Origins The origins of the National Christian Party trace back to A.C. Cuza's National-Christian Defense League (LANC) and Octavian Goga's National Agrarian Party (PNA), which had barely interacted during their existence before the 1935 merger.
The National-Christian Defense League (LANC) was one of the first large-scale fascistic and antisemitic movements in interwar Romania. Founded in 1923 by A.C. Cuza (considered to be the most important ideologue of antisemitism in Romania), at the height of student violence in Romanian universities against Jews and various ethnic minorities, the League quickly gained support throughout the entire region of Moldova. LANC perpetuated and encouraged violent means of propaganda, ranging from street attacks and intimidation of political opponents to direct clashes and provocations against state authorities.
The National Agrarian Party (PNA), however, had a completely different political background and evolution compared to LANC, which was essentially rooted in antisemitism. At its beginnings, the PNA manifested tolerance toward ethnic minorities and actively collaborated with them. Its statute even included provisions regarding the respect for ethnic minorities and their inherent characteristics. Octavian Goga, the founder of the PNA, was considered a friend and protector of the Jewish community in Romania by Leon Press, a Romanian Jewish industrialist and prominent member of the PNA. Beginning in 1933, continuing in 1934 and 1935, Octavian Goga began meeting regularly with Adolf Hitler and later with Benito Mussolini, the National Agrarian Party's ideology gradually started to reflect the influence of
German National Socialism and
Italian Fascist Corporatism, borrowing various doctrinal elements from both. The National Christian Party (PNC) inherited a wide range of doctrinal and organizational elements from the National-Christian Cuzist doctrine of the LANC, including blue-shirt uniforms, the
Lăncierii paramilitary wing, flags (the Romanian tricolor bearing the swastika), and similar means of action — such as violently repressing the Legionary Movement and carrying out systematic genocides against Jews with its assault battalions.
Preliminaries & founding By 1935, the political climate in Romania was turbulent, with traditional political parties criticizing
King Carol II's royal camarilla, authoritarian tendencies, and lavish lifestyle. Unlike his predecessors, Carol did not rely on political parties and saw himself as above the party leaders. Carol insisted that ministers answer to him rather than to party leaders; he appointed ministers directly and ruled unconstitutionally on several occasions, hence his actions to weaken the parties he did not trust by supporting splinter groups and dissidents, attracting their leading figures to his side, etc. Carol's camarilla was made up of influential figures in Romanian society, including industrialists
Nicolae Malaxa and
Max Auschnitt, banker
Aristide Blank, economist
Mihail Manoilescu, and his mistress
Elena Lupescu, whose family controlled a wide network of businesses in Romania. Parties such as the
National Liberal Party-George Brătianu (PNL-B) and the
National Peasants' Party (PNȚ), led by
Iuliu Maniu, displayed anti-carlist attitudes and, in early 1935, according to a
Siguranța report, planned a collective action against Carol's camarilla. The PNȚ’s division was accentuated by
Vaida-Voevod's split, who left the party in 1935 to created his own fascist party, the
Romanian Front. Vaida-Voevod's party promoted
Numerus Valachicus — a policy that prioritized ethnic Romanians over minorities. The party also organized paramilitary assault battalions, similar to the blue-shirted Lăncieri of the PNC and the green-shirted Iron Guard of the Legionary Movement. This development further splintered Romania's already fragmented far-right faction, characterized by warlordism, rivalries, and lack of unity in action. To further weaken the traditional political parties and the strongly anti-carlist Legionary Movement, King Carol II supported the idea of a party that would be loyal to him and to the monarchy. It was a strategic move that helped him push back against the anti-carlists and tighten his authoritarian grip on power, paving the way toward establishing his own royal dictatorship — something he had been striving for ever since his return to the throne in June 1930. Carol wanted to govern, not just reign. A.L. Easterman hypothesizes that Carol had placed the PNC in power "to give his people a taste of
Fascism", hoping vainly that an ensuing reaction against such policies would sweep away not only the relatively weak National Christians but also the far stronger Legionary Movement. The National-Christian Defense League was the main rival of the Legionary Movement, with which it frequently clashed, while Goga's National Agrarian Party exhibited a strongly pro-carlist and pro-monarchist stance, which was seen as a safeguard and moderating force against the Cuzist wing within the merged party. The two parties were ideal candidates for a puppet carlist party; as a result, King Carol II, through the
Siguranța agent
Ion Sân-Giorgiu, monitored both for a period before attempting to bring them closer together for a potential merger.
Nichifor Crainic, a prominent antisemitic ultranationalist ideologue and future vice president of the PNC, was reportedly involved in a secret agreement with Octavian Goga to facilitate a merger with LANC, which was supposedly the reason he left the Legionary Movement to join LANC in February 1935 in the first place. However, German documents indicate that personnel of the
Amt Rosenberg also played a role in arranging the merger. For his involvement in the merger, some political scientists consider Crainic a "royal executor," given King Carol II's ambition to create a party that would serve his interests. According to researcher Roland Clark, at one point the National Christian Party had become a tool for Crainic to promote a new political party he intended to found — the Christian Workers' Party. The merger took place in Iași on July 14, 1935. Delegates of the National Agrarian Party and the National-Christian Defense League from across the country gathered in the presence of the two presidents of the newly founded party — A. C. Cuza as Supreme President and Octavian Goga as Active President — for celebrations and the signing of the constitutive act of the National Christian Party, in the presence of parliamentarians from Iași County. In February 1935, lawyer and politician
Istrate Micescu, a former PNL deputy, briefly collaborated with the Legionary Movement. He founded the Association of Romanian Christian Lawyers, adopting fascist-style rituals and advocating the exclusion of Jewish lawyers from the Ilfov Bar through a
Numerus clausus policy. Supported by Legionary lawyers of the Ilfov Bar, he managed to overthrow the bar's council through a censure motion and intimidation. The alliance with the Legionary Movement proved temporary, as Micescu essentially used its members for political pressure against his opponents. Once president of the Ilfov Bar, he turned against the legionaries, and the rivalry continued throughout the rest of the 1930s. Micescu joined the PNC in 1936 and quickly became a leading figure within the party. He was later appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Goga-Cuza cabinet. In April 1937,
Octavian Goga attempted once again to form a Cuza-Goga-Vaida coalition and to repair relations with
C.Z. Codreanu's Legionary Movement — although the appeasement of the Legionary Movement proved to be in vain. In February 1937, when two Cuzists approached Codreanu with the suggestion of forming a united "nationalist front," Codreanu reportedly responded:
"Comrades, beware of dogs, whores, and Cuzists." Prior to that, during 1935 and 1936, Goga had pursued similar efforts, either through coalition talks with Vaida-Voevod or by seeking the merger of the Romanian Front into the PNC.
Vaida-Voevod was interested in a merger but hesitated, as he feared he would play a minor role in the leadership, since a third president role could not be introduced. Goga pursued a coalition or merger because he trusted the Transylvanian nationalists significantly more than the Cuzist wing of the PNC, which was also distrusted and opposed by Goga's old followers from the now-merged National Agrarian Party, due to A.C. Cuza's radical antisemitism. The
NSDAP placed its support behind Octavian Goga and A.C. Cuza — who was referred to as the "mentor of European antisemitism" by
Julius Streicher and
Alfred Rosenberg — and their party, rather than behind C.Z. Codreanu and his legionaries, although the legionaries also received support from the NSDAP and King Carol II himself at certain points. The leading figures of the NSDAP, among them Alfred Rosenberg — who took a particular interest in the issue of Nazi and fascist-oriented parties in Romania — claimed that the issue had to be resolved in Germany's favor: ''"The issue of the organizations in Romania harms the Reich's foreign policy, which must absolutely be taken into account in these times."'' The support of the NSDAP's
Amt Rosenberg facilitated the creation of the party and continued to heavily support it in the period that followed. On November 8, 1936, 100,000 National Christians marched through Bucharest, imitating the Nazi salute and carrying Romanian tricolor flags bearing the swastika. The march was authorized by
Tătărescu's cabinet through Octavian Goga, who maintained contacts with high-ranking Nazi officials. Such demonstrations were never permitted for the
Legionary Movement. The National Christian Party actively opposed the Legionary Movement during the
1937 general elections, and violent disputes between the two parties were particularly intense in the eastern regions of the country. In
Bessarabia, for example, the Legionary Movement remained weak, while in
Bukovina and parts of
Moldova, the strength of the PNC prevented it from securing the entire nationalist-antisemitic electorate. The electoral influence in the eastern regions of Romania was inherited from LANC, which was very active in Moldova, whereas the electoral influence of the PNA was based in Transylvania. King Carol II's strategy of weakening both the traditional parties and the Legionary Movement proved effective in this regard, as the electorate was now strongly divided. On 11 December, the PNC, in cooperation with Tătărescu's cabinet, successfully challenged the legal eligibility of several Legionary candidates who had participated in the
Spanish Civil War. The challenge argued that these individuals had forfeited their Romanian citizenship by serving under a foreign flag. As a result, Legionary candidate lists were disqualified in 18 counties.
The 1937 general elections did not produce a clear parliamentary majority. For the first time in the country's history, the ruling party failed to win the elections. The governing coalition led by
Gheorghe Tătărescu secured only 35.92% of the vote. Iuliu Maniu's National Peasant Party received 20.40%, while Corneliu Zelea Codreanu's Totul pentru Țară (the political arm of the Legionary Movement) obtained 15.58%. Faced with a weakened National Liberal Party, unwilling to transfer power to either Maniu or Codreanu, King Carol II turned to the fourth-largest party, the National Christian Party, which had received 9.15% of the vote. Goga was invited to form a government. The resulting cabinet included five PNC deputies, three PNȚ members, and two independents — notably
Istrate Micescu as Minister of Foreign Affairs and
Armand Călinescu, a known opponent of the Legion, as Minister of the Interior. In his journal, King Carol II reflected on the formation of the new cabinet following the 1937 elections. He wrote:
"Normally, based on the electoral results, I should have invited Codreanu. However, no one outside the legionaries would have approved such a move. For me, it was a total and absolute impossibility. Their use of terrorist methods, their violent antisemitism, their overtly radical foreign policy — especially their desire to overturn existing alliances and their unnatural closeness to Germany — as well as their overall extremist and antisocial approach, made this option unacceptable. Thus, the only remaining constitutional solution was to call upon the National Christian Party of Goga and Cuza." were well known and were strongly criticized by the National Peasant Party during the election campaign. Ultimately, for Carol, the PNC was merely a transitional pathway to his own royal dictatorship and a tool for destabilizing the political parties. -
Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Vol. II. No. 26 from August 31, 1936. == Governance ==