The History of the Legionary Movement

When Comeliu Codreanu and thirteen of his legionary comrades were strangled in the forest of Tancabesti, it left the impression upon many that somehow the story of the Captain and the Legionary Movement was not at an end, but rather that it would have a development in another time and in another place.

The following years in the history of Romania, with the country plunging into its most gruesome and terrible repression, - so vividly described by Bacu in his book The Anti-Humans - tends to,make one believe that, perhaps, the bloody sacrifice had been pointless after all. Yet, as with so much else in human history, appearances proved to be deceiving.

Following the seizure of power in post-war Romania by an alien-led Communist Party, there was an exodus of patriotic Romanians to the West, bringing with them their stories and their accounts of the exhilarating and tragic history of the Legion. It was to be this flow of refugees that preserved the legend of the Legion for future generations, and allowed the transmission of its essential and inspirational message to other nations and peoples.

It was to be the radical and anti-Communist youth of Europe and of the Americas who were to be influenced by this epic of the Captain and his movement, a movement that had thrown down a challenge that went beyond Romania and beyond its time.