Ion Victor Antonescu (Romanian pronunciation: [iˈon antoˈnesku]; June 15, 1882 – June 1, 1946) was a Romanian soldier, authoritarian politician and convicted war criminal. The Prime Minister and Conducător during most of World War II, he presided over two successive wartime dictatorships. A Romanian Army career officer who made his name during the 1907 peasants' revolt and the World War I Romanian Campaign, the antisemitic Antonescu sympathized with the far right and fascist National Christian and Iron Guard groups for much of the interwar period. He was a military attaché to France and later Chief of the General Staff, briefly serving as Defense Minister in the National Christian cabinet of Octavian Goga. During the late 1930s, his political stance brought him into conflict with King Carol II and led to his detainment. Antonescu nevertheless rose to political prominence during the political crisis of 1940, and established the National Legionary State, an uneasy partnership with the Iron Guard's leader Horia Sima. After entering Romania into an alliance with Nazi Germany and the Axis and ensuring Adolf Hitler's confidence, he eliminated the Guard during the Legionary Rebellion of 1941. In addition to leadership of the executive, he assumed the offices of Foreign Affairs and Defense Minister. Soon after Romania joined the Axis in Operation Barbarossa, recovering Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, Antonescu also became Marshal of Romania.

Horia Sima (July 3, 1907 – May 25, 1993) was a Romanian fascist politician. After 1938, he was the second and last leader of the fascist and antisemitic para-military movement known as the Iron Guard.

Sima was born near Fogaras, in Transylvania (part of Austria-Hungary at the time). Between 1926 and 1932, Horia Sima was a student at the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Bucharest. After this, he started to work as a local high-school teacher of logic and philosophy. In October 1927 he joined newly-formed Iron Guard and became responsible for the Banat area.

Sima became commander of the Legion after the founder and leader of the Iron Guard, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, was imprisoned. Tension built up following a series of assassinations of Iron Guard members, including Codreanu (who was killed in prison), in late November 1938. In early 1939, Sima was able to flee to Germany through Yugoslavia. In the summer of the same year, he was sent back in order to prepare and conduct the assassination of the Romanian Prime-Minister, Armand Călinescu, on September 21, 1939. On July 4, 1940, he joined the cabinet of Ion Gigurtu as Minister of Religion and Arts, alongside two other Iron Guard members, but resigned four days later.

Victor Antonescu (September 3, 1871, Antoneşti, Teleorman County – August 22, 1947, Bucharest) was a Minister of Finance between 1935 and 1936 and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania from 29 August 1936 until 28 December 1937. In 1946, he was part of the Romanian delegation at the Paris Peace Conference.

Adolf Hitler (German: [ˈadɔlf ˈhɪtlɐ] ( listen); 20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP), commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and dictator of Nazi Germany (as Führer und Reichskanzler) from 1934 to 1945. Hitler is commonly associated with the rise of fascism in Europe, World War II, and the Holocaust.

A decorated veteran of World War I, Hitler joined the German Workers' Party, precursor of the Nazi Party, in 1919, and became leader of the NSDAP in 1921. In 1923, he attempted a coup d'état, known as the Beer Hall Putsch, in Munich. The failed coup resulted in Hitler's imprisonment, during which time he wrote his memoir, Mein Kampf (My Struggle). After his release in 1924, Hitler gained popular support by attacking the Treaty of Versailles and promoting Pan-Germanism, antisemitism, and anticommunism with charismatic oratory and Nazi propaganda. After his appointment as chancellor in 1933, he transformed the Weimar Republic into the Third Reich, a single-party dictatorship based on the totalitarian and autocratic ideology of Nazism. His aim was to establish a New Order of absolute Nazi German hegemony in continental Europe.