The National Christian Party (Romanian: Partidul Național Creștin) was a far-right, authoritarian, and strongly antisemitic political party in the Kingdom of Romania, active between 1935 and 1938. It was formed by a merger of Octavian Goga's National Agrarian Party (PNA) and A. C. Cuza's National-Christian Defense League (LANC). Among its members was the philosopher Nichifor Crainic, the party's main ideologue. In December 1937, Goga was chosen by King Carol II to form a government that included Cuza; the government lasted only 44 days and was followed by a royal dictatorship under Carol II. The party's members were commonly nicknamed the “Gogo-Cuzists” or simply “Cuzists”, referring to Cuza's wing within the party and the former LANC militants, who were far more notorious than Goga's PNA due to violent street clashes and virulent antisemitic rhetoric throughout the 1920s.
History
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. King Carol II was aware of the threat the anti-carlist opposition posed to his plans for uncontested authoritarian rule. Carol undertook various actions to weaken the traditional political parties, fostering division within the National Liberal Party by supporting Gheorghe Tătărescu's wing. Carol asked Tătărescu to form a government in 1934, which lasted until 1937. Additionally, he sought to undermine the influence and cohesion of the National Peasants' Party in the Transylvania region by using Ion Mihalache, the PNȚ vice president, against party leader Iuliu Maniu. 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. Carol also took into consideration the appeasement of Nazi Germany, which aimed to establish a pro-German regime and actively intervened in the Romanian political scene to support sympathetic or satellite parties — among them the PNC, once it was founded.
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.
Activity
Beginning in February 1935, regional PNC leaders began organizing and establishing local party cells across counties, communes, and villages. Simultaneously, youth organization cells also started to form. In Moldova, where the former LANC had held significant influence, the Cuzist wing of the PNC made use of religious rituals and congresses, with peasants making up the majority of attendees. Such congresses were held in Suceava county, Părhuți commune, where over 3,000 peasants participated. Most notably, a large congress took place in Chișinău, where the number of participants was reportedly as high as 60,000, brought in by train from neighboring counties. In Teleorman County, Lissa commune, after a religious ritual, the local party leader spoke to the peasants about the platform of the PNC, emphasizing the Christian and nationalist aspects of the party. They wanted to show the peasantry that the PNC “takes care of the peasants and helps the poor.” To sensitize the peasants, the local party leaders brought in an old, well-known peasant of the commune (who was also appointed as a cell leader) to speak to those present at the event. With such promises and tactics, the PNC managed to attract a large number of sympathizers by the beginning of August and laid the groundwork for several regional PNC cells across the country.
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.