Victor Rădulescu-Pogoneanu

Victor I. Rădulescu-Pogoneanu (September 21, 1910 – March 10, 1962) was a Romanian diplomat. He helped set up negotiations to remove his country from its alliance with Nazi Germany during World War II. An opponent of the Romanian Communist Party, he was arrested shortly before the establishment of a communist regime and spent the next fifteen years in prison before succumbing to the treatment he received there.

Born in Bucharest into an upper-class family, his father Ion, a university professor, was a follower of Titu Maiorescu, while his mother Elena headed the Central School for Girls prior to 1939. His brother was also a distinguished diplomat, while his sister Anina (1902-1994) was active in the Romanian émigré community in Paris during the communist era. He obtained university degrees in Law, Philosophy and Sociology before entering the Foreign Ministry in 1934 in spite of advanced paralysis in his lower body. He was assigned to the press and information office. During World War II, while a ministry employee, he took part alongside Camil Demetrescu and Grigore Niculescu-Buzești in organizing secret negotiations with the Allies. Their objective was the exit of Axis Romania from the war, alongside a conspiracy against dictator Ion Antonescu that culminated in the King Michael Coup of August 1944. Moreover, as director of the ministerial cabinet and cipher unit, he played an important role both during the war and its aftermath in keeping the country's decision-makers informed. He also passed along information to Western embassies in Bucharest, alerting them to the impending danger of a communist takeover, and sent documents abroad that demonstrated the economic domination and despoilment being practiced by the country's Soviet occupiers. He was dismissed from the ministry in 1946.

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