1940 at a time when he was convinced of the possibility of reaching an arrangement with Britain". Later on, Broszat was to attack the book that first made Hillgruber's reputation as a historian, Hitler, König Carol und Marschall Antonescu dealing with relations between Germany and Romania from 1938 to 1944., Broszat offered up harsh criticism of Hillgruber's book on German-Romanian relations, arguing that Hillgruber had seriously misunderstood the Reichs relations with Romania by focusing only on the Auswärtiges Amt and upon Hitler. Broszat argued that there were two factions competing with each in regard to relations with Romania, namely the "old guard" which comprised the traditional German elites in the Wehrmacht and the Auswärtiges Amt who supported General Ion Antonescu and the "new guard" in the SS and the NSDAP who supported Horia Sima of the Iron Guard. Thus Broszat argued that German policy towards Romania between September 1940-January 1941 was largely incoherent, with different factions in the German government supporting different factions in the Romanian government, which explains how in January 1941 the SS supported the Iron Guard's coup attempt against General Antonescu while the Wehrmacht and the Auswärtiges Amt supported Antonescu. Broszat maintained that Hillgruber's picture of German foreign policy being run by Hitler at every turn was incorrect because if that were true, the situation in January 1941 during the Legionnaires' rebellion and Bucharest pogrom with the SS supporting the Iron Guard's coup against General Antonescu who was being supported by the Wehrmacht and the Auswärtiges Amt would never had occurred. Broszat argued that ultimately Hitler chose to support Antonescu as part of his general preference for conservatives like Antonescu who were more capable of governing competently over radical fascists like the Iron Guard who were ideologically closer to him, but were also incompetent. One of Hillgruber's leading critics, the British Marxist historian Timothy Mason, accepted the Stufenplan thesis, but argued that an economic crisis derailed the Stufenplan in the late 1930s. Mason argued that "Nazi Germany was always bent at some time upon a major war of expansion", but the timing of such a war was determined by domestic political pressures, especially as relating to a failing economy, and had nothing to do with what Hitler wanted. In Mason's view, in the period between 1936 and 1941 the state of the German economy, and not Hitler's "will" or "intentions", was the most important determinate on German