the alliance with Romania, of course, due to the growing pressure from Germany, as well as due to the desire to not be completely isolated in the Ukrainian problem [...] Also, [the Poles] consider that the German influence in Budapest and Prague is too powerful [...]." Both countries soon offered each other assistance. After the partition of Czechoslovakia, Romania feared being next. Ambassador Franasovici reported in March 1939 that: "[...] as with their appeasing intervention in Budapest, the Polish government pointed out that any action of Hungary against Romania could lead to a new world war, and guaranteed Romania's peaceful intentions." The annulment of Polish-Romanian treaties was one of the Soviet demands during prewar French, British, Polish and Soviet negotiations. Polish diplomacy also secured British guarantees to Romania in the Polish-British Common Defense Pact of 1939. Diplomats and strategists in Poland viewed the alliance with Romania as an important part of Polish foreign and defense policy, but it eventually proved to be mostly irrelevant. Immediately preceding the war, Poland and Romania avoided specifically aiming their agreements against Germany, a country with which both were still seeking a compromise, as Beck and Grigore Gafencu agreed in the April 1939 negotiations in Kraków. Outbreak of World War II After the German invasion of Poland on September 1, Poland declined Romanian military assistance but expected to receive assistance from its British and French allies through Romanian ports; thus the reason for the Romanian Bridgehead plan. After the Red Army joined the German attack on September 17, 1939, with Western assistance not forthcoming, the Polish high command abandoned the plan and ordered its units to evacuate to France. Many units went through Romanian borders, where they were interned, but Romania remained friendly towards Poles, allowing many soldiers to escape from the camps and to move to France. Romania also treated interned Polish soldiers and immigrants with relative respect throughout the war even after it joined the Axis in 1941. However, as a result of German pressure, Romania could not openly aid the Poles. On September 21, 1939, the pro-British prime minister of Romania, Armand Călinescu, was killed in Bucharest by a squad of local fascist activists of the Iron Guard, with German support. Immediately afterwards, German authorities issued propaganda blaming the action on Polish and British initiative. Notably, the Nazi journalist Hans Fritzsche attributed the assassination to Polish and British resentments over Romania's failure