the Bistrița monastery. Hitler was alarmed about the possibility of a Hungarian-Romanian war which he feared might result in the destruction of Romania's oil fields and/or might lead to the Soviets intervening to seize all of Romania. At this time, Hitler was already seriously considering invading the Soviet Union in 1941, and if he were to take such a step, he would need Romanian oil to power his military. At the Second Vienna Award of 30 August 1940, the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and the Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano ruled that northern Transylvania was to go to Hungary while southern Transylvania would stay with Romania; a compromise that left both Budapest and Bucharest deeply unhappy with the Vienna award. For economic reasons, Romania was far more important to Hitler than was Hungary, but Romania had been allied to France since 1926 and had flirted with joining the British-inspired "peace front" in 1939, so Hitler who personally disliked and mistrusted Carol-felt that Romania deserved to be punished for waiting so long to align with the Axis. After the fall of Paris in June 1940, the Germans had captured the archives of the Quai d'Orsay and were thus well-informed about the double-line that Carol had pursued until the spring of 1940. Hitler was annoyed with Carol's efforts to forge closer ties with France at the same time proclaiming his friendship towards Germany. At the same time, Hitler offered Carol a "guarantee" of the rest of Romania against further territorial losses, which Carol promptly accepted. Road to abdication The acceptance of the Second Vienna Award completely discredited Carol with his people, and in early September 1940 enormous demonstrations broke out all over Romania demanding that Carol abdicate. On 1 September 1940, Sima who had resigned from the government gave a speech calling upon Carol to abdicate, and the Iron Guard began to organize demonstrations all over Romania to press for king's abdication. On 2 September 1940, Valer Pop, a courtier and an important member of the camarilla first advised Carol to appoint General Ion Antonescu as Prime Minister as the solution to the crisis. Pop's reasons for advising Carol to have Antonescu as Prime Minister was partly because Antonescu - who was known to be friendly with the Iron Guard and had been imprisoned under Carol - was believed to have enough of an oppositional background to appease the