because of Gafencu's friendship with Colonel Józef Beck, the Polish foreign minister as Carol wanted to strengthen ties with Poland. Gafencu was to prove himself something of an opportunist as foreign minister, the man who always wanted to take the path of least resistance, in marked contrast to Armand Călinescu, the tough, "almost freakish-looking", diminutive, one-eyed Interior Minister (and soon to be Prime Minister) who proved himself a consistent opponent of fascism both in Romania and abroad and encouraged Carol to stand with the Allies. Carol's foreign policy going into 1939 was strengthen Romania's alliances with Poland and the Balkan Entente, work to avoid conflicts with Romania's enemies Hungary and Bulgaria, encourage Britain and France to get involved in the Balkans while trying to avoid giving offense to Germany. On 6 March 1939, the Patriarch Cristea died and was replaced as Prime Minister by Călinescu. In February 1939, Göring dispatched his deputy Helmuth Wohlthat of the Four Year Plan organisation to Bucharest with instructions to sign yet another German-Romanian economic treaty that would allow Germany total economic domination of Romania, especially its oil industry. That Wohlthat, the number two man in the Four Year Plan organisation was sent to Bucharest indicated the importance of the German-Romanian talks. Carol had resisted German demands for more oil in the December 1938 agreement, and instead had succeeded by early 1939 placing Romania to a certain extent within the British economic sphere of influence. To counterbalance the increasingly powerful German influence in the Balkans, Carol wanted closer ties with Britain. At the same time, the Four Year Plan was running into major difficulties by early 1939 and in particular, Göring's plans to have synthetic oil plants which would make oil from coal were well behind schedule. The new technology of making synthetic oil from lignite coal had run into major technical problems and cost overruns, and Göring had been informed in early 1939 that the synthetic oil plants whose construction had started in 1936 would not be operative by 1940 as planned. It was not until the summer of 1942 that Germany's first synthetic oil plants finally start operating. It was making painfully obvious to Göring in the first months of 1939 that the German economy would not be ready to support a total war by 1940 as the Four Year Plan of 1936 had envisioned while at the same time his economic experts