historian Larry Watts that it was Carol that allied Romania to Nazi Germany and that Marshal Ion Antonescu had unwillingly inherited an alliance with Germany in 1940, the Canadian historian Dov Lungu wrote:"The author's [Watts] claim that Romania's de facto alliance with Germany under Antonescu was the work of Carol, who began laying its foundations for it as early as 1938, is wide off the mark. Carol's concessions to Germany were made half-heartedly and delayed as much as possible in the hope that the western powers would regain the initiative on the political-diplomatic front and, from September 1939, the military one. He finally did change his country's external economic and political orientation, but only in the spring of 1940, when German hegemony on the Continent seemed imminent. In addition, there is more than a subtle distinction between Carol's request in the last weeks of his rule for the dispatch of a German military mission to train the ill-prepared Romanian Army and Antonescu's decision almost immediately after assuming power to fight on Germany's side until the very end. In fact, in his desire to regain the province of Bessarabia, Antonescu was keener than the Germans' in Romania's participation in an anti-Soviet war". Exile Forced under Soviet and subsequently Hungarian, Bulgarian, and German pressure to surrender parts of his kingdom to foreign rule, he was finally outmaneuvered by the pro-German administration of Marshal Ion Antonescu, and abdicated in favour of Michael in September 1940. He went into exile, initially in Mexico, but ultimately settled in Portugal. While in Portugal, he stayed in Estoril, at Casa do Mar e Sol. Carol and Lupescu settled in Mexico City, where he purchased a house in one of Mexico City's most expensive districts. During World War II, Carol tried to set up a Free Romania movement based in Mexico to overthrow General Antonescu. Carol had hopes that his Free Romania movement would be recognized as a government-in-exile, and would ultimately lead to him being restored. The closest Carol ever got to having his Free Romania movement recognized came in 1942 when President Manuel Ávila Camacho allowed Carol to stand beside him while reviewing his troops. Carol would have liked to operate out of the United States, but the American government refused him permission to enter. However, Carol was in contact with two Eastern Orthodox priests living in Chicago, Father Glicherie Moraru and Father Alexandru Opreanu, who