For My Legionaries

For My Legionaries (Romanian: Pentru legionari) is a 1936 autobiography by Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, Romanian Christian Nationalist leader and the founder of the Legionary Movement. It was first published in 1936 and translated into multiple languages over decades. For My Legionaries is largely autobiographical, with a few sections dedicated to philosophical or ideological thoughts, and was addresssed to the Legionaries who followed him. The book gives much information about Codreanu's life and his fascinating and heroic struggle against corrupt politicians and Jews in order to create a greater, religiously Christian, and culturally purer Romanian nation.

Quotes from the Book

• "From this Legionary school a new man will have to emerge, a man with heroic qualities; a giant of our history to do battle and win over all the enemies of our Fatherland, his battle and victory having to extend even beyond the material world into the realm of invisible enemies, the powers of evil. Everything that our mind can imagine more beautiful spiritually; everything the proudest that our race can produce, greater, more just, more powerful, wiser, purer, more diligent and more heroic, this is what the Legionary school must give us! A man in whom all the possibilities of human grandeur that are implanted by God in the blood of our people be developed to the maximum. This hero, the product of Legionary education, will also know how to elaborate programs; will also know how to solve the Jewish problem; will also know how to organize the state well; will also know how to convince the other Romanians; and if not, he will know how to win, for that is why he is a hero. This hero, this Legionary of bravery, labor and justice, with the powers God implanted in his soul, will lead our Fatherland on the road of its glory."

• "We were born in the mist of time on this land together with the oaks and fir trees. We are bound to it not only by the bread and existence it furnishes us as we toil on it, but also by all the bones of our ancestors who sleep in its ground. All our parents are here. All our memories, all our war-like glory, all our history here, in this land lies buried. Here... sleep the Romanians fallen there in battles, nobles and peasants, as numerous as the leaves and blades of grass. At Posada, Calugareni, on the Olt, jiu and Cerna rivers, at Turda; in the mountains of the unhappy and forgotten Moti of Vidra, all the way to Huedin and Alba-Iulia (the torture place of Horia and his brothers-in-arms), there are everywhere testimonies of battles and tombs of heroes. All over the Carpathians, from the Oltenian mountains at Dragoslavele and at Predeal, from Oituz to Vatra Dornei, on peaks and in valley bottoms, everywhere Romanian blood flowed like rivers. In the middle of the night, in difficult times for our people, we hear the call of the Romanian soil urging us to battle. I ask and I expect an answer: By what right do the Jews wish to take this land from us? On what historical argument do they base their pretensions and particularly the audacity with which they defy us Romanians, here in our own land? We are bound to this land by millions of tombs and millions of unseen threads that only our soul feels, and woe to those who shall try to snatch us from it."

• "If Christian mysticism and its goal, ecstasy, is the contact of man with god through a leap from human nature to divine nature, national mysticism is nothing other than the contact of man and crowds with the soul of their race through the leap which these forces make from the world of personal and material interests into the outer world of race. Not through the mind, since this anyone can do, but by living with their soul."

• "These young men, ever since 1931, in view of their qualities of clear judgement and great sincerity, have lived with me daily, sharing with me the same tormenting worries and helping me step by step in the difficult burden of leading an organization on the battlefield. Futile efforts, for all these infamies thrown against us were ordered. They will have only one effect: that of amassing in our souls injustice after injustice, calumny after calumny, blow after blow, pain after pain. Our youth has stood them all, burying them in its soul. Now, so many years later, if I wanted to give the world advice, I would shout: Beware of those who endure it for too long!"

• "A country has only the Jews and leaders it deserves. Just as mosquitoes can thrive and settle only in swamps, likewise the former can only thrive in the swamps of our sins."

Table of Contents

Foreword by D. Gazadru

To the Legionaries

STEPPING INTO LIFE

In the Dobrina Forest

At the University of Iasi

Revolution being prepared

The Guard of the National Conscience

The attitude of the Jewish press

The first Student Congress after the War

The opening of the Iasi University in the fall of 1920

The 1920-1921 university year

The university year 1921-1922

THE STUDENT MOVEMENT

December 10, 1922

The 'Numerus Clausus'

THE JEWISH PROBLEM

The number of Jews

The return to Romania

The Assembly of Iasi, March 4, 1923. The founding of the League of National Defense

Other nationalist and anti-Semitic organizations

Modification of the Art. 7 of the Constitution

The great men of Romania of 1879

The student general strike continues

The plans of Judaism against the Romanian Nation

The Congress of the Student Movement's Leaders

The October 1923 student plot

At Iasi

A YEAR OF GREAT TRIALS

The Christian Cultural Home

The Mota-Vlad Trial

Around what happened at the garden

The fatal day

The trial

JUNE 1925-JUNE 1926

After one year, work resumes

In France at school

At Bucharest - The League of Christian National Defense broken in two

THE LEGION OF MICHAEL THE ARCHANGEL

The Legion of Michael the Archangel

The stages of the Legion's development

TOWARD THE POPULAR MASSES

The decision to go to the masses

Dissolution of the League of Michael the Archangel and the Iron Guard

The legionary movement in the first elections

DEMOCRACY AGAINST THE NATION

In Parliament

The nation

The battle of Tutova

The second dissolution of the Guard

New general elections

The condition of the legionary organization in 1932-1933

THE OFFENSIVE OF CALUMNIES

'Anarchic and terroristic movement'

The death team

The dam of Visani

Comrades

EPILOGUE

Publication Data

• For My Legionaries. Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. Third Edition. Translated and edited by Dr. Dimitrie Gazdaru. York, SC: Liberty Bell Publications, 2003. ISBN 1593640005

• A recent fourth edition of For My Legionaries. London: Black House Publishing, 2015. ISBN-13: 9781910881002. This edition contains an added introduction by Kerry Bolton, a historical overview by Lucian Tudor, several new appendices, and photographs.

External Links

• For My Legionaires
• For My Legionaries - At the Internet Archive