National Socialist Party (Romania)

National Socialist Party of Romania (National-Socialist, Fascist and Christian Steel Shield) Partidul Național-Socialist din România (Pavăza de Oțel Național-Socialistă, Fascistă și Creștină)
President	Ștefan Tătărescu
Founded	March 25, 1932
Dissolved	July 5, 1934
Succeeded by	Numerus Valachicus National Movement Nationalist Soldiers' Front German People's Party
Headquarters	Precupeții Vechi Street 1, Obor, Bucharest
Newspaper	Crez Nou
Paramilitary wing	Pavăza de Oțel
Regional wings	National Socialist Self-Help Movement of the Germans in Romania (NSDR) National Movement for Renewal of the Germans of Romania (NEDR)
Ideology	Majority:  • Nazism  • Monarchism  • Corporatism  • Clerical fascism Minority:  • German community interests  • Christian socialism
Political position	Far-right
National affiliation	National-Christian Defense League (1932, 1933)
Colours	Black, White, Red
Slogan	România Românilor ("Romania for the Romanians")
Party flag
Politics of Romania Political parties Elections

The National Socialist Party (formally Nationalist-Socialist Party of Romania; Romanian: Partidul Național-Socialist din România, PNSR)^[1] or Steel Shield (Pavăza de Oțel) was a mimetic Nazi political party, active in Romania during the early 1930s. It was led by Colonel Ștefan Tătărescu, the brother of Gheorghe Tătărescu (twice Prime Minister of Romania during that interval), and existed around the newspaper Crez Nou. One of several far-right factions competing unsuccessfully against the Iron Guard for support, the group made little headway, and existed at times as a satellite of the National-Christian Defense League.

The PNSR proposed a program of corporatism and statism, promising a basic income, full employment, and limits on capitalist profits. It was anticommunist generally, and in particular anti-Soviet, circulating the theory of Jewish Bolshevism while describing its own program as the alternative, "positive", socialism. The party also claimed for itself the banner of Christianity, which it associated with calls for social reorganization and the expulsion or segregation of Romanian Jews. Its Germanophilia and antisemitism were supplemented by shows of support for the policies of King Carol II.

The PNSR's ideological stance, exotic in its Romanian context, found favor in Nazi Germany, notably from Alfred Rosenberg. Overall, the PNSR failed in its bid to establish a pan-fascist alliance in Romania, and, despite being nativist, functioned as a magnet for Transylvanian Saxons, Bessarabia Germans, and Russian émigrés. Tătărescu was received officially by his German patrons, who also provided the PNSR with funds, but eventually dropped by them for his unpopularity and alleged corruption. In late 1933, under the antifascist Prime Minister Ion G. Duca, the party was repressed.

Tătărescu exercised some influence over his brother's government in 1934, helping to steer the country away from its traditional alliances, but failed in his attempt to obtain arms deals for Germany. Disavowed by both its Nazi backers and Gheorghe Tătărescu, the party moderated its stances, then disappeared from the political scene in July 1934. In 1935, it was succeeded by the Numerus Valachicus National Movement, which existed briefly as part of an electoral cartel with the Romanian Front. Later that decade, the Colonel was involved with the Nationalist Soldiers' Front, which borrowed the PNSR's symbols. The PNSR Saxon chapter, under Fritz Fabritius, reemerged as the German People's Party in 1935.