When Countess Waldeck arrived in Bucharest on June 14, 1940, the day the German army marched into Paris, Romania was at the beginning of a period that would become one of the most humiliating and tumultuous eight months in the turbulent and often tragic history of this country. By the time Waldeck left Romania at the end of January 1941, the country had lost the provinces of Bessarabia, northern Bukovina, and Herta to the Soviet Union, northwestern Transylvania to Hungary, and southern Dobruja to Bulgaria. In less than a year, Romania had been stripped of a third of its total area, nearly 100,000 km², along with over six million of its population—all lost without a shot being fired. Consequently, Romania found itself, due to Soviet aggression, half-captive under the control of a German military presence and meager restitutions.