[citation needed] In the World War I, Iacobici was appointed, with the rank of captain, in the great general staff of the Austro-Hungarian Army, the operations office.

[2] Four days after the legionary rebellion, on January 27, 1941, the adjutant corps general Iosif Iacobici (with pro-German political orientation) was appointed Minister of War.

[3] In this capacity, he developed the project of transitioning the army to the peace framework and restoring it after the losses recorded in the first year of the war.

In accordance to that, Iacobici ordered the commander of the Second Section of the General Staff, lieutenant colonel Alexandru Ionescu, to draw up a plan "for the removal of the Jewish element from the Bessarabian territory by organizing and operating teams, which would overtake the Romanian troops".

According to Iacobici, "The mission of these teams is to create in the villages an atmosphere unfavorable to the Jewish elements, in such a way that the population alone will seek to remove them by the means they will find more appropriate and adaptable to the circumstances.

[5] The leadership of the Ministry of National Defense was taken over on an interim basis on the same day by Marshal Antonescu,[6] who delegated to Major General Constantin Pantazi, Undersecretary of State at the Department of National Defense for the Dry Army, the leadership of the ministry and the plenipotentiary powers to sign all decrees on all the time of his absence.

That night, Iacobici telegraphed to Antonescu's military cabinet that the ordered action had been initiated: "As reprisals and to set an example to the population, measures were taken to hang a number of suspected Jews and communists in the public squares".

[8] The German army command offered its services by proposing to send an SS battalion to the site to help "disarm the mines" and clear Odessa of "Jews and Bolsheviks".

[10] Nevertheless, the Romanian marshal agreed with the new plan to reorient the front to the resources of the Caspian Sea and expressed his commitment to participate with a large number of military personnel.

In support of his request, Iacobici specified the difficulties of supply, the lack of means of transport, deficiencies in endowment and the unpopular nature of the intervention, since the Romanian soldier is not happy to fight far from his country, and the danger represented by Hungary in the conditions in which it maintained its military potential almost intact.

[13] General Iacobici's position regarding the sending of Romanian troops to the front beyond the Dniester led to a rapid worsening of relations with Marshal Antonescu.

Considering himself wronged, Iacobici sought some kind of rehabilitation after August 23, 1944, stating that he would immediately retire from the army after he was given "moral satisfaction".

The General Prosecutor of Romania, Sorin Moisescu, requested the Supreme Court of Justice to rehabilitate eight members of the Antonescu government.

Prosecutor Moisescu reviewed the request submitted to the SCJ, stating that "the collective ministerial responsibility of the Antonescu government cannot be omitted".

On October 26, 1998, the Supreme Court of Justice rejected the request to extend the appeal for annulment, formulated by the general prosecutor, Sorin Moisescu, in favor of Iosif Iacobici, and recorded the withdrawal of the appeals for annulment declared in favor of the members of the "Antonescu group", sentenced to between two and ten years of hard prison under the charges of war crimes, subordinating the national economy to fascism and high treason.