The Transnistria Governorate (Romanian: Guvernământul Transnistriei) was a Romanian-administered territory between the Dniester and Southern Bug, conquered by the Axis Powers from the Soviet Union during Operation Barbarossa.

Limited in the west by the Dniester river (separating it from Bessarabia), in the east by the Southern Bug river (separating it from the German Reichskommissariat Ukraine), and in the south by the Black Sea, it comprised the present-day region of Transnistria (which compared to the World War II whole is only a small strip along the bank of the Dniester) and territories further east (modern Odesa Oblast eastward of the Dniester, southern Vinnytsia Oblast and a small part of Mykolaiv Oblast), including the Black Sea port of Odesa, which became the administrative capital of Transnistria during World War II.

In World War II, the Kingdom of Romania, persuaded and aided by Nazi Germany, took control of Transnistria for the first time in history.

In August 1941, Adolf Hitler persuaded Ion Antonescu to take control of the territory as a substitute for Northern Transylvania, occupied by Miklós Horthy's Hungary following the Second Vienna Award.

Part of Romania's grand strategy was to use Transnistria as a bargaining chip at the end of the war to obtain various gains, from Russia or Ukraine or possibly from Germany and Hungary.

[13] German forces were brought into the reinforce the attackers and eventually in October 1941 after two months of fighting, the Romanian army took control of the city.

[17][18] The borders of Transnistria were for the most part natural and self-evident: the Black Sea (south) along with the rivers Bug (east) and Nistru (west).

The latter wanted to push the border north of the town of Zhmerynka (Romanian: Jmerinca), a strategically important railway hub.

[3] Two eminent political figures of the day, Iuliu Maniu and Constantin Brătianu, declared that "the Romanian people will never consent to the continuation of the struggle beyond our national borders.

On 7 December 1941, the University of Odessa was reopened with 6 faculties – medicine, polytechnical, law, sciences, languages and agricultural engineering.

Under Romanian rule, religious and cultural revivals were permitted, prisoners of war were released and many local Communists were amnestied.

This leniency eased local hostility to Romanian occupation after the terror of 1941, also undermining Soviet attempts to recruit partisans.

Even while the retreating Romanians were looting Transnistria in March 1944, the local partisans were unable to mobilize civilian support.

In addition to the looting of industrial and agricultural resources, Transnistria served as a colony for cheap labor to be used in mines and to rebuild destroyed infrastructure.

By 31 August 1943, Odessa alone had issued 8,610 licenses for economic activity, including: 1,256 groceries, 1,062 restaurants/cafes and 171 "small industries" such as soap factories.

This had the dual purpose of increasing German military supplies and depriving millions of supposedly racially inferior Eastern Europeans.

Antonescu replied three days later, stating that he could only assume responsibility for the area between the Dniester and the Bug, due to lacking "the means and trained staff".

The final borders were recognized on 4 September, in a German order establishing a boundary between Transnistria and the rear of Army Group South.

On 28 October, Romania took over the part of Pervomaisk located on the western bank of the river Bug and restored its old name (Golta).

The following aircraft comprised the Transnistrian air section:[37] Responsibility for the Holocaust in Odessa and Transnistria at large was squarely Romania's, the only country aside from Germany to administer a major Soviet city during World War II.

Survivors say that in comparison with the Holocaust of Nazi Germany, where deportations were carefully planned, the Romanian government did not prepare to house thousands of people in Transnistria, where the deportees stayed.

Six days later, a bomb exploded in the Romanian military headquarters in Odessa, prompting a massacre of Jews; many were burned alive.

[45] Transnistria was the site of two concentration camps and several de facto ghettos (which the Romanian wartime government referred to as "colonies").

Similar events occurred at the Domanovka and Akmechetka [uk] camps, and (quoting the same source) "typhus-devastated Jews were crowded into the 'colony' in Mohyliv-Podilskyi."

Other camps, also with very high death rates, were at Pechora and Vapniarka, the latter reserved for Jewish political prisoners deported from Romania proper.

On 29 January 1944, on account of Transnistria's transformation into a de facto military rear area, Ion Antonescu ended the civilian administration of the region and dismissed Governor Alexianu.

Port installations, some industrial facilities, and transportation junctions were blown up (even the electric power plant, various mills, stores of bread, sugar, and other foods were destroyed).

This area comprised a Westwards salient created by the Dniester river, centered around Coșnița (today part of the Dubăsari District of the Republic of Moldova).

[72] Today east of the Dniester there are only 237,785 Romanian-speaking residents left, a small percentage of the overall population of the region, most of whom live in the actual Transnistria break-away republic.

A group of these had been made to make records of their folk music "in order to preserve proof of the permanence of the Romanian element in the distant East" (Universul, March 15, 1943).