Viorel Virgil Tilea C.B.E. was a Romanian diplomat, most noted for his ambassadorship in the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He died in London. During the Second World War, Tilea lived at Holton Place, Oxfordshire, where he became a key representative of Romania's monarchist regime in exile.
In 1921, he married Eugenia "Gene" Pop in Cluj. After a short stay in London in February 1922, the two returned to Cluj. Tilea published two works, entitled Rolul diplomaţiei în politica de stat and Acţiunea diplomatică a României, eventually translated into German, Hungarian, Croatian and Bulgarian. He had three daughters, Ileana Troiano, Ioana Ellerington and Stanca Lipton and a son Scotus Tilea, from his first marriage and a son Ioni Tilea and daughter Anca Tilea from his second marriage to Manuela Monroe. He was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
In mid-March 1939, Tilea falsely reported to the British government that his country was under the verge of an immediate German attack, which led to a U-turn on British policy of resisting commitments of Eastern Europe, as part of the government's European policy, which became known as the "Romanian war scare". In fact, there was no German attack planned on Romania in March 1939, but faced with troops from Romania's archenemy, Hungary, concentrating on the border, and German efforts to secure control of Romania's oil industry, the Romanian government had concluded that there was a danger of a Hungarian-German invasion and had exaggerated the danger level to secure British support. Whether Tilea was deliberately exaggerating the German threat to Romania as a way of gaining British support against the German demands to surrender the control of their oil industry as claimed by the British historian D.C. Watt, or if the Romanians genuinely believed that they were about to be invaded by Germany in March 1939, as claimed by the American historian Gerhard Weinberg, is still unclear.
In September 1940, a coalition of Horia Sima, leader of the Iron Guard, and General Ion Antonescu had formed a National Legionary State in Romania, forcing King Carol II to abdicate in favour of his 19-year-old son Michael, who became a figurehead to the new fascist regime. DIning that period, Tilea was recalled from his post in the Romanian embassy in London, but he decided to stay in England, requesting political asylum. Resigning his post, he co-founded the Free Romanian Movement. In the meantime, Carol II fled to exile in Mexico, where he wrote to his distant cousin, George VI, hoping for British support for an overthrowing of the new government to return it to a monarchy. The British did not support that, however, and so Tilea would spend the war in planning the liberation of Romania by external means with the Allies. Tilea also played a role in assisting the efforts that the British government made to support monarchists in Romania.
