Until 26 July 1941, the Romanian Army had pushed the Soviet Army out of Bessarabia, the territory of Romania occupied by the Soviet Union in June 1940. Nazi Germany wanted Romania as an ally in the war against the Soviet Union. However, Romania was complacent about recovering its own territory. To facilitate the persuasion of the then-dictator of Romania, Ion Antonescu, Hitler ordered the German Army to advance into Ukraine from north to south, following a route east of the Southern Bug river, in order to trap Soviet troops between Dniester and the Southern Bug. Antonescu was thus faced with a simple task for his army: conquer from the encircled and retreating Red Army troops a precisely delimited area. Antonescu ordered the Romanian Fourth Army to undertake this task.