Yugoslav coup in 1941

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Protest movement in Belgrade on March 27, 1941

The Yugoslav coup took place on March 27, 1941 in Belgrade in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia . The government under Prince Regent Paul should be overthrown by the occupation of various important government buildings throughout Belgrade and the royal court . The coup was planned and carried out by a pro-Western group of Serb officers from the Yugoslav Air Force. Above all, it was directed against the government's cooperation with the Axis powers during World War II .

Officially, the coup was led by Air Force General Dušan Simović , who has been linked to several coups since 1938. In leading the coup, both the aviation brigadier general Borivoje Mirković took on a leading role, as did the major of the royal guard Živan Knežević and his brother Radoje Knežević. In addition to Radoje Knežević, other civilian leaders probably knew about the planned coup and supported it after it was carried out. However, they were not among the organizers.

Despite its crucial contribution to the mass public protests taking place in many cities, which signaled support for the coup, the Union of Communists of Yugoslavia (CPJ) was not involved in the coup itself. Ultimately, the coup was successful and overthrew the triumvirate Prince Paul, Radenko Stanković and Ivo Perović, as well as the Prime Minister Dragiša Cvetković .

Just two days before the coup, the Cvetković government had signed the Vienna Protocol and thus Yugoslavia's accession to the tripartite pact . The coup had been in the pipeline for several months, but the signing of the Tripartite Pact prompted the organizers, spurred on by the UK Special Operations Executive , to ultimately carry it out.

The military conspirators brought the 17-year-old King Peter II Karađorđević to the head of the state. A government of national unity was established with Simović as prime minister and Vladko Maček and Slobodan Jovanović as his deputy prime ministers. Ten days after the coup, the German- led invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers began .

background

According to historian Jozo Tomasevich, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was politically weak from the moment it was founded and remained so during the interwar years. This weakness resulted mainly from a rigid centralized system , strong ties between national groups and the dominant religion, and uneven economic development. In particular, the religious primacy of the Serbian Orthodox Church in national affairs and the discrimination against the Roman Catholic and Muslim population intensified the dissatisfaction of the non-Serb population with the Serb-dominated ruling groups.

These treated non-Serbs as second class people. This centralized system was achieved through political bribery. Due to the predominance of Serbian ruling elites in Yugoslavia, the country was never able to consolidate itself politically. It has therefore never been able to deal with the political and economic difficulties that threatened it.

In 1929 democracy was abolished and King Alexander proclaimed a royal dictatorship . He tried to reduce the ethnic division through various measures, including the creation of administrative units, the banks .

This step created two oppositions: opposition, especially from the Serbian and Slovenian sides, and those in favor of dividing Yugoslavia according to ethnic criteria. In 1933, this dissatisfaction had turned into a full-blown resistance to state power, especially in the Sava Banschaft, which the government tried to overcome with several attempted and carried out assassinations and the arrest of important Croatian opposition members, including the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party, HSS Vladko Maček .

After King Alexander was killed in an assassination attempt in Marseille in 1934 , his cousin Prince Paul became the head of the three-man government with Senator Radenko Stanković and the governor of the Sava Bank, Ivo Perović. Although Prince Paul was more liberal than his cousin, he continued the dictatorship uninterrupted.

Cvetković-Maček Agreement

Prince Paul, realizing the country's poor national cohesion and political weakness, made repeated attempts to negotiate a political settlement with the leader of the HSS Maček. In January 1937, Prime Minister Milan Stojadinović met with Maček at the prince's request.

However, Stojadinović was either unwilling or unable to deal with Croatia's dissatisfaction with a Yugoslavia dominated by a Serbian ruling class. In 1938, the annexation of Austria brought National Socialist Germany to the borders of Yugoslavia. Therefore, elections were held in December.

At that time Simović was involved in two coup attempts in early 1938. Another followed the December election, in which the Maček-led opposition won 44.9% of the vote. However, due to electoral rules that gave the government 40% of the seats before the votes were counted, only 67 of 373 seats were allocated to them.

On February 3, 1939, Education Minister Bogoljub Kujundžić gave a nationalist speech in which he claimed that Serbian politics would always be a matter for this House and this government. The minister and chairman of the Yugoslav Muslim Organization (JMO) Mehmed Spaho asked Stojadinović not to acknowledge this statement, which Stojadinović refused. On the same evening, Spaho, Džafer Kulenović, Anton Korošec , Franc Snoj, and Dragiša Cvetković resigned from the government.

Stojadinović asked Prince Paul for permission to establish a new cabinet, but Korošec, as the chairman of the Senate, recommended that the prince establish the new cabinet around Cvetković instead. Prince Paul dismissed Stojadinović and appointed Cvetković in his place with instructions to reach an agreement with Maček.

In April 1939 Italy occupied Albania . In August 1939, the Cvetković-Maček Agreement was finally signed to establish a Croatian banovina that would form a relatively independent political unit within Yugoslavia. Croatian radicals believed that the agreement did not go far enough. Numerous Serbs, on the other hand, claimed that it was going too far by giving the Croats too much power.

The cabinet led by Cvetković, which was formed during the conclusion of the agreement and was resolutely against the Axis powers, now included five members of the HSS, including Maček as Deputy Prime Minister and General Milan Nedić as Minister of the Army and Navy. After the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, increasing pressure from Germany led to the resignation of Interior Minister Stanoje Mihaldžić, who had undertaken clandestine activities against the Axis powers, in mid-1940. In October 1940, conspirators who were planning a coup made contact again Simović recorded, but he was rather reserved. From the outbreak of war, British diplomacy aimed to keep Yugoslavia neutral, which Ambassador Ronald Campbell still believed possible.

Pressure build-up

Cooperation between the Yugoslav and British secret services , which had existed to a small extent since the early 1930s and had been intensified since the annexation of Austria, intensified again after the German invasion of Poland and the outbreak of war in September 1939. These collaborative intelligence activities were aimed at strengthening Yugoslavia and maintaining its neutrality while promoting covert activities. In 1940 British intelligence learned of the planned coup, but decided to continue acting through Prince Paul.

Yugoslavia situation worsened in October 1940 when Italy from Albania made by Greece invaded. The initial failure of Italy reinforced Yugoslavia's fears that Germany would support Italy. In September and November 1940, Germany forced Hungary and Romania to agree to the tripartite pact. In November 1940, General Nedić proposed giving up Yugoslav neutrality and joining the Axis powers, as he was convinced of a German victory. He hoped that Germany would protect Yugoslavia from its neighbors. Prince Paul, however, considered Nedić's proposal to be unworkable and replaced the general with the more indulgent Petar Pešić.

For the following months, Prince Paul and his ministers worked under constant pressure, as there was a risk of attack by Germany through Bulgaria and Great Britain was reluctant to promise military assistance to the Yugoslavs. Six months before the coup, Britain decided not to accept Yugoslavia's neutrality and instead to ask Yugoslavia to support the war against Germany.

On January 23, 1941, William Donovan , a special envoy for US President Franklin D. Roosevelt , issued an ultimatum that the US would not side with Yugoslavia in peace talks should Yugoslavia allow German troops through.

On February 14, Hitler asked Cvetković and the Yugoslav Foreign Minister to join Yugoslavia to the three-power pact. Furthermore, he demanded the demobilization of the royal army of Yugoslavia, the promise of being allowed to direct deliveries to Germany via Yugoslav territory, and closer economic cooperation. In return, he offered Yugoslavia a port on the Aegean Sea and the security of the country.

On February 17, both Turkey and Bulgaria signed friendship agreements, which failed attempts to keep the Balkans neutral. Prince Paul then condemned the agreement and described Bulgaria's behavior as "baseness". On March 1, Yugoslavia was pushed even further into isolation when Bulgaria signed the Tripartite Pact and the German army reached the Bulgarian-Yugoslav border.

Prince Paul met Hitler in secret on March 4 in Berchtesgaden , where he was urged again to sign the pact. Hitler asked to let German troops pass through Yugoslavia and offered the country the city of Salonika , but without setting an ultimatum for the decision. Prince Paul, who was at the center of the cabinet crisis, offered a non-aggression pact as well as a declaration of friendship instead. However, Hitler did not abandon his demands. Prince Paul also expressed fear that he would not be in office for much longer once he signed the contract. On March 8, the head of the General Staff, Franz Halder , suggested that Yugoslavia would sign the treaty if German troops did not cross the Yugoslav border.

On March 17th, Prince Paul returned to Berchtesgaden. According to Hitler, this would be his last chance to join the tripartite pact. He also moved away from his demand to use the Yugoslav railway lines. Two days later, the Privy Council, under Prince Paul, met to discuss the matter. The council members were now ready to give their consent, but only on the condition that Germany made its concessions to Yugoslavia public. Germany agreed and the council agreed to the terms. However, three members of the cabinet resigned on March 20 in protest against the impending signing. The Germans responded by setting the ultimatum to be signed at midnight on March 23rd. Prince Paul and Cvetković complied and signed despite the fact that they considered the promises made by the Germans to be worthless. On March 23, the Germans' admission to Yugoslavia was published. Alexander Cadogan, Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs at the UK Foreign Office noted that the Yugoslavs had apparently sold their souls to the devil.

Yugoslavia signs the pact

On March 25th, Yugoslavia signed the pact in Belvedere Palace in Vienna . An official banquet took place, but Hitler reported that it was more like a funeral. While the German radio later affirmed that the Axis Powers would not require permission to pass through troops or war material, the official documents only mentioned the former. There was also no mention of the promise to give Salonika to Yugoslavia. The following day, Serbian demonstrators gathered on the streets of Belgrade with the slogan "Better the grave than a slave, better the war than the pact".

The course of the coup

The coup was carried out on March 27, 1941 at 2:15 p.m. It was planned by a group of officers from the Yugoslav Air Force in Zemun and officers from the Royal Guard in nearby Belgrade. The only senior officers involved were from the Air Force. Under Mirković's supervision, officers took control of numerous buildings and other locations in the early hours of March 27, including:

  • the base of the air force in Zemun (Colonel Dragutin Savić)
  • all bridges over the Sava between Zemun and Belgrade (Colonel Dragutin Dimić)
  • the city ​​administration , the police department and the radio station of Belgrade (Colonel Stjepan Burazović)
  • the ministries and the headquarters of the General Staff (Major Živan Knežević)
  • the royal court (Colonel Stojan Zdravković)
  • the main post office in Belgrade (Lieutenant Colonel Miodrag Lozić)
  • the barracks of the Royal Guard and the Automotive Command

Even if the British support the conspirators, the initiative came from the Yugoslavs. Individuals who probably knew about the coup were Slobodan Jovanović , President of the Serbian Cultural Club, and Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin , President of the Narodna Odbrana (National Defense).

There are conflicting opinions about who was in charge of the coup and organized its implementation, ranging from Air Force Commander General Dušan Simović to his deputy Brigadier General Boran Mirković and Major Živan Knežević.

Mirković claimed sole earnings immediately after the coup and claimed on his tenth anniversary that shortly after he informed Simović of the idea and he had accepted it, he himself had made the decision to carry it out. He was also responsible for the organization and he himself decided when the coup should take place. It is likely that he has been working on planning a coup since 1937. King Peter later generally counted the coup in a speech on December 17, 1941, “younger officers of the Yugoslav army of middle rank”.

Simović's statement was published after his death. He claimed to have been the center of the whole undertaking and to have personally hired his assistant, Brigadier General Bora Mirković, for this act. Mirković's account is the most credible of the two as it is corroborated by various sources from both the Allies and the Axis powers.

At the time of the coup, Prince Peter was in Zagreb on his way to a vacation planned in Brdo. After the Deputy Prime Minister Maček was informed of the coup, the two met at the Zagreb train station to discuss the situation. Maček suggested that Prince Paul should stay in Zagreb to preserve the possibility of mobilizing army units from the Croatian Banovina to support him. However, the latter rejected the proposal, not least because his wife Princess Olga and his children were still in Belgrade. He reached the capital that evening and was immediately ordered to sign the government's abolition. He was then exiled to Greece.

King Peter II (1942)

On the morning of March 27, the royal court was surrounded and the supporters of the coup sent a radio message in which the voice of Peter was imitated and in a "call to the people" called for support for the new king. Pamphlets announcing the coup were thrown into cities from planes. Multi-day demonstrations followed in Belgrade and other major Serbian cities, where the slogan of the demonstrations was revived a few days earlier, "Better the war than the pact, better the grave than a slave." Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of Great Britain, said Yugoslavia did found his soul.

The day after the coup, Simović turned to the Serbian Orthodox Bishops' Assembly and tried to justify the coup by mentioning significant moments in Serbian history, such as the battle on the Blackbird Field and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand . For other nations in Yugoslavia, the prospect of war and the government's close ties to the Serbian Orthodox Church were less encouraging.

aftermath

New government

In the wake of the coup, the new government under Simović refused to confirm the signing of the Tripartite Pact by Yugoslavia. Thereupon Hitler, who had learned of activities in Belgrade against Germany and was angry because of the putsch, gave an officer the order to destroy Yugoslavia immediately. On the day of the coup, Hitler issued the Führer Decree 25, according to which Yugoslavia should be treated as a hostile state. Italy was also involved.

On March 30, Foreign Minister Momčilo Ninčić summoned the German Ambassador Viktor von Heeren and gave him a report according to which the new government accepted all international obligations, including accession to the Tripartite Pact, as long as the country's national interests were protected. Thereupon Berlin instructed von Heeren to avoid contact with Yugoslav officials. Ninčić never got an answer. On April 2, instructions were given to evacuate the German embassy and diplomats from allied countries were also instructed to leave the country.

On April 3, War Directive 26 was issued, which contained detailed plans for the invasion.

Simović appointed Maček as deputy prime minister after being back in government. However, he was reluctant to accept this and initially stayed in Zagreb to make his decision. While he suspected that the coup was an entirely Serbian act against both Prince Paul and the Cvetković-Maček Accords, he decided that acceptance of the post was necessary to demonstrate the HSS's loyalty to the government. On April 4, he traveled to Belgrade and took office, but under different conditions: The new government should recognize the Cvetković-Maček Agreement and add some aspects to the independence of the Croatian Banovina. In addition, it should accept the accession to the Tripartite Pact, as well as that both a Serb and a Croat temporarily form the regents. On the same day the Croatian politician Ante Pavelić called on the Croatians to a popular uprising against the new government.

On April 5, the new cabinet met for the first time.

Axis invasion

The invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers began on April 6 with the bombing of Belgrade , after which the government sought protection outside the city. From here King Peter and General Simović wanted to flee into exile. Maček, however, who refused to leave the country, resigned on April 7th and appointed Juraj Krnjević as his successor. Maček himself returned to Zagreb. Three other ministers also refused to leave the country: Ivan Andres and Bariša Smoljan from the HSS and Džafer Kulenović from the JMO . The government met for the last time on Yugoslav soil on April 13 near Pale . From here they traveled to Nikšić , from where they fled to the Greek capital Athens .

literature

Footnotes

  1. Quoted from David Stafford: SOE and British Involvement in the Belgrade Coup d'État of March 1941 . In: Slavic Review , published by the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies , Vol. 36 (1977), pp. 399-419, here p. 407. (to explain the abbreviation in the title: SOE stands for “Special Operations Executive ".)