Alexander I of Yugoslavia

Alexander I
King of Yugoslavia
Reign	3 October 1929 – 9 October 1934
Successor	Peter II
King of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
Reign	16 August 1921 – 3 October 1929
Predecessor	Peter I
Born	(1888-12-16)16 December 1888 Cetinje, Montenegro
Died	9 October 1934(1934-10-09) (aged 45) Marseille, France
Burial	18 October 1934 Oplenac, Topola, Serbia
Spouse	Maria of Romania (m. 1922)
Issue	Peter II Prince Tomislav Prince Andrew
Full name Alexander Karađorđević
House	Karađorđević
Father	Peter I of Serbia
Mother	Zorka of Montenegro
Religion	Serbian Orthodox Christian
Signature
Military career
Allegiance	Kingdom of Serbia  Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Years of service	1904–21 (end of active service)
Rank	Field Marshal
Unit	Royal Yugoslav Army

Styles of Alexander I of Yugoslavia
Reference style	His Majesty
Spoken style	Your Majesty
Alternative style	Sir

Alexander I^[1] (16 December 1888 [O.S. 4 December] – 9 October 1934), also known as Alexander the Unifier,^[2][3] served as a prince regent of the Kingdom of Serbia from 1914 and later became King of Yugoslavia from 1921 to 1934 (prior to 1929 the state was known as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes). He was assassinated in Marseille, France, by Bulgarian revolutionary Vlado Chernozemski during a state visit.

Early life[edit]

Alexander Karađorđević was born on 16 December 1888 in the Principality of Montenegro as the fourth child (second son) of Peter Karađorđević (son of Prince Alexander of Serbia who thirty years earlier in 1858 was forced to abdicate and surrender power in Serbia to the rival House of Obrenović) and Princess Zorka of Montenegro (eldest daughter of Prince Nicholas of Montenegro). Despite enjoying support from the Russian Empire, at the time of Alexander's birth and early childhood, the House of Karađorđević was in political exile, with different family members scattered all over Europe, unable to return to Serbia, which had recently been transformed from a principality into a kingdom under the Obrenovićes, who ruled with strong support from Austria-Hungary. The antagonism between the two rival royal houses was such that after the assassination of Prince Mihailo Obrenović in 1868 (an event Karađorđevićes were suspected of taking part in), the Obrenovićes resorted to making constitutional changes, specifically proclaiming the Karađorđevićes banned from entering Serbia and stripping them of their civic rights.

Alexander was two when his mother Princess Zorka died in 1890 from complications while giving birth to his younger brother Andrija, who also died 23 days later.

Alexander spent his childhood in Montenegro; however, in 1894 his widower father took the four children, including Alexander, to Geneva where the young man completed his elementary education. Alongside his older brother George, he continued his schooling at the imperial Page Corps in St Petersburg, Russian Empire. The British historian R.W. Seton-Watson described Alexander as becoming a Russophile during his time in St. Petersburg, feeling much gratitude for the willingness of the Emperor Nicholas II to give him a refuge, where he was treated with much honor and respect.^[4] As a page, Alexander was described as hard-working and determined while also being a "loner" who kept to himself and rarely showed his feelings.^[5] Being a Karađorđeviće led to Alexander being invited by Nicolas II to dinner at the Winter Palace, where he was the guest of honor at meals hosted by the Russian imperial family, which was a great honor for a prince from Serbia's deposed royal family.^[5] During his time in St. Petersburg, Alexander visited the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, where the abbot gave Alexander an icon of Prince Alexander Nevsky and guided him to the grave of Marshal Alexander Suvorov.^[6] After his visit to the monastery, Alexander expressed the wish to be a great general like Marshal Suvorov or Prince Alexander Nevsky, saying he wanted to be command either a great army or a great armada when he was a man.^[7]

In 1903 while young George and Alexander were in school, their father and a slew of conspirators pulled off a bloody coup d'état in the Kingdom of Serbia known as the May Overthrow in which King Alexander and Queen Draga were murdered and dismembered. The House of Karađorđević thus retook the Serbian throne after forty five years and Alexander's 58-year-old father became King of Serbia, prompting George's and Alexander's return to Serbia to continue their studies. After Alexander's 15th birthday, King Peter had Alexander enlisted into the Royal Serbian Army as a private with instructions to his officers to only promote his son if he proved worthy.^[5] On 25 March 1909, Alexander was suddenly recalled to Belgrade by his father with no explanation offered other then he had an important announcement for his son..^[8]

Becoming crown prince[edit]

Queen Maria with their children, Tomislav and Andrej

One of the key moments in Prince Alexander's life occurred on 27 March 1909 when his older brother Crown Prince George publicly renounced his claim to the throne after strong pressure from political circles in Serbia. George was long considered unfit to rule by many in Serbia including powerful political and military figures such as prime minister Nikola Pašić, as well as high-ranking officers Dragutin "Apis" Dimitrijević and Petar Živković who didn't appreciate the young man's impulsive nature and unstable, incident-prone personality. George killed his servant Kolaković by kicking him in the stomach, which served as the final straw. It grew into a huge scandal in the Serbian public as well as in the Austro-Hungarian press, which reported extensively on it, and 21-year-old Prince George was forced into renouncing his claim to the throne.

In 1910 Prince Alexander nearly died from stomach typhus and was left with stomach problems for the rest of his life. In the run-up to the First Balkan War, Alexander played the role of a diplomat, visiting Sofia to meet King Ferdinand of Bulgaria for secret talks for a Balkan League, which was intended to drive the Ottomans out of the Balkans.^[9] Both Bulgaria and Serbia had rival claims to the Ottoman region of Macedonia, and the talks with Ferdinand, known as "Foxy Ferdinand" due to his cunning, were difficult. Together with Ferdinand's son, Crown Prince Boris (the future King Boris III), Alexander traveled to St. Petersburg to see Nicholas II to ask for Russian mediation on certain points that were dividing the Serbs and Bulgarians.^[9] In March 1912, Serbia and Bulgaria signed an alliance that was later joined by Greece.^[9]

Balkan Wars and World War I[edit]

A wartime postcard of Alexander

In the First Balkan War in 1912, as commander of the First Army, Crown Prince Alexander fought victorious battles in Kumanovo and Bitola. One of Alexander's most cherished moments came when he drove the Ottomans out of Kosovo and on 28 October 1912 led the Serb Army on a review on the Field of Blackbirds.^[7] The Field of Blackbirds was where the Serbs under Prince Lazar had been defeated in a legendary battle by the Ottoman Sultan Murad I on 28 June 1389 and is regarded by the Serbs as holy ground. It was a great honor for him to pay his respects to the Serbs who had fallen on the Field of Blackbirds in 1389.^[7] Later in 1913, during the Second Balkan War, Alexander commanded the Serb Army at the Battle of Bregalnica.

After the Turks' withdrawal from Skopje (most of whom had left after the Albanian Revolt of 1912), Prince Alexander was met with flowers by the local people. He stopped and asked a seven-year-old girl, Vaska Zoicheva, "What are you?" (Pa shta si ti?) When she replied "Bulgarian!" (Bugarka!), the prince slapped her. This news of the event spread quickly around Bulgaria. In 1920 and 1921, Serbian authorities searched for the girl's father, Danail Zoichev, and offered him money to renounce the event as fictional, but he refused.^{[10][11][12][13]}

In the aftermath of the Second Balkan War, Prince Alexander took sides in the complicated power struggle over how Macedonia should be administered. In this Alexander bested Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević or "Apis" and in the wake of this Alexander's father, King Peter, agreed to hand over royal powers to his son. Through Colonel Dimitrijević was the mastermind of the 1903 coup that had restored the House of Karađorđević to the Serbian throne, Alexander distrusted him, regarding his attempts to set himself up as a "kingmaker" and to have the Serbian Army be a "state within the state" existing outside of civilian control as a major threat.^[14] Additionally, Alexander saw Dimitrijević as an irresponsible intriguer who having betrayed one king might always betray another. In January 1914, the Serbian prime minister Nikola Pašić sent a letter to the Emperor Nicholas II in which King Peter expressed a desire for his son to marry one of the daughters of Nicholas.^[15][16] Nicholas in his reply stated that his daughters would not be forced into arranged marriages, but noted Alexander on his most recent trips to St. Petersburg had during dinners at the Winter Palace kept giving loving looks at the Grand Duchess Tatiana, leading him to guess that it was Tatiana whom Alexander wanted to marry. On 24 June 1914, Alexander became Regent of Serbia.

At the outbreak of World War I he was the nominal supreme commander of the Serbian army; true command was in the hands of the Chief of Staff of Supreme Headquarters, a position held by Stepa Stepanović (during the mobilisation), Radomir Putnik (1914–1915), Petar Bojović (1916–1917) and Živojin Mišić (1918). The Serbian army distinguished itself in the battles at Cer and at the Drina (the Battle of Kolubara) in 1914, scoring victories against the invading Austro-Hungarian forces and evicting them from the country. The British historian Max Hastings described the Royal Serbian Army in 1914 as the toughest army in Europe and also the most egalitarian with none of the distinctions of rank that characterised the other European armies, with for example the Serb Army was the only army in Europe where officers would shake hands with the other ranks.^[17] However, the Serbian Army suffered major shortages of equipment with a third of the men called up in August 1914 having no rifles or ammunition and new recruits being advised to bring their own boots and clothing as there were no uniforms for them.^[17] Alexander ordered the Serbian police to conduct searches of houses all over Serbia to see if there were any rifles and ammunition to be seized for the army.^[17]  

Alexander I (center right) shaking hands with Alexander of Greece (center left) on the Macedonian Front, 5 May 1918

In 1915, the Serbian army with the aged King Peter and Crown Prince Alexander suffered many losses being attacked from all directions by the alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria. On 7 October 1915 an Austro-German army group under the command of Field Marshal August von Mackensen invaded Serbia and after encountering fierce resistance took Belgrade on 9 October.^[18] On 14 October 1915 Bulgaria invaded Serbia and on 16 October the Bulgarians took Nis, severing the railroad that linked Serbia to Salonika in Greece.^[18] Being attacked from the north by the Austrians and the Germans and from the south by the Bulgarians, the Serbs by 25 November 1915 had been forced into the Kosovo region.^[18] The massacres committed by the Austrians in 1914 when they invaded Serbia twice caused enormous panic and hundreds of thousands of Serbs fled their homes to escape the Austrians, which greatly delayed the movement of the Serb Army.^[18] Field Marshal Radomir Putnik persuaded Crown Prince Alexander and King Peter that it was better to keep the Serb Army intact to one day liberate Serbia rather to stand and fight in Kosovo as many Serb officers wanted.^[18] 

The Serbian Army withdrew through the gorges of Montenegro and northern Albania to the Greek island of Corfu, where it was reorganized. The march across the Prokletije ("accursed") mountains was a hallowing one as the Serb Army together with a mass of refugees had to cross mountains that rose to 3, 000 feet high in the middle of winter with the average daily temperature being -20° with the armies of Austria, Germany and Bulgaria in pursuit.^[19] Many Serbs died along the way as one Serb soldier wrote in his diary how the refugees rested by the side of the road were: "Immobilized by the snow their heads rest to their breasts. The white snowflakes dance around them while the alpine winds whistle their songs of death. The heads of horses and oxen which have fallen protrude from the snow".^[18] As the Serbs braved the icy winds and snowdrifts, the only consolation for Alexander was that the winter weather was also delaying the German, Austrian and Bulgarian armies under the command of Field Marshal von Mackensen that were pursuing his army.^[18] Upon reaching the sea, the surviving Serbs who numbered about 140, 000 were rescued by British and French ships, which took them to Corfu.^[19] In September 1915, the Royal Serbian Army was estimated to have the strength of about 420, 000 men, of whom 94, 000 had been killed or wounded while another 174, 000 had been captured or were missing during the fall campaign in 1915 and the subsequent retreat to the sea.^[19] The losses taken by Serb civilians during the autumn campaign in 1915 together with the retreat to the sea have never been calculated, but are estimated to be massive.^[19] Serb losses as a percentage of the population were the greatest of any belligerent in the war.^[19]   

In the fall of 1916, Alexander's long-standing dispute with the Black Hand group came to a head, when Colonel Dimitrijević began to criticize his leadership.^[14] Alexander promptly had officers who members of the Black Hand arrested in December 1916 and tried for insubordination; after their convictions, Dimitrijević and several other Black Hand leaders were executed by firing squad on 23 June 1917.^[14] After the army was regrouped and reinforced, it achieved a decisive victory on the Macedonian Front, at Kajmakcalan. The Serbian army carried out a major part in the final Allied breakthrough on the Macedonian Front in the autumn of 1918.

King of Yugoslavia[edit]

Royal Standard of the King

On 1 December 1918, in a prearranged set piece, Alexander, as Prince Regent, received a delegation of the People's Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, an address was read out by one of the delegation, and Alexander made an address in acceptance. This was considered to be the birth of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. One of Alexander's first acts as Prince Regent of the new kingdom was to declare his support for the widespread demand for land reform, stating: "In our free state ther can and will be only free landowners".^[20] On 25 February 1919 Alexander signed a land reform degree breaking up all estates over the size of 100 cadastral yokes with compensation to be paid for the former landowners except for those who belonged to the House of Habsburg and the other ruling families of enemy states in the Great War.^[20] Under the land reform degree some two million hectares of land was handed over to half million peasant households, through the implementation was very slow, taking 15 years before land reform was complete.^[20] In both Macedonia and Bosnia-Hercegovina the majority of the landlords who lost land were Muslims while the majority of their former tenants who received the land were Christians, and in both places land reform was seen as an attack on the political and economic power of the Muslim gentry.^[20] In Croatia, Slovenia, and the Vojvodina, the majority of the landlords who lost their land were Austrian or Hungarian nobility who usually did not reside in those places, meaning that however much they might had resented the loss of their land did not have the sort of political repercussions as it did in Macedonia and in Bosnia where the Albanian and Bosnian Muslim landlords lived.^[20]  

In August 1921, on the death of his father, Alexander inherited the throne of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, which from its inception was colloquially known both in the Kingdom and the rest of Europe alike as Yugoslavia. The historian Brigit Farley described Alexander as a something of a cipher to historians as he was a taciturn and reserved man loath to express his feelings either in person or in writing.^[21] As Alexander kept no diary or wrote no memoirs, Farley wrote any biography of Alexander could easily be titled "In search of King Alexander" as he remains an elusive and enigmatic figure.^[21] The British historian R.W. Seton-Watson who knew Alexander well called him a soldiery man most comfortable in a military milieu who was very quiet and surprisingly modest for a king.^[22] Seton-Watson described Alexander has having an "autocratic" personality, a man who was first and foremost a soldier who spent his "six of his formative years" in the Serbian Army, which left him with a "military outlook which unfitted him to deal with the delicate problems of constitutional government and which made compromise hard for him".^[23] Seton-Watson wrote that Alexander "...was very courageous, through not ever a man of strong physique or robust health. He had a strong fixity of purpose, great devotion to duty, powers of sustained work. He had great charm and simplicity of manner. He was accessible and very open to opinions-through he rarely acted on them and through occasionally he reacted with positive violence, as in the case of the Slovene Zerjav who fainted in his presence."^[24]  One of the things that historians can be certain about Alexander was his belief in keeping Yugoslavia as an unitary state and his consistent opposition to federalism, which he believed would lead to the break-up of Yugoslavia and perhaps his own assassination.^[25] In turn, Alexander's opposition to federalism related to his belief that in a federalised Yugoslavia, the prečani Serbs would be discriminated against by the Croats and Bosnian Muslims, once telling a Serb Orthodox priest that federalism would be "stabbing the Serbs in the back".^[26]

As a Karađorđević, Alexander was very conscious of the long blood-feud between the Houses of Obrenoviće and Karađorđević that had disfigured Serb politics in the 19th century and that the 1903 coup d'etat that finally brought down the Obrenovićes and led to the Karađorđevićs regaining the throne had happened because the last Obrenoviće king, King Alexander, was widely viewed as too subservient to the Austrian empire and to have betrayed Serb interests.^[27] Because of the frequent changes in loyalty in the Royal Serbian Army in the 19th century between the feuding royal families, the Obrenovićes and Karađorđevićs, Alexander was never entirely convinced that the Serb-dominated officer corps of the Royal Yugoslav Army were completely loyal to him, and always had the fear if he was seen to be betraying Serbdom as the last Obrenoviće king was, he too might be overthrown and killed.^[27] The fact that the last Obrenoviće king had been cut down in his bedchamber by officers who had sworn solemn oaths of loyalty to serve and obey him unto death was scarcely a reassuring sign of the sanctity of oaths to Serb officers.^[27]        

On 8 June 1922 he married Princess Maria of Romania, who was a daughter of King Ferdinand of the Romanians. They had three sons: Crown Prince Peter, and Princes Tomislav and Andrej. He was said to have wished to marry Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolaevna of Russia, a cousin of his wife and the second daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, and was distraught by her untimely death in the Russian Civil War. The Russophile Alexander was horrified by the murders of the House of Romanov-including the Grand Duchess Tatiana who he had once hoped to marry-and during his reign was very hostile towards the Soviet Union, welcoming Russian emigres to Belgrade.^[28] The lavish royal wedding to Princess Maria of Romania was intended to cement the alliance with Romania, a fellow "victor nation" in World War I which like Yugoslavia had territorial disputes with the defeated nations like Hungary and Bulgaria.^[29] For Alexander, the royal wedding was especially satisfactory as most of the royal families of Europe attended, which showed that the House of Karađorđević, a family of peasant origins who were disliked for slaughtering the rival House of Obrenoviće in 1903, were finally accepted by the rest of European royalty.^[29]

In foreign policy, Alexander favored maintaining the international system created in 1918-19 and in 1921 Yugoslavia had joined the Little Entente with Czechoslovakia and Romania to guard against Hungary, which refused to accept the Treaty of Trianon and claims against all three states of the Little Entenete.^[30] Besides for Hungary, the principle enemy of Yugoslavia in the 1920s was Fascist Italy, which wanted much of what is now modern Slovenia and Croatia.^[30] The origins of the Italo-Yugoslav dispute concerned the Italian contention that they had been "cheated" out what they had been promised in the secret Treaty of London in 1915 at the Paris peace conference in 1919. It was largely out of the fear of Italy that Alexander in 1927 signed a treaty of alliance with France, which therefore became Yugoslavia's principle ally.^[31]

Starting in 1926, an alliance of the Serb Democrats led by Svetozar Pribićević and the Croat Peasant Party led by Stjepan Radić had systematically obstructed the skupshtina to press for federalism for Yugoslavia, filibustering and filing nonsensical motions to prevent the government from passing any bills.^[32] In response to obstructionism from the opposition parties, in June 1928, one frustrated deputy from Montenegro took out his handgun and shot Radić on the floor of the skupshtina.^[32] The charismatic Radić, the "uncrowned king of Croatia", had inspired intense devotion in Croatia and his assassination was seen as a sort of Serb declaration of war.^[33] The assassination pushed Yugoslavia to the brink of civil war and led Alexander to consider the "amputation" of Croatia as preferable to federalism.^[33] Alexander mused to Pribićević that: "We cannot stay together with the Croats. Since we cannot, it would be better to separate. The best way to be to effect a peaceful separation like Sweden and Norway did".^[32] When Pribićević protested that this would be an act of "treason", Alexander told him he would think some more about what to do.^[32] Alexander appointed the Slovene Catholic priest, Father Anton Korošec prime minister with one mandate, namely to stop the slide towards civil war.^[33] On December 1 1928, the lavish celebrations of the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Triune kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes that the government organized led to rioting that left 10 dead in Zagreb.^[33]  

In response to the political crisis triggered by the assassination of Stjepan Radić, King Alexander abolished the Constitution on 6 January 1929, prorogued the Parliament and introduced a personal dictatorship (the so-called "January 6th Dictatorship", Šestojanuarska diktatura). One of the first acts of the new regime was to carry out a purge of the civil service with one-third of the civil service being fired by May 1929 in an attempt to address popular complaints about rampant corruption in the bureaucracy.^[33] He also changed the name of the country to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and changed the internal divisions from the 33 oblasts to nine new banovinas on 3 October. Of the banovinas, only one had a Slovene majority, two had Croat majorities and the rest had Serb majorities, which especially angered the Bosnian Muslims who were in a minority in every banovine.^[34] The way in which the banovinas were based on new borders that did not correspond to the historical regional borders led to much resentment, especially in Bosnia and Croatia.^[34] The banovinas were named after the topography of Yugoslavia rather than the historical names in a bid to weaken regional loyalties, being governed by bans appointed by the king.^[33]  In the same month, he tried to banish by decree the use of Serbian Cyrillic to promote the exclusive use of the Latin alphabet in Yugoslavia.^[35] Alexander replaced the three regional flags for the Triune kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes with a single flag for the entire country, brought in a single legal code for his realm, imposed a single fiscal code so all of his subjects would pay the same tax rate, and an Yugoslav Agrarian Bank was created by merging all of the regional agrarian banks into one.^[33] Alexander tried to promote a sense of Yugoslav identity by always taking his vacations in Slovenia, naming his second son after a Croat king, and being a godfather to a Bosnian Muslim child.^[36] Alexander had once fraternized frequently with ordinary people, being known for his habit of making unannounced visits to various villages all over Yugoslavia to chat with ordinary people but after the proclamation of the royal dictatorship, his social circle consisted of a few generals and courtiers, causing the king to lose touch with his subjects.^[37]

Within Serbia, the royal dictatorship for the first time made Alexander into an unpopular figure.^[38] The British historian Richard Crampton wrote many Serbs "...were alienated by the attempt, albeit unsuccessful, to lessen the Serbian domination on which, to add insult to injury, many of the faults of the previous system were blamed. Alexander had implicitly made the Serbs, the most reliable proponents of centralism, the villains of the Vidovdan piece".^[38] The royal dictatorship was seen in Croatia as merely a form of Serbian domination, and one result was a marked upswing in support for fascistic Ustashe, which advocated winning Croat independence via violence.^[39] By 1931, the Ustashe was waging a terrorist campaign of bombings, assassinations and sabotage, which in least in part explained Alexander's reluctance to engage with ordinary people as he done in the past out of the fear of assassination.^[39] On 14 February 1931, Alexander visited Zagreb, and the men of the Turnopolje district, whom for centuries always provided a mounted honor guard for any royal visitor to Zagreb, failed to show up, a snub that shown how unpopular Alexander had become in Croatia.^[39] On 19 February 1931, the Croat historian Milan Šufflay was murdered by police agents, becoming an international cause célèbre with Albert Einstein and Heinrich Mann leading a campaign to pressure Alexander to prosecute Šufflay's killers.^[39] The Great Depression was especially severe in predominantly rural Yugoslavia as it caused deflation leading to a collapse in price of agricultural products.^[39] The Croat politician Ante Trumbić summed up the feelings of many when he gave a speech in early 1931 stating: "We are in a crisis, an economic, financial and moral crisis. There is no material or moral credit in the country. Nobody believes anything anymore!"^[39] However, Alexander remain unperturbed, stating in a interview with the press: "Yugoslav politics will never again be driven by narrow religious, regional or national interests".^[40] In response to pressure from Yugoslavia's allies, especially France and Czechoslovakia, led Alexander to decide to lessen the royal dictatorship by bringing in a new constitution which allowed the skupshtina to meet again.^[40]      

In 1931, Alexander decreed a new Constitution which transferred executive power to the King. Elections were to be by universal male suffrage. The provision for a secret ballot was dropped and pressure on public employees to vote for the governing party was to be a feature of all elections held under Alexander's constitution. Furthermore, the King would appoint half of the upper house directly, and legislation could become law with the approval of one of the houses alone if it were also approved by the King. The 1931 constitution kept Yugoslavia as an unitary state, which enraged the non-Serbian peoples who demanded a federation and saw Alexander's royal dictatorship as thinly disguised Serbian domination.^[40] In the elections for the skupshtina in December 1931-January 1932, the call of the opposition parties to boycott the vote were widely heeded, a sign of popular dissatisfaction with the new constitution.^[38] 

In response to the impoverishment of the countryside caused by the Great Depression, Alexander reaffirmed in a speech that the right of every peasant family to a minimum amount of land that could not be seized by a bank in the event of a debt default, and in 1932 issued a decree suspending all debt payments by farmers to the banks for six months and forbade any more foreclosures by the banks against farmers.^[41] Through Alexander's measures preventing the banks to foreclose on farmers who were unable to pay their loans saved many peasants from being ruined and prevented economic distress in the countryside from turning political, in the long run his policies did not solve the economic problems of the rural areas.^[41] The losses taken by the banks and their inability to foreclose on farmers who had delinquent loans made the banks unwilling to make new loans to the farmers.^[41] As Yugoslav agriculture, especially in the southern parts of the country was backward, the farmers needed loans to modernise their farms, but the unwillingness of the banks to lend to the farmers made modernisation of the farms impossible in the 1930s.^[41]  

In September 1932, Alexander's friend, the Croat politician Ante Trumbić gave an interview with The Manchester Guardian newspaper, where he stated that life for ordinary Croats was better when they were part of the Austrian empire and stated that perhaps the Croats would be better off if they broke away from Yugoslavia to form their own state.^[42] For Alexander, who always respected and liked Trumbić to see his former friend come very close to embracing Croat separatism was a painful blow.^[42] On 7 November 1932, Trumbić and Vladko Maček of the Croat Peasant Party issued the so-called Zagreb Points, which demanded a new constitution which would turn Yugoslavia into a federation, stating that otherwise the Croats would demand independence.^[42] Alexander had Maček imprisoned without charges, but the issuing of the Zagreb points inspired the other peoples to issue similar declarations with the Slovenes issuing the Ljubljana Points, the Bosnian Muslims issuing the Sarajevo Points and the Magyars issuing the Novi Sad points.^[42] The emergence of a multi-ethnic opposition movement embracing the non-Serb peoples threatened to break the country apart, and forced Alexander to ease the level of repression as his ministers warned him that he could not imprison the entire country.^[42] In Macedonia, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization was continuing its long-running guerrilla struggle while in Croatia the security situation had further deteriorated by 1932.^[43] By the end of 1932, the Ustashe had blown up hundreds of trains while assassinating hundreds of government officials.^[43] The often violent response of the mainly Serb gendarmes to Ustashe terrorism fueled more support for the  Ustashe.^[43] To many, it appeared that Yugoslavia was sliding into the civil war that Alexander's "self-coup" of January 1929 was supposed to prevent.^[43]

Starting in 1933, Alexander had become worried about Germany. In March 1933, the French minister in Belgrade, Paul-Émile Naggiar, told Alexander that France was seriously worried about the stability of Yugoslavia, warning that the king could not continue to rule in face of opposition from the majority of his subjects, and that the viewpoint from Paris was that Alexander was starting to become a liability for France.^[44] Naggiar predicated the new regime in Germany was going to challenge the international order created by the Treaty of Versailles sooner or later, and France needed Yugoslavia to be stable and strong, which led Naggiar to advise the king to adopt federalism for his realm.^[44] However, one point of agreement that Alexander did have with Mussolini was his fear of Anschluss, having no desire to have Germany as a neighbor, which led him to support the continuation of Austrian independence.^[45] Despite his distaste for communism, Alexander gave support, albeit in a very cautious and hesitant way, to the plans of the French foreign minister Louis Barthou to bring the Soviet Union into a front meant to contain Germany.^[45] In 1933-34, Alexander become the proponent of a Balkan Pact, which would unite Yugoslavia, Greece, Romania and Turkey.^[31] Through the Balkan Pact was primarily directed against Italy and its allies Hungary, Albania, and Bulgaria, Alexander also hoped the pact might provide some protection against Germany.^[31]

Assassination[edit]

Play media

Universal Newsreel's film about the assassination.

After the Ustaše's Velebit uprising in November 1932, Alexander said through an intermediary to the Italian government, "If you want to have serious riots in Yugoslavia or cause a regime change, you need to kill me. Shoot at me and be sure you have finished me off, because that's the only way to make changes in Yugoslavia."^[46]

The French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou had attempting in 1934 to build an alliance meant to contain Germany consisting of France's allies in Eastern Europe like Yugoslavia together with Italy and the Soviet Union.^[47] The long standing rivalry between Benito Mussolini and King Alexander had complicated Barthou's work as Alexander complained about Italian claims against his country together with support for Hungarian revisionism and the Croat Ustaše terrorist group.^[48] As long as France's ally Yugoslavia continued to have disputes with Italy, Barthou's plans for an Italo-French rapprochement would be stillborn. During a visit to Belgrade in June 1934, Barthou promised the king that France would pressure Mussolini into signing a treaty under which he would renounce his claims against Yugoslavia.^[49] Alexander was skeptical of Barthou's plan, noting that there were hundreds of Ustašhi being sheltered in Italy and it was rumored that Mussolini had financed an unsuccessful attempt by the Ustaše to assassinate him in December 1933.^[50] Mussolini had come to believe that it was only the personality of Alexander that was holding Yugoslavia together and if the king were assassinated, then Yugoslavia would descend into civil war, thus allowing Italy to annex certain regions of Yugoslavia without the fear of France.^[51] However, France was Yugoslavia's closest ally and Barthou invited Alexander for a visit to France to sign a Franco-Yugoslav agreement that would allow Barthou in his words "go to Rome with the certainty of success".^[52]    

As a result of the previous deaths of three family members on a Tuesday, Alexander refused to undertake any public functions on that day of the week. On Tuesday, 9 October 1934, however, he had no choice, as he was arriving in Marseille to start a state visit to France, to strengthen the two countries' alliance in the Little Entente.^[53]

While Alexander was being slowly driven in a car through the streets along with French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou, a gunman, the Bulgarian Vlado Chernozemski,^[54] stepped from the street and shot the King twice, and the chauffeur, with a Mauser C96 semiautomatic pistol. Alexander died in the car, slumped backwards in the seat, with his eyes open.^[55] One of the bullets struck Foreign Minister Barthou in the arm, passing through and fatally severing an artery. He died of excessive blood loss less than an hour later.

It was one of the first assassinations captured on film; the shooting occurred straight in front of the cameraman,^[56] who was only feet away at the time. While the exact moment of shooting was not captured on film, the events leading to the assassination and the immediate aftermath were. The body of the chauffeur (who had been wounded) ducked and jammed against the brakes of the car, allowing the cameraman to continue filming from within inches of the King for a number of minutes afterwards.

The assassin was a member of the pro-Bulgarian Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO or VMRO) and an experienced marksman.^[57] Immediately after assassinating King Alexander, Chernozemski was cut down by the sword of a mounted French policeman, and then beaten by the crowd. By the time he was removed from the scene, the King was already dead. The IMRO was a political organization that fought for secession of the region of Macedonia and becoming independent, as some form of second Bulgarian state.^[58] IMRO worked in alliance with the Croatian Ustaše group led by Ante Pavelić.^[56][59] Chernozemski and three Croatian accomplices had travelled to France from Hungary via Switzerland. After the assassination, Chernozemski's fellows were arrested by French police.^[56] A prominent diplomat with the Palazzo Chigi, Baron Pompeo Aloisi, expressed fears that the Ustashi based in Italy had killed the king, and sought reassurances from another diplomat Paolo Cortese that Italy not been involved.^[60] Aloisi was not reassured when Cortese told him that with Alexander dead, Yugoslavia was about to break up.^[61] Public opinion in Yugoslavia held that Italy had been crucial in the planning and directing of the assassination. Demonstrations took place outside of the Italian embassy in Belgrade together with the Italian consulates in Zagreb and Ljubljana by people blaming Mussolini for Alexander's assassination.^[62] An investigation by the French police quickly established that the assassins had been trained and armed in Hungary, had traveled to France on forged Czechoslovak passports, and frequently phoned Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić, who was living in Italy.^[63] The incident was later used by Yugoslavia as an argument to counter the Croatian attempts of secession and Italian and Hungarian revisionism.^[56]

Pierre Laval, who succeeded Barthou as foreign minister, wished to continue the rapprochement with Rome, and saw the assassinations in Marseille as an inconvenience that was best forgotten.^[64] Both London and Paris made it clear that they regarded Mussolini as a responsible European statesmen and in private told Belgrade that under no circumstances would allow Il Duce to be blamed.^[65] In a speech in Northampton on 19 October 1934, the British Foreign Secretary, Sir John Simon, expressed his sympathy to the people of Yugoslavia over the king's assassination while also saying he was convinced by Mussolini's speech in Milan denying his involvement in the assassination.^[66] When Yugoslavia made an extradition request to Italy for Pavelić on charges of regicide, the Quai d'Orsay expressed concern that if Pavelić were extradited, he might incriminate Mussolini and were greatly reassured when their counterparts at the Palazzo Chigi stated there was no possibility of Pavelić being extradited.^[67] Laval cynically told a French journalist "off-the-record" that the French press should stop going on about the assassinations in Marseille because France would never go to war to defend the honor of a weak country like Yugoslavia.^[68]        

The film record of Alexander I's assassination remains one of the most notable pieces of newsreel in existence,^[69][70] alongside the film of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia's coronation, the funerals of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and Kaiser Franz Joseph I of Austria, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. A 20th Century Fox newsreel presented by Graham McNamee was manipulated in order to give the audience the impression that the assassination had been captured on film. Three identical gunshot sounds were added to the film afterwards, when in reality Chernozemski fired his handgun over ten times, killing or wounding a total of 15 people. A straw hat is shown on the ground, as if it belonged to the assassin, while in reality it did not. A Mauser C96 semi-automatic pistol with a 10-round magazine is shown as the assassination weapon, while the actual one had a 20-round magazine. The exact moment of assassination was never filmed.^[71] Just hours later, Chernozemski died of the injuries inflicted on him by the crowd in the chaos.

The following day, the body of King Alexander I was transported back to the port of Split in Croatia by the Yugoslav destroyer JRM Dubrovnik. After a huge funeral in Belgrade attended by about 500,000 people and many leading European statesmen, Alexander was interred in the Oplenac Church in Topola, which had been built by his father. The Holy See gave special permission to bishops Aloysius Stepinac, Antun Akšamović, Dionisije Njaradi and Gregorij Rožman to attend the funeral in an Orthodox church.^[72] As his son Peter II was still a minor, Alexander's first cousin Prince Paul took the regency of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

Unknown to the public, King Alexander I had a large heraldic eagle tattooed over his chest.^[73]

A ballistic report on the bullets found in the car was made in 1935, but the results were not made available to the public until 1974. They revealed that Barthou was hit by an 8 mm Modèle 1892 revolver round commonly used in weapons carried by French police.^[74]

Issue[edit]

Ancestors[edit]

In popular culture[edit]

The song "Don Juan" by British synth duo Pet Shop Boys (the B-side to their 1988 single "Domino Dancing") contains the phrase "King Zog's back from holiday, Marie Lupescu's grey and King Alexander is dead in Marseille".(21)

In Upton Sinclair's historical novel, "Wide Is The Gate" (novel 4 in the Lanny Budd series published 1941) the assassination is attributed to the Nazi German government. The novel claims funds and a forged passport were obtained by the Croatian assassin from the head of German foreign policy department.

Titles, styles, honours and arms[edit]

Titles and styles[edit]

• 16 December 1888 – 15 Jun 1903: Prince Alexander Karađorđević
• 15 Jun 1903 – 27 March 1909: His Royal Highness Prince Alexander of Serbia
• 27 March 1909 – 1 December 1918: His Royal Highness The Crown Prince of Serbia
• 1 December 1918 – 16 August 1921: His Royal Highness The Crown Prince of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
• 16 August 1921 – 6 January 1929: His Majesty The King of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes
• 6 January 1929 – 9 October 1934: His Majesty The King of Yugoslavia

Honours[edit]

Serbian and Yugoslavian military decorations
	Order of Saint Prince Lazarus, Collar (Royal Order only)
	Order of the Karađorđe's Star, Grand Master
	Order of the White Eagle, Grand Master
	Order of the White Eagle with swords, Grand Master
	Order of the Crown of Yugoslavia, Grand Master
	Order of the Karađorđe's Star with Swords, Grand Master
	Order of St. Sava, Grand Master
Serbian service medals
	Gold Bravery Medal, 1912
	Gold Bravery Medal, 1913
	Commemorative Medal of the first Balkan War, 1912
	Commemorative Medal of the second Balkan War, 1913
	Commemorative Medal of the Election of Peter I as King of Serbia
	Commemorative Medal of the Albanian Campaign
International and foreign awards
	Order of Leopold, Grand Cordon (Belgium)
	War Cross 1914-1918, (Belgium)
	Order of Saints Cyril and Methodius, Collar (Bulgaria)
	Order of St. Alexander with swords, Collar (Bulgaria)
	Order of the White Lion, Collar (Czechoslovakia)
	War Cross 1914-1918, (Czechoslovakia)
	Order of the Elephant, Grand Cross (Denmark)
	Legion of Honour, Grand Cross (France)
	Médaille militaire, (France)
	War Cross 1914-1918, (France)
	Order of the Redeemer, Grand Cross (Greece)
	War Cross 1914-1918, (Greece)
	Order of the Most Holy Annunciation, Collar (Italy)
	Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus, Knight Grand Cross (Italy)
	Order of the Crown of Italy, Knight Grand Cross (Italy)
	Military Order of Savoy, Knight Grand Cross (Italy)
	Order of the Wendish Crown, Grand Cross (Mecklenburg)
	Order of Saint Peter of Cetinje, Knight (Montenegro)
	Order of Prince Danilo I, Knight Grand Cross (Montenegro)
	Order of the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, Knight of the Collar (Orthodox Church of Jerusalem)
	Order of the White Eagle, Grand Cross (Poland)
	Order of Polonia Restituta, Grand Cross (Poland)
	Order of Christ, Grand Cross (Portugal)
	Order of Michael the Brave, 1st class (Romania)
	Knight Grand Cross with Collar of the Order of Carol I[76][77] (Romania)
	Order of St. Andrew, Collar (Russia)
	Order of St. Alexander Nevsky, (Russia)
	Order of the White Eagle, Grand Cross (Russia)
	Order of St. George, 3rd class (Russia)
	Order of St. George, 4th class (Russia)
	Order of St. Anna, 1st class (Russia)
	Order of Saint Stanislaus, 1st class (Russia)
	Order of the White Elephant, Knight Grand Cordon (Siam)
	Order of the Bath, Knight Grand Cross (United Kingdom)
	Royal Victorian Order, Knight Grand Cross (United Kingdom)
	King George V Coronation Medal (United Kingdom)

References and notes[edit]

Notes

1. ^ "The first central committee of IMRO. Memoirs of d-r Hristo Tatarchev", Materials for the Macedonian liberation movement, book IX (series of the Macedonian scientific institute of IMRO, led by Bulgarian academician prof. Lyubomir Miletich), Sofia, 1928, p. 102, поредица "Материяли за историята на македонското освободително движение" на Македонския научен институт на ВМРО, воден от българския академик проф. Любомир Милетич, книга IX, София, 1928.
2. Farley, Brigit, "King Aleksandar and the Royal Dictatorship in Yugoslavia," in Bernd J. Fischer (ed), Balkan Strongmen: Dictators and Authoritarian Rulers of Southeastern Europe (West Lafayette, IN, 2007) (Central European Studies), 51-86.

Bibliography

• Crampton, Richard (1997). Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century-And After. London: Routledge.  
• Hastings, Max (2013). Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914. London: William Collins.
• Kovrig, Bennett (January 1976). ""Mediation by Obfuscation: The Resolution of the Marseille Crisis, October 1934 to May 1935"". The Historical Journal. 19 (1). pp. 191–221.
• Watson-Seton, Robert (January 1935). ""King Alexander's Assassination: Its Background and Effects"". International Affairs. 14 (1). pp. 20–47.
• Marković, Marko (2003). Povijest Crne legije: Jure i Boban (in Croatian).
• Passmore, Kevin (2003). Women, gender, and fascism in Europe, 1919-45. Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-6083-4.

External links[edit]

Media related to Alexander I of Yugoslavia at Wikimedia Commons

• Newsreel footage of the Assassination of King Alexander
• The Official Website of the Serbian Royal Family
• Royal Mausoleum Oplenac
• Newspaper clippings about Alexander I of Yugoslavia in the 20th Century Press Archives of the German National Library of Economics (ZBW)