On Tuesday, October 9, 1934, during his first official visit to France, Yugoslav King Alexander I Karađorđević was assassinated in Marseille. The assassination was the result of an agreement between the leadership of the Croatian Ustasha emigrant circle and the leadership of the VRMO (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization), and the executor was Vlado (Veličko) Georgijev Kerin, a member of the VMRO, nicknamed Chernozemski. How and why these two very different people found themselves "eye to eye" in the crowded avenue Cannabier in Marseille, we will try to answer in this short text on the occasion of the anniversary of the murder.
The car with King Alexander enters Avenue Canebier. Keystone footage taken thirty seconds before the assassination
ALEXANDER: In the fall of 1934, Karađorđe's great-grandson, King of Yugoslavia Aleksandar I Karađorđević, was 46 years old and had 20 years of reign (from 1914 as heir to the throne, from 1918 as regent and from 1921 as king). He is married to Maria, daughter of Romanian King Ferdinand I Hohenzollern and Queen Maria, daughter of Russian Emperor Alexander II, i.e. granddaughter of Queen Victoria of England. With Maria, Aleksandar has three sons: Petar (1923), Tomislav (1928) and Andrej (1929). As heir to the throne and supreme commander of the Serbian Army in the First World War, he gained a reputation as a good warrior and a gifted military leader. But the victor in the war faced in peace with difficult problems to overcome. The newly created state union from 1918 (until 1929 the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) was a country of great differences and contrasts - national, religious, political, economic, class and cultural, which was a consequence of centuries-old historical circumstances , primarily the peculiarities of development, but also the influence of foreign factors. Firmly committed to the preservation of a unified state, Alexander had many opponents against him, so due to the political impasse, from which the civil parties had no solution, he implemented a dictatorship in the period from 1929 to 1931.
Clinging to the car, the assassin shoots King Alexander, French Minister Bartholomew and General Georges, who was sitting in the passenger seat. The driver leaves the wheel, grabs the assassin's jacket and pulls him backwards, while Lt. Col. Piole reverses his horse. Footage from the Nyt agency
Considering the opportunities and developments in the world, above all the entry of fascism on the international scene, Aleksandar tries to preserve the peace and stability of the country through political maneuvers. By joining the Little Entente (a military alliance of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and Romania), he wants to establish a barrier to the revisionist policy of the defeated states from the First World War, primarily Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria, which, encouraged by Hitler's policy, are seeking to change the Paris Peace Treaty (1919). allegedly due to the loss of territories where their compatriots live.
Dying King Alexander in the back seat of a car. Footage from the Rol agency
Alexander's personal influence is also reflected in the creation of the Balkan Agreement signed in Athens on February 9, 1934 between Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey and Romania, by which these countries "guarantee the mutual security of their Balkan borders" (Article 1 of the Agreement, MFA, Pov. No. 13991). Bulgaria did not join the Agreement, so Alexander visited Sofia in September 1934 and dispelled the threat to the territorial integrity of his country from Bulgaria (not regretting the provisions of the San Stefano Peace Treaty of 1878, the neighboring country is a question of revising the border with Serbia, later with Yugoslavia , constantly kept open).
In order to strengthen the established defense alliances, Alexander travels to France, from which he expects both help and protection. He decides to set off by ship, to land in Marseille on the soil of an ally from the previous war, in order to thank the city that accepted wounded Serbian soldiers and refugees from the previous war. The meeting with the President of the Republic of France was scheduled in Paris.
CHERNOSEM: A nickname that reflects a person's character best from his environment. Thus, Velichko Georgiev Kerin, a Bulgarian citizen, a member of the VMRO, known as a terrorist who carried out death sentences, was nicknamed Chernozemski because he handed over to the "black country" those whom the VMRO had sentenced to death. Such a man is taken with him by Ivan Vancho Mihailov, the first man of the organization, who at that time had the bloodiest hands in the Balkans.
Ante Pavelić and Vančo Mihailov
At the same time, on the other side of Europe, in Bologna, Ante Pavelić, the leader of the illegal fascist organization Croatian Ustaški Movement (founded on January 7, 1929), who after the fall of Alexander's dictatorship on January 6, 1929, received the protection of Mussolini, is active. Pavelić intends to replace his political actions for the overthrow of Yugoslavia and the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia with terrorist ones. In the beginning, these were small and poorly organized actions, which could not shake the regime in Belgrade, and then Pavelić decided to attack the main man in the country, King Alexander. When on December 16, 1933, in Zagreb, the assassination of the sovereign failed (the assassin Oreb was scared and confused at the crucial moment), Pavelić turned to his friend Vanča Mihajlov for help. Taught by the bad experience with the failed assassination, Pavelić is now looking for reliable people. Vancho gives him Chernozemsky.
Vlado Chernozemski
Preparations for the assassination were carried out in Hungary on the agricultural estate of Janka Pusta and the nearby town of Nađ Kanjiži, ten kilometers from the Yugoslav border. Of the 15 most successful terrorists, instructor Černozemski chose three for assassination: Mija Kralj, Ivan Rajić and Zvonimir Pospišil. The fourth assassin was chosen by Pavelić; it was the recommended Chernozemsky. Soon, when the program of the visit to France was known down to the last detail, an assassination plan was made. After obtaining false Czechoslovak passports from the Hungarian secret service, the group was able to leave for France. Černozemski and Kralj traveled to Marseille, and Rajić and Pospišil to Paris, where the action would be repeated if the assassination in Marseille failed.
But the Yugoslav intelligence service did not sit idly by either. Intensively following the activities of the Ustasha, she found out about the preparation of the assassination. She learned from one of her agents from Italy that the terrorists with Czechoslovak passports had already left for Marseille. Spalajković, the ambassador in Paris, was also informed about this, and on the very day of the king's arrival in Marseille on October 9, 1934, he asked his sovereign to abandon the landing in that port city. But Alexander replied: "Now it is too late for that." We have to stick to the program."
A few minutes before the double murder: King Alexander is greeted in the port of Marseille by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of France, Mr. Louis Barthes. Photo by Keystone Agency
ASSASSINATION: Marseille's Avenue Cannabier, leading from the port to the prefecture building, where the official reception is scheduled, was packed with an excited world waiting impatiently to see and greet the sovereign of a friendly country and an ally of the First World War. At exactly 16:XNUMX p.m., an honorary cannon fire was heard from the nearby Old Port, marking the arrival of the Yugoslav destroyer "Dubrovnik". The crowd of people on the crowded sidewalks is separated from the road by a "hedge fence" from the police, but it is already clear at that moment that the fence is thinned and is not able to control the crowd. The ceremony of the entry of the Yugoslav king on French soil was short, so after a few minutes the solemn procession of cars, followed by horsemen, was at the beginning of Avenue Cannabier.
In the back seat of the luxury car, which moves very slowly, are King Alexander and his host in Marseille, French Foreign Minister Louis Barthes. Suddenly, a man jumps out of the crowd on the sidewalk, instantly throws away the bouquet of flowers in which he was hiding the revolver, and shouting in French "Long live the king", passes through the thinned cordon of policemen, jumps on the side pedal of the car and fires several shots in the direction of the king, Minister Bartu and General George, who was sitting on the auxiliary seat. As the assassin fires, the driver Foasek turns and tries to interrupt his murderous intent, while Lt. Col. Piole, who is closest to the event, turns his horse and strikes the assassin twice with his saber. Falling to the pavement, the killer continues to shoot at the police and people along the sidewalk, but is himself shot by the police.
Yugoslav King Aleksandar I Karađorđević died of his wounds in the building of the prefecture of Marseille shortly before 17 p.m. Due to inadequate first aid (loss of blood), about forty minutes later, Minister Bartu also died, while General Georges, after adequate medical assistance and care, recovered.
The assassin Chernozemski died of his wounds soon after in an office of the French security service. The accomplices of the assassination, Mija Kralja, Ivan Rajić and Zvonimir Pospišila, were sentenced by the French court to life imprisonment, and the organizer, Anto Pavelić, to the death penalty in absentia. After being at the head of the infamous Independent State of Croatia, Pavelić, as a war criminal, managed to evade justice with the help of the Vatican. He died suddenly in Spain in 1959. Vancho Mihailov, the second organizer of the Marseille assassination, also escaped justice. During World War II, he enjoyed Pavelić's hospitality in Zagreb. He died in 1990. The accomplices of the assassination met an inglorious end. Pospišil died in a French prison in 1938, Rajić was found poisoned in his house in Zagreb in 1941, and Mijo Kralj was liquidated by partisans somewhere in Bosnia in the same year (both were released from prison by the Germans after the French capitulation). Today's Macedonian and Bulgarian historiography, each for its own sake, ranks Chernozemski and Mihailov among their national heroes.
Knight King Alexander I the Unifier rests in peace in the endowment of Karađorđević in Oplenac.
The author is a historian and curator of the Historical Museum of Serbia
