On the ninth of October 1934, shortly before three in the afternoon, squadrons of seaplanes covered the sky over the port of Marseille. Bombers, scouts and fighters in parade order made a circle high above the open sea, and their return hinted that the Yugoslav destroyer "Dubrovnik" was approaching Marseille, cutting through the restless sea, with a squadron of warships whose masts and the flag on the command ship could at 2.45:XNUMX a.m. to be seen with binoculars on the far horizon towards Corsica.
The French cruisers "Colbor" and "Deacon" were waiting for the convoy with the Yugoslav king in the open sea.
"Dubrovnik" slowed down and at 15.30:21 p.m. dropped anchor in front of the Marseille lighthouse, and its guns responded with XNUMX platoons to the honor salvos of the hosts.
"I WISH I WAS BACK ALREADY...": Before that visit, France tried to strengthen its ties with the Little Entente, so French Foreign Minister Bart visited Belgrade, after visiting Prague, Warsaw and Bucharest, and planned to visit Rome. While the countries defeated in the First World War: Austria, Hungary and Bulgaria, encouraged by Hitler's policy, demanded a revision of the Treaty of Versailles, Yugoslavia joined the Little Entente with the Czech Republic and Romania against Hungary's revisionist aspirations. The Balkan Agreement was concluded on February 9, 1934 between Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey and Romania, to which Bulgaria did not join.
In September 1934, Alexander visited Sofia "to reconcile the two feuding Balkan sisters", as the French press wrote, and before that, Turkey.
On the eve of his departure from Belgrade, writes Yugoslav Interpol officer Vladeta Milićević, the king was nervous; the trip to Sofia had tired him, and his health was not very good. He weighed only 49 kilograms; he was tired... Once before leaving, he said to his close relative: "I wish I had come back already!"
Nevertheless, his departure to France, "to visit 42 million friends", also had the character of an internal political manifestation. He decided not to go to Paris by train via Vienna, but by sea to Marseille, which accepted many Serbs during the First World War, and to lay a wreath at the military cemetery there.
Accompanied by Queen Maria, Prince Pavle and Princess Olga, King Alexander traveled by train from the railway station in Topčider to Kosovska Mitrovica, from there he drove through Montenegro in an open car for people to see, stopped in Rijeka Crnojevića, visited his birthplace in Cetinje, set fire to candles for a happy journey in the Savina monastery, in Zelenica he boarded the destroyer "Dubrovnik" and set sail for Marseille. The Queen returned to Belgrade and went to France on the Orient Express.
While the military music intoned the Yugoslav national anthem and the "Marseillaise", on October 9, at 15.50:XNUMX, Alexander disembarked in a vedeto with his entourage and disembarked on the Belgian quay of the port of Marseille, with a tortured but smiling face, in an admiral's uniform - a black redcoat, with a Legion of Honor ribbon across his chest. on his head is a two-horned admiral's hat, and on his side is a gilded sword.
With shouts, salutes and roars of welcome, he, accompanied by the French Minister of Foreign Affairs Bartou and a member of the High War Council, General Joseph Georges, sat in the back seat of the black open coupe of the "Delaage" brand of the Prefect of Marseille so that the King would greet France and the French would greet the King.
With the sounds of the "Marseilles", the car moved along the avenue Canebière at five kilometers per hour (according to the protocol, 20 was planned) due to the guard cavalry accompanying the column. Bunches of heads were sticking out of the windows of the surrounding buildings, and the roofs of the houses were poised to collapse, notes the reporter of "Politika".
In addition to the shouts of "Long live!", there were also noisy demonstrations by Marseille workers, socialists and communists, who demonstrated against the king - dictator, Milan Stojadinović will record later.
"THE KING WAS SHOT!”: The celebration turned into a tragedy in an instant. In that festive commotion, at 4.10:XNUMX in the afternoon, several revolver shots were clearly heard, immediately followed by a terrible roar.
Assassination!
Killer!
At the moment when the king's carriage was in front of the crowded Stock Exchange Square, a large man in a coffee-colored suit bought in Paris, with a large revolver in his hand hidden under a bouquet of flowers, ran up to the car from the sidewalk, shouting "Vive le roi," before they agents and gendarmes found, jumped on the boot of the car and shot King Alexander, Foreign Minister Barthou and General Georges. While the assassin was still shooting, Lt. Col. Piola from the Republican Guard managed to turn his horse around and with two strong blows to the head with his saber knocked the assassin off the boot of the car, but he continued to shoot from the ground.
Chauffeur Foisai stopped the car and hit the assassin on the head, so that he, already bloodied with the saber, hit his face on the front door of the car, on which traces of his blood will remain. The gendarmes mingled with the screaming crowd and trampled the assassin, leaving a trail of blood on the pavement.
French Foreign Minister Bart in hospital Hotel God (Dom of God) expired under anesthesia at 17.45:XNUMX, one hour after the death of King Alexander. Russian historian Vladimir Konstantinovich Volkov in the book "The Teutonic Sword" presents the thesis that Bartu was a target, and not an accidental victim of assassination, because he worked for the formation of an alliance against Germany and for the recognition of the Soviet Union. He supports the thesis about German involvement in the assassination by quoting a letter from the German spy Hans Huck, sent eight days before the assassination to the German military attache in Paris, General Staff Captain Hans Speidel, about which the latter immediately informed Hermann Göring: "There will be no troops to maintain order, according to De la Forcada, the armed escort of motorcyclists that was foreseen will be abolished…”
General George, wounded by two bullets in the chest, upper arms and abdomen, was transferred to the "Michel Levy" hospital, where he underwent surgery and remained alive.
"PROTECT YUGOSLAVIA!”: In the courtyard of the Marseille Prefecture, a little later, there was a car whose seats were all covered in blood. Grain marks were visible on the left side of the bodywork.
In the prefect's office, which had been converted into a hospital room, Yugoslav King Alexander was lying on a large divan with his eyes closed and breathing rapidly. Professors of the Faculty of Marseilles, Bertoin and Henri, with two other military doctors, tried to save his life with an injection into the heart and shook their heads. The king's life was dying out. According to one report, he did not regain consciousness after being wounded.
Alexander was shot with three bullets: in the shoulder, above the hip, from the side in the liver, which caused profuse bleeding and death.
He wasn't wearing body armor. When, before disembarking, the faithful young man Zečević helped him put on the admiral's uniform prepared for the occasion, he suggested that he put a steel shirt under the uniform, which the king had in his luggage. This precautionary measure was applied a few times, especially after the failed assassination attempt on the king in Zagreb, a year earlier...
The king, however, resolutely refused to follow the advice of his old servant...
According to reports after the assassination, his last and only words were: "Keep Yugoslavia", wrote "Politika" on October 10, 1934.
In the report of the "Vremena" correspondent, it is reported that Aleksandar said those words, which will be repeated during the commemoration and for many years after, in the car when the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bogoljub Jevtić, unbuttoned his jacket, and blood began to flow from his body.
Milan Stojadinović in his book "Neither War nor Pact" casts doubt on the last words: "Those who had the opportunity to watch a film, then banned in Yugoslavia, where you can see exactly how the scene at the moment of the assassination in Marseille was played, could noticed that the only one of the Yugoslavs who was rushing towards the royal car was the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bogoljub Jevtić. After all, his car was right behind the king's, so his appearance was something completely natural. But what is less natural is that he heard it from the king's mouth and later passed on the king's last words to history. 'Keep Yugoslavia!'
"Temps", then a semi-official organ of the French Government, added a few more to those words, so that the king's last words would have read: "Keep Yugoslavia and friendship with France!"
Given that this sentence was a little long for a man who had been hit by multiple bullets from a large-caliber revolver, one of which severed his aorta near his heart, later official publications, both French and Yugoslav, were limited to reproducing in just the first two words: "Keep Yugoslavia." The rest was left out.
That the poor king was able to wait for the arrival of Jevtić and utter those two words right in front of him is very hard to believe, but as Jevtić was the only witness and as those words certainly corresponded to the ideas that the king had, no one afterwards wanted to have a discussion on that issue. It was taken as true that those two words represented 'The King's Testament'.
In such circumstances, wisdom dictates listening to statesmen, not doctors.
Everyone was speechless around the death bier in the prefecture, "Politika" reported. Minister of Foreign Affairs Bogoljub Jevtić in disbelief takes the king's right hand and tries to feel the pulse, the Yugoslav ambassador in Paris Miroslav Spalajković, leaning over the king, would like to see if the chest is still heaving.
Doctors declared death at 16.45:XNUMX p.m., exactly half an hour after the assassination...
Bogoljub Jeftić and Spalajković retreated to a room from where they informed Prime Minister Nikola Uzunović by phone about the king's death. Spalajković was the one who said the classic: "King Alexander I is dead." Long live King Peter II..."
BELGRADE MOURNS ITS KING: In the text "Historical night between October 9 and 10", "Politika" wrote that, at first, no one could believe the tragic news from Marseille. The Belgrade "Pravda" was in a hurry and prematurely printed a report on the warm welcome of King Alexander in Marseille. Radio subscribers, who at that time searched for music pieces on various European stations on their devices, were shocked when they heard the news that the king had been killed in Marseille. Since the authorities did not report anything, many rushed to the Prime Minister's Office to find out about the unfortunate event and further consequences, and based on the haste in the authorities concluded that something terrible had happened. The building of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was illuminated. The Ministry of the Army and Navy building as well.
Several patrols on motorcycles were sent to the town with the notification that the officers were urgently going to their commands. At the Military Academy, precisely at a quarter past eight in the evening, a voice echoed through the autumn night: "God help you!" Soon after, another strong salute from the cadets echoed through the surrounding streets as an oath of loyalty to the new King Peter II, in whose name they will rule Prince Pavle... It was known that H. c. King Alexander appointed the governors with his act, but various assumptions were made about the person that night.
Around nine o'clock in the evening, Prime Minister Nikola Uzunović left the Prime Minister's Office and drove to Dvor na Dedinja.
Exactly at midnight, the Chief of the Main General Staff, General Milan Đ., came to the Prime Minister's Office. Nedic.
The next day, on a rainy morning, newspaper vendors distributed black-framed papers, which confirmed the news to the citizens of Belgrade and the whole of Yugoslavia that the king had died a martyr's death. The government declared six months of national mourning. From early in the morning, bells rang every hour for five minutes at all Orthodox churches in Belgrade, and prayers were held in all churches and mosques.
"Although the police did not issue any order, the shops were all closed," Politika wrote.
In front of a house on the Kalenić threshing floor, a group of people from Ličan were standing without samaras to carry and talking animatedly, it would seem that they were waiting for work. An unknown lady came by and called one of them to bring her flowers from Petrogradska Street. The bearer refuses, almost insulted. They will not do anything today, even if they are starving. Can't the lady see that the whole town is in mourning.
On Voždovac and Đermo, up there near "Cvetkova mehana", a lot of peasants from the surrounding area. It's hard to watch them cry. Many of them are warriors. They stand by their empty wagon and ask when they will bring their commander-in-chief.
One with a stick sticking out of his cloth pants instead of a leg, and red eyelids swollen from crying, sang. He is holding a tobacco box in his hand, on the lid of which is painted the image of the king, and behind him is a tricolor.
There are many women around them. Everything is wiped away by tears. Officers with black flora around their arms pass by. They look at them and grunt and cry again...
"YOU CAN'T, MAN, YOU WILL FALL...": When the destroyer "Dubrovnik" docked in the port of Split, the Yugoslav officers took the coffin with the remains of the Knight King Alexander I the Unifier from the ship's deck, with salvos from the French ships that followed the destroyer all the way to the port of Split. The casket was briefly displayed in Split and Zagreb, from where the king's remains were taken to Belgrade on October 17 by a special train.
At the end, when two guards officers led the saddled king's horse, there was no one who did not cry. On Terazije and in other places, mourners knelt as the funeral procession passed by.
When the casket was brought into the royal waiting room at the train station, the music played "Twilight of the Gods" by Richard Wagner. The coffin was transported to Mladenovac by the royal train, which was pulled by locomotive 316, the same one that pulled the funeral train from Split to Belgrade, and from there to Topola by the hearse.
The procession of peasants who came to see off their king was four kilometers long. In Markovac, the choir of peasants sang "Everlasting Memory" very harmoniously.
The old church in Topola was filled with the bearers of Karađorđe's diary, twenty-four of whom were appointed to carry the coffin. One, who lost both eyes in the war, wants to be among them. "You can't, man, you'll fall..." they convinced him...
King Alexander was buried on October 18 at Oplenac, over which airplanes flew. Trucks with wreaths were driving ahead, prominently among them were the French President Lebrun's wreath and Hitler's wreath, with a swastika on the ribbon. Before that, when the honorary companies of the Greek, Romanian, once-enemy Turkish, British and French armies marched through the streets of Belgrade, the Sixth Infantry Regiment of the Yugoslav Army passed in order with black flora, and Hitler's envoy Göring drew his saber and felled it as a sign of honor to the heroic to the army, writes "Politika".
During the day of mourning, "Politika" also quotes a peasant who says: "There is justice, it will be known who did it..."
CHERNOSEM AND THE USTASHES: The bloodied assassin who was lying motionless on the road on October 9 at noon was taken by a gendarme to a nearby kiosk, from where he was taken unconscious by car to the police, where he died two hours later. When they searched it, they found a Czechoslovak passport issued on May 30, 1934 by the Czechoslovak Consulate General in Zagreb, in the name of Petr Kelemen, a merchant, which was immediately told to the press that it was forged due to obvious errors, a French entry visa bearing the date September 28, two "mauser" and "walter" pistols, two bombs, a compass and 1700 French francs.
On his arm was seen a tattoo "VMRO - freedom or death!", with crossed bones and a wreath.
Much later, after an exhumation, it was established that the assassin's name is Veličko Georgijev Kerin, a member of VMRO, born in the village of Kalemsija, Macedonia (according to some in the village of Kamenice in Bulgaria, where he now has a street), and is a Bulgarian citizen.
He was an executor in the VMRO (pro-Bulgarian supremacists) organization of Ivan (Vanča) Mihajlov, whose driver he was, so he was called Vlade Šofer. Since 1922, he participated in about 15 armed conflicts of Bulgarian comites with the Serbian gendarmerie in the Stip, Kočan and Radoš regions in Vardar Macedonia, in which 53 comite companies were included in the twenties, of which 32 were from Bulgaria.
When in 1924, in Sofia, he became a man for special tasks of the Central Committee of VMRO, he was called Vlado Chernozemski because he sent many people to the black country, among them Dim Hadzhidimov, a Macedonian revolutionary and deputy who switched to the Bulgarian Communist Party, and Naum Tomalevsky , the ideologue of the rival VMRO (pro-Macedonian "United"), which was annexed to the Balkan Communist Federation in 1936, as In May 1934, the Comintern recognized the Macedonian nation.
In 1924, the Sofia District Court sentenced Chernozemski to death by hanging twice, but he escaped in 1925, and a second time in 1932. Vancho Mihailov, then close to the Bulgarian authorities and court, obtained a pardon for him, before himself fled to Istanbul when Bulgaria passed the Law on the Protection of the State, and the so-called "Zvenars", after the military coup, began to disband VMRO.
After Alexander's death, Bulgaria declared national mourning similar to that in Yugoslavia.
The cooperation between VMRO and Ante Pavelić was strong, so VMRO sent instructors to the Ustasha training camp in Janka Pusta in Hungary, which the Hungarian authorities dissolved after the protests of the Yugoslav government, but they tacitly allowed the Ustasha to establish their center in the small town of Nađ Kanjiža , not far from Janko Pusta, where the Ustashas then completed the final preparations for the assassination, which Pavelić and Mihajlov allegedly planned in the emigrant meeting place in the "Continental" hotel in Rome, which was recorded by the Italian intelligence service.
Pavelić tried to organize the assassination of King Alexander in Zagreb on January 17, 1933, sending assassins from the Fontecchio camp in Italy and from Janka-Pusta in Hungary, but the Zagreb police were warned in time based on information received from a member of the Yugoslav intelligence service, Jelka Pogorelec, later brutally tortured and killed on the orders of Pavelić during the Second World War.
After the Marseille assassination, the League of Nations passed a resolution condemning Hungary for inciting terrorism, but not Italy, which was otherwise a stronghold of the Ustasha. When, after half an hour of fighting, the so-called Velebit (Lička) Uprising was crushed by an attack on the gendarmerie station in Gospić on September 7, 1932, the Ustashas fled to Velebit, then to Zadar, and from there via Rijeka to Bogataro in Italy, where their training camp was located.
The Yugoslav intelligence service found out immediately before the king's arrival in Marseille that an assassination was being prepared and, as Vladeta Milićević, the permanent Yugoslav representative in Interpol, wrote, it was on high alert, but did not track down the assassins.
However, Milan Stojadinović writes in the book "Neither War nor Pact" that before the visit, it was proposed in Belgrade to the Minister of the Interior, Živojin Lazić, that several police agents be sent to Paris. To this, the minister replied that it would cost 200.000 dinars (4000 dollars from that time) and that it was a "big task", which the budget of his ministry could not handle.
"After all," added Lazić laconically, "the Paris police are better than the Belgrade police..."
Vlado Černozemski, Mijo Kralj (born in 1903 in Koprivnica, auto mechanic by profession, unmarried, organizer and executor of several Ustasha actions in the country), Zvonimir Pospišil (farmer, unmarried from Vukovar, born in 1904, prominent) were identified as the immediate perpetrators of the assassination in Marseille. Ustaša who was sentenced to death in absentia by the Yugoslav court) and Ivan Rajić (car mechanic, married, father of one child, born in 1903).
They arrived in France via Lausanne (Switzerland) on September 22 and received instructions from Ustasha Eugene Kvaternik, and weapons from Maria Vodraček (whom he would later refer to only as a beautiful blonde, identified by some sources as Katica Schiller from Brazil, and disagree on whether she transferred Czech passports, which allowed entry to France without visas and four revolvers, four bombs and ammunition for assassins, from Italy or of Germany). According to Croatian emigrant sources who refer to Chief Pavelić, the "beautiful blonde" died in a traffic accident a few hours after the assassination.
The French government has asked Italy to extradite the two top men of the Ustasha organization: Ante Pavelić and Eugen Kvaternik. Mussolini refused it at first, but later decided to temporarily avoid complications in relations with France, so Eugen Kvaternik and Ante Pavelić were arrested, who spent three months in prison, and then was released. On November 28, 1934, Mussolini categorically rejected the French request for the extradition of Pavelić and Kvaternik.
The police and judicial investigation ended in December 1934, and the trial began on December 18, 1935 in Aix-en-Provence.
The defendants Kralj, Pospišl and Rajić were represented by a well-known lawyer from Paris, Georges Desbon, who was hired by the association of Croatian emigrants from Pittsburgh (USA), and was paid by the Ustashas from South America. With various procedural objections and insults to the court, he brought the trial to a crisis, so that it was interrupted and somehow ended in February 1936.
Meanwhile, in France, Pierre Laval, a socialist before the October Revolution, neutral between the two world wars, later a member of the collaborationist Pétain Vichy government, took power.
On the eve of the World War, French diplomacy worked on rapprochement with Italy and put pressure on Yugoslavia not to insist too much on the Ustasha organization's relationship with Italy, Germany and Hungary. Mijo Kralj, Ivan Rajić and Zvonimir Pospišl were sentenced to life imprisonment and to pay court costs, while Eugen Kvaternik was sentenced in absentia to 25 years, Ante Pavelić to 46 years and Ivan Perčević to 54 years.
Zvonimir Pospišl died in prison after three years. Milo Kralj and Rajić were released when the Nazis occupied France (1940) and returned to the NDH, where, according to one version, they were liquidated by the "fraternal" government (Rajić was poisoned in his apartment in Zagreb, and Milo Kralj was taken to a concentration camp) . According to another version, they died in the first battles with the partisans in 1941 in Western Bosnia.
Quaternik fled to Argentina and died there in a traffic accident under unexplained circumstances. Pavelić died in Spain after the war. Vancho Mihailov lived for 94 years and died in the Vatican.
