The Balkans, what we tend to call the former states of Yugoslavia, have been a battleground for thousands of years … The former Soviet states began to crumble, and a delicate peace was broken … The most uncivil of civil wars raged. Tony Robinson, Britain’s Forgotten Wars II: Bloodshed in Bosnia, Channel 4 2021
Around 100,000 people lost their lives during the three-year-old bitter, brutal and bloody war. ibid.
Many leaders in the West weren’t sure how to intervene in his highly charged and highly sensitive conflict. ibid.
Yugoslavia: The break up in my opinion has been a disaster story. It’s not been a good thing. And as the crisis deepens it could be felt more. Tariq Ali, lecture Zagreb 15th May 2012, ‘The Rotten Heart of Europe’
The assembled crowd gave a rousing welcome, an honour guard presented arms, and a little girl gave King Alexander a bouquet of flowers, after which the mayor escorted his royal guest and his country’s foreign minister to their official coach for the day, a black Delage convertible, driven by chauffeur-policeman Paul Foissac. The monarch and the diplomat seated themselves in the back. Facing them on the jump seat was French Army Chief of Staff General Alphonse Georges. The vehicle started up the cobble-stoned streets following the traditional 18-rider cavalry guard, with a pair of mounted officers also posted on each side of the vehicle. Despite having survived at least six known previous attempts on his life, Alexander contemptuously refused an aide’s suggestion that he wear a bulletproof vest, which might have saved his life.
A few blocks from the waterfront landing, the assassin waited amid the cheering crowd. Within minutes after the procession had begun, Chernozemski approached the royal coach, brushed past the horse of Lt. Col. Jules Piollet, who mistook him for a photographer, jumped onto the running board and cried, ‘Long live the king!’ He held onto the car’s rear door with one hand while he brandished his 9mm Mauser machine pistol with the other, firing nine shots and hitting the king with two rounds. Alexander slumped backward, blood flowing from his mouth. Trying to disarm the assassin, General Georges was hit four times himself, in the chest, both arms, and stomach. Surviving the fusillade, he was never the same again.
Chernozemski was instantly struck down by a mounted policeman’s sword, and the enraged crowd stomped and beat him in a frenzy of revenge. The king lay back on the seat, eyes open. The chauffeur was also mortally wounded, his foot jammed against the accelerator. Barthou was accidentally shot in the arm by a French policeman, severing an artery above his right elbow. Three women and a boy in the stricken crowd were also fatally wounded by stray police bullets.
Barthou stumbled from the vehicle, bleeding badly, while the king lay dying in the back seat of the car. His foreign minister, Bagoljab Yevtic, opened the monarch’s stiff shirt collar with a penknife. The king was mortally wounded just below the heart. Rushed to a nearby clinic, he died at 4:30 p.m., 15 minutes after having been shot. Arriving by cab at another hospital with a clumsily applied tourniquet, Barthou died from blood loss during a transfusion at 5:40 p.m. Laid out at the police station, the mortally wounded assassin Vlado received no medical aid, although he lived until 8 p.m.
Remarkably, the shooting was captured on film by a newsreel cameraman standing a few feet away. It was one of the first assassinations preserved on film. The cameraman captured not merely the assassination, but the immediate aftermath, continuing to film within inches of the dying king. The footage can still be viewed online, a grim presage of President John F Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas on November 22, 1963. As with the later event, policemen were everywhere that day except around the vehicle itself. Standing at curbside, they had their backs to the crowd — again, just like in Dallas.
The assassin, 36, was a professional hit man who claimed to have killed 30 people. He had so many aliases that only his nickname remains undisputed — Vlado the Chauffeur. His ID card bore the name Petrus Kalemen. It was not until an alert newsman noticed a characteristic skull and crossbones tattoo on the assassin’s forearm that he was officially identified and linked to the Ustasha and the IMRO. An accomplice, Milo Kralj, had been standing on a street corner a block away. Their plan was for Vlado to shoot the king and then escape into the crowd if he could. If he failed, Kralj would hurl grenades at the vehicle as a backup — the same method used successfully in 1942 by a pair of British-trained Czech paratroopers to assassinate SS General Reinhard Heydrich.
The assassins were supervised by spymaster Eugen Kvaternik, who also had a second team — Zvonimirv Pospisil and Milan Rajic — in Paris in case the first team failed altogether. Kvaternik reported directly to Ustasha leader Ante Pavelic, who was reportedly seen in France on September 26, travelling with a 24-year-old blonde woman, Maria Vondrasek, who later took a train from Turin, Italy, to Paris, bringing in her luggage the grenades, Mauser, and Walther pistols that were to be used by both teams of assassins.
Pospisil and Rajic were captured at Thonon, and Kralj was taken into custody at Fontainebleau Forest after a series of near escapes. Both Pavelic and Kvaternik later escaped from France, as did the famous ‘mystery blonde’. A French extradition request for Pavelic and Kvaternik was rudely rebuffed by an angry Mussolini, who threatened war with Yugoslavia if the case was pressed. In France, the trio of would-be assassins was sentenced to life imprisonment. Kralj and Pospisil died in prison; Rajic was freed in 1942 and returned to Croatia, where he died mysteriously.
Alexander’s body was returned home aboard the destroyer Dubrovnik. He lay in state at Belgrade and then was taken by cortege for burial at St George’s Church in Oplenac. Among the luminaries following his coffin were Marshal Philippe Petain, representing France, and Luftwaffe General Hermann Goring, representing the Third Reich. Hitler sent a huge wreath.
The slain monarch’s first cousin and best friend, Prince Paul, became Regent for Crown Prince Peter, 11, until he was overthrown by the army in 1941, when the new king took the throne as Peter II, fleeing the German invasion a mere 11 days later. Ultimately, the Karadordevic dynasty was overthrown by Communist Marshal Josip Broz Tito, a Croat, in 1946. After Tito died in 1980, the country of Yugoslavia disintegrated into civil war in 1991, disappearing altogether in 2002. Warfare History Network online article December 2010, ‘The Assassination of King Alexander’