Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

Prince Paul of Yugoslavia was the only son of Prince Arsen of Serbia, younger brother of King Peter I, and of Princess and Countess Aurora Pavlovna Demidova, a granddaughter on one side of the Finnish philanthropist Aurora Karamzin and her Russian husband Prince and Count Pavel Nikolaievich Demidov and on the other of the Russian Prince Peter Troubetzkoy and his wife Elisabeth Esperovna, by birth a Princess Belosselsky-Belozersky.

Paul was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, where he was a member of the exclusive Bullingdon Club – a dining club notorious for its wealthy members, grand banquets and boisterous rituals. Cultivated[1] like his closest friends Prince George, Duke of Kent, and Sir Henry Channon,[2] his outlook on life was said to be British. Paul often said that he "felt like an Englishman".[3] Channon called Paul "the person I have loved most".[4] A cultured and easy-going bon vivant who inspired much affection from his friends, Paul when not associating with the British aristocracy collected paintings by Monet, Titian and van Gogh.[5]

In 1923 he married Princess Olga of Greece and Denmark, a sister of Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent. King George VI, when Duke of York, was best man at his wedding in Belgrade.[6]

Standard of the Prince Regent

On 9 October 1934 Vlado Chernozemski assassinated Paul's first-cousin, King Alexander I of Yugoslavia, in Marseille in France, and Prince Paul took the regency, as Alexander had stipulated in his Will that on his death a council of regents chaired by Paul should govern until Alexander's son Peter II came of age.[7]

Prince Paul, far more than Alexander, was Yugoslav rather than Serb in outlook, and unlike Alexander, he was inclined much more toward democracy. In its broadest outline, his domestic policy worked to eliminate the heritage of the Alexandrine dictatorship's centralism, censorship, and military control, and to pacify the country by solving the Serb-Croat problem.[8] Paul wanted to achieve a Serb-Croat reconciliation, but also felt for a considerable period of time that he had the duty to hand over the kingdom to Peter more or less unchanged when he reached his maturity, and thus was unwilling to entertain constitutional changes.[9] Through as Prince Regent, Paul possessed very broad powers, but he was much less inclined to exercise these powers, leading Yugoslavia in the years 1934-41 to be labelled "a dictatorship without a dictator".[9] Paul had been thrust into a position of power that he did not want by Alexander's assassination (which was why Alexander had chosen him in his will to serve as a regent, knowing he would never try to seize the throne from his son), and throughout his regency he gave the impression that ruling Yugoslavia was a burden to him.[9] A French diplomat described Paul as a man whose "incontestable qualities of character, balance, and taste...Oxonian dilettantism and charm which he exercised on his visitors where were useless in the present circumstances and in a country where arguments of might are the only ones which count".[10] Married to a Greek princess and intensely Anglophile and Hellenophile, Paul distrusted Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, though the British historian D. C. Watt noted that Paul's "nerves tended to betray him under stress and that he was by nature inclined to yield to pressure rather than withstand it".[10] The heavy losses taken by Serbia in World War I made Paul very averse to engaging in another war and led him to favoring neutralist policies despite Yugoslavia's alliance with France.[11] During the First World War, Serbia had proportionally taken the heaviest losses; one out of five Serbs who were alive in 1914 were dead by 1918.[12]

On 24 June 1935, Paul appointed Milan Stojadinović Prime Minister with a mandate to deal with the Great Depression and find a solution to the "Croat question".[13] Stojadinović believed that the solution to the Great Depression were closer economic ties with Germany, which had more people than what it could feed and lacked many of the raw materials necessary for a modern industrial economy.[13] As Germany needed both food and raw materials such as iron, bauxite, copper and manganese, Yugoslav exports of both agricultural products and of minerals to the Reich bloomed from 1935 onward, leading to an economic revival and to placing Yugoslavia in the German economic sphere of influence.[13]

Yugoslavia had signed a treaty of alliance with France in 1927, at a time when the Rhineland was still occupied by France, and during Franco-Yugoslav staff talks, it was promised that France would take the offensive into western Germany if Germany should start another war. As long as the Rhineland remained a demilitarized zone, there was always the possibility of the French launching an offensive into western Germany, which reassured Yugoslavia.[14] The American historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote that the demilitarized status of the Rhineland the treaty of Versailles had imposed was "...the single most important guarantee of peace in Europe" for as long as the Rhineland was demilitarized, it was impossible for Germany to attack any of France's allies in Eastern Europe without exposing itself to the risk of a devastating French offensive into western Germany.[15] The remilitarization of the Rhineland on 7 March 1936 meant that Germany started building the West Wall along its border with France, which ended any hope of a French offensive into western Germany. On 15–20 June 1936, the chiefs of staff of the Little Entente (Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia) met in Bucharest to discuss their plans now that the Rhineland was re-militarized.[16] The gloomy conclusion of the Bucharest meeting was that France was not a factor in Eastern Europe, and henceforward there were only two great powers in Eastern Europe, namely the Soviet Union and Germany, and the victory of either in another war would mean the end of their independence.[16]

Despite his pro-British and pro-French feelings, Paul believed in the aftermath of the remilitarization of the Rhineland that Yugoslavia needed to tilt its foreign policy towards Germany.[17] Likewise, the Hoare-Laval pact of 1935 and British attempts to improve Anglo-Italian relations such as the "Gentlemen's Agreement" of 1937 and the Easter Accords of 1938 caused Paul to believe the British were willing to sacrifice Yugoslavia for the sake of better relations with Italy.[17] Stojadinović, who openly admired Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, made a major diplomatic push with the tacit support of the Prince Regent for better relations with the fascist states in the winter of 1936-37.[18] Without informing France, Czechoslovakia or Romania, Stojadinović signed an agreement with Italy on 25 March 1937 that badly weakened the Little Entente.[19] Just before Stojadinović signed the treaty, Paul let the British minister in Belgrade, Ronald Campbell, know of what was being planned.[19] Paul seems to have believed that if Yugoslavia was seen as failing within the Italian sphere of influence, then this might prompt a British response to pull Yugoslavia in the other direction.[19]

King Carol II of Romania with Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš, Yugoslav regent Prince Paul, and Prince Nicholas of Romania in Bucharest in 1936.

In January 1939, Stojadinović had told Count Galeazzo Ciano of his wish to turn his Yugoslav Radical Union into the only legal party, saying he wanted to establish a fascist dictatorship that carry out a pro-Italian foreign policy "to find a balanced situation and security within the framework of the Axis".[20] At the same time, the Croat deputies in the skupshtina (parliament) called on foreign powers to intervene to give the Croats "liberty of choice and destiny", accusing Stojadinović of being a tyrant.[20] On 4 February 1939, Paul dismissed Stojadinović as prime minister and at that point the Yugoslav tilt towards the Axis was stopped.[20] After dismissing Stojadinović, Paul rejected an Italian appeal to support the Italian annexation of Albania.[21] On 15 March 1939, Germany occupied the Czech half of the rump state of Czecho-Slovakia (as Czechoslovakia had been renamed in October 1938), turning it into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.[22] The fact that despite the way that Emil Hácha and the rest of the leaders of Czecho-Slovakia had endeavored to carry out a slavishly pro-German foreign policy, nonetheless saw the Reich extinguish its independence came as a considerable shock to Paul.[22]

Later, when the Italians did annex Albania on Easter weekend 1939, Paul declined to make a protest, which severely strained relations with Yugoslavia's Balkan Pact ally Turkey, which protested most vehemently against the annexation of a Muslim majority nation which the Turks had historically close ties with.[20] The Italian annexation of Albania led to Italy controlling both sides of the Strait of Otranto, and thus allowed the Italians to cut Yugoslavia off from access to the rest of the world.[22] On 12 May 1939, Britain and Turkey issued a joint declaration promising "to ensure the establishment of security in the Balkans".[23] As Paul was about to make a state visit to Italy, he found the statement from the Turkish ambassador in Belgrade suggesting that Yugoslavia work with Turkey in the spirit of the Anglo-Turkish declaration to resist any further Italian advances in the Balkans very poorly timed and made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with the Turkish proposal.[23]

However, Paul did back a plan floated by the Turkish foreign minister Şükrü Saracoğlu for Bulgaria to join the Balkan Pact, and in a letter urged King Carol II of Romania to cede part of the Dobruja region as the price of Bulgaria joining the Balkan Pact.[24] In his letter, Paul stressed the importance of stopping Italy from gobbling up more Balkan nations, which required getting the Bulgarians out of the Italian sphere of influence (King Boris III of Bulgaria was married to the daughter of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy).[24] He wrote that he wanted the Bulgarians "off my back" to allow the Yugoslavs and Greeks to focus on countering the Italians who were now building up their forces in their new colony of Albania.[24] Unlike the Hungarians, whom Paul felt would never abandon their claims against Yugoslavia, the Bulgarians were felt to be more tractable.[25] After Germany and Italy, Hungary was the nation that Paul worried about the most as he noted that Danube river valley ran down from the Hungarian plain straight to Belgrade.[25] At the same time, Yugoslavia began staff talks with Greece with the aim of resisting an Italian invasion of either nation.[23] A major problem for Yugoslavia was the lack of modern weapons together with the money to pay for them.[26] Watt wrote that "Paul's tactics were aimed at winning credits and securing arms deliveries wherever he could, in Berlin, Paris or London".[26] After talking to Raymond Brugère, the French minister in Belgrade, the latter promised the prince regent that he would fly to Paris personally to lobby for Yugoslavia.[26] On 29 June 1939, it was that announced that the Bank Seligmannn of Paris was going to make a loan of 600 million francs to Yugoslavia that was to be spent on weapons for the Yugoslav military.[26] The Germans had broken the Yugoslav diplomatic codes and were well aware of Paul's attempts to play off the Axis powers against the Allied powers to secure the best deal for Yugoslavia; Paul's salvation in 1939 rested with the fact that Germany was about to invade Poland and needed raw materials from Yugoslavia like bauxite and copper to keep the German armaments industry going.[26]

In 1939, Prince Paul, as acting head of state, accepted an official invitation from Adolf Hitler and spent nine days in Berlin. During his visit to Berlin, a massive effort was made to persuade Paul to not join the "peace front" that was meant to "contain" Germany.[26] Paul was greeted by Hitler at the train station in Berlin, was made the guest of honor at a reception and dinner at the Reich Chancellery, visited the Potsdam military base, saw a gala performance of Wagner at the Berlin opera, and reviewed two major military parades meant to impress upon him the power of the Reich.[26] For the first part of his trip, Paul stayed at Bellevue Palace, an old imperial palace and then for the last three days, at Goring's estate at Carinhall.[26] Despite all the pomp, Paul during his visit to Germany repeatedly refused the demands made by his hosts to sign an economic agreement that would have turned Yugoslavia into a German economic colony or some overt pro-Axis gesture like pulling Yugoslavia out of the League of Nations and signing the Anti-Comintern Pact.[26][27] The German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop called Paul a "log" (a German slang term meaning somebody who is very stupid) while Hitler was very angry that despite all the lavish hospitality the only concession Paul made was to slightly readjust the exchange rate between the Reichmark and the Dinar.[26] In return for readjusting the exchange rate, Paul forced the Germans to finally deliver some of the aircraft that Yugoslavia had paid for in advance in 1938, but the Germans kept finding excuses not to deliver.[26]

While he was in Germany, Paul dispatched General Petar Pešić on a secret mission to Paris and London to find out what were the Anglo-French plans in the event of a war.[28] Pešić told Lord Gort of the British General Staff and French Marshal Maurice Gamelin that Yugoslavia would declare neutrality if Germany invaded Poland, but would be willing to enter the war on the Allied side the moment the Mediterranean and Adriatic seas came under Allied operational control.[28] Pešić argued that from the Allied viewpoint that Yugoslav neutrality could be advantageous in the sense that Yugoslavia at present could not stop the German Wehrmacht from occupying the country if Hitler so desired, which would allow the Germans to exploit all of the crucial raw materials of Yugoslavia whereas if Yugoslavia remained neutral and entered the war when the Allies could support her, then those raw materials would be permanently denied to the Germans.[28] Pešić found that the French, who preferred that fighting take place in anywhere but France, were far more interested in having Yugoslavia enter the conflict if the Danzig crisis should lead to a war than the British.[28] From Marshal Gamelin he learned the French were already planning on having the Army of the Levant commanded by Maxime Weygand land at Thessaloniki to march up the Balkans to link up with the Yugoslavs and the Romanians to aid the Poles.[28] In May 1939, Yugoslavia changed its diplomatic codes, which stopped both the Italians and Germans from reading the Yugoslav codes.[29] The same month, when the Romanian Foreign Minister, Grigore Gafencu, visited Belgrade, Paul spoke to him of his wish for both Yugoslavia and Romania to have closer ties with Britain.[29] Despite repeated pressure from both the German and Italian ministers in Belgrade, Paul refused their demand that Yugoslavia leave the League of Nations as a symbolic move to show that Yugoslavia was now associated with the Axis states.[30] As Germany and Japan had both left the League of Nations in 1933 while Italy had left the League in 1937, the Axis powers always attached immense symbolic importance to having other nations leaving the League as showing diplomatic alignment with them.[27]

In June 1939, Paul warned the American ambassador to Yugoslavia that the Forschungsamt (research office) was reading all of the diplomatic cables going into and out of Belgrade, including the American ones, and the ambassador should be careful what information he cabled back to Washington.[29] On 15 July 1939, Paul left Belgrade to visit London with a stop over in Paris to see Pešić.[29] From Pešić, Paul learned that he had the impression that on one hand, the French were keen to start a second front in the Balkans in the event of war while on the other hand that the French Navy would play only a defensive role, guarding convoys from Algeria to France. In London, Paul advocated that Britain launch a "preemptive war" against Italy, saying that if Italy were knocked out, then Yugoslavia would definitely move closer to Britain.[29] Paul ordered that the Yugoslav National Bank's gold reserves be transferred to London as a sign of his faith in Britain.[29] He told his British hosts that Yugoslavia was not ready to join the "peace front" yet, but was moving in that direction.[29] Paul also told the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, that he would use his influence with the more hesitant Balkan Pact nations, namely Romania and Greece to try to bring them into the "peace front".[29] During the same visit, he was installed as a Knight of the Garter, the most important British order of chivalry, by King George VI, which greatly offended Hitler, who complained that Paul's heart was with the British.[29]

During his talks with Lord Halifax in London, Paul received elusive replies to his demands for a British "preemptive war" against Italy as Paul contended that as long as the Regia Marina existed, there was always the possibility of Yugoslavia being cut off from Britain and France.[30] Both the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, and Lord Halifax regarded Italian leader Benito Mussolini as the more moderate and reasonable of the fascist leaders who despite signing the Pact of Steel in May might still be "peeled off" from his alliance with Germany.[30] Fearful of being cut off, Paul advocated to Halifax that if Britain ended up declaring war on Germany as a result of the latter invading Poland, then Britain should immediately launch air and naval attacks to destroy the Regia Marina and the Regia Aeronautica regardless if Italy was neutral or not.[30] It was Paul's belief that even if Mussolini declared neutrality at first that it was inevitable that he would come into the war on Germany's side at some point.[30] Paul very much wanted an Anglo-French landing at the Greek city of Thessaloniki in the event of war as he believed that this was the only way that Yugoslavia could resist a German invasion.[31] Paul also expressed his hope that the British would include the Soviet Union the proposed "peace front" as the best way of deterring Germany from invading Poland.[30] At the same that Paul was visiting London, the Yugoslav minister of finance Vojin Đuričić was in Paris where he signed on 14 July an agreement with the Premier Édouard Daladier for France to sell Yugloslavia anti-aircraft guns, trucks, howitzers, anti-tank guns, machine guns, tanks and tank transporters.[28]

As the Danzig crisis pushed Europe to the brink of war, Vladko Maček of the Croatian Peasant Party became convinced of the necessity of "throwing a bridge across the abyss which separated Serb from Croat".[20] Paul supported Prime Minister Dragiša Cvetković's efforts to reach an understanding with Maček, as despite his wish to hand over Yugoslavia unchanged to King Peter when he reached his majority, he felt that an end to the Serb-Croat dispute was the best way to allow Yugoslavia to survive the coming storm.[32] On 20 August 1939, the Cvetković-Maček Agreement set up the Banovina of Croatia to be ruled by a ban (governor) responsible to the king and a sabor (parliament) in Zagreb.[33] The central government retained control of the monarchy, foreign affairs, national defence, foreign trade, commerce, transport, public security, religion, mining, weights and measures, insurance, and education policy, but Croatia was to have its own legislature in Zagreb, with a separate budget.[34] The sprorazum (agreement) granted broad autonomy to Croatia, and partitioned Bosnia and Herzegovina as the government agreed to Maček's demand that all of the Croats in Yugoslavia should live under the authority of the Croatian banovina.[33] The sprorazum was popular with moderate Croat opinion, but it was extremely unpopular with the Bosnian Muslims who objected to the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina.[33] Likewise, the Serbian opinion was outraged by that the sprorazum had "abandoned" the prečani Serbs in Bosnia and the Krajina region to Croat rule.[33] The charge that Paul and Cvetković had "sold out" to the Croats with the sprorazum made them unpopular with the Serbs, and if it did not cause the coup d'état of 26 March 1941, certainly was the essential prerequisite for the coup.[35] Finally, the Slovenes demanded that a similar degree of autonomy should be granted to them.[33]

On 26 August 1939 as the Danzig crisis moved towards its climax, Paul in a letter to Lord Halifax once again urged that Britain launch a "preemptive war" against Italy if Germany should invade Poland.[31] The prince regent warned if Germany conquered Poland, then Italy would sooner or later enter the war, and if that happened, the Italian forces in Albania with support from Bulgaria would be used to threaten the other Balkan states.[31] Paul concluded in that case "a rot throughout the Balkans" would follow as the other Balkan states together with Turkey would turn towards Germany to protect them from Italy.[31] Sir Ronald Campbell, the British minister in Belgrade in a cable to Lord Halifax wrote that Paul was "in the last stages of despair".[31] Halifax wrote on the margin on Paul's letter that he was suffering from manic-depression again.[36] Brugère, who very much liked Paul, proved more sympathetic, and in a dispatch to Paris urged that France land a force at Thessaloniki if Germany should invade Poland.[36] The French proved supportive of the idea of landing at Thessaloniki, but Allied strategy was determined by an Inter-Allied War Council, and the British were stoutly opposed to the French plans for a "second front" in the Balkans.[36]

The news of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact was an especially bitter blow for Paul as it ensured that the two strongest powers in Eastern Europe would be working together, and ended the regent's hopes of an Anglo-French alliance which might finally rid Yugoslavia of the constant Italian efforts to undermine national unity.[36] When the Second World War broke out in September 1939 with the German invasion of Poland, Yugoslavia declared its neutrality.[37] During the "Phoney War", Paul arranged for Yugoslavia to step up deliveries of copper to Germany in exchanges for promises that Germany would finally deliver arms that Yugoslavia had paid for in advance, but which the Reich kept finding excuses not to deliver.[38] Germany also wanted that Yugoslavia not only refuse to join the British-inspired "peace front", but also formally align its diplomacy with the Axis powers.[22] In his sympathies, Paul preferred that France and Britain win the war, but he was markedly afraid of the Wehrmacht.[38] Paul repeatedly pressed for a revival of the Salonika Front strategy of First World War, arguing that if French and British forces landed at Thessaloniki, which would place them in a position to aid Yugoslavia, then he might lean more towards the Allied side.[38] During the Phony War, a popular, if erroneous rumor in Croatia that Paul was planning to enter the war on the Allied side and send Croat regiments to man the Maginot Line in France increased support for Croat separatism.[33]

On 25 March 1941, the Yugoslav government signed the Axis Tripartite Pact, with significant reservations, as three notes were appended. The first note obliged the Axis powers to respect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Yugoslavia. In the second note the Axis powers promised not to ask Yugoslavia for any military assistance, and in the third they promised not to ask permission to move military forces across Yugoslav territory during the war.[39] Nonetheless, the signing of the pact did not sit well with several elements of the Royal Yugoslav Army. On 27 March 1941, two days after Yugoslavia had signed the Tripartite Pact, Yugoslav military figures with British support forcibly removed Paul from power and declared King Peter II of age.[40] German and Italian forces invaded the country ten days later.

Paul's coat of arms

For the remainder of the war, Prince Paul was kept, with his family, under house arrest by the British in Kenya. His sister-in-law the Duchess of Kent and her husband the Duke, appealed to Winston Churchill, hoping he would allow Paul and his wife, Princess Olga, to take refuge in Britain. However, Churchill rejected the request in no uncertain manner; he viewed Paul as a traitor and war criminal. After the Duke of Kent's death in 1942, Churchill relented to King George's insistence and allowed Olga to fly to London to comfort her sister–although without her husband, who had been extremely close to the late Duke.[41][42]

The post-war Communist authorities in Yugoslavia had Prince Paul proclaimed an enemy of the state, barred him from ever returning to Yugoslavia, and confiscated all of his property in Yugoslavia. He died in Paris on 14 September 1976, aged 83[43] and was buried at the Bois-de-Vaux Cemetery in Switzerland.

Princess Elizabeth, his only daughter, obtained information from the British Special Operations Executive files in the Foreign Office in London and published them in Belgrade, in the 1990 edition of the Serbian-language biography of her father. The original book Paul of Yugoslavia: Britain's Maligned Friend was written by Neil Balfour, the first was published by Eaglet Publishing in London in 1980.

Prince Paul was rehabilitated by the Serbian courts in 2011 and on 6 October 2012 was reburied at the family crypt of Oplenac, near Topola in central Serbia, together with his wife Olga and son Nikola.[44]

Prince Paul was the father of Princess Elizabeth, Prince Alexander, and Prince Nikola, and was the grandfather of the American author Christina Oxenberg and American actress Catherine Oxenberg.

Prince Paul, together with King Alexander I of Yugoslavia collected, donated and dedicated a large number of art works to Serbia and the Serbian people, including foreign masterpieces. There are especially significant Italian, French and Dutch/Flemish pieces. Most of the works are in the National Museum of Serbia, including work by artists such as Rubens, Renoir, Monet, Titian, Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin etc.

• Crampton, Richard Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century-And After, London: Routledge, 1997.
• Keegan, John The Second World War, New York: Viking, 1989.
• Watt, D. C. How War Came The Immediate Origins of the Second World War, 1938–39, London: Heinemannm, 1989.
• Weinberg, Gerhard The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany Starting World War II, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980.
• Weinberg, Gerhard A World At Arms A Global History of World War II, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Prince Paul of Yugoslavia.

• Newspaper clippings about Prince Paul of Yugoslavia in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW