Yugoslavia joins the Tripartite Pact

On 25 March 1941, in the Belvedere in Vienna – the same palace in which Hungary had joined it four months earlier and Bulgaria three weeks earlier – the Yugoslav Prime Minister Dragiša Cvetković signed the protocol of his country’s accession to the Tripartite Pact. Beside him stood the Foreign Minister, Aleksandar Cincar-Marković; facing them were the Reich Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, and his Italian counterpart, Galeazzo Ciano. After the ceremony both Yugoslavs were received by Adolf Hitler, who assured them that joining the pact would one day prove the most successful act of Yugoslav foreign policy. The delegation carried home the notes over which Belgrade had bargained for three weeks: Germany and Italy promised to respect Yugoslavia’s sovereignty and not to demand either the passage of troops across its territory or military assistance, and they secretly pledged it Salonika after the war.

Behind the signature stood the regent, Prince Paul Karađorđević, who ruled the country on behalf of the under-age King Peter II. Popular chronologies spread this story over three dates and simplify it in two places. Under 4 March they state that the regent “agreed to join” the pact. Paul did indeed meet Hitler secretly that day, but he left the Berghof without having made a decision; consent was given in Belgrade only in the middle of the month. Under 21 March they state that “the Yugoslav government resigned in protest”. Cvetković’s government did not step down. Three Serbian ministers left the cabinet, and the news reached Berlin on 21 March.

A country encircled

Paul had become regent in October 1934, after the assassination in Marseille in which his cousin, King Alexander I, was killed. Educated at Oxford and related through his wife, Olga, to the Greek royal house and to the British court, he made no secret of where his sympathies lay. He believed, however, that Yugoslavia had nothing to fight with: the army was poorly armed, and the state was torn by the Serb–Croat dispute, which had been eased only in August 1939 by the Cvetković–Maček Agreement and the creation of the autonomous Banovina of Croatia. In September 1939 Yugoslavia declared its neutrality and kept to it, manoeuvring between London and Berlin, to which it was bound ever more closely by trade.

In the autumn of 1940 its room for manoeuvre began to shrink. In October Italy attacked Greece, Yugoslavia’s ally in the Balkan Pact, and in November Hungary, Romania and Slovakia joined the Tripartite Pact. Hitler told Ciano at the time that he wanted to offer the regent a “grand bargain”: a guarantee of Yugoslavia’s borders in exchange for tying itself to the Axis. On 28 November he received Cincar-Marković at the Berghof, and on 14 February 1941 Cincar-Marković together with Prime Minister Cvetković. Each time the Yugoslavs offered at most a non-aggression pact, insisted that they would defend themselves against any aggressor, and referred the final decision to the regent.

From the other side came pressure from the British and the Americans. In January Belgrade was visited by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s envoy, Colonel William J. Donovan, who warned that a country which let German troops through could not count on American support at the future peace table. Winston Churchill made it clear that neutrality alone was no longer enough. Yet London could offer nothing but promises: its only expeditionary corps on the Continent was still preparing to set off for Greece. On 17 February Bulgaria and Turkey issued a declaration of non-aggression that dashed hopes of a neutral Balkan bloc, and on 1 March Bulgaria joined the Tripartite Pact. The next day German troops marched into Bulgaria and took up positions on its border with Yugoslavia as well. Apart from its short frontier with Greece, Yugoslavia was now surrounded by Axis states or their satellites.

The regent at the Berghof

On Tuesday 4 March 1941 Paul travelled in secret to the Berghof on the Obersalzberg. The Germans promised to keep his conversation with Hitler, held in Ribbentrop’s presence, strictly secret; even Benito Mussolini learned of it only the next day, from a confidential message passed on by the embassy in Rome. According to the instruction that Ribbentrop afterwards sent to the legation in Belgrade, Hitler presented the situation to the regent as though the war had already been decided: England had lost it, and every European state now had to find its place in the “New Order”. Yugoslavia had a unique, unrepeatable opportunity to secure a German guarantee of its borders and – since the fall of Greece was only a matter of time – access to the Aegean Sea as well. Germany expected nothing beyond accession to the pact, and in particular no part in the war, and would see to it that Salonika went to Yugoslavia once the war was over.

Paul replied, as Ribbentrop recorded, with disarming frankness. Against such a decision, he said, weighed his wife’s Greek origins, his personal sympathy for England and his attitude towards Italy. At most he was prepared to consider a new agreement with Rome as a first step. Finally he voiced the fear that if he followed the German advice, in six months he would no longer be in Belgrade. Ribbentrop retorted that in his view the opposite was more likely: in six months he would no longer be there if he did not follow it. The regent left, reserving his decision. In Berlin it was judged that he had begun to waver, and Ribbentrop considered a further meeting, this time on Yugoslav soil, at Bled.

The American minister in Belgrade, Arthur Bliss Lane, reported at the end of March, citing a “reliable source”, that Hitler had told the regent of his intention to attack the Soviet Union in June or July. There is no trace of any such statement in the German records. Nor is there any trace in them of a second meeting between Paul and Hitler around 17–18 March, which the Croatian leader Vladko Maček and the Yugoslav minister in Washington, Konstantin Fotić, wrote about after the war. Only the meeting of 4 March is certain.

The Crown Council and the haggling over the notes

On 6 March the regent convened the Crown Council. It was attended by the three regents – Paul, Radenko Stanković and Ivo Perović – Prime Minister Cvetković, Deputy Prime Minister Maček, the Slovene leader Fran Kulovec, Cincar-Marković, the War Minister General Petar Pešić and the Minister of the Court, Milan Antić. Pešić presented the assessment that settled the outcome of the deliberations: in the event of war the Germans would quickly occupy the north of the country, with Belgrade, Zagreb and Ljubljana, and the army, withdrawn into the mountains, would hold out for a few weeks at most, because it lacked weapons, ammunition and food. Adding to the unease were the demonstrations and the press campaign in Bulgaria, where, after the Germans had marched in, revision of the borders was being openly demanded.

The next day, 7 March, as the first British troops were landing at Piraeus, Cincar-Marković put a question to the German minister, Viktor von Heeren: if Yugoslavia joined the pact, would it receive written assurances from Germany and Italy that its sovereignty and territorial integrity would be respected, that it would not be asked for military assistance or for consent to the passage and transport of troops across its territory, and that its interest in free access to the Aegean Sea through Salonika would be taken into account in the reorganisation of Europe? Hitler and Mussolini agreed on 8 March, but the following day Ribbentrop stipulated that the Reich could not formally release Yugoslavia from the obligation of military assistance laid down in Article 3 of the pact, in case the allies were attacked by a power not yet at war, such as the United States or the Soviet Union. Cincar-Marković explained that precisely such a war would be in flagrant contradiction with the mood of the nation. He was, as Heeren reported, “evidently very surprised”: this very article had been the main obstacle, and he had already assured the regent and the Prime Minister that the answer was yes on every point.

The haggling lasted a week. In the end the Germans agreed that the two Axis powers would “not on their own initiative” demand military assistance, and that if Yugoslavia ever judged participation in the war to be in its interest, it would itself conclude the necessary agreements. This assurance, however, had to remain secret, as did the promise of Salonika, which at Belgrade’s request was reworded from “free access” to the sea to a “territorial connection” with it. Only the note on sovereignty and territorial integrity was to be made public, and the Yugoslav government could announce the waiver of troop transit in an agreed press communiqué. Heeren wrote on 11 March that rumours of a German ultimatum and the call-up of reservists had caused great agitation in the country, that Roosevelt had sent personal messages to Cvetković, Maček and Kulovec, and that in the army it was being said that joining the pact was an affront to the honour of the Serbian soldier. Cvetković told him unofficially that he had placed certain generals under police surveillance and was ready to arrest the opposition leaders. According to German documents, the Crown Council decided on 17 March that Yugoslavia would join the pact.

Three ministers resign

The decision had been taken in a narrow circle, but the government had to accept it. At the cabinet meeting on 20 March three Serbian ministers spoke out against joining the pact: the Minister of Agriculture, Branko Čubrilović of the Agrarian Party; the Minister of Social Policy and Health, Srđan Budisavljević of the Independent Democratic Party, who had links with the British; and the Minister of Justice, Mihailo Konstantinović. All three resigned. The remaining ministers, including Maček’s Croats and Kulovec’s Slovenes, backed the regent, and the government as a whole stayed in office. It is this situation that the chronologies describe as the resignation of the cabinet.

On the evening of 21 March Heeren telephoned Berlin to say that, according to Cincar-Marković, the resignations had “clarified the situation in the cabinet”, since the departing ministers had always obstructed government policy, but that filling the vacancies would take several days, because negotiations were needed with several Serbian parties. Cvetković did not want to go to Vienna with empty seats in the Serbian part of the cabinet. Berlin had no intention of waiting. During the night of 21–22 March Ribbentrop instructed Heeren to declare that the Reich was ready to conclude the prepared agreements by the 24th at the latest, “or failing that, on 25 March”. On 26 March the Japanese Foreign Minister, Yōsuke Matsuoka, was due in Berlin, and after that, Ribbentrop added, a date for the Yugoslavs could be found only when concluding the agreements “would no longer make much sense”. It was an unmistakable threat.

On 22 March Heeren called in turn on Cincar-Marković, Cvetković, the regent, Maček and Kulovec. Maček and Kulovec assured him that the Croats and Slovenes, apart from a few “chauvinist circles”, would welcome a settlement of relations with Germany. Paul declared, in a “decidedly friendly atmosphere”, that despite the resistance he was meeting, chiefly in Serbian circles, he would not change his decision, because he was convinced that it served the country’s true interests. The places of the resigning ministers were taken by new men, among them Časlav Nikitović at Agriculture and Dragomir Ikonić at Social Policy, and on 24 March Cvetković and Cincar-Marković left secretly for Vienna. In those same days the regent rid himself of a man around whom a pro-German opposition might have rallied: the former Prime Minister Milan Stojadinović, interned for a year, was handed over to the British, who took him to the British island of Mauritius.

The signature in the Belvedere

The ceremony in the Belvedere on 25 March followed the same script as the November accessions of Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. Cvetković signed the protocol, and Ribbentrop and Ciano handed him the notes. The public note stated that the Reich government “confirms its decision always to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Yugoslavia”. A second, confidential note confirmed the understanding that in time of war the Axis powers would not ask Yugoslavia for consent to the passage or transport of troops across its territory; the Yugoslav government was allowed to make its content public in a communiqué. Two further notes were strictly secret. In the first, Germany and Italy gave an assurance that they would not “on their own initiative” demand military assistance. In the second, they promised that when the frontiers in the Balkans were redrawn, account would be taken of Yugoslavia’s interest in a territorial connection with the Aegean Sea “through the extension of its sovereignty to the city and port of Salonika”. Cvetković undertook in writing not to disclose the secret notes without the Axis’s consent.

German propaganda quickly blurred these distinctions. According to accounts cited by historians, German radio announced that the Axis would demand neither the passage of troops nor the transport of war materials, although the notes spoke only of troops. The promise of Salonika meant, in essence, that Yugoslavia was to be rewarded at the expense of Greece – a country the Germans had yet to go to war with, and Yugoslavia’s own ally in the Balkan Pact.

After the signing Hitler received the two Yugoslav ministers at the Hotel Imperial. According to the German record, he said that he understood the feelings that had stood in the way of this decision, since he himself was not free of them, but that reasons of state had to prevail over all personal feelings. He assured them that Germany had no political or territorial interests in the Balkans and that the last German soldier would leave the region once the danger had passed. Access to the Aegean, he said, would go down in history as “a kind of vindication” for those who were today taking difficult decisions that some Yugoslavs did not understand. He asked Cvetković to convey his personal greetings to the regent, together with the assurance of how very happy he was that reasons of state had prevailed. Cvetković thanked him, spoke of economic co-operation and stressed the merits of Paul, who “by his counsel” had made possible “the great act of this day”. Immediately afterwards, talking to Ciano, Hitler explained why Yugoslavia’s accession had mattered so much to him: the main supply route through Bulgaria ran for 350–400 kilometres only 20 kilometres from the Yugoslav border, and an attack on Greece while Yugoslavia’s attitude remained uncertain would have been, in military terms, “an extraordinarily irresponsible undertaking”.

“Better war than the pact”

The government had done almost nothing to prepare the public for this step, and only recently had been insisting that it was holding to neutrality. When the radio broadcast the news from Vienna on 25 March, Serbia and Montenegro seethed. The German chargé d’affaires in Belgrade reported during the night that the population was “surprised and generally deeply stirred”, but that the government was in control of the situation and had quickly suppressed demonstrations, especially in Cetinje and in Šumadija. Foreign radio stations reported the resignations of the Yugoslav envoys in London and Washington. In Croatia and Slovenia, where the Germans did not arouse such hostility and war meant above all a threat, the signature was received more calmly.

On 26 March, when Cvetković returned from Vienna, demonstrators – chiefly students and young people – again took to the streets of Belgrade. The crowds chanted a slogan that has gone down in history: “Bolje rat nego pakt, bolje grob nego rob” – “better war than the pact, better the grave than slavery”. For many Serbs, who remembered the occupation of 1915–1918 and the sufferings of the Serbian army in the First World War, siding with Germany was a betrayal, whatever reservations had been written into the secret notes. That same evening the regent left by train for a holiday in Slovenia. In the air force barracks at Zemun the conspirators were already completing their preparations for a coup.

Its place in the war

Yugoslavia’s accession to the Tripartite Pact was German diplomacy’s greatest success in the Balkans, and it lasted less than two days. During the night of 26–27 March air force officers led by General Dušan Simović overthrew the regency and Cvetković’s government and proclaimed the seventeen-year-old Peter II of age, and Paul, who returned to Belgrade on the evening of 27 March and renounced his powers, left the country that same night. The new government did not renounce the pact – it even gave assurances that it would honour its international obligations – but it did not ratify it either, and it sought support in London and Moscow, with which it concluded a treaty of friendship and non-aggression on 5 April. Hitler regarded the coup as treachery. On 27 March itself he resolved to destroy Yugoslavia “as a state”, and on 6 April 1941 the Wehrmacht, supported by the Italians and Hungarians, struck at it simultaneously with the attack on Greece. The bombing of Belgrade and the Balkan campaign ended with the capitulation of the Yugoslav army on 17 April.

On the ruins of the state that the note on territorial integrity was meant to protect arose Ante Pavelić’s Independent State of Croatia, which itself joined the Tripartite Pact on 15 June 1941. The rest of the country was divided between the Germans, the Italians, the Hungarians, the Bulgarians and Italian-dominated Albania. The promise of Salonika, handed over in Vienna in a secret note, was never called in, and Salonika remained under German occupation until 1944. Yugoslavia became the scene of one of the bloodiest occupations of the Second World War, and at the same time of one of the strongest partisan movements in Europe.

The 25th of March was argued over long after the war. In 1945 the communist authorities of Yugoslavia declared the regent a war criminal and the accession to the pact an act of treason. His defenders, above all in Serbia after the fall of communism, argued that a signature with secret reservations was the most favourable outcome that could have been obtained, and that Paul had been trying to buy time for a country that no one could defend. In 2011 a court in Belgrade rehabilitated the regent. One thing is certain: Hitler, who in the spring of 1941 needed quiet in the rear of his expedition against Greece and before his assault on the Soviet Union, had no intention of recognising anyone’s neutrality in the Balkans. Yugoslavia could choose only between submission and war, and the coup of 27 March meant that it first tried the one and then suffered the other.