As it is well known on the ninth of October 1934 during an official state visit to the Republic of France, the Yugoslav sovereign, King Alexander Karadjordjevic was assassinated together with his host, the French foreign minister Louis Barthou. The assassination happened in Marseilles right after the Yugoslav king had arrived on a warship of the Yugoslav Royal Navy. The assassin was killed on the spot and the whole incident was filmed. The King’s admiral uniform with blood stains is preserved and it is displayed in the Serbian Military Museum in Belgrade. The assassin was Vlado Georgiev–Chernozemski, a prominent member of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (VMRO) and personal driver of VMRO leader Ivan Michailov.

How dit it all happen? How could a member of the notorious Macedonian organization manage to come so close to the Yugoslav sovereign, who had personally led the troops that liberated (or conquered?) most of the territories of Macedonia during the First Balkan War? Well, as most of the things in the Balkans, everything has its prehistory, most often confusing for an average Western observer.

[Het volledige artikel kunt u lezen in Donau 2008/2]


Biography
Dmitar Tasić studied History at the University of Belgrade and is specialised in the military and political activities of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization in the Yugoslav Kingdom between 1919 and 1934. Currently, he is working on his PhD thesis and as a researcher for the Strategy Research Institute (former Military History Institute) of the Serbian Ministry of Defence. He has just published his book The War after the War; the Army of the Kingdom of Serbians, Croats and Slovenes in Kosovo and Metochia and Macedonia 1918-1920.