In Belgrade, sometimes you drive down one street, and it changes its name without changing its direction. Dušanova. George Washington, March 27.
And yes, Kraljice Marije, where I used to go to Mašinac for gigs in the eighties.
I worked at the corner of Dobračina and Dušanova for years in the first decade of this millennium, so I know that area. Dorćol (if we're right - Dorčol) is divided into the one above Dušanova, the bourgeois one, and the one below it, which connoisseurs somewhat exaggeratedly claim is the only authentic Dorćol, in any case - its hard core.
When you pass from Dušan's 14th century to Washington's 18th century on the same street near Skadarlija, nothing happens for a long time, until Takovska marks the transition to Ulica 27. Marcha. It's a sudden leap into the 20th century.
We are talking about March 27, 1941, when a group of pro-Western officers staged a coup, overthrew the Viceroyalty with Prince Pavlo Karađorđević, declared Prince Petar Karađorđević of legal age and made the just-signed Triple Pact a dead letter.
Our coup, your coup, their coup?
Round anniversaries, and this is one such, because it is an event from exactly 80 years ago, serve people to ask, in accordance with their culture of memory, a rather difficult question: What is March 27, 1941, to us today?
During the time of socialist Yugoslavia, an unrealistic sign of equality was placed between communist and patriotic resistance to the Triple Pact. It is a fact that the pro-Western officers in the demonstrations that followed were supported by people whose role model was Stalin and those whose authority was patriarch Gavrilo Dožić. After the war, the myth was added to the whole event about the crucial Yugoslav contribution to the Allied victory - delaying the attack on the Soviet Union, which supposedly fatefully pushed Hitler's Wehrmacht into the bitter Russian winter, where the blitzkrieg got stuck.
Afterwards, the group of officers who organized the coup was celebrated, but also contested. Then the signs of English secret service incitement became more and more visible in the event. And those who wondered whether it was not wiser for a certain king of Yugoslavia not to anger Hitler, also cautiously bowed their heads.
All these narratives stand more or less equally in the collage of Serbian historical images of that day. One would say that this pluralism of simplified performances is on the border of cacophony, but what can be done. We like to think of ourselves in categories that encourage collective arrogance rather than following the sober urge to assemble facts into a picture that would teach us something.
When London finds your soul
Perhaps it is more fruitful to ask ourselves what March 27, 1941 meant to the rest of the world's players. It is well known that the English opened the champagne after the successful coup. Winston Churchill famously praised that Yugoslavia had found its soul again.
British cynicism comes to mind. Military support to Belgrade - no. And Yugoslav concessions to Hitler? No, not at all. So, Yugoslavia was given ten days to "find its soul" before it was finally released under the German boots, wouldn't it be a little easier for London and Moscow compared to aggressive Berlin.
The British knew that Hitler intended to attack Greece, because his allies the Italians had an inglorious fate there that March. The British did not sit idly by. Leaving the Mediterranean to the Third Reich would mean being cut off from oil and colonies. That is why they sent their 58.000 fighters to support the Greeks. Neutral Yugoslavia was not to London's liking, but Great Britain understands the signing of the Tripartite Pact with propaganda pomp on March 25 in Vienna as a direct threat to its interests in the Balkans and in Greece. They started all their numerous connections and mechanisms in Belgrade, agents of the Directorate for Special Operations, who, of course, read the "History of Serbia" from 1917 by the British historian Harold Temperley. From that, they developed a user manual for the Serbs - you only make them angry and encourage them in the direction of patriotism.
"Serbian conspiracy mob"
Hitler was literally foaming at the news, which the British accompanied with sparkling wine. He didn't count on this twist. His concern over Mussolini's inability to conquer Greece was further heightened by the Belgrade putschists. The Third Reich could not attack the Soviet Union with an open southern front. And the Romanian oil fields - the energy base of the Nazi military machine - would be with the British in Greece and with unreliable Yugoslavia - within the range of the bombers.
Although this does not support the cliché about Hitler as an a priori hater of Yugoslavia and an ideologically driven Serb-eater, it is a historical fact that for pragmatic reasons he wanted to conquer Yugoslavia without war. His statement was recorded that for a "friendly relationship" towards Yugoslavia "no sacrifice should be considered too great". The March coup brought him back to his Austro-Hungarian trauma.
Hitler exclaimed that the coup plotters were a "Serbian conspiracy mob". He threatened to "finally fry that boil in the Balkans". From that moment on, he considered Yugoslavia an unsafe ally due to the traditional Slovenian and Serbian anti-German attitude. The result of this train of thought is Hitler's "Order number 25": "The military coup in Yugoslavia changed the political situation in the Balkans. Yugoslavia must, even if it immediately guarantees us loyalty, be seen as an enemy and therefore must be destroyed as quickly as possible". After March 27, things took an inexorable war logic.
One was against it
In Belgrade, on March 27, demonstrators burned German flags, half-burned German offices, and the next day German MP Viktor von Herren was insulted in the Parliament Church, while the crowd spat on his car. It is interesting that it was this Viktor von Herren, the German diplomatic representative in Belgrade who tried to prevent war until the last hour. Despite Ribbentrop's express order, he maintained intensive contact with the coup government. He tried to convince the Yugoslav side that demobilization might be able to stop the war. Six days before the fatal attack on Belgrade, he informed the Yugoslav side about the upcoming bombing. He lodged a protest in Berlin about the planned war campaign and was then transferred "on hold" as a punishment, which ended his diplomatic career. He died in Bavaria in 1949. It is not out of place to note that Viktor von Herren could not stop the implementation of "Order No. 25" and its transfer into the April XNUMXth "Operation Criminal Court". But that he still tried desperately to do so, sacrificing his diplomatic career.
Peripheral memory
Air Force General Borivoj Mirković was the engine of the coup. Today he has his own street in Parcani, a town with about 600 inhabitants, some thirty kilometers south of Belgrade. After the April collapse in 1941, that man was the last to take off in the evacuation of the royal suite from the airport in Nikšić, with eight chests of gold in the plane. He was shot down by Greek anti-aircraft defenses, breaking both legs. He was an officer in the British Air Force after the war and died in London in 1969.
General Dušan Simović fared a little better - the dead-end street between Ugrinovci and Batajnica is named after him, and Dušana Simović Street also exists at the exit from Borča towards Ovča. I don't know whether it was decisive that General Simović testified in the trial of Draža Mihailović or that he supported the partisan struggle as a royal officer from London, but he died in Belgrade in 1962. His friend Charles de Gaulle would sometimes send French diplomats to visit him in his Belgrade house and they ask him if he needs anything.
The putschists mostly thought they were saving the national honor, they corrected Prince Pavle's unwilling attempt to choose the "lesser evil" in a situation where there are only losing options. As soon as they came to his place, they wanted to offer Berlin the fulfillment of the signing obligations. It was late. Soon, monarchists, communists and civil politicians realized that the slogan of English intelligence officers "better a grave than a slave" is not a metaphor, but a one-way bloody historical street, at the end of which there will be an endless cemetery.
Bonus video:
