Tsar Boris III

Boris III ( bg, Борѝс III ; Boris Treti; 28 August 1943), originally Boris Klemens Robert Maria Pius Ludwig Stanislaus Xaver (Boris Clement Robert Mary Pius Louis Stanislaus Xavier) , was the Tsar of the Kingdom of Bulgaria from 1918 until his death in 1943.

The eldest son of Ferdinand I, Boris assumed the throne upon the abdication of his father in the wake of Bulgaria's defeat in World War I. Under the 1919 Treaty of Neuilly, Bulgaria was forced to, amongst other things, cede various territories, pay crippling war reparations, and greatly reduce the size of its military. That same year, Aleksandar Stamboliyski of the agrarian Bulgarian Agrarian National Union became prime minister. After Stamboliyski was overthrown in a coup in 1923, Boris recognized the new government of Aleksandar Tsankov, who harshly suppressed the Bulgarian Communist Party and led the nation through a brief border war with Greece. Tsankov was removed from power in 1926, and a series of prime ministers followed until 1934, when the corporatist '' Zveno'' ( bg, Звено) movement staged a coup and outlawed all political parties. Boris opposed the ''Zveno'' government and overthrew them in 1935, eventually installing Georgi Kyoseivanov as prime minister. For the remainder of his reign, Boris would rule as a ''de facto'' absolute monarch, with his prime ministers largely submitting to his will.

Following the outbreak of World War II, Bulgaria initially remained neutral. In 1940, Bogdan Filov replaced Kyoseivanov as prime minister, becoming the last prime minister to serve under Boris. Later that year, with the support of Nazi Germany, Bulgaria received the region of Southern Dobrudja from Romania as part of the Treaty of Craiova. In January 1941, Boris approved the anti-Semitic Law for Protection of the Nation, which denied citizenship to Bulgarian Jews and placed numerous restrictions upon them. In March, Bulgaria joined the Axis. In exchange, Bulgaria received large portions of Macedonia and Thrace, both of which were key targets of Bulgarian irredentism. Boris refused to participate in the German invasion of the Soviet Union and largely resisted German attempts to deport Bulgarian Jews as part of the Holocaust. In 1942, ''Zveno'', the Agrarian National Union, the Bulgarian Communist Party, and various other far-left groups united to form a resistance movement known as the Fatherland Front, which would later go on to overthrow the government in 1944. In August 1943, shortly after returning from a visit to Germany, Boris died at the age of 49. His six-year-old son, Simeon II, succeeded him as tsar.

Early life

Boris was born on 30 January 1894 in Sofia to Ferdinand I, Prince of Bulgaria, and his wife Princess Marie Louise of Bourbon-Parma.

In February 1896, his father paved the way for the reconciliation of Bulgaria and Russia with the conversion of the infant Prince Boris from Roman Catholicism to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, a move that earned Ferdinand the frustration of his wife, the animosity of his Catholic Austrian relatives (particularly his uncle Franz Joseph I of Austria) and excommunication from the Catholic Church. In order to remedy this difficult situation, Ferdinand christened all his remaining children as Catholics. Nicholas II of Russia stood as godfather to Boris and met the young boy during Ferdinand's official visit to Saint Petersburg in July 1898.

He received his initial education in the so-called Palace Secondary School, which Ferdinand had created in 1908 solely for his sons. Later, Boris graduated from the Military School in Sofia, then took part in the Balkan Wars. During the First World War, he served as liaison officer of the General Staff of the Bulgarian Army on the Macedonian front. In 1916, he was promoted to colonel and attached again as liaison officer to Army Group Mackensen and the Bulgarian Third Army for the operations against Romania. Boris worked hard to smooth the sometimes difficult relations between Field Marshal Mackensen and Lieutenant General Stefan Toshev, the commander of the Third Army. Through his courage and personal example, he earned the respect of the troops and the senior Bulgarian and German commanders, even that of the Generalquartiermeister of the German Army, Erich Ludendorff, who preferred dealing personally with Boris and described him as excellently trained, a thoroughly soldierly person and mature beyond his years. In 1918, Boris was made a major general.

Early reign

In September 1918, Bulgaria was defeated in the Vardar Offensive and forced to sue for peace. Ferdinand subsequently abdicated in favour of Boris, who became Tsar on 3 October 1918.

One year after Boris's accession, Aleksandar Stamboliyski (or ''Stambolijski'') of the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union was elected prime minister. Though popular with the large peasant class, Stambolijski earned the animosity of the middle class and military, which led to his toppling in a military coup on 9 June 1923, and his subsequent assassination. On 14 April 1925, an anarchist group attacked Boris's cavalcade as it passed through the Arabakonak Pass. Two days later, a bomb killed 150 members of the Bulgarian political and military elite in Sofia as they attended the funeral of a murdered general in the St Nedelya Church terror assault. Following a further attempt on Boris's life the same year, military reprisals killed several thousand communists and agrarians, including representatives of the intelligentsia. Finally, in October 1925, there was a short border war with Greece, known as the Petrich incident, which was resolved with the help of the League of Nations.

In the coup on 19 May 1934, the Zveno military organisation established a dictatorship and abolished political parties in Bulgaria. Tsar Boris was reduced to the status of a puppet tsar as a result of the coup. The following year, he staged a counter-coup and assumed control of the country. The political process was controlled by the Tsar, but a form of parliamentary rule was re-introduced, without the restoration of the political parties.

With the rise of the "King's government" in 1935, Bulgaria entered an era of prosperity and astounding growth, which deservedly qualifies it as the Golden Age of the Third Bulgarian Kingdom. It lasted nearly five years. According to Reuben H. Markham, former Balkan correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor, writing in 1941, "As a ruler, Boris is competent; as a citizen exemplary; as a personality inspiring.... His country is to a large extent indebted to him for the comparatively favorable situation it has held in the Balkans, during the last two decades." Markham added, "King Boris is very accessible. He constantly comes into contact with persons of every sort. He drives his car up and down the country with no special guards and often stops to converse with peasants, workers or children. He gives lifts to the humblest pedestrians. Rare is the Bulgarian township that does not boast of at least one person who has ridden with the King." "He is without question one of the best kings in Europe."

Marriage and issue

Boris married Giovanna of Italy, daughter of Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, in a Catholic ceremony – not a Mass – at the Basilica of Saint Francis of Assisi in Assisi, Italy, on 25 October 1930. Benito Mussolini registered the marriage at the town hall immediately after the religious service.

Their marriage produced two children: a daughter, Maria Louisa, on 13 January 1932, and a son and heir to the throne, Simeon, on 16 June 1937.

Second World War

In the early days of the Second World War, Bulgaria was neutral, but powerful groups in the country swayed its politics towards Germany (with which Bulgaria had been allied in the First World War). As a result of peace treaties that ended the First World War (the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Neuilly), Bulgaria, which had fought on the losing side, lost two important territories to neighboring countries: the Southern plain of Dobruja to Romania, and Western Thrace to Greece. The Bulgarians considered these treaties an insult and wanted the lands restored. When Adolf Hitler rose to power, he tried to win Bulgarian Tsar Boris III's allegiance. In the summer of 1940, after a year of war, Hitler hosted diplomatic talks between Bulgaria and Romania in Vienna. On 7 September, an agreement was signed for the return of Southern Dobruja to Bulgaria. The Bulgarian nation rejoiced. In March 1941, Boris allied himself with the Axis powers, thus recovering most of Macedonia and Aegean Thrace, as well as protecting his country from being crushed by the German Wehrmacht like neighboring Yugoslavia and Greece. For recovering these territories, Tsar Boris was called the Unifier (Bulgarian: Цар Обединител). Tsar Boris appeared on the cover of ''Time'' on 20 January 1941 wearing a full military uniform.

Despite this alliance, and the German presence in Sofia and along the railway line which passed through the Bulgarian capital to Greece, Boris was not willing to provide full and unconditional cooperation with Germany. He refused to send regular Bulgarian troops to fight the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front alongside Germany and the other Axis belligerents, and also refused to allow unofficial volunteers (such as Spain's Blue Division) to participate, although the German legation in Sofia received 1,500 requests from young Bulgarian men who wanted to fight against Bolshevism.

But there was a price to be paid for the return of Dobrudja. This was the adoption of the anti-Jewish " Law for Protection of the Nation" (Закон за защита на нацията – ЗЗН) on 24 December 1940. This law was in accordance with the Nuremberg Laws in Nazi Germany and the rest of Hitler's occupied Europe. Bulgarian Prime Minister Bogdan Filov and Interior Minister Petur Gabrovski, both Nazi sympathisers, were the architects of this law, which restricted Jewish rights, imposed new taxes, and established a quota for Jews in some professions. Many Bulgarians protested in letters to their government.

The Holocaust

In early 1943, Hitler's emissary, Theodor Dannecker, arrived in Bulgaria. Dannecker was an '' SS-Hauptsturmführer'' (captain) and one of Adolf Eichmann

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