“Qui habet tempus habet vitam” : la question de Thessalonique et la crise dans les Balkans : la Yougoslavie au seuil de la guerre : entre diplomatie et coup d’État (octobre 1940 - mars 1941)

Abstract

This article treats, with special reference to the question of Salonika, the
long protracted negotiations leading up to the reluctant signing of the Tripartite Pact by Prince-Regent Paul’s government of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia on 25 March 1941. Hitler’s respect for the Serbs’ fighting abilities (e.g.
on the Salonika front) led him to make considerable concessions to the Yugoslavs. The inviolability of their frontiers and sovereignty was guaranteed,
military assistance and the use of their territory for the movement of troops
and military matériel were not insisted upon. Hitler even intimated that Salonika would be ceded to them. The Yugoslavs thus faced a dilemma. They did not want the city, in which Yugoslavia had a free zone sufficient for her needs in the Aegean Sea region, for reasons of sentiment; acceptance would have been dishonourable, a betrayal of their traditional ally Greece, the land of
origin, indeed, of their ruler’s wife. On the other hand, encircled as they were
by the Axis powers elsewhere, Salonika was their only possible srategic link
with the Allies with whom their sympathies lay. Furthermore, refusal of such
an offer would, in Hitler’s eyes, have cast doubts upon their sincerity. In the event, against Croat opposition. Serbian pro-Allied sentiment allowed a plot of officers to overthrow the government thus provoking Hitler’s wrath and
bringing Yugoslavia into World War II with the consequent enormous losses,
around 1.500.000 civil and military dead, a demographic loss of 2.438.000,
many thousands of maimed persons, horrendous matériel destruction and so
on.