|
The Yugoslav coup d'état occurred on 27 March 1941 in Belgrade, Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The coup was planned and conducted by a group of pro-Western Serb-nationalist Royal Yugoslav Air Force officers formally led by Air Force General Dušan Simović, who had been associated with a number of coup plots from 1938 onwards. For practical purposes Brigadier General of Military Aviation Borivoje Mirković, Major Živan Knežević of the Yugoslav Royal Guards, and his brother Radoje Knežević all performed leadership roles in the conduct of the coup. In addition to Radoje Knežević, some other civilian leaders were probably aware of the coup before it was launched and moved to support it once it occurred, but they were not among the organisers. The Communist Party of Yugoslavia played no part in the coup, although it made a significant contribution to the mass street protests in many cities that signalled popular support for the coup after it occurred. The coup was successful and overthrew the three-member regency: Prince Paul, Dr. Radenko Stanković and Dr. Ivo Perović, as well as the government of Prime Minister Dragiša Cvetković. Two days before the coup, the Cvetković government had signed the Vienna Protocol on the Accession of Yugoslavia to the Tripartite Pact (Axis). The coup had been planned for several months, but the signing of the Tripartite Pact spurred the organisers to carry it out, encouraged by the British Special Operations Executive. The military conspirators brought to power the 17-year-old King Peter II Karađorđević, whom they declared to be of age to assume the throne, and a government of national unity was formed with Simović as prime minister and Vladko Maček and Slobodan Jovanović as his vice-premiers. The coup led directly to the German-led Axis invasion of Yugoslavia. ==Background== According to economics professor and historian Jozo Tomasevich, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was politically weak from the moment of its creation and remained so during the interwar period mainly due to a "rigid system of centralism", the strong association between each national group and its dominant religion, and uneven economic development. In particular, the religious primacy of the Serbian Orthodox Church in national affairs and discrimination against Roman Catholics and Muslims compounded the dissatisfaction of the non-Serb population with the Serb-dominated ruling groups that treated non-Serbs as second-class citizens. This centralised system arose from Serbian military strength and Croat intransigence, was sustained by Croat disengagement, Serb overrepresentation, corruption and a lack of discipline within political parties. Until 1929, this state of affairs was maintained by subverting the democratic system of government. The domination of the rest of Yugoslavia by Serb ruling elites meant that the country was never consolidated in the political sense, and was therefore never able to address the social and economic challenges it faced. Political scientist Professor Sabrina P. Ramet sees the dysfunctionality and lack of legitimacy of the regime as the reasons why the kingdom's internal politics became ethnically polarised, a phenomenon that has been referred to as the "national question" in Yugoslavia. Failures to establish the rule of law, to protect individual rights, to build tolerance and equality, and to guarantee the neutrality of the state in matters relating to religion, language and culture contributed to this illegitimacy and the resulting instability. In 1929, democracy was abandoned and a royal dictatorship was established by King Alexander, who attempted to break down the ethnic divisions in the country through a number of means, including creating administrative divisions () based on rivers rather than traditional regions. There was significant opposition to this move, with Serb and Slovene opposition parties and figures advocating the division of Yugoslavia into six ethnically-based administrative units. By 1933, discontent in the largely Croat-populated Sava Banovina had developed into full-blown civil disorder, which the regime countered with a series of assassinations, attempted assassinations and arrests of key Croatian opposition figures including the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party (, HSS) Vladko Maček. When Alexander was assassinated in Marseilles in 1934, his cousin Prince Paul headed a triumvirate regency whose other members were the senator Dr. Radenko Stanković and the governor of the Sava Banovina, Dr. Ivo Perović. The regency ruled on behalf of Alexander's 11-year-old son, Prince Peter, but the important member of the regency was Prince Paul. Although Prince Paul was more liberal than his cousin, the dictatorship continued uninterrupted. The dictatorship had allowed the country to follow a consistent foreign policy, but Yugoslavia needed peace at home in order to assure peace with its neighbours, all of whom had irredentist designs on its territory. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Yugoslav coup d'état」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|