During the Second World War

DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR _______________StK______________ SK MARSHALL LEE MILLER Stanford University Press STANFORD, CALIFORNIA I 975 Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 1975 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University Printed in the United States of America is b n 0-8047-0870-3 LC 74-82778 To my grandparents Lee and Edith Rankin and Evelyn Miller Preface SOS h e p o l it ic a l history of modern Bulgaria has been greatly ne T glected by Western scholars, and the important period of the Second World War has hardly been studied at all. The main reason for this has no doubt been the difficulty of obtaining documentary material on the wartime period. Although the Communist regime of Bulgaria has published a large number of books and monographs dealing with the country’s role in the war, these works have been concerned mostly with magnifying the importance of the Bulgarian Communist Party (BKP) and the partisan struggle. Despite this bias, useful information can be found in these works when other sources are available to provide perspective and verification. Within recent years, German, American, British, and other diplo matic and intelligence reports from the wartime years have become available, and the easing of travel restrictions in Bulgaria has facili tated research there. As recently as 1958, when the doctoral thesis of Marin V. Pundeff was presented (“Bulgaria’s Place in Axis Policy, 1936-1944”), there was very little material on the period after June 1941. It is now possible to fill in many of the important gaps in our knowledge of Bulgaria during the entire war. The Bibliography lists the books and other published materials on which I have based this work, but I have also relied on confidential personal interviews in Bulgaria and elsewhere, and on archival mate rials located on three continents. The most helpful institutions include viii Preface the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the National Library, the Sofia Synagogue Archives, the Institute for Balkanistics, the Museum of the Revolutionary Movement, and the Central State Historical A r chives, all in Sofia; the German Federal Archives in Koblenz; the Military Research Office in Freiburg; the Institute for Contemporary History, the South-East Institute, the East Europe Institute, and the Faculty of Economics and the Eastern Europe Seminar of the Uni versity of Munich, all in Munich; the American Memorial Library in Berlin; the British Museum, the Imperial War Museum, the Public Record Office, and the Wiener Institute, all in London; St. Antony’s College, Oxford University; Yad Washem and the Hebrew Univer sity of Jerusalem; the U.S. Department of State Archives in the N a tional Archives, the Library of Congress, and the Department of Defense Library, in Washington, D.C.; and Yale University Library, New Haven, Connecticut. Part One, which covers the period from the outbreak of war in 1939 to May 1941, deals mostly with the diplomatic moves that brought Bulgaria onto the Axis side and relies on published and unpublished British, American, German, and Italian documents. Parts Two and Three, which are concerned with the interaction between foreign policy and domestic political struggles, make use of previously unavailable Bulgarian and German documents: Part Two, covering the period from June 1941 through the death of Tsar Boris in August 1943, deals with the efforts of the Tsar to maintain at least a partially independent policy despite pressure from Germany and from internal pro-Nazi factions; Part Three, from September 1943 to the Communist coup of September 9, 1944, examines the political crisis that arose after the Tsar’s death, the effects of the Allied air raids, and the failure of Bulgaria’s attempts to negotiate a withdrawal from the war. This is primarily a political and diplomatic study. Because Bul garia’s participation in the war prior to the Communist takeover was limited mainly to occupation duty in Greece and Yugoslavia, mili tary affairs do not figure prominently in this work. Some considera- Preface ix tion, however, is given to the German Balkan campaign of 1941, the Allied bombings, the partisans, and the Soviet advance into the Bal kans in the fall of 1944. The space devoted to the Bulgarian partisan campaign and the activities of the Communist Party—though insuffi cient to satisfy my Bulgarian colleagues—is somewhat greater than is warranted by their actual significance, but the subsequent impor tance of the Communists in Bulgaria justifies this slight expansion. Economic affairs are also not discussed in any great detail. Bul garian official historians have generally contended that there was a drastic economic decline during the war and that this led to wide spread dissatisfaction with the regime. To determine whether there was enough validity in this theory to warrant a fuller discussion, I sifted through Bulgarian and German statistics on the marketing of various products, cost-of-living indexes, fluctuations in the average weight of marketed livestock, and even medical records (to compute the average weight loss of Bulgarian schoolgirls during the war—14 lbs.). The results indicated—not surprisingly—that Bulgaria experi enced economic difficulties due to the war, particularly after the Allied bombings in late 1943 and early 1944, but that the country was far better off than its neighbors. Because the Bulgarians were well aware of this fact, inflation and wartime shortages were not major political issues. In transliterating foreign languages, I have followed pronunciation as much as possible but have avoided encumbering the text with dia critical marks. Thus certain Bulgarian names are given in a some what simplified form: for example, Alexander, Peter, Dimiter, Stam- bolisky, and Kioseivanov. Place names generally follow the usage of the Columbia Lippincott Gazetteer of the World, but I have called the capital of Macedonia by its Bulgarian name, Skopie, rather than by the Macedonian Skopje or the Serbian Skoplje. For convenience, the word “Allies,” unless qualified, refers only to the Western Allies, not to the Soviet Union. I particularly would like to thank for their assistance Harry W il letts, Nissan Oren, William Deakin, Fred Chary, Clifford Siskin, X Preface George Cummins, Ann Abley, Basil Condos, June Roth, Catherine Schirmer, Peggy Diapoulis, William Maier, Landon Miller, Charles Moser, the late Georgi M. Dimitrov, J. G. Bell and Peter J. Kahn of Stanford University Press, those persons in Bulgaria who preferred anonymity, and my wife, Marlene. M.L.M. Contents S5SS Historical Introduction i PART ONE: SEPTEMBER 1939-M AY I94I 1. The Outbreak of the W ar 13 2. TheDobruja Crisis 24 3. Competition for the Balkans 32 4. Bulgaria Joins the Axis 45 5. Operation Marita 52 PART t w o : JUNE 1941-AUGUST I943 6. From Barbarossa to Pearl Harbor 59 7. Parries and Parleys 71 8. No Friends, Just Foes 81 9. The Jewish Question 93 10. The Allied Threat 107 11. The Bulgarian Occupation of Macedonia 122 12. The Death of Tsar Boris 135 Contents PART t h r e e : SEPTEMBER 1943-SEPTEMBER I.944 13. The Regency and Bozhilov 151 14. Bombs and Peace Feelers 165 15. The Bagryanov Government z74 16. The Partisans z95 17. The Last Phase 204 Epilogue 2I7 Notes 223 Bibliography 256 Index 279 BULGARIA DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR Historical Introduction And those that have been able to imitate the fox have succeeded best. But it is necessary to be able to disguise this character well, and to be a great feigner and dissembler. — machiavelli, The Prince, chapter xviii s a r b o r is of Bulgaria frequently complained, “My army is pro- T German, my wife is Italian, my people are pro-Russian. I’m the only pro-Bulgarian in this country.”1 As a Bulgarian, Boris’s wartime goals included both the satisfaction of his country’s irredentist aspira tions against its Balkan neighbors and noninvolvement in the fighting. Achieving these apparently irreconcilable aims necessitated a cunning aptly described by Hitler: “ Boris is by temperament a fox rather than a wolf, and would expose himself to great danger only with the ut most reluctance.”2 Boris’s dealings with the Germans seemed to confirm Hitler’s assess ment. While resisting Nazi demands to sever diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, to deport Bulgarian Jews to Germany, and to join the war on the Eastern Front, he managed to gain their support for the Bulgarian occupations of the Southern Dobruja, Macedonia, and Aegean Thrace. Even as Boris was persuading the Germans that Bulgaria was their staunchest friend, he succeeded in convincing many British and Americans that his country’s real sympathies lay with the Allies. In the early part of the war, therefore, Bulgaria was a small state pursuing its self-interest with a high degree of diplomatic skill and a fair amount of success. And yet, as the war neared its end, Bulgaria achieved the dubious distinction of being simultaneously at war with Great Britain, Germany, Russia, and the United States. 2 Historical Introduction The Bitter Heritage The seeds of Bulgaria’s involvement in the Second World War were sown over sixty years earlier, in 1878, when Russian troops under Alexander II helped liberate Bulgaria from five centuries of Turkish subjugation. By the Treaty of San Stefano in March 1878, Bulgaria was granted its independence and more territory than it was ever again to have. This victory was short-lived, however. Great Britain and Austria-Hungary were alarmed by the creation of a large, pro- Russian Slavic state within striking distance of the Turkish Straits; and on the invitation of German Chancellor Bismarck, a second peace conference was convened that summer in Berlin, which resulted in a drastic reduction of Bulgarian territory.

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