In Thrace the Bulgarian occupation produced terrible savagery. In September 1941 the local Greek population staged a rising and committed atrocities against Bulgarians; the latter took fearsome revenge in an effort, some believe, to drive the Greeks out of the region. There was no such confrontation in Macedonia. Here the Bulgarians were initially warmly received as they were a welcome relief to the centralising and serbianising policies of the Yugoslav government; a Bulgarian archimandrite officiated at the 1941 Easter service in Skopje cathedral and Bulgarian nationalists everywhere rejoiced that ‘unified Bulgaria’ had been recreated. The Bulgarians set about building schools and in Skopje opened Macedonia’s first institute of higher learning, the King Boris University. The Bulgarian church did all it could to restore or introduce exarchist organisations, and all former exarchist priests were urged to forsake retirement and work in Macedonia or Thrace. Church leaders in Sofia hoped that now national unity had at last been achieved a patriarch might be elected for the Bulgarian church; all Bulgarian communities, acting through their church, would take part in the election of a patriarch who would remain as a symbol of national unity regardless of what political or territorial changes might come about. The king, however, feared an elected patriarch might be a potential rival and he and Filov therefore filibustered and the holy synod did not receive permission for the election of a patriarch, nor were bishops chosen for the sees of Macedonia and Thrace. This caused some frustration in the newly acquired lands which also felt resentment at the alleged insensitivity of Sofia-appointed administrators. By 1944 there was evidence of growing resentment at the over-centralisation practised by the Bulgarian authorities.
After the occupation of Thrace and Macedonia the dominant issue for Bulgaria’s leaders, and in particular for King Boris, was not the nature of Bulgarian rule in the new territories but the degree to which Bulgaria would retain its freedom of action. This applied both to foreign and domestic affairs.
In foreign affairs the critical question was what Germany would require of Bulgaria in the military sphere. Boris was anxious that the Bulgarian army should not be deployed outside the Balkans, and this feeling was immeasurably strengthened when the Germans launched their attack upon the Soviet Union in June 1941. Boris argued that his army was not modern enough for a Blitzkrieg, and the peasant conscripts would not fight well far from home, particularly if they were pitted against their beloved Russians. Much better, said Boris, to keep the men in the Balkans where they could help deter a Turkish invasion or a Soviet descent on the Black Sea coast. The Germans did not object and agreed to supply the modern equipment which the Bulgarians insisted was necessary even for these limited tasks.
The German failure to take Moscow at the end of 1941 and the beginnings of partisan activity in occupied Yugoslavia changed the picture. The Wehrmacht had to call upon troops from the Balkans to reinforce the eastern front and pressed the Bulgarians to help garrison parts of German-occupied Yugoslavia. To this Boris agreed and a new Bulgarian army corps of three divisions was formed and placed under German command. The new Bulgarian army guarded railways, mines, ammunition dumps, and other strategic installations, and was later to take part in operations against the growing partisan movement; Bulgarian troops had not been deployed outside the Balkans but they had been used outside areas under Bulgarian political control in support of a non-Bulgarian civil authority. It was a qualitative change in Bulgaria’s involvement in Germany’s war.
This was not the end of German pressure for Bulgaria to extend its duties. In May 1943 Hitler asked the Bulgarians to take over an area in north-eastern Serbia to release more German troops for duty on the eastern front. He also wanted the Bulgarians to take over most of Greek Macedonia. Boris declined to accept all of the latter on the grounds that for Bulgaria to take Salonika would be too much of a provocation to the Turks and the Italians, but he agreed to help garrison Serbia on the grounds that the German troops so released might prevent a Soviet landing in Bulgaria, an eventuality which would bring about what Boris and Filov feared most: full Bulgarian involvement in the German–Soviet war. As a result of the May meeting Bulgarian soldiers assumed guard duties along the Belgrade–Salonika railway and replaced the Germans in northern Serbia and along much of the Aegean coast of Thrace. In August Hitler asked for two more divisions for northern Serbia to which Boris agreed.
Map 7.2 Bulgaria and the second world war.
Boris had succeeded in avoiding any commitment in the east beyond voluntary contributions to the Winterhilfe fund and the provision of one Red Cross train. He had refused to allow the recruitment even of a volunteer legion for duty on the eastern front and when the Germans asked for permission to use fifteen Bulgarian pilots trained in Germany Boris agreed only on condition that they served in North Africa, and even this permission was soon revoked. Boris was no doubt sincere in arguing that his forces were not equipped, materially or emotionally, for service in the Russian war, but there was another reason for this policy. He feared a victorious general might return and, with German connivance, depose him. Right-wing groups which had the sympathy of German officials in Sofia had been very active in the spring of 1942, and in May Boris said he had heard from Berlin that Gestapo sources favoured a government led by General Lukov because the king was anti-German and the present administration was dominated by masons who were protecting the Jews. In September Boris refused General Lukov permission to travel to Berlin.
There was fear of the left as well as the right. The attack on the Soviet Union mobilised the communists in Bulgaria and exiled comrades were landed in an attempt to help them. The government clamped down hard, and in the next three years over eleven thousand people were detained as suspected communists, six thousand of them being sent to internment camps and the remainder to labour battalions. On 5 April 1942 communist conspiracies were unearthed in the 1st and 6th regiments of the Bulgarian army. Swift action was again taken against the conspirators and on 6 April it was decided to close the Soviet commercial mission in Varna.
There was, of course, no disagreement between the Bulgarians and the Germans on the need to contain any communist threat. Where German and Bulgarian views and jurisdiction did clash in domestic Bulgarian affairs was over the Jewish question. In October 1941 the German minister in Sofia, Beckerle, had begun pressing for more restrictions on the Bulgarian Jews. Further measures were introduced early in 1942 with a 20 per cent levy on Jewish property, the enforcement of the wearing of the yellow star, the compulsory sale of Jewish businesses with the proceeds being deposited in blocked accounts, and the disbandment of almost all Jewish organisations. Yet so unpopular were these measures amongst the general population that the press was forbidden to report on them immediately but had to let out the information gradually. After yet more pressure from Beckerle the sûbranie agreed in August 1942 to pass a bill depriving Jews in the occupied territories of their Bulgarian citizenship; it was a decision which was to cost most of those Jews their lives.
After the Wannsee conference and the decision to implement the final solution Nazi pressure intensified. A deputy of Eichmann’s arrived in Sofia as assistant police attaché in the German mission with the brief to implement the next stage of the final solution. True to the agreement of the previous summer the Bulgarians did not impede the deportation in March 1943 of the Jews in the occupied lands. In the following months there was much less cooperation over the Jews with Bulgarian citizenship living in Bulgaria proper, at least 6,000 of whom the Nazis had wished to deport in the first wave of transports. The question was taken up by Dimitûr Peshev, a deputy from Kiustendil where preparations were being made to concentrate the putative deportees. He drafted a petition to the king which was signed by over forty deputies from the government party; Boris then forbade the deportations. In May of the same year the persecutions were fiercely opposed by the Orthodox Church and once again no deportations took place. The protests were backed by organisations representing every section of Bulgarian life from authoritarian
, pro-fascist MPs to the trade unions and the illegal communist party. In the light of such strong and united feelings in the nation the king found no difficulty in standing firm against further pressure from the Nazis. The deportations never took place and Bulgaria’s fifty thousand Jews survived the war.
Plate 7.4 Jews detained in Bulgaria, 1943–4; they were incarcerated in labour camps in the provinces, but thanks to the intervention of the Bulgarian political establishment escaped deportation to the death camps.
The German minister in Sofia acknowledged in August 1943 that the Nazis would not persuade the Bulgarians to deport their Jews. At the end of that month the Jewish question faded into the background even for such a dedicated Nazi as Beckerle. On 15 August King Boris had returned exhausted and greatly depressed from a visit to Hitler. Sources close to the king indicate that there had been a terrible row when Hitler demanded a Bulgarian commitment to the eastern front, but no confirmation of this demand can be found in German documents. Whatever the cause of his dejection Boris hoped to dispel it by climbing Bulgaria’s highest peak, Musala. He returned in a worse state and declined rapidly. On 28 August he died aged forty-nine. Mystery has surrounded his death ever since but there is no firm proof that it was due to foul play.
Plate 7.5 King Boris’s funeral, Sofia, September 1943.
On the day before Boris’s death a perceptive senior official in the German ministry in Sofia had noted, ‘In the eyes of the Bulgarian people the king is less a monarch than a leader. He is a symbol of national unity and his disappearance could . . . lead both to an internal crisis and to external realignments.’
Boris’s successor, King Simeon II, was a minor and therefore a regency was formed, though without the constitutionally proper Grand National Assembly to confirm it. The dominant figure in it was Filov, the other members being Boris’s brother, Prince Kiril, and a soldier, General Mihov. Filov chose the pliant Dobri Bozhilov as prime minister.
In the summer of 1943 the war was at a critical juncture for Bulgaria as for other powers. In the west Italy was facing collapse and was soon to surrender, whilst in the east the relaxation of German pressure on the Caucasus gave Turkey greater freedom of manoeuvre and made it more likely that it would join the allies. Towards the end of the year the war was brought to Bulgaria itself in the form of allied bombers. There had been some light raids on Sofia and other towns earlier in the war but in November the capital experienced its first heavy bombardment; on 9 January 1944 there was an even larger raid and in March Sofia was subjected to a series of incendiary attacks, culminating in a huge onslaught on 30 March. The raids had been intended to produce social chaos and push Bulgaria towards changing sides. At least in the first objective they were successful; after the January raid many Sofiotes fled in terror and the government had to order civil servants back to their posts.
By this time Bulgaria’s urban population was facing privation similar in kind if not in intensity to that endured during the first world war, and for much the same reasons. Food shortages were causing inflation and a flourishing black market where in early 1944 goods were nine times their pre-war price. The shortages were caused by over-enthusiastic requisitioning, by German soldiers sending home more than they should have done, by peasants refusing to hand over to the official procurement agencies produce which they knew would command a much higher price on the black market, by widespread corruption, and by the general dislocation of the distribution system.
The growing plight of the cities together with a general war weariness encouraged the opposition forces. Of these there were two: the legal opposition, consisting of small groups of moderates and rightists from the old parties; and the Fatherland Front (FF). The FF had first been formed in 1941 but had made little progress because few parties were willing to cooperate with the communists who were demanding control of the organisation. In the summer of 1942 a second FF emerged, consisting of communists, zvenari, a social democrat faction, and the left agrarians under Nikola Petkov, son of the premier assassinated in 1907. The new FF broadcast regularly to Bulgaria from the Soviet-controlled Hristo Botev radio station. As relayed in these broadcasts the FF programme called for absolute neutrality on the part of Bulgaria, the withdrawal of Bulgarian troops from operations against the partisans in Yugoslavia, the removal of the army from royal control, a ban on the export of food to Germany, the guarantee of a decent standard of living for all Bulgarians, the full restoration of civil liberties, and a ban on all fascist organisations. In 1943 a new central committee was established which included Petkov, Kimon Georgiev, a communist and two social democrats. The loyal opposition, however, was still not ready to work with the FF. The democrats refused to work with the communists, and the non-petkovist agrarians could not cooperate with Georgiev and his associates who had been involved in the coup of 1923. Another weakness of the FF was that, despite its own propaganda, it had little in the way of military muscle, the partisan movement in Bulgaria not assuming any significance until well into the summer of 1944.
Within the political establishment the feeling that Germany had lost the war and that Bulgaria should therefore seek an accommodation with the western allies had been current since before Boris’s death; indeed, Boris himself had shared that view. After his death approaches were made to the Americans in October 1943 but their terms were too harsh: unconditional surrender, the evacuation of all occupied territory, and an allied occupation. The allied raids on Sofia strengthened the desire to escape from the war. In February and March 1944 further approaches were made to the western allies but their terms were unchanged. Filov and Bozhilov continued to believe that the nation would not tolerate the loss of Macedonia and Thrace and that, in any case, there was no possibility of unconditional surrender with German troops still in the country. Bulgaria, said Bozhilov, would join the allies when the allies joined Bulgaria by landing in the Balkans. That illusion was finally dispelled on 6 June 1944 when the allies landed not in the Balkans but in Normandy.
By then Bulgaria had come under increasing pressure from the Soviets. They had refused a Bulgarian request to intercede with the allies for a cessation of the air bombardment, and instead launched a diplomatic offensive in Sofia. Notes from Moscow arrived in the Bulgarian capital on 1 March, 17 April, 26 April and 18 May, insisting that Bulgarian territory cease being used by anti-Soviet forces. The Bulgarians were prepared to make some concessions over the construction of naval vessels in Varna and they also decided to turn down a German request that German troops be withdrawn westwards via the Bulgarian railway system. In April there were further concessions to the Soviets when Sofia accepted in principle their demands that Soviet consulates be opened in Burgas and Rusé. The consulates were the subject of the next Soviet note, that of 18 May, and this time Moscow threatened the breaking of diplomatic ties if the consulates were not opened, said Filov.
Soviet pressure, backed as it was by the rapid advance of the Red Army through Ukraine, raised the ultimate nightmare of the Bulgarian administration: involvement in the Russo-German war. What the Soviet pressure amounted to was that if Bulgaria did not break with Germany she would suffer Soviet occupation. But if she obeyed the Soviets and broke with Germany she would suffer German occupation; the experience of Hungary in March 1944 proved that beyond reasonable doubt.
Seeing these dangers Bozhilov resigned on 1 June 1944 to be replaced by Ivan Bagryanov, who had been educated in Germany and had served with the German army in the first world war, but who was generally regarded as pro-western. He was anxious to secure an armistice with Britain and the USA and to placate the Soviets before relations with them deteriorated any further. In the meantime a direct break with Germany could not be risked. Beckerle was informed on 18 June that Bulgaria would fulfil all its obligations under the tripartite pact but in order to avoid complications with the Russians the Germans should remove their troops from Varna. The Germans, suggested Sofia, could surely not wish another front to be opened in the Balkans by the Soviets, or by the Turks w
ho were now pouring armour into Turkish Thrace. This was an argument which struck home and on 13 July the Germans signified their willingness to remove their steamers and hydroplanes from Varna to make it easier for Bulgaria to pursue ‘a policy of peace, friendship and loyalty vis-à-vis the Soviet Union’.
As an indication of his goodwill to the allies, on 17 August Bagryanov declared strict neutrality, granted an amnesty to all political prisoners, repudiated the policies of his predecessors, and repealed all anti-Jewish legislation. It was too late. On 20 August the Red Army crossed into Romania and three days later King Michael locked Marshal Antonescu in a safe containing the royal stamp collection and changed sides. At a stroke the Russians were on the lower Danube and astride Bulgaria’s northern frontier.
The pressures from the Soviets were now overwhelming and the Bulgarian government had to bend to them. On 25 August Sofia demanded the evacuation of all German troops and the following day the Bulgarian armies were ordered to disarm German forces arriving from the Dobrudja; there was little resistance and by 7 September over 14,000 German personnel had been interned in Bulgaria. The Soviets were not to be placated. On 30 August the Kremlin announced that it would no longer respect Bulgarian neutrality. Bagryanov was defeated and resigned to make way for Konstantin Muraviev, an agrarian.
Muraviev knew that he had to make the final concession to Moscow. On 5 September, therefore, whilst German troops in Bulgaria were still being disarmed, the Bulgarian cabinet decided to break off diplomatic relations with Berlin, though the war minister successfully argued for a delay of seventy-two hours to enable him to bring Bulgarian forces back from the occupied areas. At around 15.00 hours on 7 September the last German vehicles crossed the border and three hours later Bulgaria declared war on Germany with effect from 18.00 hours on 8 September. But by then the Soviet Union had declared war on Bulgaria which for a few chaotic hours was therefore at war with all the major belligerents of the second world war except Japan.
A Concise History of Bulgaria Page 18