Alexander I of Yugoslavia

Biography

Alexander Karađorđević was born in Cetinje, Montenegro, in 1888, the second son of Peter Karađorđević, whose dynasty was then in exile from Serbia. He spent his childhood in Montenegro and Geneva and was educated at the Page Corps in Saint Petersburg. After the 1903 coup brought his father to the Serbian throne he returned to Serbia, and in 1909 he became heir when his elder brother George renounced the succession.

In the First Balkan War he commanded the Serbian First Army in victories at Kumanovo and Bitola, and in 1913 he led Serbian forces against Bulgaria at Bregalnica. In June 1914 his father handed him royal powers as regent. During the First World War he was nominal commander-in-chief, shared the army's winter retreat through Albania to Corfu in 1915, and had leading members of the Black Hand tried and executed in 1917. On 1 December 1918 he accepted the union of Serbia with the South Slav lands of Austria-Hungary, creating the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

He became king when his father died in August 1921. A long conflict between Serbian centralists and Croat federalists culminated in the shooting of Stjepan Radić in parliament in 1928, and on 6 January 1929 Alexander abolished the constitution, prorogued parliament and ruled as a dictator, renaming the country Yugoslavia. His 1931 constitution kept executive power with the crown and the state unitary.

Abroad he relied on France and the Little Entente and joined the Balkan Pact in 1934. On 9 October 1934, at the start of a state visit to France, he was shot dead in Marseille by Vlado Chernozemski of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, which worked with the Croatian Ustaše; the French foreign minister Louis Barthou also died. His eleven-year-old son succeeded him as Peter II.