Killing Yugoslavia's King

0:00If you're building AI agents, you should check out Strand's agents. It's an open source SDK for Python and TypeScript. The idea is simple. Give a model some tools that will decide what to call and when and loop until it's done. No chain configs, no graph orchestration and works with any model provider. It's also open source and built and tested for production agents. Get started at strandsagents.com Stonefire non is made with real buttermilk and ghee. It's the perfect flatbread for any occasion. I put out Stonefire non with dips at every dinner party. I make non grilled cheese when my daughter is friends over. I use Stonefire non to reward the humans who do my bidding. Right. It's perfect for camping trips. Dance for it feeble mortal. Sorry, is he talking to me or? Dance. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. From our tradition to yours, Stonefire. Together be not. It's October 9, 1934 and another remarkable event is about to be uncovered by...

1:06...Ariam, Rebecca and Ali. The Retro Specters King Alexander Yugoslavia had a policy of making no public appearances on Tuesdays, which he considered unlucky because three family members had been assassinated on Tuesdays. But when he arrived in Marseille for a state visit to France today in history in 1934, on a Tuesday, he had no choice but to proceed through the city in a welcome motorcade. All seemed to be going well at first. A man even leapt onto the running board of the car with a bouquet of flowers crying. Vive la Wa, unfortunately that bouquet of flowers concealed a Mauser pistol. Yes, a semi-automatic pistol concealed in a bouquet of flowers, but he was saying long live the king. So that is presumably why he wasn't perceived as a threat. To the king, despite the armed guards all around, because people did know that there was a risk that Alexander might be assassinated. So Yugoslavia at this point is a country that has been cobbled together at the end of World War I from the old Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire.

2:08And in it there are Slovenian Serbs, Croats, Slavs, Montenegro, Macedonians, Catholics, Muslims, Jews. It's a mess, and a lot of these countries want their independence and have been forced together through the Treaty of Versailles. And the king is Serbian, and the capital is Belgrade in Serbia, which has gone down very badly with all of those other groups, particularly the Croats. So he's on this diplomatic visit to France, but it was clear there was a risk. But the assassin, Vlato Chernazemski, is immediately struck down by a mounted policeman sword and the furious crowd then savagely just stomps and beat him to death in this vengeful frenzy. And as both what's really remarkable about this whole event is that it was captured on camera. It's the first ever assassination in modern times that was captured in this way. It was filmed by a newsreel cameraman who was standing just a few feet away, which means that you have this really close up view that you can still see today if you go to YouTube of the king dying and this crazed aftermath.

3:15The sort of the moment of death and the sort of few seconds afterwards do seem to be a little bit skipped. I don't know exactly what happened, but I could imagine that there was a certain amount of chaos around the cameraman at the time. I don't know. I mean, to miss the moment of impact, that really is 101 when you're filming an assassin. Right, exactly. But what is incredible is that the camera stays close to the dying king and you get this really sort of almost a kind of grim precursor to the president, John F. Kennedy assassination. You have this really sort of similar visceral experience as a viewer of going through the exact same situation. Yeah, Cherny Zemsky, he was set up on by a mob, but also that's fairly understandable because as he tried to sort of fire his way out of the situation, he killed two more civilians. The weird thing is that he is still considered a national hero in Bulgaria. Streets are named after him there. The rest of Europe, however, was horrified partly because of those shocking newsreels and the close-ups of the mortally-wounded Alexander.

4:15Cherny Zemsky was an assassin for the International Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, which was a nationalist group that advocated for an independent Macedonia led by its ethnic Bulgarian majority. And he'd actually already carried out two hits on former members who tried to leave the organization. But he'd been hired by a Kroak group called the Utasher, like an extreme nationalist group. And you can see, you know, they all hate Alexander so much, they're sort of buying hitmen from other ethnic groups within the region. They hired him to train their own assassins to kill Alexander. He brought through them to France, but ultimately, and what I can imagine was a comedy montage of them like missing shots at bottles on a wall, decided that he was going to do it himself. Yeah, and this was being done with permission and the tacit approval of nations, Italy and Hungary, specifically. I mean, you could call this state-sponsored terrorism, which would be applying a modern term to what happened in 1934. But basically, Italy and Hungary are secretly funding, arming, aiding, and abetting these radicals, and assisting them and training them because of their own ambitions in the Balkans.

5:18They want to redraw the map after the Treaty of Versailles too. They want more power. And France is kind of aware of these things when it invites King Alexander over on this diplomatic mission. And it's delicate, because although they're aware of Mussolini's ambitions, they're also keen to keep Belgrade as an ally with Italy, because they're more concerned about Hitler. And that's the case with Britain as well. Everyone in Europe is aware that Hitler's a bad guy. And there's still this feeling of like, well, maybe we can get Mussolini on the side. Extraordinary. Maybe this is a fascist we can work with. And so, when the King then gets shot, even though it becomes evident pretty quickly that Italy was involved behind the scenes, France doesn't want to publicly admit that. Yeah, and meanwhile, Alexander's body was transported back to Yugoslavia on the destroyer that he came on the Dubrovnik. And after lying in state in Belgrade, his remains were then conveyed to the St. George's Church in Oplonacci for a burial.

6:19And among those paying their respects were Marshall Philippe Pateur from France and Luftwaffe General Herman Göring. You may have heard of him from the Third Reich. And Hitler also sent a large wreath, which I thought was very nice of him. You know, again, much maligned that Hitler guy, but it turns out he's commonly found doing really lovely things. And I think one thing that's like really sad about all of this is that Alexander started out as being quite popular in Serbia. He was one of the top commanders in the First Balkan War of 1912 to 1913, where the Balkan League swept the Ottomans almost completely out of Europe. He became Regent Fritz father in 1914. And then again, he was leading Serbia during World War I. It was really brutal, because Serbia did not have the resources for mass conscription. So, they're recruits in World War I, often just wore their own clothes and brought their own weapons from home. So it was a real sort of rag tag army. And he was seen as being a bit of a hero. He helped lead this massive retreat through the mountains when Austria invaded Belgrade.

7:19Loads of soldiers and refugees died of exposure or disease. Eventually, the surviving Serbians were evacuated to Kofu by the Allies, and there they started to regroup. And this was where everything started to go a bit wrong. The leaders of the Serbs, Kroats and Slovenes signed an agreement to form a new nation, after the war, which would unite those groups as Yugoslavia. And Alexander was actually pretty lukewarm in this idea, but he saw that was the way the wind was blowing. And ultimately, he emerged from the victors negotiations in 1918. As Prince Regent of the new Yugoslavia, and then became king when his father died in 1921. And so there was this real idea that this was going to be great for the Balkan region to bring those nations and ethnicities together and make them stronger. But Alexander, who was their king, he himself was skeptical, but this would work. And it turns out he was right to be skeptical. Well, and also you say that he was popular, but over the time that he was in charge. But I put you in a sashtrain. Yes, by multiple contenders. But even prior to that, he had started to tighten his grip. He had assumed in 1931 unrestricted executive powers under a new constitution that he pushed through.

8:30And elections, which prior to this had had universal suffrage admittedly male only, now had the secret ballot completely abolished. And all public employees were required to vote for the king's party. And on top of this, the king appointed members of the parliament's upper house, giving him basically de facto control over all legislation. So I think that kind of undermined this king of the people perception that may have come with the early days of his rule. Meantime what we're left with as you alluded to earlier is this news real footage. I mean, it's sort of the reason that anyone remembers certainly in Britain and America that anyone remembers who King Alexander was at all is because this was sensational news footage that the world was very excited to see. And it's interesting you can see both versions on YouTube, the British pathway version and the 20th century Fox version. I'm pleased to say the British version is not grubby. It's well narrated and it fesses up to the fact that they don't have the shot where he gets shots. But the American version added the sound of gunshots to the news real in the stound in case of a news.

9:40So American viewers millions of them in cinemas across the country heard bang bang bang and then literally the commentator goes, oh, he's been shot like they didn't happen. And then he's just willing hands in the strings. And it's no motion shots King Alexander clutching a stomach. So especially commissioned all-constrated music for the occasion, but were surprised by the event. Anyway, it emerged later that obviously those sounds were added later because the crucial moment wasn't filmed. And in fact, he was shot 10 times. I mean, if they'd actually had the footage, it would have been even more sensational and dramatic. But Americans thought he'd been shot three times and that was sensational enough. It had to wait for the direct cut to see all of those. And so another week of retrospecting ends. But next week begins a day early at club retrospectors. Join us now to get an exclusive episode every Sunday. patreon.com slash retrospectors. If you're building AI agents, you should check out Strand's agents. It's an open source SDK for Python and TypeScript. The idea is simple. Give a model some tools that decide what to call and when and loop until it's done.

10:54No chain configs, no graph orchestration and works with any model provider. It's also open source and built and tested for production agents. Get started at strands agents.com. Stonefire non is made with real buttermilk and ghee. It's the perfect flatbread for any occasion. I put out Stonefire non with dips at every dinner party. I make non grilled cheese when my daughter is friends over. I use Stonefire non to reward the humans who do my bidding. Right. It's perfect for camping trips. Dance for it feeble mortal. Sorry, is he talking to me? Dance. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. From our tradition to yours, Stonefire. Together, be not.