Background
Alexander Karadordevic was born in Cetinje, Montenegro, December 16, 1888. His mother was Princess Zorka of Montenegro, his father Peter Karadjordjevic (q.v.), the exiled pretender to the Serbian throne.
Alexander Karadordevic was born in Cetinje, Montenegro, December 16, 1888. His mother was Princess Zorka of Montenegro, his father Peter Karadjordjevic (q.v.), the exiled pretender to the Serbian throne.
Alexander attended school in Geneva, and the young prince completed his education at the School for Pages in St. Petersburg.
In 1909 Alexander's elder brother renounced all rights to the throne, making Alexander, at the age of twenty-one, the crown prince. He served his father as a diplomatic emissary in negotiations leading to the Balkan Wars, 1912 - 1913, and he held nominal military commands during the fighting. Serbian political life in the years before World War I was colored by the influence of irredentist groups striving for the liberation of Serbs under Habsburg rule. Albertini and Remak indicate Alexander had a brief association with the Black Hand, one of the most powerful irredentist factions. But it was the clash between military leaders from the era of the 1903 coup and Prince Peter that shaped Alexander's future.
In June 1914, the quarrel over who would control the newly conquered territory in Macedonia led to bitter confrontation between civil and military leaders. In the ensuing constitutional crisis, Peter stepped down. Barely two months before the start of World War I, Alexander took over as prince regent.
During the July crisis, Alexander made a personal appeal for aid to Tsar Nicholas II, but it was Premier Nikola Pasic who dominated Serbian foreign policy at this critical moment. Once Serbia was at war, Alexander stood as nominal commander in chief, with the actual responsibility of directing national defense in the capable hands of Field Marshal Radomir Putnik. Not yet a shaker and mover in his own right, Alexander served as a spokesman for important ideas. His proclamation of August 4 to the army referred pointedly to Serbia's fellow South Slavs within Austria-Hungary as "our brethren." Such remarks indicated some Serbians' hopes that the war might open the way to South Slav political unification.
Alexander's stature grew during the military disasters of 1915. Suffering from appendicitis, he participated in the grim retreat through Albania to the Adriatic. Even in these dark days, he insisted the army would recover and fight again. His important role in holding the battered army together has been described as "like a campfire to a wanderer in a forest at night." As Serbian troops recovered on Corfu and prepared to embark for Salonika, Alexander and Pasic toured the Allied capitals of western Europe. They assured the Entente leaders of early 1916 that Serbia would fight on. In contrast to Pasic's caution, Alexander spoke out explicitly in favor of South Slav unity. In April 1916, for example, he met in Paris with Ante Trumbic, the leading exile spokesman for South Slavs under Habsburg rule.
Alexander's serious political debut took place in the spring of 1917. In an event still cloaked in mystery, Colonel Dimitrijevic-Apis and other military men linked to the Sarajevo assassinations were arrested, tried, and executed. Some historians consider Alexander the moving force behind the purge. Possibly he was clearing the way for a compromise peace with Vienna. Perhaps the recent Russian Revolution stirred him to strike immediately at potential subversives in the army. Whatever the exact cause, the result was to end the army's political restraints on the crown and on civilian leaders. Another boost for Alexander came at once: the Corfu conference of July 1917 between Pasic and South Slav exile leaders drew the outline for a united South Slav state under the Karadjordjevic dynasty.
Only Pasic now stood between Alexander and a dominant role in Serbian politics. The prince regent, citing the limits of the constitution, held back from a direct attack. In mid-1918, British supporters of South Slav unity found Alexander deaf to their pleas to compel Pasic to cooperate with Trumbic's Yugoslav Committee, the voice of exiles from the South Slav provinces of Austria-Hungary. The fall of 1918, however, brought Alexander his moment. Serbian columns under Field Marshal Misic raced northward from Salonika to liberate their homeland; they then penetrated the rebelling southern provinces of the Dual Monarchy. When representatives of Serbia, Montenegro, and the former Habsburg provinces of Croatia and Slovenia met in late November in Belgrade, Alexander dominated the proceedings. The kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (subsequently renamed Yugoslavia) came into existence on December 1 with Alexander as regent. Pasic, denied the post of premier in the new state, was packed off to Paris to lead the peace delegation. On Peter's death in August 1921, Alexander became king.
The young monarch presided over an increasingly turbulent domestic scene. Throughout the 1920s other ethnic groups bridled at their heavy-handed domination by the Serbs, who controlled the central administration. In January 1929, Alexander ended parliamentary government to take on the trappings of a crowned dictator. He subsequently restored constitutional forms, but Yugoslavia remained a cauldron of ethnic and political discontent, claiming Alexander as its most prominent victim. The king was assassinated on October 9, 1934, during a state visit to France - the target of a successful plot by Croatian and Macedonian revolutionaries.