Home > Boris III of Bulgaria
Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria ( January 30, 1894 - August 28, 1943), son of Ferdinand I, came to the throne in 1918 upon the abdication of his father, following Bulgaria's defeat in World War I. This was the country's second major defeat in only five years, after the disastrous Second Balkan War (1913). Under the Treaty of Neuilly, Bulgaria was forced to cede land to its neighbors and pay crippling reparations, thereby threatening political and economic stability. Two movements, the Agrarian Union and the Communist Party, were calling for the overthrow of the monarchy and change of government. It was in these circumstances that Boris succeeded to the throne.
One year after Boris's accession, Aleksandar Stamboliyski of the Agrarian Union was elected prime minister. Though popular with the large peasant class, he earned the animosity of the middle class and military, which toppled his government in 1923. In 1925, Greece declared war. Despite the intervention of the League of Nations, the turmoil continued until 1934, when Boris helped the military establish a dictatorship. The following year, he assumed control of the country, ruling as an absolute monarch.
In the early days of World War II, popular sentiment swayed toward GermanyThe Federal Republic of Germany ( German: Bundesrepublik Deutschland is one of the world's leading industrialized countries, located in the middle of the European Union. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark and the Baltic Sea, to the east, which had forced Romania to cede southern DobrujaDobruja or sometimes Dobrudja Dobrogea in Romanian, Dobrudzha in Bulgarian) is the territory between the lower Danube river and the Black Sea, which includes the Danube Delta and the Romanian sea-shore. Northern Dobruja ( Dobrogea) belongs to Romania, Sou back to Bulgaria. In 1941, Boris reluctantly allied himself with the AxisAxis has several uses: In mathematics, an axis is a straight line around which a geometric figure can be rotated. An axis of symmetry is a line with respect to which a body can be symmetrical. The term is also applied for the axis of a graph; the horizont powers and joined Germany's war against GreeceGreece formally called the Hellenic Republic (in Greek: ) Hellenike Demokratia , is a country in the southeast of Europe on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula. It is bounded on land by Bulgaria, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Albania and the Yugoslavia in an attempt to regain territories lost under the Treaty of Neuilly. However, in spite of siding with Nazi Germany, Boris consistently refused cooperation on two major issues. In early 1943, Nazi officials requested that Bulgaria's Jews be sent to Poland as part of Hitler's " final solutionThe final solution ( German Endlosung is the name of the German Nazis' plan to address the " Jewish problem" through systematic relocation and later extermination through genocide. The term was coined by Adolf Eichmann, a top Nazi official who supervised." The request caused public outcry, led by prominent figures such as Parliament Chairman Dimitar Peshev and Archbishop Stefan of Sofia . Boris then intervened and prevented the deportation of Bulgaria's 50,000 Jews to Auschwitz. Even more threatening to Hitler, however, was the tsar's refusal to declare war on the Soviet UnionThe Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR ( Russian: ; tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik (SSSR) also called the Soviet Union ( ; tr. Sovetsky Soyuz , was a state in much of the northern region of Eurasia that existed from 1922 until 1, particularly as the war was turning against Germany.
In August 1943, Hitler summoned Boris to a stormy meeting in Berlin. While Boris agreed to declare war on the distant United Kingdom and United States, he again refused to get Bulgaria involved in the war against the USSR. Shortly after returning to Sofia, Boris died of apparent heart failure, though many believe he was poisoned by Hitler in an attempt to put a more obedient government in place. Boris was succeeded by his six-year-old son Simeon II.
