Bulgaria during World War II: Difference between revisions
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[[File:May_1945_Hungary-Bulgarians.jpg|thumb|200px|left|A German-made [[Panzer IV]] tank of the Bulgarian Army in Hungary in March 1945. The Soviet style star markings are meant to prevent confusion with an actual German Panzer IV.]] |
[[File:May_1945_Hungary-Bulgarians.jpg|thumb|200px|left|A German-made [[Panzer IV]] tank of the Bulgarian Army in Hungary in March 1945. The Soviet style star markings are meant to prevent confusion with an actual German Panzer IV.]] |
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[[File:1BA_1945.jpg|thumb|200px|right|People of Sofia welcoming the [[First Army (Bulgaria)|First Bulgarian Army]] on the 17th of June in 1945 after its return from Austria at the end of hostilities in Europe.]] |
[[File:1BA_1945.jpg|thumb|200px|right|People of Sofia welcoming the [[First Army (Bulgaria)|First Bulgarian Army]] on the 17th of June in 1945 after its return from Austria at the end of hostilities in Europe.]] |
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The '''military history of Bulgaria during World War II''' encompasses an initial period of [[Neutral country|neutrality]] until 1 March 1941, a period of alliance with the [[Axis Powers]] until 9 September 1944 (on 8 September, the [[Red Army]] entered Bulgaria) and a period of alignment with the [[Allies of World War II|Allies]] in the final year of the war. [[Bulgaria]] functioned as an [[Authoritarianism|authoritarian state]] during most of [[World War II]]. [[Tsar]] [[Boris III]] (reigned 1918–1943) ruled with a [[Prime Minister of Bulgaria|prime minister]] and a [[Parliament of Bulgaria|parliament]]. As an ally of Nazi Germany, Bulgaria participated in the [[Holocaust]], causing the deaths of 12,000 Jews, and though most Jews that were granted Bulgarian citizenship survived the war |
The '''military history of Bulgaria during World War II''' encompasses an initial period of [[Neutral country|neutrality]] until 1 March 1941, a period of alliance with the [[Axis Powers]] until 9 September 1944 (on 8 September, the [[Red Army]] entered Bulgaria) and a period of alignment with the [[Allies of World War II|Allies]] in the final year of the war. [[Bulgaria]] functioned as an [[Authoritarianism|authoritarian state]] during most of [[World War II]]. [[Tsar]] [[Boris III]] (reigned 1918–1943) ruled with a [[Prime Minister of Bulgaria|prime minister]] and a [[Parliament of Bulgaria|parliament]]. As an ally of Nazi Germany, Bulgaria participated in the [[Holocaust]], causing the deaths of 12,000 Jews, and though most Jews that were granted Bulgarian citizenship - some 50,000 - [[Rescue of the Bulgarian Jews|survived]] the war Bulgarian Jews were subjected to forcible internal deportation, dispossession, and discrimination.<ref name=":1" /> |
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==Initial neutrality (1939–1941)== |
==Initial neutrality (1939–1941)== |
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Revision as of 18:58, 6 March 2020
The military history of Bulgaria during World War II encompasses an initial period of neutrality until 1 March 1941, a period of alliance with the Axis Powers until 9 September 1944 (on 8 September, the Red Army entered Bulgaria) and a period of alignment with the Allies in the final year of the war. Bulgaria functioned as an authoritarian state during most of World War II. Tsar Boris III (reigned 1918–1943) ruled with a prime minister and a parliament. As an ally of Nazi Germany, Bulgaria participated in the Holocaust, causing the deaths of 12,000 Jews, and though most Jews that were granted Bulgarian citizenship - some 50,000 - survived the war Bulgarian Jews were subjected to forcible internal deportation, dispossession, and discrimination.[1]
Initial neutrality (1939–1941)
The government of the Kingdom of Bulgaria under Prime Minister Georgi Kyoseivanov declared a position of neutrality upon the outbreak of World War II. Bulgaria was determined to observe it until the end of the war; but it hoped for bloodless territorial gains in order to recover the territories lost in the Second Balkan War and World War I, as well as gain other lands with a significant Bulgarian population in the neighboring countries. However, it was clear that the central geopolitical position of Bulgaria in the Balkans would inevitably lead to strong external pressure by both World War II factions. Turkey had a non-aggression pact with Bulgaria. On 7 September 1940, Bulgaria succeeded in negotiating the recovery of Southern Dobruja in the Axis-sponsored Treaty of Craiova (see Second Vienna Award). Southern Dobruja had been part of Romania since 1913, except for a short period between 1916 and 1918 when it was re-acquired by Bulgaria (see Treaty of Bucharest (1918)). This recovery of territory reinforced Bulgarian hopes for resolving other territorial problems without direct involvement in the War.
Axis Powers (1941–1944)
After the failure of the Italian invasion of Greece, Nazi Germany demanded that Bulgaria join the Tripartite Pact and permit German forces to pass through Bulgaria to attack Greece in order to help Italy. While the Bulgarian government was reluctant to get involved in the war, the threat of a German invasion, as well as the promise of Greek territories, led Bulgaria to sign the Tripartite Pact on 1 March 1941 and join the Axis bloc. With the Soviet Union in a non-aggression pact with Germany, there was little popular opposition to the decision.
On 6 April 1941, despite having officially joined the Axis Powers, the Bulgarian military did not officially participate in the invasion of Yugoslavia and the invasion of Greece, but were ready to occupy their pre-arranged territorial gains immediately after the capitulation of each country.[2][3] The Yugoslav government surrendered on 17 April; on 19 April, the Bulgarian Land Forces entered Yugoslavia. The Greek government surrendered on 30 April; the Bulgarian occupation began the same day. Bulgaria occupied most of Yugoslav Macedonia, Pomoravlje, Eastern Macedonia and Western Thrace, which had already been captured by the German forces.[citation needed] The Bulgarians occupied territory between the Struma River and a line of demarcation running through Alexandroupoli and Svilengrad west of Maritsa. Included in the area occupied were the cities of Alexandroupoli (Дедеагач, Dedeagach), Komotini (Гюмюрджина, Gyumyurdzhina), Serres (Сяр, Syar), Xanthi (Ксанти), Drama (Драма) and Kavala (Кавала) and the islands of Thasos and Samothrace, as well as almost all of what is today the Republic of North Macedonia and much of South-Eastern Serbia. In the Greek territories, the Bulgarian government pursued a policy of Bulgarisation, leading to an exodus of the Greek population, especially after the brutal suppression of the Drama Uprising in September 1941.
Bulgaria did not join the German invasion of the Soviet Union that began on 22 June 1941 nor did it declare war on the Soviet Union. Bulgarian propaganda refrained from criticism of Stalin.[4] However, despite the lack of official declarations of war by both sides, the Bulgarian Navy was involved in a number of skirmishes with the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, which attacked Bulgarian shipping. Besides this, Bulgarian armed forces garrisoned in the Balkans battled various anti-German resistance groups and partisan movements.
The Bulgarian government, pressured by Germany, declared a token war on the United Kingdom and the United States on 13 December 1941, an act which resulted in the bombing of Sofia and other Bulgarian cities by Allied aircraft. The Bulgarian military was able to destroy some Allied aircraft passing through Bulgarian airspace to attack Romania's oilfields.[4] The German invasion of the Soviet Union caused a significant wave of protests, which led to the activation of a mass guerrilla movement headed by the underground Bulgarian Communist Party. A resistance movement called Fatherland Front was set up in August 1942 by the Communist Party, the Zveno movement and a number of other parties to oppose the then pro-Nazi government, after a number of Allied victories indicated that the Axis might lose the War. Partisan detachments were particularly active in the mountain areas of western and southern Bulgaria.
In August 1943, after a visit to Germany, Bulgarian Tsar Boris III died suddenly, believed to have been poisoned. According to the diary of the German attache in Sofia at the time, Colonel von Schoenebeck, the two German doctors who attended the tsar – Sajitz and Hans Eppinger – both believed that the tsar had died from the same poison that Dr. Eppinger had allegedly found two years earlier in the postmortem examination of the Greek prime minister Ioannis Metaxas.[5] His six-year-old son Simeon II succeeded him to the throne; a council of regents was set up because of Simeon's age. The new Prime Minister, Dobri Bozhilov, was in most respects a German puppet.
Bulgaria had maintained diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union while being a member of the Axis Powers. In the summer of 1944, after crushing the Nazi defences around Iași and Chișinău, the Soviet Army was approaching the Balkans and Bulgaria. On 23 August 1944, Romania left the Axis Powers and declared war on Germany, and allowed Soviet forces to cross its territory to reach Bulgaria. On 26 August, the Bulgarian government announced that it was neutral in the German-Soviet war and ordered German troops to leave the country. On the same date the Fatherland Front made the decision to incite an armed rebellion against the government. On 2 September Bozhilov's government fell and was replaced by a government led by Konstantin Muraviev made up of the opposition parties which were not members of the Fatherland Front. Support for the government was withheld by the Fatherland Front, accusing it of being composed of pro-Nazi circles attempting to hold on to power. On 5 September, the Soviet Union declared war on Bulgaria and three days later the Soviets crossed the border and occupied the north-eastern part of Bulgaria along with the key port cities of Varna and Burgas by the next day. The Bulgarian Army did not offer resistance by an order of the government.[6][7][8]
Holocaust
During Bulgaria's alliance with Nazi Germany, the Bulgarian government introduced Nazi-style measures and legislation targeting Jews and other minorities; in September 1939 all Jews regarded as foreign nationals - some 4,000 - were expelled. Interior Minister Petar Gabrovski, and Alexander Belev, having studied the Nuremberg Laws, introduced in 1940 the Law for Protection of the Nation, in force from January 1941.[4] By this means, Jews under Bulgaria's control were excluded from most professions, universities, and trades unions, from all government service, and from certain public areas. Moreover, Jews were required to carry special identity cards, were forbidden to bear "non-Jewish" names or marry Bulgarians, and were forced to wear a yellow star of David.[1] In February 1943 SS-Hauptsturmführer Theodor Dannecker and Belev - appointed by Gabrovski in 1942 to head the new "Office of the Commissar of Jewish Affairs" within the interior ministry - signed the Dannecker-Belev Agreement, in which Bulgaria agreed to supply Germany with 20,000 Jewish captives.[9] Bulgaria is the only nation to have signed an agreement with Germany to supply Jews in this way; Bulgaria agreed to meet the cost of their expulsion and the document explicitly noted that Bulgaria, knowing their fate in German hands, would never request the Jews' repatriation.[10]
In March 1943 Bulgarian troops and military police rounded up the Jews in Bulgarian-occupied Greek Macedonia and Vardar Macedonia in Yugoslavia - 7,122 from Macedonia and 4,221 from Thrace - and sent them to via transit concentration camps to the Bulgarian Danube port of Lom, where they were embarked and taken upriver to Vienna and thence to Treblinka; nearly all were killed.[11][4][12] This was arranged by request of the German foreign ministry in spring 1942 to surrender all Jews under Bulgarian control to German custody, to which the Bulgarian government acceded, creating the "Jewish Affairs" commissariat under Belev to organize the genocide called for at the Wannsee Conference.[12] By March 1943 Jewish Bulgarians were being concentrated at schools and train stations by the Bulgarian authorities within the country's pre-war borders.[1] Subsequently, in spring 1943, protests led by parliamentarian Dimitar Peshev M.P. and the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, concerned over the welfare of Jewish converts to Christianity as well as of a "national minority" generally, succeeded in first delaying, and then in May in finally preventing Belev's plan to meet the 20,000 figure by deporting some 8,000 Bulgarian Jews from Sofia, Kyustendil, and elsewhere to Nazi extermination camps in Poland, including all southwest Bulgaria's Jews; they were instead dispossessed of all their property, deported to the provinces, and the men aged 20–40 conscripted into forced labour, as were Jews from Stara Zagora and Kazanlak.[4][9] In April 1943 Joachim von Ribbentrop enquired of King Boris why more Jews had not been sent for extermination by Bulgaria; the response came that Boris would deport “only a small number of Bolshevik‐communist elements from Old Bulgaria [Bulgaria's pre-1941 borders] because he needed the rest of the Jews for road construction.”[4] In May 1943, Bulgaria imprisoned prominent Jewish leaders in Somivit concentration camp and late that month and the following month more than 20,000 Jews were deported from Sofia and their property seized.[1][12] (In 1934, Sofia had had around 25,000 Jewish inhabitants, close to a tenth of the city's total population.)[12] The German foreign ministry understood that Bulgaria feared the Allies and hoped to avoid antagonizing them.[4] Nonetheless, the Nazi-style ghettoization and curfew of Bulgaria's Jewish population was completed in 1943 and antisemitic racial laws were not repealed until 30 August 1944.[1][4]
Allies (1944–1945)
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On 8 September, Soviet forces crossed the Bulgarian-Romanian border and on the eve of 8 September garrison detachments, led by Zveno officers, overthrew the government after taking strategic points in Sofia and arresting government ministers. A new government of the Fatherland Front was appointed on 9 September with Kimon Georgiev as prime minister. War was declared on Germany and its allies at once and the weak divisions sent by the Axis Powers to invade Bulgaria were easily driven back. In Macedonia, the Bulgarian troops, surrounded by German forces, and betrayed by high-ranking military commanders, fought their way back to the old borders of Bulgaria. Unlike the Communist resistance, the right wing followers of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) saw the solution of the Macedonian Question in creating a pro-Bulgarian Independent Macedonian State. At this time the IMRO leader Ivan Mihailov arrived in German reoccupied Skopje, where the Germans hoped that he could form a Macedonian state on the base of former IMRO structures and Ohrana. Seeing that Germany had lost the war and to avoid further bloodshed, after two days he refused and set off.[13] Under the leadership of a new Bulgarian pro-Communist government, three Bulgarian armies (some 455,000 strong in total) entered Yugoslavia in September 1944 and alongside Soviet and Yugoslav forces, moved to Niš and Skopje with the strategic task of blocking the German forces withdrawing from Greece. Southern and eastern Serbia and Macedonia were liberated within a month and the 130,000-strong Bulgarian First Army continued to Hungary, driving off the Germans and entering Austria in April 1945. Contact was established with the British Eighth Army in the town of Klagenfurt on 8 May 1945, the day the Nazi government in Germany capitulated. Then Gen. Vladimir Stoychev signed a demarcation agreement with British V Corps commander Charles Keightley.
Consequences and results
As a consequence of World War II, the Soviet Union invaded Bulgaria and a Communist regime was installed with Georgi Dimitrov at the helm. The monarchy was abolished in 1946 and the tsar sent into exile. The People's Republic of Bulgaria was established, lasting until 1990. The Red Army remained in occupation of Bulgaria until 1947. Bulgaria later joined the Warsaw Pact in 1954 and 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.
Though the Bulgarian armistice with the Soviet Union had surrendered all territory occupied and claimed by Bulgaria in Greek and Yugoslavian Macedonia and Thrace, the Paris Peace Treaties of 1947 confirmed the incorporation of Southern Dobruja into Bulgaria during the War, thus making Bulgaria the only Axis country that increased its pre-war territory. The occupied parts of the Aegean region and Vardar Macedonia remaining within the borders of Bulgaria were returned, with 150,000 Bulgarians being expelled from Western Thrace.
Subsequent to their ordeal during the war, most of Bulgaria's remaining Jews - some 50,000 in September 1944 - emigrated. About 35,000 left for Palestine during the British Mandate and the great majority of the remainder departed to the post-1948 State of Israel; by the first years of the 1950s some 45,000 Bulgarian Jews had left the post-war communist state.[1][12]
Armed forces
By the end of the war, Bulgaria managed to mobilize about 450,000 men. Military equipment was mostly of German origin. By 1945, Bulgaria had also received stocks of Soviet weaponry, mostly small arms.
See also
- Bulgarian resistance movement during World War II
- Bulgarian government-in-exile
- Bulgaria–Russia relations
- National Liberation War of Macedonia
- Ohrana
- Military of Bulgaria
References
- ^ a b c d e f Laqueur, Walter; Baumel, Judith Tydor, eds. (2001). The Holocaust Encyclopedia. Yale University Press. pp. 98–104. ISBN 978-0-300-13811-5.
- ^ Jozo Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia: 1941 - 1945, Volume 2, Stanford University Press, 2002, ISBN 0804779244, p. 196.
- ^ Featherstone, K., et al., The Last Ottomans: The Muslim Minority of Greece 1940-1949, Springer, 2011, ISBN 0230294650, p. 83.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Ioanid, Radu (2010-11-25). Occupied and Satellite States. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199211869.003.0022.
- ^ Wily Fox: How King Boris Saved the Jews of Bulgaria from the Clutches of His Axis Ally Adolf Hitler, AuthorHouse 2008, 213, ISBN 1438922833
- ^ R. J. Crampton Cambridge University Press, 1997, A Concise History of Bulgaria, p. 181
- ^ Marietta Stankova, Anthem Press, 2015, Bulgaria in British Foreign Policy, 1943–1949, pp. 63-64
- ^ Robert Bideleux, Ian Jeffries, Routledge, 2007, The Balkans: A Post-Communist History, p. 84
- ^ a b Chary, Frederick B. (1972-11-15). The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, 1940-1944. University of Pittsburgh Press. ISBN 978-0-8229-7601-1.
- ^ Crowe, David M. (2018-05-04). The Holocaust: Roots, History, and Aftermath. Routledge. p. 300. ISBN 978-0-429-96498-5.
- ^ Plaut, J. E. (2000). "1. The Bulgarian Occupation Zone" in "1941–1944: The Occupation of Greece and the Deportation of the Jews". Greek Jewry in the 20th Century, 1912–1983: Patterns of Jewish Survival in the Greek Provinces Before and After the Holocaust. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. pp. 54–57. ISBN 978-0-8386-3911-5.
- ^ a b c d e "Bulgaria". encyclopedia.ushmm.org. Retrieved 2020-03-02.
- ^ Hitler's new disorder: the Second World War in Yugoslavia, Stevan K. Pavlowitch, Columbia University Press, 2008, ISBN 0-231-70050-4, pp. 238-240.
- Dimitrov, Božidar (1994). "Bulgaria during World War II". Bulgaria: illustrated history. Sofia: Borina. ISBN 954-500-044-9.
{{cite book}}:|archive-url=requires|url=(help); External link in|chapterurl=|chapterurl=ignored (|chapter-url=suggested) (help) - Делев, Петър; et al. (2006). "51. България в годините на Втората световна война". История и цивилизация за 11. клас (in Bulgarian). Труд, Сирма.
- "Изборът между Сталин и Хитлер. Избор няма". Българите и България (in Bulgarian). Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bulgaria, Trud, Sirma. 2005. Archived from the original on 2006-09-07.
{{cite book}}: External link in|chapterurl=|chapterurl=ignored (|chapter-url=suggested) (help) - Castellan, Georges (1999). История на Балканите XIV–XX век (in Bulgarian). trans. Лиляна Цанева. Пловдив: Хермес. pp. 459–463, 476–477. ISBN 954-459-901-0.
- Molina, Lucas; Carlos Caballero (October 2006). Panzer IV: El puño de la Wehrmacht (in Spanish). Valladolid, Spain: AFEditores. ISBN 84-96016-81-1.
- Doyle, Hilary; Tom Jentz (2001). Panzerkampfwagen IV Ausf. G, H and J 1942-45. Oxford, United Kingdom: Osprey. ISBN 1-84176-183-4.
- Griehl, Manfred (2001). Junker Ju 87 Stuka. London/Stuttgart: Airlife Publishing/Motorbuch. ISBN 1-84037-198-6.
External links
- Axis History Factbook — Bulgaria
- Map
- Text of Declaration of War on Bulgaria - June 5, 1942
- The Armistice Agreement with Bulgaria; October 28, 1944
