Ante Pavelić
Assassination of King Alexander and aftermath

By killing the king of Yugoslavia, Pavelić saw an opportunity to cause riots in Yugoslavia and eventual collapse of the state. In December 1933, Pavelić ordered the assassination of King Alexander. The assassin was caught by the police and the assassination attempt failed. However, Pavelić tried again in October 1934 in Marseille.

On 9 October 1934, King Alexander I of Yugoslavia and French foreign minister Louis Barthou were assassinated in Marseille. The perpetrator Vlado Chernozemski, a Bulgarian revolutionary, was killed right after the assassination by French police. Three Ustaša members, who had been waiting at different locations for the king, were captured and sentenced to life imprisonment by a French court. Pavelić along with Eugen Kvaternik and Ivan Perčević were subsequently sentenced to death in absentia by a French court. That the security was lax even though one attempt had already been made on Alexander's life testified to Pavelić's organizational abilities; he had apparently been able to bribe a high official in the Sûreté General. The Marseilles Prefect of Police, Jouhannaud, was subsequently removed from office. The Ustaša believed that the assassination of King Alexander had effectively "broken the backbone of Yugoslavia" and that it was their "most important achievement."

Under pressure from France, the Italian police arrested Pavelić and several Ustaša emigrants on 17 October 1934. Pavelić was imprisoned in Turin and released in March 1936. After he met with Eugen Dido Kvaternik on Christmas 1934 in prison, he stated that assassination was "the only language Serbs understand". During his time in prison, Pavelić was informed about the situation in Yugoslavia and the 5 May 1935 election, in which a coalition of opposition parties was led by HSS leader Vladko Maček. Pavelić declared the election results as a "success of the Ustaše actions". By the mid-1930s, graffiti with the initials ŽAP meaning "Long live Ante Pavelić" (Croatian: Živio Ante Pavelić) had begun to appear on the streets of Zagreb.

After Pavelić's released from prison, he remained under surveillance by the Italian authorities, and his Ustaše were interned. Disappointed with relations between the Italians and the Ustaše organization, Pavelić became closer to Nazi Germany, who promised to change the map of Europe fixed under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. In October 1936 he finished a survey for the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the Croatian Question (Croatian: Hrvatsko pitanje; German: Die kroatische Frage). According to Ivo Goldstein, the survey deemed the "Serbian state authorities, international Freemasonry, Jews and communism"’ as enemies and stated that:

Today almost all banking and almost all trade in Croatia is in the hands of the Jews. This became possible only because the state gave them privileges, because the government believed that this would weaken Croatian national strength. The Jews greeted the foundation of the so-called Yugoslav state with great enthusiasm because a national Croatian state would never suit them as well as Yugoslavia did.... All the press in Croatia is in Jewish hands. This Jewish Freemason press is constantly attacking Germany, the German people and national socialism.

According to Matković, after 1937 Pavelić paid more attention to the Ustaše in Yugoslavia than elsewhere, since the emigrants had become passive after the assassination. In 1938 he instructed the Ustaše to form stations in Yugoslav towns. The fall of Stojadinović's government and the creation of the Banovina of Croatia in 1939 further increased Ustaše activity; they founded Uzdanica (Hope), a savings co-operative. Under Uzdanica, Ustaše founded Ustaše University Headquarters and the illegal association Matija Gubec. However, Pavlowitch observes that Pavelić had few contacts with the Ustaše within Yugoslavia, and that his esteemed position within the Ustaše was partly due to his isolation in Italy. Despite their rise in activity in the 1930s, the movement experienced only moderate growth of popularity, and remained a marginal group.

In the late 1930s, about half of the 500 Ustaša in Italy were voluntarily repatriated to Yugoslavia, went underground and increased their activities. During the intensification of ties with Nazi Germany in the 1930s, Pavelić's concept of the Croatian nation became increasingly race -oriented.

On 1 April 1937, after the Stojadinović - Ciano agreement, all Ustaše units were dissolved by the Italian government. After that, Pavelić was put under house arrest in Siena, where he lived until 1939. During this period he penned his anti-Bolshevik work Horrors and Mistakes (Italian: Errori e orrori; Croatian: Strahote zabluda) which was published in 1938. It was immediately seized by the authorities. At the onset of World War II he moved to a villa near Florence under police watch until spring 1941.

After Italy occupied Albania and prepared an attack on Yugoslavia, Ciano invited Pavelić to negotiations. They discussed Croatian armed revolt, Italian military intervention and the creation of a Croatian state with monetary, customs and personal unions with Italy, which Pavelić later refused.

In 1940 Pavelić negotiated with the Italians for military assistance in creating a separate Croatian state which would have had strong ties to Italy, but this plan was postponed by the invasion of France, and subsequently derailed by Adolf Hitler.
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