The
scavengers were gathering.
It was this basic shakiness that led the King to look for sustenance
from neighbours. In rapid succession, he made his state a friend of
Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Romania (the last two in the frame of
the Little Entente). Another Entente followed (the Balkan one) with
Greece, Turkey and Romania. The King was frantically seeking to
neutralize his enemies from without while ignoring the dangers from
within.
His death lurked in Zagreb but he was travelling to Marseilles to
meet it. A vicious secret police, a burgeoning military, a new
constitution to legalize his sanguinous regime conspired with a
global economic crisis to make him a hated figure, even by Serb
Democrats. Days before his death, he earnestly considered to return
to a parliamentary form of government. But it was too late and too
little for those who sought his end.
The Ustasha movement ("insurgence" or "insurrection", officially the
"Croatian Ustasha Movement") was a product of the personal rebellion
of Ante Pavelic and like-minded others. Born in Bosnia, he was a
member of the Croat minority there, in a Serb-infused environment.
He practised as a lawyer in Zagreb and there joined the Nationalist
Croatian Party of Rights. He progressed rapidly and by 1920 (at the
age of 31), he was alderman of Zagreb City and County.
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