1016 Ch. 25 • Economic Depression and Dictatorship

King Alexander 1 of Yugoslavia and French Foreign Minister Jean-Louis Barthou

were assassinated while driving through Marseilles in 1934; the assassin was later

lynched by onlookers.

and those of parliamentarian government, as in Germany, but between the

authoritarian Serb government and a right-wing Croat organization.

In Hungary, Admiral Miklos Horthy (1868-1957), the head of state

since 1920, appointed a fascist prime minister in 1932 but repressed the

extreme right-wing parties when they threatened to seize power for them­

selves. Bulgarian political life was marked by assassinations and coups

detat followed by dictatorship in 1935. In Greece, republicans, monar­

chists, and military officers battled it out. In 1936, Greek King George II

(1890-1947) gave his blessing to the dictatorship of General Ioannis

Metaxas (1871 — 1941), who, in the fascist style, took the title of “leader.”

In 1938, Romanian King Carol II (1893-1953) established a dictatorship

by suspending the constitution. He did so to protect his rule against a

challenge from the fascist “Legion of the Archangel Michael” and particu­

larly its murderous shock troops, the “Iron Guard,” a fanatically Orthodox

religious group with strong anti-Semitic prejudices. Romanian fascists

drew upon peasant discontent created by agricultural deflation. The king’s

bloody suppression of the Legion and the Iron Guard only postponed the

victory of fascism in Romania.

In Eastern Europe, only Czechoslovakia managed to achieve political sta­

bility as a parliamentary democracy, despite differences between Czechs

and Slovaks. The two largest political parties, the Agrarian Party and the