Bulgaria: lock of the Balkans, a price to pay

At the turn of 1941, the Bulgarian Prime Minister Bogdan Filov carries a burning file for a small kingdom wedged between giants. Berlin wants to move its troops through Bulgaria to reach Greece as part of Operation Marita, and presses Sofia to join the Tripartite Pact.

The sovereign, Tsar Boris III, has been temporising since the autumn. In November 1940, the Bulgarian ambassador in Berlin made it known that the country would join 'in principle', but wished to defer the signature. The kingdom covets territories lost after the Great War — Greek and Yugoslav lands — but dreads the Russian bear as much as the British lion.

In early January 1941, Filov travels to Vienna, officially for reasons of health, then makes his way to the Obersalzberg to confer with Ribbentrop and Hitler. He lines up the familiar objections: Turkey with its 37 divisions massed on the frontier, insufficient Bulgarian armament, the USSR and its pro-Russian influence in public opinion, Yugoslavia. Hitler sweeps it all aside, except the Soviet fear, which he undertakes to neutralise. Filov measures the stakes: to sign is to expose Bulgaria to a British or Turkish riposte and to tie its fate to the Axis; to refuse or delay further is to defy a Germany whose divisions are already massing in neighbouring Romania.