Bogdan Filov

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Bogdan Dimitrov Filov (Bulgarian: Богдан Димитров Филов) (9 April 1883–2 February 1945) became a powerful politician and was Prime Minister of Bulgaria during World War II. During his service, Bulgaria became the seventh nation to join the Axis Powers.

Born in Stara Zagora, he was partly educated in Imperial Germany at Leipzig, Freiburg and Bonn, and later became a professor of archeology, and of art history, at the University of Sofia. An ally of Tsar Boris III, Filov was appointed Prime Minister of Bulgaria on February 15, 1940, following the resignation of Georgi Kyoseivanov. On New Year's Day in 1941, Filov and his wife travelled to Vienna, at that time a part of the Ostmark (the Anschluss having earlier incorporated Austria into Germany). Though the purpose was, ostensibly, so that Filov could be treated for ulcers by Dr. Hans Eppinger, Filov met in Vienna with German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, and German advisers soon arrived in Bulgaria. ^[1]A "Law for the Defence of the Nation" went into effect on January 23, 1941, restricting the rights of Bulgarian Jews ^[2]. On February 14, Bulgaria signed a non-aggression pact with the Axis powers, and on Bulgaria's Independence Day, March 3, German troops crossed into Bulgaria on the way to invade Greece.

Though a titular member of the Axis Power, Bulgaria stayed out of the war as much as possible during the regime of King Boris and Premier Filov. After the death of Boris in 1943, Filov became a member of the Regency Council established because the new Tsar, Simeon II, was underage. Following the armistice with the Soviet Union whose forces had entered Bulgaria in 1944, a new Communist-dominated government was established and the Regency Council members were arrested. Filov and 92 other public officials were sentenced to death by a "People's Tribunal" on the afternoon of 1 February 1945 and executed by firing squad that night in Sofia cemetery. The were then buried in a mass grave that had been a bomb crater. The former professor was described in one obituary as a man who had mistakenly "preferred making history to teaching it" ^[3]

[edit] References

• Bulgaria in the Second World War by Marshall Lee Miller, Stanford University Press, 1975.
• Royalty in Exile by Charles Fenyvesi, London, 1981, pps:153-171 - "Czar Simeon of the Bulgars". ISBN 978-0-86051-131-1
• Boris III of Bulgaria 1894-1943, by Pashanko Dimitroff, London, 1986, ISBN 978-0-86332-140-5
• Crown of Thorns by Stephane Groueff, Lanham MD., and London, 1987, ISBN 978-0-8191-5778-2