On September 2, 1944, the Soviet Union declared war against Bulgaria and after five and a half hours the Bulgarians called for an armistice. By September 9, the Fatherland Front—a coalition of the Communist Party, the left wing of the Agrarian Union, and a few pro-Soviet politicians who had returned from exile in the Soviet Union—had taken power.44 Bulgaria became the first Communist-controlled country outside the Soviet Union, and the Bulgarian population in Sofia enthusiastically welcomed Soviet troops.
The new Bulgarian authorities immediately ordered the arrests of the young tsar’s regents, former ministers of all cabinets from January 1941 to September 1944, and all members of the parliament during that period.45 In two days, 160 former politicians on this list were arrested, and their properties were confiscated. Later many of them were executed without trial.46
On September 11, Georgi Dimitrov, the famous Bulgarian Communist, ordered from Moscow the creation of ‘people’s courts’ for trying these and other ‘traitors’. At the time Dimitrov headed the Department of International Information of the Central Committee, the Comintern’s successor. Apparently, Stalin wanted to deal with the most important of the arrested former Bulgarian leaders himself because Prince Kyril, former prime ministers Bozhilov and Petru Gabrovski, two other ministers, and three members of parliament were handed over to the UKR SMERSH operatives of the 3rd Ukrainian Front and were brought to Moscow Lubyanka Prison. In Sofia, Soviet military intelligence also seized the Bulgarian state archive and sent it to Moscow, where most of its documents are still kept at the Military (former Special) Archive.
After a three-month investigation by SMERSH (the details of the interrogations are unknown), Moscow decided that Prince Kyril and other Bulgarian arrestees should be tried in Sofia and not in Moscow, and they were transported back to Bulgaria.47 On February 1, 1945, the Bulgarian People’s Court sentenced the three regents, 22 former ministers, 87 members of parliament, and 47 generals and colonels to death as war criminals who had involved Bulgaria in World War II on the German side, and they were executed.48
In September 1946, Simeon II, his sister Maria Louise and their mother Queen Giovanna were sent into exile. Tsar Simeon II, who had never abdicated, returned to Bulgaria in 1996, and served as prime minister from 2001 to 2006.
In the meantime, SMERSH operatives hunted Axis diplomats in Bulgaria. Later, in prison, the Italian diplomat Giovanni Ronchi claimed that while immunity for foreigners was one condition of Germany’s capitulation in Sofia, the Soviets immediately violated this agreement.49 In accordance with the agreement, members of the Italian and German legations were put on a special train that went from Sofia to Turkey.50 The evacuation was organized by a Swedish diplomat, chargé d’affaires Erland Uddgren, and two representatives of the Swedish Red Cross were on board the train, which was flying the Swedish flag. For some time, the train stayed on the Romanian border with Turkey, while the diplomats waited for Turkish visas.
In Moscow, Stalin ordered the train to be found and the diplomats arrested.51 An operational group of the NKVD rear guard troops of the 3rd Ukrainian Front located the train and took a number of diplomats, including 32 Germans and a few Italians, into custody. SMERSH operatives of the 3rd Ukrainian Front sent a group of important German and Italian diplomats, including Ronchi, to Moscow (Appendix II, see http://www.smershbook.com), but nothing was ever heard of the rest of the people on the train. However, the two Swedish representatives returned to Sofia. SMERSH operatives also arrested members of the Hungarian Legation in Sofia and sent them to Moscow (Appendix II, see http://www.smershbook.com).
In an operation similar to that which had taken place in Bucharest, in early September a six-man OSS team arrived in Sofia.52 It organized the evacuation of 335 airmen, mostly Americans, by train to Turkey. This train had better success than the one with German and Italian diplomats on board, and on September 10, it reached Istanbul. On September 26, the American and British intelligence missions left Sofia after Soviet military authorities threatened to arrest them.
SMERSH unleashed mass arrests of Russian émigrés. The Soviets were well informed about White Guard military organizations in Bulgaria. Nikolai Abramov, a son of General Fyodor Abramov, the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS, a Russian émigré military organization) leader in Bulgaria, for many years was an OGPU/NKVD agent. From 1931 to 1937, he sent detailed reports to Moscow about the ROVS’ activity in Bulgaria.53
In Sofia, SMERSH operatives arrested two former commanders of the White armies, Lieutenant General Nikolai Bredov and Colonel V. P. Kon’kov.54 The latter was also a commander of the Russian Corps that fought alongside the Germans. Another arrested officer, B. P. Aleksandrov, for years headed special courses at a school in Bulgaria that trained White Russian terrorists who were then sent to the Soviet Union.55 This and similar schools in Prague and Paris maintained contact with the intelligence services in many countries. Aleksandrov was in touch with Finnish intelligence, and SMERSH investigators accused him of having been a Finnish spy. Several arrested émigrés were shot—for instance, Dmitrii Zavzhalov, editor of the newspaper Za Rossiyu [For Russia].56 But most of them were sent to Moscow, and their fate is unknown. As for Kon’kov, he survived a long-term sentence in the labor camps, and returned to Bulgaria after Stalin’s death.
Slovakia
Simultaneously with the events in Romania and Bulgaria, on August 29, 1944, Slovak Defense Minister Ferdinand Čatloš (pronounced Chatlosh) announced on the radio that German troops had occupied Slovakia, and the Slovak National Uprising under the command of General Jan Golian, and then General Rudolf Viest, began.57 Besides the Slovak troops (about 60,000 men), partisan detachments under the leadership of Soviet commanders were parachuted to Slovakia via an airlift called the ‘Main Land—Uprising Slovakia’. About 1,500 Soviet military planes carried Czechoslovak paratroopers, military equipment and supplies from Soviet territory to the insurgent area.58 Partisan detachments also included the escaped French and Ukrainian POWs, as well as groups of British SOE and American OSS operatives.59 From September 7, 1944 to February 18, 1945 a Soviet military mission headed by Major Ivan Skripka and a small British–American military mission headed by the British Major John Segmer and American Captain James Holt Green operated at the HQ of the insurgents.
A number of events preceded the uprising. At the end of 1943, General Čatloš ordered two strong divisions to be stationed in the area where he expected the Red Army would enter Slovakia. His plan was to help the Red Army, but he wanted to maintain Slovakian independence. At the beginning of August 1944, Čatloš sent a courier, Karol Šmidke (pronounced Shmidke), a pro-Communist leader who was well known in Moscow, to inform the Red Army high command of his plan.60 But Šmidke also brought plans of other Slovak political factions, and Moscow refused to deal with Čatloš. Possibly, the Soviets considered him a German collaborator because during the first two weeks of the German invasion in June 1941, Čatloš commanded the Slovak Expeditionary Army Group within the German troops. After the uprising started, Stalin refused to permit the British and Americans to significantly assist the insurgents.61