ORIGINAL: capitan
Just read up a bit on the Yugoslavian campaign, and it strikes me as odd why Harry chose to have Prince Paul to lead the Yugoslav forces. Should it not be changed to King Peter instead? [:)]
King Peter II was to young.
Prince Paul of Yugoslavia (April 27, 1893, Saint Petersburg, Russia – September 11, 1976, Paris, France) of the Serbian ,later Yugoslav Royal House of Karadjordjevic was regent of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia for King Peter II.
He took the regency on 9 October 1934 after his cousin King Alexander's assassination in Marseille and ruled the country until he decided to sign the Tripartite Pact with the World War II Axis Powers in Vienna on 25 March 1941. Because of his decision, massive demonstrations took place in Belgrade and, after this, his cousin and ward, Peter II, together with a group of pro-British officers and middle class politicians, made a coup d'état on 27 March 1941. General Dušan Simoviæ became prime minister and Yugoslavia backed out of the Axis sphere in all but name.
Prince Paul of Yugoslavia was the only son of Prince Arsen Karageorgevich (a brother of Peter I) and Princess Aurora Demidov (a granddaughter of the Finnish philanthropist Aurora Karamzin). He married Princess Olga of Greece and Denmark, a sister of Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent, in 1923. George VI of the United Kingdom, as Duke of York, was best man at his wedding in Belgrade.
A Knight of the Garter, Paul was educated at the University of Oxford and his closest friends (including the American-born, naturalized British politician Chips Channon) and outlook on life were said to be British.
Although King Peter II and his new Government opposed Germany, they also feared that if Hitler attacked Yugoslavia, the United Kingdom was not in any real position to help. Germany, angered by the people’s protests against the Tripartite Pact, invaded the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in April 1941. At the advice of the Government, King Peter II was asked to lead the country from abroad and ask for Allied support. The only legal body of Yugoslavia became the Royal Yugoslav Government in exile. Yugoslavia itself was dismembered and occupied by Nazi Germany and its satellites.
For the remainder of the war, Prince Paul was kept, with his family, under house arrest by the British in South Africa.
King Peter II was the eldest son of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia and Princess Maria of Romania and Hohenzollern, his godfather was King George VI, and his godmother was Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom.
On March 27, 1941 Peter, then 17, was proclaimed of age, and participated in a British-supported coup d'état opposing the Tripartite Pact.
Peter was forced to leave the country with the Yugoslav Government following the Axis invasion; initially the King went with his government to Greece, and Jerusalem, then to the British Mandate of Palestine and Cairo, Egypt. He went to England in June 1941, where he joined numerous other governments in exile from Nazi-occupied Europe. The King completed his education at Cambridge University and joined the Royal Air Force.
He married Princess Alexandra of Greece and Denmark, in London on 20 March 1944. While still in exile, he was deposed by Yugoslavia's Communist Constituent Assembly on November 29, 1945. However, the King never abdicated. After the war he settled in the United States. Having had a longtime health problem, he died in Denver, Colorado on 3 November 1970 after a failed liver transplant.
He is interred at the St. Sava Monastery Church at Libertyville, Illinois, the only European monarch buried on American soil. His son, Crown Prince Alexander, is heir to the Serbian throne.
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