Chapter 3 Preventing a Repetition of the Great War: Responding to International Terrorism in the 1930s

Abstract

On 9 October 1934, King Alexander I of Yugoslavia was assassinated as he arrived in Marseilles to begin a state visit to France.1 Louis Barthou, the French foreign minister, was wounded during the chaos and died later. Evidence quickly established that anti-Yugoslav terrorist groups based in Italy and trained in Hungary had carried out the attack. The terrorists’ ultimate goal was to destabilize the multi-ethnic Yugoslavia and create new nation states. Much like the shooting of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo twenty years before, Alexander’s murder sparked an international crisis that threatened the peace of Europe. France supported Yugoslavia; Italy the Hungarians. In the background were alliances and individual states interested in either defending or changing the European status quo. All the ingredients of the July Crisis of 1914 seemed suddenly there again. While these two terrorist attacks had important similarities, their repercussions were very different. According to its Covenant, the main purposes of the League of Nations were ‘to promote international co-operation and to achieve international peace and security.’2 These central aims were in fact accomplished in 1934, an achievement that represents the League at its most effective. With strong leadership from Britain and France, the League made it possible for states to adopt a unanimous resolution that preserved the peace that all sides wanted. During its successful mediation the League Council decided to confront the serious problem of international terrorism. Jurists and officials from several countries would spend nearly three years exploring ways to classify specific terrorist acts, and conspiracies to commit them, as international Chapter 3