Kingdom of Yugoslavia

The Kingdom of Yugoslavia existed from 1918 to 1941 in southeast and central Europe. From 1918 to 1929 it was officially the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, known colloquially as Yugoslavia after its origin, the land of the South Slavs. Alexander I established the 6 January Dictatorship in 1929 and soon renamed the kingdom Yugoslavia, which stayed its name until the Axis invasion of April 1941 broke the country apart. The country had been built from Serbia, Montenegro and the territories of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, chiefly the provisional Slovenes, Croats and Serbs state, and its three peoples never settled into harmony: the Croatian peasants wanted autonomy, the Serbs feared the breakup of their prize, and the Slovenes wanted guarantees. The Declaration of Geneva of 1934 and the federal settlement it promised were undone when Alexander was assassinated at Marseille that October by an IMRO gunman, leaving the throne to an eleven-year-old boy.