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At 2 a.m. a patrol of soldiers, commanded by an Air Corps officer, appeared at the hilltop home of Premier Cvetkovitch, who had signed the Axis pact in Vienna scarcely 48 hours before. A guard stood before the door. "The Premier can not be disturbed," said the guard.
The officer said: "Nevertheless disturb him." The guard raised his rifle, but the officer was quicker with his revolver. "Stand aside," he said.
The guard stood aside.
To Premier Cvetkovitch the officer simply said: "Come." The Premier dressed and went with the patrol to General Staff Headquarters. There he found the Air Corps Chief, General Dusan Simovitch, with Chief of Staff General Peter Kossitch and Inspector General Bogoljub Hitch.
Soon other members of the Cabinet arrived. When all were there General Simovitch told the Ministers that the Army required their resignations. Less than 60 minutes after they had been aroused from their beds the Cabinet had resigned. It was then 2:51 a.m., the moment that Brock's telephone had gone dead.
The Conspirators. All that happened between then and sunrise, when 17-year-old Peter Karageorgevitch proclaimed himself King Peter II, may never be known except to the few who made those three hours of history. What happened at the White Palace of the Prince Regent was shrouded in blackest secrecy.
The character of Prince Paul of Yugoslavia has been a subject of controversy for years. His friends said he was a patriot, ambitious only to turn a united kingdom over to his nephew at the end of his regency. These people said his appeasement of Yugoslavia's Croat minority was directed toward that end. His enemies said he was a weakling, prodded by his wife, Princess Olga of Greece (whose sister is Britain's Duchess of Kent), into immense ambitions, even the ambition to rule all the Slavs, including the Russians. These people said Hitler played on Prince Paul's ambition. Certain it is that Regent Prince Paul struggled for days to get together a Cabinet that would yield to Hitler's demands. Certain it is that before he was deposed he found himself in the power of Adolf Hitler.
The serious-minded young King (who was christened with the mixed waters of Yugoslavia's three great rivers, the Sava, the Drava and the Danube) grew up as a Serb. His chief tutors were Professor Slobodan Jovanovitch of Belgrade University, who is sometimes called "Yugoslavia's intellectual conscience," and Chief of Staff General Kossitch. Peter also had an English tutor, C. C. Parrot, who taught him to like Robert Louis Stevenson and P. G. Wodehouse. As the time for his assumption of power approached (he will be 18 next September) Peter grew away from the influence of his uncle. Between his mother and ambitious Princess Olga there had always been friction, and in 1936 Queen Mother Marie had moved to England.
Yugoslavia's signature to the Axis pact brought the latent conflict between the young King and the Regent to the surface, as it brought to the surface the indignation of the Serbian people and the Army, which is predominantly Serbian. Between Peter and General Simovitch. leader of the conspiracy, General Kossitch acted as go between. When the Army struck, Peter knew all about it.