March 21, 2024 • 62 mins
Host Becky Milligan meets King Boris III’s children at Vrana Palace, a royal residence on the outskirts of Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital city. The children share the details of their father’s strange and painful death. Officially he dies of a heart attack, but the symptoms don’t add up. What—or who—is responsible? Becky speaks to witnesses who explain how Boris duped Hitler. But the discovery of a dusty document, thousands of miles from Bulgaria, makes Becky wonder if she’s way off course.
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Speaker 9 (02:13):
Goodbye. March nineteen forty three, and Bulgaria suddenly wakes up
to what being an ally of Nazi Germany really means.
A top secret mission has begun to round up thousands
(02:35):
of Bulgarian Jews. They're being taken to Plovdiv, Bulgaria's second
biggest city. Everyone is terrified. From there, the Jews will
be forced onto trains headed for concentration camps in Poland.
But someone has leaked the secret plan and now there's
(02:59):
uproar across the country. Politicians, intellectuals and leaders from the
Orthodox Church are openly protesting. And just as the guards
are about to start loading.
Speaker 6 (03:13):
In the middle of the way.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
That we stopped.
Speaker 9 (03:17):
Michael bar Zoha had Jewish friends who were already on
their way to the rail station and police, you'll free.
The police announce the trains pull away empty. There was
only one explanation. Someone must have signed the order to
(03:39):
let those people go.
Speaker 6 (03:41):
Somebody had to say stop.
Speaker 9 (03:44):
Who was responsible for that?
Speaker 10 (03:45):
Then?
Speaker 9 (03:46):
Who made that happen?
Speaker 5 (03:48):
The head of the country.
Speaker 9 (03:49):
And who was the head of the country down to him,
is it.
Speaker 11 (03:54):
Yeah, yeah, well Boris is cure.
Speaker 9 (03:58):
And if you guess who it was, you can bet
Hitler did too. And we know the furor is unlikely
to shrug off disobedience. Forgive and forget are not words
in his vocabulary. In Hitler's eyes, King Boris has committed
the ultimate crime. King Boris has saved the Jews, is
(04:22):
the culprit and is the motive for Boris's murder. Staring
us right in the face from Blanchard House and exactly right, media,
this is the Butterfly King. I'm Becky Milligan, Chapter two, Lies, Lies, Lies.
(05:28):
It's nineteen ninety four and we're partying in La. It's
Friday night, and it's a big posh dinner, white tablecloths
and candlesticks and some very decent wine. Everyone's doled up,
well they would be. There's royalty present.
Speaker 12 (05:46):
Thank you. It is our honor tonight to welcome no
other than His Majesty Simeon Saxicon.
Speaker 13 (05:54):
All I remember is sitting and having dinner with the
King of Bulgaria.
Speaker 9 (05:59):
That's where I remember.
Speaker 13 (06:00):
I don't remember what he said. I remember him being charming,
absolutely charming, and so you know, I don't know, just
very regal.
Speaker 9 (06:13):
That's Elaine Asa, all the ease years on, and she
still can't believe her luck. The seating plan that evening
put her right next to King Simeon of Bulgaria, Boris's son,
the man I've been chatting to in the Royal Palace
in Sofia, Bulgaria's capital. For Elaine, this night back in
(06:34):
ninety four was a wonderful evening, one she'll never forget.
Speaker 13 (06:39):
Who would not be impressed with a king since I'd
never met a king in my life, so yeah, I
was impressed.
Speaker 9 (06:47):
This wasn't just any old party. It was a very
special award ceremony, and Simeon was there to collect a prize,
but not for himself.
Speaker 12 (06:56):
Remember someone who for so long has been forgotten, Boris,
the third of Bulgaria.
Speaker 9 (07:07):
Simeon was there on behalf of his late father, King Boris.
And this party is actually a Shabbat celebration Shabbad, the
Jewish day of rest. Pretty Much all the guests here
are Jewish, including Elaine Asa. Her husband is Rabbi Haimesa,
(07:28):
and he's organized this whole ceremony.
Speaker 13 (07:30):
I remember just being our struck because it was just
so beautiful.
Speaker 9 (07:35):
The king, who was in partnership with the architect of
the Holocaust, Adolph Hitler, is getting an award from the
La Jewish community. And I'm not the only one who
finds this hard to square, because not everyone in the
La Jewish community was invited to this fancy party, and
(07:56):
if they had been asked, many would have declined because well,
not all of them agreed with Rabbi Haim and Elaine
Asa about King Boris. But let's leave that for a
little later. For now, this is Elaine's view as.
Speaker 13 (08:14):
A historical figure in the story of the saving of
the Jews. He played an important part. Elaine should know
I have proof the King saved my husband.
Speaker 9 (08:27):
Well, I think I can safely say we have a
possible motive here. Any friend of the Jews was by
default an enemy of Hitler's. A bit of a backstory.
Elaine met her husband him at summer camp in the US,
but he was Bulgarian born and bred. Sadly, Hyien passed
away a few years ago, so we only get to
(08:48):
meet him through her. But I get the feeling we
all would have liked to have bumped into Hyaim back
in the day.
Speaker 13 (08:55):
I saw this cute Israeli guide picking corn, you know,
from the waist up. He didn't have anything on, and
I sort of fell in love at that moment.
Speaker 9 (09:05):
I love that. So it was pretty much seeing his body.
Thanks guy.
Speaker 5 (09:10):
Start.
Speaker 9 (09:11):
That was the start, but it was no.
Speaker 13 (09:13):
I have to tell you what really intrigued me our
dating was really his sharing his stories, his life stories.
And I was really so intrigued. I mean well, first
of all, Bulgaria. I didn't even know where it was
on the map. I was seventeen, what did I know.
Speaker 9 (09:30):
After a few more dates and a very long marriage,
Elaine became well versed on Bulgarian history. At rabbinical school,
Hayim wrote his thesis on the Saving of the Bulgarian Jews,
and he spent his life campaigning to get King Boris
the recognition he felt he deserved.
Speaker 13 (09:49):
You know. He spoke about this forever, and he found
a space in telling his story, a space to thank
Boris for what he did.
Speaker 9 (10:00):
Boris's children, King Simeon and Princess Maria Louisa, have heard
many similar testimonies. They're immensely proud their father defied Hitler.
Speaker 14 (10:10):
Bulgarian Jews, many of them that I've come across time
and again say bless your father's soul and this and
that he was behind the fact of not extraditing our
Jewish population to camps in Germany. Orders must have come
from him.
Speaker 15 (10:31):
Wherever I've gone in my ninety years and come across
Bulgarian Jewish people, I've always had the greatest and most
wonderful welcome Papa and all that. They all remember it.
Speaker 9 (10:45):
But it's saving the lives that the Jews cost. Boris
his own. This is an amazing building. It I never
knew it was it. Have you been here before, Yes,
yes I have. I love it to try and find
out my producer EJ. And I are a little closer
(11:08):
to home than you might imagine. I love it.
Speaker 16 (11:11):
What is it?
Speaker 15 (11:11):
Sort of?
Speaker 9 (11:12):
It looks like brutalist architecture. It's like all concrete. This
is the National Archives in southwest London. You're probably thinking
we're a little bit off patch here, maybe about one
and a half thousand miles off patch, and that we
ought to be looking in the Bulgarian National Archives. Yes,
(11:32):
that would be great, except that the Bulgarian archives, well
they've been stolen when the Russians ended their communist occupation
of Bulgaria in nineteen ninety one, they took the National
Archives with them. That means that all those vital records
(11:52):
are still in Russia. And right now, I'm sure you're aware.
Russia isn't really the kind of place where journalists can
just rock up and go digging around for information. But
there's another paper trail we can follow. Until Bulgaria joined
the Pact with Germany in nineteen forty one, Britain had
(12:13):
an embassy in Sofia and most of the paperwork from
that embassy is now declassified. And here at the London Archives,
somewhere among the millions of records and documents. I don't know,
is it all computerized as well? It is.
Speaker 17 (12:30):
It's a bit fiddly, but it's going to take us
some time, I think, But.
Speaker 9 (12:34):
It's worth it.
Speaker 17 (12:35):
It's worth it.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (12:36):
Well, we're reappearing in a couple of weeks, aren't we. Oh wait,
have we got your sleeping dog? This certainly isn't going
to be easy. I bet lots of people can't be
bothered to come here.
Speaker 15 (12:46):
Actually a look, well.
Speaker 9 (12:47):
I had to drag you obviously, Obviously I've never bothered before,
but not drag exactly, But I do have a confession.
Most of my journalistic scoops have come through talking to people.
I put them at ease and ask the right questions.
Then sometimes without even knowing it, people well they just
(13:09):
tell the truth. But when your murder investigation is nearly
a century old, eyewitnesses are a bit thin on the ground.
So all we have is the paper trail, and that's
really time consuming. If we don't find anything, I'll blame
you for wasting weeks in there. Okay, I can't believe
(13:31):
we'll find anything. Well, I mean, what kind of things
do they having an archived like this?
Speaker 17 (13:36):
I mean, you know documents from the Foreign Office that
have been declassified now that were secret. I'm sure we're
going to find things top secret, I promise you.
Speaker 9 (13:45):
They also have really secret at the top or something
ulter secret. Although King Boris officially died of a heart attack,
even at the time, the rumors were rife that he'd
actually been poisoned. But what was he poisoned with? That's
where I'm hoping the archives will deliver some clues, because
(14:08):
my own experience of poison is rather limited, unless you
count crime fiction. Of course, I've devoured enough Agatha Christie
books to know that arsenic is always on the suspect list,
but that seems unlikely here because by the Second World
War doctors could detect arsenic pretty quickly. Cyanide is another
(14:28):
famous poison, Agatha Christie's favorite. Quite a few Nazis used
it to kill themselves after the war, including Hitler's wife.
That cyanide leaves a distinctive armored smell, and again that
would have been immediately identified. So I'm looking for something
more sophisticated, a chemical weapon, basically something designed in a
(14:52):
laboratory for a targeted killing. I think I need a
briefing from someone whose knowledge extends beyond detective thrillers, someone
who could at least give me some context as I
scan the archives.
Speaker 16 (15:05):
My name's Hemishubrecagordon. My ara of expertise is chemical, biological,
radiological and nuclear terrorism.
Speaker 9 (15:12):
This man knows everything about state of the art toxins.
Colonel Hamish's ex British Army. He's served in Iraq and Afghanistan,
has worked all over Syria and is currently advising the
Ukrainian government. He's an expert on the history and use
of chemical weapons.
Speaker 16 (15:31):
After the First World War, chemical weapons developed into much
more deadly weapons called nerve agents, which basically destroy your nerves. Now,
Hitler had a vast stock of nerve agents, and he
developed them nerve agents.
Speaker 9 (15:46):
But before I get too carried away with this, Boris
was in agony. His organs were failing, and crucially, his
heart shut down. Do nerve agents affect the heart?
Speaker 16 (15:57):
These nerve agents do impact your nerve nerves, and your
heart is probably the first thing to break down. So
some sort of nerve agent would seem vaguely to fit
the bill of some of the symptoms that you'll mention.
If it was the Germans, who seemed to be the
most likely, I would have thought it's something out of
their chemical weapon portfolio.
Speaker 9 (16:18):
This is significant information. I now have a motive and
a potential means. I just need the archives to give
me some proof that the king somehow fell foul of
a nerve agent.
Speaker 17 (16:31):
Keywords Boris, King, Boris, Boris.
Speaker 9 (16:36):
Do they have to be an order to do? There's
just a keywords king. You have to do plus or
minus or whatever? King, Bulgaria, Bulgaria and World War Two? Right, enter, Oh,
good grief?
Speaker 17 (16:49):
Quite a few, Oh.
Speaker 9 (16:51):
Great, While we're waiting for those documents to arrive. Let's
just wind back a few years. I want to examine
how Hitler and King Boris became allies, because on the
face of it, they certainly don't look like natural bedfellows.
(17:15):
Boris hadn't banked on being in Hitler's camp at all.
As war brewed, he spent months traveling around the European
capitals trying to negotiate a peaceful way out. He knocked
on pretty much every leader's door because Boris knew Bulgaria
was ill prepared for conflict under the ill fated leadership
(17:37):
of his father, Foxy King Ferdinand. It had suffered a
brutal defeat in the First World War. It lost huge
tracts of territory as a result, including Macedonia and the
area known as Thrace. And more than that, says historian
Tessa Dunlop, it lost its army.
Speaker 18 (17:57):
Remember, Boris didn't start rearming until about nineteen thirty five.
It wasn't allowed to. Bulgari had been totally dearmed. So
this is a dude who's got basically a country without
a protective shell. He has no real soldiers. Why on
earth would he want to go to War.
Speaker 9 (18:12):
Boris was a seasoned soldier, but he was terribly marked
by the brutal conflicts he'd fought in both Balkan Wars
in nineteen twelve and nineteen thirteen, and then the First
World War. When he became king aged twenty four, he
swore he would never allow Bulgarian blood to be spilled again,
(18:33):
which was why at the start of the Second World
War he declared Bulgaria was neutral. But the war spread
like wildfire.
Speaker 18 (18:42):
Little Bulgaria was in the middle of a giant world
feed and there's no way on Earth it couldn't get
sucked up into the drama.
Speaker 9 (18:53):
Now, this next bit of history is crucial to understanding
who might have killed the king and whether it might
have been hit I'll explain as clearly as I can.
Here's what forced Bulgaria to stop being neutral and put
its slap bang into Hitler's camp. So Germany and Russia
(19:13):
were allies at the start of the war. That suited
Boris just fine. Germany was Bulgaria's biggest economic partner, and
the Soviets had rescued Bulgaria from Turkish occupation only fifty
years back, so the Bulgarians felt an affinity with the Russians.
It was all just about manageable until the summer of
(19:34):
nineteen forty one, when Hitler tore up his non aggression
packed with Russia.
Speaker 18 (19:41):
The problem is when Hitler has this idea that actually, nah,
I'm going to head east. You know, I'm going to
build my empire in Russia. I'm going to kick down
the rotten door. And that means Boris has to get
off the neutrality tyrope. He's got to call it. Is
it going to be Germany or is it going to
be the USSA?
Speaker 9 (20:00):
And the crunch point came when Hitler decided he fancied
his chances in Greece. There was only one route, and
that was straight through Bulgaria. Boris now had to pick
a side.
Speaker 18 (20:13):
Look at the map. The Germans need to get to Greece, okay,
to shore up the Italians. How are they going to
get there. They've got to put boots on the ground,
and they've got to go through Bulgaria. Better they go
through as friends than his enemies. We know what happens
if your Germany's enemy.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
We already know that.
Speaker 18 (20:26):
By nineteen forty.
Speaker 9 (20:27):
One, Bulgarian historian George bos Duganov spells out the stark
choice facing King Boris.
Speaker 5 (20:35):
The journals have only one question, frank or four.
Speaker 11 (20:40):
They don't care what Bulgarian king is thinking about at all, right,
frent or four.
Speaker 9 (20:47):
So Boris had two options, resist Hitler, knowing that he'd
invade anyway and accept the consequences of that would be brutal,
or give in and save all that blood shed. His daughter,
Princess Maria Louisa is certain he made the right choice.
Speaker 15 (21:07):
Had we opposed Germany, there would have been nothing left.
Speaker 5 (21:10):
As they did to.
Speaker 15 (21:11):
Other countries in Europe, run us over kill everybody. So
there was no choice, absolutely no choice, absolutely no choice.
Speaker 9 (21:24):
So to protect his country, King Boris chose Germany. He
signed a pact with Germany, Italy and Japan in March
nineteen forty one, and from that moment on Boris was
a marked man. Overnight he became an enemy of the Allies.
(21:47):
Oh right, here we go at the Q Archives in London.
The first batch of the documents we called up has arrived.
There's a whole bunch of declassified telegrams and letters from
George Rendall to the Foreign Office marked secret. Rendell was
the British ambassador to Sofia during the war. He seemed
(22:09):
to get on well with Boris, but when the King
signed that pack with Hitler, Rendall was furious. He freaked out.
He felt the King did have a choice about throwing
in his lot with Hitler, and now that the Nazis
were walking the streets of Sofia, Rendell was panicking. He
was stuck in enemy territory and he wanted to go home.
(22:29):
He demanded permission to break off all ties with Bulgaria immediately.
In one particular document, He's pretty dramatic.
Speaker 16 (22:39):
Bulgaria had not only been able to prevent the Burgle
of Mendering, but had opened the window to him and
beckoned him in.
Speaker 9 (22:47):
A few days later, the British embassy in Sofia was
closed and Rendall left the country for good. The Allies
certainly gave Boris the cold shoulder, but whether he liked
it or not, the newfound friendship with Germany meant the
King would get plenty of FaceTime with Hitler, and at
(23:09):
first glance, the King seemed very happy to hang out
with the Fura and his henchmen. Boris would sometimes go
hunting and shooting with them. He spoke perfect German. Of course,
remember his father Ferdinand was German, and whenever the King
met Hitler it was all big smiles and handshakes and
(23:31):
slaps on the back, a real bromance. Or was it.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
Only on film footage? They are friends only in film footage.
Speaker 9 (23:42):
So if they didn't share a friendship, did they share
an ideology?
Speaker 5 (23:46):
He's very clever in the blomacy.
Speaker 9 (23:49):
Now, George Bosduganov isn't just a historian, He's Bulgaria's leading historian.
He's unbelievably learned. Now. I've done my best. I've digested
all the books out there on King Boris and the
Second World War. But it's fair to say that I'm
not quite as up to speed as mister bos Duganov
(24:10):
on the MINUTII of Balkan history. And I get the
impression that sometimes frustrates him, like when he grits his
teeth and asks for a time out.
Speaker 5 (24:24):
A little brick of course.
Speaker 9 (24:27):
Yes, Luckily, my producer EJ's on hand to back me up.
I can always rely on her, so if I can,
just I'm not recording me yet. The cory's fine. I
thought we were on a break.
Speaker 6 (24:42):
No, we're not on a break.
Speaker 9 (24:43):
Now are you ready to go? Now where eventually we
all get on the same page. No, yeah, no, no, no,
what do you mean now?
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Right?
Speaker 5 (25:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (25:01):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (25:02):
Uh uh.
Speaker 9 (25:06):
Finally I get to ask my question. Was he a Nazi?
Speaker 11 (25:14):
No?
Speaker 5 (25:15):
Never, not at all. He has never been a Nazi fan.
Speaker 9 (25:21):
Never did he make that clear to Hitler.
Speaker 11 (25:24):
Boris would be afraid to make this very clear to
Hitler because of the Hitler's power. Everybody in the world
was afraid by Hitler in this true British true of course.
Speaker 9 (25:39):
So this alliance between Hitler and Boris was because.
Speaker 5 (25:43):
Have not choice, really absolutely have no choice.
Speaker 9 (25:47):
But Hitler hoped the King was on side with the
whole Nazi project. Boris walked the walk, and he walked
it well.
Speaker 18 (25:55):
He wasn't intimidated by the fury, He wasn't intimidated by Hitler.
He is more police experienced in many levels than Hitler is.
But he is an incredible political operator. So I mean
kind of, I mean sly, Hitler says. Hitler says of Boris,
he had never met a politician as intelligent and shrewd.
Speaker 9 (26:15):
Now that's interesting because I've read that Hitler's nickname for
Boris was the Fox not foxy like his father Ferdinand,
but the fox, which suggests to me that he had
Boris's number and Hitler was right to be suspicious. King
Simeon is sure his father joined the Axis the alliance
(26:36):
with Germany only through political expediency, not because he shared
Nazi values.
Speaker 14 (26:44):
I think he distrusted Hitler deeply, with Good's reason, so
to join the Axis was not any love of Hitler
or because our families of German origin. But this is
what happens in these extreme situations in Wardam.
Speaker 9 (27:07):
And according to Simeon, Boris's nickname for Hitler was the
big dirty swine? Did Hitler know that? What we do know,
of course, is that Hitler always took revenge on those
who displeased him. Colonel Hamish de Breton Gordon is our
expert on chemical weapons like nerve agents. He tells me
(27:29):
that by the time Boris died in the summer of
nineteen forty three, Hitler had a whole pharmaceutical empire of
poisons at his fingertips.
Speaker 16 (27:39):
We do know the Nazis developed nerve agents, starting off
with Sonning called Soman, then Tavern and then Saren, which
you know the Syrian Regimus use recently in Syria. Now,
the sad thing to say is actually they are morbidly
brilliant weapons, and if you had no morals or scruple,
(28:00):
you'd use them all the time.
Speaker 9 (28:02):
I think we'd be hard pushed to find anyone who
could defend Hitler's morals and scruples. So nerve agents do
seem to fit the bill.
Speaker 16 (28:10):
If it's the Germans who see most slightly, it'd probably
be something out of their chemical warfare factory.
Speaker 9 (28:17):
So if it's nineteen forty three and you want to
kill a head of state and you have access to
a whole stock of sophisticated synthetic weapons, why wouldn't you
use them, especially if you thought you could get away
with it.
Speaker 16 (28:31):
The idea behind using deadly toxins and chemicals is actually
they're very difficult to attribute. There's a lot of uncertainty,
there's a lot of deniability. So if it was the
Nazi s kill Boris but didn't want to be directly
fingered by it, because actually they were supposed to be allies,
they were supposed to be working together. If you don't
(28:54):
want to be found out, then certainly some eyes is
that you would use a toxin that would do that.
Speaker 9 (29:00):
Yeah, they were certainly supposed to be allies who were
supposed to be working together. But the problem is, it
turns out Boris just kept on refusing to play by
the rules. After Boris canceled the deportation of the Jews
in March nineteen forty three and sent those trains away,
(29:22):
Hitler ordered Boris to Germany to have a little chat,
or rather, he gave him a stiff talking to. Hitler
insisted all Bulgaria's Jews must now be rounded up and
sent to Poland by the autumn. So Boris did something
quite extraordinary, something that might well have cost him his life.
(29:46):
He pretended to be on the same page as Hitler
when it came to the Jews. Basically, he gas lit him.
Speaker 19 (29:55):
The King said, I'm dying to send one per send
them away.
Speaker 5 (30:00):
I don't like these people.
Speaker 9 (30:02):
But then the King told Hitler unfortunately he couldn't send
the Jews away as they were otherwise engaged in forced labor.
Speaker 19 (30:12):
The King said, but I need them for building roads
and railroads.
Speaker 6 (30:17):
And that was the biggest bluff of the.
Speaker 5 (30:19):
Second World War.
Speaker 9 (30:23):
Boris's bluff saved Michael Barzoha's family Michael is a writer
and former politician who now lives in Israel. Forgive the
audio quality, but zoom was the only way I could
get to speak to him, and he's certainly worth speaking to.
He was just a young boy in Bulgaria when the
King invented his fictitious road building scheme. Every able bodied
(30:47):
Jewish Man in Michael's town was to be sent to
camps in the countryside, away from the prying eyes of
the Nazis, out of harm's way.
Speaker 6 (30:56):
I think Boris told them, now, we are going to
mobilize all the able jews men to labor camps, and
by doing that, we are going to prevent the sending
of the Jews to.
Speaker 9 (31:13):
Bolt And the King's scheme worked.
Speaker 10 (31:17):
And indeed they mobilized the Jews to the labor camps.
My father was one of them.
Speaker 9 (31:24):
According to Michael, his father's life in the camp was
not exactly arduous. He often played cards and socialized with
his Bulgarian guards. Now this was hardly a holiday. These
men had been forced to leave their homes and families
behind and their livelihoods completely uproot themselves. Not easy, but
(31:50):
it was still a far cry from a Nazi concentration camp.
Speaker 6 (31:56):
I have pictures with the camp drinking together, singing together, and.
Speaker 10 (32:01):
It was unbelievable because they did not work very hard
for these camps.
Speaker 6 (32:07):
They didn't build any railroads. I think Boris was played
here a very very subtle game.
Speaker 5 (32:12):
He bluffed.
Speaker 6 (32:14):
He was a very wily man.
Speaker 9 (32:17):
Now, nobody likes to be made a fool of. And
we know that Hitler clocked what Boris was up to
because his henchmen visited the camps and reported back. So
in May nineteen forty three, the deportation trains destined for
Poland were prepared again. All that was needed was Boris's signature,
(32:38):
if only someone could find him. It was a public
holiday in Bulgaria. As usual, crowds flocked to the city
center to see the king waving on the palace balcony.
But Boris didn't show for three whole days. He went missing,
(33:00):
and all the while the train drivers were waiting for
their orders. In fact, the Butterfly King had holed himself
away in his beloved mountains, and a few years ago
Michael Barzoha tracked down the man who helped him disappear.
Speaker 6 (33:18):
I found the driver.
Speaker 5 (33:20):
He was a simple man.
Speaker 9 (33:23):
The chauffeur told Michael that the King didn't leave his
mountain hut for three days, and while he was hiding inside,
Boris confessed his worries to him and his valet.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
He told them, I'm very much afraid that I might
get a phone call from Berlin to carry out a
certain operation. And I know very well if I get
this phone call, I can't refuse. So I decided to
be for a few days in Communicado to be unreachable.
Speaker 9 (33:58):
And just in case that wasn't clear. Michael saying that
the king deliberately cut himself off so that he couldn't
receive orders from Hitler about deporting Bulgaria's Jews on the trains,
and without the King's signature and say so, no one
had the authority to load those trains. When Boris came back,
(34:20):
he quickly evacuated all the remaining Jews to the countryside.
The elderly, the women and children, including Michael, were all
sent away out of reach of the Gestapo who were
billeted in the capitol. How many Jewish people from mainland
Bulgaria were deported two camps, concentration camps, death camps in Poland,
(34:46):
not even one, not one.
Speaker 6 (34:52):
No one, of course not there was not one Bulgarian
Jew was reported.
Speaker 9 (35:00):
Forgive the skeptical journalist in me, but I need to
check that fact myself, because it is pretty incredible. Bulgaria's
pre eminent historian, George Bosdaganov, always has the facts and
figures at his fingertips.
Speaker 11 (35:18):
Not a single Jews Bolgarian on foreigner a living in
the kingdom was killed or departed from the country to
the Nazi camps.
Speaker 5 (35:30):
Neither one, no one, no, not.
Speaker 9 (35:35):
One, And for George, that makes Boris a legend.
Speaker 11 (35:42):
King Boris third Bulgarian National Hero of twenty century.
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Speaker 9 (39:07):
It's extraordinary, such an incredible act of resistance, especially when
you remember Bulgaria was an official ally of Nazi Germany
and that the Gestapo walked the Bulgarian streets. Of course,
not everyone tells these stories in quite the same way,
(39:27):
because the definition of a hero is never universal. It's
very very personal, and as we'll hear in the next episode,
every hero is someone else's villain. But you can bet
Hitler wasn't rushing to congratulate Boris. Quite the opposite. Although
(39:48):
since Boris had gone so far off message, why bother
with subterfuge? I mean, why didn't the Nazis just cut
their losses and shoot him?
Speaker 16 (40:00):
There would be no no plausible defense. I mean, there's
not much plausible defense anyway, But I think that's the point.
Speaker 9 (40:07):
Our weapons expert, Colonel Hamish to Breton Gordon thinks assassination
with a nerve agent is about much more than deniability.
It's also about scaring the living daylights out of everybody
around the king.
Speaker 16 (40:22):
These weapons are incredibly effective because of their psychological impact.
So half the message, or probably more than half the
message in these assassinations is to other people, you know,
trying to tell anybody else who wanted to oppose the regime,
you know, would get the same thing, and it's it's
incredibly effective at doing that.
Speaker 9 (40:44):
Anyone who witnessed Boris's awful and prolonged death would have
felt distinctly uncomfortable, especially if the word poison was whispered
in the sick room. But how could Hitler have administered
the poison without Boris noticing? Remember that plane that Boris
(41:04):
took to meet Hitler for the last time, the one
that took him right into the Wolf's Lair, Hitler's top
secret base in Poland. It's also the one little Simeon
was so excited to see when it landed back in Sofia.
Here's some key evidence. It wasn't a Royal jet, it
wasn't even Bulgarian. It was a German plane, and it
(41:26):
belonged to Hitler. I've read a few history books which
mention the following story. On the way home from the
Wolf's lair. The king was subdued, but after a moment
he left his seat and went into the cockpit. You'll
remember how keen he was on all things mechanical, and
(41:47):
he asked the pilot if the plane could climb a
little higher to see if the altitude would affect his
ears the way it did when he went climbing in
the mountains. The pilot read, and that's when the oxygen
masks were handed out. So what if that's how Hitler
(42:08):
did it, substituting oxygen for some sort of poisonous gas
in Boris's mask.
Speaker 16 (42:16):
Actually, if it was a nerve agent he breathed it in,
it would probably kill him pretty quickly.
Speaker 13 (42:22):
Well.
Speaker 9 (42:22):
Boris died fourteen days after he returned from that meeting
with Hitler. Could it have been a delayed reaction to
sign my gas?
Speaker 16 (42:29):
For instance, if you breathe stuff in, it's going straight
to your lungs, your lungs straight to your bloodstream, your
bloodstream straight to your heart. So if they wanted a
delayed reaction, they would probably want a dermal ingestion, in
other words, through the skin. If it was a nerve
agent on an oxygen mask type of thing, then that
(42:51):
scenario I would think would be less likely with the
outcome that we know happened.
Speaker 9 (42:57):
But here's something I learned from Simeon and Maria Louisa
are two living links to these events. Boris's sister Eudoxia
told them that she was sure the Nazis burned his lungs.
So Boris's children carefully examined this theory.
Speaker 14 (43:17):
My aunt herself, she thought that it was the oxygen
mask that my father used on his way back. But
apparently in those days there was no poison which would
work with six days delay. So there we explode another story.
Speaker 15 (43:35):
You know, it's it's a myths because in those days
they put oxygen masks to everybody on the plane, you know,
so the other people should have, you know, had the same.
Speaker 9 (43:45):
In fact, Maria Louisa tracked down the German pilot many
years after the war. He promised her that poisoning via
an oxygen mask would have been impossible because his allegiance
was clearly to the Bulgarian king rather than to Hitler.
He claimed he'd never have let those pigs, as he
called the Distapo, anywhere near the plane, let alone the cockpit.
(44:11):
But a strange detail about that plane journey raises further questions.
According to the pilot's account, Boris himself became wary when
the oxygen masks came out, and he insisted on swapping
his own mask with the pilots. That seems odd, to
say the least. Did he suspect Hitler was trying to
(44:33):
kill him, because, according to accounts from advisers, when the
King arrived home, he didn't rush to see his family
as he usually did. He went to see a close
friend who was a former chief of cabinet, and he
told that friend that he'd had a terrible meeting with Hitler,
which he knew would cost him dearly. I saved Bulgaria,
(44:54):
he said, even if I will pay for it, which
of course he did with his life. Colonel Hamish has
his own theory.
Speaker 16 (45:04):
Maybe they thought Boris was an annoyance and wasn't helping things,
and if they killed him, actually others in the Bulgarian
higher command and raw family might be more sympathetic towards
the cause.
Speaker 9 (45:18):
You see, Boris hadn't just duped Hitler over the Jews,
he'd also conned him over the war. Hitler was desperate
for support on the Eastern Front, where the Germans were
fighting a losing battle with Russia, and Hitler wanted that
backup from the Bulgarian army. But Boris had made a
(45:41):
promise when he first ascended the throne. He promised he'd
never send another Bulgarian soldier to war.
Speaker 11 (45:48):
He refused absolutely, He refused to send troops on the
Russian Front or any other front.
Speaker 9 (45:56):
Not only that. In fact, historians George was gone off
and Tessa Dunlop say Boris was doing far more dangerous
things and refusing to hand over his army. King Boris
was actively trying to swap sides.
Speaker 18 (46:13):
He already is having conversations back channels, exist conversations about
possibly getting clear blue water from the Nazis.
Speaker 9 (46:23):
Did he try? Did he try to?
Speaker 5 (46:25):
Ches he try? Yes, he tried.
Speaker 11 (46:27):
In the spring of nineteen forty three, a Sir Boris
began talks with Americans in Switzerland for complete withdrawal of
Bulgaria from the war, which he was unable to complete
due to his sudden death.
Speaker 9 (46:45):
So Boris was having secret meetings with the US.
Speaker 19 (46:49):
If it have got he's learned about it. He had
to stop it. And the way to stop it was one,
because nobody else that the keep wasn't shaping the foreign policy.
Speaker 9 (47:04):
As writer Michael bar Zohar knows, Hitler almost certainly did
get wind of those talks. The Nazis had spies everywhere,
which is probably why that final meeting between Boris and
Hitler was so brutal. It's August nineteen forty three, and
we're back in the Wolf's Lair for eight whole hours.
(47:26):
The fewer rages at the Bulgarian King, and according to
eavesdroppers listening outside the door at the Wolf's Lair, Hitler
goes absolutely crazy. You don't need to speak German to
understand this friendship is floundering. But Boris speaks perfect German,
(47:48):
which means he's on his own in that room, with
not even an interpreter to take the sting out of
Hitler's words. It's rumored things got so heated that Hitler
even swung a punch. But Boris won't give an inch.
He won't send Bulgarian soldiers to fight Russia on the
Eastern Front. He won't send Bulgarian Jews to the death camps.
(48:12):
As far as Hitler was concerned, that wasn't the deal
that wasn't the deal at all, and Hitler feels betrayed.
And no one likes feeling they've been taken for a ride.
But Adolf Hitler has been taken for a ride. So
when his royal guest leaves, Hitler doesn't bother to wave
him off yet. This is the final goodbye. Boris doesn't
(48:37):
know it yet, but he has barely two weeks left
to live, right little corner there. Let's sit down back
at the National Archives in London. We've had some more luck.
(48:57):
Actually it could be a big breakthrough. The librarians have
pointed us towards the Churchill Archive Center in Cambridge. They've
just emailed us a very interesting document. Remember how the
king lay dying surrounded by scores of doctors and specialists.
This is apparently written by some library society or historical society,
(49:19):
ten years after Boris had died. Okay, and you know
those doctors who were there. It says here the latter
appeared to have been of opinion that it was no
natural death. No natural death. Yeah. And then it says
here a little bit further down, according to private pronouncements
(49:43):
of the official physician of the court, the cause of
death was subsequently ascertained as a strange poison of Asiatic origin. Well,
we've not had that before, have we? Asiatic? I mean,
that's crazy. And there's even more salient information in the pamphlet,
(50:06):
something which makes my blood go cold. They right here
that that particular poison paralyzes the muscular system of the
heart and shows symptoms resembling sort of heart attack, cardiac
areas or whatever. And because it looks like that, it
could obviously be mistaken for that, you know, I mean
(50:28):
I've never heard of that. I mean, what does it mean?
Speaker 17 (50:30):
I know, what's Asiatic poison?
Speaker 9 (50:32):
Asiatic? Bulgaria's next to Turkey.
Speaker 17 (50:36):
Yeah, he's half in Asia.
Speaker 9 (50:39):
But how do they know it was Asiatic?
Speaker 17 (50:42):
Hang on that. That's really important because that means they
must have found a trace of it and examined it. Yeah,
I mean, everything else we've just read said he was poison.
But if they're saying it's a specific poison to Asia,
I think really onto something there.
Speaker 9 (51:02):
Seriously, I do think this leads it is a lead. Yeah,
let's just wind back a minute, back to the summer
of nineteen forty three. A few days after his highly
stressful meeting Boris took his family for a breather in
the mountains. It was the school holidays, so the days
(51:24):
seemed long and carefree. On the Monday, though, Boris told
his family he had to leave them and return to
Sofia for work. What he didn't tell his wife or
his children was that he was feeling ill. But Boris
had already told his brother that his heart was thumping
and that he felt nauseous. It was a few more
(51:47):
days before his children found out, and at first they
weren't told the full story.
Speaker 14 (51:52):
My sister and I drew some painting. I think I
drew a little plain or something with my sister some flowers,
and we sent some mount and flowers to him, but
not suspecting or knowing that he was so gravely ill.
And then on Saturday he passed away.
Speaker 15 (52:12):
We were told he was quite ill. Then my mother
of course went down to be there. And then on
the Saturday afternoon we were out in the country in
the mountains, and when we came back, the radio was
not working. The nanny said, of course, he had pulled
the black and then we told that Papa was very
(52:40):
very ill, so, you know, very ill. We should maybe
go to Sofia, and then my father's sister, my Auntie Dosa,
came and she was dressed in black, and she said it,
and I still didn't believe it. So we drove into
Sofia and I saw black flags hanging in front of
(53:03):
the buildings, and then you know, I knew it.
Speaker 9 (53:10):
Six year old Simeon couldn't get his head around what
had happened until his father's right hand man or aide
de comte, approached him.
Speaker 14 (53:21):
My father's ADC came up to me and he addressed
me as your majesty, not your highness, as was the usual.
And that's when I suddenly realized, My god, I mean,
he's addressing me like the king. I e my father
(53:42):
has passed away.
Speaker 9 (53:48):
I'm more and more convinced that Hitler was behind King
Boris's death. And as I've told you, that was Aunt
eudoxy as hunch too. She always blamed the Nazis for
murdering her brother. Could Hitler have paid someone to administer
poison asiatic poison? What about one of the doctors or
(54:10):
nurses who were treating King Boris? What do we actually
know about those doctors? There were sixteen doctors in that
sick room. Thirteen of them signed the death certificate, but
three didn't.
Speaker 11 (54:25):
They are consultos that they are well known and will
established names with internationally.
Speaker 9 (54:32):
All so surely we can identify these doctors if they
enjoy worldwide acclaim.
Speaker 11 (54:38):
First that they are not Bogais, No, they're German doctors.
Speaker 9 (54:45):
And that's when King Simeon drops a bombshell, aren't you Doxia,
who always suspected the Nazis killed her brother, left Simeon
and Maria Louisa a very special letter penned by her
own hand, to be read only after her own death.
Speaker 14 (55:03):
It's about twenty pages and hand written, and she left
it in an envelope in Germany when she died in
eighty five, with a huge sort of with a marker
on the envelope to be given to Simon and Mary
Louise after my death, and there of course her all
(55:24):
her first hand impressions.
Speaker 9 (55:28):
Aren't you doxyre places a distinct question mark over one
of the doctors who attended Boris in his final hours.
Speaker 14 (55:36):
She was sort of pointing or saying that this doctor's
sites Rudel Sides, who came from Berlin, was I mean
there was something suspicious about him.
Speaker 9 (55:53):
And that wasn't just one German doctor, but three at
the bedside of the king.
Speaker 4 (55:57):
Well.
Speaker 9 (55:58):
One was Austrian but a known not sympathizer. Three of
them tending to King Boris, who's just betrayed the German
Fura Adolf Hitler motive means and opportunity accept.
Speaker 18 (56:14):
People like you journalists in excavating the archives. Put two
and two together and make the wonderful five that is Nazis.
But lame it all on the Nazis. It's not always
all the Nazis fault.
Speaker 9 (56:28):
Have I let my imagination run away with me? Historian
Tessa Dunlops certainly thinks I'm jumping to conclusions.
Speaker 18 (56:36):
I commend you, Becky for having swallowed holess Bolus so
much of what's been written about this. But you are
seeing what you want to see. You're looking around the
room and you're only seeing Swashtikas.
Speaker 9 (56:47):
Am I just framing the most obvious suspect in the lineup?
Speaker 18 (56:50):
Why would you take out the one man who might
not have gone as far as you wanted him to go,
but has remained consistently loyal in his support. I would
suggest that was even madder than Hitler was by nineteen
forty three.
Speaker 9 (57:03):
From a historical perspective, I know that Hitler needed all
the friends he could get at this point in the war,
So I accept that logically it doesn't make sense to
murder your ally. But that's exactly my point. Why does
there have to be logic where Hitler's concerned? He was insane?
But the Palace doesn't seem to be backing my theory either.
(57:25):
Perhaps I'm being oversensitive, or are King Simeon and Maria
Luisa giving me a gentle ticking off.
Speaker 14 (57:33):
One thing disturbs me terribly is when I see people
being not objective.
Speaker 5 (57:38):
I like objectivity.
Speaker 14 (57:40):
All these things, as I say, are simply theories or
hypothesis or just fantasy. But there's nothing rational.
Speaker 5 (57:48):
I have no proof.
Speaker 15 (57:50):
I'm convinced wasn't it wasn't a charm.
Speaker 9 (58:01):
Next time on the Butterfly King, we delve deep into
Asiatic poisons.
Speaker 11 (58:07):
It was some kind of poison from India, probably snake poison.
Speaker 6 (58:12):
That is what he had heard from the doctors.
Speaker 9 (58:16):
We find a new lead as a snake in the
grass rears its ugly head in Asia.
Speaker 16 (58:21):
Tropical Asia has a horrendous snake bite death rate every year.
Speaker 20 (58:26):
The snake venoms are complicated cocktails of different toxins.
Speaker 9 (58:31):
And Boris's squeaky clean image takes a battering as we
hear dark stories about his very controversial legacy.
Speaker 5 (58:41):
It's a story, it's a falsifying history. His hands are
not clean. It's quite a lot of blood.
Speaker 9 (59:07):
The Butterfly King is a production of Blanchard House and
Exactly Right Media, hosted by me Becky Milligan. It's written
and produced by Emma Jane Kirby. Original music is by
Daniel Lloyd Evans, Louis nank Manell, and Toby Mattamong. Sound
(59:28):
design and engineering by Toby Mattamong and Daniel Lloyd Evans.
Artwork by Vanessa Lilac. The Managing producer is a Mika
Schortino Noma. The creative director of Blanchard House is Rosy Pie.
The executive producer and head of content at Blanchard House
(59:48):
is Lawrence Grizzell. For Exactly Right Media, the executive producers
are Karen Kilgareth Georgia Hardstark, and Daniel Kramer, with concer
Shouting producer Kyle Ryan. The Butterfly King is inspired by
the book Hitler and The King by John Hoole Spencer.
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Speaker 9 (02:13):
Goodbye. March nineteen forty three, and Bulgaria suddenly wakes up
to what being an ally of Nazi Germany really means.
A top secret mission has begun to round up thousands
(02:35):
of Bulgarian Jews. They're being taken to Plovdiv, Bulgaria's second
biggest city. Everyone is terrified. From there, the Jews will
be forced onto trains headed for concentration camps in Poland.
But someone has leaked the secret plan and now there's
(02:59):
uproar across the country. Politicians, intellectuals and leaders from the
Orthodox Church are openly protesting. And just as the guards
are about to start loading.
Speaker 6 (03:13):
In the middle of the way.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
That we stopped.
Speaker 9 (03:17):
Michael bar Zoha had Jewish friends who were already on
their way to the rail station and police, you'll free.
The police announce the trains pull away empty. There was
only one explanation. Someone must have signed the order to
(03:39):
let those people go.
Speaker 6 (03:41):
Somebody had to say stop.
Speaker 9 (03:44):
Who was responsible for that?
Speaker 10 (03:45):
Then?
Speaker 9 (03:46):
Who made that happen?
Speaker 5 (03:48):
The head of the country.
Speaker 9 (03:49):
And who was the head of the country down to him,
is it.
Speaker 11 (03:54):
Yeah, yeah, well Boris is cure.
Speaker 9 (03:58):
And if you guess who it was, you can bet
Hitler did too. And we know the furor is unlikely
to shrug off disobedience. Forgive and forget are not words
in his vocabulary. In Hitler's eyes, King Boris has committed
the ultimate crime. King Boris has saved the Jews, is
(04:22):
the culprit and is the motive for Boris's murder. Staring
us right in the face from Blanchard House and exactly right, media,
this is the Butterfly King. I'm Becky Milligan, Chapter two, Lies, Lies, Lies.
(05:28):
It's nineteen ninety four and we're partying in La. It's
Friday night, and it's a big posh dinner, white tablecloths
and candlesticks and some very decent wine. Everyone's doled up,
well they would be. There's royalty present.
Speaker 12 (05:46):
Thank you. It is our honor tonight to welcome no
other than His Majesty Simeon Saxicon.
Speaker 13 (05:54):
All I remember is sitting and having dinner with the
King of Bulgaria.
Speaker 9 (05:59):
That's where I remember.
Speaker 13 (06:00):
I don't remember what he said. I remember him being charming,
absolutely charming, and so you know, I don't know, just
very regal.
Speaker 9 (06:13):
That's Elaine Asa, all the ease years on, and she
still can't believe her luck. The seating plan that evening
put her right next to King Simeon of Bulgaria, Boris's son,
the man I've been chatting to in the Royal Palace
in Sofia, Bulgaria's capital. For Elaine, this night back in
(06:34):
ninety four was a wonderful evening, one she'll never forget.
Speaker 13 (06:39):
Who would not be impressed with a king since I'd
never met a king in my life, so yeah, I
was impressed.
Speaker 9 (06:47):
This wasn't just any old party. It was a very
special award ceremony, and Simeon was there to collect a prize,
but not for himself.
Speaker 12 (06:56):
Remember someone who for so long has been forgotten, Boris,
the third of Bulgaria.
Speaker 9 (07:07):
Simeon was there on behalf of his late father, King Boris.
And this party is actually a Shabbat celebration Shabbad, the
Jewish day of rest. Pretty Much all the guests here
are Jewish, including Elaine Asa. Her husband is Rabbi Haimesa,
(07:28):
and he's organized this whole ceremony.
Speaker 13 (07:30):
I remember just being our struck because it was just
so beautiful.
Speaker 9 (07:35):
The king, who was in partnership with the architect of
the Holocaust, Adolph Hitler, is getting an award from the
La Jewish community. And I'm not the only one who
finds this hard to square, because not everyone in the
La Jewish community was invited to this fancy party, and
(07:56):
if they had been asked, many would have declined because well,
not all of them agreed with Rabbi Haim and Elaine
Asa about King Boris. But let's leave that for a
little later. For now, this is Elaine's view as.
Speaker 13 (08:14):
A historical figure in the story of the saving of
the Jews. He played an important part. Elaine should know
I have proof the King saved my husband.
Speaker 9 (08:27):
Well, I think I can safely say we have a
possible motive here. Any friend of the Jews was by
default an enemy of Hitler's. A bit of a backstory.
Elaine met her husband him at summer camp in the US,
but he was Bulgarian born and bred. Sadly, Hyien passed
away a few years ago, so we only get to
(08:48):
meet him through her. But I get the feeling we
all would have liked to have bumped into Hyaim back
in the day.
Speaker 13 (08:55):
I saw this cute Israeli guide picking corn, you know,
from the waist up. He didn't have anything on, and
I sort of fell in love at that moment.
Speaker 9 (09:05):
I love that. So it was pretty much seeing his body.
Thanks guy.
Speaker 5 (09:10):
Start.
Speaker 9 (09:11):
That was the start, but it was no.
Speaker 13 (09:13):
I have to tell you what really intrigued me our
dating was really his sharing his stories, his life stories.
And I was really so intrigued. I mean well, first
of all, Bulgaria. I didn't even know where it was
on the map. I was seventeen, what did I know.
Speaker 9 (09:30):
After a few more dates and a very long marriage,
Elaine became well versed on Bulgarian history. At rabbinical school,
Hayim wrote his thesis on the Saving of the Bulgarian Jews,
and he spent his life campaigning to get King Boris
the recognition he felt he deserved.
Speaker 13 (09:49):
You know. He spoke about this forever, and he found
a space in telling his story, a space to thank
Boris for what he did.
Speaker 9 (10:00):
Boris's children, King Simeon and Princess Maria Louisa, have heard
many similar testimonies. They're immensely proud their father defied Hitler.
Speaker 14 (10:10):
Bulgarian Jews, many of them that I've come across time
and again say bless your father's soul and this and
that he was behind the fact of not extraditing our
Jewish population to camps in Germany. Orders must have come
from him.
Speaker 15 (10:31):
Wherever I've gone in my ninety years and come across
Bulgarian Jewish people, I've always had the greatest and most
wonderful welcome Papa and all that. They all remember it.
Speaker 9 (10:45):
But it's saving the lives that the Jews cost. Boris
his own. This is an amazing building. It I never
knew it was it. Have you been here before, Yes,
yes I have. I love it to try and find
out my producer EJ. And I are a little closer
(11:08):
to home than you might imagine. I love it.
Speaker 16 (11:11):
What is it?
Speaker 15 (11:11):
Sort of?
Speaker 9 (11:12):
It looks like brutalist architecture. It's like all concrete. This
is the National Archives in southwest London. You're probably thinking
we're a little bit off patch here, maybe about one
and a half thousand miles off patch, and that we
ought to be looking in the Bulgarian National Archives. Yes,
(11:32):
that would be great, except that the Bulgarian archives, well
they've been stolen when the Russians ended their communist occupation
of Bulgaria in nineteen ninety one, they took the National
Archives with them. That means that all those vital records
(11:52):
are still in Russia. And right now, I'm sure you're aware.
Russia isn't really the kind of place where journalists can
just rock up and go digging around for information. But
there's another paper trail we can follow. Until Bulgaria joined
the Pact with Germany in nineteen forty one, Britain had
(12:13):
an embassy in Sofia and most of the paperwork from
that embassy is now declassified. And here at the London Archives,
somewhere among the millions of records and documents. I don't know,
is it all computerized as well? It is.
Speaker 17 (12:30):
It's a bit fiddly, but it's going to take us
some time, I think, But.
Speaker 9 (12:34):
It's worth it.
Speaker 17 (12:35):
It's worth it.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (12:36):
Well, we're reappearing in a couple of weeks, aren't we. Oh wait,
have we got your sleeping dog? This certainly isn't going
to be easy. I bet lots of people can't be
bothered to come here.
Speaker 15 (12:46):
Actually a look, well.
Speaker 9 (12:47):
I had to drag you obviously, Obviously I've never bothered before,
but not drag exactly, But I do have a confession.
Most of my journalistic scoops have come through talking to people.
I put them at ease and ask the right questions.
Then sometimes without even knowing it, people well they just
(13:09):
tell the truth. But when your murder investigation is nearly
a century old, eyewitnesses are a bit thin on the ground.
So all we have is the paper trail, and that's
really time consuming. If we don't find anything, I'll blame
you for wasting weeks in there. Okay, I can't believe
(13:31):
we'll find anything. Well, I mean, what kind of things
do they having an archived like this?
Speaker 17 (13:36):
I mean, you know documents from the Foreign Office that
have been declassified now that were secret. I'm sure we're
going to find things top secret, I promise you.
Speaker 9 (13:45):
They also have really secret at the top or something
ulter secret. Although King Boris officially died of a heart attack,
even at the time, the rumors were rife that he'd
actually been poisoned. But what was he poisoned with? That's
where I'm hoping the archives will deliver some clues, because
(14:08):
my own experience of poison is rather limited, unless you
count crime fiction. Of course, I've devoured enough Agatha Christie
books to know that arsenic is always on the suspect list,
but that seems unlikely here because by the Second World
War doctors could detect arsenic pretty quickly. Cyanide is another
(14:28):
famous poison, Agatha Christie's favorite. Quite a few Nazis used
it to kill themselves after the war, including Hitler's wife.
That cyanide leaves a distinctive armored smell, and again that
would have been immediately identified. So I'm looking for something
more sophisticated, a chemical weapon, basically something designed in a
(14:52):
laboratory for a targeted killing. I think I need a
briefing from someone whose knowledge extends beyond detective thrillers, someone
who could at least give me some context as I
scan the archives.
Speaker 16 (15:05):
My name's Hemishubrecagordon. My ara of expertise is chemical, biological,
radiological and nuclear terrorism.
Speaker 9 (15:12):
This man knows everything about state of the art toxins.
Colonel Hamish's ex British Army. He's served in Iraq and Afghanistan,
has worked all over Syria and is currently advising the
Ukrainian government. He's an expert on the history and use
of chemical weapons.
Speaker 16 (15:31):
After the First World War, chemical weapons developed into much
more deadly weapons called nerve agents, which basically destroy your nerves. Now,
Hitler had a vast stock of nerve agents, and he
developed them nerve agents.
Speaker 9 (15:46):
But before I get too carried away with this, Boris
was in agony. His organs were failing, and crucially, his
heart shut down. Do nerve agents affect the heart?
Speaker 16 (15:57):
These nerve agents do impact your nerve nerves, and your
heart is probably the first thing to break down. So
some sort of nerve agent would seem vaguely to fit
the bill of some of the symptoms that you'll mention.
If it was the Germans, who seemed to be the
most likely, I would have thought it's something out of
their chemical weapon portfolio.
Speaker 9 (16:18):
This is significant information. I now have a motive and
a potential means. I just need the archives to give
me some proof that the king somehow fell foul of
a nerve agent.
Speaker 17 (16:31):
Keywords Boris, King, Boris, Boris.
Speaker 9 (16:36):
Do they have to be an order to do? There's
just a keywords king. You have to do plus or
minus or whatever? King, Bulgaria, Bulgaria and World War Two? Right, enter, Oh,
good grief?
Speaker 17 (16:49):
Quite a few, Oh.
Speaker 9 (16:51):
Great, While we're waiting for those documents to arrive. Let's
just wind back a few years. I want to examine
how Hitler and King Boris became allies, because on the
face of it, they certainly don't look like natural bedfellows.
(17:15):
Boris hadn't banked on being in Hitler's camp at all.
As war brewed, he spent months traveling around the European
capitals trying to negotiate a peaceful way out. He knocked
on pretty much every leader's door because Boris knew Bulgaria
was ill prepared for conflict under the ill fated leadership
(17:37):
of his father, Foxy King Ferdinand. It had suffered a
brutal defeat in the First World War. It lost huge
tracts of territory as a result, including Macedonia and the
area known as Thrace. And more than that, says historian
Tessa Dunlop, it lost its army.
Speaker 18 (17:57):
Remember, Boris didn't start rearming until about nineteen thirty five.
It wasn't allowed to. Bulgari had been totally dearmed. So
this is a dude who's got basically a country without
a protective shell. He has no real soldiers. Why on
earth would he want to go to War.
Speaker 9 (18:12):
Boris was a seasoned soldier, but he was terribly marked
by the brutal conflicts he'd fought in both Balkan Wars
in nineteen twelve and nineteen thirteen, and then the First
World War. When he became king aged twenty four, he
swore he would never allow Bulgarian blood to be spilled again,
(18:33):
which was why at the start of the Second World
War he declared Bulgaria was neutral. But the war spread
like wildfire.
Speaker 18 (18:42):
Little Bulgaria was in the middle of a giant world
feed and there's no way on Earth it couldn't get
sucked up into the drama.
Speaker 9 (18:53):
Now, this next bit of history is crucial to understanding
who might have killed the king and whether it might
have been hit I'll explain as clearly as I can.
Here's what forced Bulgaria to stop being neutral and put
its slap bang into Hitler's camp. So Germany and Russia
(19:13):
were allies at the start of the war. That suited
Boris just fine. Germany was Bulgaria's biggest economic partner, and
the Soviets had rescued Bulgaria from Turkish occupation only fifty
years back, so the Bulgarians felt an affinity with the Russians.
It was all just about manageable until the summer of
(19:34):
nineteen forty one, when Hitler tore up his non aggression
packed with Russia.
Speaker 18 (19:41):
The problem is when Hitler has this idea that actually, nah,
I'm going to head east. You know, I'm going to
build my empire in Russia. I'm going to kick down
the rotten door. And that means Boris has to get
off the neutrality tyrope. He's got to call it. Is
it going to be Germany or is it going to
be the USSA?
Speaker 9 (20:00):
And the crunch point came when Hitler decided he fancied
his chances in Greece. There was only one route, and
that was straight through Bulgaria. Boris now had to pick
a side.
Speaker 18 (20:13):
Look at the map. The Germans need to get to Greece, okay,
to shore up the Italians. How are they going to
get there. They've got to put boots on the ground,
and they've got to go through Bulgaria. Better they go
through as friends than his enemies. We know what happens
if your Germany's enemy.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
We already know that.
Speaker 18 (20:26):
By nineteen forty.
Speaker 9 (20:27):
One, Bulgarian historian George bos Duganov spells out the stark
choice facing King Boris.
Speaker 5 (20:35):
The journals have only one question, frank or four.
Speaker 11 (20:40):
They don't care what Bulgarian king is thinking about at all, right,
frent or four.
Speaker 9 (20:47):
So Boris had two options, resist Hitler, knowing that he'd
invade anyway and accept the consequences of that would be brutal,
or give in and save all that blood shed. His daughter,
Princess Maria Louisa is certain he made the right choice.
Speaker 15 (21:07):
Had we opposed Germany, there would have been nothing left.
Speaker 5 (21:10):
As they did to.
Speaker 15 (21:11):
Other countries in Europe, run us over kill everybody. So
there was no choice, absolutely no choice, absolutely no choice.
Speaker 9 (21:24):
So to protect his country, King Boris chose Germany. He
signed a pact with Germany, Italy and Japan in March
nineteen forty one, and from that moment on Boris was
a marked man. Overnight he became an enemy of the Allies.
(21:47):
Oh right, here we go at the Q Archives in London.
The first batch of the documents we called up has arrived.
There's a whole bunch of declassified telegrams and letters from
George Rendall to the Foreign Office marked secret. Rendell was
the British ambassador to Sofia during the war. He seemed
(22:09):
to get on well with Boris, but when the King
signed that pack with Hitler, Rendall was furious. He freaked out.
He felt the King did have a choice about throwing
in his lot with Hitler, and now that the Nazis
were walking the streets of Sofia, Rendell was panicking. He
was stuck in enemy territory and he wanted to go home.
(22:29):
He demanded permission to break off all ties with Bulgaria immediately.
In one particular document, He's pretty dramatic.
Speaker 16 (22:39):
Bulgaria had not only been able to prevent the Burgle
of Mendering, but had opened the window to him and
beckoned him in.
Speaker 9 (22:47):
A few days later, the British embassy in Sofia was
closed and Rendall left the country for good. The Allies
certainly gave Boris the cold shoulder, but whether he liked
it or not, the newfound friendship with Germany meant the
King would get plenty of FaceTime with Hitler, and at
(23:09):
first glance, the King seemed very happy to hang out
with the Fura and his henchmen. Boris would sometimes go
hunting and shooting with them. He spoke perfect German. Of course,
remember his father Ferdinand was German, and whenever the King
met Hitler it was all big smiles and handshakes and
(23:31):
slaps on the back, a real bromance. Or was it.
Speaker 5 (23:37):
Only on film footage? They are friends only in film footage.
Speaker 9 (23:42):
So if they didn't share a friendship, did they share
an ideology?
Speaker 5 (23:46):
He's very clever in the blomacy.
Speaker 9 (23:49):
Now, George Bosduganov isn't just a historian, He's Bulgaria's leading historian.
He's unbelievably learned. Now. I've done my best. I've digested
all the books out there on King Boris and the
Second World War. But it's fair to say that I'm
not quite as up to speed as mister bos Duganov
(24:10):
on the MINUTII of Balkan history. And I get the
impression that sometimes frustrates him, like when he grits his
teeth and asks for a time out.
Speaker 5 (24:24):
A little brick of course.
Speaker 9 (24:27):
Yes, Luckily, my producer EJ's on hand to back me up.
I can always rely on her, so if I can,
just I'm not recording me yet. The cory's fine. I
thought we were on a break.
Speaker 6 (24:42):
No, we're not on a break.
Speaker 9 (24:43):
Now are you ready to go? Now where eventually we
all get on the same page. No, yeah, no, no, no,
what do you mean now?
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Right?
Speaker 5 (25:00):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (25:01):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (25:02):
Uh uh.
Speaker 9 (25:06):
Finally I get to ask my question. Was he a Nazi?
Speaker 11 (25:14):
No?
Speaker 5 (25:15):
Never, not at all. He has never been a Nazi fan.
Speaker 9 (25:21):
Never did he make that clear to Hitler.
Speaker 11 (25:24):
Boris would be afraid to make this very clear to
Hitler because of the Hitler's power. Everybody in the world
was afraid by Hitler in this true British true of course.
Speaker 9 (25:39):
So this alliance between Hitler and Boris was because.
Speaker 5 (25:43):
Have not choice, really absolutely have no choice.
Speaker 9 (25:47):
But Hitler hoped the King was on side with the
whole Nazi project. Boris walked the walk, and he walked
it well.
Speaker 18 (25:55):
He wasn't intimidated by the fury, He wasn't intimidated by Hitler.
He is more police experienced in many levels than Hitler is.
But he is an incredible political operator. So I mean
kind of, I mean sly, Hitler says. Hitler says of Boris,
he had never met a politician as intelligent and shrewd.
Speaker 9 (26:15):
Now that's interesting because I've read that Hitler's nickname for
Boris was the Fox not foxy like his father Ferdinand,
but the fox, which suggests to me that he had
Boris's number and Hitler was right to be suspicious. King
Simeon is sure his father joined the Axis the alliance
(26:36):
with Germany only through political expediency, not because he shared
Nazi values.
Speaker 14 (26:44):
I think he distrusted Hitler deeply, with Good's reason, so
to join the Axis was not any love of Hitler
or because our families of German origin. But this is
what happens in these extreme situations in Wardam.
Speaker 9 (27:07):
And according to Simeon, Boris's nickname for Hitler was the
big dirty swine? Did Hitler know that? What we do know,
of course, is that Hitler always took revenge on those
who displeased him. Colonel Hamish de Breton Gordon is our
expert on chemical weapons like nerve agents. He tells me
(27:29):
that by the time Boris died in the summer of
nineteen forty three, Hitler had a whole pharmaceutical empire of
poisons at his fingertips.
Speaker 16 (27:39):
We do know the Nazis developed nerve agents, starting off
with Sonning called Soman, then Tavern and then Saren, which
you know the Syrian Regimus use recently in Syria. Now,
the sad thing to say is actually they are morbidly
brilliant weapons, and if you had no morals or scruple,
(28:00):
you'd use them all the time.
Speaker 9 (28:02):
I think we'd be hard pushed to find anyone who
could defend Hitler's morals and scruples. So nerve agents do
seem to fit the bill.
Speaker 16 (28:10):
If it's the Germans who see most slightly, it'd probably
be something out of their chemical warfare factory.
Speaker 9 (28:17):
So if it's nineteen forty three and you want to
kill a head of state and you have access to
a whole stock of sophisticated synthetic weapons, why wouldn't you
use them, especially if you thought you could get away
with it.
Speaker 16 (28:31):
The idea behind using deadly toxins and chemicals is actually
they're very difficult to attribute. There's a lot of uncertainty,
there's a lot of deniability. So if it was the
Nazi s kill Boris but didn't want to be directly
fingered by it, because actually they were supposed to be allies,
they were supposed to be working together. If you don't
(28:54):
want to be found out, then certainly some eyes is
that you would use a toxin that would do that.
Speaker 9 (29:00):
Yeah, they were certainly supposed to be allies who were
supposed to be working together. But the problem is, it
turns out Boris just kept on refusing to play by
the rules. After Boris canceled the deportation of the Jews
in March nineteen forty three and sent those trains away,
(29:22):
Hitler ordered Boris to Germany to have a little chat,
or rather, he gave him a stiff talking to. Hitler
insisted all Bulgaria's Jews must now be rounded up and
sent to Poland by the autumn. So Boris did something
quite extraordinary, something that might well have cost him his life.
(29:46):
He pretended to be on the same page as Hitler
when it came to the Jews. Basically, he gas lit him.
Speaker 19 (29:55):
The King said, I'm dying to send one per send
them away.
Speaker 5 (30:00):
I don't like these people.
Speaker 9 (30:02):
But then the King told Hitler unfortunately he couldn't send
the Jews away as they were otherwise engaged in forced labor.
Speaker 19 (30:12):
The King said, but I need them for building roads
and railroads.
Speaker 6 (30:17):
And that was the biggest bluff of the.
Speaker 5 (30:19):
Second World War.
Speaker 9 (30:23):
Boris's bluff saved Michael Barzoha's family Michael is a writer
and former politician who now lives in Israel. Forgive the
audio quality, but zoom was the only way I could
get to speak to him, and he's certainly worth speaking to.
He was just a young boy in Bulgaria when the
King invented his fictitious road building scheme. Every able bodied
(30:47):
Jewish Man in Michael's town was to be sent to
camps in the countryside, away from the prying eyes of
the Nazis, out of harm's way.
Speaker 6 (30:56):
I think Boris told them, now, we are going to
mobilize all the able jews men to labor camps, and
by doing that, we are going to prevent the sending
of the Jews to.
Speaker 9 (31:13):
Bolt And the King's scheme worked.
Speaker 10 (31:17):
And indeed they mobilized the Jews to the labor camps.
My father was one of them.
Speaker 9 (31:24):
According to Michael, his father's life in the camp was
not exactly arduous. He often played cards and socialized with
his Bulgarian guards. Now this was hardly a holiday. These
men had been forced to leave their homes and families
behind and their livelihoods completely uproot themselves. Not easy, but
(31:50):
it was still a far cry from a Nazi concentration camp.
Speaker 6 (31:56):
I have pictures with the camp drinking together, singing together, and.
Speaker 10 (32:01):
It was unbelievable because they did not work very hard
for these camps.
Speaker 6 (32:07):
They didn't build any railroads. I think Boris was played
here a very very subtle game.
Speaker 5 (32:12):
He bluffed.
Speaker 6 (32:14):
He was a very wily man.
Speaker 9 (32:17):
Now, nobody likes to be made a fool of. And
we know that Hitler clocked what Boris was up to
because his henchmen visited the camps and reported back. So
in May nineteen forty three, the deportation trains destined for
Poland were prepared again. All that was needed was Boris's signature,
(32:38):
if only someone could find him. It was a public
holiday in Bulgaria. As usual, crowds flocked to the city
center to see the king waving on the palace balcony.
But Boris didn't show for three whole days. He went missing,
(33:00):
and all the while the train drivers were waiting for
their orders. In fact, the Butterfly King had holed himself
away in his beloved mountains, and a few years ago
Michael Barzoha tracked down the man who helped him disappear.
Speaker 6 (33:18):
I found the driver.
Speaker 5 (33:20):
He was a simple man.
Speaker 9 (33:23):
The chauffeur told Michael that the King didn't leave his
mountain hut for three days, and while he was hiding inside,
Boris confessed his worries to him and his valet.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
He told them, I'm very much afraid that I might
get a phone call from Berlin to carry out a
certain operation. And I know very well if I get
this phone call, I can't refuse. So I decided to
be for a few days in Communicado to be unreachable.
Speaker 9 (33:58):
And just in case that wasn't clear. Michael saying that
the king deliberately cut himself off so that he couldn't
receive orders from Hitler about deporting Bulgaria's Jews on the trains,
and without the King's signature and say so, no one
had the authority to load those trains. When Boris came back,
(34:20):
he quickly evacuated all the remaining Jews to the countryside.
The elderly, the women and children, including Michael, were all
sent away out of reach of the Gestapo who were
billeted in the capitol. How many Jewish people from mainland
Bulgaria were deported two camps, concentration camps, death camps in Poland,
(34:46):
not even one, not one.
Speaker 6 (34:52):
No one, of course not there was not one Bulgarian
Jew was reported.
Speaker 9 (35:00):
Forgive the skeptical journalist in me, but I need to
check that fact myself, because it is pretty incredible. Bulgaria's
pre eminent historian, George Bosdaganov, always has the facts and
figures at his fingertips.
Speaker 11 (35:18):
Not a single Jews Bolgarian on foreigner a living in
the kingdom was killed or departed from the country to
the Nazi camps.
Speaker 5 (35:30):
Neither one, no one, no, not.
Speaker 9 (35:35):
One, And for George, that makes Boris a legend.
Speaker 11 (35:42):
King Boris third Bulgarian National Hero of twenty century.
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Speaker 9 (39:07):
It's extraordinary, such an incredible act of resistance, especially when
you remember Bulgaria was an official ally of Nazi Germany
and that the Gestapo walked the Bulgarian streets. Of course,
not everyone tells these stories in quite the same way,
(39:27):
because the definition of a hero is never universal. It's
very very personal, and as we'll hear in the next episode,
every hero is someone else's villain. But you can bet
Hitler wasn't rushing to congratulate Boris. Quite the opposite. Although
(39:48):
since Boris had gone so far off message, why bother
with subterfuge? I mean, why didn't the Nazis just cut
their losses and shoot him?
Speaker 16 (40:00):
There would be no no plausible defense. I mean, there's
not much plausible defense anyway, But I think that's the point.
Speaker 9 (40:07):
Our weapons expert, Colonel Hamish to Breton Gordon thinks assassination
with a nerve agent is about much more than deniability.
It's also about scaring the living daylights out of everybody
around the king.
Speaker 16 (40:22):
These weapons are incredibly effective because of their psychological impact.
So half the message, or probably more than half the
message in these assassinations is to other people, you know,
trying to tell anybody else who wanted to oppose the regime,
you know, would get the same thing, and it's it's
incredibly effective at doing that.
Speaker 9 (40:44):
Anyone who witnessed Boris's awful and prolonged death would have
felt distinctly uncomfortable, especially if the word poison was whispered
in the sick room. But how could Hitler have administered
the poison without Boris noticing? Remember that plane that Boris
(41:04):
took to meet Hitler for the last time, the one
that took him right into the Wolf's Lair, Hitler's top
secret base in Poland. It's also the one little Simeon
was so excited to see when it landed back in Sofia.
Here's some key evidence. It wasn't a Royal jet, it
wasn't even Bulgarian. It was a German plane, and it
(41:26):
belonged to Hitler. I've read a few history books which
mention the following story. On the way home from the
Wolf's lair. The king was subdued, but after a moment
he left his seat and went into the cockpit. You'll
remember how keen he was on all things mechanical, and
(41:47):
he asked the pilot if the plane could climb a
little higher to see if the altitude would affect his
ears the way it did when he went climbing in
the mountains. The pilot read, and that's when the oxygen
masks were handed out. So what if that's how Hitler
(42:08):
did it, substituting oxygen for some sort of poisonous gas
in Boris's mask.
Speaker 16 (42:16):
Actually, if it was a nerve agent he breathed it in,
it would probably kill him pretty quickly.
Speaker 13 (42:22):
Well.
Speaker 9 (42:22):
Boris died fourteen days after he returned from that meeting
with Hitler. Could it have been a delayed reaction to
sign my gas?
Speaker 16 (42:29):
For instance, if you breathe stuff in, it's going straight
to your lungs, your lungs straight to your bloodstream, your
bloodstream straight to your heart. So if they wanted a
delayed reaction, they would probably want a dermal ingestion, in
other words, through the skin. If it was a nerve
agent on an oxygen mask type of thing, then that
(42:51):
scenario I would think would be less likely with the
outcome that we know happened.
Speaker 9 (42:57):
But here's something I learned from Simeon and Maria Louisa
are two living links to these events. Boris's sister Eudoxia
told them that she was sure the Nazis burned his lungs.
So Boris's children carefully examined this theory.
Speaker 14 (43:17):
My aunt herself, she thought that it was the oxygen
mask that my father used on his way back. But
apparently in those days there was no poison which would
work with six days delay. So there we explode another story.
Speaker 15 (43:35):
You know, it's it's a myths because in those days
they put oxygen masks to everybody on the plane, you know,
so the other people should have, you know, had the same.
Speaker 9 (43:45):
In fact, Maria Louisa tracked down the German pilot many
years after the war. He promised her that poisoning via
an oxygen mask would have been impossible because his allegiance
was clearly to the Bulgarian king rather than to Hitler.
He claimed he'd never have let those pigs, as he
called the Distapo, anywhere near the plane, let alone the cockpit.
(44:11):
But a strange detail about that plane journey raises further questions.
According to the pilot's account, Boris himself became wary when
the oxygen masks came out, and he insisted on swapping
his own mask with the pilots. That seems odd, to
say the least. Did he suspect Hitler was trying to
(44:33):
kill him, because, according to accounts from advisers, when the
King arrived home, he didn't rush to see his family
as he usually did. He went to see a close
friend who was a former chief of cabinet, and he
told that friend that he'd had a terrible meeting with Hitler,
which he knew would cost him dearly. I saved Bulgaria,
(44:54):
he said, even if I will pay for it, which
of course he did with his life. Colonel Hamish has
his own theory.
Speaker 16 (45:04):
Maybe they thought Boris was an annoyance and wasn't helping things,
and if they killed him, actually others in the Bulgarian
higher command and raw family might be more sympathetic towards
the cause.
Speaker 9 (45:18):
You see, Boris hadn't just duped Hitler over the Jews,
he'd also conned him over the war. Hitler was desperate
for support on the Eastern Front, where the Germans were
fighting a losing battle with Russia, and Hitler wanted that
backup from the Bulgarian army. But Boris had made a
(45:41):
promise when he first ascended the throne. He promised he'd
never send another Bulgarian soldier to war.
Speaker 11 (45:48):
He refused absolutely, He refused to send troops on the
Russian Front or any other front.
Speaker 9 (45:56):
Not only that. In fact, historians George was gone off
and Tessa Dunlop say Boris was doing far more dangerous
things and refusing to hand over his army. King Boris
was actively trying to swap sides.
Speaker 18 (46:13):
He already is having conversations back channels, exist conversations about
possibly getting clear blue water from the Nazis.
Speaker 9 (46:23):
Did he try? Did he try to?
Speaker 5 (46:25):
Ches he try? Yes, he tried.
Speaker 11 (46:27):
In the spring of nineteen forty three, a Sir Boris
began talks with Americans in Switzerland for complete withdrawal of
Bulgaria from the war, which he was unable to complete
due to his sudden death.
Speaker 9 (46:45):
So Boris was having secret meetings with the US.
Speaker 19 (46:49):
If it have got he's learned about it. He had
to stop it. And the way to stop it was one,
because nobody else that the keep wasn't shaping the foreign policy.
Speaker 9 (47:04):
As writer Michael bar Zohar knows, Hitler almost certainly did
get wind of those talks. The Nazis had spies everywhere,
which is probably why that final meeting between Boris and
Hitler was so brutal. It's August nineteen forty three, and
we're back in the Wolf's Lair for eight whole hours.
(47:26):
The fewer rages at the Bulgarian King, and according to
eavesdroppers listening outside the door at the Wolf's Lair, Hitler
goes absolutely crazy. You don't need to speak German to
understand this friendship is floundering. But Boris speaks perfect German,
(47:48):
which means he's on his own in that room, with
not even an interpreter to take the sting out of
Hitler's words. It's rumored things got so heated that Hitler
even swung a punch. But Boris won't give an inch.
He won't send Bulgarian soldiers to fight Russia on the
Eastern Front. He won't send Bulgarian Jews to the death camps.
(48:12):
As far as Hitler was concerned, that wasn't the deal
that wasn't the deal at all, and Hitler feels betrayed.
And no one likes feeling they've been taken for a ride.
But Adolf Hitler has been taken for a ride. So
when his royal guest leaves, Hitler doesn't bother to wave
him off yet. This is the final goodbye. Boris doesn't
(48:37):
know it yet, but he has barely two weeks left
to live, right little corner there. Let's sit down back
at the National Archives in London. We've had some more luck.
(48:57):
Actually it could be a big breakthrough. The librarians have
pointed us towards the Churchill Archive Center in Cambridge. They've
just emailed us a very interesting document. Remember how the
king lay dying surrounded by scores of doctors and specialists.
This is apparently written by some library society or historical society,
(49:19):
ten years after Boris had died. Okay, and you know
those doctors who were there. It says here the latter
appeared to have been of opinion that it was no
natural death. No natural death. Yeah. And then it says
here a little bit further down, according to private pronouncements
(49:43):
of the official physician of the court, the cause of
death was subsequently ascertained as a strange poison of Asiatic origin. Well,
we've not had that before, have we? Asiatic? I mean,
that's crazy. And there's even more salient information in the pamphlet,
(50:06):
something which makes my blood go cold. They right here
that that particular poison paralyzes the muscular system of the
heart and shows symptoms resembling sort of heart attack, cardiac
areas or whatever. And because it looks like that, it
could obviously be mistaken for that, you know, I mean
(50:28):
I've never heard of that. I mean, what does it mean?
Speaker 17 (50:30):
I know, what's Asiatic poison?
Speaker 9 (50:32):
Asiatic? Bulgaria's next to Turkey.
Speaker 17 (50:36):
Yeah, he's half in Asia.
Speaker 9 (50:39):
But how do they know it was Asiatic?
Speaker 17 (50:42):
Hang on that. That's really important because that means they
must have found a trace of it and examined it. Yeah,
I mean, everything else we've just read said he was poison.
But if they're saying it's a specific poison to Asia,
I think really onto something there.
Speaker 9 (51:02):
Seriously, I do think this leads it is a lead. Yeah,
let's just wind back a minute, back to the summer
of nineteen forty three. A few days after his highly
stressful meeting Boris took his family for a breather in
the mountains. It was the school holidays, so the days
(51:24):
seemed long and carefree. On the Monday, though, Boris told
his family he had to leave them and return to
Sofia for work. What he didn't tell his wife or
his children was that he was feeling ill. But Boris
had already told his brother that his heart was thumping
and that he felt nauseous. It was a few more
(51:47):
days before his children found out, and at first they
weren't told the full story.
Speaker 14 (51:52):
My sister and I drew some painting. I think I
drew a little plain or something with my sister some flowers,
and we sent some mount and flowers to him, but
not suspecting or knowing that he was so gravely ill.
And then on Saturday he passed away.
Speaker 15 (52:12):
We were told he was quite ill. Then my mother
of course went down to be there. And then on
the Saturday afternoon we were out in the country in
the mountains, and when we came back, the radio was
not working. The nanny said, of course, he had pulled
the black and then we told that Papa was very
(52:40):
very ill, so, you know, very ill. We should maybe
go to Sofia, and then my father's sister, my Auntie Dosa,
came and she was dressed in black, and she said it,
and I still didn't believe it. So we drove into
Sofia and I saw black flags hanging in front of
(53:03):
the buildings, and then you know, I knew it.
Speaker 9 (53:10):
Six year old Simeon couldn't get his head around what
had happened until his father's right hand man or aide
de comte, approached him.
Speaker 14 (53:21):
My father's ADC came up to me and he addressed
me as your majesty, not your highness, as was the usual.
And that's when I suddenly realized, My god, I mean,
he's addressing me like the king. I e my father
(53:42):
has passed away.
Speaker 9 (53:48):
I'm more and more convinced that Hitler was behind King
Boris's death. And as I've told you, that was Aunt
eudoxy as hunch too. She always blamed the Nazis for
murdering her brother. Could Hitler have paid someone to administer
poison asiatic poison? What about one of the doctors or
(54:10):
nurses who were treating King Boris? What do we actually
know about those doctors? There were sixteen doctors in that
sick room. Thirteen of them signed the death certificate, but
three didn't.
Speaker 11 (54:25):
They are consultos that they are well known and will
established names with internationally.
Speaker 9 (54:32):
All so surely we can identify these doctors if they
enjoy worldwide acclaim.
Speaker 11 (54:38):
First that they are not Bogais, No, they're German doctors.
Speaker 9 (54:45):
And that's when King Simeon drops a bombshell, aren't you Doxia,
who always suspected the Nazis killed her brother, left Simeon
and Maria Louisa a very special letter penned by her
own hand, to be read only after her own death.
Speaker 14 (55:03):
It's about twenty pages and hand written, and she left
it in an envelope in Germany when she died in
eighty five, with a huge sort of with a marker
on the envelope to be given to Simon and Mary
Louise after my death, and there of course her all
(55:24):
her first hand impressions.
Speaker 9 (55:28):
Aren't you doxyre places a distinct question mark over one
of the doctors who attended Boris in his final hours.
Speaker 14 (55:36):
She was sort of pointing or saying that this doctor's
sites Rudel Sides, who came from Berlin, was I mean
there was something suspicious about him.
Speaker 9 (55:53):
And that wasn't just one German doctor, but three at
the bedside of the king.
Speaker 4 (55:57):
Well.
Speaker 9 (55:58):
One was Austrian but a known not sympathizer. Three of
them tending to King Boris, who's just betrayed the German
Fura Adolf Hitler motive means and opportunity accept.
Speaker 18 (56:14):
People like you journalists in excavating the archives. Put two
and two together and make the wonderful five that is Nazis.
But lame it all on the Nazis. It's not always
all the Nazis fault.
Speaker 9 (56:28):
Have I let my imagination run away with me? Historian
Tessa Dunlops certainly thinks I'm jumping to conclusions.
Speaker 18 (56:36):
I commend you, Becky for having swallowed holess Bolus so
much of what's been written about this. But you are
seeing what you want to see. You're looking around the
room and you're only seeing Swashtikas.
Speaker 9 (56:47):
Am I just framing the most obvious suspect in the lineup?
Speaker 18 (56:50):
Why would you take out the one man who might
not have gone as far as you wanted him to go,
but has remained consistently loyal in his support. I would
suggest that was even madder than Hitler was by nineteen
forty three.
Speaker 9 (57:03):
From a historical perspective, I know that Hitler needed all
the friends he could get at this point in the war,
So I accept that logically it doesn't make sense to
murder your ally. But that's exactly my point. Why does
there have to be logic where Hitler's concerned? He was insane?
But the Palace doesn't seem to be backing my theory either.
(57:25):
Perhaps I'm being oversensitive, or are King Simeon and Maria
Luisa giving me a gentle ticking off.
Speaker 14 (57:33):
One thing disturbs me terribly is when I see people
being not objective.
Speaker 5 (57:38):
I like objectivity.
Speaker 14 (57:40):
All these things, as I say, are simply theories or
hypothesis or just fantasy. But there's nothing rational.
Speaker 5 (57:48):
I have no proof.
Speaker 15 (57:50):
I'm convinced wasn't it wasn't a charm.
Speaker 9 (58:01):
Next time on the Butterfly King, we delve deep into
Asiatic poisons.
Speaker 11 (58:07):
It was some kind of poison from India, probably snake poison.
Speaker 6 (58:12):
That is what he had heard from the doctors.
Speaker 9 (58:16):
We find a new lead as a snake in the
grass rears its ugly head in Asia.
Speaker 16 (58:21):
Tropical Asia has a horrendous snake bite death rate every year.
Speaker 20 (58:26):
The snake venoms are complicated cocktails of different toxins.
Speaker 9 (58:31):
And Boris's squeaky clean image takes a battering as we
hear dark stories about his very controversial legacy.
Speaker 5 (58:41):
It's a story, it's a falsifying history. His hands are
not clean. It's quite a lot of blood.
Speaker 9 (59:07):
The Butterfly King is a production of Blanchard House and
Exactly Right Media, hosted by me Becky Milligan. It's written
and produced by Emma Jane Kirby. Original music is by
Daniel Lloyd Evans, Louis nank Manell, and Toby Mattamong. Sound
(59:28):
design and engineering by Toby Mattamong and Daniel Lloyd Evans.
Artwork by Vanessa Lilac. The Managing producer is a Mika
Schortino Noma. The creative director of Blanchard House is Rosy Pie.
The executive producer and head of content at Blanchard House
(59:48):
is Lawrence Grizzell. For Exactly Right Media, the executive producers
are Karen Kilgareth Georgia Hardstark, and Daniel Kramer, with concer
Shouting producer Kyle Ryan. The Butterfly King is inspired by
the book Hitler and The King by John Hoole Spencer.
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