title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: Paul lived in London from 1919 to 1924 and only infrequently visited Belgrade. During his time in London, he was the proverbial "life of the party" who enjoyed socialising with the British elite at parties in London or in various country houses. In 1923 he married Princess Olga of Greece and Denmark, a sister of Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent. The Duke of York (the future King George VI), was the best man at his wedding in Belgrade. In January 1924, he returned to Yugoslavia. Paul's cousin, King Alexander, seems to have in mind installing him in some sort of vice-regal position in Zagreb to govern the Croats, but whatever the plans may have been turned out to be moot. Alexander enjoyed Paul's company, finding him to be a witty conversationalist with a "breath of vision" and a "cool intellect". However, the king decided that Paul was too sympathetic towards Croat complaints about the unitary state created by the 1921 constitution, and decided not to give him the position in Zagreb, much to Paul's frustration.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: Through careful never to openly criticise the constitution, Paul sympathised with the Croat demand to turn Yugoslavia into a federation, and felt that many Serb politicians were being unrealistic in expecting that Croat discontent would just dissolve of its own accord if given enough time. Paul found his palace at Dedinje to be gloomy, causing him to relocate to a villa in Slovenia, where he felt more at home, and where he took up his time with his ever expanding art collection and raising his family. Besides for art, Paul's interests were reading, fishing and hunting. Whenever there was a major art show in London, Paris, Munich, Florence, Rome and Vienna, Paul almost invariably was present both to admire the art and purchase paintings for his collection.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: On 9 October 1934 Vlado Chernozemski assassinated Paul's first-cousin, King Alexander I of Yugoslavia, in Marseille in France, and Prince Paul took the regency, as Alexander had stipulated in his Will that on his death a council of regents chaired by Paul should govern until Alexander's son Peter II came of age. Late on the afternoon of 9 October, Paul received a telephone call with the news that king had been assassinated, and that he was to go to the royal palace at once. Alexander had survived two previous assassination attempts, and had hinted that if he should die, that Paul was to serve as regent. Upon arriving at the royal palace, Paul was met by the prime minister, Nikola Uzunović, and the commander of the Royal Guard, General Petar Živković. The three men opened up the safe that contained the royal will whose terms stated that Paul was to serve as the regent until the new king Peter II came of age in September 1941.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: Prince Paul, far more than Alexander, was Yugoslav rather than Serb in outlook, and unlike Alexander, he was inclined much more toward democracy. In its broadest outline, his domestic policy worked to eliminate the heritage of the Alexandrine dictatorship's centralism, censorship, and military control, and to pacify the country by solving the Serb-Croat problem. Paul wanted to achieve a Serb-Croat reconciliation, but also felt for a considerable period of time that he had the duty to hand over the kingdom to Peter more or less unchanged when he reached his maturity, and thus was unwilling to entertain constitutional changes. Trifković wrote that: "By both instinct and personal development, Pavle was averse both to autocratic rule and militarism."


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: As Prince Regent, Paul possessed very broad powers, but he was much less inclined to exercise these powers, leading Yugoslavia in the years 1934–41 to be labelled "a dictatorship without a dictator". Paul had been thrust into a position of power that he did not want by Alexander's assassination (which was why Alexander had chosen him in his will to serve as a regent, knowing he would never try to seize the throne from his son), and throughout his regency he gave the impression that ruling Yugoslavia was a burden to him.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: A French diplomat described Paul as a man whose "incontestable qualities of character, balance, and taste...Oxonian dilettantism and charm, which he exercised on his visitors, were useless in the present circumstances and in a country where arguments of might are the only ones which count". British historian D. C. Watt noted that Paul's "nerves tended to betray him under stress and that he was by nature inclined to yield to pressure rather than withstand it". Married to a Greek princess and intensely Anglophile and Hellenophile, Paul distrusted Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: The heavy losses taken by Serbia in World War I made Paul very averse to engaging in another war and led him to favoring neutralist policies despite Yugoslavia's alliance with France. During the First World War, Serbia had proportionally taken the heaviest losses; one out of five Serbs who were alive in 1914 were dead by 1918. The French police investigation of King Alexander's assassination had established firm evidence that the assassins had been armed by the governments of Italy and Hungary, which was shared with Yugoslavia. Furthermore, the forged Czechoslovak passports that had allowed the assassins to travel to France had come from Hungary, and the assassins had telephoned Ante Pavelić, who was living in Rome at the time. However, the French premier Pierre Laval-who was seeking an alliance with Italy-made it very clear to Paul that France would not support Yugoslavia if it chose to make an issue of Italian involvement in the assassination of the king, saying that the most Yugoslavia could do was to blame Hungary. The way that the French were prepared to disregard Yugoslav concerns about the regicide for the sake of better relations with Italy soured Paul on the French alliance.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: On 24 June 1935, Paul appointed Milan Stojadinović Prime Minister with a mandate to deal with the Great Depression and find a solution to the "Croat question". Stojadinović believed that the solution to the Great Depression were closer economic ties with Germany, which had more people than what it could feed and lacked many of the raw materials necessary for a modern industrial economy. As Germany needed both food and raw materials such as iron, bauxite, copper and manganese, Yugoslav exports of both agricultural products and of minerals to the "Reich" bloomed from 1935 onward, leading to an economic revival and to placing Yugoslavia in the German economic sphere of influence.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: Yugoslavia had signed a treaty of alliance with France in 1927, while the Rhineland was still occupied by France, and during Franco-Yugoslav staff talks, it was promised that France would take the offensive into western Germany if Germany should start another war. As long as the Rhineland remained a demilitarized zone, there was always the possibility of the French launching an offensive into western Germany, which reassured Yugoslavia. The American historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote that the demilitarized status of the Rhineland the Treaty of Versailles had imposed was "the single most important guarantee of peace in Europe" for as long as the Rhineland was demilitarized, it was impossible for Germany to attack any of France's allies in Eastern Europe without exposing itself to the risk of a devastating French offensive into western Germany.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: The remilitarization of the Rhineland on 7 March 1936 meant that Germany started building the West Wall along its border with France, which ended any hope of a French offensive into western Germany. On 15–20 June 1936, the chiefs of staff of the Little Entente (Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia) met in Bucharest to discuss their plans now that the Rhineland was re-militarized. The gloomy conclusion of the Bucharest meeting was that France was not a factor in Eastern Europe, and henceforward there were only two great powers in Eastern Europe, namely the Soviet Union and Germany, and the victory of either in another war would mean the end of their independence.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: Despite his pro-British and pro-French feelings, Paul believed in the aftermath of the remilitarization of the Rhineland that Yugoslavia needed to tilt its foreign policy towards Germany. Likewise, the Hoare–Laval Pact of 1935 and British attempts to improve Anglo-Italian relations such as the "Gentlemen's Agreement" of 1937 and the Easter Accords of 1938 caused Paul to believe the British were willing to sacrifice Yugoslavia for the sake of better relations with Italy. Stojadinović, who openly admired Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, made a major diplomatic push with the tacit support of the Prince Regent for better relations with the fascist states in the winter of 1936-37.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: Without informing France, Czechoslovakia or Romania, Stojadinović signed an agreement with Italy on 25 March 1937 that badly weakened the Little Entente. Just before Stojadinović had signed the treaty, Paul let the British minister in Belgrade, Ronald Campbell, know of what was being planned. Paul seems to have believed that if Yugoslavia was seen as falling within the Italian sphere of influence, that might prompt a British response to pull Yugoslavia in the other direction. The agreements with Italy very much alarmed the French who sent out Marshal Maurice Gamelin to visit Belgrade in September 1937, followed by the Foreign Minister Yvon Delbos in December 1937, who in both cases sought reassurances that Yugoslavia was not abandoning its alliance with France. Stojadinović's foreign policies were unpopular, at least with the Serbs. When President Edvard Beneš of Czechoslovakia visited Belgrade, he was greeted by enthusiastic crowds cheering him, which was seen as a sign that public opinion was still attached to the traditional alliances. Stojadinović, supported by Paul, believed that an Anglo-German rapprochement was the best way to save the peace, accepting that an international order established by the Treaty of Versailles was doomed, and that the best way of saving the peace would be to make concessions to the "Reich" without letting Germany dominate Europe too much. At a Little Entente summit at King Carol II's summer residence at Sinaia in August 1937, Paul and Stojadinović pressed Beneš to end Czechoslovakia's alliance with the Soviet Union, complaining it upset the Germans too much. At the same time, Yugoslav diplomats tried to effect a German-Czechoslovak rapprochement, telling the Germans that Beneš had only signed the alliance with the Soviet Union out of fear, and suggested that if the Germans stopped making threats against Czechoslovakia, then perhaps Beneš could be persuaded to abrogate the alliance. Through Paul had supported Stojadinović up to this point, in about late 1937 he started to express concern about the prime minister who spoke of having Yugoslavia join the Axis powers as he felt that Stojadinović was alienating Yugoslavia's traditional allies too much.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: During the Sudetenland crisis, Stojadinović leaned in a pro-Axis position while Campbell reported that much of the Yugoslav officer corps sympathized with Yugoslavia's ally Czechoslovakia, and implied that a coup d'etat was possible if Stojadinović declared neutrality. Terrance Shone, the first secretary at the British legation in Belgrade reported that Serbian public opinion was very pro-Czechoslovak and expected Yugoslavia to go to war if its ally were attacked. Paul was described as being relieved by the Munich Agreement, which ended the possibility of a war that would had placed his country in a dilemma.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: In January 1939, Stojadinović had told the Italian Foreign Minister Count Galeazzo Ciano of his wish to turn his Yugoslav Radical Union into the only legal party, saying he wanted to establish a fascist dictatorship that carries out a pro-Italian foreign policy "to find a balanced situation and security within the framework of the Axis". Stojadinović and Ciano discussed the possibility of dividing up Albania, a plan immediately vetoed by Paul who complained that in his opinion Yugoslavia already had too many Albanians (whose loyalty to Yugoslavia was questionable) and adding more would be unhelpful. At the same time, the Croat deputies in the "skupshtina" (parliament) called on foreign powers to intervene to give the Croats "liberty of choice and destiny", accusing Stojadinović of being a tyrant.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: On 4 February 1939, Paul dismissed Stojadinović as prime minister and at that point the Yugoslav tilt towards the Axis was stopped. After dismissing Stojadinović, Paul rejected an Italian appeal to support the Italian annexation of Albania. On 15 March 1939, Germany occupied the Czech half of the rump state of Czecho-Slovakia (as Czechoslovakia had been renamed in October 1938), turning it into the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The fact that despite the way that Emil Hácha and the rest of the leaders of Czecho-Slovakia had endeavored to carry out a slavishly pro-German foreign policy, nonetheless saw the "Reich" extinguish its independence came as a considerable shock to Paul.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: Later, when the Italians annexed Albania on Easter weekend 1939, Paul declined to make a protest, which severely strained relations with Yugoslavia's Balkan Pact ally Turkey, which protested most vehemently against the annexation of a Muslim-majority nation with which the Turks had historically close ties. The Italian annexation of Albania led to Italy controlling both sides of the Strait of Otranto, and thus allowed the Italians to cut Yugoslavia off from access to the rest of the world. On 12 May 1939, Britain and Turkey issued a joint declaration promising "to ensure the establishment of security in the Balkans". As Paul was about to make a state visit to Italy, he found the statement from the Turkish ambassador in Belgrade suggesting that Yugoslavia work with Turkey in the spirit of the Anglo-Turkish declaration to resist any further Italian advances in the Balkans very poorly timed and made it clear that he wanted nothing to do with the Turkish proposal.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: Paul backed a plan floated by Turkish Foreign Minister Şükrü Saracoğlu for Bulgaria to join the Balkan Pact and, in a letter, urged King Carol II of Romania to cede part of the Dobruja region as the price of Bulgaria joining the Balkan Pact. In his letter, Paul stressed the importance of stopping Italy from invaded more Balkan nations, which required getting the Bulgarians out of the Italian sphere of influence (King Boris III of Bulgaria was married to the daughter of King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy). He wrote that he wanted the Bulgarians "off my back" to allow the Yugoslavs and Greeks to focus on countering the Italians, who were now building up their forces in their new colony of Albania. Unlike the Hungarians, whom Paul felt would never abandon their claims against Yugoslavia, the Bulgarians were felt to be more tractable.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: After Germany and Italy, Hungary was the nation that Paul worried about the most as he noted that Danube river valley ran down from the Hungarian plain straight to Belgrade. At the same time, Yugoslavia began staff talks with Greece with the aim of resisting an Italian invasion of either nation. A major problem for Yugoslavia was the lack of modern weapons together with the money to pay for them. Watt wrote that "Paul's tactics were aimed at winning credits and securing arms deliveries wherever he could, in Berlin, Paris or London". After talking to Raymond Brugère, the French minister in Belgrade, the latter promised the prince regent that he would fly to Paris personally to lobby for Yugoslavia.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: On 29 June 1939, it was that announced that the Bank Seligmann of Paris was going to make a loan of 600 million francs to Yugoslavia that was to be spent on weapons for the Yugoslav military. The Germans had broken the Yugoslav diplomatic codes and were well aware of Paul's attempts to play off the Axis powers against the Allied powers to secure the best deal for Yugoslavia; Paul's salvation in 1939 rested with the fact that Germany was about to invade Poland and needed raw materials from Yugoslavia like bauxite and copper to keep the German armaments industry going. After Hitler had the decision to launch "Fall Weiss" (Case White), the invasion of Poland, the "Reich" wanted two things from Yugoslavia, namely an agreement to supply Germany with all the necessary raw materials and that Yugoslavia not only refuse to join the British-inspired "peace front", but also formally align its diplomacy with the Axis powers.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: In 1939, Prince Paul, as acting head of state, accepted an official invitation from Adolf Hitler and spent nine days in Berlin. During his visit to Berlin, a massive effort was made to persuade Paul to not join the "peace front" that was meant to "contain" Germany. Paul was greeted by Hitler at the train station in Berlin, was made the guest of honor at a reception and dinner at the Reich Chancellery, visited the Potsdam military base, saw a gala performance of Wagner at the Berlin opera, and reviewed two major military parades meant to impress upon him the power of the "Reich". For the first part of his trip, Paul stayed at Bellevue Palace, an old imperial palace and then for the last three days, at Goring's estate at Carinhall. Despite all the pomp, Paul during his visit to Germany repeatedly refused the demands made by his hosts to sign an economic agreement that would have turned Yugoslavia into a German economic colony or some overt pro-Axis gesture like pulling Yugoslavia out of the League of Nations and signing the Anti-Comintern Pact. The German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop called Paul a "log" (a German slang term meaning somebody who is very stupid) while Hitler was very angry that despite all the lavish hospitality the only concession Paul made was to slightly readjust the exchange rate between the "Reichsmark" and the Dinar. In return for readjusting the exchange rate, Paul forced the Germans to finally deliver some of the aircraft that Yugoslavia had paid for in advance in 1938, but the Germans kept finding excuses not to deliver. During his visit to Berlin, Paul repeatedly refused to have Yugoslavia leave the League of Nations and sign the Anti-Comintern Pact.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: While he was in Germany, Paul dispatched General Petar Pešić on a secret mission to Paris and London to find out what were the Anglo-French plans in the event of a war. Pešić told Lord Gort of the British General Staff and French Marshal Maurice Gamelin that Yugoslavia would declare neutrality if Germany invaded Poland but would be willing to enter the war for the Allieds the moment that the Mediterranean Sea and the Adriatic Sea came under Allied operational control. Pešić argued that from the Allied viewpoint that Yugoslav neutrality could be advantageous in the sense that Yugoslavia at present could not stop the German Wehrmacht from occupying the country if Hitler so desired, which would allow the Germans to exploit all of the crucial raw materials of Yugoslavia, but if Yugoslavia remained neutral and entered the war when the Allies could support it, then raw materials would be permanently denied to the Germans.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: Pešić found that the French, who preferred that fighting take place in anywhere but France, were far more interested in having Yugoslavia enter the conflict if the Danzig Crisis led to a war than were the British. From Gamelin, he learned the French were already planning on having the Army of the Levant commanded by Maxime Weygand land at Thessaloniki to march up the Balkans to link up with the Yugoslavs and the Romanians to aid the Poles. In May 1939, Yugoslavia changed its diplomatic codes, which stopped both the Italians and Germans from reading the Yugoslav codes. The same month, when Romanian Foreign Minister Grigore Gafencu visited Belgrade, Paul spoke to him of his wish for both Yugoslavia and Romania to have closer ties with Britain.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: Despite repeated pressure from both the German and Italian ministers in Belgrade, Paul refused their demand for Yugoslavia to leave the League of Nations as a symbolic move to show that Yugoslavia was now associated with the Axis states. As Germany and Japan had both left the League of Nations in 1933 while Italy had left the League in 1937, the Axis powers always attached immense symbolic importance to having other nations leaving the League as showing diplomatic alignment with them.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: In June 1939, Paul warned the American ambassador to Yugoslavia that the "Forschungsamt" (research office – German cryptanalytic intelligence agency) was reading all of the diplomatic cables going into and out of Belgrade, including the American ones, and the ambassador should be careful what information he cabled back to Washington, DC. On 15 July 1939, Paul left Belgrade to visit London with a stop over in Paris to see Pešić.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: From Pešić, Paul learned that he had the impression that on one hand, the French were keen to start a second front in the Balkans in the event of war while on the other hand that the French Navy would play only a defensive role, guarding convoys from Algeria to France. In London, Paul advocated that Britain launch a "preemptive war" against Italy, saying that if Italy were knocked out, then Yugoslavia would definitely move closer to Britain. Paul ordered that the Yugoslav National Bank's gold reserves be transferred to London as a sign of his faith in Britain.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: He told his British hosts that Yugoslavia was not ready to join the "peace front" yet but was moving in that direction. Paul also told Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax that Paul would use his influence with the more hesitant Balkan Pact nations, Romania and Greece, to try to bring them into the "peace front". During the same visit, he was installed as a Knight of the Garter, the most important British order of chivalry, by King George VI, which greatly offended Hitler, who complained that Paul's heart was with the British. During his talks with Lord Halifax in London, Paul received elusive replies to his demands for a British "preemptive war" against Italy as Paul contended that as long as the "Regia Marina" existed, there was always the possibility of Yugoslavia being cut off from Britain and France. Both Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Lord Halifax regarded Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini as the more moderate and reasonable of the fascist leaders and that, despite signing the Pact of Steel in May, he might still be "peeled off" from his alliance with Germany. Paul's fears of the "Regia Marina" were confirmed in June 1940 when Italy entered the war and caused the British to start supplying Egypt via the long way around Africa on the Cape of Good Hope route as the danger of Italian air and naval attacks made crossing the central Mediterranean too dangerous, the only exception being supply convoys for Malta.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: Fearful of being cut off, Paul advocated to Halifax that if Britain ended up declaring war on Germany as a result of the latter invading Poland, then Britain should immediately launch air and naval attacks to destroy the "Regia Marina" and the "Regia Aeronautica" regardless if Italy was neutral or not. It was Paul's belief that even if Mussolini declared neutrality at first, he would inevitably that he would come into the war on Germany's side at some point. Paul very much wanted an Anglo-French landing at the Greek city of Thessaloniki in the event of war, as he believed that to be the only way that Yugoslavia could resist a German invasion. Paul also expressed his hope that the British would include the Soviet Union the proposed "peace front" as the best way of deterring Germany from invading Poland. While Paul was visiting London, Yugoslav Finance Minister Vojin Đuričić was in Paris and signed there on 14 July an agreement with Prime Minister Édouard Daladier for France to sell Yugoslavia anti-aircraft guns, trucks, howitzers, anti-tank guns, machine guns, tanks and tank transporters.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: As the Danzig Crisis pushed Europe to the brink of war, Vladko Maček of the Croatian Peasant Party became convinced of the necessity of "throwing a bridge across the abyss which separated Serb from Croat". Paul supported Prime Minister Dragiša Cvetković's efforts to reach an understanding with Maček, despite his wish to hand over Yugoslavia unchanged to King Peter when he reached his majority, since Paul felt that an end to the Serb-Croat dispute was the best way to allow Yugoslavia to survive the coming storm. On 20 August 1939, the Cvetković-Maček Agreement set up the Banovina of Croatia to be ruled by a "ban" (governor) responsible to the king and a "sabor" (parliament) in Zagreb. The central government retained control of the monarchy, foreign affairs, national defence, foreign trade, commerce, transport, public security, religion, mining, weights and measures, insurance and education policy, but Croatia was to have its own legislature in Zagreb with a separate budget. The "sporazum" (agreement) granted broad autonomy to Croatia, and partitioned Bosnia and Herzegovina as the government agreed to Maček's demand for all of the Croats in Yugoslavia to live under the authority of the Croatian "banovina". The "sporazum" was popular with moderate Croat opinion, but it was extremely unpopular with the Bosnian Muslims, who objected to the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Likewise, Serbs was outraged by that the "sporazum" had "abandoned" the "prečani" Serbs in Bosnia and the "Krajina" region to Croat rule. The charge that Paul and Cvetković had "sold out" to the Croats with the "sporazum" made them unpopular with the Serbs, and if it did not cause the coup d'état of 26 March 1941, it certainly was an essential prerequisite for the coup. Finally, the Slovenes demanded for a similar degree of autonomy to be granted to them.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: On 26 August 1939, as the Danzig Crisis moved towards its climax, Paul, in a letter to Lord Halifax, once again urged that Britain launch a "preemptive war" against Italy if Germany invaded Poland. Paul warned if Germany conquered Poland, Italy would sooner or later enter the war, and if that happened, the Italian forces in Albania with support from Bulgaria would be used to threaten the other Balkan states. Paul concluded in that case "a rot throughout the Balkans" would follow as the other Balkan states together with Turkey would turn towards Germany to protect them from Italy. Sir Ronald Campbell, the British minister in Belgrade, in a cable to Lord Halifax wrote that Paul was "in the last stages of despair". Halifax wrote on the margin on Paul's letter that he was suffering from manic-depression again. Brugère, who very much liked Paul, proved more sympathetic and, in a dispatch to Paris, urged for France to land a force at Thessaloniki if Germany invaded Poland. The French proved supportive of the idea of landing at Thessaloniki, but Allied strategy was determined by an Inter-Allied War Council, and the British were stoutly opposed to the French plans for a "second front" in the Balkans. The news of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact was an especially bitter blow for Paul, as it ensured that the two strongest powers in Eastern Europe would be working together, and it ended the regent's hopes of an Anglo-French alliance, which might finally rid Yugoslavia of the constant Italian efforts to undermine national unity.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: When the Second World War broke out in September 1939 by the German invasion of Poland, Yugoslavia declared its neutrality. During the Phoney War, Paul arranged for Yugoslavia to step up deliveries of copper to Germany in exchanges for promises that Germany would finally deliver arms that Yugoslavia had paid for in advance but for which Germany kept finding excuses not to deliver. Germany also wanted for Yugoslavia to refuse to join the British-inspired "peace front" and even for it to formally align its diplomacy with the Axis powers. In his sympathies, Paul preferred for France and Britain to win the war, but he was markedly afraid of the Wehrmacht. Paul repeatedly pressed for a revival of the Salonika Front strategy of First World War by arguing that if French and British forces landed at Thessaloniki, which would place them in a position to aid Yugoslavia, he might lean more towards the Allies. During the Phoney War, a popular if erroneous rumour in Croatia that Paul was planning to enter the war on the Allied side and send Croat regiments to man the Maginot Line in France increased support for Croat separatism.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: Such was Paul's desperation for a counterbalance to Germany that he even turned towards the Soviet Union. Vasily Strandtman, the Russian chargé d'affaires at the legation in Belgrade in 1914, finally closed the legation in October 1939 under strong pressure from the Yugoslav government. In May 1940, an economic agreement was signed with the Soviet Union, and in June 1940, Yugoslavia finally established diplomatic relations with Moscow, being one of the last European states to recognize the Soviet Union. In December 1940 and again in March 1941, Paul attempted to have Yugoslavia buy modern military equipment from the Soviet Union.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: On 4 March 1941, Paul met with Adolf Hitler at the Berghof high up in the Bavarian Alps. Hitler told Paul that he already decided to invade Greece and in exchange for the Wehrmacht being granted transit rights through Yugoslavia was willing to assign Thessaloniki to Yugoslavia after the expected conquest of Greece. Paul refused the offer and said that as his wife was Greek, he could not permit Yugoslavia to be used as a base for aggression against Greece. Paul also admitted that his sympathies were with Britain and stated to sign the Tripartite Pact would lead to his overthrow. General Franz Halder, the chief of the Germany Army Staff who attended the meeting, wrote in his diary: "No positive results. No intention to join the Tripartite Pact". On 6 March 1941, Paul called a meeting of the Yugoslav Crown Council at which Pešić stated his opinion as a soldier that the Royal Yugoslav Army could not stop a German invasion, and the best that could be hoped for was to hold out for six weeks in the mountains of Bosnia. The next day, Yugoslav Foreign Minister Aleksandar Cincar-Marković approached Victor von Heeren, the German minister in Belgrade, and said that Yugoslavia was willing to sign the Tripartite Pact if no transit rights allowing the Wehrmacht to invade Greece from Yugoslavia were granted and said that Paul could not in good conscience allow Yugoslavia to be used as a base for war against his wife's homeland.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: On 25 March 1941, the Yugoslav government signed the Axis Tripartite Pact with significant reservations, as three notes were appended. The first note obliged the Axis powers to respect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Yugoslavia. In the second note, the Axis powers promised not to ask Yugoslavia for any military assistance, and in the third note, they promised not to ask permission to move military forces across Yugoslav territory during the war. Nonetheless, the signing of the pact did not sit well with several elements of the Royal Yugoslav Army. On 27 March 1941, two days after Yugoslavia had signed the Tripartite Pact, Yugoslav military figures with British support forcibly removed Paul from power and declared King Peter II of age. German and Italian forces invaded the country ten days later.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: For the remainder of the war, Prince Paul was kept, with his family, under house arrest by the British in Kenya. Paul and his family arrived at Oserian, the former home of Lord Erroll on the shores of Lake Naivasha on 28 April 1941. The Oserian was in a state of disrepair as the earl had been murdered earlier in 1941 and Princess Olga called it "a complete nightmare". Paul and his family were under house arrest, being forbidden to leave grounds of the Oserian. The British newspapers vilified Paul by depicting him as a Nazi sympathizer despite his Anglophile tendencies.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: His sister-in-law, the Duchess of Kent, and her husband, the Duke of Kent, appealed to Winston Churchill in the hope of allowing Paul and his wife, Princess Olga, to take refuge in Britain. However, Churchill rejected the request in no uncertain manner since he viewed Paul as a traitor and war criminal. After the Duke of Kent's death in 1942, Churchill relented to King George's insistence and allowed Olga to fly to London to comfort her sister but without her husband, who had been extremely close to the late Duke. One of Paul's old friends, the South African Prime Minister, Jan Smuts, lobbied Churchill to release Paul, who was finally freed in 1944 and was allowed to settle in Johannesburg. Smuts granted Paul and his family asylum. Smuts lost the 1948 South African general election to D. F. Malan of the National Party, which was less sympathetic towards Paul being in South Africa.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: Paul lived in South Africa until 1949, when he moved to Paris. Paul always spent his summers at his villa in Tuscany, the Villa Demidoff, where his neighbor was his old friend, the wealthy American art historian and art dealer, Bernard Berenson. Berenson had long maintained his home at his Tuscan villa, "I Tatti". As Berenson was one of the richest and most influential figures in the art world, Paul was able to continue with adding to his art collection. The British art historian John Pope-Hennessy, who once had lunch with Berenson and Paul, wrote: "I found Princess Olga’s guttural manner rather disconcerting, but Prince Paul I liked from the beginning".


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: The postwar Communist authorities in Yugoslavia had Prince Paul proclaimed an enemy of the state, barred him from ever returning to Yugoslavia and confiscated all of his property in Yugoslavia. He died in Paris on 14 September 1976, aged 83 and was buried at the Bois-de-Vaux Cemetery in Switzerland.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: Princess Elizabeth, his only daughter, obtained information from the British Special Operations Executive files in the Foreign Office in London and published them in Belgrade in the 1990 edition of the Serbian-language biography of her father. The original book, "Paul of Yugoslavia: Britain's Maligned Friend", was written by Neil Balfour, the first being published by Eaglet Publishing in London in 1980.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: Prince Paul was rehabilitated by the Serbian courts in 2011 and on 6 October 2012 was reburied at the family crypt of Oplenac, near Topola in central Serbia, together with his wife Olga and son Nikola. Prince Paul was the father of Princess Elizabeth, Prince Alexander, and Prince Nikola, and was the grandfather of the American author Christina Oxenberg and American actress Catherine Oxenberg.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: In 1967, the diaries of the Conservative MP Henry "Chips" Channon were published but were heavily censored, as homosexuality was still illegal in Britain, and many of the people named in the diaries were still alive, which exposed the publishers to the risk of libel suits. In February 2021, the first part of the uncensored version of Channon's diaries were published, which caused a stir as Channon wrote of having homosexual relations with numerous well-known men (among them the playwright Terence Rattigan), and it was strongly implied that Paul had been Channon's lover.


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: The Serbian historian Srdja Trifković wrote that Paul a tragic figure: "Prince Pavle of Yugoslavia is a figure both unique and uniquely tragic in modern Serbian history. His was the story of a perennial outsider; a sophisticated art-lover thrust into the murky world of Balkan politics; an incorrigible Anglophile forced into unsavory deals with England's enemies; a gentleman in a world of perfidious rogues. Always at pains to square the demands of personal integrity with those of the 'art of the possible', he was ultimately unloved in Belgrade, mistrusted in Berlin and scorned in London."


title: Prince Paul of Yugoslavia

text: Prince Paul, together with King Alexander I of Yugoslavia, collected, donated and dedicated a large number of art works to Serbia and the Serbian people, including foreign masterpieces. There are especially significant Italian, French and Dutch/Flemish pieces. Most of the works are in the National Museum of Serbia, including work by artists such as Rubens, Renoir, Monet, Titian, Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin.


title: Rolfing

text: Rolfing () is a form of alternative medicine originally developed by Ida Rolf (1896–1979) as Structural Integration.


title: Rolfing

text: Rolfing is marketed with unproven claims of various health benefits. It is based on Rolf's ideas about how the human body's "energy field" can benefit when aligned with the Earth's gravitational field.


title: Rolfing

text: Rolfing is typically delivered as a series of ten hands-on physical manipulation sessions sometimes called "the recipe". Practitioners combine superficial and deep manual therapy with movement prompts. The process is sometimes painful. The safety of Rolfing has not been confirmed.


title: Rolfing

text: The principles of Rolfing contradict established medical knowledge, and there is no good evidence Rolfing is effective for the treatment of any health condition. It is recognized as a pseudoscience and has been characterized as quackery.


title: Rolfing

text: Science writer Edzard Ernst offers this definition: "Rolfing is a system of bodywork invented by Ida Pauline Rolf (1896–1979) employing deep manipulation of the body's soft tissue allegedly to realign and balance the body's myofascial structures."


title: Rolfing

text: Rolfing is based on the unproven belief that such alignment results in improved movement, breathing, pain reduction, stress reduction, and even emotional changes.


title: Rolfing

text: Rolf described the body as organized around an axis perpendicular to the earth, pulled downward by gravity, and she believed the function of the body was optimal when it was aligned with that pull. In her view, gravity tends to shorten fascia, leading to disorder of the body's arrangement around its axis and creating imbalance, inefficiency in movement, and pain. Rolfers aim to lengthen the fascia in order to restore the body's arrangement around its axis and facilitate improved movement. Rolf also discussed this in terms of "energy" and said:


title: Rolfing

text: Rolfers make a life study of relating bodies and their fields to the earth and its gravity field, and we so organize the body that the gravity field can reinforce the body's energy field. This is our primary concept.


title: Rolfing

text: The manipulation is sometimes referred to as a type of bodywork, or as a type of massage. Some osteopaths were influenced by Rolf, and some of her students became teachers of massage, including one of the founders of myofascial release.


title: Rolfing

text: Rolf claimed to have found an association between emotions and the soft tissue, writing "although rolfing is not primarily a psychotherapeutic approach to the problems of humans", it does constitute an "approach to the personality through the myofascial collagen components of the physical body". She claimed Rolfing could balance the mental and emotional aspects of subjects, and that "the amazing psychological changes that appeared in Rolfed individuals were completely unexpected". Rolfers suggest their manipulations can cause the release of painful repressed memories. Rolfers also hold that by manipulating the body they can bring about changes in personality; for example, teaching somebody to walk with confidence will make them a more confident person. The connection between physical structure and psychology has not been proven by scientific studies.


title: Rolfing

text: Rolfers posit that they manipulate the body's fascial layers. Rolfing also uses a combination of active and passive movement retraining.


title: Rolfing

text: Rolfing is typically performed in a progression of 10 sessions, sometimes called "the recipe". The first three sessions of the protocol focus on superficial tissues, the next four focus on deeper tissues and specifically the pelvis, and the final sessions address the whole body.


title: Rolfing

text: A session typically lasts between 60 and 90 minutes. The recipient wears undergarments. Positions for the work include lying on a table, sitting, and standing.


title: Rolfing

text: Rolfing treatments are sometimes painful. For adults, there may be moments of intense sensation during a treatment or soreness afterward. However, the technique can be done gently enough for children and the elderly. Rolf believed fascia tightens as a protective mechanism, and therefore thought an aggressive approach could be counter-productive.


title: Rolfing

text: Because of its dependence on vitalistic concepts and its unevidenced propositions about the connection between physical manipulation and psychology, Rolfing is classified as a pseudoscience, and its practice has been characterized as quackery.


title: Rolfing

text: Writing for "Science-Based Medicine", lawyer Jann Bellamy writes that in the United States of America the public is inadequately protected from bodywork practices such as Rolfing because of the lack of independent oversight; instead regulation is carried out within a "closed loop" system by such bodies as the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork. In 2015 the Australian Government's Department of Health published a review of 17 alternative therapies, including Rolfing, which concluded no clear evidence of effectiveness was found. Accordingly, in 2017, the Australian government named Rolfing as a practice that would not qualify for insurance subsidy, to ensure the best use of insurance funds. Proponents of Rolfing claim it can be used to alleviate pain. However, Rolfing's focus on appropriate "alignment" of structures of the body does not reflect modern science about pain.


title: Rolfing

text: The American Cancer Society says the deep soft tissue manipulations such as those used in Rolfing are a concern if practiced on people with cancer near tumor sites.


title: Rolfing

text: In 2010 "The New York Times" reported that Rolfing was enjoying a "resurgence" following an endorsement from Mehmet Oz on "The Oprah Winfrey Show".


title: Rolfing

text: Ida Rolf began working on clients in New York City in the 1940s with the premise that the human structure could be organized "in relation to gravity". She developed structural integration with one of her sons and by the 1950s she was teaching her work across the United States. In the mid-1960s she began teaching at Esalen Institute, where she gathered a loyal following of students and practitioners. Esalen was the epicenter of the Human Potential Movement, allowing Rolf to exchange ideas with many of their leaders, including Fritz Perls. Rolf incorporated a number of ideas from other areas including osteopathic manipulation, cranial osteopathy, hatha yoga, and the general semantics of Alfred Korzybski. In 1971 she founded the Rolf Institute of Structural Integration. The school has been based in Boulder, Colorado, since 1972, and as of 2010 included five institutes worldwide.


title: Rolfing

text: Since Rolf's death, the field of Structural Integration has branched into various schools. Of these schools, the Rolf Institute is the only one with the use of the trademarked terms "Rolfing" and "Certified Rolfer". Other programs of Structural Integration certify "Practitioners of the Rolf Method of Structural Integration" including the Guild for Structural Integration, Hellerwork Structural Integration, Aston Patterning, SOMA, KMI, and a dozen other Structural Integration programs. A professional membership organization exists called the International Association of Structural Integration, which has certified practitioners by exam since 2007.


title: Rolfing

text: Internationally, some countries have a Board of Health that regulates bodywork while others don't. Four Canadian provinces require licensure for bodywork practitioners. Switzerland has separate licensure for complementary therapies including Structural Integration.


title: Tornado climatology

text: Tornadoes have been recorded on all continents except Antarctica. They are most common in the middle latitudes where conditions are often favorable for convective storm development. The United States has the most tornadoes of any country, as well as the strongest and most violent tornadoes. A large portion of these tornadoes form in an area of the central United States popularly known as Tornado Alley. Canada experiences the second most tornadoes. Ontario and the prairie provinces see the highest frequency. Other areas of the world that have frequent tornadoes include significant portions of Europe, South Africa, Philippines, Bangladesh, parts of Argentina, Uruguay, and southern and southeastern Brazil, northern Mexico, New Zealand, and far eastern Asia.


title: Tornado climatology

text: Tornado reports in the U.S. have been officially collated since 1950. These reports have been gathered by the National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), based in Asheville, North Carolina. A tornado can be reported more than once, such as when a storm crosses a county line and reports are made from two counties. The severity of tornadoes is measured by the Enhanced Fujita Scale, which measures tornado intensity on a scale of EF0 to EF5 based on wind speed and intensity of destruction. The ratings are made after the tornado has dissipated and the damage trail is carefully studied by weather professionals. A series of continuous tornado outbreaks is known as a tornado outbreak sequence.


title: Tornado climatology

text: Not every thunderstorm, supercell, squall line, or tropical cyclone will produce a tornado. Precisely the right atmospheric conditions are required for the formation of even a weak tornado. Tornadoes can form in any month when conditions are favorable. 1,000 or more tornadoes a year are reported in the contiguous United States. The high frequency of tornadoes in North America is largely due to geography, as moisture from the Gulf of Mexico is easily advected into the midcontinent with few topographic barriers in the way. The Rocky Mountains block Pacific-sourced moisture and buckle the atmospheric flow, forcing the drier air to mid-levels of the troposphere. Downsloping winds off the Rockies force the formation of a dry line when the flow aloft is strong, while the Gulf of Mexico fuels abundant low-level moisture. This unique topography allows for frequent collisions of warm and cold air, the conditions that breed strong, long-lived storms throughout the year. This area extends into Canada, particularly Ontario and the Prairie Provinces. Tornadoes can also be triggered by hurricanes, although the tornadoes caused by hurricanes are often much weaker and harder to spot. Winter is the least common time for tornadoes to occur, since hurricane activity is virtually non-existent at this time, and it is more difficult for warm, moist maritime tropical air to take over the frigid Arctic air from Canada. Winter tornado occurrences are found mostly in the Gulf states and Florida during winter (although there have been some notable exceptions).


title: Tornado climatology

text: South America's tornado corridor region is favorable for tornadoes and severe thunderstorms, due to the large size of the Pampas Plain where the cold, dry air from Patagonia, the Andes, and Antarctica collides with warm, moist air from areas of Brazil, northern Argentina, and Paraguay.


title: Tornado climatology

text: Europe has some small "tornado alleys"—probably because of frontal collisions as in the south and east of England, but also because Europe is partitioned by mountain ranges such as the Alps. The Po Valley (Pianura Padana) is one of the areas frequented with more tornadoes in the European continent than elsewhere. Located in the heart of Europe, between the Alps and the Apennines, the collision between cold and warm air here during the summer months easily permits the growing of very strong thunderstorms. The most frequent tornadoes occur in the eastern section of the Po Plains. Parts of Styria (Steiermark) in Austria may be a tornado alley, and this state has had at least three F3 tornadoes since 1900. F3 and perhaps one F4 tornado have also occurred as far north as Finland.


title: Tornado climatology

text: The United States has the most tornadoes of any country. Many of these form in an area of the central United States known as Tornado Alley. This area extends into Canada, particularly the prairie provinces and Ontario. Activity in Canada, however, is less frequent and intense than that of the US. Strong tornadoes occur in northern Mexico. A large region of South America is also characterized by storms that reach the level of supercells and produce intense hailstorms, floods, and tornadoes during the spring, summer, and early fall. The region recently dubbed as the (South America) is considered the second largest in the world in terms of the formation of extreme weather events. It covers most of central Argentina, southern Paraguay, southeastern Brazil, and Uruguay.


title: Tornado climatology

text: Other areas of the world that have frequent strong tornadoes include Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Italy, Spain, China, and the Philippines. Australia, France, Russia, areas of the Middle East, and Japan have a history of multiple damaging tornado events. Bangladesh and surrounding areas of eastern India suffer from a couple tornadoes annually of similar severity to stronger tornadoes in the US. These occur with a greater recurrence interval but over a smaller region. The annual human death toll from tornadoes in Bangladesh is estimated at 179 deaths per year, which is much greater than in the US. This is likely due to the density of population; poor quality of construction; lack of tornado safety knowledge; and lack of warnings—among other factors.


title: Tornado climatology

text: The United States averaged 1,274 tornadoes per year from 2001 to 2011. April 2011 saw the most tornadoes recorded to date for any month in the US National Weather Service's history: 875. It has more tornadoes yearly than any other country, and reports more violent F4 and F5 tornadoes than anywhere else.


title: Tornado climatology

text: Tornadoes are common in many states but are most common to the west of the Appalachian Mountains and to the east of the Rockies. The Atlantic seaboard states: North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Virginia, are also vulnerable, as well as Florida, though most Florida tornadoes are relatively weak, usually EF0 or EF1. The southern states are also highly impacted, in terms of casualties. More tornadoes occur in Texas than in any other US state, but the state that has the highest number of tornadoes per area is Florida. Tornadoes often occur along the edges of the hurricanes that strike the state. The state with the highest number of strong tornadoes per area is Oklahoma, while the neighboring state of Kansas records the most EF4 and EF5 tornadoes in the country.


title: Tornado climatology

text: Tornadoes can occur west of the continental divide, but they are infrequent and usually relatively weak and short-lived. Recently, tornadoes have struck along the Pacific coast towns of Lincoln City, Oregon (1996); Sunnyvale, California (1998); Port Orchard, Washington (2018); and downtown Salt Lake City, Utah (1999). The California Central Valley is an area of some frequency for tornadoes, albeit of very weak intensity.


title: Tornado climatology

text: The deadliest U.S. tornado recorded is 18 March 1925, Tri-State Tornado that swept across southeastern Missouri, southern Illinois, and southern Indiana, that killed 695 people. The biggest tornado outbreak on record—with 353 tornadoes for just days (including four EF5 and eleven EF4 tornadoes)—occurred starting on 25 April 2011 and intensifying on April, 26, and 27 (a record-breaking day), before ending on 28 April 2011, now referred to as the 2011 Super Outbreak.


title: Tornado climatology

text: Canada annually experiences numerous tornadoes, although fewer than the United States. On average 62 are reported per year, but this number is expected to in fact be higher due to undetected tornadoes in large expanses of underpopulated areas. NOAA records a higher average of 100 per year in Canada. These storms cause tens of millions of dollars in damage. Most are weak F0 or F1 in intensity, but there are on average a few F2 or stronger that touch down each season.


title: Tornado climatology

text: For example, the tornado frequency of Southwestern Ontario is about half that of the most tornado-prone areas of the central US plains. The last multiple tornado-related deaths in Canada were caused by a tornado in Ear Falls, Ontario on 9 July 2009, where 3 died, and the last killer tornado was on 3 August 2018 in Alonsa, Manitoba. The two deadliest tornadoes on Canadian soil were the Regina Cyclone of 30 June 1912 (28 fatalities) and the Edmonton Tornado of 31 July 1987 (27 fatalities). Both of these storms were rated an F4 on the Fujita scale. The city of Windsor was struck by strong tornadoes four times over 61 years (1946, 1953, 1974, 1997) ranging in strength from an F2 to F4. Canada's first official F5 tornado struck Elie, Manitoba on 22 June 2007. Tornadoes are most frequent in the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario.


title: Tornado climatology

text: The UK has the most annual tornadoes per land area per year, 0.14 per 1000 km (although these tornadoes are generally weak), and other European countries have a similar number of tornadoes per area. One notable tornado of recent years was the tornado that struck Birmingham, United Kingdom, in July 2005. A row of houses was destroyed, but no one was killed.


title: Tornado climatology

text: Europe as a whole has about 700 tornadoes per year. They are most common from June to August, especially in the inland, and rarest from January to March. Strong and violent tornadoes (F3–F5) do occur, especially in some of the interior areas and in the south, but are not as common as in parts of the US. As in the US, tornadoes are far from evenly distributed. Since 1900, deadly tornadoes have occurred in Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Ukraine, Portugal, Romania, Russia, and the UK. The 1984 Ivanovo–Yaroslavl outbreak, with more than 400 fatalities and 213 injured, was the 20th century's deadliest tornado outbreak in Europe. It included at least one F5 and one F4.


title: Tornado climatology

text: Bangladesh and the eastern parts of India are very exposed to destructive tornadoes. Bangladesh, the Philippines, and Japan have the highest number of reported tornadoes in Asia. The single deadliest tornado ever recorded struck the Manikganj District of Bangladesh on 26 April 1989, killing an estimated 1,300 people, injuring 12,000, and leaving approximately 80,000 people homeless. Five other recorded tornadic events have killed more than 500 people in Bangladesh, most recently on 13 May 1996 when a tornado swept through the Jamalpur and Tangail districts, killing more than 600.


title: Tornado climatology

text: China occasionally experiences destructive tornadoes. Storms producing multiple tornadoes and hail struck a densely populated area of farms and factories near the city of Yancheng in Jiangsu province, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) south of Beijing, China. Throughout China, an estimated 100 tornadoes may occur per year with a few exceeding F4 in intensity, with activity most prevalent in eastern regions.


title: Tornado climatology

text: South America has its own , comprising areas in central and northern Argentina, southern and southeast Brazil, Uruguay, and part of Paraguay. It is considered the second-highest frequency tornado region in the world. Argentina has areas with high tornadic activity, and the strongest tornadoes in the southern hemisphere, such as the F5 in San Justo, Argentina, north of the city of Santa Fe, with winds that exceeded . In Brazil, one of the most remarkable events occurred on 24 May 2005 when an F3(EF3) multiple-vortex tornado struck the industrial district of the city of Indaiatuba in the state of São Paulo.


title: Tornado climatology

text: Tornadoes do occur in extreme southern Africa (including the countries of South Africa, Lesotho, and Eswatini). In October 2011 (i.e. in the spring), two people were killed and nearly 200 were injured after a tornado formed, near Ficksburg in the Free State; more than 1,000 shacks and houses were flattened. There is also the seasonal incidence of tornadoes in the coast of western Africa. These occur during the onset of the rainy season when tumultuous winds accompanied by sheets of rain as well as spectacular thunder and lightning batter the coast. The tornado generating storms were often welcomed by colonial settlers in the region since they dissipated extreme heat and humidity during the last days of the dry season. Tornadoes are often embedded in the African squall lines, but they damage crops, and diminish any beneficial effect of its rains.


title: Tornado climatology

text: Australia has about 16 tornadoes per year – excluding waterspouts, which are common. In New Zealand, a tornado hit the northern suburbs of Auckland on 3 May 2011, killing one and injuring at least 16 people.


title: Tornado climatology

text: Tornadoes are most common in spring and least common in winter. The seasonal transition during autumn and spring promotes the development of extratropical cyclones and frontal systems that support strong convective storms. Tornadoes are common in landfalling tropical cyclones, where they are focused in the right poleward section of the cyclone. Tornadoes can be spawned as a result of eyewall mesovortices, which persist until landfall.


title: Tornado climatology

text: The time of year is a big factor in the intensity and frequency of tornadoes. On average, in the United States as a whole, the month with the most tornadoes is in May, followed by the months June, April, and July. There is no "tornado season" though, as tornadoes, including violent tornadoes and major outbreaks, can and do occur anywhere at any time of year if favorable conditions develop. Major tornado outbreaks have occurred every month of the year.


title: Tornado climatology

text: The reason for the peak period for tornado formation in North America being skewed toward spring has much to do with temperature patterns in the U.S. Tornadoes often form when cool, polar air traveling southeastward from the Rockie Mountains overrides warm, moist, unstable Gulf of Mexico air in the eastern states. Tornadoes tend to be commonly found in front of a cold front, along with heavy rains, hail, and damaging winds. Since both warm and cold major weather patterns collide in Spring, the conflict between the two air masses tends to the formation of tornado producing storms and supercells. As the weather warms across the country, the occurrence of tornadoes spreads northward. There is a second active tornado season of the year that usually appears in late September to mid-November. Autumn, like spring, is a time of the year when warm weather frequently alternates with cold weather, especially in the Midwest; but the season is not as active as it is during the springtime, and tornado frequencies are higher along the Atlantic coastal plain. On average, there are around 294 tornadoes throughout the United States during May, and as many as 543 tornadoes have been reported in May alone (in 2003). The months with the fewest tornadoes are usually December and January, although major tornado outbreaks can and sometimes do occur even in those months. In general, in the Midwestern and Plains states, springtime (especially the month of May) is the most active season for tornadoes, while in the far northern states (like Minnesota and Wisconsin), the peak tornado season is usually in the summer months (June and July). In the colder late autumn and winter months (from early December to late February), tornado activity is generally limited to the southern states, where warm Gulf of Mexico air can penetrate.


title: Tornado climatology

text: Tornado occurrence is highly dependent on the time of day because of solar heating. Austria, Finland, Germany, and the United States' peak hour of occurrence is 5 pm, with roughly half of all tornado occurrence between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. local time. Due to this being the time of peak atmospheric heating, and thus the maximum available energy for storms; some researchers, including Howard B. Bluestein of the University of Oklahoma, have referred to this phenomenon as "five o'clock magic." Despite this, there have been several morning tornadoes reported, such as evidenced by the Gainesville Tornado of 1936 (one of the deadliest tornadoes in history) that occurred at 8:30 a.m. local time.


title: Tornado climatology

text: Tornado myths exist that may cause ill-conceived preparation, planning, and reactions to tornadoes. For instance: some people mistakenly believe that tornadoes only occur in the countryside. While it is true that the plains states are tornado-prone, tornadoes have been reported in every U.S. state, including Alaska and Hawaii. One likely reason tornadoes are so common in the central U.S. is that this is where Arctic air, cold fronts that have not been "weakened" yet first collide with warm tropical air from the Gulf of Mexico. As these fronts head further east, they sometimes lose their strength as they travel over more warm air. For this reason, tornadoes are not as common on the East Coast as they are in the Midwest. However, they have happened on rare occasions, such as the F3 twister that struck Limerick Township, Pennsylvania near Philadelphia on 27 July 1994, the F2 twister that struck the northern suburbs of New York City on 12 July 2006, the EF2 twister in the borough of Brooklyn on 8 August 2007, or the F4 twister that struck La Plata, Maryland on 28 April 2002.


title: Tornado climatology

text: Another popular misconception is that tornadoes don't occur in mountainous areas, or that mountainous terrain will protect people from tornadoes. While the frequency of tornadoes is lower in mountainous areas compared to Tornado Alley, significant tornadoes can occur regularly in the southern Appalachian region of the United States and have even been documented at high altitudes along the continental divide of Wyoming. In addition, tornado outbreaks occasionally occur around the southern Appalachian mountains, with the 1974 Super Outbreak and the 2011 Super Outbreak directly affecting the southern Appalachian region.


title: Tornado climatology

text: The reliable climatology of tornadoes is limited in geographic and temporal scope; only since 1976 in the United States and 2000 in Europe have thorough and accurate tornado statistics been logged. However, some trends can be noted in tornadoes causing significant damage in the United States, as somewhat reliable statistics on damaging tornadoes exist as far back as 1880. The highest incidence of violent tornadoes seems to shift from the Southeastern United States to the southern Great Plains every few decades. Also, the 1980s seemed to be a period of unusually low tornado activity in the United States, and the number of multi-death tornadoes decreased every decade from the 1920s to the 1980s, suggesting a multi-decadal pattern of some sort.


title: Stephanie Lee

text: Stephanie Lee (; Korean name: Lee Jeong-ah, , on September 14, 1993) is a Korean-American actress and model. She has starred in the Korean television series "Schoolgirl Detectives" (2014), "Partners for Justice" (2018), and "Start-Up" (2020).


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: The spacecraft was launched on 23 July 2020 and inserted into Martian orbit on 10 February 2021. The lander, carrying the rover, performed a successful soft-landing on Mars on 14 May 2021, making China the second country to successfully soft-land a spacecraft on Mars and establish communications from the surface, after the United States. "Zhurong" was successfully deployed on 22 May 2021, 02:40 UTC.


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: "Zhurong" is named after a Chinese mytho-historical figure usually associated with fire and light, as Mars is called "the Planet of Fire" () in China and some other countries in East Asia. It was selected by a public online vote held between 20 January 2021 and 28 February 2021, with "Zhurong" ranking first with 504,466 votes. The name was chosen with the meanings of "igniting the fire of interstellar exploration in China" and "to symbolize the Chinese people's determination to explore the stars and to uncover unknowns in the universe".


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: China began its first interplanetary exploration attempt in 2011 by sending Yinghuo-1, a Mars orbiter, in a joint mission with Russia. It did not leave Earth orbit due to a failure of the Russian launch vehicle. As a result, CNSA then embarked on its independent Mars mission.


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: The first early model of the future Mars rover was on display in November 2014 at the 10th China International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition. It had an appearance similar to the "Yutu" lunar rover, which had deployed on the Moon.


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: On 22 April 2016, Xu Dazhe, head of the CNSA, announced that the Mars mission had been approved on 11 January 2016. A probe would be sent to Martian orbit and attempt to land on Mars in 2020.


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: On 23 August 2016, CNSA revealed the first images of the final version of the Mars mission spacecraft, which confirmed the composition of a Mars orbiter, lander, and rover in one mission.


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: The scientific objectives and payloads of the Mars mission were declared in a paper published in "Journal of Deep Space Exploration" in December 2017.


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: On 24 April 2020, China's interplanetary exploration program was formally announced by CNSA, along with the name "Tianwen" and an emblem of the program. The first mission of the program, the Mars mission to be carried out in 2020, was named Tianwen-1.


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: On 24 April 2021, in anticipation of the upcoming landing attempt, CNSA formally announced that the rover would be named "Zhurong" ().


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: To design and test the rover and simulate conditions at Utopia Planitia, CNSA kept a test bed rover in a Mars yard at the China Academy of Space Technology in Beijing. The Field Test Rover (FTR) was made two years before the actual Zhurong was built, and some of the FTR components were used in the vehicle flown to Mars. The FTR completed thousands of tests on the ground before the start of the mission. The twin remained in service to help scientists and engineers determine the path for Zhurong by testing maneuvers in the Mars yard.


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: The candidate in Utopia Planitia was favored by the team due to higher chances of finding evidence for whether an ancient ocean existed on the northern part of Mars. It was eventually selected as the final landing area of the mission.


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: Tianwen-1, along with "Zhurong" rover, was launched at 12:41 UTC+8 on 23 July 2020, from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site by a Long March 5 heavy-lift rocket.


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: After a 202-day journey through interplanetary space, Tianwen-1 inserted itself into Martian orbit on 10 February 2021, thereby becoming China's first Mars orbiter. Subsequently, it performed several orbital maneuvers and began surveying target landing sites on Mars in preparation for the coming landing attempt.


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: On 14 May 2021, the lander and "Zhurong" rover separated from Tianwen-1's orbiter. After experiencing Mars atmospheric entry that lasted about nine minutes, the lander and rover made a successful soft landing in the Utopia Planitia, using a combination of aeroshell, parachute, and retrorocket. With the landing, China became the second country to operate a fully functional spacecraft on Martian surface, after the United States.


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: After establishing stable communication with the rover, CNSA released its first pictures from the surface of Mars on 19 May 2021.


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: On 22 May 2021, at 10:10 a.m. Beijing time (0240 GMT), "Zhurong" drove from its landing platform to the surface of Mars, starting its exploration mission.


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: On 11 June 2021, CNSA released the first batch of scientific images from the surface of Mars including a panoramic image taken by "Zhurong", and a colored group photo of "Zhurong" and the Tianwen-1 lander taken by a wireless camera placed on Martian soil. The panoramic image is composed of 24 single shots taken by the NaTeCam before the rover was deployed to the Martian surface. The image reveals that the topography and rock abundance near the landing site was consistent with previous anticipations from the scientist on typical south Utopia Planitia features with small but widespread rocks, white wave patterns, and mud volcanoes.


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: On 27 June 2021, CNSA released images and videos of "Zhurong" EDL process and movement on Martian surface, including a clip of sounds made by "Zhurong" recorded by its instrument, Mars Climatic Station (MCS).


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: On 12 July 2021, "Zhurong" visited the parachute and backshell dropped onto Martian surface during its landing on 14 May.


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: As of 15 August 2021, "Zhurong" had officially completed its planned exploration tasks and will continue to drive towards the southern part of Utopia Planitia where it landed.


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: After 20 October 2021, the rover continued, having paused and stopped in a sleeping mode around the time of the Mars conjunction of October 8. The pause was necessary due to the strong solar radiation in the line of sight with Earth, creating too high levels of "noise" for a secure radio communication to function (Radio blackout) with the Chinese relay satellite orbiting Mars. The rover continued its travel in the southern direction.


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: In November 2021, the CNSA and European Space Agency (ESA) conducted tests to learn if an ESA orbiter, Mars Express, could serve as a relay for data sent from Zhurong. Several steps were involved. ESA commanded Mars Express to point toward Zhurong while passing overhead, so it could receive a signal from the rover. CNSA commanded its Tianwen-1 orbiter to tell Zhurong to send the data. Mars Express received the data from Zhurong and transmitted to Earth. The deep space stations of ESA received the data and sent it to CNSA. The data were then compared with the original Chinese signal. Five tests were performed, but four of them failed. A test on November 20 succeeded. Analysis found that another device aboard Mars Express caused the failures by disturbing transmission. Tianwen-1's ability to act as a relay for Zhurong has lessened, because it is spending more time on its main mission of mapping Mars. As a result, CNSA and ESA agreed to the tests to determine if Mars Express can be a relay for the rover.


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: The six-wheeled rover weighs , and is tall. It is powered by four solar panels along with n-undecane stored in 10 containers under two circular windows on the deck absorbs heat and melts during the daytime and solidifies and releases heat at night. It carries six scientific instruments:


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: Among the six scientific instruments, RoPeR works during roving; MarSCoDe, MSCam and NaTeCam work when being stationary; RoMAG and MCS work both when moving or still.


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: The rover had a planned operational lifetime of 90 sols. Originally, every three sols were defined as one operation period. The basic process of each operation period was:


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: Acquired data is downlinked each sol. The data will be processed by teams in CNSA during an official 5–6 months' proprietary period before being released to the scientiﬁc community.


title: Zhurong (rover)

text: In July 2021, the designer of Tianwen-1 orbiter disclosed that due to "Zhurong" better-than-expected performance, the original three-day period has been merged into one, accelerating its exploration process.


title: Byzantine Empire under the Justinian dynasty

text: The Byzantine Empire had its first golden age under the Justinian dynasty, which began in 518 AD with the accession of Justin I. Under the Justinian dynasty, particularly the reign of Justinian I, the empire reached its greatest territorial extent since the fall of its Western counterpart, reincorporating North Africa, southern Illyria, southern Spain, and Italy into the empire. The Justinian dynasty ended in 602 with the deposition of Maurice and the ascension of his successor, Phocas.


text: The Justinian dynasty began with the accession of its namesake Justin I to the throne. Justin I was born in a big village, Bederiana, in the 450s CE. Like many country youths, he went to Constantinople and enlisted in the army, where, due to his physical abilities, he became a part of the Excubitors, the palace guards. He fought in the Isaurian and Persian wars, and rose through the ranks to become the commander of the Excubitors, which was a very influential position. In this time, he also achieved the rank of senator. After the death of the Emperor Anastasius, who had left no clear heir, there was much dispute as to who would become emperor. To decide who would ascend the throne, a grand meeting was called in the hippodrome. The Byzantine Senate, meanwhile, gathered in the great hall of the palace. As the senate wanted to avoid outside involvement and influence, they were pressed to quickly select a candidate; however, they could not agree. Several candidates were nominated, but were rejected for various reasons. After much arguing, the senate chose to nominate Justin; and he was crowned by the Patriarch of Constantinople, John of Cappadocia, on 10 July.


text: Justin, who was from a Latin speaking province, spoke little Greek, and was almost completely illiterate. As such, he surrounded himself with intelligent advisers, the most notable of which was his nephew, Justinian. Justinian may have exerted great influence on his uncle and is considered by some historians, such as Procopius, to be the real power behind the throne.


text: After his accession, Justin removed the other candidates to the throne; two were executed and three were punished either with death or exile. Unlike most emperors before him, who were Monophysite, Justin was a devout Orthodox Christian. Monophysites and the Orthodox were in conflict over the dual natures of Christ. Past emperors had supported the Monophysites' position, which was in direct conflict with the Orthodox teachings of the Papacy, and this strife led to the Acacian Schism. Justin, as an Orthodox, and the new patriarch, John of Cappadocia, immediately set about repairing relations with Rome. After delicate negotiations, the Acacian Schism ended in late March, 519.


text: After this initial ecclesiastical overhaul, the rest of Justin's reign was relatively quiet and peaceful. In 525, perhaps at the insistence of Justinian, Justin repealed a law which effectively forbade court officials from marrying people of low class. This allowed Justinian to marry Theodora, who was of low social standing. In his last years, conflict increased around the Empire. There was increased strife with the Ostrogothic Kingdom in the Italian Peninsula. Their king, Theodoric the Great, was suspicious of plots by the Byzantines; and turned on the Roman senatorial class, going so far as executing the philosopher Boethius, who was attempting to end the persecution. However, Theodoric died in 526, ending the persecution. The Sasanian Empire, likewise, resumed hostilities with the Byzantines, and the Iberian War began in the east; which would not reach its conclusion until the reign of Justinian. In 527, Justin appointed Justinian co-emperor after becoming dangerously ill. Justin recovered from the illness, however, several months later, he died of an ulcer on an old wound; and Justinian then ascended the throne.


text: The strength of the dynasty was shown under Justinian I. After the Nika Riots, Justinian rebuilt the city and reformed the law with the "Code of Justinian".


text: Justinian had inherited a war with Persia from his uncle and previous emperor, Justin I. Justinian continued the war, succeeding in sending a force all the way down the Euphrates, but the raid stalled, and he lost the beginnings of a new fortress in a crushing defeat. This impasse of sorts led to Justinian negotiating the "Eternal Peace" in which he agreed to pay eleven thousand pounds of gold in return for a cease in hostilities and the defense of several mountain passes.


text: He then set about satisfying his dream to rebuild the Roman Empire. On his command, his favoured general, Belisarius, began reconquering former Roman territory, starting with the Vandals.


text: The Vandals, after maintaining North African dominance since the fall of the Western Roman Empire, had become content and laid back; their army, despite being twice the size to the 15,000 men commanded by Belisarius, was poorly trained, and ill-equipped to deal with an Imperial threat. The Vandal king, Gelimer, attempted to surround the Byzantines at the battle of Ad Decimum; he defeated Belisarius, but went hysterical after finding the body of his dead brother. Belisarius rounded up his remaining men and broke the disorganized mass of Vandals, now poorly commanded. Belisarius went on to capture Carthage, and the Byzantines were victorious.


text: Justinian then recalled the victorious Belisarius. In Italy, dynastic squabbles amongst the ruling Ostrogoths gave Justinian an opportunity to invade, and he sent Belisarius to Sicily with 7500 men. Belisarius arrived and received only token resistance. He then moved on to mainland Italy.


text: After putting down a mutiny in recently conquered North Africa, Belisarius landed in mainland Italy; finding the same token resistance. The Gothic garrison of Naples resisted however, and after several months siege, Belisarius sacked the city. After more ensuing dynastic squabbles, resulting in the deaths of two kings, Belisarius was invited to Rome by the pope while the king was in Ravenna. Hearing of this, the Gothic king, Witigis, sent a huge force, some accounts put the force as large as 150,000, to besiege Rome. Belisarius had been fortifying Rome, and a siege ensued. One year and nine days later, after a grueling siege, Witigis had displayed his utter inabilities as a king, and Belisarius had showed his brilliance as a commander.


text: The Goth army then moved to besiege Ariminium, which suffered due to lack of food. Narses, another Byzantine general, was called in to help and he used his influence to help Belisarius break the siege. After a massacre at Milan, breaks in Narses' command chain were revealed; following a letter from Belisarius, Narses was recalled by Justinian.


text: Thereafter, the campaign became a war of sieges, which came to an end after Belisarius pretended to accept an offer to become Western Roman Emperor. He marched into the city unopposed, occupied it, then disposed of King Witigis.


text: Belisarius was recalled from Italy and then immediately sent to the Persian front, which had flared into warfare again. During this period, the Ostrogoths retook most of Italy. After the Persian front died down, with the Persians swearing they would never fight the Byzantines again until after his death, Belisarius retook Italy and captured southern Spain in a war that lasted 18 years.


text: Justinian's wars of reconquest had expanded the empire to include the former Roman provinces of Italia, Baetica, and Africa Proconsularis. These additions expanded the Byzantine Empire to the largest point in its history.


text: After Justinian's reconquest and extensive rebuilding programs, the empire's treasury was left empty. The financial mess weakened the Empire; and forced his successor, Justin II, to suspend payments to the Avars. While the Byzantines were distracted with the Persians, Lombard hordes under king Alboin invaded Italy, and soon conquered most of the peninsula. Later wars with the Persians did not go well in Syria, resulting in mental illness that drove Justin II to his grave.


text: Tiberius II succeeded Justin II. His four-year reign was marked by Imperial weakness due to the Empire being over-stretched. He reinforced Ravenna, his generals found success against the Persians in battles in Armenia and against the Berbers in North Africa. At the same time, the Slavs began migrating all the way down into Greece. The overstretched Emperor ran out of money, couldn't pay the Army of the East which was fighting the Persians, and they threatened to mutiny. As his forces were deployed elsewhere, the Avars took advantage of him and forced Tiberius to give up the key city of Sirmium. After this setback, Tiberius ate some bad food, which may have been intentionally poisoned, fell ill, and died.


text: Maurice, the fifth and final emperor of the Justinian dynasty, reportedly came from Armenia, and began his career in Constantinople as a Notarius. He eventually rose to the rank of secretary of the Imperial bodyguard, and, in 577 AD was appointed commander in chief of the army. He, after hard campaigning in the East in the Byzantine–Sassanid War of 572–591, was promoted to the rank of patricius. In 582 he married the Emperor's daughter, and succeeded him on the throne at the age of forty three.


text: Maurice's reign was marked by constant money troubles. Maurice ascended the throne and received a completely bankrupt empire, and this Financial state continued until beyond the end of his reign. He also inherited military troubles: the Slavs were continuing to migrate into the empire, oftentimes violently; imperial hold over Italy was utterly collapsing; he also still had to continue the war with Persia that he had fought in for his entire military career. This Persian war also struggled with money difficulties, leading up to a major mutiny in 588; however, the money dispute was resolved the following spring. During the mutiny, a civil war began between rival factions in Persia, and Maurice saw an opportunity. He gave his support to Khosrau II in Persia, and he succeeded in gaining the throne. This ended the Byzantine-Sassanid War of 572–591.


text: Maurice then turned his attention to the Balkans, which, after a decade of inattention from the army, had become completely ravaged by the Slavs. With the full attention of the army, the Byzantines drove back the Slavs, expelled them from the empire, and then ravaged their lands beyond the Danube. The Byzantines, after this decisive victory, were now easily able to hold the frontier on the Danube as it had been since the Roman Empire, as well as gain control over some minor territories in southern Dacia.


text: Despite these extensive military victories, Maurice was extremely unpopular within the borders of the empire, due to the fact that he always had an empty treasury, and often had to reduce payments to his soldiers. As a result of this unpopularity, he was deposed by the Greens in 602 and replaced with their choice, Phocas.


title: Tanks of France

text: French development into tanks began during World War I as an effort to overcome the stalemate of trench warfare, and largely at the initiative of the manufacturers. The Schneider CA1 was the first tank produced by France, and 400 units were built. The French also experimented with various tank designs, such as the Frot-Laffly landship, Boirault machine and Souain experiment. Another 400 Saint-Chamond tanks were manufactured from April 1917 to July 1918 but they were underpowered and were of limited utility because the caterpillar tracks were too short for the tank's length and weight. The most significant French tank development during the war was the Renault FT light tank, which set the general layout for future tank designs and was used or redesigned by various military forces, including those of the United States.


title: Tanks of France

text: While the British began the design and use of tanks in World War I, France at the same time developed its own tracked AFVs, but the situation there was very different. In Britain a single committee had coordinated design, while the major industries remained passive. Almost all production effort was thus concentrated into the Mark I and its direct successors, all very similar in shape. In France, on the other hand, there were multiple and conflicting lines of development which were badly integrated, resulting in three major and quite disparate production types. A major arms producer, Schneider, took the lead in January 1915 and tried to build a first armoured vehicle based on the "Baby Holt" tractor but initially the development process was slow until in July they received political, even presidential, support by combining their project with that of a mechanical wire cutter devised by engineer and politician Jean-Louis Bréton. In December 1915, the influential Colonel Estienne made the Supreme Command very enthusiastic about the idea of creating an armoured force based on these vehicles; strong Army support for tanks would be a constant during the decades to come. Already in January and February 1916 quite substantial orders were made, at that moment with a total number of 800 much larger than the British ones.


title: Tanks of France

text: Army enthusiasm and haste would have its immediate drawbacks, however. As a result of the involvement of inexperienced army officers ordered to devise a new tank based on the larger 75 hp Holt chassis in a very short period of time, the first French tanks were poorly designed with respect to the need to cross trenches and did not take the sponson-mounting route of the British tanks. The first, the "Char" Schneider CA equipped with a short 75 mm howitzer, had poor mobility due to a short track length combined with a hull that overhung front and rear. It was unreliable as well; a maximum of only about 130 of the 400 built were ever operational at the same time. Then industrial rivalry began to play a detrimental role: it created the heavy Char Saint-Chamond, a parallel development not ordered by the Army, but approved by government through industrial lobby, which mounted much more impressive weaponry — its 75 mm was the most powerful gun fielded by any operational tank up till 1941 — but also combined many of the Schneider CA's faults with an even larger overhanging body. Its innovative petro-electrical transmission, while allowing for easy steering, was insufficiently developed and led to a large number of breakdowns.


title: Tanks of France

text: But industrial initiative also led to swift advances. The car industry, already used to vehicle mass production and having much more experience in vehicle layout, in 1916 designed the first practical light tanks, a class largely neglected by the British. It would be Renault's excellent small tank design, the FT, incorporating a proper climbing face for the tracks, that was the first tank to incorporate a top-mounted turret with a full 360° traverse capability. In fact the FT was in many respects the first truly 'modern' tank having a layout that has been followed by almost all designs ever since: driver at the front; main armament in a fully rotating turret on top; engine at the rear. Previous models had been "box tanks" with a single crowded space combining the role of engine room, fighting compartment, ammunition stock and driver's cabin. (A very similar Peugeot prototype, with a fixed casemate mounting a short 75mm cannon, was trialled in 1918, but the idea was not pursued.) The FT would have the largest production run of any tank of the war with over 3,700 built, more numerous than all British tanks combined. That this would happen was at first far from certain; some in the French army lobbied for the alternative mass production of super-heavy tanks. Much design effort was put in this line of development resulting in the gigantic Char 2C, the most complex and technologically advanced tank of its day. Its very complexity ensured it being produced too late to participate in World War I and in the very small number of just ten, but it would be the first tank with a three-man turret; the heaviest to enter service until late in World War II and still the largest ever operational.


title: Tanks of France

text: French production at first lagged behind the British. After August 1916 however, British tank manufacture was temporarily halted to wait for better designs, allowing the French to overtake their allies in numbers. When the French used tanks for the first time on 16 April 1917, during the Nivelle Offensive, they had four times more tanks available. But that would not last long as the offensive was a major failure; the Schneiders were badly deployed and suffered 50% losses from German long-range artillery. The Saint-Chamond tanks, first deployed on 5 May, proved to be so badly designed that they were unable to cross the first line of German trenches.


title: Tanks of France

text: The French used a very wide range of tanks, including many unique types. France was the second largest tank producer in the world, behind the Soviet Union (see French armoured fighting vehicle production during World War II). French cavalry tank designs saw attempts to balance the needs of firepower, protection and mobility. They also fielded a heavy tank design, and several lighter types for scouting and infantry support. In addition to these types, they were also working on super-heavy breakthrough tanks (FCM F1). The French didn't have an independent Tank Corps. All tanks belonged to either the Infantry or the Cavalry.


title: Tanks of France

text: The Renault FT had a long life and saw use in World War II and even later in Indochina. It was utilised as far away as in China, during the Chinese Civil wars, and versions of the tank were used both against and by the Japanese during the invasion of China. A large number found their way into both Republican and Nationalist hands during the Spanish Civil War. They were used in the Russian Revolution by both the Bolsheviks and the White Russians, and later by the Finns against the Soviets. France exported the FT right up to World War II. The design was also developed by the Italians as the Fiat 3000 and the USSR as the T-18.


title: Tanks of France

text: By the mid-1930s the French Army was replacing the aging FT fleet with a mixed force of light tanks both in the Infantry and Cavalry branches, as well as medium and heavy tanks. The Infantry light tanks included the Renault R 35, which followed the FT concept quite closely with its very small size, two-man crew, and short 37 mm gun armament. It was, however, heavily armored. The R 35 was mostly used to equip the independent tank battalions, an armoured reserve allocated at army level and intended to reinforce infantry divisions in breakthrough operations. French infantry divisions normally had no organic tank component. The R 35 was exported to Poland and Romania. The cavalry had the similar Hotchkiss H 35, armed with the same 37 mm, as well as light recon tanks such as the AMR 35.


title: Tanks of France

text: France also produced what may have been the best tank of the 1930s, the SOMUA S35. This tank equipped the armoured divisions of the Cavalry which had to execute the exploitation phase of a battle and was probably the best combination of armour, firepower and mobility prior to the appearance of the German PzKpfw IV Ausf. F2 and Soviet T-34. The S 35 had a long 47 mm gun that could kill any tank then in service, as well as heavy cast armour and good speed.


title: Tanks of France

text: The French "char de bataille" Char B1 tank was a very formidable tank, with heavy cast and riveted armour, the same long 47 mm gun as in the S 35, and a hull-mounted 75 mm howitzer. All Char B1s were equipped with radio and the tank was nearly invulnerable to most tanks and towed antitank guns. They equipped the armoured divisions of the Infantry, which were specialised breakthrough units.


title: Tanks of France

text: The French plan of 1926, calling for the creation of a Light Infantry Support Tank, led to the development of the existing Renault NC1 prototype into the Char D1. On 23 December 1930 a first order of 70 main production series of Char D1 tanks was made, followed on 12 July 1932 by a second order of 30; the last order on 16 October 1933 was of 50 vehicles, for a total of 150, delivered between January 1932 and early 1935.


title: Tanks of France

text: In general, French tanks of the 1930s were well-armoured, innovative vehicles that owed little to foreign designs. However, the light tanks lacked firepower, tended to be slow, and almost all French tanks were weakened by their one-man turrets. Even the vaunted Char B1 had a commander who was tasked with commanding the vehicle, aiming the main gun, and loading the main gun. If he were a platoon leader or company commander, he had the additional tasks of controlling his other units. Such a heavy set of tasks was overwhelming, and greatly reduced the effectiveness of the tanks. The lack of radios with the light tanks was not seen as a major drawback, since French doctrine called for slow-paced, deliberate manoeuvers in close conformance to plans: the "Methodical Battle" concept, adopted because wargaming showed it to be superior. The role of small unit leaders was to execute plans, not to take the initiative in combat. This was nearly the opposite of German doctrine, which stressed initiative and decision-making at low command levels ("Auftragstaktik"). In 1939 a belated effort was made to improve flexibility and increase the number of radios


title: Tanks of France

text: Despite the views of Estienne and later Charles de Gaulle, the French general staff failed in defining an effective military doctrine regarding their use, due to the division of labour between infantry and cavalry tanks.


title: Tanks of France

text: At the start of the war, France had one of the largest tank forces in the world along with the Soviet, British and German forces. The French had planned for a defensive war and built tanks accordingly; infantry tanks were designed to be heavily armoured. Within France and its colonies, roughly 5,800 tanks were available during the time of the German offensive, and some when they came into contact were effective against the German tanks.


title: Tanks of France

text: The R 35 was intended to replace the FT as standard light infantry tank from the summer of 1936, but even by May 1940 not enough conscripts had been retrained and therefore eight battalions of the older tank had to be kept operational. On 1 September 1939, at the outbreak of war, 975 vehicles had been delivered out of 1070 produced; 765 were fielded by tank battalions in France. Of a total order for 2,300 at least 1,601 had been produced until 1 June 1940 serial numbers known to be actually used indicate a production of at least 1670 vehicles.


title: Tanks of France

text: In the Battle of France, despite an advantage in number and armour against the Germans, the French tanks were not used to good enough effect. Ironically, cooperation with the infantry was poor. The Cavalry units alone were too few in number.


title: Tanks of France

text: In armour and firepower, French tanks were generally not inferior to their German counterparts. In one incident, a single Char B1 "Eure" was able to destroy thirteen German tanks within a few minutes in Stonne on 16 May 1940, all of them Panzer III and Panzer IV tanks. The 37mm and 20mm guns the Germans used were ineffective at penetrating the thick armour of the B1, which was able to return safely despite being hit a large number of times. Even German General Rommel was surprised at how the French tanks withstood the German tank shells and had to resort to using the German 88 artillery as antitank guns against the French tanks to knock them out. Setbacks the French military suffered were more related to strategy, tactics and organisation than technology and design. Almost 80 percent of French tanks did not have radios, since the battle doctrine employed by the French military was more a slow-paced, deliberate conformance to planned maneuvers. French tank warfare was often restricted with tanks being assigned for infantry support. Unlike Germany, which had special "Panzerwaffe" divisions, France did not separate tanks from the Infantry arm, and were unable to respond quickly to the Blitzkrieg tactics employed by the Germans, which involved rapid movement, mission-type orders and combined-arms tactics.


title: Tanks of France

text: The S35 medium tank entered service in January 1936 with the "4e Cuirassiers". At the end of 1937 the SA 35 gun became available and deliveries of the main production series could begin. By mid 1938 a hundred had been produced, 270 on 1 September 1939 and 246 delivered. On this date 191 served with the troops, 51 were in depot and four had been sent back to the factory for overhaul. After the outbreak of war a fourth order of 200 was made, bringing the ordered total to 700. Later it was decided that from the 451st vehicle onward the tanks would be of the improved S 40 type. Production in fact totalled 430 by June 1940, including the prototype and the preseries.