Bogdan Filov

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Bogdan Filov (Bulgarian: Богдан Филов) (9 April 1883 - 2 February 1945) became a powerful politician and Prime Minister in Bulgaria during World War II.

He was partly educated in Imperial Germany and later became a university professor and historian in Sofia, Bulgaria. An ally of Tsar Boris III, he was appointed Prime Minister of Bulgaria in 1940. During his time as prime minister Bulgaria became a titular member of the Axis Powers though Tsar Boris and Filov tried to keep Bulgaria as much out of the war as possible. Filov was prime minister until shortly after Boris's death in 1943. He then became a member of the Regency Council established because the new Tsar, Simeon II, was underage. Following the armistice with the Soviet Union who had invaded Bulgaria in 1944, a new Communist-dominated government was established and the Regency Council members were arrested. Filov and other members, along with numerous Cabinet members and other government luminaries, were sentenced to death by a "People's Tribunal" on the afternoon of 1 February 1945 and executed that night in Sofia cemetery, where they were buried in a mass grave that had been a bomb crater.

[edit] References

Bulgaria in the Second World War by Marshall Lee Miller, Stanford University Press, 1975.
Royalty in Exile by Charles Fenyvesi, London, 1981, pps:153-171 - "Czar Simeon of the Bulgars". ISBN 0-86051-131-6
Boris III of Bulgaria 1894-1943, by Pashanko Dimitroff, London, 1986, ISBN 0-86332-140-2
Crown of Thorns by Stephane Groueff, Lanham MD., and London, 1987, ISBN 0-8191-5778-3