Dušan Simović (; 28 October 1882 – 26 August 1962) was a Yugoslav Serb army general who served as Chief of the General Staff of the Royal Yugoslav Army and as the Prime Minister of Yugoslavia in 1941.A. W. Palmer, "Revolt in Belgrade, March 27, 1941,"History Today (March 1960) 10#3 pp 192-200.
Officer Simović, born on 28 October 1882 in Kragujevac, attended elementary school and two years of high school in his hometown. Due to his interest in military matters, he left high school and entered the Military Academy in Belgrade. He completed the Military Academy course in 1900, when he was promoted to second lieutenant of artillery. He completed the Higher School of the Military Academy in 1905. He married Snežana Tadić (1883–1971), a Serbian-Ukrainian-Croatian pharmacist from Valjevo, and daughter of Milorad Tadić (1861–1940), in October 1908. They had three sons and four daughters.Obituary, The New York Times (28 August 1962); "Gen. Simovic Dies; Yugoslav Leader; Headed Royal Government When Nazis Invaded in '41."
During the Balkan Wars (1912–13) and during the First World War (1914–1918), he proved an excellent officer. He won promotion in 1913, and again, in 1915, to lieutenant colonel.Dusan Biber, "The Yugoslav Coup d'État, 27 March 1941" in John Erickson and David Dilks (eds), Barbarossa: The Axis and the Allies (Edinburgh University Press, 1994), pp.34-42 At the Salonika front, he commanded the 7th Infantry Regiment. But even while working on the Salonika front as an infantry commander, Simović was interested in air power and in air defense. Every day he became more and more interested in the works of flight pioneer Mihailo Petrović (1884–1913), reading Petrović's reports on the Balkan Wars, as well as his studies on aviation. So Simović decided to dedicate his career to aviation. In 1918, he was named to the delegates of the Serbian government and the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs in Zagreb. Upon the break-up of the Austrian empire in October–November 1918, it remained unclear whether the Slovenes and the Croats would join in a union with Serbia to create a new country to be called Yugoslavia ("the land of the South Slavs"). The Croat Sabor had issued a declaration of independence on 29 October 1918. The deciding issue was that the Bolsheviks had in December 1917 published the secret Treaty of London signed in May 1915 under which Britain, France, and Russia had promised Italy the Istria and Dalmatia provinces of the Austrian empire in exchange for declaring war on Austria. In the Austrian empire's absence, the majority of the Slovenes and Croats favored the Yugoslav concept as the best way to hold onto Istria and Dalmatia. On 14 November 1918, Simović reported to his superiors that an overwhelming majority of the people in Zagreb were "taken with the idea of Yugoslav solidarity". With Italy trying to take advantage of the dissolution of the Austrian empire by seizing the provinces promised by the Treaty of London, Simović advised his superiors to tell the National Council, which represented an ad hoc government for Croatia and Slovenia, that there was no time to waste and the council should proclaim a union with Serbia as soon as possible. Simović blocked an Italian attempt to occupy Ljubljana by having the Serb Army occupy Ljubljana first. Up to the onset of World War II he devoted himself exclusively to aviation.Dusan Biber, "The Yugoslav Coup d'État, 27 March 1941" in John Erickson and David Dilks (eds), Barbarossa: The Axis and the Allies (Edinburgh University Press, 1994), pp.34-42
From May 1938 until 1940 he served as Chief of the General Staff, in which position he replaced General Milutin Nedić. There were two war plans for the defense of Yugoslavia drawn by the General Staff. The first one, which was drawn up by Simović called for the defense of all Yugoslavia. The second plan, called for the Royal Yugoslav Army to concentrate on defending Serbia and Montenegro and then to stage a fighting retreat into Bosnia-Herzegovina. Virtually all military experts questioned Simović's plans under the grounds that it would overextend the Yugoslav Army and Simović conceded that his plan was adopted for political rather than military reasons, namely to prove that the government in Belgrade cared about all the peoples of Yugoslavia. Raymond Brugère, the French minister-plenipotentiary in Belgrade, had long been worried about the pro-Axis tendencies of the Yugoslav prime minister Milan Stojadinović. Brugère who first met Simović in May 1938 reported to Paris that he was opposed to the foreign policy of Stojadinović and favored Yugoslavia standing the alliance it had signed with France in 1927.
In March 1941, he met Colonel William J. Donovan in Belgrade who was on a tour of the Balkans and the Middle East as the special emissary for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Donovan informed Roosevelt that Simović believed that Germany would invade the Soviet Union in the near-future "...for the purpose of seizing Ukraine initially and eventually overpower south-east Europe". During the meeting, Donovan assured Simović that as a close friend of Roosevelt's, that the president's policy was to strongly support any state determined to resist Nazi Germany as Roosevelt felt it was imperative that Germany lose the war. At the same time, Simović was in contact with agents of the Special Operations Executive, created in 1940 to support resistance movements in Europe. The American historian Joseph Jakub noted that since the war a vast legend has been created which claims that the coup d'état of 27 March 1941 was the work of Anglo-American intelligence with Simović reduced to a puppet of his presumed Anglo-American masters.
Prime Minister He joined other officers in the March 1941 coup against the government of Dragiša Cvetković. After the coup, Simović became the new prime minister (27 March 1941). Simović did not repudiate the Tripartite Pact and assured the German minister-plenipotentiary, Viktor von Heeren, that his government was still committed to the Tripartite Pact as part of a desperate attempt to prevent a German invasion. Simović told Arthur Bliss Lane, the American minister-plenipotentiary, that he was anti-Axis, but that Yugoslavia was too weak to go to war against Germany and that an overt anti-German foreign policy would shatter Yugoslav national unity as most Croats favored a pro-German foreign policy. He appointed as his foreign minister Momčilo Ninčić, formerly the president of the Yugoslav-German friendship society, in attempt to gain favor with Adolf Hitler. Simović had overthrown the Regent, Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, and Cvetković, for having signed the Tripartite Pact, but as prime minister he continued the same foreign policy as Prince Paul and Cvetković as the only hope of preventing a German invasion. Huge crowds had come out in Belgrade to denounce Yugoslavia signing the Tripartite Pact and to cheer the coup, which gave the impression that the coup was aimed at undoing Yugoslavia's accession to the Tripartite Pact. The impression was further reinforced by a speech by the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, which portrayed the coup as anti-Axis. There was much popular anger in Belgrade over the brutally bullying tactics of Hitler and his Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, which made Yugoslavia's accession appeared as an abject national humiliation, hence the outburst of widespread joy at the news of the coup. The American historian Joseph Rothschild wrote the co-leader of the coup, General Borivoje Mirković was "too politically naïve" to understand the dangers of a German invasion, but that the "more sophisticated" Simović was not. The Serb historian Sima M. Cirković wrote it was a "legend" that Simović repudiated the Tripartite Pact, knowing full well that it would trigger a German invasion, instead noting Simović essentially chose to continue Paul's foreign policy, writing at most his government leaned in an anti-Axis and pro-Allied neutrality. The British historian Tim Judah wrote that the oddest aspect of the coup was that having been undertaken against the Prince Regent for having signed the Tripartite Pact, Simović in power did not repudiate the Tripartite Pact and instead continued with it. The principle reasons for this volte-face was that Simović had discovered, just as Prince Paul had before, that Churchill spoke very loudly of his wish to have Yugoslavia oppose Germany, but that words were all that the British were willing to offer. Simović swiftly learned that there would be no British military support and that Yugoslavia would be on its own if faced with a German invasion. Simović had been misinformed by a British journalist who had told him the entirely spurious story that Britain had just landed 15 divisions in Greece and was preparing to march north to link up with the Yugoslavs. On 27 March 1941, Hitler, furious about the coup, ordered an invasion of Yugoslavia under the grim codename of Operation Punishment.
A major historical debate concerns the allegation that Simović was put up to the coup by SOE. In the official history of British intelligence operations in World War Two, Harry Hinsley wrote that Simović was in contact with Sir Ronald Hugh Campbell, the British minister-plenipotentiary in Belgrade, together with the British service attachés along with SOE agents who all seemed to have misled him about the amount of British support he could expect. However, Hinsley concluded: "While British participation in the coup plans no doubt contributed to their success, it is clear that even without direct British encouragement there still would have been a coup". Bickham Sweet-Escott, an SOE agent stationed in Belgrade, wrote afterwards "most of us thought the coup would have happened even if SOE hadn't existed at all". Donovan, who later became the chief of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), upon reading an OSS document claiming that he had masterminded the coup during his meeting with Simović in 1941 wrote on the margin "NO".