Petar II

Petar II (1923-1970), king of Yugoslavia (1934-1945), son of Aleksandar I, king of Yugoslavia, and grandson of Petar I Karadjordjević, king of Serbia, born in Belgrade. Petar succeeded to the throne under the regency of his uncle, Prince Paul, after his father's assassination in 1934. At the start of World War II (1939-1945), Yugoslavia struggled to remain neutral. However, in 1941 the government yielded to German pressure and signed the Tripartite Pact, which aligned it with the Axis powers: Germany, Italy, and Japan. Within days, an anti-Axis military coup overthrew the regent and the government and declared Petar to be of age to rule in his own right. A week later Germany and Italy, along with their allies Hungary and Bulgaria, invaded and conquered Yugoslavia. Petar fled to Britain, where he established a Yugoslav government in exile. In 1945, at the end of the war, Yugoslavia became a Communist republic; Petar remained in exile.