Death of Boris III
The death of Boris III of Bulgaria was one of the great mysteries of World War II.


Shortly after returning to Sofia from a meeting with Adolf Hitler in Rastenburg, East Prussia, Boris III died of apparent heart failure on 28 August 1943.[1] According to the diary of the German attache in Sofia at the time, Colonel Carl-August von Schoenebeck, the two German doctors who attended the King – Sajitz and Hans Eppinger – both believed that he had died from the same poison that Dr. Eppinger had allegedly found two years earlier in the postmortem examination of the Greek Prime Minister, Ioannis Metaxas, a slow poison which takes weeks to do its work and which causes the appearance of blotches on the skin of its victim before death.[2]
There are three versions for poisoning:
- the United Kingdom case (Secret Intelligence Service);[3]
- the case of the Soviet Union (NKVD);[4]
- the case of the Nazi Germany (Sicherheitsdienst).[5]
Bulgarian officials say the tsar has been poisoned by British secret services. [6]
The Bulgarian tsar is a descendant of all French kings, an Eastern Orthodox whose godfather is the last Emperor of All Russia Nicholas II.
There is a version that he was urged by Hitler to be an intermediary for separate peace with the Soviet Union, similar to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. During the war, Bulgaria represented diplomatically the interests of the Nazi Germany in Moscow. Upon learning of his death, Hitler furiously breaks a vase into the wall, mourning his fate.
Boris III is buried in the Rila Monastery.
References
- "Bulgarian Rule Goes to Son, 6. Reports on 5-day Illness Conflict", United Press dispatch in a cutting from an unknown newspaper in the collection of historian James L. Cabot, Ludington, Michigan.
- Wily Fox: How Tsar Boris Saved the Jews of Bulgaria from the Clutches of His Axis Allie Adolph Hitler, AuthorHouse 2008, 213
- mediapool.bg, Поверителен доклад от 1943 г.: Цар Борис III е отровен, Христо Христов, 28 август 2015 г.
- www.kingsimeon.bg
- Преди 76 г. умира цар Борис III Обединител
- mediapool.bg, Поверителен доклад от 1943 г.: Цар Борис III е отровен, Христо Христов, 28 август 2015 г.