The Yugoslav Republic's enormous shift in strategic direction first rippled to the eastern side of the Dinaric Alps—to the Kingdom of Dalmatia.
January 19, 1938.
Split.
At the Yugoslav Republic Embassy, Ambassador Taherovich looked at the telegram in his hand, his expression somewhat grave. Minister Modrov asked,
"Your Excellency, what should we do next?"
Ambassador Taherovich tapped the table and said, "The President has truly handed us a difficult problem. Improving our relations with the Kingdom of Dalmatia will not be easy."
Modrov was somewhat disdainful of Taherovich's words. He knew very well that Taherovich was deeply conflicted at the moment.
For Taherovich himself was a hardliner—or rather, a Yugoslav inclined toward taking hardline measures against the Kingdom of Dalmatia.
As a pure-blooded former Croat, Taherovich naturally inherited the Croats' general attitude toward the Kingdom of Dalmatia, a country that had occupied the magpie's nest.
After all, before the Kingdom of Dalmatia, this land had long been home to Croats. Even after it came under the rule of the Austrian Empire, Croats still made up the majority of the local population.
But from the Austro-Hungarian era onward, especially beginning in the latter half of the nineteenth century, vast numbers of so-called "German" immigrants had poured in, completely changing Dalmatia's demographic structure.
The Croats who had originally lived here either chose to merge with the Germans or chose to leave. Those who chose neither basically faced only the fate of physical extermination.
Thus, it was difficult for Ambassador Taherovich to feel any goodwill toward the Kingdom of Dalmatia. After becoming an official of the new Yugoslav Republic, his political platform had been "recover the lost lands."
These so-called lost lands naturally referred to the territory of the Kingdom of Dalmatia.
And in the early days of the Yugoslav Republic's founding, the