Unpacking Motivation: The Assassination Squad

On 9 October 1934, terrorists murdered King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in a Marseille street. The Croatian ultranationalist Ustashe was behind the attack. The Ustashe hoped that the king’s death would cause the collapse of Yugoslavia and the liberation of the Croat people. Murder in Marseille: Right-Wing Terrorism in 1930s Europe (Manchester UP, 2025) examines the circumstances, processes, and trajectories that shaped the Ustashe terrorists and their attack in Marseille.

It brings questions about contemporary terrorism to bear on a historical attack: what prompts people to join terrorist organisations? How are these people ‘radicalised’ to commit violence? What roles do women play in terrorism? Murder in Marseille bridges the scholarly gap between historical and contemporary terrorism, paying attention to, and often guided by, current concerns, ideas, theories, and notions about terrorist violence.

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