Milan Stojadinović (; 4 August 1888 – 26 October 1961) was a Serbian and Yugoslav politician and economist who served as the Prime Minister of Yugoslavia from 1935 to 1939. He also served as Foreign Minister from 1935 to 1939 and as Minister of Finance three times (1922–1924, 1924–1926, 1934–1935). Early life Milan Stojadinović was born on 4 August 1888 in the Serbian town of Čačak. His father, Mihailo, was a municipal judge who relocated to Belgrade in 1904. It was here that the young Stojadinović finished his secondary education and became a sympathizer of the Serbian Social Democratic Party (SSDP). Later, he came to believe that the liberation of ethnic Serbs who lived in the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires was more important than bridging the gap between the upper and lower classes, and followed in his father's footsteps by joining the People's Radical Party (NRS) of Nikola Pašić. In the summer of 1906, Stojadinović was sent to Austria to learn German as a reward for successfully completing secondary school. While there, he fell under the influence of South Slavic youth movements and became a supporter of Yugoslav unity. He later returned to Serbia and began his studies at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law, specializing in economics and finance. He spent three years studying abroad, staying in Munich and Potsdam during the 1910–11 school year, Paris between 1911 and 1912, and London between 1912 and 1913. Stojadinović's stay in Germany had a profound effect on his economic views and led him to write a doctoral dissertation on the country's budget. He was greatly influenced by the German historical school of economics, which argued that economic policies should be developed according to the specific economic and cultural conditions prevalent in a society rather than being based on a universal model. Economist Stojadinović's competence as an economist became evident during the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 and during World War I, when he began working in the Serbian Ministry of Finance. Following the Serbian Army's retreat through Albania during the winter of 1915, he withdrew with the Serbian government-in-exile to the Greek island of Corfu. He stayed there between 1916 and 1918 and distinguished himself as a financial expert by helping to stabilize the Serbian dinar. Stojadinović met his future wife Augusta — a woman of mixed Greek-German heritage — during his stay in Corfu. The two settled in