History, World War II and Liberation

At the start of the war, 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 a military coup, both anti-Axis and anti-Croat in motivation, overthrew the regency and government and declared Petar II of age. A week later, Germany and Italy, along with their allies Hungary and Bulgaria, invaded and conquered Yugoslavia in a ten-day war, then proceeded to dismember it. The king and his government fled and established a government in exile in London.

Germany and Italy divided Slovenia between them. Kosovo was added to Italian-controlled Albania; Hungary annexed Backa, Baranja, and Medjumurje; and Bulgaria occupied Macedonia. Montenegro became an Italian protectorate. The Germans occupied Serbia. The largest piece of Yugoslavia became the so-called Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Drzava Hrvatske or NDH in Serbo-Croatian), which included most of Croatia and all of Bosnia. Actually a puppet state under German-Italian occupation, the NDH was ruled for them by the Ustase. Led by Ante Pavelic the Ustase attempted to exterminate the NDH’s nearly 2 million Serbs, modeling their actions after the Nazi genocide of Europe’s Jews. The Ustase also slaughtered Roma (Gypsies), Jews, and antifascist Croats in the NDH.

Armed resistance against Yugoslavia’s invaders and their collaborators began immediately. Colonel (later General) Draza Mihailovic and other Serb officers and soldiers of the Royal Army who refused to surrender took to the forests and mountains and began harassing the German occupation troops. They called themselves Cetniks, the name given to Serb guerrillas in Ottoman times. Josip Broz Tito, the Croat head of the Yugoslav Communist Party, organized a rival, pan-Yugoslav resistance group called the Partisans, which was in the field by June 1941. The two groups soon moved from sporadic cooperation to open conflict. The Cetniks continued to be an almost exclusively Serb and poorly organized force. They were at best loosely controlled by Mihailovic, who was made minister of defense by the royal government in exile in early 1942 and enjoyed British and American support until late 1943. The Partisans, with "death to fascism, freedom to the people" and the "brotherhood and unity" of all the Yugoslav ethnic groups as their principal slogans, recruited fighters and supporters from all of the Yugoslav ethnic groups.

From late 1941 to the end of the war in 1945 Yugoslavia suffered a devastating triple war. The first war was between the anti-Axis resistance movements and the Axis occupiers and their allies, including the Ustase and the Slovene White Guards. The second conflict was between the Partisans and the Cetniks, with the latter accepting first Italian and then German support against the Partisans. The third was among the Yugoslav peoples, especially Serbs, Croats, and Muslim Slavs on both sides of the other two wars. In the end, the Partisans were the victors, primarily because of their broad appeal, better organization and discipline, and greater persistence in fighting the Axis occupiers. In 1943 the Partisans won what would eventually become exclusive British and American recognition and military assistance as the most active anti-Axis fighters.b