Invasion of Yugoslavia

• 1. Introduction

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  The invasion of Yugoslavia began on the 6th of April 1941. German-led Axis forces attacked the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in what became known as the April War, or Operation 25. Adolf Hitler ordered it after a Yugoslav coup d'état overthrew a government that had just allied itself with him. He told his generals he intended, in his own words, 'to destroy Yugoslavia militarily and as a state.' He would carry it out 'with pitiless harshness,' without waiting to hear from the new government in Belgrade. Within days, German, Italian and Hungarian forces were advancing on the country from several directions at once. This documentary follows how a single palace coup pulled half of southeastern Europe into one war. It asks why the kingdom's defenses gave way so quickly. And it traces what was left of Yugoslavia once the fighting stopped.

• 2. The Regent's Pact

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  Prince Paul, ruling as Regent for the underage King Peter II, agreed to align Yugoslavia with the Axis on the 25th of March 1941. He signed the Tripartite Pact under pressure from Hitler, who had already brought Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria into the same alliance during 1940 and early 1941. Hitler wanted Yugoslavia's cooperation partly to shore up Benito Mussolini, whose October 1940 invasion of Greece had been thrown back into Italian-held Albania. He also wanted to protect Germany's oil supply, since Britain could bomb Romania's Ploiești oilfields from bases in Greece.

  Serbian officers, the National Defense association, the Chetniks Association, the Serbian Orthodox Church, and many liberals and Communists all opposed the pact. On the 27th of March, military officers, most of them Serbs, staged a coup d'état. They forced Prince Paul to resign and declared the seventeen-year-old King Peter II to be of age. Hitler took the coup as a personal insult. He summoned his military advisers to Berlin that same day and issued Führer Directive No. 25, ordering that Yugoslavia be treated as a hostile state.

  On the 27th of March, Hitler also informed Hungary's ambassador, Döme Sztójay, of his plan. He confided to Regent Miklós Horthy that Germany recognized Hungary's claims on Bačka and Banat, telling him to 'take as much as you want.' Horthy accepted. By the 2nd of April, Germany's ambassador had already been pulled from Belgrade, and the remaining embassy staff urged friendly nations to evacuate too.

• 3. Courting The Neighbors

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  King Carol II of Romania first invited German troops onto his soil. He wrote to Hitler on the 2nd of July 1940, shortly after ceding Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union. German soldiers crossed into Romania on the 10th of October, reaching Bucharest two days later to shouts of 'Heil.' Officially they were there only to train the Romanian army. The real purpose was to guard the Ploiești oil fields and prepare for a future attack on the Soviet Union. Ion Antonescu, Romania's new leader, asked that the mission be expanded, and Germany happily obliged. By January 1941, German troop numbers in Romania had reached 170,639, and Britain broke off diplomatic relations with the country that February.

  In Bulgaria, two events in early November 1940 convinced Hitler he needed troops there. False reports claimed the British were building an airfield on Lemnos. British air raids had also begun striking Italian shipping from Greek bases on the 6th of November. On the 18th of November, Tsar Boris III met Hitler and promised Bulgaria would join an attack on Greece, though only at the last moment. A secret German team under Colonel Kurt Zeitzler slipped into the country soon after to set up fuel depots and arrange troop billeting. By the end of December, more than a thousand German soldiers in civilian clothing were active in Bulgaria, though its government kept denying it. Bulgaria signed the Tripartite Pact on the 1st of March 1941, ratified by its Assembly on a vote of 140 to 20. The next day, the bulk of the German 12th Army crossed the Danube. It was welcomed by a population that still believed Germany and the Soviet Union were allies.

  Hungary had refused to let German troops cross its territory during the 1939 invasion of Poland. By 1940 it allowed them through as civilians bound for Romania. In September 1940, the Hungarian legation in Berlin granted over 6,500 transit visas to Germans headed there. The arrangement called for six trains a night, carrying soldiers in sealed cars with no rail transport officers aboard. The first German troops passed through Hungary on the 8th of October. By early November, British intelligence had already tracked three divisions moving through. On the 20th of November, Hungarian Prime Minister Pál Teleki signed the Tripartite Pact after meeting Hitler in Berchtesgarden. Major German troop movements began on the 13th of December. That was the day after Hungary and Yugoslavia signed a non-aggression pact promising 'permanent peace and eternal friendship.' Germany had promised 180 locomotives for the transfers; only 130 arrived, and Hungarian railway officials complained. On the morning of the 3rd of April 1941, with Hitler's invasion plan already finalized, Teleki took his own life.

• 4. A Lopsided Balance

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  Against Yugoslavia, Germany fielded 19 divisions, including five panzer divisions and over 750 aircraft. The Italian 2nd and 9th Armies added 22 more divisions, roughly 300,000 troops and 666 aircraft. Hungary's 3rd Army joined in with support from more than 500 additional aircraft.

  The Kingdom of Yugoslavia defended itself with more than 33 divisions of the Royal Yugoslav Army. Its air force flew four air brigades and over 400 aircraft. Its small navy counted four destroyers and four submarines on the Adriatic. That army leaned heavily on horse-drawn and animal transport, and it had only 50 tanks able to match the Germans on equal terms. Fewer than 120 of its aircraft counted as modern fighters. Fully mobilized, it could have fielded 28 infantry divisions, three cavalry divisions and 35 independent regiments, adding up to about 1,200,000 men. Yugoslavia delayed full mobilization until the 3rd of April to avoid provoking Hitler. Only around 11 divisions reached their planned positions before the invasion began. Units were filled to somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of strength. Its air force counted 1,875 officers and 29,527 other ranks, including about 2,000 pilots, who flew aircraft of Yugoslav, German, Italian, French and British design.

• 5. Fractures In The Ranks

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  Fifth column activity by Croatians, Slovenians and ethnic Germans is one theory scholars have proposed for the Royal Yugoslav Army's sudden collapse. Others point to poor training and equipment, or to generals eager to end the fighting quickly. Some historians have pushed back on the fifth column theory, arguing it made little real difference to the outcome. Historian Jozo Tomasevich instead blamed strategy: the army's insistence on defending every border at once doomed it from the start.

  None of Yugoslavia's national groups, Slovenes and Croats included, were willing to fight to defend what they saw as a Serbian Yugoslavia. To keep Slovenes from feeling abandoned, defenses were built along the northern border. That left the natural defensive line, at the Sava and Drina rivers further south, unused. Only wholly Serbian units inside Serbia's own borders put up serious resistance. On the evening of the 7th and the 8th of April, Croatian troops in the 108th Infantry Regiment rebelled near Grubišno Polje. They took command from their Serb officers. They entered Bjelovar, where the mayor, Julije Makanec, proclaimed an Independent State of Croatia on the 8th of April, on his own initiative. Two days later, units of the Croatian-manned 4th and 7th Armies mutinied as well.

  Of the 165 generals on Yugoslavia's active list when the invasion began, all but four were Serbs. Belgrade itself would fall within days.

• 6. Eleven Days

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  At 07:00 on the 6th of April 1941, Luftwaffe bombers opened the invasion with a saturation raid on Belgrade codenamed Operation Retribution. Around 300 aircraft took part, a quarter of them Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers, escorted by heavy fighter cover. The raid came in three waves, each lasting about 20 minutes and spaced 15 minutes apart. Bombs fell on the city for nearly an hour and a half. The bombers aimed mainly at the government district in the city center. About 4,000 residents were killed, and communication between the Yugoslav high command and its forces in the field effectively collapsed.

  That same day, the German XL Panzer Corps struck out from Bulgaria toward Skopje, opening the ground war. On the 8th of April, the XIV Panzer Corps pushed from Bulgaria toward Niš. Two days later, four more German thrusts hit at once. The XLI Panzer Corps drove from Romania toward Belgrade, and the XLVI Panzer Corps crossed from Hungary over the Drava. The LI Infantry Corps pushed from Austria toward Zagreb, while the XLIX Mountain Corps advanced from Austria toward Celje. By the end of that day, the Yugoslav Army was disintegrating almost everywhere, except along the Albanian frontier. Italy and Hungary joined the ground offensive on the 11th of April, meeting almost no resistance as they advanced.

  On the 11th of April, a single German officer, Fritz Klingenberg, slipped into Belgrade with only a handful of men to scout the city. After brief clashes with Yugoslav troops, his small group bluffed their way to the center of the city. They convinced officials that a much larger force, backed by bombardment, stood ready outside. The city's Mayor surrendered to them at 18:45 on the 12th of April, before German reinforcements had even arrived. On the 14th and the 15th of April, King Peter II and his government flew out of the country. German troops captured the Yugoslav Supreme Command near Sarajevo around the same time.

  On the 17th of April, after eleven days of fighting, Aleksandar Cincar-Marković and General Radivoje Janković signed Yugoslavia's unconditional surrender. The armistice took effect at noon the following day. Over twelve days of combat, German losses totaled 558 men: 151 killed, 392 wounded and 15 missing. The Germans took between 254,000 and 345,000 Yugoslav prisoners, and the Italians took 30,000 more. Days earlier, on the 10th of April, a new state had already been declared in Zagreb: the Independent State of Croatia. Its fate, and Yugoslavia's, were only just beginning to take shape.

• 7. What Came After

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  Ante Pavelić led the fascist Ustaše behind that new government, timing its proclamation to land before the invasion had even finished. Germany took control of most of Serbia once the final surrender was signed, while Hungary, Italy and Bulgaria annexed other pieces of the former kingdom. Croatia itself, despite its new government's declaration, fell under the joint control of Germany and Italy in practice.

  The Yugoslav Army officially surrendered on the 18th of April 1941. That same day, Colonel Draža Mihailović began organizing resistance in the mountains of Serbia and Eastern Bosnia. King Peter II and his government-in-exile in Britain made him a General and Minister for War. His guerrilla force eventually grew to as many as 100,000 active soldiers. Mihailović insisted his men still be called the 'Royal Yugoslav Army,' but American and British intelligence and press consistently called them 'Chetniks' instead. That labeling caused confusion, since a separate, collaborationist Yugoslav force operated at the same time under General Milan Nedić.