Here is What happened in Yugoslavia during WWII

Murder, rape and mass executions were all too common in Yugoslavia during World War Two - carried out by Partisan fighters as well as by Chetnik rebels and German troops. Stephen Hart examines how resistance to Hitler led to terrifying brutality in war-time Yugoslavia.

On March 25, 1941, Yugoslavia joined the Axis and agreed to permit transit through its territory to German troops headed for Greece. The immediate reason for the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav government announcement that it would not honor its obligations under the agreement.

Public shooting of the national hero Čedomir Ljub Čupić in Nikšić on May 5, 1942.

The debate over signing the Tripartite Pact that bound the Axis partners had bitterly divided the Yugoslav federal government. Prince Paul had pushed hard for it and had prevailed. The announcement of the agreement on March 25 was extremely unpopular in many parts of the country, particularly in Serbia and Montenegro. On March 27, Serb military officers overthrew the regency, placed the 17-year-old King Peter on the throne and denounced the previous government's decision to join the Axis. Although the new prime minister, Colonel Dusan Simovic, sought within days to retract this statement, Hitler was furious and ordered the invasion of Yugoslavia on the evening of March 27.

The Axis invasion, involving German, Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian military units, commenced on April 6, 1941. Eleven days later, after the Simovic government and King Peter fled to London via Alexandria, Egypt, Yugoslavia surrendered to the Axis powers.

The make up of the population of Yugoslavia at the time of World War Two was extremely complex. Broadly speaking, there were two main ethnic groups - the Serbs and the Croats - plus three other smaller ethnic groupings - Albanians, Macedonians, Slovenes. The Serbs predominantly followed the Orthodox Church, although many Bosnians were Muslims ('Bosnians' are the descendants of Serbs who converted to Islam many centuries ago, and lived in Bosnia-Hercegovina). Greater Croatia, in addition to its Christian Croat population, also contained significant Islamic populations, either in parts of Bosnia or Croatia proper. Hitler was able to profit from the tension between these ethnic groups, particularly that between the Serbs and Croats.

The Yugoslavian ruler, Prince Pablo Karađorđević (center), tried unsuccessfully to resist German pressure to align Yugoslavian politics with German politics. He ended up agreeing to sign the Tripartite Pact, but was immediately deposed by a military coup.

Facing attack from three sides, the ethnically-divided Yugoslav Army soon succumbed to the onslaught - indeed, many ethnically Croatian units surrendered immediately to the invading Germans. By 17 April Yugoslavia had capitulated, and in the aftermath of the conflict the Axis victors claimed the spoils of conquest and dismembered the country.

Belgrade, Terazije Street, March 27th 1941, Citizens greet an officer, one of the putschists.

Greater Croatia, which included Bosnia-Hercegovina, became an independent pro-Axis state ruled by the anti-Semitic Fascist-nationalist Ustase. Germany also annexed northern Slovenia, occupied Serbia, and left its allies to annex or occupy the remaining parts of Yugoslavia. Axis occupation brought with it real hardship for the inhabitants of these territories, as these areas were ruthlessly exploited for the German war effort.

‘’250 followers of DRAZHA MIHAILOVIC were executed on December 26th 1942…’’

In some ways, however, the Axis victory remained a hollow one. For the writ of the Axis powers ran little beyond the towns and main roads. In the remote mountain regions, embryonic resistance forces soon emerged. But before the Germans could crush these nascent movements, their forces were redeployed from Yugoslavia to the east, in preparation for the now-imminent Operation Barbarossa.

Subsequently, those substantial Axis forces that did remain in the conquered Yugoslavia became locked in a protracted and appallingly brutal anti-partisan war, which raged across much of the territory. The resistance groups divided into two main movements - the Chetniks and the Partisans.

The first resistance group to emerge were the Chetniks - in Serbian the word means a detachment of men. These bands were nominally led by a former Yugoslav Army Colonel, named Dragoljub (“Draza”) Mihailovic, who served the Yugoslav Royalist government in exile.

The original nucleus of these guerrilla bands were the ethnic Serb Yugoslav troops who had evaded Axis capture during the invasion, and then fled to the hills of Bosnia, Montenegro, and Serbia. Mihailovic established his first stronghold in the mountainous Ravna Gora area of western Serbia.

A Wehrmacht soldier poses next to murdered civilians in occupied Yugoslavia, World War II

Soon Chetnik numbers were swelled by Serb peasants who had fled from Greater Croatia - non-Serbs were not allowed to join Chetnik bands. Many of these participants sought simply to defend their local village from the terrible brutalities of the Ustase. The latter were so brutal that they even drew protests from the Germans - not on humanitarian grounds, but because Ustase ethnic cleansing was fuelling the resistance movements.

The Chetniks were never a homogenous ideological movement, and many sub-groups paid no more than lip-service to Mihailovic's leadership. Some groups were implacably anti-German, whereas others saw the emerging rival resistance movement, that of the Partisans, as the greater threat. The elements that did unite the Chetniks, however, were their loyalty to the old Royalist regime, and heir desire to ensure the survival of the Serbian population.

These disparate groups strove to protect the Serbs from what seemed to be the genocidal intent of the Croats and Germans, plus the hostility of Muslims (both Croatian and Serbian) and Communists. To achieve this goal, Chetniks strove to forge an ethnically-pure Greater Serbia by violently 'cleansing' these areas of Croats and Muslims.

On the other hand, Chetniks were often reluctant to attack Axis targets, in case this provoked brutal Axis retaliation against the local Serb population. In addition, Mihailovic wished to conserve his forces for the general uprising that would coincide with the envisaged Allied invasion of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia.

The rival resistance movement, the Partisans, were led by 'Tito' - real name Josip Broz - who was head of the underground Yugoslav Communist party (KPJ), and received support from Stalin's Soviet Union. Broz was a Croatian-Slovene peasant, who after capture as an Austro-Hungarian soldier by the Russians during the Great War, had become a fanatical Communist.

The Partisans' goal was to create an independent Socialist Yugoslav state by freeing the country from Axis occupation. For Tito, therefore, resistance to the Axis always went hand-in-hand with the fostering of Socialist revolution. To this latter end, the KPJ attempted to appeal to all the various ethnic groups within Yugoslavia, by preserving the rights of each group - including those of both Serb and Croat Muslims. While the ethnic composition of partisan units varied widely over time and between regions, Tito's followers on the whole were Serbs.

Whenever the Partisans established control of an area within occupied Yugoslavia, they forged a disciplined Communist mini-state. Tito's first 'liberated base area', termed the Uzice Republic, was located in western Serbia, just 40km south of the Chetnik stronghold of Ravna Gora.

Top left: Leader ("Poglavnik") of the puppet Independent State of Croatia, Ante Pavelić, visits Adolf Hitler at the Berghof Top right: Partisan fighter Stjepan Filipović, shouts "Death to fascism, freedom to the people!" (the Partisan slogan) as he is hanged by the occupation forces Middle left: Yugoslav Prime Minister Marshal Josip Broz Tito, commander of the Partisans.

In these liberated areas the Partisans disseminated propaganda, and established schools, cinemas, newspapers, weapons workshops, and railways. However, as the Partisans were subject to strict Party discipline and did not generally fight to protect a particular village, they had the freedom to abandon a stronghold when faced by overwhelming Axis military operations - a flexibility the Chetniks often did not have.

Partisan strategy often sought to deliberately attack the Axis, so as to provoke appalling reprisals - the Germans usually worked on the basis of 100 executions for every German soldier killed by the resistance. Tito's coldly-calculated rationale was that the greater the cruelty the Axis inflicted on ordinary Yugoslavs, the greater the numbers that would join the Partisans' crusade to liberate Yugoslavia.

Relations between the two movements were uneasy from the start, but from October 1941 they degenerated into full-scale conflict. To the Chetniks, Tito's pan-ethnic policies seemed anti-Serbian, whereas the Chetniks' Royalism was anathema to the Communists.

German intelligence, however, failed to identify this rift, and their misperception of deepening Chetnik-Partisan cooperation led to the first significant anti-partisan sweeps. The death of ten German soldiers in the guerrilla attack on Gornij Milanovas led to an orgy of retaliation, during which the Germans executed 2,324 men in the nearby town of Kragujevac. The dead included 144 schoolboys - a tragedy subsequently immortalised in an often quoted poem by Desanka Maksimovic. The atrocity set the tenor for the barbarity that was to follow.

From autumn 1941, after recognising Mihailovic as the official head of the resistance in Yugoslavia, Britain regularly sent Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents to the Chetniks to assist them in their efforts. This move further strained Chetnik-Partisan relations. Then in late 1941, the Germans assaulted both Ravna Gora and Uzice. To avoid the continuance of this onslaught, Mihailovic suggested a truce with the Germans, and offered to fight against the Partisans - his first step on the rocky road to collaboration. This time, the Germans declined.

In the face of the German attacks, Mihailovic's Chetniks either melted away back to their villages or fled with their leader to eastern Bosnia. Here, they became locked in a vicious struggle with Croat Ustase and Bosnian Muslim forces that were wreaking genocidal atrocities against local Serbs.

Chetnik Serb vengeance, in return, was equally brutal. At Foca (also in eastern Bosnia) they systematically raped Muslim women and slit the throats of over 2,000 men. When Tito's Partisans then arrived in Foca, after retreating from Uzice in the face of German attacks, they became locked into what was now a three-sided war.

The fighting between Partisans and Chetniks continued to escalate, and as it developed so did the collaboration of the latter with the Axis forces. Having expanded into Montenegro (located in west-central Yugoslavia, along the northern border of the Italian colony of Albania) during 1942, the Chetniks increasingly cooperated with the occupying Italian forces while attempting to annihilate the Partisans. Consequently, British support for Mihailovic waned.

During 1943, the Partisans gained significant ground by spearheading the fight against Axis occupation, while simultaneously paving the way for Socialist Revolution by crushing the Chetniks. In May, the Partisans evaded a large-scale Axis offensive against them.

Next, in September, Italy surrendered to the western Allies, and while Axis forces immediately occupied the Italian-controlled areas of Yugoslavia, the Partisans captured large amounts of Italian equipment. Even more importantly for Tito, increasing Chetnik collaboration with the Axis powers finally led the British in December to switch their support to the Partisans.

Members of the Black Legion, formed mainly by Bosnian refugees from the Chetniks and partisan killings in eastern Bosnia. The atrocities and the subsequent reaction facilitated the return of the UASTA administration to the region.

Then, in May 1944, German airborne forces mounted a daring raid that came close to capturing Tito. The leader, however, escaped and subsequently established his headquarters on the Adriatic island of Vis. While he was there the Allies continued to support him militarily, and also worked to reconcile the Communists with the exiled Yugoslav King.

Finally, in early October 1944, the Soviet advance against German occupation forces reached the eastern regions of Yugoslavia. This compelled those Germans deployed in the southern Balkans to withdraw north into Serbia and Croatia - to link up with the units defending the Eastern Front. As a result, on the 20th, Partisan forces liberated Belgrade, capital of Yugoslavia, just a few hours before the Red Army arrived.