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Yugoslavia World War II
The thirty divisions of the Royal Yugoslav Army were not
equipped or prepared to meet the fifty-two invading German,
Italian, and Hungarian divisions and the Bulgarian forces that
invaded Macedonia. Lacking modern equipment and adequate mobility
and firepower, the Yugoslav Army faced a surprise attack on
several fronts by superior and heavily armored and mechanized
forces. Yugoslav forces retreated rapidly to the center of the
country, attempting to use the mountainous coastal areas as a
base and to maintain lines of supply to Greece and the Allies.
However, German forces captured the supreme command at Sarajevo
on April 17, 1941, and Yugoslavia formally surrendered. Germany,
Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Albania annexed or occupied parts
of the country.
A small group of officers led by Colonel Draza Mihajlovi
refused to surrender and continued to resist the occupation from
a base in western Serbia. They called themselves the Cetnik
Detachments of the Yugoslav Army of the Fatherland. The Cetnici
(sg.
Cetnik--see Glossary) also represented the royal government
in exile. They received a British military liaison officer and
considerable amounts of British supplies and equipment. However,
they avoided attacking the occupiers because they feared
reprisals against the noncombatant population. The Cetnici
believed their military actions could not influence the course of
the war, and they waited instead for the Allies to defeat the
Axis powers. They were later discredited in Yugoslavia as
collaborators because of their unwillingness to resist.
The Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) under Tito also
refused to accept defeat. It remained inactive, however, until
Germany attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. Through the
Comintern (Communist Internal trans), the CPY received orders
from the Soviet Union to resist the German occupation. Initially
the military committees of the CPY collected arms and organized
available manpower. Then they conducted small armed attacks and
acts of sabotage against occupying Axis forces. They waged their
military campaign without regard to the fate of civilians living
under the occupation--often the occupiers executed large numbers
of civilians in retaliation for attacks and sabotage. The
difference in strategies and political views quickly brought the
etnici and CPY forces into a state of civil war. The former
unsuccessfully attempted to attack Tito's headquarters in
November 1941.
The CPY military wing formally became the People's Liberation
Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia (commonly known as
the Partisans) on December 22, 1941. With approximately 80,000
fighters, the Partisans fought occupying forces, collaborators
such as the
Ustase (see Glossary) in Croatia, and their political
opponents, the Cetnici. By the end of 1942, the Partisans had
grown to 150,000 troops organized into two corps, three
divisions, thirty-one brigades, and thirty-eight detachments.
Axis occupation forces launched several major offensives to
destroy the Partisans, but they failed in each case. Although the
Partisans liberated some areas of the country, they generally
avoided major engagements with superior forces.
Yugoslavia became an unanticipated theater of war for the
Axis. Large German forces were forced to remain there to protect
lines of supply to Greece and North Africa during the critical
year of 1942. Nearly 600,000 Axis troops, thirty-eight divisions
in all, were needed to control the country and thus were
unavailable as reinforcements for the pivotal battles of El
Alamein and Stalingrad. The occupation of Yugoslavia drained
significant Axis manpower and resources from other theaters over
a long period of time. Partisan pressure was a factor in Italy's
withdrawal from the war in September 1943. When Italy's twenty
divisions left Yugoslav territory, Germany had to commit even
greater numbers of soldiers to maintain its position there. At
maximum strength the German occupying army included twenty-six
divisions.
By late 1943, the Partisans began to resemble a regular army.
With captured or abandoned Italian arms, they armed 300,000
combatants in eight corps and twenty-six divisions. At the end of
1943, virtually all Allied military assistance was transferred
from the Cetnici to the Partisans, whose operations had the
potential of hastening the defeat of Germany. From then until the
end of the war, the Partisans received over 100 tanks, 300 field
guns, 2,000 mortars, 13,000 machine guns, and 130,000 rifles from
Great Britain and the United States. The Soviet Union provided
even larger numbers of guns, mortars, and machine guns.
As the Germans retreated from Greece through Yugoslavia and
the Soviet Red Army advanced into Romania in 1944, the Partisans
cleared most of the German troops from the country while
simultaneously battling their domestic Ustase and Cetnik enemies.
Tito flew to Moscow to meet Stalin and to coordinate Partisan and
Red Army operations on Yugoslav territory. The Red Army wheeled
north after entering the country and, together with the
Partisans, liberated Belgrade on October 20, 1944. The Red Army
pursued the retreating German forces from northeast Yugoslavia
into Hungary, leaving the Partisans in control in Yugoslavia. The
800,000 troops of the People's Liberation Army officially became
the Yugoslav People's Army (YPA) on March 1, 1945.
Yugoslavia suffered 1.7 million dead during the war, out of a
total population of 15 million. Of these, over 300,000 were
killed in action. Another 400,000 were wounded. Yugoslav sources
claimed that the Partisans inflicted over 450,000 enemy
casualties. The amount of Ustase and Cetnik casualties in that
total is unknown.
Data as of December 1990
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