“Better war than a pact!”
Mass demonstrations under this slogan swept across Yugoslavia as soon as its citizens learned of its accession to the Triple Alliance. The situation worsened by the hour. Serbian Patriarch Gavriel appeared on the radio to denounce the pact with the Germans.
During the night of March 26 to 27, 1941, a group of high-ranking officers of the Yugoslav army with close ties to London, led by Yugoslav air force commander, General Dushan Simovich, staged a military coup. The conspirators acted on behalf of the minor King Petar P. Prince Regent Paul and the Cvetkovic government, which had signed a pact with the Axis powers, was overthrown.
On the morning of March 27, Belgrade rejoiced. Mass rallies and demonstrations shook the Yugoslav capital. More than 100,000 people took to the streets. Demonstrators broke glass in German embassies with stones, and burned flags with swastikas. Patriotic demonstrations were held in all major cities of the country. The Communist Party came out of hiding. The participants in the rallies demanded that the new government break with Germany, take immediate measures to defend the country, and purge the state structures of pro-fascist elements.
On the same day, a new government was formed. It was headed by General D. Simovic, with Prof. Slobodan Jovanovic, leader of the Serb Club, and V. Macek, the Croatian leader, as his deputies. The new government consisted mostly of pro-English figures.
“Today Yugoslavia has regained its soul!”
Churchill declared in London
But suddenly it turned out that all the energy of the coup leaders had been squandered in the first 24 hours. What to do next? This the new government of the country clearly did not know.
Yugoslavia was sending out desperate signals to Germany and Italy, trying to convince them that the coup was for purely internal political reasons, that Yugoslavia was not giving up its participation in the Triple Pact, that it was ready to fulfill all its obligations to Germany and Italy. But all was already in vain.
The press of England, the USA and the neutral countries regarded the coup in Belgrade as “spitting in Hitler’s face”. The Yugoslav coup in Berlin was assessed in the same way, only more seriously.
On March 27, an emergency meeting of the Wehrmacht high command was held at Hitler’s headquarters. Hitler stated, “Yugoslavia was an uncertain factor. The Serbs and Slavs had never been pro-German. If a government coup had taken place during the events of Barbarossa (that is, during the German attack on the USSR. – Author’s note), the consequences for us would probably have been much more serious. As a result, “the Führer decided, without waiting for a possible declaration of loyalty to the new government, to make all preparations to destroy Yugoslavia militarily and as a national unit.
On the same day Hitler issued “Directive No. 025,” in which he stated that “the military putsch in Yugoslavia has changed the political situation in the Balkans. The declaration instructed the Wehrmacht command to regard Yugoslavia, regardless of possible displays of loyalty, as an enemy and to begin preparations for an invasion.
The Wehrmacht General Staff had no plan of war against Yugoslavia. In the spring of 1941 German troops were preparing for Operation Marita, the invasion of Greece from Bulgaria. The presence of German troops in Bulgaria allowed the redirection of part of the forces from this grouping to Yugoslavia. Another grouping was deployed in Austria, on the Yugoslavian-German border. Italy was also involved in the attack on Yugoslavia.
The position of Hungary remained a problem. Germany had expected that Hungary, as a member of the Triple Pact, would allow German troops through its territory. But unexpectedly Berlin ran into the stubborn position of Hungarian Prime Minister Pál Teleki on this issue. Four months earlier Hungary had concluded a friendship pact with Yugoslavia, and Teleki believed that Hungary had no right to trample on it so brazenly. But the Hungarian leadership, led by Admiral Horthy, was of a different opinion, and German troops entered Hungary. Upon learning of this, Teleki shot himself.
In a few days Germany deployed 32 divisions to the Yugoslavian borders, not counting the allied Italian, Hungarian and Bulgarian forces, united under the overall command of Field Marshal W. List in three main groups: in Austria (Graz area), Hungary and Bulgaria.
The Yugoslav army did not have enough forces to repulse the aggression. The manpower of the army as of March 27, 1941 numbered about 600,000 men. The Defense Plan R-41, elaborated by the Yugoslav General Headquarters in February, 1941, envisaged that in case of war 1.7 million additional persons would be mobilized in the army. 28 infantry and 3 cavalry divisions were to be formed. Guided by outdated ideas about the nature of war, the Yugoslav General Staff assumed to complete the mobilization and strategic deployment of the army in 12 days-as if anyone was going to give him those 12 days!
All in all Yugoslavia could oppose the aggressor with about 40 divisions for a land border length of 2,500 kilometers.
In technical terms the Yugoslav army was quantitatively much inferior to the German army, although its combat equipment was of the same quality as that used by the Germans. The core of the air force was made up of German Messerschmitt-109 fighters (about 200), which were the basic fighter aircraft of the German air force. The small number of armored units were armed with 200 Czechoslovak LT-35 light tanks [German designation: 35(t), version 1935, such as those deployed by the German 6th Armored Division.
Plan R-41 stipulated that in the event of a German attack, the Yugoslav Army, fighting defensively in the north, would have to invade Albania and, in cooperation with the Greek armed forces, defeat the Italian grouping in Albania, thereby ensuring the withdrawal of the main forces of the Yugoslav army to the south. Here, together with the Greeks and the British, the Yugoslavs were to form a stable fighting front. It was essentially a repetition of the Thessaloniki front option during World War I.
The construction of fortifications on Yugoslav borders began as early as the late 1930s, but they were built on the assumption that Italy was the country’s most likely opponent. There were no fortifications on the borders with Bulgaria and Romania.
The Germanophile policy of the country’s governing circles and the intensive activities of the German intelligence service in Yugoslavia resulted in the fact that on the eve of the war a number of top positions in the army and the state were held by agents of the Abwehr. All the “secret” and “top secret” documents of the Yugoslav General Staff, including the mobilization plan, within hours of their appearance lay on the table of the German resident in Belgrade.
War was on the doorstep, but the government took no serious action. On March 30, a partial mobilization of reservists began in Yugoslavia. The General Staff was practically inactive. A British expeditionary corps had already landed in Greece, but there were no talks about organizing joint actions with it or with the General Staff of the Greek army, its ally.
Literally on the brink of war, the ruling circles of Yugoslavia decided to take the step which had long been demanded by the public of the country: On April 5, a treaty of friendship and non-aggression was signed in Moscow between Yugoslavia and the USSR. The parties undertook obligations to respect each other’s independence, sovereign rights and territorial integrity. Article 2 of the treaty stipulated that “should either Contracting Party be attacked by a third State, the other Contracting Party undertakes to maintain a policy of friendly relations toward it.” Thus, the treaty with the USSR was only moral support for Yugoslavia – there was no question of military assistance. For Belgrade, this treaty was a concession to public opinion in the country and a desire to find moral support in the face of fascist aggression. By encouraging this desire of the Yugoslavs, Moscow hoped that Hitler would be drawn into a protracted war in the Balkans. Thus the timing of the German-Soviet war, which was inevitable, would inevitably be delayed, which was extremely desirable for the USSR.
On the eve of the attack on Yugoslavia, the German military intelligence intensified its entire network of agents in the country. Its main task was to morally corrupt the army and society, to disrupt the mobilization. The Croatian Ustashi, to whom Italian reinforcements were secretly transferred, were preparing to unleash terror in the rear of the Yugoslav army.
At dawn on April 6, Orthodox Palm Sunday, German aviation violated the airspace of Yugoslavia. Belgrade was subjected to particularly fierce bombing – in accordance with Hitler’s directive: “Belgrade must be destroyed by continuous day and night air raids. The carpet bombing of the Yugoslav capital played primarily a psychological role: it was Hitler’s answer to the “spit in the face” and at the same time an act of intimidation for those states that were still thinking about binding their fate with England – in particular, for Turkey.
On the same day German troops invaded Yugoslavian territory.
The Yugoslav army had not had time to prepare and move out to the initial positions by the beginning of the hostilities. From the first hours of the war the General Staff had lost control of the troops. General mobilization was not announced until the second day of the war, April 7, when German mechanized units had already deeply invaded the country.
The plan of action of the Wehrmacht was developed taking into account the provisions of the Yugoslav defensive plan R-41, well known to German intelligence. The main blow was delivered by German troops from Bulgaria, aiming to cut off Yugoslavia from Greece and thus cut off the Yugoslav army’s escape routes to the south. On the evening of April 7 the Germans entered Skopje, and on April 9 they entered Nis. To the north, on April 10, the Germans occupied Zagreb almost without any resistance.
By the end of April 10, the fourth day of the war, the Yugoslav army had ceased to exist as an organized force. Part of the Yugoslav forces put up stubborn pockets of resistance in various places. In Albania, acting on Plan R-41, the Yugoslav units went on the offensive against the Italian forces. At the same time, much of the Yugoslav divisions stretched along the borders were demoralized. Croats, Slovenes, and Macedonians deserted en masse. On the morning of April 13, the Germans entered Belgrade. On April 15, the Yugoslav government left the country, King Petar II and ministers flew to Greece and from there to Egypt. On April 17 the act of the complete and unconditional surrender of the Yugoslav army was signed in Belgrade.