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German Führer Adolf Hitler thought he had the Balkans sorted out to provide a secure southern front. He forced the Yugoslav government to adhere to the Axis. A popular revolt occured in Belgrade against joining the NAZI-dominated Axis. The revolt led by students overthrew the regency under Prince Paul. They installed the youthful King Peter and rejected the treaty that Prince Paul had signed with the NAZIs. Hitler was enraged with the coup. He decided to punish and cow the Serbs by destroying Belgrade by a Luftwaffe terror bombing. It is unclear what Hitler's plans for Yugoslavia were before the coup that rejected the Axis. Yugoslavia was a state centered on Serbia which had valiantly resisted the Central Powers in World War I. It was populated by Slavs which gave him another reason to despise the Yugoslav state. After the coup, Hitler was determined to destroy Yugoslavia, especially Serbia.
Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe military units had already been positioned in the Reich and and allied states (Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria). Hungary had been a relatively willing ally, Romania and Finally Bulgaria had been forced into the Axis as Hitler had tried to do in Yugoslavia. The movement of troops into Romania and Bulgaria was in part of the shift of the Wehrmacht east for the upcoming invasion of the Soviet Union. An intervention in the Balkans had also been foreseen, although the target was believed to be Greece. Hitler called the invasion, occupation and dismemberment of Yugoslavia “Operation Punishment” or “Operation 25.”
Belgrade was subjected to Luftwaffe terror bombing for rejecting the alliance with the NAZIs. Waves of Luftwaffe bombers and Stukas without warning began bombed the Serbian capital (April 6). Yugoslavia did not have a modern air force or anti-aircraft defenses. A reader in Belgrade writes, "There is a monument to the Nazi air attack on April 9th at the start of operation Punishment. The gallant Serbian air force did all it could to defend Belgrade and shot down Nazi planes, but there were too few Serbian Air Force personal and too few planes. The pilots were shot out of the sky one by one. Some survived and escaped to Britain and joined the RAF." There were no civil defense preparations. The Luftwaffe bombed Belgrade relentlessly for 4 days. No one know how many were killed. Estimates varied from 5,000 to 17,000 civilians. Belgrade, a beautiful and ancient center of Serbian culture and history, was reduced to rubble.
The invasion of Yugoslavia or (Operation Punishment/25) is sometimes described as a Axis invasion, in fact it was almost entirely an all German operation. All the serious fighting was done by the Germans who in sharp contrast to World war I secured a stunningly swift victory with virtually no casualties. The Wehrmacht launched a three-prong attack on Yugoslavia aimed at taking Belgrade and the Luftwaffe began the terror bombing of Belgrade ordered by Hitler to punish the Serbs (April 6). The swift German victory was due to superior German preparation, tactics, and equipment. The Yugoslav Army was affected by ethnic divisions the country. Zagreb radio announced the establishment of an independent Croatian republic under their nationalist leader Ante Pavelic (April 10). A major factor in the German victory was that the Yugoslav Army attempted to defend the entire country rather than concentrating forces. The Axis countries (Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria) proceeded to occupy and dismember defeated Yugoslavia. Germany's Axis allies play a minor role in the campaign. The Italian and Hungarian Army launched limited attacks on Yugoslav positions (April 11). The Bulgarian participation was to occupy Macedonia already taken by the Germans. King Peter fled the country (April 14). The Yugoslavs surrendered only 11 days later (April 17). Former Foreign Minister Cincar-Markovic signed the armistice with the Germans.
Military resistance in Yugoslavia, even in Serbia, quickly collapsed. Serbia had proven to be an important ally in World War I and the Serbian Army continued to fight even after the Central Powers overran Serbia itself. There was no effective resistance to the German invasion. The Wehrmacht spearhead by Panzers swept through Yugoslavia from both the north and west. The reaction to the German invasion varied. In Croatia they found a sympathetic population that treated them like liberators. The unexpectedly swift collapse of the Royal Yugoslav Army opened the way for the invasion of Greece. Neither the Greeks or British were prepared for such a stunning German victory in Yugoslavia. What Hitler did not anticipate after his stunning victory was the development of a major guerilla war in Yugoslavia which would require him to deploy a major force in the Balkans.
Hitler and Stalin launched World War II by invading Poland (September 1939). You would have thought this meant that the Germans, Hitler in particular, had many strengths. In fact they did not.. The Germans actually had many weaknesses. There were four primary reasons for the shocking early German successes:
1) Tactical doctrine: As in 1939 and 1940, the German military performed spectacularly in the first half of 1941. Using Blitzkrieg tactics, the Germans subdued Greece and Yugoslavia in a few weeks, a textbook application of Blitzkrieg. And this was done even with British military assistance. The reasons for these victories were not fully understood at the time, either in Berlin or Allied capitals. Germany emerged as a major world power largely because the small, poverty stricken principality of Bragsenburg-Prussia developed an effective way of war against larger powers. 【Citino】 Prussia has been described as an army with a country rather than a country with an army. The Prussian Army was small, but highly profession, mobile, and in place before war broke out. Giving them the ability to achieve quick victories and a very valuable ally. The doctrine of Blitzkrieg was simply adopting the German way of war with new weaponry, primarily tanks and aircraft. It would take some time for the Americans, British, and Soviets to develop similar tactical doctrine. Unfortunately France did not have the needed time and space.
2) Small countries: Many new countries were created as a result of World War I. Hitler's concept was a series of aggressions against isolated, small countries without the ability to resist a major power. In 1939, he wanted a War with Poland and was actually surprised when Britain and France declared war. The one exception here was France, largely because France built the Maginot Line rather than developing modern tactical doctrine like the Germans did. France especially with British backing had the capability of resisting. Tragically, its military commanders clung to World War I tactical doctrine.
3) Logistics: Almost all of German successes were short campaigns in countries close to Germany, mostly bordering on Germany. This meant that the logistical needs could be easily met by the Reichsbahn. The only exception here was Norway, primarily because Norway relied on its neutrality to defend itself.
4) Length: All of the campaigns were very short. Victories over mostly, small unprepared countries. Short campaigns meant that countries cold be quickly subdued before a country could mobilize its military and industrial plant. his also meant the need campaign was not a great strain on the limited resources available to the Germans. And the German Luftwaffe quickly exerted air superiority. Short campaign also meant that Germany's serious weaknesses did not have time to manifest before the campaign was over.
5) Technology: Technology was not one of the reasons the Germans gained early victories. I only mention it because many at the time thought it was. And Goebbels propaganda loudly proclaimed their technology. The Germans did have excellent technology. In fact the Germans until the advent of the NAZIs were technological leaders. By the advent of World War II, British and French technology was just as good if not better. America was a technological powerhouse, enriched by a flood of refugee scientific caused by the NAZIs, but America until Pearl Harbor was not focusing its technological cabilpaities on the military. Pearl Harbor of course changed this. Notably, Germany's first military failure was the Battle of Britain, the first campaign where technology made a huge difference. Notably, the myth of German technological superiority continues to his day because of the secret weapons developed by German scientists. Rarely noted is that few of these technological marvels had any impact on the battlefield. Rather, the top secret weapons developed during the War we all the work of Allied scientists.
Yugoslavia had a substantial population of ethnic Germans. The Yugoslav population was primarily Slavic people. The country was known as the Kingdom of the Southern Slavs. 'Yug' mean south in Serbo-Croatian. The Yugoslav population was primarily Slavic peoples, including Serbs (40 percent), Croats (25 percent), Slovenes (10 percent), and Macedonians (5 percent). In addition there were non-Slavic minorities: Germans, Hungarians, Italians, and Jews. Yugoslavia inherited a considerable number of Germans along with its ex-Habsburg territories when it was created at the end of World War I (December 1918). There were two important ethnic German communities. One was Slovenia and the other was Vojvodina and Croatia-Slavonia commonly referred to as Donau Schwaben (Swabians). In addition to these two major communities were scattered pockets of ethnic Germans in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) as well as the other non-Slav minorities were discriminated against by the Serbian documented Royal Yugoslavian government. The different German communities responded differently to this discrimination. The Slovenian Germans in the north on the Austrian border became virulently anti-Serbian, when Austro-Hungarian rule was replaced by a Serbian nationalist rule. With the rise of the xenophobic NAZI regime (1933), Slovenes developed a virulently German nationalism outlook that embraced NAZIism. The Swabian community in central Yugoslavia , on the other hand, generally tried to cooperate with the central government in Belgrade. The Swabians remained rather ambivalent toward the rising NAZI movement until the tremendous successes of the Third Reich in 1938 made Nazism irresistibly attractive. 【Mentzel】 The ethnic Germans would prove very useful to the NAZIs when the Germans invaded (April 1941). They spoke the various Yugoslavian languages, including Slovene and Serbo-Croatian. This was very useful in the initial invasion as well as administering occupied Yugoslavia. They were familiar with local conditions as well as people and could point out people who were hostile to the Germans.
Citino, Robert M. The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years' War to the Third Reich (2005), 428p.
Mentzel, Peter. "The German minority in Inter-War Yugoslavia." published online by Cambridge University Press (November 20, 2018).
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