ABSTRACT
Following the failed attempt to co-opt Yugoslavia into joining the Tripartite Pact, German, Italian, Bulgarian and Hungarian forces invaded the country on 6 April 1941. Within a matter of days, the Axis forces succeeded in destroying the main parts of the Yugoslav Army. On 18 April, the Yugoslav government capitulated. In the period that followed, Nazi Germany annexed the northern part of Slovenia, while the southern part of Slovenia together with Dalmatia and the Bay of Kotor were annexed by Italy (see Map 3). Hungary received Bacˇka and Medjimurje in northern Croatia, Bulgaria occupied parts of Serbia and the bulk of Macedonian territory, while Kosovo south of Mitrovica and parts of western Macedonia were attached to Italiandominated Albania. Montenegro was placed under Italian administration, while the rest of Serbia including the Banat was occupied by Germany. However, the dismemberment of the country had already started before the Axis victory. On 10 April, the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH) was proclaimed in Zagreb; it comprised the rest of Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and parts of present-day northwestern Serbia. Following the establishment of the NDH, the ustašas (who at the time had
a following of a mere few hundred) and their Poglavnik (Leader) Ante Pavelic´ immediately embarked on an ambitious state-building scheme that aimed at achieving an ethnic homogenization of state territory. This was to be done through physical annihilation of Jews and Roma, as well as by removing all traces of Serbian presence through mass killing, deportations to Serbia proper and forced conversions to Catholicism. However, the terror soon provoked spontaneous rebellions that gradually merged with either Josip Broz Tito’s People’s Liberation Movement (Narodnooslobodilacˇki pokret, NOP) or Draža Mihailovic´’s Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland (Jugoslovenska vojska u otadžbini, JVUO).1
