ABSTRACT
Yugoslavia's professional military and its standing federal army, the Yugoslav People's Army (YPA), officially originated from the Partisan detachments and the National Liberation Army formed during World War II. The first Partisan detachments and regional and area headquarters appeared in the mid-summer of 1941, and their first serious military engagements with the occupiers and local Quislings took place in the early fall of that year. Curiously, the official commemorative day for the YPA (in the 1970s renamed the Day of the Armed Forces) does not commemorate either the initial formation or the earliest engagements of the YPA. It falls on December 22, the day after the founding of the First Proletarian Brigade at Rudo (Bosnia) and, coincidentally, Stalin's birthday. This brigade was established by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (in agreement with the Partisans' Supreme Command) on December 21, 1941, 1 and it was intended by Tito to serve as the model for all other Yugoslav Partisan units. The First Proletarian Brigade was also Tito's birthday present to Joseph Stalin (hence the date), and the unit was meant to be Bolshevik, monolithic in its spirit, and to emulate the elite "shock" units of the Red Army.
