ABSTRACT
If they are to avoid infinite regression all histories must have a starting point. These are never totally satisfactory because no single starting point can be fully explained without some introduction to its own historical background. The starting point for this history is the end of the Second World War yet what happened after the end of that conflict was largely conditioned by the war itself and also the period before it. By the mid-1930s in the Balkans, as in much of Europe and beyond, there was little left of the Versailles system created at the end of the First World War. The League of Nations and collective security were soon to collapse while on the domestic front authoritarianism progressed inexorably, not least because the disastrous economic recession and its social consequences were rapidly increasing the power of central government. By 1939 political power was vested in a centralized executive and political activity confined to what that power deemed acceptable. The battle against the depression and its effects had concentrated an unprecedented amount of economic and social control with the central authorities.
