After King Alexander (1888-1934) was assassinated, Prince Paul ruled on behalf of the young King Peter II (1923-70). Paul moderated but did not dismantle his late cousin's dictatorship.

The prospect of war had moved the Prince Regent to grant home rule to Croatia. Yet, his failure, simultaneously, either to restore democracy or to devolve powers to the other national-historical units to ensure that Yugoslavia entered the wartime period as disunited as ever.

The prince, hoping for deliverance by the outbreak of Nazi-Soviet hostilities, played for time, failing to appreciate that it was running out. He wavered until early March 1941 when, after submitting to a harangue from Hitler at Berchtesgaden, he concluded that the only alternative to signing the pact was state suicide.

Yugoslav ministers journeyed to Vienna to sign the Tripartite Pact on 25 March 1941. It committed Yugoslavia to little more than acquiescence in Germany's conquest of Greece, the various let-out clauses and the bribe of a post-war acquisition of Salonika remained secret.

Demonstrations against the Axis erupted in Serbia and Slovenia. Conspirators drawn from the army, air force, and Serbian nationalist groups seized power in Belgrade in the early hours of 27 march, abolishing the regency, and proclaiming King Peter to have come of age. Serbs took to the streets to celebrate the recovery of their honour and the prospect of a just war alongside the UK and Greece.

Communists among them shouted instead for an alliance with Moscow. From London Churchill hailed the Yugoslavs' recovery of their 'soul'. Croats sulked at home over such folly and expected the worst.

An all-party government was established under the presidency of the conspirators' nominal leader, General Dusan Simovic. It seemed an impressive embodiment of Yugoslav unity, but its cohesion was illusory. The makers of the coup had acted to expunge the dishonour which partnership with the Axis would do to Serbian traditions: the politicians whom they summoned to share power had other concerns. The representatives of those Serb parties which had been in opposition since 1929 were as hostile to the iniquities of Prince Paul's domestic policy as they were to his appeasement of the Axis. They resented, in particular, the manner in which Croatia had won autonomy. On the other hand, Vladko Macek, leader of the Croatian Peasant Party and vice-premier of Paul's ousted government, made his participation in the new cabinet conditional upon its reaffirmation of both Croatian home rule and Yugoslavia's adherence to the Tripartite Pact: This was agreed as the enormity of the country's peril sank in.

The Luftwaffe inaugurated the Axis offensive with punishing raids on Belgrade (killing some 5,000 people in the supposedly 'open city') and the main military airfields. These set the king, government, and High Command in flight, disrupted communications, and destroyed from the outset any possibility of a concerted defence.

As German troops entered Zagreb on 10 April the Ustasa -Croat Fascists led by Ante Pavelic- were permitted to declare the independence of Croatia, Mazek having spurned German offers that he do so.

Italy and Hungary invaded on 11 April to claim their shares of the spoils. (Bulgaria was not obliged to fight for its share).

In total, the Axis invaders employed 52 divisions, 24 of which were German, and their casualties were negligible. The Germans, for example, lost only 151 dead.

Although the Yugoslavs offered occasional local resistance, and some effort was made to attack the Italians across the Albanian frontier, their rout was complete.

It took the Germans longer to locate men competent to sign an instrument of surrender than it did to create the conditions of chaos that made Yugoslav capitulation inevitable.

M.Wheeler,

Oxford Companion to the Second World War (1995), pp.1294,1295