The Kingdom of Yugoslavia documentary series

What was the link between the outbreak of the First and Second World Wars? What was the London Agreement of 1915? Did failure to implement it in 1918 lead to a new World War?

Kingdom of Yugoslavia spring 1941; the Italians invaded as allies of Hitler and the Croatian Fuhrer Ante Pavelich, collectively forming the largest and most brutal enemy of the Serbian people.

Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1941. Sections of the Royal Yugoslav Army did not capitulate; they formed a resistance movement led by Colonel Draza Mihailovich, against the Axis powers

1942. In Africa, there waged a decisive battle against Hitler’s best military leader, Marshal Erwin Rommel, whose shortest fuel supply route went through Serbia. The Yugoslav army (Chetniks) took part in the “Battle of supply”

Balkans 1943. All were convinced that, after landing in Italy, the Western allies would deploy to the Balkans. All were preparing an answer to that

After the capitulation of Italy in September 1943, the Western allies decided to no longer supply the Chetniks, but to direct all their help to the Partisans.

September 1944, the Yugoslav Army, known as the Chetniks, attacked the Germans and Ustashi in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, anticipating the arrival of the Western Allies

the Supreme Commander of the Yugoslav Army, King Peter II Karadjordjevich, via Radio London urged his army to put themselves under the command of the Communists

Why did the British Prime Minister Churchill force the Yugoslav King to make a speech on September 12th 1944? Why did the BBC praise the Partisans from 1943 onwards?

Kingdom of Yugoslavia, in the late summer and early fall of 1944. The US intelligence service OSS (later the CIA) sent Mission Ranger to the Supreme Command of the Yugoslav Army

How the Chetniks liberated Krushevac from the Germans. The battle between the Chetniks and the Red Army in Krushevac and the air battle between the Red Army and the Western Allies over Nish.

Why were the nations of Eastern Europe – Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia allied to the Western allies – 1945, abandoned to the Communists?

At the end of September 1944, 414,000 Soviet troops entered Serbia. The Partisans began to establish their authority. Their first action was to ‘mobilize’ 250,000 young men, many of whom were still minors

The harrowing testimony of 12 witnesses who survived the end of 1944 and beginning of 1945 in communist prisons, where they were tortured and witnessed many murders

After invasion by the Red Army, the remaining units of the Yugoslav army, the Chetniks, during autumn 1944 retreated into Bosnia without shelter and without winter equipment

Spring 1945. The last area of territory located in northern Bosnia that was free of Partisan control. now came under attack from Partisans equipped with heavy weaponry

Spring 1945 units from Montenegro, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Pavle Djurisic, separated from the main body of General Draza Mihailovic’s forces in an attempt to reach Slovenia

End of the Second World War. Units under the command of General Damjanovic withdraw to Italy into the hands of the Western Allies