Dusan Babac - Böcker

In March 1941, an anti-German coup in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia prompted Hitler to order an invasion using allied Italian, Hungarian, Bulgarian and Romanian forces. Operation Marita was an invasion of Yugoslavia and simultaneously Greece.At the same time, the constituent region of Croatia broke away from Yugoslavia and joined the Axis powers. Royal Yugoslav armed forces, despite advancing against the Italians in Albania were forced to surrender after 11 days' fighting and some 1,000 soldiers, airmen and sailors escaped to British-occupied Egypt to form Free Yugoslav units. From there, guerrilla resistance to the Axis occupiers broke out and continued with increasing strength until the end of the war under Mihailovic’s royalist 'Chetniks' and Tito's Communist 'Partisans' (both supported by Britain).However, hostilities between the two movements eventually led to the Chetniks entering into local agreements with Italian occupation forces and Britain switching its support entirely to the Partisans. The advance of the Red Army increased Partisan strength and, during 1944–45, they created what could be described as a lightly equipped conventional army.Featuring meticulously-drawn illustrations of different insignia, uniforms and equipment from each faction, this volume describes, in detail, both the political and military implications of the war and how it was fought, setting the scene for the subsequent rise of Tito to power within Yugoslavia.

It was the Balkan flashpoint which set off World War I, yet the fighting there is curiously neglected, although it was an inportant 'second front' cutting the Central Powers in two and preventing direct German/Turkish co-operation. The campaigns in the Balkans in 1915-18 involved the British, French, Russian and Italian armies, together with the local Serbian, Montenegrin, Greek and Rumanian forces, fighting German, Austrian and Bulgarian troops. This concise but comprehensive account identifies, describes and illustrates all these forces. The text is illustrated with rare photographs never before seen in the West, and with full orders-of-battle and insignia charts.