The Serbian Uprising of 1941 and The British Response

Abstract

This is a critical study of resistance in German-occupied Serbia and the subsequent uprising of 1941, and the British response to those events. This activity in Serbia followed from the Yugoslav defeat by the Axis in the campaign of April 1941 and lasted until December, when the uprising was suppressed by the "punishment expedition" mounted by the 'Wehrmacht'. This is also the period when a number of Serb Yugoslav officers and men went to their own war with Nazi Germany, thus making up for the lost chance to do so in the 'Blitzkrieg' of the previous April. It was in this period in Serbia that there arose the two World War II resistance organizations of Nazi-dismembered Yugoslavia: the Army Cetniks of Mihailovic, and the Communist Party's "Partisans", later called "Tito's Partisans". In 1941 these two organizations at first collaborated, but ultimately they parted company and engaged in civil war. The moral impact of Serb resistance on wartime Allies gave it an assured place in the general history of the Second World War. Another aspect of historical significance was Churchill's controversial decision in 1943 to support Tito against the Allied government of Yugoslavia represented by Mihailovic. The subjects of this study are military and paramilitary men, and, predominantly, military events. Nevertheless, this is not a military history, but a critical record of human problems and politics, and of strengths and weaknesses of participants. In their Yugoslav context this raises a special problem, and this is best illustrated by comparing it to British ways. In an old cultural milieu, sets of values exist which form a common bond. Thus, the immediate British response to the events in occupied Serbia conformed to British Imperial traditions. Even after the change of British policy on Yugoslavia in 1943, the official rationale for it remained British strategic considerations. By contrast, Yugoslavia had existed for twenty three years only, and a cultural cohesion had not yet been achieved. Therefore a study of the disparate backgrounds of Yugoslav participants is a prerequisite for understanding their later actions, and this study forms an integral part of the thesis.