The End of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia August 1939–April 1941

Abstract

This chapter chronicles the start of the Yugoslav regency and how it managed to protect its territorial integrity and its independence. It assesses the impact of the Depression, the rise of Hitler's Reich, the decline of French power, and the Western Allies' scant sympathy for the country's economic problems. The chapter looks at Yugoslavia, as a united state, and the ideology of integral 'Yugoslavism', which was supposed to merge all the component identities. It highlights the struggles and impending dissolution of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ, Komunistička partija Jugoslavije) and how it continued to act through legal organisations. The chapter then introduces Josip Broz, known as Tito, who had appeared at the eleventh hour to give the party some cohesion. The KPJ thereafter achieved some success as a disciplined movement formed on a federalist basis under a team of able younger men for whom Tito, the executor in Yugoslavia of a line received from Moscow, was the ultimate arbiter. Ultimately, the chapter discusses Germany's diplomatic offensive to get Yugoslavia off its neutrality.