A new history of the rise and fall of the Axis counterinsurgency effort in Yugoslavia during World War II.

In April 1941 German and other Axis forces invaded and rapidly overran the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Following the short campaign, the country was dismembered and divided between Germany, Hungary, Italy and Bulgaria.

Almost immediately, remnants of the Royal Yugoslav Army under Colonel Mihailovic began to organize a resistance to the occupation. When the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa against the Soviet Union in June 19412, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia under Josip Broz Tito followed suit, and the Yugoslav Partisans were born. What followed was a campaign of incredible complexity and brutality, as over 12 different factions at times fought both against and alongside each other in a conflict that cost the lives of as many as one million out of the 15 million pre-war population of Germany.

In this new study of this complex and bloody conflict – at the same time both a liberation movement and a civil war – respected Sandhurst academic Klaus Schmider uses primary sources, as well as latest research from the various combatant powers, to provide a comprehensive and authoritative account of this bitter struggle from its origins in April 1941 through to the arrival of the Red Army in 1944.