Would it be possible to build up your army to be bigger again before the justification expires?
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This shows the slimy perfidy of those Fascists: did you toy with the idea of accepting the coup and preserving the unity of the army?
Well, that’s being put in your place!
A sad ending to the tragic episode.
Interesting. I have a few questions, mainly asked by commenters already (see extras below).
This is my principal question too: if all those rebel divisions and the Air Force dissolved when the war ended, then surely what must have already been an uncertain prospect must now be almost foolhardy. But if most of them have come back, then maybe it could still be launched.
Following on from that, what do you think your chances of success would be with whatever forces you can bring to bear? What is the main benefit you would gain by winning and what would be risked if it was lost? Is attacking and defeating Bulgaria central to your strategy going forward for surviving the war, or just something interesting to do along the way?
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Given the sorry state of Yugoslav intelligence on Bulgaria, I estimate that they have sixteen or so divisions against the eleven which stayed loyal in the civil war. The civil war gave me some confidence, perhaps too much, when it comes to micromanaging a small local campaign against a superior foe. Story-wise, it is unlikely that Bulgaria will just accept an apology for rattling up a war (although maybe we could blame the misunderstanding on Stojadinović, who is conveniently out of power) and agree to let bygones be bygones. Furthermore, the Italians and the Hungarians won't be left waiting for long; I know that Germany has a national focus to award Yugoslav land to Hungary and Bulgaria while Italy can form an alliance with Bulgaria. Too long of a delay may mean that the prize is out of reach barring a major conflict, and tackling the problem now could help avoid a sudden threat to our rear when our forces are focused in the west.
Honestly, I panicked a little bit when I first saw the rebel numbers and how the spawning of the Yugoslavian Confederation scattered my units across Bosnia, but we managed to pull through without some major power sticking its nose in.
To answer the question you and @Bullfilter posed: I did not get any of the army units back, although the navy was retained. Which leaves us at two-thirds the strength of the Bulgarians in terms of divisions.
If we did go to war and somehow win, then as for pacifying the Bulgarians... Well, there's always the strategy of claiming to be at war with the government and not the people of the opposing country, but for some reason that never seems to work out as planned in real life.
The armed forces definitely need to be rebuilt. Is it possible to do that and crush the Bulgarians before they decide the settle scores at a time of their own choosing?
The possibility of an army revolt breaking out was a possibility, but I thought that it would take a full-fledged military alliance or something else more than just signing a scrap of paper to get the British to act.
Given how long it takes to justify a war goal, I think that Europe will be in flames by the time it takes to prepare for war again, and Bulgaria might be in an alliance by then. Besides Bulgaria, only Hungary provides the prospect of expansion as a neighbor who is not either a major power or protected by a major power, but I think that the Hungarians are on a fast-track to get into the Axis, and the issue of time strikes again.
I have enough equipment captured and manufactured to equip my divisions, but manpower is short until I can change my conscription law and mobilize some more men, which will not be happening before the justification for war expires in October.
Accepting the coup would have given German an automatic war goal on Yugoslavia. It would have certainly made for an interesting detour, but would've shortened the story significantly!
I covered the division numbers above, but for the rest of your questions. I'm not very good at math, so I won't hazard a percentage for our success against Bulgaria, but I think that the situation is not entirely dire. Like with the civil war situation, we have a much stronger industrial base than Bulgaria and some opportunities to expand our manpower pool through national focuses and conscription laws (although the lingering Macedonian penalty slows that one down). It might not be a quick war, but I think that in the long run we can outpace their growth and field a larger army. Our strategy would have to involve enticing the Bulgarians away from their entrenched positions and into Yugoslavia proper where we would try and destroy their army piecemeal. Hopefully, Sofia's desire for Macedonia will temper their treatment of the civilian population until they can be recovered.
To consolidate some earlier comments: if we win, we would secure Yugoslavia's eastern frontier and reduce the number of fronts that we need to defend accordingly. We would also gain access to a sea that is protected by a friendly Turkey rather than a potentially hostile Italy. We would be able to add Bulgaria's industrial capabilities to our own and gain some experience for our generals and soldiers. Lastly, it would put us in a better position for expanding into Greece or intervening against the Soviet Union in the event of war with Moscow. Losing the war would mean annexation (although I suppose the South Slavs would be united then). A long war could see Bulgaria and/or Yugoslavia join a faction and their smaller conflict get swallowed up into a larger war. In short, conquering Bulgaria would help Yugoslavia survive by removing an avenue for losing territory through national focuses and give us a more defensible position against Italy. Conquering Bulgaria is an ambitious move that could mean more than survival, it could mean victory for ideological Yugoslavism.
That said, war with Bulgaria is also interesting thing to do along the way and for people to read about, I think. After all, this is a war game, isn't it?
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That civil war was certainly a suprise! I'm glad you won. It's shame the Germans were not more help, let's hope aligning towards them will bear fruit later on...
I would personally favour war will Bulgaria, you have eloquently made the case that you may not get the chance again, remember who dares wins!
I would personally favour war will Bulgaria, you have eloquently made the case that you may not get the chance again, remember who dares wins!
Chapter Eleven: A Cacophony of War (June 25th, 1938 to December 1st, 1938)
Chapter Eleven: A Cacophony of War (June 25th, 1938 to December 1st, 1938)
The Last Days of Peace
After nearly two decades of subjugation, Hungary was more than willing to provide Germany with a strategically placed partner in exchange for a hand in the redrawing of Europe’s borders.
As the rest of the continent help its breath, two more of Europe’s disgruntled powers threw off the shackles that had bound them since the Great War. For Hungary, the renunciation of the much-hated Treaty of Trianon and joining as a junior partner in a German-led military alliance at the end of June 1938 was almost perfunctory. For years, Hungary had agitated against and skirted the restrictions placed on her military by Trianon. The wedge between Romania and the other members of the Little Entente had helped Hungarian diplomats remove the most onerous restrictions, but the formal denouncement of the post-war settlement by Miklós Horthy on June 30th, 1938 was still greeted with euphoria by his countrymen, even eclipsing the state-sponsored celebrations that had been arranged following the signing of the military pact with Germany the day before.
While Berlin had previously been content to keep Hungary hungry for more praise and support, developments elsewhere had accelerated the German timetable for war and an ally was sought in order to impose a new vision on Europe. Despite Hungary’s small size and untested army, Budapest was eager to fulfill the role and immediately began lobbying Germany for support against Czechoslovakia and Romania, much to Bucharest’s chagrin.
Bulgaria, another of the Great War’s losers also was looking to right the wrongs of an “unjust” peace settlement. Yugoslav diplomacy may have left Sofia isolated for the time being, but the unwillingness of Belgrade’s Tripartite Pact partners to intervene on behalf of Prince Paul’s regime made it seem as though that isolation ran both ways. The violent rhetoric and extensive propaganda campaign in Yugoslavia had been matched by the government in the eastern Slavic kingdom, and the Buglarian army was ready to put the upstarts in Belgrade in their place and seize Yugoslav Macedonia as the first step towards rebuilding Bulgaria’s power and prestige in Europe.
Once the “Prussia of the Balkans”, Bulgaria retained a high degree of military culture and skill even after decades of peace.
The sudden betrayal of the Royal Yugoslav Army’s leadership had been a stroke of luck for Tsar Boris and his forces. Years of work expanding the Yugoslav military had been undone in a single act of betrayal, just as Sofia’s shirking of the military restrictions put on Bulgaria by the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine was bearing fruit. The Bulgarian army in late 1938 was roughly fifty percent larger than the Royal Yugoslav Army in terms of manpower and fielded divisions, and the industrial gap between the two kingdoms, while still in Belgrade’s favor, had narrowed sharply. The initial Yugoslav plans for a breakthrough of Bulgarian lines aided by artillery and massed infantry seemed utterly foolish in light of the changed strategic situation. With this in mind, feelers were put out to Sofia to see if there was some way to reduce tensions between the two kingdoms.
But just as much of Belgrade’s political and military leaders had worked themselves up into a frenzy before the outbreak of civil war, now Sofia was abuzz with excitement at the prospect of war with Yugoslavia. With the other powers of Europe preoccupied with developments elsewhere in Europe, there was no one willing to intervene to mediate and prevent another Balkan War. Prince Paul’s diplomatic mission, under the leadership of foreign minister Ivo Andrić, was roundly rebuffed by Sofia. Belgrade had made its bed and now it was going to have to lie in it.
Following the advice of the German military mission in the kingdom, Yugoslavia enacted a system of reserves which would allow for a larger pool of men with basic military training, especially among her non-Serb constituents.
As stated earlier, the civil war had hollowed out the backbone of the Royal Yugoslav Army: its Serb officers and their loyal followers. With war with Bulgaria on the horizon, Belgrade scrambled to make up for the deficits in manpower which suddenly afflicted the kingdom. The pressures of war and the lack of fighting near Yugoslavia’s industrial centers meant that the kingdom was producing a healthy surplus of rifles and artillery pieces, although airplanes were less forthcoming. Unfortunately, there were not enough men to wield them in the ranks of the army which had survived the struggle against the British-backed coup.
Well aware of the threat from the emboldened Bulgarians and Hungarians, National Assembly began a fierce and contentious debate following the surrender of rebel forces, the end result of which was to transform the Royal Yugoslav Army from a volunteer force to one in which all men of military age in the kingdom would have to register for conscription, out of which a fraction would serve. The old guard of officers had long defended the policy of keeping the army’s ranks full of volunteers. The argument went that the kingdom could ill-afford to be defended by men forced to bear arms for a kingdom, an idea, that they did not believe in. Unspoken was the assumption that the volunteers would mostly come from the loyal Serb and Montenegrin quarters of the country, which would help maintain the dominance of the existing leadership. The civil war, and the service of the brave Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, and Bosniak Muslims who rallied to Belgrade’s defense helped to break that log jam and that summer saw the first registration of young men outside of the kingdom’s Serb heartland.
The Sudeten Crisis
The dream of a united, Pan-German state had a long history, but it was under the National Socialist government that the concept was reinvigorated with Berlin seeking to reclaim German people and land across Europe.
What attention the escalating conflict between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria had attracted was soon eclipsed by a much greater threat to European peace. The implosion of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires had left Germans trapped in foreign countries all over Europe. With Austria incorporated into the German Reich, Berlin now looked to the issue of the Germans living in the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia. Despite Prague’s fiercest efforts, the population of the Sudetenland which marked the Czech border with Germany was still predominantly German in character, just as it had been when it had been a part of the Hapsburg Empire and when its citizens had attempted to join the Republic of German-Austria after the war.
Moving quickly while the country’s population was still in rapture over the peaceful reunification with Austria, Berlin began agitating for Prague to cede the Sudetenland. With each side hoping to avoid war, at least until further preparations were made, arrangements were made for a conference to be held in Munich. While no official Czech representative joined those of the four great powers which were present at the conference, Prague still had hope that, after the conclusion of formal guarantees of Czechoslovakia’s territorial integrity by Great Britain and Romania, that Germany would be suitably discouraged from using force to alter the map of Europe. For all of the bellicose rhetoric emerging from the National Socialist government in Berlin, Germany had not waged war in more than fifteen years.
While German diplomats, led by the Führer Adolf Hitler himself, used the familiar arguments of self-determination, their British and French opponents argued on the basis of strategic and economic considerations. Attempts at compromise through a greater degree of political and cultural autonomy for the Sudetenlanders, similar to what Yugoslavia had granted her Slovenian subjects, were rejected. While the Germans wanted nothing less than territorial readjustment, the solution of increased autonomy was also viewed frostily by Prague, under the belief that granting concessions to the country’s German population would lead to similar demands by Czechoslovakia’s sizable Slovak and Hungarian minorities. In a country which was barely more than fifty percent Czech, such moves could lead to a civil war such as that which occurred in Yugoslavia.
The four great powers of Europe were represented at the Munich Conference which sought to decide the fate of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland region. Prague was not invited.
Although Benito Mussolini attempted to play the part of an “honest broker”, the Italian leader was unable to create an agreement which all parties would sign off on. Surprisingly, it was not the British, but the French who proved the most ardent defenders of Czechoslovakia’s interests. Although Paris had formally renounced formal diplomatic obligations to Prague, the new government under President Phillipe Pétain believed that it was time to take a firm line against Germany. Even if the country was not entirely ready for war, it was held that the Maginot Line of fortifications would allow for French mobilization to meet the German threat. Britain on the other hand, preferred to use intelligence operations and continental allies to deter German revanchism rather than risk an outright war. While Mussolini supported the proposal, along with the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Hitler, he privately kept backchannels open with the French delegation in order to see what concessions Italy could gain from a war between the two other continental powers.
The period leading up to the Great War was characterized by a series of rigid alliances, whereas the interwar period had seen few permanent alliances form as powers freely maneuvered to try and gain the advantage. The war between France and Germany would solidify coalitions, some of which had never been intended to be permanent.
French intransigence was met with fury by the German government, which signaled its intentions to go to war with Czechoslovakia over the Sudetenland. Publicly, the British government lamented the failure of the Munich Conference to achieve a peaceable outcome, but behind closed doors efforts were underway to provide France with support, both material and moral, against Germany. In Prague, the Czech government was frankly bewildered by the dizzying whirlwind of developments which had occurred within just a few short hours in Munich. To face the German threat, the alliance with France was exhumed and military exchanges between the French and Czech general staffs were hastily arranged.
Twelve hours after the world knew about the failure of the Munich Conference, Germany declared war on Czechoslovakia. The general peace crafted at Versailles had not lasted twenty years.
The Second Sino-Japanese War
While Europe was preoccupied with the unfolding cataclysm, the Japanese Empire began a war which matched the Russo-Japanese War in its boldness.
Chiang Kai-Shek’s concessions to the Japanese had bought China several months of time with which to prepare for the war which Tokyo was determined to wage. Soldiers were called up, coastal cities were evacuated of civilians, officials, and industry, and defenses were prepared in their place. Still, it was uncertain whether this would be enough to withstand the tide of the Japanese military. While China could boast nearly inexhaustible reserves of manpower, Japan’s forces were far more experienced, dependable, and better armed. As the Japanese forces massed at the new border between free and occupied China began to move south from Beijing to assault Chinese positions, the momentum seemed to be on the side of Japan, whose planes and ships commanded virtually uncontested control over China’s skies and seas.
One measure of relief came when the Communist forces under Mao Zedong agreed to halt their struggle with the Nanking government and form a united front to expel the Japanese invaders from the Asian continent. Another boon came with the acceptance of both Chinese governments, the Kuomintang and the Communists, into an alliance with the Soviet Union and its client states, although it would take precious months for Moscow to shift forces to the east and away from Europe. It became all the more imperative for the Chinese to hold the line and blunt the Japanese assault, while Tokyo felt increased pressure to move quickly and secure China in order to meet the Soviet threat when it came.
The Mongolian People’s Republic was the first Communist country to come to China’s aid. Although unable to contribute many fighting men, Mongolia’s entry in the war did add a new front and diverted precious Japanese divisions away from the main fighting in the south.
The fierce fighting in Asia had prompted many westerners living in China to huddle in the foreign concessions, but when the Japanese made it clear that they intended to sharply curtail the extraterritorial privileges enjoyed by Europeans in China, many turned to evacuation aboard whatever ships they could secure passage on. Overzealous Japanese pilots attacked and sunk one British and one American gunboat as they ferried passengers. Causalities were light, and the matter was quickly resolved as all three powers showed little interest in adding war to their woes. An official apology and indemnity from Tokyo soothed most of the ruffled feathers, but it was clear that the world was becoming a more and more dangerous place.
The Third Balkan War and the Third Franco-German War
As with the Great War, both France and Germany were eager for opportunities to add to their respective military alliances and, in doing so, outflank their opponent. For fear of Bulgaria gaining backing from the Germans, French, or the presently neutral Italians, it was decided by Prince Paul and his advisers to respond to Sofia’s escalating incursions across the border with war. The bravado which had characterized the propaganda campaign against Bulgaria was gone, and only the most optimistic of observers believed that this war would be nearly as short as the civil war which had been fought a few short months earlier.
As of midnight, September 19th, 1938, Yugoslavia was at war with Bulgaria.
In light of the Royal Yugoslav Army’s disadvantages against the larger Bulgarian force, a risky strategy was orchestrated by the Nedić brothers. Holes would be purposefully left in the kingdom’s defenses so as to entice a Bulgarian advance out of the fortified positions which lined the frontier. The enemy was to be provided with easy passage into Yugoslav Macedonia, masked by a half-hearted fighting retreat, whereupon the bulk of the Royal Army’s forces would cut off supply lines and attempt to isolate and destroy the advance guard of the Bulgarian army piecemeal.
It was a risky strategy, both politically and militarily, and it was one that never would have seen the light of day had Belgrade not been so desperate. Prince Paul in particular was distraught at the suffering that might be visited upon the country’s Macedonian population which had already endured the brunt of the fighting in the civil war. Milan Nedić tried to assuage his guilt by hazarding a theory that the Bulgarians would be too keen to establish good relations with what they regarded as their future subjects to commit any heinous acts, but such words did little to settle the regent’s nerves. More material concerns were raised by the small size of the Royal Air Force. With every man called up being sent to fill out the ranks of the beleaguered army, there were few pilots and fewer planes available to contest the Bulgarian air force. Aerial observation could reveal the Royal Army’s plans, and harassment could delay their moves until Bulgarian reinforcements could arrive at key junctions.
Initially, Sofia did not appear to take the bait. Bulgarian forces hammered the strengthened points of the Royal Yugoslav Army, with the aim of breaking the back of the Yugoslavs long enough to deter any counterattack. The Macedonian countryside was riven with craters and trenches, but the Yugoslav army maintained their forward positions, with a few exceptions. Milutin Nedić’s forces were still battered, and Boris’s generals, smelling blood, decided to advance against the relatively undefended portions of the Yugoslav-Bulgarian border. Across hastily abandoned emplacements and into Yugoslavia, the Bulgarian infantry swarmed, capturing Leskovac, which had served as the last refuge of the rebel generals during the civil war. Memories of the Great War electrified the invaders and horrified the defenders, as the Serbian surrender in the darkest days of 1915 seemed to portend another collapse.
Then, the Bulgarians grew overconfident, and gaps began to appear in their own lines, gaps which the Yugoslavs quickly moved to exploit. Infantry divisions detached themselves from the hardened centers of resistance and moved to cut off the lead invaders. Despite the strain of fighting and forced marches, the Yugoslav Army managed to cut off the vanguard of the Bulgarian army in the two towns of Leskovac and Vidin. What ensured was fierce days of fighting as the outnumbered Yugoslavs tried to simultaneously besiege the towns to destroy the Bulgarian interlopers and prevent reinforcements from reaching them. If they could manage those tasks, then the strategy concocted by the Nedić brothers would be proven successful and the imbalance between the Yugoslav and Bulgarian forces would be greatly rectified. If not, then half a dozen Bulgarian division would serve as the tip of a spear which could pierce Yugoslavia’s heart.
Elsewhere in Europe, the war between the French and German alliances had taken a turn in the latter’s favor. While the line of defenses along the French and Czech borders with Germany had held remarkably well against the might of the Wehrmacht, the concentration on the larger German threat, as well as the prioritization of the political, economic, and Czech heartland of the country, had left Czechoslovakia vulnerable to an invasion from the south. Fueled by dreams of reincorporating Slovakia into a “Greater Hungary”, the Hungarian army had broken through the relatively weaker fortifications protecting their neighbor to the north and soon reached the Polish border.
While Bucharest had been unwilling to intervene directly to save Slovakia, the Romanian government viewed the rapid Hungarian advance with alarm. The abandonment of the Little Entente alliance and the plans of King Carol and his government for Romania to position herself as a friendly neutral for both sides of the conflict seemed foolhardy in light of Hungarian successes in Slovakia. Under the changed circumstances, it seemed more likely that Hungary would seek to recover territory lost to Romania following the Great War and the overthrow of Béla Kun’s Bolshevik regime, and that Berlin would look more favorably on those claims on Transylvania.
Caught in a trap, the encircled Bulgarian divisions attempted to break out, but in doing so they left the relative safety of the towns they had captured for the uncertainty of the countryside. Expecting to be welcomed by the civilians of Yugoslav Macedonia as liberators, the invaders were surprised and unnerved by the chilly reception that they received. There were hardly as many acts of outright sabotage and violence visited upon the Bulgarians as the rebel Serb forces had suffered, with the local population waiting patiently to see which side would emerge victorious from this struggle. Attempting to rejoin their compatriots to the east and to set up a new base in Skopje, the Bulgarians were frustrated as the Yugoslavs moved in and captured the lightly defended towns which had fallen so easily to the initial Bulgarian assault. Efforts at relief were frustrated by a diversionary attack on the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. Although his generals assured Boris that the feint was unlikely to succeed, they still ordered available divisions to concentrate on the defense of the capital rather than the relief of the divisions trapped behind enemy lines. As a further precaution, the tsar and his ministers moved the government to the royal summer residence, the Euxinograd Palace on the Black Sea.
Such preparations proved prescient, as Yugoslav forces drove away Sofia’s defenders and entered the Bulgarian capital tired but proud. The tide of the war seemed to be shifting in favor of the Royal Yugoslav Army, as the Bulgarians were clearly showing the strain. Both Balkan kingdoms had seen plenty of fighting since gaining their independence from the Turks, but while the civil war had greatly damaged the ranks of the Yugoslav military it had also greatly streamlined the command structure and given the Yugoslavs more recent war-fighting experience, augmented by the German military mission in the country and the observers who had been sent to the Spanish Civil War under the guise of the All-Yugoslav Relief Mission. The Bulgarian army, long subject to the envy and fear of its neighbors, had fallen behind following fifteen years of peace and the crippling terms of the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine.
A little over a month after the war’s beginning, the Yugoslav strategy finally bore fruit as two Bulgarian divisions, exhausted and out of supplies, surrendered to the Royal Yugoslav Army, shortly before the perimeter was broken. The units who escaped the encirclement were reunited with the bulk of the Bulgarian army, but with Belgrade riding high from the success of the Nedić’s strategy, attention moved to the three divisions attempting to escape from the pocket around Leskovac.
Romanian attempts at maintaining neutrality between the different European power blocs did not extend as far as surrendering the hard-won region of Transylvania to the unscrupulous Hungarians.
Preoccupied with a war on two fronts, Berlin attempted to moderate Hungarian ambitions and avoid the expansion of the war by arranging a conference with Budapest and Bucharest. The meeting in Vienna proved as fruitless as that in Munich. The Hungarian delegation was frustrated by the lack of German support for their territorial goals given the two countries’ common war effort, but grudgingly agreed to accept the compromise proposal put forward by the German arbitration whereby Hungary would receive the northern portion of Transylvania and relinquish all further claims against Romania. It had been hoped in Berlin that the German war against France, and especially the Hungarian conquest of Slovakia, would convince Bucharest of the folly of opposing Germany on this matter, but King Carol and his advisers did not see the war between Germany and France as a sign of the former’s seriousness to use force to rectify borders but rather as a weakness to be exploited.
Confident that Germany would be unwilling to antagonize Romania and risk her joining the French camp, thereby imperiling Hungary and the campaign against Czechoslovakia, the Romanian delegation roundly rejected the German proposal. For the second time in a few short months, German diplomacy and intimidation had failed to accomplish Berlin’s goal, and for the second time it appeared as though the only recourse for Germany would be war.
While the Czechoslovaks bore the brunt of the fighting, the French army primarily focused on shielding France from German attacks until mobilization could be completed, although a small incursion into the Rhineland was permitted in order to convince the Germans to divert some additional divisions to the Western Front. The population was fairly united behind President Pétain and his government in the early days of the war, with German aggrandizement seen as a continuing threat to the country and the territory of Alsace-Lorraine in particular, and as long as the war remained primarily a Central European affair that would continue.
Decisions and alliances were made haphazardly on both sides of the conflict, as long-term strategic concerns were prioritized less than short-term gains.
Seeking an advantage over the Germans, the French confirmed their commitments to Romania’s territorial integrity against Berlin and Budapest’s threats. The support was appreciated, and exchanges of personnel commenced, but the Romanian government remained wary of French intentions. The Czechs had thus far received little help from their self-proclaimed benefactors in Paris and the Romanians were unwilling to bear the brunt of the German military without tangible French assistance.
Meanwhile, in order to position forces to circumvent the Maginot Line, Germany declared war on Luxembourg after the tiny state refused to grant passage to German troops. While war planners in Berlin had hoped that the British acquiescence to the Munich proposal had signaled London’s unwillingness or unpreparedness to fight a war, the second Germany violation of the neutrality of the low countries in a lifetime invited a similar British response. While Luxembourg formally affiliated itself with the French alliance, Germany found herself also at war with the world-spanning British Empire.
In the middle of November, the Royal Yugoslav Army scored an unexpected victory. While the Bulgarians concentrated their offensive power on liberating Sofia from Yugoslav control, a cavalry and an infantry division had been isolated on the Greek border as Yugoslav forces penetrated deeper into Bulgaria. The Greeks, wary of Bulgarian designs on their territory, provided no refuge or relief for the newly surrounded Bulgarians and the Yugoslavs began the laborious process of starving them out even while brave soldiers attempted to hold Sofia long enough for their comrades-in-arms to finish their work.
The war between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, while not a “total war”, still saw monumental efforts from civilians to aid the war effort.
While the soldiers of the Royal Yugoslav Army fought valiantly in the kingdom’s hinterlands against the Bulgarian foe, the Yugoslav home front saw a great deal of activity. A new propaganda campaign was launched with the aim of rallying the war-weary populace to the defense of their homeland, with a particular emphasis on overcoming entrenched provincial attitudes. With a mixed degree of success, Belgrade’s finest propagandists worked to convince the kingdom’s Slovene and Croat subjects of the necessity of defending their Serb and Macedonian countrymen against the sinister ambitions of Boris and his generals. A secondary component of the Yugoslav propaganda was the separation of the Bulgarian people from their ruler and his government. Success here was also mixed, and counteracted by the simultaneous appearance of strident speeches and articles denouncing the Bulgarian people, but the overall hope was that the groundwork would be laid by the war’s end for the incorporation of the Bulgarians into the Yugoslav nation on the basis of their identity as fellow South Slavs.
Not all Yugoslav patriots served on the front lines or in government offices. The industrialists of Slovenia, long admired for their work in industrializing the westernmost reaches of the country and privileged through close ties and contracts with Belgrade were put in charge of a series of cartels which sought to rationalize the Yugoslav economy and increase its efficiency, which had long lagged behind those of other European countries.
The need to produce more material for war led to the construction of more factories, few of which were undertaken with foreign assistance besides that of Italy. These factories in turn demanded workers, and a migration of Yugoslavs from the countryside to the cities and towns of the kingdom reshaped the social fabric of Yugoslavia and exposed many young men and women to the first life that they had known outside of their small villages. For better or worse, the war was changing Yugoslavia and it left no one untouched.
The Course of the Wars
By December, the Soviet Union had entered the war against Japan on behalf of its Chinese allies. The winter fighting in Siberia and outer Mongolia was hellish, with thousands of men flooding into the barren land for the glory of their masters in Moscow and Tokyo. Initial Japanese gains had seemed promising, with the nearly complete capture of the northern half of the Sakhalin Island and penetration deep into the Mongolian People’s Republic. Absent a second front, however, it was unlikely that the Japanese and their Chinese collaborators would be able to hold out against the human tides which the Soviets and the Chinese forces could bring to bear. To this end, Tokyo extended some diplomatic feelers to anti-Communist governments in Europe, gauging the possibility of some measure of joint action. Preoccupied with European wars, little relief seemed as though it would be forthcoming from the west.
In Iberia as well, Communism appeared to be on the march. The Nationalist forces, virtually abandoned by their German and Italian benefactors, had been reduced to two small holdouts centered on Sevilla in the south and Galicia in the north. There, the last holdouts of Francisco Franco’s government held out against the vastly superior Republican forces. No small number of officers, religious and political officials, and civilians had escaped the country, with more arriving in Portugal every day. These would form the nucleus of Spanish diaspora groups which spread throughout Europe and nurtured fantasies of a triumphant homecoming and revenge against the Bolsheviks who had driven them out.
With the elimination of two more pockets of divisions which had been cut off from the main body, the Bulgarian Army suffered a tremendous blow. The numerical superiority which Bulgaria had enjoyed at the onset of the war with Yugoslavia had been overcome, and the loss of Sofia had dealt a serious blow to Bulgarian morale. Bulgaria’s smaller size compared to Yugoslavia meant that there was little territory which could be given up in order to buy time or entice Yugoslav divisions into a trap. Every week that went by seemed to bring news of another town falling to the Royal Yugoslav Army. The Bulgarian government which had reorganized in Varna was faced with a war which some thought was unwinnable, barring outside assistance. To that end, Boris sent out feelers in every direction, hoping to find sympathy in Rome, Berlin, or Budapest which could translate into an intervention which could turn the tide in the Balkans.
With Slovakia overrun by Hungary, it was assumed that the Czechs would soon surrender. Seeking to secure the southern flank of the alliance to concentrate forces against the west, Berlin offered Belgrade an alliance.
In light of Yugoslav successes against Bulgaria and the onset of a new World War, the German government approached Prince Paul’s government with a formal invitation to join the Berlin-Budapest Axis. Such an offer may have been tempting before Germany had become embroiled in a war with France and Britain, but worries about provoking the western powers into supporting Bulgaria just when progress was being made against the smaller country, led to Paul giving the German envoy a polite but firm response. Yugoslavia would remain neutral in the war between Germany and the other major powers, but would not be a party to a war waged on the basis of German and Hungarian ambitions. Under orders from Adolf Hitler himself, the German ambassador attempted to appeal to the regent’s Yugoslavist sentiments by offering German aid in gaining Southern Dobruja and Greek Macedonia for his kingdom. Other elements of the German proposal were more personal in nature, including the usage of a crack German commando team to rescue and return the Yugoslav royals which had been spirited away to Britain. This was the part of the offer which Paul had the hardest time rejecting, even more so than the veiled offer of his being made the head of a new royal Russian government. The death of Peter and the loss of the slain king’s brothers weighed heavily on Paul, but he not only believed that Germany could not fulfill such extravagant promises, Paul also believed that Germany would be unable to win the war.
Paul’s rejection of an alliance with Germany inspired a tirade against him and the whole Yugoslav nation by Adolf Hitler. The German Führer, who had once assured then-foreign minister Stojadinović that he did not view Balkan issues through “Viennese spectacles” unleashed the full force of his rhetoric against Belgrade. The Serbs and other Dinaric peoples, Hitler declared to his intimates, were backwards and incapable of higher civilization. Their subjugation under Austrian rule had been to their great benefit and to Austria’s great detriment. Prince Paul in particular was savaged as a hopeless Anglophile, unable to abandon his love of a foreign land even when its government had slain his cousin and had tried to overthrow him.
With the initial German overtures rejected, Berlin turned to the naked threat of force to earn Yugoslavia’s compliance. Neutrality was not an option; the Kingdom of Yugoslavia could either choose an alliance with Germany or war.
The Last Days of Peace
After nearly two decades of subjugation, Hungary was more than willing to provide Germany with a strategically placed partner in exchange for a hand in the redrawing of Europe’s borders.
As the rest of the continent help its breath, two more of Europe’s disgruntled powers threw off the shackles that had bound them since the Great War. For Hungary, the renunciation of the much-hated Treaty of Trianon and joining as a junior partner in a German-led military alliance at the end of June 1938 was almost perfunctory. For years, Hungary had agitated against and skirted the restrictions placed on her military by Trianon. The wedge between Romania and the other members of the Little Entente had helped Hungarian diplomats remove the most onerous restrictions, but the formal denouncement of the post-war settlement by Miklós Horthy on June 30th, 1938 was still greeted with euphoria by his countrymen, even eclipsing the state-sponsored celebrations that had been arranged following the signing of the military pact with Germany the day before.
While Berlin had previously been content to keep Hungary hungry for more praise and support, developments elsewhere had accelerated the German timetable for war and an ally was sought in order to impose a new vision on Europe. Despite Hungary’s small size and untested army, Budapest was eager to fulfill the role and immediately began lobbying Germany for support against Czechoslovakia and Romania, much to Bucharest’s chagrin.
Bulgaria, another of the Great War’s losers also was looking to right the wrongs of an “unjust” peace settlement. Yugoslav diplomacy may have left Sofia isolated for the time being, but the unwillingness of Belgrade’s Tripartite Pact partners to intervene on behalf of Prince Paul’s regime made it seem as though that isolation ran both ways. The violent rhetoric and extensive propaganda campaign in Yugoslavia had been matched by the government in the eastern Slavic kingdom, and the Buglarian army was ready to put the upstarts in Belgrade in their place and seize Yugoslav Macedonia as the first step towards rebuilding Bulgaria’s power and prestige in Europe.
Once the “Prussia of the Balkans”, Bulgaria retained a high degree of military culture and skill even after decades of peace.
The sudden betrayal of the Royal Yugoslav Army’s leadership had been a stroke of luck for Tsar Boris and his forces. Years of work expanding the Yugoslav military had been undone in a single act of betrayal, just as Sofia’s shirking of the military restrictions put on Bulgaria by the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine was bearing fruit. The Bulgarian army in late 1938 was roughly fifty percent larger than the Royal Yugoslav Army in terms of manpower and fielded divisions, and the industrial gap between the two kingdoms, while still in Belgrade’s favor, had narrowed sharply. The initial Yugoslav plans for a breakthrough of Bulgarian lines aided by artillery and massed infantry seemed utterly foolish in light of the changed strategic situation. With this in mind, feelers were put out to Sofia to see if there was some way to reduce tensions between the two kingdoms.
But just as much of Belgrade’s political and military leaders had worked themselves up into a frenzy before the outbreak of civil war, now Sofia was abuzz with excitement at the prospect of war with Yugoslavia. With the other powers of Europe preoccupied with developments elsewhere in Europe, there was no one willing to intervene to mediate and prevent another Balkan War. Prince Paul’s diplomatic mission, under the leadership of foreign minister Ivo Andrić, was roundly rebuffed by Sofia. Belgrade had made its bed and now it was going to have to lie in it.
Following the advice of the German military mission in the kingdom, Yugoslavia enacted a system of reserves which would allow for a larger pool of men with basic military training, especially among her non-Serb constituents.
As stated earlier, the civil war had hollowed out the backbone of the Royal Yugoslav Army: its Serb officers and their loyal followers. With war with Bulgaria on the horizon, Belgrade scrambled to make up for the deficits in manpower which suddenly afflicted the kingdom. The pressures of war and the lack of fighting near Yugoslavia’s industrial centers meant that the kingdom was producing a healthy surplus of rifles and artillery pieces, although airplanes were less forthcoming. Unfortunately, there were not enough men to wield them in the ranks of the army which had survived the struggle against the British-backed coup.
Well aware of the threat from the emboldened Bulgarians and Hungarians, National Assembly began a fierce and contentious debate following the surrender of rebel forces, the end result of which was to transform the Royal Yugoslav Army from a volunteer force to one in which all men of military age in the kingdom would have to register for conscription, out of which a fraction would serve. The old guard of officers had long defended the policy of keeping the army’s ranks full of volunteers. The argument went that the kingdom could ill-afford to be defended by men forced to bear arms for a kingdom, an idea, that they did not believe in. Unspoken was the assumption that the volunteers would mostly come from the loyal Serb and Montenegrin quarters of the country, which would help maintain the dominance of the existing leadership. The civil war, and the service of the brave Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, and Bosniak Muslims who rallied to Belgrade’s defense helped to break that log jam and that summer saw the first registration of young men outside of the kingdom’s Serb heartland.
The Sudeten Crisis
The dream of a united, Pan-German state had a long history, but it was under the National Socialist government that the concept was reinvigorated with Berlin seeking to reclaim German people and land across Europe.
What attention the escalating conflict between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria had attracted was soon eclipsed by a much greater threat to European peace. The implosion of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires had left Germans trapped in foreign countries all over Europe. With Austria incorporated into the German Reich, Berlin now looked to the issue of the Germans living in the Sudeten region of Czechoslovakia. Despite Prague’s fiercest efforts, the population of the Sudetenland which marked the Czech border with Germany was still predominantly German in character, just as it had been when it had been a part of the Hapsburg Empire and when its citizens had attempted to join the Republic of German-Austria after the war.
Moving quickly while the country’s population was still in rapture over the peaceful reunification with Austria, Berlin began agitating for Prague to cede the Sudetenland. With each side hoping to avoid war, at least until further preparations were made, arrangements were made for a conference to be held in Munich. While no official Czech representative joined those of the four great powers which were present at the conference, Prague still had hope that, after the conclusion of formal guarantees of Czechoslovakia’s territorial integrity by Great Britain and Romania, that Germany would be suitably discouraged from using force to alter the map of Europe. For all of the bellicose rhetoric emerging from the National Socialist government in Berlin, Germany had not waged war in more than fifteen years.
While German diplomats, led by the Führer Adolf Hitler himself, used the familiar arguments of self-determination, their British and French opponents argued on the basis of strategic and economic considerations. Attempts at compromise through a greater degree of political and cultural autonomy for the Sudetenlanders, similar to what Yugoslavia had granted her Slovenian subjects, were rejected. While the Germans wanted nothing less than territorial readjustment, the solution of increased autonomy was also viewed frostily by Prague, under the belief that granting concessions to the country’s German population would lead to similar demands by Czechoslovakia’s sizable Slovak and Hungarian minorities. In a country which was barely more than fifty percent Czech, such moves could lead to a civil war such as that which occurred in Yugoslavia.
The four great powers of Europe were represented at the Munich Conference which sought to decide the fate of Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland region. Prague was not invited.
Although Benito Mussolini attempted to play the part of an “honest broker”, the Italian leader was unable to create an agreement which all parties would sign off on. Surprisingly, it was not the British, but the French who proved the most ardent defenders of Czechoslovakia’s interests. Although Paris had formally renounced formal diplomatic obligations to Prague, the new government under President Phillipe Pétain believed that it was time to take a firm line against Germany. Even if the country was not entirely ready for war, it was held that the Maginot Line of fortifications would allow for French mobilization to meet the German threat. Britain on the other hand, preferred to use intelligence operations and continental allies to deter German revanchism rather than risk an outright war. While Mussolini supported the proposal, along with the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Hitler, he privately kept backchannels open with the French delegation in order to see what concessions Italy could gain from a war between the two other continental powers.
The period leading up to the Great War was characterized by a series of rigid alliances, whereas the interwar period had seen few permanent alliances form as powers freely maneuvered to try and gain the advantage. The war between France and Germany would solidify coalitions, some of which had never been intended to be permanent.
French intransigence was met with fury by the German government, which signaled its intentions to go to war with Czechoslovakia over the Sudetenland. Publicly, the British government lamented the failure of the Munich Conference to achieve a peaceable outcome, but behind closed doors efforts were underway to provide France with support, both material and moral, against Germany. In Prague, the Czech government was frankly bewildered by the dizzying whirlwind of developments which had occurred within just a few short hours in Munich. To face the German threat, the alliance with France was exhumed and military exchanges between the French and Czech general staffs were hastily arranged.
Twelve hours after the world knew about the failure of the Munich Conference, Germany declared war on Czechoslovakia. The general peace crafted at Versailles had not lasted twenty years.
The Second Sino-Japanese War
While Europe was preoccupied with the unfolding cataclysm, the Japanese Empire began a war which matched the Russo-Japanese War in its boldness.
Chiang Kai-Shek’s concessions to the Japanese had bought China several months of time with which to prepare for the war which Tokyo was determined to wage. Soldiers were called up, coastal cities were evacuated of civilians, officials, and industry, and defenses were prepared in their place. Still, it was uncertain whether this would be enough to withstand the tide of the Japanese military. While China could boast nearly inexhaustible reserves of manpower, Japan’s forces were far more experienced, dependable, and better armed. As the Japanese forces massed at the new border between free and occupied China began to move south from Beijing to assault Chinese positions, the momentum seemed to be on the side of Japan, whose planes and ships commanded virtually uncontested control over China’s skies and seas.
One measure of relief came when the Communist forces under Mao Zedong agreed to halt their struggle with the Nanking government and form a united front to expel the Japanese invaders from the Asian continent. Another boon came with the acceptance of both Chinese governments, the Kuomintang and the Communists, into an alliance with the Soviet Union and its client states, although it would take precious months for Moscow to shift forces to the east and away from Europe. It became all the more imperative for the Chinese to hold the line and blunt the Japanese assault, while Tokyo felt increased pressure to move quickly and secure China in order to meet the Soviet threat when it came.
The Mongolian People’s Republic was the first Communist country to come to China’s aid. Although unable to contribute many fighting men, Mongolia’s entry in the war did add a new front and diverted precious Japanese divisions away from the main fighting in the south.
The fierce fighting in Asia had prompted many westerners living in China to huddle in the foreign concessions, but when the Japanese made it clear that they intended to sharply curtail the extraterritorial privileges enjoyed by Europeans in China, many turned to evacuation aboard whatever ships they could secure passage on. Overzealous Japanese pilots attacked and sunk one British and one American gunboat as they ferried passengers. Causalities were light, and the matter was quickly resolved as all three powers showed little interest in adding war to their woes. An official apology and indemnity from Tokyo soothed most of the ruffled feathers, but it was clear that the world was becoming a more and more dangerous place.
The Third Balkan War and the Third Franco-German War
As with the Great War, both France and Germany were eager for opportunities to add to their respective military alliances and, in doing so, outflank their opponent. For fear of Bulgaria gaining backing from the Germans, French, or the presently neutral Italians, it was decided by Prince Paul and his advisers to respond to Sofia’s escalating incursions across the border with war. The bravado which had characterized the propaganda campaign against Bulgaria was gone, and only the most optimistic of observers believed that this war would be nearly as short as the civil war which had been fought a few short months earlier.
As of midnight, September 19th, 1938, Yugoslavia was at war with Bulgaria.
In light of the Royal Yugoslav Army’s disadvantages against the larger Bulgarian force, a risky strategy was orchestrated by the Nedić brothers. Holes would be purposefully left in the kingdom’s defenses so as to entice a Bulgarian advance out of the fortified positions which lined the frontier. The enemy was to be provided with easy passage into Yugoslav Macedonia, masked by a half-hearted fighting retreat, whereupon the bulk of the Royal Army’s forces would cut off supply lines and attempt to isolate and destroy the advance guard of the Bulgarian army piecemeal.
It was a risky strategy, both politically and militarily, and it was one that never would have seen the light of day had Belgrade not been so desperate. Prince Paul in particular was distraught at the suffering that might be visited upon the country’s Macedonian population which had already endured the brunt of the fighting in the civil war. Milan Nedić tried to assuage his guilt by hazarding a theory that the Bulgarians would be too keen to establish good relations with what they regarded as their future subjects to commit any heinous acts, but such words did little to settle the regent’s nerves. More material concerns were raised by the small size of the Royal Air Force. With every man called up being sent to fill out the ranks of the beleaguered army, there were few pilots and fewer planes available to contest the Bulgarian air force. Aerial observation could reveal the Royal Army’s plans, and harassment could delay their moves until Bulgarian reinforcements could arrive at key junctions.
Initially, Sofia did not appear to take the bait. Bulgarian forces hammered the strengthened points of the Royal Yugoslav Army, with the aim of breaking the back of the Yugoslavs long enough to deter any counterattack. The Macedonian countryside was riven with craters and trenches, but the Yugoslav army maintained their forward positions, with a few exceptions. Milutin Nedić’s forces were still battered, and Boris’s generals, smelling blood, decided to advance against the relatively undefended portions of the Yugoslav-Bulgarian border. Across hastily abandoned emplacements and into Yugoslavia, the Bulgarian infantry swarmed, capturing Leskovac, which had served as the last refuge of the rebel generals during the civil war. Memories of the Great War electrified the invaders and horrified the defenders, as the Serbian surrender in the darkest days of 1915 seemed to portend another collapse.
Then, the Bulgarians grew overconfident, and gaps began to appear in their own lines, gaps which the Yugoslavs quickly moved to exploit. Infantry divisions detached themselves from the hardened centers of resistance and moved to cut off the lead invaders. Despite the strain of fighting and forced marches, the Yugoslav Army managed to cut off the vanguard of the Bulgarian army in the two towns of Leskovac and Vidin. What ensured was fierce days of fighting as the outnumbered Yugoslavs tried to simultaneously besiege the towns to destroy the Bulgarian interlopers and prevent reinforcements from reaching them. If they could manage those tasks, then the strategy concocted by the Nedić brothers would be proven successful and the imbalance between the Yugoslav and Bulgarian forces would be greatly rectified. If not, then half a dozen Bulgarian division would serve as the tip of a spear which could pierce Yugoslavia’s heart.
Elsewhere in Europe, the war between the French and German alliances had taken a turn in the latter’s favor. While the line of defenses along the French and Czech borders with Germany had held remarkably well against the might of the Wehrmacht, the concentration on the larger German threat, as well as the prioritization of the political, economic, and Czech heartland of the country, had left Czechoslovakia vulnerable to an invasion from the south. Fueled by dreams of reincorporating Slovakia into a “Greater Hungary”, the Hungarian army had broken through the relatively weaker fortifications protecting their neighbor to the north and soon reached the Polish border.
While Bucharest had been unwilling to intervene directly to save Slovakia, the Romanian government viewed the rapid Hungarian advance with alarm. The abandonment of the Little Entente alliance and the plans of King Carol and his government for Romania to position herself as a friendly neutral for both sides of the conflict seemed foolhardy in light of Hungarian successes in Slovakia. Under the changed circumstances, it seemed more likely that Hungary would seek to recover territory lost to Romania following the Great War and the overthrow of Béla Kun’s Bolshevik regime, and that Berlin would look more favorably on those claims on Transylvania.
Caught in a trap, the encircled Bulgarian divisions attempted to break out, but in doing so they left the relative safety of the towns they had captured for the uncertainty of the countryside. Expecting to be welcomed by the civilians of Yugoslav Macedonia as liberators, the invaders were surprised and unnerved by the chilly reception that they received. There were hardly as many acts of outright sabotage and violence visited upon the Bulgarians as the rebel Serb forces had suffered, with the local population waiting patiently to see which side would emerge victorious from this struggle. Attempting to rejoin their compatriots to the east and to set up a new base in Skopje, the Bulgarians were frustrated as the Yugoslavs moved in and captured the lightly defended towns which had fallen so easily to the initial Bulgarian assault. Efforts at relief were frustrated by a diversionary attack on the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. Although his generals assured Boris that the feint was unlikely to succeed, they still ordered available divisions to concentrate on the defense of the capital rather than the relief of the divisions trapped behind enemy lines. As a further precaution, the tsar and his ministers moved the government to the royal summer residence, the Euxinograd Palace on the Black Sea.
Such preparations proved prescient, as Yugoslav forces drove away Sofia’s defenders and entered the Bulgarian capital tired but proud. The tide of the war seemed to be shifting in favor of the Royal Yugoslav Army, as the Bulgarians were clearly showing the strain. Both Balkan kingdoms had seen plenty of fighting since gaining their independence from the Turks, but while the civil war had greatly damaged the ranks of the Yugoslav military it had also greatly streamlined the command structure and given the Yugoslavs more recent war-fighting experience, augmented by the German military mission in the country and the observers who had been sent to the Spanish Civil War under the guise of the All-Yugoslav Relief Mission. The Bulgarian army, long subject to the envy and fear of its neighbors, had fallen behind following fifteen years of peace and the crippling terms of the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine.
A little over a month after the war’s beginning, the Yugoslav strategy finally bore fruit as two Bulgarian divisions, exhausted and out of supplies, surrendered to the Royal Yugoslav Army, shortly before the perimeter was broken. The units who escaped the encirclement were reunited with the bulk of the Bulgarian army, but with Belgrade riding high from the success of the Nedić’s strategy, attention moved to the three divisions attempting to escape from the pocket around Leskovac.
Romanian attempts at maintaining neutrality between the different European power blocs did not extend as far as surrendering the hard-won region of Transylvania to the unscrupulous Hungarians.
Preoccupied with a war on two fronts, Berlin attempted to moderate Hungarian ambitions and avoid the expansion of the war by arranging a conference with Budapest and Bucharest. The meeting in Vienna proved as fruitless as that in Munich. The Hungarian delegation was frustrated by the lack of German support for their territorial goals given the two countries’ common war effort, but grudgingly agreed to accept the compromise proposal put forward by the German arbitration whereby Hungary would receive the northern portion of Transylvania and relinquish all further claims against Romania. It had been hoped in Berlin that the German war against France, and especially the Hungarian conquest of Slovakia, would convince Bucharest of the folly of opposing Germany on this matter, but King Carol and his advisers did not see the war between Germany and France as a sign of the former’s seriousness to use force to rectify borders but rather as a weakness to be exploited.
Confident that Germany would be unwilling to antagonize Romania and risk her joining the French camp, thereby imperiling Hungary and the campaign against Czechoslovakia, the Romanian delegation roundly rejected the German proposal. For the second time in a few short months, German diplomacy and intimidation had failed to accomplish Berlin’s goal, and for the second time it appeared as though the only recourse for Germany would be war.
While the Czechoslovaks bore the brunt of the fighting, the French army primarily focused on shielding France from German attacks until mobilization could be completed, although a small incursion into the Rhineland was permitted in order to convince the Germans to divert some additional divisions to the Western Front. The population was fairly united behind President Pétain and his government in the early days of the war, with German aggrandizement seen as a continuing threat to the country and the territory of Alsace-Lorraine in particular, and as long as the war remained primarily a Central European affair that would continue.
Decisions and alliances were made haphazardly on both sides of the conflict, as long-term strategic concerns were prioritized less than short-term gains.
Seeking an advantage over the Germans, the French confirmed their commitments to Romania’s territorial integrity against Berlin and Budapest’s threats. The support was appreciated, and exchanges of personnel commenced, but the Romanian government remained wary of French intentions. The Czechs had thus far received little help from their self-proclaimed benefactors in Paris and the Romanians were unwilling to bear the brunt of the German military without tangible French assistance.
Meanwhile, in order to position forces to circumvent the Maginot Line, Germany declared war on Luxembourg after the tiny state refused to grant passage to German troops. While war planners in Berlin had hoped that the British acquiescence to the Munich proposal had signaled London’s unwillingness or unpreparedness to fight a war, the second Germany violation of the neutrality of the low countries in a lifetime invited a similar British response. While Luxembourg formally affiliated itself with the French alliance, Germany found herself also at war with the world-spanning British Empire.
In the middle of November, the Royal Yugoslav Army scored an unexpected victory. While the Bulgarians concentrated their offensive power on liberating Sofia from Yugoslav control, a cavalry and an infantry division had been isolated on the Greek border as Yugoslav forces penetrated deeper into Bulgaria. The Greeks, wary of Bulgarian designs on their territory, provided no refuge or relief for the newly surrounded Bulgarians and the Yugoslavs began the laborious process of starving them out even while brave soldiers attempted to hold Sofia long enough for their comrades-in-arms to finish their work.
The war between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, while not a “total war”, still saw monumental efforts from civilians to aid the war effort.
While the soldiers of the Royal Yugoslav Army fought valiantly in the kingdom’s hinterlands against the Bulgarian foe, the Yugoslav home front saw a great deal of activity. A new propaganda campaign was launched with the aim of rallying the war-weary populace to the defense of their homeland, with a particular emphasis on overcoming entrenched provincial attitudes. With a mixed degree of success, Belgrade’s finest propagandists worked to convince the kingdom’s Slovene and Croat subjects of the necessity of defending their Serb and Macedonian countrymen against the sinister ambitions of Boris and his generals. A secondary component of the Yugoslav propaganda was the separation of the Bulgarian people from their ruler and his government. Success here was also mixed, and counteracted by the simultaneous appearance of strident speeches and articles denouncing the Bulgarian people, but the overall hope was that the groundwork would be laid by the war’s end for the incorporation of the Bulgarians into the Yugoslav nation on the basis of their identity as fellow South Slavs.
Not all Yugoslav patriots served on the front lines or in government offices. The industrialists of Slovenia, long admired for their work in industrializing the westernmost reaches of the country and privileged through close ties and contracts with Belgrade were put in charge of a series of cartels which sought to rationalize the Yugoslav economy and increase its efficiency, which had long lagged behind those of other European countries.
The need to produce more material for war led to the construction of more factories, few of which were undertaken with foreign assistance besides that of Italy. These factories in turn demanded workers, and a migration of Yugoslavs from the countryside to the cities and towns of the kingdom reshaped the social fabric of Yugoslavia and exposed many young men and women to the first life that they had known outside of their small villages. For better or worse, the war was changing Yugoslavia and it left no one untouched.
The Course of the Wars
By December, the Soviet Union had entered the war against Japan on behalf of its Chinese allies. The winter fighting in Siberia and outer Mongolia was hellish, with thousands of men flooding into the barren land for the glory of their masters in Moscow and Tokyo. Initial Japanese gains had seemed promising, with the nearly complete capture of the northern half of the Sakhalin Island and penetration deep into the Mongolian People’s Republic. Absent a second front, however, it was unlikely that the Japanese and their Chinese collaborators would be able to hold out against the human tides which the Soviets and the Chinese forces could bring to bear. To this end, Tokyo extended some diplomatic feelers to anti-Communist governments in Europe, gauging the possibility of some measure of joint action. Preoccupied with European wars, little relief seemed as though it would be forthcoming from the west.
In Iberia as well, Communism appeared to be on the march. The Nationalist forces, virtually abandoned by their German and Italian benefactors, had been reduced to two small holdouts centered on Sevilla in the south and Galicia in the north. There, the last holdouts of Francisco Franco’s government held out against the vastly superior Republican forces. No small number of officers, religious and political officials, and civilians had escaped the country, with more arriving in Portugal every day. These would form the nucleus of Spanish diaspora groups which spread throughout Europe and nurtured fantasies of a triumphant homecoming and revenge against the Bolsheviks who had driven them out.
With the elimination of two more pockets of divisions which had been cut off from the main body, the Bulgarian Army suffered a tremendous blow. The numerical superiority which Bulgaria had enjoyed at the onset of the war with Yugoslavia had been overcome, and the loss of Sofia had dealt a serious blow to Bulgarian morale. Bulgaria’s smaller size compared to Yugoslavia meant that there was little territory which could be given up in order to buy time or entice Yugoslav divisions into a trap. Every week that went by seemed to bring news of another town falling to the Royal Yugoslav Army. The Bulgarian government which had reorganized in Varna was faced with a war which some thought was unwinnable, barring outside assistance. To that end, Boris sent out feelers in every direction, hoping to find sympathy in Rome, Berlin, or Budapest which could translate into an intervention which could turn the tide in the Balkans.
With Slovakia overrun by Hungary, it was assumed that the Czechs would soon surrender. Seeking to secure the southern flank of the alliance to concentrate forces against the west, Berlin offered Belgrade an alliance.
In light of Yugoslav successes against Bulgaria and the onset of a new World War, the German government approached Prince Paul’s government with a formal invitation to join the Berlin-Budapest Axis. Such an offer may have been tempting before Germany had become embroiled in a war with France and Britain, but worries about provoking the western powers into supporting Bulgaria just when progress was being made against the smaller country, led to Paul giving the German envoy a polite but firm response. Yugoslavia would remain neutral in the war between Germany and the other major powers, but would not be a party to a war waged on the basis of German and Hungarian ambitions. Under orders from Adolf Hitler himself, the German ambassador attempted to appeal to the regent’s Yugoslavist sentiments by offering German aid in gaining Southern Dobruja and Greek Macedonia for his kingdom. Other elements of the German proposal were more personal in nature, including the usage of a crack German commando team to rescue and return the Yugoslav royals which had been spirited away to Britain. This was the part of the offer which Paul had the hardest time rejecting, even more so than the veiled offer of his being made the head of a new royal Russian government. The death of Peter and the loss of the slain king’s brothers weighed heavily on Paul, but he not only believed that Germany could not fulfill such extravagant promises, Paul also believed that Germany would be unable to win the war.
Paul’s rejection of an alliance with Germany inspired a tirade against him and the whole Yugoslav nation by Adolf Hitler. The German Führer, who had once assured then-foreign minister Stojadinović that he did not view Balkan issues through “Viennese spectacles” unleashed the full force of his rhetoric against Belgrade. The Serbs and other Dinaric peoples, Hitler declared to his intimates, were backwards and incapable of higher civilization. Their subjugation under Austrian rule had been to their great benefit and to Austria’s great detriment. Prince Paul in particular was savaged as a hopeless Anglophile, unable to abandon his love of a foreign land even when its government had slain his cousin and had tried to overthrow him.
With the initial German overtures rejected, Berlin turned to the naked threat of force to earn Yugoslavia’s compliance. Neutrality was not an option; the Kingdom of Yugoslavia could either choose an alliance with Germany or war.
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It is a very funny joke if told deliberately. I may have to steal it...
A great episode. Some real PODs emerging here.
You went there, boldly, where no man had dared to venture before!
It seemed the conflict might have been avoided. But was it a serious attempt to defuse the situation? Or Yugoslav posturing to try to give them the moral high ground?
Fair enough really.
A major POD right there!
The next big POD: things are looking difficult for the Axis and Japan in this OTL.
Was this the cunning plan all along!
Good!
Now that’s an even sillier misstep than the ‘scrap of paper’ over Belgium in WW1.
Yet another POD, that plays against the Axis.
OK, how firm is that rejection really? Does the German offer remain on the table even after their subsequent rage, or is it now passed?
Is it still an active choice? Or a rhetorical flourish? Could they join the Allies instead?
Well a German-Franco war is exciting! Getting Hungary in the Axis was a masterful move in hindsight, but I'll be curious how well France can hold alone. The war is way earlier, so I'd think that'd be in their advantage, but I'm not certain.
It's good you're breaking through in Bulgaria, and I'm glad you didn't join the Axis. It's a bad time to join, and you could be saddling yourself to a losing cause.
Mussolini's moves in the future should be interesting. I could see him siding with either France or Germany since he can make gains either way and there aren't as many ideological issues. Italy joining France would be very, especially if Britain was sending aid to them both.
It's good you're breaking through in Bulgaria, and I'm glad you didn't join the Axis. It's a bad time to join, and you could be saddling yourself to a losing cause.
Mussolini's moves in the future should be interesting. I could see him siding with either France or Germany since he can make gains either way and there aren't as many ideological issues. Italy joining France would be very, especially if Britain was sending aid to them both.
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Damn. When I was reading the Paul denying the German offer, I was pleased that they were going to seek neutrality for the time being as Germany looks to be in a dire situation.
However, If the Russians are to preoccupied in the east with Japan and war with Germany is delayed, that could pose Yugoslavia some troubles if they have to bear the German and Hungarian war machine. Good thing Italy is neutral for the moment. Looking forward to seeing how the world plays out here!
However, If the Russians are to preoccupied in the east with Japan and war with Germany is delayed, that could pose Yugoslavia some troubles if they have to bear the German and Hungarian war machine. Good thing Italy is neutral for the moment. Looking forward to seeing how the world plays out here!
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Chapter Twelve: All Roads Lead to Rome (December 1st, 1938 to June 5th, 1939)
Chapter Twelve: All Roads Lead to Rome (December 1st, 1938 to June 5th, 1939)
The End of the Third Balkan War
As December wore, on, the tide of the war in the Balkans continued to turn in Yugoslavia’s favor. A bold advance nearly reached Edirne and the Turkish frontier by December 11th, and left another Bulgarian division cut off from supplies and reinforcements. As recently as a few months before the outbreak of the Yugoslav-Bulgarian war, Ankara had been open to the idea of admitting Bulgaria to the Balkan Pact which had been formed against her, and so Tsar Boris had attempted to seek aid from the Turks in the darkest hour of his rein. The Turkish government was willing to provide refuge for Bulgarian civilians and notables and to warn Belgrade not to cross the border into European Turkey, but unwilling to enter the war to save the tottering Bulgarian government, and so the war continued to turn against Boris and his clique of supporters.
The recapture of Plovdiv from the advancing Yugoslavs was a bright spot in the otherwise tragic Bulgarian war effort. Now two divisions of the Royal Yugoslav Army were the ones who were cut off, victims of the ambitious plans of the Yugoslav government and generals who were pushing for a speedy conclusion to the war before outside powers might intervene. The elated generals on the other side of the conflict convinced Tsar Boris to relocate the capital again, or at least its military functions, to Plovdiv in order to keep a closer eye on the war and to demonstrate to the dejected populace that the country was still in the fight.
The temporary Bulgarian capital, as well as Varna where the tsar and his civilian government were still holed up, was soon cut off from the rest of the country by a small number of highly motivated divisions. Prince Paul and others in Belgrade hoped that a quick capture of those two cities would mean the collapse of Bulgarian resistance. The sooner that Yugoslav troops could be transported to the border with Germany, the better. But as the Croat and Slovene soldiers of the Royal Yugoslav Army celebrated their Christmas Eve, the Bulgarians had refused to surrender the last cities under Boris’s flag and were still hoping for relief from an outside force.
The Third Balkan War had provided a sideshow to the main conflict roiling Europe, but its end brought new attention to Yugoslavia and the rest of the region from the powers fighting elsewhere on the continent.
But no assistance, mortal or divine, was forthcoming, and a provisional government of Bulgaria formed by Zveno-affiliated officers surrendered to the invading Yugoslav forces with the capture of Plovdiv and the generals who had been headquartered there. Tsar Boris had managed to slip out of the country aboard a royal yacht along with some of his advisers and received refuge in Turkey. The Yugoslavs could do little to stop his flight, possessing no capabilities on the Black Sea, and there was little incentive to pick a fight with Ankara over the issue of a deposed monarch, not when the country was threatened with destruction by the Germans.
The dream of a “Greater Yugoslavia” was achieved at the expense of an independent Bulgaria. The process of integrating the new territories into Yugoslavia was complicated by war and memories of the Bulgaria which had existed before its incorporation.
The annexation of Bulgaria was hailed by Yugoslavist ideologues and the textbooks which they helped write as the fulfillment of the great mission. With the removal of Boris and his government, there was no competitor to the claim of the mantle of South Slav leadership, and the Bulgarians and Macedonians who had once paid fealty to him were now in one state which they shared with their brother Slavs. The end of the war with Bulgaria was marked with more celebrations than the end of the Yugoslav Civil War had been, although the enthusiasm of the populace was still muted with the threat of another war over the horizon.
The integration of Bulgaria was pursued haphazardly at first, with the Macedonian areas of the west coming to terms with the new status quo and the expanded rights offered to them by Belgrade while most of the ethnic Bulgarians elsewhere in the annexed territories resented the loss of their country and feared the fate which their new masters would visit upon them. Efforts to build legitimacy through local partners s had been done in Macedonia through cooperative elements of the IMRO were complicated by a bloody dispute between the Zveno organization which Paul and his advisors had been counting on for support in the newly liberated territories. While the Zveno had been in favor of an alliance with Yugoslavia during their brief governance, the Yugoslavist stance of the group was not uniform following the annexation of Bulgaria. The so-called “Big Zveno” quickly accepted Bulgaria’s new status as part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and willingly offered their services and expertise to their new countrymen. The “Little Zveno”, by contrast, had hoped that the Yugoslav invasion would mean the establishment of a new Zveno-led government with a degree of independence, not outright annexation. The right-wing government in Belgrade and Yugoslavia’s mercurial ties with Germany had disillusioned many of the men who had been idealistic Yugoslavists in 1934, and the conflict between the two wings of Zveno turned violent as Bulgaria’s new rulers struggled to keep the peace.
An Uneasy Neutrality
In response to Belgrade’s defiance, Berlin’s demands for the territorial reorganization of Yugoslavia meant the effective end of the country and the dream of a unified South Slav nation.
After weeks of preparation and veiled threats, the German government finally issued its ultimatum to Belgrade. The kingdom would be dissolved, with the Croatian subjects of Yugoslavia receiving their own state under “the guidance and protection of the Reich” and Slovenia annexed to Germany proper on the basis of its not insignificant German minority and its historic status as part of Austria. The Serb and Macedonian portions of Yugoslavia, as well as the recently conquered Bulgarians, would be reorganized as a protectorate with a degree of autonomy but subject to the authority of a German representative, or “Reich Protector.
It was an arrogant, heavy-handed ultimatum, much worse than the Austrian demands which Serbia had rejected before the Great War, and just as with that conflict, the Germans were threatening war should any of their demands not be met. Yugoslavia’s ability to survive a war with the full might of the German army and its Hungarian allies for more than a couple of weeks seemed doubtful, but Berlin was currently at war with much larger countries as well. Rejecting the ultimatum was the only answer, and it was hoped that the time needed for Germany to assemble the forces needed for an invasion of Yugoslavia would be enough to discover a way out of this predicament.
The German document had been delivered to Belgrade privately, and Prince Paul and Milan Nedić refused it through private channels as well, but leaks from the prime minister’s office, whether intentional or not, transmitted the information outside of the country’s leadership, and from there it spread to the common people. The broad sentiment was in favor of Radical Union government, as even members of the liberal opposition gave speeches and penned editorials that, while still critical of aspects of the current government, urged Yugoslavs to stand united against German threats. Most significantly, the analysts who had developed demands and argumentations for the German ultimatum had been working from faulty resources as the offer of a supervised Croatian state failed to elicit much public excitement from the kingdom’s Croat population. Indeed, students at the University of Zagreb organized a demonstration in support of the king and the government’s stance against Germany, with one of the homemade banners proclaiming, “We will fight for you, Yugoslavia!” It was an astonishing sea change in attitude from what the region had witnessed and struggled with only very recently.
The first new divisions raised to defend Yugoslavia against Axis threats were commanded by General Josef Depre, one of the many beneficiaries of the mass defection of Yugoslav officers during the civil war.
The popular outpouring of support for the Yugoslav government did little to slow German preparations for war. Plans for an invasion of Yugoslavia were much more stymied by the lack of Wehrmacht divisions available to commit to the attack, however. To deter an attack for as long as possible, policing duties in Bulgaria were handed over to civilian forces and all divisions of the Royal Yugoslav Army were rushed to Slovenia in order to deter a German attack. Their ranks were bolstered by six new divisions drawn from the inaugural class of the system of conscription which the National Assembly had implemented. Some of their members were siblings or former classmates of the students who had rallied in Zagreb, and their enthusiasm was unmatched.
Still, in contrast to their compatriots who had crushed the much-larger Bulgarian army, these new divisions had received the barest minimum of training before being fielded. It was believed, or rather hoped, that Berlin would be too preoccupied with the rest of Europe to look too closely at the green recruits who made up the bulk of Yugoslavia’s new divisions. As their experienced compatriots arrived from Bulgaria, the fresh divisions were shifted to the Hungarian border. As successful as the Hungarian Army had been in Slovakia, its reputation was still nothing compared to that of German soldiery.
With Berlin threatening both Yugoslavia and Romania with war, the potential frontline in the Balkans stretched from Istria to the northern reaches of Transylvania.
By the start of February 1939, German divisions had begun to appear on the German and Hungarian borders with Yugoslavia. The first bricks of the coming build-up appeared anodyne enough. The German soldiers on the frontier at first appeared to be doing nothing more dangerous than participating in exercises and manning border fortifications, but as their numbers swelled in the coming weeks, the German divisions began committing small violations of the Yugoslav border and expanding those fortifications into armed camps directed against Slovenia and northern Croatia.
Lingering mistrust between the French and Yugoslav governments over the reversals and intrigues which had characterized the pre-war period dampened enthusiasm for cooperation against the German threat.
Belgrade’s break with Berlin had soon become public, and this raised hopes in Paris and London that the Yugoslavs could be brought onboard the anti-German coalition. The British were still on the outs with Prince Paul and the Yugoslav government, but the French were happy to extend an offer to renew the alliance with Yugoslavia. With the collapse of Czechoslovakia and the German divisions assembling on the kingdom’s borders, such an offer of military alliance appeared to so many Yugoslavs as a poisoned chalice. The stilted invasion of the Rhineland and the accompanying failure of France to support the Czechs inspired fears that Yugoslavia would be sacrificed in order to serve as a shield to protect France for a while longer from the war they had willingly sought.
Nonetheless, the French ambassador was not turned away outright. Instead, the overtures from France became bogged down in matters or protocol and the details of a potential military convention. While the delaying tactics frustrated Paris, the possibility of opening another front against the Axis was too tempting for the Pétain government to abandon the efforts. For Belgrade, it was enough to keep the French option available without yet committing to it outright. The German declaration of war could come any day, and in that event an alliance with France, and, to a lesser extent, Britain, would become an established fact no matter how many meetings and audiences had or hadn’t taken place.
The failure of the military coup against Prince Paul did little to dampen the enthusiasm for Balkan machinations among Winston Churchill and his accomplices.
While the French were desperate enough to engage in the latest bout of Yugoslav chicanery which had become the norm under Milan Stojadinović’s government, the British were not as accommodating. Even while the kingdom was in the midst of the war with Bulgaria, the British ambassador had paid an unannounced visit to the Foreign Ministry and demanded an explanation for why Yugoslavia was continuing to trade with Germany. Arguments of economics and security fell on deaf ears, as the British representative made it clear that his government did not want excuses, or even a more balanced trade policy between the Axis and the Allied powers. Instead, the ambassador demanded that Yugoslavia cease trading with Germany or else face the consequences of her actions. The threats rankled the kingdom’s leadership, especially Prince Paul. The kidnapping of the Yugoslav royal family by British agents was still fresh in his memory, and the implication of further British intrigues in his country soured Paul’s opinion of his once-beloved England even more.
When the British pressure campaign was brought up in a meeting between the French ambassador to Yugoslavia and the kingdom’s foreign minister, Ivo Andrić, Paris intervened on behalf of Belgrade in order to convince the British to moderate their demands lest Yugoslavia join the Axis powers out of protest. A begrudging compromise was found when the Yugoslavs offered to allow British ships safe harbor in the kingdom’s Adriatic ports and the transit of troops to reinforce Romania should the Germans declare war against King Carol’s government, but the wounds cut deeply. The ugliness highlighted the division between the British and French strategies for the war against Germany, based upon each country’s proximity the fighting was widening the gulf between the two western powers.
The Tempest of War
While the nationalist governments of France and Germany fought, the Communists completed their takeover of Spain.
A million Spaniards and foreign fighters had fallen or been captured in the war for Spain’s soul, a conflict which seemed set to continue intermittently though one side had decisively won. The Spanish Republicans, anti-clerical and nominally democratic, had faced the trials of the war against the Nationalists and emerged on the other side much harder and brutal in their practice of power. Gone were the parliamentary façade to the campaigns against the Catholic Church in Spain; the government in Madrid had learned to simply take church land, to arrest priests, and to break the seal of confession by force. Gone too were the public debates and elections over the direction of the country; the Republicans had learned to tolerate no dissent not even from supposed allies such as the Spanish anarchists or regional separatists. In order to triumph over a brutal foe, the Republicans had resolved to become more brutal than Francisco Franco’s collection of reactionaries, generals, and fascists, and in that they had succeeded.
The specter of a new Communist-ruled country, long-unseen outside of the Soviet Union should have attracted more attention, especially in France where the question of Communism in Iberia had helped bring the current government to power. Instead, the rest of Europe was preoccupied with the war and the new Spanish regime was left to its own devices. Aside from Moscow, it had no friends in Europe and many enemies, but the Republicans had found themselves in this position before and, after a long, bloody struggle, they had triumphed.
The Franco-Russian Entente had failed to match the German Empire during the Great War, but desperation caused Paris to seek an alliance with the Bolsheviks.
Despite public shows of bravado by the military government in Paris, renewed conflict with Germany was a terrifying thought to French of every social class. In the last war, it had taken the combined efforts of France, Britain, and the Russian Empire to halt the initial German advance and even then the dreaded Huns had almost reached Paris. Now, London and Paris were once again united against the Teutonic threat, but instead of Russia, their great eastern ally was little Czechoslovakia. Such a combination seemed to portend doom in the minds of the French leadership and so the unthinkable became not just plausible but desirable: an alliance with the Soviet Union.
Since the end of the Great War, French war plans had counted on allies to Germany’s east providing a second front which would divide German forces and ease the pressure on France and her war-weary populace. One of the chief debates, especially in the heady days following the Armistice when possibilities in Europe seemed endless, was whether to support a coalition of smaller states or seek rapprochement with the Bolshevik government in Moscow in hopes that they would soon evolve or be replaced by a “normal” Russian government. The former policy had initially won out, but not without infrequent shifts to the latter one. When Maxim Litvinov was the Soviet’s foreign minister, a renewed Franco-Russian entente seemed within reach, only to flounder on the refusal of Poland and Romania would allow troops from the Soviet Union to transverse their territory in order to aid Czechoslovakia.
Now, with both countries struggling mightily against the same foes that they had fought earlier in the century, the new Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, received a French envoy seeking to formalize a Franco-Soviet pact which would commit each country to the defense of the other’s territorial integrity. It was a bold move by the anti-Communist French government, especially in light of their regime’s origin and the Republican victory in the Spanish Civil War. It was one that showed France’s desperation for allies against Germany, but it was nonetheless rejected. Preventing the loss of Siberia and its Pacific ports to the Japanese was the first order of the day in Moscow, and the question of troop transit through Poland and Romania had still not been resolved. Short of shipping troops through the deadly waters of the North Sea to take up positions in France, there was little that the Soviet Union could offer France and, more importantly to Joseph Stalin and his fellow Bolsheviks, even less that France could offer the Soviets. French Indochina and other holdings in the Pacific were already woefully underprepared for war. All French involvement in the war with Japan would likely accomplish would be the addition of new fronts for the Soviets and their allies to manage through unchallenged Japanese invasions of Vietnam and the French concessions in China.
With characteristic bluntness, Molotov told his French suitor that the one thing that might have enticed Moscow into considering the treaty and war with Germany was the removal of Poland as a buffer state keeping the Soviet Union from Germany, and the rest of Europe. The situation was not yet so dire that Paris was willing to condone a war against Poland, not when Warsaw was still a potential ally. As such, the Franco-Soviet Treaty was stillborn, and it was soon overtaken by more pressing developments.
Polish victory in the Polish-Soviet War of 1918 to 1921 had expanded the country’s borders and its leaders’ egos. It was believed that Poland was strong enough to shape her own destiny and defend herself from her hostile, but embattled, neighbors.
With her two most powerful neighbors engaged in brutal wars and potential patrons otherwise engaged, Poland embarked on an ambitious mission of forging an alliance of neutral states in Eastern Europe which would be strong enough to withstand German or Soviet pressure. It was a bold project and one that attracted attention in Bucharest and Belgrade, as well as in the Baltic states to Poland’s north, but Józef Beck and his team of diplomats were unable to ask the uncomfortable question of how the alliance would fare in the event that the Germans or the Soviets won their wars elsewhere and then turned their attention against Poland and her allies. As Prince Paul bitterly reflected in his diary, the only options for the middle powers of Europe seemed to be either siding with the Germans or to helping to put them down.
The slow pace of the war in the west frustrated Adolf Hitler and his generals who were hoping for quick decisive victories, and so their attention turned to Czechoslovakia and the impressive gains which the Axis were making in that theater. The failure to break through the mighty Maginot Line was understandable in light of the years of work which had gone into its construction and the training of the soldiers manning it but the inability of the Wehrmacht to crush the tiny country of Luxembourg was a grave blow to the prestige of the German armed forces. Even more humiliating, territory had been lost to a joint French-Luxembourgish advance into the Rhineland. The expansion of the war with the German attack on Luxembourg had not only brought in the British empire on the side of France and Czechoslovakia, but it had not even succeeded in its aim of flanking the Maginot Line.
The Lithuanian alliance with Britain against Germany gave the Allies new bases with which to contest the Baltic Sea.
Undeterred by past failures at diplomacy, Berlin attempted to secure the return of the Memel region which had been taken by Lithuania from the dejected Germans in 1923. While the Czech, Luxembourgish, and Romanian governments had significant international backing, it was felt that the small Baltic country would fold in the face of German pressure. Once more, German calculations had been wrong and Lithuania steadfastly refused the German demands and tendered membership in the British-led alliance when Berlin declared war.
Mussolini’s Price
"War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it. All other trials are substitutes, which never really put a man in front of himself in the alternative of life and death." – Benito Mussolini
As the fighting in Europe expanded, Italy found herself in a similar position to the one that she had enjoyed at the start of the last Great War. For Mussolini, neutrality was not an option and both the German and the Anglo-French Alliances were eager to win Mussolini for their cause. The opening of a new front in the French Alps or in Austria could bring victory to whichever side of the war which the Italian dictator chose to join. Unfortunately for Rome’s suitors, Mussolini was well aware of this fact and he drove a high price for his support, encouraging diplomats from the warring powers to compete in offering Italy concessions in return for her entering the war on their behalf.
The supplanting of Italy by Germany as the continent’s preeminent nationalistic regime still rankled Mussolini’s pride. He had long toyed with the idea of an alliance with Germany in order to confront the British and the French, but the rapid rise of the Nationalist Socialists under Adolf Hitler had given the Duce pause. Berlin seemed uninterested in serving as a junior partner in an Italian-led coalition, and the annexation of Austria and alliance with Hungary had meant the loss of two would-be Italian client states to German control. The question of South Tyrol, with its German population, weighed heavily on the Italian government. Adolf Hitler had renounced claims to the region in his book Mein Kampf, but the situation had changed dramatically since the German Führer had been merely an imprisoned rabble-rouser. With Germany at war with Czechoslovakia, France, Britain and now Lithuania over similar claims of ethnic kinship, no one was quite sure if Berlin’s designs wouldn’t someday extend to Italian-controlled territory as well.
The replacement of the French Republic with a French State modeled, at least in part, by Mussolini’s Fascist Party removed an ideological barrier to siding with the French. The British were even willing to hold their noses and work with the other continental nationalists in order to defeat Germany, although anything more than an alliance of convenience was out of the question. In hopes of winning Italian entry into the war against Germany, the French and British ambassadors offered Mussolini a free hand in the occupation and reforming of the Austrian and Hungarian lands should the anti-German alliance prove victorious. Further appeals included the possibility of border adjustments favoring Italian holdings in East Africa and a certain percentage of Italian influence in various Mediterranean countries.
Paris and London were limited in what they could offer by the smaller size of the pie which was to be carved up should they prove victorious, but Berlin was much less restrained. The destruction of the French and the British Empires offered much grander prizes for an ambitious country like Italy, more than enough to share, the German ambassador, Hans Georg von Mackensen, assured Count Ciano and Mussolini. Long-standing Italian designs on Tunisia, Corsica, and the French Alps could be awarded immediately following the victory of the Axis alliance over its foes, with further colonial possessions in Africa, the Middle East, and beyond available for spoils. In addition, should Italy prove hesitant, German plans for Yugoslavia made it clear that Berlin felt no compunctions about reordering the Balkans without offering compensation to Rome in this Italian area of interest. Thus, despite the best efforts of the western powers and the distrust the Italian government felt towards the ascendant Germans, a deal was struck between Rome and Berlin. Italy was now the third member of the Axis alliance.
The entrance of Italy into the war on the German side dismayed the French and British, but Yugoslavia seemed to be the country most threatened by the alliance.
The entry of Italy into the war marked a further escalation of the already explosive conflict. British and French fleets scrambled to win the Mediterranean from the forces of the Regia Marina, and French divisions were sent southward in anticipation of an Italian attack across the mountain range bordering the two countries. With Italy’s entry, Africa now became a battlefield as well and forces needed to be redeployed to meet the threat of Italian colonial forces stationed in Libya and Ethiopia.
Italy’s alliance with Germany gave the Axis alliance a longer frontline and additional troops to bring to bear against the recalcitrant Yugoslavs as well. The bulk of Italian divisions were sent to fight the British and the French, but a worrying number of them appeared in Istria and the coastal enclave of Zara to support the German build-up in the region. It seemed that time was running out for Yugoslavia’s neutrality.
Despite Italy reinforcing the alliance, Germany still suffered the loss of East Prussia to a joint Lithuanian and English task force. The territory was placed under Lithuanian control and the occupation by the authoritarian government of Antanas Smetona made little secret of its ambitions for annexing some degree of the German land should their side prove victorious. The loss was frustrating for the National Socialist government in Berlin, as the war had thus far resulted in more Germans living under foreign domination, not less, but spirits were buoyed by the fact that territory in that region had been lost to the Russians during the Great War as a temporary setback on the road to the great victories of the Eastern Front. Nonetheless, additional resources were devoted to the Kriegsmarine to build enough ships to contest the Baltic Sea and win control back from the upstarts in Kaunas.
The Hungarian conquest of Slovakia had cut off the Czech heartlands of Bohemia and Moravia from the non-Axis world, and meant that only a few men escaped the country to form a Czech government-in-exile in London.
What setbacks the Axis suffered in the north were soon overcome by the collapse of the Czech government following the surrender of Prague and Brno. The invasion of Slovakia by way of Hungary had proven a massive success and led to some in Budapest to call for the Czech portions of Bohemia and Moravia to be occupied by Hungary for the remainder of the war, but the idea was quickly shot down by Miklós Horthy in order to preserve good relations with Berlin. The Czech surrender was still a vital step forward for the Axis powers as it freed up a large number of divisions to turn back the French advance into the Rhineland, and also to man the borders with Yugoslavia in anticipation of another expansion of the war.
The long-awaited French advance into Germany faced stiffened resistance from the influx of divisions coming from the east. Meanwhile, the Italians faced hardly any opposition in their invasion of France and had soon crossed the Alps.
A Deal with the Devil
As with South Tyrol, Zara had been an issue of the utmost importance for nationalists during the 1920’s, but also one whose importance had been eclipsed by grander designs.
The fall of Czechoslovakia to German and Hungarian arms reinforced Berlin’s leadership of the Axis alliance despite the launching of more and more wars against new countries, but schemes were already being hatched in Rome to subvert the pact’s current hierarchy. The key, Count Ciano believed, would be expanding the alliance so as to diffuse German influence and preclude further German adventurism in Europe. To that end, he proposed, with Mussolini’s acquiescence, a new Italo-Yugoslav Friendship Treaty to replace the bare bones agreement of 1936. Italian membership in the Axis had heightened the danger of Hitler’s threats against Yugoslavia, and it was believed that Belgrade could be enticed into joining the alliance through the concession of Zara, an Italian enclave on the Dalmatian coast.
The prospect of giving up Italian territory was not an appealing one to Mussolini, especially after he had railed for so long against the “mutilated victory” which had deprived Italy of the Dalmatia coast which she had coveted as a prize for participating in the World War. Ciano and a select few others argued that, given Italian predominance in Albania and future acquisitions from France and Britain, Zara was an unnecessary irritant in the relations between two impressive Fascist kingdoms, both of which had reasons for working together to limit German hegemony over Europe. Italy could still be master of the Mediterranean, it was argued, and the Straits of Otranto, the gateway to the Adriatic, would still be in Rome’s hands. The strategy required not only concessions on the Italians’ part, but also from the Yugoslavs. Mussolini and his government had been involved in the joint Ustaše-IMRO assassination of King Alexander in Paris, and Italian support for terrorists and separatists in Yugoslavia and designs on the Dalmatian coast had been no secret. Joining the Axis alliance, and implicitly supporting its war against France, would mean disregarding the last words of the slain king. These were somber considerations, but so was the mounting number of German and now Italian and Hungarian troops massing on Yugoslavia’s borders. Questions of honor battled with those of the kingdom’s survival.
The mobilization of the Yugoslav economy for war was undertaken at a breakneck pace which produced impressive results but also numerous issues as inexperienced men learned to soldier or serve in factories.
The threat of war from Germany hung over the country like a guillotine’s blade and prevented the country from demobilizing after the Treaty of Varna. Instead, with the new conscription regime enacted by the National Assembly beginning to bear fruit, the Royal Yugoslav Army grew by leaps and bounds from its nadir of nine divisions to an impressive twenty-eight infantry divisions in a few short months. This rapid expansion was driven by the stockpiles of equipment built up and the aforementioned need to deter any German attack on the country by projecting as much strength as possible.
On the economic front, the rationalization of the Yugoslav continued. Although the kingdom’s economy had always possessed a significant degree of state interference, the influence of Italian and German thinking caused Belgrade to move closer to the corporate model espoused by those countries and further away from the free-market economics which London and Paris practiced. Although workers’ wages rose with the heightened demands for labor, the ability to strike was severely curtailed in order to prevent disruption in a time of national crisis. As long as things continued to go well, it was believed that Yugoslavia’s workers would remain loyal.
While Germany was unhappy that her bluster had not suitably cowed the Yugoslavs, the kingdom’s membership in the Axis meant a continuing flow of valuable mineral resources and foodstuffs necessary for the war effort.
For weeks, the Italians and the Yugoslavs had hammered out an agreement which was much more ambitious in scope than that signed only a few years previously. The economic clauses of the previous treaty were updated to reflect Yugoslavia’s new territories and industrial capabilities, with the two countries operating on a more equal basis, although the treaty still was tilted in Italy’s favor. Military and diplomatic considerations took up the bulk of the new Friendship Treaty, with Rome and Belgrade agreeing not to join in any military alliance directed against the other country and to consult on all Central and Southern European issues. Italy renounced all claims on the Dalmatian coast in exchange for Yugoslavia doing the same for Istria, although the treaty included clauses providing for minority rights for Italians in Yugoslavia and Yugoslavs in Italy. Lastly, the treaty included secret provisions delineating the two kingdoms’ interests in Greece and arrangements for joint military action in the region.
Notably, although the alliance paved the way for Yugoslavia to join the Axis, there was no requirement for Belgrade to join in Rome’s war with France and Britain. Mussolini was content to keep Yugoslavia friendly but uninvolved, so long as the war continued to go in his favor.
At Mussolini’s urging, Berlin renewed its offer of alliance to Belgrade and this time Prince Paul’s government accepted. The move was met with grumbling in some quarters of the National Assembly, but the highest political and military officials had been briefed by Milan Nedić and understood just how grave a position Yugoslavia had found herself in. Italian intervention had helped shield the country from war with Berlin for the moment, but the question was what price would have to be paid for this assistance.
The Italian advance into France was the cruel harvest of the vacillating military and diplomatic policy the country had practiced before the outbreak of the war as France faced the invasion without any developed plans for this contingency or any allies who might threaten Italy and thereby deter the invasion.
The small amounts of progress which the Allies’ continental forces had made advancing into the Rhineland came rapidly undone as battle-hardened German and Hungarian divisions reinforced the already substantial Axis build-up in the area and the need to contain the Italian to the south weakened the forces assigned to the French attack. The people and the lands of the Franco-German borderlands had seen more than their fair share of war during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but the natural barrier of the Alps and peace between France and Italy had preserved peace for the beautiful south of France for a long time. The success of the Italians at penetrating into France surprised all, especially the Italian generals who had expected a stronger initial resistance. After all, their forces had succeeded at not only threatening the region of France which boasted the strongest support for the Pétain government but also capturing the ports which provided vital lifelines between la Métropole and French North Africa. As Italian troops neared the Spanish border, Mussolini and his circle of advisers began to hazard ideas of what would follow a victorious war. Such flights of fancy remained so much fantasy for the time being, but the feeling was already forming that Italian and German designs for Europe would not be wholly in-sync.
Owing to the greater British presence in the fighting on the Dark Continent, the African front attracted much more attention in the Anglo-Saxon world and stories of daring actions and brave soldiers fighting in North Africa and Ethiopia peppered American newspapers with far more regularity than stories concerning the defense of France against invasion.
After the conquest of East Prussia, the brightest spot in the Allied war effort was in Africa. There, the Italian presence in Libya had been almost completely removed and French and British gains in eastern Africa had almost bisected the Italian colonies in the region, despite the fierce fighting by the Italians and their Askari troops. Troops which had been freed up from the now-safe Yugoslav border were to be sent to turn the tide in Libya, but there was no port under Italian control in the region and so they were instead diverted to assist with efforts in southern France. Control of the Suez Canal and Gibraltar prevented any link-up between the Axis fleets of the Regia Marina and the Kriegsmarine and helped the Allies win the war at sea even while the situation on land grew more and more dire.
The War in Asia
The jewel of the Far East had fallen to the Japanese during the Russo-Japanese War as well, but that conflict over railways and spheres of influence had not been the life-or-death struggle that the Soviet Union and the Japanese Empire now found themselves in.
In the Far East, the Japanese could point to the capture of the major Soviet port city of Vladivostok as a sign of the successful campaign against the Sino-Soviet alliance, with the capture of the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar also on the horizon. The victories in Siberia and Mongolia had been achieved due to the superior organization and command of the Japanese forces compared to their Soviet opponents, but Communist reinforcements continued to flow into Siberia from the west and the long-term prognosis for the Japanese hold on the Eurasian continent was still uncertain.
Compared to the war in Europe, the war in Asia was seen by most Westerners as a sideshow fought by two inscrutable Oriental powers, and, like the Spanish Civil War, neither side seemed palatable to democratic sensibilities.
Gains in Siberia and Mongolia had been achieved at the cost of scaling back the men and material assigned to the Chinese front, with the result that the territory ceded after the skirmish at the Marco Polo Bridge began to fall to Chinese control. However, Chiang still did not command the loyalty of all of his governors. The warlords of the Guangxi, Ma, Shanxi, and Yunan were wary of partnering with Chiang Kai-shek after his concessions to Japan had failed to forestall war for a longer period of time. Chiang’s alliance with Mao Zedong to defend China against the Japanese had seemed promising, but their inclusion of the Soviet Union into the coalition against the invaders sparked worries that a Communist regime would be enforced upon China by Moscow and its new dependents. Even Sheng Shicai, the Soviet-aligned governor of the Sinkiang province of China had thus far stayed neutral in the conflict. The Japanese invasion had thus far not touched the holdings of these skeptical warlords, and they were content to wait for the time being and see what the fortune of wars would bring to China.
Notwithstanding the neutrality of some segments of China, Japan still had found herself in a war with the two most populous countries in the world, and the empire’s holdings in Asia could be ground to dust between the two giants if nothing decisive was done to bring the war to a speedy end.
The End of the Third Balkan War
As December wore, on, the tide of the war in the Balkans continued to turn in Yugoslavia’s favor. A bold advance nearly reached Edirne and the Turkish frontier by December 11th, and left another Bulgarian division cut off from supplies and reinforcements. As recently as a few months before the outbreak of the Yugoslav-Bulgarian war, Ankara had been open to the idea of admitting Bulgaria to the Balkan Pact which had been formed against her, and so Tsar Boris had attempted to seek aid from the Turks in the darkest hour of his rein. The Turkish government was willing to provide refuge for Bulgarian civilians and notables and to warn Belgrade not to cross the border into European Turkey, but unwilling to enter the war to save the tottering Bulgarian government, and so the war continued to turn against Boris and his clique of supporters.
The recapture of Plovdiv from the advancing Yugoslavs was a bright spot in the otherwise tragic Bulgarian war effort. Now two divisions of the Royal Yugoslav Army were the ones who were cut off, victims of the ambitious plans of the Yugoslav government and generals who were pushing for a speedy conclusion to the war before outside powers might intervene. The elated generals on the other side of the conflict convinced Tsar Boris to relocate the capital again, or at least its military functions, to Plovdiv in order to keep a closer eye on the war and to demonstrate to the dejected populace that the country was still in the fight.
The temporary Bulgarian capital, as well as Varna where the tsar and his civilian government were still holed up, was soon cut off from the rest of the country by a small number of highly motivated divisions. Prince Paul and others in Belgrade hoped that a quick capture of those two cities would mean the collapse of Bulgarian resistance. The sooner that Yugoslav troops could be transported to the border with Germany, the better. But as the Croat and Slovene soldiers of the Royal Yugoslav Army celebrated their Christmas Eve, the Bulgarians had refused to surrender the last cities under Boris’s flag and were still hoping for relief from an outside force.
The Third Balkan War had provided a sideshow to the main conflict roiling Europe, but its end brought new attention to Yugoslavia and the rest of the region from the powers fighting elsewhere on the continent.
But no assistance, mortal or divine, was forthcoming, and a provisional government of Bulgaria formed by Zveno-affiliated officers surrendered to the invading Yugoslav forces with the capture of Plovdiv and the generals who had been headquartered there. Tsar Boris had managed to slip out of the country aboard a royal yacht along with some of his advisers and received refuge in Turkey. The Yugoslavs could do little to stop his flight, possessing no capabilities on the Black Sea, and there was little incentive to pick a fight with Ankara over the issue of a deposed monarch, not when the country was threatened with destruction by the Germans.
The dream of a “Greater Yugoslavia” was achieved at the expense of an independent Bulgaria. The process of integrating the new territories into Yugoslavia was complicated by war and memories of the Bulgaria which had existed before its incorporation.
The annexation of Bulgaria was hailed by Yugoslavist ideologues and the textbooks which they helped write as the fulfillment of the great mission. With the removal of Boris and his government, there was no competitor to the claim of the mantle of South Slav leadership, and the Bulgarians and Macedonians who had once paid fealty to him were now in one state which they shared with their brother Slavs. The end of the war with Bulgaria was marked with more celebrations than the end of the Yugoslav Civil War had been, although the enthusiasm of the populace was still muted with the threat of another war over the horizon.
The integration of Bulgaria was pursued haphazardly at first, with the Macedonian areas of the west coming to terms with the new status quo and the expanded rights offered to them by Belgrade while most of the ethnic Bulgarians elsewhere in the annexed territories resented the loss of their country and feared the fate which their new masters would visit upon them. Efforts to build legitimacy through local partners s had been done in Macedonia through cooperative elements of the IMRO were complicated by a bloody dispute between the Zveno organization which Paul and his advisors had been counting on for support in the newly liberated territories. While the Zveno had been in favor of an alliance with Yugoslavia during their brief governance, the Yugoslavist stance of the group was not uniform following the annexation of Bulgaria. The so-called “Big Zveno” quickly accepted Bulgaria’s new status as part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and willingly offered their services and expertise to their new countrymen. The “Little Zveno”, by contrast, had hoped that the Yugoslav invasion would mean the establishment of a new Zveno-led government with a degree of independence, not outright annexation. The right-wing government in Belgrade and Yugoslavia’s mercurial ties with Germany had disillusioned many of the men who had been idealistic Yugoslavists in 1934, and the conflict between the two wings of Zveno turned violent as Bulgaria’s new rulers struggled to keep the peace.
An Uneasy Neutrality
In response to Belgrade’s defiance, Berlin’s demands for the territorial reorganization of Yugoslavia meant the effective end of the country and the dream of a unified South Slav nation.
After weeks of preparation and veiled threats, the German government finally issued its ultimatum to Belgrade. The kingdom would be dissolved, with the Croatian subjects of Yugoslavia receiving their own state under “the guidance and protection of the Reich” and Slovenia annexed to Germany proper on the basis of its not insignificant German minority and its historic status as part of Austria. The Serb and Macedonian portions of Yugoslavia, as well as the recently conquered Bulgarians, would be reorganized as a protectorate with a degree of autonomy but subject to the authority of a German representative, or “Reich Protector.
It was an arrogant, heavy-handed ultimatum, much worse than the Austrian demands which Serbia had rejected before the Great War, and just as with that conflict, the Germans were threatening war should any of their demands not be met. Yugoslavia’s ability to survive a war with the full might of the German army and its Hungarian allies for more than a couple of weeks seemed doubtful, but Berlin was currently at war with much larger countries as well. Rejecting the ultimatum was the only answer, and it was hoped that the time needed for Germany to assemble the forces needed for an invasion of Yugoslavia would be enough to discover a way out of this predicament.
The German document had been delivered to Belgrade privately, and Prince Paul and Milan Nedić refused it through private channels as well, but leaks from the prime minister’s office, whether intentional or not, transmitted the information outside of the country’s leadership, and from there it spread to the common people. The broad sentiment was in favor of Radical Union government, as even members of the liberal opposition gave speeches and penned editorials that, while still critical of aspects of the current government, urged Yugoslavs to stand united against German threats. Most significantly, the analysts who had developed demands and argumentations for the German ultimatum had been working from faulty resources as the offer of a supervised Croatian state failed to elicit much public excitement from the kingdom’s Croat population. Indeed, students at the University of Zagreb organized a demonstration in support of the king and the government’s stance against Germany, with one of the homemade banners proclaiming, “We will fight for you, Yugoslavia!” It was an astonishing sea change in attitude from what the region had witnessed and struggled with only very recently.
The first new divisions raised to defend Yugoslavia against Axis threats were commanded by General Josef Depre, one of the many beneficiaries of the mass defection of Yugoslav officers during the civil war.
The popular outpouring of support for the Yugoslav government did little to slow German preparations for war. Plans for an invasion of Yugoslavia were much more stymied by the lack of Wehrmacht divisions available to commit to the attack, however. To deter an attack for as long as possible, policing duties in Bulgaria were handed over to civilian forces and all divisions of the Royal Yugoslav Army were rushed to Slovenia in order to deter a German attack. Their ranks were bolstered by six new divisions drawn from the inaugural class of the system of conscription which the National Assembly had implemented. Some of their members were siblings or former classmates of the students who had rallied in Zagreb, and their enthusiasm was unmatched.
Still, in contrast to their compatriots who had crushed the much-larger Bulgarian army, these new divisions had received the barest minimum of training before being fielded. It was believed, or rather hoped, that Berlin would be too preoccupied with the rest of Europe to look too closely at the green recruits who made up the bulk of Yugoslavia’s new divisions. As their experienced compatriots arrived from Bulgaria, the fresh divisions were shifted to the Hungarian border. As successful as the Hungarian Army had been in Slovakia, its reputation was still nothing compared to that of German soldiery.
With Berlin threatening both Yugoslavia and Romania with war, the potential frontline in the Balkans stretched from Istria to the northern reaches of Transylvania.
By the start of February 1939, German divisions had begun to appear on the German and Hungarian borders with Yugoslavia. The first bricks of the coming build-up appeared anodyne enough. The German soldiers on the frontier at first appeared to be doing nothing more dangerous than participating in exercises and manning border fortifications, but as their numbers swelled in the coming weeks, the German divisions began committing small violations of the Yugoslav border and expanding those fortifications into armed camps directed against Slovenia and northern Croatia.
Lingering mistrust between the French and Yugoslav governments over the reversals and intrigues which had characterized the pre-war period dampened enthusiasm for cooperation against the German threat.
Belgrade’s break with Berlin had soon become public, and this raised hopes in Paris and London that the Yugoslavs could be brought onboard the anti-German coalition. The British were still on the outs with Prince Paul and the Yugoslav government, but the French were happy to extend an offer to renew the alliance with Yugoslavia. With the collapse of Czechoslovakia and the German divisions assembling on the kingdom’s borders, such an offer of military alliance appeared to so many Yugoslavs as a poisoned chalice. The stilted invasion of the Rhineland and the accompanying failure of France to support the Czechs inspired fears that Yugoslavia would be sacrificed in order to serve as a shield to protect France for a while longer from the war they had willingly sought.
Nonetheless, the French ambassador was not turned away outright. Instead, the overtures from France became bogged down in matters or protocol and the details of a potential military convention. While the delaying tactics frustrated Paris, the possibility of opening another front against the Axis was too tempting for the Pétain government to abandon the efforts. For Belgrade, it was enough to keep the French option available without yet committing to it outright. The German declaration of war could come any day, and in that event an alliance with France, and, to a lesser extent, Britain, would become an established fact no matter how many meetings and audiences had or hadn’t taken place.
The failure of the military coup against Prince Paul did little to dampen the enthusiasm for Balkan machinations among Winston Churchill and his accomplices.
While the French were desperate enough to engage in the latest bout of Yugoslav chicanery which had become the norm under Milan Stojadinović’s government, the British were not as accommodating. Even while the kingdom was in the midst of the war with Bulgaria, the British ambassador had paid an unannounced visit to the Foreign Ministry and demanded an explanation for why Yugoslavia was continuing to trade with Germany. Arguments of economics and security fell on deaf ears, as the British representative made it clear that his government did not want excuses, or even a more balanced trade policy between the Axis and the Allied powers. Instead, the ambassador demanded that Yugoslavia cease trading with Germany or else face the consequences of her actions. The threats rankled the kingdom’s leadership, especially Prince Paul. The kidnapping of the Yugoslav royal family by British agents was still fresh in his memory, and the implication of further British intrigues in his country soured Paul’s opinion of his once-beloved England even more.
When the British pressure campaign was brought up in a meeting between the French ambassador to Yugoslavia and the kingdom’s foreign minister, Ivo Andrić, Paris intervened on behalf of Belgrade in order to convince the British to moderate their demands lest Yugoslavia join the Axis powers out of protest. A begrudging compromise was found when the Yugoslavs offered to allow British ships safe harbor in the kingdom’s Adriatic ports and the transit of troops to reinforce Romania should the Germans declare war against King Carol’s government, but the wounds cut deeply. The ugliness highlighted the division between the British and French strategies for the war against Germany, based upon each country’s proximity the fighting was widening the gulf between the two western powers.
The Tempest of War
While the nationalist governments of France and Germany fought, the Communists completed their takeover of Spain.
A million Spaniards and foreign fighters had fallen or been captured in the war for Spain’s soul, a conflict which seemed set to continue intermittently though one side had decisively won. The Spanish Republicans, anti-clerical and nominally democratic, had faced the trials of the war against the Nationalists and emerged on the other side much harder and brutal in their practice of power. Gone were the parliamentary façade to the campaigns against the Catholic Church in Spain; the government in Madrid had learned to simply take church land, to arrest priests, and to break the seal of confession by force. Gone too were the public debates and elections over the direction of the country; the Republicans had learned to tolerate no dissent not even from supposed allies such as the Spanish anarchists or regional separatists. In order to triumph over a brutal foe, the Republicans had resolved to become more brutal than Francisco Franco’s collection of reactionaries, generals, and fascists, and in that they had succeeded.
The specter of a new Communist-ruled country, long-unseen outside of the Soviet Union should have attracted more attention, especially in France where the question of Communism in Iberia had helped bring the current government to power. Instead, the rest of Europe was preoccupied with the war and the new Spanish regime was left to its own devices. Aside from Moscow, it had no friends in Europe and many enemies, but the Republicans had found themselves in this position before and, after a long, bloody struggle, they had triumphed.
The Franco-Russian Entente had failed to match the German Empire during the Great War, but desperation caused Paris to seek an alliance with the Bolsheviks.
Despite public shows of bravado by the military government in Paris, renewed conflict with Germany was a terrifying thought to French of every social class. In the last war, it had taken the combined efforts of France, Britain, and the Russian Empire to halt the initial German advance and even then the dreaded Huns had almost reached Paris. Now, London and Paris were once again united against the Teutonic threat, but instead of Russia, their great eastern ally was little Czechoslovakia. Such a combination seemed to portend doom in the minds of the French leadership and so the unthinkable became not just plausible but desirable: an alliance with the Soviet Union.
Since the end of the Great War, French war plans had counted on allies to Germany’s east providing a second front which would divide German forces and ease the pressure on France and her war-weary populace. One of the chief debates, especially in the heady days following the Armistice when possibilities in Europe seemed endless, was whether to support a coalition of smaller states or seek rapprochement with the Bolshevik government in Moscow in hopes that they would soon evolve or be replaced by a “normal” Russian government. The former policy had initially won out, but not without infrequent shifts to the latter one. When Maxim Litvinov was the Soviet’s foreign minister, a renewed Franco-Russian entente seemed within reach, only to flounder on the refusal of Poland and Romania would allow troops from the Soviet Union to transverse their territory in order to aid Czechoslovakia.
Now, with both countries struggling mightily against the same foes that they had fought earlier in the century, the new Soviet foreign minister, Vyacheslav Molotov, received a French envoy seeking to formalize a Franco-Soviet pact which would commit each country to the defense of the other’s territorial integrity. It was a bold move by the anti-Communist French government, especially in light of their regime’s origin and the Republican victory in the Spanish Civil War. It was one that showed France’s desperation for allies against Germany, but it was nonetheless rejected. Preventing the loss of Siberia and its Pacific ports to the Japanese was the first order of the day in Moscow, and the question of troop transit through Poland and Romania had still not been resolved. Short of shipping troops through the deadly waters of the North Sea to take up positions in France, there was little that the Soviet Union could offer France and, more importantly to Joseph Stalin and his fellow Bolsheviks, even less that France could offer the Soviets. French Indochina and other holdings in the Pacific were already woefully underprepared for war. All French involvement in the war with Japan would likely accomplish would be the addition of new fronts for the Soviets and their allies to manage through unchallenged Japanese invasions of Vietnam and the French concessions in China.
With characteristic bluntness, Molotov told his French suitor that the one thing that might have enticed Moscow into considering the treaty and war with Germany was the removal of Poland as a buffer state keeping the Soviet Union from Germany, and the rest of Europe. The situation was not yet so dire that Paris was willing to condone a war against Poland, not when Warsaw was still a potential ally. As such, the Franco-Soviet Treaty was stillborn, and it was soon overtaken by more pressing developments.
Polish victory in the Polish-Soviet War of 1918 to 1921 had expanded the country’s borders and its leaders’ egos. It was believed that Poland was strong enough to shape her own destiny and defend herself from her hostile, but embattled, neighbors.
With her two most powerful neighbors engaged in brutal wars and potential patrons otherwise engaged, Poland embarked on an ambitious mission of forging an alliance of neutral states in Eastern Europe which would be strong enough to withstand German or Soviet pressure. It was a bold project and one that attracted attention in Bucharest and Belgrade, as well as in the Baltic states to Poland’s north, but Józef Beck and his team of diplomats were unable to ask the uncomfortable question of how the alliance would fare in the event that the Germans or the Soviets won their wars elsewhere and then turned their attention against Poland and her allies. As Prince Paul bitterly reflected in his diary, the only options for the middle powers of Europe seemed to be either siding with the Germans or to helping to put them down.
The slow pace of the war in the west frustrated Adolf Hitler and his generals who were hoping for quick decisive victories, and so their attention turned to Czechoslovakia and the impressive gains which the Axis were making in that theater. The failure to break through the mighty Maginot Line was understandable in light of the years of work which had gone into its construction and the training of the soldiers manning it but the inability of the Wehrmacht to crush the tiny country of Luxembourg was a grave blow to the prestige of the German armed forces. Even more humiliating, territory had been lost to a joint French-Luxembourgish advance into the Rhineland. The expansion of the war with the German attack on Luxembourg had not only brought in the British empire on the side of France and Czechoslovakia, but it had not even succeeded in its aim of flanking the Maginot Line.
The Lithuanian alliance with Britain against Germany gave the Allies new bases with which to contest the Baltic Sea.
Undeterred by past failures at diplomacy, Berlin attempted to secure the return of the Memel region which had been taken by Lithuania from the dejected Germans in 1923. While the Czech, Luxembourgish, and Romanian governments had significant international backing, it was felt that the small Baltic country would fold in the face of German pressure. Once more, German calculations had been wrong and Lithuania steadfastly refused the German demands and tendered membership in the British-led alliance when Berlin declared war.
Mussolini’s Price
"War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it. All other trials are substitutes, which never really put a man in front of himself in the alternative of life and death." – Benito Mussolini
As the fighting in Europe expanded, Italy found herself in a similar position to the one that she had enjoyed at the start of the last Great War. For Mussolini, neutrality was not an option and both the German and the Anglo-French Alliances were eager to win Mussolini for their cause. The opening of a new front in the French Alps or in Austria could bring victory to whichever side of the war which the Italian dictator chose to join. Unfortunately for Rome’s suitors, Mussolini was well aware of this fact and he drove a high price for his support, encouraging diplomats from the warring powers to compete in offering Italy concessions in return for her entering the war on their behalf.
The supplanting of Italy by Germany as the continent’s preeminent nationalistic regime still rankled Mussolini’s pride. He had long toyed with the idea of an alliance with Germany in order to confront the British and the French, but the rapid rise of the Nationalist Socialists under Adolf Hitler had given the Duce pause. Berlin seemed uninterested in serving as a junior partner in an Italian-led coalition, and the annexation of Austria and alliance with Hungary had meant the loss of two would-be Italian client states to German control. The question of South Tyrol, with its German population, weighed heavily on the Italian government. Adolf Hitler had renounced claims to the region in his book Mein Kampf, but the situation had changed dramatically since the German Führer had been merely an imprisoned rabble-rouser. With Germany at war with Czechoslovakia, France, Britain and now Lithuania over similar claims of ethnic kinship, no one was quite sure if Berlin’s designs wouldn’t someday extend to Italian-controlled territory as well.
The replacement of the French Republic with a French State modeled, at least in part, by Mussolini’s Fascist Party removed an ideological barrier to siding with the French. The British were even willing to hold their noses and work with the other continental nationalists in order to defeat Germany, although anything more than an alliance of convenience was out of the question. In hopes of winning Italian entry into the war against Germany, the French and British ambassadors offered Mussolini a free hand in the occupation and reforming of the Austrian and Hungarian lands should the anti-German alliance prove victorious. Further appeals included the possibility of border adjustments favoring Italian holdings in East Africa and a certain percentage of Italian influence in various Mediterranean countries.
Paris and London were limited in what they could offer by the smaller size of the pie which was to be carved up should they prove victorious, but Berlin was much less restrained. The destruction of the French and the British Empires offered much grander prizes for an ambitious country like Italy, more than enough to share, the German ambassador, Hans Georg von Mackensen, assured Count Ciano and Mussolini. Long-standing Italian designs on Tunisia, Corsica, and the French Alps could be awarded immediately following the victory of the Axis alliance over its foes, with further colonial possessions in Africa, the Middle East, and beyond available for spoils. In addition, should Italy prove hesitant, German plans for Yugoslavia made it clear that Berlin felt no compunctions about reordering the Balkans without offering compensation to Rome in this Italian area of interest. Thus, despite the best efforts of the western powers and the distrust the Italian government felt towards the ascendant Germans, a deal was struck between Rome and Berlin. Italy was now the third member of the Axis alliance.
The entrance of Italy into the war on the German side dismayed the French and British, but Yugoslavia seemed to be the country most threatened by the alliance.
The entry of Italy into the war marked a further escalation of the already explosive conflict. British and French fleets scrambled to win the Mediterranean from the forces of the Regia Marina, and French divisions were sent southward in anticipation of an Italian attack across the mountain range bordering the two countries. With Italy’s entry, Africa now became a battlefield as well and forces needed to be redeployed to meet the threat of Italian colonial forces stationed in Libya and Ethiopia.
Italy’s alliance with Germany gave the Axis alliance a longer frontline and additional troops to bring to bear against the recalcitrant Yugoslavs as well. The bulk of Italian divisions were sent to fight the British and the French, but a worrying number of them appeared in Istria and the coastal enclave of Zara to support the German build-up in the region. It seemed that time was running out for Yugoslavia’s neutrality.
Despite Italy reinforcing the alliance, Germany still suffered the loss of East Prussia to a joint Lithuanian and English task force. The territory was placed under Lithuanian control and the occupation by the authoritarian government of Antanas Smetona made little secret of its ambitions for annexing some degree of the German land should their side prove victorious. The loss was frustrating for the National Socialist government in Berlin, as the war had thus far resulted in more Germans living under foreign domination, not less, but spirits were buoyed by the fact that territory in that region had been lost to the Russians during the Great War as a temporary setback on the road to the great victories of the Eastern Front. Nonetheless, additional resources were devoted to the Kriegsmarine to build enough ships to contest the Baltic Sea and win control back from the upstarts in Kaunas.
The Hungarian conquest of Slovakia had cut off the Czech heartlands of Bohemia and Moravia from the non-Axis world, and meant that only a few men escaped the country to form a Czech government-in-exile in London.
What setbacks the Axis suffered in the north were soon overcome by the collapse of the Czech government following the surrender of Prague and Brno. The invasion of Slovakia by way of Hungary had proven a massive success and led to some in Budapest to call for the Czech portions of Bohemia and Moravia to be occupied by Hungary for the remainder of the war, but the idea was quickly shot down by Miklós Horthy in order to preserve good relations with Berlin. The Czech surrender was still a vital step forward for the Axis powers as it freed up a large number of divisions to turn back the French advance into the Rhineland, and also to man the borders with Yugoslavia in anticipation of another expansion of the war.
The long-awaited French advance into Germany faced stiffened resistance from the influx of divisions coming from the east. Meanwhile, the Italians faced hardly any opposition in their invasion of France and had soon crossed the Alps.
A Deal with the Devil
As with South Tyrol, Zara had been an issue of the utmost importance for nationalists during the 1920’s, but also one whose importance had been eclipsed by grander designs.
The fall of Czechoslovakia to German and Hungarian arms reinforced Berlin’s leadership of the Axis alliance despite the launching of more and more wars against new countries, but schemes were already being hatched in Rome to subvert the pact’s current hierarchy. The key, Count Ciano believed, would be expanding the alliance so as to diffuse German influence and preclude further German adventurism in Europe. To that end, he proposed, with Mussolini’s acquiescence, a new Italo-Yugoslav Friendship Treaty to replace the bare bones agreement of 1936. Italian membership in the Axis had heightened the danger of Hitler’s threats against Yugoslavia, and it was believed that Belgrade could be enticed into joining the alliance through the concession of Zara, an Italian enclave on the Dalmatian coast.
The prospect of giving up Italian territory was not an appealing one to Mussolini, especially after he had railed for so long against the “mutilated victory” which had deprived Italy of the Dalmatia coast which she had coveted as a prize for participating in the World War. Ciano and a select few others argued that, given Italian predominance in Albania and future acquisitions from France and Britain, Zara was an unnecessary irritant in the relations between two impressive Fascist kingdoms, both of which had reasons for working together to limit German hegemony over Europe. Italy could still be master of the Mediterranean, it was argued, and the Straits of Otranto, the gateway to the Adriatic, would still be in Rome’s hands. The strategy required not only concessions on the Italians’ part, but also from the Yugoslavs. Mussolini and his government had been involved in the joint Ustaše-IMRO assassination of King Alexander in Paris, and Italian support for terrorists and separatists in Yugoslavia and designs on the Dalmatian coast had been no secret. Joining the Axis alliance, and implicitly supporting its war against France, would mean disregarding the last words of the slain king. These were somber considerations, but so was the mounting number of German and now Italian and Hungarian troops massing on Yugoslavia’s borders. Questions of honor battled with those of the kingdom’s survival.
The mobilization of the Yugoslav economy for war was undertaken at a breakneck pace which produced impressive results but also numerous issues as inexperienced men learned to soldier or serve in factories.
The threat of war from Germany hung over the country like a guillotine’s blade and prevented the country from demobilizing after the Treaty of Varna. Instead, with the new conscription regime enacted by the National Assembly beginning to bear fruit, the Royal Yugoslav Army grew by leaps and bounds from its nadir of nine divisions to an impressive twenty-eight infantry divisions in a few short months. This rapid expansion was driven by the stockpiles of equipment built up and the aforementioned need to deter any German attack on the country by projecting as much strength as possible.
On the economic front, the rationalization of the Yugoslav continued. Although the kingdom’s economy had always possessed a significant degree of state interference, the influence of Italian and German thinking caused Belgrade to move closer to the corporate model espoused by those countries and further away from the free-market economics which London and Paris practiced. Although workers’ wages rose with the heightened demands for labor, the ability to strike was severely curtailed in order to prevent disruption in a time of national crisis. As long as things continued to go well, it was believed that Yugoslavia’s workers would remain loyal.
While Germany was unhappy that her bluster had not suitably cowed the Yugoslavs, the kingdom’s membership in the Axis meant a continuing flow of valuable mineral resources and foodstuffs necessary for the war effort.
For weeks, the Italians and the Yugoslavs had hammered out an agreement which was much more ambitious in scope than that signed only a few years previously. The economic clauses of the previous treaty were updated to reflect Yugoslavia’s new territories and industrial capabilities, with the two countries operating on a more equal basis, although the treaty still was tilted in Italy’s favor. Military and diplomatic considerations took up the bulk of the new Friendship Treaty, with Rome and Belgrade agreeing not to join in any military alliance directed against the other country and to consult on all Central and Southern European issues. Italy renounced all claims on the Dalmatian coast in exchange for Yugoslavia doing the same for Istria, although the treaty included clauses providing for minority rights for Italians in Yugoslavia and Yugoslavs in Italy. Lastly, the treaty included secret provisions delineating the two kingdoms’ interests in Greece and arrangements for joint military action in the region.
Notably, although the alliance paved the way for Yugoslavia to join the Axis, there was no requirement for Belgrade to join in Rome’s war with France and Britain. Mussolini was content to keep Yugoslavia friendly but uninvolved, so long as the war continued to go in his favor.
At Mussolini’s urging, Berlin renewed its offer of alliance to Belgrade and this time Prince Paul’s government accepted. The move was met with grumbling in some quarters of the National Assembly, but the highest political and military officials had been briefed by Milan Nedić and understood just how grave a position Yugoslavia had found herself in. Italian intervention had helped shield the country from war with Berlin for the moment, but the question was what price would have to be paid for this assistance.
The Italian advance into France was the cruel harvest of the vacillating military and diplomatic policy the country had practiced before the outbreak of the war as France faced the invasion without any developed plans for this contingency or any allies who might threaten Italy and thereby deter the invasion.
The small amounts of progress which the Allies’ continental forces had made advancing into the Rhineland came rapidly undone as battle-hardened German and Hungarian divisions reinforced the already substantial Axis build-up in the area and the need to contain the Italian to the south weakened the forces assigned to the French attack. The people and the lands of the Franco-German borderlands had seen more than their fair share of war during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but the natural barrier of the Alps and peace between France and Italy had preserved peace for the beautiful south of France for a long time. The success of the Italians at penetrating into France surprised all, especially the Italian generals who had expected a stronger initial resistance. After all, their forces had succeeded at not only threatening the region of France which boasted the strongest support for the Pétain government but also capturing the ports which provided vital lifelines between la Métropole and French North Africa. As Italian troops neared the Spanish border, Mussolini and his circle of advisers began to hazard ideas of what would follow a victorious war. Such flights of fancy remained so much fantasy for the time being, but the feeling was already forming that Italian and German designs for Europe would not be wholly in-sync.
Owing to the greater British presence in the fighting on the Dark Continent, the African front attracted much more attention in the Anglo-Saxon world and stories of daring actions and brave soldiers fighting in North Africa and Ethiopia peppered American newspapers with far more regularity than stories concerning the defense of France against invasion.
After the conquest of East Prussia, the brightest spot in the Allied war effort was in Africa. There, the Italian presence in Libya had been almost completely removed and French and British gains in eastern Africa had almost bisected the Italian colonies in the region, despite the fierce fighting by the Italians and their Askari troops. Troops which had been freed up from the now-safe Yugoslav border were to be sent to turn the tide in Libya, but there was no port under Italian control in the region and so they were instead diverted to assist with efforts in southern France. Control of the Suez Canal and Gibraltar prevented any link-up between the Axis fleets of the Regia Marina and the Kriegsmarine and helped the Allies win the war at sea even while the situation on land grew more and more dire.
The War in Asia
The jewel of the Far East had fallen to the Japanese during the Russo-Japanese War as well, but that conflict over railways and spheres of influence had not been the life-or-death struggle that the Soviet Union and the Japanese Empire now found themselves in.
In the Far East, the Japanese could point to the capture of the major Soviet port city of Vladivostok as a sign of the successful campaign against the Sino-Soviet alliance, with the capture of the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar also on the horizon. The victories in Siberia and Mongolia had been achieved due to the superior organization and command of the Japanese forces compared to their Soviet opponents, but Communist reinforcements continued to flow into Siberia from the west and the long-term prognosis for the Japanese hold on the Eurasian continent was still uncertain.
Compared to the war in Europe, the war in Asia was seen by most Westerners as a sideshow fought by two inscrutable Oriental powers, and, like the Spanish Civil War, neither side seemed palatable to democratic sensibilities.
Gains in Siberia and Mongolia had been achieved at the cost of scaling back the men and material assigned to the Chinese front, with the result that the territory ceded after the skirmish at the Marco Polo Bridge began to fall to Chinese control. However, Chiang still did not command the loyalty of all of his governors. The warlords of the Guangxi, Ma, Shanxi, and Yunan were wary of partnering with Chiang Kai-shek after his concessions to Japan had failed to forestall war for a longer period of time. Chiang’s alliance with Mao Zedong to defend China against the Japanese had seemed promising, but their inclusion of the Soviet Union into the coalition against the invaders sparked worries that a Communist regime would be enforced upon China by Moscow and its new dependents. Even Sheng Shicai, the Soviet-aligned governor of the Sinkiang province of China had thus far stayed neutral in the conflict. The Japanese invasion had thus far not touched the holdings of these skeptical warlords, and they were content to wait for the time being and see what the fortune of wars would bring to China.
Notwithstanding the neutrality of some segments of China, Japan still had found herself in a war with the two most populous countries in the world, and the empire’s holdings in Asia could be ground to dust between the two giants if nothing decisive was done to bring the war to a speedy end.
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Sorry about not getting back to comments and updates sooner, but we're back now.
First off, I have to admit that the "Hungary hungry" line was completely unintentional. If there is a word that means the opposite of "serendipitous", that was it.
As you noticed, we're getting a lot of points of divergence. At this point, they are sort of cascading as things begin to go more and more off the rails. Nearly everyone's fighting but at different times and in different places than were expected. The main battle lines between the Axis and the Allies, broadly speaking, seem to be holding for now though with Germany and now Italy against Britain and France while Japan and the Soviets go at it in the East.
Regarding Yugoslavia's intentions towards Bulgaria with the peace offensive, as expansionist as the annexationists were, I think that the prospect of going to war with Bulgaria with a much smaller and exhausted army was enough to make the overtures genuine, but also likely gave the Bulgarians every incentive to dismiss them. The war turned out shockingly well for Belgrade in the end, and I'm sure there will now be the usual chorus of Winkies who will tell Paul and his ministers that they were always confident of a Yugoslav victory, but that's hindsight for you.
The choice between allying with Germany or going to war with them was, I felt, the only choice available. We were offered an alliance with France in the latest chapter, but I really think that would have been hitching our wagon to a dying horse. Wherever Rome went, it was likely that Belgrade would have very strongly considered following. A show of force on the border with the Axis powers helped to deter Germany from declaring war for a little while, but especially with the addition of Italy to the equation, there was no way that I could keep churning out enough divisions to give them pause. The German AI tends to be egregiously aggressive, look at the declarations against Lithuania and Luxemburg for example, so I count myself lucky that Yugoslavia was able to hold off long enough to enter the Axis alliance at least somewhat on her own terms.
Mussolini was really the star of the last chapter, and I had a lot of fun putting myself in his fine Italian shoes and trying to figure out what his game is here. We'll see how things play out, but I think that there is a lot of potential with the German-Italian relationship.
Well, that neutrality didn't last as long as I'd hoped, but such is the nature of world wars. Germany was struggling, and continues to struggle diplomatically at least, but the addition of Italy seemed to have breathed new life into the Axis war effort. Now we'll see how far this alliance can take Yugoslavia.
Aren't we all?
A great episode. Some real PODs emerging here.
You went there, boldly, where no man had dared to venture before!
It seemed the conflict might have been avoided. But was it a serious attempt to defuse the situation? Or Yugoslav posturing to try to give them the moral high ground?
A major POD right there!
The next big POD: things are looking difficult for the Axis and Japan in this OTL.
Was this the cunning plan all along!
Now that’s an even sillier misstep than the ‘scrap of paper’ over Belgium in WW1.
Yet another POD, that plays against the Axis.
OK, how firm is that rejection really? Does the German offer remain on the table even after their subsequent rage, or is it now passed?
Is it still an active choice? Or a rhetorical flourish? Could they join the Allies instead?
First off, I have to admit that the "Hungary hungry" line was completely unintentional. If there is a word that means the opposite of "serendipitous", that was it.
As you noticed, we're getting a lot of points of divergence. At this point, they are sort of cascading as things begin to go more and more off the rails. Nearly everyone's fighting but at different times and in different places than were expected. The main battle lines between the Axis and the Allies, broadly speaking, seem to be holding for now though with Germany and now Italy against Britain and France while Japan and the Soviets go at it in the East.
Regarding Yugoslavia's intentions towards Bulgaria with the peace offensive, as expansionist as the annexationists were, I think that the prospect of going to war with Bulgaria with a much smaller and exhausted army was enough to make the overtures genuine, but also likely gave the Bulgarians every incentive to dismiss them. The war turned out shockingly well for Belgrade in the end, and I'm sure there will now be the usual chorus of Winkies who will tell Paul and his ministers that they were always confident of a Yugoslav victory, but that's hindsight for you.
The choice between allying with Germany or going to war with them was, I felt, the only choice available. We were offered an alliance with France in the latest chapter, but I really think that would have been hitching our wagon to a dying horse. Wherever Rome went, it was likely that Belgrade would have very strongly considered following. A show of force on the border with the Axis powers helped to deter Germany from declaring war for a little while, but especially with the addition of Italy to the equation, there was no way that I could keep churning out enough divisions to give them pause. The German AI tends to be egregiously aggressive, look at the declarations against Lithuania and Luxemburg for example, so I count myself lucky that Yugoslavia was able to hold off long enough to enter the Axis alliance at least somewhat on her own terms.
Mussolini was really the star of the last chapter, and I had a lot of fun putting myself in his fine Italian shoes and trying to figure out what his game is here. We'll see how things play out, but I think that there is a lot of potential with the German-Italian relationship.
Well, that neutrality didn't last as long as I'd hoped, but such is the nature of world wars. Germany was struggling, and continues to struggle diplomatically at least, but the addition of Italy seemed to have breathed new life into the Axis war effort. Now we'll see how far this alliance can take Yugoslavia.
Aren't we all?
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Yuguslavia being a third wheel rather than a speed bump in the axis war path is going to be interesting. Not only does this make the balkans bascially yuguslavia's for the taking but threatens Romania, Turkey and Russia later on.
Good news for Germany. Good news for Italy (they probably won't embarrass themselves in Greece now) and, probably, Good news for Yuguslavia if they can keep the Soviet war away from them, take Greece and Turkey for themselves and then sit out the rest of the war.
Good news for Germany. Good news for Italy (they probably won't embarrass themselves in Greece now) and, probably, Good news for Yuguslavia if they can keep the Soviet war away from them, take Greece and Turkey for themselves and then sit out the rest of the war.
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I also like seeing Yugoslavia as a credible Axis member because Italy isn't totally inept and can't be as easily bullied by Hitler as OTL. They might prove to be a real power and together with Yugoslavia form a counterweight to Germany.
The last chapter was quite enjoyable, and it's been interesting to see how similar history has worked out, even though there have been huge differences from OTL. I was worried Germany was going to fail and ruin the premise of this AAR, but it looks like they might steamroll thanks to Mussolini!
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It’s all getting very interesting and alt-ish. The way Yugoslavia is essentially backed into the Axis seems very (and sadly) plausible.
It was probably always going to end up that way.
Nice to see the Hundred having such problems.
Good show!
No surprise there: apart from starting with ‘h’, humility and Hitler have nothing in common.
Well, that casts the die for Yugoslavia as well. Taking them on as well is just not feasible.
Excellent!
This is where the worm turns, alas. France must now be doomed, especially with Italy hitting them in the south.
This really seals the deal.
Survival wins out. Otherwise, Yugoslavia would have been done over as in OTL. But it does seem a sad pass to be forced into.
This is good, for as long as it can be managed. Keeping some distance from the Nazis and getting some time to build up and redeploy.
No need to be, of course. It was well worth the wait.
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