20 (FIRM) POINTS ON THE WAR ON THE KINGDOM OF YUGOSLAVIA

 

* March 25, 1941: in Vienna, at the Belvedere Palace, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia signs pact with Axis powers Germany and Italy, which are at war against France and Great Britain; Germany since September 1939, Italy since 10 June 1940. Germany is also linked to the USSR by the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.

 

* March 26, 1941: In Belgrade, a military coup (financed by the English) overthrows the legitimate government, sends the Regent Paul into exile (in favor of the "boy king" Peter) and denounces the Belvedere Pact

 

* March 27, 1941: Churchill announces that he has made a pact with the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The latter therefore finds itself entering the war against Germany and Italy

 

* March 28, 1941: the Kingdom of Yugoslavia begins hostilities against Zadar (against the forces of General Emilio Giglioli) and against Albania, where Italian troops are present.

* April 6, 1941: German and Italian troops enter the territory of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia

 

* April 17, 1941: after only ten days the war ends with the defeat of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, a defeat that can also be explained by the fact that only the Serbs fight, while Croats and Slovenes desert en masse, without putting up any resistance to the Italo-Germans.

 

* After the defeat: the Kingdom of Yugoslavia is, in effect, dismembered. A Croatian state is formed (led by the Ustasha of Ante Pavelic), while some small parts of Slovenian territory are incorporated into the Third Reich and Hungary. Ljubljana and the central part of Slovenia are incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy.

 

* Ligurian Pokrajina – Province of Ljubljana: a request signed by Juro Adlesic, Mayor of Ljubljana, by Mgr. Gregorj Rozman, Bishop of Ljubljana, by Prof. Slavic, Rector of the University of Ljubljana, by several Slovenian parliamentarians and former ministers, by 105 Slovenian mayors asks Mussolini to annex Slovenia to the Kingdom of Italy; Mussolini joined by creating an autonomous province, strictly bilingual, with a governor appointed by Rome supported by 14 Slovenian notables, and the municipal administrations were equally Slovenian.

 

* June 22, 1941: following the German attack on the Soviet Union, Stalin telegraphs Tito the order to begin fighting against the Axis forces and Josip Broz launches his proclamation which starts his revolutionary war, supporting (only from that moment on) the guerrilla warfare already underway by Mihajlovic's Serbian monarchists.

 

* April 1942: the partisan guerrilla warfare also makes its effects felt in the Autonomous Province of Ljubljana, where the first reprisal shootings following partisan actions are reported.

 

* September 8, 1943: the Badoglio Armistice, the crumbling of the Italian army determines the strengthening of the partisan guerrilla warfare (thanks to the weapons collected by the Italians) and the direct presence of the Germans who replace the Lijubijanska Pockraijna - Province of Ljubljana with the Provinz Laibach, of which they assume full control.

 

* Spring 1945: the defeated German troops try to reach the Austrian border to surrender to the Allies; so do the anti-communists Slovenians and Croatians.

 

*Bleiburg and Vitking: two places reached – in Austria – by Slovenian and Croatian fugitives to hand themselves over to the Allies, two places from which they will instead be handed over (tens and tens of thousands) into the hands of the men with the red star to be massacred en masse (men, women, children), once the war was over.

 

*The victims in Yugoslavia: according to the historian Rudolf Joseph Rummel («Death by government» – New Brunswich, 1994) this is the (tragic) accounting of the murders in the Balkan conflict:
– by the communists 1.072.000
– by the Chetniks 100.000
– by the Croats 650.000
– by the Bulgarians 10.000
– by the Hungarians 78.000
– by the Italians 5.000

 

* The Jews: during the conflict in Yugoslavia, especially in Dalmatia, at least ten thousand Jews were saved by the Italians, who took them away from the Nazis and the Ustasca; this is documented by the Jewish historian Shelah Menachem, professor at the University of Jerusalem, in his «A debt of gratitude - History of the relations between EI and the Jews in Dalmatia (1941 1943)»

 

* communist Yugoslavia: built by Tito with his revolutionary war, cemented by the terror of the OZNA – Tito's terrible secret services – (at the end of the war thousands of Italians, tens of thousands of Slovenians, hundreds of thousands of Croatians were massacred) will remain alive until the collapse of the communist system

 

* June 25, 1991: Slovenians wage a war of liberation from Yugoslavia (fortunately short-lived) and proclaim the Republic of Slovenia.

 

* June 25, 1991: the Croats also declare their independence by engaging in a war of liberation from Yugoslavia, to proclaim the Republic of Croatia. All this, however, at the cost of a long conflict with Yugoslavia.

 

* November 25, 1995: the agreements that put an end to this latest Balkan war are signed in Dayton, a conflict that involved Croats, Serbs and Muslims whose toll, in terms of violence and massacres, is worthy of that of the Second World War.

 

I hope that this last "Balkan war" will truly be the last conflict to bloody, with violence and massacres, this tormented European area.

 

Paolo Sardos Albertini
President of the National League

 

Source: National League