Yugoslavia



Yugoslavia refers to several political entites in the Balkans region. As of this writing, there is no legally recognized entity called Yugoslavia any longer.

The first Yugoslavia was a large multiethnic kingdom in the Balkans created by the victorious allies after World War I. For a matter of days in 1941, Yugoslavia was a fullfledged member of the Axis. However, after the ruling prince was overthrown, Germany invaded and conquered the country, setting up several puppet states including Croatia and Serbia while annexing other territory.

After the War, Josip Broz Tito, a leader of the resistance and devout communist eventually gained control of the country, establishing the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Tito successfully removed Yugoslavia from the Soviet Union's sphere of influence, and for the remainder of his life, Tito successfully kept the various ethnic and religious populations at peace. Upon his death, Yugoslavia disintegrated into several smaller states, with substantial bloodshed. A new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, a rump state, was established in 1992. In 2003 it changed its name to the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, and in 2006 it dissolved into Serbia and Montenegro, two seperate states.

What was once Yugoslavia is now divided among seven countries: Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Macedonia, and the newly independent Kosovo, which seceded from Serbia in 2008.

Yugoslavia in The Guns of the South
Some of the AK-47s delivered to the Army of Northern Virginia by Andries Rhoodie carried stamps proclaiming them to have been made in Yugoslavia. Neither Robert E. Lee nor any member of his staff had ever heard of such a country, and no one was able to find any mention of it in any atlas they consulted. Jefferson Davis and James Seddon were also unfamiliar with this country.

Yugoslavia in The Man With the Iron Heart
The stiff and brutal resistance Germany met in Yugoslavia was remembered bitterly even after World War II. Nonetheless, German Freedom Front leader Reinhard Heydrich made use of the tactics developed by the Yugoslav freedom fighters.

Yugoslavia in Worldwar
After the Peace of Cairo, Germany annexed the various pieces of the former Yugoslavia and absorbed them into the Greater German Reich.