The Forgotten Campaign of WW2: The Axis Invasion of Yugoslavia.
269The Axis invasion of Yugoslavia is one of the many forgotten campaigns during WW2. Yet, it's a campaign that was extremely important for the re-telling of history.
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The Kingdom of Yugoslavia, formed in 1918 under the name of Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, incorporated diverse national and religious groups with varied historical backgrounds. With three religions dominating certain regions and cultures of the state those being Orthodox in the North-east, Catholic in the North-west, and Islam in the south. Yugoslavia was politically weak from the moment of its creation and remained so during the interwar period. This was mainly due to a rigid system of centralism imposed by the Vidovdan Constitution, the first Constitution of the state. The aforementioned strong association between each national group and its dominant religion, and uneven economic development only worsened matters. The Democratic government in the state was plagued by party opposition, and many bills would be blocked from being passed on the floor, merely in opposition of one ethnic group or another. This opposition, would nearly boil over into Civil War, when one of the Croat representatives, Stjepan Radić, was shot dead during deliberation by another member of the legislation. In response to the crisis triggered by the assassination of Radić, King Alexander abolished the Constitution on 6 January 1929, prorogued the Parliament and introduced a dictatorship over the nation. One of the first acts of the new regime was to carry out a purge of the civil service, with upwards of one-third being fired by May of the same year. All supposedly, in an attempt to address complaints about rampant corruption in the bureaucracy. He officially changed the nations name to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and compressed the governing districts of the kingdom, compacting it from 33 separate divisions, down to only nine, with six, being a Serbian majority.
Both internal and external pressure, forced Alexander to establish a new Constitution in 1931, but, the power of the public government had been weakened heavily, as he was able to place over half of the upper house without public support, had the ability to by-pass a chamber if he supported a bill, and transferred heavy amounts of executive power to the king, which was himself. The King. Good ol democracy, eh. By 1933, Alexander had started to become worried about Germany and he worked to build up a Balkan alliance to act as a bulwark against the Germans. The main reason for this, was that Italy and Yugoslavia wanted to prevent the German annexation of Austria, something that both nations at the time heavily opposed. During the 1933 Pusch attempt in Austria. Both nations pledged a guarantee of war against Germany, if German troops should enter Austria. However, Alexanders life would come to a quick end. As a result of the previous deaths of three family members on Tuesdays, Alexander refused to undertake any public functions on that day of the week. On Tuesday, 9 October 1934, however, he had no choice, as he was arriving in France, to strengthen the two countries' alliance in the Little Entente.