Looking at the remnants of what was once Yugoslavia it is hard to understand the hatred and violence that has ripped that nation apart, engendering mass atrocities and policies of genocide not seen in Europe since the days of Adolph Hitler. First Slovenia, Croatia and now Bosnia-Herzegovina have sunk into a brutal civil war, which defies every effort to end the violence. While some causes of this war are as ancient as the centuries-old split between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, one need only travel as far back as the Second World War to find more recent and vivid reasons for the peoples of the former Yugoslavia to wish death and destruction upon each other.
The Second World War came to Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941; two weeks after a group of anti-German military officers overthrew the pro-Axis government of the royal regent Prince Paul and placed the seventeen-year-old King Peter upon the throne. A massive invasion by powerful Nazi German armored and air forces supported by infantry overran the entirety of Yugoslavia in only eleven days. An ominous sign of the fratricidal days to come were the cheers of the pro-German Croatians that greeted the men and tanks of the Fourteenth Panzer Division as they arrived virtually unopposed in the Croatian capital of Zagreb. Yugoslavia was immediately dismembered and its territory and the task of governing it was divided among Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and the newly independent fascist state of Croatia. .
The occupation of Yugoslavia, which was to last in some areas until the end of the war, can only be described as on of the most brutal of the entire war. Drawing upon centuries of traditions as guerilla fighters the people of Yugoslavia fought an unceasing war against the occupiers and often each other with little outside assistance from either the Western Allies or the Soviet Union.
In areas controlled by the Germans brutal measures were taken in a vain effort to stamp out the resistance that was offered to German rule.