By saying "No!" - straight to Hitler's face the Serbs made a decisive contribution to the defeat of Nazis in World War II.

Serbian bravery and the World reaction

... Events force me to give you by this quickest means my estimation of the situation and the consequences which may result from it.

From the beginning I have regarded Yugoslavia as a dangerous factor... For this reason I have done everything honestly TO BRING YUGOSLAVIA INTO OUR [New World Order] COMMUNITY...

... Unfortunately these endeavors did not meet with success... Today's reports leave no doubt as the imminent turn in the foreign policy of Yugoslavia.

Therefore I have already arranged for all necessary measures... with MILITARY MEANS. Now, I would cordially request you, Duce, not to undertake any further operations in Albania in the course of the next few days. I consider it necessary that you should cover and screen the most important passes from Yugoslavia into Albania with all available forces...

I have no doubt that we will both achieve a success no less than the success in Norway a year ago. This is my unshaken conviction.

Accept my heartfelt and friendly greetings,

Yours,
Adolf Hitler

The above Hitler's letter was wired to Mussolini, the night of the coup in Belgrade, March 27, 1941.

The quote comes from: William L. Shirer: "The rise and fall of the Third Reich" pages 825, 826

Thomas Emmert, "Serbian Golghota: Kosovo, 1389", page 140.
New York, 1990

Quote:

On the streets of Belgrade and several other cities, exuberant crowds chanted, "Bolje rat nego pakt!" and "Bolje grob nego rob!" ("Better war than pact (with Hitler)! Better graves than slaves!") [Serbian spiritual leader] Patriarch Gavrilo, who had been staunchly against the signing, clearly saw the coup in terms of the EPIC TRADITION. On the radio he said,
"Before our nation in these days the question of our fate again presents itself. This morning at dawn the question received its answer. We chose the HEAVENLY KINGDOM - the kingdom of truth, justice, national strength, and FREEDOM. That eternal idea is carried in the hearts of all Serbs, preserved in these shrines of our churches, and written on our banners."

Dr. Edmond Paris "Genocide in Satellite Croatia"
(Chicago, 1961) page 43:

Quote:

These proud words were pronounced by the Patriarch Gavrilo: "IF WE ARE TO LIVE, LET US LIVE IN LIBERTY, AND IF WE ARE TO DIE LET US DIE FOR LIBERTY!"

Winston S. Churchill, "MEMOIRS of the Second World War,
an abridgment of the six volumes of The Second World War",
page 424,
Bonanza Books, New York, 1978

Quote:

Few revolutions have gone more smoothly. There was no bloodshed...

The plan had been made and executed by a close band of Serb nationalist officers who had identified themselves with the true public mood. Their action let loose an outburst of popular enthusiasm. The streets of Belgrade were soon thronged with Serbs, chanting,
"Rather war than the pact;
rather death than slavery."

Winston S. Churchill, "The Second World War",
Vol. 3: "The Grand Alliance", page 148,
London 1950

Quote:

Early this morning the Yugoslav nation found its soul. A revolution has taken place in Belgrade, and the Ministers who but yesterday signed away the honor and freedom of the country are reported to be under arrest. This patriotic movement arises from the wrath of valiant and warlike race at the betrayal of their country by the weakest of their rulers and the foul intriguers of the Axis Powers.

Such were the words when Britain needed Serbian sacrifice.

Dr. Edmond Paris "Genocide in Satellite Croatia"
(Chicago, 1961) page 49:

Quote:

...Among leading Serbs arrested during the first days of the [Nazi] occupation [was] the Serbian Orthodox Patriarch, Dr. Gavrilo Dozic... [He was] taken to Dachau where [he was] interned until the end of the war.

After Yugoslavia was crushed and butchered by the New World Order of 1941:

William L. Shirer: "The rise and fall of the Third Reich" pg. 828

Quote:

"We were all stunned by that coup, carried through by a handful of bribed conspirators... You will understand, gentlemen, that when I heard this I at once gave orders to attack Yugoslavia. TO TREAT THE GERMAN REICH IN THIS WAY IS IMPOSSIBLE...

He is the most bloodthirsty or amateurish strategist in history... For over five years this man has been chasing around Europe like a madman in search of something that he could set on fire... As a soldier he is a bad politician and equally bad soldier... Churchill, one of the most hopeless dabblers in strategy, thus managed (in Yugoslavia and Greece) to lose two theaters of war at one single blow. In any country he would be court-martialed..."
End quote

The above quote is from Hitler in a victory speech to the Reichtag in Berlin on May 4, 1941.

Note how the great Fuhrer of New World Order was also PEACEKEEPER. It was others that instigated wars - not him!

Shocking how models of super bullies never change. No matter how atrocious their acts - they try to present themselves as only seeking PEACE AND JUSTICE.

The World Book Encyclopedia, Edition 1958, Vol 18,
Entry: Yugoslavia, page 8988

Quote:

President Franklin Roosevelt said that March 27 (1941) was "THE TURNING POINT IN HITLER'S FATE." Hitler had planned to invade the Soviet Union on March 15. Instead, he had to wait until June 22, after he had "destroyed" Yugoslavia and Greece...

Wilhelm Keitel, Hitler's Minister of War was second in command only to Hitler himself. Marshal Keitel wrote his memoirs in Nuremberg prison in 1946 only days before he was to be executed. Here is how, on his death bed he morns Hitler's mistake of attacking Yugoslavia.

"The Memoirs of Field-Marshal Keitel, Chief of the German High Command, 1938-1945"
Stein and Day Publishers, New York, first published in 1966.

Page 131. Quote:

What would we not have saved by way of aid to Italy for her senseless Balkan war? In all probability there would not have been any uprising in Yugoslavia in an attempt to force her entry into the war on the side of the enemies of the Axis, just to oblige Britain and the Soviet Union. How differently things would then have looked in Russia in 1941: we would have been in a far stronger position, and above all we should not have lost those two months. Just imagine: we would not just have frozen to a standstill in the snow and ice, with temperatures of minus fourty-five degrees just twenty miles outside Moscow, a city hopelessly encircled from the north, west and south, at the end of that November; we should have had two clear months before that infernal cold weather closed in - and there was nothing like it in the winters that followed anyway!

But gratitude has a short expiration date in the Western culture.

Dr. John Keegan, who was teaching at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst from 1960 to 1986, publishes a book "The Second World War" (Viking Penguin, Inc. New York, 1990). This is how Professor Keegan presents the events once the Serbian sacrifice is not only needed but should be forgotten (or even ridiculed):

Pages 151, 152 (quote):

[Yugoslav] signatures were entered at Vienne on March 25 [1941]. Hitler exulted in the result - but too soon; incautiously as a former citizen of the Habsburg Empire with which the Serbs had played such havoc, he had failed to allow for the impetuosity of the Serb character. On the night of 26-27 March a group of Serb officers, led by the air force general Bora Mirkovic, denounced the treaty...

The Mirkovic coup still appears in retrospect one of the most unrealistic, if romantic, acts of defiance in modern European history. Not only did it threaten to divide... country; it was also bound to provoke the Germans to hostile reaction, against which the Serbs could call on no external assistance whatsoever to support them. They were surrounded by states that were wholly inept, like Albania, or as threatened as themselves, like Greece, or actively hostile, like Italy, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, with all of which they had bitter and long-standing territorial disputes.

If Croatia, which would shortly take its own independence under Italian tutelage, is added to the roll of the Serbs' enemies, the behaviour of General Mirkovic and his fellow conspirators of 27 March appears the collective equivalent of Gavrilo Princip's firebrand assault on the Austro-Hungarian monarchy personified by Archduke Ferdinand in June 1914.

It ensured the extintion of the Serb national cause as if by reflex; it would also doom Serbia, as in 1914, to invasion, defeat and occupation and with it the peoples of Yugoslavia... to an agony of protracted civil and guerrila warfare for the next four years...

There is no doubt that [Serbian officers] had been encouraged in their FOOLHARDINESS by the British and the Americans... [but]... The 27 March coup was an autonomous Serb initiative, to be seen with hindsight as the last outright expression of sovereign defiance made by any small peoples who lie between the millstones of [New World Order] Germany and Russian power... It was to be punished with vehemence and without delay.

In shiny armor, Serbian army waited at Kosovo field in 1389, much stronger army of the Ottoman Empire. The Serbs came to defend their FREEDOM, their way of life, their RIGHT TO EXIST. That right is not negotiable. Serbian honor is not negotiable. And any Evil Empire, any New World Order, it seems, before enslaving Europe has to stumble at the Serbian doorstep.

Were the Serbs foolish in March 1941 to listen to Americans and Brits at the time? Were they foolish to defend their freedom and sense of dignity?...

For sure, this is NOT a question that the same Brits and Americans should pose today.

Back to:
[ Hitler's most catastrophic mistake ]
[ World War II Yugoslavia ]

The truth belongs to us all.

Feel free to download, copy and redistribute.

Last revised: July 24, 1998