Invasion and Armed Resistance
In March 1941, after a coup d'etat with British and Soviet help, King Peter II ousted the pro-Axis Prince Regent Paul. In April 1941, Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia and quickly defeated the Yugoslav army. The Communist Party decided to organize resistance against the invaders and on 10 April set up a war committee in Zagreb to prepare a war for ″national and social liberation″.
When Hitler began his invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June, the Communists considered the moment opportune and issued a proclamation calling to the nations of Yugoslavia to resistance. Assisted by the British and the Americans, the Communist-led Partisans used guerrilla tactics to establish territories under their control, where they also introduced elements of socialist revolution, and used propaganda to popularize their aims. At the end of the Yugoslav People's Liberation War in 1945, the Partisans consisted of 800,000 soldiers under the leadership of 14,000 members of the Communist party.
Read more about this topic: League Of Communists Of Yugoslavia
Famous quotes containing the words invasion, armed and/or resistance:
“We should have an army so organized and so officered as to be capable in time of emergency, in cooperation with the National Militia, and under the provision of a proper national volunteer law, rapidly to expand into a force sufficient to resist all probable invasion from abroad and to furnish a respectable expeditionary force if necessary in the maintenance of our traditional American policy which bears the name of President Monroe.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Behold now this vast city; a city of refuge, the mansion house of liberty, encompassed and surrounded with his protection; the shop of war hath not there more anvils and hammers waking, to fashion out the plates and instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth, than there be pens and hands there, sitting by their studious lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions.”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“Growing older, I have lost the need to be political, which means, in this country, the need to be left. I am driven into grudging toleration of the Conservative Party because it is the party of non-politics, of resistance to politics.”
—Kingsley Amis (1922–1995)