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:
“In our governments the real power lies in the majority of the community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of government contrary to the sense of the constituents, but from the acts in which government is the mere instrument of the majority.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“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)
“The free man is a warrior.—How is freedom measured among individuals, among peoples? According to the resistance that must be overcome, according to the trouble it takes to stay on top. The highest type of free man must be sought where the highest resistance is constantly overcome: five steps away from tyranny, close to the threshold of the danger of servitude.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)