Yugoslavia History Coup d'état, 1941

The Yugoslav coup d'état took place on 27 March 1941 in Belgrade, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, when the regency led by Prince Paul of Yugoslavia was overthrown and King Peter II fully assumed monarchical powers. The coup was planned and conducted by a group of pro-Western Serbian nationalist Royal Yugoslav Air Force officers formally led by the Air Force commander, General Dušan Simović, who had been associated with several putsch plots from 1938 onwards. Brigadier General of Military Aviation Borivoje Mirković, Major Živan Knežević of the Yugoslav Royal Guards, and his brother Radoje Knežević were the main organisers in the overthrow of the government. In addition to Radoje Knežević, some other civilian leaders were probably aware of the takeover before it was launched and moved to support it once it occurred, but they were not among the organisers. Peter II himself was surprised by the coup, and heard of the declaration of his coming-of-age for the first time on the radio. The Communist Party of Yugoslavia played no part in the coup, although it made a significant contribution to the mass street-protests in many cities that signalled popular support for it once it had occurred. The putsch was successful and deposed the three-member Yugoslav regency (Prince Paul, Radenko Stanković and Ivo Perović) and the government of Prime Minister Dragiša Cvetković. Two days prior to its ousting, the Cvetković government had signed the Vienna Protocol on the Accession of Yugoslavia to the Tripartite Pact (Axis). The coup had been planned for several months, but the signing of the Tripartite Pact spurred the organisers to carry it out, encouraged by the British Special Operations Executive. The military conspirators brought to power the 17-year-old King Peter II (whom they declared to be of-age to assume the throne) and formed a weak and divided national unity government with Simović as prime minister and Vladko Maček and Slobodan Jovanović as his vice-premiers. The coup led directly to the German-led Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941. The importance of the putsch and subsequent invasion in delaying Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union (which started on 22 June 1941), is still open to debate. In 1972 military historian Martin van Creveld dismissed the idea, affirming that the invasion of Yugoslavia actually assisted and hastened the overall Balkan campaign, and that other factors determined the start date for Operation Barbarossa. On the other hand, findings published in 2013 have led to assertions that the invasion of Yugoslavia did somewhat contribute to a delay in the launching of Operation Barbarossa.