Gaj Trifkovic

[EN] “[...] The hour of the complete annihilation of Tito's army has come. The order is: 'No able-bodied man leaves the cauldron alive'" (Commander of the German troops in Croatia to subordinate units, June 10, 1943)

In early January 1943, Axis forces in the Balkans launched a series of ambitious operations. Their goal was to smash the bulk of the Yugoslav People's Liberation Army and to secure the strategically important hinterland of the Adriatic coast. These operations, dubbed "Weiss" and "Schwarz", were among the largest of their kind. The Wehrmacht alone deployed between 40,000 and 60,000 of its soldiers and up to 100 aircraft, thus overshadowing even the otherwise massive "anti-bandit operations" in the USSR . It remains to be seen whether the sheer superiority in men and materiel would enable the Germans to force their agile enemy into a Moltke-style encirclement battle and thus quash the entire communist-led uprising  virtually in one afternoon.

[DE] „[...] die Stunde der restlosen Vernichtung der Tito-Armee ist damit gekommen. Der Befehl: ‘Kein wehrfähiger Mann verlässt den Kessel lebend’“(Befehlshaber der deutschen Truppen in Kroatien an unterstellte Einheiten, 10. Juni 1943)

Anfang Januar 1943 setzten die Streitkräfte der Achsenmächte auf dem Balkan eine Reihe ambitionierter Operationen in Gang. Ihr Ziel war, das Gros der jugoslawischen Volksbefreiungsarmee zu zerschlagen und das strategisch wichtige Hinterland der adriatischen Küste zu sichern. Diese Unternehmen, genannt „Weiss“ und „Schwarz“, zählten zu den umfangreichsten ihrer Art. Die Wehrmacht allein brachte dabei zwischen 40.000 und 60.000 ihrer Soldaten und bis 100 Flugzeuge auf, was sogar die sonst massiven „Bandenkampfeinsätze“ in der UdSSR in Schatten stellte. Ob die schiere materielle und zahlenmäßige Überlegenheit den Deutschen ermöglichen würde, ihrem wendigen Feind eine Kesselschlacht Moltkescher Art aufzuzwingen und somit den gesamten von den Kommunisten geführten Aufstand quasi in einem Nachmittag niederzuschlagen, wird sich noch zeigen müssen.

NEW! The first reviews for SEA OF BLOOD are in:

"Certainly one of the best new books of the year" (Bill Stone): http://books.stonebooks.com/reviews/220227/

"I think 'awesome' is generally overused in modern (mainly American) parlance. Still, the research into this new military history of the Partisans by Gaj Trifkovic is genuinely awesome." (Balkandave):
http://balkandave.blogspot.com/2022/02/sea-of-blood-partisan-movement-in.html

The Second World War on the territory of the former Yugoslavia was marked by extraordinary complexity and base brutality. At least twelve factions fought against and worked with each other in what was at the same time a liberation war, a civil war, and a revolutionary war. The human cost was staggering: out of the pre-war population of roughly 15 million, more than one million died as a direct result of the conflict.

Sea of Blood follows the creation and rise of the communist-led People's Liberation Movement and more specifically its combat arm, colloquially known as the Partisans. Sea of Blood also deals heavily with Axis counterinsurgency efforts, particularly those carried out by armed formations of the Third Reich. Although the past decade has seen a steady rise in the number of academic publications in English dealing with various military aspects of the war, none of them offers comprehensive coverage of the entire conflict. The main deficiency of most scholarly works from outside of what was once Yugoslavia is the over-reliance on Axis/non- Yugoslav primary sources; Sea of Blood seeks to redress the imbalance by drawing heavily on both original Yugoslav documents and a vast array of secondary sources published in the region over the past 70 years. The text also cites unpublished materials from more than a dozen archival institutions including NARA, TNA, TsAMO, BA/MA, Military Archives in Belgrade, and other relevant archives from around the world.

Sea of Blood will find a readership among all those interested in the Second World War in Yugoslavia, the history of guerrilla warfare, and the contemporary history of the Western Balkans. The main narrative is divided into seven chapters. Additional information is provided in the introduction (which comes together with a bibliographical survey) and three appendices, which contain a short treatise on human losses, as well as tables and organizational charts; the text is accompanied by 14 maps.

The Second World War in Yugoslavia is notorious for the brutal struggle between the armed forces of the Third Reich and the communist-led Partisans. Less known is the fact that the two sides negotiated prisoner exchanges throughout the war. Under extraordinary circumstances, these early communications evolved into a formal exchange agreement centered on the creation of a neutral zone -- quite possibly the only such area in occupied Europe -- where prisoners were regularly exchanged until late April 1945, saving thousands of lives. The leadership on both sides used these points of contact to hold secret political talks, for which they were nearly branded as traitors by their superiors in Berlin and Moscow. Parleying with the Devil is the first comprehensive analysis of prisoner exchanges and the attendant contacts between the German occupation authorities and the Yugoslav Partisans. Trifković argues that prisoner exchange had a decisive influence on prisoner of war policies on both sides and helped reduce the levels of violence for which this theater of war became infamous. Parleying with the Devil reveals that these points of contact, contrary to some claims, did not lead to collusion between these two parties against other Yugoslav factions or the Western Allies.

"Deftly detailing the motives and actions of Tito's Partisan movement and the German occupiers within the larger context of the war, Trifković provides a masterful analysis of a neglected and complex topic. A trailblazing work that modifies our traditional understanding of the brutal war waged within Yugoslavia's borders." -- Jeff Rutherford, author of Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front: The German Infantry's War, 1941--1944

Foreword by Klaus Schmider

"Trifković's Parleying with the Devil is a unique and monumental contribution to the literature on prisoners of war in the Second World War. It is exhaustively researched from sources in multiple languages, offering the only comprehensive treatment of the topic. This should be the standard work on the subject for the foreseeable future." -- Derek R. Mallett, author of Hitler's Generals in America: Nazi POWs and Allied Military Intelligence

www.kentuckypress.com/9781949668087/parleying-with-the-devil/

You can listen to the podcast about the book on Cris Alvarez's warscholar.org: 

http://warscholar.org/wwii-military-history-book-parleying-with-the-devil-university-press-of-kentucky-2020-gaj-trifkovic-interview/

Allegations about the number of German soldiers engaged in Yugoslavia was one of the pillars of the narrative about the “People’s Liberation War”. This issue, however, was never given a proper historiographical treatment in the socialist period. It would have shown that the number of units in Yugoslavia depended on external factors (events on major fronts and broader strategic deliberations) at least to the same extent as on internal ones (guerrilla danger), that the occupation contingent was of highly heterogeneous nature, and that large numbers are not always synonymous for combat quality. This research, based almost entirely on unpublished primary sources, will attempt to provide a comprehensive account of the strength and quality of the German occupation contingent in the second half of the war. The original plan to hold the country with a symbolic force of 2 to 4 divisions was shattered already in the summer of the same year by the outbreak of the uprising in occupied Serbia and the NDH. From the early 1942 to mid-1943, anywhere from 4 to 7 divisions were engaged in anti-guerrilla duties, and from the summer of 1943 until the arrival of the Red Army in the late autumn of 1944, from 5 to 9 divisions (parts of the divisions that were nominally responsible for securing the coast, yet in practice constantly engaged against the Partisans, not counted). In the final phase of the war, almost the entire German contingent consisting of 11 to 15 divisions (including those stationed in Slovenia) ended up fighting the regular Yugoslav army. Apart from the divisions, dozens of independent combat battalions were involved in these operations. In the worst case, a large percentage of all these units could have been used to secure the rear areas of the main fronts, and a smaller percentage could be used directly against the Allied armies. Although, in general, these formations were of lower combat value, there is no doubt that their deployment to a secondary theater of war such as the Yugoslav one was to the detriment of the German war effort.

U regionalnoj istoriografiji Drugog svjetskog rata u Jugoslaviji, pisanoj kako u socijalističkom tako i u post-socijalističkom periodu, generali Wehrmachta se spominju gotovo isključivo u kontekstu ratnih zločina. O njihovom porijeklu, ličnom životu i vojničkoj karijeri se ne zna gotovo ništa. Oslanjajući se uglavnom na podatke iz ličnih dosijea čuvanih u njemačkom Saveznom arhivu, ovaj članak će analizirati biografije šezdesetak komandanata krupnih operativnih jedinica (divizija i korpusa) te pokušati utvrditi mehanizme po kojima su visoki oficiri dolazili na jedno tako specifično ratište kakvo je bilo balkansko. Osnovna teza rada je da presudni kriteriji nisu bili lični background, poznavanje podneblja, ili posebna obuka, već praktični razlozi i potrebe velikih frontova.

U regionalnoj istoriografiji Drugog svjetskog rata u Jugoslaviji, pisanoj kako u socijalističkom tako i u post-socijalističkom periodu, generali Wehrmachta se spominju gotovo isključivo u kontekstu ratnih zločina. O njihovom porijeklu, ličnom životu i vojničkoj karijeri se ne zna gotovo ništa. Oslanjajući se uglavnom na podatke iz ličnih dosijea čuvanih u njemačkom Saveznom arhivu, ovaj članak će analizirati biografije šezdesetak komandanata krupnih operativnih jedinica (divizija i korpusa) te pokušati utvrditi mehanizme po kojima su visoki oficiri dolazili na jedno tako specifično ratište kakvo je bilo balkansko. Osnovna teza rada je da presudni kriteriji nisu bili lični background, poznavanje podneblja, ili posebna obuka, već praktični razlozi i potrebe velikih frontova.

Bitka koja se odigrala u Kninu i njegovoj okolici u studenom i prosincu 1944. spada u red najvažnijih događaja Drugoga svjetskog rata na području Hrvatske, odnosno Jugoslavije. Kao takva, zauzimala je istaknuto mjesto u narativu „Narodnooslobodilačkoga rata”, u kojem je bila opisivana uglavnom s partizanske strane. Za takav pristup postojali su i subjektivni i objektivni razlozi. Od prvih treba istaknuti nedostatak volje da se odstupi od ustaljene, službene verzije koja je nastala još za vrijeme rata; od drugih nedostatak primarnih izvora njemačke provenijencije. Zahvaljujući prolasku vremena, dolasku digitalnoga doba i otvaranju dosad teško dostupnih arhiva napokon je moguće „čuti i drugu stranu”. Kako u prikazima samoga tijeka operacija nema većih razlika u spisima suprotstavljenih vojski, ovaj članak koncentrirat će se na sporne i malo poznate aspekte Kninske bitke poput brojnosti, sastava i gubitaka njemačkih snaga te njezino značenje u kontekstu sveukupne strateške situacije We...

Third Reich's main special forces unit, known as the "Brandenburg", continues to capture the public imagination even after almost eight decades since the end of the biggest conflict in world history. The exploits from the early phase of the Second World War, notably those that took place in the Soviet Union and North Africa, invariably occupy a central place in these narratives. In stark contrast, the "Brandenburg" 's service in occupied Yugoslavia has, at best, received scant coverage despite the fact that all of its major sub-units saw action there at one point or another. Using largely unpublished primary sources, the article at hand will seek to outline the unit's involvement in what has once been aptly described as "the Wehrmacht's Balkan quagmire". It will also argue that its performance in counterinsurgency warfare did not live up to its general reputation.

Between autumn 1943 and autumn 1944, the Wehrmacht’s 2nd Panzer Army applied novel methods to stem the ever-growing tide of Yugoslavia’s partisan movement. During the first two years of the uprising, the German doctrine for combating the guerrillas was based almost entirely on brute force; in battlefield terms, this amounted to persistent use of classic large-scale encirclement operations aimed at breaking particularly dangerous enemy concentrations. After it had become clear that this wasn’t working, the Germans slowly began applying a more diversified approach in late 1943, including more reliance on small unit tactics, flexible operational planning, and subversive propaganda. Although initially successful, these methods came too late to make a strategic impact on the course of the Yugoslavia campaign. Furthermore, they could not offset the effects of Berlin’s long-standing refusal to dedicate more resources to this secondary theater of war.

Bitka koja se odigrala u Kninu i njegovoj okolici u studenom i prosincu 1944. spada u red najvažnijih događaja Drugoga svjetskog rata na području Hrvatske, odnosno Jugoslavije. Kao takva, zauzimala je istaknuto mjesto u narativu „Narodnooslobodilačkoga rata”, u kojem je bila opisivana uglavnom s partizanske strane. Za takav pristup postojali su i subjektivni i objektivni razlozi. Od prvih treba istaknuti nedostatak
volje da se odstupi od ustaljene, službene verzije koja je nastala još za vrijeme rata; od drugih nedostatak primarnih izvora njemačke provenijencije. Zahvaljujući prolasku vremena, dolasku digitalnoga doba i otvaranju dosad teško dostupnih arhiva napokon je moguće „čuti i drugu stranu”. Kako u prikazima samoga tijeka operacija nema većih
razlika u spisima suprotstavljenih vojski, ovaj članak koncentrirat će se na sporne i malo poznate aspekte Kninske bitke poput brojnosti, sastava i gubitaka njemačkih snaga te njezino značenje u kontekstu sveukupne strateške situacije Wehrmachta na Balkanskom poluotoku u kasnu jesen 1944. godine.




The battle that took place in Knin and its surroundings in November and December 1944 was one of the most important events during World War II in Croatia and Yugoslavia as a whole. As such, the battle occupied a prominent place in the narrative of the Yugoslav Partisans’ ‘People’s Liberation War’. The descriptions, however, were almost always written from the perspective of the winning side. This approach had both objective (lack of German documents) and subjective reasons (unwillingness to change the official—and much em- bellished—version, which had already begun to take shape during the war). Thanks to the passage of time, as well as the opening and advanced digitisa- tion of archival holdings throughout the world, we now have a chance to take a look at the battle from the perspective of the losing side. As there are no major discrepancies in the German and Yugoslav descriptions of the course of the battle itself, the article at hand will concentrate on its lesser-known or controversial aspects. The reader will thus find out about the German High Command’s fixation with the events transpiring in the eastern parts of Yu- goslavia. This effectively meant that the Wehrmacht’s contingent in Dalmatia was all but abandoned to its fate. The contingent was denied reinforcements and proper supply, and soon succumbed to the semi-regular, numerous, and well-equipped Partisan units operating in the area. The catastrophe brought the entire strategic right flank in the Balkans to the brink of collapse. That the enemy did not advance all the way to Bihać was more due to luck than de- sign: thanks to the strained relations with the Western Allies at that time, the Partisans saw themselves compelled to call off the offensive and concentrate the bulk of their forces closer to the coast. Apart from details on these events, the reader will also find updated information on the German order-of-battle as well as new findings on the scale and type of losses incurred at or around Knin, a topic that is still shrouded in controversy.

From October 1944 to April 1945, the Red Army operated in Serbia proper, but also in other parts of Yugoslavia: Vojvodina, Podravina, Baranja, Međimurje, and  Prekmurje.  The Belgrade and Batina operations have received adequate historiographical coverage owing to their scale and importance; others are almost forgotten. Due to the fact that the Soviet archives had until recently been available to only a small number of foreign scholars, our knowledge of these operations is derived solely from Partisan, and, to a lesser extent, Axis sources. The Red Army documents, among other things, include a large amount of information on casualties incurred in Yugoslavia; apart from several well-publicized official figures (which are not always correct), very little is known about this topic. They reveal some new details (e.g. the existence of plans to capture Belgrade from the north in the first days of October 1944), but also confirm the old thesis about Yugoslavia's secondary importance in Soviet strategic considerations. Fixated on their main axis of advance through the Pannonian Basin and further northwest, local commands proved unwilling to commit resources for the operations on Yugoslav territory, even when these could have had serious consequences for the Wehrmacht forces deployed there (e.g. the thrusts towards Maribor or Zagreb in April 1945). The reader will also notice the peculiar treatment of NOVJ units in these documents. Although formally accepted as partners, in reality the Soviet headquarters often considered them merely as auxiliaries who could be simply utilized for finishing off tactical and operational tasks. The Partisans, for their part, were seemingly happy to oblige, and their commanders were not as proud in their dealings with the “big brother from the east“, as their memoirs, written after the Yugoslav-Soviet split of 1948, would have us believe. Finally, it should be said that the documents of the Red Army – like those of any other army – contain their fair share of contradictory and incorrect information, as well as self-aggrandizing falsehoods. Despite this, they are an extremely valuable and almost untapped source for the history of the Second World War in the Western Balkans.

The essay at hand covers the operations on the southern flank of the German front in Yugoslavia from October 1944 to April 1945. During this period, the Germans managed to extricate their 21st Mountain Corps from virtual encirclement on two occasions (in Montenegro and the Bosna River Valley) and ultimately reinforce their hard-pressed main line in the Balkans with this battered, but still battle-worthy formation. This article will provide the reader with a brief description of this little-known campaign and explain the reasons behind what was probably the Yugoslav Partisans’ greatest “lost victory” of the war. The main argument is that such an outcome was largely the result of the Yugoslav leadership’s refusal to award sufficient attention to this sector of the front and the internal political considerations, but also of the German army’s skillfully conducted defense. The article will also dwell on the battlefield effectiveness of both sides, and the Partisans’ efforts to become a regular army in both their outlook and operational manner.

This article deals with the extensive signals surveillance program operated by the Wehrmacht and directed at their most dangerous enemy in the Balkans, the Yugoslav Partisans. This subject has so far received surprisingly little attention in academic circles despite the fact that it was one of the crucial pillars of the entire Axis counter-insurgency effort in Yugoslavia, and that it was one of the most successful actions of its kind conducted by the German intelligence. Based largely on previously unpublished primary sources, as well as post-war literature, this article will outline the workings of the program during its heyday in the years 1943–1944, and seek to establish its impact on the battlefield. As such, it will hopefully prove to be useful to both students of wartime events in the Western Balkans, and to researchers of intelligence services during the Second World War in general.

The eastern parts of Yugoslavia were the site of savage fighting between October and December 1944, as the German Army Group E tried to force its way out of an almost desperate situation it had found itself in following the evacuation of Greece. Against all odds, this huge German formation managed to best three Allied armies, rugged terrain, and autumn rains and reach the relative safety of the Independent State of Croatia, where it joined the remainder of the Axis front in the Balkans. Although this dramatic episode had been extensively written about in the former Yugoslavia and Germany, it received next to no attention in the English-speaking academic community. The article at hand will provide an overview and an analysis of military operations based on a wide plethora of primary and secondary sources of all sides. It will also argue that the ultimate success of the breakthrough was as much due to the unwillingness of the Soviet high command to devote more resources to the Balkan Front, and the structural weaknesses of the Bulgarian and Yugoslav Partisans’ armies, as it was to the battlefield prowess of the Wehrmacht.

English-language historiography has paid scant attention to the events in Yugoslavia in spring 1945, despite the fact that the combined strength of the armies pitted against each other amounted to around 800,000 men, and that it was the only front in Europe which was held independently by a junior member of the anti-Hitler coalition. This article provides an analysis of both the capitulation of the German Army Group E, and the widely diverging descriptions of the same event offered by German and Yugoslav authors. The main argument presented here is that the Yugoslav leadership, prompted by both internal and foreign policy considerations, did not shirk from using less-than-honourable methods to achieve its aims. In doing this, the article will also provide insights into the functioning of the historiography of the socialist era when dealing with potentially embarrassing issues.

Sa stanovišta istoriografije, raspad SFRJ početkom devedesetih godina 20. vijeka praktički je označio i kraj proučavanja klasične vojne istorije Narodnooslobodilačkog pokreta. Nade da će sa nestankom prepreka uslovljenih specifičnostima socijalističkog sistema– posebice autocenzure– ta iznimno važna epizoda istorije jugoslovenske države konačno dobiti objektivan prikaz, izjalovile su se pod naletom plime revizionizma, kao i zbog pada interesa akademske zajednice za ovu temu generalno. Ovaj prilog sadrži sažet pregled najvažnijih ratnih zbivanja u bivšoj Jugoslaviji, kao i kratku analizu uzroka pobjede NOP-a i njegovog učinka na bojnom polju. Također će biti skrenuti pažnja na neka pitanja koja još nisu dobila odgovarajuću istoriografsku obradu.

The aim of this article is to analyze the operations in Western Serbia and the neighboring regions conducted from March through September 1944 by the Yugoslav Partisans on one side and the Germans and collaborationist troops on the other. Knowledge of these operations is important for understanding subsequent military and political developments, namely the joint Soviet-Partisan offensive on Belgrade and the establishment of the Communist-dominated government in Yugoslavia. Little is known about these events in the West, in particular the details of the military co-operation between the Germans and the Serbian Chetniks, which developed to its full extent during this period. By relying on a wide array of primary sources, the article will hopefully shed some light on these complex issues, as well as help settle the still-existing controversies surrounding the Serbian nationalist guerrillas’ role in the last year of the war.

On 16 October 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin attended a parade in Belgrade marking the 70th anniversary of its liberation by the Red Army and the Communist-led Yugoslav Partisans. In addition to being a public display of the historic bonds and mutual friendship between the two states, the event also symbolically re-affirmed the role of the Yugoslav Partisans in these operations by parading their old battle flags. In light of strong revisionist tendencies in the past 25 years which sought to diminish or even deny the Partisans’ contribution to the liberation of the country, this represents a small but important gesture. The aim of this article will be to provide an overview of operations in Serbia from late September to late October 1944, to quantify the Partisans’ contribution to the campaign, and to briefly discuss Soviet-Yugoslav cooperation during this period.

The aim of this article will be to examine the operations of the Yugoslav Partisans and German armed forces in northern parts of Yugoslavia in late 1944 and early 1945. Since the summer of 1941, the communist-led guerrilla movement had conducted a massive guerrilla campaign against Axis forces, at the same time striving to build a regular army and thus gain recognition as a full-time member of the anti-Hitler coalition. The arrival of the Red Army and liberation of country's eastern parts in September and October 1944 secured material foundations for a creation of a regular field force. Whether this nascent army would be capable of defeating its retreating, but still dangerous German foe remained to be seen.

The prospect of prisoner exchange was often the only reason for sparing captives in irregular warfare fought on the edges of international law. During World War II, such prisoner exchanges were few, due to the totality of the war and the irreconcilable attitudes of the warring parties. Yugoslavia was an exception, as it witnessed massive and frequent exchanges of able-bodied prisoners between the communist-led Partisans and the Germans. What started as isolated cases, motivated by a spontaneous desire to save captured compatriots, soon evolved into a complex affair involving propa­ganda and intelligence issues, as well as political talks between two ideological arch-enemies. This article is the first attempt to provide a comprehensive, non-ideological survey o f the topic, which is neglected in former Yugoslav historiography and is virtually unknown to the public in the West.

This article examines operations “Weiss” and “Schwarz,” two of the largest anti-guerrilla sweeps conducted by the German Wehrmacht during the entire Second World War. Four reinforced divisions with ca. 65,000 German soldiers and up to 100 aircraft took part in what is regarded as the most ferocious fighting of the whole war in Yugoslavia. Although conducted with maximum effort in material terms, they were doomed to failure because of the Third Reich's neglect of guerrilla warfare and the resulting lack of a sound counter-insurgency doctrine. Remarkably, operations “Weiss” and “Schwarz” are almost unknown to the public in the West, despite their sheer size. As the founding myths of socialist Yugoslavia, they were extensively written about, almost always from a Partisan perspective. This is the first article to describe the events from the German point of view, and to analyze the Wehrmacht's conduct of these operations in some depth. With the ongoing COIN campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, examining the lessons from the past can prove enlightening.

This article examines the portrayal of the "other side" in socialist Yugoslavia's war movies from 1945 to 1990. We shall see how these movies reflected social changes in the country, evolving from simple propaganda glorifying the heroic struggle against the German invader to more sophisticated artistic products with a nuanced picture of both the good and the bad guys. The portrayal of the Germans was also influenced by changes in the foreign policy of the socialist state. Until the 1960s, the depiction of the Germans was mostly based on war-time memoirs, and was correspondingly negative. As Yugoslavia's relations with the Federal Republic of Germany improved and as the country began opening up to the world, a new and more positive picture of Germany...

From September 1944 to May 1945, the Yugoslav Partisans carried out a series of successful large-scale operations along the Adriatic coast aimed at liberating the country’s coastal belt and claiming the territories awarded to Italy by the 1920 Treaty of Rapallo. From the military point of view, these operations represented the culmination of Partisan efforts to evolve into a regular army capable of facing the Germans in open battle. Politically, the campaign was marked by increasing tensions between the Partisans and the Western Allies, especially over the fate of the city of Trieste. While well known in the former Yugoslavia, the littoral campaign is almost unknown in the West. This article will seek to address this imbalance by providing an overview of these military operations and analyzing both the Partisans’ performance in battle and their attitude towards the Western Allies during this period.

Being a historian of the region, I naturally welcomed the publishing of The Routledge Handbook of Balkan and Southeast European History in October 2020 (for more information on this edited volume see https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Balkan-and-Southeast-European-History/Lampe-Brunnbauer/p/book/9781138613089). Whereas the vast majority of the contributions contained in the volume fall outside my area of expertise, I feel there are a number of points in Heather Williams’ piece „Partisans And Chetniks in occupied Yugoslavia“ that need to be addressed in some detail.

The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest campaign of the Second World War. This volume highlights the scale and complexity of this bitterly contested campaign, one that encompassed far more than just attacks by German U-boats on Allied shipping. The team of leading scholars assembled in this study situates the German assault on seaborne trade within the wider Allied war effort and provides a new understanding of its place within the Second World War. Individual chapters offer original perspectives on a range of neglected or previously overlooked subjects: how Allied grand strategy shaped the war at sea; the choices facing Churchill and other Allied leaders and the tensions over the allocation of scarce resources between theaters; how the battle spread beyond the Atlantic Ocean in both military and economic terms; the management of Britain's merchant shipping repair yards; the defense of British coastal waters against German surface raiders; the contribution of air power to trade defense; antisubmarine escort training; the role of special intelligence; and the war against the U-boats in the Arctic and Pacific Oceans.