What if Yugoslavia avoids its 1941 coup?

[Futurist]

What if Yugoslavia would have avoided its 1941 coup where Prince Paul was overthrown and King Peter II was declared of age to rule? This would mean no Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia, but would this have also had any effects on the subsequent Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union?

Yugoslavia itself would have been MUCH better off in this scenario, avoiding both the Holocaust and the mass murder of Serbs that occurred in Axis-allied Croatia during World War II in real life. I do wonder, though: Had the Soviet Union still survived Operation Barbarossa in this scenario, would Yugoslavia have still ended up under Communist rule after the end of World War II in this scenario, similar to the rest of its neighborhood? Bulgaria got invaded by the Soviet Union in 1944 in spite of it NOT waging war against the Soviet Union, after all. Could Yugoslavia have shared the same fate in this scenario? Also, would most Yugoslav Jews have subsequently immigrated to Israel and would Yugoslavia have still eventually broken up--possibly in an EXTREMELY bloody fashion--after the collapse of Communism in this scenario, as it did in real life?

Any thoughts on all of this?

[historygeek2021]

Yugoslavia's accession to the Tripartite Pact stipulated that German troops would not be permitted to move through Yugoslavia. Thus, Germany would have been forced to invade Greece solely from Bulgaria, where it would be up against the well fortified and defended Metaxas Line. The Germans struggled against the Metaxas Line in the OTL, so the campaign against Greece might have taken a lot longer than in the OTL. With the German invasion of Greece beginning on April 6 and Barbarossa scheduled for June 22, that could have caused serious problems for Germany and may have delayed the invasion of Russia even further. Likewise, the invasion of Crete would have been significantly delayed and may have been needed to cancelled entirely, allowing British bombers to strike the Ploesti oil fields from Crete.

Most of Yugoslavia's leadership and people were pro-Allied or pro-Russian, so Germany would have been leaving a hostile neighbor in its backyard. As the war turned against Germany, it is likely that Yugoslavia would have entered the war on the Allied side.

[Carl Schwamberger]

Yugoslavia's accession to the Tripartite Pact stipulated that German troops would not be permitted to move through Yugoslavia. Thus, Germany would have been forced to invade Greece solely from Bulgaria, where it would be up against the well fortified and defended Metaxas Line.

There is the possibility Hitler forces this issue, demanding passage through southern Yugoslavia anyway.

[Terry Duncan]

Duplicate topic. Locked.