Yugoslavia Today Index

The purpose of this web page is to provide an index to people names, phrases, etc. that the reader may encounter.  I have used Wikipedia as the source of definitions

Peter I  -> Peter I of Serbia was King of Serbia from 15 June 1903 to 1 December 1918. On 1 December 1918, he became King of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and he held that title until his death three years later. 

Alexander I  -> was King of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes from 16 August 1921 to 3 October 1929 and King of Yugoslavia from 3 October 1929 until his assassination in 1934.

Peter II  -> was the last king of Yugoslavia, reigning from October 1934 until he was deposed in November 1945.

Operation Ratweek (1944)  -> was a series of coordinated attacks on the Axis forces' communication lines in the Balkansduring World War II. See our discussion of the preplanning of the Leskovac mission.  Also note there is another Operation Ratweek, which was a co-ordinated assassination offensive against Nazi security forces.

Henry Maitland Wilson  -> also known as Jumbo Wilson, was a senior British Army officer of the 20th century.  Wilson succeeded Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower at Allied Forces Headquarters (AFHQ) as the Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean on 8 January 1944 based at Algiers.

Sir Fitzroy Maclean   -> was a British Army officer, who during the Second World War enlisted in the British Army as a private and rose to the rank of brigadier.

Maclean Mission  -> was a World War II British mission to Yugoslav partisans HQ and Marshal Tito organised by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) in September 1943. Its aim was to assess the value of the partisans contribution to the Allied cause and the means to increase it. It was led by a recently promoted Brigadier Fitzroy Maclean and was the first such mission with full authorization and a personal message from Winston Churchill.[1]

Special Operations Executive   -> was a British organization formed in 1940 to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in German-occupied Europeand to aid local resistance movements during World War II.

John Henniker-Major  -> In 1943 he joined Fitzroy Maclean's mission in Yugoslavia (Macmis) whilst on secondment to the Special Operations Executive and appointed as a British Liaison Officer (BLO) to Koča Popović, the most prominent Partisan commander. In August 1944, the three men agreed the scope and tactics of the Operation Ratweek in central Serbia, which severely damaged German ambitions to withdraw troops from Greece and the southern Balkans.

Chetniks    -> formally the Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army, and also the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland, was a Yugoslav royalist and Serbian nationalist movement and guerrilla force in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia.

Draža Mihailović   - > was a Yugoslav Serb general during World War II. He was the leader of the Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army (Chetniks)

Partisans   -> was the communist-led anti-fascist resistance to the Axis powers (chiefly Nazi Germany) in occupied Yugoslaviaduring World War II.

Tito   ->  was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary and politician who served in various positions of national leadership from 1943 until his death in 1980.[2] During World War II, he led the Yugoslav Partisans, often regarded as the most effective resistance movement in German-occupied Europe.

Koča Popović   -> was a Serbian and Yugoslav politician and communist volunteer in the Spanish Civil War, 1937–1939 and Divisional Commander of the First Proletarian Division of the Yugoslav Partisans. He is on occasion referred to as "the man who saved the Yugoslav Partisans", because it was he who anticipated the weakest point in the Axis lines on the Zelengora–Kalinovik axis, and devised the plan for breaking through it during the Battle of Sutjeska, thus saving Josip Broz Tito, his headquarters and the rest of the resistance movement.

Balkan Air Force  -> was an Allied air formation operating in the Balkans during World War II. Composed of units of the Royal Air Force and South African Air Forceunder the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces command, it was active from 7 June 1944 until 15 July 1945. Air Vice Marshal William Elliot and then George Mills, both RAF officers, were its Air Officer Commanding (AOC).

The BAF operated mainly over Yugoslavia, supporting the Partisans against Germany and its allies, but occasionally supporting the Greek and Albanian resistance movements also.

Caserta  -> is a palace north of Naples.  From 1943, during the allied invasion, the royal palace served as Allied Force Headquarters for the Supreme Allied Commander in the Mediterranean area; Sir Maitland Wilson, and later Sir Harold Alexander. In April 1945, the palace was the site of the signing of the unconditional surrender of German and Italian RSI forces in Italy. The agreement covered between 600,000 and 900,000 soldiers along the Italian Front, including troops in sections of Austria.