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Was the theatre of conflict of World War II that took place in the Balkans.
Chronology
Interactive Chronologies with maps are available in the section Changes Navigation
December 1941: The Republic of Užice was a short-lived liberated Yugoslav territory and the first liberated territory in World War II Europe, organized as a military mini-state that existed in the autumn of 1942.
November 1942: Slunj conquered by Bihać Republic.
December 1942: Tomislavgrad conquered by Bihać Republic.
January 1943: Teslic conquered by Bihać Republic.
January 1943: Germans retook Bihać on 29 January.
December 1942: Some towns in Croatia were retaken by Axis forces in local attacks: Jajce was reoccupied.
February 1943: Drvar conquered by Axis forces.
December 1942: Livno conquered by Bihać Republic.
September 1941: The Republic of Užice was a short-lived liberated Yugoslav territory and the first liberated territory in World War II Europe, organized as a military mini-state that existed in the autumn of 1941.
November 1942: The Bihać Republic was established by the Partisan resistance movement following the liberation of Bihać.
March 1943: Bihać Republic conquered by italy;germany.
January 1943: Teslic conquered by italy;germany.
November 1942: Jajce conquered by Bihać Republic.
January 1943: Udbina and Bosansko Grahovo were evacuated by ustaša and Italian units under partisan pressure.
Was a conflict between Greece and Italy during World War II that started with the Italian invasion of Greece.
April 1941: Italo-Greek front as of April, 4th 1941 (based on maps).
1.1.Italian offensive (Greco-Italian War)
Were the Italian operations during the Greco-Italian War.
November 1940: By the night of 29/30 October, the Greek covering units had withdrawn to the Kalpaki line.
November 1940: The Italians managed to capture Konitsa.
November 1940: The Italian Julia Division captured the village of Vovousa.
November 1940: The Italians reached Margariti.
April 1941: Knin was taken by the Axis forces.
April 1941: The Italian 133rd Armoured Division Littorio and the 52nd Infantry Division Torino took Senj.
April 1941: On 13 April the Italian occupied Otočac and Gradac.
April 1941: Split and Sibenik were taken by Italian forces on 15 and 16 April, respectively.
April 1941: Italian Motorized Corps took Dubrovnik.
April 1941: On 11 April, the Italian 2nd Army launched its offensive, capturing Ljubljana, Sušak and Kraljevica on the same day.
November 1940: Igoumenitsa was captured by the Italians on 6 November.
November 1940: The Greek forces reach the Pindus area of the Greek-Italian border.
April 1941: The Italian army conquers of Kastav, Kalce and Logatec.
1.2.Greek counter-offensive (Greco-Italian War)
Were the Greek operations during the Greco-Italian War.
November 1940: The Greeks captured the summit of Morava.
November 1940: The city of Korçë was captured by Greek 9th Division.
November 1940: Greek conquest of Leskovik.
November 1940: Pogradec was captured unopposed by the Greek 13th Division.
December 1940: The Greek army captured Delvinë on 5 December.
December 1940: The Greek army captured Himarë on 22 December.
February 1941: In the Battle of Trebeshina, a series of engagements from 2-12 February, the Trebeshinë massif was captured by Greek forces.
November 1940: The Greeks captured Ersekë on 21 November.
December 1940: Greek conquest of Gjirokastër.
November 1940: The Western Macedonia Section of the Greek Army captured the entire Korçë plateau.
November 1940: The Greek 10th Division captured Moscopole.
January 1941: The Greek 11th Division captured the Klisura Pass.
December 1940: The Greek Lioumbas Detachment captured Sarandë, at the time baned Porto Edda after Edda Mussolini.
December 1940: The Greek army captured the Ostravicë Mountain on 12 December.
December 1940: The Greeks arrived around the Kakavia Pass, forcing the Italians to withdraw.
Was a military operation by the Axis forces that resulted in the occupation and partition of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
2.1.German Offensive in Yugoslavia
German offensive during the World War II Axis invasion of Yugoslavia.
2.2.Surrender and partition of Yugoslavia
Was the partition of Yugoslavia among the invading Axis forces.
April 1941: The Independent State of Croatia (a German puppet state) was established in parts of occupied Yugoslavia.
April 1941: Yugoslavia was partitioned ca. April 20-22, 1941 among the Axis countries (Italy and Germany) and their satellite states (Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania).
2.3.Hungarian Offensive (Axis invasion of Yugoslavia)
Was the offensive of the Hungarian army during the Axis invasion of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
April 1941: The Hungarian 1st Parachute Battalion captured canal bridges at Vrbas and Srbobran. Meanwhile, Sombor was captured against determined Chetnik resistance, and Subotica was also captured.
April 1941: The Hungarian 1st and 2nd Motorised Brigades occupied Novi Sad.
April 1941: The Hungarian army captured Vinkovci and Vukovar on 18 April.
April 1941: Valjevo conquered by hungary.
April 1941: Hungarian forces occupied the Yugoslavian regions of Prekmurje and Međimurje.
2.4.Yugoslav Albanian offensive
Was the offensive of the Italian forces in Albania during the Axis invasion of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
April 1941: Between 11-13 April 1941, with German and Italian troops advancing on its rear areas, the Zetska Division was forced to retreat back to the Pronisat River by the Italian 131st Centauro Armoured Division.
Was the invasion of Greece Germany during World War II. The Invasion followed the unsuccesful invasion of Greece by Italian forces.
April 1941: The spearheads of the German 9th Panzer Division reached Kozani.
April 1941: The Germans captured the town of Strumica.
April 1941: The German 73rd Infantry Division captured Prilep.
April 1941: By the evening of 8 April the German 164th Infantry Division captured Xanthi
April 1941: The German 72d Infantry Division reached the area northeast of Seres.
April 1941: On 14 April a pitched battle between several Greek units and the LSSAH brigade—which had by then reached Grevena—erupted. The Greek 13th and Cavalry Divisions lacked the equipment necessary to fight against an armoured unit, and on 15 April were finally encircled and overwhelmed.
April 1941: German conquest of Panteleimonas.
April 1941: The Italian armoured division along with the 18th Infantry Division Messina advanced upon the Yugoslav fleet base of Kotor in Montenegro, also occupying Cettinje and Podgorica.
April 1941: The port of Volos fell to the Germans on 21 April.
April 1941: The Germans advanced further and captured Ioannina.
April 1941: On 23 April the Greek commander signed a surrender agreement whit the Italians. The Italians thus re-acquired the Greek-occupied regions of Albania.
April 1941: German conquest of Thermopyles (pass).
April 1941: German conquest of Kalamata.
April 1941: The German 5th Panzer Division reached the south coast of Greece on 29 April.
April 1941: German SS troops seized Vevi on 11 April.
April 1941: German conquest of Veles.
April 1941: On 19 April the German first XVIII Mountain Corps troops entered Larisa and took possession of the airfield.
April 1941: German conquest of Skopje.
April 1941: By April 9th the German forces reached Thessaloniki.
April 1941: The German 72d Infantry Division got through the Metaxas Line by the evening of 9 April,
April 1941: On 27 April the SS forces seized the Corinth Canal and Patras.
April 1941: Korça that fell unopposed to the Italian 9th Army.
April 1941: By 30 April the hostilities ceased. Greece was fully occupied by German forces.
April 1941: On the morning of 27 April the Germans entered Athens, the Greek capital.
3.1.Battle of Crete
Was a major Axis airborne and amphibious operation during World War II to capture the island of Crete.
May 1941: On May 27, Chania fell to German forces.
May 1941: On May 28, the port in Souda Bay passed into German hands.
May 1941: The next day, through communication failures, Allied tactical hesitation and German offensive operations, the Maleme Airfield in western Crete fell.
June 1941: Allied evacuation from Crete May 28th to June 1st. Crete was occupied by German forces.
May 1941: On May 29th, Rethymno capitulated to the Germans.
After the German invasion of Greece, the country was partitioned among the Axis powers. The territorial division changed during the war, and after the surrender of Italy to the Allies the Italian zone was occupied by Germany.
August 1943: Part of the Bulgarian occupation zone in Greece fell under German control from 1943.
September 1943: After the Italian capitulation, the Italian zone of Greece was taken over by the Germans.
4.1.Greece divided in Occupation zones by Axis powers
Division in occupation zones of Greece by the Axis.
June 1941: East Macedonia and Thrace came under Bulgarian occupation and were annexed to Bulgaria.
June 1941: The Hellenic State was the puppet Greek state controlled by italy and Germany.
In June 1941, Serbs in eastern Herzegovina rebelled against the authorities of the Independent State of Croatia, an Axis puppet state established during World War II.
Was an uprising by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia against the German occupation forces in Serbia.
Was the liberation of Albania by the Albanian resistance during World War II.
July 1943: By the summer of 1943, when the Italian effort collapsed, almost all of the mountainous interior of Albania was controlled by resistance units.
July 1944: Albanian partisans defeated the last Balli Kombëtar forces in southern Albania by mid-summer 1944.
November 1944: Following the successful advances of the Red Army in the Balkans and the offensives by the Albanian communist partisans of Enver Hoxha's Lëvizja Nacional-Çlirimtare, the Germans evacuated Albania by October 1944. The collaborationist government fell and was quickly replaced by the Democratic Government of Albania.
January 1946: The People's Republic of Albania was proclaimed.
August 1944: The National Liberation Movement entered central and northern Albania by the end of July.
November 1944: German resistance in Tirana ends.
December 1943: The Germans launched a series of offensives against the Partisans, who were primarily concentrated in Southern Albania and to a lesser extent in Central Albania. The first offensive, operation "505", started in early November 1943 to clear Partisan units from the Pezë region and remove the threat to the Durrës-Tirana road.
October 1944: The Democratic Government of Albania was established on 20 October 1944 by the National Liberation Movement, as the Albanian partisan resistance of 1940-1944 came to a close.
April 1944: By 1944 all prefectures of the National Liberation Movement, except Gjirokstra in the south, were in the hands of the Albanian Kingdom.
November 1944: The territories added to Albania by the Axis in in 1941 were reversed to Yugoslavia.
After the capitulation of Italian forces on 8 September 1943, German troops swiftly occupied Albania with two divisions.
September 1943: After the capitulation of Italian forces on 8 September 1943, German troops swiftly occupied Albania with two divisions. The Germans formed a 'neutral government' in Tirana.
After the Italian capitulation on 8 September 1943, the Croatian territories of Italy were occupied by German forces.
September 1943: After the ousting of Mussolini and the Kingdom of Italy's armistice with the Allies, the Independent State of Croatia on 10 September 1943 declared that the Treaties of Rome were null and void and annexed the portion of Dalmatia that had been ceded to Italy.
September 1943: Until the Italian capitulation on 8 September 1943, the Independent State of Croatia was a territorial condominium of Germany and Italy.
After the Italian capitulation on 8 September 1943, German forces invaded Slovenia.
September 1943: The Italian Governorship of Dalmatia was disestablished and the country's possessions were subsequently divided between Germany, which established its Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral, and the Independent State of Croatia, which established the new district of Sidraga-Ravni Kotari.
Was the battle between Germany and Great Britain for the control of the Italian Dodecanese after Italy's surrender on 8 September 1943.
September 1943: Battle of Rhodes.
October 1943: Germans overrun Kos Island whic was the site of the only Allied air base in the Aegean.
October 1943: Between the night of 14 and 15 October, a British vessel offered to transfer the personnel of Piscopi to Castelrosso, who gladly accepted. The island was later occupied by the Wehrmacht.
November 1943: Altered by the unexpected resistance of the Anglo-Italians, General Kleemann ordered the Luftwaffe to proceed with the bombardment of the island of Simi. To avoid losing the entire garrison during another battle, on the night of 11 October Corradini and Lapraik gave the order to evacuate the island and head towards Castelrosso. The German pilots, unaware of all this, continued to hit the island until November 2, when troops landed on the island and realized what had happened.
October 1943: On 7 October a small group of German officers landed in Calino offering unconditional surrender which was immediately accepted.
November 1943: When the Anglo-Italian garrison of Leros was defeated on 17 November 1943, the men on Patmos embarked for the coast of Turkey and were subsequently interned.
November 1943: The Germans complete the occupation of the Island of Leros.
September 1943: On the date of the armistice, the Italian command in Rhodes ordered not to initiate hostile acts against the Germans, an order which on 12 September changed into surrendering arms to the former ally. Scarpanto was occupied by German forces.
September 1943: The military vicissitudes of the island of Caso were brief: the small garrison of the Italian army (a company and a battery with 75/27 guns) and the lookout and signaling stations of the navy surrendered to the Germans on 12 September.
October 1943: On the morning of 22 October Luftwaffe planes bombed the island of Stampalia with almost zero anti-aircraft reaction, followed by a drop of Fallschirmjäger at Maltezana simultaneously with a landing of men on the west coast. By noon the German forces were in control of the island.
May 1945: The Dodecanese Islands were occupied by the British and Peter Bevil Edward Acland was appointed governor.
After the Italian capitulation on 8 September 1943, German forces invaded Montenegro.
December 1944: Montenegro remained under German occupation until Axis forces evacuated in December 1944.
September 1943: Montenegro was occupied by German forces in September 1943, after the Armistice of Cassibile in which the Kingdom of Italy capitulated and joined the Allies.
Democratic Federal Yugoslavia was a provisional state established during World War II on 29 November 1943 through the Second Session of the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ). .
November 1943: The Democratic Federal Yugoslavia was a provisional state established during World War II on 29 November 1943 through the Second Session of the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ).
October 1944: Partisan-controlled territories in Yugoslavia by september 1944.
October 1944: Belgrade falls under combined blows of Third Ukrainian Front and Marshal Tito’s Yugoslav Army.
January 1945: In late September 1944 three Bulgarian armies, some 455,000 strong in total led by General Georgi Marinov Mandjev from the village of Goliamo Sharkovo - Elhovo, entered Yugoslavia with the strategic task of blocking the German forces withdrawing from Greece. Southern and eastern Serbia and Macedonia were liberated within two months.
January 1945: At the onset of winter, the Partisans effectively controlled the entire eastern half of Yugoslavia - Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro - as well as most of the Dalmatian coast.
April 1945: The Croatian army did not leave Sarajevo until 15 April.
October 1944: The German forces in Serbia are destroyed in the Battle of Belgrade.
13.1.Partisan offensive in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia
Were a series of partisan offensives against Axis-occupied Yugoslavia during World War II.
April 1945: On 5 April, Yugoslavian forces aptured Doboj.
April 1945: By 20 April, Yugoslavian forces led by Drapšin liberated Lika and the Croatian Littoral, including the islands, and reached the old Yugoslav border with Italy.
May 1945: After having captured the Italian territories of Rijeka and Istria from the German LXXXXVII Corps, the Yugoslav 4th Army beated the western Allies to Trieste by one day.
May 1945: The German forces in Croatia were still able to reconquer Rijeka Trieste and the region of Istria in May 1945.
May 1945: Despite the German capitulation, sporadic fighting still took place in Yugoslavia. On 7 May, Zagreb was evacuated.
May 1945: Battle of Poljana.
April 1945: On 12 April, the Yugoslav 3rd Army, under the command of Kosta Nađ, forced a crossing of the Drava river. The 3rd Army then fanned out through Podravina, reached a point north of Zagreb, and crossed the old Austrian border with Yugoslavia in the Dravograd sector.
May 1945: Battle of Odžak.
May 1945: Maribor and Ljubljana were captured by the Partisans.
Was the Soviet invasion of Bulgaria during World War II.
September 1944: The Soviets established a new communist government in Bulgaria, with Kimon Georgiev as prime minister. The Red Army remained in occupation of Bulgaria until 1947.
September 1944: On 8 September, Soviet forces crossed the Bulgarian-Romanian border and on the eve of 8 September garrison detachments, led by Zveno officers, overthrew the government after taking strategic points in Sofia and arresting government ministers.
The evacuation of Greece by German troops during World War II.
June 1945: Isolated Axis garrisons remained in Crete, the Dodecanese and various other Aegean islands until the end of the war in May 1945.
October 1944: On 23 August 1944, at a meeting at his headquarters, Adolf Hitler told Field Marshal Maximilian von Weichs, the commander of the German forces in the Balkans, that with the Romanian oil fields lost, there was now no more point in occupying Greece and he should begin preparations for a withdrawal from Greece at once. The German troops evacuated Athens on 12 October 1944.
November 1944: German forces withdraw from mainland Greece.
Selected Sources
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Blau, G.E.(1953): PART THREE THE GERMAN CAMPAIGN IN GREECE (Operation MARITA). U.S. Army Center of Military History. Retrieved on 5 April 2024 on https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/balkan/20_260_3.htm
Blau, G.E.(1953): PART TWO THE YUGOSLAV CAMPAIGN. U.S. Army Center of Military History. Retrieved on 5 April 2024 on https://history.army.mil/books/wwii/balkan/20_260_2.htm
Campaign In The Balkans, Invasion Of Yugoslavia And Greece, April 1941. United States Military Academy West Point. Retrieved on March, 26th, 2024 on https://s3.amazonaws.com/usma-media/inline-images/academics/academic_departments/history/WWII%20Europe%20Med/WWIIEurope17.jpg
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World War II (Balkan Theatre)
