The Forgotten 500: The Untold Story of the Men Who Risked All for the Greatest Rescue Mission of World War II

Yugoslavia in World War II exemplifies the conflict between Nazism and Communism and the struggle of Eastern European countries to maintain their independence during this period. In an effort to save Yugoslavia from oppression, General Draza Mihailovich and his Chetnik supporters (from četa, meaning “band” or “troop”) fought both the Nazi invaders and Tito’s Communist Partisans, who were backed by the Soviet Union. The Chetniks were royalist and nationalist forces and, therefore, did not want to see Yugoslavia come under the control of a foreign power. By challenging both Germany and the Soviet Union at the same time, Mihailovich and the Chetniks took on two of the 20th century’s most brutal authoritarian powers simultaneously.

Nazism and Communism were two major opposing ideologies during WWII, and it is critical to differentiate between them. Nazism is the ideology of the National Socialists, called Nazis, who ruled Germany under the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler from 1933 to 1945. At its core, Nazism is a racial ideology based on the pseudoscience of eugenics, from the Greek meaning “well-born” or “well-bred.” The architects of Germany’s Nazi regime celebrated German blood and German soil. Hitler’s Third Reich adopted racial laws designed to protect German “purity” from “contamination” by Jewish blood. Other ethnic groups, including the Romani, and those with physical and intellectual disabilities were also the targets for extermination. German territorial aggression from 1937 onward followed from Hitler’s desire to unify the German-speaking peoples, to give them Lebensraum (“living space”), and to enslave or exterminate their Untermenschen (“sub-human”) neighbors, including Jews, Slavic and Polish people, and others to the east.

Whereas Nazism separates people on the basis of race and nationality and is inherently prejudicial, Communism highlights differences in class and seeks to liberate the working class from the oppression of the wealthy. This ideology is derived from the writings of Karl Marx in Das Kapital (Capital: A Critique of Political Economy 1867). His theories fueled the 1917 Communist Revolution in Russia that led to the formation of the Soviet Union. Since Marx called for a worldwide revolution of the working class, Communism, particularly Soviet Communism, sought aggressive expansion to other parts of Europe and the rest of the world.

Both Hitler and Stalin wanted to bring Eastern Europe into their sphere of influence. Prior to Hitler’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939—the event that triggered WWII—he signed a nonaggression pact with Stalin to allow the two dictators to divide up Eastern Europe and avoid a conflict. In June 1941, however, Hitler launched a surprise attack on the Soviet Union. After the Red Army got the upper hand in 1943 and began its push westward toward Germany, Soviet troops inflicted the same sort of terror the Nazis had during WWII on the people of Eastern Europe. This is the experience Yugoslavia underwent during this period, and it explains why nationalist Yugoslav forces welcomed the Americans, who tried to preserve the country’s independence.