Nationalism in the Balkan Peninsula
1915-1944

The defeat of Austria-Hungary in World War I, allowed for the creation of The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1919. Ten years later, King Alexander I changed the name to Yugoslavia. The Serbs controlled much of the government and in 1934, Alexander was murdered.

World War II brought further instability to the region. Germany invaded the Balkans and Hitler provided the Croats with an independent "puppet" state that included Bosnia. Serbs, Jews, gypsies and anti-fascist Croats were killed in concentration camps in Croatia. Italians occupied Montenegro and Kosovo, which was also occupied by Albanians. The Bulgarians occupied Macedonia. Figure 3 is a map of the Balkan penninsula circa 1941. How have the nation boundaries changed since 1913? (See Figure 2 for a comparison).

Source: BBC Education http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/map/yugoslavia/

Figure 3: Map of the Balkans circa 1941
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/map/yugoslavia/