'Better the grave than a slave '

27th March 1941: A popular uprising in Yugoslavia leads to a coup d'état overthrowing the pro Nazi government

Although there were divisions along ethnic lines it appeared that most Yugoslavs oppposed becoming a puppet state under the Nazis.

On the 22nd March Churchill had written to the Yugoslav Prime Minister¹, urging him not to join the Nazi dominated ‘Tripartite Pact’. The letter is worth reproducing because it encapsulates Churchill’s world view and reflected his new confidence in eventual victory following the Lend Lease programme:

Your Excellency, the eventual total defeat of Hitler and Mussolini is certain. No prudent and far-seeing man can doubt this in view of the respective declared resolves of the British and American democracies.

There are only 65,000,000 malignant Huns, most of whom are already engaged in holding down Austrians, Czechs, Poles and many other ancient races they now bully and pillage. The people of the British Empire and of the United States number nearly 200,000,000 in their homelands and British Dominions alone.

We possess the unchallengeable command of the oceans, and with American help will soon obtain decisive superiority in the air. The British Empire and the United States have more wealth and more technical resources, and they make more steel than the whole of the rest of the world put together.