Prince Paul, the regent, had joined the Axis under heavy German pressure on March 25, 1941. Officers led by General Dušan Simović struck in the early hours, and crowds in Belgrade celebrated with the slogan "Better war than the pact". Hitler, enraged, ordered Yugoslavia destroyed. On April 6 Germany bombed Belgrade and invaded, and within 11 days the country had surrendered and been carved up.
By early 1941 Yugoslavia was nearly surrounded by Axis states and their allies. Prince Paul, ruling as regent for his young cousin Peter, believed resistance was hopeless, and on March 25 his government signed the Tripartite Pact in Vienna. The decision was deeply unpopular, especially among Serbs, who remembered their losses in the First World War.
The coup began at 2:15 a.m. on March 27, when officers of the Royal Yugoslav Air Force, with support from army units and the Royal Guard, seized key buildings in Belgrade. General Dušan Simović became prime minister, and Peter II was declared to have come of age months early. That morning, huge crowds filled the streets carrying British and French flags and chanting "Bolje rat nego pakt" (better war than the pact) and "Bolje grob nego rob" (better the grave than a slave).
In Berlin, Hitler told his generals that Yugoslavia would be destroyed "militarily and as a state". Operation Punishment, the bombing of Belgrade on April 6, killed thousands of people. The German invasion that followed delayed Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union, though historians disagree over how much the delay mattered.
Key people: Dušan Simović, Peter II of Yugoslavia, Prince Paul of Yugoslavia, Adolf Hitler