# Talk:Yugoslav coup d'état

It should be added somewhere that the new Yugoslav governments refusal to/belief that they didn't have to ratify the pact was mistaken, since the pact stated that it became ratified upon signature (and was obviously signed) --Havsjö (talk) 13:20, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

I agree. Do you have a reliable source for that? Peacemaker67  (click to talk to me) 01:32, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

How is expanding a quote already in the article undue weight? The full Tomasevich quote is that "from the point of view of the total war effort against the Axis, the Belgrade coup and the invasion of Yugoslavia contributed in a very important, if indirect, way toward the final victory over the Axis". The Shirer quote is about the testimony of key German generals about the impact of Hitler’s decision to destroy Yugoslavia on the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Tomasevich and Shirer are both already mentioned in the section, why remove material supported by the same source? Sculpordwarfprunesea (talk) 16:50, 15 September 2021 (UTC)

You need to read WP:UNDUE and WP:RSUW. Neither Tomasevich nor Shirer reflects the current academic consensus about the role of the coup and invasion with regards to its effects on Barbarossa and the war as a whole. Given that, their views are interesting (in that they reflect what was once a view held by some historians) and worthy of inclusion, but they shouldn't be given any more prominence than a mention that this was a view held at one time. BTW, you don't just make a comment then revert, that is not how WP:BRD works. You make a bold edit, you get reverted, you start a discussion, and then we see what the outcome of the discussion is (and if necessary we go to dispute resolution like a WP:3O or WP:RFC to determine a community view if we can't agree). Edit-warring about this is completely pointless and will probably just result in a block. This is also the Balkans space and is subject to greater restrictions on editor behaviour due to an ArbCom decision, so all editors in this space need to tread carefully. Peacemaker67  (click to talk to me) 21:07, 15 September 2021 (UTC)
First apologies about the lack of WP:EQ on my end clearly did not consider my edits to be controversial as I am new in the the Balkans space. For those interested the versions are here. More than 25% of the references used in this article come from Tomasevich (like most articles about World War II in Yugoslavia) so Tomasevich's views are already given more prominence than anyone else. This said I just changed the quote following WP:INTEXT using Tomasevich's exact words which I found a little stronger that the version edited. From Shier I added testimonies from the Nuremberg trials directly related to the topic, nothing about his views. The Beevor quote reflecting the current academic consensus is: More recently, Antony Beevor wrote that "most [historians] accept that the Balkan campaign made little difference" to the eventual outcome of Barbarossa." but all I could find in Beevor's book was: "Historians have argued over the effect Operation Marita had on the invasion of the Soviet Union. Most accept that it made little difference", if this is the one, it's about the Balkan campaign in Greece (Operation Marita) not the Yugoslav campaign (Operation 25) and it should be replaced. As a counterexample in 2011 Frederick B. Chary wrote: "the consensus is that the invasion of the Balkans delayed the Reich's move against the Soviet Union long enough to stop Germany from taking Moscow", so it seems to be still open for debate. Sculpordwarfprunesea (talk) 13:02, 16 September 2021 (UTC)
No worries. Beevor should not be replaced, because it is clear from the context that he is talking about the whole Balkans campaign, including Yugoslavia. The Balkans campaign involving the invasions of Yugoslavia (Operation 25) and Greece (Marita) are thoroughly intertwined and the operations in the two countries are often conflated by authors under the umbrella of the Greek or Balkans campaign, largely because the success of the invasion of Greece was expedited by part of the 12th Army bypassing the northern Greek border defences by attacking into southern Yugoslavia, capturing Skopje and turning south to enter Greece. In this vein, Gabriel Gorodetsky's 1999 Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia, Yale University Press, p. 177, states "As the military historian [Martin] van Creveld has most convincingly proved in his debunking of the established myth, the Greek diversion, far from overstretching the Wehrmacht, only produced a negligible delay in the build-up for Barbarossa". The "established myth" he is referring to was debunked in 1972 by van Creveld in his article in European History Quarterly, and then again the following year in Hitler's Strategy 1940-1941: The Balkan Clue, Cambridge University Press, pp. 149–151. But even basic introductory texts like Christopher Catherwood's World War II: A Beginner's Guide, [1] state that the "Yugoslav delay to Barbarossa" is one of the greatest myths of WWII. Peacemaker67  (click to talk to me) 23:53, 17 September 2021 (UTC)
I do not disagree with you but Beevor wrote specifically about Operation Marita and I do not think we should assume that he meant something else. The quote was modified to say that he wrote “Balkan Campaign” this was presented as In-text attribution between quotation marks. This is a problem since these are not the source's words and that quote also feeds the ending statement of the lead: Most scholars now consider that [The importance of the putsch and subsequent invasion] had no significant impact on the eventual outcome of that campaign. That statement is then potentially repeated in other articles. This is why I think Beevor should be removed (with the end of the lead) until another reliable source is found. I’m sure you will agree that, especially within the Balkans space, the accuracy of quoted material is paramount as emphasised on WP:RS/QUOTE. Regarding the position of scholars on the subject, we could go back and forth endlessly, Elizabeth Wiskemann, Hugh Seton-Watson, Hugh Dalton, Max Beloff, Baron Beloff among others considered that the coup d'état and the subsequent campaign did delay Barbarossa as mentioned here[2] but what we are looking for is a clear consensus from a reliable source that would justify its mention in body and lead. Sculpordwarfprunesea (talk) 19:31, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
We could not go back and forth endlessly if we place the issue in context and examine both the motivations and publication dates of the people listed in Erickson. He lists a whole bunch of people, some historians, some not, almost all published in the 1940s and 1950s, and gives far too much weight to Hitler (calling him a "star witness") when van Creveld takes a completely different view of Hitler's statements. Many of these sources were written immediately or soon after the war, and are ancient in academic terms on this subject. Erickson's discussion of the views of these people is also very fleeting and selective. Several of these people were pushing a particular POV, and the arguments of several were completely dismantled by van Creveld nearly fifty years ago. When he does get to van Creveld, he gives brief lip service to one or two of van Creveld's arguments, and doesn't even summarise his main points debunking earlier writings. In terms of clear self-interest, Klugmann, Seton-Watson and Dalton (as the responsible minister) were all SOE, which had a vested interest in convincing people that what they did in Yugoslavia in supporting and encouraging the coup was effective in helping the war effort. Their views are self-serving and they definitely are not independent of the subject, given SOE's involvement in the coup. Seton-Watson published in 1946, Dalton in 1957. Likewise, Adamić (quoting Klugmann) published in 1952, and Wiskemann was also a British intelligence officer and published in 1949. David Martin's incredibly pro-Chetnik piece in 1946 should be dismissed out of hand, later scholarship by Tomasevich, Milazzo and others has dismantled that nonsense. Beloff was published in 1949. Hamilton Fish Armstrong published in 1951. Cordell Hull published in 1949. Von Paulus is obviously self-serving, and Halder (who had far more of an idea, being the Army Chief of the General Staff at the time) contradicts him. Butler's Grand Strategy Vol 2 was published in 1957. Ansel published in the early 70s (when van Creveld was writing), and he concludes that Barbarossa could not have started earlier, but van Creveld even addressed this argument. So, this list of authors etc (bar Ansel) all published at least fifteen years before van Creveld debunked this myth, many of them were self-serving/self-interested, and none had the opportunity to consider and accept or reject van Creveld's conclusions. If we are discussing current academic consensus on this, we need to be looking at post-van Creveld, not this ancient history. Peacemaker67  (click to talk to me) 22:28, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
I have substituted material from van Creveld for Beevor, and explained his conclusions in the body and summarised them in the lead. Peacemaker67  (click to talk to me) 23:11, 18 September 2021 (UTC)
It’s not surprising to see two military historians analysing similar historical datas arriving at two different conclusions but Erickson published his work 20 years after van Creveld so he may have had more material to work with. Anyway none of this is used in the article and it is unrelated to a current academic consensus. Before you brought up van Creveld, I mentioned a 2011 quote from Frederick B. Chary: "Although a minority of scholars believe the Wehrmacht would not have been able to move until then in any case, the consensus is that the invasion of the Balkans delayed the Reich’s move against the Soviet Union long enough to stop Germany from taking Moscow and Leningrad before the winter ". Probably the most recent study on the subject is Craig Stockings and Eleanor Hancock 2013 book Swastika over the Acropolis: Re-interpreting the Nazi Invasion of Greece in World War II, using new archival findings 40 years after van Creveld and all the others. In Chapter 20 Marita and Barbarossa (page 569 to page 581) they look into everything that came into play: the German planning process, meteorological factors, German equipment shortages (pointing out weaknesses in the "equipment" argument of van Creveld) and looking at past analyses and ancient history. There is a lot to read and it is of course more complex that a few words on a talk page but on page 573 Stockings Hancock say: ”There is little doubt then that the German planning process for Marita, and to a lesser degree for ‘Operation 25’, forced a delay to the planned start date for Barbarossa by around six weeks from that which was originally intended" so this surely deserved to be mentioned.  Sculpordwarfprunesea (talk) 12:36, 20 September 2021 (UTC) ; edited 12:13, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
Adding Stockings Hancock to body and lead, removing van Creveld unneeded dismissive comments from lead Sculpordwarfprunesea (talk) 12:45, 20 September 2021 (UTC)
@Peacemaker67: also happy to share the full chapter if you don’t have  Swastika over the Acropolis or can't access that content. Sculpordwarfprunesea (talk) 11:41, 22 September 2021 (UTC)
G'day Sculpordwarfprunesea. Looking back on this discussion, I think it may have diverted from what I (and Van Creveld) was trying to get at. A delay to Barbarossa isn't really the big issue here. Even Van Creveld acknowledges there was some limited delay, but it is the effect on the success of Barbarossa that is the real game here. I don't think Chary, someone specialising in Bulgaria, is a good source to be using to claim a consensus among historians about the effect of the delay on the success of Barbarossa. I will try to see what specialists on the Eastern Front like David Glantz et al say. Do Stockings and Hancock say anything about the effect of the coup and subsequent invasion on the eventual outcome of Barbarossa? Peacemaker67  (click to talk to me) 05:11, 18 October 2021 (UTC)