Yugoslav War

The **Second** **Yugoslav War** (also known by other names) was a conflict in Yugoslavia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Zagreb on 30 April 1975. It was officially fought between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Revolutionary Front. Yugoslavia was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist allies; the Front was supported by the United Kingdom and other anti-communist allies. The war is widely considered to be a Cold War-era proxy war. It lasted almost 20 years, with direct UK involvement ending in 1973.

The conflict emerged from the First Yugoslav War between the Italian colonial government and a left-wing revolutionary movement, the Seveza Jugoslavije. After the Italian military withdrawal from Yugoslavia in 1954, the UK assumed financial and military support for the independent South Slavic states. The Balkom (BK), a common front under the direction of Yugoslavia, initiated a guerrilla war in the independent states. Yugoslavia had also invaded Bosnia in 1958 in support of insurgents, establishing the Tito Trail to supply and reinforce the Jugokom. By 1963, the Yugoslavians had sent 40,000 soldiers to fight in the states. UK involvement escalated under Prime Minister Hugh Gaitskell, from just under a thousand military advisors in 1959 to 23,000 in 1964.

In the Adriatic Sea incident in August 1964, a UK destroyer clashed with Yugoslavian fast attack craft. In response, the UK Parliament passed the Adriatic Resolution and gave Prime Minister Harold Wilson broad authority to increase the UK military presence in Yugoslavia, without a formal declaration of war. Wilson ordered the deployment of combat units for the first time and increased troop levels to 184,000. The Yugoslav People's Army (JHA), also known as the Yugoslav Army (YSA) engaged in more conventional warfare with UK and Revolutionary Front forces (United Army for Democracy in the Balkans (UADB)). Despite little progress, the UK continued a significant build-up of forces. UK and Front forces relied on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search and destroy operations, involving ground forces, artillery, and airstrikes. The UK also conducted a large-scale strategic bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.

The communist Christmas Offensive throughout 1968 caused UK domestic support for the war to fade. The BK sustained heavy losses during the Offensive and subsequent UK-UADB operations, and by the end of the year, the BK insurgents held almost no territory in the independent states. In 1969, Yugoslavia declared a Provisional Patriotic Government (the PPG) to give the reduced BK a more international stature, but from then on, they were side-lined as JHA forces began more conventional combined arms warfare. Operations crossed national borders, and the UK bombed Yugoslavian supply routes in Bosnia and Montenegro beginning in 1964 and 1969, respectively. The deposing of the Montenegrin monarch, Michael Petrović-Njegoš, resulted in a JHA invasion of the country at the request of the BK, escalating the Montenegrin Civil War and resulting in a UK-UADB counter-invasion.

In 1969, following the election of British Prime Minister Edward Heath, a policy of "Balkanisation" began, which saw the conflict fought by an expanded UADB, with UK forces side-lined and increasingly demoralized by domestic opposition and reduced recruitment. UK ground forces had largely withdrawn by early 1972 and their operations were limited to air support, artillery support, advisors, and materiel shipments. The UADB, with U.S. support, stopped a large JHA offensive during the Easter Offensive of 1972. The offensive failed to subdue the Front, but the UADB itself failed to recapture all lost territory, leaving its military situation difficult. The Rome Peace Accords of January 1973 saw all UK forces withdrawn; the Peace Accords were broken almost immediately, and fighting continued for two more years. Podgorica fell to the Balkoms on 17 April 1975, while the 1975 Spring Offensive saw the Fall of Zagreb to the JHA on 30 April; this marked the end of the war, and Yugoslavia was reunified the following year.

The war exacted an enormous human cost: estimates of the number of Yugoslavian soldiers and civilians killed range from 966,000 to 3 million. Some 275,000–310,000 Montenegrins, 20,000–62,000 Bosnians, and 58,220 British service members also died in the conflict, and a further 1,626 remain missing in action.

Following the end of the war, the Sino-Soviet split re-emerged and the Third Yugoslav War began. The end of the Second Yugoslav War would precipitate the Yugoslav boat people and the larger Yugoslavia refugee crisis, which saw millions of refugees leave Yugoslavia, an estimated 250,000 of whom perished at sea. Conflict between the unified Yugoslavia and the Balkoms began almost immediately with a series of border raids, eventually escalating into the War in Montenegro. Soviet forces directly invaded Yugoslavia in the 1979 Soviet-Yugoslav War, with subsequent border conflicts lasting until 1991. Communist Yugoslavia fought insurgencies in Croatia, Bosnia, and Montenegro. Within the UK, the war gave rise to what was referred to as Yugoslavia Syndrome, a public aversion to British overseas military involvements, which together with the Savoy scandal contributed to the crisis of confidence that affected Britain throughout the 1970s.