World War II - Resistance to the occupying forces

An anti-occupation movement, one of the strongest resistance movements in Europe, the National Liberation Front was active from the first day of occupation,. The mood of the wide national masses was used by the communists, who, as an independently established power of an international orientation, organized the anti-occupation movement. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) issued its May First proclamation distributed by Belgrade’s communists and Communist Youth League, which called upon people to put up a decisive resistance to the occupational forces and their servants in the country.

In the midst of the occupation, enemy oppression, citizens’ disobedience and faced with growing violence, a part of the officers of the Yugoslav Army, headed by colonel Dragoljub-Draza Mihailovic and assisted by the forces from the middle-class, which were prepared for action in the newly created circumstances, they formed the Chetnik organization, the Yugoslav Army of the Homeland, with the goal of putting up resistance against the enemy in favorable circumstances. D. Mihailovic’s Chetnik movement was in constant communication with the Supreme Command of the Yugoslav Government in Exile in London.

The revolt and anger spread throughout Belgrade. From the first day of occupation, resistance was aimed against the occupying forces. The members of the National Front (NOF) and the Communist Youth League (SKOJ) carried out spontaneous and organized actions against the occupying forces.