Serbia

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• In Moscow Josip Broz Tito formally authorizes Soviet troops to enter Belgrade. The Third Ukrainian Front’s Fifty-seventh Army begins marching toward Belgrade in three columns, with 64th Rifle Corps crossing the Morava River at Paracin, 68th Rifle Corps advancing from Vidin toward Mladenovac, and 75th Rifle Corps advancing from Turnu toward Pozarevac. The Bulgarian Second Army advances with some difficulty over the Balkan Mountains towards Bela Palanka. The Bulgarians are engaged by the 7. SS-Freiwilligen Gebirgs-Division “Prinz Eugen” but the SS formation is routed.

 

- At the same time, elements of the Second Ukrainian Front are advancing west between Timișoara and the Danube. The Germans have parts of two SS divisions at Timișoara and a motorized brigade north of the Iron Gate but nothing in between; OKH had assumed that the Soviets were more likely to go north west past Timisoara into Hungary. Commander of Heersgruppe F Maximilian Reichsfreiherr von Weichs right away suspects what is coming - two thrusts from the east on either side of the Danube toward Belgrade, to be reinforced, perhaps later, by Tito's forces from the west. He had expected to face only Third Ukrainian Front and is seemingly paralyzed, making no changes in his dispositions.

 

Belgrade Strategic Offensive Operation

 

7th SS Mountain Division Prinz Eugen soldiers using fleeing civilians for target practice Serbia 1943

 

Yugoslav partisans in Beograd October 1944"