Prince Paul of Yugoslavia was accordingly informed by Baron von Altendorf.
Two weeks after the European Alliance secretly approved the ‘Yugoslav peacekeeping action’ as it came to be known, the ‘occupation’ of Yugoslavia was complete. It had started only twenty four hours earlier, as Prince Paul was giving his opening speech at his partition conference.
Informed of the reason for inviting the multinational force into the country, most of the population more or less accepted the position, even welcomed it in many cases, as the foreign troops were friendly and free spending compared to their own countrymen. The more extreme elements — which included most of the self-styled ‘local leaders’ — suffered impotent rage as the realised they had no real control over events and had been outmanoeuvred by their Prince.
All attendees at the conference had been given copies of the provisional division of the country, and invited to make urgent but reasoned representations for any changes. They were warned that outrageous, frivolous, or nonsensical suggestions would simply be rejected out of hand and they should not waste anybody’s time with such ideas.
Most of the petty or self-promoting politicians soon became resigned to an acceptance of the newly imposed fait accompli. It was a done deal. What could they do?
All members of the Alliance had readily agreed on the need for intervention in this dysfunctional country. Indeed, Field Marshall Rommel had been pleasantly surprised by their enthusiastic compliance with his operational directives.
Each member country was required to send a number of troops roughly in proportion to their country’s population. Most countries had exceeded this, being eager for their troops to gain experience, even it wasn’t actually war.
At the insistence of Rommel, the German contribution to the peacekeeping force included a unit of soldiers of Czech extraction, and one of Slovaks. This was designed to demonstrate that they were considered to be truly integrated with their German speaking comrades. A golden opportunity to show unity.
Prince Paul was now regent of Serbia only. An Act of dissolution of the state of Yugoslavia had already been approved and signed by the Yugoslav Regency Council. Peter, the son of the previous assassinated king, would soon be crowned Peter II of Serbia. The other six newly created countries had been presented with draft constitutions of their own for them to use or not use, as they saw fit. The Yugoslav monetary reserves had been deposited with the German Reserve Bank prior to being distributed between the seven countries on a proportional basis. Interim Prime Ministers had been appointed. They now had what they had wished for — independence. They were told to ‘Get on with it’.
Prince Paul thought of the old maxim ‘Be careful what you wish for. You might get it’!
Rommel humorously described himself as ‘the temporary Yugoslav dictator’ while acting as the Supreme Commander of the Alliance forces. There had been demonstrations, unrest, outbreaks of violence, and even disorganised attempts at invasion of each other’s territories by different disaffected groups. All had been dealt with firmly and with the minimum of casualties.
The new borders were unceasingly patrolled, forcing the different ethnic people’s own interim governments to start issuing their own passports for those wishing to travel. Thus, in practice, each acknowledging the existence of the other new countries.
There had been a spate of murders from the start, but under the firm hand of the European Alliance these had quickly declined in number. The worst atrocity that happened, involved a British corvette patrolling the Adriatic coast as part of the Alliance forces. At dawn one day they had come across a motor torpedo boat flying no flag, with its guns trained on an old rusty Croatian fishing vessel. On sighting the British ship, the MTB hurriedly recalled its sailors from aboard the fishing boat, pumped numerous shells into it, machine gunned the people on deck, and swiftly departed. Much too fast for the relatively slow corvette to catch it.
The British stopped to help the stricken vessel which was sinking fast. They recovered only one wounded boy. Twenty three others were dead. They were guilty of being Montenegrin nationals taking passage from Croatia to Montenegro.
Three months after the commencement of the operation, Rommel started to withdraw troops back to their home countries. By the end of November all Alliance troops were out of what used to be Yugoslavia. Casualties among Alliance personnel amounted to twenty two killed and fifty eight injured, one of whom had been unlucky enough to be run over by an ambulance from his own side!
There was no doubt in anybody’s mind that without the peacekeeping force there would have been carnage throughout what had been Yugoslavia. The peacekeeping operation was considered to be an unqualified success. A ‘Yugoslavia’ medal was awarded by the Alliance Supreme Command to each of the Alliance personnel who had taken part.
Various European countries started establishing embassies, consulates, or some sort of diplomatic presence, in the new seven small countries, once the situation settled down. Some of them, including Germany, even arranged loans or other forms of aid to them, to stimulate their economies and promote stability. Things appeared to be working.
Prince Paul was content with what he had achieved. As long as the new countries governed themselves tolerably well, he believed he had just eliminated the sole remaining danger of war in Europe outside of the Soviet Union.
After winning the French Grand Prix in commanding style three weeks earlier, the Mercedes-Benz team were supremely confident of winning today’s German Grand Prix. They were running two new cars this year, instead of the pre-war cars used in 1944. However, as a gesture to Germany’s highly revered Field Marshall von Brauchitsch, his nephew Manfred had been given one of the older cars to drive. The Field Marshall was there to watch.
The other German cars, the Auto-Unions, were the same old cars. No real development work, only tinkering, had been done of these since 1939. It was obvious that they were no longer the force they had previously been before the War.
Alfa Romeo fielded a new and very fast car, driven once again by the immortal Nuvolari. Maserati had two new cars entered, both of which proved to be fast in the practice sessions.
Three hours after the race started, the results were a surprise to many people. Mercedes were once again first and second, but one of their new cars driven by Caracciola, had suffered from mechanical problems and retired. It was Manfred von Brauchitsch who had followed Lang into second place.
An even bigger surprise was the old man, (by grand prix racing standards), Nuvolari, bringing the Alfa Romeo across the finishing line in third place in front of the Auto Unions. There were red faces at Auto union. The Maseratis displayed reliability but not enough speed, and ended in sixth and seventh places.
The first British Grand Prix since 1938 was over. A huge crowd of enthusiasts had been there in the rain to watch. Amazingly the results were identical to those of the German Grand Prix held two weeks earlier. The only difference was that no third Mercedes had been entered, so it was Lang and Caracciola in first and second places.
Everyone considered it sporting of Auto Union to continue to enter their now elderly cars, but did they have any plans for development? Auto Union made no comment.
Winston Churchill and Sir Anthony Eden were having an informal meeting about Indian Independence. Following his talk with the German Foreign Minister in February, the partition plan had been hurriedly re-evaluated and belatedly changed to separate what was to be Muslim Pakistan in the west, from Muslim Bengal, (or Bangladesh as the Bengalis were thinking of calling it), in the east.