CONTRIBUTIONS TO RESEARCH INTO DIPLOMACY OF THE KINGDOM OF YUGOSLAVIA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WORLD WAR II

Abstract

The paper highlights some of the issues related to the development and operation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and diplomatic network of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Yugoslavia during the World War II, spanning a period before the winds of war reached the Kingdom (1939–1941) and one in the wake of the April War in 1941, when the Government of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia operated in exile. It was an extremely complex and meaningful mission lying ahead of the Kingdom’s diplomatic network, which not only worked to promote the occupied Kingdom and its internationally recognised government-in-exile, but also to collect information from the occupied and fragmented state, while assisting thousands of Yugoslav citizens captured and interned in the Third Reich and Italy.