Yugoslavia in the Shadow of War: Veterans and the Limits of State Building, 19031945 [Paperback]

A study of the impact of the Great War on state and society in Yugoslavia during the interwar period.A study of the impact of the Great War on state and society in Yugoslavia during the interwar period. John Paul Newman examines its effects through the men who took part in the war, both those who served in the Serbian army and those who fought in the Austro-Hungarian army.A study of the impact of the Great War on state and society in Yugoslavia during the interwar period. John Paul Newman examines its effects through the men who took part in the war, both those who served in the Serbian army and those who fought in the Austro-Hungarian army.The Yugoslav state of the interwar period was a child of the Great European War. Its borders were superimposed onto a topography of conflict and killing, for it housed many war veterans who had served or fought in opposing armies (those of the Central Powers and the Entente) during the war. These veterans had been adversaries but after 1918 became fellow subjects of a single state, yet in many cases they carried into peace the divisions of the war years. John Paul Newman tells their story, showing how the South Slav state was unable to escape out of the shadow cast by the First World War. Newman reveals how the deep fracture left by war cut across the fragile states of 'New Europe' in the interwar period, worsening their many political and social problems, and bringing the region into a new conflict at the end of the interwar period.Introduction: liberation and unification; Part I. Ultima Ratio Regnum, the Coming of Alexander's Dictatorship: 1. All the king's men: civil-military relations in Serbia and Yugoslavia, 19031921; 2. A warriors' caste: veteran and patriotic associations against the state; 3. Resurrecting Lazar: modernization, medievalization and the Chetniks in the 'classical south'; Part II. In the Shadow of War: 4. In extremis: death throes and birth pains in the Habsburg south Slav lands; 5. Refractions of the Habsbl3‡