On the Eastern Front of World War II, in November 1942, the German army executed Yugoslav patriots by hanging. In retaliation for the first partisan resistance, the German army carried out a massacre in the fall of 1941.

    On the Eastern Front of World War II, in November 1942, the German army executed Yugoslav patriots by hanging. The German invasion led to the collapse of Yugoslavia due to internal divisions. From 1941 to 1945, the occupying forces were torn apart by a civil war between the Yugoslav communists, Croatian fascists, Serbian royalists and the German occupation forces. At least one million people died.

   In the spring of 1941, the Wehrmacht occupied Yugoslavia, and the multi-ethnic state collapsed. After that, nationalist groups became the first partisan units in World War II. The partisans, a lightly armed militia, retreated to the mountainous regions and fought against the occupying German forces. In retaliation for the first partisan resistance actions, the Germans carried out a mass extermination in the autumn of 1941. The partisans refrained from large-scale resistance. The number of civilian victims increased considerably in the months that followed, due to the gang-hunting by the German SS in 1943. The comprehensive armed uprising of the partisans was declared after the occupying German forces had become exhausted and the general situation of the war had turned against them.

  The Axis powers' occupying forces - the German, Italian, Hungarian and Bulgarian armies - committed atrocities against the Yugoslav population. In retaliation for partisan attacks and resistance, they massacred large numbers of civilians and hostages. The most famous incident was the Kragujevac massacre by the German army, and the Waffen-SS unit of the Albanians killed more than 400 Orthodox Christians in Andrijevica. The Hungarian army's Novi Sad massacre killed between 3,000 and 4,000 civilians in the southern region of Bačka. In the Podum massacre by the Italian army, on July 12th 1942, the Italian occupying forces killed 91 Croatian civilians in the village of Podum in retaliation for a partisan attack.

    The partisan revenge was covered up, and many people who did not actively participate in the partisan movement and prisoners of war were arbitrarily punished, detained, interned, exiled, killed, and oppressed by being considered collaborators with the German army. The massacre of Yugoslavian fascist fighters in Bleiburg, and the massacre of the Gottscheer and Danube-Swabian ethnic minorities. Yugoslav partisans carried out the Foibe massacre against the Italian population in the autumn of 1943 and the spring of 1945. Even after the war, the area where the massacre took place was kept off-limits to the general public as a restricted military area.