History
Gavrilo Princip's assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
of Austria, in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 triggered the start
of World War I. Most of the subsequent Balkan offensives occurred
near Belgrade. Austro-Hungarian monitors shelled Belgrade on
29 July 1914, and it was taken by the Austro-Hungarian Army
under General Oskar Potiorek on 30 November. On 15 December,
it was re-taken by Serbian troops under Marshal Radomir Putnik.
After a prolonged battle which destroyed much of the city, between
6 and 9 October 1915, Belgrade fell to German and Austro-Hungarian
troops commanded by Field Marshal August von Mackensen on 9
October 1915. The city was liberated by Serbian and French troops
on 5 November 1918, under the command of Marshal Louis Franchet
d'Espérey of France and Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia. Since
Belgrade was decimated as the front-line city, Subotica overtook
the title of the largest city in the Kingdom for a while; still,
Belgrade grew rapidly, regaining its position by the early 1920s.
After
the war, Belgrade became the capital of the new Kingdom of
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
in 1929. The Kingdom was split into banovinas, and Belgrade,
together with Zemun and Pan?evo, formed a separate administrative
unit.
During
this period, the city experienced faster growth and significant
modernisation. Belgrade's population grew to 239,000 by 1931
(incorporating the town of Zemun, formerly in Austria-Hungary),
and 320,000 by 1940. The population growth rate between 1921
and 1948 averaged 4.08% a year.[65] In 1927, Belgrade's first
airport opened, and in 1929, its first radio station began
broadcasting. The Pan?evo Bridge, which crosses the Danube,
was opened in 1935,[66] while "King Alexander Bridge"
over Sava was opened in 1934. The last Grand Prix motor racing
race before the outbreak of World War II took place around
the Belgrade Fortress and was followed by 75,000 spectators.
The winner was Tazio Nuvolari.
World
War II
Damage caused by the Nazi bombing.On 25 March 1941, the government
of regent Crown Prince Paul signed the Tripartite Pact, joining
the Axis powers in an effort to stay out of the Second World
War. This was immediately followed by mass protests in Belgrade
and a military coup d'état led by Air Force commander General
Du?an Simovi?, who proclaimed King Peter II to be of age to
rule the realm. Consequently, the city was heavily bombed
by the Luftwaffe on 6 April 1941, when up to 24,000 people
were killed.Yugoslavia was then invaded by German, Italian
, Hungarian, and Bulgarian forces
and suburbs as far east as Zemun, in the Belgrade metropolitan
area, were incorporated into a Nazi state, the Independent
State of Croatia. Belgrade became the seat of the Nedi regime,
headed by General Milan Nedi.
During
the summer and fall of 1941, in reprisal for guerrilla attacks,
Germans carried out several massacres on Belgrade citizens;
in particular, members of the Jewish community were subject
to mass shootings at the order of General Franz B?hme, the
German Military Governor of Serbia. B?hme rigorously enforced
the rule that for every German killed, 100 Serbs or Jews would
be shot. The resistance movement in Belgrade was led by Major
arko Todorovi lonely
from 1941 to his arrest in 1943.
Just
like Rotterdam, which was devastated twice, by both German
and Allied bombing, Belgrade was bombed once more during World
War II, this time by the Allies on 16 April 1944, killing
about 1,100 people. This bombing fell on the Orthodox Christian
Easter. Most of the city remained under German occupation
until 20 October 1944, when it was liberated by the Red Army
and the Communist Yugoslav Partisans. On 29 November 1945,
Marshal Josip Broz Tito proclaimed the Federal People's Republic
of Yugoslavia in Belgrade (later to be renamed to Socialist
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on 7 April 1963). Higher estimates
from the former secret police place the victim count of political
persecutions in Belgrade at 10,000.[dir]
|
