Belgrade under the bombs

The coup of 27 March had made Hitler furious: he had sworn to 'destroy Yugoslavia' and to strike its capital 'with implacable harshness.' Belgrade, a city of some 350,000 inhabitants, was in the days that followed swollen by thousands of people who had come in from the surroundings for the Orthodox Easter festivities, and public rumour offered reassurance: the city was said to have been declared open, and therefore spared.

Our Belgraders lived through these days of uncertainty between patriotic exaltation — Hitler had been defied — and a muffled anguish at the announced invasion. The city's anti-aircraft defences were derisory, the Yugoslav air force scattered.

At dawn on 6 April 1941, without a declaration of war, the Luftwaffe unleashed Operation 'Punishment' (Strafgericht): waves of bombers swept over Belgrade. For the inhabitants, the question was immediate and without a good answer: try to flee the city by roads already jammed and strafed; huddle in cellars and makeshift shelters devoid of any serious protection; or reach the suburbs and countryside between waves, hoping to escape the successive raids.