Yugoslavia in the Shadow of War Veterans and the Limits of State Building, 1903–1945

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, 1903–1921; 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 Habsburg war: ongoing conflicts and contested commemorations; 6. No man's land: the invalid and volunteer questions; Part III. Re-mobilization: 7. Authoritarianism and new war, 1929–1941; 8. 'The gale of the world', 1941–1945; Conclusion: brotherhood and unity; Bibliography; Index.

John Paul Newman is Lecturer in Twentieth-Century European History at Maynooth University, Ireland. He was a postdoctoral fellow at University College Dublin and a research fellow at the Imre Kertesz Kolleg in Jena. He is co-editor (with Julia Eichenberg) of The Great War and Veterans' Internationalism (2013).