This is the long-awaited second part of the author’s meticulously researched and scrupulously impartial study of the complicated and anguished history of Yugoslavia during the years of World War II. The previous volume dealt with the Chetniks, the resistance movement formed by officers of the defeated Yugoslav army who came to regard the Communist-led Partisans as their chief enemy, and who reached accords with the occupying powers—first with the Italians and then with the Germans. The present volume deals with the rule of the Axis powers in occupied Yugoslavia, along with the role of the other groups that collaborated with them—primarily the extremist Croatian nationalist organization known as the Ustashas.

The book begins by briefly describing the establishment of Yugoslavia in 1918 and its internal history during the interwar period. It then discusses the breakup of the state in April 1941, the annexation or occupation of parts of its territory by its neighbors, and the establishment by the Ustashas of the independent state of Croatia as a German-Italian quasi protectorate, focusing on its governmental policies and its problems with the Bosnian Muslims. The book also examines the role of religion during the occupation, the destruction of the Yugoslav Jewish community, and the economic exploitation of Yugoslav territory by the Axis powers. The work concludes by discussing the wartime population losses of the country and the ultimate fate of the collaborationist forces.

"The scholarly standard achieved by Jozo Tomasevich in his two volumes of "War and Revolution in Yugoslavia" and the thought of what he would have made of volume three of the series make his death a tragedy keenly felt even by those who never knew him." - Royal Military Academy Sandhurst

"Tomasevich succeeds again, in his final major work, in making solidly supported and reasonable claims in an environment that has long been defined by the instrumentalization and manipulation of historical claims. He restores faith in the enterprise of history by reviving a long-absent figure—the modest professional researcher hard at work." - Clark University

"This is a magnificent work of superb scholarship. No other book in any language so clearly presents and analyzes the aims and policies of the Axis in occupied Yugoslavia, as well as those of the various collaborators. . . . The need for such a book is greater than ever, as controversies over the past rage in the post-Yugoslav states." - Yale University