On April 6, 1941, German troops along with Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian military units invaded the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In less than two weeks the Kingdom would be defeated, setting the stage for a bloody civil war that the occupying Axis forces desperately tried-and needed-to control. Based on years of research, this book provides a distinctive account of what happened in the relatively unknown and under-researched Yugoslavian theater of conflict in WW2. Based on the detailed diaries of Gottfried Winkler, a naïve patriotic teen from a small town in Saxony who is willingly drafted into the German Wehrmacht and sent to Yugoslavia for occupation duty. This is the story of an emerging adult struggling to keep a sense of youthful normalcy during war, balancing friendships and romance with his daily life in combat and trying to stay alive. But the book is more. Winkler's accounts are woven into the historical record, while personal interviews from his comrades and enemies that he fought against provide the reader with firsthand accounts of the horrors and humanity of common foot soldiers in WW2 Yugoslavia. Combined with an extensive number of photographs, some of which were taken by Winkler, the people, land, and war that the Axis and Allied fighters were exposed to is brought to life. Winkler's war-time travels are also re-traced in the 21st century to connect the past with the present, revealing that the scars and memories of WW2 are still present with the peoples and land that Winston Churchill coined the soft underbelly of Europe. AUTHOR: Brian R. Johnson is a professor at Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan. He holds a Ph.D. from Michigan State University. An author of several books and articles, this book reflects his life-long interest in WWII history. He and his family live in west Michigan.
