Invasion of Yugoslavia

05:30, out of Bulgaria

On 6 April 1941 the Luftwaffe began bombing Belgrade and Yugoslav airfields while German ground forces opened the invasion of Yugoslavia.

At 05:30 Germany's XL Panzer Corps crossed from Bulgaria into southern Yugoslavia. By evening its spearheads had reached the area east of Kumanovo and Kočani; by 7 April a German advance guard had entered Skopje, cutting important Yugoslav-Greek communications.

Italy also attacked Yugoslavia that day.

Two countries at once

German forces simultaneously invaded northeastern Greece from Bulgaria, attacking the Metaxas Line, while other columns moved through southern Yugoslavia toward central Macedonia.

Within about a week German forces had occupied Thrace and eastern and central Macedonia. Greek troops and the British, Australian and New Zealand W Force opposed them.

Two things the headline gets wrong

Hungary provided territory for German operations but its own forces did not enter Yugoslavia on 6 April; Hungary joined the campaign on 11 April.

Calling 6 April the start of the Battle of Greece erases the war Greece had been fighting against Italy since October 1940, from Albania. What began that day was the German invasion.

The trigger was the 27 March coup that overthrew the Yugoslav government which had signed the Tripartite Pact; Hitler then ordered Yugoslavia treated as an enemy and demanded its rapid military destruction.