Yugoslav accession to the Tripartite Pact in the context of "Yugoslav coup d'état"

The Tripartite Pact, also known as the Berlin Pact, was an agreement between Germany, Italy, and Japan signed in Berlin on 27 September 1940 by, respectively, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Galeazzo Ciano, and Saburō Kurusu (in that order) and in the presence of Adolf Hitler. It was a defensive military alliance that was eventually joined by Hungary (20 November 1940), Romania (23 November 1940), Slovakia (24 November 1940), Bulgaria (1 March 1941), and Yugoslavia (25 March 1941). Yugoslavia's accession provoked a coup d'état in Belgrade two days later. Germany, Italy, and Hungary responded by invading Yugoslavia. The resulting Italo-German client state, known as the Independent State of Croatia, joined the pact on 15 June 1941.

The Tripartite Pact was, together with the Anti-Comintern Pact and the Pact of Steel, one of a number of agreements between Germany, Japan, Italy, and other countries of the Axis powers governing their relationship.

Dragiša Cvetković (Serbian Cyrillic: Драгиша Цветковић; 15 January 1893 – 18 February 1969) was a Yugoslav politician active in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He served as the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia from 1939 to 1941. He developed the federalization of Yugoslavia through the creation of the Banovina of Croatia via the Cvetković–Maček Agreement with Croat leader Vladko Maček. He signed the Yugoslav accession to the Tripartite Pact on 25 March 1941. Two days later, on 27 March, a group of officers carried out a military coup, and arrested Dragiša Cvetković and other ministers. German authorities arrested him on two occasions and took him to Banjica concentration camp. He fled on 4 September 1944 for Bulgaria. He spent the rest of his life in Paris.

He previously served as mayor of Niš. On 25 September 2009, the regional court in Cvetković's hometown of Niš rehabilitated him from charges laid against him by the Yugoslav government in 1945.

The Yugoslav Army (Serbo-Croatian: Jugoslovenska vojska, JV, Југословенска војска, ЈВ), commonly the Royal Yugoslav Army, was the principal ground force of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. It existed from the establishment of Yugoslavia in December 1918 until its surrender to the Axis powers on 17 April 1941. Aside from fighting along the Austrian border in 1919 and 1920 related to territorial disputes, and some border skirmishes on its southern borders in the 1920s, the JV was not involved in fighting until April 1941 when it was quickly overcome by the German-led invasion of Yugoslavia.

Shortly before the invasion, Serbian officers of the Yugoslav General Staff, encouraged by British Special Operations Executive personnel in Belgrade, led a coup d'état against Prince Paul of Yugoslavia and Dragiša Cvetković for adhering to the Tripartite Pact. Beyond the problems of inadequate equipment and incomplete mobilization, the Royal Yugoslav Army suffered badly from the Serbo-Croatian schism in Yugoslav politics. Yugoslavian resistance to the Axis invasion collapsed overnight, primarily due to a large part of the non-Serb population, Croats in particular, being unwilling to offer resistance. In its worst expression, Yugoslavia's defenses were badly compromised on 10 April 1941, when some of the units in the Croat-manned 4th and 7th Armies mutinied, and a newly formed Croatian government hailed the entry of the Germans into Zagreb the same day.