What actually happened: Between World War I and World War II, the Balkans simmered, but never quite boiled over into a war. Most of the hatreds that we saw boil over in Yugoslavia over the last few years were there in the 1920's and 1930's. Croatian and other separatists sometimes made accommodations with the Yugoslav government, and sometimes waged campaigns of terrorism against it. Things calmed down a little in the late 1930's. Hitler wanted agricultural goods and raw materials from Turkey and the Balkans, and supported the status quo in order to make sure the flow didn't get interrupted. The Italian invasion of Greece eventually upset those plans and the Germans invaded and occupied Yugoslavia in early 1941.

The Germans then set up a brutal puppet state in Croatia, which fought on the German side through the rest of the war.

What might have happened: Yugoslavia could have boiled over at essentially any time during the 1930's. Let's say it boils over in early February 1939. Some spark sets off Croatian/Serbian violence in the civilian population. Army units in Croatia split along ethnic lines, and a Yugoslav civil war is on. The war quickly starts pulling in other countries.

Mussolini's Italy has long supported Croatian nationalists, though that support has been muted in the late 1930's due to pressure from Hitler. Mussolini has not given up on the Croatians though, and this opportunity looks way too good to pass up. Italian weapons quickly show up in Croatian hands, and Italian 'volunteers' soon follow. Bitter and confused fighting goes on throughout much of northern Yugoslavia. Both sides are hampered by the lingering Balkan winter, but the Yugoslav army is hurt a bit more because it has a hard time taking advantage of its advantage in mobility and firepower. Hungary and Bulgaria both have border disputes with Yugoslavia, and they watch the fighting with an eye to grabbing off bits of territory if they get the chance.

The Consequences: Italian troops land in Albania and make the country an Italian protectorate. As the civil war escalates, Italian troops move into disputed border areas between Italy and the now-isolated area of Slovenia in northern Yugoslavia. Slovenian nationalists promptly declare a breakaway state. The Germans are torn between their need to keep Italy as an ally and the fact that the Italians are disrupting their plans for the Balkans. Hitler and Mussolini meet to try to defuse the mounting tensions between the Axis partners.

Turkey has long feared Italian expansion in the Balkans. The Turks have been quietly working with France and England to counter Italian influence. Now they begin making military preparations and run a series of large-scale military exercises near their border with Bulgaria, attempting to keep Bulgaria from intervening in the Yugoslav civil war.

The French are not willing to stand by and let the Italians have things their way in the Balkans. French arms start flowing to the Yugoslav army. The Soviets also begin sending arms. Both countries make threatening but ambiguous statements about Italian activities. Mussolini doesn't want war with either France or the Soviets. The Italian army is just starting to rearm with modern weapons and won't be in any shape to take on a great power until 1942 at the most optimistic estimate. Mussolini begins to quietly scale down Italian activities in the Yugoslav civil war and look for a negotiated settlement.

Unfortunately, the Yugoslav army picks that point to score a series of minor but embarrassing and highly publicized triumphs over Italian 'volunteers'. Mussolini sees Italian honor at stake and quickly escalates. By early March, nearly 50,000 Italian troops are involved in the fighting, along with a large air force contingent. The French respond by sending the Yugoslavs several dozen obsolete light tanks and some nearly obsolete aircraft (Dewoitine 510 high-wing monoplanes), while trying to figure out a more adequate response.

Hitler has no desire to get sucked into the Balkans, but he has even less desire to see French troops there. He puts heavy pressure on the Italians and Yugoslavs to reach a settlement. Things are spiraling out of anyone's control though. Serb/Croatian fighting spreads to the very ethnically mixed area of Bosnia. Fighting also starts in areas near the Hungarian border with large Hungarian and German minorities. That pulls in the Hungarians. In mid-March, the Bulgarians are pulled in. That brings in Turkey on the side of Yugoslavia. Romania has long been allied with Yugoslavia against Hungary, and the Romanians suspect Hungary of trying to get the large Hungarian minority in Romania to revolt, but Germany manages to coerce the Romanians into staying out of the war for the time being. The Romanians continue to contemplate a preemptive strike though.

At this point in our time-line, the Germans occupied what was left of Czechoslovakia. In this time-line, Hitler looks at that option but decides that ending the Balkan fighting before the French or Soviets get involved takes a higher priority. But how does he do that without starting a war with England and France that he is not ready for yet? That question becomes more pressing as the French send several dozen 'volunteer' pilots, some of their most modern fighter planes, and a large military mission to Yugoslavia.

The Italians respond by bringing in their latest fighter planes, flown by some of the best Italian veterans of the Spanish Civil War. The aircraft are reasonably evenly matched, but the Italians are more experienced and run up a lopsided and highly publicized score against the French. That turns out to be a mistake. The French have no intention of being bested by the Italians. They send more planes and two hastily organized light divisions to Yugoslavia. The presence of the French troops encourages the Romanians to jump into the spreading war on the side of Yugoslavia. They attack across the Hungarian border.

At this point, both Hitler and Mussolini want the Balkan fighting to end. Mussolini is not willing to give up his gains though. Events in the Balkans point out the danger of a wider war, as French and Italian troops clash repeatedly in Yugoslavia, with the French usually claiming tactical victory.

Meanwhile, the Turks are winning a series of increasingly decisive victories against the Bulgarians. The Romanians have chosen their time well, taking advantage of Hungary's commitment to the Yugoslav conflict. The Romanians also have a larger population and better equipment. The Romanians win several quick victories. The Yugoslavian Civil War itself has become a muddle almost as complicated as the one in our time-line fifty-odd years later. The Croatians and their Italian allies control most of the Croatian ethnic areas, and some parts of Bosnia. Refugees from several ethnic groups struggle to avoid the fighting and get to safety.

The Soviets have been watching this whole conflict with an eye to both threats and opportunities. They aren't happy about the French or Italian troops in the Balkans. They are even less enthusiastic about the Turks advancing into traditionally pro-Russian Bulgaria. The Soviets begin saber rattling, both in Europe and on the Soviet/Turkish border in the Caucasus. The Turks aren't particularly intimidated. The French have mobilized several divisions and have moved three of them to the Balkans. With the apparent French support, the Turks continue their offensive. The Soviets provoke a series of clashes along the Soviet/Turkish border in the Caucasus. Those clashes grow to involve division-sized forces with tanks and aircraft. The French sell the Turks a few dozen R35s and some obsolescent fighter aircraft to bolster their forces. The French tanks fare poorly against the Soviets.

The Italians and Croatians have cut off several Yugoslav army units in predominately Serb areas of Bosnia. The French spearhead a Yugoslav drive to link up with those units. That sets up a confrontation between division-sized units of the French and Italian armies. The French simply roll over the Italians. They have an enormous advantage in firepower, and the Italians have nothing to match a French tank battalion's R35 tanks. The Italians still hold an advantage in the air, because the French don't have enough planes or pilots to successfully challenge them yet.

It is now mid-June 1939. The war is about to get much bigger. The Romanians look to be well on their way toward crushing the Hungarian army. The Hungarians reluctantly ask the Germans for help. Hitler tries to strong-arm the Romanians, but the growing French presence makes the Romanians over-confident and they try to crush the Hungarian army to present Hitler with a fait accompli. That turns out to be a mistake. The Germans intervene and give the Romanian army a taste of blitzkrieg. In less than two weeks the Romanian army is shattered, with remnants chased back across the Hungarian border. The fighting gets more complicated as Romania's large Hungarian minority revolts. The French are shocked by the abrupt Romanian defeat, but they aren't intimidated by it. France is in something of a war fever, with popular enthusiasm for war with Italy sometimes forcing the government to act less prudently than it would like to. War with Germany is another matter, but the French can't let Romania go down without a fight. The French army is already partially mobilized. More troops are mobilized and more French divisions head to the Balkans. The French threaten war if the German offensive continues.

The British have been very unhappy about the possibility of being pulled into a world war over the Balkans. They intervene and try to patch together a deal. Events overtake that effort. A French light partially mechanized cavalry division moving up toward the old Yugoslav/Hungarian border runs into a German panzer division guarding the Hungarian southern flank. The French get their first taste of German tanks and Stukas. They panic and are routed with very heavy casualties. The Germans move into northern Yugoslavia, but are ordered to halt by Hitler. The French move another division to the area, and the clashes escalate. A very good French infantry division with an attached battalion of R35 tanks takes on a German panzer division. The result is a very bloody stalemate. The French take over 2000 casualties while the Germans take about half that many, but lose over 40 percent of their tanks.

The French parliament is demanding war. The mounting number of body bags from the Balkans dims that fervor a bit. French army commander Gamelin does not want all out war if it can possibly be avoided. The French are not ready for war with Germany, especially in terms of their airforce.

British Prime Minister Chamberlain manages to convene a peace conference. The Germans are surprisingly eager for that conference, as are the Italians. The Italians are at the end of their economic resources, while the German airforce is essentially out of aviation gas and has used up nearly eighty percent of its bombs. (In our time-line the Germans ran out of aviation gas except for captured stocks and had used 60% of its bombs by the end of the Polish campaign, and that was after seizing huge amounts of Czech ammunition.)

The Germans are operating precariously on small quantities of captured fuel, and are in no condition for further warfare in the immediate future. The French and English don't know that though, and Hitler drives a hard bargain. On July 8, 1939, the Great Powers come to an agreement. German troops withdraw from most of the parts of Romania they have captured, but the Romanians lose some mainly Hungarian-speaking territory, though not all of the predominantly Hungarian-speaking areas. Yugoslavia is forced to recognize an independent Croatia, though that state is much smaller than the one the Croatians and Italians wanted. A country of Slovenia appears on the world map. The rest of Yugoslavia's borders are set as they were pre-war.

With the French/German fighting apparently over for now, Stalin hastily de-escalates the fighting with Turkey. He would be happy to take advantage of a French/German war to grab some territory, but he has no desire to take on France and England at this time.

While the Great Powers are happy enough to avoid total war, some of the Balkan parties to the war are not. There are still a lot of Croatians inside Yugoslavia, and the new Croatian state has no intention of letting that situation continue indefinitely. There are a considerable number of Serbs inside the new Croatia, and the Yugoslavs have no intention of letting that continue indefinitely either. Both the Hungarians and Romanians are unhappy and are itching for a rematch, though they have to rebuild their armies first. Low-level fighting continues in large areas of the Balkans between governments and nationalist guerrillas caught on the wrong sides of the new borders.

The Germans and French look at the results of their two clashes carefully. The French conclude (rightly) that their partially mechanized light cavalry units are not particularly useful as presently constituted. They work to beef up anti-aircraft and anti-tank capabilities of those units. The French are also appalled at the collapse of morale among their men when faced with the combination of airpower and tanks. They begin extensive training in infantry anti-tank tactics and try to accelerate their acquisition of light anti-aircraft guns. The German dive-bombers make a deep impression on the French, and they hastily begin trying to get a dive-bomber into production.

The French are gratified that their infantry tactics stopped the panzers in their tracks, but they are appalled at the casualties that resulted, and especially at the apparent ratio of French to German casualties-something on the order of four French casualties for every German one if you count both battles-though the Germans lost more equipment. The French held the battlefield, and got a nice selection of damaged, but in some cases repairable German armor. That armor is quietly shipped to France, where French experts officially voice their contempt for it, while quietly trying to incorporate lessons learned into the next generation of French tanks.

The French are also appalled at the speed of the German advance against the Romanians. They carefully study that campaign and while officially denying that something similar could be done against the first class army like the French, they quietly beef up tank production, and increase the number of planned French mechanized and armored divisions.

The Germans are gratified by their easy victory over the Romanians, but not thrilled by the fact that they were stopped by the French. A German school of thought that advocates heavily armored infantry accompanying tanks on the French model begins to gain more prominence than it had in our time-line. Fundamentally though, blitzkrieg has to work if Germany is to expand.

So where do we go from here? Obviously World War II is not going to happen exactly on schedule. It's already July 1939 and the Germans have yet to take over Czechoslovakia, much less begin to threaten Poland. Based on the experience of German recovery after the Polish campaign, it will take at least two months before the Germans can build back up enough expendables for another campaign. That would push any further German actions into mid-September 1939. Do things just go pretty much as they did in our time-line, but six months or so later? Or will this time-line begin to diverge more and more radically from ours? Would you like for me to explore this further in future issues?