Description
WWII Nazi German Army Officer's Dagger with an unusal feature. A Yugoslavian officer's dagger blade by Carl Eickhorn. This piece can easily be explained because of the history of Yugoslavia and the Germanic people after the Country was invaded. The dagger is in excellent condition with a roughly, 25cm long, drop forged steel construction, double engraved, nickel/silver plated, stiletto style blade with a flat central ridge and a full length, including the hilt, of roughly, 37cm. Maker marked to "Carl Eickhorn Solingen". The original brown leather washer is still intact. The dagger has a cast alloy, nickel/silver plated, crossguard, ferrule, and pommel. The obverse crossguard features the embossed, army style national eagle with outstretched wings, clutching a wreathed, canted swastika in its talons and a plain reverse. The ferrule and pommel both feature embossed repeating oak-leaf patterns. The dagger has a molded, white, celluloid grip with the correct, diagonally angled ribbing. The dagger comes with its original, tooled, magnetic sheet metal construction, nickel/silver plated scabbard with a random pebbled pattern to both the obverse and reverse and smooth side panels. Both of the sweated on scabbard bands with a repeating, horizontally embossed oak-leaf pattern and the hanger suspension rings are intact. The single, dome headed, throat retaining screw is also intact. The beautifully engraved blade features on the obverse the Royal monogram of King Peter II of Yugoslavia surrounded by a floral pattern and to the reverse a matching floral pattern with the makers name of Carl Eickhorn. Having steadily fallen within the orbit of the Axis during 1940 after events such as the Second Vienna Award, Yugoslavia followed Bulgaria and formally joined the Tripartite Pact on 25 March 1941. Senior Serbian air force officers opposed to the move staged a coup d'état and took over in the following days. These events were viewed with dismay in Berlin, and as Germany was preparing to help its Italian ally in its war against Greece anyway, the plans were modified to include Yugoslavia as well.World War II in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia began on 6 April 1941, when the country was swiftly conquered by Axis forces and partitioned between Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and their client regimes. Shortly after Germany attacked the USSR on 22 June 1941, the communist-led republican Yugoslav Partisans, on orders from Moscow, launched a guerrilla liberation war fighting against the Axis forces and their locally established puppet regimes, including the Axis-allied Independent State of Croatia (NDH) and the Government of National Salvation in the German-occupied territory of Serbia. This was dubbed the National Liberation War and Socialist Revolution in post-war Yugoslav communist historiography. Simultaneously, a multi-side civil war was waged between the Yugoslav communist Partisans, the Serbian royalist Chetniks, the Axis-allied Croatian Ustae and Home Guard, Serbian Volunteer Corps and State Guard, Slovene Home Guard, as well as Nazi-allied Russian Protective Corps troops. Both the Yugoslav Partisans and the Chetnik movement initially resisted the Axis rule. However, after 1941, Chetniks extensively and systematically collaborated with the Italian occupation forces until the Italian capitulation, and thereon also with German and Ustae forces. The Axis mounted a series of offensives intended to destroy the Partisans, coming close to doing so in the Battles of Neretva and Sutjeska in the spring and summer of 1943. Despite the setbacks, the Partisans remained a credible fighting force, with their organisation gaining recognition from the Western Allies at the Tehran Conference and laying the foundations for the post-war Yugoslav socialist state. With support in logistics and air power from the Western Allies, and Soviet ground troops in the Belgrade offensive, the Partisans eventually gained control of the entire country and of the border regions of Trieste and Carinthia. The human cost of the war was enormous. The number of war victims is still in dispute, but is generally agreed to have been at least one million. Non-combat victims included the majority of the country's Jewish population, many of whom perished in concentration and extermination camps (e.g. Jasenovac, Stara Gradika, Banjica, Sajmite, etc.) run by the client regimes or occupying forces themselves. The Ustae regime in Croatia (mostly Croats, but also Muslims and others) committed genocide against Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croats. The Chetniks (mostly Serbs, but also Montenegrins and others) pursued genocide against Muslims, Croats and Pro-Partisan Serbs, and the Italian occupation authorities pursued violence and ethnic cleansing (Italianization) against Slovenes and Croats. The Wehrmacht carried out mass executions of civilians in retaliation for resistance activity (e.g. the Kragujevac massacre and the Kraljevo massacre). SS Division "Prinz Eugen" massacred large numbers of civilians and prisoners of war. Hungarian occupation troops massacred civilians (mostly Serbs and Jews) during a major raid in southern Backa, under the pretext of suppressing resistance activities. Finally, during and after the final stages of the war, Yugoslav communist authorities and Partisan troops carried out reprisals, including the deportation of the German and Italian populations, forced marches and execution of tens of thousands of captured soldiers and civilians (predominantly Croats associated with the NDH, but also Slovenes and others) fleeing their advance (the Yugoslav Partisan pursuit of Nazi collaborators), atrocities against the Italian population in Istria (the foibe massacres) and purges against Serbs, Hungarians and Germans associated with the fascist forces.Axis invasion and dismemberment of YugoslaviaTwo of the principal constituent national groups, Slovenes and Croats, were not prepared to fight in defense of a Yugoslav state with a continued Serb monarchy. The only effective opposition to the invasion was from units wholly from Serbia itself. The Serbian General Staff was united on the question of Yugoslavia as a "Greater Serbia" ruled, in one way or another, by Serbia. On the eve of the invasion, there were 165 generals on the Yugoslav active list. Of these, all but four were Serbs. On 6 April 1941 the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was invaded from all sides by Germany, Italy, and their ally Hungary. Belgrade was bombed by the German air force (Luftwaffe). The war, known in the post-Yugoslavia states as the April War, lasted little more than ten days, ending with the unconditional surrender of the Royal Yugoslav Army on 17 April. Apart from being hopelessly ill-equipped when compared to the German Army (Heer), the Yugoslav army attempted to defend all borders, a tactic that resulted in thinly spreading the scarce resources available. Additionally, large numbers of the population refused to fight, instead welcoming the Germans as liberators from government oppression. As this meant that each individual ethnic group would turn to movements opposed to the unity promoted by the South Slavic state, two different concepts of anti-Axis resistance emerged: the royalist Chetniks, and the communist-led Partisans. The terms of the surrender were extremely severe, as the Axis proceeded to dismember Yugoslavia. Germany annexed northern Slovenia, while retaining direct occupation over a rump Serbian state. Germany also exercised considerable influence over the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) proclaimed on 10 April, which extended over much of today's Croatia and contained all of modern Bosnia and Herzegovina, despite the fact that the Treaties of Rome concluded between the NDH and Italy on 18 May envisioned the NDH becoming an effective protectorate of Italy. Mussolini's Italy gained the remainder of Slovenia, Kosovo, coastal and inland areas of the Croatian Littoral and large chunks of the coastal Dalmatia region (along with nearly all of the Adriatic islands and the Bay of Kotor). It also gained control over the Italian governorate of Montenegro, and was granted the kingship in the Independent State of Croatia, though wielding little real power within it; although it did (alongside Germany) maintain a de facto zone of influence within the borders of the NDH. Hungary dispatched the Hungarian Third Army to occupy Vojvodina in northern Serbia, and later forcibly annexed sections of Baranja, Backa, Medimurje, and Prekmurje.The Bulgarian army moved in on 19 April 1941, occupying nearly all of modern-day North Macedonia and some districts of eastern Serbia which, with Greek western Thrace and eastern Macedonia (the Aegean Province), were annexed by Bulgaria on 14 May. The government in exile was now only recognized by the Allied powers. The Axis had recognized the territorial acquisitions of their allied states.
