In Yugoslavia a coup inspired by opposition to that country's entering the Tripartite Pact deposes the government and declares 17 year old King Peter II sovereign of the country, effectively nullifying the government's joining the Axis.
The coup was dominated by Serbian officers of a nationalistic bent, and can be regarded as a military coup. Those who advocated the overthrow of the government, and who accomplished it, were aware that the result would surely be a German invasion. Hitler in fact ordered it that very day. The only senior officers in it were in the Yugoslavian air force.
The Yugoslavian military was large, numbering some 700,000 men in size, which may have caused those backing it to be able to convince themselves that Yugoslavia stood a chance against Germany, which was heavily committed as it was. Still, Germany's armed forces were comparatively enormous and combat hardened.
The coup would prove a fateful choice for the country, and indeed for the world.
On the same day Romania's military leader Ion Antonescu signed an anti Jewish law allowing for segregation of the country's Jewish population and the expropriation of its urban property. Therefore, on the same day Yugoslavia was being taken away from the Axis by is population, Romania was running towards it through its military leader. As we've already seen, Bulgaria had reluctantly signed the Tripartite Pact and German troops were already massing on its border with Greece.
While all of this history is well known, a person has to wonder what would have occurred if Yugoslavia, which only entered the Tripartite Pact with Germany reluctantly, had coordinated with Bulgaria and pressured Romania. If the southern Slavic nations had refused jointly to participate in German designs on Greece, brought about only because Italy was losing in its battle with that country, it would have posed a more difficult strategic problem for Germany. They likely would have solved it by invading those nations, of course, so perhaps things would have been no different.
In the Mediterranean a major naval engagement between the British and the Italians commences at Cape Matapan.
The United States leased British military installations in the Western Hemisphere for 99 years.
More of the events of World War Two on this day be read here.
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