From Bulgaria, the advance guard of Colonel-General Ewald von Kleist's panzer group raced towards the city of Skopje in Yugoslav Macedonia, which was a key railway link between Belgrade and Greece. In one day German panzers overwhelmed the stunned Yugoslav border guards and were in Skopje. The Leibstandarte, which had been following behind the assault wave, now took over the lead on 9 April and drove west to link up with the Italians who had begun an advance eastwards from their positions in Albania. There was almost no opposition from the Yugoslav Army units in the area; all seemed to have dissolved in panic. The SS brigade then turned south and headed to the strategic Klidi Pass which guarded the border to Greece and where Australian troops were believed to be dug in. During the afternoon of 11 April the lead Leibstandarte battlegroup had their first contact with the Australian defenders.

A paper tiger

Farther to the north, the collapse of the Yugoslav Government and military command under the weight of the relentless bombing of Belgrade forced the Germans to accelerate their invasion plans. While German, Italian and Hungarian troops struck southwards, Colonel-General Georg Hans Reinhardt's XXXXI Panzer Corps was launched from its bases around Timisoara in Romania to capture Belgrade, with the Das Reich Division in the vanguard.

The Yugoslav Army was wracked by ethnic divisions. Some of its Croat soldiers openly defected to the Germans, and others deserted en masse. Agents sent by SD chief Reinhard Heydrich exploited these divisions and distributed arms to local ethnic Germans, who staged several sabotage operations to help the advancing Wehrmacht. German panzers and Stukas made easy work of the Yugoslav divisions. Soon the German columns converging on Belgrade were racing each other for the honour of capturing the Yugoslav capital.

The capture of Belgrade

Early on the morning of 12 April, an advance guard from Das Reich's reconnaissance battalion under Fritz Klingenberg approached Belgrade from the northeast. Klingenberg was anxious to enter the city, but the swollen River Danube was in his way. Using their initiative, the SS men soon commandeered a motor launch on the north bank of the river. Seven of the Das Reich men then crossed the Danube, and Klingenberg led them into the city. Soon after entering the city, they encountered a group of 20 Yugoslav soldiers, who without firing a shot surrendered. Klingenberg and his small team now proceeded to the German Embassy, where they unfurled a large swastika over it to declare the capture of the city. Two hours later, the mayor of Belgrade arrived at the embassy and surrendered the city to the Das Reich Division! Yugoslavia had held out for less than a week, and some 254,000 Yugoslav soldiers surrendered. In total the Germans suffered 558 casualties, including only 151 dead.

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