Guerrilla Nightmare: Luftwaffe Stukas at War Against Tito's Partisans in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945

摘要

The Balkan theater of World War Ⅱ was a small war in the midst of a grand conflict. Competing resistance groups, Dragoljub "Draza" Mihailovic's royalist Chetniks and Tito's Partisans, Communist resistance fighters, fought the Axis occupiers and their local supporters for four years with the help of Allied commandos and supplies, before largely unifying and linking up with the Red Army in late 1944. The Axis counterinsurgency morphed as Axis strength diminished and increasing support from the Allies emboldened the Partisans. In Guerrilla Nightmare: Luftwaffe Stukas at War Against Tito's Partisans in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945, German close air support (CAS) in support of Axis counter-insurgency operations is analyzed by focusing on the Luftwaffe's famed Junkers Ju 87 Stuka. The book's authors, Lovro Persen and Mario Raguz, are aviation enthusiasts each with several publishing credits, including a history of a German squadron in Yugoslavia. The book's thesis, that "from January 1943 to the end of 1944 Stukas were used with great success and were feared by the Partisans like no other German plane in the theatre," is not well supported by the text (21). Lavishly illustrated, Guerrilla Nightmare is a niche book that provides readers a narrow look at the aircraft's mission and role but needs better context and analysis to adequately analyze and frame the Stukas' impact.