Military of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, from 1921 to 1941
Archival material of the Military of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, for the period from January 1921 to 1941, inclusive with the April War, represents a separate whole. The aforementioned archival material served as operational documentation to occupant forces. They used it, as such, first as on the Yugoslav battlefield, and afterwards they took it. What was returned after the Second World War was received without any formal documents, so it could not be determined what was returned, and what was not, since it was not known what the archival material contained.
This voluminous material (roughly about 600,000 to 700, 000 documents) was just placed in the boxes, and for the certain period of time nothing was done with it. Later, in order to process the history of the National Liberation War and review the situation of the Military of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and its failure in the April’s War in 1941, first the documents from 1938 to 1941 were arranged and registered. Besides, in lack of original documents, in order to partially shed light on the certain events of the April’s War in 1941, the statements given by political and military authorities of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia were collected regarding the military condition, political work and the events of the April’s War. Later, the action to arrange other military archives of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was launched.
The massive archival materials of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes/Yugoslavia, from January 1921 to April 1941, include mostly the peacetime archival materials of the Ministry of Army and Navy, Chief General-Staff, military and territorial bodies of all levels and various commands, troops and organizations outside of their composition.
In order to fill archival funds until the Second World War, besides the original material, microfilming of the archival materials was conducted in the country and abroad.
- inventory book 17 - Inventory book 17 has the archival materials of the Ministry of Army and Navy, commands units and institutions of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia from 1920 to 1941. The aforementioned inventory book has in total 1143 boxes of the archival materials.
- The aforementioned inventory book has also the data on the Military Council, Ministers Cabinet, General-Staff section and other sections activities, military control, the editors of “The Warrior“ magazine, the Rear Command activities, Air Force Headquarters in Zemun, Navy Headquarters in Zemun, engineer, cavalry and fortification HQs, military institutions, army districts, armies and others.
- personal data files - There are 52,000 personal data files of officers, NCOs and military employees of the Army of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The files are currently in process of inventory, as the first phase of their archival processing and arranging.
- inventory book 18 - Inventory book 18 consists of the archival materials and data on the camps and prisoners of the Army of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in Germany from 1941 to 1945. The aforementioned inventory book has in total 28 boxes of the arranged archival materials and 13 boxes of the disorganized archival materials with the data on the camps and prisoners lists.
- varia - The Military Archives have also a number of documents which by their origin and year of formation does not belong to the natural sequence of documents from the funds, but they date back to the previous periods and have been found as an Appendix or a part of the document within the particular fund. These parts of documents date back to 1715, 1719, 1833...