Short history thread: #OnThisDay Operation Retribution (Unternehmen Strafgericht) took place: Nazi Germany & its allies bombarded and then invaded Yugoslavia for refusing to side with them in WWII. 1/8

My granpa Major Petar Radjenovic was an airman in the Royal Yugoslav Air Force; he sortied German tank columns but as the war was lost they were ordered to take their fleet to Greece and join the RAF. His Dornier Do17 light bomber got downed by German flak but he survived 2/8

Granpa's wing commander Major Dusan Milojevic (pictured left) however made it to Greece, then evacuated to Egypt with the RAF and eventually joined the U.S. Air Force. He and 40 other Yugoslav airmen were taken to the U.S. to train as B-24 Liberator crews 3/8

The training finished in 1943; 4 Liberator bombers were turned over by President Roosevelt (pictured seated in front of the aircraft) to the U.S. Air Force Yugoslav combat unit at Bolling Field. "Remember always that we are comrades in arms," he said at the ceremony. 4/8

The Yugoslav Detachment crossed the Atlantic to attack enemy targets in Greece,Italy & Bulgaria, before turning to Germany. Major Milojevic, whose own home had been bombed 3 years earlier, was shot down by the Luftwaffe in his Liberator23 while bombing Berlin on Dec 24, 1944 5/8

My grandpa Petar meanwhile fled captivity, became a partisan commander and eventually liberated his hometown (pictured on a horse) on November 13, 1944, unaware at the time that his old commander and crew got killed in the skies over Germany. 6/8

How things changed in mere 3 years: the Luftwaffe officer responsible for the 1941 bombing of Yugoslavia, Generaloberst Alexander Löhr, was captured by the partisans and executed for war crimes. A superpower dismantled with the help of people from a remote region it conquered 7/8

And 79 years later, courtesy of these improbable twists and turns of history, here I am happily living in Berlin, as peaceful, prosperous and carefree place as any. 8/8