The history of Serbia in the two World Wars is also a history of enormous sacrifice.
During the First World War, Serbia was attacked in 1914 by Austria-Hungary. The Serbian Army fought major battles at Cer and Kolubara, achieving victories despite facing a considerably stronger enemy.
In 1915, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria launched a massive offensive against Serbia. The Serbian Army and hundreds of thousands of civilians were forced to retreat through Montenegro and Albania during the winter. Thousands died from hunger, disease, exhaustion and exposure. Serbian military sources estimate that more than 20,000 soldiers died on the road to Skadar alone, while the total losses during the retreat were far greater.
The survivors were eventually evacuated to Corfu, where the Serbian Army was reorganized before returning to the battlefield. The Serbian Army later fought on the Salonika Front and participated in the liberation of Serbia in 1918.
The human cost was enormous. According to figures published by the Serbian Ministry of Defence, the Kingdom of Serbia lost approximately 1.245 million people, around 26% of its pre-war population.
Twenty-three years later, the Serbian people faced another world war.
In 1941, Yugoslavia was invaded and occupied. Serbian civilians were subjected to executions, expulsions, imprisonment and persecution in different parts of occupied Yugoslavia. In the territory of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), Serbs were among the principal groups targeted by the regime's persecution and mass violence.
The Jasenovac camp system became one of the most notorious sites of mass killing in occupied Yugoslavia. The Museum of Genocide Victims in Belgrade describes Jasenovac as the largest concentration-camp and killing-site complex on the territory of occupied Yugoslavia during the Second World War.
Serbian civilians were also among those killed in German occupation reprisals in Serbia. One of the most remembered crimes occurred in Kragujevac in October 1941, when German occupation forces carried out mass executions of civilians. The Museum of Genocide Victims identifies October 21 as the Day of Remembrance of Serbian Victims of the Second World War, commemorating these executions.
The story of the Serbian people in the two World Wars is therefore not only a story of armies and battles. It is also the story of millions of ordinary people caught in wars they did not choose — soldiers who died on distant battlefields, civilians who perished during occupations, families who were forced from their homes, and generations whose lives were permanently changed.
Their names and graves remain part of Serbia's historical memory.
They were not merely numbers in the history books. They were fathers, mothers, sons, daughters and children — people whose lives were lost in the most devastating conflicts of the twentieth century.