"Cold War Yugoslavia - would it have participated at all?" Topic

As the Warsaw Pact armies rumble over the North German Plains (WW3 – c.1985 wargame/campaign), heading towards Brussels and the Franco-Spanish border beyond, would non-aligned Yugoslavia have become embroiled in the conflict (either as a willing participant or otherwise) and how would the Yugoslavian armies have performed?

What might its objectives be?

I think it's highly unlikely that they would have joined either side, but if things bog down on the main front, is anyone going to roll through to open a new front?

Could make a decent fun three way campaign.

You could advance the break up of Yugoslavia by 10 years, as Soviet backed Serbs push for dominance over the other ethnic groups and self declared republics, whilst NATO backs the break away groups and deploys assets in support…..Italians,Greeks,Spaniards and US Marines? Open the southern flank on a different front…….

Hacketts Third World War starts in Yugoslavia, however outside of that scenario, there is little reason for it to be active theatre of operations.

If you want interesting southern front stuff, War Pac attacks on Greece and Turkey are interesting.

I was going to make reference to Hackett's book. Played a some awesome games based on his Yugoslavia scenario back in the 1980s.

I think Yugoslavia may have escaped the war by 1985, but if it had happened earlier, even by just a couple of years, I think the Soviet Union may have been more inclined to pass through there.

If it could have avoided the war, it would have. Who it might have sided with, I think would have been a matter of opportunity, given the situation at the time of commitment, internal stability, and the particular leadership at the time.

Yugoslavia of the 80s, if they saw any possibility of outside aggression, they expected it from the East. There was always that worry about "Russian tanks grouping at the border with Hungary, Romania or Bulgaria", we didn't worry about the West. I think Tito's version of Yugoslav nationalism would override the traditional sense of brotherhood with Mother Russia that some ethnic entities of the former Yuga harboured. We always thought we would give Russians a good licking.

I alway thought it was going to start there.

They'ld have probably joined in somewhere around when a guards tank army gets outside of Madrid.

On our Uni trip in 1986 the govt tour guide very much told us they were geared for a defensive war ( this was in the village where Tito was born – we were taken to the very small house and the shown the exact spot of his birthplace ). Every man had an Ak47 and the mountains had so many tunnels . I think they were thinking partisans again .
I remember vividly how much the Croatians hated the Serbs . A fact shown by a visit to the partisan belgrade vs dinamo zagreb game .
A deadly civil war was always more likely I guess than Yugoslavia fighting anyone else .