World War II and the national question: the origins of the autonomous status of Vojvodina in Yugoslavia

This essay investigates the origins of the autonomous status of Vojvodina in post-war Serbia and Yugoslavia. It charts the formation of national and regional consciousness among Vojvodina’s Serbs, Germans and Hungarians, from Habsburg times to World War II. It then argues that Nazi Germany’s racial war radicalised national tensions in Vojvodina. Nazi defeat resulted in the brutal expulsion of Vojvodina’s Germans, making Serbs for the first time a majority. Consequently, the region’s claim to autonomous status after the war clashed with the national-territorial principle applied to federalism by the victorious Communist Party of Yugoslavia, causing frequent friction and instability