Bombing of Belgrade (1944)

Operation Retribution (German: Unternehmen Strafgericht), also known as Operation Punishment, was the April 1941 German bombing of Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia, in retaliation for the coup d'état that overthrew the government that had signed the Tripartite Pact. The bombing occurred in the first days of the German-led Axis invasion of Yugoslavia during World War II. The Royal Yugoslav Army Air Force (VVKJ) had only 77 modern fighter aircraft available to defend Belgrade against the hundreds of German fighters and bombers that struck in the first wave early on 6 April. Three days prior, VVKJ Major Vladimir Kren had defected to the Germans, disclosing the locations of multiple military assets and divulging the VVKJ's codes. Three more waves of bombers attacked Belgrade on 6 April, and more attacks followed in subsequent days. The attacks resulted in the paralysis of Yugoslav civilian and military command and control, the widespread destruction of Belgrade's infrastructure, and many civilian casualties. The ground invasion had begun a few hours earlier, and air attacks were also made on VVKJ airfields and other strategic targets across Yugoslavia. Among the non-military targets struck during the bombing were the National Library of Serbia, which burned to the ground with the loss of hundreds of thousands of books and manuscripts, and the Belgrade Zoo. In retaliation for the invasion of Yugoslavia, which surrendered on 17 April, the Royal Air Force carried out two bombing raids on Sofia, the capital of Axis Bulgaria, which later took part in Yugoslavia's partition. The senior Luftwaffe officer responsible for the bombing, Generaloberst Alexander Löhr, was captured by the Yugoslavs at the end of the war and was tried and executed for war crimes, in part for his involvement in the bombing of Belgrade. Kren was arrested in 1947 on unrelated charges of war crimes stemming from his subsequent service as the head of the Air Force of the Independent State of Croatia. He was extradited to Yugoslavia to face trial, convicted on all counts, and executed in 1948. A monument erected in Zemun in 1997 commemorates the airmen killed in Belgrade's defence. The bombing has been dramatised in literature and film.

Belgrade ( bel-GRAYD, BEL-grayd; Serbian: Београд / Beograd, lit. 'White City', pronounced [beǒɡrad] (listen); names in other languages) is the capital and largest city in Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers and the crossroads of the Pannonian Plain and the Balkan Peninsula. Nearly 2.5 million people live within the administrative limits of the City of Belgrade. It is the third largest of all cities on the Danube river. Belgrade is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Europe and the world. One of the most important prehistoric cultures of Europe, the Vinča culture, evolved within the Belgrade area in the 6th millennium BC. In antiquity, Thraco-Dacians inhabited the region and, after 279 BC, Celts settled the city, naming it Singidūn. It was conquered by the Romans under the reign of Augustus and awarded Roman city rights in the mid-2nd century. It was settled by the Slavs in the 520s, and changed hands several times between the Byzantine Empire, the Frankish Empire, the Bulgarian Empire, and the Kingdom of Hungary before it became the seat of the Serbian king Stefan Dragutin in 1284. Belgrade served as capital of the Serbian Despotate during the reign of Stefan Lazarević, and then his successor Đurađ Branković returned it to the Hungarian king in 1427. Noon bells in support of the Hungarian army against the Ottoman Empire during the siege in 1456 have remained a widespread church tradition to this day. In 1521, Belgrade was conquered by the Ottomans and became the seat of the Sanjak of Smederevo. It frequently passed from Ottoman to Habsburg rule, which saw the destruction of most of the city during the Ottoman–Habsburg wars. In the period after the Serbian Revolution, Belgrade again was named the capital of Serbia in 1841. Northern Belgrade remained the southernmost Habsburg post until 1918, when it was attached to the city, due to former Austro-Hungarian territories becoming part of the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes after World War I. Belgrade was the capital of Yugoslavia from its creation in 1918 to its dissolution in 2006. In a fatally strategic position, the city has been battled over in 115 wars and razed 44 times, being bombed five times and besieged many times.Being Serbia's primate city, Belgrade has special administrative status within Serbia. It is the seat of the central government, administrative bodies, and government ministries, as well as home of almost all of the largest Serbian companies, media, and scientific institutions. Belgrade is classified as a Beta-Global City. The city is home to the Clinical Centre of Serbia, one of the hospital complexes with the largest capacity in the world, the Church of Saint Sava, one of the largest Orthodox church buildings, and the Štark Arena, one of the indoor arenas with the largest capacity in Europe. Belgrade hosted major international events such as the Danube River Conference of 1948, the first Non-Aligned Movement Summit (1961), the first major gathering of the OSCE (1977–1978), Eurovision Song Contest (2008), as well as sports events such as the first FINA World Aquatics Championships (1973), UEFA Euro (1976), Summer Universiade (2009) and EuroBasket three times (1961, 1975, 2005).

The Fall of Belgrade (Serbian Cyrillic: Пад Београда, German: Der Fall von Belgrad) was a military engagement between the joint armies of Austria-Hungary and German Empire against Serbia in October 1915, during the Serbian Campaign of 1915 of World War I. After the fighting between 5 and 16 October 1915 Belgrade was finally occupied by Austro-Hungarian Third Army and German Eleventh Army, while successfully establishing two bridgeheads to serve as base for further operations of the Central Powers armies in the Balkans Theatre.

Nikola Spasić Endowment Building in Belgrade, 33, Knez Mihailova Street, was built in 1889 and it is a сultural monument of exceptional importance.

The University of Priština (Serbian: Универзитет у Приштини, romanized: Univerzitet u Prištini) is a public university in Kosovo with a temporary seat in North Mitrovica. It is the post-secondary institution that emerged after the disestablishment of the Serbian-language University of Pristina as a result of the Kosovo War. Despite its official name, it is also referred to as the University of Kosovska Mitrovica after its temporary relocation to North Mitrovica in 2001.

The University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy (Serbian: Филозофски факултет Универзитета у Београду), established in 1838 within the Belgrade Higher School, is the oldest Faculty at the University of Belgrade. It is a modern social science education institution, adapting to current educational trends worldwide.The Faculty building is located at the meeting point of the Čika-Ljubina with the Knez Mihailova Street, the main pedestrian and shopping zone in Belgrade, Stari Grad. The Faculty employs 255 teaching staff and enrolls approximately 5000 undergraduate and graduate students within ten departments: Department of Philosophy, Department of Classics, Department of History, Department of Art History, Department of Archaeology, Department of Ethnology and Anthropology, Department of Sociology, Department of Psychology, Department of Andragogy and Department of Pedagogy.

The University of Belgrade (Serbian: Универзитет у Београду / Univerzitet u Beogradu) is a public university in Serbia. It is the oldest and largest modern university in Serbia. Founded in 1808 as the Belgrade Higher School in revolutionary Serbia, by 1838 it merged with the Kragujevac-based departments into a single university. The university has around 97,700 enrolled students and over 4,800 academic staff members. Since its founding, the university has educated more than 378,000 bachelors, around 25,100 magisters, 29,000 specialists and 14,670 doctors. The university comprises 31 faculties, 12 research institutes, the university library, and 9 university centres. The faculties are organized into four groups: social sciences and humanities; medical sciences; natural sciences and mathematics; and technological sciences. On the prestigious Shanghai Ranking (ARWU), the University of Belgrade ranks between 401st and 500th place, according to the most recent (2018) global ranking. In 2014, it ranked 151–200, specifically in the areas of mathematics and physics.

The Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Latin: Academia Scientiarum et Artium Serbica, Serbian Cyrillic: Српска академија наука и уметности, САНУ, Serbian Latin: Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti, SANU) is a national academy and the most prominent academic institution in Serbia, founded in 1841 as Society of Serbian Letters (Serbian: Друштво србске словесности, ДСС, romanized: Društvo srbske slovesnosti, DSS). The Academy's membership has included Nobel laureates Ivo Andrić, Leopold Ružička, Vladimir Prelog, Glenn T. Seaborg, Mikhail Sholokhov, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and Peter Handke as well as, Josif Pančić, Jovan Cvijić, Branislav Petronijević, Vlaho Bukovac, Mihajlo Pupin, Nikola Tesla, Milutin Milanković, Mihailo Petrović-Alas, Mehmed Meša Selimović, Danilo Kiš, Dmitri Mendeleev, Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, Jacob Grimm, Antonín Dvořák, Henry Moore and many other scientists, scholars and artists of Serbian and foreign origin.

The Faculty of Philology is one of the constituent schools of the University of Belgrade. The school's purpose is to train and educate its students in the academic study or practice in linguistics and philology.

Studentski Trg (Serbian Cyrillic: Студентски Трг), or Students Square, is one of the central town squares and an urban neighborhood of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. It is located in Belgrade's municipality of Stari Grad. In the Classical Antiquity, area of the modern square was the center of Singidunum, Roman precursor of modern Belgrade.

Stari Grad (Serbian Cyrillic: Стари Град, pronounced [stâːriː ɡrâd]) is a municipality of the city of Belgrade. It encompasses some of the oldest sections of urban Belgrade, thus the name (‘’stari grad’’, Serbian for “old city”). Stari Grad is one of the three municipalities that occupy the very center of Belgrade, together with Savski Venac and Vračar.

Ilija M. Kolarac Endowment (Serbian: Задужбина Илије М. Коларца), also known as the Kolarac People's University Building, is at 5 Students' Square in the heart of Belgrade. The building is a monument of a great cultural and historical importance and as such was declared as the immovable cultural property.