Liberal Forces in Twentieth Century Yugoslavia: Memoirs of Ladislav Bevc spans 80 years of his professional and political life: from the early years of his childhood in the large family of a civil servant, to his studies in Vienna and the interruption of his professional career by military service at the Eastern and Western front under the detested Austrian flag, to a flourishing career in the liberated homeland of Yugoslavia. Born in Skocijan, Slovenia, he graduated as a civil engineer from the Technical University in Vienna. In World War I, he served on the front in Russia and France. Following the war, Ladislav Bevc focused his life on politics, civic organizations, and the engineering profession. In Ljubljana, he served as a city councilman and was active in civic and academic affairs. He helped establish a new University and resisted Communist subversion in the Sokol Patriotic Gymnast Association. Following the German invasion in World War II, he joined the resistance movement of General Dragoljub Mihajlovich, which led to encounters with the Gestapo and eventual political emigration. In 1949, he immigrated to California, where he remained active in the efforts to liberate Yugoslavia from the Communists and rescued his family, who had been held hostage. In the free world, he organized the Slovenian liberal émigrés in the Slovenian Democratic Party and was instrumental in rebuilding the Yugoslav Sokol in the Free World. He practiced civil engineering in the United States, where he was elected Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers. He died on November 29, 1988.

This is a study of the early writings of Virginio Gayda (1885-1944), a talented but amoral Italian journalist whose career spanned two world wars. A keen observer, prolific writer and propagandist during his stint as the newspaper La Stampa’s special correspondent in Habsburg Vienna, Gayda lent his considerable skills to promote an aggressive foreign policy. No one did more than he to poison relations between the Italian and Yugoslav peoples. His is the story of a respected journalist who chose an ultranationalist path to fascism and international fame. Not uninfluenced by rank careerism and material reward he forsook his roots to embrace the antisemitic “race” laws of 1938 and Italy’s disastrous partnership with Nazi Germany.

A study of the impact of the Great War on state and society in Yugoslavia during the interwar period. John Paul Newman examines its effects through the men who took part in the war, both those who served in the Serbian army and those who fought in the Austro-Hungarian army.

The term "Yugoslavia" first appeared in an article in the newspaper Slovenija in Ljubljana on Friday, October 19, 1849. The author of the article declared that he was interested in politics, but only in the literary unification of Yugoslavs within the Austro-Hungary Empire. With ongoing conflicts and disparate forms of nationalism in and around historical Yugoslavia as its backdrop, Yugoslavia without Yugoslavs for the first time addresses the history and idea of a united Yugoslavia in and during which a true "Yugoslav" identity never really came into being . Following a series of wars and uprisings from 1875 onwards, the first nation-state of Southern Slavs, established after World War I, became the "Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes" -- a competing nationalistic blender that would go through failure, revival and transformation through the concept of "Yugoslavia".

In the spring of 1941, when Slovenia was invaded by Germany, Italy, and Hungary, Slovenes faced at best assimilation, and at worst deportation or extermination. Still, a significant number of Slovenes would eventually collaborate with the Axis powers. Why were they so ready to work with their invaders, and why did the occupiers permit this collaboration? Gregor Joseph Kranjc investigates these questions in To Walk with the Devil, the first English-language book-length account of Slovene-Axis collaboration during the Second World War. Examining archival material and post-war scholarly and popular literature, Kranjc describes the often sharp divide between Communist-era interpretations of collaboration and those of their émigré anti-Communist opponents. Kranjc situates this divide in the vicious civil war that engulfed Slovenia during its occupation – a conflict that witnessed at its bloody climax the execution of over 10,000 Slovene collaborators and opponents of the new Communist Yugoslav regime in the wake of liberation. To Walk with the Devil makes clear how these grisly events continue to ripple through Slovene society today.

The gripping, vividly told story of the largest prisoner of war escape in of the Second World War – organized by an Australian bank clerk, a British jazz pianist and an American spy. In August 1944, the most successful POW escape of the Second World War took place - 106 Allied prisoners were freed from a camp in Maribor, in present-day Slovenia. The escape was organized not by officers, but by two ordinary soldiers: Australian Ralph Churches (a bank clerk before the war) and Londoner Les Laws (a jazz pianist by profession), with the help of U.S. intelligence officer Franklin Lindsay. The American was on a mission to work with the partisans: a group who moved like ghosts through the Alps, ambushing and evading Nazi forces. Told here for the first time is the story of how these three men came together – along with the partisans – to plan and execute the escape is told here for the first time. The Greatest Escape, written by Ralph Churches’ son Neil, takes us from Ralph and Les’s capture in Greece in 1941 and their brutal journey to Maribor, with many POWs dying along the way, to the horror of seeing Russian prisoners starved to death in the camp. The book uncovers the hidden story of Allied intelligence operations in Slovenia, and shows how Ralph became involved. We follow the escapees on a nail-biting 160-mile journey across the Alps, pursued by German soldiers, ambushed and betrayed. And yet, of the 106 men who escaped, 100 made it to safety. Thanks to research across seven countries, The Greatest Escape is no longer a secret. It is one of the most remarkable adventure stories of the last century.

Smiling Slovenia's collection of articles and essays on Slovenia's current political scene boldly declares its dissenting view from the political mainstream beginning with a declaration of a dozen prominent intellectuals presenting their views of Slovenia's political situation. Topics range from recent Slovenian history, Slovenia's role in the breakup of Yugoslavia, foreign policies, including liaisons with the Islamic terrorists to modern-day Slovenian-American relations and Slovenia's admission into the European Union. This book shows that Slovenia, although outwardly westernized, is still deeply rooted in its communistic legacy. However, prominent intellectuals and democratic politicians strive to hold Slovenia to the highest European cultural, ethical, political, legal, and economical standards in public life - a goal that may take several generations to achieve. Some authors observe that transparency achieved by the present conservative coalition government has already established a state of affairs where return to the old ways of a crypto government would be impossible even if the leftist parties returned to power.