August 25 – November 18, 1991 · Eastern Slavonia Theater
August 25 – November 18, 1991
For 87 days, the baroque Danubian city of Vukovar endured the most sustained siege in Europe since World War II. Outnumbered Croatian defenders — many of them police officers and volunteers — held off tens of thousands of JNA troops and Serb paramilitary fighters, fighting street by street through a city reduced to rubble. The JNA expended more artillery ammunition on Vukovar than in any operation since the Second World War. When the city finally fell on November 18, Croatian defenders were promised safe passage; instead, hospital patients and wounded soldiers were taken to Ovčara farm on the city's outskirts and executed. The city was ethnically cleansed of nearly all its Croatian and other non-Serb residents.
Commanders