In the BBC documentary The Death of Yugoslavia, which used archival footage, Slobodan Milošević, President of Serbia, is recorded stating that "I was against using the Yugoslav Army in Slovenia."

Following the death of Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito in 1980, underlying political, ethnic, religious, and economic tensions within Yugoslavia surfaced.

This was an existing but antiquated institution, unique to Slovenia, which was intended to enable the republic to form an ad hoc defence structure, akin to a home guard.

Between May and October 1990, some 21,000 Slovenian Territorial Defence and police personnel were secretly mobilised into the MSNZ command structure, of which the federal government was wholly unaware.

Tank columns could be trapped by destroying the lead and rear vehicles in favourable terrain – for instance, on a narrow mountain road where room for manoeuvre was limited – enabling the rest to be dealt with more easily.

[citation needed] Hit-and-run and delaying tactics were to be preferred and frontal clashes were to be avoided since in such situations the JNA's superior firepower would have been very difficult to overcome.

The JNA Chief of Staff, Colonel-General Blagoje Adžić, advocated a large-scale military operation to remove the Slovenian government and bring "healthy forces" to power in the republic.

His political superior, the Yugoslav defence minister, General of the Army Veljko Kadijević, insisted on a more cautious approach – essentially a show of force that would convince the Slovenian government to back down on its declaration of independence.

By this time, the Slovenian government had already put into action its plan to seize control of the republic's border posts and the international airport at Brnik.

[24] Heavy fighting broke out at Nova Gorica on the border with Italy, where the Slovenian special forces fired two Armbrust antitank rockets and 700 rounds from infantry weapons.

The Yugoslav Air Force carried out attacks at a number of locations across the country, most notably at Brnik Airport, where two Austrian journalists (Nikolas Vogel and Norbert Werner) were killed and four Adria Airways airliners were seriously damaged.

Three EC foreign ministers met with Slovenian and Yugoslav government representatives in Zagreb during the night of 28–29 June and agreed on a ceasefire plan, but this was not put into practice.

The JNA-held border crossings at Vrtojba and Šentilj also fell to the Slovenian TO, who seized the troops' weapons and tanks, providing a much-needed boost to their arsenal.

[29] The JNA 306th Light Air Defence Artillery Regiment's column retreated from its exposed position at Medvedjek and headed into the Krakovo Forest (Krakovski gozd) near the Croatian border.

The JNA Chief of Staff, General Blagoje Adžić, was furious and publicly denounced "the federal organs [which] continually hampered us, demanding negotiations while they [the Slovenians] were attacking us with all means.

Units from the JNA's Fourth Armoured Brigade attempted to move up from Jastrebarsko in Croatia but were beaten back near the border town of Bregana.

The Slovenian TO mounted successful attacks on border crossings at Šentilj, Gornja Radgona, Fernetiči and Gorjansko, overrunning them and taking a number of JNA troops prisoner.

The helicopter was seized by the Slovene military, but was deemed not suitable for the newly created air force and handed back to Belgrade on 13 August.

The Slovenian government insisted that the withdrawal should proceed on its terms; the JNA was not allowed to take much of its heavy weaponry and equipment, which was later either deployed locally or sold to other Yugoslav republics.

Video footage shows a small group of JNA soldiers standing or walking slowly with raised hands, holding up a white sheet in an apparent attempt to surrender.

However, the incident sparked renewed public debate after the footage was shown on Serbian TV station B92 in 2006, with many claiming that the soldiers were shot and killed by Slovenian TO troops and that Slovenia is trying to cover up the affair.

[38] Other reports identify three young soldiers as victims (Zoran Ješić, Goran Maletić and Antonio Šimunović) and claim that they were killed in the Holmec incident.

[34] The actions of Slovenia's forces were largely dictated by the military strategy devised some months before and were tightly integrated with an equally detailed media management plan.

An international media centre was established prior to the outbreak of conflict with Jelko Kacin designated to act as information minister and Slovenia's public face to the world.

The Slovenian government and media successfully presented the conflict to Western European audiences as a case of a "David versus Goliath" struggle between an emerging democracy and an authoritarian communist state, and the columns of Yugoslav tanks brought to mind the events of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 two years earlier.

On 30 June, Defence Minister General Kadijević suggested to the Yugoslav federal presidency a massive attack on Slovenia to break down the unexpectedly heavy resistance.

[41] According to the journalist Hermann Tertsch, who covered that war firsthand: The weak military deployment of the federal army had only two reasons, the external cosmetic, to claim that Belgrade defended its international borders.

On July 7, having collected properties and documents from the barracks, the Yugoslav army, in reality already pan-Serbian, left a Slovenia that Milosevic and his generals did not give a damn about.

Its poor performance in Slovenia and later in Croatia discredited its leadership – Kadijević resigned as defence minister in January 1992, and Adžić was forced into medical retirement shortly afterwards.

The Slovenian and Croatian governments were urged by the European Commission to freeze their declaration of independence for a period of three months, hoping to ease tension, to which Slovenia and Croatia agreed.