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Yugoslav People's Liberation War
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| Yugoslav Front of WWII | ||||||||
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| Part of World War II | ||||||||
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| Combatants | ||||||||
Allies (Comintern): Yugoslav Partisans Soviet Union |
Axis Powers:
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Allies: Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland |
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| Commanders | ||||||||
| Josip Broz Tito |
many | Draža Mihailović |
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~600,000 - ~1,700,000 |
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The Yugoslav Front of World War II, also known as the Yugoslav People's Liberation War (Serbo-Croat: Narodnooslobodilački rat, Народноослободилачки рат, Slovenian: Narodno-osvobodilna borba), was fought in what was the Kingdom of Yugoslavia before World War II and in what became the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia after the war. The war against occupation in Yugoslavia was fought from 1941 to 1945 between native Yugoslav anti-occupation forces and the forces of the Axis Powers.
The native Yugoslav anti-occupation forces were divided into two guerilla armies: on one side were the Yugoslav Partisans (communist People's Liberation Army), and on the other, the Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland (also known as Royalist Chetniks). Both participated in the struggle against the occupiers and fought a civil war against each other.
The Yugoslav Partisans, under the command of Josip Broz Tito, primarily fought against the German, Italian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Chetnik and collaborationist forces. Drawing on a cadre of experienced fighters from the Spanish Civil War to train troops and on communist ideology to win support that crossed national lines, they steadily gained power during the struggle, winning recognition from the Allies and the government-in-exile as the Yugoslav legitimate fighting force. Eventually they prevailed against all of their opponents as the official army of the newly-founded Democratic Federal Yugoslavia.
The Royalist Chetniks, under the command of General Draža Mihailović cooperated with the Partisans briefly at first, but mostly fought independently against both them and the Germans. Although they helped deliver a number of downed Allied pilots to safety, on a number of other occasions they sided with the Axis forces against the Partisans.[1] Ethnically they were predominantly Serb, and in some regions committed widespread atrocities against non-Serb civilians with the intent of ethnic cleansing.[2] They also suffered from internal divisions serious enough that battles broke out between different factions.
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From 6 April 1941, German, Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian armies invaded Yugoslavia from all sides and the Luftwaffe bombed Belgrade. The Axis victory was swift and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia surrendered unconditionally in only 11 days on 17 April 1941. There are several reasons that the Yugoslav Royal Army collapsed so quickly: The army's attempt to defend all the borders managed to spread thin the limited resources available. Few armies in Europe were as modern and as well equipped as the German army (Wehrmacht). The Yugoslavs, like most nations, were not prepared for the terror bombing unleashed by the Germans on civilian population centers. The Yugoslav army reflected some of the divisions within the nation as a whole and some units refused to fight.
Yugoslavia was subsequently divided amongst Germany, Hungary, Italy and Bulgaria, with most of Serbia being occupied by Germany. The Croatian fascist leader Ante Pavelić took the opportunity to declare an Independent State of Croatia. The Germans set up a puppet state in Serbia. The Serbian Government of National Salvation, headed by Milan Nedić was also known as Nedic's Serbia.
In April 1941, after the surrender of the Yugoslav Royal Army, some of the remaining Yugoslav soldiers organized the Yugoslav Royal Army in the Fatherland to fight the German occupation. This new army was organized in the Ravna Gora district of western Serbia under Colonel Draža Mihailović. Mihailović's forces, Royalist Chetniks, were almost entirely ethnic Serbs. He directed his units to arm themselves and await his orders for the final push. Mihailović avoided actions which he judged were of low strategic importance.
Between 1941 and 1943, the Chetniks had the support of the Western Allies. In 1942, TIME Magazine, featured an article which boasted of the success of Mihailović's Chetniks and heralded him as the sole defender of freedom in Nazi-occupied Europe. The Chetniks became famous for saving downed Allied pilots. However, Tito's Partisans fought the Germans as well during this time. Both Tito and Mihailović had a bounty of 100,000 Reichsmarks offered by Germans for their heads.
Throughout World War II, the Royalist Chetniks were faced with two main enemies: On one side was the German occupiers and on the other side were the ideologically opposite Communist Partisans. While remaining mortal enemies of the Germans and the Ustaše, the Chetniks were known for making clandestine deals with the Italians and some of the other occupying and quisling forces.
The Yugoslav Partisans and the People's Liberation Army fought both a guerilla campaign against the Axis occupiers and a civil war against the Chetniks and the Ustaše. The Partisans enjoyed gradually increasing levels of support. People's committees were organized to act as civilian governments in areas of the country liberated by the Partisans. In places, even limited arms industries were set up.
At the very beginning, the Partisan forces were relatively small, poorly armed, and without any infrastructure. But they had two major advantages over other military and paramilitary formations in former Yugoslavia: the first and most immediate advantage was a small but valuable cadre of Spanish Civil War veterans. Unlike some of the other military and paramilitary formations, these veterans had experience with a modern war fought in circumstances quite similar to those found in World War II Yugoslavia. Their other major advantage, which became more apparent in later stages of war, was in Partisans being founded on communist ideology rather than ethnicity. Therefore Partisans could expect at least some levels of support in almost any corner of the country, unlike other paramilitary formations limited to territories with Croat or Serb majority. This allowed their units to be more mobile and fill their ranks with a larger pool of potential recruits.
The Axis forces were quite aware of the Partisans in Yugoslavia. They tried to destroy the Partisans with numerous minor offensives. There were also seven major anti-Partisan Offensives specifically aimed at the destruction of all Partisans in Yugoslavia. These major offensives were typically combined efforts by the German Wehrmacht, the German SS, the Fascist Italians, the Ustaše, the Croatian Home Guard, the Serbian Volunteer Corps, the Serbian State Guard, the Bulgarians, and the Hungarians. The Royalist Chetniks also agreed to participate against the Partisans. The major offensives included two larger efforts: Fall Weiss (Plan White) and Operation Schwarz (Operation Black). These were known in the Yugoslav annals as the 4th Offensive (Battle of Neretva) and the 5th Offensive (Battle of Sutjeska).
The seven major offensives against the Yugoslav Partisans are as follows:
- First anti-partisan offensive in western Serbia against the Republic of Užice, from September to November 1941.
- Second anti-partisan offensive took place in eastern Bosnia in January 1942, with the partisan troops forced to retreat over mount Igman next to Sarajevo.
- Third anti-partisan offensive, an offensive against partisan forces in eastern Bosnia, Montenegro, Sandžak and Herzegovina in spring 1942. Mistakenly identified by some sources as the battle of Kozara in summer 1942.
- Fourth anti-partisan offensive, also known as Fall Weiss, spanning the area between western Bosnia and northern Herzegovina and culminating in the partisan retreat over the Neretva river, from January to April 1943.
- Fifth anti-partisan offensive, also known as the Sutjeska offensive or Operation Schwartz, a complete encirclement of partisan forces in southeastern Bosnia and northern Montenegro in May and June 1943.
- Sixth anti-partisan offensive, a series of operations undertaken by the Wehrmacht and the Ustaše after the surrender of Italy in an attempt to secure the Adriatic coast in autumn 1943 and winter 1944.
- Seventh anti-partisan offensive, the final attempt against the core of the resistance movement in western Bosnia in spring 1944, including Operation Rösselsprung, an unsuccessful German airdrop on the town of Drvar directed against Tito personally, on 25 May 1944.
Later in the conflict the Partisans were able to win the moral, as well as limited material support of the Allies. Until then, the Allies had supported Yugoslav General Draža Mihailović's Royalist Chetnik forces. But the Allies were finally convinced of who was really doing the fighting against the Axis in the region by many military missions dispatched to both the Partisans and the Chetniks during the course of the war.
From 28 November to 1 December 1943, during the Teheran Conference the Partisans received official recognition as the legitimate national liberation force by the Allies. Subsequently the Allies set up the RAF Balkan Air Force under the influence and suggestion of Brigadier-General Fitzroy MacLean. The aim of this air force was to provide increased supplies and tactical air support for Tito's forces.
In January 1944, Tito's forces unsuccessfully attack Banja Luka. But, while Tito is forced to withdraw, Mihajlović and his forces were noted by the Western Press for their lack of activity.[3]
On 16 June 1944, the Tito-Šubašić agreement between Partisans and the Royal Government was signed on the island of Vis. The document called on all Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs to join the Partisans. The Partisans were recognized by the royal government as Yugoslavia's regular Army. Mihajlović and many Chetniks refused to answer the call.
From 30 March to 8 April 1945, Colonel Dragoljub Mihailović's Chetniks mounted a final attempt to establish themselves as a credible force fighting the Axis in Yugoslavia. The Chetniks fought a combination of Croatian Ustaša and Croatian Home Guard forces in the Battle on Lijevča Field. This battle was fought near Banja Luka in what was then the Independent State of Croatia. The battle ended in victory for the Ustaša-Home Guard forces and in defeat for the Chetniks.
In August 1944, the Romanian government quit the war. Bulgaria declared war on Germany and its allies on 10 September and the weak divisions sent by the Axis Powers to invade Bulgaria were easily driven back. In Macedonia, the Bulgarian troops, surrounded by German forces and betrayed by high-ranking military commanders, fought their way back to the old borders of Bulgaria. Three Bulgarian armies (some 455,000 strong in total) entered Yugoslavia in late September 1944 and moved from Sofia to Niš and Skopje with the strategic task of blocking the German forces withdrawing from Greece. Southern and eastern Serbia and Macedonia were liberated within two months and the 130,000-strong Bulgarian First Army continued to Hungary. Concurrently, with Allied air support and assistance from the Red Army, the Partisans turned their attention to Nedić's Serbia. The area under Nedić had seen relatively little fighting since the fall of the Republic of Užice in 1941. On 20 October, the Red Army and the Partisans liberated Belgrade after a joint operation. At the onset of winter, the Partisans effectively controlled the entire eastern half of Yugoslavia—Serbia, Vardar Macedonia, Montenegro—as well as most of the Dalmatian coast. The Wehrmacht and the Ustaše fortified a front in Syrmia that held through the winter 1944-45. To raise number of Partisans Tito has declared amnesty for all members of quisling forces which will change sides before 31 December 1944.
On 20 March 1945, the Yugoslav Army launched a general offensive in the Mostar-Višegrad-Drina sector. With large swaths of Bosnian, Croatian and Slovenian countryside already under Partisan guerilla control, the final operations consisted in connecting these territories and capturing major cities and roads.
For the general offensive, Josip Broz Tito allegedly had a force of about 800,000. His force was organized into four armies: 1st Army commanded by Peko Dapčević, 2nd Army commanded by Koča Popović, 3rd Army commanded by Kosta Nađ, and 4th Army commanded by Petar Drapšin. In addition, Tito had eight independent corps (II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, IX, and X).
Against Tito and his People's Liberation Army, was German General Alexander Löhr. Lohr was the Commander-in-Chief of Army Group E. This army group had seven army corps (XV Mountain, XV Cossack, XXI, XXXIV, LXIX, and LXXXXVII). These corps included seventeen divisions (1st Cossack, 2nd Cossack, 11th, 41st, 104th, 22nd, 181st, 7th SS, 373rd Croat, 392nd Croat, 237th, 188th, 438th, 138th, 14th SS Ruthenian, and Stefan Division). In addition to the seven corps, the Axis had naval forces to defend the coast, strong police forces to secure the rear, and roughly twenty divisions of local Croatians and Serbians. The Croatians included Ustaše and Croatian Home Guard units. There were even some remnants of the Serbian State Guard, large amounts of Chetniks and the Serbian Volunteer Corps from Nedić's Serbia.
Bihać was liberated by the Yugoslav Army the same day that the general offensive was launched. The 4th Army, under the command of Petar Drapšin, broke through the defenses of the XV Cossack Corps. By 20 April, Drapšin liberated Lika and the Croatian Littoral, including the islands, and reached the old Yugoslav border with Italy. On 1 May, after capturing the former Italian possessions of Rijeka and Istria from the German LXXXXVII Corps, the Yugoslav 4th Army beat the Allies to Trieste by one day.
On 5 April, the Yugoslav 2nd Army, under the command of Koča Popović, forced a crossing of the Bosna River, captured Doboj, and reached the Una River. On 8 May, along with units of the Yugoslav 1st Army, the 2nd Army captured Zagreb.
On 6 April, the II Corps, the III Corps, and the V Corps of the People's Liberation Army took Sarajevo from the German XXI Corps.
On 12 April, the Yugoslav 3rd Army, under the command of Kosta Nađ, forced the Drava. The 3rd Army then fanned out through the Podravina, reached a point north of Zagreb, and crossed the old Austrian border with Yugoslavia in the sector of Dravograd. The 3rd Army closed the ring around the enemy forces when its advanced motorized detachments linked up with detachments of the 4th Army in Carinthia.
Also on 12 April, the Yugoslav 1st Army, under the command of Peko Dapčević penetrated the fortified front of the German XXXIV Corps in Syrmia. By 22 April, the 1st Army had smashed the fortifications and was advancing towards Zagreb. After taking Zagreb with the Yugoslav 2nd Army, both armies advanced in Slovenia.
On 2 May, the German capital city, Berlin, fell. On 7 May 1945, the Germans surrendered unconditionally and the war in Europe officially ended. The Italians had quit the war in 1943, the Bulgarians in 1944, and the Hungarians earlier in 1945.
On 9 May, Maribor and Ljubljana were captured by the Partisans, and General Alexander Löhr, Commander-in-Chief of Army Group E was forced to sign the total surrender of the forces under his command at Topolšica, near Velenje, Slovenia, on Wednesday May 9. Only the quislings remained.
From 10 May to 15 May, the People's Liberation Army continued to face resistance from Ustaše, Domobranci and other collaborationist diehards throughout the rest of Croatia and Slovenia.
The Battle of Poljana was the last battle of World War II in Europe. It started on Monday May 14, ending on Tuesday May 15, 1945 at Poljana, near Prevalje in Slovenia. It was the culmination and last of a series of battles between Yugoslav partisans and a large (in excess of 30,000) mixed column of Wehrmacht soldiers together with Croatian Ustaše, Slovenian Domobranci (members of Slovensko domobranstvo) and other collaborators who were attempting to retreat to Austria.
On 8 March 1945, a coalition Yugoslav government was formed in Belgrade with Tito as Premier and Ivan Šubašić as Foreign Minister. King Peter II of Yugoslavia agreed to await a referendum before returning from exile.
In early May, the remnants of the Serbian State Guard, the Serbian Volunteer Corps, the Croatian Home Guard, the Ustaše, and the XVth Cossack Cavalry Corps surrendered to British forces.
On 5 May, in the town of Palmanova (50 km northwest of Trieste), between 2,400 and 2,800 members of the Serbian Volunteer Corps surrendered to the British. On 12 May, about 2,500 additional Serbian Volunteer Corps members surrendered to the British at Unterbergen on the Drava River.
From 11 May to 12 May, British troops in Klagenfurt, Austria, were harassed by arriving forces of the People's Liberation Army. In Belgrade, the British ambassador to the Yugoslav coalition government handed Tito a note demanding that the Yugoslav troops withdraw from Austria.
On 15 May, Tito placed Yugoslav forces in Austria under Allied control. A few days later he agreed to withdraw them. By 20 May, Yugoslav troops in Austria had begun to withdraw.
Around 1 June, most of the Serbian State Guard, the Serbian Volunteer Corps, the Croatian Home Guard, the Ustaše, and the XVth Cossack Cavalry Corps who surrendered to the British were turned over to the Yugoslav government as part of what is sometimes referred to as Operation Keelhaul. The Yugoslav Army proceeded to brutalize the POWs in what became known as the Bleiburg massacres.
On 8 June, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Yugoslavia agreed on the control of Trieste.
On 29 November, after a questionable referendum, Peter II was deposed by Yugoslavia's Communist Constituent Assembly while he was still in exile. On the same day, the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia was established as a socialist state during the first meeting of the Communist-led Parliament in Belgrade. Josip Broz Tito was named Prime Minister.
On 13 March 1946, Mihailović was captured by agents of the Yugoslav Department of National Security (Odsjek Zaštite Naroda or OZNA). From 10 June to 15 July, he was tried for high treason and war crimes. On 15 July, he was found guilty and sentenced to death by firing squad.[4] On 16 July, a clemency appeal was rejected by the Presidium of the National Assembly.
During the early hours of 18 July, Mihailović, together with nine other Chetnik officers, was executed in Lisičiji Potok. This execution essentially ended the World War II-era civil war between the communist Partisans and the Royalist Chetniks.
The official Yugoslav post-war estimate of victims in Yugoslavia during World War II is 1,704,000. The majority of the victims were Serbs, targeted in a planned genocide in NDH, and who also constituted the bulk of both Partisan and Royalist Chetnik guerilla forces.
However, the number of 1.7 million was later disputed as being deliberately exaggerated for war reparations from Germany. Germany refused to pay reparations until names were provided of the victims, following which another investigation showed only half the number of victims. Subsequent data gathering in the 1980s by historians Vladimir Žerjavić (Croatian) and Bogoljub Kočović (Serb) showed that the actual number of dead was about 1 million. Both arrived at an almost equal figure during independent, unrelated studies.
This was later confirmed by Professor Vladeta Vučković, Serbian author of the official 1946 Yugoslav document, who agreed with Žerjavić and Kočović estimations. Vučković has stated that he had calculated demographic loss at 1,700,000 (i.e. including those not born, deaths by starvation, diseases, etc.), and later that number was interpreted as actual number of victims and presented by Yugoslav delegation at a peace conference later that year in Paris.[5]
Other sources have confirmed their figures:
- "Details of the (Yugoslav) 1948 census were kept secret but, in negotiations with Germany, it became apparent that the real figure of the dead was about one million. An American study in 1954 calculated 1,067,000.[6] Following Tito's death in 1980, the 1948 census results became available for comparison with those of 1931. Allowances had to be made for the birth rates of the different communities and for emigration. Research was pioneered by Professor Kočović, a Serb living in the West, whose findings were published in January 1985. He assessed the number of dead as 1,014,000. Later that year a Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts Conference heard that the figure was 1,100,000. In 1989, Vladimir Zerjavic, a Croatian living in Zagreb published, with the aid of the Zagreb Jewish community, his calculation of 1,027,000. ... So a figure of about one million for all Yugoslavia is now generally accepted."[7]
Žerjavić's and Kočović's calculations of war losses in Yugoslavia during WW2 were accepted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
A list compiling individual names of victims has reached only 600,000.[5]
Number of victims by ethnicity is:
| Nationality | 1946 | Kočović[5] | Žerjavić[5] | By name[5] |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Albanians | 4,000 | - | - | - |
| Bosnian | 100,000 | 86,000 | 103,000 | 32,300 |
| Croatian | 110,000 | 207,000 | 192,000 | 83,257 |
| Germans | - | 26,000 | 28,000 | - |
| Hungarian | 3,000 | - | - | - |
| Jews | 60,000 | 60,000 | 57,000 | 45,000 |
| Macedonians | 35,000 | - | - | - |
| Montenegrin | 50,000 | 50,000 | 20,000 | 16,276 |
| Slovacs | 1,000 | - | - | - |
| Slovenians | 60,000 | 32,000 | 42,000 | 42,027 |
| Serbs | 1,280,000 | 487,000 | 530,000 | 346,740 |
| Turks | 686 | - | - | - |
| Others | - | 66,000 | 55,000 | 31,723 |
| TOTAL | 1,703,686 | 1,014,000 | 1,027,000 | 597,323 |
By region:
| Country | 1946 |
|---|---|
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 690,000 |
| Croatia | 630,000 |
| Kosovo | 14,000 |
| Macedonia | 40,000 |
| Montenegro | 50,000 |
| Slovenia | 60,000 |
| Serbia | 170,000 |
| Vojvodina | 40,000 |
- Yugoslavia during the Second World War
- Invasion of Yugoslavia
- Seven anti-partisan offensives
- List of anti-Partisan operations in Yugoslavia
- AVNOJ
- Partisans (Yugoslavia)
- Serbian State Guard
- Serbian Volunteer Corps
- Ustaše
- Croatian Home Guard
- Chetniks
- Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland
- History of Germany during World War II
- Military history of Italy during World War II
- Foibe massacres
- Independent State of Croatia during World War II
- Nedić's Serbia during World War II
- Independent State of Montenegro during World War II
- Military history of Bulgaria during World War II
- Hungary during the Second World War
- Military history of Greece during World War II
- Military history of the United Kingdom during World War II
- ^ Please refer to sources cited in the Serbian Wikipedia article on Chetnik collaboration in WWII
- ^ Please refer to sources cited in the Serbian Wikipedia article on Chetnik atrocities in WWII
- ^ (January 17, 1944) "While Tito Fights" (in English). Time Magazine. Retrieved on 2007-09-14.
- ^ Too Tired Time Magazine 1946-06-24
- ^ a b c d e Nikolić, Goran; "ŽRTVE RATA IZMEDJU NAUKE I PROPAGANDE"; Nova srpska politička misao (in Serbian)
- ^ Mayers, Paul and Campbell, Arthur; The Population of Yugoslavia; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Washington D.C., 1954; p.23
- ^ Barton, Dennis; "Croatia 1941 - 1946"; Churchin History Information Centre
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