The disintegration of Yugoslavia began as early as the first days of Hitler’s aggression. On April 10, in Zagreb, the Ustasha proclaimed the creation of the Independent Croatian State (IHH), which included Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Technically, the head of the IHH was the Italian duke Spoletto, but during the war he never bothered to come to Zagreb, and in reality it was Ante Pavelic, the leader of the Ustashas, who was the “head of the country. The entire Adriatic coast of Croatia came under the control of the Italian military administration. Italian troops occupied Montenegro and the southern part of Slovenia. The northern part of Slovenia went to Germany, the eastern part to Hungary. Hungary also received Vojvodina, Bulgaria received Macedonia, and Albania received Kosovo. In Serbia, occupied by Germany, a government of Serbian Germanophile politicians was formed, with its own armed forces, recruited from among the Serbian fascists. The Serbian government was headed by former Yugoslav military minister Milan Nedic. During the German attack on Yugoslavia, he commanded one of the Yugoslavian field armies and by his actions in fact opened the front for the Germans.
The entire territory of Yugoslavia was divided into spheres of influence between Germany and Italy. At the same time, the Italian administration – and this is acknowledged by all without exception – was considerably softer than the German one. Hitler’s racial theory regarded all Slavs as an inferior race. The Germans living in pre-war Yugoslavia were given special rights, everything else was declared a “space” that was to be transformed in accordance with the values of the “Aryan civilization. Ethnic cleansing began: Natives were expelled from the Yugoslav territories annexed to Germany and their lands were given to German colonists. The economy of the country was placed at the service of German military needs, strategic resources, agricultural products and manpower were removed from Yugoslavia. Thousands of prisoners of war of the Yugoslav army and civilians were transported to Germany for forced labor. Patriarch Gavriel of the Serbian Orthodox Church was sent to the German concentration camp Dachau. Slavic schools and cultural institutions were closed, and the German language was imposed. In parallel, national discord among Slavs was fomented.
The most dramatic events unfolded in Croatia. The Ustashas who came to power began a genocide against the Serbs, Roma and Jews that was unheard of in the history of Europe. In its brutality and scale this genocide is comparable only to the crimes of the Turks against Christians committed in the second half of the XIX – early XX centuries. The two million non-Croats who lived on the territory of the HCG, first of all the Serbs, were the objects of this genocide. At the same time, the Ustashas took their hatred not out on Belgrade’s gendarmes or officials, but on their neighboring Serbs, the former “granicars” (see Chapter 1), with whom the Croats had lived side by side for more than three hundred years and who were literally caught off guard by this sudden hatred.
The atrocities against the Serbian population shocked even their allies, the Germans and Italians. It seemed that “enlightened” Europe had received new proof that the Slavs were savages, an inferior race that must either be destroyed or “civilized.
It should be noted that in 1941 the vast majority of Croats supported the creation of the NHH. The leader of the Croatian Peasant Party, Vlatko Maček, immediately after the Ustashas came to power said: “I call upon all Croatian people to submit to the new power. I call on all supporters of the Croatian Peasant Party in administrative positions to sincerely cooperate with the new power. But very soon Maček found himself in the Jasenovac death camp, created by the Ustashas primarily for the mass extermination of Serbs, Jews and Roma. In his memoirs, Maciek writes that he saw one of the camp Ustasha guards, who had been killing people all day, constantly being baptized before going to sleep. “I asked him – wasn’t he afraid of God’s punishment? – ‘Better not talk about it,’ he replied, ‘I understand very well what awaits me. For all my past, present, and future transgressions I will burn in hell. But I will burn in hell for Croatia!”
Well, the answer is exhaustive. If a man who calls himself a Christian – whether he be a patriarch, a metropolitan, or an archbishop – puts Croatia, Serbia, or anything else above Christ and his commandments, he is not a Christian (not Catholic or Orthodox), even if he is covered in crosses, smashed his forehead in prayer, and postured to dystrophy.
The Catholic Church in Croatia played a most undignified (to put it mildly) role in the events of World War II. The genocide of the Serbs was carried out with its actual blessing. Of all the Croatian hierarchs, only Bishop Alojisije Misic of Mostar condemned the massacres and forbade his priests to absolve those Catholics who had sullied themselves with manslaughter. This was the only truly Christian act of the churchman – the other eleven bishops of Croatia and Archbishop Stepinac himself found nothing reprehensible in the actions of the Ustasha, either closing their ears and eyes or secretly and explicitly inciting the Ustasha to more murders.
After the occupation and disintegration of Yugoslavia, there were only two real forces that stood for the restoration of the country’s unity: the Royal Government, which had fled the country, and the Communist Party, which, despite the terror of the occupation authorities, maintained its organizational structure throughout its territory.
The Yugoslav emigrant government of Yugoslavia, led by General Dušan Simović, settled in Cairo, was supported by England and the United States. Unlike, for example, the Polish émigré government, the Yugoslav government had no armed forces of its own and no extensive network of underground organizations in the country. All its resistance organization activities in the early days were limited to English radio broadcasts in which the people of Yugoslavia were invited to “wait” for better times.
Another influential political force for Yugoslav unity was the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY). Its leader since 1937 was Josip Broz, better known by his party name Tito, one of the most prominent political figures of the 20th century.
The son of a Croatian and a Slovenian, Josip Broz Tito was born in May 1892 in the village of Kumrovac near Zagreb. During World War I he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army, and in 1915 he was taken prisoner at the Russian front and remained in Russia until 1920. Returning to Yugoslavia, he joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, was arrested several times, and in 1937 was elected First Secretary of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.
The Communist partisan movement in Yugoslavia began to unfold in the summer of 1941. In the meantime a small group of Serb officers led by Colonel Dragoljub Mihajlovic had been active in Serbia in the area of Ravnaya Gora since April. After the surrender of the army, this group did not lay down their arms and, retreating into the mountains, began to organize partisan units on Serbian territory. By tradition, dating back to the time of the struggle against the Turks, the Serbian partisans called themselves Chetniks (from “chetan” meaning “squad”). Mihajlovic established ties with the émigré government, but avoided any military action against the occupiers. Ideologically and organizationally linked to the regime that ruled interwar Yugoslavia, Mihajlovic’s Chetniks stood on narrowly national Great Serbian positions. “My enemies are Croats, Muslims, and Communists,” Mihajlovic liked to repeat.
Since late May, the Yugoslav Communist Party began forming partisan groups on Serbian territory. Initially, their numbers were small. When the Croatian fascists began the brutal extermination of the Serbian population in May 1941, thousands of Serbs fled to the mountains to escape the slaughter. It was there that the first partisan units arose, unified by the singular desire for self-defense, not by any ideology at all. These people stood face to face with the Nazis, enraged with impunity, and were not about to become submissive sheep. Armed with hunting rifles, scythes and pitchforks they were preparing to defend their lives. It was here, in the mountains of Bosnia, that the slogan first sounded, which later became the slogan of the entire national liberation struggle of the Yugoslav patriots: “Death to Fascism – Freedom to the People!”
Slovenia was the only Yugoslav territory where the resistance to the fascists immediately acquired the character of an organized movement. Already on April 27 in Ljubljana an underground meeting of all the leading political and social movements of Slovenia, including the Communist Party, was held, at which it was decided to create a single anti-fascist organization, the Slovenian Liberation Front.
The attack of the fascist Germany on the USSR on June 22, 1941 created a new military-political situation in Europe. Regardless of how the pre-war situation unfolded, the Soviet Union was now involved in the general anti-fascist struggle waged by England, its allies and the peoples of Europe enslaved by Hitler. The entry of the USSR into the war against fascism gave a new impetus to the Yugoslav resistance. This was objectively facilitated by the traditionally good attitude towards Russia, which, despite all the twists and turns of Yugoslav state policy, persisted among the people.
On June 27, 1941, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia decided to establish the Main Headquarters of the Partisan Movement, headed by Tito. In July, a plan was developed to expand partisan operations in Serbia, primarily envisaging an increase in the number of partisan groups and the transition to active operations. But reality overturned these calculations: as early as July 7 in Western Serbia, and then in Montenegro, a mass uprising against the occupiers began. In Montenegro alone, the number of rebels reached 32,000 people. Armed guerrilla warfare in Slovenia began on July 22, and in Croatia on July 27, where at first guerrilla groups consisting of Serbs who had fled the genocide were active. In October 1941 partisans began to operate in Macedonia.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, in response to the actions of the guerrillas, the Ustasha began a new massacre of Serbs. The medieval atrocities of the Croatian fascists angered even the Italian occupation army commanders, who were forced to introduce their troops into Herzegovina to protect the Serbian population. This move calmed passions for a time, and guerrilla actions in Herzegovina practically ceased.
By October 1941 there were about 70,000 partisans active on the territory of Yugoslavia. A vast liberated zone was formed in western Serbia. The Main Headquarters of the Partisan Movement was relocated there. Here began the formation of the bodies of the new government – the People’s Liberation Committees.
The struggle of various political forces in Yugoslavia was not ignored by the anti-Hitler coalition allies. It was no secret that they were united only by the struggle against Hitler – in all other matters the allies had their own, as a rule, diametrically opposed views. In the eyes of England, the Chetnik movement in Serbia was an organic continuation of the anti-Hitler and pro-British policies which the Simovic government, which had come to power as a result of the coup d’état of March 27, 1941, tried to carry out. In turn, the Simović government was a continuation of the traditional pro-Western, “Entente” policy pursued by Serbia since 1903. Therefore, the Chetniks were seen in London as natural allies of England. As for Tito’s partisans, the communist ideas of their leaders and their explicitly pro-Moscow orientation naturally could not arouse any enthusiasm in the British. London constantly pressured Moscow through diplomatic channels, trying to convince Stalin that only Mihajlovic could be considered the true leader of the Yugoslav resistance and that he should be considered a partner in the anti-Hitler coalition. They demanded that Moscow influence the partisan leadership so that the Chetniks and partisans “put aside their differences and form a united front. British Ambassador to Moscow Cripps, addressing Molotov, expressed the wish on behalf of official London: “The Soviet government might be inclined to persuade the Communist elements in Yugoslavia to place themselves militarily at the disposal of Mikhailovich as the national leader.
In the ranks of the People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia (PLAJ) there were many national formations formed from soldiers and officers of the occupation troops and former prisoners of war who had defected to the partisan side. Together with the Yugoslavs, the Italian Garibaldi Guerrilla Division, the Bulgarian partisan brigade named after Georgy Dimitrov and the Soviet partisan battalion fought against the Nazis, in March 1945 transformed into the 1st Soviet Strike Brigade, the Czechoslovak Jan Žižka Strike Battalion, the Hungarian Shandor Petefi Battalion, the Polish Tadeusz Kosciuszko Battalion, the German communist company named after Ernst Thaelmann.
The Anglo-American command, which staked on the Chetniks, supplied them with arms, ammunition, equipment, communications equipment, and money. It was much more difficult for the partisans – they had to fight only with weapons that they could discard from the enemy. Nevertheless, already in December 1941 the formation of the regular People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia (PLAJ) began from the partisan detachments. On December 21, 1941 the first military unit of the SPLA was founded: the 1st Proletarian Brigade, the backbone of which consisted of Serbian and Montenegrin workers. In March 1942 the 2nd Proletarian Brigade was formed, in June 1942 the 3rd, the 4th and the 5th. By the end of 1942 the SPLA had two army corps, eight divisions, 31 brigades and 36 partisan detachments – over 150 thousand men.
In the summer of 1942, a massive attack by the Germans, Italians and Serb Chetniks forced the main guerrilla forces to withdraw into Western Bosnia. From that moment the mood among the Croats began to change in favor of the partisans: by November 1942 there were more than 18,000 partisans in Croatia. The partisan movement in Slovenia developed in some isolation from other parts of the country for purely geographical reasons, and has its own history of ups and downs. In October 1942, the partisan struggle in Kosovo began.
The Yugoslav partisans had close ties with the Albanian partisans. On the party line, Miladin Popovic, secretary of the regional committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia for Kosovo and Metohija, ensured communication with the Albanian Communists. The influence of the Yugoslav partisans largely explains a certain unification of the methods of political and armed struggle of the Albanian partisans. Like the Yugoslavs, the Albanian Communists raised the people to fight under the slogan “Death to Fascism – Freedom to the People!” The People’s Liberation Army of Albania was built on the principles adopted by the SPLA. Yugoslav military advisors took part in the building of the People’s Liberation Army of Albania. And the problems faced by the Albanian partisans were similar to those faced by Tito’s partisans. The role of the Chetniks in Albania was performed by the Albanian nationalists, united in the organization Balli Kombetar – the National Front. The Balli Kombetar were the slogans for the creation of an “ethnic Albania”, a “Greater Albania from the Vardar Valley to the Adriatic coast”. Like the Serb Chetniks, the Albanian Ballists maintained close contacts with the Fascists. The backward areas of northern Albania, populated by Catholics, and Kosovo, populated by Muslim Albanians, were the backbone of the Ballists. The SS division “Skanderbeg” was formed of them. Its soldiers fought against Yugoslavian and Albanian partisans and spared neither Serbs nor Albanians. Dali Ndreu, the chief of staff of the 1st strike corps of the National Liberation Army of Albania, and the commissar of the corps Husni Kapo described the position of Kosovo Albanians during the war in the following way at the end of 1944: “Vilely deceived by the propaganda of German invaders, most of the people of Kosovo put themselves at the service of the German army, joined the ranks of traitors and fought with weapons in their hands against the national liberating Yugoslav and Albanian armies. The Kosovo gangs descended upon the Albanian population of Southern Albania, ruthlessly burning, looting, killing, raping. And today, when it has become clear to everyone that Germany is on the verge of surrender, and the national liberation armies of Tito and Enver are fighting for the freedom of peoples, a significant part of Kosovars continue to fight in the ranks of Germans and traitors against these troops” (“A Brief History of Albania.” M., 1992, p. 378). This fact, as well as all developments in the Balkans during World War II, clearly shows that any great-power chauvinism – Serbian, Albanian, Croatian, German, etc., eventually leads to fascism, and fascism leads to the degradation and disintegration of the nation itself.
Moreover, it is quite obvious that during the second war, the peoples of the Balkan Peninsula were not so much divided along national lines as along social ones, which ultimately led to the victory of the communist movement in Yugoslavia.
By the end of 1942, 1/5 of Yugoslavia was controlled by partisans. In parallel with the expansion of the armed struggle, the Supreme Headquarters of the Partisan Movement created a network of local governments in the liberated territories. On November 26, 1942, the Constituent Assembly convened in Bihać (West Bosnia) with the participation of representatives of all anti-fascist groups in Yugoslavia. The Assembly elected the highest pan-Yugoslav political body, the Anti-Fascist People’s Liberation Party of Yugoslavia (AVNOY). The Executive Committee of AVNOY was headed by Ivan Ribar, a well-known political figure of interwar Yugoslavia. Ironically, it was he who in
the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in 1921. Now, in 1942, he stood shoulder to shoulder with the Communists (and he was not alone), although he did not share their views. Tito’s partisans were supported by all kinds of people, regardless of social background, nationality or religion. Dalmatian peasant women, Croatian and Catholic, shouted at rallies, “Long live the Virgin Mary and the Communist Party!”
The first half of 1943 was the most difficult period for the Yugoslav partisans. The fierce battles on the Neretva River (February-March) and on the Sutjeska River (May) marked the beginning of a turning point in guerrilla warfare. Despite the large losses incurred by units of the PLAJ, even at the cost of maximum effort (during the Battle of the Sutjeska the number of German-Italian troops amounted to 115 thousand against 18 thousand guerrillas) did not manage to defeat the main forces of the PLAJ. The main focus of the guerrilla movement shifted to Eastern Bosnia.
The last chance for an Allied invasion of Yugoslavia was the events of Trieste. On May 2, 1945, units of the PLAJ liberated Trieste, a Yugoslav port on the Adriatic that had been ceded to Italy under the Treaty of Rappal in 1920. The Anglo-American allies demanded that the Yugoslavs immediately clear Italian territory. The Yugoslavs refused. The Trieste crisis threatened to turn into a military clash between the PLAJ and American and British troops. On May 22, the Soviet Union issued a statement in support of Yugoslavia: “It would be unfair and an undeserved affront to the Yugoslav army and the Yugoslav people to deny Yugoslavia the right to occupy territory recaptured from the enemy, after the Yugoslav people had sacrificed so much in the struggle for Yugoslav national rights and for the common cause of the United Nations.” As a result, the crisis was resolved peacefully – the Yugoslav troops withdrew behind the so-called Morgan Line, and the fate of Trieste was to be determined after the war (today Trieste belongs to Italy. – Author’s note).
The contribution of the peoples of Yugoslavia to the victory over fascism was one of the most significant. Till 1944 the Yugoslav People’s Liberation Army, the fourth largest allied army after the armies of the USSR, the USA and England, actually alone held the “second front” in Europe, at different times holding back from 12 to 15 German divisions, not including Italian, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Croatian units and armed nationalist formations. Yugoslavia suffered enormous losses in World War II, 1.7 million people. One in ten people of pre-war Yugoslavia died. The PLAU lost 305,000 men in the fighting.
The end of the war brought to the fore the task of political consolidation of the de facto victory of the Communists headed by Tito. This task was greatly facilitated by the fact that most of the owners of large industrial enterprises and banks during the occupation were collaborating with Hitler or the nationalist governments of Croatia, Serbia and other territories. This allowed the confiscation and nationalization of their property in accordance with the practice adopted in all European states in relation to collaborators. Another circumstance that made it easier for the Communists was the fact that during the four years of occupation almost all their opponents had compromised in the eyes of the people as obvious collaborators with the Fascists. The few pro-Western activists connected with the émigré circles had no political influence in the country.