Partisans (Yugoslavia)

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Yugoslav Partisan Flag

The Yugoslav Partisans were the main resistance movement engaged in the fight against the Axis forces in the Balkans during World War II, the Yugoslav People's Liberation War.

1 Origins
2 Formation
3 Operations
4 Post-war
5 Controversy
6 Cultural Legacy
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] Origins

The Rebellion

One of the early flags used by Partisans

In April 1941 Yugoslavia was occupied by Nazi Germany. On July 30 the first rebels made their presence felt under Kopaonik - in Trepča, the first armed action was carried out. The participants then proceeded to Kopaonik and, together with other insurgents from the Ibar valley and the moutain villages, began the struggle for freedom. On the 10th of August, 1941 in Stanulović, a mountain village, they formed the Kopaonik Partisan Unit Headquarters. Their liberated area was called the Miners Republic and lasted 42 days. They joined the ranks of Tito and the Peoples Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia later on.

The Yugoslav Partisans went under the official name of People's Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia - (Slovene: Narodnoosvobodilna vojska in partizanski odredi Jugoslavije; Croatian: Narodno-oslobodilačka vojska i partizanski odredi Jugoslavije; Serbian: Народно-ослободилачка армија и партизански одреди Југославије or Narodno-oslobodilačka armija i partizanski odredi Jugoslavije; Macedonian: Народно-ослободителна војска и партизански одреди на Југославија or Narodno osloboditelna vojska i partizanski odredi na Jugoslavija) - and were under the direct command of Marshal Tito and the Yugoslav Communist Party (CPY) Politburo.

The occupying forces instituted such severe burdens on the local populace (in certain instances the army of Nazi Germany would hang or shoot indiscriminately, including women, children and the elderly, up to 100 local inhabitants for every one Wehrmacht soldier killed) that the Partisans came not only to enjoy widespread support but for many were the only option for survival.

[edit] Formation

Marshal Tito

The first resistance movement was formed in Ljubljana, Slovenia on April 27th and it was called "The anti-imperialist front", later renamed to "Liberation front"(Slovenian:Osvobodilna fronta OF). It consisted of the Comunist party of Slovenia, the Christian-socialists and the "sokoli". The first Partisan unit was the Sisak Partisan Detachment, officially founded near Sisak, Croatia on June 22nd 1941, the day Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Various military formations more or less linked to the CPY were involved in various armed confrontations with Axis forces which erupted in mainly Serb-populated areas of Yugoslavia in the ensuing weeks. The CPY formally decided to launch an armed uprising on July 4th 1941, a date which was later marked as Fighter's Day - public holiday in SFRY. Zikica Jovanovic Spanac shot the first bullet on July the 7th, 1941, and it became the day of state of Socialist Republic of Serbia.

In Autumn of 1941, the Partisans established the Republic of Užice in the liberated territory of western Serbia. In November 1941, the German troops occupied this territory again, while the majority of Partisan forces escaped towards Bosnia. It was during this time that tenuous collaboration between the Partisans and the royalist Chetnik movement broke and turned into open hostility.

On December 22nd 1941 Partisans formed 1st Proletarian Brigade - the first "regular" unit able to operate outside its local area. This became the Day of the Yugoslav People (National) Army, December the 22nd. In 1942 those units and partisan detachments merged into PLA & PDY (NOV i POJ), into a regular force, the Yugoslav Army, on March 1, 1945.

On September 19th 1942 partisans in Dalmatia formed their first naval unit made of fishing boats, which gradually evolved into force able to engage the Italian Navy and Kriegsmarine and conduct complex amphibious operations.

In May 1942 pilots of two aircraft belonging to NDH air force, Franjo Kluz i Rudi Cajevec, defected to the partisans in Bosnia and later used their planes against Axis forces. Although short-lived due to a lack of infrastructure, this was the first instance of resistance movement having its own air force. Partisans later gained permanent air force by getting aircraft, equipment and training from the Royal Air Force in 1944.

[edit] Operations

Main article: People's Liberation War

The Partisans and the People's Liberation Army staged a guerrilla campaign which enjoyed gradually increased levels of support among the population. People's committees were organized to act as civilian governments in liberated areas of the country, and even limited arms industries were set-up.

At the very beginning, 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 was a small but valuable cadre of Spanish Civil War veterans who, unlike anyone else at the time, had some experience with modern war fought in circumstances quite similar to those in WWII Yugoslavia.

Another, which became 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 larger pool of potential recruits.

Occupying and quisling forces were quite aware of the Partisan problem, and tried to solve it in seven major anti-partisan Offensives. The biggest were combined by Wehrmacht, the SS, Fascist Italy, Ustaše, Chetniks and Bulgarian forces. They included the so-called Fall Weiss (Plan White) and Operation Schwarz (Operation Black), or as they were known in the Yugoslav annals: the 4th (Battle of Neretva) and 5th (Battle of Sutjeska) Offensives.

Children save the wounded

Later in the conflict the Partisans were able to win the moral, as well as limited material support of the Allies, who until then had supported General Dragoljub "Drazha" Mihailovich's Royalist Chetnik Forces, but were finally convinced of who was doing the fighting against the Axis in the region by many military missions dispatched to both sides during the course of the war.

Image:1943sept17.jpg

RAF on Vis (island)

After the Teheran Conference in 1943 they received official recognition as the legitimate national liberation force by the Allies, who subsequently set-up the RAF Balkan Air Force under the influence and suggestion of Brigadier-General Fitzroy MacLean, and with the aim to provide increased supplies and tactical air support for Tito's forces.

With Allied air support and assistance from the Red Army, in the second half of 1944 Partisans turned their attention to Serbia, which 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 in a joint operation. At the onset of winter, the Partisans effectively controlled the entire eastern half of Yugoslavia - Serbia, Vardar Macedonia and Montenegro, as well as the Dalmatian coast.

In 1945 the Partisans defeated Ustaše and the Wehrmacht, breaking through a hard-fought front in Syrmia in late winter, taking Sarajevo in early April, and the rest of Croatia and Slovenia through mid-May. After taking Rijeka and Istria, which were part of Italy before the war, they beat the Allies to Trieste by a day.

[edit] Post-war

Yugoslavia was one of the two European countries that were liberated by its own communist forces during the Second World War, with the assistance and active participation of the Soviet regime (the other one being Albania with the aid of Yugoslavia). It received support from both Western Allies and the Soviet Union, and at the end of the war no foreign troops were stationed on its soil. As a result, the country found itself halfway between the two camps at the onset of the Cold War.

In 1947 and 1948 Soviet Union attempted to command obedience from Yugoslavia, primarily on issues of foreign policy, which resulted in the Tito-Stalin split and almost ignited an armed conflict. A period of very cool relations with the Soviet Union followed, during which USA and UK considered courting Yugoslavia into newly formed NATO. This however changed in 1953 with the Trieste crisis, a tense dispute between Yugoslavia and the Western Allies over the eventual Yugoslav-Italian border (see Free Territory of Trieste), and with Yugoslav-Soviet reconciliation in 1956.

This ambivalent position at the start of the Cold War matured into the non-aligned foreign policy which Yugoslavia actively espoused until its dissolution.

[edit] Controversy

Partisans were involved in some acts that are with no doubt qualified as war crimes or similar atrocities. Some of these incidents happened at the very beginning of war, when guerilla forces were poorly disciplined and often nothing more than rural militias prone to tit-for-tat ethnic killings.

As in the case of other anti-fascist resistance movements around the world at the time (France, Italy, China, etc.), the Partisans and the local population who supported them engaged in retribution in the immediate postwar period, directed against people who did not support communist orientation of the movement. The best known of these incidents was the "Bleiburg massacre" of fleeing Slovenian and Croatian soldiers and civilians at the end of war, and the Foibe massacres -- pits in which Croatian and Slovenian Partisans shot ethnic Italians associated with Fascism. Similar events involved ethnic Hungarians in Vojvodina in the 1944-1945 Killings in Bačka.

This chapter of Partisan history was not publicly discussed in the SFRY until late the 1980s, and as a result, decades of official denial created a reaction in the form of numerous urban legends and data manipulation for nationalist propaganda purposes.(cf David.B. MacDonald, Balkan Holocausts? (Manchester 2003))

[edit] Cultural Legacy

Partisan ranks included some of the most important artists and writers of 20th Century Yugoslavia.

The Partisan experience would have had a major impact on the culture of second half of the 20th Century in any event, but much of the result is now considered government propaganda.

Partisan struggle was well-chronicled through the memoirs of its participants, and later those experiences served as basis for important literary works, most notably by authors like Jure Kaštelan, Joža Horvat, Oskar Davičo, Antonije Isaković, Branko Ćopić, Dobrica Ćosić, Mihailo Lalić and other.

Comic books depictings the Partisan struggle also became very popular, most notably works by Croatian artist Jules Radilović. The most popular, however, was Mirko i Slavko comic book series.

The most visible aspect of Partisan legacy in former Yugoslavia was the series of monuments commemorating their struggle. Most of those monuments are now considered soc-realist kitsch, while only a few proved to be artistically valuable and important. Some of them became victims of state-sponsored vandalism following the break-up of SFRY in early 1990s.

The Partisan struggle also influenced the film industry, which developed its own genre of Partisan film, with its own set of unofficial rules and motives, very much like American Western or Japanese Jidaigeki.