Yugoslavian Front (WWII)
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| Yugoslavian Front of WWII | ||||||||
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| Part of World War II | ||||||||
 The Partisan march on Igman, Bosnia |
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| Combatants | ||||||||
Allied Powers: Yugoslav Partisans Soviet Union |
Axis Powers:
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 Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland |
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| Commanders | ||||||||
| Josip Broz Tito |
many | Draža Mihailović |
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| Yugoslavian Front |
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| Seven anti-partisan offensives
1st offensive – 2nd offensive – 3rd offensive – Kozara – Neretva – Sutjeska – 6th offensive – Drvar – Sremski Front |
The Yugoslavian Front of World War II, also known as the Yugoslav People's Liberation War (Serbo-Croat: Narodnooslobodilački rat, Народноослободилачки рат), 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 Yugostavia was fought from 1941 to 1945 between native Yugoslavian anti-occupation forces and the forces of the Axis Powers.
The native Yugoslavian anti-occupation forces were divided into two guerilla armies: on one side were the 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. They steadily gained power during the struggle, winning recognition from the Allies and the government-in-exile as the Yugoslav legitimate fighting force, and eventually prevailing against all of their opponents. The Royalist Chetniks, under the command of General Draža Mihailović, mostly fought independently against both the Partisans and the Germans, though on a number of occasions they fought alongside the Axis forces against the Partisans. They suffered from internal divisions serious enough that battles broke out between different Chetnik factions.
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[edit] Invasion of Yugoslavia
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 army's in Europe were as modern and as well equipped as the German army (Wehrmacht). The Yugoslavians, 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.
[edit] Guerrilla war and civil war in Yugoslavia
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 Croatians, the Chetniks were known for making clandestine deals with the Italians and some of the other occupying and quisling forces.
The Yugoslavian Partisans and the People's Liberation Army fought both a guerrilla campaign against the Axis occupiers and a civil war against the Chetniks. 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 larger pool of potential recruits.
[edit] Seven major Axis offensives
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. At times the Royalist Chetniks 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 enemy offensive in western Serbia against the Republic of Užice, from September to November 1941.
- Second enemy offensive took place in eastern Bosnia in January 1942, with the partisan troops forced to retreat over mount Igman next to Sarajevo.
- Third enemy offensive, an offensive against partisan forces in eastern Bosnia, Montenegro, Sandžak and Hercegovina in spring 1942. Mistakenly identified by some sources as the battle of Kozara in summer 1942.
- Fourth enemy offensive, also known as Fall Weiss, spanning the area between western Bosnia and northern Hercegovina and culminating in the partisan retreat over the Neretva river, from January to April 1943.
- Fifth enemy 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 enemy 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 enemy offensive, the final attempt to 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.
[edit] Tito recognized over Mihajlović
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 "Draža" Mihailović'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.
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.
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.
On 29 August, King Peter II of Yugoslavia dismissed general Mihailović as a Chief-of-Staff of Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland. On 12 September the King appointed Tito in Mihailović's place.
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, near Banja Luka in what was then the Independent State of Croatia. The battle ended in victory for the Croatians and defeat for the Chetniks.
[edit] Final operations of the People's Liberation Army
In early August 1944, the Bulgarian government quit the war and ordered all Bulgarian forces to be removed from Greece and Yugoslavia. 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.
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, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th) and, in addition, he had eight independent corps (II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, IX, and X). Against Tito, Army Group E had seven German 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 armed quislings. The quislings included Ustaše and Croatian Home Guard units. There were even some remnants of the Serbian State Guard and the Serbian Volunteer Corps.
Bihać was liberated by the Yugoslavian 4th 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 liberating the former Italian possessions of Rijeka and Istria from the German LXXXXVII Corps, the Yugoslavian 4th Army beat the Allies to Trieste by one day.
On 5 April, the Yugoslavian 2nd Army, under the command of Koča Popović, forced a crossing of the Bosna River, liberated Doboj, and reached the Una River. On 8 May, along with units of the Yugoslavian 1st Army, the 2nd Army freed 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 Yugoslavian 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 Yugoslavian 1st Army, under the command of Peko Dapčević penetratrated 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 Yugoslavian 2nd Army, both armies advanced in Slovenia. On 9 May, Maribor and Ljubljana fell to the Partisans.
From 10 May to 15 May, the People's Liberation Army continued to surround and destroy additional enemy forces throughout the rest of Croatia and Slovenia.
On 2 May, the German capital city, Berlin, fell. On 9 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. Only the quislings remained.
[edit] Aftermath
On 8 March 1945, a coalition Yugoslavian 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 surrender 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, are harrassed by arriving forces of the People's Liberation Army. In Belgrade, the British ambassador to the Yugoslavian 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. On 20 May, Yugoslav troops in Austria began 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 Yugoslavian government. The Yugoslav Army proceeded to brutalize the POW's 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 rigged referendum, Peter II, still in exile, was deposed by Yugoslavia's Communist Constituent Assembly. 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 Yugoslavian 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. 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 ended the civil war between the communist Partisans and the Royalist Chetniks.
[edit] See also
- 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
- 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
