The Slovak National Uprising or 1944 Uprising was an armed insurrection
organized by the Slovak resistance movement during World War II. It was
launched on 29 August 1944 from Banská Bystrica in an attempt to resist German
troops that had occupied Slovak territory and to overthrow the
collaborationist government of Jozef Tiso. Although the rebel forces were
defeated by Nazi Germany, guerrilla warfare continued until the Soviet Army,
Czechoslovak Army and Romanian Army occupied Slovakia in 1945.
In the post-war period, many political entities attempted to "hijack" the
uprising to their credit. The Stalinist regime in Czechoslovakia presented the
Uprising as an event initiated and governed by Communist forces. Slovak
ultranationalists, on the other hand, claim that the uprising was a plot
against the Slovak nation, as one of its main objectives was to oust the regime
of the puppet Slovak state and reestablish Czechoslovakia, in which
Slovaks were dominated by Czechs. In fact, many factions fought in the
uprising, including large rebel units of the Slovak Army, Democratic resistance
and Communist partisans, and international forces. Given this
factionalization, the Uprising did not have unambiguous popular support. Yet
the participants and supporters of the Uprising represented every religion,
class, age, and anti-Nazi political faction of the Slovak nation.
Preliminaries Edvard Beneš, leader of the Czechoslovak
government in exile in London, initiated preparations for a possible revolt in
1943 when he contacted dissident elements of the Slovak Army. In December
1943, various groups that would be involved in the uprising—the government
in exile, Czechoslovak democrats and Communists, and the Slovak army—formed
the underground Slovak National Council, and signed the so-called "Christmas
Treaty", a joint declaration to recognize Beneš' authority and to
recreate Czechoslovakia after the war. The council was responsible for creating
the preparatory phase of the uprising. In March 1944, Slovak army Lieutenant
Colonel Ján Golian took charge of the preparations. Conspirators stockpiled
money, ammunition and other supplies in military bases in central and eastern
Slovakia. The rebelling forces called themselves Czechoslovak Forces of the
Interior and the First Czechoslovak Army. Approximately 3,200 Slovak
soldiers deserted and joined partisan groups or the Soviet Army. In April
1944, Slovak Jews Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler escaped from Auschwitz and
eventually spoke about the horrors of German death camps.
In summer 1944, the partisans intensified their war against German
occupation forces, mainly in the mountains of north-central Slovakia. In
July, Soviet troops in Poland began to advance towards Slovakia. By August
1944, Soviet troops were at Krosno, Poland, within 40 kilometres of the
northeastern Slovak border. Two heavily armed divisions of the
Slovak Army, together with the entire eastern Slovak Air Force, were
deliberately relocated to Prešov in north-eastern Slovakia in the summer of
1944 to execute one of two planned options to begin the uprising. The two
options were: Capture Dukla Pass when the Soviet
arrived. As ordered by Golian, capture Dukla pass
immediately and hold the pass against any German forces until the Soviet Army
could arrive. Colonel Viliam Talský was the chief of
staff of the two divisions. He had agreed in advance with the
insurrection's army leadership and the uprising planning committee of the
Slovak National Council to execute either of these two plans, depending on
the circumstances. On 23 August 1944, neighboring Romania changed sides in
favor of the Allies. On 27 August 1944 in Martin, a group of Communist
partisans under Soviet direction killed 30 members of a German military mission
leaving Romania. The next day, German troops began to occupy Slovakia to put
down the rebellion. German arrangements for the occupation were completed a few
weeks earlier. At 19:00 hours on 29 August 1944, Slovak
Defence Minister General Ferdinand Čatloš announced on state radio that
Germany had occupied Slovakia. At 20:00, Golian sent the coded message to all
units to begin the uprising. But instead of adhering to the agreed plan, on 30
August Colonel Talský and the entire eastern Slovak Air Force flew to a
prearranged landing zone in Poland to join the Soviet Army, and abandoned the
two divisions at Prešov. The two divisions, left in chaos and without
leadership, were quickly disarmed on the afternoon of 30 August without a single
shot. Consequently, the uprising commenced prematurely and lost a crucial
component of their plan, as well as the two most heavily armed divisions.
Forces Accounts of the exact numbers of
combatants vary. At first, the rebel Slovak partisan forces consisted of an
estimated 18,000 soldiers. The total increased to 47,000 after mobilization
on 9 September 1944, and later to 60,000, plus 18,000 partisans from over
30 countries. The Slovak Insurgent Air Force had a small number of mostly
obsolete planes. In addition to Slovak forces, the
combatants included various other groups: escaped French prisoners of war,
Soviet partisans, and Special Operations Executive and Office of Strategic
Services operatives. The Slovak side had to use mostly biplanes and improvised
armored trains to fight against the better equipped German weapons. In
addition to Soviet aid, United States B-17 Flying Fortress bombers, escorted
by North American P-51B Mustang's landed at Tri Duby airfield on 7 October 1944
and brought supplies and OSS agents, headed by a naval officer, Lieutenant
James Holt Green. They also took out 15 Allied pilots shot down over Slovakia
and five French partisans. After the uprising started, Czechoslovak
officials in exile discussed the possibility of bringing in Czechoslovak
units deployed on the Eastern Front with the Soviet Army. Two such units were
brought in. On 15–17 September 1944, the 1st Czechoslovak Independent Fighter
Regiment landed at Zolná airfield near Zvolen with 21 Lavochkin La-5 fighters.
Later the 2nd Czechoslovak Parachute Brigade was transferred from the
Carpathians, arriving 25 September to 15 October.
Course of the uprising = Uprising begins=
Rebels began the uprising on August 29 at 8:00 p.m. under the command of Ján
Golian. They entered Banská Bystrica in the morning of August 30 and made it
their headquarters. German troops disarmed the Eastern Slovak Army on
August 31. Many of the soldiers were sent to camps in Germany while others
escaped and joined the Soviet-controlled partisans or returned home. On September
5 Ján Golian became the commander of all the rebel forces in Slovakia and was
given the rank of General. Slovak forces in central Slovakia mobilized 47,000
men. His first analysis of the situation predicted that insurgents could resist
German attacks for about two weeks. By September 10 the rebels had gained
control of large areas of central and eastern Slovakia, including two
airfields, which were used by the Soviet Air Force to fly in equipment.
= Momentum lost= The pro-German government of Tiso
remained in power in Bratislava. Germany moved 40,000 SS soldiers under Gottlob
Berger to suppress the uprising, which detained and disarmed two Slovak
divisions and 20,000 soldiers that had been supposed to secure the mountain
passes to help the Red Army. Beneš had met with Stalin and Molotov in Moscow in
December 1943 to secure Soviet support for the uprising, but Soviet premier
Joseph Stalin and the Soviet military command Stavka failed to deliver the
needed support on time to the insurgent army and even blocked Western offers of
military aid, as they had done only a few weeks earlier during the Warsaw
uprising. Meanwhile, General Koniev and the Soviet partisan headquarters in
Kiev, Ukraine, continued to undermine the Slovak insurgent army by ordering
partisan groups operating in forward positions in Slovakia to conduct
operations independently of the Slovak insurgent army and avoid coordination.
The Soviet-led partisans even demanded and took desperately needed weapons and
munitions that had been stored for the Slovak uprising. The vast majority of
Soviet air drops of weapons over insurgent-held territory in Eastern and
Northern Slovakia were quickly confiscated by Soviet partisans and
little ended up in the hands of the much stronger and better trained Slovak
insurrectional army. On September 8, the Red Army began an
offensive on the Dukla Pass on the Slovak-Polish border and tried to fight
through the Carpathian Mountains to penetrate into Slovakia. This poorly
planned and late action resulted in tremendous casualties on both sides and
became bogged down for nearly two months.
Beneš, the Soviet partisans, and various Slovak factions began to argue among
themselves, each seeking operational control. Despite repeated efforts,
General Golian could not persuade the different sides to coordinate their
efforts. General Rudolf Viest flew in and took command on October 7, with
Golian becoming his second-in-command. Viest could not control the situation
when political rivalries resurfaced in the face of military failure.
The uprising also coincided with the stalling of the Soviet summer offensive,
the failure of the Warsaw Uprising, and other troubles on the side of the
Western allies. The Red Army and its Czechoslovak allies failed to quickly
penetrate the Dukla Pass despite fierce fighting between September 8 and October
28; they suffered 85,000 casualties. The Czechoslovak government in exile failed
to convince Western allies to ignore Stalin's obstructionism and send more
supplies to the area. On September 17 two B-17 Flying
Fortresses flew in the OSS mission of Lieutenant James Holt-Green. The SOE
team of Major John Sehmer followed the next day on its way to Hungary. Their
reports confirmed the suspicions of Western Allies that the situation of the
uprising was worsening. = Counteroffensive=
On September 19, German command replaced SS-Obergruppenführer Berger, who had
been in charge of the troops fighting the Uprising, with General Höfle. By
that time Germans had 48,000 soldiers; they consisted of eight German
divisions, including four from the Waffen-SS and one pro-Nazi Slovak
formation. On October 1 the rebel army was renamed
the 1st Czechoslovak Army in Slovakia, in order to symbolize the beginning of
the Czech-Slovak reunification that would be recognized by the Allied
forces. A major German counteroffensive began on
October 17–18 when 35,000 German troops entered the country from Hungary, which
had been under German military occupation since 19 March 1944. Stalin
demanded that his advancing Second Ukrainian Front led by General
Malinovsky be immediately diverted from Eastern Slovakia to Budapest. The
western advance of Soviet forces came to a sudden halt in late October 1944, when
Stalin's interests focused on Hungary, Austria and Poland rather than Slovakia
or the Czech lands. By the end of October, Axis forces had taken back most
of the territory from the insurgents and encircled the fighting groups. Battles
cost at least 10,000 casualties on both sides.
Insurgents had to evacuate Banská Bystrica on October 27 just prior to the
German takeover. SOE and OSS agents retreated to the mountains alongside the
thousands of others fleeing the German advance. The rebels prepared to change
their strategy to that of guerrilla warfare. On October 28, Viest sent
London a message that said the organized resistance had ended. On October 30,
General Höfle and President Tiso celebrated in Banská Bystrica and
awarded medals to German soldiers for their part in the suppression of the
uprising. = Aftermath=
Nonetheless, partisans and the remains of the regular forces continued their
efforts in the mountains. In retaliation, Einsatzgruppen executed
many Slovaks suspected of aiding the rebels as well as Jews who had avoided
deportation until then, and destroyed 93 villages on suspicion of collaboration.
Several villages were burned to the ground and all their inhabitants were
murdered, as in Ostrý Grúň and Kľak or Kalište. A later estimate of the death
toll was 5,304 and authorities discovered 211 mass graves that resulted
from those atrocities. The largest executions occurred in Kremnička and
Nemecká. On November 3, the Germans captured
Golian and Viest in Pohronský Bukovec; they later interrogated and executed
them. SOE and OSS teams eventually united and
sent a message in which they requested immediate assistance. Germans surrounded
both groups on December 25 and captured them. Some of the men were summarily
executed. Germans took the rest to Mauthausen concentration camp where they
were tortured and executed. The German victory only postponed the
eventual downfall of the pro-Nazi regime. Six months later, the Red Army
had overrun Axis troops in Czechoslovakia. By December 1944
Romanian and Soviet troops had driven German troops out of southern Slovakia
in the Battle of Budapest. On January 19, 1945, the Red Army took Bardejov,
Svidník, Prešov and Košice in Eastern Slovakia. On March 3–5 they had taken
over northwest Slovakia. On March 25 they entered Banská Bystrica and on
April 4 marched into Bratislava. The main military objectives were not
achieved due to the bad timing of the uprising and lack of cooperation by
Soviet partisans. This undermined the plans of the insurrectional Slovak army.
The guerrilla struggle, however, tied up significant German forces that could
otherwise have reinforced the Wehrmacht on the eastern front against the
advancing 1st Ukrainian Front to the north and south of Slovakia.
Nevertheless, much of Slovakia was left devastated by the Uprising and the
German counter-offensive and occupation. See also
Slovak Insurgent Air Force References
Vlčko, Ryan P; Vlčko. "The Soviet Union's Role in the Slovak National
Uprising: The Talský Affair: Incompetent, Traitor or Pawn?".
Downs, Jim. World War II: OSS Tragedy in Slovakia. Liefrinck. ISBN
978-0-9717482-0-0. Lettrich. History of Modern Slovakia.
F.A. Praeger. OCLC 600002230. Vlčko, Peter. In the Shadow of Tyranny:
A History in Novel Form. Vantage Press. ISBN 978-0-533-00363-1.
Brown, Martin D.. "The SOE and the failure of the Slovak National
Uprising". History Today 54. External links
Slovak National Uprising Museum in Banská Bystrica
Czechoslovak military units in USSR Slovak National Uprising Anniversary
website German army fighting partisans during
the Slovak Uprising on YouTube - German propaganda movie during World War II
Continuation of same film, with Slovakian narration on YouTube
Modern Russian movie interviewing soldiers seen in the World War II German
propaganda video on YouTube