What happened to Bosnia and Herzegovina during WW2? What is today Bosnia and
Herzegovina was during WW2 a part of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). What
exactly happened here in Bosnia during WW2? Well this here is another
countries in World War II episode where we're going to talk about Bosnia during World War II!
Hey good to have you back on the channel; if you're new: I'm Stefan, I'm a Dutch history teacher and
I'd like to cover history on location - right now I'm overlooking Sarajevo - and if you find this on
location content interesting consider subscribing, hit that notification bell and you can support me
via Patreon, PayPal or via a Super Thanks. The links can be found below in the description. What
is today Bosnia and Herzegovina was during the interwar years a part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
In the region Bosnian Muslims lived, also known as Bosniaks, but also many Serbs and of course
Croats. During the 1930s the Yugoslav government redrew the Bosnian map by dividing the territory
into different provinces (banats) and removed the traces of the old Bosnian borders. In 1939 the
Cvetković-Maček agreement (known as the Sporazum) made a special banovina of Croatia but there was
nothing of a sort for Bosnia. The next border change merged Bosnia with Croatia and that happened
after the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia that commenced on the 6th of April 1941. The state became known
as the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) and had around 40 percent of the territory of the Kingdom of
Yugoslavia that was now defeated by the Axis. The reason why Bosnia and Croatia were merged was that
the Axis wanted to break Bosnia away from Serbia and Serbian influences. Serbia proper which became
known as a Serbian Residual State, or basically what was left of Serbia, mostly came under German
occupation. There was also a puppet say there led by Milan Nedic but it had barely any influence.
Who had influence was the Ustasha. The Ustasha was the party that ruled the NDH
which was an Axis puppet state. Now this movement was led by Ante Pavelic, the
Ustasha – Croatian Revolutionary Movement. Its ideology was drawn from German Nazism, Italian
fascism, but also authoritarianism and peasantism. Basically Ustasha ideology can be summed up in
three words and I'm talking about: racism, religion, and violence and the Croatian ultranationalists
they saw their state was fo Croatians only and people they deemed inferior -Serbs,
Jews and Roma - they had to disappear; many died at the hands of Ustasha death squads that roamed the
countryside killing people in the most horrifying ways imaginable. Others were sent to concentration
camps such as the Jasenovac complex where many would be brutally murdered. Also Croatians with other
political ideas were murdered in Jasenovac. It is believed that around 80 000 died in the Jasenovac
complex. One Ustasha member was about to kill his Serbian acquaintances and spoke the following
words to them: ‘I know who you are and how you are, but I can’t help you; I can’t help the fact that
you are Serbs, that you belong to the people among whom the new laws of the state make no distinction.
You are all guilty for what happened during the time of the former Yugoslavia, and you will pay for it, everyone of you, down to the last.’
Many people were murdered with knives, bayonets, axes,
people were burned alive or burried alive. Now for those who aren't targeted by the Ustasha
life wasn't easy because the NDH suffered economic hardships due to Axis exploitation. Food
shortages and inflation led to the rise of black markets. One thing that confuses many people is why
did the Uastsha hate the Serbs but not the Bosnian Muslims. I mean the serbs there were Orthodox but
they were at least Christian right? But the Muslims... they were well Muslim. So why weren't they targeted?
Well that was because they hated the Serbs because the Serbs had oppressed them for so long
during the time of the Yugoslav Kingdom and the Bosniaks, the Muslims, that were basically seen
as Croats of the Islamic faith and the idea was that one day these people would be converted
to Catholicism. “The Ustaša movement is unique in that it was the only fascist group from that era to
have a significant Muslim component and military uniforms that included the fez.” And it is true that
a certain amount of Bosnian Muslims joined the Axis, either in the Croatian Home Army (Hrvatsko domobranstvo) but also in the Waffen-SS.
The SS Handschar and the SS Kama. On request of the NDH authorities the Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was invited to help recruiting Muslims.
And these units held the Axis with anti-partisan warfare in the country, because
the NDH had a huge problem with rebellion. According to historian Stevan K. Pavlowitch the
first resistance in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia did not start out of ideology; it was basically out of
survival as local priests and merchants armed themselves to fight against the Ustasha. It soon
however took on an ethnic bias Basically there were two main resistance groups in
Yugoslavia during the WW2: the nationalist Chetniks (led by Draža Mihailović) who were more Serbian
nationalist-oriented and the communist-oriented Partisans that were led by Joseph Broz Tito.
Eventually the Chetniks, to some degree, started to collaborate with the Axis to fight against
the Partisans. It's a complicated story which I covered in another video. Both started their
operations in neighboring Serbia; soon the resistance fighters moved into Bosnia, part of
the NDH. In the following years the Axis carried out several huge offensives against the Partisans
and according to Yugoslav historians these actions became known as the 'Enemy Offensives One to Seven'.
The First Enemy Offensive – September-December 1941, where Germany and Italy recovered territory taken by the Partisans.
The Second Enemy Offensive – 15 Januar 1942, where German and Croatian forces advanced through Eastern Bosnia making Tito retreat and form mobile 'Proletarian brigades'.
The Third Enemy Offensive – April-June 1942, German-Italian-Croatian ánd Chetnik units attacked Tito's position who then marched 200 miles to the north-west of Western Bosnia.
The Fourth Enemy Offensive – 15 January 1943, German-Italian-Croatian units executed Operation White I, II and III. Tito managed to break out fighting his way southeast reaching Western Montenegro.
The Fifth Enemy Offensive – On 20 May he was surrounded again and made it back to Eastern Bosnia ordering his troops to disperse.
The Sixth Enemy Offensive – Autumn and winter of 1943/44, Operation Kugelblitz which was launched and the Axis forces took Tuzla and Bihac.
And the last one was the Seventh Enemy Offensive – May 1944, Operation Rösselsprung, where Germany used paratroopers and Tito barely escpaped.
Do notice at some point the Axis were assisted by the Chetniks.
The Chetniks was a very diverse and decentralized group. As historian Micha Glenny wrote:
“The bulk of Chetnik forces, on the other hand, were attached not just to specific districts but to individual villages.
Their tactics were defensive, aimed at maintaining local freedom of action. As such, the Chetniks were not highly organized or flexible; although most payed lip service to Mihailovic as their leader,
they did not consider themselves bound to him: if they did not feel like leaving their villages on a mission, they would not do so.”
Many Chetniks viewed the war primarily as an eliminationist opportunity, killing thousands of Muslims in eastern Bosnia.
The Chetniks often clashed with the Partisans and by the autumn of 1943 the Partisans had decisively weakened them. Italy's collapse in September that year also
sapped the strength of the Chetniks. “The ability of the Partisans to unite all Yugoslavia not only
gave them a military edge over the Ustaša and Četniks, but also meant that they were able to exploit their victory in a moral sense for many years, giving them greater political durability.”
Many Chetniks went over to the side of the Partisans. See the Partisans made no distinction
between nationality: everybody was welcome to join. Reckless tactics resulted in the death of 300 000
Partisans out of a million fighters but at the end they did prevail. Do notice that the
Partisans did come purges and atrocities as well. They certainly showed no mercy at the end of the
war through those who collaborated with the Axis, as for example as shown the Bleiburg repatriations
as subsequent massacre. Sarajevo was taken in April 1945 and the following month Zagreb was
taken; the last battle that took place here was the Battle of Odzak that took place in late May 1945.
“Altogether 75,000 Bosnian Muslims are thought to have died in the war: at 8.1 per cent of their total
population, […]. Muslims, had fought on all sides — Ustaša, German, Četnik, Partisan - and had been killed
by all sides. […] They had not started this war, and had fought above all to defend themselves.”
After the war Bosnia and Herzegovina became one of the six constituent republics of the Socialist Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia that was led by Tito. It's important to note that the events in Bosnia and
Herzegovina during this period were marked by intense violence, ethnic tension and wartime
atrocities committed by the various factions; the scars of this conflict would continue to shape
the region's history in the years to come and it led to violence in the 1990s during the Bosnian War