When you think of the resistance forces of the Second World War,
it’s likely that the French Resistance and the Polish Home Army come to mind. But what
about the resistance fighters in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia,
specifically the Yugoslav Partisans? This organisation was enormous—a veritable
army—and highly effective. And we don’t think it gets the attention it deserves.
In this video, we hope to rectify that.
After Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria joined Axis, Hitler set his sights on Yugoslavia,
and Yugoslavia’s Prince Paul soon declared that he would bend the knee.
Many in Yugoslavia, especially the Serbians, were not happy about this. On the 27th of March 1941,
a coup d'état saw Prince Paul dethroned and replaced by King Peter the Second.
This infuriated Hitler, who issued Führer Directive 25 on the very same day. In answer
to the coup d'état, he would, quote, “destroy Yugoslavia militarily and as a state with pitiless
harshness, and without waiting for possible declarations of loyalty of the new government.”
On the 6th of April 1941, Germany, Italy, and Hungary launched their invasion of Yugoslavia.
All told, this Axis force included 19 German divisions, 22 Italian divisions,
and the Hungarian 3rd Army. The sky was all but blacked out, with more than 1,900 aircraft flying
in support of the Axis ground force. Conversely, some 700,000 soldiers of the Royal Yugoslav Army
stood in defence of the state, while up to 500 Yugoslav planes patrolled the sky.
In just 12 days, the Germans alone had captured as many as 345,000 Yugoslavs,
and the state had been shattered. The Serbian capital, Belgrade, was bombed into submission,
with 17,000 residents killed. The Yugoslavs had truly had no idea how hard Hitler would hit them.
A brutal occupation followed, with Yugoslavia split into territories
occupied by, or annexed to, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Albania.
The Axis troops gunned down or hung people at will. They burned houses, and sometimes
entire villages, to the ground, and re-housed the expelled Yugoslavs in concentration camps.
In the German-occupied zones, if someone slew a German soldier,
the Germans would slaughter 100 Yugoslav hostages in response.
In Mussolini’s words, “The best situation is when the enemy is
dead. So we must take numerous hostages and shoot them whenever necessary.”
With Yugoslavia torn apart and atrocities like these taking place on the regular,
many Yugoslavs felt they had no choice but to resist the occupying forces by violent means.
In fact, the leader of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, a man named Josip Broz Tito, had been
establishing an underground network and amassing weapons since the Axis forces first stepped foot
in Yugoslavia. He would not, however, engage the Axis in open warfare because to do so, he would
need Soviet support, and the USSR was currently upholding a non-aggression pact with Germany.
In June 1941, Hitler launched his invasion of the USSR, and everything changed.
Now, Tito could step out of the shadows and wage a guerrilla war against the Axis.
Together, his forces were known as the Yugoslav Partisans, or officially,
the National Liberation Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia. The Partisans had two main goals:
defeat the occupying forces, and turn Yugoslavia into a federal multi-ethnic communist state.
However, the Partisans were not the only resistance force operating in Yugoslavia.
As Tito had risen, so too had Draža Mihailović. This Yugoslavian Serb was the leader of a loose
collective of resistance fighters known as the Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army,
or simply the Chetniks. Instead of communism, the Chetniks stood in
support of the Yugoslav monarchy and Serbia itself. They were stoutly nationalistic.
As you might expect, the Partisans and Chetniks didn’t get along so well.
It didn’t help that the Chetniks collaborated with the Axis powers pretty much whenever it
suited them, while also—in a supreme act of juggling—keeping the Western Allies on
their side for much of the war. With that said, there were times when the Partisans
and Chetniks fought together against the Axis. We’ll get to that in just a moment.
For now, Tito’s first uprising kicked off on the 4th of July 1941,
and the first bullet was fired on the 7th, in what became known as the Bela Crkva incident.
Here, in Serbia, a dozen Partisans led by a man named Žikica Jovanović Španac gunned down two
Yugoslav gendarmes who were serving the enemy by enforcing the ban on political rallies. After the
deed was done, Jovanović said, “This is how all those who will serve the occupier will pass.”
From that incident until the end of November, Serbia was in an uproar. And for three of those
four months, the Partisans and Chetniks fought side by side against the Germans,
who made both resistance organisations pay dearly.
At the end of the uprising, some 4,000 Partisans and Chetniks had been slain, and in reprisal for
some German 600 casualties, the Germans massacred Yugoslav 35,000 civilians. To top it off, the rift
that had been growing between the Partisans and Chetniks throughout the uprising grew inconsolable
in early November, when Mihailović surrendered to the Germans and turned on the Partisans.
In mid-November, for example, the Chetniks captured 365 Partisans and handed them
over to the Germans, who executed them or sent them to suffer and die in concentration camps.
The Germans may have defeated the Partisans in this first uprising,
but the war was not over. And over the next year and a half, surviving four major Axis offensives,
the Partisans swelled in number. We’re not sure how many Partisans Tito commanded by mid-1943,
but by late 1944, it’s argued that that figure was around 650,000.
Returning to mid-1943, British historian Basil Davidson had this to say about the situation
in Yugoslavia: “[At this stage,] the partisan resistance to the Germans and their allies had
grown from the dimensions of a mere nuisance to those of a major factor in the general situation.
In many parts of occupied Europe the enemy was suffering losses at the hands
of partisans that he could ill afford. Nowhere were these losses heavier than in Yugoslavia.”
In May, the Axis forces launched their fifth major offensive against the Partisans,
codenamed Case Black. This involved some 127,000 Axis troops and 22,000 Partisans. And despite the
Axis force’s numerical superiority, the Axis failed to capture the Partisans in
the giant noose they had set. German General Rudolf Lüters chalked the Axis failure up to
the Partisans being well organised, skilfully led, and of unbelievably high combat morale.
The Partisans had taken some 7,500 casualties, about a third of their starting strength,
but the battle proven that the war could be won. The Partisans,
after all, were fighting for their home.
In Basil Davidson’s words, “It was the nature of partisan resistance that operations against
it must either eliminate it altogether or leave it potentially stronger than before,
with the backing of a population which had come to
see no alternative to resistance but death, imprisonment, or starvation.”
Following Italy’s surrender, the Axis launched one more major offensive
against the Partisans that year. This was Operation Kugelblitz, in which the Germans,
Chetniks, and Bulgarians issued the Partisans a significant defeat.
In December, however, while Kugelblitz was still raging, something massive happened.
The Western Allies, sick of the Chetniks’ two-timing, dumped them in favour of the
Yugoslav Partisans. With Britain, the United States, and the USSR backing Tito,
the Partisans were looking stronger than ever. The failure of the seventh
and final major Axis offensive launched against them was a testament to this.
From May 1944 until the end of the war, the Partisans were the ones on the offensive.
Looking to cement his power while his men pressed the attack,
Tito signed an agreement with the aforementioned King Peter.
The agreement stipulated that the new Yugoslav government would include communists and royalists,
and that the government would recognise Tito’s Partisans as Yugoslavia’s regular army.
Tito further cemented his power, particularly with the Western Allies, by assisting in the evacuation
of downed Allied airmen from Yugoslavia in 1944. Among these rescue operations, Halyard was
perhaps the most famous, though it wasn’t the only operation of its kind. We’ve covered this topic in
depth in a previous video, but what’s important to today’s video is that Tito’s partisans assisted in
the rescue of as many as 795 downed Allied airmen throughout the year, whereas the Chetnik’s rescued
about half as many. According to American Rear Admiral Thomas T. Matteso, supporting the Allies
in these operations was the Chetniks “only means of reversing the Partisan takeover.”
To that end, their efforts were in vain.
In September 1944 (while Operation Halyard was still in effect),
the nigh-unstoppable Partisans began a massive march of Belgrade alongside the Red Army,
and summarily freed the city from the Germans.
At this point, things were looking terrible for the Germans in Yugoslavia. (Well, things were
looking terrible for the Germans everywhere.) To quote our friend Basil one last time,
“Every German unit which could safely evacuate from Yugoslavia might count itself lucky.”
In 1945, with some 800,000 Partisans under his command, Tito defeated the Armed Forces of the
Independent State of Croatia (and the Germans) in Croatia, marched on and seized Trieste,
and then fought one of the last battles of the Second World War in Europe: The Battle of Poljana.
Here, on the 14th and 15th of May, several days after Germany had officially surrendered,
the Partisans crushed a retreating Axis column some 30,000 men strong.
After the war was won, the surviving Chetnik forces were dissolved, King Peter was deposed,
and Partisans were reorganised into the regular armed forces of the newly formed
Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, which was led by Tito. What happened between
then and the breakup of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s is a story for another time.
For now, what do you think? Why aren’t the Yugoslav Partisans discussed in mainstream
history as much as the French and Polish resistances? What do you know about the
Partisans that we didn’t cover in this video? And lastly, what other resistance organisation
would you like us to cover in future videos? Please share your thoughts in the comments.