On this channel we've covered lesser known countries during WWII.
So what happened in what is today North Macedonia during WW2? Well, the region was part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
And was referred to as Vardar Banovina or Vardar Banate.
Then the Axis invasion of April 1941 took place.
Most of the region came under Bulgarian occupation.
There was collaboration, but also resistance.
In this video you will learn about North Macedonia / Yugoslav Macedonia during the Second World War!
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Be aware that Macedonia is a geographical region that encompasses large parts of today's
northern Greece, southwest Bulgaria, some parts of Kosovo and Albania and today's country of North Macedonia.
The region has a rich history that goes all the way back to the times of Alexander the
Great.
Most people in North Macedonia today are of Slavic instead of Greek descent.
“The territory of Macedonia lacked clearly and unambiguously defined frontiers.
It also lacked a unifying language; until the end of the Second World War, the [Slavo] Macedonians
spoke a variety of dialects related to both Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian.”
After WW1 what is now North Macedonia became a part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and
Slovenes (later Kingdom of Yugoslavia).
On German pressure Yugoslavia signed the Triparte Pact on 25 March.
Then 27 March Serbian military leaders seized power in a military coup in Belgrade.
Hitler then vowed to destroy Yugoslavia.
On 6 April the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia started.
The details of this operation I did cover in another episode.
See link in the top right corner.
When the Germans marched into this region they were greeted as liberators by the local
population.
During the interwar years policies of Serbianization were implemented, much to the dismay of the
population.
On 19 April 1941 the Bulgarian army entered the region and they were very much welcomed
as well.
The Yugoslav region that was occupied by Bulgaria is the largest part of what today is the country
of North Macedonia (a smaller part in the west came under Italian influence).
Actually the Italians wanted more territory but the Germans wanted the Bulgarians to have
it so they would have easier access to its minerals.
During the interwar years it was mostly part of Vardar Banovina or Vardar Banate.
In literature it is referred to as Vardar Macedonia or just Macedonia, which angers
many Greek people because Macedonia is a geographical region with most of its territory in Greece.
Bulgarian legislation was simply extended in the newly taken territories.
After the initial joy, soon there was disillusionment.
The Serbian officials (from the interwar Yugoslav state) were simply replaced by Bulgarian officials (which often weren't
the best ones).
During the interwar period the people were told they were Serbs.
Now they were told they were Bulgarians.
From Sofia everything was decided and efforts were made to transform the region into a part
of Greater Bulgaria.
“Without making any formal proclamation, it simply extended Bulgarian military, administrative,
police, and judicial organizations and legislation to these regions, though it did issue a number
of specific laws and decrees applicable to them.”
The Bulgarian government saw the region as rightfully Bulgarian.
However, instead of liberators they acted as conquerors: harsh and rude to the local
population.
The Yugoslav Macedonians were treated as backward Bulgarians.
The Bulgarians realized only a part of the population saw themselves as Bulgarians.
Education was to facilitate the proces of Bulgarization.
Bulgaria also took control over the Orthodox Church.
Mid-1942 Bulgarian citizenship was imposed on the people.
Those who refused would be required to leave the country.
This led to the expulsion of around 26,000 Serbs and Montenegrins to German-occupied
Serbia.
In the future you'll learn more about the Bulgarian occupation of this part of Yugoslavia.
In September 1944 Bulgaria switched sides and was now on the side of the Allies, instead
of the Axis.
After the Bulgarians withdrew from the area they had occupied the Germans wanted to take them
over. The German soldiers stationed in Greece now ran the risk of being cut off by the advancing
Red Army.
Therefore they wanted to seize control over the area in order to let their comrades
have a save passage to better defendable areas.
The Germans sought the help of the IMRO (Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization).
Back in April 1941 they wanted them to launch an uprising just as the ustasha did in Croatia
but as for Yugoslav Macedonia nothing came of it.
The IMRO was a Bulgarian-based organization established in 1893 and led by Ivan Mikhailov
in 1927.
It soon fell apart into a faction that supported an independent Macedonian state, and a third
branch, which was pro-Communist.
When Bulgaria outlawed Macedonian terrorist groups in 1934, Mikhailov fled to Italy.
After April 1941 he spent the entire war in Zagreb as a guest of Ante Pavelic (ustasha
leader of the NDH).
In September 1944 he went to Skopje to help to Germans by proclaiming a separate Macedonian
state and organizing an administration and military forces.
He realized the situation was very hopeless and abandoned the project and returned to
Zagreb.
For several weeks the Germans crossed to the territory to withdraw from Greece to Bosnia.
The Yugoslav Partisans inflicted losses on them.
By mid-November all Axis units had left Yugoslav Macedonia.
World War II in North Macedonia had come to an end.
I mentioned the Yugoslav partisans, but these weren't the only resistance fighters.
As we saw elsewhere in the former Yugoslav kingdom
there was a conflict between between different factions of the resistance. However there was a difference.
It was not the communist partisans versus royalist chetniks but it was
the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) versus the Communist Party of Bulgaria
(CPB). That was the conflict.
See, many Bulgarians including the political opposition in Sofia, including the communists
they believed this area was rightfully theirs.
However, the Yugoslav partisans they wanted this area
for the future postwar Yugoslav state.
“Both the Bulgarian and Yugoslav parties urged resistance to fascism; but for the former,
resistance apparently meant political opposition to the Tsarist regime, whereas to the latter
it meant an armed struggle against the Bulgarian domination of [North] Macedonia.”
The CPY gained the upper hand, but this explained why their resistance took a while to take
off: October 1941.
This was also due to the fact that the CPY had only a few members in the area.
And even when resistance took off their organization fell apart due to counterattacks.
From the early summer of 1943 their numbers grew significantly.
In response, the Bulgarians used repressive measures on a broad scale: forced labour,
imprisonement or deportation to Bulgaria.
A special type of Bulgarian counterunit was developed, though with little success.
Just to be clear: chetniks were also active in the area but were defeated by the partisans
in March 1944. What happened to the Jews in this region?
As you may know: Bulgaria did not hand over its Jewish population to the Germans.
But this was unfortunately not the case for the Jews living in
Bulgarian-occupied territories of Greece and Yugoslavia.
The Bulgarian government took care of the roundup and deportation of over 7,000 Jews
in Skopje and Bitola.