Slovak National Uprising

Slovak National Uprising
Part of the Eastern Front of World War II
Monument to the National Uprising in Banská Bystrica
Date 29 August – 28 October 1944 (2 months) Location Slovakia Result Uprising suppressed Transition of the insurgents to partisan warfare
Belligerents
Germany  Slovak State	Czechoslovakia (1st Czechoslovak Army in Slovakia) Supported by:  Soviet Union  United States
Commanders and leaders
Gottlob Berger Hermann Höfle Ferdinand Čatloš (defected) Štefan Haššík Otomar Kubala	Ján Golian  Rudolf Viest
Strength
in total: 50,000 German soldiers 6,900–8,600 Slovak soldiers 5,000 Hlinka guardists	in total: 60,000 rebelling soldiers 7,000–18,000 partisans

Slovak National Uprising (Slovak: Slovenské národné povstanie, abbreviated SNP; alternatively also Povstanie roku 1944, English: The Uprising of 1944) was organised by the Slovak resistance during the Second World War, directed against the German invasion of Slovakia by the German military, which began on 29 August 1944, and on the other against the Slovak collaborationist regime of the Ludaks under Jozef Tiso. Along with the Warsaw Uprising, it was the largest uprising against Nazism and its allies in Europe.

Carried by parts of the Slovak army, the main area of the uprising was in central Slovakia, with the town of Banská Bystrica as its centre. The Slovak insurgent army (officially the 1st Czechoslovak Army in Slovakia) was under the overall command of a military headquarters of the opposition Slovak National Council. This represented a coalition of the civic Democratic Party and the Slovak communists and was linked to the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London. The uprising was additionally supported by Soviet and Slovak partisan units. At the beginning of the uprising, the insurgents controlled over half of what was then Slovak territory, but quickly lost ground as a result of the German advance. After 60 days of fighting, the uprising ended on 28 October 1944. With the fall of Banská Bystrica, the military leadership of the insurgents gave up fighting openly against the Wehrmacht. Without surrendering, the insurgents switched to pure partisan fighting, which they continued until the Red Army occupied Slovakia in April 1945.

As a result of the uprising, both conflicting parties also committed numerous war crimes. In the areas controlled by the insurgents, up to 1,500 people were murdered (mostly members of the German minority). The German occupation regime, for its part, claimed up to 5,000 lives (about 2,000 of them being Jews), especially after the suppression of the uprising with targeted "punitive measures" against the civilian population. The German leadership also used the uprising as an opportunity to complete the extermination of the Jews in Slovakia, which resulted in the deportation or murder of more than 14,000 Jews on Slovak territory by the end of the war. A total of about 30,000 Slovak citizens were deported to German prison, labour, internment and concentration camps.

After the communist takeover in Czechoslovakia in 1948, the Slovak National Uprising underwent strong reinterpretations. As a result, the share of communists and partisans in the uprising was exaggerated by official Czechoslovak historiography. The civic resistance and the significance of the insurgent army, whose representatives were persecuted by the communist leadership after 1948, were neglected. With the fall of communism in 1989, a process of re-evaluation began in Slovakia, through which the role of the civic resistance and the insurgent army was emphasised. 29 August is a public holiday in today's Slovakia.