Slovene Partisans

Liberation Front of the Slovenian People. and
Partisan Detachments of Slovenia
LeadersBoris Kidrič, Edvard Kardelj[2][3]
Dates of operation1941–1945
Headquartersmobile, attached to the Main Operational Group
Active regionsAxis-annexed Slovene Lands
Ideology
SizeLeast (1941): 700–800 Peak (1944): 38,000
Part ofYugoslav Partisans
OpponentsGermany, Italy, Hungary, Independent State of Croatia, Anti-Communist Volunteer Militia, Slovene Home Guard
Battles and warsBattle of Dražgoše (1941)
Battle of Nanos (1942)
Battle of Janče (1942),
Battle of Jelenov Žleb (1943),
Battle of Kočevje (1943),
Battle of Grčarice (1943),
Battle of Turjak Castle (1943),
Battle of Ilova Gora (1943),
Raid at Ožbalt (1944),
Battle of Trnovo (1945),
Race for Trieste (1945),
Battle of Poljana (1945)

The Slovene Partisans,[a] formally the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Slovenia,[b] were part of Europe's most effective anti-Nazi resistance movement[4][5] led by Yugoslav revolutionary communists[6] during World War II, the Yugoslav Partisans.[7] Since a quarter of Slovene ethnic territory and approximately 327,000 out of total population of 1.3[8] million Slovenes were subjected to forced Italianization[9][10] after the end of the First World War, and genocide of the entire Slovene nation was being planned by the Italian fascist authorities,[11] the objective of the movement was the establishment of the state of Slovenes that would include the majority of Slovenes within a socialist Yugoslav federation in the postwar period.[7]

Slovenia was in a rare position in Europe during the Second World War because only Greece shared its experience of being divided between three or more countries. However, Slovenia was the only one that experienced a further step—absorption and annexation into neighboring Germany, Italy, Croatia, and Hungary.[12] As the very existence of the Slovene nation was threatened, the Slovene support for the Partisan movement was much more solid than in Croatia or Serbia.[13] An emphasis on the defence of ethnic identity was shown by naming the troops after important Slovene poets and writers, following the example of the Ivan Cankar battalion.[14] Slovene Partisans were the armed wing of the Liberation Front of the Slovene Nation, a resistance political organization and party coalition for what the Partisans referred to as the Slovene Lands.[15] The Liberation Front was founded and directed by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ), more specifically its Slovene branch: the Communist Party of Slovenia.

Being the first organized military force in the history of Slovenes,[16] the Slovene Partisans were in the beginning organized as guerrilla units, and later as an army. Their opponents were the Axis forces in Slovenia, and after the summer of 1942, also anti-Communist Slovene forces. The Slovene Partisans were mostly ethnically homogeneous and primarily communicated in Slovene.[16] These two features have been considered vital for their success.[16] Their most characteristic symbol was a cap known as a triglavka.[16][17] They were subordinated to the civil resistance authority.[15] The Partisan movement in Slovenia, though a part of the wider Yugoslav Partisans, was operationally autonomous from the rest of the movement, being geographically separated, and full contact with the remainder of the Partisan army occurred after the breakthrough of Josip Broz Tito's forces through to Slovenia in 1944.[18][19]

  1. ^ According to Brezovar, Milan. Letopis muzeja narodne osvoboditve LRS, 1957 p. 41, the Slovene Partisan flag is the Slovene tricolor flag with the anti-Fascist red five-armed star over all three fields.
  2. ^ Gow, James; Carmichael, Cathie (2010). Slovenia and the Slovenes: A Small State in the New Europe (Revised and updated ed.). Hurst Publishers Ltd. p. 70. ISBN 978-1-85065-944-0.
  3. ^ Beacons in the Night: With the OSS and Tito's Partisans in Wartime Yugoslavia. Stanford University Press. 1996. p. 35. ISBN 978-0-8047-2588-0.
  4. ^ Jeffreys-Jones, R. (2013): In Spies We Trust: The Story of Western Intelligence, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-958097-2, p. 87
  5. ^ Adams, Simon (2005): The Balkans, Black Rabbit Books, ISBN 978-1-58340-603-8, p. 1981
  6. ^ Rusinow, Dennison I. (1978). The Yugoslav experiment 1948–1974. University of California Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-520-03730-4.
  7. ^ a b Tomasevich, Jozo (2001). War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration. Vol. 2. San Francisco: Stanford University Press. pp. 96–97. ISBN 978-0-8047-3615-2.
  8. ^ Lipušček, U. (2012) Sacro egoismo: Slovenci v krempljih tajnega londonskega pakta 1915, Cankarjeva založba, Ljubljana. ISBN 978-961-231-871-0
  9. ^ Cresciani, Gianfranco (2004) Clash of civilisations Archived 2020-05-06 at the Wayback Machine, Italian Historical Society Journal, Vol.12, No.2, p.4
  10. ^ Hehn, Paul N. (2005). A Low Dishonest Decade: The Great Powers, Eastern Europe, and the Economic Origins of World War II, 1930–1941. Continuum International Publishing Group. pp. 44–45. ISBN 978-0-8264-1761-9.
  11. ^ Gibson, Hugh (Dec 1, 1945). The Ciano Diaries 1939-1943: The Complete, Unabridged Diaries of Count Galeazzo Ciano, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1936-1943 [en] (in Italian) (1st ed.). Safety Harbor, FL: Doubleday & Company Inc. pp. 432, entry date January 5, 1942. ISBN 978-1931313742.
  12. ^ Gregor Joseph Kranjc (2013).To Walk with the Devil, University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division, p. introduction 5
  13. ^ Hoare, Marko Atilla (2002). "Whose is the partisan movement? Serbs, Croats and the legacy of a shared resistance". The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. 15 (4): 24–41. doi:10.1080/13518040208430537. S2CID 145127681.
  14. ^ Štih, P.; Simoniti, V.; Vodopivec, P. (2008) A Slovene History: Society, politics, culture. Inštitut za novejšo zgodovino. Ljubljana. p.426.
  15. ^ a b Repe, Božo (2005). "Vzroki za spopad med JLA in Slovenci" [Reasons for the Conflict Between the Yugoslav People's Army and the Slovenes] (PDF). Vojaška zgodovina [Military History] (in Slovenian). VI (1/05): 5. ISSN 1580-4828. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-07-21. Retrieved 2012-03-02.
  16. ^ a b c d Vankovska, Biljana; Wiberg, Håkan (2003). "Slovene and the Yugoslav People's Army". Between Past and Future: Civil-Military Relations in the Post-Communist Balkans. I.B. Tauris. pp. 164–165. ISBN 978-1-86064-624-9.
  17. ^ Martinčič, Vanja (1990). Slovenski partizan: orožje, obleka in oprema slovenskih partizanov [Slovene Partisan: Weapons, Clothing and Equipment of Slovene Partisans] (PDF) (in Slovenian and English). Museum of People's Revolution. pp. 44–45, 50–52. COBISS 17009408.
  18. ^ Stewart, James (2006). Linda McQueen (ed.). Slovenia. New Holland Publishers. p. 15. ISBN 978-1-86011-336-9.
  19. ^ "Histories of the Individual Yugoslav Nations". The former Yugoslavia's diverse peoples: a reference sourcebook. ABC-Clio. 2004. pp. 167–168. ISBN 978-1-57607-294-3.


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