Independent Macedonia (1944)

For other uses, see Independent Macedonia (disambiguation).
The red and black flag used by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization and more broadly by supporters of an autonomous or independent Macedonia

The Independent State of Macedonia[a] was a proposed puppet state of Nazi Germany during the Second World War in the territory of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia that had been occupied by the Tsardom of Bulgaria following the invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941.

When Soviet Union forces approached the borders of Bulgaria near the end of August 1944, Bulgaria declared neutrality and briefly sought to negotiate with the Western Allies. As the Bulgarian government was not impeding the withdrawal of German forces from Bulgaria or Romania, the Soviet Union treated it with suspicion. On 2 September, a new pro-Western government took power in Sofia, only to be replaced a week later by a pro-Soviet government after a Fatherland Front–led coup.[1] However, on 5 September 1944, the Soviets declared war on Bulgaria.

The Germans turned to Ivan Mihailov to implement the scheme.[2] Mihailov was a Bulgarophile right-wing politician and former leader of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) who had been engaged in terrorist activity in Yugoslav and Greek Macedonia. Mihailov had become leader of IMRO in 1927 and under his leadership the organisation had joined forces with the Croatian Ustaše in 1929.[3] The two organisations had planned and executed the assassination of King Alexander of Yugoslavia in 1934. After the Bulgarian military coup d'état in the same year, IMRO was banned by the Bulgarian authorities. Mihailov fled to Turkey and then Italy, where most of the Ustaše were also in exile. After the invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, Mihailov had moved to Zagreb where he had acted as an advisor to Ante Pavelić. In January 1944 he had successfully lobbied the Germans to arm some Ohrana supporters and have them placed under Schutzstaffel (SS) command in Greek Macedonia, which had also been in part annexed by Bulgaria in 1941.[2]

In 1928, Mihailov proposed a plan calling for the unification of the region of Macedonia into a single state, that would be autonomous from Bulgaria.[4] He was a proponent of a pro-Bulgarian United Macedonian multi-ethnic state, calling it: "Switzerland of the Balkans".[5] During the last phase of the Second World War he tried to realise his plan with German political collaboration; however, he abandoned the implementation of this idea due to the lack of real military support. Despite this, an independent state was declared by Macedonian nationalists on 8 September 1944. Without the means to make the state a reality, this pretence dissolved as soon as the Yugoslav Partisans asserted their control following the withdrawal of German troops from the area by mid-November. This event marked the defeat of the Bulgarian nationalism and the victory of the Macedonism in the area.[6]

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  1. ^ Tomasevich 2001, pp. 166–167
  2. ^ a b Tomasevich 2001, p. 167
  3. ^ Tomasevich 2001, p. 159
  4. ^ "Collective Memory, National Identity, and Ethnic Conflict: Greece, Bulgaria, and the Macedonian Question, Victor Roudometof, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002, ISBN 0275976483, p. 99.
  5. ^ Fischer 2007, p. 127
  6. ^ Macedonia and the Macedonians: A History, Andrew Rossos, Hoover Press, 2008, ISBN 9780817948832, p. 189.