Partisan Long March

Partisan Long March
Part of World War II in Yugoslavia
Path of partisan brigade from eastern Bosnia to northwestern Bosnia.
Date 24 June 1942 — August 1942 Location Independent State of Croatia (modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina) Result Partisan victory, establishment of Bihać Republic
Belligerents
Yugoslav Partisans	Italy  Croatia  Chetniks
Commanders and leaders
Josip Broz Tito Arso Jovanović Koča Popović Ratko Sofijanić Vladimir Knežević Peko Dapčević Sava Kovačević Vlado Šegrt	Mario Roatta Rafael Boban

The Partisan Long March was the redeployment of Josip Broz Tito's Partisan Supreme Headquarters and the major fighting elements of the Yugoslav Partisans across the Independent State of Croatia (Serbo-Croatian: Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH), from south-eastern to north-western Bosnia that commenced in late June 1942. The march followed the first large-scale joint German-Italian counter-insurgency operation in the NDH, Operation Trio, and the combined Italian-Montenegrin Chetnik offensive in Montenegro and eastern Herzegovina.^[1]

The majority of the units of the National Liberation Army (1st and 2nd Proletarian, 3rd Sandžak and 4th Montenegrin Brigades) and the Supreme Headquarters of the NOV and POJ set out from the territory of Mt Zelengora on June 24, 1942, for western Bosnia. Along the way, battles were fought with the enemy (Konjic, Bugojno, Prozor, Livno, Kupres) and a new liberated territory was created. At the end of July, the 5th Montenegrin Brigade joined these forces with the Herzegovinian NOP Detachment, from which the 10th Herzegovinian Proletarian Strike Brigade was then formed.

The campaign in Bosnian Krajina was not intended as a march, but to strike at the enemy, expand free territory in western Bosnia and create favorable conditions for further development of the uprising in the western parts of Yugoslavia, so it was planned to be carried out gradually, in stages. In the first stage, a sudden attack was to break and destroy enemy crews and destroy the Sarajevo-Mostar railway, and then, in the next stage, continue to advance to the northwest, take control of the territory on the right bank of the Neretva, in the upper Vrbas and Kupres, Livno, Imotski and connect with Krajina and Dalmatian units.