Croatian Partisans
The Croatian Partisans, officially the National Liberation Movement in Croatia, were part of the anti-fascist National Liberational Movement in the Axis-occupied Yugoslavia which was "perhaps Europe's most effective anti-Nazi resistance movement". It was led by Yugoslav revolutionary communists during the World War II. NOP was under the leadership of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia and supported by many others, with Croatian Peasant Party members contributing to it significantly. NOP units were able to temporarily or permanently liberate large parts of Croatia from occupying forces. Based on the NOP, the Federal Republic of Croatia was founded as a constituent of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia.
Background
In April 1941, the Croatian people found itself once again in a position of solving the issue of Croatian survival in the swirling of international warfare. Vladko Maček, leader of HSS and at the time de facto political leader of Croats, estimated that the Croatian state had no real possibility for surviving as part of Nazi Germany's war reconstruction of Europe so he refused to declare an independent Croatian state within the Axis system. Convinced that the Axis powers would lose the war and that their totalitarian system was not aligned with HSS's ideas of liberal democracy and peacemaking, Maček tried in all ways, including entering the Yugoslav government-in-exile, to preserve the changes that had been made within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and to protect the Croatian people from bloodshed. However, when the war reached Croatian territory, prevented by Ustashe police control, Maček opted for a policy of waiting to see how the things would turn, left the political scene and handed it over to the Ustaše and the Communists.Nazi-puppet state, Independent State of Croatia proclaimed by Slavko Kvaternik in the name of Ustaša leader Ante Pavelić on 10 April 1941 appeared as a discontinuity in relation towards the approximation of the basic line of Croatian political orientation and a failure of the aspiration of the Croatian people to have an independent state because NDH's existence was directly linked to the will and destiny of Nazi Germany. The borders of NDH included Bosnia and Herzegovina and parts of Syrmia, but not Međimurje, Istria and large parts of Dalmatia. With Treaties of Rome, NDH was proclaimed the kingdom, and the crown was offered to a member of the Italian ruling dynasty, Prince Aimone, Duke of Aosta as Tomislav II. NDH's constitution was based on a totalitarian ideology that developed under the influence of Nazism and Fascism.
Racial laws were soon enacted and the Ustaše targeted Serbs, Roma and Jews for extermination. Anti-fascist Croats were also persecuted by the regime. Dissatisfaction of the Croatian people with Ustaše rule started almost immediately with the beginning of these persecutions.
The NDH was not truly independent in relation towards German and Italian occupation authorities and with large parts of its territory being controlled by Chetniks and growing Partisan movement. The significance of the regime and the German and Italian influence did not leave much room for independent activity in any area of social life. With the Lorković–Vokić plot in summer of 1944, high-ranking Ustasha officials unsuccessfully tried to preserve NDH by taking power and switching sides to the Allies.
History
Communist activity was aimed at preserving Yugoslavia and its transformation into a federal multiethnic communist state. That is why the KPJ's basic political position was the gathering of all political groups and people ready to provide resistance to the occupying forces and collaborators. In Croatian territories, that meant primarily to win over the Croatian population that had until then followed the HSS and to stop the strengthening of the Chetnik movement among the Serbian population and eventually unite them into a broad anti-fascist movement.The Beginning of the Uprising
in Europe was founded by a group of Croats and one notable Serb woman, Nada Dimić, in the forest of Žabno near Sisak on 22 June 1941 under the leadership of Vlado Janić-Capo. Partisans in Croatia wore three-cornered caps like International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, called Triglavka. Their goal was, first and foremost, to liberate Croatia from the German and Italian occupation and terror which was conducted by the Ustaše regime against Jews, Romanis, Serbs, Croats and others who did not accept their principles. Soon afterward, Croatian partisans founded a Main Staff of the Croatian Partisans led by Andrija Hebrang which was a part of the Supreme Staff of the Yugoslav Partisans under the command of Josip Broz Tito. Of all the other main staffs in the territory of Yugoslavia, Croatian was the strongest and most developed operational-territorial body of the Partisan forces, both in terms of the number of staff and the duties that it had. Following the unsuccessful uprising in Serbia in 1941, the center of gravity for the resistance moved to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.On April 13, 1941, Winston Churchill sent his greetings to the Yugoslav people. In his greeting he stated:
Partisan warfare was effective in the early period of war - avoiding a direct conflict with much stronger military force, using tactics of guerrilla warfare, sabotage, and propaganda. With sudden attacks on the traffic infrastructure and ambushes, they have successfully hindered the main supply of the German army, as well as the overall NDH's functioning.
Turning point
With Germany's weakening and the Italian surrender, the movement grew in power and got statehood attributes with the foundation of the State Anti-fascist Council for the National Liberation of Croatia, led by Croatian poet Vladimir Nazor, which acted as the highest political representative body of the anti-Fascist movement in Croatia. Just like a real war government, ZAVNOH coordinated Partisan military operations and organized economic activities in the liberated territories.In the general warfare of the anti-Hitler coalition, partisan movement in the Yugoslav territory, primarily Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose members, after the capitulation of Italy, disarmed a large number of Italian divisions and liberated large parts of Istria, Dalmatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, played a significant role during 1943.
In the second half of 1943, the Partisans strengthened numerically and created more mobile combat units - the brigades, and gained control over larger territory. With the surrender of Italy and the withdrawal of the remaining Italian soldiers, Partisans acquired a lot of military equipment and materials. Apart from the fact that the population of the former occupied Italian territories was more massively enrolled in the NOP, some Italian volunteers also joined. With more troops and equipment, Partisan brigades gradually developed into a well-coordinated military force, using more direct methods of conflict, so that the NDH government's control, in reality, came down to larger cities and communication lines.
Thanks to military success, at the Second Session of Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia held on 29 November 1943 in Jajce, a new Yugoslavia was established "as a state union of equal peoples", which would ensure full equality of Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs and Slovenians, that is, of Federal Republics of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia.
At the 1943 Tehran Conference, Allied powers decided that they would start supporting NOP so they withdrew support for the Draža Mihailović's Chetniks. Allies established a military mission at the Supreme Staff of the National Liberation Army which was led by Josip Broz Tito. The situation further improved for the Partisans in 1944 as it became obvious that Axis powers would lose the war. Croatian Home Guard's soldiers began joining partisans in large numbers.
Federal State of Croatia
The Final Stage of the War
In mid-1944, when the final stage of the war began, there were about 110,000 partisans in Croatia divided in five corps. The military campaign was led by the Main Staff of Croatia. The KPJ/KPH tried to impose and preserve the leading position, determine the political and military goals of the anti-fascist struggle, expel all other political factors and maintain the continuity of Yugoslavia's existence with the change of the essential elements of its internal structure. The continuity of the Yugoslav state was accepted, and at the same time, the internal discontinuity was confirmed, especially with regard to social and class determinations and their formation in accordance with communist conceptions. That is why the war itself was multi-layered: liberational, civil and revolutionary. The war ended in the Croatian territories with the military defeat of the NDH in May 1945 which was followed by the establishment of a highly centralized Communist regime in Belgrade which controlled Croatia until 1991 when Croatia declared independence.In the final offensive for the liberation of Yugoslavia, from Croatia was engaged 165,000 soldiers mostly for the liberation of Croatia. On Croatian territory after 30 November 1944 in combat with the enemy participated 5 corps, 15 divisions, 54 brigades and 35 Partisan detachments, a total of 121,341 soldiers which at the end of 1944 made up about third of the entire armed forces of the National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia. At the same time, on the territory of Croatia there was 340,000 of German soldiers, 150,000 of Ustasha and Home Guard soldiers while the Chetniks at beginning of 1945 withdrew towards Slovenia. According to the ethnic composition of Partisans, most were Croats 73,327 or 60.40%, followed by Serbs 34,753 or 28.64%, Muslims 3,316 or 2.75%, Jews 284 or 0.25% and Slovenes, Montenegrins and others with 9,671 or 7.96%,.
In military operations in the Croatian and Slovene territories conducted in March 1945, the Partisans broke through the German front in Lika, and parallel to the Danube river, the Syrmia Battlefield. By the beginning of May 1945, they successfully completed the Rijeka campaign, liberated Istria and the Slovene Littoral up to Soča where they met with allied forces, who after liberating Bologna on 19 April penetrated through northern Italy to Austria and the Soča. By 15 May 1945, Partisan units liberated the entire Slovene territory and penetrated the Italian and Austrian territories, where a large part of the NDH's Armed Forces along with a part of NDH's political leadership surrendered to them on Bleiburg on 15 May 1945.