Partisan: A Strategic Analysis
of the War in Yugoslavia, 1942−44
by Javier
Romero
B
y the summer of 1940 the growing strength of Germany and
Italy made Yugoslav neutrality
difficult to maintain. After the fall of
France and the isolation of Britain,
Yugoslavia was diplomatically alone.
Further, Mussolini, who’d just taken his
country into the war, wanted to invade
Yugoslavia and annex the territories of
Dalmatia and Istria while also sponsoring Croatian separatism. Hitler initially
thought otherwise, though, because
he viewed the Yugoslav Army as the
direct descendent of the staunch Serb
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Army of World War I, and he also saw
any distraction of forces to the strategic
backwater of the Balkans as undesirable.
By 1941, however, the Germans were
no longer content with Yugoslav neutrality, and during the winter of 1940−41
their diplomatic pressure increased on
Belgrade. The Yugoslav government,
lacking allies in Europe after the
destruction of France, Czechoslovakia
and Poland, finally joined the Axis on
25 March. That government was in
turn overthrown, only two days later,
by a military coup supported by an
angry mob that occupied the streets of
Belgrade. All pro-German diplomats
and ministers were swiftly replaced.
In the words of British soldier Michael
McConville, who fought in Yugoslavia
with No. 2 Commando Brigade: “it [the
coup] was a self-generated outburst of
spontaneous revulsion at the expedient
abandonment of a hallowed national,
primarily Serbian, custom of hitting
back hard at the teeth of threats and
to hell with the consequences.”
The coup in Belgrade caused
a tantrum in Hitler. He decided to
Home
A determined looking woman Partisan shoulders an Italian rifle. During the war, 100,000 women served with the Partisans and estimated 25,000 died.
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conquer the Balkans before beginning
the invasion of the USSR in order to
secure his deep southern flank. The
British air force was already moving into
Greece to support that nation’s defensive
stand against Mussolini’s stalled invasion; so it was possible RAF bombers
would soon be in range of the Ploesti
oil wells. Those facilities were vital for
the Wehrmacht, at least until Soviet
oil was at its disposal. On 6 April 1941,
then, German, Italian and Hungarian
forces invaded Yugoslavia. Belgrade was
savagely bombed for three days, with
thousands of its inhabitants killed in the
aptly named “Operation Punishment.”
In order to try to maintain the political integrity of the country, the Yugoslav
Royal Army deployed to defend all its
territory, thereby fatally overextending
its units on a long front. Further, when
the Germans struck, the Yugoslav
mobilization was only about 70 percent
complete. Within less than two weeks all
was over: the overall defense collapsed
while most Slovene and Croat units
deserted and went home. Zagreb, where
the Germans were greeted as liberators,
fell on the 10th; Belgrade followed on the
13th. In two weeks of campaigning the
Germans suffered only 558 casualties
and the Italians 3,500, while capturing
some 300,000 prisoners of war. At the
same time, though, no less than 200,000
former Yugoslav soldiers remained free,
most of them Serbs. Vast quantities of
weapons were also left scattered everywhere, while thousands went home
carrying their rifles with them. The
Germans were in a hurry to withdraw
the bulk of their force in order to allow
it time to regroup prior to the coming
invasion of the USSR; so they didn’t
spend much effort in cleanup operations. Many within the manpower pool
left behind by the Germans were therefore soon again at war with the Reich.
to the Germans while the Italians got
the south. Slovenia was annexed by
Germany, Kosovo and the Albanianpopulated areas of Macedonia were
added to Italian-controlled Albania,
while a pseudo-independent Croatian
client state (including Bosnia and
Herzegovina) was also set up. A large
part of ethnically Croatian Dalmatia,
and almost all the Adriatic islands,
were directly annexed by Italy along
with Kotor bay and the Montenegro
coast. Montenegro and a rump Serbia
were also declared “independent,”
while Budapest was given the
ethnically Hungarian Vojvodina region.
Finally, Bulgaria got Macedonia,
western Thrace (from Greece), and
some smaller areas bordering Serbia.
Rebellion against the occupation
began in August 1941, when an uprising
in Montenegro drove the Italians to
take refuge inside their garrison towns.
The Italians took almost a year to put
down that uprising, and did so only by
finally reaching an agreement with the
local Chetnik (Serbian royalist) militias:
the Italians would yield control of the
countryside; in exchange, those same
Chetniks would keep the territory free
of partisans (pan-Slav communists).
Upon the start of the invasion of
the USSR in June 1941— prior to which
they had orders from Moscow not
to interfere with the occupiers — the
communists began to raise partisan
(literally “politically based”) units.
Tito had proved prescient enough
to warn, in May, that the Nazi-Soviet
pact wouldn’t last and to prepare for
an uprising. At the same time he was
wrong, though, in that he also expected
the arrival of the victorious Red Army
soon after the new phase of the war
started. In fact, he remained undercover
in Belgrade until mid-September in
order to be in the best position to
welcome the Soviets when they arrived.
The partisans first gained
control of the region along the BosniaMontenegro-Serbia border, centered
on the town of Uzice (hence its name,
“Uzice Republic”), which was in turn
attacked in November 1941 by German
troops (their so-called “First Offensive”).
The partisans fled and regrouped in
Montenegro and southeastern Bosnia.
continued on page 10 »
Tito
During the second half of the 20th century, Tito passed from
being idolized at home and hailed abroad as one of the most
outstanding leaders of his era, to being reviled in his own country
and all but forgotten abroad. He passed away on 4 May 1980, and
in 1982 then US Secretary of State Alexander Haig wrote in the
visitors book at his tomb that Tito had been the: “great leader and
world statesman who led the Yugoslav peoples out of the ruins of
war, to stability at home, to respect and prestige in the world.”
Since the break up of Yugoslavia into its constituent
republics, virtually every monument, statue and bust of Tito has
been stored away, obliterated or otherwise covered up.
The seventh son of a peasant family of mixed Croat and Slovene
ancestry, Tito was born Josip Broz on 25 May 1892 in Kumrovec,
then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In 1914 he fought with
distinction in the Austro-Hungarian Army, first against the Serbs then
against the Russians, being promoted to sergeant and proposed for a
decoration. In April 1915 he was captured and made a prisoner of war.
In 1917, during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution, he declared for
the Bolsheviks, joining the Communist Party. By 1920 he was back in
the newly created “Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes,” also
known as Yugoslavia (“Land of the South Slavs”), where he joined the
Yugoslav Communist Party or KPJ (Komunistika Partija Jugoslavije).
After several years of political activity he was imprisoned by
the royalist government and served five years. After his release in
March 1934 he lived clandestinely under the new name of “Tito.”
That was the first of the some 70 nom de guerre he used during the
inter-war period. For example, within the Komintern he was known
as “Comrade Walter.” In early 1935 he visited Stalin’s Russia, where
he impressed many with his steadfastness and loyalty. When the
head of the Yugoslav Communist Party was purged in 1937, on
Stalin’s orders, Tito was given that post, the same one he held in
April 1941 when Yugoslavia was invaded by the Axis powers. ★
The New Order
At the end of the campaign the
Germans and Italians divided Yugoslavia
into two broad areas of occupation.
The line Visegrad-Sarajevo-Banja Luka
marked the boundary between the two
spheres: everything north of it went
upper-right — SS troops in the Balkans for the
1941 invasion serve as human brakes as their
personnel carrier, which ran off the roadway
and teeters on the edge of a rocky incline.
lower-right — German motorcyclists bump
slowly along a stretch of hurriedly constructed
corduroy road, made of rough-hewn logs
laid side by side by combat engineers.
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Marshall Tito
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» continued from page 8
At the same time, Col. Dragoljub
“Draza” Mihailovic, a Serb officer from
the old royalist army, with a group
of Chetnik (“military”) followers,
established himself at Ravna Gora.
Appointed by the Yugoslav governmentin-exile as commander-in-chief of the
Yugoslav Army of the Homeland (JVO),
he recruited followers exclusively among
Serbs. Initially, at least, he seemed to
have no political agenda: he simply
fought for the old Serbia he knew.
From the onset both guerrilla
movements had opposing strategies.
Tito wanted to wage immediate and
broad-scale war at all costs. Mihailovic
wanted to gather strength, wait until the
Western Allies returned to the continent,
then attack as a kind of liberating
spearhead that would thus prevent
the communists from taking over the
country. He also feared terrible reprisals
from the Axis occupiers if they attacked
the enemy prematurely. He was right in
that, while the Germans suffered only
some 20,000 casualties during their
entire time in Yugoslavia, from June 1941
to April 1945, reprisals and the civil war
caused some 1 million Yugoslav deaths.
Of course, it must also be pointed out the
Axis occupation of an increasingly restive
Yugoslavia required as much as 38 of their
divisions, which — under Mihailovic’s
strategy — could’ve been used elsewhere.
Tito wanted to wage all-out war
not only to destroy German units, thus
forcing Berlin to send troops badly
needed elsewhere simply to maintain
the occupation of Yugoslavia. He also
understood the resultant chaos and
anarchy of guerrilla war would go a
long way toward enabling his revolutionary movement to take over the
entire country at the end of the war. In
that regard, Tito also had an advantage
in that he had multi-ethnic units
willing and able to operate anywhere.
(Those first “proletarian” brigades and
divisions began to be formed in 1942)
Tito’s men would hit enemy garrisons
without concern about possible
local reprisals. On the contrary, such
reprisals ended up being a source of
recruits for his units. Mihailovic’s units
were strictly territorial and mono-
ethnic. Even more, he couldn’t always
control them; most of them (especially
the Chetniks of Bosnia) recognised
him only as honorary leader, only
obeying his orders when they
coincided with their own priorities.
Waging immediate revolutionary
war thus became Tito’s first break with
Moscow’s orders. That is, through
the end of 1941, Stalin’s top priority
was simply ensuring the survival of
the Soviet Union. He feared open
communist revolution in the Balkans
would lead the Western Allies to stop
sending military aid to the USSR.
Stalin therefore called for collaboration
with the Chetniks and the forming
a “united front” coalition with all
“anti-fascist elements” in the country.
Mihailovic remained in his stronghold
of Ravna Gora. From January through
March 1942, several Italo-German
anti-partisan drives in eastern Bosnia
(termed their “Second” and “Third
Offensives”) forced Tito to withdraw to
western Bosnia; however, that already
devastated territory couldn’t support
them; so they moved into western
Bosnia. That region was populated by
Serbs but was controlled and terrorized
by the Croatian Ustache (native fascist)
movement. Amid that sympathetic
population the partisans could regroup,
recruit new troops and strike into Serbia,
control of which was to eventually prove
key in winning the entire guerrilla war
(in western Bosnia there were no Italian
troops, as they’d withdrawn from the
area, preferring instead to sponsor
Serbian Chetniks and local militias). In
November 1942, Tito established his
new headquarters in the town of Bihac.
Tito’s force continued to grow during
the winter of 1942−43. Unobserved by
the Western Allies — who knew almost
nothing of partisan activities; only
ULTRA intercepts of German communications being sent out of Yugoslavia
gave them an idea of what was
happening — by early 1943 the partisans
deployed nine divisions (including
the elite 1st and 2nd Proletarian and
3rd Assault Divisions), eight brigades
and many smaller detachments.
1942
Strategically isolated from the larger
war, both the partisans and Chetniks
were largely left to their own devices.
Tito began the year based in the Foca
area (the border region between
Bosnia, Montenegro and Serbia), while
above — German security police find a just-abandoned campsite in Slovenia.
below — SS troops mow down fugitives in Serbia in 1942. Thousands of innocent civilians
were killed by the Germans, who looked on them as “bandits” or “Communist suspects.”
1943−44
The new year soon provided great
news: the fall of Stalingrad followed by
the Axis defeat in Libya. The Germans
then had to fear possible Allied
landings in Sicily, mainland Italy or
the Balkan peninsula; so they set in
motion plans aimed at suppressing
the Yugoslav insurgents before any of
those projected operations could take
place. That was the Fourth Offensive,
also codenamed Operations White
I, II and III. They were the largest
anti-partisan efforts to date, with
the first objective the destruction
of Tito’s stronghold at Bihac.
Operation White I opened on
20 January with 90,000 Axis troops
(German, Italian and Croat) participating. Tito fled from Bihac and moved
back into eastern Bosnia. At the Battle
of the Neretva River, in March, the
partisans managed to cross that water
barrier and break out of a German
encirclement, though they suffered
heavy casualties while doing so. The
survivors then cut their way relatively
easily through some 20,000 Chetniks
who attempted to prevent them from
moving toward Montenegro and Serbia.
During that period Tito also
attempted to negotiate a truce with the
Germans in order to allow his forces to
concentrate on destroying the Chetniks.
The Germans, though, correctly
perceived the communists were the
far bigger threat to their occupation,
and so refused to make a deal.
Bearded Drazha Mihailovich addresses villagers in west Bosnia to gain support for the Serbian Chetniks.
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In May and June the Germans
launched another major offensive,
Operation Black. It forced Tito to
suspend further operations against
the Chetniks. At the Battle of Sutjeska
Valley the partisans again managed
to disengage and flee, re-establishing themselves in eastern Bosnia.
By that time, however, the entire
partisan army had been reduced to
no more than 10,000 combatants.
In July the Anglo-Americans landed
in Sicily, and follow-on landings were
expected shortly in mainland Italy or
the Balkans. At that juncture the British
called on the Chetniks, for whom they
were the main weapons supplier, to
increase their activities so as to tie up
as many German units as possible.
Along that same line, Sir William
Deakin, who’d been an assistant to
Winston Churchill prior to the war,
had been parachuted into Tito’s
headquarters in May. His reports made
it clear Tito’s partisans represented
the only effective movement fighting
the Germans, while Mihailovic did
nothing and, worse, often reached
agreements with the Axis occupiers
to fight the partisans. By September,
then, when Italy surrendered, the
Western Allies decided to give all
their support to Tito. Tito’s winning
personality had also played a part in
that reassessment, as Deakin wrote:
One would expect to be dealing
with a rigid doctrinaire fanatic,
harshly moulded by underground
life, narrow in outlook, and
impervious to open debate.
Instead, the personality of Tito
emerged as that of a man broadened by the experience of exile
and prison, flexible in discussion,
with a sharp and humorous
wit, and a wide curiosity.
Back in eastern Bosnia, Tito’s
movement reaped dividends from
the disappointment of the Croatian
population with the fanatic Ustashe.
Croats began to join the partisan bands,
while the communist political program
offered an idea for a new Yugoslavia that
increasingly appealed to all nationalities
in the country. The Italian surrender
also gave the partisans access to a huge
amount of materiel abandoned by those
units, as well as a sudden, though temporary, expansion of territorial control.
When Italy surrendered, the
Germans launched Operation
Constantine, the goal of which was
to occupy their former zone, disarm
their units and send the men into
captivity in Germany. An entire Italian
division, the 41st Firenze Infantry
Division, defected and joined the
partisans. That was followed by a race
among the Germans, partisans and
Partisans use a captured 50mm German gun to fire on advancing tanks in Bosnia in December 1943.
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Chetniks to seize the caches of arms
and supplies in the former Italian
zone. Tito was furious the Western
Allies hadn’t trusted him enough to tip
him off about the Italian surrender.
After several weeks of chaotic fighting, the Germans controlled the main
coastal cities and the islands, except
for Vis (Lissa in Italian), where a British
base was established through which
to channel further logistical support to
Yugoslavia. From there a British commando brigade under Maj. Randolph
Churchill (son of Winston) operated
until 1945, launching raids against other
islands and the Yugoslav mainland.
By late September there were 14
German divisions in Yugoslavia fighting some 145,000 insurgents (90,000
partisans). In November there were 17
divisions; by the end of the year there
were 20 divisions fielding some 700,000
troops (though almost all of them
were second-rate or third-rate units).
The Western Allies remained fully
committed to Tito, but their advance in
Italy had stalled in front of the Germans’
Gustav line. In December, after having
reconquered the Yugoslav coast and its
immediate hinterland, the Germans
launched a new anti-partisan drive
(the Sixth Offensive) into eastern Bosnia,
Herzegovina and Croatia, again in anticipation of an Allied landing. The partisan
main force and Tito’s headquarters
moved back to Drvar in western Bosnia.
On 25 May 1944, Tito’s birthday,
the Germans launched yet another
offensive, (the Seventh) against the partisans. It was an airborne raid by an SS
parachute battalion aimed at assassinating Tito. With the partisans leaderless,
a joint offensive was then to have been
launched by Ustache and German troops
in Bosnia. Though the SS battalion
was effectively destroyed (70 percent
casualties), Tito barely escaped capture.
He fled to the British base on Vis.
1944−45
By the summer of 1944, the partisan
movement had grown even inside
Croatia. At the same time, though,
Serbia remained firmly supportive of
Mihailovic. That remained true even
after he was stripped of official position:
in September, the government in exile
appealed to all Yugoslavs to support Tito.
In September 1944, with the Red
Army at last approaching the Yugoslav
border, Tito flew to Moscow to coordinate the military aspects of that
arrival. The plan agreed on stipulated
the Soviets wouldn’t take Belgrade until
such time as the partisans also arrived
there in force. During that month the
Soviet 3rd Ukrainian Front reached
the Bulgarian-Yugoslav border. At
the same time, though, the German
troops occupying Greece and Albania
managed to escape north in an orderly
retreat, with the partisans unable to
stop them. The partisans entered
Belgrade on 20 October 1944, in a
joint offensive with Soviet 57th Army.
The guerrilla phase of the war was
then over. A conventional war took its
place, one for which the partisans were
ill prepared. Though further strengthened by continued Western Allied aid, by
the newly allied Bulgarian Army, and by
mass conscription and amnesty in the
newly liberated territories, the partisans,
numbering some 800,000 troops by April
1945, found it difficult to advance in
open country against a veteran and wellequipped enemy. The Germans successfully contested all Yugoslav offensives.
Zagreb, for instance, didn’t fall until
May 1945, when the remaining Croat
and Chetnik forces decided to retreat to
Austria to surrender there to the British.
(The move did them no good: they
were handed over to the partisans, who
indulged in a final round of reprisals,
executing some 30,000.) In fact, the
fighting in Yugoslavia didn’t fully end
until 15 May, a week after the surrender
of all other Axis forces in Europe.
Conclusion
In respect to the Balkans, the
Germans were strategically concerned
with only by two things. First, they
wanted to secure their southern flank
against Anglo-Allied invasion. Second,
they wanted to secure the sources of
several critical raw materials, namely
Ploesti oil and other minerals coming from Yugoslav mines. All their
operations in Yugoslavia were ultimately
driven by those two concerns.
Below the strategic level, however,
the horrific Axis conduct of their Balkan
counterinsurgency provides a case study
of how not to wage such a war. Their
counter-productive and bloody policies,
as well as those of their imitative Croat
satellite state, created perfect conditions
for the communists to eventually take
over: they destroyed existing authority
and set the various nationalities against
each other, while at the same time
lacking sufficient on-hand strength to
impose a substitute system. The result
was violent anarchy and an ideal situaHome
tion for the propagation of revolutionary
war that Tito exploited to the full. ✪
SOURCES
Deakin, F. W. The Embattled Mountain. London, 1971.
Djilas, Milovan. Wartime. New York, 1977.
Malaparte, Curzio. Kaputt. Barcelona, 1990.
McLean, Fitzroy. Eastern Approaches. London, 1991.
McConville, Michael. A Small War in the Balkans.
London, 2007.
Pavlowitch, Stevan K. Tito: A Reassessment. London, 1992.
_______. Hitler’s New Disorder:
The Second World War in Yugoslavia. London, 2008.
Tomasevich, Jozo. War and Revolution in Yugoslavia,
1941−45: Occupation and Collaboration. Stanford,
CA, 2001.
Dazed and wounded Partisans rest at Milinklade in June 1943 after a nine-hour bombing attack.
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