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Yugoslavia Partition and Terror
Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria dismembered Yugoslavia.
Germany occupied a rump Serbia and part of Vojvodina
(see
fig. 5). It created a puppet "Independent State of Croatia" (Nezavisna
drzava Hrvatska, NDH) including Croatia and Bosnia and
Hercegovina, and it annexed northern Slovenia. Italy won southern
Slovenia and much of Dalmatia, joined Kosovo with its Albanian
puppet state, and occupied Montenegro. Hungary occupied part of
Vojvodina and Slovenian and Croatian border regions. Bulgaria
took Macedonia and a part of southern Serbia.
Germany unleashed a reign of terror and Germanization in
northern Slovenia. It resettled Slovenes in Serbia, moved German
colonists onto Slovenian farms, and attempted to erase Slovenian
cultural institutions. The Catholic hierarchy collaborated with
the authorities in Italian-occupied southern Slovenia, which
suffered less tyranny than the north.
Germany and Italy supported the NDH and began diverting
natural resources to the Axis war machine. When Macek refused to
collaborate, the Nazis made Ante Pavelic head of the NDH. His
Ustase storm troopers began eliminating the two million
Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies in the NDH, through forced religious
conversion, deportation, and extreme violence. The NDH was backed
enthusiastically by some Croatian Catholic clergy, including the
Archbishop of Sarajevo; some Franciscan priests enlisted in the
Ustase and participated in massacres. The Archbishop of Zagreb,
Alojzije Stepinac, publicly welcomed and appeared with Paveli
while privately protesting NDH atrocities. On the other hand,
many Catholic priests condemned the violence and helped Orthodox
Serbs to practice their religion in secret. Even the Germans were
appalled by Ustase violence, and Berlin feared the bloodbath
would ignite greater Serbian resistance. Italy reoccupied areas
of Hercegovina to halt the slaughter there.
Jews and Serbs also were massacred in areas occupied by the
Albanians and the Hungarians. Thousands of Serbs fled to Serbia,
where the Germans had established a puppet regime under General
Milan Nedic. Nedic considered himself a custodian rather than a
collaborator and strove to maintain control of violence. In the
south of Yugoslavia, many Macedonians welcomed Bulgarian forces,
expecting that Sofia would grant them autonomy; but a harsh
Bulgarianization campaign ended their enthusiasm.
Resistance in Yugoslavia developed mainly in dispersed units
of the Yugoslav army and among Serbs fleeing genocide in Croatia
and Bosnia and Hercegovina. Various armed groups in Serbia
organized under the name
Cetnik (pl. Cetnici--see Glossary), from the
Serbian word for "detachment." Some
Cetnici supported Nedic, others the Communist-led Partisan
guerrillas. The best known Cetnici were the followers of Colonel
Draza Mihajlovic, a Serbian nationalist, monarchist, and staunch
anticommunist. Certain that the Allies would soon invade the
Balkans, Mihajlovic advised his Cetnici to avoid clashes with
Axis forces and prepare for a general uprising to coincide with
the Allied push. In October 1941, Britain recognized Mihajlovi
as the leader of the Yugoslav resistance movement, and in 1942
the government-in-exile promoted him to commander of its armed
forces.
Data as of December 1990
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