1st Army | |
---|---|
Active | 1 January 1945 |
Country | Yugoslavia |
Branch | Yugoslav Partisans |
Type | Field Army |
Engagements | World War II |
Commanders | |
Notable commanders | General Lieutenant Peko Dapčević |
The 1st Army of the Yugoslav Partisans was a Partisan army that operated in Yugoslavia during the last months of the Second World War.
The Army was created on 1 January 1945, along with the 2nd and 3rd Armies, when Chief Commander Marshal Josip Broz Tito converted the guerilla National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia in a more regular Yugoslav Army.
As commander was named General lieutenant Peko Dapčević, as Political Commissioner Mijalko Todorović, and as Chief of staff, Savo Drljević.
The Army was first formed from the 1st Proletarian Corps (1st, 5th, 6th, 11th, and 21st Divisions), and on 3 April the 15th Corps (42nd and 48th Divisions) and several independent divisions and brigades (22nd, 2nd, 17th Divisions and 2nd Tank Brigade) were added. [1] The 1st Army had some 60,000 combatants in mid-April 1945.
It first fought on the Syrmian Front, and after its breakthrough in mid-April, liberated the western part of Yugoslavia with other units of the Yugoslav army. It liberated Zagreb on May 8, together with parts of the 2nd Army. Then, with four divisions, it liberated northern Slovenia, encircled and captured the enemy Army and reached the Austrian border on 13 May. There, along with units of the 2nd and 3rd Armies and 4th Operational Zone, it participated in the last battles of World War II on European soil, more than a week after the German surrender on 8 May.
Operation Rösselsprung was a combined airborne and ground assault by the German XV Mountain Corps and collaborationist forces on the Supreme Headquarters of the Yugoslav Partisans in the Bosnian town of Drvar in the Independent State of Croatia during World War II. It was launched 25 May 1944, with the goal of capturing or killing Partisan leader Marshal Josip Broz Tito and destroying the headquarters, support facilities and co-located Allied military missions. It is associated with the Seventh Enemy Offensive in Yugoslav history, forming part of the Seven Enemy Offensives historiographical framework. The airborne assault itself is also known as the Raid on Drvar.
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The Russian Protective Corps was an armed force composed of anti-communist White Russian émigrés that was raised in the German occupied territory of Serbia during World War II. Commanded for almost its whole existence by Lieutenant General Boris Shteifon, it served primarily as a guard force for factories and mines between late 1941 and early 1944, initially as the "Separate Russian Corps" then Russian Factory Protective Group. It was incorporated into the Wehrmacht on 1 December 1942 and later clashed with the communist-led Yugoslav Partisans and briefly with the Chetniks. In late 1944, it fought against the Red Army during the Belgrade Offensive, later withdrawing to Bosnia and Slovenia as the German forces retreated from Yugoslavia and Greece. After Shteifon′s death in Zagreb, the Independent State of Croatia, on 30 April 1945, Russian Colonel Anatoly Rogozhin took over and led his troops farther north to surrender to the British in southern Austria. Unlike most other Russian formations that fought for Nazi Germany, Rogozhin and his men, who were not formally treated as Soviet citizens, were exempt from forced repatriation to the Soviet Union and were eventually set free and allowed to resettle in the West.
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The Belgrade offensive or the Belgrade strategic offensive operation was a military operation during World War II in Yugoslavia in which Belgrade was liberated from the German Wehrmacht through the joint efforts of the Soviet Red Army, Yugoslav Partisans, and the Bulgarian Army. Soviet forces and local militias launched separate but loosely cooperative operations that undermined German control of Belgrade and ultimately forced a retreat. Martial planning was coordinated evenly among command leaders, and the operation was largely enabled through tactical cooperation between Josip Broz Tito and Joseph Stalin that began in September 1944. These martial provisions allowed Bulgarian forces to engage in operations throughout Yugoslav territory, which furthered tactical success while increasing diplomatic friction.
Vicko Krstulović was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary, the most prominent Partisan military commander from Dalmatia during World War II, and a post-war communist politician. He was an illegal communist activist during the 1920s and 1930s in Split at a time when communist sympathizers were brutally persecuted by the Yugoslav monarchy. As an officer in the Partisans during World War II, he was in charge of creating and organising the resistance movement in Dalmatia. In Socialist Yugoslavia, he worked in various government offices and was remembered for his work and contribution to his native Split.
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, 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.
The Bratislava–Brno offensive was an offensive conducted by the Red Army in western Slovak Republic and south Moravia towards the end of World War II. The offensive was held between 25 March and 5 May 1945 using the forces of the 2nd Ukrainian Front to capture the capital of Slovakia, Bratislava, and the capital of Moravia, Brno.
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