| Brotnja massacre | |
|---|---|
Locations of massacres in summer 1941 | |
| Location | Brotnja |
| Date | July 27, 1941 |
| Target | Croat civilians |
Attack type | war crime, mass killing |
| Deaths | 37 |
| Perpetrators | Serb rebels, Chetniks [1] |
The Brotnja massacre was the massacre of Croat civilians in the village of Brotnja, committed by Serb rebels on 27 July 1941, during the Srb and Drvar uprisings. [2]
In the weeks prior to the Srb Uprising, local Serb civilians had been the victims of Ustaše atrocities.
Throughout July 1941, Ustaše general, Vjekoslav Luburić, ordered the "cleansing" of Serbs from the Donji Lapac area in Lika and the bordering regions of Bosanska Krajina. [3] [4]
A number of local Croat peasants from the area joined the Ustaše movement and actively took part in massacres against local Serb civilians, including the massacre of almost 300 Serbs in the nearby village of Suvaja, at the start of July 1941. [5] [6] It is known that at least two people from Brotnja joined the Ustaše and took part in crimes against Serbs. [5] However, the majority of Croats did not take part in such crimes, many moderate Croats were opposed to them and actively tried to help their Serb neighbours. [7]
On 27 July 1941, local Serbs launched an uprising against Ustaše authorities. [8] Throughout July, August and September 1941, Croat and Muslim villages across Lika and Western Bosnia were attacked and massacred by Serb insurgents, such killings were said to have been acts of retaliation for earlier Ustaše massacres against Serbs. [9]
On July 27, 1941, Chetniks and other Serb rebels under Chetnik leadership, [1] entered Brotnja, gathering and killing the remaining 37 Croat civilians left in the village, their bodies were thrown into a deep, vertical cave, some were thrown into the pit alive. [10] The village was then subsequently destroyed.
24 of the victims were members of the Ivezić family, while 12 of the victims were children, the youngest being just three years old. [11]
Massacres against Croats by Chetniks and other Serb insurgents continued throughout July and August 1941, culminating in further massacres throughout the area of eastern Lika and western Bosnia, such as in Trubar, Bosansko Grahovo, Boričevac, Vrtoče and Krnjeuša. [12]
In 2014, a mass grave containing 19 victims of the massacre were exhumed and reburied elsewhere. [13]
The Chetniks, formally the Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army, and also the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland and informally colloquially the Ravna Gora Movement, was a Yugoslav royalist and Serbian nationalist movement and guerrilla force in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. Although it was not a homogeneous movement, it was led by Draža Mihailović. While it was anti-Axis in its long-term goals and engaged in marginal resistance activities for limited periods, it also engaged in tactical or selective collaboration with Axis forces for almost all of the war. The Chetnik movement adopted a policy of collaboration with regard to the Axis, and engaged in cooperation to one degree or another by both establishing a modus vivendi and operating as "legalised" auxiliary forces under Axis control. Over a period of time, and in different parts of the country, the movement was progressively drawn into collaboration agreements: first with the puppet Government of National Salvation in the German-occupied territory of Serbia, then with the Italians in occupied Dalmatia and Montenegro, with some of the Ustaše forces in northern Bosnia, and, after the Italian capitulation in September 1943, with the Germans directly.
The Bleiburg repatriations were a series of forced repatriations from Allied-occupied Austria of Axis-affiliated individuals to Yugoslavia in May 1945 after the end of World War II in Europe. During World War II, Yugoslavian territory was either annexed or occupied by Axis forces, and as the war came to end, thousands of Axis soldiers and civilian collaborators fled Yugoslavia for Austria as the Yugoslav Army (JA) gradually retook control. When they reached Austria, in accordance with Allied policy, British forces refused to take them into custody and directed them to surrender to the JA instead. The JA subsequently subjected them to death marches back to Yugoslavia, where those who survived were either subject to summary executions or interned in labor camps, where many died due to harsh conditions. The repatriations are named for the Carinthian town of Bleiburg, where the initial British refusal to accept the surrenders occurred, and from which some repatriations were carried out.
Vjekoslav Luburić was a Croatian Ustaše official who headed the system of concentration camps in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during much of World War II. Luburić also personally oversaw and spearheaded the contemporaneous genocides of Serbs, Jews and Roma in the NDH.
The Glina massacres were killings of Serb peasants in the town of Glina in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) that occurred between May and August 1941, during World War II. The first wave of massacres in the town began on 11 or 12 May 1941, when a band of Ustaše led by Mirko Puk murdered a group of Serb men and boys in a Serbian Orthodox church before setting it on fire. The following day, approximately 100 Serb males were murdered by the Ustaše in the nearby village of Prekopi. Estimates of the overall number of Serbs killed from 11 to 13 May range from 260 to 417. Further killings in Glina occurred between 30 July and 3 August of that same year, when 700–2,000 Serbs were massacred by a group of Ustaše led by Vjekoslav Luburić.
Operation Alfa was an offensive carried out in early October 1942 by the military forces of Italy and the Axis puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), supported by Chetnik forces under the control of vojvoda Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin. The offensive was directed against the communist-led Partisans in the Prozor region, then a part of the NDH. The operation was militarily inconclusive, and in the aftermath, Chetnik forces conducted mass killings of civilians in the area.
Petar Baćović was a Bosnian Serb Chetnik commander within occupied Yugoslavia during World War II. From the summer of 1941 until April 1942, he headed the cabinet of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Milan Nedić's puppet Government of National Salvation in the German-occupied territory of Serbia. In May and June 1942, Baćović participated in the joint Italian-Chetnik offensive against the Yugoslav Partisans in Montenegro. In July 1942, Baćović was appointed by the Chetnik leader Draža Mihailović and his Supreme Command as the commander of the Chetnik units in the regions of eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina within the Axis puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia. In this role, Baćović continued collaborating with the Italians against the Yugoslav Partisans, with his Chetniks formally recognised as Italian auxiliaries from mid-1942.
Lieutenant Colonel Zaharije Ostojić was a Montenegrin Serb and Yugoslav military officer who served as the chief of the operational, organisational and intelligence branches of the Chetnik Supreme Command led by Draža Mihailović in Yugoslavia during World War II. He was a major in the Royal Yugoslav Army Air Force prior to the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia, and was involved in the coup that deposed Prince Paul of Yugoslavia on 27 March 1941. After the coup, he escorted Prince Paul to exile in Greece, and was in Cairo during the invasion in April. In September 1941, he was landed on the coast of the Italian governorate of Montenegro along with the British Special Operations Executive officer Captain Bill Hudson and two companions. He escorted Hudson to the German-occupied territory of Serbia and introduced him to the Yugoslav Partisan leader Josip Broz Tito at Užice, then accompanied Hudson to Ravna Gora to meet Mihailović. Ostojić soon became Mihailović's chief of staff, and after the German attempt to capture the Chetnik leader during Operation Mihailovic in December 1941, brought the Chetnik Supreme Command staff to Montenegro where they were re-united with Mihailović in June 1942. During the remainder of 1942, Ostojić launched a counter-attack against Ustaše troops of the Independent State of Croatia returning to the eastern Bosnian town of Foča where they were expected to continue their genocidal anti-Serb policies. As many as 2,000 local Muslims were subsequently killed in the town by forces under Ostojić's command. Ostojić later oversaw large-scale massacres of civilians and burning of Muslim villages in the border region between Montenegro and the Sandžak.
The Srb uprising was a rebellion against the Independent State of Croatia that began on 27 July 1941 in Srb, a village in the region of Lika. The uprising was started by the local population as a response to persecutions of Serbs by the Ustaše and was led by Chetniks and Yugoslav Partisans. It soon spread across Lika and Bosanska Krajina. During the uprising numerous war crimes were committed against local Croat and Muslim population, especially in the area of Kulen Vakuf. As NDH forces lacked the strength to suppress the uprising, the Italian Army, which was not a target of the rebels, expanded its zone of influence to Lika and parts of Bosanska Krajina.
The Gudovac massacre was the mass killing of around 190 Bjelovar Serbs by the Croatian nationalist Ustaše movement on 28 April 1941, during World War II. The massacre occurred shortly after the German-led Axis invasion of Yugoslavia and the establishment of the Ustaše-led Axis puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). It was the first act of mass murder committed by the Ustaše upon coming to power, and presaged a wider Ustaše-perpetrated campaign of genocide against Serbs in the NDH that lasted until the end of the war.
The Blagaj massacre was the mass killing of around 400 Serb civilians by the Croatian nationalist Ustaše movement on 9 May 1941, during World War II. The massacre occurred shortly after the German-led Axis invasion of Yugoslavia and the establishment of the Ustaše-led Axis puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). It was the second act of mass murder committed by the Ustaše upon coming to power and was part of a wider campaign of genocide against Serbs in the NDH that would last until the end of the war.
The Dinara Division was an irregular Chetnik formation that existed during the World War II Axis occupation of Yugoslavia that largely operated as auxiliaries of the occupying forces and fought the Yugoslav Partisans. Organized in 1942 with assistance from Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin and headed by Momčilo Đujić, the division incorporated commanders in Bosnia and Herzegovina, northern Dalmatia, and the Lika region. The division was under the control of supreme Chetnik commander Draža Mihailović and received aid from Dimitrije Ljotić, leader of the Serbian Volunteer Corps, and Milan Nedić, head of the Serbian puppet Government of National Salvation.
Ismet Popovac was a Bosnian Muslim lawyer and physician who led a Muslim Chetnik militia known as the Muslim People's Military Organization (MNVO) in Bosnia and Herzegovina during World War II. He was active in pre-war Yugoslav politics, becoming a member of the Serbian Muslim cultural organization Gajret and serving as the mayor of Konjic, a town in northern Herzegovina. He is also said to have been candidate for Vladko Maček's electoral list, but was left without a job in the Yugoslav state government after the creation of the Banovina of Croatia in August 1939.
A massacre of Croat civilians was committed by local Serb rebels on 27 July 1941 in village Trubar in Drvar municipality Independent State of Croatia. It was one of a number of massacres in the southwestern Bosnian Krajina during the Drvar uprising and Eastern Lika.
The Chetniks, a Yugoslav royalist and Serbian nationalist movement and guerrilla force, committed numerous war crimes during the Second World War, primarily directed against the non-Serb population of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, mainly Muslims and Croats, and against Communist-led Yugoslav Partisans and their supporters. Most historians who have considered the question regard the Chetnik crimes against Muslims and Croats during this period as constituting genocide.
The Kulen Vakuf massacre was committed during World War II by Communist-led Yugoslav Partisans and groups of non-communist Serb rebels, killing 1,000 to 3,000 Ustaše prisoners as well as Muslim, and a smaller number of Croat, civilians in early September 1941 in Kulen Vakuf, part of the Independent State of Croatia. The local Ustaše had previously massacred Serbs in Kulen Vakuf and surrounding villages.
The Drvar uprising was the World War II uprising of the Serb population of Bosnian Krajina. Italy supported it, both politically and in arms, in its struggle against the fascist puppet state of the Independent State of Croatia between 27 July and 26 September 1941.
The Makarska massacre was the mass murder of Croat civilians by Chetnik forces, led by Petar Baćović, from 28 August until early-September 1942, across several villages in the Dalmatian Hinterland of southern Croatia, around the town of Makarska.
The Boričevac massacre was the massacre of Croat civilians in the village of Boričevac, committed by Serb rebels on 2 August 1941, during the Srb uprising.
The Vrtoče massacre was the massacre of Croat civilians in the village of Vrtoče, committed by Serb rebels on 8 August 1941, during the Srb uprising.
