Aftermath
After the war and the liberation of Maribor and Slovenia, Erwin Rösener was put on trial and found guilty of the Maribor prison massacres among others. He was hanged on 4 September 1946. [3]
The Maribor prison massacres were a series of massacres perpetrated by the Germans against the ethnic Slovenian population in the city of Maribor, which had been annexed by Nazi Germany, in present-day Slovenia. The Germans systematically murdered a total of 689 political prisoners from Maribor and surrounding areas as a retaliatory measure in response to Partisan activity. Those that were shot had been arrested for supplying the Partisan forces with food, weapons, and other aid. [1]
Maribor as most of Slovene Lands had been part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia since 1918. In 1941 Nazi Germany attacked and defeated Yugoslavia, quickly establishing an occupation system. Maribor together with Slovenian Styria was annexed to Nazi Germany and a brutal process of Germanisation began.
The massacres of ethnic Slovenians in Maribor range from 1941 and all the way to April 1945. The first massacre was perpetrated on 24 August 1941 and the last one only a month before the end of the war. The worst single massacre occurred on 2 October 1942, when the Germans murdered 143 Slovenian civilians. [1] [2]
After the war and the liberation of Maribor and Slovenia, Erwin Rösener was put on trial and found guilty of the Maribor prison massacres among others. He was hanged on 4 September 1946. [3]
Maribor is the second-largest city in Slovenia and the largest city of the traditional region of Lower Styria. It is also the seat of the City Municipality of Maribor, the seat of the Drava statistical region and the Eastern Slovenia region. Maribor is also the economic, administrative, educational, and cultural centre of eastern Slovenia.
Dravograd is a small town in northern Slovenia, close to the border with Austria. It is the seat of the Municipality of Dravograd. It lies on the Drava River at the confluence with the Meža and the Mislinja. It is part of the traditional Slovenian provinces of Carinthia and the larger Carinthia Statistical Region.
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.
The Yugoslav Partisans, or the National Liberation Army, officially the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia, was the communist-led anti-fascist resistance to the Axis powers in occupied Yugoslavia during World War II. Led by Josip Broz Tito, the Partisans are considered to be Europe's most effective anti-Axis resistance movement during World War II.
Styria, also Slovenian Styria or Lower Styria, is a traditional region in northeastern Slovenia, comprising the southern third of the former Duchy of Styria. The population of Styria in its historical boundaries amounts to around 705,000 inhabitants, or 34.5% of the population of Slovenia. The largest city is Maribor.
Italian war crimes have mainly been associated with Fascist Italy in the Pacification of Libya, the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II.
Kočevski Rog or Kočevje Rog or simply Rog is a karstified plateau in the Kočevje Highlands above the Črmošnjice Valley in southeastern Slovenia. The plateau is part of the traditional Lower Carniola region of Slovenia and of the Dinaric Alps. The highest area is the central part, with the 1099-metre-high peak of Veliki Rog. The plateau is densely forested. The only ski slope in Lower Carniola, Rog-Črmošnjice also lies in the vicinity of Rog.
The Slovene Home Guard, was a Slovene anti-Partisan collaborationist militia that operated during the 1943–1945 German occupation of the formerly Italian-occupied Slovene Province of Ljubljana. The Guard consisted of former Village Sentries, part of Italian-sponsored Anti-Communist Volunteer Militia, re-organized under Nazi command after the Italian Armistice of September 1943.
The Germans of Yugoslavia is a term for German-speakers who form a minority group in former Yugoslavia, namely Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina or Slovenia. Despite the name for the group, the label includes ethnic Germans, primarily Danube Swabians, and Austrians. The largest German minority was found in Serbia prior to dissolution of Yugoslavia.
The history of the Jews in Slovenia and areas connected with it goes back to the times of Ancient Rome. In 2011, the small Slovenian Jewish community was estimated at 500 to 1,000 members, of whom around 130 are officially registered, most of whom live in the capital, Ljubljana.
World War II in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia began on 6 April 1941, when the country was invaded and swiftly conquered by Axis forces and partitioned among Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and their client regimes. Shortly after Germany attacked the USSR on 22 June 1941, the communist-led republican Yugoslav Partisans, on orders from Moscow, launched a guerrilla liberation war fighting against the Axis forces and their locally established puppet regimes, including the Axis-allied Independent State of Croatia (NDH) and the Government of National Salvation in the German-occupied territory of Serbia. This was dubbed the National Liberation War and Socialist Revolution in post-war Yugoslav communist historiography. Simultaneously, a multi-side civil war was waged between the Yugoslav communist Partisans, the Serbian royalist Chetniks, the Axis-allied Croatian Ustaše and Home Guard, Serbian Volunteer Corps and State Guard, Slovene Home Guard, as well as Nazi-allied Russian Protective Corps troops.
The Province of Ljubljana was the central-southern area of Slovenia. In 1941, it was annexed by the Kingdom of Italy, and after 1943 occupied by Nazi Germany. Created on May 3, 1941, it was abolished on May 9, 1945, when the Slovene Partisans and partisans from other parts of Yugoslavia liberated it from the Nazi Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral. Its administrative centre was Ljubljana.
The Novi Sad raid, also known as the Raid in southern Bačka, the Novi Sad massacre, the Újvidék massacre, or simply The Raid, was a military operation carried out by the Királyi Honvédség, the armed forces of Hungary, during World War II, after the Hungarian occupation and annexation of former Yugoslav territories. It resulted in the deaths of 3,000–4,000 civilians in the southern Bačka (Bácska) region.
The foibe massacres, or simply the foibe, refers to mass killings and deportations both during and immediately after World War II, mainly committed by Yugoslav Partisans and OZNA in the then-Italian territories of Julian March, Kvarner and Dalmatia, against local Italians and Slavs, primarily members of fascist and collaborationist forces, and civilians opposed to the new Yugoslav authorities. The term refers to some victims who were thrown alive into the foibe., deep natural sinkholes characteristic of the Karst Region. In a wider or symbolic sense, some authors used the term to apply to all disappearances or killings of Italian and Slavic people in the territories occupied by Yugoslav forces. Others included deaths resulting from the forced deportation of Italians, or those who died while trying to flee from these contested lands.
Marburg's Bloody Sunday was a massacre that took place on Monday, 27 January 1919 in the city of Maribor in Slovenia. Soldiers from the army of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, under the command of Slovene officer Rudolf Maister, killed between 9 and 13 civilians of German ethnic origin, wounding a further 60, during a protest in a city centre square. Estimates of casualties differ between Slovene and Austrian sources.
The Slovene Partisans, formally the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Slovenia, were part of Europe's most effective anti-Nazi resistance movement led by Yugoslav revolutionary communists during World War II, the Yugoslav Partisans. Since a quarter of Slovene ethnic territory and approximately 327,000 out of total population of 1.3 million Slovenes were subjected to forced Italianization since the end of the First World War, the objective of the movement was the establishment of the state of Slovenes that would include the majority of Slovenes within a socialist Yugoslav federation in the postwar period.
World War II in the Slovene Lands started in April 1941 and lasted until May 1945. The Slovene Lands were in a unique situation during World War II in Europe. In addition to being trisected, a fate which also befell Greece, Drava Banovina was the only region that experienced a further step—absorption and annexation into neighboring Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Hungary. The Slovene-settled territory was divided largely between Nazi Germany and the Kingdom of Italy, with smaller territories occupied and annexed by Hungary and the Independent State of Croatia.
The Tezno massacre was the mass killing of POWs and civilians of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) that took place in Tezno near Maribor, after the end of World War II in Yugoslavia. The killings were perpetrated by units of the Yugoslav Partisans in May 1945, in the Bleiburg repatriations. Summary executions began on 19 May when first prisoners arrived to the Tezno forest from nearby prison camps and continued until 26 May. Most of the bodies were buried in a several kilometers long antitank trench, which the Yugoslav authorities concealed and kept secret.
Anti-Croat sentiment or Croatophobia is discrimination or prejudice against Croats as an ethnic group and it also consists of negative feelings towards Croatia as a country.
This is a list of war crimes committed during World War II.