During World War II, Nazi Germany and Hungary occupied and annexed the northern areas (brown and dark green areas, respectively), while Italy occupied the vertically hashed black area, including Gottschee area. (Solid black western part being annexed by Italy already with the Treaty of Rapallo). After 1943, Germany took over the Italian occupational area, as well.
During World War II, the Drava Banovina was in a unique situation. While Greece shared its experience of being trisected, this territory (roughly present-day Slovenia) experienced a further step—absorption and annexation into neighboring Nazi Germany, the Kingdom of Italy, and Hungary.[1] After Yugoslavia was invaded by Axis Powers on 6 April 1941, Germany and Hungary occupied and annexed the northern part of the region. The ethnic German Gottscheers were moved out of the province because Hitler opposed having them in the Italian zone.
Territory
After the attack on Yugoslavia by Germany and Italy, the central area of Slovenia was occupied by Italy as a territory that had historically belonged to the County of Gorizia, the Duchy of Friuli, and the Ancient Roman provinces of Illyria, and the Roman city of Emona (modern Ljubljana) had been an important hub of communication.[2] The bulk of its territory was:
The city of Ljubljana and its southern suburbs. The northern suburbs (Šentvid) were under the occupation of the Greater German Reich.
The Kingdom of Italy occupied Marindol and other villages that had previously belonged to the Banovina of Croatia, Milić-Selo, Paunović-Selo, Žunić-Selo, Vukobrati, Vidnjevići, and Vrhovci. These villages were annexed to the municipality of Črnomelj as part of the Province of Ljubljana, despite being predominantly inhabited by Orthodox Serbs.
After the war the inhabitants of those areas demanded to be returned to the People’s Republic of Croatia as part of the county of Karlovac[citation needed]. By the administrative organization of 1947, Marindol and the surrounding villages on the left bank of Kolpa constituted a local community in the composition of the county of Karlovac. It was still a constituent part of the county at the time of 1948 census. After that the complete area was under Slovene authority. Parts of the Žumberak/Gorjanci area were also annexed by Italy to the Province of Ljubljana and parts of Gorski Kotar mainly in the Čabar area (villages around Prezid), all from what was earlier part of the Banovina of Croatia. This was an agreement between the Kingdom of Italy and the Independent State of Croatia on the border between the two Axis states during the Second World War.
Administration
The Italian period
Pre-resistance
Compared to the German policies in the northern Nazi-occupied area of Slovenia and the forced Fascist italianization in the former Austrian Littoral that was annexed after the First World War, the initial Italian policy in the central Slovenia was not as violent. Tens of thousands of Slovenes from German-occupied Lower Styria and Upper Carniola escaped to the Province of Ljubljana until June 1941.
The central area of Slovenia was first occupied by the Kingdom of Italy in April 1941. It was subjected to military occupation but in May 1941, after the debellatio of the Yugoslav State by the Axis Powers, it was formally annexed by the Kingdom of Italy under the name of Provincia di Lubiana. The province was created as a specific administration unit within Italy. Although considered as an integral part of Italy, it was treated as a corpus separatum. Unlike other provinces, it was administered by a High Commissioner, appointed by the Italian Government. The High Commissioner had a similar position as prefects in other Italian provinces, but was given wider competences. The first High Commissioner was Emilio Grazioli. The province did enjoy some political or administrative autonomy and several concessions were given to the local Slovene population. In the countryside, most of the municipal administrations, elected in general elections during the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, could continue to function. Judiciary and local administration personnel were also kept. Both Italian and Slovene were given the status of official languages and also the status of an administrative language. Most Slovenian cultural and educational institutions of national importance, such as the University of Ljubljana and the Academy of Sciences and Arts, were kept. Education in Slovene was kept, although Italian was introduced as an obligatory second language. The population of the province was exempted from military service in the Italian Army.
Also, the Consult was created as an advisory council of the High Commissioner's office. It was composed by members of local economic and professional associations, as well as of those political party leaders that were willing to collaborate with Italian authorities.
Post-resistance and war crimes against the Slovene civil population
1942 announcement that exiting Ljubljana is forbidden by Fascist Italian authority
The initial tolerant policies of the Italian administration did not last long. After the establishment of the Liberation Front and the emergence of the partisan resistance, the Italian army's opinion has been in accord with the 1920s speech by Benito Mussolini:
When dealing with such a race as Slavic - inferior and barbarian - we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy.... We should not be afraid of new victims.... The Italian border should run across the Brenner Pass, Monte Nevoso and the Dinaric Alps.... I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians....
—Benito Mussolini, speech held in Pula, 22 February 1922[3][4]
As noted by Minister of Foreign Affairs in Mussolini government, Galeazzo Ciano, when describing a meeting with secretary general of the National Fascist PartyAldo Vidussoni who wanted Italian army to kill all the Slovenes:
(...) I took the liberty of saying they (the Slovenes) totaled one million. It doesn't matter - he replied firmly - we should model ourselves upon ascari (auxiliary Eritrean troops infamous for their cruelty) and wipe them out".[5]
General Mario Robotti, Commander of the Italian XI Corps (Italy) in Slovenia and Croatia, issued an order in line with a directive received from Mussolini in June 1942: "I would not be opposed to all (sic) Slovenes being imprisoned and replaced by Italians. In other words, we should take steps to ensure that political and ethnic frontiers coincide.",[6] which qualifies as ethnic cleansing policy.
The Province of Ljubljana saw the deportation of 25,000 people, which equaled 7.5% of the total population. The operation, one of the most drastic in Europe, filled up Italian concentration camps on the island Rab, in Gonars, Monigo (Treviso), Renicci d'Anghiari, Chiesanuova and elsewhere.
Mario Roatta's "Circular 3C" (Circolare 3C), tantamount to a declaration of war on the Slovene civil population, involved him in war crimes while he was the commander of the 2nd Italian Army in the Province of Ljubljana.[7]
On February 25, 1942, only two days after the Italian Fascist regime established Gonars concentration camp the first transport of 5,343 internees (1,643 of whom were children) arrived from - at the time already overpopulated - Rab concentration camp, from the Province of Ljubljana itself and from another Italian concentration camp in Monigo (near Treviso). The survivors received no compensation from the Italian state after the war.
The violence against the Slovene civil population easily matched the German.[9] For every major military operation, General M. Roatta issued additional special instructions, including one that the orders must be "carried out most energetically and without any false compassion".[10]
One of Roatta's soldiers wrote home on July 1, 1942: "We have destroyed everything from top to bottom without sparing the innocent. We kill entire families every night, beating them to death or shooting them."[11] The idea that Italian excesses in violence was due to anger or grief at the loss of comrades is false, since the process of killing and mass execution was a consequence of Fascist propaganda, de-humanizing the Slovenes as racially inferior.[12][13]
After the war, Roatta was on the list of the most sought after Italian war criminals indicted by Yugoslavia and other countries, but never saw anything like the Nuremberg Trials because the British government saw in Pietro Badoglio, also on the list, a guarantee of an anti-communist post-war Italy within the context of the Cold War. Some of the most notorious were put on trial however, including Roatta. But he escaped just before being jailed, and fled to Spain.[14][15]
Structure
The Province of Ljubljana (1941–1943)
The province was divided into five districts (Italian: distretti) based around the pre-existing Yugoslav district boundaries, plus the city of Lubiana. Each district was further sub-divided into municipalities (Italian: comuni). The five districts were:[16]
After the Italian armistice in September 1943, the province was occupied by Nazi Germany. The province was kept in the same borders that were set by Italian occupation forces. The province was included in the Adriatic Littoral. It was finally abolished on May 9, 1945.
Administration
During the Italian period (1941–1943), the province was ruled by a high commissioner; for most of its history this post was held by Emilio Grazioli, replaced in early 1943 by Giuseppe Lombrassa who after the fall of Fascism was in turn replaced by General Riccardo Moizo, who only held the post for a month before the Armistice of Cassibile. In the first months after the province was officially annexed to Italy (May 1941), a so-called Consultation Council (consulta) was set up from high-ranking members of local economic, professional and political elites. The first chairman of the council was Marko Natlačen, former Yugoslav governor of the Drava Banovina. Already in 1942, he stepped down in opposition to Italian occupation policies, and the Council itself ceased to be summoned.
After the German occupation in September 1943, Leon Rupnik was named president of the province. He managed to establish a fairly autonomous provincial administration with the help of a small circle of collaborators.
Armed formations
In 1942 so called village guards started appearing spontaneously, as a self-defense against partisan revolutionary violence. They turned to Italians for weapons and equipment, and the Italians soon organized them as a part of Anti-Communist Volunteer Militia. They were called White Guard by the partisans (and even Germans later on).
After the capitulation of Italy most of the Slovene Chetniks were destroyed in the Battle of Grcarice (quietly helped by the Partisans, who then became the only resistance group in Slovenia) and members of the 'White Guard' were killed, captured, dispersed or fled to the Germans, where they formed the core of the newly established Slovenian Home Guard corps led by former general of the Royal Yugoslav Army Leon Rupnik. He became chief of the puppet provincial government of the Province of Ljubljana and came into the service of the Third Reich. Many previously captured or dispersed members of the White Guard soon joined the Slovenian Home Guard.
While the war was still going on some of the leaders of the 'White Guard' underwent a military court-martial in Kočevje and were sentenced to death. The trial was organized by the Slovenian National Liberation Council.
On the Allied side there was the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People which was formed on 27 April 1941 by the decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Slovenia, which refrained from active participation in the fighting as the Communist line at the time was that both sides were engaged in an 'imperialist' war. Originally, organizations from the entire political spectrum participated, but as the influence of the Communist Party within the Liberation Front started to grow, some of them turned against it.
Ending
The area of the Province of Ljubljana after the Second World War was united with the rest of Slovene Lands that were under the control of Tito’s Yugoslavia and formed the People’s Republic of Slovenia in 1947, which in the meantime was called the Federal State of Slovenia (short form: Federal Slovenia).
Some of its territory was returned to Croatia but some was subsequently claimed by Slovenia.
The history of Slovenia chronicles the period of the Slovenian territory from the 5th century BC to the present. In the Early Bronze Age, Proto-Illyrian tribes settled an area stretching from present-day Albania to the city of Trieste. The Slovenian territory was part of the Roman Empire, and it was devastated by the Migration Period's incursions during late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. The main route from the Pannonian plain to Italy ran through present-day Slovenia. Alpine Slavs, ancestors of modern-day Slovenians, settled the area in the late 6th Century AD. The Holy Roman Empire controlled the land for nearly 1,000 years, and between the mid-14th century and 1918 most of Slovenia was under Habsburg rule. In 1918, most Slovene territory became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, and in 1929 the Drava Banovina was created within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia with its capital in Ljubljana, corresponding to Slovenian-majority territories within the state. The Socialist Republic of Slovenia was created in 1945 as part of federal Yugoslavia. Slovenia gained its independence from Yugoslavia in June 1991, and today it is a member of the European Union and NATO.
Kobarid is a settlement in Slovenia, the administrative centre of the Municipality of Kobarid.
The Slovenes, also known as Slovenians, are a South Slavic ethnic group native to Slovenia, and adjacent regions in Italy, Austria and Hungary. Slovenes share a common ancestry, culture, history and speak Slovene as their native language. They are closely related to other South Slavic ethnic groups, as well as more distantly to West Slavs.
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.
The Rab concentration camp was one of several Italian concentration camps. It was established during World War II, in July 1942, on the Italian-annexed island of Rab.
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.
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.
Yugoslavia had various administrative divisions throughout its 74 years of existence.
Gregorij Rožman was a Slovenian Roman Catholic prelate. Between 1930 and 1959, he served as bishop of the Diocese of Ljubljana. He may be best-remembered for his controversial role during World War II. Rožman was an ardent anti-communist and opposed the Liberation Front of the Slovene People and the Partisan forces because they were led by the Communist party. He established relations with both the fascist and Nazi occupying powers, issued proclamations of support for the occupying authorities, and supported armed collaborationist forces organized by the fascist and Nazi occupiers. The Yugoslav Communist government convicted him in absentia in August 1946 of treason for collaborating with the Nazis against the Yugoslav resistance. In 2009, his conviction was annulled on procedural grounds.
The Gonars concentration camp was one of the several Italian concentration camps and it was established on February 23, 1942, near Gonars, Italy.
Mario Roatta was an Italian general. After serving in World War I he rose to command the Corpo Truppe Volontarie which assisted Francisco Franco's force during the Spanish Civil War. He was the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Italian Army from October 1939 to March 1941 and from March 1941 to January 1942 its Chief of Staff and helped in preparing for the invasion of Yugoslavia.
Ernest Peterlin was a Slovene military officer who rose to a senior position in the Royal Yugoslav Army prior to the Second World War. Married to Anja Roman Rezelj. A decided anti-Communist, during the war he became a prominent anti-Partisan military leader and one of the main exponents of the pro-Western faction of the Slovene Home Guard, an anti-Communist collaborationist militia active in parts of German-occupied Slovenia between 1943 and 1945. In 1945, he was tried and sentenced to death by the new Yugoslav Communist authorities and executed in 1946.
The Anti-Communist Volunteer Militia were paramilitary auxiliary formations of the Royal Italian Army composed of Yugoslav anti-Partisan groups in the Italian-annexed and occupied portions of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia during the Second World War.
Marko Natlačen was a Slovenian politician and jurist, who also served as the last ban (governor) of the Drava Banovina in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. His assassination at the hands of the Slovenian Communist secret police (VOS) during World War II was an important event in the escalation of the armed conflict between the Slovenian partisans and the Slovenian paramilitary anti-revolutionary forces in the Province of Ljubljana. The role of Natlačen during World War II and the extent to which he collaborated with the Fascist Italian forces has been disputed.
This is a survey of the postage stamps and postal history of Slovenia.
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.
The Assembly of the Delegates of the Slovene Nation or the Kočevje Assembly was the session held in Kočevje in what is now southern Slovenia over the period 1–3 October 1943 by the highest representative body of the anti-fascist Partisan movement in Slovenia during World War II. The assembly elected the legislative body of the Slovene liberated areas.
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.
Mario Robotti was a general in the Royal Italian Army who commanded the XI Corps during the World War II Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941.
Emilio Grazioli was an Italian Fascist politician and prefect, High Commissioner for the Province of Ljubljana from 1941 to 1943.
References
↑ Gregor Joseph Kranjc (2013).To Walk with the Devil, University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division, p. 5
↑ The Ciano Diaries 1939–1943: The Complete, Unabridged Diaries of Count Galeazzo Ciano, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1936–1943 (2000) ISBN1-931313-74-1
↑ Davide Rodogno. Fascism's European empire. Cambridge, England, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006 Pp. 419.
Further reading
Ballinger, P. (2002). History in exile: memory and identity at the borders of the Balkans. Princeton University Press, ISBN0-691-08697-4
Burgwyn, H.J. (2005). Empire on the Adriatic: Mussolini's Conquest of Yugoslavia 1941-1943 (introduction by Lutz Klinkhammer), Enigma Books, ISBN1-929631-35-9
Guerrazzi, Amedeo Osti (2013): 'The Italian Army in Slovenia. Strategies of antipartisan Repression, 1941-1943', New York, Palgrave Macmillan
Giuseppe Piemontese (1946): Twenty-nine months of Italian occupation of the Province of Ljubljana
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