TIGR, fully the Revolutionary Organization of the Julian March T.I.G.R., was a militant anti-fascist and insurgent organization established as a response to the Fascist Italianization of the Slovene and Croat people on part of the former Austro-Hungarian territories that became part of Italy after the First World War, and were known at the time as the Julian March. It is considered one of the first anti-fascist resistance movements in Europe. It was active between 1927 and 1941.
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.
Leon Rupnik, also known as Lav Rupnik or Lev Rupnik was a Slovene general in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia who collaborated with the Fascist Italian and Nazi German occupation forces during World War II. Rupnik served as the President of the Provincial Government of the Nazi-occupied Province of Ljubljana from November 1943 to early May 1945. Between September 1944 and early May 1945, he also served as chief inspector of the Slovene Home Guard, a collaborationist militia, although he did not have any military command until the last month of the war.
The Slovene Home Guard was a Slovene anti-Partisan anti-fascist militia that accommodated the Germans for reasons of self-defense from the Partisans. It operated during the 1943–1945 German occupation of the formerly Italian-annexed 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.
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 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.
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.
The Legion of Death was a regimental-size Slovenian anti-Communist militia of the Second World War. The units that would call themselves the Legion of Death began recruiting and organizing against the Partisans in May 1942. Eventually they would consist of three battalions when the Blue Guard Styrian battalion was incorporated into the Anti-Communist Volunteer Militia, the anti-Communist militia of the Fascist Italians who occupied Slovenia at the time. It mainly fought against the Communist Yugoslav Partisans. The unit reached a strength of 1,731 members in October 1942, but plans for further expansion were never realized. The unit was mainly led by former Yugoslav Royal Army officers. When the Italians capitulated in 1943, the unit was disbanded and its members absorbed into the Slovene Home Guard units.
Žvirče is a village in the Municipality of Žužemberk in southeastern Slovenia. The area is part of the historical region of Lower Carniola and is now included in the Southeast Slovenia Statistical Region.
The siege of Turjak or Battle of Turjak was fought between 14 and 19 September 1943 at the Turjak Castle between the Slovene Partisans and the combined forces of Slovene former units of the Anti-Communist Volunteer Militia (MVAC) and Slovene Chetniks. The battle followed the Partisan victory at Battle of Grčarice. Partisans encircled the Turjak castle on 14 September and laid siege to the castle after the defenders refused to surrender. The siege ended on 19 September with a Partisan victory, in part due to the heavy weapons that they had acquired from Italian forces.
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 after the end of the First World War, and genocide of the entire Slovene nation was being planned by the Italian fascist authorities, 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 Kočevski Rog massacre was a series of massacres near Kočevski Rog in late May 1945 in which thousands of members of the Nazi Germany–allied Slovene Home Guard were executed, without formal charges or trial, by special units of the Yugoslav Partisans; other victims were Croat, Serb and Montenegrin collaborationists as well as much smaller numbers of Italian and German troops.
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.
Lambert Ehrlich was a Carinthian Slovene Roman Catholic priest, political figure, and ethnologist.
The Slovene Covenant was an underground anti-communist organisation formed in Slovenia in April 1942 by a number of non-communist political parties after the killing of Avgust Praprotnik (1891–1942) by operatives from the Security and Intelligence Service, a forerunner of the Yugoslav secret police. It "adopted a political programme that strongly echoed the political positions of the OF". In 1943 anti-communist forces including the Slovene Covenant engaged in armed conflict against Partisan forces in the country and were defeated.
The Blue Guard, also known as the Slovene Chetniks, was a Slovenian anti-communist militia, initially under the leadership of Major Karl Novak and later Ivan Prezelj. Their official name was the Royal Yugoslav Army in Slovenia.
The Battle of Grčarice was fought in early September 1943 between the Slovene Partisans and the Blue Guard. The battle was waged in Grčarice in German-occupied Yugoslavia, modern-day Slovenia.
Vuk Rupnik was a Slovene military officer during the Second World War.
