Yugoslav Partisans
The Yugoslav Partisans began the war as a ragged band of guerrillas with captured rifles and no infrastructure. They ended it with over 800,000 soldiers organized in 63 divisions, having beaten the Western Allies to Trieste by two days. How a banned communist party, operating underground in an occupied and dismembered country, built Europe's most effective anti-Axis resistance movement is a story of ideology, desperation, and ruthless adaptability.
When Germany invaded the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the country fell in little more than ten days. The Royal Yugoslav Army surrendered unconditionally on the 17th of April. In the weeks that followed, the Axis powers carved Yugoslavia into pieces, distributed among Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the newly created puppet state of Croatia. Into that wreckage, Josip Broz Tito and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia began building something entirely new. The questions worth asking are not just how they survived seven major enemy offensives. They are also: who actually fought, what kind of country they were fighting for, and what happened to the civilians caught between the Partisans and everyone else.
Germany bombed Belgrade during the April 1941 invasion, reducing the Royal Yugoslav Army to an institution that had tried to defend every border at once and had only managed to spread its limited forces fatally thin. The unconditional surrender came on the 17th of April, after just eleven days of resistance.
What followed was a systematic dismemberment of a country that had existed for barely two decades. Germany took the northern part of Drava Banovina, roughly corresponding to modern Slovenia, and maintained direct military rule over a rump Serbian territory with a puppet government. Italy absorbed the remainder of Drava Banovina, renamed it the Province of Lubiana, and seized large sections of Dalmatia along with nearly all its Adriatic islands. Mussolini also gained control of a newly created governorate of Montenegro.
The Independent State of Croatia, known by its initials NDH, was created under German direction and extended over modern Croatia, all of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Syrmia region of Serbia. Hungary dispatched its Third Army and annexed the Yugoslav regions of Baranja, Backa, Medjimurje, and Prekmurje. Bulgaria annexed nearly all of Macedonia and portions of eastern Serbia and Kosovo. The source states plainly that this dissolution of Yugoslavia was incompatible with international law as it stood at the time.
For ordinary people living through this, the situation became quickly unbearable. German forces adopted a policy of shooting up to 100 local inhabitants for every one German soldier killed. Two of the most documented atrocities came early: the massacre of 2,000 civilians in Kraljevo and 3,000 in Kragujevac. This formula of mass reprisals was enforced strictly in Serbia, though it was issued across all German-occupied territory. The ratio was eventually cut in half in February 1943 and removed altogether later that same year, but by then it had already driven thousands toward the one organized force promising both resistance and survival.
Before Tito could act, he had to wait. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union was still in force after the April invasion, and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia had been banned since its strong showing in post-World War I elections. Tito could not move openly without Soviet backing.
Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, began on the 22nd of June 1941, and that changed everything. The very same day, forty Croatian communists staged an uprising in the Brezovica woods between Sisak and Zagreb, forming the 1st Sisak Partisan Detachment. It was the first Partisan uprising in occupied Yugoslavia. Two weeks later came the uprising Tito led directly in Serbia.
The Communist Party of Yugoslavia formally decided to launch an armed uprising on the 4th of July, a date later marked as Fighter's Day, a public holiday in socialist Yugoslavia. On the 7th of July, one Zikica Jovanovic Spanac fired the first bullet of the campaign in the Bela Crkva incident. On the 27th of July, a Partisan-led uprising began near Drvar and Bosansko Grahovo. On the 10th of August, in a mountain village called Stanulovice, the Partisans formed the Kopaonik Partisan Detachment Headquarters and held a small liberated area they called the Miners Republic for 42 days.
In western Serbia, the uprising produced something more ambitious: the Republic of Uzice, a short-lived liberated territory that was, according to the source, the first liberated territory in occupied Europe. It fell to German forces by the 29th of November 1941. What had started in July as a general uprising was already being driven back by December. In Serbia, Partisan numbers that had reached around 55,000 in 1941 were reduced to roughly 4,500 fighters who managed to escape westward into Bosnia. The September 1941 Stolice conference was a critical organizational moment: there the unified name Partisans and the red star as an identification symbol were formally adopted for all fighters under Communist Party leadership.
Yugoslav historiographers defined a series of seven major enemy offensives aimed at destroying the Partisan movement. What is remarkable is that the Partisans survived all seven. What is equally remarkable is that surviving each one left them stronger.
The First Enemy Offensive struck in the autumn of 1941 against the Republic of Uzice in western Serbia. German troops reoccupied the territory, and most Partisan forces fled toward Bosnia. This offensive also broke the fragile cooperation between the Partisans and the royalist Chetnik movement, which had briefly fought alongside them, and turned the two groups into open enemies.
The Second Offensive was a coordinated Axis attack in January 1942 against eastern Bosnia. Partisan forces avoided encirclement by retreating over Igman mountain near Sarajevo. The Third, known to the Germans as Operation TRIO, hit eastern Bosnia, Montenegro, Sandzak, and Herzegovina in the spring of 1942; the Partisans escaped again. The Fourth, also called the Battle of the Neretva or Fall Weiss, spanned western Bosnia and northern Herzegovina from January to April 1943, culminating in a fighting retreat across the Neretva river.
The Fifth Enemy Offensive, Fall Schwarz or the Battle of the Sutjeska, immediately followed the Fourth. It achieved a complete encirclement of Partisan forces in southeastern Bosnia and northern Montenegro in May and June 1943. The source notes that at the Sutjeska, only 1,492 of the fighters in Tito's Main Operational Group came from Serbia, while 8,925 came from Croatia, with 5,195 of those from Dalmatia alone.
The Sixth came after Italy's capitulation in late 1943, as the Wehrmacht and Ustasha forces moved to secure the Adriatic coast. The Seventh, in the second quarter of 1944 in western Bosnia, included Operation Rosselsprung, Knight's Leap, which was an attempt to parachute directly onto Tito's headquarters near Drvar and kill him. It failed. The source draws a pointed conclusion: it was the nature of partisan resistance that an offensive must either eliminate the movement altogether or leave it potentially stronger than before. Each of the seven offensives proved that.
The ethnic composition of the Partisans shifted dramatically over the course of the war, and the shifts reveal a great deal about why people joined and when. In 1941 and into 1942, Serbs formed the overwhelming majority. In Croatian territory at the end of 1941, according to Goldstein, 77 percent of Partisans were Serbs and only 21.5 percent were Croats. In Bosnia and Herzegovina by late 1943, according to Hoare, 70 percent were Serb and 30 percent were Croat and Muslim.
The Party's stated policy was pan-ethnic: in Bosnia, the Partisan rallying cry was for a country that was to be neither Serbian nor Croatian nor Muslim, but free and brotherly with full equality of all groups. But practice and ideology often diverged in the early war years. Some Serbian Partisans rejected non-Serb members and raided the villages of Croatian neighbors. A group of Jewish youths from Sarajevo who attempted to join a Partisan detachment in Kalinovnik were turned back by Serbian Partisans; many were later captured by Axis forces and killed.
The turning point for Croat participation came in part from a specific political decision: a key Croatian Peasant Party member, Bozidar Magovac, joined the Partisans in June 1943. Italy's capitulation that September brought even larger numbers. By the end of 1944, Croatian Partisan units were 60.4 percent Croat and 28.6 percent Serb. Over the entire war, according to pension records from 1977, the movement was 53 percent Serb, 18.6 percent Croat, 9.2 percent Slovene, 5.5 percent Montenegrin, 3.5 percent Bosnian Muslim, and 2.7 percent Macedonian.
More than 40,000 Italian fighters also served in several formations including the Partisan Battalion Pino Budicin, the Division Garibaldi, and Division Italia. From Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1,064 Jewish fighters joined the Partisans during 1941-1943; after Italy's capitulation, many more followed. At the end of the war, 2,339 Jewish Partisans from those territories survived while 804 were killed. According to Romano, the total number of Jewish Partisans from that region was 4,572, of whom 1,318 were killed.
About 100,000 women served alongside 600,000 men in the National Liberation Army. The Antifascist Front of Women claimed two million civilian supporters and managed schools, hospitals, and local governments. The movement used imagery drawn from traditional folklore heroines to recruit women, and Yugoslav historians after the war paid extensive attention to those roles, attention that faded when the country dissolved in the 1990s.
Until 1944, Britain had been supplying both the Partisans and the royalist Chetniks, hedging its bets in an occupied country it barely understood. The intelligence that changed Allied policy came from direct observation.
F.W.D. Deakin was sent by the British to gather information while the Germans were executing Operation Schwarz, the Fifth anti-Partisan offensive. His reports contained two findings that shifted Allied calculations. First, the Partisans were fighting aggressively against the German 1st Mountain and 104th Light Divisions and had suffered significant casualties while doing so. Second, and more damaging for the Chetniks, the entire German 1st Mountain Division had traveled by railway from Russia through Chetnik-controlled territory without incident. British intercepts of German communications, the ULTRA intelligence program, confirmed that Chetnik restraint was not tactical caution but active collaboration.
In September 1943, at Churchill's request, Brigadier General Fitzroy Maclean was parachuted directly to Tito's headquarters near Drvar to serve as a permanent formal liaison. From that point, the Partisans received the bulk of Allied material support. Official recognition followed at the Tehran Conference.
At a meeting with Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Combined Chiefs of Staff on the 24th of November 1943, Churchill stated that 222,000 followers of Tito were holding as many Germans in Yugoslavia as the combined Anglo-American forces were holding in Italy south of Rome, and that virtually no supplies had yet been sent to them by sea. The RAF Balkan Air Force was subsequently established, under the influence of Maclean, specifically to provide increased supplies and tactical air support for Tito's forces. Between the 1st of January and the 15th of October 1944, 1,152 American airmen were airlifted from Yugoslavia; 795 of those evacuations were carried out with Partisan assistance.
On the 20th of October 1944, the Red Army and the Partisans liberated Belgrade in a joint operation known as the Belgrade Offensive. By the onset of winter, the Partisans controlled the entire eastern half of Yugoslavia, including Serbia, Vardar Macedonia, Montenegro, and the Dalmatian coast.
Tito issued an amnesty to all collaborators on the 17th of August 1944. Tens of thousands of Chetniks switched sides. The amnesty was offered again after the German withdrawal from Belgrade on the 21st of November 1944 and once more on the 15th of January 1945. Serbia's Partisan brigades went from 28 in June 1944 to 60 by the end of the year, a consequence of mass mobilization following the Soviet-Bulgarian offensive in Serbia, North Macedonia, and Kosovo.
In 1945, the Partisans, by then numbering over 800,000, defeated the Armed Forces of the Independent State of Croatia and Wehrmacht forces. They broke through the Syrmian front in late winter, took Sarajevo in early April, and completed the liberation of the NDH and Slovenia through mid-May. After taking Rijeka and Istria, which had been Italian territory before the war, they arrived in Trieste two days ahead of the Western Allies. The last battle of World War II in Europe, known as the Battle of Poljana, was fought between the Partisans and retreating Wehrmacht and collaborationist forces at Poljana, near Prevalje in Carinthia, on the 14th and the 15th of May 1945.
On the 1st of March 1945, the National Liberation Army was formally reorganized and renamed the Yugoslav Army. It would keep that name until 1951, when it became the Yugoslav People's Army. Yugoslavia was one of only two European countries largely liberated by its own forces. The independence that came with that fact shaped everything that followed: at the onset of the Cold War, the country found itself positioned between the two camps, a position that matured, following the Tito-Stalin split of 1947-48, into the non-aligned foreign policy Yugoslavia actively maintained until its dissolution.
The Partisans' casualty tables run from the 7th of July 1941 to the 16th of May 1945. Across those years, 245,549 were killed in action, 399,880 were wounded, 31,200 died from wounds, and 28,925 were listed as missing. The country as a whole suffered between 900,000 and 1,150,000 civilian and military dead during the Axis occupation.
The Partisans also killed civilians. On the 27th of July 1941, Partisan-led units massacred around 100 Croat civilians in Bosansko Grahovo and 300 in Trubar during the Drvar uprising. Between the 5th and the 8th of September 1941, the Partisan Drvar Brigade massacred between 1,000 and 3,000 Muslim civilians and soldiers, including 100 Croats. After the war ended, mass executions swept up prisoners of war, perceived collaborators, and their relatives, including children. These killings include the Foibe massacres, the Tezno massacre, the Macelj massacre, the Kocevski Rog massacre, and the communist purges in Serbia in 1944-45. According to Marcus Tanner's work on Croatia, at least 30,000 people were killed in the Bleiburg killings and between 80,000 and 100,000 people died in the partisan purges more broadly.
The Partisans did not have an official policy of liquidating enemies; their stated cardinal principle was the brotherhood and unity of all Yugoslav nations, a phrase that became the motto of postwar Yugoslavia. But the gap between stated principle and conducted violence was wide. This chapter of Partisan history was officially taboo in the SFR Yugoslavia until the late 1980s. Decades of enforced silence created fertile ground for nationalist manipulation of the data after the country's dissolution, a dynamic the source identifies as an ongoing problem in the historical record. According to Vladimir Dedijer, more than 40,000 works of folk poetry were inspired by the Partisans, a measure of how completely the movement had embedded itself in the popular memory of the people it fought among.
Up Next
Continue Browsing
Common questions
Who led the Yugoslav Partisans during World War II?
Josip Broz Tito led the Yugoslav Partisans throughout World War II. He organized the movement on the initiative of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia following the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, and commanded the movement through its growth from a guerrilla force into an army of over 800,000 by 1945.
How large did the Yugoslav Partisans become by the end of the war?
By late 1944 the Partisans numbered around 650,000, organized in four field armies and 52 divisions. By April 1945 the force exceeded 800,000 soldiers grouped in 63 divisions. They began the war as a small, poorly armed guerrilla force with around 81,000 fighters recorded in late 1941.
What ethnic groups made up the Yugoslav Partisans?
According to pension records from 1977, the ethnic composition over the entire war was 53 percent Serb, 18.6 percent Croat, 9.2 percent Slovene, 5.5 percent Montenegrin, 3.5 percent Bosnian Muslim, and 2.7 percent Macedonian, with the remainder including Albanians, Hungarians, Italians, and others. More than 40,000 Italian fighters served in formations including the Division Garibaldi. The Serb majority in the early war years shifted substantially after Italy's capitulation in September 1943.
When did the Western Allies switch support from the Chetniks to the Yugoslav Partisans?
Allied support shifted in late 1943 after British intelligence missions confirmed that Chetnik forces were collaborating with the Axis. Brigadier General Fitzroy Maclean was parachuted to Tito's headquarters in September 1943 as a permanent liaison, and the Tehran Conference that year granted the Partisans official Allied recognition. Churchill stated in November 1943 that the 222,000 followers of Tito were holding as many Germans in Yugoslavia as combined Anglo-American forces were holding in Italy south of Rome.
What was the last battle of World War II in Europe and how did the Yugoslav Partisans fight in it?
The Battle of Poljana, fought on the 14th and the 15th of May 1945 near Prevalje in Carinthia, is considered the last battle of World War II in Europe. Yugoslav Partisans fought retreating Wehrmacht and collaborationist forces there. Earlier in the same final offensive, the Partisans reached Trieste two days before the Western Allies.
How many Yugoslav Partisan casualties were recorded during World War II?
From the 7th of July 1941 to the 16th of May 1945, 245,549 Partisans were killed in action, 399,880 were wounded, 31,200 died from wounds, and 28,925 were listed as missing. Ivo Goldstein records that 82,000 Serbs and 42,000 Croats were killed on NDH territory as Partisan combatants.
All sources
76 references cited across the entry
- 1bookPolitical change in post-Communist Slovakia and Croatia: from nationalist to EuropeanistSharon Fisher — Palgrave Macmillan — 2006
- 2bookA new kind of war: America's global strategy and the Truman Doctrine in GreeceHoward Jones — Oxford University Press — 1997
- 3bookThe Balkans: from Constantinople to communismDennis P. Hupchick — Palgrave Macmillan — 2004
- 4bookComparative economics in a transforming world economyJohn Barkley Rosser — MIT Press — 2004
- 5bookThe encyclopedia of codenames of World War IIChristopher Chant — Routledge — 1986
- 6journalConstitutional Socialism in YugoslaviaIvan Maksimovi — 1 March 1965
- 11bookYugoslavia: A Country StudyGlenn E. Curtis — Library of Congress — 1992
- 12bookYugoslavia Through Documents:From Its Creation to Its DissolutionSnežana Trifunovska — Martinus Nijhoff Publishers — 1994
- 13bookThe Yugoslav experiment 1948–1974Dennison I. Rusinow — University of California Press — 1978
- 15bookWomen and Yugoslav Partisans: A History of World War II ResistanceJelena Batinić — Cambridge University Press — 2015
- 16harvnbBanac (1996) p. 43Banac — 1996
- 17bookThe Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina: Their Historic Development from the Middle Ages to the Dissolution of YugoslaviaMark Pinson — Harvard CMES — 1996
- 18bookBalkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav StatesVjekoslav Perica — Oxford University Press — 2004
- 19webIndependent State of CroatiaEncyclopædia Britannica Online — 2010
- 20webCommentary on Convention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Part III Status and treatment of protected persons, Section III, Occupied territories, Article 47 Inviolability of RightsInternational Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva — 1952
- 21bookThe Balkans: Nationalism, War, and the Great Powers, 1804–1999Misha Glenny — 1999
- 22bookPeasant Nationalism and Communist PowerChalmers A. Johnson — Stanford University Press — 1962
- 23bookTito's Flawed Legacy: Yugoslavia and the West since 1939Nora Beloff — Routledge — 2019
- 24journalTito: The Formation of a Disloyal BolshevikGeoffrey R. Swain — 1989
- 25bookHitler and RussiaTrumbull Higgins — The Macmillan Company — 1966
- 26bookFascist Warfare, 1922–1945: Aggression, Occupation, AnnihilationMiguel Alonso et al. — Springer Nature — 2019
- 27bookThe Bosnian Muslims in the Second World WarMarko Attila Hoare — Oxford University Press — 2013
- 28bookBosnia and Herzegovina in the Second World WarEnver Redžić et al. — Routledge — 2004
- 29book1941: The Year That Keeps ReturningSlavko Goldstein — New York Review of Books — 2013
- 30bookThe Three Yugoslavias: State-building and Legitimation, 1918–2005Sabrina P. Ramet — Indiana University Press — 2006
- 31magazineForeign News: Partisan Boom3 January 1944
- 32webBBC HistoryStephen Hart — BBC
- 33bookTitoNeil Barnett — Haus Publishing — 2006
- 34bookThe Churchill War Papers: The ever-widening war, 1941Martin Gilbert — W. W. Norton & Company — 1993
- 37webDalmazia: Una cronaca per la Storia 1943–1944 Parte ITalpo, Oddone — 1994
- 38bookYugoslavia in the Second World WarAhmet Đonlagić et al. — Međunarodna štampa Interpress — 1967
- 41webEncyclopedia of the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial MuseumUshmm.org — 6 January 2011
- 42bookRazdvojeni narod: Slovenija 1941–1945: okupacija, kolaboracija, državljanska vojna, revolucijaTamara Griesser-Pečar — Mladinska knjiga — 2007
- 43bookSlovensko in italijansko odporniško gibanje – strukturna primerjava: diploma thesisFaculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana — 2008
- 44webSloveniaDamijan Guštin — ERA Project
- 46bookJugoslavija 1941–1945Vlado Strugar — Vojnoizdavački zavod — 1969
- 47bookPutevim Glavnog štaba HrvatskeBožidar Vuković et al. — 1976
- 48bookCroatia in War and Revolution 1941–1945Ivan Jelic — Školska knjiga — 1978
- 52webThe Great Serbian threat, ZAVNOBiH and Muslim Bosniak entry into the People's Liberation MovementMarko Attila Hoare — Posebna izdanja ANUBiH
- 55harvnbJonassohn, Björnson (1998) p. 285Jonassohn, Björnson — 1998
- 56bookPrisoners of War: Europe: 1939-1956Bob Moore — Oxford University Press — 2022-05-05
- 57webSlovene-Italian historical commissionKozina.com
- 58bookPartisan Warfare 1941-45Nigel Thomas et al. — Osprey Publishing — 1983
- 59bookWomen and Yugoslav PartisansJelena Batinic — Cambridge University Press — 2015
- 60journalWomen in the Yugoslav National Liberation Movement: An OverviewBarbara Jancar — 1981
- 62journalResistance and the Politics of Daily Life in Hitler's Europe: The Case of Yugoslavia in a Comparative PerspectiveVesna Drapac — 2009
- 63bookThe Politics of Memory of the Second World War in Contemporary Serbia: Collaboration, Resistance and RetributionJelena Đureinović — Routledge — 2019
- 65webHow Serbia Changed its Mind about World War II History2020-02-06
- 67webKad četnici slave Dan pobjede nad fašizmom2020-05-10
- 68webSutjeska – ogledalo apsurda ovdašnjih antifašizama2020-06-07
- 69webŠta je Hrvatskoj Bleiburg, a šta bitka na Sutjesci?2020-05-13
- 70webKosovo Partisans Set to Lose Their Memorial2013-03-28
- 71webObilježena 75. godišnjica Bitke na Neretvi5 May 2018
- 72webSpuštanjem 76 karanfila u Neretvu obilježena godišnjica Bitke za ranjenikeRadiosarajevo.ba — 11 May 2019
- 74webSUBNOR osudio imenovanje ulice u Kragujevcu po Draži Mihailoviću5 November 2019
- 75webSocijalisti glasali za Dražinu ulicu pa se predomislili, sada "u klinču" s POKS17 November 2019