Cyclone Ianos

Cyclone Ianos, also known as Medicane Ianos, was a rare Mediterranean tropical-like cyclone (medicane), that impacted Greece on 17 and 18 September 2020. Ianos developed from an area of low pressure over the Gulf of Sidra that quickly began tropical cyclogenesis while moving over warm waters. After receiving various names from different meteorological centers, the storm, dubbed "Ianos" by the Greek Government, rapidly intensified while moving northeastward. After scraping Italy, the storm went on to strike Malta and Crete with tropical storm-force winds. Despite land interaction, the small cyclone reached its peak intensity of on 18 September, immediately before making landfall in southwestern Greece. After landfall, Ianos turned back out to sea and moved south-southeastward, before dissipating on 21 September.
Damage was severe in Greece, with cities in the central part of the country getting the brunt of the storm's impacts. Cities such as Karditsa and Mouzaki were flooded for several days. Heavy agricultural damage was reported in rural areas north of Athens. A state of emergency was declared for the islands of Ithaca, Kefalonia, and Zakynthos. Four people were killed, and one person remains missing. Ianos caused at least $100 million (2020 USD) in damages.
Meteorological history.
An upper-level low moved eastward in the southern Mediterranean Sea through September 14. On that day, a low-pressure area began to develop over the Gulf of Sidra, beginning tropical cyclogenesis by forming a warm core at the surface. The cyclone quickly developed in the subsequent hours while slowly moving northwest with a wind speed of around . By 15 September, it had intensified to , with a minimum pressure of , with further development predicted over the coming days. The cyclone had strong potential to become tropical over the next several days due to warm sea temperatures of in the region. Weather models predicted that it would likely hit the west coast of Greece on 17 or 18 September. Ianos gradually intensified over the Mediterranean Sea, acquiring an eye-like feature. Ianos made landfall on Greece at peak intensity on 03:00 UTC on September 18, with winds peaking near and a minimum central pressure estimated at , equivalent to a minimal Category 1 hurricane. After making landfall, Ianos turned south-southeastward on 19 September, moving back out to sea, where the storm managed to reorganize somewhat. Soon afterward, Ianos underwent a weakening trend. Ianos continued moving south-southeastward for another couple of days before dissipating on 21 September, off the coast of Cyrenaica.
Warmer sea surface temperatures caused by climate change in the Mediterranean Sea can allow the storms to take on more tropical appearances and characteristics, increasing the wind speeds and making the storms more intense. A 2017 study in Global and Planetary Change led by Raquel Romera examined a large suite of regional climate model projections, which supported the theory that medicanes will gradually become stronger due to climate change.
Preparations and impact.
As Ianos passed to the south of Italy on 16 September, it produced heavy rain across the southern part of the country and in Sicily. As much as of rain was reported in Reggio Calabria, more than the city's normal monthly rainfall.
The Hellenic National Meteorological Service issued Red Alerts, the highest level of warnings, to alert people of the storm while it was approaching Greece. Downed trees and power outages were reported on Kefalonia, and residents were urged to stay indoors. Wind gusts reached on Kefalonia and Zakynthos. When Ianos stalled over the western part of Greece, it caused flash flooding and landslides. The peak official rainfall amount recorded was , though the exact peak rainfall amount is claimed to be much higher than that. Ianos left four people dead and one missing. On 19 September, a man was found dead on his farm north of Athens, while the body of a woman was recovered from her flooded home in a nearby town. On 20 September, the body of a 62-year-old farmer was found under the collapsed roof of his house in a village north of Athens. In addition, a 43-year-old woman was found dead on 24 September after being declared missing on 20 September. The woman was swept several kilometres from her car by flash flooding. More than 5,000 homes were damaged. In addition, there were strong tides in Ionian islands such as Kefalonia, Zakynthos, Ithaca and Lefkada, and winds at Karditsa that brought down trees and power lines, and caused landslides. A bridge also collapsed in Karditsa, one of the hardest-hit areas. Throughout the country, over 600 people were rescued by the national firefighting service. Greece's cotton crop was ready for harvest, which was set to begin just as the storm hit. However, Ianos likely caused significant flooding and crop losses where rain was heaviest, especially in Thessalia. Assos, in Kefalonia, was isolated from the rest of the island and the mainland. Nearly two metres (6.5 feet) of rubble covered roads, prohibiting access by car and trapping residents and tourists. Damage in one village (Assos) in Kefalonia totalled more than €50,000 ($58,555 USD).
Aftermath and naming.
On 20 September, the Public Power Corporation reported that 61 power substations were in operation in the urban zone of Karditsa, and another 10 would be powered shortly. Efforts were made to restore power in Argithea and Mouzaki. The top officials of the corporation met with the leader of the Karditsa Fire Department to coordinate and accelerate water pumping in areas where the technical crews needed to work.
Prime Minister of Greece Kyriakos Mitsotakis pledged that "all the affected areas will have immediate support." He sent three senior officials to the worst-hit central region. On 22 September, Prime Minister Mitsotakis visited the Karditsa region, one of the hardest-hit regions. 5,000 to 8,000 euros were given to each household and business in Karditsa and Mouzaki. In Mouzaki, Mayor Fanis Stathis declared that all schools and nurseries will remain closed, as Ianos damaged the road network, and school buildings of the region.
Greece assigned the system the name "Ianos" (), sometimes anglicized to "Janus", while the German weather service used the name "Udine"; the Turkish used "Tulpar", and the unofficial Mediterranean Cyclone Centre used "Cassilda".


Moritz Franz Kasimir von Wobersnow

Moritz Franz Kasimir von Wobersnow (5 March 1708 in Kamissow (Kamosowo)–23 July 1759 at Kay) was a Prussian major general of infantry and a general adjutant of Frederick the Great. He died at the Battle of Kay; a lifelong friend of the King, his name is included on the Equestrian statue of Frederick the Great.
Family.
Moritz Franz Kasimir came from the old Pomeranian noble family of Wobersnow. He was a son of Moritz Georg von Wobersnow (1677–1759), heredity lord of Kamissow and his wife, Anne Elisabeth, née Manteuffel, of the House of Popelow.
Military service.
In 1723, Wobersnow entered the Prussian military service in the infantry regiment "Grumkow" as a "fahnenjunker". With Crown Prince Frederick, he transferred to the regiment Moulin, where he remained for the remainder of the reign of Frederick William II and for the first seven years of Frederick's reign, through the War of Austrian Succession. He was promoted to major in 1747. In August 1751, he received for his service a prebendary to the cathedral in Minden, which gave him a regular income. In March 1752 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and appointed to the adjutant to the king. He was also given control of the light Jaeger Corps. He also accompanied the king to his campaign to Saxony.
Seven Years' War.
He was wounded in the Battle of Prague, but soon recovered to fight at the battles of Rossbach and Leuthen. Frederick sent him and his light troops to support Christoph von Dohna against the Russians. In August 1758 he fought in the Battle of Zorndorf and helped to expel the Russians from Landsberg an der Warthe (Gorzów Wielkopolski) in September.
In February 1759 he received his own corps; he and Georg Ludwig von Puttkamer moved from Silesia to Poland, where they were commissioned to destroy Russian magazines. In June 1759, as the Russians, however, shifted their forces to western Poland, and marched toward the Oder river, a move that threatened the Prussian heartland, Brandenburg, and potentially Berlin. Frederick sent an army corps commanded by Friedrich August von Finck to contain the Russians; he sent a second column commanded by Christoph II von Dohna to support Finck. Wobersnow was at the vanguard of the second column. At Battle of Kay, in an effort to break the Russian line, Wobersnow led eight battalions and six squadrons from Züllichau against the Russian right wing. His cavalry penetrated the enemy's infantry line, but the Russian cavalry, supported by gun-fire, drove them back. He fell in the Kay on 23 July 1759.


HMS Worcester (D96)

The eighth HMS "Worcester" (D96, later I96), was a Modified W-class destroyer of the British Royal Navy that saw service in World War II. She later served as an accommodation ship as the second HMS "Yeoman".
Construction and commissioning.
"Worcester" was ordered in April 1918 as part of the 13th Order of the 1917-1918 Naval Programme. She was laid down on 20 December 1918 by J. Samuel White at Cowes, Isle of Wight, and launched on 24 October 1919. After launching, she was transferred to the Royal Navy Dockyard at Portsmouth for fitting out, and was completed there on 20 September 1922. She was commissioned into service the same day with the pennant number D96.
Service history.
Before World War II.
After entering service with the fleet in 1922, "Worcester" saw service in the Atlantic Fleet and Mediterranean Fleet before being decommissioned, transferred to the Reserve Fleet, and placed in reserve at Portsmouth in the early 1930s.
In 1939, "Worcester" was selected for recommissioning as the fleet mobilised because of deteriorating diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and Nazi Germany.
World War II.
1939–40.
After the United Kingdom entered World War II on 3 September 1939, "Worcester" prepared for war service, recommissioning that month, taking aboard stores, and reporting for duty with the 16th Destroyer Flotilla – which also included the destroyer leader and the destroyers , , , , , and – at Portsmouth for convoy escort and patrol operations in the English Channel and Southwestern Approaches, which she began in October 1939. She remained on these duties until May 1940, when the German invasion of the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France began and she came under the Commander-in-Chief, Dover to support the evacuation of Allied personnel from Europe as German ground forces advanced. On 24 May, she was assigned to Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk, France, during which she made six trips to the Dunkirk beaches, transported a total of 4,350 troops to the United Kingdom, and suffered damage in a German air attack on 27 May 1940.
"Worcester" was under repair during June 1940 – the month in which her pennant number was changed to I96 – but in July 1940 she returned to service with the 16th Destroyer Flotilla, now based at Harwich, for convoy escort and patrol operations in the North Sea. In August 1940 she was transferred to Western Approaches Command for convoy defence duty in the Western Approaches, which she continued without major incident through the end of 1940.
1941–42.
In January 1941, "Worcester" transferred back to the 16th Destroyer Flotilla at Harwich for more North Sea convoy escort and patrol work, this time with "Whitshed" and the destroyer leader and destroyer . In March 1941, she and "Whitshed" escorted Convoy FS 29, which was steaming south along the east coast of Great Britain and came under German air attack on 6 March. On 7 March, she and "Whitshed" chased a German motor torpedo boat – an S-boat, known to the Allies as an "E-boat" – which had been detected near the convoy; the two destroyers were unable to make contact with it. Unfortunately for the convoy, the E-boat had been serving as a decoy for the German 1st S-Boote (E-boat) Flotilla, which attacked the convoy when "Worcester" and "Whitshed" were too far away to intervene. The Germans penetrated the remaining escort – reduced to only the escort destroyer and the patrol sloop – to sink two of FS 29s merchant ships.
"Worcester" continued her escort and patrol duties without significant incident until February 1942, when her flotilla was put on alert for the possibility that the German battlecruisers "Scharnhorst" and "Gneisenau" and heavy cruiser "Prinz Eugen " would attempt a breakout from Brest in German-occupied France to move to a port in Germany. In preparation for opposing such a breakout, "Worcester", "Mackay", "Walpole", and "Whitshed" were conducting exercises with the destroyer leader and destroyer of the 21st Destroyer Flotilla to practise torpedo attacks against enemy ships when they received word on 12 February 1942 that the German ships were indeed steaming to Germany via the English Channel, Strait of Dover, and North Sea in what was to become known as the "Channel Dash." The British ships were ordered to attack the German naval force. During her unsuccessful torpedo attack, "Worcester" was hit by 11-inch (280-mm) shells from the battlecruisers and 8-inch (203-mm) shells from "Prinz Eugen", suffering 26 killed or mortally wounded and 45 injured. Most of the dead are buried side by side at Shotley Naval Cemetery, opposite Worcester's Harwich moorings The German gunfire inflicted severe structural damage on "Worcester", starting fires, flooding her No. 1 boiler room, and causing her to go dead in the water. Her surviving crew managed to put out her fires, get back underway, and proceed to Parkeston Quay (Harwich) for repairs without the aid of tugs.
Nominated for conversion to a Short-Range Escort, "Worcester" was under repair and conversion until August 1942. Returning to service in September 1942, she was assigned to the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands to support Arctic convoys during their voyages between the United Kingdom and the Kola Inlet in the Soviet Union. On 16 September, she deployed with "Venomous", the destroyers , , and , and the escort destroyer for Operation Gearbox, in which the ships established a refuelling base at Lowe Sound on Spitsbergen for Allied escort ships on the Arctic run. With the base established, "Worcester" departed Lowe Sound on 20 September with the destroyers and and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary oiler RFA "Oligarch" to join Convoy QP 14 during its voyage from the Kola Inlet to Loch Ewe, Scotland. She detached from QP 14 on 26 September.
"Worcester" remained with the Home Fleet through December 1942. That month, she deployed with "Montrose" and the destroyers and , the Royal Australian Navy destroyer , and the Polish Navy destroyer ORP "Piorun" as the screen for the battleships and and the light cruiser as they provided cover for Convoy RA 51 as it steamed from the Kola Inlet to the United Kingdom in case German heavy warships attempted to interfere in its passage.
1943–45.
In January 1943, "Worcester" was released from duty with the Home Fleet. She returned to the 16th Destroyer Flotilla at Harwich and in February 1943 resumed operations in the North Sea, escorting convoys and conducting interception patrols targeting German E-boats before they could launch attacks against Allied convoys. On 24 October 1943, she deployed off Norfolk, England, with "Mackay" and small craft of the Royal Navy Coastal Forces to intercept E-boats thought to be gathering for an attack on Convoys FN 1160 and FS 1164, steaming northbound and southbound, respectively, in the North Sea along the east coast of Great Britain. "Worcester", "Mackay", and the Coastal Forces craft engaged E-boats of the German 4th Torpedo Boat Flotilla on 25 October 1943 off Cromer, preventing them from attacking the convoys; four of the E-boats did not return to base at IJmuiden in the Netherlands.
"Worcester" continued her escort and interception operations until 23 December 1943 when she detonated a mine in the North Sea near Smith's Knoll. The mine destroyed her stern structure, and she was towed to Great Yarmouth. She was under repair and survey until April 1944, when she was deemed beyond economical repair and was decommissioned.
In May 1944, "Worcester" was selected for use as an accommodation ship in London upon completion of repairs and modification for her new role. In January 1945 she was towed to London, and after local preparation for use as an accommodation ship, was recommissioned with the new name HMS "Yeoman", the second Royal Navy ship of the name, in June 1945. She remained in service as such after the surrender of Japan brought World War II to an end in August 1945.
Decommissioning and disposal.
"Yeoman" remained in use as an accommodation ship until placed on the disposal list in 1946. She was sold for scrapping on 17 September 1946 to the British Iron & Steel Corporation (BISCO), which allocated her to Thos W Ward to be broken up. She was towed to the shipbreakers yard at Grays, Essex, England, in February 1947.


Adolf, Duke of Guelders

Adolf of Egmond (Grave, February 12, 1438 – Tournai, June 27, 1477) was a Duke of Guelders, Count of Zutphen from 1465–1471 and in 1477.
He was the son of Arnold, Duke of Guelders and Catherine of Cleves.
In the battle of succession for Guelders, he imprisoned in 1465 his own father and became Duke with the support of Philip the Good, who also made him Knight in the Order of the Golden Fleece. In 1468 he won the Battle of Straelen against Cleves, but Charles the Bold reinstated his father Arnold, and Adolf was imprisoned in Hesdin.

After the death of Charles the Bold in 1477, he was liberated by the Flemish.

He died the same year at the head of a Flemish army besieging Tournai, after the States of Guelders had recognized him as Duke. His body was buried in Tournai Cathedral.
Family and issue.
Adolf married Catharine of Bourbon (1440–1469), daughter of Charles I, Duke of Bourbon, in 1463. They had twin children :


Lordship of Lippe


Sigismund Francis, Archduke of Austria

Sigismund Francis, Archduke of Further Austria (27 November 1630 – 25 June 1665) was the ruler of Further Austria including Tyrol from 1662 to 1665.
Biography.
He was born at Innsbruck, the second son of Leopold V, Archduke of Austria and Claudia de' Medici. He was appointed as bishop of Augsburg in 1646. In 1653, he became bishop of Gurk and in 1659 bishop of Trent. He was never ordained as a priest or consecrated as a bishop.
In 1662 he was put forth by his cousin Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor as a candidate for Archbishop of Strasbourg. This included large cash incentives to the cathedral chapter and a promise that Sigismund would be a very hands off ruler.
After the 1662 death of his brother Archduke Ferdinand Charles, he became Archduke of Further Austria, and therefore withdrew from the candidacy for the bishopric. He was more able than his brother and could have made him a good ruler, but with his early death in 1665 the younger Tyrolean line of the Habsburg house ended. Leopold I, who as the heir male succeeded Sigismund Francis, took direct control over the government of Further Austria and Tyrol.
He married Hedwig of the Palatinate-Sulzbach on 3 June 1665 and died in Innsbruck twenty-two days later of an illness.


Corsican emigration to Venezuela

Corsicans, coming mainly from the regions of Cap Corse and La Castagniccia in the mediterranean island of Corsica, started arriving in the first third of the 19th century and settled mainly in the coastal towns of Carúpano and Rio Caribe. Known locally as Los Corsos, Corsicans played a central role in the development of the cocoa industry in Venezuela. Around the 1950s many Corsican families left Paria and settled in Caracas, and have been active in politics, commerce, medicine and the arts.
Historical background.
The first Corsicans to settle in Venezuela were sailors and missionaries, who moved from the island when was part of the Italian Republic of Genoa, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
During the reign of Napoleon III Corsica suffered a decline in agricultural production (particularly in the wine, olive and chestnut industries) due to unfair trade practices imposed by France. That coupled with a population boom due to the eradication of malaria in coastal areas, forced many Corsican families to emigrate to the Caribbean.
The first wave of Corsicans arrived in the Venezuelan region of Paria around 1830. Antonio Oletta, Francisco and Cayetano Morandi, José Vicente Franceschi and Juan Bautista Lucca were some of the first Corsicans to settle in the town of Carúpano. Once in Paria, many Corsicans founded cocoa exporting firms, most notable being that of the Franceschi & Co, established in 1830 and still existing today, making it one of Venezuela's oldest companies.
There were two other significant waves of immigration at the end the 19th century. While most of them went to Carúpano, where there was already a well established Corsican-Venezuelan community, others settled in the towns of Barcelona and Ciudad Bolivar. The Corsos controlled the Venezuelan cocoa bean trade and modernized many of the towns where they lived.
In 1876, four companies -Franceschi & Cia., Massiani & Cia., Lucca & Cia. and Raffalli Bros., represented almost 90% of the export of cocoa carried out during that year. Nearly half a century later, in 1921, five companies -Franceschi & Cia., Prosperi & Cia. (founded 1890), Antoni Brothers, Benedetti Brothers (founded 1889) and Raffalli Brothers still represented 80% of the export trade for cocoa from Carúpano. (Harwich Vallenilla, Nikita. La red comercial corsa. 1991).
On 01.18.1870, the company « Compañia Minera Anonima El Callao » was founded by Liccioni & Cagninacci (cf Acta de Fundacion, en sesion de 6 de Marzo de 1883).
The port facilities, road improvements and a telegraph cable that connected Carúpano with Marseille were some of the projects put forward by the Corsicans in Carúpano.


Princess Luisa Cristina of Savoy

Princess Luisa Cristina of Savoy (27 July 1629 – 12 May 1692) was a Princess of Savoy by birth and the eldest daughter of Victor Amadeus I, Duke of Savoy. She married her uncle Prince Maurice of Savoy but had no children. She was the owner of the future "Villa della Regina". She was a first cousin of Louis XIV of France and Charles II of England.
Biography.
Luisa Cristina was born at the Castello del Valentino in Turin. She was the eldest daughter of the future Victor Amadeus I, Duke of Savoy and his wife Christine Marie of France. Her birth was greeted with excitement as prior to her birth, her parents had lost a son and heir and were expecting another son. However, being a female and due to the Salic law, she was barred from succeeding to the Duchy of Savoy which at the time of her birth was ruled by her grandfather Charles Emmanuel I. Luisa Cristina was said to have been illegitimate and the fruit of her mother's supposed affair with a French courtier named "Pommeuse".
As a child, two of Luisa Cristina's brothers succeeded their father, who became ruler of Savoy in 1630. Her father died in 1637 and was succeeded quickly by her brother Francis Hyacinth who died in 1638 and was followed to the throne by another brother Charles Emmanuel II. Her mother, Christine Marie, took over as regent, a development which was disputed by Luisa Cristina's uncles Thomas Francis, Prince of Carignano and Cardinal Maurice. The two brothers conspired against Christine Marie as regent, claiming the regency between the two of them. This led to a civil war in Savoy.
The war resulted in Thomas Francis and Maurice fleeing to Spain in the vain hope of finding support. Luisa Cristina's mother was soon victorious in the ensuing wars thanks to French support in the form of her brother, Louis XIII. Returning to Savoy, Luisa Cristina was soon engaged to Maurice as part of a reconciliation between Christine Marie. Luisa Cristina married Maurice in Turin on 18 August 1642. Maurice had previously been a cardinal and had to receive permission from Pope Urban VIII who consented to the match. The thirteen-year-old bride and forty-nine-year-old Maurice moved to Nice where Maurice was the governor of the city – another part of the reconciliation.
Her husband died in 1657 of a stroke leaving Luisa Cristina a widow aged twenty seven. Her husband willed her his large art collection as well as his huge debts. In Turin she lived at her husband's villa outside Turin. She also did much to improve the structure under the direction of Amedeo di Castellamonte. She also commissioned Guarino Guarini to carry out works on churches in Savoy. Luisa Cristina died at the villa and left the property to her nephew's consort, the French born Anne Marie d'Orléans.


Germanos III of Old Patras

Germanos III of Old Patras (; 1771–1826), born Georgios Gotzias, was an Orthodox Metropolitan of Patras. He played an important role in the Greek Revolution of 1821, having diplomatic and political activity.
Germanos was born in Dimitsana, northwestern Arcadia, Peloponnese. Before his consecration as Metropolitan of Patras by Patriarch Gregory V, he had served as a priest and Protosyngellus in Smyrna.
Greek Revolution.
According to tradition and several written sources, on March 25 (6 April, Greg.Calendar), the Feast of Annunciation, 1821, Bishop Germanos proclaimed the national uprising against the Ottoman Empire and blessed the flag of the revolution at the Monastery of Agia Lavra. Earlier, another revolt of the Greek War of Independence had also been declared on February 21 by Alexandros Ypsilantis in Iaşi, which was crushed by June 1821.


Falzon

Falzon
may refer to:


Christoph Haberland

Christoph Haberland () was a Baltic German architect, chief architect of Riga and is considered one of themost illustrious masters of classical architecture in Latvian history.
Biography.
Christoph Haberland was born in Riga to a mason on 1 January 1750. Both his parents originated from Saxony. In early age he started to learn from his father — mason Johann Andreas Haberland, who came from Saxony and in 1749 became a citizen of the city of Riga. Later Christoph Haberland traveled to Germany and as a journeyman studied in Berlin and Dresden. In 1777 Haberland returned to Riga, passed his exam of master craftsmen and was admitted in the mason guild. In 1778 he becomes the assistant of the Riga chief architect J.P. Leicht. When Leicht died in 1789 Haberland was appointed as his successor. He was chief architect of Riga until 1797.
Haberland was first to attempt the transformation of the medieval image of Riga according to the ideas of Enlightenment. His adapting many innovative ideas and a fresh look at architecture made Haberland one of the pioneers of classicism architecture in Riga. He designed about 20 dwelling houses in Riga, and some churches and manor houses around Riga and in Estonia. One of those churches, Katlakalna Lutheran Church, near Riga is considered his best work and is built as the Roman pantheon in miniature.
Christoph Haberland died on 7 March 1803 in Riga. He was interred in the Riga Great cemetery.


World War II in Yugoslavia

World War II in Yugoslavia, officially the National Liberation War and Socialist Revolution in Yugoslav historiography, refers to World War II military operations that occurred on the territory of the then-Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Conflict in Yugoslavia began on 6 April 1941, when the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was swiftly conquered by Axis forces and partitioned between Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and client regimes. Subsequently, a guerrilla liberation war was fought against the Axis occupying forces and their locally established puppet regimes, including the fascist Independent State of Croatia (NDH) and the Government of National Salvation in the German-occupied territory of Serbia, by the communist-led republican Yugoslav Partisans. Simultaneously, a multi-side civil war was waged between the Yugoslav communist Partisans, the Serbian royalist Chetniks, the Croatian fascist Ustashe and Home Guard, Serbian Volunteer Corps and State Guard, as well as Slovene Home Guard troops.
Both the Yugoslav Partisans and the Chetnik movement initially resisted the occupation. However, after 1941, Chetniks extensively and systematically collaborated with the Italian occupation forces until the Italian capitulation, and thereon also with German and Ustashe forces. The Axis mounted a series of offensives intended to destroy the Partisans, coming close to doing so in the Battle of Neretva and Battle of Sutjeska in the spring and summer of 1943.
Despite the setbacks, the Partisans remained a credible fighting force, with their organisation gaining recognition from the Western Allies at the Tehran Conference and laying the foundations for the post-war Yugoslav state. With support in logistics and air power from the Western Allies, and Soviet ground troops in the Belgrade Offensive, the Partisans eventually gained control of the entire country and of the border regions of Trieste and Carinthia.
The human cost of the war was enormous. The number of war victims is still in dispute, but is generally agreed to have been at least one million. Non-combat victims included the majority of the country's Jewish population, many of whom perished in concentration and extermination camps (e.g. Jasenovac, Stara Gradiška, Banjica, Sajmište, etc.) run by the client regimes or occupying forces themselves.
The Ustashe regime (mostly Croats, but also Muslims and others) committed genocide against Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croats. The Chetniks (mostly Serbs, but also Montenegrins and others) pursued genocide against Muslims, Croats and Pro-Partisan Serbs, and the Italian occupation authorities pursued violence and ethnic cleansing (Italianization) against Slovenes and Croats. The Wehrmacht carried out mass executions of civilians in retaliation for resistance activity e.g., the Kragujevac massacre and the Kraljevo massacre. SS Division "Prinz Eugen" massacred large numbers of civilians and prisoners of war. Hungarian occupation troops massacred civilians (mostly Serbs and Jews) during a major raid in southern Bačka, under the pretext of suppressing resistance activities.
Finally, during and after the final stages of the war, Yugoslav authorities and Partisan troops carried out reprisals, including the deportation of the Danube Swabian population, forced marches and executions tens of thousands of captured soldiers and civilians (predominantly Croats associated with the NDH, but also Slovenes and others) fleeing their advance (the Bleiburg repatriations), atrocities against the Italian population in Istria (the Foibe massacres) and purges against Serbs, Hungarians and Germans associated with the fascist forces.
Background.
Prior to the outbreak of war, the government of Milan Stojadinović (1935–1939) tried to navigate between the Axis Powers and the imperial powers by seeking neutral status, signing a non-aggression treaty with Italy and extending its treaty of friendship with France. In the same time, the country was destabilized by internal tensions, as Croatian leaders demanded a greater level of autonomy. Stojadinović was sacked by the regent Prince Paul in 1939 and replaced by Dragiša Cvetković, who negotiated a compromise with Croatian leader Vladko Maček in 1939, resulting in the formation of the Banovina of Croatia.
However, rather than reducing tensions, the agreement only reinforced the crisis in the country's governance. Groups from both sides of the political spectrum were not satisfied: the pro-fascist Ustaše sought an independent Croatia allied with the Axis, Serbian public and military circles preferred alliance with the Western European empires, while the then-banned Communist Party of Yugoslavia saw the Soviet Union as a natural ally.
After the fall of France to Nazi Germany in May 1940, the UK was the only empire in conflict with the Axis powers, and Prince Paul and the government saw no way of saving Yugoslavia except through adopting policies of accommodation with the Axis powers. Although Hitler was not particularly interested in creating another front in the Balkans, and Yugoslavia itself remained at peace during the first year of the war, Benito Mussolini's Italy had invaded Albania in April 1939 and launched the rather unsuccessful Italo-Greek War in October 1940. These events resulted in Yugoslavia's geographical isolation from potential Allied support. The government tried to negotiate with the Axis on cooperation with as few concessions as possible, while attempting secret negotiations with the Allies and the Soviet Union, but those moves would fail to keep the country out of the war. A secret mission to the US, led by the influential Serbian-Jewish Captain David Albala with the purpose of obtaining funding to buy arms for the expected invasion went nowhere, while Stalin expelled Yugoslav Ambassador Gavrilovic just one month after agreeing a treaty of friendship with Yugoslavia.
1941.
Having steadily fallen within the orbit of the Axis during 1940 after events such as the Second Vienna Award, Yugoslavia followed Bulgaria and formally joined the Axis powers by signing the Tripartite Pact on 25 March 1941. Air force officers opposed to the move staged a coup d'état and took over in the following days. These events were viewed with great apprehension in Berlin, and as it was preparing to help its Italian ally in its war against Greece anyway, the plans were modified to include Yugoslavia as well.
Invasion.
On 6 April 1941 the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was invaded from all sides by the Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and their ally Hungary.
During the invasion, Belgrade was bombed by the German air force ("Luftwaffe"). The invasion lasted little more than ten days, ending with the unconditional surrender of the Royal Yugoslav Army on 17 April. Besides being hopelessly ill-equipped when compared to the German Army ("Heer"), the Yugoslav army attempted to defend all borders but only managed to thinly spread the limited resources available. Also, large numbers of the population refused to fight, instead welcoming the Germans as liberators from government oppression. However, as this meant each individual ethnic group would turn to movements opposed to the unity promoted by the South Slavic state, two different concepts of resistance emerged, the royalist Chetniks, and the communist Partisans.
Two of the principal constituent national groups, Slovenes and Croats, were not prepared to fight in defense of a Yugoslav state with a continued Serb monarchy. The only effective opposition to the invasion was from units wholly from Serbia itself. The Serbian General Staff was united on the question of Yugoslavia as a "Greater Serbia" ruled, in one way or another, by Serbia. On the eve of the invasion, there were 165 generals on the Yugoslav active list. Of these, all but four were Serbs.
The terms of the capitulation were extremely severe, as the Axis proceeded to dismember Yugoslavia. Germany annexed northern Slovenia, while retaining direct occupation over a rump Serbian state, and considerable influence over its newly created puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia, which extended over much of today's Croatia and contained all of modern Bosnia and Herzegovina. Mussolini's Italy gained the remainder of Slovenia, Kosovo, coastal and inland areas of the Croatian Littoral and large chunks of the coastal Dalmatia region (along with nearly all of the Adriatic islands and the Bay of Kotor). It also gained control over the Italian governorate of Montenegro, and was granted the kingship in the Independent State of Croatia, though wielding little real power within it; although it did (alongside Germany) maintain a de facto zone of influence within the borders of the NDH. Hungary dispatched the Hungarian Third Army to occupy Vojvodina in northern Serbia, and later forcibly annexed sections of Baranja, Bačka, Međimurje, and Prekmurje.
The Bulgarian army moved in on 19 April 1941, occupying nearly all of modern-day North Macedonia and some districts of eastern Serbia which, with Greek western Thrace and eastern Macedonia (the Aegean Province), were annexed by Bulgaria on 14 May.
The government in exile was now only recognized by the Allied powers. The Axis had recognized the territorial acquisitions of their allied states.
Early resistance.
Various military formations more or less linked to the general liberation movement were involved in armed confrontations with Axis forces which erupted in various areas of Yugoslavia in the ensuing weeks.
From the start, the Yugoslav resistance forces consisted of two factions: the Partisans, a communist-led movement propagating pan-Yugoslav tolerance ("brotherhood and unity") and incorporating republican, left-wing and liberal elements of Yugoslav politics, on one hand, and the Chetniks, a conservative royalist and nationalist force, enjoying support almost exclusively from the Serbian population in occupied Yugoslavia, on the other hand. Initially the Chetniks received recognition from the Western Allies, while the Partisans were supported by the Soviet Union.
At the very beginning, the Partisan forces were relatively small, poorly armed, and without any infrastructure. But they had two major advantages over other military and paramilitary formations in former Yugoslavia: the first and most immediate advantage was a small but valuable cadre of Spanish Civil War veterans. Unlike some of the other military and paramilitary formations, these veterans had experience with a modern war fought in circumstances quite similar to those found in World War II Yugoslavia. In Slovenia, the Partisans likewise drew on the experienced TIGR members to train troops.
Their other major advantage, which became more apparent in later stages of War, was in the Partisans being founded on a communist ideology rather than ethnicity. Therefore, they won support that crossed national lines, meaning they could expect at least some levels of support in almost any corner of the country, unlike other paramilitary formations limited to territories with Croat or Serb majority. This allowed their units to be more mobile and fill their ranks with a larger pool of potential recruits.
Although the activity of the Macedonian and Slovene Partisans were part of the Yugoslav People's Liberation War, the specific conditions in Macedonia and Slovenia, due to the strong autonomist tendencies of the local communists, led to the creation of separate sub-armies called the People's Liberation Army of Macedonia, and Slovene Partisans led by Liberation Front of the Slovene People, respectively.
The most numerous local force, besides the four second-line German Wehrmacht infantry divisions assigned to occupation duties was the Croatian Home Guard ("Hrvatsko domobranstvo"), founded in April 1941, a few days after the founding of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) itself. It was done with the authorisation of German occupation authorities. The task of the new Croatian armed forces was to defend the new state against both foreign and domestic enemies.
The Croatian Home Guard was originally limited to 16 infantry battalions and 2 cavalry squadrons – 16,000 men in total. The original 16 battalions were soon enlarged to 15 infantry regiments of two battalions each between May and June 1941, organised into five divisional commands, some 55,000 enlisted men. Support units included 35 light tanks supplied by Italy, 10 artillery battalions (equipped with captured Royal Yugoslav Army weapons of Czech origin), a cavalry regiment in Zagreb and an independent cavalry battalion at Sarajevo. Two independent motorized infantry battalions were based at Zagreb and Sarajevo respectively. Several regiments of Ustaše militia were also formed at this time, which operated under a separate command structure to, and independently from, the Croatian Home Guard, until late 1944. The Home Guard crushed the Serb revolt in Eastern Herzegovina in June 1941, and in July they fought in Eastern and Western Bosnia. They fought in Eastern Herzegovina again, when Croatian-Dalmatian and Slavonian battalions reinforced local units.
The Italian High Command assigned 24 divisions and three coastal brigades to occupation duties in Yugoslavia from 1941. These units were located from Slovenia, Croatia and Dalmatia through to Montenegro and Kosovo.
From 1931 to 1939, the Soviet Union had prepared communists for a guerrilla war in Yugoslavia. On the eve of the war, hundreds of future prominent Yugoslav communist leaders completed special "partisan courses" organised by the Soviet military intelligence in the Soviet Union and Spain. Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union, began on 22 June 1941. On the same day, Yugoslav Partisans formed the 1st Sisak Partisan Detachment, was the first armed anti-fascist resistance unit formed by a resistance movement in occupied Yugoslavia during World War II. Founded in the Brezovica Forest near Sisak, Croatia, its creation marked the beginning of anti-Axis resistance in occupied Yugoslavia.
After the German attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia formally decided to launch an armed uprising on 4 July 1941, a date which was later marked as Fighter's Day – a public holiday in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In the village of Bela Crkva, Spanish veteran Žikica Jovanović Španac shot the first bullet of the campaign on 7 July 1941, a date that later became known as the "Day of Uprising of the Socialist Republic of Serbia". On 10 August 1941 in Stanulović, a mountain village, the Partisans formed the Kopaonik Partisan Detachment Headquarters. Their liberated area, consisting of nearby villages and called the "Miners Republic", was the first in Yugoslavia, and lasted 42 days. The resistance fighters formally joined the ranks of the Partisans later on.
The Chetnik movement was organised after the surrender of the Royal Yugoslav Army by some of the remaining Yugoslav soldiers. This force was organised in the Ravna Gora district of western Serbia under Colonel Draža Mihailović. However, unlike the Partisans, Mihailović's forces were almost entirely ethnic Serbs. He directed his units to arm themselves and await his orders for the final push. Mihailović avoided direct action against the Axis, which he judged were of low strategic importance.
The royalist Chetniks (officially the Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland, JVUO), under the command of General Draža Mihailović, drew primarily from the scattered remnants of the Royal Yugoslav Army, relying overwhelmingly on the ethnic Serbian population for support. They were formed soon after the invasion of Yugoslavia and the surrender of the government on 17 April 1941. The Chetniks were initially the only resistance movement recognized by the Yugoslav government-in-exile and the Western Allies. The Partisans and Chetniks attempted to cooperate early during the conflict, but this quickly fell apart.
In September 1941, Partisans organised sabotage at the General Post Office in Zagreb.
As the levels of resistance to its occupation grew, the Axis Powers responded with numerous minor offensives. There were also seven major Axis operations specifically aimed at eliminating all or most Yugoslav Partisan resistance. These major offensives were typically combined efforts by the German Wehrmacht and SS, Italy, Chetniks, the Independent State of Croatia, the Serbian collaborationist government, Bulgaria, and Hungary.
The First Anti-Partisan Offensive was the attack conducted by the Axis in autumn of 1941 against the "Republic of Užice", a liberated territory the Partisans established in western Serbia. In November 1941, German troops attacked and reoccupied this territory, with the majority of Partisan forces escaping towards Bosnia. It was during this offensive that tenuous collaboration between the Partisans and the royalist Chetnik movement broke down and turned into open hostility.
After fruitless negotiations, the Chetnik leader, General Mihailović, turned against the Partisans as his main enemy. According to him, the reason was humanitarian: the prevention of German reprisals against Serbs. This however, did not stop the activities of the Partisan resistance, and Chetnik units attacked the Partisans in November 1941, while increasingly receiving supplies and cooperating with the Germans and Italians in this. The British liaison to Mihailović advised London to stop supplying the Chetniks after the Užice attack (see First Anti-Partisan Offensive), but Britain continued to do so.
On 22 December 1941 the Partisans formed the 1st Proletarian Assault Brigade ("1. Proleterska Udarna Brigada") – the first regular Partisan military unit capable of operating outside its local area. 22 December became the "Day of the Yugoslav People's Army".
1942.
On 15 January 1942, the Bulgarian 1st Army, with 3 infantry divisions, transferred to south-eastern Serbia. Headquartered at Niš, it replaced German divisions needed in Croatia and the Soviet Union.
The Chetniks initially enjoyed the support of the Western Allies (up to the Tehran Conference in December 1943). In 1942, "Time Magazine" featured an article which praised the "success" of Mihailović's Chetniks and heralded him as the sole defender of freedom in Nazi-occupied Europe.
Tito's Partisans fought the Germans more actively during this time. Tito and Mihailović had a bounty of 100,000 Reichsmarks offered by Germans for their heads. While "officially" remaining mortal enemies of the Germans and the Ustaše, the Chetniks were known for making clandestine deals with the Italians. The Second Enemy Offensive was a coordinated Axis attack conducted in January 1942 against Partisan forces in eastern Bosnia. The Partisan troops once again avoided encirclement and were forced to retreat over the Igman mountain near Sarajevo.
The Third Enemy Offensive, an offensive against Partisan forces in eastern Bosnia, Montenegro, Sandžak and Hercegovina which took place in the spring of 1942. It was known as "Operation TRIO" by the Germans, and again ended with a timely Partisan escape. This attack is mistakenly identified by some sources as the Battle of Kozara, which took place in the summer of 1942.
The Partisans fought an increasingly successful guerrilla campaign against the Axis occupiers and their local collaborators, including the Chetniks (which they also considered collaborators). They enjoyed gradually increased levels of success and support of the general populace, and succeeded in controlling large chunks of Yugoslav territory. People's committees were organised to act as civilian governments in areas of the country liberated by the Partisans. In places, even limited arms industries were set up.
To gather intelligence, agents of the Western Allies were infiltrated into both the Partisans and the Chetniks. The intelligence gathered by liaisons to the resistance groups was crucial to the success of supply missions and was the primary influence on Allied strategy in the Yugoslavia. The search for intelligence ultimately resulted in the decline of the Chetniks and their eclipse by Tito's Partisans. In 1942, though supplies were limited, token support was sent equally to each. In November 1942, Partisan detachments were officially merged into the People's Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia ("NOV i POJ").
1943.
Critical Axis offensives.
In the first half of 1943 two Axis offensives came close to defeating the Partisans. They are known by their German code names Fall Weiss "(Case White)" and Fall Schwarz "(Case Black)", as the Battle of Neretva and the Battle of Sutjeska after the rivers in the areas they were fought, or the Fourth and Fifth Enemy Offensive, respectively, according to former Yugoslav communist historiography.
On 7 January 1943, the Bulgarian 1st Army also occupied south-west Serbia. Savage pacification measures reduced Partisan activity appreciably. Bulgarian infantry divisions participated in the Fifth anti-Partisan Offensive as a blocking force of the Partisan escape-route from Montenegro into Serbia and in the Sixth anti-Partisan Offensive in Eastern Bosnia.
Negotiations between Germans and Partisans started on 11 March 1943 in Gornji Vakuf, Bosnia. Tito's key officers Vladimir Velebit, Koča Popović and Milovan Đilas brought three proposals, first about an exchange of prisoners, second about the implementation of international law on treatment of prisoners and third about political questions. The delegation expressed concerns about the Italian involvement in supplying the Chetnik army and stated that the National Liberation Movement is an independent movement, with no aid from the Soviet Union or the UK. Somewhat later, Đilas and Velebit were brought to Zagreb to continue the negotiations.
In the Fourth Enemy Offensive, also known as the Battle of the Neretva or "Fall Weiss" (Case White), Axis forces pushed Partisan troops to retreat from western Bosnia to northern Herzegovina, culminating in the Partisan retreat over the Neretva river. It took place from January to April, 1943.
The Fifth Enemy Offensive, also known as the Battle of the Sutjeska or "Fall Schwarz" (Case Black), immediately followed the Fourth Offensive and included a complete encirclement of Partisan forces in southeastern Bosnia and northern Montenegro in May and June 1943.
The Croatian Home Guard reached its maximum size at the end of 1943, when it had 130,000 men. It also included an air force, the Air Force of the Independent State of Croatia ("Zrakoplovstvo Nezavisne Države Hrvatske", or ZNDH), the backbone of which was provided by 500 former Royal Yugoslav Air Force officers and 1,600 NCOs with 125 aircraft. By 1943 the ZNDH was 9,775 strong and equipped with 295 aircraft.
Italian capitulation and Allied support for the Partisans.
On 8 September 1943, the Italians concluded an armistice with the Allies, leaving 17 divisions stranded in Yugoslavia. All divisional commanders refused to join the Germans. Two Italian infantry divisions joined the Montenegrin Partisans as complete units, while another joined the Albanian Partisans. Other units surrendered to the Germans to face imprisonment in Germany or summary execution. Others surrendered themselves, arms, ammunition and equipment to Croatian forces or to the Partisans, simply disintegrated, or reached Italy on foot via Trieste or by ship across the Adriatic. The Italian Governorship of Dalmatia was disestablished and the country's possessions were subsequently divided between Germany, which established its Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral, and the Independent State of Croatia, which established the new district of Sidraga-Ravni Kotari. The former Italian kingdoms of Albania and of Montenegro were placed under German occupation.
On 25 September 1943, the German High Command launched Operation "Istrien", and on October 21 the military operation "Wolkenbruch" with the aim of destroying Partisan units in the Slovene-populated lands, Istria and the Littoral. In that operation were killed 2,500 Istrians among whom were Partisans and civilians (including women, children, and elderly). Partisan units which did not withdraw from Istria in time were completely destroyed. German troops, including the SS division "Prinz Eugen", on September 25 began to carry out a plan for the complete destruction of the Partisans in Primorska and Istria.
The events which occurred in 1943 would bring about a change in the attitude of the Allies. The Germans were executing Operation Schwarz (Battle of Sutjeska, the Fifth anti-Partisan offensive), one of a series of offensives aimed at the resistance fighters, when F.W.D. Deakin was sent by the British to gather information. His reports contained two important observations. The first was that the Partisans were courageous and aggressive in battling the German 1st Mountain and 104th Light Division, had suffered significant casualties, and required support. The second observation was that the entire German 1st Mountain Division had transited from the Soviet Union on rail lines through Chetnik-controlled territory. British intercepts (ULTRA) of German message traffic confirmed Chetnik timidity. Even though today many circumstances, facts, and motivations remain unclear, intelligence reports resulted in increased Allied interest in Yugoslavia air operations and shifted policy.
The Sixth Enemy Offensive was a series of operations undertaken by the Wehrmacht and the Ustaše after the capitulation of Italy in an attempt to secure the Adriatic coast. It took place in the autumn and winter of 1943/1944.
At this point the Partisans were able to win the moral, as well as limited material support of the Western Allies, who until then had supported General Draža Mihailović's Chetnik Forces, but were finally convinced of their collaboration by many intelligence-gathering missions dispatched to both sides during the course of the war.
In September 1943, at Churchill's request, Brigadier General Fitzroy Maclean was parachuted to Tito's headquarters near Drvar to serve as a permanent, formal liaison to the Partisans. While the Chetniks were still occasionally supplied, the Partisans received the bulk of all future support.
When the AVNOJ (the Partisan wartime council in Yugoslavia) was eventually recognized by the Allies, by late 1943, the official recognition of the Partisan Democratic Federal Yugoslavia soon followed. The National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia was recognized by the major Allied powers at the Tehran Conference, when United States agreed to the position of other Allied. The newly recognized Yugoslav government, headed by Prime Minister Josip Broz Tito, was a joint body formed of AVNOJ members and the members of the former government-in-exile in London. The resolution of a fundamental question, whether the new state remained a monarchy or was to be a republic, was postponed until the end of the war, as was the status of King Peter II.
Subsequent to switching their support to the Partisans, the Allies set-up the RAF Balkan Air Force (under the suggestion of Brigadier-General Fitzroy Maclean) with the aim to provide increased supplies and tactical air support for Marshal Tito's Partisan forces.
1944.
Last Axis offensive.
In January 1944, Tito's forces unsuccessfully attacked Banja Luka. But, while Tito was forced to withdraw, Mihajlović and his forces were also noted by the Western press for their lack of activity.
The Seventh Enemy Offensive was the final Axis attack in western Bosnia in the spring of 1944, which included "Operation Rösselsprung" (Knight's Leap), an unsuccessful attempt to eliminate Josip Broz Tito personally and annihilate the leadership of the Partisan movement.
Partisan growth to domination.
Allied aircraft specifically started targeting ZNDH (Air Force of the Independent State of Croatia) and Luftwaffe bases and aircraft for the first time as a result of the Seventh Offensive, including "Operation Rösselsprung" in late May 1944. Up until then Axis aircraft could fly inland almost at will, as long as they remained at low altitude. Partisan units on the ground frequently complained about enemy aircraft attacking them while hundreds of Allied aircraft flew above at higher altitude. This changed during "Rösselsprung" as Allied fighter-bombers went low en-masse for the first time, establishing full aerial superiority. Consequently, both the ZNDH and Luftwaffe were forced to limit their operations in clear weather to early morning and late afternoon hours.
The Yugoslav Partisan movement grew to become the largest resistance force in occupied Europe, with 800,000 men organised in 4 field armies. Eventually the Partisans prevailed against all of their opponents as the official army of the newly founded Democratic Federal Yugoslavia (later Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia).
In 1944, the Macedonian and Serbian commands made contact in southern Serbia and formed a joint command, which consequently placed the Macedonian Partisans under the direct command of Marshal Josip Broz Tito. The Slovene Partisans also merged with Tito's forces in 1944.
On 16 June 1944, the Tito-Šubašić agreement between the Partisans and the Yugoslav Government in exile of King Peter II was signed on the island of Vis. This agreement was an attempt to form a new Yugoslav government which would include both the communists and the royalists. It called for a merge of the Partisan Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia ("Antifašističko V(ij)eće Narodnog Oslobođenja Jugoslavije", AVNOJ) and the Government in exile. The Tito-Šubašić agreement also called on all Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs to join the Partisans. The Partisans were recognized by the Royal Government as Yugoslavia's regular army. Mihajlović and many Chetniks refused to answer the call. The Chetniks were, however, praised for saving 500 downed Allied pilots in 1944; United States President Harry S. Truman posthumously awarded Mihailović the Legion of Merit for his contribution to the Allied victory.
Allied advances in Romania and Bulgaria.
In August 1944 after the Jassy-Kishinev Offensive overwhelmed the front line of Germany's Army Group South Ukraine, King Michael I of Romania staged a coup, Romania quit the war, and the Romanian army was placed under the command of the Red Army. Romanian forces, fighting against Germany, participated in the Prague Offensive. Bulgaria quit as well and, on 10 September, declared war on Germany and its remaining allies. The weak divisions sent by the Axis powers to invade Bulgaria were easily driven back. In Macedonia, the Bulgarian troops, surrounded by German forces and betrayed by high-ranking military commanders, fought their way back to the old borders of Bulgaria. In late September 1944 three Bulgarian armies, some 455,000 strong in total led by General Georgi Marinov Mandjev from the village of Goliamo Sharkovo – Elhovo, entered Yugoslavia with the strategic task of blocking the German forces withdrawing from Greece. Southern and eastern Serbia and Macedonia were liberated within two months and the 130,000-strong Bulgarian First Army continued to Hungary.
On 10 September 1944, Bulgaria changed sides and declared war on Germany as an Allied Power. The Germans swiftly disarmed the 1st Occupation Corps of 5 divisions and the 5th Army, despite short-lived resistance by the latter. Survivors retreated to the old borders of Bulgaria. After the occupation of Bulgaria by the Soviet army negotiations between Tito and the Bulgarian Communist leaders were organised, resulting in a military alliance between them. The new Bulgarian People's Army and the Red Army 3rd Ukrainian Front troops were concentrated at the old Bulgarian-Yugoslav border. On 8 October, they entered Yugoslavia. The First and Fourth Bulgarian Armies invaded Vardar Macedonia, and the Second Army south-eastern Serbia. The First Army then swung north with the Soviet 3rd Ukrainian Front, through eastern Yugoslavia and south-western Hungary, before linking up with the British 8th Army in Austria in May 1945.
Liberation of Belgrade and eastern Yugoslavia.
Concurrently, with Allied air support and assistance from the Red Army, the Partisans turned their attention to Central Serbia. The chief objective was to disrupt railroad communications in the valleys of the Vardar and Morava rivers, and prevent Germans from withdrawing their 300,000+ forces from Greece.
The Allied air forces sent 1,973 aircraft (mostly from the US 15th Air Force) over Yugoslavia, which discharged over 3,000 tons of bombs. On 17 August 1944 Marshal Josip Broz Tito offered an amnesty to all collaborators. On 12 September, King Peter broadcast a message from London, calling upon all Serbs, Croats and Slovenes to "join the National Liberation Army under the leadership of Marshal Tito". The message had a devastating effect on the morale of the Chetniks. Many of them switched sides to the Partisans.
In September under the leadership of the new Bulgarian pro-Soviet government, four Bulgarian armies, 455,000 strong in total, were mobilized. By the end of September, the Red Army (3rd Ukrainian Front) troops were concentrated at the Bulgarian-Yugoslav border. In the early October 1944 three Bulgarian armies, consisting of around 340,000-man, together with the Red Army reentered occupied Yugoslavia and moved from Sofia to Niš, Skopje and Pristina to blocking the German forces withdrawing from Greece. The Red Army organised the Belgrade Offensive, and took the city on 20 October. At the onset of winter, the Partisans effectively controlled the entire eastern half of Yugoslavia—Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro—as well as most of the Dalmatian coast. The Wehrmacht and the forces of the Ustaše-controlled Independent State of Croatia fortified a front in Syrmia that held through the winter of 1944–45 in order to aid the evacuation of German Army Group E from the Balkans. To raise the number of Partisan troops Tito again offered the amnesty on 21 November 1944. In November 1944, the units of the Ustaše militia and the Croatian Home Guard were reorganised and combined to form the Army of the Independent State of Croatia.
1945.
The Germans continued their retreat. Having lost the easier withdrawal route through Serbia, they fought to hold the Syrmian front in order to secure the more difficult passage through Kosovo, Sandzak and Bosnia. They even scored a series of temporary successes against the People's Liberation Army. They left Mostar on 12 February 1945. They did not leave Sarajevo until 15 April. Sarajevo had assumed a last-moment strategic position as the only remaining withdrawal route and was held at substantial cost. In early March the Germans moved troops from southern Bosnia to support an unsuccessful counter-offensive in Hungary, which enabled the NOV to score some successes by attacking the Germans' weakened positions. Although strengthened by Allied aid, a secure rear and mass conscription in areas under their control, the one-time partisans found it difficult to switch to conventional warfare, particularly in the open country west of Belgrade, where the Germans held their own until mid-April in spite of all of the raw and untrained conscripts the NOV hurled in a bloody war of attrition against the Syrmian Front.
On 8 March 1945, a coalition Yugoslav government was formed in Belgrade with Tito as Premier and Ivan Šubašić as Foreign Minister.
Partisan general offensive.
On 20 March 1945, the Partisans launched a general offensive in the Mostar-Višegrad-Drina sector. With large swaths of Bosnian, Croatian and Slovenian countryside already under Partisan guerrilla control, the final operations consisted in connecting these territories and capturing major cities and roads. For the general offensive Marshal Josip Broz Tito commanded a Partisan force of about 800,000 men organised into four armies: the
In addition, the Yugoslav Partisans had eight independent army corps (the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th, and the 10th).
Set against the Yugoslav Partisans was German General Alexander Löhr of Army Group E ("Heeresgruppe E"). This Army Group had seven army corps :
These corps included seventeen weakened divisions (1st Cossack, 2nd Cossack, 7th SS, 11th Luftwaffe Field Division, 22nd, 41st, 104th, 117th, 138th, 181st, 188th, 237th, 297th, 369th Croat, 373rd Croat, 392nd Croat and the 14th SS Ukrainian Division). In addition to the seven corps, the Axis had remnant naval and Luftwaffe forces, under constant attack by the British Royal Navy, Royal Air Force and United States Air Force.
The army of the Independent State of Croatia was at the time composed of eighteen divisions: 13 infantry, two mountain, two assault and one replacement Croatian Divisions, each with its own organic artillery and other support units. There were also several armoured units. From early 1945, the Croatian Divisions were allocated to various German corps and by March 1945 were holding the Southern Front. Securing the rear areas were some 32,000 men of the Croatian gendarmerie ("Hrvatsko Oružništvo"), organised into 5 Police Volunteer Regiments plus 15 independent battalions, equipped with standard light infantry weapons, including mortars.
The Air Force of the Independent State of Croatia ("Zrakoplovstvo Nezavisne Države Hrvatske", or ZNDH) and the units of the Croatian Air Force Legion ("Hrvatska Zrakoplovna Legija", or HZL), returned from service on the Eastern Front provided some level of air support (attack, fighter and transport) right up until May 1945, encountering and sometimes defeating opposing aircraft from the British Royal Air Force, United States Air Force and the Soviet Air Force. Although 1944 had been a catastrophic year for the ZNDH, with aircraft losses amounting to 234, primarily on the ground, it entered 1945 with 196 machines. Further deliveries of new aircraft from Germany continued in the early months of 1945 to replace losses. By 10 March, the ZNDH had 23 Messerschmitt 109 G&Ks, three Morane-Saulnier M.S.406, six Fiat G.50 Freccia, and two Messerschmitt 110 G fighters. The final deliveries of up-to-date German Messerschmitt 109 G and K fighter aircraft were still taking place in March 1945. and the ZNDH still had 176 aircraft on its strength in April 1945.
Between 30 March and 8 April 1945, General Mihailović's Chetniks mounted a final attempt to establish themselves as a credible force fighting the Axis in Yugoslavia. The Chetniks under Lieutenant Colonel Pavle Đurišić fought a combination of Ustaša and Croatian Home Guard forces in the Battle on Lijevča field. In late March 1945 elite NDH Army units were withdrawn from the Syrmian front to destroy Djurisic's Chetniks trying to make their way across the northern NDH. The battle was fought near Banja Luka in what was then the Independent State of Croatia and ended in a decisive victory for the Independent State of Croatia forces.
Serbian units included the remnants of the Serbian State Guard and the Serbian Volunteer Corps from the Serbian Military Administration. There were even some units of the Slovene Home Guard ("Slovensko domobranstvo", SD) still intact in Slovenia.
By the end of March, 1945, it was obvious to the Croatian Army Command that, although the front remained intact, they would eventually be defeated by sheer lack of ammunition. For this reason, the decision was made to retreat into Austria, in order to surrender to the British forces advancing north from Italy. The German Army was in the process of disintegration and the supply system lay in ruins.
Bihać was liberated by the Partisans the same day that the general offensive was launched. The 4th Army, under the command of Petar Drapšin, broke through the defences of the XVth SS Cossack Cavalry Corps. By 20 April, Drapšin liberated Lika and the Croatian Littoral, including the islands, and reached the old Yugoslav border with Italy. On 1 May, after capturing the Italian territories of Rijeka and Istria from the German LXXXXVII Corps, the Yugoslav 4th Army beat the western Allies to Trieste by one day.
The Yugoslav 2nd Army, under the command of Koča Popović, forced a crossing of the Bosna River on 5 April, capturing Doboj, and reached the Una River. On 6 April, the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th Corps of the Yugoslav Partisans took Sarajevo from the German XXI Corps. On 12 April, the Yugoslav 3rd Army, under the command of Kosta Nađ, forced a crossing of the Drava river. The 3rd Army then fanned out through Podravina, reached a point north of Zagreb, and crossed the old Austrian border with Yugoslavia in the Dravograd sector. The 3rd Army closed the ring around the enemy forces when its advanced motorized detachments linked up with detachments of the 4th Army in Carinthia.
Also, on 12 April, the Yugoslav 1st Army, under the command of Peko Dapčević penetrated the fortified front of the German XXXIV Corps in Syrmia. By 22 April, the 1st Army had smashed the fortifications and was advancing towards Zagreb.
The long-drawn out liberation of western Yugoslavia caused more victims among the population. The breakthrough of the Syrmian front on 12 April was, in Milovan Đilas's words, "the greatest and bloodiest battle our army had ever fought", and it would not have been possible had it not been for Soviet instructors and arms.
By the time General Peko Dapčević's NOV units had reached Zagreb, on 9 May 1945, they had perhaps lost as many as 36,000 dead. There were by then over 400,000 refugees in Zagreb. After entering Zagreb with the Yugoslav 2nd Army, both armies advanced in Slovenia.
Final operations.
On 2 May, the German capital city, Berlin, fell to the Red Army. On 8 May 1945, the Germans surrendered unconditionally and the war in Europe officially ended. The Italians had quit the war in 1943, the Bulgarians in 1944, and the Hungarians earlier in 1945. Despite the German capitulation, however, sporadic fighting still took place in Yugoslavia. On 7 May, Zagreb was evacuated, on 9 May, Maribor and Ljubljana were captured by the Partisans, and General Alexander Löhr, Commander-in-Chief of Army Group E was forced to sign the total surrender of the forces under his command at Topolšica, near Velenje, Slovenia, on Wednesday 9 May 1945. Only the Croatian and other anti-Partisan forces remained.
From 10 to 15 May, the Yugoslav Partisans continued to face resistance from Croatian, and other anti-Partisan forces throughout the rest of Croatia and Slovenia. The Battle of Poljana started on 14 May, ending on 15 May 1945 at Poljana, near Prevalje in Slovenia. It was the culmination and last of a series of battles between Yugoslav Partisans and a large (in excess of 30,000) mixed column of German Army ("Heer") soldiers together with Croatian Ustaše, Croatian Home Guard, Slovenian Home Guard, and other anti-Partisan forces who were attempting to retreat to Austria. Battle of Odžak was the last World War II battle in Europe. The battle began on 19 April 1945 and lasted until 25 May 1945, 17 days after the end of the war in Europe.
Aftermath.
On 5 May, in the town of Palmanova (50 km northwest of Trieste), between 2,400 and 2,800 members of the Serbian Volunteer Corps surrendered to the British. On 12 May, about 2,500 additional Serbian Volunteer Corps members surrendered to the British at Unterbergen on the Drava River. On 11 and 12 May, British troops in Klagenfurt, Austria, were harassed by arriving forces of the Yugoslav Partisans. In Belgrade, the British ambassador to the Yugoslav coalition government handed Tito a note demanding that the Yugoslav troops withdraw from Austria.
On 15 May 1945 a large column of the Croatian Home Guard, the Ustaše, the XVth SS Cossack Cavalry Corps and the remnants of the Serbian State Guard, and the Serbian Volunteer Corps, arrived at the southern Austrian border near the town of Bleiburg. The representatives of the Independent State of Croatia attempted to negotiate a surrender to the British under the terms of the Geneva Convention that they had joined in 1943, and were recognised by it as a "belligerent", but were ignored. Most of the people in the column were turned over to the Yugoslav government as part of what is sometimes referred to as Operation Keelhaul. Following the Bleiburg repatriations, the Partisans proceeded to brutalize the POWs. The Partisans' actions were partly done for revenge as well as to suppress the potential continuation of armed struggle within Yugoslavia.
On 15 May, Tito had placed Partisan forces in Austria under Allied control. A few days later he agreed to withdraw them. By 20 May, Yugoslav troops in Austria had begun to withdraw. On 8 June, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Yugoslavia agreed on the control of Trieste. On 11 November, parliamentary elections were held in Yugoslavia. In these elections the communists had an important advantage because they controlled the police, judiciary and media. For that reason the opposition did not want to participate in the elections. On 29 November, in accordance with election result, Peter II was deposed by communist dominated Yugoslavia's Constituent Assembly. On the same day, the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia was established as a socialist state during the first meeting of the Yugoslav Parliament in Belgrade. Josip Broz Tito was appointed Prime Minister. The autonomist wing in the Communist Party of Macedonia, which dominated during World War II, was finally pushed aside in 1945 after the Second Assembly of the ASNOM.
On 13 March 1946, Mihailović was captured by agents of the Yugoslav Department of National Security ("Odsjek Zaštite Naroda" or OZNA). From 10 June to 15 July of the same year, he was tried for high treason and war crimes. On 15 July, he was found guilty and sentenced to death by firing squad.
On 16 July, a clemency appeal was rejected by the Presidium of the National Assembly. During the early hours of 18 July, Mihailović, together with nine other Chetnik and Nedić's officers, were executed in Lisičji Potok. This execution essentially ended the World War II-era civil war between the communist Partisans and the royalist Chetniks.
War crimes and atrocities.
Ustaše.
The Ustaše, a Croatian ultranationalist and fascist movement which operated from 1929 to 1945 and was led by Ante Pavelić, gained control of the newly formed Independent State of Croatia (NDH) that was set up by the Germans after the invasion of Yugoslavia. The Ustaše sought an ethnically pure Croatian state by exterminating Serbs, Jews and Roma from its territory. Their main focus were Serbs, who numbered about two million. The strategy to achieve their goal was purportedly to kill one-third of Serbs, expel one-third and forcibly convert the remaining one-third. The first massacre of Serbs took place on 28 April 1941 in the village of Gudovac where nearly 200 Serbs were rounded up and executed. The event initiated the wave of Ustasha violence targeting Serbs that came in the following weeks and months, as massacres occurred in villages throughout Croatia and Bosnia, particularly in Banija, Kordun, Lika, northwest Bosnia and eastern Herzegovina. Serbs in villages in the countryside were hacked to death with various tools, thrown alive into pits and ravines or in some cases locked in churches that were afterwards set on fire. Ustaše Militia units razed whole villages, often torturing the men and raping the women. Approximately every sixth Serb living in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina was the victim of a massacre, meaning that almost every Serb from this region had a family member that was killed in the war, mostly by the Ustaše.
The Ustaše also set up camps throughout the NDH. Some of them were used to detain political opponents and those regarded as enemies of the state, some were transit and resettlement camps for the deportation and transfers of populations while others were used for the purpose of mass murder. The largest camp was the Jasenovac concentration camp which was a complex of five subcamps, located some 100 km southeast of Zagreb. The camp was notorious for its barbaric and cruel practices of murder as described by testimonies of witnesses. By the end of 1941, along with Serbs and Roma, NDH authorities incarcerated the majority of the country's Jews in camps including Jadovno, Kruščica, Loborgrad, Đakovo, Tenja and Jasenovac. Nearly the entire Roma population of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina were also killed by the Ustaše.
Chetniks.
The Chetniks, a Serb royalist and nationalist movement which initially resisted the Axis but progressively entered into collaboration with Italian, German and parts of the Ustaše forces, sought the creation of a Greater Serbia by cleansing non-Serbs, mainly Muslims and Croats from territories that would be incorporated into their post-war state. The Chetniks systemically massacred Muslims in villages that they captured. These occurred primarily in Eastern Bosnia, in towns and municipalities like Goražde, Foča, Srebrenica and Višegrad. Later, "cleansing actions" against Muslims took place in counties in Sandžak. Actions against Croats were smaller in scale but similar in action. Croats were killed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, northern Dalmatia, and Lika.
German forces.
In Serbia, in order to squelch resistance, retaliate against their opposition and terrorize the population, the Germans devised a formula where 100 hostages would be shot for every German soldier killed and 50 hostages would be shot for every wounded German soldier. Those primarily targeted for execution were Jews and Serbian communists. The most notable examples were the massacres in the villages of Kraljevo and Kragujevac in October 1941. Germans also set up concentration camps and were aided in their persecution of Jews by Milan Nedić's puppet government and other collaborationist forces.
Italian forces.
In April 1941, Italy invaded Yugoslavia, occupying large portions of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Serbia and Macedonia, while directly annexing to Italy the Ljubljana Province, Gorski Kotar and Central Dalmatia, along with most Croatian islands. To suppress the mounting resistance led by the Slovenian and Croatian Partisans, the Italians adopted tactics of "summary executions, hostage-taking, reprisals, internments and the burning of houses and villages.".
This was particularly the case in the Province of Ljubljana, where Italian authorities terrorized the Slovene civilian population and deported them to concentration camps with the goal of Italianizing the area.
Hungarian forces.
Thousands of Serbs and Jews were massacred by Hungarian forces in the region of Bačka, the territory occupied and annexed by Hungary since 1941. Several high-ranking military officials were complicit in the atrocities.
Partisans.
The Partisans engaged in the massacres of civilians during and after the war. A number of Partisan units, and the local population in some areas, engaged in mass murder in the immediate postwar period against POWs and other perceived Axis sympathizers, collaborators, and/or fascists along with their relatives. These included the Bleiburg repatriations, Foibe massacres, Kočevski Rog massacre and communist purges in Serbia in 1944–45.
Casualties.
Yugoslav casualties.
The Yugoslav government estimated the number of casualties to be at 1,704,000 and submitted the figure to the International Reparations Commission in 1946 without any documentation. An estimate of 1.7 million war related deaths was later submitted to the Allied Reparations Committee in 1948, despite it being an estimate of total demographic loss that covered the expected population if war did not break out, the number of unborn children, and losses from emigration and disease. After Germany requested verifiable data the Yugoslav Federal Bureau of Statistics created a nationwide survey in 1964. The total number of those killed was found to be 597,323. The list stayed a state secret until 1989 when it was published for the first time.
The U.S. Bureau of the Census published a report in 1954 that concluded that Yugoslav war related deaths were 1,067,000. The U.S. Bureau of the Census noted that the official Yugoslav government figure of 1.7 million war dead was overstated because it "was released soon after the war and was estimated without the benefit of a postwar census". A study by Vladimir Žerjavić estimates total war related deaths at 1,027,000. Military losses are estimated at 237,000 Yugoslav partisans and 209,000 collaborators, while civilian losses at 581,000, including 57,000 Jews. Losses of the Yugoslav Republics were Bosnia 316,000; Serbia 273,000; Croatia 271,000; Slovenia 33,000; Montenegro 27,000; Macedonia 17,000; and killed abroad 80,000. Statistician Bogoljub Kočović calculated that the actual war losses were 1,014,000. The late Jozo Tomasevich, Professor Emeritus of Economics at San Francisco State University, believes that the calculations of Kočović and Žerjavić "seem to be free of bias, we can accept them as reliable". Stjepan Mestrovic estimates that about 850,000 people were killed in the war. Vego cites figures from 900,000 to a million dead. Stephen R. A'Barrow estimates that the war caused 446,000 dead soldiers and 514,000 dead civilians, or 960,000 dead in total from the Yugoslav population out of 15 million.
Kočović's research into human losses in Yugoslavia during World War Two was considered to be the first objective examination of the issue. Shortly after Kočović published his findings in "Žrtve drugog svetskog rata u Jugoslaviji", Vladeta Vučković, a U.S. based college professor, claimed in a London-based émigré magazine that he had participated in the calculation of the number of victims in Yugoslavia in 1947. Vučković claimed that the figure of 1,700,000 originated with him, explaining that as an employee of the Yugoslav Federal Statistical Office, he was ordered to estimate the number of casualties suffered by Yugoslavia during the war, using appropriate statistical tools. He came up with an estimated demographic (not real) population loss of 1.7 million. He did not intend for his estimate to be used as a calculation of actual losses. However, Foreign Minister Edvard Kardelj took this figure as the real loss in his negotiations with the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency. This figure had also already been used by Marshal Tito in May 1945, and the figure of 1,685,000 was used by Mitar Bakić, secretary general of the Presidium of the Yugoslav government in an address to foreign correspondents in August 1945. The Yugoslav Reparations Commission had also already communicated the figure of 1,706,000 to the Inter-Allied Reparations Agency in Paris in late 1945. This suggests that subsequent estimates had to conform to the predetermined figure. Tito's figure of 1.7 million was aimed at both maximizing war compensation from Germany and demonstratting to the world that the heroism and suffering of Yugoslavs during the Second World War surpassed that of all other peoples save only the Soviets and perhaps the Poles.
The reasons for the high human toll in Yugoslavia were as follows:
In Slovenia, the Institute for Contemporary History, Ljubljana launched a comprehensive research on the exact number of victims of World War II in Slovenia in 1995. After more than a decade of research, the final report was published in 2005, which included a list of names. The number of victims was set at 89,404. The figure also includes the victims of summary killings by the Communist regime immediately after the war (around 13,500 people). The results of the research came as a shock for the public, since the actual figures were more than 30% higher than the highest estimates during the Yugoslav period. Even counting only the number of deaths up to May 1945 (thus excluding the military prisoners killed by the Yugoslav Army between May and July 1945), the number remains considerably higher than the highest previous estimates (around 75,000 deaths versus a previous estimate of 60,000).
There are several reasons for such a difference. The new comprehensive research also included Slovenes killed by the Partisan resistance, both in battle (members of collaborationist and anti-Communist units), and civilians (around 4,000 between 1941 and 1945). Furthermore, the new estimates includes all the Slovenians from Nazi-occupied Slovenia who were drafted in the Wehrmacht and died either in battle or in prisoner camps during the war. The figure also includes the Slovenes from the Julian March who died in the Italian Army (1940–43), those from Prekmurje who died in the Hungarian Army, and those who fought and died in various Allied (mostly British) units. The figure does not include victims from Venetian Slovenia (except of those who joined the Slovenian Partisan units), nor does it include the victims among Carinthian Slovenes (again with the exception of those fighting in the Partisan units) and Hungarian Slovenes. 47% percent of casualties during the war were partisans, 33% were civilians (of which 82% were killed by Axis powers or Slovene home guard), and 20% were members of the Slovene home guard.
According to Žerjavić's research on the losses of the Serbs in the NDH, 82,000 died as members of the Yugoslav Partisans, and 23,000 as Chetniks and Axis collaborators. Of the civilian casualties, 78,000 were killed by the Ustaše in direct terror and in camps, 45,000 by German forces, 15,000 by Italian forces, 34,000 in battles between the Ustaše, the Chetniks, and the Partisans, and 25,000 died of typhoid. A further 20,000 died in the Sajmište concentration camp. According to Ivo Goldstein, on NDH territory 45,000 of Croats are killed as Partisans while 19,000 perishing in prisons or camps.
Žerjavić estimated the structure of the actual war and post-war losses of Croats and Bosniaks. According to his research, 69–71,000 Croats died as members of the NDH armed forces, 43–46,000 as members of the Yugoslav Partisans, and 60–64,000 as civilians, in direct terror and in camps. Outside of the NDH, a further 14,000 Croats died abroad; 4,000 as Partisans and 10,000 civilian victims of terror or in camps. Regarding Bosniaks, including Muslims of Croatia, he estimated that 29,000 died as members of the NDH armed forces, 11,000 as members of the Yugoslav Partisans, while 37,000 were civilians and a further 3,000 Bosniaks were killed abroad; 1,000 Partisans and 2,000 civilians. Of the total Croat and Bosniak civilian casualties in the NDH, his research showed that 41,000 civilian deaths (18,000+ Croats and 20,000+ Bosniaks) were caused by the Chetniks, 24,000 by the Ustaše (17,000 Croats and 7,000 Bosniaks), 16,000 by the Partisans (14,000 Croats and 2,000 Bosniaks), 11,000 by German forces (7,000 Croats and 4,000 Bosniaks), 8,000 by Italian forces (5,000 Croats and 3,000 Bosniaks), while 12,000 died abroad (10,000 Croats and 2,000 Bosniaks).
Individual researchers who assert the inevitability of using identification of casualties and fatalities by individual names have raised serious objections to Žerjavić's calculations/estimates of human losses by using standard statistical methods and consolidation of data from various sources, pointing out that such an approach is insufficient and unreliable in determining the number and character of casualties and fatalities, as well as the affiliation of the perpetrators of the crimes.
In Croatia, the Commission for the Identification of War and Post-War Victims of the Second World War was active from 1991 until the Seventh Government of the republic, under Prime Minister Ivica Račan ended the commission in 2002. In the 2000s, concealed mass grave commissions were established in both Slovenia and Serbia to document and excavate mass graves from the Second World War.
German casualties.
According to German casualty lists quoted by The Times for 30 July 1945, from documents found amongst the personal effects of General Hermann Reinecke, head of the Public Relations Department of the German High Command, total German casualties in the Balkans amounted to 24,000 killed and 12,000 missing, no figure being mentioned for wounded. A majority of these casualties suffered in the Balkans were inflicted in Yugoslavia. According to German researcher Rüdiger Overmans, German losses in the Balkans were more than three times higher – 103,693 during the course of the war, and some 11,000 who died as Yugoslav prisoners of war.
Italian casualties.
The Italians incurred 30,531 casualties during their occupation of Yugoslavia (9,065 killed, 15,160 wounded, 6,306 missing). The ratio of dead/missing men to wounded men was uncommonly high, as Yugoslav partisans would often murder prisoners. Their highest losses were in Bosnia and Herzegovina: 12,394. In Croatia the total was 10,472 and in Montenegro 4,999. Dalmatia was less bellicose: 1,773. The quietest area was Slovenia, where the Italians incurred 893 casualties. An additional 10,090 Italians died post-armistice, either killed during Operation Achse or after joining Yugoslav partisans.


Franconian Circle

The Franconian Circle () was an Imperial Circle established in 1500 in the centre of the Holy Roman Empire. It comprised the eastern part of the former Franconian stem duchy—roughly corresponding with the present-day Bavarian "Regierungsbezirke" of Upper, Middle and Lower Franconia—while western Rhenish Franconia belonged to the Upper Rhenish Circle. The title of a "Duke of Franconia" was claimed by the Würzburg bishops.
Composition.
The circle was made up of the following states:


Province of Bologna

The province of Bologna () was a province in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. Its provincial capital was the city of Bologna. The province of Bologna covered an area of and had a total population of 1,004,323 inhabitants as of 31 December 2014, giving it a population density of 271.27 inhabitants per square kilometre. It was replaced by the Metropolitan City of Bologna starting from January 2015.
Geography.
The province of Bologna was one of nine provinces in the region of Emilia-Romagna in northwestern Italy from 1859 to 2014. It was bounded on the east by the Province of Ravenna, the Province of Ferrara lies to the north and the Province of Modena lies to the west. To the south were the Province of Florence, the Province of Prato and the Province of Pistoia, all in the region of Tuscany. The Province stretches from the alluvial Po Plain into the Apennine Mountains; the highest point was the province is the peak of Corno alle Scale in the commune of Lizzano in Belvedere, which is above sea level.


Governor of the Isle of Man

The title of Governor of the Isle of Man existed until 1828. Other titles were also used, especially before 1595.
The following were Governors of the Isle of Man:


John, Duke of Istria

John was the Frankish Duke of Istria in the early years of the 9th century, soon after its conquest by Charlemagne.
In 804, in the Placitum of Riziano, the denizens of the nine cities of Istria complained to Charlemagne that John was ignoring their ancient privileges. John had taken away the privileges of sea-fishing and pasturing in public forests. He had abolished the old hierarchy and either abolished the offices of tribune, domesticus, vicarius, and hypatus or filled them Franks. He seized lands and confiscated the taxes (344 "solidi mancusi" annually from the cities) for himself. He forced many to serve in the army personally, alongside their slaves, and to demand corvée labour. John explained that he had been ignorant of the customs of Istria and promised to make amends and ceased exacting corvées. It is unknown if he did.


Preobrazhenskoye, Kamchatka Oblast

Preobrazhenskoye () was a village ("selo") in Aleutsky District of Kamchatka Oblast, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, located on Medny Island in the Commander Islands group east of the Kamchatka Peninsula.
The village was founded in the 19th century by Aleut (Unangan) settlers from Attu Island in the Aleutian Islands. They were engaged in whaling and sealing with harpoons and spears. Fishing and hunting of whales and other
marine mammals were the mainstay of the economy there.
The village was abolished in the 1960s due to low population.


Tanne, Saxony-Anhalt

Tanne is a village and a former municipality in the district of Harz, in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. Since 1 January 2010, it is part of the town Oberharz am Brocken. 608 inhabitants live in Tanne.


Felix Romuliana


Rudolf I, Margrave of Baden-Baden

Rudolf I, Margrave of Baden (1230 – 19 November 1288) served as Regent to Margrave Frederick I from 1250 until 1267, then as Margrave of Baden from 1268 until his death in 1288.
He was the son of Herman V and Irmengard, Countess Palatine of the Rhine. She was the daughter of Henry V, Count Palatine of the Rhine. Rudolf inherited Baden, together with his brother Herman VI, until Herman VI married into the Austrian ducal family. Rudolf I then became the sole ruler of Baden-Baden.
Rudolf I married Kunigunde of Eberstein in 1257. The Eberstein family were in a position to raise money for Rudolf, and they bequeathed half their castle to the margrave. In 1283, Otto II of Eberstein sold the other half of Old Eberstein Castle to Rudolf I. In the 14th century, the castle was the place of residence for the Margraves of Baden. In 1250 Rudolf I began the construction of Hohenbaden Castle.
On 23 August 1258 King Richard of Cornwall gave the city of Steinbach its charter. Rudolf I had asked the king to do this. The Lords of Weissenstein bought their castle Liebeneck and the village of Würm from the margrave. Rudolf I quarreled with the Counts of Württemberg and the Bishops of Straßburg over the tolls on the Rhine. The quarrel with Württemberg ended in later years because of the marriage of one of Rudolf's sons into the Württemberg dynasty.
Rudolf I built many churches and abbeys. Because of his love of art and Minnesang, Rudolf was lauded by Beppo of Basel as a pious and benevolent man. He is buried in Lichtenthal Abbey.
Marriage.
On 20 May 1257 Rudolf married Kunigunde of Eberstein (1230 – 12 April 1284/1290 in Lichtental), the daughter of Count Otto of Eberstein. They had the following children:


Battle of the Oinousses Islands

The Battle of the Oinousses Islands () comprised two separate actions, on 9 and 19 February 1695 near the Oinousses (), a small island group off Cape Karaburun in western Anatolia, between a Venetian fleet under and the Ottoman fleet under Mezzo Morto Hüseyin. The result of the first battle was a Venetian defeat, and although the second engagement ended in a draw, the Venetian position in Chios became untenable, forcing Zeno to abandon the island.
In the first engagement, Venetian casualties were 142 killed and 300 wounded on the sailing ships, excluding the three ships lost, and 323 killed and 303 wounded on the galleys. All together, less than 2500 casualties. In the second engagement, the Venetians were at a numerical disadvantage, due to the loss of three ships and the absence of the damaged "San Vittorio". Venetian deaths were 132, and "Fama Volante" was damaged, along with 2 Ottoman sailing ships.


Torra di Sagone

The Tower of Sagone () is a ruined Genoese tower located in the commune of Vico (Corse-du-Sud) on the west coast of the Corsica. The tower sits on the west side of the Anse de Sagone.
The tower was built in 1581 and replaced an earlier tower. It was one of a series of coastal defences constructed by the Republic of Genoa between 1530 and 1620 to stem the attacks by Barbary pirates. The tower is privately owned and in 1974 was listed as one of the official historical monuments of France.


Julie Wilhelmine Hagen-Schwarz

Julie Wilhelmine Hagen-Schwarz ( – ) was a Baltic German painter, primarily of portraits.
Biography.
She was the daughter of the painter August Matthias Hagen; born while her parents were on a painting excursion. She displayed an early interest in drawing, so her father wasted no time in giving her lessons. After graduating from the public schools, she enrolled at the University of Dorpat (now University of Tartu), where she was soon attracted to portrait painting.
After graduating, she received a grant to study in Germany. She began with Friedrich Gonne in Dresden, then went to Munich, obtaining a position in the workshops of Moritz Rugendas. Three years later, she returned to Tartu and received another grant from Tsar Nicholas I to study in Italy. This time, she was accompanied by her father, who hoped that the Italian climate would help his failing eyesight.
In 1854 she returned home, already a well-known artist due to her participation in several exhibits throughout Europe. Soon after, she married the astronomer Ludwig Schwarz, who later became Director of the local observatory. Her honeymoon consisted of an expedition to Southeast Siberia, covering 600 versts, where her husband was part of a team exploring mineral resources and preparing a detailed map on behalf of the Russian Geographical Society. As might be expected, she took the opportunity to sketch everything of interest.
In 1858, she became the first woman elected to the Imperial Academy of Arts. After that, she spent much of her time in Saint Petersburg, participating in all the local and national exhibitions. Overall, she produced more than 700 portraits.