Adriatic Coastal Operation Zone
 Location in Italy |
|
| status | Operation zone of the German Reich (de facto) or the Italian Social Republic (de jure) |
| Official languages | Italian , German |
| Capital | Trieste |
| Facility | September 10, 1943 |
| Supreme Commissioner | Friedrich Rainer |
| The End | May 1945 |
| currency | lira |
The Adriatic Coastal Operations Zone (OAK) was formed together with the Alpine Foreland Operations Zone on September 10, 1943 from Italian areas that were occupied by the Wehrmacht in northeastern Italy after the armistice of the Badoglio government on September 8, 1943 in the case of the Axis and placed under German military administration were. The taking of possession of the Adriatic port cities was already anticipated in General Field Marshal Keitel's guidelines of August 30, 1943.
Territories and administrative apparatus
The OAK consisted of the provinces of Udine , Gorizia (Görz), Trieste , Pula (Pola), Rijeka (Fiume) and some of the previously Italian-administered areas of Yugoslavia, the provinces of Laibach , Susak and Bakar . On October 1st, the Reichsstatthalter of Carinthia and head of the civil administration of the occupied territories of Carinthia and Carniola , Friedrich Rainer , was appointed as the “Supreme Commissioner” . He received the order to "de-Italianize" the operation zone. The names of places, streets and institutions were Germanized, Italian schools and banks were closed. These measures, which were also carried out in the foothills of the Alps, were viewed by the Salò government as an obvious admission of the intention to annex these areas by Germany.
The "Commissariat Suschak-Krk" (Italian " Commissariato straordinario per i territori di Sušak-Krk ") was formed from the area around the town of Sušak and the island of Krk . The commissariat was subordinate to the Croatian Vice-Prefect of the Province of Fiume. It was a kind of buffer zone between RSI / OZAK and NDH. Measures, for example regarding Italian schooling, indicate a planned return to Croatia.
Since October 10, 1943, the general of the mountain troops, Ludwig Kübler , was the military commander of the operational zone . Because of the numerous Italian, Slovenian and Croatian partisans , strong military forces were stationed and the area was finally declared a "gang fighting area" in December 1943.
The HSSPF Odilo Globocnik be based in Trieste was under the special section insert R . Similar to Aktion Reinhardt , this special department had the task of deporting and exterminating Jews as well as confiscating Jewish property. Further tasks consisted in the pursuit of political opponents and increasingly in the fight against partisans . Up to 5,000 Jewish prisoners and partisans were murdered in the Risiera di San Sabba concentration camp near Trieste, and several transports of deportees were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp .
The province of Ljubljana received a Slovenian provincial administration on September 20, headed by General Leon Rupnik . HSSPF "Alpenland" Erwin Rösener became the President's advisor . The provincial administration set up its own regular and political police, which worked with the Gestapo in Ljubljana . Since the Italian armistice, southern Slovenia has been ruled by a strong partisan movement. To fight the partisans, the Slovenian Home Guard Legion (Domobranska legija) was formed in September 1943 . It had a strength of up to 13,000 men and was subordinate to the German SS. The leadership of the Domobranci was anti-communist. The Oberkrainer Selbstschutzbund was founded in Oberkrain , which was directly subordinate to the Gestapo district offices. In the Slovenian part of Venezia Giulia , the Slovenian National Protection Corps was established , which was subordinate to the HSSPF in Trieste, Odilo Globocnik . Since the autumn of 1944, other armed units from other parts of Yugoslavia fleeing the Red Army came to Venezia Giulia, including Chetniks from Dalmatia , Lika and Bosnia . These troops all served as occupation forces.
Little is known about the fate of these troop units that collaborated with the German occupiers. Around 10,500 of their relatives fled to Carinthia towards the end of the war and were handed over to the Yugoslav authorities by the British army. Around 7,000 are said to have been executed by the Yugoslav secret police OZNA , others were sentenced to prison terms and released after the amnesty in August 1945.
LXXXXVII. Army Corps z. b. V.
For political reasons, the Adriatic Coastal Area of Operations was declared an army corps area of operations on September 28, 1944 . The operational area extended from the Tagliamento to Sušak and Rijeka . The corps was supposed to secure the northeastern Adriatic coast against an Allied invasion , to monitor radio communications in Istria and on the Slovenian coast and to fight the Tito partisans .
Until April 25, 1945, it was part of the Army Group C under Albert Kesselring , then the Army Group E . It was supposed to stop the advance of Tito's 4th Army on Trieste and Ljubljana . When the corps was enclosed at Rijeka, the 392nd (Croatian) Infantry Division should help; but she was already too weak.
Subordinate troops
In April 1945 the corps consisted of 88,000 soldiers.
- Divisions
- 188th Mountain Division
- 237th Infantry Division
- 710th Infantry Division (February 1945)
- Army troops
- Railway artillery
- Army coastal artillery
- Pioneers
- Corps troops
- Artillery Commander 497
- Corps Intelligence Division 497 (four companies)
guide
- Ludwig Kübler , commanding general
- Heinrich Johann Bussmann, Chief of Staff
See also
literature
- René Moehrle: Persecution of Jews in Trieste during Fascism and National Socialism 1922–1945. Berlin 2014 ( ISBN 978-3-86331-195-7 ), pp. 305-460.
- Wilhelm Baum : The crimes of the National Socialists in the occupied Upper Carniola and in the "Adriatic Coastal Area" (Trieste). In the S. (Ed.): The book of names. The victims of National Socialism in Carinthia. Kitab-Verlag, Klagenfurt [u. a.] 2010, ISBN 978-3-902585-53-0 , pp. 232-252.
- Roland Kaltenegger : Operation zone “Adriatic coastal land”. The battle for Trieste, Istria and Fiume in 1944/45. Leopold Stocker Verlag, Graz / Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-7020-0665-6 .
- Karl Stuhlpfarrer: The operational zones “Alpine Foreland” and “Adriatic Coastal Land” 1943–1945 (= publications by the Austrian Institute for Contemporary History and the Institute for Contemporary History at the University of Vienna. Vol. 7, ZDB -ID 504400-5 ). Hollinek publishing house, Vienna 1969.
- Michael Wedekind: National Socialist Occupation and Annexation Policy in Northern Italy 1943 to 1945. The operational zones “Alpine Foreland” and “Adriatic Coastal Land” (= Military History Studies. Vol. 38). Oldenbourg, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-486-56650-4 (At the same time: Münster, Univ., Diss .: The urging of the periphery - National Socialist occupation and annexation policy in Northern Italy 1943 to 1945 ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rolf Wörsdorfer: »German Views of the Adriatic Region. From the construction of the southern runway to the end of the Second World War (1857–1945) «. In: Hannes Obermair et al. (Ed.): Regional civil society in motion - Cittadini innanzi tutto. Festschrift for Hans Heiss . Vienna-Bozen: Folio Verlag 2012, ISBN 978-3-85256-618-4 , pp. 94–116, reference p. 109.
- ^ Sources and research from Italian archives and libraries , Vol. 83, 2003 (German Historical Institute Rome)
- ↑ World War 2 in Yugoslavia (vojska.net)