Miroslav Navratil

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Miroslav Navratil in the uniform of an aviator general (around 1943)

Miroslav Navratil , Germanized and Friedrich Navratil (* 19th July 1893 in Sarajevo ; † 7. June 1947 in Zagreb ) was a flying ace and Lieutenant of the Austro-Hungarian Luftfahrtruppen in the First World War , Colonel of the Air Force of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia , as well as general and war minister of the Independent State of Croatia in World War II .

Early years and World War I

Navratil was born in Sarajevo , Bosnia, to a Czech father and a Serbian Orthodox mother . He attended the infantry cadet school in Liebenau (Graz) , which he left as a leader for the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Infantry Regiment No. 1 . When the war broke out, he had been a lieutenant since July 1, 1914 , was appointed first lieutenant exactly one year later and was company commander . Among other things, he took part in the two Austro-Hungarian offensives against Serbia , and later in the Second Isonzo Battle . In the spring of 1917, Navratil, who had received several awards but was also tired of war, sought a transfer to the Austro-Hungarian aviation troops , which was granted due to his achievements.

Navratil was detached from May 15, 1917 and attended the Aviator Officers School in Wiener Neustadt for observer training and was assigned as an observer officer on the Eastern Front of Fliegerkompanie 13 in Galicia on June 12th . In October 1917 he was transferred to Fliegerkompanie 11 , which was also stationed in Galicia . Because of the collapse of the tsarist empire, he was hardly used there, instead his unit was transferred to the Italian front. In November, Navratil's repeated requests for pilot training were granted, so that from November 15, 1917 he could begin training as a fighter pilot .

The Albatros (Oeffag) D.III, flown by Navratil in 1918 with the Flik 3J

Trained as a fighter pilot, he was assigned to the elite fighter pilot company 41J under the command of Godwin von Brumowski , which was stationed at the Portobuffolé airfield in Veneto. Until he was given his own command in June 1918, however, he only managed to shoot down a single Flik 41J. He achieved all others until the end of the war as commander of the 3J fighter pilot company stationed on the Romagnano airfield south of Trento (since May 30, 1918), many of them against pilots of the Royal Air Force . In total, he was able to record ten confirmed aerial victories . During a test flight on October 26th, it crash-landed and was convalescent at the end of the war .

Between the wars and the Second World War

After the First World War, Navratil became a colonel in the air force of the newly established Kingdom of Yugoslavia . He was dismissed from service because of differences with Serbian officers . After Yugoslavia's unconditional surrender to the Axis Powers , he became the first Commander in Chief of the Air Force of the Independent State of Croatia , a puppet state of the Axis Powers , on April 29, 1941 . A short time later, on September 27, 1941, he was appointed military attaché in the Romanian capital Bucharest . Promoted to Lieutenant General ( General pukovnik ) in August 1943 , he was on the recommendation of the "German Plenipotentiary General in Croatia" Edmund Glaise-Horstenau , from September 2, 1943 to January 29, 1944, Minister of War and Commander-in-Chief of the Croatian Armed Forces . Considered moderate and shocked by the policy of persecuting minorities under racial laws, he did not interrupt his career. Ante Pavelić dismissed Navratil as Minister of War because, in his view, he neglected the Ustaše and had also shown himself to be friendly to the Serbs.

After that, Navratil was tasked with building the air defense around Zagreb and other cities. From March 1944 he was ambassador to Romania . When he was supposed to take over the Foreign Ministry in February 1945, he went to live with relatives in Vienna, where he stayed until the end of the war. After the war he was arrested by the Americans in Zell am See and extradited to Yugoslavia in 1946. In a nine-day trial, he and six other people were sentenced to death for collaboration with National Socialist Germany and war crimes and executed in 1947 .

Awards (selection)

swell

  • Martin O'Connor: Air Aces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire 1914-1918 . Flying Machines Press, Mountain View (California) 1986, ISBN 1-891268-06-6 .
  • Chris Chant: Austro-Hungarian Aces of World War 1 . Osprey Publishing, 2012, ISBN 978-1-78200-854-5 .

Web link

literature

  • Mato Rupić: NAVRATIL, Miroslav (Friedrich) . In: Darko Stuparić (ed.): Tko je tko u NDH: Hrvatska 1941. – 1945. [Who is who in the NDH: Croatia 1941–1945] . Minerva, Zagreb 1997, p. 289 (Croatian).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Edmund Glaise von Horstenau: A general in the twilight: The memories of Edmund Glaise von Horstenau . Ed .: Peter Broucek. 3rd volume. Böhlau Verlag, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-205-08749-6 , p. 271 u. 316 .
  2. ^ Klaus Schmider : Partisan War in Yugoslavia 1941–1944 . ES Mittler & Sohn GmbH, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-8132-0794-3 , p. 362 .
personal data
SURNAME Navratil, Miroslav
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Navratil, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Croatian flying ace, general and defense minister in the independent state of Croatia
DATE OF BIRTH July 19, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Sarajevo
DATE OF DEATH June 7, 1947
Place of death Zagreb