Battle of the Neretva
| date | January to April 1943 |
|---|---|
| place | Yugoslavia |
| output | Tactical victory of the Axis forces. Fall of the partisan state established by Tito in northwestern Bosnia. Retreat of the Tito partisans towards Montenegro with heavy losses. The partisans destroy the Chetniks involved in the fight. The Axis powers failed to achieve their strategic goal of completely destroying the partisans. |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
| Troop strength | |
| 150,000 soldiers 200 aircraft |
Unknown (about 20,000 partisans) |
| losses | |
|
Germans: 335 dead and 101 missing. |
8,000 partisans |
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The Battle of Neretva ( Serbo-Croatian Bitka na Neretvi / Битка на Неретви) was an under the code name Operation White camouflaged strategic plan of the German Empire in World War II for a joint attack of the Axis powers on the Yugoslav partisans . At the beginning of 1943 the Axis Powers feared an Allied invasion of the Balkans. That is why the Yugoslav partisans should be destroyed as completely as possible, in particular the high command of the partisan movement, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia . It was also planned to destroy the partisan's main hospital. The start of the offensive was scheduled for January 20, 1943 and concentrated on the area of Bosnia-Herzegovina . The military action ended in April 1943. It was named after the nearby Neretva River .
The operation is also known in sources of the former Republic of Yugoslavia as the fourth anti-partisan offensive , also as the fourth enemy offensive (Četvrta neprijateljska ofenziva / ofanziva) or battle for the wounded (Bitka za ranjenike) .
surgery
The Axis powers raised nine divisions, six German and three Italian. These were supported by two Croatian divisions and a number of Chetnik and Ustasha associations. Around 150,000 soldiers on the Axis side faced a much smaller partisan force.
The military operation was carried out in three phases:
- White I began the attack on the partisan-held areas west of Bosnia and central parts of Croatia on January 20, 1943 .
- White II joined on February 25th. There were skirmishes in the west and south-west of Bosnia and the partisans evaded so far to the south-east that they had the banks of the Neretva behind them.
- White III began in March 1943 and concentrated on the areas of northern Herzegovina , but the beleaguered partisans managed to break free from their encirclement and break through into northern Montenegro , so that the third phase of the military operation was not successfully completed from the perspective of the Axis powers could.
In the course of the battle the partisans were pushed close to the western bank of the Neretva. In doing so, they faced German armed forces, which were supported by tank brigades. The eastern bank of the Neretva, opposite the partisans, was only monitored by formations of the Chetniks who acted in coordination with the Germans. The banks, separated by the low-lying river bed of the Neretva, were only connected by the bridge of the Narenta Railway. If the partisans had managed to cross the river with the help of the bridge in time and get to the eastern bank, then they would have been in relative safety. However, given the military superiority of the Axis forces, they did not have the time to get everyone across the bridge. In order to avoid the threatened annihilation, the partisan leader Marshal Tito planned a sophisticated deception. He ordered his pioneers to blow up the bridge over the Neretva, the only obvious means of escape. When the aerial reconnaissance presented the photos of the destroyed bridge to General Löhr, the latter concluded that the partisans were planning an advance northwards from their current position (along the western bank of the Neretva). The demolition of the bridge was interpreted by Tito on the German side as a means of moral pressure to encourage his fighters and prevent possible desertion. For this reason, the troops of the Axis Powers were regrouped so that Tito's units in the expected combat area could be destroyed as soon as they attacked. Instead, these measures gave the partisan pioneers valuable time to make makeshift repairs to the bridge. The partisans succeeded in encircling and eliminating the Chetnik troops on the opposite bank of the Neretva. Although the Germans finally saw through Tito's ruse, they were no longer in a position to prepare a serious attack in time because they could not reverse the regrouping orders quickly enough. The rearguard of the partisans fought against the increasing pressure from German troops. Ultimately, the partisans saved most of their people on the eastern bank of the Neretva. However, the transition took place under heavy bombardment by the Luftwaffe. Only the mountainous landscape prevented sufficient destruction of the temporary bridge. After the partisans managed to escape, the weak bridge was made unusable again in order to prevent further pursuit. The detachment movement was upgraded propagandistically by Tito, since he had succeeded in keeping his promise to evacuate the wounded from the main hospital of the partisans, who would have been threatened with execution if captured by the Axis powers . Later, the feared executions actually came about as a result of the Battle of the Sutjeska .
consequences
At the end of March, the Axis forces had killed around 8,000 partisans and took 2,000 prisoners. Apart from these heavy losses for the Yugoslav People's Liberation Army and a tactical victory for the Axis Powers, the partisans were able to secure their high command and hospital system and were able to continue their military operations. In fact, after the partisans had reached the eastern areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina , they only had to face the Chetniks. The Tito partisans were able to put the Chetniks in the area west of the Drina almost completely out of action. The next major military operation in Yugoslavia was Operation Black , which came to be known as the Battle of Sutjeska .
The expulsion of Tito from his territory in north-west Bosnia turned out to be unfavorable for the German armed forces and their allies in the long term , because now the partisans were able to establish themselves in the more impassable mountains of Montenegro. The crossing on the Neretva attracted international attention, the importance of which was that British Prime Minister Winston Churchill began to support Tito's partisans.
The 1969 Oscar-nominated war film The Battle of the Neretva recreates the events of early 1943.
Associations involved in the battle
Partisan troops
- 1st Croatian Corps (16,000 men)
- 1st Bosnian Corps (11,500 men)
- Main operation group (14,500 men) consisting of
- 1st Proletarian Division
- 2nd Proletarian Division
- 3rd Sturm Division
- 7th Banija Division (added later)
- 9th Dalmatian Division
Axis forces
- 7th SS volunteer mountain division "Prinz Eugen"
- 369th Infantry Division
- 714th Infantry Division
- 717th Infantry Division
- A regiment of the 187th Reserve Division
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- 12th Infantry Division Sassari
- 13th Infantry Division Re
- 57th Infantry Division Lombardia
- 2nd Croatian Homeland Security Mountain Brigade
- 3rd Croatian Homeland Security Mountain Brigade
Chetniks (nominally as Italian anti-communist volunteer militia)
- About 20,000 men
See also
literature
- Lea Christina Meister: Culture of Remembrance in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The Battle of the Neretva 1943-1965-1978 . University of Basel, Basel 2014.
- Wolfram Prihoda (Red.): Military operations and partisan struggle in Southeast Europe. From the Berlin Congress to the end of Yugoslavia. Federal Ministry for National Defense, Troop Service Working Group, Vienna 2009, ISBN 978-3901183553 , pp. 222-264 ( table of contents ).
