Slovensko domobranstvo
Slovene Home Guard ( Slovene militia , also Slovene Home Guard or Slovenian Domobranzen / Domobrancen called) was in September 1943 during the Second World War, after the withdrawal of Italy in the area of the province of Ljubljana established anti-communist and conservative Catholic military organization in which Slovenians served. A relative was accordingly called Domobranec , German Domobranze . As collaborators , they supported the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS in the fight against the Osvobodilna Fronta ( Liberation Front ). The majority of the equipment was initially of Italian origin; it was confiscated by the German Wehrmacht after Italy's surrender on September 8, 1943. Most of the Domobranzen served as infantrymen .
history
On September 8, 1943, partisans destroyed the Chetnik base of the Yugoslav army at home, including the command post for Slovenia in the Gottscheer village of Measles ( Grčarice ), which had been abandoned since 1941 . The commanders of the village guards set up by the Italians ( Milizia volontaria anticomunista MVAC) have again been gathering at Auersperg Castle (Grad Turjak) since September 12th to join an anti-communist Slovenian National Army (Slovenska narodna vojska SNV) . On the night of September 15, 1,500 partisans surrounded the fortress, destroyed its crew by September 19, and thus smashed a large part of the village guards.
In this situation, anti-communist Slovenian forces from the province of Ljubljana founded the Slovenian Home Guard Legion (Slovenska domobranska legija) with three battalions on September 24, 1943 . The soldiers were surviving members of the village guards / MVAC and Slovenian Chetniks of the Yugoslav army at home.
On September 30, the Germans incorporated the province into the Adriatic Coastal Operation Zone . The establishment of the Slovenian Home Guard was convenient for them due to the lack of their own armed forces.
Ernest Peterlin and the former Yugoslav General Leon Rupnik played a particularly important role in building the Home Guard . Peterlin wanted to raise a heavily armed Slovenian army, but the Germans only left the Domobranzen with light infantry armament.
On September 23, General Leon Rupnik declared himself in command of the Slovenian Home Guard , Anton Kokalj as chief inspector and Colonel Franc Krenner as his deputy. However, the head of the police department, SS-General Erwin Rösener, prevented him from taking up the post and on November 4th banned him in writing from any activity in the Home Guard. Instead, he installed Colonel Krenner in his place. In September 1944 Rupnik was finally appointed inspector general. As before, the actual authority remained with SS-General Rösener. The Germans even prescribed when General Rupnik was allowed to appear in the uniform of the General Inspector of the Slovenian Home Guard. Under the command of Vuk Rupnik , Leon Rupnik's son , the battalion had limited autonomy in military operations . The number of Domobranzen at the end of the war was around 15,000.
After the Second World War, around 17,000 Slovenian Landwehr soldiers and civilians fled from the communist Tito regime to Viktring near Klagenfurt in Austria , where they surrendered to British units. On May 10, this resulted in violent fighting with the Yugoslav People's Liberation Army below the Hollenburg near Köttmannsdorf during the transition over the Drau . The Slovenes who fled were interned in a refugee camp near Viktring.
In 2008, the Slovenian EU Council Presidency held a hearing on “crimes of totalitarian regimes”, in which, in addition to National Socialist crimes during the Second World War in Slovenia, the mass executions after the end of the war were discussed. In addition to Croatian and Serbian prisoners, the British handed over around 11,000 members of the Slovenian Home Guard to the Yugoslav People's Liberation Army at the end of May / beginning of June 1945. This interned the soldiers handed over to her in camps in Slovenia and Croatia. The Slovenian Domobranzen came mainly to the Teharje (cloths) camps near Celje (Cilli) and Šentvid (now part of Ljubljana ). Numerous Slovenes were murdered on the marches into the camps, and other massacres were carried out in the camps. With the victory of the Yugoslav People's Liberation Army, there were summary executions of anti-communist Slovenian military members in many places in Slovenia without any trial. Civilians and German prisoners of war were also killed. Of the thousands of prisoners in the Teharje, Šentvid nad Ljubljano and Škofja Loka camps, only a small number of civilians and minors from the Home Guard survived. The number of Slovenes executed after the end of the war is estimated at 14,000, but the total number of all persons executed on Slovenian territory may be over 100,000. While the prisoners in Šentvid with cattle cars to Kočevje and then to the execution to hidden caves in the nearby Horn Forest ( Kočevski Rog brought) were the executions of prisoners of Teharje found to a lesser extent in the camp itself, for the most part in caves or abandoned mine shaft of around Stari Hrastnik , Trbovlje and Lasko instead. An important destination at Laško was the Barbara tunnel at Huda Jama .
Around 6,000 Slovenian civilians were exempted from repatriation to Yugoslavia following an intervention by the Canadian camp director with Harold Alexander , the British commander- in -chief in Carinthia. In Slovenia these massacres are known today as the “Drama about Viktring”, in Croatia as the Bleiburg massacre or “Bleiburg tragedy”.
literature
- Tamara Griesser-Pečar: The torn people. Slovenia 1941-1946. Occupation, collaboration, civil war, revolution (= studies on politics and administration 86). Böhlau Verlag, Vienna et al. 2003, ISBN 3-205-77062-5 , chapter: "The Slovenian National Army (Slovensko domobranstvo): With German help against the communists" , pp. 296-330.
- Monika Kokalj Kočevar: Mati, Domovina, Bog. Muzej Novejše Zgodovine, Ljubljana 1999, ISBN 961-90232-4-2 .
- Boris Mlakar: Slovensko domobranstvo 1943–1945. Ustanovitev, organizacija, idejno ozadje. Slovenska Matica, Ljubljana 2003, ISBN 961-213-114-7 .
- Antonio J. Munoz: Slovenian Axis Forces in World War II, 1941-1945. Axis Europa Books, Bayside NY 1998, ISBN 1-891227-04-1 .
- Florian Thomas Rulitz: The tragedy of Bleiburg and Viktring. Partisan violence in Carinthia using the example of anti-communist refugees in May 1945. New edition. Hermagoras Verlag, Klagenfurt / Ljubljana / Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-7086-0616-3 .
- Rozina Švent: Slovenski begunci v Avstriji. 1945–1950 (= Migracije 13). Zalozba ZRC, Ljubljana 2007, ISBN 978-961-254-025-8 .
Web links
- Joachim Hösler: Slovenia's historical burden in From Politics and Contemporary History 46/2006
Individual evidence
- ↑ Damjan Hančič and Renato Podberšič: Totalitarian regimes in Slovenia in the 20th century, in: Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, Peter Jambrek (ed.): Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes (pp. 39-60) ( Memento from October 4, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 4.6 MB), p. 53. Reports and proceedings of the April 8 European public hearing on “Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes”, organized by the Slovenian Presidency of the Council of the European Union (January – June 2008) and the European Commission.
- ↑ Testimony of the former partisan Jakob Ugovšek before the investigative commission in 1994 (PDF; 69 kB)
- ↑ Slovenec, May 10, 1994, page 4. (PDF; 381 kB)
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from January 17, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
