Balkan war history

In 1941, photographers went to the Partisan ranks with a camera, dying for an image or a negative, to see a fight they had never seen before. In Croatia, these include, among others, Elvira Kohn, Franjo Mosinger and Georges Skrigin.
This is how George Skrigin described that day in the spring of 1942, when he, armed only with his camera, went to his first battle, in an ambush prepared for the Italians on the road between Senj and Novi Vinodolski: ... ' "I hear shouts: 'Forward, proletarians! ... shoot them! ...' I had just pointed the camera in the direction of the attack when over my head comes blaring our heavy machine gun that has taken a position a few meters behind me. It was my first action. The bullet whips over my head, for the first time I hear something like this and for the first time, I smell the gunpowder. I instinctively draw my head to the ground lower and lower, thinking: should I die in the first action and that of our bullet? "
He survived the w…

March - Fighting for Eastern Bosnia is ongoing. The struggles for Eastern Bosnia in 1942 were complex political and armed struggles of stakeholders for dominance in the territory of Eastern Bosnia, conducted during the first few months of 1942. Interested parties were partisans, Chetniks, Germans, Independent State of Croatia and Nedic's Serbia. The Chetniks did not want to fight the Germans but only against the Ustashas. They were trying to separate the area from the NDH and annex Nedic's Serbia.
March 3 - A quisling Serbian State Guard was established in Serbia.known as the Nedicevci
March 5 - The Comintern Executive Committee criticizes the CPY's tactics ("left turns"), for example the establishment of Proletarian brigades.


March 6 - Police officer Djordje Kosmajac killed in Belgrade. He was killed in the assassination, which was organized by Members of the Resistance
March 22 - Massacre in Stari Brod and Milosevic, Ustasha crimes on river Drina.
March 31 - The Thi…

Communist activist Ivica Sabljak was detained in the Stara Gradiška detention camp in order to find out about this terrifying information, who smuggled a message that reached his family, and later to the partisans, at the double bottom of the jam jar. The packages were banned in the concentration camp, the bread would be sliced, and jars with marmalade were opened. Maja Kacan, the curator of the Spomen-Jasenovac area and the author of the exhibition emphasized that this testimony, this letter belongs to the rarely preserved documentation of Ustasha death camps because most of them were destroyed by administrations during a panic escape from the same ends of the Second World War.
The prisoner of Stara Gradiška camp was Ivica Sabljak, communist, activist, during 1944, the smugglers of the letter Katica Bukovac, who delivered them to the Zagreb Camp Committee for help to camps. These letters, actually these messages written on pieces of paper, today, apart from the natural testimonies of …

During the People's Liberation Struggle of Yugoslavia from July 1941 to May 1945, over 100,000 women fought in the ranks of the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia, of which some 25,000 were killed. In addition, a large number of women participated in work in the background, and especially the mass participation of women was recorded in the rebellious regions. Under the leadership of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia during the People's Liberation Struggle, women's organizations were different that was different because the conditions were different in some parts of Yugoslavia, but the goals were the same - liberation of women from the occupiers, but also of its dependence and inequality in society.


Women are massively involved in the National Liberation Movement - as delegates, political commissars, commanders, officers Medical Corps, nurses, soldiers, puškomitraljesci, bombers, party and SKOJ managers and councilors National Liberation Committe…

Germans and allies in this operation, known as the "Fifth Enemy Offensive" or the Battle of Sutjeska, introduced about 127,000 soldiers (67,000 Germans, 43,000 Italians, 2,000 Bulgarians, and about 15,000 domestic servicemen) with the support of 170 planes, 8 artillery regiments and large number of tanks - against the Main Operational Group strengths about 22,000 partisans. Or: six to one, which according to military standards, is twice as much that it is necessary for the absolute combat success of the attackers.


The Main Operational Group managed to break out of the environment with huge losses of 7,543 dead soldiers, including 597 Partisans, which is an unspoken example of the loss of women fighters in the history of wars.
Most of the fighters from Croatia - 8,925, of which from Dalmatia - 5,195; from Bosnia and Herzegovina - 8,293; from Montenegro - 3,337; from Serbia - 1492; from Macedonia - 21; from Slovenia - 19; from abroad - 38.


There were 1,316 fighters from Šibenik, …

The March negotiations were negotiations between representatives of the National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia (NLA) and Wehrmacht on the exchange of prisoners, begun in early March 1943. The Partisans, surrounded by all sides in the midst of The fourth enemy offensive, offered the Germans a ceasefire.
The Partisan-German negotiations were then continued in Sarajevo and Zagreb. Partisan negotiators, the most prominent people of the movement - Milovan Djilas, member of the Politburo, Koca Popovic, commander of the First Proletarian Division and Vladimir Velebit.


At the end of February or early March 1943, the Partisans captured the German Major Strecker, commander of the 3rd battalion of the 738th peak, and about 25 soldiers. Having been in a difficult position and needing again in time to cross the Neretva, they decided to use it to negotiate with the Germans about the exchange of prisoners, so that at least for a brief moment German pressure would not be allowed. Negotiations began on…