Slovensko Domobrantsvo (Slovenian home Guard 1943-1945)

By Gabriele Malavoglia

General Rupnik, with Anton Kokalj, Ernest Peterlin and Janko Kregar, constituted the Slovenska Domobranska Legija (Slovenian Legion of Guards) on 24 September 1943, supported by representatives of the pre-war political parties in the Ljubljana region and organised it into 3 Battalions. It must be emphasis

• Language: English
• Publisher: Soldiershop
• Release date: May 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9788893279789

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Slovenia in the Reich's orbit

The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was the heir in the Balkans of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which had broken up at the end of the Great War, but was in reality composed of a conglomeration of different and antagonistic ethnic groups. This potentially dangerous situation was exacerbated over the years by the fact that the Yugoslav government, consisting of a strong Serbian centralism, never considered the idea of incisively involving the country's different ethnic minorities, leading to a state of continuous and latent dissatisfaction. It was only in August 1939 that the Croats were granted a narrow margin of independence, which was, however, insufficient to heal the rift between Serbs and Croats and left the other ethnic ies even further out in the cold.

At the end of the Yugoslav Campaign in the spring of 1941, the areas of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia inhabited by the Slovenian population were divided between the Kingdom of Italy, the German Reich (which still intended to integrate the entire Yugoslav territory) and the Kingdom of Hungary (the southern, northern and eastern parts, respectively), while Croatia declared independence on 10 April and Bulgarian troops occupied eastern Macedonia. Italy incorporated the regions of Inner Carniola, Lower Carniola and White Carniola, an area of about 4,500 km². On 3 May the area of Italian influence, in which there were in fact no ethnic Italians living, was constituted into the Province of Ljubljana, a province with a special order, governed by "a High Commissioner appointed by Royal Decree at the proposal of the Duce of Fascism, Head of Government, Minister of the Interior", assisted by "a Council composed of 14 representatives chosen from among the productive categories of the Slovenian population". In the weeks following the partition of Slovenia, about 17,000 Slovenes fled from the part annexed to the Reich, taking refuge in the Ljubljana Province, as they feared reprisals from the German occupation forces. This 'confused' state led to a revival of nationalist spirits among the peoples of Yugoslavia, who thus found themselves divided, without common ideals and goals, without a central power, in an environment that left them effectively at the mercy of the occupiers.

With the Armistice, the problem became even more dramatic. On 8 September 1943, the Italian troops in the Ljubljana Province amounted to about 50,000 soldiers, who were joined by just over 6,000 men of the M.V.A.C., and between 300 and 400 Slovenian Cetnics. Approximately half of the latter, trusting in an Allied landing in the Slovenian littoral, moved south, hoping to encounter possible reinforcements from the Lika region of the neighbouring independent state of Croatia, but, attacked by Titine partisan units, they were pushed south-west as far as the village of Grčarice. At the same time, the units of the M.V.A.C., renamed the 'Slovenian National Army', managed to concentrate about 1,600 men at Turjak Castle, 20 kilometres from Ljubljana, with a large quantity of (Italian) weapons and ammunition, as well as large stocks of food. The Slovenian nationalists had already planned in July to unite the M.V.A.C. forces operating under Italian control into a unit consisting of 19 battalions, to form a Slovenian National Army (Slovenska Narodina Vojska), while waiting for an Anglo-American landing on the Adriatic coast, which would enable them to drive out the Germans and keep out Tito's armed forces, since for the nationalists it was unthinkable that the Balkans could be left in the hands of the communists. For this reason, the Slovenian partisans reacted promptly to the announcement of the Armistice: the 1st Triglav Brigade and the 2nd Krim Brigade surprised the M.V.A.C. men at Turjak, precisely in order to prevent them from taking advantage of the disbandment of the Italian armed forces to create this vague Slovenian National Army. Leaving aside the details of the events that affected these two garrisons, which are beyond the scope of this volume, let us only recall that between 9 and 10 September, a partisan brigade, with the fire support of two captured Italian howitzers, forced the Cetnics of Grčarice to surrender and, four days later, the partisans besieged Turjak castle for five long days, still using captured heavy weapons, until they surrendered. The fate