Liberation Front of the Slovenian People. and Partisan Detachments of Slovenia | |
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![]() The flag of the Slovene Partisans[1] | |
Leaders | Boris Kidrič, Edvard Kardelj[2][3] |
Dates of operation | 1941–1945 |
Headquarters | mobile, attached to the Main Operational Group |
Active regions | Axis-annexed Slovene Lands |
Ideology | |
Size | Least (1941): 700–800 Peak (1944): 38,000 |
Part of | Yugoslav Partisans |
Opponents | Germany, Italy, Hungary, Independent State of Croatia, Anti-Communist Volunteer Militia, Slovene Home Guard |
Battles and wars | Battle of Dražgoše (1941) Battle of Nanos (1942) Battle of Janče (1942), Battle of Jelenov Žleb (1943), Battle of Kočevje (1943), Battle of Grčarice (1943), Battle of Turjak Castle (1943), Battle of Ilova Gora (1943), Raid at Ožbalt (1944), Battle of Trnovo (1945), Race for Trieste (1945), Battle of Poljana (1945) |
The Slovene Partisans,[a] formally the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Slovenia,[b] were part of Europe's most effective anti-Nazi resistance movement[4][5] led by Yugoslav revolutionary communists[6] during World War II, the Yugoslav Partisans.[7] Since a quarter of Slovene ethnic territory and approximately 327,000 out of total population of 1.3[8] million Slovenes were subjected to forced Italianization[9][10] after the end of the First World War, and genocide of the entire Slovene nation was being planned by the Italian fascist authorities,[11] the objective of the movement was the establishment of the state of Slovenes that would include the majority of Slovenes within a socialist Yugoslav federation in the postwar period.[7]
Slovenia was in a rare position in Europe during the Second World War because only Greece shared its experience of being divided between three or more countries. However, Slovenia was the only one that experienced a further step—absorption and annexation into neighboring Germany, Italy, Croatia, and Hungary.[12] As the very existence of the Slovene nation was threatened, the Slovene support for the Partisan movement was much more solid than in Croatia or Serbia.[13] An emphasis on the defence of ethnic identity was shown by naming the troops after important Slovene poets and writers, following the example of the Ivan Cankar battalion.[14] Slovene Partisans were the armed wing of the Liberation Front of the Slovene Nation, a resistance political organization and party coalition for what the Partisans referred to as the Slovene Lands.[15] The Liberation Front was founded and directed by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ), more specifically its Slovene branch: the Communist Party of Slovenia.
Being the first organized military force in the history of Slovenes,[16] the Slovene Partisans were in the beginning organized as guerrilla units, and later as an army. Their opponents were the Axis forces in Slovenia, and after the summer of 1942, also anti-Communist Slovene forces. The Slovene Partisans were mostly ethnically homogeneous and primarily communicated in Slovene.[16] These two features have been considered vital for their success.[16] Their most characteristic symbol was a cap known as a triglavka.[16][17] They were subordinated to the civil resistance authority.[15] The Partisan movement in Slovenia, though a part of the wider Yugoslav Partisans, was operationally autonomous from the rest of the movement, being geographically separated, and full contact with the remainder of the Partisan army occurred after the breakthrough of Josip Broz Tito's forces through to Slovenia in 1944.[18][19]
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