The Final Stages
Following the capitulation of Italy in September 1943 and the first aid shipments from the Western Allies, the military situation in Yugoslavia began to even more dramatically shift in favour of the Partisans. By mid-1944, many Home Guard personnel and units began to openly side with Partisans, leading to some instances of mass defections that included battalion-size formations as well as some ZNDH aircraft. By November 1944 the defections and desertions, as well as the creaming off of troops to the Ustashe Brigades or the 369th, 373rd, and 392nd so-called legionnaire divisions (Wehrmacht infantry divisions with Croatian troops under a German officer cadre) reduced the size of the Croatian Home Guard to 70,000 men, down from its peak at 130,000 in 1943.
Read more about this topic: Croatian Home Guard (Independent State Of Croatia)
Famous quotes containing the words final and/or stages:
“All cries are thin and terse;
The field has droned the summer’s final mass;
A cricket like a dwindled hearse
Crawls from the dry grass.”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)
“America is a country that seems forever to be toddler or teenager, at those two stages of human development characterized by conflict between autonomy and security.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)