Civil War and Post-war Killings
The civil war that broke out in Slovenia during the occupation was, ideologically and politically, the result of the conflict between two authoritarian ideologies: Bolshevik communism and Catholic clericalism. Communists were unreceptive to warnings of harmful consequences of the rash elimination of opponents and begun to be - with the success of the Slovene Partisan movement in spring and summer 1942 - convicted that the national liberation phase was to be continued with the revolutionary one, which had already led to violent encounters with Catholic activists, who began to leave the Partisan ranks. The Communist security service killed 60 people in the first few months of 1942 in Ljubljana alone; people who the Communist leadership had proclaimed as collaborators and informers. After the assassination of Lambert Ehrlich, and 429 shot by VOS agents in May 1942, and especially the liquidation of a number of priests, Bishop Rožman rejected the OF and Partisans outright. Part of the clergy continued to support the Partisan movement and performed religious ceremonies for them, burring killed Partisans on the church graveyards, etc. Gottschee ethnic German priest Josef Gliebe, who preferred to stay with those who did not want to be moved away, has been helping Partisans with food, shoes and clothes, being labelled "red one" by Slovene Home Guard.
In the summer of 1942, a civil war between Slovenes broke out. The two fighting factions were the Slovenian Partisans and the Italian-sponsored anti-communist militia, known as the White Guard, later re-organized under Nazi command as the Slovene Home Guard. Small units of Slovenian Chetniks also existed in Lower Carniola and Styria. The Partisans were under the command of the Liberation Front (OF) and Tito's Yugoslav resistance, while the Slovenian Covenant served as the political arm of the anti-Communist militia. The civil war was mostly restricted to the Province of Ljubljana, where more than 80% of the Slovene anti-partisan units were active. Between 1943-1945, smaller anti-Communist militia existed in parts of the Slovenian Littoral and in Upper Carniola, while they were virtually non-existent in the rest of the country. By 1945, the total number of Slovene anti-Communist militiamen reached 17,500. Over 28,000 Partisans were killed due the war, compared to over 14,000 anti-Communists. The Slovene Partisans and revolutionary forces killed over 24,000 Slovenes during and after World War II, and contributed through post-war killings 15% to all Slovene victims of the war. The anti-communist forces killed about 4,400 Slovenes in their independent actions.
Read more about this topic: Slovenian Partisans
Famous quotes containing the words civil, war, post-war and/or killings:
“I’ve never been afraid to step out and to reach out and to move out in order to make things happen.”
—Victoria Gray, African American civil rights activist. As quoted in This Little Light of Mine, ch. 3, by Hay Mills (1993)
“It was the most ungrateful and unjust act ever perpetrated by a republic upon a class of citizens who had worked and sacrificed and suffered as did the women of this nation in the struggle of the Civil War only to be rewarded at its close by such unspeakable degradation as to be reduced to the plane of subjects to enfranchised slaves.”
—Anna Howard Shaw (1847–1919)
“Much of what Mr. Wallace calls his global thinking is, no matter how you slice it, still “globaloney.” Mr. Wallace’s warp of sense and his woof of nonsense is very tricky cloth out of which to cut the pattern of a post-war world.”
—Clare Boothe Luce (1903–1987)
“‘I told him, Look at all those fightings and killings down there,
What’s the matter? Why don’t you put a stop to it?
‘I try, he said—That’s all he could do, he looked tired. He’s a bachelor so long, and he likes lentil soup.’”
—Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926)