Tell me about the Yugoslav partisans Veeky Forums. How did they get people to join their cause?

Tell me about the Yugoslav partisans Veeky Forums. How did they get people to join their cause?

Basically every mountain village had a sort of village strongman back in those days. So if the partisans convinced him that swearing allegiance to the partisans was to his benefit, he told all the lads between 16 and 46 of the village to join. And they listened for the most part. Partisans didn't really have to spend too much time convincing people on an individual basis, peasant by peasant.

At least that's the way my grandfather explained it to me.

"You either join or we burn your village."

Yugoslav communists were very well organized during interwar period, despite their party being banned and their members often arrested, killed and beaten by police. They endured some insane hardships even before the war even started, the guy standing next to Tito managed to translate Marx's Capital from German while in prison, he wrote it down on pieces of toilet paper since there was no other material and his comrades managed to sneak the translation illegaly from prison so it could be printed and distributed.

The pre-war Yugoslav political scene was a mess and political parties were corrupt as shit. They had no real support in the masses. Once the Germans marched in it all crumbled in pieces, the royal government fled to London, while small-time fascist movements decided to serve to Germans. At this point the Yugoslav partisans were the only ones offering unity and cohesion, along with stern resistance to the Germans. The partisans had all peoples of Yugoslavia in their ranks at the time when the country was disintegrated and people slaughtered each other. More importantly, they offered a plan for federalization of the country, something which pre-war politicans have bickered over fruitlessly for two decades. Apart from being poor and undeveloped, Yugoslavia was also politically undefined country.

tl:dr National liberation and social revolution.

Yugoslavia was a very poor, rural country with huge income inequality. Besides Slovenia, Northern parts of Croatia and Serbia (Vojvodina) and a few large cities in central Serbia (Belgrade in particular), life was incredibly shitty and boiled down to subsistence farming with no education.
It was very much a country of uneducated alienated people thrust straight from feudalism into the modern world.
Industrialization of these parts of the country was just starting to take off at the eve of WW2, the Stojadinovic government managed to have at least 5% growth every year, and even had a staggering 14% growth in 1936, but the rural people didn't feel any of it.
It didn't take much convincing to win over these people. The promises of land reform, and a better life were enough. They also showed themselves as capable fighters with a good command structure. While the other resistance, the Yugoslav home army nicknamed the chetniks had trouble organizing as a whole, also they offered the status quo.
But it's not only the poor folks, the socialists had a strong influence on the young intellegists, the university students. Of the 6 student cafeterias of Belgrade's university 4 were held by communists, 1 was held by the zbor (yugo nazis) and they fought over the last one.
So they had the poor masses and a strong infrastructure of young intellectuals, as well as experienced combatants from the Spanish civil war.
A lot of this is correct.
However, did Pijade really do it like that? I mean, i know he translated it, but i think i've heard the "toilet paper smuggled out" thing about Gramsci. Is it true, or is it a leftist meme?

I've read it in Vladimir Dedijer's biography of Tito, if he's lying then i'm lying.

It wasn't as much as the partisans, as the regime.

What do you think of Vlajko Begovic?

These are the only two good answers.

I mean, the other posts are good in regards to their analysis of the overall situation in interwar Yugoslavia, but the motivations of the average partisan recruit was a bit divorced from that.

Don't much about him except that he fought in Spain and for French resistance. Apparently he was Tito's main man in Spain and was responsible for spying on Tito's rivals from KPJ and Komintern fighting there.

*know

Yeah, i meant about the controversy. Do you think he killed Parovic, or did he really just document it? Dedijer claims he killed him, but to me it seem outright stupid for the killer to report the crime.

I think others know more about the situation in the other republics so let me write solely about the situation in Slovenia. Until 1944, our liberation movement (the Liberation front) was fully autonomous.

The Liberation front was formed on the 26th of April 1941 by a number of organisations: the Slovene communists, Christian socialist, the Sokol movement, the organisation of culture workers and many others. Their paramilitary were the partisans. From 1941 and until the capitulation of Italy, the vast majority of fighters were veterans of the Spanish civil war (various leftist radicals who fought for the Republicans), other activists and other volunteers who joined to liberate their nation; this included people of vastly different political alignments. The Liberation front conducted rallies to gain more support.
Anyway, the partisans saw the biggest increase in men after Italy capitulated and it became apparent that war was drawing to a close. Many were recruited by force - there's a saying that during the day, one was at danger of being recruited by the occupator or the collaborator and by the partisans at night.
In 1943, the Communist party took control of the Liberation front which was the turning point for the movement. All other organisations in it were dissolved and political opponents dealt with; even among the socialists and other radicals, the more nationally conscious would meet an end through "accidents". The communists were prepared for it. They had been collecting information on people even before the war, they started removing opponents in 1941 when they were still on good terms with the Axis and by 1943, the partisans were the armed wing of the Communist party. Nonetheless, Slovene communists retained an autonomist view but in the end, the dream of a Slovene-speaking part of the army did not become a reality for decades to come, although their views differed from Belgrade's until the end.

It was only legit army that fight occupators and not collaborating with them. People didn't give fuck about communism. They just to live they farm live in peace again

Well for one there's tons of half-truths and unverified stories regarding KPJ activities in Spain. I've even heard stories of Tito himself going there to fight.

I don't know really. Dedijer was a sort of rogue during his later years and could've just been butthurt about Tito. But then again some say Parovic was a Trotskyst.

For Yugoslavia, the second world war was more than just a war. For the Slovenes, it is something that divides to this day.
At the beginning of the armed struggle, the partisans were basically starting from nothing. Sure, they had some weapons of their own and collected Yugoslav army weaponry after capitulation (there was an effort among activists to collect weapons and hide them to make preparations for the inevitable revolutionary fight) but this did not go further beyond rifles and machine guns. Other supplies were lacking as well. In Italian-occupied Lower Carniola where they operated, the partisans were forced to collect food and other supplies among people and this is where problems started.
Sure, there were households where some food could be spared, but others couldn't or wouldn't. In the end, partisans would take what they needed. Villages would get raided. Because the occupying troops were not capable of protecting them, the people stepped together. In 1942, the first village guards were formed. The Italians were not keen on having another armed paramilitary in the region but they saw them useful. They armed them but didn't go further than that. Very soon, the defensive formations would be tainted.
The Italian military administration was on good terms with the Slovene Catholic leadership (Bishop Rožman) - as opposed to the violent policy of Germany which deported priests. The Catholic faction could easily sway the village guards as they were mostly conservative Catholic village folk and it also helped that they were threatened by the communist-led partisans. More men were recruited (priests had an important role in this as they would urge people to join in church) and a wider organisation was formed.

A chetnik formation operated in Slovenia but was not very succesful. For over a year it remained completely invisible, connected to London and the Yugoslav government there while operating under cover of a partisan formation.They were the third, liberal faction (although with clerical connections - there were talks to organise together with the Catholic faction but this ironically didn't happen until after Italian capitulation).

In 1943, Italy collapsed and the Slovene anti-communist organisations entered the final tragic stage of collaboration. As Italian troops retreated westwards, the anti-communist formations remained alone in complete anarchy. As the partisans approached and isolated units were destroyed, the village guards and chetniks took stand. On the Turjak castle, between 700 and 800 men declined to surrender their weapons. On the other side, the partisans refused negotiations. With the use of Italian cannons left over after the capitulation, they broke the defences and captured the men inside. What followed was massacre.
As the area that was previously under Italian control was being seized by the partisans but before the Germans could react, the remaining anti-communist troops retreated northwards, surrendering to the Germans. From these survivors and some more recruits, the Slovene Homeguard was organised in 1943. This same organisation swore allegiance to Hitler and the SS and it is without doubt that for the next two years, this was an formation subordinate to the Third reich. Even after the first great loss in 1943, they still counted on the Western Allies but the invasion in the Adriatic never came. In the final moments of the war, the collaborating forces fled (or tried to flee) northwards. Between the 14th and 15th of May (after the war in Europe was officially over), the last battle was fought at Poljana. Some collaborators had already escaped to Carinthia, though. In the end, the Allies were not their saviours, however.

The soldiers of the Homeguard were put in prison camps in Carinthia but the British forces there had them put on a train and returned across the border where the majority was executed. Thousands did make it out and together with their families, most went to Argentina.

To end this write-up which strayed well off topic but I thought was necessary to outline many of the circumstances of WW2 in Slovenia; the conflict was much more complex and divided than among many other nations of Europe during the war. It wasn't just a fight of "good" and "evil" - it was rather a fight of ideologists, with the common folk trapped in-between. The communist faction, the Catholic faction, the monarchists,... all had their own goals and various circumstances led from one thing to another. Brother fought against brother and former friends would become executioners. The war led to incomprehensible horrors which affected our nation for many decades to come.

Inclusive and balanced ethnic policies, real resistance to the enemy, and pressuring people into service as posts above explained in detail. Plus communism sounds appealing on first encounter.

I wrote all this right before going to bed so I finished it quite fast and it shows. Nevertheless, I do think I wrote most of what I wanted and needed, so here's just one more addition (unless anyone has any questions).

The partisan movement may have been started mostly by leftist radicals but volunteers came from all walks of life. Nevertheless, before Italian capitulation, men were not keen on joining (or were not forced to join) in such numbers. Not all regions experienced the war the same way. In aformentioned Lower Carniola is where the partisans started off and as a result saw most opposition. In Styria and Upper Carniola, where Germany had plans to deport thousands to colonise the land, the decision to join the partisans was seen as necessary; just as it was necessary in the west, in Littoral, where the Slovene people had been victims to Italian terror ever since the land was annexed after WW1. Still, the number of partisans grew slowly, reaching a bit over 5000 by 1943 while the village guards had about a thousand more. After Italian capitulation, however, the number of partisans exploded, reaching about 38000 by 1944, while the opposition reached about half the size.

>translate Marx's Capital
Why is reading Marx such a big deal for Communists?

He was, after all, the main of the two founders of marxism.

It's a huge, boring book, that isn't really consistent.

My grandfather fought for the Slovenian Home Guard. So he was killing Communists instead. I never got to meet him, but my grandmother filled me in on why he joined. Basically

>Communists keep coming to my great-grandmother's village asking for food
>keeps happening over and over
>eventually tell them to fuck off
>Communists shoot at the house
>People start getting worried that they will destroy the church
>Grandfather was the village "elder"
>Decide enough is enough
>Grandfather joins, most of his brothers and cousins too
>Old Slovenian grandma points out each of my great-uncles in a picture and tells me about each one in striking detail
>mfw she tells me they almost all died in combat or were brutally executed by Tito

I got a suitcase full of his stuff when he came over to America. He was in a Red Cross camp in Austria for a while before a priest sponsored him and he came over. Apparently he was a really polite POW and would do a lot of cooking.

>tfw Croat whose grandfather was in our Homeguard
>he was murdered by a state agent in the 50s

>tfw both grandfathers were card carrying communist partisans and my dad went full blown SRBE NA VRBE ustasha during the 90s to compensate
>ended up as diaspora anyway
>father pines for the old Yugoslavia days after he realized how much the hdz Hercegovinans pilfered the country
heheh how do you do fellow za Dom spremnis?

>not realising HDZ is a commie party and nothing has changed

My granda has an interesting story from central Serbia.
>communists come at night and beg for food
>"a bit of bread and a boiled egg"
>they stirred up shit in the neighboring village
>germans come threatening to execute everyone
>chetniks come and sooth things out with the germans, effectively saving the village
>chetniks ask for a few pigs
>grandpa keeps hating the chetniks because they took a pig, regardless of the fact they literally saved his life
>they took my pig, the arrogant bastards, the partisans only asked for a few eggs, and these bearded faggots take a fucking pig

In Montenegro both communists and chetniks acted like shit. But that's because we're shit people.