From: josip@src.umd.edu ()
Subject: WWII aftermath
Originator: josip@galaxy.src.umd.edu
Organization: Systems Research Center, University of Maryland, College Park
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 05:50:58 GMT

A claim is often made that the perpetrators of genocide during WWII 
in former Yugoslavia have "not been punished enough."  This claim is
not justified, since scarcely any of the perpetrators had been left alive.
The victims of Partisan reprisals after their victory had included anyone
who might have somehow been associated with the guilty parties.  While
for obvious reasons this episode of Yugoslav history was suppressed,
it ought to be better known.  Massive reprisals against various anti-Partisan
forces and their dependants had caused an enormous death toll.  For
example, it appears that not one sworn Ustasha was left alive in Yugoslavia.

In addition, many innocent people were killed without any attempt to 
distinguish between them and the guilty parties.  Here is what the
end of WWII in former Yugoslavia had brought:
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"Systematic Destruction of Their Enemies by the Partisans"

...in order to prevent any challenge to the future safety of their regime and 
of the country, to give some satisfaction to those groups of people who had 
been wronged by the various anti-Partisan forces -- primarily the Serbs for 
the wrongs done to them by the Ustashe and to the Croats and Moslems for the 
wrongs inflicted upon them by the Chetniks -- and most probably also to take 
reprisals on their opponents for the sufferings they had inflicted on the 
Partisan and pro-Partisan population, the Partisans inaugurated a policy of 
destruction of all armed formations of their domestic opponents on whom they 
could lay their hands.  With the exception of the groups stationed in the 
Ljubljana gap, who fled and surrendered to the British in northern Italy and 
whose members were accorded treatment similar to that of prisoners of war, the 
majority of members of all domestic anti-Partisan forces were destroyed. ....

The Croatian puppet government fled to Zagreb on May 4 (the cabinet members) 
and May 6 (the head of state, Pavelic).  With Germany on its knees, this was 
the end of the Independent State of Croatia.  Zagreb was liberated by the 
Partisans on May 8.  However, for a whole week after the German unconditional 
surrender became effective late on May 8, German and Croatian quisling forces 
fighting on Yugoslav soil refused to surrender to the Partisans, and continued 
to withdraw toward the Austrian border while fighting.  Thousands of civilian 
refugees accompanied the withdrawing armies.  The German forces wanted to 
surrender to the British in Austria; the Croatian quisling forces wanted to 
put themselves at British disposal or be taken as prisoners of war by the 
British.  In the process of withdrawal under steady Partisan attack, a large 
part of these German and Croatian troops was destroyed or captured on Yugoslav 
soil, but a part did manage to get to Austria. Since the Western Allies and 
the Soviet Union had previously reached an agreement that all troops of 
Germany and its allies would have to surrender to troops of countries against 
which they had fought, the British commanders in Austria refused to accept the 
surrender of German and Croatian troops that crossed from Yugoslavia into 
Austria.  Instead they told these troops to surrender to the Partisans and 
offered aid to the latter if they shouls need it to enforce the surrender.  
And so the last German and Croatian quisling troops surrendered to the 
Partisans on May 15.

With the exception of those individuals and small groups that succeeded in 
escaping while still on Austrian soil, all these troops, as well as the bulk 
of the Slovenian Domobrans and various smaller groups of Chetnik and Ljotic 
forces that had also succeeded in crossing into Austria, were soon returned to 
Yugoslavia.  In the course of the following weeks most of these Croatian, 
Slovenian, Serbian, and Montenegrin troops that were returned from Austria, as 
well as others captured on Yugoslav soil, were killed.  The exact number of 
anti-Partisan forces that perished at the hands of the Partisans at that time 
is not known, but probably ran into several scores of thousands.  Some 
thousands of civilian refugees perished with them.[*] ....

There is no doubt that in the process of taking control of the country, and 
after the end of the war, the Partisans conducted a systematic hunt for their 
enemies, including those who had been left in the country on purpose, those 
that did not have a chance to flee abroad and therefore hid to escape capture, 
and many of those who simply were opposed to Partisan rule.  This hunt lasted 
for several years after the war and resulted in the capture of more than 
11,000 "agents and spies," who according to Yugoslav sources were left in the 
country by various intelligence services of the occupying powers, the quisling 
regimes, and the Chetniks; and in the "liquidation" (most probably meaning the 
killing) of more than the 12,000 aremd individuals and members of various 
armed groups opposed to the new regime.
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[*] Yugoslav official and other sources do not contain any information about 
these matters.  On the other hand, members of the groups which were affected 
and who avoided being returned to Yugoslavia or who later escaped from 
Yugoslavia have tried, for propaganda reasons, to magnify the number of people 
that the Partisans killed during the final days of the war and soon 
thereafter.  For the story that the Ustasha or pro-Ustasha Croatian exiles 
have to tell, see a special issue of "Studia Croatica", entitled "La tragedia 
de Bleiburg", (Buenos Aires, 1963).  For the story of the anti-Communist 
Slovense see Anonymous, "Vetrinjska tragedija" (Cleveland, 1960).  Bleiburg 
and Viktring are small towns in Austria near the Austrian-Yugoslav border to 
which thousands of Croatian and Slovene anti-Partisan fighters and refugees 
escaped and from which the overwhelming part were returned to Yugoslavia.  The 
Western Allies also returned to Yugoslavia most of the members of the last 
Croatian quisling cabinet and some people, like Slavko Kvaternik, who played 
an important role in the early stages of the Ustasha state.  Practically all 
of these men were later tried in Yugoslavia and sentenced to death.  The chief 
of the defunct Independent State of Croatia, Dr. Ante Pavelic, eluded capture, 
escaped later to Argentina, and finally died in Spain in 1959.  The Yugoslavs 
also tried as war criminals a number of German generals and other officers and 
sentenced to death a great number of them, the highest ranking being Colonel 
General Alexander Lohr.  They also tried and sentenced to death the German 
envoy to the Independent State of Croatia, Siegfred Kasche.

(See: "Yugoslavia During the Second World War" by Jozo Tomasevich, pp.112-113, 
in: Wayne S. Vucinich: "Contemporary Yugoslavia: Twenty Years of Socialist 
Experiment", Univ. of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969)


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