Many Slovak Army units and Slovak gendarmes sided with the rebels during the Slovak National Uprising. Relying on German troops to suppress the uprising was politically undesirable. Therefore, the Hlinka Guard, the paramilitary force of the clericofascist Slovak People's Party, was drafted to combat the partisans. President Jozef Tiso was an influential advocate of this, because he saw the Hlinka Guard as loyal to the Slovak State. Slovak fascist propaganda claimed that the uprising had been fomented by the Czech and Jewish minorities, considered "enemies of the state" because of their alleged support for Czechoslovakism and Communism respectively. Although many Czechs and Jews had been expelled from Slovakia, some had been allowed to remain. Their deportation or murder was seen as an integral part of the suppression of the uprising, and the Hlinka Guard was the preferred tool for the Slovak State's racial persecutions.