page_title: Croatian Partisans
section_title: Turning point
hierarchical_section_title: Croatian Partisans / History / Turning point
caption_attribution_description: Hrvatski: Teritorij pod nadzorom NOVJ u rujnu 1944.
context_page_description: The Croatian Partisans, officially the National Liberation Movement in Croatia, were part of the anti-fascist National Liberational Movement in the Axis-occupied Yugoslavia which was the most effective anti-Nazi resistance movement led by Yugoslav revolutionary communists during the Second World War. NOP was under the leadership of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia and supported by many others, with Croatian Peasant Party members contributing to it significantly. NOP units were able to temporarily or permanently liberate large parts of Croatia from occupying forces. Based on the NOP, the Federal Republic of Croatia, which was referred to by Winston Churchill as "the Croatian miracle" was founded as a constituent of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia.
context_section_description: With Germany's weakening and the Italian surrender, the movement grew in power and got statehood attributes with the foundation of the State Anti-fascist Council for the National Liberation of Croatia (ZAVNOH), led by Croatian poet Vladimir Nazor, which acted as the highest political representative body of the anti-Fascist movement in Croatia. Just like a real war government, ZAVNOH coordinated Partisan military operations and organized economic activities in the liberated territories.
  In the general warfare of the anti-Hitler coalition, partisan movement in the Yugoslav territory, primarily Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose members, after the capitulation of Italy, disarmed a large number of Italian divisions and liberated large parts of Istria, Dalmatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, played a significant role during 1943.
  In the second half of 1943, the Partisans strengthened numerically and created more mobile combat units - the brigades, and gained control over larger territory. With the surrender of Italy and the withdrawal of the remaining Italian soldiers, Partisans acquired a lot of military equipment and materials. Apart from the fact that the population of the former occupied Italian territories was more massively enrolled in the NOP, some Italian volunteers also joined. With more troops and equipment, Partisan brigades gradually developed into a well-coordinated military force, using more direct methods of conflict, so that the NDH government's control, in reality, came down to larger cities and communication lines.
  Thanks to military success, at the Second Session of Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ) held on 29 November 1943 in Jajce, a new Yugoslavia was established "as a state union of equal peoples", which would ensure full equality of Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs and Slovenians, that is, of Federal Republics of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia.
  At the 1943 Tehran Conference, Allied powers decided that they would start supporting NOP so they withdrew support for the Draža Mihailović's Chetniks. Allies established a military mission at the Supreme Staff of the National Liberation Army which was led by Josip Broz Tito. The situation further improved for the Partisans in 1944 as it became obvious that Axis powers would lose the war. Croatian Home Guard's soldiers began joining partisans in large numbers.
caption: Map of Yugoslavia from 1944 with liberated territories marked in red
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