Slovene Partisans The Slovene Partisans ( formally National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Slovenia ) were part of Europe ' s most effective anti - Nazi resistance movement led by Yugoslav revolutionary communists during World War II , the Yugoslav Partisans . Since a quarter of Slovene ethnic territory and approximately 327 , 000 out of total population of 1 . 3 million Slovenes were subjected to forced Italianization since the end of First World War , the objective of the movement was the establishment of the state of Slovenes that would include majority of Slovenes within a socialist Yugoslav federation in the post - War period . Slovenia was during WWII in a unique situation in Europe , only Greece shared its experience of being trisected , however , Slovenia was the only one that experienced a further step — absorption and annexation into neighboring Nazi Germany , Fascist Italy , and Hungary . As the very existence of the Slovene nation was threatened , the Slovene support for the Partisan movement was much more solid than in Croatia or Serbia . An emphasis on the defence of ethnic identity was shown by naming the troops after important Slovene poets and writers , following the example of the Ivan Cankar battalion . Slovene Partisans were the armed wing of the Liberation Front of the Slovene Nation , a resistance political organization and party coalition for what the Partisans referred to as the Slovene Lands . The Liberation Front was founded and directed by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia ( KPJ ) , more specifically its Slovene branch : the Communist Party of Slovenia . Being the first organized military force in history of Slovenes , the Slovene Partisans were in the beginning organized as a guerilla and later as an army . Their opponents were the occupants and since summer 1942 also the anti - Communist Slovene forces . The Slovene Partisans were mostly ethnically homogenous and primarily communicated in Slovene . These two features have been considered vital for their success . Their most characteristic symbol was a triglavka . They were subordinated to the civil resistance authority . The Partisan movement in Slovenia , though a part of the wider Yugoslav Partisans , was operationally autonomous from the rest of the movement , being geographically separated , and full contact with the remainder of the Partisan army occurred after the breakthrough of Tito ' s forces through to Slovenia in 1944 . Background . After World War I ended in 1918 , the Slovene - settled territory partially felt under the rule of the neighboring states Italy , Austria and Hungary . Slovenes there were subjected to policies of forced assimilation . On 6 April 1941 , Yugoslavia was invaded by the Axis Powers . Slovenia was divided among the occupying powers : Italy occupied southern Slovenia and Ljubljana , Nazi Germany got northern and eastern Slovenia , while Horthy ' s Hungary was awarded the Prekmurje region . Some villages in Lower Carniola were annexed by the Independent State of Croatia . The Nazis started a policy of violent Germanisation . In the frame of their plan for the ethnic cleansing of Slovene territory , tens of thousands of Slovenes were resettled or chased away , imprisoned , or transported to labor , internment and extermination camp s . The majority of Slovene victims of the occupation authorities were from the regions occupied by the Germans , i . e . Lower Styria , Upper Carniola , Central Sava Valley , and Slovenian Carinthia . The Italian occupation policy in the Province of Ljubljana gave Slovenes cultural autonomy , however the Fascist system was systematically introduced . After the establishment of the Liberation Front , the violence against the Slovene civil population in the zone escalated and easily matched the German . The province was subjected to brutal repression . Alongside with summary executions , the burning of houses and villages , hostage - taking and hostage executions , the Province of Ljubljana saw the deportation of 25 . 000 people , which equaled 7 . 5 % of the total population , to different concentration camps . Formation , organisation , and ideological affiliation of the membership . In both Slovene Partisans squads and in the " field committees " of the Liberation Front of the Slovene Nation the Communists were indeed in the minority . During the course of the war , the influence of the Communist Party of Slovenia started to grow . Nowhere else in Yugoslav territory did the Partisan movement have a plural political composition like it did have in Liberation Front of the Slovene Nation , so the Yugoslav Communist Party wanted that the Slovene partisans should be brought under more exclusive Communist control . This was not officially declared until the Dolomite Declaration of 1 March 1943 . The High Command of the Slovene Partisans ( Supreme Command at first ) was established by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Slovenia on 22 June 1941 . The command members were the commander Franc Leskošek ( a . k . a . Luka ) , the political commissar Boris Kidrič ( succeeded by Miha Marinko ) , deputy commander Aleš Bebler ( a . k . a . Primož ) , and members Stane Žagar , Oskar Kovačič , Miloš Zidanšek , Dušan Podgornik , and Marijan Brecelj . The decision to start armed resistance was passed at a meeting on 16 July 1941 . The first partisan shot in the Slovene Lands was fired by one Miha Novak on 22 July 1941 at a former Yugoslav policeman who was claimed to have collaborated with the Germans and to have betrayed to them local supporters of the Communist Party . The man was attacked by the Šmarna Gora Partisan group from an ambush at Pšatnik Forest near Tacen . The Germans arrested about 30 people and executed two of them . In the latter Socialist Republic of Slovenia , 22 July was celebrated as the Day of the National Rising . The historian Jože Dežman stated in 2005 that this was a celebration of a day when a Slovene wounded another Slovene by shooting and that it symbolised the victory of the Communist Party over its own nation . In addition to the war against the occupying forces , there was a civilian war going on in the Slovene Lands and both the Communist and the anti - Communist side tried to cover it , according to Dežman . At the very beginning the Partisan forces were small , poorly armed and without any infrastructure , but Spanish Civil War veterans amongst them had some experience with guerrilla warfare . Some of the members of Liberation Front and partisans were ex - members of the TIGR resistance movement . Autonomy . The partisan activities in Slovenia were initially independent of Tito ' s Partisans in the south . In autumn 1942 , Tito attempted for the first time to control the Slovene resistance movement . Arsa Jovanović , a leading Yugoslav communist who was sent from Tito ' s Supreme Command of Yugoslav partisan resistance , ended his mission to establish central control over the Slovene partisans unsuccessfully in April 1943 . The merger of the Slovene Partisans with Tito ' s forces happened in 1944 . The Slovene Partisans retained their specific organizational structure and Slovene language as commanding language until the last months of World War II , when their language was removed as the commanding language . From 1942 till after 1944 , they wore the triglavka s , which was then gradually replaced with the " Titovka " cap as part of their uniform . In March 1945 , the Slovene Partisan Units were officially merged with the Yugoslav Army and thus ceased to exist as a separate formation . The General Staff of the Slovene Partisan Army was abolished in May 1945 . Cooperation with Allies . In June 1943 Major William Jones arrived at the high command of the Slovene resistance units located in the Kočevje forest as the envoy of a British - American military mission , and one month later the Slovene Partisans received their first consignment of arms from the Allies . Number of combatants . The estimates of the number of Slovene Partisans differ . Despite a solid support among the Slovenes , the numbers of Slovene Partisans was quite small and increased only in the latter stages of the war . There were no more than 700 – 800 Slovene Partisans in August 1941 , about 2000 in the end of 1941 , 5 , 500 in September 1943 , at the time of the capitulation of Italy . According to Slovene Historical Atlas , published in 2011 , in summer 1942 there were 5 , 300 Slovene partisans and 400 members of the Home Guard , a year after in summer 1943 there was unchanged number , i . e . 5 , 300 Slovene partisans , but the number of members of the Home Guard increased to 6 , 000 , also there were 200 members of the Slovene Chetniks , in autumn 1943 ( after the capitulation of Italian army ) there were 20 , 000 Slovene partisans , 3 , 000 members of the Home Guard and no Slovene Chetniks left , while in summer 1944 there were 30 , 000 Slovene partisans , 17 , 000 members of the Home Guard and 500 members of the Slovene Chetniks , and in winter 1945 the number of Slovene partisans increased to 34 , 000 , while the number of members of the Home Guard and members of the Slovene Chetniks was unchanged . In December 1944 , there were 38 , 000 Slovene Partisans , which was the peak number . Partisans who were ethnic Germans . Although majority of the Gottschee ethnic Germans obeyed the Nazi Germany which issued an order that all of them should relocate from Province of Ljubljana , which was occupied by the Fascist Italy , to the " Ranner Dreieck " or Brežice Triangle , which was in the German occupation zone , some of them ( fifty six ) refused to leave their homes and , instead , decided to join Slovene Partisans fighting against Italians together with their Slovene neighbours . Logistics . In December 1943 , the Franja Partisan Hospital was built in difficult and rugged terrain , only a few hours from Austria and the central parts of Germany . 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 . Notable members . Members of Slovene Partisans who are today internationally most notable include Boris Pahor , a writer and public intellectual , Nazi concentration camps survivor , who opposed Italian Fascism and Titoist Communism , as well .