Back الحرب العالمية الثانية في مقدونيا اليوغوسلافية Arabic Народна-вызваленчая барацьба ў Македоніі Byelorussian Комунистическа съпротива във Вардарска Македония Bulgarian Β΄ Παγκόσμιος Πόλεμος στη Γιουγκοσλαβική Μακεδονία Greek Seconde Guerre mondiale en Macédoine yougoslave French Народноослободителна борба во Вардарска Македонија Macedonian Segunda Guerra Mundial na Macedônia Iugoslava Portuguese Народно-освободительная война в Вардарской Македонии Russian Makedonija u Narodnooslobodilačkoj borbi Serbo-Croatian Македонија у Народноослободилачкој борби Serbian
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| World War II in Yugoslav Macedonia | ||||||||
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| Part of World War II in Yugoslavia | ||||||||
 Map of Vardar Macedonia during World War II. The area was divided between Albania and Bulgaria and the frontier between them run approximately along the line: Struga – Tetovo – Gjilan – Vranje. (3 years, 7 months, 1 week and 5 days) | ||||||||
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| Belligerents | ||||||||
 Bulgaria (from Sep. 1944) LANÇ |
 Chetniks | |||||||
| Commanders and leaders | ||||||||
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| Strength | ||||||||
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1,000 (1941) 2,000 (1942) 8,000 (Sep. 1944)[1][2] 66,000 (Dec. 1944)[3] 110,000 (April 1945)[4][unreliable source?] 340,000 Bulgarian soldiers in Southern Serbia and Vardar Macedonia (October – December 1944) |
~32,000 Bulgarian soldiers in Southern Serbia and Vardar Macedonia (May 1941 – September 1944)[5] ~8,000 Chetniks | |||||||
| Casualties and losses | ||||||||
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Total casualties: 24,000 By nationality: 7,000 Jews, 6,724 ethnic Macedonians, 6,000 Serbs, 4,000 Albanians 1,000 Bulgarians, Aromanians, Roma and Turks[7] By affiliation: 2,000 Civilians, 1,000 Collaborationists, 11,000 Soldiers and Partisans 7,000 victims of Concentration Camps | ||||||||
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| History of North Macedonia |
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| Timeline of the history of North Macedonia |
World War II in Yugoslav Macedonia started with the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941. Under the pressure of the Yugoslav Partisan movement, part of the Macedonian communists began in October 1941 a political and military campaign to resist the occupation of Vardar Macedonia. Officially, the area was called then Vardar Banovina, because the use of very name Macedonia was avoided in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.[8][9] It was occupied mostly by Bulgarian, but also by German, Italian, and Albanian forces.
Initially, there was no organised resistance in the region because the majority of the Macedonian Slavs nurtured strong pro-Bulgarian sentiments, although this could've been an effect from the previous Kingdom of Yugoslavia rule which had negative impact on the majority of the population.[10] Even the local Communists, separated from the Yugoslav and joined the Bulgarian Communist Party.[11] However, even those Macedonians who felt that they were Bulgarians soon discovered that the Bulgarians from Bulgaria were suspicious of them and considered them second-class Bulgarians.[12] In fact, Bulgarian authorities began a process of Bulgarianization as they realised that only part of the Macedonian population felt Bulgarian or was pro-Bulgarian.[12]
Communist resistance started to grow only in 1943 with the capitulation of Italy and the Soviet victories over Nazi Germany.[13][14] The role of the Bulgarian communists, who avoided organizing mass armed resistance, was also a key factor.[15] Their influence over the Macedonian Committee remained dominant until 1943, when it became obvious that Germany and Bulgaria would be defeated.
At that time Tito's special emissary Svetozar Vukmanović arrived in Macedonia.[16] Vukmanović had to activate the struggle and give it a new ethnic Macedonian facade. This led to the rise of younger generation anti-Bulgarian oriented partisan leaders, who were loyal to Yugoslavia.[17] They formed in 1943 the People's Liberation Army of Macedonia and the Macedonian Communist Party. In the western part of the area, the Albanian Partisans also participated in the resistance movement.
After Bulgaria switched sides in the war in September 1944, the Bulgarian 5th. Army stationed in Macedonia, moved back to the old borders of Bulgaria. In the early October the newly formed Bulgarian People's Army together with the Red Army reentered occupied Yugoslavia to blocking the German forces withdrawing from Greece. Yugoslav Macedonia was liberated in end of November. After the German retreat forced by the Bulgarian offensive, the conscription of Macedonians in the People's Liberation Army increased significantly.
The operation was commonly called by the Yugoslav Marxist historiography the National Liberation War of Macedonia (Macedonian: Народноослободителна борба на Македонија, Narodnoosloboditelna borba na Makedonija) in Yugoslavia, similarly to the greater Yugoslav People's Liberation War. Some of the combatants also developed aspirations for independence of the region of Macedonia, but were suppressed at the end of the war by the communist authorities.
It marked the defeat of Bulgarian nationalism and the victory of the pro-Yugoslav Macedonian nationalism in the area. As result the new Communist authorities persecuted the former collaborationists with the charges of "Great Bulgarian chauvinism" and cracked down on pro-Bulgarian organisations that supported ideas of Greater Bulgaria and those which opposed the Yugoslav idea and insisted on Macedonian independence.
- ^ Bulgaria During the Second World War, Marshall Lee Miller, Stanford University Press, 1975, p. 202.
- ^ Who Are the Macedonians? Hugh Poulton, C. Hurst & Co. Publishers, 2000. p. 104.
- ^ The Slavonic and East European review, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, 1991, p. 304.
- ^ Зимските операции на Македонска војска 1943/44 – Раде Гогов, носител на "Партизанска споменица 1941".
- ^ Александър Гребенаров, Надя Николова. Българското управление във Вардарска Македония (1941 – 1944). Кн. No. 63 от поредицата „Архивите говорят" на Държавна агенция „Архиви", 2011, .стр. 512.
- ^ Klaus Schönherr: Der Rückzug aus Griechenland. In: Karl-Heinz Frieser, Klaus Schmider, Klaus Schönherr, Gerhard Schreiber, Krisztián Ungváry, Bernd Wegner: Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, Band 8, Die Ostfront 1943/44 – Der Krieg im Osten und an den Nebenfronten. Im Auftrag des MGFA hrsg. von Karl-Heinz Frieser. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, München 2007, ISBN 978-3-421-06235-2, pp. 1089–1099; (in German).
- ^ Zerjavic, Vladimir. Yugoslavia Manipulations With the Number of Second World War Victims. Croatian Information Centre, ISBN 0-919817-32-7 [1] Archived 5 July 2016 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Donald Bloxham, The Final Solution: A Genocide, OUP Oxford, 2009, ISBN 0199550336, p. 65.
- ^ Chris Kostov, Contested Ethnic Identity: The Case of Macedonian Immigrants in Toronto, Peter Lang, 2010, ISBN 3034301960, p. 76.
- ^ Boškovska, Nada (2017). Yugoslavia and Macedonia Before Tito: Between Repression and Integration. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 282, 284. ISBN 9781786730732.
- ^ "The Bulgarian occupation forces in the Serbian part of Macedonia were received as liberators and pro-Bulgarian feeling ran high in the early stages of the occupation. Neither the Communist position regarding a separate Macedonian nation nor the idea of a Yugoslav federation met with much response from the Slav population, which nurtured pro-Bulgarian sentiments. The local Communists, led by M. Satorov, splintered off from the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and joined the Bulgarian Labour Party (which was Communist), with the slogan "One state, one party". The subsequent dissatisfaction with the occupation authorities was due to social factors, rather than national ones. This was also why Tito's resistance movement in Yugoslav Macedonia failed to develop." For more see: Spyridon Sfetas, "Autonomist Movements of the Slavophones in 1944: The Attitude of the Communist Party of Greece and the Protection of the Greek-Yugoslav Border". Balkan Studies 1995; 36 (2): pp. 297–317.
- ^ a b Tomasevich, Jozo (2001). War and Revolution in Yugoslavia 1941–1945. Stanford University Press. pp. 163–164.
- ^ Bulgaria During the Second World War, Marshall Lee Miller, Stanford University Press, 1975, ISBN 0804708703, pp. 132–133.
- ^ Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Macedonia, Dimitar Bechev, Scarecrow Press, 2009, ISBN 0810862956 introduction Ixiii.
- ^ Viktor Meier, Yugoslavia: A History of Its Demise, Routledge, 2005, ISBN 1134665113, p. 181.
- ^ Dejan Djokić, Yugoslavism: histories of a failed idea, 1918–1992, Hurst, 2003, ISBN 1850656630, p. 120.
- ^ Roumen Daskalov, Diana Mishkova ed., Entangled Histories of the Balkans, Vol. Two, Brill, 2013, ISBN 9004261915, p. 534.