National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Macedonia | |
---|---|
![]() The flag of the Macedonian Partisans | |
Active | 1941 [1] (1943) [2] – 1945 |
Allegiance | Communist Party of Macedonia |
Size | 1,000 (1941) 8,000 (August 1944) [3] [4] 66,000 (late 1944) [5] up to 100,000 (April 1945) |
Part of | ![]() |
Anniversaries | August 18 October 11 |
Engagements | National Liberation War of Macedonia (part of World War II in Yugoslavia) |
Commanders | |
Notable commanders | Mirče Acev † Mihajlo Apostolski Metodija Andonov-Čento Svetozar Vukmanović-Tempo |
The Macedonian Partisans, [lower-alpha 1] officially the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Macedonia, [lower-alpha 2] was a communist and anti-fascist resistance movement formed in occupied Yugoslavia which was active in World War II in Yugoslav Macedonia. Units of the army were formed by Macedonians within the framework of the Yugoslav Partisans as well as other communist resistance organisations operating in Macedonia at the time [6] and were led by the General Staff of the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Macedonia, headed by Mihajlo Apostolski. [7]
After the Bulgarian takeover of Vardar Banovina in April 1941, the Macedonian communists fell in the sphere of influence of the Bulgarian Communist Party. [8] They thought that the ordinary Macedonian people believe in Bulgaria's role as liberator and that no Macedonian wants to fight against the Bulgarian soldiers. [9] Nevertheless when the USSR was attacked by Nazi Germany in June, some form of anti-Axis resistance started, with the emergence of Macedonian Partisan military units. Initially they had no real success. [10] The problem arose at the end of 1941, when CPY lost its contact with the local communists due to its leaders withdrawal into Bosnia and because the Bulgarian forces captured Lazar Koliševski, whom the CPY had appointed to led the Macedonian communists. [11] The role of the Bulgarian communists, which avoided organizing mass armed resistance in the area, was also a key factor. [12] Although several Macedonian partisan detachments were formed through the end of 1942 which fought battles against the Bulgarian, Italian, German and Albanian occupation forces and despite Sofia's ill-managed administration, most Macedonian Communists had yet to be lured to Yugoslavia. Between 1941 and 1943, Tito have sent five emissaries to Macedonia, to persuade his ill-disciplined comrades, but their efforts had limited success, and the Regional Committee of the Communists in Macedonia was de facto under the control of the Bulgarian Communist Party. [13]
To change that, in the beginning of 1943 the Montenegrin Svetozar Vukmanović-Tempo was sent by Tito as an assistant to the HQ of the Macedonian partisan forces. One of his objectives was to destroy the influence of the BCP in Macedonia and to fight against any form of Macedonian autonomism. He would have to "Macedonize" the struggle’s form and content, and to give it an ethnic Macedonian facade. One of his main achievements was also that the wartime pro-Bulgarian trend receded into the background of pro-Yugoslav one. Tempo was able to capitalize on the growing contradictions towards Bulgarian authorities, which during 1942 were involved into a policy of centralization, contradicting their initial agenda to respect Macedonian autonomy. Yugoslav communists proclaimed as their aim the issue of unification of the three regions of Macedonia – Yugoslav, Greek and Bulgarian, and so managed to get also Macedonian nationalists. As result the Communist Party of Macedonia (CPM) was formed on 19 March 1943 in Tetovo, then in the Italian occupation zone. In May 1943 Mihajlo Apostolski was promoted to Major General and during the Second Session of AVNOJ he became a member of the Presidency of AVNOJ. Apostolski became the commander of the General Staff of the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Macedonia. [14]
The resistance started to grow in the summer of 1943 with the capitulation of Italy and the Soviet victories over Nazi Germany. [15] The date of the creation of its major unit, the Mirče Acev Battalion, on August 18, 1943 on Mount Slavej [16] [ page needed ] between Ohrid and Kičevo, then in the Italian occupation zone, is officially celebrated today in North Macedonia as the Day of the Army of the Republic of North Macedonia. On 11 November 1943, the 1st Macedonian Kosovo Shock Brigade was formed in western Macedonia by merging two Vardar Macedonian and one Kosovo battalion. The second — larger ethnic Macedonian military unit was the 2nd Macedonian Shock Brigade, formed on 22 December 1943 just across the border in Greek Macedonia. [17] [ page needed ] On 26 February 1944 in the village of Zegljane, near Kumanovo, the 3rd Macedonian Shock Brigade was formed. These three brigades were the nucleus of the National Liberation Army of Macedonia, which after constant battles became stronger in numbers. Meanwhile, the second session of AVNOJ recognized the Macedonians as a separate nation for the first time in November 1943. From 8,000 partisans in the summer of 1944, until the final military operations in the Yugoslav National Liberation War in April 1945, the National Liberation Army of Macedonia had increased to three corps, seven divisions and thirty brigades, all with a total of 100,000 regular soldiers. [18] Chronological composition by the number of the members of MNLA (partisans, their helpers, etc.) was as follows: [19]
Late 1941 | Late 1942 | September 1943 | Late 1943 | August 1944 [20] [21] | Late 1944 [22] | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Macedonia | 1,000 | 2,000 | 10,000 | 7,000 | 8,000 | 66,000 |
Notes
References
{{cite news}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link){{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link){{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)The Yugoslav Partisans, or the National Liberation Army, officially the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia, was the communist-led anti-fascist resistance to the Axis powers in occupied Yugoslavia during World War II. Led by Josip Broz Tito, the Partisans are considered to be Europe's most effective anti-Axis resistance movement during World War II.
The Socialist Republic of Macedonia, or SR Macedonia, commonly referred to as Socialist Macedonia, Yugoslav Macedonia or simply Macedonia, was one of the six constituent republics of the post-World War II Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and a nation state of the Macedonians. After the transition of the political system to parliamentary democracy in 1990, the Republic changed its official name to Republic of Macedonia in 1991, and with the beginning of the breakup of Yugoslavia, it declared itself an independent country and held a referendum on 8 September 1991 on which a sovereign and independent state of Macedonia, with a right to enter into any alliance with sovereign states of Yugoslavia was approved.
The Order of the People's Hero or the Order of the National Hero, was a Yugoslav gallantry medal, the second highest military award, and third overall Yugoslav decoration. It was awarded to individuals, military units, political and other organisations who distinguished themselves by extraordinary heroic deeds during war and in peacetime. The recipients were thereafter known as People's Heroes of Yugoslavia or National Heroes of Yugoslavia. The vast majority was awarded to partisans for actions during the Second World War. A total of 1,322 awards were awarded in Yugoslavia, and 19 were awarded to foreigners.
The League of Communists of Macedonia was the Macedonian branch of the ruling League of Communists of Yugoslavia during the period 1943 – 1990. It was formed on the basis of the Regional Committee of Communists in Macedonia under the name Communist Party of Macedonia during the antifascist National Liberation War of Macedonia in World War II. It retained that name until April 1952.
The Anti-fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia was the supreme legislative and executive people's representative body of the communist Macedonian state from August 1944 until the end of World War II. The body was set up by the Macedonian Partisans during the final stages of the World War II in Yugoslav Macedonia. That occurred clandestinely in August 1944, in the Bulgarian occupation zone of Yugoslavia. Simultaneously another state was declared by pro-Nazi Germany Macedonian right-wing nationalists.
Metodija Andonov-Čento was a Macedonian statesman, the first president of the Anti-Fascist Assembly of the National Liberation of Macedonia and of the People's Republic of Macedonia in the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia after the Second World War. In the Bulgarian historiography he is often considered a Bulgarian.
Metodi Tasev Shatorov - Sharlo was a Bulgarian Communist Party activist and also the temporary leader of the Regional Committee of Communists in Macedonia in 1940-1941. Like most left-wing politicians from Macedonia, during the 1930s he adopted the Resolution of the Comintern on the Macedonian question, about the recognition of a distinct Macedonian national identity. However, such Macedonian communist functionaries, originating from the Bulgarian Communist Party (BCP) and Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (United), maintained pro-Bulgarian sentiments.
Mihailo Apostolski was a Macedonian general, partisan, military theoretician, politician, academic and historian. He was the commander of the General Staff of the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Macedonia, colonel general of the Yugoslav People's Army, and was declared a People's Hero of Yugoslavia.
The National Liberation Front, also known as the People's Liberation Front, was a communist political and military organization created by the Slavic Macedonian minority in Greece. The organization operated from 1945–1949, most prominently in the Greek Civil War. As far as its ruling cadres were concerned its participation in the Greek Civil War was nationalist rather than communist, with the goal of secession from Greece.
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 very name Macedonia was prohibited in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. It was occupied mostly by Bulgarian, but also by German, Italian, and Albanian forces.
Mirče Acev was a Macedonian organizer of the Yugoslav communist resistance in Vardar Macedonia during World War II. He graduated from the University of Belgrade Faculty of Law in Yugoslavia, after which he became a commander of the Yugoslav Partisans and was declared a People's Hero of Yugoslavia, on 29 July 1945.
The Independent State of Macedonia was a proposed puppet state of Nazi Germany during the Second World War in the territory of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia that had been occupied by the Kingdom of Bulgaria following the invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941.
Vera Aceva - Dosta was a Macedonian communist, participant in the World War II in Yugoslavia and a national hero of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY).
The Supreme Headquarters was created in June 1941 by the Central Committee of the Yugoslav Communist Party after the German-led Axis invasion of Yugoslavia of 6 April 1941. It was the main command and staff body of the Yugoslav Partisans, with Josip Broz Tito at its head.
The Stracin–Kumanovo operation was an offensive operation conducted in 1944 by the Bulgarian Army against German forces in occupied Yugoslavia which culminated in the capture of Skopje in 1944. With the Bulgarian declaration of war on Germany on September 8, followed by Bulgarian withdrawal from the area, the German 1st Mountain Division moved north, occupied Skopje, and secured the strategic Belgrade–Nis–Salonika railroad line. On October 14, withdrawing from Greece, Army Group E faced Soviet and Bulgarian divisions advancing in Eastern Serbia and Vardar Macedonia; by November 2, the last German units left Northern Greece.
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. It was led by Yugoslav revolutionary communists during the World War II. NOP was under the leadership of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (KPJ) 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 was founded as a constituent of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill referred to the movement as "the Croatian miracle".
The Regional Committee of Communists in Macedonia was the provincial communist organization in Vardar Macedonia from 1939 to 1943.
"Gotse Delchev" Brigade was a military unit composed of conscripts and volunteers from the region of Macedonia. The Brigade was named after the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization revolutionary Gotse Delchev.
The Partisan Hospital is a former hospital and WWII historical site located on the mountain of Plačkovica near the village of Šipkovica, North Macedonia. Here, the wounded partisans were treated, during the Axis Spring Offensive in 1944.
Dimče Gjošev Mirčev was a Macedonian communist and partisan. He was awarded posthumously the Order of the People's Hero on 2 August 1949.