I know of the Yugoslav partisans and their contribution (most notably they liberated their own country).
And that's not important? Wasn't the whole point to liberate us from Nazism and defeat Hitler? Or do our lands and efforts not matter?
Much of Slovenia was part of the Third Reich after the German Occupation. It was part of Nazi Germany and under direct Hitler's rule. It was not a puppet state of the Nazis, it WAS the Nazi State. Germany annexed it. So basically, there were lots of German soldiers here, as it was formally Germany. The Croatian State is another story but the battles we're talking about here didn't take place there. When Hitler came into Maribor (the 2nd largest Slovene city), he said: "Make this city German." He wanted to make it part of the German "Lebensraum" and was starting to get quite successful in forced germanization. In June 1941, they made a plan to move 200.000 Slovenes out of Slovenia. Italy also got a large part of our territories.
german units fleeing the Soviet advance dont strike me as major players nor major forces.
By the time the Soviets came here, much of our territories were already under Tito's control, under control of the Yugoslav Army which was first a guerilla force but grew into a conventional Army with conventional warfare that fought the German forces just like the rest of the Allies did. So saying they were fleeing solely from the Soviets is a bit absurd, to be honest. The Soviet presence here was at best limited.
In September 1944, Soviet Red Army advanced into Yugoslavia and forced the rapid withdrawal of the German Army Groups E and F in Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia to rescue them from being cut off. By this point, the Yugoslav Partisans under Marshal Josip Broz Tito controlled much of the Yugoslav territory and were engaged in delaying efforts against the German forces further south. In northern Serbia, the Red Army, with limited support from Bulgarian forces, assisted the Partisans in a joint liberation of the capital city of Belgrade on October 20.
It was the Slovene Partisans that liberated Ljubljana from Nazi rule. Who do you think they were really fleeing from here? Was it maybe the people who they were oppresing for years, sending to concentration camps, burning their villages, and killing their innocent?
I see little difference between Ukrainian forces in a puppet Ukrainian state resisting the Soviets and the Ustashe in a puppet Croatian state resisting the Yugoslav partisans.
What exactly are you talking about? Are you seriously suggesting that WW2 was still being fought in the 50s? And as I said before, the last WW2 battles in Europe that the OP talks about did not take place in the Croatian state, they took place in the area Germany considered their own, their "Lebensraum". But in any case, and even if this was the Croatian Independent State, they were, in fact, battles against the German Nazi Army and its helpers, battles against the Axis forces.
If the qualifier for the Slovene battle to count is the presence if German forces, then what of sporadic (1-5 man) German resistence to Soviets/partisans in the rest of Eastern Europe?
Hmm..a few individuals as opposed to an Army of 30.000? And what exactly are you talking about? Where did this happen?
You obvisouly seem to think that the Partisans were not the Allies, and that they were not really important in the fight against Nazis. Well, the Yugoslav Front was an important part of WW2. Do you know anything about it? Here is what was happening in the end, a short while before the final battles in Slovenia:
On March 20, 1945, the Partisans launched a general offensive in the Mostar-ViÅ¡egrad-Drina sector. With large swaths of Bosnian, Croatian and Slovenian countryside already under Partisan guerrilla control, the final operations consisted in connecting these territories and capturing major cities and roads. For the general offensive Marshal Josip Broz Tito commanded a Partisan force of about 800,000 men organized into four armies: the 1st Army commanded by Peko DapÄević, 2nd Army commanded by KoÄa Popović, 3rd Army commanded by Kosta NaÄ‘, and the 4th Army commanded by Petar DrapÅ¡in. In addition, the Yugoslav Partisans had eight independent army corps (the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th, and the 10th).
Set against the Yugoslav Partisans was German General Alexander Löhr of Army Group E (Heeresgruppe E). This Army Group had seven army corps (the XV Mountain, XV Cossack, XXI, XXXIV, LXIX, and LXXXXVII). These corps included seventeen weakened divisions (1st Cossack, 2nd Cossack, 11th, 41st, 104th, 22nd, 181st, 7th SS, 369th Croat, 373rd Croat, 392nd Croat, 237th, 188th, 438th, 138th, 14th SS Ruthenian, and the Stefan Division). In addition to the seven corps, the Axis had remnant naval forces (under constant attack by the British Royal Navy and Royal Air Force) to defend the coast, strong police forces to secure the rear, and roughly twenty weak, remnant divisions of local Croatian and Serb units. The Croats included Ustaše and Croatian Home Guard units of the Independent State of Croatia, as well as the Air Force of the Independent State of Croatia and the units of the Croatian Air Force Legion, returned from service on the Eastern Front. The Serbs included the remnants of the Serbian State Guard and the Serbian Volunteer Corps from the Serbian Military Administration. There were even some units of the Slovene Home Guard (Slovensko domobranstvo, or SD) still intact in Slovenia. By the end of March, 1945, it was obvious to the Croatian Army Command that, although the front remained intact, they would eventually be defeated by sheer lack of ammunition. For this reason, the decision was made to retreat into Austria, in order to surrender to the British forces advancing north from Italy.[16]
Bihać was liberated by the Partisans the same day that the general offensive was launched. The 4th Army, under the command of Petar Drapšin, broke through the defenses of the XV Cossack Corps. By April 20, Drapšin liberated Lika and the Croatian Littoral, including the islands, and reached the old Yugoslav border with Italy. On May 1, after capturing the former Italian possessions of Rijeka and Istria from the German LXXXXVII Corps, the Yugoslav 4th Army beat the western Allies to Trieste by one day.
The Yugoslav 2nd Army, under the command of KoÄa Popović, forced a crossing of the Bosna River on April 5, capturing Doboj, and reached the Una River. On May 8, the Yugoslav 2nd Army, along with units of the Yugoslav 1st Army, captured Zagreb. On April 6, the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th Corps of the Yugoslav Partisans took Sarajevo from the German XXI Corps.
On April 12, the Yugoslav 3rd Army, under the command of Kosta Nađ, forced a crossing of the Drava river. The 3rd Army then fanned out through Podravina, reached a point north of Zagreb, and crossed the old Austrian border with Yugoslavia in the Dravograd sector. The 3rd Army closed the ring around the enemy forces when its advanced motorized detachments linked up with detachments of the 4th Army in Carinthia.
Also on April 12, the Yugoslav 1st Army, under the command of Peko DapÄević penetrated the fortified front of the German XXXIV Corps in Syrmia. By April 22, the 1st Army had smashed the fortifications and was advancing towards Zagreb. After taking Zagreb with the Yugoslav 2nd Army, both armies advanced in Slovenia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yugoslav_F ... #AftermathBut anyway, here is this last battle, the Battle of Poljana:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_PoljanaThe Battle of Poljana (Monday May 14 - Tuesday May 15, 1945)
was the last battle of World War II in Europe. It started at Poljana, near the village of Prevalje in Yugoslavia,[1] and was the culmination of a series of engagements between the Yugoslav Partisans and a large retreating
Axis column, numbering in excess of 30,000 men. The column consisted of
German (Wehrmacht), Ustaše, Montenegrin Chetniks, and Slovene Home Guard forces, as well as other fascist collaborationist factions and even civilians who were attempting to escape into British-controlled Austria.
BackgroundIn the spring of 1945, the German Army and their allies were in
full retreat from the Yugoslav Partisans. In early April, the Partisan 3rd Army, under the command of Kosta Nađ, fanned out through the Drava Valley region (Podravina), reaching a point north of Zagreb, and crossed the old Austrian border with Yugoslavia in the Dravograd sector. The 3rd Army closed the ring around Axis forces when its advanced motorized detachments linked up with detachments of the 4th Army in Carinthia. As a result, the German Army Group E was prevented from escaping north-west across the Drava river. Completely surrounded,
General Alexander Löhr, Commander-in-Chief of Army Group E was forced to sign the unconditional surrender of the forces under his command[2] at Topolšica, near Velenje, Slovenia, on Wednesday May 9. Nevertheless, some of his troops, along with collaborationist units, namely the Ustaše, Slovene Home Guard, Montenegrin Chetniks, and elements of other factions, continued to resist and tried to fight their way west to what they hoped would be the protection of the British at KlagenfurtThe BattleJust before 9am on May 14, a significant force of mostly Ustaše with some Chetniks and Slovenian Home Guard troops approached Partisan positions at the Šurnik farm near Poljana demanding free passage west. This was refused, and firing commenced on both sides. Ustaše attacks intensified in the afternoon, evening and overnight, finally ceasing on the morning of May 15 with the arrival of around 20 British tanks. Tense negotiations followed, during which British officers made it abundantly clear that they would not offer protection to the collaborators and that
unconditional surrender to the Partisans was the only option.
White flags were finally raised around 4pm on May 15 [3].
Casualty estimates were at least
310 Ustaše dead in the two main locations of fighting,
and 250 wounded. On the Partisan side, losses were considerably lower, numbering fewer than 100
dead and wounded. The surrender of this last area of
Axis resistance is considered to be the end of World War II in Europe, 8 days after the official surrender of the Germans on Monday May 7, 1945.
However, numerous isolated incidents carried on in the next few days, including one on the evening of May 20 when a group of Ustaše appeared near Ferlach (Slovene: Borovlje), and attempted to set terms for their passage west. "As the Ustaše did not want to surrender" reads the operational diary of the 2nd Battalion of the Partisan 11th Dalmatian Assault Brigade, "we attacked them at 21:00hrs. On this occasion we took 24 Ustaše soldiers and one officer" [4].
Supposedly, 50.000+ Nazis were killed in the Yugoslav Front from 1941 to 1945
And here are the overall statistics of the Yugoslav war victims, by ethnicity (there are more estimates that people did not agree on, especially the Germans):
But anyway, what are you trying to prove by disagreeing with a fact that is a general consensus among historians?
"Nations ... as an inherent political destiny, are a myth. Nationalism, which sometimes takes preexisting cultures and turns them into nations, sometimes invents them, and often obliterates preexisting cultures: that is a reality." - E. Gellner