A synopsis of the book "Slovenes and their Liberty Struggle During Occupation 1945 Annotated" by Maria Velikonja. The first in a planned series covering research and history of her family from Slovenia. Available from ((https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CP1NJTDM/|Amazon Books))
In 2023 the author found a document, long hidden in her father’s papers, that completely changes the narrative that has split Slovenian society in half over the aftermath of World War Two between the Slovene Home Guard and the communist Partisans. The document, written during WWII by the National Committee for Slovenia and their intelligence operatives, sheds light on how the Home Guard supported the Allies throughout the war and prepared to fight the Nazis alongside the Allies.
The document also details how the communist Partisans brutally murdered hundreds of American and British airmen who parachuted into Slovenia during WWII. Although the Slovene Home Guards reported the murders to the British intelligence service via their secret communications network, it is unclear whether this information was ever passed on to the United States.
The end of WWII brought liberation to western Europe, but only continued terror in the form of communism to the east. Because communists ran Slovenia for 45 years from 1945 to 1990, they were able to secretly murder their opponents, hide their bodies, destroy their documents, and continue to create a false narrative of communist heroic acts and accomplishments, while simultaneously painting their opponents as collaborators with the occupier.
With the passage of time, more and more hidden documents have emerged to help portray the actual story, and more survivors of the communist's 1945 post-war mass murders have come forward to share their first-hand witness experiences. This report, likely the only copy to have survived the war and communist purges, clearly sets out the case that Slovenia's anti-communists were not collaborators of the occupiers. From the outset of the war, the pro-Allies groups that became the National Committee for Slovenia (the Slovenian and Sokol Legions, Zaveza, the Yugoslav Army, etc.) set up a system of collecting intelligence on the occupier for the Allies and carried it out this system throughout the war. Dozens of intelligence agents, embedded in the Village Guards and Slovene Home Guard units, regularly sent information on German military movements to the Yugoslav government in London, via British military intelligence. They used radios, telegrams, and letters. No actual collaborative army in Europe would report Germany's military activities to the Allies.
Slovenia was occupied by both Italy and Germany at the beginning of the war on April 6, 1941 (and Hungary at the eastern section). Germany assimilated Slovenia and made it part of Germany. Not only did ordinary Slovenes have to contend with fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, they also had to watch out for the communist Partisans, their fellow Slovenes. The Partisans were supported first by the Soviet Union, and after Italy withdrew from Slovenia in 1943, the Allies were also supporting the Partisans. The information contained in this document was collected by agents working covertly at great risk to themselves. They were not only working behind enemy lines, but they were also doing so with two enemies watching.
Many people paid the ultimate price for helping to produce this document, which was written secretly during WWII. Anti-communist intelligence agents, including the author’s father, gathered information about both the German occupier and the communist Partisans, and passed it on to the Slovene Home Guard and the underground Yugoslav Army radio operators, who then sent the information to British intelligence in London. Other agents took information about German movements and attempted to deliver it in person to the Allies. A number of these agents were uncovered by the Germans and either sent to German concentration camps where they died or were executed by the Yugoslav communist Partisans. As the document contains the names of numerous witnesses to crimes committed by the Partisans, it could not safely be shared or publicized until recently. This original document, like many others before it, was written in English initially for the express purpose of informing the Allies about the occupier's movements. As the war continued, the reports included information about the communist Partisans. The writers could not believe that the Allies would arm and support the communists in Slovenia, who even brazenly killed American military servicemen who parachuted into Slovenia. The cruelty and criminality of the Partisans was an inconvenient truth for the Allies, who had already determined they would support their ally the Soviet Union.
While the Allies' decision to support the Soviet Union in order to defeat Nazi Germany in WWII is understood, the long-term effects of this decision are disproportionately felt in eastern Europe even today and especially in Slovenia. The Slovene Home Guards, who only took weapons from the Germans to form a police force to save themselves from the Partisans during Slovenia's civil war, have for too long been cast as the bad guys who "collaborated" with the occupier. At the same time, the Partisans were actively collaborating with the Germans, which is documented in this report and in the annexes which contain German documents ordering their military to work with the Partisans. The National Committee for Slovenia and all who worked to support it, fully believed up until the end of the war that the Allies would come take control of Slovenia and help them start a new democratic process in Slovenia. When the Allies did not do this, the Home Guards paid the ultimate price when at the end of the war Tito turned on them. They fled to Austria to escape Tito, only to be repatriated by the British back to Yugoslavia and then to their mass execution without trials.
Why this and earlier documents written and delivered to the Allies have not made it into the public arena earlier is not known at this time. Perhaps they were classified and will be available at some point. Perhaps they were destroyed by communist agents who infiltrated the British intelligence, or perhaps some in Britain made mistakes and covered them up. It is also not known whether the families of the American and other allied military servicemen who died in Slovenia, were told the actual circumstances of the deaths: that they were murdered by the Partisans. It is the author’s hope that by publicly sharing this document, others can now ask questions and conduct their own research.
Maria Velikonja, Nov 2023