Henry Bogdan: From Warsaw To Sofia

bound by the friendship treaty signed with Yugoslavia the preceding winter, and would only agree to military collaboration if Croatia proclaimed independence and the Hungarian minorities were threatened. The Hungarian chief of staff, General Henrik Werth, had in fact already agreed to Hitler's offer; on April 3, when Teleki learned that the Wehrmacht had begun deployment across Hungarian soil, he chose to commit suicide rather than break his word. Teleki's death removed the last obstacle to Hungary's military participation, particularly since the new head of state, Laszlo Bardossy, was enthusiastically pro-German. Augmented by Hungarian and Italian contingents, the Wehrmacht quickly occupied Yugoslavia. In Zagreb on April 10, Croat nationalists took advantage of the new situation to take over the government. On the same day in Jellachich Square, Colonel Kvaternik declared the independence of the National Croat State, and on April 15, Ante Pavelitch, supported by the Croat fascist group, the Ustaschians, became the leader, the Poglavnik, of independent Croatia. Later there were plans to give the crown of Croatia to an Italian prince, the Duke of Spoleto. In Serbia, the Yugoslavian army tried to resist, but was rapidly overwhelmed, and surrendered on April 17. King Peter II and his government fled to London, where on April 22 they called for a general uprising.

Yugoslavia had disappeared under the joint forces of its neighboring countries and Croat separatism. In its place there was an independent Croat state, enlarged by Bosnia-Herzegovina on April 23, 1941, but deprived of Dalmatia, which went to Italy. At the center was a small Serbian state, occupied first by the Germans alone, and then by both Germans and Bulgarians. The rest of Yugoslavia was divided up among its neighbors: Gerrnany annexed northern Slovenia along with the Maribor region, and had direct rule over the Yugoslav Banat despite protests from Hungary and Rumania; Italy took southern Slovenia along with Ljubljana, and made a protectorate of the former Montenegro; Hungary recovered most of the Vojvodina including the towns of Szabadka and Ujvidek, while Albania, under Italian sovereignty since April, 1939, annexed Kosovo and part of Albanian-populated Macedonia. The Bulgarians received most of Macedonia including the town of Skopje, and at the same time, the defeat of Greece allowed them to retake the Aegean coast. Again in this case, despite the aggressive action of the Wehrmacht and its allies, the new borders were closer to the aspirations of the people than the old unified kingdom of Yugoslavia had been. But there was no room for idealism; Germany and Italy were not acting according to Wilsonian principles, but were only trying to establish their political and economic hegemony.

Just before the invasion of the USSR, postponed due to the events in Yugoslavia, the Reich and its allies were in a strong position in Danubian

and Balkan Europe. All of the countries in this region, by choice or by force, were in the German sphere of influence.

THE EASTERN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES DURING THE

GERMAN-SOVIET WAR, 1941-1945

At dawn on June 22, 1941, German troops unleashed Operation Barbarossa, planned since December, 1940, and invaded the Soviet Union from several points. On the same day, Rumania, Slovakia and Croatia declared war on the USSR. Budapest had not been asked to take part in the "Crusade against Bolshevism," but the Hungarian chief of staff wanted Hungary to participate in order to maintain good relations with the Reich. The bombardment of the Hungarian town of Kassa by apparently Soviet -- but more likely German or Slovak -- planes furnished the needed pretext, and on June 27, Hungary also declared war on the Soviets. Of all the Reich's allies, only Bulgaria remained neutral. From then on, however, directly or indirectly, all eastern European countries, by choice or by force, occupied, neutral or allied with the Reich, would be affected and drawn into the German war effort. And all of them, allies as well as victims, would suffer the consequences.

Germany's Allies

Incontestably, Antonescu,s Rumania showed the greatest enthusiasm for the war against the USSR. The Conducator first saw it an an excellent occasion to make a show of loyalty to Hitler. Interior policies were already aligned with Germany's, particularly policy regarding the Jews, who were at best sent to concentration camps and assigned to public works, or at worst murdered during bloody pogroms such as those that took place at Jassy and in Bukovina. But above all, Rumania saw the war as a way to recover land lost in 1948, and in effect, Bessarabia was reoccupied and brought back into Rumania in July, 1941. King Michael immediately awarded Antonescu the title of "Marshal of Rumania" for his successes. Later, Rumania was given all the Soviet territory between the Dniester and the Dnieper, or the province of Transistria with its capital, Odessa. Since 1848, Rumanian nationalists had considered this region part of their national territory, using dubious arguments to prove it. The new region was thoroughly pillaged and Rumanian colonists sent to "Rumanianize" the local populations. By 1941, 20 Rumanian divisions, over 700,000 soldiers, were fighting on the Russian front beside the Wehrmacht. In addition, Rumania delivered large quantities of food and nearly all the oil it produced to Germany.

Hungary participated on a smaller scale. Up until mid-1942, there were scarcely more than 40,000 Hungarian soldiers engaged in military operations

in Russia. The war was unpopular among both the opposition, which organized a peace demonstration in front of the statue of Petofi in Budapest on March 15, 1942, and among state leaders, including Nicolas Kallay, the country's prime minister as of March 9, 1942, and Vice Regent Istvan Horthy, son of the Admiral, all of whom were looking for a way out of the costly and unpopular conflict. Kallay made overtures to the Allies, who had broken off relations with Hungary in December, 1941, but these efforts were blocked by pro-German military command. To placate the Germans, who were aware of the Hungarians, double game, Kallay had to send the Second and Third armies to the front on the Don, bringing Hungarian military participation up to 250,000 men by the end of 1942. Hungary also sent Germany increased food supplies and most of its limited petroleum. By contrast, of the other countries in the war, Croatia and Slovakia sent only about 20,000 men each, and Bulgaria put only its economy at the service of the German war effort.

Slovakia and Croatia, like Bulgaria and Rumania, modeled their institutions and interior policies on those of Germany. In Slovakia, Father Tiso, with the support of the majority of the population, followed an ultra-nationalist line in regard to the Czechs who were interned or deported to Bohemia-Moravia; he also discriminated against the Jews. On September 10, 1941, the Slovak diet unanimously adopted a codex judaicus that limited to four percent the number of Jews who could hold public of fice or enter the liberal professions. A Slovak SS, called the Hlinka Guard, was established to maintain order. The Slovak regime was much less radical than those in neighboring countries, however, because of the Christian principles guiding the leaders. In Croatia, for example, Ante Pavelitch's government was known for its brutality and authoritarianism, with the state organized according to the Fuhrerprinzip. The regime distinguished itself in anti-Serbian and anti-Orthodox policy. The Croats, who had suffered 20 years of Serbian dictatorship, took violent revenge under the leadership of Ante Pavelitch. With the support of fascist Croats and Muslims from Bosnia, Pavelitch embarked on a campaign of systematic persecution of the 1,900,000 Orthodox Serbs who lived within the confines of the Croat state. Nearly 300,000 of them perished between 1941 and 1945, either because they had taken up arms to fight in resistance groups, or simply because they refused to give up their religious beliefs.

The Defeated Countries

While the countries described above had some independence beyond their close ties to Germany -- ties which also gave them certain privileges -- the countries occupied by Germany through annexation or defeat in war suffered a fate none would envy.

The protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia became part of the Great German Reich on March 15, 1939. Baron von Neurath, former foreign minister, was appointed protector, and Reinhard Heydrich became chief of police. By the end of 1939, the universities with young students full of patriotic sentiments were closed, and the Sokol groups dissolved. The population as a whole adopted a wait-and-see attitude, although isolated resistance groups acted with the Benes government in exile in London, or with the underground Communist party. Bohemia-Moravia's industry was actively engaged in the German war effort and also furnished manpower for German factories. In early 1943, nearly 300,000 Czechs were employed in factories in Germany. Until then, the population had remained calm and were secretly appreciative they had escaped Poland's fate and were still fully employed. The assassination of Heydrich, however, who had just succeeded von Neurath as protector, brought a wave of repression that radically changed popular feelings. On May 29, 1942, an assassin sent from England had struck down Heydrich, who always traveled with a small escort. Immediately afterwards, the two villages of Lidice and Lezaky were totally razed by the SS and their populations were massacred in reprisal. Thousands of arrests were followed by deportation to Germany. The entire population was under suspicion; the time of "collaboration" had passed.

Nothing could compare with the Polish situation. From the beginning, Poland was treated as a defeated enemy country. Governed directly by authorities of the occupation, the Poles lost nearly all of their rights. Hardest hit were the Jews, who were immediately penned up in overcrowded ghettos. Beginning in February, 1942, these ghettos were progressively emptied of their occupants who were sent to concentration camps. In September, 1942, the Warsaw ghetto of over 400,000 Jews began to feel the effects of the Nazi exterminations; the resulting revolt in early 1943 only accelerated the liquidation. A total of over 3,000,000 Polish Jews were exterminated. The German authorities also undertook a liquidation of the Polish elite. Intellectuals, artists, priests, monks, teachers, and members of the liberal professions were systematically interned or simply executed. The Polish nation suffered through yet another tragedy.

The German-Soviet war brought no changes, only the Polish territories annexed by the USSR in 1939 were amalgamated into the General- Couvernement. The Poles realized that the fate of their compatriots who fell into Soviet hands was hardly better than their own. They had further proof of this when on April 13, 1943, the Germans discovered in the forest of Katyn near Smolensk, eight enormous common graves containing the bodies of thousands of Polish officers taken prisoner by the Soviets at the end of September, 1939, and executed in the spring of 1940. The Soviets, like the Germans, clearly demonstrated their determination to destroy Polish society.

Poland was forced to participate in the German war effort; its agricultural and industrial output were requisitioned by Germany, and civilian manpower was sent to work in German factories, where in early 1943 there were over 1,600,000 civilian workers, 527,000 of them women. In the Balkans, the countries occupied by the Germans and their allies were subjected to a systematic exploitation of their resources. Serbia, under the puppet government of General Neditch, furnished only manpower and raw materials to Germany, but even these were limited by growing popular hostility. The Italian position was even more tenuous in regions they held; even in Albania they met active opposition from the local populations.

1943 -- THE TURNING POINT OF THE WAR

German military setbacks in the winter of 1942-43, marked by the Anglo-American landing in North Africa on November 8,1942, and the surrender of the Ninth German army at Stalingrad on February 3, 1943, completely changed the course of the war. German allies began to wonder if they had made the right choice, and resistance movements within most of the occupied countries took new hope and intensified their action against the occupying forces.

Rumania's Sudden Change of Allegiance

The example of the Italian king who, on July 24,1943, turned his back on Mussolini and signed an armistice with the Anglo-Americans on September 3, gave Germany's allies food for thought. In Rumania, the Conducator's namesake, Foreign Affairs Minister Michael Antonescu, noted the changing situation on the Russian front, and had been trying to establish contact with the Allies since summer of 1943. Antonescu's adversaries increased their efforts to persuade King Michael to dismiss the dictator and ask the Allies for an armistice as the king of Italy had done. In April of 1 944, Prince Barbu Stirbey was secretly sent to Cairo to open armistice negotiations. Peace supporters joined together into a National Democratic Front formed on June 20, 1944, which included Bratainu's Liberals, Maniu's National Peasants, Titel Petrescu's Socialists, and even Patrascanu, a representative of the clandestine Communist party. The deteriorating military situation led them to act. The Soviets had crossed the Dniester on August 1 8, and were dangerously close to the Rumanian border. King Michael, who had given his full support to Antonescu's opponents, had Marshal Antonescu and Michael Antonescu arrested in the Royal Palace on August 23. The king then appointed a new cabinet led by General Sanatescu, and including members of all of the National Democratic Front parties. The

German troops occupying the country were interned, though some units managed to flee to Hungary.

By changing sides at the last minute, the Rumanians expected to be treated as allies. However, Soviet troops immediately moved in and treated the country as a conquered land. The civilian population again had to endure the pillage of the new occupying forces, while the local police were disarmed by the Soviets. Despite the Rumanian government's urgent request to the Anglo-Americans, the Soviets refused to sign an armistice until September 12, 1944. Rumania, who had been the first eastern European state to enter the war, was also the first to leave it.

Bulgaria's Attempts to Negotiate

The Rumanian about-face had immediate repercussions in Bulgaria. Bulgaria was not at war with the USSR, but had economically contributed to the German war effort, causing a break with the Allies. In July, 1942, the underground Communist party appealed to all democratic opposition parties to join in a "Fatherland Front" to fight the pro-German policies of the government. After Stalingrad, the number of guerillas began to grow, and by 1944, they were at least 10,000 strong. Since the tragic disappearance of King Boris III on August 28, 1943, an event blamed on the Germans, a regency council of Prince Cyril, the deceased king's brother, Bogdan Filov and General Milov, administered state affairs in the name of the young king, Simeon II. The regents retained the pro-German policy at first, but in view of growing public discontent and Allied victories, they asked the diplomat Ivan Bagrianov, on June 1, 1944, to form a government capable of opening negotiations with the Allies. Events in Bucharest accelerated changes in Bulgaria. On August 26, Bagrianov stated that Bulgaria, having just revoked its alliance with Germany, intended to remain neutral as it had always been, particularly in the German-Soviet conflict, and as a gesture of Bulgarian goodwill, he ordered troops to evacuate Yugoslavian Macedonia. To please the Anglo-Americans, the regents replaced Bagrianov's government with another led by the Agrarian, Muraviev, nephew of the Agrarian movement's historic leader, Stambolijski, who had been killed by reactionaries in 1923. The appointment was made too late, and did not conform to the Moscow-supported plans of the Bulgarian Communists. The Communist party had ordered its partisans to stand ready on August 26 for a general insurrection in conjunction with the Soviets. On September 5, the USSR declared war on Bulgaria, and on September 8, Soviet troops from Rumania crossed the Danube and entered the country. On the same evening, the Fatherland Front unleashed a general insurrection, seizing the regents and cabinet members. The Bulgarian leaders who had planned to keep their

country out of the German-Soviet conflict and step out of a tight spot with a minimum of damages, were badly rewarded for their efforts. The Soviets, who were in a position of strength in the summer of 1944, were not going to let such a strategically placed country escape their influence.

The Failure of Hungary's Diplomacy

Hungarian leaders too, after Stalingrad and the decimation of the Second Army, wanted out of the war. They had also tried to negotiate with the Allies after 1942, and were hoping for an Allied landing in the Balkans or on the Adriatic that would keep them out of a direct confrontation with the Soviets. As a gesture of goodwill toward the Allies, the Kallay government made every attempt to limit Hungarian contributions to the war effort in 1943. Deliveries of supplies were reduced to less than in 1938. The Germans, who were perfectly aware of the secret negotiations, decided on military occupation. On March 15, 1944, Regent Horthy was summoned by Hitler and ordered to increase Hungarian participation, and to form a new, more pro-German government. During these interviews, in the night of March 18, German troops moved in to occupy Hungary and began arresting all those known for anti-German sentiments. Under pressure from Hitler, Horthy confirmed the change worked in his absence and formed a new pro-German government led by Dome Sztojay "to fight the common enemy, particularly bolshevism." But Hungarian diplomats stationed in neutral countries also received orders to maintain contact with the Anglo-Americans. The new government increased Hungarian contributions to the war effort enough to satisfy German demands by supplying German troops still occupying Soviet territory. Relations between German generals and their Hungarian counterparts were difficult, particularly since they held differing concepts of the war. For example, while the German high command ordered captured Russian partisans to be treated like bandits and shot, General Lakatos, commander of Hungarian troops in Russia, told his officers to treat them "with courtesy and humanity."

The presence of the German army in Hungary radically altered the position of the Jews. With the exception of the pogrom of Ujvidek in 1942 in which a thousand Serbians and Jews died, and for which the instigators were publicly reprimanded and punished by the government, Hungary's 800,000 Jews had been relatively well treated. By March, 1944, some 70,000 foreign Jews had fled persecution for refuge in Hungary. The German occupation abruptly and brutally changed their situation. On April 27, the Sztojay government decided to group Jews together in ghettos, and then on orders from the SS of ficer, Adolf Eichman, began the first conveyances to Germany in mid-May, 1944. Intervention by the Vatican and by Catholic and Protestant churches, and diplomatic protests from neutral countries led to

the suspension of these deportations by early July. The Jews were then put to work on local projects.

As the German grip tightened on Hungary, the opposition parties met secretly with encouragement from official circles and agreed, despite their reservations, to join forces with the underground Communist party. During the summer of 1944, as the Red Army's advance was dangerously close, Regent Horthy relieved the Sztojay government of its duties and replaced it with General Lakatos, government which was much cooler toward the Germans. After the signing of the Soviet-Rumanian armistice, Horthy secretly sent an official delegation to the Soviet government to obtain a similar armistice. Such an agreement was signed in Moscow on October 11 and was to go into effect on the 16^th. But when on October 15, Admiral Horthy went on the radio to announce that he had just signed an armistice and that Hungary was quitting the war, the Germans invaded the Royal Palace in Budapest and arrested Horthy and his ministers. Then before taking Horthy to Germany, where he was detained until the end of the war, they forced him to name Ferenc Szalasi, head of the Arrow-Cross party, as chief of state. Hungary had come close, but ultimately failed to leave the war.

RESISTANCE MOVEMENTS DURING GERMAN OCCUPATION

As the eventual German defeat became clearer, the various resistance movements in the occupied countries intensified their efforts.

In Bohemia-Moravia, resistance activity was fairly weak -- even after German repression following the assassination of Heydrich -- and was limited to sabotage, to isolated attacks on "collaborators" and German officials, and to strikes. Resistance groups working with the exiled Benes government in London were heavily infiltrated by members of the underground Communist party, particularly since summer of 1941. The Czech resistance was hardly visible until the last weeks of the war, after American troops had already liberated Pilsen and Soviet troops were already at the gates of Prague. On May 5, 1945, the resistance led a general uprising in the capital directed primarily at German civilians, since the German military had already been evacuated. On May 9, the Red Army entered Prague.

In Slovakia, the resistance began to organize in 1942 in the mountainous regions where Slovak army deserters formed guerilla groups, and were joined by local Communists, autonomists disappointed in Father Tiso's regime and some 1,700 escaped French prisoners of war. At the end of December, 1943, a National Slovak Council was secretly formed in the mountains of central Slovakia by representatives of the Slovak Communist party, such as Gustav Husak, and Protestant members of the Democratic party led by Joseph Lettrich. The goal of this council was the liberation of the country and

rebuilding of a Czechoslovakian state in which Czechs and Slovaks would be treated equally, which had not been the case in the first Czechoslovakian republic. In early 1944, the resistance became more aggressive and gained control of vast sections of Slovakia, alarming the government in Bratislava, which called in German troops to restore order. On August 24, 1944, a German convoy containing General Otto, head of the German military mission in Bucharest, was ambushed near Turciansky Sv. Martin (formerly Turoc Szt. Marton). This was the signal for revolt. On August 29, the insurgents seized the city of Banska-Bystrica and its radio station, from which they called for a general insurrectiori. Regular units of the Slovak army joined them. General Csatlos, Tiso's minister of war, tried to escape but was captured by the insurgents and handed over to the Russians who executed him. For nearly two months, 60,000 Slovak partisans managed to hold several German divisions at bay. They were finally crushed by the weight of numbers, and on October 27, their last center of resistance, Banska- Bystrica, surrendered. The Slovak revolt had cost over 25,000 lives. Isolated groups, badly organized and demoralized, held out here and there, but most of the country was again under German control. Soviet troops fighting in nearby eastern Hungary had made no effort to support the Slovak revolt. They would not make their appearance in Slovakia until the beginning of March, 1945.

In Poland, the spontaneous resistance to German occupation had the backing of almost the entire population. It was directed from London by the Polish government in exile led first by General Sikorski, and after his accidental death on July 4, 1943, by the peasant leader, Stanislaw Mikolajczyk. The behavior of the Soviets between September, 1939, and June, 1941, made the Polish resistance suspicious of Soviet overtures after the outbreak of the German-Soviet conflict. Polish prisoners of war interned in the USSR since September, 1939, who had endured 18 months of Soviet concentration camps, nearly all refused the Soviet offer to fight in the Red Army. After an agreement between generals Anders and Sikorski and the Soviet authorities, the prisoners were transferred to Iran beginning in the surnmer of 1942, and from there to Egypt, where they were taken into the British army. But thousands of officers and soldiers were still missing, and the slow, evasive Soviet responses to questions about the disappearances only intensified Polish distrust. The men in question had in fact died in the concentration camps. Out of 10,000 Poles interned in the camp at Kolyma, only 583 left it alive. And this is only one example among many. The discovery of the mass grave in the forest of Katyn added even more poison to the already bad relations between the Polish government in exile and the Soviet leadership.

The Polish resistance remained independent of the Soviets, and

answered only to London, the only government recognized by the resistance. Its activities were carried out by the Interior Army or AK (Armia Krajova) created in 1941 and numbering 380,000 men by 1944. In the country, this army was under the command of General Bor-Komorovski, and operated under orders of an underground parliament, the National Unity Council. The council was presided over by the Socialist, Puzak, and represented by the four democratic opposition parties in the time of the colonel's regime: the Polish Socialist party, the Peasant party, the Christian Workers and the Nationalists.

Beside this "national" resistance, Polish Communists from the USSR who escaped the purges of 1938 were also in Poland trying to counter the activities of the AK. In early 1943 they organized a clandestine Polish Worker party within Polish territory. Its resistance fighters were known as the Popular Army or AL (Armia Ludowa) commanded by General Rola Zymierski. Its numbers never reached 40,000, a tenth of the AK's.

The record of Polish resistance successes between January 1, 1941 and June 30, 1944, is impressive: 6,930 locomotives and 19,058 railroad cars destroyed, 732 derailments, and nearly 6,000 German officials killed or wounded. But the most spectacular success was the Warsaw uprising on August 1, 1944. At that time, Soviet troops had already advanced deep into Polish territory, accompanied by a unit of Polish volunteers, the Kosciuszko Division. A National Liberation Committee formed in Lublin and led by the leftist Edward Osobka-Morawski and the Communist Boleslaw Bierut, declared itself the "only source of power in the state" on July 22. This power play was strongly resented by the AK and the Polish government in exile, and was probably what pushed the AK to act. On August 1 , AK fighters and the citizens of Warsaw began the Warsaw uprising. For 63 days the AK and civilians held off German troops, turning every house into a fortress. Although the Soviet army under Marshal Rokossowsky arrived on the right bank of the Vistula in early September, they made no effort to help, even though they were only a few kilometers from the struggle. The Soviets actually refused to allow English and American planes trying to parachute arms and supplies to the fighters to use Russian-held airfields. The head of the Polish government in London, Mikolajczyk, was in Moscow to discuss Poland's future with Stalin, but was unable to convince the Russians to assist the Poles in Warsaw. On October 3, short of ammunition and facing starvation, the freedom fighters surrendered. One hundred thousand of them had died in combat. The AK and civilian survivors were deported to Germany and the city svas destroyed. When the Red Army took over on January 17, 1945, there vas nothing but piles of rubble and deserted ruins.

The Soviets had clearly wanted the Polish resistance to be crushed. While the Poles may have rushed into the uprising, it is almost certain today

that on July 29, Radio Moscow broadcast a call to revolt. At any rate, once the fight had begun, the Russians simply stood by and watched. This attitude was certainly not adopted casually; it was deliberately planned. The major goal of the Soviets was less to rid Warsaw of the Germans than to see that the Polish resistance was crippled. Eliminating the AK was a prerequisite to setting up a regime more sympathetic to the USSR. In the eastern regions of the country controlled by the Red Army, AK members were purposefully hunted down by the Soviet military police. Over 50,000 of them were deported to the USSR and very few returned. It was a strange behavior for the "liberators" of a supposedly "allied" country. When the Red Army took over all of Poland in early 1945 , the resistance, which had largely contributed to pushing out the Germans, was almost totally wiped out, and the country was left exhausted and in ruins.

There were similarities between the Yugoslav and the Polish resistance movements: both were able to call up large numbers of fighters who then played a major role in liberating their country. But the similarities ended there. From London on July 22, 1941, King Peter II called for a popular uprising against the occupying forces. In answer to his appeal, General Draga Mihajlovitch, a Serbian appointed as minister of war by the king, organized the first combat groups of the "Chetnik" movement in the mountains of Serbia as the first contingents of a national army to aid the Allies when they landed. The Chetniks waged a cautious kind of guerilla war in hopes of avoiding German reprisals such as the massacre in the Serbian village of Kragujevac in October, 1941, in which the Germans shot 7,000 civilians in reprisal for a guerilla ambush. The Chetniks were devoted to the idea of a "greater" Serbia and to Orthodoxy, and were more likely to quarrel with the Croats and Muslims of Bosnia for the common cause than with the Germans and Italians. On occasion, they even collaborated with the occupants against their rival resistance fighters.

The Chetniks were not the only resistance movement in Yugoslavia. A partisan movement, the communist and federalist inspired National Liberation Front, was founded in late April, 1941, by the secretary general of the party, Josip Broz, nicknamed "Tito." After the Germans invaded Russia, the Partisans called for a national uprising on July 12, 1941. Even though Tito was of Croat origin, the Serbian regions answered his call for resistance most enthusiastically. Mihajlovitch also found most of his followers in Serbia. In late 1941, Tito's Partisans already numbered 80,000 men; by the end of 1943, there were 300,000 of them; and at the end of the war there were 800,000. The Partisans essentially waged a war of attrition and harassment. From their mountain strongholds, they descended into the valleys to sabotage travel routes and communications and to ambush enemy convoys.

At first, the two resistance movements tried to find common ground. Tito and Mihajlovitch met in September, 1941, but failed to come to terms due to the profound political differences between the two, one an old monarchist officer and the other, a Communist revolutionary militant. They also differed on how to fight the occupying forces, and from then on, Tito viewed Mihajlovitch as a traitor. The British tried to bring the royalist resistance and the popular resistance back together, but after Tito's military victories in the field, they withdrew their support from the Chetniks at the end of 1943, and backed only the Partisans . King Peter II actually disavowed his own general after Tito's Partisans managed to liberate almost half of the country, a spectacular feat in that it had been accomplished without outside assistance.

While leading the resistance against the Germans, the Partisans were also planning Yugoslavia's future. At Bihac on November 27, 1942, the anti-fascist Council of the National Liberation of Yugoslavia was created as a provisory government, in preparation for a postwar social democracy. It was designed along the lines of a federal state in which the different nationalities would enjoy equal rights. This underlined, once again, the unequal treatment of certain nationalities in the former Yugoslavia. After Italy's defection in September, 1943, the Partisans recovered some of the war material, weapons and ammunitions abandoned by the Italians, and were able to step up their offensive. In the summer of 1944, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina were almost entirely under the control of the Partisans. Only the areas of Belgrade and the Vojvodina, Croatia and Slovenia still eluded them. The combined forces of the Red Army and the Partisans led to the liberation of Belgrade on October 20, 1944, and to the expulsion of Hungarian troops from the Vojvodina. German troops and the Croat fascists held out in Croatia and Slovenia until early May, 1945. There again, despite assurances from Tito on the future equality of the various peoples, the Croats -- and to a lesser degree the Slovenes -- were conspicuously absent in the resistance movements. Many Croats were unable to believe Tito's promises.

In Albania, the resistance within the country was somewhat similar to Yugoslavia's in that it achieved liberation. Albania had been part of the Italian Empire since 1939, and Victor-Emmanuel III had replaced Zog I on the throne. At the outset of Italian occupation, a government of conservatives presided over by Shefret Verlaci, an old enemy of Zog, ruled under supervision of the Italian high commissioner, though it quickly incurred growing popular hostility. The Albanians deeply resented the massive influx of Italians preparing for an upcoming attack on Greece, using Albania as a point of departure. After Yugoslavia disappeared and Greece was occupied by the Wehrmacht, the Italian government planned to regain public favor by

flattering patriotic sentiments through the creation of a "greater" Albania. Kosovo and a few Greek districts with Albanian populations were in fact added to the Albanian state. In December, 1941 , the Italians chose a middle-class nationalist, Mustafa Kruja, as head of the Albanian government. But such measures did not placate the opposition. The resistance was already organizing in the mountains. One group was formed by King Zog's former followers, led by Abas Kupi, and supported by the English. The other group, under the aegis of the Communist party, was born at Korca in 1930, and met secretly in Tirana from November 8 -14, 1941. They elected a young French-educated intellectual named Enver Hoxha as head of its central committee. The Communists joined the National Liberation Front, open to all enemies of fascism, and from there organized the first groups of partisans who fought the Zogist troops in a veritable civil war beginning in 1943. After the Italian occupying forces were replaced by the Germans in September 1943, the National Liberation Front intensified the battle for liberation. They fought in a similar style to the Yugoslav partisans, with whom they were cooperating actively. As soon as an area was liberated, militant Communists took control, and a provisory government was formed by Enver Hoxha on May 24, 1944. The last of the fighting occurred in October and November, and Hoxha's triumphal entry into Tirana on November 28, 1944, marked the achievement of independence.

The liberation of Albania, like that of Yugoslavia, had been the sole work of the Partisans. Though they had received arms and material from the Anglo-Americans and to a lesser degree from the Soviets, they were loosely organized and had always acted independently without direction from outsiders. It was a unique case in eastern Europe, and the consequences strongly influenced the political development of both countries.

THE END OF THE WAR IN CENTRAL ANI) EASTERN EUROPE

At the beginning of the winter of 1944-45, the Soviets were about to occupy Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the west of Poland, and they expected to finish with Germany before the end of the winter. They already had a firm grasp on Bulgaria and Rumania as well as the eastern half of Poland, and in Albania and Yugoslavia, Communist-led resistance movements controlled the country.

Only Germany's old allies, Hungary, Croatia and Slovakia, continued to struggle. In Hungary, the abortive attempt for a separate peace and the German dismissal of Regent Horthy had brought Ferenc Szalasi and the extremist Arrow-Cross party to power. Once in power, they turned the country into a police state whose first victims were the Jews. At the same time, Hungary rapidly became a vast battlefield where the Wehrmacht and

Hungarian contingents fought the Red Army for nearly six months. Typical of the hard-fought battles was the siege of Budapest, begun by the Soviets on December 25,1944, and lasting until February 13, 1945. Fighting continued until April 4 in western Hungary, though by then most of the country was under Soviet control. The Szalasi government fled to Germany, and was replaced by the pro-Soviet provisory government formed in late December at Debrecen, one of the first large towns taken by the Red Army.

During the first few months of 1945, German troops were also expelled from the other east European territories. After the fall of Warsaw, on January 17,1945, the west of Poland was quickly occupied by the Red Army, which then advanced deep into Germany toward Berlin. The capital of the Reich was surrounded on April 19, and fell into Soviet hands on May 2. Further south, the Soviet army was slowed by German resistance in Hungary. At the end of March, Slovakia was finally liberated. Banska-Bystrica, the center of the Slovak uprising of August, 1944, was taken on March 25, and Bratislava, capital of the short-lived independent Slovakian state, fell in turn in early April. Before adjourning its last seating on January 23, 1945, the Slovak parliament expressed the wish that Slovakia be able to maintain its identity in the future. Just before the Red Army entered Bratislava, Father Tiso and several of his ministers crossed over into Austria where they were taken prisoner by the Americans who turned them over to the new Czechoslovak authorities in October, 1945. On April 3, President Benes and his government had already returned to the country they had left in October, 1938, moving into the first sizeable town to be librated, Kosice, known by its old Hungarian name of Kassa from 1938 to 1945. On the following day, Benes announced the Kosice Program which gave a general description of the new Czechoslovakia: the new state would be for Czechs and Slovaks only, implying that the old national minorities would be eliminated. Even further south, Yugoslav Partisans continued the struggle against Ante Pavelitch's fascist Croatian troops and their Wehrmacht backers. The Croats resisted tenaciously, and the last battles in northern Slovenia and the northeast ended with the final surrender of Germany on May 8, 1945. To escape the Partisans, the last Croat units surrendered to the Americans holding Austria, but were turned over to Tito.

CONCLUSION: YALTA

In May of 1945, 25 years after the end of the First World War -- a war which had completely upset political borders and marked a new beginning for the peoples of eastern Europe -- the course of history was redirected. The Wilsonian dream of a Europe of nations in which all peoples, great and small, could live in peace and security, enjoying a spirit of cooperation, had

vanished after the treaties of 1919-1920 were signed. Eastern Europe had been politically and geographically restructured according to principles that had little to do with the principles for which armies had fought, leading to frustration, rivalry and heightened antagonism between countries and to a rise in nationalism, to internal instability, and to increased interest in foreign support, support which always came with strings attached.

Twenty years after the end of a bloody and ruinous war, disastrous for all, another even more disastrous war began, leaving in its wake an eastern Europe that was nothing more than a rubble-strewn battlefield. Even more than in l919, the fate of the people of this part of Europe was in the hands of the victorious powers. Germany's allies and victims alike had decisions imposed on them by the powers of the moment. The Munich Conference had been a prelude to the Second World War, when the Great Powers had decided the future of Czechoslovakia without even consulting its government, and had then imposed a judgement which largely served to open the door for Hitler to the Danubian region. It ended in decisions made in January, 1945, during another international conference, this time at Yalta. Here the new powers, the United States, the United Kingdom and the USSR, decided to place the eastern European countries within the Soviet sphere of influence, and once again ignoring the wishes of the populations. Eastern Europe as we know it today was born at Yalta. This Eastern Europe includes the Danubian and Balkan states, Poland, and the Russian-occupied part of the former Reich which became the German Democratic Republic in 1949. From Yalta on, Eastern Europe was to live in the shadow of Moscow.

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* Western and Eastern Europe are capitalized after they become actual political entities at Yalta in 1945.

Henry Bogdan: From Warsaw To Sofia