German Antiguerrilla Operations in the Balkans (1941-1944)/Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
NATIONAL STATES
I. General
The peace treaties following the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, World War I, and the Greek-Turkish conflict ending in 1923 resolved the frontiers of the various Balkan states until 1939. In that year, Italy occupied Albania and proceeded to implement her designs for dominating the Balkan Peninsula.
The creation of these states had satisfied many national aspirations, but numerous minority and territorial problems were left unsettled, and both Italians and Germans were able to turn them to their own advantage. Among the dissatisfied were the Hungarians in the part of north central Yugoslavia that had once been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; the Italians along Yugoslavia's northwestern border; the Macedonians, torn among the Bulgarians, Yugoslavs, and Greeks; and the large colonies of Austrians and Germans in northern Yugoslavia. There were also bitter rivalries between member nations of the same state, as the Serbs and Croats of Yugoslavia, and both Yugoslavia and Bulgaria were resentful of Greek possession of the Aegean coast. Despite the efforts of some Balkan leaders to foster intra-Balkan cooperation and good will prior to 1941, these sources of animosity and friction remained to hamper resistance to Italian and German subjugation.
II. Greece
Slightly smaller in area than England, Greece had. a population of less than eight million in 1941. Migrations and exchanges of population, chief among them the replacement of Turks in western Thrace with a million and a quarter Greeks expelled from Asia Minor in 1922–24, contributed to making the inhabitants of the Hellenic state predominantly Greek by the outbreak of World War II. Although there were a number of Albanians and Vlachs in the Pindus Mountains area, they presented no minority problem.
Athens, the capital, with its port city of Piraeus, was the nucleus of the Greek maritime system; Salonika was a center of land transportation and an important seaport for the more northerly of the Balkan countries. With an economy based chiefly on ocean commerce and agriculture, Greece had no heavy industry. Rather, it restricted its processing of goods mainly to olive oil, currants, and tobacco. Cereals led among heavy food imports, since Greece could not feed its own population on its domestic production.
When Italian forces attacked from occupied Albania on 28 October 1940, the Greeks adopted a strategy of holding lightly on their left, allowing Italian columns to advance deep into the barren Pindus, while they resisted strongly and then launched a counteroffensive on their right. Their advance brought the Greeks into Albania, where they presented a serious threat to the left flank of the Italian forces to the south.
Despite their victories over the Italian invaders, the Greeks could not long resist the fast-moving German forces that intervened in the Greek-Italian conflict on 6 April 1941. Greece surrendered to the Germans on 23 April, and was then required to surrender to the Italians as well. This submission to an enemy they had all but defeated aroused the resentment of the Greeks. Later coupled with the occupation of most of Greece by Italian forces, it contributed in no small measure to the rise of the Greek resistance movement.
III. Yugoslavia
A most heterogeneous state, the homeland of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, derived its name from the Slavic terms for South Slav and became a state following World War I. Yugoslavia had a population of nearly sixteen millions by 1941, and in geographic area was slightly smaller than the state of Wyoming. Almost one half of its inhabitants, or six and one-half million people, were Serbs, occupying the areas of the former Kingdom of Serbia and the old provinces of Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Dalmatia. The Serbs used the Cyrillic alphabet, professed mainly the Orthodox faith though many Serbs were Moslems, and stubbornly resisted the Central Powers in World War I. Serbian Belgrade was the seat of the Yugoslav national government, lending credence to the claim of the minorities that the Serbs dominated the state. It was the Serbs' violent protest to Regent Paul's accord with Hitler and their overthrow of the government in March 1941 that precipitated the German attack the following month, and it was from among the Serbs that the Chetniks rose to resist the occupation forces.
Next in numbers to the Serbs were the Croats, some three and three-quarter million, inhabiting the northwestern part of Yugoslavia. The traditional capital of the Croats was Zagreb, and their territory was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the end of World War I. The Croats were culturally more advanced than the Serbs, were western European in their outlook, and the majority professed Catholicism. Although their language was related closely to that of the Serbs, the Croats used the Latin alphabet. German influence among the Croats in the pre-1941 period was strong, and it was on the traditional Croatian hostility to the Serbs that the invaders placed much confidence in 1941.
Last among the major racial groups comprising the Yugoslav state were the Slovenes, inhabiting the most northerly portion of the country and numbering some one and one-half million. Like the Croats, the Slovenes were culturally well advanced, used the Latin alphabet, were oriented toward the West, and for the most part Catholic. Their historic capital was Ljubljana, and the German influence was very marked.
Smaller national minorities included one-half million Hungarians and almost as many Albanians; one-quarter million Romanians; and splinter groups of Czechs, Slovaks, and other Slavic peoples. There were also well over one-half million Austrians and Germans.
In 1941 over three quarters of the Yugoslav population worked the land, and agriculture formed the nation's economic base. The chief exports were lumber, bauxite, copper, some iron ore, and processed fruits; imports included textiles and machinery. Deposits of iron ore near the surface of the ground could not be used to build up a sizable steel industry because of the shortage of coking coal.
The German onslaught of 6 April 1941 caught the Yugoslavs in the midst of general mobilization, a measure that had been delayed to avoid giving provocation to Hitler. A devastating air attack on Belgrade the day hostilities commenced crippled communications between the Yugoslav High Command and the armies in the field. To placate the dissatisfied minorities, which charged that the Serb-dominated government would defend only Serb-inhabited areas, the Yugoslav Army was deployed all around the borders of the country. To make the Yugoslav position even more difficult, thousands of Croat reservists did not report as directed for military service. By 17 April the German Second Army from the northwest and the Twelfth Army from the southeast, assisted to some extent by their Italian allies, had broken through the thin shell of resistance around the country, captured all major cities, and forced the Yugoslav High Command to capitulate.
IV. Albania
This smallest of the Balkan countries, approximately the size of Maryland, had a population of slightly over one million in 1941. After centuries of Turkish domination, Albania had declared its independence in 1912, but it was not until the end of World War I that the tiny state could consider itself free of its stronger neighbors.
Consisting mainly of Gheg tribesmen in the north and Tosks in the south, the Albanians were almost exclusively an agricultural and stock-raising people. Mineral and lumber resources were largely undeveloped because of a lack of transportation, although the Italians managed to produce some oil and completed part of the short rail line from Tirana to the Adriatic after their occupation of the country in 1939.
In normal times, Albania exported quantities of wool, dairy products, tobacco, hides, and some cattle. Textiles and other finished products led among imports.
Exploited by the Italians, Albania furnished 12,000 auxiliaries to Mussolini's disastrous campaign against Greece in 1940. A large number of these, however, promptly deserted. In the rugged mountain areas of Albania, Italian control was little more than nominal, and the occupation garrisons usually restricted themselves to the few towns, to the through roads, and to the coastal regions.
V. Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Turkey
Since Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary succumbed to German pressure to become partners of the European Axis, and Turkey remained neutral until the end of World War II, this study will consider these countries but briefly.
Bulgaria, approximately the size of Ohio, had a population of a little more than seven million in 1941. Ethnically close to the Russians, the language of the Bulgarians was Slavonic. With an economy primarily agricultural, the chief Bulgarian exports were fruits and dairy products.
Hungary, not a true Balkan country but adjacent to the Balkan area and continually involved in its problems, had a population of slightly over nine million and was approximately the size of Indiana. The economy of Hungary was agricultural, with meat and cereals the chief exports.
Romania, also outside the Balkan area proper, was approximately the size of Oregon, and had a population of fifteen and one-half million, three quarters of whom were engaged in agriculture. With its rich Ploesti fields, Romania was the largest oil producer in the Balkan-Danubian area.
Turkey, as large as Texas and Maine combined, had a population of nineteen and one-half million and an agricultural economy in 1941. In the Balkans proper, Turkey had only a few thousand square miles in eastern Thrace.