Bleiburg repatriations

Commonly used terms such as Bleiburg massacre, Bleiburg tragedy, Bleiburg crime, Bleiburg case, and also simply Bleiburg, are used in Croatia to refer to the events in question.[1][2][3] The term Way of the Cross (Croatian: Križni put) is a common subjective term, used mostly by Croatians, regarding the events after the repatriations.[1] The latter have been described as "death marches".[4][5]

Among Slovenes, the term Viktring tragedy (Slovene: Vetrinjska tragedija) is commonly used. Viktring was a British camp where the largest number of Slovene prisoners were interned before the repatriations took place.[6]

The Independent State of Croatia conducted a systematic campaign of mass murder and extermination of Serbs, Jews and Roma. This May 1945 picture shows Jasenovac concentration camp victims thrown into the Sava River, near Sisak.

When World War II broke out in 1939, the government of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia declared its neutrality.[7] By the beginning of 1941, most of its neighbours joined the Tripartite Pact.[8] Yugoslavia came under strong pressure to join the Axis and the Yugoslav government signed the Pact on 25 March 1941, the year that Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. But demonstrations broke out in Belgrade against the decision, and on 27 March, the opposition overthrew the government in a coup d'état. The new Yugoslav government refused to ratify the signing of the Tripartite Pact, though it did not rule it out. Adolf Hitler reacted by launching the invasion of Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941, allied with forces of Italy and Hungary.[9]

On 10 April, German troops entered Zagreb and on the same day, the Independent State of Croatia (Croatian: Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH) was declared, an Axis puppet state led by the Ustaše. Ante Pavelić was named the Poglavnik ("leader") of NDH.[10] Yugoslavia capitulated to the Axis powers on 17 April.[11]

The rump Serbian territory was placed under German military administration, with the help of a civil puppet government led by Milan Nedić.[12] Slovene lands were divided among Germany, Italy and Hungary.[13]

Following the occupation and division of Yugoslavia, the fascist governments introduced anti-semitic laws in accordance with the Nazi Final Solution plan.[14] The Ustaše also enacted racial laws and systematically persecuted Serbs, who were Orthodox Christian, as well as Jewish and Roma populations throughout the country. It established a concentration camp system, the largest of which was Jasenovac,[15] where 77,000–100,000 people were murdered.[16] Around 29–31,000 Jews, or 79% of their pre-war population in the NDH, was killed during the Holocaust, mostly by the Ustaše.[17] Almost the entire Roma population of around 25,000 was annihilated.[18]

The number of Serbs killed by the Ustaše is difficult to determine.[19] The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum estimates that the Ustaše killed between 320,000–340,000 Serbs in 1941 and 1942 alone.[20] Croatian demographer Vladimir Žerjavić calculated the population losses of Yugoslavia, and estimated the total number of Serb civilian and combatant deaths in the NDH at 322,000. Of the civilian casualties, he estimated that the Ustaše killed 78,000 Serb civilians, in direct terror and in concentration camps, and the rest died at the hands of the German and Italian forces, and of other causes.[4] A series of massacres led to armed revolts of Serbs against the DH. Wehrmacht General Edmund Glaise-Horstenau blamed the Ustaše crimes for the uprisings and criticised the government of NDH.[21]

In the wake of the invasion, remnants of the Royal Yugoslav Army organized the Serbian monarchist Chetniks as the first resistance movement. The Chetniks were led by Draža Mihailović and were recognized by the Yugoslav government-in-exile.[22] The Communist Party of Yugoslavia refrained from open conflict with the Axis forces while the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union was in effect. Following the start of Operation Barbarossa in 1941, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Communist-led Yugoslav Partisans issued a call for an uprising.[23]

Josip Broz Tito was the supreme commander of the Partisan forces. The Chetniks and the Partisans, the two main guerrilla resistance units, initially cooperated against the Axis, but their cooperation soon fell apart, and they turned against each other. The Chetniks started to collaborate with the Axis, and Allied support shifted to the Partisan side.[24][25]

Front lines in Europe on 1 May 1945

The arrival of Soviet ground troops in the Belgrade Offensive and Allied logistical support enabled the Partisans to increase their offensive actions. By the end of 1944, with the help of the Red Army, they established control in Serbia, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Dalmatia.[26] German forces retreated from Serbia, together with Nedić's forces.[27] The Wehrmacht and the HOS established a front in Syrmia to secure the retreat of the German Army Group E from the Balkans.[28] The Partisans conducted mass killings of POWs and ethnic Germans after securing control of Serbia.[29]

In May 1944, Tito founded an intelligence service known as the Department for People's Protection (OZNA), modeled after the Soviet NKVD. It represented a military intelligence service and a political secret police of the Communist Party.[30] In August 1944, he founded an army unit called the People's Defence Corps of Yugoslavia (Korpus narodne odbrane Jugoslavije, KNOJ), whose explicit assignment was to "liquidate Chetnik, Ustaša, White Guard and other anti-people gangs".[31]

When in August 1944, a coup d'état against Ante Pavelić, known as the Lorković–Vokić plot, failed, its conspirators were arrested or executed. The main plotters wanted to align NDH with the Allies.[32] As the war progressed and it became clearer that the Axis would lose the war, the desertion rate in the NDH armed force increased, especially among the Croatian Home Guard.[33] The Chetniks showed similar signs of desertion.[25] In contrast, the Ustaše Militia rarely disintegrated or defected to the Partisans.[34]

On 30 August 1944, Tito offered amnesty to Croatian Home Guards, Slovene Home Guards, and Chetniks if they chose to defect to the Partisan side by 15 September. After 15 September, all who had not defected were to be brought to "people's courts". Similar calls were repeated several times after the deadline. In some cases, Croatian Home Guards were killed despite defecting to the Partisans.[35]

The Armed Forces of the Independent State of Croatia (HOS) were reorganized in November 1944 to combine the units of the Ustaše and Croatian Home Guard.[36] Throughout the war, the treatment of Croatian Home Guard prisoners was relatively benign  – Partisans would ridicule the captured domobran soldiers and send them home if they did not want to join the uprising. But, on 13 January 1945, Pavelić ordered the domobrani to merge with the Ustaša military, creating a force estimated at 280,000.[37]

By 1945, the Yugoslav Partisans were known as the Yugoslav People's Army, and numbered more than 800,000 men organized into five field armies. They pursued the remnant of the defeated German and NDH forces.[38][39]

In March 1945, the 4th Yugoslav Army advanced through Lika, Croatian Littoral and Kvarner Gulf. Most of Bosnia and Herzegovina was in Partisan hands by the end of April. On 12 April, the Syrmian Front was broken and the 1st and 3rd Armies advanced west through Slavonia. Only the northwestern part of NDH, with Zagreb as its center, remained under control of NDH authorities.[40] Numerous refugees had gathered there from other parts of NDH. The Partisans carried out reprisals against captured soldiers of the HOS, as well as thousands of suspected civilian political opponents.[41]

Slovene Home Guards and Germans retreating through the town of Tržič

Slovene Home Guards and civilians on the Tržič-Ljubelj road near Austria

Slovene refugees heading to Austria

The collapse of the Syrmian front in April 1945 accelerated the withdrawal of German forces, which had been retreating from the Balkans since October 1944.[28] Like other Axis troops, forces of the NDH did not want to surrender to the Red Army or the Yugoslav Partisans. They retreated through Slovenia trying to reach the Yugoslav-Austrian border, in order to surrender to the British forces advancing north from Italy.[42] A large-scale exodus of people was planned and organized by the authorities of the NDH although there was no strategic benefit to it: there was no viable destination for all the population.[43] The NDH government's decision to organize a retreat was reached on 3 May.[44] On the same day, the Slovene leadership also decided to retreat to Austria.[45]

Some in the NDH and Slovene political and military leadership believed that the Western Allies would use them as anti-Communist forces and support them in returning to Yugoslavia and regaining power. Slovenian Bishop Gregorij Rožman appealed to the Allies to occupy Slovenia and prevent the Communists from taking power.[42] The NDH leadership abolished racial laws and sent a request for collaboration with the Allies on 6 May,[46] but all of these efforts failed.[42] While the NDH leadership may have organized a civilian retreat to bolster their claims that the Yugoslav Communists were after innocent civilian victims, the sheer number of civilians slowed down the retreat, and made surrender to the Allies unfeasible. Some observers believed the government was using the civilians as a human shield against the Ustaše.[43] The majority of the civilian refugees reportedly held anti-Communist views or feared reprisals.[47]

Divisions of three Yugoslav armies were pursuing the Axis forces.[28] Some units of the Yugoslav 4th Army managed to reach Carinthia before or at the same time as the retreating columns. Additional divisions of the 3rd and 4th Armies were sent to the area in order to capture southern Carinthia and prevent the Axis retreat. The 1st and 2nd Armies were halted near Celje, while the 3rd Army advanced further in pursuit of the retreating columns.[48]

On 6 May 1945, the government of the NDH fled Zagreb and reached a site near Klagenfurt, Austria on 7 May.[49] Pavelić and the military leadership left Zaprešić on the evening of 7 May, intending to join the rest of the NDH regime in Austria.[50] The bulk of the NDH leadership, including Pavelić, escaped in early May, fleeing to Western Europe and Latin America. Partisans captured only a small number of senior military NDH officers.[51]

Zagreb was defended by parts of the 1st Division of the Army of NDH and the 41st and 181st German Divisions, deployed along the unfinished fortified "Zvonimir line" between Sveti Ivan Žabno and Ivanić-Grad. The fierce battle with the Yugoslav 1st Army lasted from 5–8 May. The 7 May was the single bloodiest day in the 1,240-day long history of the 1st Proletarian Brigade, with 158 killed and 358 wounded in the fighting for Vrbovec.[52]

Besides the HOS, the Slovene Home Guard and the German Army Group E, other military units were retreating.[53] The remnants of the Serbian State Guard, two regiments of the Serbian Volunteer Corps, and a group of Chetniks surrendered to the British near the Italian-Yugoslav border on 5 May. These units were not repatriated to Yugoslavia.[54] The Montenegrin National Army, formed in April 1945 by Sekula Drljević with the support of the NDH government, to gather Montenegrins from NDH in the unit, were retreating together with Croatian forces.[55] Thousands of Russian Cossacks of the XVth SS Cossack Cavalry Corps, stationed in Yugoslavia since 1943, were also retreating to Austria.[56]

On 7 May 1945, Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allied powers, marking the practical end of World War II in Europe.[44] The German Instrument of Surrender applied to German Wehrmacht forces in Yugoslavia, as well as to other armed forces under German control, such as the Croatian Armed Forces. Ordinarily this would have meant that they, too, had to cease their activities on 8 May and stay where they found themselves. The military of NDH, however, came under the command of Pavelić.[57] As the Germans were about to surrender, General Alexander Löhr, Commander-in-Chief of Army Group E, handed command of the Croatian forces to Pavelić on 8 May.[51] Pavelić issued an order from Rogaška Slatina for his troops not to surrender to the Partisans, but to escape to Austria, to implement the NDH government's decision of 3 May to flee to Austria.[51] Following the capitulation of Germany, Tito issued an address via Radio Belgrade on 9 May calling upon all armed collaborators to surrender, threatening "merciless response" from the people and the army should they refuse to do so.[58]

Most of the German and HOS troops had withdrawn from Zagreb by 8 May, when units of the Partisan 1st and 2nd Armies took control of it. There were relatively few skirmishes and casualties in the city. The 1st Army reported to the General Staff that 10,901 enemy soldiers had been killed and 15,892 captured in taking Zagreb, without specifying battles in which these casualties occurred.[56] That same day, the headquarters of the 51st Vojvodina Division of the Yugoslav 3rd Army issued a dispatch ordering its units to consider all enemy forces who continued resistance after midnight that day, and who were not part of units who had an organized surrender, as persons who did not have the status of prisoners of war, and to treat them as "bandits". The German surrender obstructed the progress of the columns fleeing Croatia northward. By 9 May, Partisan forces had moved into Maribor, which eliminated that escape route. They also took control of Celje on 10 May, but with a force insufficient to halt the columns that were escaping towards Dravograd.[58]

Escape route to Bleiburg

A column of refugees near the city of Celje

Croat troops and civilians mostly used escape routes toward Mežica and Bleiburg, and across the Kamnik Alps toward the Jaun Valley in Austria.[42] The main Croatian column moved through the towns of Zidani Most, Celje, Šoštanj, and Slovenj Gradec. On 11 May, the vanguard of the column reached Dravograd. The bridges across the Drava River were barricaded by Bulgarian units that had reached the area on 9 May.[64]

On 11–12 May, generals Vjekoslav Servatzy and Vladimir Metikoš entered discussions with Bulgarian generals to allow the Croatian column to pass into Austria.[65] The discussions were inconclusive, but the Bulgarians suggested they head in the direction of Prevalje and Bleiburg, which the column did.[66] Bleiburg was located some four kilometres northwest of the border of Austria and Yugoslavia. Parts of the columns that had weak or no protection were attacked by the Partisans - on 12 May, Politika carried Yugoslav Army reports of 15,700 prisoners of war in Maribor, Zidani Most, Bled, Jesenice and elsewhere. On 13 May, they reported over 40,000 prisoners taken near Rogaška Slatina, Celje, Velenje, Šoštanj, Dravograd, and elsewhere.[67]

The main column was encircled in the Dravograd pocket. The Croatian Armed Forces had artillery positions in a five kilometers linear distance from Dravograd to the south and used howitzers to fire on positions of the Yugoslav Army. On the night of 13 May, the elite HOS infantry units, commanded by General Rafael Boban, managed to break through the Partisan blockade and the column moved west through Ravne na Koroškem and Poljana towards Bleiburg.[68][69] A large number of Croat soldiers and civilians reached the field at Bleiburg on 14 May.[70] The 38th (Irish) Infantry Brigade headquarters were set up in Bleiburg,[71] having occupied the town on 12 May,[70] while the rest of the 5th Corps was stationed in Klagenfurt.[71]

The retreating column of the Croatian Armed Forces approaching the town of Bleiburg in May 1945

The main group of HOS troops and Croat civilians reached the Bleiburg field on 15 May. They were the head of the 45-65 kilometres-long columns, numbering around 25,000 to 30,000 people.[72][53] The group included various branches of the NDH army, including the Air Force, HOS, and civilian refugees. Most of them camped near the local railroad embankment. The Montenegrin National Army was placed east of the embankment.[73] Around 175,000 people were still on Yugoslav territory and moving towards Bleiburg.[72] Negotiations between representatives of the HOS, the Yugoslav Army and the British were held on the same day in the Bleiburg Castle.[74] The British negotiator was Brigadier Thomas Scott of the 38th (Irish) Infantry Brigade.[75] Ustaša infantry general Ivo Herenčić of the V Ustaša Corps, and a translator, Colonel Danijel Crljen, were involved in the surrender negotiations.[76][77]

In the afternoon of the same day, the Croatian forces started raising white flags in surrender.[78] The Partisan representatives included Major-General Milan Basta, the political commissar of the 51st Vojvodina Division, and Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Kovačič Efenka of the 14th Attack Division.[66][76] NDH military representatives attempted to negotiate a surrender to the British, but were directed to surrender to the Yugoslav military.[76] The Independent State of Croatia had joined the Geneva Convention on 20 January 1943, and was recognised by it as a "belligerent".[79]

The Partisan forces of the 51st Vojvodina Brigade of the Yugoslav 3rd Army and the 14th Slovenian Division had established tactical control over the field of Bleiburg.[71] Milan Basta set an ultimatum to the NDH negotiators - unconditional surrender within one hour, or else they would attack them and not uphold the norms of the international conventions of the Red Cross.[76][80] Basta's ultimatum was extended for another fifteen minutes, after which point a general surrender started.[76] Basta gave Scott assurances that the prisoners would be treated humanely and that only "political criminals" would be tried by courts.[81]

NDH POWs at Bleiburg on 15 May 1945, after the surrender

The exact events after the expiry of the ultimatum are the source of the original controversy regarding the repatriations. Teodor Pavić, described as a NDH "courier", wrote that the Partisan forces began strafing the crowd in the Bleiburg field with machine guns and shooting them individually.[80] Petar Brajović, a Yugoslav officer, described a fifteen- to twenty-minute machine gun and mortar fire on the column.[82] Strle wrote that the 3rd Battalion of the 11th "Zidanšek" Brigade and the 3rd Battalion of the 1st "Tomšič" Brigade were involved in the fire, and their records noted at least 16 deaths, mainly from the machine gun fire.[82] A Croatian soldier who survived, Zvonimir Zorić, wrote of a massacre at Bleiburg.[82]

Schematic representation of the situation on the Bleiburg field in May 1945

The notion of a massacre at the Bleiburg field was promoted by the remnants of the Ustaša in exile.[83] Croatian-American historian Jozo Tomasevich notes that it would have been physically impossible to assemble all the Croatian refugees in Bleiburg itself, so German and Croatian troops who are said to have surrendered "in Bleiburg" must have done so in various localities, including Bleiburg, and certainly not all in Bleiburg itself. He considers it impossible to establish the exact number of troops and civilians who tried to flee to Austria and were forced to surrender to the Partisans, and stresses that the number of victims has been inflated by pro-Ustaša sources for propaganda purposes, while communist sources have been diminishing it for similar reasons.[84] Croatian historian Martina Grahek Ravančić[85] wrote that the complete extent of the casualties sustained by the NDH column at Bleiburg on the day of the surrender was not described in any available sources. She described a short Yugoslav Army attack on the column as a certainty, likewise that there were casualties, but the number is unknown.[86]

Strle and Milan Basta claimed that as Ustaša forces tried to make a breakthrough at the north side of the valley, three British tanks moved to stop them, reportedly resulting in several casualties. However, only three Croatians provided testimony which supported the notion that there were British tanks in the proximity of the column, but with no mention of such an incident.[82] Tomasevich writes that these kinds of unconfirmed reports of British military involvement, coupled with the legitimate acts of repatriation, were subsequently exaggerated by Ustaša supporters, particularly in the Croatian diaspora. They published biased works that falsely accused the British of "turning a blind eye" to the actions of the Partisans.[83]

Later the same day, NDH generals Slavko Štancer, Vjekoslav Servatzy, and Vladimir Metikoš oversaw the surrender to the Partisans.[86] British army reports say Štancer had previously been captured by the Partisans when they strayed from the column, seeking the British.[76] The surrender continued for several days and at various locations; it took until 21 May for Tito to order the Partisans to withdraw from Carinthia.[87]

Bleiburg

Ferlach

Rosenbach

Lavamünd

Graz

Lienz

Known repatriation locations in Austria

Several other repatriations took place elsewhere in Carinthia during May 1945. Yugoslav intelligence officer Simo Dubajić negotiated with the British forces about the organization of surrender and repatriation elsewhere along the Yugoslav-Austrian border.[88] The extradition of Croat internees of the Viktring and Krumpendorf prisoner-of-war camps, located north of the Drava River, began on 18 May. The prisoners were assured that they were being transported to Italy. The repatriation took place in the village of Rosenbach and the town of Eberndorf. The transports continued on 19 May when Rosenbach and Lavamünd, northeast of Bleiburg, were used as extradition places, while some were transported to Bleiburg. Internees of the Grafenstein camp were also transported. Thousands more were handed over in the following days, mostly in Rosenbach and the Bleiburg railway station. The last transport was on 23 May when 800 Croat prisoners from Grafenstein were taken by rail to Bleiburg. British war diary records note that the extraditions of Croats ended on 24 May.[89]

The transports of Serbs and Montenegrins followed on 24 May, with three regiments of the Serbian Volunteer Corps. The first repatriation of larger groups of Slovene prisoners took place on 27 May, together with the remaining Serbs and Montenegrins. The repatriation of Slovenes also took place in Rosenbach or Bleiburg, except for the severely wounded that were accommodated in a hospital in Klagenfurt.[90] The Slovenes were also told by the British that they will be transported to camps in Italy.[72] The last Slovene group was handed over on 31 May. The following day, 2,700 Slovene civilians were scheduled to be transported to the border, but the transport was stopped by the British due to reports of massacres in Yugoslavia. All repatriations were canceled and a decision was made that only those who wanted to return to Yugoslavia would be transported.[91] According to an estimate of the British 5th Corps, a total of 26,339 people were extradited from the camps by 30 May, including 12,196 Croats, 8,263 Slovenes, 5,480 Serbs, and 400 Montenegrins.[90][92]

On the evening of 20 May, a group of NDH troops appeared near Ferlach, located approximately 40 km (25 mi) west of Bleiburg, 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 21:00 hrs. On this occasion we took 24 Ustaše soldiers and one officer".[93] British forces repatriated around 40,000 Cossacks to the Soviet Union's SMERSH, near Graz.[94] The repatriation of Cossacks to the Soviet Union from camps near Lienz began on 28 May.[95]

At the Yalta Conference on 11 February 1945, an agreement was reached on the repatriation of citizens from the signatory states, the US, the UK, and the USSR, to their country of origin. As Yugoslavia was not a signatory, the repatriation of Yugoslav citizens was not mentioned in the agreement. At the time of the Axis retreat from occupied Yugoslavia, the British 5th Corps of the 8th Army was stationed in southern Austria, which was within the area of authority of Field Marshal Harold Alexander.[96] The Yugoslav Army reached southern Carinthia in early May and declared it a part of Yugoslavia. This caused strained relations with the British, who supported an independent Austria in prewar borders.[96][97] Due to Yugoslav refusal to withdraw from Austrian Carinthia, as well as from the Italian city of Trieste, the possibility of an armed conflict between the British forces and the Partisans emerged.[98]

The Western Allies did not expect the movement of a large number of people in the 5th Corps area.[99] The retreat of larger groups of "anti-Tito forces" was reported by Ralph Stevenson, the British ambasador in Belgrade, on 27 April.[100] There was no consensus among British authorities on how to deal with them. Stevenson recommended their internment in camps rather than repatriation.[98] British Prime Minister Winston Churchill agreed with Stevenson's suggestion as "the only possible solution".[101] The 8th Army issued an order on 3 May that Axis forces from Yugoslavia "will be regarded as surrendered personnel and will be treated accordingly. The ultimate disposal of these personnel will be decided on Government levels".[102] Until 14 May, the British accepted the surrender of thousands of retreating troops and civilians.[103]

A report to the 5th Corps from 13 May noted the movement of hundreds of thousands of people towards Austria. On the following day, the 5th Corps estimated that once the columns arrived, the food situation would become critical, and cited an insufficient number of guards to manage the people.[104] Harold Macmillan, the British Minister Resident in the Mediterranean, recommended the immediate transfer of Cossacks to the Soviet Union. Regarding the column that was approaching Bleiburg, the brigade stationed in the town was instructed to "keep it south of the Drava".[105] Brian Robertson, Alexander's Chief Administrative Officer, issued an order to the 8th British Army on 14 May to hand over all surrendered Axis personnel of Yugoslav nationality to the Yugoslav Army.[106] The order excluded Chetniks, who were to be transferred to Italy. The repatriations were opposed by Alexander Kirk, American political advisor to the Supreme Headquarters (SHAEF), who asked the US State Department for advice. Joseph Grew, the US Under Secretary of State, agreed with Kirk and instructed him to inform the Allied Force Headquarters (AFHQ) of "violation of the agreed Anglo-American policy".[107]

The AFHQ contacted the Yugoslav authorities on 15 May regarding the repatriation of "Yugoslavs".[98] In line with the orders received by 15 May, the 5th Corps rejected the surrender of the column at Bleiburg. At the same time, the 5th Corps entered negotiations with Yugoslav representatives regarding the repatriation of other POWs and the withdrawal of the Yugoslav Army from Carinthia. An agreement was reached for the Yugoslav withdrawal on 21 May.[108] The repatriations began earlier, on 18 May.[109]

A November 1945 report from the British Foreign Office noted that it had not yet been decided on a high level whether the prisoners should be transferred to Yugoslavia.[110] Local British commanders were given imprecise and contradictory orders. On 17 May, Brigadier Toby Low, Chief of Staff of the 5th Corps, ordered that "all Yugoslav nationals at present in Corps area will be handed over to Tito forces as soon as possible. These forces will be disarmed immediately but will NOT be told of their destination".[111] Several hours later, an order arrived from Alexander to evacuate all Yugoslav prisoners to northern Italy.[111] On the same day, Alexander sent a telegram to the Combined Chiefs of Staff, in which he wrote that to return the prisoners to their country of origin "might be fatal to their health".[112]

Instructions and provisions made by the Allies in the following days frequently conflicted.[113] Two conflicting instructions from the AFHQ arrived on 23 May: the first was to return the Yugoslav citizens from the 8th Army area to Yugoslavia unless it involved the use of force. The second instruction was that Yugoslav citizens should not be returned to Yugoslavia against their will, and that they should be "moved to suitable concentration area and screened".[114] The confusion in the line of command led to a series of meetings between the AFHQ representatives and the 8th Army. The conclusion of the meetings on 27 May was an implicit support to the policy of not telling the prisoners their destination, the non-use of force, and that "it was unwise to make any further interpretation".[115][116] The repatriations continued until 31 May, when they were canceled following the appeal of the head of the Viktring camp and the local British Red Cross.[117]

POWs in Maribor on a forced march

1,416 POWs of the Croatian Armed Forces and the Slovene Home Guard were executed in the Barbara Pit massacre

Thousands of prisoners were thrown into caves and pits in the Kočevski Rog massacre

Representatives of the HOS of NDH accepted the surrender on 15 May at 16:00 hours. After the immediate repatriation of the soldiers at Bleiburg was complete, the Yugoslav forces began disarming them and started preparations for transporting the prisoners back.[118] A large number of columns of prisoners were formed in rows of four that were sent on a forced march through Slovenia. Due to the presence of the British Army, the initial treatment of prisoners was correct.[119] However, it got worse as the columns moved away from the border. The prisoners were given no food or water and were looted of valuables. Those who lagged behind were shot.[120] Individual killings and executions of smaller groups of men soon began. The columns were in Dravograd directed to Maribor or Slovenj Gradec and Celje.[121] On 17 May, the British started the repatriation of Croat internees of the Viktring camp, mostly members of the HOS.[122]

The columns marching towards Maribor, where transit camps were set, were moving along the Drava River.[120] During the march, bodies could be seen floating in the Drava and on the banks of the river.[123] The first prisoners arrived in Maribor on 17 May and were placed in transit camps. Other larger columns arrived in the following two days. At the camps, prisoners were sorted based on their unit and year of enlistment.[124] A part of the prisoners were sent on further marches or transported with trains to Celje and Zagreb. The rest were brought by trucks to anti-tank trenches in Tezno near Maribor, with their hands tied with wire, where they were lined up and killed. The killings lasted for several days until the trenches were filled with dead bodies.[120] It is estimated that around 15,000 people were killed in the Tezno massacre, mostly members of the HOS.[125][126]

Prisoners directed from Bleiburg to the town of Slovenj Gradec were joined by a large number of refugees that were stuck on the Dravograd-Slovenj Gradec road. Several transit camps were set in the town where prisoners were placed and sorted. Around 1,500 were killed in the nearby village of Žančani. The prisoners were only briefly held in Slovenj Gradec, mostly a day, before they continued their way to Celje. Anyone who stepped out of the column to take a rest or drink water was shot. Those that were too exhausted to continue the march were also shot. In Celje, most of the prisoners were placed in a football yard on the outskirts of the city. The command of the 11th Krajina Division of the 1st Army reported on 17 May that they received 30,000 prisoners. Anti-tank trenches near the Sava River and in the area of Bukovžlak were used for executions.[127] Prisoners were killed in various ways; on one occasion around 100-200 were locked in an enclosed water reservoir. Water was then slowly released until all of them drowned.[128][129]

A column of 40,000 people, consisting primarily of Croat soldiers, moved from Celje to Zidani Most on 18 May. A part of the captives were separated there, and led to the nearby forests and killed.[130] The column reached Samobor on 20 May.[131] They were not given food during the trip, but locals left them food and water by the road. Prisoners were placed in several smaller camps and prisons in the town, where selections were made again. Most of the prisoners were from Samobor sent to Zagreb and led through the city by foot. Trains with prisoners from other locations, mostly from Maribor, were also coming to Zagreb. The city's transit camps were not suitable for the accommodation of a large number of people, so many prisoners were placed in yards. The camps were surrounded with wire fences, behind which citizens gathered, bringing food or seeking relatives and friends.[132] One of the largest camps in the area was in Prečko. Prisoners were given food there, albeit not regularly. Around 50 died of hunger and illness.[133] Aleksandar Ranković, the chief of the intelligence service, was dissatisfied with the pace of executions in Zagreb and sent a letter to the Croatian branch of the OZNA, demanding greater resoluteness.[134] An increased number of arrests of Zagreb's citizens followed during June and July 1945.[131]

The repatriation of Slovene and Serb internees from Viktring began on 24 May.[135] The transports of around 11,000 Slovene Home Guards and 600 Slovene civilians were done in two directions: from Rosenbach in Austria to Jesenice, who were then imprisoned in internment camps in Kranj, Škofja Loka or Šentvid, and from Bleiburg to Celje, where the Teharje camp was located. The prisoners were beaten and many were killed on the way. The transport and liquidations were carried out by the Corps of People's Defence of Yugoslavia (KNOJ) and the Department for People's Protection (OZNA).[136] Internees of the Šentvid camp were taken to the Kočevje region, where thousands were killed and disposed of in caves, pits and ravines in the Kočevski Rog massacre. Internees of the Teharje camp were killed in its vicinity and in the surrounding caves and mines, including the Barbara Pit coal mine.[137] Out of 5,000 Slovene Home Guards brought to Teharje, almost all were dead by August 1945.[138] 800 Slovene Home Guards and civilians were executed at Podutik near Ljubljana.[139] The decomposing bodies at the location contaminated Ljubljana's water supply, so a group of German POWs were ordered to relocate the bodies to a new mass grave.[140]

The OZNA reported that the main movement of columns of prisoners from Slovenia and the Austrian border was carried out by 8 June. Most of the columns reached their destination where permanent camps were located, 12 of which were in Croatia and 11 in Vojvodina. According to the report, there were a total of 175,922 prisoners.[141] On 25 June, Deputy Prime Minister of Yugoslavia Edvard Kardelj sent a dispatch to Slovenian Prime Minister Boris Kidrič, requesting him to speed up the liquidations as a general amnesty will soon be passed.[142] The decree "on general amnesty and pardon" for Chetniks, the Serbian State Guard, Croatian and Slovene Home Guard, and Albanian and Muslim militia, was adopted on 3 August.[143] According to a report from February 1946, 41,320 prisoners were granted amnesty based on this decision.[144] All those who had been discharged from camps had to contact their local authorities. Some faced trials and sentences to prison or forced labor. Others were under surveillance of the KNOJ and the secret police. On 2 March 1946, the Supreme Command of the Yugoslav Army ordered the release of "all Yugoslav nationalities - members of enemy military formations, except those against whom criminal proceedings have been initiated."[145] Internment and labor camps continued to operate in the following years.[146] The purges that started at the end of the war continued until the early 1950s.[29]

Bleiburg

Ferlach

Rosenbach

Lavamünd

Tezno trench

Kucja Valley

Kočevski Rog

Macelj

Barbara Pit

Harmica

Gornji Hrašćan

Known massacre locations on the map of Slovenia marked in red, with the repatriation locations marked in gray.

The events in the aftermath of the war were censored in Yugoslavia. Mass graves were concealed or destroyed, in accordance with an order by the Federal Ministry of Interior Affairs from 18 May 1945.[147] Relatives of the victims faced persecution and were treated as second class groups.[148] Until the 1950s, there were strict border controls in Yugoslavia, but tens of thousands of people emigrated illegally.[149]

It was not possible to visit the graves located in Yugoslavia, so Bleiburg in Austria became the main location where political emigrants, survivors, or families of the victims could gather and hold a commemoration.[150] The first commemoration on the fields of Bleiburg was in 1952 on All Saints' Day. Since then, the Bleiburg Honorary Guard (Počasni bleiburški vod), an association founded by Croatian emigrants, organized an annual commemorative event, together with the Catholic Church in Carinthia. The Yugoslav consulate in Klagenfurt sent diplomatic protests to the Austrian government, but the commemorations were never banned by Austria.[151][152] The commemoration was seen as a provocation by Yugoslavia. Prohibited Croatian symbols were openly displayed and it drew attention to postwar killings which the Yugoslav authorities denied.[153] The Bleiburg events were also used as a tool for historical revisionism and the focus of collective resentment by the remainder of the Ustaše and their supporters. The number of victims was artificially inflated.[154]

Places in Austria and Slovenia, one of the May and June 1945 mass killings

The Yugoslav State Security Administration (UDBA) monitored the activities of the participants of the commemorative event and conducted a series of attacks on its organizers. During the ceremony in 1966, a bomb exploded in a country inn in Loibach, but none of the attendants was injured. Nikica Martinović, the chairman of the Bleiburg Honorary Guard, was assassinated by the UDBA in Klagenfurt in 1975. The following year a bomb was found in front of the tavern of Mirko Karačić, also a member of the Bleiburg Honorary Guard. In spite of the threats and attacks, the commemoration continued to be held annually until the breakup of Yugoslavia.[155]

Gatherings and commemorations were also held in other countries. In 1960, on the 15th anniversary commemoration held in Cleveland, the Bleiburg Tragedy Research Committee was founded by Croatian emigrants.[156] In 1961, the commemoration in Cleveland was attended by US Congressman Michael A. Feighan. The Yugoslav consul in Pittsburgh, Ivan Mirošević, protested against it and requested the gathering to be banned. Feighan criticized the consul and Josip Broz Tito during his speech at the commemoration. Mirošević was expelled from the US for his comments.[157] In 1965, commemorating the 20th anniversary, US Senator Frank Lausche condemned the post-war killings in Yugoslavia.[158] Organizations of Croatian emigrants in Germany and USA requested a Red Cross investigation of mass grave sites, which was rejected by Yugoslavia.[159]

In 1976, a marble monument was erected in the Unter-Loibach cemetery and in 1987, a monument was erected on the Bleiburg field with the inscription "In Honor and Glory of the Fallen Croatian Army, May 1945" in Croatian and German language. The monument had the Croatian coat of arms and the Islamic star and crescent engraved.[151]

Investigations of mass graves

Interior of the Barbara Pit near Huda Jama, Slovenia, reached in March 2009

Discussions about the post-war massacres were forbidden in Yugoslavia, so the investigations of mass grave locations began only in the 1990s, after the fall of communism.[160] In 1992, 1163 bodies were excavated from 23 mass graves in the forests of Macelj, leaving around 130 possible mass grave locations unexplored.[161] In 2002, the Slovenian government established the Governmental Committee for Settlement of Questions on Secret Mass Graves, with the assignment of "recording of data about the number and locations of mass graves" after the end of World War II.[160]

The Tezno mass graves near Maribor were discovered in 1999 during the construction of a motorway. 1,179 corpses were excavated from a 70 meter long part of the trench. In 2007, the Commission on Concealed Mass Graves in Slovenia, founded in 2005, analyzed the entire Tezno trench and found human remains at a length of 940 metres, estimated to contain the remains of around 15,000 victims.[126] In 2009, the Barbara Pit near Huda Jama in Slovenia was uncovered, and 726 human remains were exhumed by December 2009.[162] The same year, more pits were uncovered on two locations near the Croatian-Slovenian border, one near the village of Harmica and the other near Gornji Hrašćan, estimated to hold, together, around 4,500 bodies.[163]

By mid 2008, 581 concealed grave sites were registered by the Slovenian Commission on Concealed Mass Graves. The number rose to more than 600 grave sites in 2010. The commission estimates that there are around 100,000 victims in those graves in Slovenia alone.[164] Unlike in Slovenia, there was no serious research of mass graves in Croatia by the Croatian government.[165] In 1991, the Croatian Parliament established the Commission for Determination of War and Post-war Victims. The Commission began its work in 1994, but was abolished in 2002, with no significant contribution to the research.[166]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bleiburg repatriations.

• Allied war crimes during World War II
• List of massacres in Slovenia
• Mass killings under communist regimes
• Operation Keelhaul
• Persecution of Danube Swabians

• Cohen, P.J., Riesman, D., Serbia's Secret War: Propaganda and the Deceit of History, Texas A&M University Press, 1996; ISBN 0-89096-760-1
• Epstein, Julius (1973). Operation Keelhaul: the story of forced repatriation from 1944 to the present. Devin-Adair Co. ISBN 978-0-8159-6407-0.