The History Of Silence - The Slovene Resistance Movement (1941-1945)

… in period of drought even wild storms are preferable to yet another sunny day…

Laying as it does, along the foothills of eastern end of the Alps, at the very tip of the most northerly Mediterranean bay, open towards Hungary – and the south, Slovenia is a natural hub of European routes and meeting place of the Alpine, Panonian, Dinaric and Mediterranean worlds. A largely mountainous country, almost half of it covered with forests. The Julian Alps are the first mountain barrier separating the Mediterranean from continental Central Europe. Both, the strategic location, probably the first choice for settlement by ancient Slovenes, and the natural wealth, forests/wood – which extensive trade links have been not yet sufficiently explored - had profound impact on the history of Slovenes.

Only last year the Poles learned about their main resistance movement during the Second World War (1941-1945) and an extensive documentation about the events was made available to them. The main Polish resistance (in all were 5 groups) had already its own government in waiting in London. Warszaw would have become the first liberated capital in Europe. The Soviet Red Army, then already at the river Visla refused to assist the Polish resistance movement. In retaliation, the Germans during what was to became known as the Warszaw uprising, killed some 200.000 people. Several thousand Slovenes and one Slovene women, who is alive and well living in Poland, participated in the Warszaw uprising. It went for local resistance of persons with minimal military equipment and during first few days they were even winning. Total number of fallen Slovenes in the Warszaw uprising is 11.000. Also, recently it became known that also Ukrajinians had their own resistance movement which believed in an independent Ukrajinian state.

Similar fate as the Poles probably had the main Slovenian resistance movement. Fact is that Slovenes had their own resistance movement, may be a government, an early Slovene state, as early as 1940? They saw themselves in a Slavic community of independent nations. But we are only allowed to speculate.

When Hitler on 6th April, 1941 attacked Yugoslavia, the Slovenes were well prepared and begun asserting their identity. The destruction of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was accompanied not only by the fragmentation of the state, but also of Slovenia: a nation of one and a half million people, which was divided among Germany, Italy and Hungary, and which was under threat of becoming extinct. Therefore Slovenes decided to fight against the occupying forces.

From the Slovene Falkon movement (Slovenski Sokoli) rose the main resistance movement, with initial support of then only friendly country, the Soviet Union. The Falcons were essential a cultural movement. However, in the given situation they transformed themselves into para-military units. Possibility exist that they had very different contacts in the former Soviet Union, Russia and with other groups such as the Polish and Ukrajinian resistance groups. Again we are allowed only to speculate.

The Slovenian resistance movement had their own plan, military plan, political, social and cultural infrastructure, economy, vision,
which aim was to unite the lands in which Slovenes lived into one entity. This local resistance, non-communist nationals, was hijacked by the Yugoslav Communist Party. Carinthia, a province in the present day Austria, became subject to "sale" with supporting documentation still missing. Slovenes lost Trieste and Gorica. The newly created Yugoslav state gives priority to ideology and not to Slovene national and territorial issues. Slovenia became a constitutional republic of the new Yugoslav federation. Dr. Ljubo Sirc, Director of CRCE in London estimates that some 200.000 Slovenes were killed in the subsequent genocide following WW2 year 1945/1946 by the former Yugoslav regime. .

It goes for largely untoled role of the Slovene Cultural Association in Pliberk/Bleiburg in present day Austria, which played significant role in the "Slovene awakening and resitance" during that time and of contribution by the great Slovene Carinthian poetess Milka Hartmann.

An extensive supporting documentation about the events remains
still "off limits".

Among the different sorts of time that make up history the long term thus presents itself as troublesome, complicated, often entirely new characters. It is in relation to such vast expanses of slow- moving history that the totality of history is to be re-thought. Every one of the thousand levels, the thousand explosions of historical time can be grasped.

Vladimir Gajsek, a Slovene author and poet, in his excellent "The Anatomy of Spectacular Political Process in Slovenia in 1947", reflects

"who could then convince a German Nazi party member or a specifically designed Yugoslav communist, that they were "MISTAKEN" when they were in power. Both had power in their hands in were blinded with it."

And further
"the modern era, which is here represented by 20th century, and characterized by ateist dictatorships, growth in technology and with nihilism, and during which the human being in simply liquidated en- masse"

But slowly the veil is being lifted, eventhough it was not in the history books. A real democracy does not have the luxury of hiding taboos under the carpet, and in the process of revealing and speaking a solution can be found.

Full knowledge of those events could only improve and strengthen the position and role of Slovenes and the Slovene state in Europe.

REFERENCE AND FURTHER READING

Vladimir Gajsek, Arijski obritoglavci, ki so pozabili na Avstrijsko prijaznost, Anatomija politicnega spektakularnega procesa v Sloveniji leta 1947, in Slovene, on
http://intely.com/cult/kritike/naci.htm

Milka Hartman, Dovolj je cvetje dalo zrnja, A tribute, Collection of articles, in Slovene, published by KKZ Celovec/Klagenfurt, Austria 2004

Tragicen konec Varsavske vstaje pred 60 lelti, ozadje, in Slovene, (Tragic end of the Waszaw uprising, background) on http://www.slowwwenia.com/ , date 4/29/2004

Irena Knehtl, Zgodovina tisine – Slovensko odpornisko gibanje 1941-1945, (The history of Silence, the Slovene Resistance movement) in Slovene, on http://independent.gape.org

On trade links view an interesting article FROM MARIB THE SABEAN CAPITAL TO KARANTANIA, Discovery of the link between the ancient Yemen Sabean kingdom and the Slovenian State of Karantania, by Irena Knehtl on www. buzzle.com

Armia Krajowa : Polish resistance in WW II : La résistance Polonaise. The Web Site "Armia Krajowa : Polish resistance in WW II : La résistance Polonaise" is a trilingual site about the heroic, and largest resistance movement in Europe during the Second World War. The Home Army (Armia Krajowa) was 300,000 strong at its peak and played an important part in Allied intelligence operations and gathering. View full record
http://www.humbul.ac.uk/output/redirect.php?URI=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.polishresistance-ak.org%2F

Vida Deželak-Bariè, The attitude of the Slovenian communists towards the revolutionary organization 'tigr' during the second world war UDK 329.61(TIGR):329.15(479.4)"1941/1945" The paper emphasizes the important role of the underground revolutionary organization TIGR (Trieste, Istria, Gorizia, Reka) in organizing the National Liberation Front in Primorska, and shows the reservations and caution of the Communist Party of Slovenia with regards to the TIGR members. Exclusivity of the Communists prevented the TIGR from being integrated into the LF as a group in its own right, in spite of its years-long resistance to Italian Fascism. When the TIGR organization had become severely weakened as a result of numerous arrests of its members in 1940, many of its remaining members joined the LF as individuals. Some of them became the Communist Party members and were even given prominent posts. Although the TIGR ceased to exist in 1941, the CPS continued to carefully monitor the activities of the organization's former members.

View an interesting exhibition "Med kljukastim krizem in rdeco zvezo" (Unter Hakenkreuz und Titoism) on http://gostje.kivi.si/total
about WW2 events in Carinthia.