Original scientific paper
HOW MANY PARTISAN DIVISIONS WERE THERE FROM CROATIA IN THE WWII?
Davor Marijan
; Ministry of Defence of the Republic of Croatia, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The common standpoint that during the WWII there were 17 Partisan divisions from the territory of today's Republic of Croatia the author disputes and holds that the 9th Dalmatian division cannot be counted as one but two divisions. The problem of counting the divisions increases the amount of Dalmatian brigades from 14 to 17. A further problem is the 3rd Assault Division that had been "remembered" in the historiography of the ex-Yugoslavia as Montenegrin, even though it had never been officially called so. The first formation of the Division, from the establishment in November 1942 to the split-up in June, 1943 at Sutjeska, consisted of a Croatian majority. Only the second formation of the Division could be held Montenegrin. This was of course not sufficient for the broadening of the national or the territorial definition for the military path of the 3rd Assault Division of the first formation. The remaining two Partisan infantry divisions, the 1st and the 2nd Proletarian, which did not have a national-territorial definition, had in particular periods of its existence a percentage of Croats that varied between 20 to 50 percent, mostly in 1943. The final conclusion is that on the territory of the Republic of Croatia there were 18 divisions, of which 16 survived until the end of the war, while one existed only fora short period of time, and another one was abolished just before the end of the war. Apart from two divisions, the others were fighting on the territory of the Independent Stale of Croatia (NDH) so that they kept a constant majority of Croatian citizens. Two divisions had been outside Croatia, so that they changed their national and territorial composition.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
207216
URI
Publication date:
4.12.2000.
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