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In early 1943, British intelligence was thinking the same thing as Ralph. Total victory was near in North Africa, and attention moving across the Mediterranean. The British knew that Italian forces were tied up in Slovenia. Yet aside from that, they knew little about Slovenia except what they received through a secret line from the old politicians of the SLS in Ljubljana, via the Vatican.
The SLS were in a bind, playing both sides, but as the Italian summer offensive faltered, their fear of the Partisans triumphed. The SLS paramilitary underground, the Slovenska legija, remained dormant during the occupation. Meanwhile a few local militias had formed following Partisan reprisals. The SLS leveraged their underground to expand the militias and create a pro-Italian, collaborationist army, dubbed Vaške straže (the Village Guards).1 Slovenia was now in a civil war. The SLS tried to convince London that this was nothing to worry about, and that the Partisans were the enemy. In a single baffling message, the SLS told the British three competing conspiracy theories: that the Partisans were Nazi agents, that they wanted to resurrect Austria-Hungary, and that they wanted to form Communist super-Germany.*2 The SLS also claimed that the Partisans were gone, not worth British attention. ‘The Partisans are slowly disappearing . . . [they are] now solitary bands fighting for their own lives.’3 The British determined to find out for themselves. The Special Operations Executive (SOE), the intelligence agency responsible for espionage and resistance, would go into Slovenia.
The Slovenian Communist Party, meanwhile, seeing Slovenia’s international importance rising, wanted total control of the OF. More or less at gunpoint, the leading non-Communist rebels were forced to sign the ‘Dolomite Declaration’ at the beginning of March 1943:
other founding groups of the OF will not organize independent political parties or political organizations. Corresponding to their national, political, and social aspirations, which are identical in all respects to the aspirations of the Communist Party, they do not feel or see any need for their own specific parties or political organizations.
It also emphasized the Slovenian Communists’ links to Tito’s Yugoslav Communists, while trying to hold the mantle of Slovenian patriotism. ‘As an integral part of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, the Communist Party of Slovenia is the only party . . . which correctly understood and represented Slovenian nationalism.’4
The first British agents led by Major William Jones arrived a few months after this coup within the OF. Jones was from Newfoundland, and a veteran of the First World War. Somehow, at nearly fifty and missing an eye, he convinced SOE to parachute him into the Balkans. He immediately saw that the SLS were lying, and the Partisans were doing all the fighting against the Axis. The rebels were by now very strong, and the Italian 2nd Army was all but defeated, Italian troops rarely leaving their garrisons any more from fear of the Partisans. One Italian colonel said, ‘I haven’t moved, ever. I’m waiting to go home and if I manage to get there, I’m going to light a candle to the Madonna.’5 Jones also met John Denvir, now commander of Ljubo Šercer’s 2nd Battalion.
Major Jones’s primary job was to supply John and the other Partisans. At first this was all by parachute drops, but there were ambitions to build an airstrip. One of the last things on the Major’s mind was POWs. That was MI9’s area, not SOE’s – but that would soon change.
On 8 September 1943 Italy capitulated. The Allies had invaded Sicily, and Mussolini was spent. His armies in the Soviet Union and Africa had been destroyed. His army in Slovenia would fight no more. Three Italian divisions in Slovenia surrendered their weapons and were granted safe passage home by the Partisans.6 In Ljubljana, the SLS held an emergency meeting. They decided to take control of the Vaške straže and defect to the Allies. But the orders never went out. German forces seized Ljubljana and took over from Italy before the Vaške straže could be organized.7 The Partisans also made sure against any defection: Vaške straže garrisons were attacked, and the OF’s Communist leadership ordered the execution of any prisoners taken.*8
The Partisans liberated the Italian concentration camps, took on 10,000 new recruits, and formed nineteen new brigades. These were grouped three or four into a single Partisan division.9 John and the Ljubo Šercer Brigade joined the 14th Division.* They seemed victorious but they were grossly outmatched against what was coming: Hitler pulled the formidable II SS-Panzer Corps off the Eastern Front to take what Italy had lost. The predictable happened. With tanks, planes, and overwhelming numbers against them, the Partisans took devastating casualties and were unable to protect the civilians against reprisals. Towns that had only just been liberated were lost again.10
Major Jones had his hands full trying to maintain supply during an enemy offensive. Worse, the region was so devastated it was on the brink of famine.11 Then, in November 1943 came more work. A few dozen POWs who had escaped from camps across northern Italy found their way to him. Jones could offer little besides weak soup. He had no plan for evacuating escapees. Instead, he asked the group, exhausted by two months on the run, to join the Partisans. This nearly triggered a mutiny, and the senior POWs vowed to report the Major.12 Eventually, Jones arranged to send the POWs south by way of a Partisan courier line. There, they evacuated from the Croatian coast to southern Italy, now held by the Allies.13 Once returned, the POWs were debriefed by MI9, who began to think SOE and the Partisans would make useful partners.
Though, following the SS offensive, the situation again looked bleak for the Partisans, Commander Stane’s resourcefulness led him to be recalled south to take overall command of all Slovenian Partisans. Before he left, he had reorganized the northern forces. A small group of Partisans returned to Pohorje after the battalion there was destroyed. They did not fight – rather they established an escape line from Maribor for Partisan supporters and sympathizers. Over 1943 several hundred Slovenians fled into the hills and formed into three groups. The largest group was smuggled south along the secret courier lines, where it formed a fresh brigade, armed, and trained. A second group formed the Koroška Odred, a Partisan force that would go high into the mountains bordering Austria. The third formed what later became known as the Lackov Odred, the new permanent presence in Pohorje.14 If brigades and divisions were wolves that would cooperate with each other to strike hard, then odreds were bears. Lone scavengers, they would operate stealthily across a large territory.
With the south near famine, not all the Partisans could remain. So Commander Stane assembled the 14th Division. They were to march north, cross into the Reich, link up with the odreds, and liberate Štajerska.