Slovenia

Slovenia is today an independent country in Europe. Slovenia joined NATO on 7 April 2004, and since 1 May 2004 has been a full member of the European Union.

History

Slavic ancestors of the present-day Slovenians settled in the area in the sixth century. The Slavic Duchy of Carantania was formed in the seventh century. In 745, Carantania lost its independence, being largely subsumed into the Frankish empire. Many Slavs converted to Christianity.

The Freising manuscripts, the earliest surviving written documents in a Slovenian dialect and the first ever Slavic document in Latin script, were written around 1000. During the fourteenth century, most of Slovenia's regions passed into ownership of the Habsburgs whose lands later formed the Austrian Empire, with Slovenians inhabiting all or most of the provinces of Carniola, Gorizia and Gradisca and parts of the provinces of Istria, Carinthia, Styria, the region of Prekmurje that belonged to the Kingdom of Hungary and Venetian Slovenia which was part of the Austrian Empire between 1797-1805 and 1815-1866. Slovenians also inhabited most of the territory of the Imperial Free City of Trieste, although representing the minority of its population.

In 1848, a massive political and popular movement for a United Slovenia (Zedinjena Slovenija) emerged as part of the Spring of Nations movement within Austria.

During World War I several fronts were opened between the belligerent countries in Europe. After the Italian attack on Austro-Hungary the south-west front was opened, part of which was also The Isonzo Front. The name itself indicates that it ran along the river of Isonzo (Italian name for the Soča), with the greatest part on the present territory of Slovenia.

With the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy in 1918, Slovenians initially formed part of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, which shortly joined the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later renamed (1929) the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

Following the re-establishment of Yugoslavia at the end of World War II, Slovenia became a part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, officially declared on 29 November 1945. Present-day Slovenia was formed on 25 June 1991 upon its independence from Yugoslavia, gained in the Ten-Day War. Slovenia joined NATO on 29 March 2004 and the European Union on 1 May 2004. Slovenia will hold the Presidency of the Council of the European Union in the first half of 2008.

Massacres (WWII)

During the night of 9/10 May 1945, a bitter battle took place near and in the village of Raka. In the early morning hours, a large officers' conference, led by General Hans-Joachim Gravenstein, was held to discuss whether to attempt a breakthrough and reach safe ground in Austria or to surrender. The arrival of Colonel Knackfuß with the order to surrender ended the heated debate and, at the same time, the existence of the 373rd (Croatian) Infantry Division. During this conference, the fighting continued. A German police battalion was stationed nearby, which refused to surrender under any circumstances. Meanwhile, a Yugoslav major, driven by a German motorcyclist, had arrived for the conference and demanded an immediate, unconditional surrender. Naturally, the soldiers were promised free passage back to their own border after laying down their weapons. At around 12:00 noon on May 10th, the soldiers of the division surrendered their weapons. First, they were led home for one more day, then the march into captivity began, with the officers and the general leading the way, toward Zagreb. In Steinbrück, Slovenia alone, 3,000 men—Ustasha, police, members of the 373rd Infantry Division and the 104th Jäger Division—were murdered by the bloodthirsty Serbian partisans during these days.

Over 10,000 victims of Tito's partisans, including Germans, lie in the largest known mass grave in the village of Mostec in Slovenia on the Croatian border. For two weeks, from 13 to 26 May 1945, the shots of the executions echoed through the night. The murdered Wehrmacht soldiers belonged to the so-called "Blue Division." Officially called the "392nd (Croatian) Infantry Division," this unit was an unusual formation in occupied Croatia: It consisted of German support personnel, ethnic Germans, and Croatian fighters. The soldiers wore Wehrmacht uniforms with the Croatian flag sewn onto them. Tito had been in nearby Zagreb from 13 to 23 May 1945. On 26 May, he delivered a speech to a large crowd in Congress Square in Ljubljana, declaring that "all traitors who had not yet been touched by the hand of revenge of our people" would never again see the mountains and fields of the country.

In May 1945 alone, over 60,000 Croats were executed. Several of them died in the "Bleiburg Massacre," when the British simply handed over Slovene and Croat prisoners of war to Tito's Yugoslav assassins. From May to October 1945, columns of prisoners of war and civilians were driven through Mostec in southeastern Slovenia, on the border with Croatia, toward the nearby anti-tank ditch on the banks of the Sava River. Machine gun fire was heard from there at night. Marko Strovs, head of the Slovenian Mass Graves Authority, estimates that up to 10,000 skeletons may lie in the 186-meter-long, four-meter-wide, and two-meter-deep trench dug by the German defenders after two weeks of exploration. It is the largest known mass grave in Slovenia from the Second World War and its subsequent months. The mass grave at Mostec is believed to contain primarily Croats and Slovenes. In addition to Ustaše soldiers, skeletons of civilians bound with wire were also found. The grave is also likely to contain soldiers from the 7th SS Mountain Division "Prinz Eugen." It consisted primarily of ethnic Germans recruited in southeastern Europe and committed numerous war crimes. The majority of the approximately 20,000-strong unit surrendered in May 1945 near the Austrian border—and disappeared. So far, all that is known is that approximately 2,000 of them were murdered in the Brežice area near Mostec.

Ethnic Germans were also "selected out and liquidated as traitors," says Professor Rolf-Dieter Müller of Humboldt University in Berlin. And of the approximately 175,000 to 200,000 German soldiers who were taken prisoner of war by Yugoslavia in 1945, less than half returned. They died on death marches, starved to death in camps, or were arbitrarily executed or sentenced to death en masse in show trials.

See also

• Foreign volunteers of the German Armed Forces (WWII)

External links

• Encyclopedia.com: Slovenia