Battle of Poljana
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
|
|||||
The Battle of Poljana (from Monday 14 May to Tuesday 15 May 1945) was the last battle of World War II in Europe.
The Battle of Poljana started at Poljana, near the Slovenian village of Prevalje in Yugoslavia [1]. The battle was the culmination and the last of a series of battles between Yugoslav partisans and a large, mixed column (numbering in excess of 30,000) of German Army (Wehrmacht Heer) soldiers together with Croatian Ustaše, members of the Slovene Home Guard (Slovenian Domobranci, Slovensko domobranstvo, or SD), and other Fascist collaborators who were attempting to retreat to Austria.
In the spring of 1945, the German Army and their allies were in full retreat from the Partisans. In early April, the Partisans’ 3rd Army, under the command of Kosta Nađ, fanned out through the Drava Valley region (Croatian: Podravina), reached a point north of Zagreb, and crossed the old Austrian border with Yugoslavia in the Dravograd sector. The Partisans' 3rd Army closed the ring around the enemy forces when its advanced motorized detachments linked up with detachments of the 4th Army in Carinthia. As a result, German Army Group E was prevented from escaping north-west across the Drava river. Completely surrounded, General Alexander Löhr, Commander-in-Chief of Army Group E was forced to sign [1] the total surrender of the forces under his command at Topolšica, near Velenje, Slovenia, on Wednesday May 9. Nevertheless, some of his troops, together with Croatian Ustaše, some Slovene Home Guard, and other collaborationist forces continued to resist and tried to fight their way west to what they hoped would be the protection of the British, who were at Klagenfurt, Austria.
Just before 9am on 14 May, a significant force of mostly Ustaše with some Montenegrin Chetniks and Slovenian Domobranci approached Partisan positions at the Šurnik farm near Poljana demanding free passage west. This was refused and firing commenced on both sides. Ustaše attacks intensified in the afternoon, evening and overnight, finally ceasing on the morning of 15 May with the arrival of around 20 British tanks. Tense negotiations followed, during which British officers made it abundantly clear that they would not offer protection to the collaborators and that unconditional surrender to the Partisans was the only option. White flags were finally raised around 4pm on 15 May.
Casualty estimates were at least 310 Ustaše dead in the two main locations of fighting, and 250 wounded. On the Partisan side, losses were considerably lower, numbering fewer than 100 dead and wounded. The surrender of this last area of Axis resistance is considered to be the end of World War II in Europe, 8 days after the official surrender of the Germans on Monday 7 May 1945.
However, numerous isolated incidents carried on in the next few days, including one on the evening of 20 May when a group of Ustaše appeared near Ferlach (Slovenian Borovlje), 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 Partisans’ 11th Dalmatian Shock Brigade, “we attacked them at 21.00hrs. On this occasion we took 24 Ustaše soldiers and one officer”.
[edit] References
- ^ General Löhr signing the surrender document at Topolšica: http://www.250kb.de/u/060216/j/12453304.jpg
[edit] See also
- Yugoslav Partisans
- Yugoslav People's Liberation War
- Seven anti-Partisan offensives
- List of anti-Partisan operations in Yugoslavia
- Resistance during World War II
