ABSTRACT On 16 October 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin attended a parade in Belgrade marking the 70th anniversary of its liberation by the Red Army and the Communist-led Yugoslav Partisans. In addition to being a public display of the historic bonds and mutual friendship between the two states, the event also symbolically reaffirmed the role of the Yugoslav Partisans in these operations by parading their old battle flags. In light of strong revisionist tendencies in the past 25 years that sought to diminish or even deny the Partisans’ contribution to the liberation of the country, this represents a small but important gesture. The aim of this article will be to provide an overview of operations in Serbia from late September to late October 1944, to quantify the Partisans’ contribution to the campaign, and to briefly discuss Soviet-Yugoslav cooperation during this period.

The aim of this article will be to examine the operations of the Yugoslav Partisans and German armed forces in northern parts of Yugoslavia in late 1944 and early 1945. Since the summer of 1941, the communist-led guerrilla movement had conducted a massive guerrilla campaign against Axis forces, at the same time striving to build a regular army and thus gain recognition as a full-time member of the anti-Hitler coalition. The arrival of the Red Army and liberation of country’s eastern parts in September and October 1944 secured material foundations for a creation of a regular field force. Whether this nascent army would be capable of defeating its retreating, but still dangerous German foe remained to be seen.

The aim of this article is to analyze the operations in Western Serbia and the neighboring regions conducted from March through September 1944 by the Yugoslav Partisans on one side and the Germans and collaborationist troops on the other. Knowledge of these operations is important for understanding subsequent military and political developments, namely the joint Soviet-Partisan offensive on Belgrade and the establishment of the Communist-dominated government in Yugoslavia. Little is known about these events in the West, in particular the details of the military co-operation between the Germans and the Serbian Chetniks, which developed to its full extent during this period. By relying on a wide array of primary sources, the article will hopefully shed some light on these complex issues, as well as help settle the still-existing controversies surrounding the Serbian nationalist guerrillas’ role in the last year of the war.

First of all, I would like to thank Mr. Schmider for his comments on my article. Being a newcomer to the world of scholarly writing, drawing the attention of a renowned an expert on WW2-Yugoslavia such as himself does me credit indeed. Now I shall try to address the issues Mr. Schmider raised in his letter. I believe a somewhat unfortunate choice of the title I’ve chosen for the article is responsible for at least one of them. I concur with Mr. Schmider completely on the deeper reasons for the failure of German operations in winter and spring of 1943—inadequacy of Italian anti-partisan efforts and suicidal internal policy of the Ustasha. Then as now, politics lay in the heart of every counterinsurgency—achieving victory with military means alone has been proven nigh impossible on countless occasions in history. In Yugoslav terms the political problem boiled down to two words: Ustasha regime. For no matter how many large operations the Axis launched and no matter how close they came to destroying a large part of Partisan Movement (as in the Operation ‘Schwarz’), Serb peasants from the Independent State of Croatia would certainly not lay down their arms without comprehensive political reform in Croatia. As General Warlimont correctly observed, by 1943 the lines were firmly drawn and no amount of promises or propaganda would convince them that 1941 would not be repeated once more. This problem was recognized by the German commands in the field, from divisional level onwards as well, but their reports and suggestions fell on deaf ears. The regime in Zagreb had only one ally but that was all it needed: Adolf Hitler wasn’t willing to swap horses in the middle of the race.

This article examines operations “Weiss” and “Schwarz,” two of the largest anti-guerrilla sweeps conducted by the German Wehrmacht during the entire Second World War. Four reinforced divisions with ca. 65,000 German soldiers and up to 100 aircraft took part in what is regarded as the most ferocious fighting of the whole war in Yugoslavia. Although conducted with maximum effort in material terms, they were doomed to failure because of the Third Reich's neglect of guerrilla warfare and the resulting lack of a sound counter-insurgency doctrine. Remarkably, operations “Weiss” and “Schwarz” are almost unknown to the public in the West, despite their sheer size. As the founding myths of socialist Yugoslavia, they were extensively written about, almost always from a Partisan perspective. This is the first article to describe the events from the German point of view, and to analyze the Wehrmacht's conduct of these operations in some depth. With the ongoing COIN campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, examining the lessons from the past can prove enlightening. “Black” on “White”: Operations in Yugoslavia, January – June 1943