1941: Annexation of Upper Carniola

After the German Wehrmacht attacked Yugoslavia in April 1941, Slovenia was divided into occupied territories. In addition to Lower Styria, a civil administration zone “Carinthia and Carniola” was established in Upper Carniola/Gorenjska, and administered from Klagenfurt. The Carinthian Gauleiter (Nazi term for regional leader), Franz Kutschera and, as of December 1941, Friedrich Rainer, assumed leadership of the occupied territories as Chiefs of the Civil Administration (CdZ). While the Mezica Valley/Mežiška was directly incorporated into the Carinthian districts of Wolfsburg and Völkermarkt, in the remaining three Upper Carolian districts, the Carinthian People’s Association (KVB), a National Socialist party similar to the German Nazi Party NSDAP, was to mobilise the population and  promote Nazi ideologies in the process.

In Upper Carniola, the establishment of Nazi rule and the Germanisation (German courses, relocations and resettlements of the Slovenian population), organised from Carinthia, developed more sluggishly than in Lower Styria. In doing so, Rainer, as Gauleiter and Chief of the Civil Administration, changed the procedure and started to integrate the three Upper Carniolan districts Radmannsdorf/Radovljica, Stein/Kamnik and Krainburg/Kranj as Nazi districts into the Gau (administrative district) of Carinthia.