1941–1945: Partisans – Military Resistance in Carinthia/Koroška

The only armed resistance in the German Reich

This article is part of the intervention Liberation 1945 – Open Ending, Fragile Future.

After the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Slovenian anti-fascists in Ljubljana founded the Osvobodilna Fronta (OF, Liberation Front) to provide armed resistance against the occupation. The OF joined Carinthian Slovenes who had deserted from the Wehrmacht. In April 1942, the Nazi regime intensified its oppression of Slovenes, and deported 200 Carinthian families to Germany. Thus, the willingness to resist grew among the remaining population.

The first battles between partisans and Nazi organisations took place in August 1942. In the winter of 1942/1943, the Gestapo arrested about 200 opponents of the Nazis in the vicinity of Eisenkappel/Železna Kapla and Zell Pfarre/Sele. At a trial in Klagenfurt in April 1943, the People’s Court (Volksgerichtshof) handed down 13 death sentences, which were carried out in Vienna.

In the summer of 1944, the armed resistance in Carinthia/Koroška reached its peak. Supported by British arms deliveries, more than 900 men and women fought for the Carinthian partisan associations of the OF. They provided the only armed resistance within the German Reich. The Slovenian historian Marjan Linasi has counted 800 battles, campaigns and clashes between partisans and Nazi forces in bilingual Carinthia. As late as April 25, 1945, members of the SS perpetrated a massacre in Peršmanhof near Eisenkappel against a Slovenian family that had supported partisans. Today a museum is located there.