The Slovene Home Guard (, SD; ) was a Slovene anti-Partisan militia that was founded and supported by the Germans and fought alongside them against the Partisans. It operated during part of the 1943–1944 German occupation of the formerly Italian-annexed Slovene Province of Ljubljana. The Guard consisted of former Village Sentries (; ), part of Italian-sponsored Anti-Communist Volunteer Militia, re-organized under Nazi command after the Italian Armistice of September 1943. At the end of 1944, the National Committee for Slovenia re-organized all the anti-communist armies into one called the Slovenian National Army/Slovenska Narodna Vojska. This new Slovenian National Army re-took their oaths to King Peter in their support of the kingdom of Yugoslavia.
The Guard had close links with Slovenian right-wing anti-Communist political parties and organizations, which provided most of the membership, receiving assistance from the Germans rather than providing assistance to them. In the Slovenian Littoral, a similar but much smaller unit, called the Slovenian National Defense Corps (, ), more commonly known as the Littoral Home Guard () was ideologically and organizationally linked to the SD. An even smaller Upper Carniolan Self-Defense (, ), also known as the Upper Carniolan Home Guard () operated in Upper Carniola between 1944 and 1945. All three "home guard" units comprised almost exclusively ethnic Slovenes. The officers and the language of command were Slovene.
Some of the resistance groups outside of the communist-led Liberation Front of the Slovene Nation (OF) were collectively known by the OF as White Guards (Slovene: Bela garda), a pejorative term. Some of the British liaison-officers with the Slovene Partisans saw the White Guards as another name for the Home Guards, and declared them enemies of the Allies. All the while, the Slovene Home Guard had embedded intelligence officers into its ranks who secretly spied on the German military movements and reported this intelligence to the British, both in London and to MI6 in Switzerland.
Background
In April 1941, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was invaded by the Axis powers, quickly overrun and carved up. Those areas of Yugoslavia that now form the country of Slovenia were annexed by Germany, Italy and Hungary. The Italians annexed southern Slovene territories with a population of 336,279, as the Province of Ljubljana. Italian annexation troops, the XI Army Corps, secured the new province, introduced fascist laws, and an Italian civilian high commissioner was appointed.
The influential Roman Catholic Bishop of Ljubljana, Gregorij Rožman, and in-country prewar politicians, led by Marko Natlačen, immediately expressed their willingness to collaborate with the fascist authorities, writing public letters of support for the annexation of Ljubljana Province to Italy. On 8 June 1941, Natlačen led Slovene politicians and industrialists to meet with Mussolini in Rome, after which they reiterated their loyalty, and started officially collaborating with the Italians in the Consulta, a supposedly consultative body, that had no power.
Much of the prewar police force and public administration continued to work for the new Fascist authorities.
Resistance begins Soon after the annexation, several resistance groups emerged, including the communist-led Liberation Front of the Slovene Nation (), or simply Liberation Front (Osvobodilna fronta, OF) raised armed units and engaged in sabotage and active resistance. The OF consisted of eighteen distinct groupings, including the Communist Party of Slovenia, quite a large number of members of the Christian Socialist Party, some members of the gymnastic body Sokol, various progressive intellectuals, some former Royal Yugoslav Army officers, and even some members of the strongly-Catholic Slovene People's Party. These bodies varied in origin, ideology and strength, but were united in their policy of immediate armed resistance to the annexation forces. The communist-led group was initially inactive when the Axis forces invaded Yugoslavia because of the Nazi–Soviet nonaggression pact; this position changed to one of resistance to the Axis forces after 22 June 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The communist-led group was active in May 1941, on 8 June 1941 and on 15 June 1941 by publishing criticisms against the occupation and the German occupiers, as well as against the Americans and the British, in their publication Slovenski poročevalec. During the same time, most Slovene newspapers wrote favourably about the occupation out of fear or by being directly controlled by the occupiers.
The anti-communist, anti-fascist resistance groups were the first group to start resisting the occupiers, which including Germany, Italy and Hungary. Slovenia was assimilated by Nazi Germany, which meant that most resistance was underground. These underground groups organized themselves on the basis that they would form the core of resistance against the Italians and the Germans at some time in the future. These groups generally considered immediate resistance to be pointless given the overwhelming enemy, and that it would be too expensive in terms of lives, property and suffering. Instead, they create intelligence divisions that would provide essential intelligence about German military movements to the Allies. They also planned for the arrival of Allied troops in the region, and trained their troops so they could join the Allies in their battle against the Germans.
In this they reflected the same approach as the Chetnik leader in the German-occupied territory of Serbia, Draža Mihailović. Some of these groups had a pro-Western stance, but others were pro-Axis, as the number of active collaborators with the Italians testified. The main part of the Slovene People's Party formed the Slovene Legion, the Yugoslav National Party and the majority of Sokol formed the Sokol Legion, and another group that was formed was the National Legion. All of these latter organizations tried to position themselves to take advantage of whatever outcome resulted from the war. These pro-democracy, pro-allied groups were collectively called the pejorative term "White Guards" () to the OF.
The pro-Western groups sought the re-establishment of Yugoslavia and, in common with the communists, the expansion of Yugoslavia to include those Slovene lands that had been annexed by Italy or remained part of Austria after World War I.
The leadership of the OF lay in the hands of several communists, Boris Kidrič, Edvard Kardelj, and Franc Leskošek. In August, the OF created the Security and Intelligence Service (, VOS) to coordinate resistance activities. This was a small and select secret police organisation, led by Zdenka Kidrič, Boris Kidrič's wife. Although it was part of the OF, the VOS was under exclusive communist control.
During the second half of 1941, there was no active resistance by any group to the occupiers. At that time, the OF began killing civilians in the city of Ljubljana, and also in the countryside. The OF developed an underground organisation in Ljubljana and in the countryside, and the Partisans conducted attacks on Italian forces and sabotaged important targets from July. The Italians retaliated against the OF and against the civilian population, conducting operations in the late summer and early autumn that destroyed or broke up many of the Partisan companies and caused losses to others. The non-OF groups made contact with Mihailović and planned to provide recruits for his "Yugoslav Army in the Homeland" during a future uprising against the Italians.
Setbacks to the OF, followed by the onset of a severe and early winter, meant that the Partisans gained little ground until early 1942. In December, the VOS began a campaign against Slovenes who were collaborating with the Italians, assassinating several prominent leaders.
Resurgence and reaction
Early in 1942, Partisan Supreme Headquarters directed the Slovene Partisans to re-develop its depleted units and increase attacks and sabotage. This order resulted in a spate of Partisan operations in April–June in the Province of Ljubljana. These operations occurred at the same time that the Italians were concentrating their many small, weak and widely-spread garrisons into larger bases under Plan Primavera. The Partisans were thus able to effectively extend their control to over half of the province and population, and expand their recruiting and number and size of their units. The Partisans' success in mid-1942 meant that the Italians were even more committed to combating them, and the non-OF forces sought to find an effective way to collaborate with the Italians in order to fight the Partisans. By early 1942, the non-OF forces had concluded that the OF was working towards a communist takeover of Yugoslavia, which made the OF a far greater threat to them than the Italians, especially if the Allies prevailed. Likewise, the Partisans realised that the non-OF forces were their main enemy. These realisations resulted in bitter enmity between the two groups and started a civil war.
The non-OF forces then made a series of proposals to the Italians, aimed at opposing the objectives of the OF and Partisans. They also established the Slovene Alliance () to coordinate their anti-Partisan policies. The alliance was dominated by the Slovene People's Party, with its Slovene Legion. The leader of the Slovene People's Party, Miha Krek, who was vice-premier in the Yugoslav government-in-exile in London, broadcast messages urging all members of the alliance to follow the orders of Mihailović, who was by this time the Minister of Army, Navy and Air Force in the government-in-exile, despite being physically located in occupied Yugoslavia. In May 1942, clandestine recruiting and organisation of the first Slovene anti-Partisan forces began. Initially this effort was very small, and included members of the Slovene, Sokol and National Legions, as well as a number of Major Karl Novak's Slovene Chetniks. This organisation was known as the Legion of Death. Whilst small initially, once this force was raised, it became critical to obtain Italian endorsement for its operation.
Armed collaboration begins
Units of the Legion of Death informally collaborated with Italian units during a major Italian offensive against the Partisans that commenced in the second half of July 1942 and continued through to early November. Impressed with the potential of such units, and with the approval of the Italian leader, Benito Mussolini, the Italians decided to accept the offer of the Slovene Alliance, and to enrol the anti-Partisan units as auxiliaries. In early August, the Italians directed that all existing and future Slovene anti-Partisan units would be incorporated into the Anti-Communist Volunteer Militia (, MVAC). In the same month, armed units in rural areas were formed into the Village Guards (), which was also included in the MVAC, and ultimately became the largest grouping among the Italian auxiliaries.