The Bleiburg massacre was a massacre that happened near the end of World War II, during May 1945, near the village of Bleiburg on the Austrian-Slovenian border. It involved mass murder of Croatian soldiers and civilians who were fleeing from the defeated fascist puppet state of Croatia. The atrocities were a reprisal against the real or alleged members or collaborators of the fascist regime, by the Yugoslav partisan army, under the orders from their supreme commander Josip Broz Tito, himself half-Croatian.
Although a still undefined number of Croatian soldiers died during a series of battles and skirmishes, it is generally accepted that the vast portion of violent deaths were the result of executions that lasted at least two weeks after the cessation of hostilities. The victims were Croatian soldiers and civilians, executed without trial as an act of vengeance for the crimes commited by the Ustaše regime in Croatian-controlled territories during World War II — frequently in overtly gruesome manner (mass rape and subsequent killing by stoning of women; beheading of Croatian disarmed soldiers). Murder continued in nearby Slovenia, and it is hard to estimate the number of victims in Bleiburg field, compared to those later found in the trenches in the Maribor area and other numerous pits in Slovenia. Many captives were sent on a death march further into Yugoslav territory.
Croatian political emigration, as well as other sources related to the Cossacks, had published numerous testimonies on the atrocities and British involvement in the affair (interestingly enough, British archives on the Operation Keelhaul tragedy are still sealed), but their publications have received little or no attention since communist Yugoslavia was the West's protege and the buffer-zone to the Soviets in the post-war period.
Number of Victims
The number of those who met their death in Bleiburg is almost impossible to ascertain. Generally, there are two schools that have tried to do this:
1. One operates with big numbers, and their contention is that somewhere between 250,000 and 600,000 Croats had been executed in Bleiburg, Slovenia and northern Croatia. While the upper limit is almost certainly false, the lower one has gained credibility in recent years, when Slovene authorities have estimated, in 1999 and 2000, that mass excavations in wider Maribor area have found cca. 180,000 human corpses, mostly Croats (judging from the remnants of military insignia). As reported elsewhere:
- In 1999 the resources from the Republic of Slovenia reported of as many as 110 mass graves of Croats discovered in this state, victims of the "Way of the Cross" in 1945 immediately after the end of World War II. Among them there were not only soldiers, but also a large number of civilians. The Slovenian public was shocked by the size and number of these graves.
- In 2001 Slovenian sources reported of as many as 296 mass graves on their territory, and an estimate of about 190,000 Croats killed immediately after the end of World War II (May 1945 and later), mostly Croats. Only in the region of Tezno woods Slovenian sources estimate about 60-80,000 killed. Many children bones have been found among the remains victims.
However, the investigation was stalled, so no definite conclusion can be drawn.
2. The another school is based mainly on demographic investigations of Croatian expert Vladimir Žerjavić, who has estimated that ca. 55,000 people were killed in Bleiburg area and in Slovenia. Other sources, like Misha Glenny and other investigators or publicists have come with the figure of 50,000 executed disarmed soldiers and 30,000 civilians. Which figure is closer to the reality is still hard to decide.
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