Europe’s Civil Wars, 1941–1949 Page 1 of 13 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). (c) Oxford University Press, 2014. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy ). Subscriber: Oxford University Press - Master Gratis Access; date: 26 September 2014 Subject: History, European History Online Publication Date: Sep 2014 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199695669.013.30 Europe’s Civil Wars, 1941–1949 Aviel Roshwald The Oxford Handbook of Europe 1914-1945 (Forthcoming) Edited by Nicholas Doumanis Oxford Handbooks Online Abstract and Keywords A number of the conflicts that wracked European countries under Axis-power occupation during the Second World War can be understood as civil wars. This analytical prism should be seen as complementing rather than replacing the more conventional pairing of collaboration and resistance. The three European cases from this period that best fit conventional notions of civil war in terms of the intensity and duration of fighting among co-nationals are Greece, Yugoslavia, and Italy. A comparative analysis can yield insights into the complex interplay of historical continuities and ruptures, and of nationalist and internationalist frames of reference, in shaping the agendas and choices of participants in these violent struggles. Keywords: civil war, Greece, Yugoslavia, Italy, communism, nationalism, internationalism, occupation, collaboration, resistance On 22 February 1943, in the course of the Battle of the Neretva, the Fourth Brigade of the Communist-led Yugoslav Partisans took the town of Jablanica from an Italian battalion, capturing the commander in the process. On learning that their prisoner was a proud veteran of the pro-Franco Italian contingent in the Spanish Civil War, his counterparts among the Partisans demanded his immediate execution. The Italian officer returned the salutation in a manner of speaking, requesting that his shooting be carried out by one of those former volunteers for the Spanish Republic. The request was denied, and he was shot by military couriers instead. Did the Italian commander die in a global conflict, in an internecine Yugoslav struggle, or on one of the multiple fronts of a transnational civil war? One could truthfully answer yes to each of these questions. This was certainly an episode in the Second World War. It could also be construed as part of a Yugoslav civil war, insofar as Serb Chetnik units fought alongside the Italian and German forces arrayed against their shared Yugoslav Communist foe on the Neretva River. Clearly, in the Italian officer’s own mind, his death in Bosnia also constituted a coda to the Spanish Civil War. The very denial of his request for a ‘Spanish’ executioner may have constituted a rejection by his adversaries of any pretence of mutual respect between veterans of the opposing sides in that conflict, rather than a denial that the current encounter was connected to that earlier struggle. Conversely, perhaps it did indicate a rejection of the notion that the war between foreign occupiers and Yugoslav resisters could be understood as a legitimate sequel to the clash between foreign participants in the Spanish Civil War. The ambiguous, multi-layered nature of this incident reminds us how problematic any simplistic use of the term ‘civil war’ can be in the context of the twentieth century’s greatest international and global conflict and its immediate aftermath. On the one hand, the term could be applied to almost every country that fell under Axis control: wherever occupation took place, societies were divided in their responses, and these divisions frequently led to bloodshed. On the other hand, the term can be seen as inappropriate in many such cases, insofar as these confrontations really pitted collaborators against resisters. To label these fights civil wars may seem to imply that the fundamental source of conflict was internal to the society in question rather than exogenous (in the form of foreign conquest by Germany or its allies). Such an implication is bound to be controversial in most cases; it may prove misleading in many; yet it may also contain a strong element of truth. 1 2