The Improvised Navy of the Yugoslav Partisans

 

Tito with sailors from the Partisan Navy
(used with permission)

Freivogel and Rastelli's Adriatic Naval War is a treasury of superb naval images drawn from private collections, alongside the best-informed text I have ever read on the topic. The sheer amount of small but important details suggests to me that much of the book was put together from local knowledge and oral history. The gathering together of this information is a credit to its authors, but it was not the first time I had heard about the improvised navy of those Extemporisers Extraordinaire, the Yugoslav Partisans.

 

That honour goes to Eastern Approaches (2), the travelogue and war diary of the intrepid British adventurer and friend of Josip Broz Tito, Fitzroy Maclean. Yet not even his gripping chronicle records the very beginnings of the maritime struggle against Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany for Istria, Dalmatia and its coast of a thousand islands. That story began as the wartime innovation of Croatian sailors.

Partisan ships and seamen were continuously at sea in spite of adverse weather and were taking every risk in the face of the Italian and German revenge. At first they were weakly armed and badly equipped, and their results in sinking and capturing enemy vessels were never as high as the numbers 'bagged' by 'inefficient' Allies. But when the war ended the Partisans remained on the scene as the only victors, getting rid of their enemies, allies and political rivals as well. (1)

The old Yugoslavia was a land of mountains, ideal for the guerrilla warfare at which its people had had centuries of practice. The Adriatic with its twisting coastline, headlands, bays and islands offered the same type of warfare on the sea. Much of the reason for Tito's success as a leader in World War 2 came from his ability to unite these various fighting groups, and there are several images in the Adriatic Naval War of him bestowing a communist blessing on the sailors.

Italy had long coveted the beautiful Croatian coast and, when the Croatian Ustasha dictator Ante Pavelić did as he was told and handed it over to Mussolini in May 1941, local men formed the beginnings of the resistance later that same year.

Small rowing, sailing or motor boats were used to maintain communication lines between various groups in coastal and island camps. Italians were always trying to stop these movements with new orders and regulations, but the boats were often 'stolen' by their owners, being returned to the harbour in the morning after a specific action was performed.(1)

Actual attacks against the Italians began in January 1942 and became such a nuisance that Italian ships had to be armed or escorted and sometimes travelled in convoys for protection.

Italy had naval dockyards around the Adriatic at Monfalcone, Trieste and nearby Taranto, so it might reasonably be asked what type of vessels the Croatians could possibly have used against such technology. Fishing villages run the length of the coast and the first boats used were nothing more than their everyday vessels like those below in the Mandracio of Novigrad, which I visited in 2018.

The Partisan's aim was to capture from the enemy as much as they could: stores, food, arms and the vessels themselves. The Navy was given official recognition in the coastal town of Podgora around September 1942, a year before the Italian collapse. 

  The first flag of the Partisan NOVJ Navy 

 - Narodno Oslobodilačka Vojska Jugoslavija.

   The People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia (3). 

From early 1945 this became the Yugoslav Navy. (Not to be confused with the Royal Yugoslav Navy and merchant fleet 1918-1941 or the Navy of the Independent State of Croatia, untimely born and ineffective.) Ninety percent of the Navy of the Yugoslav Partisans was Croatian, but members also came from the other areas of Yugoslavia and even Italy and countries in Eastern Europe.

There were two classifications of vessels, PČ and NB, reflecting the Croatian words for boat, čamac (pronounced chamats), and brod, ship. PČ means Patrolni Čamac or patrol boat and NB means Naoružani Brod or ‘armed ship’. The Adriatic Naval War describes them initially as having ‘at least one 40mm gun’ and they may have had in addition ‘older British 40mm Vickers anti-guns with 20mm Breda and Scotti machine guns.’ However, photos from the book show them having many more. The old fishing boats of the pre-war villages were also reinforced with planks and stone filling. They were slow but nevertheless had impressive success rates against the Italians and later the Germans.

The Adriatic Naval War lists 17 armed Partisan ships (four German and several Italian), and 70 patrol boats (four German). 

For two years from the invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, the Partisans received no help from either Russia or Britain and stole arms, ammunition, food, stores and even uniforms from the enemy. They became adept at improvisation. They took the machine guns from crashed aircraft and attached them to the bows of their boats, they stole bombs from under the nose of Italians and dismantled them to reuse the parts. Fitzroy Maclean writes how the Yugoslav Partisans remade railway carriages and engines. (One always feels that they’d have a go at anything.) On Vis they enthusiastically learned how to handle heavy weapons and fly aeroplanes and at the very end of the war, they even stole a miniature submarine from Pula Harbour.

After the Italians abandoned Dalmatia, the Nazis invaded until eventually the only unoccupied island was Vis, the furthest from the coast of Split. It is about an hour and a half by modern fast ferry.

The idea of creating an Allied/Partisan air and naval base on Vis was first floated by Fitzroy Maclean. A small airstrip was constructed where damaged bombers frequently crash-landed from both directions at once. The strip can just be seen at the beginning of this short video. Also visible is Tito’s war cave in which he lived from June to September 1944.

The island of Vis has a noble history dating all the way back to the ancient Greeks. Officially, it was the only island along the coast that was not invaded by Germany after Italy capitulated to General Eisenhower in September 1943. Practically, however, the Germans had spread themselves too thinly this late in the war, and once Tito declared the fight to retain Vis imperative and the Allies established a base there, many of the islands changed hands frequently.

I  was relieved to discover that the charming port of Komiža where the British and Partisan navies docked during the war is inaccessible to large cruise ships. We caught the ferry from Split to the town of Vis and, once there, hired a car, drove across the island to Komiža, parked outside the town and walked. Alternatively, you can put your own car on the ferry.

An excellent book to read about the Allies and Partisans on Vis is ‘Island of Terrible Friends’ by Bill Strutton. Happily, it was not hard to access and I got my copy on an interlibrary loan.

Commando Lieutenant Barton ‘dressed as a peasant and with two Partisans to show him the way, loaded his Sten gun on a mule under a burden of firewood and walked passed a number of German sentries right into the village of Nerežiše on the island of Brać, garrisoned with 200 Germans. One of the Partisans stood guard outside while he knocked on the Commandant’s billet, was admitted, thrust past a screeching woman to a bedroom upstairs, and there, in the faint light of a candle, fired a burst at the German Commandant who, half risen and gaping wordlessly, leaned over and fell. Barton calmly helped himself to the dead commandant’s automatic, his compass, an excellent pair of binoculars and a rifle. [Then] he beat it with his two Jugoslav comrades through a thicket of sentries. (4)

One story I loved occurred when a British doctor expressed his need for an X-ray machine. Upon hearing this, a group of Partisans sailed into Split, held up a local clinic at gun point and demanded the required machine. They then dismantled it and walked out with the pieces under their clothes, got back on board, returned to Vis and reassembled it for the doctor.  

Sources

(1) Freivogel, Z and Rastelli, R Adriatic Naval War 1940-1945 DESPORT INFINITUS 2015

(2) Maclean, Fitzroy Eastern Approaches Jonathon Cape 1949

(3) http://www.ratnakronikasplita.com/kronika/1943-1 

(4) Strutton, Bill Island of Terrible Friends Hodder and Stroughton 1961.

Rijeka 1919: a decadent poet and an Italian land claim

 

‘Posing for his sexual partner as a martyred saint, Gabriele d’Annuncio was titillating himself with the image of a young man tortured and killed.’

The Pike, Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s biography of the Italian poet Gabriele d’Annuncio, is an unrivalled story of decadence and hedonism requiring, at times, a suspension of disbelief. Death, sadism and eroticism are constant and intertwining themes, to the extent that I wondered, when d’Annuncio urged young Italians into World War 1, whether he did so for the glory of Italy or for his own sexual pleasure. Hughes-Hallett has no scruples on the matter. ‘Throughout the Great War, d’Annuncio was to refer over and over again, and in increasingly exulted tones, to dead soldiers as “martyrs”, whose deaths must be honoured by the sacrifice of further beautiful youths. What had begun as an erotic fantasy shaped by an aesthetic trend would become a motive for slaughter.’ (1)

Before World War 1, Italy was a poor, politically unstable country wracked by feudal lords and mafiosi, and the exodus of families looking for a better life had already begun to give the world its plethora of Italian restaurants. (Read Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi (2), written after Mussolini had locked away the mafia and made the trains run on time.) Abiding by a belief that war, hatred and bloodshed would strengthen it and in order to redeem territory promised to it at the Secret Treaty of London in 1915, Italy deserted its allies, Austria-Hungary and Germany, and sent its young men to World War 1 on a salary of a third of a lire per day (3). My husband’s grandfather travelled from Turin to fight on the northeastern frontier. Because he was illegitimate he was put on the front line in the hope that he would be shot first. It was not until he died in 1971 that the Italian government sent his daughter his war medals which she promptly sent back.

Italy is a strange country, held together by dreams of ancient Rome, the Renaissance and a hasty revision of its modern history textbooks. The last time I was in Turin I went for a walk along the Po and read there a series of mounted plaques glorifying the Risorgimento and the rise of the Italian military, both historical failures and examples of the importance to Italy of its own propaganda.

Indeed, what would Italy do without words? It is built entirely upon them, as The Pike proves. It is a very long book, but it is d’Annuncio’s self-styled takeover of Rijeka in 1919, surfing in on a wave of alcohol and cocaine, that concerns my study of War in the Balkans.

At the time Italy had a population of over 38 million and Croatia just 3 million. It was hardly surprising then that d’Annuncio and his contemporaries could claim Rijeka (Fiume), Istria and Dalmatia as Italian merely because a few Italian businesses had crossed the Adriatic and doubled the population in the cities. Yet it is doubtful for how long even this had been going on, for according to Viscountess Strangford who visited Rijeka in 1863, ‘There was but little Italian to be heard, but much more German, and all the rest Slavonic or Hungarian.’ (4) That there had been an increase in Italian settlers since then is likely, because I noticed a steady increase in Italian surnames in the church registries of my mother's village in Istria after Italian unification in 1860. Nevertheless, in 1910, Maude M Holbach, another British visitor to Dalmatia, recorded the following, ‘The population of Dalmatia at the census of 1890 was 507,000 souls of whom 417,000 are of Croatian stock, 90,000 of Serbian, and 16,000 were returned as Italian, the rest being Austrians, Hungarians and Poles.’ (5) 

The chapters in The Pike concerning the fate of Italian soldiers during the war are horrifying and, after the bloodbath when Italy demanded the Slavic territories promised it in 1915, America's Woodrow Wilson retorted, ‘Why does Italy want all these countries that don’t speak Italian?’ (3) 

The answer in part was Gabriele D’Annuncio, the voice of irredentism. Irredentism was an Italian word which meant land that should be considered unredeemed Italian territory. The criteria were:

i) it had once been part of the Roman Empire,

ii) it had once been part of the Venetian Empire,

iii) a few Italians lived there,

iv) a few Slavs lived there who wanted to be Italian (my grandmother),

v) it was south of the Alps and thus its acquisition made the map of Italy look better (the South Tyrol and the western third of Slovenia).

Istria was a good fit for points i) to iv). My mother, however, felt displaced in Italy and after World War 2, took on Yugoslav citizenship. Of Istria she said, ‘We were Austrian then Austria lost the war, then we were Italian and Italy lost the war.’ These Venetian-speaking Istrians lived on the west coast in a strip so thin that my mother told me that Croatian speakers came to her village of Tar in the 1920’s to buy fish. In the days before refrigeration, they couldn't have lived very far away.

It is evident from The Pike that Gabriele D'Annuncio was a metaphorical magician. Though small and unattractive (some would call him odious and repellent) he cast his spell over countless women who didn’t like the look of him but slept with him anyway, actresses, editors, musicians, politicians, the great mass of the Italian populace and sundry minor aristocracy. His mastery with words and manipulation of emotions invariably got him what he wanted, and it’s only a shame that he didn’t live long enough to see Italy after World War 2 lose all the territory his efforts had gained it.

But let us return to Rijeka in 1919.

The war was over and d'Annuncio was 'foremost among those shaping the story of the war's end as one of Italian humiliation, Italian victimisation.' (1) In Paris, the Allies allowed Italy only temporary occupation of the Croatian coast but delayed in granting it the territory promised in the Secret Treaty of London. D'Annuncio 'swore to fight on for the cause of an Italian Dalmatia' even as Italy slumped into depression and civil war. In an ugly mood, a million and a half demobbed soldiers trained in violence filled the cities and countryside, including the elite Italian troops, the arditi. Feared by the people, these arditi were unwelcome at home, they had nothing to do, and they were itching for a fight. They and d'Annuncio were mutually attracted.

Ignoring Italy's dire economic position, D'Annuncio then produced a series of incendiary speeches in Rome to the effect that Italy should 'seize by force what the peace-makers in Paris refused to grant them.' For his efforts in destabilizing an already unstable country, he was kicked out of Rome by the military authorities and sent back to Venice.

Anxious to belong to a Greater Italy, Rijeka's Italian population wrote to d'Annuncio asking him to lead them. The local arditi prepared to mobilize. Emotions ruled the day and violence towards non-Italians quickly overcame the city. D'Annuncio's ego was fueled and, although the government in Rome would not sanction any action against the city by him, on 11th September 1919 he decided to satisfy his fans and enter Rijeka. As if under d'Annuncio's spell, the Italian general protecting the city for the Allies let him and his arditi pass.

Once installed, however, the poet had no idea how to run a city in ways that didn't mimic his own lifestyle, and Rijeka swiftly became 'a bordello, a refuge for criminals and prostitutes...disorder, corruption and craziness.' 'D'Annuncio ‘staged pseudo-sacred ceremonies in the cathedral…and encourage a cult of his own personality so fervid that the Bishop…noted furiously that his flock were forsaking Christ for this modern Orpheus.’(1)

After three months, the government in Rome offered the citizens of Rijeka the option to remain a free city under the protection of Italy, and a plebiscite voted d'Annuncio out. Yet still he remained, ruling his totalitarian city-state by intimidation while the government commenced a blockade. 

Finally, as the new wave of violent fascism erupted around Trieste and Italian ships trained their guns on Rijeka's harbour, d'Annuncio was ordered to vacate the city by 6pm on Christmas Eve 1920. Three days of fighting came to end when the city begged him to leave.

Gabriele d'Annuncio departed Rijeka on 18th January 1921 and in October 1922 Mussolini marched on Rome.

References

1. Hughes-Hallett, Lucy   The Pike WF Howes 2014

2. Levi, Carlo   Christ Stopped at Eboli, Einaudi 1945.

3. Duggan Christopher   The Force of Destiny, Penguin 2008

 

4. Strangford, Emily Anne Beaufort Smythe   The Eastern Shores of the Adriatic in 1863. Richard Bentley, London 1864

5. Holbach, Maude M   Dalmatia, the Land Where East Meets West, 1910. William Clowes and Sons Ltd, London.

His Most Italian City | Mysite (mwalkeristra.com)

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