Laz wrote:The partizans were overwhelmingly a serbian army - FACT.
Not a fact a all.
According to Tito's statement in spring 1944 there were 44% Serbs, 30% Croats, 10% Slovenians.....
I don't have a source for this cause it's from a book, but if you like you can try to google it
and you'll find plenty of sources on the net on Serbo-Croatian about this statement.
I do however have a good source of partisans by republics and ethnic composition of partisans from Croatia.
Croatia - Late 1944
Nationality
Operational units (brigades, divisions, corps) 100740
60703 Croats
24528 Serbs
5113 Slovenians
3593 Muslims
http://www.vojska.net/eng/world-war-2/y ... partisans/
Serbs were a majority in partisan army but in no way were they overwhelming majority. I can admit that
Serbs were overwhelming majority in 1941 at a beginning of war but as war progressed there percentage in the
NOB was falling.
If you are interested in this matter you can read a few articles from well respected historian Ivo Goldstein that can be found on the net.
According to him Croats from Croatia gave around 22% of troops although they made up only 16% of population.
Croats from Croatia gave 40% more partisans then Yugoslavian average. Reason for this was that Serbs from Serbia were mostly
members of Chetnik units and not Partisans. However Serbs from Croatia were overwhelmingly in Partisans. I would also like to remind you
that the leader of Partisans was a Croat, and the movement itself was founded in Croatia by Croats and as
Stipe said before majority of Croats voted for HSS, a party that was banned during NDH.
Now it would definitely be wrong to say that NDH had no support in Croatian population. At a beginning good portion of population supported declaration of NDH.
Mainly cause people wanted independence from Belgrade that treated them like second class citizens, oppressed them and murder their political representatives.
As time went by people started to see that their government was not what they hoped and they switched sides. In the end I would like to add the there were
more Croatian volunteers in Partisans then there were in NDH units.