The Slovene Partisans, formally the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Slovenia, were part of Europe's most effective anti-Nazi resistance movement led by Yugoslav revolutionary communists during World War II, the Yugoslav Partisans. Since a quarter of Slovene ethnic territory and approximately 327,000 out of total population of 1.3 million Slovenes were subjected to forced Italianization since the end of the First World War, the objective of the movement was the establishment of the state of Slovenes that would include the majority of Slovenes within a socialist Yugoslav federation in the postwar period.
Slovenia was in a rare position in Europe during the Second World War because only Greece shared its experience of being divided between three or more countries. However, Slovenia was the only one that experienced a further step—absorption and annexation into neighboring Germany, Italy, Croatia, and Hungary. As the very existence of the Slovene nation was threatened, the Slovene support for the Partisan movement was much more solid than in Croatia or Serbia. An emphasis on the defence of ethnic identity was shown by naming the troops after important Slovene poets and writers, following the example of the Ivan Cankar battalion. Slovene Partisans were the armed wing of the Liberation Front of the Slovene Nation, a resistance political organization and party coalition for what the Partisans referred to as the Slovene Lands. The Liberation Front was founded and directed by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ), more specifically its Slovene branch: the Communist Party of Slovenia.
Being the first organized military force in the history of Slovenes, the Slovene Partisans were in the beginning organized as guerrilla units, and later as an army. Their opponents were the Axis forces in Slovenia, and after the summer of 1942, also anti-Communist Slovene forces. The Slovene Partisans were mostly ethnically homogeneous and primarily communicated in Slovene. These two features have been considered vital for their success. Their most characteristic symbol was a cap known as a triglavka. They were subordinated to the civil resistance authority. The Partisan movement in Slovenia, though a part of the wider Yugoslav Partisans, was operationally autonomous from the rest of the movement, being geographically separated, and full contact with the remainder of the Partisan army occurred after the breakthrough of Josip Broz Tito's forces through to Slovenia in 1944.
Background
After World War I ended in 1918, the Slovene-settled territory partially fell under the rule of the neighboring states of Italy, Austria, and Hungary. Slovenes there were subjected to policies of forced assimilation.
On 6 April 1941, Yugoslavia was invaded by the Axis powers. Slovenia was divided among the Axis powers: Italy annexed southern Slovenia and Ljubljana, Nazi Germany took northern and eastern Slovenia, and Hungary annexed the Prekmurje region. Some villages in Lower Carniola were annexed by the Independent State of Croatia.
The Nazis started a policy of violent Germanisation. In the frame of their plan for the ethnic cleansing of Slovene territory, tens of thousands of Slovenes were resettled or chased away, imprisoned, or transported to labor, internment and extermination camps. The majority of Slovene victims of the Axis authorities were from the regions annexed by the Germans, i.e. Lower Styria, Upper Carniola, Central Sava Valley, and Slovenian Carinthia.
The Italian policy in the Province of Ljubljana gave Slovenes cultural autonomy, however the Fascist system was systematically introduced. After the establishment of the Liberation Front, the violence against the Slovene civil population in the zone escalated and easily matched the German. The province was subjected to brutal repression. Alongside summary executions, the burning of houses and villages, hostage-taking and hostage executions, the Province of Ljubljana saw the deportation of 25,000 people, which equaled 7.5% of the total population, to different concentration camps.