To Walk with the Devil: Slovene Collaboration and Axis Occupation, 1941-1945

In the spring of 1941, when Slovenia was invaded by Germany, Italy, and Hungary, Slovenes faced at best assimilation, and at worst deportation or extermination. Still, a significant number of Slovenes would eventually collaborate with the Axis powers. Why were they so ready to work with their invaders, and why did the occupiers permit this collaboration?

Gregor Joseph Kranjc investigates these questions in To Walk with the Devil, the first English-language book-length account of Slovene-Axis collaboration during the Second World War. Examining archival material and post-war scholarly and popular literature, Kranjc describes the often sharp divide between Communist-era interpretations of collaboration and those of their emigre anti-Communist opponents.

Kranjc situates this divide in the vicious civil war that engulfed Slovenia during its occupation - a conflict that witnessed at its bloody climax the execution of over 10,000 Slovene collaborators and opponents of the new Communist Yugoslav regime in the wake of liberation. To Walk with the Devil makes clear how these grisly events continue to ripple through Slovene society today.

Abbreviations

Alternate Spelling of Place Names

Map 1: Axis-Occupied Yugoslavia, 1941

Map 2: The Province of Ljubljana and Surrounding Regions

Introduction

1 The Battle Goes Post-war: The Historiographical Debate

2 Before the Deluge

3 Reality Subverted (6 April-22 June 1941)

4 The Emergence of Resistance (July 1941-November 1942)

5 The Emergence of Collaboration (July 1941-July 1943)

6 The Collapse of Italy and a New Spirit of German Cooperation (July 1943-December 1943)

7 Shoulder to Shoulder with the German Armed Forces (January 1944-December 1944)

8 The Banality of Civilian Collaboration (September 1943-December 1944)

9 The Final Stand and its Consequences (January 1945-May 1945)

Conclusion: The Verdict

Notes

Bibliography

‘An important and valuable contribution to the historiography of European collaboration… Kranjc’s book is a timely addition to the history of wartime Slovenia and contemporaneous debates about collaboration.’