crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

Crimes committed by totalitarian regimes
In Slovenia, it is possible to comparatively explore the consequences of three totalitarianisms. Fascism,
National Socialism and Titoism were more focused on terrorizing the unarmed inhabitants of Slovenia
than fighting each other. 5 Fascism lags behind in the trampling of civilians, but National Socialism
and Titoism are quite evenly matched, e.g. Titoisitc concentration camps in the Bishop’s institutes in
Šentvid near Ljubljana and in Teharje were more destructive to Slovenians than National Socialistic
death camps. Because the basic goal of Titoists was to win the civil war, they killed many more unarmed
Slovenians than armed occupying soldiers. 6
Activities of secret political police agencies were destructive; however, the Titoist police definitely
surpassed those of the Fascists or the National Socialists. In 1946, there was one employee of the secret
political police per 1,200 inhabitants of Slovenia; if active informants are included, that number rises to
one per every 282 inhabitants. Several hundreds of thousands of people were affected by the constant
spying and denouncing; mass paranoia reigned.
Destroying national wealth is where Bolshevism, due to its long-term systematic dissolution of the
market economy, agriculture and natural environment, caused more damage than Fascism or National
Socialism. A lot of long-term damage was also caused by the Bolshevik permanent persecution of
democracy, religion and Church, with its collectivistic cages and repression of free innovation.
Totalitarian terror directly impacted several hundreds of thousands of people. The basic criminal
categories were killing unarmed people, forcibly migrating the population, mass arrests, internments,
plundering of wealth, abuse of currency changes, taxing, ... etc. Those crimes and the violations of basic
human’s rights were mostly perpetrated by National Socialism, primarily in the first two years of the
War, and Titoism, the darkest moments of which lasted until the mid-1950s.
Table:
Fatalities caused by totalitarianisms in Slovenia 7
Fascism National Socialism Titoism
Inhabitants of Slovenia directly killed by 8 >6,000 >40,000 < > 30,000
Part of unarmed inhabitants of Slovenia
out of total casualties
>3,000 >25,000 >25,000
Interned, imprisoned, deported, fugitives 9 >100,000 10 >200,000 11 >150,000 12
5
Around 20,000 partisans fall in combat, perhaps more than 2,000 members of the Slovenian anti-communist units and a few thousand
Slovenians forcibly mobilized into the occupiers’ armies – less than one third of all casualties.
6
Losses of the inhabitants of Slovenia because of the occupation, resistance,
civil war and Stalinist revolution
Losses of the occupying forces fighting
Slovenian partisans 1941–45
> 90,000 - more than six percent of the population < 5,000
There is such a relationship in Yugoslavia as well. The casualties of the inhabitants of Yugoslavia were around one million, and less than
30,000 Italian and German soldiers died until August, 1944, when the Red Army entered Yugoslavia (Klaus Schmieder, Partisanenkrieg
in Jugoslawien 1941–1944, Hamburg–Berlin–Bonn 2002, p. 589.).
7
Slovenian democratic parties decided on the tactic of waiting when Slovenia was invaded. When the partisans started killing civilians
en masse (by the spring of 1942, the communist secret political police, the partisan units and the political leadership of the partisan
movement killed more than a thousand civilians without any trials), the armed anti-communist resistance sprang into being, first in
collaboration with the Italians and after Italy capitulated, with the Germans. According to partisans, the anti-communists units on their
own or with the occupiers, killed more than 12,000 partisans and collaborators of the partisan movement. See: Silvo Grgič, Zločini
okupatorjevih sodelavcev (Crimes of the occupier’s collaborators), III/2, Ljubljana 2002, p.1081–1098.
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