The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

to join the resistance. The “Antifascist Front” fought against the Germans,
against the Italians and against the Croatian and Serbian national -
ists, and it was attacked by all of them.
The Communists propagated the equal rights of all peoples and also federalism;
they were disciplined and introduced strict ethical and moral
rules, and unlike their opponents, respected the property of the people.
This won them the confidence of the people, who frequently sought ref -
uge with the partisans as they fled from the attacks of the nationalistic
units. Josip Broz Tito became the unchallenged leader of the Communists.
The plan of the Cominform had panned out; German Wehrmacht
units were tied down by the resistance in Yugoslavia and couldn’t be
sent to the eastern front. The Wehrmacht conducted seven major offensives
to break the Yugoslav resistance and kill Tito. There were heavy
losses on all sides, but the resistance could not be overcome. Tito requested
that the Allies recognize the partisan movement and provide it
with heavy weapons. Great Britain, seeking to prevent the “Bolshevization”
of the Balkans, in 1944 succeeded in pushing through a joint gov -
ernment consisting of members of the Antifascist Front and the
Yugoslav government in exile. The forced admission of the etnik troops
into antifascist units at that time led to long-standing uncertainty and to
conflicts within the resistance movement and amongst the population.
The ideology and the foundation of the second common state
After the partisans had liberated large portions of the country by their
own efforts, the Soviet army marched into Belgrade at the end of the
war. In the first elections held in the summer of 1945, the Popular Front
organized by the partisans during the war defeated the bourgeois parties.
All important positions in society were shared out amongst the
members of the Communist Party; this was the beginning of their period
of one-party rule. The residences of “enemies” and of expelled and expropriated
people were also given to deserving party members. The mon -
archy was abolished and the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia
proclaimed by the Constituent Assembly in November 1945. A British
attempt to prevent this and reinstate the king failed in the teeth of the
determined resistance of the communist government. The second Yu-
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