Split during the Occupation

Italian air forces bombarded Split, a Dalmatian port city with forty-two thousand inhabitants, on April 6, 1941, initiating the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia to secure strategic Adriatic control. Benito Mussolini annexed Split into the Governatorato di Dalmazia through the Rome Agreement, signed on May 18, 1941, with Ante Pavelić, leader of the Ustascha-governed Independent State of Croatia. This agreement allocated Split, Šibenik, Zadar, the Bay of Kotor, and most islands to Italy, appointed an Italian royal as Croatia's king, and guaranteed Croatia's territorial integrity, igniting tensions as Croats claimed Dalmatia as their historical core. During Ljubljana negotiations in late April 1941, Italians accused Croats of exploiting German alliances to undermine Italian claims. The Italian Second Army, deploying fifteen divisions across Yugoslavia, established military governance in Split under prefect Paolo Zerbino, who wielded absolute authority from June 16, 1941, to August 1943, enforcing Italianisation to eradicate Croatian identity. Giuseppe Bastianini, governor from May 21, 1941, implemented Mussolini's directives targeting Slavic culture and promoting anti-Semitism, succeeded by Francesco Giunta in February 1943, who escalated reprisals until the governorate's dissolution on August 7, 1943. The National Fascist Party founded the Split fascio on September 19, 1941, in Palazzo Vitturi, led by Giovanni Savo as vice-federal and Aurelio Bonavia as deputy, growing to one thousand three hundred ten members by April 1943, including five hundred fifty-seven women and two hundred twenty-five in Gioventù Universitaria Fascista, with four thousand four hundred forty-four youth in Gioventù Italiana del Littorio at the former Sokol House. The Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro facilitated indoctrination, while the Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale formed a Blackshirt battalion in June 1941. The Extraordinary Tribunal for Dalmatia, established on October 11, 1941, imposed death penalties for anti-fascist acts under laws effective from February 18, 1942. Zerbino deployed Anticommunist Volunteer Militia units under the Zara Division in late 1942 to counter partisans intensifying resistance in Dalmatian mountains.

Italian authorities banned Croatian newspapers like Novo doba on April 23, 1941, replacing it with the bilingual San Marco on May 29, 1941, edited by Antonio Just-Verdus, mandating fascist salutes, Italian flags, and bilingual administration, later transitioning to Il Popolo di Spalato under Silvio Maurano until September 10, 1943. Obituaries prioritised Italian from mid-May 1942, and a surname law prohibited non-Italian names for children, converting Ljubica to Violeta or Mladen to Giovenale, while surnames adopted Italian orthography, omitting Croatian letters. Authorities dismantled the Gregory of Nin monument on the Peristyle from November 3 to 12, 1941, banned Croatian calendars by early 1942, and prohibited non-Italian societies, including Hajduk football club, on June 15, 1941, renaming its field Campo sportivo Bruno Mussolini. Zerbino declared that within five years no Croat would remain, asserting Italy created and financed Croatia, which existed solely at Italy's discretion. Education enforced indoctrination, importing Italian teachers by late 1941 who spoke no Croatian, offering meals and clothing for enrolment by December 1941, and scholarships to Italian universities, while Croatian teachers faced mandatory Italian courses, often boycotted. Repression required identity checks with legitimations from the questura for those over fourteen, invalidating Yugoslav documents, with weapons or propaganda possession triggering immediate executions. Zerbino offered ten thousand to fifty thousand lire rewards for reporting disturbers, while agents like Ivan Gale collected donations to identify sympathisers. Bishop Kvirin Klement Bonefačić urged loyalty to Italians, denouncing anti-fascists, prompting Mass walkouts, while Orthodox priest Sergij Urukal faced solicitations for Chetnik recruitment. Bastianini demanded Dalmatian-born partisans surrender by June 22, 1942, or face family reprisals, leading to internments on Molat in July 1942 of two thousand families, with high child mortality. Sabotage incurred three hostages shot per damaged pole, escalating for larger damage, with affected areas losing food supplies. Deportations from October 1, 1941, to May 15, 1942, sent one thousand four hundred forty-eight from Split to Italy, including three hundred five communists, forty-eight politically dangerous, and one thousand ninety-five Jews, with one hundred eighteen Jews to Dalmatian islands. The first prisoner ship to Italian camps sailed in late 1941, and over fifteen thousand passed through Split prisons. Mussolini ordered two Croats shot per wounded Italian and twenty per killed, while after the November 9, 1941, attack on an Italian band, three hundred to six hundred faced arrest, many sent to Divulje camp. Zerbino threatened to resettle all fifty-four thousand Split residents within twenty-four hours following Antonio Hoffmann's murder. Economic policies caused hunger, with camp threats for shortage complaints, and the Anticommunist Volunteer Militia collaborated against partisans.

General Vittorio Ambrosio, supreme commander in Yugoslavia, ordered reoccupation of unstable coastal strips in late August 1941, extending to a fifty-kilometre zone including Split under the Sixth Army Corps led by General Renzo Dalmazzo. The Marche Division, commanded by General Giuseppe Amico, deployed to southern Dalmatia, headquartered in Dubrovnik while stationing troops near Split to counter Ustascha incursions. Italian authorities protected persecuted groups, releasing all Jews and Serbs imprisoned for racial or religious reasons in September 1941 and prohibiting deportations without approval. Amico enforced oversight, declaring arbitrary arrests contradicted Italian army honour, based on witnessed Ustascha massacres in May and June 1941 that killed two hundred thousand Serbs by late 1941. This protection, driven by humanitarian motives and Croatian rivalry, facilitated Serb escapes and alliances against partisans, whose activities intensified by early 1942, necessitating reinforcements to safeguard Split's port from sabotage. Dragica Vajnberger, a twenty-two-year-old Jewish woman from Zagreb, fled to Split in April 1942 after enduring night raids and mandatory yellow armbands marked Ž for Židov in Ustascha zones. She acquired a friend's identity card with a substituted photograph to travel by train to Metković, where a policeman remarked that Jews fled to Italian areas because Italians did not harm them while Croats captured them en route, allowing her to board a ship to Split. There, she concealed herself for months in a shared apartment under minimal restrictions for Jews. Italian diplomats facilitated similar relocations via military vehicles, and by summer 1942, Rome rejected German demands to surrender Jews for deportation to eastern extermination camps. Mussolini initially ordered compliance but reversed after Amico argued that surrendering Jews violated protection pledges and Italian honour, as expressed in responses to Croatian police demands. In Split and Dalmatia, these measures safeguarded fifteen hundred Jews by 1943, with Amico relocating nine hundred from Mostar in August 1942 to safer coastal sites, prompting SA-Obergruppenführer Siegfried Kasche to accuse Amico on August 21, 1942, of enabling Jews to aid partisans and incite discord. Emil Tolentino, head of the Dubrovnik Jewish community, collaborated with Amico to secure protections in Split, where Italian Carabinieri guarded Jewish properties, thwarting Croatian attempts to repurpose a Jewish cemetery. Oberleutnant Weiss documented amicable Italian-Jewish relations in December 1941, noting social interactions that maintained normalcy in annexed ports like Split, unlike Ustascha campaigns that declared Serbia judenfrei by May 1942 through executions and deportations.

Thirty-three Jewish children from Split, primarily orphans whose parents perished in German and Ustascha camps, were evacuated to Nonantola, Italy, in April 1943 by the Delegazione per l'Assistenza degli Emigranti Ebrei and twenty-year-old Zionist Josef Indig. They joined forty others in cramped quarters, facing language barriers between German and Croatian speakers while preparing for migration to Palestine under Italian facilitation, which underscored temporary refuge in Dalmatian zones. Recha Freier, who escaped to Yugoslavia in July 1940, coordinated with Zagreb organisations to arrange these transfers, highlighting dangers in Split during brief Ustascha influence before Italian dominance. Partisan operations in the Dalmatian mountains escalated by early 1942, prompting Italian reinforcements to protect Split's port from sabotage. The Marche Division conducted counter-insurgency, initially burning villages and interning civilians but later providing food and reconstruction aid to counter local discontent. The prefect of Split reproached Dalmatians on September 26, 1941, for ingratitude despite provisions exceeding Italy's, including bread, meat, sweets, and children's milk, while they murdered Carabinieri. The Independent State of Croatia, proclaimed on April 10, 1941, coincided with the Wehrmacht's entry into Zagreb four days after the April 6, 1941, assault. Ustascha terror involved robbery, torture, relocations, and murders targeting communists, bourgeois Croats, Jews, Serbs, and Roma, with racial laws mirroring Reich statutes requiring Jews to wear yellow Ž armbands, leading to deportations to camps like Koprivnica and razzias capturing youths for forced labour in vermin-infested huts under harsh conditions.

Italy's armistice with the Allies on September 8, 1943, triggered Operation Achse, a German plan to neutralise Italian troops and secure the Balkans. Adolf Hitler appointed General Lothar Rendulic Commander-in-Chief Southeast on August 6, 1943, directing him to harness Croatian forces, dismantle Josip Broz Tito's one hundred fifty thousand partisans, capture Italians, and occupy Dalmatia, including Split, to fortify against Allied landings. Rendulic arrived in Belgrade on August 24, 1943, assessing seven German divisions entangled in anti-partisan warfare, deeming Croatian brigades unreliable due to desertions while relying on Ustascha militias for suppression. Motorised battalions from five divisions targeted coastal hubs, with the Split unit from the Seventh ϟϟ Mountain Division Prinz Eugen. At five o'clock in the evening on September 8, 1943, Marshal Pietro Badoglio announced capitulation, activating Achse at eight o'clock, with advances commencing at four o'clock in the morning on September 9, 1943, covering four hundred kilometres over rugged terrain. The Split battalion reported at eleven o'clock in the evening on September 9, 1943, facing assaults east of the city by thousands of partisans supported by Italian units, with additional forces encircling them. The entire Seventh ϟϟ Division mobilised from Bosnia for relief, but infantry lagged one hundred fifty to two hundred kilometres, delaying aid by three to six days. On September 10, 1943, at seven o'clock in the morning, Fallschirmjäger from the Brandenburg Division seized General Carlo Rossi and his chief of staff General Albert in Tirana after a ninety-minute flight, allowing packing before transfer to Belgrade, disrupting Italian commands. The Ninth Army capitulated at two o'clock in the afternoon on September 10, 1943, in Tirana's Hotel Dajti, interning two hundred seventy thousand Italian soldiers. Split's garrison resisted, fortifying east in bunkers and allying with partisans, repelling advances from September 11 to 15, 1943, until a motorised regiment and initial Seventh ϟϟ elements arrived on September 15, 1943, forcing partisan retreat by the morning of September 16, 1943. German forces, half the Italian strength, assaulted with dive-bomber support, breaching defences on September 22 to 23, 1943, resulting in over five hundred casualties on both sides. Three hundred eight Italian officers and soldiers, including two generals, were executed post-capitulation as reprisals, reported by General Edmund Glaise von Horstenau via General Walter Lueters. ϟϟ-Standartenführer August Schmidhuber, commanding the Prinz Eugen Division's Second Regiment, ordered executions in Dubrovnik on September 13, 1943, shooting General Amico without trial, with German records labelling him a traitor.

German occupation of Split began on September 23, 1943, integrating the city into the expanded Independent State of Croatia. Policies shifted to immediate persecution through Ustascha-German Security Police collaboration, exemplified by Schmidhuber's directive on September 21, 1943, to execute all Jews, half-Jews, and those in Aryan marriages in Dubrovnik, extending to Split, where Italian protections ended. This targeted approximately three thousand Croatian Jews who had sought refuge in Dalmatian camps, many self-liberating post-armistice to join Tito's partisans. Economic exploitation intensified, extracting bauxite, chromium, and foodstuffs with depreciated currency, exacerbating shortages, while forced labour deported hundreds of thousands regionally for mining, port operations, and fortifications. Partisan resistance, controlling half of Yugoslavia by 1944, inflicted thirty-two thousand Wehrmacht casualties through ambushes and sabotage, prompting reprisals executing fifty to one hundred civilians per fallen soldier, including village burnings and hangings near Split, where the Seventh ϟϟ Division fortified the port against Allied threats. The 264th Infantry Division positioned its command post and supply units around Drniš, with grenadier regiments in Split and Trogir, securing the Dalmatian coast and islands between Split, Šibenik, and Zadar. Operation Herbstgewitter, launched on October 23, 1943, seized islands Brac, Hvar, Korcula, and the Peljesac peninsula, with intense fighting on Peljesac. Operation Waldrausch, starting on January 4, 1944, involved heavy combat near Travnik, shattering the first battalion in adverse weather by January 18, 1944. Operation Maibaum, initiated on April 26, 1944, prevented partisans from crossing the Drina southward, ending in mid-May with significant partisan losses. Operation Rösselsprung, launched on May 25, 1944, targeted partisan strongholds in Bos Petrovac-Drvar, destroying forces and securing supply depots for the Seventh ϟϟ Division, capturing extensive stores in the Unac-Sana forest by June 6, 1944. Operation Freie Jagd, starting on June 18, 1944, advanced the line from Scit to Kiseljak, with partisans breaching southeast, concluding on July 9, 1944. An operation on August 5, 1944, north of the Drina in Foca-Gorazde-Podromanija-Kalinovik prevented partisan relocation to Serbia, supported by division units driving partisans from Sarajevo-Rogatica, but Romania's defection on August 22, 1944, aborted it prematurely. Operations in Topola and Gr Milanovac on September 25, 1944, saw partisan clashes end early. After Bulgaria's war declaration on September 8, 1944, German forces faced Russian and Bulgarian units in Svrljig, Bela Palanka, and Leskovac, retreating through Kraljevo until November 1944. Generaloberst Kurt Student's order on May 31, 1941, for Crete, mandating swift measures without formalities against beasts and murderers, influenced regional tactics. Split's German soldiers' cemetery holds remains from exhumations, like the 2021 recovery near Rijeka, relocating seven soldiers' bones to Zagreb's Mirogoj, identified via dog tags and artefacts, including an Albanian silver coin with Victor Emmanuel III's portrait, part of Volksbund efforts estimating twenty thousand unexamined reports in Croatia. Ustascha atrocities killed three hundred thirty thousand to three hundred ninety thousand Serbs and sixty thousand to one hundred thousand Jews and Roma, contributing to Yugoslavia's one million fifteen thousand wartime deaths, including five hundred fifty-four thousand civilians.

The Italian occupation of Split enforced stringent cultural and political controls to align the city with fascist ideology. Zerbino's administration prioritised Italianisation through linguistic and cultural suppression, banning Croatian-language publications and enforcing Italian in public and private spheres. The San Marco newspaper, launched on May 29, 1941, served as a propaganda tool, requiring fascist salutes and Italian flags in public spaces, while Il Popolo di Spalato continued this until September 10, 1943. The surname law, effective from mid-1942, mandated Italianised names, transforming traditional Croatian names to fit fascist ideals, such as changing Ivan to Giovanni or Marija to Maria. The dismantling of the Gregory of Nin monument, a symbol of Croatian heritage, from November 3 to 12, 1941, underscored efforts to erase national identity. The ban on non-Italian societies, including the Hajduk football club, and renaming its field after Bruno Mussolini reflected cultural domination. Zerbino's declaration that Croatia existed at Italy's will reinforced Split's subordination, with economic policies extracting resources like fish and olives, causing shortages exacerbated by inflated lire. Education reforms imported Italian teachers, who offered incentives to boost enrolment, while Croatian resistance through boycotts highlighted local defiance. Repression intensified with identity checks, where failure to carry legitimations led to arrests, and possession of anti-fascist materials resulted in executions. Zerbino's rewards for informants fostered a climate of fear, with agents like Ivan Gale identifying dissenters. The Church's role, exemplified by Bishop Bonefačić's pro-Italian stance, alienated congregants, while Orthodox priest Urukal's recruitment for Chetniks showed competing loyalties. Bastianini's ultimatum for partisan surrender by June 22, 1942, led to mass internments on Molat, with severe conditions causing child deaths. Deportations to Italian camps, peaking between October 1941 and May 1942, targeted communists and Jews, with Split's prisons processing thousands. Mussolini's reprisal orders, escalating after incidents like the November 9, 1941, attack, fueled cycles of violence, while Zerbino's threat to resettle Split's population underscored authoritarian control.

The Marche Division's role under General Amico was pivotal in Split's occupation dynamics. Stationed to counter Ustascha influence, the division protected persecuted groups, releasing Jews and Serbs from racial detentions in September 1941. Amico's insistence on oversight, declaring Croatian arrests dishonourable, stemmed from witnessing Ustascha massacres that killed two hundred thousand Serbs by late 1941. His actions facilitated Serb alliances and Jewish relocations, with fifteen hundred Jews safeguarded in Dalmatia by 1943, including nine hundred moved from Mostar in August 1942. Kasche's accusation on August 21, 1942, highlighted tensions, as Amico's policies disrupted German and Croatian plans. Emil Tolentino's collaboration ensured Jewish properties in Split remained secure, with Carabinieri interventions preventing desecrations. Oberleutnant Weiss's December 1941 report noted Italian-Jewish camaraderie, contrasting Ustascha brutality. Dragica Vajnberger's escape to Split in April 1942, aided by a policeman's leniency, exemplified Italian zones as safe havens, with minimal restrictions allowing her to hide in a shared apartment. The evacuation of thirty-three Jewish orphans to Nonantola in April 1943, organised by Josef Indig and Recha Freier, prepared them for Palestine amidst language challenges, reflecting Italian facilitation of Jewish survival. Partisan escalation by early 1942 prompted Italian counter-measures, with the Marche Division balancing repression with reconstruction to pacify locals, as seen in the prefect's September 26, 1941, reproach for ingratitude despite generous provisions.

The German takeover post-Italy's armistice on September 8, 1943, marked a brutal shift. Operation Achse, led by General Lothar Rendulic from August 6, 1943, aimed to secure Dalmatia and dismantle Tito's partisans. The Seventh ϟϟ Division Prinz Eugen's assault on Split, starting September 9, 1943, faced fierce resistance from Italian and partisan forces, delaying capture until September 22 to 23, 1943, with over five hundred casualties. Executions of three hundred eight Italians, including two generals, followed, with ϟϟ-Standartenführer August Schmidhuber ordering General Amico's death in Dubrovnik on September 13, 1943. German occupation integrated Split into the Independent State of Croatia, with Ustascha collaboration targeting three thousand Jewish refugees for deportation. Economic exploitation and forced labour intensified, while partisan resistance inflicted thirty-two thousand Wehrmacht casualties by 1944, prompting brutal reprisals. The 264th Infantry Division's operations, including Herbstgewitter on October 23, 1943, and Rösselsprung on May 25, 1944, aimed to crush partisans, with retreats by November 1944 driven by Allied advances. Split's German soldiers' cemetery, with exhumations like the 2021 Rijeka recovery, reflects ongoing efforts to identify remains, while Ustascha atrocities contributed to Yugoslavia's one million fifteen thousand deaths.