Yugoslav Partisans in the context of "Field army"

The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (commonly abbreviated as SFRY or SFR Yugoslavia), known from 1945 to 1963 as the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, commonly referred to as Socialist Yugoslavia or simply Yugoslavia, was a country in Central and Southeast Europe. It was established in 1945, following World War II, and lasted until 1992, dissolving amid the onset of the Yugoslav Wars. Spanning an area of 255,804 square kilometres (98,766 sq mi) in the Balkans, Yugoslavia was bordered by the Adriatic Sea and Italy to the west, Austria and Hungary to the north, Bulgaria and Romania to the east, and Albania and Greece to the south. It was a one-party socialist state and federation governed by the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, and had six constituent republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Within Serbia was the Yugoslav capital city of Belgrade as well as two autonomous Yugoslav provinces: Kosovo and Vojvodina.

The country emerged as Democratic Federal Yugoslavia on 29 November 1943, during the second session of the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia midst World War II in Yugoslavia. Recognised by the Allies of World War II at the Tehran Conference as the legal successor state to Kingdom of Yugoslavia, it was a provisionally governed state formed to unite the Yugoslav resistance movement. Following the country's liberation, King Peter II was deposed, the monarchical rule was ended, and on 29 November 1945, the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia was proclaimed. Led by Josip Broz Tito, the new communist government sided with the Eastern Bloc at the beginning of the Cold War but pursued a policy of neutrality following the 1948 Tito–Stalin split; it became a founding member of the Non-Aligned Movement, and transitioned from a command economy to market-based socialism. The country was renamed Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1963.

Collective punishment is a punishment or sanction imposed on a group or whole community for acts allegedly perpetrated by a member or some members of that group or area, which could be an ethnic or political group, or just the family, friends and neighbors of the perpetrator, as well as entire cities and communities where the perpetrator(s) allegedly committed the crime. Because individuals who are not responsible for the acts are targeted, collective punishment is not compatible with the basic principle of individual responsibility. The punished group may often have no direct association with the perpetrator other than living in the same area and can not be assumed to exercise control over the perpetrator's actions. Collective punishment is prohibited by treaty in both international and non-international armed conflicts, more specifically Common Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention and Article 4 of the Additional Protocol II.

The German resistance to Nazism (German: Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus) included unarmed and armed opposition and disobedience to the Nazi regime by various movements, groups and individuals by various means, from attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler or to overthrow his regime, defection to the enemies of the Third Reich and sabotage against the German Army and the apparatus of repression and attempts to organize armed struggle, to open protests, rescue of persecuted persons, dissidence and "everyday resistance".

German resistance was not recognized as a united resistance movement during the height of Nazi Germany, unlike the more organised efforts in other countries, such as Italy, Denmark, the Soviet Union, Poland, Greece, Yugoslavia, France, the Netherlands, Czechoslovakia, and Norway. The German resistance consisted of small, isolated groups that were unable to mobilize mass political opposition. Individual attacks on Nazi authority, sabotage, and the disclosure of information regarding Nazi armaments factories to the Allies, as by the Austrian resistance group led by Heinrich Maier, occurred. One strategy was to persuade leaders of the Wehrmacht to stage a coup d'état against the regime; the 20 July plot of 1944 against Hitler was intended to trigger such a coup. Hundreds of thousands of Germans had deserted from the Wehrmacht, many defected to the Allies or the anti-Fascist resistance forces, and after 1943, the Soviet Union made attempts to launch a guerrilla warfare in Germany with such defectors and allowed the members of the National Committee for a Free Germany which consisted mostly of the German prisoners of war to be engaged in the military operations of the Red Army and form small military units.

The Croatian Partisans, officially the National Liberation Movement in Croatia (Croatian: Narodnooslobodilački pokret u Hrvatskoj; NOP), were part of the anti-fascist National Liberational Movement in the Axis-occupied Yugoslavia which was "perhaps Europe's most effective anti-Nazi resistance movement". It was led by Yugoslav revolutionary communists during the World War II. NOP was under the leadership of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (KPJ) and supported by many others, with Croatian Peasant Party members contributing to it significantly. NOP units were able to temporarily or permanently liberate large parts of Croatia from occupying forces. Based on the NOP, the Federal Republic of Croatia was founded as a constituent of the Democratic Federal Yugoslavia.

Josip Broz (7 May 1892 – 4 May 1980), commonly known as Tito (/ˈtiːtoʊ/ TEE-toh), was a Yugoslav communist revolutionary and politician. During World War II, he led the Yugoslav Partisans, often regarded as the most effective resistance movement in German-occupied Europe. Tito led Yugoslavia as prime minister from 1943 to 1963, and as president from 1953 until his death in 1980. The political ideology and policies promulgated by Tito are known as Titoism.

Tito was born to a Croat father and a Slovene mother in Kumrovec in present-day Croatia, then part of Austria-Hungary. Drafted into military service, he distinguished himself, becoming the youngest sergeant major in the Austro-Hungarian Army of that time. After being seriously wounded and captured by the Russians during World War I, he was sent to a work camp in the Ural Mountains. Tito participated in some events of the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the subsequent Russian Civil War. Upon his return to the Balkans in 1920, he entered the newly established Kingdom of Yugoslavia, where he joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. Having assumed de facto control over the party by 1937, Tito was formally elected its general secretary in 1939 and later its president, the title he held until his death. During World War II, after the Nazi invasion of the area, he led the Yugoslav guerrilla movement, the Partisans (1941–1945). By the end of the war, the Partisans, with the Allies' backing since late 1943, took power in Yugoslavia.

The League of Communists of Yugoslavia, known until 1952 as the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, was the founding and ruling party of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It was formed in 1919 as the main communist opposition party in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and after its initial successes in the elections, it was proscribed by the royal government and was at times harshly and violently suppressed. It remained an illegal underground group until World War II when, after the invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, the military arm of the party, the Yugoslav Partisans, became embroiled in a bloody civil war and defeated the Axis powers and their local auxiliaries. After the liberation from foreign occupation in 1945, the party consolidated its power and established a one-party state, which existed in that form of government until 1990, a year prior to the start of the Yugoslav Wars and breakup of Yugoslavia.

Led by Josip Broz Tito from 1937 to 1980, it was the first communist party in power to defy the Soviet hegemony in the Eastern Bloc and thus was expelled from the Cominform in 1948 in what is known as the Tito–Stalin split. After internal purges of pro-Soviet members, the party renamed itself the League of Communists in 1952 and adopted the politics of workers' self-management and an independent path to achieving socialism, known as Titoism.

Vis (pronounced [ʋi:s]) is a Croatian island in the Adriatic Sea. Before the end of World War I, the island was held by the Liburnians, the Republic of Venice, the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, and the Austrian Empire. During the 19th century, the sea to the north of Vis was the site of two naval battles. In 1920, the island was ceded to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as part of the Treaty of Rapallo. During World War II, the island was the headquarters of the Yugoslav Partisan movement. After the war, Vis was used as a naval base for the Yugoslav People's Army until 1989. The island's main industries are viticulture, fishing, fish processing, and tourism.

The orthography of the Macedonian language includes an alphabet consisting of 31 letters (Macedonian: Македонска азбука, romanized: Makedonska azbuka), which is an adaptation of the Cyrillic script, as well as language-specific conventions of spelling and punctuation.

The Macedonian alphabet was standardized in 1945 by a commission formed in Yugoslav Macedonia after the Partisans took power at the end of World War II. The alphabet used the same phonemic principles employed by Vuk Karadžić (1787–1864) and Krste Misirkov (1874–1926).