So what if the JNA managed to defeat Slovenia? Can anyone suggest a POD? What for effects would this have on history?
The reason they decided to let Slovenia go was that they couldnt get supplies or reinforcements because Croatia was in the way
Excellent preparation by the Slovenians, who were dug in, highly motivated, and expecting a fight; JNA being badly prepared to wage war generally; in particular, JNA being scattered in battalion-size units all over Slovenia, and not being configured to wage a war against secession (viz., many troops being either Slovenes, Croats, or ethnicities with little interest in fighting against secession).
Most of all, divided command. The military leadership itself was split (between "show of force", "fight to negotiation" and "crush them all" policies), which led to confusion and paralysis -- for instance, on the issue of bombarding civilian towns. There was also an almost complete disconnect between the military and civilian leadership. The civilians mostly were unaware that the operation was planned, and for several days had to get their information from the mass media!
This might have worked if JNA had won the first battles and been able to present the civilians with a fait accomplit, but when the offensive stalled the civilians were enraged.
(That's not counting Slobo and his allies, of course -- they were perfectly content to see the offensive fail.)
As for the Croats, they didn't help in any way, but neither did they seek to blockade the movement of supplies to JNA, and they allowed it freely to retreat after the cease-fire.
This makes sense if you think about it -- if JNA had been winning, the Croats could have /then/ turned up the pressure, cut them off from behind, and "saved" the Slovenes. But as it was, the Croats won a bloodless victory; the failure of JNA in Slovenia meant that Croat independence was assured as well.
Of course, this encouraged the Croats to miscalculate, writing off JNA completely, which led to some unpleasantness in Slavonia a bit later in the year. But that's something else again.
Doug M.
Excellent preparation by the Slovenians, who were dug in, highly motivated, and expecting a fight; JNA being badly prepared to wage war generally; in particular, JNA being scattered in battalion-size units all over Slovenia, and not being configured to wage a war against secession (viz., many troops being either Slovenes, Croats, or ethnicities with little interest in fighting against secession).
Most of all, divided command. The military leadership itself was split (between "show of force", "fight to negotiation" and "crush them all" policies), which led to confusion and paralysis -- for instance, on the issue of bombarding civilian towns. There was also an almost complete disconnect between the military and civilian leadership. The civilians mostly were unaware that the operation was planned, and for several days had to get their information from the mass media!
This might have worked if JNA had won the first battles and been able to present the civilians with a fait accomplit, but when the offensive stalled the civilians were enraged. (That's not counting Slobo and his allies, of course -- they were perfectly content to see the offensive fail.)
As for the Croats, they didn't help in any way, but neither did they seek to blockade the movement of supplies to JNA, and they allowed it freely to retreat after the cease-fire. This makes sense if you think about it -- if JNA had been winning, the Croats could have /then/ turned up the pressure, cut them off from behind, and "saved" the Slovenes. But as it was, the Croats won a bloodless victory; the failure of JNA in Slovenia meant that Croat independence was assured as well.
Of course, this encouraged the Croats to miscalculate, writing off JNA completely, which led to some unpleasantness in Slavonia a bit later in the year. But that's something else again.
Doug M.
I think Broz has the best answer here: Yugoslavia let Croatia go because it had few Serbs, and in 1991, Milosevic wanted a Greater Serbia; he could have cared less about Yugoslavia.
If the JNA had crushed the uprising, they would have had to endure a long, painful insurgency.
but it is all an interesting idea, and one that comes up every so often in most ex-yu conversations, the fact is JNA had no way of realy keeping Slovenia, it would of prowen as useles in fighting slovenians in guerrila war in the alps and the urban areas as it did fighting the much more porly armed and equiped croats, especially since slovenia kept most of its weapons, and is actually in the Alps... tank colums-Alps, does not work
Not prepared for war of secession, yes and no. JLA had no troubles keeping Albanians in line.
Multinational army was a problem but not huge one.
Seeing how it was civilian leadership that gave the order (Ante Marković, Croat, BTW) that is not true. Military in Yugoslavia was not some organisation running amok but rather subjugated to civilian authority, same as in other communist countries.
Slobo had little if anything to do with it. It was a federal affair and he wasn't part of decision making circle
JLA retreated through Slovenian port of Koper, not through Croatia
That is simply untrue. If failure of JLA in Slovenia assured croat independance then please expalin how come that fighting in Croatia started after Slovenian war
IIRC it was Jović who said "If we keep Slovenians they will get together with Croats and we'll have troubles. If we let them go we can deal with Croats on their own, which will be much easier."
this is based on common misconception that occupier/gov't needs to control every part of country. Hardly. It only has to control vital areas, which are large cities, transportation network and borders.
1) Markovic has said so many different things about his actions here that it's hard to work out what the truth was. But in his book "The Road to War" he claims that the he only wanted a show of force, not shooting, and that the generals ran away with the ball. That's rather dubious, but it's clear that once the shooting started he was not well informed of the situation on the ground.
2) Civilian authority: who? Remember, the 1974 Constitution gave control over the military to the collective Presidency, not the Prime Minister. But at this point Yugoslavia had no President -- Mesic's election had been deadlocked, and the collective was no longer on speaking terms.
Minister of Defense Kadijevic was a Communist dinosaur who despised Markovic and communicated with him as little as possible. Army Chief of Staff Blagoje Adzic was even worse... he was a "hardliner" who was either a closet Serb nationalist or who became one soon after.
Also, just a couple of months earlier Kadijevic had opened negotiations with interested parties in Moscow seeking out support for 'firm action' against the separatists. He definitely didn't tell Markovic about this initiative, and then-President Borisav Jovic doesn't seem to have known about it either. (Of course, Jovic was not the sharpest tool in the box. Even his friends thought he was a stereotype of a certain kind of dull-but-stubborn Serb.)Nothing came of it -- in the spring of 1991, the Russians had problems of their own -- but when the Minister of Defense is off asking for help without the Prime Minister or President knowing about it, the whole "civilian control of the military" issue gets a little less clear.
Well, I fidn't say he did: just that he was pleased with the outcome. (Although by this time Slobo's influence in the remains of Yugoslavia was rapidly growing, and the fiasco in Slovenia would let it grow still more.)
! This I did not know. I thought they went out through Slavonia.
Are you sure about this? I've seen Koper and it's pretty tiny. [googles] Well, 40,000 people, bigger than I thought.
After July 1991, Croatian independence was never seriously threatened. The only question was, inside what boundaries -- especially, would they be able to keep the Serb-majority regions.
That wasn't resolved until 1995. But once the war in Slovenia was over, it was clear that Croatia was gone too. Europeans moved in just 90 days from "we will never recognize" to "we're thinking about it" to "we will do it by January if nothing happens".
(There's an alternate universe very close to ours where Croatia is independent, but only about half the size it is OTL. I don't think I've seen that done as a WI, though...)
See my earlier note about Jovic!
Doug M.
this is based on common misconception that occupier/gov't needs to control every part of country. Hardly. It only has to control vital areas, which are large cities, transportation network and borders. If some guerillas wish to dwell in some wooded areas of no real importance let them, as long as they can be prevented from causing troubles elsewhere.
And besides, what is in the Alps anyway? Other then few cities (Jesenice was important due to heavy industry but that's about it). granted border areas with Austria and Italy would have to be guarded (specially Austria as it is easier passable). However Austria would be scared shitless to do anything of importance.
look, it took them 3 months and huge casulties to take Vukovar, how long would it take them to ocupy Ljubljana?
teenager with a rpg and enough ammo could take out a dosen tanks a day, in fact they did so in Slavonia, mainly due to the fact the JNA comand had no idea what it was doing, using atavistic soviet tactics back from the 1940is
look, it took them 3 months and huge casulties to take Vukovar, how long would it take them to ocupy Ljubljana?
Imagine JNA fighting in Slovenia, taking vilage after vilage or town after town, a few month into the war theid start running out of tanks, screw tanks, theid start running out of people
a teenager with a rpg and enough ammo could take out a dosen tanks a day, in fact they did so in Slavonia, mainly due to the fact the JNA comand had no idea what it was doing, using atavistic soviet tactics back from the 1940is
provided that teenager has guts to do it, has RPGs (which TO didn't have, BTW)
Dude.
"The Slovenes were well aware that they would not be able to resist the JNA for a very long time. Under Defence Minister Janez Jansa, they adopted a strategy based on an asymmetric approach. TO units would carry out a guerrilla campaign, using anti-tank weapons and anti-aircraft missiles to ambush JNA units. Tank columns could be trapped by destroying the lead and rear vehicles in favourable terrain — for instance, on a narrow mountain road where room for manoeuvre was limited – enabling the rest to be tackled more easily.
"In preparation for this, the Slovenian government covertly bought lightweight missile systems from foreign suppliers, notably the SA-7 Grail (Strela) anti-aircraft missile and the German-designed Armbrust anti-tank system. Hit-and-run and delaying tactics were to be preferred, but frontal clashes were to be avoided since in such situations the JNA's superior firepower would have been very difficult to overcome."
Brief googling finds an interview with the Slovene Minister of the Interior a few months later:
Q: It is known that you have been friends with Janez Jansa, Slovene defence minister. Whose department - yours or Mr. Jansa's - is, according to you, more responsible for the import of German arms to Slovenia?
A: I know nothing about that. We didn't import a single rifle from Germany. The arms we've got are of Russian, i. e. eastern origin. We also have "Armbrust" anti-tank weapons supplied by a south-Asian source.
A: Nevertheless, some "Armbrust" weapons from Germany were found at the Croatians front. They came via Slovenia.
Q: [They] definitely don't originate from Germany. These are weapons from Singapore. Besides, "Armbrust" is in the inventory of the Slovene territorial defence units.
This is like twenty seconds with google. There are even more hits in Serbian because the Serbs made an urban legend about how the Germans had supplied the Slovenes with those weapons. (Because, you know, Germans just hate Serbs!)
Vukovar was different because army was literally falling apart with reservists calling it quits and going home
In my last post, I said that JNA was worse off at Vukovar in September than it had been in Slovenia in June.
But it wasn't /that/ much worse off. Top command was still a bunch of dinosaurs, the conscripts were still miserable, morale was still low.
Also, Vukovar had about 20,000 soldiers attacking a city of around 50,000 people. Here you have a bunch of brigade-sized units, scattered and disorganized, attacking a city of 250,000 people. I'm just not seeing how "half a day" works here.
I think Broz is making a more convincing case.
Doug M.