TheIndependent State of Macedonia[a] was a proposedpuppet state ofNazi Germany during theSecond World War in the territory of theKingdom of Yugoslavia that had been occupied by theTsardom of Bulgaria following theinvasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941.
WhenSoviet Union forces approached the borders of Bulgaria near the end of August 1944, Bulgaria declared neutrality and briefly sought to negotiate with theWestern Allies. As the Bulgarian government was not impeding the withdrawal of German forces from Bulgaria orRomania, the Soviet Union treated it with suspicion. On 2 September, a new pro-Western government took power inSofia, only to be replaced a week later by a pro-Soviet government after aFatherland Front–led coup.[1] However, on 5 September 1944, the Soviets declared war on Bulgaria.
The Germans turned toIvan Mihailov to implement the scheme.[2] Mihailov was aBulgarophile right-wing politician and former leader of theInternal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) who had been engaged in terrorist activity inYugoslav andGreek Macedonia. Mihailov had become leader of IMRO in 1927 and under his leadership the organisation had joined forces with the CroatianUstaše in 1929.[3] The two organisations had planned and executed the assassination ofKing Alexander of Yugoslavia in 1934. After theBulgarian military coup d'état in the same year, IMRO was banned by the Bulgarian authorities. Mihailov fled to Turkey and then Italy, where most of the Ustaše were also in exile. After the invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, Mihailov had moved toZagreb where he had acted as an advisor toAnte Pavelić. In January 1944 he had successfully lobbied the Germans to arm someOhrana supporters and have them placed underSchutzstaffel (SS) command in Greek Macedonia, which had also been in partannexed by Bulgaria in 1941.[2]
In 1928, Mihailov proposed a plan calling for the unification of the region of Macedonia into a single state, that would be autonomous from Bulgaria.[4] He was a proponent of a pro-BulgarianUnited Macedonian multi-ethnic state, calling it: "Switzerland of the Balkans".[5] During the last phase of the Second World War he tried to realise his plan with German political collaboration; however, he abandoned the implementation of this idea due to the lack of real military support. Despite this, an independent state was declared by Macedonian nationalists on 8 September 1944. Without the means to make the state a reality, this pretence dissolved as soon as theYugoslav Partisans asserted their control following the withdrawal of German troops from the area by mid-November. This event marked the defeat of theBulgarian nationalism and the victory of theMacedonism in the area.[6]
Bulgaria joined theAxis powers on 1 March 1941, but remained passive during theinvasion of Yugoslavia and most of theinvasion of Greece. Yugoslavia surrendered on 17 April and Greece on 30 April. On 20 April, the Bulgarian army entered Greece and Yugoslavia with the aim of gaining access to theAegean Sea inThrace andeastern Macedonia. During the Second World War, Bulgaria occupied much of what is nowNorth Macedonia, as well as parts ofsouthern Serbia andnorthern Greece. The western part of present-day North Macedonia was occupied by Italy. Unlike Germany and Italy, on 14 May, Bulgaria annexed the occupied areas, which had long been the target ofBulgarian nationalism.[7] Germany, however, considered the annexation inconclusive and imposed limited Bulgarian sovereignty over the occupied territories.[8] The Bulgarians were initially welcomed by the locals as liberators, since pro-Bulgarian sentiments were prevalent among the local population.[9][10][11][12][13][14] InVardar Macedonia, a powerfulYugoslav partisan movement did not develop until the autumn of 1943.[15][16]
According to the Bulgarian historian Dobrin Michev, Mihailov, who lived inZagreb during the war, traveled in disguise to Germany around 1 August 1943, where in theFührer Headquarters and in the premises of theReich Security Main Office, he met with Hitler,Heinrich Himmler and other senior German officials, with whom, according to scant information, it was agreed that he would raise two or three volunteer battalions, armed with German arms and ammunition, to operate under the operational command and disposition ofReichsführer-SS Himmler. According to Michev, at the same time, talks were also held inSofia between high-rankingSchutzstaffel officials and the members of the Central Committee of IMROVladimir Kurtev,Zhoro Nastev andDimitar Tsilev.[17]
On 14 August 1943, a few days before his death, the Bulgarian kingBoris III met with Adolf Hitler in Germany. During the talks, Hitler advocated the creation of an autonomous Macedonia within the borders of Bulgaria, with Mihailov as its head.[18] Boris agreed to this proposal. Hitler was also determined to convince him to declare war on the Soviet Union and transfer most of the Bulgarian Army to the Eastern Front and the Italian Front. As a result, the IMRO militias were to take over the functions of the Bulgarian Army in the so-called "newly liberated territories" in Greece and Yugoslavia. After Boris' subsequent death, this plan failed. However, it became apparent that Mihailov had broader plans, which included the establishment of an independent Macedonian state under German control. The IMRO also began to actively organize pro-Bulgarian militias in the former Italian and German occupied zones in Greece. Bulgaria watched these activities of Mihailov with concern, fearing that his plan to establish an "Independent Macedonia" might succeed. In an attempt to bring him under its control, Bulgaria lifted his death sentence and offered him to return to the country and take up a leading position in Vardar Macedonia, but he rejected this proposal.[19]
Meanwhile, the Bulgarians, who staffed the new provinces with corrupted officials from Bulgaria proper began to lose the public confidence. This process accelerated after the King's dead which concurred with thecapitulation of Italy and the Soviet victories over the Nazi Germany in the summer of 1943. On this basis, the Yugoslav communists, who supported the recognition of a separate Macedonian nation, managed to organize an earnest armed resistance against the Bulgarian forces in the autumn of 1943.[20] Many former IMRO right-wing activists assisted the authorities in fightingTito's partizans.[21]
In the August 1944, the Soviet Army was approaching the Balkans. On the other hand, at the same time, theYugoslav Partisans, who "articulated the slogan ofMacedonian unification",[22] increased their activities in Macedonia. As result, theAnti-fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM) declared the foundation of the Macedonian state on 2 August 1944. The state was proclaimed in the Bulgarian occupation zone of Yugoslavia.[23][24] On 23 August, Romania left the Axis Powers, declared war on Germany, and allowed Soviet forces to cross its territory to reach Bulgaria. At that time, Bulgaria made a drive to find separate peace, repudiating any alliance with Nazi Germany, and declared neutrality on 26 August. However, its secret negotiations with theAllies in Cairo, to allow it to retain the annexed areas in Greece and Yugoslavia failed, because Bulgaria was "not in a position to argue".[25]
At that time the Partisans were active in western Macedonia, then under German control, as part of an Albanian puppet-state. Using the situation the Nazis sent aplenipotentiary to meet withIvan Mihailov, the leader of the IMRO at that time. Mihailov was inZagreb serving as an adviser toAnte Pavelić where he was pushing for the formation of volunteer units to operate in what is now theGreek province of Macedonia underSchutzstaffel (SS) command.[26] He, as most of the right wing followers of the former IMRO, were pro-Bulgarian orientated, and did not support the existence of Communist Yugoslavia.[27] The Germans were becoming increasingly overwhelmed and, in a last-ditch effort, tried to establish a Macedonian puppet-state.[25] That was the only alternative, instead to leave it to Bulgaria, which was switching the sides.[26] At the evening on 3 September, Mihailov was sent to Sofia, to negotiate here with the Bulgarian authorities and his comrades. When on 5 September, the Soviet Union declared war on Bulgaria Mihailov was transported urgently from Sofia to Skopje.
Contacts were established here with another IMRO leader,Hristo Tatarchev who was offered the position of president of the proposed state.[28] Negotiations were also held with theMacedonian Partisans, mediated by the Bulgarian minister ofInternal Affairs Alexandar Stanishev.[29] In spite of all of this, Mihailov's arrival came too late and all negotiations failed. On the next day, 6 September, Mihailov declined the plan for inability to gain support. The failure led to ordering German withdrawal from Greece the same day, when Mihailov and his wife were also evacuated from Skopje. Bulgaria immediately ordered its troops to prepare for withdrawal from former Yugoslavia and on 8 September, the Bulgarians changed sides and joined theSoviet Union. This turn of the events, put the Bulgarian 5th. Army stationed in Macedonia, in a difficult situation, surrounded by German divisions, but it fought its way back to the old borders of Bulgaria.[30]
On 8 September, right-wing IMRO nationalists declared independence.[31] A faction—includingDimitar Chkatrov,Spiro Kitinchev,Dimitar Gyuzelov—had foreseen the future of this independent Macedonian state under the protectorate of the Third Reich. The state had to have a Bulgarian character and its official language to be Bulgarian.[32] However, the self-proclaimed state was left "virtually defenseless" following the withdrawal of German troops.[33]
The German command in Skopje did not support the "independent" Macedonian state as their forces withdrew from the region. In the chaos, it tried only to use the new-formed "Macedonian committees" as local police services. Their members were people as Vasil Hadzhikimov, Stefan Stefanov,Spiro Kitinchev,Dimitar Gyuzelov andDimitar Tchkatrov, all of them former activists of the IMRO, theMacedonian Youth Secret Revolutionary Organization and theBulgarian Action Committees.[34] In between, in the early October 1944, three Bulgarian armies under the leadership of the new Bulgarian pro-Soviet government,[35] together with theRed Army reentered occupied Yugoslavia.[36][37] The Bulgarian forces entered Yugoslavia on the basis of an agreement betweenJosip Broz Tito and theBulgarian partisan leaderDobri Terpeshev signed on 5 October inCraiova, Romania with the mediation of the USSR.[38]
Despite some difficulties in cooperation between the two forces, the Bulgarians worked in conjunction with theYugoslav Partisans in Macedonia, and managed to delay the German withdrawal through the region by ten to twelve days. By mid-November all German formations had withdrawn to the west and north and the Partisans had established military and administrative control of the region.[39] However, under the political pressure of the Partisans, after the liberation of Vardar Macedonia, the Second and Fourth Bulgarian armies were forced to retreat back to the old borders of Bulgaria at the end of November. TheASNOM became operational in December, shortly after the German retreat. The Macedonian national feelings were already ripe at that time as compared to 1941, but some researchers argue that even then, it was questionable whether the Macedonian Slavs considered themselves to be a nationality separate from the Bulgarians.[40] Subsequently, to wipe out the remainingBulgarophile sentiments, the new Communist authorities persecuted the right-wing nationalists with the charges of "great-Bulgarian chauvinism".[41] The next task was also to break up all the pro-Bulgarian organisations that opposed the idea of Yugoslavia. So even left-wing politicians were imprisoned and accused of being pro-Bulgarian oriented. Seeing that he had little support, Mihailov went into hiding, first moving from Croatia toAustria and eventually to Spain and finally toItaly where remained until he died in 1990.[42]
Unlike the Slovene and Croatian identities, which existed independently for a long period before the emergence of SFRY, Macedonian identity and language were themselves a product federal Yugoslavia, and took shape only after 1944. Again unlike Slovenia and Croatia, the very existence of a separate Macedonian identity was questioned—albeit to a different degree—by both the governments and the public of all the neighboring nations (Greece being the most intransigent)
The key fact about Macedonian nationalism is that it is new: in the early twentieth century, Macedonian villagers defined their identity religiously—they were either "Bulgarian," "Serbian," or "Greek" depending on the affiliation of the village priest. WhileBulgarian was most common affiliation then, mistreatment by occupying Bulgarian troops during WWII cured most Macedonians from their pro-Bulgarian sympathies, leaving them embracing the new Macedonian identity promoted by the Tito regime after the war.
