Who exactly were the Slovene White Guard?

Question

In World War II, there was a group in Yugoslavia called the Slovene White Guard. Concerning this group, the book If The Allies Had Fallen states that:

If an Istrian landing was put into effect, the Slovene White Guard (Domobranstvo) would almost certainly have tried to join the allied side.

From what I understand (and from what I can understand on the Internet), they were a collection of anti-Communist collaborationist political groups whose leaders set up the Slovenian Alliance to fight Communism and their local partisans. However, this apparently was just for show, as from what I read, the leaders of this Alliance and of the White Guard secretly swore allegiance to the government-in-exile while putting on a show of allegiance to the Germans.

I’m still unsure of what their story is though, as I can’t seem to understand most of the online sources on them. Why did they agree with the Allies? And were they waiting for an Istrian invasion to switch sides?

If The Allies Had Fallen is sort of a niche book. It’s edited by Dennis Showalter and Harold Deutsch, published by MJF Books. ISBN: 978-1-60671-238-2

Answer 1

Welcome to the Histor.SE

There is an element to be taken into account when one interests in the resistance in Yugoslavia: The interaction of three forces.

Despite -or because- of the putsch against Nazis in Yugoslavia, quickly followed by an invasion by the Axis, the Resistance got a very important base, but it was a fragmented base. It has as a consequence two major political behaviours of resistance movements:

• First, the governement in exile is maitained legitimate: That means you are against Axis, but also against the second sort of movement:
• Second, communism: don't want nazis, don't want the governement back either

These two movements opposed progressively during the war, culminating in some "loyalist" (means: loyal to the governement in exile) collaborating with Axis forces. This is the case for Mihailovitch in Croatia and Serbia, this is the case of the Slovenian White Guard. They say they are loyal to the governement, and if the Allies invaded, maybe they would have stayed loyal and fought against Axis. But right now (in 1942 and 1943), they can't liberate from scratch, with no external help, their country. So some loyalists decided to work in the mid-time for the governement by destroying communist movements: technically, those communist movements were an ennemy because they did not want the governement to come back. And an action against could have been successful with an help from the Axis, while an action against the Axis got no chance to free the country.

That is why, to answer your question, the Slovenia White Guard played the two positions:

• They were in favour of the governement in exile with the Allies
• But right now, they just fought communism alongside Axis

Note that this was not a successful strategy in the hand:

• Governement in exile, and thus Allies, did not value them: they understood the thing and started to help communist movements (such as Tito's)
• A lot of those movements (more in Serbia than in Slovenia, though) were destroyed in the process of fighting their communist counterparts, as the Axis used them as front-line soldiers against Italian and German ones
• Communists from USSR came first to free from the outside (note that Tito did partially liberate the country by himself)