Editing Yugoslav Partisans (section)

== Objectives ==
[[File:Zgrabimo oružje svi.jpg|thumb|right|''To arms, everyone!'', a Partisan propaganda poster]]
One of two objectives of the movement, which was the military arm of the [[Unitary National Liberation Front]] (UNOF) coalition, led by the [[Communist Party of Yugoslavia]] (KPJ)<ref name="Sharon Fisher 2006, p. 27"/> and represented by the [[Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia]] (AVNOJ), the Yugoslav wartime [[deliberative assembly]], was to fight the occupying forces. Until British supplies began to arrive in appreciable quantities in 1944, the occupiers were the only source of arms.{{sfn|Davidson|1946|loc=[https://znaci.org/00001/3_1_2.htm 1.2 Contact]}} The other objective was to create a federal multi-ethnic [[communist state]] in Yugoslavia.{{sfn|Tomasevich|2001|p=96}} To this end, the KPJ attempted to appeal to all the various ethnic groups within Yugoslavia, by preserving the rights of each group.

The objectives of the rival resistance movement, the [[Chetniks]], were the retention of the [[House of Karađorđević|Yugoslav monarchy]], ensuring the safety of ethnic [[Serb]] populations,{{sfn|Milazzo|1975|pp=30–31}}{{sfn|Roberts|1973|p=48}} and the establishment of a [[Greater Serbia]]{{sfn|Tomasevich|1975|pp=166–178}} through the [[ethnic cleansing]] of non-Serbs from territories they considered rightfully and historically Serbian.<ref name="Banac 1996 p143">{{harvnb|Banac|1996|p=43}}: "From the summer of 1941, the Chetniks increasingly gained control over Serb insurgents and carried out gruesome crimes against Muslims of eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina. Massacres of Muslims, usually by cutting the throats of the victims and tossing the bodies into various water-ways, occurred especially in eastern Bosnia, in Foča, Goražde, Čajniče, Rogatica, Višegrad, Vlasenica, Srebrenica, all in the basin of the Drina river, but also in eastern Herzegovina, where individual villages resisted Serb encirclement with ferocious determination until 1942. Chetnik documents&nbsp;– for example the minutes of the Chetnik conference in Javorine, district of Kotor Varoš, in June 1942 – speak of a determination to 'cleanse Bosnia of everything that is not Serb'. It is difficult to estimate the number of Muslim victims of this original ethnic cleansing, but it can be counted in the tens of thousands."</ref>{{sfn|Hirsch|2002|p=76}}{{sfn|Mulaj|2008|p=71}}{{sfn|Velikonja|2003|p=166}} Relations between the two movements were uneasy from the start, but from October 1941 they degenerated into full-scale conflict. To the Chetniks, Tito's pan-ethnic policies seemed anti-Serbian, whereas the Chetniks' [[royalism]] was anathema to the communists.<ref name="BBC - History -      World Wars: Partisans: War in the Balkans 1941 - 1945" /> In the early part of the war Partisan forces were predominantly composed of Serbs. In that period names of Muslim and Croat commanders of Partisan forces had to be changed to protect them from their predominantly Serb colleagues.<ref name="Pinson1996">{{cite book|author=Mark Pinson|title=The Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina: Their Historic Development from the Middle Ages to the Dissolution of Yugoslavia|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Yl3TAkJmztYC&pg=PA143|access-date=2 October 2013|year=1996|publisher=Harvard CMES|isbn=978-0-932885-12-8|pages=143, 144}}</ref>

After the German retreat forced by the Soviet-Bulgarian offensive in Serbia, North Macedonia, and Kosovo in the autumn of 1944, the conscription of Serbs, Macedonians, and Kosovar Albanians increased significantly. By late 1944, the total forces of the Partisans numbered 650,000 men and women organized in four [[field army|field armies]] and 52 [[Division (military)|divisions]], which engaged in [[conventional warfare]].<ref name=perica>{{cite book|last=Perica|first=Vjekoslav| title=Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States|publisher=[[Oxford University Press]]|year=2004|page=96|isbn=978-0-19-517429-8}}</ref> By April 1945, the Partisans numbered over 800,000.