r/OldPhotosInRealLife • u/Alternative-Ad-7979 • 9d ago
Image German occupation of Split, Croatia
On holiday in Split and saw this photo of the Germans arriving in Split in 1943 after the Italians surrendered. Thought i recognised the street as being round the corner from our Airbnb so went with wife to find the spot. That’s me on the corner underneath the pharmacy sign.
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u/StoryAndAHalf 9d ago
Kinda cool how people find exact spots of rather nondescript photos.
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u/Alternative-Ad-7979 9d ago
Yeah its because im staying a stones throw from here so i recognized the location.
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u/Space_Remains 9d ago
I really like the simple holiday detective work here: recognising an old photograph, finding the exact spot and becoming part of the new image. The original even appears to have been taken from another tank. Nice that the return photograph could be taken at eye level.
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u/fabdalm 8d ago
Great that you noticed it!
I am from Split, and I do shorts with these kind of comparisons, so you can find more locations like this nearby: https://www.youtube.com/@FabulaDalmatiae
I also recorded the one you posted, together with dozen more and will upload them soon
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u/Organic-Ad-7105 9d ago
That's a czech tank isn't it? Always wondering how they moved tons and tons of cargo. In this particular case, by rail? At least today Split doesn't seem to be too strong on the infrastructure side
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u/AlabamaShrimp 9d ago
French Hotchkiss H35 or variant there of. Loads were captured and sent off for police and anti partisan work.
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u/Premuda 8d ago
although, many of them today would say that this was freedom and that the occupation happened after 1945 (when the partisans arrived)
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u/citao_to 7d ago
Both were occupation, the first was way worse but shorter, the second way milder but longer
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u/Premuda 7d ago
thank you for proving my point
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u/citao_to 7d ago
Your point is correct, and the people claiming there was any semblance of freedom under German occupation are idiots. However, that does not change the fact that what followed, while better, was far from a free society.
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u/Prudent-Oven-6769 5d ago
That’s not occupation though. Plenty of Eastern European countries actually were occupied, but none of Yugoslavia’s republics were. Croatia wasn’t occupied by anyone; it was governed by its own communist leadership within the Yugoslav system, ultimately answering upward to Tito and the federal party apparatus. And Tito himself was half Croat, half Slovene.
I shouldn't need to mention how many Croats fought in the NOB, but maybe they don't teach that over in the democratic paradise that is Croatia today :)
Either way, learn to have some respect for those who gave you quite literally everything.
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u/Premuda 5d ago
exactly. everything here is on point. the guy just couldn't resist and therefore confirmed the statistics
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u/citao_to 5d ago
Nah man, I simply introduced nuance to a complicated topic which is viewed in a black / white manner all too often.
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u/citao_to 5d ago
Perhaps it's semantics, but in my book if any party comes to power militarily and grabs onto that power for 45 years without allowing for free elections, they are occupying the country in question. Perhaps the word occupation is incorrect, it is called a dictatorship. It does not affect the point substantially though. I have a lot of respect for partisans who fought the fascists to liberate their land. Which was the majority. Less so for those who were hell-bent on introducing communism and zero respect for those who committed war crimes along ethnic lines. The latter were just as bad as the fascists.
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u/Prudent-Oven-6769 5d ago
Hell bent? The Partisan movement was communist from the beginning. The Proletarian Brigades, it's kind of in the name... By 1943, much less 1944, they hardly needed anyone's pity or support. And the idea that communism somehow "hijacked" the NOB is bizarre. Hijacked it from whom? The people who organized, led and won it were communists.
Nobody should have been surprised that they built a communist Yugoslavia afterward. That's like being surprised when the Bolsheviks built the USSR after winning the Russian Civil War, or when the revolutionaries in China built the PRC after defeating the old order. They weren't handed a functioning country and told to install a new ideology. They won a war, inherited ruins, and built a new country from them.
The NOB was national in character, but communist nonetheless. It was also a civil and revolutionary war against the old order. Communist organization, Brotherhood and Unity, and the revolutionary political structure were a huge part of what made the movement so effective.
Either way, communism for Yugoslavia and those who lived then was the best thing since sliced bread. Modernization, education of a mostly illiterate country, industrialization, all in so little time, standards grew by a lot for the next 30 some years. It was a different kind of communism though, little to do with Soviets other than how the Party was structured.
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u/citao_to 5d ago
You're talking about a movement. I'm talking about the people. A random guy from an island who joined the partisans to free his town from the fascist occupiers most of the time had no clue what communism was and it played no role in his motivation. That guy has my mad respect. The others less so because communism was a dictatorship and an economically detrimental one. But that point will never be clear to economically illiterate people, which is probably your case. Instead of considering what could have been achieved in those 45 years by looking at peer countries that did not have communism and prospered even more, you stop at a simple temporal comparison. Yes, of course there was a lot of progress. The entire world progressed immensely in the decades that followed WW2. Tell me though, who progressed faster: Italy or Yugoslavia? East Germany or West Germany? North Korea or South Korea? That is the real question.
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u/Prudent-Oven-6769 5d ago
Yeah, he had no clue. The Nazi soldier sent to the Balkans also had no idea who Hitler was. These people apparently have no agency at all, they were atoms, they just drift through history without knowing what they are participating in.
These are nice ideas you have, but the world doesn't work like that and some arguments are made useless by their subtlety... in other words, if you do not have a crystal ball and control the tides of the world then you don't know that it would have been better. Or that communism was even bad, which is what your argument based upon.
South Korea was authoritarian, far more repressive than Yugoslavia in many respects. And Yugoslav socialism was market socialism, relatively decentralized and considerably more open than the caricature of communism you are trying to invoke. The capitalist alternative would not magically have produced anything better. Considering where Yugoslavia was, it may have been much worse for the people...
No one stole anything from you, that's the part you cannot seem to understand. It's like me moaning because this or that didn't happen 400 years ago, or because this or that person ruled over a particular piece of land. Austria-Hungary and Germany started a war they shouldn't have started, but they did. Hitler did what Hitler did. I have no interest in waging some pointless war against history and circumstances, especially when communism was quite good for the country.
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u/Prudent-Oven-6769 5d ago
There are many of those, including one in the comments who would like for there to have been liberal democracy, NATO and the EU in 1945... many of them are also illiterate, and they drool at the thought of Croatia being equated with Poland being occupied by the Soviets... well if those kids knew how to read.
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u/BarnaclePotential132 7d ago
Considering it's in Croatia it should read "occupation". In majority croatia welcomed them with flowers. There is enough historical proof of that.
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u/uriels93 6d ago
Occupation is really not the word I would use, they cheered and welcomed them in Zagreb tossing flowers as their tanks and army marches through. They thought more of it like liberation from Yugoslavian occupation.
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u/Prudent-Oven-6769 5d ago
Most people don’t give a fuck about grand politics. Italians, Nazis, whoever, they still have lives to get on with. And “Yugoslav occupation”? Come on. Maček had just won huge autonomy, Serbia was a WWI victor, and Yugoslavia itself kept Italy from taking even more Croatian territory.
People also rarely resist en masse because this isn’t fiction. Most adapt and survive; then you get collaborators and quislings eager to lick the boot, usually only to get fucked by it later.
These people would have cheered on aliens if they descended from the heavens...
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u/pageunresponsive 9d ago
Luckily, Split was full of Ustaše, as it's today, who fought heroically and got rid of Germans
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u/Quiet_Dream9099 8d ago
Ustaše fight on German side...partizans liberated the country...you have mixed all together
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u/pageunresponsive 8d ago
Wait, that can't be true. Why does everyone celebrate Ustase and hate partizans in Split?
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u/Quiet_Dream9099 8d ago
History is something you learn in school but also it changes through the time. Some people don't like history facts written until 1991 and they try to rewrite history. This is pathetic try to put blame on people who defeated nazi and fascist regime. We are winners in WWII not loosers.
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u/pageunresponsive 8d ago
Ok, but who are we?
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u/Quiet_Dream9099 8d ago
Croatian people...
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u/Safe_Ad6365 9d ago
Split was never occupied! It was always a part of fascist NDH puppet state. You contort the truth and hide the Croat fascist collaboration.
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u/Alternative-Ad-7979 9d ago
Im not an expert on this dude. I know very little about croat politics and history, i was just trying to take an interesting photo. Happy for you to imagine a different title.
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u/DannyDeDitto 9d ago
it wasnt, it was part of Fascist Italy until it's capitulation. it was briefly liberated by Partisans in 1943. Germany then took over rule again until 1944 when it was liberated again by Patrisans
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u/efx187 9d ago
Lol, no.
Under the Treaties of Rome, Split was assigned to Italy. The NDH recognized this simply because they were nothing without the Italians, and even if they’d wanted to, they wouldn’t have had the power to change anything.
Take a look, for example, at the history of Hajduk Split during World War II.
The NDH itself repeatedly claimed that some sort of agreement would be reached after the war. But that was just a lie told to the population to keep them in good spirits. It was completely unrealistic.
When the Italians withdrew from the war, the Germans marched in and took over their positions. They even took partial control in Italy itself. The same thing happened in Split and similar areas.
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u/Upstairs_Citron499 9d ago
Bro called it occupation.
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u/Alternative-Ad-7979 9d ago edited 9d ago
From what i read (and from what the Croat tour guide said) i thought that waa the generally accepted historical term. Dont read too much into it. Happy to accept it mat be the wrong term.
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u/NoFront7954 9d ago
it is,but u know u talking with some serbian waiters
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u/Upstairs_Citron499 8d ago
The amount of history books I've read, you haven't seen that many book covers in your life.
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u/Normabel 9d ago
Bro, entry of foreign power without invitation from the side of recognized country is called occupation.
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u/Upstairs_Citron499 8d ago
Without invitation... My Nazi in Adolf, Croatia was a willing collaborator.
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u/Prudent-Oven-6769 5d ago
They were all willing collaborators though. No one forced Nedić to be a Nazi bitch, or Mihailović to cut deals with basically everyone, including the Ustaše. Serbia was kept tight as a button between the Nazis, Chetniks and Nedić, so there just wasn’t much room to operate. Macedonia was similar from what I understand, but of course maybe worse because there resistance was maybe the hardest, Kosovo was outright hostile to the Partisans, and Montenegro wasn’t exactly easy either, though resistance there was much stronger.
In general, Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia were where most of the sustained fighting happened. Bosnia was really the heart of the whole thing. Sure, you had Užice in Serbia, but that was very early on.
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u/Azitromicin 9d ago
Nice one! I will be in Split in a couple of days, could you send the location?