Seven Enemy Offensives

The Seven Enemy Offensives (Sedam neprijateljskih ofanziva) is a group name used in Yugoslav historiography to refer to seven major Axis military operations undertaken during World War II in Yugoslavia against the Yugoslav Partisans. These seven major offensives were distinct from the day-to-day warfare that went on in every part of the country; and they were distinct, too, from planned operations involving large numbers of troops against isolated regions. The seven offensives were seven different attempts by carefully planned, co-ordinated, and extensive manoeuvres to annihilate the main core of partisan resistance. The Seven Enemy Offensives are: The First Enemy Offensive, the attack conducted by the Axis in autumn of 1941 against the "Republic of Užice", a liberated territory the Partisans established in the western region of the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia. In November 1941, under the codename 'Operation Uzice', German troops attacked and reoccupied this territory, with the majority of Partisan forces escaping towards Bosnia. It was during this offensive that the tenuous collaboration between the Partisans and the royalist Chetniks broke down and turned into open hostility. The Second Enemy Offensive, consisted of three consecutive operations conducted by German, Italian and Independent State of Croatia forces, Operation Southeast Croatia and Operation Ozren against Partisan forces in eastern Bosnia, and Operation Prijedor to relieve beleaguered German and Croatian forces in northwest Bosnia. In eastern Bosnia, the Partisan troops avoided encirclement and were forced to retreat over Igman mountain near Sarajevo. The Third Enemy Offensive, which consisted of two operations against Partisan forces in eastern Bosnia, Montenegro, Sandžak and Herzegovina which took place in the spring of 1942. These operations were the German-Italian Operation Trio and the Italian-Chetnik Montenegro offensive. The Kozara Offensive, which took place in northwestern Bosnia in the summer of 1942, known as Operation West-Bosnien by the Germans, is not considered part of the Third Enemy Offensive.