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Slovenia during the Second World War

Home Guard (Domobranstvo)
Liberation Front (Osvobodilna Fronta)

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Home Guard (Domobranstvo)

Flag of the Home Guard - Image by Ivan Sarajčić, 2 May 2000, according to photos, scans and information provided by Janez Vezalka

The Slovenian Home Guard (Domobranstvo, from dom, "home", and braniti, "to defend") was an armed formation created by the German occupying forces in Slovenia during the Second World War.

Ivan Sarajčić & Eugene Ipavec, 2 February 2009

The flag is a variation of the flag of the Carniola province of Austria-Hungary - Slovenian tricolour with the coat of arms of the Carniola province - white with a blue eagle bearing a chequy red-white crescent.
The coat of arms is in fact that of the Ljubljana Province (Slovene, Ljubljanska pokrajina; Italian, Provincia di Lubiana; German, Provinz Laibach; Wikipedia), the part of present-day Slovenia which was annexed by Italy in 1941 and included the town of Ljubljana and areas between the town and the Croatian border. It is not quite clear if the coat of arms was actually used before the capitulation of Italy in 1943, when the area was occupied by Germany and made part of Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral (Operationszone Adriatisches Kuestenland; Wikipedia), which was administratively attached to the Third Reich without formal annexation. In that year, after the German takeover of the area, a series of banknotes (photos), denominated in lire, was issued for the Province which were charged with this coat of arms, with inscriptions in German on one side and in Slovene on the other, and remained in use until the liberation in 1945.

Željko Heimer & Tomislav Todorocić, 30 March 2013

Liberation Front (Osvobodilna Fronta)

Symbol of the Liberation Front - Image by Eugene Ipavec, 29 August 2000

In 1941 started in Slovenia the resistance movement named Osvobodilna fronta (Liberation Front), whose symbol depicts Triglav (three headed mountain -- the highest mountain in Slovenia), on top of which are letters "O" and "F". The Triglav is a pan-Slovene symbol, which was adopted as the main part of the post-war, Communist era, coat of arms. The current coat of arms, designed in 1991, is also based on the Triglav silhouette.

Andrej Brodnik, 30 June 1995

Two partisan flags - Images by Eugene Ipavec, 2 March 2000

The book Slovenska grb in zastava - heraldika in veksilologija by Zmago Jelinčič Plemeniti, shows the photos of two flags used by partisan units, vaguely prototypical of the post-war Socialist Yugoslav flag:
- a flag presented to the Varnostno-Obvečevalna Služba (Security and Intelligence Service on 31 December 1941 by the women of Ljubljana.
- a flag belonging to the 1st batallion of the Vojska Državne Varnosti (State Security Army, February 1944
Oddly the shades of gray in each photo suggest the blue fields to be much lighter than the red, which would seem to mean a very light blue and a very dark red. The outline of mount Triglav on the second flag is of unknown color: not red; blue wouldn't show; gray seems a possibility. Green is unlikely as I understand it was associated with the Germans at the time.

Željko Heimer & Eugene Ipavec, 2 March 2009

Flag of the Triglav Guard Company - Image by Eugene Ipavec, 15 December 2009

The historical exhibition organized in December 2008 in Kamnik by the local cultural association Kulturno društvo Triglav (KD Triglav) shows a flag (photo, no longer online) horizontally divided white-blue-red with a red star in the blue stripe and the golden writing "ZAŠČITNA ČETA" and "TRIGLAV" in the white and red stripes, respectively.
The caption says that this flag belonged to the "Triglav Guard Company" and is used today by KD Triglav as its flag.

Ivan Sache & Eugene Ipavec, 15 December 2009