The Stracin–Kumanovo operationIvaylo Znepolski et al., Bulgaria under Communism Routledge Histories of Central and Eastern Europe, Routledge, 2018, , chapter: Bulgaria in the shadow of Stalin, see also: Timeline of the People's Republic of Bulgaria. () was an offensive operation conducted in 1944 by the Bulgarian Army against German forces in occupied Yugoslavia which culminated in the capture of Skopje in 1944.Karl-Heinz Frieser, Klaus Schmider, The Eastern Front 1943-1944: The War in the East and on the Neighbouring Fronts, editor Karl-Heinz Frieser, translated by Barry Smerin, Oxford University Press, 2017, , pp. 1096-1098. With the Bulgarian declaration of war on Germany on September 8, followed by the Bulgarian withdrawal from the area, the German 1st Mountain Division moved north, occupied Skopje, and secured the strategic Belgrade–Nis–Salonika railroad line. On October 14, withdrawing from Greece, Army Group E faced Soviet and Bulgarian divisions advancing in Eastern Serbia and Vardar Macedonia; by November 2, the last German units left Northern Greece.Spencer C. Tucker as ed., (2016) World War II: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection [5 volumes]; ABC-CLIO, 2016; p. 1841, ISBN 1851099697.
By early October, Bulgarian forces were breaking through into eastern Serbia, Vardar Macedonia and Kosovo in support of the Soviet advance towards Belgrade. Although the Bulgarian army drove the Germans out of Skopje and what is now North Macedonia, later Yugoslav and contemporary Macedonian historiography has downplayed its role for ethnopolitical reasons."Until the Soviet-Yugoslav rift in 1948, a trilateral military-political alliance between the U.S.S.R, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria dominated the strategic situation in the Balkans. As a direct consequence of the Moscow talks, Tito met with a delegation from the Bulgarian government's Fatherland Front on October 5, 1944, in Krajova, and on the same day, concluded an agreement on the participation of the new battles on Yugoslav territory. The three armies took part in the Belgrade Operation, which was launched in late September 1944, and Yugoslav-Bulgarian relations flourished with the patronage of the Soviet Union. Southeastern Europe's fate was effectively secured." For more, see Norman Naimark, The Establishment Of Communist Regimes In Eastern Europe, 1944-1949, Routledge, 2018, , p. 60."By the end of November, almost all of Macedonia and Serbia had been liberated and cleansed of German units. The Bulgarian army is largely responsible for achieving this goal. A military contingent of more than 450,000 troops participated in the campaign. Even though the Bulgarian offensive was undertaken with the cooperation of the Yugoslav Liberation Army, as all observers at the time noted, the latter's forces were absolutely insufficient and without Bulgarian participation, defeating the enemy would have been impossible. Another thing noted at the time was the wholly upright behavior of Bulgarian troops in Macedonia and Serbia. After conquering a given territory, the army turned over control to the new administration that was being formed from the ranks of the Yugoslav opposition. In contradiction to preliminary expectations, it was found that the whole local population, especially in urban areas, calmly accepted the Bulgarian military presence in the region. This generally positive attitude was connected to the idea of a future federation between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria that was beginning to be promoted." For more, see Ivaylo Znepolski et al., Bulgaria under Communism, Routledge Histories of Central and Eastern Europe, Routledge, 2018, ."For a detailed description of the German withdrawal from Greece through Macedonia and the central Balkans to Bosnia ... see the account by one of the participants, Erich Schmidt-Richberg, 'Der Endkampf auf dem Balkan'. General Schmidt-Richberg was chief of staff of Army Group E, deployed in Greece ... The Yugoslavs' main criticism of the book was that it did not mention the Partisan units that fought the Germans as soon as they entered Yugoslav territory in Macedonia. Schmidt-Richberg only mentioned Bulgarian divisions, which had changed camps and were now fighting the Germans. But the Yugoslavs claimed that the main burden of fighting the Germans was theirs and that the Bulgarians did not have their heart in fighting their erstwhile allies. The claim applies to Partisan operations in the area between the Greek frontier on the south and the Drina River on the northwest – Macedonia, Southern Serbia, Kosovo and Sndjak. It is interesting to note that in a series of maps from Army Group E on its withdrawal through Macedonia and Serbia toward the Drina River and Bosnia, there is almost no indications on Yugoslav Partisan units... The contribution of Bulgarian troops in fighting the Germans in the fall of 1944 in Macedonia and Serbia is still much debated between Yugoslav and Bulgarian military historians." For more, see Jozo TomasevichWar and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945: Occupation and Collaboration. Volume 2, Stanford University Press, 2002, , pp. 751-752."Soviet arrogance was evident at all levels of the Red Army, beginning with its commander in chief. Stalin told Tito at a meeting that the Bulgarian army (which switched sides in the war in September 1944) was superior to Partisans, praising the professionalism of its officers. This was a pure provocation from the Soviet leader. The Bulgarians were Partisan wartime foes, and regardless of whether it was true, Stalin meant to put the assertive Yugoslav leadership in its place by insulting Tito's proudest achievement: his army. Furthermore, the Red Army's operational maps often excluded Partisan units, indicating the command's failure to even acknowledge that Yugoslavs played any role in the defeat of the Germans in the country. Further below in the chain of command, Partisan commanders had to appeal to the Red Army's political departments to include in their public statements the fact that Belgrade was liberated jointly by the Red Army and Partisans and not just by the Soviets, as well as to cease treating the Partisans as unknowledgeable and as a second-rate army." For more, see Majstorović, Vojin. "The Red Army in Yugoslavia, 1944–1945". p. 414 in Slavic Review, vol. 75, no. 2, 2016, pp. 396–421. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5612/slavicreview.75.2.396. Accessed October 24, 2020. Accounts of these events in post-war Yugoslav literature give the impression that the Germans were driven out by the communist Partisans who liberated the area. There was some fighting by the Yugoslav Partisans, but their actions were insignificant compared with Bulgarian military activity.Jože Pirjevec (2024) The Partisans and Politics, Taylor & Francis, , p. 168. The greeting of Bulgarian troops in Skopje as liberators at the end of the operation is still denied there."By 23 October the Bulgarians had reached the vicinity of Podujevo, in the north-eastern corner of Kosovo; another Bulgarian force was also closing on Kumanovo, a strategically important town just to the north-east of Skopje. For a crucial period of a fortnight, however, this front remained more or less static. This was thanks to two factors: the disruption of the Bulgarian army by the sudden removal (at Russian insistence) of its old officer corps, and the dogged resistance of the Scholz Group, which was assisted by up to 5,000 Albanians in the Prishtina-Mitrovica area (of whom some belonged to the security force recruited in Albania by Xhafer Deva, and 700 were members of the Skanderbeg division) as well as some local Chetnik formations. The Germans formed a plan for the orderly evacuation of their forces, which they were able to carry out on schedule, abandoning Skopje on 11 November, destroying installations at the Trepcha mine on the 12th and leaving Prishtina on the 19th, from where they retreated north-westwards into Bosnia. Accounts of these events published in post-war Yugoslavia give the impression that the Germans were driven out by the Partisans, who 'liberated' the cities of Kosovo by force. There was some fighting by a combined force of Yugoslav and Albanian Partisans in Western Kosovo, mainly against the remnants of the Skanderbeg division; but these actions were quite insignificant compared with the Soviet-Bulgarian advance. The war diary of the commander of the German Army Group 'E', with its detailed day-by-day record of military actions in Kosovo, contains hardly any references to Partisan actions at all. The general pattern was that the towns in Western Kosovo were 'liberated', i.e. taken over by Partisan forces, only after the Germans and their auxiliaries had left; in Eastern Kosovo it was the Soviet and Bulgarian forces (with some Yugoslav Partisans attached to them) who took over, also after the Germans had got out." For more, see Noel Malcolm, Kosovo: A Short History, New York University Press, 1998, pp. 310-313, .
After capturing Skopje on 14 November, the Bulgarian Second Army and the Yugoslav Partisans kept driving the Albanian SS Division and the Balli Kombëtar back, until Kosovo had been seized.Andrew Rawson, Balkan Struggles: A Century of Civil War, Invasion, Communism and Genocide; Pen and Sword Military, 2021, , p. 86.
Development Bulgarian military activity