Operation Trio () was the first large-scale joint German-Italian counter-insurgency operation of World War II conducted in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), which included modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was carried out in two phases within eastern Bosnia from 20 April to 13 May 1942, with Ustaše militia and Croatian Home Guard forces taking part on the Axis side. The aim of the operation was to target all insurgents between Sarajevo and the Drina river in eastern Bosnia. These included the communist-led Yugoslav Partisans and Serb nationalist Chetniks. Differentiating between the rank and file of the two insurgent factions was difficult, as even the communist-led insurgent groups consisted mainly of Serb peasants who had little understanding of the political aims of their leaders.
Operation Trio consisted of two parts, Trio I and Trio II. Together they comprised one element of the Axis effort known as the Third Enemy Offensive () in post-war Yugoslav historiography. The joint Italian-Chetnik offensive in Montenegro and eastern Herzegovina formed the other element. The Third Enemy Offensive forms part of the Seven Enemy Offensives framework in Yugoslav historiography.
The operation was of limited effectiveness due to several factors, including preemptive action by the Ustaše militia and Italian delays. The area of operations straddled the demarcation line between the German and Italian zones of occupation within the NDH, which led to mutual suspicion and lack of coordination. Both insurgent factions avoided fighting the Axis and NDH forces, instead focusing on fighting each other. After Operation Trio, the Partisan leader Josip Broz Tito, his Supreme Headquarters and the Partisan main force, consisting of the 1st and 2nd proletarian brigades, withdrew from their base of operations around Foča. After briefly reorganising around Zelengora mountain south-east of Foča, they moved their operations to western Bosnia for the remainder of 1942.
Operation Trio coincided with and contributed to the polarisation of the almost exclusively Serb rebels in eastern Bosnia into two groups: the Serb-chauvinist Chetniks and the multi-ethnic and communist-led Partisans. Encouraged by Chetnik propaganda against Croats and Bosnian Muslims and repelled by the sectarian left-wing policies and actions of the communists, many Serb peasant fighters were swayed to the Chetnik cause. Violent coups occurred against the communist leadership of all but one of the Partisan detachments in eastern Bosnia, and these detachments effectively defected to the Chetniks. Most of the surviving communist fighters from these detachments rejoined the Partisan forces, and many withdrew with Tito to western Bosnia during the Partisan Long March. Within a few weeks of the end of Operation Trio only 600 Partisan fighters were left in eastern Bosnia, comprising the Group of Shock Battalions and the Birač Partisan Detachment. All these forces sought refuge in the Birač region. The Chetnik movement in eastern Bosnia, at best a confederacy of local warlords, was strengthened by mass defections from the Partisans. For a time they ruled large parts of the region, after making accommodations with the Ustaše regime in May and June 1942.
Background
Foča Republic During Operation Southeast Croatia, Josip Broz Tito, his Supreme Headquarters and the 1st Proletarian Brigade commanded by Spanish Civil War veteran Konstantin "Koča" Popović, had withdrawn south to Foča, on the boundary between eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. With the help of Montenegrin Partisans, they established a liberated area around Foča and Goražde. This area, known as the "Foča Republic", was expanded by subsequent military operations. By late March, People's Liberation Councils had been established to govern 10 towns and 92 villages in the liberated area, but communist organisation in the area was limited and of poor quality.
Insurgent forces At the end of 1941, there were six Partisan detachments in eastern Bosnia, with about 7,300 fighters operating in the Majevica, Ozren, Birač, Romanija, Zvijezda and Kalinovik areas. In January 1942, the Romanija detachment had borne the brunt of Operation Southeast Croatia and had been effectively destroyed. Many Partisan fighters were Serb peasants who took to the forests and mountains to defend their families and villages against the Ustaše; few were ideologically committed to the Partisan cause. The Chetnik forces in eastern Bosnia had not opposed the Axis offensive. Many had withdrawn across the Drina river into the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia to avoid engagement with German and NDH forces.
Both the Partisan Supreme Headquarters and the Partisan General Staff of Bosnia-Herzegovina were based in the area of operations, with Tito's supreme headquarters directly controlling the 1st Proletarian Brigade, and the general staff, commanded by Svetozar Vukmanović-Tempo, controlling the Partisan detachments in East Bosnia under the overall direction of the supreme headquarters.
In early January 1942, the Partisan Supreme Headquarters decided to permit fighters who were not willing to formally become Partisans to fight alongside Partisan units. These "volunteer detachments" were under the control of the supreme headquarters of the renamed People's Liberation Partisan and Volunteer Army of Yugoslavia, and were established from former Chetnik-aligned fighters as the Jahorina, Foča, Vlasenica, Srebrenica and Krajina volunteer detachments. The Krajina Volunteer Detachment consisted of refugees from that region who had fled to German-occupied Serbia to escape the Ustaše terror. Volunteer battalions and companies were also placed under the staff of the original Partisan detachments, with many of them absorbed as whole units with the addition of a communist cadre. Some volunteer detachments fought under their own leaders, and all volunteer detachments fought under the Serbian tri-colour flag.
In February 1942, Major Jezdimir Dangić and other former Royal Yugoslav Army officers (many of whom had allegiance to the Serbian puppet regime of Milan Nedić or Draža Mihailović) entered eastern Bosnia from occupied Serbia, where some of them had withdrawn to avoid Operation Southeast Croatia. They started to re-form Chetnik units in eastern Bosnia and began agitating against the Partisans on a "conservative, Serb-nationalist and anti-Muslim basis". Other Chetnik units crossed into eastern Bosnia from occupied Serbia and attacked the Partisans. They included the "Chetnik Proletarian Shock Brigade", a unit of 200 fighters under Captain Dragoslav Račić, and another group under Captain Milorad Momčilović.
The Partisan forces in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina initially consisted almost entirely of Serb peasants, and this made much of the rank and file of both Partisan and volunteer detachments highly susceptible to pro-Chetnik agitation, accommodations with Chetnik forces in the local area and hostility towards non-Serbs. The Partisan moves towards multi-ethnic recruiting, imposition of extreme left-wing policies and use of terror against "class enemies" made all the Partisan and volunteer detachments vulnerable to such agitation. Chetnik infiltrators were able to join detachments and turn the rank and file against their communist cadres. An example of this occurred in the Majevica Partisan Detachment on 20 February, when the communist staff were massacred by Chetniks at Vukosavci near Lopare.
The 2nd Proletarian Brigade was formed at Čajniče on 1 March from Partisan forces that had withdrawn from occupied Serbia after Operation Uzice. In early March the Partisans began collecting the most loyal fighters from each Partisan detachment into "shock companies" and established structures for the development of "shock battalions" and "shock brigades". At the same time, Partisan forces that had been dispersed by Operation Southeast Croatia were threatening the Tuzla-Doboj railway line. In mid-March the 1st East Bosnian Shock Battalion was established at Srednje (outside Sarajevo), and by the end of the month the 2nd East Bosnian Shock Battalion had been established in Drinjača (near Zvornik); it incorporated the remaining 240 fighters of the Majevica Partisan Detachment.
The concentration of the most reliable fighters into proletarian brigades, shock battalions and shock companies weakened the integrity of the four remaining Partisan detachments in eastern Bosnia, but enabled the Partisan Supreme Headquarters to concentrate its best forces in mobile units to undertake successful offensive operations against the Chetniks. They captured several towns in March, including Vlasenica and Srebrenica. Partisan operations were threatening the railway network throughout eastern Bosnia, including around Sarajevo, by the end of March. Many Bosnian Chetniks deserted to the Partisans, often joining as complete units under their previous Chetnik commanders. These former Chetnik units became units of the "Volunteer Army", which reached a strength of around 7,000–8,000 fighters by the end of March. Their loyalty and military value to the Partisans was very limited.
On 25 March the Partisan General Staff of Serbia advised the Partisan Supreme Headquarters that the Serbian Partisan movement had been "extinguished", largely as a result of Operation Uzice and subsequent operations by the German occupation forces and their Serb collaborators. This was a significant setback for the Partisan cause, as Tito had always considered that a return to Serbia was a necessary ingredient for a successful revolution.
Planning
Planning for Operation Trio and the associated Operation West-Bosnien in the Bosanska Krajina occurred during two Axis conferences in March 1942. During the initial conference at Opatija on 2–3 March, the NDH Chief of the General Staff Vladimir Laxa objected to an Italian proposal to involve the Bosnian and Herzegovinian Chetniks in the planned operations, and with the support of the Germans, this idea was initially shelved. Operation Trio was to be one of a series of counter-insurgency operations planned for eastern Bosnia, Herzegovina, Sandžak, Montenegro, western Bosnia and Lika. Despite this, the only operations that were actually conducted between March and June 1942 were Operation Trio, and a combined Italian-Montenegrin Chetnik offensive in Montenegro and eastern Herzegovina which is also associated with the Third Enemy Offensive in Yugoslav historiography.
Detailed planning and orders for Operation Trio were finalised at a conference in Ljubljana on 28–29 March 1942. Laxa, General Mario Roatta (the commander of the Italian Second Army), and General der Artillerie Paul Bader (the commander of German forces in the NDH) negotiated a compromise permitting temporary non-political agreements to be concluded with the Herzegovinian Chetniks, led by Dobroslav Jevđević, but not with any of the Bosnian Chetnik groups, whose leaders were Petar Baćović in the area of Foča and Jezdimir Dangić, who was aligned with the Serb collaborationist Milan Nedić.