Leon Rupnik



Leon Rupnik, also known as Lav Rupnik or Lev Rupnik (10 August 1880 – 4 September 1946) was a Slovene general during the Kingdom of Yugoslavia who collaborated with the Fascist Italian and Nazi German occupation forces during World War II. Known for his visceral antisemitic and openly pro-Nazi views already prior to the war, Rupnik served as the President of the Provincial Government of the Nazi-occupied Province of Ljubljana from November 1943 to early May 1945. Between September 1944 and early May 1945, he also served as chief inspector of the Slovene Slovenian Home Guard, a Slovene collaborationist anti-Communist militia, although he did not have any military competences until the last month of the war.

Early career
Rupnik was born in Lokve near Gorizia, in what was then the Austrian County of Gorizia and Gradisca and is now part of the Slovenian municipality of Nova Gorica. A career soldier, from 1895 to 1899 he studied at the infantry cadet school in Trieste and graduated as a Junior Second Lieutenant. His schooling continued in Vienna from 1905 to 1907. After World War I, he joined the Yugoslav army in May 1919 with the rank of active Staff Major. He thereafter climbed the ranks, becoming a Lieutenant-Colonel (1923), Colonel (1927), Brigadier General (1933) and Lieutenant General (1937). When the Wehrmacht invaded Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941 Rupnik was Chief of Staff of 1st Army Group.

The Rupnik Line
After the Third Reich and the Kingdom of Italy had formed the Axis alliance, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia decided to construct a line of fortresses along the borders to defend itself against possible attacks from the north and the west. The constructions was mostly carried out on the border with Italy in the Drava Banovina. The line was initially staffed by 15,000, but the number increased to 40,000 by 1941. As Rupnik was in charge of their completion, the 'Rupnik Line' became the common name for these fortifications.

The defences were built on the French Maginot Line and Czechoslovak models, adapted to local conditions. After the invasion of Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941, few of them were ready and the German Wehrmacht campaign quickly rendered the line obsolete.

Walking tours of the Rupnik Line are now possible.

Collaboration
After the quick defeat of the Royal Yugoslav Army, Rupnik was released from German military prison and moved to the Italian-occupied southern Slovenia (known as Province of Ljubljana) on 17 April 1941. On 7 June 1942, he accepted the position of President of the Provincial Council of Ljubljana, thus replacing Juro Adlešič as mayor under Italian occupation. After the Italian armistice in September 1943, Ljubljana was occupied by the Germans. Friedrich Rainer, Nazi Gauleiter of Carinthia, nominated Rupnik as president of the new provincial government, after an alleged consultation with bishop Gregorij Rožman who agreed with Reiner's intention to put Rupnik in charge of the provisional government.

Together with Anton Kokalj, Ernest Peterlin and Janko Kregar, Rupnik was also one of the founders of the Slovene Home Guard, an auxiliary military unit of the Wehrmacht, formed as a voluntary militia to fight the partisan resistance movement. The militia was organized mostly by members of Slovene anti-Communist politicians gathered around the underground organization Slovenian Covenant (Slovenska zaveza) in agreement with the German occupation forces. Soon after the formation of the militia on the 23rd of September 1943, Rupnik nominated himself its commander-in-chief, but was dismissed by Rainer on 4 November 1943. In September 1944, he was nominated chief inspector of the Slovene Home Guard, a function with virtually no competence.

In his function of president of the provincial administration, Rupnik organized a large-scale bureaucracy which tried to cover all spheres of civilian life, from local administration, to social security and cultural policies. For this purpose, he relied on two groups of aids: on one side, mostly a-political civil servants and cultural functinaries active already in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (such as Stanko Majcen and Narte Velikonja); on the other side, he involved several highly ideological and fervently pro-Nazi young individuals, such as Ljenko Urbančič and Stanko Kociper. Rupnik succeeded in keeping almost all Slovene cultural and educational institutions functioning under Nazi occupation, and in 1944 he even managed to rename the "Academy of Sciences and Arts in Ljubljana" to Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Throughout his presidency, Rupnik maintained complete loyalty to the German Nazi occupation authorities. He organized several "anti-Communist rallies", in which he delivered violent speeches against the Liberation Front of the Slovenian People, the Western Allies and the "World Jewish Conspiracy". He maintained friendly contacts with the SS general Erwin Rösener, who was later convicted of war crimes.

As Chief Inspector of the Slovenian Home Guard from November 1944, Rupnik was present on the two occasions when selected members of the militia swore oaths of allegiance.

Rupnik disagreed with all attempts by members of the Slovenian Covenant and some military leaders of the Slovene Home Guard to rise against the Nazis, nor did he intervene when several of his former collaborators were arrested by the Nazis and sent to Dachau concentration camp.

On 5 May 1945, Leon Rupnik fled to Austria with a small group of 20 collaborators. He was arrested by the British on 23 July and returned to Yugoslavia on January 1946. He was put on trial alongside Rösener and others, and was sentenced to death for treason on 30 August 1946. He was executed by firing squad on 4 September 1946 at Ljubljana's Žale cemetery, and was buried the same day in an unmarked grave.

Other
His son, Vuk Rupnik, was an active officer of the Slovene Home Guard and commander of one of the most belligerent units in the militia. His son-in-law, Stanko Kociper, later emigrated to Argentina and wrote a book in which he tried to vindicate Rupnik's role in the war.