The Yugoslav Partisans, or simply the Partisans (Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Slovene: Partizani, Cyrillic script: ?????????; meaning: "partisans") were a Communist-led World War II resistance movement engaged in the fight against Axis forces and their collaborators in Yugoslavia during the Yugoslav People's Liberation War (being part of World War II) from 1941 to 1945. The Partisans, led by Marshal Josip Broz Tito, were a faction that embodied a blend of republican, left-wing, and socialist ideologies, the main goals of which were the liberation of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia as a federal republic, the deposition of the monarchy (lead by King Peter II), and the recognition of all six Yugoslav nations, as opposed to the unitarianist ethnic policies of the Yugoslav royalists in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (often described as "serbianization").
The movement's full official name was 'People's Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia, (NOV i PO?') (Serbo-Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian: Narodnooslobodilacka vojska i partizanski odredi Jugoslavije; Slovene: Narodnoosvobodilna vojska in partizanski odredi Jugoslavije; Macedonian: Narodno osloboditelna vojska i partizanski odredi na Jugoslavija.
The common name of the movement is "the Partisans" (capitalized), while the adjective "Yugoslav" is used sometimes in exclusively non-Yugoslav sources to distinguish them from other (World War II) partisan movements. Despite the fact that their name suggests they fought as a guerrilla force, this was only true for the first three years of the conflict. From the second half of 1944 the total forces of the Partisans numbered over 800,000 men organized in four field armies, which engaged in conventional warfare.
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