Slavonski Brod through centuries

Trough centuries   Turkish authority   Habzburg Monarchy   Brod na Savi   I World War   II World War  

Second World War and Time After

The period of The second world war and the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) 1941-1945. was one of the hardest which Brod survived in its history. The Independent State of Croatia, most of Brod inhabitants received like a realisation of their aspirations and efforts for their own state in which Croats would at last develop their national identity. However, these hopes, the Independent State of Croatia did not carry out and soon came the disappointment. It turned out that it became to dependent of The Third Reich because it gave Italians the biggest part of Dalmatia with the islands and the use of racial laws against all the non-Aryan, Jews, Gypsies and Serbs. This was the reason why lots of Brod inhabitants kept their distance from the insurgent authority, and the other active joined to partisan movement under the leadership of the Communist party of Croatia, whose goal was the overthrow of the Independent State of Croatia, the renewal of Yugoslavia and the establishment of the new political order.

Exhausted with numerous problems that war brought with, the Brod inhabitants were exposed to systematically and terrible bombardment of the Western Alies (April 1944-April 1945). In that interval, the allied aeroplanes bombarded Brod for 27 times (once it was done by Germans, and with minimal damages in 1941.) by bringing waste material damages and by killing hundreds of civilians. The Allies worked intensely on 27th June 1944. when 120 aeroplanes dropped about 4000 bombs and killed 363 people and 320 were more or less severely injured. In bombing of the 19th January 1945. which lasted the whole day from 5 to 15 minutes, 250 people were killed and 69 wounded. In all these air brunts, town was practically turned into ruins: out of 2.500 buildings Brod had before war, 475 of them was destroyed completely, about 300 with severe and about 1.300 light damages. The accurate number of victims was never established.

The reasons for this merciless bombardment were in the estimate of the Western Allies Brod was very important military-strategic for Germans concerning the traffic lines (the bridge and the railway line Zagreb-Beograd) and also that the factory of the railway cars was here, in which, only in The Independent State of Croatia, the ammunition were produced. They were marked as the military targets and the Allies did not hesitate to destroy them. The fact was they did not care of civil victims and buildings.

At the beginning of 1945. it was certain that the Independent State of Croatia would not maintain itself and would soon fell after the breakthrough of "the Srijemski front" on 12th April, 1945. The last battles for town, run on the 20/21 April 1945, when the units of the 1st Yugoslav army came in and a lot of Brod inhabitants moved towards Bleiburg.

In the first years after the war, town was rebuilding intensely and at first of all it should renew residential and economic buildings. That process of the renewal lasted till 1950. when town entered the period of economic development and progress of industry, especially metalworks, in "Đuro Đaković". The best illustration will give these figures about the number of Brod inhabitants: Brod had about 20.700 inhabitants in 1953. and seven years later almost 28.000 inhabitants. According to the census from the 1971. there were 38.705 and ten years later about 48.000 inhabitants. This rapid increase was the result of the natural growth but also the immigration from the villages of "brodsko Posavlje" and Bosnia and Hercegovina in a search for a solution of existential problems, what Brod with its economic possibilities and perspectives made possible. Because most of the settlers originated from rural places, the sociological-cultural sight had considerably changed, while the national one stayed mostly unghanged.Croats were still the most numerous. They declared themselves the same in a smaller percent only in the census in 1981. Then they declared themselves as Yugoslavs and in a bigger amount Serbs did the same, what was the result of the denationalisation and the imposition of Yugoslavianism after the break of "Croatian spring" in 1971.

In the last half of the century, Brod stayed the most important administrative centre (till 1962. of the district, and after that of the county - "županija") and a cultural-educational centre of Brod Posavlje and the "Brodsko-posavska županija"

Translated by: Mirta Bušić