On this day 198.11.1991. Vukovar, a small city on a west bank of the river Dunav in Croatia felt into enemy hands.
The Battle of Vukovar was an 87-day siege of the Croatian city of Vukovar by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), supported by various Serbian paramilitary forces, between August-November 1991 during the Croatian War of Independence. It ended with the defeat of the local Croatian National Guard, the near-total destruction of Vukovar and the killings or expulsion of most of the Croat population.
Although the battle was a significant and symbolic loss for Croatia, which did not regain control of the town until 1998, it was also a very costly victory for the JNA and helped to gain the international support for the Croatian independence. As such, it is widely regarded as having been a crucial turning point in the course of the war.
On 25 June 1991, Croatia declared independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This was strongly opposed by the country's substantial Serb minority, who took up arms against the Croatian government across a wide area of the country. They were supported in their opposition by the Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević and by the Serb-dominated leadership of the JNA.
At this stage in the Yugoslav conflict, the objectives of Milošević and the JNA were somewhat different. Milošević sought to support the efforts of the rebel Serb communities to secede from an independent Croatia and associate with a Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. The JNA leadership also supported the Serb rebellion but went further, aiming to decisively cripple or overthrow the new Croatian state. According to its former head, Veljko Kadijević, it planned to advance deep into Croatia, capture the capital Zagreb and destroy its armed forces. Having done this, the new Yugoslavia could dictate its western borders, leaving Croatia as a rump state shorn of much of its territory. A key element in this plan was the use of heavy armored forces to capture the Serb-populated region of Eastern Slavonia, and then to advance west from there to Zagreb.[2]
The region was already in the grip of a long-running political crisis. The leading Croatian nationalist party, the HDZ, had little direct influence in the Vukovar municipality, having won none of the area's five parliamentary seats in the 1990 elections. In July 1990, the Serb-dominated Vukovar Municipal Assembly came into conflict with the seceding Croatian national government when it refused to endorse the controversial new Constitution of Croatia, which downgraded the political status of the country's Serb minority. The assembly was dominated by the League of Communists of Croatia. A Serb agricultural engineer, Slavko Dokmanović, was elected chairman of the assembly.
By the spring of 1991, paramilitary militias from Serbia proper – reportedly supported by Milošević through the Serbian Interior Ministry (MUP) – had established themselves in a number of localities in Eastern Slavonia. Serb paramilitaries established a base in the Serb-populated suburb of Borovo Selo on the outskirts of Vukovar. Militant propaganda from both Belgrade and Zagreb added to the tension, radicalising many of the local population and encouraging each side to view the other in the worst possible light. Tensions were further inflamed by the actions of hardline members of the ruling HDZ who carried out attacks against Serb civilians and property.[3]
The first casualties at Vukovar came in May 1991, when two Croatian policemen were taken prisoner in Borovo Selo. A detachment of Croatian Interior Ministry (MUP) police was sent in to rescue them on 2 May but came under heavy fire, suffering twelve fatalities and another 20 injured. It was widely reported that the bodies of the dead were mutilated and put on display by the paramilitaries. In the wake of the Borovo Selo killings, relations between Croats and Serbs worsened sharply and intercommunal attacks took place in a number of other places in Croatia over the following months.[4]
As the situation in Eastern Slavonia deteriorated, Serb and Croatian paramilitary groups mounted a sporadic campaign of violence and intimidation against each other and against civilians. In Vukovar itself the local militia commander, Tomislav Merčep, gained a reputation for brutality against local Serbs and was eventually removed from his post by the Croatian government. At least 80 Serb civilians were claimed to have been killed or disappeared in these incidents.[5] On 9 April 1991, Dokmanović wrote a dramatic letter to Croatian President Franjo Tuđman declaring "that the current situation in Vukovar is extremely critical and threatens to escalate any time into inter-ethnic conflict with possible permanent, tragic and unforeseeable consequences, which is particularly emphasized by [the] increasingly frequent arming of civilian population, which continues and is causing the atmosphere of fear and absolute lack of confidence of the entire population in any government institutions."
In an effort to take control of the situation in Vukovar, the Zagreb government removed the municipal assembly and its chairman from office in July 1991. They were replaced by a government-appointed commissioner, Marin Vidić Bili. This further alienated the local Serbs, but Vidić appears to have had little influence on the ground in any case. Throughout July and August 1991, the Croatian government progressively lost control of Eastern Slavonia as paramilitary forces and local Serb militias, often supported by JNA units stationed in the area, expelled government officials and set up barricades and minefields.
The JNA took up positions on the other side of the Danube, and JNA gunboats patrolled the river. Sporadic mortar attacks on Vukovar began in July, and long-range artillery attacks began from early August. By the end of August, the population of the city had fallen to around 15,000 people. The remainder comprised a mixture of Croatians, Serbs and other nationalities.[4] Vukovar was by this time largely surrounded by Serb-controlled territory, and from 25 August onwards was subjected to regular shelling and air attacks. There was, however, no attempt as yet to capture it; the fighting consisted principally of intense exchanges of fire between Croatian- and Serb-held territory.
From 25 August Vukovar was under constant artillery and rocket bombardment. In the rest of Croatia situaton was dramatic too. In many parts of the country the real war has started, and by the start of September 1991 the Croatian government had lost control of nearly a third of the country. Its forces were poorly armed and, without access to heavy weapons, were unable to put up effective opposition to its better-armed opponents. The JNA, as the national army of Yugoslavia, was still deployed throughout Croatia and was seen as a major threat to the republic's secession from the Yugoslav federation. It was, however, already seen to be openly acting in support of the Serb rebellion in the Croatian Krajina and by mid-1991 most Croatians regarded it as a hostile force.
In order to eliminate the threat of the JNA's garrisons and remedy its own lack of heavy weapons, on 14 September 1991 the Croatian government launched an attack on JNA garrisons and arms depots throughout government-held territory – an offensive dubbed the "Battle of the Barracks". They had already been effectively besieged for a couple of months but the Croatian forces had not, up to that point, attempted to capture them. The outcome of the offensive was mixed; some depots were successfully captured, while others were destroyed or evacuated after negotiations. Nonetheless, it enabled the Croatian forces to obtain a large number of heavy weapons, it eliminated a strategic threat to the Croatian rear and it significantly weakened the strength of the JNA.[6]
Vukovar's JNA barracks, in the southern suburb of Sajmište, was one of those attacked on 14 September. The local Croatian forces were, however, unable to capture it and, in retaliation, the Chetniks (Serbian paramilitaries) launched a major attack on the southwest of Vukovar from the direction of Negoslavci. 2,000 residents fled, reporting scores of civilian deaths and mass killings.[4]
In response to the "battle of the barracks", the JNA activated its strategic offensive plan. The main element of this was the drive on Eastern Slavonia. The JNA's objectives in the first stage of the battle were to take the Serb-inhabited areas of Eastern Slavonia plus Vukovar, then to progress west via Vinkovci and Osijek to Zagreb.
On 19 September a huge column of JNA armor left Belgrade; foreign journalists reported that it stretched for nearly 10 km and included at least a hundred tanks, mostly T-55s and M-84s, as well as armored personnel carriers and numerous towed heavy artillery pieces. The force crossed the Croatian border on 20 September, near the Serbian town of Šid. Further support was provided by other JNA units, notably the 12th (Novi Sad) Corps, advancing from Serbia's Vojvodina province.[4]
Few problems were experienced in the early days of the campaign, and the JNA took the time to expel non-Serbs from mixed communities en route, such as at Ilok.[7] Pockets of Croatian defenders outside Vukovar were quickly routed and fell back to Vukovar. The JNA's 1st Guards Mechanised Division quickly reached the town's barracks and lifted the Croatian siege of the facility. They also moved to encircle Vukovar. By 30 September the town was almost completely surrounded; all roads in and out of the town were blocked and the only route in was via a track through a perilously exposed cornfield.[8][6]
During the period of 14th to 20th September, JNA launched some of the largest tank and infantry attacks at the city. One of the major attacks in this period was started on September 18th from the north on Trpinjska cesta; launched by the JNA's 51st Mechanized Brigade's one Mechanized Battalion of about 30 tanks and 30 APCs. These fell into an ambush, and were almost wiped out. As a result, an area where the fighting occurred was nicknamed Tank graveyard.[9] In total, about one hundred armoured vehicles were destroyed there, 15 of which were destroyed by Colonel Marko Babić.[10]
Vukovar was cut off for a time after the village of Marinci, straddling the route out of the city, was captured on 1 October. Shortly afterwards, Vukovar's deputy commander Mile Dedaković - Jastreb broke out through the Serbian lines to reach Vinkovci. His place was taken by his deputy Branko Borković (known as "Mladi Jastreb", or Young Hawk). A Croatian counter-offensive was mounted in the second week of October in an effort to break the siege and succeeded in retaking Marinci. However, the counter-offensive was called off by Croatian President Franjo Tuđman, apparently at the urging of European Economic Community negotiators attempting to obtain a ceasefire. The pause enabled the JNA's 252nd Armoured Brigade to retake Marinci on 14 October and consolidate the captured territory[11]. Vukovar was now fully besieged.
Croatian forces
Vukovar was defended by a force of some 2,000 defenders drawn from local militias, the 204th brigade of the Croatian National Guard (ZNG) and Interior Ministry forces. Although the defenders were routinely castigated as extreme nationalist Ustaše by the Serbian media, they reflected Vukovar's ethnic mix. As many as a third of defenders were said to be non-Croats. They were relatively poorly armed with little heavy weaponry, though they gained some additional weapons following the capture of JNA barracks elsewhere in Croatia.[11] Despite their small numbers and poor weaponry, they were better motivated than their opponents, as [in some instances] their families were located in the town, and they would naturally fight with more vigor and emotion. They also benefited from the defensive advantages offered by urban terrain.[3]
Dedaković and the defenders' Chief of Staff, Branko Borković, played a key role in devising defensive tactics that kept the JNA out of Vukovar for a prolonged period of time. They created a unified command structure that created a single brigade from a number of previously disparate elements. Their tactics centred on the creation of an integrated defence system that featured the mining of approach routes, roving anti-tank teams, snipers and heavily fortified defensive strongpoints. This combination was intended to slow down and dissipate JNA attacks to the point where counter-attacks could force a retreat.
Yugoslav/Serb forces
The attacking force was a mixture of JNA soldiers, conscripts from the Serbian Territorial defence force (teritorialna obrana or TO), chetniks (Serbian nationalist paramilitaries) and local Serb militiamen. At its largest, it numbered about 36,000 troops.[6] Although it was in theory far stronger than the Croatian forces and was much better equipped, it suffered from often low morale, poor leadership, and constant desertions, which reduced the strength and capability of many units. Many of the JNA soldiers were not Serbs in the first place, a large number being Bosniaks and Kosovo's ethnic Albanians. By this stage, the non-Serb members of the JNA were not particularly supportive of either Serbian nationalism or the nominal cause of Yugoslav unity. The non-Serb soldiers were distrusted by the Serb-dominated officer corps, and many deserted from a battle in which they felt that they had no stake of their own.
Low morale was a problem for the Serb members of the JNA as well, and desertions and protests were frequent among the largely conscripted force. The war was unpopular at home and the JNA experienced severe problems in mobilizing soldiers for the battle. The Army as a whole struggled to explain adequately what it was fighting for (it was only in October 1991 that its insignia was altered to replace the Communist red star with the Yugoslav tricolor flag, symbolising its shift from Communist to nationalist ideologies).
The attackers also suffered from a persistent lack of coordination between the various groups involved. Even within the JNA, there were problems in establishing a unified chain of command between the different corps and divisions on the battlefield. There were even greater problems in coordinating movements with the Serbian TO militias, Serbian paramilitary groups and the local Croatian Serb militias. The paramilitaries and militias were often poorly organised and undisciplined, often drunk, and soon gained a reputation for considerable brutality. Massive desertions and the casualties suffered by poor organization during the battle led to JNA recruiting people off the streets in Serbia and sending them to the battle zone, which only worsened their losses.
From mid-October 1991 to the fall of the city in mid-November, Vukovar was entirely surrounded by JNA and Serbian forces. Its remaining inhabitants – who included several thousand Serbs – took refuge in communal bomb shelters which had been built during the Cold War as insurance against a Soviet invasion. A crisis committee was established, operating from a nuclear bunker underneath the municipal hospital. It organised the delivery of food, water and medical supplies, keeping to a minimum the number of civilians on the streets and ensuring that each bomb shelter was guarded and had at least one doctor and nurse assigned to it.
The hospital was kept busy dealing with hundreds of wounded people; in the latter half of September, it had received between sixteen and eighty wounded each day, three quarters of them civilians. Despite the building being clearly marked with the Red Cross symbol it was shelled and bombed along with the rest of the city. On 4 October the Yugoslav Air Force attacked it, destroying its operating theater. One bomb fell through several floors, failed to explode and landed on the foot of a wounded man, who survived.[4]
Despite the attacking forces' numerical superiority and far greater firepower, they were unable to dislodge the Croatian defenders. The JNA's attempts to storm the city were beaten back with heavy losses in manpower and equipment. Its largely conscript force had no training for urban combat and little desire to undertake such dangerous work. They were also ill-equipped for such work – the JNA, like other armies before it, found that its heavy armour was simply not suited for intense urban combat.
Unable to engage the defenders directly, the army instead resorted to intensive long-range artillery bombardments supported by occasional Yugoslav Air Force bombing raids. By the end of October, much of Vukovar had been reduced to ruins. Ironically, though, this actually worked to the defenders' advantage; as the Red Army had found at Stalingrad fifty years previously, a destroyed city offered far more defensive positions than an intact one.
The poor performance of the JNA had been an unwelcome surprise to the Army's high command in Belgrade, and at the start of October General Života Panić, the commander of the First Army District, was put in charge of the Vukovar operation. He was accompanied to the front lines by the JNA Chief of Staff, Blagoje Adžić. The two men were appalled by what they found - a situation which Panić himself described as "chaos".
Panić swiftly made major changes, integrating the paramilitaries into the JNA command structure and putting in place a single chain of command with himself at the apex. Poorly motivated conscripts were replaced with nationalist Serb volunteers wherever possible.[4] The Serbian Ministry of the Interior played a crucial role in facilitating this, organising volunteers from Serbian nationalist parties and clubs and sending them to Eastern Slavonia. Although relatively untrained, they made up for this with an often xenophobic dedication to the cause
In desperate attempt to end this battle, in late October 1991. general Panić identified the JNA's key weakness as being its inability to carry out a coordinated assault with well-motivated and equipped troops. The Croatian defenders had previously been able to defeat the JNA's disjointed, single-sector attacks but did not have the numbers to defeat a coordinated attack on multiple sectors.
On 30 October, the JNA launched just such an attack with well-trained infantry and engineering troops systematically forcing their way through the Croatian defences, supported rather than led by armour. Paramilitary forces were used to spearhead the assaults. The JNA forces, divided into a northern and southern operation sector, attacked multiple points simultaneously; as predicted, the defenders were unable to repulse such an attack. On 3 November JNA troops launched a successful amphibious assault across the Danube to meet up with the Serbian paramilitary "Tigers", led by the notorious warlord Željko Ražnatović ("Arkan"). This split the Vukovar perimeter in half, isolating a pocket of Croatian defenders in the suburb of Borovo Naselje. Even so, the pocket held out until 16 November.
Further south, the JNA's "Operational Group South" systematically cleared the town centre, isolating the remaining defenders. A key hilltop was captured on 9 November, giving the attackers a clear view of the town. The assault was largely led by paramilitary troops, with JNA and TO soldiers providing support, especially in demining operations and close artillery support. By 15 November the defenders had been reduced to isolated pockets, and on 18 November they surrendered.
The Battle of Vukovar was an 87-day siege of the Croatian city of Vukovar by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), supported by various Serbian paramilitary forces, between August-November 1991 during the Croatian War of Independence. It ended with the defeat of the local Croatian National Guard, the near-total destruction of Vukovar and the killings or expulsion of most of the Croat population.
Although the battle was a significant and symbolic loss for Croatia, which did not regain control of the town until 1998, it was also a very costly victory for the JNA and helped to gain the international support for the Croatian independence. As such, it is widely regarded as having been a crucial turning point in the course of the war.
On 25 June 1991, Croatia declared independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This was strongly opposed by the country's substantial Serb minority, who took up arms against the Croatian government across a wide area of the country. They were supported in their opposition by the Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević and by the Serb-dominated leadership of the JNA.
At this stage in the Yugoslav conflict, the objectives of Milošević and the JNA were somewhat different. Milošević sought to support the efforts of the rebel Serb communities to secede from an independent Croatia and associate with a Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. The JNA leadership also supported the Serb rebellion but went further, aiming to decisively cripple or overthrow the new Croatian state. According to its former head, Veljko Kadijević, it planned to advance deep into Croatia, capture the capital Zagreb and destroy its armed forces. Having done this, the new Yugoslavia could dictate its western borders, leaving Croatia as a rump state shorn of much of its territory. A key element in this plan was the use of heavy armored forces to capture the Serb-populated region of Eastern Slavonia, and then to advance west from there to Zagreb.[2]
The region was already in the grip of a long-running political crisis. The leading Croatian nationalist party, the HDZ, had little direct influence in the Vukovar municipality, having won none of the area's five parliamentary seats in the 1990 elections. In July 1990, the Serb-dominated Vukovar Municipal Assembly came into conflict with the seceding Croatian national government when it refused to endorse the controversial new Constitution of Croatia, which downgraded the political status of the country's Serb minority. The assembly was dominated by the League of Communists of Croatia. A Serb agricultural engineer, Slavko Dokmanović, was elected chairman of the assembly.
By the spring of 1991, paramilitary militias from Serbia proper – reportedly supported by Milošević through the Serbian Interior Ministry (MUP) – had established themselves in a number of localities in Eastern Slavonia. Serb paramilitaries established a base in the Serb-populated suburb of Borovo Selo on the outskirts of Vukovar. Militant propaganda from both Belgrade and Zagreb added to the tension, radicalising many of the local population and encouraging each side to view the other in the worst possible light. Tensions were further inflamed by the actions of hardline members of the ruling HDZ who carried out attacks against Serb civilians and property.[3]
The first casualties at Vukovar came in May 1991, when two Croatian policemen were taken prisoner in Borovo Selo. A detachment of Croatian Interior Ministry (MUP) police was sent in to rescue them on 2 May but came under heavy fire, suffering twelve fatalities and another 20 injured. It was widely reported that the bodies of the dead were mutilated and put on display by the paramilitaries. In the wake of the Borovo Selo killings, relations between Croats and Serbs worsened sharply and intercommunal attacks took place in a number of other places in Croatia over the following months.[4]
As the situation in Eastern Slavonia deteriorated, Serb and Croatian paramilitary groups mounted a sporadic campaign of violence and intimidation against each other and against civilians. In Vukovar itself the local militia commander, Tomislav Merčep, gained a reputation for brutality against local Serbs and was eventually removed from his post by the Croatian government. At least 80 Serb civilians were claimed to have been killed or disappeared in these incidents.[5] On 9 April 1991, Dokmanović wrote a dramatic letter to Croatian President Franjo Tuđman declaring "that the current situation in Vukovar is extremely critical and threatens to escalate any time into inter-ethnic conflict with possible permanent, tragic and unforeseeable consequences, which is particularly emphasized by [the] increasingly frequent arming of civilian population, which continues and is causing the atmosphere of fear and absolute lack of confidence of the entire population in any government institutions."
In an effort to take control of the situation in Vukovar, the Zagreb government removed the municipal assembly and its chairman from office in July 1991. They were replaced by a government-appointed commissioner, Marin Vidić Bili. This further alienated the local Serbs, but Vidić appears to have had little influence on the ground in any case. Throughout July and August 1991, the Croatian government progressively lost control of Eastern Slavonia as paramilitary forces and local Serb militias, often supported by JNA units stationed in the area, expelled government officials and set up barricades and minefields.
The JNA took up positions on the other side of the Danube, and JNA gunboats patrolled the river. Sporadic mortar attacks on Vukovar began in July, and long-range artillery attacks began from early August. By the end of August, the population of the city had fallen to around 15,000 people. The remainder comprised a mixture of Croatians, Serbs and other nationalities.[4] Vukovar was by this time largely surrounded by Serb-controlled territory, and from 25 August onwards was subjected to regular shelling and air attacks. There was, however, no attempt as yet to capture it; the fighting consisted principally of intense exchanges of fire between Croatian- and Serb-held territory.
From 25 August Vukovar was under constant artillery and rocket bombardment. In the rest of Croatia situaton was dramatic too. In many parts of the country the real war has started, and by the start of September 1991 the Croatian government had lost control of nearly a third of the country. Its forces were poorly armed and, without access to heavy weapons, were unable to put up effective opposition to its better-armed opponents. The JNA, as the national army of Yugoslavia, was still deployed throughout Croatia and was seen as a major threat to the republic's secession from the Yugoslav federation. It was, however, already seen to be openly acting in support of the Serb rebellion in the Croatian Krajina and by mid-1991 most Croatians regarded it as a hostile force.
In order to eliminate the threat of the JNA's garrisons and remedy its own lack of heavy weapons, on 14 September 1991 the Croatian government launched an attack on JNA garrisons and arms depots throughout government-held territory – an offensive dubbed the "Battle of the Barracks". They had already been effectively besieged for a couple of months but the Croatian forces had not, up to that point, attempted to capture them. The outcome of the offensive was mixed; some depots were successfully captured, while others were destroyed or evacuated after negotiations. Nonetheless, it enabled the Croatian forces to obtain a large number of heavy weapons, it eliminated a strategic threat to the Croatian rear and it significantly weakened the strength of the JNA.[6]
Vukovar's JNA barracks, in the southern suburb of Sajmište, was one of those attacked on 14 September. The local Croatian forces were, however, unable to capture it and, in retaliation, the Chetniks (Serbian paramilitaries) launched a major attack on the southwest of Vukovar from the direction of Negoslavci. 2,000 residents fled, reporting scores of civilian deaths and mass killings.[4]
In response to the "battle of the barracks", the JNA activated its strategic offensive plan. The main element of this was the drive on Eastern Slavonia. The JNA's objectives in the first stage of the battle were to take the Serb-inhabited areas of Eastern Slavonia plus Vukovar, then to progress west via Vinkovci and Osijek to Zagreb.
On 19 September a huge column of JNA armor left Belgrade; foreign journalists reported that it stretched for nearly 10 km and included at least a hundred tanks, mostly T-55s and M-84s, as well as armored personnel carriers and numerous towed heavy artillery pieces. The force crossed the Croatian border on 20 September, near the Serbian town of Šid. Further support was provided by other JNA units, notably the 12th (Novi Sad) Corps, advancing from Serbia's Vojvodina province.[4]
Few problems were experienced in the early days of the campaign, and the JNA took the time to expel non-Serbs from mixed communities en route, such as at Ilok.[7] Pockets of Croatian defenders outside Vukovar were quickly routed and fell back to Vukovar. The JNA's 1st Guards Mechanised Division quickly reached the town's barracks and lifted the Croatian siege of the facility. They also moved to encircle Vukovar. By 30 September the town was almost completely surrounded; all roads in and out of the town were blocked and the only route in was via a track through a perilously exposed cornfield.[8][6]
During the period of 14th to 20th September, JNA launched some of the largest tank and infantry attacks at the city. One of the major attacks in this period was started on September 18th from the north on Trpinjska cesta; launched by the JNA's 51st Mechanized Brigade's one Mechanized Battalion of about 30 tanks and 30 APCs. These fell into an ambush, and were almost wiped out. As a result, an area where the fighting occurred was nicknamed Tank graveyard.[9] In total, about one hundred armoured vehicles were destroyed there, 15 of which were destroyed by Colonel Marko Babić.[10]
Vukovar was cut off for a time after the village of Marinci, straddling the route out of the city, was captured on 1 October. Shortly afterwards, Vukovar's deputy commander Mile Dedaković - Jastreb broke out through the Serbian lines to reach Vinkovci. His place was taken by his deputy Branko Borković (known as "Mladi Jastreb", or Young Hawk). A Croatian counter-offensive was mounted in the second week of October in an effort to break the siege and succeeded in retaking Marinci. However, the counter-offensive was called off by Croatian President Franjo Tuđman, apparently at the urging of European Economic Community negotiators attempting to obtain a ceasefire. The pause enabled the JNA's 252nd Armoured Brigade to retake Marinci on 14 October and consolidate the captured territory[11]. Vukovar was now fully besieged.
Croatian forces
Vukovar was defended by a force of some 2,000 defenders drawn from local militias, the 204th brigade of the Croatian National Guard (ZNG) and Interior Ministry forces. Although the defenders were routinely castigated as extreme nationalist Ustaše by the Serbian media, they reflected Vukovar's ethnic mix. As many as a third of defenders were said to be non-Croats. They were relatively poorly armed with little heavy weaponry, though they gained some additional weapons following the capture of JNA barracks elsewhere in Croatia.[11] Despite their small numbers and poor weaponry, they were better motivated than their opponents, as [in some instances] their families were located in the town, and they would naturally fight with more vigor and emotion. They also benefited from the defensive advantages offered by urban terrain.[3]
Dedaković and the defenders' Chief of Staff, Branko Borković, played a key role in devising defensive tactics that kept the JNA out of Vukovar for a prolonged period of time. They created a unified command structure that created a single brigade from a number of previously disparate elements. Their tactics centred on the creation of an integrated defence system that featured the mining of approach routes, roving anti-tank teams, snipers and heavily fortified defensive strongpoints. This combination was intended to slow down and dissipate JNA attacks to the point where counter-attacks could force a retreat.
Yugoslav/Serb forces
The attacking force was a mixture of JNA soldiers, conscripts from the Serbian Territorial defence force (teritorialna obrana or TO), chetniks (Serbian nationalist paramilitaries) and local Serb militiamen. At its largest, it numbered about 36,000 troops.[6] Although it was in theory far stronger than the Croatian forces and was much better equipped, it suffered from often low morale, poor leadership, and constant desertions, which reduced the strength and capability of many units. Many of the JNA soldiers were not Serbs in the first place, a large number being Bosniaks and Kosovo's ethnic Albanians. By this stage, the non-Serb members of the JNA were not particularly supportive of either Serbian nationalism or the nominal cause of Yugoslav unity. The non-Serb soldiers were distrusted by the Serb-dominated officer corps, and many deserted from a battle in which they felt that they had no stake of their own.
Low morale was a problem for the Serb members of the JNA as well, and desertions and protests were frequent among the largely conscripted force. The war was unpopular at home and the JNA experienced severe problems in mobilizing soldiers for the battle. The Army as a whole struggled to explain adequately what it was fighting for (it was only in October 1991 that its insignia was altered to replace the Communist red star with the Yugoslav tricolor flag, symbolising its shift from Communist to nationalist ideologies).
The attackers also suffered from a persistent lack of coordination between the various groups involved. Even within the JNA, there were problems in establishing a unified chain of command between the different corps and divisions on the battlefield. There were even greater problems in coordinating movements with the Serbian TO militias, Serbian paramilitary groups and the local Croatian Serb militias. The paramilitaries and militias were often poorly organised and undisciplined, often drunk, and soon gained a reputation for considerable brutality. Massive desertions and the casualties suffered by poor organization during the battle led to JNA recruiting people off the streets in Serbia and sending them to the battle zone, which only worsened their losses.
From mid-October 1991 to the fall of the city in mid-November, Vukovar was entirely surrounded by JNA and Serbian forces. Its remaining inhabitants – who included several thousand Serbs – took refuge in communal bomb shelters which had been built during the Cold War as insurance against a Soviet invasion. A crisis committee was established, operating from a nuclear bunker underneath the municipal hospital. It organised the delivery of food, water and medical supplies, keeping to a minimum the number of civilians on the streets and ensuring that each bomb shelter was guarded and had at least one doctor and nurse assigned to it.
The hospital was kept busy dealing with hundreds of wounded people; in the latter half of September, it had received between sixteen and eighty wounded each day, three quarters of them civilians. Despite the building being clearly marked with the Red Cross symbol it was shelled and bombed along with the rest of the city. On 4 October the Yugoslav Air Force attacked it, destroying its operating theater. One bomb fell through several floors, failed to explode and landed on the foot of a wounded man, who survived.[4]
Despite the attacking forces' numerical superiority and far greater firepower, they were unable to dislodge the Croatian defenders. The JNA's attempts to storm the city were beaten back with heavy losses in manpower and equipment. Its largely conscript force had no training for urban combat and little desire to undertake such dangerous work. They were also ill-equipped for such work – the JNA, like other armies before it, found that its heavy armour was simply not suited for intense urban combat.
Unable to engage the defenders directly, the army instead resorted to intensive long-range artillery bombardments supported by occasional Yugoslav Air Force bombing raids. By the end of October, much of Vukovar had been reduced to ruins. Ironically, though, this actually worked to the defenders' advantage; as the Red Army had found at Stalingrad fifty years previously, a destroyed city offered far more defensive positions than an intact one.
The poor performance of the JNA had been an unwelcome surprise to the Army's high command in Belgrade, and at the start of October General Života Panić, the commander of the First Army District, was put in charge of the Vukovar operation. He was accompanied to the front lines by the JNA Chief of Staff, Blagoje Adžić. The two men were appalled by what they found - a situation which Panić himself described as "chaos".
Panić swiftly made major changes, integrating the paramilitaries into the JNA command structure and putting in place a single chain of command with himself at the apex. Poorly motivated conscripts were replaced with nationalist Serb volunteers wherever possible.[4] The Serbian Ministry of the Interior played a crucial role in facilitating this, organising volunteers from Serbian nationalist parties and clubs and sending them to Eastern Slavonia. Although relatively untrained, they made up for this with an often xenophobic dedication to the cause
In desperate attempt to end this battle, in late October 1991. general Panić identified the JNA's key weakness as being its inability to carry out a coordinated assault with well-motivated and equipped troops. The Croatian defenders had previously been able to defeat the JNA's disjointed, single-sector attacks but did not have the numbers to defeat a coordinated attack on multiple sectors.
On 30 October, the JNA launched just such an attack with well-trained infantry and engineering troops systematically forcing their way through the Croatian defences, supported rather than led by armour. Paramilitary forces were used to spearhead the assaults. The JNA forces, divided into a northern and southern operation sector, attacked multiple points simultaneously; as predicted, the defenders were unable to repulse such an attack. On 3 November JNA troops launched a successful amphibious assault across the Danube to meet up with the Serbian paramilitary "Tigers", led by the notorious warlord Željko Ražnatović ("Arkan"). This split the Vukovar perimeter in half, isolating a pocket of Croatian defenders in the suburb of Borovo Naselje. Even so, the pocket held out until 16 November.
Further south, the JNA's "Operational Group South" systematically cleared the town centre, isolating the remaining defenders. A key hilltop was captured on 9 November, giving the attackers a clear view of the town. The assault was largely led by paramilitary troops, with JNA and TO soldiers providing support, especially in demining operations and close artillery support. By 15 November the defenders had been reduced to isolated pockets, and on 18 November they surrendered.
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