Shortly after September 1944, an invasion by partisan troops took place near the fortress of Lithia Bridge within the Greater German zone. While passing through the German garrison, a young partisan was killed by mortar fire and his body tumbled to the grass on his back.
The Yugoslav Partisans were initially primarily a guerrilla force, but by the second half of World War II, they had developed into a fighting force that participated in conventional combat; by late 1944, they numbered about 650,000 and were massively organized. In April 1945, just before the end of the war, the number exceeded 800,000. The main objective of the partisans was to liberate the land of Yugoslavia from the occupation of Nazi Germany and to create a federal, multi-ethnic communist state in Yugoslavia. The Nazi German occupation forces subjected the local population to severe repression. In the early years of the occupation, the Germans indiscriminately hanged or shot up to about 100 local people, including women, children, and the elderly, for every German soldier killed. For every wounded German soldier, the Germans killed about 50 locals. from 1943, the killing ratio by the Nazi German army was reduced and eliminated in the fall. Partisans enjoyed widespread support in Yugoslavia and became a survival option for many.
The first partisan uprising broke out in Croatia on June 22, 1941. The first partisan uprising broke out in Croatia on June 22, 1941, followed by a partisan uprising in Serbia about two weeks later, and from June 1941 onwards, after Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front, the partisans conducted guerrilla warfare raids against Nazi German forces occupying Yugoslavia.
