Sotla River as the occupational border between the Third Reich and the Independent State of Croatia: the case of the municipality of Rogaška Slatina

Abstract

Drawing on archival materials, oral accounts and field research (LIDAR), the article analyses the Sotla River, which has for centuries served as a border, also forming the southern state border of the Third Reich during German occupation (1941–1945) and the occupational boundary between the Independent State of Croatia and the Nazi Germany. Owing to its key strategic position, the Sotla border (also the easternmost border section of Lower Styria) was of vital importance. Consequently, German authorities heavily reinforced it with a fence and razor wire, and by sowing it with minefields. Given that the erected physical barriers suddenly cut human ties and drove a deep wedge into the daily life on either bank of the river, this is primarily a story about the survival of local inhabitants. However, seventy-four years after the end of the Second World War and the removal of barbed-wire, the same river is again lined with the wire which, in defiance of historical memory, divides Croatia and Slovenia.