[1] During the hostilities, he met and became friends with the Bulgarian officer at the time, Lieutenant Ferdinand Kozovski, later a general and activist of the BKP.

[1] Since 1943, General Ivan Marinov has not allowed trials against those suspected of anti-fascist and communist activities in the military units commanded by him, in 1943 he hid in Bitola and Ohrid both Jews who escaped from the military haikus and (from September 1943) officers and soldiers of the Italian Armed Forces, after the signing of the Armistice of Cassibile between Italy and the anti-Hitler coalition and the declaration of war by Italy against Germany on 13 March 1943, which fact did not become known to the high command of the Wehrmacht in Serbia, nor did the Bulgarian government learn about it until September 9, 1944.

On September 2, 1944, he was appointed Minister of War of Bulgaria in Konstantin Muraviev's cabinet and arrived in Sofia two days later.

Muraviev faced with a series of strikes he broke relations with Germany on 5 September but, on the advice of Marinov did not declare war in order to allow Bulgarian troops to evacuate Yugoslavia first.

After had secretly been in contact with the Fatherland Front in the preceding period and had been largely acting on their behalf.,[13] he participated in carrying out the September 9th coup, after which he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Bulgarian Armed Forces (1944) (as assistant commander-in-chief of the Bulgarian army was Ivan Marinov's old friend – General Ferdinand Kozovski) and remained in office until July 12, 1945.

[2] Later, the senior communist functionary of that period, Georgi Chankov, noted that for his activities in Macedonia, including his role in the deportation of the Jews from Bitola, Marinov should have been tried by the so-called People's Court, but avoided this with the patronage of the Bulgarian Communist Party and personally of its leader Georgi Dimitrov, who is in Moscow.