However, propaganda and Nazi ideology prevailed, and following an agreement between Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, the VoMi began planning the Gottschee "resettlement" (forced expulsion) from the Italian occupation zone to the Rann Triangle (German: Ranner Dreieck), a region in Lower Styria between the confluences of the Krka, Sotla, and Sava rivers.
To achieve that goal, accommodation had to be made for the Gottschee "settlers" and some 46,000 Slovenians in the Rann Triangle region were forcibly deported to eastern Germany for potential Germanisation or forced labor beginning in November 1941.
Shortly before that time, a largely transparent propaganda effort was aimed toward both the Gottscheer and the Slovenians, promising the latter equivalent farmland in Germany for the land relinquished in Lower Styria.
The attempt to resettle the Gottscheer was a costly failure for the Nazi regime, since extra manpower was required to protect the farmers from the partisans.
Toward the close of the war, these camps were liberated by American and Soviet troops, and the later repatriated Slovenian refugees returned to Yugoslavia to find their homes in shambles.
Yugoslavia was invaded by the Wehrmacht on 6 April 1941, and groups of Partisans began to gather in Kočevski Rog as early as August 1941.
Following an Italian offensive in the summer of 1942, the leaders fled to forested hills above Polhov Gradec, where they decided that Rog would be the location of Partisan hospitals, workshops, schools, printing houses and stores.
The leadership returned to Rog on 17 April 1943, setting up a major facility with associated barracks called Baza 20 (Base 20),[5] which is still preserved and today is a tourist attraction.