The Ustaše regime was militarily weak and failed to ever attain significant support among Croats. Therefore, terror was their means of controlling the "ethnically disparate" population.[56][57] The Ustaše regime was initially backed by some parts of the Croat population that in theinterwar period had felt oppressed by the Serb-led Yugoslavia, but their brutal policies quickly alienated many ordinary Croats and resulted in a loss of the support they had gained by creating a Croatian national state.[58]
The wordustaša (plural:ustaše) is derived from the intransitive verbustati (Croatian forrise up). "Pučki-ustaša" (German:Landsturm) was a military rank in theImperial Croatian Home Guard (1868–1918). The same term was the name of Croatian third-class infantry regiments (German:Landsturm regiments) during World War I (1914–1918).[citation needed] Another variation of the wordustati isustanik (plural:ustanici) which means aninsurgent, or a rebel. The nameustaša did not have fascist connotations during the early years of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as the term "ustat" was itself used inHerzegovina to denote the insurgents from theHerzegovinian rebellion of 1875. The full original name of the organization appeared in April 1931 as theUstaša – Hrvatska revolucionarna organizacija or UHRO (Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Organization). In 1933 it was renamed theUstaša – Hrvatski revolucionarni pokret (Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Movement), a name it kept until World War II.[44] In English, Ustasha, Ustashe, Ustashas and Ustashi are used for the movement or its members.[citation needed]
One of the major ideological influences on the Croatian nationalism of the Ustaše was 19th century Croatian activistAnte Starčević,[48] an advocate of Croatian unity and independence, who was both anti-Habsburg and anti-Serbian in outlook.[48]
He envisioned the creation of aGreater Croatia that would include territories inhabited byBosniaks,Serbs, andSlovenes, considering Bosniaks and Serbs to be Croats who had been converted toIslam andOrthodox Christianity, and considered the Slovenes "mountain Croats".[48] Starčević argued that the large Serb presence in territories claimed by a Greater Croatia was the result of recent settlement, encouraged by Habsburg rulers, and the influx of groups likeVlachs who took up Orthodox Christianity and identified themselves as Serbs. Starčević admired Bosniaks because in his view they were Croats who had adopted Islam in order to preserve the economic and political autonomy of Bosnia and Croatia under theOttoman occupation.[48]
The Ustaše used Starčević's theories to promote their own annexation ofBosnia and Herzegovina to Croatia and recognized Croatia as having two major ethnocultural components: Catholics and Muslims.[48] The Ustaše sought to represent Starčević as being connected to their views.[59]Josip Frank seceded his extreme fraction from Starčević'sParty of Rights and formed his own, thePure Party of Rights, which became the main pool of members of the subsequent Ustaše movement.[60][61][62][63] Historian John Paul Newman stated thatAustro-Hungarian officers' "unfaltering opposition to Yugoslavia provided a blueprint for the Croatian radical right, the Ustaše".[64]
The Ustaše promoted the theories ofMilan Šufflay, who is believed to have claimed that Croatia had been "one of the strongest ramparts of Western civilization for many centuries", which he claimed had been lost through its union with Serbia when the nation of Yugoslavia was formed in 1918.[65] Šufflay was killed in Zagreb in 1931 by government supporters.[66][67]
The Ustaše accepted the 1935 thesis ofKrunoslav Draganović, a Catholic priest who claimed that many Catholics in southern Herzegovina had been converted to Orthodox Christianity in the 16th and 17th centuries, in order to justify their own policy of forcible conversion of Orthodox Christians toCatholicism.[68]
The Ustaše were heavily influenced by Nazism and fascism. Its leader, Ante Pavelić, held the position ofPoglavnik, which was based on the similar positions ofDuce held by Benito Mussolini andFührer held by Adolf Hitler.[48] The Ustaše, like fascists, promoted acorporatist economy.[69] Pavelić and the Ustaše were allowed sanctuary in Italy by Mussolini after being exiled from Yugoslavia. Pavelić had been in negotiations with Fascist Italy since 1927 that included advocating a territory-for-sovereignty swap in which he would tolerate Italy annexing its claimed territory inDalmatia in exchange for Italy supporting the sovereignty of an independent Croatia.[48] The Ustaše ideology has also been characterized asclerical fascism[70] by several authors, who emphasize the importance the movement attached to Roman Catholicism.
Mussolini's support of the Ustaše was based on pragmatic considerations, such as maximizing Italian influence in the Balkans and the Adriatic. After 1937, with the weakening of French influence in Europe following Germany's remilitarization of the Rhineland and with the rise of a quasi-fascist government in Yugoslavia underMilan Stojadinović, Mussolini abandoned support for the Ustaše from 1937 to 1939 and sought to improve relations with Yugoslavia, fearing that continued hostility towards Yugoslavia would result in Yugoslavia entering Germany's sphere of influence.[71]
The collapse of the quasi-fascist Stojadinović regime resulted in Italy restoring its support for the Ustaše, whose aim was to create an independent Croatia in personal union with Italy.[71] However, distrust of the Ustaše grew. Mussolini's son-in-law and Italian foreign minister CountGaleazzo Ciano noted in his diary that "The Duce is indignant with Pavelić, because he claims that the Croats are descendants of the Goths. This will have the effect of bringing them into the German orbit".[72]
Hungary strongly supported the Ustaše for two aims. One, in order to weaken Yugoslavia,Little Entente, in order to ultimately regain some of its lost territories. The other, Hungary also wished to establish later in the future a strong alliance with the Independent State of Croatia and possibly enter a personal union.[73]
Nazi Germany initially did not support an independent Croatia, nor did it support the Ustaše, with Hitler stressing the importance of a "strong and united Yugoslavia".[71] Nazi officials, includingHermann Göring, wanted Yugoslavia stable and officially neutral during the war so Germany could continue to securely gain Yugoslavia's raw material exports.[71] The Nazis grew irritated with the Ustaše, among them Reichsfuhrer SSHeinrich Himmler, who was dissatisfied with the lack of full compliance by the NDH to the Nazis' agenda of extermination of the Jews, as the Ustaše permitted Jews who converted to Catholicism to be recognized as "honorary Croats", thus putatively exempt from persecution.[48]
Political programme and main agendas
In 1932, an editorial in the first issue of theUstaše newspaper, signed by the Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić, proclaimed that violence and terror would be the main means for the Ustaše to attain their goals:
The KNIFE, REVOLVER, MACHINE GUN and TIME BOMB; these are the idols, these are bells that will announce the dawning and THE RESURRECTION OF THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF CROATIA.[74]
In 1933, the Ustaše presented "The Seventeen Principles" that formed the official ideology of the movement. The Principles stated the uniqueness of the Croatian nation, promoted collective rights over individual rights and declared that people who were not Croat by "blood" would be excluded from political life.[48]
Those considered "undesirables" were subjected to mass murder.[75] These principles called for the creation of a new economic system that would be neithercapitalist norcommunist[48] and which would emphasize the importance of theRoman Catholic Church and thepatriarchial family as means to maintain social order and morality.[48] (The name given by modern historians to this particular aspect of Ustaše ideology varies; "national Catholicism",[76] "political Catholicism" and "Catholic Croatism"[77] have been proposed among others.) In power, the Ustaše bannedcontraception and tightened laws againstblasphemy.[78]
The Ustaše accepted that Croats are part of theDinaric race,[79] but rejected the idea that Croats are primarily Slavic, claiming they primarily come from Germanic roots with theGoths.[80] The Ustaše believed that a government must naturally be strong and authoritarian. The movement opposedparliamentary democracy for being "corrupt" andMarxism andBolshevism for interfering in family life and the economy and for theirmaterialism. The Ustaše considered competing political parties and elected parliaments to be harmful to its own interests.[69][clarification needed]
The Ustaše recognized both Roman Catholicism and Islam as national religions of the Croatian people but initially rejected Orthodox Christianity as being incompatible with their objectives.[65] Although the Ustaše emphasized religious themes, it stressed that duty to the nation took precedence over religious custom.[81]
In power, the Ustaše banned the use of the term "Serbian Orthodox faith", requiring "Greek-Eastern faith" in its place.[75] The Ustaše forcefully converted many Orthodox to Catholicism, murdered and expelled 85% of Orthodox priests,[82] and plundered and burnt many Orthodox Christian churches.[82] The Ustaše also persecutedOld Catholics who did not recognizepapal infallibility.[75] On 2 July 1942 theCroatian Orthodox Church was founded, as a further means to destroy theSerbian Orthodox Church, but this new church gained very few followers and was abolished in 1945.[83]
While initial focus was against Serbs, as the Ustaše grew closer to the Nazis they adopted antisemitism.[84] In 1936, in "The Croat Question", Ante Pavelić placed Jews third among "the Enemies of the Croats" (after Serbs andFreemasons, but before Communists): writing:
″Today, practically all finance and nearly all commerce in Croatia is in Jewish hands. This became possible only through the support of the state, which thereby seeks, on one hand, to strengthen the pro-Serbian Jews, and on the other, to weaken Croat national strength. The Jews celebrated the establishment of the so-called Yugoslav state with great joy, because a national Croatia could never be as useful to them as a multi-national Yugoslavia; for in national chaos lies the power of the Jews... In fact, as the Jews had foreseen, Yugoslavia became, in consequence of the corruption of official life in Serbia, a true Eldorado of Jewry."[85]
Once in power, the Ustaše immediately introduced a series of Nazi-style racial laws. On 30 April 1941, the Ustaše proclaimed the "Legal Decree on Racial Origins", the "Legal Decree on the Protection of Aryan Blood and the Honor of the Croatian People", and the "Legal Provision on Citizenship".[86] These decrees defined who was a Jew, and took away the citizenship rights of all non-Aryans, i.e. Jews and Roma. By the end of April 1941, months before the Nazis implemented similar measures in Germany and over a year after they were implemented in occupied Poland, the Ustaše required all Jews to wear insignia, typically a yellowStar of David.[87] The Ustaše declared the "Legal Provision on the Nationalization of the Property of Jews and Jewish Companies", on 10 October 1941, and with it they confiscated all Jewish property.[88]
Already on their first day, 10–11 April 1941, Ustaše arrested a group of prominent Zagreb Jews and held them for ransom. On 13 April the same was done inOsijek, where Ustaše andVolksdeutscher mobs also destroyed the synagogue and Jewish graveyard. This process was repeated multiple times in 1941 with groups of Jews. Simultaneously, the Ustaše initiated extensive antisemitic propaganda, with Ustaše papers writing that Croatians must "be more alert than any other ethnic group to protect their racial purity, ... We need to keep our blood clean of the Jews". They also wrote that Jews are synonymous with "treachery, cheating, greed, immorality and foreigness", and therefore "wide swaths of the Croatian people always despised the Jews and felt towards them natural revulsion".[89]
In May 1941, the Ustaše rounded up 165 Jewish youth in Zagreb, members of the Jewish sports club Makabi, and sent them to theDanica concentration camp. All but three were later killed by the Ustaše.[90] The Ustaše sent most Jews to Ustaše and Nazi concentration camps—including the notorious, Ustaše-runJasenovac concentration camp—where nearly 32,000, or 80% of the Jews in the Independent State of Croatia, were killed.[91] In October 1941, the Ustaše mayor of Zagreb ordered the demolition of theZagreb Synagogue, which was completely demolished by April 1942.[92] The Ustaše persecuted Jews who practicedJudaism but authorized Jewish converts to Catholicism to be recognized as Croatian citizens and be given honorary Aryan citizenship that allowed them to be reinstated at the jobs from which they had previously been separated.[81] After they stripped Jews of their citizenship rights, the Ustaše allowed some to apply for Aryan rights via bribes and/or through connections to prominent Ustaše. The whole process was highly arbitrary. Only 2% of Zagreb's Jews were granted Aryan rights, for example. Also, Aryan rights did not guarantee permanent protection from being sent to concentration camps or other persecution.[93]
Views on Muslims
Islam, which had a large following in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was praised by the Ustaše as the religion that "keeps true the blood of Croats."[50] The Ustaše viewed the Bosniaks as "Muslim Croats", and as a result, they were not persecuted on the basis of race.[48] However, Muslims were not free from Ustaše persecution and atrocities, even if they were not targeted on a religious or ethnic basis. The majority of Muslims preferred a return toautonomy under Habsburg rule and were reportedly either neutral or opposed to the Ustaše regime. Despite Pavelić’s promises of equality between Catholics and Muslims, many Muslims became dissatisfied with Croat rule.[94] Muslims (Bosniaks) comprised approximately 12% of the civil service and armed forces of the NDH.[95]
Decrees enacted by the regime formed the basis that allowed it to get rid of all unwanted employees in state and local government and in state enterprises, the "unwanted" being all Jews, Serbs and Yugoslav-oriented Croats who were all thrown out except for some deemed specifically needed by the government. This would leave a multitude of jobs to be filled by Ustašes and pro-Ustaše adherents and would lead to government jobs being filled by people with no professional qualifications.[97] Dalmatian-American historianJozo Tomasevich inWar and Revolution in Yugoslavia: 1941–1945 remarks "never before in history had Croats been exposed to such legalized administrative, police and judicial brutality and abuse as during the Ustaša regime."[97]
History
Before World War II
During the 1920s, Ante Pavelić, a lawyer, politician and follower of Josip Frank'sPure Party of Rights, became the leading advocate for Croatian independence.[62] In 1927, he secretly contactedBenito Mussolini, dictator ofItaly and founder offascism, to present hisseparatist ideas.[98] Pavelić proposed an independent Greater Croatia covering the entire historical and ethnic area of the Croats.[98] HistorianRory Yeomans claimed there were signs appearing as early as 1928 that Pavelić was considering the formation of a nationalist insurgency group.[99]
In October 1928, after the assassination of leading Croatian politicianStjepan Radić, (Croatian Peasant Party President in theYugoslav Assembly) by radical Montenegrin politicianPuniša Račić, a youth group named the Croat Youth Movement was founded byBranimir Jelić at theUniversity of Zagreb. A year later, Pavelić was invited by the 21-year-old Jelić into the organization as a junior member. A related movement, the Domobranski Pokret—which had been the name of the legal Croatian army in Austria-Hungary—began publication ofHrvatski Domobran, a newspaper dedicated to Croatian national matters. The Ustaše sentHrvatski Domobran to theUnited States to garner support fromCroatian-Americans.[100] The organization around theDomobran tried to engage with and radicalize moderate Croats, using Radić's assassination to stir up emotions within the divided country. By 1929 two divergent Croatian political streams had formed: those who supported Pavelić's view that only violence could secure Croatia's national interests, and a much larger group supporting the Croatian Peasant Party, led then byVladko Maček, successor to Stjepan Radić.[69]
Various members of theCroatian Party of Rights contributed to the writing of theDomobran, until around Christmas 1928 when the newspaper was banned by authorities of theKingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In January 1929 the king banned all national parties,[101] and the radical wing of the Party of Rights was exiled, including Pavelić, Jelić and Gustav Perčec. This group was later joined by several other Croatian exiles. On 22 March 1929,Zvonimir Pospišil,Mijo Babić,Marko Hranilović, and Matija Soldin murdered Toni Šlegel, the chief editor of newspaperNovosti from Zagreb and president ofJugoštampa, which was the beginning of the terrorist actions of Ustaše. Hranilović and Soldin were arrested and executed for the murder.[102] On 20 April 1929 Pavelić and others co-signed a declaration inSofia, Bulgaria, with members of theMacedonian National Committee, asserting that they would pursue "their legal activities for the establishment of human and national rights, political freedom and complete independence for both Croatia and Macedonia".[citation needed] The Court for the Preservation of the State inBelgrade sentenced Pavelić and Perčec to death on 17 July 1929.
The exiles started organizing support for their cause among theCroatian diaspora in Europe, as well as North and South America. In January 1932 they named their revolutionary organization "Ustaša". The Ustaše carried out terrorist acts intended to maximize damage to Yugoslavia. From their training camps in fascist Italy and Hungary, they planted time bombs on international trains bound for Yugoslavia, causing deaths and material damage.[103] In November 1932 ten Ustaše, led byAndrija Artuković and supported by four local sympathizers, attacked a gendarme outpost at Brušani in theLika/Velebit area, in an apparent attempt to intimidate the Yugoslav authorities. The incident has sometimes been termed the "Velebit uprising".[citation needed]
The Ustaše's most infamous terrorist act was carried out on 9 October 1934, when, working with theInternal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), they assassinated KingAlexander I of Yugoslavia in Marseille, France. The perpetrator, Bulgarian revolutionaryVlado Chernozemski, was killed by French police.[104] Three Ustaše members who had been waiting at different locations for the king—Mijo Kralj, Zvonimir Pospišil and Milan Rajić—were captured and sentenced to life imprisonment by a French court. Following theGerman invasion of France, the men were released from prison.[103]
Ante Pavelić, along withEugen Kvaternik and Ivan Perčević, were subsequently sentenced to deathin absentia by a French court, as the real organizers of the plot. The Ustaše believed that the assassination of King Alexander had effectively "broken the backbone of Yugoslavia" and was their "most important achievement."[104]
Soon after the assassination, all organizations related to the Ustaše as well as theHrvatski Domobran, which continued as a civil organization, were banned throughout Europe. Under pressure from France, the Italian police arrested Pavelić and several Ustaše emigrants in October 1934. Pavelić was imprisoned inTurin and released in March 1936. After he met with Eugen Dido Kvaternik, he stated that assassination was "the only language Serbs understand". While in prison, Pavelić was informed of the 1935 election in Yugoslavia, when the coalition led by Croat Vladko Maček won. He stated that his victory was aided by the activity of Ustaše.[105] By the mid-1930s, graffiti with the initialsŽAP meaning "Long live Ante Pavelić" (Croatian:Živio Ante Pavelić) had begun to appear on the streets of Zagreb.[106] During the 1930s, a split developed between the "home"Ustaše members who stayed behind in Croatia and Bosnia to struggle against Yugoslavia and the "emigre"Ustaše who went abroad.[107] EmigreUstaše who had a much lower educational level were viewed as violent, ignorant and fanatical by the homeUstaše, who were in turn dismissed as "soft" by the emigres, seeing themselves as a "warrior-elite".[107]
After March 1937, when Italy and Yugoslavia signed a pact of friendship, Ustaše and their activities had been banned. This attracted the attention of young Croats, especially university students, who became sympathizers or members. In 1936, the Yugoslav government offered amnesty to thoseUstaše abroad provided they promised to renounce violence; many of the emigre faction accepted the amnesty.[108] In the late 1930s, theUstaše began infiltrating the para-military organizations of the Croat Peasant Party, the Croatian Defense Force and the Peasant Civil Party.[109] At the University of Zagreb, anUstaše-linked student group become the largest single student group by 1939.[109] In February 1939 two returnees from detention,Mile Budak and Ivan Oršanić, became editors[citation needed] of the pro-Ustaše journalHrvatski narod, known in English asThe Croatian Nation.[110]
World War II
TheAxis powersinvaded Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941. Vladko Maček, the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS), which was the most influential party in Croatia at the time, rejected German offers to lead the new government. On 10 April the most senior home-based Ustaše,Slavko Kvaternik, took control of the police in Zagreb and in a radio broadcast that day proclaimed the formation of theIndependent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH). The name of the state was an attempt to capitalise on the Croat struggle for independence. Maček issued a statement that day, calling on all Croatians to cooperate with the new authorities.[111][better source needed]
Meanwhile, Pavelić and several hundred Ustaše left their camps in Italy for Zagreb, where he declared a new government on 16 April 1941.[48] He accorded himself the title of "Poglavnik"—a Croatian approximation to "Führer". The Independent State of Croatia was declared on Croatian "ethnic and historical territory",[112] what is todayRepublic of Croatia (withoutIstria),Bosnia and Herzegovina,Syrmia and theBay of Kotor. However, a few days after the declaration of independence, the Ustaše were forced[48] to sign theTreaty of Rome where they surrendered part of Dalmatia andKrk,Rab,Korčula,Biograd,Šibenik,Split,Čiovo,Šolta,Mljet and part ofKonavle and theBay of Kotor toItaly.De facto control over this territory varied over the course of the war, as theYugoslav Partisans grew more successful, while the Germans and Italians increasingly exercised direct control over areas of interest. The Germans and Italians split the NDH into two zones of influence: the southwest, controlled by the Italians, and the northeast, controlled by the Germans. As a result, the NDH has been described as "an Italian-German quasi-protectorate". In September 1943, after Italian capitulation, the NDH re-occupied the whole territory annexed by Italy through the Treaty of Rome.[113]
The decline in support for the Ustaše regime among ethnic Croats of those initially for the government began with the ceding of Dalmatia to Italy, considered as the heartland of the state and worsened with the internal lawlessness from Ustaše persecutions.[114]
TheArmy of the Independent State of Croatia was composed of enlistees who did not participate in Ustaše activities. The Ustaše Militia was organised in 1941 into five (later 15) 700-man battalions, two railway security battalions and the eliteBlack Legion and Poglavnik Bodyguard Battalion (later Brigade).[115] They were predominantly recruited among uneducated population and working class.[116]
On 27 April 1941 a newly formed unit of the Ustaše army killed members of the largely Serbian community of Gudovac, nearBjelovar. Eventually all who opposed and/or threatened the Ustaše were outlawed. The HSS was banned on 11 June 1941, in an attempt by the Ustaše to take their place as the primary representative of the Croatian peasantry. Vladko Maček was sent to the Jasenovac concentration camp, but later released to serve ahouse arrest sentence due to his popularity among the people. Maček was later again called upon by foreigners to take a stand and oppose the Pavelić government, but refused. In early 1941 Jews and Serbs were ordered to leave certain areas of Zagreb.[117][118]
In the months after Independent State of Croatia has been established, most of Ustaše groups were not under centralized control: besides 4,500 regular Ustaše Corps troops, there was some 25,000–30,0000 "Wild Ustaše" (hrv. "divlje ustaše"), boosted by government-controlled press as "peasant Ustaše" "begging" to be sent to fight enemies of the regime. After mass crimes against Serb populace committed during the summer months of 1941, the regime decided to blame all the atrocities to the irregular Ustaše—thoroughly undisciplined and paid for the service only with the booty; authorities even sentenced to death and executed publicly in August and September 1941 many of them for unauthorized use of extreme violence against Serbs and Gypsies. To put an end to Wild Ustaše uncontrolled looting and killing, the central government used some 6,000 gendarmes and some 45,000 newly recruited members of regular"Domobranstvo" forces.[119]
Pavelić first met with Adolf Hitler on 6 June 1941. Mile Budak, then a minister in Pavelić's government, publicly proclaimed the violent racial policy of the state on 22 July 1941.Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić, a chief of the secret police, started buildingconcentration camps in the summer of the same year. Ustaše activities in villages across theDinaric Alps led the Italians and the Germans to express their disquiet. According to writer/historianSrđa Trifković, as early as 10 July 1941 Wehrmacht Gen.Edmund Glaise von Horstenau reported the following to the German High Command, theOberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW):
Our troops have to be mute witnesses of such events; it does not reflect well on their otherwise high reputation. .. I am frequently told that German occupation troops would finally have to intervene against Ustaše crimes. This may happen eventually. Right now, with the available forces, I could not ask for such action. Ad hoc intervention in individual cases could make the German Army look responsible for countless crimes which it could not prevent in the past.[120][121]
HistorianJonathan Steinberg describes Ustaše crimes against Serbian and Jewish civilians: "Serbian and Jewish men, women and children were literally hacked to death". Reflecting on the photos of Ustaše crimes taken by Italians, Steinberg writes: "There are photographs of Serbian women with breasts hacked off by pocket knives, men with eyes gouged out, emasculated and mutilated".[122]
AGestapo report to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, dated 17 February 1942, stated:
Increased activity of the bands [of rebels] is chiefly due to atrocities carried out by Ustaše units in Croatia against the Orthodox population. The Ustaše committed their deeds in a bestial manner not only against males of conscript age, but especially against helpless old people, women and children. The number of the Orthodox that the Ustaše have massacred and sadistically tortured to death is about three hundred thousand.[123]
In September 1942 an Ustaše Defensive Brigade was formed, and during 1943 the Ustaše battalions were re-organised into eight four-battalion brigades (1st to 8th).[115] In 1943 the Germans suffered major losses on theEastern Front and theItalians signed an armistice with theAllies, leaving behind significant caches of arms which the Partisans would use.
An Ustaša disguised as a woman, captured byPartisans of the 6th Krajina Brigade
By 1944 Pavelić was almost totally reliant on Ustaše units, now 100,000 strong, formed in Brigades 1 to 20, Recruit Training Brigades 21 to 24, three divisions, two railway brigades, one defensive brigade and the new Mobile Brigade. In November 1944 the army was effectively put under Ustaše control when theArmed Forces of the Independent State of Croatia were combined with the units of the Ustaše to form 18 divisions, comprising 13 infantry, two mountain and two assault divisions and one replacement division, each with its own organic artillery and other support units. There were several armored units.[115]
Fighting continued for a short while after the formal surrender of GermanArmy Group E on 9 May 1945, as Pavelić ordered the NDH forces to attempt to escape to Austria, together with a large number of civilians. TheBattle of Poljana, between a mixed German and Ustaše column and a Partisan force, was the last battle of World War II on European soil.[dubious –discuss] Most of those fleeing, including both Ustaše and civilians, werehanded over to the Partisans at Bleiburg and elsewhere on the Austrian border. Pavelić hid in Austria and Rome, with the help of Catholic clergy, later fleeing toArgentina.[124]
After World War II, many of the Ustaše went underground or fled to countries such asCanada,Australia,Germany and some countries inSouth America, notably Argentina, with the assistance of Roman Catholic churches and their own grassroots supporters.[125]
For several years some Ustaše tried to organize a resistance group called theCrusaders, but their efforts were largely foiled by the Yugoslav authorities.[44] With the defeat of the Independent State of Croatia, the active movement went dormant. Infighting fragmented the surviving Ustaše. Pavelić formed theCroatian Liberation Movement, which drew in several of the former state's leaders.Vjekoslav Vrančić founded a reformed Croatian Liberation Movement and was its leader.Maks Luburić formed theCroatian National Resistance. Branimir Jelić founded the Croatian National Committee. Former Crusader and Ustaša mobile police officer, Srecko Rover, helped establishUstaše groups in Australia.[citation needed]
Blagoje Jovović, aMontenegrin, shot Pavelić nearBuenos Aires on 9 April 1957; Pavelić later died of his injuries.[126]
An entire Serb family lies slaughtered in their home following a raid by theUstaše militia, 1941.
The Ustaše intended to create an ethnically "pure" Croatia, and they viewed the Serbs living in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina as the biggest obstacle to this goal. Ustaše ministers Mile Budak,Mirko Puk [hr] and Milovan Žanić declared in May 1941 that the goal of the new Ustaše policy was an ethnically pure Croatia. The strategy to achieve their goal was:[127][128]
One third of the Serbs were to be killed
One third of the Serbs were to be expelled
One third of the Serbs were to be forcibly converted to Catholicism
The NDH government cooperated with Nazi Germany inthe Holocaust and exercised their own version of thegenocide against Serbs, Jews and Roma inside its borders. State policy towards Serbs had first been declared in the words of Milovan Žanić, a minister of the NDH Legislative council, on 2 May 1941:
This country can only be a Croatian country, and there is no method we would hesitate to use in order to make it truly Croatian and cleanse it of Serbs, who have for centuries endangered us and who will endanger us again if they are given the opportunity.[129]
The Ustaše enactedrace laws patterned after those of theThird Reich, which persecutedJews,Romani and Serbs, who were collectively declared to be enemies of the Croatian people.[48] Serbs, Jews, Roma and Croatian and Bosniak dissidents, including Communists, were interned in concentration camps, the largest of which was Jasenovac. By the end of the war the Ustaše, under Pavelić's leadership, had killed an estimated 30,000 Jews and 26,000–29,000 Roma,[130] while estimates of Serb victims range from 200,000 to 500,000,[131] with historians generally listing between 300,000 and 350,000 deaths.[132][133][134][135]
Determining the number of victims is highly problematic, due to the destruction of many relevant documents, the long-term inaccessibility to independent scholars of those documents that survived, and the ideological agendas of postwar partisan scholarship and journalism, which has been and remains influenced by ethnic tension, religious prejudice, and ideological conflict. The Ustaše murdered between 320,000 and 340,000 ethnic Serb residents of Croatia and Bosnia during the period of Ustaša rule; more than 30,000 Croatian Jews were killed either in Croatia or at Auschwitz-Birkenau.[136]
The USHMM notes that estimates on the number of Serb victims, the Ustaše's primary victims, vary tremendously but "the most reliable figures place the number between 330,000 and 390,000, with 45,000 to 52,000 Serbs murdered in Jasenovac."[137]
Serb civilians forced to convert to Catholicism by the Ustaše inGlina
The Jasenovac Memorial Area maintains a list of 83,145 names of Jasenovac victims gathered by government officials in Belgrade in 1964, as well as names and biographical data for the victims identified in recent inquiries.[138] As the gathering process was imperfect, they estimated that the list represented between 60%–75% of the total victims, putting the number of killed in that complex at roughly 80,000–100,000. The previous head of the Memorial Area, Simo Brdar, estimated at least 365,000 dead at Jasenovac. The analyses of statisticiansVladimir Žerjavić andBogoljub Kočović were similar to those of the Memorial Area. In all of Yugoslavia, the estimated number of Serb deaths was 487,000 according to Kočović, and 530,000 according to Žerjavić, out of a total of 1.014 million or 1.027 million deaths (respectively). Žerjavić further stated there were 197,000 Serb civilians killed in NDH (78,000 as prisoners in Jasenovac and elsewhere) as well as 125,000 Serb combatants.
The Belgrade Museum of Holocaust compiled a list of over 77,000 names of Jasenovac victims. It was previously headed by Milan Bulajić, who supported the claim of a total of 700,000 victims. The current administration of the museum has further expanded the list to include slightly over 80,000 names. During World War II various German military commanders and civilian authorities gave different figures for the number of Serbs, Jews and others killed inside the territory of the Independent State of Croatia. Historian Prof. Jozo Tomasevich has posited that some of these figures may have been a "deliberate exaggeration" fostered to create further hostility between Serbs and Croats so that they would not unite in resisting the Axis.[139] These figures included 400,000 Serbs (Alexander Löhr);[140] 500,000 Serbs (Lothar Rendulic);[141] 250,000 to March 1943 (Edmund Glaise von Horstenau);[139] more than "3/4 of a million Serbs" (Hermann Neubacher) in 1943;[142] 600,000–700,000 in concentration camps until March 1944 (Ernst Fick);[139] 700,000 (Massenbach).[143][unreliable source?]
Ustaše militia execute prisoners near the Jasenovac concentration camp.A knife, nicknamed "Srbosjek" or "Serbcutter", strapped to the hand, which was used by the Ustaše militia for the speedy killing of inmates in Jasenovac
The first group of camps was formed in the spring of 1941. These included:
These camps were closed by October 1942. The Jasenovac complex was built between August 1941 and February 1942. The first two camps, Krapje and Bročica, were closed in November 1941. The three newer camps continued to function until the end of the war:
between 300,000 and 350,000 up to 700,000 in Jasenovac (disputed)
around 35,000 in Gospić
around 8,500 in Pag
around 3,000 in Đakovo
1,018 in Jastrebarsko
around 1,000 in Lepoglava
Massacres of Serb civilians
Beyond mass killings in concentration camps, the Ustaše perpetrated many massacres of civilians in the field. The first mass killing of Serbs was carried out on 30 April 1941, when the Ustaše rounded up and killed 196 Serb villagers atGudovac. Many other massacres soon followed, including atBlagaj,Glina, Korita, Nevesinje,Prebilovci, Metkovic, Otočac, Vočin,Šargovac, etc. Croatian Catholic Bishop ofMostar,Alojzije Mišić, described mass killings of Serb civilians in one small area ofHerzegovina during the first six months of the war:[144]
People were captured like beasts. Slaughtered, killed, thrown live into the abyss. Women, mothers with children, young women, girls and boys were thrown into pits. The vice-mayor of Mostar, Mr. Baljić, a Mohammedan, publicly states, although as an official he should be silent and not talk, that in Ljubinje alone 700 schismatics [i.e. Serb Orthodox Christians] were thrown into one pit. Six full train carriages of women, mothers and girls, children under age 10, were taken from Mostar and Čapljina to the Šurmanci station, where they were unloaded and taken into the hills, with live mothers and their children tossed down the cliffs. Everyone was tossed and killed. In the Klepci parish, from the surrounding villages, 3,700 schismatics were killed. Poor souls, they were calm. I will not enumerate further. I would go too far. In the city of Mostar, hundreds were tied up, taken outside the city and killed like animals.
German accounts of Ustaše massacres
German officers in Croatia and Bosnia repeatedly expressed abhorrence at Ustaše mass killings of Serbs, using words like "slaughter", "atrocities", "butchery" and "terror",[145] while citing hundreds of thousands of victims. Major Walter Kleinenberger, officer with the 714th division, complained Ustaše brutality "was in defiance of all laws of civilization. The Ustaše murder without exception men, women and children".[145] German Captain Konopatzki called the slaughter of Serb civilians in Eastern Bosnia by the UstašeBlack Legion "a new wave of butchery of innocents".[145] Ustaše "wholesale butchery" (Abschlachtung) of Serbs in Srem, in ISC-occupied Serbia, triggered German concerns of Serb uprisings.[145] Lieutenant Colonel von Wedel wrote that in western Bosnia Ustaše killed women and children "like cattle" in a series of "bestial executions".[145] Hitler's Plenipotentiary to Croatia, General von Horstanau, described the aftermath of slaughter committed by Jasenovac concentration camp guards in a nearby village:[146]
At Crkveni Bok, an unfortunate place, over which about five hundred 15- to 20-year-old thugs descended under the leadership of an Ustasha lieutenant colonel, people were killed everywhere, women were raped and then tortured to death, children were killed. I saw in the Sava River the corpse of a young woman with her eyes dug out and a stake driven into her sexual parts. This woman was at most twenty years old when she fell into the hands of these monsters. All around, pigs devoured unburied human beings. "Fortunate" residents were shipped in terrifying freight cars; many of these involuntary "passengers" cut their veins during transport to the camp [Jasenovac]"
The German military even took the extraordinary step of trying the Ustaše chaplain,Miroslav Filipović, for the massacre of 2,300 civilians in three villages around Banja Luka in February 1942, including 52 children at a school.[147] On 3 March, 1943, Generalvon Horstanau, wrote "Thus far 250,000 Serbs have been killed".[148] General Lothar Rendulić wrote how in August 1942 he remarked to an Ustaše official that he could not conceive how 500,000 Serbs had been killed, to which the Ustaše replied "Half-a-million is a slanderous accusation, the number is not higher than 200,000". Other German sources put the total Serb victim numbers in the ISC as high as 600,000 to 700,000.[149]
Religious persecution
As part of their policy to eliminate Serbs entirely, by killing one-third, converting one-third and expelling one-third, the Ustaše conducted forcible conversions of Christian Orthodox Serbs to Catholicism, with the participation of Catholic priests.[150] On occasion the prospect of conversion was merely a ruse to gather Serbs so they could be murdered, such as in Glina. On 18 May 1943,Archbishop Stepinac wrote a letter to the pope, in which he estimated 240,000 conversions had occurred.[151] The Ustaše killed 157 Orthodox priests, among them three Serb Orthodox bishops (cutting the throat of the bishop of Banja Luka and killing the archbishop of Sarajevo),[152] while they jailed and torturedthe Orthodox archbishop of Zagreb. The Ustaše expelled to Serbia 327 Orthodox priests and one bishop, while two other bishops and 12 priests left on their own.[82]
According to NDH laws only uneducated Serbs were eligible for conversion; educated people, including merchants, intelligentia, and particularly Orthodox clergy were to be exterminated or expelled.[153]
Thus 85% of the Orthodox priests in the Independent State of Croatia were either killed or expelled by the Ustaše, in order to "leave the Orthodox population without spiritual leadership so the Ustašas' policy of forced or fear-induced conversions to Catholicism would be easier to carry out".[82] The Ustaše destroyed anddesecrated numerous Orthodox churches,[82] forbade the use ofCyrillic script and theJulian calendar (both officially used by the Serbian Orthodox Church) and even prohibited the term "Serbian Orthodox Church". Orthodox schools were shut down,[154] and the Church was prohibited from collecting donations, robbing it of income.[154] Church properties were confiscated,[154] some were turned over to the Croatian Catholic Church. Finally, to destroy the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Ustaše tried to create its own alternativeCroatian Orthodox Church, with an imported Russianhieromonk,Germogen Maximov, reigning as "patriarch", but it failed to gain adherents.[155]
Despite these many actions by the Ustaše to destroy the Serbian Orthodox Church, the historian Jozo Tomasevich found no condemnations of these crimes, public or private, by Catholic Archbishop Stepinac or any other members of the Croatian Catholic Church. On the contrary, he states that this massive Ustaše attack on the Serbian Orthodox Church "was approved and supported by many Croatian Catholic priests",[154] and that the Croatian Roman Catholic Church hierarchy and the Vatican "regarded Ustaše policies against the Serbs and Serbian Orthodox Church as advantageous to Roman Catholicism".[156]
The historian Mark Biondich observes that the Catholic Church had historically been on the fringes of Croatian politics and public life, and that Church influence had further eroded during theinterwar period due to the royal dictatorship and the popularity of the anti-clerical Croatian Peasant Party.[157] During the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the Catholic Clergy was deeply dissatisfied with the regime: "... a massive press campaign was launched to mobilize Croatia's nearly three million Catholics against the central government's measures penalizing Saint Peter's apostolate. First of all its inequality in treatment was denounced: 'the budget for religion totals 141 million dinars, 70 of which go to the Serbian Church, and 34 to the Catholic one.(...)Pašić's government is kind in Serbia, where each citizen pays 55 dinars in yearly taxes, while it is cruel in Croatia and Slovenia, largely Catholic districts, where each citizen pays 165 dinars in taxes.'"[158]
Croatian Catholic Church antagonism toward the Orthodox Church became an important part of Ustaše antagonism toward Serbs, with fateful consequences during the war.[152] The Ustaše supported violent aggression or force to convertSerbo-Croatian speaking Orthodox believers to Roman Catholicism. The Ustaše held the position thatEastern Orthodoxy, as a symbol ofSerbian nationalism, was their greatest foe and never recognized the existence of a Serb people on the territories of Croatia or Bosnia—they recognized only "Croats of the Eastern faith". Under the Ustaše policy of eliminating Serbs, the Catholic Church in Croatia participated in the forced conversion of Orthodox Serbs to Catholicism.[150] However, even conversion did not necessarily protect Serbs and Jews from slaughter. BishopAlojzije Mišić ofMostar described how while Serb converts to Catholicism "were at Church attending holy Mass, they (Ustaše) seized them, the young and the old, men and women, drove them like cattle...and soon sent them to eternity,en masse."[159]
The Ustaše called Bosniaks "Croats of the Islamic faith" and in general tolerated Muslims; in turn the Bosniak community did not demonstrate any particular hostility to the Ustaše government.[160] Many Muslim conscripts served in the armed forces of Independent State of Croatia and its police forces; only a very small number of Muslims served in the ranks of the communist Partisans until the closing days of the war.[161] The October 12, 1941,Resolution of Sarajevo Muslims by 108 notable Muslims condemned Ustaše atrocities against Serbs.
On 28 April 1941, the head of the Catholic Church in Croatia, Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac, issued a public letter in support of the new Ustaše-led Independent State of Croatia and asked the clergy to pray for Pavelić.[162] This despite the fact that the Ustaše had already proclaimed measures prohibiting Serbs, Jews and Roma to serve as policemen, judges and soldiers, and making easy for the state officials to fire members of those ethnic/religious groups from the public administration,[163] and he knew they were preparing Nazi-style racial laws, which Pavelić signed only two days after.[164]
While Stepinac later objected to certain Ustaše policies and helped some Jews and Serbs, he continued to publicly support the survival of Independent State of Croatia until its very end, served as the state's War Vicar, and in 1944 received a medal from Pavelić.[165] During the ongoing war, Stepinac publicly objected to Ustaše policies—in fact, as regards for the relations with head of the Ustaše regime Ante Pavelić, "it is generally agreed that they thoroughly hated each other... archbishop also opposed Fascist and Nazi ideologies, especially Nazi racist ideology, and many Ustasha policies", unlike some other members of the Croatian Catholic clergy.[166] According to HistorianMartin Gilbert, "Aloysius Stepinac, who in 1941 had welcomed Croat independence, subsequently condemned Croat atrocities against both Serbs and Jews, and himself saved a group of Jews in an old age home."[167]
The vast majority of Catholic clergy in Croatia supported the Ustaše at the moment they succeeded in forming Independent State of Croatia; but later when it was clear the Allies would win, the Catholic hierarchy tried to distance the Church from the regime and its war crimes.[168] Yet in its pastoral letter of 24 March 1945, the Croatian Catholic Church still proclaimed its support for the puppet state and its rulers, despite the fact that most seniorregime figures were preparing to flee the country.[169] The Catholic press also maintained its support of Pavelić right to the end,[170] and Stepinac himself performed a finalTe Deum to the NDH on the anniversary of its founding, on 10 April 1945, while the NDH was carrying out the final mass killings to liquidate the Jasenovac concentration camp.
Some priests, mostlyFranciscans, particularly in, but not limited to, Herzegovina and Bosnia, took part in the atrocities themselves. Priests like Ivan Guberina served as Pavelić's bodyguards, while Dionizije Juričev, responsible for the forced conversion of Serbs in the Ustaše government, wrote that it was no longer a crime to kill seven-year-olds if they stood in the way of the Ustaše movement.[171] In his diocesan newspaper, the Archbishop of Sarajevo, Ivan Šarić, published that the "liberation of the world from the Jews is a movement for the renewal of humanity".[172] In Bosnia the Ustaše largely ruled through the Catholic clergy, with the priest Božidar Bralo serving as a chief Ustaše delegate for Bosnia.[173]
Miroslav Filipović was a Franciscan friar (from thePetrićevac monastery) who allegedly joined the Ustaše as chaplain and, on 7 February 1942, joined in the massacre of roughly 2730 Serbs of the nearby villages, including some 500 children. He was allegedly subsequently dismissed from his order and defrocked, although he wore his clerical garb when he was hanged forwar crimes. He became Chief Guard of Jasenovac concentration camp where he was nicknamed"Fra Sotona" (FriarSatan) by fellow Croats.Mladen Lorković, the Croat minister of foreign affairs, formulated it like this:"In Croatia, we can find few real Serbs. The majority of Pravoslavs [i.e. Orthodox Christians] are as a matter of fact Croats who were forced by foreign invaders to accept the infidel faith. Now it's our duty to bring them back into the Roman Catholic fold."[174]
For the duration of the war, "in accordance withVatican's long-term diplomatic practice of not recognizing new states in wartime before they were legitimized by peace treaties, thepope did not send anuncio or diplomat to Croatia as requested, but an apostolic visitor, the abbotGiuseppe Marcone, who was to represent the Vatican to Croatian Catholic Church, not to the government. The government ignored this nuance, bestowing a prominent place for Marcone at all official functions".[175] After World War II ended, the Ustaše who had managed to escape from Yugoslav territory (including Pavelić) were smuggled to South America.[124] This was largely done throughratlines operated by Catholic priests who had previously secured positions at theVatican. Some of the more infamous members of theIllyrian College of San Girolamo in Rome involved in this were Franciscan friarsKrunoslav Draganović andDominik Mandić, and a third friar surnamed Petranović (first name unknown).[176]
The Ustaše regime had deposited large amounts of gold—including the gold plundered from Serbs and Jews during World War II—intoSwiss bank accounts. It seems a substantial quantity of gold was additionally transported by Ustaše to Austria at the end of the WWII. Out of a total, by some estimates, of 350 millionSwiss francs, an intelligence report estimated 200 million (ca. $47 million) reached the Vatican.[177] The question remains unclarified.[178][176]
CardinalAlojzije Stepinac,Archbishop of Zagreb,was accused and sentenced to prison after the end of World War II by Yugoslav communist authorities of supporting the Ustaše and of exonerating those in the clergy who collaborated with them and were hence complicit in forced conversions. Stepinac stated on 28 March 1941, noting early attempts to unite Croatians and Serbs:
"All in all, Croats and Serbs are of two worlds, northpole and southpole, never will they be able to get together unless by a miracle of God. The schism (between the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy) is the greatest curse in Europe, almost greater thanProtestantism. There is no moral, no principles, no truth, no justice, no honesty."[179]
On 22 July 2016, the Zagreb County Court annulled his post-war conviction due to "gross violations of current and former fundamental principles of substantive and procedural criminal law".[180]
In 1998 Stepinac wasbeatified byPope John Paul II. On 22 June 2003 John Paul II visitedBanja Luka. During the visit he held aMass at the aforementioned Petrićevac monastery. This caused public uproar due to the connection of the monastery with Filipović. At the same location the Pope proclaimed the beatification of a Roman Catholic laymanIvan Merz (1896–1928), who was the founder of the "Association of Croatian Eagles" in 1923, which some view as a precursor to the Ustaše. Roman Catholicapologists defend the Pope's actions by stating the convent at Petrićevac was one of the places that went up in flames, causing the death of 80-year-old Friar Alojzije Atlija. Further, it was claimed by the apologists that the war had produced "a total exodus of the Catholic population from this region"; that the few who remained were "predominantly elderly"; and that the church in Bosnia then allegedly risked "total extinction" due to the war.[citation needed]
Ustaše and Domobran officers with the Chetnik commanderUroš Drenović (left)
Despite representing opposing nationalisms, when confronted with the growing strength of their common enemy (i.e. the partisans), Ustaše and Chetniks throughout the Independent State of Croatia signed collaboration agreements in the spring of 1942, which for the most part held until the very end of the war.[181] The introduction to these agreements stated:[181]
As long as there is a danger of armed partisan gangs, Chetnik formations will voluntarily cooperate with the Croatian armed forces in fighting and destroying the partisans and will be under the command of the Croatian armed forces in these operations.
Beyond that, the agreements specified that the NDH military will supply Chetniks with arms and ammunition, Chetniks wounded in anti-partisan operations will be treated at NDH military hospitals, and widows and orphans of killed Chetnik soldiers, will receive state financial aid equal to aid received by widows and orphans of NDH soldiers. The NDH authorities arranged for Serbs in Ustaše concentration camps to be released, but only on the special recommendation of Chetnik commanders (thus, not partisans and their sympathizers).[182] On 30 June 1942, the Chief Headquarters of the Poglavnik (i.e.Ante Pavelić), sent a statement, signed by Marshall Slavko Kvaternik, to other NDH ministries, summarizing these agreements with NDH Chetniks.[182]
The Ustaše signed collaboration agreements with key NDH Chetnik commanders, in the following order:
Momčilo Đujić (commander of ChetnikDinara Division),Brane Bogunović (commander of Gavrilo Princip Corps, Dinara Division), Mane Rokvić (commander of King Alexander I Corps,Dinara Division),Pajica Omčikus (King Petar II Corps, Dinara Division) andPajo Popović (commander of Onisin Popović Corps, Dinara Division) in December 1941 first started negotiations with the Ustaše mayor of Knin, David Sinčić, inKnin.[183]
Uroš Drenović, the commander of the Chetnik »Kočić« detachment, signed an agreement with the Ustaše in Mrkonjić Grad on 27. April, 1942.[184]
Lazar Tešanović, commander of the Chetnik battalion, »Mrkonjić«, signed an agreement with the NDH on 23. May, 1942.
Cvijetin Todić andSavo Božić, commanders of the Chetnik Ozren and Trebava detachments, signed agreements with the NDH on 28. May 1942. in the village Lipac[185][186][187]
Representatives of the Majevica Chetnik detachment, signed agreements with the NDH on 30 May 1942.[188]
Rade Radić, commander of the Chetnik detachment, "Borja", reached agreement with the NDH authorities on 9 June 1942.[189]
On 26 May 1942, the Ustaše minister, Mladen Lorković, wrote in a communique to local NDH authorities, that pursuant to these agreements "Home Guard Headquarters agrees with your proposal to grant one million kuna aid to the leaders of the Greek-Eastern community [i.e. Serb Orthodox], Momčilo Djujić, Mane Rokvić, [Branko] Bogunović, Paja Popović and Paja Omčikus, 200 Yugoslav guns and 10 machine guns".[183] Ustaše and Chetniks simultaneously participated, alongside German and Italian forces, in major battles against the Partisans in the NDH: theKozara Offensive,Case White,Operation Rösselsprung, theBattle for Knin (1944), etc.
In 1945, the Chetnik commander, Momčilo Djujić and his troops, with Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić's permission, escaped across the NDH to the West.[190] In April 1945, by his own admission, Ante Pavelić received "two generals from the headquartersDraža Mihailović and reached an agreement with them on a joint fight against Tito's communists", while in the first days of May, Chetnik units passed through Ustaše-held Zagreb, on their way to Bleiburg, after which Chetniks and members of the Ustaše army, were killed by the Partisans in various sites, including Tezno near Maribor.[191]
Structure
At the top of the command was thePoglavnik (meaning "head") Ante Pavelić. Pavelić was appointed the office as Head of State of Croatia after Adolf Hitler had accepted Benito Mussolini's proposal of Pavelić, on 10 April 1941. TheCroatian Home Guard was the armed forces of Croatia, it subsequently merged intothe Croatian Armed Forces.[1] The Ustaše command structure was further broken down into administrations at astožer (district),logor (country) andtabor (county) level.[192]
Symbols
"Evo zore, evo dana" redirects here. For the 1992 album, seeDražen Zečić.
The symbol of the Ustaše was acapital blue letter "U" with an exploding grenade emblem within it.[193][194]
The flag of the Independent State of Croatia was a red-white-blue horizontaltricolor with the shield of the coat of arms or Croatia in the middle and the U in the upper left. Its currency was theNDH kuna.
This was used instead of the Nazi greetingHeil Hitler by the Ustaše. Today it is associated with Ustaše sympathisers. On the internet, it is sometimes abbreviated as ZDS.[195][196]
The songs promoting the Ustaše included "Evo zore, evo dana", "Hrvatska se vojska diže", "Pjesma Poglavniku".[197][full citation needed] "Evo zore, evo dana" (also called "Jure i Boban") promoted theBlack Legion, and it was common for songs to have both a Partisan and a Ustaše version.[198]
The Ustaše plays an important role inHarry Turtledove's shortalternate history storyReady for the Fatherland. It plays a brief background role inIn the Presence of Mine Enemies, an unrelated work by the same author. In both these works, the regime founded by Pavelić lasted several decades beyond the 1940s.
Popular Croatian singerMarko Perković Thompson regularly starts his concerts with the Ustaše salute.[199] The Wiesenthal Center has protested this, along with other attempts at revisionism and Holocaust-denial in Croatia.[200]
Modern-day Croatia
Seeking to unify support for Croatia's independence,Franjo Tuđman, Croatia's first president, in the late 1980s advocated "pomirba", i.e. national reconciliation between Ustaše and Partisans.[201] This led to a revival of pro-Ustaše views, symbols and salutes among the Croatian political right.[202] Following Croatia's Independence in the 1990s, streets were renamed to carry the name of Ustaše leaders, such asMile Budak andJure Francetić. Although some of these were later removed,Radio Free Europe noted that of some 20 streets dedicated to Mile Budak in the '90s, half still remained in Croatia in 2019.[203]
Jewish and Serb organizations, Croat historians and antifascists, as well as international observers, have repeatedly warned of revisionism in Croatia, which seeks to minimize Ustaše crimes and even celebrates the Ustaše regime. Recent examples include the publication of a book celebrating "the Croatian knight"Maks Luburić,[204] who as head of Ustaše concentration camps was responsible for over 100,000 deaths, during Ustaše genocides against Jews, Serbs and Roma, and a documentary minimizing children's deaths in Ustaše concentration camps.[205] The Luburić book was promoted with the assistance of theCroatian Catholic Church,[204] and Church sources minimized children's deaths in concentration camps. Croat historians have noted that the Church has been a leader in promoting revisionism and minimizing Ustaše crimes.[205] In 2013, the newspaper of Croatian Catholic archdioceses,Glas Koncila, published a series on Jasenovac, by the Jasenovac-denierIgor Vukić,[206] who claims Jasenovac was a "mere work-camp," where no mass executions took place. In 2015, the head of the Croatian Bishops' Conference asked that the Ustaše "Za dom spremni" salute be adopted by the Croatian army.[207]
Croatian soccer fans have repeatedly chanted the Ustaše "Za dom spremni" salute, for whichFIFA andUEFA have repeatedly leveled penalties against the Croatian soccer federation for fascist outbursts.[208][209] In 2014, the Croatian soccer playerJosip Šimunić was banned from theFIFA World Cup for leading a stadium full of fans in the Ustaše salute.[210]
In 2014 the then-mayor of Split, Croatia, unveiled a monument dedicated to the 1990s HOS brigade named "The KnightRafael Boban", after the Ustaše commander, which includes the HOS emblem with the Ustaše "Za dom spremni" salute.[211] Since then the HOS organization has organized annual commemorations at the memorial on 10 April (the anniversary of the founding of the Independent State of Croatia), during which the black-uniformed participants shout the Ustaše "Za dom spremni" salute.[212]
In 2016 the Croatian HOS war veterans' organization posted a plaque at Jasenovac concentration camp with the Ustaše "Za dom spremni" salute.[213] Despite protests by Jewish and other organizations, this was allowed to remain until criticism by the US State Department special envoy on Holocaust issues,[214] forced the government to move it to a nearby town. As a result of this, and allegations of the government's tolerance for the minimization of Ustaše crimes, Jewish, Serb and Croat WWII resistance groups refused to appear with government representatives at the annual Jasenovac commemoration.[215]
In 2019 the Austrian government passed a law forbidding the display of Ustaše symbols,[216] along with previously banned Nazi symbols, largely as a result of the display of same by Croatian nationalists at the annual, Croatian government-sponsoredBleiburg commemoration, where Austrian police have repeatedly arrested Croat nationalists for Nazi and fascist salutes. Three Austrian EU parliamentarians declared the Bleiburg ceremony, which tens-of-thousands of Croat nationalists attend, "the largest fascist gathering in Europe."[217] The Austrian Catholic Church banned a Mass by the Croatian Catholic Church at Bleiburg because, as they stated, "the Mass at Bleiburg has become part of a manifestation that is politically instrumentalised and is part of a political-national ritual that serves to selectively experience and interpret history," adding that it misuses "a religious service for political purposes while not distancing itself from the Fascist worldview."[218][219]
Modern usage of the term "Ustaše"
After World War II, the Ustaše movement was split into several organizations and there is presently no political or paramilitary movement that claims its legacy as their "successor." The termUstaše is today used as a derogatory term for Croatianultranationalism.Ustaše is sometimes used among Serbs to describeSerbophobia or more generally to defame political opponents.[citation needed]
Use by Serbian nationalists
Since the end of World War II, Serbian historians have used the Ustaše to promote that Serbs resisted the Axis, while Croats and Bosniaks widely supported them. However, the Ustaše lacked support among ordinary Croats and never accrued any significant support among the populace.[56][57] The Ustaše regime was backed by parts of the Croatian population that during the interwar period had felt oppressed in the Serbian-led Yugoslavia. Most of the support it had initially gained by creating a Croat national state was lost because of the brutal practices it used.[58] In the 1980s, Serbian historians produced many works about the forced conversion during World War II of Serbs in Ustaše Croatia.[220] These debates between historians openly became nationalistic and also entered the wider media.[221] Historians in Belgrade during the 1980s who had close government connections often went on television during the evenings to discuss real or invented details about the Ustaše genocide against Serbs during World War II.[222] Serb clergy and nationalists blamed all Croats for crimes committed by the Ustaše, and for planning a genocide against Serb people. These propagandistic activities were aimed at justifying planned crimes and ethno-demographic engineering in Croatia.[223][222]
Notes
^Ante Pavelić began using the title ofPoglavnik (lit.'leader' or 'guide').[1] After the war, Pavelić died on 28 December 1959 at the Hospital Alemán in Madrid, aged 70, from the wounds he had sustained in the assassination attempt.[2]
^The new economic system promised by the Ustaša was heavily inspired by Italian Fascistcorporatism and went by several different names; Ustaše theoretician Aleksandar Seitz called it "Croatian socialism". This idea was opposed to both communism and capitalism and "attempted to create a psychic unity among the peasant in the village, the worker in the town, intellectuals in garrets, white-collar workers in offices, and warriors on the battlefield". Seitz declared that the aim was to bring together all classes and estates to work for the national community; this national community was held to be a concept opposed to bothMarxists andcapitalists, because "the former knew only of classes, while the latter recognized only free markets."[20][21][22][23][24]
^They are variously known in English as theUstaše,Ustashe,Ustashi,Ustahis, orUstashas (OED 2020 addsUstachi,Ustaci,Ustasha,Ustaša, andUstasi); with the associated adjective sometimes beingUstashe orUstasha, apart fromUstaše. This variance stems from the fact thatUstaše is the plural form ofUstaša in theSerbo-Croatian language.
References
^abGoldstein, Ivo (2001).Croatia: A History. Hurst & Co. pp. 133–134.ISBN978-0-7735-2017-2...On 15 April Pavelić came to Zagreb and... took the title ofpoglavnik (leader) of the state... by May 1941, it already had 100,000 members who swore the Ustasha oath.
^Ramet, Sabrina P., ed. (2020).The Independent State of Croatia 1941-45. Routledge.ISBN9781000154993.Ustasism, in a manner typical of radical-right formations, set the leader above the law, replaced individual rights with a notion of collective rights, declared the inequality of peoples, allowed for intolerance and violence toward those lower on the racial hierarchy..
Ruzicic-Kessler, Karlo (2011).From the Industrial Revolution to World War II in East Central Europe. Lit. p. 194....the ultra-nationalist Ustase of Ante Pavelic...
Serbia proper was under strict German occupation, a situation which allowed the Ustasha to pursue its radical anti-Serbian policy...
^Rory Yeomans; Anton Weiss-Wendt (2013).Racial Science in Hitler's New Europe, 1938–1945. University of Nebraska Press. p. 228.ISBN978-0-8032-4605-8.The Ustasha regime ... inaugurated the most brutal campaign of mass murder against civilian population that Southern Europe has ever witnessed ... The campaign of mass murder and deportation against the Serb population was initially justified onscientific racist principles.
Lampe, John; Mazower, Mark (2006).Ideologies and National Identities. Central European University Press. pp. 54–109.ISBN9789639241824.
^Lampe, John; Iordachi, Constantin (2019).Battling Over the Balkans: Historiographical Questions and Controversies. Budapest: Central European University Press. p. 267.ISBN978-963-386-325-1.
^Laws on the use of flags in the Independent State of Croatia. The racial laws of the Independent state of Croatia (texts) includeZakonska odredba o zaštiti arijske krvi i časti Hrvatskog naroda (Legal determination on protection of Aryan blood and honor of the Croatian people), signed on 30 April 1941 by Ante Pavelić. Article 4 says:
"[...] Non-Aryans [Jews, Roma and others] and the non-State members [citizens without full citizenship rights] are forbidden to hoist the Croatian State and national flag and to display the Croatian national colors and emblems".
^Zgodovina Slovenije - SIstory Zakoni, zakonske odredbe, naredbe i t. d. proglašene od 11. travnja do 26. svibnja 1941. Knjiga I (svezak 1. - 10.), ur. A. Mataić; Tisak i naklada St. Kugli, Zagreb; str. 107.-108., pristupljeno 24. travnja 2019.
^Badie, Bertrand;Berg-Schlosser, Dirk;Morlino, Leonardo, eds. (2011).International Encyclopedia of Political Science. Sage Publications.ISBN9781483305394. Retrieved9 September 2020.[...] fascist Italy [...] developed a state structure known as the corporate state with the ruling party acting as a mediator between 'corporations' making up the body of the nation. Similar designs were quite popular elsewhere in the 1930s. The most prominent examples wereEstado Novo in Portugal (1932–1968) and Brazil (1937–1945), the AustrianStandestaat (1933–1938), and authoritarian experiments in Estonia, Romania, and some other countries of East and East-Central Europe, [...]
^"Croatia"(PDF). Shoah Resource Center - Yad Vashem.Archived(PDF) from the original on 4 November 2013. Retrieved17 September 2017.
^TheUstaše's largestgenocidal massacres were carried out inBosanska Krajina and in places in Croatia where Serbs constituted a large proportion of the population includingBanija,Kordun,Lika, and northernDalmatia. Between 300 000– 350 000 Serbs were killed in massacres and in concentration camps likeJasenovac andJadovno. Some 100,000 Serbs, Jews, and anti-fascist Croat were killed at Jasenovac alone.[30][31]
^"Croatian Liberation Movement"(PDF) (in Croatian). Croatian Information-Documentation Referral Agency. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 14 January 2017. Retrieved29 April 2012.
^Alexander, Yonah;Myers, Kenneth (2015).Terrorism in Europe. Routledge Library Editions: Terrorism and Insurgency. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. p. 59.ISBN978-1-317-44933-1.OCLC907773295.The third terrorist international aggregate which has caused problems for Western Europe is composed of various Croatian emigre terrorist groups. These groups operating under names ...Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood ...
^abcdefLadislaus Hory und Martin Broszat.Der kroatische Ustascha-Staat, Deutsche Verlag-Anstalt, Stuttgart, 2. Auflage 1965, pp. 13–38, 75–80.(in German)
^"Balkan 'Auschwitz' haunts Croatia".BBC News. 25 April 2005. Retrieved29 September 2010.No one really knows how many died here. Serbs talk of 700,000. Most estimates put the figure nearer 100,000.
^Meier, Viktor.Yugoslavia: a history of its demise (English), London: Routledge, 1999, p. 125.ISBN9780415185950
^Kent, Peter C.The lonely Cold War of Pope Pius XII: the Roman Catholic Church and the division of Europe, 1943–1950, McGill-Queen's Press (MQUP), 2002 p. 46;ISBN978-0-7735-2326-5 "Fiercely nationalistic, the Ustaše were also fervently Catholic, identifying, in the Yugoslav political context, Catholicism with Croatian nationalism..."
^abJelić-Butić, Fikreta (1977).Ustaše i Nezavisna Država Hrvatska 1941–1945. Sveučilišna naklada Liber.
^abcdeĐilas, Aleksa.The Contested Country: Yugoslav Unity and Communist Revolution, 1919–1953, Harvard University Press, 1991, pp. 114–115, 129.ISBN9780674166981
^Fascism: Past, Present, FutureBy Walter Laqueur. p. 263
^abAtkin, Nicholas and Frank Tallet.Priests, Prelates and People: A History of European Catholicism since 1750. New York: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., 2003. p. 248.ISBN9781860646652
^Caccamo, Francesco and Trinchese, Stefano.Rotte adriatiche. Tra Italia, Balcani e Mediterraneo. FrancoAngeli, 2011. p. 158.ISBN9788856833027
^Rich, Norman.Hitler's War Aims: the Establishment of the New Order (1974), pp. 276–277. W.W. Norton & Co: New York.ISBN9780393332902
^abGreble, Emily.Sarajevo, 1941–1945: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Hitler's Europe. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2011. p. 125.ISBN9780801449215
^Knežević, Snješka (2001). "The Synagogue of Zagreb, 1867–1942".The Synagogue and Zagreb(PDF). Jewish Community of Zagreb. pp. 42–46. Retrieved13 December 2018.
^Kivisto, Peter.The Ethnic enigma: the salience of ethnicity for European-origin groups. Cranbury, NJ/London, UK/Mississauga, Canada: Associated University Press, 1989. p. 107ISBN9780944190036
^Jović, Dejan.Yugoslavia: a state that withered away, p. 51
^(Colić 1973, p. 34):"Ustaške terorističke akcije počele su 22. marta 1929. godine u Zagrebu, gdje su Mijo Babić i Zvonko Pospišil revolverskim hicima ubili glavnog urednika zagrebačkih »Novosti« i predsjednika »Jugoštampe« Toni Šlegela."
^(Yeomans 2015, p. 301):"The social background of rankand-file Ustasha recruits was overwhelmingly working class and uneducated;"
^"Photography". Jewish Historical Museum of Yugoslavia. 1941. Archived fromthe original on 13 February 2008. Retrieved3 December 2007.
^Some were sent to concentration camps and subsequently killed. For a description of these deportations and the treatment in the camps C.f. Djuro Schwartz, "In the Jasenovac camps of death" (ג'ורו שווארץ, במחנות המוות של יאסנובאץ", קובץ מחקרים כ"ה, יד-ושם)
^Summers, Craig & Eric Markusen.Collective violence: harmful behavior in groups and governments; Rowman & Littlefield, 1999, p. 55ISBN9780847688135
^Rummel, Rudolph J.Democide: Nazi Genocide and Mass Murder; Transaction Publishers, 1992, p. 75.ISBN9781412821476; "While German troops were still in several places in Croatia, the Croatians began a beastly persecution of the Orthodox [Serbs]. At this time at least a half-million people were killed. An unbelievable governing mentality was responsible, as I learned in August 1943 when I received the answer to a question of mine from a government functionary in the circle of the chief of state."
^[Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention: Crisis in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1990–93: Crisis in Bosnia-Herzegovina], Steven L. Burg, Paul S. ShoupRoutledge, 4. ožu 2015.
^Brunnbauer, Ulf (2011)."Historical Writing in the Balkans". In Woolf, Daniel; Schneider, Axel (eds.).The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 5: Historical Writing Since 1945. Oxford University Press. p. 364.ISBN9780199225996.
Aarons, Mark andLoftus, John:Unholy Trinity: How the Vatican's Nazi Networks Betrayed Western Intelligence to the Soviets. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992. 372 pages;ISBN978-0-312-07111-0.
Yeomans, Rory (2011). ""For Us, Beloved Commander, You Will Never Die!", Morning Jure Francetic, Ustasha Death Squad Leader".In the Shadow of Hitler: Personalities of the Right in Central and Eastern Europe. I.B Tauris.
Fischer, Bernd J., ed. (2007).Balkan Strongmen: Dictators and Authoritarian Rulers of South-Eastern Europe. Purdue University Press.ISBN978-1-55753-455-2.
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