The Independent State of Croatia was created when the Axis powers invaded
Yugoslavia and on the 15th of June 1941 the NDH - as this state was called in short -
joined the Tripartite Pact; you're going to learn about this process in this video. Keep watching.
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the video. Croatia was a part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. During the interwar years there
was much discontent among the Croats about their treatment by the Serbs. The Croats felt oppressed by
the Serbs and the result was the emergence of extreme movements and the most noteworthy was
known as the Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Movement. This movement was founded abroad by
Ante Pavelic who called himself the Poglavnik (which means: leader, or can be translated as first and foremost).
This was around a time that King Alexander I of Yugoslavia announced his
royal dictatorship which happened in 1929. From abroad the Ustaša carried out sabotage
and terrorist actions; most noteworthy was what happened in France in 1934: when King Alexander
visited the country he was assassinated. After this many Ustaša members they fled to Italy where they
were interned. Now can you describe the Croatian Ustaša, these ultranationalists, can you describe them
as fascists? Well not per se because his ideology was drawn from Croatian ultra nationalism, Italian
fascism, German Nazism, authoritarianism and peasantism. So it was not a one-on-one copy of
neither Italian fascism or German Nazism. But they for sure were anti-Yugoslav and
they wanted a large Croatian state. “Many of the Ustaše leadership came from the petty-bourgeois
milieu of Zagreb and the Zagorje hinterland. But its foot soldiers were more likely to be students or workers and peasants from the poorer areas of Croatia,
especially the Dalmatian hinterland, Kordun, Banija, Lika and western Hercegovina.” I'd say it can rather be viewed as a terrorist organization
as they successfully carried out the assassination of the Yugoslav King in France. Its leader Pavelic
once stated: 'Knives, revolvers, automatic pistols and time bombs are the bells that ring in the dawn and rebirth of the Croatian state'.
On German pressure the Kingdom of Yugoslavia signed the Tripartite
Pact on the 25th of March, but then two days later Serbian military officers staged a coup d'etat in
Belgrade. Regent Paul was forced to resign and King Peter II who were now come of age was proclaimed
to be the new king. When Hitler heard it he flew into a rage and he vowed to destroy the country
and this happened from the 6th of April 1941. On Orthodox Eastern Sunday 'Operation Retribution'
started and it started with a merciless bombing campaign of Belgrade in which thousands of lives, both
military and civilian, were lost and within 12 days the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was toppled,
but before that the Independent State of Croatia was proclaimed: on the 10th of April the Germans
entered Zagreb and Croatia seceded from Yugoslavia. The proclamation was stage managed by the Germans.
The borders of the NDH extended over almost 40 percent of the former Yugoslav Kingdom: it
covered most of modern-day Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as some parts of modern day
Serbia and Slovenia. Catholic Croats amounted to around half of the 6.5 million people; it had 750 000
Muslims, 40 000 Jews and 1.9 million Serbes. It was called the Independent State of Croatia
but how independent was the state reall? Well... in reality it was a puppet state of the Axis
Powers were both the Germans and the Italians wielded great influence over. Germany wanted
economic advantages and privilege status for the ethnic Germans living there; the Germans
were heavily influenced in the country's economy: from day one there were German soldiers on the
streets of Zagreb and diplomatic representatives occupied important places. And therefore the NDH
can be hardly called independent. Officially the country was a kingdom with the Italian royal
that was named Tomaslav II on the throne but he never resided there. Ante Pavelic who
at the time of the independence declaration of the Croats was still in Italy. He became the leader of
the NDH. On the 13th of April he returned to Zagreb after 12 years of exile and to a bunch of Italian
journalists he stated the following: “Today’s restoration of Croatian independence has its
foundation in historical and ethnic factors. The pan-Slavist movement spread throughout the entire world the belief that we are one people with the Serbs.
This is not true as the Croats are not Slavs according to race but rather are Croats by their origin and nothing else.
Without repeating the known differences in religion and culture, the two nations are differentiated ethnically even in a somatic sense.”
So how did the average Croat view the rise of the NDH and Ante Pavelic? “A significant part of
the population, generally in towns and particularly in Zagreb, viewed it favourably. The ustashas had a modicum of popular support in western Herzegovina and Lika, but virtually nowhere else.
However, most people accepted 'the resurrection of the Croatian state' with the feeling that the war had ended quickly and that the worst had been avoided.”
But in reality the worst was about to come: from the get-go Jews were arrested on the streets. First killings occurred in May and confinement in
camps that summer. By the end of the year Pavelic stated though that there were no more than 12 000
Jews left in the NDH. But not only Jews were targeted since the country had a larger
population of Serbs; statements were made to expel, convert or kill them. Mass expulsions
to German-occupied Serbia started. It is hard to say how many actually were expelled since
many went on their own initiative. Or rather: they fled. Numbers of people fleeing were between 180 and 200 000.
A degree formalized concentration camps: the largest was the Jasenovac Complex which was
a death camp where Serbs, Jews, and Roma-Sinti, and undesirable Croats (political opponents) would meet their fate
in horrifying ways; there were also concentration camps for children such as Sisak and Jastrebarsko.
Many Serbs and Jews and Roma-Sinti, they died at the hands of Ustaša death squads that roamed
the countryside butchering people: men, women, and children were slaughtered in the most horrifying
ways imaginable. The Germans were appalled by this violence. An attaché for the Gestapo wrote the
following to Heinrich Himmler: “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 Croats have massacred and sadistically tortured to death is about three hundred thousand.”
The Wehrmach also used a lot of violence in the region and also used violence against
non-combatants, but had a different take on it because they believed that their violence was
needed and that the Croatian ultra nationalists did it out of anger. “Ustasha brutality was blamed
for fuelling the armed rebellion that the German army sought to quash.” Officially Croatia joined the
Tripartite Pact on the 15th of June 1941. This would pave the way for the Croatian Legion where
Croatian men fought in Wehrmacht uniforms on the Eastern Front. More on that in another video!