Following World War 1 and the defeat of Austria-Hungary, the remnants of its
territories had to now be divided by the dominant European powers at the time. Bound by a flimsy
understanding of the deep tensions between the different religions and ideologies of the Slavs
that inhabited the Balkan areas however, the Governments of Western Europe, following World
War 1, figured it would be a good idea to combine all of these Balkan states into one,
called Yugoslavia. This was a recipe for disaster, and in the early hours of the 6th of April 1941,
the Axis blitzed Yugoslavia, and captured Belgrade in less than 12 days, ultimately taking 300,000
Yugoslav officers prisoner. Having a relatively better understanding of the Balkans however,
when Nazi High command were deciding what to do with their newly acquired land and how to
best control it, the most natural idea was to use to pre-existing Croatian fascist party,
known as the Ustaše, to act as a Nazi puppet state and spread terror and tyranny around
the Balkans in the name of the fascist cause. And that’s exactly what they did,
with their actions in World War 2 causing a divide that is still visible today.
Engaged in terrorist and violent activities before the dawn of World War 2 in the name of Croatian
catholic nationalism, the Ustaše were the natural choice for Axis high command when it came to who
should run the Balkans. The Nazis, not really caring about the fate of the people within the
Balkans, essentially left the Ustaše and their leader Ante Pavelić with free reign of the area,
essentially letting them do whatever as long as they upheld order and discipline and shut
down political dissidents. Although the Ustaše still had a problem with the Nazis because they
were considered inferior to them, the Croatian leaders of the fascist movement tried to raise
their political standing within the Axis by creating a theory about the pseudo-gothic
origin of the Croats, hence making them seem more aryan, even though this wasn’t true.
Anyway, the Croatian Ustaše now feeling secure in their power, and with the world war 2 fronts
on the east and west at this point in history being quite far away from them,
they now figured it would be a good time to begin their reign of death and destruction to
all groups they deemed deserving. According to Ustaše theory, Serbian Orthodox Christians were
public enemy number one and even though they claimed to be Catholic Nationalist, the Ustaše
Croats professed that they were absolutely fine with Bosnian Muslimsm, stating that they were
just ethnic Croatians who converted to Islam during the Ottoman Turk occupation of Bosnia.
At this point, the stage is pretty much set. The spotlight is shining on the Eastern and
Western Fronts of the war, the Ustaše is allied with Bosnian Muslim SS units and has
the backing of the Nazi party and pretty much everyone outside of the Balkans doesn’t care
what happens within. Ante Pavelić proceeds to publicly proclaim his racial policy on
July 22nd 1941, and that same month, work on the concentration camps of the Balkans begin.
The Ustaše secret police at the same time begin carrying out the violent anti-serb,
anti-jew and anti-roma racial policy and begin the initial mass murders in the region. As word
of these horrific injustices spread, many Serbs and various other ethnics groups joined the allied
backed Chetniks or the communist backed Partisans, and began Guerilla warfare against the Ustaše.
Nevertheless, the Ustaše continued their indiscriminate and often times horrific
killings of all those deemed enemies, and they were particularly brutal when it came to Serbs,
who they often sadistically tortured. A report Gestapo report sent to Himmler
on the 17th of February 1942 even betrays a hint of disgust of the actions of the Ustaše,
where the anonymous Gestapo officer states:
“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 Croats
have massacred and sadistically tortured to death is about three hundred thousand”
The Italian and German regular army occupation force also began to express
quiet disgust as they became witness to the ways of the Ustaše. As early as July 10th,
even before the proclamation of the racial policy,
Wehrmacht General Edmund Glaise von Horstenau reported the following to German High command:
“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”
At one point, the Italians got so sick of the Ustaše and their violent ambition in
the regions of territory they were competing with, that they actually co operated with
allied backed Chetnik units on the field. Despite Hitler’s pleas to work with the Ustaše instead,
the senior Italian Commanders ignored this and continued to work with the Chetniks.
As the violence continued however, much like the Nazi’s,
the Ustaše found a better way to kill their political opponents, and the Jasenovac death
camp became operational in August of 1941. The Jasenovac death camp was the largest,
and now most well-known camps the Ustaše built in the Balkan regions. The exact
number of victims is not known due to the lack of documentation, however throughout its management,
historians estimate no less than 300,000 Serbs, 32,000 Jews and 40,000 Roma were killed in these
camps, with many pointing out that the number of Serbs killed was in actuality closer to 700,000.
There is still much debate on the exact number of people killed by the Ustaše during their reign
of terror, but the fact still remains that they killed and tortured at least hundreds
of thousands, forcibly converted many more to Catholicism and forced thousands upon
thousands to flee their homeland. The role of the catholic Church in the workings of Ustaše is still
a fiercely debated topic, with some claiming they used it as an opportunity to spread its influence
eastward and others claiming it was entirely innocent and silently worked against facism
during its reign. The truth will likely never been known in its full capacity, but the fact remains
that the Croatian Ustaše were a tyrannical and disgusting regime that exploited its new found
power the enact violence against the Slavic people who had a different religion. They hid behind the
curtains of violence on both sides of Europe to enact their own flavour of it in the shadows.
In the end, Ante Pavelić’s goal of a Croatian Ethno-state failed and so did his racial policy
of 1/3rd of Serbs converted to catholicism, 1/3rd expelled and 1/3rd killed. Following World War 2,
many Ustaše high officers fled the country, and the rest who were still convicted to the
cause formed terrorist cells that had impacts for decades to come. In 1957, After fleeing
to Argentina, Ante Pavelić was eventually tracked down by a Serbian and injured by an assassination
attempt. He didn’t survive the injury however and died a slow, painful and deserving death.