Watzy
02-27-2006, 02:09 AM
The history of the Independent State of Croatia (ISC) has been systematically misrepresented by Serbian and some Croatian scholars (mainly Marxist), propaganda, and mass media for decades. This is one of the main reasons that historians nowadays deal with this topic and try to reveal the truth about the Second World War on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. Serb propaganda has described all Croatian nationalists as “Ustashas” and “Nazis.” It systematically inflated the number of victims in the Ustasha concentration camps, trying to create the impression that Croats have a genocidal nature and that today they “threaten” the Serbian minority in Croatia.
Until recently, in the historical literature the opinion prevailed that the Ustashas were fascists and that their ideology was a Balkan version of fascism. This idea was so widespread because of the unscientific treatment of the problem of fascism. In the old literature, terms as “clero-fascism,” “monarcho-fascism,” and simply “fascism” were very frequently used, and these labels were assigned to all anti-democratic and autocratic movements and regimes in Europe of the interwar period and the Second World War. The authors of this literature thus simplified the political situation in the Europe during the interwar period. They spoke of the great crisis in the democratic political system after the First World War and of the only two alternative and rival anti-democratic and totalitarian systems in Europe—right (fascist) and left (Bolshevik). Of course, these writers put the Ustasha regime of 1941–1945 in the sphere of the fascist political system. There was no doubt for them that the Croatian Ustasha organization, Romanian Iron Guard, Hungarian Arrow Cross, and Slovakian Hlinka Guards were fascist by their nature. Marxist authors freely used “fascist” as a smear-word, designed not so much to identify anything specifically fascist as to discredit person, group, or whole movement that had an anti-Communist ideology.
It is very important for historians to define the term “fascism” and to distinguish movements that were fascist, pro-fascist, and those that were merely authoritarian in the traditional sense of the term. Only recently have the majority of historians abandoned the simple scheme democracy/totalitarianism (fascism and bolshevism), founding out that one group of European states as Balkan, the most Central European and Iberian (Spain and Portugal) states did not inserted in it. Before these countries easily were associated with a non-democracy, in particular with the right-wing variety of totalitarianism (fascism). Today most historians agree that the regimes in these states were using some of the means and methods of fascism, but were not fascist by nature. They were authoritarian regimes, quite similar to totalitarian ones in conception, but different in realization. Only in recent years have Croatian and foreign authors succeeded in shaking off ideological dogmas and begun extensive scientific research of the Ustasha movement. As a result, some of them have made a complete reassessment of the Ustasha ideology and rejected the thesis about its fascist character.
In fact, the roots of the Ustasha ideology can be found in the Croatian nationalism of the nineteenth century. The Ustasha ideological system was just a replica of the traditional pure Croatian nationalism of Ante Starcevic. His ideology contained all important elements of those of the extreme Croatian nationalism in the twentieth century. Starcevic’s writings reveal an attitude similar to that of the contemporary Croatian nationalists: Frankovci at the beginning of the twentieth century and
Ustashas in the 1930s. Mainly this is the idea that all political, social, and economic problems were subordinate to the national one and would be easily solved once national emancipation and statehood had been achieved.
Ustasha’s ideological system contained some new elements that distinguished it from its predecessors and made it eclectic. At the same time, the Ustashas borrowed from traditional Croatian nationalism, the National-Socialism of Hitler, the fascism of Mussolini, and even from the program of the Croatian Peasant Party.
Some of their ideas were really fascist and national-socialistic. Such ideas included hatred of the “foreign elements”, contempt for “Jewish” liberal democracy (anti-democracy), social utopia, use of terror for encounter with all “enemies of the state,” establishment of concentration camps, and so on, but that was because the fascism was a popular, modern ideology in the 1930s in Europe. Fascist and National Socialist ideology with their radical revisionism with regard to borders proved attractive to many dissatisfied nationalists in Central and Eastern Europe, including Croatia. The center of activity for Croatian nationalists in the 1930s was in Italy. Therefore, it is not difficult to find some influences of fascism on Ustasha ideology.
The Ustasha movement became increasingly dependent on the states, that advocated the revision of the Versailles treaty and thus also the entire state structure of Yugoslavia: Italy, Germany, Hungary, and Austria. They largely supported the Croatian separatists, turning them into means of pressure on the Yugoslav government and into a weapon to destroy Yugoslavia when the time would come to change the status quo in South-Eastern Europe. These countries gave financial help, provided military training on their territory, and supplied Ustashas with weapons and explosives for their activities.
But at the same time Ustasha ideology had a specific character which made it unique: anti-Yugoslavism, anti-Serbism, Catholicism, conservative traditionalism, historical mythologization, etc.
Despite its later advancement toward Nazism (in the Independent State of Croatia), the Ustasha movement never became truly nazist and remained a nationalistic movement the main goal of which was to solve the Croatian national question—to destroy Yugoslavia with foreign help, to liberate Croatian lands from Serbian dictatorship, and to unify them into the framework of one national state. Its ideology was a national-liberation and revolutionary ideology. The Ustasha organization was a Croatian nationalistic revolutionary organization.
The main point in the Ustasha’s oath: “I swear to fight in the Ustasha army for a free Independent Croatian State” reveals its real aim precisely. In South-Eastern Europe it was perhaps most similar to Corneliu Codreanu’s Legion of the Archangel Michael in Romania.
Fascism and Nazism were mainly a reaction to conflicts within nationally homogeneous societies, a form of solving class conflicts and the crises of political institutions through violence and dictatorship. The Ustashas, however, had no developed program for internal affairs and only a rudimentary concept of what Croatian society should be like. They had a national, but not a social program. That was one of the Ustashas biggest mistakes. Their movement did not have mass character. The Ustasha movement was not a middle-class one (like the fascists’) but a movement of the lower social strata of Croatian society (mainly peasantry).
The Ustashas shared the cult of the state with the fascist ideology, but for them the nation and the national state were the supreme goals, while for the fascists they were instruments for power. The main idea in Ustasha ideology was the idea of the Independent State of Croatia, which was born in the mid-nineteenth century. Its founder was the Party of Croatian Rights whose leader, Ante Starcevic, was called the “father” of pure Croatian nationalism. Ante Starcevic was the initiator of the idea of Croatian independence and the right of the Croatian nation to have its own independent state.
The Ustashas inherited these ideas. They believed that the Croatian state had always been a legal entity, even when its incorporation in another state deprived it of international recognition (from the twelfth century on). For them, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was illegal, because it had never been accepted by the majority of the Croatian people through democratic processes—neither elections, nor referenda. They claimed that the Croatian state had always existed and that they had only liberated it in April 1941 by defeating the foreigners (Serbs) who had occupied it since
the end of the First World War.
The Ustashas believed that they were fighting against a foreign enemy (Serbs) in the name of the liberation and unification of the Croatian lands. They insisted on their specifically Croatian identity in reaction to the existence of a largely formed Serbian national consciousness elsewhere where Serbs lived in their territories. Ustashas firmly opposed Yugoslav national ideology, because they saw the strong orientation of the Serbian national interests to Belgrade. Separate Croatian and Serbian traditions and ideas of statehood were too strong for the Ustashas to ever accept the
notion of a South Slav union.
The Ustashas were the only fighters for the complete national independence of Croatia, the biggest enemies of an united Yugoslavia and of the Serbian people. Their ideology was an ideology of extreme Croatian nationalism during the interwar period and the Second World War.
For the Ustashas the purification of the nation and the creation of a homogeneous national state were the supreme goals. They had a peculiar understanding of sovereignty, as meaning primarily ethnic homogeneity. This idea appeared in Ustasha’s ideology because of the multi-national and multi-religious character of the Croat historical territories. Even the core of them—Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia were marked by the presence of ethnic Serbs who were Orthodox by their religion. The issue of Bosnia and Herzegovina was much more difficult, because here the Croats were living together not only with another Christians but with Moslems too. In the Independent State of Croatia, the pro-Axis regime adopted a strategy of
ultra-nationalistic purification toward non-Croats.
The Bosnian issue was the most intense emotional focus of Ustasha national ideology. Determining who held sovereignty over this region, inhabited by Croats, Serbs and Moslems was the most intricate, emotionally explosive and disputable problem. Both Croats and Serbs have claim to Bosnia and Herzegovina on ethno-linguistic and historical grounds, and under the ISC the inevitable conflict turned into ruthless inter-communal butchery. The Ustashas never doubted that their na-
tion alone had legitimate rights to these territories and considered the Bosnian Moslems to be Croatian “blood brothers” and “Croats of the Moslem faith.”
What the Ustashas truly wanted was an ethnically pure Croatia that would encompass, the territories of inner Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, a state, cleaned of all Serbs and which would not form any alliance with other Yugoslav states. The boundaries of the ISC were determined by Germany and Italy and included the old province Croatia-Slavonia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, and a small part of Dalmatia.
The Ustashas also wanted their Croatian state to be a strictly centralized and unified one. There was never any mention of a regional autonomy for the areas in which there was a mixed Croatian and Serbian population. They never spoke of a federal constitutional arrangement for Croatia and believed that national government should be strong, authoritarian, and, naturally, in their hands. And the Ustashas achieved this supreme goal of their struggle during the Second World War
when they assumed power over the new, created by Germany, Independent State of Croatia in April 1941.
In fact the idea of Croatian independence was one deeply fair idea that was in the spirit of all national movements in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nationalism as a political principle and theory which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent was typical ideology for all oppressed nationalities. The Ustashas insisted on having their own state after eight centuries of foreign rule and political dependence, like all the other European nations. Nationalism, with its nineteenth century characteristics and some twentieth century modifications, was the core of Ustasha ideology, because of the unsolved Croatian national question.
Croatian nationalism, in the first place, was a force for unity for a Croatian nation that had been politically divided in the last centuries. Integration and consolidation of a Croatian ethnic territory was one of the main goal of Ustasha national policy. And another one was the achievement of complete national independence, which had been a desire of the Croatian people from 1918—to break away from Yugoslavia and to create a separate Croatian state based on national principle. For Croats, nationalism preserved the characteristics of early modern nationalism with its two main ideas: the primacy of the national state and the principle of sovereignty. The simple fact that the Croatian nation had no state until the mid-twentieth century made so actual this problem.
Continuing the tradition of the pure Croatian nationalism of the nineteenth century, the Ustashas considered Serbs the biggest enemy of the Croatian people. After 1918 the threat of Magyarization was replaced by the fear of Serb hegemony, which was seen as being more insidious, because there is no decisive differentiation of language between Croats and Serbs, only those of religion and culture. Because of Hungarian pro-Serbian policy, in the middle of the nineteenth century Starcevic developed anti-Serbian nationalistic ideas. Ante Pavelic stated in Neue Ordnung, a weekly published by the Ustashas in German, that: “There were very few real Serbs in Croatia.They were mostly Croats of Orthodox confession.” But in the moment when they showed their own consciousness, they became “Slavoserbi,” as Ante Starcevic pro-claimed them, or “Vlasi”, as Ustashas sometimes called them. The nineteenth century, the leader of the Croatian Party of Rights did not consider “Slavoserbi” Slavs, he derived this name from the Latin words sclavus and servus, both meaning “slave.”
Serbian hegemony in the interwar period just reinforced the animosity between the two nations. Leading Croatian personalities were imprisoned, tortured, and even liquidated. Political assassinations and massacres of civilian population were among the main reasons for the increase of Croat hostility toward the whole Serbian nation. Serbian high authorities, officers, and bureaucrats with their Greater-Serbian notions and desire to liquidate any form of national opposition, just made enemies in the face of the Croats.
The Ustasha regime in 1941–1945 represented the extreme anti-Serb tendency in Croatian political life the main purpose of which was a revenge for the twenty years of subjugation, terror, and police methods of rule and to make the idea of Serbo-Croatian coexistence unthinkable forever. The Ustashas were irritated mostly by the Greater Serbia idea, which continued to predominate in the Serbian national consciousness even during the Second World War when the country was occupied by the Germans.
Though Yugoslav in name, the exiled government became increasingly Pan-Serb. It threw all the blame for the collapse of Yugoslavia in April 1941 on the “treachery” of the Croats. It was clear that if it would take power again, the retribution against the Croatian people would be cruel and outrageous. This fear incited Ustashas against Serbs with more passion and vehemence. Western democratic powers were on the side of Serbia and it was no secret that if they won the war, Croatia would again lose its freedom.
Because the fate of Croatia has always been determined by the Great Powers, Pavelic tried to purify its territory of all non-Croats and to place Western countries in front of an accomplished fact. He was convinced that if there were no Serbs on Croatian territory, they would have no justification for their Greater Serbian claims on the basis of the Serbian minority in Croatian lands. That is why he put into practice his extreme nationalistic policy.
The Ustasha hatred towards the Serbs living in their territory was due to the fact that they were a sizable minority in the ISC. The Independent State of Croatia encompassed huge territories, including Bosnia and Herzegovina. For centuries dis-
puted frontier lands, they contained a mixed population of Croats, Serbs, and Moslems, and in some regions Orthodox Serbs outnumbered the Catholic Croats several times. In the country only about one-half of a population of 6–7 million were Roman Catholics of Croat origin. There were also 2.2 million Orthodox Serbs; 750,000 Moslems; 45,000 Jews; and relatively few members of other minority groups. Thus the proportion of Serbs in ISC was quite high—they represented approximately one-third of the population of the country.
It was clear that they would never accept the Croatian state as their own and would always struggle against it. According to the Ustashas, if the Serbs were not fully defeated, they would be always the “turbulent element” in the ISC and would always claim for their separation from Croatia, and for incorporation into Serbia. They would ask Serbia for support and appeal for its intervention to protect their rights. In practice, there was a danger of territorial loss for the young Croatian state—loss of lands acquired as an Axis ally. For this reason, the Ustashas directed their political energy predominantly against the Serbs. The Jews and Gypsies were fewer in number, much more quiet, and not as dangerous for the future of the ISC. The Ustashas knew well that if it was not settled quickly and radically it would disturb the future political life of the ISC, and the state would be never stable. They were in a hurry to settle the Serbian question during the war years when all of Europe was in a reign of terror and lawlessness and everything was possible.
Just one week after the proclamation of the ISC, a law was enacted whose declared purpose was “to defend the people and the state.” Severe punishment was introduced for all those who in any way offended “the honor and vital interests of the Croatian people” or who threatened the existence of the Croatian state.
The plans of the leader of the Chetniks, Draza Mihailovic were for the expulsion of all Moslems (who, were proclaimed by the Ustasha's as the “purest part of the Croatian nation”) and Catholic Croats from Bosnia and Herzegovina and from large regions of Croatia-Slavonia and Dalmatia, all of which were to become parts of the future Greater Serbia. Starting in 1941, the Chetniks carried out indiscriminate terror raids against Moslem settlements in Eastern parts of the country (especially in areas along the river Drina) and committed severe “punishing and cleansing actions” to ensure continued Serbian hegemony in the post-war period in these territories. For this reason Moslems were ready to support Croats in their nationalistic war against the Serbian population and accepted the government’s anti-Serbian policy. Most of them became loyal citizens of the Croat state, identified themselves with the Ustashas, and joined their military and police forces.
The right to political participation and citizenship in ISC was reserved exclusively for Croats. To take part in national repression was glorified as the heroic performance of a higher duty to the Croatian nation. The unspeakable fanaticism were characteristic of the Ustashas’ attitude toward non-Croats in the ISC.
Ustashas believed that Serbs had a national consciousness that was independent from their confessional affiliation, whereas illiterate peasants were expected to forget their Serbian identity. Villages whose names contained words associated with the Serbian nationality or were more typical of Serbian vocabulary were given new names. Use of the Cyrillic alphabet was banned. Serbs were no longer allowed to live in certain residential areas, and they had to wear a blue band on their right arm.
In regions with a mixed population, especially those with a tradition of animosity between Croats and Serbs, violent conflicts became an everyday event. Serbian hostility toward the new regime increased rapidly. Ustasha’s fierce clashes with Chetniks were beyond description.
The Moslems were treated in Croatia with far greater consideration than were the Orthodox. The Ustashas regarded Croatia as a “state of two faiths—Catholicism and Islam.” In order to succeed in his national policy, the Poglavnik was obliged to assure himself of as much cooperation as possible, especially in the regions where the Serbian masses were more densely settled. In Bosnia and Herzegovina the Moslems constituted about one-third of the population, the Croats were one-fourth, and the remainder were Serbian Orthodox. The Croats, therefore, were unable to insist on their right to these territories without recognizing the Moslems as Croats.
The Ustashas needed Moslems support in the struggle against the Chetniks and Partisans in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Poglavnik understood perfectly the advantages he could achieve by winning over the greatest possible number of Moslems and urging them to fight against the Orthodox Serbs. That is why he followed the policy of tolerating Moslems, giving them privileges and extraordinary concessions, promising their leaders high positions in the administration, and even admitting two of their representatives into the Ustasha government. The Poglavnik promised Moslems full realization of their material and religious aspirations, gave them opportunities to hold high civil and military positions in the state, permitted Moslem units in the Croatian army, subsidized their schools, and even made them a present of a huge new mosque in the center of Zagreb. This policy brought the desired results and assured Pavelic with the cooperation and support of a part of the Moslem population in Independent State of Croatia. Several specialized Moslem Ustasha divisions were formed, with the main task of fighting Chetniks.
There were some influences of Nazism on the Ustasha national program, like anti-Semitism and the struggle against Gypsies, but they didn’t play such an essential role and never became a central element in Ustasha ideology. Jews and Gypsies were defined as non-Aryans and were persecuted as racially inferior and dangerous people. Ustasha Anti-Semitism was more like a manifestation of religious conviction and the number of Jews was too small, to make it a really popular slogan. Anti-Semitism was something the Ustashas accepted from the ideology of National Socialism, but it never became a main element in their ideological system. Racist legislation against the Jewish population imitated the German model and, in fact, was a copy of the Nazi Nuremberg laws of September 1935.
Jews who could prove that they had been active pre-war supporters of Croatian separatists could save themselves and acquire Croatian citizenship. In these cases some of them also acquired the title “honorary Aryan.” But such political loyalty was difficult to prove, and in any case very few non-Croats were sympathetic to the extreme Croatian nationalism of the pre-war period. Most exceptions were made for Jews who were related to members of the Ustasha movement (some leading Ustashas were married to Jewish women.)
In their activity to create the Croatian national state, the Ustashas accepted extreme methods of struggle and rule, which were widely spread in Europe by Nazi and Italian fascist movements. They saw the contemporary political situation as a struggle for the survival of their nation against all enemies—Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and Communists.
The outbreak of the Second World War and especially the German aggression against Yugoslavia was a real chance for the Ustashas. Germany was the Great Power that destroyed Yugoslavia and created an Independent State of Croatia on its
former territory. But Germany did not intend to give real independence. Croatia had no independent foreign policy.In joint operations with the German army, the Ustasha military units were always under its command. There were also tensions and clashes between the Italian forces and the Ustashas. Even outside their zone of occupation, Italian troops often took over civilian and military power from them.
The Independent State of Croatia was in general chaos—in national, political, social, and economic crisis—and the Ustasha power was entirely supported by German military forces. Neither the Italian nor the German military and political circles believed that their Croatian ally was capable of surviving on its own. This led to the collapse of the Ustasha regime at the end of war simultaneously with the German capitulation. The Ustashas lost not just political power in 1945 but the historical chance for the Croatian people to have their own state for a long period of time. The Yugoslav Communist Party accomplished its long-standing desire, creating a new, federated Yugoslavia. In 1945, the Croatian people lost their brief, although somewhat fictitious state independence and were compelled to enter this new state as a federated republic.
Until recently, in the historical literature the opinion prevailed that the Ustashas were fascists and that their ideology was a Balkan version of fascism. This idea was so widespread because of the unscientific treatment of the problem of fascism. In the old literature, terms as “clero-fascism,” “monarcho-fascism,” and simply “fascism” were very frequently used, and these labels were assigned to all anti-democratic and autocratic movements and regimes in Europe of the interwar period and the Second World War. The authors of this literature thus simplified the political situation in the Europe during the interwar period. They spoke of the great crisis in the democratic political system after the First World War and of the only two alternative and rival anti-democratic and totalitarian systems in Europe—right (fascist) and left (Bolshevik). Of course, these writers put the Ustasha regime of 1941–1945 in the sphere of the fascist political system. There was no doubt for them that the Croatian Ustasha organization, Romanian Iron Guard, Hungarian Arrow Cross, and Slovakian Hlinka Guards were fascist by their nature. Marxist authors freely used “fascist” as a smear-word, designed not so much to identify anything specifically fascist as to discredit person, group, or whole movement that had an anti-Communist ideology.
It is very important for historians to define the term “fascism” and to distinguish movements that were fascist, pro-fascist, and those that were merely authoritarian in the traditional sense of the term. Only recently have the majority of historians abandoned the simple scheme democracy/totalitarianism (fascism and bolshevism), founding out that one group of European states as Balkan, the most Central European and Iberian (Spain and Portugal) states did not inserted in it. Before these countries easily were associated with a non-democracy, in particular with the right-wing variety of totalitarianism (fascism). Today most historians agree that the regimes in these states were using some of the means and methods of fascism, but were not fascist by nature. They were authoritarian regimes, quite similar to totalitarian ones in conception, but different in realization. Only in recent years have Croatian and foreign authors succeeded in shaking off ideological dogmas and begun extensive scientific research of the Ustasha movement. As a result, some of them have made a complete reassessment of the Ustasha ideology and rejected the thesis about its fascist character.
In fact, the roots of the Ustasha ideology can be found in the Croatian nationalism of the nineteenth century. The Ustasha ideological system was just a replica of the traditional pure Croatian nationalism of Ante Starcevic. His ideology contained all important elements of those of the extreme Croatian nationalism in the twentieth century. Starcevic’s writings reveal an attitude similar to that of the contemporary Croatian nationalists: Frankovci at the beginning of the twentieth century and
Ustashas in the 1930s. Mainly this is the idea that all political, social, and economic problems were subordinate to the national one and would be easily solved once national emancipation and statehood had been achieved.
Ustasha’s ideological system contained some new elements that distinguished it from its predecessors and made it eclectic. At the same time, the Ustashas borrowed from traditional Croatian nationalism, the National-Socialism of Hitler, the fascism of Mussolini, and even from the program of the Croatian Peasant Party.
Some of their ideas were really fascist and national-socialistic. Such ideas included hatred of the “foreign elements”, contempt for “Jewish” liberal democracy (anti-democracy), social utopia, use of terror for encounter with all “enemies of the state,” establishment of concentration camps, and so on, but that was because the fascism was a popular, modern ideology in the 1930s in Europe. Fascist and National Socialist ideology with their radical revisionism with regard to borders proved attractive to many dissatisfied nationalists in Central and Eastern Europe, including Croatia. The center of activity for Croatian nationalists in the 1930s was in Italy. Therefore, it is not difficult to find some influences of fascism on Ustasha ideology.
The Ustasha movement became increasingly dependent on the states, that advocated the revision of the Versailles treaty and thus also the entire state structure of Yugoslavia: Italy, Germany, Hungary, and Austria. They largely supported the Croatian separatists, turning them into means of pressure on the Yugoslav government and into a weapon to destroy Yugoslavia when the time would come to change the status quo in South-Eastern Europe. These countries gave financial help, provided military training on their territory, and supplied Ustashas with weapons and explosives for their activities.
But at the same time Ustasha ideology had a specific character which made it unique: anti-Yugoslavism, anti-Serbism, Catholicism, conservative traditionalism, historical mythologization, etc.
Despite its later advancement toward Nazism (in the Independent State of Croatia), the Ustasha movement never became truly nazist and remained a nationalistic movement the main goal of which was to solve the Croatian national question—to destroy Yugoslavia with foreign help, to liberate Croatian lands from Serbian dictatorship, and to unify them into the framework of one national state. Its ideology was a national-liberation and revolutionary ideology. The Ustasha organization was a Croatian nationalistic revolutionary organization.
The main point in the Ustasha’s oath: “I swear to fight in the Ustasha army for a free Independent Croatian State” reveals its real aim precisely. In South-Eastern Europe it was perhaps most similar to Corneliu Codreanu’s Legion of the Archangel Michael in Romania.
Fascism and Nazism were mainly a reaction to conflicts within nationally homogeneous societies, a form of solving class conflicts and the crises of political institutions through violence and dictatorship. The Ustashas, however, had no developed program for internal affairs and only a rudimentary concept of what Croatian society should be like. They had a national, but not a social program. That was one of the Ustashas biggest mistakes. Their movement did not have mass character. The Ustasha movement was not a middle-class one (like the fascists’) but a movement of the lower social strata of Croatian society (mainly peasantry).
The Ustashas shared the cult of the state with the fascist ideology, but for them the nation and the national state were the supreme goals, while for the fascists they were instruments for power. The main idea in Ustasha ideology was the idea of the Independent State of Croatia, which was born in the mid-nineteenth century. Its founder was the Party of Croatian Rights whose leader, Ante Starcevic, was called the “father” of pure Croatian nationalism. Ante Starcevic was the initiator of the idea of Croatian independence and the right of the Croatian nation to have its own independent state.
The Ustashas inherited these ideas. They believed that the Croatian state had always been a legal entity, even when its incorporation in another state deprived it of international recognition (from the twelfth century on). For them, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was illegal, because it had never been accepted by the majority of the Croatian people through democratic processes—neither elections, nor referenda. They claimed that the Croatian state had always existed and that they had only liberated it in April 1941 by defeating the foreigners (Serbs) who had occupied it since
the end of the First World War.
The Ustashas believed that they were fighting against a foreign enemy (Serbs) in the name of the liberation and unification of the Croatian lands. They insisted on their specifically Croatian identity in reaction to the existence of a largely formed Serbian national consciousness elsewhere where Serbs lived in their territories. Ustashas firmly opposed Yugoslav national ideology, because they saw the strong orientation of the Serbian national interests to Belgrade. Separate Croatian and Serbian traditions and ideas of statehood were too strong for the Ustashas to ever accept the
notion of a South Slav union.
The Ustashas were the only fighters for the complete national independence of Croatia, the biggest enemies of an united Yugoslavia and of the Serbian people. Their ideology was an ideology of extreme Croatian nationalism during the interwar period and the Second World War.
For the Ustashas the purification of the nation and the creation of a homogeneous national state were the supreme goals. They had a peculiar understanding of sovereignty, as meaning primarily ethnic homogeneity. This idea appeared in Ustasha’s ideology because of the multi-national and multi-religious character of the Croat historical territories. Even the core of them—Croatia, Slavonia, and Dalmatia were marked by the presence of ethnic Serbs who were Orthodox by their religion. The issue of Bosnia and Herzegovina was much more difficult, because here the Croats were living together not only with another Christians but with Moslems too. In the Independent State of Croatia, the pro-Axis regime adopted a strategy of
ultra-nationalistic purification toward non-Croats.
The Bosnian issue was the most intense emotional focus of Ustasha national ideology. Determining who held sovereignty over this region, inhabited by Croats, Serbs and Moslems was the most intricate, emotionally explosive and disputable problem. Both Croats and Serbs have claim to Bosnia and Herzegovina on ethno-linguistic and historical grounds, and under the ISC the inevitable conflict turned into ruthless inter-communal butchery. The Ustashas never doubted that their na-
tion alone had legitimate rights to these territories and considered the Bosnian Moslems to be Croatian “blood brothers” and “Croats of the Moslem faith.”
What the Ustashas truly wanted was an ethnically pure Croatia that would encompass, the territories of inner Croatia, Slavonia, Dalmatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, a state, cleaned of all Serbs and which would not form any alliance with other Yugoslav states. The boundaries of the ISC were determined by Germany and Italy and included the old province Croatia-Slavonia, Bosnia, and Herzegovina, and a small part of Dalmatia.
The Ustashas also wanted their Croatian state to be a strictly centralized and unified one. There was never any mention of a regional autonomy for the areas in which there was a mixed Croatian and Serbian population. They never spoke of a federal constitutional arrangement for Croatia and believed that national government should be strong, authoritarian, and, naturally, in their hands. And the Ustashas achieved this supreme goal of their struggle during the Second World War
when they assumed power over the new, created by Germany, Independent State of Croatia in April 1941.
In fact the idea of Croatian independence was one deeply fair idea that was in the spirit of all national movements in Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Nationalism as a political principle and theory which holds that the political and national unit should be congruent was typical ideology for all oppressed nationalities. The Ustashas insisted on having their own state after eight centuries of foreign rule and political dependence, like all the other European nations. Nationalism, with its nineteenth century characteristics and some twentieth century modifications, was the core of Ustasha ideology, because of the unsolved Croatian national question.
Croatian nationalism, in the first place, was a force for unity for a Croatian nation that had been politically divided in the last centuries. Integration and consolidation of a Croatian ethnic territory was one of the main goal of Ustasha national policy. And another one was the achievement of complete national independence, which had been a desire of the Croatian people from 1918—to break away from Yugoslavia and to create a separate Croatian state based on national principle. For Croats, nationalism preserved the characteristics of early modern nationalism with its two main ideas: the primacy of the national state and the principle of sovereignty. The simple fact that the Croatian nation had no state until the mid-twentieth century made so actual this problem.
Continuing the tradition of the pure Croatian nationalism of the nineteenth century, the Ustashas considered Serbs the biggest enemy of the Croatian people. After 1918 the threat of Magyarization was replaced by the fear of Serb hegemony, which was seen as being more insidious, because there is no decisive differentiation of language between Croats and Serbs, only those of religion and culture. Because of Hungarian pro-Serbian policy, in the middle of the nineteenth century Starcevic developed anti-Serbian nationalistic ideas. Ante Pavelic stated in Neue Ordnung, a weekly published by the Ustashas in German, that: “There were very few real Serbs in Croatia.They were mostly Croats of Orthodox confession.” But in the moment when they showed their own consciousness, they became “Slavoserbi,” as Ante Starcevic pro-claimed them, or “Vlasi”, as Ustashas sometimes called them. The nineteenth century, the leader of the Croatian Party of Rights did not consider “Slavoserbi” Slavs, he derived this name from the Latin words sclavus and servus, both meaning “slave.”
Serbian hegemony in the interwar period just reinforced the animosity between the two nations. Leading Croatian personalities were imprisoned, tortured, and even liquidated. Political assassinations and massacres of civilian population were among the main reasons for the increase of Croat hostility toward the whole Serbian nation. Serbian high authorities, officers, and bureaucrats with their Greater-Serbian notions and desire to liquidate any form of national opposition, just made enemies in the face of the Croats.
The Ustasha regime in 1941–1945 represented the extreme anti-Serb tendency in Croatian political life the main purpose of which was a revenge for the twenty years of subjugation, terror, and police methods of rule and to make the idea of Serbo-Croatian coexistence unthinkable forever. The Ustashas were irritated mostly by the Greater Serbia idea, which continued to predominate in the Serbian national consciousness even during the Second World War when the country was occupied by the Germans.
Though Yugoslav in name, the exiled government became increasingly Pan-Serb. It threw all the blame for the collapse of Yugoslavia in April 1941 on the “treachery” of the Croats. It was clear that if it would take power again, the retribution against the Croatian people would be cruel and outrageous. This fear incited Ustashas against Serbs with more passion and vehemence. Western democratic powers were on the side of Serbia and it was no secret that if they won the war, Croatia would again lose its freedom.
Because the fate of Croatia has always been determined by the Great Powers, Pavelic tried to purify its territory of all non-Croats and to place Western countries in front of an accomplished fact. He was convinced that if there were no Serbs on Croatian territory, they would have no justification for their Greater Serbian claims on the basis of the Serbian minority in Croatian lands. That is why he put into practice his extreme nationalistic policy.
The Ustasha hatred towards the Serbs living in their territory was due to the fact that they were a sizable minority in the ISC. The Independent State of Croatia encompassed huge territories, including Bosnia and Herzegovina. For centuries dis-
puted frontier lands, they contained a mixed population of Croats, Serbs, and Moslems, and in some regions Orthodox Serbs outnumbered the Catholic Croats several times. In the country only about one-half of a population of 6–7 million were Roman Catholics of Croat origin. There were also 2.2 million Orthodox Serbs; 750,000 Moslems; 45,000 Jews; and relatively few members of other minority groups. Thus the proportion of Serbs in ISC was quite high—they represented approximately one-third of the population of the country.
It was clear that they would never accept the Croatian state as their own and would always struggle against it. According to the Ustashas, if the Serbs were not fully defeated, they would be always the “turbulent element” in the ISC and would always claim for their separation from Croatia, and for incorporation into Serbia. They would ask Serbia for support and appeal for its intervention to protect their rights. In practice, there was a danger of territorial loss for the young Croatian state—loss of lands acquired as an Axis ally. For this reason, the Ustashas directed their political energy predominantly against the Serbs. The Jews and Gypsies were fewer in number, much more quiet, and not as dangerous for the future of the ISC. The Ustashas knew well that if it was not settled quickly and radically it would disturb the future political life of the ISC, and the state would be never stable. They were in a hurry to settle the Serbian question during the war years when all of Europe was in a reign of terror and lawlessness and everything was possible.
Just one week after the proclamation of the ISC, a law was enacted whose declared purpose was “to defend the people and the state.” Severe punishment was introduced for all those who in any way offended “the honor and vital interests of the Croatian people” or who threatened the existence of the Croatian state.
The plans of the leader of the Chetniks, Draza Mihailovic were for the expulsion of all Moslems (who, were proclaimed by the Ustasha's as the “purest part of the Croatian nation”) and Catholic Croats from Bosnia and Herzegovina and from large regions of Croatia-Slavonia and Dalmatia, all of which were to become parts of the future Greater Serbia. Starting in 1941, the Chetniks carried out indiscriminate terror raids against Moslem settlements in Eastern parts of the country (especially in areas along the river Drina) and committed severe “punishing and cleansing actions” to ensure continued Serbian hegemony in the post-war period in these territories. For this reason Moslems were ready to support Croats in their nationalistic war against the Serbian population and accepted the government’s anti-Serbian policy. Most of them became loyal citizens of the Croat state, identified themselves with the Ustashas, and joined their military and police forces.
The right to political participation and citizenship in ISC was reserved exclusively for Croats. To take part in national repression was glorified as the heroic performance of a higher duty to the Croatian nation. The unspeakable fanaticism were characteristic of the Ustashas’ attitude toward non-Croats in the ISC.
Ustashas believed that Serbs had a national consciousness that was independent from their confessional affiliation, whereas illiterate peasants were expected to forget their Serbian identity. Villages whose names contained words associated with the Serbian nationality or were more typical of Serbian vocabulary were given new names. Use of the Cyrillic alphabet was banned. Serbs were no longer allowed to live in certain residential areas, and they had to wear a blue band on their right arm.
In regions with a mixed population, especially those with a tradition of animosity between Croats and Serbs, violent conflicts became an everyday event. Serbian hostility toward the new regime increased rapidly. Ustasha’s fierce clashes with Chetniks were beyond description.
The Moslems were treated in Croatia with far greater consideration than were the Orthodox. The Ustashas regarded Croatia as a “state of two faiths—Catholicism and Islam.” In order to succeed in his national policy, the Poglavnik was obliged to assure himself of as much cooperation as possible, especially in the regions where the Serbian masses were more densely settled. In Bosnia and Herzegovina the Moslems constituted about one-third of the population, the Croats were one-fourth, and the remainder were Serbian Orthodox. The Croats, therefore, were unable to insist on their right to these territories without recognizing the Moslems as Croats.
The Ustashas needed Moslems support in the struggle against the Chetniks and Partisans in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Poglavnik understood perfectly the advantages he could achieve by winning over the greatest possible number of Moslems and urging them to fight against the Orthodox Serbs. That is why he followed the policy of tolerating Moslems, giving them privileges and extraordinary concessions, promising their leaders high positions in the administration, and even admitting two of their representatives into the Ustasha government. The Poglavnik promised Moslems full realization of their material and religious aspirations, gave them opportunities to hold high civil and military positions in the state, permitted Moslem units in the Croatian army, subsidized their schools, and even made them a present of a huge new mosque in the center of Zagreb. This policy brought the desired results and assured Pavelic with the cooperation and support of a part of the Moslem population in Independent State of Croatia. Several specialized Moslem Ustasha divisions were formed, with the main task of fighting Chetniks.
There were some influences of Nazism on the Ustasha national program, like anti-Semitism and the struggle against Gypsies, but they didn’t play such an essential role and never became a central element in Ustasha ideology. Jews and Gypsies were defined as non-Aryans and were persecuted as racially inferior and dangerous people. Ustasha Anti-Semitism was more like a manifestation of religious conviction and the number of Jews was too small, to make it a really popular slogan. Anti-Semitism was something the Ustashas accepted from the ideology of National Socialism, but it never became a main element in their ideological system. Racist legislation against the Jewish population imitated the German model and, in fact, was a copy of the Nazi Nuremberg laws of September 1935.
Jews who could prove that they had been active pre-war supporters of Croatian separatists could save themselves and acquire Croatian citizenship. In these cases some of them also acquired the title “honorary Aryan.” But such political loyalty was difficult to prove, and in any case very few non-Croats were sympathetic to the extreme Croatian nationalism of the pre-war period. Most exceptions were made for Jews who were related to members of the Ustasha movement (some leading Ustashas were married to Jewish women.)
In their activity to create the Croatian national state, the Ustashas accepted extreme methods of struggle and rule, which were widely spread in Europe by Nazi and Italian fascist movements. They saw the contemporary political situation as a struggle for the survival of their nation against all enemies—Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and Communists.
The outbreak of the Second World War and especially the German aggression against Yugoslavia was a real chance for the Ustashas. Germany was the Great Power that destroyed Yugoslavia and created an Independent State of Croatia on its
former territory. But Germany did not intend to give real independence. Croatia had no independent foreign policy.In joint operations with the German army, the Ustasha military units were always under its command. There were also tensions and clashes between the Italian forces and the Ustashas. Even outside their zone of occupation, Italian troops often took over civilian and military power from them.
The Independent State of Croatia was in general chaos—in national, political, social, and economic crisis—and the Ustasha power was entirely supported by German military forces. Neither the Italian nor the German military and political circles believed that their Croatian ally was capable of surviving on its own. This led to the collapse of the Ustasha regime at the end of war simultaneously with the German capitulation. The Ustashas lost not just political power in 1945 but the historical chance for the Croatian people to have their own state for a long period of time. The Yugoslav Communist Party accomplished its long-standing desire, creating a new, federated Yugoslavia. In 1945, the Croatian people lost their brief, although somewhat fictitious state independence and were compelled to enter this new state as a federated republic.