Independent State of Croatia

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The Independent State of Croatia (NDH, from Croatian Nezavisna Država Hrvatska) was a puppet state of the Third Reich formed after the defeat of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia at the beginning of World War II. It was ruled by the Ustasha, a fascist movement based on nationalism. extreme, a discourse of religious overtones and a history of great violence.

The establishment of the NDH was proclaimed on April 10, 1941, four days after the Axis attack on Yugoslavia and shortly before the entry of German troops into the city. The leader of the new state was Ante Pavelić, who returned with Italian troops from exile on April 13, 1941, after promising Mussolini possession of Dalmatia. Officially it was a kingdom with a sovereign in the figure of Tomislav II of Croatia of the House of Savoy - a second cousin of the King of Italy Victor Emmanuel III of Italy - but he did not actually have any power and never visited Croatia.

The state included all of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and much of Croatia, while northern Dalmatia was annexed to Italy, and Međimurje and southern Baranja passed to Hungary. The northern half of the NDH it was under the zone of German military influence, with the Wehrmacht exercising occupation, while the southern half was controlled by the Army of Fascist Italy. After Italy's capitulation in 1943, the NDH absorbed northern Dalmatia—Split and Šibenik —. The country was at all times militarily occupied by the Axis, first by Italian and German troops and, after the Italian capitulation, only by the latter.

Despite its previous support during the 1930s, the Italian government claimed and obtained from the Ustasha government extensive coastal territories with a majority Croat population, in addition to reaching pacts with the chetniks of the region.

For virtually its entire existence, the NDH was a major battleground for various armed groups, including the forces of the new state, and the site of major "ethnic cleansing" operations, primarily at the hands of the Pavelić regime. they were mainly due to the smallness of the Croatian population - barely 50% of the population of the new country - which clashed with the Ustaše vision of a uniform nation-state.

The Independent State of Croatia ceased to exist in May 1945, with the advance of Tito's partisan forces, followed by the Soviet Red Army. That same year the Federal Democratic Republic of Yugoslavia was created.

Creation and Italian-German rivalry

The establishment of the NDH was proclaimed on April 10, 1941, four days after the Axis attack on Yugoslavia, by Slavko Kvaternik, a lieutenant of the Ustasha, at the direction of the German representative in Zagreb, Edmund Veesenmayer, and shortly before the entry of German troops into the city. Until shortly before the invasion, Hitler had not contemplated the division of Yugoslavia and had prevented the Italian attack on the country. The coup d'état of 27 March led him to consider the new government of doubtful loyalty to the Axis and, after offering to annex Croatia to Miklós Horthy in vain, consider establishing it as an independent country.

Flag of Croatia (1941–1945).svg NDH Territory
Administrative units of the Croatian State in 1941.
The NDH in the Balkans of World War II.

Proclaimed during the German attack on Yugoslavia, the new Croatian state, with its capital in Zagreb, was theoretically in the area of Italian influence. Italian control, however, could not be made effective due to economic weakness of Mussolini and German interests in exploiting Croatia for their benefit. Despite repeated German declarations about Croatia belonging to the Italian area of influence, the Reich wanted to maintain control of raw materials. As early as 1942 all the main raw materials and much of the country's industry were under German control. Late in the year, using the excuse of increased resistance to the occupation, the Germans also managed to gain control of the Croatian armed forces., despite the Italian suspicion.

The State, despite its theoretical independence, was little more than an Italo-German condominium. in Vienna on 21 and 22 April 1941. Of all the states under military occupation by the Axis, however, it was the one with the greatest internal autonomy. These talks confirmed the handover of Bosnia-Herzegovina to the new state., as well as the layout of its eastern border with Serbia.

The coastal area, which remained mostly in Italian hands, was subordinated to the Italian military authorities, who tried to make it difficult for the new Croatian administration to spread in this region. The Treaties of Rome (Croatian: Rimski ugovori) of May 18, 1941 established the relationship between the NDH and Italy, among other things the cession of territories of Croatian population to Italy, mainly on the Adriatic coast, concession to previous Italian support for Pavelić. The territorial cessions were one of the conditions imposed by the Italians to recognize the inclusion of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the new Croatian state. On 12 April, Hitler had arranged for the Italians to be the that they decide the fate of the province, after ruling out at first that the new Croatian state be part of it. The NDH also promised not to form its own Navy, destroy coastal defenses and cede control of its territorial waters. Italians. The agreements also included the appointment of the Italian duke as formal, but powerless, king of Croatia. In the territories ceded to Italy, Italy carried out a brutal occupation with the aim of "Italianizing" them., which included the internment of between 30,000 and 40,000 Croats in Italy or the protection of several thousand chetniks troops who committed atrocities against Croats and Muslims.

Italy controlled territorially, in addition to the ceded areas, the so-called zone II (the coast), and partially the zone III (a parallel strip in the interior), with devastating effects for the economy of the new country. Italian troops also committed war crimes in the area under their control and, furthermore, they could not prevent the numerous crimes perpetrated by the Croatian authorities in the region, especially abundant in 1941.

The differences between the two main partners of the Axis in Europe in their relationship with Dalmatia and Istria, the coastal strip, where thousands of Italo-Dalmatians lived for centuries, in addition to the majority of ethnic Slavs, were further festered during the campaigns against the partisans in the first half of 1943, when the Italians refused to break their relations with the Serbian nationalist gangs. This relationship, desired by the Italians in order to put pressure on the Croatian nationalists and at the same time have a local ally in their fight against the partisans, provided the chetniks a secure base both against attacks by Pavelić's Croatian fascists, and Tito's communist rivals, as well as a source of armaments.

Domestic policy

Creation of the State and its pillars

The Croatian leader Pavelić (right) shakes his hand to Hitler in a visit to the German leader in June 1941.

The state, controlled since its proclamation by the fascist organization Ustasha, was characterized primarily by a fierce hatred of Serbs, extreme nationalism, coupled with later anti-Semitism and perhaps due to Nazi influence German and a totalitarian form of government. This State of terror received the support of the Croatian Catholic Church, whose Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac was a direct collaborator of the regime in its beginnings, distancing himself later, although at all times supporting the independence of the State and its Catholic ideology. The regime, given the low Croatian population in the state, proclaimed the Bosnian Muslims (15% of the population) members of the Croatian nation, excluding them from extreme persecution of the which subjected Serbs, Jews and Gypsies. This was based on laws proclaimed shortly after independence (April 18 and 30), similar to the German Nuremberg Laws.

Proportion of Bosnian population
of each community in 1931
According to Hoare, p. 48.

The Ustasha movement had been marginal before the German attack in 1941, being known largely only for its terrorist attacks, including the assassination of King Alexander I and French Foreign Minister Barthou in 1934, in retaliation for the assassination of Stjepan Radić in 1928, in the Belgrade Parliament. Only Mussolini's support, intermittent and due to his desire to destabilize his Yugoslav neighbor, allowed Pavelić's organization to endure. The relationship, however, was one of pure convenience: Mussolini intended to annex part of Yugoslav territory and control the Croats, while they had no intention of becoming Italian puppets, only using their support in weapons, training, money and diplomacy. The movement's tendency towards violence was originally due to being the way to gain national and international prominence, given its small size.

The Germans only turned to Pavelić and his Ustachas after the main Croatian pre-war party, the Croatian Peasant Party, refused their collaboration. Only then had the Germans allowed the proclamation of the new state by Pavelić, brought, along with his supporters, from Italy. The state depended on the Germans for its survival.

Pavelić's formation was small, no more than 10,000 members at the time of independence, it did not have significant popular support, and only at the beginning of the independent period was it able to count on the support of the right wing of the Croatian Peasant Party. and from the Catholic clergy and intellectuals, although the desire for independence was widespread in 1941.

Totalitarian state, parties and organizations other than the Ustaše were banned. Political power in the country was concentrated in Pavelić, the head of the state, and his coterie of exiled veterans, loyal to him. It never had a Constitution, Pavelić limiting himself to swearing to the principles of his movement, declared the supreme law of the State. Without Parliament at the beginning, this, the Sabor, barely met for a few weeks at the beginning of 1942, with the intention of increasing the popularity of the regime by reviving the traditional Croatian parliament dissolved in 1918 and claimed during the Yugoslav period by Croatian parties. The Parliament, elected according to Pavelić's wishes, had a chosen majority of Ustashas and sympathizers. It passed only one law during its short existence and was not assembled as a chamber with real power, but for simple propaganda. Laws and decrees were passed directly by Pavelić or on his order; the ministers and secretaries of State were also appointed by him and the cabinet, which hardly met, was responsible only to him, who concentrated all the state's political authority. Despite the formal existence of a political council, power real was in the hands of Pavelić.

Politics, culture, institutions and administration were soon brought under Pavelić's political formation which, short-staffed, grew in part thanks to the admission of opportunists and corrupts drawn to power.

The legal prosecution of potential opponents was approved by the decree of April 17, 1941, which sentenced to death anyone who "infringed upon the honor or vital interests of the Croatian nation" and established several dozen special courts for their prosecution. application, which could be applied retroactively to crimes prior to the decree. The application of the penalty was carried out three hours after the conviction.

The territory was divided into twenty-two counties administered by a prefect, which did not follow traditional borders, partly to avoid autonomist tendencies among Bosnian Muslims. To the regional administration was added a parallel Ustash hierarchy, which often It had greater power than the state.

Territories and population

NDH population in April 1941 (approximately)
Group Population
Croats 3 000 000
Serbs 2 000 000
Muslims 500 000-800 000
Germans 140 000
Hungarian 70 000
Jews 35 000-36 000
Others (slovenes, Czechs, among others.) 150 000

The new state included most of the Croatian-majority territories, except for part of Dalmatia which was annexed to Italy. On the other hand, it also had a very important Serb minority, around a third of the population of six million, which was due to the inclusion of territories such as Bosnia, Herzegovina and Krajina in the new country. This territory became part of the NDH due to the German acceptance of Pavelić's request on April 23, 1941. In the northeast, Hungary annexed Međimurje, part of Austro-Hungarian Hungary until 1918. The southern and eastern border of the state was drawn at a meeting between Hitler and Pavelić in June, while the inclusion of Srem was due to the handover of the territory by Germany later. In general, these followed the old route between Croatia-Slavonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. According to German data from 1941, the new state had an area of 98,572 km² and an approximate population of 6,285 000 inhabitants.

The Italian government of Dalmatia, divided into three provinces: Zara, Spalato and Cattaro.

The state, despite its proclaimed national character, was in practice multinational, a fact that the regime tried to change through various violent methods, including deportations, massacres, or forced religious conversions. The goal was to make the state purely Croatian and primarily Catholic.

The German minority (about 170,000 people concentrated mainly in eastern Slavonia, Sirmia and the cities in the north of the country), as in other countries in the region, received special treatment, enjoying a wide autonomy (decree of June 21, 1941 and later). The main cultural organization of the minority had converted to Nazism at the end of the previous decade and had maintained close contacts with German institutions, distributing propaganda among the community. Highly involved in the various German military units, the minority ended up being partly evacuated by the retreating German military authorities at the end of the war or expelled shortly after. Already in January 1945, before the advances of the Soviet Army and the partisans, some 110,000 minorities were evacuated from Slavonia and Sirmia. Most of those who remained were sent to Yugoslav concentration camps after the war. The Slovaks and Lo The Hungarians were generally well treated, as were the Ruthenians (protected by the Uniate Church). Available population data are approximate, as no census was conducted during the existence of the NDH.

Situation of the Muslim population

Given the relative scarcity of the Croatian Catholic population in the country —around 50%— the Ustasha proclaimed two state religions: Catholic and Muslim, to include 15% Muslims within the Croatian population. This was based on a view of a certain branch of Croatian nationalism that considered Croatian Muslims who had converted to Islam during the Ottoman period. The regime, unlike its treatment of other communities, promised cultural and religious autonomy to Muslims, naming certain positions of this origin in the hierarchy of the regime.

The official inclusion of Muslims as Croats was due to the fact that until the war they were not considered a separate community, it being relatively common for Muslims and Jews to declare themselves Croats or Serbs and not as a separate group. The regime's repression did not particularly target Muslims, whose victims during the war approached their percentage of the country's population. Catholic Croats were, for their part, even less affected by the violence that characterized the period..

The Muslim population progressively distanced itself from the Pavelić regime, realizing that their excesses put them in danger of reprisals from the Serbs and that the state was unable or unwilling to protect them from these. After the second AVNOJ congress As he proclaimed the partisans' intention to establish a federation in which Bosnia-Herzegovina would form one of the units, the number of Muslims who supported Tito's organization grew.

Repression of minorities

The new country was already created with plans to genocide minorities that Pavelić's movement considered non-Croats such as Serbs, Gypsies or Jews. This was due to the ideology of the formation, which saw the state as the home exclusively to the population it considered Croatian, which meant the elimination of the rest of the inhabitants. The cruel methods of elimination of those that the regime considered undesirable were supported, albeit tacitly, by it. Immediately after independence, widespread anti-Semitic and anti-Serb propaganda began.

Despite the regime's hostility towards those considered non-Croats, the definition of who belonged to each community, especially Serbs, was never sharpened, giving rise to unequal and privileged treatment of those whom the authorities they rewarded, compared to others who, lacking sponsorship, suffered the rigor of the official policy of repression. In any case, the authorities were aware of and to varying degrees supported the killings carried out by their different armed forces against the population, either minorities or those considered dissidents (mainly communists).

The legal basis for the persecutions were the three decrees promulgated in April 1941: the "decree on racial belonging", the "decree on citizenship" and the "decree on the defense of Aryan blood and the honor of the Croatian nation", based on German law. Jews and Gypsies were discriminated against as non-Aryans, unlike the "Croat race", officially defined as such. The regime defined a "Nordic" Croatian racial ideal -Dinaric" similar to Norse in contemporary Nazi Germany.

Persecution of the Jews

The Jewish community was subjected to the harshest and most uniform measures imposed by the German occupier on the Pavelić government. Their repression was more gradual and planned than that of the Serb population. At the end of April, both In the capital as in other towns with a notable Jewish population, the authorities carried out hostage takings to force the community to pay ransoms to certain committees formed for this purpose, which were later released. Shortly after, the first anti-Semitic discriminatory measures were approved. On April 30, they lost their nationality and later their freedom of movement and residence.

As early as June 1941, Jews were forced to wear a metal identification tag. Of the 35,000 living on NDH territory when it was formed, about 28,000 died at the hands of the authorities or They were sent to German concentration camps, with 4,000 fleeing, many of them thanks to Italian collusion. Italy welcomed the escapees from German-controlled territory, but prevented their passage to Italy or their emigration. The Zagreb government paid compensation of thirty marks for each deported Jew.

The intention of the Ustasha regime was to completely eliminate the Jewish population from the country. The first mass arrests took place between June —after the German attack on the USSR— and September 1941, in which those arrested they were sent to the new camps created by the authorities. In Bosnia the arrests took place somewhat later, between August and November 1941. The majority of the population, urban and politically defenseless, were deported to Auschwitz in the summer 1942, their harassment having begun as early as May. By the end of 1942, virtually the entire Jewish population had been killed, sent to Auschwitz, or imprisoned. After the Italian surrender in the fall of 1943, the authorities German and Croatian authorities deported Jews who had taken refuge in Italian-controlled territories to death camps. Until then, the Zagreb government had repeatedly requested the handover of the Jews by the Italian Italians, whom he accused of being pro-Jews and anti-German. The Italians, for their part, had unsuccessfully requested the handover of the Croatian Jews, a request rejected by Zagreb due to its deportation agreement with Germany.

Persecution of Gypsies

Only the Roma minority suffered a destruction of the same magnitude as the Jewish community. The first Ustaše racial laws included the entire Roma community but in 1941 the authorities decided to rid the sedentary (a minority) of them. Those who had adopted the Muslim faith were excluded from the repressive measures by the Government, as a measure to win the sympathy of the Islamic community. On July 3, 1941, the Ministry of the Interior ordered the entire Roma population to appear before the police in the capital on the 22nd and 23rd of that month. At the same time, detailed files on each person in the community were ordered to be drawn up. For reasons not yet established, the authorities began mass arrests and deportations almost a a year later, in May 1942. On May 16, the Ministry of the Interior and the secret police ordered the transfer of the entire Roma population to the Jasenovac concentration camp. this camp in the summer and fall of 1942, probably at the German request. Held in the subcamp known as "Jasenovac III" with a section of their own, most were killed before the end of the year.

It is estimated that about 75% of Croatian Roma perished (10,000 people), a percentage similar to that of Jews who lost their lives in the NDH. The figures of different historians, however, vary, due to to the difficulty of knowing the Roma population residing in the NDH and the incomplete documentation available on their extermination. It is considered, in any case, that the vast majority of the community was murdered.

Repression of the Serb minority and attitudes of Italy and Germany

Main article: Serb genocide in the Independent State of Croatia
Serbian family murdered by ustachas units in 1941. The atrocities against the Serb minority fuelled resistance to the new Croatian State.

Since independence, the Ustashas launched a campaign of massacres, forced conversion to Catholicism and mass expulsions which, in addition to fomenting the opposition of the Serb population of the state, encouraged the enlistment of many victims in the resistance bands, active since the summer of 1941. The Zagreb government gave priority to the "purification" of the state over its internal stability. the basis for subsequent terror. Two official departments (the Public Order and Security Office and the Ustasha Surveillance Service) were created responsible for the murder of "undesirables".

Pavelić's movement viewed the general Serb population as alien to the Croatian nation, which it had to eliminate through terror in order to preserve its newly won independence. Persecution of the Serb population began immediately after independence.

One of the regime's first measures was to outlaw the Serbian Orthodox Church, the use of the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet (April 25, 1941), and literature and customs considered to be Serbian (August 14, 1941). Serbs faced fines and imprisonment for the use of their alphabet. Many lost their jobs, their possessions, and suffered discrimination, being subjected to curfews. They also did not have the rights of citizenship. and they could not join the armed forces. Gypsies and Jews, not racial, but cultural and religious.

Given the ambiguous definition of a Serb, the application of the repressive measures advocated by the central government was uneven, ultimately left to the discretion of local authorities, who applied them according to their will where the Ustasha did not have the right to enough power to impose them. The repression was, in any case, disorganized, uncontrolled and improvised, although encouraged and coordinated in general terms by the Pavelić government.

The first atrocities against the Serb population occurred at the end of April and in May. Then they stopped temporarily and the Archbishop of Zagreb complained by letter about the May massacres. The next signing of the Treaties of Rome, which were to involve territorial cessions, also led to stopping the atrocities. The territorial loss and the need to channel the regime's nationalism in another direction than territorial expansion or confrontation with Italy led, however, to to the resumption and intensification of the killings. The beginning of the invasion of the USSR further increased the repression against anyone considered a potential enemy of the State.

The brutal massacres began again in June 1941 in Herzegovina, causing many German personnel to become hostile to the Pavelić regime. At the same time, they were taking place in In this region, the first uprisings of the Serb population against the authorities with the aim of defending themselves against the Ustaše units, which initially consisted of poorly armed self-defense groups that were mainly in charge of warning and evacuating the populations in the face of the proximity of Ustaše columns. The revolt soon spread to Lika and northern Dalmatia. At the beginning of July, the first cases of atrocities in Croatia-Slavonia reappeared. At the same time, the mass deportations of Serbs from the capital began.

In August 1941, the NDH government opened the Jasenovac concentration camp, where estimates suggest that 80,000-90,000 people were murdered, mostly Serbs, although the figures are controversial. In the territory of the NDH there were at one time twenty-six concentration camps, the destination of those whom the regime considered a threat because of their race, political ideology or religion.

Until the end of the summer of 1941, Pavelić tried to eliminate the Serb minority through deportations and massacres, denying the possibility of assimilation with a quasi-racist stance. The regime counted on expelling Serbia, brutally and disorganized, about 179,000 Serbs, who would be replaced by Slovenes deported from their territories by the Germans in their colonization plan. The brutality against the deportees, in some cases robbed and murdered on the way to the camps transit, was such that it impressed the German authorities. They had previously agreed to the deportation of Serbs to occupied Serbia (June 4, 1941) in exchange for the settlement in Croatia of some 250,000 Slovenes, who had to leave their homes for German colonization. The deportations were to begin very soon because the first Slovenes were to arrive in the NDH on July 11, 1941. From April 18, the government began the expropriation of land in Srem and Slavonia to the Serb population, their expulsion to Serbian territory, and between May and June some 5,000 people had been expelled. Although the exact figure is unknown due to the lack of rigorous data, it is estimated that during the spring and summer some 200,000 Serbs were deported from the country.

Towards the end of 1941, the German Army and especially its plenipotentiary representative in Zagreb had a very unfavorable opinion of its Croatian allies. The military was concerned about the stability of the country and the image of the Wehrmacht, tarnished by the Ustasha crimes. The attacks on the Serbs also undermined intermittent attempts by the Germans to reach an agreement with the chetniks gangs, which were to split the insurgency in two and weaken it., however, he was indifferent to the fate of the Serb population of the NDH and did not support those who proposed to stop the Ustashi atrocities.

Execution of prisoners near the Jasenovac concentration camp by US militias.

The Italian Army was even more hostile to its former protégés. Disgust at the outrages of the Croatian Ustashas caused the alliances to change in the summer of 1941: the Italians expelled the Ustachas from the territories they occupied in Dalmatia, they extended their control and reached agreements with the population and the Serb armed bands in the area. As early as the end of May 1941, a Croatian delegation, headed by a Franciscan friar, informed the division commander " Sassari" of his intention to "kill all Serbs as soon as possible", to the surprise of the Italian general. This tacit agreement between chetniks and Italians, established by the Army Italian and respected by Mussolini, it remained until the Italian surrender in July 1943.

Starting in September 1941, a series of Italian garrisons were established in the southwestern half of the state from which the Italians expelled the Croatian authorities and in which Serb insurgents, with the exception of communist partisans, began to collaborate with the occupier, in exchange for the security guaranteed by the Italian troops. The Ustasha units, regular and irregular, were disarmed and expelled. II" to the Croatian Government one day before the start of the operation, on August 15, and they had received their protest. Pavelić only managed to keep certain units of the regular Army, without heavy weapons and under control of the Italian command, in some cities in the region. The Italian command, which assumed both the military and civil administration in the region, began to apply measures favorable to the Serb population (return of property s confiscated, a meeting of local authorities, the opening of Orthodox churches...) that generally allowed to pacify it and gain the support of a large part of the Serb rebel bands in the area. The Croatian authorities, for their part, tried to obtain the German support to stop the measures of the Italians.

In mid-October, Italian forces also took control of "Zone III", where the partisan and Ustaše forces expelled from "Zone II" had concentrated. Again, the Italians ignored the Zagreb government. and limited their power in the occupied zone. This region, wider and more rugged than "Zone II", could not be controlled as effectively, becoming the site of frequent fighting and Italian garrisons poorly supplied and semi-isolated from the surrounding area.

In the north-eastern half, under German political influence, the Ustasha regime enjoyed the enthusiastic support of the German ambassador Siegfried Kasche, but faced opposition from the Army, the SS, and other German organizations in the country. of this, at the end of 1941 the Government of Zagreb did not control more than a third of the theoretical territory of the new state. Wide areas of Bosnia were in rebellion, mainly the counties with a majority Serb population. The rest of the territory was subjugated. to the military occupation of the Axis, although the regime had internal autonomy.

The forced conversion campaign
Leaders of the Croatian Catholic Church, including the Archbishop of Zagreb, Aloysius Stepinac, together with high-ranking officials of the ustacha regime. This was sympathized with numerous low clergy, monacato and part of the Croatian ecclesiastical dome.

Despite the atrocities against minorities since the beginning of independence, the Pavelić regime decided in September 1941 to implement a policy of forced conversion of the Serb population, given the manifest impossibility already then of physically ending with this community or to deport it to the territory of the Serbian National Salvation Government due to the German refusal to accept more immigrants. The partial Italian occupation, which seemed to endanger independence, also contributed to the change in policy towards Serbs from Pavelić. It was an attempt to assimilate by force in the face of revolts that endangered the State.

Conversions, in smaller numbers, had been taking place since April, with some Serbs seeking to avoid official persecution through religious conversion. The government-backed campaign, however, began in the fall, through a mix of force and threats, and the offer to avoid persecution through conversion, which Jews were not offered.

The conversion campaign, however, did not stop the killings, instead it was carried out in parallel, which made it difficult to carry out. Despite the efforts of supporters of the conversion, it was a failure as a method of eliminating the Serb population, both due to the irregularity of the conversions from one region to another and the impossibility of carrying it out in areas that escaped the control of the Government, each time larger. The Serb population, which found that the conversion also did not provide any security against the excesses of the armed groups, also lost interest. It is estimated that some 240,000 Serbs abandoned Orthodoxy to embrace Catholicism during the period.

As a roundabout way of admitting the failure of the maneuver and trying to integrate and control the Serb population, Pavelić created a Croatian Orthodox church on April 3, 1942, while in May the authorities began to reach local agreements with chetniks commanders. The attempt to forcefully convert the Orthodox population to Catholicism thus ended. The new Orthodox Church, which did not have the support of the few Serbian Orthodox priests who they had survived the persecutions and had to train with Russian priests, however, it served as a refuge for a certain number of Serbs who came to it to avoid persecution, not wishing to opt for active resistance to the regime.

In August 1942, disguised as action against partisans, Kvaternik, as Ustasha security chief, ordered an attack on the Serb population of the fertile Srem plain. The total number of victims of the repression is unknown and very controversial, handling estimates of between 200,000 and 800,000 people, depending on the author. The massacres, criticized by foreign institutions such as the Holy See or the Serbian government of Milan Nedić, were also criticized by the German authorities themselves and Italian forces in the area, being considered destabilizing and favoring partisan forces.

German economic control

Amin al-Husayni reviewing Bosnian SS troops.

On May 16, 1941, the Croats had signed a confidential protocol granting the Germans the creation of mixed committees for the management of the national economy, with two main criteria: the special relevance of German economic interests and the cession of the unlimited exploitation of its raw materials, mainly minerals. Germany also received the promise of preference in future economic concessions. Croatia also promised to cover the expenses of the occupation troops.

Italy, for its part, had also made economic concessions at the April 1941 meeting of foreign ministers in Vienna. The Italian-Croatian economic commission, created in June 1941, served the Italians for little more than see their demands rejected by the Croats, who had German support, interested in keeping economic control of the country in their hands. The Government of Rome had not taken advantage of the treaties to achieve the monetary and customs union either, contenting itself with territorial concessions and losing control of the most economically advanced part of the new state, which remained in the hands of Berlin.

The main industrial areas of the state, Zagreb, Sarajevo-Zenica-Tuzla (which contained the bulk of the important Bosnian mining industry) and the Sava Valley were in the German occupation zone. Bauxite, the main raw material in the Italian zone, it had been ceded to Germany in the Vienna talks. Germany also had control of the main communications, as well as the country's mines and forests, making the nation's independence illusory.

In the summer of 1942, an Italian lobbying campaign for better terms for the Croats failed, again due to German backing for the reluctant Croatian stance. As the war progressed, German pressure on raw materials and other Croatian products increased, with disastrous effects for the national economy, dependent in any case on the German one.

The regime's insurgency and anti-population activities had already affected transportation in the NDH since August 1941, with the country's economy greatly weakened. Malnutrition and famine had already begun in June. high inflation and the rationing system was ineffective. Starting in the autumn of 1941, the urban population became rapidly impoverished, causing cases of famine. Given the impossibility of harvesting a large part of the 1941 harvest, there were great food shortages in 1942, Germany having to send corn to alleviate the situation.

Armed Forces

The country's armed forces were divided into two main categories: the regular Croatian Home Guard Army and the Ustashi militias, similar to the German division between the regular Army and the Nazi party's SS troops. at first it was poorly organized, poorly armed and had low morale. Its loyalty to Pavelić was also dubious, which meant that Ustaše units were soon assigned to the regular Army in their counter-insurgency operations. Yugoslav Partisans soon infiltrated the he. A third armed corps was the gendarmerie, reorganized from its earlier Yugoslav equivalent, first under the regular Army and, from June 1941, under the Ustasha command.

In the beginning, the regular army consisted of three army corps headquartered in Zagreb, Brod and Sarajevo, with five divisions of three regiments each. Four sapper battalions, twelve artillery, one cavalry regiment, one unit of armored vehicles completed the Croatian forces; in total about 55,000 men. By the end of the year, these forces numbered around: 70,000 regular soldiers, 15,000 Ustaše militiamen, and 8,000 gendarmes. The Croatian forces grew notably in number later, reaching 92,246 men under Croatian command and 170,080 under German command in September 1943.

The Regular Army maintained the territorial division into five zones of the former Yugoslav Army. In September 1941, they were reformed into three army corps with six divisions in total. The Ustaše militia had five battalions, two in the former Croatia-Slavonia and three in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which increased to thirty-six at the end of 1942. The gendarmerie, for its part, also had five units, one stationed in Dalmatia and the rest divided equally between Bosnia and Croatia-Slavonia. In June 1941 a military border, similar to the one that had existed in the region for centuries due to Austro-Ottoman clashes, was created to guard the borders with Serbia and Montenegro, which had five battalions with command in Sarajevo. This military region and its troops were abolished in May 1942, becoming dependent on the regular Army. In 1942 most of the armed forces, five of the seven divisions of the Army and half of the thirty-six Ustacha battalions were concentrated in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The National Guard also had a modest Air Force, mostly equipped with German, Italian and French aircraft, or from the former Royal Yugoslav Air Force. Despite being outmatched by the Allies, Croatian aviation still had 176 aircraft in April 1945.

Fighting the insurgency

Insurgent groups

Two groups stood out among the insurgency in the NDH: the chetniks subordinate more or less theoretically to the defense minister of the Yugoslav government-in-exile, Dragoljub Mihajlović, and the partisans controlled by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia The former, of Serbian nationalist ideology, were stronger and more numerous in Herzegovina and, outside the NDH, in the Serbia of General Milan Nedić. The latter were initially concentrated in the eastern areas of the NDH, expelled at the end of Serbia by the Germans, Serbian collaborationists and Mihailović's troops.

Unlike the partisans, with a fairly centralized command, the chetniks gangs often acted independently of Mihailović. While they often avoided direct confrontation with the occupiers, in part to avoid reprisals against civilians, they defended an all-out resistance despite the victims among the population. Confronted since the autumn of 1941, both groups fought for supremacy within the resistance to the NDH that ended in defeat Chetnik in the summer of 1943 in a series of combats in Montenegro.

Characteristics of the campaigns against the rebels

Alexander Löhr, commander of the German troops in the Balkans during the first half of 1943, led the major operations against the insurgency.

The Wehrmacht carried out various military concentration operations to try to put an end to the insurgents, separated by periods of less military intensity, but with a continuous increase in violence. Their military operations, despite their aseptic reflection in The reports mixed the fighting with rebel gangs and the killing of the civilian population. The German command's strategy of ending the enemy's will to fight allowed attacks on the civilian population to achieve this end. His conviction that the concentration of large military units could once and for all put an end to the insurgents in large operations to exterminate them in delimited areas led to a succession of campaigns of great violence, which included the population. This became an explicit objective of the campaigns against the resistance, as they were considered accomplices of it. No community was spared from the German military operations, which were directed targeted by regions, unlike the regime's Ustaše violence, which was directed at certain communities, not certain territories. and indiscriminate, they were ineffective. Ustaše and German brutality ultimately backfired, increasing popular support for the partisans.

The massacres in the Italian occupation zone and in the annexed territories were not part of a policy of genocide as happened with some NDH communities, but rather classic counter-insurgency operations aimed at securing control of the coastline. In addition to the goal of rapid elimination of other communities (Jews and Gypsies and, to a lesser extent, Serbs), the Italians expected a gradual assimilation of the Slavic population and gave refuge to numerous Jews.

Campaigns of 1941

After the start of government atrocities against minorities the country soon became a battleground between Axis troops and their Croatian allies and insurgents. From the beginning many Croats joined Tito's partisans, mainly in the zone under German military occupation ("zone I"). In the Italian-occupied zones II and III, the main opposition forces to the Pavelić regime were the chetniks, who soon reached agreements with the Italian military authorities, protecting them from NDH attacks in exchange for their cooperation against the partisans. Notorious for their atrocities against civilians, the chetniks Chetniks mainly attacked the Croat and Muslim population and, to a lesser extent, Serbs hostile to their movement.

In mid-August, Mussolini informed Pavelić of his intention to take over the civil administration of the area under Italian military control, replacing the Croatian administration. The excesses of the latter against the population, especially against the Serbs, fueled the insurgency, and Italian commanders, backed by the Italian dictator at the time, wanted to pacify the area by agreeing with the non-communist gangs, which would reduce tension and split the rebels in two. Pavelić's attempt to rally German support against the The measure failed. By this time the Germans had barely 7,500 soldiers in the NDH, having withdrawn the bulk of their units to use them in the eastern campaign. the Italian advance, which was completed for "Zone II" on October 9, the date when the occupation of "Zone III" was also taking place.

In early September, the Italians began to administer the area, expelling many, but not all, Ustashi units. The pro-Serb measures of the Italian authorities (return of local administration in areas in those that were the majority, reopening of Orthodox churches, return of seized goods...) had a relative success: while in some areas there were agreements between Serb bands and the Italians, in others the partisans resurfaced, opposed to the occupier. Immediate opposition to the Italians, however, was little. In some towns the Croats requested the presence of Italian troops to prevent retaliation by the Serbs while in others they refused to hand over their weapons fearing the return of the Croatian authorities in in case the Italian occupation was temporary.

By the end of October 1941, Italian troops had reached the demarcation line with the Germans, occupying about half of the country, without being able to completely pacify the area. The Italians did not have enough troops to control the areas rural, often mountainous, areas of their occupation. Serb bands, temporarily freed from the Ustasha scourge, dealt with the Italians, but did not abandon their terrorist activities against the Croat and Muslim population. The Italian target, however, was it was to use them to destabilize the NDH and expand its power. By the end of the year, most of the country was engulfed in fighting.

Campaigns of 1942

German troops in Yugoslavia in 1943. The successive military operations against insurgents, despite heavy losses, were insufficient to end them and ensure the political and military control of the country by the Axis or the Croatian authorities.

At the beginning of the year, following up on their operations the previous winter in Serbia, German forces carried out major operations against rebels in eastern Bosnia, a region with a slim Serb majority to a Muslim population, and which was in full revolt after the massacres of the early summer of 1941 in the area. Attempts to reach an agreement between the German military commanders and the main rebel military leader in the region, the major of the Yugoslav gendarmerie Jezdimir Dangic, failed due to the attitude of Berlin. In April and May, without Italian participation despite the original plans, Croats and Germans attacked the insurgent forces in the area, without achieving, however, the annihilation of the partisans, who managed to escape in mostly to the south or west, while Dangic and his men were captured and deported to Germany.

Between the spring and autumn of 1942, the German commanders carried out grueling operations against the partisans in western Bosnia which, although they failed in their objective of wiping out Tito's troops, almost led to the annihilation of the civilian population of the region. The offensive was carried out by the Western Bosnia Combat Group (German: Kampfgruppe Westbosnien) led by German officers and with a couple of regiments, some artillery and an armored unit of this nationality and the bulk of Croatian troops (15,000 regular soldiers and 2,500 members of Ustaša units). The German commanders explicitly included the civilian population as the objective of the campaign. The male population over 14 years of age was sent to internment camps in brutal raids. Unlike the reprisal campaigns in Serbia of late 1941, this campaign included the entire population. Nearly 50,000 people of all ages were captured The men were sent to hostage camps and later to labor camps in the Norwegian Arctic, where they mostly perished. The women and children turned themselves in to the Croatian authorities to be incarcerated in concentration camps, where many died. The area, however, was occupied by partisans a few months after the end of the campaign, despite the fact that it was described as "a great success".

At the same time, the Italians decided to evacuate "zone III" and part of zone II, which by agreement on July 19 returned to Croatian administration, creating in reality a strip of territory under weak military control soon occupied by the partisans.

In June 1942, on the other hand, Pavelić had to admit his inability to confront both partisans and chetniks, reaching a pact with the latter known as the «Zagreb agreement» for the that the chetniks were allowed to participate in actions against the partisans as part of an "Anti-Communist Volunteer Militia" (MVAC). The Italians pressured the Croatian warlord to reach the agreement. This pact, which was the moment of greatest agreement between the Zagreb government and the chetniks gangs, had the support of the German military representative but was reluctantly accepted by the Ustachas.

In the fall of 1942, Tito's communist partisans numbered about 100,000 men. The Croatian Army units were neither reliable nor disciplined. The German commanders therefore wanted to have them under their control in order to deal with the partisans. An attempt on their part to force Pavelić to concede to the German commanders Control over the civil authorities in which they operated failed when they received the support of the German Foreign Ministry, faced with the claims of the Army.

The German Army did, however, gain control of the Croatian one thanks to Hitler's decision, communicated to Pavelić during his visit to him in the Ukraine on September 23, 1942. However, a report written mainly by the German ambassador on the situation in the country deprived the Army of the opportunity to also get rid of the Ustashas politically. The commander of the Balkans himself, General Alexander Löhr, had explained to Hitler that the atrocities encouraged support for the insurgency.

The Army then concentrated on reorganizing the Croatian Army and encouraging the enlistment of Croats into the German forces. In August 1942, the Wehrmacht's 369th Division was created as a legionary division, followed by the formation of two other divisions until the end of the war. In early 1943, the SS formed the Handschar division, made up mainly of Bosniacs. By early 1943, the Croatian Army had become little more than an auxiliary to the German, who concentrated most of the recruitment.

In early November, the NDH suffered its worst military defeat to date with the loss of Bihać to the Partisan command, Bosnia's second garrison, which allowed the union of the rebel-held territories of Bosnia and Croatia. In December 1942, Hitler ordered the annihilation of the insurgency in the Balkans, which he saw as a threat in the face of possible Allied landings. The Army could count on total authority in the areas where military operations were to be carried out, invalidating the power of the Croatian authorities. The Ustachas, however, ignored the theoretical restrictions and continued their outrages against the population, which the few units of the German military police could not prevent.

By the end of 1942 the Croatian Army was under German control, its economy served Germany and much of the territory was left in the hands of the German army, leaving Pavelić as little more than a puppet. This change also coincided with the removal by Pavelić from his former colleagues, Kvaternik father and son, little to the taste of the Germans and whom he blamed for previous atrocities against civilians.

Campaigns of 1943

The Italians promised the Germans to disarm their Serbian allies but the commanders in Dalmatia ignored the order and decided to use them in the operation against the partisans, which was to begin at the end of January 1943.

The operation, called Plan Weiss, consisted of three phases: Weisss I, in which partisan units in western Bosnia and Lika were to be surrounded and annihilated; Weiss II, who was to push the remnants that evaded the encirclement to the south, where they would be ambushed; and Weiss III, which would take place in the Italian zone and would consist of the neutralization of the chetniks. Four German divisions and units of the Croatian army were to attack from the north while the Italian divisions cut off the retreat towards the south of the partisans. The Italians, contrary to what was promised to the Germans, increased the armament of their chetniks allies and decided that they should participate in the operations against the partisans. The Italian commander in Dalmatia assigned them one of the most difficult part of the operation, which had to contain the bulk of Tito's troops in their flight to the south.

The first phase of the operation was favorable to the attackers, the partisans losing a large number of men in the north. The second, however, was a failure. Instead of facing three Italian divisions, as the German commanders had expected, the partisans encountered parts of one and several chetniks units, which were overwhelmed by the partisan forces. the partisans had escaped encirclement and spread into eastern Herzegovina, hitherto chetnik territory. German protests and the replacement of Italian command did not lead to a change in the Italian attitude. The commander refused to immediately disarm his Serb collaborators and indicated his desire to end the operation against the insurgency. The operation failed to annihilate the partisans, who managed to break through the encirclement of the Neretva River.

Propaganda film, Ante Pavelić visiting Croatian troops and populations in 1943.

The German attempt to wipe out the chetniks, despite temporary support (under German pressure) from Mussolini, was a failure. The Italian army itself was in charge of protecting its allies, warning or directly evacuating the units.

The new "Operation Schwarz", designed by the Germans to wipe out Mihajlović's chetnik forces once the communist partisans were considered neutralized, took place in north-western Montenegro and south-eastern Montenegro. Herzegovina. The operation had to be carried out with as little knowledge as possible of the Italians, whom the Germans already distrusted. Before the partisans entered the area, the fighting, very hard and lasted about a month, had This took place mainly among German troops and partisans. The Germans failed to eliminate either of their two enemies.

At the end of August, Hitler rejected a new Army proposal to place the NDH under German military administration. Backing the Ustashas, he rejected the alternative of direct German occupation.

Failure

Despite successive campaigns to crush resistance, the Axis did not achieve its objective. From the German point of view, the explanation for this failure was due to the violence of the Ustasha regime, which undid its military successes by feeding the insurgency. The military forces needed to control the territory were also unavailable.

Loss of military control

Members of the SS division Handschar (“cimitarra”), a unit recruited by the organization of Himmler among the Muslim population, to dislike the Government of Zagreb.

In May 1942, the German High Command granted Himmler control of the German minority in the Balkans in military matters. After notifying the Croatian government in July, the intense recruitment campaign of the Croatian Army was formalized in September and October. minority in the SS, which was not voluntary, but compulsory.

The following year, during anti-insurgency operations, Hitler approved an order preventing the handing over of territory taken from partisans to the Croatian government, granting Himmler the power to form police forces to maintain control of it, and stating that it was the German commanders who decided the limits of the zones of military operations (March 10, 1943). The same year the battalions of the German minority became part of the 7th Mountain Division SS Prinz Eugen, formed by members of the German minority from the countries of the region.

The alliance of the Wehrmacht and Himmler's SS to gain control of the armed forces in the region forced Pavelić to accept on March 24, 1943 the formation of a new gendarmerie under German control that could recruit Croatian citizens, even from Croatian military units, and over which the Zagreb government had no control, being simply informed about their operations.

Getting permission to form the gendarmerie, Himmler immediately went on to create a new SS military division with Muslim recruits from Bosnia-Herzegovina and German officers, also without control of Zagreb. The move took advantage of growing public discontent with the regime, which had led to the question of autonomy for the region or its passage to German military control. The inability of the Pavelić government to protect Muslims from Serb gangs increased their disenchantment with it, fostering Himmler's political alternatives and military plans.

Once again against the supposed Italian supremacy in the country, it was Germany that was in charge of training and arming the Croatian armed forces, even in areas under Italian control. Croatian conscripts served in German units, both in Croatia and abroad. the Soviet front.

Foreign Policy

The new state, created thanks to the Axis invasion, was recognized by the powers of this and related countries in the spring and summer of 1941: by Germany, Italy and Slovakia on April 15, 1941, by Bulgaria on 19, by Romania on May 7, 1941, by Spain on June 27, 1941, by Finland on July 2, 1941, by Denmark on 10 and by Manchukuo on August 2, 1941. the official recognition of the main regional power, Turkey, despite its attempts. A foreign ministry was created on 16 April, occupied first by Pavelić himself and, shortly after, by Mladen Lorković. The following day the new State declared war on the United Kingdom and later did the same with the United States and the Soviet Union.

The country joined the Tripartite Pact on June 15, 1941 and the Anti-Comintern Pact on November 15, 1941. The Treaties of Rome of May 1941 fixed its border with Italy, marking the first blow to the prestige of the new regime, which ceded almost all of Dalmatia to Mussolini.

The country's relations with Italy, which saw the Balkans as its area of influence, were tense. They were also tense with Hungary, which annexed Međimurje. With Bucharest, always in tension with the Hungarians over possession of Transylvania, the Zagreb government maintained minimal relations so as not to worsen the situation with Hungary.

Despite Pavelić's papal reception in May 1941 and the sending of a legate to Zagreb, the Holy See never recognized the NDH and continued to maintain diplomatic contacts with the exiled Yugoslav government. His attitude was cautious despite the Catholic propaganda of the Pavelić regime and the Ustasha enthusiasm on the part of the Croatian high clergy.

Italian surrender and attempts to get closer to the Allies

In the autumn of 1943, the surrender of Italy to the Allies allowed Pavelić to denounce the Treaties of Rome and claim the territories ceded therein (9-11 September), as well as other regions with Croat populations that they had belonged to Italy during the interwar period. The fall of Italy was celebrated by the regime which did not, however, obtain German permission to claim more than the former Yugoslav territories and even limited its control over them. Euphoria at the prospect of obtaining the territories with Croatian populations gave way to deep indignation when a month later the Germans announced their decision to exclude the Croatian authorities from the territory and maintain its control as a zone of military operations. With the disappearance of Italy as A counterweight to Germany, Croatia became even more of a mere German satellite, with little autonomy. Ribbentrop, in response to Croatian protests, decided to clarify the si situation to the Government of Zagreb in a statement:

The Croatian Government is in no way permitted to raise any demands or to let us know its wishes, even if they are justified. The reality is that the Croatian Government must be satisfied with what it obtains since even this is due entirely to the force of German weapons.

At the same time, some Ustachas began to maintain contacts to reach an agreement with the Peasant Party to move away from the Axis, but the negotiations failed due to the great difference in positions. In 1944 the country, like other satellites like Hungary or Slovakia, it was under military occupation, despite the maintenance of the Government or its armed forces. with the Allies he was discovered and suffocated. The contacts of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Defense with the Allies did not bear fruit and Pavelić, who knew them, used them to end the focus of internal dissent.

Last months and end of the State

With the switch of sides of Romania and Bulgaria in the late summer of 1944 and the advance of Soviet troops into central Europe, the defense of Croatia became important to the Germans as a bulwark of their southern border, and Pavelić finally succeeded the definitive support of these as of September. The relief of General Glaise and the previous crushing of Foreign Minister Lorković's attempt to mediate with the Allies sealed Pavelić's political victory and his definitive association with the fate of Hitler.

At the end of 1944 the armed forces were reorganized, merging the Ustaše units and those of the regular Army (Domobrantsvo), accentuating the political indoctrination and cult of Pavelić's personality among the troops. The main commands of the 200,000 men that made up Pavelić's forces were left in the hands of the Ustashas.

After an unsuccessful appeal by the Croatian bishops to support the state and reject the conclusions of the Yalta conference, promoted by Pavelić, made on March 24, 1945, the collapse of the Sirmian front on April 7 led to the arrival of abundant troops and refugees in the capital. The half-built "Zvonimir line" was left without defense, which was to protect Zagreb from the East and on April 28 Pavelić informed the high command and party leaders of the impossibility of continue resistance given military setbacks and impending German withdrawal.

On the afternoon of May 5, the decision was made for the government and military units to withdraw from Zagreb to the Northwest, a move that was carried out gradually over the next three days. Vladko Maček, who had been allowed to Released from house arrest to deal with some of his supporters, he left the capital along with the cabinet and military forces. The end came with the unresisted takeover of Zagreb by partisans on the evening of 9 May 1945, and from Odžak (Posavina) on May 25 after a siege started on April 19.

Balance

The country formed by the Axis and handed over to the government of Pavelić and his followers was from the beginning disorganized, decentralized and doomed to disaster. The movement controlled by the state never had the support of the majority of the population Its form had been that of a fascist state with typical characteristics: a one-party regime, a cult of the caudillo, racist laws, a corporatist economic organization, youth and women's organizations controlled by the state... After a beginning in which the new state had the sympathy of a large part of the population, soon its terrorist policies against minorities and political opposition led to the disenchantment and hostility even of the Croatian population. The oppression and violence of the regime, similar to German behavior in Poland and the USSR, they also fostered growing support for the partisan resistance.

The role of the Catholic Church in the new state is disputed. He celebrated the collapse of Yugoslavia and the creation of the new country, theoretically Catholic, though not clerical, but soon became disillusioned by the regime's atrocities. sectors of the clergy, however, sympathized with the regime and were even counted among the ustache troops who committed them or in the management of the concentration camps. Among those closest to the regime, there were especially some Franciscans and some bishops, such as Ivan Saric, Bishop of Sarajevo. Church authorities, moreover, despite often privately condemning the regime's actions, including the forced conversion campaign in the autumn of 1941, did not go so far as to do so in public. The regime he tended to use the Church, which had great influence, especially among the peasants, but to ignore their complaints or reproaches. Much of his propaganda had Catholic motives. The state was never recognized. officially gone by the Holy See, although the pope continued to receive Croatian envoys until the Allied takeover of Rome, including one from the Ustaše police and its bloodthirsty director, Eugen "Dido" Kvaternik. His representative in the NDH, the apostolic legate Ramiro Marcone, after being received at first with some reserve, participated in the main official ceremonies of the NDH.

Of the around one million victims of the war in the territory of the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia, about 623,000 lost their lives in the territory of the NDH. The Pavelić regime is considered the most brutal and bloodthirsty of all satellites of the Axis, despite some later attempts to improve its image.

Military Commanders

Political leaders