Independent State of Croatia

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The Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH) was an Axis puppet state in Croatia and its environs during World War II. It was established in April 1941, after the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was split up by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. Geographically it encompassed most of modern-day Croatia as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina. It also coverd some 20 sq. km of Slovenia (villages Slovenska vas near Bregana, Nova vas near Mokrice, Jesenice in Dolenjsko, Obrezje and Cedem).

The NDH was ruled by Ante Pavelić and his Ustaša coming from the extremist wing of Croatian Party of Rights (HSP), which was founded by Ante Starčević in 1848. The NDH had a program, formulated by Mile Budak, to purge Croatia of Serbs, by killing one third, expelling the other third and assimilating the remaining third. The first part of this Croatian national programme was achieved during WWII by a planned genocide in Jasenovac and other places all over NDH

Croatia was allied with Italy and Germany. The guerilla group called the Partisans, led by Josip Broz Tito and other members of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, as well as rival guerilla group called Chetniks, opposed the Ustasha. The Partisans, Chetniks and the Ustasha effectvely fought a 3 sided civil war in the NDH. Communist Tito took control of increasingly large patches of Croatian territory by 1943, and in May 1945 Yugoslav army finally defeated the Axis forces.

Establishment of NDH

Following the attack of the Axis powers on the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1941, and the quick defeat of the Yugoslav army (Jugoslovenska vojska), the whole country was occupied by Axis forces. Hitler and Mussolini helped install the Croatian Ustaše, who embraced an ideology of freedom for the Croatian people even before WWII started, forming the Independent State of Croatia (NDH - Nezavisna Država Hrvatska).

The establishment of NDH was proclaimed on April 10, 1941 by Slavko Kvaternik, deputy leader of the Ustaše. The leader of the state was Ante Pavelić. On paper, it was a kingdom under king Tomislav II of the House of Savoy (The Duke of Spalato), but he was only a figurehead with no real power.

The name of the new state was an obvious attempt at capitalizing on the Croat people's desire for independence, which had been unfulfilled since 1102. Vladko Maček the head of the Croatian Peasant Party, the strongest elected party in Croatia at the time, refused an offer from Germans to head the government but called on people to obey to and cooperate with the new government the same day Kvaternik made the proclamation. Ante Pavelić arrived on April 20th to become the poglavnik (Leader, correlated with führer). The Roman Catholic Church's official stance was also openly positive in this period.

According to Vladko Maček, the establishment of the state was greeted with approval by the middle classes and the intelligentsia who had become disillusioned with Yugoslavia, but the peasantry met it with suspicion. The concession of an autonomous Croat province, the Banovina of Croatia, had been too recent (1939) to offset the friction that had marked the last two decades under the militarist regime of the Yugoslav king.

The state included most of today's Croatia, but with Istria, Kvarner and northern Dalmatia given to Italy by Pavelić according to the Roman contracts, and with Međimurje and southern Baranja annexed by Hungary. On the other hand, it spread to all of today's Bosnia and Herzegovina. It roughly included the areas of former Austro-Hungarian Empire where Croatian and Serbian languages were spoken (see image).

Initial period

The Ustaše initially did not have a capable army or administration necessary to control all of this territory: the movement had fewer than 12,000 members when the war broke out, and not nearly all of them were deployed during the invasion. Therefore the territory was controlled by the Germans and the Italians:

the northeastern half of NDH territory was under the so-called German zone of influence, with the Wehrmacht making its presence
the southwestern half was controlled by the Italian Fascist army. After the capitulation of Italy in 1943, NDH acquired northern Dalmatia (Split and Šibenik)

The State would eventually build up its own army, divided into two main groups:

Ustaše proper constituted the elite militia (Croatian Ustaška vojnica)
Home Guard or Domobrani was the much larger regular army

Together they mustered about 110,000 troops by the end of 1942, and about 130,000 in 1943 and were initially equipped mainly with captured Royal Yugoslav Army weapons and equipment, as well as some ex-Italian and ex-Polish light armoured vehicles. On the other hand, the NDH had no navy, owing to the terms of the Rome Agreement with Italy. The air force was modest as well, initially consisting of captured Royal Yugoslav aircraft (7 operational fighters and 20 bombers, as well some 150 auxiliary and training aircraft), but also supplemented by further German, Italian and French fighters and bombers right up until March 1945.

Ethnic persecutions

File:Hitler29.jpg

Hitler meets Pavelić

Much of the population of the Independent State of Croatia was not Croat. It had significant populations of Serbs (about 19% of the population of Croatia at the time, over 30% of the population of NDH), Muslims (the largest population group of Bosnia at the time, and over 10% of the population of NDH), Germans, Hungarians and others. The Catholics (mainly Croats, Germans and Magyars) constituted just over 50% of the 6.3 million population. However, today's Bosniaks, at the time, were not allowed to acknowledge Bosniak nationality but were politically directed to be called "Croatians of Islamic faith". Dr. Mile Budak, politician and minister of the NDH - immediately took the opportunity to proclaim the Muslims as "Brothers". Many Croatians agree with the idea that the majority of modern Bosniaks are actually Croats who were converted to Islam during the invasion of Turks in the 15th Century. Many Bosniaks consider this idea offensive and a product of Croatian nationalism.

Many Bosniaks accepted the NDH (in some cases were forced to accept it) and immediately became involved. The most notorious of Islamic Ustase divisions was the SS Handžari. In respect to the soldiers of Muslim faith, a mosque was built in Zagreb - Croatia's capital city - known as "Poglavnikova Dzamija" or Poglavnik's Mosque.

The Ustase almost immediately enacted racial laws that reflected the acceptance of the ideology of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, with an emphasis placed on Croatian national issues.

File:NDH metal plate for Jewish houses.jpeg

1941 "Ž" metal plate for Jewish houses (from Židov=Jew), removed from post office in Osijek.

The first "Legal order for the defence of the people and the state" dated April 17, 1941 ordered the death penalty for "infringement of the honour and vital interests of the Croatian people and the survival of the Independent State of Croatia". It was soon followed by the "Legal order of races" and the "Legal order of the protection of Aryan blood and the honour of the Croatian people" dated April 30, 1941, as well as the "Order of the creation and definition of the racial-political committee" dated June 4, 1941. The enforcement of these legal acts was done not only through normal courts but also new out-of-order courts as well as mobile courts-martial with extended jurisdictions.

The normal jails could no longer sustain the rate of new inmates and the Ustaša government started preparing the grounds what would become the Jasenovac concentration camp by July 1941. The regime would eventually form concentration camps in eleven different locations.

The Ustaše started conducting a deliberate campaign of mass murder, deportation and forced religious conversion in an attempt to remove the undesirables: Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, dissenting Croats and others. The atrocities against non-Croats started on April 27, 1941 when a newly formed unit of Ustaša army massacred the largely Serbian thorp of Gudovac near Bjelovar.

The Jasenovac complex of five concentration camps would become the place of murder of several hundred thousand people (some estimate that this camp was the third largest camp of WWII); The overall Ustaša death count is estimated at around 400,000 people, but all written records were destroyed to cover it up.

Displacement of people within NDH

A large number of people were displaced internally due to fighting as well as from external sources. The NDH also had to accepted more than 200,000 Slovenian refugees which were forcefully evicted from their homes as part of the German plan of annexing parts of the Slovenian teritories. As part of this deal the Ustaše were to deport 200,000 Serbs from Croatia military, however only 182,000 were deported due to the German high commander Bader stopping this mass transport of people because of the chetnick and partizan uprising in Serbia. Because of this 25,000 Slovenian refugees ended in Serbia.

Political and civilian life in the NDH

The previously important civic factors, the Peasant Party (HSS) and the Catholic Church, were reasonably uninvolved in the creation and maintenance of the Independent State of Croatia. All who opposed and/or threatened the Ustaše were eventually outlawed.

The Ustaša government tried to convene the Croatian Parliament (as Hrvatski državni Sabor NDH) in 1942, with a manually selected list of deputies, but after three short sessions, this mock parliament ceased operation by the end of the same year.

The HSS was banned on June 11, 1941 in an attempt of the Ustaše to take their place as the primary representative of the Croatian peasantry. Vladko Maček was sent to Jasenovac concentration camp, but later released to serve a house arrest sentence due to his popularity among the people. Maček was later again called upon by the foreigners to take a stand and counteract the Pavelić government, but refused.

The Catholic Church participated in religious conversions at first, but eventually the main branches of the Church stopped doing so, as it became obvious that these conversions were merely a lesser form of punishment for the undesirable population. Nevertheless, a number of priests joined the Ustaša ranks. (See also: Involvement of Croatian Catholic clergy with the Ustaša regime.)

End of the war

In August of 1944 there was an attempt by foreign Minister in NDH government Mladen Lorković and Minister of War Ante Vokić to execute a coup d'etat against Ante Pavelić. The coup (called Lorković-Vokić coup) failed and conspirators were executed.

The NDH army held its lines as it withdrew towards Zagreb with German and Cossak troops by early 1945, and even continued fighting for a week after the German surrender on May 9th, 1945. They were soon overpowered and the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) effectively ceased to exist in May 1945, near the end of the war. The advance of Tito's partisan forces, joined by the Soviet Red Army, caused mass retreat of the Ustaše towards Austria.

In May 1945, a large column composed of anti-communists, Ustaša followers, NDH Army troops and civilians retreated away from the Partisan forces, heading northwest towards Italy and Austria. Ante Pavelić detached from the group and fled to Austria, Italy and finally Argentina. The rest of the group, consisting of over 150,000 soldiers (including Cossak troops) and civilians negotiated passage with the British forces on the Austrian side of the Austrian-Slovenian border. Unfortunately the British Army then turned over the overwhelming majority to the Partisan forces. Most did not survive the return journey.

During the Tito's Yugoslavia, many Croatian Nationalists were executed or imprisoned (the Lepoglava jail and Goli Otok were the most notorious). The expression of Croat nationalist ideas (and any other nationalist ideas) in SFRJ became illegal.

Today, this monument stands just south of Srb commemorating the battle which ensued.

References

Hermann Neubacher: Sonderauftrag Suedost 1940-1945, Bericht eines fliegendes Diplomaten, 2. durchgesehene Auflage, Goettingen 1956

Ladislaus Hory and Martin Broszat: Der Kroatische Ustascha-Staat, 1941-1945 Stuttgart, 1964

Encyclopedia Britannica, 1943 - Book of the year, page 215, Entry: Croatia

Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations, Europe, edition 1995, page 91, entry: Croatia

Encyclopaedia Britannica, Edition 1991, Macropedia, Vol. 29, page 1111.

Helen Fein: Accounting for Genocide - Victims and Survivors of the Holocaust, The Free Press, New York, Edition 1979, pages 102, 103.

Alfio Russo: Revoluzione in Jugoslavia, Roma 1944.

Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Vol. 2, Independent State of Croatia entry.

External links