title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: Tank started looking at ways to address the altitude performance problem early in the program. In 1941, he proposed a number of versions featuring new powerplants, and he suggested using turbochargers in place of superchargers. Three such installations were outlined


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: The Fw 190 participated on every major combat front where the Luftwaffe operated after 1941, and did so with success in a variety of roles. The Fw 190 first tasted combat on the Western Front in August 1941, where it proved superior to the Mk V Spitfire. The Spitfire's main advantage over the Fw 190, and the Bf 109 as well, was its superior turn radius. Beyond that, the Fw 190 outperformed the Spitfire Mk. V in most areas, such as roll rate, speed, acceleration, and dive performance. The addition of the Fw 190 to the Jagdwaffe allowed the Germans to fight off RAF attacks and achieve local air superiority over German skies until the summer of 1942, when the improved Spitfire Mk. IX was introduced. In June 1942, Oberleutnant Armin Faber of JG 2 landed his Fw 190 A-3 at a British airfield, allowing the RAF to test the Mk. IX against the 190 and learn tactics to counter it.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: A Focke-Wulf plant east of Marienburg was bombed by the Eighth Air Force on 9 October 1944. In addition, one of the most important sub-contractors for the radial-engined Fw 190s was AGO Flugzeugwerke, which from 1941 through to the end of the war produced enough Fw 190s to earn it major attention from the USAAF, with the AGO plant in Oschersleben being attacked at least five times during the war from 1943 onwards.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: In 1997 a German company, Flug Werk GmbH, began manufacturing new Fw 190 models as reproductions. By 2012, 20 had been produced, most flyable, a few as static display models, with airworthy examples usually powered by Chinese-manufactured Shvetsov ASh-82 twin-row, 14-cylinder radial powerplants, which have a displacement of 41.2 litres, close to the BMW 801's 41.8 litres, with the same engine cylinder arrangement and number of cylinders.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: The nearly intact wreck of an Fw 190 A-5/U3 ( 151 227) that had crashed in a marsh in a forest near Leningrad, Soviet Union, 1943 was located in 1989. After restoration in the US, the Fw 190 flew again (with the original BMW 801 powerplant) on 1 December 2010. Following the successful test flight, the aircraft was then trucked up to the Flying Heritage & Combat Armor Museum in Everett, Washington, where it was reassembled in April 2011 and returned to airworthy condition.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: At least five surviving Fw 190A radial-engined aircraft are known to have been assigned to the Luftwaffe's JG 5 wing in Herdla, Norway. More German fighter aircraft on display in museums in the 21st century have originated from this unit than from any other Axis Powers' military aviation unit of World War II.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: The Turkish Air Force retired all of its Fw 190A-3 fleet at the end of 1947 mostly because of a lack of spare parts. It is rumored that American-Turkish bilateral agreements required retiring and scrapping of all German-origin aircraft, although that requirement did not exist for any other country. According to the "Hürriyet Daily News", all of the retired Fw 190s were saved from scrapping by wrapping them with protective cloths and burying them in the soil near the Aviation Supply and Maintenance Center at Kayseri. All attempts to locate and recover the aircraft have been unsuccessful, which suggests the story is probably a hoax or myth.


title: Ustaše

text: The Ustaše (), also known by anglicised versions Ustasha or Ustashe, was a Croatian fascist and ultranationalist organization active, as one organization, between 1929 and 1945, formally known as the Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Movement (). Its members murdered hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, and Roma as well as political dissidents in Yugoslavia during World War II.


title: Ustaše

text: The ideology of the movement was a blend of fascism, Roman Catholicism and Croatian ultranationalism. The Ustaše supported the creation of a Greater Croatia that would span the Drina River and extend to the border of Belgrade. The movement emphasized the need for a racially "pure" Croatia and promoted genocide against Serbs—due to the Ustaše's beliefs grounded in anti-Serb sentiment—and Jews and Roma via Nazi racial theory, and persecution of anti-fascist or dissident Croats and Bosniaks. The Ustaše viewed the Bosniaks as "Muslim Croats", and as a result, Bosniaks were not persecuted on the basis of race.


title: Ustaše

text: The Ustaše espoused Roman Catholicism and Islam as the religions of the Croats and condemned Orthodox Christianity, which was the main religion of the Serbs. Roman Catholicism was identified with Croatian nationalism, while Islam, which had a large following in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was praised by the Ustaše as the religion that "keeps true the blood of Croats."


title: Ustaše

text: It was founded as a nationalist organization that sought to create an independent Croatian state and functioned as a terrorist organization before World War II. In April 1941, the Ustaše came to power when they were appointed to rule a part of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia as the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), a quasi-protectorate puppet state established by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. The Ustaše Militia () became its military wing in the new state. The Ustaše regime was backed by parts of the Croat population that during the interwar period had felt oppressed in the Serb-led Yugoslavia, but their brutal policies quickly alienated many ordinary Croats and resulted in a loss of the support they had gained by creating a Croat national state. As a consequence, they did not accrue support from the majority of the populace.


title: Ustaše

text: With the German surrender, end of World War II, and the establishment of socialist Yugoslavia in 1945, the Ustaše movement, along with their state, totally collapsed. Many members of the Ustaše Militia and Croatian Home Guard were subsequently massacred by the new government in the Bleiburg repatriations. Underground and exile successor organisations, such as the Crusaders guerrilla and Croatian Liberation Movement were created by former Ustaše members and tried to continue the movement, without results.


title: Ustaše

text: The word "ustaša" (plural: "ustaše") is derived from the intransitive verb "ustati" (Croatian for "rise up"). "" () was a military rank in the Imperial Croatian Home Guard (1868–1918). The same term was the name of Croatian third-class infantry regiments () during World War I (1914–1918). Another variation of the word "ustati" is "ustanik" (plural: "ustanici") which means an insurgent, or a rebel. The name "ustaša" did not have fascist connotations during the early years of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as the term "ustat" was itself used in Herzegovina to denote the insurgents from the Herzegovinian rebellion of 1875. The full original name of the organization appeared in April 1931 as the or UHRO (Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Organization); in 1933 it was renamed the (Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Movement), a name it kept until World War II. In English, Ustasha, Ustashe, Ustashas and Ustashi are used for the movement or its members.


title: Ustaše

text: One of the major ideological influences on the Croatian nationalism of the Ustaše was 19th century Croatian activist Ante Starčević, an advocate of Croatian unity and independence, who was both anti-Habsburg and anti-Serbian in outlook.


title: Ustaše

text: He envisioned the creation of a Greater Croatia that would include territories inhabited by Bosniaks, Serbs, and Slovenes, considering Bosniaks and Serbs to be Croats who had been converted to Islam and Orthodox Christianity, while considering the Slovenes to be "mountain Croats". Starčević argued that the large Serb presence in territories claimed by a Greater Croatia was the result of recent settlement, encouraged by Habsburg rulers, and the influx of groups like Vlachs who took up Orthodox Christianity and identified themselves as Serbs. Starčević admired Bosniaks because in his view they were Croats who had adopted Islam in order to preserve the economic and political autonomy of Bosnia and Croatia under the Ottoman occupation.


title: Ustaše

text: The Ustaše used Starčević's theories to promote the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Croatia and recognized Croatia as having two major ethnocultural components: Catholics and Muslims. The Ustaše sought to represent Starčević as being connected to their views. Josip Frank seceded his extreme fraction from Starčević's Party of Rights and formed his own, the Pure Party of Rights, which became the main pool of members of the subsequent Ustaše movement. Historian John Paul Newman stated that Austro-Hungarian officers' "unfaltering opposition to Yugoslavia provided a blueprint for the Croatian radical right, the Ustaše".


title: Ustaše

text: The Ustaše promoted the theories of Dr Milan Šufflay, who is believed to have claimed that Croatia had been "one of the strongest ramparts of Western civilization for many centuries", which he claimed had been lost through its union with Serbia when the nation of Yugoslavia was formed in 1918. Šufflay was killed in Zagreb in 1931 by government supporters.


title: Ustaše

text: The Ustaše accepted the 1935 thesis by Father Krunoslav Draganović, a Catholic priest who claimed that many Catholics in southern Herzegovina had been converted to Orthodox Christianity in the 16th and 17th centuries, in order to justify a policy of forcible conversion of Orthodox Christians in the area to Catholicism.


title: Ustaše

text: The Ustaše were heavily influenced by Nazism and fascism. Its leader, Ante Pavelić, held the position of "Poglavnik", which was based on the similar positions of "Duce" held by Benito Mussolini and "Führer" held by Adolf Hitler. The Ustaše, like fascists, promoted a corporatist economy. Pavelić and the Ustaše were allowed sanctuary in Italy by Mussolini after being exiled from Yugoslavia. Pavelić had been in negotiations with Fascist Italy since 1927 that included advocating a territory-for-sovereignty swap in which he would tolerate Italy annexing its claimed territory in Dalmatia in exchange for Italy supporting the sovereignty of an independent Croatia. The Ustaše ideology has also been characterized as clerical fascism by several authors, who emphasize the importance the movement attached to Roman Catholicism.


title: Ustaše

text: Mussolini's support of the Ustaše was based on pragmatic considerations, such as maximizing Italian influence in the Balkans and the Adriatic. After 1937, with the weakening of French influence in Europe following Germany's remilitarization of the Rhineland and with the rise of a quasi-fascist government in Yugoslavia under Milan Stojadinović, Mussolini abandoned support for the Ustaše from 1937 to 1939 and sought to improve relations with Yugoslavia, fearing that continued hostility towards Yugoslavia would result in Yugoslavia entering Germany's sphere of influence.


title: Ustaše

text: The collapse of the quasi-fascist Stojadinović regime resulted in Italy restoring its support for the Ustaše, whose aim was to create an independent Croatia in personal union with Italy. However, distrust of the Ustaše grew. Mussolini's son-in-law and Italian foreign minister Count Galeazzo Ciano noted in his diary that "The Duce is indignant with Pavelić, because he claims that the Croats are descendants of the Goths. This will have the effect of bringing them into the German orbit".


title: Ustaše

text: Hungary strongly supported the Ustaše for two aims. One, in order to weaken Yugoslavia, Little Entente, in order to ultimately regain some of its lost territories. The other, Hungary also wished to establish later in the future a strong alliance with the Independent State of Croatia and possibly enter a personal union.


title: Ustaše

text: Nazi Germany initially didn't support an independent Croatia, nor did it support the Ustaše, with Hitler stressing the importance of a "strong and united Yugoslavia". Nazi officials, including Hermann Göring, wanted Yugoslavia stable and officially neutral during the war so Germany could continue to securely gain Yugoslavia's raw material exports. The Nazis grew irritated with the Ustaše, among them Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler, who was dissatisfied with the lack of full compliance by the NDH to the Nazis' agenda of extermination of the Jews, as the Ustaše permitted Jews who converted to Catholicism to be recognized as "honorary Croats", thus putatively exempt from persecution.


title: Ustaše

text: In 1932, an editorial in the first issue of the "Ustaše" newspaper, signed by the Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić, proclaimed that violence and terror would be the main means for the Ustaše to attain their goals:The KNIFE, REVOLVER, MACHINE GUN and TIME BOMB; these are the idols, these are bells that will announce the dawning and THE RESURRECTION OF THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF CROATIA.


title: Ustaše

text: In 1933, the Ustaše presented "The Seventeen Principles" that formed the official ideology of the movement. The Principles stated the uniqueness of the Croatian nation, promoted collective rights over individual rights and declared that people who were not Croat by "blood" would be excluded from political life.


title: Ustaše

text: Those considered "undesirables" were subjected to mass murder. These principles called for the creation of a new economic system that would be neither capitalist nor communist and which emphasized the importance of the Roman Catholic Church and the patriarchial family as means to maintain social order and morality. (The name given by modern historian to this particular aspect of Ustaše ideology varies; "national Catholicism", "political Catholicism" and "Catholic Croatism" have been proposed among others.) In power, the Ustaše banned contraception and tightened laws against blasphemy.


title: Ustaše

text: The Ustaše accepted that Croats are part of the Dinaric race, but rejected the idea that Croats are primarily Slavic, claiming they are primarily descended from Germanic roots with the Goths. The Ustaše believed that a government must naturally be strong and authoritarian. The movement opposed parliamentary democracy for being "corrupt" and Marxism and Bolshevism for interfering in family life and the economy and for their materialism. The Ustaše considered competing political parties and elected parliaments to be harmful to its own interests.


title: Ustaše

text: The Ustaše recognized both Roman Catholicism and Islam as national religions of the Croatian people but initially rejected Orthodox Christianity as being incompatible with their objectives. Although the Ustaše emphasized religious themes, it stressed that duty to the nation took precedence over religious custom.


title: Ustaše

text: In power, the Ustaše banned the use of the term "Serbian Orthodox faith", requiring "Greek-Eastern faith" in its place. The Ustaše forcefully converted many Orthodox to Catholicism, murdered and expelled 85% of Orthodox priests, and plundered and burnt many Orthodox Christian churches. The Ustaše also persecuted Old Catholics who did not recognize papal infallibility. On 2 July 1942 the Croatian Orthodox Church was founded, as a further means to destroy the Serbian Orthodox Church, but this new Church gained very few followers.


title: Ustaše

text: The Ustaše attached conditions to the Croatian citizenship of Muslims, such as asserting that a Muslim who supported Yugoslavia would not be considered a Croat nor a citizen but would instead be considered a "Muslim Serb" who could be denied property and imprisoned. The Ustaše claimed that such "Muslim Serbs" had to earn Croat status.


title: Ustaše

text: While initial focus was against Serbs, as the Ustaše grew closer to the Nazis they adopted antisemitism. In 1936, in "The Croat Question", Ante Pavelić placed Jews third among "the Enemies of the Croats" (after Serbs and Freemasons, but before Communists): writing:″Today, practically all finance and nearly all commerce in Croatia is in Jewish hands. This became possible only through the support of the state, which thereby seeks, on one hand, to strengthen the pro-Serbian Jews, and on the other, to weaken Croat national strength. The Jews celebrated the establishment of the so-called Yugoslav state with great joy, because a national Croatia could never be as useful to them as a multi-national Yugoslavia; for in national chaos lies the power of the Jews... In fact, as the Jews had foreseen, Yugoslavia became, in consequence of the corruption of official life in Serbia, a true Eldorado of Jewry."


title: Ustaše

text: Once in power, the Ustaše immediately introduced a series of Nazi-style Racial Laws. On 30 April 1941, the Ustaše proclaimed the "Legal Decree on Racial Origins", the "Legal Decree on the Protection of Aryan Blood and the Honor of the Croatian People", and the "Legal Provision on Citizenship". These decrees defined who was a Jew, and took away the citizenship rights of all non-Aryans, i.e. Jews and Roma. By the end of April 1941, months before the Nazis implemented similar measures in Germany and over a year after being implemented in occupied Poland, the Ustaše required all Jews to wear insignia, typically a yellow Star of David. The Ustaše declared the "Legal Provision on the Nationalization of the Property of Jews and Jewish Companies", on 10 October 1941, and with it they confiscated all Jewish property.


title: Ustaše

text: Already on their first day, 10–11 April 1941, Ustaše arrested a group of prominent Zagreb Jews and held them for ransom. On 13 April the same was done in Osijek, where Ustaše and Volksdeutscher mobs also destroyed the synagogue and Jewish graveyard. This process was repeated multiple times in 1941 with groups of Jews. Simultaneously, the Ustaše initiated extensive antisemitic propaganda, with Ustaše papers writing that Croatians must "be more alert than any other ethnic group to protect their racial purity, ... We need to keep our blood clean of the Jews". They also wrote that Jews are synonymous with "treachery, cheating, greed, immorality and foreigness", and therefore "wide swaths of the Croatian people always despised the Jews and felt towards them natural revulsion".


title: Ustaše

text: In May 1941, the Ustaše rounded up 165 Jewish youth in Zagreb, members of the Jewish sports club Makabi, and sent them to the Danica concentration camp (all but 3 were later killed by the Ustaše). The Ustaše sent most Jews to Ustaše and Nazi concentration camps—including the notorious, Ustaše-run Jasenovac concentration camp—where nearly 32,000, or 80% of the Jews in the Independent State of Croatia, were exterminated. In October 1941, the Ustaše mayor of Zagreb ordered the demolition of the Zagreb Synagogue, which was completely demolished by April 1942. The Ustaše persecuted Jews who practiced Judaism but authorized Jewish converts to Catholicism to be recognized as Croatian citizens and be given honorary Aryan citizenship that allowed them to be reinstated at the jobs from which they had previously been separated. After they stripped Jews of their citizenship rights, the Ustaše allowed some to apply for Aryan rights via bribes and/or through connections to prominent Ustaše. The whole process was highly arbitrary. Only 2% of Zagreb's Jews were granted Aryan rights, for example. Also, Aryan rights did not guarantee permanent protection from being sent to concentration camps or other persecution.


title: Ustaše

text: Economically, the Ustaše supported the creation of a corporatist economy. The movement believed that natural rights existed to private property and ownership over small-scale means of production free from state control. Armed struggle, revenge and terrorism were glorified by the Ustaše.


title: Ustaše

text: The Ustaše introduced widespread measures, to which many Croats themselves fell victim. Jozo Tomasevich in his book "War and Revolution in Yugoslavia: 1941-1945", states that "never before in history had Croats been exposed to such legalized administrative, police and judicial brutality and abuse as during the Ustaša regime." Decrees enacted by the regime formed the basis that allowed it to get rid of all unwanted employees in state and local government and in state enterprises, the "unwanted" being all Jews, Serbs and Yugoslav-oriented Croats who were all thrown out except for some deemed specifically needed by the government. This would leave a multitude of jobs to be filled by Ustašes and pro-Ustaše adherents and would lead to government jobs being filled by people with no professional qualifications.


title: Ustaše

text: During the 1920s, Ante Pavelić, lawyer, politician and one of the followers of Josip Frank's Pure Party of Rights, became the leading advocate of Croatian independence. In 1927, he secretly contacted Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy and founder of fascism, and presented his separatist ideas to him. Pavelić proposed an independent Greater Croatia that should cover the entire historical and ethnic area of the Croats. Historian Rory Yeomans claimed that as early as 1928, there are signs that Pavelić was considering the formation of a nationalist insurgency group.


title: Ustaše

text: In October 1928, after the assassination of leading Croatian politician Stjepan Radić, (Croatian Peasant Party President in the Yugoslav Assembly) by radical Montenegrin politician Puniša Račić, a youth group named the Croat Youth Movement was founded by Branimir Jelić at the University of Zagreb. A year later Ante Pavelić was invited by the 21-year-old Jelić into the organization as a junior member. A related movement, the Domobranski Pokret—which had been the name of the legal Croatian army in Austria-Hungary—began publication of "Hrvatski Domobran", a newspaper dedicated to Croatian national matters. The Ustaše sent "Hrvatski Domobran" to the United States to garner support for them from Croatian-Americans. The organization around the "Domobran" tried to engage with and radicalize moderate Croats, using Radić's assassination to stir up emotions within the divided country. By 1929 two divergent Croatian political streams had formed: those who supported Pavelić's view that only violence could secure Croatia's national interests, and the Croatian Peasant Party, led then by Vladko Maček, successor to Stjepan Radić, which had much greater support among Croats.


title: Ustaše

text: Various members of the Croatian Party of Rights contributed to the writing of the "Domobran", until around Christmas 1928 when the newspaper was banned by authorities of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In January 1929 the king banned all national parties, and the radical wing of the Party of Rights was exiled, including Pavelić, Jelić and Gustav Perčec. This group was later joined by several other Croatian exiles. On 22 March 1929 Zvonimir Pospišil and Mijo Babić murdered Toni Šlegel, the chief editor of newspaper "Novosti" from Zagreb and president of "Jugoštampa", which was the beginning of the terrorist actions of Ustaše. On 20 April 1929 Pavelić and others co-signed a declaration in Sofia, Bulgaria, with members of the Macedonian National Committee, asserting that they would pursue "their legal activities for the establishment of human and national rights, political freedom and complete independence for both Croatia and Macedonia". The Court for the Preservation of the State in Belgrade sentenced Pavelić and Perčec to death on 17 July 1929.


title: Ustaše

text: The exiles started organizing support for their cause among the Croatian diaspora in Europe, as well as North and South America. In January 1932 they named their revolutionary organization ""Ustaša"". The Ustaše carried out terrorist acts, to cause as much damage as possible to Yugoslavia. From their training camps in fascist Italy and Hungary, they planted time bombs on international trains bound for Yugoslavia, causing deaths and material damage. In November 1932 ten Ustaše, led by Andrija Artuković and supported by four local sympathizers, attacked a gendarme outpost at Brušani in the Lika/Velebit area, in an apparent attempt to intimidate the Yugoslav authorities. The incident has sometimes been termed the "Velebit uprising".


title: Ustaše

text: The Ustaše's most famous terrorist act was carried out on 9 October 1934, when working with the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), they assassinated King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in Marseille, France. The perpetrator, a Bulgarian revolutionary, Vlado Chernozemski, was killed by French police. Three Ustaše members who had been waiting at different locations for the king—Mijo Kralj, Zvonimir Pospišil and Milan Rajić—were captured and sentenced to life imprisonment by a French court.


title: Ustaše

text: Ante Pavelić, along with Eugen Kvaternik and Ivan Perčević, were subsequently sentenced to death "in absentia" by a French court, as the real organizers of the deed. The Ustaše believed that the assassination of King Alexander had effectively "broken the backbone of Yugoslavia" and that it was their "most important achievement."


title: Ustaše

text: Soon after the assassination, all organizations related to the Ustaše as well as the "Hrvatski Domobran", which continued as a civil organization, were banned throughout Europe. Under pressure from France, the Italian police arrested Pavelić and several Ustaše emigrants in October 1934. Pavelić was imprisoned in Turin and released in March 1936. After he met with Eugen Dido Kvaternik, he stated that assassination was "the only language Serbs understand". While in prison, Pavelić was informed of the 1935 election in Yugoslavia, when the coalition led by Croat Vladko Maček won. He stated that his victory was aided by the activity of Ustaše. By the mid-1930s, graffiti with the initials "ŽAP" meaning "Long live Ante Pavelić" () had begun to appear on the streets of Zagreb. During the 1930s, a split developed between the "home" "Ustaše" members who stayed behind in Croatia and Bosnia to struggle against Yugoslavia and the "emigre" "Ustaše" who went abroad. The "emigre" "Ustaše" who had a much lower educational level were viewed as violent, ignorant and fanatical by the "home" "Ustaše" while the "home" "Ustaše" were dismissed as "soft" by the "emigres" who saw themselves as a "warrior-elite".


title: Ustaše

text: After March 1937, when Italy and Yugoslavia signed a pact of friendship, Ustaše and their activities were banned, which attracted the attention of young Croats, especially university students, who would become sympathizers or members. In 1936, the Yugoslav government offered amnesty to those "Ustaše" abroad provided they promised to renounce violence; many of the "emigres" accepted the amnesty and returned home to continue the struggle.  In the late 1930s, the "Ustaše" started to infiltrate the para-military organizations of the Croat Peasant Party, the Croatian Defense Force and the Peasant Civil Party. At the University of Zagreb, an "Ustaše"-linked student group become the largest single student group by 1939. In February 1939 two returnees from detention, Mile Budak and Ivan Oršanić, became editors of the pro-Ustaše journal "Hrvatski narod", known in English as "The Croatian Nation".


title: Ustaše

text: The Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941. Vladko Maček, the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS), which was the most influential party in Croatia at the time, rejected German offers to lead the new government. On 10 April the most senior home-based Ustaše, Slavko Kvaternik, took control of the police in Zagreb and in a radio broadcast that day proclaimed the formation of the Independent State of Croatia ("Nezavisna Država Hrvatska", NDH). The name of the state was an attempt to capitalise on the Croat struggle for independence. Maček issued a statement that day, calling on all Croatians to cooperate with the new authorities.


title: Ustaše

text: Meanwhile, Pavelić and several hundred Ustaše left their camps in Italy for Zagreb, where he declared a new government on 16 April 1941. He accorded himself the title of "Poglavnik"—a Croatian approximation to "Führer". The Independent State of Croatia was declared on Croatian "ethnic and historical territory", what is today Republic of Croatia (without Istria), Bosnia and Herzegovina, Syrmia and the Bay of Kotor. However, a few days after the declaration of independence, the Ustaše were forced to sign the Treaty of Rome where they surrendered part of Dalmatia and Krk, Rab, Korčula, Biograd, Šibenik, Split, Čiovo, Šolta, Mljet and part of Konavle and the Bay of Kotor to Italy. "De facto" control over this territory varied for the majority of the war, as the Yugoslav Partisans grew more successful, while the Germans and Italians increasingly exercised direct control over areas of interest. The Germans and Italians split the NDH into two zones of influence, one in the southwest controlled by the Italians and the other in the northeast controlled by the Germans. As a result, the NDH has been described as "an Italian-German quasi-protectorate". In September 1943, after Italian capitulation, the NDH annexed the whole territory which was annexed by Italy according to Treaty of Rome.


title: Ustaše

text: The decline in support for the Ustaše regime among ethnic Croats of those initially for the government began with the ceding of Dalmatia to Italy, considered as the heartland of the state and worsened with the internal lawlessness from Ustaše persecutions.


title: Ustaše

text: The Army of the Independent State of Croatia was composed of enlistees who did not participate in Ustaše activities. The Ustaše Militia was organised in 1941 into five (later 15) 700-man battalions, two railway security battalions and the elite Black Legion and Poglavnik Bodyguard Battalion (later Brigade). They were predominantly recruited among uneducated population and working class.


title: Ustaše

text: On 27 April 1941 a newly formed unit of the Ustaše army killed members of the largely Serbian community of Gudovac, near Bjelovar. Eventually all who opposed and/or threatened the Ustaše were outlawed. The HSS was banned on 11 June 1941, in an attempt by the Ustaše to take their place as the primary representative of the Croatian peasantry. Vladko Maček was sent to the 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 foreigners to take a stand and oppose the Pavelić government, but refused. In early 1941 Jews and Serbs were ordered to leave certain areas of Zagreb.


title: Ustaše

text: In the months after Independent State of Croatia has been established, most of Ustaše groups were not under centralized control: besides 4,500 regular Ustaše Corps troops, there was some 25,000–30,0000 "Wild Ustaše" (hrv. "divlje ustaše"), boosted by government-controlled press as "peasant Ustaše" "begging" to be sent to fight enemies of the regime. After mass crimes against Serb populace committed during the Summer months of 1941, the regime decided to blame all the atrocities to the irregular Ustaše—thoroughly undisciplined and paid for the service only with the booty; authorities even sentenced to death and executed publicly in August and September 1941 many of them for unauthorized use of extreme violence against Serbs and Gypsies. To put an end to Wild Ustaše uncontrolled looting and killing, the central government used some 6,000 gendarmes and some 45,000 newly recruited members of regular "Domobranstvo" forces.


title: Ustaše

text: Pavelić first met with Adolf Hitler on 6 June 1941. Mile Budak, then a minister in Pavelić's government, publicly proclaimed the violent racial policy of the state on 22 July 1941. Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić, a chief of the secret police, started building concentration camps in the summer of the same year. Ustaše activities in villages across the Dinaric Alps led the Italians and the Germans to express their disquiet. According to writer/historian Srđa Trifković, as early as 10 July 1941 Wehrmacht Gen. Edmund Glaise von Horstenau reported the following to the German High Command, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW):Our troops have to be mute witnesses of such events; it does not reflect well on their otherwise high reputation. .. I am frequently told that German occupation troops would finally have to intervene against Ustaše crimes. This may happen eventually. Right now, with the available forces, I could not ask for such action. Ad hoc intervention in individual cases could make the German Army look responsible for countless crimes which it could not prevent in the past.


title: Ustaše

text: Historian Jonathan Steinberg describes Ustaše crimes against Serbian and Jewish civilians: "Serbian and Jewish men, women and children were literally hacked to death". Reflecting on the photos of Ustaše crimes taken by Italians, Steinberg writes: "There are photographs of Serbian women with breasts hacked off by pocket knives, men with eyes gouged out, emasculated and mutilated".


title: Ustaše

text: In September 1942 an Ustaše Defensive Brigade was formed, and during 1943 the Ustaše battalions were re-organised into eight four-battalion brigades (1st to 8th). In 1943 the Germans suffered major losses on the Eastern Front and the Italians signed an armistice with the Allies, leaving behind significant caches of arms which the Partisans would use.


title: Ustaše

text: By 1944 Pavelić was almost totally reliant on Ustaše units, now 100,000 strong, formed in Brigades 1 to 20, Recruit Training Brigades 21 to 24, three divisions, two railway brigades, one defensive brigade and the new Mobile Brigade. In November 1944 the army was effectively put under Ustaše control when the Armed Forces of the Independent State of Croatia were combined with the units of the Ustaše to form 18 divisions, comprising 13 infantry, two mountain and two assault divisions and one replacement division, each with its own organic artillery and other support units. There were several armored units.


title: Ustaše

text: Fighting continued for a short while after the formal surrender of German Army Group E on 9 May 1945, as Pavelić ordered the NDH forces to attempt to escape to Austria, together with a large number of civilians. The Battle of Poljana, between a mixed German and Ustaše column and a Partisan force, was the last battle of World War II on European soil. Most of those fleeing, including both Ustaše and civilians, were handed over to the Partisans at Bleiburg and elsewhere on the Austrian border. Pavelić hid in Austria and Rome, with the help of Catholic clergy, later fleeing to Argentina.


title: Ustaše

text: After World War II, many of the Ustaše went underground or fled to countries such as Canada, Australia, Germany and some countries in South America, notably Argentina, with the assistance of Roman Catholic churches and their own grassroots supporters.


title: Ustaše

text: For several years some Ustaše tried to organize a resistance group called the Crusaders, but their efforts were largely foiled by the Yugoslav authorities. With the defeat of the Independent State of Croatia, the active movement went dormant. Infighting fragmented the surviving Ustaše. Pavelić formed the Croatian Liberation Movement, which drew in several of the former state's leaders. Vjekoslav Vrančić founded a reformed Croatian Liberation Movement and was its leader. Maks Luburić formed the Croatian National Resistance. Branimir Jelić founded the Croatian National Committee. Former Crusader and Ustaša mobile police officer, Srecko Rover, helped establish Ustaše groups in Australia.


title: Ustaše

text: Blagoje Jovović, a Montenegrin, shot Pavelić near Buenos Aires on 9 April 1957; Pavelić later died of his injuries.


title: Ustaše

text: The Ustaše intended to create an ethnically "pure" Croatia, and they viewed the Serbs living in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina as the biggest obstacle to this goal. Ustaše ministers Mile Budak, Mirko Puk and Milovan Žanić declared in May 1941 that the goal of the new Ustaše policy was an ethnically pure Croatia. The strategy to achieve their goal was:


title: Ustaše

text: The NDH government cooperated with Nazi Germany in the Holocaust and exercised their own version of the genocide against Serbs, Jews and Roma (aka "gypsies") inside its borders. State policy towards Serbs had first been declared in the words of Milovan Žanić, a minister of the NDH Legislative council, on 2 May 1941:


title: Ustaše

text: This country can only be a Croatian country, and there is no method we would hesitate to use in order to make it truly Croatian and cleanse it of Serbs, who have for centuries endangered us and who will endanger us again if they are given the opportunity.


title: Ustaše

text: The Ustaše enacted race laws patterned after those of the Third Reich, which persecuted Jews, Romani and Serbs, who were collectively declared to be enemies of the Croatian people. Serbs, Jews, Roma and Croatian and Bosniak dissidents, including Communists, were interned in concentration camps, the largest of which was Jasenovac. By the end of the war the Ustaše, under Pavelić's leadership, had exterminated an estimated 30,000 Jews and 26–29,000 Roma, while the number of Serb victims ranges as low as 200,000 to as high as 500,000 with historians generally listing between 300,000 and 350,000 deaths.


title: Ustaše

text: The history textbooks in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia cited 700,000 as the total number of victims at Jasenovac. This was promulgated from a 1946 calculation of the demographic loss of population (the difference between the actual number of people after the war and the number that would have been, had the pre-war growth trend continued). After that, it was used by Edvard Kardelj and Moša Pijade in the Yugoslav war reparations claim sent to Germany. In its entry on Jasenovac, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum says:


title: Ustaše

text: Determining the number of victims is highly problematic, due to the destruction of many relevant documents, the long-term inaccessibility to independent scholars of those documents that survived, and the ideological agendas of postwar partisan scholarship and journalism, which has been and remains influenced by ethnic tension, religious prejudice, and ideological conflict.The Ustaše murdered between 320,000 and 340,000 ethnic Serb residents of Croatia and Bosnia during the period of Ustaša rule; more than 30,000 Croatian Jews were killed either in Croatia or at Auschwitz-Birkenau.


title: Ustaše

text: The USHMM notes that estimates on the number of Serb victims, the Ustaše's primary victims, vary tremendously and that "the most reliable figures place the number between 330,000 and 390,000, with 45,000 to 52,000 Serbs murdered in Jasenovac."


title: Ustaše

text: The Jasenovac Memorial Area maintains a list of 83,145 names of Jasenovac victims that was gathered by government officials in Belgrade in 1964, as well as names and biographical data for the victims identified in recent inquiries. As the gathering process was imperfect, they estimated that the list represented between 60%–75% of the total victims, putting the number of killed in that complex at between roughly 80,000–100,000. The previous head of the Memorial Area Simo Brdar estimated at least 365,000 dead at Jasenovac. The analyses of statisticians Vladimir Žerjavić and Bogoljub Kočović were similar to those of the Memorial Area. In all of Yugoslavia, the estimated number of Serb deaths was 487,000 according to Kočović, and 530,000 according to Žerjavić, out of a total of 1.014 million or 1.027 million deaths (respectively). Žerjavić further stated there were 197,000 Serb civilians killed in NDH (78,000 as prisoners in Jasenovac and elsewhere) as well as 125,000 Serb combatants.


title: Ustaše

text: The Belgrade Museum of Holocaust compiled a list of over 77,000 names of Jasenovac victims. It was previously headed by Milan Bulajić, who supported the claim of a total of 700,000 victims. The current administration of the Museum has further expanded the list to include a bit over 80,000 names. During World War II various German military commanders and civilian authorities gave different figures for the number of Serbs, Jews and others killed inside the territory of the Independent State of Croatia. Historian Prof. Jozo Tomasevich has posited that some of these figures may have been a "deliberate exaggeration" fostered to create further hostility between Serbs and Croats so that they would not unite in resisting the Axis. These figures included 400,000 Serbs (Alexander Löhr); 500,000 Serbs (Lothar Rendulic); 250,000 to March 1943 (Edmund Glaise von Horstenau); more than "3/4 of a million Serbs" (Hermann Neubacher) in 1943; 600,000–700,000 in concentration camps until March 1944 (Ernst Fick); 700,000 (Massenbach).


title: Ustaše

text: These camps were closed by October 1942. The Jasenovac complex was built between August 1941 and February 1942. The first two camps, Krapje and Bročica, were closed in November 1941. The three newer camps continued to function until the end of the war:


title: Ustaše

text: Beyond mass killings in concentration camps, the Ustaše perpetrated many massacres of civilians in the field. The first mass killing of Serbs was carried out on 30 April 1941, when the Ustaše rounded up and killed 196 Serb villagers at Gudovac. Many other massacres soon followed, including at Blagaj, Glina, Korita, Nevesinje, Prebilovci, Metkovic, Otočac, Vočin, Šargovac, etc. Here is how the Croatian Catholic Bishop of Mostar, Alojzije Mišić, described the mass killings of Serb civilians just in one small area of Herzegovina, just during the first 6 months of the war:People were captured like beasts. Slaughtered, killed, thrown live into the abyss. Women, mothers with children, young women, girls and boys were thrown into pits. The vice-mayor of Mostar, Mr. Baljić, a Mohammedan, publicly states, although as an official he should be silent and not talk, that in Ljubinje alone 700 schismatics [i.e. Serb Orthodox Christians] were thrown into one pit. Six full train carriages of women, mothers and girls, children under age 10, were taken from Mostar and Čapljina to the Šurmanci station, where they were unloaded and taken into the hills, with live mothers and their children tossed down the cliffs. Everyone was tossed and killed. In the Klepci parish, from the surrounding villages, 3,700 schismatics were killed. Poor souls, they were calm. I will not enumerate further. I would go too far. In the city of Mostar, hundreds were tied up, taken outside the city and killed like animals.


title: Ustaše

text: German officers in Croatia and Bosnia repeatedly expressed abhorrence at Ustaše mass killings of Serbs, using words like “slaughter”, “atrocities”, “butchery” and “terror”, while citing hundreds of thousands of victims. Thus Major Walter Kleinenberger, officer with the 714th division, complained that Ustaše brutality “was in defiance of all laws of civilization. The Ustaše murder without exception men, women and children”. German Captain Konopatzki called the Ustaše Black Legion slaughter of Serb civilians in Eastern Bosnia “a new wave of butchery of innocents”. Ustaše “wholesale butchery” (Abschlachtung) of Serbs in Srem, in ISC-occupied Serbia, triggered German concerns of Serb uprisings. Lieutenant Colonel von Wedel wrote that in western Bosnia Ustaše killed women and children “like cattle” in a series of “bestial executions”. This is how Hitler's Plenipotentiary to Croatia, General von Horstanau, described the aftermath of slaughter committed by Jasenovac concentration camp guards in a nearby village:


title: Ustaše

text: The German military even took the extraordinary step of trying the Ustaše chaplain, Miroslav Filipović, for the massacre of 2,300 civilians in 3 villages around Banja Luka in February 1942, including 52 children at a school. On March 3, 1943, General von Horstanau, wrote "Thus far 250,000 Serbs have been killed". General Lothar Rendulić wrote how in August 1942 he remarked to an Ustaše official that he could not conceive how 500,000 Serbs had been killed, to which the Ustaše replied "Half-a-million is a slanderous accusation, the number is not higher than 200,000". Other German sources put the total Serb victim numbers in the ISC, as high as 600,000 to 700,000.


title: Ustaše

text: As part of their policy to eliminate Serbs entirely, by killing one-third, converting one-third and expelling one-third, the Ustaše conducted forcible conversions of Christian Orthodox Serbs to Catholicism, with the participation of Catholic priests. On occasion they used the prospect of conversion as a means to gather Serbs together so they could kill them, which is what occurred at Glina. On 18 May 1943, Archbishop Stepinac wrote a letter to the pope, in which he estimated 240,000 conversions to date. The Ustaše killed 157 Orthodox priests, among them 3 Serb Orthodox bishops (cutting the throat of the bishop of Banja Luka and killing the archbishop of Sarajevo), while they jailed and tortured the Orthodox archbishop of Zagreb. The Ustaše expelled to Serbia 327 Orthodox priests and one bishop, while 2 other bishops and 12 priests left on their own.


title: Ustaše

text: According to NDH laws only uneducated Serbs were eligible for conversion to Catholicism; educated people (merchants, intelligentia, and especially Orthodox clergy) were to be exterminated or expelled.


title: Ustaše

text: Thus 85% of the Orthodox priests in the Independent State of Croatia were either killed or expelled by the Ustaše, in order to "leave the Orthodox population without spiritual leadership so the Ustašas' policy of forced or fear-induced conversions to Catholicism would be easier to carry out" The Ustaše destroyed and desecrated numerous Orthodox Churches, forbade the Cyrillic script and Julian calendar (both used in the Orthodox Church), even prohibited the term "Serbian Orthodox Church". Orthodox schools were shut down, and the Church was prohibited from collecting contributions from believers, robbing it of income. Orthodox Church properties were confiscated by the Ustaše, some turned over to the Croatian Catholic Church. Finally, to destroy the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Ustaše tried to create its own alternative Croatian Orthodox Church with an imported Russian priest, but failed to gain adherents.


title: Ustaše

text: Despite these many actions by the Ustaše to destroy the Serbian Orthodox Church, the historian Jozo Tomasevich found no condemnations of these crimes, public or private, by Catholic Archbishop Stepinac or any other members of the Croatian Catholic Church. On the contrary, he states that this massive Ustaše attack on the Serbian Orthodox Church "was approved and supported by many Croatian Catholic priests", and that the Croatian Roman Catholic Church hierarchy and the Vatican "regarded Ustaše policies against the Serbs and Serbian Orthodox Church as advantageous to Roman Catholicism".


title: Ustaše

text: The historian Mark Biondich observes that the Catholic Church had historically been on the fringes of Croatian politics and public life, and that Church influence had further eroded during the interwar period due to the royal dictatorship and the popularity of the anti-clerical Croatian Peasant Party. During the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the Catholic Clergy was deeply dissatisfied with the regime: "... a massive press campaign was launched to mobilize Croatia's nearly three million Catholics against the central government's measures penalizing Saint Peter's apostolate. First of all its inequality in treatment was denounced: 'the budget for religion totals 141 million dinars, 70 of which go to the Serbian Church, and 34 to the Catholic one.(...) Pašić's government is kind in Serbia, where each citizen pays 55 dinars in yearly taxes, while it is cruel in Croatia and Slovenia, largely Catholic districts, where each citizen pays 165 dinars in taxes.'"


title: Ustaše

text: Croatian Catholic Church antagonism toward the Orthodox Church became an important part of Ustaše antagonism toward Serbs, with fateful consequences during the war. The Ustaše supported violent aggression or force to convert Serbo-Croatian speaking Orthodox believers to Roman Catholicism. The Ustaše held the position that Eastern Orthodoxy, as a symbol of Serbian nationalism, was their greatest foe and never recognized the existence of a Serb people on the territories of Croatia or Bosnia—they recognized only "Croats of the Eastern faith". Under the Ustaše policy of eliminating Serbs, the Catholic Church in Croatia participated in the forced conversion of Orthodox Serbs to Catholicism. However, even conversion did not necessarily protect Serbs and Jews from slaughter. Bishop Alojzije Mišić of Mostar described how while Serb converts to Catholicism "were at Church attending holy Mass, they (Ustaše) seized them, the young and the old, men and women, drove them like cattle...and soon sent them to eternity, "en masse"."


title: Ustaše

text: The Ustaše called Bosniaks "Croats of the Islamic faith" and in general tolerated Muslims; in turn the Bosniak community did not demonstrate any particular hostility to the Ustaše government. An important number of Muslim conscripts served in the armed forces of Independent State of Croatia, or in its police forces; only a very small number of Muslims served in the ranks of the communist Partisans until the closing days of the war. The October 12, 1941, Resolution of Sarajevo Muslims by 108 notable Muslim condemned Ustaše atrocities against Serbs.


title: Ustaše

text: On 28 April 1941, the head of the Catholic Church in Croatia, Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac, issued a public letter in support of the new Independent State of Croatia (under Ustaše-led government), and asked the clergy to pray for its leader, Ante Pavelić. This despite the fact that the Ustaše had already proclaimed measures prohibiting Serbs, Jews and Gipsies to serve as policemen, judges and soldiers, and making easy for the state officials to fire members of those ethnic/religious groups from the public administration, and he knew they were preparing Nazi-style racial laws, which Pavelić signed only 2 days after.


title: Ustaše

text: While Stepinac later objected to certain Ustaše policies and helped some Jews and Serbs, he continued to publicly support the survival of Independent State of Croatia until its very end, served as the state's War Vicar, and in 1944 received a medal from Pavelić. During the ongoing war, Stepinac publicly objected Ustaše policies—in fact, as regards for the relations with head of the Ustaše regime Ante Pavelić, "it is generally agreed that they thoroughly hated each other... archbishop also opposed Fascist and Nazi ideologies, especially Nazi racist ideology, and many Ustasha policies", unlike some other members of the Croatian Catholic clergy. According to Historian Martin Gilbert, "Aloysius Stepinac, who in 1941 had welcomed Croat independence, subsequently condemned Croat atrocities against both Serbs and Jews, and himself saved a group of Jews in an old age home."


title: Ustaše

text: The vast majority of the Catholic clergy in Croatia supported the Ustaše at the moment they succeeded in forming Independent State of Croatia; but later when it was clear the Allies would win, the Catholic hierarchy tried to distance the Church from the regime which involved itself in various abuses and war crimes. Yet in its pastoral letter of 24 March 1945, the Croatian Catholic Church still proclaimed its support for the puppet state and its rulers, despite the fact that most senior regime figures were preparing to flee the country. The Catholic press also maintained its support of Pavelić right to the end, and Stepinac himself performed a final Te Deum to the NDH on the anniversary of its founding, on 10 April 1945, while the NDH was carrying out the final mass killings to liquidate the Jasenovac concentration camp.


title: Ustaše

text: Some priests, mostly Franciscans, particularly in, but not limited to, Herzegovina and Bosnia, took part in the atrocities themselves. Priests like Ivan Guberina served as Pavelić's bodyguards, while Dionizije Juričev, responsible for the forced conversion of Serbs in the Ustaše government, wrote that it was no longer a crime to kill seven-year-olds if they stood in the way of the Ustaše movement. In his diocesan newspaper, the Archbishop of Sarajevo, Ivan Šarić, published that the "liberation of the world from the Jews is a movement for the renewal of humanity". In Bosnia the Ustaše largely ruled through the Catholic clergy, with the priest Božidar Bralo serving as a chief Ustaše delegate for Bosnia.


title: Ustaše

text: Miroslav Filipović was a Franciscan friar (from the Petrićevac monastery) who allegedly joined the Ustaše as chaplain and, on 7 February 1942, joined in the massacre of roughly 2730 Serbs of the nearby villages, including some 500 children. He was allegedly subsequently dismissed from his order and defrocked, although he wore his clerical garb when he was hanged for war crimes. He became Chief Guard of Jasenovac concentration camp where he was nicknamed ""Fra Sotona"" (Father Satan) by fellow Croats. Mladen Lorković, the Croat minister of foreign affairs, formulated it like this: ""In Croatia, we can find few real Serbs. The majority of Pravoslavs are as a matter of fact Croats who were forced by foreign invaders to accept the infidel faith. Now it's our duty to bring them back into the Roman Catholic fold.""


title: Ustaše

text: For the duration of the war, "in accordance with Vatican's long-term diplomatic practice of not recognizing new states in wartime before they were legitimazed by peace treaties, the pope did not send a nuncio or diplomat to Croatia as requested, but an apostolic visitor, the abbot Giuseppe Marcone, who was to represent the Vatican to Croatian Catholic Church, not to the government. The government ignored this nuance, bestowing a prominent place for Marcone at all official functions". After World War II ended, the Ustaše who had managed to escape from Yugoslav territory (including Pavelić) were smuggled to South America. This was largely done through ratlines operated by Catholic priests who had previously secured positions at the Vatican. Some of the more infamous members of the Illyrian College of San Girolamo in Rome involved in this were Franciscan friars Krunoslav Draganović and Dominik Mandić, and a third friar surnamed Petranović (first name unknown).


title: Ustaše

text: The Ustaše regime had deposited large amounts of gold—including the gold plundered from Serbs and Jews during World War II into—Swiss bank accounts. It seems a substantial quantity of gold was additionally transported by Ustaše to Austria at the end of the WWII. Out of a total, by some estimates, of 350 million Swiss francs, an intelligence report estimated 200 million (ca. $47 million) reached the Vatican. The question remains unclarified.


title: Ustaše

text: Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, Archbishop of Zagreb was accused sentenced to prison after the end of World War II by Yugoslav communist authorities of supporting the Ustaše and of exonerating those in the clergy who collaborated with them and were hence complicit in forced conversions. Stepinac stated on 28 March 1941, noting early attempts to unite Croatians and Serbs: "All in all, Croats and Serbs are of two worlds, northpole and southpole, never will they be able to get together unless by a miracle of God. The schism (between the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy) is the greatest curse in Europe, almost greater than Protestantism. There is no moral, no principles, no truth, no justice, no honesty." On 22 July 2016, the Zagreb County Court annulled his post-war conviction due to "gross violations of current and former fundamental principles of substantive and procedural criminal law".


title: Ustaše

text: In 1998 Stepinac was beatified by Pope John Paul II. On 22 June 2003 John Paul II visited Banja Luka. During the visit he held a Mass at the aforementioned Petrićevac monastery. This caused public uproar due to the connection of the monastery with Filipović. At the same location the Pope proclaimed the beatification of a Roman Catholic layman Ivan Merz (1896–1928), who was the founder of the "Association of Croatian Eagles" in 1923, which some view as a precursor to the Ustaše. Roman Catholic apologists defend the Pope's actions by stating the convent at Petrićevac was one of the places that went up in flames, causing the death of 80-year-old Friar Alojzije Atlija. Further, it was claimed by the apologists that the war had produced "a total exodus of the Catholic population from this region"; that the few who remained were "predominantly elderly"; and that the church in Bosnia then allegedly risked "total extinction" due to the war.


title: Ustaše

text: Despite representing opposing nationalisms, when confronted with the growing strength of their common enemy (i.e. the partisans), Ustaše and Chetniks throughout the Independent State of Croatia signed collaboration agreements in the spring of 1942, which for the most part held until the very end of the war. The introduction to these agreements stated:As long as there is a danger of armed partisan gangs, Chetnik formations will voluntarily cooperate with the Croatian armed forces in fighting and destroying the partisans and will be under the command of the Croatian armed forces in these operations.Beyond that, the agreements specified that the NDH military will supply Chetniks with arms and ammunition, Chetniks wounded in anti-partisan operations will be treated at NDH military hospitals, and widows and orphans of killed Chetnik soldiers, will receive state financial aid equal to aid received by widows and orphans of NDH soldiers. The NDH authorities arranged for Serbs in Ustaše concentration camps to be released, but only on the special recommendation of Chetnik commanders (thus, not partisans and their sympathizers). On 30 June 1942, the Chief Headquarters of the Poglavnik (i.e. Ante Pavelić), sent a statement, signed by Marshall Slavko Kvaternik, to other NDH ministries, summarizing these agreements with NDH Chetniks.


title: Ustaše

text: On 26 May 1942, the Ustaše minister, Mladen Lorković, wrote in a communique to local NDH authorities, that pursuant to these agreements "Home Guard Headquarters agrees with your proposal to grant one million kuna aid to the leaders of the Greek-Eastern community [i.e. Serb Orthodox], Momčilo Djujić, Mane Rokvić, [Branko] Bogunović, Paja Popović and Paja Omčikus, 200 Yugoslav guns and 10 machine guns". Ustaše and Chetniks simultaneously participated, alongside German and Italian forces, in major battles against the Partisans in the NDH: the Kozara Offensive, Case White, Operation Rösselsprung, the Battle for Knin (1944), etc.


title: Ustaše

text: In 1945, the Chetnik commander, Momčilo Djujić and his troops, with Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić's permission, escaped across the NDH to the West. In April 1945, by his own admission, Ante Pavelić received “two generals from the headquarters Draža Mihailović and reached an agreement with them on a joint fight against Tito's communists", while in the first days of May, Chetnik units passed through Ustaše-held Zagreb, on their way to Bleiburg, after which Chetniks and members of the Ustaše army, were killed by the Partisans in various sites, including Tezno near Maribor.


title: Ustaše

text: At the top of the command was the "Poglavnik" (meaning "head") Ante Pavelić. Pavelić was appointed the office as Head of State of Croatia after Adolf Hitler had accepted Benito Mussolini's proposal of Pavelić, on 10 April 1941. The Croatian Home Guard was the armed forces of Croatia, it subsequently merged into the Croatian Armed Forces. The Ustaše command structure was further broken down into administrations at a "stožer" (district), "logor" (country) and "tabor" (county) level.


title: Ustaše

text: The flag of the Independent State of Croatia was a red-white-blue horizontal tricolor with the shield of the Coat of Arms or Croatia in the middle and the U in the upper left. Its currency was the NDH kuna.


title: Ustaše

text: This was used instead of the Nazi greeting "Heil Hitler" by the Ustaše. Today it is nominally associated with Ustaše sympathisers by Serbs or non-Ustaše conservatives associated with the Croatian Party of Rights. However, some Croats see it as a patriotic salute, emphasising defending one's home and country. On the internet, it is sometimes abbreviated as ZDS.


title: Ustaše

text: The Ustaše plays an important role in Harry Turtledove's short alternate history story, "Ready for the Fatherland". It plays a brief background role in "In the Presence of Mine Enemies", an unrelated work by the same author. In both these works, the regime founded by Pavelić lasted several decades beyond the 1940s.


title: Ustaše

text: The popular Croatian singer, Thompson, regularly starts his concerts with the Ustaše salute. The Wiesenthal Center has protested this, along with other attempts at revisionism and Holocaust-denial in Croatia.


title: Ustaše

text: Seeking to unify support for Croatia's independence, Franjo Tuđman, Croatia's first president, in the late 1980s advocated "pomirba", i.e. national reconciliation between Ustaše and Partisans. This led to a revival of pro-Ustaše views, symbols and salutes among the Croatian political right. Following Croatia's Independence in the 1990s, streets were renamed to carry the name of Ustaše leaders, such as Mile Budak and Jure Francetić. Although some of these were later removed, Radio Free Europe noted that of some 20 streets dedicated to Mile Budak in the '90s, half of these still remained in Croatia in 2019.


title: Ustaše

text: Jewish and Serb organizations, Croat historians and antifascists, as well as international observers, have repeatedly warned of revisionism in Croatia, which seeks to minimize Ustaše crimes, even celebrates the Ustaše regime. Recent examples include the publication of a book celebrating "the Croatian knight", Maks Luburic, who as head of Ustaše concentration camps was responsible for over 100,000 deaths, during Ustaše genocides against Jews, Serbs and Roma, and a documentary minimizing children's deaths in Ustaše concentration camps. The Luburic book was promoted with the assistance of the Croatian Catholic Church, and Church sources minimized children's deaths in concentration camps. Croat historians have noted that the Church has been a leader in promoting revisionism and minimizing Ustaše crimes. In 2013, the newspaper of Croatian Catholic archdioceses, "Glas Koncila", published a series on Jasenovac, by the Jasenovac-denier Igor Vukic, who claims Jasenovac was a "mere work-camp", where no mass executions took place. In 2015, the head of the Croatian Bishops' Conference asked that the Ustaše "Za dom spremni" salute be adopted by the Croatian army.


title: Ustaše

text: Croatian soccer fans have repeatedly chanted the Ustaše, "Za dom spremni" salute, for which FIFA and UEFA have repeatedly leveled penalties against the Croatian soccer federation, for "fascists outburst". In 2014, the Croatian soccer player Josip Šimunić was banned from the FIFA World Cup for leading a stadium full of fans in the Ustaše salute.


title: Ustaše

text: In 2014 the then-mayor of Split, Croatia unveiled a monument dedicated to the 1990s HOS brigade named "The Knight Rafael Boban", after the Ustaše commander, which includes the HOS emblem with the Ustaše "Za dom spremni" salute. Since then the HOS organization has organized annual commemorations at the memorial on 10 April (the anniversary of the founding of the Ustaše Independent State of Croatia), during which the black-uniformed participants shout the Ustaše "Za dom spremni" salute.


title: Ustaše

text: In 2016 the Croatian HOS war veterans' organization, posted a plaque at Jasenovac concentration camp with the Ustaše "Za dom spremni" salute. Despite protests by Jewish and other organizations, this was allowed to remain until criticism by the US State Department special envoy on Holocaust issues, forced the government to move it to a nearby town. As a result of this, and allegations of the government's tolerance for the minimization of Ustaše crimes, Jewish, Serb and Croat WWII resistance groups refused to appear with government representatives at the annual Jasenovac commemoration.


title: Ustaše

text: In 2019 the Austrian government passed a law forbidding the display of Ustaše symbols, along with previously banned Nazi symbols, largely as a result of the display of same by Croatian nationalists at the annual, Croatian government-sponsored Bleiburg commemoration, where Austrian police have repeatedly arrested Croat nationalists for Nazi and fascist salutes. Three Austrian EU parliamentarians declared the Bleiburg ceremony, which tens-of-thousands of Croat nationalist attend, "the largest fascist gathering in Europe" The Austrian Catholic Church banned a Mass by the Croatian Catholic Church at Bleiburg because, as they stated, "the Mass at Bleiburg has become part of a manifestation that is politically instrumentalised and is part of a political-national ritual that serves to selectively experience and interpret history", adding that it misuses "a religious service for political purposes while not distancing itself from the Fascist worldview."


title: Ustaše

text: After World War II, the Ustaše movement was split into several organizations and there is presently no political or paramilitary movement that claims its legacy as their "successor". The term ""ustaše"" is today used as a derogatory term for Croatian ultranationalism. The term "Ustaše" is sometimes used among Serbs to describe Serbophobia or more generally to defame political opponents.


title: Ustaše

text: Since the end of World War II, Serbian historians have used the Ustaše to promote that Serbs resisted the Axis, while Croats and Bosniaks widely supported them. However, the Ustaše lacked support among ordinary Croats and never accrued any significant support among the populace. The Ustaše regime was backed by parts of the Croatian population that during the interwar period had felt oppressed in the Serbian-led Yugoslavia. Most of the support it had initially gained by creating a Croat national state was lost because of the brutal practices it used. In the 1980s, Serbian historians produced many works about the forced conversion during World War II of Serbs to Catholicism in Ustaše Croatia. These debates between historians openly became nationalistic and also entered the wider media. Historians in Belgrade during the 1980s who had close government connections often went on television during the evenings to discuss invented or real details about the Ustaše genocide against Serbs during World War II. Serb clergy and nationalists blamed all Croats for crimes committed by the Ustaše, and for planning a genocide against Serb people. These propagandistic activities were aimed at justifying planned crimes and ethno-demographic engineering in Croatia.


title: The New York Times Company

text: The New York Times Company is an American mass media company that publishes "The New York Times". Its headquarters are in Manhattan, New York City.


title: The New York Times Company

text: The company was founded by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones in New York City. The first edition of the newspaper "The New York Times", published on September 18, 1851, stated: "We publish today the first issue of the New-York Daily Times, and we intend to issue it every morning (Sundays excepted) for an indefinite number of years to come."


title: The New York Times Company

text: The company moved into the cable channel industry, purchasing a 40% interest in the Popcorn Channel, a theatrical movie preview and local movie times, in November 1994. In 1996, it expanded upon its broadcasting by purchasing Palmer Communications, owners of WHO-DT in Des Moines and KFOR in Oklahoma City.


title: The New York Times Company

text: The company completed its purchase of "The Washington Post" 50 percent interest in the "International Herald Tribune" ("IHT") for US$65 million on January 1, 2003, becoming the sole owner.


title: The New York Times Company

text: On March 18, 2005, the company acquired About.com, an online provider of consumer information, for US$410 million. In 2005, the company reported revenues of US$3.4 billion to its investors.


title: The New York Times Company

text: The Times, on August 25, 2006, acquired Baseline StudioSystems, an online database and research service on the film and television industries for US$35 million.


title: The New York Times Company

text: The company announced on September 12, 2006, its decision to sell its Broadcast Media Group, consisting of "nine network-affiliated television stations, their related Web sites and the digital operating center". "The New York Times" reported on January 4, 2007, that the company had reached an agreement to sell all nine local television stations to the private equity firm Oak Hill Capital Partners, which then created a holding company for the stations, Local TV LLC. The company announced that it had finalized the sale of its Broadcast Media Group on May 7, 2007, for "approximately $575 million".


title: The New York Times Company

text: On May 7, 2007, the company announced that its About.com web information service was acquiring Consumersearch.com, a Web site that compiles reviews of consumer products, for $33 million in cash.


title: The New York Times Company

text: In 2007 the company moved from 229 West 43rd Street to the New York Times Building at 620 Eighth Avenue, on the west side of Times Square, between 40th and 41st streets across from the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey Bus Terminal.


title: The New York Times Company

text: On July 14, 2009, the company announced that WQXR was to be sold to WNYC, which moved the station to 105.9 FM and began to operate the station as non-commercial on October 8, 2009. This US$45 million transaction, which involved Univision Radio's WCAA moving to the 96.3 FM frequency from 105.9 FM, ended the Times' 65-year-long ownership of the station.


title: The New York Times Company

text: In December 2011, the company sold its Regional Media Group to Halifax Media Group, owners of "The Daytona Beach News-Journal", for $143 million. "The Boston Globe" and "The Telegram & Gazette" of Worcester were not part of the sale. In 2011, the Times sold Baseline StudioSystems back to its original owners, Laurie S. Silvers and Mitchell Rubenstein, majority shareholders of Project Hollywood LLC.


title: The New York Times Company

text: Facing falling revenue from print advertising in its flagship publication in 2011, "The New York Times", the company introduced a paywall to its website. As of 2012, it had been modestly successful, garnering several hundred thousand subscriptions and about $100 million in annual revenue.


title: The New York Times Company

text: In 2013, the New York Times Company sold "The Boston Globe" and other New England media properties to John W. Henry, the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox. According to the Times Company, the move was made in order to focus more on its core brands.


title: The New York Times Company

text: After forming an editorial partnership with the New York Times in 2015, The Wirecutter was acquired by the Times in October 2016 for a reported $30 million.


title: The New York Times Company

text: In July 2020, the New York Times Company acquired podcast production company Serial Productions. The same month, the company appointed chief operating officer Meredith Kopit Levien to the position of CEO.


title: The New York Times Company

text: In January 2022, the New York Times Company announced that it would acquire "The Athletic", a subscription-based sports news website. The $550 million deal closed the following month, and "The Athletic"'s co-founders, Alex Mather and Adam Hansmann, were to stay with the publication, which would continue to be run separately from the "Times". Later that month, it acquired Wordle, an Internet word puzzle game that grew from 90 players in October 2021 to millions at the time of purchase.


title: The New York Times Company

text: ValueAct Capital took a stake in the company in August 2022. ValueAct aims to encourage the company to more actively pursue the sale of "bundled" subscriptions to its various offerings.


title: The New York Times Company

text: The paper bought AM radio station WQXR (1560kHz) in 1944. Its "sister" FM station, WQXQ, would become WQXR-FM (96.3MHz). Branded as "The Stereo Stations of "The New York Times"", its classical music radio format was simulcast on both the AM & FM frequencies until December 1992, when the big-band and pop standards music format of station WNEW (1130kHz – now WBBR/"Bloomberg Radio") was transferred to and adopted by WQXR; in recognition of the format change, WQXR changed its call letters to WQEW (a "hybrid" combination of "WQXR" and "WNEW"). By 1999, "The New York Times" was leasing WQEW to ABC Radio for its "Radio Disney" format. In 2007, WQEW was finally purchased by Disney; in late 2014, it was sold to Family Radio (a religious radio network) and became WFME. On July 14, 2009, it was announced that WQXR-FM would be sold to the WNYC radio group who, on October 8, 2009, moved the station from 96.3 to 105.9MHz (swapping frequencies with Spanish-language station WXNY-FM, which wanted the more powerful transmitter to increase its coverage) and began operating it as a non-commercial, public radio station.


title: The New York Times Company

text: Alongside its namesake newspaper, the company also owns "the New York Times International Edition" and their related digital properties including NYTimes.com, as well as various brand-related properties.


title: The New York Times Company

text: Since 1967, the company has been listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol NYT. Of the two categories of stock, Class A and Class B, the former is publicly traded and the latter is held privately—largely (over 90% through The 1997 Trust) by the descendants of Adolph Ochs, who purchased "The New York Times" newspaper in 1896.


title: The New York Times Company

text: On January 20, 2009, "The New York Times" reported that its parent company, the New York Times Company, had reached an agreement to borrow $250million from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, "to help the newspaper company finance its businesses". The New York Times Company later repaid that loan ahead of schedule. Since then, Slim has bought large quantities of the company's Class A shares, which are available for purchase by the public and offer less control over the company than Class B shares, which are privately held. Slim's investments in the company included large purchases of Class A shares in 2011, when he increased his stake in the company to 8.1% of Class A shares, and again in 2015, when he exercised stock options—acquired as part of a repayment plan on the 2009 loan—to purchase 15.9million Class A shares, making him the largest shareholder. As of March 7, 2016, Slim owned 17.4% of the company's Class A shares, according to annual filings submitted by the company. While Slim is the largest shareholder in the company, his investment only allows him to vote for Class A directors, a third of the company's board.


title: The New York Times Company

text: The company sponsors a series of national and local awards designed to highlight the achievements of individuals and organizations in different realms.


title: The New York Times Company

text: In 2007, it inaugurated its first Nonprofit Excellence Award, awarded to four organizations "for the excellence of their management practices". Only nonprofits in New York City, Long Island, or Westchester were eligible.


title: The New York Times Company

text: Jointly with the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the American Library Association, the New York Times Company sponsors an award to honor librarians "for service to their communities". The "I Love My Librarian!" award was given to ten recipients in December 2008, and presented by the New York Times Company president and CEO Janet L. Robinson, Carnegie Corporation president Vartan Gregorian, and Jim Rettig, president of the American Library Association. The award has been given to ten exceptional librarians annually since that date.


title: The New York Times Company

text: In May 2009, the company launched The New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award to honor an American playwright who had recently had his or her professional debut in New York. The first winner was Tarell Alvin McCraney for his play "The Brothers Size". In 2010, Dan LeFranc won for his play "Sixty Miles to Silver Lake".


title: June Diane Raphael

text: June Diane Raphael ( ; born January 4, 1980) is an American actress, comedian, and screenwriter. She has starred in TV comedy programs "Burning Love", Adult Swim's "", and "Grace and Frankie". Notable film work includes supporting roles in "Year One" and "Unfinished Business", as well as her 2013 Sundance film "Ass Backwards", which she co-wrote and starred in with her creative partner Casey Wilson. She is self-credited as the inventor of podcasts, and currently co-hosts both "How Did This Get Made?" alongside Jason Mantzoukas and her husband Paul Scheer, and "The Deep Dive" with Jessica St. Clair.


title: June Diane Raphael

text: Raphael was born and raised in Rockville Centre, New York, to Diane and John Raphael, where she graduated from South Side High School in 1998. She is of Irish descent, and was raised Catholic. She has two older sisters, Lauren and Deanna.


title: June Diane Raphael

text: Raphael attended New York University (NYU), where she studied acting at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and the Stella Adler Studio of Acting. After graduating from NYU in 2002, Raphael and her best friend from college, Casey Wilson, studied improvisational comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in New York City, where they would eventually run their two-woman sketch show for a number of years. Performing the long-running stage show opened doors for them as writers.


title: June Diane Raphael

text: Raphael began her comedy career writing and performing with the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre (UCB) in New York and later in Los Angeles. Among her best known work at UCB was the long-running sketch show "Rode Hard and Put Away Wet", written and performed alongside her comedy partner and best friend Casey Wilson; the stage show ran from 2003 to 2006 in New York and Los Angeles and was an official selection at 2005's US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen, Colorado. Raphael and Wilson's comedic partnership has since branched out into an active writing career in film and television; they co-wrote their first screenplay for the comedy "Bride Wars", in which they also appeared in supporting roles.


title: June Diane Raphael

text: As a film and television actress, Raphael has made appearances on shows such as "Party Down", "Happy Endings", "New Girl", and "Lady Dynamite" and in films such as "Long Shot" and "Blockers". In 2010, Raphael co-starred as Barb in the improvised comedy series "Players" on Spike TV. She also starred in all three seasons of the web series "Burning Love" alongside Ken Marino and Michael Ian Black.


title: June Diane Raphael

text: Raphael has collaborated with writing partner Casey Wilson on scripts for film and television. They most recently wrote and starred together in the raunchy female buddy comedy "Ass Backwards", which also co-stars Alicia Silverstone, Jon Cryer, Vincent D'Onofrio, Paul Scheer, and Bob Odenkirk. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival on January 21, 2013. In 2013 it was reported that Raphael and Wilson were working on a second film to star in together, produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay's company Gary Sanchez Productions.


title: June Diane Raphael

text: In February 2010, Raphael joined the rotating cast of the Off-Broadway play "Love, Loss, and What I Wore" (written by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron) at the Westside Theatre in Manhattan. Raphael and Casey Wilson created the comedic stage show "The Realest Real Housewives", which they starred in alongside Jessica St. Clair, Melissa Rauch, Danielle Schneider and Morgan Walsh. The show began running monthly at the Los Angeles Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in 2011. Raphael also contributed short stories to the 2010 book "Worst Laid Plans", based on the long-running stage show, in which she frequently performed.


title: June Diane Raphael

text: Raphael co-starred in the Adult Swim action-comedy series "", which aired for three seasons from 2011 to 2013. She currently co-hosts with her husband, Paul Scheer, the movie discussion podcast "How Did This Get Made?" along with comedian Jason Mantzoukas. The podcast is a roundtable discussion where Scheer, Raphael, Mantzoukas and other special guests "try make sense of movies that make absolutely no sense."


title: June Diane Raphael

text: In 2015, Raphael took on a leading role as Brianna Hanson in the Netflix comedy series "Grace and Frankie". Together with Kate Black, Raphael authored "Represent: The Woman's Guide to Running for Office and Changing the World", a step-by-step guide for women who are considering a political career.


title: June Diane Raphael

text: Raphael is married to actor-comedian Paul Scheer. They met in January 2004, after first meeting when the artistic director of Manhattan's Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre brought Scheer in to offer advice to Raphael and her comedy partner Casey Wilson on making improvements to their UCB two-woman sketch show. They moved from New York to Los Angeles in 2005. In October 2009, they married at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. They have two sons, born 2014 and 2016.


title: June Diane Raphael

text: Raphael and comedian Kulap Vilaysack are the founders and directors of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater (UCB) associated "UCB Corps" community, a volunteer charity organization. Raphael and Vilaysack organize charity events and projects to help improve the community, with the help of volunteers and other UCB performers "who want to make our world a better place".


title: June Diane Raphael

text: Raphael is also co-founder of The Jane Club, a coworking space in Los Angeles for professional women.


title: Methotrexate

text: Methotrexate (MTX), formerly known as amethopterin, is a chemotherapy agent and immune-system suppressant. It is used to treat cancer, autoimmune diseases, and ectopic pregnancies. Types of cancers it is used for include breast cancer, leukemia, lung cancer, lymphoma, gestational trophoblastic disease, and osteosarcoma. Types of autoimmune diseases it is used for include psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, and Crohn's disease. It can be given by mouth or by injection.


title: Methotrexate

text: Common side effects include nausea, feeling tired, fever, increased risk of infection, low white blood cell counts, and breakdown of the skin inside the mouth. Other side effects may include liver disease, lung disease, lymphoma, and severe skin rashes. People on long-term treatment should be regularly checked for side effects. It is not safe during breastfeeding. In those with kidney problems, lower doses may be needed. It acts by blocking the body's use of folic acid.


title: Methotrexate

text: Methotrexate was first made in 1947 and initially was used to treat cancer, as it was less toxic than the then current treatments. In 1956 it provided the first cures of a metastatic cancer. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. Methotrexate is available as a generic medication. In 2020, it was the 113th most commonly prescribed medication in the United States, with more than 5million prescriptions.


title: Methotrexate

text: Methotrexate was originally developed and continues to be used for chemotherapy, either alone or in combination with other agents. It is effective for the treatment of a number of cancers, including breast, head and neck, leukemia, lymphoma, lung, osteosarcoma, bladder, and trophoblastic neoplasms.


title: Methotrexate

text: Methotrexate is used as a disease-modifying treatment for some autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, juvenile dermatomyositis, psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, lupus, sarcoidosis, Crohn's disease, eczema and many forms of vasculitis. Although originally designed as a chemotherapy drug (using high doses), in low doses methotrexate is a generally safe and well-tolerated drug in the treatment of certain autoimmune diseases. Because of its effectiveness, low-dose methotrexate is first-line therapy for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Weekly doses are beneficial for 12 to 52 weeks duration therapy, although discontinuation rates are as high as 16% due to adverse effects. Although methotrexate for autoimmune diseases is taken in lower doses than it is for cancer, side effects such as hair loss, nausea, headaches, and skin pigmentation are still common. Use of low doses of methotrexate together with NSAIDs such as aspirin or analgesics such as paracetamol is relatively safe in people being treated for rheumatoid arthritis, if adequate monitoring is done.


title: Methotrexate

text: Studies and reviews have found that most rheumatoid arthritis patients treated with methotrexate for up to one year had less pain, functioned better, had fewer swollen and tender joints, and had less disease activity overall as reported by themselves and their doctors. X-rays also showed that the progress of the disease slowed or stopped in many people receiving methotrexate, with the progression being completely halted in about 30% of those receiving the drug. Those individuals with rheumatoid arthritis treated with methotrexate have been found to have a lower risk of cardiovascular events such as myocardial infarctions (heart attacks) and strokes.


title: Methotrexate

text: Results of a systematic review exploring the comparative effectiveness of treatments of early rheumatoid arthritis can be improved with combination therapy of tumor necrosis factor (TNF) or non-TNF biologics with methotrexate alone.


title: Methotrexate

text: Likewise, a 2016 study found the use of methotrexate, in combination with anti-TNF agents, has been shown to be effective for the treatment of ulcerative colitis.


title: Methotrexate

text: Methotrexate has also been used for multiple sclerosis and is used occasionally in systemic lupus erythematosus, with tentative evidence to support such use.


title: Methotrexate

text: Methotrexate is an abortifacient and it is used to treat ectopic pregnancies, provided the fallopian tube has not ruptured. Methotrexate with dilation and curettage is used to treat molar pregnancy. Rarely, it is used in combination with mifepristone to abort uterine pregnancies.


title: Methotrexate

text: Methotrexate can be given by mouth or by injection (intramuscular, intravenous, subcutaneous, or intrathecal). Doses are usually taken weekly, not daily, to limit toxicity. Routine monitoring of the complete blood count, liver function tests, and creatinine are recommended. Measurements of creatinine are recommended at least every two months.


title: Methotrexate

text: The most common adverse effects include: hepatotoxicity (liver damage), ulcerative stomatitis, leukopenia and thus predisposition to infection, nausea, abdominal pain, fatigue, fever, dizziness, acute pneumonitis, rarely pulmonary fibrosis, and kidney failure. Methotrexate is teratogenic and hence is not advised for either the prospective father to take it before or for the mother to take it before or during pregnancy (pregnancy category X) and for a period after birth. Methotrexate can also cause mucositis.


title: Methotrexate

text: Central nervous system reactions to methotrexate have been reported, especially when given via the intrathecal route (directly into the cerebrospinal fluid), which include myelopathies and leukoencephalopathies. It has a variety of cutaneous side effects, particularly when administered in high doses.


title: Methotrexate

text: Another little understood but serious possible adverse effect of methotrexate is neurological damage and memory loss. Neurotoxicity may result from the drug crossing the blood–brain barrier and damaging neurons in the cerebral cortex. People with cancer who receive the medication often nickname these effects "chemo brain" or "chemo fog".


title: Methotrexate

text: Penicillins may decrease the elimination of methotrexate, so increase the risk of toxicity. While they may be used together, increased monitoring is recommended. The aminoglycosides, neomycin and paromomycin, have been found to reduce gastrointestinal (GI) absorption of methotrexate. Probenecid inhibits methotrexate excretion, which increases the risk of methotrexate toxicity. Likewise, retinoids and trimethoprim have been known to interact with methotrexate to produce additive hepatotoxicity and haematotoxicity, respectively. Other immunosuppressants like cyclosporins may potentiate methotrexate's haematologic effects, hence potentially leading to toxicity. NSAIDs have also been found to fatally interact with methotrexate in numerous case reports. Nitrous oxide potentiating the haematological toxicity of methotrexate has also been documented. Proton-pump inhibitors such as omeprazole and the anticonvulsant valproate have been found to increase the plasma concentrations of methotrexate, as have nephrotoxic agents such as cisplatin, the GI drug colestyramine, and dantrolene.


title: Methotrexate

text: Methotrexate is an antimetabolite of the antifolate type. It is thought to affect cancer and rheumatoid arthritis by two different pathways. For cancer, methotrexate competitively inhibits dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR), an enzyme that participates in the tetrahydrofolate synthesis. The affinity of methotrexate for DHFR is about 1000-fold that of folate. DHFR catalyses the conversion of dihydrofolate to the active tetrahydrofolate. Folic acid is needed for the "de novo" synthesis of the nucleoside thymidine, required for DNA synthesis. Also, folate is essential for purine and pyrimidine base biosynthesis, so synthesis will be inhibited. Methotrexate, therefore, inhibits the synthesis of DNA, RNA, thymidylates, and proteins.


title: Methotrexate

text: For the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, inhibition of DHFR is not thought to be the main mechanism, but rather multiple mechanisms appear to be involved, including the inhibition of enzymes involved in purine metabolism, leading to accumulation of adenosine; inhibition of T cell activation and suppression of intercellular adhesion molecule expression by T cells; selective down-regulation of B cells; increasing CD95 sensitivity of activated T cells; and inhibition of methyltransferase activity, leading to deactivation of enzyme activity relevant to immune system function. Another mechanism of MTX is the inhibition of the binding of interleukin 1-beta to its cell surface receptor.


title: Methotrexate

text: In 1947, a team of researchers led by Sidney Farber showed aminopterin, a chemical analogue of folic acid developed by Yellapragada Subbarao of Lederle, could induce remission in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The development of folic acid analogues had been prompted by the discovery that the administration of folic acid worsened leukemia, and that a diet deficient in folic acid could, conversely, produce improvement; the mechanism of action behind these effects was still unknown at the time. Other analogues of folic acid were in development, and by 1950, methotrexate (then known as amethopterin) was being proposed as a treatment for leukemia. Animal studies published in 1956 showed the therapeutic index of methotrexate was better than that of aminopterin, and clinical use of aminopterin was thus abandoned in favor of methotrexate.


title: Methotrexate

text: In 1951, Jane C. Wright demonstrated the use of methotrexate in solid tumors, showing remission in breast cancer. Wright's group was the first to demonstrate use of the drug in solid tumors, as opposed to leukemias, which are a cancer of the marrow. Min Chiu Li and his collaborators then demonstrated complete remission in women with choriocarcinoma and chorioadenoma in 1956, and in 1960 Wright et al. produced remissions in mycosis fungoides.


title: Methotrexate

text: In 2018, a photoactivated version of methotrexate (phototrexate) has been developed and proposed to be useful in localized, target-specific chemotherapy of psoriasis and cancer.


title: Meredith Baxter

text: Meredith Ann Baxter (born June 21, 1947) is an American actress and producer. She is known for her roles on the CBS sitcom "Bridget Loves Bernie" (1972–73), ABC drama series "Family" (1976–80) and the NBC sitcom "Family Ties" (1982–89). A five-time Emmy Award nominee, one of her nominations was for playing the title role in the 1992 TV film "".


title: Meredith Baxter

text: Baxter was born in South Pasadena, California, the daughter of actress, director and producer Whitney Blake; and Tom Baxter, a radio announcer. After her parents were divorced in 1953, Baxter and her two brothers, Richard (born 1944) and Brian (born 1946), were raised by their mother in Pasadena. Her second stepfather was situation comedy writer Allan Manings. She and her "Family Ties" co-star, Michael Gross, were both born on June 21, 1947.


title: Meredith Baxter

text: Baxter was educated at James Monroe High School before transferring to Hollywood High School. During her senior year, she attended Interlochen Center for the Arts as a voice major, but returned to Hollywood High, where she graduated in 1965.


title: Meredith Baxter

text: Baxter got her first appearance in television in 1970 on an episode of The Partridge Family in its second season. She later appeared in 1972 as one of the stars of "Bridget Loves Bernie", a CBS television network situation comedy. The series was canceled after one season. Her co-star, David Birney, became her second husband in 1974. Until they were divorced in 1989, she was credited as Meredith Baxter Birney, under which name she became widely known in 1976 on "Family". She played the role of Nancy Lawrence Maitland and received two Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Continuing Performance by a Supporting Actress in a Drama Series (1977 and 1978). In 1976 she played the wife of White House staffer Hugh W. Sloan Jr. in "All the President's Men"


title: Meredith Baxter

text: After "Family" ended, she starred with Annette O'Toole and Shelley Hack in "Vanities" (1981), a television production of the comedy-drama stage play about the lives, loves and friendship of three Texas cheerleaders starting from high school to post-college graduation; it aired as a part of "Standing Room Only", a series on the premium television channel HBO.


title: Meredith Baxter

text: In 1982, Baxter landed the role of Elyse Keaton, the former flower child matriarch of the Keaton family on the NBC sitcom "Family Ties". In 1986, during her time on "Family Ties", Baxter garnered critical acclaim for her dramatic performance as Kate Stark in the NBC television film "Kate's Secret", about a seemingly "perfect" suburban housewife and mother who is secretly suffering from bulimia nervosa. Following "Family Ties", Baxter produced and starred in television films. She portrayed a psychopathic kidnapper in "The Kissing Place" (1990) and was nominated for an Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Special for her work in "" (1992), based on the true story of Betty Broderick, a divorcée who was convicted of murder in the shooting of her ex-husband and his young wife. For her work on the television film "My Breast" (1994), she received a special award for public awareness from the National Breast Cancer Coalition. In 1997, Baxter once again played the mother of a character played by Michael J. Fox (who portrayed her son, Alex P. Keaton, on "Family Ties"), this time in two episodes of "Spin City".


title: Meredith Baxter

text: In 2005, she began appearing in television commercials for Garden State Life Insurance Company. In 2006, she temporarily co-hosted—with Matt Lauer—"Today", the NBC morning news and talk show. In 2007, she made a guest appearance on "What About Brian", an ABC drama series. That same year, she also made several appearances as the dying mother of Detective Lilly Rush on "Cold Case", a CBS police procedural series. In recent years, Baxter created a skin care line called Meredith Baxter Simple Works, which raises funds for Baxter's breast cancer research foundation.


title: Meredith Baxter

text: Baxter was the guest speaker at the 2008 Southern Commencement for National University in La Jolla, California, and was awarded an honorary doctoral degree from the university.


title: Meredith Baxter

text: On March 1, 2011, Baxter's memoir, titled "Untied", was published. In the book, she details her early life, her unhappy and in some cases abusive marriages, her struggles with and recovery from alcoholism, and her realization that she is a lesbian. The book became a "New York Times" bestseller.


title: Meredith Baxter

text: She is also a spokesperson for the senior mobile service provider Consumer Cellular. She voiced the character "Elise Sr." in "Dan Vs.". In April 2013, it was announced that Baxter would be in the season 4 finale episode of "Glee", along with Patty Duke, as a mentor to Darren Criss's character Blaine Anderson and Chris Colfer's character, Kurt Hummel. She also made a guest appearance on the ABC Family/Freeform series "Switched at Birth" as the widowed mother of Kathryn Kennish (portrayed by Lea Thompson).


title: Meredith Baxter

text: On August 4, 2014, producers announced that Baxter would be joining "The Young and the Restless" as Maureen, Nikki Newman's new drinking buddy, a "charming, intelligent, middle-class woman who has always aspired to a more privileged life than she has had". Baxter started appearing on the program on September 8. She also played the mother to "Stich" Raybourne and Kelly Andrews.


title: Meredith Baxter

text: On December 2, 2009, she came out as a lesbian during an interview with Matt Lauer on "Today", and on the "Frank DeCaro Show" on Sirius-XM OutQ 102. Accepting her sexual orientation helped her understand why, in part, previous relationships with men had failed.


title: Meredith Baxter

text: On March 1, 2011, while promoting a memoir, Baxter alleged that ex-husband David Birney had emotionally and physically abused her. Birney denied the allegations. ABC News reported that: