num_pages: 402
description: This is a Ph.D. dissertation. After the Axis invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Adolf Hitler decided to rely upon the Croatian fascist Ustasha movement in order to achieve political stability in the southeast before launching Operation Barbarossa. To the disappointment of many high-ranking German officers, the so-called Independent State of Croatia (which included Bosnia and Herzegovina) soon proved to be a hotbed of instability and upheaval. Within a fortnight of its creation, the Ustashe embarked on a program of mass killing and terror that inter alia aimed at expunging the Serbian community through deportation, forced conversion and mass killing. On the other side were the Serbian nationalist and royalist Chetniks, who wanted to create an ethnically purified "homogenous Serbia" through mass killing and forced migrations targeting Croats and Muslims.
language: English
title: Utopias of Nation: Local Mass Killing in Bosnia & Herzegovina, 1941-42
titlecomplete: Utopias of Nation: Local Mass Killing in Bosnia & Herzegovina, 1941-42 (Studia Historica Upsaliensia)
publisher: Coronet Books