Ustaše

The Ustaše (also called Ustashas or Ustashi) was a Croatian racist, terrorist, and Nazi-like movement. It was engaged in terrorist activities before World War II. Under the protection of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, the Ustaše ruled a part of Yugoslavia, after Yugoslavia was occupied by Italy and Germany. At the end of World War II, the Ustaše were defeated and expelled by the Yugoslav Partisans.

Establishment of the Ustaše Organization
Croatian politician Stjepan Radić was shot in October 1928 and died a month later. Alexander I, King of Yugoslavia, imposed a royal dictatorship in January 1929 and made all political parties illegal. Ante Pavelić left the country for Vienna. He and Gustav Perčec, a former Austro-Hungarian Lieutenant colonel, established contact with organization of Macedonian political emigres. These two groups agreed to coordinate their political activities for achieving full independence for Macedonia and Croatia. There and then, Pavelić secretly met with the leader of outlawed Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), Ivan Mikhailov, a declared enemy of Yugoslavia, and made agreement with him to cooperate against the Yugoslav state.

Due to these circumstances, the Court for the Preservation of the State in Belgrade sentenced Pavelić and Perčec to death on 17 July 1929. The exiles started organizing support for their cause among the Croatian emigration in Europe, North America, and South America. The Ustaše organization was small in numbers and was organized in military patterns. They fought Yugoslav statehood by means of terror.

Ideology of the Ustaše Organization

The roots of the Ustaše ideology were in the Croatian nationalism of the nineteenth century. The Ustaše ideological system was chiefly based on the traditional pure Croatian nationalism of Ante Starčević. About it, W. Safran wroteBut another vision of Croatian identity that was closely tied to the Catholic Church and the Vatican and was led by an ex-seminarist Ante Starcevic became the ideological precursor to the Ustase. Starcevic and his followers emphasized the high achievements of Western Catholic, Croatian culture, while Serbian culture was depicted as oriental and inferior. Starčević's racism was further fully elaborated by Ustaša Ivo Pilar [under the pseudonym L. von Südland]. His book was translated into Croatian in 1943, by Pavelić's regime, as one of the tenets of his Ustaše and his Independent State of Croatia. At the same time, the Ustaše borrowed from traditional Croatian nationalism, the National-Socialism of Hitler, the fascism of Mussolini, and even from the program of the Croatian Peasant Party. The Ustaše aimed at an ethnically "pure" Croatia, and saw the Serbs that lived in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina as their biggest obstacle. Along that line, Ustaše ministers Mile Budak, Mirko Puk, and Milovan Žanić declared in May 1941 that the goal of the new Ustaše policy was an ethnically clean Croatia. They also publicly announced the strategy (on July 22, 1941 ) to achieve their goal, which resembled the bloodiest religious wars: "A third must become Catholic, a third must leave the country, and a third must die!"

The Ustaše persecuted the Serbs, who were Orthodox Christians. They were tolerant toward the Bosnian Muslims, claiming that the Muslims were actually ethnic Croats that converted to Islam during the Ottoman Turk occupation of Bosnia. The state even converted a former museum in Zagreb for use as a mosque. The basic principles of the movement were laid out by Pavelić in his 1929 pamphlet "Principles of the Ustaše Movement."

The Ustaše's problem with the Nazi ideology was that the Croats are Slavs and were considered inferior by Nazi standards. Ustaše ideology thus created a theory about a pseudo-Gothic origin of the Croats in order to raise their standing on the Aryan ladder.

Terrorist Activities
At Janka Puszta training facility in Hungary, IMRO terrorists trained Ustaše operatives in bomb-making and in conspirational activities. The Ustaše put that knowledge to immediate use, carrying out about half-dozen assassinations of Yugoslavian officials or pro-Serb civilians. They carried out a dozen bombings of trains, including the Orient Express, and other public targets during the first four years of their existence. This caused the Yugoslav Government to complain to the League of Nations and forced Hungary to close down Janka Pusta Ustaše training camp. Internal power struggle, and discovery that Perčec's mistress was a Yugoslav police informant, will lead to the Perčec assassination by Pavelić in 1933.

The Ustaše received the most funds from Mussolini, who also supplied this group with an Italian headquarters that changed location whenever Yugoslavia managed to track it down. Camps for training terrorists and saboteurs were set up in Italy, chiefly at Brescia and Borgotaro. An armed insurrection was attempted in 1933, when the Ustaše, armed by the Italians, attempted to invade Yugoslavia by crossing the Adriatic Sea in motorboats. This was unsuccessful, but its lack of success probably was instrumental in the decision to assassinate King Alexander I of Yugoslavia.

Two attempts were made; the last one was successful. Alexander was murdered at Marseilles on 9 October 1934, along with the French Foreign Minister, Louis Barthou. In the wake of the assassination, Mussolini renounced the Ustaše, and the group went deeply underground. The singular lack of armed protection afforded to the Yugoslav king, and the general laxity of security precautions when it was well known that one attempt had already been made on Alexander's life, are grim tributes to Pavelić organizational abilities. He had apparently been able to bribe a high official in the Surete General. The Prefect of Police of Marseilles, Jouhannaud, was subsequently removed from office.

The assassin was Vlada Georgief Cernozemski, a Bulgarian, who had already killed two members of the Bulgarian Parliament in Sofia. His accomplices were arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment. Pavelic was condemned to death by France, but managed to escape.

Yugoslavia brought charges against Hungary and Italy before the League of Nations in November 1934, offering evidence that Italy and Hungary had openly conspired against her sovereignty. The League of Nations did not discuss the Italian conspiracy against the national sovereignty of Yugoslavia. Moreover, Italy refused to extradite Pavelić and Kvaternik to either France or Yugoslavia, and Hungary bore the brunt of the charges.

After the assassination, the Ustaše activities were prevented completely. A great number of Ustaše were caught and arrested in Italy, Germany, and Hungary. Italy interned many Ustashe to the Lipari camp, where many died. Janka Puszta Ustaše camp was raided by Hungarian police, who arrested some of them. Ustaše from Germany escaped to Switzerland, France, and England.

Widespread outrage at the assassination of Alexander and Barthou led to the first international efforts to combat terrorism since the St. Petersburg Protocol of 1904. The issue was taken up by the League of Nations, which passed the convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Terrorism in 1937.

After March 1937, when Italy and Yugoslavia signed a friendship treaty, many Ustaše in Italy were extradited to Yugoslavia.

World War II

Invasion of Yugoslavia and Establishment of Independent State of Croatia
Germany and Italy invaded Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941. On April 10, the most senior home-based Ustaša, 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). Maček issued a statement that day, calling on all Croatians to cooperate with the new authorities.

Meanwhile, Pavelić and several hundred Ustaše left their camps in Italy for Zagreb, where Pavelić set up his government on 17 April. He accorded himself the title of "Poglavnik", - which was equivalent to "Führer," or "Headman" in English. Pavelić's "Independent State of Croatia" comprised territory of Croatia, Srem, and Bosnia-Herzegovina - except parts of the Dalmatian coast and islands, which were ceded to the Italians. De facto control over this territory varied for the majority of the war, as the Partisans grew more successful, while the Germans and Italians increasingly exercised direct control over areas of their interest.

All who opposed and/or threatened the Ustaše were outlawed. In early 1941, Jews and Serbs were ordered to leave certain areas of Zagreb.

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. Maks Luburić, one of the chiefs of the secret police, started building concentration camps in the summer of the same year. Ustaše activities in villages across the Dinaric Alps led to the Italians and the Germans expressing disquiet. As early as July 10, 1941, Wehrmacht General Edmund Glaise von Horstenau reported the following to the German High Command, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW):

A Gestapo report to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, dated February 17, 1942, stated that:

Italian troops in the field had competing territorial claims with their Ustaše allies and had cooperated from the start with Chetnik units operating in the southern areas that they controlled. Hitler tried to insist that Mussolini should have his forces work with the Ustaše, but senior Italian commanders, such as General Mario Roatta, ignored such orders.

Racial persecution

The Ustaše enacted race laws patterned after those of Nazi Germany. These laws were aimed against Jews, Roma, and Serbs, who were collectively declared enemies of the Croatian people. Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croats and Bosniaks, including communists, were interned in concentration camps, the largest of which was the Jasenovac complex, where many were killed by Ustaše militia. The exact number of victims is not known. The number of murdered Jews is fairly reliable: around 32,000 Jews were killed during World War II on NDH territory. Gypsies (Yugoslav Roma) numbered around 40,000 fewer after the war. Of the number of Serbs who died, estimates tend to vary between 300,000 and 700,000.

The history textbooks in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia cited 700,000 as the total number of victims at Jasenovac. According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center (citing the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust), "Ustasa terrorists killed 500,000 Serbs, expelled 250,000 and forced 250,000 to convert to Catholicism. They murdered thousands of Jews and Gypsies."

The Jasenovac Memorial Area, currently headed by Slavko Goldstein, keeps a list of 59,188 names of Jasenovac victims that was gathered by government officials in Belgrade in 1964. The previous head of the Memorial Area, Simo Brdar, estimated at least 365,000 dead at Jasenovac.

The Belgrade Museum of the 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 the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, Alexander Arnon (secretary of the Jewish Community in Zagreb) testified about the treatment of Jews in Yugoslavia during the war.
Alexander Arnon's testimony included estimates of six hundred of thousand killed in the Jasenovac concentration camp.

During World War II, various German military commanders gave different figures for the number of Serbs, Jews and others killed on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia. They circulated figures of 400,000 Serbs (Alexander Lehr); 350,000 Serbs (Lothar Rendulic); between 300,000 (Edmund Glaise von Horstenau); more than "3/4 of a million Serbs" (Hermann Neubacher) in 1943; 600-700,000 until March 1944 (Ernst Fick); 700,000 (Massenbach).

Concentration camps
The first group of camps was formed in the spring of 1941. These included:
 Danica, near Koprivnica
 Pag
 Jadovno, near Gospić
 Kruščica, near Vitez and Travnik in Bosnia
 Đakovo
 Loborgrad, in Zagorje
 Tenja, near Osijek

These six 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:
 Ciglana (Jasenovac III)
 Kozara (Jasenovac IV)
 Stara Gradiška (Jasenovac V)

There were also other camps in:
 Gospić
 Jastrebarsko, between Zagreb and Karlovac - Jastrebarsko Children's Concentration Camp
 Kerestinec, near Zagreb
 Lepoglava, near Varaždin

Numbers of prisoners:
 From 300,000 to 350,000 up to 700,000 in Jasenovac
 Around 35,000 in Gospić
 Around 8,500 in Pag
 Around 3,000 in Đakovo
 1,018 in Jastrebarsko
 Around 1,000 in Lepoglava

Connections with the Catholic Church
The Ustaše held the position that Eastern Orthodoxy, as a symbol of Serbian nationalism to them, was their greatest enemy. The Ustaše never recognized the existence of a Serb people on the territories of Croatia or Bosnia. They recognized only "Croats of the Eastern faith." They also called Bosnian Muslims "Croats of the Islamic faith,"(the latter which they wanted to force to convert to Christianity) but they had a stronger ethnic dislike of Serbs.

Some former priests, mostly Franciscans, took part in the atrocities themselves. Miroslav Filipović was a Franciscan friar (from the Petrićevac monastery), who joined the Ustaša army on 7 February 1942 in a brutal massacre of 2730 Serbs of the nearby villages, including 500 children. Filipović became Chief Guard of Jasenovac concentration camp, where he was nicknamed "Fra Sotona" by the camp inmates. He was hanged for his war crimes in his Franciscan robes.

For the duration of the war, the Vatican kept up full diplomatic relations with the Ustaša state (granting Pavelić an audience), with its papal nuncio in the capital Zagreb. The nuncio was briefed on the efforts of religious conversions to Roman Catholicism. After the Second World War was over, the Ustaše who had managed to escape from Yugoslav territory (including Pavelić) were smuggled to South America. It is widely documented that this was done through rat lines operated by members of the organization who were Catholic priests and had previously secured positions at the Vatican. Members of the Illyrian College of San Girolamo in Rome were reputedly involved in this: friars Krunoslav Draganović, Petranović, and Dominik Mandić.

The Ustaše regime had sent large amounts of gold that it had plundered from Serbian and Jewish property owners during WWII into Swiss banks. Of a total of 350 million Swiss Francs, about 150 million was seized by British troops; however, the remaining 200 million (ca. 47 million dollars) reached the Vatican. Allegations exist that it is still being kept in the Vatican Bank. This was reported by the American intelligence agency SSU in October 1946. This issue is the theme of a recent class action lawsuit against the Vatican Bank and others.
Adolf Eichmann trial witness Alexander Arnon testified about the Roman Catholic Church stance that time:  Unfortunately there were no protests. Croatia was definitely a Catholic state. Not even the Catholic Church in Zagreb said one word against the deportations and sufferings of the Jews.
E. Fratini and D. Cluster wrote in their book The entity: Five centuries of secret Vatican espionage:
The Archbishop of Zagreb, Monisgor Alojzije Stepinac, provided Catholic support to the Pro Nazi government of Ante Pavelic; knew right from the start about the massacres and extermination of Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies; and was one of the pillars of the effort to help Nazi and Croatian criminals to escape to South America after the Second World War.
Archbishop Stepinac also said this on 28 March 1941, in note of Yugoslavia's 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 (Eastern Orthodoxy) is the greatest curse in Europe, almost greater than Protestantism. Here there is no moral, no principles, no truth, no justice, no honesty."

After the war
At the end of war, Ustaše continued fighting for a short while after the formal surrender of German Army Group E on 9 May 1945, and many refugees attempted to escape to Austria. Pavelić, however, with the help of associates among the Franciscans, managed to escape and hide in Austria and Rome, later fleeing to Argentina.

The remaining Ustaše went underground or fled to South America and countries such as Canada, Australia, Germany, with the assistance of Roman Catholic churches and their grassroots supporters Some of them persisted in their crusade against Yugoslavia.

With the defeat of the Independent State of Croatia, the movement ceased to exist. Infighting over the failure to establish a Croatian state also fragmented the surviving Ustaše. Ante Pavelić formed the Croatian Liberation Movement, which drew several of the former state's leaders. Vjekoslav Vrančić founded a reformed Croatian Liberation Movement, and was its leader.

Vjekoslav Luburić helped form an organization called the "Croatian National Resistance" (Hrvatski narodni odpor). This became the most violent of the Ustaše organizations which were born after the WWII. Luburić commanded the organization for twenty-five years from his refuge in Spain. His organization was heavily involved in racketeering, attempted murder, extortion, hijacking, terrorist bombings, and other violent crimes. After his death, his successors on the organization commanding post sought out criminal organization ties with La Cosa Nostra, the Provisional IRA, and the Croatian Mafia in San Pedro. Odpor was banned in Germany for terrorist activities and operated (in the US and Canada) between legitimate emigre functions and a thuggish underworld. Its leaders tried to distance the organization from the acts of the so-called renegade elements that hijacked international flights and served prison sentences for extortion. Odpor embraced a radical nationalist ideology that differed only marginally from Ustaše ideology.

The Odpor's most spectacular terrorist action was hijacking TWA Flight 355 on September 10, 1976. This terrorist action was masterminded by Zvonko Bušić, then the leader of the American branch of Odor. He and four other Croatian terrorists carried out the hijacking. Bušić also planted a bomb at Grand Central Station in New York City. An attempt to dismantle the bomb ended in a blast which killed one police officer and injured three others. All of the terrorists surrendered, and Bušić was sentenced to life in prison. The other four terrorists were sentenced to various long-term imprisonments.

Blagoje Jovovic, a Serb, shot Ante Pavelić near Buenos Aires, Argentina, on April 9th, 1957. Pavelić was injured and later died.

Another Ustaše terrorist organization, the Croatian Revolutionary Cell, Bruno Busic Department, bombed the R. S. Schullz publishing house in Percha on Lake Starnberg, Germany, on August 19, 1981. The group, which claims to be based in Paris, used one kilogram of Swiss Mark 2 dynamite. They threatened to use two more kilograms the following week if the firm published Tito's memoirs.

Related pages
 Independent State of Croatia
 Ante Pavelić
 Jasenovac concentration camp

Footnotes

References
 Aarons, Mark and Loftus, John: Unholy Trinity: How the Vatican's Nazi Networks Betrayed Western Intelligence to the Soviets. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992. 372 pages. 
 Edmond Paris: Genocide in Satellite Croatia 1941- 1945. (First print: 1961, Second: 1962), The American Institute for Balkan Affairs, 1990.
 Hermann Neubacher: Sonderauftrag Suedost 1940-1945, Bericht eines fliegendes Diplomaten, 2. durchgesehene Auflage, Goettingen 1956
 Ladislaus Hory and Martin Broszat: Der Kroatische Ustascha-Staat, 1941-1945 Stuttgart, 1964
 Srdja Trifkovic: Ustaša: Croatian Separatism and European Politics 1929-1945 Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies, London 1998.
 Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Israel Gutman editor-in-chief, Vol. 4, Ustase entry. Macmillan 1990

Other websites
 Holocaust era in Croatia: Jasenovac 1941-1945 , an on-line museum by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
 Principles of the Ustaše movement 
 Jasenovac Research Institute - "a non-profit human rights organization and research institute committed to establishing the truth about the Holocaust in Yugoslavia."
 Fund For Genocide Research, Jasenovac death camp 
 Eichmann Trial, Tel Aviv 1961 
 Tied up in the Rat Lines from the Haaretz, 17/01/2006
 Lawsuit against the Vatican Bank and Franciscans for return of the Ustasha Treasury by Holocaust victims
 The Ustasha Genocide  by Marko Attila Hoare

World War II
War crimes
Fascism
Terrorism
Croatia
Political parties in Europe
Nationalist organizations in Europe
1929 establishments in Europe