Ustaše

The **Ustaše** (also called **Ustashas** or **Ustashi**) was a Croatian independence movement. It engaged in terrorist activities before World War II. Loosely associated with Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, the Ustaše ruled an independent Croatian state, after Yugoslavia was occupied by Italy and Germany. At the end of World War II, much of the Ustaše was disbanded as result of the partisans. However factions still existed, new groups were also formed such as the Crusaders (Križari).

## Founding
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 an organization of Macedonian political émigré. These two groups agreed to coordinate their political activities for achieving full independence for Macedonia and Croatia. 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.But 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.

### Racism
Starčević's racism was elaborated by Ustaša Ivo Pilar [under the pseudonym L. von Südland]. The Ustaše said 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.

### Syncretism
Simultaneously, the Ustaše borrowed from traditional Croatian nationalism, the Nazism of Hitler, the fascism of Mussolini, and even from the program of the Croatian Peasant Party. The Ustaše aimed at an ethnically "pure" Croatia. They saw the Serbs that lived in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina as their biggest obstacle. 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 announced the strategy on July 22, 1941  to achieve their goal, which resembled the bloodiest religious wars:

#### Persecution of ethnic minorities
The Ustaše persecuted the Serbs, who were Orthodox Christians. They were tolerant toward the Muslims Bosniaks, 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 the Nazis. Ustaše ideology thus created a theory about a pseudo-Gothic origin of the Croats in order to raise their standing on the Aryan ladder.

## Terrorism
At Janka Puszta training facility in Hungary, IMRO terrorists trained Ustaše operatives in bomb-making and in conspiracy. The Ustaše  carried out about half-dozen assassinations of Yugoslavian officials or pro-Serb civilians. They bombed  a dozen  trains, including the Orient Express, and other public targets during the first four years of their existence. The Yugoslav Government  complained 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,  led to Perčec's assassination by Pavelić in 1933.

### Funding
The Ustaše received the most money from Mussolini. He also supplied the group with an Italian headquarters that changed 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. The Ustaše, armed by the Italians, attempted to invade Yugoslavia by crossing the Adriatic Sea in motorboats. This was unsuccessful. The lack of success may have led to the decision to assassinate King Alexander I of Yugoslavia.

### Assassination attempts
Two assassination attempts of Yugoslav royal family members were made. Alexander was murdered at Marseilles on 9 October 1934, along with the French Foreign Minister, Louis Barthou. After the assassination, Mussolini renounced the Ustaše, and the group went deeply underground. The  lack of armed protection for 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 escaped.

#### Diplomatic disputes
Yugoslavia brought charges against Hungary and Italy before the League of Nations in November 1934. They had 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. Italy refused to extradite Pavelić and Kvaternik to either France or Yugoslavia, and Hungary bore the brunt of the charges.

#### Brief crackdown
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 Ustaše  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
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.

### Establishment of the Independent State of Croatia
In a radio broadcast that day he proclaimed the formation of the Independent State of Croatia (Serbo-Croatian: *Nezavisna Država Hrvatska*, **NDH**). Maček issued a statement that day, calling on all Croatians to cooperate with the new authorities.

### Foreign policy
Pavelić first met with Adolf Hitler on June 6, 1941. Mile Budak, then a minister in Pavelić's government, publicly proclaimed the violent racial policy of the state on July 22, 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  to the German High Command, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW):

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

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 Muslim Bosniaks community from Zenica published a declaration stressing the special position of Muslim Roma, and with help of Muslim religious authorities in Sarajevo, the declaration influenced the Ustaše authorities to make a special provision in May 1942 to spare Muslim Roma residing in Bosnia and Herzegovina from deportation to the concentration camps.

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. 

In 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 600,000 killed in the Jasenovac concentration camp.

### Concentration camps
.]]

The first batch of concentration camps was formed in spring 1941:

* Pag
* Đakovo
* Tenja, near Osijek
* Loborgrad, in Zagorje
* Jadovno, near Gospić
* Danica, near Koprivnica
* Kruščica, near Vitez and Travnik in Bosnia

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:

* Kozara (Jasenovac IV)
* Ciglana (Jasenovac III)
* Stara Gradiška (Jasenovac V)

#### Other camps
There were also camps in:
* Gospić
* Kerestinec, near Zagreb
* Lepoglava, near Varaždin
* Jastrebarsko, between Zagreb and Karlovac - Jastrebarsko Children's Concentration Camp
#### Prisoners
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 Roman Catholic Church
 (1889–1945) shaking hands with Alberto Vassallo-Torregrossa (1865–1959), a high-ranking Vatican clergy in Bavaria, Nazi Germany.]] kept diplomatic relations with the Ustaše state throughout WWII.]]Throughout the Catholic Ustaše-led NDH's existence, the Roman Catholic Church played a significant role in Ustaše's genocides. Alojzije Cardinal Stepinac, then the Archbishop of Zagreb, was seen by the survivors as an Ustaše war criminal. 

Under subordinate bishops' pressure, Stepinac told the Pope that they would ask Pavelić to stop the massacres and forced conversions, while sending Pavelić a different letter in which they asked for neither to stop.
### Participation in the Holocaust
Contrary to the common perception that the Roman Catholic Church was opposed to Nazism and the Holocaust, priests and bishops throughout the Church hierarchy were highly sympathetic to them due to classical antisemitism and their belief that Nazi Germany was the "lesser evil". was a Franciscan. In addition, Catholic priest Božidar Bralo served as the security police chief in Sarajevo to target Jews while Dyonisy Juričev as an Ustaše newspaper editor calling for all bishops to join the Ustaše to kill Jews.
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:

### Critique
In his 1999 book ''Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII'', British author and journalist John Cornwell pointed out that
# Pope Pius XII's allegedly anti-Nazi sermons never mentioned Jews
# Pope Pius XII was silent after the Nazi roundup of 1,200 Jews below the Vatican hill on 16 October 1943
# the reason for (1.) and (2.) was Pope Pius XII's lifelong antisemitism preventing him from developing sympathy for Jews
# Defenders of Pope Pius XII promoted lies to make him look like a hero by misclassifying his neutral correspondence with the Nazis as "protests" and overstating his interventions in Nazi deportations of Jews

## Post-war period
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.

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.
### Cold War
#### Croatian Liberation Movement
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.
#### Croatian National Resistance
Vjekoslav Luburić helped form an organization called the *Odpor* (Croatian National Resistance). 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, extortion, hijacking, terrorist bombings, and other violent crimes. Odpor hada radical nationalist ideology very like Ustaše ideology.
#### Other groups
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 claimed to be based in Paris, used 1 kg of Swiss Mark 2 dynamite. They threatened to use two more kilograms the following week if the firm published Tito's memoirs.

## Related pages
* Iron Guard
* Antisemitism
* Catholic Church and the Independent State of Croatia
* Roman Catholics and antisemitism in the 21st century

## Footnotes
## Other websites
* Holocaust era in Croatia: Jasenovac 1941-1945 , an on-line museum by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
* Tied up in the Rat Lines from the Haaretz, 17/01/2006
* Principles of the Ustaše movement 
* The Ustasha Genocide  by Marko Attila Hoare
* Eichmann Trial, Tel Aviv 1961