Pavelić and the Ustašas

Pavelić and the Ustašas. The Ustaša (insurrectionary) Movement was a revolutionary organization that developed in the 1930s to fight by all means for the independence of Croatia. Feeding on the dissatisfaction of most Croats with developments in Yugoslavia, Ustašism emerged after King Alexander (1888–1934) had dispensed with the Constitution in 1929. An extreme-right-wing deputy from Zagreb, Ante Pavelić (1889–1959) went abroad to set up his secret organization. He soon became the symbol of a radical Croatian fringe, turning for support to Italy and Hungary. Fusing Balkan rebelliousness with fascism and the Nazi cult of authority, action, violence, and race, and operated from abroad, his movement never attracted many supporters in Yugoslavia before the war, but the dissatisfaction on which it fed spread among Croats. It was an Ustaša agent who killed King Alexander in Marseilles in 1934.

The collapse of Yugoslavia in April 1941 (see Balkan campaign) provided the Ustašas with their opportunity. They were allowed by the Axis powers to set up an Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, or NDH) on 10 April over all the territories inhabited by Croats, thus taking in Bosnia and Herzegovina. All power was in the hand of the movement, under its poglavnik (leader) Pavelić.

The NDH took its place among the satellites of the Axis, and declared war on the Allies. It established a conscript army, at best lukewarm in its loyalty to the regime which, for efficient action, had to rely on the Ustaša Militia, the NDH counterpart to the SS. Satellite Croatia had been planned to fit into Mussolini's Adriatic schemes, and Italy duly annexed a large part of the coast, while Germany's interests were safeguarded by an occupation zone which covered two-thirds of the territory, the rest being the Italian zone (see Map 111).

With its 6.5 million inhabitants, the NDH contained almost as many ‘aliens’ as ‘pure’ Catholic Croats, a great majority of whom initially accepted the new regime, even though the Ustašas remained a minority. Muslims were accepted as being Croats of Islamic faith. There were, however, just under two million Orthodox Serbs, who represented a ‘problem’ to be solved, it was openly stated, by conversion, expulsion, and killing. Ustaša bands were immediately let loose to spread terror among them, starting with the intellectual and social élite, before moving on to mass extermination. Those fortunate or near enough fled to German-occupied Serbia or Italian-annexed Dalmatia. The rest took to the hills.

The Ustašas' action was so ferocious and blatant that their protectors were shocked. Italian troops intervened to halt the massacre, to prevent the Serbs from exacting retribution, and stop the insurgency from spreading to the coast. In spite of—and because of—their ruthlessness, the Ustašas failed in their attempt, and in 1942 had to admit defeat by pretending that the Serbs were henceforth Orthodox Croats. In Bosnia they actually had to come to terms with many of the rebel peasant leaders, which in effect put an end to Ustaša power in most of the Bosnian uplands. Tension with the Italians made Pavelić draw closer to the Germans who, worried by the inherent instability of the Ustaša state, would look closer into its affairs and take over control of its armed forces, as Tito and the partisans increased their activities. Recent research estimates that one out of every six Serbs in the NDH lost his life during the Second World War, a large majority being victims of Ustaša massacres.

Tito's communist partisan movement had fattened on the anarchy of the Ustaša regime, and as the Germans reduced their hold to essential points in 1944, Pavelić's authority shrank. When the final German withdrawal started, and a parallel partisan advance rolled up what remained of the NDH, the Ustašas, the remnants of their army, and masses of civilians fled to reach Austria and the protection of the western Allies before Soviet and partisan forces cut off their retreat routes. On 9 May 1945 the Yugoslav partisans entered Zagreb. In those early days of May, thousands of Croats were turned back by the British, and summarily executed by the partisans.

Many of the Ustašas escaped, going underground and to safe havens under assumed identities. Pavelić himself eventually reached Argentina, survived an assassination attempt there, and died in Madrid.

Stevan Pavlowitch

Bibliography

Djilas, A. , The Contested Country: Yugoslav Unity and Communist Revolution 1919–1953 (Cambridge, Mass., 1991).
Djordjević, D., and and Avakumović, I. , ‘Yugoslavia’, in P. Sugar (ed.), Native Fascism in the Successor States 1918–45 (Santa Barbara, Calif., 1971).
Pavlowitch, S. , A History of the Balkans, 1804–1945 (London, 1999).