THE SERBS IN WORLD WAR II

A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS

SERBIAN STUDIES FOUNDATION

MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY

SYDNEY 1991

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CROATIA’S FINAL SOLUTION AND THE AXIS

Srdja Trifkovic

I - Introduction

          The range of moral and political issues raised by the Ustasha movement and the regime of the so-called Independent state of Croatia (Nezavisna Dr`ava Hrvatska, hereafter NDH) is similar to that confronting a student of the Third Reich. If a political group, organised into a regime, so exceeds the bounds of previously conventional morality as to devote extraordinary resources to the brutal murder of some hundreds of thousands of people simply because of their creed or nationality, the question why becomes both unavoidable and difficult to answer. While this question is inevitably lurking in the background of any attempt to throw light on the Ustasha movement, instead of seeking to answer it directly it is probably more useful to examine the hows: how did the Ustasha movement and “ideology” develop?  How did they fit into the European political scene of the 1930’s and early 1940’s?  How did its leader Ante Paveli} take power?  And how did his regime survive for four years?

          The problem of Croat separatism was coeval to the birth of Yugoslavia. The Serbs perceived the new state as the fulfilment of a long process of liberation and unification, and sought to base it on the Jacobin model of nation-state, the “nation” being supposedly one, with three names (Serbs, Croats and Slovenes). This concept of integral Yugoslavism had some adherents among the Croat intelligentsia too. “Yugoslavism” was perceived as the only effective defence against Italian aspirations. Most Croats, however, perceived Yugoslavia as a modified, but not substantially different re-enactment of the dualist system of Austria-Hungary. Their chief political force, the Croat Peasant Party (Hrvatska selja~ka stranka, HSS) was accordingly much more a national movement than any of its Serb counterparts. Both sides followed patterns of thought and reactions learned in the pre-1914. period.

           After its acceptance of the legitimacy of state institutions in 1925 the HSS was no longer a “separatist” force; and only the extremist fringe, nurtured on the Serbophobe traditions of the ideologues of Croat ultra-nationalism, Ante Star~evi} and Josip Frank, would turn both uncompromisingly separatist and violent.

          The Ustasha movement was an anti-Serb and anti-Yugoslav fit of rage, rather than a coherent elaboration of the Croat national identity and “mission.”  Its roots went back to that strain in the land's body-politic which insisted on Croatia’s “rights of state” and on the continuity of the “Crown of Croatia,” but - far from respecting the legalistic overtones of such notions - the Ustashas’ modus operandi and outlook initially resembled the Black Hand in pre-1903 Serbia, the VMRO in Macedonia, and other Balkan nationalist conspiratorial organisations.

          The Ustasha phenomenon was the product of two sets of circumstances in the inter-war period.  One was the complex internal and international situation of Yugoslavia, the other was the rise of fascism in Europe. The collapse of the parliamentary system in Yugoslavia (1929) coincided with the period of growing political radicalism throughout the continent and the beginning of a world-wide economic crisis which provided an impetus to extremism. Each of those developments was a necessary precondition, but neither was by itself sufficient, for the rise of a Croat separatist movement which was at the same time anti-democratic, racist and violent.

          Although it would be difficult to give a clear “fascist” label to Pavelic and his followers - at least in their early days - the evolution and final manifestations of Ustacism place it firmly into the group of phenomena known as “native fascism” of Central-Eastern Europe. The salient features of all such movements - in Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, or Croatia - was their celebration of the glorious past of a particular nation, based on its alleged particular qualities and “divine mission.” There was also the virulent opposition to Marxism and the reliance on the dynamism of violence and direct action. While both fascism and Nazism were dynamic movements, the Ustasha movement was essentially static. It aimed for a “stable” situation, i.e. the creation of a nationally homogeneous Croat state, and “ideology” was always subservient to nationalist obsessions. But what really set the Ustashas apart was the degree to which their anti-Serb animosity was the key ingerdient of their self-perception, of their very “Croatness.”

                    It was this rediness to compromise fundamental national interests in pursuit not of real independence, but of the separation from “the Serbs,” that set the Ustashas completely apart from the HSS, the mainstream force in Croatia’s politics. Both Stjepan Radic and his successor at the HSS helm, Vlatko Macek, sought reconciliation with Belgrade and a place for Croatia within the Yugoslav framework when they concluded that external dangers could leave Croatia isolated and vulnerable if it was on its own.  They accepted the Yugoslav solution not out of conviction, but as the least of all evils. The Ustashas, by contrast, postulated a demonic concept of the Serb as the cornerstone of their entire outlook, and above all of their very Croatness. This made any compromise impossible by definition, and every alternative - including limited sovereignty and acceptance of the amputation of territory - perfectly feasible. Already in 1927, for instance, Pavelic addressed a memorandum to the Italian government in which he clearly indicated his readiness to accept limited soverignty for Croatia under Italian tutelage in order to get rid of the “Serb yoke.” Both the tone and contents of this document were to find their logical conclusion in the Rome Agreements, fourteen years later, when Pavelic accepted the amputation of Dalmatia and Italian predominance in the NDH. His curious perception of Croatia’s “national interest” was consistent with his basic assumptions.

          Pavelic was finally reduced to being the pawn and prisoner of Italy; but the fact that his nucleus, however small and ineffective, could survive anywhere at all was indicative of a deeper European malaise of the time. The European system established in 1919. was inherently unstable. Periods of stable peace in Europe bear witness to the effectiveness of a combination of physical and moral restraints. The European system of 1919 possessed neither pillar of stability. Of the five pre-1914 powers Russia was engulfed in revolution, Austria-Hungary had disintegrated, Germany was humiliated and without a stake in the new order. In effect, the only “European power” left was France. And yet the French, bled white in the trenches, lacked the means and the will to be the arbiter of Europe.

            It was the inherent instability of this Pax Gallica that created some manoeuvring space for an array of European malcontents to seek a place for themselves. The circumstances that turned Italy from an Entente victor into a revanchist power who felt cheated of the fruits of victory ultimately ensured the survival - however precarious - of Pavelic’s movement. This happened in the years that followed Mussolini’s “new course” in foreign policy in 1926, in efect his shift to an emphasis on means rather than ends, on “action” rather than a defined strategy. His simplistic, all-or-nothing approach was well reflected in his increasingly antagonistic attitude to Yugoslavia, which was an extension of Mussolini's problematic relationship with France.

          Pavelic was offered a haven in Italy, but on terms which precluded any thought of independent action ( especially after the assassination of King Alexander in Marseilles in 1934), of being “our Balkan pawn,” in Mussolini’s own words. Already by 1931-1932 Pavelic was receiving money and logistic support (camps, weapons and equipment) from the Italian police, while instructions concerning policy and organisational matters came from the foreign ministry in Rome. In the aftermath of King Alexander’s death, however, Mussolini was forced to conclude that the foundations of the Yugoslav state were more solid than he had supposed. His return to a more conciliatory approach to Belgrade was also linked to the rise of Hitler, whom Mussolini initially regarded as a menace to Italy’s position in the Danubian basin.

          The softening of Italy’s position coincided with the appointment of Milan Stojadinovic as Yugoslav Prime Minister. Stojadinovic embarked on a policy of friendship with Italy, which was crowned with the signing of a treaty of friendship in 1937. The low esteem in which the Italians held their “Balkan pawns” was illustrated by the fact that ciano offered assurances on the Ustashas’ total neutralisation in advance of the treaty, and regardless of the outcome of subsequent negotioations.

           There followed a total curb of Ustasha activity in Italy in 1937-38. This period was the low point of Pavelic’s pre-war fortunes. Many of his followers (numbering up to 500 in the mid-1930s) decided to return to Yugoslavia, under the watchful eye of a Yugoslav police inspector sent to Rome to oversee them. The remaining Ustashas were interned throughout the peninsula. Demoralised and inactive, they had no choice but to look to Pavelic as their only hope. His followers in Croatia - probably only several hundred strong, and certainly never numbering more than two thousand - were totally cut off, and although they regarded Pavelic as their Poglavnik, their activities were not directed or controlled by him. Pavelic’s position among the Ustashas at that time was entirely based on his reputation, rather then his deeds.

            His lack of contact with Croatia - paradoxically - enhanced his position as “the Leader” in so far as his followers could ascribe to him those views and intentions dear to themselves. This seemed scant comfort to Pavelic in the late-1930s, deprived of all autonomy of action and alternative sources of support which would make him a viable actor in European politics.

II - Reactivation

            The fall of Stojadinovic, which coincided with German successes in Czechoslovakia in early 1939, made Mussolini both suspicious of Yugoslavia again, and apprehensive of possible German designs in the South-East. To allay such fears, Hitler reiterated his disinterestedness in the Mediterranean in general, and in the Balkans in particular. Such assurances were often repeated in subsequent years, only to be disregarded in practice. From the beginning, the Axis remained unclarified until the end.

            A small group of Pavelic's supporters tried to become active in Germany following Hitler’s rise to power. At first they enjoyed some support in the Nazi Party foreign department (Alfred Rosenberg), but already by 1934 the foreign ministry line - hostile to the Ustashas, and determinedly pro-Yugoslav - prevailed with Hitler. Ustasha publications were banned in the Reich, and their activists expessed or placed under strict police surveillance. Such strongly hostile posture towards the Ustashas continued in Germany until the military coup in Belgrade in 1941. The policy of wooing Yugoslavia was not the only reason for this posture: Hitler was also keen not to upset Mussolini by nurturing his “pawns,” especially when the friendship with Italy was made possible - and in a sense unavoidable - by the Abyssinian war.

            German victories in the spring of 1940 threw Mussolini completely off his balance, and made him obsessed with the notion of a “reckoning” with Yugoslavia.  Energetically opposed by the Germans in his anti-Yugoslav designs, he turned to Greece and presented Hitler with a fait accompli with a hastily organized attack from Albania. Within Yugoslavia, in the meantime, a belated political consolidation was on the horizon. Macek’s “sporazum” with Stojadinovic’s successor and Prince-Regent Paul’s choice for premiership, Dragisa Cvetkovic, turned Vladko Macek into a de facto defender of the Yugoslav state. Notably, the Agreement opened with the statement that “Yugoslavia is the best guarantee of the independence and progress of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.” Such a declaration of principle by the HSS - the undoubted representative of the Croat people - pitted it more sharply against Pavelic than ever. Macek’s advantage was that he could legitimately claim the leadership of his nation.

            On the Serb side, by contrast, King Alexander’s dictatorship had disrupted political life and created disorientation, paving the way either for authoritarian figures (like Stojadinovi}); or for leaders who were perceived as weak and devoid of authority (like Cvetkovi}).  Both of them, and especially Cvetkovic, were nominees of Prince Paul, who lacked full credibility among the Serbs.

            Even though Mussolini decided against attacking Yugoslavia in the summer of 1940 due to German pressure, his overall change of posture led him to reactivate the Ustasha organisation in Italy, after almost six years of inactivity and isolation. The result was a remarkable meeting between Ciano and Pavelic in January 1940. It was on this occasion that Paveli}’s territorial and political obligations to Italy, although still somewhat undefined, were given a specific form. The Croat’s submissiveness was implicit, rather than overt. When finally summoned Paveli} did not come to Rome to negotiate, but to listen and accept. It could not have been otherwise. From the outset Paveli}’s reliance on Italy was a marriage of convenience on both sides. There was no natural proximity between two chauvinisms, which needed each other only because they expected to gain something from each other.

          The reversal of Ustasha fortunes appeared short-lived at first. As 1940 drew to a close Italy suffered reverses in its war against Greece. During this period, instead of Germany exercising a moderating influence on an Italy hostile to Yugoslavia - as it had frequently done after May 1939 - there was increasing evidence of an increase in German pressure on Belgrade to join the Axis camp; while a chastened Italy was far from contemplating any aggressive action against its Adriatic neighbour. The prospects for Paveli} started looking very bleak again, judging by Ciano’s diary (November l940): “Instead of bringing under our roof a mass of nervous and untrustworthy Croats, I believe it is better to create a solid basis of understanding with Yugoslavia.”

          After a period of arduous negotiations with the Germans during the winter of 1940-41, whose demands kept escalating, Prince Paul was forced to accept that Yugoslavia should sign the Tripartite Pact, albeit with several provisos which were supposed to guard a modicum of its independence. But this exercise in pragmatism, however understandable under the circumstances, was too much to stomach for a Serbian public already suspicious of the Prince-Regent and his government. The military coup of 27 March 1941 was the culmination of such misgivings - and the turning point in Hitler’s attitude to Yugoslavia.

          Hitler decided to attack Yugoslavia as soon as he heard of the coup in Belgrade. He promised territories to Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, and to Croatia an “autonomy in close liaison with Hungary.” He did not contemplate a fully independent Croatia at first, and most certainly the Ustashas were not his preferred choice for the government of Croatia. The Germans tried to woo Macek, and only after his decision to go to Belgrade after all, did Ribbentrop’s plenipotentiary in Zagreb Veesenmayer reluctantly establish contact with the “home Ustasha” leadership.

          The extraordinary story of German efforts to win over Vlatko Macek as the future leader of Croatia, regardless of Mussolini’s “Balkan pawn” Pavelic and of the oft-stated German position that Italy enjoyed “precedence” in the area, would go beyond the intended scope of our analysis. German actions in Zagreb in March and April of 1941 indicated that German policy in practice disregarded such officially proclaimed principles whenever this served the interests of the Reich. The final outcome - Slavko Kvaternik’s hasty proclamation of the “Independent State of Croatia” as the Wehrmacht was entering the Croatian capital in April 1941 - was an improvisation, caused by the Germans’ lack of contingency plans. This uncharacteristic unpreparedness clearly indicated that Germany had not intended to destroy Yugoslavia prior to 27 March 1941.

            The cause of the quick defeat of Yugoslavia was the overwhelming military-strategic superiority of the Reich. Even had the country been united and politically fully consolidated, the defence would have been hopeless. With or without Ustasha agitation, in April 1941 there had been no military, economic, geographic, political or psychological foundations for a sustained defence of the Yugoslav state. The Ustasha activity was merely a peripheral symptom, rather than a cause, of the internal divisions which turned military defeat into an overall collapse.

III - From Obscurity to Notoriety

          Although Ante Paveli} lacked the charismatic personality of a Hitler or a Mussolini, after his return to Zagreb under the mantle of the victorious Axis forces he emerged as the undisputed leader of his movement. It was on this movement - virtually non-existent at first - that he relied to the exclusion of all other social and political forces in Croatia. With a nucleus of two hundred followers returning with him from Italy, and maybe five times as many “sworn” members within the country, he proceeded to equate “Croat” and “Ustasha” in all spheres and to promote his own variety of the Fuehrerprinzip. His glorification of peasant “natural” justice and values, rooted in the Dinaric karst of the Dalmatian hinterland, Lika and western Herzegovina, produced a cult of unbridled aggressiveness, vengeance and pure hatred.

          The Ustashas’ mix of Nazi brutality and racism, Fascist irrationality and oriental despotism quickly turned into a pandemonium of anarchy and genocide, exposing the Balkan heart of darkness in all its tragic awfulness. The most notorious manifestation of this was Paveli}’s systematic and premeditated attempted genocide of the large Serb population within the NDH borders of over two million people, as well as that of Jews, Gypsies, and all real or perceived enemies of the regime. The numbers of people actually killed during the ensuing four years of horror are still uncertain, and a matter of hot political dispute within the former Yugoslavia. Contemporary Ustasha and Axis sources, as well as methodologically acceptable post-World War II statistical studies, indicate that 400-500,000 civilians of both sexes and all ages fell victims of Paveli}’s Ustasha state. About four fifths of them were Serbs.

          The Rome Agreements (May 1941) between Italy and Croatia ostensibly solved the problem of Dalmatia by awarding it to Mussolini. It also defined Croatia’s relationship with Italy in a purely formal diplomatic sense. In a substantive sense, however, these agreements were an important milestone in the process of increasing estrangement between the Italians and Paveli}’s fledgling government. Formally included in the Italian sphere of interest, Croatia started looking more and more like, say, Slovakia - with German soldiers on the streets of its capital, German companies exploiting its mineral wealth, German-speeaking Habsburg officers in command of its budding regular army, and the German minority - the Volksdeutsche - granted special privileges by the regime.

          The system of occupation, hastily created and presumably temporary, was weakened from the outset by intra-Axis differences, and by the consequences of their half-hearted decision to install the Ustashas in power. Besides, Hitler wanted to impose a truly Carthaginian peace on the Serbs, whom he singled out for special punishment after 27.  March 1941. He attempted to do so, however, without allocating sufficient resources to the maintenance of such a new order. The willingness of Mussolini’s reluctant clients, the Ustashas, to get drawn closer to Berlin was a very dubious substitute for the inherent instability of the western Balkans as the Wermacht was preparing to leave for the East.

            Paveli} expressed his eagerness to visit Hitler as soon as possible in a talk with the newly-appointed German minister in Zagreb, Siegfried Kasche, on 9 May 1941.[i] The Ustasha leader said that he did not want to make any political demands, but simply to express his personal feelings and his country's strong links with the Reich. Kasche realised that such visit should have a domestic political objective: Paveli} was due to sign his agreements with Italy later that month, and hoped that such visit could help avert the anticipated popular backlash against the deal.

          The predictions of a negative rection to the Rome Agreements were correct.  Already on 19  May the plenipotentiary German Army representative in Zagreb, General Edmund Glaise von Horstenau, reported to the OKW that the psychological effect of Pavelic’s surrender of Dalmatia to Italy was shattering throughout Croatia, whose people “put all their hope in Germany and Hitler.”[ii] Pavelic attempted to rectify this by delivering a major speech, in which he sought to explain the loss of Dalmatia (“... we had to make some sacrifices, but a nation unable to make sacrifices is unable to live”). He concluded it with a threat against the Serbs, in an attempt to shift the focus away from the Rome Agreements onto the “enemy within.”[iii]

          On 2 June 1941, after yet another telegram from Kasche with Pavelic’s request for an audience, Ribbentrop informed his minister in Zegreb that Hitler would receive Pavelic on the sixth at the Berghof.[iv] Although still theoretically “an Italian satellite” Pavelic did not bother to inform Mussolini either of his request, or of the German response. Remarkably, on the same day Hitler and Mussolini met at the Brenner. Their foreign ministers conferred separately, and Ciano received the usual assurances that Germany approved of everthing done so far in Croatia, which belonged to the Italian sphere.[v]

          On Pavelic's arrival in Salzburg on 6 June he was first taken to Ribbentrop’s estate at Fuschl. Ribbentrop opened the meeting by expressing concern about the remaining “conspiratorial cliques” in Serbia, which “have always spread unrest from that country.”[vi] He even indicated that such people, “from military and Church circles,” should be resettled somewhere in Eastern Europe. Pavelic eagerly responded that the Croats could offer valuable help in uprooting such “cliques” in Serbia. He added that he had at his disposal experts familiar with the conditions in Serbia as well as certain relevant documents.

          Having expressed his satisfaction with the agreement reached between the NDH and Italy, Ribbentrop returned to the Serb question and asked Pavelic about the problem of the sizeable Serb minority in the NDH - which, even according to Ustasa sources, came to almost 1.9 million.[vii] Pavelic cooly replied that there had been no Serb question until sixty or seventy years earlier, when the influence of Orthodoxy imbued these people with the “mistaken” sense of Serb identity. He added that they would be expelled anyway, and that the Slovenes from the Reich would be settled in their stead. Pavelic also pledged to deal resolutely with “the Jewish question,” and pointed out that anti-Jewish legislation was already enacted in Croatia - less than two months after his taking power![viii]

          From Fuschl Pavelic proceeded to Berghof, where he was received by Hitler at 3 p.m. on 6 June 1941.[ix] When Pavelic thanked Hitler for independence, the latter replied that the course of events had made him an unwilling instrument of Croatia's liberation, since he had not intended to act against Yugoslavia. Hitler added that he attached greatest importance to economic relations between Germany and the Balkan countries.

          The key part of the conversation concerned national policy. Hitler mentioned plans to transfer Serbs from the NDH to Serbia, and Slovenes from the Reich into Croatia, as a “momentarily painful” operation, but preferable to permanent suffering. Then he added the key sentence: “After all, if the Croat state wishes to be strong, a nationally intolerant policy must be pursued for fifty years, because too much tolerance on such issues can only do harm.”

          Hitler went on to express his sympathies for the Croat people, but also to stress the importance of the alliance with Italy and his own feeling of loyalty to Mussolini.  Germany wanted nothing for itself in the area, he added, since it did not see itself as the legal heir to Austria-Hungry. It stood by Croatia as a sincere friend, ready to offer mediation and advice in case of difficulties. Pavelic thanked Hitler for his offer to mediate should such “problems arise” (presumably in Croatia’s relations with with Italy). He talked of his government's excellent cooperation with the “German national group” in the NDH (Volksdeutsche). According to Pavelic, such affinity was to be expected, as the Croats in reality were not Slavs at all, but Goths (sic!); and the pan-Slav idea was imposed on them as something artificial.

          Pavelic’s visit to Hitler did not have much political significance, except for Hitler’s explicit endorsement of the policy of mass persecution of the Serb minority in the NDH.  This was entirely in line with his intention, openly stated to Glaise on 17 April, to encourage internal Serb-Croat conflict as “the guarantee of a permanent schism between nations which had been within one state until now.” Bringing the formula of divide et impera to its final conclusions, Hitler let the Italians make enemies of Croats; and he was going to let the Croats make enemies of Serbs. In the event, both Mussolini and Pavelic eagerly did what was expected of them.

IV - “Intolerance” At Work

          Hitler's advocacy of “fifty years of intolerance” did not make any difference to the thousands of Serbs who had been already slaughtered in the NDH before 6. June 1941.[x]  But it is inconceivable that the wave of bloody terror which engulfed the Ustasha state in the summer of 1941 would have been possible had Hitler wanted to put a stop to it. His encouragement to Pavelic therefore had major long-term impact not because it induced the Poglavnik to do something he had not intended to do anyway, but because it gave him a carte blanche to go all the way in his intentions.[xi] In Berchtesgaden Hitler made Pavelic feel authorised to proceed with the wholesale murder of the Serb population.

          Our century has witnessed a departure in the conduct of European states away from a concept of transcendent morality, prevalent before 1914. The rise of totalitarian ideologies marked the end of the framework which impicitly recognised that physical elimination of an adversary is not a legitimate way of resolving the conflict. Until the rise of Lenin it was not mere political expediency which had prevented states from resorting to mass extermination as a means to some end. The limitations on the behaviour of states at that time derived from an absolute moral principle, which impicitly subordinated perceived national interest to the continued membership of an international community.[xii]

          The NDH was the kind of place where no legislation of any kind was needed for the prosecution to begin, and no formal orders from the centre were required. With total power in the hands of Pavelic and his followers, or at any rate with total control over armed units of Ustasha ad hoc militia, they could do literally as they pleased. Local Ustasha commanders and officials were now able to pick up a village, have it surrounded, order all inhabitants to gather in the local Orthodox church or school, tie them two by two and either kill them on the spot or throw them down a nearby mountain crater.

          The method of killing was typically very savage: slitting the throat, or a blow with an axe or a heavy club in the back of the head were the most common. Many Serb villagers who escaped immediate murder were taken to a concentration camp - the most notorious of which was Jasenovac - and killed there by equally savage means. The relatively fortunate minority - about a quarter of a million - were selected for conversion to Roman Catholicism by the local Franciscan friar or “Petric” priest, while hundreds of thousands of others were packed off to Serbia, typically bereft of any belongings.

          In their public statements Pavelic’s luminaries followed their leader’s cue and left no doubt what was in store for the Serbs: “This land can only be Croat land and there is no method we would hesitate to apply in order to make it truly Croat and to cleanse it of Serbs.”[xiii] “Destroy them wherever you see them, and the blessing of the Poglavnik and myself are guaranteed.”[xiv]

          In the many speeches and propaganda articles preparing the ground for the pogrom, the Serbs were depicted as alien people who had come to Croatia uninvited and had always been its enemies. Even their nationality was depicted as suspect, and the term “Vlachs” - as a term of de-nationalising abuse - routinely applied. On the other hand, paradoxically, the Serbs were also depicted as “traitors,” therefore, by implication, Croats with a false consciousness, who had opted for an alien identity and thus betrayed “their country” to foreign, that is, Serbian interests. In either case, of course, Serb presence, Serb name, and Serb national consciousness in any shape or form were to be uprooted.

          It is noteworthy that in the first weeks of the NDH the Serb population displayed complete passivity. It appeared ready by default to accept the new regime. Some perceived it, fatalistically, as a re-enactment of an alien rule - of the old Austria-Hungary, for instance, which, while certainly not loved, was well respected by most. As they were soon to learn to their peril, however, in the NDH there was no rational correlation between a Serb’s thoughts, or deeds, and the state’s attitude to him:

The Ustashas refused to acknowledge that having a Serbian national consciousness was not a political act or in any sense something one [did not] intentionally choose.  Such an admission would have made their anti-Serbian policies look like a campaign against innocent people.  They therefore insisted that being a Serb was in itself a political act and that those ‘who wanted to be Serbs’ and ‘insisted on being Serbs’ could justly be punished for that.[xv]

          Even when the bloodbath began in earnest, after the departure of most German units for Russia in late June 1941, many Serbs were too dumbfound to believe what was happening. There were cases of people who, having survived a massacre by mere chance, went to the Ustasha authorities to report what had happened and to seek protection!

          While in Germany the Endloesung was mainly carried out away in the East, by small, specially selected units (Einsatzgruppen and the SS), Ustasha terror was open and calculated to involve as many Croats and Muslims as possible. With thousands of Croat and Bosnian Muslim civilians this took the form of distribution of the land and property of killed or expelled Serbs. By making their terror public more or less everywhere outside Zagreb, and especially in the Dinaric regions, the Ustasha regime also sought to instil such fear in the remaining Serb population that their flight to Serbia or conversion to Catholicism would be facilitated.

          Finally, by going beyond the pale, the Ustasha leadership expected to create the feeling of irreversibility in Serb-Croat relations, which would make any thought of a revived Yugoslavia literally unthinkable. Terror and genocide were to be pursued even if this endangered vital state interests and played into the hands of real enemies, e.g. by causing mass uprisings of Serbs and by creating favourable conditions for the rise of insurgency, under a Serb-nationalist, or communist banner.[xvi] There can be but little doubt that the terror actually helped the real enemies of the Pavelic regime and the Third Reich.  This disregard for their own survival indicated that the Ustasha leaders considered genocide a fundamental duty, something which even surpassed the importance of military victory itself.* Such commitment to genocide makes the NDH and the Third Reich unique in the whole of European history.

          There is a sizeable body of literature on Ustasha atrocities, and to dwell on the subject in any detail is beyond the scope of this study. Suffice to say that the Ustasha terror against the Serbs was certainly without precedent in the history of that part of Europe: it was also the first attempted total genocide in the Second World War.

          There is a great wealth of German sources on Ustasha massacres. One of the first documents on “the increasing anti-Serb terror by the Ustasha” reached Berlin on 2 July, 1941. It was a report by Veesenmayer, who was still the special representative of the German Foreign Ministry in Zagreb - a post soon to be abolished. He stated that “authoritative representatives of the regime” looked on the presence of a third of the population of the NDH - the Serbs - as a problem “which is under the exclusive competence of Ustasha police and court martials.”[xvii]

          General Glaise von Horstenau was among the first ranking Germans in Croatia to become convinced that Pavelic actually wanted to kill all Serbs. From his first day in Zagreb he worked hard on the establishment of an efficient intelligence network, which provided him with detailed information about all aspects of life in the NDH, including Ustasha crimes. laise's chief information gatherer was Captain Haeffner, his assistant, who had lived in Zagreb for many years, spoke the language faultlessly, and had excellent contacts throughout Croatia.

          Haeffner's reports on eyewitness accounts of Ustasha slaughters should not be read by people with weak stomachs. According to Haeffner's meticulous computations, the number of Serbs “who have fallen as victims of animal instincts fanned by Ustasha leaders” exceeded 200,000 by the beginning of August 1941.[xviii] As the terror grew, so did Haeffner's disdain for its perpetrators. Thus he wrote of “the strong inferiority complex of Ustasha leaders and their flock vis-a-vis the Serbs, who are more numerous and superior in terms of life energy.”

          As a decent officer of the old school, Glaise was genuinely horrified with what was going on: but his particular alarm was triggered when he realised that many people blamed the Germans for Ustasha crimes. In early July he decided to take advantage of the temporary absence of the blindly pro-Ustasha German minister, Kasche, from Zagreb.

          Glaise agreed with the much more realistic Heribert Troll-Obergfell, a former Austrian diplomat and counsellor at the German legation in Zagreb, that they should raise the issue of Ustasha atrocities in Berlin on two fronts. Troll-Obergfell sent on 10 July 1941 a report to the Foreign Ministry in Berlin which was restrained, yet subtly alarming: “The Serb question has become more acute during recent days.  Brutality with which deportations are carried out, as well as many ominous incidents and numerous terrorists actions in the provinces give reason for concern even to realistic Croat circles.”[xix] Troll concluded his report with the accurate prediction that cruel resettlement and numerous crimes committed previously were creating an explosive situation wherever Serbs lived - a situation which could soon erupt into hotbeds of unrest which would be hard to quell.

          Also, on 10 July Glaise sent his own report to the OKW.  Its tone was similar to Troll-Obergfell's, and it sounded an alarm about the effect of Ustasha atrocities on German units in Croatia and the future possible challenges those units would have to face.  The two reports, together with the Foreign Ministry report of 2 July, were the first official information to reach Berlin about the seriousness of Ustasha crimes.  In this first phase those reports tended to express concern about the effect such crimes would have on the reputation of the German army and the Reich in general. Genuine security concerns would come later, with the uprising.

          Requests for intervention to stop Ustasha massacres kept pouring in from different German quarters, including the military commander South-East, General-Field Marshall Wilhelm List, and the Volksdeutsche in the NDH.[xx] Until August 1941 such requests were regularly motivated by the desire “to preserve the reputation of Germany” (and avoid any suggestion that the atrocities were being German inspired), by the fear that Ustasha crimes could cause instability and disorder, and by simple revulsion. All such approaches went unheeded: in the matter of “resolving” the Serb question Pavelic and his men displayed a remarkable determination to preserve their autonomy of action. Pavelic realised that he could afford to proceed for as long as there was no pressure from Berlin to do otherwise.

          The Ustasha anti-Serb terror is inseparable from any consideration of the “Independent State of Croatia,” 1941-45. This terror profoundly influenced all facets of its life. Eventually, and inevitably, this ostensibly “domestic” issue affected wider strategic considerations of the belligerents by fanning a series of Serb uprisings - which soon turned into a major guerilla war - and thus drawing Germany and Italy ever deeper into a tangled web of unintended and unwanted military and political involvement in the Balkans.

V - Uprising

          It could be argued that the Serb uprising would have occurred even without the massacres: there were uprisings in the summer of 1941 in both Serbia and Montenegro. But by the end of 1941 both Serbia and Montenegro had been largely pacified, and remained so - in the case of Serbia - for almost three years. No such pacification could be expected in the NDH because of the constant fact, or ever-present threat, of massacres. The Ustashas’ attempt to exterminate the Serbian peasant and small-town establishment - with teachers, priests, merchants and intellectuals always the first target - created a political vacuum and opened the way for the Communists to gain an early foothold, and later to reestablish themselves in a new area, after the defeats of the winter of 1941-41.

          The degree of insurgent activity in the NDH was in direct proportion to the intensity of anti-Serb terror in a given area. In eastern Herzegovina there was a spontaneous Serb uprising already in June 1941, in response to a wave of savage slaughters the Ustashas carried out throughout the area, most notably in the municipalities of Gacko, Stolac, Nevesinje and Trebinje. The regions of Bosanska Krajina, eastern Bosnia, Lika, Kordun, Banija and northern Dalmatia, which were also the scene of mass slaughters, were up in arms by early August.

          It is noteworthy that at the same time even those areas with a strong Serb majority - Srem, Semberija, parts of Slavonija and Podravina - reamined remarkably quiet for as long as they were relatively little affected by terror. But even the peaceful Srem, in the Panonian plain, geographically quite ill-suited to guerilla warfare, would become a hotbed of insurgency only after a particularly bloody Ustasha “cleansing action” in 1942.

          In the upheaval that followed the first wave of pogroms there was no ideological background to Serb resistance, which was in the early phase purely a struggle to preserve bare life. This was to change soon, however. The Nazi attack on the Soviet Union finally enabled the Communist Party of Yugoslavia to end the dilemma presented by the Molotov-Robbentrop pact, and present itself as a legitimate “national” force. In the initial stage the uprising was a purely Serb affair. Croats and Muslims among the insurgents were few, almost all of them disciplined Communist cadres sent by the CPY after 22 June.

          Those cadres were in an awkward position. For years they were being indoctrinated in the spirit of extreme antagonism to “greater Serbian hegemony,” and took the Party rhetoric for reality - regardless of their ethnic origin. Until the late 1930s they had been determined and principled opponents of the very existence of the Yugoslav state itself, even to the point of supporting the Ustashas and trying to woo them into the Party fold. A notorious example is the Party official organ’s leading article on the “Lika uprising” of 1932: 

The Communist Party salutes the Ustasha movement of the peasants of Lika and fully backs them.  It is the duty of all Communist organisations and of every Communist to help this movement, to organise it and to lead it.  At the same time, the Communist Party points out this movement's present shortcomings and mistakes, which can be explained by the fact that a considerable role is played by Croat fascist elements (Pavelic-Percec), who have no interest in developing a broad mass movement against Serbian dictatorship; they feat that such movement could turn out to be not only against Yugoslav dictatorship, but also against their own Italian masters.[xxi]

           Only belatedly the Communists were instructed to defend Yugoslavia, after all, because even the despised “Versailles creation” was deemed preferable - from the viewpoint of Soviet  interests - to the peril of Nazi-Fascism. In reality the CPY sought to exploit for its own revolutionary ends the Calvary of the Serbs of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina by imposing itself on the leaderless peasantry and manipulating it.  The Ustasha atrocities were condemned by the Party for tactical reasons, but they secretly gloated over the fact that the Ustashas had done the job for the Communists by liquidating the Serbian establishment. The “black” revolution was brutally destroying the “old order” and thus helping the “red” revolution.[xxii]

          Left without traditional leaders, and long before 1941 without a national programme, the Serbs were going to pay an additional price for their own incoherence. Within the insurgent movement the principle of “revolutionary realism” of the CPY inevitably clashed with the “existential realism” of the non-Communist patriots.[xxiii] The ensuring three-cornered civil war rounded up the truly Hobbesian drama without precedent even in Europe of 1941.

          Italian military commanders in the NDH were aware of the tension between different nationalities in the area well before the flare-up of insurrection. In early May deputations of Muslims from western Bosnia were already asking the Italians to extend their occupation zone, and Serb community leaders made similar approaches to the Sassari division.[xxiv] As the Ustasha terror flared, resulting in the Serb uprising, the Italians faced a political and military dilemma. They could either help their nominal Croat allies; or they could act in some other way to restore order; or else simply remain on the sidelines.

          In some areas, notably eastern Herzegovina, armed Serb bands soon made it clear to the Italians that they did not have a quarrel with them, but only with the Ustashas.  Furthermore, during the June insurgency, Serb village heads sometimes approached Italian garrisons to request food and protection.[xxv] As Italian units moved into the area of unrest to secure the lines of communication between Dubrovnik and its hinterland they encountered no opposition from the insurgents. Both sides soon realised that they had a common interest: restoration of peace. If this objective demanded the removal of the cause of unrest - the Ustashas - the Italians had no qualms about acting accordingly.

          It is noteworthy of the political and diplomatic skill with which individual Italian ministry commanders that their primary objective - pacification - was soon achieved. General Dalmazzo, who commanded the Sixth Army Corps in the region of Dubrovnik (which included the rebellious eastern Herzegovina), had no doubt that the Ustashas were guilty of causing the uprising. He supplied the Second Army headquarters with detailed reports to that effect.[xxvi]

          Dalmazzo did not seem too keen to observe the niceties of NDH “sovereignty” if it clashed with his task and what what he perceived as the elementary prerequisites of civilised living.  He duly took matters into his own hands by seeking to establish a modus vivendi with the insurgents.[xxvii] They subsequently undertook not to attack Italian troop movements by road or rail, provided that such that transports carried no Croats. The victims of recent Ustasha massacres were exhumed from mass graves and buried with proper Orthodox religious rites, which were allowed once again by the explicit order of General Dalmazzo. Normality had returned, at least temporarily, to that part of the NDH, at practically no cost in Italian lives.

          As this episode illustrates, in the early summer of 1941 Italian commanding officers in the NDH had to cope with tasks totally different from Italian operations in other theatres of war, and - on the whole fulfilled them better than in other places. In the NDH they faced a challenge potentially even more serious than their German c[MW1] ounterparts. The slaughters on their side of the Demarcation Lines were worse, and the reaction to them more violent.

          While Glaise was agonising over the dilemma posed by the Ustasha-instigated uprising, worrying about the “reputation of the German Army” and its inability to prevent the massacres, Italian officers evidently enjoyed much greater autonomy of action in matters which definitely crossed the boundary between military and political issues.  Furthermore, by acting in a concilliatory manner, the Italians made it more difficult for the Communists among the insurgents to advocate total war against “all enemies,” as instructed by their centre in Moscow.

CONCLUSIONS

          Hitler actively encouraged Pavelic in embarking on his anti-Serb pogroms, and he did not dissuade Italy from pursuing its territorial ambitions along the eastern shore of the Adriatic. His purpose was twofold. He sought to prevent long-term stabilisation of Croatia as a state in its own right, and to prevent its establishment as an Italian client-state. By letting Italy follow its annexationist course he knew that resentment among Croats would follow, opening the door open for German meddling.

          At the same time, by encouraging Pavelic in his “nationally intolerant policy” Hitler envisaged the emergence of a chronic state of instability in the NDH, with a similar effect on the future role of Germany as the key arbiter in Croatia. He stuck to this policy for years, to the chagrin of many German generals who regarded the Ustashas’ anti-Serb genocidal zeal as the chief cause of turmoil in the region.

          The system of occupation, established in the Yugoslav lands after April 1941, was largely an improvisation, hastily contrived and weakened from the outset by intra-Axis differences. Besides the problematic Pavelic regime, the most destabilising factor was Hitler’s desire to impose a cruelly punitive, “Carthaginian” peace on the Serb nation, without allocating sufficient military resources for this task. Subsequently in the summer of 1941 a series of Serb rebellions, under different banners and induced by different circumstances, shook the entire western Balkans. They may have taken place in any event, but west of the Drina river they were clearly fuelled by the wave of bloody anti-Serb terror, unleashed by the Ustasha, for which Pavelic felt authorised by Hitler after the talks at Berchtesgaden on 6 June 1941. By destabilizing their unconsolidated through unbridled terror the Ustasha regime in Zagreb turned the former Yugoslavia from a potential Axis asset into a nagging liability which remained unresolved until the end of the war in 1945.

NOTES