Ustaše
The Ustaše (pronounced [ûstaʃe]), also known by anglicised versions Ustasha or Ustashe,[n 3] was a Croatian, fascist and ultranationalist organization[21] active, as one organization, between 1929 and 1945, formally known as the Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Movement (Croatian: Ustaša – Hrvatski revolucionarni pokret). Its members assisted in assassinating King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in 1934, and went on to perpetrate The Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia, killing hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews,[22] Roma as well as Bosniak Muslims and Croatian political dissidents during World War II in Yugoslavia.[23][24][25][26]
This article is about the World War II organization. For an ethnic slur against Croats, see Ustaša (pejorative).
Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Movement Ustaša – Hrvatski revolucionarni pokret
- 7 January 1929[2]
25 May 1945 (de facto)
Members of the defunct Croatian Committee[3]
Radical Frankist wing of the Party of Rights[4]
Various emigre groups[n 2]
Ustaše Youth (UM)
100,000 (1941 est.)[10]
"Za dom spremni"[20]
("For the home—Ready!")
Puška puca
The ideology of the movement was a blend of fascism, Roman Catholicism and Croatian ultranationalism.[23] The Ustaše supported the creation of a Greater Croatia that would span the Drina River and extend to the border of Belgrade.[27] The movement advocated a racially "pure" Croatia and promoted genocide against Serbs—due to the Ustaše's anti-Serb sentiment—and Jews and Roma via Nazi racial theory, and persecution of anti-fascist or dissident Croats and Bosniaks. The Ustaše viewed the Bosniaks as "Muslim Croats", and as a result, Bosniaks were not persecuted on the basis of race.[28] The Ustaše espoused Roman Catholicism and Islam as the religions of the Croats and condemned Orthodox Christianity, which was the main religion of the Serbs. Roman Catholicism was identified with Croatian nationalism,[29] while Islam, which had a large following in Bosnia and Herzegovina, was praised by the Ustaše as the religion that "keeps true the blood of Croats."[30]
It was founded as a nationalist organization that sought to create an independent Croatian state. It functioned as a terrorist organization before World War II.[31][23] In April 1941, the Ustaše came to power when they were appointed to rule a part of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia as the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), a quasi-protectorate[32] puppet state established by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.[33][34][35] The Ustaše Militia (Croatian: Ustaška vojnica) became its military wing in the new state.[23]
The Ustaše regime was militarily weak and lacked general support among Croats, struggling to ever attain significant support among the populace. Therefore, terror was their means of controlling the "ethnically disparate" population.[36][37] The Ustaše regime was initially backed by some parts of the Croat population that in the interwar period had felt oppressed by the Serb-led Yugoslavia, but their brutal policies quickly alienated many ordinary Croats and resulted in a loss of the support they had gained by creating a Croatian national state.[38]
With the German surrender, end of World War II in Europe, and the establishment of socialist Yugoslavia in 1945, the Ustaše movement and their state totally collapsed. Many members of the Ustaše militia and Croatian Home Guard who subsequently fled the country were taken as prisoners of war and subjected to forced marches and executions during the Bleiburg repatriations. Various underground and exile successor organisations created by former Ustaše members, such as the Crusaders and the Croatian Liberation Movement, tried to continue the movement to little success.
Name
The word ustaša (plural: ustaše) is derived from the intransitive verb ustati (Croatian for rise up). "Pučki-ustaša" (German: Landsturm) was a military rank in the Imperial Croatian Home Guard (1868–1918). The same term was the name of Croatian third-class infantry regiments (German: Landsturm regiments) during World War I (1914–1918). Another variation of the word ustati is ustanik (plural: ustanici) which means an insurgent, or a rebel. The name ustaša did not have fascist connotations during the early years of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as the term "ustat" was itself used in Herzegovina to denote the insurgents from the Herzegovinian rebellion of 1875. The full original name of the organization appeared in April 1931 as the Ustaša – Hrvatska revolucionarna organizacija or UHRO (Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Organization). In 1933 it was renamed the Ustaša – Hrvatski revolucionarni pokret (Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Movement), a name it kept until World War II.[23] In English, Ustasha, Ustashe, Ustashas and Ustashi are used for the movement or its members.
History
Before World War II
During the 1920s, Ante Pavelić, lawyer, politician and one of the followers of Josip Frank's Pure Party of Rights, became the leading advocate of Croatian independence.[42] In 1927, he secretly contacted Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy and founder of fascism, and presented his separatist ideas to him.[76] Pavelić proposed an independent Greater Croatia that should cover the entire historical and ethnic area of the Croats.[76] Historian Rory Yeomans claimed that as early as 1928, there were signs that Pavelić was considering the formation of a nationalist insurgency group.[77]
In October 1928, after the assassination of leading Croatian politician Stjepan Radić, (Croatian Peasant Party President in the Yugoslav Assembly) by radical Montenegrin politician Puniša Račić, a youth group named the Croat Youth Movement was founded by Branimir Jelić at the University of Zagreb. A year later Ante Pavelić was invited by the 21-year-old Jelić into the organization as a junior member. A related movement, the Domobranski Pokret—which had been the name of the legal Croatian army in Austria-Hungary—began publication of Hrvatski Domobran, a newspaper dedicated to Croatian national matters. The Ustaše sent Hrvatski Domobran to the United States to garner support for them from Croatian-Americans.[78] The organization around the Domobran tried to engage with and radicalize moderate Croats, using Radić's assassination to stir up emotions within the divided country. By 1929 two divergent Croatian political streams had formed: those who supported Pavelić's view that only violence could secure Croatia's national interests, and the Croatian Peasant Party, led then by Vladko Maček, successor to Stjepan Radić, which had much greater support among Croats.[49]
Various members of the Croatian Party of Rights contributed to the writing of the Domobran, until around Christmas 1928 when the newspaper was banned by authorities of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In January 1929 the king banned all national parties,[79] and the radical wing of the Party of Rights was exiled, including Pavelić, Jelić and Gustav Perčec. This group was later joined by several other Croatian exiles. On 22 March 1929 Zvonimir Pospišil and Mijo Babić murdered Toni Šlegel, the chief editor of newspaper Novosti from Zagreb and president of Jugoštampa, which was the beginning of the terrorist actions of Ustaše.[80] On 20 April 1929 Pavelić and others co-signed a declaration in Sofia, Bulgaria, with members of the Macedonian National Committee, asserting that they would pursue "their legal activities for the establishment of human and national rights, political freedom and complete independence for both Croatia and Macedonia". 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 diaspora in Europe, as well as North and South America. In January 1932 they named their revolutionary organization "Ustaša". The Ustaše carried out terrorist acts, to cause as much damage as possible to Yugoslavia. From their training camps in fascist Italy and Hungary, they planted time bombs on international trains bound for Yugoslavia, causing deaths and material damage.[81] In November 1932 ten Ustaše, led by Andrija Artuković and supported by four local sympathizers, attacked a gendarme outpost at Brušani in the Lika/Velebit area, in an apparent attempt to intimidate the Yugoslav authorities. The incident has sometimes been termed the "Velebit uprising".
Despite representing opposing nationalisms, when confronted with the growing strength of their common enemy (i.e. the partisans), Ustaše and Chetniks throughout the Independent State of Croatia signed collaboration agreements in the spring of 1942, which for the most part held until the very end of the war.[159] The introduction to these agreements stated:[159]
Beyond that, the agreements specified that the NDH military will supply Chetniks with arms and ammunition, Chetniks wounded in anti-partisan operations will be treated at NDH military hospitals, and widows and orphans of killed Chetnik soldiers, will receive state financial aid equal to aid received by widows and orphans of NDH soldiers. The NDH authorities arranged for Serbs in Ustaše concentration camps to be released, but only on the special recommendation of Chetnik commanders (thus, not partisans and their sympathizers).[160] On 30 June 1942, the Chief Headquarters of the Poglavnik (i.e. Ante Pavelić), sent a statement, signed by Marshall Slavko Kvaternik, to other NDH ministries, summarizing these agreements with NDH Chetniks.[160]
The Ustaše signed collaboration agreements with key NDH Chetnik commanders, in the following order:
On 26 May 1942, the Ustaše minister, Mladen Lorković, wrote in a communique to local NDH authorities, that pursuant to these agreements "Home Guard Headquarters agrees with your proposal to grant one million kuna aid to the leaders of the Greek-Eastern community [i.e. Serb Orthodox], Momčilo Djujić, Mane Rokvić, [Branko] Bogunović, Paja Popović and Paja Omčikus, 200 Yugoslav guns and 10 machine guns".[161] Ustaše and Chetniks simultaneously participated, alongside German and Italian forces, in major battles against the Partisans in the NDH: the Kozara Offensive, Case White, Operation Rösselsprung, the Battle for Knin (1944), etc.
In 1945, the Chetnik commander, Momčilo Djujić and his troops, with Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić's permission, escaped across the NDH to the West.[168] In April 1945, by his own admission, Ante Pavelić received "two generals from the headquarters Draža Mihailović and reached an agreement with them on a joint fight against Tito's communists", while in the first days of May, Chetnik units passed through Ustaše-held Zagreb, on their way to Bleiburg, after which Chetniks and members of the Ustaše army, were killed by the Partisans in various sites, including Tezno near Maribor.[169]
Structure
At the top of the command was the Poglavnik (meaning "head") Ante Pavelić. Pavelić was appointed the office as Head of State of Croatia after Adolf Hitler had accepted Benito Mussolini's proposal of Pavelić, on 10 April 1941. The Croatian Home Guard was the armed forces of Croatia, it subsequently merged into the Croatian Armed Forces.[10] The Ustaše command structure was further broken down into administrations at a stožer (district), logor (country) and tabor (county) level.[170]