Introduction

Apart from the Third Reich itself, no other Axis state has been con- demned to villainy in such unequivocal terms by posterity as the Ustasha1 Independent State of (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH), which existed as a formal political entity within Axis Europe between 1941 and 1945 under the dictatorial rule of the Poglavnik (Leader) Ante Pavelić (1889–1959). The moral reprobation that accompanies the NDH in histo- riographical (and related political) discourses, in and outside of the pres- ent day Republic of Croatia,2 is certainly not in proportion to the small political and military significance that the Ustasha state actually pos- sessed during the Second World War. The NDH could not claim the mili- tary or political position of Axis countries such as Italy or even Romania and Hungary. The NDH was, however, the German Reich’s closest ally in terms of its political-military structures, racial ideology and policies toward ethnic and racial minorities (albeit with considerable differences), and therein lies the historical significance of the Ustasha state. The NDH was in fact the last standing ally of National Socialist Germany in early May 1945. The NDH was closely attached to Germany through the racial policies of the Ustasha regime. According to the general historiographical view of the NDH, the Ustasha government was ‘the most brutal and most sangui- nary satellite regime in the Axis sphere of influence.’3 Yet, while the ethnic and racial policies of the Ustasha state toward Serbs, Jews and Gypsies in wartime Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina have received a great deal of attention in both Croatian and non-Croatian historiography,4 historians

1 Ustasha (Ustaša) is the singular form, while Ustashe (Ustaše) is plural. 2 For a recent discussion on the place of the NDH in modern Croatian historiogra- phy, politics and society, see Sabrina P. Ramet, ‘The NDH—An Introduction’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 7, No. 4 (2006): 399–408. 3 Ιbid., 399. 4 The Ustasha policies of deportation, mass killing and forced religious conversion in regard to the NDH’s Serbs, Jews and Gypsies have been extensively documented. See Mark Biondich, ‘Religion and Nation in Wartime Croatia: Reflections on the Ustaša Policy of Forced Religious Conversions, 1941–1942’, Slavonic and East European Review, 83, No. 1 (2005): 71–115; (and ), Holokaust u Zagrebu (: Novi liber, 2001); Emily Greble, , 1941–1945: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Hitler’s Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011); Jonathan Gumz, ‘Wehrmacht Perceptions of Mass Violence in Croatia, 1941–1942’, The Historical Journal, 44, 4 (2001): 1015–1038; 2 introduction continue to ignore, downplay or dismiss the importance of racial theories in the political, legal and cultural spheres of the NDH.5 In recent years more historians have turned their interest to studying nationalism, fas- cism and race theory in European countries other than Germany,6 but there is still a gaping historiographical hole as far as the NDH is concerned, particularly in regard to the question of Ustasha racial ideology. This book aims to fill that gap by analysing the ideas that actually lay at the heart of the Ustasha world view, ideas that were fundamentally concerned with questions of ethnolinguistic identity and origins (or ethnogenesis), racial anthropology and racial identity. Ustasha racial ideas have received such little attention from historians because the whole phenomenon of the NDH has been traditionally analy- sed from a severely limited number of historiographical perspectives. As the Croatian historian Nada Kisić Kolanović has noted, two schools or ‘models’ came to dominate historiography on the Ustashe from 1945 to 1990.7 One was the ‘Marxist’ model that dominated Croatian/Yugoslav his- toriography, reflected in the works of historians such as Bogdan Krizman and Fikreta Jelić Butić.8 The Marxist Yugoslav approach defined the Ustasha NDH as an exclusively ‘Nazi-Fascist’ puppet state and, according

Ladislaus Hory and Martin Broszat, Der kroatische Ustascha-Staat, 1941–1945 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1964); Fikreta Jelić-Butić, Ustaše i Nezavisna Država Hrvatska 1941–1945 (Zagreb: Sveučilišna naklada Liber, 1977); Narcisa Lengel-Krizman, Genocid nad Romima: Jasenovac 1942 (Zagreb: Biblioteka Kameni cvijet, 2003), Hrvoje Matković, Povijest Nezavisne Države Hrvatske (Zagreb: Naklada Pavičić, 1994), Holm Sundhaussen, ‘Der Ustascha-Staat: Anatomie eines Herrschaftssystems’, Österreichische Osthefte, No. 37 (1995): 521–532, and Jozo Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration (California: Press, 2001). 5 Up until this point, the only works specifically dealing with racial theories in the NDH have been those written by the author of this book. See Nevenko Bartulin, Honorary Aryans: National-Racial Identity and Protected Jews in the Independent State of Croatia (Palgrave Macmillan: New York, 2013); ‘Intellectual Discourse on Race and Culture in Croatia 1900– 1945’, Review of Croatian History, 8, No. 1 (2012): 185–205; ‘The Anti-Yugoslavist Narrative on Croatian Ethnolingustic and Racial Identity’, East Central Europe, 39, Nos. 2–3 (2012): 331– 356; and ‘The Ideal Nordic-Dinaric Racial Type: Racial Anthropology in the Independent State of Croatia’, Review of Croatian History, 5, No. 1 (2009): 189–219. 6 See, for example, Aaron Gillette, Racial Theories in Fascist Italy (London and New York: Routledge, 2002) and Marius Turda and Paul J. Weindling eds. Blood and Homeland: Eugenics and Racial Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe 1900–1940 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2007). 7 Nada Kisić Kolanović, ‘Povijest NDH kao predmet istraživanja’, Časopis za suvremenu povijest, 34, No. 3 (2002): 684. 8 See the works by Bogdan Krizman, Ante Pavelić i ustaše (Zagreb: Globus, 1978), Pavelić između Hitlera i Mussolinija (Zagreb: Globus, 1980), and the two volume Ustaše i Treći Reich (Zagreb: Globus, 1983); and Jelić-Butić, Ustaše i Nezavisna Država Hrvatska.