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The Ustasha Racial State Introduction the German Invasion of Yugoslavia

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The Ustasha Racial State Introduction the German Invasion of Yugoslavia CHAPTER SEVEN THE USTASHA RACIAL STATE Introduction The German invasion of Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941 paved the way for the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia. The NDH was pro- claimed in Zagreb on 10 April 1941 in the name of Ante Pavelić, and by ‘the will of our ally’ (i.e. Germany), by the unofficial head of the home- land Ustasha organisation, the former Austro-Hungarian Colonel Slavko Kvaternik (1878–1947).1 Pavelić returned to Croatia on April 13 after twelve years in exile in Italy. The next day he informed a group of Italian journal- ists the following: Today’s restoration of Croatian independence has its foundation in histori- cal and ethnic factors. The pan-Slavist movement spread throughout the entire world the belief that we are one people with the Serbs. This is not true as the Croats are not Slavs according to race but rather are Croats by their origin and nothing else. Without repeating the known differences in religion and culture, the two nations are differentiated ethnically even in a somatic sense.2 On 15 April Pavelić reached Zagreb and immediately formed a new gov- ernment that he officially headed as the Poglavnik. The German Reich and Fascist Italy formally recognised the NDH on the same day. The NDH was never truly independent, but one cannot ignore the fact that ‘a political entity calling itself the Independent State of Croatia did exist from April 10, 1941 to May 8, 1945.’3 The NDH retained all the formal trappings of a state until its fall in May 1945, including its own foreign office, currency, police and armed forces (albeit under German operational command), education system and significant control over policies toward ethnic- racial minorities. 1 For more on the events of April 1941 in Croatia, see Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 52–53. 2 Cited in Jelić-Butić, Ustaše i Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, 140. 3 Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 272. the ustasha racial state 145 The NDH included within its state territory the regions of Croatia- Slavonia, southern Dalmatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Rome Agree- ments, signed by Mussolini and Pavelić on 18 May 1941, accorded Italy sovereignty over the littoral and hinterland of northern and central Dal- matia and most of the Adriatic islands.4 After the capitulation of Italy in September 1943 Germany recognised the NDH’s sovereignty over the for- merly Italian-annexed areas. Hungary occupied the small northwestern region of Međimurje, and ruled it until the end of the war, although the Ustasha government never officially recognised the Hungarian annexation. In late June 1941 the large ethnic German minority in north-eastern Croa- tia (Volksdeutsche) also received complete cultural and political autonomy within the NDH, including education in their own schools and self-gov- ernment in areas where they formed the majority.5 The NDH had a popu- lation of approximately 6.5 million inhabitants: 30% were comprised of Orthodox Serbs (around 1,845,000 people); there were also around 150,000 ethnic Germans, between 36,000 to 39,000 Jews and just over 750,000 Bos- nian Muslims.6 Ethnic Croats made up a little over half of the population of the NDH, but since all Bosnian Muslims were declared ethnically Croatian, the number of Croats was officially estimated at around 4.5 million people. The National Community In order to transform the multi-ethnic NDH into an ethnically homoge- neous nation state the Ustashe established extralegal forces which were free to deal, in whatever manner seemed fit, with the political and racial enemies of the Croatian people. On 17 April 1941 Pavelić issued the Law Decree on the Defence of the Nation and State, which authorised the death sentence for ‘whoever in whatever way acts or has acted against the honour and vital interests of the Croatian people or in any way endangers the existence of the Independent State of Croatia or state authority, even if the act is only attempted . .’7 Like the German Reich, the NDH did not 4 For more on the Rome Agreements, see Kisić Kolanović, NDH i Italija, 101–104. 5 Tomasevich, War and Revolution, 283. 6 The figures for the population of the NDH and its ethnic composition were deduced on the basis of population statistics from 1931; different authors give somewhat different figures. See Jere Jareb, Pola stoljeća hrvatske politike 1895–1945 (1960; reprint Zagreb; Institut za suvremenu povijest, 1995), 87–88 and Jelić-Butić, Ustaše i NDH, 106. On the number of Serbs, see Matković, Povijest Nezavisne Države Hrvatske, 113, 161, and Jews, Tomasevich, War and Revolution, 592. 7 Cited in Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 383..
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