Abstract
A month after the invasion of Yugoslavia by Axis forces in March 1941 a new Independent State of Croatia (NDH) was created under German and Italian control comprising Croatia, Bosnia and parts of Srijem. The new state was nominally a monarchy under the Duke of Spoleto as King Tomislav II, at least until his abdication in 1943. But, from the outset, power resided in the hands of Ante Pavelić, as Poglavnik or supreme chieftain, and one of the leaders of the Ustasha Croatian Revolutionary Organization since its foundation in 1930. At first it seems that the new regime enjoyed considerable popularity, which reassured both US diplomats and the German authorities. It was not long, however, before it unleashed a wave of genocidal ethnic cleansing against Serbs, Jews and Roma, whose brutal savagery appalled even the German military commanders. Not that the Germans minded the elimination of the Jews and the Roma: by the summer of 1942 most of them, some 30,000 in each case, were either incarcerated in Ustasha concentration camps or deported to various Nazi death camps and few survived the war. What staggered the Germans was the violence the Ustasha unleashed on the 1.9 million Serbian inhabitants of the NDH. Perhaps as many as 500,000 Serbs were killed by 1945. Even though the government partially abandoned its exclusive emphasis on physical elimination in favour of assimilation by conversion to Catholicism and by the creation of a new Croatian Orthodox Church, the brutality, and the killing, continued in some areas until the end of the war. Why?
As Rory Yeomans explains in this engrossing new study, the genocide was inextricably linked with the Ustasha doctrine of Croat identity and with their visions for the future. Of course one obvious motive was undoubtedly revenge for the injustices allegedly perpetrated by the largely Serbian Yugoslav authorities against the Croats during the 1920s and 1930s. But, more fundamentally, the Serbs, together with the Jews and Roma, were viewed as an obstacle to the creation of a racially and culturally pure Croatian state. They were ‘Balkan trash’ allegedly brought into Croatia by the Ottomans. Their Eastern Orthodox religion set them apart from the Catholic Croats. While the Bosnian Muslims were regarded as authentic, original Croatians, the Serbs were branded aliens. Their elimination was regarded as a crucial element of the first of two revolutions that would result in the resurgence of the Croat nation: the revolution of blood. Its successful execution was the precondition for the second stage, the social and cultural revolution that would create the new society.
Yeomans’ book is concerned with the ideals that inspired this second stage of the revolution. In six fascinating chapters he explores the key elements of Ustasha ideology. Above all, rather than examining the Ustasha movement simply through the lens of Eastern European politics, he seeks to position it in relation to the other fascist movements, from which it borrowed heavily, and to apply to it the kind of analysis that George Mosse and Ze’ev Sternhell have applied to Nazism. Of course the Ustasha never lost it original character as an extreme Croat nationalist movement driven by radical students and youth activists. Even as its leaders aged, the student remained a key archetype, venerated as the vanguard of a new elite. Similarly, the annihilation of the old (in practice watered down as purging key institutions of the older generation of officials) was presented as the precondition of national regeneration. The new society would be peopled by new men and women, ‘merciless warriors and militant heroines’. Culture and taste – the reform of popular literature, the development of a film industry, the establishment of gyms and fitness halls, a campaign against swearing – were also central concerns of the movement, as much as the emphasis on the regenerative power of older Croat literary traditions or a concern for the purification of the Croat language. Both were essential aspects of the ‘revolution of the soul’ that the Ustasha aspired to. Like Nazism, finally, Ustasha ideology devoted much energy to the cult of martyrs and to the sacrifices made by their activists: warriors, martyrs and avenging angels who would ultimately liberate the Croats from Sodom and Serbdom.
Drawing on a wealth of contemporary journals and newspapers, Yeomans presents a marvellously vivid picture of this short-lived movement. Like Italian fascism and Nazism, it was both modern and anti-modern, traditionalist yet revolutionary, invoking the ancient history of the nation to build the foundations for a racially pure future. One might almost be tempted to view the Ustasha movement as a popular movement, yet Yeomans also emphasizes the rising tide of opposition to it: ordinary Croats, outraged by the treatment of their Serb neighbours or simply alienated by the arrogant intellectualism of those who aimed to reform them. The second revolution failed as the country descended into civil war and Serb Chetniks and communist Partisans gained control in many areas. Palević, the movement’s leader, increasingly under German supervision, hung on to power in Zagreb until May 1945. Then, urging his followers to fight to the last, he fled to Italy and was sheltered by the Vatican, which arranged for his passage to Argentina in 1948. He died in Spain in 1959, having sought asylum there following an attempted assassination two years earlier. His ‘visions of annihilation’ had signally failed to bring about cultural regeneration. They left instead a bitter legacy that still weighs heavily today.