Translated by Damir O. Rados

COUNTERING AGIT-PROP

C R O A T I A N   U P R I S E R S:   U S T A S H E  

            (Jasenovac) (Bleiburg) (Catholic Church)

French history professor, newsperson and author Christophe Dolbeau specialized in Croatian history. He published several volumes on that theme, the most prominent being La Veridique historie des oustachis (The true history of Ustashe ), Akribeia, Saint Genis-Laval, France, 2015).                   

Christophe Dolbeau: The origin of the Ustasha movement should be undoubtedly attributed to the failed concept of co-existence  which forced people of deeply different cultures, religions and languages to live in one country. The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes proclaimed on December 2, 1918.)  was the  forerunner of Yugoslavia which was established on strictly authoritarian principles, without consultation with the Croatian Parliament and with the forceful support of the Serbian military.

Serbia ignored the will of several peoples and countries. Croatia with its own distinct language (written in Latin alphabet), has predominantly Catholic population (with defined segments of Muslim, Protestant, Ortodox and Jewish minorities) and has a deeply oriented western culture; Croatia suddenly found itself under military tutelage of the Serbian monarch and Serbian people. The Serbs, with their similar but separate distinct language (written in Cyrillic alphabet) followed the Ortodox faith having fairly recently freed themselves from the Osman domination which had significantly shaped their political traditions.

Slovenia faced a similar situation, while the Macedonians (culturally close to Bulgarians) and Kosovars (ethnically linked to Albanians) saw their ethnic identity completely ignored. The forced coexistence imposed on these people, each one of them with ancient and established feeling of self-identity was initially ill conceived and it promptly metamorphosed into a permanent, ever growing, aggressive conflict.

A major part of the conflict resided in the perception of the Serbian leadership: they felt emboldened by their successes in WWI and therefore firmly believed that the new Yugoslav creation will become a “Great Serbia”, the height of their military successes.

The Ustasha movement was established on January 7, 1929 as a direct response to the dictatorship which, one day before, on January 6th, was proclaimed by King Alexander Karadjordjevic of Yugoslavia. The movement itself was not deeply ideology driven; rather, it was primarily directed to liberation of Croatia from foreign domination, emphasizing the use of force if necessary in the process of return to independence. From the historic point of view, Croatians had maintained their own country and parliament from the early  Middle  Ages: the continuity of these institutions survived through centuries until the establishment of Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

Ustashe not only attempted to re-establish the Croatian national sovereignty to include the territories of historic Croatian lands Bosnia and Herzegovina, but to implement  a government based on traditional social, democratic, agrarian and Christian  values of the land. In addition, the movement planned to establish political programs clearly favoring the Muslim population which had been an object of significant institutional repression and scorn under Serbian domination.

It is imperative to clarify that the Marseille attack (October 9, 1934) was indeed planned by a Croatian Ustasha, but the person who actually fired on King Alexander was neither a Croatian nor a member of Ustashe. The assassin, Petr Kelemen, was a Macedonian and a member of the Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (VMRO), a nationalist group connected with Ustashe.

The fatal act of the conspirator was not motivated by personal revenge or desire for personal profit: it was defined as a punishment of a king who ruled as a despot and imposed a government of terror.

On June 20, 1928 the Montenegro representative in the Yugoslav parliament and stern ally of the king, Puniša Račić, opened fire during the parliament session and assassinated  two Croatian representatives. The third victim, Croatian  delegate  Stjepan Radic, the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party, was mortally wounded andeventually died on August 8. Subsequently, many Croatian parlamentarians were forced into exile ( including Juraj Krnjevic, August Kosutic and Ante Pavelic ) while others were imprisoned (Vladko Macek), were  physically attacked (Mile Budak) or assassinated (Josip Predavac, Stjepan Duic and academicians Ivo Pilar and Milan Sufflay).

In January 1929 King Alexander abolished the constitution, closed the House of Representatives and prohibited any activities of all political parties. Croatian national symbols including the flag, national anthem and traditional songs were all prohibited under heavy penalties of law. On September 20th, 1929 The Manchester Guardian offered the following bleak assessment: “Yugoslavia should be considered a cemetery. The country is a paradise for police forces, spies, traitors and slanderers. In prisons, confessions are obtained by ungodly torture. This dictatorship is a dictatorship of a sword and gun.”

Insofar it concerns the Marseilles conspirators, it is imperative to quote Emile de Saint-Auban, attorney for the defense: “Ustashe are not people who can be bought. They are ready to die for a just cause of the oppressed. It suffices to see them and to hear them to recognize that these are not ordinary criminals. There is no criminal venture here: Ustashe are neither gangsters nor thieves. They only strive for the revision of unjust agreements and independence for their country.”

Alexandre Guibbal, chief of Marseille police, stated the following on VMRO and Ustashe: “These groups are not composed of criminals and outlaws, but of honest people who believe that they are true patriots who are led by exclusive and noble ideals. Ustashe are not people that can be bought. They are ready to die for noble principles and a noble cause.”

It is, therefore, warranted to clarify the common misconception:  The Fascist Italy played a limited role in the process of establishment of Croatian Independent State and the Ustashe movement. Instead, Italy seized the advantage of dissolution of Yugoslavia in order to occupy the entire Adriatic coast (Dalmatia) and to force this act of occupation on the newly formed Ustashe government in Zagreb.

In this region, Italy actively collaborated with Chetniks (Serbian monarchists) who had already started attacking the newly formed nation. Croatia did not regain control over its Adriatic shores until September 10, 1943, the date of capitulation of Italy. (Armistice signed on September 3, and announced on September 8).

Despite the occupation of German, Italian and Hungarian forces, The Croatian Independent State worked to attain and assert its sovereignty in defense of national interests. However, its capabilities were extremely limited. Croatia could only survive through collaboration with Berlin and Rome. This fact was significantly complicated by the support of the western allies to re-establish the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Within the sphere of these extremely limiting parameters  Pavelic did succeed in attaining some significant goals.

He re-established the Croatian parliament, a great success in Europe which was dominated by anti-democratic regimes. He fully established the Croatian Orthodox church and personally supervised the construction of a large mosque in Zagreb. This was an extraordinary symbol of inclusion. At the same time, he maintained secret communication with USA, a country with thousands of Croatian immigrants. It is notable that by direct Pavelic’s  intervention, many American prisoners of war were  saved from German imprisonment and kept under protection of Baroness  Vera Nikolic Podrinska ( 1886- 1972) in the capital city Zagreb. 

Early in 1945, 14 American POW’s departed Croatia with Croatian aircraft and arrived safely to Italy. These events indicate that despite enormous limitations, Pavelic and Ustashe regime followed their own strategic goals while facing a plethora of ongoing oppositions and limitations.

Incidentally, it must be noted that traditionally, Croatians do not consider themselves a Balkan nation. Their identification resides with the central Europe.

(Jasenovac)

The most prominent enemies  of the Croatian Independent State were the Serbian Chetniks led by Draza Mihailovic (1893-1946) and later the partisans led by Josip Broz Tito (1892-1980). The Chetniks were the monarchy financed and supported guerilla forces sternly loyal to Yugoslav kingdom, the concept of Greater Serbia, the Karadjordjevic dynasty and the Serbian Ortodox Church. Until 1943-1944 they were supported by London and Washington. On the other side of the spectrum, the partisans were communist guerillas initially supported by the Soviet Union, and later, starting in 1944, by London.

The characterization of Jasenovac as the “Croatian Auschwitz” was contrived after Tito’s victory in 1945. To affirm their control and aggrandize its legitimacy, the communist victors proceeded to demonize the NDH by creating a narrative about a mass concentration camp where, allegedly, thousands of prisoners had been executed. The irrefutable truth is that during 45 years of a myriad of investigations  not   a single credible number of victims of  Jasenovac has been produced. 

In May of 1945 the initial estimates cited 55 victims. Thereafter, the number was elevated to 1.4 million (sic!), then reduced to 900,000 and thereafter, in 1964, to 481. The political speculations continued with new changing estimates ranging from 200,000 to 400,000, to 700,000. Until year 1989, General Franjo Tudman suggested a range between 30,000 and 40,000 while other “experts” cited numbers ranging from 403 to 50,000 and thereafter 85,000, then 600,000 and finally 1,000,000. 

The politicization continued in 2024 clearly showing the unscrupulous use of numbers of victims by the communist propaganda: use of shocking, unfounded anecdotal reports, false statements, falsification of documents, particularly photographic. It has been often demonstrated that many of these “statistics victims” included people who were identified as survivors after the war. It was also clearly demonstrated that many properly identified victim remains were actually victims of the Tito’s communist liberators regime.

The Jesuit historian Vladimir Horvat pointed out the logistic impossibility of some victims estimates. If the number of 500,000 victims is considered as correct, that would imply 16 executions each hour of the 1300 days of the camp existence. A claim of 1 million victims doubles the previous number, to wit, 768  executions daily, or one per minute……a scale not substantiated by evidence.

The details about comparison of daily camp operations between Auschwitz and Jasenovac are almost always excluded from serious analyses. Jasenovac had a soccer  stadium,  a theater, a formal orchestra and a regular Sunday mass service. The industrial operations of the camp were supervised by a Jewish associate of Pavelic, Ivo Heinrich, who eventually took residence in Argentina. A portion of the camp’s administrative body was composed of Jews. Some of the guards were orthodox Christians. These facts are not intended to negate that life in the camp was difficult and that prisoners died, at times under cruel circumstances. It must also be said that difficult prison life was a common denominator in all camps during WWII but definitely not to be equaled by conditions in Auschwitz. Canadian historian James Bacque estimated, on record, close to one million deaths in American and French prison camps at the end of the war.

Coat of arms and flag

As opposed to Auschwitz, Jasenovac was visited several times by neutral international observers. In February 1942, the international commission visited the camp; one of the prominent and credible observers attending was Don Giuseppe Carmelo Masucci, the Italian Benedictin and secretary to the Vatican envoy, later resident Marconi. The Zagreb Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac intervened frequently with the government, always requesting improvements of the existing conditions. Formal international delegations visited and audited Jasenovac in May 1942,  Fall  1942, Summer 1943 and February 1944. In addition, Julius Schmidlin, Switzerland delegate and president of the commission of International Red Cross led the visiting commission to Jasenovac from July 14 through July 17 of 1944.  Schmidlin left no significant critiques or accusations with the government of Croatia.

The question of alleged antisemitism within the Ustasha movement and the NDH is a complex issue. It is an established fact that between 13,000 and 19,000 Croatian Jews disappeared during the length of the entire war in Croatia. For decades, the communist propaganda- which effectively influenced the allied powers- attributed full responsibility for this tragedy to the Ustashe regime. The truth, however, is by far, different.

The Ustasha movement inherited and provided continuity to the ideology of Stranka Prava (Party of Rights) which was led by Josip Frank (1844 – 1911),  a Jewish Zionist. Furthemore, the movement never based its recruiting on racist criteria. Its essential program never mentioned antisemitism or antagonism toward Jews. To the contrary, several prominent members of the Pavelic government were Jews including Ljubomir Krezimir, Vlado Singer, Ivo Korsky, David Karlovic, Oktavijan Svijezic, Stipo Mosner, Andrije Betlehem, Alexander Klein and others.

Furthemore, several NHD leaders, including Pavelic (1889 – 1959), ministers Slavko Kvaternik, Milovan Zanic, General Ivan Percevic and leader of the Ustasha Youth Ivan Orsanic had all spouses of Jewish ancestry. Pavelic’s mother in law maiden name was Herzfeld.

Although NDH published specific laws on “racial protection” under stern German pressures, the government also executed measures to counter such laws. Pavelic frequently took advantage of his “discretionary power” to bestow status of “honorary arian” to several selective Jews - a fact confirmed by historian Raul Hilberg.

Some Jews were recruited into the Croatian military which protected them from deportation, while many were urged to seek protection in the Italian occupation zone where the risks were significantly reduced. Jewish professionals, for example doctors, were strategically assigned to medical missions in Bosnia and Herzegovina, farther from the pressures in the north. Despite these efforts, arrests and deportations did take place. It should be emphasized that NDH was a nation in making and the administration, including Pavelic, did not have full control over those who falsely claimed to act in its name.

Some regions registered activities of the so called “nastashe” formations which operated in most remote parts of the country and outside control of the lawful government in Zagreb. In addition, there were German formations which operated independently within the north regions of Croatia [Hans Helm (1909 – 1947), German police forces attache ] and Einsatzgruppe E, SS operative forces, both active outside the direct Pavelic control. 

In Zagreb, there were two Adolf Eichmann delegates –Franz Abromeit (1907 – 1964) and Herman Krumay (1905 – 1981) overseeing the compliance of the anti-Jewish politics. They were supported by approximately 30 German-Croatian police units under the command of SS Gruppenfuhrer Konstatntin Kammerhofer (1899 – 1958 )  which operated separately from the Croatian armed forces. The anti-Croatian propaganda frequently associated the activities of this body with the Ustasha movement often creating invented narratives carried on to current times.

 (Bleiburg- then and now)

It is warranted to address the concept of the term “democide” – meaning mass killings executed by the government – which was created by professor Rudolph Joseph Rummel. Democide, as defined, took place in full force in May of 1945. The crime started in the vicinity of Austrian town of  Bleiburg  where  Tito’s communist forces started a brutal, planned campaign to eradicate the Croatian national identity and destroy the Croatian nationalism by mass killing of all civil and military enemies.

The Croatian military surrendered on May 15, 1945, one week after the capitulation of Germany. A documented number of 600,000 individuals –POW’s, refugees, men, women, children, contingents of wounded and elderly were extradited to the Yugoslav communist partisan forces by the British army. Many thousands were massacred close to the surrender site without any due process. Countless columns of humanity were “mowed” by machine guns and thrown into hundreds of gullies and caves in southern Austria, Slovenia and Croatia. The “death marches “lasted for months and some covered distances of almost 1000 kilometers. (600 miles) This planned and well executed extermination of the civilian and POW masses  also insured that the mass graves, incurred in the process,  would be spread over large distances: therefore,  they would more difficult to detection.

This tragedy resulted in a disappearance of several hundreds of thousands of Croatians. The details of this tragedy are well documented and  more recently described in an excellent study by Florian  Rulitz  The Tragedy of Bleiburg and Viktring, 1945. (Northern Illinois University Press. Dekalb, 2016.)

During the Homeland War (1991–1995) many defenders spontaneously revived  

the Ustashe songs from the 1941 to 1945 war period. The nation was undergoing a  process of liberation after 45 years of communist oppression: Communism was rejected, old songs, symbols and heroes were revived and a preponderant part  of the population called for the rehabilitation of the past patriots. The truth about the Bleiburg extermination was finally allowed to be discussed; many, ( but not all) of the planners, participants and executors of the Bleiburg crime were identified but were not prosecuted; witnesses were not deposed and  not all archives were opened. Thus, despite more than 750 mass graves in Slovenia and 1700 mass graves in Croatia, the perpetrators of this joint criminal enterprise , Josip Broz Tito and the partisans, were not brought to justice. The traditional agit-prop counterargument to these devastating statistics was the continued vilification of the Ustasha movement.

Entering a new millennium, the new political leadership in Croatia implemented the anti-Tudman politics (sic!) and imposed the maximum motto “that anti-fascists” (read communists ) could not be prosecuted. This protected all Communists, their descendents  and it included the Bleiburg perpetrators. Subsequent governments frequently distanced themselves from the debate simply concerned about a possible detrimental reaction of their progressive European colleagues. In the meantime, the expected purge of the communist legacy, “the lustration”, never materialized and the Ustasha songs and emblems, were again prohibited by law.

 (Catholic Church)

The founder and leader of the Ustasha movement Ante Pavelic was a practicing Catholic as were many of the members of his movement from the early, pre-war years.  The Catholic Church in Croatia held a place of honor and respect in the eyes of both the government officials and the population at large. Many members of the Catholic Church actively supported the establishment of NDH. Opposite to nacism, the Ustasha ideology was based on the traditional Christian values and it did not  show being partial  to either atheism or biological  materialism (racism).

Pope Pio XII., was well informed about the situation in Croatia through his  apostolic  visitor Giuseppe Ramiro Marcone  (1882-1952). He welcomed Pavelic in Vatican on 18 May, 1941. It is doubtful that he would extend a welcome to a foreign dignitary having serious doubts about him and his government. It Is significant to note that Pope John XXIII personally blessed Ante Pavelic at the time of his death in December 1959.  Equally important is to note that such consideration did not guarantee unconditional agreements.

Some members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy expressed their opposition to the NDH regime in word and in writing. Sarajevo Archbishop Ivan Evandelist Saric (1871-1960) openly  supported  the NDH  and its leadership. The Mostar Bishop Alojzije Misic (1859-1942) represented a strong opposition. The Archbiship of Zagreb, Alojzije Stepinac (1898-1960) was never intimidated by public criticisms when they were justified. It suffices to add that some Catholic priests of stature actually favored the communist ideology; Svetozar Rittig (1873-1961) actually assumed a ministerial position in Tito’s post war, communist government.

THE AGIT-PROP METHOD WAS MOTHERED IN MOSCOW, IMPORTED THROUGH COMMUNIST IDEOLOGY TO EVERY CORNER OF EUROPE, PARTICULARLY SO TO THE OLD YUGOSLAVIA REAL ESTATE WHERE IT FOUND  A FERTILE GROUND  AND  WHERE IT EXISTS TODAY  AS A CHALLENGING FORCE  IN THE NEW CROATIAN SOCIETY.

Bibliography

1. Ustashe, Croatian political movement, Encyclopedia Britannica, Chicago, II, 2024.

2. Paulet, Georges, Author de l’assassinat  d’Alexandre ler, souvenirs at Editions du Coq, 1949, pp.139-141.

3. Revue Internationale de Criminologie et de Police Technique et Scientifique, 1-1955, pp.13-17

4.  C. MichaelMcAdams, Saveznički ratni zarobljenici  u Hrvatskoj  1941-1945, Hrvatska izvještajna služba, Arcadia, 1980.

5. The term “poglavnik”is a derivative from word “head”, mening “leader”.

6. Bacque, James, Other losses: investigation on mass deaths of german prisoners of French and  Americans after  WWII, Talonbooks, 2011.

7. Bleiburg: Tito’s License For Genocide, Documentary, Croatian Film Institute, Texas, 2017

8. Jendryschik, Sepp Zgoda: Stanica na šleskom putu patnje, Viol Publishing House for Holistic Research, 2000.

9. The traditional coat of arms of Croatia is composed of six crossing lines of white and red squares, noting  that the first square in the upper, left position is  white. This is the coat of arms observed on the roof of St. Mark’s church and Zagreb and the one declared as the official national coat of arms by the Croatian Independent State. The current  Republic of Croatia adopted the coat of arms  with the first square in the upper left position being red.

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