User:Amanuensis Balkanicus/Sandbox4

Background

Inter-war period

Ethnic tensions between Croats and Serbs can be traced back to the Great Schism of 1054. During the time of the Austrian Empire, many Croats came to resent the privileges granted to Serbs living in the Croatian Military Frontier. Following the collapse of Austria-Hungary in the final days of World War I, the Croat and Slovene-dominated State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs was established. Having fought on the side of the Central Powers during the war, ethnic Croats and Slovenes — who formed the majority of the state's population — were viewed unfavourably by western nations and as such failed to gain recognition from the Great Powers. This left them no choice but to join a union largely dominated by ethnic Serbs, which came to be known as the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Upon creation, the state was composed of six million Serbs, 3.5 million Croats and 1 million Slovenes. Being the largest ethnic group, the Serbs favoured a centralized state, whereas Croats, Slovenes and Bosnian Muslims did not.

Approved on 28 June 1921 and based on the Serbian constitution of 1903, the so-called Vidovdan Constitution established the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes as a parliamentary monarchy under the Serbian Karađorđević dynasty. Belgrade was chosen as the capital of the new state, assuring Serb and Orthodox Christian political dominance. In 1928, Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) leader Stjepan Radić was assassinated on the floor of the country's parliament by a Serbian nationalist. The following year King Alexander I proclaimed the 6 January Dictatorship and renamed his country the Kingdom of Yugoslavia to deemphasize its ethnic makeup. Yugoslavia was divided into nine administrative units called banovinas, six of which had ethnic Serb majorities. In 1931, the king issued a decree which allowed the Yugoslav Parliament to reconvene on the condition that only pro-Yugoslav parties were allowed to be represented in it. Marginalized, far-right and far-left movements thrived. The Ustaše, a Croatian fascist party, emerged as the most extreme movement of these. The Ustaše were driven by a deep hatred of Serbs and Serbdom and claimed that "Croats and Serbs were separated by an unbridgable cultural gulf" which prevented them from ever living alongside each other. They organized the so-called Velebit uprising in 1932, assaulting a police station in the village of Brušani in Lika. The police responded harshly to the assault and harassed the local population. In 1934, the Ustaše cooperated with Bulgarian, Hungarian and Italian right-wing extremists to assassinate Alexander while he visited the French city of Marseille. Alexander's cousin, Prince Paul, took the regency until Alexander's son, Peter II, turned eighteen. Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić believed that the assassination would cause Yugoslavia to disintegrate. Instead, countries that had assisted the organization, such as Italy and Hungary, cracked down on its members, arrested them, and destroyed their training camps at Yugoslavia's behest. According to historian Slavko Goldstein, the Ustaše planned to commit a genocide against ethnic Serbs for years prior to the outbreak of World War II. One of Pavelić's main ideologues, Mijo Babić, wrote in 1932:

“ When blood starts to spill it will gush in streams. The blood of the enemy will turn into gushes and rivers, and bombs will scatter their bones like the wind scatters the husks of wheat. Every Ustaša is poised [...] to thrust himself upon the enemy, with his body and soul, to kill and destroy it. The dedication, revolvers, bombs, and sharp knives of the Croatian Ustaše will cleanse and cut whatever is rotten from the healthy body of the Croatian people. ”

Croatian opposition to a centralized Yugoslavia continued following Alexander's assassination, culminating with the signing of the Cvetković–Maček Agreement by Croatian politician Vladko Maček and Yugoslav Prime Minister Dragiša Cvetković on 26 August 1939. By signing the agreement, Belgrade sought to accommodate moderate Croats through the creation of a largely autonomous Banovina of Croatia which covered 27 percent of Yugoslavia's territory and included 29 percent of its population. It also ensured that Maček became Yugoslavia's deputy premier. Ultimately, the agreement was not successful—it led to other Yugoslav ethnic groups demanding a status similar to that of Croatia and failed to satisfy right-wing Croats such as those that had joined the Ustaše, who wanted a fully independent Croatian state. The Ustaše were enraged by the very notion of Maček having negotiated with Belgrade, denouncing him as a "sell out". Right-wing Croats quickly orchestrated anti-Serbian incidents across the newly formed Banovina, and in June 1940, a Croatian National-Socialist Party was established in Zagreb. On 25 March 1941, Yugoslavia bowed to German pressure and signed the Tripartite Pact in an effort to avoid war with the Axis powers. Two days later, a group of Serbian nationalist Royal Yugoslav Air Force officers organized a coup d'état to depose Prince Paul and the government of Dragiša Cvetković. Peter was declared to be of age and was elevated to the throne. Upon hearing news of the coup, Adolf Hitler immediately ordered the invasion of Yugoslavia.

Prelude

On 6 April 1941, Axis forces invaded Yugoslavia. On 10 April, Ustaše leader Slavko Kvaternik proclaimed the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (Croatian: Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH). The declaration came one week prior to the surrender of the Royal Yugoslav Army. In Gospić, the Ustaše immediately set about terrorizing the local Serb population. Pavelić was in Rome at the time and made arrangements to travel to Karlovac. He arrived in the town on 13 April, accompanied by 250–400 Ustaše. Pavelić reached Zagreb on 15 April, having granted territorial cessions to Italy at Croatia's expense and promised the Germans that he had no intention of pursuing a foreign policy independent of Berlin. Germany and Italy responded by extending the NDH their diplomatic recognition the same day. Pavelić was appointed Poglavnik ("leader") of the Ustaše-led Croatian state. The NDH combined most of modern Croatia, all of modern Bosnia and Herzegovina and parts of modern Serbia into an "Italian-German quasi-protectorate". NDH authorities, led by the Ustaše militia, then implemented genocidal policies against the Serb, Jewish and Roma populations living in the new state. Ethnic Serbs were persecuted most because Pavelić and the Ustaše considered them "potential turncoats" in what they wanted to be an ethnically pure state composed solely of Croats. Aiming to exterminate the entire Serb population of the NDH, the Ustaše declared that their goal was:

1. One-third of the Serbs were to be killed.
2. One-third of the Serbs were to be expelled (ethnically cleansed).
3. One-third of the Serbs were to be forcibly converted to Roman Catholicism.

The Cyrillic script was banned by Croatian authorities and Orthodox Christian church schools were closed. Serbs were ordered to wear identifying armbands. These armbands were blue in colour and contained the letter "P" for Pravoslavac (Orthodox). The use of the expression "Serbian Orthodox faith" was prohibited as it was "no longer compatible with the new state order". The Ustaše mandated that the expression "Greek Orthodox faith" be used instead. Further racist and antisemitic laws were passed. Ethnic Serbs, representing about thirty percent of the NDH's population of 6.3 million, became targets of large-scale massacres perpetrated by the Ustaše.

Genocide

Massacres

The Ustaše militia and a hastily formed Croatian gendarmerie, with about 20,000 members each, were given the responsibility of going across Bosnia and Herzegovina and finding as many Serbs as possible to push into camps from where they were to be expelled to Serbia. Serbs who resisted such measures were killed. As expulsions became increasingly difficult to organize, the Ustaše resorted to killing Serb peasants in their villages or deporting them to death camps.

The first atrocity perpetrated against ethnic Serbs in the NDH occurred on 27–28 April, when the Ustaše committed the Gudovac massacre in the village of Gudovac near Bjelovar. The massacre was carried out in retaliation for the killing of a Croatian soldier by an unknown person. The victims were drawn from Gudovac and its surroundings. The massacre resulted in the killing of 184 to 196 Serbs. On 2 May, Miroslav Žanić, the minister of the NDH legislative council, declared:

“ This country can only be a Croatian country, and there is no method we would hesitate to use in order to make it truly Croatian and cleanse it of Serbs, who have for centuries endangered us and who will endanger us again if they are given the opportunity. ”

On 9 May, 400 Serbs were killed in the Blagaj massacre. The same day, about 30 Serb men were killed in Sanski Most. Their corpses were then hung in the parks and streets in order to intimidate the local Serb and Jewish population. Several days later, the Ustaše entered the town of Glina and massacred several hundred local Serbs. On 14 May, the Archbishop of Zagreb, Aloysius Stepinac, sent a letter of protest to Pavelić after receiving news of the massacre.

A Serb family killed in their home, c. 1941.

331 Serb men were later axed to death by the Ustaše in the town of Otočac. On 31 May, 120–270 Serb men were rounded up and murdered in Trebinje under the pretext that they were Chetniks who had killed Ustaše. Outraged, German officer Edmund Glaise-Horstenau reported that the Ustaše had rounded up and killed 2,300 men in villages around Banja Luka. Eyewitnesses reported that the atrocities were unprovoked attacks directed against the Serb civilian population, which the Muslim commander of the regional Ustaše gendarmerie confirmed.

Atrocities against the Serb civilian population of the NDH continued. Many Ustaše massacres followed a similar pattern—Croat soldiers entered a town or village and ordered the Serb peasant population to assemble in the town hall, marketplace, or inside a local church ostensibly so that a proclamation could be read before them; the peasants were then tied together, forced onto lorries and taken to a nearby forest or mountain crate where they were killed. Serb villagers were sometimes killed immediately or forced inside a church which was subsequently set alight. In June, the Ustaše launched pogroms against the Serb population of Herzegovina. On 2/3 June, 120–170 men were massacred in Trebinje. Large arrests of Serbs were carried out in Mostar, where hundreds were shot and their bodies thrown into the Neretva River. In Sarajevo, entire Serb villages were destroyed. In Nevesinje, 173 Serbs were were tortured and then killed by the Ustaše. In Ljubinje, 140 Serbs were massacred. On 3 June, the Ustaše killed 133 Serbs in the village of Korita. Upon being informed of the massacre in Korita, Stepinac again protested to Pavelić. Herman Tongl, the man who orchestrated the killing of Serbs in Korita, told Muslim locals in eastern Herzegovina: "We cannot be satisfied and will not stop until the total extermination of the last Serb from our Independent State of Croatia. The last bullet for the last Serb."

The persecution of Serbs worsened following Pavelić's meeting with Hitler on 6 June, when the two discussed the ethnic composition of the NDH. In particular, they discussed the Serb and Muslim "problem" and the resettlement of Serbs and Slovenes. Hitler advised Pavelić: "If the Croatian state [is] to be really stable, a nationally intolerant policy [has] to be pursued for 50 years, because only damage can [result] from too much tolerance in these matters". After this meeting, the Ustaše lifted all restrictions on the persecution, mistreatment and killing of Serbs. On 7 June the NDH passed a law which ordered all ethnic Serbs who had settled in Croatia after 1 January 1900—as well as their descendents—to register with Croatian authorities or be arrested as prisoners of war. On 22 June, the Ustaše spread rumours that Serbs were plotting to launch a major assault against the Croat and Muslim population of the NDH on the Serbian holiday of Vidovdan on 28 June. Using this ruse, the Ustaše enlisted local Croats and Muslims to massacre Serb farmers in four districts in Herzegovina in what came to be known as the Vidovdan massacre. Serb women and children were raped and assaulted, with some being killed and their bodies thrown into ravines. Others were transported to locations along the Neretva River and killed there. When some Muslims in Bileća demanded the release of local Serbs that the Ustaše had arrested, Croatian authorities realized that they had not secured the support of all Muslims in Herzegovina.

On 25 June, 280 Serbs were massacred by the Ustaše in the coastal town of Metković. A further 260 Serbs were killed at other locations. More killings of Serbs occurred in Čapljina, Knin, Prisoj, Suvaj, Slunj, Polača, Bihać, Bosanska Krupa, Cazin, Sanski Most, Prijedor, and Bosanski Novi. Such atrocities were intended to make as many Serbs as possible leave the NDH and flee to Serbia. While massacres continued, the German general plenipotentiary in Croatia commented that the Ustaše "[had] gone raging mad". He continued by remarking on the "blind, bloody fury of the Ustaše".

Serbs from Glina gathered in a Serbian Orthodox church prior to the second Glina massacre, 30 July 1941.

By the middle of 1941, massacres of Serbs reached degrees of brutality that shocked even some Germans. On 27 June, Pavelić ordered an end to atrocities against Serbs – blaming Jews for the rumours that preceded the Vidovdan massacre. The decree itself, titled the Extraordinary Law Decree and Command For the Maintenance of Peace and Order, came as a result of horrified public reaction and protests from several German officials. It warned of harsh punishment both for individuals who broke the law and for those who failed to enforce it legally and led to the arrest, and in some cases execution, of several Ustaše leaders. The Ustaše also decreed that 100 Serbs would be killed for every Croatian soldier killed. Despite Pavelić's orders, killings of Serbs continued throughout the summer. On the night of 30 July 1941, another group of Serbs were massacred in Glina. Those who had gathered, thinking they were to undergo a conversion ceremony, were greeted by six members of the Ustaše under the direct command of Vjekoslav Luburić. When all were inside, the doors to the church were sealed. The Serbs were then forced to lie on the ground as the six Ustaše struck them one by one on the head with spiked clubs. More Ustaše then appeared and the killings continued. Victims were killed by having their throats cut or by having their heads smashed in with rifle butts. The massacre resulted in the death of 1,200–2,000 Serbs. At around the same time, Serbs in Sanski Most were subjected to mass arrests. Ustaše representative Viktor Gutić stated: "I have issued drastic orders for their complete extermination. Do not be weak toward any of them, bear in mind they were our grave-diggers and destroy them wherever you can." On 2–3 August 1941, those who had been arrested were marched by the Ustaše to various execution sites around Sanski Most, particularly Šušnjar, where they were forced to dig their own graves. The mass grave ended up being 3 metres (9.8 ft) wide, 40 metres (130 ft) long and 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) deep. The victims were killed over the next three days with weapons ranging from machine guns to picks, axes and knives. 2,862 people were recorded killed in this massacre, although some Serbs state that the number was as high as 4,000–5,500. Local legend holds that blood seeped from the earth underneath which victims were buried for months after the killings, turning the soil to reddish clay. On 9 August 1941, Pavelić issued an order prohibiting the activity of "wild Ustaše units". More than 100,000 Serbs had been killed by the Ustaše during the summer of 1941 alone. When arocities continued, Pavelić issued an order on 27 September calling on all NDH officials to "maintain peace and order", reiterating the prohibition of such units. The order also sought to induce Serbs hiding in the mountains to return to their homes, assuring them their safety. Nevertheless, many of those who came out of hiding were killed—even in cases when they had converted to Catholicism.

Members of the 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian), 1944. The division committed several atrocities against Serb civilians in the NDH.

In the winter of 1941–1942, the Ustaše Black Legion carried out massacres in the town of Prijedor and in the Romanija mountains north-east of Sarajevo. In the latter massacres, they killed thousands of defenceless Bosnian Serb civilians and threw their bodies into the Drina River. Ustaše commander Jure Francetić was rumoured to have personally ordered the killing of more than 3,000 of those killed in these operations. In early 1942, in the village of Štikada, near Gračac, local Serbs were convened by the town's parish priest, Morber, to a conversion ceremony in a local church. They were massacred upon arrival by members of the Ustaše militia. On the Orthodox Christmas eve, the night of 6 January 1942, Ustaše units led by Friar Miroslav Filipović destroyed the densely populated village of Drakulić near Banja Luka, killing about 1,000 people. When his superiors heard of the killings, they had Filipović expelled from the Franciscan order. In May 1942, the Black Legion massacred about 890 Serbs and Jews from Vlasenica and raped numerous women and girls.

Massacres of Serbs in the NDH continued throughout the war, but decreased significantly as the Partisans gained strength beginning in 1943. The moderating influence of the Germans—who, for economic and military reasons wished to have a peaceful NDH—was also an important factor. In June 1943, the Ustaše carried out a massacre of Serbs in the town of Srebrenica. The 13th Waffen Mountain Division of the SS Handschar (1st Croatian), a Waffen-SS division made up mostly of Bosnian Muslims commanded by German officers, committed several atrocities against Serb civilians in the NDH in 1944. Its reprisal attacks in northern and eastern Bosnia left many hundreds and possibly as many as several thousand Serb civilians dead by the spring and summer of 1944. In April 1945, NDH authorities captured Chetnik commanders Pavle Đurišić, Petar Baćović, Zaharije Ostojić and Dragiša Vasić and murdered them alongside several Serbian Orthodox priests and others.

Religious persecution

The Germans responded to the widespread anti-Serb violence in the NDH by suggesting to Pavelić that Serbs be given basic civil rights—including the right to work—and urged his regime to create a so-called Croatian Orthodox Church for the Serb population of the NDH, which still numbered about 1.5 million. The purpose of the Croatian Orthodox Church was the Croatisation of the Orthodox Serb population. Supported by Croatian propaganda which claimed that Serbs were largely either Vlachs or Croats who had converted to Orthodox Christianity during the time of the Ottoman Empire or the interwar period, NDH authorities and many Catholic priests launched a campaign of forced conversions of Serbs to Roman Catholicism. Word quickly spread that the Ustaše would spare the lives of those Serbs who converted from Orthodox Christianity. Hundreds of surviving women and children converted in an attempt to save their own lives. Others chose to die rather than give up their faith. Countless Orthodox Christian priests were exiled or imprisoned.

Serbs living in the NDH march out of town carrying large bundles after being expelled from their homes.

The Serbian Orthodox Church and its adherents were fiercely persecuted by NDH authorities and many Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries were destroyed. Notably, the Serbian Orthodox church in Smiljan—the birthplace of inventor Nikola Tesla—was targetted and demolished, as was the home in which Tesla was born. In Banja Luka, the Ustaše forced Jewish prisoners to destroy the city's Serbian Orthodox church. 172 Orthodox Christian places of worship were closed in Lika, Kordun and Banija alone. A total of 183 Serbian Orthodox priests and five bishops were killed by the Ustaše between 1941 and 1945. About 150 of these were killed between May and December 1941. Notably, the Bishop of Banja Luka, Platon Jovanović, was killed on 5 May. His corpse was thrown into a river before being recovered and buried. On 12 May, the Metropolitan of Sarajevo, Petar Zimonjić, was arrested and killed, likely in the Jadovno concentration camp. In mid-August, Sava Trlajić, the Bishop of Plaški–Karlovac was murdered by the Ustaše, also likely in Jadovno. Bishop Sava of Gornji Karlovac was thrown from a mountaintop to his death.

Expulsions

On 7 June 1941, Croatian and German authorities agreed that 179,000 Serbs would be expelled from the NDH and forced into German-occupied Serbia while 179,000 ethnic Slovenes were to be deported from German-occupied Slovenia and settled in the NDH (mostly in Bosnia and northern Croatia). The deportations did not go according to plan, however, due to violence against ethnic Serbs and the inability to arrange such a large population transfer in such a short period. By July 1941, German occupational authorities in Serbia counted nearly 140,000 refugees that had been forced from the NDH. Another 40,000 civilians fleeing the NDH into German-occupied Serbia are thought to have gone unrecorded. The German military commander in Serbia responded by reducing the amount of border crossings between Serbia and the NDH first to two, then to one. By the fall of 1941, all border crossings between the NDH and Serbia were closed. Overall, approximately 200,000 Serbs were forced out of the NDH and expelled to Serbia by the end of the summer of 1941.

Concentration camps

The train which carried inmates to the Jasenovac concentration camp.

The first of twenty-six concentration camps established in the NDH was the Jadovno concentration camp. It was located in a secluded area about 20 kilometres (12 mi) from the town of Gospić and was established between 11 and 15 April 1941. Most of its inmates were Serbs. Other victims included Jews and anti-fascist Croats. It was surrounded by gorges—some up to 91.5 metres (300 ft) deep—which were used as dumping grounds where inmates were lashed together and pushed to their deaths. The camp was closed on 21 August 1941. The remaining Croat inmates were transferred to other NDH-controlled camps, while the Serbs and Jews were murdered. The area in which the Jadovno camp was located was later handed over to the Italians and became part of Italian Zones II and III. 10,000–68,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the camp.

On 29 April 1941, the Ustaše established a concentration camp in the Danica furniture factory in the village of Drnje, near Koprivnica. It held 5,000–9,000 inmates, most of whom were Serbs. Many inmates were executed, beaten, starved, and subjected to forced labour before the camp's closure in July 1941, when the surviving Serbs and Jews were taken to Jadovno and killed.

Two concentration camps were formed on the island of Pag on 25 June 1941—one in Slano and one in the village of Metajna. The camp in Slano was used only to detain men, while the camp at Metajna was used to hold women and children. In Slano, Serbs and anti-fascist Croats were separated from Jewish inmates. As the prisoner barracks were incomplete, many inmates slept on stone floors and without roofs to shield them from the elements. Inmates were subjected to twelve hours of hard labour on a daily basis and many were tortured and starved while others contracted various diseases. Inmates were executed at a nearby location called Furnaža or were taken in boats to the Pag Channel and thrown overboard with heavy stones around their necks. Camp guards sometimes deceived inmates into thinking they were going to be released before executing them. The camp in Metajna saw female inmates frequently raped and then killed by disembowelment. Many women had their breasts severed away. On Sundays, a Croatian Catholic priest would come to the camp to say mass and rape the female inmates. Ustaše guards bragged in local taverns about how easy it was to kill after murdering their first three or four victims. The Ustaše withdrew from Pag on 19 August 1941, having executed many of those detained in the Slano and Metajna camps. The total number of inmates killed on the island remains unknown because in September the Italians exhumed and incinerated the corpses of those murdered there in order to prevent the potential spread of disease. During the exhumations, they noted that some pregnant female inmates who had been murdered had their bellies sewn shut with wire while the bodies of their unborn children remained inside their bodies.

Some Serb women were held in the Lobograd camp near the village of Zlatar Bistrica. Prior to the war, Lobograd was a home from the elderly. In September 1941, it was vacated to receive 1,300 mostly women, many of whom were transferred from a camp in Kruščica. The Ustaše killed, tortured and raped many of the women as typhoid fever spread amongst the inmates. Younger Serb women were transferred to Germany as forced labourers while older Serb women were transferred to Serbia once the camp was closed in autumn 1942. The camp in the town of Đakovo saw 50 Serb women held alongside about 1,830 Jews. Typhoid fever spread quickly amongst the inmates—killing 5–6 women daily—after the Ustaše transferred 1,200 prisoners from Stara Gradiška to the camp. Initially self-administered, the camp was soon taken over by Ustaše guards who began raping and torturing inmates. In June 1942, the camp was closed. 2,400 inmates were transferred to Jasenovac while the 500 women that had been executed in the camp were buried there.

The concentration camp in Jasenovac was established in August 1941. It was intended as a replacement for the camp in Jadovno, and work on its construction began soon after Jadovno was closed. Run by German-trained Ustaše guards, it was the largest concentration camp in Europe in terms of surface area—covering 60 km² (23 sq mi)–130 km² (50 sq mi). It held mostly Serb, Jewish, and Romani prisoners. Rather than being a single site, it was a large complex located north of the Sava River and consisted of five camps near the village of Jasenovac. Inmates in Jasenovac were often murdered very brutally, with physical and psychological torture accompanying the killing. Vjekoslav Luburić, the camp commander, was a sadist who often taunted inmates as to the date and method of their execution. According to witness testimony, inmates died or were killed by, amongst other methods, starvation, infection or infestation, being stabbed with knives or other pointed objects, being nailed to trees, through torture or drowning, being thrown alive into furnaces, through hanging, being shot, having their throats slit, or by having their heads smashed in with mallets or hammers. Children were often killed by being smashed against walls or impaled with bayonets. The methods of execution used by the Ustaše appalled some German observers. Often, the Ustaše would kill their victims with clubs or hooks that were bound to their wrists. The srbosjek, or Serb-cutter, was a curved knife designed specifically for slitting throats. The vast majority of Jasenovac inmates failed to leave the camp alive. In contrast to German-run camps, inmates in Jasenovac were subjected to more personal and less industrial methods of killing as there were no permanent gas chambers. The most successful mechanized method of killing in Jasenovac was throwing live victims into the furnace of the brick factory in Jasenovac III. A poorly-constructed gassing chamber did exist for a period of three months, and many inmates were killed in it using sulfur dioxide and Zyklon B. Ustaše guards sometimes forced inmates to kill and torture other inmates. On other occasions, guards held competitions to see who could kill the most prisoners within the shortest period of time. Luburić boasted the Ustaše had "killed in Jasenovac [...] more people than the Ottoman Empire was able to do during its occupation of Europe". He distributed gold and silver medals to those who killed the most inmates at Jasenovac. One guard, Petar Brzica, a Franciscan scholarship student, is reported to have murdered 1,360 people on the night of 29 August 1942 alone. In a report dated 10 June 1942, Monsignor Augustin Juretić wrote: "The concentration camp at Jasenovac is a real slaughterhouse. You have never read anywhere—not even under the GPU [Soviet State Political Directorate] or the Gestapo—of such horrible things as the Ustashi commit there [...] The story of Jasenovac is the blackest page of the Ustashi regime because thousands of men have been killed there." Most exterminations in Jasenovac occurred in 1941–42 and during the second half of 1944 and the beginning of 1945.

Response

Atrocities directed against the Serb population of the NDH quickly led to anti-Croatian revolts, first in Herzegovina and then in Kordun and Lika. The Schutzstaffel quickly realize that such uprisings would only divert German troops from other fronts. In one of their reports, the Schutzstaffel reported:

“ The atrocities perpetrated by Ustaše units against the Orthodox in Croatian territory must be regarded as the most important reason for the blazing up of guerilla activities. The Ustaše units have carried out their atrocities not only against the male Orthodox of military age, but in particular in the most bestial fashion against unarmed old men [...] Because of these atrocities, innumerable Orthodox have fled to rump Serbia and their reports have roused the Serbian population to great indignation. ”

Appalled by the killings, Italian forces stationed in the NDH began extending their protection to the Serb population and reoccupied many Serb-inhabited areas which had earlier been relinquished to the Croats. Italian soldiers often came to the aid of Serb civilians and on several occasions Italian commanders had senior Ustaše arrested and shot. This caused many Serb and Jewish civilians to flee into Italian-controlled territories. Serb villagers began pleading with the Italians to protect them from the Ustaše. An Italian report dated 29 September 1941 stated that representatives from twenty-four different western Bosnian villages met with Italian officers and offered to collaborate with their forces by repairing roads, acting as guides or fighting on their behalf on the condition that their villages were occupied by the Royal Italian Army. Chetnik bands emerged under Italian protection and received Italian arms to protect ethnic Serb civilians and to fight the Yugoslav Partisans. Chetnik forces responded to Ustaše atrocities by committing massacres of Croat and Muslim civilians in the NDH. Sir Fitzroy Maclean, the head of Great Britain's military mission to aid the Yugoslav Partisans, reported:

“ Bands of Ustaše roamed the countryside with knives, bludgeons and machine guns, slaughtering Serbian men, women and little children, desecrating Serbian churches, murdering Serbian priests, laying waste to Serbian villages, torturing, raping, burning, drowning. Killing became a cult, an obsession. The Ustaše vied to outdo each other, boasting of the numbers of their victims and of their own particular methods of dispatching them. Some Ustaše collected the eyes of Serbs they had killed, sending them, when they had enough, to the Poglavnik for his inspection or proudly displaying them and other human organs in the cafés of Zagreb. ”

Atrocities against Serbs were met with condemnation in many Bosnian Muslim circles, with Muslim intellectuals in Sarajevo, Tuzla, Banja Luka, Bijeljina, Mostar, and Prijedor issuing a resolution denouncing Ustaše crimes throughout the NDH in the summer and autumn of 1941.

Destruction of the NDH

The Ustaše attempted to cover up their crimes when it became obvious that the Allies were winning the war. Evidence of atrocities in places such as Jasenovac was destroyed. All written evidence was thoroughly destroyed and bodies were exhumed from mass graves and incinerated.

Legacy

Demographic impact

Ustaše leader Dido Kvaternik declared: "Whatever the final outcome of the war, by the time it ends, there will be no Serbs in Croatia—and whoever wins will have to face that fact as an unchangeable determinant". Historian Raphael Israeli writes: "There is no doubt that had the war lasted longer, and the German war fronts not collapsed, many more Serbs would have perished and a deeper dent would have been made into their ethnic demographic pool toward their decimation". Some towns in the NDH bore the brunt of Ustaše atrocities more than others. All but 1,400 of the 7,000 Serbs living in Glamoč before the war were killed or sent to concentration camps. Similarly, only about 800 of the 7,000 Serbs living in the town of Mostar before 1941 still lived there following the war. The town was recorded as having a population of 20,295 in the 1931 Yugoslav census. Most of its Serb inhabitants were expelled, arrested or executed by the Ustaše between 1941 and 1945.

References

Books

• Anderson, Liam D. (2013). Federal Solutions to Ethnic Problems: Accommodating Diversity. London, England: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-78161-9.
• Cheney, Margaret; Uth, Robert (1999). Tesla, Master of Lightning. New York City: Barnes & Noble. ISBN 0-7607-5568-X.
• Cox, John K. (2007). "Ante Pavelić and the Ustaša State in Croatia". In Fischer, Bernd Jürgen (ed.). Balkan Strongmen: Dictators and Authoritarian Rulers of South Eastern Europe. West Lafayette, Indiana: Purdue University Press. ISBN 978-1-55753-455-2.
• Djilas, Aleksa (1991). The Contested Country: Yugoslav Unity and Communist Revolution, 1919–1953. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-67416-698-1.
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Websites

• Fisk, Robert (15 August 1992). "'Cleansing' Bosnia at a camp called Jasenovac". The Independent.