ICS Working Papers Nº2/2016

40 / 60

ICS WORKING PAPERS 2016
denounced the plan as ‘revolutionary’.
After the Axis forces attacked the Kingdom of Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941, and its territory was
partitioned between Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and other client regimes, there were
some different strategies for political control. In the case of Croatia, the Axis established
the Independent State of Croatia (NDH – Nezavisna Država Hrvatska) while most of Serbia
was placed under a German administration that gave some powers to a more fragile local
government. The NDH was established under the political leadership of Ante Pavelić and his
Ustasha – Croatian Revolutionary Movement (Ustaša – Hrvatski revolucionarni pokret). The
Ustasha movement was a radical ultra-national organization associated with fascism and
terrorist political action. Ante Pavelić, a lawyer and extreme-right politician whose main
political activity in inter-war Yugoslavia was always associated with the independence of
Croatia, went into exile in Germany and Italy on a number of occasions, which was where he
founded the Ustasha. During the 1930s, the movement was increasingly influenced by Italian
Fascism and German National Socialism. By the late 1930s, however, it was developing a
racist ideology through its demand for a ‘Gothic’ identity for all Croats and by idealizing the
peasantry. The Ustasha was fiercely Catholic, identifying Catholicism with Croatian
nationalism. As corporatism became an element of ideological convergence between the
Croat Catholic movement and Ustasha, most Catholic intellectuals in Croatia supported the
construction of a social system based on an organic view of society. As the decade
progressed, the Ustasha ‘adapted the Italian Fascist model to Croatian conditions. In the case
of corporatism, as on the national question, there was an unmistakable convergence of views
between the Ustasha and radical Catholics’
The NDH was marked by improvisation and the disarticulation between the party and the
state, as well as by generalized and terrorist violence against all ‘foreigners’, particularly
Serbs, Jews and Roma. Ethnic cleansing was at the forefront of NDH ideology and
‘totalitarianism and violence remained woven into the very structure of the state’. In fact,
one of the basic goals of Ustasha ideology was to create an ‘ethnically pure Croatia’.
Decision-making within the NDR was increasingly centralized in the person of Ante Pavelić,
who arbitrarily broadened and narrowed his circle of close advisers according to
circumstances and who was ‘always very unwilling to convene government meetings’. The
NDH introduced most of authoritarian and fascist-inspired institutions, even though these
were often poorly developed: the single-party, a youth organization, a system of national
labour syndicates and an outline of ‘professional organization chambers’ as the beginning of a
38