Ustaše

Poglavnik Ante Pavelić and Italy's Duce Benito Mussolini on 18 May 1941 in Rome. The Ustaše were heavily influenced by Italian Fascism and politically supported by Fascist Italy.

Germany's Führer Adolf Hitler with Pavelić at the Berghof outside Berchtesgaden, Germany. The Ustaše increasingly came under the influence of Nazism after the founding of the NDH in 1941.

One of the major ideological influences on the Croatian nationalism of the Ustaše was 19th century Croatian activist Ante Starčević,[7] an advocate of Croatian unity and independence, who was both anti-Habsburg and anti-Serbian in outlook.[7]

He envisioned the creation of a Greater Croatia that would include territories inhabited by Bosniaks, Serbs, and Slovenes, considering Bosniaks and Serbs to be Croats who had been converted to Islam and Orthodox Christianity, while considering the Slovenes to be "mountain Croats".[7] Starčević argued that the large Serb presence in territories claimed by a Greater Croatia was the result of recent settlement, encouraged by Habsburg rulers, and the influx of groups like Vlachs who took up Orthodox Christianity and identified themselves as Serbs. Starčević admired Bosniaks because in his view they were Croats who had adopted Islam in order to preserve the economic and political autonomy of Bosnia and Croatia under the rule of the Ottoman Empire.[7]

The Ustaše used Starčević's theories to promote the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Croatia and recognized Croatia as having two major ethnocultural components: Catholics and Muslims.[7] The Ustaše sought to represent Starčević as being connected to their views.[22] Josip Frank seceded his extreme fraction from Starčević's party and formed his own the Pure Party of Rights, which became the main pool of members of the subsequent Ustaše movement.[23][24][25][26] Historian John Paul Newman stated that Austro-Hungarian officers' "unfaltering opposition to Yugoslavia provided a blueprint for the Croatian radical right, the Ustaše".[27]

The Ustaše promoted the theories of Dr Milan Šufflay, who is believed to have claimed that Croatia had been "one of the strongest ramparts of Western civilization for many centuries", which he claimed had been lost through its union with Serbia when the nation of Yugoslavia was formed in 1918.[28] Šufflay was killed in Zagreb in 1931 by government supporters.[29][30]

The Ustaše accepted the 1935 thesis by a Franciscan friar, Father Krunoslav Draganović, who claimed that many Catholics in southern Herzegovina had been converted to Orthodox Christianity in the 16th and 17th centuries, in order to justify a policy of forcible conversion of Orthodox Christians in the area to Catholicism.[31]

The Ustaše were heavily influenced by Nazism and fascism. Pavelić's position of Poglavnik was based on the similar positions of Duce held by Benito Mussolini and Führer held by Adolf Hitler.[7] The Ustaše, like fascists, promoted a corporatist economy.[32] Pavelić and the Ustaše were allowed sanctuary in Italy by Mussolini after being exiled from Yugoslavia. Pavelić had been in negotiations with Fascist Italy since 1927 that included advocating a territory-for-sovereignty swap in which he would tolerate Italy annexing its claimed territory in Dalmatia in exchange for Italy supporting the sovereignty of an independent Croatia.[7]

Mussolini's support of the Ustaše was based on pragmatic considerations, such as maximizing Italian influence in the Balkans and the Adriatic. After 1937, with the weakening of French influence in Europe following Germany's remilitarization of the Rhineland and with the rise of a quasi-fascist government in Yugoslavia under Milan Stojadinović, Mussolini abandoned support for the Ustaše from 1937 to 1939 and sought to improve relations with Yugoslavia, fearing that continued hostility towards Yugoslavia would result in Yugoslavia entering Germany's sphere of influence.[33]

Anti-Serbian and anti-communist Ustaše poster

The collapse of the quasi-fascist Stojadinović regime resulted in Italy restoring its support for the Ustaše, whose aim was to create an independent Croatia in personal union with Italy.[33] However, distrust of the Ustaše grew. Mussolini's son-in-law and Italian foreign minister Count Galeazzo Ciano noted in his diary that "The Duce is indignant with Pavelić, because he claims that the Croats are descendants of the Goths. This will have the effect of bringing them into the German orbit".[34]

Hungary strongly supported the Ustaše for two aims. One, in order to weaken Yugoslavia, Little Entente, in order to ultimately regain some of its lost territories. The other, Hungary also wished to establish later in the future a strong alliance with the Independent State of Croatia and possibly enter a personal union.[35]

Nazi Germany initially didn't support an independent Croatia, nor did it support the Ustaše, with Hitler stressing the importance of a "strong and united Yugoslavia".[33] Nazi officials, including Hermann Göring, wanted Yugoslavia stable and officially neutral during the war so Germany could continue to securely gain Yugoslavia's raw material exports.[33] The Nazis grew irritated with the Ustaše, among them Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler, who was dissatisfied with the lack of full compliance by the NDH to the Nazis' agenda of extermination of the Jews, as the Ustaše permitted Jews who converted to Catholicism to be recognized as "honorary Croats", thus putatively exempt from persecution.[7]

In 1932, an editorial in the first issue of the Ustaše newspaper, signed by the Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić, proclaimed that violence and terror would be the main means for the Ustaše to attain their goals:

The KNIFE, REVOLVER, MACHINE GUN and TIME BOMB; these are the idols, these are bells that will announce the dawning and THE RESURRECTION OF THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF CROATIA.[36]

In 1933, the Ustaše presented "The Seventeen Principles" that formed the official ideology of the movement. The Principles stated the uniqueness of the Croatian nation, promoted collective rights over individual rights and declared that people who were not Croat by "blood" would be excluded from political life.[7]

Those considered "undesirables" were subjected to mass murder.[37] These principles called for the creation of a new economic system that would be neither capitalist nor communist[7] and which emphasized the importance of the Roman Catholic Church and the patriarchial family as means to maintain social order and morality.[7] (The name given by modern historian to this particular aspect of Ustaše ideology varies; "national Catholicism",[38] "political Catholicism" and "Catholic Croatism"[39] have been proposed among others.) In power, the Ustaše banned contraception and tightened laws against blasphemy.[40]

The Ustaše accepted that Croats are part of the Dinaric race,[41] but rejected the idea that Croats are primarily Slavic, claiming they are primarily descended from Germanic roots with the Goths.[42] The Ustaše believed that a government must naturally be strong and authoritarian. The movement opposed parliamentary democracy for being "corrupt" and Marxism and Bolshevism for interfering in family life and the economy and for their materialism. The Ustaše considered competing political parties and elected parliaments to be harmful to its own interests.[32]

The Ustaše recognized both Roman Catholicism and Islam as national religions of the Croatian people but initially rejected Orthodox Christianity as being incompatible with their objectives.[28] Although the Ustaše emphasized religious themes, it stressed that duty to the nation took precedence over religious custom.[43]

In power, the Ustaše banned the use of the term "Serbian Orthodox faith", requiring "Greek-Eastern faith" in its place.[37] The Ustaše forcefully converted many Orthodox to Catholicism, murdered and expelled 85% of Orthodox priests,[44] and plundered and burnt many Orthodox Christian churches.[44] The Ustaše also persecuted Old Catholics who did not recognize papal infallibility.[37] On 2 July 1942 the Croatian Orthodox Church was founded, as a further means to destroy the Serbian Orthodox Church, but this new Church gained very few followers.[45]

The Ustaše attached conditions to the Croatian citizenship of Muslims, such as asserting that a Muslim who supported Yugoslavia would not be considered a Croat nor a citizen but would instead be considered a "Muslim Serb" who could be denied property and imprisoned. The Ustaše claimed that such "Muslim Serbs" had to earn Croat status.

See also: The Holocaust in the Independent State of Croatia

While initial focus was against Serbs, as the Ustaše grew closer to the Nazis they adopted antisemitism.[46] In 1936, in "The Croat Question", Ante Pavelić placed Jews third among "the Enemies of the Croats" (after Serbs and Freemasons, but before Communists): writing:

″Today, practically all finance and nearly all commerce in Croatia is in Jewish hands. This became possible only through the support of the state, which thereby seeks, on one hand, to strengthen the pro-Serbian Jews, and on the other, to weaken Croat national strength. The Jews celebrated the establishment of the so-called Yugoslav state with great joy, because a national Croatia could never be as useful to them as a multi-national Yugoslavia; for in national chaos lies the power of the Jews... In fact, as the Jews had foreseen, Yugoslavia became, in consequence of the corruption of official life in Serbia, a true Eldorado of Jewry."[47]

Once in power, the Ustaše immediately introduced a series of Nazi-style Racial Laws. On 30 April 1941, the Ustaše proclaimed the "Legal Decree on Racial Origins" the "Legal Decree on the Protection of Aryan Blood and the Honor of the Croatian People", and the "Legal Provision on Citizenship".[48] These decrees defined who was a Jew, and took away the citizenship rights of all non-Aryans, i.e. Jews and Roma. By the end of April 1941, months before the Nazis implemented similar measures in Germany and over a year after being implemented in occupied Poland, the Ustaše required all Jews to wear insignia, typically a yellow Star of David.[49] The Ustaše declared the "Legal Provision on the Nationalization of the Property of Jews and Jewish Companies", on 10 October 1941, and with it they confiscated all Jewish property.[50]

Already on their first day, 10–11 April 1941, Ustaše arrested a group of prominent Zagreb Jews and held them for ransom. On 13 April the same was done in Osijek, where Ustaše and Volksdeutscher mobs also destroyed the synagogue and Jewish graveyard.[51] This process was repeated multiple times in 1941 with groups of Jews. Simultaneously, the Ustaše initiated extensive antisemitic propaganda, with Ustaše papers writing that Croatians must "be more alert than any other ethnic group to protect their racial purity, ... We need to keep our blood clean of the Jews". They also wrote that Jews are synonymous with "treachery, cheating, greed, immorality and foreigness", and therefore "wide swaths of the Croatian people always despised the Jews and felt towards them natural revulsion".[52]

In May 1941, the Ustaše rounded up 165 Jewish youth in Zagreb, members of the Jewish sports club Makabi, and sent them to the Danica concentration camp (all but 3 were later killed by the Ustaše).[53] The Ustaše sent most Jews to Ustaše and Nazi concentration camps—including the notorious, Ustaše-run, Jasenovac—where all told nearly, 32,000, or 80% of the Jews in the Independent State of Croatia, were exterminated.[54] In October 1941, the Ustaše mayor of Zagreb ordered the demolition of the Zagreb Synagogue, which was completely demolished by April 1942.[55] The Ustaše persecuted Jews who practiced Judaism but authorized Jewish converts to Catholicism to be recognized as Croatian citizens and be given honorary Aryan citizenship that allowed them to be reinstated at the jobs from which they had previously been separated.[43] After they stripped Jews of their citizenship rights, the Ustaše allowed some to apply for Aryan rights via bribes and/or through connections to prominent Ustaše. The whole process was highly arbitrary. Only 2% of Zagreb's Jews were granted Aryan rights, for example. Also, Aryan rights did not guarantee permanent protection from being sent to concentration camps or other persecution.[56]

Economically, the Ustaše supported the creation of a corporatist economy.[32][40][57] The movement believed that natural rights existed to private property and ownership over small-scale means of production free from state control. Armed struggle, revenge and terrorism were glorified by the Ustaše.[32]

The Ustaše introduced widespread measures, to which many Croats themselves fell victim. Jozo Tomasevich in his book War and Revolution in Yugoslavia: 1941-1945, states that "never before in history had Croats been exposed to such legalized administrative, police and judicial brutality and abuse as during the Ustaša regime." Decrees enacted by the regime formed the basis that allowed it to get rid of all unwanted employees in state and local government and in state enterprises, the "unwanted" being all Jews, Serbs and Yugoslav-oriented Croats who were all thrown out except for some deemed specifically needed by the government. This would leave a multitude of jobs to be filled by Ustašes and pro-Ustaše adherents, and would lead to government jobs being filled by people with no professional qualifications.[58]

During the 1920s, Ante Pavelić, lawyer, politician and one of the followers Frank's party, became the leading advocate of Croatian independence.[25] In 1927, he secretly contacted Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy and founder of fascism, and presented his separatist ideas to him.[59] Pavelić proposed an independent Greater Croatia that should cover the entire historical and ethnic area of the Croats.[59] Historian Rory Yeomans claimed that there are indication that Pavelić had been considering the formation of some kind of nationalist insurgency group as early as 1928.[60]

In October 1928, after the assassination of leading Croatian politician Stjepan Radić, Croatian Peasant Party President in the Yugoslav Assembly by radical Montenegrin politician Puniša Račić, a youth group named the Croat Youth Movement was founded by Branimir Jelić at the University of Zagreb. A year later Ante Pavelić was invited by the 21-year-old Jelić into the organization as a junior member. A related movement, the Domobranski Pokret—which had been the name of the legal Croatian army in Austria-Hungary—began publication of Hrvatski Domobran, a newspaper dedicated to Croatian national matters. The Ustaše sent Hrvatski Domobran to the United States to garner support for them from Croatian-Americans.[61] The organization around the Domobran tried to engage with and radicalize moderate Croats, using Radić's assassination to stir up emotions within the divided country. By 1929 two divergent Croatian political streams had formed: those who supported Pavelić's view that only violence could secure Croatia's national interests, and the Croatian Peasant Party, led then by Vladko Maček, successor to Stjepan Radić, which had much greater support among Croats.[32]

Various members of the Croatian Party of Rights contributed to the writing of the Domobran, until around Christmas 1928 when the newspaper was banned by authorities of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In January 1929 the king banned all national parties,[62] and the radical wing of the Party of Rights was exiled, including Pavelić, Jelić and Gustav Perčec. This group was later joined by several other Croatian exiles. On 22 March 1941 Zvonimir Pospišil and Mijo Babić murdered Toni Šlegel, the chief editor of newspaper Novosti from Zagreb and president of Jugoštampa, which was the beginning of the terrorist actions of Ustaše.[63] On 20 April 1929 Pavelić and others co-signed a declaration in Sofia, Bulgaria, with members of the Macedonian National Committee, asserting that they would pursue "their legal activities for the establishment of human and national rights, political freedom and complete independence for both Croatia and Macedonia". The Court for the Preservation of the State in Belgrade sentenced Pavelić and Perčec to death on 17 July 1929.

The exiles started organizing support for their cause among the Croatian diaspora in Europe, as well as North and South America. In January 1932 they named their revolutionary organization "Ustaša". The Ustaše carried out terrorist acts, to cause as much damage as possible to Yugoslavia. From their training camps in fascist Italy and Hungary, they planted time bombs on international trains bound for Yugoslavia, causing deaths and material damage.[64] In November 1932 ten Ustaše, led by Andrija Artuković and supported by four local sympathizers, attacked a gendarme outpost at Brušani in the Lika/Velebit area, in an apparent attempt to intimidate the Yugoslav authorities. The incident has sometimes been termed the "Velebit uprising".

The Ustaše's most famous terrorist act was carried out on 9 October 1934, when working with the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), they assassinated King Alexander I of Yugoslavia. The perpetrator, a Bulgarian revolutionary, Vlado Chernozemski, was killed by French police.[65] Three Ustaše members who had been waiting at different locations for the king—Mijo Kralj, Zvonimir Pospišil and Milan Rajić—were captured and sentenced to life imprisonment by a French court.[64]

Ante Pavelić, along with Eugen Kvaternik and Ivan Perčević, were subsequently sentenced to death in absentia by a French court, as the real organizers of the deed. The Ustaše believed that the assassination of King Alexander had effectively "broken the backbone of Yugoslavia" and that it was their "most important achievement."[65]

Soon after the assassination, all organizations related to the Ustaše as well as the Hrvatski Domobran, which continued as a civil organization, were banned throughout Europe. Under pressure from France, the Italian police arrested Pavelić and several Ustaše emigrants in October 1934. Pavelić was imprisoned in Turin and released in March 1936. After he met with Eugen Dido Kvaternik, he stated that assassination was "the only language Serbs understand". While in prison, Pavelić was informed of the 1935 election in Yugoslavia, when the coalition led by Croat Vladko Maček won. He stated that his victory was aided by the activity of Ustaše.[66] By the mid-1930s, graffiti with the initials ŽAP meaning "Long live Ante Pavelić" (Croatian: Živio Ante Pavelić) had begun to appear on the streets of Zagreb.[67] During the 1930s, a split developed between the "home" Ustaše members who stayed behind in Croatia and Bosnia to struggle against Yugoslavia and the "emigre" Ustaše who went abroad.[68] The "emigre" Ustaše who had a much lower educational level were viewed as violent, ignorant and fanatical by the "home" Ustaše while the "home" Ustaše were dismissed as "soft" by the "emigres" who saw themselves as a "warrior-elite".[68]

After March 1937, when Italy and Yugoslavia signed a pact of friendship, Ustaše and their activities were banned, which attracted the attention of young Croats, especially university students, who would become sympathizers or members. In 1936, the Yugoslav government offered amnesty to those Ustaše abroad provided they promised to renounce violence; many of the "emigres" accepted the amnesty and returned home to continue the struggle.[69]  In the late 1930s, the Ustaše started to infiltrate the para-military organizations of the Croat Peasant Party, the Croatian Defense Force and the Peasant Civil Party.[70] At the University of Zagreb, an Ustaše-linked student group become the largest single student group by 1939.[70] In February 1939 two returnees from detention, Mile Budak and Ivan Oršanić, became editors of Hrvatski narod, known in English as The Croatian Nation, a pro-Ustaše journal.

The Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941. Vladko Maček, the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS), which was the most influential party in Croatia at the time, rejected German offers to lead the new government. On 10 April the most senior home-based Ustaše, Slavko Kvaternik, took control of the police in Zagreb and in a radio broadcast that day proclaimed the formation of the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH). The name of the state was an attempt to capitalise on the Croat struggle for independence. Maček issued a statement that day, calling on all Croatians to cooperate with the new authorities.[71]

A unit of Ustaše in Sarajevo

Meanwhile, Pavelić and several hundred Ustaše left their camps in Italy for Zagreb, where he declared a new government on 16 April 1941.[7] He accorded himself the title of "Poglavnik"—a Croatian approximation to "Führer". The Independent State of Croatia was declared on Croatian "ethnic and historical territory",[72] what is today Republic of Croatia (without Istria), Bosnia and Herzegovina, Syrmia and the Bay of Kotor. However, a few days after the declaration of independence, the Ustaše were forced[7] to sign the Treaty of Rome where they surrendered part of Dalmatia and Krk, Rab, Korčula, Biograd, Šibenik, Split, Čiovo, Šolta, Mljet and part of Konavle and the Bay of Kotor to Italy. De facto control over this territory varied for the majority of the war, as the Partisans grew more successful, while the Germans and Italians increasingly exercised direct control over areas of interest. The Germans and Italians split the NDH into two zones of influence, one in the southwest controlled by the Italians and the other in the northeast controlled by the Germans. As a result, the NDH has been described as "an Italian-German quasi-protectorate". In September 1943, after Italian capitulation, the NDH annexed the whole territory which was annexed by Italy according to Treaty of Rome.[73]

The decline in support for the Ustaše regime among ethnic Croats of those initially for the government began with the ceding of Dalmatia to Italy, considered as the heartland of the state and worsened with the internal lawlessness from Ustaše persecutions.[74]

Despite being the best-armed and having the best logistics and infrastructure of all the domestic military formations in the World War II Balkans, the Croatian Home Guard failed to become an efficient fighting force for a variety of reasons.

The most immediate reason was that few Croats owed complete allegiance to the Ustaše regime and it’s institutions including the army. Another issue was a mass disregard of calls for induction and widespread evasion of the draft to the Domobran army from the former Yugoslav army and other Croats up to age 35. A clear expression of the public’s lack of confidence in and opposition to the Ustaše regime and army.[75] Disgust towards the barbaric acts of the Ustaše regime towards Serbs and other deemed enemies of the state would only further dissuade Croats from joining. In fact most did not respond and many non-responders joined the Partisans instead. As the Partisan movement gained momentum, it provided Croats and alternative that appeared more in Croatia’s national interest than that offered by the Ustaše, who were seen as a tool of the Axis powers.[76] Towards the end of the war, perceived imminent defeat of the Axis forces only further motivated moves towards Partisans support.[77]

Another issue were the professional officers. Although initially ethnic Croat officers from the old Yugoslav army joined the Croatian Home Guard, they were mistrusted by the new Ustaše puppet regime. Many army officers were appalled by the Ustaše regime’s methods and they especially objected to the regime’s persecution of Serbs. A sizable number of them became secret Partisan sympathizers while remaining in the Domobran forces or gradually defected to the Partisans instead. The higher ranks were filled by presumably more reliable former Austro-Hungarian officers. Those men were older, retired and generally had little knowledge of modern warfare. The lack of trust that the Ustaše had in the Domobran army was so strong, that it was well indicated by a statement made by Ustaše militia captain who said that "the Croatian army would not become useful to the Ustaše until at least 80 percent of the present officers are shot."[78] NDH authorities tried to remedy this by forming officer schools and having junior staff trained in Italy and Germany, but effects of this policy came too late to affect the outcome of the war.

Yet another reason was the rivalry between the Croatian Home Guard and the Ustaše Militia (Croatian: Ustaška vojnica), the less numerous but yet more reliable paramilitary formation. Those two formations never properly integrated their activities and the Militia was gradually taking more and more dwindling resources from the Home Guard.

Meeting in Bosnia between representatives of the Chetniks and Independent State of Croatia officers (including the Ustaše militia and the Croatian Home Guard)

The Army of the Independent State of Croatia was composed of enlistees who did not participate in Ustaše activities. The Ustaše Militia was organised in 1941 into five (later 15) 700-man battalions, two railway security battalions and the elite Black Legion and Poglavnik Bodyguard Battalion (later Brigade).[79] They were predominantly recruited among uneducated population and working class.[80]

On 27 April 1941 a newly formed unit of the Ustaše army killed members of the largely Serbian community of Gudovac, near Bjelovar. Eventually all who opposed and/or threatened the Ustaše were outlawed. The HSS was banned on 11 June 1941, in an attempt by the Ustaše to take their place as the primary representative of the Croatian peasantry. Vladko Maček was sent to the Jasenovac concentration camp, but later released to serve a house arrest sentence due to his popularity among the people. Maček was later again called upon by foreigners to take a stand and oppose the Pavelić government, but refused. In early 1941 Jews and Serbs were ordered to leave certain areas of Zagreb.[81][82]

In the months after Independent State of Croatia has been established, most of Ustaše groups were not under centralized control: besides 4,500 regular Ustaše Corps troops, there was some 25,000–30,0000 "Wild Ustaše" (hrv. "divlje ustaše"), boosted by government-controlled press as "peasant Ustaše" "begging" to be sent to fight enemies of the regime. After mass crimes against Serb populace committed during the Summer months of 1941, the regime decided to blame all the atrocities to the irregular Ustaše—thoroughly undisciplined and paid for the service only with the booty; authorities even sentenced to death and executed publicly in August and September 1941 many of them for unauthorized use of extreme violence against Serbs and Gypsies. To put an end to Wild Ustaše uncontrolled looting and killing, the central government used some 6,000 gendarmes and some 45,000 newly recruited members of regular "Domobranstvo" forces.[83]

Pavelić first met with Adolf Hitler on 6 June 1941. Mile Budak, then a minister in Pavelić's government, publicly proclaimed the violent racial policy of the state on 22 July 1941. Vjekoslav "Maks" Luburić, a chief of the secret police, started building concentration camps in the summer of the same year. Ustaše activities in villages across the Dinaric Alps led the Italians and the Germans to express their disquiet. According to writer/historian Srđa Trifković, as early as 10 July 1941 Wehrmacht Gen. Edmund Glaise von Horstenau reported the following to the German High Command, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW):

Our troops have to be mute witnesses of such events; it does not reflect well on their otherwise high reputation . . . I am frequently told that German occupation troops would finally have to intervene against Ustaše crimes. This may happen eventually. Right now, with the available forces, I could not ask for such action. Ad hoc intervention in individual cases could make the German Army look responsible for countless crimes which it could not prevent in the past.[84][85]

Historian Jonathan Steinberg describes Ustaše crimes against Serbian and Jewish civilians: "Serbian and Jewish men, women and children were literally hacked to death". Reflecting on the photos of Ustaše crimes taken by Italians, Steinberg writes: "There are photographs of Serbian women with breasts hacked off by pocket knives, men with eyes gouged out, emasculated and mutilated".[86]

A Gestapo report to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler, dated 17 February 1942, stated:

Increased activity of the bands [of rebels] is chiefly due to atrocities carried out by Ustaše units in Croatia against the Orthodox population. The Ustaše committed their deeds in a bestial manner not only against males of conscript age, but especially against helpless old people, women and children. The number of the Orthodox that the Ustaše have massacred and sadistically tortured to death is about three hundred thousand.[87]

In September 1942 an Ustaše Defensive Brigade was formed, and during 1943 the Ustaše battalions were re-organised into eight four-battalion brigades (1st to 8th).[79] In 1943 the Germans suffered major losses on the Eastern Front and the Italians signed an armistice with the Allies, leaving behind significant caches of arms which the Partisans would use.

An Ustaše disguised as a woman, captured by Partisans of the 6th Krajina Brigade

By 1944 Pavelić was almost totally reliant on Ustaše units, now 100,000 strong, formed in Brigades 1 to 20, Recruit Training Brigades 21 to 24, three divisions, two railway brigades, one defensive brigade and the new Mobile Brigade. In November 1944 the army was effectively put under Ustaše control when the Armed Forces of the Independent State of Croatia were combined with the units of the Ustaše to form 18 divisions, comprising 13 infantry, two mountain and two assault divisions and one replacement division, each with its own organic artillery and other support units. There were several armored units.[79]

Fighting continued for a short while after the formal surrender of German Army Group E on 9 May 1945, as Pavelić ordered the NDH forces to attempt to escape to Austria, together with a large number of civilians. The Battle of Poljana, between a mixed German and Ustaše column and a Partisan force, was the last battle of World War II on European soil. Most of those fleeing, including both Ustaše and civilians, were handed over to the Partisans at Bleiburg and elsewhere on the Austrian border. Pavelić hid in Austria and Rome, with the help of Catholic clergy, later fleeing to Argentina.[88]

After World War II, many of the Ustaše went underground or fled to countries such as Canada, Australia, Germany and some countries in South America, notably Argentina, with the assistance of Roman Catholic churches and their own grassroots supporters.[89]

For several years some Ustaše tried to organize a resistance group called the Crusaders, but their efforts were largely foiled by the Yugoslav authorities.[4] With the defeat of the Independent State of Croatia, the active movement went dormant. Infighting fragmented the surviving Ustaše. Pavelić formed the Croatian Liberation Movement, which drew in several of the former state's leaders. Vjekoslav Vrančić founded a reformed Croatian Liberation Movement and was its leader. Maks Luburić formed the Croatian National Resistance. Branimir Jelić founded the Croatian National Committee.

Blagoje Jovović, a Montenegrin, shot Pavelić near Buenos Aires on 9 April 1957; Pavelić later died of his injuries.[90]

An entire Serb family lies slaughtered in their home following a raid by the Ustaše militia, 1941

Ustaše militia execute prisoners near the Jasenovac concentration camp

A knife, nicknamed "Srbosjek" or "Serbcutter", strapped to the hand, which was used by the Ustaše militia for the speedy killing of inmates in Jasenovac

The first group of camps was formed in the spring of 1941. These included:

• Danica near Koprivnica
• Slana and Metajna on the Island of Pag
• Jadovno near Gospić
• Kruščica near Vitez and Travnik in Bosnia
• Đakovo
• Loborgrad in Zagorje
• Tenja near Osijek

These camps were closed by October 1942. The Jasenovac complex was built between August 1941 and February 1942. The first two camps, Krapje and Bročica, were closed in November 1941. The three newer camps continued to function until the end of the war:

• Ciglana (Jasenovac III)
• Kozara (Jasenovac IV)
• Stara Gradiška (Jasenovac V) – concentration camp for women and children

There were also other camps in:

• Sisak Children's Concentration Camp
• Jastrebarsko Children's Concentration Camp
• Gospić
• Kerestinec prison near Zagreb
• Lepoglava near Varaždin

Numbers of prisoners:

• between 300,000 and 350,000 up to 700,000 in Jasenovac (disputed)
• around 35,000 in Gospić
• around 8,500 in Pag
• around 3,000 in Đakovo
• 1,018 in Jastrebarsko
• around 1,000 in Lepoglava

Beyond mass killings in concentration camps, the Ustaše perpetrated many massacres of civilians in the field. The first mass killing of Serbs was carried out on 30 April 1941, when the Ustaše rounded up and killed 196 Serb villagers at Gudovac. Many other massacres soon followed, including at Blagaj, Glina, Korita, Nevesinje, Prebilovci, Metkovic, Otočac, Vočin, Šargovac, etc. Here is how the Croatian Catholic Bishop of Mostar, Alojzije Mišić, described the mass killings of Serb civilians just in one small area of Herzegovina, just during the first 6 months of the war:[109]

People were captured like beasts. Slaughtered, killed, thrown live into the abyss. Women, mothers with children, young women, girls and boys were thrown into pits. The vice-mayor of Mostar, Mr. Baljić, a Mohammedan, publicly states, although as an official he should be silent and not talk, that in Ljubinje alone 700 schismatics [i.e. Serb Orthodox Christians] were thrown into one pit. Six full train carriages of women, mothers and girls, children under age 10, were taken from Mostar and Čapljina to the Šurmanci station, where they were unloaded and taken into the hills, with live mothers and their children tossed down the cliffs. Everyone was tossed and killed. In the Klepci parish, from the surrounding villages, 3,700 schismatics were killed. Poor souls, they were calm. I will not enumerate further. I would go too far. In the city of Mostar, hundreds were tied up, taken outside the city and killed like animals.

German officers in Croatia and Bosnia repeatedly expressed abhorrence at Ustaše mass killings of Serbs, using words like “slaughter”, “atrocities”, “butchery” and “terror”,[110] while citing hundreds of thousands of victims. Thus Major Walter Kleinenberger, officer with the 714th division, complained that Ustaše brutality “was in defiance of all laws of civilization. The Ustaše murder without exception men, women and children”.[111] German Captain Konopatzki called the Ustaše Black Legion slaughter of Serb civilians in Eastern Bosnia “a new wave of butchery of innocents”.[111] Ustaše “wholesale butchery” (Abschlachtung) of Serbs in Srem, in ISC-occupied Serbia, triggered German concerns of Serb uprisings.[111] Lieutenant Colonel von Wedel wrote that in western Bosnia Ustaše killed women and children “like cattle” in a series of “bestial executions”.[111] This is how Hitler's Plenipotentiary to Croatia, General von Horstanau, described the aftermath of slaughter committed by Jasenovac concentration camp guards in a nearby village: [112]

At Crkveni Bok, an unfortunate place, over which about five hundred 15- to 20-year-old thugs descended under the leadership of an Ustasha lieutenant colonel, people were killed everywhere, women were raped and then tortured to death, children were killed. I saw in the Sava River the corpse of a young woman with her eyes dug out and a stake driven into her sexual parts. This woman was at most twenty years old when she fell into the hands of these monsters. All around, pigs devoured unburied human beings. "Fortunate” residents were shipped in terrifying freight cars; many of these involuntary "passengers" cut their veins during transport to the camp [Jasenovac]"

The German military even took the extraordinary step of trying the Ustaše chaplain, Miroslav Filipović, for the massacre of 2,300 civilians in 3 villages around Banja Luka in February 1942, including 52 children at a school.[113] On March 3, 1943, General von Horstanau, wrote "Thus far 250,000 Serbs have been killed".[114] General Lothar Rendulić wrote how in August 1942 he remarked to an Ustaše official that he could not conceive how 500,000 Serbs had been killed, to which the Ustaše replied "Half-a-million is a slanderous accusation, the number is not higher than 200,000". Other German sources put the total Serb victim numbers in the ISC, as high as 600,000 to 700,000.[115]

As part of their policy to eliminate Serbs entirely, by killing one-third, converting one-third and expelling one-third, the Ustaše conducted forcible conversions of Christian Orthodox Serbs to Catholicism, with the participation of Catholic priests.[116] On occasion they used the prospect of conversion as a means to gather Serbs together so they could kill them, which is what occurred at Glina. On 18 May 1943, Archbishop Stepinac wrote a letter to the pope, in which he estimated 240,000 conversions to date.[117] The Ustaše killed 157 Orthodox priests, among them 3 Serb Orthodox bishops (cutting the throat of the bishop of Banja Luka and killing the archbishop of Sarajevo),[118] while they jailed and tortured the Orthodox archbishop of Zagreb. The Ustaše expelled to Serbia 327 Orthodox priests and one bishop, while 2 other bishops and 12 priests left on their own.[44]

Thus 85% of the Orthodox priests in the Independent State of Croatia were either killed or expelled by the Ustaše, in order to "leave the Orthodox population without spiritual leadership so the Ustašas' policy of forced or fear-induced conversions to Catholicism would be easier to carry out" [44] The Ustaše destroyed and desecrated numerous Orthodox Churches,[44] forbade the Cyrillic script and Julian calendar (both used in the Orthodox Church), even prohibited the term "Serbian Orthodox Church". Orthodox schools were shut down,[119] and the Church was prohibited from collecting contributions from believers, robbing it of income.[119] Orthodox Church properties were confiscated by the Ustaše,[119] some turned over to the Croatian Catholic Church. Finally, to destroy the Serbian Orthodox Church, the Ustaše tried to create its own alternative Croatian Orthodox Church with an imported Russian priest, but failed to gain adherents.[120]

Despite these many actions by the Ustaše to destroy the Serbian Orthodox Church, the historian Jozo Tomasevich found no condemnations of these crimes, public or private, by Catholic Archbishop Stepinac or any other members of the Croatian Catholic Church. On the contrary, he states that this massive Ustaše attack on the Serbian Orthodox Church "was approved and supported by many Croatian Catholic priests",[119] and that the Croatian Roman Catholic Church hierarchy and the Vatican "regarded Ustaše policies against the Serbs and Serbian Orthodox Church as advantageous to Roman Catholicism".[121]

The Ustaše plays an important role in Harry Turtledove's short alternate history story, Ready for the Fatherland. It plays a brief background role in In the Presence of Mine Enemies, an unrelated work by the same author. In both these works, the regime founded by Pavelić lasted several decades beyond the 1940s.

The popular Croatian singer, Thompson, regularly starts his concerts with the Ustaše salute.[159] The Wiesenthal Center has protested this, along with other attempts at revisionism and Holocaust-denial in Croatia.[160]

Seeking to unify support for Croatia's independence, Franjo Tuđman, Croatia's first president, in the late 1980s advocated "pomirba", i.e. national reconciliation between Ustaše and Partisans.[161] This led to a revival of pro-Ustaše views, symbols and salutes among the Croatian political right.[162] Following Croatia's Independence in the 1990s, streets were renamed to carry the name of Ustaše leaders, such as Mile Budak and Jure Francetić. Although some of these were later removed, Radio Free Europe noted that of some 20 streets dedicated to Mile Budak in the '90s, half of these still remained in Croatia in 2019.[163]

Jewish and Serb organizations, Croat historians and antifascists, as well as international observers, have repeatedly warned of revisionism in Croatia, which seeks to minimize Ustaše crimes, even celebrates the Ustaše regime. Recent examples include the publication of a book celebrating "the Croatian knight", Maks Luburic,[164] who as head of Ustaše concentration camps was responsible for over 100,000 deaths, during Ustaše genocides against Jews, Serbs and Roma, and a documentary minimizing children's deaths in Ustaše concentration camps.[165] The Luburic book was promoted with the assistance of the Croatian Catholic Church,[164] and Church sources minimized children's deaths in concentration camps. Croat historians have noted that the Church has been a leader in promoting revisionism and minimizing Ustaše crimes.[165] In 2013, the newspaper of Croatian Catholic archdioceses, Glas Koncila, published a series on Jasenovac, by the Jasenovac-denier Igor Vukic,[166] who claims Jasenovac was a "mere work-camp", where no mass executions took place. In 2015, the head of the Croatian Bishops' Conference asked that the Ustaše "Za dom spremni" salute be adopted by the Croatian army.[167]

Croatian soccer fans have repeatedly chanted the Ustaše, "Za dom spremni" salute, for which FIFA and UEFA have repeatedly leveled penalties against the Croatian soccer federation, for "fascists outburst".[168][169] In 2014, the Croatian soccer player Josip Šimunić was banned from the FIFA World Cup for leading a stadium full of fans in the Ustaše salute.[170]

In 2014 the then-mayor of Split, Croatia unveiled a monument dedicated to the 1990s HOS brigade named "The Knight Rafael Boban", after the Ustaše commander, which includes the HOS emblem with the Ustaše "Za dom spremni" salute.[171] Since then the HOS organization has organized annual commemorations at the memorial on 10 April (the anniversary of the founding of the Ustaše Independent State of Croatia), during which the black-uniformed participants shout the Ustaše "Za dom spremni" salute.[172]

In 2016 the Croatian HOS war veterans' organization, posted a plaque at Jasenovac concentration camp with the Ustaše "Za dom spremni" salute.[173] Despite protests by Jewish and other organizations, this was allowed to remain until criticism by the US State Department special envoy on Holocaust issues,[174] forced the government to move it to a nearby town. As a result of this, and allegations of the government's tolerance for the minimization of Ustaše crimes, Jewish, Serb and Croat WWII resistance groups refused to appear with government representatives at the annual Jasenovac commemoration.[175]

In 2019 the Austrian government passed a law forbidding the display of Ustaše symbols,[176] along with previously banned Nazi symbols, largely as a result of the display of same by Croatian nationalists at the annual, Croatian government-sponsored Bleiburg commemorations, where Austrian police have repeatedly arrested Croat nationalists for Nazi and fascist salutes. Three Austrian EU parliamentarians declared the Bleiburg ceremony, which tens-of-thousands of Croat nationalist attend, "the largest fascist gathering in Europe"[177] The Austrian Catholic Church banned a Mass by the Croatian Catholic Church at Bleiburg because, as they stated, "the Mass at Bleiburg has become part of a manifestation that is politically instrumentalised and is part of a political-national ritual that serves to selectively experience and interpret history", adding that it misuses "a religious service for political purposes while not distancing itself from the Fascist worldview."[178][179]

After World War II, the Ustaše movement was split into several organizations and there is presently no political or paramilitary movement that claims its legacy as their "successor". The term "ustaše" is today used as a derogatory term for Croatian ultranationalism. The term "Ustaše" is sometimes used among Serbs to describe Serbophobia or more generally to defame political opponents.

Since the end of World War II, Serbian historians have used the Ustaše to promote that Serbs resisted the Axis, while Croats and Bosniaks widely supported them. However, the Ustaše never received massive support from ordinary Croats.[14] The Ustaše regime was backed by parts of the Croatian population that during the interwar period had felt oppressed in the Serbian-led Yugoslavia. Most of the support it had initially gained by creating a Croat national state was lost because of the brutal practices it used.[15] In the 1980s, Serbian historians produced many works about the forced conversion during World War II of Serbs to Catholicism in Ustaše Croatia.[180] These debates between historians openly became nationalistic and also entered the wider media.[181] Historians in Belgrade during the 1980s who had close government connections often went on television during the evenings to discuss invented or real details about the Ustaše genocide against Serbs during World War II.[182] Serb clergy and nationalists blamed all Croats for crimes committed by the Ustaše, and for planning a genocide against Serb people. These propagandistic activities were aimed at justifying planned crimes and ethno-demographic engineering in Croatia.[183][182]