by Carl Savich
Introduction: Kill a Third, Deport a Third, Convert a Third
On April 6, 1941, Germany, Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria invaded Yugoslavia and subsequently dismembered the Balkan nation into a Greater Croatia and a Greater Albania. On April 10, 1941, Slavko Kvaternik proclaimed the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Drzava Hrvatska, NDH), which was a Greater Croatia consisting of Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, and Serbian territory. In fact, the NDH was recognized and created by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and was a Nazi satellite or puppet state. The NDH was not a viable state. It was propped up by a German military occupation.
The President of the NDH Nazi-fascist state was Poglavnik Ante Pavelic, who was born in Bradina, Bosnia-Hercegovina. The Vice-President, from November, 1941 to April, 1945, was Bosnian Muslim Dzafer Kulenovic, born in Bihac, Bosnia-Hercegovina. The Minister of the Interior was Andrija Artukovic, born in Ljubuski, Bosnia-Hercegovina. The top leaders of the NDH were thus not from Croatia proper, but were all Bosnians from Bosnia-Hercegovina. This is a fact that has been overlooked in any analysis of the NDH. This fact is crucial, however, in understanding what occurred in Bosnia during World War II. Being Bosnians, Pavelic and Artukovic were determined to create a Greater Croatia, Velika Hrvatska, which would include all of Bosnia-Hercegovina.
The problem was that the largest ethnic and religious group in Bosnia-Hercegovina was the Serbian Orthodox population. The Roman Catholic Croat population was a small minority in Bosnia, settled primarily in western Hecegovina. How could Pavelic and Artukovic argue for a Greater Croatia which would include Bosnia-Hercegovina when Croats were a minority in Bosnia? The way this was achieved was to argue that the Bosnian Muslim population was ethnically Croatian. The Bosnian Muslims were ethnic Croats who had converted to Islam according to the NDH leadership. To be sure, some Bosnian Muslims were the descendants of Croats who had converted to Islam. The Ustasha regime, however, recognized all Bosnian Muslims as Croats. This was the basis for the creation of a Greater Croatia. The problem with this rationale was that the Bosnian Muslims had their own Muslim identity in Bosnia. Moreover, many were descendants of Serbs who had converted to Islam. The NDH had a population of approximately 6,300,000. Approximately 3,300,000 were Croats, 2 million were Serbs, 700,000 were Bosnian Muslims, and 300,000 were other groups such as Jews and Roma. The problem in the creation of a Greater Croatia was the presence of a large Serbian population in the NDH. What was the solution?
The NDH leadership, made up of Croats and Bosnian Muslims, sought to get rid of the Serbian Orthodox population by a systematic and planned genocide. This is a salient fact in the history of Greater Croatia that is overlooked by historians. The NDH government policy of genocide against the Serbian population was officially announced by Mile Budak, the Minister of Education, Religion, and Culture in the NDH. Budak was the Doglavnik, or deputy leader, of the NDH.
In a speech given in Gospic on June 6, 1941, Budak outlined the official government policy or program of genocide against the Serbian population as follows:
One-third of the Serbs we shall kill, another we shall deport, and the last we shall force to embrace the Roman Catholic religion and thus melt them into Croats.
On August 14, 1941, in a speech in Vukovar, Pavelic explained the policy of genocide against the Serbian population:
This is now the Ustashi and Independent State of Croatia. It must be cleansed of Serbs and Jews. There is no room for any of them here. Not a stone upon a stone will remain of what once belonged to them.
The NDH policy of genocide was directed against both the Serbian Orthodox population and the Jewish population of the NDH. The NDH established 22 concentration camps, nearly half of them run by Croat Roman Catholic priests, the largest of which was at Jesenovac. Pavelic declared in 1941 that the NDH was committed to the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem: “The Jews will be liquidated within a very short time.”
The genocide against the Serbian population began on April 25, 1941, when under decree law No. XXV-33Z, the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet was outlawed and Orthodox Serbs were forced to wear a blue arm band with the letter “P” for Pravoslavac, Orthodox. In Belovar, Serbs were forced to wear a red arm band with the word “Serb”. Serbian Churches were destroyed or closed down and church property was seized while Serbian Orthodox priests were systematically murdered. The Serbian population was systematically murdered, deported, or forcefully converted to Roman Catholicism. Hermann Neubacher, the Plenipotentiary for Southeastern Europe and Serbia, had been an Austrian officer in World War I who commanded Croatian troops and was knowledgeable about the Balkans. He was a diplomatic troubleshooter for the Nazi Third Reich, having been the mayor of Vienna in 1938-1939. Neubacher described the genocide against the Serbian population as follows:
The Serbian people in the NDH were transformed into wild animals for free hunting. The NDH is a land of the most horrendous mass slaughter in human history… A Croatian crusade of destruction directed against the Orthodox Serbs erupted, a crusade that belongs among the most brutal mass murder undertakings in the entire history of the world…The slaughter of the Orthodox Serbs undertaken by the Ustasha leaders and led by the Poglavnik…Ante Pavelic, reminds one of the religious wars of bloodiest memory. ‘A third must become Catholic, a third must leave the country, and a third must die!’… This last point of their program was accomplished….On the basis of the reports submitted to me, I believe that the number of defenseless victims slaughtered to be three quarters of a million….When I once brought up the truth about the terrible atrocities around me in Croatia, Adolf Hitler said to me: ‘I have also told the Poglavnik that one cannot exterminate such a minority: it is simply too large!’
Several hundred thousand Serbs were murdered in Bosnia-Hercegovina alone, 240,000 were forcefully converted to Roman Catholicism, and 300,000 were deported, most fleeing as refugees to Serbia. Neubacher’s recollections corroborate the Ustasha policy of genocide, which consisted of killing a third, deporting a third, and converting a third of the Serbian population of Greater Croatia, the NDH.
CONTINUED; http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/049.shtml
