The NDH – An Introduction

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The papers published in this issue were originally presented at a conference held in Trondheim, Norway in September 2004. The conference was made possible thanks to a generous grant from the Norwegian Research Council. I am also grateful to Christine M. Hassenstab for comments on the penultimate draft of this article.

Notes

1. On the Roma, see Narcisa Lengel‐Krizman, ‘Prilog proučavanju terora u tzv. NDH: Sudbina Roma 1941–1945’, in Časopis za suvremenu povijest (Zagreb), Vol.18 (1986), No.1, pp.29–42; and Dennis Reinhartz, ‘Unmarked graves: the destruction of the Yugoslav Roma in the Balkan Holocaust, 1941–1945’, in Journal of Genocide Research, Vol.1 (1999), No.1, pp.81–9.

2. Vladimir Žerjavić, Gubici stanovništva Jugoslavije u drugom svjetskom ratu (Zagreb: Jugoslavensko Viktimološko Društvo, 1989), pp.61–6.

3. Ustaše is the plural of Ustaša, and refers to the members of the Ustaša party.

4. Portions of this paragraph and of the following paragraph are closely paraphrased from my book, The Three Yugoslavias: State‐building and Legitimation, 1918–2005 (Bloomington, Ind./Washington D.C.: Indiana University Press & The Wilson Center Press, 2006), pp.114–15.

5. Document No.90: D 708 (10 July 1941), Troll‐Oberfell to Foreign Ministry (Berlin), in Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918–1945, Series D, Vol.13: The War Years – 1941 (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964), pp.113–14.

6. Milan Dj. Nedić, Reći Generala Milana Nedića Srpskom narodu i omladini (Belgrade: Nacionalni spisi, 1941), pp.9–10 (speech of 2 September 1941). Even today, there are those who are inclined to give a positive assessment of Nedić’s wartime role, sometimes representing him as having endeavored to ‘save’ the Serbian people. See, for example, Lazo M. Kostić, Armijski General Milan Nedić. Njegova uloga i delovanje (Novi Sad: Dobrica knjiga, 2000 [1976]), especially pp.10–16.

7. In December 1941, Gerhard Feine, stationed in Belgrade, wrote to Berllin to report, ‘it can be said today after General Nedić has been Minister President for three months that so far he has justified the trust placed in him …Today he is so much identified with Germany in the eyes of the Serbian people that it is hardly possible for him any more to abandon this line.’ Document 538: Pol. S No.2 (3 December 1941), Feine to Foreign Ministry (Berlin), in Documents on German Foreign Policy, Vol.13, p.947.

8. Document No.526: Confidential protocol signed in Zagreb (16 May 1941), by Siegfried Kasche, Carl Clodius, Lovro Sušić, and Mladen Lorković, in Documents on German Foreign Policy 1918–1945, Series D, Vol.12: The War Years – 1941 (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1962), pp.831–2.

9. See, for example, Zorica Stipetić, ‘Je li vrijeme da se ustaški logor Jasenovac, u ime istine, oslobodi i mitova i laži?’, in Globus (Zagreb), 23 April 1999, p.87; and ‘Uprava Spomen parka Jasenovac mora sačiniti pojedinačni popis stradalih’, in Novi list (Rijaka), 3 May 2005, at http://www.novilist.hr (accessed on 1 September 2005).

10. Ladislav Tomičić, ‘Tajna o ustaškom zlatu u arhivima Crkve’, in Novi list (15 May 2005), at http://www.novilist.hr (accessed on 1 September 2005).

11. See, for example, ‘Zagrebački nadbiskup fasciniran osnivanjem hrvatske države’, in Novi list (5 March 2002), at http://www.novilist.hr (accessed on 19 June 2003); and Jure Krišto, ‘Katolička crkva u Nezavisnoj Državi Hrvatskoj’, in Časopis za suvremenu povijest, Vol.27 (1995), No.3: pp.461–74.

12. On these two points, see Ivo Goldstein with Slavko Goldstein, Holokaust u Zagrebu (Zagreb: Novi liber & Židovska općina Zagreb, 2001), pp.49, 540.

13. Letter from Archbishop Stepinac to Minister Artuković (23 April 1941), translated into English for The Pavelic Papers: An Independent Project Researching the History of the Ustaša Movement, at http://www.pavelicpapers.com/documents/stepinac/as0005.html (accessed on 10 June 2006). See also Goldstein, (note 13), pp.468–9.

14. Nada Kisić Kolanović, ‘Povijest NDH kao predmet istraživanja’, in Časopis za suvremenu povijest (Zagreb), Vol.34, No.3 (2002), pp.679–712.

15. Ibid., p.690.

16. Two recent examples are: Goldstein (note 12; and Ramet, note 4), chap.4.

17. Anyone who still doubts that NDH mythology played a role for some Croats to express their defiance of Serbs need only look at Zdravko Tomac, The Struggle for the Croatian State … through hell to democracy, trans. by Profikon (Zagreb: Profikon, 1993).

18. S. Klarica, ‘Grafitima za Gotovinu i NDH’, in Novi list (16 December 2004), at http://www.novilist.hr (accessed on 1 September 2005).

19. Z.C., ‘NDH nije bila država’, in Novi list (10 April 2005), at http://www.novilist.hr (accessed on 1 September 2005).

20. Agence France Presse (23 April 1996), in Lexis‐Nexis Academic Universe.

21. The party’s website is http://www.ultimatum.20m.com/nova_hrv_desnica.htm [accessed on 11 June 2006]. See also M. Bokulic, ‘Schwartz: ‘O meni je stvorena fama kao o nacisti i politickom monstrumu’’, in Vjesnik (Zagreb), 3 April 2001, at http://www.vjesnik.hr (accessed on 11 June 2006).

22. Croatian Radio (Zagreb), 23 November 1996, trans. in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts (25 November 1996), via Lexis‐Nexis Academic Universe.

23. Ivica Radoš, Tudjman izbliža: Svjedočenja suradnika i protivnika (Zagreb: Profil International, 2005), p.56.

24. Regarding the Mass itself, see Agence France Presse (29 December 1998), in Lexis‐Nexis Academic Universe; regarding the archbishop, see HINA (Zagreb), 1 January 1999, in NewsBank – Access World News, at infoweb.newsbank.com; and regarding the HDZ comment, see Beta news agency (Belgrade), 6 January 1999, translated in BBC Worldwide Monitoring (6 January 1999), via Lexis‐Nexis Academic Universe.

25. HINA (12 February 2004), in NewsBank – Access World News, at infoweb.newsbank.com.

26. In connection with that incident, seven participants were later charged with having violated the law banning the display of symbols that could incite interethnic or racial hatred. See HINA (7 December 2004) and Agence France Presse (7 December 2004) – both in NewsBank – Access World News, at infoweb.newsbank.com.

27. Agence France Presse (21 August 2005), in Lexis‐Nexis Academic Universe.

28. According to Ladislaus Hory and Martin Broszat, Der kroatische Ustascha‐Staat, 1941–1945 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags‐Anstalt, 1964), p.69. Sundhaussen estimates the NDH’s population at 6.5 million. See Holm Sundhaussen, ‘Der Ustasche‐Staat: Anatomie eines Herrschaftssystems’, in Österreichische Osthefte, Vol.37, No.2 (1995), p.500.

29. Hory and Broszat (note 28), p.69.

30. Vladimir Žerjavić, Gubici stanovništva Jugoslavije u drugom svjetskom ratu (Zagreb: Jugoslavensko Viktimološko Društvo, 1989), pp.61–6.

31. Toward the end of 1942, Mussolini personally took the decision to take Croatian Jews into protective custody in order to protect them from the Nazis and the Ustaše. See Fikreta Jelić‐Butić, Ustaše i NDH (Zagreb: S.N. Liber and Školska knjiga, 1977), p.180; and Jonathan Steinberg, All or Nothing: The Axis and the Holocaust 1941–1943 (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), p.133. See also Zvi Loker, ‘The Testimony of Dr. Edo Neufeld: The Italians and the Jews of Croatia’, in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol.7, No.1 (Spring 1993), pp.67–76.

32. At that time, it was renamed the Directorate for Public Order and Security [Ravnateljstvo za javni red i sigurnost, or RAVSIGUR]. See ‘Ustasha’, at http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=7257 (accessed on 10 June 2006).

33. Ivo Goldstein, Croatia: A History, translated from Croatian by Nikolina Jovanović (McGill‐Queen’s University Press, 1999), p.137.

34. Holm Sundhaussen, ‘Jugoslawien’, in Wolfgang Benz (ed.), Dimension des Völkermords. Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des Nationalsozialismus (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1991), pp.321–2.

35. Goldstein (note 12), p.342. A history textbook for Croatian high schools published in 2003 gives 80,000 as the number of people (Serbs and non‐Serbs alike) who lost their lives at Jasenovac. See Hrvoje Matković and Franko Mirošević, Povijest 4, udžbenik za 4. razred gimnazije, 2^nd ed. (Zagreb: Školska knjiga, 2003), p.159. István Deák, in a review essay for New York Review of Books, accepts a figure of 60,000 persons killed at Jasenovac. See his essay, ‘Jews and Catholics’, in New York Review of Books (19 December 2002), p.42. Vladimir Zerjavic has offered a rough estimate of ‘around 100,000’ for the number of persons who lost their lives at Jasenovac. See Vladimir Zerjavic, Population losses in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945 (Zagreb: Dom i svijet, 1997), p.89.

36. See, for example, Hrvatski narod (11 June 1942), p.1.

37. Hrvatski narod (13 January 1942), p.3, and (27 January 1942), p.7.

38. For more accurate accounts of Starčević, see V. Bogdanov, Ante Starčević i Hrvatska politika (Zagreb: Biblioteka Nezavisnih Pisaca, 1937); Vaso Bogdanov, Starčević i Stranka prava prema Srbima i prema jedinstvu Južnoslavenskih naroda (Zagreb: Naklaka ‘Školska knjiga’, 1951); and Mirjana Gross, Izvorno pravaštvo. Ideologija, agitacija, pokret (Zagreb: Golden Marketing, 2000).

39. Hrvatski narod (10 January 1942), p.3.

40. Dubravko Jelčić, ‘Kulturni život u Nezavisnoj Državi Hrvatskoj’, in Časopis za suvremenu povijest, Vol.27 (1995), No.3, p.522.

41. Hrvatski narod (26 March 1942), p.1.

42. ‘Legal Decree on the Croatian language, its purity and spelling’ (14 August 1941), trans. in The Pavelic Papers, at http://www.pavelicpapers.com/documents/budak/mbu0003.html (accessed on 10 June 2006).

43. Hrvatski narod (12 February 1942), p.7, and (1 January 1943), p.1.

44. Jelić‐Butić (note 31), p.158.

45. Ibid., pp.168–72.

46. Klaus Buchenau, Orthodoxie und Katholizismus in Jugoslawien 1945–1991. Ein serbisch‐kroatischer Vergleich (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2004), p.124.

47. Document No.262: Telegram 33 (4 April 1941), Consul Gen. Alfred Freundt/Zagreb to Foreign Ministry (Berlin), in Documents on German Foreign Policy, Vol.12, p.448.

48. Goldstein (note 12), p.628.