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Croatia Has a Problem with Historical Revisionism, and HDZ Is to Blame

Present-day Croatia is haunted by numerous revisionist tendencies concerning the country’s own role in war crimes committed during World War II and Yugoslavia’s collapse. This has taken the form of both historical relativisation and, in some cases, open denial regarding the nature and crimes committed by the government during these years .

A chronic lack of unabiased information by media and politicians alike, coupled with the still existent tensions with neighbouring countries (particularly Serbia), have led have this mentality to become a part of the mainstream political discourse. It has even gotten tothe point where a non-negligible number of Croats elevate certain war criminals to the status of national heroes.

In order to understand the reasons why Croatia can’t seem to shake off the current stronghold of nationalism and deresponsibilisation in the country, it is necessary to take a look at the origins of these war crimes, and in particular the political events that led to them happening in the first place.

The Birth of the Ustaše Movement

Due to its ethnic composition and the lack of definition of its entities, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was always an unstable country. It was this instability, evident especially in the Yugoslav Parliament, that led King Aleksandar I to suspend the Constitution and ban all political parties in 1929. This move transformed the country into an absolute and autocratic monarchy centred around ethnic Serbs, who at the time held many of the most important positions in the State.

This situation led, in 1929, to the birth of the Ustaše movement from the ashes of the now-defunct Croatian Party of Rights, a Yugoslav party which militated for more autonomy for Croatia within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. When King Aleksandar I banned all parties, the militant wing of the Party of Rights had gone underground to continue its activities, evolving a powerful clerico-fascist, antisemitic, xenophobic and serbophobic rhetoric in the form of the Ustaše movement – now focused on achieving Croatia’s independence rather than more autonomy.

Its ideology was a blend of Croatian nationalism, fascism, and clericalism. The Ustaše supported the creation of a Greater Croatia spanning from the Drina River to the border of Belgrade. The organisation particularly emphasized the need for a ‘racially pure’ Croatia, and it would be a fundamental actor in the persecution and systemic killings of Serbs, Jews, Romani people, and dissident Croats and Bosniaks in the coming years.

The first decade of their existence was constellated by strong efforts by its leaders, particularly the ex-Secretary of the Party of Rights Ante Pavelić, to gain the support of the Croatian diaspora in Europe and the Americas. The organisation set up training camps in fascist Italy and Hungary, and spent ten years carrying out terrorist attacks against Yugoslavia. In 1934, they even managed to assassinate King Aleksandar I, with the help of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization.

The Rise of the Independent State of Croatia

The Ustaše movement would finally have its chance to rise to power with the death of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. When the Axis Powers invaded the country in April 1941, returning a crushing defeat to the Kingdom, they established in its place a quasi-protectorate with the name of Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, abbreviated in Croatian to NDH), which would exist until 1945.

Borders of the NDH in 1941.

Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy called Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić to lead the new-born NDH. He took the title of Poglavnik (‘leader’) and ruled Croatia as a one-party state. His objective was to ‘purify’ the Croatian lands from all things non-Croat, from language to people living in it.

The Ustaše, fierce antiserbs, particularly saw Serbs as the reason for Croatia’s oppression. Thus, they implemented a ‘three tiers policy’: one tier of the Serbs had to be expelled far away of Croatian lands, the second tier had to be forcibly converted to Catholicism, and the last tier had to be exterminated. The NDH was effectively the only Axis country to open and manage concentration and extermination camps apart from Germany.

Without any prompting from Germany, the Ustaše set out to exterminate Serbs, Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, dissident Catholics, anti-fascist Croats and Bosniaks, and all other undesirables. They were known for their extreme brutality, for instance with the organisation of ‘beheading contests’. Even Heinrich Himmler found their methods ‘barbaric’ and was disgusted by them. The three tiers policy is thought to have killed between 350,000 and 500,000 Serbs, with more than 50,000 killed in the horrendous Jasenovac extermination camp. These numbers, however, do not take into account all other victims of the genocide, like Jews, Romani people and Catholics.

The NDH fought the entire war against Yugoslav partisans and collapsed in 1945 when the Partisans freed most of the Yugoslav territory with Soviet support. A lot of Ustaše and their families tried to flee to Austria, which was occupied by the British, but the latter were horrified by what they had learnt about them and refused to let them in. This eventually led to the Bleiburg massacre in May 1945, where every single Ustaše was killed by the Partisans.

Ante Pavelić fled to Spain, where he would spend the rest of his life being chased by the UDBA, the Yugoslav secret services. He would eventually die in 1959 from his wounds after one of their assassination attempts.

Rehabilitating the Ustaše Regime

Following the demise of the Independent State of Croatia, the territories got absorbed into the new Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, with a new communist government led by Tito. Having learnt from the mistakes of the previous Kingdom of Yugoslavia, he ensured that the people of the Six Republics had to work together for their future. During his tenure, Yugoslavia effectively worked as a united bloc, but that didn’t last long after his death.

Soon after his death, as Yugoslavia was nearing its demise due to conflictual national aspirations, one particular politician started making himself known in Croatia: Franjo Tuđman, a former brother in arms of Marshall Tito, who claimed to defend the interest of the Croatian people. Tuđman would quickly become an emblematic figure for Croatia, which was at that time crying for more powers to the local governments.

Franjo Tuđman, first Croatian president.

In 1989, Tuđman founded the HDZ (Hravtske Demokratske Zajednice, or Croat Democratic Union), the party which would lead Croatia during the upcoming wars. The party’s ideology was far from Tuđman’s earlier political ideals, when he had been close to Tito and a prominent member of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. HDZ adopted a nationalistic rhetoric, answering the one that Milošević was developing in Serbia. Its final goal was the establishment of an indepedent Croatian nation-state.

In the Spring of 1990, internal tensions that had broken up the Communist party of Yugoslavia prompted the governments of federal Republics to schedule free multiparty elections. In Croatia, these saw the HDZ triumphing, with neoelected President Tuđman comparing his entry in Zagreb cheered on by the crowd to “Jesus entering Jerusalem”.

During the campaign for these elections, and in subsequent years, several HDZ officials including Tuđman began performing a systematic rehabilitation of the Ustaše regime, stating that they had done nothing but protect Croatian lands from foreign powers. Given the severity of the actions committed by the Ustaše, these statements in turn had the effect of incrementing Serbian nationalist propaganda against Croatia. Croatian and Serbian nationalist propaganda answered each other, with Croatia claiming that Serbia wanted to enslave them again and Serbia claiming that Croatia was willing to commit another genocide against them. This degradation of relations soon paved the way to a full-blown war.

Croatia’s War of Independence

In April 1991, war broke out with Yugoslavia (controlled by the constituent Republic of Serbia) after Croatia declared its independence. Croatia had an underdeveloped army and heavily relied on paramilitary groups such as Croatian Defence Forces (HOS), a neo-fascist group re-using symbols of the NDH. Some groups called themselves Crna Legija (Black Legion), using the name of a former Ustaše military unit.

The years of the war were characterised by a continuous recycling of former Croatian fascist symbols, as well as using Catholicism as a war tool, both of which had been distinctive characteristics of the Ustaše regime. The war also saw the ideology of ‘Greater Croatia’ coming back, a sort of equivalent to ‘Greater Serbia’.

The war ended in 1995, following the Dayton Peace Agreement and an incredibly high number of civilian casualties. Franjo Tuđman died in 1999 before the ICTY had the time to fully conduct an investigation on him for war crimes. Nevertheless, several other Croatian war criminals were arrested and trialled.

Slobodan Milošević and Franjo Tuđman meeting in 1991.

A difficult legacy

HDZ has played a central role in Croatia since its independence, and has remained in power all the time but for two terms (2000-2003 and 2011-2016) in which the Social Democrats gained a majority. It has continued to maintai ambiguous positions at best in relation to the war crimes committed during these decades, significantly contributing to the present-day issues with rehabilitation of terrorist organisations and relativisation of the gravity of the acts committed during WWII and the Yugoslav Wars.

Every year to this day, HDZ officials go to Bleiburg to commemorate the massacre of Ustaše members that happened in 1945. Several rallies exist to commemorate the Ustaše and their ‘fight for Croatia’, occulting the crimes committed and holding views and speeches which are only prohibited on paper.

It is also due to this pervadent lack of objectivity that many Croats keep presenting these individuals as national heroes to be celebrated, in what is objectively historical revisionism. The blatant lack of unbiased information available about the Ustaše regime worries several members of the political opposition as well as foreign observers and research institutes, which have launched appeals to the Croatian government to put distance between themselves and these atrocious war crimes.

Croatia is far from being the only country in the Balkan peninsula to hold revisionists views (Serbia has a significant amount of revisionism as well), but these are particularly worrying coming from a member of the European Union. 

Ever since Croatia has joined the EU, in particular, the country has begun to look backwards. Zagreb has abandoned its active policy of reconciliation with the other countries of the region. On top of that, the selective reinterpretation of the past has continued as strong as ever, fostering hate speech and acting as a sounding board for anti-progressive values.

What will happen in the future is unclear. The next parliamentary elections in the country are one year and a half away, but it is very unlikely that these will deliver a result that removes HDZ from power. The lack of transparency and honesty the party has showed concerning its recent history will continue not to allow a fair education about Croatia’s past to the many without the means or ability to discover the truth for themselves. The shadows of former criminals still haunt Croatian society today – and unless the country’s political scene undergoes a severe shake-up, these shadows will continue to haunt Croatia for a long time.

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Josselin Pérouse

Student of history and geopolitics, language-lover and strong believer that humankind can do good. Likes to write alternate history and explore the world of "What ifs"

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5 Comments

  1. Good work Josselin! Pay no attention to the fool “Zadar.” My grandmother was 3 when the genocide started. She came from Donji Sjeniak- her town only lost 25% of its inhabitants. I say only because many towns were completely obliterated. My grandmother only had a 3rd grade education and was BRAINWASHED by Tito. She actually looked up to the cretin. The Ustase made Nazis wretch. Tito tried to erase the atrocities for the sake of some nonsensical notion of “brotherhood.” John Joseph Loftus, former Nazi prosecutor and intelligence officer of the US government later turned whistle blower has said that the three evils of mankind are fascism, communism and indifference. The most dangerous is the latter. Of course Loftus was trying to drive home a point that to forget or to not care of atrocities that happened to our fellow man is a grave sin. However, the evil committed by the Ustase could never be overstated. It is simply impossible. I cannot write down what they did to children, babies and mothers and many others because it would be reported. If there is a hell, which there probably is, the Ustase are without a shadow of a doubt there.

  2. Hey
    Very usefull and crazy cool post. I know too that in Croatia, the type of government is a Unitary parliamentary constitutional republic. In Croatia, the legislative power is vested in a Sabor. The head of the government is Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović.
    How could that have influenced this situation?

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