Ustaše/Archive 3

Ustaše/Archive 3

The Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Movement (Croatian: Ustaša – Hrvatski revolucionarni pokret) was a Croatian fascist and terrorist organization before and during World War II. Its members, Ustaše (, also anglicised Ustashe, Ustashas or Ustashi) were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of citizens of Yugoslavia, particularly Serbs. The ideology of the movement was a blend of Nazism and Croatian nationalism. Ustaše supported the creation of a Greater Croatia that would span to the River Drina and to the border of Belgrade. The movement emphasized the need for a racially "pure" Croatia and promoted persecution and genocide against Serbs, Jews and Romani people. Fiercely nationalistic, the Ustaše were also fanatically Catholic. In the Yugoslav political context, they identified Catholicism with Croatian nationalism. Following Croatian nationalism, they declared that the Catholic and Muslim faiths were the religions of the Croatian people. The Ustaše also saw the Islam of the Bosniaks as a religion which "keeps true the blood of Croats."

The movement functioned as a terrorist organization before World War II, but in April 1941, they were appointed to rule a part of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia as the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), which has been described as both an Italian-German quasi-protectorate, and as a puppet state of Nazi Germany. The Ustaše were chiefly responsible for the World War II Holocaust in the NDH. Around three hundred thousand were killed by the NDH government's racial policies, which condemned all Serbs, Jews and Roma to death in the concentration camps, alongside Croat resistance members and political opponents.

When it was founded in 1930, as Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Organization (Croatian: Ustaša – Hrvatska revolucionarna organizacija) it was a nationalist organization that sought to create an independent Croatian state. When the Ustaše came to power in the NDH, a quasi-protectorate established by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany during World War II, its military wings became the Army of the Independent State of Croatia and the Ustaše militia (Croatian: Ustaška vojnica). The NDH collaborated with the Italian and German occupation forces in Yugoslavia in fighting an increasingly unsuccessful campaign against the resistance forces, the Yugoslav Partisans, who were recognized in late November 1943 as the military of the Allied Yugoslav state. As German forces withdrew from Yugoslavia in 1944/1945, the Ustaše mostly left the country, some of them remained in SFR Yugoslavia as a resistance group known as Crusaders and large numbers of them were killed without trial by Yugoslav forces (the Partisans) after the end of the war.