Through Blood and Brotherhood: Comrades and Enemies in WWII Yugoslavia

By Brian R. Johnson

The war of a young German soldier in Yugoslavia told through his diaries and complemented by the oral histories of his comrades—and the enemies he fought.

On April 6, 1941, German troops along with Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian military units invaded the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In less than two weeks the Kingdom would be defeated, setting the stage for a bloody civil war that the occupying Axis forces desperately tried—and needed—to control. Based on years of research, this book provides a distinctive account of what happened in the relatively unknown and under-researched Yugoslavian theater of conflict in World War II.

Based on the detailed diaries of Gottfried Weber, a naïve patriotic teen from a small town in Saxony who is willingly drafted into the German Wehrmacht and sent to Yugoslavia for occupation duty. This is the story of an emerging adult struggling to keep a sense of youthful normalcy during war, balancing friendships and romance with his daily life in combat and trying to stay alive. But the book is more. Weber’s accounts are woven into the historical record, while personal interviews from his comrades and enemies that he fought against provide the reader with firsthand accounts of the horrors and humanity of common foot soldiers in WWII Yugoslavia. Combined with an extensive number of photographs, some of which were taken by Weber, the people, land, and war that the Axis and Allied fighters were exposed to is brought to life. Weber’s war-time travels are also re-traced in the 21st century to connect the past with the present, revealing that the scars and memories of WWII are still present with the peoples and land that Winston Churchill coined the soft underbelly of Europe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Casemate
• Release date: May 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9781636244068

Book preview

Introduction

This is a story about a set of old World War II diaries and the journey they took me on. The story has a simple beginning in 2007. But it soon became complex. One day while surfing the internet, I came across a set of World War II German diaries for sale. Having always been attracted to military history, particularly World War II, I thought they looked interesting. It seemed like a fun thing to do: translate and read some old diaries to learn more about the life of a German soldier in World War II. I took German in college, so it would also be a good way to brush up on my German-language skills. Being a military history buff, I had already done a similar thing with some American diaries from World War I where the writer’s unpublished thoughts took me back to a time, perhaps a more simplistic one, in American history and culture. These diaries revealed a time in America where writing was basically the only way of communication and an art, where wordsmithing and penmanship was paramount, compared to the 21st century where video blogs and e-mails are the preferred way of recording one’s thoughts. These diaries were also time capsules where forgotten words like lads, chaps, and fellas were common vernacular, while having a gay time simply meant having fun. These young men, some the first time away from home, recorded their days in boot camp and comradeship, writing about the excitement of journeying across the United States by train, proudly wearing their new uniforms, and marching through impromptu parades at whistle stops as citizens cheered them on. Some included entries about their journeys on the troop ships that would take them to faraway England and eventually to France where they would write about the boredom, excitement, and horrors of war. These stories also provided a glimpse into the innocence of these long-dead youth who now only exist as a photograph tucked away in an old box where future descendants wonder who that person in the photo is—and was.

I hoped that these diaries would provide me more insight into the glimpse of a day in the life of a German soldier—not what is found in the objective history books, but a personal narrative of the life of a soldier, expressed by the soldier himself from a simple, individualistic, and human perspective that is often overshadowed by other World War II history books. These books tend to report the facts of historical battles and tactics. But they fail to capture the details and the point that human beings, young men full of life and dreams regardless of which side they were on, were propelled into a maelstrom of violence that was out of their control.

The diaries did not look like much when they came in the mail. Just a few old tattered pocket-sized journals and 77 photographs of a German soldier. Perhaps other individuals thought the same. I was the only bidder on the item. What was immediately apparent was that the writer had good penmanship. He was also very detailed in his writing. In most cases, there were daily entries in the diaries, making me wonder when a soldier had time to write, especially in 1945 when the German army was basically on its heels and in a constant state of retreat. The writer also included sketches and maps of where he was, a direct violation of Wehrmacht (armed forces) orders that prohibited the writing of diaries out of concern that if the soldier was captured or found dead, the information found in the diary would assist the enemy. I soon found, through the maps and a quick skim of some words, that the original owner of the diaries was Gottfried Weber, who served in Yugoslavia. His Feldpost number indicated that he was in Jäger-Regiment 750. He was also a radio operator, which might explain why he had the time to write daily entries. The photos showed he was young, and had dark hair. He was also thin, as most likely were other individuals his age serving in the German armed forces. His face looked carefree and innocent.

However, I immediately ran into problems with my translating. First, my knowledge of the German language was worse than expected. In fact, it was awful. I was overconfident in my abilities. Based on my prior experiences in Germany where I was competent in ordering beer and pretzels, finding my way to various locations, reading menus, and having very short conversations, I thought I could do this. If all else failed, I had a German–English dictionary… In addition, while the handwriting was legible, it was confusing. It did not resemble the Latin text or cursive that I was taught in grade school. I soon thought that this simple activity would become dead, and I was the proud owner of a few diaries I could not read and translate, along with a lot of photos. Fortunately, one of my retired colleagues was originally from Germany. I e-mailed some page scans of the diaries to Mary. In particular, I sent her some choice entries—those with a lot of details and one day in particular: May 8, 1945. The German surrender. Within a few days, she wrote back and said, You’re sitting on a gold mine here. But Mary also explained that the diaries were written in Sütterlin text. This style of writing was taught in German schools from about 1915 until about 1935 when even the Nazis determined that the text was too chaotic, subsequently requiring the more modern Latin-styled text when teaching writing in schools. Mary warned me that it would be almost impossible for me to translate. She was that type of person that never put perfume on her comments. She told people how it was. So much for an easy translation. Fortunately, Mary knew someone who could help—Bernie Siehling. I called Bernie and he was interested.

Bernie also had his own story of being a youth in Nazi Germany in World War II. He was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1930 into a family of German immigrants. In 1930, his father was killed in a car accident, which required his mother and him to move back to the family farm in Germany when he was just six months old. So Bernie spent his youth in Nazi Germany, as an American citizen, living on the farm with his extended family in the area. He and his mother never had any problems with the authorities as former Americans living in Nazi Germany, he said. Perhaps it was because his mother had married his uncle and was therefore a German citizen again. He recalls that during Operation Varsity in 1945, one of the last large offenses that involved the Allies crossing the Rhine river, one of his relatives serving in the Wehrmacht drove up to the farm in his Kübelwagen, the German equivalent of the US Jeep, and warned the family that the British would soon be at their farmstead. He then drove away, later becoming a prisoner of war in the hands of the Americans. He was correct. Soon after, a British Churchill tank drove into the family farm where the crew eventually got out of the tank to take a break. Bernie also has memories of how he helped hide the family’s valuables and extra clothes by burying them in barrels around the farmstead to protect their belongings from potential looters. His family was fortunate that they were farmers and could live off what they grew and raised, since food was in short supply for many immediately after the war. He also reminisced about the many refugees that would show up at the farm looking for food. Rebuilding his nearby city of Borken, which was heavily bombed in 1945, was a post-war activity for young Bernie. As a teen, he and his classmates cleaned up the rubble and re-set cobblestones that were torn up by Allied tanks in their race to Berlin. Many of the adult men were dead from the war or still in prisoner of war (POW) camps waiting to be sent home. It was up to the young and the old to rebuild the town.

Bernie is the inquisitive type and enjoys his own research. During the war, he would watch Allied bombers fly over the farm. On one occasion, a B-17 bomber crash landed nearby. One of the crew members who bailed out of the dying bomber crashed through the roof of the Siehlings’ chicken coop. Bernie recalls walking into the coop and seeing the flyer, in his sheepskin flying suit, hanging through the hole in the roof, suspended by the chute’s shroud lines. While authorities took the now-POW away to captivity, Bernie never stopped thinking about what happened to the flyer. But he had a clue to the person’s identity: he had taken a photograph of the wreckage of the downed plane that crashed close to their farm. About 60 years later, through his internet prowess, he identified the aircraft by its tail number. Eventually he also found the names of the crew through his internet searches. Then, he found the flyer that put the hole in the roof. Being the witty person that he is, Bernie laughingly explained that when the old flyer answered his phone, Bernie stated that he was calling to collect for the damage that this flyer had caused to the roof of the family farm in 1944. To this day, they still stay in contact.

After the war, when Bernie was an adult, he wanted to return to the United States, but US authorities in Germany questioned his allegiance and would not let him return. To prove his allegiance, they said that he needed to join the US Army. He could move back to the US after his stint in the army was over. So, Bernie joined the US Army—in Germany. Based on his fluency in German, the military designated him to be a translator/linguist and radio operator. The US army then sent him to Korea during the Korean War, even though he was fluent in German and had no working knowledge of the Korean language! Eventually, Bernie made it back to Grand Rapids after his service in the military. He married his sweetheart, Brigetta, who he met in grade school in Germany, convincing her to follow him back to America. They raised three children and now enjoy their retirement with their pet peacocks, serving as the Siehlings’ security system, who strut and scurry around their secluded wooded property.

Bernie was a great help in the translations. He and Brigetta spent countless hours reading the diaries and translating them into English. In one of our many conversations we had while translating the diaries, Bernie asked the simple question: Do you think Weber is still alive? That was a good question. He would be in his 80s or maybe early 90s, so, it was possible that he was. A few minutes later Bernie was scouring the internet, and was then on the phone calling the town hall of the town in Germany where Weber lived in World War II. Fortunately, the town was small and the woman who answered knew the family. She told him that Weber had returned home after the war to Soviet-occupied East Germany, and lived and worked as a bookkeeper there his entire life. But he was dead. His wife was still alive but had Alzheimer’s and was in assisted living. It was said that she would not be too useful in answering any questions. However, Weber did have a son who lived in Potsdam. He might be helpful. So, Bernie called the son and connected him with me. Through our e-mail conversations his son wrote that his father had never spoken about the war. In the post-war GDR—the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany—being in the German armed forces in World War II was something that was not readily discussed. In fact, World War II was not discussed by many Germans at all. It was widely felt that the 12-year period of the Third Reich was best forgotten. All Weber’s son was aware of was that his father fought in Yugoslavia. He never knew that his father had kept diaries and he had never seen any photos of his father from the war. As with many veterans from the US, wartime memories were not shared. And, if shared, they were only with an intimate few who understood their fellow brothers in arms. How the diaries wound up in my possession will remain a mystery. Perhaps a junk picker found the diaries in the trash after the family cleaned out the home. From there, they eventually made their way all the way to the United States of all places, and were then sold by an online site.

But what his son did provide was a lead. This lead resulted in a multi-year journey of discovery, of not just one man’s experience in World War II, but many. The lead was relatively simple. Weber’s son gave me some contact information for one of his father’s wartime comrades who lived in Munich, and who was still alive. From this, the question arose: how many more individuals are alive that fought in Yugoslavia during World War II? And this led to an idea—the collection of oral histories of those who fought in Yugoslavia. So, from this one contact, and the translation of one man’s diaries, countless interviews were conducted with Germans, Ustaše, Chetniks, Americans, British, Australians, and Partisans who fought in Yugoslavia during World War II. Finding these persons was not too difficult. In most cases I simply asked if the person knew of anyone else that would like to talk to me. In fact, in one instance I found a US airman, a German Wehrmacht soldier, and a Yugoslav Royalist Chetnik who were all neighbors in the same retirement community. I guess time heals most wounds, but I’m sure they were still guarded in their conversations on what they did during the war—to avoid old flames ruining their barbecues.

To provide some context to all of these stories, and to fill in some time gaps in the diaries, this book also includes other source materials. They include the daily combat logs from the 118. Jäger-Division that somehow survived the war. In my mind I imagine this division, in full retreat from the Soviets and Partisans, its German staff officers nevertheless worried that their divisional records would be destroyed—and preserving them at all costs. Bureaucrats at their best. This information allowed me to further pinpoint where units of the 118th were on particular days. In fact, as a radio operator, Weber most likely was one of the soldiers providing divisional HQ with the daily updates from the field that were included in the division’s war diary. I also conducted my own interviews with veterans and used original photos and documents to build the story of Weber. Many of these photographs were taken by Weber himself and the captions on the back of them were very useful in identifying landmarks, places, and dates. I also re-traced his steps though Bosnia, Montenegro, Croatia, Hungary, and Austria where he fought. Signs of World War II are still found on the walls of many buildings, the landscape, and the collective memories of the people. All this information provides the reader with a better understanding of World War II in Yugoslavia.

And so, the story of one soldier’s diary begins. But it is more than one diary. It is a story about World War II, and a civil war in Yugoslavia. This is the story of those persons that experienced the war, told in their words, and their interpretation of the war. Many needed and wanted to tell their stories to share what they felt was the truth about the war. Some felt that the history books were incorrect, or there was no written record of that particular event. Others took a more philosophical position. Gerhardt Hennes, who served in the German Wehrmacht, wrote in a letter to me: It is important to keep a record of WWII, even though I do not expect that lessons will necessarily be learned!¹ For many, it was the first time they shared their wartime experiences with someone; some wanted to shed the demons that they have carried with them for 70-plus years. For some, I had to promise that I would not share their names—perhaps out of the shame or embarrassment they felt for their actions. Others asked me not to write about them until they died. I have honored their requests. Many of these interviews included tears—it is never comfortable listening to an elderly person crying, assuring me that it was a different time and they are not that person that did those acts so many decades ago. But they did. Others, meanwhile, still carried intense hatred to this day regarding what happened in this theater of war—what Winston Churchill coined the soft underbelly of Europe—Yugoslavia.

CHAPTER 1

1941

In 1939, Poland was conquered by Germany and the Soviet Union, dividing the country at the Vistula, Narew, and San rivers. The defeat of the nation took only 35 days.¹ Later in 1940, the Third Reich directed its efforts west, attacking Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and then France, getting closer to meeting Germany’s goal of making Europe a single economic and political unit. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) in France also experienced the German onslaught and was pushed to the beaches on the English Channel. Under Operation Dynamo, May 26 to June 4, 1940, over 300,000 Allied troops were rescued off the beaches of Dunkirk by a rag-tag fleet of fishing vessels and other small craft, and taken across the Channel to the safety of England.²

With the continent now under German rule, the next stop in 1940 would be Great Britain itself. The British rejected Hitler’s demand to surrender, with Churchill eloquently stating that they would never surrender; they would fight on the beaches and the streets, whatever the cost, to protect their island. In the summer of 1940, the Germans started planning for an amphibious invasion, code named Operation Seelöwe (Sea Lion). Before the invasion could occur, however, Herman Göring’s Luftwaffe (air force) would have to gain control of the British skies. It never happened. The four-month long Battle of Britain led to the permanent postponement of the invasion, and Germany’s first defeat.³ It was a signal to the world that the Germans could be stopped.

Now, in 1941, the Third Reich turned its attention to its true enemy, the Soviet Union. The Bolshevik "Untermenschen (subhumans") needed to be eliminated, the Nazis believed, and the plague of communism eradicated from the face of the earth. And Germany was the country to do it. Besides the elimination of communism and its leader, Joseph Stalin, invasion of the east served the German’s practical needs. The Reich needed Lebensraum, or living space, where ethnic Germans could readily settle and make it a suitable part of the world. The vast natural resources and farmlands in the east would also ensure the economic health of the Thousand-Year Reich, thus improving the lives of all Aryans.⁴

Before the Soviet Union could be invaded, Hitler needed to ensure that the flanks of the Third Reich were secure. To the west, the English Channel provided a natural barrier, and Britain was still licking its wounds from the British Expeditionary Force’s loss in France, so it was not a concern yet. If anything, Great Britain was just a nuisance. To the south was Italy, an ally that would provide some source of protection to the Reich, even though Italian operations in North Africa were wavering on the brink of destruction with its failed invasion of Egypt in September 1940. In the battle of Sidi Barrani in December 1940, the British counterattacked the Italian advance into Egypt. The Italians lost 38,000 troops, compared to 624 British losses. It was a rout. The year 1941 was even worse for the Italians, but the bloodletting was staunched with the arrival of Rommel’s Afrikakorps in February 1941, after which German forces, along with the Italians, pushed the British and Commonwealth forces back to Egypt.⁵ However, one vulnerability that needed to be addressed by the Reich in 1941 was south of German-annexed Austria—Yugoslavia.

The Balkans

The Balkans was already a hotbed for war in the early 20th century. In the First Balkan War of 1912, Serbia and its Bulgarian, Greek, and Montenegrin allies formed the Balkan League, defeating the Ottoman empire, pushing the Turks out of Macedonia and almost all the way back to Istanbul. The subsequent Treaty of London carved up Macedonia among the victors, and Serbia doubled in size. Albania also broke away from the Ottomans and became its own nation. Soon after, in 1913, the Second Balkan War flared up when Bulgaria felt it had been cheated out of the land it should have received from the first war, attacking Serbia and Greece in an attempt to get it back. The war did not work out well for Bulgaria. Bulgaria lost more of Macedonia to the Serb and Greek victors.⁶

To the north, the Austro-Hungarian Empire butted against the Kingdom of Serbia. In 1908, the empire annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, that it had been occupying since 1878. This outraged the Serbs who also had their eyes on it. The Serbs were now under even more threat of the empire’s expansion into what they felt were rightfully their own lands.⁷ On June 28, 1914, it all came to a head when Serb nationalist Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and his wife Sofie, in Sarajevo during his trip to the province to inspect military troops.⁸ In response, the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia; Serbia’s long-time ally, Russia, declared war on the Austro-Hungarians; and Germany, an ally of Austria-Hungary, then declared war on Russia. Because France was allied with Russia, it came to Russia’s aid. And because the United Kingdom was allied with France, they too were drawn into the war.⁹ World War I would engulf all of Europe, destroy empires, and change the map of Europe forever.

The war did not go well for the Kingdom of Serbia. Out of all of the nations that fought in World War I, Serbia had the highest percentage of civilian deaths. It was estimated that about 840,000 Serbian citizens died, along with over 400,000 soldiers, about 12 percent of the Kingdom’s total population.¹⁰ Others estimated that total losses of the Serb population were as high as 20 percent.¹¹ In 1915, the country was over-run by the Austro-Hungarians, and the remnants of the Serbian government, along with many civilians and military personnel, and Regent Alexander and members of the royal family, retreated through Kosovo and Albania and were then rescued by the British on the Adriatic shoreline. The survivors, about 175,000 strong, were evacuated by the British to Corfu island in Greece, which became the location of the Serbian government in exile. Serbian troops from Corfu would later fight on the Macedonian front against the Bulgarians and Austrians.¹²

Discussions about the new Europe and the fate of the Serbian kingdom were already in play before the end of the war. In 1917, the federation of Slavs from the former provinces of the Austro-Hungarian Empire signed the Pact of Corfu with the Kingdom of Serbia, a declaration that all of the Slavs would form a single south Slav state after the war. Later in 1918, the National Council of Slovenes, Croats, and Serbs (in Bosnia and Herzegovina) was created in Zagreb, claiming to be representing the Slavic states in the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire. To protect the Slav states from the Italians, who were already invading land in the western part of the empire, the Council sought out the protection of the Serbs. Later in November, delegates from the National Council met with the Serbian government that recognized them and their request, which led to the annexation of the former lands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that included Slovenia and Croatia.¹³ Soon after the November 11, 1918 Armistice that ended World War I, the new Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was created by the Serbian monarchy on December 1, 1918.

The new empire was unstable from its beginning. Soldiers from Croatia that fought for the Kaiser and King in the Austro-Hungarian Empire were now living in the same nation as their centuries-old nemesis: Serbs that they fought against in World War I. The new kingdom also incorporated peoples of different cultures, ethnicities, and religions. Catholic Croats, who used the Latin alphabet and often spoke German, were now in the same kingdom as Orthodox Serbs who used the Cyrillic alphabet, spoke Serbian, and had different customs and norms than their Croatian counterparts. Many Bosnians, descendants of citizens of the Ottoman Empire who had lived in Bosnia and Herzegovina centuries earlier, practiced Islam and also had their own traditions and beliefs, and were often distrusted by the Serbs because of their Ottoman origins. Colloquially called the Kingdom of South Slavs, or Yugoslavia, the only commonality was that the people in the kingdom lived in the same part of the world.¹⁴ It soon became a kingdom of distrust and dissension.

The annexation was not received well by the Croatians. Many Croatian citizens wanted an independent nation in the post-World War I world. Independence was part of the nation’s long history. As far back as the ninth century, Croatia was independently ruled under the reign of Duke Trpinir,¹⁵ while the first king of Croatia was King Tomislav, who reigned in 925.¹⁶ The country was also traditionally allied with the Hungarians since the 1100s, not with the Ottomans and Serbs to the south.¹⁷

One particular group that opposed the merger with Serbia was the Croatian Peoples’ Peasant Party (HPSS). Created in 1904 by Stjepan Radić and his brother Ante, the party politicized the peasant population, making them a powerful foe in Croatia and the new kingdom. The HPSS was threatening to the central government with its anti-coalition, and anti-centralization stance, and opposition to what it felt was Serb domination of the government. Opposition to Serb rule of the kingdom reached a crisis stage in 1921 when the now Croatian Republican Peoples’ Party (HRSS) and Slovene representatives to parliament opposed ratification of the kingdom’s first constitution. Regardless of their opposition, there were still enough votes by Serb and Muslim representatives in the National Assembly to ratify the Vidovdan Constitution.¹⁸ The kingdom’s new constitution, even though it gave voting rights to the peasants, and increased HRSS membership, also defined the kingdom as one unified state, stripping Croatia (along with other independent states) of its independent autonomy and giving the Serbs majority rule throughout the kingdom.¹⁹ Angered about losing their status as an independent state within the new kingdom, the HRSS adopted a strategy of passive resistance to the new (in the HRSS’s view) Serb-biased government.²⁰

Because of the HRSS’s actions, it was repeatedly under the scrutiny of the kingdom. Radić and some of his followers were harassed and repeatedly jailed for their revolutionary actions against the state. In 1924, the central government started placing further restrictions on HRSS activities, arresting Radić and some of his followers in 1925 for violating the kingdom’s internal security law because of the party’s association with the Soviets. After being released from prison, Radić was back in politics. He was made the minister of education in 1925, and then became a member of Parliament in 1927. On June 20, 1928, in a session of Parliament, Puniša Račić and other Serb MPs were publicly accused of corruption by Ivan Pernar and others from the now known (former HRSS) Croatian Peasant Party (HSS). On the floor of Parliament, Račić pulled out a revolver, shooting Pernar, killing two other MPs of the HSS, and mortally wounding Radić, who died a few months later. For his crimes, Račić was sentenced to house arrest in a villa in Serbia, which further outraged the Croats.²¹ Vladko Maček then became the leader of the HSS after Radić’s death, leading the HSS until 1941.²²

With the kingdom on the brink of civil war over the Parliament assassinations, in 1929 King Alexander discontinued Parliament, banned all political parties, and imposed a royal dictatorship.²³ The political opposition was silenced and their leaders either fled the country or were imprisoned, including Maček of the HSS, who was jailed for six months in 1933 for inciting Croatian violence.²⁴ After the creation of a new constitution in 1931, Parliament resumed, but it was too late. Even though the king had made some reforms and concessions to appease the opposition, the new government was perceived as too pro-Serb by Muslims and Croats, and there was a movement for the kingdom to become a federation, regardless of the efforts of the king to appease the many factions.²⁵

The HSS was not the only party wanting Croatian independence. There was also the Croatian Party of Rights (HSP). One of the persons active early in this party was Ante Pavelić, a devout Catholic and attorney from Bradina, Herzegovina, who was elected as the party’s general secretary in 1918. Pavelić was effective in mobilizing students and nationalists for Croatian independence. In 1927, he was elected to the Croatian National Assembly representing Zagreb. His name and reputation for independence also extended beyond Croatia when he became known for defending Macedonian separatists belonging to the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), who were also calling for independence from Serbian rule, and using violence to get their points across.²⁶ During this time, Pavelić was also meeting with Italian officials, seeking their support for Croatian secession from the kingdom, and giving promises to Italy that it could expand its sphere of influence into Croatia’s Dalmatia region along the Adriatic coast, once he gained power, and Croatia became an independent nation.²⁷ Pavelić was also meeting with IMRO Macedonian separatists to coordinate their efforts to expedite the demise of Yugoslavia.²⁸

Pavelić was not liked by the Yugoslav government for his actions. In July 1929, he was convicted in the Yugoslav court for treason, and sentenced to death, in absentia.²⁹ But Pavelić had already fled to Italy and the support of Benito Mussolini. In May 1930, Pavelić announced the creation of the Croatian Revolutionary Organization (Ustaša Hrvatska Revolucionarna Organizacija) or Ustaša, for short, whose ideology was based on fascist principles and Catholicism.³⁰ The Ustaša position was that Croatia should be independent and be entitled to all of its original territory; it was the Croatian’s historic right that dated back over 1,000 years. Additionally, all Croats had the right to live in Croatia, and the Croatian peoples had been selected by God to defend Catholicism against Orthodoxy and communism. Other ethnic groups, especially the inferior Serbs, Jews, and Romas needed also to be eliminated from Croatian lands.³¹

Armed revolt and violence were at the core of Ustaša principles. One of the Ustaša publications from 1932 stated the gun, bomb, and the infernal machine are the idols which shall bring back the land to the peasant.³² Pavelić also had the support of some nations that wanted to see the kingdom’s demise. In Italy and Hungary, Pavelić established training camps, schooling recruits in weapons and explosives use, while training subjects in Ustaša principles so they could lead others once they made it back to Croatia.³³

To further build the movement, Pavelić appealed to Croatians around the world, built a large propaganda machine, and established a central command in Italy called the Nucleus, that coordinated Ustaša efforts in the kingdom. Through its network of local cells, the masses were educated in Ustaša principles and its followers increased in number. Direct actions including the assassination of government officials, and blowing up trains and government buildings were also occurring. Because of the religious persecution of Croatians, and the emphasis on Catholicism as an Ustaša ideal, even the Catholic Church was involved in the movement. Local priests spread the Ustaša ideals to their followers from the pulpit.³⁴

One of their earliest successes that gained them some notoriety was the Velebit uprising. In 1932, about 20 Ustaša terrorists, some brought over by boat from Italy, along with some local Ustaše, attacked a police gendarme station in Brušane in the Lika district of Croatia, leading to a military response by the Yugoslav government. While the Velebit uprising was small in scale, it was a symbol of the birth of the Ustaša movement, informing the world of its cause and serving to further unnerve the kingdom, while also raising concerns in Belgrade about the abilities of the Ustaše, and the extent of their movement in the kingdom.³⁵

The Ustaša also set its sights on King Alexander. In December 1933, there was an attempted assassination of the king in Zagreb that failed—the assassin hesitated in using grenades to kill the king because he did not want to kill the children that were surrounding King Alexander’s vehicle. That night, police arrested the assassins, thwarting their plans to kill the king the following day.³⁶ When King Alexander was visiting Marseille, France on October 9, 1934, the assassins were successful.³⁷ The assassination was a joint effort between the IMRO and Ustaša, and was planned by Pavelić. The assassin was Vlado Chernozemski, a member of the IMRO.³⁸ Reminiscent of the 1914 assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, the king and his driver were shot in their vehicle. King Alexander died from the attack, while the driver lived. Chernozemski, the assassin, died in police custody that day from saber wounds. The Ustaša accomplices, Ivan Rajić, Mijo Kralj, Zvonimir Pospišil, and Antun Godina were later arrested and tried in France. They received life sentences, but they were released by the Germans in 1940, after France fell.³⁹ King Alexander’s cousin, Prince Paul, became regent over the kingdom until the king’s son, Peter II, would be of age to rule.⁴⁰

The assassination was not an unqualified success for Pavelić and the Ustaša movement. Italy and Mussolini were accused by Belgrade of conspiring in the assassination. In response, Mussolini had Pavelić imprisoned in Italy, his training camps in the country were closed, and his followers were interred on the Italian island of Lipari, located north of Sicily.⁴¹ Later, in March 1936, Pavelić was released from custody, but he remained in Italy under police guard, with the Nucleus still coordinating actions in Yugoslavia. Many of his followers went back to the kingdom to spread their Ustaše ideals and infiltrate the government to prepare for the return of the Poglavnik (or leader) to Croatia, when the time was right.⁴² Belgrade still protested to the Italians