Im Schatten des Weltkriegs: Massengewalt der Ustaša gegen Serben, Juden und Roma in Kroatien, 1941–1945 by Alexander Korb (review)

In this monograph, Alexander Korb explores the sources, role, and impact of violence under Ustaša misrule. Propelled onto the historical stage as the Axis powers dismembered Yugoslavia, this self-delusional, murderous group of fanatics sought to transform “a multiethnic society into a homogeneous entity,” creating in Croatia “an unmanageable violent space … [where] even the German occupiers no longer felt safe. …” (pp. 432–33, 437). Ultimately the Ustaše took the lives of more than 310,000 Serbs, 26,000 Jews, and 20,000 Roma. The Ustaša-imagined ethnic nation offered space for Muslims and for some Serbs and Jews divorced from their ethnic-religious identity. It thus reflected ethnic distribution in enlarged Croatia, where Croats constituted 51% of the population (p. 78). With ethnic boundaries impervious to rational geographical division and many Serbs and Jews intermarried with Croats (some were spouses of Ustaša leaders), Ustaša philosophers defined enemies less by race than by perceived cultural and historical traditions. According to this thinking, the Orthodox Church, with its ties to Russia in “Asian subservience,” reinforced by “Jewishness” and “Gypsy strains” incubated in interwar Yugoslavia, rendered Serbs susceptible to Bolshevism. As Yugoslavia’s rulers, Serbs were inclined to biologically weaken the Croat race (pp. 132–34).

German occupiers set the framework for mass violence, but violent initiatives were local (pp. 10–11). Ustaša leaders unleashed violence to demonstrate that the peoples of Yugoslavia could survive only if separated by national boundaries—an approach that contrasted sharply with Nazi notions that race-based enemies could not be allowed to live at all. Three situational factors regulated levels of Ustaša violence: 1) Ustaša unpreparedness to govern; 2) civil war; and 3) occupation by two foreign powers with conflicting interests. The regime lacked a stable popular basis, knowledge of local conditions, and influence over local elites—even if the latter were Ustaša (p. 71). Only in regions supported by a Croat administrative apparatus could the leadership construct a functioning state; elsewhere Croat leaders watched the country slide into civil war. Unleashed but unrestrained by Zagreb, local Ustaša militias targeted Serbs, provoking retaliatory bloodshed against Croats and Muslims (p. 72).

The absence of central control, however, sometimes resulted in the creation of constraints on violence. Fearing that changes in the proportions of religious groups in the population might threaten their own position, Bosnian elites in Sarajevo protected Serbs and Jews (pp. 156–57). Persecuted Serbs sheltered Jews to defy Croat authorities. Muslim communities protected Roma Muslims; at the same time Ustaša actions against Muslim Roma were restrained by the regime’s hope to win Muslim support (pp. 142–43). Conversely, regional leaders deported or killed Serbs in ruthless anticipation of an influx of Slovenes expelled by the Germans (pp. 187–88, 206–12). “Ordinary” Croats—civilian administrators, local businessmen and farmers, and female workers—stood to benefit from ethnic cleansing: motivated by mixtures of patriotism, ethnic nationalism, fear of Serb retaliation, antisemitism, hostility to Roma, self-enrichment, or score-settling, they accelerated the process.

Such variations drive Korb’s conclusion that the Ustaša did not pursue the physical elimination of Serbs, Jews, and Roma in a premeditated way. The regime’s goal was assimilation for a few and expulsion for the rest. German authorities in Serbia halted deportations to Serbia by closing the border in summer 1941; insufficient transportation infrastructure, inability to feed deportees at concentration points, and a dearth of destinations induced frustrated local leaders to choose murder. Surviving Serb refugees, they feared, could escape and fight back. Korb argues that violence in the field flourished where a majority Serb population gave effective resistance and where the counter-violence of Serbian insurgents lent some credibility to the threat to the Croat state imagined by the Ustaša (p. 445). Ustaša motives for mass murder in...