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8. Eradicating “Undesired Elements”
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8 Eradicating “Undesired Elements” National Regeneration and the Ustasha Regime’s Program to Purify the Nation, 1941–1945 R O R Y Y E O M A N S InApril1942,onthefirstanniversaryofthefoundingoftheIndependentState of Croatia, a group of train passengers took a journey into the heart of Bosnia. This was no ordinary party of travelers. It comprised leading officials from the Ustasha regime—the Fascist movement that had come to power the previous year—andincludedForeignMinisterMladenLorković,thehead ofthesecret police, Eugen Dido Kvaternik, and the commander of the elite Black Legion death squad, Jure Francetić. Nor was it any ordinary journey: the train took them through eastern Bosnia, which the Black Legion had recently “cleansed” of its Serb population through a campaign of mass murder and expulsion. In his subsequent radio address Lorković explained that the train stations they had passed were “new symbols of the order, creation, and struggle of Ustasha Croatia.” Traveling through Bosnia, the view from the train window offered a pleasingpictureofa“completelyharmoniousorderlyland,”instarkcontrastto the situation when the Ustasha movement had come to power. Following the campaign of purification by Francetić’s legionaries, there was no more of this “Balkan filth and dirt, a picture of complete negligence and chaos that we saw Eradicating “Undesired Elements” 201 all the time in this region in the era of the former Yugoslavia.” With all traces of the Serb presence in the region eradicated, the railway stations were now “hygienic and orderly” and had home guards and armed militias standing in front of them “offering a beautiful picture” of cleanliness and progress.1 TheaccountofthejourneyundertakenbyLorkovićandotherofficialssymbolizedthecontradictorynatureoftherelationshipbetweentheUstasharegime and racial science. The nucleus of what was to become the Croatian Ustasha movement was founded in the early 1930s by Ante Pavelić, a lawyer and rightwing politician, out of militant university and youth groups (even though its rank and file was made up predominantly of peasants, workers, and sailors). During the 1930s the majority of members of the Ustasha movement lived in exileabroad,interroristtrainingcampsfromwhichtheylaunchedarmedraids into Yugoslavia. However, the Ustasha movement enjoyed support across the radical-rightspectrum:nationalistuniversityandhighschoolstudents,Catholic clergy,Catholicyouthorganizations,theseparatistintelligentsia,andnationalist workers’ unions. The Ustasha movement aimed to establish, by force if necessary , an independent Greater Croatia comprising Croatia, Bosnia, and parts of Serbia. Its chief theoreticians believed that the economic, moral, and social transformation of the future Croatian state could be achieved only after it had beencleansedofall“alien”influences,thesizableSerbpopulationinparticular.2 Duringthesecondhalfofthe1930s,undertheinfluenceofNationalSocialism, the movement also incorporated antisemitism into its program. TheUstashamovementviewedtheeradicationofall“unwantedelements” asapathtonationalregeneration—acollectivepanaceaforthenation’scultural, moral,andsocialills.TheUstasharegimecametopowerinApril1941following the invasion and division of Yugoslavia by Axis forces. Established on 10 April, theIndependentStateofCroatia,comprisingCroatiaandBosnia,wasdivided into two zones of occupation, with Dalmatia annexed and administered by Italian occupation forces and the rest controlled by Nazi Germany. Despite this unpromising beginning for a movement founded on the very principle of national liberation, the Ustasha regime immediately set about realizing its vision of a regenerative national revolution. To facilitate the implementation of its agenda, the regime introduced a series of racial laws and edicts drawing heavily on Nazi biological concepts of antisemitism and race. Simultaneously, the Ustasha media launched a campaign of demonization, imbued with the languageofscientificracism,against“foreign”influencesand“alien”racialand [35.171.22.220] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 17:33 GMT) 202 R O R Y Y E O M A N S nationalgroupsinthenewstate.Thisprovedthepreludetoacampaignofmass murder to purify the Croatian homeland of Serbs, Jews, Gypsies (Roma), and all other “degenerate” and “undesired” elements. Despite its attempts to mimic Nazi racial policies, the Ustasha regime’s vicious anti-Serb campaign and the inchoate propaganda that accompanied it exposedcertaincontradictions.Theregime’suseofmoral,social,andeconomic arguments to legitimize its extremist agenda highlighted the marginality of the Nazi concept of race on the one hand and the centrality of older anthropological theories on the other. It also underscored deep divisions within the movementbetween“moderate”and“hard-line”factionsandexterminatoryand assimilationisttendenciesand,moregenerally,underscoredtheCroatianradical right’s ambiguous attitudes toward race and racial science. Armed resistance provoked by the Ustasha campaign of mass murder, and subsequent pressure exercised by the Nazi occupation authorities, eventually forced the regime to modifyitspoliciestowardthestate’sSerbs.Thepolicyofmassmurderwasfirst substitutedwithoneofforcedassimilationthroughconversionoftheOrthodox SerbpopulationtoCatholicismandthen,whenthatfailed,bylimitedattempts toreintegratetheSerbsintomainstreamsociety.Atthesametime,thepresence of a significant number of Jews within the upper echelons of both the regime bureaucracy and the party itself led to the introduction of an exception clause allowingsomeCroatianJewstoclaim“HonoraryAryan”status.However,such contingentdecisionswereneverdesignedtobepermanent.Inreality,veryfew Jews were able to evade eventual deportation and death in one of the Ustasha concentration camps; marginalization, terror, and persecution remained the everyday experience for many Serbs. By 1944 the regime...