Ante Pavelić

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For the vice president of the National assembly of the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, see Ante Pavelić (1869)

Ante Pavelić
Head of the Independent State of Croatia
In office 1941 – 1945
Preceded by	None (first Head of Independent State of Croatia)
Succeeded by	None
Born	July 14, 1889(1889-07-14) Konjic,Bosnia - Herzegovina Austria-Hungary
Died	December 28, 1959 (aged 70) Madrid, Spain
Nationality	Croatian
Political party	Croatian Party of Rights, Ustaša - Croatian Revolutionary Movement, Croatian Liberation Movement
Spouse	Maria Pavelic - Maiden name: Lovrencevic

Ante Pavelić (July 14, 1889 – December 28, 1959) was a Croatian politician and, in the 1930s, a founding member and Poglavnik (literal translation: Headman) of the Croatian paramilitary separatist movement, the Ustaše. For the four years of its existence from April 1941, again under the Poglavnik title, he served as leader of the Independent State of Croatia, a puppet state^[1][2] of Nazi Germany.^[3][4][5] Shortly after Germany's surrender he escaped abroad, and died in Madrid in 1959.^[6][7]

[edit] Early life

Ante Pavelić was born north of Konjic in Bradina, a small village roughly 15 kilometres southwest of Hadžići in Bosnia and Herzegovina, then Austria-Hungary, although he draws his roots from southern Lika, in the small town of Krivi Put on the central part of the Velebit plain. His parents moved to Bosnia. As an adult, Ante Pavelić decided to move to Zagreb to study law. An extremist even in his youth, he became a member of the organization known as the "Frankovci" whose founder, Dr. Josip Frank, was the father-in-law of Slavko Kvaternik, an Austro-Hungarian army officer.^[8] In 1919 he was the interim secretary of the Pure Party of Rights. In 1921 he was arrested along with several other members of the party but was released; he defended them at the trial and lost. Kvaternik had long been a strong advocate of Croat separatism and the German ideas on a separate Croat state found in him a ready tool.

Pavelić's quarrelsome nature became more and more apparent in the years immediately after the first war when he became involved in one dispute after another with the Centralist Party and the Croat Peasant Party of Radić. He was the sole representative of his Party in the Skupština (Yugoslav Parliament) but rarely attended sessions and, when he did, he sulked in his seat and only occasionally indulged in a long harangue in protest against some measure which he did not approve.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] 1920s and 1930s

In the early 1920s, Pavelić established contacts with Croat émigrés in Vienna and Budapest. Over the next few years he entered into close accord with the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization and in 1927 defended Macedonians charged in Skopje with terrorist offences. Through his Viennese contacts he established clandestine links with the Italian government but he was less successful in attempting to forge similar links in Hungary, where the Budapest authorities were wary of jeopardising relationships with other countries.^[9][10][11]

In 1927 he was elected to the national assembly (he had previously served on municipal council of Zagreb). He was one of two elected on the Croatian Bloc's list, the other being Ante Trumbić.^[12] He held the position of the party secretary in the Party of Rights until 1929 and the beginning of royal government in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Shortly after the proclamation of the establishment of the government Alexander I of Yugoslavia in January 1929, Pavelić fled abroad and was subsequently sentenced to death in absentia at Belgrade for his part in anti-Serb demonstrations organized at Sofia by Bulgarian and Macedonian terrorists. He then co-founded the Ustaše extremist organization and went underground. Pavelić received support from Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini who supported Pavelić and the Ustaše as a means to help destroy Yugoslavia and expand Italian influence in the Adriatic. Mussolini allowed Pavelić to live in exile in Rome and train his paramilitaries for war with Yugoslavia. Pavelić would later cede parts of Dalmatia and some Adriatic islands to Italy in exchange for being allowed to take all of modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina into the NDH.

Ustaše training camps were set up in Italy and Hungary, chiefly at Brescia and Borgotaro in Italy, and Jankapuszta in Hungary and an armed insurrection was attempted in 1933 when the Ustaše,^[13][14]. armed by the Italians, attempted to invade the country by crossing the Adriatic sea in motorboats. This was unsuccessful but its lack of success probably was instrumental in the decision to assassinate King Alexander I of Yugoslavia. Two attempts were made, the last one successful and Alexander was slain at Marseilles 9 October 1934 along with the French Foreign Minister, Louis Barthou.

The singular lack of armed protection afforded to the Yugoslav monarch, and the general laxity of security precautions when it was well-known that one attempt had already been made on Alexander's life are grim tributes to Pavelić organizational abilities; he had apparently been able to bribe a high official in the Surete General. The Prefect of Police of Marseilles, Jouhannaud, was subsequently removed from office.

[edit] World War II

Ante Pavelić visiting Hitler at Berghof.

Pavelić remained in Italy until the beginning of World War II. As the leader of the Ustaše he directly ordered, organized and conducted a campaign of terror against Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, and anti-fascist Croats. Pavelić's Ustaše regime was arguably the most murderous in relation to its size in the whole of occupied Europe.^[15][16] Numerous testimonies from the Nuremberg Trials and in German, Italian and Austrian war archives bear witness to bestialities perpetrated against the civilian population.^[17]
Serbian, Jewish, and Croatian men, women, and even children were literary hacked to death. Whole villages were razed to the ground and the people driven into barns to which the Ustaše set fire. General Edmund von Glaise-Horstenau reported to the OKW on June 28, 1941:

On July 10, General Glaise-Horstenau added:

The personal standard of Ante Pavelić as Poglavnik (Head-man) of the Government from 1941 to 1943, and then as Poglavnik of the state from 1943 to 1945.

According to these testimonies, German officers themselves were dismayed by the atrocities committed by the Ustaše, to the extent that they occasionally intervened to stop the bloodshed (Jasenovac, 1941), arrested one of the most notorious Ustaše (Friar Miroslav Filipović/Majstorović, Banja Luka, 1942) and disarmed an Ustaše detachment (Eastern Bosnia, 1942).
The regime declared in advance its intention to eliminate the Serbian population in NDH by killing one part, expelling a second part and converting the rest.^[19] . A Gestapo report to Himmler (17 February 1942) on increased Partisan activities stated that "Increased activity of the bands is chiefly due to atrocities carried out by Ustasha units in Croatia against the Orthodox population. The Ustashas committed their deeds in a bestial manner not only against males of conscript age, but especially against helpless old people, women and children. The number of the Orthodox that the Croats have massacred and sadistically tortured to death is about three hundred thousand."

In September of 1942, Pavelić traveled to the Eastern Front along with Jure Francetić where he met Hitler at Vinnytsia on September 23.^[20] The following day the two met Croatian legionnaires serving in the 369th Reinforced Croatian Infantry Regiment. Pavelić met with general Friedrich Paulus and decorated several of the legionnaires with military awards.^[21]

Pavelić's regime was not officially recognized by the Vatican, but at no point did the Church condemn the genocide and forced conversions to Catholicism perpetrated by the Ustaše.^[22] Soon after coming to power in April 1941 Pavelić was given a private audience in Rome by Pope Pius XII, an act for which the Pope was widely criticized. A British Foreign Office memo on the subject described Pius as "the greatest moral coward of our age" for receiving Pavelić.^[23] Many priests and members of the Franciscan Order in NDH supported the regime, often actively. (See involvement of Croatian Catholic clergy with the Ustaša regime.)
A Yugoslav court ruled Pavelić responsible for approximately 700,000 deaths, though some historians and demographers believe tbat figure to be too high.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Post-war

In May 1945 Pavelić fled via Bleiburg to Austria, where he stayed for a few months before transferring to Rome, where he was hidden by members of the Roman Catholic Church (as is documented in de-classified US Intelligence documents)^[24]).

Six months later, he fled to South America. Upon arriving in Argentina via the ratlines, he became a security advisor to Juan Perón. Perón issued 34,000 visas to Croatians: both the Nazi collaborators and the anti-communists that fled from the new communist government led by Josip Broz Tito.

On April 10, 1957, the 16th anniversary of the founding of the Independent State of Croatia, the 67 year old Pavelić was shot and seriously wounded by an unknown assailant in Buenos Aires ^[25]. The operation was attributed to Tito's Yugoslav intelligence, although the anniversary also suggested an attempt at revenge by a Chetnik activist. Despite having a bullet in his spine, Pavelić elected not to be hospitalized. Two weeks later, the Argentine government agreed to the Tito government's request to extradite Pavelić, and he went into hiding. Although there were reports that he had fled to work for the Stroessner regime in Paraguay, Pavelić's whereabouts remained unknown until late 1959, where it was learned that he had been granted asylum in Spain. Pavelić died on December 28, 1959, at the German hospital in Madrid, reportedly from complications due to the bullet in his spine. ^[26].

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Hermann Neubacher: Sonderauftrag Suedost 1940-1945, Bericht eines fliegendes Diplomaten, 2. durchgesehene Auflage, Goettingen 1956
• Ladislaus Hory and Martin Broszat: Der Kroatische Ustascha-Staat, 1941-1945 Stuttgart, 1964
• Encyclopedia Britannica, 1943 - Book of the year, page 215, Entry: Croatia
• Worldmark Encyclopedia of the Nations, Europe, edition 1995, page 91, entry: Croatia
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, Edition 1991, Macropedia, Vol. 29, page 1111.
• Helen Fein: Accounting for Genocide - Victims and Survivors of the Holocaust, The Free Press, New York, Edition 1979, pages 102, 103.
• Alfio Russo: Revoluzione in Jugoslavia, Roma 1944.
• Ruth Mitchell: The Serbs Choose War, Doubleday, Doran, 1943, page 148
• Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, vol. 2, p. 739.
• Avro Manhattan: The Vatican's Holocaust, Ozark Books, 1986, page 48.
• Edmond Paris: Genocide in Satellite Croatia, The American Institute for Balkan Affairs, 1525 West Diversey Parkway, Chicago, Illinois. Published in 1961, 1962, 1990
• Cali Ruchala, Lord of the Danse Macabre: Ante Pavelic and the Independent State of Croatia, Degenerate Magazine © 1996

[edit] See also

• World War II
• Ustaše
• Involvement of Croatian Catholic clergy with the Ustaša regime

[edit] External links

• Biography of Pavelić
• Another Biography of Pavelic
• Miroslav Filipović-Majstorović
• Reported Arrival of Ante Pavelic in Argentina
• Ivan Goran Kovačić The Pit
• Jasenovac - a prisoner execution
• Independent State of Croatia proclamation
• The Holocaust in the Balkans
• Unindentified Croatian Ustasha
• Tied up in the Rat Lines by Yossi Melman
• Vatican-Hitler-Pavelic connections