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Nazism in former Yugoslavia

"Kill all Serbs. And when you finish come here, to the Church, and I will confess you and free you from sin."(54)
-- Father Srecko Peric of the Gorica Monastery, reassuring his fellow Ustashi prior to a massacre
From: What is the Vatican hiding? by Barry Lituchy

The Croatian Ustashe were a Catholic outfit that formed the Nazi government in the Croatian part of former Yugoslavia, then renamed as the Independent State of Croatia, in the period leading upto and during WWII. The Ustashe were in league with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy during the war.
What is unique about them is that the largest number of their victims were not Jews or Romany - although these two groups were murdered by them as well - but another Christian group: the Ortodox Serbs. The Catholic Church had for centuries considered the Orthodox Church one of their primary enemies. Amongst the mass-murderers in the Ustashe ranks were monks and friars. Often they were the most zealous and cruel. Archbishops had seats in the Ustashe government.

Besides the Ustashe, a large section of that nation's minority Moslem population eagerly joined in and worked with Germany's Nazis and the Ustashe. This 20,000 strong force was called the Hanjar.

The Catholic Ustashe, as well as the Islamic Hanjar Nazis, worked to exterminate the Serbs, Jews and Romany in their region. Between 600,000 and one million people were murdered in what are said to have been the most brutal massacres of the Nazi period. Although the Ustashi recorded the number of people murdered in many cases, not all massacres were kept track of.

After WWII, when the communist dictator Tito came to power in Yugoslavia, the communists indulged in their trademark history-rewriting and the numbers of those massacred in the country were suppressed. Tito struck a deal with the Vatican and released the criminal Ustashe priests from imprisonment.

During the Second World War in Yugoslavia, Catholic priests and Muslim clerics were willing accomplices in the genocide of the nations Serbian, Jewish and Roma population. From 1941 until 1945, the Nazi-installed regime of Ante Pavelic in Croatia carried out some of the most horrific crimes of the Holocaust (known as the Porajmos by the Roma), killing over 800,000 Yugoslav citizens - 750,000 Serbs, 60,000 Jews and 26,000 Roma. In these crimes, the Croatian Ustasha and Muslim fundamentalists were openly supported by the Vatican, the Archbishop of Zagreb Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac (1898-1960), and the Palestinian Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin al-Husseini. Many of the victims of the Pavelic regime in Croatia were killed in the war's third largest death camp - Jasenovac, where over 200,000 people - mainly Orthodox Serbs met their deaths. Some 240,000 were "rebaptized" into the Catholic faith by fundamentalist Clerics in "the Catholic Kingdom of Croatia" as part of the policy to "kill a third, deport a third, convert a third" of Yugoslavia's Serbs, Jews and Roma in wartime Bosnia and Croatia.
-- The Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican, by Vladimar Dedijer, Anriman-Verlag, Freiburg, Germany, 1988)
Link

The Catholic Ustashe

What are the Ustashe?
The Ustashe were the Croatian Nazis who ran the puppet state of Croatia between 1941 and 1945. After 1945 they fled Croatia with the help of the Vatican and others. The Ustashe continued terrorist activities from bases in Spain, Argentine, and the United States. Ustashe front organizations like the Croatian Liberation Movement were involved in a series of terrorist operations in the United States 1976-1980 including an airline hijacking and several bombings in New York. Internationally, Croatian terrorists are alleged to have assasinated the Swedish Prime Minister, plotted the assasination of President Nixon and the Australian Prime Minister, and committed a string of crimes in Sweden, Germany, Australia, Paraguay, and many other countries.

What are the Crimes of the Ustashe?
The crimes of the Ustashe are too numerous to list here but they massacred over 700,000 Serbs, Jews, Roma, Partisans, and others between 1941 and 1945. The Ustashe leader Pavelic was given refuge by the Vatican, Spain, and Argentine. The Ustashe Minister of the Interior, Artukovic, lived openly in California from 1949-1986 when he was finally deported to Yugoslavia and convicted of murder. Thousands of Ustashe escaped justice for their crimes due to their wealth and influence and the backing of the Roman Catholic Church and who along with certain rogue elements in the US government portrayed these war criminals as anticommunist freedom fighters.
Link
Bringing the Ustashe to power

Not only did the Croatian Catholic clergy meet secretly in the years prior to 1941 with Italian fascist agents to help prepare for the final destruction of Yugoslavia, but they provided the Ustasha with all of the vast resources at its disposal, including its buildings and monasteries for meetings and safe-houses. The operational headquarters in which the plans for the Ustasha take-over were made was in the Franciscan monastery at Chuntich. Monasteries, parish houses, cathedrals, Franciscan high schools, seminaries, etc., throughout Croatia doubled as meeting places, recruiting centers, arms depots and staging areas for Croatian fascism and terror in the years prior to the war. We know this to be true because the Croatian fascists themselves boasted of it when they came to power in 1941 in their official publications and on the memorial plaques they affixed to these places.(16)
...
In 1940 an article appeared in the official Church publication "Catholic List" praising Mein Kampf [Hitler's infamous work] and adding that there was no conflict between being a good Catholic and a good Nazi.(20) Indeed, similar articles were published by innumerable Catholic clergy all over Europe in the 1930's and 1940's. Urged on by the Catholic clergy, thousands of Croatian officers and soldiers in the Yugoslav army deserted to the Nazi-Ustasha side as did a large part of the membership of the popular Croatian Peasant Party.

While the Ustashi rode to power on the backs of the Nazi Wehrmacht, units of Ustasha soldiers fought alongside them. Among the very first armed divisions of the Ustasha army were numerous Catholic priests. The military exploits of one priest, Ilija Tomas of Klepac, were hailed in the Croatian fascist publication "Hrvatski Narod" on July 25, 1941.(21) Another Catholic publication "Nedelja" praised the military exploits of dozens of priests, especially those in monastic orders such as the Franciscan Radovan Glavas, and the priest Ivan Miletic who led Croatian fascists in joint battle with Wehrmacht forces.(22) Priests who led Catholic organizations in Croatia and Bosnia such as the "Crusaders Brotherhood" and "Catholic Action," which had tens of thousands of members, established military units within them and were used as recruiting centers for the Ustasha military.(23) These are not unique examples. The entire Catholic press in this period in Croatia was thoroughly pro-fascist, racist and supportive of the elimination of the "minorities."
-- What is the Vatican Hiding, by Barry Lituchy

The Catholic Press preached Catholic Nazism on the model of that planted in Slovakia by the Catholic Nazi dictator priest, Mgr. Tiso. The Zagreb Katolicki List, the organ of Archbishop Stepinac, in January, 1940, carried an article entitled "Catholicism and Slovakian National Socialism," which read in part:
In a modern state, which placed the interests of the people above all other considerations, the Church and the State must cooperate in order to avoid all conflicts and misunderstandings. Thus, in accordance with the teachings of Christ, the Church in Slovakia had already exerted itself to arrange a new life for the Slovakian people. The views of Dr. Tuka are fulfilled by the formation of a 'people's Slovakia, which has the approval of the President of the Republic, Mgr. Dr. Josip Tiso. In the National-Socialist system in Slovakia, the Church will not be persecuted. Persecutions will be used against the opponents of National-Socialism.
The achievements of Catholic Fascism were continually glorified in Hungary, in France under Catholic Petain, in Spain under Catholic Franco. The chief Catholic daily, Hrvatska Straza, the editor of which, Dr. Janko Shimrak, became a bishop under Pavelic, openly and consistently praised Hitler's successes in domestic and foreign policy. In the issue of March 12, 1938, Hitler's occupation of Austria was defended and praised. Later this paper hailed Hitler's successes in Czechoslovakia, Poland, and France. The Katolicki Tjednik, organ of Catholic Action, published under the direction of the Archbishop of Sarajevo, Dr. Ivan Saric, printed articles entitled "A New Order Must Come" (e.g. in issue No. 4, 1941), before Hitler attacked Yugoslavia.
-- Chapter 6 of The Vatican's Holocaust by Avro Manhattan
The attack on Yugoslavia led to the formation of the Croatian Ustashe state.

Ustashe: Catholic Nazis including genocidal clergy

Croatia was a very Catholic country whose identity was greatly tied up with its religion. The Ustashe were a Catholic outfit.
Some of the most fanatical mass-murderers amongst the Ustashe were the priests themselves. The methods they employed to murder their victims is of a gruesomeness that will not be recounted here, but can be read about in many of the links following.

Warning, graphic and disturbing photos: Holocaust Archive Pictures. They are captioned with:

  • Zagreb Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac (right), at an official Croatian ceremony in 1941
  • Forced Conversion. The Ustashi promised the Serbs that they would be spared death if they converted from Eastern Orthodoxy to Roman Catholicism. Thousand converted, only to be killed anyway
  • Archbishop Stepinac greets Ante Pavelic [head of the Ustashe regime] on the anniversary of the Independent State of Croatia
  • Nuns marching with Croatian Nazi legionaires
  • Archbishop Stepinac and the papal nuncio Marcone leave a celebration; behind them is a German General
  • The papal nuncio Marcone (in the white robes of the Dominican order), Archbishop Stepinac next to him, and around them sit leading military representatives of Nazi Germany and the NDH [stands for the Independent State of Croatia formed by the Ustashe]
  • Reception of the Ustashi Police special unit at the Vatican in Sept. 1943
In pictures: the Vatican and Nazism in Germany and Croatia. The relevant pictures are captioned with:
  • Forced conversion of Serbs to Catholicism
  • The Nazi-like Croatian Ustashi state, set up immediately after the Nazi German invasion of Yugoslavia, was based on fanatical Catholicism. Orthodox Christian Serbs who refused to convert were butchered in their villages, or at the Jasenovac death camp, or thrown into mountain crevices. Hitler referred to the Ustashi as, "Our Nazis."
  • Croatian Ustashi fuehrer Ante Pavelic giving Nazi salute (far left) with Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac (far right) and other Catholic Church leaders.
  • Croatian Ustashi dictator Ante Pavelic with Franciscan monks. The Franciscan order was active in the genocide against Serbs, Jews and Roma.

A vow of silence - U.S. News and World Report, March 30, 1998:

It is a matter of historical record that the Croatian Catholic Church was closely entangled with the Ustashas. In the early years of World War II, Catholic priests oversaw forced conversions of Orthodox Serbs under the aegis of the Ustasha state; Franciscan friars distributed Ustasha propaganda. Several high Catholic officials in Yugoslavia were later indicted for war crimes. They included Father Dragutin Kamber, who ordered the killing of nearly 300 Orthodox Serbs; Bishop Ivan Saric of Sarajevo, known as the "hangman of the Serbs"; and Bishop Gregory Rozman of Slovenia, a wanted Nazi collaborator. A trial held by the Yugoslav War Crimes Commission in 1946 resulted in the conviction of a half-dozen Ustasha priests, among them former Franciscan Miroslav Filipovic-Majstorovic, a commandant of the Jasenovac concentration camp where the Ustashas tortured and slaughtered hundreds of thousands with a brutality that shocked even the Nazis.

Catholic Croatia's Atrocities, referring to the book Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII by John Cornwell:

According to Cornwell, "Priests, invariably Franciscans, took a leading part in the massacres. Many went around routinely armed and performed their murderous acts with zeal. A father Bozidar Bralow, known for the machine gun that was his constant companion, was accused of performing a dance around the bodies of 180 massacred Serbs at Alipasin-Most." Individual Franciscans killed, set fire to homes, sacked villages, and laid waste the Bosnian countryside at the head of Ustashe bands. In September of 1941, an Italian reporter wrote of a Franciscan he had witnessed south of Banja Luka urging on a band of Ustashe with his crucifix."
In the Foreign Ministry archive in Rome there sits a photographic record of atrocities: of women with breasts cut off, gouged eyes, genitals mutilated; and the instruments of butchery: knives, axes, meat hooks. [Cornwell, pp. 253-254] Not only priests, but nuns also sympathized to the movement. Nuns marched in military parades behind soldiers with their arms raised in the fascist salute.

...the second highest ranking cleric in fascist Croatia, the Archbishop of Sarajevo, Ivan Sharich -- called "the Hangman of Serbs" by his fellow Ustashi. Sharich had been a secret member of the Ustasha since 1934, and had been in close contact with them at least since 1931. Whereas Stepinac was willing to spare the lives of some Jews and Serbs who had converted to Catholicism, Sharich ridiculed those who did not have the stomach for total genocide, declaring it
"stupid and unworthy of Christ's disciples to think that the struggle against evil could be waged in a noble way and with gloves on."
Among Vatican documents that have emerged is one dealing with Sharich's personal expropriations of property belonging to Jews in Bosnia(28)
-- What is the Vatican hiding?, by Barry Lituchy
The Real Genocide in Yugoslavia: Independent Croatia of 1941 Revisited, by Srdja Trifkovic, renders more of the encompassing phrases of this Ustashi Archbishop:
"There are limits even to love... (It is) stupid and unworthy of Christ's disciples to think that the struggle against evil could be waged in a noble way and with gloves on."
-- Archbishop of Sarajevo, Ivan Saric, 1941

The so-called Ustasha Minister of Education, Dr. Mile Budak, summarized the racial policy of Croatia in a speech on July 22, 1941 in Gospic when he said:
"The movement of the Ustashi is based on religion. For the minorities -- Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, we have three million bullets. We shall kill one part of the Serbs. We shall deport another, and the rest of them will be forced to embrace the Roman Catholic religion. Thus, our new Croatia will get rid of all Serbs in our midst in order to become one hundred percent Catholic within ten years."
-- What is the Vatican hiding, by Barry Lituchy

THE VATICAN'S HOLOCAUST is not a misnomer, an accusation, and even less a speculation. It is an historical fact. Rabid nationalism and religious dogmatism were its two main ingredients. During the existence of Croatia as an independent Catholic State, over 700,000 men, women and children perished. Many were executed, tortured, died of starvation, buried alive, or were burned to death. Hundreds were forced to become Catholic. Catholic padres ran concentration camps; Catholic priests were officers of the military corps which committed such atrocities. 700,000 in a total population of a few million...
What had been gathered in this book will vindicate the veracity of these facts. Dates, names, and places, as well as photos are there to prove them.
-- from the preface to the American editions of The Vatican's Holocaust, by Avro Manhattan

The Ustashi were compared to no one else but Christ. Witness the voice of the Crusader movement, Nedelja, which, in its issue of June 6, 1941, in an article entitled, "Christ and Croatia," declared the following:
"Christ and the Ustashi and Christ and the Croatians march together through history. From the first day of its existence the Ustashi movement has been fighting for the victory of Christ's principles, for the victory of justice, freedom, and truth. Our Holy Saviour will help us in the future as he has done until now, that is why the new Ustashi Croatia will be Christ's, ours and no one else's."
...A group of Franciscan priests, who tortured and finally killed twenty-five Serbs in the village of Kasle, took photographs of their victims. In the village of Tramosnica, priest Ante Klaric became the first Ustashi commissar, he personally led Ustashi units in attacks on Serbian villages. He organized the Ustashi militia and, according to witnesses, spoke from the pulpit as follows:
"You are old women and you should put on skirts, for you have not yet killed a single Serb. We have no weapons and no knives and we should forge them out of old scythes and sickles, so that you can cut the throats of Serbs whenever you see them."
-- Vatican's Holocaust, by Avro Manhattan - Chapter 6 "Christ And The Ustashi March Together"

The wholesale kidnapping of Orthodox children was a characteristic feature of the forcible conversion, through terror, of Orthodox adults.
The former Apostolic Administrator and Bishop of Krizevci, Dr. Simrak, like many of his episcopal colleagues, publicly promoted, discussed, and encouraged plans for the whole campaign, and published directives to his clergy in the official Bishopric News of Krizevci, No. 2, 1942. Part of the text reads as follows:
Directive regarding the conversion of the members of the Eastern Orthodox Church in Slavonia, Srijem and Bosnia.

Special offices and church committees must be created immediately for those to be converted.... Let every curate remember that these are historic days for our missions and we must under no circumstances let this opportunity pass.... Now we must show with our work what we have been talking about for centuries in theory. We have done very little until now because....we are afraid of complaints from the people. Every great work has someone opposing it. Our universal mission, the salvation of souls and the greatest glory of our Lord Jesus Christ, is involved in this issue. Our work is legal because it is in accord with official Vatican policy and with the directives of the saintly congregations of the Cardinals for the Eastern Church.
-- Glasnik krizevacke nadbiskupife, No. 2, 1942
-- Vatican's Holocaust, by Avro Manhattan - Chapter 8
The same excerpt from Bishopric News no. 2, 1942 concludes the statement thus:
"Our work is legal because it is in accord with official Vatican policy ...that the Eastern Orthodox Church be converted to the Catholic faith"

The relevant literature substantiates the assumption that the social make-up of the Ustashi was by no means similar to that of the Arrow Cross, or of the Iron Guard, for example. Workers and peasants were conspicuously under-represented, while the relatively high number of Catholic priests and of persons active in the secular organs and organizations of the [Roman] Catholic Church, as well as the high percentage of officers, intellectuals, professionals, and mainly students, endowed the movement with a specific character, ...
-- Fascism: A reader's guide, by Walter Laquer [the section Fascism in Eastern Europe]
The Arrow Cross was Romania's large Nazi movement. It's policies have revived and its members are still persecuting, torturing and murdering Roma (Gypsies).

More on the Catholic nature of the Ustashe:

More about the Ustashe: Yugoslavia during WWII

The Islamic Hanjar

These were the Moslem Nazis:

Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Edition 1990, Volume 2, Pages 706 and 707, entry Husseini, Hajj Amin Al ; The main Hitler's supporter among Palestinian Arabs...
It so happened that Husseini made his contribution to the Axis war effort in his capacity as a Muslim, rather than as an Arab leader, by recruiting and organizing in record time, during the spring of 1943, Bosnian Muslim Battalions in Croatia comprising some twenty thousand men. These Muslim volunteer units, called Hanjar (Sword), were put in Waffen-SS fought Yugoslav partisans in Bosnia, and carried out police and security duties in Hungary. They participated in the massacre of civilians in Bosnia and volunteered to join in the hunt for Jews in Croatia... The Germans made a point of publicizing the fact that Husseini had flown from Berlin to Sarajevo for the sole purpose of giving his blessing to the Muslim army and inspecting its arms and training exercises.
Link, which also links to pictures of the Moslem Hanjar working with Nazi officials

See also: The Role of the SS Handschar division in Yugoslavia's Holocaust

Death toll

Herman Naubacher, Hitler's personal assistant for the South-East Europe and the Balkan affairs, in his book "Sonderauftrag Sudosten 1940-1945. Bericht eines fliegenden Diplomate", Gottingen, 1956, on page 31, writes:
"The Orthodox recipe of Ante Pavelic, Ustashi leader and Croatian Fuehrer, reminds one of the religious wars in the bloodest aspects: one-third must become Catholic, one-third must leave the country and one-third must die. The last item was executed. When the leading men of the Ustashi movement are stating that they have slaughtered ONE MILLION Serbs (including infants, children, women and aged) this in my opinion is a self-praising exaggeration. According to the reports that have reached me, my estimate is that the number of those defenseless slaughtered is some three quarter of a million. [=750,000]"
Professor Edmond Paris, "Genocide in Satellite Croatia, 1941- 1945," Chicago, 1961, The American Institute for Balkan Affairs, from the introduction of the book:
"The greatest genocide during World War II, in proportion to a nation's population, took place, not in Nazi Germany but in the Nazi-created puppet state of Croatia. There, in the years 1941-1945, some 750,000 Serbs, 60,000 Jews and 26,000 Gypsies - men, women and children - perished in a gigantic holocaust. These are the figures used by most foreign authors, especially Germans, who were in the best position to know... The magnitude and the bestial nature of these atrocities makes it difficult to believe that such a thing could have happened in an allegedly civilized part of the world."
Dr. Nora Levin, "The Holocaust - The destruction of European Jewry 1933 - 1945," Schocken Books, New York, Edition 1973, page 515
"The Ustashi murdered and tortured Jews and Serbs in indescribably bestial fashion. One of the most notorious camps in Hitler's Europe, Jasenovac, was in Croatia. Here the Ustashi used primitive implements in putting their victims to death - knives, axes, hammers and other iron tools. A characteristic method was binding pairs of prisoners, back to back, and then throwing them into the Sava River. One source estimates that 770,000 Serbs, 40,000 Gypsies and 20,000 Jews were done to death in the Jasenovac camp."
Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Vol 2, page 739:
"Jasenovac, the largest concentration camp in Croatia. Jasenovac was in fact a complex of several subcamps, in close proximity to each other, on the bank of Sava river... established in August 1941 and was dismantled only on April 1945...
Some six hundred thousand people were murdered at Jasenovac, mostly Serbs Jews, Gypsies, and opponents of the Ustasha regime... The living conditions in the camp were extremely severe... a particularly cruel regime, and unbelievably cruel behavior by the ustashe guards."
Link, has more information on the Ustashe

As Holocaust historian Jonathan Steinberg has pointed out, the Ustashi pioneered the methods of genocidal terror and extermination only later perfected by the Nazi SS Einsatzgruppen another fact "conveniently" overlooked in conventional Holocaust studies.(36)
-- What is the Vatican Hiding, by Barry Lituchy

Clergy invents and promotes race ideology

Priests were active in inventing and promoting a Germanic (in particular, Gothic) descent for the Croatians. This Germanic-Slavic dichotomy would then strengthen the divide between the Croatians and Serbians who were already divided by their religion. To this day, this fabricated race-ideology is still taken seriously by some who no doubt were brainwashed at a young age.

The Church sponsored racism even running up to WWI:

Combined with the Catholic fanaticism encouraged by the Vatican was the extreme racial violence expressed toward the Serbs throughout Austria-Hungary and summed up in the popular jingle of August 1914: "Alle Serben mussen sterben!"(11) ["All Serbs must die"] This blending of Catholic fanaticism and racial violence toward the Serbs born in the last days of the Habsburg Empire and sponsored by the Vatican prefigured the later emergence of Croatian fascism. Indeed, in World War I, one out of every four male Serbs would be killed -- a dress rehearsal, one might say, for the greater genocide to come.
-- What is the Vatican Hiding?, by Barry Lituchy

This continued during the Nazi era:

Ustashi's leading racist theorists were Catholic clergy, like Dr. Ivo Guberina, a priest and leading Ustasha emigre, whose writings reconciling religious purification with racial hygiene lent a spurious scientific veneer to Ustasha propaganda.(30) Croatia had to be purified of its "foreign elements," namely Serbs, Jews and Romas. Purification for the Ustashi always meant extermination; they never hid their desire to commit genocide. In the 1930's they were already known for songs with verses like: "We shall hang Serbs on the willows" ("Serbe o verbe"), and "We shall tear their children out of their womb."(31) ...the foreign minister of fascist Croatia, Mladen Lorkovic, sent instructions to his diplomats and to the world:
"... the Croatian people annihilate all foreign elements, which weaken its powers; those foreign elements are the Serbs and the Jews."(33)
How committed was the Catholic Church in Croatia to this ideology and its racial laws? As has been mentioned already, priests were among the intellectual godfathers of Croatian fascism and racism. Whereas anti-Serbian racism had roots deeply connected to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, anti-Semitism in Yugoslavia was almost entirely the product of Catholic propaganda after World War I. Official church publications in Croatia like Catholic List frequently published condemnations of Jews during the 1930's as being the source of communism, free-masonry, abortions and immorality.(34) It should not be surprising therefore that the man appointed to be President of Ustasha Central Propaganda Office (equivalent to the position held by Goebbels in Germany) was none other than a priest, Father Grga Peinovic. To claim that the Catholic Church simply adapted to the fascist regime would be a whitewash of their long-standing promotion of racism. They were the very leaders responsible for articulating this ideology to the people and for the regime itself.
-- What is the Vatican Hiding?, by Barry Lituchy

Chapter 6 - Christ and the Ustashi March Together of The Vatican's Holocaust by Avro Manhattan:

If the first ingredient of Ustashi super-nationalism was race, the second was religion. The two could hardly exist independently, having been so closely intertwined as to have become almost synonymous. The word Croat, in fact, signified Catholic, as much as, in Croatia, Catholic came to signify Croat. If this was useful to Ustashi racialism, it was no less beneficial to Catholicism, in so far as, once the theory had been established that Catholic meant Croat, the idea that Croatia had to be totally Catholic not only became firmly rooted: it was turned into one of the basic tenets of the new State.

The results of such an identification were portentous. For, while nationalism had embarked upon a policy of 100 per cent racialism, the Catholic Church had embarked upon an inevitable parallel policy of 100 per cent Catholicism. The two policies were in effect one single policy, the political authorities automatically furthering the religious interests of Catholicism, while the religious authorities furthered the political interests of Ustashi racialism.

The actual process of integrating the two into an inseparable organic, religio-political unit, not only was conducted by individual Catholics or Catholic organizations, like the Crusaders, or Catholic political leaders like Macek: it was promoted by the Catholic clergy prior to the birth of the Ustashi State. Catholic priests, in fact, vigorously preached Fascism before the Second World War. The Catholic Press, controlled by them, became Fascism's mightiest propaganda organ. In it they advocated the Fascist Corporate State, praised the Fascist Catholic dictators, and preached racial theories—e.g. the theory that the Croats were not of Slav descent, but were Gothic German. One of the founders of this race theory was a well-known Catholic priest, Kerubin Segvic, who as far back as 1931 wrote a book entitled, The Gothic Descendance of the Croats, with a view to creating racial odium against the Slavs, which was synonymous with "Orthodox." Fascist nations were hailed as glorious examples for the future Croatia. In its issue of April 3, 1938, for instance the Catholic daily, Hrvatska Straza, praised Fascist Hungary for "solving the social problem by accepting the main principle of the Christian Corporate State." The same paper, on March 2, 1938, greeted the Anschluss with: "Young Croatia for Anschluss."
Anschluss refers to the join with Nazi Germany.
See also: Nazi Germany's racist anti-Semitic literature written by Christian Nazis and clergy

Vatican and communism unite to whitewash history after WWII

[The post-war Communist government headed by Catholic-born Tito and the Vatican] had been conducting secret negotiations for a long time with the view of solving the problems of the Catholic dissidents inside Communist Yugoslavia, the Catholic clergy who had been imprisoned and the Catholic Croats whom Tito had considered "war criminals." They had agreed upon a general amnesty for the lot, including amnesty for those Catholics who had collaborated with the occupying Nazis. The most telling, however, was a general amnesty for the priests, monks and other clergy who had been the backbone of the independent Catholic State of Croatia.

That meant a change in the relationship with the Vatican, at home and abroad. Hence, a prompt minimization of the Croatian atrocities and cooperation with a new "reformed" Croatian Catholicism. A real diplomatic triumph for the Vatican.
-- The Vatican's Holocaust by Avro Manhattan, Chapter 17 - The ambassador and the Pope's Nuncio in a Red embassy, a Vatican Victory
(The "independent (Catholic) State of Croatia" was the name of the Croatian region of former Yugoslavia, when it was under Ustashe control.)

Unpunished

Unlike Germany, which has been made to stand trial for its crimes against humanity, Croatia's war criminals were by and large not punished. The Vatican and certain Allied governments helped these loyal Catholic followers escape justice by giving them fake travel documents to Argentina, the US, Australia, the UK and elsewhere after the war. See: The Vatican's Ratlines and What is the Vatican hiding?, by Barry Lituchy
Because they went unpunished, many Ustashi murderers returned to former Yugoslavia during the war in the 1990s and continued with their extermination of the Serbs there.

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