Fascist Italy Fascist-led Italianization, or the forced assimilation of Italian culture on the ethnic Croat communities inhabiting the former Austro-Hungarian territories of the
Julian March and areas of
Dalmatia, as well as ethnically mixed cities in Italy proper, such as
Trieste, had already been initiated prior to
World War II. The
anti-Slavic sentiment, perpetuated by
Italian fascism, led to the persecution of Croats, alongside ethnic Slovenes, on ethnic and cultural grounds. ,
Croatia). Signed by the
Squadristi (
blackshirts), and threatening the use of "persuasive methods" in enforcement. In September 1920, Mussolini said: This period of fascist Italianization included the banning of the
Croatian language in administration and courts between 1923 and 1925, the Italianization of Croat first and last names in 1926, and the dissolution of Croatian societies, financial co-operatives and banks. Hundreds of Croatian-speaking schools were closed by the state. On 13 July 1920, Italian fascists attacked the Croatian National House in
Pula, destroying property belonging to various Croatian societies and burning around 7,000 books written in the Croatian language. The incident was one of the first fascist book burnings in Europe. Between February and April 1921, Croats in Istria became victims of Italian fascist terror during the period of
fascist and anti-fascist violence in Italy. In response to the
Proština rebellion, led by Croat Anti-fascists and local peasants, hundreds of Italian
Squadrismo militia,
Black Shirts, as well as members of the local army and police, attacked the Croat villages of Proština,
Krnica,
Marčana and
Šegotići, in order to intimidate the Croat population. The fascists burned Šegotići completely to the ground, while houses in the other villages were also burned. 400 peasants were arrested and imprisoned in
Pula, several peasants died after being beaten to death. This period was therefore characterised as "centralising, oppressive and dedicated to the forcible Italianisation of the minorities" consequently leading to a strong emigration and assimilations of Slovenes and Croats from the Julian March. Following the
Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941,
Italy occupied almost all of
Dalmatia, as well as
Gorski Kotar and the Italian government made stringent efforts to further Italianize the region. Italian occupying forces were accused of committing
war crimes in order to transform occupied territories into ethnic Italian territories. An example of this was the 1942 massacre in
Podhum, when Italian forces murdered up to 118 Croat civilians and deported the remaining population to concentration camps. The Italian government operated
concentration camps for tens of thousands Slavic citizens, such as
Rab concentration camp and one on the island of
Molat, where thousands died, including hundreds of children. According to statistics collected through 1946 by the Commission for War Damages on the Territory of the
People’s Republic of Croatia, Italian authorities with their collaborators killed 30,795 civilians (not including those killed in concentration camps and prisons) in Dalmatia, Istria, Gorski Kotar and the Croatian Littoral.
Nazi Germany Nazi German racial theories towards the Croats were inconsistent and contradictory. On the one hand, the Nazis described the Croats officially as being "more Germanic than Slav", a notion propagated by Croatia's fascist dictator
Ante Pavelić who imposed the view that the "Croatians were the descendants of the ancient
Goths" who "had the
Panslav idea forced upon them as something artificial". However, the Nazi regime continued to classify Slavs as
Untermensch, despite inclusion of Slavs such as Russians, Ukrainians, Czechs, Serbs, Bosnians and Croats in SS divisions. Furthermore, according to the book "Hitler's Table Talk", a collection of monologues by
Adolf Hitler and conversations he had with close associates in the period from 1941 to 1944, Hitler mentioned that "Croats are desirable, from the ethnical point of view, and should be germanized. But there, however, were political reasons which completely preclude any such measures". After the
Anschluss of 1938, Austrian
Burgenland Croats faced Germanization and were forced by the Nazi regime to assimilate. Minority rights that had been approved in 1937, such as Croatian language schools and bilingualism, were abolished under Nazi rule. Between 1941 and 1945, some 200,000 Croatian citizens of the NDH (including ethnic Croats as well as ethnic Serbs with Croatian nationality and Slovenes) were sent to Germany to work as a slave and forced labourers, mostly working in mining, agriculture and forestry. It is estimated that 153,000 of these labourers were said to have been "voluntarily" recruited, however in many instances this was not the case, as the workers that may have initially volunteered were forced to work longer hours and were paid less than their contracts had stipulated, they were also not allowed to return home after their yearly contract had ended, at which point their labour was no longer voluntary, but forced. Forced and slave labour were also conducted in Nazi concentration camps, such as in
Buchenwald and
Mittelbau-Dora. From 1941 to 1945, 3.8% of the population of Croatia had been sent to the Reich to work, which was higher than the European average.
Serbian Chetniks Regarding the realization of his
Greater Serbian program
Homogeneous Serbia,
Stevan Moljević wrote in his letter to
Dragiša Vasić in February 1942: {{Blockquote The tactics employed against the Croats were at least to an extent, a reaction to the
terror carried out by the Ustashas, but Croats and
Muslims living in areas intended to be part of Greater Serbia were to be cleansed of non-Serbs regardless, in accordance with
Draža Mihailović's directive of 20 December 1941. However the largest
Chetnik massacres took place in eastern
Bosnia where they preceded any significant Ustasha operations. Chetnik ethnic cleansing targeted Croat civilians throughout areas of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which Croats were massacred and expelled, such as the
Krnjeuša,
Gata,
Makarska and
Kulen Vakuf massacres, among many others. According to the Croatian historian,
Vladimir Žerjavić, Chetnik forces killed between 18,000 and 32,000 Croats during
World War II, mostly civilians. Some historians regard Chetnik actions during this period as constituting genocide. Written evidence by Chetnik commanders indicates that terrorism against the non-Serb population was mainly intended to establish an ethnically pure Greater Serbia in the historical territory of other ethnic groups (most notably Croatian and Muslim, but also Bulgarian,
Romanian, Hungarian, Macedonian and Montenegrin). In
Elaborate of the ''Chetnik's Dinaric Battalion'' from March 1942, it's stated that the Chetniks' main goal was to create a "Serbian national state in the areas in which the Serbs live, and even those to which Serbs aspire (Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Lika and part of Dalmatia) where "only
Orthodox population would live". Regarding the campaign, Chetnik commander Milan Šantić said in
Trebinje in July 1942, "The Serb lands must be cleansed from Catholics and
Muslims. They will be inhabited only by the Serbs. Cleansing will be carried out thoroughly, and we will suppress and destroy them all without exception and without pity, which will be the starting point for our liberation. Mihailović went further than Moljević and requested over 90 percent of the
NDH's territory, where more than 2,500,000 Catholics and over 800,000 Muslims lived (70 percent of the total population, with Orthodox Serbs the remaining 30 percent). According to
Bajo Stanišić, the final goal of the Chetniks was the "founding of a new Serbian state, not a geographical term but a purely Serbian, with four basic attributes: the Serbian state [Greater Serbia], the
Serb King [of] the
Karađorđević dynasty, Serbian nationality, and Serbian faith. The Balkan federation is also the next stage, but the main axis and leadership of this federation must be our Serbian state, that is, the Greater Serbia. == Second Yugoslavia (1945–1991) ==