"All the researchers make a point of stressing the savage

terrorist nature of the Ustashi"

FASCISM: A READERS GUIDE

Edited by WALTER LAQUER

U. of CALIFORNIA PRESS ............... BERKELEY & LA

Library of Congress #75-13158

Page 247

FASCISM IN EASTERN EUROPE

"....... then, there are controversies about the originality of Slovak fascism and of the [Roman Catholic Monsignor] Tiso regime. Slovak fascism was a "ludicrous imitation of the Reich model" wrote one of the researchers recently, while others see an interwoven pattern of conservativism, clericalism, and fascism, typical only of Slovakia.

One would suppose that the 1969 Prague Symposium about fascism was a good opportunity to elucidate some open questions concerning Slovak fascism. But among the twenty-five papers presented at this forum not a single one dealt with Slovakia (six were devoted to Czech subjects and one to the problem of fascism in the Sudetenland).

Among the types of fascism in the Danubian countries and the four fascist regimes in the area, the scantiest literature available is that on the Ustasha movement and the Croatian state of the Ustashi (1941-1945).

["scantiest literature available" because the USTASHI

was and is even more Roman Catholic than the Mafia ....... jp]

There is no controversy about the fact that the Ustasha takeover in April 1941 was solely a German and Italian act and was not the outcome of a mass uprising in the wake of the military defeat and the dismemberment of Yugoslavia. However, the torrential influx of nationalistic masses to the Ustashi once Ante Pavelic had been installed in Zagreb, cannot be denied.

In the typology of fascism the Ustasha movement belongs with the East European movements in spite of its long-standing links with Italian fascism. The main characteristics of the Ustashi are to be sought elsewhere than in its diffuse, nebulous ideology. They are rooted in the fanatical anti Serbian ultra-nationalism, supplemented by anti-communist, anti-Semitic, and anti-democratic ideas, and by a sui generis volkisch - Christian [Roman Catholic] anti-modernism.

All the researchers make a point of stressing the savage terrorist nature of the Ustashi.

Anyone looking for sources and scholarly works about the Ustashi will be disappointed. Apart from the pamphlets published in Croatia after 1941 by Pavelic and his entourage (in both Italian and in German), and a few works published mainly in Italy and in Vienna during the thirties, no comprehensive or analytical work about the movement has yet appeared.

Nor is the literature about the so-called independent Croatia much more informative. An exhaustive work on Yugoslav historiography published in 1965 in Belgrade is ample evidence of the reluctance of historians in postwar Yugoslavia to tackle the Ustasha movement; there is little to be found about the subject in contemporary Yugoslav writings, except for a number of essays about the relationships of the movement with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy.

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, ..........."

-END QUOTE-

Mr. Laquer's book confirms the much more explicit and exhaustive books

by Avro Manhattan (THE VATICAN'S HOLOCAUST)

and

by Valdimir Dedijer (THE YUGOSLAV AUSCHWITZ AND THE VATICAN)

THE "USTASHI" WERE AN EXPLICITLY ROMAN CATHOLIC TERRORIST GOVERNMENT.

The USTASHI were allied with Hitler.

They murdered all who were not Roman Catholic.

(some "Orthodox" were converted at the point of a gun).

It is clear why the Vatican enabled thousands of Nazis & Ustashis escape.