Ustaše

The Ustaše are presented as a Croatian movement whose memory remained politically potent decades after the Second World War. In the book, the name refers both to a wartime association with Nazi-aligned Croatian rule and, in the later conflicts of the former Yugoslavia, to a label wielded by Serbian militiamen against Croats. The shifts in its use expose how historical memory could shape political loyalties and collapse distinctions between past and present violence.

Wartime memory and political argument

In debates over Croatian independence, some interlocutors invoked the wartime record of the Croats, arguing that they had supported Nazi Germany with particular zeal. One example came from Curzio Malaparte’s book Kaputt: visiting Croatian leader Ante Pavelić, Malaparte was reportedly shown a basket that Pavelić said contained the eyes of Serbs, a gift from his loyal Ustaše. The episode entered the later argument as a horrifying emblem of what Croat nationalists’ wartime history might mean for Serbs living in an independent Croatia. The book presents it as part of a contested political discussion, not as a detached account of the organization’s history.

That historical memory also attached itself to the symbols of the new Croatian state. After independence, the government under Franjo Tuđman banned Cyrillic signs and dismissed Serbs from the civil service; it replaced the Yugoslav federation’s red-starred flag with the Croatian Red-and-White Checkerboard Flag. The narrative says the flag had been created by the Germans in 1941 and notes that, for people who had lived through World War II, it evoked associations comparable to those of the swastika. The flag was not identified simply as an organizational emblem of the Ustaše, but its wartime associations helped make the movement’s legacy part of contemporary fears about Croatian rule.

The name in the wars of the former Yugoslavia

The book distinguishes the Ustaše of wartime memory from the varied militias that fought in the wars of the former Yugoslavia. Drawing on Jean Rolin’s account of the militias, it describes neo-Nazis nostalgic for the Ustaše joining the Croat side, alongside other armed groups and foreign volunteers. The point is not that the later fighters were the wartime organization, but that its memory could attract and identify people entering a new conflict.

The name also appears as a hostile designation for Croats in Serbian accounts of captivity. In Jean Hatzfeld’s reporting on Arkan’s militia after the surrender at Vukovar, Croatian prisoners are described as being seized from cellars and forced onto trucks. A militiaman later tells Hatzfeld that the group’s initiation involved slowly cutting the throat of a kneeling prisoner, and calls the Croats who fell into their hands Ustaše. In this usage, a historical political label is applied broadly to present-day captives; the narrative shows how that naming could turn an enemy population into the presumed inheritors of an old enemy.

Narrative significance and limits

The Ustaše function in the book less as a fully documented organization than as a recurring and unstable political reference. The name surfaces in arguments over self-determination, in the interpretation of a national flag, in the composition of wartime militias, and in the language used to describe prisoners. Each appearance links a different moment to the memory of wartime collaboration and violence, while also showing how that memory could be invoked selectively. The account does not provide a formal history of the organization’s leadership, structure, or program; its focus is the force the name carried in later political conflicts.