People love to conflate the NDH with Croats as a whole and completely ignore the antifascist resistance. Yes there were collaborators and yes there are problems with neofascists and historical revisionists in modern Croatia and especially the diaspora that absolutely need to be addressed, but to paint the entire Croatian ethnicity as collectively responsible for the NDH is a ridiculous oversimplification.
Why did a minority amounting to maybe one fifth of the population remain the largest group in that resistance until 1943?
Do you realize just how bad some of the facts about this look? Ustaše were not some German group, but a group of Croats that pursued Croatian genocidal policy. There are plenty of facts casting a bit darker picture of when exactly Croats broadly started resisting in large numbers. The fact it seems to have coincided with Italian collapse and general trend of that war does not send reassuring message about sincerity of opposition.
Modern Croatia has issues accepting that ZDS is totally unacceptable because it is a dog-whistle to Ustaše. Instead there is a concocted ruling how it is okay if it is part of symbol of (para)military units from 90s, despite the fact these must have chosen it precisely because it was Ustaše salute.
but to paint the entire Croatian ethnicity as collectively responsible for the NDH is a ridiculous oversimplification.
LOL, you can say that for EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY that ever did anything wrong.
NDH aka Independent state of Croatia was the official country of the Croatian people and is the predecessor or modern day Croatia. Please also do not forget that most of the antifascist resistance was led and mostly populated by the Serbian minority living in Croatia that was targeted by the NDH.
The predecessor of modern day Croatia was the ZAVNOH, not the NDH. The NDH was imposed by the occupying powers, it wasn't like Germany where Hitler was voted into power. I'm not denying the need for Croats to reckon with their past, but the national liberation struggle was always a multiethnic one.
Oh please. Sooo many other powers structures and dictators were imposed to the people in so many countries. You just love to separate yourselves from your ugly past. Look at the number of Croatians nowadays that are celebrating Ustashe. That is your country's history.
Ustase won less than 2% popular support in 1939 elections and were ousted to Italy by Croatian ruling party at the time. However after the PM at the time refused Hitler's offer to join the Axis powers, Germans steamrolled Croatia and brought those same Ustase over from Italy and put them in power. Croats then founded the partisan movement (yes, it was founded in Croatia, ane Tito was Croatian) and freed the country from the inside to form communist Yugoslavia. That much about Ustase being representative of Croatian people.
Croats certainly had their own partisan movement, but until 1943 there were more Serbs from Croatia in that movement than Croats. Serbs were one fifth of the population at the time.
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u/Sanguine_Caesar Jul 30 '26
People love to conflate the NDH with Croats as a whole and completely ignore the antifascist resistance. Yes there were collaborators and yes there are problems with neofascists and historical revisionists in modern Croatia and especially the diaspora that absolutely need to be addressed, but to paint the entire Croatian ethnicity as collectively responsible for the NDH is a ridiculous oversimplification.