The new Croatian government adopted German racial and economic laws and persecuted Jews, Serbs, Communists, Peasant Party leaders and others. While fighting primarily for its own survival against Serbian Cetnik who wanted to restore the Serbian monarchy and the Communist-led Partizans, the Croatian State joined the Axis and later sent troops to the Russian front where thousands died at Stalingrad. While the majority of the Croatian people favored an independent Croatian state, many did not support the Ustase regime. When the war broke out there were fewer than twelve thousand members of the movement representing less than one per cent of the Croatian population. At its height in 1942, there were only sixty thousand Ustase. Over sixty per cent were from impoverished Western Hercegovina with a strong anti-Serbian sentiment from the dictatorship of Alexander. Some twenty per cent were Muslims who joined in direct response to Serbian massacres in Bosnia. The leader of Croatia's popular Peasant Party was jailed by the regime during the War.

Many members ot the Croatian Domobran (regular Army separate from the Ustase) officer corps were pro-Allied and supported the Croatian Peasant Party. In September 1944, pro-Allied officers attempted a coup against Pavelic. The plotters had been promised an Anglo-American landing in Dalmatia and would have turned the Croatian Army against Germany to support the Allied invasion. The landing never took place. Dr. Ivan Subasic of the Yugoslav Government-in-Exile learned of the plot and informed the Soviets. Stalin immediately contacted Roosevelt and informed him that any such action would be a violation of the Tehran agreement dividing Europe into spneres of influence. Rovsevelt cancelled all plans for the landing, but British secret channels withheld the information from the Croatians on the premise that any revolt, even one doomed to failure, was better for the Allied cause than nothing.

Serbia and the Cetnik

In Serbia, a new pro-Nazi government was first established under the leadership of Milan Asimovic and later under former Minister of War General Milan Nedic which governed until 1945. Nedic supported Hitler and met with him in 1943. This new government established even harsher racial laws than Prince Paul had enacted and immediately established three concentration camps for Jews, Gypsies and others. Nedic formed his own paramilitary storm troops known as the State Guard. The Guard was comprised of former members of the Cetnik which had existed as an all-Serbian para-military police force under Alexander and Paul to enforce loyalty from non-Serbian members of the armed forces.

When Yugoslavia disintegrated, one faction of Cetnik swore allegiance to the new Serbian Nazi government. Another group remained under the pre-war leader Kosta Pecanac, who openly collaborated with the Germans. A third Cetnik faction followed the Serbian Fascist Dimitrije Ljotic. Ljotic's units were primarily responsible for tracking down Jews, Gypsies and Partizans for execution or deportation to concentration camps. By August 1942, the Serbian government would proudly announce that Belgrade was the first city in the New Order to be Judenfrei or "free of Jews." Only 1,115 of Belgrade's twelve thousand Jews would survive.

Still other Cetnik rallied behind Draza Mihailovic, a 48 year-old Army officer who had been court- martialed by Nedic and was known to have close ties to Britain. Early in the war, Mihailovic offered some resistance to the German forces while collaborating with the Italians. By July 22, 1941, the Yugoslav Government-in-Exile announced that continued resistance was impossible. Although Mihailovic and his exiled government would maintain a fierce propaganda campaign to convince the Allies that his Cetnik were inflicting great damage on the Axis, the Cetnik did little for the war effort and openly collaborated with the Germans and Italians while fighting the Ustase and Partizans. At its peak, Mihailovid's Cetnik claimed to have three hundred thousand troops. In fact they never numbered over thirty-one thousand. By February 1943 the Western Allies condemned the Cetnik as collaborators and threw their support to the Partizans. Mihailovic was executed in 1946 for treason. Ironically, his son and daughter Branko and Gordana went over to the Partizans in 1943 and both publicly supported their father's execution after the war. The extent of Cemik collaboration with the German and Italian armies as well as their vicious war against the pro-Allied Partizans is well documented in dozens of books, including Professor J. Tomasevich's scholarly and definitive work The Chemiks.

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