Retreat from Zagreb

The retreating German Army, usually without bothering to inform its erstwhile allies, took with it much of the material support for the Croatian armed forces. Despite conditions, several Croatian generals wanted to defend the city of Zagreb from the Partizan advance and fight to the finish if necessary. The communists made it clear that the city, swollen to twice its size with refugees, would be destroyed if they met resistance. A final meeting of the Croatian government was held on April 30, 1945, at which the decision was made to abandon Zagreb and retreat into Austria.

Still quite naive concerning Allied intentions, many Croatian officers hoped that the still sizable Croatian Army would be allowed to surrender to the British to fight again against the Russians. Since both Croatia and Britain were signatories to the Geneva Conventions, the Croatians felt that at worst they would be treated as prisoners of war.

The exodus from Zagreb began on May first. Two hundred thousand civilians were flanked by two hundred thousand soldiers. Archbishop Aloysius Stepinac took charge of the government for the few hours until the arrival of the Partizan army. Minister Vrancic was dispatched to Italy as a peace emissary, and several highranking English speaking officers headed the main column toward Austria.

The retreat was well ordered, and the protecting flank armies insured that all of the civilians arnved safely at the Austrian border by May seventh. A number of military units remained behind to fight delaying actions as late as May twelfth. Still other units, known as Krizari or "Crusaders," fled into the hills and fought sporadic guerilla actions until 1948.

The huge column, numbering perhaps as many as one- half million soldiers and civilians, including Slovenes, some Serbs and even a few Cetniks, finally came to rest in a small valley near the Austrian village of Bleiburg. The leaders had no way of knowing that their peace emissary, Dr. Vrancic, had travelled as far as Forli, Italy, by plane and car under a white flag only to be stopped short of his goal. At Forli, Vrancic and Naval Captain Vrkljan, who spoke fluent English, were detained by a Captain Douglas of British Field Security who was more interested in their diplomatic grade Mercedes-Benz automobile than their mission to see Field Marshal Alexander in Caserta. He held the emissaries incommunicado until May 20 when he pad them thrown into a POW camp and confiscated the and Betraya in the belief that their envoys had made some an- angement with the British, the multitude of humanity set up camp in the valley to await the outcome of negotiations. One of the first groups to arrive at British headquarters was a contingent of 130 members of the Croatian government headed by President Nikola Mandic. All were told that they would be transferred to Italy as soon as possible by British Military Police. All were then loaded onto a train and returned to the communists for execution. It was the intent of the British to turn over all Croatians, as well as Serbs and Slovenes, to the communists from whom they had fled.

When the Croatian military leaders realized that they had led hundreds of thousands into a trap, some committed suicide on the spot. The British extradited at first hundreds, then thousands of Croatians. Some were shot at the border, while others joined the infamous "Death Marches," which took them deeper into the new People's Republic for liquidation.

Realizing the importance of the clergy to the Croatian people, most church leaders were arrested. Although Archbishop Stepinac was sentenced to death, he was saved by a massive outcry of world public opinion and died, probably of poisoning by the secret police, under house arrest in 1960. Two bishops, three hundred priests, twenty-nine seminarians and four lay brothers were less forlunate and were executed.

The number of Muslim religious leaders executed has never been determined, although the figure is thought to be in excess of six hundred. Churches and mosques were closed or destroyed throughout Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. The new government dynamited the minarets around the mosque of Zagreb, turned the building into a museum glorifying the communist victory, and renamed the square in which it stood "Victims of Fascism Square." One of the first acts of the Croatian government in 1991 was to rename the plaza.

Almost every government official from the President to local postmasters, every military officer above the rank of major, and virtually every Ustase officer, regardless of rank, was found guilty of "crimes against the people." Many were executed. Enlisted members of the Ustase were often found guilty en masse and sent to concentration camps where many died. All top ranking members of the government were executed. Chief-of-state Ante Pavelic escaped only to be gunned down by an assassin in 1957. Even the memory of those anti-Partizans who had died in combat during the war would disappear as every non- Partizan military cemetery in Croatia was plowed under. In 1996 Croatian President Franjo Tudjman suggested that a memorial to those who were slaughtered after the war be dedicated at Jasenovac. This was the site of a concentration camp run during the War by the Ustases, and after the war by the communists, where a huge memorial was erected to the "Victims of Fascism." The suggestion was met with an outcry in the international media. Far from being a gesture of reconciliation among the Croatian people, as Tudjman intended, it was seen as an affront to those already memorialized.

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