Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States

known as the Partizani, or Partisans), led by Josip Broz Tito, who assumed
the title of “supreme commander of the People’s Liberation Army–Partisans
and general secretary of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.” This “People’s
Liberation Struggle” emphasized equality of all national groups and minorities,
defeat of domestic and foreign fascism, and the halt of ethnic massacres
by the force of a multiethnic army. The communist leaders did not yet
insist on what was presumably their chief goal: communist revolution. The
Yugoslav Partisan movement ideology can be described in Eric Hobsbawm’s
terms as “antifascist nationalism of the late 1930s and 1940s,” that is, “remarriage
of social revolution and patriotic sentiment.” 19 The ethnic nationalists’
massacres reinforced the Partisan ranks, first with the most endangered
Croatian and Bosnian Serbs. After the fall of Mussolini, a significant
number of Croats fighting for the formerly Italian-occupied and predominantly
Croat-populated littoral joined the Partisan army. When the Allies
recognized Tito’s movement in 1943 and began sending massive aid to Tito,
the Partisans’ victory became imminent.
The third major warring faction was a Serb nationalist-royalist guerilla
organization, the Četniks, under the royal general staff officer Dragoljub
Drazˇa Mihajlović. The Četniks were formed in Spring 1941 in Serbia and
even joined forces with the communists in several attacks on Germans.
Many Croatian and Bosnian Serbs joined them to escape the NDH terror. At
the end of 1941, the Četniks broke up with the communists, halted antiinvaders’
activities, and even collaborated with Germans and Italians against
the Partisans in the hope of forming an independent Serbian state. The
Četniks committed massive crimes against non-Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia-
Herzegovina. 20 In Serbia’s towns and cities, the quisling regime under general
Milan Nedić and the Serbian native fascist Dimitrije Ljotić collaborated
with the Germans. There was also a quisling regime in Slovenia, led by the
Catholic bishop Gregorij Rozˇman, and pro-Axis Bosnian Muslim and Kosovo
Albanian groups. The foreign invaders and native nationalist factions carried
out massive genocidal atrocities, bloody reprisals, torture, deportations, and
executions of civilians. The native ethnic nationalist factions all committed
what today is known as the crime of “ethnic cleansing.” They would repeat
it 50 years later.
The Ustasˇas maintained several dozen concentration camps and large
prisons. The largest concentration camp was located near the town of Jasenovac
on the Sava river. 21 Most of prisoners in these camps were Partisan
fighters and members of their families, members of urban guerilla squads
of the Communist Party and Communist Youth, and all who belonged to
and/or supported the Partisans. The killings at Jasenovac, also indicate the
NDH regime’s intention to “cleanse” all Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies from the
NDH. At any rate the Pavelić regime in the NDH pro-Axis state was perhaps
the most brutal among the quisling regimes in Axis-occupied Europe. 22
Much has been written about these Ustasˇa and Četnik massacres of the
civilian population in Yugoslavia, but the problem still invites new analyses.
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