Ustaše

The Ustaše (pronounced; anglicised as Ustasha or Ustashe) was a Croatian fascist and ultranationalist organization active, as one organization, between 1929 and 1945. It was formally known as the Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Movement (Croatian: Ustaša – Hrvatski revolucionarni pokret). From its inception and before the Second World War, the organization engaged in a series of terrorist activities against the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. It collaborated with IMRO to assassinate King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in 1934. During World War II in Yugoslavia, the Ustaše went on to perpetrate the Holocaust and genocide against its Jewish, Serb and Roma populations, killing hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, Roma, as well as Muslim and Croat political dissidents. The ideology of the movement combined fascism, Islamism, Roman Catholicism and Croatian ultranationalism.

The Ustaše supported the creation of a Greater Croatia. The movement advocated a racially "pure" Croatia and promoted genocide against Serbs, Jews and Roma, and persecution of anti-fascist or dissident Croats and Bosniaks. They viewed the Bosniaks as "Muslim Croats" sparing their prosecution. After the invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the Ustaše came to power with the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), established as an Italo-German quasi-protectorate in which German influence steadily increased over time as Italian influence waned. The state owed its creation and continued existence to the two Axis powers. The Ustaše Militia was its military wing. With the German surrender, end of World War II in Europe, and the establishment of socialist Yugoslavia in 1945, the Ustaše movement collapsed. Splinter movements identifying themselves as part of the Ustaše ceased activity around 1982.

The militarily weak Ustaše failed to ever garner significant support among Croats. Many of those that did initially support the regime in the interwar period were alienated by its brutality.