NDH and unrealized South Slavic world

- an Outline for a dialogue -

( pročitaj Okvir za dijalog na hrvatskom jeziku )

Introduction

Almost 80 years after the end of the last global conflict, most of the participating countries have repeatedly twisted and mixed their history, extracting what was valuable and discarding the superfluous, ultimately constructing prosperous societies. The reason for their success is quite simple: they began their post-war journey from the positions of either war-winners or war-losers.

No European country has encountered the misfortune of emerging from the war as both war-winners and war-losers simultaneously, thanks to a unique partisan movement within the territory of the NDH. This along with their parallel, wholly uncritical, and exclusive historical truths.

When we assert today that the NDH was unquestionably a Nazi-fascist satellite, entangled in crimes due to its inability to govern the entrusted state, but simultaneously excluding the possibility that the NDH might have represented also something else, we are not adhering to historical truth. Instead, we are acting as war winners, motivated solely by the desire to maintain our elitist position in society that we acquired a long time ago.

Post-Habsburg South Slavic community

It has been 28 years since 1995 and the conclusion of the Homeland War, and even 32 years since its onset. Despite this passage of time, many media outlets and a significant portion of the scientific community continue to discuss Croatia as a post-Yugoslav society and part of the so-called post-Yugoslav region.

What unites all those who engage in this uncritical glorification of state creations that failed twice in exceptional bloodshed, is that they belong to the post-Yugoslav elite, impoverished by intellectual exclusivity inherited from the comfort of a one-party society.

Thus, over 30 years since the dissolution of the debatably successful state community, Croatia is still characterized as a post-Yugoslav society.

But what about 1941?

Only 23 years had passed since 1918, so it is a valid question why no one has ever referred to the NDH as a post-Habsburg society, as well as question the sentiment that made that country accepted by the Croatian people. It is also worth asking why no one was ever allowed to connect the NDH with the centuries-old dream of the Croatian people for an independent state.

The Habsburg society, unlike the Yugoslav society, has been present in these areas for centuries, and its values primarily represented a military alliance against the Ottoman conquests.

Speaking of the year 1941, it is extremely important to think about the level of misunderstanding of all the evil that was threaded through those pan-European ideologies, such as Nazism and Fascism, placed in front of semi-literate and rural populations of that time.

In contrast to the post-Habsburg sentiment which was present in these areas for centuries, and which today we can compare in terms of time with the post-Yugoslav sentiment, regardless of its value content. When we talk about post-Habsburg sentiments, we should not forget that it is the original Strossmayer's South Slavic community, spatially and functionally surrounded by the provisions of the Congress of Berlin from the year 1878, the same congress in which Serbia, which we admired so much at the time, and which was a role model for all of us, received its first international recognition as an independent state.

• Why is the NDH today, exclusively associated with Nazism and fascism without placing it in a wider historical context? And in whose interest is that anyway?
  
  
• Is this in the interest of the Serbian people who for centuries served the same master and fought against the same enemy with their Croatian neighbours? Does the phrase "Only concord save the Serbs" refer to concord with their neighbours, or to concord with some unknown stranger, hundreds of kilometers away? What does historical experiences teaching us on that subject?
  
  
• Is it in the interest of the Serbian people to put the slogan For Home Ready in the same sentence as the slogan Serbs on trees, as they have been doing for years from politicians who present themselves as the exclusive protectors of the Serbian people?
  
  
• Why and in whose interest is it to demonize the Croatian people because of their acceptance of the state that was gifted to them?
  
  
• Why is it that today, when so much is being said about Diana Budisavlevic, there is no mention anywhere of the numerous Croatian families who took in the martyred Serbian children?
  
  
• Why is every attempt at revisionism of the existing narratives about the NDH, which is primarily in the interest of the Serbian people and their coexistence with their Croatian neighbours, regularly called glorification of the NDH?

Revision does not mean glorifying or demonizing something. On the contrary, the meaning of the revision should be exactly the opposite, to erase the glorification and demonization of historical facts.

Why then, with all the horrors that happened then, is it necessary to further demonize the NDH and disrupt the construction of the coexistence of Croats and Serbs? The answer to all this questions is quite simple and can be expressed in just a few words, and that is - A Hunger for territory.

The original South Slavic world

A Hunger for the territory of Strossmayer's original South Slavic community between the rivers Sutla and Drina, with which Serbia and even Slovenia have nothing to do. The original project of the South Slavic community is the project of non-violent decentralization of the Habsburg monarchy, where language, in the all-European flourishing of parliamentarism at the time, played a key role in the formation of newly created states.

As multilingual, but still predominantly Slavic regions within the monarchy, Istria and Vojvodina were also understood to be part of that original South Slavic language community. In contrast to Slovenia, which did not fully belong to that circle due to its linguistic uniqueness.

The shots in Sarajevo in 1914 were therefore not shots at some kind of colonial master, but were shots at the original South Slavic community that was supposed to be created as part of the decentralized Habsburg military alliance, which lost the cohesive meaning of its existence with the fall of the Ottoman Empire. What the NDH should have been for the Croatian people in 1941. was precisely the centuries-old dream of their own state that had been prepared and expected for many years, even centuries, after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

The sentiment of the majority of NDH supporters had nothing to do with that pan-European Nazi-fascist deception that caused so much harm to all European nations.

Today we can state that the year 1914 marked the end of the original and sincere South Slavic world, and that since then, we have been in a real post-Yugoslav world, where post symbolizes something that was then killed. The world after 1914, which is incorrectly called Yugoslav instead of post-Yugoslav, is a world that was marked by an entire century of senseless bloodshed and suffering of all peoples in these areas.

 

Slogan "For Home Ready"

When today we talk about the salute that is the slogan "For Home Ready", from 1941 and the undoubtedly post-Habsburg society at that time, it should be said that home defence, from the originally Habsburg term "Heimwehr", which the salute For Home Ready essentially describes, as the military doctrine of the Habsburg monarchy, was deep rooted in the Croatian and even the wider, originally South Slavic society loyal to the then empire.

Between the two wars, the Great Serbian Monarchy had no understanding of such a thing, so it abolished the Home Guard, and Josip Broz Tito brought it back again, somewhat clumsily calling it the "Territorial Defence", also according to the originally Habsburg term "Landwehr". We can see how clumsy it was, by asking ourselves, would they be happier today if parts of the Croatian army used the sign "For Territory Ready", instead of the sign "For Home Ready", during the Homeland War.

No matter how much today the members of the Croatian army whose units wore the For Home Ready insignia say, out of that simple-minded defiance, that they fought against the five-pointed star, it should be said that above all, side by side with those who also once wore the five-pointed star, they fought against the stigma with which the Croatian people have been stigmatized for years.

And according to everything we know so far about their war path, especially when it comes to Vukovar and the actual war reversal in Maslenica, they deservedly washed away that stain from the Croatian people perhaps more than anyone else.

And by using the greeting For Home Ready it can, and definitely should be said, not that they glorified the Ustashes, but that they cleansed it from the Ustashes in the best possible way.

Written by Petar Bacic in Pula, 28 may 2023.