Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
World War II. Ustaše concentration camps—including the notorious Jasenovac extermina-
tion camp—were used to murder tens of thousands of Jews and Roma (Gypsies), as well as
hundreds of thousands of Serbs.
Catholic Church leader Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac was one Croat who made the mistake
of backing the Ustaše. By most accounts, Stepinac was a mild-mannered, extremely devout
man who didn't agree with the extremism of the Ustaše...but also did little to fight it. Fol-
lowing the war, Stepinac was arrested, tried, and imprisoned, dying under house arrest in
1960. In the years since, Stepinac has become a martyr for Catholics and Croat nationalists.
At the end of World War II, the Ustaše (and the Nazis) were forced out by Yugoslavia's
homegrown Partisan Army, led by a charismatic war hero named Josip Broz, who went by
his nickname, “Tito.” Tito became “president for life,” and Croatia once again became part
ofaunitedYugoslavia. Theunionwouldholdtogether formorethan40years,untilitbroke
apartamidsquabblesbetweenSerbianPresidentSlobodanMiloševi
ć
andCroatianPresident
Franjo Tu
đ
man.
For more details on Yugoslavia and its breakup, see the Understanding Yugoslavia
chapter.
Croatia'sdeclarationofindependencefromYugoslaviain1991wasmetwithfearandanger
on the part of its more than half-million Serb residents. Even before independence, the first
volleys of a bloody war had been fired. The war had two phases: First, in 1991, Croatian
Serbs declared independence from the new nation of Croatia, forming their own state and
forcing out or murdering any Croats in “their” territory (with thinly disguised military sup-
portfromSlobodanMiloševi
ć
).Thenatensecease-firefellovertheregionuntil1995,when
thesecondphaseofthewarignited: Croatia pushedbackthroughtheSerb-dominated territ-
ory, reclaiming it for Croatia and forcing out or murdering Serbs living there.
Imagine becoming an independent nation after nine centuries of foreign domination.
Croatians seized their hard-earned freedom with a nationalist fervor that bordered on fas-
cism. It was a heady and absurd time, which today's Croatians recall with disbelief, sad-
ness...and maybe a tinge of nostalgia.
In the Croatia of the early 1990s, even the most bizarre notions seemed possible. Croa-
tia's first post-Yugoslav president, the extreme nationalist Franjo Tu
đ
man (see sidebar),
proposed implausible directives for the new nation—such as privatizing all of the nation's
resources and handing them over to 200 super-elite oligarchs. While this never quite
happened, privatization relied heavily on nepotism, and Tu
đ
man's highly placed allies
enjoyed a windfall. The government began calling the language “Croatian” rather than
“Serbo-Croatian” and created new words from specifically Croat roots. Some outside-the-
box thinkers even briefly considered replacing the Roman alphabet with the ninth-century
