Ante Pavelić

Ante Pavelić (July 14, 1889 – December 28, 1959) is a Yugoslavian Croat lawyer, politician and dictator who founds and headed the fascist ultranationalist organization known as the Ustaše in 1929 and governs the Independent State of Croatia (Croatian: Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH), a fascist puppet state built out of parts of occupied Yugoslavia by the authorities of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, from 1941 to 1945.

Pavelić and the Ustaše persecute many racial minorities and political opponents in the NDH during the war, including Serbs, Jews, Romani, and anti-fascists, becoming one of the key figures of the Genocide of Serbs and the Holocaust in NDH.

At the start of his career, Pavelić is a lawyer and a politician of the Croatian Party of Rights in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia known for his nationalist beliefs and support for an independent Croatia.

By the end of the 1920s, his political activity becomes more radical as he calls on Croats to revolt against Yugoslavia, and schemes an Italian protectorate of Croatia separate from Yugoslavia.

After King Alexander I declares his January 6 Dictatorship in 1929 and bans all political parties, Pavelić goes abroad and plots with the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) to undermine the Yugoslav state, which prompts the Yugoslav authorities to try him in absentia and sentence him to death.

In the meantime, Pavelić has moved to fascist Italy where he founds the Ustaše, a Croatian nationalist movement with the goal of creating an independent Croatia by any means, including the use of terror.

Pavelić incorporates terrorist actions in the Ustaše program, such as train bombings and assassinations, stages a small uprising in Lika in 1932, culminating in the assassination of King Alexander in 1934 in conjunction with the IMRO.

Pavelić is once again sentenced to death after being tried in France in absentia and, under international pressure, the Italians imprison him for eighteen months, and largely obstrucs the Ustaše in the following period.

At the behest of the Germans, senior Ustaša Slavko Kvaternik declares the NDH's establishment on April 10, 1941, in the name of Pavelić, the Poglavnik.

Pavelić returns from Italy and takes control of the puppet government, creating a political system similar to that of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

The NDH, though constituting a Greater Croatia, is forced by the Italians to relinquish several territorial concessions to the latter.

After taking control, Pavelić imposes largely anti-Serbian and antisemitic policies that result in the deaths of over one hundred thousand Serbs and Jews in concentration and extermination camps in the NDH, murdering and torturing several hundred thousand Serbs, along with tens of thousands of Jews and Roma.

These persecutions and killings have been described as the "single most disastrous episode in Yugoslav history".

The racial policies of the NDH greatly contributeto their rapid loss of control over the occupied territory, as they feed the ranks of both the Chetniks and Partisans and cause even the German authorities to attempt to restrain Pavelić and his genocidal campaign.

In 1945, he orders the executions of prominent NDH politicians Mladen Lorković and Ante Vokić on charges of treason when they are arrested for plotting to oust him and align the NDH with the Allies.

Following the surrender of Germany in May 1945, Pavelić orders his troops to keep fighting even after the surrender.

The remainder of the NDH government decides to flee to Austria on May 3, 1945, but Pavelić instead orders them to retreat to Austria over the former border of the Third Reich and have the Croatian Armed Forces surrender to the British Army.

The British refuse to accept the surrender and direct them to surrender to the Partisans.

The Partisans begin carrying out massacres against the Ustaše when the latter attack their position, killing them in a series of repatriations later known as the Bleiburg repatriations.

Pavelić himself flees to Austria, and later Argentina, whose president Juan Perón provides sanctuary for German war criminals and several Ustaše.

On April 10, 1957, he is shot several times in a failed assassination attempt by the Serbian assassin Blagoje Jovović.

Pavelić survives the attempt and soon leaves Argentina for Spain. He dies two and a half years later, on December 28. 1959, aged seventy, from the injuries he had sustained in the attempted assassination. 

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