Massacre of Serbs by Ustaše in Croatia in WWII
The Gudovac massacre was the mass killing of around 190 Bjelovar Serbs by the Croatian nationalist Ustaše movement on 28 April 1941, during World War II. The massacre occurred shortly after the German-led Axis invasion of Yugoslavia and the establishment of the Ustaše-led Axis puppet state known as the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). It was the first act of mass murder committed by the Ustaše upon coming to power, and presaged a wider Ustaše-perpetrated campaign of genocide against Serbs in the NDH that lasted until the end of the war.
The Ustaše used the mysterious deaths of two of their local followers as a pretext for the killings. The victims were drawn from Gudovac and its surroundings on 28 April. Most were arrested under the guise that they were rebels loyal to the ousted Yugoslav government. They were taken to a nearby field and collectively shot by a firing squad of up to 70 Ustaše guards. Five of the prisoners managed to survive the initial volley and crawled away to safety. The Ustaše forced Gudovac's surviving inhabitants to dig a mass grave for the victims and pour quicklime on the bodies to speed up decomposition. The following day, relatives of one of the victims informed the Germans of what had transpired. The Germans ordered a partial exhumation of the mass grave, and had 40 suspected perpetrators arrested. Mladen Lorković, a senior Ustaše official, used his influence to have the detained men released and promised German ambassador Siegfried Kasche that the Croatian authorities would carry out a thorough investigation. No investigation took place.
An ossuary and a mausoleum were erected on the site of the massacre in 1955, as was a monument by the sculptor Vojin Bakić. In 1991, amid inter-ethnic violence during the Croatian War of Independence, the monument and the mausoleum were destroyed by Croatian nationalists, as was another one of Bakić's works, "Bjelovarac" (The Man From Bjelovar). The ruins of the ossuary were removed by the local authorities in 2002. That same year, residents signed a petition to have the "Bjelovarac" monument erected once again. The restored monument was unveiled in December 2010.
Background.
Inter-war period.
Gudovac is a village near Bjelovar, about east of the NDH capital, Zagreb. It was first settled during the Middle Ages, and had an ethnically mixed population through much of its history. In 1931, Gudovac had 1,073 inhabitants living in 330 households. Croats formed two-thirds of the population, while the remaining inhabitants were ethnic Serbs. The Gudovac municipality had a population of 8,000, including 3,000 Serbs.
Gudovac had been part of a common South Slav state since November 1918, when the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was proclaimed. At its creation, the Kingdom included six million Serbs, 3.5 million Croats and one million Slovenes, among others. Being the largest ethnic group, the Serbs favoured a centralized state; Croats, Slovenes and Bosnian Muslims did not. The Vidovdan Constitution, approved on 28 June 1921 and based on the Serbian constitution of 1903, established the Kingdom as a parliamentary monarchy under the Serbian Karađorđević dynasty. Belgrade was chosen as the capital of the new state, assuring Serb and Orthodox Christian political dominance. In 1928, Croatian Peasant Party ("Hrvatska seljačka stranka", HSS) leader Stjepan Radić was shot and mortally wounded on the floor of the country's parliament by a Serb deputy. The following year, King Alexander proclaimed the 6 January Dictatorship and renamed his country Yugoslavia to deemphasize its ethnic makeup. Yugoslavia was divided into nine administrative units called banates ("banovine"), six of which had ethnic Serb majorities. In 1931, Alexander issued a decree allowing the Yugoslav Parliament to reconvene on the condition that only pro-Yugoslav parties were allowed to be represented in it. Marginalized, far-right and far-left parties thrived. The Ustaše, a Croatian fascist movement, emerged as the most extreme of these. The movement was driven by a deep hatred of Serbs. In 1932, the Ustaše launched the so-called Velebit uprising, attacking a police station in Lika. The police responded harshly to the attack and harassed the local population, leading to further animosity between Croats and Serbs. In 1934, an Ustaše-trained assassin killed Alexander while he was on a state visit to France. Alexander's cousin, Prince Paul, became regent and took up the king's responsibilities until Alexander's son Peter turned 18.
Following the 1938 "Anschluss" (union) between Germany and Austria, Yugoslavia came to share a border with the Third Reich and fell under increasing pressure as her neighbours became aligned with the Axis powers. In April 1939, Italy opened a second frontier with Yugoslavia when it invaded and occupied neighbouring Albania. At the outbreak of World War II, the Yugoslav government declared its neutrality. Between September and November 1940, Hungary and Romania joined the Tripartite Pact, and Italy invaded Greece. From that time, Yugoslavia was almost completely surrounded by the Axis powers and their satellites, and her neutral stance toward the war came under tremendous pressure. In late February 1941, Bulgaria joined the Pact. The next day, German troops entered Bulgaria from Romania, closing the ring around Yugoslavia. Intending to secure his southern flank for the impending attack on the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler began placing heavy pressure on Yugoslavia to join the Axis. On 25 March 1941, after some delay, the Yugoslav government conditionally signed the Pact. Two days later, a group of pro-Western, Serbian nationalist air force officers deposed Prince Paul in a bloodless coup d'état. The conspirators declared the 17-year-old Prince Peter of age and brought to power a "government of national unity" led by General Dušan Simović. The coup enraged Hitler. "Even if Yugoslavia at first should give declarations of loyalty," he stated, "she must be considered ... a foe and ... destroyed as quickly as possible." He then ordered the invasion of Yugoslavia, which commenced on 6 April 1941.
Fall of Bjelovar.
The Royal Yugoslav Army ("Vojska Kraljevine Jugoslavije", VKJ) was quickly overwhelmed by the combined German, Italian and Hungarian assault. Much of its equipment was obsolete, its military strategy was outdated and its soldiers were ill-disciplined and poorly trained. To make matters worse, many of the VKJ's Croat personnel refused to fight the Germans, whom they considered liberators from Serb oppression. This attitude was shared by many soldiers of the 40th Infantry Division "Slavonska"'s largely Croat 108th Regiment, which was stationed in Veliki Grđevac. The regiment had been mobilized in Bjelovar, and on 7 April was marching towards Virovitica to take up positions, when its Croat members revolted and arrested the Serb officers and soldiers. Led by Captain Ivan Mrak, the regiment disarmed a Yugoslav gendarmerie post in Garešnica and began marching back to Bjelovar alongside a band of Ustaše rebels under Mijo Hans. The following morning, elements of the 108th Regiment entered Bjelovar and clashed with the local gendarmerie, sustaining losses of two killed and three wounded. At about noon, the regiment joined up with elements of the 42nd Infantry Regiment and other units of the 40th Infantry Division. At around the same time, Julije Makanec, the Croat mayor of Bjelovar, joined Ustaše official Ivan Šestak and HSS representative Franjo Hegeduš in demanding that the VKJ surrender the town to the rebels. When the 4th Army's commander, General Petar Nedeljković, learned of the rebel approach, he ordered the local gendarmerie commander to maintain order, but was advised that this would not be possible as local Croat conscripts would not report for duty. Fourth Army headquarters reported the rebels' presence to the headquarters of the 1st Army Group, which requested that HSS leader Vladko Maček intervene with the rebels. Maček agreed to send an emissary to the 108th Infantry Regiment urging them to obey their officers, to no avail.
Later in the day, two trucks of rebels arrived at 4th Army headquarters in Bjelovar with the intention of killing the staff. The headquarters guard force prevented this, but the operations staff immediately withdrew from Bjelovar to Popovača. After issuing several unanswered ultimatums, around 8,000 rebels attacked Bjelovar, assisted by Croat fifth-columnists within the town. Bjelovar surrendered, and many Yugoslav officers and soldiers were captured by the Germans and Ustaše rebels. Local Croats welcomed the revolt with great enthusiasm. When Nedeljković heard of Bjelovar's capture, he called Makanec and threatened to bomb the city if VKJ prisoners were not immediately released. Detained officers from 4th Army headquarters and the 108th Infantry Regiment were then sent to Zagreb. At about 16:00, Nedeljković informed the Ban of Croatia, Ivan Šubašić, of the revolt, but Šubašić was powerless to influence events. At about 18:00, Makanec proclaimed that Bjelovar was part of an independent Croatian state. This was the only significant pro-Ustaše revolt in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina prior to 10 April. Ustaše propaganda celebrated it as "an uprising of the Croatian people against the April War", claiming it showed that Croats wholeheartedly supported Yugoslavia's destruction.
Creation of the NDH.
On 10 April, senior Ustaše commander Slavko Kvaternik proclaimed the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia ("Nezavisna Država Hrvatska", NDH). The declaration came exactly one week before the VKJ's unconditional surrender to the Axis powers. The leader of the Ustaše, Ante Pavelić, was in Rome at the time and made arrangements to travel to Karlovac, just west of Zagreb. He arrived in Karlovac on 13 April, accompanied by 250–400 of his followers. Pavelić reached Zagreb on 15 April, having granted territorial cessions to Italy at Croatia's expense and promised the Germans he had no intention of pursuing a foreign policy independent of Berlin. That same day, Germany and Italy extended diplomatic recognition to the NDH. Pavelić was declared "Poglavnik" ("leader") of the Ustaše-led Croatian state, which combined the territory of much of present-day Croatia, all of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and parts of present-day Serbia.
Pavelić and his followers intended to create an "ethnically pure" Croatia through the mass murder and deportation of Serbs, Jews and other non-Croats. Only about fifty percent of the NDH's 6.2 million inhabitants were Croat. Nearly two million Serbs, about one-third of the NDH's total population, now found themselves within the borders of the newly formed state. In addition, Serb-majority areas covered between 60 and 70 percent of the NDH's total landmass. "The Croatian state cannot exist if 1.8 million Serbs are living in it and if we have a powerful Serbian state at our backs," Croatia's future Foreign Minister Mladen Lorković explained. "Therefore, we are trying to make the Serbs disappear from our regions." Dido Kvaternik, a senior Ustaše official, was entrusted with "cleansing" Bjelovar and its surroundings. The younger Kvaternik recalled: "When we triumphantly returned home from abroad and when Pavelić decided that I should take over the implementation of the measures against Serbs and Jews, I obeyed immediately and without hesitation because I knew that this question had to be resolved for the future of the Croatian people and state, and that someone had to make the sacrifice so that these odious but necessary measures could be carried out." Pavelić's orders for the extermination of non-Croats in and around Bjelovar were likely delivered orally to ensure that no written evidence remained.
Prelude.
Immediately after seizing Bjelovar, the Ustaše set about strengthening their hold of the city. Josip Verhas, an ethnic German, was appointed the acting head of Bjelovar district, Đuro Vojnović was appointed Ustaše representative to the Bjelovar district, and Hans was named the Ustaše commissioner for Bjelovar county. Alojz Čukman was appointed chief of police. He immediately decreed that all of Bjelovar's Serbs had to wear a red armband with the word "Serb" written in both Croatian and German. Ivan Garščić, a public notary, was appointed acting commander of the Bjelovar armoury and set about reorganizing local Ustaše formations. Mrak, who had distinguished himself as one of the leaders of the 108th Regiment's revolt, was tasked with overseeing the city centre.
Between 9 and 14 April, groups of soldiers from the disbanded 108th Regiment roamed the Bjelovar countryside looking for a way home. Serb officers that had refused to surrender raided Croat homes, hoping to find food, money and civilian clothing that would make it easier for them to pass through German and Ustaše checkpoints. In some villages, Croat peasants disarmed defeated VKJ units and plundered their warehouses. Some of these peasants, especially those in Gudovac, entered local units known as "readiness battalions". On 10 April, the Germans reached Bjelovar and