Croats in WWII

Serb Leader

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Croatia

History
Initially, Germany was uninterested in the plight and aid of
the Balkan region, but that
attitude changed after 1941 when Italy invaded Greece. Soon
after Greece was invaded, the
Italians were held off and then actually pushed back into
Albania. Germany was complelled
to help the situation and did so by attempting to pull
Yugoslavia into the Tripartite Pact to
allow Axis troops passage through Yugoslav territory to attack
Greece. Prince Paul, the
Yugoslav Regent, signed the Pact. Almost immediately after
doing so, he was deposed by a
group of Serbian offciers. The new leadership of Yugoslavia
declared its continued
willingness to be a part of the Tripartite Pact, but Hitler
ignored all such claims and made
plans to invade and crush Yugoslavia instead. This took place
April 6th, 1941, when
Germany, Italy and Hungary launched a massive blitz against
Yugoslavia. The Country was
crushed in 12 days, and soon after, Yugoslavia was divided up
among the Axis partners, with
Hungary, Italy and Germany taking their share of territory. Of
the many regions in the now
beaten Yugoslavia, Croatia was declared to be independent with
Italy being given a "zone of
influence" in the Western portion and Germany a "zone of
influence" in the eastern portion.

Even before the fall of Yugoslavia, on April 10th, 1941, Slavko
Kvaternik, an underground
Ustasha leader, proclaimed the formation of the Independent
State of Croatia. On April 16th,
1941, Ante Pavelic became the leader of the new Indepedent
State of Croatia. Also on April
16th, 1941, the Croatian Home Defense Force, or Hrvatsko
Domobranstvo, was formed.
It was established with an Amry, Navy, National Guard, Police
Force, Labour Service, and
Airforce. Later, in 1943, the Ustasha Army was incorporated
into this force and it was
renamed as the Croation Armed Forces, or Oruzane snage NDH. On
April 17th, 1941, the
New State of Croatia declared war on Great Britian, and thus
became an Axis partner. The
new Government under Pavelic was formed as a fascist-military
dictatorship and it was very
nationalistic, Roman Catholic, anti-Serb, anti-Semitic, and
anti-Communist. From the
begining though, as stated before, true independence was denied
Croatia because of the
constant occupation forces of Germany and Italy in their
respective "zones of influence." As
well, the Serb population gave the new leaders a great deal of
trouble with many siding with
Tito's partisan forces.

As far as the armed forces of Croatia are concerned, there were
three distinct, although
inter-related, forces. These were the actual Croatian Armed
Forces, the Croatian Forces
seving in the German Wehrmacht, and those Croatian forces in
the Waffen-SS. All three will
be discussed here.

-The Croatian Army-

Soon after the Croat State was declared and the Armed Forces
instituted, volunteer units
began to form. Initially, 16 infantry battalions were formed,
later 2 cavalry battalions and 4
engineer battalions along with 10 artillery battalions were
also formed. Soon after these initial
battalions were formed, they were enlarged and formed into 15
infantry regiments, each with
two infantry battalions.

The 15 infantry regiments in Croatia were staged and formed in
the areas of the old Yugolsav
divisional districts as follows:

Sava Divisional Region

1st Regiment in Bjelovar
2nd Regiment in Zagreb
3rd Regiment in Karlovac