Goran Miljan - Böcker

During World War II, Croatia became a fascist state under the control of the Ustasha Movement - allied with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. Here, Goran Miljan examines and analyzes for the first time the ideology, practices, and international connections of the Ustasha Youth organization. The Ustasha Youth was an all-embracing fascist youth organization, established in July 1941 by the `Independent State of Croatia' with the goal of reeducating young people in the model of an ideal `new' Croat. This youth organization attempted to set in motion an all-embracing, totalitarian national revolution which in reality consisted of specific interconnected, mutually dependent practices: prosecution, oppression, mass murder, and the Holocaust - all of which were officially legalized within a month of the regime's accession to power. To this end education, sport, manual work and camping took place in specially established Ustasha Youth Schools. In order to justify their radical policies of youth reeducation, the Ustasha Youth, besides emphasizing national character and the importance of cultural and national purity, also engaged in transnational activities and exchanges, especially with the Hlinkova mladez [Hlinka Youth] of the Slovak Republic. Both youth organizations were closely modelled after the youth organizations in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. This is a little studied part of the history of World War II and of Fascism, and will be essential reading for scholars of Central Europe and the Holocaust.

This book explores the radicalization and fascistization of the Ustaša–The Croatian Revolutionary Organization within the interwar Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and later Yugoslavia, whose tumultuous rise led to terrorism and racial cleansing throughout the western Balkans.Using an interdisciplinary and socio-cultural approach, Constantin Iordachi and Goran Miljan trace the Ustaša's political trajectory from its ideological and organizational roots in the 1920s, to its guerrilla struggle and terrorist activities in the 1930s, to its genocidal rule, violent downfall, and post-1945 metamorphosis in exile.By considering the paramount role played by prejudice, economic deprivation, and the breakdown of social institutions in fueling grievances against an existing socio-political system, the authors place the emergence of the Ustaša in the context of the interwar Kingdom of Yugoslavia but also in the wider perspective of the emergence of fascist movements and regimes in interwar and wartime Europe.