Boris Zarnik and his entry on race in the Croatian encyclopaedia (1942)
Boris Zarnik and his entry on race in the Croatian encyclopaedia (1942)

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the short section on race theory found in the entry on ‘Man’ published in the fourth volume of the Croatian Encyclopaedia (the so-called ‘Ustaša’ Encyclopaedia) in 1942 and written by the Slovenian-born Croatian biologist Boris Zarnik. Since Zarnik criticised the idea of racism, or what he also termed ‘race theory’, in this entry, a number of historians and other commentators have claimed that Zarnik, and even the Ustaša government, were theoretically opposed to National Socialist racism. But through a close examination of both his pre-war articles on racial anthropology and the ideas expressed in his entry on race theory, this article will highlight that Zarnik’s position on race and racism was actually completely in line with the tenets of National Socialism.

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