THE NDH AS A ‘CENTRAL EUROPEAN BULWARK AGAINST ITALIAN IMPERIALISM’: AN ASSESSMENT OF CROATIAN-ITALIAN RELATIONS WITHIN THE GERMAN ‘NEW ORDER’ IN EURO
THE NDH AS A ‘CENTRAL EUROPEAN BULWARK AGAINST ITALIAN IMPERIALISM’: AN ASSESSMENT OF CROATIAN-ITALIAN RELATIONS WITHIN THE GERMAN ‘NEW ORDER’ IN EURO

Summary/Abstract: The topic of Croatian-Italian relations is a complex one considering the paradox that, while Fascist Italy gave material support and sanctuary to the Ustasha Organization during the 1930s and was allied to the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH) from 1941 to 1943, Italy also laid claim to (and subsequently occupied) large tracts of the Croatian coast and supported the anti-Croatian Serbian Chetniks during the Second World War. There is now a great deal of literature in both Croatian and English on the theme of Italian Fascist-Croatian Ustasha relations. In general, however, this literature has paid scant attention to the ideological differences between the Fascists and Ustashe, especially in the areas of racial ideology and geopolitics, preferring to concentrate on the purely diplomatic and political relations between Italy and the NDH. In other words, little has been written on how the Ustashe used the question of ‘race’ and a peculiarly Croatian concept of Mitteleuropa to move to a closer political relationship with Germany in opposition to Italian Fascist expansionist aims.

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