Since 1929, literally tens of thousands of ministers and bureaucrats, soldiers and executioners have been part of the Ustase movement. The biographical thumbnails below are by no means exhaustive. This is living page and will be updated as time and circumstances allow.

 

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Artukovic, Andrija (1899 - 1988). Pre-war member of the Ustase, leading an uprising in the Velebit Mountains in opposition to the Royal Dictatorship of King Alexander I in the 1930s. Tasked with formulating a back-up plan in London in case the assassination of the King in Marseilles, France failed, Artukovic was briefly arrested by the British authorities but later released. Became Interior Minister of the Independent State of Croatia in April 1941, taking overall command of the concentration camps and part of the multi-headed hydra of Ustase security agencies. Escaped in May of 1945, eventually to Ireland and then to the United States, which he entered with a forged identity certificate. After nearly four decades living openly in California, Artukovic (by now quite senile) was extradited to Yugoslavia in 1986 and sentenced by a court to die by firing squad. The sentence was put off on account of his ill health, and Artukovic died in a prison hospital two years later. more...

 

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Budak, Mile (1889 - 1945). The "minister of culture with a machine gun," as famous Croatian novelist Miroslav Krleza called him, Mile Budak was a novelist in the pre-war era who emigrated after he was attacked by a pro-Yugoslav gang in broad daylight in Zagreb. The episode had a dramatic effect on his behavior, as the was soon calling for the mass extermination of Serbs and characterizing them as "slaves" and "beggars" and the like. As Minister of Education, Religion and Cults in the first Independent State of Croatia government, Budak was responsible for propaganda in the NDH as well as "de-Serbianizing" Croatian culture and forming a "pure" Catholic Croatian civilization (which, in order to mask the fact that minorities made up a plural majority in the NDH, included Bosnian Muslims, or as Budak was fond of referring to them, "Islamic Croats.") In a speech which was widely published in the Summer of 1941, Budak proclaimed the NDH's goal of "killing a third, expelling a third, and converting a third" of the Serbian population to Catholicism. Budak was arrested by the Communist-led Partizans in 1945 as he fled for the Austrian border and executed. more...

 

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Ducic, Jovan Yugoslav ambassador to Italy and Spain before the war. He emigrated to the United States in the early 1940s and for a brief time led the Serbian National Defense. Ducic died of a terminal illness before the war's conclusion. Mentioned frequently in the OSS Files.

 

Doshen, Ante Believed to be one of the top two or three leaders of the Domobrans, the official American branch of the Ustase movement in the 1930s. Doshen escaped arrest when Domobran offices were raided by the FBI following the Independent State of Croatia's declaration of war on the United States in December, 1941. Described as an "adventurer" by the Office of Strategic Services, Doshen managed to obtain considerable political backing from a Pennsylvania senator until his ties to the Ustase regime then terrorizing Croatia were exposed. He was arrested on immigration charges, after which he is no longer heard from.

 

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Jelic, Branimir ("Branko") One of the three most important Ustase leaders in the pre-war period, along with Ante Pavelic and Eugen-Dido Kvaternik. Went into exile a year or more earlier than Pavelic, living in Vienna. He was interned with Pavelic and the younger Kvaternik in Italy following the assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia in Marseilles, France, but later released, and it's questionable how involved in the conspiracy he had been. Jelic traveled to the United States in the 1930s to found the Domobrans or "Homedefenders," the official American branch of the Ustase movement. In London at the start of World War II, Jelic was interned as an enemy alien by the British government and thus did not participate in any role in the government of the Independent State of Croatia. After the war's conclusion, he settled in Germany and founded (with his brother Ivan) the Croatian Committee and the Croatian Socialist Party, closer in ideology to the Croatian Peasant Party than to any of the other Ustase successor organizations.

 

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Laxa, Vladimir (1870-1946). A highly decorated veteran of the First World War (in which he served in the Austro-Hungarian Army on the Italian front), Vladimir Laxa eventually enlisted in the Royal Yugoslav Army at the war's conclusion. After the German invasion and the declaration of the Independent State of Croatia, Laxa was given the title podmarsal (roughly, "deputy marshal") and was charged by Field Marshal Slavko Kvaternik with organizing the Domobrans (literally "Home Defenders," the Croatian regular army) in April 1941. Dispatched as "Special Representative of the Poglavnik" to Hercegovina in June of 1941, he authored several scathing reports denouncing the murderous rampages of the Ustase Army (the NDH's equivalent of Hitler's SS), in one of which he called for the entire Ustase Army's dissolution. Transferred to Army HQ, he later resigned his commission in protest against the refusal by Ante Pavelic and other Ustase political leaders to rein in the Ustase Army. Laxa was captured by the Communist-led Partizans after the British turned over a large group of Croatian refugees at the Austrian city of Bleiburg, and was shot the following year.

 

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Pavelic, Ante (1889-1959). A member of the Croat Party of Right founded by Ante Starcevic in the 19th century, Pavelic emigrated from Yugoslavia to Vienna in 1929 after the assassination of Croatian Peasant Party leader Stjepan Radic and the subsequent declaration of the Royal Dictatorship. He formed the Ustase movement with Branimir Jelic and with the assistance of Slavko Kvaternik and his son, Eugen-Dido. The Ustase organized several attempts on the life of King Alexander, including a farcical failure in Zagreb, before succeeding with the assistance of a hired killer from the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, or IMRO. Sentenced to death in France, Pavelic remained in Italy until April 1941, when Nazi Germany invaded Yugoslavia and the Ustase proclaimed the Independent State of Croatia with the approval of Hitler and Mussolini. Responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands, including a third of the Serbian population of the NDH and the near total extinction of Croatia's Jewish and Roma communities. In May of 1945, he fled from Croatia toward Austria, disappearing into the woods with other Ustase political leaders. He spent the next two years in Italy under the protection of the Vatican and Father Krunoslav Draganovic. Pavelic resurfaced in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1948, forming a series of short-lived organizations before uniting a dozen other escaped ministers from the NDH into the Croatian Liberation Movement, or HOP. After an attempt on his life in April of 1957, Pavelic fled to Spain, where he died a few days before the New Year in 1959. His body is reportedly buried at a secret location, waiting to be taken by his daughter Visnja back to Croatia for burial. more...

 

Puk, Mirko Minister of Justice in the Ustase regime in the Independent State of Croatia, generally regarded as the instigator of the Glina Church Massacre, among other atrocities. Puk was reputedly the leading advocate for mass expulsion of the Serbian population of the NDH, and on February 25, 1942 (when tens of thousands of Serbs had already been killed, converted to Catholicism or forced over the border to Serbia), delivered a speech before the Croatian Sabor or parliament stating that "the moment the Croatian state came into being, its first duty was to return this element, which settled in these lands against all natural laws and against the will of the Croatian people, back to where it came from. The Croatian state has in this sense carried out its Croat and Ustase duty." Puk is mentioned in several files from the US Army as traveling with Pavelic in Italy; his final fate is unclear.

 

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Vrancic, Vjekoslav Personal secretary to Ante Pavelic, Vjekoslav Vrancic followed him throughout the war years, serving in a number of cabinet-level and deputy positions. In May of 1945, he followed Pavelic once again through Austria and Italy, passing on his master's orders via wireless radio transmitter to the Krizari or "Crusaders" who mounted a series of fantastically unsuccessful commando raids into Yugoslavia between 1945 and 1948. Vrancic became Pavelic's chief aide in the Croatian Liberation Movement in Buenos Aires, and after the poglavnik's death disputed Stjepan Hefer's right to lead the organization. Vrancic led a small splinter faction of the HOP until it was re-united with the main organization in the 1970s under the HOP's American leader, Ante Bonifacic.

 

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