No. 12

CAPTAIN HÖFFNER REPORTS TO THE OFFICE OF THE GERMAN GENERAL IN ZAGREB ON NOVEMBER 10, 1941, ABOUT THE RELATIONS BETWEEN THE CROATIAN ARMED FORCES AND THE USTASHA UNITS, FAVOURITISM TOWARD THE USTASHAS, THEIR WEAK COMBAT CAPACITY AND THE USTASHA MASSACRES OF SERBS AS THE ONLY CAUSE OF THE UPRISING.^[1]

Arthur Höffner Zagreb, November 10, 1941

Captain Svačićev trg 3.

Office of the German General in Zagreb.

Subject: Situation in the Croatian Armed Forces.^[2]

As could be expected when the legal decree on the creation of the Ustasha militia^[3] was published, rivalry with this privileged military institution of the Ustasha movement became, in the new Croatian armed forces, an insurmountable obstacle to the development of a dedicated military spirit willing to take responsibility.

The preconditions for this in these armed forces are in themselves aggravated by the fact that the officer corps on the one hand is composed of old, mostly from their profession more or less alienated officers of the former Austro-Hungarian army, and on the other hand of younger officers of the former Yugoslav army, educated in a completely different spirit, and is therefore completely heterogeneous. It would be all the more important for the Supreme Command of the Croatian Armed Forces to do everything possible to bridge the contradictions by helping to develop a single Croatian army spirit in the officer corps and in the troops. For this, in the first place, it was necessary to provide the new armed forces in the country with the general respect necessary for the fulfillment of their tasks.

In fact, however, the opposite is happening. While the press widely talks about the completely insignificant combat actions of militia formations against the insurgents in Bosnia, and while the fallen members of the militia are glorified, the public never hears anything about the actions of the army, which, as it is known only in informed circles, practically carries complete burden of battle, given that Ustasha formations prefer to avoid any danger if possible, and see as their main task the killing of unarmed or disarmed Serbs.

The Ustasha militia has repeatedly committed treason by leaving its combat sector in the middle of the night in imminent danger, without informing nearby parts of the army, which enabled the insurgents to carry out attacks from the side and encirclement, which caused significant casualties to military troops regarding the dead and wounded.

The fact that such shameful acts of the Ustasha militia could take place unpunished can be subsumed under the fact that it never obeys the command of the army, considering that only the right to dispose of and issue orders to the militia is reserved for the Supreme Leader. The Ustasha militia does not even carry out the orders of Marshal Kvaternik, no matter how much he insisted that he be named “Krilnik”, that is, of a militia general and no matter how much he valued this title more than his position as marshal.

When General Marić,^[4] in his capacity as Chief of the General Staff of the Croatian Army, in order to encourage the troops in battle tried to reward their special efforts through public recognition in the press, this was decisively rejected by Marshal Kvaternik, and he [Kvaternik] even had the order issued by his Chief of Staff to the troops about submitting and sending regular lists of losses, be annulled behind the man’s back.

This sufficiently proves that Marshal Kvaternik, who possesses unbridled ambition, but not the ability to be both a soldier and a politician in one person, deliberately suppresses everything that could raise the reputation of the military and contribute to the public realizing that it is the army, not the militia, whose soldiers must shed their blood and give their lives to defeat the uprising which is essentially the result of the Ustasha movement, as the uprising had come about solely because of the mass killings of domestic unarmed Serbs by the Ustasha hordes.

And the fact that under such circumstances the combat spirit of the Croatian troops engaged in Bosnia is declining day by day, they really cannot be blamed, and yet these soldiers are required not only to die as unknown heroes but also to die unmentioned as such.

It seems important to me to inform this administration about the moment, when, for the purpose of pacification of Bosnia, the German armed forces will largely cooperate with Croatian troops.

There are also clear indications that the leadership of the Ustasha movement, including Marshal Kvaternik, does not trust the Croatian army. On the other hand, however, the state leadership, apart from reactivating a significant number of officers who are completely unsuitable for service in the armed forces, did nothing to ensure the sympathy and obedience of the army.

The antagonism today, which, even if disguised, exists between the armed forces and the Ustashas, is undoubtedly the fault of the latter, given that they are the ones who imposed the troops to bear the main burden of the battle they have provoked, and the Ustashas even make fun of them for that.

This administration will be informed that Marshal Kvaternik, despite the contrary advice of his General Staff, designated Sisak, Slavonski Brod and Sarajevo as locations for corps commands, and Petrinja, Banja Luka and Travnik as locations for territorial commands. As can be seen, for Zagreb, where high military command has since long ago been based, none of the advice has been taken into account. After the establishment of the newly created Supreme Leader’s bodyguard regiment^[5], which includes only completely reliable, i.e. loyal to the Ustasha regime elements, the intention is for the Bosnian regiment, as the last body of military troops, to be moved away from Zagreb, because it is no longer trusted.

Considering that, on the other hand, morally even completely worthless people have been taken into militia formations, which is rooted in the fact that there are constant intrigues in command posts and therefore quarrels and mistrust, which causes constant changes of people in leading positions, so we can only state the fact that this state cannot rely either on the army or the militia, which is why we must reckon with the danger that this house of cards will collapse overnight and that chaos will ensue.

^[1] АВ, Ф. 562, 3.1.1.2, 12-13.

^[2] See: M. Colić, Takozvana Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, Beograd: Delta-press, 1973; N. Barić, Ustroj kopnene vojske domobranstva Nezavisne države Hrvatske 1941.-1945, Zagreb: Hrvatski institut za povijest, 2003.

^[3] These are Ustasha units organized into the Ustasha army (vojnica); see: A. Obhođaš et al., Ustaška vojnica, Vols. 1-2; B. Dimitrijević, Ustaška vojska Nezavisne Države Hrvatske 1941-1945, Beograd: Institut za savremenu istoriju, 2016.

^[4] At that time, General August Marić was Chief of the General Staff of the Ministry of Home Guard (Ministarstvo domobranstva); Tko je tko u NDH, 256 (M. Рojić).

^[5] Battalion, bojna.

Subeditor’s Note

This – English – edition of the book is a translation of the one in the Serbian language, published in 2022 under the title Ustaška zverstva: Zbornik dokumenata (1941–1942). As far as the corpus of the Dossier from the personal fonds of Slavko Odić is concerned – and it makes the essential body of this book – the translation team worked from its Serbian version given in the said book and not from the German original.

The Serbian edition, with the documents translated from German, was printed in the Cyrillic alphabet, which necessitated some explanations provided by the Editor, Dr. Milan Koljanin, with regard to the linguistic traits, orthography and punctuation resorted to by the translators from German into Serbian (Tatjana Janićijević, Akademija Oxford) and the Editor. Naturally enough, numerous clarifications referring to the Serbian edition do not apply on the English one in most of the aspects of translation work. Hence the need to write this Note.

To begin with, the translators basically opted for the varieties of the American English rather than British English.

Personal names in the officially processed documents are most often written in what is today considered inverse order: family name/surname first, followed by one’s first/Christian name, without a comma in between.

Originally, the documents (letters, reports, statements etc.) were written (typed) in bureaucratic style and with a page layout practised by German offices, so these traits have been retained herein, and so have the obvious spelling and/or typing errors (personal names, toponyms); the latter have been corrected in the footnotes. The parts of text/sentences which are underlined or written with spaces between letters as means of emphasis correspond to the German original and its Serbian/Croat counterpart. The same applies to whole words or lines written in capital letters.

Punctuation has been kept almost completely, except when the meaning demanded comma (usually related to the rules of word order in an English sentence). Some marks, such as hyphens, dashes or slashes may impress the Reader as outdated or misplaced. Earlier typewriters did not have buttons with parentheses, and the slash was used instead of them.

Dates are written with differing uses or omissions of period (full stop), whereby month is written in three ways: fully in letters (20 January), in Arabic numerals (e.g. 20.1.) or Roman numerals (e.g. 20.I.). In rare cases, the slash can be found in dates (e.g. 12./X. 1941), but not as a regular separator between their constituents. Years are occasionaly written without the first digit, e.g. 942 instead of 1942, which is a frequent occurrence in oral communication.

Abbreviations, other than official identification means for offices, titles or codenames (VB, MA, RSHA etc.), have been translated (e.g. ’etc.’). The translators chose to retain the Croat/Serbian abbreviation for the name of the wartime ’state’, that is, ’NDH’ is standing for Nezavisna Država Hrvatska (Independent State of Croatia) instead of the less known English name (ISC). Some words were written in a shortened form for the reason of economy of expression, and the habit has been transferred to the translation, including the Editor’s intervention in the Serbian edition: Reg.[ister], Gend.[armerie], Gor[nja] Tuzla.

Footnotes in the English edition partially differ from those in the Serbian version. Some proved to be unnecessary (those that provided original names which were transliterated into the phonetical Cyrillic alphabet). New footnotes have been added by the Subeditor in order to explain/clarify the specific, locally used, words or phrases with which the Reader may not be familiar (such as slava, din, sokolski dom), or to indicate some nuances in the meaning (student, profesor). Here and there, the Reader will find notes in brackets inserted into the main body of the text by translators or the Editor where immediate understanding was needed.

Finally, it is noteworthy that the above-mentioned bureaucratic style of the presented documents mirrors the established conventions of communication in Central Europe and the Balkans of the first half of the 20th century, particularly in state and military affairs, yet also illustrates the specific ’hierarchy’ of various authorities on the occupied territories during World War Two, accentuating the relations between the German organs/institutions in power and the various offices subordinated to the administrative and military system of the Third Reich. As to the information, facts and accounts of events recorded in these documents, they are the subject of the history science and studies related thereto.

A. Č. P.