Croatian Leader Lauds Ustasha Nazis as the «Fourth Reich Lite» Rears Its Ugly Head in Europe
Croatia’s president, the former deputy NATO secretary general for public diplomacy Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, decided to pay homage to Nazis of the Ustasha Nazi puppet regime of Croatia shot by Yugoslav partisans at the end of World War II. Grabar-Kitarovic’s tone deafness in choosing Victory in Europe week to honor dead Nazis shocked the Balkans and the rest of Europe.
The Ustasha, along with their Slovenian and Serb loyalists to the Nazi puppet regime, were killed by the partisans under the command of anti-fascist guerrilla leader Josip Broz Tito. Most of the Ustasha were killed in the Austrian town of Bleiburg, as well as in the Slovenian towns of Macelj and Tezno. The Ustasha were attempting to flee among hordes of other refugees from Tito's forces who were mopping up the last remaining pockets of Nazi resistance in Yugoslavia. The Ustasha actually sought the protection of British forces that were advancing from Austria toward the Yugoslav border. It was known to the Ustasha that the Serbian Chetnik guerrilla leader, the non-Communist, Draza Mihailovic, who had battled the Ustasha had maintained a special relationship with the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) intelligence and military officials while also cooperating with the Axis powers of Germany and Italy. However, the British had struck a deal with Tito’s partisans at the expense of the Chetniks and although they did not directly aid the Ustasha, they had no problem letting the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the Vatican help spirit out of Yugoslavia some of the top Ustasha officials in the infamous «Rat Line» operation coordinated with Croatian Catholic war criminal Monsignor Krunoslav Draganovic.
