Balkan ethnic conflict in the 1940s

The Ustaše genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia is perhaps the only chapter in the World War II where Germans (as well as Italians), including SS troops, acted to protect the group from the actions of their collaborators - over-enthusiastic Croat Ustaše, who started mass killings at the rate unseen by that time (from the onset of the puppet regime in 1941), prompting appalled Germans to restrain the puppet government. [http://www.pavelicpapers.com/timeline/ustasetimeline.html] Estimates for the number of Serbs killed are a matter of recent controversy. Simon Wiesenthal center, German sources from World War II, historians from SFRY during Tito's era and most Serbian sources cite numbers over 1,000,000, [http://www.pavelicpapers.com/documents/serbs/index.html] but some Croatian sources give estimates in the range of 330,000 to 390,000.

The genocide of Serbs had religious background. Although both Serbs and Croats were Slavs, speaking almost identical language, Serbs are Orthodox Christians while Croats are Catholics. Involvement of Catholic Clergy was important since forced conversion to Catholicism was sometimes an alternative to killing, and organizations such as Catholic Crusaders gave some of the most enthusiastic and notorious participants in the genocide. The commander of Jasenovac concentration camp camp, Miroslav Filipović was a Catholic friar. Killings were done in concentration camps, but also by destroying villages, burning Orthodox churches packed with Serbs who were forced inside, filling foiba pits with bodies of victims and by other methods. The chief architect of Croatian campaign against the Serbs was Mile Budak.

As per the most recent study, "Bosnjaci u Jasenovackom logoru" ("Bosniaks in Jasenovac concentration camp") by the author Nihad Halilbegovic, at least 103,000 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslim Slavs) perished during Holocaust at the hands of the Nazi regime and Croatian Ustaše. According to the study "unknown is the full number of Bosniaks who were murdered under Serb or Croat alias or national name" and "large numbers of Bosniaks were killed and listed under Roma populations", therefore in advance sentenced to death and extermination. [* [http://www.interliber.com/catlistdetail.asp?SID=Interliber^57473-57473&ProductID=30790&ml=b Bosniaks in Jasenovac Concentration Camp] — Congress of Bosniak Intellectuals, Sarajevo. ISBN 9789958471025. October 2006. (Holocaust Studies)] [ [http://www.bosnjaci.net/egt.php?id=1169&polje= Commemoration of Bosniak victims of Jasenovac] Meliha Pihura, Bosnjaci.net Magazine, April 13, 2007.]

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