30: Ustašas in Power - The Independent State of Croatia 1941-45

TENE tackles the Ustaša movement of wartime Croatia and their bloody wake. Boris begins with the establishment of the so-called Independent State of Croatia (NDH) with German tanks in Zagreb and their poglavnik (fuhrer), Ante Pavelić chilling out of the country... and it pretty much goes right downhill from there. Much to their surprise, creating extermination camps for children did not endear the fanatically murderous Ustaša to their countrymen and thus the Partisan movement was fully formed. Boris narrates the downfall of the short-lived Ustaša State, which by the end of the war was essentially Zagreb. The crew reflects on the brutalities of the Ustasha methods and concentration camps and marvel at the absurd attempts to attract Serbs into the new State as ‘Catholic Serbs’ and, failing to win anyone over what with all the massacring and such, inventing the ridiculous Orthodox Croatian Church run by the White Russian, Germogen. Boris also recounts the Bleiburg massacre of escaping Ustaša, as well as their traveling companions, and he introduces the Cossack SS. Finally, Rey and Boris discuss contemporary reverberations of the Ustaša’s psychotic reign and tease a future arc.

This is The Empire Never Ended, the Antifascist Amerikanski-Balkan podcast about (neo) fascist terror, the (deep) state and the alienation, nihilism and desperation produced by the capitalist system. And how to get rid of all that. Something like that...

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