Ante Pavelić

Who was Ante Pavelić?

Ante Pavelić was a Croatian fascist leader and politician who led the Ustaše movement and who during World War II ruled the Independent State of Croatia, a puppet state of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in part of the occupied Kingdom of Yugoslavia, pursuing genocidal policies against ethnic and racial minorities.

Pavelić was a lawyer and politician of the Croatian Party of Rights in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia known for his nationalist beliefs about an independent Croatia. By the end of the 1920s, his political activity became more radical as he called on Croats to revolt against Yugoslavia, and schemed an Italian protectorate of Croatia separate from Yugoslavia. After King Alexander I declared his 6 January Dictatorship in 1929 and banned all political parties, Pavelić went abroad and plotted with the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization to undermine the Yugoslav state, which prompted the Yugoslav authorities to try him in absentia and sentence him to death. In the meantime, Pavelić had moved to fascist Italy where he founded the Ustaše, a Croatian nationalist movement with the goal of creating an independent Croatia by any means, including the use of terror.