document count: 4

After the conquest and dismemberment of Yugoslavia in April 1941, German soldiers formed the backbone of security forces and were soon drawn into action as administrators, diplomats, and as shock troops against a growing insurgency. General Edmund Glaise von Horstenau arrived in Zagreb as German Plenipotentiary General after the proclamation of the state and remained in this position until September 1944. Glaise von Horstenau detested the Ustase, and poglavnik Ante Pavelic in particular, and acted as a brake to the more atrocious plans by the Ustase leadership. His reports to Berlin were filled with accounts of the slaughter ordered by Pavelic and his agents. In his testimony to the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, Horstenau said he had been "dismissed from my post in Zagreb because, being an Austrian of the old regime, I was against the official policy and was one of the opponents of the Ustashi terror. Another reason was that I was supposed to have called the Head of the State, who was elected and appointed by us, Ante Pavelic, a 'criminal subject,' among other undiplomatic things." Horstenau died shortly after the end of World War II, and his notes and reports have been compiled into a sort of posthumous autobiography. Together with the memoirs of German Plenipotentiary for Southeast Europe Dr. Hermann Neubacher, the reports submitted by these loyal German officers form a valuable primary source of how the Ustase were viewed by their chief allies.

Report on the Murder of 800 Civilians near Petrinja
December 3, 1941: Tersely-worded request for information by German General Edmund Glaise von Horstenau regarding the massacre of 800 "men, women and children" by the Ustase near Petrinja

Letter: Glaise von Horstenau on the Ustase Concentration Camps
Gen. Glaise von Horstenau's inspection of an Ustase Concentration Camp

Letter: Glaise von Horstenau on the Ustase Massacres
"The 'lucky' inhabitants were consigned to one of the fearsome boxcar trains; many 'passengers' cut their veins on the journey."

Special Assignment in the Southeast
Dr. Hermann Neubacher, the German Plenipotentiary in SE Europe, on the "Croatian Crusade of Destruction"

 

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