Im Schatten des Weltkriegs

In the shadow of the Second World War, the Croatian Ustasa movement attempted to create an ethnically homogenous nation state by force. The destruction of Yugoslavia by the Wehrmacht enabled Ustasa to establish a regime of terror that was primarily directed against Serbs, Jews and Roma. In this way, Ustasa unleashed a civil war that claimed some 500 000 lives. Korb examines the motives, interests and scope for action of the Ustasa, the course of the use of violence and the interplay between the dynamics of civil war and brutalization. He describes a complex spiral of violence in which Croatian, Serbian, German and Italian actors were involved. His study impressively reveals the complexity of the events, describes the situational logic of violence and thus provides a basis for Holocaust and violence research.