One of the main questions arising in the study of the genocide perpetrated against the Serbs during Pavelic's Independent State of Croatia is: How was such a crime possible and why did it happen? An answer to this question cannot be given if the history of the Croats and Serbs and of their mutual relations is studied over shorter periods of time, as is usually done; instead, the history of these relations must be followed over a number of centuries, from the time when the Serbs first met the Croats within the same state community. As long as the question of genocide against the Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia is viewed over brief segments of time, we shall not have the explanation of these events but will throw guilt now on this, now on that community, or regime, or religious community, or an eminent personality. It is likely, as has already happened, that the genocide over the Serbs by the ustashas is variously attributed to racial characteristics of the Croats, to alleged atrocities perpetrated in Croatia by the ruling regimes between the two world wars (1918-1941), to the so-called greater-Serbian hegemonic policy and January 6th dictatorship. On occasion there were attempts to justify and lessen the ustasha crimes and, for the sake of peace in the house, establish an equilibrium in guilt between the murderers and their victims.

Taking up the pen for scholarly reasons and conviction that there must be no taboo themes, that harm is done only by unscholarly interpretation, and that scientific interpretations help not only to clarify the past but also to bring a better understanding of the present, I have no intention of exhausting the theme to the end in this text. Likewise, I have no intention of pronouncing judgements which will be the last word, which could not be amended and complemented in some way. I will explain my view of the problem in the shortest possible strokes, permitting all those with a better knowledge of the history of Serbs and Croats to have different, perhaps even more reasonable, logical and convincing interpretation of the origin of the genocidal acts against the Serbs in Croatia.

No serious scholarly work has been written so far about the genesis of the genocidal acts against the Serbs in Croatia. On the eve of the Second World War, Vasa Bogdanov, in the first issue of the periodical Izraz in 1939, published the text entitled "Germs of disagreements between the Croats and Serbs" which he reprinted after the war. However, with his text Bogdanov only raised the issue but did not try to resolve it, partly because in his assessment he relied exclusively upon the biased judgement of Ante Starcevic, which he accepted uncritically, but also because he approached the problem more as a politically committed writer than an objective historian. Belonging to the left wing intelligentsia, which fought a battle against the centralist rule and the January 6th dictatorship, Bogdanov wrongly attributed the "enormously increased conflict" between the Serbs and Croats to the January 6th regime and indirectly to the Serbs because, he wrote, "since the beginning of 1929, nothing in this country could be even whispered against the Serbs, nor against the representatives of the January 6th regime, neither in the press which was banned or heavily censured, nor in public meetings, nor in schools, nor in theatres, nowhere." Bogdanov made many wrong allegations at the expense of the Serbs which we are not going to quote here, but it is necessary to point out that, though he regarded himself as a Marxist, he identified the interests of the Croatian people with those of the Croatian upper classes in a non-Marxist manner, failing to see that the Serbs living in Croatian territory were in conflict with the temporal and spiritual feudalists of Croatia and not with the Croatian people themselves.

The attempt by Dusan Popovic, erstwhile an active politician, a prominent member of the Croato-Serbian coalition, to find the causes of ustasha genocidal acts in a far distant past, is also inadmissible. In his book "Prilozi citanju i razumevanju raznih starina" (How to read and understand various old scripts) (Belgrade, 1957), on the basis of evidence proffered by Constantine Porphyrogenet, Fredegar, Theophanos, Nicephoros and Paul the Deacon, Popovic attempted to prove that the Croats were not pure Slavs, that during the migrations in the 7th century the Croats and a tribe from Asia had intermingled and that mass murders which took place during the occupation 1941-1945 in the Independent State of Croatia, were due to their Asiatic blood. This being a basically racialist approach to the problem of genocide, which has nothing to do with history, it is pointless even to speak about it, but the case is characteristic because it was only possible due to the absence of satisfactory scholarly answers as to the causes for genocidal acts against the Serbs in Pavelic's NDH.

Thirst for the truth about such a big issue of our time and insufficient knowledge about our past have led to wrong judgements which on their part only added fuel to the fire, instead of putting it out by an objective scholarly investigation and critical observation of the common Croatian and Serbian history, which contains answers to all the concealed questions about genocide. It is our duty to answer those questions, principally out of piety for the victims, but also because of the future generations which can and must draw lessons from the past so that ignorance should not lead to a repetition of the tragedy.

The first and the biggest, but unfortunately still solitary breakthrough in revealing the truth about the causes of genocide in the ustasha NDH, was made by Victor Novak in his book Magnum Crimen. It covers, as it states on the title page, "half a century of clericalism in Croatia". Whatever criticism might be addressed to him, Novak unravelled in his book in an unambiguous manner one of the most important dimensions in the genesis of genocide, its late and final stages. How this stage was reached is to be shown by what follows.

It is quite certain that the emergence of genocidal acts against the Serbs in Croatia goes back to the time when the so-called Orthodox Vlachs, i.e. the Serbs, under the pressure from the Turks in the 16th and 17th centuries, began settling Croatian lands. The arrival of "Orthodox schismatics" in Croatia raised many questions of religious, social and economic character. Settled in the lands of Croatian feudal gentry, spiritual as well as temporal, Serbs were exposed to a double pressure: pressure to become serfs and pressure to become uniates. As they wanted at all costs to preserve the status of free peasants and the status of frontiersmen, they strongly resisted both pressures which would have basically altered their social position.

Known for their religious bigotry, which characterised the entire society of the then feudal Europe, the Croatian aristocracy passed at their convention in 1608 a special law which granted public rights on the Croatian state territory only to the members of the Roman Catholic faith. This law was in conformity with the well-known catchword: whose land, his religion. In accordance with their function and their status in the high society, this motto was particularly dear to the Zagreb bishops but also to other feudal landowners in Croatia. The principle expressed in this slogan suited them not only for religious but also economic reasons. Namely, the Serbian Orthodox population were not under the obligation, like the Catholics, to pay various dues to the catholic church and its clergy. Having preserved their status of free peasants after crossing into Croatia, and enlisting in the system of military frontier, an overwhelming majority of the Serbs did not become serfs. Therefore, unlike most of the Croatian population, they were not under the obligation to pay numerous feudal taxes. In order to force them to do it, the Croatian feudalists used all available means, including brute force against the coriaceous and intractable "Orthodox schismatics". There are many instances of drastic pressures against the Orthodox Serbian inhabitants of Croatia, but history has also recorded that the manager of the Zagreb bishopric's farmstead, Ambroz Kuzmic, in a report made on November 13, 1700, wrote that it would be better to have the "Vlachs" "slaughtered, than to settle them down". Obviously, he meant that they should be slaughtered because they were not serfs, they were not Catholics, because they never wanted to accept the status of feudally dependent subjects with all the taxes which the latter were obliged to pay.

Ambroz Kuzmic supported his proposal with the claim that the "Vlachs" "are more of a nuisance to the noble state illumined by the Emperor than an advantage", so that "neither the Emperor's radiance nor the noble state will ever be at peace with them". Thus, at the very onset of the 18th century, we find that the feudal circles of Croatia, for reasons of class and religious antagonism, were prepared for genocide against the Serbian Orthodox population which had settled down on their possession, but under special conditions and unwillingly, encroaching upon their feudal rights.

Then already, judging by the conflict which had taken place between the Serbian populace settled in Croatia and the Croatian feudalists, it was clear that the Serbs in Croatia were uninvited guests, that wherever they struck their roots they were not only superfluous but also undesirable. They were looked upon as intruders. Such an attitude towards the frontiersmen, in the first place towards the Serbs of Orthodox confession, was passed on from generation to generation and has been preserved to this day. A crucial role in it was played by the Croatian and Slavonian feudalists, both spiritual and secular. They wielded strong influence even after the collapse of feudalism in 1848, in the bourgeois capitalist society, upon which they transferred their views and prejudices from the earlier periods of history. As a result, the old misunderstandings not only did not cease but were carried over into the new social and political system, which they empoisoned and corroded.

How far the Croatian antagonism towards the Serbs went even in Dalmatia, where relations were more tolerable than those in Croatia and Slavonia, is borne out by a letter from Djordje Nikolajevic, a clergyman of Dubrovnik, addressed to bishop Jerotej Mutibaric of Dubrovnik on March 22, 1848. Nikolajevic wrote: "On this occasion I dare communicate to you only briefly that here in Dubrovnik, since the proclamation of the constitution, instead of having great joy we are suffering great fear as they have publicly threatened to cut us up into smallest pieces. Situation has been calmer today after last night, but if the slightest spark should fly, we are all finished." Fortunately, when the people of Boka heard about the threats, the Serbs in Dubrovnik were safe. Nikolajevic wrote: "This rumour came to Kotor, where the Orthodox Serbs are in great majority. The Kotor Serbs told the Dubrovnik people not to touch their brothers there, because if they touch one single one of them, no Catholic would be left alive. Even this threat could not tame the infuriated people of Dubrovnik until they received another message which if it were true would have been no joke, that in the town of Budva ten thousand Montenegrins boarded ships which were coming to visit the Dubrovnik people to ask them what they intended to do with the Serbs."

Antagonism between the Serb frontiersmen and the Croat feudalists, both spiritual and temporal, lasted for as long as the feudal society did, but in the course of time it altered somewhat. Of particular significance for their relations and for antagonisms which generated genocidal ideas, was the attitude of the high military circles in Vienna and Graz, which always and invariably safeguarded the state and dynastic interests, so sometimes they supported the frontiersmen against the Croat feudalists, and sometimes the feudalists against the frontiersmen. At any rate, the high military circles in Austria with their policy did much to poison relations between the Serb frontiersmen and Croatian feudalists.

While relations between the Croatian feudal society and the Serb frontiersmen were aggravated to the boiling point, relations between the frontiersmen of Orthodox and Catholic religions were as a rule correct. The favourable social and even economic situation of the Serb frontiersmen acted stimulatively upon certain categories of bonded peasants of Catholic faith. Burdened by numerous taxes, they rebelled wanting to be equalised socially with the rights of the frontiersmen. There were cases where protesting against feudal encumbrances, homesteaders of Catholic and Orthodox religion acted in solidarity. At any rate, during the feudalist society, the antagonism of the upper classes, the so-called Croatian political people, was not transferred to the subjected and disenfranchised portion of the Croatian people, to the broad masses. This is a fact of particular significance and it must be taken into account when discussing the development of genocidal ideas against the Serbs in Croatia.

Examining the influence of the past times and past events upon subsequent developments, historian is bound to note certain analogies concerning the social and political development of the Croatian people and their attitude to the Serbs, particularly those in Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia, but also in Bosnia and Hercegovina. It is well known that many of the Habsburg rulers, particularly Maria Theresia and Francis Joseph II, spent an enormous amount of energy to create out of a multi-lingual, multi-national and multi-state community, through various reforms, by hook or by crook, a great and unified Austrian state in which the Germans would be the masters and where everyone would be speaking German.

Such attempts by the Habsburgs and Austrian Germans met with a violent opposition from all non-Germanic peoples. Resistance was led by the well organised and nationally conscious Hungarians. By opposing the Habsburgs and the Germans of Austria, the Hungarians had created a movement with clear national and political ideas. Resisting germanization and fighting against the melting of Hungary into a unified German empire, Hungarians set up as the main target of their national policy the building of a great and ethnically unified Hungarian state, which would extend from the Carpathians to the Adriatic. So the goal intended to be achieved by the Habsburgs and Austrian Germans had given rise to a Hungarian movement, which within Hungary had the same aims as those within the monarchy, except that the former were bound to the interests of the Germans and germanization, and the latter to those of the Hungarians and magyarization.

Both the pro-German and pro-Hungarian endeavours were long enduring processes. They extended over the entire two centuries, and even when they formally vanished from the political scene, their ideas remained and were transformed, in one way or another, into new political ventures. This is necessary to point out because the process of forcible germanization was not ended on account of basically similar, both in methods and goals, forcible magyarization. Just as the Hungarians had stood up against germanization, so the Croats opposed magyarization. Embodied in the Illyrian movement, which was entirely subordinated to the Croatian political and national interests, the Croatian resistance ended following the defeat of the Hungarian revolution of 1848-49. However, the chain reaction, begun with forcible germanization followed by magyarization, from the early 1860s continued with the forcible croatization of the Serbs, which, with occasional ups and downs, has endured to this day.