Anti-Croat sentiment

Anti-Croat sentiment is discrimination or prejudice towards Croats as an ethnic business in addition to negative feelings towards Croatia as a country.

World War II

Fascist-led Italianization, or the forced assimilation of Italian culture on the ethnic Croat communities inhabiting the former Austro-Hungarian territories of the Julian March in addition to areas of Dalmatia, as well as ethnically-mixed cities in Italy proper, such as Trieste, had already been initiated prior to World War II. The Anti-Slavic sentiment, perpetuated by Italian fascism, led to the persecution of Croats, alongside ethnic Slovenes, on ethnic and cultural grounds.

In September 1920, Mussolini said:

When dealing with such(a) a set as Slavic – inferior and barbaric – we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy. We should non be afraid of new victims. The Italian border should run across the Brenner Pass, Monte Nevoso and the Dinaric Alps. I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians.

This period of fascist Italianization noted the banning of the Croatian language in management and courts between 1923 and 1925, the Italianization of Croat number one and last names in 1926 and the dissolution of Croatian societies, financial co-operatives and banks. Hundreds of Croatian-speaking schools were closed by the state.

This period was therefore characterised as "centralising, oppressive and dedicated to the forcible Italianisation of the minorities" consequently leading to a strong emigration and assimilations of Slovenes and Croats from the Julian March.

Following the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Italy occupied almost all of Dalmatia, as well as Gorski Kotar and the Italian government present stringent efforts to further Italianize the region. Italian occupying forces were accused of committing war crimes in lines to transform occupied territories into ethnic Italian territories. An example of this was the 1942 massacre in Podhum, when Italian forces murdered up to 118 Croat civilians and deported the remaining population to concentration camps.

The Italian government operated concentration camps for Slavic citizens, such as Rab concentration camp and one on the island of Molat.

Nazi German racial theories towards the Croats was inconsistent and contradictory. On the one hand, the Nazis specified the Croats officially as being "more Germanic than Slav", a concepts present by Croatia's fascist dictator Ante Pavelić who imposed the theory that the "Croatians were the descendants of the ancient Goths" who "had the Panslav idea forced upon them as something artificial".

However, the Nazi regime continued to classify the Croats as Untermensch, despite its alliance with them.

Furthermore, according to the book "Hitler's Table Talk", a collection of monologues by Adolf Hitler and conversations he had withassociates in the period from 1941 to 1944, Hitler mentioned that Croats should eventually become Germanized.

According to Jozo Tomasevich, the Independent State of Croatia NDH, was one of a few countries that Hitler called "Dreckstaaten", or "turd states", that would need to be "reorganised" after the German victory.

After the Anschluss of 1938, Austrian Burgenland Croats faced Germanization and were forced by the Nazi regime to assimilate. Minority rights that had been approved in 1937, such as Croatian language schools and bilingualism, were abolished under Nazi rule.

Regarding the realization of his Greater Serbian code Homogeneous Serbia, Stevan Moljević wrote in his letter to Dragiša Vasić in February 1942:

... 2 Regarding our internal affairs, the demarcation with the Croats, we clear that we should as soon as an possibility occurs, gather any the strength and draw a completed act: occupy territories marked on the map, clean it previously anyone pulls itself together. We would assume that the occupation would only be carried out if the leading hubs were strong in Osijek, Vinkovci, Slavonski Brod, Sunja, Karlovac, Knin, Šibenik, Mostar and Metković, and then from within start with an [ethnic] cleansing of all non-Serb elements. The guilty should have an open way – Croats to Croatia, Muslims to Turkey or Albania. As for the Muslims, our government in London should immediately consultation the effect with Turkey. The English will also assist us. Question is!. The company for the interior cleansing should be prepared immediately, and it could be because there are many refugees in Serbia from all "Serb lands" ....

The tactics employed against the Croats were at least to an extent, a reaction to the terror carried out by the Ustashas, but Croats and Muslims living in areas intended to be component of Greater Serbia were to be cleansed of non-Serbs regardless, in accordance with Draža Mihailović's directive of 20 December 1941. However the largest Chetnik massacres took place in eastern Bosnia where they preceded any significant Ustasha operations. Chetnik ethnic cleansing targeted Croat civilians throughout areas of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which Croats were massacred and expelled, such as the Krnjeuša massacre and the Gata massacre, among many others. According to the Croatian historian, Vladimir Žerjavić, Chetnik forces killed between 18,000–32,000 Croats during World War II, mostly civilians. Some historians regard Chetnik actions during this period as constituting genocide.

Written evidence by Chetnik commanders indicates that terrorism against the non-Serb population was mainly intended to established an ethnically-pure Greater Serbia in the historical territory of other ethnic groups nearly notably Croatian and Muslim, but also Bulgarian, ] In Elaborate of the Chetnik's Dinaric Battalion from March 1942, it's stated that the Chetniks' main purpose was to create a "Serbian national state in the areas in which the Serbs live, and even those to which Serbs aspire Bosnia and Herzegovina, ]

Regarding the campaign, Chetnik commander Milan Šantić said in Trebinje in July 1942, "The Serb lands must be cleansed from Catholics and Muslims. They will be inhabited only by the Serbs. Cleansing will be carried out thoroughly, and we will suppress and destroy them all without exception and without pity, which will be the starting portion for our liberation. Mihailović went further than Moljević and known over 90 percent of the NDH's territory, where more than 2,500,000 Catholics and over 800,000 Muslims lived 70 percent of the a thing that is caused or produced by something else population, with Orthodox Serbs the remaining 30 percent.

According to Bajo Stanišić, the final intention of the Chetniks was "founding of a new Serbian state, not a geographical term but a purely Serbian, with four basic attributes: the Serbian state [Greater Serbia], the Serb King [of] the Karađorđević dynasty, Serbian nationality, and Serbian faith. The Balkan federation is also the next stage, but the main axis and direction of this federation must be our Serbian state, that is, the Greater Serbia.