From left to right: Croatian Ustasha, Slovenian Domobran, Serbian Chetnik, SS gunner, Tito's Partisan
In what was the kingdom SHS happened terrible killings during WW2, even more atrocious than those that happened in average in that horrible and merciless war. I will not make parallels with the events that followed the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, or try to explain the new with the old, I just want to say that I consider men capable of wild acts, driven by hatred and spiral of revenge, which are perpetuated in endless feuds. The veneer and civilization is a thin skin that covers us, ready to fall apart when the policy that guides the masses, endorsed by complacent men of culture requires and justifies ruthless and inhumane actions. In SHS Kingdom there was an accumulation of internal illnesses and external causes that determined the succession of heinous crimes against humanity.
At the end of World War I the politically correct concept of self-determination of people, bad joined with willingness to reward the winner countries and to punish the loser ones, associated with a wrong assessment of what really were the peoples of Europe created the background for what it happened later in the Balkan region. Italy, which had considerable expansionist ambitions towards the Balkans financed and instructed military members of the Croatian right-wing organizations, although its expansionist ambitions were directed precisely towards that country, as did Bulgaria with the Macedonian VMRO organization. With the occupation by the German and the Italian army of the kingdom of SHS, this state was divided in military controlled areas by the two armies, was created the autonomous kingdom of Croatia, vast territories were annexed by Germany, Italy, and their allies: Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. What's more, Italy that already had conquered Albania, also annexed the neighboring Kosovo, which is also populated mostly, but not only, by Albanian populations. Yugoslavia was not perfectly divided into areas populated by defined limits, because in many areas the different populations were scattered patchy. In a felonious effort to standardize by population the areas that were not, happend terrible crimes. I speak not only of what did the Croats, that being an autonomous kingdom were the only relatively autonomous actor, Italy did the same in Slovenia in the annexed Ljubljana province.
Ljubljana province was populated patchy too, the coasts and cities were predominantly Italian, while the agricultural hinterland was quite whole Slavic. The Italian army performed ethnic cleansing of the province of Ljubljana, whole countries were depopulated, italian confined dissidents - interpreting this concept very broadly - in concentration camps, . These concentration camps were not death camps, but in the camp of Rab the death rate from disease and malnutrition was many more than those of German extermination camps, and as in those were interned also women, old people and children, confirming how wide was the concept of “dissident”.
The Serbs responded by organizing the Monarchic Chetniks, while the partisans of Tito were the only actual Yugoslavian organization in spirit, they were mostly communist, but not only, in Croatia several partisans were adherent of the conservative Croatian Peasant Party. During the war Chetniks become at first collaborators of the Italian, arousing the displeasure of Croatian and the disappointment of the German, later become allied of the Germans that changed their mind.
German enrolled two croatian waffen SS divisions, mostly composed by muslins under the aegis of the grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and an Albanian division, to fight the partisans.
At the end of the war, the Tito's partisans freed the Yougoslavia, and there was no mercy, nor escape for the Croatian Ustasha and for Slovenian Domobranci, while the Italian populations, and the German ones that had colonized for centuries the Istrian and Dalmatian coast and the Vojvodina region had to escape abroad as refugee.