Anti-Croat sentiment or Croatophobia () is discrimination or prejudice against Croats as an ethnic group, also consisting of negative feelings towards Croatia as a country. It refers to negative attitudes towards Croats and it has been historically a basis for the persecution and ethnic cleansing of ethnic Croats.
The most widely-known historical proponents of anti-Croat sentiment in the 19th- and 20th-century were the Hungarian Liberal party, Italian Fascist Party, Serbian nationalist Chetniks and Serbian Radical Party.
Serbian and Italian nationalism in the 19th century Some of the earliest tensions between the Croatian and Serbian people were documented in the mid-19th century, during the nation-building process. Serbian Prime Minister Ilija Garašanin's Načertanije (1844), initially a secret document, claimed lands that were inhabited by Bulgarians, Macedonians, Albanians, Montenegrins, Bosniaks, Hungarians, and Croats as a part of Serbia. Garašanin's plan also included methods of spreading Serbian influence in the claimed lands. He proposed ways to influence Croats, who Garašanin regarded as "Serbs of Catholic faith." In 1901, Serbian Orthodox bishop Nikodim Milaš published the influential work Pravoslavna Dalmacija, in which he, among others, claimed that the Croatian historical lands and historical-sacral heritage were Serbian since the Early Middle Ages.
Vuk Karadžić and other early Slavists considered everyone speaking Shtokavian dialects to be ethnic Serbs. Hence, the literary and standard Croatian language and heritage, based on Shtokavian, was to be a part of the Serbian language, and all Shtokavian-speaking Croats were counted as "Catholic Serbs." Chakavian was considered by them to be the only original Croatian language, sometimes also Kajkavian which was theoretically related to the Slovenes, and sometimes none dialect (grouping Chakavian with Shtokavian as the Serbian language), reducing Croats to merely a toponym. Croatia was at the time a kingdom in the Habsburg monarchy, with Dalmatia and Istria being separate Habsburg crown lands.In the Name of Independence: The Unmaking of Tito's Yugoslavia, Branko Belan, 2010, p. 82,83
After Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878 and Serbia gained its independence from the Ottoman Empire, Croatian and Serbian relations deteriorated as both sides had pretensions on Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 1902, there was a reprinted article written by the Serb Nikola Stojanović that was published in the publication of the Serb Independent Party from Zagreb titled Do istrage vaše ili naše (Till the Destruction, Ours or Yours). The article denied the existence of a Croat nation, and forecast the result of the "inevitable" Serbian-Croatian conflict.
During the 19th century, some Italian radical nationalists tried to promote the idea that the Croatian nation has no sound reason to exist: therefore the Slavic population on the east coast of the Adriatic Sea (Croats and Slovenes) should be Italianized, and the territory be included in Italy."Buying and Selling the Istrian Goat: Istrian Regionalism, Croatian Nationalism, and EU Enlargement", (book), John E. Ashbrook, 2008, Pg. 37
First Yugoslavia (1918–1941) A new state was established in late 1918. The Kingdom underwent a crucial change in 1921 to the dismay of Croatia's largest political party, the Croatian Peasant Party (Hrvatska seljačka stranka). The new constitution abolished historical/political entities, including Croatia and Slavonia, centralizing authority in the capital of Belgrade. Nikola Pašić believed that Yugoslavia should be as centralized as possible, creating a Greater Serbian national concept of concentrated power in the hands of Belgrade in place of distinct regional governments and identities."The Opposition", Time, 6 April 1925
During a Parliament session in 1928, Puniša Račić, a deputy of the Serbian Radical People's Party, shot at Croatian deputies, resulting in the killing of Pavle Radić and Đuro Basariček and the wounding of Ivan Pernar and Ivan Granđa. Stjepan Radić, a Croatian political champion at the time, was wounded and later succumbed to his wounds. These multiple murders caused the outrage of the Croatian population and ignited violent demonstrations, strikes, and armed conflicts throughout Croatian parts of the country.
In response to the shooting at the National Assembly, King Alexander abolished the parliamentary system and proclaimed a royal dictatorship. He imposed a new constitution aimed at removing all existing national identities and imposing "integral Yugoslavism". He also renamed the country from the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Political parties were banned and the royal dictatorship took on an increasingly harsh character. In 1931, the royal regime organized the assassination of Croatian scientist and intellectual Milan Šufflay on the streets of Zagreb. The assassination was condemned by globally renowned intellectuals such as Albert Einstein and Heinrich Mann.
World War II (1941–1945)
Fascist Italy
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 and 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:
This period of fascist Italianization included the banning of the Croatian language in administration and courts between 1923 and 1925, the Italianization of Croat first and last names in 1926,Regio decreto legge 10 Gennaio 1926, n. 17: Restituzione in forma italiana dei cognomi delle famiglie della provincia di TrentoMezulić, Hrvoje; R. Jelić (2005) Fascism, baptiser and scorcher (O Talijanskoj upravi u Istri i Dalmaciji 1918–1943.: nasilno potalijančivanje prezimena, imena i mjesta), Dom i svijet, Zagreb, and the dissolution of Croatian societies, financial co-operatives and banks. Hundreds of Croatian-speaking schools were closed by the state.
On 13 July 1920, Italian fascists attacked the Croatian National House in Pula, destroying property belonging to various Croatian societies and burning around 7,000 books written in the Croatian language. The incident was one of the first fascist book burnings in Europe.
Between February and April 1921, Croats in Istria became victims of Italian fascist terror during the period of fascist and anti-fascist violence in Italy. In response to the Proština rebellion, led by Croat Anti-fascists and local peasants, hundreds of Italian Squadrismo militia, Black Shirts, as well as members of the local army and police, attacked the Croat villages of Proština, Krnica, Marčana and Šegotići, in order to intimidate the Croat population. The fascists burned Šegotići completely to the ground, while houses in the other villages were also burned. 400 peasants were arrested and imprisoned in Pula, several peasants died after being beaten to death.
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."Le pulizie etniche in Istria e nei Balcani", Inoslav Bešker, retrieved 29. Feb. 2020
Following the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Italy occupied almost all of Dalmatia, as well as Gorski Kotar and the Italian government made stringent efforts to further Italianize the region. Italian occupying forces were accused of committing war crimes in order 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 tens of thousands Slavic citizens, such as Rab concentration camp and one on the island of Molat, where thousands died, including hundreds of children.
According to statistics collected through 1946 by the Commission for War Damages on the Territory of the People’s Republic of Croatia, Italian authorities with their collaborators killed 30,795 civilians (not including those killed in concentration camps and prisons) in Dalmatia, Istria, Gorski Kotar and the Croatian Littoral.
Nazi Germany
Nazi German racial theories towards the Croats were inconsistent and contradictory. On the one hand, the Nazis described the Croats officially as being "more Germanic than Slav", a notion propagated by Croatia's fascist dictator Ante Pavelić who imposed the view that the "Croatians were the descendants of the ancient Goths" who "had the Panslav idea forced upon them as something artificial".Rich, Norman (1974) Hitler's War Aims: the Establishment of the New Order. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. p.276-7.
However, the Nazi regime continued to classify Slavs as Untermensch, despite inclusion of Slavs such as Russians, Ukrainians, Czechs, Serbs, Bosnians and Croats in SS divisions.Davies, Norman (2008) Europe at War 1939–1945: No Simple Victory. Pan Macmillan. pp.167,209.
Furthermore, according to the book "Hitler's Table Talk", a collection of monologues by Adolf Hitler and conversations he had with close associates in the period from 1941 to 1944, Hitler mentioned that "Croats are desirable, from the ethnical point of view, and should be germanized. But there, however, were political reasons which completely preclude any such measures".
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.
Between 1941 and 1945, some 200,000 Croatian citizens of the NDH (including ethnic Croats as well as ethnic Serbs with Croatian nationality and Slovenes) were sent to Germany to work as a slave and forced labourers, mostly working in mining, agriculture and forestry. It is estimated that 153,000 of these labourers were said to have been "voluntarily" recruited, however in many instances this was not the case, as the workers that may have initially volunteered were forced to work longer hours and were paid less than their contracts had stipulated, they were also not allowed to return home after their yearly contract had ended, at which point their labour was no longer voluntary, but forced. Forced and slave labour were also conducted in Nazi concentration camps, such as in Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora.
From 1941 to 1945, 3.8% of the population of Croatia had been sent to the Reich to work, which was higher than the European average.
As in other parts of Yugoslavia, Nazi German forces committed several war crimes against Croat civilians in reprisal for the actions of the Yugoslav Partisans. Examples of such policies include the Massacre of villages under Kamešnica and the massacre in the village of Lipa, while others were deported to and killed in German concentration camps. At least 7,000 Croat civilians from the territory of the Independent State of Croatia were killed by Nazi German forces, in acts of terror or in concentration camps.
Serbian Chetniks
Regarding the realization of his Greater Serbian program Homogeneous Serbia, Stevan Moljević wrote in his letter to Dragiša Vasić in February 1942:Nikola Milovanović – DRAŽA MIHAILOVIĆ, chapter "SMERNICE POLITIČKOG PROGRAMA I CILJEVI RAVNOGORSKOG POKRETA", edition "Rad", Belgrade, 1984.