(; sometimes also abbreviated ZDS) was a salute used during World War II by the Ustaše movement in the Independent State of Croatia, where its use was mandatory. It was the Ustaše equivalent of the fascist salute or the Nazi salute.
Its status in Croatia has been a topic of political controversy, however, involving a more recent usage pattern during the Croatian War of Independence. The use of the slogan in the country is generally considered unacceptable, has been condemned by the leadership of the country and is generally associated with far-right politics. It has not been prosecuted consistently though the Croatian courts have generally tended to ban it through more general statute. In Austria, symbols including the slogan were likewise used by extremists and eventually banned.
Usage during World War II
During World War II, the Ustaša, a movement of radical Croatian nationalists and fascists, which ruled the Axis puppet state Independent State of Croatia (1941–45), created after the Invasion of Yugoslavia, and conducted genocidal campaigns against Serbs, Jews and Romani people. The salute "" was immediately instituted as a new, revolutionary salute to be used in official correspondence and everyday life. On 10 April 1941, Slavko Kvaternik, designated commander-in-chief of the State's Armed Forces, and deputy of state leader (Poglavnik) Ante Pavelić proclaimed the establishment of the state on Radio Zagreb, and ended the statement with (God and the Croats! For the homeland prepared!)
In October 1941, state minister of education and culture Mile Budak issued strict rules regarding the mandatory usage of the salute. In July 1941, Ustaša commissar for Sarajevo, Jure Francetić, issued a circular to state authorities on the importance of using the Ustaša greeting. As British historian Rory Yeomans notes, the Ustaša authorities were disappointed with the low acceptance of the salute among the population, even in the areas where the new regime enjoyed support. State officials and the government-controlled press constantly complained about the lack of the usage of the new salute, and they threatened with sanctions and reprimanded those who did not use it.
In 1944, newspapers admonished the readers that "in the Independent State of Croatia there exists only one greeting: For the homeland – prepared!" According to Yeomans, Ustaša movement saw the usage of the new greeting as "not only the question of ideological purity, but also the national pride." Ustaša official Mijo Bzik furiously attacked all other greetings as foreign, servile and slavish. All official government and military reports and documents usually ended with "" Ante Pavelić used the salute to end all of his private correspondence, even after the war ended, in exile (1945–56).
As a part of their new cultural and language policy, the government took an effort to replace "hello" when answering the phone with "prepared" (though, somewhat ironically, the former is and was used in Germany of which NDH was an ally). State Intelligence and Propaganda Bureau (DIPU) wanted to assess how many people used the salute by calling them randomly on the phone and recording whether they answered with "hello" or "prepared". Some of those who did not answer with "prepared" had their telephones confiscated. During this time, the salute was used in various ways, for example as ""Izvještaj Župske redarstvene oblasti u Sarajevu od 2 oktobra 1943 god. o situaciji na području Župe, Zbornik NOR-a. tom IV – Borbe u Bosni i Hercegovini – knjiga 18 – oktobar 1943., page 452 (For Poglavnik and homeland ready) and in form of a question and answer: "" ("For homeland?! – Prepared!", "For whom?! For Poglavnik!"). There was also usage of ("For God and Our Poglavnik – Always Prepared!") on various NDH flags.
Usage during the Yugoslav Wars
The salute was used in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Croatian War of Independence and Bosnian War by the Croatian Defence Forces (, HOS), the paramilitary arm of the right-wing Croatian Party of Rights. They emulated Ustaša forces and used their iconography,"Hrvoje Klasić: Napokon se Anto Prkačin i ja u nečemu slažemo" , N1, 4 September 2107"Izdali su Francetića kao što je Juda izdao Isusa" , N1, 14 September 2017 and adopted Za dom spremni as their official salute and included it in their logo.
While it's clear that the leadership of this group intentionally referenced the Ustaše when they chose these symbols, there is some question as to the extent to which all the group members comprehended their actual meaning at the time. The remembrance of the story of HOS became part of the culture of memory of the war in Croatia.
Croatian singer Thompson used the salute at the beginning of his wartime song Bojna Čavoglave, and it was first included in the song in 1991, according to his lawyers in a later court case.
Usage in Croatia after the war
The chant is sometimes used by nationalist football fans in Croatia, with publicized examples from 2008, 2013, 2015, 2016.Goran Penić: S OSJEČKIH TRIBINA SE ORILO 'ZA DOM SPREMNI' I 'AJMO, USTAŠE' Vlada RH osudila sramotna skandiranja , Jutarnji.hr, 24 March 2016. In 2008, the chant was often heard among fans in the concerts of Thompson. The use of the salute in the Thompson song had previously subsided, until a 2009 concert when the singer told the crowd that he would intentionally use the salute as he had done in 1991. Sociologist Renato Matić noted in 2015 how the most common users of the slogan are those who weren't even born during the war and didn't learn anything about it in school, and who do it as a way to annoy the authorities without awareness of what it actually means.
The fascist nature of the salute has been discussed in a variety of public statements in Croatian mainstream press, such as those by human rights activist Ivan Zvonimir Čičak in 2013, historian Hrvoje Klasić and sociologist in 2015, historians Tvrtko Jakovina and in 2017, historian Ivo Goldstein in 2019, Croatian Helsinki Committee in 2021.
In 2013, Croatian international football player Josip Šimunić led the chant four times with the crowd in Zagreb after Croatia beat Iceland to qualify for the 2014 World Cup finals. He was subsequently banned for ten matches and fined by FIFA, which barred him from participating in the 2014 World Cup finals. Šimunić denied supporting "any form of intolerance or bigotry."
In August 2015, a number of conservative and right-wing public figures and Catholic clergy members signed a petition and an open letter to the President of Croatia Grabar-Kitarović and to the chairman of Croatian Democratic Union Tomislav Karamarko, calling for the introduction of the salute as the official salute of the Armed Forces of Croatia. The list of signers included most notably Sisak bishop Vlado Košić and auxiliary bishop of Zagreb Valentin Pozaić, and in turn Joe Šimunić, Zvonimir Šeparović, Nikola Štedul, Velimir Bujanec and others. It was publicly rejected by the Office of the President as unserious, unacceptable and akin to a provocation. In response, writer and politician Ivan Aralica agreed that the salute should not be promoted, but did say it should instead be reclaimed from its strict association with the Ustaše, naming the example of the Croatian kuna which was 'de-Ustaše-ized' from the Independent State of Croatia kuna.
Thompson also referenced the salute in the song "" (also known as ) in 2015.
In June 2016 Elvis Duspara, a Catholic blogger and columnist, self-published a book titled () in Zagreb, focusing on whitewashing the salute and claiming that "this salute is in the DNA of every Croat." Croatian mathematician and academic, controversial far-right writer Josip Pečarić, self-published a similar book in 2017 titled (). Its presentation on public premises was rejected by Tisno local authorities.
In November 2016 in the village of Jasenovac, a plaque commemorating members of Croatian Defence Forces killed in action 1991–92 was unveiled, containing the HOS emblem with the salute . This caused an outrage because of the nearby well-known Jasenovac Memorial Area, for over 80,000 ethnic minorities, resistance fighters and political opponents of Ustaša regime that perished there between 1941 and 1945. Jewish, Serb, Roma, and WWII veteran organisations as well as opposition parties boycotted the government-led annual commemoration in April 2017, protesting the fact that Croatian government has not removed the inscription. The emblem itself received limited support in public discussions, while the idea that the commemorating plaque could be made appropriate despite the unacceptable emblem was supported by historian Ante Nazor. The plaque was finally removed 10 months later, in September 2017, to be placed in nearby Novska. The government called it 'unacceptable' but 'wanted to resolve the divisive problem through dialogue and with respect for those who died in the 1990s war'.
The HOS emblem on war flags was included in the 2015 military parade organized by the Croatian Ministry of Defence, a topic of a later political dispute between the then-Prime Minister Zoran Milanović and the Croatian Democratic Union. The HOS emblem with the salute was also painted in a graffiti mural in Mokošica, a neighbourhood of Dubrovnik, after it was approved by the mayor Mato Franković in 2017.
Croatian computer scientist Filip Rodik analyzed the prevalence of the salute among Facebook comments on right-wing or conservative news portals and Facebook profiles between 2012 and 2017. Rodik found that out of 4.5 million comments, 33,000 comments used the salute in the affirmative manner. More than 10,000 individual users left at least one message/comment including "" Rodik also noted an increase in the frequency and spread of its usage: in 2014 1,700 individual users used it at least once, in 2015 they numbered 3,400, while in 2016 the number stood at 4,700. The Serb National Council of Croatia in its report on anti-Serb sentiment in 2017 reported that the salute was used 11,309 times in the comment sections of the 4 far-right Facebook profiles.
A Croatian political study published in early 2019, using empirical research testing public attitudes towards contentious political symbols, found that in Croatian society "...from 2016 to 2018 the proclivity to ban the local fascist slogan For the Homeland Ready significantly increased to 50%, as a sign of growing criticism and aversion. (...) Nevertheless, when we move to [discussion on] recent violent history [referencing the breakup of Yugoslavia], relative majority of 47% of citizens advocates preservation of the Homeland War monuments that contain the fascist slogan For the Homeland Ready."
The authors further opined "when this slogan is used as a part of commemoration of the soldiers who fought in the Homeland War, it is impossible to separate the positive value of patriotic struggle for Croatia's independence from revisionist acceptance of the legacy of fascist NDH and the persecution of the Serbian minority as a legitimate political goal."
In 2019, Croatian historian Miljenko Hajdarović noted the pro-Ustaše fantasies of the HOS leadership during the war, esp. using the salute, and how the memory of the war in Croatia in turn gets politicized to promote various false equivalences in historical references.
In 2024, the then mayor of Vukovar, Ivan Penava from the political party Homeland Movement, has defended the usage of , saying that "whoever is offended by that slogan should not be visiting Vukovar."
In 2025, the chant of this salute at the largest Thompson concert to date held at the Zagreb Hippodrome caused the public ombudsman of Croatia to issue a statement condemning the act, calling it unacceptable and illegal.