Ante Pavelić

Ustaše Fascists and Nazis Counter-revolutionary forces 1889–1959 ○ Complications of gunshot wounds

Founder of the Ustaše and Poglavnik of the Independent State of Croatia who led the genocide of Serbs, Jews and Roma

Born in Bradina in Herzegovina, he became a lawyer and a Croatian Party of Rights politician in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia demanding an independent Croatia. Exiled after the royal dictatorship of 1929, he founded in Fascist Italy the Ustaše, which made terror part of its programme, and with the IMRO organised the assassination of King Alexander in 1934. In 1941 he became Poglavnik of the Independent State of Croatia, a puppet state created by Germany and Italy, and presided over the mass killing of Serbs, Jews and Roma in camps and the forced conversion of Orthodox Christians. He fled to Argentina after the war and died in Madrid in 1959 from complications of wounds suffered in a 1957 assassination attempt.