Arhivski vjesnik, Vol. 61 No. 1, 2018.
Professional paper
About the Department X of the Main Directorate for Public Order and Safety of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Independent State of Croatia
Nikica Barić
orcid.org/0000-0003-2118-0736
; Croatian Institute of History, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
The paper contains transcripts of several documents pertaining to the
establishment and activities of the Department X. The Department was established in late 1942 within the Main Directorate for Public Order and Safety of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH). The task of the Department X was to gather intelligence information about Chetnik units and to establish contacts and cooperation with them. But the Department X also had a task to gather information about the
Partisan movement. After the proclamation of the NDH, headed by the Ustasha regime, it initiated a campaign of state terror against the Serb population. The NDH labelled this population “Greek-Eastern” and later “Orthodox”. This terror led to the uprising of Serbs that gradually developed into two mutually opposed movements – Chetniks, loyal to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and Partisans led by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. The struggle between royalists and communists led Chetniks into cooperation with the Axis powers. During mid-1942 some
Chetnik detachments operating in Bosnia made ceasefire agreements with the NDH authorities. The NDH did not give up from crushing the uprising by force, but along with negotiations with Chetniks it also initiated some other measures whose aim was to lessen the animosity and distrust of the Orthodox population toward the regime. Despite all this, the NDH regime was weak and it ultimately could not restore order neither with military force, nor with measures of peaceful pacification. The Department X duty was to take complete control and leadership over the already established contacts with Chetniks, as well as to investigate the possibility of further cooperation with them. Concerning the transcribed documents of the Department X in the paper they show how it commenced with its activities but they also contain analysis of the Department X about the causes that led to the appearance of the Chetnik (and the Partisan) movement on the NDH territory. The analysis is interesting because the Department X (in)directly concluded that the NDH regime itself, with its policy of terror against Serbs in 1941, bears the main responsibility for the uprising. Therefore, at least some elements in the higher NDH administration were aware that the regime’s policy of state terror against the Serb population was ultimately counterproductive because it led to a large scale uprising of the Serb population. But, as mentioned, when the
Department X reached such conclusion it was too late to rectify the consequences of the NDH policy during 1941. It should also be noted that analyses of the Department X were top secret documents intended only for the highest NDH officials.
Keywords
Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska); Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Independent State of Croatia (Ministarstvo unutarnjih poslova NDH); Main Directorate for Public Order and Safety (Glavno ravnateljstvo za javni red i sigurnost); Department X.
Hrčak ID:
216964
URI
Publication date:
14.9.2018.
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