Original scientific paper
Establishment of the Župa police jurisdictions in the Independent State of Croatia and activities of the Higher Police Committee in Srijem in 1942
Davor Kovačić
Abstract
With the foundation of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) in April 1941, there also came to the establishment of organized police forces. Simultaneously, the so-called Direction for Public Order and Security (RAVSIGUR) was founded as a standard form of police force with limited rights, and the so-called Ustasha Surveillance Service (UNS) as the secret state police, structured on analogy to the German Gestapo. This went hand in hand with the establishment of lower-rank police bodies. Due to some unsettled circumstances, a Higher Police Committee was founded in Srijem in 1942, which was headed by Viktor Tomić.
After the emergence of RAVSIGUR and UNS, which were both headed by the same person (Dido Kvaternik), any police operations, whether handled by the protection or župa (county) police forces, were under the control of the Office I of UNS. This gave a guarantee of a functional unity and ensured that there be no adverse effects in case of divergencies in practice, which were theoretically conceivable; all top management was in a single man's hands. In practice there came to overlaps in jurisdictions only in those places where there were protection forces; in Zagreb, Sarajevo and for a short while in Banja Luka. Namely, the župa police jurisdictions as well as the police jurisdiction of the city of Zagreb also comprised within their structure separate political divisions with, at least in theory, the same objectives as the protection forces. Since the very inception of NDH, all through 1943 there were in NDH two police force organizations, i.e. RAVSIGUR with limited rights and authority and the UNS with unlimited authorities as a secret state police, built on the model of the Gestapo. At the very beginning the entire UNS apparatus was filled by completely inexperienced and for the most part unprofessional staff, who had only come to acquire the regulatory and intelligence-service competencies required as they gained more and more experience. This explains at least the initial disorientation and errors which could not have been avoided. This also resulted in frequent shifts in work methods. The organization itself developed at a gradual pace. Taking all that into consideration, UNS achieved significant results, and such results could only have been achieved thanks to a complete reliance in the work of most employees. Due to some unsettled matters in Srijem, i.e. due to the strengthening of the Partisan resistance movement, in 1942 E. Dido Kvaternik prompted, and Pavelić ordered, the foundation of the Higher Police Committee.
Keywords
Independent State of Croatia (NDH); police force; župa police jurisdictions; district jurisdictions; Higher Police Committee
Hrčak ID:
8048
URI
Publication date:
30.9.2005.
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