The Teachers of Banal Croatia in the Turmoil of the Great War

Abstract

Very little has been written about the participation of Croatian teachers in World War I thus far, even when the general lack of research on this period of Croatian history is taken into account. There are many reasons for this, and one of them is certainly the fact that Croatian teachers invested their lives and other efforts and sacrifices in the side that lost the war, and which also represented a negation of the Yugoslav state created in 1918. Based on archival sources, literature, and newspapers, this article seeks to examine the role of teachers in the Kingdoms of Croatia and Slavonia during World War I, with special emphasis on the fate of teachers on the front and the various forms of persecution suffered by those teachers who actively expressed anti-state views or were seen as politically unreliable.