The Contribution of Women to Peace and Reconciliation

a common state and the creation of the unity and understanding be -
tween all southern Slavs. This opportunity was initially missed. There
was a lack of the essential prerequisites for the success of peaceful cohabitation,
the knowledge and experiences of democratic political culture.
That was no different from other European states which were also
led into war at this time by nationalists.
The Second World War
When the Yugoslav government in 1941 signed on to the Tripartite Pact
with Italy, Germany and Japan, memories of their heavy losses in the
First World War were still fresh in the minds of many Serbs. The pro-
British officers’ corps staged a coup d’état against that move, whereupon
Hitler ordered the bombing of Belgrade and the smashing of
Yugoslavia. Young King Peter fled to Great Britain, where he formed a
Yugoslav government in exile. Since the leaderless Yugoslav army put
up no resistance to the German invaders, the state collapsed within a
few days.
For Hitler, Yugoslavia was initially of no great importance. To save forces
for the invasion of the Soviet Union, he decided upon a “divide et impera”
(divide and rule) strategy. The acting chair of the Croatian Peasants’
Party was advised to proclaim Croatia’s secession from the
Yugoslav state. He refused, in the hope of preventing war within Yugoslavia.
However, Ante Pavelic Pavelić who, in exile in Rome, had by this time become
a fervent supporter of Italian fascism and German Nazism, was
happy to assume this task. The “Independent State of Croatia” was proclaimed
under the protection of German tanks in Zagreb on April 10,
1941, a week before the surrender of the Yugoslav army. This state,
which also included Bosnia-Herzegovina, was never recognized internationally,
and its territory was always occupied by Italian and German
troops. The Germans ordered Pavelić
Paveli to exterminate the Jews and the
Gypsies. He was praised in writing by Hitler for having already com -
pleted this task by 1943. Pavelić Pavelic had to hand over the Dalmatian coastal
region to Mussolini, which caused great indignation in Croatia, and led
to massive participation by the population in the resistance movement,
which recruited some 250,000 combatants. The Ustaša, a relatively
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