BiteNibbleChomp wrote:CroCop96 wrote:Croatians were not independent for 900 years, since their kingdom, and so everybody welcomed the ustaše, but when they ceded the Croatian coast to Italy, people were not that happy anymore!
Was it that long? I thought Croatia still existed in the 1400s until they were conquered by the Ottomans?
- BNC
EDIT: This is what happens when you ask a Croatian whether his nation was conquered by the Ottomans... an essay
One note: I double checked all numbers, some might seem extreme.
We were never fully conquered by the Ottomans! You insulted my national pride now
let me explain...
We existed, but not fully independent... After our last king died in battle against the Hungarians, we signed a treaty of personal union with them. So, we kept our administration, taxes, nobles' ''parliament'', even our money mint and the position of ban (viceroy), but the overall ruler was the Hungarian king, also crowned as the king of Croatia.
Nevermind that, we defended Europe from the Turks from 1433 to 1593!
They did conquer half of our territory and islamicized it. That territory is nowadays Bosnia and Herzegovina. Before the Turks, it was a mostly Croatian region, but in 1956 the communists have invented the ''Bosniaks'' as a separate nation. Oh well, that's politics now.
Anyway, the Turks managed to penetrate our defenses couple of times and even lay siege to Vienna, but they were defeated every time.
In 1526, the last Hungarian king died and our nobles elected the Austrians to rule us (most of our historians are proud because ''we chose our own ruler'', I would have been proud if we choose one of our own nobles...)
So now we were part of a multi-national Austrian-Czech-Hungarian-Croatian-Slovak Ottoman-ass-kicking kingdom called the Habsburg Monarchy (after the ruling Austrian house), and the big boss was Austria. We still had some autonomy.
In 1566, the ''Croatian Thermopilae'' happened. 2 300 - 3 000 defenders, mostly Croatians, under the leadership of heroic duke Nikola Šubić-Zrinski (''the Croatian Leonidas''), held the fortified town of Siget (Szeget, in Hungary) for a month against more than 100 000 (low estimate, high is 300 000) Turks, armed with 300 cannons, led by none other than the famous sultan Suleyman the Magnificent! This was his sixth campaign against us, and he was intent to capture Vienna. Siget was in his way.
In short, the Turks lost 20 000 - 30 000 soldiers due to Croatian surprise cavalry attacks, while storming the walls, and because of illness. Even the great sultan perished (not in battle; naturally) while besieging the city! The Turks finally managed to set the town ablaze and the fire was so widespread that the defenders could not extinguish it. Then duke Šubić led the surviving defenders out of the town into a final charge against the Turks! Imagine the balls of that man. All but 4 defenders died. The Turks, having lost their leader to illness, retreated! Just one of the times we saved Europe (Suleyman was really intent on capturing Vienna this time!)...
Then the Turks got arrogant again, and in 1592-1593 launched another, much smaller campaign. This time, they assaulted the fortified city of Sisak. Now, Sisak was not a mere town with several keeps like Szeget, but a true city within a hexagonal fortress, so it serves as a testament to Turk military genius. Of course, it was surrounded by rivers and marshland at the time... So, 12 000 Turks layed siege against 300-800 defenders. 5-6000 Croatians, Austrians and Slovenians quickly assembled and marched towards Sisak, attacked the Turks, who then counterattacked them and crossed completely on our side of the river. Meanwhile, the brave defenders sallied forth and cut off the Turkish escape route (the only bridge in the area), and so the Turks were between our army, the fortress, and the defenders, trapped on our side of the river. After a couple of musket volleys, they started to jump in the river and try to swim to the other side. Many drowned, including their duke (pasha) and 12 other nobles (beys)... The battle was a great victory for us and it was greeted in all of christian Europe. The pope Clemens VII sent a letter of thanks to our army, while the Spanish king Felipe II decorated our viceroy and commander of our detachment, ban Erdody. The Turks were silent for a couple of decades.
Now that the Eastern border was peaceful, in 17th century, the Austrians waged war across Europe (the Thirty Years War etc.). Croatian nobles were not too happy because they wanted to return the still-occupied Croatian territories of Bosnia. And so two of our most prominent nobles (one was the great grandson of Šubić, the defender of Siget) plotted against the king and asked for help the French, Poles, Venice, and even the Turks (?!). Of course, they were executed for treason, and now Croatia was in a pretty bad position... their families held the great majority of our land, and now it was divided and given to foreign nobles (mostly Hungarian)...
In 1683, the Turks launched their final campaign against Vienna and layed siege to it, but our Polish brothers saved the city. And then, the Turks turned tail and all of us started running behind them and kicking them in the ass - Croats, Hungarians, Austrians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenians! Some of our troops got almost to Greece! We liberated most of our present day territory, as well as Bosnia. However, the French attacked Austria, and our armies fell back, and Turks reoccupied much of Serbia and Bosnia again...
After these two centuries of warfare ended, the Hungarians tried to hungarize, and Austrians tried to germanize us. From 18th century to the end of Austria-Hungary in 1918... So we had even less rights and autonomy...
Then we formed a nation with Slovenia and the Serb minority encompassing almost all of historical Croatian regions (Bosnia included, but with parts of the coast under Italy!) and called it ''the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs''. However, it had no allies, and the Italians were pretty horny on capturing half of our country, and on the other side the Serbs, also the victors of WW1, proposed a Southern-Slav state under the ideals of ''Yugoslavia'', with their king as a ruler... we preferred the lesser evil and after 2 months united with them. The country changed name into ''the State of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes'' (note the Serbs in the first place now
), and then immediately into ''Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes'', and in 1929 to Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The Serbs started a politics of terror towards our intellectuals, murdering them on the street. They mortally wounded our people's champion Stjepan Radić and killed several others in the Parliament in Belgrade in 1928. He died after a couple of months. It was then that Ante Pavelić, a lawyer and also member of the Parliament and president of the Croatian Party of Rights (a right-wing, conservative, patriotic party) went into exile and formed the later-notorious ustaše, while Josip Broz-Tito, a man of mixed Croatian-Slovenian origin, became the ''Chief Secretary'' (president) of the forbidden Yugoslav communist party and went to jail for five years. So, everybody including non-royalist Serbs, which means a great majority of the people of Yugoslavia, did not like the Serb king and his rule. The ustaše and the Macedonian ''VMRO'', a similar organisation, managed to assassinate the Serbian king in Marseille in 1934. It did not do much good for the people back home...
Only one fact is enough to see the injustice and Serb dominance in Royal Yugoslavia: At one point, out of around 150 generals, ALL BUT FOUR (4) WERE SERBS!
Then came 1941 and the German invasion, all units except those manned completely by royalist Serbs layed down their arms or just did not shoot - some were even not disarmed by the Germans when they started flying Croatian flags. Army officers and town mayors proclaimed an independent Croatia in several different cities and towns on different dates! It was a euphoria. Soon after, however, after the mild democrats under Vladko Maček (a total pussy of a man) refused to come to power, the Germans installed the right-wing ustaše... and then they started implementing racial laws and anti-communist laws. Many of our intellectuals as well as common folk were killed.
Many Serb royalist units kept resisting the occupation, and now called themselves the ''četniks''. They started pillaging villages everywhere but in Serbia. The Times magazine even applauded them for being ''the first guerrilla in occupied Europe''. However, the četniks are actually the bad guys, as they murdered innocent civilians, even their own (Serb). And so the ustaše implemented anti-Serb policies as well, both as a revenge for the terror 1918-1941 and for recent pillaging. However, it confuses me a lot because modern day Serb propaganda says that 700 000 (yes, 700 000) Serbs were murdered only by the ustaše - which is a ridiculously high number - however, I have read a lot about a couple of Serb GENERALS in the army of the Croatian ustašas, as well as watched a Croatian propaganda video from 1942 where the ''Poglavnik'' (Fuhrer) Ante Pavelić hails the establishment of the Croatian Orthodox Church (!!!) (Serbs are Orthodox Christians). I've also read and seen photographic evidence that 13 Croatian generals were Serbs, and 23 Jews (!), which is contrary to the fact that Ustaše did have several prison/labour/concentration camps and many people died. Unfortunately, poor Jews and Gypsies were killed due to German influence... as well as politically incorrect Croats and Serbs. I am ashamed of that part of our history. However, the communists took over those camps and killed many political enemies as well.
The truth is most certainly in the middle - all sides killed innocent people.
And so you had the Croatian ustaše and Homeguard on the side of Independent State of Croatia, all-national Partisans, the Slovenian Homeguard in the Slovenian annexed zone (half to Italy, half to Germany), četnik factions in coastal Croatia helped by the Italians, četniks in Bosnia, Germans, Italians...
Royal Government in London, for whom the četniks nominally fought, although they cooperated with the Germans, still tried to negotiate with the Partisan Government. However, the Allies now supported the partisans as they knew the četniks are actually the bad guys.
In 1944, after the royal prime minister signed an agreement about post-war democratic elections (which never happened and the communists took power, of course
), most četniks officially changed flags and joined the partisan forces!
As I said, I am not biased, as one of my great-grandfathers was a Partisan officer, and the other a Homeguard officer. Most of modern Croatians are either for the Partisans or the Ustaše, but I watch without bias and prejudice and see positive and negative sides of both. I am proud, however, that no one in my family was neither a communist nor an ustaša
(they were ''just'' partisans or homeguardsmen, while others were too young, died in WW1, or didn't participate in WW2 at all).
The partisans were a good idea, declaratively accepting everyone, but on the top they were actually led by communists, who are as bad as the nazis, plus, the transfer of tens of thousands of ex-četniks to partisans in 1944 proved catastrophic in the long run - I am talking about the last 70 years from that day to this day.
And so the Allies won, the Partisans slaughtered 30 000 - 500 000 (yes, again, propaganda and different sources) ustašas, remaining četniks, and unfortunately many regular soldiers and civilians from Germany, Slovenia and Croatia.
So Croatia got back its old coast from Italy completely, but lost Bosnia. The ''Bosniak'' nation was invented in 1956 - beforehand, these people, of mostly ancient Croatian origin, declared either as Croats or as Yugoslavs. From 1945 to 1956, they were called ''Muslims'' with a capital M as a NATION, not a religion. And so Croats went from right-wing dictature to left-wing dictature, again gained some and lost some terrritory. Essentially, that was it. Life in Yugoslavia was generally ok from 1950's to 1980, the nations were fairly equal, when the aforementioned dictator Tito died. Of course, some still went to prison for ''nationalism'', all nationalities included.
We now come to those tens of thousands of Serb soldiers who supported the king and simply transferred to the Partisans in 1944-45. These people were secretly still supporting the idea of Greater Serbia. After Tito died, Serb nationalists got to chief positions, and Serbia slowly started to assert dominance like in the old Yugoslavia... Then the war happened in 1991, the Yugoslav People's Army attacked first Slovenia, then Croatia, then Bosnia. Most of those nationalities left the army, and so it became the Serbian army. In 1992 it removed the ''People's'' from its name. It supported the Serb rebels who occupied 25%-33% of Croatia as well as 30-50% of Bosnia. In 1995, Croatia and Bosnia launched large counteroffensives and liberated themselves.
So yes, we didn't really have our country since 1102, since the ustaša Independent State of Croatia was a nazi puppet state...
Holy shit, I've been writing this for an hour. Just wanted to share some of my interesting history with you guys
yeah, I'll definitely make that WW2 Balkan Front campaign!
