The gullible and self-delusional Cardinal Stepinac of Zagreb
wrote just before the Second World War erupted, in a curious
reversal of pan-Serbist beliefs: "If there were more freedom...
Serbia would be Catholic in twenty years. The most ideal thing would
be for the Serbs to return to the faith of their fathers. That is,
to bow the head before Christ's representative, the Holy Father.
Then we could at last breathe in this part of Europe, for Byzantium
has played a frightful role ... in connection with the Turks."
The same Turks that almost conquered Croatia and, met by fierce and
brave resistance of the latter, were confined to Bosnia for 200
years. The Croats came to regard themselves as the last line of
defence against an encroaching East - against the manifestations and
transmutations of Byzantium, of the Turks, of a vile mix of
Orthodoxy and Islam (though they collaborated with their Moslem
minority during the Ustashe regime). Besieged by this siege
mentality, the back to the literal wall, desperate and phobic, the
Croats developed the paranoia typical of all small nations encircled
by hostility and impending doom. It was impossible to reconcile
their centrifugal tendency in favour of a weak central state in a
federation of strong local entities - with the Serb propensity to
create a centralist and bureaucratic court.
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