The Austrian national
socialists who were implicated in the murder of the Austrian prime
minister, Dolfus, in July 1934, escaped to Yugoslavia and resided
openly (though disarmed by the Yugoslav police) in army barracks in
Varadzin. In 1935, a fascist movement was established in Serbia
("Zbor"). Fascism and Nazism were not without their attractions to
Serbs and Croats alike.
This is the great theatre of the absurd called the Balkans. Pavelic
and the Ustasha were actually closer in geopolitical orientation to
the Yugoslav monarchy (until Paul was deposed by the Yugoslav army)
- than to Mussolini's fascist Italy. They were worried by the
latter's tendency to block German designs on Austria. In a region
known for its indefinite historical memory and lack of statute of
limitations, they recalled how the Italians treated Montenegrin
refugees in 1923 (returning them to Yugoslavia in cattle cars). They
wondered if the precedent might be repeated, this time with Croat
passengers. The Italians did, after all, arrest "Longin"
(Kvaternik), Jelic and others in Torino following the assassination
of the King. In the paranoid twilight zone of European Big Power
sponsored terrorism, these half hearted actions and dim memories
were enough to cast a pall of suspicion and of guilt over the
Italian regime.
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