Society of Decorated Croat Warriors 1914-1918. An addition to the research on the attitude of the Independent State of Croatia to the First World War

Abstract

In this article, the author tried to determine the attitude of the Independent State of Croatia towards the First World War on the example of the activities of the military-veteran Society of Decorated Croatian Warriors 1914-1918. He previously analyzed the attitude towards this war of Croatian nationalist circles in the interwar period and concluded that this war in that period was not part of the political imaginary of these circles. However, for the first time after the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia and its entry into the Second World War on the side of its allies, this war took a prominent place in the Croatian public space. The Croatian regime began to create a cult of the Croatian warrior in order to mobilize and delight the Croatian people to overcome the war effort, and for this purpose, among other things, reached for the heritage of the First World War. In this context, the Society of Decorated Warriors founded as part of a promotional campaign to gather Croatian volunteers for the Eastern Battlefield. As the war progressed and new Croatian victims multiplied, the heritage of the First World War in Croatian public space began to fade, and instead the cult of the Croatian warrior, hero and martyr in the Second World War began to rise.

The Society of Decorated Warriors, which was connected with the fate of the Eastern battlefield, began to sink into anonymity with the defeat of German-Croatian troops on that battlefield at the end of 1942.