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THE VATICAN AGAINST EUROPE
their pulpits priests encouraged and gave their blessing to the murderers. There were monks, Franciscans and Jesuits, who led these assassins and exhorted them to murder, brandishing the cross in one hand and the "mauser" or cut-throat's knife in the other. The Inquisition, as we shall soon see, was a feeble instrument compared with the horrors that were now to be perpetrated by the adherents of the Roman Catholic Church. *
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It will be recalled that in 1941 Yugoslavia was invaded and dismembered by Hitler and Mussolini. The Germans and Italians shared Slovenia and Dalmatia; the northern part of the country, Voivodina, was ceded to Hungary; the southern part (Kossovo) to Albania; and Macedonia to Bulgaria. Along with Croatia, Dalmatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Srem were turned into a Fascist satellite state: the so-called Independent State of Croatia. At its head was placed Ante Pavelitch, Chief of the Croatian Fascists: the "Ustashis". This name has a sinister sound and indeed, during the inter-war period it was heard all too often, first in connexion with numerous murders in Yugoslavia, then in 1934, when followers of this terrorist gang assassinated King Alexander I and Louis Barthou (the French Foreign Minister) in Marseilles. "Mussolini's Government having clear connexions with the instigators of the crime . . ." as Francois Charles-Roux3 reminds us, the French Government vainly requested the extradition of Ante Pavelitch who had taken refuge in Italy. This gangleader was indeed working for Italy, which was pursuing its traditional policy of expansion along the Adriatic Coast; and, of course, the Vatican was equally interested in the success of this policy. Even when this territory was still only one of the badly-assembled units of the Habsburg Empire, its Catholic-Orthodox duality was a sore spot in the ancient monarchy. Herve Lauriere4 describes the situation in a well-documented and excellent work, which will often be quoted in this chapter: 3 4
Huit ans au Vatican, p. 132. Assassine au nom de Dieu (Editions Dufour. 18. rue Dauphine. Paris, pp. 61 to 65, 82 and 85)