Yugoslavia’s Hidden History: Partisan-Ustashi Collaboration in the World War II (1941−1945)
The aim of this article is to give a significant contribution to both Balkan and South Slavic historiography in clarification of the question of direct and indirect military-political cooperation between the Partisans of Corporal and Marshal Josip Broz Tito and the Ustashi leader (Poglavnik) Ante Pavelić on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia during the World War II (1941−1945) and to highlight the ideological and political roots and objectives of this cooperation. The article is mainly based on the primary archival documents housed in Belgrade, but never used by the official state's Titoist historiography, and on the testimonies of participants in historical events from the Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland (the so-called Chetniks) who were after 1945 in exile. 
Yugoslavia’s Hidden History: Partisan-Ustashi
Collaboration in the World War II (1941−1945)
Vladislav B. Sotirović
Mykolas Romeris University, Faculty of Politics and Management, Institute of Political Sciences, Vilnius, Lithuania
To cite this article:
Vladislav B. Sotirović. Yugoslavia’s Hidden History: Partisan-Ustashi Collaboration in the World War II (1941−1945). History Research.  
Vol. 3, No. 1, 2015, pp. 9-24. doi: 10.11648/j.history.20150301.12
Revolutionary winners in the  civil war, Tito's Partisans
(officially  called  by  themselves  as  the  People's
Liberation  Army  of  Yugoslavia)  and  the  Communist
Party  of  Yugoslavia,  organized  a  deliberate  and  well-
orchestrated  policy  of  removal,  and  even  physical
destruction,  of  the archival material of  both  their own
documents and the documents of their political enemies.
The Titoists succeeded in short period of time after their
military occupation of Belgrade and Serbia in October-
November  1944  to eliminate  almost  all compromising
authentic  and  original  documents,  which  could
challenge  to  a  greater  or  lesser  extent,  politically
coloured  Titoist  propaganda  within  the  framework  of
the  official  (quasi)-historiography  about  the  war  years
of  1941−1945.  
Thus,  for  example,  in  the  Yugoslav
archives the researcher  can not find  the key documents
of  Tito's  Partisans open  cooperation and  collaboration
with the Croat-Bosniak Ustashi,  Albanian (Shquipetar)
Fascist  detachments  and  the  German  Nazi  occupation
forces,  as  well  as  an  open  anti-Serbian  policy  and
military  actions  by  Tito's  Supreme  Command  of  his
revolutionary  the  People's  Liberation  Army  of
Yugoslavia  and  its  subordinated  operational  command
headquarters.  Therefore,  preserved German and Italian
documents  (archival  material)  and  the  memoirs
(including  and  the  diaries)  of  German  and  Italian
commanders  (for  instance,  by  the  General  Edmund
Glaise  von  Horstenau  from  Austria  in  service  of  the
Wehrmacht) 2  are  essential  for  uncovering  the  truth
about the policies and  real political objectives of  Tito's
forces,  fighting  for  overtaking  a  political  power  in
Yugoslavia in 1941−1945