Brief from G-2 to Allied Headquarters
From the US Army File on Ante Pavelic: This document lifts most of its body, word for word, from the report filed by Agent Robert Clayton Mudd more than seven months previous. It omits Mudd's recommendation that Pavelic be arrested, though much other material is excised as well. Hartman's name will be memorable to readers of the Hands Off letter, though it is unlikely that he himself was in a position to make that sort of decision. The order to call off Pavelic's arrest most likely came one month before from the recipients of this document.

 

INFORMAL ROUTING SLIP

HEADQUARTERS
MEDITERRANEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS
Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2
APO 512, U.S. Army

 

File:
SUBJECT: Ante PAVELIC

(from: G-2, Phone: 307, To: DC/S AFHQ; Date: 7 Aug 47)

1. In reply to the request 6 August 1947, below is a brief of the life of Ante PAVELIC.

2. Ante PAVELIC was born in 1896 in IVAN PLANINA in BOSNIA and practiced law in ZAGREB. An extremist even in youth, he became a member of the arch-terrorist union known as the "Frankovci" under Doctor Josip FRANK. In the years immediately after the first world war he became involved in many disputes with the other Yugoslav political parties and was the sole representative of his party in the Yugoslav Parliament. In the early 1920s PAVELIC established many contacts in VIENNA and BUDAPEST and was in close contact with the Macedonian terrorist society, IMRO.

3. Shortly after the proclamation of the dictatorship of King ALEXANDER in January 1929 PAVELIC fled abroad and was subsequently condemned to death in absentia by ALEXANDER for his part in anti-Serb demonstrations organized by the Bulgarian and Macedonian terrorists.

4. From 1930 onwards, while living abroad, a great part of the time in ITALY, he became the leader of a terrorist organization eventually to be known as the USTASHI. This organization, financed by ROME and BUDAPEST and given moral encouragement by the Germans, was responsible for a serious flurry of bomb outrages from 1930 to 1935. Training centers for terrorists were set up at BRESCIA and BORGOTARO, ITALY. The series culminated in the assassination of King ALEXANDER at MARSEILLES, FRANCE on 14 October 1934.

COMMENT:

   The singular lack of added protection afforded the Yugoslav Monarch when it was well known that one attempt had already been made on ALEXANDER's life, are rather ghastly tributes to the organizational ability of PAVELIC who had apparently bribed some high official of the Surete Generale.

5. When ITALY was asked by YUGOSLAVIA to extradite PAVELIC for his guilt in this assassination, ITALY stubbornly refused and during his time of normal house arrest PAVELIC often conferred with CIANO on a possible "Coup d'etat."

6. In April 1941, PAVELIC traveled to ZAGREB and under the auspices of the Italians and Germans proclaimed the "Free and Independent State of Croatia." In June and July of 1941, PAVELIC and his Croation [sic] nationalists representing some of the outstanding thugs in the Balkans, slaughtered tens of thousands of Serbians living in his independent state and along its border.

7. PAVELIC remained as head of the "Free and Independent State of Croatia" until early 1945 when he disappeared. Traces have been found in his residence in Austria until the Spring of 1947 when it is believed he traveled to ROME.

 

For the Assistant Chief of Staff,

CHARLES D. HARTMAN JR
Lt. Colonel, GSC
G-2 (CI) Section

 

:: filing information ::
Title: Brief from G-2 to Allied Headquarters
Source: US Army, declassified.
Date: August 7, 1947 Added: October 2002