Ustaša’s Brother Frenemies: Slovak Minority in the Independent State of Croatia

Abstract

This article examines the position of the Slovak minority in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during the Second World War, focusing on the tension between official discourses of interstate friendship and local experiences of insecurity. Drawing on extensive archival sources, including diplomatic correspondence and administrative and security reports, it shows how ethnic Slovaks were formally portrayed as members of a friendly nation while remaining exposed to administrative exclusion, stigmatization, and violence in peripheral regions. Inspired by selected insights from Brubaker, Wimmer, and Kalyvas — used as heuristic points of reference rather than deductive frameworks — the article conceptualizes this ambivalent position as that of a “frenemy” minority: symbolically included yet structurally marginalized. It argues that the deterioration of the Slovak community’s security from 1942 onward resulted from an uncoordinated syncretism of centrally implemented policies of ethnic exclusion and processes of state degradation, manifested in fragmented authority and the brutalization of local actors. By highlighting the gap between declared friendship and practical neglect, the article contributes to debates on minority governance under fascist rule and on the effects of weak state capacity and localized violence in wartime authoritarian contexts.