This book explores the radicalization and fascistization of the Ustaša–The Croatian Revolutionary Organization within the interwar Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and later Yugoslavia, whose tumultuous rise led to terrorism and racial cleansing throughout the western Balkans.

Using an interdisciplinary and socio-cultural approach, Constantin Iordachi and Goran Miljan trace the Ustaša's political trajectory from its ideological and organizational roots in the 1920s, to its guerrilla struggle and terrorist activities in the 1930s, to its genocidal rule, violent downfall, and post-1945 metamorphosis in exile.

By considering the paramount role played by prejudice, economic deprivation, and the breakdown of social institutions in fueling grievances against an existing socio-political system, the authors place the emergence of the Ustaša in the context of the interwar Kingdom of Yugoslavia but also in the wider perspective of the emergence of fascist movements and regimes in interwar and wartime Europe.

Constantin Iordachi is a Professor at the Central European University, Austria. Editor-in-chief of East Central Europe and CEU Review of Books, and consultant editor, Fascism. Author of Liberalism, Constitutional Nationalism and Minorities: The Making of Romanian Citizenship, c. 1750–1918 (2019); and The Fascist Faith of the Legion “Archangel Michael” in Romania, 1927-1941: Martyrdom and National Purification (2023).

Goran Miljan is Associate Professor in History and a researcher at the Uppsala Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Department of History, Uppsala University, Sweden. He is the author of Croatia and the Rise of Fascism: The Youth Movement and the Ustaše during WWII (2018) and Revolucionari i ubojice: Iz povijesti hrvatske nacionalisticke emigracije (2018).