This book explores the relationship between genocide on the one hand and martyrdom culture and sacralization on the other, examining how concepts of martyrdom and sacrifice have been utilized in the service of ethnic cleansing through the study of one European fascist movement, the Ustaša regime which ruled the Independent State of Croatia between 1941 and 1945. Taking an interdisciplinary approach and drawing on a series of illustrative case studies, it shows how popular culture, literature, and propaganda were used to promote martyrdom to ordinary citizens and legitimize sanguinary cleansing operations against minority populations, especially Serbs, in the countryside. The book considers the contradictions inherent in martyrdom culture, and how martyrdom and sacralization culture was experienced by citizens as an everyday socioeconomic system. It uses martyrdom culture as a means of exploring ideological and sociological conflicts and divisions within regime structures, and the role that sacralization and the culture of mass violence ultimately played in the destruction of the state from within. As such, it is one of the first studies to seek to understand the role of martyrdom culture in European fascism not just as a cultural or aesthetic phenomenon but an ideological, social, and economic system which grew to influence every facet of life in the Independent State of Croatia. In particular, the book provides insight into the real lives of some of the most consequential Ustaša martyrs, exploring the private individuals behind the public persona.

Rory Yeomans is a social and cultural historian of fascism and Southeastern Europe, with a focus on the Ustaša regime and the Independent State of Croatia.