HEADQUARTERS
COUNTER INTELLIGENCE CORPS
ALLIED FORCES HEADQUARTERS
APO 512
30 January 1947
SUMMARY OF INFORMATIONSUBJECT: Present Whereabouts and Past Background of Ante PAVELIC, Croat Quisling
1. From a usually reliable source the following information has been obtained concerning the present whereabouts of Ante PAVELIC, Croat Quisling.
2. With the collapse of German resistance in the Balkans and the subsequent withdrawal of support of the puppet Croat government on the part of the Germans, Ante PAVELIC, fearing for his personal safety at the hands of the Partisans fled from Jugoslavia into Austria where he took refuge in the small village of CELOVAC near the Austrian-Jugoslav frontier. Pavelic had an apartment and a villa there.
3. In April of 1946 PAVELIC left Austria and came to ROME accompanied only by an Ustasa Lieutenant named DOCHSEN. Both were dressed as Roman Catholic priests. They took refuge in a college there in Via Giavomo Belli, 3, which is the only college in ROME enjoying complete extra-territoriality, and which can be entered only by presenting the proper credentials. (Presumably the Papal seal is needed because it is said that this is the only college in ROME directly under the administration of the Pope.)
4. This informant further states that a short time ago PAVELIC obtained at the Spanish Consulate in MILANO a passport under the name of DON PEDRO GONNER. This passport is ready for Spain and has a visa either for South America or Canada. Three other members of the Ustashi are being taken care of in this same fashion but the only one so far identified is General Vlado KREN, Chief of the Croat Air Force under PAVELIC. KREN is an old-time Yugoslav officer who at the outset of the war deserted to the Germans taking with him as much loot and money as he could. He was decorated by the Germans after a lengthy inspection tour of the Craot [sic] Air Force on the Eastern Front.
5. This informant, directed by this Agent to try to penetrate the Ustashi intelligence network in Italy and Jugoslavia, has managed to do so and it has been determined that the network runs from GRUMO-ROME-VENICE-TRIESTE-LJUBLJANA-ZAGREB. The whole affair is run under cover of the Roman Catholic clergy whose priests in these monasteries are nearly all of Croat extraction. Complete penetration of this organization is a rather lengthy process but efforts are being continued in that direction. There is no doubt that Ustashi elements in Italy communicate with one another, and that the focal point of all intelligence and activity is the Monastery of Saint Jerome [NB - Anglicized San Girolamo], Via Tomacelli, 132, ROME.
BACKGROUND:
6. Ante PAVELIC was born in 1896 in Ivan Planina in Bosnia and practiced law in ZAGREB. An extremist even in his youth he became a member of the arch-terrorist organization known as the "Frankovci" whose founder, Dr. Josip FRANK, was a Jew and the father-in-law of Slavko KVATERNIK, the first Croat to be elevated to the rank of Field Marshall. KVATERNIK had long been a strong advocate of Croat separatism and the German ideas on a separate Croat state found in him a reday [sic] tool.
7. The quarrelsome nature of PAVELIC became more and more apparent in the years immediately after the first war when he became involved in one dispute after another with the Centralist Party and the Croat Peasant Party of RADIC. He was the sole representative of his Party in the Skupstina (Jugoslav Parliament) but rarely attended sessions and when he did he sulked in his seat and only occasionally indulged in a long harangue in protest against some measure which he did not approve.
8. In the early 1920's, PAVELIC began to establish his contacts with Croat emigrees in VIENNA and BUDAPEST and later on he established a close accord with the Macedonian terrorist society, IMRO. In 1927 he acted as counsel for the defense of the Macedonian terrorists at the SKOPLJE trials.
9. Shortly after the proclamation of the establishment of the dictatorship of King ALEKSANDAR in January 1929, PAVELIC fled abroad and was subsequently condemned to death in absentia at BELGRADE for his part in anti-Serb demonstrations organized at SOFIA by Bulgarian and Macedonian terrorists.
10. 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 Ustasha. This organization was financed by ROME and BUDAPEST and given moral encouragement by the Germans. Together with [Branko] JELIC, ARTUKOVIC, and the younger [Eugen-Dido] KVATERNIK and others he was responsible for a serious flurry of bomb outrages, the weapons and explosives all supplied by Italy. This occurred in the period between 1930 and 1935.
11. Camps for training terrorists and saboteurs were set up in Italy and Hungary, chiefly at BRESCIA and BORGOTARO in Italy and JANKA PUSZTA in Hungary and an armed insurrection was attempted in 1933 when the Ustashi, armed by the Italians, attempted to invade the country by crossing the Adriatic in motorboats. This was unsuccessful but its lack of success probably was instrumental in the decision to assassinate King ALEKSANDAR. Two attempts were made, the last one successful and ALEKSANDAR was slain at MARSEILLES 14 October, 1943 along with the French Minister of the Interior, Jean BARTHOU. The singular lack of armed protection afforded by the Jugoslav monarch, and the general laxity of security precautions when it was well-known that one attempt had already been made on ALEKSANDAR'S life are rather ghastly tributes to the organizational ability of PAVELIC, who apparently had been able to bribe some high official in the Surete General. The Prefect of Police of MARSEILLES, JOUHANNAUD, was subsequently removed from office.
12. Yugoslavia took her case to the League of Nations offering evidence that Italy and Hungary had openly conspired against her sovereignty. However, for some strange reason Italy's role in the affair was never considered and Hungary bore the brunt of the charges. Italy, furthermore, stubbornly refused to extradite PAVELIC who, along with the younger KVATERNIK, was placed under the permanent supervision of the Italian police until sometime in 1941. During the course of his "house arrest" he was subsidized by the Italians and he conferred long and often with Count Galeazzo CIANO on the prospective coup d'etat in Croatia.
13. In April of 1941 he arrived in ZAGREB and proclaimed the "Free and Independent State of Croatia" with himself as the head of the government. What prompted the Axis powers to put a man like PAVELIC at the head of a puppet government is not too well-known for it was an established fact that he was an ardent extremist of the worse sort and an international gangster. Perhaps it was the fact that the Nazis and Fascists were not looking for leadership. The only thing that they needed was a fanatic, an ultra-chauvinist, who could and would do what they suggested and do it with a vengeance. At any rate in June and July, 1941 PAVELIC and his Croatian nationalists, representing the lunatic fringe of Balkan life, slaughtered in a few weeks tens of thousands of Serbians living in his "independent state" and along its peripheries.
14. PAVELIC remained as head of the "Free and Independent State of Croatia" until early 1945 when he disappeared from the limelight and little trace of him has been found since.
15. PAVELIC'S name tops the list of quislings whom the State Department and the Foreign Office have agreed to hand over to the Yugoslavs for trial. At the present time this Agent is expending every effort to try to trace PAVELIC AND HIS WIFE. One source yet unconfirmed states that she is living in VENICE under an assumed name while yet another says that she is living somewhere in ROME.
AGENTS COMMENTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS: IN view of the fact that this man, while generally considered a criminal, is not a criminal in just the ordinary sense but a political criminal as well, and in view of the fact that the Yugoslav Government through its controlled press has on several occasions accused the Anglo-Americans of hiding PAVELIC to further their own aims, this Agent recommends that every effort should be made to apprehend him and ship him back to the Jugoslav Government for trial. In so doing not only would the Yugoslav propaganda guns be silenced and the people of Jugoslavia forced to admit that their previous propaganda was all false, but also a serious threat to security would be removed and the position of the Anglo-Americans strengthened with regard to those south Slav elements who were pro-Allied before the war. The Ustashi organization in Italy is at the present moment a tightly-knit group still maintaining its "cell" organization, still publishing its papers, and still interested in the same aims that they professed before and during the war. The center of this organization is the Monastery of St. Jerome, Via Tomacelli, 132, ROME.
ROBERT CLAYTON MUDD,
Special Agent, CIC
Approved:
EDWIN F. COWAN
Chief, CIC
DISTRIBUTION:
CIC, Zone 1 (1)
CIC, Zone 3 (1)
CIC, Zone 5 (1)
CIC, Zone 6 (1)
AC of S, G-2, AFHQ (2)
Chief, CIC, AFHQ (1)