2 - Ordinary People, Extraordinary Times: Everyday Life in Karlovac under Ustasha Rule

Summary

Surrounded by the Kupa, Korana, Mrežnica, and Dobra rivers, the city of Karlovac was, in times of peace, widely recognized as a place of leisure and sports. Its picturesque parks, dating from the Habsburg period, and beach-lined riverbanks provided natives and visitors alike with ample opportunities for a variety of pleasurable activities. Karlovac's beautiful physical geography, however, did not always lend itself to a positive portrayal of the city. Ante Kovačić, the famous nineteenth-century writer, referenced Karlovac's proximity to so many rivers, and the humid, swamp-like environment created by such a geographical position, in his unfinished condemnation of Karlovac and its inhabitants, Međ Žabarima (Among the frog people). So outraged were Karlovac's elites at Kovačić's portrayal of them as frog-like, duplicitous, and cowardly that Kovačić never completed the volume. In times of war, Karlovac's rivers and the star-shaped fortress located in the town's center helped protect the town from invaders.

The advent of the Second World War, however, placed Karlovac's citizens in a situation where the lines between the invaders and the invaded—the aggressors and victims—became blurred beyond any recognition. As an Ustasha stronghold surrounded by an overwhelmingly Serbian Orthodox–inhabited countryside, Karlovac served as a center from which the Ustasha state launched many murderous raids against the area's Serbian Orthodox community. Nonetheless, it also suffered ample devastation and many casualties as rebel guerillas from surrounding areas sought to wrest the city from Ustasha hands. Though a historical analysis can neither confirm nor disprove Kovačić's one-dimensional caricature of Karlovac's citizens, it can offer important insights into how the ordinary inhabitants of this picturesque town and its surrounding areas responded to a set of extraordinary circumstances brought about by the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia and the establishment of the Ustasha-led Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Država Hrvatska—NDH), circumstances so extreme they could hardly be compared to anything the city had ever experienced before. Exploring the manner in which the Ustasha movement ruled and how Karlovac's citizens adjusted to Ustasha rule in and around Karlovac can lead us to conclusions relevant far beyond Karlovac's city limits.