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1918-1941 - The First Yugoslavia

In November 1918, the Serbs stormed back into Bosnia inflicting mayhem upon the Muslim population. Following the war and the Versailles Peace Treaty (1919), Bosnia and Herzegovina were separated from the Hapsburg Empire. Together with Croatia and Slovenia, the State of the Slovenians, Croats and Serbs was created, which was united with Serbia into the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians by the Geneva Treaty (soon renamed Yugoslavia).

Political life in Bosnia at this time was marked by two major trends: social and economic unrest over "Agrarian Reform 1918-1919" manifested through mass colonization and property confiscation; also formation of several political parties that frequently changed coalitions and alliances with parties in other Yugoslav regions.

The dominant ideological conflict of the Yugoslav state, between Croatian regionalism and Serbian centralization, was approached differently by Bosnia's major ethnic groups and was dependent on the overall political atmosphere. Although the initial split of the country into 33 oblasts erased the presence of traditional geographic entities from the map, the efforts of Bosnian politicians such as Mehmed Spaho ensured that the six oblasts carved up from Bosnia and Herzegovina corresponded to the six sanjaks from Ottoman times and, thus, matched the country's traditional boundary as a whole.

On June 28, 1921 (again, the anniversary of the 1389 Kosovo Polje battle) the kingdom's Parliament, according to the Vidovdan Constitution (Vidovdan means "St. Vitus" Day), agreed to establish a centralized state as demanded by Serbian leaders. Most of the members from Croatia and Slovenia voted against this decision or did not attend.

In 1929 the country was renamed Kingdom of Yugoslavia (land of the South Slavs) with a Serb king assuming absolute power. The Serbs successfully dominated what had originally been a Croat plan for a multinational and multi-ethnic state. The establishment of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929 brought the redrawing of administrative regions into banates that purposely avoided all historical and ethnic lines, removing any trace of a Bosnian entity.

The newly founded kingdom suffered ethnic hatred, religious rivalries, language barriers and cultural conflicts from the very beginning. The difference in the economic situation between the dominant Serbs and the Croats added to those rivalries. The Croatian people considered that they were oppressed as never before in history. However, this tension and hatred stemmed more from outside the region's borders as neighbours continued to fester in the unresolved clashes of WWI.

Nationalism increased in both the Croatian and Serb areas. The Croat nationalists associated themselves with the fascist governments of Italy and Germany, forming a group called the "Ustasha." The Serbs, loyal to the monarchy, became the defenders of Orthodoxy, forming a group called "Chetniks." The monarchy became a dictatorship catering to Serbian nationalism while fanning ethnic tensions between the Serbs and the Croats. Meanwhile the Muslims, led by Mehmed Spaho, aligned with the Croats as a balance of power.

Serbo-Croat tensions over the structuring of the Yugoslav state continued, with the concept of a separate Bosnian division receiving little or no consideration. The famous Cvetkovic-Macek agreement that created the Croatian banate in 1939 encouraged what was essentially a partition of Bosnia between Croatia and Serbia.

However, outside political circumstances forced Yugoslav politicians to shift their attention to the rising threat posed by Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany. The onset of WWII brought serious upheaval to the region, as several wars were fought at the same time and in the same place. Following a period that saw attempts at appeasement, the signing of the Tripartite Treaty, and a coup d'état, Yugoslavia was finally invaded by Germany on April 6, 1941.

Once the kingdom of Yugoslavia was conquered by Nazi forces in World War II, all of Bosnia was ceded to the Nazi-puppet state of Croatia. At the outbreak of World War II, the Germans, Hungarians and Italians occupied Yugoslavia for about four years. Croatia aligned itself with the Axis Alliance and the fascist movement. After the invasion of Yugoslavia (1941), Bosnia and Herzegovina came under the authority of the Independent State of Croatia, being on the separation line between the German and Italian occupation zones.

The Nazi rule over Bosnia led to widespread persecution. The Croat "Ustasha" committed atrocities against the Serbs and erected concentration and extermination camps, as in Jasenovac. The Jews of Bosnia were persecuted and killed, and Jewish symbols and synagogues damaged or destroyed. The Jewish population was nearly exterminated. Over a million Serbs died in Croat concentration camps. Many Serbs in the area took up arms and joined the Chetniks; a Serb nationalist and royalist resistance movement that both conducted guerrilla warfare against the Nazis but also committed numerous atrocities against chiefly Bosnian Muslim civilians in regions under their control. Consequently, several Bosnian Muslim paramilitary units joined the Axis powers (ustase) to counter their own persecution in the hands of the Serbs in Bosnia.

Two opposition forces were born in response to the Ustasha violence: the Chetniks and the Partisans. Initially the western allies recognized the Serbian "Chetniks" as legal representatives of the exiled Yugoslav government. They fought against the Germans and retaliated against the Ustasha with atrocities of their own. Eventually, however, the Allies supported the Partisans, led by Josip Broz Tito. The role of the Bosnian Muslims in the war was more complex, as they were caught between the Croatian Ustasha and the Serbian Chetniks, often equally disillusioned with both.

Starting in 1941, Yugoslav communists under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito organized their own multi-ethnic resistance group, the partisans, who fought against Axis, Ustase and Chetnik forces. On November 25, 1943 the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia with Tito at its helm held a founding conference in Jajce where Bosnia and Herzegovina was reestablished as a republic within the Yugoslavian federation in its Ottoman borders. As the Partisans began to increasingly differentiate themselves from the Chetniks, Muslims began to join Tito's army.

In November 1943, the Anti-Fascist Council was established and Bosnia and Herzegovina regained its statehood and legal status. Documents from the First Session of the Anti-Fascist Council placed Bosnia and Herzegovina in the state of Yugoslavia as a separate unit based on the principles of equality of all nations living within Bosnia. This same year, Tito was able to convince an allied liaison committee that his communist Partisans had the best chance to defeat the foreign invaders, deceiving them of the relative strength and importance of his group. Thus they received most of the allied support and became a real military force. He united parts of all factions into a combined force to drive out the foreigners, and effectively attacked Axis troops.

World War II and the resultant vicious civil war between the Croat Ustasha and the Serb Chetniks cost the lives of about 1 million Yugoslavs. The most important foundation of communist Yugoslavia is the story of how the Yugoslav people unified to fight the invaders. However, the atrocities committed by the Ustasha and the Chetniks were too terrible to be easily forgotten. Under Tito, discussion of the atrocities of the war was prohibited in an attempt to forget the past and keep the lid on potential boiling emotions. Nevertheless, once that lid was lifted, some politicians and parties were ready, able and eager to exploit the WWII atrocities in order to promote their own aims later.