ABSTRACT
The war in Croatia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina has focused attention on the political and military developments of the conflict, leaving aside issues of institutions. In order to understand the nature of civil-military relations, a brief review of Croatian military traditions and of the most important features of domestic society and the military will be necessary. In the Russian campaign a larger Croatian unit served as part of the Wehrmacht forces. The political legacy of the Ustasha regime’s reign of terror was ethnic hatred and the further fostering of Serbian suspicion of Croatian intentions. The Croatian Partisans were the first to form a resistance combat group, and were organized on June 22, 1941. The creation of the Republic of Croatia in 1991 followed its secession from Communist Yugoslavia. In order to assess civil-military relations in Croatia it is necessary to give a short overview of the development of democracy in the years following independence.
