Currents of History 2/2019

Abstract: This paper analyses the establishing of the Croatian Orthodox Church (HPC) and the campaign for its international recognition. The research is based on rarely used historical documents from collections of the Political Archives of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Berlin) and the Croatian State Archives (Zagreb). The main research subject is analyzed in the context of Nazi policies toward the Orthodox churches in the European South-East, and those have varied from case to case in accordance with Germany’s war goals and properties. The paper also sheds light on the efforts of the Serbian Orthodox Church to prevent the international recognition of the HPC as well as efforts to establish the Hungarian Orthodox Church (a process analogous to the HPC case in many details).

Key words: Croatian Orthodox Church (HPC), Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (RZC), Serbian Orthodox Church (SPC), Independent State of Croatia (NDH), Nazi Germany, WWII, Genocide in NDH

Establishing the Croatian Orthodox Church was one of the synergistic culminations of the centuries-long aspirations of the Croatian extreme nationalists to deprive the Serbs in Croatia of their national and confessional identity and Nazi Germany’s policies in the Balkans. However, they lacked international recognition in accomplishing the full legitimization of this organization, and the Croatian authorities invested intensive effort to achieve this. Through the official diplomatic institutions of the NDH and unofficial, private channels alike, Zagreb approached all the Orthodox churches in the region, including even the Russian Orthodox Church in the USSR and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, requesting recognition and cooperation for the new church. An analogous process was happening in Hungary, where the Horthy regime sought to establish the Hungarian Orthodox Church, whose main goal would be to Hungarize the Orthodox population. Nazi Germany developed a pragmatic stance regarding the religious question in the Balkans and conducted activities and policies in accordance with its own political and war interests and priorities. Thus, Nazi Germany supported the HPC but was reserved toward the MPC. The Serbian clergy rejected the possibility of cooperation and participation in the newly established church organizations, forcing the state authorities to rely on the clergy of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. None of the new “churches” received proper canonical recognition but a certain level of cooperation with the Bulgarian and Romanian Orthodox Churches was achieved, especially in the case of the HPC.