Government of the Croatian Independent State in the courseo of the Second World War (1941 -- 1945) | Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust

The Independent State of Croatia (Serbo-Croatian: Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, Независна Држава Хрватска, NDH; German: Unabhängiger Staat Kroatien; Italian: Stato Indipendente di Croazia), often referred to simply by the abbreviation NDH, was a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany established on a part of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. The NDH was founded on 10 April 1941, after the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers. The NDH consisted of most of modern day Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, together with some parts of modern-day Serbia. The regime targeted Jews, Serbs and Roma people, as part of a large-scale genocide campaigns were conducted in places such as the Jasenovac concentration camp.

The state was officially a monarchy and Italian protectorate from the signing of the Treaties of Rome on 18 May 1941 until the Italian capitulation on 8 September 1943. Appointed by Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, Prince Aimone of Savoy-Aosta, initially refused to assume the crown in opposition to the Italian annexation of the Croat-majority populated region of Dalmatia. However, he later accepted the throne upon being pressured to do so by Victor Emmanuel III, and was titled Tomislav II of Croatia, but never moved from Italy to reside in Croatia.

The state was actually controlled by the governing fascist Ustaše movement and its Poglavnik,Ante Pavelić, which in turn were primarily under German influence. For its first two years up to 1943, the state was also a territorial condominium of Germany and Italy. Additionally, central Dalmatia was annexed directly into Italian territory as part of the irredentist agenda of an Italian Mare Nostrum (Our Sea). In 1942, Germany offered Italy to take military control of all of Croatia out of a desire to redirect German troops from Croatia to the Eastern Front, however Italy rejected the offer as it did not believe that Italy alone could handle the unstable situation in the Balkans.

After the ouster of Mussolini and the Kingdom of Italy's surrender to the Allies, the NDH on 10 September 1943 declared that the Treaties of Rome of 18 May 1941 with the Kingdom of Italy were null and void and annexed the portion of Dalmatia that had been annexed from Yugoslavia to the Kingdom of Italy in the Treaties of Rome. The NDH attempted to annex Zara that had been a recognized territory of Italy since 1919 that had been an object of Croatian irredentism, but Germany did not allow the NDH to do so.