860H.01/317
The Yugoslav Minister (Fotitch) to the Secretary of State
Sir: I have the honor to convey to your Excellency the following statement which I have been instructed to make by my Government:
In the course of the first few days following the unprovoked attack on Yugoslavia the German army occupied a part of the territory of the Banovine of Croatia including its capital city Zagreb. Acting under the protection of the army of occupation the notorious conspirator, Ante Pavelic, who had been sentenced to death by French courts for the assassination of the late King Alexander,91 proclaimed, with the support of a small group of partisans having no following whatever among the Croat people, a so-called “Independent State of Croatia.” The legitimate representatives of the Croat people in the Yugoslav Government as well as those of the autonomous authorities of the Banovine of Croatia have been forced to withdraw under the onslaught of enemy armies.
It is, of course, a cardinal principle of International Law that military occupation of territory in the course of hostilities does not change the juridical status of the territory thus occupied and that occupation by enemy armies provides no legal basis for the establishment of a new juridical status within such territory. In consequence, the establishment of so-called “Independent Croatia” imposed by, or at the instigation of the authorities of occupation is devoid of any basis in law and constitutes a patent violation of the Law of Nations to which the Yugoslav Government continues to adhere.
The Royal Yugoslav Government desires to register its most emphatic protest against this unlawful action of the German Rich and considers null and void all acts relating to the creation of the so-called “Independent State of Croatia”, the sole object of which is to dismember the national territory of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.
Accept [etc.]
- King Alexander I of Yugoslavia was assassinated at Marseilles, France, October 9, 1934.↩