Without the Croats, Yugoslavia would never have existed, since they were the most numerous people in it.
However, in World War I, they were on the losing side and thus fell under the crown of the Serbian king, who was supported by London. The King of the First Yugoslavia ignored the behavior of Serbs towards Croats, and after the assassination of our legally elected members of the Yugoslav Parliament, which took place in the Parliament by Serbian radicals, he introduced a dictatorship and banned democratic parties, abolished Croatian newspapers and all ways Croats tried to awaken national consciousness in the people. After that, the Croats were desperate, after 800 years in union with the Hungarians, they fell under another foreigner. Croats had no choice but to fight for freedom, resistance to the system and even at the cost of their own lives. The revolutionary organization of the Ustashas was founded and it was the center of resistance of the Croatian people in Yugoslavia. Unfortunately, today they are called fascists, nazis, racists and various labels are attached to them, just because at that time no one in the world wanted to support the creation of the Croatian state except Hitler and Mussolini. If Stalin and Churchill offered the Croats a state at that time, or America, they would gladly accept them as allies, because they did not care who their allies were as long as they supported them in realizing the millennial dream of creating a Croatian state. The Independent State of Croatia was created and lasted as long as the war lasted, it was not fabulous and great, but it existed, internationally recognized and a signatory to international conventions. Unfortunately, the Croats found themselves on the losing side again and as such had to be part of the new Yugoslavia, this time under communist leadership.
After the war, the Croatian people experienced a great tragedy that happened at Bleiburg (later known as the Bleiburg Massacre) when the British handed over about half a million Croatian refugees into the hands of the Yugoslav Communists. For months and even years after the fall of the Croatian state, communists and Serbian Chetniks abused the Croatian people as punishment for cooperating with the Germans and Italians. The whole of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina are covered with mass graves of Croats. After the war, there were 800,000 less Croats in Yugoslavia, while there were a million more Serbs in Yugoslavia than before the war. These are statistical data according to the census, but even today Croats are accused of committing genocide against Serbs and Jews in the war, even though Serb Orthodox and Bosniak Muslims, and Croatian Jews together with Croatian Catholics had leading positions in the Croatian state. There were over 10 generals of the Croatian Army of Serbian origin, but for them they were just traitors who did not fare much better than the Croats themselves.
The years passed, and the situation was getting worse, the false communion could not survive at all. A state built with such a foundation has no future. In the early 1970s, the "Croatian Spring" was the last hope for freedom and the Croatian state, but the communist authorities suppressed the protests, arrested the main officials and tried to stifle the Croatian spirit as much as they could. Then in 1972, after the fall of the Croatian Spring of 1971, brave Croatian patriots from distant Australia, to which they fled after the war, went to Croatia. They were called Fenix group, or Bugojno group (because they came to Bugojno first).
The Bugojno group was organized by the Croatian Revolutionary Brotherhood (HRB), a secret organization founded in 1961 in Australia and operating in both Europe and the United States. The main goal of the HRB was the liberation of Croatia from Yugoslavia. 19 of them managed to enter Yugoslavia and set out to get the Croats back on their feet, but they were soon discovered, the news spread quickly and rumors began to spread that the Ustashas had come to Yugoslavia. Over 30,000 soldiers of the communist army chased 19 young men who were ready to give their lives, just to try to provoke a revolt in Croatia, unfortunately they did not succeed, but their heroic desire for Croatian freedom is passed on to us young people who still dream of a new Independent State Croatia. This is how it was passed on to young people who later found out about it, and at the end of the 1980s Croatian pride began to awaken again and Croats held democratic elections in the Croatian Republic, which was one of the 6 republics of the federation. In these elections, Croats voted overwhelmingly for independence from the Federation of Yugoslavia. But the Serbs did not like that, they embarked on a conquest campaign and expansion of the borders of Serbia beyond the borders of common sense. Terrible crimes were committed against the Croatian people, all under the pretext that Serbs were endangered and that they had the right to revenge for the genocide of Serbs in the Second World War. Croatia managed to defend itself with great sacrifices from a much stronger enemy. Even today, the state stands, as such, internationally recognized, although while our fathers were bleeding at the front, the communists from the former state fought for positions in the government of our new state. All judges, civil servants, chiefs, generals, directors of state-owned enterprises remained unchanged. And that is why today we have a state, but we do not have power.
Why are the Croatian people silent about it?
Well, probably because that state has become our idol, we have been waiting for it for so long, so much blood has been shed, so no one dares to question the current government for fear of losing the state we have.
Better a poor horse than no horse at all.
This is only a small part of history, only the last 120 years of the struggle for freedom and independence.