Poglavnik

Poglavnik (pǒɡlaːʋniːk) was the title used by Ante Pavelić, leader of the World War II Croatian movement Ustaše and of the Independent State of Croatia between 1941 and 1945. The word was first recorded in a 16th-century dictionary compiled by Fausto Veranzio as a Croatian term for the Latin word princeps. According to Vladimir Anić's Rječnik hrvatskoga jezika (Croatian Dictionary) and the Croatian Encyclopedic Dictionary the word comes from the adjective form poglavit, which can be loosely translated as 'first and foremost' or 'respectable, noble, honorable'. The adjective is in turn a compound of the Croatian prefix po- and the Proto-Slavic word stem glava 'head'. Because it was used by the fascist regime, the title (which had originally meant "head" or "chief" but was rarely used before the 1930s) is never used today in its original sense as it became synonymous with Pavelić and took on negative connotations after World War II. Other etymologically closely related words used in modern Croatian are "poglavar" (translated as "head of state" or "chief", used for heads of state) and "poglavica" (translated as "chief", in the sense of tribal leader). Ante Pavelić first began using the title of "Poglavnik" when it was prescribed as the official title for the supreme leader of the Ustaše movement in the organization's founding charter in 1930, while he was in exile in Italy. The organization (whose name at the time meant simply "rebels" in Croatian but which also lost its original meaning in modern usage), was organized as a movement which sought to create an independent Croatian nation-state by means of armed struggle at the time when Croatia was part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Following the 1941 invasion of Yugoslavia and the establishment of the puppet state called Independent State of Croatia (commonly referred to by its Croatian-language initialism NDH), the title continued to be used for Pavelić, and its meaning was taken to have evolved into "the supreme leader".