Croatia Policies employed by the NDH, enforced by the Ustaše against Serbs and ceding of Dalmatia to Italy through the Treaties of Rome created a natural base for Partisan recruitment among the Serbs, and Croats (particularly in Dalmatia) respectively. Furthermore, establishment of the NDH fractured the HSS into three groups – one supporting the armed resistance, another supporting the NDH, and an indecisive group around HSS leader Vladko Maček employing a waiting tactic. In February 1942, the KPH leadership under Hebrang saw this as an opportunity for the Croatian Partisans to wrest the position of the central patriotic force among Croats from the HSS. In effect, Hebrang thus pursued a policy close to the wartime Soviet coalitionist views, supporting a certain level of involvement of the former members of the HSS, and the Independent Democratic Party, as well as representatives of associations and trade unions in the political life as a form of a "mass movement", including in the work of the State Anti-fascist Council for the National Liberation of Croatia as the top tier political body intended to grow into the future People's Parliament of Croatia. Furthermore, Hebrang declared support for more moderate social policies, and advocated Croatia's autonomy within the Yugoslav federation. He argued that Serbs of Croatia should be primarily loyal to the Croatian federal unit which would ensure their political representation and preservation of their culture. Nonetheless, the increased Croatian character of the KPH caused anxiety among the Serbs. The independent policy pursued by the KPH brought Tito and Hebrang into conflict with pursuit of nationalist policy as the principal charge against the KPH. Due Hebrang's popularity, the KPJ wanted to avoid antagonising Croats during the wartime struggle and instead, just two weeks before the Red Army and the Partisans took the capital from Germans, reassigned Hebrang to Belgrade to become the minister of industry and filled the leading role in the KPH with Vladimir Bakarić. Proclamation of new government In November 1942, the Partisans captured the town of Bihać and secured control over a large part of western Bosnia, Dalmatia and Lika they named the Bihać Republic. In the town, a pan-Yugoslav assembly – the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (, AVNOJ) – was established in the town at the initiative of Tito and the KPJ later that month. At its founding meeting, the AVNOJ adopted the principle of federal state as