taking control, Pavelić imposed largely anti-Serbian and antisemitic policies that resulted in the deaths of over 100,000 Serbs and Jews in concentration and extermination camps in the NDH, murdering and torturing several hundred thousand Serbs, along with tens of thousands of Roma and Jews. These persecutions and killings have been described as the "single most disastrous episode in Yugoslav history". The racial policies of the NDH greatly contributed to their rapid loss of control over Croatia as they fed the ranks of both the Chetniks and Partisans and caused even the Nazis to attempt to restrain Pavelić and his genocidal campaign. In 1945, he ordered the executions of prominent NDH politicians Mladen Lorković and Ante Vokić on charges of treason when they were arrested for plotting to oust him and align the NDH with the Allies. Following the surrender of Germany in May 1945, Pavelić ordered his troops to keep fighting even after the surrender. The remainder of the NDH government decided to flee to Austria on 3 May 1945, but Pavelić instead ordered them to retreat to Austria over the former border of the Third Reich and have the Croatian Armed Forces surrender to the British Army. The British refused to accept the surrender and directed them to surrender to the Partisans. The Partisans began carrying out killings of the Ustaše when the latter attacked their position, killing them in the Yugoslav death march of Nazi collaborators. Pavelić himself fled to Austria, and later Argentina, whose president Juan Perón provided sanctuary for German war criminals and several Ustaše. On 10 April 1957, he was shot several times in an attempted assassination by the Serbian hotel owner Blagoje Jovović. Pavelić initially survived the attempt and soon left Argentina for Spain. He died two and a half years later, on 28 December 1959, aged 70, from the injuries he sustained in the shooting. Early life Birth and education Ante Pavelić was born in the Herzegovinian village of Bradina on the slopes of Ivan Mountain north of Konjic, roughly southwest of Hadžići, then part of the Ottoman Empire occupied by Austrian-Hungarian Empire. His parents had moved to Bosnia and Herzegovina from the village of Krivi Put in the central part of the Velebit plain, in southern Lika (in today's Croatia), to work on the Sarajevo-Metković railway line. Searching for work, his family moved to the village of Jezero outside Jajce, where Pavelić