to the British, but were directed to surrender to the Yugoslav military. The Independent State of Croatia had joined the Geneva Convention on 20 January 1943, and was recognised by it as a "belligerent". The Partisan forces of the 51st Vojvodina Brigade of the Yugoslav 3rd Army and the 14th Slovenian Division had established tactical control over the field of Bleiburg. Milan Basta set an ultimatum to the NDH negotiators - unconditional surrender within one hour, or else they would attack them and not uphold the norms of the international conventions of the Red Cross. Basta's ultimatum was extended for another fifteen minutes, after which point a general surrender started. Basta gave Scott assurances that the prisoners would be treated humanely and that only "political criminals" would be tried by courts. The exact events after the expiry of the ultimatum are the source of the original controversy regarding the repatriations. Teodor Pavić, described as a NDH "courier", wrote that the Partisan forces began strafing the crowd in the Bleiburg field with machine guns and shooting them individually. Petar Brajović, a Yugoslav officer, described a fifteen- to twenty-minute machine gun and mortar fire on the column. Strle wrote that the 3rd Battalion of the 11th "Zidanšek" Brigade and the 3rd Battalion of the 1st "Tomšič" Brigade were involved in the fire, and their records noted at least 16 deaths, mainly from the machine gun fire. A Croatian soldier who survived, Zvonimir Zorić, wrote of a massacre at Bleiburg. The notion of a massacre at the Bleiburg field was promoted by the remnants of the Ustaša in exile. Croatian-American historian Jozo Tomasevich notes that it would have been physically impossible to assemble all the Croatian refugees in Bleiburg itself, so German and Croatian troops who are said to have surrendered "in Bleiburg" must have done so in various localities, including Bleiburg, and certainly not all in Bleiburg itself. He considers it impossible to establish the exact number of troops and civilians who tried to flee to Austria and were forced to surrender to the Partisans, and stresses that the number of victims has been inflated by pro-Ustaša sources for propaganda purposes, while communist sources have been diminishing it for similar reasons. Croatian historian Martina Grahek Ravančić wrote that the complete extent of the casualties sustained by the NDH column at Bleiburg on the day of the surrender was not described in any