Well, I don't know whether the Ustase were borrowing the phraseology robomatic, or had re-invented it for themselves.

Sources are notoriously unreliable, particularly Serb sources commenting on Croat crimes and vice versa. Two I would regard as reliable in this case are Victor Novak's substantial account of the Ustase, Magnum Crimen (p605), which was published in Zagreb; and Ustasa: Croatian Separatism and European Politics 1929-45 by Srdja Trifkovic (p141). Dr Trifkovic is an academic who worked for some years as a Balkans correspondent for the BBC World Service.

These books quote Mile Budak, the Ustase minister for religion, culture and education, speaking at Gospic, 22 July 1941: "For the rest - Serbs, Jews and Gypsies - we have three million bullets. We shall kill one third of all Serbs. We shall deport another third, and the rest of them will be forced to become Roman Catholics."

But similar terminology was in open and widespread use by the Ustase - to the horror of German diplomats, who clearly had no inkling of the horrors shortly to get underway in Poland, in the name of their own country. Here's an extract from the memoirs of Hitler's SE Europe representative, Hermann Neubacher: "It reminds one of the boodiest religious wars in history. 'One third must be converted to Catholicism, one third must leave the country, and one third must die!' The last part of this programme was carried out. When Ustase leaders claim one million orthodox Serbs (including babies, children, women and old men) were slaughtered, this I believe to be a boastful exaggeration. On the basis of the reports I have received,I estimate that three-quarters of a million defenceless people were slaughtered. As I repeated again at Headquarters the horror taking place in Croatia, Adolf Hitler replied: 'I myself have told them that it is not possible to annihilate such a minority, it is too large." - Sonder-Auftrag Suedost 1940-45; Bericht eines fliegenden Diplomaten (Goettingen-Berlin-Frankfurt 1956).

The papers of another German plenipotentiary, Edmund Glaise von Hostenau (Vienna War Archive) includes similar reports . And similar wording about the fate of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies appeared in various issues of the Zagreb newspaper Novi List (July 1941).

Much of the most virulent anti-Serb filth emanated from the Catholic archbishop of Sarajevo. But some of it also got into the Catholic press in Zagreb, where it could not have been published without the sanction of Archbishop Stepinac - now beatified by John Paul II.

The "Independent State of Croatia (NDH)" was illegal in international law, or the Vatican would have sent a nuncio. So what was the Vatican doing maintaining diplomatic relations through the "apostolic visitor" Marcone, and why did the Pope receive the Croatian dictator Pavelic in Rome? But then this was the pope who while a cardinal had signed a concordat with Hitler over the heads of the German hierarchy.

What a church! And we're asked to accept that proper apologies are not a realistic option, for fear of offending Catholicism's "right wing."