Ante Pavelić (14 July 1889 – 28 December 1959) was a Croatian politician who led the fascist Ustaše movement and served as the dictator of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) from 1941 to 1945, a Nazi German and Fascist Italian puppet state during World War II. His regime was responsible for the persecution and mass murder of Serbs, Jews, Roma, and political opponents as part of the Holocaust and broader genocidal policies in the Balkans. After the war, Pavelić fled Europe, lived in Argentina and later Spain, where he died in Madrid on 28 December 1959 from complications resulting from gunshot wounds sustained in an assassination attempt two years earlier.