The mere suggestion that the Ustasha movement constituted the Croatian variant of a generic ideological and political phenomenon that we nowadays label “fascism” raises complex questions both about the Ustasha movement itself and about the nature and dynamics of interwar fascism. There are three main facets to this discussion that has been raging in fascism studies for decades. The first concerns the nature of fascism as a distinct but also generic ideological force. As a novel radical, hypernationalist force that came to the fore in the effervescent atmosphere of post–World War I Italy, fascism quickly developed a strong transnational momentum, with radical ideas and practices pioneered in Italy exerting ever stronger and wider influence across the continent. With the rise of National Socialism in Germany and especially Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933, many—both on the right and left—spoke of fascism as a generic paradigm shiftin the political sphere. At the same time, an array of radical movements appeared in many parts of the continent; some brandished the name “fascist” or “national socialist” in their title, while others borrowed from the radical ideas and experiments of Fascist Italy or National Socialist Germany or both at the same time that they were claiming that their beliefs were rooted in distinct national traditions and not simply emulating foreign prototypes. Post–World War II historiography assumed the existence of a “generic fascism” in interwar Europe even before different generations of scholars (from George L Mosse and Ernst Nolte in the 1960s to Stanley Payne in the 1980s and Roger Griffin in the 1990s) sought to identify fascism's distinct ideological character and clarify, through a process of “idealized abstraction,” its distinguishing, generic features vis-à-vis other established ideologies of the time. However, the rise of the “generic fascism” paradigm was also contested by other scholars who claimed that the ideological differences between those movements and regimes outweighed their similarities. Ever since Gilbert Allardyce's polemical “What Fascism Is Not,” these scholars have tried to either dissociate Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany from each other or challenge the utility of the concept of generic fascism.