Few national symbols have been as misunderstood — and as deliberately misrepresented — as the Croatian coat of arms. At the heart of the controversy is a deceptively simple question: does the colour of the first square on the šahovnica (chessboard) make it a symbol of fascism? The short answer is no. The longer answer requires a walk through centuries of Croatian history.
The Croatian coat of arms — known as the šahovnica, from the Croatian word šah (chess) — consists of a shield divided into 25 alternating red and white squares arranged in a 5×5 grid. It is one of the most recognisable national emblems in Europe, worn proudly on the jerseys of the Croatian national football team and displayed on the country's flag and official documents.
The šahovnica is not merely a modern design choice. It is a symbol with roots stretching back to medieval Croatia, with documented use in heraldic depictions associated with the Kingdom of Croatia as far back as the late 15th century. The earliest known examples include an appearance on a tower in Innsbruck, Austria, dated 1495–1496, and a depiction in Senj Cathedral around 1491. Legends — though not historically verified — trace it even further back to the 10th-century reign of King Stjepan Držislav.
Here is where the misconception takes root. The current official coat of arms of the Republic of Croatia, adopted on 21 December 1990, specifies that the first field in the upper left corner is red. This is enshrined in Croatian law.
However — and this is crucial — the white-first variant is not an invention of the Ustasha regime. Both variants have coexisted throughout Croatian heraldic history.
As historians have repeatedly noted, prior to the 19th century there was no official standardisation of which colour came first. Over the past five centuries, examples of both the red-first and white-first šahovnica appear in authentic Croatian heraldic documents, seals, and monuments. Neither version was considered more "Croatian" than the other — they were treated as heraldically equivalent.
During World War II, the Ustasha regime — a fascist, genocidal movement that ruled the so-called Independent State of Croatia (NDH) from 1941 to 1945 — did adopt a coat of arms that featured a white first field. But they also added a distinctive letter "U" (for Ustaše) above the shield, and made other stylistic modifications to distinguish their emblem.
The regime's symbol was not the šahovnica itself — it was a specifically altered version of it combined with other Ustasha insignia. Equating every appearance of a white-first šahovnica with this regime is historically illiterate. It is akin to claiming that any cross is a symbol of the Ku Klux Klan, simply because that organisation also used a cross.
After the Partisans' victory in 1945, the communist Yugoslav government replaced the šahovnica with a Soviet-style emblem. It was the communists who, for political reasons, insisted that only the red-first version was acceptable and, at one point, made it a criminal offence to display the white-first version. This political decision — made not by historians but by a regime with its own agenda — is the true origin of the stigma.
In June 2025, the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (HAZU) — the country's highest academic body — issued a formal Declaration addressing this very controversy. Its conclusion was unambiguous: both the red-first and white-first versions of the šahovnica are legitimate expressions of Croatia's national heraldic heritage.
Historian Mario Jareb of the Croatian Institute of History, speaking about the Declaration on national television, was direct: "The version of the coat of arms with a white first field should not be stigmatised or associated with the WWII-era Ustasha regime. It is very clearly demonstrated that the white-first-field version is part of Croatia's heraldic tradition."
He further noted: "Unfortunately, part of the media and public has created hysteria, labelling it as a criminal or unacceptable symbol — often referred to as the 'Ustasha coat of arms' — but this is historically incorrect."
The narrative that the šahovnica itself — or its white-first variant — is a fascist symbol was not born from historical scholarship. It was largely propagated in the early 1990s by commentators, some with clear political motivations, who sought to delegitimise Croatian independence and statehood during the dissolution of Yugoslavia.
Writers and journalists at the time drew lazy parallels: Croatia was asserting its identity, the šahovnica was its symbol, and since the Ustasha regime had also used a checkerboard, the conclusion — to those unfamiliar with the nuances — seemed obvious. What was ignored was that the same basic symbol had been used by Croatian institutions, kings, and democratic movements for centuries before any fascist movement existed.
It is also worth noting what the full modern Croatian coat of arms represents. Above the šahovnica sits a crown composed of five smaller shields, each representing a distinct historical region:
The oldest Croatian coat of arms — representing Croatia proper
The coat of arms of the Republic of Dubrovnik
Dalmatia
Istria
Slavonia
This is not the symbol of any single political movement. It is a map of Croatian history and geography — a composite of the lands and peoples that form the Croatian nation.
The šahovnica — in both its red-first and white-first forms — is a symbol of Croatian identity that predates fascism by centuries. Treating every appearance of a white first square as an Ustasha symbol is not only historically wrong; it is an insult to the long heritage of Croatian heraldry and to the countless Croatians, across all political backgrounds, who have proudly used both variants as an expression of national belonging.
Symbols do not have fixed, eternal meanings — they exist in historical context. The šahovnica, in its many forms, has meant freedom, statehood, and continuity for the Croatian people since the Middle Ages. No regime, however brief and brutal, can claim ownership of a symbol that existed five centuries before it was born.