Croatian Committee
The organisation opposed the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later renamed Yugoslavia) and aimed to achieve Croatia's independence.
Frank received aid from the Kingdom of Italy seeking to destabilise Yugoslavia before the Paris Peace Conference and bilateral negotiations on the mutual border.
The issue was contentious because Italian territorial claims, largely based on the Treaty of London, were conflicting with interests of Yugoslavia, relying on the right of self-determination.
[2] Following the 3 November 1918 Armistice of Villa Giusti, the Austro-Hungarian surrender,[3] Italian troops moved to occupy parts of the eastern Adriatic shore promised to Italy under the Treaty of London, ahead of the Paris Peace Conference.
[7] In late November 1918, General Pietro Badoglio received a plan for propaganda activities designed to hinder consolidation of Yugoslavia.
Finzi's plan envisaged stoking anti-Serbian sentiment in Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Vardar Macedonia to promote separatist ideas.
Sonnino planned to bring Radić to the Paris Peace Conference to advocate Croatian interests, but Yugoslav authorities arrested the entire HSS leadership.
[10] Frank, as well as a number of the faction of the Party of Rights known as the Frankists[b] had been previously briefly arrested in relation to the protest of Croatian Home Guard soldiers in Zagreb.
[12] Frank and a number of other Frankists (including a member of Party of Rights leadership, Vladimir Sachs-Petrović) moved to Italy, Hungary or Austria.
[13] Historian Jozo Tomasevich described Frank as the only person of significant standing in Croatian political emigration in the aftermath of World War I.
[13] Those included Generaloberst Stjepan Sarkotić, Lieutenant Colonel Stephan Duić [de], Emanuel Gagliardi, Niko Petričević, Major Vilim Stipetić, and Beno Klobučarić.
[13] For this purpose, it intended to gather support in Croatia by spreading and amplifying anti-Serbian sentiment relying on discontent with the conditions of creation of Yugoslavia.
[23] The latter were also recipient of Italian aid in opposition to the Yugoslav state, as were the Montenegrin pro-independence Greens and the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO).
Yugoslavia sent letters of protest to Austria and Hungary which were sufficient to cause the Austrian and Hungarian authorities to shut down operations of the group led by Frank.
[28] Similarly, Italian support for the Croatian Committee ended after the Treaty of Rapallo defining the Italian-Yugoslav border was concluded in late 1920.
[29] According to Frank's wife Aglaja, Gagliardi was constantly supplying information on the Croatian Committee and its foreign contacts to the Yugoslav authorities.
The group disagreed with Frank on some issues and continued to informally meet in the 1920s to pursue politics, maintaining communication with Pavelić and Radić.
In one such instance, former members of by then defunct Croatian Legion conspired with the IMRO to assassinate king Alexander I of Yugoslavia during his wedding celebration.
