"In his encyclical on godless communism, Pope Pius XI recommends the means that the Catholics should employ in order to fight against 'the greatest danger of our time'. (…)The realistic depiction of the worst enemy of God and the Christian culture can only benefit us, because only in this manner can we realise that the 'mysterious malice is already at work'. (…)and those who know their opponents, their weapons and way of fighting, will not be easily surprised, but will be able to stand up to them bravely and rationally, especially when they see that they possess weapons even more effective than their opponents. Our best weapons against communism are truth, justice, and love." This is what Ivan Ahčin, editor-in-chief of the Slovenec newspaper and one of the leading Catholic ideologues, wrote in his introduction to the book Komunizem največja nevarnost naše dobe (Communism, the Greatest Danger of Our Time, 1939). In 1937 the foreign-political editor of Slovenec, Alojzij Kuhar, explained to the Czechoslovak diplomats how the "clericalists" felt when they finally managed to assume power in the Drava Banate: "We are autonomous, like we wanted; we have complete control of the Slovenian administration, and you will not find a single Serbian in it; and we do what we want here." The primate of the Catholic camp in the Slovenian political life in the second half of the 1930s was not disputable, and neither were its aggressive activities aimed at the recatholicisation of the Slovenian society. In this regard it should nevertheless not be overlooked that such a situation was largely caused by the fact that at this time the Catholic camp did not actually face any real opponents or competitors that could be seen as seriously threatening. The Slovenian liberals underwent an identity crisis as well as the consequent political schism, and thus they focused primarily on their own political survival. In the second half of the 1930s, when the Communist Party of Slovenia was established (as a part of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia), Slovenian communists with their policy and demands in the national area (the national defence against fascism, the demands for the democratisation of the society) adapted themselves to the actual circumstances and approached certain groups of the population (students, intellectuals). Thus the communists successfully weathered the isolation that they were exposed to due to the persecution and ideological exclusivism. However, the People's Front anti-fascist and national defence activities failed to bring any permanent results for them in the sense of the Party consolidation. The Communist Party of Yugoslavia was active in Slovenia as of the middle of the 1930s. However, any growth in terms of its numbers can only be discussed after the establishment of the Communist Party of Slovenia in 1937, which had 250 members during the preparations. Three years later, in June 1940, the number of communists amounted to 650, while in October of the same year there were a little over 800 or perhaps around 900 of them. This trend kept becoming more obvious, and thus the estimates with regard to the membership of the Communist Party of Slovenia at the moment when the Axis Powers invaded Yugoslavia range between 1200 and 1300 members. At this time the Slovenian communists were more or less at the brink of the contemporaneous political developments. This is how the Slovenian communists also felt in the time before World War II broke out, as this is evident from the correspondence between the communist Dušan Kermavner and Lojze Ude: "Well over ten years ago and for the whole decade since then, many people have believed that this orientation is based on a chimera of some kind – its idea appeared to be so impractical that it seemed to be powerless: while God is up high, Russia is far away." In such circumstances the adherents of the Catholic camp would often equate the self-satisfied Slovenian People's Party with the whole of the Slovenian nation, while they would refer to this party's leader Dr Anton Korošec with the title of "the uncrowned King of Slovenia". However, appearances were deceptive. The internal strength and ideological unity in the ranks of Catholics, characteristic of the previous period, had been severely destabilised despite the self-confident attitude and attempts at internal unification. This weakness could not be concealed, not even by the certain external populist mass manifestations or the considerable support at the last pre-war elections in 1938. Although the main problem of the Catholic camp was not any endangerment by its Slovenian political competitors, but rather the disunity and ideological confusion in the Catholic camp's own ranks, communism that replaced the exhausted liberalism soon became the main enemy of the Catholic side, especially after the Pope's Divini Redemptoris encyclical (1937). With regard to the imbalance between the actual influence of the communist ideas in the contemporaneous Slovenia society and the emphasis placed on anti-communism we can speculate that the exceedingly aggressive anti-communist actions stemmed predominantly from the attempt at the internal unification of the Catholic camp by underlining the supposed external threat against Catholicism. In the absence of any real political competitors, but with what was nevertheless a political and ideological intolerance for different opinions, the Catholic camp also lacked a clear and single social model concept. It was only known as something that had to be in accordance with the papal encyclicals and based on the Catholic foundations. The economic crisis of October 1929, which shook the whole world profoundly, almost resulted in the demise of the global capitalist economy. Thus planned economy, based on the Soviet practice of state property, and on the other hand the authoritarian corporatist model, expressed in its totalitarian form in the fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, became the global alternatives. In the 1930s the process of the approximation between the ideologues of the Catholic rightists and the ideologues of the European totalitarian and authoritarian regimes began in Europe. The ideological flirtation of the Catholic right with the radical right in Europe had a number of common points (the abolishment of the class struggle, the critique of the liberal capitalism and socialism/Marxism, anti-communism, etc.). The ideological-political development of the Catholic right in Slovenia followed these European trends. The recommendation of the German ambassador to Belgrade clarified the direction taken by the dominant wing of the Catholic camp: besides Korošec's preparedness to engage in long-term close cooperation with Berlin due to his belief in the German victory, the ambassador identified the elements that corresponded to the Nazi plans with regard to the implementation of the racist totalitarian "New Order" precisely in the ideological profile of the Slovenian Catholic party. Viktor von Heeren communicated the following to Berlin: "Regardless of the familiar reservations that we have for a long time had about Korošec as the leader of the Slovenian clericalists, giving him a mandate to form a government could now turn out to be beneficial for the German interests. If we exclude Stojadinović, whose return to the position of Prime Minister would be far too detrimental for the internal situation in Yugoslavia due to the Croatian opposition, Korošec is the only Yugoslav statesman capable of leading the struggle against Jews, freemasons and communists with an honest personal conviction as well as the authority and energy crucial for the victory against the resistance." Therefore his recommendation to Berlin was "that the German press should not publish anything which could be interpreted as a principled refusal of a potential Korošec's mandate." Such a concept of the majority of the Slovenian Catholic camp, which emphasised the combination of anti-communism, anti-liberalism and anti-Semitism as fundamental social values, ultimately lost its social legitimacy with the military defeat of the Axis Powers in the global conflict.