The regime quickly moved to make good on these threats. Ustasha’s primary enemy, the Orthodox Slav minority, was persecuted with a ferocity that at times alarmed even their Nazi patrons, who feared that the grisly brutality of the atrocities committed against such a large minority would drive them into the arms of the Partisans. The Italian fascists who controlled a portion of Croatia during the war were genuinely horrified by the Ustasha and rescued a substantial number of Jews and Orthodox from Ustasha persecution, resisting all attempts to extradite the refugees who fled into their zone of control.