Ante Pavelić (Croatian: [ǎːnte pǎʋelit͡ɕ] ^ⓘ; 14 July 1889 – 28 December 1959) was a Croatian politician who founded and headed the fascist ultranationalist organization known as the Ustaše in 1929 and was dictator of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), a fascist puppet state built out of parts of occupied Yugoslavia by the authorities of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, from 1941 to 1945. Pavelić and the Ustaše persecuted many racial minorities and political opponents in the NDH during the war, including Serbs, Jews, Romani, and anti-fascists, becoming one of the key figures of the genocide of Serbs, the Porajmos and the Holocaust in the NDH.

At the start of his career, Pavelić was a lawyer and a politician of the Croatian Party of Rights in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia known for his nationalist beliefs and support for an independent Croatia. By the end of the 1920s, his political activity became more radical as he called on Croats to revolt against Yugoslavia, and schemed an Italian protectorate of Croatia separate from Yugoslavia. After King Alexander I declared his 6 January Dictatorship in 1929 and banned all political parties, Pavelić went abroad and plotted with the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) to undermine the Yugoslav state, which prompted the Yugoslav authorities to try him in absentia and sentence him to death. In the meantime, Pavelić had moved to Fascist Italy where he founded the Ustaše, a Croatian nationalist movement with the goal of creating an independent Croatia by any means, including the use of terror. Pavelić incorporated terrorist actions in the Ustaše program, such as train bombings and assassinations, staged a small uprising in Lika in 1932, culminating in the assassination of King Alexander in 1934 in conjunction with the IMRO. Pavelić was once again sentenced to death after being tried in France in absentia and, under international pressure, the Italians imprisoned him for 18 months, and largely obstructed the Ustaše in the following period.

At the behest of the Germans, senior Ustaša Slavko Kvaternik declared the NDH's establishment on 10 April 1941 in the name of Pavelić. Calling himself the Poglavnik, or supreme leader, Pavelić returned from Italy and took control of the puppet government. He created a political system similar to that of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. The NDH, though constituting a Greater Croatia, was forced by the Italians to relinquish several territorial concessions to the latter. After taking control, Pavelić imposed largely anti-Serbian, anti-Semitic and anti-Roma policies that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Serbs, and tens of thousands of Jews and Roma in the NDH, many of which in dedicated concentration and extermination camps run by the Ustaše. Under the NDH regime, hundreds of thousands of Orthodox Christians were also forcibly converted to Catholicism, or expelled to German-occupied Serbia. These mass killings and persecutions have been described as the "single most disastrous episode in Yugoslav history".

In 1945, Pavelić ordered the executions of prominent NDH politicians Mladen Lorković and Ante Vokić on charges of treason when they were arrested for plotting to oust him and align the NDH with the Allies. Following the surrender of Germany that May, Pavelić ordered his troops to keep fighting even after the surrender. He subsequently ordered the NDH to flee to Austria to offer the surrender of their armed forces to the advancing British Army, which refused to accept it, and directed them to surrender to the Yugoslav Partisans instead. Sparked by attacks on their position, the Partisans began carrying out mass killings of surrendered Axis forces and their alleged collaborators, in which tens of thousands perished.

Pavelić fled to Austria before obtaining a false passport from the Vatican and escaping to Argentina, where he continued to engage in fascist activities. He later served as a security advisor to Juan Perón, the President of Argentina, who provided sanctuary for many fascist war criminals. On 10 April 1957, Pavelić was shot in an assassination attempt in Buenos Aires. The shooting and subsequent hospitalization caused him unwelcome public attention; fearing arrest and extradition to Yugoslavia, he fled to Francoist Spain, where he would be granted political asylum. He spent two and a half years in Spain before dying in Madrid from complications of the gunshot wounds on 28 December 1959, aged 70.

Ante Pavelić was born in the Herzegovinian village of Bradina on the slopes of Ivan Mountain north of Konjic, roughly 15 kilometres (9.3 miles) southwest of Hadžići, then part of the Ottoman Empire occupied by the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His parents had moved to Bosnia and Herzegovina from the village of Krivi Put in the central part of the Velebit plain, in southern Lika (in today's Croatia), to work on the Sarajevo-Metković railway line.

Searching for work, his family moved to the village of Jezero outside Jajce, where Pavelić attended primary school, or maktab. Here Pavelić learned Muslim traditions and lessons that influenced his attitude towards Bosnia and its Muslims. Pavelić's sense of Croat nationalism grew from a visit to Lika with his parents, where he heard townspeople speaking Croatian, and realised it was not just the language of peasants. While attending school in Travnik he became an adherent of the nationalist ideologies of Ante Starčević and his successor as the leader of the Party of Rights, Josip Frank.

Health problems briefly interrupted his education in 1905. In summer he found work on the railway in Sarajevo and Višegrad. He continued his education in Zagreb, the home city of his elder brother Josip. In Zagreb, Pavelić attended high school. His failure to complete his fourth-year classes meant he had to retake the exam. Early in his high school days, he joined the Pure Party of Rights as well as the Frankovci students' organization, founded by Josip Frank, the father-in-law of Slavko Kvaternik, an Austro-Hungarian colonel. Later he attended high school in Senj at the classical gymnasium, where he completed his fifth-year classes. Health problems again interrupted his education, and he took a job on the road in Istria, near Buzet. In 1909 he finished his sixth-year classes in Karlovac. His seventh-year classes were completed in Senj. Pavelić graduated in Zagreb in 1910 and entered the Law Faculty of the University of Zagreb. In 1912 Pavelić was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the attempted assassination of the Ban of Croatia-Slavonia, Slavko Cuvaj. He completed his law degree in 1914 and obtained his doctorate in July 1915. From 1915 until 1918 he worked as a clerk in the office of Aleksandar Horvat [hr], president of the Party of Rights. After completing his clerkship, he became a lawyer in Zagreb.