The NDH government cooperated with Nazi Germany in the Holocaust and exercised their own version of the genocide against ethnic Serbs living within their borders. State policy regarding Serbs was first declared in the words of Milovan Žanić, the minister of the NDH Legislative council on 2 May 1941: "This country can only be a Croatian country, and there is no method we would hesitate to use in order to make it truly Croatian and cleanse it of Serbs, who have for centuries endangered us and who will endanger us again if they are given the opportunity."