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Page Dr Sam Vaknin is an Economic
Advisor to the Government of
Macedonia. Yugoslavia was born in sin and
in sin it perished. The King of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes,
Alexander I, a freshly self-proclaimed dictator, declared it
on October 1929. It was a union of East and West, the
Orthodox and the Catholic, Ottoman residues with
Austro-Hungarian structures, the heart and the mind.
Inevitably, it stood no chance. The Croats and the Slovenes
- formerly fiery proponents of a Yugo (Southern) Slav
federation - were mortified to find themselves in a
Serb-dominated "Third World", Byzantine polity. This was
especially galling to the Croats who fiercely denied both
their geography and their race to cling to the delusion of
being a part of "Europe" rather than the "Balkans". To this
very day, they hold all things Eastern (Serbs, the Orthodox
version of Christianity, Belgrade, the Ottoman Empire,
Macedonia) with unmitigated contempt dipped in an
all-pervasive feeling of superiority. This is a well known
defence mechanism in nations peripheral. Many a suburban
folk wish to belong to the city with such heat and
conviction, with such ridiculous emulation, that they end up
being caricatures of the original. And what original! The bloated,
bureaucracy-saddled, autocratic and sadistic Habsburg
empire. Hitler's Germany. Mussolini's Italy. Unable to
ignore the common ethnic roots of both Serbs and Croats -
one tribe, one language - the Croats chose to believe in a
vast conspiracy imposed upon the Serbs by corrupt and
manipulative rulers. The gullible and self-delusional
Cardinal Stepinac of Zagreb wrote just before the Second
World War erupted, in a curious reversal of pan-Serbist
beliefs: The same Turks that almost
conquered Croatia and, met by fierce and brave resistance of
the latter, were confined to Bosnia for 200 years. The
Croats came to regard themselves as the last line of defence
against an encroaching East - against the manifestations and
transmutations of Byzantium, of the Turks, of a vile mix of
Orthodoxy and Islam (though they collaborated with their
Moslem minority during the Ustashe regime). Besieged by this
siege mentality, the back to the literal wall, desperate and
phobic, the Croats developed the paranoia typical of all
small nations encircled by hostility and impending doom. It
was impossible to reconcile their centrifugal tendency in
favour of a weak central state in a federation of strong
local entities - with the Serb propensity to create a
centralist and bureaucratic court. When the Croat delegates
of the Peasant Party withdrew from the fragmented
Constituent Assembly in 1920 - Serbia and the Moslem members
voted for the Vidovdan Constitution (June 1921) which was
modelled on the pre-war Serbian one. While a minority with limited
popular appeal, the Ustashe did not materialize ex nihilo.
They were the logical and inescapable conclusion of a long
and convoluted historical process. They were both its
culmination and its mutation. And once formed, they were
never exorcised by the Croats, as the Germans exorcised
their Nazi demon. In this, again, the Croats, chose the path
of unrepentant Austria. Croat fascism was not an
isolated phenomenon. Fascism (and, less so, Nazism) were
viable ideological alternatives in the 1930s and 1940s.
Variants of fascist ideology sprang all over the world, from
Iraq and Egypt to Norway and Britain. Even the Jews in
Palestine had their own fascists (the Stern group). And
while Croat fascism (such as it was, "tainted" by Catholic
religiosity and pagan nationalism) lasted four tumultuous
years - it persisted for a quarter of a century in Romania
("infected" by Orthodox clericalism and peasant lores).
While both branches of fascism - the Croat and the Romanian
- shared a virulent type of anti-Semitism and the
constipated morality of the ascetic and the fanatic -
Codreanu's was more ambitious, aiming at a wholesale reform
of Romanian life and a re-definition of Romanianism. The
Iron Guard and the Legion (of the Archangel Michael, no
less) were, therefore and in their deranged way, a force for
reform founded on blood-thirsty romanticism and masochistic
sacrifices for the common good. Moreover, the Legion was
crushed in 1941 by a military dictatorship which had nothing
to do with fascism. It actually persecuted the fascists who
found refuge in Hitler's Germany. Fascism in Hungary developed
similarly. It was based on reactionary ideologies pre-dating
fascism by centuries. Miklos Horty, the Austro-Hungarian
Admiral was consumed by grandiose fantasies of an Hungarian
empire. He had very little in common with the fascists of
the "white terror" of 1919 in Budapest (an anti-communist
bloodshed). He did his best to tame the Hungarian fascist
government of Gyula Gombos (1932). The untimely death of the
latter brought about the meteoric rise of Ferenc Szalasi and
his brand of blood-pure racism. But all these sub-species of
fascism, the Romanian, the Slovakian (Tiso) and the
Hungarian (as opposed to the Italian and the Bulgarian) were
atavistic, pagan, primal and romanticist - as was the Croat.
These were natural - though nefarious - reactions to
dislocation, globalization, economic crisis and cultural
pluralism. A set of compensatory mechanisms and reactions to
impossible, humiliating and degrading circumstances of
wrathful helplessness and frustration. "Native fascism"
attributed a divine mission or divine plan to the political
unit of the nation, a part of a grand design. The leader was
the embodiment, the conveyor, the conduit, the exclusive
interpreter and the manifestation of this design (the
Fuhrerprinzip). Proof of the existence of such a
transcendental plan was the glorious past of the nation, its
qualities and conduct (hence the tedious moralizing and
historical nitpicking). The definition of the nation relied
heavily of the existence of a demonized and dehumanized
enemy (Marxists, Jews, Serbs, Gypsies, homosexuals,
Hungarians in Romania, etc.). Means justified the end and
the end was stability and eternity ("the thousand years
Reich"). Thus, as opposed to the original blueprint, these
mutants of fascism were inert and aspired to a state of
rest, to an equilibrium after a spurt of cleansing and
restoration of the rightful balance. When Serb domination (Serb
ubiquitous military, Serbs in all senior government
positions even in Croatia) mushroomed into the "Kingdom of
Serbs, Croats and Slovenes", it was only natural for
dissenting and dissident Croats to turn to their "roots".
Unable to differentiate themselves from the hated Serbs
racially - they appealed to religious heterogeneity.
Immediately after the political hybrid was formed, the
Croats expressed their discontent by handing election
victories to the "Croatian Peasant Party" headed by Radic.
The latter was a dour and devout anti-Yugoslav. He openly
agitated for an independent - rustic and pastoral - Croatia.
But Radic was a pragmatist. He learned his lesson when -
having boycotted the Constituent Assembly in Belgrade - he
facilitated the imposition of a pro-Serb, pro-central
government constitution. Radic moderated his demands, if not
his rhetoric. The goal was now a federated Yugoslavia with
Croat autonomy within it. There is poetic justice in that
his death - at the hand of a Montenegrin deputy on the floor
of the Skupstina in 1928 - brought about the dictatorship
that was to give rise to Macek and the Sporazum (Croat
autonomy). The irony is that a peasant-favouring land reform
was being seriously implemented when a deadlock between
peasant parties led to King Alexander's fateful decision to
abolish the parliamentary system. King Alexander I was a good and
worthy man forced by circumstances into the role of an
abhorrent tyrant. He was a great believer in the power of
symbols and education. He changed the name of his loose
confederacy into a stricter "Yugoslavia". In an attempt to
defuse internal divisions, he appealed to natural features
(like rivers and mountains) as internal borders. Croatia
vanished as a political entity, replaced by
naturally-bounded districts and provinces. The majority of
Croats still believed in a federal solution, albeit less
Serb-biased. They believed in reform from the inside. The
Ustashe and Pavelic were always a minority, the Bolsheviks
of Croatia. But King Alexander's authoritarian rule was hard
to ignore: the torture of political opponents and their
execution, the closure of patriotic sports societies, the
flagrant interference in the work of the ostensibly
independent judiciary, the censorship. There was bad blood
growing between the King and more of his subjects by the
day. The Croats were not the only "minority" to be thus
maltreated. The Serbs maintained an armed presence in
Macedonia, Kosovo, the Sandzak and even in Slovenia. They
deported thousands of "Turks" (actually, all manner of
Muslims) under the guise of a "re-patriation" scheme. They
confiscated land from religious institutions, from the
deportees, from big landowners, from the Magyars in
Vojvodina and "re-distributed" it to the Serbs. Ethnic
homogenization (later to become known as "ethnic cleansing")
was common practise in that era. The Turks, the Bulgars, the
Germans, the Greeks were all busily purifying the ethnic
composition of their lands. But it made the King and the
Serbs no friends. The Serbs seemed to have been
bent on isolating themselves from within and on transforming
their Yugo Slav brethren into sworn adversaries. This was
true in the economic sphere as well as in the political
realm. Serbia declared a "Danubian orientation" (in lieu of
the "Adriatic orientation") which benefited the economies of
central and northern Serbia at the expense of Croatia and
Slovenia. While Serbia was being industrialized and its
agriculture reformed, Croatia and Slovenia did not share in
the spoils of war, the reparations that Yugoslavia received
from the Central Powers. Yugoslavia was protectionist which
went against the interest of its trading compatriots. When
war reparations ceased (1931) and Germany's economy
evaporated, Yugoslavia was hurled into the economic crisis
the world has been experiencing since 1929. The Nazi induced
recovery of Germany drew in Yugoslavia and its firms. It was
granted favourable export conditions by Hitler's Germany and
many of its companies participated in cartels established by
German corporate giants. King Alexander I must have
known he would be assassinated. Someone tried to kill him as
he was taking the oath to uphold the constitution on June
28, 1921. For 8 long years he had to endure a kaleidoscope
of governments, a revolving door of ministers, violence in
the Assembly and ever-escalating Croat demands for autonomy.
After the hideous slaughter on the floor of parliament, all
its remaining Croat members withdrew. They refused to go
back and parliament had to be dissolved. Alexander went
further, taking advantage of the constitutional crisis. He
abolished the constitution of 1921, outlawed all ethnically,
religiously or nationally based political parties (which
basically meant most political parties, especially the Croat
ones), re-organized the state administration, standardized
the legal system, school syllabi and curricula and the
national holidays. He was moulding a nation single handedly,
carving it from the slab of mutual hatred and animosity. The
Croats regarded all this as yet another Serb ploy, proof of
Serb power-madness and insatiable desire to dominate. In an
effort to placate the bulk of his constituency, the
peasantry, King Alexander established rural credit unions
and provided credit lines to small farmers and rural
processing plants. To no avail. The insecurity of this
hastily foisted regime was felt, its hesitation, the cruelty
that is the outcome of fear. The scavengers were gathering.
It was this basic shakiness
that led the King to look for sustenance from neighbours. In
rapid succession, he made his state a friend of Bulgaria,
Czechoslovakia and Romania (the last two in the frame of the
Little Entente). Another Entente followed (the Balkan one)
with Greece, Turkey and Romania. The King was frantically
seeking to neutralize his enemies from without while
ignoring the dangers from within. His death lurked in Zagreb
but he was travelling to Marseilles to meet it. A vicious
secret police, a burgeoning military, a new constitution to
legalize his sanguinous regime conspired with a global
economic crisis to make him a hated figure, even by Serb
Democrats. Days before his death, he earnestly considered to
return to a parliamentary form of government. But it was too
late and too little for those who sought his end.
The Ustasha movement
("insurgence" or "insurrection", officially the "Croatian
Ustasha Movement") was a product of the personal rebellion
of Ante Pavelic and like-minded others. Born in Bosnia, he
was a member of the Croat minority there, in a Serb-infused
environment. He practised as a lawyer in Zagreb and there
joined the Nationalist Croatian Party of Rights. He
progressed rapidly and by 1920 (at the age of 31), he was
alderman of Zagreb City and County. He was a member of the
Skupstina when anti-Croat sentiment peaked with the triple
murder of the Croat deputies. When Alexander the King
dissolved parliament and assumed dictatorial powers, he
moved (or fled) to Italy, there to establish a Croat
nationalist movement, the Ustasha. Their motto was "Za Dom
Spremny" ("Ready for Home" or "Ready for the Fatherland").
Italy the fascist was a natural choice - both because of its
ideological affinity and because it opposed Yugoslavia's
gradual drift towards Germany. Italy was worried about an
ultimate anschluss ("unification or incorporation") between
the Reich and Austria - which will have brought Hitler's
Germany to Austria's doorstep. Thus, the Ustasha established
training centres (more like refugee camps, as they included
the family members of the would be "warriors") in Italy and
Hungary (later to be expelled from the latter as a result of
Yugoslav pressure). Having mainly engaged in the
dissemination of printed propaganda, they failed at
provoking a peasant rebellion in north Dalmatia (promised to
Italy by the Ustasha). But they did better at assassinating
their arch-foe, King Alexander in 1934 (having failed
earlier, in 1933). In this the Ustasha was reputed to have
collaborated with the fascist IMRO (Internal Macedonian
Revolutionary Organization) under Ivan Mihailov in Bulgaria.
By joining forces with the IMRO, the Ustasha has transformed
itself into a link in the chain of terrorist organizations
that engulfed the world in blood and flames prior to the
onslaught of the greatest terrorist of all, of Hitler. While
some versions of the unholy alliance between the
Bulgarian-Macedonian outfit and the Croats are
unsubstantiated (to put it gently), it is clear that some
assistance was provided by both lower Italian ranks and the
IMRO. The actual murderer of the King was Mihailov's
Macedonian chauffeur, Vlado Georgiev-Kerin. The Ustasha was
also known for blowing trains and for attempting to do so on
more than one occasion both in Croatia and in Slovenia. King
Alexander seemed to have ordered the systematic annihilation
of the Ustasha just before his own untimely Ustasha-assisted
annihilation. Lt. Colonel Stevo Duitch "committed suicide"
in Karlsbad and there were attempts - some successful, some
less - on Pavelic in Munich, Percevic in Vienna, Servaci
(Servatsi) in Fiume and Percec in Budapest. It was made
abundantly clear to the Ustasha that it was an all-out war
with no prisoners taken. The King had to go. It was a strange movement, the
Ustashe. Claiming the continuous "rights of state" of the
Great Croatian Kingdom under Peter Kresimir and Zvonimir in
the 11th century - they nonetheless gave up Slovenia and
Bosnia-Herzegovina to Italy and, later, accepted a German
occupation of eastern Croatia. Composed of frugal ascetics
and avaricious operators, merciless romanticists and hard
nosed pragmatists, murderous sadists and refined
intellectuals, nationalist Croats and Serb-haters who had no
coherent national agenda bar the mass slaughter of the
Serbs. Thus, it was a social movement of the dispossessed, a
cesspool of discontent and rage, of aggression too long
suppressed but never sublimated, of justified social and
political grievances irradiated by racism, national
chauvinism, militarism and sadism. A grassroots reaction
turned cancerous, led by a second hand, third rate
Hitler-clone. A terrorist organization displaying the
trappings of a state in the making. This is not to say that
it lacked popular support. Tensions ran so high between
Serbs and Croats that daily brawls broke in pubs and
restaurants, trains and public places between Serb soldiers
and Croat citizens in Croatia. The Ustashe fed on real
friction, were charged by escalating tensions, mushroomed on
growing violence. Prince Paul, who acted as
regent for 12 years old Peter II, permitted the operation of
political parties but did not reinstate parliament. All this
time, a Yugoslav opposition of democratic forces included
Croat as well as Serb intellectuals and wannabe politicians.
Vladko Macek himself - later, the epitome of Croat
separatism and the most successful promoter of this cause -
was a member. In the 1938 elections, his party - the Peasant
Party - won an astounding 80% of the votes in Croatia. The
regent, now much humbled by years of strife and paralysis -
bowed to popular opinion so eloquently and convincingly
expressed. He backed negotiations with Macek which led to a
declaration of Croat independence in everything but name.
The Sporazum of August 1939, a few days before the outbreak
of World War II, granted Croatia self-government except in
matters of national defence and foreign affairs. The Serbs
were now disgruntled. The Serb Democrats felt abandoned and
betrayed by Macek and his Faustian deal with the
dictatorship. All other Serbs felt humiliated by what they
regarded as a capitulation to irredentism, bound to have a
disintegrative domino effect on the rest of Serbia's
possessions. It is a surrealistic thing, to read the
transcripts of these vehement and sincere arguments just
four days before the world as all the conversants knew it,
came to a shrieking end. When German planes were
pulverizing Warsaw, Yugoslavia declared its mock-neutrality.
Everybody knew that Paul was pro-German. Even King Alexander
before him signed a few secret pacts with the rising, ignore
at your peril, Central European force. The Austrian national
socialists who were implicated in the murder of the Austrian
prime minister, Dolfus, in July 1934, escaped to Yugoslavia
and resided openly (though disarmed by the Yugoslav police)
in army barracks in Varadzin. In 1935, a fascist movement
was established in Serbia ("Zbor"). Fascism and Nazism were
not without their attractions to Serbs and Croats alike.
This is the great theatre of
the absurd called the Balkans. Pavelic and the Ustasha were
actually closer in geopolitical orientation to the Yugoslav
monarchy (until Paul was deposed by the Yugoslav army) -
than to Mussolini's fascist Italy. They were worried by the
latter's tendency to block German designs on Austria. In a
region known for its indefinite historical memory and lack
of statute of limitations, they recalled how the Italians
treated Montenegrin refugees in 1923 (returning them to
Yugoslavia in cattle cars). They wondered if the precedent
might be repeated, this time with Croat passengers. The
Italians did, after all, arrest "Longin" (Kvaternik), Jelic
and others in Torino following the assassination of the
King. In the paranoid twilight zone of European Big Power
sponsored terrorism, these half hearted actions and dim
memories were enough to cast a pall of suspicion and of
guilt over the Italian regime. Mussolini called Pavelic his
"Balkan Pawn" but in that he was mistaken. There are good
reasons to believe that he was shocked by the murder of King
Alexander. In any event, the free movement of Pavelic and
the Ustasha was afterwards severely restricted. On March 1941, the Crown
Council of Yugoslavia decided to accede to the Tripartite
Pact of the Axis, though in a watered down form. Yugoslavia
maintained the prerogative to refuse the right of passage in
its territory to foreign powers. Yet, no one believed this
would be the case if confronted with such a predicament.
This decision - to give up Yugoslavia's main asset and only
protection - its neutrality - was taken under pressure from
the Croats in power at the time. The Pact was already joined
by Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary. Two days after the
Yugoslav Prime Minister (Dragisa Cvetkovic) and his foreign
minister signed the Pact in Vienna - they were deposed
together with the Regent Paul. The precocious Peter was made
King of Yugoslavia by the rebellious officers, headed by
General Dusan Simovic. The generals now in charge reverted
to Yugoslavia's neutrality and refused to join the
British-Greek naval treaty, for example. But what appeared
to be spontaneous demonstrations in favour of the
conspirators and against the Tripartite Pact erupted all
over Serbia. It was a challenge to Germany which it could
not ignore. The Supreme Command of the Wehrmact (OKW) issued
"Undertaking 25" (against Yugoslavia) and "Case Marita"
(against Greece). The Yugoslavs mobilized (albeit with a
surprising procrastination), the Germans invaded (on April
6, 1941) and, within 10 days it was all over. The Croats did
their best to assist the new forces of occupation,
disrupting and sabotaging the best they could army
operations as well as civilian defence. It was clear that
many of them (though by no means the majority) regarded the
Serbs as the real occupiers and the Germans as long awaited
liberators. On April 10, 1941, six days
into the invasion, the Germans declared the Independent
State of Croatia (NDH, after the initials of its name in
Croatian - Nezavisna Drzava Hrvatska). Vladimir Mecak,
leader of the Peasant Party and Deputy Prime Minister of
Yugoslavia called on the people to collaborate with the new
government. Overnight, a fringe terrorist organization,
(erroneously) considered to be more a puppet of Italy that a
true expression of Croat nationalism, found itself at the
helm of government in circumstances complicated by
internecine rivalries, inter-ethnic tensions, an history of
hate and mutual resentment, a paranoia stoked by sporadic
violence. The Serbs were evidently a fifth column and so
were the Jews. Indeed, Croatia's Serbs wasted no time in
joining resistance movements against the Nazis and the NDH.
Anyhow, the vacuum created by Macek's surprising passivity
and by the Church's abstention - was filled by the Ustashe.
The new state included a part of Dalmatia (the rest went to
Italy), the region of Srem and the entirety of Bosnia
Herzegovina. It was the closest Croatia ever got to
re-creating Great Croatia of a millennium ago. Fearful of
Croat encroachment, the Slovenes hurried to discuss the
declaration of their own state modelled after the NDH - only
to discover that their country was split between Italy and
Germany. In Zagreb, the enthusiasm was great. The 200 nor so
returning Ustashe were greeted back even by their political
rivals. People thronged the streets, throwing flowers and
rice at the advancing former terrorist and German convoys.
The NDH existed for four years.
It had 7 governments - only 5 of which were headed by Ante
Pavelic. As opposed to popular opinion, the Ustashe were not
a puppet regime, far from it. Both the Italians and the
Germans express their continued frustration at being unable
to control and manipulate the Ustashe. Despite their
military presence and economic support - both Axis powers
lacked real leverage over the ever more frantic activities
of the Ustashe. Even when it was clear that the Croat NDH -
in its genocidal activities - is alienating the Serbs and
adding to the ranks of resistance movements throughout
Yugoslavia, there was precious little the Germans or
Italians could do. They held polite and less polite talks
with the top echelons of their own creation but like the
fabled Dr. Frankenstein found that the NDH had a life very
much of its own and an agenda it pursued with vigour and
conviction. It is impossible - nor is it desirable - to
avoid the issue of the mass killings of Serbs, Jews and
Gypsies. Some Croats claim that "only" 60-70,000 were killed
in Jasenovac and other camps. The very use of the word
"only" in this context ought to send a frisson of repulsion
down the spines of civilized men. The Serbs, Jewish scholars
and many international scholars claim the number was between
300-600,000 people. The reason for the disparity in numbers
is that - despite their "German" pretensions, the Croats
acted like the least of the barbarous Balkanians in their
mass slaughters. This was no industrial affairs, replete
with bureaucracy and statistics. The massacres were
atavistic, primitive, the call of blood and guts and
scattered brains. It was an orgy, not an operation.
There is nothing much to tell
about the NDH. The regime was busy enacting laws against
deadly sins and minor vices (such as pornography). The
collaboration with the Catholic Church proceeded smoothly.
Laws were passed against the Jews. The NDH army fought the
partisans and the Allied Forces. When it tried to surrender
to the British army in 1945 - it refused to accept their
capitulation and turned them over to the partisans. In a
series of death marches army soldiers and civilian
collaborators with the Ustashe were deliberately
exterminated. The Balkans knows no mercy. Victims become
butchers and butchers victims in nauseating turns. By 1944,
the NDH lost half its territory either to the Germans or to
the partisans. The rump state survived somehow, its leaders
deserting in droves. Pavelic himself escaped to Austria,
from there to Italy and Argentina. He survived an attempt on
his life in 1957 and then fled to Paraguay and Spain where
he died in 1959. "For the rest - Serbs,
Jews and Gypsies - we have three million bullets. We
shall kill one third of all Serbs. We shall deport
another third, and the rest of them will be forced to
become Roman Catholic." (Mile Budak, Minister
of Education of Croatia, July 22, 1941)
"There are limits even to
love... (It is) stupid and unworthy of Christ's disciples
to think that the struggle against evil could be waged in
a noble way and with gloves on." (Archbishop of
Sarajevo, Ivan Saric, 1941) "Croats no longer think
that German troops are present merely to provide peace
and security, but that they are here to support the
Ustasha regime [...] The Ustashas promote the
impression that they act not only in agreement with
German instances, but actually on their orders.
[...] There is here today a deep mistrust of
Germany, because it is supporting a regime that has no
moral or political right to exist, which is regarded as
the greatest calamity that could have happened to the
Croat people. That regime is based entirely on the
recognition by the Axis powers, it has no popular roots,
and depends on the bayonets of robbers who do more evil
in a day than the Serbian regime had done in twenty
years." (Captain Haffner to General Edmund
Glaise von Horstenau, Plenipotentiary of the Wehrmacht in
Zagreb, Croatia, 1941) "Our troops have to be
mute witnesses of such events; it does not reflect well
on their otherwise high reputation... I am frequently
told that German occupation troops would finally have to
intervene against Ustasha crimes. This may happen
eventually. Right now, with the available forces, I could
not ask for such action Ad hoc intervention in individual
cases could make the German Army look responsible for
countless crimes which it could not prevent in the past."
(General Edmund Glaise von Horstenau to the
OKW, July 10, 1941) "The horrors that the
Ustashi have committed over the Serbian small girls is
beyond all words. There are hundreds of photographs
confirming these deeds because those of them who have
survived the torture: bayonet stabs, pulling of tongues
and teeth, nails and breast tips - all this after they
were raped. Survivors were taken in by our officers and
transported to Italian hospitals where these documents
and facts were gathered." (Commander of the
Italian Sassari Division in Croatia, 1941)
"Increased activity of
the bands is chiefly due to atrocities carried out by
Ustasha units in Croatia against the Orthodox population.
The Ustashas committed their deeds in a bestial manner
not only against males of conscript age, but especially
against helpless old people, women and children. The
number of the Orthodox that the Croats have massacred and
sadistically tortured to death is about three hundred
thousand." (Report to Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich
Himmler from the Geheime Staatspolizei - GESTAPO - dated
February 17, 1942) "From the founding
[of the NDH] until now the persecution of Serbs
has not stopped, and even cautious estimates indicate
that at least several hundred thousand people have been
killed. The irresponsible elements have committed such
atrocities that could be expected only from a rabid
Bolshevik horde." (German foreign ministry
plenipotentiary representative in Belgrade Felix Benzler
to Joachim Ribbentrop, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the
Reich) " (In Croatia under the
Ustasha) ...over half a million [Serbs] were
murdered, about a quarter of a million were expelled from
the country, and another quarter of a million were forced
to convert to Catholicism." (Encyclopaedia of
the Holocaust) (All quotes from "The Real
Genocide in Yugoslavia: Independent Croatia of 1941
Revisited" by: Srdja Trifkovic, published in:
www.rockfordinstitute.org
and in: www.antiwar.com)
This article (Part IV in a
series) is from: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/6297/pp55.html
"Even going back
ten years it was easy to see something gripping
Yugoslavia by the throat. But in the years since then the
grip has been tightened, and tightened in my opinion by
the dictatorship established by King Alexander
Karageorgevitch. This dictatorship, however much it may
claim a temporary success, must inevitably have the
effect of poisoning all the Yugoslav organism. Whether
the poisoning is incurable or not is the question for
which I have sought an answer during two months in
Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and central Europe." ("Black
Hand over Europe" by Henri Pozzi, 1935)
THE SIN
"If there were more
freedom ... Serbia would be Catholic in twenty years. The
most ideal thing would be for the Serbs to return to the
faith of their fathers. That is, to bow the head before
Christ's representative, the Holy Father. Then we could
at last breathe in this part of Europe, for Byzantium has
played a frightful role ... in connection with the
Turks."
THE DEAD
"After all, if the
Croat state wishes to be strong, a nationally intolerant
policy must be pursued for fifty years, because too much
tolerance on such issues can only do harm."
(Adolf Hitler to Ante Pavelic in their meeting,
June 6, 1941)