Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia,soc.culture.europe,soc.culture.german
Subject: Germany's Yugoslav Policy by Nora Beloff  - Part 2
From: stojanov@husc10.harvard.edu (Milan Stojanovic)
Date: 26 Aug 92 12:34:33 EDT
Organization: Harvard University Science Center


Part 2 : 

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          An Analysis of Germany's Yugoslav Policy

                      By Nora Beloff


The Origins of Yugoslavia

The Germans eagerly accepted the Croat nationalist fiction that the creation
of Yugoslavia after the First World War, like the division of Germany after
the Second, was imposed by force and consequently lacked international validity.
Yet the concept of Yugoslavia a union of South Slavs, was originally a Croat
idea.  In the heyday of romanticism, a Croat philosopher in Vienna propagated
the proposition that the Slav subjects of the Habsburg and Ottoman empires
should free themselves from their imperial masters and create a new state.
Though this would incorporate different religions, the emancipationist mood
was expected to eliminate the risk of conflict.

Later in the nineteenth century other Croats were attracted by a more
pernicious form of nationalism, precursor of National-Socialism, in which
the exigences of nationhood transcend all considerations of morality.  It was
this ideology which influenced Franjo Tudjman, who was to become President
of Croatia.  After being released from Tito's prisons he blamed all Croatia's
miseries not on the corrupt and cruel communist regime which had locked him
up, but solely on the domineering Serbs.  From his three books, Big Ideas and
Little Nations, 1969 Nationalities and contemporary Europe, 1981, and The
Wasteland of History, 1989, it is clear that he regards the Jews as well as
the Serbs as racially inferior.  Herr Eberhard Dingels, head of the
international department of the SDP, recalls a fraternal socialist meeting in
1959, attended by Tudjman: having been a Partisan, he was still in General's
uniform, dedicated to Titoist communism, but already unashamedly expressing
his hatred of Jews.

Tudjman's defenders abroad argue that his works only record history but the
texts not only cite antisemites but applaud their talent and endorse their
verdict.  He also claims that the Jews, by their internationalist
egalitarianism, "directly help to maintain and even to incite anti-Jewish
sentiment."  Since he became President, Tudjman has sought recognition and
respectability.  He tried and failed to induce Jewish intellectuals to join
his government and he declared that Croatia dissociates itself from the UN
resolution equating Zionism with the Nazis.  But in his books, the state of
Israel is declared 'Judeo-Nazi'.  In present day Germany, any German who
flaunted these sentiments would be excluded from civilised society.  Tudjman
is heralded as the liberator of an oppressed people.

Tudjman has applied the German-ethnic concept of citizenship to his own
country in which, at the last census, 17 of the population declared
themselves non-Croat.

Most Westerners are surprised that under the German system, any ethnic German
can claim citizenship and its attendant benefits, regardless of where they
come from and even if their families had become part of another state
centuries ago.  And those whom the British and French call immigrants, but
the Germans call guest-workers, cannot be naturalised, even if their fathers
as well as themselves were born in Germany.

Imitating the German model Tudjman's 1992 law of citizenship extends passports
only to ethnic Croats.  For others, this concession would be at the discretion
of the Croat authorities.

The Serbs from Serbia itself were modernised under French rather than German
influence and never incorporated this racial tenet, either in their ideology
or behaviour.  But the concept of Yugoslavia has always divided them.  The
Serb novelist Dobrica Cosic, in a semi-documentary historical novel,
convincingly recounts passionate arguments in 1914 between the older
generation  who yearned to link up with the Orthodox world and the young,
eager to join a Western-type union with the Slav subjects of the
Austro-Hungarian empire.

The proposition widely held in Germany, that the Serbs and Croats are
innately hostile, contradicts the historical record showing centuries of
peaceful coexistence: they fought each other only when outside rules
recruited them into rival armies.

The first Yugoslavia, under the Karadjordjevic dynasty disappointed
politically conscious Croats, who had expected some degree of autonomy.
Instead they were subject to a centralised state, on the Jacobin model:
though Zagreb became its financial and industrial capital, and the Slovenes
played an active part in government and administration, all decisions
ultimately rested with the Serb king.

Under the shadow of war the British-educated Prince Regent recognised that
Yugoslavia could not hold together unless the Croats were granted home rule.
In 1939 a deal was negotiated with Macek, the popular leader of the Peasants'
Party, who later refused to collaborate with the Nazis.  He spent part of the
war confined in the notorious Jasenovac concentration camp, which he described
in his subsequent memoires.

Though there was no time to see if autonomy would have worked, it seems clear
that, had the westernised monarchy lasted, the kingdom of Yugoslavia would
have had to take a looser, federal form.

Admittedly reconciliation after the events of 1941-5 would have been difficult.
Hitler had carved up Yugoslavia, given Croatia to his malignant puppet Ante
Pavelic, allocated Dalmatia to the Italians and compensated Pavelic with
Bosnia-Herzegovina.  Today, again, this region is being claimed as part of
'historic Croatia'.

Every Serb family would know of the massacres perpetrated by Pavelic who,
after representing the racialist 'Party of Rights' in the Yugoslav parliament
had been expelled in 1929 and became a protege of Mussolini.  He named his
new party, Ustasha and back in Zagreb in 1941 proceeded to implement his
'final solution' against the Serbs.  The numbers slaughtered are still
uncertain but according to the most reliable sources 350,000 is the minimum.
Tudjman and his supporters have flatly refused to examine the war records
from either the Allied or Axis archives and have crossed a naught from the
reputable figure.

But in Yugoslavia, unlike in Germany, the perpetrators of the war crimes were
never exposed and their compatriots never admitted or regretted the atrocities.
Indeed many young Croats have grown up without ever being confronted with the
evidence and when they are told, simply refuse to believe it.

Tito, himself half-Croat and half-Slovene, did his best to propagate the
Partisan mythology that all Croats, barring a handful of collaborators, fought
against the occupiers side by side with the Serbs.  In reality, the Germans
treated the Croats far more humanely than they treated the Slovenes and Serbs
and many Croats fought on the German side until the end of the war.  From
1941 to late 1943, nearly all the guerilla fighters were Serb.  The Partisans
drew their recruits in Croatia and Bosnia from survivors of the Ustasha
massacres whereas Drazha Mihajlovic, faithful to the exiled government, drew
his support from Serbs in Serbia itself.  The protracted civil war between
the pro-communist Partisans and he anti-communist loyalists divided Serb from
Serb: a reminder against treating the Serbs as a monolithic entity.  Today
again the Serb communities are passionately divided.



Xref: sparky soc.culture.yugoslavia:8449 soc.culture.greek:8386 soc.culture.europe:8058