Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia,soc.culture.europe,soc.culture.german
Subject: Germany's Yugoslav Policy by Nora Beloff  - Part 3
From: stojanov@husc10.harvard.edu (Milan Stojanovic)
Date: 26 Aug 92 12:38:22 EDT
Organization: Harvard University Science Center


Part 3 :

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          An Analysis of Germany's Yugoslav Policy

                      By Nora Beloff


Tito's Yugoslavia

As things turned out, it was the Russians not the western allies who drove the
Germans out of Belgrade, so enabling Tito to install his own communist
dictatorship over a 'liberated' Yugoslavia.  Tito was still Stalin's disciple
and like Stalin he named his country 'a federation' whereas in fact it was
highly centralised round his own person.  He ruled by decree, collectivised
everything and imprisoned or shot presumed anti communists - or even
communists insufficiently deferential to himself.  Tito had tens of thousands
of fellow-Yugoslavs killed at the end, or soon after, the war and about one
million went through his prisons.  But everything took place behind an
impenetrable iron curtain and when the killing was over and after 1948 when
Stalin excommunicated Tito from the communist block, the Curtain was lifted
on a now petrified and monolithic Yugoslavia.  The West ignored the bloody
record and in the West he found himself cheered from the right for his
anti-Stalinism and from the left for his 'progressive' anticapitalism.

Tito's Flawed Legacy the subject of my last book, showed Tito's virtuosity
in playing ethnic and social groups against each other and in delegating
power and patronage exclusively to those faithful to him.  His most damaging
bequests to his ill-governed and, in many ways bestialised country, was the
colossal federal army, almost the biggest in Europe and his abuse of power
in the reconquered province of Kosovo

In the cold war atmosphere Tito managed to persuade credulous westerners
that the Yugoslav army was the only barrier keeping the USSR from the
Adriatic.  After the breach With Moscow Stalin had indeed prepared an
invading army to get rid of Tito but the 'Truman doctrine' for the protection
of Greece and Turkey indicated that the Americans would not tolerate any
further Soviet advance: Stalin drew back knowing he would not survive an
east west conflict.  The same caution constrained his successors and it
was the existence of NATO and not Tito's inflated army that kept the
super-militarised USSR at bay.

Nevertheless Tito and his successors continued to receive the military,
financial and diplomatic backing which was to produce the present overarmed
federal military monster.

Finding Yugoslavia too diverse to run as a single entity, Tito divided the
army into two: a federal force to defend the fronters and the system, and
local militias available to his trusted chleftains.  Now the militias have
ganged up with the local ethnic groups while the federal army has shown
itself desperate to preserve the union which alone gave it legitimacy.  Some
generals thought that, as the US owes its own existence to victory in a long
and bloody civil war, they could count on American sympathy.

The Kosovo Catastrophe

The beginning of the end of Tito's Yugoslavia came when the Serb communist
leader sent troops to deprive Kosovo of its status as 'Autonomous Province'.
Previously, for all practical purposes, the province of Kosovo had the same
rights - and deprivation of rights - as the six republics of which Tito's
federation was composed; all of which were compelled to implement his brand
of communism.

Having ordered his partisans to reconquer Kosovo regardless of cost, Tito
initially reincorporated it into Serbia allowing Rankovic, his police-chef
to hold down the Albanian majority by tested Stalinist methods.  But after
riots in 1968, Tito changed tack, giving power and patronage to his Albanian
nominees and prohibiting the Belgrade press from reporting the vengeful
harassment to which the vulnerable Serb minority were then being subject.

Milosevic's reassertion of Serb rule over what Serbs treasure as the cradle
of their medieval empire, was just what he needed to revive his battered
authority at a time when Communism everywhere was crumbling.  But his reckless
use of force and his overt manipulation of the Federal presidency enabled the
Croats and Slovene ex-communists to retaliate, by whipping up their own
nationalist sentiments.  The repression of Kosovo justified the proposition,
echoed in Germany, that Milosevic would soon be turning his guns to the West.

But though Milosevic committed himself to defending Serb minorities outside
Serbia, there is no evidence he ever contemplated Serb military dominance
over the whole of Yugoslavia

The Federal army, which did have a vested interest in preserving the union,
was manifestly divided about what to do.  They would hardly have launched
a massive attack with tanks and heavy armour had they not been deliberately
insulted and provoked.

Confident of German and Austrian support, the nationalists in both territories,
some anti communist but most of them ex communists, came to feel they could
safely tear up the Yugoslav constitution and declare unilateral secession.

Origins of Civil War

The killings began in the summer of 1990, after Tudjman had been elected
President of Croatia.  The Serbs shot at his armed followers, who had been
sent in to take over town halls and police stations previously manned by them.
Violent skirmishes produced the beginnings of an exodus of civilians from
both sides, which at the last Red Cross count number over a million.

Serb irregulars managed to cut communications between Zagreb and the coast,
tourism collapsed and, had it not been for vociferous German encouragement,
Tudjman would probably have settled for a negotiated arrangement,
restoring Serb autonomy.

Even then, Tudjman might have been reluctant to take on the Federal Army had
he not had his hand forced by the usually conciliatory Slovenes.  In June 1991
the nationalist leaders, defying sensible advice from wiser compatriots,
not only broke off relations with Belgrade but also sent their militia to haul
down the Yugoslav flag from the international frontier with Austria.

Understandably the Federal army intervened.  They sent in, and very soon
afterwards pulled out - a highly inappropriate convoy of tanks and heavy
armour along with a small number of infantrymen, easily outnumbered by the
local Slovene militia.  The surrender was all the swifter as the general
commanding the operation happened to be Slovene.

International opinion has too readily assumed that the Federal army was always
a tool of the Serbian government: they were indeed often in collusion but
Milosevic's complete control dates only to May 1992, with the purge of senior
officers.  Under Tito's system, the highest ranking officers were chosen
according to an ethnic key, ensuring all the communities were represented.
Junior officers on the other hand were always mainly Serb: indeed it would
rarely occur to an educated Croat, Slovene or Muslim to choose a military
career.

Many Germans, thinking along ethnic lines, defend the independence of the
homogeneous state of Slovenia as inherently virtuous.  But the Slovenes
themselves are already coming to the conclusion that, as long as there is
fighting in their backyard, they will be short of investment, tourism and
access to the captive market, which their industry previously enjoyed.
Under the flag of independence, life has become a lot more difficult.

Some Slovenes privately deplore the independence fervour: old ones remember
the Nazi treatment of Slovenes and dread renewed subordination.  Many young
Slovenes, less alarmed by Austro-German dominance, have lived their lives as
Yugoslavs, travelled freely, exchanged people and ideas and are shocked by
the narrow chauvinism of their current leaders.  Perhaps this was why,
before the independence referendum, the Slovene Minister of Information sent
a directive ordering the Ljubljana press 'to mobilise' for an affirmative
answer.  Among the list of obligations was the fanning of racial hatred:
editors were told to play up anything disagreeable said by a Serb about
Slovenes.

Slovene chauvinism would seem to be only skin-deep.  The prima ballerina of
the Slovene national ballet was born in Nish (Serbia), and educated at the
Zagreb school of ballet.  At a recent reception Slovene leading personalities
saw nothing odd in toasting the success of this prototype of Yugoslav talent.

At the end of last year, Slovene leaders were in desperate haste to acquire
a constitution in time for the scheduled German recognition.  The communists
and anti-clerical liberals informed the leading Christian democrats that they
would withhold the necessary majority unless the projected constitution
legalised abortion.  It did.

According to the Archbishop of Ljubljana, there is no country in the world,
with the possible exception of one African state, which has abortion written
into its constitution   This did not prevent the Pope from promptly
recognising the newly independent state.

Tudjman, who could hardly let himself appear less resolute than his Slovene
colleague, vainly ordered the Federal army to leave Croatia and proceeded
to try and blockade and starve out military garrisons, stationed around
Croatia - legally, under the old regime.  The army often, but not always,
has supported the Serb irregulars.  One exception was at Gospic, capital of
the mainly Serb province of Krajina, which was commanded by a Croat.  When he
surrendered it is reported that his Serb second-in-command committed suicide.
In subsequent revenge killings in Gospic the Serbs who had taken refuge in a
cellar were dragged out by uniformed Croats and Some 75 have remained
unaccounted for.

According to a local Orthodox bishop and other Serb survivors, the Croats
demolished the Orthodox church and wiped out the adjoining cemetery.  As
Zagreb closed the area to Red Cross and Amnesty personnel, there was no Western
confirmation and no TV programmes.

This does not, of course in any way justify the viciousness on the Serb side
nor the wanton killing and destruction of whole Croat communities and the
devastation of so many villages and towns.  But the Croats have been quick to
see that if they use their churches as convenient high-points from which to
shoot attackers and as ample spaces to store weapons, this has the additional
usefulness of provoking attacks on sacred and often historically precious
Catholic places of worship: the ruins make excellent television.

The area of Dubrovnik, form which the federal garrison had withdrawn several
years previously, was turned in 1990 into a Croat stronghold and the Croat
marksmen had no compunction in shooting from behind the ancient walls.  Serious
damage has been done to the front and windows of some buildings, though Western
visitors expecting to see a city in ruins have, on the contrary, found the old
city is still virtually intact.

Reasons behind German Policy

In supporting Croatian and Slovene independence the Germans have seemed to be
defending the principle of self-determination: giving each ethnic group the
right to form its own nation-state.  But German policy makers, who have studied
the ethnic map of Yugoslavia, recognise that the intermingling of communities
makes self-determination impossible: it would produce hundreds of mini-states.
Nor is there any international criteria for deciding how big a group must be,
nor how substantial the majority, in order to qualify its people for the
statehood.

Instead, top officials say, German policy is guided by support for the
immutability of frontiers and the rights of the majority, within these
frontiers, to decide their future.  No one has explained why the present
frontiers of Croatia, drawn by the Communists during the war and englobing
large numbers of non-Croats, should be any more immutable than, the frontiers
of the previously recognised Yugoslavia.  Nor is there any moral reason why
the Croats have a better case for rejecting rule from Belgrade than the Serbs
of Krajina from being governed from Zagreb or the Serbs from Bosnia from
submitting to Moslem/Croat rule from Sarajevo.

Some German officials have justified the speedy recognition of Croatia as a
way of establishing a Western presence in Zagreb which could exercise
restraint.  But so far, no restraining influence has been apparent.  The
Germans have stood by and sustained support, though descendants of the Ustashi
families, who had fled to the US, Canada, Australia, Austria and Germany had
returned to Croatia to re-animate the racist ideology.  'U' for Ustashi (the
Croat equivalent of the Swastika) is scrawled on Zagreb walls.  One
manifestation has been a cult of Mile Budak, Pavelic's minister of education
who was the first to announce Ustashi intentions.  At a rally in Gospic (where
fifty years later Serbs were again being massacred) he promised Croatia would
be cleared of Serbs: one third by expulsion, one third by killing and one
third by forced conversion to Catholicisim, which would turn them into Croats.

Further, there seems to have been no German objection, or reduced support,
when Tudjman passed an anti-Serb law of citizenship, when he raised exorbitant
taxes on Serb-owned property or when he failed to enforce existing law to
protect Serb residents from arson, confiscations and assault.  The consequence
of German conspicuous support for the regime has had disastrous consequences
on the Serbs: in Serbia itself Milosevic has been able to whip up frantic
hysteria, by alleging German complicity with the Croats.  And the Serb
minorities, in both Croatia and Bosnia, often with Milosevic's support,
are willing to perpetrate any crime or bestiality, in what they perceive as
a last-ditch fight for their own survival.

Many educated Serbs are appalled at the frenzy and violence.  Liberal Serbs
are currently engaged in demythologising Titoism and it was recently suggested
to them that there is new material available, showing that the targets for
the Royal Airforce were selected by the Partisans.  This means that Tito was
responsible for the notorious bombing of Belgrade on Eastern Monday, 1944.
Serb liberals preferred to hold back the evidence: Tito was a Croat and it
would only further inflame anti-Croat passions, already out of control.

Germany's best contribution to restore tolerance and trust between their
respective churches, would be to persuade their proteges to follow the German
example, and openly and unconditionally disassociate themselves from those who
committed the wartime genocide.  So far the Vatican has colluded with the
communists in covering up the past, in part, perhaps, because of the
unassailable evidence that some Fransican monks incited and participated in
the Ustashi massacres.

The entrenched hierarchy may never have allowed the present Pope to know what
was done in his Church's name and the Germans Catolic leaders would be
uniquely competent to tell him.

Senior German officials claim credit for having got Tudjman to sign the
Carrington deal, admitting UN troops into the minority areas.  But what has
happened is the reverse of a solution: as Tudjman's Consul General in Munich
said, the Croats need the UN troops to negotiate the departure of the Federal
army: once the federal soldiers had left the Croats would ask the UN to
withdraw.  If the Serbs in Croatia behaved according to Croatian law, they
would have nothing to fear.  This is quite different from what Carrington had
promised the Serbs: the UN would stay until some formula was agreed in which
the minorities could appeal for protection to some international tribunal.
Only the Germans could have forced Tudjman to clear up this dangerous
misunderstanding, in advance of the arrival of the UN troops.

The Croats are once again assuming that the Germans will be on their side and,
indeed, on May 11th 1992 Herr Genscher was the first to proclaim the EC
diplomatic rupture with Belgrade, designed to end the siege of Sarajevo. But
the restoration of peace depends first and foremost on he reconciliation
between Croats and Serbs in which neither would be humiliated and in which
blame would be fairly shared.  Perhaps a change of German foreign minister
will lead to a more balanced policy.

May 13th, 1992
London

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