page_title: Massacres of Albanians in the Balkan Wars
section_title: Reactions
hierarchical_section_title: Massacres of Albanians in the Balkan Wars / Reactions
caption_attribution_description: Captain Dimitrije Tucović, shortly before his death on the battlefield.
context_page_description: According to international reports, a number of massacres of Albanians by the Montenegrin Army, Serbian Army and paramilitaries took place in the Balkan Wars. During the 1912–13 First Balkan War, Serbia and Montenegro committed a number of war crimes against the Albanian population after expelling Ottoman Empire forces from present-day Albania and Kosovo, which were reported by the European, American and Serbian opposition press. Most of the crimes occurred between October 1912 and the summer of 1913. The goal of the forced expulsions and massacres was statistical manipulation before the London Ambassadors Conference to determine the new Balkan borders. According to contemporary accounts, between 20,000 and 25,000 Albanians were killed or died because of hunger and cold during that period. Many of the victims were children, women and the elderly. In addition to the massacres, some civilians had their lips and noses severed.
  According to Philip J. Cohen, the Serbian Army generated so much fear that some Albanian women killed their children rather than let them fall into the hands of Serbian soldiers.
context_section_description: According to Misha Glenny, Serbian press published banner headlines (such as "Get ready for war! The joint Serbo-Bulgarian offensive will start any minute now!") on the eve of war to encouraging patriotic hysteria. French general Frédéric-Georges Herr reported on 3 January 1913 that "in the Albanian massif, the numerous massacres that bloodied this region reduced the population to strong proportions. Many villages were destroyed and the land remained barren". Edith Durham, the European socialists Leo Freundlich and Leon Trotsky, and Serbian socialists such as Kosta Novaković, Dragiša Lapčević and Dimitrije Tucović condemned the atrocities against Albanians and supported Albanian self-determination.
  Durham wrote about Isa Boletini and how Dragutin Dimitrijević (Apis) and his friends betrayed the Albanians after they revolted against the Ottomans: "Having used their ammunition in the recent rebellions, the bulk of the Albanians were practically unarmed, and were pitilessly massacred by the invading armies. Apis and his friends who had posed as friends of the Albanians now spared neither man, woman nor child. How many were massacred in Kosovo vilayet will never be known".
  To investigate the crimes, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace formed a commission which was sent to the Balkans in 1913. Summing up the situation in Albanian areas, the commission concluded:
  Houses and whole villages reduced to ashes, unarmed and innocent populations massacred en masse, incredible acts of violence, pillage and brutality of every kind – such were the means which were employed and are still being employed by the Serbo-Montenegrin soldiery, with a view to the entire transformation of the ethnic character of regions inhabited exclusively by Albanians.
  — Report of the International Commission on the Balkan Wars
  Serbian territorial claims on the region were complicated by the issue of war crimes committed by Serbian forces which were part of the International Commission on the Balkan Wars investigation. The report was received negatively by Serb historians and officials, although the Serbian side was treated with restraint compared with others who had participated in the conflict. The socialist press in Serbia referred to crimes, and Serbian socialist Dimitrije Tucović wrote about the Serbian campaign in Kosovo and northern Albania. The Serbian social-democratic newspaper Radnica novice reported that innocent Albanians were plundered and their villages devastated.
  We have carried out the attempted premeditated murder of an entire nation. We were caught in that criminal act and have been obstructed. Now we have to suffer the punishment .... In the Balkan Wars, Serbia not only doubled its territory, but also its external enemies.
  — Dimitrije Tucović
  Although Tucović reminded his Serbian readers in 1913 of Karl Marx's "prophetic" quote ("The nation that oppresses another nation forges its own chains"), the Serbian Orthodox Church had whipped up nationalist hatred of Albanians. In his book Srbija i Arbanija, he wrote:
  The bourgeois press called for merciless annihilation and the army acted upon this. Albanian villages, from which the men had fled in time, were reduced to ashes. At the same time, these were barbarian crematoria in which hundreds of women and children were burned. 
  — Dimitrije Tucović
  During the second half of the twentieth century, historian Vladimir Dedijer researched Serbian foreign relations of the era. Dedijer equated Serbian actions (such as Nikola Pašić's description of eyewitness accounts as foreign propaganda) with those of European colonial armies in South America and Africa. The British and German press published articles about the large number of Albanian deaths in Albania and Kosovo, and the attempts by the Serbian government to conceal the reality from its people by censorship. An 18 January 1913 Times of London article reported that 25,000 Albanians were killed in northeastern Albania by Serbian forces.
  Russia played a significant part in the territorial division of Albanian regions and propaganda about crim
caption: Captain Dimitrije Tucović
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