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TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u YUGOSLAVIA – FROM UTOPIA TO HELL PAGEREF _Toc526079838 \h 524Part 2 PAGEREF _Toc526079839 \h 524CHAPTER 4 - APOCALYPSE PAGEREF _Toc526079840 \h 524Table of Contents PAGEREF _Toc526079841 \h 524CHAPTER 4 – Apocalypse PAGEREF _Toc526079842 \h 528CHAPTER 4 – Apocalypse (1941-1945) PAGEREF _Toc526079843 \h 5294.1Government of Croatia PAGEREF _Toc526079844 \h 5294.2New Law PAGEREF _Toc526079845 \h 5334.3 The NDH government did not possess sufficient armed forces to alleviate this terror. PAGEREF _Toc526079846 \h 5574.3.1Partisans and Chetniks PAGEREF _Toc526079847 \h 5654.3.2 The KPJ (Communist Party of Yugoslavia) PAGEREF _Toc526079848 \h 5724.3.3The Partisans PAGEREF _Toc526079849 \h 5734.3.4 The Case Hebrang PAGEREF _Toc526079850 \h 5764.3.5The Chetniks PAGEREF _Toc526079851 \h 5834.3.6The Role of Nazi Germany PAGEREF _Toc526079852 \h 5854.3.7The Chetnik revenge PAGEREF _Toc526079853 \h 5924.3.8Assistance of German units PAGEREF _Toc526079854 \h 5934.3.9Ustasha reacts to Chetniks PAGEREF _Toc526079855 \h 6094.3.10Bosnia-Hercegovina PAGEREF _Toc526079856 \h 6114.3.11The Serb view of the NDH PAGEREF _Toc526079857 \h 6154.4The Yugoslav ?migré Government in London PAGEREF _Toc526079858 \h 6164.4.1Communist Historians PAGEREF _Toc526079859 \h 6224.4.2Germans and Italians PAGEREF _Toc526079860 \h 6274.4.3 German and Italian Offensive PAGEREF _Toc526079861 \h 6284.4.4Operation Schwarz PAGEREF _Toc526079862 \h 6324.4.5Chetnik Crimes PAGEREF _Toc526079863 \h 6374.4.6 German Collaborators in Serbia 1941-45 Collaboration in Serbia PAGEREF _Toc526079864 \h 6394.4.7The Collapse of Nedi?’s Serbia PAGEREF _Toc526079865 \h 6414.4.8The Situation in the NDH PAGEREF _Toc526079866 \h 6424.4.9 Bosnia – A War within the War PAGEREF _Toc526079867 \h 6434.4.10 The Battles for the Prozor Basin and the Valley of the River Vrbas PAGEREF _Toc526079868 \h 6484.5Col. Jure Francetic PAGEREF _Toc526079869 \h 6494.6Battles around Kupres, Tomislav Grad, ?ujica and Livno PAGEREF _Toc526079870 \h 6514.6.1The battles for Livno and Kupres – 2nd to 11th August 1942 PAGEREF _Toc526079871 \h 6544.6.2Attack on Kupres – 11th/12th August 1942 PAGEREF _Toc526079872 \h 6564.6.3The new attack on Kupres – 13th/14th August 1942 PAGEREF _Toc526079873 \h 6574.7The Situation in Central Bosnia at the end of summer 1942 PAGEREF _Toc526079874 \h 6594.7.1Partisan Historicism PAGEREF _Toc526079875 \h 6634.7.2The Black Legion (Crna Legija) PAGEREF _Toc526079876 \h 6644.7.3National Liberation Army – Liberators or Murderers? PAGEREF _Toc526079877 \h 6654.7.5War for Yugoslav Utopia – The Price Paid in Croatian Blood PAGEREF _Toc526079878 \h 6804.7.6 Partisan Massacres Continue PAGEREF _Toc526079879 \h 6864.8The Conquest of Croatia PAGEREF _Toc526079880 \h 6924.8.1Ko?evje PAGEREF _Toc526079881 \h 6944.8.2 Celje PAGEREF _Toc526079882 \h 6944.8.3Ljubljana PAGEREF _Toc526079883 \h 6954.8.4Massacres in Croatia PAGEREF _Toc526079884 \h 6954.8.5The Death Marches PAGEREF _Toc526079885 \h 6954.8.6The Witness Documents PAGEREF _Toc526079886 \h 6984.8.7Anecdotal Evidence PAGEREF _Toc526079887 \h 7084.8.8Bleiburg and its consequences PAGEREF _Toc526079888 \h 7184.9The Number Games in the War of the Yugoslav Utopia PAGEREF _Toc526079889 \h 7294.9.1Slovenia – Mass Graveyard of Croats PAGEREF _Toc526079890 \h 7344.9.2 Yugoslav Utopia under the Scrutiny of the Big Powers PAGEREF _Toc526079891 \h 7374.9.3 Croatian Jewish Community and Ante Paveli? PAGEREF _Toc526079892 \h 7594.10 Notes PAGEREF _Toc526079893 \h 8154.10.1: The programme of the HSS PAGEREF _Toc526079894 \h 8154.10.2: Ma?ek in NDH Prison PAGEREF _Toc526079895 \h 8174.10.3: Luburi? PAGEREF _Toc526079896 \h 8194.10 4: The Dinaric Mountains PAGEREF _Toc526079897 \h 8204.10.5: Tezno PAGEREF _Toc526079898 \h 8214.10.6: The ‘programme’ of the HSS PAGEREF _Toc526079899 \h 8224.10.7 Abbreviations and Acronyms for Chapter 4 PAGEREF _Toc526079900 \h 825CHAPTER 5 - THE YUGOSLAV GOD MARX (1945-1990) PAGEREF _Toc526079901 \h 8285.1Archbishop Stepinac as Scapegoat PAGEREF _Toc526079902 \h 8285.2‘Free’ Elections PAGEREF _Toc526079903 \h 8635.3Secret Police and Military Court Documents PAGEREF _Toc526079904 \h 8655.4Independent State of Croatia PAGEREF _Toc526079905 \h 8815.5Tito’s Crimes - The Documents PAGEREF _Toc526079906 \h 8825.6 Sample Documents PAGEREF _Toc526079907 \h 8865.7The Violence of Yugoslavia PAGEREF _Toc526079908 \h 9205.8 Goli Otok Island ('Hell's Island') PAGEREF _Toc526079909 \h 9335.9 Was the Croatian Mass Movement in Good Taste and Worth the Price? PAGEREF _Toc526079910 \h 9475.10 Croatia Waking Up PAGEREF _Toc526079911 \h 9615.11 Information and Disinformation - Propaganda PAGEREF _Toc526079912 \h 9835.12 The 'Sixth Column' PAGEREF _Toc526079913 \h 9905.13 Dr. Franjo Tudjman PAGEREF _Toc526079914 \h 9955.14 The Counterpoint PAGEREF _Toc526079915 \h 10065.15 Yugoslav murders still being uncovered PAGEREF _Toc526079916 \h 10195.16 Time for 'Rationalisation' PAGEREF _Toc526079917 \h 10275.17 APPENDIX I PAGEREF _Toc526079918 \h 10375.17.10 One year before . . . PAGEREF _Toc526079919 \h 10415.17.11 A few days later . . PAGEREF _Toc526079920 \h 10415.17.12 And a few days before . . . PAGEREF _Toc526079921 \h 10425.18APPENDIX II PAGEREF _Toc526079922 \h 10455.19Note: Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac PAGEREF _Toc526079923 \h 1046CHAPTER 6 - The Phoenix in the Ashes – 1990-2003 PAGEREF _Toc526079924 \h 10486.1The Reality and the Independence PAGEREF _Toc526079925 \h 10596.2 Heavenly Serbia PAGEREF _Toc526079926 \h 10826.2.1The Serbian Orthodox Church as a Political Party PAGEREF _Toc526079927 \h 10906.3Operation ‘Storm ‘95’ PAGEREF _Toc526079928 \h 11026.3.1The liberation of Krijina from the Serbs PAGEREF _Toc526079929 \h 11026.4'PAX' Americana PAGEREF _Toc526079930 \h 11036.4.1Operation End Game PAGEREF _Toc526079931 \h 11036.5 In God we Trust PAGEREF _Toc526079932 \h 11096.6 Do the Jews Hate the New Croatia PAGEREF _Toc526079933 \h 11106.6.1 Is President Tudjman Really an Anti-Semite? PAGEREF _Toc526079934 \h 11106.6.2 Marcus Tanner and the Western Press PAGEREF _Toc526079935 \h 11136.6.3 Too many Cooks Spoil the Broth PAGEREF _Toc526079936 \h 11156.6.4 Defender of the Faith PAGEREF _Toc526079937 \h 11156.6.5 How Mad, if at all, is Dobroslav Paraga? PAGEREF _Toc526079938 \h 11166.6.6 Do Croats Still Suffer from Yugo-Nostalgia? PAGEREF _Toc526079939 \h 11186.6.7 OSCE fills all the Loopholes PAGEREF _Toc526079940 \h 11196.6.8 Serbs, As Parasitic as Mistletoe, Still 'Love' Croatia PAGEREF _Toc526079941 \h 11206.6.9 Waspish OSCE (Office for Security and Co-operation in Europe) PAGEREF _Toc526079942 \h 11216.7 Kiss-and-tell Stories on the Subject of Tudjman Are Becoming More Bizarre PAGEREF _Toc526079943 \h 11216.7.1 The Character Assassination of President Tudjman by the Soro? Press Continues in Boring Instalments PAGEREF _Toc526079944 \h 11246.7.2 The Unbearable Senility of the ‘Croatian Opposition’ PAGEREF _Toc526079945 \h 11276.7.3 Economic Strategy of Croatia PAGEREF _Toc526079946 \h 11386.7.4 Publishing editor of the Serbian cultural society ‘Prosveta’ to talk to a Zagreb magazine, January 1999. PAGEREF _Toc526079947 \h 11416.7.5 The Demands of Europe PAGEREF _Toc526079948 \h 11426.7.6 Croatian Football PAGEREF _Toc526079949 \h 11436.7.7 How the other half - PAGEREF _Toc526079950 \h 11446.7.8 The Storm Troopers PAGEREF _Toc526079951 \h 11556.7.9 The Communist Secret Police (UDBA) PAGEREF _Toc526079952 \h 11606.7.10 The European Union PAGEREF _Toc526079953 \h 11976.7.11 America vs. Europe? PAGEREF _Toc526079954 \h 11996.7.12 The Epilogue PAGEREF _Toc526079955 \h 12046.8 Appendix I: Testimony of Stip Mesi? vs General Tihomir Bla?ki? at The Hague Court between March 16 and March 19 1998 PAGEREF _Toc526079956 \h 1206CHAPTER 7: SIX BLOODY YEARS (2003- 2009) PAGEREF _Toc526079957 \h 1237INDEX TO PART 2: Chapters 4,5 & 6 PAGEREF _Toc526079958 \h 1239This file is combined and called 4,5&6,v7 updated for 26th September meetingPrevious file called combined 4,5&6ABv6tom.v6THURSDAY6,9docYUGOSLAVIA – FROM UTOPIA TO HELLPart 2CHAPTER 4 - APOCALYPSETable of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \n \h \z \u T4.1Government of Croatia4.2New Law4.3 The NDH government did not possess sufficient armed forces to alleviate this terror.4.3.1Partisans and Chetniks4.3.2The KPJ (Communist Party of Yugoslavia)4.3.3The Partisans4.3.4The Chetniks4.3.5The Role of Nazi Germany4.3.6The Chetnik revenge4.3.7Assistance of German units4.3.8Ustasha reacts to Chetniks4.3.9Bosnia-Hercegovina4.3.10The Serb view of the NDH.4.4The Yugoslav ?migré Government in London4.4.1Communist Historians4.4.2Germans and Italians4.4.3German and Italian Offensive4.4.4Operation Schwarz4.4.5Chetnik Crimes4.4.6 German Collaborators in Serbia 1941-45 Collaboration in Serbia4.4.7 The Collapse of Nedi?’s Serbia4.4.8 The Situation in the NDH4.4.9 Bosnia – A War within the War4.4.10 The Battles for the Prozor Basin and the Valley of the River Vrbas4.5Col. Jure Francetic4.6 Battles around Kupres, Tomislav Grad, ?ujica and Livno4.6.1The battles for Livno and Kupres – 2nd to 11th August 19424.6.2Attack on Kupres – 11th/12th August 19424.6.3The new attack on Kupres – 13th/14th August 19424.7The Situation in Central Bosnia at the end of summer 19424.7.1Partisan Historicism4.7.2The Black Legion (Crna Legija)4.7.3National Liberation Army – Liberators or Murderers?4.7.5 War fo Yugoslav Utopia – The Price Paid in Croatian Blood4.8 The Conquest of Croatia4.8.1 Ko?evje4.8.2 Celje4.8.3 Ljubljana4.8.4 Massacres in Croatia4.8.5 The Death Marches4.8.6 The Witness Documents4.8.7 Anecdotal Evidence4.8.8 Bleiburg and its consequences4.9The Number Games in the War of the Yugoslav Utopia4.9.1 Slovenia – Mass Graveyard of Croats4.9.2 Yugoslav Utopia under the Scrutiny of the Big Powers4.9.3 Croatian Jewish Community and Ante Paveli?ICHAPTER 5 - THE YUGOSLAV GOD MARX (1945-1990)5.1 Archbishop Stepinac as Scapegoat5.2 ‘Free’ Elections5.3 Secret Police and Military Court Documents5.4 Independent State of Croatia5.5 Tito’s Crimes - The Documents5.6 Sample Documents5.7 The Violence of Yugoslavia5.8 Goli Otok Island ('Hell's Island')5.9 Was the Croatian Mass Movement in Good Taste and Worth the Price?5.10 Croatia Waking Up5.11 Information and Disinformation - Propaganda5.12 The 'Sixth Column'5.13 Dr. Franjo Tudjman5.14 The Counterpoint5.15 Yugoslav murders still being uncovered5.16 Time for 'Rationalisation'5.17 APPENDIX I5.18 APPENDIX II5.19 Note: Archbishop Alojzije StepinacCHAPTER 6 The Phoenix in the Ashes – 1990-20036.1 The Reality and the Independence6.2 'Heavenly Serbia'6.2.1The Serbian Orthodox Church as a Political Party6.3 Operation ‘Storm ‘95’6.3.1 The liberation of Krijina from the Serbs6.4 'PAX' Americana6.4.1 Operation End Game6.5 In God we Trust6.6 Do the Jews Hate the New Croatia6.6.1 Is President Tudjman Really an Anti-Semite?6.6.2 Marcus Tanner and the Western Press6.6.3 Too many Cooks Spoil the Broth6.6.4 Defender of the Faith6.6.5 How Mad, if at all, is Dobroslav Paraga?6.6.6 Do Croats Still Suffer from Yugo-Nostalgia?6.6.7 OSCE fills all the Loopholes6.6.8 Serbs, As Parasitic as Mistletoe, Still 'Love' Croatia6.6.9 Waspish OSCE (Office for Security and Co-operation in Europe)6.7 Kiss-and-tell Stories on the Subject of TudjmanError! Bookmark not defined. Are Becoming More Bizarre6.7.1The Character Assassination of President Tudjman by the Soro? Press Continues in Boring Instalments6.7.2 The Unbearable Senility of the ‘Croatian Opposition’6.7.3 Economic Strategy of Croatia6.7.4 Publishing editor of the Serbian cultural society ‘Prosveta’ to talk to a Zagreb magazine, January 1999.6.7.5 The Demands of Europe6.7.6 Croatian Football6.7.7 How the other half -6.7.8 The Storm Troopers6.7.9 The Communist Secret Police (UDBAError! Bookmark not defined.)6.7.10The European Union6.8 Appendix I: Testimony of Stip Mesi? vs General Tihomir Bla?ki? at The Hague Court between March 16 and March 19 1998CHAPTER 7: SIX BLOODY YEARSOf a delicate nature and will be available at a later date.CHAPTER 4 – ApocalypseCHAPTER 4 – Apocalypse (1941-1945)4.1Government of CroatiaJune 1941: The speedy breakup of Yugoslavia XE "Breakup of Yugoslavia" took the British by surprise. Churchill groaned:"We cannot see any reason for the King to leave the country, which is big, mountainous and full of armed people."The breakup of Yugoslavia put the country under the control of the Axis, so that any resistance became de facto illegal. The Independent State of Croatia (NDH), with Ante Paveli?, a staunch Catholic Croat XE "Paveli?, Ante - staunch Catholic Croat head of Independent State of Croatia (NDH)" , XE "Independent State of Croatia (NDH) head Ante Paveli?, staunch Catholic Croat," at its head, irrespective of the reasons for its genesis, fell also automatically under the Axis control. Yet, due to its internal contradictions (containing a considerable population in favour of the Yugoslav utopia), it was bound to become vulnerable.The HSS (Croatian Peasant Party – Hrvatska Selja?ka Stranke) the great pre-war Croatian Democratic Party, was in a state of confusion XE "HSS (Croatian Peasant Party – Hrvatska Selja?ka Stranke) great pre-war Croatian Democratic Party - in state of confusion" . At the end of 1941, the Great Serbs in the Yugoslav Emigrant Government in London published a fake memorandum about the alleged Croatian crimes against the Serbs in the NDH. This kicked off a great anti-Croat campaign in Britain and the US XE "Anti-Croat campaign in Britain and US" . The HSS, logically, published a counter-memorandum about the Chetnik crimes against the Croats and Muslims. Instead of leaving matters at that, Dr. Juraj Krnjevi?, the HSS Leader within the Yugoslav Emigrant Government in London XE "Krnjevi?, Dr. Juraj - HSS Leader within Yugoslav Emigrant Government in London" , inexplicably broadcast on the BBC in May 1992 an invitation to the Croats to support the Serbian Chetniks in order to placate the British whose propaganda was singing panegyrics to the Chetniks as the only resistance group in Yugoslavia).The former Ban of Croatia, now in exile, Dr. Ivan ?uba?i? XE "?uba?i?, Dr. Ivan" , went even further by persuading the influential Croatian community in the US to address a Memorandum to King Peter XE "King Peter" "elevating Dra?a Mihajlovi? and the heroic Chetniks" just at the moment when these cut-throats were committing the most hideous crimes against the Croats and Muslims.The Yugoslav Government in London was a puppet of the Foreign Office and as such had to toe its line, i.e., the policies propagating the Great Serbian aim XE "Great Serbian aim" .Already in June 1941, the British Government gave the Yugoslav government in exile an assurance that "it doesn't recognise the breakup of Yugoslavia by the Axis, and gave the promise that after the victory Yugoslavia will be reinstated". The US followed Britain "and condemned the attack on Yugoslavia and assured the Yugoslav Government in London that it would not recognise the division of Yugoslav territory".The First British mission (D.T. Hudson XE "Hudson, D.T." ) was sent to the Chetniks by a submarine, which arrived in Montenegro in September 1941.The purpose of that mission was to stir up trouble and to set Yugoslavia on fire. Upon their return home it was their duty to spread propaganda about the 'heroic' Chetniks, which propaganda in 1942 caught the imagination of the British and Americans. In a further push by the British in favour of the Chetniks XE "British in favour of Chetniks" , the British tried to persuade the Soviets to force Tito to fuse the Partisans with the Chetniks. The SOE permanent link with the NKVD became very useful for this reason.By a bizarre paradox, the HSS handed its political power in Croatia on a plate to the Ustashas and the Communists.The HSS suffered from the pacifist tradition imprinted upon it by Stjepan Radi?, along with the irrational peace-loving philosophy of its then leader Ma?ek who tried to avoid bloodshed at any cost. In that spirit Ma?ek accepted the Pact between Hitler and the Belgrade Government (1941) XE "Ma?ek accepted Pact between Hitler and Belgrade Government (1941)" (of which he was deputy Prime Minister), because this was the only chance to preserve the peace. At the same time, he had no doubt whatsoever that the Allies would eventually win the war and recreate a sort of Yugoslavia within which the HSS would hopefully be able to secure a decent place for Croatia. Yet, he forgot to take into account the Ustasha and the Communist agenda. For Ma?ek, co-operation with Paveli? and Hitler was out of the question XE "Ma?ek - co-operation with Paveli? and Hitler out of the question" . He believed that when the Allies renewed Yugoslavia that he would then proceed from where he had left off in 1939 after the establishment of the Banovina Hrvatska (an autonomous Croatia under a Ban–Governor). The Croatian ministers in the Yugoslav Government in London (Krnjevi?, ?uba?i?, and ?utej) were kept there ‘in reserve’, issuing a host of memoranda about the future ‘Croatian State’ within a post-WW2 Yugoslavia. Their Serbian colleagues in the London émigré government met these fantasies with belittling jibes.The HSS, as a truly democratic Croatian political party, succumbed completely to the utopian Yugoslav aim XE "HSS as truly democratic Croatian political party, succumbed completely to utopian Yugoslav aim" . Croatian political individuality within Yugoslavia was the maximum they aimed for - an Independent Croatian State in the context of the WW2 situation - was a non-starter. In spite of all that, Ma?ek's signature on the Pact with Hitler compromised his firm anti-totalitarian stance. His firm orientation towards the Allies was thus undermined. The HSS confused principles were ignored by the revolutionary agenda of the Ustasha movement XE "Ustasha movement" . Most of the HSS's theoretical principles were their own antithesis. The gap between the HSS world of peasant pastoral scene and the real world was filled with HSS’s followers sharply split into those who sympathised with the Ustasha firm stand for independence and those who flirted with Tito XE "Tito" because of his ‘socialist’ propaganda. The latter joined Tito's Partisans XE "Tito's Partisans" for the sake of ‘national liberation’ and certainly not for the sake of communism. The majority of the HSS followers, however, were in favour of a wait-and-see policy. Paveli?, without hesitation, locked up Dr. Ma?ek in the Jasenovac concentration camp in 1941, ignoring the fact that Ma?ek had asked the people to co-operate with Paveli? his new administration. (Note in ref.) Thus, the inexplicable peculiarities of this ‘peasant’ party, led by bourgeois lawyers, who formed the backbone of Paveli?'s new NDH Civil Service, rendered the HSS eminently utopian.Running the administration of the NDH by the HSS members was not, in the opinion of its leaders, in contravention of its ‘political correctness’ XE "Political correctness" , as long as these bureaucrats maintained surreptitiously an anti-Ustasha stand. The conclusion by the HSS leadership that ‘the majority of the Croatian people were against their new Independent State’ was contradicted by the fact that the Croats readily joined the regular armed forces (the Domobran) rather than fleeing to the woods. They were determined (at least in 1941/42) to fight the bloodiest Yugoslav enemies of all times, the Partisans and the Chetniks XE "Partisans and Chetniks" .The HSS party leadership was politically incorrect in trying to ‘justify’ the flight of many of its members into the Ustasha ranks, classifying them carefully into those who joined wholeheartedly, those who were blinded by the sudden achievement of the Croatian Independence, and those who joined out of fear – yet it was largely silent about those who escaped into Tito's ranks.The Yugoslav ?migré Government in London had only one HSS minister.The lamentation of the HSS policies during WW2 allowed for so many ambiguities, particularly in relation to the KPJ (Yugoslav Communist Party XE "Yugoslav Communist Party" ). The HSS leadership believed that Tito's Partisans could not establish themselves without the support of the people (by that they meant ‘their own people’, i.e., the peasants) and that without that support they could not organise an army, ‘liberate territory’ or establish government.During the period between 1941 and 1945, the HSS was a party of contradictions. Marvellously immune from the responsibility of holding power and running the war, it played a waiting game of assessing the final outcome of the struggle of the Yugoslav Utopia during the war. It assumed correctly that the two contesting sides in that war, the Communist Partisans and the Serbian Chetniks, would inevitably come to blows, and that this would result in a civil war during the war. XE "Two contesting sides, Communist Partisans and Serbian Chetniks, inevitably come to blows, this would result in civil war during war" The HSS assumed an unrealistic role in that its first priority was to ‘frustrate such a war and prevent bloodshed’ XE "HSS assumed an unrealistic role to frustrate such a war and prevent bloodshed" . This policy was more important than that of safeguarding Croatian independence and this assumption was at the root of its complete downfall.On the basis of the bloody experience of the First Yugoslavia, it was clear to any sane person that Yugoslavia could not be recreated on the foundation of the Great-Serbian monarchy. As a result, the federative arrangement of the state propagated by Tito caught the imagination of the pro-Yugoslav Croat emigrants and the large number of Croats in the US.The Yugoslav ?migré Government in London and Washington were a stale extension of the old Great-Serbian State structure staffed by corrupt Serbian diplomats. XE "Great-Serbian State structure staffed by corrupt Serbian diplomats" This coterie used all, even the most immoral, means to blame the Croats for the break-up of the Kingdom and for the collaboration with the Axis. In the face of this onslaught, the three million Americans of Croatian origin were totally confused. Eventually, Tito’s propaganda about the Chetnik collaboration with the Germans and Italians and the information that many Croats were joining his Partisan ranks gradually put the majority of the Croats in America firmly into Tito’s bag. This trend was not popular with the Serbs in the US and, as all Tito’s representatives in the US were Serbs (Markovi?, Prica, Stevan Dedijer), XE "All Tito’s representatives in US were Serbs (Markovi?, Prica, Stevan Dedijer)" together with their collaborators, S. Kosanovi? and Dr. Mirkovi?, they did everything in their power to sway American public opinion against the ‘National Liberation Movement’.Pro-Yugoslav Croats, such as the exiled Ban (Governor of Croatia) ?uba?i?, were dubbed reactionaries XE "Pro-Yugoslav Croats, such as exiled Ban (Governor of Croatia) ?uba?i?, dubbed reactionaries" , because they stood on the utopian principle of ‘A free Croatia in a free Yugoslavia’ XE "Free Croatia in free Yugoslavia" , an improbable aim. Tito’s men in London, led by the ‘Croatian’ Serb, Dr. Vladimir Velebit, were busy recruiting as a rule Serbs (Ne?i?, Koen, Gavrilovi? and Nin?i?) for their diplomacy. The Serbs in London and the US eventually hijacked also the Partisan movement for their own propaganda. According to this propaganda, there were no Partisans in Serbia, and in the NDH the Serbs joined the Partisans only because of the Ustasha terror. Thus, it appeared that the 'resistance' was completely in the hands of the Serbian royalists XE "Serbian Royalists" .More realistically, the HSS leadership hoped that the Croatian Domobran (the Regular NDH Army - i.e., uniformed peasants) XE "Croatian Domobran (Regular NDH Army - i.e., uniformed peasants)" would switch their allegiance to the Allies at the right moment when it became clear that the war was lost for the NDH. The lack of enthusiasm on the part of the Croats for defending the Kingdom of Yugoslavia should now be quite clear. Croats saw Yugoslavia as their prison, a feeling that had been intensified by being battered about from one policeman to another for 23 long years, each policeman having a quite different style of terror. So when Belgrade bungled the situation, and the Nazis attacked in 1941 XE "Nazis attack 1941" , the Croats spontaneously took affairs into their own hands as a piece of pure political logic, even before German tanks reached Zagreb. The Germans, and particularly the Italians when they finally arrived, tinkered with everything in Croatia and on a grand scale. Independent Croatia at that time, with its peoples' idealism for their own state was, de facto, a miracle. Yet very soon all the country became sick with hate in the internal struggle between irreconcilable forces between the NDH regime and Serbian nationalists; Yugoslav communists vs. NDH forces; the NDH regime vs. pro-Yugoslav Croatian communists; Serbian nationalists vs. Serbian communists; Great-Serbian nationalist vs. Yugoslav communists; Great-Serbian nationalists vs. pro-Yugoslav Croatian communists. There were also the various royalist, fascist, German, Italian, Hungarian and Bulgarian extras who made feints against ephemeral alliances, each and every one of these groups, without exception, trying by a process of sly provocation and butchery to gain a momentary advantage.Hitler considered Yugoslavia to have been an artificial creation XE "Hitler considered Yugoslavia an artificial creation" . On the other hand, the Yugoslav Communists maintained that the NDH (which included Bosnia-Hercegovina) was Hitler's ‘quisling state’ XE "NDH - included Bosnia-Hercegovina, Hitler's ‘quisling state’" , created solely for the purpose of satisfying the pretensions of the Croatian fascists and in order to deepen the gulf between the Yugoslav nations.Hitler's personal knowledge of the Serbs in the First World War convinced him that Serbia was the snake’s head of the Yugoslav state that had to be crushed. XE "Hitler's personal knowledge of Serbs in First World War convinced him Serbia was snake’s head of Yugoslav state that had to be crushed" Paveli?, who came to power as a result of an agreement between the Reich and Italy, throughout the war, was thus a soft target for communist propaganda clichés, which ignored the twenty-three years' long anti-Croat terror in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia XE "Kingdom of Yugoslavia" . “In order to create an ethnically clean Croatia, Paveli? outlawed Jews, Gypsies and Serbs. The mass persecution and driving out of the Serbs from Croatia, terror in the camps and villages, and Catholisation were a means to this end. Pro-fascists and separatists put themselves in the service of the occupiers, and the bourgeois parties were in disarray.”The reality, however, revealed itself in ways, which the communists could not control. Paveli?'s regime, in charge of the NDH as the only anti-Yugoslav contestant in the war of the Yugoslav Utopia, hit back by promulgating a series of laws backing the use of force, which made the NDH anything but a soft target. An example was the Law for the Defence of the (Croatian) People and the State, which was published on the 17th April 1941 dealing with"anyone involved in Infringements on the honour and the vital interests of the Croatian people that endanger the existence of the NDH . . . is committing treason". The penalty for this was death XE "Penalty was death" . The trials were to be conducted by the summary conviction consisting of 3 judges, appointed by the Minister of Justice. ‘Treason’ (in the revolutionary situation) was defined very flexibly. XE "Treason in revolutionary situation defined very flexibly" The first seed of the self-destruction of the NDH was, however, sown by the law that was totally out of the programme whose aim was the destruction of the pro-Yugoslav forces, it was ‘the law about the protection of the Aryan blood and honour of the Croatian people’ published on the 30th April 1941. This totally uncalled-for concession to Hitler by Paveli? was unacceptable even in Italy XE "Totally uncalled-for concession to Hitler by Paveli? unacceptable even in Italy" 4.2New Law XE "New Law" The tangled web of this law had a number of exceptions: “To the persons who before 10th April 1941 were meritorious to the Croatian people and its liberation as well as their spouses and their descendants . . . the Head of State may (ignoring this law) grant all the rights which belong to persons of Aryan origin.”Published on 30th April 1941, the law was aimed at Jews and Gypsies XE " Law published on 30th April 1941 aimed at Jews and Gypsies" . The restrictions of marriage between Aryans and non-Aryans – aping the Nazis (also with many exceptions) were finely defined.As this particular law is continually being used to describe the NDH regime as anti-Semitic, it is opportune here to point out a contradiction between its principles and the curious fact that many of the leading Ustashas, including Paveli? were married to Jewesses. According to the Statement of Slavko Kvaternik to the ‘Yugoslav Communist Court’ XE "Kvaternik, Slavko - Statement to ‘Yugoslav Communist Court’" . . . "Paveli?’s [half-Jewish] wife Mara was a strong-willed and intellectual ally, superior to him, pathologically ambitious and without scruples in the choice of means [for this purpose]. Therefore she influenced him in political matters, and was the Eminence Gris and the final and determining factor, particularly in the decisions about the Ustasha organisation and the Serbian question. These policies were cooked up in Paveli?’s [kitchen cabinet], perfectly camouflaged’". Although Kvaternik had an axe to grind against Paveli?, this assessment about his wife (a kind of Mira Markovi? XE "Markovi?, Mira" , wife of Slobodan Milo?evi?) on available evidence can be taken as substantially correct.Minister ?ani? was married to Alma Stoeger who was pure Jewish. The Youth Leader, Ivo Or?ani? and others were married to women of Jewish origin who, with the exception of ?ani?’s wife, were 'assimilated' many years before WW2. Eugen Kvaternik, for example, son of the Field-Marshall Slavko and the Minister of the Interior, was the son of a Jewish mother. She was the daughter of Josip Frank, the leader of the Pure Party of the Croatian Rights, after whom the Ustashas were, not justifiably but popularly, known as Frankovci.According to a statement made on the subject by one of the leading Ustashas Colonel Mo?kov to the Yugoslav Communist Court XE "Mo?kov, Colonel - statement to Yugoslav Communist Court" on 19th May 1947:“Behind all the Jewish questions was the Ministry of the Interior or rather Eugen Dido Kvaternik XE "Kvaternik, Eugen Dido" himself. Did he himself propose these laws – I do not know. There existed a department called ‘The Jewish Department’ which ran these matters. Whether the Germans were behind this or not or even the Italians, and in what measure is not known to me. However, I know from hearsay how Italian officers made a lot of money transferring Jews to Italy in their cars. Many of these Jews were robbed by the Italians and then interned. Again, according to hearsay . . . even Germans had their fingers in that pie. . . . I was told that they took away even some Jews who were members of the Party of the Croatian Rights . . . and even some of those who had the right to be protected under this law. Behind this must have been also Paveli? and Dido Kvaternik . . . It is curious, to say the least, that out of 195 Ustasha emigrants 3 were Jewish: Vlado Singer XE "Singer, Vlado " , Ljubomir Kremzir XE "Kremzir Ljubomir” and the lawyer, Dr. Vladimir Sachs-Petrovi? XE "Sachs-Petrovi?, Dr. Vladimir" .Taking into account the circumstances in which 'Mo?kov' statement was made, and even the animosity towards Kvaternik in the higher echelons of the Ustasha movement, the tenor of this statement seems to be substantially correct.Yet, the anti-Semitism in Croatia (and in Bosnia-Hercegovina, then part of the NDH) in the sense of hating the Jews never existed beyond an odd jibe and certainly nothing like that which existed in England XE "Anti-Semitism in Croatia (and Bosnia-Hercegovina, then part of NDH) never existed beyond odd jibe and nothing like that which existed in England" (from Edward the Confessor to Moseley), not to mention Serbia where anti-Semitism was rampant. XE "Serbia - where anti-Semitism was rampant." The rhetoric of the explanatory addendum to these Laws, which states that“Racially alien elements must not involve themselves in the governing of the people and in the advancement of their culture, because they will ipso facto act in a destructive manner and derail the national life in a direction alien to the people and contradictory to its tradition and culture . . .”cannot explain satisfactorily the phenomenon of Mara Paveli? as ‘an alien element’ as it were in Paveli?’s own bed.Either the spirit of the law was compromised and inconsistent (in other words, very likely mercenary in order to placate Hitler) or it was ideologically and psychologically inexplicable on Paveli?'s own domestic front.The fact is that Jews in Croatia (and particularly in Zagreb) made a major contribution to the professions and business out of all proportion to their numbers XE "Jews in Croatia (and particularly in Zagreb) made major contribution to professions and business out of all proportion to their numbers" . Also, many Jews who had become integrated into the life of Croatia over many years were saved from deportation. A good example was Dr. Ivo Vinski, first Paveli?’s, then Tito's wife's own dentist who, in the 1950’s and 1960’s practiced in Wimpole Street, London.The ‘Jewish question’ XE "Jewish question" was not essentially a part of the conflict of the Yugoslav utopia with the exception of those Jews who were communists (Hebrang, Bakari?, Kupferer) and those who were in active opposition to the NDH regime for any other reason.Although the Ustasha regime was leaning heavily on Hitler politically, mimicking his ideology, with the exception of the 'Jewish question', was not continuous. There were only a very small number of adherents to the official National Socialist and Fascist parties within the Ustasha ranks. The Ustasha rank and file were ideologically far from homogeneous: a minority was pro-German and/or pro-Italian and the great majority were simply ‘pro-Croat.’ This is illustrated by the curious private conversations that were pursued at that time between a certain Milan Govedi?, brother of the Leader of the Croatian ‘National Socialists’ Slavko, who departed to Vienna at the behest of Gestapo Obersturmbannführer Beissner XE "Beissner, Gestapo Obersturmbannführer" . These conversations created a headache for the NDH government and the German Foreign Ministry, so that the appropriately named Vice-Counsellor Martin Luther warned the SS about the affair on the 3rd March 1942. Beissner was sacked and his position was taken by our old acquaintance Hans Helm of the Gestapo who would play a Machiavellian role in the next ten years or so in the NDH and later on in Tito’s Yugoslavia XE "Hans Helm of Gestapo would play Machiavellian role in next ten years in NDH and later in Tito’s Yugoslavia" .Martin Luther, in his report pointed out that Govedi?’s trip clearly raised many political questions XE "Luther, Martin - pointed out Govedi?’s trip clearly raised many political questions" ; the aim of his group was to present the NDH government as Italophile and as such inimical to Germany. However, this aim was contrary to the directives issued by the Fuehrer. Thus the attempt by the German Ambassador in Zagreb, von Kasche, XE "von Kasche - German Ambassador in Zagreb" to introduce Croatian National Socialist Workers Party into the Ustasha Movement failed. The Reich link for this group was the SS and the office of Reichsleiter A. Rosenberg, which they denied.In the meantime, the Ustasha police imprisoned a large group of the Croatian 'National Socialists' and treated them accordingly.Eugen (Dido) Kvaternik, Minister of the Interior in the NDH, in his book Rije?i i ?injenice (The Words and the Facts, p.65-66) described his meeting with Himmler in 1941, the occasion on which he was faced with his angry outburst:“If your father and you wish to have peace with the Italians and stop their takeover [of the NDH], then provide a secure manor near Zagreb for Paveli? under your guard. He is totally tied up with Italy and, while he is in power, you will not have peace with the Italians. He suggested also that I keep an eye on Archbishop Stepinac who is a Vatican man and untrustworthy . . . I tried to persuade Himmler that Paveli? was a patriot, which he received sceptically . . . also that the integrity of the archbishop was unquestionable. . ” "It seems possible that Himmler wanted to have his say in the government of the NDH to spite the more friendly policies of Ribbentrop XE "Ribbentrop" with whom he was in suppressed conflict."In that in his report to Ribbentrop XE "Ribbentrop" , Vice-Counsellor Luther (Berlin 18th May 1942) for the Minister von Ribbentrop, pointed out “The group of ‘Croatian National Socialists’ XE "Croatian National Socialists Infected with Marxist communist elements" was, even before April 1941, in bitter conflict with the Ustasha Movement. After the NDH was established, they formally joined the Ustasha movement, but proceeded as before strengthened with new members from the Marxist and Yugoslav circles. Because the Croatian National Socialists” he goes on “are infected with Marxist-communist elements and maybe even with some Italian groups, they represent a danger for the NDH government, which government is supported by Germany.” The Ustashas quite rightly maintained that the HSS was a pro-Yugoslav political party and, as such, as far as they were concerned, its members were traitors, a compliment they exchanged mutually. The right wing of the HSS (about 10%) joined the Ustasha movement. The HSS did not recognise the legality of the NDH and simply treated Croatia as an occupied country. Consequently, relations between the HSS and the Ustashas became irreconcilable.Relations between the HSS and the communists were even worse. XE "Relations between HSS and communists even worse." Before the Second World War, the KPH was an ideological party of only a few thousand members. The HSS, on the other hand, was a mass national and social movement of the Croatian people and particularly the peasantry, i.e., 75% of the population.The ideological differences between the communists, whose aim was to take power by force, and the HSS, which used exclusively peaceful democratic means, were profound.The war-time ‘Government of the Commissariat’ in Belgrade (Nedi? – 1941-1944), formed by the Germans, inherited almost all its Civil Service from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. XE "War-time ‘Government of Commissariat’ in Belgrade (Nedi? – 1941-1944), formed by Germans, inherited all its Civil Service from Kingdom of Yugoslavia" Thus the Old State apparatus was preserved. The Royalist Government and King Peter escaped to England via Egypt.Dra?a Mihajlovi?, a colonel in the Yugoslav Army XE "Mihajlovi?, Dra?a - Colonel in Yugoslav Army" , and about 20 officers withdrew into the mountains to Ravna Gora in Western Serbia. Chetnik policies of terror on the territory of the NDH were presented in the West by the Yugoslav ?migré Government in London as a ‘democratic force’ fighting the occupier. For the British, turning a blind eye to these crimes was Whitehall political wisdom.As early as the 13th, 14th and 15th April 1941, Chetnik regiments of the Royal Yugoslav army murdered twenty-five Croats in ?apljina (Hercegovina) yelling, "Butcher all without regard" XE "Chetnik regiments of Royal Yugoslav army murdered twenty-five Croats in ?apljina (Hercegovina) yelling, "Butcher all without regard" .Mixed gangs of Serbian Chetniks and communists, and scattered remnants of the Yugoslav army (just as in 1992 to 1995) burned down eighty-five houses in the Croatian villages of ?im and Ili?i (Hercegovina) on the 15th April 1941, driving out and scattering all the inhabitants.In April 1941 and the following months, over one hundred Croats were murdered by the combined Chetnik-communist gangs in Knin, Grahovo, and Sinj (Dalmatia).In the region of Jajce, Central Bosnia, the Chetnik-communists murdered 56 Croats and Muslims in the period from 10th April to the 31st December 1941.Rising against the NDH, the KPJ (Communist Party of Yugoslavia) was lead under the slogan of the ‘national liberation’. The Communists, who were inspired by Lenin's dictum of turning the democratic into a proletarian revolution, therefore viewed the HSS in many ways as a more serious enemy than the Ustashas, who they believed were an ephemeral force and would disappear together with Hitler. After the fall of the NDH, the question was - who would take power? The Communists would not share it with anyone XE "Communists would not share power with anyone" , and therefore the HSS, as a potential candidate for power, had to be eliminated.The success of the communists, in pursuit of that aim depended upon attracting the peasants from the HSS into their own ranks. They maintained that at the end of World War the old bourgeois parties would disappear, including the HSS. Yet they failed to grasp the Croatian peasants' attachment to Radi?'s ideas. The Communists believed that nothing could stop them from getting the peasants into their fold provided they used the correct political tactics, one of which was the slogan for the ‘creation of the people’s Croatian State’ while not mentioning Yugoslavia.In order to woo the sentiments of the Croatian people, they were attacking the Kingdom of Yugoslavia XE "In order to woo sentiments of Croatian people, they were attacking the Kingdom of Yugoslavia" as a jail of the Croatian and other non-Serbian peoples, even more than they attacked the Ustashas. By soft-pedalling with the attacks on the HSS, they almost succeeded.The Communists fought the Great-Serbian Chetniks as the protagonists of the renewal of the royalist Yugoslavia and not Yugoslavia per se. Federalist Yugoslavia was the common aim of the HSS and KPH, and a bridge between the two, which the communists manipulated extremely skilfully. The KPJ proceeded to act as an all-Yugoslav Communist party on the basis of the conclusions arrived at a meeting of the Central Committee in Zagreb under the chairmanship of Tito held on the 10th April 1941. In the meantime, the Ustashas were busy eliminating all the leading Communists that they inherited in the Yugoslav jails. They locked up hundreds of Communists, leftists, Serbs and Jews.On the 3rd May 1941, a new Law regarding the change of religion XE "Law regarding change of religion" (i.e., from Serbian-Orthodox to Roman Catholic) as a part of the (NDH's) regime’s solution of the ‘Serbian problem’ was published. The communists accused Cardinal Stepinac of taking part in drafting the law.The Ustasha revolution, facing the combined pro-Yugoslav forces, relied on the old fashioned, well-tried terror methods of ‘court martials’ (prijeki sudovi) and temporary court martials (pokretni prijeki sudovi) empowered by the law of 24th June 1941. The death penalty was a rule rather than an exception in these courts.The activities of these courts depended on the political situation on the ground and were proportionate with the terror of the pro-Yugoslav forces (Chetniks and Partisans). The utopian circle thus was closed. The irony was that these courts were just using many of the well-tried methods of the Dictatorship of King Aleksandar in 1929 XE "Dictatorship of King Aleksandar 1929" . On the 10th May 1941, Paveli? reorganised the original Ustasha Croatian Revolutionary Organisation – UHRO - into the Ustasha Croatian Liberation Movement (UHOP). A further development was GUS (i.e., Glavni Usta?ki Stan - Chief Ustasha Headquarters) and the Ustasha military regiments (Usta?ka vojnica). A subsequent development in June 1941 was a division of this into the political organisation and the Ustasha Supervisory Service (UNS) as a counter intelligence service XE "Ustasha Supervisory Service (UNS) counter intelligence service" .In May 1941 Paveli? set up the police organisation (RAVSIGUR), the Directorate for Public Order and Security headed by Eugen (Dido) Kvaternik, the most powerful man in the State.The UNS was divided into the Ustasha Police, the Ustasha Intelligence Service, the Ustasha Defence, the Ustasha Personnel Office and the Ustasha Security Service.The Ustasha Police was concerned with political matters (Communists, Serbs) and the prisons. The Intelligence Service speaks for itself. The Ustasha Defence was in charge of concentration camps and the Ustasha Security Service was in charge of Paveli?’s own security. Thus, the tightly organised and armed regime was ready to take the pro-Yugoslav forces head-on.The crucial device in that counter-attack was the massive concentration of anti-Serbian rhetoric. Although sometimes counter-productive, it does not take away from the ambitiousness of the project. The campaign of threatening speeches that there was to be no compromise in dealing with the Serbian question XE "No compromise in dealing with Serbian question" on the basis of bitter experience of Croats with the Serbs during the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, helped to convince many reasonable people that this action was long overdue and perhaps the best method in achieving a peaceful future. There was also the threat of another Yugoslavia, advocated by the propaganda of its protagonists, the Chetniks and the Partisans.How to achieve that peaceful future in practice was another matter. The great majority of the Croatian people opposed the terror of the regime in that pursuit, but could not find an alternative way out of the violent quagmire, in the political realities of the time.The prohibition on the use of the Cyrillic alphabet XE "Prohibition on use of Cyrillic alphabet" , the use of the term ‘Serbian-Orthodox’, a night curfew for the Serbs, and evictions from the more desirable parts of Zagreb and other towns were enforced, however largely counterproductive these measures were.On the 1st of May 1941, however, the CK of the KPJ announced"that the KPJ will lead the struggle against the occupiers and their servants, against the inflaming of national hatred, for [the utopian aim of] the brotherhood of the nations of Yugoslavia . . . and for a better and happier future."In May 1941, the CK of the KPJ at its meeting in Zagreb confirmed the conclusions of the Fifth Conference of the KPJ XE "Conclusions of Fifth Conference of KPJ" , quite one sidedly that “a deep social-political crisis of the bourgeois system of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was responsible for its fall. At the same time the platform of the KPJ was confirmed, i.e., that a historical moment had arrived in which the working class of Yugoslavia should take power. Therefore the struggle against the occupiers is also a struggle for ‘national and social liberation’”.The KPJ maintained that WW2 was an imperialistic war, and that the Soviet Union (in spite of the confusion created by the Pact between Hitler and Stalin) XE "Soviet Union (in spite of confusion created by Pact between Hitler and Stalin)" would play a decisive role in turning that imperialistic war into a chain reaction of proletarian revolutions. The KPJ’s concept of the people's liberation struggle would be built into the revolutionary content of that struggle, the destruction of imperialism and the victory of the socialist revolution. Therefore, the (communist) liberation struggle was not the first stage of the revolution, but a specific mode of revolution within the context of the occupation. Its major demand was the wide unity of all classes of Yugoslav society in the liberation struggle, and particularly of the peasants, under the strict leadership of the KPJ.The politics of the HSS and KPH were based on attracting the masses to their own side, so both parties were mentally on the same track. In 1941, the first year of the war, the communists' utopian aim of the renewal of Yugoslavia was carefully covered up. Yugoslavia was a taboo subject, hated by the majority of non-Serbs. For the Communists, a waiting game was the tactic of grabbing power irrespective of the final shape of the future state.The Communists did not mind collaborating with the bourgeois politicians XE "Communists did not mind collaborating with bourgeois politicians" who were willing to fight the occupiers under the leadership of the KPJ. They were good at uncovering the agents working not only for the occupiers but also “for the English [who provided them with war logistics] and for the return of the former regime responsible for the present catastrophe”.The Consultative Meeting of the CK of the KPJ in May 1941 held in Zagreb decided to stand firmly on its principle for the “historical need for the unity of the Yugoslav nations and to affirm in practice its views for the solution of the national question and the basis for the creation of the new state”.Immediately after this meeting Tito moved from Zagreb to Belgrade. As a good 'Croat' he felt safer among the Serbs! XE "Tito moved from Zagreb to Belgrade. As a good 'Croat' he felt safer among Serbs!" Communist agitation became widespread in order “to increase the fighting spirit of the people against the occupiers.”Tito came to the conclusion “that bourgeois parties could not accept his concept of the liberation struggle in which the armed people would become subject to their own fate, and in respect of the solution of their social and national aims.”Membership of the KPJ increased from 8,000 before April 1941 to 12,000. Out of that number 2,500 members were in Serbia and 4,000 were in Croatia; the decision to commence the uprising (Ustanak) came only on the 22nd June 1941 with Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union. The session of the Politburo of the CK of the KPJ in Belgrade under Tito on the same day stated “that with this attack, the situation in the world has changed fundamentally, and that, apart from internal reasons, the international conditions were right to commence the armed struggle in Yugoslavia.” The policy of the KPJ in respect to the HSS was ambivalent: firstly, it appealed for collaboration with the HSS in order to get as many HSS members as possible into its fold; secondly, it tried to isolate the HSS in order to avoid sharing power with them. An illustration of this contradictory policy was the proclamation by the KPH in September 1941 addressed to the HSS: "The Communist Party invites you [the HSS] to join the struggle to drive out together the occupiers from our suffering country, and to destroy their puppet government [the Ustashas]. The Communist Party is offering its brotherly hand to you in that difficult struggle, and demands that you recall the cosmopolitan traditions of the Croats [in the persons of] Matija Gubec, Stjepan Radi? and many other fighters and martyrs for the freedom of the Croatian people . . . "Surreptitiously and concurrently, the KPJ and the KPH were instilling among their own members the hatred for the HSS as a reactionary bourgeois party inimical to the Communists. During the course of the civil war XE "During course of civil war" the KPH had proclaimed Dr. Ma?ek (the leader of HSS) to be a traitor and put him on the same level as Dr. Ante Paveli?.The Communist term 'Ustanak' (uprising) is related to “Ustasha” (those who rise up). Ironically, the Partisans were nominally the red Ustashas as against the Croatian nationalist revolutionaries simply called “Ustashas”.In Zagreb, the agent of the Komintern, Ivan Kopini? XE " Kopini?, Ivan - Komintern agent" , “created confusion in the CK of the KPH in respect of “the uprising”, which the CK KPH condemned, taking directives from the CK of the KPJ only. Because of that delay, the action for the release of imprisoned Communists in the camp at Kerestinec on the 13th July 1941 failed, and sixty-eight out of eighty leading Communists of Croatia were liquidated by the Ustashas.”On the 27th June 1941, the General Headquarters of the National Liberation Partisan Formations of Yugoslavia were established in Belgrade under Tito's command. XE "General Headquarters of National Liberation Partisan Formations of Yugoslavia established in Belgrade under Tito's command" Tito's organisational directives were issued in a Bulletin dated 10th August 1941 in which he explained that the aim of the struggle was “the liberation of the nations of Yugoslavia”.Hitler decided that the uprising in Serbia must be quashed XE "Hitler decided that uprising in Serbia be quashed" . For each German killed 100 hostages and for each wounded German, 50 hostages would be shot.On the 16th September 1941, Hitler reinforced the police force in Serbia by redirecting three divisions of the operative army from Greece and one from France. The Germans succeeded in crushing the uprising at the beginning of December 1941, shooting 44,000 Serbs and sending some 20,000 insurgents to detention camps. This put an end to the Serbian uprisings in Serbia until the spring of 1944.Exploiting this situation after most of the German divisions had left for the Eastern Front in 1941, the KPJ organised an uprising in Western Serbia with 25,000 Partisans, ‘liberated’ Montenegro and increased their ranks to 30,000. Alas, very soon, the Germans and the Italians reoccupied these territories and Tito’s ‘army’ was destroyed.This region was an area of activity for the Chetnik leader, Dra?a Mihajlovi?, who formed a ‘Command of the Chetnik regiments of the Yugoslav Army’. For a while, the Chetniks were co-operating with the Partisans. Yet in November 1941, on a signal from the Yugoslav Government in London, they attacked the Partisans from the rear while they were engaged in fighting with the Germans. Thus began a fratricidal war in Serbia. The two pro-Yugoslav ideologies were completely contradictory except in their aim of recreating the Yugoslav utopia XE "The two pro-Yugoslav ideologies completely contradictory except in their aim of recreating Yugoslav utopia" . The aim of the Chetnik movement was the creation of a Great-Serbia on the pattern dating as far back as the 19th century. After the collapse of the Belgrade centralism and the creation of Banovina Hrvatska in 1939, the leading Serbian political parties went back, quite openly, to the aim of creating Great-Serbia. In their mind, Yugoslavia, without both Slovenia and Banovina Hrvatska, would become simply Great-Serbia. This plan failed because of the break-up of the first Yugoslavia in 1941.On the 30th June 1941 in ‘The Homogeneous Serbia’, Stevan Moljevi? XE "Moljevi?, Stevan" outlined in a document called a Great-Serbian plan that became the utopian blueprint for both the Yugoslav ?migré Government in London and its ‘army’ on the ground led by the Chetniks of Dra?a Mihajlovi?.The Serbian western frontier of this Great-Serbia would encompass Croatian Dalmatia to the town of Karlobag, half of the Croatian region of Lika, the old ‘Krajina’ region to Karlovac, and Slavonia, east from Pakrac. From these annexed Croatian territories, Croats would naturally be ‘ethnically cleansed’ and driven into the remainder of Croatia, and the Serbs from the remainder of Croatia would be transferred to the annexed territories. In this way Great-Serbia would be balanced by a ‘Little Croatia’, which would correct the fatal ‘mistake’ made by the then Serbian Prime Minister, Nikola Pa?i? XE "Pa?i?, Nikola - Serbian Prime Minister" in 1918, when he had incorporated Serbia into Yugoslavia. The Great-Serbs believed that this plan could be realised by force because ‘their’ Allies (Britain, France and the Soviet Union) were adamant about the re-creation of Yugoslavia after the Second World War, by fair means or foul.The Great-Serbian Chetniks (Royalists), whose savage crimes were only matched by their proverbial hatred of anything and everything Croatian, were the chief explosive in the fuelling of this war. In the words of Djilas: "Major Ostoji? [Chetnik] asked me at one point why we called ourselves 'guerrillas' instead of Chetniks. I replied that the Chetniks had once been national liberation troops, but that after World War I, they had been transformed into a chauvinist organisation that terrorised the non-Serbian population. On top of that, the Chetnik leader, Kosta Pe?anac, had issued a call to the Chetniks to collaborate with the Germans XE "Pe?anac, Kosta - Chtnik Leader, issued call to Chetniks to collaborate with Germans" ."Tito's own note on the meeting with the leader of the Chetniks, Dra?a Mihajlovi?, is rather quaint: "Dra?a Mihajlovi?, for some reason that I could not unravel at that time and also for a long time afterwards, thought that I was a Russian, so he spoke to me completely openly about the Croats and the other nations of Yugoslavia. When I asked him for his opinion about the national question, he was quite blunt. ‘Croats, Muslims and all the others [sic!] must be most severely punished, and after a satisfactory revenge must be subjugated by the Serbs’. When I protested, he said that his view was totally justified, because all the Croats were responsible for the Ustasha crimes, they were all Ustashas and traitors, who had sold Yugoslavia to the Germans."The first Chetnik organisation was created in 1921 in Belgrade. XE "First Chetnik organisation created 1921 in Belgrade." New branches were quickly established in Serbia and the organisation spread into Croatia in the 1930’s. Its main objective was the utopian programme of ‘uncompromising integral Yugoslavism and unitarism’.Their second aim was to have Yugoslavia ruled by the dynasty of Karadjordjevi? under the banner ‘For King and Country’ (Za Kralja i Otad?binu). Yet in fact this Yugoslavia was only a mask for the Great Serbia. Their chief enemies were ‘the Croat nationalist separatists’ (Ustashas). Members of the organisation were mainly Great-Serbs and a small minority of Croats from Dalmatian cities, organised in ORJUNA (The Organisation of Yugoslav Nationalists).The Chetniks were a para-military organisation XE "Chetniks - para-military organisation" . The bizarre outfit they wore was a large ?ubara (woollen hat) with the emblem of skull and crossbones over their long hair and overgrown beards. The Chetnik oath was done over a long knife, a pistol, salt and bread, and went as follows: “I swear by Almighty God that I shall be faithful and loyal with all my soul at all times to King Peter II. I will fight for King and country and will never betray the Chetnik symbol. I will obey the orders of my senior commanders, so help me God. If I fail in my duty let God punish me, and let my knife and pistol execute that punishment. Amen.”The Chetniks were the main supporters of the dictatorship of King Aleksandar (1929). Up to the beginning of 1935 there were already 114 Chetnik organisations in Croatia, excluding Dalmatia.The agreement between Dragi?a Cvetkovi?, the Prime Minister XE "Dragi?a Cvetkovi?, Prime Minister" and Dr. Vlatko Ma?ek, leader of the HSS XE "Ma?ek Dr. Vlatko, leader of HSS" (26/8/1939) about the establishment of the Banovina Hrvatska (an autonomous Croatian principality XE "Autonomous Croatian Principality" ) met with strong reaction from the Chetniks in their sister organisations, ‘Srbi na Okup’ (Serbs All Together) and ‘Srpska Odbrana’ (Serbian Defence).They demanded the establishment of a Banovina Srpska (Serbian principality). However, unlike the Banovina Hrvatska, which covered only 80% of the Croatian territory, the latter was to cover the whole of Yugoslavia, with the exception of Slovenia, under the title ‘The Serbian Lands’. It would have its capital in Skopje (Macedonia), the mediaeval seat of the Serbian ‘Emperor Du?an’. All these activities led to the setting up of some 1,000 Chetnik branches.The war plans drawn up by the Ministry of the Army and Navy of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia included Chetnik voluntary battalions, trained for guerrilla warfare.However, when the time for action came in April 1941, these battalions fell apart and the chief Chetnik ‘Duke’ Kosta Pe?anac put his Chetniks at the disposal of the Germans.When assessing the responsibility for the carnage in the first days of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH, 1941-45), formally established on the 10th April 1941 but at that time without the possession of armed forces, it is important to note that the Chetniks within the Yugoslav Army were ahead of schedule. Between the 9th and 29th of April 1941, they killed twenty-seven Croats in the region of Bjelovar alone. At the same time, some fifty other Croats were killed in Knin and in Bosnia and Hercegovina.The Chetnik aim was the creation of a Great-Serbia within Yugoslavia XE "Chetnik aim was creation of Great-Serbia within Yugoslavia" , and failing that, simply Great-Serbia, no more, no less. They almost succeeded in that attempt just before 1941. The document that synthesised the Chetnik programme had the quasi- scientific title of ‘The Homogeneous Serbia’, written by Stevan Moljevi? on 30th June 1941. XE "Moljevi?, Stevan – author of ‘Homogeneous Serbia’, 30th June 1941" Moljevi? was born in Bosnia, and was a member of Pribi?evi?’s Independent Democratic Party. From 1941, he was a member of the Chetnik National Committee, and was an adviser to General Dra?a Mihajlovi?, the Chetnik leader. Captured by the Partisans on the 3rd September 1945, he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment and, naturally, was later reprieved by Tito’s Pro-Serbian Communist regime.‘The Homogeneous Serbia’ was a utopian plan par excellence for the creation of Great-Serbia within the new Yugoslavia after the Second World War.This ‘homogeneous’ Serbia would cover all the territory inhabited by Serbs irrespective of their numbers. Moljevi? insisted that the chief failure of Serbia in 1918 was that it failed to establish its firm boundaries within the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (SHS). This must now be done, Moljevi? argued. Serbia must have an exit on the (Croatian) Adriatic coast even though no Serbs lived there. The ‘homogeneous’ Serbia must also include ‘Southern Serbia’ (i.e., Macedonia), Montenegro, Hercegovina, the Croatian city of Dubrovnik and Northern Albania in addition to Serbia proper. Its territory would also cover Croatian Dalmatia (from Plo?e to ?ibenik) and Western Bosnia.The new Yugoslavia would be a federal state, i.e., Serbia, Slovenia and the remnants of the remnants of Croatia. An ethnically pure Serbia would be achieved by means of thorough ethnic cleansing.Moljevi?’s plan to reduce Croatia to ‘the remnants of the remnants’ was revived again in the Serbian aggression against Croatia in 1991-92. Yet that attempt ended in the total Serbian defeat and in their flight from Knin in Croatia in 1995.Moljevi?’s plan for having ‘all the Serbs in one state’ inevitably led to the genocide of the non-Serbs, mainly Croats and Muslims XE "Genocide of non-Serbs, mainly Croats and Muslims" . This utopian plan was submitted to the Yugoslav ?migré Government in London already in September 1941. From the territory of this ‘Great-Serbia’, it was necessary to ethnically cleanse 2,675,000 inhabitants (including 1 million Croats and half a million Germans). Moljevi? worked out that he would allow only 200,000 Croats to remain in that Great-Serbia.The plan would kick off with the occupation of the Croatian cities of Osijek, Karlovac, Knin, ?ibenik and also Mostar with its mixed population, to be followed by the ‘cleansing of the unwanted ethnic groups’.All these ideas were included in the military plans of the Chetnik leader, General Dra?a Mihajlovi?, with clear instructions to the Chetnik leaders in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina to put them into action. The utopian aims, as defined by General Dra?a Mihajlovi? himself (20th December 1941), were:1.The freedom of the people under the sceptre of King Peter II.2.The creation of Great Yugoslavia and within it Great-Serbia.3.The liberation of our territories, now under the occupation of Italy and Germany: Trieste, Gorizia, Istria, Carinthia, Bulgaria and Northern Albania.4.The ethnic cleansing of the minorities and anti-national elements.5.The cleansing of the Croat and Muslim population in Bosnia-Hercegovina in order to achieve a direct frontier between Serbia and Slovenia (!) and Serbia and Montenegro.6.The punishment of all those responsible for the April 1941 catastrophe (i.e., the Croats).7.The punishment of the Ustashas and the Muslims.8.The settling of Montenegrins in ethnically cleansed Croatian regions.Mihajlovi? pointed out that the “collaboration with the communist Partisans is out of the question, as they are fighting against the Monarchy and for the realisation of the socialist revolution”.The Yugoslav ?migré Government (in Cairo and later in London) supported these far-fetched utopian aims. ‘This Government’ consisted mainly of the Great-Serbian émigré bourgeois politicians. The crimes of the Chetniks in the NDH were swept under the carpet, and the crimes of the Ustashas hugely exaggerated.Strategically, this programme was carried out in the NDH in phases. The formation of the Chetnik Dinara Division (established on the 8th-12th March 1942 in Mostar) was the first step in that direction. The nurseries for the development of these utopian aims were the Croatian regions around Knin (Krajina) and the mountainous regions of Dalmatia inhabited by the Serbianised Vlachs. In May 1941 Niko Novakovi?-Longo, a former Minister in the fascist orientated Yugoslav Stojadinovi? government XE "Novakovi?-Longo, Niko - former Minister in fascist-orientated Yugoslav Stojadinovi? government" and one of the leaders of the Yugoslav Radical Union, demanded in the name of 100,000 Serbs from Northern Dalmatia, the secession of Krajina from the NDH, and its annexation to the ‘Italian Dalmatia’. XE "Italian Dalmatia" In July, he went even further and demanded the creation of the so-called ‘Roman Dominion’ as an autonomous Serbian enclave. It is surprising that this ‘amputation’ of a part of Croatia in favour of Italy did not meet with the approval of the Italian occupation force. The failure to achieve this put the Serbs in Northern Dalmatia in the pocket of General Dra?a Mihajlovi? who used them for the formation of the ‘Dinara division’.In order to strengthen their position, the Commanders of the Dinara division advocated collaboration with the Yugoslav-orientated Croats in order to stop them joining the Partisans. The far-fetched Chetnik theory about the Partisans as ‘Ustashas in Partisan uniforms’, out to destroy the Serbs in Croatia, was one of their less successful propaganda ploys.The Dinara Division declared war on the Ustashas and Domobrans (the Croatian Regular Army) ‘without mercy, compassion or scruples’ and war on the Partisans ‘to the bitter end’. A clearer plan of one of the chief contestants in the war of Yugoslav Utopia could not have been more succinctly spelled out.As a result of the ‘liberation’ by the Chetniks on the 28th June 1941 (the traditional Serbian assassination day), the Muslim village of Avtovac (Hercegovina) was burned down and 47 people were massacred.On the 25th June 1941, the combined Chetnik-communist forces attacked the Gendarmerie in Lukavac, Hercegovina, and killed 6 Croat Gendarmes, and on the 29th July 1941 they killed 10 Gendarmes at Plavno, Knin.On the 2nd August 1941, the communist gangs burned down the Croatian villages of Krnjeu?a and Vrtoce in Western Bosnia, and massacred its villagers. After the slaughter, they displayed a red flag ‘under which Serbia will resurrect and Croatia will disappear’. 139 Croat inhabitants were murdered irrespective of age, many of them burned in their own homes.According to a report from the Gendarmerie in Bile?a on the 20th October 1941 addressed to the Commander of the Adriatic Division in Mostar, Serbian Chetnik-communists burned down 28 houses in Begovi?-Kula (Hercegovina) on the 7th August 1941, and a further 45 houses in the other nearby villages.The Gendarmerie in ?ipovo report dated 13th August 1941 quotes Dervi? Redji?, a witness to the Chetnik-Communist slaughter in the villages of Dragni? and Pliva, Central Bosnia: “Ten villagers identified by name were shot with the comment 'watch your own death' while we were queuing up waiting to be shot.”In charge of these murders was the Communist ‘peoples hero’ Serb Simo ?olaja XE "?olaja, Simo - Serb Communist ‘peoples hero’" .As in the Bosnian war of 1992-95, the town of Srebrenica paid a heavy price in blood in the Croato-Yugoslav conflict of 1941-45. The Chetnik-communist gangs arrived from Serbia across the river Drina. A witness from Srebrenica, Muharem Djozi? Abidov, stated to the Croatian Commission of Enquiry on the 27th January 1942: “On the 18th August 1941, 3,000 Chetnik-communists entered Srebrenica under the command of a certain To?i?, a former teacher. They started by raping and plundering. On the 5th January 1942 they killed twenty-five Muslims. During their occupation, they ‘liquidated’ more than 1,000 people.”Began Avdic, a Muslim, stated to the Croatian authorities on the 26th and 27th August 1941 that Chetnik-Communists Gavrilo Samardji?, Vojko Nedjo and Danilo Babi? imprisoned 38 women and children, cut their hair, disrobed them naked and threw them into the burning house of Salko Avdi?. Five other children were slaughtered and thrown over a precipice.On the 1st August 1941, during an attack by the Chetnik-communists on the Croatian Gendarmerie in Krupa, they killed thirteen Gendarmes. Luka Mari?, a Domobran (soldier of the Croatian Regular Army) stated on the 7th September 1941 to the Commander of his regiment in Bile?a, Hercegovina:“On the 28th August 1941, 43 Croatian Domobrans were taken prisoner by the Chetnik-communists in Plane, Hercegovina. I miraculously escaped. Forty-two of my comrades were hit with the butt of a gun on the head and thrown over a precipice. All of them died quietly, with one or two exceptions. The Chetnik Commander accompanied these actions with the comment “You Croats did not want to fight for Yugoslavia and had the cheek to come here to fight against us.”” The NDH in 1941 was badly armed, while the Chetniks and the Yugoslav Army had all the former Yugoslav army guns.There was no war in Serbia between 1941 and 1943 XE "No war in Serbia between 1941 and 1943" . Serbia was operating as the supplier of arms for the war in the NDH.The influx of the Chetniks and Partisans into the NDH from Serbia and Montenegro in the second half of 1941 and the first half of 1942, while the NDH frontiers were still open, was decisive for the supply of arms and ammunition.Proof for this is the statement that the imprisoned partisan Veljko Iri? from U?ice, Serbia, made to the Military Command of the NDH in Sarajevo in April 1942:“In January 1942 there were 40 wagons of ammunition in U?ice. The Chetnik leader, Djoki?, took fifteen crates of ammunition and 4 million dinars and with 150 Chetniks went to Vi?egrad in the NDH. After he left U?ice, 300 Partisans arrived from Serbia. The remaining factories produced 300-400 guns every 48 hours. Many of the guns were sent to Romanija near Sarajevo. After some time, our U?ice battalion went to ?ajni?e in the NDH. There we organised the mobilisation and formed the Second Proletarian Brigade which went to Gora?de in the NDH and then to Rogatica, where I was taken prisoner.”Fortunately, the genocide of the Croatian people failed in spite of enormous loss of life due to the strong resistance put up by the NDH forces.The most extreme Chetnik demand was expressed in a bulletin ‘Glas Cera’ (The Voice of the CER Mountain) in November 1943. Prior to the creation of the new Yugoslavia it is necessary that “700,000 Croat heads must roll” (to match the alleged number of Serbs killed in NDH up to 1943). Only then could the Serbs start ‘negotiating’ with the Croats on the same level.Outwardly, the Chetniks propagated the renewal of Yugoslavia on the lines of the Allies policies XE "Chetniks propagated renewal of Yugoslavia on lines of Allies policies" . Privately, however, they had Great-Serbia, by means of ethnic cleansing, on their minds. This was confirmed in a letter written by the Chetnik Commander of the Ozren regiment of 13th January 1943 to the Commander of the Chetnik regiment in Zenica, Bosnia-Hercegovina: “In the region of Fo?a, ?ajni?e and Vi?egrad [BiH] there is no longer a single Muslim settlement remaining. The same applies to Stolac. We have commenced [ethnic cleaning] successfully, we must now proceed in the same way”.Detailed orders for finishing off Croatia advocated: “the squaring of accounts with those who sinned against the Serbian people in their most tragic moments. After that, destroy and kill all intellectuals and economically strong Croats. Only the peasants and the ordinary people must be reprieved, but they must be turned into real Serbs by means of conversion to the Serbian Orthodox faith, by fair means or foul”.The terminology of the Chetnik documents is dominated by the idea of ‘osveta’ (revenge) on the lines of the Serbian folk proverb “It is preferable to revenge than become a saint”.The same aim was expressed by the notorious Chetnik ‘Duke’ Mom?ilo Djuji? in his letter of 16th July 1943 to the Commander of the Chetnik Bosnian-Krajina corpus, Uro? Drenovi?: “We are falling behind in relation to the situation in the world. We have to speed up [the cause of Great Serbia] in order that the world situation does not find us unready and incapable of realising our political aim, and that is the creation of an ethnically pure Serbian State”.It is curious that a Chetnik report from the end of 1943 makes the renewal of Yugoslavia conditional on one thing; that is “if the British win the Second World War”.So, the Chicago gang syndrome took over. The Croatian sally from the Kingdom became the chief excuse for the crimes of the Yugoslav Utopia.As if complaining at how bad the times were (and particularly that there had been nothing exciting for a long time to compare with the massacre of the Croatian Deputies in the Belgrade ‘Parliament’ in June 1928), the Serbian Chetniks and Partisans, perversely enough, welcomed the establishment of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). This gave them carte blanche for the 'final solution' of the Croatian problem. How else would their rule be remembered without internal violence? They were restrained only by their lack of physical resources. Everything their leaders did was marked with equal parts of cruelty and amusement and their absolute power over ordinary fighters, and naturally over their political opponents, effectively absolved them from any personal responsibility for the killings. Their spokesman put it this way:"In the [Communist] Party there was still indecision and reticence about the killing of spies and collaborators. Killing is a function of war and revolution. Or could it be the other way around? Excesses were always recognised - excesses that ‘did’ harm the movement. But those who want to wage wars and revolutions must be prepared to kill people, to kill their compatriots - even their friends and relatives. In a country with living clan traditions, everyone is of a glorious lineage and related to someone important; so, too, this little civil servant [who was executed] was the relative of a Party functionary. That Party functionary was angry: he knew his relative to be an honest man. Probably he really was honest, in a bourgeois and human sense - that is, outside the scope of ideological and revolutionary requirements. And our victim never understood how 'natural' and 'logical' for us his death was. Should one feel remorse? To be sure. But for what? For bad ideas and worse realities? Or for oneself - for one's devotion to bad ideas, for one's inability to come to terms with bad realities?"At the same time, the leaders of the Croato-Yugoslav contesting forces in this carnage suffered the paradox of leadership risks: "People who play a public role, even against their will, must count on having untruths spread about them - especially when their role strikes their opponents as dangerous.” This applied equally to Tito and Mihajlovi?, as well as to Paveli?. Yet, the Communist violence, unlike that of the Ustashas and Chetniks (the ‘nationalist forces’) abated only when there was no one suitable left to be killed: "If our conduct [in Nova Varo?, Sandjak, mainly populated by Muslim people] was not as violent and bloody as in 'dogmatic' and simple-minded Montenegro, this should not be ascribed to anyone's 'humanitarianism' and 'understanding' - not even mine - but to the absence of social and political differentiation, so that we had no one against whom we could 'correctly' apply 'the spirit of a sharper class differentiation’”.Djilas’s philosophical musings focus our attention on the hereditary narrative of his violent past, which in turn provoked an elaborately ironical comment:"There was no need for me to get mixed up with this [i.e., killings] and so I occupied myself with propaganda and the organisation of units. Someone told me that the legs and arms of the executed were sticking out of their graves, and I cautioned the Sandjak officials to dig more carefully to avoid offending local people! I don't believe that anything much was done about past cases. Partisans didn't bury even the bodies of their own comrades with much care, unless some very important person was involved. Where their enemies were concerned, there was an anti-traditional attitude toward death."In the Croato-Yugoslav war (1941-45), which was waged almost totally on Croatian territory, the contestants were defined with absolute clarity. The considerable strife between the pro-Yugoslav factions (Communist Partisans versus Royalist Serbian Chetniks) was ideologically self-destructive rather than hostile. Both of these contestants were fighting for the re-establishment of the utopian structure of the 'Second Yugoslavia', and only incidentally against the occupiers.The National Liberation Movement (led by the Communists during 1941-45) was essentially a movement for the reconstruction of Yugoslavia in the Communist garb but inevitably with the same Great-Serbian content. This was an arm-twist by Tito, a little man not much given to rhetoric. Yet surprisingly enough, many Croats joined his brigands. Tito himself, for some mysterious reason, pretended to be a Croat. One would have thought that in reconstructing Yugoslavia his claim of being a Croat would have been a distinct disadvantage.He advertised the 'New' Yugoslavia as a society that would bring equality to all its constituent nations, yet the majority of the Croats knew in their bones that this 'New' Yugoslavia would be as bloody as the old one. Nonetheless, a considerable number of Croats supported the Movement, which did show, if nothing else, that the Croats were not politically single-minded asses. As a result, the two extreme groups of Croats, the Ustashas and those who had joined the Yugoslav Partisans fought each other, while the majority of the Croatian people stood between them dazed and on the receiving end of the Great Serbian slander: "The fifth column in Serbia and the reactionary gangs are already putting all the Croats in the 'Ustasha' basket and sharpening their knives to kill them . . ."And, "Due to very weak political work, a tendency occurred which puts all Croats in the same basket with the Ustashas, so much so that there commenced a liquidation of some people on the basis of very little evidence . . ."The ‘Collective Croatian responsibility’ for Ustasha violence was a device used in turn by both of the pro-Yugoslav contestants (the Chetniks and the Partisans) in that war and this became a paradigm from which they derived their political arguments. Yet when it suited them, as is quite clear from the above quotation, they turned these arguments upside-down. 10th July 1941 - Gleise von Horstenau accredited Reich’s General in Croatia, informed Ober-Komando Wermacht about the lawlessness of the legal and illegal Ustasha formations (paramilitaries). He generalised but said that he could give concrete examples. Paveli? accepted the criticism in principle, but referred to similar traits characteristic of all revolutions, and pointed to his order of 27th June published in the Zagreb daily, Hrvatski Narod, Zagreb, 29th June 1941 to stop these practices.The Croats themselves were subject to the same mistreatment, not to speak of the Serbs (deportations and imprisonment) if they misbehaved.Paveli? informed Gleise von Horstenau also about his order of 17th June threatening severe punishments for breaches of military discipline within the Ustasha ranks.The First Counsellor of the German Embassy in Zagreb, Herbert von Troll-Obergfell, complained to the NDH Foreign Minister Lorkovi?, about the despatch of 3,000 Serbs to Serbia, contrary to the agreement.At the time, Paveli? was hard pressed by foreign policy problems with Italy in Dalmatia and with the Magyars in Medjimurje, to give enough thought to the Ustasha lawlessness.Gleise von Horstenau, under pressure from General Field-Marshall Wilhelm Liszt, protested to Field Marshall Kvaternik about the deportations of the Serbs, and the executions of the Serbs and even Croats “numbers of which already reach into the thousands”.Paveli? responded by complaining about the behaviour of the Italians helping ‘Serbian gangs’ attacking the Croatian villages.Already in August of 1941, Gleise von Horstenau reported that many Croats criticise the Ustashas; the Serbs are outlawed and even the Croats are insecure. However, all of them are bent on revenge against each other. According to him, Eugen Kvaternik, Minister of the Interior was the most hated man in the NDH.The complex phenomenon of ‘collaboration with the occupiers’ was the key in the pro-Yugoslav anti-Croat propaganda. While welcoming the Croatian state per se, the majority of Croatian peasants brought up on Radi?'s pacifist philosophy, while by no means crusaders for a socialist Yugoslavia, were almost to a man hostile to the occupiers and the excesses of the NDH regime. What else could they do anyway, with their long tradition of rebellions and an instinct for a better life? They were never in the habit of backing losers. They had followed Stjepan Radi? in the years 1918-24, while Radi? was in opposition to the Belgrade centralism, and abandoned him in 1925 when he jumped on to the Belgrade bandwagon. They supported him again in 1927 when he returned to the opposition. Likewise, Dr. Vladko Ma?ek (successor to Radi?) was cold-shouldered by the peasants for his compromise with Belgrade in 1939. The peasants were at loggerheads with their leadership because of its wavering attitude towards the Belgrade centralism. Emasculated by the apocalyptic conflict, the Croatian Peasant Party (the HSS) gradually split apart – into left, right and centre. Its leadership had displayed political impotence and was unable to lead anyone in any direction. Dr. Ma?ek, the leader, was in and out of Ustasha prisons. A party like this could be of little use to the Nazis. The Communists exploited this situation to recruit the Croatian peasants, large numbers of whom helped the Partisans willy-nilly. The Communists tried to put them off joining the Croatian Regular Army (the 'Domobran' or Homeguards) and if they did join they were forced to supply them with arms stolen from the Croatian Army. At the same time, the peasants became a theme for Partisan generalisations in which irony took up a great deal of space: "The Croatian Domobrans, who are fighting here under duress, do not show any enthusiasm for the battle and shoot mostly in the air and easily surrender to our forces."The consciousness with which the Communists alluded to their own fictions tends to make their propaganda appear a farce, particularly when they exaggerated the bickering between the Ustashas and Domobrans. Some mysterious deaths among the high ranking Domobran officers were blown out of all proportion: "The conflict between the Croatian Regular Army and the Ustasha Army is deepening daily . . . In the last few days alone, Colonel Neuberger was shot, and Vice-Marshall Mari? and General Prpi?, together with fifty officers, were imprisoned, and about eighty officers were demoted [by the Ustasha regime] . . ." Individual Communists succeeded in infiltrating the Croatian Regular Army and only the premature death of those caught at the hands of Ustasha firing squads prevented them from receiving the Order of Yugoslav National Heroes. Yugoslav historicists become confused because they cannot explain the ‘contradiction’ of the passive resistance of the long-suffering Croatian peasantry to the German and Italian occupation forces and at the same time their attachment to the Croatian State. For the Croatian peasants, this contradiction was an ethical question arising from their innate sense of humanity and justice - but even if correctly understood this could not have been acknowledged officially by the Communists. Because of their strict censorship, even the help given to the neighbouring Serbian villages by their Croatian neighbours was described as an act of aggression against the Serbs.Croatian schoolboys, particularly in Dalmatia, joined the opposition to the Italian Fascists. On 25th September 1941, Split witnessed their mass demonstration, demanding that all the textbooks be printed in Croatian and not in Italian. These demonstrations, plainly patriotic in character, were exploited by the Communists who tried to divert this sentiment into a Communist uprising. The Italian irredenta, traditionally anti-Croat, welcomed the communist move as an excuse to clamp down hard on these young Croats: in Trogir, Split and ?ibenik, hundreds were tortured and shot - some of them were between 16 and 20 years old. "The reality here is clear: the antipathy of this people is towards Italy and, more than anything else, towards fascism.""The Croatian people treat with contempt the rule of the Italian occupation forces in Croatia. Among those in prison, there are persons who are imprisoned only simply for the fact that they are Croats who do not wish to recognise Italian Rule."Is it surprising then when we are reminded of this situation, that without the real and many-sided opposition to the occupiers by the majority of the Croatian people, Tito's Partisans would have been turned into layabouts? The most ferocious battles of the three-cornered Croato-Yugoslav war were fought on the territory of the Independent State of Croatia (the NDH). The Croats themselves were helplessly crucified and divided, being caught up in a war they did not want and did nothing either to help or hinder. Why the Croats are still singled out and demonised for ‘collaboration’ is a matter more for amazement rather than understanding. What about those other nations (like the Dutch or the French for example, who were collaborators par excellence under Nazi occupation)? The Croats could not take kindly to the unpleasant prospect planned out for them by the Allies (particularly the British), who had a strange habit of reviving obsolete and old-fashioned kingdoms such as Yugoslavia. Croats (if they respected themselves) had to resist the bad taste of such retrograde political style. In fact, the first Croat army rebellion against the Nazis occurred in Ville-Franche in 1943 at the height of the Nazi power. They all were shot.Ironic comments by the communists about the value of the Croatian army backfired. The Croatian Ustashas and Domobrans quashed the Communist uprising in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The retaliation against the Partisan attackers of the Croatian villages was merciless. Yet by the end of 1941, there were still some 20,000 Partisans around.In the summer of 1941, there were some 7,000 Partisans in Croatia and in October 1941, the General Partisan Headquarters (NOPO) was established there under the command of the Croatian Communist, Ivo Rukavina.The build-up of the occupation forces by the end of 1941 had increased to 25 divisions; these were made up of Germans, Italians, Magyars and Bulgarians, along with about 120,000 ‘quisling formations’ (Croats and Serbian Chetniks). Partisans claimed about 80,000 fighters XE "Occupation forces (1941) increased to 25 divisions; made up of Germans, Italians, Magyars and Bulgarians, with about 120,000 ‘quisling formations’ (Croats and Serbian Chetniks). Partisans claimed 80,000 fighters" . At this stage of the war, the Komintern changed the goalposts XE "Komintern changed the goalposts" by declaring“that at the present stage of the war, the struggle was for the liberation from the fascist subjugation, and not the pursuit of the socialist revolution”. In such a situation of the partnership between the Soviet Union and the Western capitalist powers, the struggle became a fight of all the 'democratic forces' (among which the Partisans wrongly included themselves) against the Axis XE "Fight of all 'democratic forces' (Partisans wrongly included themselves) against Axis" . Almost overnight, the doctrine of the destruction of imperialism, by turning the imperialist wars into a revolutionary class war, was thus abandoned.This fundamental dogma of the Yugoslav Communists thus failed and created an irreparable shock within the rank and file of the Communist Party.After Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union XE "Hitler's attack on Soviet Union" the KPJ under Tito shifted its position from an earlier anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist character of the struggle, and adjusted its slogans to ‘anti-fascism’ and the ‘national liberation’.At this critical period, the KPJ adopted an opportunistic attitude towards other pro-Yugoslav political forces by not judging them by their final aims, but by their attitude towards the occupiers.Tito had to become more co-operative with other ‘anti-fascist’ forces and abandon his insistence that they should fight under his leadership “without regard for their political and religious affiliations”. The bourgeois pro-Yugoslav parties were, however, very sluggish in responding to this communist manoeuvre. In August 1941, Tito organised ‘the National Committee for the Liberation of Yugoslavia’ (a kind of national government) as the driving force towards the utopian XE "Tito organised National Committee for Liberation of Yugoslavia" ‘Unity of the Yugoslav nations’ and “their determination to rebuild the [Yugoslav] State organisation on new foundations”.The ‘Representatives of the so-called democratic currents’ were allowed to sit on this committee in order not to give the impression that the uprising was solely a Communist affair, and also to act as a balance to the Yugoslav Great-Serbian ?migré Government in London.The decisive stab in the back to the KPJ came from an unexpected source. At the end of August, the Soviet Union and the Yugoslav Government in Exile in London renewed diplomatic relations XE "Soviet Union and Yugoslav Government in Exile in London renewed diplomatic relations" . To counteract this, Tito hyped the role of the National Liberation Committees (the ODBORI) as fundamental organs of the ‘peoples’ political power.As far as the utopian aim for the unity of the Yugoslav nations was concerned, the KPJ did not have any dilemmas. The fact that it acted as an integral Yugoslav political party was a clear declaration for the recreation of the Yugoslav state.The KPJ had never discarded the Yugoslav idea, and its attitude was that the ‘common struggle’ of the separate (‘Yugoslav’) nations would pave the way for the recovery of the lost faith in the idea of the Yugoslav unity on the new foundations of Brotherhood and Unity.This faith of the KPJ that the unity of all the ‘patriotic’ (pro-Yugoslav) forces would be achieved by means of the Liberation struggle failed dismally because these forces perceived the KPJ as a “danger to their class position” And “a danger of Communist subversion”.These (pro-Yugoslav) forces were the Chetniks of Colonel Dra?a Mihajlovi? and the Chetnik ‘Duke’ Kosta Pe?anac who, at the end of 1941, moved to Belgrade and collaborated with the Germans. The Chetnik programme was the struggle for a strong and ‘homogeneous’ Great-Serbia, ethnically cleansed of all non-Serbian peoples and covering the territory of at least three-quarters of the pre-war Kingdom.The Germans in Serbia succeeded in organising the ‘Serbian bourgeoisie’ under the leadership of General Milan Nedi? XE "Germans in Serbia succeeded in organising ‘Serbian bourgeoisie’ under leadership of General Milan Nedi?" for the fight against ‘Communists and escaped criminals’ and in the struggle for ‘the great deed of the national renewal of the homeland.’ This call was supported by ‘the appeal’ of 10th August 1941 signed by 500 leading Serbs. Dimitrije Ljoti?, leader of the pro-fascist party Zbor (Assembly) led this motley crowd.In October 1941, the Chetnik formations were honoured by the arrival of the British Military Mission. The British plan was to isolate the Communists and wait for the right moment to strike in the ‘right direction’.In the meantime, bestialities on the ground were in full swing. Huso ?atovi?, a Muslim witness made an official statement to the Croatian gendarmerie in Bile?a, Hercegovina, on the 29th October 1941: "I witnessed the Chetnik-communist gauging out the eyes of Hasan ?atovi? and then drinking the blood from his eyes.”The Chetnik-communists Rajko and Nikola Vukoja and Bo?o Vaso also murdered 76 other Muslims.On the 9th October 1941, in the same region they killed a further seven Croatian Gendarmes.Alija Prvan, another eyewitness stated that fifty-two more people had been murdered in the region of Bile?a on 29th October 1941. These men had been murdered in order that the communists could take away 80 Muslim women and rape them. The gang leader of this outrage was a Serb shopkeeper, Dmitar Radanovi? from Divin, who was heard yelling, “Where the hell is Croatia; everyone I catch I will put under the knife.”Radios Moscow and London were adding oil to the fire XE "Radios Moscow and London adding oil to fire" by announcing on the 1st October 1941 that King Peter had invited Serbs to rise up.“Your ruler, to whom you swore an oath of loyalty, invites you by proxy of our great warriors in the woods, those who did not shamefully capitulate, to take up arms! Our mother, the mother of all the Slavs – Russia – is leading the struggle against our eternal enemy in a common struggle with the English and American people for the salvation of humanity and our freedom.“My people! Close ranks . . . under the leadership of my best and the most courageous and most decent men, who are in contact with me via their commanders. Your ranks must be joined by all able-bodied people between the ages of 17 and 60 years. My orders, and the arms and ammunition will be dropped by planes. Take up arms! etc. etc. London, 1st October 1941.”The village of Koraj in Eastern Bosnia was on the receiving end of the ‘liberation’ by the Chetnik-communist gangs on the 28th November 1941. The report addressed to the NDH Ministry of the Interior dated 4th December 1941, described the outrage:“Around 100 armed bandits entered the village inhabited by the Muslims. It was difficult to establish the right number of the killed but up to 300 people massacred was the very probable number. 150 houses were burned down. It is characteristic that the women [among the bandits] were plundering and that their children were piling up the straw against the houses setting them on fire and yelling to King Peter and Joseph Stalin simultaneously (!)”“A further report was received on the 30th January 1942 that Partisans had killed 8 Croatian soldiers on the 4th November 1941 only to be later replaced by Chetniks who murdered 62 Muslims.” Serbian Chetniks-communist gangs committed an outrageous genocide in the eastern Bosnian town of Fo?a and its environs, murdering 7,000 to 8,000 people (mainly Muslims - 1,000 of them in the town itself). This occurred at the beginning of December 1941 (5th-21st December 1941).A most outrageous massacre of thirty Croats occurred in Ervenik (Knin) in December 1941 after the most sadistic torture. Fifty-one Croats were murdered in Drvar. Thirteen Croats were murdered in ?tikovo and 16 in Knin, all the above identified by name and surname.Twenty Muslims were killed by the Chetnik gangs in the region of Glamo? (Bosnia) from January to December 1941.On the 30th December 1941, the Croatian Gendarmerie found twenty-eight burnt bodies of Muslim peasants in the village of Tuholj (Kladanj, Bosnia), murdered by the Chetnik-communist gangs.The Administrator of the Vrhbosna district, near Sarajevo, G. Kapetanovi?, reported to the Government in Zagreb on the 13th December 1941: “In the district of Fo?a 75 Muslims were murdered.”The peaceful Croatian civilians (Catholics, Muslims and even many Orthodox) had not caused any provocation to be on the receiving end of the Chetnik-communist terror.In a letter addressed to Marshall Kvaternik, dated 6th December 1941 and written by the Reis-ul-ulema (Muslim religious leader) Fehim Spaho about the plight of the Muslim population in Eastern Bosnia under the Chetnik-communist terror quoted a letter addressed to him which is evocative: “We succeeded in escaping on the 24th November 1941 to Sarajevo. During a month and a half of terror the Chetniks burned down 71 villages in which the people were burnt together with their houses. Murders, rapes and the most monstrous massacres are still in progress. In hospital in Rogatica 300 wounded patients have been murdered. I beg you . . . save these people as soon as you can. . .”4.3 The NDH government did not possess sufficient armed forces to alleviate this terror.The NDH authorities tried hard to grant amnesty to all those rebels XE "NDH authorities tried hard to grant amnesty to all rebels" who would return to normal life. However, even after eight months of these appeals, nothing had changed.At the end of 1941 the first conflicts between the Chetniks and the communists commenced on the NDH territory. Thousands died in the gang warfare between the two key contestants for the reconstruction of the Yugoslav utopia.As a result of the accusations and counter-accusations against each other they recorded each other’s crimes against the NDH civilian population. The Partisans in Bosnia-Hercegovina distributed a confused leaflet under the title “What is the aim of the Partisans struggle in Bosnia-Hercegovina?” The communists explicated. “Certain Chetnik leaders have not collaborated with us sincerely. Their aim was to plunder while the Partisans fought; they burned and plundered. They are pushing the Serbs into genocide against the Muslims. . . . And such Chetnik leaders maintain that they are fighting the Ustashas, but the Serbs seek a real struggle against the Ustashas . . . so that they are destroyed . . .” Signed Pero Jankovi? et al.” (97 peasants.)Yet at the time of this whitewash by the ‘Partisans’ they were de facto indistinguishable from the Chetniks.The chief Partisan headquarters proclamation to the people of Eastern Bosnia stated “that [the Chetniks] have the cheek to accuse [our] proletarian brigades of plunder and murder while they are fighting.”In its infancy, the Ustasha revolutionary movement abstained from unnecessary bloodshed XE "Ustasha revolutionary movement abstained from unnecessary bloodshed" . This was in the ancient tradition of the Croatian warrior, but this self-restraint was to be short-lived. Soon a violent streak appeared in its ranks as a direct consequence of the confrontation with the protagonists of the Yugoslav utopia and its unavoidable violence. The Ustasha regime, now in command of an independent state (the NDH), came down hard on the rebellious Serbs, although a chance remark by a humane Croat to the effect that “a Serbian fighter might be an equal match for his Ustasha opponent” was enough to have him dragged through the streets with a chain round his neck. A Croat traitor who spoke evil of his own State would have been devoured by a concentration camp as silently as any rebellious Serb. This happened to thousands of Croats on the most trivial charges. As a ‘deserter’ from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the only anti-Yugoslav contestant in the Croato-Yugoslav war, the NDH was an organised aggregate of differing constituent parts. It cannot be treated in terms of wholes. This view has been repeatedly challenged, alas unsuccessfully. Croats with any dignity thought that it was an extreme tragedy that their country was raped by the forces that were without any doubt fighting for the reconstruction of the hateful Yugoslav state."1st December 1918 - the Day commemorating 'Yugoslav Unification', a national holiday - went by without our remembering it, though we were waging a pitiless war so as to inherit that very state,observed Djilas.Clearer answers are now beginning to emerge. The Kingdom of Yugoslavia initiated the Croato-Serbian conflict in 1918 XE "Kingdom of Yugoslavia initiated Croato-Serbian conflict 1918" . It perpetrated the violence for 23 long years (1918 to 1941). Pro-Yugoslav factions (Tito's Partisans and the Great-Serbian Chetniks) prolonged this violence from 1941-45 ‘by waging a pitiless war against the breakaway Croatian State so that they could inherit that very state’.So, in order to arrive at a dispassionate account of this conflict, one has to trade in Belgrade anti-Croat conspiracy theories for some facts. The Croats have certainly suffered for many years from the Western 'false sympathy’, which believed the fairy story that Croatian ‘separatism’ threatened the peace in Europe. The commies accused the Croat bourgeoisie of the ultimate sin of collaboration with the occupiers.Ironically enough, on the other side some of Tito’s closest collaborators were rich bourgeois, e.g., Ko?a Popovi?, Vladimir Bakari?, Vladimir Velebit et al., so what were they doing running the ‘proletarian’ revolution? Yet the rank and file of the Ustasha Movement were drawn mainly from the ranks of the poor sanquillots of Lika, Bosnia, Hercegovina and Dalmatia. Djilas’ note on the subject of the ‘class war’ between a numerically rather weak class of Yugoslav proletarians and even the weaker Yugoslav bourgeoisie, reads almost as a surreal joke: "On the agenda was an appraisal of the political situation and the designation of further assignments. Without any reports in brief dialogues in which Kardelj held forth at greatest length, we agreed that the armed struggle against the occupation had developed into a class war between the workers and the bourgeoisie . . . We would, of course, continue our armed struggle against the occupation forces, not only because we thereby affirmed ourselves as a patriotic force, but because this was an integral part of a world-wide class struggle led by the Soviet Union."Collaboration with the occupiers all over ex-Yugoslavia XE "Collaboration with occupiers all over ex-Yugoslavia" was very random, just as elsewhere in Europe. “It was a characteristic of the bourgeoisie of all the Yugoslav nations and not the speciality of any particular one” according to clichéd Marxists' assessments. Now the clever-clogs of the KPJ changed from an armed struggle against the occupier to a class war against the bourgeoisie. In Serbia the Chetnik fascist fanatics, such as Dimitrije Ljoti? and Kosta Pe?anac, collaborated with the Nazis as a matter of course: in Croatia Serbian Chetniks not only collaborated but fraternised with the Italians. The ‘Government of Serbian Salvation’ in Belgrade, under General Nedi?, and the Serbian Orthodox Church, were Nazi bootlickers par excellence.The commies, who pretended to be anti-fascist (but were Great Serbs at heart), played an even more distasteful role than Paveli? in Zagreb, who broke away from Yugoslavia to be sure, with the help of Hitler and did not mind bloodying his hands in that endeavour. However, as Sartre makes clear in ‘Les Mains Sales’, the trademark of Yugoslav Communist behaviour (like the communists in general) was not only ruthlessness but also a futile waste of life in the process of reconstructing the utopian Yugoslav State.An anomaly can be tolerated only if it is functional. ‘Collaboration’ with the Nazis was, at street level, purely functional rather than ideological. The majority of ordinary people in Croatia and Bosnia accepted (very sensibly) the positivist view that "it does not matter who rules - as long as one survives". "The peasants cowardly [but common sense] surrender of freedom and homeland for the sake of property and family stunned me and made me bitter, all the more so because it was contrary to my inherited belief in Montenegrin heroism and hostility toward an alien foe. Nor could I fit this into my dogmatic notions about the people - about the peasant and the worker, ready and willing to sacrifice themselves for 'their' cause, given the right conditions. In fact, I wasn't free from this idealisation of the people until my fall from power, though even during the war I suspected that the people do not sacrifice for any ideal unless an organised force, or the danger of annihilation, obliges them to do so,"wrote Djilas.It is not surprising that, during that war, the power instinct and the common 'Yugoslav' aim (which were one and the same) diverged, and that the Serbian Royalists and communists were at each other's throats, so much so that there developed a life and death struggle for power between these two rivals. Each was armed with its own ideological method with which to destroy the other. The Croat struggle against the renewal of Yugoslavia was of a totally different order and makes nonsense of Tito's dictum: "The connection between the Ustashas and Serbian traitors is one and the same XE " Connection between Ustashas and Serbian traitors is one and same" ."To understand the Ustasha regime and the Croatian body politic at that time demands reflection on their nature and philosophy. They cannot be identical. Europeans easily grasp this, even sometimes Americans - yet never, it would seem, do the British! For the British, the whole Croatian scene is too mysteriously wayward.Without being finicky, it becomes obvious that the conflict between the Croats and the Serbs can be reduced to the Original Sin of the establishment of Yugoslavia in 1918. Having once 'fallen' in this way, both sides were doomed to unremitting strife. As the Croat analysts have frequently pointed out, the Ustasha terror existed alongside the Yugoslav terror, but was not directed only against the rebellious Serbs but also against those Croats who were considered to have been traitors to the Croatian State. This is often overlooked. I hope it is not too cynical to point out that there were even some turncoat Serbs and opportunist Muslims who were eager members of the Ustasha Movement. The Western analysts have an unhealthy tendency to over-emphasise the role of the regime in wartime Croatia, which generates the myth that the Croatian peoples’ will for an independent statehood was irreconcilably synonymous with that of the regime. With a certain discomfort, one may point out that many Croats were duped by the communist pro-Yugoslav propaganda and were under the illusion that they were fighting for an autonomous Republic of Croatia within a future Yugoslavia."In the summer of 1944, Croatia had 17 Divisions and 5 Corps in the ranks of Tito's Partisans [out of a total Yugoslav number of 41 Divisions and 9 Corps]. The total number of Partisans in Croatia was 150,000".These figures come from a former general of Tito's, Franjo Tudjman (later to become the first President of the Republic of Croatia from 1991-1999). He compiled these figures on the basis of the official documents (deposited in the Institute for the History of the Workers Movement in Zagreb) annoyed at the distortions at the expense of the Croats put out by the Belgrade propaganda machine. Not surprisingly, he was jailed in 1971 for his effort.One of the oddest twists in the Yugoslav propaganda war was that by the end of 1945 the whole Ustasha Movement was reduced to almost pre-war number of hardcore émigrés of Ante Paveli? (AP) and the "whole Croatian working-class movement . . . i.e., 50% of the Croatian people, were against the Ustasha regime".These figures from the official communist sources, although greatly exaggerated, imply that the Ustasha terror per se was equally highly exaggerated, and that the unspeakable terror let loose on the NDH territory largely boiled down to the unremitting violence fomented (mainly by the Yugoslav Communist Partisans) in order to grab power in the second Yugoslavia at any price. The Commies cannot have it both ways.Are we being unfair to the commies? Let us turn, once more, to Djilas: "The reign of terror in Montenegro, and the even more terrible one in Hercegovina, took place largely because of wilful local leaders and doctrinaire reactionaries. Milutinovi?'s responsibility was not so much for what he did as for what he did not do: order should have governed zeal and common-sense retribution. Yes, should have! It is easy to wage flawless battles after they have been lost."However, surely this philosophy of the wilfulness XE "Philosophy of wilfulness" on the part of the irregulars and of common sense in executing retribution should be equally applicable as an excuse also to the NDH forces? 'No way’ argue the hard-core Yugo-Commies. The soldiers killed in the NDH forces were not recognised by the Yugo-Communists and their allies to have been legitimate war contestants, let alone victims. It is very difficult to distinguish between the 'fascist' and the Communist killings. Although these events, now seen through the eyes of a new generation who take nothing on trust, must not be accepted without testing. The blame put on the NDH for all the evils and violence in that war is merely the paralysis of the Yugoslav utopian mindset. It overlooks the laws of conflict which are inevitable, mutual and interlocking."The Conspiracy theory of the society is just a version of theism XE "Conspiracy theory of the society is just a version of theism" . . . It comes from abandoning God and then asking 'Who is in his place'. His place is then filled by various powerful men and groups - sinister pressure groups, who are to be blamed for having planned . . . all the evils from which we suffer," wrote Karl Popper.When the communists came to power in 1945, the Yugoslav world entered a state of retribution activity never seen before. There was a proliferation of oppressive systems: concentration camps, death marches, shootings and imprisonments. These retributions went on in spite of the appalling sacrifices during the war and in spite of ‘liberation’.Djilas succinctly explains the communist aims of ‘liberation’: "The war which we communists had in mind was not just a national war. Communists are people who are not attracted by anything, even by national freedom if it does not hold out to them the prospect of a specific ideological revolutionary community. This did not deny the national role, the national idealism of communists, but rather confirmed it wherever the ruling classes sacrificed the national to their own class interest. However united in their ultimate aims, communist leaders differed among themselves in their emphasis on the national role. Such differences existed also among the leaders of Yugoslav communism during the uprising. Yet these differences were not so crucial as to cause a split: ideals gained legitimacy, as the prospect of power became increasingly real. Since the Yugoslav party had entered the war as a 'purged’, monolithic, ‘Stalinist’ party, the unifying elements were far stronger than the divisive ones. Such war aims held no prospect of victory without a homogeneous and ideologised party: a special new community that identified itself with a set of absolute social and human ideals, and thus with absolute power."The Yugoslav communists after WW2, in order to expurgate themselves from the bloodshed they inflicted on the Croatian people, put their own crimes in their secret records (ad acta). XE "Yugoslav communists after WW2 expurgate themselves from bloodshed they inflicted on Croatian people, put their own crimes in their secret records (ad acta)" They propagated a series of philosophical themes, some of which were deliberately facetious: they elaborated a conspiracy theory about the collective and the absolute responsibility of the Croats for the violence during the Croato-Yugoslav war. Though they were unable to achieve this, "In this indictment [the Yugoslav Communists] denied themselves the fundamental understanding of the things in society, not those designed and wanted but those which one presumes nobody [even the Croats] wants, such as war."Philosophically the conspiracy theory of the ‘collective responsibility’ comes naturally to communism, which describes ‘collectives’ as the ‘group personality’ or conspiring agents. The Yugoslav communists’ belief in the collective ‘treacherous pro-Fascist’ mentality of the Croats was part and parcel of this ideological superstition. As practising Marxists, they knew that a superstition such as this cannot possibly be true, but within the Yugoslav communist utopia everything was possible. Yet, at the same time, they wanted ‘brotherhood and unity’ with this very same ‘pro-fascist’ people. Marx himself realised that a capitalist was not a demonic conspirator, but a man who was forced by circumstances to act as he did. XE "Marx realised that a capitalist was not demonic conspirator, but man who was forced by circumstances to act as he did." But the vulgar Yugoslav communists have ignored this rarely-quoted sober thought from Marx. The point perhaps is that conspiracy theories are susceptible to bad memory. Unexpectedly, a record of one of the seminal documents of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia at its conference held in Zagreb in May 1941 quoting the summary of Tito's expose points the finger at the true culprits: "Throughout more than twenty years, a criminal national policy was perpetrated: a policy of monstrous oppression and exploitation of Macedonians, Croats, Montenegrins, Slovenes and other minorities, by the Great Serbian ruling clique which aimed to preserve its plundering hegemony . . . The system of Government of all the reactionary capitalist cliques, Serbian [as well as the others], which has been in power since the establishment of Yugoslavia until the present day, was a national and a social exploitation of the masses of the people. This was one of the main reasons for the weakness and the fall of the Yugoslavia set up after Versailles, within which the most progressive group of people, the working class led by the Communist Party, fought for its transformation into a truly brotherly union of the peoples of Yugoslavia, free and equal . . . Further, the Serbian ruling clique blames the Croats for the speedy capitulation of the Yugoslav army. In that way it intends to get rid of its own responsibility for its own treachery and to spread the hatred of the Serbian people against the Croatian people in the same way as the small group of treacherous Frankist [followers of Dr. Josip Frank] gentlemen act in Croatia, which aims with all its power to spread hatred against the Serbian and Slovene peoples. The Croatian people are blamed for the treachery of an insignificant Frankist clique [Ustashas], which, with the help of the imperialist bayonets, now saddles the Croatian people. Such an accusation deeply hurts the feelings of the oppressed Croatian people, who have nothing in common with the treachery of the Frankist gang, in the same way that the Serbian people have nothing in common with the treacherous clique of the ruling Serbian gentlemen. But the Serbian people know only too well that the main offender for its present tragedy and the tragedy of all the peoples of Yugoslavia is the Serbian reactionary ruling bourgeoisie, and the people will make them answerable for this as soon as the time for this arrives. The Serbian bourgeoisie is the main cause of all the evil that now oppresses the Serbian as well as all other peoples of Yugoslavia."Noting the relevant attributions of responsibility for the failure of the first Yugoslav Reich and skimming over much of Tito's Marxist sophistry XE "Tito's Marxist sophistry" , we arrive at a reasonable historical explanation: there was no Croatian conspiracy and particularly no collective Croatian responsibility for the violence in NDH. Not surprisingly, in the Yugoslav context, a great number of the pre-war 'Great Serbian ruling clique', blamed by Tito, joined the ranks of his Partisans, lock, stock and barrel, and at some stage after 1945 became a stalwart of his own New class.The conspiracy theory about the ‘Croatian collective responsibility’ XE "Conspiracy theory about ‘Croatian collective responsibility’" was also consciously cultivated throughout the Second World War by the Yugoslav ?migré Government in London, but that is another story. Cynical and narrow-minded as they were, they understood, however, the usefulness of a deadly Fascist label:Who this 'Government' actually represented is clearly defined by Djilas:"Roughly speaking, Serbia was divided into three groups. The first was in favour of local collaboration with the occupation forces. Its most influential representative was the fascist, Dimitrije Ljoti?. The former Royal Minister of War, General Milan Nedi?, had placed himself at its head by becoming Premier at the outbreak of the armed conflict. A second group was for awaiting 'favourable' conditions for an armed struggle. At its head was Colonel Dra?a Mihajlovi?. The core of this group were Royalist officers who had fled to the woods . . . they had one or two [defensive] encounters with the Germans, but because of the reprisals and the Government in Exile’s policy of waiting, they were to opposed to an armed struggle except against the Croatian fascist Ustashi. The third group were the communists over whom that 'Government' had no power.”By sticking a Fascist label onto the entire Croatian people, the ‘Yugoslav Government-in-Exile’ hoped to ‘expose’ the Croats as the enemies of freedom and democracy. It was now up to Croats like me to write scientific treaties to prove otherwise. In any case, most of what happened in Yugoslavia at the time is incomprehensible or irrelevant to foreign audiences, even if they were Croatian (or Serbian)-speaking. While the Croats were spending their precious time attempting to fight off these accusations, the Yugoslavs would be busy ‘consolidating’ power in the New Yugoslavia. A lie “is very often irrefutable” a paradox pointed out by Popper. Therefore, to expose lies is always a thankless task."Revolutions and totalitarian ideas do not know or recognize anything but themselves XE "Revolutions and totalitarian ideas do not know or recognize anything but themselves" ," wrote Djilas.And, "Hatreds flared which we, high up in the party, didn't really comprehend in all their elemental and destructive dimensions, even though we had inflamed them and directed them through our ideas and organisation. Yet there was no choice. It was as if life itself was metamorphosed into an idea, and all outsiders were consigned to hell." "There can be no revolution without leaders capable of combining reality with utopia. But this in turn requires a belief in inevitability and an adversary who looks to the past for that reality and ideal."The Chetnik-Partisan relationship pivoted on an anomaly XE "Chetnik-Partisan relationship pivoted on an anomaly" – both sides aimed at the reconstruction of Yugoslavia yet, at the same time, this aim became divisive. The KPJ rejected the Great-Serbian ‘Monarcho-fascist’ concept of the future State, the effect of which was firmly embedded in the Serbian consciousness. The gist of this contradiction was that the Chetniks maintained that the communists had to be destroyed by any and all means at their disposal, including with the help of the NDH. The result of this confrontation was therefore decisive for the shape of the future Yugoslavia. The introduction of the communist regime, and reducing Serbia to its pre-First World War frontiers in a federal Yugoslavia, was an equally a contradictory agenda, as it depended heavily on ‘crossing the floor’ between these two pro-Yugoslav sides. Historically, the conflict between the Belgrade Great-Serbian Royalist Mafia and the communists dated from 1919 XE "Conflict between Belgrade Great-Serbian Royalist Mafia and communists dated from 1919" ; now the moment had come for the squaring of accounts and the breaking up of the Great-Serbian Royalist regime, which the communists believed would solve the Yugoslav national question in a Bolshevik manner. The Great-Serbs believed that the KPJ was in an unlikely conspiracy between the Komintern, the Vatican, the Freemasons and the Ustashas, all jumbled together under the contradictory and apocalyptic title of ‘the dark forces’.Tito's ‘liberation’ army used all the well-tried Balkan methods of violence, and at the same time condemned them. It had two objectives in mind: to take power and to get rid of its competitors in the rebuilding of the Yugoslav utopia. The hidden similarities between Tito's forces and those of the Serbian nationalists quickly became apparent. The fact that these two gangs were disunited by an ideological defect in their common philosophy (the utopian aim of the reconstruction of the second ‘Yugoslav Reich’), created a situation in which the national conscience and irresponsibility could be used in the same breath: . . ."It seemed as if the realities of war most convincingly confirmed the communist doctrine that class and ideological hatred over-rode national solidarity . . . a joint commission for the investigation of crimes and conflicts met [between Serbian nationalists and Communists], but it was too late. The Chetniks [Serbian nationalists] had already decided on a fight [against communism], and the communists would revenge. The [Serbian] civil war had begun, though everyone denied it, by each side blaming on the other side. At the time the Communists were relatively considerate in their treatment of the Chetniks."This quotation sounds like the longest joke until one realises that in spite of all their differences the communists treated the Chetniks with 'consideration', and that they enthusiastically joined in the liquidation of the Croatian prisoners of war whom they saw as enemies of Yugoslavia.The incestuous relationship between these two pro-Yugoslav contestants, obsessed by slaughter and 'sacrifice', XE "Incestuous relationship between these two pro-Yugoslav contestants, obsessed by slaughter and sacrifice" is an extraordinary study in moral degradation with the purpose of re-establishing a utopian state. This utopian state, in spite of its 'withering away', was still with us until recently. We celebrated its '72nd Anniversary of Violence' on 1st December 1990.4.3.1Partisans and ChetniksThe Germans and Italians smashed the uprising of 50-60,000 Partisans in Serbia mercilessly in the late autumn of 1941, so that the remaining 5-6,000 Partisans of that force escaped to the mountains of Eastern Bosnia. The Chetniks now became sole masters in Serbia.At the end of 1941, the war between the Partisans and the Chetniks spread into Montenegro and the NDH. The devil of that war was in its details.The most sadistic murders by the Serbian Chetnik-communist gangs were executed in Koritnik in January 1942. Mehmed Kurspahi?, a Muslim who miraculously saved himself, gave a statement to the Military Command in Sarajevo on the 17th January 1942.“Vuko Medenica and 20 Chetniks arrived in Koritnik [Eastern Bosnia] and ordered that all the men gather in the village. They were lined up and the first 2 had their faces skinned with knives. Then the Chetniks ordered them to pray. Falling to the ground they were stabbed in the back. The Chetniks preceded stabbing the rest and throwing them into the River Drina.”In the village of Rudo, the Chetnik-communists murdered four Muslims in January 1942.The Glamo? Council Report of the 5th January 1942 states that the Chetniks murdered 28 Muslims during the period from 10th April 1941 to January 1942.A Serb prisoner, Vlado Milanovi?, stated to the Military Mission in Sarajevo on the 26th January 1942: “While I was guarding the bridge in Gora?de, I witnessed nightly the Chetniks murdering Muslims on the bridge and throwing them into the river Drina . . .”In the Muslim village of Plo?nik in Eastern Bosnia, the Chetnik-communist gangs committed the heinous crime of murdering children in February 1942. Had?i Omer Had?i?, a Muslim witness, made an official statement on the 11th February 1942 to the Military Commander in Sarajevo: “The women refugees were made to witness the knifing of 27 male children.”Seifo ?elik, a Muslim witness, made the following statement to the Military Command in Sarajevo on the 8th February 1942:“In the district of Batovo, ?ajni?e, Eastern Bosnia, the Chetniks murdered around 1,000 [Muslim] people. In the neighbouring district they killed another 500.”On the 6th February 1942, Seifo ?elik faced some of these murderers taken prisoner by the Croatian Army: They were Vlado Pjeval?i?, Gojko Rudanovi?, Bo?ko Milovi? and seven others.Adem Telarevi?, a Muslim witness, stated that twenty-six members of the family Telarevi? had been murdered. A further fifteen members of the Dedovi? family, six members of the Ze?i? family, eight members of the Pizovi? family and nine others had also been murdered by the Chetnik-communists.Two British parachutists, together with two Serbs, fell into the hands of the Ustashas on Romanija Mountain near Sarajevo in February 1942. Kevin Elliot from London, Robert Chapman from Barrow-in-Furness, Serbs Petar Milkovi?, and Pavle Crnjanski. Their written instruction to the Chetniks was to report on the numbers and the morale of the Croatian Army, its relationship with the Ustasha organisation, its directives, including lists of the reserve and active officers who joined the Croatian Army, etc. They treated the NDH as a non-State. The reality, however, was different – the chief characteristic of all states ultimately is the power over life and death of its citizens, which the NDH at the time possessed in large measure.The Regional Administrator, Amir Plo?ki?, a Muslim, made an official report about the slaughter of the Muslim civilians by the Chetnik-communists in the region of Vi?egrad. Eastern Bosnia, on the 29th March 1942.“Up to date they have murdered 6,000 Croats and Muslims in this region. Just one example: they locked up 82 people in a house in the village of Brokan, threw two hand grenades into it and burnt them all.”District Authority for Kalinovik, near Sarajevo, reported on the 25th March 1942: “When the Partisans took the villages of Bukvica and Golubi?i, they murdered 20 people. 5 of them were thrown into a fire, including a local humanist, Began Kara?i? 80 years old. Two wounded Ustashas, after undergoing torture, were cut to pieces and thrown into the fire.”The conflict between the Partisans and the Chetniks in Bosnia-Hercegovina was complicated by the mixed structure of the population. The war there turned into carnage. XE "Conflict between Partisans and Chetniks in Bosnia-Hercegovina was complicated by mixed structure of population. The war there turned into carnage" The Serbs refused to recognise the NDH, and the Croats and many Muslims (paramilitaries) who had euphorically accepted the Croat State exacted their revenge (under the Croatian label) on the Serbs for the past twenty-three years of unspeakable terror in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. This in turn engendered new Serbian uprisings.For the Serbs, the NDH was a greater enemy than the Germans. The fact that many Serbs in Bosnia-Hercegovina and Croatia had taken the side of the Partisans rather than the Chetniks saved the skins of surviving Partisans pouring into the NDH from Serbia and Montenegro.Gleise von Horstenau despatched a detailed report to the OKW from Zagreb dated 21st November 1941 about the situation in the NDH.“Persecution of the Serbs on a large scale has eased but illegal actions by the low ranking Ustashas are still going on. Relations with the Muslims, which regime was received with open arms initially, have deteriorated and the blame for this cannot always be placed on the NDH Government. The imprisonment of Dr. Ma?ek has left a deep impression on the [Croatian] peasants, equally so the imprisonment of Ivan Me?trovi? [the sculptor], a high-profile Anglophile. As far as the relations between the NDH and Italy were concerned, the whole country below the demarcation line (III Zone) de facto is in the hands of the Italians. In a few places where the NDH administration remained, it cannot switch even one single policeman without the permission of the Italian occupation forces. In Biha? and Mostar, one can see Italian commanders armed up to their teeth parading together with armed Chetnik commanders. The Chetniks from the mountains are coming to the towns for supplies with the help of the Italian soldiers. ... The German sources state that the Ustasha militia [Vojnica] numbers 10,000 men and the Domobran Army 42,000 at the end of 1941”. In Ciano’s report to Mussolini, dated 15th December 1941, about his talks with Paveli?, he described Paveli?’s determination to use ‘a firm hand’ in dealing with the Chetniks and communists. He quoted Paveli? saying that "decisive actions against the outlaws [odmetnici] must be taken during the winter because, with the coming of the spring when the woods become green, the task would be much more difficult, particularly in Southern Bosnia and Montenegro”.Von Horstenau, whose reports are amply quoted here, was becoming more and more critical of the state of affairs in the NDH and more favourable to some ‘non-Ustasha alternative’, according to Croatian communist historian Krizman.The London Yugoslav ?migré Government was nagging the Soviet Government XE "London Yugoslav ?migré Government nagged Soviet Government" to persuade Tito to concede command of all the pro-Yugoslav forces to the Chetniks.To reinforce Mihajlovi?, the London ?migré Government promoted him to the rank of General of ‘The Yugoslav Army in the Homeland’. In 1942, he also became a Minister in Absentia in the London Government. The British proceeded to drop supplies to Mihajlovi? and the BBC used all its warped imagination in its pro-Chetniks propaganda.The Soviet government was using a softly-softly approach in its own propaganda in favour of the Partisans in order not to fall out with the British. Radio ‘Free Yugoslavia’ was its main propaganda machine. The Soviets had serious misgivings about Tito’s activities.In Bosnia-Hercegovina, part of the NDH, the Partisan uprising was mainly a Serbian affair. Croat and Muslim peasants were shy of involvement as they were on the receiving end of the Chetnik outrages mainly in Eastern Bosnia (as in the war of 1992-95).In May and June 1942 (16th May to the 10th June 1942), it was the turn of the Western Bosnian town of Prijedor to receive ‘liberation’ by the Serbian communist partisans. Some 400 Croats lost not only their homes but also their lives (15th-16th May 1942). The Partisan leaders ?o?a, Miro ?ikota, Sveto Marjanovi?, Proka Kovrlija, Bo?ko ?iljegovi?, Mile Raji? and Stevan Trtica (all Serbs) were in the forefront of this ‘liberation’. Most of those killed were paupers from the town and the surrounding villages, who had nothing to do with the Ustashas. Four mass graves were exhumed on the 25th July and 28th July 1942 in the presence of the legal and medical commission in the province of Sana and Luka under the chairmanship of Matija Kova?i? from the NDH Foreign Ministry in Zagreb, a member of the commission Dr. Maksimilian Stepinac, from the High Court in Zagreb, Secretary Dragan Kati?i? from Zagreb, and Dr. Iso Fr?hlich, pathologist. All the identified bodies were terribly massacred and were listed by name and surname.The statements of several imprisoned Partisans involved in these massacres XE "Statements of several imprisoned Partisans involved in these massacres" are evocative. Mira ?ikota (Serb), a female Partisan who was in charge of the ‘death penalties’ stated to the above commission that on the 24th July 1942 “When the Partisans arrived in Prijedor in May 1942, several of them settled in my house. One of them, my cousin Bo?ko ?iljegovi?, demanded that I join their Court trying the Croat Ustashas. My job was to give my opinion about each of them. It is not true that I told one woman that even the babies in cradles must be killed.”Mi?o Rodi? (a Serb), aged 30, an imprisoned Partisan who took part in the ‘liquidation’ of the Croats stated to the Commission: “My job was to dig a mass grave . . . [Other] partisans were chatting, but as I am forgetful, I can’t remember what they said. . . . The men who were shot were silent prior to the shooting. They faced the grave and were shot with dum-dum bullets in the back of the head. The Partisans pulled their garments off them after they were shot. I remember one of them said ‘Take these trousers’. I took them home and gave them to my wife. The garments of the shot Croats were distributed in front of the [Serbian-Orthodox] church in ?irkin-Polje, during the night,” concluded Rodi?. The commission heard the statements of the Serb Uro? Timarac, present at the killing of the Croats in Prijedor on the 26th July 1942: “Two or three nights after the Partisans entered Prijedor my wife woke me up. “Uro?, I heard guns” “How many times?” “Seven or eight times.” I told her “Shut up, fuck the guns!" 15 minutes later the Partisans arrived in the house and shouted, “Take a shovel and come with us.” When we arrived at Glavica, the mass grave was full of the shot Croats. We were back-filling for some two hours. When we finished the Commander shouted: “Comrades, those who are in tatters are free to pick a suit for themselves.” A few days later I saw many people in the town dressed in the shirts of the shot Croats and no questions were asked.” Jela Rodi?, a Partisan woman stated to the Commission: “The Partisans told us to keep our mouths shut [about the shootings], otherwise even we would get a bullet in the head.”Alija Jahi?, a Muslim witness stated to the Commission: “I was taken to jail and examined by the Partisan woman Mira ?ikota [in charge of the death penalties] and was tied up lying on the floor face down and beaten up as she considered me to be an Ustasha. Three days before the Partisans were driven out of the town they took 22 of us to Kozarac to be shot. As we could not get there we were taken into the mountain near Pa?inac. The Partisan Commander Kovrlija shouted: “Legion stop – Comrades, take each one of the prisoners, and be careful that they don’t break their nose.” When the graves were dug, he shouted again: “Those prisoners with the weak nerves come forward first”. In the meantime, the Serbian women were beating us, and said “fuck your Croatian and Ustasha mothers”. Then they disrobed us and left us stark naked. All were shot except myself and Esad Selimbegovi?, who asked to be allowed to sing sevdah [a melancholic Muslim song] 'My Bosnia' which was granted on condition that he also sang 'How bitter is my life', a provincial pre-war hit. He declined “as Croatia will not fall for the loss of one Croat”. They shot him. As I promised to tell them the whereabouts of the radio station I was sent back to prison – a few days later German tanks arrived in Prijedor and we were released.”On the 15th June 1942, the Chetnik-communists murdered ninety Muslims in the district of Ljubinje, Hercegovina; the names of the killers are quoted.The Partisans themselves admit to murders but they present them as murders of the Ustashas. ‘The Partisan Newspaper’ dated 1st May 1942 states: “On the 16th April 1942 our forces attacked the Ustasha stronghold in Jezerane. The fighting took the whole day in the streets and houses, which we set on fire with petrol . . .”The 'Ustashas' in the communist Serbian jargon were Croatian peasants.On the 5th June 1942, the Partisans attacked the Croatian village of Prekope near Glina and burned down twenty-seven peasant houses including its inhabitants. ‘The Partisan Newspaper’ reported on 13th May 1942 about their attack on the Croatian village of Turkovi?i (Ogulin). The attack occurred on the 9th May 1942. The village and houses of the ‘peoples traitors’ were burned down.The Chetnik commander, writing to the village mayor in Borik, states: “. . . when we burn all the Turkish [Muslim] houses . . . the Turks may revenge with the same measure against us . . . But when we finally destroy them . . . then we shall tailor our laws to our own pleasure . . . Obviously, the enormity of the terror and the slaughter began to have an effect on the killers. XE "Enormity of terror and slaughter began to have an effect on killers" The fear made thousands of Chetniks return to their villages and keep a low profile. However, they were on the receiving end of the bitterness of the Partisans.On the 1st May 1942, the proclamation by the Partisan Commissar Miro Popara and Commander Petar Ili? sums up perfectly the situation: “The Ustasha leaders are now hand-in-hand with the Serbian traitors, the Chetniks . . . who murdered thousands of Croatian and Muslim women, children and elderly and burned down hundreds of villages of the innocent Croats and Muslims.”Mara Do?en, an imprisoned Partisan woman from Sanski Most, stated to the NDH Judicial-Medical Commission in Prijedor on the 24th July 1942: “When the Chetnik-communists arrived in Drvar they took all the people into a camp and divided the Croats from the Serbs. The Croats [about 300 people] were taken to Kamenica and killed. 30 young Ustashas, who defended the town, were murdered. At that time the Chetniks and communists collaborated.” She then gave the names of 15 Croats that had been killed.The Croatian people welcomed the NDH as their own State that they had a moral duty to defend them against the pro-Yugoslav forces.The Chetniks in Bosnia-Hercegovina XE "Chetniks in Bosnia-Hercegovina" claimed that they rebelled solely against the NDH (and by implication not against the Germans and Italians). The Italians exploited this ploy for the purpose of the pacification of the Serbian regions in Eastern Bosnia and Hercegovina. The Chetniks, in particular, collaborated with the Italians from 1941-43, and the Italians in turn offered them “peace, security and the outlawing of the Ustasha regime”.The Italians organised the Chetnik forces of the ‘Serbian National Movement’ XE "Serbian National Movement" in the NDH into the so-called ‘Voluntary anti-Communist Militia’ for the purpose of fighting the Partisans, sabotaging the NDH State Authority and, in their spare time carrying out the carnage of the Croatian and Muslim population and burning their villages.Thus, the Great-Serbian nationalist forces succeeded, to a large extent, in breaking up the Partisan uprising “but for that success they paid dearly by collaboration with the occupiers and so became national traitors. The process of differentiation of the Serbian uprising distanced the Partisans from the Great-Serbian Chetniks, and in lieu gained some Muslim and a few Croat fighters. The slogan was the ‘Brotherhood’ of the [various] ethnic groups in the common liberation struggle” At that stage the uprisings were still ethnic and religious in character. The Ustasha paramilitaries (Divlji Usta?e) turned against the Chetnik terror directed against the Croats and Muslims. This confused situation, however, carried a sting in the tail, as the Partisans (newcomers to the affray) were impotent in attracting many to their side. So, lacking the Chetnik ‘co-operation’ they had to turn really nasty and take charge of the carnage themselves. The policy of terror by the Ustasha regime against the Serbs, and the Chetniks against the Croats and Muslims, was cleverly exploited by the KPJ, which proclaimed a spurious and, in that situation, an almost cynical slogan of ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ XE "Brotherhood and Unity" . The rejection of the Croatian (and the Serbian) history by the Partisans (as far as they were concerned, history commenced with Marx) as a bourgeois-reactionary phenomenon was to be replaced by the utopian vision of the ‘shining future’ (svijetla budu?nost).The Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina supported the policy of the renewal of Yugoslavia, in addition to fighting the NDH. Thus, events turned in favour of Tito. In order to save his neck, he limped into Western Bosnia with his beaten and ramshackle army, having escaped from Serbia. The policy of the Chetnik collaboration with the Italians and, sporadically with the Germans and even with the Ustashas, added only a few Serbs to Tito’s ranks. Knin in Croatia (Krajina) remained solid Chetnik territory. This was the arena in which the Chetniks, in collaboration with the Italians, perpetrated the most monstrous crimes against the civilian Croatian population.In October 1942, the Chetniks burned the Croatian village of Gati in Dalmatia and killed all 275 of its inhabitants. The Italians gave tactical help to the Chetniks by bombarding the coast from the sea in the vicinity of the Gati village. On their return from the killing spree, the Chetniks of the Orthodox priest Mom?ilo Djuji? (now a US citizen) marched through Split, which was occupied by the Italians, singing a pathetic outpouring: “King Peter from London ordered that all the Croats must be murdered XE "King Peter from London ordered that all the Croats must be murdered" ”.By the end of 1942 the four contestants in the conflict of the Yugoslav Utopia were finally clearly defined: the NDH, the HSS, the Partisans, and the Chetniks.4.3.2 The KPJ (Communist Party of Yugoslavia) XE "KPJ (Communist Party of Yugoslavia)" The NDH regime, as well as the KPJ (the Communist Party of Yugoslavia), was competing for the favours of the HSS, whose right-wing had already switched to the NDH regime. Dr. Vladko Ma?ek, leader of the HSS, on the other hand, stood firmly on his principle of “having nothing to do with the communists”.In the old ‘Krajina’ in Croatia, the communists achieved a balance in the NDH-Serbian conflict after the initial carnage in April-May 1941 between the Ustashas and the Chetniks. The communist slogan was “Croats and Serbs meeting halfway with the aim of achieving ‘brotherhood’ by means of the common struggle”.At the end of 1941, a serious doubt arose within the KPJ - was the Partisan uprising a national liberation struggle or a part of a free-for-all civil war? According to the Party seers this was caused by “the bourgeois [pro-Yugoslav] forces within the partisan movement that provoked an internal class war among the communists”.The aim was to slow down the Liberation struggle and wait to see how the great world conflict would end. The Croatian bourgeoisie (the HSS and Dr. Ma?ek) were allergic to bloodshed and were aware of the communist aims of taking power at the end of the war.After Hitler’s losses near Moscow XE "Hitler’s losses near Moscow" , the anticipation that the Red Army would eventually dominate Europe and a clampdown on the ‘reactionary movements’ led to the ‘Great-Serbian hegemonist chain reaction’ against the communists, whatever that meant. The last hope for co-operation between the KPH (the Communist Party of Croatia) and the HSS was abandoned."Without the co-operation of [the Great-Serbian reactionaries] Nedi? and Mihajlovi? [Serbian Royalists], the German forces [in Serbia] would have been inadequate and ineffective beyond their lines of communication. The peasants would not have waited for the Germans to come; there would not have been massive espionage against the Partisans, and even more massive persecution of them," was the communist excuse.On a lighter note, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) proceeded to collaborate with the Nazis, the SS and the Gestapo XE "Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) collaborated with Nazis, SS and Gestapo" with a lack of inhibition that even the creepy Anglo-Saxon lovers of all Yugoslavias would find ingenuous and, at the same time, shocking. Already there was some inkling of such collaboration showing by the 23rd August 1939 not least by Vojislav Gavrilovi? (a Serbian member of the Komintern) and the Nazi Intelligence man Kreiger whose task it was to keep up ‘permanent contact’ between the Nazis and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia.4.3.3The Partisans XE "Partisans" However, the full history of Tito's own collaboration is still awaiting its author. From the eve of the war, right up to 22nd June 1941, when Hitler turned east against the Soviet Union, Tito felt alive and in tune with whatever was happening around him, particularly his free to-ing and fro-ing between Zagreb and Belgrade (under the German noses as it were). On 6th April 1941, the Nazis attacked Yugoslavia, but this did not stop the Godfather Tito from proceeding with his travels under the fancy name of Josip Tomanek. Earlier he had travelled on a passport issued by Heydrich, the notorious Nazi Protector of Czechoslovakia. However, after the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia, ironically enough, life became even easier for him and he was able to push ahead with his plans with ruthless single-mindedness. He returned to Belgrade to find all the key members of the Party already waiting for him: Vladislav Ribnikar, leftist editor of the Belgrade newspaper 'Politika', together with his old pal (and an old Nazi to boot) Dr. Hribovschek-Berga. These commie mafia were meeting regularly in Ribnikar’s villa; old Nazis and Gestapo members Gruber, Merth and Ott and the Yugoslav Communist Party hotshots, Vladimir Velebit, Marijan Stilinovi?, Ko?a Popovi? and the ‘Prince of Montenegro’, Djilas himself.They were busy conspiring behind the scenes, passing the time until 22nd June 1941 (the German attack on the Soviet Union). When Hitler blitzed Yugoslavia XE "Hitler blitzed Yugoslavia" in only a few days, this jolly crowd escaped to the Serbian mountains, not in order to defend the State, which had already been occupied for the previous two months, but in order to defend comrade Stalin! A Proclamation to the People by the Party dated 4th July 1941 and signed with ‘Death to Fascism’ appeared on the walls of the mud hovels of Serbia: "On the invitation of our Party, our people have carried out honourably their international debt in respect of the Soviet Union by marching into the armed struggle . . . The people have answered this call without any delay and at the invitation of Comrade Stalin [sic!] . . .” (not of Comrade Tito!) and have eventually found eternal peace in the hundreds of thousands of unknown graves all over Yugoslavia. The Godfather Broz (Tito) attempted to organise these disparate and loose groups into his own underworld with the aim of taking over in the future Yugoslavia. This attempt was foiled for four years. SS Major Hans Helm (of the Gestapo, assigned to Yugoslavia) could not help but feel somewhat stifled. He had been in Yugoslavia on a spying spree before the war and now he marched in again at the head of Hitler’s victorious armies and proceeded directly to Belgrade to organise an intelligence link between the Obercommando Wermacht and the Supreme Headquarters of the ‘National Liberation Army’.The atmosphere in the Gestapo hide-out in Zagreb (right under the noses of the dreaded Ustashas) was highly charged, but at least they all felt deeply involved: Vladimir Velebit, later Tito’s ambassador to London, Hans Ott (Gestapo link-man accredited to the Partisans), Othmar Merth, Glaise von Horstenau and Walter Gruber, followed by Tito's hit men - Dr. Kosta Gruba?i?, Frano Frol, Djuro Peri?i? and Vladislav Ribnikar (who, for his own comfort, refused to leave Belgrade). Ribnikar's villa, the Belgrade hideout, was efficiently wired by the nearby DNB (Nazi-Inform-Bureau). A transparent and yet solid screen had been placed between this foxhole and the outer world. All these characters were linked 'through' the mysterious and irrepressible woman-spy, Zlata-Golda Kikel, who enjoyed the pace and the combustion without the smoke. During the Second World War, she was an editor in the Nazi DNB (Nazi Inform Bureau) XE "Kikel, Zlata-Golda - mysterious and irrepressible woman-spy. During WWII was editor in Nazi DNB (Nazi Inform Bureau)" - after the war she turned up as an editor of Tanjug (Yugoslav Inform-Bureau) in ‘liberated’ Belgrade. Apart from her twin social handicaps (she was cross-eyed and snored, which was a security hazard), she was also a bit of a nymphomaniac, but Tito didn't mind this. "So was Venus”, he said.The Gestapo linkman Helm amused himself by exchanging Partisans for German prisoners taken by Tito. He was far from bored, and that was one of his priorities in the war. For example, he was able to handle the exchange of Andrija Hebrang, later secretary of the Communist Party of Croatia (KPH), who resisted Tito’s pro-Yugoslav take-over of the party apparatus and was lured by him through Helm presumably on the pretext that the Party's dance competition was held in the nearby woods. We shall see how the unsuspecting Hebrang was liquidated after the war. Dramatic developments unexpectedly influenced Tito’s emotional life XE "Dramatic developments influenced Tito’s emotional life" : the Gestapo linkmen arranged a romantic reunion between Herta Hass (Tito’s German-born wife) and the Godfather himself, after her unexpected release from the Ustasha prison. The Ustasha boss of counter-espionage, Dido Kvaternik, was a frustrated man, who could make no headway with his German ‘Allies’, while they listened willingly to their Partisan isthmuses like Vladimir Velebit, Obren Blagojevi?, Milovan Djilas, Ko?a Popovi? and Marijan Stilinovi?. Velebit (whom I knew personally), a cultured man, was a favoured guest of the Helm gang in Zagreb. As a cover-up for the Partisans own carnage, Helm produced a propaganda document exaggerating Ustasha war crimes by the thousand and passed it through his channels to the always ajour Royal Yugoslav Government-in-Exile in London, for their own amusement and for further international distribution.The General Headquarters of Tito’s ‘Liberation Army’ was ready to take on all sorts of commitments, which, surprisingly for once, they seriously intended to carry out. Fearing total annihilation, Tito called for a truce. When his henchmen met Professor Buerger (from the Abwehr centre Klagenfurt) XE "Buerger, Professor from the Abwehr centre Klagenfurt" in February of 1943, in Postojna, the Godfather generously offered a cease-fire to the Germans in return for free movement over the German-occupied territory, particularly the Croatian State. However, this conspiracy move failed because Tito’s demands became too exorbitant. For example, he required the Germans to provide the Partisans with smart new uniforms. ‘Perfidious Albion’ naturally spotted this plot just in time and dropped tons of British khaki battle fatigues by parachute. In spite of this failure, a month later, the Gestapo wired Hitler from Zagreb (30th March, 1943) “. . . according to precedents Tito’s promises could be taken at face value . . .”Djilas released only half of this story in his memoirs, but this was sufficient to give a genuine flavour of the Partisan-German kissing game: “. . . Ott even showed some understanding for the Partisans . . . he spoke about the Ustashas with revulsion and about the Chetniks with contempt . . .” Herr Ott apparently was a smart fellow; “He had the appearance of a diplomat rather than of an officer.”Djilas and Velebit, in fact, spent many pleasant hours incognito with Herr Ott in Zagreb cafes XE "Djilas and Velebit spent many pleasant hours incognito with Herr Ott in Zagreb cafes" right under the noses of the Ustashas, possibly as an antidote to too much exposure to the frustrations and neuroses of Tito's influence. Their conversations evolved from dialectic materialism to gossip to good-food talk, and back to dialectics, and naturally to sex and women, all the stuff that made the ambience of the woods so uncomfortable. The subject of women, of course, raised the issue of Olga (Vladimir Dedijer's wife) who was in a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany. Herr Ott, to his credit, got her back into the Bosnian Mountains for a comparatively low fee. However, Herr Ott's career was far from static: “At the end of the war, [Ott] was brought back by the Yugoslav Secret Police [OZNA] from Germany to Yugoslavia, not in order to be harmed in any way, but because he was in possession of the names of the German agents who sympathised with the Partisan leaders.”So, he was back again among his old pals, Djilas and Velebit, around whom a mysterious and strange community grew up, so that his hard work in releasing Olga Dedijer, Herta Hass et al. as a good-will gesture towards Tito and his secret policemen, could be celebrated with nostalgia and lots of Slivovitza.It is rather curious, however, that Ott, who was able to release Herta Hass, Olga Dedijer et al. was unable to save the lives of hundreds of the Croatian Communists (Bo?idar Ad?ija, Dr. Ivo Kun, German Kraus, Otokar Ker?ovani, Borjan, Crnogorac, ?tajner, Jurani?, ?elemetin, Stumpf, Trbonja, Furlan, ?osi?, Gaser, Barle, Markovi?, Pejevi?, Spahi?, Milo?evi?, Li?en, Kosir et al., who no longer fitted into Tito's favourite project - the reconstruction of yet another utopian Yugoslavia. However, the real truth as to why Ott was still alive and well living in Belgrade may be directly traced to the so-called 'Case Hebrang'.4.3.4 The Case Hebrang XE "Hebrang Case" At the end of 1941, Kuhar, Kocmur, Dornik and Hebrang (all members of the inner core of the Party) were invited to mysterious 'confidential discussions' at a pre-arranged spot: they arrived - and immediately disappeared. Kuhar was interned in Germany; Kocmur was shot, Dornik killed in Dachau, and Hebrang ended up in the Ustasha jail. The relationship between Tito, Djilas, Velebit, Helm, Ott and Merth and the urgent need for their physical presence in Belgrade now began to add up. They declared 'officially' that all the Croats who defended their own state were fascist criminals, and that they and their Gestapo friends should find the most ingenious method of liquidating them. This was certainly a unique collaboration that is worth further examination as a piece of 'revolutionary' dynamics, so much admired in the 'liberal' circles of the West. Hans Helm was reprieved after the war in order to organise OZNA (subsequently UDBA), the Yugoslav Secret Police. Ott became the boss of the Yugoslav Secret Police Archives Department for Croatia. Merth was freed and left for Germany where this obdurate Nazi and Gestapo character arranged his periodic media conferences on the subject of Tito. But let us return to the ‘Case Hebrang’. Stalin was a relatively flexible man in comparison with Tito, who remained an obdurate, dogmatic Yugoslav unitarist and who ran the Communist Party of Yugoslavia on the Fuehrer principle. In 1941, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia split into national parties: the Croatian Communist Party (led by Kopini? and Hebrang), the Serbian Communist Party (led by Gavrilovi?), and the Slovenian Communist Party (led by Kuhar), an arrangement that, if it had lasted, would soon have replaced Tito and his monolithic ‘Yugoslav’ set-up. Tito was furious and accused the local national leaders of letting him down. Soon after Hebrang had been released from the Ustasha jail (he was exchanged for Partisan prisoners only as a result of an energetic order from Stalin to Tito), Hebrang began to distance himself more and more from Tito's Yugoslav Central Committee. He founded the TAH (Telegraph Agency of Croatia) in competition to Tito's Tanjug, and established a direct hot line with Moscow. Stalin made it clear that Hebrang was as important as Tito was, if not more so. Hebrang, without Tito's knowledge, visited Stalin in 1945 though the subject of their conversation remains a mystery. From then on, all Stalin's communication lines led directly to Hebrang and not to Tito. Tito was furious. Adrenaline was flowing and by 1946, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia came out in the open with the officially agreed statement that a misunderstanding had arisen between Hebrang and Tito. This satisfied Tito emotionally for the time being - until 1948 when Tito clashed with Stalin (but not with Stalinism). The time for sweet revenge had finally arrived. XE "Time for sweet revenge finally arrived." What the Ustashas had been unable to do to Hebrang, his comrade, Tito certainly could: machine-gun bullets riddled Hebrang because Tito didn't like being misunderstood. Three years later in 1948 our old friends Hans Helm, Hans Ott, Walter Gruber and Othmar Merth produced 'incriminating' evidence against Hebrang (written back in 1945). During cross-examination by Rankovi?'s (the Secret Police Boss) man, Hebrang brushed him off with a black-humoured remark: "What's the difference anyway . . . Whether I confess or not, my head will still roll. I know comrade Marko [Aleksandar Rankovi?, Head of the Secret Police] from the days when we were in [the old Yugoslav] jail together . . . there is no help . . . I regret only one thing . . . and that is the fact that I [as a Croat] shall be killed by a Serbian communist hand . . .”. A few days later, an official communiqué stated: "Hebrang, Secretary of the Communist Party of Croatia, hanged himself in jail, during an attack of depression . . . " According to the Party Press, it was apparently the time of the Full Moon when the principle of irrationality is intensified. The Secret Police pointed out that it is well known that mentally weak people are said to be doubly disturbed at times of the Full Moon. Plainly the Full Moon had an important Party role to play in getting rid of ‘nationalist deviations’ XE "Nationalist deviations’" . Taking into account the help that the BBC propaganda machine gave to the Yugoslav ?migré Government in London and to the Chetniks, the KPJ, a member of the worldwide 'anti-fascist' coalition, had to increase its own output.On the 17th December 1941, the Leader of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia made a paranoiac claim that “a continuous chain of the Great Serbian ‘hegemonistic’ reaction is being created’ (with the help of the British Government and Yugoslav Emigrant Government in London). In London, Yugoslav politicians argued and politicised. Great-Serb Sava Kosanovic (later Tito’s Ambassador to the US) was a frequent guest of Queen Marie and King Peter. XE "Kosanovic, Sava - Great-Serb, later Tito’s Ambassador to US was frequent guest of Queen Marie and King Peter." He was the main advocate of the renewal of the Monarchy in order to establish Great-Serbian hegemony by the most extreme terrorist means. The CK of the KPJ included in ‘that chain’ all the western-orientated bourgeois political forces in Croatia, Slovenia and abroad, and, first and foremost, Dr. Ma?ek and the HSS. In other words, the commies believed that there was a conspiracy by an anti-communist alliance in all parts of ‘Yugoslavia’, helped by the Allies, XE "Conspiracy by anti-communist alliance in all parts of ‘Yugoslavia’, helped by the Allies," who used the German and Italian occupiers and their 'local servants' (i.e., the Ustashas, and the Chetniks) as their tools in order to crush the Partisan movement. Such a coalition of ‘all the bourgeois forces’ occurred after these ‘reactionary forces’ came to the conclusion that after the defeat of Germany near Moscow in December 1941 and the offensive of Marshal Zukov, the end of Hitler was nigh and the Red Army would soon swamp Europe. This fear was the main glue of this coalition of ‘reactionary forces’ against the Soviet break into the heart of Europe.This could have only meant that the alliance between the USA, Great Britain and the USSR was beginning to crack. The concentration of the 'reactionary forces' against the transformation of the national liberation war into a communist revolution had to be fended off, according to the CK of the KPJ, by the 'second phase of the revolution', i.e., the abandonment of the collaboration with the bourgeois anti-Hitler forces and the reliance on the workers, proletarians and poor peasants to take an open stand, under the slogan of ‘the proletarian revolution’. At that stage, some of the Partisan groups were turned into Proletarian Brigades. However, this new course of action failed dismally, simply because the killing of thousands of people in Montenegro and Eastern Hercegovina by the Partisans solely on ideological revolutionary grounds sent many Serbs running back into the ranks of the Chetniks. The hypothesis about the Red Army blitzkrieg into Europe and the break-up of the US-GB-USSR Alliance was refuted by the facts. Tithe war lasted another three and a half years, and for the time being, the motley ‘anti-fascist coalition’ became stronger.This shift to the extreme left on the basis of the blind following of the Bolshevik ideology almost finished Tito. Even Moscow was alarmed with Tito's antics XE "Moscow alarmed at Tito's antics" . Stalin needed help from the West (i.e., the Second Front), and on the 5th March 1942, Moscow warned Tito: "We are getting the impression that the British and the Yugoslav Emigrant Governments, with good reason, are suspicious that the Partisan movement is turning into a communist revolution and that it points towards the Sovietisation of Yugoslavia. What on earth do you need proletarian brigades for? It is difficult to accept [your] argument that the Yugoslav Emigrant Government is on the side of the occupiers . . . Will you check again that you have done your homework in order to create a truly unified national front in Yugoslavia . . ." Moscow's criticism was, of course, a mischievous falsehood for propaganda purposes. Moscow had to pacify the US and Great Britain’s rumour-mongering about the Moscow ‘rumour clinic’. It was of course wrong about the Yugoslav Government in London’s non-collaboration with the occupiers but was spot-on about the Bolshevisation by the KPJ. The CK of the KPJ came to the conclusion that the class contradictions would come to the fore at this stage, in this ‘second stage of the revolution’ XE "Second stage of revolution" which was in the offing. Therefore, corresponding changes in the method of the political action must be taken. Firstly, the KPJ must become the overall leader of the liberation struggle. The proletarianisation of the Partisan ranks, as a safeguard against the infiltration of reactionaries into the ranks, and the creation of the Proletarian brigades, would be the safeguard of the revolution in this second stage. However, this approach was soon abandoned because of the danger of ‘narrowing the liberation struggle’.A direct link with the Komintern from February 1942 had enabled the Komintern to explain to the Partisans the importance of the worldwide anti-fascist front. The alliance between the USSR and the Western powers removed all the doubts about the character of this alliance XE "Alliance between USSR and Western powers removed all doubts about character of alliance" . In spite of that the true believers dragged on with the dogma of the transformation of the imperialist war into a revolution under the leadership of the USSR.The Komintern warned the KPJ on 5th March 1942 that London was absolutely right in its suspicion ‘that the Yugoslav Partisan movement is becoming more and more Communist and is leading towards the Sovietisation of Yugoslavia.’Why was it necessary to form proletarian brigades, they asked? The CK of the KPJ was warned ‘to think again’ about its policy and check if it had done everything it could for the ‘creation of a united national front of all the enemies of the Axis in Yugoslavia’.Tito denied the inference behind this message with alacrity, pointing out that the Chetniks were collaborators with the Axis 24 hours a day. The Komintern warned again that the KPJ must not focus on its own struggle only ‘from its own point of view but from an international point of view of the British-Soviet-American coalition’.The CK of the KPJ at its session on 4th June 1942 stated that “it does not accept in principle that [this war] is a civil war, but [in spite of that] will continue the struggle against the occupiers and their servants” the Chetniks and the NDH. By rejecting the liberation struggle, XE "Rejecting liberation struggle" collaboration with the occupiers turned these Ustasha and Chetnik forces automatically into ‘national traitors’. This was the reason the commies believed that the 'liberation struggle' by its content and character was also the struggle for the fundamental social changes and the victory of the socialist revolution. Thus, the Party welcomed all the patriots (including the former bourgeois politicians, even Catholic priests, and intellectuals). As the struggle would be long, the KPJ had thus to adjust its strategy and tactics in relation to its potential followers. What one finds most offensive in these exchanges is that they were expressed in such impoverished clichés.The shift in direction of the new KPJ policy in the ‘liberated territory’ was rampant and was displayed by the burning of ‘enemy’ villages, the killing of ‘bourgeois’ politicians and wealthy people solely on ideological grounds XE "Burning of ‘enemy’ villages, killing ‘bourgeois’ politicians and wealthy people solely on ideological grounds" . This inflamed the ‘Civil War’. From virtually thousands of (non-communist) partisans at the outset of the uprising, there remained only a few thousand hard-core fanatical communists. The rest deserted. At the same time, a general starvation among them began to rear its ugly head. The Partisan movement in Montenegro and Eastern Bosnia-Hercegovina collapsed. The CK of the KPJ kept its ramshackle hungry gangs (bande) in the mountains hoping for salvation by the Red Army and the eventual return to the promised land of Serbia in order to be near the seat of power. There remained only a meagre 4,500 out of a previous 50,000 men originally with Tito in Serbia in 1941, beaten up by the coalition of the German-Italian-Croatian and miscellaneous Chetnik forces. The Partisan movement was virtually wiped-out. The remaining Partisans were hunted down like wild beasts. Their only salvation was to break into the territory of the NDH where the parallel 'Croatian' partisan movement, after its victory over the Chetniks in 1941/42, was reasonably stabilised. In June 1942 Tito, after a few breakthroughs and a disastrous defeat by the Ustashas in Kupres in Bosnia, and with his four ramshackle ‘brigades’, somehow linked up with the Partisans in Dalmatia and Western Bosnia. These forces created the so-called liberated territory of the ‘Republic of Biha?’ eventually claimed to be the size of Switzerland (and accordingly full of holes like Ementhal cheese) right in the heart of the NDH.Unlike in Serbia, the Partisan movement in the NDH was developing steadily.Tito was pressurising the CK of the KPH to go for a mass uprising. However, due to the enthusiasm of the great majority of the Croatian population for the Croatian State (although not for the Ustasha regime), coupled with the confidence in the HSS, whose policy of wait and see, meant that Tito’s directive for a mass uprising in Croatia would inevitably lead to nothing. A mass uprising in NDH was out of the question. The Partisans, having been ‘liquidated’ in Serbia, lost contact with Croatia and Slovenia. XE "Partisans ‘liquidated’ in Serbia, lost contact with Croatia and Slovenia." For this reason, the KPJ organised a separate Secretariat in Zagreb headed by a dull Slovene schoolteacher and party ideologists Edvard Kardelj together with Croatian communist Ivo Lola Ribar.The Domobran, the Regular Army of the NDH XE "Domobran, Regular Army of NDH" , was reorganised at the end of 1941, but its effectiveness was impaired in the south by the sabotage collaboration of 19 divisions of the Italian occupying with the Chetniks. The Germans, on the other hand, intended to eliminate the Chetniks as they saw them as the lackeys of England.The Italians ‘fought’ the Partisans only by proxy, i.e., through the agency of the Great-Serbian Chetniks. This created considerable political tension within the Axis in the Balkans.In the addendum of von Kasche’s letter to Ribbentrop XE "Ribbentrop" dated 21st March 1942, he discussed the Italian-Croat relations and articulated that the Italians were playing one against the other, the Serbian, Montenegrin and Croatian groups. As a result, Montenegrin gangs were moving freely throughout Bosnia, and the Jews in Mostar and Dubrovnik openly supported the Partisans. The net result of this game was that all sides (with the exception of the Jews) hated the Italians and “more and more were spreading some kind of new Yugoslav ideology”.The Communist Partisans proclaimed a ‘Democratic Yugoslavia’ as their final aim, a slogan that had some attraction for the masses.The Italian press was full of utopian blueprints for the political order XE "Italian press full of utopian blueprints for political order" after the war, i.e., these regions were intended to form an enlarged Italian Empire. Von Kasche demanded that Germany put a stop to these machinations and encouraged the Croats to show good will to Germany. 120,000 Croats were working extremely well in the Reich. Croat forces on the Soviet front had made a good impression and the Croat soldiers in Croatia fought well. "The counter-action against the pro-Yugoslav propaganda can be achieved only with German-Croat co-operation," ended the letter.The Croatian Communist Party (the KPH), as an active opposition to the NDH regime, de facto saved the Partisans from Serbia and also saved Tito's neck XE "Croatian Communist Party - KPH - saved Partisans from Serbia and also saved Tito's neck" . In 1942, the KPH mobilised into its ranks some 7,000 men, mainly Serbs from Croatia, and by the end of the year this number had increased to 25,000, again mainly Serbs, but it included also many Croats. At that time, the NDH had a force of 42,000 Ustashas, which force increased to 55,000 by 1943. In 1943, the regular Croatian Army numbered some 135,000 men mainly made up of conscripts. The total NDH forces therefore, comprised 190,000 men. To this number one must add three volunteer divisions (the 369th, the 373rd and the 392nd divisions), called respectively the ‘Devils’ (Vra?ja), the ‘Tigers’ (Tigar) and the ‘Blue’ (Plava) divisions, manned by Croats and led by German officers. In a way, these numbers were a kind of referendum of how the Croats felt about the prospect of yet another Yugoslavia and, God forbid, communism.Taking into account that Croatia in 1941 (as in 1990) did not possess any armed forces, XE "Croatia in 1941 (as in 1990) did not possess any armed forces" it was almost a miracle that such a force was created within such a short time and, in fact, proved to be ten times more efficient than the Partisans.The major reason for the rapid development of the Croatian armed forces was the Croat enthusiasm for their own National State (and definitely not for fascism). This enthusiasm would not evaporate in spite of all the tribulations it met until the tragedy of the Croatian Army being handed over to the Partisan forces by the British at Bleiburg in 1945.The philosophical and pragmatic justification for the ultimate Croatian breakaway from Yugoslavia survived all the violence and became possible only in 1991. The pre-WWII Yugoslav Communist Party supported this Croatian aim (on paper), but the Party's fickle attitude in the service of Moscow turned against it just when Croatia needed it most in 1941. In 1942, the situation in World War II was favourable to the NDH as a member of the still strong Axis. At this time, pragmatic people were not in the mood to instigate uprisings against the regime, which was at the peak of its power, and there were very few Croats prepared to shiver with the Partisans in the frozen woods.The policy of the NDH became more pragmatic after the first revolutionary and retributive outburst against the Serbian uprisings in 1941.In the spring of 1942 a Croatian Orthodox Church was established XE "In 1942 Croatian Orthodox Church established" . This was headed by a white Russian emigrant, Moscow Metropolitan Germogen, whose appointment was approved by the then interned Serbian Patriarch, Gavrilo.A popular story went around at that time that Paveli? himself 'was prepared to embrace the Orthodox religion on condition that the Serbs in Croatia accept the NDH'.Although demagogy, the consequence of the creation of the Croatian Orthodox Church was positive for the NDH; the Serbs in the NDH were invited to join the auxiliary ranks of the Croatian army, and Dr. Savo Besarovi?, a Sarajevo Serb and an old school friend of Paveli?, became a minister in the NDH government, so the anti-Serb feeling was somewhat blunted. This softening of attitude by the NDH regime was done also under pressure from the Germans who needed pacification in the Balkans in order to transfer their badly needed troops elsewhere. The Germans were even toying with the idea of replacing the Ustasha regime with an alternative 'softer' government. In practice this could only have been the HSS, but Dr. Ma?ek, its leader, refused to co-operate, so the idea was abandoned. Italy was a far cry from being an ‘ally’ of Croatia, XE "Italy far cry from being ‘ally’ of Croatia," and strained to the utmost to destroy it in order to celebrate presumably the 100th anniversary of the Risorgimento XE "Risorgimento" . The Germans often intervened with the Italians on behalf of Croatia but only gingerly, as they didn’t think that Croatia was worth a split in the Axis. The Italians’ excuse was that the NDH was not able to keep order in Dalmatia. The collaboration of the Italians with the Chetniks was for the Italians a useful bridge with the Yugoslav ?migré Government in London as a possible intermediary in the looming separate peace with the Allies, and which the non-fascist part of the Italian Establishment kept on the back burner.4.3.5The Chetniks XE "Chetniks" Reviewing the Great-Serbian Chetniks and the utopian ideas of their ideologists is a very disconcerting experience. Their fantasies fed on the myths of loyalty to Serbianhood, the Monarchy and the Serbian Orthodox Church, a particular death-producing coterie, which was unable to accept the failure of the utopia they pursued: they formed armed bands from the ranks of former officers, gendarmes, Orthodox priests, and the members of the Yugoslav nationalist organisations. Only a very few Croats, Slovenes, and Muslims of a pro-Yugoslav orientation joined them.The invitation by Dra?a Mihajlovi? in October 1941 to all the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes to join the ‘National Army’ by swearing an oath to ‘the King and Country’ XE "Mihajlovi?, Dra?a - invitation in October 1941 to all Serbs, Croats and Slovenes to join ‘National Army’ by swearing oath to ‘King and Country’" occurred in a surrealist context, indispensable for understanding not only his doctrines, but also the tragi-comedy of being promoted to the rank of Minister of the non-existent Army, Navy, and Air Force by the Yugoslav ?migré Government in January 1942. It also exposed the charlatanry of the Chetnik army, which formally changed its name to the ‘Yugoslav Army in the Homeland’, XE "Yugoslav Army in Homeland" yet in the non-Serb popular parlance; the name Chetnik remained synonymous with the Great-Serbian knife wielding cut-throats.In his circular dated 14th February 1942, Mihajlovi? published the detailed organisation of the Chetnik units. This consisted of operative units (fighters between the ages of 20-30 years), sabotage units (between the ages of 30 and 40 years) and the local units (between the ages of 40 and 50 years). The basic unit was the ?eta (regiment), XE "?eta - regiment" from where the name Chetnik (English spelling) came from. Two/three ?etas formed a battalion and two-five battalions a brigade.In January 1943, further re-organisations of these units occurred in order to improve their mobility: the re-introduction of Trojkas (Three Fighters), an old guerrilla formation; fifteen to thirty Trojkas equalled one ?eta, three ?etas a battalion, three battalions a brigade and three to five brigades a corps. This presentation appears impressive but distorts the reality.Not unexpectedly, the final break between Mihajlovi? and Tito came in the early autumn of 1941 in Serbia and was followed by mass desertions from the Partisans to the Chetniks.Mihajlovi? failed to form a unified ‘Yugoslav Army in the Homeland’“because of the peculiar local interests of the Chetnik warlords”.What they were lacking in quality the Chetniks in the NDH balanced by the quantitative bloodshed and mass crimes against the Croatian and Muslim population, and even against those Serbs who favoured the Partisans or, the rare ones, who were loyal to the NDH. According to a general assessment, the number of armed Chetniks on the whole territory of pre-Second World War Yugoslavia was 100,000 at the end of 1943. In 1944 they were strengthened by the Serbian fascist ‘Ljoti?’ regiments and Hitler’s Gauleiter in Belgrade ‘Nedi?’s’ para-militaries.Already in the summer of 1941, the Chetniks were active around Knin and Lika in Croatia. These Great-Serbian brigands put themselves completely under the Italian protection that accepted that the Chetnik war was waged for the preservation of the ‘biological substance’ of Serbianhood. The Chetnik groups in Croatia expanded and linked up with the Chetniks of Mihajlovi?. Ancient mechanisms of the so-called bloodless revolution (infiltration) had been lovingly restored. These consisted of breaking up and sabotaging the Partisan groups that were manned mainly by Serbs and killing the communist commissars. According to the Report of the Chetnik Headquarters in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina dated 16th July 1942, there were at the time 3,500 armed Chetniks formed into six quasi-brigades, volatile groups, often switching sides between their own and the Partisan ranks – whichever side was more convenient. This was easy as both sides were under the influence of the same toxic dose of utopian Yugoslavism.In order to strengthen the Chetniks in Croatia, 3,200 Chetniks from Eastern Bosnia-Hercegovina were transferred to Knin and Lika. These Bosnian Serbian Chetniks committed the most heinous crimes on the Croatian population.After the capitulation of Italy in 1943 XE "Capitulation of Italy 1943" , the Chetniks in Croatia, who were weakened by the loss of their Italian support, were able to revive their bloody achievements at the end of 1943, when they received German support. Stimulated by this, the strength of the Chetniks in Croatia in 1944 was: The ‘First Dalmatian Corpus’ had 2,700-armed men, and the ‘Second Dalmatian Corpus’ 1,600 armed men. There also were 3,200-armed Chetniks in the ‘Lika Corpus’ so that the total number of Chetniks in Croatia was 7,760. The core of these forces was a ‘Dinara’ division that, in December 1944, withdrew to ‘safe areas’ of Croatia – inhabiting luxury hotels of Opatija and Rijeka on the Croatian Adriatic Riviera – awaiting the outcome of the Second World War. The Chetnik mythology included the utopian extremes, ‘freedom or death’, 'invincibility and fearlessness’, ‘an unstoppable fighting spirit against Serbian enemies’ as well as the role of ‘protector of the enslaved’; who these enslaved were was not stipulated.The Chetnik strategy XE "Chetnik strategy" was not to fight both the Germans and the Partisans at the same time. They collaborated with the Partisans in Serbia and Bosnia in 1941 and, from the beginning of 1942, avoided actively fighting the Germans awaiting the Allied landing in Dalmatia. As the ‘landing’ never occurred, Chetniks occupied themselves with sporadic attacks against what they labelled as the ‘Ustashas’, i.e., the Croat and Muslim civilians as the ‘mortal enemies of the Great-Serbian statehood’. In reality, what they dreaded the most was a direct clash with the real Ustasha formations, clashes which they usually lost.On the other hand, the Chetnik fight against the Partisans XE "Chetnik fight against Partisans" was a part of the fight between the two contestants for the realisation of the Yugoslav utopian aim, for which help from the Germans and/or the Italians was vital.The part of Croatia annexed by the Italians (the Adriatic coast) was defended from the partisans by the Italians in the forward positions of the so-called Second and Third Occupation Zone. The aim was to weaken the NDH rule and with the help of the Chetniks at the same time destroy the partisans.The Italian and Chetnik combined operations in these zones gave the Chetniks free rein in the extermination of the Croats. This led inevitably to strained relations between the two ‘allies’, Italy and the NDH. In order to smooth out this problem, the so-called ‘General Governing Representation’ XE "General Governing Representation" of the NDH (Ob?e Upravno Povjereni?tvo) was established on the 29th August 1941 and attached to the Second Italian Army.In the annexed Coastal zone all the NDH forces were disarmed and the Italians were supposed to disarm also all the Chetniks and Partisans.As it happened, in the Second Zone the Italians disarmed only the NDH forces but not the Chetniks – these were incorporated into the Italian’s own military strategy.4.3.6The Role of Nazi Germany XE "Role of Nazi Germany" The Representative of the German Foreign Ministry in occupied Belgrade, Felix Benzler, XE "Benzler, Felix - Representative of German Foreign Ministry in occupied Belgrade" in his report dated 28th April 1942 sent to the Ministry, confirmed that General Nedi? and the Italian Military Attaché in Belgrade, Bonfatti, indulged in political territorial discussions (which were outside their jurisdiction). Bonfatti suggested to Nedi? that Serbia must give up the Yugoslav idea and concentrate on the Italian-Serbian alliance because their interests were identical (i.e., anti-Croat). He proceeded to point out that Italy would support the Serbian demands for access to the sea (via Boka Kotorska) and help with the expansion of the Serbian Lebensraum.Although the NDH civilian authorities remained in these zones, the Italians and even Chetniks in their own enclaves sabotaged them. The NDH authorities played this card by making tricky deals with the individual Chetnik groups in the spring of 1942 for the common interest in fighting the Partisans. A report of the Local NDH Government in Bribir of 27th June 1942 clearly stated this aim: “To destroy the Partisans with the help of the Chetniks, i.e. with Serbian help to destroy the Serbs who were the majority in the communist ranks.”Yet both sides in these deals did not have any illusions about their final aims, which were contradictory, and covered only their own immediate interests.In the second half of 1942, the new situation had arisen in the Italian-NDH relations. The Italians decided to withdraw from the Second and Third NDH occupation Zones, as they were overstretched and as their 140 garrisons were considerably weakened in fights with the Partisans. The Italians were generally demoralised.This withdrawal was ratified by the Zagreb Agreement of 19th June 1942 XE "Zagreb Agreement 19th June 1942" between the Italian Command and the NDH government. The Agreement allowed for the transfer of the so far Italian protected Chetniks into the ‘voluntary anti-communist militia’ (Milizia volontaria anti-communista, or MVAC), in whose ranks there were also a few Croats.Naturally, as the agreement was ambiguous XE "Agreement ambiguous" (like the Dayton Accord of 1995 XE "Dayton Accord 1995" ) each side interpreted it in their own way.For this reason, on the 26th June 1942, Paveli? opportunistically agreed that the Chetniks could be armed by the NDH Government but must be under its control. They would receive food and medicines and fight the Partisans under the label of the ‘Voluntary Anti-Communist Militia’.Hitler did not like this arrangement. During a meeting between him and Paveli? in his headquarters at Werwolf in Ukraine on the 23rd September 1942, Hitler remarked that “this arrangement is dangerous because these Serbian patriots, let’s face it, are carried on the wing of the Great-Serbian ideal. If this [arrangement] was pursued, one would be hatching a snake, which at the moment is small but one day may become dangerous”.The ‘Anti-Communist Militia’ XE "Anti-Communist Militia" failed in its main objective by chance or design and concentrated its activities on the murder and plunder of the civilians in Croatian and even some Serbian villages.The Italian high-ranking officers enjoyed greatly the Chetnik hospitality (similar to that of the Dutch officers in Srebrenica 1994). There were many drunken orgies, at which mutual anti-Croat hatred was explored with zest in order to balance out the vulnerability and survival in a dramatically hostile environment. Above all, there was a ubiquitous presence of the spirit of appropriation of Dalmatia (Ritorniamo a Dalmazia) and of the stubborn Croatian population, which was in the way of that realisation. Perhaps the Chetniks could help? A former Italian anti-fascist partisan, Luigi Carissimi-Priori, wrote in the January 2000 edition of Storia Nuova Contemporanea (Milan) about Winston Churchill’s friendly correspondence with Mussolini in 1939. XE "Winston Churchill’s friendly correspondence with Mussolini in 1939" XE "Carissimi-Priori, Luigi - former Italian anti-fascist partisan, wrote in Storia Nuova Contemporanea (Milan) about Winston Churchill’s friendly correspondence with Mussolini in 1939" In one of the last letters Churchill promised Italy “a post-war adjustment to your 'western borderline” “with Italy gaining Nice, the Savoy region, Corsica, Northern Tunisia, Dalmatia and Istria . . .” thus putting pressure on Mussolini not to join Hitler. British historians naturally cast doubt on the existence of these letters, as according to them Churchill was not an appeaser. Is selling somebody else’s land appeasement – that is the question? In retrospect it was a classic repetition of London’s deal with Italy in respect of Dalmatia in 1916 all over again.At such Italian-Chetnik gatherings XE "Italian-Chetnik gatherings" , revolutionary futurist cooking has taken upon itself the lofty, and noble goal of modifying radically the nourishment of the Chetnik race (spit-roasted lamb and Slivovitz), reinforcing it with the latest Roman cuisine (after Marinetti).The Italians investigated the Chetnik mass murders XE "Italians investigated Chetnik mass murders" and plunder of the Croatian civilian population with extreme reluctance, as they themselves were Chetnik accessories to these crimes. They blockaded Croatian villages and let Chetniks loose: it was impractical and unrealistic to impose strict rules. If that paradise of the unrestrained murderous delight needs any further debunking the following text will forcefully provide it. An undeclared war by Italy against the NDH was de facto in progress.After the Italian capitulation in 1943 XE "Italian capitulation 1943" , the Chetniks joined the Germans, disarming their former protectors with equal sadistic delight.Disturbed by the German-Chetnik collaboration, the NDH government was impotent to do anything about it. The Germans, however, used the Chetniks to finish off the Partisans and, in that move lay some consolation for the NDH government.The official NDH government’s attitude was “that the Germans are trying to justify Chetnik crimes”. The German claim on the other hand was that the Croatian civilians murdered by the Chetniks were in fact Partisans.The traditional conservativeness and the pragmatism of the Croat peasantry, with its respect for family life and the ownership of land, were not really the qualities suitable for the revolutionary adventurism of the dispossessed Montenegrin and Serbian sans quillots, a trait personified in the wild character of Milovan Djilas.The war, as the greatest evil for the Croatian peasants, was to be avoided at all costs. At the same time, war brought about the demand for food, and in turn increased the price of the agricultural products in the rich Northern regions of Croatia, so the Croatian peasants by staying put profited from it. In such a situation it would have been shear madness to roam through the mountains and woods for the sake of the perfidious 'Allies'. XE "Perfidious 'Allies'" As a result only a few family men joined the Partisans. All in all, the circumstances in Croatia at the time were on the side of the NDH regime. The ‘battles’ were only small guerrilla clashes between the NDH military patrols and the Serbian bandits and casualties were relatively few. The NDH army had no particular wish to chase these groups of ‘hajduks’ (the traditional Balkan outlaws against the Turks) XE "Hajduks - traditional Balkan outlaws against Turks" through the impassable woods. The innocent victims of such clashes lay mainly in the retributions against the prisoners and the civilian population on both sides. The year 1942 saw the stabilisation of a more classic type of civil war; ‘Bellum omnium contra omnes XE "Bellum omnium contra omnes" ’. Ignoring the occupation forces and the Chetniks for the moment, there was the Ustasha army, formed from the Croatian peasants, the human material of which the communists should have been proud. On the other hand, there were the Partisans (mainly the Serbs from Croatia, ideologically monochrome and illiterate) bent on revenge inspired by a deep-seated hatred of anything Croatian and most of all, any Croatian State (the case that would be repeated in the war of 1990-1995). The fact that the Partisans did have a commissar in charge of the ideological brainwashing machine and the Ustashas did not made an enormous difference. The communist ideology gave the Partisans (or should it be Chetniks?) a convenient and ‘respectable anti-fascist’ cover-up. XE "Communist ideology gave Partisans (or should it be Chetniks?) convenient and ‘respectable anti-fascist’ cover-up." On one side were Croat peasants, led by the extreme nationalist intellectuals and truly wedded to the idea of the liberation of Croatia. After twenty-three years of Serbian oppression in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia defiled by the NDH regime’s opportunistic ties with Hitler and Mussolini, they wanted a change. On the other side the Partisans were the forces of the utopian Yugoslavism and the most criminal ideologists of the Great-Serbian exclusive nationalism (and later communism), under the mask of the national ‘liberation’. Between these three groups naturally there could not have been any compromise, only a struggle to the death.The violent methods of these three groups in those existential circumstances are concisely captured by quoting Sartre, alas, in a different context: "Men act in response to the circumstances in which they are placed and . . . they are just as much the victims of a system which had helped them to conquer in the past as the willing accomplices in the crimes to which this system was still giving birth."As any utopia leads inevitably to violence XE "Utopia inevitably leads to violence" , due to differences in the method of execution of the utopian plan, according to Popper, so is a utopian state increasingly obsessed with what happens to any of its breakaway elements. Centrifugal trends must be prevented by force. The Yugoslav utopia produced something hitherto unheard of in Croatian history: a revolutionary Croatian movement, which aped, in essence, the very same Great-Serbian violent methods. Secretly, the Serbs were enormously impressed. Taken aback by this most uncharacteristic Croat behaviour, even before the break-up of the Kingdom, the Serbs believed at first that they were hit only by a passing nightmare. There was a sudden backlash to the balancing of fear and hate, policies on which the Kingdom of Yugoslavia depended if it were to survive at all. For this reason, however, one should not jump to too many conclusions about the violence in the Independent State of Croatia (1941-45) during WWII in relation to the irrational fears of Serbs regarding the present-day Republic of Croatia, since the disequilibrium between the fear and hate on both sides was one of the causes of that violence and this disequilibrium doesn’t exist at present. The Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during WWII, whatever one thinks of it, defended itself as it were by ever-growing inducement of fear, under war-time conditions of disorder, and shared the inherent violence of the 'Yugoslav' system which it inherited and tried to break away from. The cynical disregard of this fact exhibited by the pro-Yugoslav lobby in the West, and the drawing of analogies between the WW2 Croatia and the present-day Republic is plain mischief making. In part, the Strategy of Disgust XE "Strategy of Disgust" , to which we have already referred, emulates the ‘Chicago gangs’ whose psychology is implied in the philosophy of Yugoslav ‘Brotherhood and Unity’. But let the conspirators themselves reflect on the definition by Richardson: "Steady state distribution of group sizes can be derived according to one assumption - in the way - that individuals can join the group but cannot leave it unless the whole group falls apart . . . ".It is also observed that the members of an "organisation for violence . . . do not leave [it] casually" - or at least do not leave [it] "without punishment."At the same time, the psychology of such systems of concentrated 'power of violence' may be entirely independent of its human components. "If this conclusion is correct, we need not search the human psyche for attributes that explain the murderous tendencies of certain human organisations."The confidential report of the Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service from Berlin dated 17th February 1942 addressed to Himmler blames the activities of the rebels (the Chetniks and Partisans) on the Ustasha outrages against the ‘orthodox population’, quoting the absurdly high figure of ‘roughly’ 300,000 killed. The second reason was the ‘enforced conversions to Catholicism’. As far as the communists were concerned, the German-Soviet conflict was a more important reason for the uprising. The German Ambassador in Zagreb, von Kasche who was on the spot, rejected the above opinion about the responsibility of the Ustashas for the uprising in a letter to the Chief of the Military Governing Body, Dr. Harold Turner XE "Turner, Dr. Harold - Chief of Military Governing Body" . He reported in a telegram dated 13th April 1942 on the situation in the NDH:“The NDH forces beat the rebels [the Chetniks] and took Han-Pijesak, Vlasenica, Bratunac and Srebrenica in East Bosnia. The Chetniks from Serbia were slaughtering the Muslims, and the Ustashas responded in the same manner against the Chetniks”.Why Yugoslavia displayed false modesty in not praising itself for its own violent tendencies and was ascribing all of them to the Croats is not surprising. Who indeed could have shown off these qualities better than Yugoslavia itself? Because the twin social handicaps of that state - its utopianism and its ensuing violence - was its raison d'etre. We must not allow the eulogy that rightfully belongs to its murderous system to be wastefully ascribed to the Croats.Dissecting former Yugoslavia’s state ‘organisation for violence’ would be largely superfluous since it is, after all, so apparent when looked at from any angle. Yet there are still those people who claim that Yugoslavia was a Haven of Peace, even a Garden of Eden. For those who are blind, that the State's super-system, which possessed its own mechanisms for generating and keeping the Croato-Yugoslav conflict in a steady state, can be classified as an 'indigenous’ struggle since the contestants were formally a part of the same super-system. At the same time, this was also a ‘symmetric-structure-orientated conflict,’' because it could not have been resolved unless the structure of the whole super system [Yugoslavia] collapsed. Yet even these definitions are not absolutely foolproof as to what made Yugoslavia such an extraordinarily ‘happy’ place. To a simple man, the Croato-Yugoslav conflict probably meant just that, a conflict between the Croats and the Serbs. In reality, it was a conflict between the Croats and the Yugoslav State, that State being synonymous with the Serbs (or more accurately with the Great-Serbs) who, as such, played an ambiguous role and therefore could not have been impartial arbiters in the resolution of that conflict. The conflict therefore transformed itself into an 'exogenous' one.The Great-Serbian ideology was at the centre of the Chetnik crimes and terror in the NDH. The religious and national differences between the Croats and the Serbs were not the essence of this conflict.Von Kasche reported to Berlin again XE "von Kasche reported to Berlin" on the 1st May 1942 that the clearing of the rebels in Eastern Bosnia by the German and Ustasha forces under General Bader was progressing well. The negotiations for surrender (of the Chetniks) were conducted with the NDH representatives. The rebels were dissipating into small bands that were robbing the villages. (Map required.)He also reported on the 9th May 1942 that these operations were successful east of Sarajevo. In the southern direction, Zvornik, Vlasenica, Rogatica and Vi?egrad were pacified; rebel bands were moving around Vare? and Zenica; Croat units were clearing these areas and also those towards Petrova Gora and around Jajce.Kasche sent a telegram dated 15th May 1942 reporting that Lieutenant Col. Pfaffenroth from General Bader’s headquarters had assessed the general situation thus: “The rebels [without difference] are our enemies. General Mihajlovi? is their spiritus movens” XE "Mihajlovi?, Genera l- their spiritus movens" .Gleise von Horstenau reported to Berlin XE "von Horstenau, Gleise - reported to Berlin" on the 19th May 1942 “Certain outstanding personalities – of course not all – are of the opinion that a policy of elimination of the Serbian population [1.5 million] from the NDH was a misguided [move], although this remains the aim of the middle and lower-ranking Ustasha leaders. So the vicious circle goes on and on. These policies also affect the Croatian people (who are opposed to them – many disappearing behind the walls of the prisons) and they are engendering communism even among them. The blitz operation [Gleise von Horstenau goes on] of the German and Croatian forces within the battle group of General Bader broke the rebels and imprisoned the Chetnik leader Dangi?. The regiment of Ustashas under Col. Franceti?, who entered Vi?egrad on horseback, is praiseworthy. However, it was spoiled by subsequent bloody crimes of all sorts. North of Sarajevo numerous Montenegrin Partisans withdrew to Montenegro pushed by the 718th Infantry division. In the last few days a few diversions occurred on the Bosnian railway track. The mainly communist rebellion on the Mountain Kozara intensified. . . . The leaders originated from the regions south of the Sava River. The key foreign policy is the relationship between the NDH and Italy. When at the beginning of April 1942 it was agreed in Ljubljana that the Italians should not co-operate with [Serbian] Chetniks, only a few days later the Italians were seen shoulder to shoulder in their company. Unfortunately the original sympathies for the Germans in the Croatian masses is waning . . . this may be felt also within the ruling circles of the NDH – which is understandable when people are burdened with so many worries." “The civil war situation is making it difficult for the NDH armed forces to get into good shape. While the Domobrans see in the Ustashas the impediment to the organisation of the army, on the other hand Paveli?, Kvaternik Junior and other leading personalities in the Ustasha movement maintain that only the Ustashas can defend the State against the internal enemies and that the Domobrans are useless in that respect. In that argument they evoke their revolutionary spirit, and the enthusiasm of their volunteer forces in the still inadequately organised State. The majority of the Croatian people however prefer the Domobrans, led by the former Austro-Hungarian officers, to the Ustashas whom they abhor for their indiscipline, arrogance and crimes which have not yet abated.“That the organisation of the armed forces of the NDH, contrary to German advice, went the wrong way unfortunately is a fact of life. However, it would be futile to ask Paveli? to disband the Ustasha regiments when he is tied with them in life and death. The Ustasha militia must be distinguished from the political Ustasha Movement, which is a unified State-organising political party.The basic unit of the future Croatian Army should be, according to the well-tried model of the Austro-Hungarian military in Bosnia-Hercegovina [before 1918], a mountain brigade of 4 battalions with appropriate artillery. The German officers have seen the first of these brigades in action recently in Petrinja and they made an excellent impression.“The NDH Airforce has 120 [mostly out-of-date] aircraft. The young officer cadres are good but in conflict with the older former Yugoslav officers [now in the NDH forces] who still breathe with the ‘Yugoslav spirit’”.The biggest pockets of resistance XE "Biggest pockets of resistance" were in the Prijedor, Ozren and Majevica mountains [around 3,500 rebels]. It is interesting that the German Ambassador in Rome in his letter to Berlin dated 9th June 1942 proposed two alternatives for the future of the NDH. A proclamation of the Kingdom of Dalmatia and its link with Croatia in a personal union with the Duke of Spaleto as the King; or alternatively that the NDH as such be linked with Italy in a personal union. Paveli? dismissed both alternatives as impractical. The Ustasha leaders, however, demanded that the number of Italian units in the NDH should be reduced, and that the crushing of the rebellion and the Security of the State territory be executed by the Ustasha formations.4.3.7The Chetnik revenge XE "Chetnik revenge" The Chetnik revenge against the Croat civilians for Ustasha retributions was plainly an excuse for ideological murders, which were an extension of the terror carried out in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. This terror was directed in three ways:1.To exterminate the Croatian people.2.Against the Communist Partisans as the chief contestants in the Yugoslav utopia.3.Against the Serbs loyal to the NDH.Beneath the responsibility for the Chetnik crimes lay darker doom-laden collaboration: that of the German and Italian occupation forces, which not only supplied the Chetniks with ammunition, food and medicines, but also covered up the Chetnik crimes. The Yugoslav ?migré Government in London was the co-ordinating and propaganda centre in charge of these crimes, not only intellectually but also very much in practice. The Allies, supporting the Chetniks until 1944, were the authors of an accelerating spread of chaos. The BBC, as an institution of universal darkness as far as the Croats were concerned, announced regularly the names of the people sentenced to death by the Chetniks by means of code ‘Z’ (Zaklati - meaning those people who were on the list to have their throats cut).The methods and forms of the Chetnik terror were the same then as they were in the 1992-1995 war: physical and psychological torture, rape and murder. The ethnic cleansing of the Croatian towns and villages were fuelled by Chetnik propaganda, with its permanent threat of bloodshed, revenge, and satanisation of the Croatian people, as well as the plunder and destruction of the Croatian material and cultural heritage. In the 1992-95 war, the existence of the worldwide television coverage was an improvement on BBC coverage in WW2. In many ways the anti-Croat insinuations XE "Anti-Croat insinuations" based on the specious authority on topics which the international war correspondents and pundits were largely ignorant, was even more insidious. Beatings, amputations, knifing, stoning and the hot iron branding of Chetnik symbols onto the bodies of their victims had by now become the familiar method of building the Great-Serbia. If there was a preference it was for throat-cutting, followed by shooting, hanging, decapitation, burning alive, throwing of people into pits, killing with a hammer or butt of a gun, crushing sculls, gauging out eyes, the cutting of stomachs, cutting off women’s breasts and men’s genitalia. Though these methods differed in execution they were all part of a devil’s rite in the service of the Yugoslav utopia. The Chetniks aired their crimes openly. In a report dated 16th July 1942, it was stated that the Dinara division alone, in the period from the 25th May to the 15th June 1942, counted 500 Partisan (mainly Croat) bodies.4.3.8Assistance of German units XE "Assistance of German units" At the conference between the Ambassador von Kasche and General Bader on the 22nd June 1942, it was agreed that the forces of General Stahl consisting of about 20,000 Croatian soldiers and four German battalions would be strengthened with four further German battalions. The main body of the Partisans in Kozara, Prijedor, Dubica, Bos. Gradi?ka and Banja Luka would be blockaded as from 20th June 1942. The political requirement to crush these Partisans was extremely urgent. Von Kasche wrote a memo: “about stopping the Partisans and the pacification of the Western Bosnian regions” in which he criticised the NDH Government’s attempts in that direction, i.e., these operations should be less bloody, with less destruction and with an overall better organisation.He informed the Foreign Ministry in Berlin on the 4th July 1942 about the withdrawal of the Italian Second Army from the Second and Third Occupation Zones which the NDH forces planned to retake, and as these regions were Chetnik infested it was inevitable that the Croato-Serbian war there would be re-ignited.In his report dated 9th July 1942, Gleise von Horstenau noted that the actions of the Partisan gangs were on the increase, helped by the Serbian population. The enemy propaganda from London and Moscow was lively.Counsellor von Troll forwarded a report by the Gestapo Attaché Helm XE "Gestapo Attaché Helm" to the Chief Office for the Security in Berlin on the 23rd July 1942:“Military action in Kozara Mountains completed. 3,500 Partisans killed and 300 shot. 900 Croats killed or disappeared. 9,000 men and 2,300 women and children were imprisoned. 7-8,000 women and children sent to Assembly camps [sabirni logor] and children’s homes, the rest sent to Srijem and Slavonija to work on the harvest. The actions of the Partisans are destroying the harvest and they are blowing up the railway line between Zagreb and Belgrade. 3 battalions of Germans and 2 battalions of Ustashas despatched to comb the Srijem region. 3-4,000 Partisans from Montenegro stopped west of Sarajevo and, as a result, had a loss of 1,000 dead. The NDH Government plans to resettle the Kozara mountain area with Croatian refugees”.Von Kasche informed the Foreign Ministry in Berlin on the 7th August 1942 that Paveli?, together with General Stahl visited the battle sites in Kostajnica, Novi and Prijedor. The fighting spirit and effectiveness of the Croatian units were very good, as assessed by the General.Gestapo Attaché Helm informed Berlin on the 11th August 1942 that Paveli?’s Headquarters had empowered Eugen Kvaternik to clear Srijem of communists by means of police actions. Eight officers, forty agents and 3-4 battalions of the Croatian Army would intervene. Kvaternik pointed out that this action would not target the Serbs but rather communists of all ethnic origins.Von Kasche forwarded the following information from Hans Helm to the Security Headquarters of the Reich in Berlin XE "Security Headquarters of Reich in Berlin" on the 19th August 1942:"According to the Ustasha Supervising Service [Nadzorna Slu?ba], the Komintern had issued an order to the Partisans in Croatia, in which they are ordered to break through into the southern regions of the former Yugoslavia by 15th August 1942 and link up with the Chetnik forces of Dra?a Mihajlovi? in order to safeguard the link with the Partisans in Slovenia and Istria. The orders to the Partisans were to destroy railways and food stores and infiltrate the ranks of the Domobrans and railway personnel.”According to Helm’s report dated 20th August 1942 to Berlin, Eugen Kvaternik and Paveli? had decided to reorganise the Ustasha movement, increase the discipline and put it under a single leadership. The purified Ustasha ranks would be formed into separate military, police and gendarmerie units. Kvaternik asked the Germans for help in the schooling and training of a sufficient number of officers for this purpose.Attaché Helm asked that his report dated 27th August 1942 be sent to Security Headquarters of the Reich in Berlin as follows: “Action of clearing the Srijem region:Zemun: 70 Communist Youth (SKOJ) imprisoned. Expect 400 further imprisonments.Mitrovica: Out of 70 imprisoned members of SKOJ [Union of the Communist Youth of Yugoslavia] – 62 shot.Ruma: 734 imprisoned, 166 shot, 265 sent to concentration camps.Stara Pazova: 115 imprisoned, 33 shot.Irig: 160 imprisoned. 350 sentenced to death, among the condemned are some members of the ethnic German group.The Partisan actions in Srijem [a region of the NDH] are orchestrated from Serbia.1,500 rebels concentrated in Fru?ka Gora. Military action in progress.Slavonija: Clearing action. 28 dead, 683 prisoners.Western Bosnia: Quiet.Eastern Bosnia: Fo?a taken by Chetniks dressed in Italian uniforms and armed with Italian guns.Italian Zone: 60-70,000 rebels, mainly Chetniks armed with 8-10 Italian tanks, 2 guns, over 100 machine guns, all under Serbian Officers command. Second Partisan group [1,500 men] under the command of [Vladimir] Bakari?."Pacification of this region frustrated by the [friendly] Italian attitude towards the Chetniks.The assistance of the German units in these actions is necessary as the Croatian forces are much overstretched”.Von Kasche passed Helm’s report dated 4th September 1942 to Berlin:“Action in Fru?ka Gora completed on 31st August 1942. 369 Partisans dead, 1,333 imprisoned, our losses 11 dead, 14 wounded”. The Counsellor Troll in his telegram to the Foreign Ministry dated 5th September 1942 forwarded the following Helm’s information: “Rail traffic from Zagreb to Belgrade stopped by night. From the beginning of the operations in Western Bosnia, on the 28th August 1942 rebels suffered 4,723 dead and 12,207 were taken prisoner. Our own losses Germans: 71 dead, 187 wounded, 8 disappeared. Croats: 475 dead, 725 wounded, 510 disappeared.”The Chetnik Commander, Ilija Trifunovi? Bir?anin XE "Bir?anin, Trifunovi? Ilija - Chetnik Commander" , boasted in his report to Dra?a Mihajlovi? dated 5th September 1942, that the Chetniks in Vrgorac, Dalmatia, “skinned alive three Catholic Priests. In addition, they also murdered all the males above the age of 15”.The murdering of wounded prisoners was a Chetnik speciality XE "Murdering of wounded prisoners was Chetnik speciality" . On the 2nd June 1944 near Udbina in Croatia, they killed thirty-six wounded Croat men lying in the field hospital.Decapitation was another Chetnik speciality. The Italians paid well for each imprisoned or dead Partisan (in Dalmatia these were mainly Croats). The going price was 100,000 lire per head. Decapitated heads of the prisoners taken to the Italian Headquarters as trophies were evidence and, at the same time, a means of exchange.Helm’s report of the 9th September 1942 repeated the opinion of the NDH Police in Osijek that the Partisan movement en gros is not communist but rather nationalist Serbian XE "Nationalist Serbian" . The best solution for the pacification would be the deportation of all the Serbs in the region, irrespective. The Partisans were directed and supplied from Serbia. A more rational approach by the NDH government should be able to attract the Serbs to co-operate with the Croatian State, concluded Helm.Von Kasche informed Berlin on the 21st September 1942: “Tito is a protagonist of a Great-Yugoslavia; he doesn’t recognise Mihajlovi? and England, and is suspicious of Russia. He recently informed the German side that he would be in favour of pacification”. “Military forces:“Croats: 4 active Ustasha mountain brigades with 4,000 men each are very successful units. However, their method of warfare is unnecessarily cruel. Acting together with Germans all the Croats could achieve better results.“Drawbacks: Lack of time for the training of the NDH forces, insufficient leadership and lack of armaments; lack of motor vehicles, Ustasha [political] mistakes, Italian duplicity in co-operation with Chetniks and their lack of action.”On 11th September 1942, Ambassador von Kasche raised the issue of the terrorist action committed by the Ustashas in Srijem against Serbs who were NDH citizens.On 12th September 1942 Paveli? discussed the issues raised (by von Kasche) with Viktor Tomi?, Commander of the Ustasha Supervising Force.“The Italians have abandoned the town of Livno which was immediately blockaded by Partisans. The Ustasha battalion of 300 men under command of Jure Franceti? and Colonel ?imic broke the blockade but had to withdraw. Partisans took Livno”.During the ‘liberation’ of Livno the Partisans imprisoned seven German civilian technicians XE "liberation of Livno Partisans imprisoned seven German civilian technicians" from the Reich, including Ing. Hans Ott, who was in charge of a desperate defence of the town.Ott applied lateral thinking when questioned by the Partisan Inquisitor Dr. Vladimir Velebit: “I know you will shoot us but what’s the use,” said Ott. “You would do better to exchange us for imprisoned Partisans. I could be a link with the German military, and I give you my word of honour as a First World War Officer that after the accomplishment of my mission I will return.”Ott kept his word. Together with Hans Helm, he would play an important role in future shady deals with Tito.Ott left for Sarajevo on the 13th August 1942 and then continued his journey by Croatian plane to Zagreb. The Partisans, amongst others, asked for the exchange of Andrija Hebrang, Secretary General of the KPH, who was in the Ustasha prison. Paveli? refused this request on the pretext that Hebrang had already died in prison.Attaché Helm reported to Himmler in Berlin on the 21st September 1942 from Sarajevo:“The Partisans in Livno tried to hold the German technicians as they needed their technical expertise in establishing their basic industry”. The slant of the report was that the Partisans were really not communists but fighting against the NDH and that, if the Germans would take over, half of them would return home.The welcome these German prisoners received from the Partisans went so far that on a Sunday they were treated to a lunch in a nearby hotel. Political opinions expressed by Tito and relayed to Ing. Ott on that occasion were rather curious.“Tito was of the opinion [that in spite of] the terrible bloodshed on the Eastern Front, Germany and the Soviet Union [have to come to] some agreement in order to stop the USA and England from winning the war, which in the long run would mean slavery for the working class XE "Slavery for the working class" ."The Germans were of the opinion that the Partisans were better disciplined than the Croatian soldiers, mainly because the Croats had received no proper training (as if the Partisans had). It was senseless to send such men into battle. It was all a question of leadership. If the Germans led the Croats they could become very effective – the report was beefed up to please Himmler.In the second, more down-to-earth report to the Command of the 718th German division, in the area the freed Germans stated: “In the area of Prozor-Glamo?-Klju? there are five operative Partisan brigades: Kragujevac-U?ice [from Serbia], Vi?egrad [Bosnian Serbs], the Third Division made up from former Chetniks from Drvar and Klju?, the Fourth Division from Sarajevo area [mainly Serbs and some Muslims], and the Fifth Division made up of Montenegrins. In addition to these there was a Dalmatian battalion under the command of the old Croat Communist Vice Buljan, recruited from the ranks of Croats who had escaped the Italian occupation, and who by the way ‘cannot be trusted’ [by the Partisans].”The total number of Partisans, armed with Italian and the old Yugoslav equipment was 25,000. The best brigade (made up from communist intellectuals) is the First Brigade led by Ko?a Popovi? (Belgrade bourgeois, later Foreign Minister of Yugoslavia). That Brigade took the Croatian Bosnian town of Livno. The worst impression is made by the Montenegrin Brigade, which looked as if it was made up from the worst criminals.Quoting historian Bogdan Krizman’s XE "Krizman, Bogdan" gibe in this connection: “Of course, the imprisoned Germans were scared stiff, even by the sheer appearance of our fighters.”Ing. Ott listened to Tito who bragged in good German about the Partisan efficiency. Ott got the impression that he was a former Austro-Hungarian officer.Helm reported again on the 24th September to Himmler from Sarajevo:“It appears that Dra?a Mihajlovi? was in Nevesinje [East Hercegovina] on 16th September 1942 at the consultation about idea of a unified front with the Partisans on the Prozor-Glamo? [Central Bosnia] sector.“Although the Italians are rather successful in applying the English methods of helping now one and now the other contestant in this war to get maximum profit out of it, they lack sufficient determination in action. The Chetniks and Partisans do not think much of the Italians."“Tito hates Mihajlovi? and dismisses the NDH. One could even hear the hint that if the Chetniks negotiate with the Italians, why can’t the Partisans negotiate with the Germans?” “The Ustashas have, on their own initiative, exchanged 33 Partisan prisoners, including Andrija Hebrang, Secretary General of the KPH, for two NDH police agents, Vutuc and Wagner on the 23rd September 1942.”Krizman’s footnote indicates that the Partisan negotiators were Vladimir Velebit and Marijan Stilinovi? (November 1942 and March 1943), and Velebit, Djilas and Ko?a Popovi? in March 1943. Stilinovi? and Boris Bakra? led negotiations on the exchange of prisoners from March 1944 up unto the end of the war. Bakra? had forty sessions with the Ustasha exchange commission, twenty-five of them in Zagreb, and had freed about 800 Partisans.Gleise von Horstenau telegraphed the Commander in Chief for the South East on the 11th September 1942 to confirm that he had read his letter addressed to Paveli?.On the German side, the negotiator was our old friend, Ing. Ott. Dr. Bakari? who gave information to historian Krizman in a letter dated 6th June 1966.The NDH Government received with consternation Field-Marshal Liszt’s proposal for a more direct German involvement XE "Liszt, Field-Marshal - proposal for more direct German involvement" in the Croatian military engagements. This was to be expected! Paveli? replied in a determined way that the acceptance of Clauses 2 and 3 and particularly Clause 5 of the proposal would reduce the NDH Government to a ‘pseudo-existence’. Gleise von Horstenau, in his return telegram, asked permission for further negotiations with Paveli? on the matter.As expected, Ribbentrop XE "Ribbentrop" reacted in the negative to his Ambassador in Zagreb’s proposals (letters of 13th and 21st August 1942). After permission by Hitler himself, he rejected the revision of the existing German policies towards the NDH.Von Kasche was called to Berlin for consultations with Ribbentrop XE "Ribbentrop" . Gleise von Horstenau’s notes of the meeting of the 17th September 1942 with General Col. L?hr in Sofia state that a rational solution of the Serbian problem in the NDH is the most urgent requirement of the Croatian domestic policy, ignoring that which had been attempted by the Croats in the past 23 years, without success. “From the foundation of the NDH this policy was resolved by the liquidation of the Serbs. It is impossible to kill 2 million people, and, on the other hand, the survivors are joining the enemy camp. One must accept that the NDH is a multi-national State and that the most fanatical protagonists of that policy [of liquidation] are father and son Kvaternik, particularly the son who occasionally displays a particular kind of sadism”.“In replacing him as the State Secretary for Public Security, the whole country would breathe a sigh of relief and, apart from his father; no one would shed a tear for him. That cleansing process would improve the Ustasha ranks, which at the moment are undisciplined, badly led and politically uneducated. Far from being supporters of the State, they are a great danger to its existence. The question is – should a unified German command over these forces be established in Croatia against Paveli?’s belief that such a solution would destroy the sovereignty of the Croatian State.”Von Kasche informed the Foreign Ministry on the 18th September 1942 about the meeting between Gleise von Horstenau and L?hr in Sofia. Gen. Col. L?hr sent a demand to the NDH Government on behalf of the Commander in Chief in Serbia, Field-Marshall Liszt that the civil administration of the NDH should be subject to the orders of the German Military, which Paveli? flatly rejected. L?hr intends to present this demand to the Führer. Both Gleise von Horstenau and von Kasche believe that“submission to this demand to Paveli? was a politically unhappy measure and that Paveli?’s rejection should be taken as a slap in the face to the German army.”So much for the Yugoslav propaganda that Paveli? was an apologetic lackey of the Germans.Gleise von Horstenau informed the OKW on the 21st September 1942: “That a representative of Dr. Ma?ek is in Belgrade at the moment. In the process of the reconstruction of Yugoslavia, according to Ma?ek, the NDH and its armed forces must be taken into account. When the Ustasha regime collapses, the Croatian Regular Army will safeguard the frontiers of the NDH. Only then will negotiations with the Serbs take place [i.e., from a position of strength], if and under what conditions Croatia would enter again into union with Serbia. The basis for the negotiations is to be the status quo ante 1918. The giving up of Croatian territory, which the Serbs demand, is out of all proportion [and therefore out of the question] with the exception of only a few small districts.”Sadly, Ma?ek's endeavours were shot through with ingrained Yugoslavism XE "Ma?ek's endeavours shot through with ingrained Yugoslavism" – surprising in such a delicate war situation.The Counsellor von Troll reported to the Ministry in Berlin on the 24th September 1942 the text of the speech made by the NDH foreign Minister Lorkovi? on the occasion of the anniversary of the Tripartite Treaty in which he stated that the Treaty “represents a breakthrough by the young revolutionary nationalism from the sphere of the national into the sphere of international affairs and international law.”According to Lorkovi?, this Treaty could become, in that sense, truly a Magna Carta of the new Croatian world.Paveli? met Hitler in Vinica (Ukraine) XE "Paveli? met Hitler in Vinica (Ukraine)" for the second time on the 23rd September 1942. Hitler emphasised the importance of maintaining uninterrupted transport through the NDH, which was vital for the front in Africa. He confirmed the German interest in supporting the NDH. If the NDH failed, there would be the danger of the repetition of the Yugoslav plans fostered by the Serbian fanatics. Paveli? explained the situation in the trouble spots in Bosnia-Hercegovina.Hitler pointed out that he felt embarrassed to insist on German military leadership in the NDH due to difficulties the country experienced with its own forces (lack of armaments, etc.). The NDH numerically has more forces than the Germans in the NDH and he would be happiest if the German forces could withdraw from there, everything being equal. Paveli? stated that as the NDH had just an ‘improvised army’, it was essential that Germany gave the lead in that respect. He requested additional arms supplies. When Ribbentrop XE "Ribbentrop" asked Paveli? directly if he could make order in the country by controlling the Ustashas, Paveli? confirmed by pointing out again that they lacked arms. Hitler ordered that arms must be supplied.Von Kasche informed the Ministry in Berlin on the 28th September 1942 that at the Fuehrer’s Headquarters he had explained to Benzler that the NDH undertook positive steps for the pacification of the ‘orthodox’ [i.e., Serb] population. However “disturbances are orchestrated from Belgrade . . . it is impossible to stop this opposition unilaterally”.A memorandum sent to Hitler, dated 1st October 1942, and signed by General L?hr, von Kasche, and Gleise von Horstenau could be reduced to these points:The Croats have common interests with the Germans in the conduct of the war.1.The Croatian people can make a significant contribution militarily.2.To proceed with supporting the Paveli? government.3.To help the positive side of the Ustashas as a State organising movement, and to try to remove from their ranks all the destructive elements.4.To help to make a radical re-organisation of the NDH forces.5.To remove the misunderstandings between Italy and the NDH.The Italian activities were doubly damaging. XE "Italian activities doubly damaging" Firstly, the Croatian energies were weakened, and on the other hand the Chetniks and Partisans were strengthened as they fight for the Yugoslav aims, i.e., fight for London and Moscow.Gleise von Horstenau was appointed German Commanding General in the NDH, his main duty being to co-operate closely with the Croatian armed forces (see his letter to Paveli? dated 3rd October 1942).Finally, the heads of both Kvaterniks rolled, metaphorically speaking. Paveli? took over the Ministry of the Armed Forces and on the 13th October 1942, appointed Dr. Ljudevit Zimpermann as successor to young Kvaternik as Director for Public Order and Security.Von Kasche informed Berlin by telegram, dated 13th October 1942, about the changes in Zagreb. The removal of Eugen Kvaternik as Minister of Police was caused by his irresponsible behaviour that destroyed the reputation of the Ustashas generally in the eyes of the population. His successor, Dr. Zimpermann XE "Zimpermann, Dr. Ljudevit" , was an experienced and energetic man and it was hoped that an improvement in the activities of the Ustasha police would occur. Dr. Vjekoslav Vran?i? took the very important position of State Counsellor.Gleise von Horstenau’s report dated 19th October stated: “The Government is unable to stop the persecutions of the Serbs pursued by the lower ranks of the Ustashas and Ustasha paramilitaries even if it wanted to. The blame for these [persecutions] is put on the Germans [by the Ustashas] and as a result the German reputation in the country is falling. In eastern Bosnia there is an increase in the activities of the Chetniks, after clearing the area around Klju?-Jajce, the repeated activities of the Partisans on line Jajce-Travnik. In Western Bosnia, West and South West of Zagreb, in Slavonia and Srijem the appearance of new communist gangs. The 718th Division and the Croatian Mountain Division are in counter-actions.“Sabotage on the rail lines of Zagreb-Belgrade, Prijedor-Sunja and Zagreb-Vara?din caused the deaths of some civilians.”Von Kasche’s memo to Paveli? dated 25th October 1942 gives the following details: "130,000 Croats work in Germany; 20,000 Germans fight in Croatia and 12,000 Croats fight on the Eastern front. In spite of this positive co-operation, certain matters are spoiling this relationship. Firstly, the Ustasha activities against Germany are painful; Germany respects the Ustasha Movement as a state organising body, but cannot overlook these actions. Such a view does not mean interference in Croatian internal affairs - on the contrary.”The anti-German feeling within the Ustasha ranks sporadically erupted, but Paveli? himself, for reasons of state, swept it under the carpet.The German Embassy in Zagreb raised the issues with the NDH Foreign Ministry “but most of these submissions were without reply.” The cleansing of the Ustasha ranks XE "Cleansing of Ustasha ranks" with a view to introducing discipline was not affected. The Ustasha method of warfare is pursued against the villages rather than against the rebels (i.e., the Serbian method). This method beefs up the rebel ranks.The Embassy got the impression, with regret, that the Ustasha institutions pretended to be the persecutors on the orders received from the Germans.The crux of the matter was that the Ustasha rank and file were fighting an anti-Yugoslav war, which war was irrelevant as far as the Germans were concerned.An extremely important political diversion occurred when a group of very prominent members of the Croatian Parliament (Sabor), Marko Do?en, Ademaga Me?i?, Dr. Mirko Ko?uti?, Dr. Marko Ver?i?, Prof. Vinko Kri?kovi?, Dr. Krunoslav Lokmer, Ferdinand Gasteiger, Stjepan Uroi?, Dr. Fran Milobar and Tomo Vojkovi? sent a memorandum to Paveli? on the 30th November 1942, in which they pointed out that the happiness on the occasion of the resurrection of the Croatian State on the 10th April 1941 was ruined by Paveli?’s signature on the Rome Agreement dated 18th May 1941 XE "Rome Agreement 18th May 1941" (giving up almost all of Dalmatia to Italy).“That signature brought about the demographic destruction of our people in Dalmatia, Lika and Krbava, the Littoral and Bosnia and Hercegovina; from that date our villages were burning, . . . bringing suffering and pain to thousands of the best of our sons; bringing persecution to our national intelligentsia; activating the organisation of the Chetniks [by the Italians] who from that date slaughtered people in our villages . . .. It brought about the emigration and deportation of our people . . . the destruction of our national economy, . . . and the dispersal of the remnants of our people in the fields and woods, mountains and caves. This general despair has been used by the enemies of the Croatian people in order to spread hatred for the new Croatian State in order to kill it, politically, morally and socially. . . . No wonder a great number of our people in Dalmatia, who are not communists but Croats and patriots, were forced to go to the woods . . . The time has come to shed the foreign influence [propaganda]. Dalmatia was the cradle of Croatianhood since the dawn of [our] history; . . . our National honour demands from us that we stop the destruction of our population in Dalmatia and Bosnia and Hercegovina. However, even the picture of our internal national and state life is not such that could put our minds at rest."“No Croat doubts that the foundation of our State was laid by the Ustasha Movement particularly by the members of the Ustasha Military [Vojnica] who gave numerous proof of their courage and readiness to sacrifice very often their own lives. Unfortunately, the ranks of the Ustashas were infiltrated during ‘the storm of the revolution’ by people with impure motives, misusing the Movement and the Croatianhood . . . and as such caused irreparable damage to the reputation and authority of the State.“As rumours about events in the [concentration] camps spread, it offended our conscience and sense for law and justice. No wonder that the population stigmatised such intrigues of some [irresponsible] elements of the Ustasha Movement . . . and tremble for their own endangered security. The cleansing of the Ustasha ranks so far has not shown sufficiently effective results to pacify our consciences and restores our sense of security.“The ambivalence of the State Government is not acceptable. It is impossible that the State Administration is in the hands of Ministers who are at the same time Ustasha functionaries. One or the other must govern the State. Permanent conflict between the two . . . has brought about the present untenable situation, which affects also the judiciary. The stories of slaughter and mistreatment in the camps and prisons circulate in public; the public believes that many individuals and groups of prisoners do not present any danger to the security of the State. It would be desirable if the members of the HSS and others now in prisons were given the opportunity to defend themselves before the regular courts. “Our armed forces could be effective only if they have the support of the people . . . Without justice . . . without faith in our own future . . . there cannot exist the spiritual-psychological foundations . . . for building up the State armed forces. The time has come for this state of affairs to be ended without delay, because it affects the existence of the State and the people, and therefore we propose the following measures:1.To clarify the status of Dalmatia and the Littoral [vis-à-vis Italy].2.We hope that the Führer would be sympathetic to our requests.3.The Croatian Parliament as a representative of the people . . . must be reorganised and become active.4.The State Administration must be cleared of all incapable and unreliable people who must be replaced by persons of honour, knowledge and capability, which clearance could restore our faith in the Law and the State.5.All prisoners . . . must be freed if found not guilty by the courts.6.The Ministry of the Interior must revisit the prisons and release from them the masses of peasants who were sent there only on the basis of ‘collective responsibility’.7.The ranks of the Domobrans and the Ustashas must be cleared of all undignified and irresponsible elements.8.All those who have broken the laws and dishonoured the interests of the Croatian people must answer for their misdeeds.9.All our energies must be put into the rebuilding of a reliable and mighty national army in which Croatian people would see their protection, a unified will, the hundreds of years old traditions, glory and pride . . . in order to bring about pacification and a return to our abandoned homes.”This outstanding document, drawn up by leading Croatian intellectuals, some of whom were of an international status, such as Professor Vinko Kri?kovi? XE "Kri?kovi?, Professor Vinko" , a constitutional lawyer, set a unique precedent in occupied Europe of that time, (only) with the exception of the sermons of Cardinal Stepinac. It goes without saying that such a cry for decency was totally absent on the other side in the ranks of the pro-Yugoslav contestants in the war for a Yugoslav utopia, particularly in the case of the Chetniks. The Croatian national anti-Yugoslav revolution, without any doubt, was infiltrated by foreign intelligence services, working hard for the break-up of the NDH. XE "Croatian national anti-Yugoslav revolution, was infiltrated by foreign intelligence services, working hard for break-up of NDH" The Memorandum would have been rather more convincing had it taken into account this important factor in its accusatory analysis. Paveli?’s reaction to this Memorandum is unknown, except that the Parliament was permanently dissolved, with his comment that “in any case it was re-established only as a transitional forum”.Gleise von Horstenau reported on the 31st October 1942 on the situation in NDH: “In Eastern Bosnia, clashes between the Ustashas and rebels are becoming more intensive. Around Bjelovar there was greater activity by the communists. The Italians withdrew the Chetniks, who had committed many crimes against the Croatian population in Hercegovina and transferred them to Eastern Hercegovina [populated by Serbs]. On the 26th October 1942 the town of Livno in Bosnia was taken by the Ustasha regiments of Col. Franceti?.”Von Kasche’s notes on the meeting with Paveli? dated 14th November 1942 State that Paveli? ordered that the detailed lists of prisoners in the concentration camps be made by first name and surname and that the commission headed by Dr. Vran?i? should investigate their guilt individually.Gleise von Horstenau, in his letter to General Col. L?hr dated 16th November 1942 expressed doubt that the rebels would be disarmed within the next few months.“The strength of the Chetniks and Partisans north of the demarcation line is 35-40,000 and below it stretches into the ‘Partisan Empire’ of 30-35,000, and even more to the South is dug in behind the barbed wire [of our dear] Italian ally” remarked Gleise ironically. “Our ally and 20,000 of their comrades [Chetniks] that it surrounded itself with won’t be easy to get rid of . . . Therefore, the status quo tactics towards the rebels, i.e., divide et impera, should be retained in which ‘impera’ will remain rather conditional. By the way, the internal situation in Croatia is, before anything else, a political question: a political U-turn would bring back home the majority of the ‘poor devils’ [Partisans]. Chetniks as ‘Great Serbs’ and ‘Yugoslavs’ are a totally different kettle of fish.” After meeting with Paveli? on the 17th November 1942, Gleise made a characteristic ironical note: “Jasenovac [concentration camp] XE "Jasenovac concentration camp" is a paradise. A Catholic parish priest died there of natural causes; all others are flourishing in the best of health, and all decisions are in the hands of the generals.”Gleise von Horstenau reported to the OKW on the 18th of November 1942, the curious news about the Italians offering ‘to return’ Dalmatia to Paveli? if the NDH proclaimed itself an Italian Protectorate and invited the Duke of Aosta (formerly of Spoleto) as the King of Croatia. Paveli? allegedly accepted the offer.At its last session on the 28th December 1942, Paveli? spoke in the Parliament explaining the problem of “responsibility within the framework of the NDH political system. I cannot resign; I cannot blame anyone . . . I take responsibility myself for everything; I don’t demand responsibility of the Ministers towards the people. The Minister is in his post while he is serving, and afterwards nobody asks him to justify himself. All the responsibility I take voluntarily myself. I take all the responsibility for the army, for the subsistence, for the policies and for the lives of the people.”In his telegram to the OKW of 13th December 1942, Gleise von Horstenau commented with his characteristic sense of humour "that after all the changes in the [Croatian] Government [i.e., the removal of the Kvaterniks] Paveli? finally realised the madness of his policy of the extermination of the Orthodox [i.e., the Serbs] or, at least, decided to postpone it for better times.”He wrote to the OKW on the 1st December 1942 with the perceptive comment:“The Italians have in mind to withdraw from the areas outside the ‘Italian part of Dalmatia’. For this purpose, local Chetniks would be strengthened by 2,000 Chetniks from Hercegovina, who would drive out the last Croats to the woods in this region. It could also come to a clash between the Partisans and Chetniks in which the Chetniks would switch to the Partisans. It is also possible that they may fuse together, taking into account the final aims of the Partisan leadership, i.e., the reconstruction of Yugoslavia.”In his report dated 4th December 1942, von Kasche wrote:“The Italians are planning the withdrawal of a whole division . . . just now when the strongest Partisan attacks on the German-Croatian positions near Jajce and Prijedor are in progress. The attitude of the Italian army shows that they are unwilling to stem the rebel gangs. The demarcation line, which should have been the line of the division for military [German-Croat-Italian] operations, became a security line for the rebels protected by the Italians.”Von Kasche advocated the strengthening of the German forces for that reason.Gleise von Horstenau, in his report dated 10th December 1942, quoted the removal of Dr. Zimpermann, the (Croatian) Director of Public Security, and the appointment of the Ustasha Dr. Filip Crvenkovi?, as a return to the old sharp Ustasha rule. Great communist activity. Jajce freed by the 718th Division. North of the River Sava a fight between Croat armed forces and the stronger communist bands is in progress XE "North of River Sava fight between Croat armed forces and stronger communist bands in progress" .Von Kasche reported on the 11the December 1942 that the Italians had abandoned Imotski and Makarska and that the Ustasha regiments had taken over.Gleise von Horstenau met Paveli? on the 12th December 1942. Paveli? opposed the recruitment of the Croatian soldiers into the German army. An inquiry into the activities of Lieutenants Milo? and Vlah in the Jasenovac camp XE "Jasenovac camp" was set up. One of them was shot – which one is not known. In exercising his ironical bent, Gleise von Horstenau pointed out that ‘only’ twelve Domobran officers and four non-commissioned officers were imprisoned, accused of spying. At the conference in Zagreb on the 15th December 1942, General L?hr, in the presence of the NDH Foreign Minister Lorkovi? reported: “The change in the situation has occurred as the people were fed up with Partisan terror; secondly, the Partisans themselves are getting tired, due to their large losses. Thirdly, the evacuation of the Italians in the Second Zone is pacifying even some [Croat] Partisans in the region, who are ready to surrender to the NDH forces. This progress could be maintained if the Croat Legionnaire Division is returned to Croatia [from the Eastern front] and is reinforced by another German Division.”The fighting value of the (Italian) Second army is insignificant. L?hr didn’t object to making a link with Tito “for the purpose of gathering information only”.At the meeting between Hitler and Ciano on the 18th December 1942, Hitler stated amongst other things that “Paveli? is the only one able to stop Croatia becoming communist and Pan-Slavist because that would amount to a catastrophe. In view of that fact, only the total destruction of all the Chetniks and the squaring of accounts with the rebel gangs by the most brutal means should be undertaken.” During 1942, 760 acts of sabotage on the railways took place in the NDH, XE "Sabotage - 760 acts - on railways took place in NDH" reported Willy Requard, von Kasche’s Deputy, on the 5th January 1943.On the 29th December 1942 a conference on the forthcoming offensive 'Operation Weiss' took place in Belgrade under the Commander in Chief of the South East, General L?hr with a view of the final destruction of the Partisans. Taking part in the action would be two German Infantry Divisions, Croatian 369 Legionnaire Division, SS Division ‘Prinz Eugen (made up of ethnic Germans); two mountain brigades of Croatian Domobrans and two brigades of Ustashas. The Italians in the south, whose duty would be to plug the escape route of the Partisans, declined to supply the reinforcement of some 20,000 Chetniks [!]. This was the weakest link in the plan. At the beginning of October 1942, after the mass murder of Croatian civilians in the village of Gati, near Omi? in Dalmatia, the Chetniks impaled the heads of the murdered children, dancing around them in a lunatic dance-macabre frenzy XE "Dance-macabre frenzy" .The torching of whole villages and their inhabitants was a routine Chetnik activity. The most monstrous case was the burning of a 68-year old Croat, Nikola Bla?evi?, on the 26th January 1943 in the village of Maovice. He was impaled and then while still alive, burned to death.The disgraceful story of the Italian-Chetnik crimes against the Croatian civilians, which began around Knin in 1941 and lasted throughout the war was part and parcel of the conquest of the Croatian province of Dalmatia, which illustrates the central role it would play in the futurist Mussolini Empire. Detailed accounts of these crimes are macabre evidence of the murderous Serbo-Italian intimacy. For example, on the 7th/8th October 1941, Chetniks cut the throats of sixteen Croats in the village of ?tikovo. At the end of July 1941 in the village of Brotnjo, the Chetniks murdered thirty-seven members of one family Ivezi?.These crimes engendered a massive ethnic cleansing XE "Massive ethnic cleansing" of mixed Croat-Serb villages so that by the end of 1941 there were more than 3,000 Croat refugees crammed into the small town of Knin under the protection of the NDH forces. Mass executions of the Croats by the Chetniks reached a peak during 1942 and 1943. During the mixed Italian-Chetnik ‘offensives’ in NDH XE "Italian-Chetnik ‘offensives’ in NDH" , Chetniks committed the most monstrous crimes. During Operation Albia, the Italians in the Bergamo division, joined by 1,000 Chetniks from Eastern Hercegovina, nominally fought the Partisans, but in fact they were murdering and plundering the Croatian population in the Biokovo region of Dalmatia. On the 29th and 30th August 1942, the Chetniks killed 137 Croat civilians, including three Catholic Priests: Josip Braenovi?, Ivan ?ondi? and Ladislav Ivankovi?.At the end of 1942, the Italian division Sassari despatched 150 Chetniks into the Split-Omi? region. From the 1st to the 5th October they murdered Croatian civilians in the villages of Dugopolje, Kotlenice, Dubrava, Gata and Donji Dolac, including 120 women, children and old people. 1,500 houses and farm buildings were plundered and set on fire.The report of the Local Committee of the Communist Party of Croatia dated 4th October 1942 addressed to its Regional Committee, described the slaughter in the village of Gati: “On the 1st October, about 200 Chetniks, led by the Italians, came into the village and commenced killing without mercy. Women were raped and mutilated. Old people and children were not spared. Many incapacitated people were burnt in their own houses. The killings were carried out with knives.” The Croatian philosopher Edo Piv?evi?, professor at Bristol University in the UK XE "Piv?evi?, Edo - professor at UK Bristol University, friend of author" , lost many relatives in that slaughter. The Italian Command ignored all protests by the NDH authorities. This gave the green light to the Chetniks to intensify their criminal activities.Soon afterwards, the Italian ‘penal expedition’, consisting of 360 Chetniks, entered the village of Bitelic on the 21st October 1942, and slaughtered 29 Croats, burned some 200 houses and plundered what they could.The demonology of the Italian-Chetnik Antante reached a peak in January 1943 when Chetniks made ‘a bloody visit to Vrlika’ with the cry “Burn everything Catholic” on the instigation of the Catholic Italian division Bergamo! From the initial strategy to capture authentic Communist Partisans the Italian-Chetnik forces (which met with only minor Partisan resistance) moved towards much softer targets, i.e., the Croatian population in Vrlika, Maovice, Kosore, and Kijevo, killing 60 people.The more provocative raids and the slide into total moral irresponsibility featured at the beginning of 1943 and 1944. 2,500 Hercegovinian Chetniks, retreating from Knin to Imotski in Dalmatia on the 3rd/4th March 1943, killed 32 Croat civilians, plundered and burned the houses and raped the women. In February 1944, the Chetniks killed thirty Croats in the village of Dubrava; on the 4th April they killed 9 Croats in the village of Necmen; on the 12th September 1944 they killed 27 Croat civilians in the Skradin region.There are many intriguing gaps in the documentation of the Chetnik crimes in NDH during 1941-45 XE "Many intriguing gaps in documentation of Chetnik crimes in NDH during 1941-45" that could provide a full insight into the relationship between the Italians and the Chetniks. Any hope of salvaging some of the obituaries of these innocent people was buried by the Italian cover-up. Even so, some 3,000 murdered civilians were identified by name and date of death, two thirds of them being Croats.Dr. Igor Grabovac XE "Grabovac, Dr. Igor" made the analysis of these crimes. He established that 57% of the Chetnik victims were murdered in Dalmatia where Italian and Serbian fascism work in tandem.The demographic studies of Professor Vladimir ?erjavi? concluded that the Chetniks murdered some 20,000 Croats in the period 1941-45, with the aim of achieving the Great-homogeneous-Serbia. 4.3.9Ustasha reacts to Chetniks XE "Ustasha reacts to Chetniks" The Kingdom of Yugoslavia became a breeding ground for the transformation of certain Croatian radical groups in the pre-Second World War and wartime Croatian history (1941-45) into the uncompromising revolutionaries, the Ustashas. As the violence increased, so did the revolutionary organisation in turn grow more violent. This was rather surprising, as no other people are more genial, more democratic, and more anti-totalitarian than are the Croats. This was very unlike their immediate neighbours, the Serbs, who are such eager practitioners of violence, historically speaking, a fact of which they are hugely proud. This was confirmed again world-wide on television screens during the Croat-Serbian war of 1991-95. A simplistic attempt to capture the authentic nature of the Ustasha character came from that violent individual-turned philosopher, Djilas, who observed the wartime (1941-45) Ustasha violence from the vantage point of the pro-Yugoslav communist contestant in that conflict and showed how little he had really understood of its reality within the framework of the Yugoslav utopian system: " . . . They are killing every Serb in sight,” the peasants lamented. “Like cattle - a blow to the head, then down the ditch. They are mostly Turks [Bosnian Muslims]. Their time has come. They want to wipe out the poor Serbian people.” For me this was a new story. Later, in the course of the war, I was to hear it many times and almost always the same: a village surprised and the men all bound, murdered, and thrown into the ditch. Religious and ideological murders do not require any imagination, just efficiency: in this lies all the horror and - for the victims - 'relief'. Yet I was not as shocked as I should have been. I was already familiar with the Ustasha ideology - an amalgam of primitive Croatian nationalism with modern fascist totalitarianism. While in prison I had come to know many leading Ustashas. I had followed the evolution of their ideology from militant separatism to fascism and total anti-Serbianism."A passage like this detracts from what Djilas would have us believe. It pretends to provide an historical, social and political explanation for the nature of the revenge murders of the Serbs by the Bosnian Muslims (Turks) in 1941-45. XE "Historical, social and political explanation for nature of revenge murders of Serbs by Bosnian Muslims (Turks) in 1941-45" It also tries to explain the role of the Ustashas as one of the contestants in the war of Yugoslav utopia. Yet illustrations from Djilas’s own life, the blazing adjectives he sticks to Croatian nationalism and the plethora of anecdotal background information from his own prison days do have their dangers. This moves Djilas towards a broader simplification of the bloodshed within this contest. Djilas uses the jargon of slogan mongering, which allows him to distance himself from this carnage in which his side was functionally, inevitably, and actively implicated. In this vicious circle the Communist Partisans of all shades were no better (and perhaps even worse) than their counterparts, especially in their murderous attitude towards each other and the fate of the innocent civilians. Perhaps Djilas was losing his marbles XE "Djilas losing his marbles" . Or was he just being malicious? This did not stop him from being accepted as a 'liberal' by the delighted Western elite who uncritically shared his delusions and thus flattered the ‘National Liberation struggle’.Let us consider the case of the wartime Independent State of Croatia (NDH) apart and away from the language of slogans and undigested big ideas. The fact is that the NDH success in breaking away from the Yugoslav Utopian State in 1941 was possible only because the Yugoslav State fell apart. Be that as it may, by proclaiming its independence, Croatia became the beneficiary and, at the same time, the victim of an irrepressible mood of violence XE "Irrepressible mood of violence" (Chicago gang syndrome) inasmuch as it was not allowed to leave the Yugoslav state ‘organisation of violence’ without punishment.It was less a crime, it appears, to murder without imagination and with efficiency than to allow the Croatian people to establish their own state. It was better that all the country should perish rather than allow the Croats to decide their own future. The Independent State of Croatia, with its own Government (irrespective of its many faults), its considerable international recognition (such as it was), and its own armed forces became, for the ‘Yugoslavs’, the ogre of the year XE "Ogre of the year" in 1941.The Croato-Yugoslav war turned thus into an exogenous category.So, let's analyse it. The wartime Ustasha regime did not feel inhibited about its violent nature, in spite of the fact that it was totally out of character with the traditions of Croatian statehood. In the past, Croatian peasant rebellions for ‘the old rights’ never had much to do with carnage XE "Croatian peasant rebellions for ‘the old rights’ never had much to do with carnage" , only with a functional force in self-defence. One cannot help wondering about the Ustashas own murderous activities in this context. We have traced their origins back to the struggle against the Dictatorship of King Aleksandar on the pattern of similar European nationalist liberation movements, influenced and recognised as such even by the pre-WW2 Yugoslav Communist Party, and similar to that of the 19th century Italian Carbonari; tightly knit with a small number of individuals, whose motives suffered unavoidable aberration under war-time conditions, as a reaction to the violent attacks by the pro-Yugoslav forces against the Croatian State.As with any state, the NDH's system of 'concentrated power for violence' was entirely independent of any individual human contribution. The Yugoslav conspiracy theory about the 'inherent fascist mentality' XE "Yugoslav conspiracy theory about 'inherent fascist mentality'" of the Croatian people because of the Ustasha regime’s war-time alliance (with the Axes) is preposterous, and has been used to punish the Croats as a whole ever since for the successful break-away from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the state of organised violence par excellence. The majority of Croatian people at the time shifted away from taking any part in the conflict.4.3.10Bosnia-Hercegovina XE "Bosnia-Hercegovina" The situation in Bosnia-Hercegovina, a part of the NDH, was more complicated. XE "Situation in Bosnia-Hercegovina, part of NDH, was more complicated" The clash between the Serbian fanatical nationalism, which maintained that Bosnia-Hercegovina was a fulcrum of the Serbianhood and the Croatian national tradition, according to which there was a ‘Croatian historical right’ to Bosnia-Hercegovina sum up the essence of the Croato-Serbian conflict in BiH.Ethnic and religious factors were the unwritten forms of social consciousness in the land of mostly illiterate people. In Bosnia-Hercegovina 84% of the population were peasant sheep-breeders, with an outlaw mentality inherited from the Ottoman times. If we attempt to isolate a single aberrant factor that decimated the Bosnian-Hercegovinian Croatian and Muslim population and which can stand up to historical scrutiny, it would be the crimes of the Serbian Chetniks. The Chetnik outrages in Bosnia-Hercegovina during 1941-45 were, in essence genocide XE "Chetnik outrages in Bosnia-Hercegovina during 1941-45 were, in essence genocide" , in scope and scale similar to that carried out during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, yet remained, by force of circumstances, unreported. In Communist Yugoslavia, this remained ‘a taboo subject’ until the 1980’s, although the leading Communists in the CKJ were the fiercest Chetnik antagonists, at least on paper. The intention may have been to placate the Serbs on whose wartime support Tito largely depended. Chetnik war crimes were swept under the carpet and only mentioned declaratively without quoting facts and figures. At the same time, Ustasha war crimes were not only voluminously elaborated but also exaggerated out of all proportion.The silence on the Chetnik crimes had a common denominator in the Chetnik-Partisan ideological link within the Yugoslav utopianism. Within the ruling Communist Party in Yugoslavia the Serbs were most numerous. The best illustration for this was a nonchalant switch by the Serbs from Chetnik to Partisan ranks and vice versa, Slobodan Milo?evi? being the best example.The Croats, as a Catholic, anti-communist and anti-Yugoslav nation, were absolutely and totally under-represented in the highest ranks of the communist circles, whose cynicism led them to defame “the Croats as a genocidal nation”. Only after 1990, when Croatia again became an independent State, XE " Croatia again became an independent State after 1990" did its enormous human losses since 1918 come to light. Even so, to date, there has been no comprehensive study carried out on this delicate subject.From its foundation in 1902, the Chetnik organisation was the chief instrument of Serbian expansionist policies. The Police and the Army in the Kingdom of Serbia, at their most hermetic, were well-trusted institutions for squaring accounts with the political opponents of centralism, with the King at its head. The Chetnik organisation in Bosnia-Hercegovina was established in 1921 with the single aim of directing its incorporation into Great-Serbia.Chetnik activities in Bosnia-Hercegovina focused on inflaming hatred towards the Croats and Muslims as enemies of the Yugoslav national and state unity.In 1925 in Sarajevo, all the Chetnik organisations fused into ‘The Union of Serbian Chetniks, Petar Mrkonji? for the King and Fatherland’ under the leadership of the notorious Puni?a Ra?i? (the assassin of the Croatian Leader, Stjepan Radi?, and other Croat MP’s in the Belgrade Assembly in 1928).At the head of this new enlarged Chetnik organisation in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia from 1929-32 was the fanatic Ilija Trifunovi?-Bir?anin XE "Trifunovi?-Bir?anin, Ilija" and from 1932, Kosta Pe?anac XE "Pe?anac, Kosta " . In 1932, there were as many as 500,000 members in this organisation. The youth branch in Bosnia-Hercegovina – the so-called SRNAO – had 60,000 members. A fraternal branch of the Chetnik organisation – called ORJUNA – operating in Croatia, consisted of some of the grimmest Yugoslav nationalists.The establishment of the Croatian Ustasha Revolutionary organisation in 1929, in the footsteps of the rising Great-Serbian nationalism, proves that Ustashism was inevitable and inseparable from, and indeed a constituent pact, of the Yugoslav utopian vicious circle. The ethnic polarisation at the political party level led to the establishment of the Muslim party, the JMO (Yugoslav Muslim Organisation) and the Croatian Peasant Party (the HSS).In 1939, under the threat of Hitler’s invasion, the Serbs were forced to negotiate with the Croats. With the Cvetkovi?-Ma?ek Agreement XE "Cvetkovi?-Ma?ek Agreement" , and an autonomous Croatian principality (Banovina) within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in its pocket, Croatia gained 13 districts in Bosnia-Hercegovina, and the district of ?id in Vojvodina, inhabited by Croatian majorities. At the same time, Croatia lost in the deal its historical regions of Srijem and Boka Kotorska, which regions Tito ‘presented’ to Serbia and Montenegro after WW2. Map Required.The Croatian Banovina had a population of 4,025,601 (70% Croats, 19% Serbs, 4% Muslims and 7% others) and an area of 65,456 km2. The new political arrangement had far-reaching implications on the future activities of the contestants in the conflict of the Yugoslav utopia.The HSS maintained that the whole of Bosnia-Hercegovina was de facto an historical Croatian territory and that the new Croatian Banovina was only the first step in the direction of the BiH unification with Croatia.The Ustashas took a more radical and pragmatic view that this arrangement was a hotchpotch ‘Yugoslav compromise’, which failed to result in an Independent Croatian State. The Muslims, predictably, took the view that the whole of Bosnia-Hercegovina was their own dowry. On the 3rd April 1941, Dr. D?afer Kulenovi? (a Muslim politician who would later become an NDH Minister) XE "Kulenovi?, Dr. D?afer - Muslim politician who would later become an NDH Minister)" demanded that Bosnia-Hercegovina become an independent state under the protection of Italy. A second faction of the JMO, under Uzeir-Aga Had?ihasanovi?, and in alliance with the Serbs, demanded autonomy for Bosnia-Hercegovina under a German protectorate in order to frustrate the creation of the NDH, which was looming on the horizon.The Communist Party of Yugoslavia ‘greeted’ the establishment of the Croatian Banovina as the first step towards the ‘Federal Yugoslavia’ but rejected the ‘annexation’ of parts of Bosnia-Hercegovina into its frontiers.All the Serbian political parties, including the Yugoslav Army and the Serbian Orthodox Church, were up in arms against this agreement. The movement of Srbi na Okup (Serbs gather together) demanded that Yugoslavia, with the exception of Slovenia, be lumped together under the name of ‘the Serbian lands’. These ‘Serbian lands’ were to include large parts of the Croatian-Banovina that the Serbs maintained were theirs. Fortunately, this utopian aim ended with the break-up of the Kingdom on the 10th April 1941.Yet, even during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war and after Dayton, the Serbs have never mentally abandoned this aim. Just before the capitulation of Yugoslavia in April 1941, as if to reinforce their Great-Serbian plans, the Chetniks committed outrageous crimes against the Croat and Muslim population in Bosnia-Hercegovina.The period between 1921 and 1941 was the preparatory period for the Apocalypse of 1941-45 during which the political and national conflicts came to a pitch. Even so, the Chetniks in Bosnia-Hercegovina didn't have it all their own way and in 1941 they were beaten by the Ustashas, and later on by the Partisans. Eventually, with the help of the Chetniks from Serbia, the Italians and even the Germans, they gradually recovered. In Bosnia, they were led mainly by the officers of the old Royal Yugoslav Army and members of the old Great-Serbian and Yugoslav nationalist organisations.The establishment of the NDH, which incorporated Bosnia-Hercegovina XE "Establishment of NDH, which incorporated Bosnia-Hercegovina" , shocked the Serbs. The NDH had a population of 6,640,000 and out of that total, 30% were Serbs. Within Bosnia-Hercegovina itself, there were 1,031,446 Serbs, 645,175 Muslims, 496,013 Croats, 10,447 Jews, and 18,000 others (figures based on the census of 1931). The Ustasha policy of national exclusivism found the greatest opposition in Bosnia-Hercegovina XE "Ustasha policy of national exclusivism found greatest opposition in Bosnia-Hercegovina" . Paveli? adopted the romantic ideas of Ante Star?evi? for the Bosnian-Hercegovinian Muslims as the purest ‘Croatian Stock’, or in the popular parlance Cvijet Hrvatskog Naroda (Croatian flowers). Right or wrong, this policy put the majority of the Muslims on the side of the NDH yet not necessarily on the side of the Ustasha regime itself.D?afer Kulenovi?, leader of the JMO (The Yugoslav Muslim Organisation), switched to the Ustasha regime in 1941 and became a Minister. Croatian politicians from the HSS (Croatian Peasant Party in BiH) greeted the establishment of the NDH enthusiastically but while remaining ideologically inimical to the Ustasha regime.The Chetniks could not accept the NDH XE "Chetniks could not accept NDH" , or any other form of Croatian State, on any basis. They maintained that 90% of the NDH was Great-Serbian territory. The catch was that only a massive ethnic cleansing and the genocide of the Croats and Muslims could have realised such a utopian belief.The first Chetnik murders were carried out only three days after the proclamation of the NDH on the 10th April 1941 and long before the Ustashas pounced on the Serbs. From the 13th to the 15th April 1941 the Chetniks murdered twenty Croats and five Muslims in the ?apljina region in Hercegovina and set fire to forty houses. On the 15th April 1941, in the villages of ?im and Ili?i, they murdered five Croat civilians and burned down all the houses. On the 13th and 14th October 1941, the Chetniks murdered seventeen Serbian civilians (those who had accepted the NDH) near the town of Derventa in northern Bosnia-Hercegovina.This kicked off the later indiscriminate slaughter. After recovering from the initial shock, (the fall of Yugoslavia and the creation of the NDH XE "Fall of Yugoslavia and creation of NDH" ) two months later the Chetniks and the Communists commenced organised armed insurrections against the new State.On the 30th June 1941, Stevan Moljevi?, the Chief Chetnik ideologist, produced a notorious utopian programme under the title The Homogeneous Serbia. As a matter of fact, “the first Ustasha concentration camp was established only some four months after this Chetnik early outrage."In a letter dated February 1942 and addressed to Dragi?a Vasi?, Moljevi? specified that Croats from the imaginary Great Serbia “will be transferred to the remnants of Croatia and the Muslims expelled to Turkey or Albania; in this connection our [Yugoslav emigrant] government in London must work out the details with the Turkish Government and, of course, the English must give us a helping hand”.In June 1941, the leading Chetnik, ‘Duke’ Jevdjevi?, sent a promemoriam to the Italian occupying General R. Dalmazzo, requesting the Italian occupation of Bosnia-Hercegovina and its annexation to Italy. Nothing happened in that direction as the Germans put a stop to it.4.3.11The Serb view of the NDHThe partial deportation of the Serbs from the NDH XE "Deportation of the Serbs from NDH" (coded as exchange of population) was a part of the NDH regime’s ‘Serbian solution’ (a method which, by the way, was a copy of Great-Serbian plan of long standing) – propelled without any doubt by the Reich’s policy of the exchange of populations within the New Europe.That this was the case was confirmed by the NDH Minister Mile Budak’s statement in the Yugoslav Communist Court on the 26th May 1945: “I have heard here repeatedly that I once said: scoundrels [i.e., Serbs] get lost over the river Drina [i.e., the Serbian frontier]; I cannot remember ever having said that, but even if I did, it would have been only an insult in bad taste, and proof that it never occurred to me that the Croato-Serbian conflict could be resolved by killing, but only with the mutual exchange of populations”.The idea, of course, was not a new one. The British in India and Pakistan practiced it as recently as 1945-55. At a conference in Zagreb on the 4th June 1941 between the representatives of the Reich and those from the NDH, it was agreed to deport Slovenes from Austria to the NDH and the Serbs from the NDH to Serbia on an equal basis. ‘The NDH State Directorate for Renewal’ was the office in charge of these moves. However, the Germans complained that the NDH regime did not stick to the agreed proportions and was getting rid of more Serbs than agreed. Although the musings of the Yugoslav communist historian F. Jeli?-Buti? operate in the realm of the ambiguous, phrases such as “According to some German data” there were 137,000 Serbian refugees and deportees from the NDH in Serbia, “however, it seems that the number was even higher”. According to the official NDH ledgers, they seem to be realistic, and relatively small. Up to the 25th August 1941 there were only 13,243 persons deported from the NDH to Serbia. XE "Only 13,243 persons deported from NDH to Serbia." These deportations led to some serious disagreements between the NDH government and the Reich.For example, the infamous Heydrich, for whom the exchange of populations was a main preoccupation, in a telegram to Ribbentrop XE "Ribbentrop" on the 26th June 1941 complained that ‘this matter’ in the South is at a standstill. The NDH deported 118,110 people to Serbia, legally or illegally, according to the German records, should be taken as correct, taking into account the German pedantry. In return, the NDH accepted only 38,641 persons from the Reich and Serbia. Heydrich referred to Himmler’s order for the transfer of 12,000 Volksdeutscher (ethnic Germans) from the NDH to Austria and 45,000 Slovenes from Austria to the NDH, which according to him was frustrated because "the Government of NDH refuses to accept the Slovenes. As a result, the Fuhrer’s order was put into question. Heydrich therefore requests Ribbentrop to influence the NDH government to receive the Volksdeutscher before the winter”.On the 8th June 1941 the Italian Ambassador Casertano in Zagreb reported to Rome “that yesterday about 1,000 persons [communists, Serbs and Jews] were imprisoned, which action was supported by the German police. [The Croatian] Public opinion shows signs of displeasure at the involvement of the German police”.In July and August of 1941, in all the regions of the NDH populated by the Serbs, combined Chetnik-Partisan rebellions, led by the KPJ, were in the offing. In some regions the Chetniks led them. (Vlasenica and Srebrenica in Bosnia-Hercegovina.) Very soon these rebellions fell apart: the communists harangued under the slogan of the ‘National Liberation and Anti-Fascism’ and the Chetniks under that of ‘Great-Serbia’. The communist propaganda declared that the reasons for the rebellions in both cases were the Ustasha crimes against the Serbs, for which the whole Croatian population was blamed. On 1st July 1941, the Ustashas shot eight leading communists who had been held in the Kerestinec Manor House prison XE "Kerestinec Manor House prison" . On the 9th July 1941, the Zagreb Communist Organisation organised the escape of the remaining prisoners. The first group of twenty-five were captured and shot or committed suicide on the 14th July; the rest were pursued and shot. Forty-four were imprisoned in Zagreb, court-marshalled, and shot. In that way Tito and the pro-Yugoslav KPJ conveniently got rid of the ‘Croatian’ communist rivals by Ustasha proxy.On the 5th August 1941, the communists attacked the Ustasha militia at the University of Zagreb. As a consequence, 98 Croatian and 87 Jewish communist hostages were shot, the German Ambassador von Kasche informed the Foreign Ministry in Berlin on the 7th August 1941. 4.4The Yugoslav ?migré Government in London XE "Yugoslav ?migré Government in London" The Yugoslav ?migré Government in London was recognised by the USA and Great Britain immediately and by the Soviet Union in July 1941.The Atlantic Charter of 14th August 1941 defined the aims of the ‘anti-fascist coalition’, one of which was the renewal of all the occupied states in Europe, including Yugoslavia. This gave the Chetniks an international legitimacy in pursuit of genocide. At the same time, the war within the war of the Yugoslav utopia between the Chetniks and the communists was carried out exclusively on the territory of the NDH. The British and the Americans actively supported the Chetniks “until 1944, in spite of the fact that the intelligence services of these two countries were well informed about the true nature of their criminal activities”.In September 1941 Dra?a Mihajlovi? firmed up his utopian plans in a Memorandum addressed to the Yugoslav ?migré Government in London:1.To fix the new frontiers of the Great Serbia.2.To activate a radical [ethnic] cleansing of towns of Croats and Muslims and resettle them with Serbs.3.To activate ethnic cleansing and shifting of Croat and Muslim village populations in order to achieve Serbian homogeneity.4.To complete the ‘final solution’ of the ‘Muslim’ problem. In the instruction to the Chetnik regiments of 20th December 1941, Mihajlovi? became even more explicit: “To create a Great Yugoslavia and within it a Great Serbia, including Montenegro, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Srijem, Banat, and Ba?ka . . .”“To ethnically cleanse the State territory of all national minorities.”“To create a common frontier between Montenegro and Serbia, and Serbia and Slovenia by means of ethnic cleansing of Muslims from Sandjak, and Muslims and Catholics from Bosnia-Hercegovina.”“To punish all Ustashas and Muslims.”The satanisation of the Croats by the Yugoslav ?migré Government, as the Chetnik mouthpiece in London, meant in practice a blessing on the Chetnik genocide. XE "Satanisation of Croats by Yugoslav ?migré Government meant a blessing on Chetnik genocide" The Allies, without comment, swallowed the Chetnik propaganda. Already in 1941, London accused the Croats of killing 382,000 Serbs. In 1942, this number was increased to 518,000 and in October of the same year it reached a peak of 600,000. In 1943 the figure rocketed sky high to 800,000 and by the end of the war to more than one million.The British were particularly sympathetic to the ‘information’ emanating from their favourite protégés XE "British sympathetic to ‘information’ emanating from their favourite protégés" . On the 3rd October 1942, F.G. d’Arcy Osborne, British Envoy to the Vatican, informed Msgr. Tardini that Paveli?’s regime was responsible for the killing of no more nor less than 600,000 Serbs. This ‘data’ was accepted by the US without any verification.So far, the only scientifically-researched document quoting the true number of victims during the Second World War in the whole of ex-Yugoslavia was 597,323. Out of this number 49,602 people died in Jasenovac concentration camp.The total losses of the Second World War between 1941 and 1945 on the territory of the present Republic of Croatia (killed and disappeared) were 194,749 and in Bosnia-Hercegovina 177,045. The total losses on the territory of NDH (without Istria and Srijem) were 371,794 people, i.e., 2.66% (of the population) for the whole of Yugoslavia.According to door-to-door statistical research carried out in 1964 (during communist Yugoslavia), 89,851 people died and disappeared in the 13 largest concentration camps in Croatia and Serbia.The exaggerated figures about Serbian wartime victims in the NDH XE "Exaggerated figures about Serbian wartime victims in NDH" are more or less synchronised in the Chetnik and Communist propaganda ledgers. The difference between these two sources occurs only in the emphasis – for the Chetniks all the victims were only Serbs and for the Communist the victims were mainly Serbs, but also Jews, Gypsies and anti-NDH Croats and Muslims.The fantasy game with the exaggerated number of Serbian victims in the NDH was also taken over by the German and Italian intelligence services for their own purposes. This was understandable if one takes into account that both of these services co-operated directly or indirectly with the Chetniks in the persecution of Croats and Muslims. Given that the Germans and Italians were formally the NDH ‘allies’, their figures in the international statistics enjoy a solid reputation of being ‘objective’ and thus support the conspiracy theory about the genocidal nature of the Croats.The Chetnik policy of swallowing up Bosnia-Hercegovina into a Great Serbia XE "Chetnik policy of swallowing up Bosnia-Hercegovina into Great Serbia" had to include first and foremost the 'final solution' of ‘the Muslim question’. Privately, among the faithful, that problem would be solved in the traditional Chetnik way with Kamas (the Chetnik long knives). Publicly, the Chetniks made a feeble effort to flannel the Muslims. For example, Mustafa Mulali?, a former Muslim MP in the Belgrade Assembly, was made a vice-president of the Serbian Chetnik movement of RAVNA GORA (notorious headquarters of Dra?a Mihajlovi?). His duty was to persuade the Muslims to join the Serbian Federation.Numerous authentic documents prove without any doubt that the elimination of Muslims was an elaborate Chetnik plan, in which the Muslims were depicted as a foreign element, 'Turks', and an internal enemy, which had to be destroyed with all the means at the Chetnik disposal.The Italian (and sometimes the German) occupying forces on the territory of the NDH between 1941 and 1943, playing the role of a ‘perfidious ally’ of the NDH regime, armed, fed and supplied the Chetnik regiments, particularly in Bosnia-Hercegovina, i.e., they provided them with ‘the necessary means’ for getting rid of the Croats and Muslims.More significantly, however, there was no particular imagination in this policy except for the use of the stale divide et impera approach, which benefited only the communists.Already in September and October 1941, the Italians had taken over the NDH occupation Zones II and III, XE "Italians had taken over NDH occupation Zones II and III" and the NDH regime was forced to remove all its military units and the civil administration.Thus, the wildly advertised ‘Ustasha crimes’ in these two most volatile zones with a large Serbian population could not possibly have taken place during this period of time (September 1941 to July 1942). The Italians took over the command of the Chetnik formations in order to resist the Partisans and neutralise the NDH regime.On the 13th September 1941, the German Plenipotentiary General in Zagreb, Gleise von Horstenau, XE "German Plenipotentiary General in Zagreb, Gleise von Horstenau" informed the German Commandant of the South East that “the Chetniks co-operate with the Italian troops”. On the 11th November 1941, the Italians, after their withdrawal, gave the Chetniks the green light to take control of the regions of ?ajni?e and Fo?a (Eastern Bosnia). The Chetniks thus controlled eight towns and shared control with the Partisans of a further three. In all, there were at the time some 13,000 Chetniks in 15 regiments and some 20,000 Partisans in Bosnia-Hercegovina. The Chetniks, who joined the German and Italian offensives against the Partisans, had thus strengthened the status of the ‘Yugoslav Army in the homeland’, led by Dra?a Mihajlovi?. This was the most critical period for the Partisans. At the end of 1942, 20,000 Chetniks from Bosnia-Hercegovina were incorporated into the Italian military formations. Quoting only the figures robs this story of a good deal of its complexity.The irony is that the NDH government was paying for the upkeep of the Italian forces and in the circumstances was also paying indirectly for the upkeep of its mortal enemy, the Chetniks.After the withdrawal of the Italians from Zones II and III XE "Withdrawal of the Italians from Zones II and III" in mid-1942 the German and NDH forces took over and, on the pretext of fighting against the Partisans, were lumbered also with the maintenance of the Chetniks. This in turn meant the de facto recognition of the NDH government by the Chetniks, and the price was exorbitant.Even so, no sane person expected the Chetniks to keep to their obligations, and their plundering and murdering of the Croat and Muslim civilians went ahead as normal. Now the Partisans, rather than the Ustashas, became formally the Chetnik enemy no. 1.The year 1943 represented the crossroad in the relations between the contestants in the war for the achievement of the Yugoslav utopian aim. On one side the Partisans and Chetniks, and their chief enemy on the other, the NDH government forces. Due to German setbacks in North Africa and the strengthening of the Partisans, supplies of raw materials for the German war industry from the NDH (mainly from Bosnia-Hercegovina) were seriously impeded. For this reason, the Germans led a massive offensive against the Partisans, with the uneven support of the Italians, NDH forces and Chetniks.The Chetnik aim was the destruction of the NDH XE "Chetnik aim the destruction of NDH" on the one hand, and the Partisans on the other. Some 20,000 Chetniks from Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia joined the fight against the Partisans in Bosnia-Hercegovina. As it happened, the Chetniks were thoroughly beaten by the Partisans in the battles on the rivers Drina, Neretva and Sutjeska. After the capitulation of Italy in 1943, only 15,000 Chetniks remained in Bosnia-Hercegovina – a large number of these switched to the Partisans with whom they shared the Yugoslav utopian aim, although ideologically they were each other's mortal enemies.In line with Hitler’s order of 29th October 1943 in which he approved the military collaboration with the ‘nationalist anti-communist forces in the South-East’, the Germans continued to supply the Chetniks right up to the end of the war and as a result enabled them to pursue ‘small-scale’ murders of Croat and Muslim civilians in Bosnia-Hercegovina. In Eastern Bosnia, there remained some 24,000, and in western and central Bosnia some 13,000 Chetniks confronted by 40,000 Partisans.At the very end of the war in March 1945, the Germans distributed a force of 32,000 Chetniks into the valley of the River Bosnia along the main railway line Sarajevo-Brod in order to facilitate their withdrawal from the south east Balkans. The Montenegrin Chetniks who split from Dra?a Mihajlovi?’s forces were pushing westwards and were intercepted by the Ustashas who decimated them at Lijev?e Polje. The consequence of this was the total collapse of the Montenegrin Chetnik movement and the establishment of the so-called National Army of Montenegro, which formally joined the NDH armed forces fighting the Partisans. Between the 13th April and 18th of May 1945, Mihajlovi?’s Chetniks, escaping to Serbia, XE "Mihajlovi?’s Chetniks, escaping to Serbia" suffered total defeat by the Partisans at Zelengora with the loss of 9,000 dead and imprisoned men. The communist Yugoslav army pursued the remnants of the Chetnik gangs until 1947.Some 100,000 Great-Serbs passed through the Chetnik ranks during the Second World War. The Chetnik war crimes could be slotted into three clearly defined periods:1.April 1941 to July 1942.2.August to December 19423.January to October 1943.The uprising of the Serbs against the new Croatian State in April 1941 in Bosnia-Hercegovina XE "Uprising of Serbs against new Croatian State in April 1941 in Bosnia-Hercegovina" included both the pro-Yugoslav forces, the Chetniks and the Partisans. However, the official Yugoslav history of the NOP pooh-poohs the Chetnik contribution in these events. The NDH forces were too weak to stem this uprising. How far the NDH should carry the can for the violence at this time is a question that still needs exploring. However one looks at it, it was only the 'contribution' by one of the contestants in the inevitable violence in the war for the Yugoslav utopia. So whose activities mattered most when the final balance of lives and deaths in this contest is drawn up?The Chetniks and communist Partisans, as the protagonists of the Yugoslav utopian aim, were themselves clinched in a self-destructive conflict of their own, whose purpose changed with the passage of time. Their mutual slaughter was kept more or less in balance, commensurate with their ideological appetite and strategic necessities. In spite of that, they were left with plenty of time on their hands to focus their murderous talents onto the slaughter of the Croat and Muslim civilians XE "Slaughter of Croat and Muslim civilians" , unable, as they were to win the war against the NDH armed forces, until the very end in 1945.An early example of this approach occurred in the ‘liberated territory’ of the NDH in Bosnian Krajina (Drvar). Under the communist leadership the uprising commenced there in July 1941, only 3 months after the establishment of the NDH. At that time 62 Croat civilians were murdered in Bosansko Grahovo. The Chetniks, in their ?ubara (sheepskin hats) emblazoned with the skull and crossbones insignia, and the Communists, with five-pointed red stars on their peak caps, apart from that were indistinguishable from each other. As far as the NDH regime was concerned, they were all simply criminals. Was this title justified? On the 10th August 1941, the Chetniks tortured, impaled and roasted alive Juraj Gospodneti?, a Croat Catholic Parish Priest in Grahovo, in the presence of his mother. The Reverend Gospodneti?, from an aristocratic family, was a direct descendant of the Archbishop of Split, de Dominis, who was Dean of Windsor in England (1618-1624).Before the Second World War, the small town of Drvar in Western Bosnia had 800 Croat inhabitants. On the first day of the 'uprising' – 27th July 1941 – 300 Croats were murdered by their Serbian neighbours. On the same day, the Serbs attacked in the village of Trubar a train carrying Croat pilgrims, who were accompanied by their Parish Priest Msgr. Waldemar Maximilian Nestor, as they were returning home from the celebration of St. Anthony fest in Knin. All were murdered, including the priest who was decapitated and had his head impaled. This monstrous crime was, later in communist Yugoslavia, celebrated as a state holiday – i.e., the day of the uprising of the people of Bosnia-Hercegovina against fascism.In August 1941, the Chetniks led by the Duke Dragan Pe?anac murdered several Croatian families in the village of Ostrelj. On that occasion, the Catholic church of St. Ana was demolished. Out of 800 Croats in the village, only twenty remained alive. They were all of them communists.On the 2nd August 1941, in the same region, in the ethnically mixed town of Krnjeu?a, which had a population of 1,244 Croats, the Chetniks murdered all those who failed to escape. The Catholic Parish Priest, Kre?imir Bari?i? was burned alive in his own Church.It is not surprising that many years later, in 1949, the communist authorities demolished the remaining ancient ‘fascist’ Catholic churches in Drvar and Bosanski Petrovac in order to placate the Serbs.In the township of Brotnjo, 37 members of the Croatian clan ‘Ivezi?’ were murdered on the 28th July 1941. At the same time, 55 Croat civilians were killed in Bori?evac.The Chetniks and Partisans attacked the town of Kulen Vakuf on 5th September 1941. Out of 3,000 people, mainly Muslims, only about 500 saved themselves, the remainder were murdered. This attack was stated to be a revenge for the ‘Ustasha crimes’.The pattern of killings repeated itself throughout western Bosnia XE "Pattern of killings repeated itself throughout western Bosnia" . The ‘liberated areas’ were truly ‘liberated’ of all Croat and Muslim population.Who was a Chetnik and who was a Partisan among the Serbs in this uprising was largely a matter of opinion. They all were Great-Serbs and both movements agreed on the basic utopian aim – the recreation of Yugoslavia and the ‘liquidation’ of the Croats and Muslims. In Eastern Hercegovina on the 28th June 1941 (Vidovdan – traditional Serbian Assassination Day, in revenge for their defeat by the Turks in the Kosovo battle of 1389), the Chetniks murdered 47 Muslims and burned several villages near Gacko. On the 28th August 1941, the Chetniks killed 300 Muslims in Dabar and on the 29th August, near Bile?a they killed 40 Muslims.On the 3rd September 1941, near Stolac, they killed and threw into a precipice 400 Muslim civilians.In the region of Divin, there was a similar slaughter of 425 civilians.The Serbian 'uprising' XE "Serbian 'uprising'" that was supposedly directed against the Ustasha regime was, in fact, a planned genocide against the Muslim and Croat civilians. In Eastern Bosnia in October and November 1941, the Chetniks murdered 1,000 Muslims in the township of Medjedja.On the bridge in Vi?egrad according to a report dated 3rd September 1941 addressed to the Muslim religious leader, Reis-ul-Ulema in Sarajevo, 2,500 Muslims were murdered.On the 6th August 1941, in the Visoko and Jajce region the Chetniks burned down several villages. At that time, the regular NDH armed forces were in the status nascendi and could hardly prevent these outrages. At the end of 1941, there were only 50,000 men in the NDH units.The German General in Zagreb, Gleise von Horstenau reported on the 13th September 1941 to the OKW (German High Command) coolly: “The situation in the NDH is critical. Two thirds of the country is in the hands of Italians and rebels.”4.4.1Communist HistoriansThe communist historians enumerating the Ustasha crimes were notorious for their exaggerated data. The Ante Paveli? and Usta?as study by Fikreta Jeli?-Buti?, Yugoslav Muslim communist historian, XE "Jeli?-Buti?, Fikreta - Yugoslav Muslim communist historian" Zagreb 1900, is a good example of such a practice. She re-uses too many citations and familiar material in order to reach apocalyptic conclusions, supported with many ‘abouts’ and spurious claims without documentary evidence. German researchers on the subject, on the other hand, have listed these crimes by investigating and recording the material thoroughly and, as such, they hold the most reliable documentary evidence available. With no reluctance to take stock of these crimes whatsoever, on the contrary, here is a sample of the communist figures.According to Jeli?-Buti?, the Ustashas shot 184 Serbs in the village of Gudovac near Bjelovar on the 27th and 28th April 1941. In Blagaj (Kordun), they executed ‘about’ 250 Serbian peasants. On the 11th and 12th of May 1941, they shot ‘about’ 300 Serbs in Glina. In Ljubinje (Hercegovina) ‘about’ 140 Serbs were executed on the 2nd June 1941 and three days later ‘about’ 180 Serbs in Korita (Gacko). On the 23rd June near Ljubinje ‘about’ 160, and near Gacko ‘about’ 80 Serbs were executed. On the 25th June near Stolac (Hercegovina) ‘about’ 260 Serbs were shot, and near Opuzen ‘about’ a further 280. On the 30th June ‘about’ 90 Serbs from ?apljina were shot. In June there was a mass campaign of imprisonment of the Serbs around Knin and Drni? of ‘about’ 60 Serbs in Knin and ‘about’ an additional 50 Serbs were shot. On the 19th and 20th June ‘about’ 76 Serbs in Promina were executed. Around Vrlika, Drni? and Promina, ‘about’ a further 250 Serbs were killed at the beginning of July. Around Knin ‘about’ 70 Serbs were killed up to 12th July and near Sinj ‘about’ a further 90. In July 1941, according to F. Jeli?-Buti?, “A series of new and bigger slaughters was organised. That was the time of the beginning of the armed uprising of the [Serbian] people in Croatia and Bosnia”.In the village of Suvaja (Gra?ac) ‘about’ 300 people were killed on the 1st July 1941. In the village of Grabovac (Petrinja) the Ustashas killed ‘over’ 1,200 people on the 24th and 25th July. In the period from 20th to the 27th July in Prijeboj they killed ‘several’ hundred people.In Slunj ‘about’ 80 people were killed on the 27th and 28th July and ‘about’ 180 Serbs in Vojni? on the 28th July. 50 Serbs were killed near Knin also on the 28th July. On the 29th July there occurred the killing of ‘several hundred’ Serbs in the church in Glina. ‘According to some data’ up to the end of July ‘about’ 2,000 Serbs were killed. At the same time a mass killing of ‘about’ 500 Serbs occurred in Gra?ac.The biggest slaughter occurred at the end of July in Western Bosnia XE "Biggest slaughter occurred at end of July in Western Bosnia" (Biha?, Krupa and Cazin) where ‘it is assumed’ ‘about’ 2,000 Serbs were killed and in Sanski Most ‘about’ a further 6,000. In the Serbian villages near Duvno, the Ustashas killed ‘about’ 250 people. From the 29th July there began a mass slaughter in the region of Livno, which, over the following days, ‘included over 1,000 Serbs’.The ‘assembly camps’ (sabirni logori) XE "Assembly camps (sabirni logori)" for the prisoners were turned into concentration camps similar to the well-tried Nazi pattern. These were at Jadovno (Gospi?), Stara Gradi?ka and Jasenovac established from the beginning of the summer of 1941.In November of that year, Jasenovac had four separate camps and became“the biggest concentration and liquidation camp for ‘undesirable persons of all nationalities’" (including, of course, many Croats) in accordance with the law “for dispatching the undesirable and dangerous persons into assembly and working camps dated 25th November 1941 . . . Tens of thousands of people passed through the Jasenovac camp XE "Jasenovac camp" , most of them killed in numerous slaughters”.The war for and against the Yugoslav utopia within WWII interfered with German operations. XE "War for and against Yugoslav utopia within WWII interfered with German operations" For this reason, the Germans poured an additional 12,000 soldiers into the critical area of Bosnia-Hercegovina. One could claim with a clear conscience that this war within a war, absorbing the German forces, was a God-sent gift to the Allies, and they amply encouraged it. On the 30th November 1941, the Chetnik Major Bo?ko Todorovi? signed an agreement with Italian Colonel Castagnero permitting the Chetniks to enter the towns of Fo?a and Gora?de on the 5th December 1941. They remained there until the Partisans replaced them on 20th January 1942. Yet this short period was no impediment to the Chetniks in performing yet another bloody carnival. On the three bridges of these towns, 7,000 Muslim civilians were massacred. (Note: A reprise of this outrage occurred in Srebrenica in 1995, again in the sight of the Western Powers.)In the Fo?a region from the 6th December 1941 to the 1st February 1942, 5,000 people (mainly Muslim) citizens of the NDH were killed and their villages burned to the ground. In the region of ?ajni?e, 1,500 people were murdered by the Chetniks.In the notorious Srebrenica (known from the recent Bosnian war of 1992-95) the Chetniks killed 1,000 Muslims people. They did not miss out on robbing, burning, raping and torturing. In the region of Vlasenica the Chetniks killed between 2,000–3,000 people and in Rogatica 1,000 people. In March 1942, 17,000 Muslim refugees from eastern Bosnia crammed into Sarajevo.In the spring of 1942, as a consequence of the ‘liberation’ by the Chetniks and Partisans, the towns of the NDH had to accommodate and feed some 100,000 refugees. The most heinous Chetnik crimes in this period were committed in Eastern Bosnia and Hercegovina. According to the report by the Chetnik Duke Dobroslav Jevdjevi? (a Serbian Orthodox priest) to the Chetnik Major Petar Ba?ovi? in July 1942, there were 10,000 Chetniks in Bosnia and 4,000 in Eastern Hercegovina on the ‘Italian cauldron’ (Na Kazanu Talijana).The Italians gave their blessing for the Chetnik attack on the town of Fo?a led by Zaharije Ostoji?. On the 19th August 1942 the Chetniks took Fo?a for the second time. 5,000 Muslims escaped to Sarajevo and the 3,000 remaining were slaughtered. Ostoji? reported to the Chetnik High Command on the 23rd August:“Yesterday's action completed . . . 1,000-3,000 Muslims slaughtered. My troops were good fighters, and even better plunderers . . . Muslim women were raped."The escaping refugees were machine-gunned by the Chetniks XE "Escaping refugees were machine-gunned by Chetniks" without mercy. Some 3,000 people were killed. Chetnik Commander Petar Bacovi? reported on 5th September to Dra?a Mihajlovi?: “1,200 Ustashas in uniforms and 1,000 compromised Muslims killed. . . . We had an enormous plunder. Our aim was to achieve a direct link with Serbia and we succeeded. Our losses were 4 dead and 5 wounded.”Their small losses indicate clearly that the Chetniks were facing only helpless civilians.From the 29th August to the 4th September, 1,000 Chetniks from Eastern Hercegovina were taking part in the Italian operation Alba in Biokovo region (Dalmatia), committing mass crimes. In the region of Cetina, 160 Croat civilians were murdered.Major Ba?ovi? reported about this ‘penal expedition’ to Dra?a Mihajlovi?:“Our Chetniks passed through that region, singing, under our Serbian flag and arrived at the coast of our Adriatic [!], where they raised our banner. Over 1,000 Ustashas killed – we had no losses. . . . Our Chetniks were killing all the males over 15 years of age. 17 villages burnt down.”In July 1942, Dobroslav Jevdjevi?, a Chetnik Duke, demanded that the Italian General Alessandro Lusano permit the Chetniks “to shoot 20,000 Ustashas [i.e., Croatian civilians] in Eastern Hercegovina, and also resettle all the Muslims in Asia.”28,000 Croat and Muslim civilians from the region of Eastern Hercegovina (Stolac) were ethnically cleansed.Very few pro-Serb orientated Muslims were mobilised into the ‘Muslim Chetnik Regiments’. As an exception to the rule, the Chetnik anti-Muslim hatred was forgotten for the moment XE "Chetnik anti-Muslim hatred was forgotten for moment" in order to set the Muslims and Croats against each other.The leader of the ‘Muslim Chetniks’, a certain Dr. Ismet Popovac, was not a familiar name, yet that did not prevent him from murdering 100 Croats in the region of Neretva. According to a report by the Chetnik ‘Duke’ Dobroslav Jevdjevi? to General Dra?a Mihajlovi?, during that time between 10,000 and 15,000 Croats from the Stolac region were murdered or driven away. 1,000 Croat homes were burned down and some local Muslims gave a hand in these massacres.On the 12th October 1942, the NDH Governor of ?apljina district reported to the NDH Ministry of the Interior that the previous number of 20,000 refugee Croats from Stolac was now increased by a further 5-6,000 refugees. In that way “the whole left bank of the River Neretva, from Mostar to the [Adriatic] sea, is cleansed of the Croatian population.”In the current ‘human rights’ hysteria, led by the 'liberal' and ex-communist EU governments, perhaps they should consider picking up a few of the former Italian Officers who are still alive and put them on trial for these war crimes.After they finished with Eastern Hercegovina, the Chetniks moved, with the Italian imprimatur, into Western Hercegovina and further into Bosnia. 5,500 Chetniks assembled at the Vran mountain, XE "Chetniks assembled at Vran mountain" then dispersed over large areas committing heinous crimes; in the vicinity of Mostar they killed 200 Croats and Muslims and then in the town of Prozor a further 1,716 people (340 Muslims and the rest Croats). They burned down 4,000 houses. Petar Ba?ovi? reported to Mihajlovi? on the 23rd October 1942: “In the operations at Prozor 2,000 Catholics [Croats] and Muslims had their throats cut. Our soldiers returned [from the operation] elated.” The Chetnik leaders themselves described the spirit of these occasions. The Reports dated November 1942 written by Jevdjevi? and Ba?ovi? to Mihajlovi? explained:“During the operations in Bosnia we witnessed the most bestial murders of children by our soldiers in the past 2 years, not only individual ones but of whole groups. Primeval instincts have become dominant in the [Serbian] people’s souls. At the same time we have ascertained a series of cases of ordinary plunder, but we had to turn a blind eye to that as the cult of our past and our national epic poetry is imbibed with this phenomenon”.In August 1942, in the region of Grada?ac (Northern Bosnia), the Chetniks surrounded a whole regiment of the Domobrans (Croatian Regular Army). All 70 were murdered. This was repeated also in Podunavlje (and again in Bosnia) on the 23rd August 1942 when the Chetniks murdered 96 Croatian Domobran prisoners of war.Even the Italian reports state that “mainly the older Croatian people, women and children were murdered [by the Chetniks], people who did not have any contact with the Partisans.”According to a report by the Italian General Paolo Berardi, commander of the notorious division Sasari from Knin, “every Catholic [Croat] was tortured and murdered, and afterwards their corpses were mutilated in the most disgusting way XE "Corpses were mutilated in the most disgusting way" .” Yet, the Italian general (who was presumably also a Catholic) and who was seen smiling in the photographs taken in the company of Chetnik Duke Jevdjevi? did nothing to stop these crimes. From the numerous documents now available, it is plain that 99% of the Chetnik victims were civilians.The macabre irony was that the Yugoslav ?migré Government heavily decorated Chetnik Dukes Djuji?, Ba?ovi? and Jevdjevi?. None of them appeared on the lists of any Allied War Crimes Courts in 1945. 4.4.2Germans and ItaliansGleise von Horstenau sent a confidential letter to General L?hr on the 4th January 1943 (apropos OKW instruction to kill everything alive in that action), and noted that this "instruction is giving him a great deal of a headache, not because of the humanitarian considerations, although generally speaking bloodthirstiness is not his most prominent characteristic. The Plans for the extermination are an extraordinarily difficult political problem where more could be lost than gained. In the case of those imprisoned males who cannot prove their place of origin (99% in the case of the Partisans, i.e., those who originated from Serbia and Montenegro), everything is clear. But with the indigenous Partisans who are one day Partisans and the next day ‘peaceful inhabitants’, it is difficult to apportion blame," he went on.Perhaps one idea would be to use the prisoners as reserve hostages.‘This country is well-known for its enjoyment of shooting the wrong persons as hostages’, mused the ironical Gleise von Horstenau.Von Kasche wrote to the Counsellor Hudeszek on the 7th January 1943 in connection with his continuous harping at the Ustashas. The NDH government had shown considerable success in that direction [i.e., accepting the criticism]."Naturally, sufficient time would be necessary to achieve the complete reorganisation of the Ustasha Movement," he went on.He reported again on the 10th January 1943 that the Ustasha Colonel Franceti? lost his life in an air crash in Lika (see Vran?i? in Glossary). He replied also to General L?hr with a long letter on the 13th January 1943 in which, among other matters, he referred to a meeting in the Italian Military mission in Zagreb accompanied with a glass of vermouth: 5 Italians, led by General Roatta and 4 Germans were present. Roatta stuck to the theme of the extermination in general terms. No doubt he would put that into practice, particularly because all his political philosophy in Dalmatia and Hercegovina was tied up with killing Croats and protecting the Serbs. The Germans present at the soirée were taken aback by Roatta’s vision.Roatta met Paveli? on the 10th January 1943. It transpired that Roatta had 19,000 Chetniks under his command (i.e., the right manpower for that purpose), and that they couldn’t make a single move without Roatta’s approval.Gleise von Horstenau described his visit to Kvaternik Senior who surprised him with his story about his sincere friendship with the Serbs whose killings, ordered by his son Eugen, he condemned.Weizs?cher sent a note to Ribbentrop XE "Ribbentrop" dated 15th January 1943, in which NDH Minister Ko?ak’s requested the Germans “to be extremely careful during the military operations not to treat Croatian, and particularly Muslim, villages in the same way as those of the [Serbian] ‘rebels’."The same day Gleise von Horstenau elaborated this important point and proposed a consultation with the NDH authorities on the subject of the German demand for the deportation of all the males from the area of military operations, which action would mean de facto putting them into the ranks of the Partisans XE "Putting males into ranks of Partisans" . At the meeting between Paveli? and Gleise von Horstenau on the 27th January 1943, Paveli? was keen to clear all the concentration camps in the NDH and send the inmates to labour camps in Germany. Von Kasche reported on the 27th January 1943 that ‘Operation Weiss’ was in progress, with the enemy putting up a strong resistance. Tito’s gangs were caving in and Biha? and Klju? were now in German hands.4.4.3 German and Italian OffensiveThe great offensive by the Germans and Italians XE "Great offensive by Germans and Italians" from 20th January 1943 against the Partisans included also the Chetnik formations, which would not waste this golden opportunity to ethnically cleanse the remaining Croats and Muslims in the area of the operations on the pretext that these people were Partisans. It is rather curious that in that operation they got the three leading pro-Serbian Muslim Intellectuals onto their bandwagon: Ismet Popovac, Mustafa Pa?i? and Fehim Musakadi?. They were the founders of the so-called Muslim National Chetnik Organisation, which was in the forefront of the Chetnik ethnic cleansing of the Muslim population.The Chetnik leader, Major Pavle Djuri?i?, reported to his High Command on the 10th January 1943 that the action of cleansing, ordered by the High Command, had been successfully completed: thirty-three Muslim villages were destroyed in the region of Bjelopolje; 400 Muslim fighters and some 1,000 women and children were murdered; Chetnik losses were fourteen dead and twenty-six wounded. The war of the Yugoslav utopia was thus truly in full swing.The same Djuri?i? ordered on the 29th January 1943 that his group of 6,000 Chetniks exterminate the Muslim population of the ?ajni?e region in Eastern Bosnia.The attack commenced on the 5th February 1943. Djuri?i? reported to the High Chetnik Command on the 13th February: “All the Muslim villages in the region of ?ajni?e, Fo?a and Plevlja are torched. . . . 1,200 Muslim fighters and 8,000 others, women, children and the elders are dead – our losses are 22 dead and 32 wounded.”An eyewitness testified, “that the slaughter was executed by throat-cutting, burning and raping.”This was, without doubt, the grimmest mass slaughter during WWII in Europe.The German Commandant in the NDH, General Rudolf Lüters reported to the OKW: “One must point out that the main characteristic of the Chetnik warfare consists of attacking an unarmed and weak enemy . . . the slaughter of helpless women and children for the Chetniks is a straightforward honourable and heroic act, and the executioners are considered to be heroes.”The Serbian people thus reached the lowest point in their moral degradation for the sake of the utopian aim of the Great Serbia.According to German documents, the Chetniks in the six East Bosnian and four Central Bosnian regions killed 8,400 Croats and 24,400 Muslims. At the end of January 1943, the Chetniks moved to Dalmatia and, as an afterthought, murdered a further 100 Croat civilians. In the village of Otavice they caught 86-year-old Ilija Me?trovi?, uncle of the world-famous Croatian sculptor, Ivan Me?trovi? and threw him into his burning house.The British government turned the attention of Dra?a Mihajlovi? to these crimes and suggested, with a characteristic and ironical understatement, that he should perhaps ‘soften his attitude’ towards the Muslims. (Croats, of course, were not worth mentioning XE "Croats, of course, were not worth mentioning" .)Charles de Gaulle XE "de Gaulle, Charles" , not to be outsmarted by the British on the same subject, decorated General Mihajlovi? (his comrade from L'Ecole Militaire) with the Croix de Guerre, an occasion when a monstrous slaughter and the French refinement came in balance.Partisans, if taken prisoner by the Chetniks, were killed as a rule XE "Partisans, if taken prisoner by Chetniks, were killed as a rule" . The only exceptions were the Great Serbs who infiltrated the Partisans ranks for the purpose of sabotage.The rank and file of the crypto-Partisans, i.e., the Chetniks who joined the Partisans, led many mutinies. On the 20th February 1942, a group of such crypto-Partisans killed 40 leading Partisan Commanders in the Majevica regiment.In a very revealing letter to General Col. Warlimont of the OKW dated the 15th February, 1942 Gleise von Horstenau opened his heart and mused about the various political alternatives that might reinforce the NDH sovereignty on the ground. The first alternative would be to involve the Croatian Peasant Movement (the HSS). He regretted that the Germans, in such a reorganisation, may lose Paveli? and his loss must not be taken lightly. The second alternative would be to proceed with a patched-up German-Croat relationship XE "Patched-up German-Croat relationship" , but in that case the Germans must increase their influence.Gen. Col. L?hr, in a Memorandum dated 27th February 1943, saw the only option for the “mobilisation of the local forces for the Reich and against the Partisans” in the removal of Paveli?, and his replacement by Ma?ek’s followers. The Memorandum was so radical that General Jodl didn’t dare submit it to Hitler, as he maintained that the removal of the Ustasha regime in Zagreb would be extremely risky.Von Kasche reported on the 3rd March 1943 on the Croat-Italian talks. Casertano was of the opinion that the Croats were playing Italy and Germany against each other. XE "Croats were playing Italy and Germany against each other." He said that the Il Duce asked him to inform the NDH government that if the Croat media pursues further the anti-Italian propaganda, he would react with an equally strong counter-attack. Casertano insinuated that behind this propaganda stood too many Dalmatians within the NDH Foreign Ministry.Operation Weiss XE "Operation Weiss" , as originally planned, was not a complete success. The Partisans escaped over the River Neretva to Montenegro and the Sandjak in Serbia, dragging with them 5,000 wounded.Gleise von Horstenau sent a further report to General L?hr on the 20th April 1943 on the subject of the situation in the NDH. His favourite obsession in getting rid of the Ustasha units and replacing them with the Domobran army floated in the realms of fantasy. He proposed that the Ustasha military (Vojnica) could be the base for the formation of a Third Legionnaire Division in the Reich. He also described the mission of Milovan Djilas to Zagreb. The Partisan representatives, during an exchange of prisoners on the 17th November 1942, handed him a letter for Gleise von Horstenau in which they tried hard to prove that the ‘National Liberation Army’ of Yugoslavia did not consist of bandits, but was an armed force with military discipline. Perhaps the true extent of its character will be appreciated one day. As such, their prisoners should be subject to international law. Although both von Horstenau and von Kasche were in favour of contacts with the Partisans, Hitler was absolutely against it, “because you don’t negotiate with them, you kill them”.As the Partisans held four Germans and five Croat businessmen in Jajce and also German Major Strecker with a group of soldiers, they used that as an opportunity to request the release of eleven communist intellectuals held by the Germans and Croats. On the 11th March 1943, three high ranking Partisan representatives (Ko?a Popovi?, Milovan Djilas and Vlatko Velebit) arrived at the Headquarters of the 717th German Infantry Division. They stated that they held twenty-five Germans, 120 Croats and 600 Italians. They were prepared to negotiate on the basis of ‘humanity’. “They were not fighting against the Croatian State and even less against the Germans but exclusively against the Chetniks”they stated. Col. Pfaffenrot, who questioned them, noted that the Partisan representatives also stated, “that they would be prepared to fight anyone if requested by the Germans, including the invading English.”They asked to be recognised as “participants in the war”, which General Lüters flatly rejected.As late as 12th November 1978, Tito himself referred to this event: “We had a number of German and Italian prisoners and did not know what to do with them. . . . We did not want to kill them as we adhered strictly to the letter of the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War."He, naturally, did not refer to the Croat PoWs he had murdered, XE "Titoe did not refer to Croat PoWs he had murdered," neither then nor in 1945, when virtually hundreds of thousands were liquidated in spite of the fact that the NDH was a signatory to the Geneva Convention, to which he appealed.Von Kasche informed Berlin also on 17th March 1943 that the battle near Mostar was concluded. The Partisans had 6,000 dead. He informed Berlin also on 26th March 1943 that Velebit and Djilas, the Partisan representatives, arrived in Zagreb to negotiate with Croats, Germans and Italians the exchange of prisoners.Ribbentrop XE "Ribbentrop" cut short these negotiations on the 29th March 1943. Von Kasche reported that the Partisans had lost 15,000 men in Operation Weiss.According to General Lüter's report, German and Croat forces had killed 11,915 Partisans; 616 were shot there and then; 2,506 were imprisoned, out of which 775 were taken into concentrations camps.That the German-NDH relations were not one-sided is plain from the fact that Paveli? was not taken for granted by the Germans as a yes-man.In Gleise von Horstenau’s notes about his telephone conversation with the Fuhrer’s headquarters of 20-22nd April 1943, he informed OKW about the difficulties which had to be taken into the account in dealing with the Croats, particularly with the passive resistance in the ranks of the NDH government and the Croatian Army General Headquarters.With ‘energetic pressure’ on Paveli?, little could be achieved. His method was always to say yes and then do the opposite. Von Horstenau repeatedly warned the OKW that something could be achieved only if it were spelled out to Paveli? from the highest place that he would be abandoned if he did not toe the German line XE "Paveli? would be abandoned if he did not toe the German line" . Yet according to Col. Butler in the Fuehrer’s Headquarters such a result would be difficult to achieve. On the 27th April 1943, Paveli? met Hitler in Salzburg for the third time. Discussing the military and economic relations, Paveli? pointed out that his alleged policy for the deliberate denouncement of Serbs was pure invention. Armed bandits celebrating King Peter and receiving orders from Dra?a Mihajlovi? on the territory of the NDH was not acceptable. The Führer elaborated ". . . that it is a well-known fact that the Serbs have always been troublemakers and that they are quarrelsome. Let’s face it”, he said, “the Reich made extraordinary favours to the Yugoslavs. It went as far as offering them Salonika in case of the liquidation of Greece. Nothing was enough for them. In spite of profitable economic relations before the war, the coup d’etat occurred in Belgrade [27th March 1941]. There is an old song: “First the Tzar’s roubles then the Soviet roubles caused the troubles in Belgrade". The English pounds and the French francs followed in their footsteps. Serbian intrigues in the past were directed against Austria-Hungary, and now they are directed against the Reich."Hitler went on that “he followed the development of the situation in Croatia with great interest . . . recent history has made me an unintentional factor in the liberation of Croatia, because I really didn’t have any intention to attack Yugoslavia.”Paveli? mentioned the politikants, people sitting in Belgrade cafes forming and deposing governments. Even Croatia fell under their influence; they distributed leaflets speculating whether Croatia would fall under German or Italian influence if the Axis wins the war or under Russian or English influence if it lost. Hitler agreed that even in Germany there were many people like that – ‘idle politikants’.Von Kasche informed Ribbentrop XE "Ribbentrop" on 3rd May 1943 that Paveli? would receive Himmler at 3 p.m. The subject of the talks – nothing particularly new, but they would be useful for future relations.4.4.4Operation Schwarz XE "Operation Schwarz commenced on 15th May 1943"The original Axis plans for 1943 called for operation WEISS I-III to eliminate partisans followed by SCHWARZ, which called for the disarming of Chetniks in Italian occupation zone, who were completely enlisted in Italian Voluntary Anti-Communist Militia (Milizia Volontaria Anti-Comunista - MVAC), since during WIESS II partisans annihilated most of Chetniks and had broken through into eastern Herzegovina and Montenegro, WIESS III was called off and SCHWARZ was redesigned to finish the job of elimination of partisans before the anticipated allied landing in Balkans.Operation Schwarz commenced on 15th May 1943.On 17th May 1943, von Kasche informed Berlin about his talks with Lorkovi?, the NDH Foreign Minister.Bastianini, in conversation with Peri?, the retiring Croatian Ambassador in Rome, threatened: “The government in Zagreb failed to educate the Croats to love Italy. If everything else fails this must then be achieved by an Italian General . . .”and “The guns will speak between Italy and Croatia before Split ever again becomes a Croatian city.”Counsellor von Schubert reported from Zagreb on 24th May 1943 that Operation Schwartz was in full progress. The Italian General in Dubrovnik, Piazzoni, threatened to shoot anyone passing rumours that the Germans will liberate Croatia from the Italians.Von Schubert telegraphed Berlin again on 24th May about Tito’s broadcast 'to the nation' on ‘Radio Free Yugoslavia’ on 23rd May, haranguing the people to increase their will to fight against the occupiers.In a telegram dated 28th May 1943 von Kasche reported to Berlin on his conversation with Paveli?: “Paveli?’s attitude is to stick to his path irrespective; it appears that he will march with Germany for better or for worse.”Gleise von Horstenau reported in his usual manner to OKW on 15th May 1943 about the situation in Croatia: “The Croats hate the Italians more and more. The Italians are engendering the mistrust of the Croats with their ‘Great-Serbian’ policies in Dalmatia and in the South. Paveli? is less popular than ever before. The Ustasha regime became more moderate but the responsibility for the bloodshed with which the regime burdened itself in the past year and a half remains unforgettable, failing at the same time to put in action the fiction of a unified national State."“The situation with the uprising caused by the Ustasha policies already mentioned and magnified after the Russian war, do not show signs of waning. All this bad situation is blamed on the Germans [by the Croats]. The Orthodox population [the Serbs] already see the spectre of [the future] Yugoslavia as a Great-Serbian Empire. The Croats [numbering approximately 3 million] don’t know what they want. Those of a more profound turn of mind know that their biological existence could be secured only with a German victory. The wider circles are returning ideologically again to some kind of Yugoslavism, which was not Serbian but rather the Croatian philosophy, that of Gaj and Strossmayer. The rebirth of Yugoslavism, after the bloody civil war, would result in the end of the Croatian Statehood. Politically, in spite of their real or imaginary Persian-Gothic origins, Croats make the mistake, like all the Slav nations, of negating [even their own] State and are oppositionists in principle. The [Croat] communists are pro-Russian and some are Anglophile. The Muslims are Germanophiles. .The Catholic Church has a hold over the peasant masses [75% of the population]. Its leaders do not show sympathy for National Socialism, but are not enemies of Germany, because of Bolshevism."“The Croatian Domobran [Regular] army was established by the old Austro-Hungarian officers and the old Yugoslav reservists and was swallowed up by the civil war. The Ustasha Military [Vojnica] is the Ustasha Party Army. Upon my appointment to my present position I [Gleise von Horstenau] received the following instructions: ‘Give advice only if you are asked for it'. But they [the Croats] never asked for advice and if that [rarely] occurred, they ignored it."“The Ustasha Military will be reorganised [into about 30 battalions]; 12 battalions of Ustashas are in the Italian area and are outside our jurisdiction. The remainder will be turned into mountain brigades and even into [Waffen] SS-police." “In the higher officer corps, the Yugoslav element is raising its ugly head. Taking into account all the bad characteristics of Paveli?, he may be taken, on the whole, as an honest partner in this game."“'Operations Weiss I and II’ between 20th January and the end of March 1943 have broken the ‘Partisan Empire’ between Karlovac and Mostar. The Partisans who escaped into Montenegro and the Sandjak collided with the Chetniks there. Would it have been better to allow this fratricide to go on longer before rushing in with Operation Schwartz? Mihajlovi?’s Chetniks are escaping to Serbia; in the Italian zone they are under the protection of the Italians and the remainder are joining the Partisans”.The State Counsellor in the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, in his note dated 7th June 1943, mentioned that the Italian Ambassador Alfieri complained about the rumours that are being spread abroad about Dalmatia coming, in due course, under German jurisdiction, where Croatia would re-establish its own navy, (Mornarica or, as the Italians maliciously called it ‘Mona Rizza’).At the conference between Ribbentrop XE "Ribbentrop" and Ambassador Alfieri in Salzburg on 10th June 1943, XE "Conference between Ribbentrop and Ambassador Alfieri in Salzburg on 10th June 1943" Ribbentrop confirmed that Operation Schwartz was effective. Dra?a Mihajlovi? was destroyed but had slipped through the net. German Ambassador in Rome, Mackensen, reported from Rome on 13th June 1943 that while he was attending a meeting with Bastianini in the Foreign Ministry, Il Duce telephoned him saying that the (Waffen) SS-Division, made up of Croats, marched through Zagreb singing anti-Italian songs, and suggested that there were more suitable songs available for their amusement.Berlin immediately alerted von Kasche in Zagreb, who reported that this was only a case of the Croatian Legionnaire Division on leave in Zagreb, singing traditional Dalmatian songs about the beauty of the Adriatic Sea.Von Kasche reported to Berlin on the 18th June 1943 that Operation Schwarz was complete. Tito escaped a blockade XE "Tito escaped blockade" and lost between 10,000 and 12,000 men. On 27th and 28th Bill Deakin of the British Military Mission in the Near East dropped into Partisan Headquarters. One of Tito’s groups escaped the blockade in Sutjeska (Montenegro). The Germans shot the remaining group of 2,000 wounded men.Von Kasche, in his report to the Commander in Chief South East, General L?hr on 25th June 1943 stated: “The political line of the Reich in relation to Croatia was decided by the Führer. He recognised the NDH and accordingly its government and the Ustasha movement. He has a duty to keep to that line. However, many German institutions and personalities were expressing various views, often tendentiously, trying to influence the political situation [in Croatia]. Many Serbs are exploiting the situation and linking themselves with these institutions [Wermacht] and [the German] police to further their own interests.”The criticisms from those (German) institutions were mainly directed at the Ustashas. They referred to the outrages in 1941 and 1942, which cannot be denied. Yet the terror of these operations became meaningless when trying to describe or explain the revolution; the lives, loves, hates and politics that the Croatian people developed during twenty-three long years of oppression in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The fact that the NDH government did not, or could not put a stop to these outrages when they came to the boil must be accepted. The political Ustasha organisation represented a force that would, from the German point of view, be of great help in the conduct of the war, if it were taken with confidence. The continuous German/Italian reproaches, distrust and the fraternising with the pro-Yugoslav forces was deeply disheartening. The fact is, after the first onslaught on the Serbs, the Ustasha Military (Vojnica) did not commit any outrage in the previous year (i.e., from 25th June 1942 to 25th June 1943), yet at the same time it did increase its fighting capability. Consequently, von Kasche discouraged the trend of breaking that force and replacing it with an unreliable alternative. Von Kasche, as incidentally most Germans, did not realise that the NDH war was not their war.Ma?ek, as an alternative, was not a person upon whom Germany could rely. The HSS may have been a force to contend with in opposition, but not in battle. To ascribe to the Ustashas the killing efficiency that was not there (i.e., that they had killed 400,000 ‘Orthodox’ (i.e. Serbs)) is not flattering. The investigation of the war during this period in the critical East Bosnian area established that 2,400 Croats, 13,400 Muslims and 19,300 Serbs were killed in the conflict.A similar incomplete investigation into the losses in Central Bosnia found that 6,000 Croats, 11,000 Muslims and 18,000 Serbs were killed in the process. The Ustasha outrages did not start in 1941, but they followed up on the outrages of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia from 1918. The counter attack by the Ustashas in 1941 was, needless to say, radical XE "Counter attack by Ustashas in 1941 was radical" . Von Kasche refused to embellish the terrible methods of warfare of both sides. He passed a copy of this letter to Berlin.Von Kasche informed Berlin again on 6th July 1943 that Nik?i?, the NDH Ambassador in Rome had paid him a visit. Nik?i? pointed out that the difficulties with Italy arose particularly because of the 70,000 Croats still being held in the Italian concentration camps. A recent Soviet statement about the creation of the Croatian-Slovene State, including the territory of Trieste, was received in Rome with great consternation. In a telegram to Ribbentrop XE "Ribbentrop" on 8th July 1943, von Kasche, informed him about Himmler’s order to him dated … July 1943 that 1)the Croats were sabotaging recruitment to the SS – this must be stopped by police measures; 2)Himmler believed that some Croats who had volunteered for the Waffen SS were put in concentration camps by the NDH government XE "Himmler believed that some Croats who had volunteered for Waffen SS were put in concentration camps by NDH government" – and that those responsible must be liquidated. The NDH government, in return, put the blame on Himmler.Lorkovi? complained to von Kasche that:1.The recruitment into the Waffen-SS was achieved only with the co-operation of the anti-NDH elements. In that way the Croatian Government was excluded from control over its own citizens.2.Recruitment for the Waffen-SS from within the Croatian armed forces created great confusion.3.Himmler interfered with the NDH police system.On 12th July 1943, von Kasche handed to the SS-Obergruppenführer Berger, who was visiting Zagreb, the following notes about the principles of what the German policy in Croatia should be: 1.To support the political line given at the time of the recognition of the NDH. Care should be taken in dealing with opposition circles. There must be no collaboration with the Muslim autonomists. 2.General restraint on German financial and other demands.3.Unconditional unity of approach by all German institutions towards all foreign States (which of course includes the NDH). Clear-cut agreements with the NDH and their reliable execution. 4.The engagement of the Wermacht and German police only with the aim of the destruction of the rebels. Outside of that aim, there should be the least possible interference with the internal affairs of the NDH. Kasche as a responsible and pedantic executioner of the Reich’s powers.Von Kasche informed Berlin on 16th July 1943 about the police report he had received from the Attaché Helm: “Bandits succeeded in freeing 800 prisoners from Lepoglava prison during the night of 13th-14th July 1943. 300 of them joined the bandits; 300 reported to the authorities and the others disappeared." On 24th July 1943, after a dramatic conference of the Great Fascist Council in which Il Duce remained in the minority, he was asked to resign. XE "Conference of Great Fascist Council in which Il Duce remained in minority, Attaché Helm was asked to resign." Next day, after an audience with the King, he was imprisoned. Marshall Badoglio formed the new Italian Government.Von Kasche telegraphed Berlin with Helm’s police report on 27th July 1943: “The Ustashas are keen to get into immediate action and to go to Karlovac where there are 8,000 Italians stationed; discussion went on about the march of the Croatian armed units into Dalmatia. The majority of the population maintained that the moment of squaring of accounts with Italy had come.”4.4.5Chetnik Crimes XE "Chetnik Crimes" On 1st April 1942, the Chetniks killed 25 wounded Partisans in the Fourth Krajina regiment. Similarly, in May 1942 the Chetniks/Partisans killed 29 Partisans in a hospital in ?emernica.Some 1,000 Chetniks provoked mutinies in the Partisan ranks, in which 1,000 Partisans were killed. In this context, the reconstruction of the Yugoslav utopia by its two protagonists in bloody conflict with each other in its murderous randomness was becoming very likely a pipedream. To add to the confusion, the BBC broadcasts to the peoples of Yugoslavia carried on in a funerary style (the newsreaders wore black ties during the broadcasts!) and were putting on the air its own version of the 'heroic' Partisan-Chetnik exploits against the occupiers.Yet these broadcasts infuriated Tito: “The BBC, in its broadcasts to Yugoslavia, talks about the common fight of the Partisans and Chetniks against the occupiers. That is a monstrous lie. . . . The [Chetniks], with their bestial-like murders and terror, surpass the occupiers. . . . They are faithful dogs of the occupiers. . . . We believe that the Yugoslav ?migré Government in London has its fingers in this pie . . . ” The Chetniks wanted to prove that there is more to murdering than knives. Chetnik Commander Djuji? reported to Mihajlovi? on 21st December 1943 that out of 140 caught Partisans, seven were Serbs and the remainder were Croats. The Serbs were freed and the Croats were slaughtered.A similar policy was applied to the Jews. Chetnik leaders in Eastern Hercegovina reported in August 1942 that “All the Jews in this region are communist orientated,” and as such they were executed.The horror of the Chetnik slaughter that occurred in October 1943, with the murder of between 2,500 and 3,000 Muslims on the notorious Vi?egrad Bridge over the River Drina is difficult to grasp. According to the report of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the NDH dated 11th September 1944: “On 5th October 1943, the Chetniks in Vi?egrad tortured and murdered 2,500 people. . . . Shooting came from the right [Serbian] bank of the river at the people on the bridge and all those who remained alive were pushed into the river.”As a result of this carnage, some 100,000 Muslim refugees from Eastern and Central Bosnia crammed into Sarajevo and other large Bosnian towns, spreading Para-typhus and other infectious diseases.As late as February 1945, Chetniks in the region of Derventa (northern Bosnia) murdered 100 Croats and burned 120 houses.In the region of Rogatica (Eastern Bosnia), up until June 1944, 4,635 Muslims were murdered and 3,677 houses were burned down.Finally beaten at the end of the war, the Chetniks, unlike the Ustashas, after Tito’s amnesty in September 1944, were allowed to switch to the Partisan ranks either ‘voluntarily’, or were simply mobilised. More than 80% of Chetniks used that loophole to escape justice. In spite of their ideological differences, the Chetniks and Partisans, linked by the Yugoslav utopian glue, joined together in the final slaughter of the Ustashas, Domobrans and Croatian civilians at the end of 1944 and into 1945.Research carried out by the Croatian demographer, Professor V. ?erjavi?, calculated that during the period from 1941 to1945, Croats in the NDH lost in the region of 200,000 and that of Muslims in the region of 100,000 people. Out of this number 32,000 Croats (20,000 in Croatia and 12,000 in Bosnia-Hercegovina) and 33,000 Muslims were slaughtered by the Chetniks.That these crimes were not accidental but solely inspired by the long-term utopian plans for the creation of a Great Serbia in the guise of Yugoslavia is beyond any doubt. The accessories to these crimes were the Yugoslav ?migré Government in London, and by proxy the governments of Great Britain, the United States of America and the Soviet Union, all of them bent on the reconstruction of another Yugoslav monster state.300 villages and towns were burned down, hundreds of mosques and Catholic churches and historical monuments were destroyed. 200,000 refugees and some 60,000 murders were the net results of the Chetnik crimes on their own. The Germans, and even more the Italians, made their own additional bloody contribution. The Communist rulers of Yugoslavia from 1945 to1990 kept the lid on the history of the Chetnik crimes for obvious reasons. After all, the pot could not call the kettle black. The (mainly Serbian) commies and crypto-commies (the former Chetniks) in 1945 surpassed even themselves in the scope and the massive scale of the post-war murders of the Croats XE "Former Chetniks in 1945 surpassed even themselves in scope and massive scale of post-war murders of Croats" .4.4.6 German Collaborators in Serbia 1941-45 XE "German Collaborators in Serbia 1941-45" Collaboration in Serbia XE "Collaboration in Serbia" Two weeks after the Serbian ‘Appeal’ to the Germans, the same crowd resolved that General Milan Nedi? (pro-Axis man) should form a government of ‘National Salvation’. On 29th August 1941 the Germans installed the Nedi? government.The Germans relied on Nedi? to build up armed forces to beat the communist uprising. Col. Jovan Tri?i?, commander of these forces, confirmed that they would act entirely autonomously in the interests of the Serbian people.“By the end of October 1941, these forces, under German supervision, were performing with increasing effectiveness.”On 1st December 1941, the German authorities with their new Commander, General B?hm, estimated that Nedi? was in command of 18,000 men.The Belgrade Special Police was organised by Dragi Jovanovi? and the Germans (in the person of our old acquaintance Helm of the Gestapo) in mid May 1941. It consisted of 240 agents and 878 police guards who were responsible for hundreds of arrests, tortures, executions and deportations (mainly communists and Jews) paid for by the Belgrade Jews.The Ljoti? Serbian Fascist volunteers were established by Dimitrije Ljoti?, who had links with the SS as early as 1935 when his previous organisation, ZBOR (Yugoslav National Movement) modelled on the Nazis, turned into a pro-fascist organisation.In September 1941, Harald Turner, the chief Nazi Civil Administrator for Serbia, XE "Harald Turner, chief Nazi Civil Administrator for Serbia" reported that Ljoti?’s volunteers had exhibited ‘extraordinary results’ in their ‘cleansing actions’ (against the Partisans), and that they could be fully trusted.Col. Kosta Mu?icki, a member of ZBOR and a former aide to King Aleksandar XE "Col. Kosta Mu?icki, member of ZBOR and former aide to King Aleksandar" , became the head of this volunteer force. As a Commander of the Royal Yugoslav Army in 1941 in Slavonski Brod (Croatia), he facilitated the progress of the Germans at that strategic railway junction.In October 1941, the Serbian Volunteer Force participated in the German massacre at Kragujevac, when German troops shot 2,300 Serbian hostages as a reprisal for shooting ten German soldiers and wounding twenty-six. Between December 1941 and February 1942, 600 pro-communist Serbs, identified by the Serbian priest Dragutin Buli?, were sentenced to death and many more were sent to concentration camps.In December 1942, Ljoti?’s volunteers numbered 5,000. Early in 1943, the armed forces of Serbia, under Nedi?, numbered 25,000. The Serbian State Guard was established by General Nedi? with the help of the SS General August Mayszner and reached a total of 18,622 men by June 1942.In the summer of 1942, Mayszner installed Dragi Jovanovi? as the Chief of the Serbian State Security. The Serbian State Guard routinely executed captured Partisans. At the same time, it supported the Chetniks of Dra?a Mihajlovi?, and planned to re-instate Great-Serbia.23,697 people passed through the concentration camp at Banjica in Belgrade, of whom 3,849 were killed, not only by the Germans but also by the Serbian State Guard.In mid-1942, Emanuel Sch?fer, an SS commander, established the Serbian Gestapo with Janji?, a member of Ljoti?’s ZBOR, as its head.In July 1942, Janji? proposed to Felix Benzler of the Reich Foreign Ministry the establishment of two Serbian SS divisions.In April 1943, Janji?, with twenty-six of his collaborators, went to Berlin to work for the Gestapo, infiltrating the Serbian workers organisations in Germany.In the meantime, the Nedi? government had not forgotten Great-Serbia. In June 1941 it sent a memo to Gen. Ludwig von Schr?der, the military commander in Serbia, stating the need ‘to give the Serbian people its centuries-old ethnographic borders’.From December 1941 Nedi? advocated the creation of Great Serbia, to include Dalmatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (then in the NDH).On 1st January, 1943, the Serbian Ministerial Council sent a memorandum to Gen. Paul Bader, Commander in Chief in Serbia in which it stated: “. . . As opposed to the Jewish-anarcho-materialist mentality, the Serbs . . . are characterised by a natural racial instinct . . .”On 18th September 1943, Nedi? was received by Hitler to discuss plans for the creation of Great-Serbia under his protection. In talks with von Ribbentrop XE "Ribbentrop" , Nedi? asked for more Lebensraum for Serbia, i.e., the annexation of the Sandjak, Kosovo, Srijem and Eastern Bosnia (the last two regions of the NDH).Hitler promised all sorts of things but made no concession on Great-Serbia.In August 1944, Hitler railed against the ‘danger of a Greater Serbia’ and even suggested that ‘communism was more acceptable’ XE "Hitler railed against ‘danger of Greater Serbia’ - even suggested ‘communism was more acceptable’" .At the same time (September 1943), Milosav Vasiljevi?, a follower of Ljoti?, submitted to the Germans his own proposal for Great-Serbia. Describing the Independent State of Croatia as unable to keep the peace on its territory, he proposed instead an ‘Independent State of Serbia’ to be an ally of the Reich. This state was supposed to include Croatian Dalmatia, Skadar (Albania), and Salonika (Greece).Critical to the understanding of the Croato-Yugoslav conflict (1941-45) is the need to look into the activities of these Serbian forces outside Serbia in the NDH (i.e., in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina). From 1942 to 1944 the Serbian Gestapo was active in Srijem (in the NDH). On the 14th April 1943 the Germans praised the Serbian State Guard for the successful action against the Partisans near Bijeljina in Bosnia-Hercegovina (at the time in the NDH).4.4.7The Collapse of Nedi?’s SerbiaIn August 1944, Dra?a Mihajlovi? took command of the Serbian State Guard and the volunteer Corps, XE "Dra?a Mihajlovi? took command of Serbian State Guard and volunteer Corps" in addition to the Chetniks in Serbia. During the next month, Nedi?’s government decided to emigrate to the Reich. In October, the Red Army took Belgrade and the Partisans followed in their footsteps. The resumption of Nedi?’s Serbia showed that the Serbs themselves kept their own resistance at bay and that that was essential in the support of the Nazi war effort. As for the Partisans, there were only 1,200 in all in Serbia in early 1943. In August 1944, tens of thousands of Chetniks switched sides and joined the Partisans in answer to Tito’s amnesty. Two more amnesties on 21st November 1944 and 15th January 1945 rehabilitated further tens of thousands of Chetniks who were former Nazi collaborators. In the next six and a half months of the war, these characters ‘joined the Allies’, and proceeded with the slaughter of the Croats at Bleiburg and after.The persecution of the Jews in Serbia was carried out mainly by the Germans. Yet, the Serbs made a considerable contribution to this outrage. Serbian propaganda created the myth of a traditional Serbian-Jewish friendship XE "Serbian propaganda created thyth of traditional Serbian-Jewish friendship" , yet the reality was much more sinister. Already in Karadjordje’s Serbia in 1805 to 1806, Jews were being persecuted. They were expelled from Serbia in 1846 and again between 1861 and 1864. More persecutions followed in 1867 and in both 1873 and 1876 Jews were expelled from several Serbian towns. Nikola Pa?i?, the long-term Radical Serbian Prime Minister in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, was a well-known anti-Semite.In comparison with Croatia of the 19th century, which saw the emancipation of the Jews in all walks of life, the Jews in Serbia suffered almost the whole century of persecution.In 1859 in Croatia, Jews were allowed to employ Christian servants and in 1860 to have their own property. In 1873, the Croatian Parliament granted full civil rights to the Jews. By the end of the century, there were 20,032 Jews in Croatia and only 6,430 in Serbia.During WW2 the Serbian Volunteer Corps and the Chetniks during WW2 were in the forefront of the persecution and execution of the Serbian Jews. The Serbian Orthodox church was adding fuel to the fire of the Serbian anti-Semitism. Serbian Orthodox Bishop N. Nikolaj Velimirovi? wrote: “Today (Europe) is the main battlefield of the Jew and the Jews’ father, the devil . . .”while at the same time, Cardinal Stepinac spoke courageously from the pulpit of Zagreb Cathedral in defence of the Jews.15,000 Jews (94% of the Jewish population in Serbia) perished, many with the direct help of Nedi?, Ljoti? and the Chetniks. Thus Serbia became the first ‘Yuden frei’ country in Europe.4.4.8The Situation in the NDH XE "Situation in NDH" The real struggle within the NDH was the war for, and at the same time, against the recreation of Yugoslavia and for the preservation of the Croatian State.Paveli?’s regime followed the rhetoric of its Axis sponsors and declared war on communists and other ‘undesirable elements’. Following the GUS decree of 22nd April 1941, the regime began to purge Serbs and Jews from the government, the military, the media, businesses and the professions. Paveli?’s 'success' in doing so was mainly due to the co-operation of the pre-war Yugoslav Police, who handed over their secret files to the Ustasha authorities almost intact.The Ustasha revolutionary retributions began on 27th and 28th of April 1941 with the arrest and execution of 176 Serbs near Bjelovar (while the Chetnik massacres were already in full swing throughout March and April). On 5th May 1941, Paveli? ordered the conversion of Orthodox Serbs to Catholicism.In a meeting in the Berchtesgarden XE "Meeting in Berchtesgarden" in early June 1941, Hitler advised Paveli? to conduct a ‘fifty years long nationally intolerant policy’.Most Croats, including the communist sympathisers, supported the breakup of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (Tamnica Naroda). The revolutionary spirit of the NDH regime was not very popular, particularly after the Rome Agreements of 18th May 1941. The German estimate of support for the Ustashas was only two per cent of the population.The Croatian resistance to the Italian and Chetnik terror in Dalmatia became the core of the Partisan resistance movement in Croatia XE "Croatian resistance to Italian and Chetnik terror in Dalmatia became core of Partisan resistance movement in Croatia" . In fact, the Partisan uprising in Brezovica in Croatia predated Tito’s uprising in Serbia by two weeks, but officially this very important fact was ignored.According to German intelligence, armed Chetnik formations had begun to arrive onto the territory of the NDH from Serbia during early March 1941 before the proclamation of the NDH.Many perpetrators of the Chetnik crimes during the first days of the NDH were members of the Royal Yugoslav Army (the same as in 1990).Serbian Partisans in the NDH viewed their own ranks as exclusively Serbian, and raided, as a rule, only Croatian villages. By 1943, 61% of the Partisans in the NDH were Croats, mainly those from Dalmatia, and only 28% Serbs and others.By May 1944, the Presidency of ZAVNOH included 3 representatives of the HSS, two from the Communist party, two from the Serbian Independent Democratic Party and three independents, i.e., ZAVNOH represented already then a veritable mini Yugoslavia.The NDH became the key battleground in the war of the Yugoslav Utopia.On 7th January 1942, the regional committee of the KPJ held a consultative meeting in Bosnia-Hercegovina, the conclusion being to intensify the fight against the Chetniks who were dominant in its Western and Eastern regions. This attempt was cut short by the offensive Operation Weiss XE "Operation Weiss offensive " by the German and the Croat forces on 15th January 1942 when the Partisans were smashed and driven to the town of Fo?a in the Southeast on the border with Montenegro.The second German-Italian-Croat offensive followed closely in April/May 1942 which, with some help from the Chetniks, striking, as is their wont from behind, made life for the Partisans rather uncomfortable.Early in 1942, the CK of the KPH, controlling some 10,000 fighters, was transferred into the ‘liberated territory’. At that time, the Croatian Domobrans (Regular Army) numbered some 90,000 men. The communists claimed the disunity in the leadership of the HSS contributed to the ‘passivity of these forces’. The Partisan's initial successes in Western Bosnia were broken up by the ferocious German-Croat offensive in the Kozara Mountains of Western Bosnia in June of that year. Map required.The Soviet help did not materialise and the rhetoric of Radio ‘Free Yugoslavia’ did not help much either. At this point, the Partisans in Western Bosnia reached their lowest point as the German and Croat forces hit them hard to finally eradicate this pocket of resistance.On 19th June 1942, the CK of the KPJ escaped to Zelengora, Montenegro, where it decided to break into Western Bosnia to stop the annihilation of the Partisans blockaded there. It was stated that from June until August 1942, "the Partisans succeeded in connecting Western Bosnia, from Biha? to south-eastern Bosnia, and the river Neretva," with the communist penchant for sweeping generalisations.The Croats and the Yugoslavs, from then on, were embroiled in a bitter war exclusively on the territory of the NDH against respectively and for a ‘utopian Yugoslavia’. In this the commies were playing a double game, fighting the occupiers only part-time and focusing their venom on the Chetniks.4.4.9 Bosnia – A War within the War XE "Bosnia – A War within War" The communist military history describing the fighting in the summer of 1942 in Central and Western Bosnia cannot be taken seriously as a basis of scientific historiography. After the combined German, Italian, NDH and Chetnik operations against the Partisans in Eastern Bosnia, the Partisans were largely destroyed. The main groups withdrew to the impassable mountains at the Bosnian-Montenegrin frontier, and the remainder split into Chetniks and Partisans. The Zagreb Agreement between the NDH and Italy (19th June 1942) stipulated that the Italian II Army evacuates the III occupation zone, and also a part of the II zone occupied in 1941. The Italians, due to large losses, withdrew before the agreed date, without consultation with the NDH authorities, and the Krajina Partisans (Serbs) exploited the vacuum and occupied Drvar and Bosanski Petrovac in Western Bosnia, while the main NDH forces were pre-occupied in North Eastern Bosnia.The regular NDH forces (Domobrani - the 5th and 6th Infantry Divisions) in the Operative Districts I and II did not have sufficient forces to cover such a large area at short notice.The Ustasha formations in the same district were also short of adequate forces. The forces in question were the first Ustasha operative corps – Crna Legija (The Black Legion) and several reserve and operative battalions. In order to quash the rebellion in the region of Travnik, Jajce, Mrkonji?-Grad, Klju?, Mlini?te, Glamo?, Livno, Kupres, Bugojno, Skender Vakuf, Paveli? promoted Franjo ?imi?, Colonel of the Regular Army as the Commander in Chief of all the forces in the region. XE "?imi?, Franjo - Colonel of the Regular Army - Paveli? promoted as Commander in Chief" ?imi? was only 42 years of age. He was a cadet of the Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt and Belgrade in 1920. From then on he became Commander of the Platoon of the Yugoslav Royal Guards in Belgrade in 1924. From 1924 until 1934, he was Commander of the Regiment of the Yugoslav Royal Guard, and finally from 1938 to 1939 he was Commander of the Yugoslav Royal Guards battalion. He joined the NDH forces on the 14th May 1941.Facing these inadequate combined NDH forces were Partisan forces of Bosnian Krajina (all Serbs) and the forces of the Great Serbian Chetniks. The key strategic township in this area was Kupres (with mainly Croat and Muslim population), held by the First Regiment XVII Ustasha Battalion and a platoon of Domobrans. The defeated Partisan forces, rounded up on Mount Zelengora in Montenegro, were in a state of confusion about their immediate fate.The CK of the KPJ, under Tito's leadership, decided to break into Western Bosnia, populated by the Serbs, as the situation in Chetnik-dominated Serbia was not good for the partisan's own health. Tito's aim was to destroy the anti-Yugoslav NDH forces (staffed predominantly by the Croats and Muslims) and leave the squaring of accounts with the Chetniks for a later date. As the Chetniks were de facto a comradely Yugoslav force, they were, for Tito, for the time being, of secondary concern. From these broken hordes of the Partisans and Chetniks from Sandjak (eastern Serbia) and those from Montenegro, Tito cobbled together three extravagantly-named new Proletarian brigades XE "Tito cobbled together three extravagantly-named new Proletarian brigades" (i.e., III Sandjak and IV and V Montenegrin), and also two (Eastern) Hercegovinian battalions. All these forces were made up of Serbs, the inhabitants of Serbia and Montenegro. Tito's aim was to link up with the Krajina Serbs in Western Bosnia (i.e., the inhabitants of the NDH). The two forces, NDH versus Tito forces, were now facing each other in an open Croato-Serbian war, within the overall WWII. Any pretence on Tito's part that this was a war against fascism withers away as it is clear from the quoted documents that this was open aggression by the Serbs and Montenegrins on the Croatian and Muslim villages (i.e., civilian population) wrapped up as the 'liberation' package. The Proletarian brigades were the Communist Party Army XE "Proletarian brigades were Communist Party Army" . The direction the attack took was over the NDH frontier towards the mountains of Treskavica and Bjela?nica (over 2,000m high), south of Sarajevo, and on towards Mostar, Prozor and Kupres. The assault group of 3,800 'proletarians' got moving on 24th June 1942 in two columns: the right column was made up of the II Proletarian Brigade and Tito's Headquarters and the IV Montenegrin Brigade; the left column was made up from the I and III Proletarian Brigade. From 1st to 3rd July 1942, these two columns were preparing to attack the railway line between Sarajevo and Mostar.In this region (Konjic, Rama, Ostro?ac), at that time, there was only a small number of NDH forces.In Konjic there were some 480-armed soldiers, mainly the First Battalion of the 7th Infantry Brigade of the NDH Regular Army (Domobrans). This region was reasonably peaceful for a long period of time and the local population (Croats and Muslims) in the majority were favourably disposed towards the NDH. The NDH Regular Army could not secure any more men, so that the shortage was made up of 109 Ustasha of the Ist Railroad Guard Units and the IInd Railroad Guards Battalion. The defence of this strategic region was totally a Croatian affair. This was not the German's war.On 3rd July 1941 Croatian forces imprisoned a Partisan from the II Proletarian Brigade. After a thorough grilling, he briefed them that five Partisan brigades, each consisting of 1,500 men, had moved from Montenegro in the direction of the railroad Sarajevo-Konjic. De facto, this attack was not unlike the Serbian aggression on BiH in 1992-45.The attack started at 20.30 hours on 3rd July by the Third Battalion of the III Sandjak Brigade. Seven NDH gendarmes were taken prisoner and the Commander was killed. The Partisans had one dead and six wounded. They took Bradina (the rail junction, the birthplace of Ante Paveli?), destroyed and plundered the station and its surroundings and demolished 30m of the railway line.The station at Tar?in was attacked at 22.30 hours. Three Ustashas were killed and nine imprisoned. The Partisans had two killed, two wounded and five deserted.The 2nd Battalion of the II Proletarian Brigade at 00.30 hours attacked the station at Pazari? on 4th July 1942. 47 men defended the station.The Partisans set fire to the station. Prior to that, a train with 250 civilians on the way to Sarajevo stopped at the station. The civilians took cover in the cellar of the station. At 21.34 hours another train from Sarajevo on the way to Konjic entered the station. On the train there were 40 Ustashas of the Black Legion (Crna Legija) who volunteered to join the defence. In the thick of the fighting, by a fluke chance, yet another, now a German armoured train entered the station at 02.23 hours.Within twenty minutes, most of the defenders succeeded in boarding the train, which then left in the direction of Sarajevo. However, in the half-burned gendarmerie station, six Ustashas and six Domobran gendarmes succeeded in holding out. The result of the attack was two Ustashas, two civilians and two gendarmes were killed. The Partisans had two dead and four seriously wounded. The First Battalion of the IV Montenegrin Brigade attacked the railroad station at Had?i?i at 14.00 hours, which was defended by only twenty--five men of the Ustasha Railroad guards. The Partisans burned the station and some other buildings but did not succeed in demolishing the railway line. The outcome was seven civilians and two Ustashas killed and two wounded. The Partisans had six dead and one wounded.At 22.15hrs on 4th July 1942, the 4th battalion of the I Proletarian Brigade took the railroad station at Brdjani in which was a stationary train with a unit of Croatian Domobrans, only a few of them armed. Partisans burned the station and the train. In the following skirmish three Domobrans were killed, one Ustasha was wounded and 120 (unarmed) Domobrans taken prisoners. The Partisans had one dead and 3 wounded. The right Partisan column (the II and IV Proletarian Brigade) crossed the railroad Sarajevo-Mostar and progressed to the valley of Lepenica in Central Bosnia. On 5th/6th July 1942, this column proceeded in the direction of the ancient medieval Royal Croat Catholic town of Kre?evo. The success of the Partisans was due to a weak Croatian defence, de facto a few hundred village militias, who could not match the 'all or nothing' ideologised cut-throat Serbian and Montenegrin Partisans, most of whom, until recently, were members of the Chetnik gangs.On 5th/6th July 1942, the III Proletarian Brigade burned down the railroad at Bradina and demolished the Bridge at Lukac.The 1st and 2nd Battalion of the II Proletarian Brigade entered Kre?evo on 6th July at 02.00hrs. 34 gendarmes and 142 Militiamen and a few Ustashas defended the town. The Ist Battalion of the 738 German Brigade, which happened to be around, however relieved Kre?evo on the same day.The Partisans, in their own manner, destroyed some industrial buildings and plundered the town. Seven Partisans deserted. As a result, the two Proletarian Brigades changed the direction of the attack towards the road link Travnik-Gornji Vakuf. In the meantime, the southern Partisan column concentrated on the town of Konjic.As a result of the Partisan activities in this region, the local Croat and Muslim population suffered from fear and panic, which was the intended aim of the Serbo-communist strategy.The Croat commander of the town was Dragutin Stipeti? of the 1st Battalion of the 7th Infantry Brigade of the Domobrans. 480 men, mainly of the regular NDH army, defended Konjic. 4 Battalions of the Ist Proletarian Brigade (some 750 men) led the Partisan attack. On 7th July 1942 the Ist Proletarian Brigade broke through the 5th Domobran Regiment Defence, which then withdrew towards Mostar, and entered the mainly Croatian and Muslim town of Konjic. 30 Domobrans were taken prisoner and 8 Ustashas were shot. The town was plundered and 24 railroad engines were destroyed.The Germans pursued their own strategies and were not interested in this Croato-Serbian war, which did not impinge on their own interests XE "Germans pursued their own strategies and were not interested in this Croato-Serbian war, which did not impinge on their own interests" . The Italian 'allies' likewise were not in a hurry to give a helping hand. Eventually on 9th July the Partisans withdrew from Konjic with the massive plunder. When the Italians sent 'help' it was in the form of cut-throat Serbian Chetnik regiments. Thus, one lot of Communist-Chetnik brigades was replaced with another even worse lot and got on with the business of terrorising the peaceful Croat-Muslim population of the region.The right Partisan column moved over the mountain Vranica, and the left one moved over the mountain Bitovnja in the direction of the valley of the River Vrbas, in total some 3,000 men. In addition to that, the 'local' Krajina Partisans (manned by the even more fanatical Great Serbian descendants of the notorious Vlachs) were attacking the township of Glamo? from the West, and the railroad Jajce-Bugojno. The weakness of the Croatian armed forces stretched between the German and Italian Zones of Occupation was obvious, but nothing much could be done about it. Small garrisons of the NDH gendarmes, militia, Domobrans and the village guards could deal only with the small Partisan groups whose raids were mainly plundering. The attacks of the numerous ideologised 'proletarians' created a totally different relationship between these two forces. The III group of the Regular Croat army was reinforced by relatively small forces, mainly two regiments of the Ustasha Black Legion despatched to Travnik, and another one under the command of Major Rafael Boban, which was dispatched to Bugojno. All that was too little.4.4.10 The Battles for the Prozor Basin and the Valley of the River Vrbas XE " Battles for Prozor Basin and Valley of River Vrbas" The events in Konjic created panic in Prozor. On 9th July the 3rd Regiment of the XVII Ustasha battalion (133 men) moved to Prozor, which was defended by the 1st Regiment of the XX Ustasha Battalion (ninety-two men), a platoon of Domobrans from the 2nd Regiment of 9th Infantry Brigade (twenty-eight men), eleven gendarmes and thirty militia men.Colonel Franjo ?imi?, Commander in Chief of all the NDH forces in the region, moved from Jajce to Bugojno. A battalion of the Ustasha Black Legion, under the command of Col. Rafael Boban, put itself at his disposal.The right Partisan column divided on 11th July. The II Proletarian Brigade with the 2nd Battalion of the IV Montenegrin Brigade went towards Bugojno, and the IV Montenegrin Brigade towards Gornji Vakuf. The II Proletarian Brigade took the township of Sebe?i? and destroyed and plundered its industrial buildings. The IV Montenegrin Brigade took Gornji Vakuf.In the meantime, the left Partisan column blockaded Prozor. Two battalions of the Sandjak and 1 Battalion of the Proletarian Brigade attacked the town.A regiment of the XXVI Ustasha battalion of the Black Legion broke up the attack. The Croatian air force aided the defenders from the air. The main group of the defenders (some 44 men) was a regiment of the newly mobilised Ustasha of the XX Battalion without fighting experience. The defenders of Prozor were cut off from Bugojno and Travnik, the only places from which help to the defenders could arrive. Domobran Commander Gen. Luki? appealed to the Italians for help, but the appeal fell on deaf ears.In the new Partisan attack with 950 men on 13th July (the III Sandjak Brigade and the 4th Battalion of the 1st Proletarian Brigade) took the town after bitter fighting. The majority of the defenders succeeded in withdrawing.Two days after the fall of Gornji Vakuf, three battalions of the IV Proletarian Brigade were directed to Kupres.The command of the III Domobran group exerted itself in organising the defence of the strategic town of Bugojno, on the way to Travnik.After several days of shilly shallying, the IV Montenegrin Brigade believed that Donji Vakuf was taken by the II Proletarian Brigade, attacked Bugojno on 16th July with 1,000 men.Col. ?imi? enforced drastic discipline among the defenders. The Partisans were attacking from the south. Only the 2nd Battalion of the IV Montenegrin Brigade succeeded in penetrating from the north entering the town. After bitter fighting, the Partisans were thrown out. The rest of the attackers in retreat from Bugojno were intercepted by a group of Ustashas. In a bitter fight the Partisans had thirteen dead and several wounded. Five militiamen and four Ustashas were killed. During these battles the commander of the Ist Ustasha Regular Army, Col. Jure Franceti?, arrived in Donji Vakuf with a group of Ustashas from the Black Legion. They joined the battle without delay. The success of the defenders was mainly due to the organising abilities of Cols. ?imi? and Franceti?. Photograph of Col. Francetic required.4.5Col. Jure Francetic XE "Col. Jure Francetic" Col. Franceti? was born in 1912 in Oto?ac, Lika. In1931 he commenced study of Law at Zagreb University and, at the same time, joined the Ustasha movement. In 1933 he emigrated to Italy and, after the amnesty, he returned home in 1937, but was imprisoned, released, and mobilised and sent as a punishment to Ni? in Serbia.In 1941 he escaped to Germany but after the proclamation of the NDH returned home. He was nominated as a Commissioner for BiH in Sarajevo. There he organised the first Ustasha military formations for the purpose of fighting the Serbian rebels in Eastern Bosnia. In September 1941, he founded the famed Black Legion (Crna Legija). In the winter of 1941/42 he himself commanded (always in the first lines of his units) taking part in the actions against the Serbian Chetniks around Sarajevo, and on the mountains Ozren, Romanija mountains and in the region of Han Pijesak. The winter of 1941 was one of the most vicious winters remembered with temperatures falling below 40oC. At the end of March, at the head of the Black Legion, he penetrated the Chetnik stronghold of Eastern Bosnia (Karad?i? and Mladi?'s territory from the war in the 1990's) and arrived on the River Drina, the frontier with Serbia. Map Required.After that he became a national hero, many believed invulnerable to bullets (so much so that a 7-year old Serbian boy, a Chetnik, joined Franceti? as a courier). On 24th April Franceti? received the military decoration of the Iron Trefoil of the III Degree with oak leaves. On 24th June 1942, he was promoted to the rank of Colonel. He fought in the bitter battles against the Krajina Serb Partisans on Mount Kozara. After clearing the Partisans from the valley of the River Vrbas he joined Col. ?imi? in the battles against the Serbian and Montenegrin Partisans around Livno and Tomislavgrad and later in operation 'Dinara' towards Livno.On 22nd December 1942, he was on a flight to Gospic to take command of the operative region Lika. The aircraft was forced to land near the village of Mo?ilo near Slunj in the Partisan territory. In the hand-to-hand combat, he was injured in the head by the local Partisans and was murdered, probably on 27th December 1942. He was posthumously decorated and promoted to the rank of General (Krilnik).Franceti?'s death was the subject of many conspiracy theories, one of which maintained that Paveli? himself arranged the sabotage of the aircraft, as Franceti? had become too popular for Paveli?'s liking, a theory wrapped in a, so far, unexplained mystery.into a rage and he openly blamed Djilas for the failure."Dido's' (Djilas - not to be confused with another Dido, i.e., Eugen Kvaternik) approach to the attack must be most strictly condemned, because it was the approach of a flippant man, which had serious consequences, and could have even ended in a catastrophe . . ."Tito decided that after better organisation, another attack on Bugojno should go ahead. He pulled out two battalions from the Ist Proletarian Brigade and added them to the II Proletarian Brigade. The aim was to cut the communications with Donji Vakuf, Jajce and Travnik.The II Proletarian Brigade was still acting on the basis of the previous information and in fact had distanced itself from the strategic communication with Tito's forces.Believing that, for the cutting off Donji Vakuf, one whole brigade was necessary Djilas in his message to Tito on 19th July suggested "that a clearer plan should be developed, and that an intelligent decision should be made which would bring about a fruitful result," hinting that Tito's previous instructions were confused XE "Tito's previous instructions were confused" . Tito ignored the sting and responded in style:"If you were more decisive and speedy, by now the action would have been completed and with less losses."The Croatian forces of the III Domobran military region were not adequate to defend Bugojno. The Italians were no help and the Germans were not prepared to release the Special Croatian Units (Gorski Sdrugovi) which they used in the operation 'Kozara' against the Krajina Serbian rebels (Partisans and Chetniks).In order to keep the road between Bugojno and Donji Vakuf clear, the Partisan forces had to be swiftly pushed back.The 2nd Regiment of the Vth Ustasha Battalion from Karlovac (near Zagreb) arrived in Donji Vakuf on 19th July, together with some units of the Black Legion. Col. Franceti? succeeded with these extra forces in clearing the area around Donji Vakuf and pushed back sections of the II Proletarian Brigade. The Partisans lost 14 dead and 7 wounded. In the ensuing battles around Donji Vakuf and Bugojno, 20 Domobrans were killed.On 20th July 1941 the action of pushing the Partisans from the Donji Vakuf – Bugojno road, Col. Franceti?, with the Black Legion, pushed part of the I, II and III Proletarian Brigades from the road and met with the forces of Col. ?imi?. The Croatian airforce took part, as well as artillery from Bugojno and Donji Vakuf. That stopped the Partisan attack, which had to start that evening. In spite of that, on the night of 20th/21st July Bugojno was attacked a second time. The attack was carried out by the Partisan 2nd and 4th Battalion of the II Proletarian Brigade, the 1st Battalion of the 1st Proletarian Brigade, the 3rd Battalion of the I Proletarian Brigade, the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the IV Brigade, the 5th and 4th Battalion of the IV Brigade, the 4th Battalion of the I Proletarian Brigade, and the 1st Battalion of the II Proletarian Brigade and 1 battalion of the IV Montenegrin Brigade, in total 1,750 men. As before, the Croatian defence held the Partisans on the first line of defence. The attackers did not show too great a challenge. The defenders had 12 dead and 20 wounded. The IV Montenegrin Brigade had 6 dead and 9 wounded. The losses of other Partisan units are unknown but must have been considerable.The Partisans were now in flight towards the Kupres plateau. Next day Col. ?imi? commenced clearing the left and right banks of the River Vrbas. The IV Montenegrin Brigade fled, and Croatian forces entered Gornji Vakuf. Thus, Bugojno was saved and the Partisans were driven from the valley of the River Vrbas.4.6Battles around Kupres, Tomislav Grad, ?ujica and Livno XE "Battles around Kupres, Tomislav Grad, ?ujica and Livno" The Partisans now concentrated in the South West, in the Kupres plateau, which disturbed the defenders of the township above. Tito's 'religious' representative, Serbian Orthodox Priest Vlado Ze?evi?, informed him that about 400-500 Croatian men defended the town of Kupres. "These were Ustashas", he generalised in the best Serbian way, and prophesied, "When Kupres falls, half of Zagreb will fall". In the meantime, the local Serbs (Vlachs) were telling the invading Serbian (from Serbia) and Montenegrin Partisan forces Gothic horror stories, exaggerating as usual the inimical behaviour of the local Croatian and Muslim population, their own next door neighbours. The situation in the town of Livno became more precarious with the fall of the township of Glamo?, which was attacked by 500 Partisans of the V Krajina unit (all local Serbs). 150 Croatian Domobrans and 128 militiamen defended the town. 80 Domobrans and 70 militiamen succeeded in getting to Livno. The majority of the Croatian population escaped to Livno. 60 Croatian civilians, 7 Domobrans and 1 militiaman were killed. 40 Domobrans were taken prisoner. Map required.After the failure in Bugojno, Tito redirected the southern column of the Proletarian Brigades towards Tomislavgrad and Livno.In the meantime, the Croat Commander, Col. ?imi? in Bugojno and Donji Vakuf reorganised his defence forces: a battalion of Ustasha Black Legion, part of the XX Ustasha Battalion, the 2nd regiment of the X Ustasha Battalion, half a battalion of the 15th Infantry Brigade, the 3rd Mountain Platoon of the IX division, part of the 13th regiment of the 9th Infantry Brigade, some militia men, and an armoured platoon with three tankettes. These forces were sufficient for the defence of Bugojno and Donji Vakuf, but not to stop the Partisans from taking Livno.At the meeting of the III Domobran region in Travnik on 24th July, it was agreed that a part of the Black Legion, as the most experienced fighting unit, be sent towards Livno. XE "Black Legion, most experienced fighting unit, sent towards Livno" Three aircraft of the Croatian airforce would support the action.On 24th July, 200 Partisans attacked and took a key village, ?ujica. The Croatian defenders withdrew to Tomislavgrad which was attacked by the 2nd, 3rd and 6th Battalion of the Ist Proletarian brigade, and was taken at 22.00hrs. The defenders withdrew to the villages of Posu?je and Prisoje. Col. ?imi? strengthened the defence of Kupres when he arrived there on 26th July and took overall command of this strategic town.The delegate of the Partisan High Command in the II Proletarian Brigade was our old acquaintance, Milovan Djilas. In his report to Tito, he described the situation of the brigade as very serious, and the II Proletarian brigade he described as an army of plunderers (which de facto they were). Tito responded by ordering the command of the brigade to stop "the selfishness and plundering by some individuals . . . as they will be held responsible for such actions".In fact, on 28th July 1942, Tito ordered Sreten-?ujovi? Crni to re-organise the brigade XE "Tito ordered Sreten-?ujovi? Crni to re-organise brigade" , but all these measures came too late.On the same day the main group of the Black Legion moved from Kupres to ?ujica. Near Gornji Malovan the Black Legion beat the Sandjak Partisans in a fierce battle. The Legion took ?ujica. Col. ?imi? sent a platoon of Ustashas with three tankettes. Tito issued the order to stop them. However, they proceeded to Tomislavgrad, beating the 4th Battalion of the I Proletarian brigade, and chased off the remainder, taking their 65mm gun. The Ustashas had three dead and fourteen wounded, but the Partisans had their most shameful experience of the war. Tomislavgrad was retaken.The Croat forces, however, were now stretched from Tomislavgrad to ?ujica.Tito now abandoned the idea of taking the town of Livno but got excited with the idea of destroying the Black Legion, (i.e., 1,200 Ustashas and Domobrans with several guns and tanks). However, he lost his nerve. Instead, he ordered the V Krajina group in Glamo? to demolish bridges and roads on the line Glamo?-Livno and to disarm village guards in the Croat villages north of Livno.The Partisans attacked the village of Zlosela on the night of 29th/30th July, with a view to cutting the road from Kupres to Bugojno but failed.Even so, the Croatian village suffered badly. The Partisans set fire to 40 buildings and plundered 158 cattle, 32 horses, in what amounted to banditry, plain and simple.After another failure to hold Mala and Velika Vrata, a member of the Partisan High Command, Sreten ?ujovi?, informed Tito on 1st August 1943:" . . . Our troops could not concentrate and were pushed back. . . . In these units there is a curious understanding of the term withdrawal: withdrawal here is identified with running away . . . "The Croat commander of the 9th Infantry Battalion noted: "The Partisans were driven away from Kupres. . . . The Kupres militia has shown extreme effort in killing Partisans and driving them away. . . . " On the night of 31st July 1943, the II Proletarian Brigade, strengthened by the III Krajina unit attacked Zlosela again and attacked Kupres for the first time. The local Serbs joined in the demolition of bridges and built roadblocks with logs (the 'Log Revolution', as in Krajina in the 1990's). The attack failed, and Sreten ?ujovi? informed Tito that the (Partisan) fighters are "imbued with the Chetnik mentality: some are keen to fight, some are not; taking part in a battle is dependent on their current mood and their individual assessments as to the risk. . ."In the morning, there was a repetition of the same drama: Ustashas and Croatian militia from Kupres nearly encircled four battalions of the II Proletarian brigade. 50 Partisans from the I Battalion followed their commander in panicking. The II Proletarian Brigade had 9 dead and 14 wounded.In his report of 1st August to Tito, ?ujovi? XE " ?ujovi? his report of 1st August to Tito" stated: "We failed because our men in their stupidity and ignorance lost almost 100% of the results they had achieved."This failure affected the local Serb civilians so much that 80 Chetniks joined their Serbian comrades, the Partisans, that day.Because of the permanent attacks by the Partisans around Kupres, Col. ?imi? withdrew the Black Legion from Livno to Kupres. 'Fortress' Kupres was a barrier for the Proletarian Brigades break into the valley of the River Vrbas and the Bosnian Krajina for the purpose of linking up with the Serbs in Croatia. In the night of the 31st July Ustasha battalions abandoned the position on Borova Glava and organised a defence line in ?ujica. In the Partisan attack on this line, the Ist Battalion of the Ist Brigade had to withdraw, leaving seven dead and five wounded.Croat forces withdrew towards Kupres. The III Sandjak brigade intercepted them. Arso Jovanovi?, a leading Partisan Commander, reported to Tito:"Battalions of the 3rd Brigade . . . around 00.80hrs commenced a battle with Ustashas. The battle went on the whole day and was fierce. Some units have shown great heroism. . . . In spite of that, nothing helped."He concluded that with the return of the Black Legion the situation in Kupres had altogether changed. On the other hand, the departure of the Legion from Livno put Livno in a difficult situation.4.6.1The battles for Livno and Kupres – 2nd to 11th August 1942 XE " Battles for Livno and Kupres – 2nd to 11th August 1942" In clearing the Kupres-Bugojno road, Col. ?imi? engaged the Bugojno garrison. As the Partisans were obstructing this action, the Croatian airforce from Sarajevo bombed the Partisan-held villages. Traffic towards Bugojno was established on 3rd August so Bugojno could be replenished with ammunition and food. One Ustasha was killed and 20 wounded during this operation. The Partisans took Tomislav Grad and ?ujica again. The region of Klju? and Prozor was becoming the target of the Montenegrin and Hercegovinian Partisan units. As Col. ?imi? did not receive help by way of extra troops, he concentrated on training and arming the local Croat and Muslim population in the region of Kupres.While Col. ?imi? was busy in Kupres, the Partisans concentrated on attacking Livno. The Livno garrison was made up of 2 battalions of the 14th Domobran Infantry Brigade, a platoon of Domobrans, and the 2nd Regiment of the XX Ustasha battalion – in total 600 men.50 Domobrans, who secretly had contacts with the Partisans, sabotaged the defence of the town. Their leader was a Muslim, Lieutenant Ismet ?atifi?, The attack on the town was led by the Ist Proletarian Brigade (Commander in Chief Ko?a Popovi?, later foreign minister in FNRJ), and the III Proletarian Brigade and parts of the V Krajina unit, in total 1,800 men (i.e., a ratio of 3:1 in favour of the Partisans). On 4th July, 1941 the Partisans entered the town. The Croat Commander Major Kri?ani? was taken prisoner. However, the 2nd regiment of the XX Ustasha Battalion held a single solid house in the town, owned by one Dr. Mitrovi?. The house fell two days later when the Partisans brought a heavy mountain gun and pounded the house continuously. Twenty Ustashas in the house were killed and 252 Domobrans were taken prisoner. That was how the ancient Croat town with its mixed Croat/Muslim population fell to the invaders from Serbia. But Tito was still preoccupied with Kupres XE "Tito still preoccupied with Kupres" . In an order to the V Montenegrin Brigade, Tito wrote: ". . . If we receive the help of the Krajina Assault Brigade in time, we believe we shall bury [the Franceti? Battalion in] Kupres."The information Tito was receiving was based on bragging by various local Partisan commanders, exaggerating their successes. Djilas, from the II Proletarian Brigade, wrote to Tito in the same way on 4th August 1942: "We expect the Krajina Assault Brigade to finish this matter [i.e., Kupres]."Cols. ?imi? and Franceti? made sure that the road to Bugojno (for main supplies) was clear. On the morning of 5th of August 1942 they opened artillery fire and followed by pushing away the I Battalion of the II Proletariat Brigade for several miles. In these battles, three Ustashas were killed and twenty-four wounded. The Partisans had six dead and seventeen wounded. The Croat forces finally received reinforcements of 165 Ustashas from the Black Legion, and the First Regiment of the I Battalion of the Black Legion under the command of Lt. Rafael Boban.Now the Partisan optimism splashed. Kupres became Tito's obsession. On 5th August, Tito wrote to the C-in-C of the involved Partisan forces: "The question of Kupres must be speedily resolved . . . concentrate ('skoncentri?ite', note how Tito, as a so-called 'Croat', wrote in Serbian XE "Tito, as a so-called 'Croat', wrote in Serbian" ) all the forces and with a swift attack dispose of that Ustasha nest . . . "In the meantime, the Croat commanders from Kupres had a meeting with the C-in-C of the III Domobran Military Region, General Luki? in Travnik on 7th August. It was decided that with the combined attack from Kupres and Bugojno the Partisans would be pushed from Gornji Vakuf and Prozor.Unfortunately, the bad news arrived that Fo?a (a Muslim inhabited town) in Eastern Bosnia, under threat from the Chetniks, had made a secret agreement with the Italians. Col. Franceti?, who already had an aura of invincibility, sped to Fo?a at the worse moment for the defence for Kupres. The Chetniks had already slaughtered thousands of Muslims prior to that (on the pattern of Srebrenica in 1995), and the defence of the Muslim population in the easternmost region of the NDH became for Franceti? a matter of moral duty.The 2nd Regiment of the VIII Ustasha Battalion from Sarajevo now reinforced the Kupres garrison, in total 400 men from 3 regiments.4.6.2Attack on Kupres – 11th/12th August 1942 XE "Attack on Kupres – 11th/12th August 1942" The Battalion of the Black Legion, the 1st Regiment XVII Ustasha Battalion, the 3rd Platoon of the IX Artillery Division, a Platoon of Domobrans, and 570 local militiamen, in total 1,400 men defended Kupres. The Partisan attack was led by the II Proletariat Brigade (600 men), reinforced by another 240 men. The IV Montenegrin Brigade had 800 men. In addition, there were 270 men of the X Hercegovinian Brigade, 200 men from the III Sandjak Brigade, in total 2,100 men, a ratio of 3:2 in favour of the Partisans.The attack commenced on 11th August at 23.00 hours. After bitter fighting the defenders withdrew from the peaks overlooking the Kupres-Bugojno road. The first attack towards the town was repulsed, but due to the numerical superiority the second attack pushed the defenders to the outskirts of the town. The first attackers that reached the town were pushed out with vicious fire by the defenders."The Ist Battalion of the Montenegrin Brigade" wrote its Commander, "was stopped with an impenetrable wall of steel". When in the morning parts of the II Proletariat Brigade were driven from the town, the defenders, helped with artillery, commenced the chase of the scattered groups of the Partisans. This push was helped by the attacks of the Croatian air force.The escaping Partisans, enraged by this failure, took their revenge on the local civilian population that remained in their homes. They set 46 houses on fire and plundered 461 cattle, 1,762 sheep, including food, clothing, etc. The Partisans killed twelve civilians and took sixteen prisoners. Col. ?imi? retook the Bugojno-Kupres road. The defenders had fourteen dead, forty-five wounded. The Partisans had thirteen dead, thirty-eight wounded and several imprisoned. Among the dead was the notorious Partisan Commander Simo ?olaja, XE "?olaja, Simo - Partisan Commander," immortalised in one of the monotonous Partisan chants.The Partisan failure was due to meeting a determinate Black Legion with an outstanding Commander (?imi?). There was no panic in these forces.After this defeat, the Partisans tried to find a scapegoat. The Partisan observer, Pavle Ili? reported to Tito on 12th August 1942: "We have to concentrate all the artillery we have, and attack with full force, with hand grenades and knives, to take Kupres; otherwise we cannot be sure of success. . . . It seems that the enemy has 1,200 men, all of them are the worst Ustashas who hate us . . . "While the delegates at the Partisan Headquarters blamed each other, the reinforcement of the 1st Krajina Assault Brigade arrived in the region of Blagaj. (See map.) Map required.4.6.3The new attack on Kupres – 13th/14th August 1942 XE "New attack on Kupres – 13th/14th August 1942" For the defence of Kupres Col. ?imi? had 1,500 men. He decided to concentrate all the defence within the town and its immediate surroundings. The attack was frustrated by the action of the Croatian Airforce (ancient biplanes of the POTEZ 25 type) from Sarajevo.The Croat and Muslim civilians escaped from their villages to shelter in the town, a beehive of 160 houses (the population increased to 11,000). In a way, this made the defence of the town more difficult.Tito nominated a former colonel of the Yugoslav Army, Savo Orovi?, as Commander of the operation. He was a member of Tito's Headquarters. A lot of hope was put in the I Krajina Brigade, made up of Bosnian Serbs (mainly former Chetniks) who, unlike the Serbs from Serbia and Montenegro, were not hesitating, and "did not dwell on moral preaching, and it was a fighting unit which could not wait to attack the enemy" (in the style of their Morlach forefathers).Curiously enough, the Commander of this crypto-Chetnik unit was the Croat Communist, Ivica Maru?i?-Ratko from Dalmatia.The start of the attack was set for 21.00hrs. The ratio of the forces was 2:1 in favour of the Partisans, XE "Ratio of forces was 2:1 in favour of Partisans" i.e., 3,000:1,500. Kupres was being attacked with 16 battalions, led by the leading communist cut-throats (and future leaders of the communist Yugoslavia): Milovan Djilas, Peko Dap?evi?, Ko?a Popovi?, Sreten ?ujovi?, Vlado ?egrt, Arso Jovanovi?, Aleksandar Rankovi?, Pavle Ili?, all of them Serbs from Serbia or Montenegro, led by Tito, supposedly a 'Croat', a character of murky origin.An entire generation of leading Yugo-communists, the very flower of the Serbianism and the Yugoslavism, saturated not only with hatred, but also with a vision of a utopian Yugoslav future, congregated around fortress Kupres, the Croatian Alcasar. But of course, it was still a long way from Kupres to the future comfort of Belgrade and the Island of Brioni. The attack was concentrated on the node held by a regiment of the Black Legion, which withdrew to the town.Spread out like a chain, the Partisan attack was open to a sideways fire, which had nearly cut them in half by the time they reached the outskirts of the town. The 3rd Battalion of the VI Brigade suffered great losses. The 2nd and 3rd Regiment of the 1st Battalion 1st Krajina Brigade also penetrated into the town. In the street fighting, the Battalion took a mosque and set fire to several houses. The defenders opened up with artillery. The confusion was great as the attackers and the defenders mixed with the civilians. Yet, the Partisans lacked an able commander on the spot. The Croatian defence had Col. ?imi? at its head "who with extraordinary tactics, personal endeavour and courage, saved Kupres and its inhabitants."A regiment of the Black Legion, in the meantime, reorganised and attacked the intruders from the rear. In the melee, the Partisans fled the town: first and foremost, the 1st Battalion of the bragging I Krajina Brigade. At the entrance to the town, two regiments of the I Krajina Brigade were mown down, with losses of 12 dead and 33 wounded.The enraged Partisans displayed their heroism by setting fire to the village of Zloselo, on the orders of the Godfather, Tito himself, while withdrawing. During the night, the Croat Garrison in Bugojno moved to help the defenders of Kupres.Daylight brought into focus the full horror of the battle: bodies of the attackers and the defenders, dead horses, cows and sheep were scattered all around. Villages were in flames. The attackers had ninety-seven dead and 136 wounded. The defenders had thirty-three dead and seventy-four wounded. The civilians had ten dead, nineteen wounded and twelve missing.However, according to a report of the IV Montenegrin Brigade, this brigade alone had 100 dead and wounded.The Partisans blamed each other and this stopped further pressure on Kupres. Two smaller attacks showed the weakness of the Partisan attacks on well-fortified places.After the failure in Kupres, Tito decided to direct his attention to other areas. The I Krajina and II Proletarian Brigades were redirected to Mrkonji? Grad XE "I Krajina and II Proletarian Brigades redirected to Mrkonji? Grad" .In the meantime, Tito's plan was to sow dissent between the Muslim and Catholic Ustashas in Kupres. The Chief of Staff of the Supreme Partisan Headquarters, in writing to the Commander of the IV Montenegrin Brigade stated:"You are aware that some Muslims in Kupres expressed the wish to surrender . . . for this purpose, on the night of 20th/21st August, you shall make a 'demonstration' attack at 21.00hrs. On that occasion Muslims will yell "Allah is with us" and you will reply, "Allah is great" [Allah Uekber]. The surrender of these [Muslim] Ustashas would be a scoop for our struggle. In that way we could undermine Paveli? and his Ustashas . . ."When the attack began, the defenders of Kupres answered with vicious rifle fire instead of "Allah is with us". That was the end of the fight for Kupres for the time being. Another attack on 28th February also failed.4.7The Situation in Central Bosnia at the end of summer 1942 XE " Situation in Central Bosnia at end of summer 1942" The Commander of the Croatian 6th Gendarmerie Brigade described the mood of the Croatian people in this region at that time: "The mood of the Croatian citizens, Catholic and Muslim, is not unfavourable [to the NDH] but at the same time it is not as happy as it could be. Doubt and fear are coming to the fore, mainly due to difficult living conditions, which influence morale and the resistance of the people. People are giving up hope in the authorities who cannot protect them . . . this fact becomes decisive in the attitude of the people towards the state . . . " Such a situation was created, and afterwards exploited, by the communists. In the Italian zone of occupation, it was even worse, as the Italians openly co-operated with the Serbian Chetniks against the Croatian population. The majority of the non-Serbian population was firmly against both the Partisans and the Chetniks.Yugoslav Partisans and Chetniks were fighting the Croatian state on a matter of principle, with the aim of recreating Yugoslavia XE "Yugoslav Partisans and Chetniks fighting the Croatian state on matter of principle, with aim of recreating Yugoslavia" . The Partisans used their own well-drilled agitation for that purpose, which agitation was accompanied by mass public trials, such as that in Livno where 500 members of the Ustasha movement and sympathisers were investigated, and out of whom 120 were shot. The poisonous mixture of propaganda and fear, in the best communist tradition, produced the required results. Yet, this practice failed in Kupres, so the frustrated local Serbs proclaimed the whole Croat population of the region to be criminal fascists. The Croatian armed forces (Domobrans or Regular Army) were treated in the same way. Stretched over great areas, they were badly armed and frustrated. The rank and file were mainly the Croatian and Muslim peasants. The dissatisfaction with their status vis-à-vis the Ustasha formations did not help. Usta?ka Vojnica (a voluntary military wing of the Ustasha movement) was a force distinctive from the political Ustasha institutions in Zagreb (such as the police and the intelligence services). The military success in fighting the Partisans and the Chetniks in the combined operations depended entirely on the relationship of their commanders, such as Domobran Col. ?imi? and Ustasha Vojnica's Col. Franceti?.In the First, Second and Third zones of occupation the Italian policies resulted in the massive flight of the Croats into the Partisan ranks. There was no other choice, as the NDH military were prevented from having forces in these areas until the Zagreb Agreement (19th June 1942). The Germans were the first, the NDH the second and the Partisans were the third danger for the Italian interests in these zones.Let's see how the Italian, and the German 'help' to Croats in these operations failed, and for what reasons. The Italian policies were the chief reason for the fall of the NDH state, i.e., for the failure of the Croatian forces to defend its territories, and even more so for the Croats from Dalmatia joining the Partisan forces. Paveli? eventually abandoned the state. However, with many provisos the Croatian state could have been saved in some form if some of its uncompromised leaders had used their brains rather than their irrational prejudices. To that extent, the battle for Kupres in the summer of 1942 was characteristic.The Germans, on the other hand, did not allow the special Croat units under their own command to get involved in this 'Croato-Serbian' war, and used them only for clearing the areas important for the German war effort.The attitude of the local Serbs improved somewhat after the reform of the official NDH policies in the spring of 1942. Paveli? issued special orders for dealing with the cleansing of the rebellious regions. Plunder and mistreatment of the civilian population was punishable in the War Courts. Throughout 1942, these measures brought about a reasonable state of peace.In Western Bosnia XE "Western Bosnia" , however, these measures did not work, due to the inflaming of the Croato-Serbian conflict by Tito's Partisans. The Serbian Chetniks were a volatile element and were joining and/or falling out with the Partisans and pursuing their own (Great Serbian) aims.The assault groups of the Proletarian Brigades on Croatian territory suffered either from plundering bandit instincts and/or from mass desertions.As far as tactical relations between the NDH authorities and the local Serbian Chetniks were concerned, neither side had any illusions about their final aims. This 'co-operation’ however, had a negative impact on the morale of the Croatian people at large.Giving vent to Serbian chauvinism was another method of the Partisan propaganda in attracting the Serbs into their ranks.Equating the Ustasha movement in the political and military sense (Vojnica) was the job of the Partisan commissars. These two branches were, in many ways, quite different. The merciless treatment of the Ustasha prisoners of war by the Partisans had a negative impact on the fighting spirit of the Croatian Regular Army. These individuals were tortured and killed in the most bestial way as a matter of communist policy.The trouble with Tito's Partisans was the fact that the Partisans were de facto the only illegitimate force in the war of the Yugoslav Utopia, the fact that caused Tito many sleepless nights. XE "Tito's Partisans were de facto only illegitimate force in war of Yugoslav Utopia, fact that caused Tito many sleepless nights" Both the NDH forces and the Serbian Chetniks were recognised by either one or the other side in the WW2 conflict. Yet by being flexible and playing here on the Serbian chauvinist and then on the Croat or Slovene 'Nationalist' card, the communists were politically always 'open to suggestions', never forgetting that their aim of creating a communist Yugoslavia was the main obstacle in dealing with the Croatian contestant.The subject matter of terror and bloodletting in Eastern Hercegovina and Montenegro XE "Eastern Hercegovina and Montenegro" in the winter and spring of 1941/42 committed by Tito's communists, which was in the manner of the Marxist dialectical acrobatics, turned into a respectable philosophical phrase 'the left deviations' taught the communists a lesson. It did not mean actually that they abandoned terror, but the terror was wrapped up in devious rationalisations in the way that the popular national dish 'sarma' is wrapped up in sour cabbage leaves.The crimes committed in the wars of the Yugoslav Utopia are still awaiting their historian. They were inevitable, as both the contestants in that conflict committed them liberally. Yet during the life of the communist Yugoslavia (1945-1990) only Ustasha crimes were the subject of the Yugoslav historicists. The crimes of the Partisan-Chetniks, particularly at the beginning and the end of the war, and Tito's crimes, were kept strictly under wraps. The communists, Chetniks and the Yugoslavs of all shapes, colours, sizes and weights have turned the subject of the war crimes upside down. The Ustasha crimes were usually described as fascist genocide, and their own crimes were described (if you please) as the anti-fascist struggle. Some Yugoslav historicists argue that there cannot be a parallel between the two. Philosophically there is no objection to such a theory. However, the objective view of the genesis of the Ustasha crimes, as a result of the 23-years long political history of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, XE "Kingdom of Yugoslavia - 23-years long political history" can be described more correctly as Ustasha retribution, and the crimes of the Yugoslav communist/Chetnik side, particularly at the end of the war (1945) as a deliberate cold-blooded genocide. The philosophical explication for the crimes of both sides, quite rightly, was the creation of Yugoslavia. This was worked out by the Croat Utopians on the one side and put into practice by the pursuers of Great Serbia on the other. The imprimatur and support given by the great Powers for its realisation must not be forgotten.After the Zagreb Agreement with the Italians XE "Zagreb Agreement with the Italians" on 19th June 1942, the Italians withdrew from Annexed Zones 2 and 3. This was a great political coup for the NDH. However, the Italians left behind them well-armed Chetniks (whom they had armed), the so-called 'anti-communist voluntary forces', and the NDH had to take over the Italian responsibility towards them. In this power vacuum, the small NDH forces could not fill. Partisan forces from Serbia and Montenegro came in. Because of the NDH's lack of military consolidation in the Dinaric areas of BiH and the valley of the River Vrbas, the Serbian Partisans succeeded in establishing the foundations for their 'empire' in this region. The whole weight of the defence fell on the III Domobran military district and the I Ustasha formation (SDRUG).Thus, all the townships, except Donji Vakuf, Bugojno and Kupres, fell to the Partisans. These towns held out due to the charismatic leadership of two commanders and the fighting spirit of the Black Legion. Kupres was, without doubt, the greatest military defeat for the Partisans.Even so, the Partisans realised that their units could not afford to remain stationary in those particular regions and that they must get moving, as they would be exposed to counter-attacks. So for that purpose, they established flexible new units – brigades, which in addition had a political gospel to be spread by their political commissars.The duality of the NDH armed forces (Domobrans, i.e., the Regular Army and the Ustasha military volunteers), and the former Austro-Hungarian and former Yugoslav officers, on the commanding level, created inevitable confusion.Vjekoslav Vran?i?, the NDH military representative with SUPERLODA (the Second and Third Italian Annexed Zones), summed it up: "The dismemberment of Croatia was prepared by the Italians, by withdrawing from the NDH frontier in Eastern Bosnia, and by letting the Balkan invaders into the NDH just at the moment when Col. Franceti?, in the spring of 1942, succeeded in clearing Eastern Bosnia of the Serbian rebels, and in stopping Franceti? from closing the frontier against Montenegro."In that Vran?i? was absolutely right. The treacherous Italian 'Allies' sympathised always with the Serbs who were helping them to grab Dalmatia. Croat forces, on the other hand, had shown great fortitude in defending the Croatian and Muslim populations of Vi?egrad, Vare?, Grada?ac, Rogatica and Vlasenica, all of them under blockade by the Serbian Chetnik formations, who had perpetrated the most monstrous crimes, particularly against the Muslim population of this region.After August 1942, the slimmed down proletarian brigades were gradually filled out by hook or by crook, with the Croats from Dalmatia who were oppressed by the Italians and were deeply disappointed with Paveli?'s agreement with Italy in allowing the annexation of large chunks of Dalmatia in 1941. These political strategic failures were a mortal blow to the NDH.Up to the end of 1942, there were three Partisan Dalmatian brigades established. The Fifth Montenegrin and the Tenth Hercegovinian brigades were each 50% staffed by Croats.Joining the Partisans in Bosnia (except for Serbs) was not that popular. Only Muslims from Konjic, Prozor and Livno, and some Croats from Livno, showed any taste for such an adventure.It is clear from the quoted documentary evidence that the offensive by the Serbian and Montenegrin Proletarian brigades was an aggression against the Croatian State and Croatian territory XE "Documentary evidence that the offensive by Serbian and Montenegrin Proletarian brigades was aggression against Croatian State and Croatian territory" . As such, it could not be described in any way as a struggle against fascism, or a struggle against the German or Italian occupiers (who were not involved), nor as helping the Allied war effort. Exaggerated claims like these make objective Western historians feel extremely uncomfortable. The subject of the war crimes in Yugoslavia XE "Subject of war crimes in Yugoslavia" has been treated in the most one-sided and cynical way.As far as the battles in July and August 1942 were concerned, both sides inevitably were involved in activities, which now, more than 50 years after the events, may be described as war crimes:1.The Fourth Montenegrin Brigade imprisoned 8 Ustashas of the Railroad Guards near Had?ici and shot them.2.In Prozor several members of the garrison and in Makljen one Domobran and six Ustashas PoWs were shot.3.In Gornji Vakuf after 12th August, the Fourth Montenegrin Brigade shot 6 Ustasha PoWs.4.In the village of Urije during the battle on 19th July 1942, according to unreliable Yugoslav records, the Ustashas killed 65 civilians. (This incident was not recorded in the otherwise reliable German records.)5.During the battle in Gornji Malovan (Kupres), according to Yugoslavs, the Ustashas killed 70 civilians. (This was not registered in otherwise reliable German or any other foreign records.)6.On 7th August 1942 after taking Livno, the Partisans sentenced to death 120 Ustasha and political leaders and shot them. (This was recorded in the Partisan records.)7.In Glavice (Bugojno), on the 11th August 1942, the Ustashas killed 76 people after they were fired on from the village. (This was not recorded anywhere except in the Partisan records.)4.7.1Partisan Historicism XE "Partisan Historicism" The monopoly for writing the wartime history of Yugoslavia belonged exclusively to 'historical institutes' of the former JNA (Vojno Istorijski Institut and Narodna Armija). These publications have a very low scientific rating (with partial exemption for the monograph written by Mi?o Lekovi?: The Offensive of the Proletarian Brigades in Western Bosnia in the summer of 1942. After the 14-month long struggle for the 'Ustasha Fortress', Kupres was finally 'liberated' by the I Proletarian and the X Krajina Division on 4th October 1943 (a year and a half later). The Croatian Domobran battalion withdrew to Travnik without fighting.The 'liberation' commenced with the shooting of 74 'compromised' Croat civilians. Almost all the Croatian population was 'cleansed' from the town on 23rd October 1943. Even that was not enough. On the orders of the C-in-C of the First Proletarian Division, the town of Kupres was torched on 11th December 1943.4.7.2The Black Legion (Crna Legija) XE "Black Legion (Crna Legija)" The 'Black Legion' is name of the Sarajevo Ustasha Military Brigade, made up of volunteers, founded on 15th September 1941 in Sarajevo. The name was acquired through the black uniforms they wore, as, at that time, this was the only suiting material available in town. The colour did not have any ideological connotations.The founders were the emigrant Ustashas, Captain Jure Franceti? and Lieutenant Rafael Boban.Up to the end of 1941, the legion fought in Eastern Bosnia and north-eastern Hercegovina. Before the combined Operation Trio (German, Italian, Croat) from 31st March to mid-April 1942, it operated in the valley of the River Drina (i.e., the eastern NDH frontier with Serbia), which its operations became well-known. At that time, it had five battalions numbering 2,200 Ustashas.In May 1842 it operated around Makarska (Dalmatia) and in July 1942 on Mount Kozara. In August, it was a crucial force in the defence of Kupres. In October, the units of the V Ustasha Formation were made up of newly arrived battalions under the command of Rafael Boban. The remaining I Ustasha formation (SDRUG) operated mainly in Eastern Bosnia during 1943.From the beginning of 1944 it held the defence nodes on Mounts Romanija, Sokolac, Rogatica and Pale near Sarajevo. In the 1990's it became the capital of the Chetnik 'empire' of Radovan Karadji?. It was in continuous battles with Chetniks and Partisans. It took part in battles near Srebrenica, Zvornik, Bratunac, Bugojno, Kre?evo, Vitez, Tar?in and Turbe (all in Bosnia).In January 1945 in took part in the battles for Travnik, ?apljina, ?itluk, Ivan Sedlo and Sarajevo (BiH).The Fifth formation was involved in bitter battles all over BiH and, in 1944, also in Croatia (Bjelovar).From 13th to 17th October 1944, it was active in the bloody battles near Koprivnica (Croatia) with the Partisan Sixth Slavonian, Tenth Zagreb Corpus of the Seventh Partisan Division NOV.Besides Kupres, these were the toughest battles that this formation fought during the Second World War. From December 1944 to February 1945, parts of the division pushed the III Yugoslav Army over the River Drava. After 9th April 1945 it withdrew to Zagreb and later to Austria.The formation crossed over to Austria under the command of Rafael Boban. A great number of its fighters ignored the British assurances. It then dispersed penetrating the British blockade and ending up in all parts of the world. 4.7.3National Liberation Army – Liberators or Murderers? XE "National Liberation Army – Liberators or Murderers?" The Muslims in Bosnia-Hercegovina welcomed the NDH in 1941 and 1942, but as soon as they sensed that it ‘let them down’, true to their volatile tradition, they sought a way out. Some worked on a plan for the autonomy of BiH, which the Germans dismissed. Later, in 1942, the Muslims split into pro-Ustasha and pro-Partisan camps that engendered a mini-civil war of their own. “The Muslim religious leaders became disappointed with the record of the NDH and became louder in their demands for the autonomy of Bosnia-Hercegovina within the framework of Hitler's new European order.” The crisis in the 'bourgeois camp' (i.e., the HSS and the Chetniks) increased the Partisan activity in the direction of the ‘revolutionary change of power’. Tito expanded on the subject, “finally, the old forms of political power have withered away and a new form of power created in the uprising will be the seed from which the future Government will develop.” In the Partisan ‘liberated territory’ centred on Biha? in Western Bosnia-Hercegovina, Partisans organised some 900 ‘national committees’, setting up literacy courses mainly to enable thousands of illiterate peasants to follow communist propaganda displayed on ‘wall newspapers’.The following gem by Tito took a prominent place:‘The national question in Yugoslavia in the light of the national liberation struggle’ in which he outlined that “that struggle would not be successful unless the nations of Yugoslavia would see in that struggle, apart from victory over fascism, also the victory over those who oppressed them.”At that point the repressed anxieties of the British about the collaboration of Chetnik protégés with the Germans XE "Repressed anxieties of British about collaboration of Chetnik protégés with Germans" , and particularly the Italians, became fraught with their fear of loss of control over the aims of the ‘Yugoslav resistance’. The KPJ exploited this situation and pushed forward with the formation of their own representative body for the ‘nations of Yugoslavia’.On 26th November 1942, an inauguration meeting of AVNOJ (Anti-fascist Council of the National Liberation of Yugoslavia) was held in Biha?. The main aims of this body were the crushing of the NDH and the prevention of the renewal of the ‘old Royalist reactionary regime’. The greatest majority of the Bosnian-Hercegovian Croats were staunch supporters of the NDH XE "Greatest majority of Bosnian-Hercegovian Croats were staunch supporters of NDH" to the bitter end and beyond the end of WWII on 8th May 1945 (Kulenovi? Kula in Stolac and Bleiburg). A small minority of the BiH Croats, however, joined the Partisans engendering a mini Croat fratricide of its own.In contrast to the Chetnik utopian plan of a ‘homogeneous Serbia’, the communists proclaimed a plan for the creation of a federal state of Bosnia-Hercegovina within the frontiers of the new Yugoslav state, which satisfied the main aim of the Serbs ‘to live in one state’, and pacified the Muslims who would be getting their own ‘Jamahiria’. In 1942 this increased the reputation of the Partisans among the Serbs and the Muslims.In spite of a revolutionary reversal in November 1942 and while still being pursued through the woods, Tito declared that the formation of the first divisions and corps meant in fact the creation of the extravagantly named ‘National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia’. On 19th June 1942, he decided to beef up his army with the ideological and political 'organs' for the purpose of its communist indoctrination.The pro-Yugoslav bourgeois parties, unlike the KPJ, did not have a united political platform. `The most fanatical protagonists of Great-Serbia now in the ‘Yugoslav’ Government in London were synchronising their messages with those of the Foreign Office. Ma?ek and the HSS were, on paper, ‘loyal’ to the NDH under whose administration the HSS Home Guards were sporadically active. The communists believed that the passive attitude of the HSS was crucial in preventing the Croatian peasants from joining the national-liberation movement, and they encouraged it.The Germans, on the other hand, concluded that the communists had become too big for their boots. Hitler, at his meeting with Paveli? in October 1942, therefore decided that the Partisans must be crushed. This would entail shooting any suspect in the zones of operations and packing up all the males over the age of 15 to concentration camps. The operation commenced for real on 20th January 1943.As a result, five of the recently established ‘divisions’ of Partisans ran to Montenegro via Herzegovina. Some 4,000 wounded Partisans slowed down ‘the withdrawal’. The remnants crossed the river Neretva where, on the other bank, the Chetniks set up an ambush. Yet even before the Communists had time to turn this defeat into a heroic victory in the best Serbian tradition, 127,000 Germans, Croats and Italians, in order to be quite sure that they finished the job properly, rounded up the remnants of that rag-tag army in Montenegro and decimated it in mid-May 1943. The survivors limped back through the woods to Eastern Bosnia. Empathising with this great Partisan ‘victory’ (on the pattern of Dunkirk XE "On the Dunkirk pattern" ), the British decided to establish a permanent Mission at Tito's Command Headquarters on 27th May 1943, in order to keep an eye on him. The fall of Mussolini on 25th July 1943 XE "Fall of Mussolini on 25th July 1943" saved the Partisan necks in the Italian occupation zone of the NDH as they rushed to disarm the Italians, and arm their depleted ranks, which they exaggerated “had 18 ‘divisions’ at that time, while the Germans had only 13.” The Germans reorganised their command structure after the fall of Italy. The command of the Army Group ‘F’ was now in Belgrade and Fifth Army Corps was stationed in the NDH.The British went cool on the idea of invading the Balkans XE "British went cool on idea of invading the Balkans" via the Adriatic coast and opened the way for a ‘free for all’ strategy for the pro-Yugoslav forces in Zone I (the Adriatic coast), from which the Croatian Army was banned.Now the Partisans, with enough arms to supply 80,000 men, filled the vacuum, occupied Split, and took a large part of the Croatian coast. The Germans, however, re-entered Istria and the Croatian Littoral In October 1943, and the Partisans became more active in Northern Croatia.The ‘National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia’ had some 300,000 fighters at the end of 1943, according to an unsubstantiated claim by the KPJ. In spite of their great losses, there were still plenty of them around.The decadence of the 'revolutionary army' came about with the introduction of the Officer ranks (in their British khaki uniforms) in May 1943. All of them were members of the KPJ.That the “People's Liberation Army meant, in practice, the realisation of the Marxist concept of the ‘armed people’”was a peculiarly meaningful admission on part of the KPJ.Adding political commissars to the 'armed people' created a healing environment, which stimulated all the senses and made them receptive for the political line of the KPJ and the basics of the Marxist theory.On a more down-to-earth subject, some forty planeloads of supplies of arms and medicines were dropped by the British to the Partisans XE "Forty planeloads of supplies of arms and medicines dropped by the British to Partisans" after the arrival of Brigadier Fitzroy MacLean XE "MacLean, Fitzroy - Brigadier" at Tito's Headquarters in September 1943. The military supply base in Bari (Italy) in October 1943 was established specifically for this purpose and for the evacuation of the seriously wounded. Tito, not to be outsmarted, responded by sending his own military mission, headed by Vladimir Velebit, to the Allied Command in the Near East in December 1943.At the Conference in Teheran on 28th November 1943 XE "Conference in Teheran on 28th November 1943" , Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt decided to give the Partisans even more extensive help.The Germans and the NDH refused to recognise the ‘National Liberation Movement’ as an army in conflict under international law. In the situation as irreversible as that, Tito retorted with a demand that ‘the occupiers’ make an end to the execution of the imprisoned Partisans and hostages, never mind that he executed Ustasha PoWs on the spot. Eventually, both sides had to agree to a partial exchange of the more important prisoners. This exchange was carried out with the help of Gleise von Horstenan in the summer of 1942 but applied only to the Germans. The policy of the KPJ in 1943 was meant to “activate the masses for the liberation and creation of the people's rule and the establishment of the principles for the true equality among the nations of Yugoslavia.”This was to be done naturally by force!The Komintern XE "Komintern" , however, identified more modest aims for the ‘liberation’ and demanded that the AVNOJ (the ‘Antifascist Council of the National Liberation of Yugoslavia’) must maintain the link with the Yugoslav ?migré Government in London. The British, with their urge to have their fingers in the Yugoslav pie, contaminated the rational solution of that problem by on the one hand helping ‘the counter-revolutionary’ forces to try to renew the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and on the other hand, at the same time helping the ‘revolutionaries’, led by the KPJ “to safeguard the right of the nations of Yugoslavia to decide for themselves their own future, i.e., to safeguard their true independence”.On 1st March 1943, a branch of the AVNOJ was formed in Croatia under the acronym ZAVNOH (the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Croatia), following blindly the same utopian aims.At the inaugural meeting of the ZAVNOH on 13th and 14th June 1943, it was resolved to “destroy the NDH XE "Destroy the NDH" , square accounts with the collaborationist leadership of the HSS and with the Yugoslav ?migré Government in London. The policy [of the utopian aim] of ‘brotherhood and unity’ between the Croats and the Serbs in Croatia was articulated with determination to establish a free Croatia in the brotherly union of the Yugoslav nations.” In October of that year, “several leaders of the left wing of the HSS joined the Partisans and established the executive committee of the HSS within the ‘liberated’ territory.This move turned out to be its downfall, becoming, as it were, a stooge of the KPJ. That same year the KPJ in Bosnia-Hercegovina erroneously believed that it had“stopped the negative processes which created deep divisions between Serbs, Muslims and Croats in Bosnia-Hercegovina during 1941-43.”The Germans quashed the idea of Muslim autonomy, and instead set up a volunteer Bosnian Muslim SS Legionary division (the Handjar). Muslim anti-Communist militias eventually succumbed to the Communists call in order to avoid being on the wrong side at the end of the war. Croats in Bosnia-Hercegovina, on the other hand, with the exception of a few post-war communists, abhorred the communist Partisans.The Communists pushed the process of change in the utopian direction, i.e., that of class unity and brotherhood, and against insurmountable odds of the traditional national and religious exclusivism. The KPJ deluded itself that the switch of the people towards the national liberation struggle would end the national conflicts of the past 25 years.In setting up another branch of the AVNOJ, with the awkward acronym ZAVNOBIH (the Anti-Fascist Council of the National Liberation of Bosnia-Hercegovina), it was decided that Bosnia-Hercegovina would become a fully-fledged federal Republic in Yugoslavia after the war, in which there “will be safeguarded the full equality of the Serbs, Muslims and the Croats,”who were, for the time being, creating havoc by refusing to listen to communist platitudes.The KPJ at that time had 20,000 members, half of whom belonged to the KPH as was typical of a high proportion of the industrial workers in Croatia. In January 1943, the AVNOJ confronted the Allies, exasperated with the collaboration from the Yugoslav ?migré Government in London with the Axis via the Chetniks.Early in the summer of 1943 and late in 1944 when it became plain that Germany was losing the war, after more than three years in political conflict, the HSS, which considered itself an ‘antifascist’ party, and the Ustasha regime which was an Axis member, confronted their differences and tried to find a way out for Croatia. It is difficult to unravel the confusion of motives, ambitions and perceptions of that situation.In the summer of 1943, Croatian Regular Army Col. Babi?, XE "Babi?, Ivan - Croatian Regular Army Col." who was working in the NDH Ministry of Defence, met with representatives of the Partisan National Liberation Movement (NOP) at their request. Facing a wholly unacceptable situation, the HSS mused that in Croatia there were two decisive political factors - the HSS with the pre-war democratic mandate of the Croatian people and the NOP, without any democratic mandate but in possession of arms. Yet the groups with the real killing power, the Ustashas, were strangely enough totally ignored.As a result of its links with the Allies, the NOP saw itself as a privileged political entity able to negotiate on its own terms. It was willing to negotiate with the Domobrans (the NDH Regular Army) by by-passing the HSS. The Domobrans, on the other hand, were: "willing to co-operate with the NOV as separate units with Croatian emblems and without the communist insignia; to be in charge of their own officers; to be a semi-detached force with the NOP with no political commissars; to have free choice of joining either the Domobran or the NOV units; to run separate military operations and as an organised army to become a more influential armed force than the NOV. The NOP naturally turned down these conditions."At the beginning of 1944, Colonel Ivan Babi? flew secretly to Bari at the invitation of the British and with the help of Seton-Watson, to try to initiate talks with the Allies on behalf of the 'pro-Allied' section of the Croatian Domobran Army (numbering some 150,000) with the political support of the HSS. The British, however, preferring totalitarians to true democrats, locked him up in a prisoner-of-war camp. After the Tito-?uba?i? meeting in Vis, the British allowed Babi? to meet briefly with ?uba?i?. Babi?'s down-to-earth argument that ?uba?i? could not negotiate with Tito without the backing of a strong military force was dismissed by ?uba?i?. He, as a 'good Croat', declined the offer of support by the forces of his own Croatian people and quipped naively: "Behind me is a force stronger than the Croatian Domobran Army. Behind me stands Churchill (at the time when he was renewing Yugoslavia). Anyhow, I had a long talk with Tito as one Croat to another. I have complete confidence in him and I am sure that his blue Zagorje eyes will not let me down."Stephen Clissold, a former member of the British Consulate in Zagreb and a British spy, XE "Clissold, Stephen, former member of British Consulate in Zagreb and British spy" who was in Bari, urged Babi? to invite the Domobrans to join the Partisans, lock stock and barrel – Babi? rejected this suggestion.A report, dated 20th February 1944, from Stevenson the British Ambassador to the Yugoslav Government in London, in Cairo, to the Foreign Office states:“Colonel Babi? is a high ranking officer of the Domobrans; he represents several high Domobran officers and certain leaders of the HSS. He has asked to meet Krnjevi? in London but refused to speak to the Yugoslav Government in London or to the Partisans. He was not prepared to speak about the NDH forces before his status as an emissary was established. He stated that von Horst was anti-Nazi and that he had a message from him”.Tito was more radical; he asked that Babi? be imprisoned as a war criminal.The aim of creating a strong Croatian Domobran army, to collaborate with the Allies and to reinforce the resistance together with the Chetniks and the Communists, was contradictory, too little and too late.The Foreign Office in London ‘expressed doubts’ about this plan and about Babi? himself, and continued supporting Tito, as Babi? represented only a small splinter group among the Domobrans. Babi?'s effort, although commendable, was bound to fail.Col. Talbot-Rice, of the S.O.E., XE "Talbot-Rice, Col. of the S.O.E." who questioned Babi?, ‘improved’ on Clissold’s ideas by suggesting that the Domobrans should join not only the Partisans but also the Chetniks and co-operate with the Allies but only by proxy. British Ambassador Stevenson XE "Stevenson British Ambassador " sent a full report on the subject to Eden XE "Eden, Anthony" in February 1944, probably drafted by Talbot-Rice himself: 1.Before the war, the HSS was leading the struggle against Belgrade centralism.2.The (Croatian) people greeted the Ustashas because they had got rid of Yugoslavia.3.Eventually the Ustashas (with their excesses) let them down.4.At the present time, the Ustasha regime has no more than one per cent of the Croats behind it.” 5.Paveli?’s stronghold consists of six colonels, Mo?kov, Serwatzy, Heren?i?, Bzik, Pe?nikar and Lisak. XE "Paveli?’s stronghold consists of six colonels, Mo?kov, Serwatzy, Heren?i?, Bzik, Pe?nikar and Lisak." 6.15-20% of the Communists in the Partisan ranks are against the (KPJ) policy of general destruction.7.The Chetniks are hated in Croatia.8.There are 150,000 Domobrans and 30,000 Ustashas in the NDH armed forces, but they are undisciplined. 9.Domobrans are anti-fascist and follow the HSS.10. General Nedi? in Belgrade collaborates with the Germans and de facto saved the Serbs’ necks. The Serbs appreciated this.11.The 1943 contact between General Mihajlovi? and the HSS failed. Mihajlovi? was not acceptable as a Commander in Chief of the ‘Yugoslav Army in the Homeland’, which would include the Domobrans, and he couldn’t let down the Chetniks in Croatia even though they had committed terrible crimes there.Ambassador Stevenson reported to the Foreign Office in London XE "Foreign Office in London" : “The views of Col. Babi? are suspect, although of some interest [Chetnik collaboration] with Germany and Italy; political tendencies of the Partisans; the situation in Serbia, and the political role in store for the Croatian Peasant Party] and are the result of wishful thinking”.Stephen Clissold sent a memo on the profile of the HSS to Cairo, PICME (Political Intelligence Centre, Middle East XE "Political Intelligence Centre, Middle East" ) in January 1944, which stated: “In April 1941, the HSS was the strongest political democratic party in Yugoslavia (90% Croat). However, a few days later an ‘Independent’ State of Croatia appeared under the control of the Ustasha terrorist Ante Paveli?. The HSS fell apart. Partisans concentrated on the territory of the NDH. Ma?ek the leader was a committed Yugoslav. His directive of 10th April 1941 to the Croatian people was false. He was passive. Refused collaboration but did not put up resistance to Germany and Italy. Krnjevi? [his second in command] was obsessed with abstract theories about ‘centuries old Croatian Statehood’ and did not show a talent for practical and revolutionary war, and as such “lost the confidence of the Croatian people.”“The Right wing and the Centre of HSS failed – the Left wing was toying with the idea of a possible new leadership: Toma?i?, Jan?ikovi?, and Bi?ani? who has joined the Partisans. “Jan?ikovi? [a lawyer], who had defended the Communists in the NDH courts, had escaped to Bari in October 1943. He had stated: “to keep the HSS organisation intact [including its passivity in NDH] – a policy of ‘wait and see’ had to be employed."“The HSS break into the Domobran armies was without positive results for the Allies. “Croatian Peasant resistance existed but within the NOP, not within the HSS.“The Domobrans [the Regular Army] were wavering in their loyalty to Paveli?. Desertions increased but not as a result of the HSS policies.“A Splinter group of the HSS with the Partisans, Lakus and Magovac had some success in pulling some members of the HSS into joining the Partisans. The Partisans treat Ma?ek as a traitor.“The HSS [Clissold rumbled on] was incapable of resolving the conflict with the Serbs and is consequently considerably responsible for the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1941”.At this point Clissold succumbed to the Serbian theories of collapse.In the Partisan bulletin ‘Proleter’ in December 1942 Clissold quotes Tito XE "Clissold quotes Tito" : “The leadership of HSS perceived the ‘Croatian question’ as a matter of division of political power with the Serbs; secondly, they directed the struggle of the Croatian people against the whole Serbian people and not only against the Serbian hegemonists. Thirdly, the HSS ignored the actual problems of the other [Yugoslav] nations, the Slovenes, Macedonians, Albanians, etc. In that way the Croatian people became isolated and are taken to be chauvinists on the pattern of the Serbs The days of the HSS are over and the NOP has gone far in seducing the fidelity of the Croatian people,”exclaimed Clissold.The implication of Tito’s ‘agreement’ with the former Ban of Croatia, ?uba?i? XE "?uba?i? - Ban of Croatia, in London under British surveillance" (who was at the time in London under British surveillance), was to establish a Federal State of Croatia within a Federal Yugoslavia. This occurred on 8th and 9th of May 1944 at the session of ZAVNOH (Anti-fascist Council of People’s Liberation of Croatia) on the ‘liberated territory’ of Croatia. ZAVNOH ignored the HSS, which intended ‘to do something about it’ but hesitated. What was surprising was that ZAVNOH became openly dismissive of the NDH, which still had an 80,000-strong regular army and an army of 76,000 fanatical Ustashas, no mean force by any standards. There were some 120,000 Partisans in Croatia (probably more than half of them local Serbs). The ZAVNOH action provoked a predictable response from Paveli?. He mixed the Ustasha fighters with the regular army soldiers, the Domobrans, and put a few German officers in charge of some units. This combination robbed the regular forces of hesitation and created the cohesion and a new fighting spirit necessary in confronting the overwhelming pro-Yugoslav forces. The HSS, not being much prone to violent change, took a long time to find its bearings in the war of the Yugoslav utopia. Being outlawed by the Ustasha regime and having been out of power for three years, the imprisonment of Dr. Ma?ek paralysed the party, which was trailing behind the realities of the war. The left wing of the party dwindled into the Partisan movement. The HSS politicians in London, under Dr. Krnjevi? (?uba?i?, ?utej, and Bi?ani?) XE "HSS politicians in London under Dr. Krnjevi? (?uba?i?, ?utej, and Bi?ani?)" , were split into those who wanted to negotiate with Tito and those who were against it. ?uba?i? was accused of capitulation to the communists.The extreme right wing of the HSS had joined the Ustashas already in 1941. They had a dash of radicalism vis-à-vis the complacent attitude of the Party. Yet in totally free and democratic elections in Croatia, the HSS would probably have beaten both the Ustashas and the Communists put together. The Partisans in Croatia were joined mainly by 'lost' youths of 18 to 25 years of age, who were not exactly an inspired elite to follow. However, to maintain that they spoke for the majority of the Croatian people, as the HSS did, was fanciful to say the least.The irony was that since 1941 the KPH was pressing for the HSS co-operation, although this was not feasible on ideological grounds. The HSS anti-war stance was attacked in 1942 by the KPH. Dr. Ma?ek, the HSS leader, became the focus of the stale communist rhetoric and was pilloried for obstructing the struggle against the occupiers and the NDH. He was a man who could no longer speak for himself as the Ustashas imprisoned him and he had then been vilified by the KPH who accused him of collaboration with the Ustasha regime. Negotiations between the HSS and the KPH, which started in December 1943, were merely the confirmation of the old sinister business for the recreation of Yugoslavia under a different label. Dr. Ivo Krbek, a former Vice-Ban of Croatia XE " Krbek, Dr. Ivo - former Vice-Ban of Croatia" , who conducted the negotiations on behalf of the HSS proposed an HSS-KPH form of coalition to enable the HSS to get the Domobrans (the regular NDH army, i.e., armed peasants) on the side of the ‘liberation’ movement. The Commies, affronted by what they believed was a subversive deconstructive attitude of the Domobrans (traditional passivity of the peasants) replied with unscrupulous opportunism. As Britain relaxed its support for the Chetniks XE "Britain relaxed its support for Chetniks" and developed its own utopian scenario for the salvation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, it helped the Partisans to fall into its embrace. However, perfidious Albion did not change essentially its attitude towards Yugoslavia. The new British policy was directed towards reconciliation between the Chetniks and the Partisans. (There is a dim analogy with Tudjman’s very same policy in 1990 for the reconciliation between the descendants of the Ustashas and the Partisans, but for which, alas, he was heavily criticised by Britain.) The Yugoslav ?migré Government in London, in the grip of severe psychosis after the changes in 1943, became even more focused on the creation of a Great-Serbia. Peeved that the British had let it down, they floundered when Britain took its policies into her own hands and, as a result the Yugoslav Government under Bo?idar Puri? was established on 10th August 1943.The Soviet Union, curiously enough, cheerfully handed over the ‘Yugoslav problem’ to the British XE "Soviet Union cheerfully handed over ‘Yugoslav problem’ to British" .In May 1943, the Komintern was disbanded, a welcome relief for the KPJ because this lifted its restriction on the KPJ's freedom of action. The Komintern was essentially a tool of Stalin's foreign policy in relation to the Allies.Although ‘the national liberation movement’ in 1943 became a considerable military and political force, its international standing was still dubious. After the fall of Italy, it became apparent that the British had not yet been prepared to accept the situation on the ground in Yugoslavia, and had not abandoned its traditional policy of meddling in the Balkans. The rehabilitation of the Chetniks was devious and double-edged. Britain kept two military missions there, one with the Chetniks and the other with the Partisans. This encouraged the Yugoslav ?migré Government to move to Cairo in August 1943 to be nearer home. King Peter XE "King Peter" followed suit and announced his imminent return to Yugoslavia. Binary opposition bestowed a spurious symmetry between the Chetniks and the Partisans in British eyes - on what were in truth quite unequal sides linked together by the Utopian Yugoslavism.Tito, ignorant of the Allies’ abandonment of the invasion of the Mediterranean, feared a British landing in Dalmatia. XE "Tito feared British landing in Dalmatia" His political acumen and distrust of the British decided in favour of deconstruction of the ?migré Government. To that extent, he sent a note on 2nd October to the Allies and Soviets stating that AVNOJ “does not recognise the King and the Yugoslav Government because of the Chetnik collaboration with the Axis, and will not allow their return to Yugoslavia, as this would cause a civil war. The only lawful rule now was that of the AVNOJ.”At the session of the CK of the KPJ on 16th October 1943, Tito established the legislative and executive bodies. XE "Tito established legislative and executive bodies" He asked for the removal of these powers from the Cairo Government XE "Cairo Government" . In the official proclamation it was stated that "the situation is ripe to put forward the question of the final change in the structure of the political power as a whole, and for the realisation of the old dream of the best sons of the South Slav nations: i.e., a brotherly federal state.”"The peoples of Yugoslavia do not give the right to the Yugoslav ?migré Government in London and other reactionaries at home to speak in their name; the King and monarchy became a concentration of the cliques organising a civil war . . . Therefore the nations of Yugoslavia demand that the Allies recognise their wishes.”The second session of the AVNOJ was held on 29th November 1943, in Jajce, in Bosnia-Hercegovina. With a rhetorical turn, Tito enumerated his aims and demands: “further strengthening of the Partisan struggle; the building of a new society based on the utopian ideal of 'brotherhood and equality' of the nations of Yugoslavia; the republican state system; and the demand that AVNOJ becomes the highest legislative and executive body in Yugoslavia (i.e., a provisional government) - all these demands being in the spirit of the Atlantic Treaty.”The NKOJ (National Committee for the Liberation of Yugoslavia) thus became a temporary government and Tito awarded himself the grotesque title of Marshall and was provided with suitable gold-braided attire. The proclamation was a hotchpotch of radical policies and dangerous utopian ideas.A body called the ‘Commission for the Establishment of the crimes of the occupiers and their servants’ XE "Commission for Establishment of crimes of occupiers and their servants’" would eventually become the main political tool in the hands of Tito (reparations from Germany, and the political and physical destruction of the Croatian people). Out of 63 elected members of the AVNOJ, 28 were Communists. In the NKOJ out of 17 members, 5 were Communists. The rest were homespun fellow travellers, former Chetniks, pro-Yugoslav orientated leftists and a mass of san cuillotes, to whom these utopian aberrations mattered desperately. With the establishment of AVNOJ and the NKOJ, the Communists deluded themselves that the political power had de facto changed and thus the “aims of the revolution within the framework of the national liberation war were achieved.”The second statement elaborated the utopian view that “the nations of Yugoslavia never accepted its break-up by the fascist imperialists” and “that they have firmly decided to remain united through their common struggle.”A stark illustration of Utopia XE "Stark illustration of Utopia" and false pretence reinforced with the Leninist dictum was the following declaration:“Starting from the right of every nation to self-determination, including the right of separation and/or unification with other nations, and led by the true will of all the nations of Yugoslavia witnessed in the three-year long national liberation struggle which forged inseparable brotherhood of the nations of Yugoslavia, Yugoslavia will become a true homeland of all its nations and never again be the subject of hegemonistic cliques.” The federal principle with full equality for the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians and Montenegrins (no mention of the Muslims) in the Republics of Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia-Hercegovina was enunciated. In the meantime, Britain became the chief saviour of the Yugoslav ?migré Government. The Brits had no choice but to accept the NKOJ, but only provisionally, including its demand that the ‘people’ will decide the final status of the Yugoslav State’ after the war ends. The decisions of the AVNOJ were described by the Yugoslav Royal ?migré government as an ‘act of terrorism’ XE "Act of terrorism" . Ironically, they were international experts on this subject.In the meantime, in April 1944, further flirtations between the HSS and the KPH resulted in a document called “The Fundamental Principles and Conclusions”, tabled by the HSS, in which the HSS maintained that it was still "the legitimate representative of the Croatian people, and the followers of the indestructible programme of Stjepan Radi? as the spiritual foundation of the political aims of the Croatian people.”This statement was immediately deflated with the utopian demand for the social and democratic (Croatian) State in union ‘with all the Yugoslav nations’.A proposal for the formation of the High Council of Croatia as a coalition body (of the HSS and the KPH) was tabled, to be followed by the general elections to be held three months after the end of war. Andrija Hebrang, the leader of the KPH XE "Hebrang, Andrija, leader of KPH" , turned down these proposals and invited the HSS to join the ‘National Liberation Movement’. This was equally unacceptable to the HSS. One can easily be disparaging and dismissive about a network of anti-Paveli? forces within the NDH establishment formed during these negotiations in the Spring of 1944, with a view to removing him, putting the HSS in power, driving the Germans out of Croatia and joining the anti-Hitler coalition. The absurdly overrated initiative for such a gargantuan task came from the NDH Minister of the External Affairs, Dr. Mladen Lorkovi?, an old ideologist of the Ustasha movement, and General Ante Voki?, the Minister of the NDH Armed Forces.The network infiltrated all the structures of the NDH regime, so much so that General Voki? spoke openly about the plan to the generals of the Croatian Army in Sarajevo in July 1944. The high-ranking HSS Executives Farolfi, Torbar and Pernar led the negotiations with the conspirators in the name of the HSS and with the agreement of August Ko?uti? (Secretary General of the HSS).These parleys were secretly encouraged by the indisposable KUK figure of General Glaise von Horstenau, the accredited general to the Government of the NDH, representing the Wermacht in Zagreb. Horstenau was a black sheep in the German military establishment in Croatia who believed that the Ustasha regime, as a whole, bordered on criminal and at the same time, believed correctly in the inevitable fall of Hitler. His intriguing anti-Ustasha stands throughout the war are not yet easily explicable, particularly in view of Hitler's staunch support of Paveli?, perhaps because of it. ‘The conspiracy’ against Paveli? XE "Conspiracy against Paveli?" might have had a remote chance of success if Voki? and Lorkovi? had not informed Paveli? himself at every turn about its progress. They hoped that he would accept this as a way of saving the Croatian State. The mistake they made was that they took him literally as he, an old Morlach, never objected in principle to switching sides. In any case, the hardcore of the Ustasha regime remained loyal to Hitler's Germany, which had helped to sustain it (Danke Deutschland!).The lesson that they did not learn was that interpreting Paveli? by yoking him with rigid principles was a doomed enterprise. He was too slippery for that. It was an absurd attempt to get him to capitulate before he was ready to do so. His judgement that the Third Yugoslavia was rubberstamped by the Allies was irrefutable. Surely the British would be true to themselves and be considerate to the Regular Army and the civilians? Yet, he met his Morlach match in the British stiff upper lip with which they handed over hundreds of thousands of innocent Croatian soldiers and civilians to Tito’s butchers XE "British stiff upper lip with which they handed over hundreds of thousands of innocent Croatian soldiers and civilians to Tito’s butchers" to support ‘Tito’s show’ without batting an eyelid. The conspirators’ almost infantile belief that the Allies would value the Croatian contribution to the struggle against Bolshevism was curious, to say the least.Paveli?’s revolutionary pragmatism in holding onto power, mixed with loyalty to Hitler, the evidence that the Allies intention would recreate Yugoslavia, and the psychological inability to abandon his principles, determined his final actions.On 21st August 1944, he gave orders for Lorkovi? and Voki? to be locked up in a concentration camp. On 30th August 1944 the rest of the conspirators, including the HSS team of Farolfi, Toma?i?, Torbar, Pernar, Smoljan, Ip?a, Reberski et al., joined them.By way of a parallel coincidence, at the same time Hitler executed 5,000 German ‘conspirator’ generals and politicians who were involved in the assassination attempt on him on 20th August 1944.After the liquidation of the Voki?-Lorkovi? group, the NDH regime increased the pressure against its enemies. The slogan was that the Croats must be loyal to their own State on the basis of the teaching of the 19th century Father of the Homeland, Dr. Ante Star?evi? XE "Star?evi?, Dr. Ante - Father of the Homeland" .The intellectual Ustasha newspaper ‘Spremnost’ (Readiness to Fight for the Homeland) published an article on 10th September 1944 stating ". . . at the end of this Great War the Croatian people must live to see an independent state . . ." The hope that if the NDH existed, that pragmatism would prevail and that the Allies would accept it as such, remains locked in the time warp of its own demise.From December 1943 to January 1944, the German-Croat offensive was in full swing to safeguard the Dalmatian coast against the onslaught of the Partisans. With the Red Army approaching Serbia, the strategic value of the coast increased.On 25th May 1944 (supposedly Tito's birthday), the German-Croat attack by aerial bombing and parachute drops on Tito’s hideout at Drvar in Bosnia eliminated virtually thousands of Partisans. 3,000 members of SKOJ (Communist youth) died defending Tito’s backside. On 3rd June Tito was air lifted by the British to Italy XE "British air lifted Tito to Italy" and from there returned to the Island of Vis, which became the new Headquarters of the CK of the KPJ and its Military Command. They were away from it all, on holiday as it were in the middle of the Adriatic. With 100,000 gold DM put on his head, Tito's dinner was still hot on the stove when the German paratroopers arrived at his cave and his impeccably tailored Marshall's uniform was taken as a trophy and displayed in a Zagreb shop window.On 23rd February 1944, the Soviet Military mission joined Tito’s hide-out on Vis Island. They also needed a holiday.The development of the war and the offensives of the Red Army in 1944 dictated the strategy for the ‘liberation’ of Serbia. Without Serbia, Tito could have little hope of becoming the boss of the new Yugoslavia. General Nedi?, Hitler’s lackey in Belgrade passed the command of his forces to General Mihajlovi?. As late as 28th August 1944, the Americans had a military mission with the Chetniks and the British pressed hard for reconciliation between the Chetniks and the Partisans.In September, the Partisans embraced the Red Army soldiers XE "Partisans embraced Red Army soldiers" on the banks of the river Danube.Unknown to all but his closest aides, Tito went to Moscow on 19th September 1944 to co-ordinate the ‘liberation’ of Belgrade by the Red Army.The irrational faith in the power of Germany to finish off Bolshevism and thus the Partisans as the chief pro-Yugoslav contestant in the conflict prevailed in the NDH for some time yet.Paveli? visited Hitler on 18th/19th September 1944 XE "Paveli? visited Hitler on 18th/19th September 1944" . The staunchest supporters of the NDH were the Croats of Bosnia-Hercegovina - squeezed as they were by the violence of the Chetniks and Partisans and the duplicity of the Muslims, suffocated by the fragrance of these 'Croatian flowers' - a situation that was to be repeated in the Bosnian war of 1990-1995.The HSS, at this crucial time in the history of Croatia, were still pestering the KPH to accept the sharing of power with a view to strengthening the left wing of the party, which had already joined the Partisans in the impassable woods. At the end of 1944, the HSS, after a long period of inactivity and ‘wait and see’ tactics, were pushed to negotiate with both sides at the same time, the Ustashas and the Partisans. A coalition of more rational people from all three Croatian sides hoped for the creation of a democratic parliamentary Croatian State. But this idea came to nothing.The reasons were the hesitant policies of the HSS, Paveli?'s elimination of all his ‘democrats’ and the Croatian communists who, in 1944, were feeling victorious and who were not inclined to share power with anyone after the end of the war.There was much confusion during the birth of communist Yugoslavia.The entrenched beliefs about its establishment had lost touch not only with the recent historical developments, but also with the accurate knowledge of what was going on there at the time. For that reason, the utopian thinking prevailed: “In my opinion . . . the policies of the HSS must be redirected towards Moscow. Russia is becoming the hope and pride of all the Slav nations.” At the same time, on 20th April 1944 Jan?ikovi?, XE "Jan?ikovi?" the left- winger in the HSS, reported to the State Department XE "State Department" : “. . . due to the sincere and deep understanding of the brotherly link of all the Slav nations, Croatian as well as Serbian - the HSS never pursued the policy of breaking up the Yugoslav State . . . ” From that statement, the Ustashas correctly concluded that the HSS were the lackeys of Belgrade. As a result, Mihovil Pavlek Mi?kina, the HSS MP, was executed in the Jasenovac concentration camp and subsequently got a street in Zagreb named after him. The HSS was now an illegal political party in the NDH.According to the German reports in April 1944, in the NDH 7,740 Partisans were killed and 2,869 were locked up in concentration camps in contrast to 532 Croat soldiers killed, 419 wounded, 91 imprisoned and 192 unaccounted for.In May 1944, the Italian newspapers published an interview with Tito by John Talbot, a Reuters correspondent, which included Tito’s surprising admission: “The value of the German soldier is falling lately. At the moment, the best soldiers they have are Ustashas. I maintain that one Ustasha is equal to two Germans. Chetniks are, without doubt, bad soldiers.” The background knowledge about the Croats and Serbs amongst the Anglo-Americans was and still is laughable. For example, Talbot asked Vane Ivanovi?, a Yugoslav businessman working for the British Intelligence: “Tell me, is King Peter a Serb?”Jan?ikovi?, now in Bari, in a letter to Krnjevi? in London dated 17th June 1944 made a tricky admission: “The fascist and Germanophile members of our party [HSS] were absorbed by the Ustasha movement’s latest campaign for its expansion.”?uba?i?, who had arrived in Bari from the Island of Vis after negotiations with Tito on the 19th June 1944 stated in conversation with Jan?ikovi?: “Tito is a good Croat; he does not allow attacks on President Ma?ek”.From the beginning of 1943, the British military strategy (i.e., support of those who kill most Germans) expressed itself ‘in balanced help’ to both the Chetniks and Partisans - in case. In November 1943 (the Teheran Summit XE "Teheran Summit" ), this policy suddenly changed to ‘substantial help for the Partisans’.The stylised communist's ideology of the KPH saw the greatest danger in the bourgeois parties as the competitors in the struggle for power in the next Yugoslavia.The establishment of the provisional Yugoslav executive in Belgrade in 1944, with Tito at its head, finally ended its nightmares. The wartime propaganda about the autonomy of the federal units was soon extinguished in the face of the looming Belgrade centralism.In a sense, this switch back to centralism by the KPJ was inevitable and predictable. The monolithic Marxist approach fitted Yugoslav utopianism admirably. Even more significant was the fact that the low-ranking party stuntmen in Croatia were usually Croats and that the majority of the Great Serbian Chetniks turned communists now joined the highest echelons of the Party.This was real life, not the movies: the fathers and grandfathers of the contemporary royalist ‘Chetniks’ and the paramilitaries have now joined the ‘revolution’. That is to say: the terror. The Communists were concerned with protecting the revolution against compromise, but as they were forced to use members of the ‘Great Serbs’ as the raw material for its execution, therefore, by definition they compromised it.4.7.5War for Yugoslav Utopia – The Price Paid in Croatian Blood XE "War for Yugoslav Utopia –Price Paid in Croatian Blood" The considerable role of the Croatian anti-Fascist resistance in the Allied victory in WWII has been side-issued for several reasons:1.Yugoslav communists hit it in the overall Yugoslav anti-Fascist resistance.2.The Great-Serbian propaganda machine identified all the Croatian people with the WWII Ustasha regime.3.Tito's Partisan movement had the final aim of re-establishing an Utopian Yugoslavia, where Croats would be of peripheral interest, and preferably unmentionable.4.The 'anti-Fascist' movement was divided (the HSS, the communists), and therefore confusing.5.The HSS was only a political non-military organisation, and as such hardly a 'resistance'.6.The 'anti-fascism' of the Chetniks, who co-operated with the Axis and depended on the Italian Fascists for their existence, was fake but at the same time very much used in the anti-Croat propaganda.For all these reasons the Croats who joined Tito's ranks for various reasons faded into the background. Yet, although Croatia had a considerable anti-Fascist force on its own territory it contributed also up to eight brigades to Tito's Operative Group, XE "Tito's Operative Group" particularly in the so-called Fourth and Fifth Offensive. While the credentials of these brigades were absolutely anti-fascist, the Yugoslav Communist role was thrust upon them, willingly or unwillingly, and that put them fairly and squarely into the camp of the enemies in the struggle for Croatian independence. The schizophrenic situation in which Croats within Tito's resistance movement found themselves was, on the one hand positive, anti-fascist and formed part of the overall Allied effort. However, on the other hand it was negative, communist and inimical to the struggle for Croatian independence (except for the Ustasha regime).The role of the Croat anti-Fascists within the overall Yugoslav resistance was considerable in relation to the role of the other 'Yugoslav' nations. Croats were accused by the Serbian propaganda of joining the 'Peoples' Liberation Army' too late. Such an accusation could be more appropriately be leveled against the Serbs.The fact is that Croatia contributed 34% of the 'Liberation Army' manpower; although commensurate to the size of its population this percentage should have been in the region of only 20% of the total Yugoslav forces. Or, if we specify these percentages by the ethnic origin then Croats contributed 22% of operative Partisan forces, although they formed only 16% of the total Yugoslav population.Croats predominated in 40 Infantry Brigades, 4 KNOJ Brigades (though nothing to be proud of, since these were Communist executioners), six other Brigades, twelve divisions, four corps, and as a whole in the Yugoslav Army and, as a maritime nation of course in the Navy.Although the Serb population in the NDH was, in propaganda ledgers, perceptually more engaged in the resistance than the Croatian one, that 'advantage' had been lost by the low engagement of the Serbs in the Partisan movement in Serbia proper. At the time of the establishment of the first 'Croatian Brigade' (July 1942) in BiH, there were Five Serb-Montenegrin and One 'Bosnian' Brigade. These formations were 'successful' only in setting the NDH on fire but were totally impotent in Serbia, which was dominated by the Chetniks. The First Partisan Brigade in Serbia was actually formed only in October 1943 and in Montenegro only in November 1943.The period of time from mid-1942 to autumn 1944 was dominated by the formation of Croatian and Bosnian units on the territory of the NDH.Before the capitulation of Italy in 1943 Croats had 23 times more Partisan units than Serbia, and 8 times more than Montenegro. In September 1942 Croats had 8 out of 21 Partisan Brigades on the territory of the NDH. Croats kept this lead up to the end of the war.The Croatian tragedy XE "Croatian tragedy" was that these forces were ideologically indoctrinated and exploited for the purpose of the reconstruction of Yugoslavia and the destruction not only of the NDH, but also even of the dream of an independent Croatian state. The fact is, and it has to be taken into account, that Croats as ever were politically and ideologically divided. It is therefore safe to assume that at least 50% of the Croat Partisan forces consisted of the victims of the Serbian Chetnik and Italian Fascist terror in Dalmatia, and they had no choice but to join Tito's ranks.The length of time that the Partisan Brigades were operative was 635 days in Slovenia, 624 days in BiH, 599 days in Croatia, 576 days in Montenegro and only 353 days in Serbia.This means that the Croatian Partisan brigades were fighting 34,000 days and all the rest only 65,000 days. The 'quality' of these brigades lay in the fact that the HQ of the Partisan forces fixed the 'proletarian' prefix to seven Croatian brigades and to only seven other brigades in the rest of Yugoslavia, and no questions were asked.In comparison, in January 1944, Serbs had only seven Partisan brigades, while Croats had five corps, fourteen divisions and forty-three brigades. The Serbian 'anti-fascist' movement made up only 10% of the total Yugoslav effort.The credentials of the fighting Croatian anti-Fascists are therefore indisputable. The disproportion in the number of units of Serbs on the one side and of Croats cannot be easily explained because the occupation forces were, more or less, equally distributed over the whole of the territory of the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Even so, the real reason that the greatest pressure and the number of the pro-Yugoslav forces were within the NDH territory was that the aim of these forces was the destruction of the NDH, while the struggle against the occupiers was an unavoidable side issue.After more than 50 years, a balanced assessment can be made. There is no doubt that the NDH regime was allied in WWII to fascism, but the majority of the Croatian people that welcomed their independence were definitely not. The NDH in its recognised frontiers perhaps was untenable demographically. Yet post WWII, the Croatian state, freed of its wartime regime, could have perhaps survived as a democracy within the negotiable frontiers in the way that post-war Germany did. This, however, did not happen, as the Great Powers were the progenitors of both Yugoslavias. The Croatian blood that was shed within the anti-fascist resistance and the overall Allied effort was, de facto, also shed for the destruction of the idea of an independent Croatian state.The situation was aggravated by the fact that the General Headquarters of the Partisan forces of Croatia were situated in the so-called 'liberated territory' within the NDH with the majority Serbian population (i.e., Krajina – notorious from the 1992-95 war).At the end of 1944 the HQ of the Partisan forces on the territory of the present-day Croatia included 46% Serbs and 44% Croats (the Serbs being a 12% minority in Croatia, i.e., Croatian citizens.On 30th June 1944, out of the total number of Partisan 140 Infantry Brigades there were seventy-seven in the NDH, (forty-six in Croatia and thirty-one in BiH). The Partisan General HQ (Tito) used manpower from the Croatian Brigades for making up numerical losses in his own HQ and even in the Serbian divisions in Krajina but carefully avoiding forming nationally pure Croatian divisions. While shedding of Croat blood for the recreation of another Yugoslavia was acceptable in the final analysis the communist leadership did not trust the Croats. The Croat anti-fascists thus were under permanent Great-Serbian control. For example:1.The 1st Dalmatian Brigade was transferred to the 3rd Montenegrin division.2.The 2nd Dalmatian Brigade was transferred to the second proletarian division.3.The 3rd Dalmatian Brigade was in the HQ IV operative zone.4.The 6th Littoral-Goran Brigade was dumped into the 8th Kordun (Serbian) division.5.The 14th Littoral-Goran Brigade was in the HQ V operative zone.6.The 13th (Croatian) Proletarian Brigade was dumped into the 7th Banija (Serbian) division.In the period from 1st January to 30th June 1943 (during the bloody fighting in Neretva and Sutjeska against the overwhelming German-Italian-NDH forces), Croat Partisan Brigades were thrown into the worst battles. Three brigades, each with a Croat majority, were totally destroyed in order that Tito and Co. could save their skins and escape to Serbia.Even so, at the end of that battle, Croats had 20 and 'Bosnians' 12 brigades, i.e., 32 Partisan brigades were in the territory of the NDH out of a total of 45. 50% of the fighters in these battles were Croats. No other 'Yugoslav' force suffered such losses. On 31st December 1943, after the capitulation of Italy, Croats had 38 and 23 Bosnians' brigades out of a total of 96. Serbs in Serbia had only 5. From the total of 99,085 war days, Croats were involved in 34,180 and Serbs from Serbia in only 17,631.The 1st 'Croat' division was formed only in February 1943, although by their numerical strength, the Croats could have formed two divisions already back in November 1942. Immediately after its establishment, this first so-called Dalmatian division was involved into the toughest battle of the whole war, i.e., the battle of River Neretva (the so-called '4th Offensive'). In order to 'thank' Croats for their sacrifices, this division was disbanded two months later, Tito having lost this battle against the Germans, Italians and NDH. From one whole division and five brigades, only one brigade survived. 50% of all victims of that battle were Croats. Our old friends the Great Serbs from Krajina masterminded the well-organised propaganda about the Croats as the Johnnie-come-latelies to the resistance. The average number of men in the Croatian divisions was 2,700. At the end of the war that average was increased to 7,200.While Croats in Dalmatia abhorred Paveli? for his servility to the Italians XE "Croats in Dalmatia abhorred Paveli? for his servility to the Italians" , and for abandoning most of the Adriatic coast to them, there is no documentary evidence that all of them fought against the NDH per se, nor indeed for the recreation of Yugoslavia. If such Croats existed, they were a considerable minority.In the Zagreb region, with a population of 1.5 million, Croat Partisan divisions were almost half the size of those in the rest of the NDH, due to the high concentration of the German and NDH forces. The German pressure was somewhat attenuated, also due to the protests from the NDH government. There was naturally less appetite for the adventures in the woods than in the south of the country. The resistance in general was on the Czech pattern – wait and see, more or less as in Serbia.While there was great opposition to the excesses of the NDH regime, there is no documented evidence that the people welcomed the prospect of yet another Yugoslavia, let alone a communist one. On the contrary.In such circumstances, the Great Serbian propaganda (now wrapped in the Yugoslav Peoples Liberation movement (NOP) run by the communists) found fertile ground for pushing the myth about all the Croats being fascists, never mind that the Croat representation in the Partisan divisions in Croatia was 78.93% in 11 divisions, and 26.74% in five divisions with the local Serbian majority. On average, the Croat majority in the Partisan ranks was 62.62%.The high percentage of so-called Krajina Serbs in these 5 divisions came from the fact that these Serbs primarily rebelled against any Croat State in principle (as they also did in the 1990's), irrespective of its character. For them, all Croats were, and remained, Ustashas without exception. The Krajina Serbs anti-fascism, on the other hand, is questionable because more than half of them collaborated openly with the Italians throughout WWII. The anti-Croat hatred became acute even in the Partisan divisions in which the Serbs had a majority.Thus, the establishment of the major Partisan formations occurred first in the territory with a Serb ethnic majority (Krajina), apparently for 'security' reasons. Tito camouflaged the predominance of the Croats in the Partisan ranks with an order that all the formations must carry the Yugoslav name. In spite of that, national-territorial names survived until the end of the war, when Tito eventually felt secure enough to get rid of them. The Croats were, ironically enough, the majority in the operative formations and in the minority in the Partisan leadership, where naturally Serbs dominated.Croats dominated the 8th Dalmatian corps. At its foundation, it had 13,049 fighters and at the end of the war it had 70,000. The Croat majority in the 8th corps was 72%. In the 11th corps the Croat majority was 66%. In the 6th corp (Slavonian) the Croat majority was 57%. In five corps on the territory of the NDH there were 101,000 Croat fighters.The anxiety that the Yugoslav centralism, championed by Tito, had towards the groups in the various 'Republican' headquarters of the Partisan forces, because of this fear of the formation of the separatist republican armies, led eventually to the creation of the Yugoslav army with the supreme headquarters in Belgrade. Yugo-unitarists thus centralized all the forces under a single leadership in spite of the evidence of the relatively successful war experience achieved by the separate 'Republican' forces. The Communist Party directives in the ethnically mixed forces were not effective. The mistrust of the anti-communist and anti-Yugoslav attitude of the Croats, in spite of their strong anti-fascist credentials, reinforced the dictatorship in the pursuit of the utopian unity. The fact that the Croats in Dalmatia, with the help of the British, liberated the island of Vis in 1943, for Tito's own safety XE "Croats in Dalmatia, with help of British, liberated island of Vis in 1943 for Tito's own safety" and the fact that they liberated the Dalmatian coast up to the Island Pag long before the 'liberation' of Belgrade (naturally by the Red Army), XE "Liberation of Belgrade by Red Army" did not count for much. Nor did the fact that the Croat fighters liberated parts of Dalmatia which were later sold to Italy by the Kingdom of Yugoslavia count for much either.At the end of WWII, some 250,000 Croats, mainly civilians, were slaughtered by the communist Partisans from the 12th Slavonian division in the region of Marenberg, s. Race, s. Brezuli and by the 40th Slavonian division in the region of Maribor, Dravograd, Klagenfurt, Ljubljana, Vrhnike, and Novo Mesto. In January 1945 these divisions had between 50.1% and 69.5% Croat fighters respectively. These statistics amply record evidence of the human propensity for ideological and physical cruelty to one's own kind, i.e., Croats were killing other Croats for a utopian end.What was the actual percentage of the Croats who were slaughtering their own brothers during the 'liberation'? The answer to this question is difficult. Yet due to communist Yugoslav brainwashing, fear of the Serbs in their own units and the hardship and savagery of the war, it must have been at least 50%, particularly in the 40th division, i.e., some 2,000 Croat murderers involved in fratricide (Bratoubilacka Borba) applauded by their Serbian Communists comrades. The recreation of the Yugoslav Utopia in 1945 did not thus deviate from its usual path and, as could be easily foreseen would inevitably end in yet more bloodshed and apocalyptic violence in the 1990's.The Partisan naval detachments in the Adriatic, established in Podgora in 1942 such as they were, were dominated by the Croats. In October, the so-called Yugoslav Navy consisted of 90% Croats, 6.8% Slovenes and 1.6% Serbs.The fledgling 'Yugoslav' Air Force was established when two Croat pilots from the NDH Air Force airport in Banja Luka landed on Partisan territory on 21st May 1942. Franjo Kluz and Rudi ?ajevec gradually built up the Partisan 'Air Force' with incoming deserters from the NDH Air Force. In 1943, the Partisan 'Air Force' had one Dornier Do-17 aircraft with 7 crewmembers from the NDH Air Force. However, the Luftwaffe made sure that this single Partisan plane did not leave the ground XE "Luftwaffe made sure that this single Partisan plane did not leave the ground" . In Brindisi in 1944 there were 222 trained Partisan pilots under British command. These escadrilles flew 2,280 sorties, pounding mainly Croatian towns and villages and killing the civilians.The orgy of the so-called 'anti-fascist' army of Croatia (1941-1945) used anti-fascism as a slogan. Clearly, the anti-fascism of the Western democracies was one thing, and the 'anti-fascism' of the Yugoslav communists was plainly another. But the West put up with this farce for its own interests.The added tragedy was the exploitation by the communists of the genuine democratic and anti-fascist feelings of the great majority of the Croatian people for their own ends, i.e., for the creation of the communist Yugoslav Utopia, which by definition was anti-Croat rather than 'anti-fascist'. The communist concerned with protecting their revolution against compromise inevitably compromised it by using the 'Great-Serbian' raw material for its execution. 4.7.6 Partisan Massacres Continue XE "Partisan massacres continue"The Partisans arrived in Dubrovnik on 18th October 1944 and already on the 19th October they had murdered a group of Croatian youths (between the ages of 19 and 22 years) from Konavle who were dressed by the NDH authorities in the ‘Ustasha uniforms’. After brutally torturing them, they were thrown into the sea at Orsula.On 25th and 26th October 1944, the communists shot a large group of citizens of Dubrovnik, mainly Croat intellectuals, including a few Serbs and Jews, on the Island Daksa. They were described as ‘enemies of the people’. Yet these were not the only murders carried out. Several mass graves are scattered on the Island of Daksa, and in the environs of Dubrovnik as far as the Island of Kor?ula.Since 1944, Daksa has become a ‘taboo’ subject in Yugoslavia, rather as if it had disappeared from the face of the earth. Out of the total number of 190 Dubrovnik citizens murdered, 79 were murdered on Daksa, eleven of them Roman Catholic priests.Immediately after the war 600 other people from the Dubrovnik region were murdered by the communists and buried in the mass graves of Vranjina Jama (on the Island Kor?ula), Slano, Boninovo and Gospino Polje.The communist register, kept in the Dubrovnik archive, lists the names and surnames of some of the murdered citizens with comments such as ‘Ustasha’, ‘Ustasha spy’, ‘collaborator’, ‘sympathetic to the occupiers’, etc., imprisoned on the basis of hearsay, and a 'free assessment' by spies of the ‘new authorities’. Any one of these excuses 'justified' the death sentences.“They must be killed” was the leitmotif of a long illiterate letter written by the ‘People’s Hero’, one Ante Jurjevi?-Baja XE "Jurjevi?-Baja, Ante" , a leading communist in Dalmatia, addressed to the local Partisan executioners in Dubrovnik (most of whom were former Serbian Chetniks).It was clear from that letter that the victims were chosen on the basis of unfounded accusations; that many of them were Roman Catholic priests and friars; that the hunt for the ‘peoples’ enemies’ was progressing and had to be accomplished before the Allies (i.e., the British), who could protect them as individuals who held different opinions, arrived in Dubrovnik; that the shootings were already completed before Baja's letter and that the public was informed about them only partially; that Baja and company signed the death warrants and at the same time acted as executioners; that the public made demands for open trials in the Peoples’ Courts when the accused were already dead; that the communist authority was profoundly paranoid and anxious about the backlash by the ‘reactionaries’; that the new authority was confused as to how to proceed with its ‘revolutionary programme’ and therefore imprisoned ‘suspects’ piecemeal on a daily basis; that members of the HSS were not compromised, ‘even so’ that ‘that did not prevent them from being liquidated’.Such events were repeated all over Croatia XE "Events were repeated all over Croatia" , and particularly in Dalmatia, during the period in which the early 'anti-fascism' of the Croatian Partisans gradually became hijacked by the Serbo-communists around Tito and the CK of the KPJ. The Yugoslav communists' sub-culture allowed the liquidation of all those whom it deemed to be in its way, even many anti-fascists in the name of 'anti-fascism'. The 10th and 12th Brigade of 29th Hercegovinian Partisan Division, which entered Dubrovnik twenty days earlier, was manned by 800 Great-Serbian Chetnik cut-throats from Hercegovina. (Their sons and grandsons were to attempt to destroy Dubrovnik again in 1992.) The first question they asked was "who is next for the knife?" As it happened, they struck at the outstanding Croatian scholar, Jesuit Priest Petar Perica, whom they murdered for composing the lyrics of a popular church hymn, ‘Hail Virgin, the Queen of Croatia’. This was a paradigm for the series of crimes by the ‘National Liberation Army’, whose victims were listed on the posters stuck on the medieval walls of Dubrovnik with the purpose of inflicting the ‘revolutionary fear of God’ by the Godless ruffians onto the Croatian citizens of this most civilised city in the world. The second question was who will be next in the line of fire? The myth, believed by many, was that the Reds were democrats, unlike the Nazi-Fascists or the Ustashas. People like Maks Milo?evi?, Headmaster of the Dubrovnik gymnasium, was one of those who welcomed the Partisans with open arms only to be shot on the island of Daksa for saying “Let there be even a Red Croatia, as long as it is Croatia”. The list of the victims with names and surnames was finally published in the Zagreb broadsheet Vjesnik on 20th November 1999.The Dubrovnik massacres in the autumn of 1944 were a precursor to the genocide in Bleiburg in the Spring of 1945. The realisation of the ‘socialist revolution’ required the destruction of the ‘class enemies’.These ‘class enemies’ included first and foremost any enemies of Yugoslavia.The re-creation of Yugoslavia was the justification for the Red comrades to absorb into their ranks hundreds of thousands of the Great-Serbian Chetniks, ignoring the fact that they cut each other's throats throughout the four-year long war. The two ideologically inimical pro-Yugoslav contestants found that Yugoslav blood was thicker than water.In the meantime, General Mihajlovi?, with another 15,000 Chetniks, withdrew to Eastern Bosnia. On 20th October 1944, the Red Army and the Partisans entered Belgrade.The Partisans claimed a hugely exaggerated figure of 600,000 fighters XE "Partisans claimed a hugely exaggerated figure of 600,000 fighters" . Thousands of Chetniks switched ranks and turned into virtual Partisans simply by discarding the royal insignia and replacing it with the communist red star. On the 1st March 1945, this concoction changed its name to the ‘Yugoslav Army’.At the Conference at Yalta in the Crimea from 4th to 11th February 1945, the Big Three decided to divide the sphere of influence in Yugoslavia 50/50 between the East and the West and then breathed a collective sigh of relief as Germany capitulated on the 8th May 1945.Before the final operations of the war were complete, the German Army Group ‘E’ had 450,000 soldiers in the region and the combined Croatian NDH forces had 17 divisions amounting to 150,000 fighters, and according to Communist Agit-Prop information "these quisling forces resisted even after the German forces had laid down their arms on 15th May 1945.”The most extreme Serbian nationalists, now firmly in power, used the communist dialectical tricks and rhetoric as a convenient tool to crush the Croats, who were described as separatist 'Chauvinists, Ustashas and fascists’.In a paraphrase of Edward Mortimer, "The [communists] descended armed into the [Serbian] conscience and the [Serbian] conscience entered all the key positions of the [new] State. [Chetniks and Partisans] were travelling the road towards [Yugoslav] Utopia, just from opposite directions."During 1943/44, more and more Croatian leftists joined ZAVNOH. These included some high-ranking Domobrans and intellectuals, lured by the mix of vague left-wing ideologies and woolly-minded promises, such as the utopian sovereignty of the federal Croatian State within communist Yugoslavia. It was inevitable, therefore, that this influx would dilute the dogmatic Stalinism of the KPJ. The leadership of the KPJ was physically remote so that the Partisan movement in Croatia in 1943/44 became almost autonomous. Curiously enough, Tito never put his foot on the soil of the present-day Republic of Croatia throughout the war until 1944 when he escaped to the Island Vis for a “Dalmatian holiday”.In comparison with Serbia and Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia and Slovenia claimed to be the only organised ‘Partisan states within states’ with their armies, ‘parliaments and governments’ which indulged in organising the various ‘congresses’ on the ‘liberated’ territory, curious events in occupied Europe (unthinkable, for example, in France).Croatia ‘in the woods’ articulated more and more its utopian statehood.Strong opposition to these ‘nationalist’ deviations within the KPH was put up by the 'Croatian' Stalinists, particularly those in Dalmatia and of course by the local Serbs (our old friends from Krajina), a situation that led to the Serbian Partisan uprising in Pla?ko in 1944. However, these reactions were too weak to stop the ‘democratisation’ and the strengthening of the imaginary sovereignty of the ‘Federal Croatia’ within Yugoslavia, which became the leading utopian aim of the ‘Croatian’ communists. Tito, anxious about these developments XE "Tito, anxious about these developments" , despatched Edvard Kardelj, an obdurate Slovene Unitarist, and our old friend, Milovan Djilas to Croatia. Their report to the Politburo of the KPJ in Belgrade about the situation in the KPH concluded with a comment that its Rukovodioci (leaders), particularly Andrija Hebrang, were leaning towards nationalism, liberalism and the autonomy of Croatia.The Politburo of the KPJ did not lose any time in withdrawing Hebrang to Belgrade and replacing him with Dr. Vladimir Bakari? XE "Bakari?, Dr. Vladimir" (who had changed his surname from Kupferer), a rather dull lawyer and Tito’s lapdog in Croatia, a man with a seismographic sense for any, even the slightest, political shifts emanating from Belgrade. He remained irremovable in that position until his death in 1983.In 1944 it was clear that the end of the NDH was nigh, that the ‘negotiations’ between the HSS and the KPH and the Ustashas and the HSS, had failed, and that the ‘democratisation, liberalisation and political pluralism’ in the future sovereign ‘Federal Croatia’ was just a pipe dream.On 1st March 1945, the ‘Croatia's Partisans’ were disbanded and integrated into the Yugoslav army. The NDH armed forces, fuelled by the popular contempt for the Serbo-communists, proceeded with their anti-Yugoslav war until the 8th May 1945. At the end, these forces numbered 150,000 men under Ustasha commanders. The Partisan forces in Croatia numbered also some 150,000 men (60% pro-Yugoslav Croats, 30% Serbs, and the 10% the ‘others’).305,000 Partisans were killed and 425,000 were wounded in the course of the war of the Yugoslav utopia and the total casualties were in the region of 1,400,000 dead. The history of the KPJ manipulates this figure in its own peculiar way XE "History of KPJ manipulates this figure in its own peculiar way" : “in the national liberation movement, as victims of the fascist terror, and as members of the quisling formations. Most of these deaths occurred in the concentration camps. . . . The greatest numbers of these were the Serbs executed by the Ustashas in the NDH. Only in the concentration camp at Jasenovac were 700,000 people, mainly Serbs, executed. There were 320,000 Yugoslav citizens in the quisling formations.”The KPJ figures do not differ substantially from the propaganda of the Yugoslav ?migré Government in London passed by F.G. d’Arcy Osborne, the British Envoy to the Vatican to Msgr. Tardini on 3rd of October 1942.Retributions, shootings, ethnic cleansing, burning, looting, hunger and disease in that conflict hardly overstate the sub-culture of the Yugoslav utopia.Perhaps the dirtiest events in Croatia occurred in the last days of the war during the invasion of the NDH territory by the Yugoslav 'liberating' armies from Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia, thirsty for blood and revenge. They were met by the NDH forces, prepared to fight to the bitter end.Today, half a century after the events, it is imperative to discuss these events dispassionately, XE "It is imperative to discuss these events dispassionately," and yet the repetition of the aggression of the similar 'liberating' forces against Croatia (and the Croats in Bosnia-Hercegovina 1992-95) makes this difficult. The NDH government, with the collapse of the German Reich had only two alternatives: to pursue (as some generals advocated) guerrilla warfare or to withdraw armed forces to Austria. In April 1945, before the ‘liberation’ of Zagreb, there was a genuine interest in Belgrade as to what Paveli? would do. The Great Serbian Royalists, whose end was nigh, hoped beyond hope that he would put up strong resistance to the communists and thus, save their skins.The NDH regime's attitude, in such a situation, was strained to explain that the NDH was not a fascist organisation, but rather an historic expression of the will of the Croatian people for the right to their own national state. This attempt was somewhat ineffective because the Allies did not distinguish between the NDH and its regime in a way that Anglo Saxons do not distinguish between statehood adherence (Dr?avljanstvo) and nationality (ethnic origin).At a public meeting in Zagreb on 10th March 1945, the NDH Prime Minister, Nikola Mandi? defined clearly the relationship between the Government and the Head of State: "The Croatian government acts in accordance with the directions of the Poglavnik [leader] who rules in the name of the people". In view of the fact that all dictators 'rule in the name of the people' XE "All dictators 'rule in name of people'" and that the Croatian people's views at that time counted for little, it is obvious that there existed a clear distinction between the State as such and the ruling Regime.In that context, and also in the context of the absolute negative attitude of the Catholic Church towards Bolshevism, the Catholic Bishops demanded, in their pastoral letter of March 1945, that Croatia be included in the Western sphere of influence after the end of the war. It was significant that this pastoral letter was published twenty days after the Allies, namely the British, recognised Tito’s communist regime. (“Why are you worried, you won't have to live there” quipped Eden to Winston Churchill).On 8th May 1945, Germany capitulated and the Croatian army and the hundreds of thousands of civilians from all regions of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina were trekking from Zagreb on the only route to Austria still open via Celje and Dravograd. A memorandum to Field Marshall Alexander, signed on 4th May 1945 by all the Ministers of the NDH government, pleading with the Allies to occupy Croatia to save it from falling into the hands of communists, was rather na?ve in the circumstances. In June 1944, when there was still time for such an action, Paveli? executed Dr. Mladen Lorkovi?, Ante Voki? and the HSS men, Farolfi, Toma?ic et al., on the 24th and 25th April 1945. These were the very ministers who intended to make the appeal. Ante Ciliga, the veteran Croatian communist, recalled that Paveli? telephoned the prison, knowing full well that Lorkovi? and co. were already dead, and ordered: "Release those wretched souls". When told that they were already dead, he quipped: "What a shame". The Revolution indeed had eaten its own children!The Allies defined the NDH as a ‘Criminal quisling state’, as their aims were never dictated by moral considerations. As a result of the formal recognition of Tito's Yugoslavia on 7th April 1945 Croatia, willy-nilly, found itself again in the second Yugoslav now Communist Reich. The British decision that the NDH forces had to capitulate to Tito’s communist army on the 8th May 1945 was dictated by putting the outcome of the war in the service of politics. However, the Croatian army resisted until it eventually gave itself up to the British in Bleiburg, Austria on 15th May 1945. Isolated pockets of Ustashas in Od?ak (Bosnia) and Stolac (Hercegovina) fought many battles, long into the autumn of 1945.The last hope of the Croatian army and civilians of escaping butchery at the hands of Tito's 'liberators' was that the British would respect the Geneva Convention on POWs, to which NDH was a signatory. However, the British turned a blind eye to these ‘formalities’, XE "British turned a blind eye to these ‘formalities’" a familiar tactic in British military history.4.8The Conquest of Croatia XE "Conquest of Croatia" In April 1945, Tito had at his disposal three times more men than Paveli?. In spite of this his losses were disproportionately high. Only in the battles for Srijem and Slavonia did he have more than 70,000 wounded. (Tito’s report to the Fifth Congress of the KPJ, 1944.)Croatian forces fought well to fend off the communist offensive that lasted more than a month. At the end of April, the Croats even went on a counter-offensive.The retreat of the Croatian army is described by the Commander in Chief of the General Headquarters of the Croatian Army, General Fedor Dragojlov, a Croat of Orthodox religion and former lieutenant in the Austro-Hungarian army [accused by the Serbs as a traitor of Serbianhood on account of his Orthodoxy]. “The withdrawal of the 200,000-strong Croatian army to Klagenfurt in Austria in order to save lives was decided by the NDH government with Paveli? in the chair. This was scheduled for 5th May 1945. Zagreb was abandoned on 8th May 1945 without a fight and the communists crept into the city two days later. The order to the NDH units was to surrender only to the British after crossing the frontier into Austria, hoping that the British would respect the Geneva Convention on PoWs. However, members of the NDH Government were handed to Tito by the British without much ado and liquidated, some immediately, some after show trials.“The Croatian army on the way to Austria won its last battle with the Partisans on 13th May 1945 in the area south of Dravograd, five days after the end of WWII. On 14th May, 8 kilometres from Bleiburg, it forced the communists into flight and broke through over the frontier. In that way the core of the Croatian army of 140,000 men fulfilled its last orders. Humiliating and arduous negotiations commenced with the British, and culminated in the surrender of more than 100,000 men. The remainder escaped into the nearby woods and further afield.”The mass exodus of the Croats included the political and cultural elite of Croatia and large masses of patriotic citizens XE "Mass exodus of Croats included political and cultural elite of Croatia and large masses of patriotic citizens" . Among these were many members of the oldest democratic political party, the HSS, and Dr. Ma?ek himself. These elite included some high prelates of the Roman Catholic Church, university professors, and journalists. The exodus ended in general slaughter, the responsibility for which rests squarely with the Croat ideologists of the Yugoslav utopia and its sponsors, the British and the French.It is clear from Dragojlov's text that the exodus was Paveli?'s decision, 'in order to save lives' not only of the Army but also of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Yet morality in wars resides not only in the laws of war but also in twisting them to one's own advantage. As a cunning Morlach, Paveli? called the British bluff, and entrusted them with the lofty mission of saving the refugees from the Bolsheviks. The mystical faith of the Croats in European civilisation and British fairness and justice, which Paveli? himself decried, was now put to the test. "You admire the British, you can have them. Now I am exonerated," one could almost hear him say. That this is not a tacky ironical invention is confirmed by Paveli?'s wife's alleged statement after the war:"We have sacrificed everything for the Croatian people, but they are an ungrateful lot, who do not deserve any better."The columns of refugees headed for Celje in Slovenia, at which point the roads forked to Dravograd and Maribor. The Partisan 3rd Army installed itself in Maribor so that the mass of 50-60,000 civilians and the wounded fell into their trap, most of them slaughtered on the spot. The main body of the army and civilians proceeded to Dravograd. The progress was slow due to the overcrowded roads. Near Dravograd the army wasted two crucial days in negotiations and clashes with the Partisans and Bulgarians. On 14th/15th May 1945 at Bleiburg Field in Austria, the Croats were stopped by the British Army with the Partisan gangs lurking behind the thick bushes.Following the extradition, the thousand-kilometres long death-marches commenced. The British went out of their way to pursue those people who were already settled in refugee camps in Italy and Austria and were ‘on the list’ as political and ideological opponents of Tito's communists. Two years after the end of the war on 8th September 1947, an agreement between Britain and Yugoslavia on displaced persons was signed, the gist of which was to get hold of all the ‘enemies of Yugoslavia’, in which pursuit the British cheerfully acted as Yugoslav policemen during this time. The British, with sadistic delight, took part in a previous similar agreement in 1946, demanding the return of all ‘collaborators’. By contrast, the Americans extradited only a handful of people.The exact number of people in the exodus XE "Exact number of people in exodus will never be known" with figures from the available documents show that it was upwards of 400,000.Only a small number of Croats who reached Carinthia were saved. The British refused any contact with the ex-NDH government, Dr. Ma?ek, the Church dignitaries or members of the Croatian Red Cross, even though the NDH was a signatory to the Geneva Convention of 1943.The British stole hundreds of motorcars (mainly Mercedes and BMWs) from the Croatian refugees. The world-acclaimed Croatian sculptor, Ivan Me?trovi?, recalled that a group of prisoners accompanying the NDH Prime Minister was handed over to the Partisans by a British officer in return for a car. The Austrian weekly die Furche wrote that Dr. Bakari?, the ‘Croat’ communist leader, presented a Packard to a British General expressing his gratitude for the General's contribution in the extradition of the Croatian PoWs.The massacres of the Croatian PoWs commenced immediately in Slovenia, mainly in Maribor, where a well-prepared plan for the mass execution of over 50,000 Croatian officers trapped there was put into action. Starting about 10th May, the massacre went on until 15th June 1945 and even later, 24 hours a day, every day, except on 25th May, Tito’s birthday. The bodies were thrown into the tank trenches. Many of these mass graves in Slovenia were uncovered, marked and identified only in 2,000.4.8.1Ko?evje XE "Ko?evje" Partisan massacres here were carried out at the end of May 1945. Victims were arriving in long columns and in sealed wagons, Auschwitz style. Without food over ten days, many collapsed, chocked up and went berserk. They were taken in groups of 30-40, undressed, shot in the back of the neck and thrown into pits. Witnesses believe that between 20,000 and 30,000 people were executed in this area, and also named some of the executioners: Nikola Mar?i?, Dane Jakovi?, Mato Uzora?, Luka Bla?evi?, Anto ?epi?, Bo?o Ka?i?, Albert ?tambuk, Ivan Bokez and Jakov Bla?evi? (in 1946 the State Prosecutor at the trial of Cardinal Stepinac and in 1971 the official escort to Queen Elizabeth II on her walkabout in Zagreb).4.8.2 CeljeCroatian air force and Ustasha officers were excluded from these columns and were sent to Maribor.During the death marches between Dravograd and Celje, many groups of PoWs were shot on the spot. A conservative estimate of those killed during the death marches from Dravograd to Slovenjgradec is 15,000.In Celje massacres commenced even before the Croatian army surrendered at Bleiburg. The witness of these massacres, a former Partisan, stated that the murders went on continuously throughout four nights (he himself taking part in some of them).In nearby Teharje the executioners were Slovene communists who applied more 'sophisticated' techniques of executions than the primitive Serb and Croat Partisans. They drove groups of people into cisterns, filled them with water and drowned the prisoners. According to witnesses, 10,000 people were shot around the area of Teharje. Near Be?igrad lie the mass graves of 3,000-5,000 victims, shot with automatic pistols. The mass liquidations in the Celje region lasted throughout June 1945 and sporadically until September 1945.On the Celje-Zidani Most route about 10,000 people were shot or thrown into old mineshafts. Another witness stated that about 3,000 people were massacred in the vicinity of the Croatian-Slovene border.Several thousand Croats are buried on an old airfield near Kr?ko, massacred by the II, III and VI Krajina Brigade (most of whom were former Great-Serbian Chetniks). (Doc, BTHN.)4.8.3LjubljanaSome thousand Croats were massacred in this region. Bodies had to be reburied later because the Ljubljana water supply became contaminated XE "Ljubljana water supply became contaminated" . The reburial was done by German PoWs who were, themselves, later shot. 4.8.4Massacres in Croatia XE "Massacres in Croatia" Croats who survived the killing fields of Slovenia were slaughtered in Zagreb, Krapina, Samobor, Karlovac, Sisak and Bjelovar. The victims included people who were not withdrawing to Austria, but who believed in the justice of the ‘peoples authority’. Political opponents of communism, picked from their houses and flats, were also included in these groups.According to witnesses, the massacres were carried out in Rakov Potok, Horvati and So?ice. At Kravarsko there were 5,000 victims. Many more were murdered at ?estine, Gra?ani, Miro?evac, Samobor, Maksimir Park in Zagreb and Zagreb centre itself. Samobor, Krapina, Sisak, Karlovac, ?emernica, Slavonska Po?ega were the new concentration camps in Croatia. Many victims were transported to ‘Krajina’, the Serbian inhabited region in south western Croatia, where the PoWs were tortured and later murdered. About ten thousand people were executed in this region.4.8.5The Death Marches XE "Death Marches" The survivors of the massacres in Slovenia and north-western Croatia were marched in long columns all the way to Serbia, and even to Macedonia as far as the Greek border, for more than 1,000 miles. The idea was to put the fear of God into the population along the route, a fitting climax of the highly accomplished 'liberation’ in practice (see map required). The liquidations were carried out summarily, individually and collectively throughout these marches, with people being thrown into ditches or rivers along the way.Columns of prisoners were starved, marched in the strong sun and through terrifying storms without water or food. Croatian women were courageously offering them food and risking their own lives.When passing through the Serbian villages in Croatia and in Serbia, the prisoners were insulted, beaten up and many were killed. The sick were shot on the spot. Many were shot just for the amusement of the bored Partisan guards. The marches became a locus where violence and suffering were intended to break the spirit of the Croatian people, for whom the recreation of another Yugoslav Utopian state, by the tricksters of the proletarian revolution meant death rather than ‘liberation’.By killing Croat refugees in the name of the slogan of ‘Brotherhood and Unity’, the communists and the Great-Serbian Chetniks displayed at first hand the appalling effects of the Yugoslav utopia. Tito confirmed the authenticity of the policy of revenge in a conversation with American journalists.Mass Terror was the depressing start to the 'Liberation' XE "Mass Terror was the depressing start to 'Liberation'" . The murders and plunder of Croatia were executed according to well-prepared plans. The 'peoples' enemies' must be punished. OZNA, the Secret Police, crept around with long lists of the ‘reactionaries’, ‘liquidating’ most of the outstanding personalities in the country. Absolute control of the schools, offices, factories and forced attendance at their meetings, conferences and ‘voluntary labour’ actions, topped up with continuous brainwashing, were the treatments of the communist psychological warfare.Yet, there was the unexpected revenge by the bourgeois city of Zagreb: elegant, civilised and clean, which was, by the way, abandoned by the NDH army intact. The primitive savages from Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro were dazzled by the 'bourgeois hygiene' of the capital of the Croatian 'fascist beasts'. The ragtag Partisan army, against the backdrop of the baroque and classicist fa?ades of Zagreb made a stark contrast. Zagreb became a city of parallel fear XE "Zagreb became city of parallel fear" . The citizens felt threatened, and at the same time, the ‘peoples’ army’ became fearful of the unknown danger lurking behind the shuttered windows. In the first few days the communists imprisoned more than 80,000 Zagreb citizens.The agony of the ‘liberation’ commenced with the murder of the wounded Croatian officers and soldiers in Zagreb hospitals.Dr. Manzoni, a consultant in the Zagreb hospital Svetoga Duha and Rebro, who later in the 60’s had a private practice in London’s Harley Street, relayed to me the nightmare of the massacre of the Croatian soldiers that were found by the ‘peoples’ liberators’. Several hundred seriously wounded immobile patients were dragged from the hospital beds, thrown onto lorries, taken to the suburbs of Zagreb and shot. The medical staff and nurses – many of whom were nuns - were not exempt. The bulldozing of the military cemeteries XE "Bulldozing of military cemeteries" , the breaking of gravestones of prominent Croatian people and those with German-sounding names, were only the overture to the communist revolution.The anonymity of the mass graves was deliberately meant to destroy the evidence of the massive post-war massacres. These were uncovered and documented only fairly recently.Not only Zagreb, but also other cities of the former NDH were affected: Sarajevo, Mostar, and Banja Luka.The Croatian intellectuals were the prime targets of the communist revisionism. In the course of the war 362 Roman Catholic priests were murdered by the communists and 34 by the Chetniks. In 1945, the communists murdered 219 priests and two bishops. In the following months a further 40 priests were murdered. Most of the Roman Catholic clergy passed through prisons and camps and were tortured before being murdered. Fifty Croatian writers were executed XE "Fifty Croatian writers executed" , among them Ljubo Wiesner, Vinko Kos, Dr. Albert Haller, Dr. Radoslav Glava?, Julije Makanec, Rudolf Herceg, Milivoj Magdi?, Tias Mortigija, Filip Lukas, Vinko Kri?kovi?, a well-known Anglophile and Janko ?imrak. Their works were put on the communist ‘Index’ and their books removed from public libraries and burned.The war crimes of Tito's 'liberators' XE "War crimes of Tito's 'liberators'" included the mass murder of women and children. In February and March of 1945, pushed by the Partisans, large masses of people from Dalmatia, Bosnia and Hercegovina moved towards Zagreb. This exodus included thousands of women and children and the elderly, many of them threading their way barefoot for miles on end. This peasant population from the poorest regions of Croatia were at the end of their tether after being maltreated firstly by the Chetniks and Partisans and then by the NDH ‘allies’, the Italians, throughout the war. Many of them now had members of their families murdered by the communist ‘liberators’. No wonder they were not anxious to be ‘liberated’ again.Milan Basta, Commissar of the 51st Partisan Vojvodina Division of the 3rd Army, and a negotiator with the British at Bleiburg, stated "that there were 120,000 soldiers and almost twice that number of civilian refugees in Austria." According to a witness, the wife of a Croatian Officer: “I refused to part from my husband so a Partisan hit me with a gun and as a consequence my arm was swollen for two days. I was 18 and in the third month of pregnancy. They pushed us into railway wagons, most of us with children between 14 and 16 years of age, who were subsequently killed at Maribor. I succeeded in escaping. I was put into a column of civilians. Without food and water many of the pregnant women miscarried, including myself. In spite of that we had to go on marching and bleeding. Trekking along the River Drava one woman, with twins between 2 and 3 years of age, went berserk and jumped into the river. She was the wife of Colonel N … from Split.”The rape of young Croatian women as a ‘first course’ before their murder was a ‘normal’ procedure’; forty female students from Zagreb University were raped in Maribor railway station.Partisan women excelled in cruelty XE "Partisan women excelled in cruelty" over their own men, not surprisingly recalling the cruelties of Dolores Ibarury, ‘La Passionaria’ in the Spanish civil war. Such was their revolutionary zeal, as a rule they stopped menstruating. One such Partisan woman forced an elderly man to carry her piggyback for a mile or so. When he finally collapsed, she shot him.No wonder the ‘liberators’ later suffered from the ‘Partisan disease’, a form of epileptic madness during which they re-enacted their slaughters.Bosiljka Djuri?, a Partisan woman from Vu?evac, Slavonia killed hundreds of Germans (members of the local ethnic German minority) in the camp at Krndija. Thereafter, every so often she would fall to the ground and, in delirium, relive her cut-throat operation.4.8.6The Witness Documents XE "Witness Documents" In the first day of October 1943, the Partisans entered Tuzla (an industrial town in the north of Bosnia), imprisoned 310 Croats and shot them without trial. On 10th October 1943 on their withdrawal, they took with them eight surviving men and a woman, among them a well-known trade union leader (our witness) and shot them over a mass grave. The witness, although wounded, survived and escaped during the night. Pavao Prcela, a former Partisan from Split, stated under oath to the Investigating Commission in Rome on 25th August 1955:“I was mobilised on 14th November 1944 in Split in the First Proletarian Brigade of the 26th Division. After three days of bitter fighting in Cigansko Brdo, Hercegovina, we entered the village. We were given the order to massacre everyone, irrespective of age, including women and children. A few days later, the same practice was repeated in nearby Mostar. The order for the indiscriminate slaughter was given to us by General (Peko) Dap?evi?, Commander in Chief of the 26th Division.”Drago Kinjerovec, a Slovene, stated to the Commission in Rome on 19th May 1955 (excerpt): “I was a radio telegraphist taken prisoner by the Partisans in Banja Luka in August 1944. The same night the Partisans shot about 100 people. As they needed a radio-operator, I was saved and transferred into the 5th Corps. At the end of March, after the Partisans entered Kakanj a mining town in Bosnia, they shot some 300-400 prisoners, Croats and Germans, and threw them into the River Bosnia. Gangs from the 4th Krajina Division carried this out. I saw the execution from a distance of some 30 metres.”A report by Professor Daniel Crljen, the Croat representative at the negotiations with the British in Bleiburg on 15th May 1945 stated: “After the interception by the Bulgarian Partisans near Dravograd [who were holding the frontier bridge over the River Drava to Austria], and after unsuccessful negotiations, we decided to redirect the withdrawal columns along the River Miess towards Bleiburg. Some of our troops were redeployed and cleared the Partisans who tried to stop our progress. We had 200 wounded in Slovenjgradec. At Bleiburg the British accepted the army and refugees. Generals Heren?i?, Servatzy and I, with dark forebodings, went to negotiate with the British, passing between the lined- up British tanks. An American Croat acted as interpreter. General Heren?i? sat opposite the British officer [General Patrick Scott]. We were standing. Heren?i? offered the surrender of the Croatian army and asked for asylum for the civilian refugees. The British General refused to accept the surrender and stated that according to the Yalta agreements we have to be surrendered to the ‘Yugoslav Army’. There was a minute’s heavy silence.“I asked permission to speak, which was granted. I explained that our case couldn’t be treated as a military one but rather as a political one. The British General replied that as a soldier he was subject to the orders of Field Marshall Alexander. Heren?i? asked permission to send a representative to Alexander, which the General refused on the pretext that Alexander acted on the order of Prime Minister Churchill. I tried to explain that the situation facing him could not have been envisaged by the Field Marshall and that hundreds of thousands of the civilians were escaping the communist slaughter. Scott replied that, on the contrary, the civilians were escaping for no valid reason, and that they were misled by propaganda, because their Yugoslav allies respected the human rights and the International laws on conduct of the war."“I proceeded: With all due respect I beg to differ. These Croatian refugees now plead with you to decide their fate and you will have to take the moral responsibility if these people are handed over to the communists to be slaughtered. General Scott tried to stop me, saying that he was not interested in politics. Totally indifferent to our pleading he announced the arrival of the Yugoslav delegation for the purpose of finalising the surrender. Only Heren?i? and I were allowed to enter the room again to face two communists. One of them was a Serb, Commissar Milan Basta, and the other a Slovene. Basta bragged about the might of the Partisan divisions that encircled us and that already then some of our generals had surrendered. Basta proceeded: We demand unconditional surrender within one hour. If you accept, the women and children can go back home. The soldiers will become PoWs; officers will be taken to Maribor and tried if guilty. If you do not accept this condition within one quarter of an hour we will go on the attack and you will lose the protection of the Conventions of the International Red Cross. Heren?i? asked for 24 hours in which to make a decision. Basta replied ironically: “You are in command of an organised army . . . and I am sure it is sufficient for you to send only a liaison officer with your order to the Army to get moving." General Scott intervened suggesting two hours for a decision. Both communists refused. Scott exerted pressure by saying that we were surrounded by British tanks, which are at the disposal of our Allies, the Partisans. We took this attitude as a gross offence. Scott offered a special British commission to help with the surrender, which Basta refused. Heren?i? saw a ray of hope in this suggestion and immediately agreed, but Scott rudely interrupted him with the remark that it was not up to us to decide. The conversation ended.”“We were faced with 60 fatal minutes during which to advise the people and let them decide for themselves. Heren?i? informed the high-ranking officers of the outcome. Some immediately decided to go into the woods. Others decided to send General ?tancer [a WWI veteran] of the Regular Army to talk to Scott. Scott immediately handed him over to the Partisans. After I had informed the civilians and political leaders, with a group of soldiers I went into the mountains."A report on the events by the communist Commissar Milan Basta (of the 51 Vojvodina Division) was described thus: “According to Basta, there were around 300,000 Croat soldiers and civilians around Bleiburg. In the main his statement agreed with Crljen’s description of the negotiations. However, from his report it transpires that the Yugoslav communists were suspicious to the very end that the British might eventually protect the Croats. The irony was that Basta was born in Lika, Croatia, and in the tradition of the sheepskin-clad Serbianised Vlach minority in the so-called Krajina (as in the 1992-95 war), was fighting against his own homeland.” “The order of the General Headquarters of the Yugoslav Army to [my] 51st Division was to march to Dravograd in order to stop ‘the homespun traitor gangs, the Ustashas and Chetniks, from escaping from our country. [Operative No. 301.] However, the enemy was stronger than we expected and attacked us in the region of Dravograd on 13th May, which meant that it did not accept our ultimatum for surrender which expired on that day at 14.00.”Basta, a Great-Serb, lied as a matter of principle XE "Basta, Milan Commissar, Great-Serb, lied as a matter of principle" in order to gain certain tactical advantage. However, he failed to mention the fact that the strong Bulgarian Partisan units (and not the Yugoslav units) already held the Drava Bridge to Austria. The Croats naturally rejected the ‘communist ultimatum’ as soon as it was issued. The Croat generals therefore decided to bypass Dravograd and march on the right bank of the River Meiss to Bleiburg. Basta goes on: “Our forces have not succeeded in stopping the enemy [Croat] attack in the direction of Bleiburg. After a sharp battle, the Croats continued towards Bleiburg.”Basta embroidered here. The fact was that the communist units were totally incapable of stopping the core of the Croatian army, which stopped the withdrawal only when faced with the British forces. There was a chase on the part of the 3rd Communist Army as a result, in order to catch up with the Croats. (See map of the final position of the three armies on 15th May 1945.)Basta went on to describe the military situation, from which it was clear that the communists were too weak against the Croatian army and that if “the Allied Forces [the British] did not wish to help us, at least they should have remained neutral until we received reinforcements.”In fact, Basta did not need to worry. The British went out of their way to be the communists’ obedient servants. The negotiations for the surrender were pathetic as far as the British were involved. The servility of General Scott towards a little Serbian cut-throat Morlach from Lika was indescribable.The architectural mis-en-scene for these negotiations was a feudal manor on the hill above the field of Bleiburg.“In the lobby we noticed four Ustasha generals,” Basta goes on. “We entered the room. The British General [with typical understatement] said, “We are faced here with 300,000 enemy soldiers who understandably do not wish to surrender to us. In fact they are prepared, if the negotiations fail, to continue fighting. However, as the war has ended it does not make any sense to shed more blood. They wish to surrender to us [the British] but as we are the Allies, we shall later resolve the matter easily.”Basta (according to his notes) stated that the British should have treated this matter as a purely ‘Yugoslav affair’ XE "British should have treated this matter as a purely ‘Yugoslav affair’" :“Our wish is that if they cannot help us, they should not put obstacles in our way. General Scott smiled and quipped that it was difficult to persuade soldiers to fight after the war has ended. Instinctively I felt that General Scott was hesitating,” Basta drolls on. “Therefore, I insisted that the soldier’s dignity required that the enemy be smashed only by ourselves. I have an explicit order to take over the enemy army and force it to capitulate. As a soldier it is my duty to execute that order.”In fact, Basta was bluffing as he raced to Bleiburg on his own initiative and, being far too big for his own boots, improvised with some difficulty (on his own admission): “I demanded that the surrender be accomplished within an hour,” Basta continued.Basta's military amateurism was met by Scott’s comment about the impossibility of carrying out such an operation in such a short time. Scott suggested the next morning as a final deadline. He wanted to first talk with ‘the enemy’. “Scott asked us to go to another room. I was puzzled as to why the General wanted to talk with the Ustasha representatives. Dark forebodings preoccupied me. Maybe the British had made some promises to them,” continues Basta. “I therefore asked the attending officer to tell General Scott that if we were not invited to the final talks within five minutes we will return to our base. The General asked us to enter. Paveli?’s representatives were sent out. He informed us that the talks would be resumed immediately. “We Allies will sit on this side of the table” pointed out the General; formalism was satisfied I thought” writes Basta. Two Ustasha Generals [only one was a general] entered, facing two Partisan officers. Without delay, the British General asked me to state the conditions of the surrender. I dictated: ‘The remainder of your Ustasha-Domobran army is in a hopeless situation. You are encircled by the strong forces of the Yugoslav army. We are fully informed that you do not have at your disposal an organised force able to break this blockade. We can either force you to an unconditional surrender or we can annihilate you. It is in your own interest and the interest of the refugees to surrender without resistance. The time for surrender is one hour, i.e. you have until 16.00.’ After a pause I proceeded,” goes on Basta: “The refugees will be returned home, your army will be taken into PoW camps and we will treat you in accordance with International laws. The Generals may retain their personal arms for the time being. If you reject this, we will treat you as outlaws and you will not be treated in accordance with International laws. We will ‘liquidate’ you, and in that effort, we will receive help from our Allies [the British]. General Heren?i? answered: “Mr. Commissar, [!] we cannot accept the time of the surrender. We have fought against you for four years and it would be impossible to persuade the Army to surrender in such a short time. Some groups, in spite of our own orders, may resist. Therefore, you may take it that we cannot accept your conditions of surrender as a whole.” “I butted in” Basta goes on, “that if they don’t accept the surrender as a whole that it will be up to us to deal with isolated incidents accordingly.” In the meantime, the other Ustasha general [Professor Crljen was not a General] got up and told the British General that history will not forgive him if he hands over 300,000 Croats to their enemy. At that I got up saying that we were leaving. Everybody was standing. General Scott turned to me and said “Mr. Commandant, my tanks are at your disposal.” Immediately afterwards we met with the Commanders of the 12 Slavonian Proletarian Brigade. We briefed them particularly on the correct treatment of the prisoners of war. It was a difficult task – a mass of prisoners and refugees to return to Yugoslavia. All this time, until the enemy [Croat] army was not completely disarmed and on our own territory, we could not have been certain of the successful outcome of the negotiations” ended Basta.‘The correct treatment of the PoWs’ XE "Correct treatment of PoWs" , while they were in the sight of the British, soon turned into carnage. It was difficult for the Croat representatives to penetrate the British mind, of which they had neither knowledge nor empathy. The British did not have any illusions that the communists were bluffing about the treatment of the prisoners under International law, but they did not wish to spoil the game.On his own admission, Basta was scared stiff of the armed Ustashas. Only when they were totally disarmed and helpless did they show their true communist machismo. So the traditions of the most civilised and the most barbaric nation in Europe found themselves in absolute harmony.It is almost impossible to come up with a satisfactory explanation as to why the British political Establishment skilfully orchestrated enlisting the Yugoslav commies as a proxy in the execution of their own dirty work in handing over the genuine prisoners-of-war and civilians to what was clearly certain death. Yet we need not look further than the treatment of that Establishment meted out to their own veterans of the Gulf war and the Bosnian and Kosovo conflict. These veterans laid their lives on the line for their country and their reward for such dedication to duty was total rejection. With such a hard attitude towards their own forces, the treatment of the Croat PoWs and civilians is not surprising. The stiff upper lip attitude of the British Establishment was certainly a factor in the event. However, there were deeper reasons also at work, and the author would suggest another way of looking at these repatriations. The time lapse of fifty years since the Bleiburg tragedy absolves the debate on its causes and consequences from the raw reactions to what most reasonable people have agreed was genocide. Stimulated in part by the release of some British documents XE "Release of some British documents" (the key ones of which were tampered with and others destroyed), today it is clear that the British Establishment was deeply implicated in uncalled-for active intelligence and collaboration with Tito and even with Stalin.Nikolai Tolstoy XE "Tolstoy, Nikolai" maintains that the extraditions were the wanton creation of Harold MacMillan: “aided by one or two others, who enabled Stalin and Tito to obtain their objectives. With what in any other cause would be regarded as admirable ingenuity, he successfully hoodwinked his own Government, his colleague and friend, the Field-Marshall, the Commander of the Fifth Corps. Macmillan’s motives remain tantalisingly mysterious and may never be known. The explanations he has given are inadequate and inconsistent; documents have been tampered with and destroyed and a forty-year cover-up has all but concealed a trail, which must long ago have been believed to have safely run cold.”The Soviet and Yugoslav motive in getting custody of their political opponents with vengeance is obvious and as such self-explanatory.The first hypothesis is that both Stalin and his poodle Tito felt extremely insecure and mistrusted their Allies. The possibility of being double-crossed set in motion in their conspiratorial minds the possibility of another war with the British (and even the Americans). The ROA (Russian Liberation Army) was in the American zone while the Russian Corps, and the Shandruk Ukrainian division were in the British Zone of Austria. According to Tolstoy, SMERSH (the Soviet Intelligence Service) after failing with General Keightley on 10th May 1945 XE "Keightley, General - 10th May 1945" to get hold of Cossack units in Austria, turned with confidence to MacMillan as “there are positive indications that SMERSH was deeply involved in the British side of the repatriations, and that links between the British organisers of the covert operation and the Soviet security forces went beyond mere illicit compliance with an official request.”There is circumstantial evidence that the Soviet had a finger in the pie of the simultaneous extradition of the ‘Yugoslavs’ (i.e., mainly Croats) by the Fifth Corps of the British Army. There is an odd remark by Djilas: “We didn’t understand at all why the British insisted on returning these people. To our great surprise, they were delivered into our hands. This was all the more astonishing because we knew that many Yugoslavs [Croats and others] who found themselves in Britain as prisoners of war were considered quite safe from repatriation.”The astonishment of the Yugoslav leadership was confirmed by General Nadj’s comment that all the demands by his Colonel Ivanovi? for the return of the refugees had been conceded in advance by Brigadier Toby Law.According to Tolstoy, “one explanation of this anomaly which suggests itself is that the demand was made by the Soviets on their protégés’ behalf. It would then have been through the NKVD or the SMERSH channels that the request for the Cossacks was combined with additional secret pressure to include the Yugoslavs.” Stalin was preoccupied with the events in Carinthia XE "Stalin was preoccupied with events in Carinthia" , where the misunderstandings between ‘the Allies’ might have erupted into another war, for which Stalin, Tito et al., were not prepared.For the Americans and for the British, the tiresome war had already ended victoriously and they simply wanted to ‘clear the decks’.There is in looking at the Bleiburg massacres a second (ideological) hypothesis that “in any case there was one major area of policy where Stalin’s and Tito’s interests coincided. Over the space of a quarter of a century the Soviet government had developed the most formidable machinery of police control over its subject population the world had ever seen”.Tito’s decision to scare the hell out of the country in order to consolidate his power was based on a hit list of ‘subversive’ individuals and organisations, which must be dealt with by his administration. Pre-war ‘liberals’ in Britain prepared the way for the collaboration in the extraditions by making communism respectable under war-time conditions by their alliance with Stalin and Tito,The subsequent discoveries of the activities of Kim Philby and the Cambridge Four (or Five) confirmed that these activities were very much a bi-partisan affair.During the apocalyptic events of 1945 XE "Apocalyptic events of 1945" , the most vicious pro-Stalin and pro-Tito elements were to be found in the British liberal and conservative circles. These included Deakin, Clissold, Fitzroy MacLean, and Toby Law who, as Lord Aldington XE "Law, Toby who, as Lord Aldington" , was later made chairman of the Conservative Party. Churchill himself was aware of what was going on as it transpired from his agreement with Roosevelt of not to extradite ‘the Yugoslavs’ to Tito. However, his loyalty to Stalin at Yalta was marked by an unjustifiable disregard for the lives of extradited Russians (and later Croats).Yet this very process of appeasing the butchers led to carnage, which must be abhorrent to any democracy.A third way to explain the extraditions was the possibility that the British establishment uncritically accepted the prevailing social psychology: the plain hatred of the Croats, inspired by Great-Serbian propaganda, and egged on by the pro-Serbian lobby in the UK, blamed the Croats for the fall of the Yugoslav Kingdom, one of the cherished British strategic projects. The irrational behaviour of Paveli?, his dare-devil proclamation of war on the United Kingdom and the US, which Americans took as a huge joke, but the British took seriously, although there was no physical contact between the Croats and the British throughout the war. His flirting with Hitler became the justification by Britain for removing the Croat obstacle to asserting its influence in Yugoslavia again, a presence that was slipping out of its hands. Poking its nose into Yugoslav affairs could have been possible only by collaboration with the rising power of Tito who, after the British had trained him, was about to go ballistic. The price for access to the ‘new Yugoslavia’ was the extradition of the Croat army and the civilian refugees.The anxiety that the British status in the Balkans was threatened is plain from the British involvement in the Greek civil war without the help of the Americans. The price exacted by Tito was paid, covered up and vaporised from the eyes of the world.A fourth hypothesis is the politics of revenge XE "Fourth hypothesis is politics of revenge" . There were incidents in which the British troops or officers were looking for vengeance and despatched to Yugoslavia the Croat refugees already safe in Austria and Italy.These cowardly actions hugely outweighed several examples of the courageous behaviour of individual British officers (or lower rank soldiers – mainly Irish) who, at the risk of their own personal danger, helped small groups or individual Croats to escape extradition.An incident occurred on 5th May 1945 when the Croatian Government Emissary, Dr. Vran?i?, and two Croatian officers began a trip from Klagenfurt in Austria, over the Italian Alps, through Udine and Mestre to Padua, Bologna and Forli in order to reach the headquarters of Field-Marshal Alexander in Caserta. He and his party passed fairly easily though the US Fifth army positions but were imprisoned by the British in Mestre on 9th May 1945. On 11th May they were allowed to proceed to Forli, where they were imprisoned again by the British Field Security Outpost No. 313 until 18th May. On 20th May, a certain Captain Douglas, broke the pole carrying the white flag the Croats were displaying on their Mercedes on his knee and threw it down angrily into the dust and jumped upon it in a frenzy. He then confiscated the car, sat in it, and drove it off to Northern Italy, making sure that Dr. Vran?i? and his party were safely locked up in the prisoner-of-war camp.A second example of British trickery XE "Second example of British trickery" was the treatment of some 90,000 civilian refugees in the valley of Klagenfurt. The British told the Croats that they would be sent to PoW camps in Italy. The pinnacle of sarcasm was that some of them were told that they would be trained to continue the fight against communism. The British took 5,000 people out of this group to the railway station in Rosenbach. From there, they were sent back to Slovenia where the British guards disappeared from the scene and the Partisans pounced upon them. Realising that they had been tricked, many people jumped off the moving trains.As the groups of Croatian PoWs, usually between 500 and 3,000 people, were physically cut off from each other, the information of how the ‘British Military honour’ and the much-advertised ‘fair play’ worked in practice could not have been shared between them, so they were trapped. The few Croatian officers in the NDH army, who had been brought up on an English literary diet and spoke English, warned people not to fall for the British promises, and then made their way to the woods.On 21st May 1945, two groups of refugees, mainly families, were loaded into military trucks and driven from Grafenstein to Bleiburg. There were already some 1,500 people there. By this time, people realised that they were not going to Italy as they had been told and started to break away. One of the many Roman Catholic priests in this group, Dr. Kranj?ec, who spoke English, asked the British to let them escape. The Commander of the Guards told him that they must go back to Yugoslavia, but if they were maltreated in any way they could file a complaint with the British Consul in Zagreb.A certain British Major William Johnson was apparently the author of the ‘transports to Italy’ deception and thus made his historic contribution to the slaughter of thousands of Croats.An exception to this practice was a case of some 3,000 Croats in 150 motor vehicles in which they reached Reichenfels. They were taken prisoner and sent to Sankt Stefan. The British commander there saved the lives of these people. He told them quite frankly that he had orders to pass them to the Partisans, and then proceeded to drag his feet over the extradition procedures until most of the refugees and PoWs had escaped.Meanwhile, the Croatian Commanders General Tomislav Rolf, his wife and General Dragojlov, attempted suicide due to depression, as they felt that they had let the army down by trusting the British rather than ordering them to fight. After cutting veins on their writs, the British Commander in the St. Stefan Wolfsburg area hurried them to hospital where General Rolf died. His wife and General Dragojlov, however, survived.So the courage and humanity of a very few British Commanders saved 2,500 lives.There were only a very few officers among the British who put humanity and decency before political insensitivity and their duty to their superiors.It was also a misfortune that the Croats fell into the British rather than the American area of occupation. The British took the business of the extradition of the PoWs in 1945 deadly seriously. For the Americans, this was a tiresome sideshow for which they were not prepared to be responsible. The British, however, were eager and obedient servants of Tito’s butchers. A good illustration of this was the Lavamünd region, where the British were running like fox hounds around the countryside, picking up individuals or small groups of Croats and handing them to the first Partisan gang they encountered. Only a few small contingents of the Croatian forces fought their way through the Partisan lines and got away.While 50 US airmen were held as NDH prisoners of war in the Villa Weiss on the Pantov?ak in the elite part of Zagreb under salubrious conditions, the Croat PoW's were being handed over to Tito and to certain death.The genocide of the Croats (and Slovenes) XE "Genocide of Croats and Slovenes" was carried out in order to enable a clique of so-called 'anti-fascists' to grab absolute power. Slovenia has thus become the greatest Croatian cemetery in Europe. (See illustration on p. ….) As late as 10th August 2007 Croatian Radio reported that the excavations in Tezno, Maribor and Pohorje found that the former German anti-tank trenches contain 40,000 Croatian bodies.Ironically enough, these dead Croats, scattered in the mass graves of Slovenia, have already joined the European Union, something that the social democrat- controlled European Union is very reluctant to grant to living Croats.4.8.7Anecdotal Evidence XE "Anecdotal Evidence" The parleys between the British Army and the NDH representatives at Bleiburg commenced on 14th May 1945 between Domobran Lieutenant Deutsch-Maceljski (a Croat Jew) in Hrust, Austria. According to Jovo Popovi?, a Serb, writing in the leading Zagreb newspaper Vjesnik on 30th May 1975, Maceljski told a British Major: “We are not under German command. We are withdrawing independently with the people escaping communist terror. If you don’t take us they will kill us . . . ”.According to Daniel Crljen, one of the three official negotiators, the outcome of this meeting seemed to have been positive.The Partisans got a whiff of this and faced the British Major who departed for Bleiburg accompanied by twelve tanks and twelve armoured cars. (Vjesnik.) The Communists insisted that Milan Basta (a Serb from Krajina) represent them as their negotiator. After Basta’s long harangue about the British wartime friendship with the Partisans, three Ustasha negotiators, Heren?i?, Servatzy and Crljen, joined the British General and Basta. The British General in question was Patrick Scott, who thought that the ‘conditions of surrender were quite fair’, i.e., that the Partisans ‘promised’ that the Croat civilians would be returned to Croatia and that the soldiers would be treated as prisoners of war, with the exception of the war criminals who would be subject to (international) war crimes tribunal. According to Bethel, Scott’s reaction was:“I received guarantees [from the Partisans] that all would be repatriated and taken care of. However, whether they stick to the agreement or not I cannot say. I do not know if all of them were killed. I would not be surprised if they were.”The documents released by the Public Records Office, in relation to what to do with the surrendered Croats, were ambiguous and very often contradictory.Some of them commiserated with the plight of the Croats, some treated all refugees (Croats, Serbs and Slovenes) in the same manner; the others divided them for special treatment, particularly the Ustashas, some recognised the NDH forces as a regular army of a recognised State, and others treated the Croats as Quislings.In hindsight, these opinions are irrelevant, particularly the division of opinion on the matter between the Americans and the British. The British argument in the end prevailed – the Croats were handed over to Tito and massacred. Yet the British are still economical with the truth about these decisions: who made them, when they were made and what exactly was agreed.Snippets from the Foreign Office documents XE "Snippets from Foreign Office documents" FO371-48889 R9150/329/92 illustrate the ‘sentiments’ of the British towards the NDH functionaries and the military. R9959 telegram from the British Ambassador Stevenson in Belgrade (8th June 1945) reports the death penalties given to the NDH Ministers by the Communists with the comment “with the exception of Dr. Mandi?, all these, it seems, deserved the death penalty . . .” and in paragraph 4: “I am not so sure about Dr. Makanec and Admiral Steinfel.”In R10001, the Ambassador is passing a message by DSM MacDonald from Split about the establishment of a communist decree “for the protection of the honour of the Croats and Serbs in Croatia” [aping a similar decree by Paveli?]. All the people who have not joined the Partisans are under its hammer. Jails are fuller than during the Italian and German occupation, or even under the Ustashas. The present [communist] system equals terror."R.12114: The Earl of Halifax, British Ambassador in Washington, passing to the Foreign Office a telegram received from the State Department, dated 16th July 1945, asking for a halt to sending ‘Yugoslav’ dissidents back to Yugoslavia until they are assured of a fair trial, received the Foreign Office reply that "it is difficult to fulfil this task and therefore it is better not to pursue it, in order to please the Yugoslav Government".London and Belgrade were frustrated by such ‘delays’ from Washington.R.16394: Bill Deakin reports from Belgrade XE "Deakin, Bill - reports from Belgrade" (telegram No. 1729) that in Zagreb 17 high-ranking Ustasha officers who were sentenced to death were ‘freed’ and 16 out of them were sentenced to long-term imprisonment. At the end of the document was a brief remark: “They aren’t criminals but anyway . . .”J.M. Addis for the Foreign Office replied on 25th May 1945 to Lieutenant Colonel C.R. Pince in the War Cabinet Office with reference to the Joint Staff Mission in Washington opinion dated 18th May 1945 in respect of the Croat prisoners of War:“Armed forces of the NDH are forces of a marionette state . . . and are in fact regular forces of a Quisling government. . . . Therefore, we should hand them to Tito. . . . That would satisfy him. . . . We understand, however, that the US government cannot accept such a rather drastic development of events. . . . If the US government does not agree, we are prepared to treat the Croats in the same way as the Chetniks.” Doc. R13774/1728/92, referring to the massacre of over 900 Croats handed over to Tito whom he massacred, speaks of an ‘unsavoury’ business “which was a mistake, due to the delay in deciding what to do with them. . . . As soon as the ears of the AFHQ received this message we instigated the investigations. . . . Unfortunately, ‘the damage’ could not be repaired.”Instead of treatment in accordance with the Geneva Convention, General Patrick Scott and his Serbian-communist henchman Milan Basta, who was concerned not to lose the elite of the Ustasha state-political apparatus, de facto, put the Croats on trial. Yet this elite consisted of a maximum of 100 men. The question is why the other 500,000 people were handed over?According to Raymond Aron, international law de facto is a plaything in the hands of the (great) powers. Their interests, and not justice is what counts. The British documents evoke that spirit with expressions like ‘useful gesture’ (to Tito), knowing very well that under him there will not be a ‘just [or fair] trial’. On top of that, ‘wartime friendship’ was the supreme law. Harder evidence of the British policy of poking its nose into ‘Yugoslav’ affairs comes in VUS, the Zagreb newspaper, No. 1112 of 29th August 1975, in an article signed by the Yugoslav diplomat, Du?an Biber. According to him, already in March 1945 Churchill was fed up with Tito, and sent an internal note to his Ministers suggesting that the British should call it quits with the British involvement in the political nightmare of ‘Yugoslavia’. Eden put a stop to that: “On the contrary, how could we explain such a policy to the Americans? The US government was never excited with our Partisan policies, and we had to drag them behind us with great difficulty on that subject, which they always resisted”.Messrs, Addis and Colville, from the Foreign Office, spoke about the ‘compassionate Americans’ who said “perhaps we could follow them and protect the Croats.”What a lot of hot air after the horse had bolted and the hundreds of thousands of Croats who were already in Tito’s hands!How about the moral responsibility XE "Moral responsibility" ? (And conscience to which Aldington obituary referred alas 50 years after the event?) Conscience – what conscience? The British stiff upper lip and a sense of revenge, however, prevailed.On the other hand, the NDH political leadership was totally irresponsible to gamble on the probability that the International Law and (moral) standards of the West would be more libertarian in the face of half a million refugees than the fate they would meet if they stayed put at home, particularly as these ‘standards’ were at the mercy of the British 'justice'.The British did not accept that the Croats had a right to escape the Yugoslav utopia, by force if necessary. Let us say a few words in their defence. The British cannot be held responsible for the pro-Yugoslav policy of the HSS, the largest Croat democratic political party which supported the Yugoslav state as late as 1939. Based on the legality of the HSS utopianism, the revolutionary Croat escape from Yugoslavia was treated as treason. Britain was not responsible for the Croat disunity on the line of Paveli? and Ma?ek, or for the momentum of the Yugoslav utopian conflict, in which neither Paveli? nor Ma?ek could develop policies in harmony with the probability of a happier final outcome for Croatia at the end of the war.In such a blind utopian inevitability self-criticism is of no value.The Serbian minority in Croatia, as an extended arm of Belgrade (equally in the 1992-95 war and even at present) as previously mentioned in Chapter 4, commenced its dirty business as far back as the 1890's on an already firmly prepared theoretical and practical plan. Rightly or wrongly, succeeding British governments, particularly during the 1941-45 war when Britain, from the point of view of real politics, stood firmly on the side of the Yugoslav utopia, helped this Serbian minority. On the principle of tit-for-tat, violence on one side was answered with violence on the other, escalating all the time, always keeping in mind that the Yugoslav utopia had already a long 23-years precedent. On the principle of Vae Victis, the post-war historians described the NDH regime's anti-Yugoslav violence as ‘matchless crime’ and the crimes of the pro-Yugoslav contestants (the Partisans and Chetniks) as ‘liberation’ and even, insultingly, as the ‘defence of the honour of the Croatian people’.Yet these off-the-cuff descriptions cannot eradicate the struggle and sacrifice of thousands of Croatian soldiers who were fighting for the Croatian state, which was led by a totalitarian political leadership. Djilas’ theories of ‘noble hatred’ and Partisan identity formation as ‘noble savages’ were used as justification for the massacres: “ . . .kill them like dogs, as they deserve it. Revenge the innocent victims . . .”In his article in Borba in 1942, entitled ‘The Noble Hatred’, Djilas quoted Stalin:“One cannot defeat the enemy without learning how to hate him.”In contrast, Roosevelt stated: “It is not the intention of our government nor the Allied governments to have recourse to mass reprisals.”The Partisan mass murders were de facto the liquidation of their political opponents and not reprisals for war crimes in which they themselves had participated.Who was the Quisling in the conflict of the Yugoslav utopia?The fact that the Croats (as always) used every historical situation, e.g., in 1941 to re-establish their national state, cannot be taken as Quisling treachery by any stretch of the imagination.The Yugoslavs found the Quisling formula convenient for blaming the Croats for the break-up of their Kingdom and ignored the fact that that state was rotten to its core. The Yugoslav communists, on the directive of the International, helped with the destruction of the first Yugoslavia and encouraged the bourgeoning independence movements. However, they soon changed their minds after 22nd June 1941 (the German attack on the then Soviet Union). In Tito’s report to the Fifth Congress of the KPJ in 1948, XE "Tito’s report to Fifth Congress of KPJ in 1948" he accused the ‘Croatian’ communists of “advocating the weakening of the links between Croatia and Yugoslavia” and stated that he felt that “at every step [in Croatia], one could notice deviations towards Croatian separatism.” Tito's statement was, however, fake.No Croats in the KPJ were separatists but Tito used this as an argument for the squaring of accounts with Andrija Hebrang, the Secretary General of the KPH.The territory of the NDH was too suffocating for Tito’s and Stalin’s revolutionary ambitions, so the re-construction of Yugoslavia and the destruction of the NDH became an imperative and consequently the fighters for Croatian independence became, in their eyes, fascists, collaborators, Quislings - you name it. So who fought for national liberation and who fought oppression?Vidkum Quisling XE "Quisling, Vidkum" was a traitor to his own free and democratic Norway for purely ideological reasons. For this he was rewarded by the Nazi-backed Norwegian government with a position in power. In drawing a parallel with Croatia, the Croats were seeking an end to the oppressive Kingdom of Yugoslavia, as related in previous chapters. In this view, the communists amply supported Croatian 'nationalists'.It is crystal clear, therefore, that the Croat national revolution in 1941 was liberation from twenty-three years of oppression. The communists welcomed this nationalist action but changed their mind when the Soviets entered the Allied camp and recognised the ‘Yugoslav ?migré Government’ in London. Overnight, the Croats became Quislings in order to placate the Allies (particularly the British) who perpetrated the myth of the continuity of Yugoslavia in spite of its break-up. Yet the Soviet Union itself, at that stage, closed the legation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in Moscow.Let’s face it, the NDH was as independent as were the other independent European states under Nazi occupation (Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Denmark, etc.) and was recognised by the states of Germany, Italy, Japan etc. for whatever it was worth, and even by Switzerland and neutral Sweden.The perception that the aspiration of the Croats to their own independence was a crime is a well-worn Great-Serbian attitude from as far back as 1918. It found acceptance later on also with the communists.It goes without saying that the Great-Powers, creators of Yugoslavia in 1918 XE "Great-Powers, creators of Yugoslavia in 1918" (particularly the British and the French), could not retreat from this position without severe embarrassment.The fact is that the Croatian soldiers in WW2 did not fight the Western Allies – but they did fight their Russian communists’ allies at Stalingrad.The generally accepted view of the victors in WWII was that the NDH was a profoundly bad thing. However, the events of 1990 to 2000 (the Yugoslav wars) have given new insights and life to the whole NDH debate.The break-up of communist Yugoslavia and the establishment of the internationally recognised Republic of Croatia must raise new questions about the true character of the NDH.Ironically enough the independence of Croatia in the 1990’s was led by one of Tito’s former communist generals, Franjo Tudjman, and the subsequent governments were formed from the former ‘reformed’ communist ideologists (Ra?an) and apparatchiks such as Mesi? and others.The independence of Croatia in the present world power structure is equally debatable in view of the permanent threats of sanctions using investigations by The Hague. However, others see the NDH as a creation of Hitler. However, Hitler, on his own admission, never intended to invade Yugoslavia in 1941 XE "Hitler never intended to invade Yugoslavia in 1941" , and in April 1941 he had to improvise his policies on Yugoslavia with alacrity within a short period of 2 weeks.That the Croats wanted to re-establish an independent Croatia comes out clearly in the statement made by Dr. V. Ma?ek to the correspondent of the Associated Press on 21st March 1939: “The Croatian question must be resolved without delay, as all those who are involved should know that as far as Croats are concerned it is immaterial whether the question isl be raised either by Roosevelt or Hitler.”Whether the NDH was created by Hitler or not is not a problem for the extreme Right or the extreme Left. They stand their ground on the subject. However, it is the ‘liberals’ who cannot stomach the now well-established documentary evidence on the subject. Hitler, in his own words, became an unintentional instrument in the liberation of Croatia in 1941.Although recognition of the regime and the frontiers of the NDH were subject to the will of the Reich as in the rest of Europe, when it came to the defence of Croatia itself from its numerous enemies and ‘friends’, the majority of the Croats stood together. The Croatian people could easily distinguish between the State and the ephemeral regime. They sharply criticised the regime within the limits of personal safety and patriotic decorum.Yugoslav communists try to justify their genocidal massacres of the Croats by presenting them as ‘the liquidation of the hated Ustashas’. But this won’t wash. In practice, the activities of the Ustasha movement in emigration could develop only in the countries that ‘tolerated’ them, i.e., Italy and Hungary, and those countries that aimed at the revision of the Versailles treaty.Ustasha members were active in Germany before Hitler came to power, and it will surprise many people that, after his rise to power, they did not receive any help from him. In fact, they were put under strict control after Belgrade and Berlin re-established their friendly relations in 1939, and only after the coup in Belgrade on 27th March 1941, i.e., fourteen days before the proclamation of independence, did they enjoy full freedom of action.One of the main conditions for the re-establishment of the Belgrade-Berlin axis was that Berlin and Rome put a stop to the activities of the Ustasha émigrés. The Ustashas in Italy were, in fact, deported to the Island of Lipari. The terrorist methods of the Ustashas before 1941 were insignificant in comparison with the Great-Serbian terrorism within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia from 1918 to 1941.Due to the logic of the historical situation XE "Logic of historical situation" and after Dr. Ma?ek refused to take over in Croatia (an offer made to him by Hitler), the Ustashas came to power as it were ‘from above’ when the national ferment was already in full swing. Up to that time, the Ustasha movement was illegal, secret and, due to this, could not develop into a political party. Dr. Ma?ek, as an individual, could abstain and emigrate, but the Croatian people could not leave the country en-masse and ignore this momentous opportunity for national liberation. The timing, however, was extremely unfortunate not by choice, but by force of circumstances.A witness to the events in 1941, the former British Consul in Zagreb Mr. Rapp who, when he arrived in Split (on his way back to England), told Croatian sculptor Me?trovi?: “Without any doubt, the Croatian State is here and is supported by the people. As soon as we moved from Zagreb we met with total anarchy. In Slunj the [Croatian] rebels had already taken power . . . and it seems that they knew what they wanted.”During that phase of taking over power, some of the self-organised and disorganised ‘rebels’ (paramilitaries) Consul Rapp speaks about exceeded the limits in exacting retribution. These outrages, regurgitated by the Great-Serbian propaganda of the Yugoslav ?migré Government in London, criminalised the Movement in the eyes of the democracies.The Ustasha movement was joined (at least in its initial euphoric stages) in its position of power by diverse political and ideological groups, and individual members of the pre-war democratic (and yes, anti-fascist) parties. Fascism was unpopular in Croatia, particularly in Dalmatia, because of the Italian claims on Dalmatia. Nazism was even less popular for the broad masses under the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, which was openly opposed to Nazism XE "Nazism less popular for broad masses under influence of Roman Catholic Church, which was openly opposed to Nazism" .Even the most outspoken Ustasha press usually spoke of ‘the Croatian war’. Beyond that, ideology was conspicuous by its absence. The Voki?-Lorkovi? anti-Nazi coup attempt, both of them by high-ranking Ustasha officers, proves the point. A pre-war attempt to form a Croatian National Socialist Party was unsuccessful.Paveli?, as the head of State (L’êtat c’est moi), in his own words, took upon himself all the responsibility for the concessions to Hitler mimicking some of his laws, yet the price for this was paid by the Croatian people as a whole and not Paveli? personally; he later emigrated to and lived in Argentina in the comfort to which he was accustomed.In the sixth volume of the ‘European Political Systems’ by Taylor Cole, the Ustasha movement was filed under ‘The Extremist Movements’, split between autonomist and fascist sub-headings. The Ustasha movement and the Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation were described as typical autonomist movements in the struggle for national liberation. The comparison between the quisling Norway and Croatia thus collapses.On the other hand, the Yugoslav communists were the staunchest quislings of the Soviet Union up to 1948, and appeasers to the West after WWII. The ‘Croatian’ communists were quislings par excellence in the total pay of Belgrade against their own homeland. In the present ‘reformed’ system of government, their servile attitude towards the US and the European Union displays the same consistency. The very process of ‘reformed’ appeasement has led them to compromise their very own principles. This makes them very unreliable partners in the current democracy.Europe, as an historical, political, ideological and cultural entity is a myth and in its new European Union, it is utopia. Before 1945, it was divided into three blocks, into two blocks since 1945, and presently aiming at utopian unity. Europe has been constantly in conflict. In the 20th century alone, Europe, including Russia, has murdered some 100 million people.The Peasant Democratic Croatia of 1945, as a part of this fake Europe, came out of the war defeated by the other two ‘Croatias’, first nationalist and then communist, all three in simultaneously bloody conflict. In the struggle for an independent democratic state, Croatia, during the 20th century, has been under four empires: Magyar, German, Italian and particularly Yugoslav in its Great-Serbian and communist form. As a result, Croatia could not avoid being swept into the whirlpool of the great European conflict. Given the logic of the historical situation in 1941 Croatia did not have a real choice. Released from the Great-Serbian yoke by the break-up of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the Croatian people spontaneously acclaimed their independence, even though it was immediately hijacked by the Axis.It is no use philosophising with hindsight that the Croatian national interest should have been fighting against the Axis. The reality was something else: euphoria at their sudden release from the Great-Serbian yoke and the fact that the Croatian state was a fact of life. The attitude of the HSS leadership was still hung up on the idea of a democratic Croatia in a ‘democratic Yugoslavia’. In the existing Croatian state this was de facto treason. Before June 1941, the communists (and particularly the Croatian communists) were sitting on the fence while Hitler and Stalin were shaking hands. Nobody yet (not even the Brits) were sure about the outcome of the war before the US and the Soviet Union joined the fray.The Ustasha revolution was in progress XE "Ustasha revolution in progress" , the puppet Government in Serbia was collaborating with the Germans, and the Chetniks in the NDH were collaborating with the Italians. The conviction prevailed that the state, such as it was, was in the Croatian national interest. In such a situation the state had to deal with the immediate day-to-day problems, i.e., fight its immediate enemies, viz. the Great Serbian Chetniks and, after June 1941, the communists. This conviction was reinforced when announcements from the BBC were heard that the Allies intended to re-create Yugoslavia.The global interest in the outcome of the war, which was, by the way, imposed on Croatia by the British-inspired coup in Belgrade on 27th March 1941, was beyond the strength of Croatia.The Great Powers ignored the fact that the artificially engineered Yugoslavia, in 1918, was a utopian construct, which kept its internal conflicts continuously on the boil. It was also clear that such an artificial structure was likely to fall apart at the first opportunity. This brings us back to the Ustasha movement as one of the contestants in the bloody conflict of the Yugoslav utopia. The paradox of the Ustasha regime was that it could not avoid being inevitably and unavoidably harnessed to the violence in the war against the Yugoslav utopia. This war was a reaction to the 23-year long persecution of the Croats in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918-1941) and was more than justified. At the same time its final failure was unavoidable because of its totalitarian ideology.The KPH propaganda XE "KPH propaganda" ‘promise’ of a federal Croatian state in the future Yugoslavia in the situation while there was de facto an extant Croatian state (however good or bad) was abhorrent to the majority of the Croatian people. It was also in conflict with the common-sense belief that 'better a bird in the hand that one in the bush'. It was also divisive. The Croatian people could easily see that the communist declaration that they were anti-fascists was in contradiction with their totalitarian ideology. There exists such a thing as the ‘Croatian National Interest’ in a way that ‘the British National interest’ exists, whatever they may be. The Croats did not invent ideological-isms, fascism, Nazism or communism; all these were imposed upon them. Croats did not invent the slave trade, let alone concentration camps, unlike the British. Only forty years before during the Boer War, the British pursued the 'scorched earth' policy, whereby their patrols roamed the South African countryside, setting fire and laying waste to vast stretches of the veldt. Most shocking of all, the British military and civil authorities rounded up and interned tens of thousands of civilians in concentration camps."At the end of the war the true appalling scale of the tragedy could be tabulated: almost 28,000 Boers died in the 46 concentration camps. Women accounted for two thirds of the adult deaths. Nearly 80% of the fatalities were children under 16 years old . . . the true record of deaths among the blacks interned is now thought to be closer to 20,000."From the middle of 1943, the HSS, which had been so far passive, commenced negotiations first with the NDH regime and then with the communists. Both failed.The HSS claimed legitimacy on the basis of the pre-war victories in the general elections. But this held little conviction with the communists. The HSS proclamation at this very late stage of the war that “it was fighting for a democratic Croatia, which may be in union with other ‘Yugoslav’ nations, if it would so wish” was a slap in the face for the Croatian people already defending their independence in an existing state. The KPJ belief that bourgeois-democratic forces, which included the HSS, were the most dangerous obstacles for the establishment of the communist regime after WWII, was a good slogan but was not plausible.Tito and the KPJ were already installed in Belgrade in October 1944 under the wing of the Red Army offensive. A massive ‘crossing the floor’ from the HSS and the Domobran Army to the Partisans ‘Croatised’ the KPH to such an extent that it commenced to act more and more independently from the KPJ. Apart from Slovenia, Croatia had something to write home about in 1943/44, however, twisted: the best-organised ‘Partisan state’ in Europe with the ‘army, parliament and government’ (ZAVNOH). The ‘Croatian Independent Statehood’, alas coloured red, was coming more and more to the fore. Unitarists, as well as a few Serbs within the KPH, were raising their ugly heads. The class heart was winning over nationalist mind, and vice versa, and ended in the rebellion of the Serbian pro-Yugoslav unitarists and the Dalmatian communist hardliners in Pla?ko in 1944. The ‘democratisation’ of the KPH and the strengthening of the national element and the idea of ‘sovereignty’ of the Federal Croatia (within a future Yugoslavia) sounded alarm bells in Belgrade. Tito demanded an urgent report on the state of the revolutionary awareness of the KPH.‘The presence or the absence’ of Croatian Independence, even in its narrowest federal Yugoslav sense, was discernibly a product of the KPH-KPJ infighting in the autumn of 1944. The NDH was facing collapse, the HSS-KPH talks failed, and the KPH was now cleansed of its ‘nationalists’. On top of that, on 1st March 1945, Croatia lost ‘its own Partisan Army’, which was absorbed into the Yugoslav Army. The centralism of Belgrade, reinforced by means of the imperative revolutionary terror, was carried now on the wings of the Great-Serbian Partisan-Chetnik fraternisation. The NDH, up to 8th May 1945, was de facto a battleground where Croats themselves, nationalists as well as the fanatical pro-Yugoslav communists, deeply aware of their failure as a nation, stabbed each other suicidally in front and back, passing the knife from hand to hand.The communists massacred hundreds of thousands of the Croatian prisoners of war and helpless civilians who were handed to them on a plate by their British allies.The question of why the Croatian and other civilians were handed to the communists bothered me for a long time until I found, as already mentioned, a precedent for such an action in the Boer war.The British Establishment, in the dying days of the Empire, was totally insensitive to the plight of thousands of PoWs and refugees, as it was during the Boer war between 1900 and 1902. On the admission of the Military in Carinthia - they wanted to 'clear the decks'.Since they were unable to feed these masses, the British insisted they were doing it out of military and humanitarian necessity (they always do!). So far, this argument seems plausible. However, the real question is how the British Establishment could live down this crime, having tolerated Tito's liquidations on the other side of the frontier, of which it was fully aware. The explanation lies again in the precedent of the Boer war: "Although some commandants made the best of a bad situation, many, either through incompetence, negligence or just plain heartlessness consigned thousands of civilians . . . to a miserable end . . ."In the case of the Boers, this was done by starvation and leaving them to die in temperatures as high as 50oC and in the case of Croats by proxy slaughter executed by the communist ally of the Establishment. While more than half of European states fell from one totalitarian state into the lap of another, in 1945 Croatia was strangled by the Yugoslav communist utopia XE "Croatia was strangled by the Yugoslav communist utopia" . 4.8.8Bleiburg and its consequences XE "Bleiburg and its consequences" The fall of the NDH gave the green light for a ‘free for all’ revenge against Croatia's desertion from Yugoslavia by the victorious Yugoslav contestants (communists, including ‘Croatian’ communists and Chetniks now absorbed into the communist ranks). The utopian Yugoslavism that took possession of the ‘Croatian’ communists was decisive in the re-creation of Yugoslavia in 1945. Without the British treachery, the Croatian state (not the NDH) could have survived in some form acceptable to the great powers, including the Soviets. (Links, Hebrang-Stalin).The responsibility for the mass murders after Bleiburg in 1945 and for several years afterwards thus falls mainly on British shoulders. The Croatian communists claim that their struggle against fascism put Croatia on the victorious side in WWII is bogus; as for the Croatian people, the blood bath and the inclusion into yet another Yugoslavia, could not be 'victory' but a disaster. The Bleiburg massacres, which were a closely guarded taboo in the former Yugoslavia up to 1990, became the theme for political manipulations, belittling, misrepresentations and even denial. They were presented as a myth and an exaggerated invention by the Croatian ‘fascist’ emigrants, in spite of the existence of over 500 mass graves of the victims of the ‘anti-fascism’ strewn over thousands of miles from Slovenia to Macedonia – covered up and uninvestigated.By contrast, the ‘Croatian’ communist sycophant, the Great-Serbian cut-throat called Simo Dubaji?, as a good Serb, (1923–July 8, 2009) boasted of how he himself had ‘liquidated’ 30,000 Croats in May and June of 1945 on the order of Tito himself.Nikolai Tolstoy recalled how Dubaji?, XE "Dubaji?" when he interviewed him in Belgrade in 1990 stated: “If Tito had asked me to kill my own mother, I would have killed her.”This genocide, therefore, could not be defined by any stretch of the imagination as the ‘liquidation’ of Croatian war criminals – they were in the minority anyway and could have been dealt with easily in the regular courts. On the other hand, the blindness of the British Government's policy XE "Blindness of British Government's policy" of clearing the decks of the Croats ‘for Tito’s show’, and the ignorance of its consequences does not make any sense to those who are au fait with British political history and its revanchist dynamic. Without mincing words, the decision by the British to hand over the Croats was deliberate. This assessment comes straight from the horse’s mouth: "With hindsight, Aldington admitted in court (Aldington versus Tolstoy) that he could have acted differently. “If I had known that the Cossacks and Yugoslavs [i.e. the majority being Croats] were going back to their death I would have taken steps to make sure that this did not happen.’ ”"So Lord Aldington XE "Lord Aldington" ‘could have taken steps’ but did not, as ‘All who had surrendered to the 5th Corps were deemed to fall under the Yalta rules for repatriation' – rules which British politicians were keen to implement on the understanding that this would ensure the early return of the many British soldiers held as PoWs in Eastern Europe’.When the more powerful side cheats the weaker one in such a bloody way, one would expect it to apologise for what it has done. Anguish and doubt about the atrocities, which the British Government of the time physically helped to take place, have not become a suitable subject for an apology even 60 years after the event.‘The Times’ shed crocodile tears, expressing a profound moral shock but shifted it from the leading article to the Aldington Obituary on page 31, not with an apology, but in the form of a Requiem: “The massacres to which the [forced] repatriations led had long been on the collective British conscience. Few would dispute that this was a tragedy, one of the ugliest manifestations of the grim real politic of war whereby an alliance with one tyrant may be the means of defeating another.” The story of Bleiburg would not be complete without mentioning Tito’s terror in the form of the ‘death marches’, hundreds of miles long, crawling from Slovenia, Croatian Zagorje, Slavonia and Serbia, to Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro. These forced marches with the PoWs (of which the author was one) going without food and water, during which they were beaten, plundered, maltreated and humiliated in every possible way, were supposed to induce a slow death, speeded up at intervals with shootings, knifings, beatings, individual and mass executions in the quarries, mines, tunnels, wells, precipices, tank trenches, ravines, rivers, lakes and the sea, in a mass-schizophrenia of hatred. The Croatian PoWs were often deliberately lead through Serbian villages to be spat on, shot at, stoned and poisoned.The communist documents recording this terror are rare and well published only in the 1990’s. The first one that I described was the ‘Minutes of the City Committee in Zagreb’ dated 12th May 1945 stating: "The camps are full of Domobrans [the Croatian Regular Army] and others. In the Kanal camp there are 10,000 and in Vrapce 2,000 Ustashas . . .” According to a telegram from the General Headquarters of the Yugoslav Army for Croatia to the General Headquarters of the Yugoslav Army in Belgrade, there were 77,047 PoWs in Croatia even without those coming from Bleiburg. According to the minutes of the KPH meeting of 17th May 1945 the OZNA (Communist Secret Police) had already killed 7,000 people in Zagreb by that date.In the report from the Headquarters of the XIIth Assault division to the Headquarters of the Yugoslav Army in Belgrade dated 21st May 1945, it was stated that on the way from Bleiburg to Maribor (in Slovenia) there were 93,000 PoW Croatian soldiers.Partisan General Kosta Nadj noted in 1983 that his forces in Slovenia took 234,000 prisoners, out of which 150,000 were Croats.The formations of the XIIth Division and the IVth Osijek Brigade were in charge of the PoW camp in Maribor. According to the diary of the Virovitica Brigade of the 12th Slavonian (communist) Division, which was in charge of the PoWs moving on 19th May 1945 from Zagreb to Kri?evci, there were 26,000 prisoners in the column.On 20th July 1945 the ‘Croat’ Partisans from Suhopolje addressed a letter to Andrija Hebrang, the former General Secretary of the KPH then in Belgrade, pointing out that: "On or about 20th June 1945 the 4th Battalion of the 5th Proletarian Montenegrin Brigade [former Chetniks] have beaten up and killed in the nearby forest 1,416 Croat PoWs.”According to the estimate of the British 5th Corps of the 8th Army on 13th May 1945, 600,000 Croatian Domobrans and Ustashas were moving in the direction of Austria.Up to 15th of May 1945, the Croatian convoy camped in the Bleiburg field while two Ustasha officers, General Heren?i? and Daniel Crljen were negotiating the surrender of the Croatian armies with Brigadier Patrick Scott of the 38th British Infantry Brigade. The fact that the two high-ranking Ustasha officers, despised by the British, represented the Croats was not only unfortunate, but also extremely stupid. The Partisan General Milan Basta hijacked that meeting so that the two Ustasha officers had no option but to accept the surrender. Basta ‘guaranteed’ humane treatment to all those who gave themselves up. Yet, as soon as the columns of Croatian soldiers, now PoWs, started to move off, the Partisans opened fire from the nearby woods. The story of the forced repatriations must be familiar by now.The key role in these events was played by Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander XE "Alexander, Field Marshal Sir Harold" , who issued an instruction on 16th May 1945 to Air Vice Marshall Lee, his military envoy at Tito’s headquarters: "Commander of the Allied Troops in Austria reports that approximately 200,000 Yugoslav Nationals (mainly Croats) who were serving in the German Armed Forces have surrendered to him. We should like to turn them over immediately to Marshall Tito’s forces and would be grateful if Marshall Tito would agree to instruct his commanders to accept them and to arrange with GOC Vth Corps the rate at which they can be received, and a handing-over point on the Austrian frontier south of Klagenfurt for their return to Yugoslavia.”The fact that thousands of Croats had already been handed over on the 15th May was not mentioned.A few days later, Tito replied, thanking the Field Marshall. The guesswork of what would have happened to the Croat refugees if they refused to comply with the order from the British is not helpful. Smaller groups of Croats (up to 25,000) successfully penetrated the British occupation zone in Austria before 15th May 1945 and were protected.From 15th May 1945, the attitude of the British 5th Corps had totally changed from one in accord with the laws of war and the dictates of humanity to active collaboration with Tito’s genocide, as is hinted at in General Toby Low’s statement quoted in the court.Knowing the attitude of the communists towards the NDH (reported regularly to the British government by its military mission to Tito) and the savage behaviour of the Partisans in the British zone in Austria, it is very unlikely that those who forced the Croats across the Austrian frontier could not have anticipated their fate.The war diary of the 1st Guards Brigade reported: “Slovenes and Serbs mostly concentrated [in] Viktring cage. None of these can be repatriated except to almost certain death at the hands of Tito.”The more explicit statement came from the late Captain Nigel Nicholson XE "Nicholson, Captain Nigel " (of my acquaintance) who noted in his logbook on 25th May 1945: “100 further Croats . . . are already on the way to Yugoslavia by train – en route for the slaughter-house . . . information came from a Tito officer who was in charge of loading at Maria Elend.”According to Nikolai Tolstoy, the role of Macmillan XE "Macmillan, Harold" was decisive in this change of behaviour. “What was it that caused this dramatic and dishonourable change in policy? The pattern of events shows clearly that decisive intervention occurred on 13th May 1945 when Harold Macmillan unexpectedly arrived at Corps Headquarters. Macmillan was at the time Minister Resident in the Mediterranean, a post that was effectively that of political adviser to Field Marshall Alexander. . . . Macmillan spent the evening of the 12th visiting General Sir Richard McCreery (the Commander in Chief of the 8th Army) and Lieutenant General Harding, whose 13 Corps faced the Yugoslavs along the line of Isonzo. At this point . . . Macmillan, instead of flying back to Naples as originally intended, unexpectedly flew north over the mountains to Austria. There he spent two hours in discussion with [Lieutenant-General Sir Charles] Keighley [5th Corps] and his staff. What happened at their conference can only be inferred from evidence . . . In his diary . . . Macmillan expatiated at some length on what was evidently one of the more important issues laid before him by Knightly. “To add to the confusion, thousands of so-called Ustashi or Chetniks, mostly with wives and children, are fleeing in panic into this area in front of the advancing Yugoslavs. These expressions, Ustashi and Chetnik, cover anything from guerrilla forces raised by the Germans, from Slovenes and Croats and Serbs to fight Tito, armed and maintained by the Germans, to people who, either because they are Roman Catholic or conservative in politics [Macmillan being both a Catholic convert and a Conservative] or for whatever cause are out of sympathy with revolutionary communism and therefore labelled as Fascists or Nazis. This is a very simple formula, which in a modified form is being tried, I observe, in English politics.” ]The inferences Tolstoy draws from the above are plausible to anyone au fait with the events: "The information came from Keighley and the meeting was not one of mere small talk. The topics of discussion were, among others, Tito’s open declaration to annex Carinthia and the arrival of the masses of ‘various Yugoslavs’ in the area. Thus, Macmillan responded to Keighley’s problems with appropriate advice and directions, the issue being political – and for which Macmillan was responsible as an extended hand of Whitehall in the occupied area. Macmillan responded [in the diary] to the problem of the ‘annexation of Carinthia’ and the problem of the Cossacks. However, no indication appears in Macmillan's diary as to what, if any, advice he proffered on the problem [of the ‘various Yugoslavs’]. This omission appears the more curious the closer it is considered. . . . If we discount Macmillan's characteristically florid language, his account implies that Keighley's report on the Yugoslav refugees was explicit and detailed . . ., i.e., among others."“2.Croatian forces, falsely categorised en bloc as ‘so-called’ Ustashi, in reality largely comprising ‘guerrilla’ forces armed and maintained by the Germans . . . to fight Tito, i.e., Croatian Domobrani.” “3.Roman Catholic and conservative elements ‘out of sympathy with revolutionary communism’, i.e., civilians from various ethnic groups in Yugoslavia who had reason to fear a communist takeover.”Tolstoy goes on: “Before Macmillan's arrival the evidence indicates that the 5th Corps had neither the intention nor the desire to hand anyone over to be maltreated or killed. Thereafter a radical shift in policy occurred, which required extensive deception of the Allied Command, to say nothing of the unfortunate prisoners. The 5th Corps War Diary and other military records have been substantially doctored, a procedure which would scarcely have been necessary had all the proceedings been above board.” "A conflict of opinion between the US and British political advisers resulted in a letter being sent by Alexander’s Chief Administrative Officer, General Robertson on 14th May 1945 (under pressure by Macmillan on Alexander) to the 8th Army to be passed to General Keighley, which required the prompt handover. "All surrendered personnel of established Yugoslav nationality who were serving in the German forces should be disarmed and handed over to the Yugoslav forces.” It was this order on which the 5th Corps justified the forced repatriation of the prisoners from 15th May 1945 onwards." On 17th May Alexander asked the Combined Chiefs of Staff for direction. . . “regarding the final disposal following three classes: a) Cossacks; b) Chetniks c) German Croat troops, total 25,000. Whether or not Alexander knew of the fact that thousands of PoWs and refugees were already forcibly repatriated on 15th May is almost immaterial in the light of his ironical understatement at the end of his message: “In each of the above cases, to return them to their country of origin immediately might be fatal to their health . . .” The message was transmitted by the Chief Administrator to the Supreme Allied Commander, General Robertson XE "Robertson, General" and puts into question his role in the forced repatriation. Three days earlier he had issued, at Macmillan's instigation, the infamous ‘Robertson order’, which had ordered the 8th Army to hand over to Tito ‘all Yugoslavs serving in the German forces’. These two orders were inconsistent and it is plain that Alexander was not aware of the prior ‘Robertson order’. On 17th May the Americans lodged a formal objection to this order with the Deputy Chief of Staff (General Lemnitzer XE "Lemnitzer, General - Deputy Chief of Staff" ), General Robertson and Harold Macmillan. “You will recall that the British Ambassador in Belgrade proposed some two weeks ago that there were three alternatives in connection with the handling of these Yugoslavs (refugees): they could be used as auxiliary troops; they could be handed over to the Yugoslav Army; c) they should be disarmed and placed in refugee camps. At the time the State Department and the British Foreign Office agreed that alternative (c) was the only possible solution. More than two months were to pass before General Kirk XE "Kirk, General" discovered that both he and Alexander had been the victims of an elaborate deception practiced by their own colleagues.”The chronology of the events, according to Tolstoy was this:13th May 1945“Following Macmillan's visit to the 5th Corps, both he and Keighley omit all reference in their otherwise detailed reports to the presence of tens of thousands of Yugoslavs [mainly Croats] in the Corps’ area, and to their decision to deliver them to the Communists.”14th May 1945“At Macmillan's instigation Robertson issued his order for the Yugoslavs to be handed back to Tito. Kirk is carefully omitted from the circulation list.”16th May 1945“Alexander’s Chief of Staff, General Morgan, reported to Alexander the presence of 25,000 Croats and 25,000 Slovenes in the 5th Corps’ area. He clearly was not advised of Robertson’s ‘remedy’ for them [i.e., sending them back to Tito]. Alexander accordingly requested directions from the Combined Chiefs of Staff for the solution to the problem. Clearly, it is inconceivable that he would have done so if he had been aware of Robertson’s order.”17th May 1945The US political adviser is misled into believing that Robertson’s order had been superseded.“Aldington at 5th Corps issued the following order, extending the category of those required to be [forcibly] repatriated, and taking care not to transmit a copy to higher command “All Yugoslav nationals [mainly Croats] at present in the Corps area will be handed over to Tito’s forces as soon as possible. These forces will be disarmed immediately but will not be told their destination. Arrangements for the handover will be co-ordinated by HQ in conjunction with the Yugoslav forces. The handover will last over a period owing to difficulties of Yugoslav acceptance. FMNS will be responsible for escorting personnel to a selected point notified by this HQ where they will be taken over by Tito’s forces.”General McCreery instructed Keighley: “Pending the outcome of [the] present governmental negotiations with [the] Yugoslavs you will avoid entering into any agreements with [the] Yugoslav commanders.”19th May 1945“Despite [the] clear terms of the last two orders Aldington entered into a written agreement with Yugoslav Colonel Ivanovi?, committing the 5th Corps to handing over all the Yugoslavs in the area . . . and relying on Robertson’s order for his authority.”21st May 1945“Alexander learns for the first time of Robertson’s order. “Between the 19th and 22nd May 1945 thousands of Croats were transported to the hands of Tito’s executioners by means of further lying and deception.”On 14th August 1945 General Kirk reported to the State Department amongst other things: “ . . . that Resident Minister [Macmillan] acted contrary to the policy agreed upon after consultation by [the State] Department and [the British] Foreign Office.”The status of the surrendered Croats under International Law, who were forcibly repatriated in May 1945 by Aldington, who relied on Robertson’s order of 14th May 1945, i.e., “all surrendered personnel of established Yugoslav nationality who were serving in the German forces should be disarmed and handed over to Yugoslav forces” was established in accordance with the uniform they wore.If the Croat military were regarded as part of ‘the German armed forces’, they should have been treated as such and held as prisoners of war of the British to whom they had surrendered. If they were not ‘German forces’ (which they were not) but Croatian forces of a State recognised by twelve powers (but not by the British) and that State had signed the Geneva Convention, this was hardly a reason to send them to their death indiscriminately. Even less was this the reason to send the civilians to their death.“During the 1989 libel trial [Tolstoy vs. Aldington], Lord Aldington classified these Croatian civilians as ‘camp followers’. The claim was designed to legitimise the inclusion of Croatian civilians [forcibly] surrendered to Tito, who would not otherwise have been covered by the orders the 5th Corps claimed to have fulfilled, which violated the International Law. Article 81 of the 1929 Geneva Convention provides that civilians engaged in this type of relationship with the military “have the right to be treated as prisoners-of-war”.Philip Bratton, a platoon commander in the Welsh Guards, in his military diary dated 12th May 1945 noted: “Tito still making aggression. His Partisans are simply brigands and looters.”Tito was kicked out of Austria on 18th May 1945 on orders from Stalin.“Why, therefore, was I ordered to hand over 200 men, women and children, the Croatian government and their families . . . to a representative of Tito on the 17th May, who were, save one, all shot against the garden wall of a hotel in Slovenia – and a further 2,000 next day? Their fate must presumably have been the same, although many were thrown into pits.” “Finally, on a personal note: The British representative in Belgrade at the time – other than one Ambassador – was William Deakin, whom I knew. He told me MacMillan put the blame on Robertson; but this cannot be accepted. Eden in Athens had obviously briefed Macmillan after Yalta: ‘Appease Stalin’. I knew Macmillan well, often dining with him in a mutual club we belonged to and having a flat in the same building at 90 Piccadilly. Alexander was my wife’s cousin and I bought the lease of my house in London from Aldington. A second cousin was ADC to Keighley. The fundamental question, which logically presents itself concerning events in Austria in 1945, is – why? There are four potential premises. 1) It was a military necessity: ‘clear the decks’. 2) It was not a military necessity. 3) It was a political priority. 4) It was not a political priority.”The Yalta Repatriation Agreements of 11th February 1945 XE "Yalta Repatriation Agreements of 11th February 1945" covered the return of all citizens belonging to a signatory state to their respective countries.The British Cabinet decision and the Foreign Office policy and signals made clear that the Government did not wish to retain any of the [Soviet] citizens and ordered their return by force . . . In expressing these sentiments, the Foreign Office was consistent throughout. . . . Clear instructions were passed by the Foreign Office to both the Resident Minister, Harold Macmillan and Field Marshall Alexander: They stated:“all Yugoslavs to be evacuated.” The latter signal was dated 29th April and passed on 2nd May 1945 . . . [No screening took place and] in practice, . . . the Yugoslavs [the majority of whom were Croats] were despatched . . . as military formations and as national groups in accordance with the 5th Corps instructions during May and June 1945.”Tito’s threat to take Carinthia, Venezia Giulia, and Trieste was taken seriously. The marauding gangs of Partisans in Carinthia were to be cleared by force “and handed over to their opposing compatriots by deception. To use Alexander’s phrase: ‘the decks were going to be cleared’.”On 13th May 1945 Macmillan visited the 5th Corps Headquarters at Klagenfurt, returned to Caserta and “is cited by General Robertson as advising the return of the Croats. If this point were to be disputed, it would be a fine one as far as the Croats were concerned; they were returned after Robertson’s signal of 14th May which ordered their expulsion – and that of the Cossacks.” “A further complication had been [the] 15th Army Groups signal on 7th May 1945 [a week earlier] which ordered “. . . Those facing Tito must surrender to Tito”. The Croats wore the uniform of the Independent State of Croatia [the NDH]. However, the NDH was not recognised by the Allies. Croats were not ‘Yugoslavs’ serving in the German armed forces and had not fought against the British army (in spite of the fact that the NDH had formally declared war against Britain). In terms of Churchill’s orders XE "Churchill’s orders" of 29th April 1945, the Croats were Yugoslavs to be evacuated to Italy, pending further orders. According to the 15th Army Group, Croats were to be surrendered to Tito, but their surrender had been implicitly accepted by the British Army in their being offered asylum [by Tito]. Under the Geneva Convention the Croats were British prisoners [of war]. According to common sense and humanity, they and their ‘camp followers’ were likely to be annihilated if they were handed over to Tito. In terms of ‘clearing the decks’ they could be evacuated to Italy (and further to Austria) or handed over [to Tito]. They were handed over to Tito.The argument that roads and rails could not support such an exodus XE "Roads and rails could not support such an exodus" and that food was a problem was a red herring. The weather was perfect, it was springtime and the Croats had already marched 1,000 kilometres with unbearable hardship; a few hundred kilometres more would not have presented a problem.The climax in this saga occurred on 15th May 1945 when 500,000 people (mainly Croats), army and civilians, arrived at Bleiburg field, and were refused acceptance, the refusal fully backed by Alexander. Macmillan, . . . according to his biographer, expressed no regret for the advice he had given.” In hindsight, the rationalisation for the handing over of the Croats to Tito was: a) that the Croats had not many friends in the higher echelons of the British Military and political command; b)that those at the very top, Churchill, Eisenhower and Alexander, who apparently were ‘understanding’ were thwarted; c) that between 8th and 19th May the hard-nosed military in the 5th Corps had to take into account the possibility of the (Partisan) Yugoslav attack in Carinthia; d) through sheer military expediency and in order to mollify Tito, the operation, once started, gathered its own momentum on the principle that the “5th Corps got the bit between their teeth”. On this basis humanitarian issues were ignored; e)that the hand-over was in Britain’s national interest. (!)Military action was being used as politics by other means.It was convenient to assume that all the anti-communist Yugoslavs were ‘Quislings’ (referred to as ‘wogs’ by General Patrick Scott), which was the case in many command communications, a description that reflected the state of mind of many in the British military at the time. Compassion had no place in real-politik.The state of mind of the British officers in Austria in May 1945, when translated into passable English paraphrase, was something like this: "I contend that we are the finest race in the world, and that the more of the world we inhabit, the better it is for the human race. Just fancy, those parts that are at present inhabited by the most despicable specimens of human beings [such as Croats], what an alteration would there be if they were brought under the Anglo-Saxon influence."One must, of course, reject the crude apologia cited above for what in fact was political terrorism, par excellence, which nobody, fair as the British claim to be, would have dreamt they would be capable of carrying out. In essence the British Establishment had a psychological motive in handing over the Croats to Tito, the revenge (a kind of war rage). The Croats were sternly judged as examples of unsustainable pro-German, anti-Yugoslav and reactionary Papists, who had dared to declare war on Britain and therefore must be punished. This proved to be a momentary psychological release from the anxieties in the cortex of the British Establishment. It was not because of shame, anguish or doubt about their role in Tito’s atrocities, but as an act of revenge. The moral shock, if any, was replaced by a series of excuses, both military and political, that may appear plausible but are still, 65 years after the events, floating in a kind of psycho penumbra! 4.9The Number Games in the War of the Yugoslav Utopia XE "Number Games in War of Yugoslav Utopia" The Yugoslav censuses of 31st March 1931 and 15th March 1948 were used as a basis for the calculation of demographic and wartime losses (which included the losses at and after Bleiburg):1.The population as of 31st March 1931.2.Less surviving population on the 15th March 1948.3.Less births and deaths.4.Less refugees and emigration.5.The result equals war losses, including the losses at Bleiburg and after.On 25th May 1957 (his birthday), Tito announced that 1.7 million people had been killed during WW2 on the territory of Yugoslavia. This number was slightly increased to 1,706,000 to appear more realistic and was registered with the International Reparations Commission in Paris in 1946. The Commission requested supporting documentation in 1947, which was prepared by a student of mathematics, a Serb named Vladeta Vuckovi?. Forty years afterwards, Vuckovi? recounted that his calculation of the losses of 1.7 million were demographic losses, which Edvard Kardelj, then Foreign Minister, presented to the Commission as the actual number of human losses.Tito aimed to increase the amount of reparations.In 1952 the Slovene demographer Vogelnik published the even more dramatic ‘Demographic losses in Yugoslavia during WWII’, claiming that between 2,650,000 and 3,000,000 human lives had been lost.Another Slovene demographer, Ivo Lah, disputed these figures, quite rightly stating that “Demographic losses can be increased limitlessly, but what remains in question is the motivation for such a hypothesis.”Vogelnik’s figures were then used to substantiate the 700,000 Serbs killed in the Ustasha concentration camp in Jasenovac.The acid test of these figures came when Germany refused to pay reparations on the basis of the figure of 1.7 million lost lives and asked for a revised estimate. The new estimate was made in 1964 but was never published. On 21st November 1989 Croatian journalist ?eljko Kru?elj XE "Kru?elj, ?eljko" published these ‘secret’ figures in the magazine Danas. However, they included neither NDH soldiers, nor the Slovene Army and Chetniks killed, but only the victims of the ‘fascist terror’. It is curious that these Yugoslav communist figures show the victims of the Ustasha concentration camps to be 49,874 for Jasenovac, 9,387 for Stara Gradiska, 1,794 at Jadovno (not all victims were Serbs by any means) – giving a total figure of 51,055 which was miles away from the incongruous propaganda figure of 700,000 for Jasenovac alone.Tito used the original, super-inflated figures to support the references to the magnitude of ‘the National Liberation Struggle’. They were also exploited later as a prop for the self-referential claims about the threat to Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina in order to support ‘all the Serbs in one State’ political aim, a prop that Milo?evi? used once again in the Yugoslav wars of 1990-1995. ?erjavi? concluded:“That the total fallen, killed and dead in the NDH was 322,000, out of which 28,000 were killed in pits, prisons and other camps, and 50,000 in Jasenovac, a total of 78,000, as a direct result of terror, pursued not of course only by the NDH regime but also by the Germans and the Italians.”By comparison, the total losses of Croats and Muslims in the NDH, due to direct terror by the pro-Yugoslav forces, were 148,000, i.e., almost double the number. This figure shows that the Chetniks killed 47,000, while the Partisans matched them by killing 46,000 during the war and 55,000 at Bleiburg, the ‘death marches’ and individual liquidations from 1945-1947.He also shows that 82,000 Serbs and 57,000 Croats and Muslims were killed in the ‘liberation struggle’, i.e., that only 25% of those killed were Serbs, most of them killed by the overwhelming military power of the Germans and Italians and, to a lesser extent, by that of the NDH forces.In this light, the war of the Yugoslav utopia assumes the character of proportional representation, i.e., that the 56,000 Croats and Muslims killed at Bleiburg and after, as estimated by ?erjavi?, more than compensates in a tit-for-tat fashion for the 50,000 Serbs killed by the Ustashas in Jasenovac.?erjavi?, a Yugoslav demographer XE "?erjavi?, Yugoslav demographer" , a member of the Communist Party and a retired United Nations Official, published his figures in 1992 in a manual entitled ‘The Population losses of Yugoslavia in World WarII’. The title of his publication was ‘The Obsessions and Megalomania about Jasenovac and Bleiburg’.The introduction has an ominous whiff of Yugoslav nostalgia: “It is high time to stop presenting such [super-inflated] figures to the public and avoid a possible civil war that can only harm all the nations obliged by fate to live together by fate in this territory.”The ‘secret’ figures of the victims of WWII, prepared by the Yugoslav Government and never published, were for this reason probably the only figures approaching the truth. After all, Belgrade had all the relevant documents in its hands. Published in the magazine Danas on 28th November 1989 by ?eljko Kru?elj, i.e., during the still-existing communist Yugoslavia, they showed a total of 61,055 victims of the direct ‘fascist terror’ but have not included the ‘Quislings’ killed by the communists either during, and particularly not, after the war (Bleiburg). Bogdan Krizman XE "Krizman, Bogdan" , in his book Paveli? Izmedju Hitlera i Mussolinija, quotes Fikreta Jeli?-Buti? (communist Muslim historian XE "Jeli?-Buti?, Fikreta - communist Muslim historian" ) in Chapter 7 of Usta?ki Terror u Zamahu (pp.117-137) on the subject of the Ustasha murders of the Serbs during 1941: (See note at end of chapter.) 11/12 AprilGlina 30027/28 AprilGudovac, Bjelover 184Blagaj, Kordun 2502nd JuneLjubinje, Hercegovina 1405/6th JuneKorito, Gacko 18015th JuneKnin 11019/20th JuneVrika, Drnis, Promina 25019/20th JuneKnin 7623rd JuneLjubinje, Hercegovina 60Gacko 8025th JuneStolac, Hercegovina 260Opuzen, Hercegovina 28030th JuneLjubuski, Hercegovina 901st JulyGracac 30012th JulyKnin 70Prisoj, Sinj 9020/27thPrijeboj - estimated 70024/25thGrabovac, Petrinja 1,20027/28th JulySlunj 8029th JulyLivno 1,000To end of JulyGlina - according to some figures 2,000Bihac, Krupa, Cazin - estimated 20,000Sanski Most - estimated 6,000Prijedor, B. Novi - estimated 6,000Duvno 250 =SUM(ABOVE) 40,0501945 May/JuneMass Graves discovered/ Strazun, Nr. Moribor, Slovenia Croats were shot and thrown into anti-tank trenches45,000unearthed in SLOVENIA.Pohorje - Croats were killed and thrown into anti-tank trenches and bomb craters 3,000Slaughterhouse in Kosaki - Croatian boys were shot 800Strnisce - Croats were shot and thrown into air-raid shelter tranches5,000 =SUM(ABOVE) 53,800The hundreds of thousands of anonymous victims (mainly Croats) were thus not the subject of the manipulative ‘demographic’ or other methods of estimating but are, only now, being painfully counted, mass grave by mass grave, pit by pit, victim by victim’ (by professional commissioners). They have been found literally in the crevices of hell!The statement, made in Rome by Ivan Gugi?, a Croat from Vela Luka (on the Island Kor?ula in Dalmatia) on 14th August 1953. He was born on 26th August 1925. One of the best illustrations of the work of the devil is the following statement. From 10th September 1943 he was mobilised as a second lieutenant in the XIth Partisan Dalmatian Brigade. His statement was given freely: “I was in the 26th Partisan Division and as I was a minor I was despatched to work in the British Military hospital on the Island Vis. In March 1945 I was transferred to the 11th Dalmatian Brigade. On 15th/16th May 1945 we reached Kranjska Gora in Slovenia and proceeded to Carinthia. I was present at Klagenfurt at the handover of the Croatian soldiers to Titoists by the British. On 24th/25th May we were back in Kranj, Slovenia. The order came from the Headquarters of the 26th Division to select from the entire Brigade the most trustworthy communists for a confidential assignment. Daniel Jokovi? XE "Jokovi?, Daniel" , second lieutenant also from my town, confided to me that the men were being selected to liquidate Croat, Slovene and German prisoners of war. Captain Nikola Mar?i? [a Croat!] from Makarska commanded the 3rd Battalion [60-70 people] and I was on escort duty.“The commissar was Ivan Bokez [a Montenegrin] and the chief commander was the notorious cutthroat already mentioned, a Serb called Simo Dubaji? from ‘Krajina’ [the district of Lika in Croatia], Commander in Chief of the 4th Army Operations Branch. The [soon to be] selected troops marched on 25th/26th May 1945 to Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, and arrived at the PoW [?t. Vid] camp. The camp was full of prisoners of all kinds, including women and children. The selected troop commenced by looting any valuables they could find on the prisoners. The next day, 27th May at 6.00 a.m., four sealed trucks with prisoners and one truck of Partisan assassins arrived in the camp. Four to five kilometres away was a small wood with a large pit nearby. When we arrived there, I saw 50 prisoners undressed, their hands tied with wire, shot and pushed into the pit. Approximately each hour another truckload arrived and was dealt with by the same procedure. That day 40 truckloads of people were liquidated. At the end of the day [the assassins] bragged about murdering 2,000 people. The guns [for the liquidation] were British-made 20-bullet hand machine guns. The pit was about 50m deep. The victims were Slovenes and Croats.“The next day we took a train to Ko?evje in Slovenia where further killings were carried out in the woods of Ko?evski Rog. The commissar responsible for looting gold was a 'Croat', Ljubo Barbari? from the Island of Hvar in Dalmatia. The commander of the troop loading the people into the trucks was another 'Croat', Ivo Frankovi?, from the Pelje?ac peninsular in Dalmatia. We spent 8 days in Ko?evje. Up to 20 train loads of people arrived there daily, each containing 20 sealed wagons. Most of these people were males – only a few women who were raped and pushed into the pit, but there were quite a few boys between 15 and 16 years of age and they were also killed. All these were Croats. It was said that in these two locations 30-40,000 people were killed in 8 days. The killers were sent to Lake Bled for a holiday after a big evening party and dance. The mountains of clothing taken from these people that I have seen confirm the above numbers of those killed.“Bozo Ka?i? XE "Ka?i?, Bozo" , another 'Croat' from the Island Hvar who was Tito’s standard-bearer bragged about raping a few women among these wretched people [they were wives of the imprisoned Croatian officers] who wept incessantly. I saw perhaps 200 boys [between the ages of 14 and 16] among them, dressed in the uniforms of the Ustasha youth. They were first beaten. Some of them sobbed saying that they had not done anything wrong. “The unloading from the wagons [which were full of excrement and stench] of many unconscious, deranged and sick people did not satisfy the liquidators sadism - they were beaten up and were not given mercy. All were killed together: Croatian Domobrans, Ustashas, Slovene Domobrans and even a few Chetniks. I was able to save four or five Croats thereby putting my own life in danger.“At the end of this liquidation a commission of high ranking Partisan officers [among whom was a notorious Serb, Dane Kora? from Krajina] inspected the pits, and ordered that they be blown up with explosives, collected the gold and departed.“The killers were heavily decorated, among them another 'Croat' [!] Ante Cepi? from Makarska, Dalmatia. Most of them later fell victims to the Partisan disease, an epileptic kind of fit, in which they re-enacted their glorious exploits.”Many years later, on 8th October 1991, now in the free Independent Republic of Croatia, the day when all ties with Yugoslavia were finally broken, the Croatian Parliament passed a law whereby, in accordance with International Law, the graves and burial sites of all war and post-war victims were to be identified, examined, restored and maintained regardless of the nationality, race, religious beliefs, ideology, political or any other affiliation of the 'victims’ (of the Yugoslav utopia) and regardless of the manner of their execution. The Law also provided that a proper funeral service, with removal and burial of the remains in an appropriate site must be ensured.Article 4 stipulated the establishment of a Commission for the Identification of Wartime (WW2) and Post-War Victims. Twenty-one members were to be members of the Croatian Parliament and forty other members to be historians, lawyers, medical doctors and other professional experts on the subject. Accordingly, ten committees were formed covering the entire territory of the Republic of Croatia. Up to 2010, the work of this Commission has been only partial. At Mace near Zadar, two skeletons were discovered at Lug near Bjelovar together with 228 skeletons in a mass grave; victims of both locations were killed by the Partisans after 8th May 1945 (the end of WWII). The most comprehensive research so far has been carried out in the Mount Macelj locality near Krapina. Three clusters of burial locations with a total of twenty-two mass graves containing over 1,000 skeletons have been partially examined. The victims were Croatian soldiers killed by Partisans in May/June 1945 in the 'death marches'. The estimated number of victims is in fact very much higher.The people in the locality are still fearful and reluctant to speak out and give evidence. This psychology of fear was instilled in them over forty-five years of the Yugoslav communist rule. In some cases, the work of the Commission has been openly obstructed, particularly in Istria, settled as it was after WW2 by retired communist cut-throats. Even so, two further mass graves were examined: 102 skeletons have been unearthed from the pit in Podi (Trilj) containing Croatian soldiers and civilians captured by the Partisans in Ar?ano on 26th/27th May 1944 and executed.4.9.1Slovenia – Mass Graveyard of Croats XE "Slovenia – Mass Graveyard of Croats" According to the Slovene Almanach ‘Slovenija, 1941-1948-1952, Tudi mi smo umrli za Domovino, Ljubljana, 2000’, a well-researched work of 727 pages written by seven researchers under Editor Franc Perme on the subject of the forgotten mass graves (co-financed by the Slovene Ministry for Science and Technology), the macabre computation of the Croatian soldiers and civilians murdered by the communists from 23rd May 1945 onwards only on the Slovene territory is shown in the table below:Table showing Croatian soldiers and civilians murdered on 23rd May 1945 on Slovene territory:1Victims of the ‘death marches’ from Dravograd to the Croatianfrontier (100kms) 145,0002Victims killed in Ko?evski Rog 41,0003Victims in Zasavskem Hribovju 24,0004Victims in Brezi?ke Mostec: 6,0005Victims in Krakovski Gozd (11 graveyards): 5,0006Victims (members of the Croatian Government) and their familiesat Lancovo: 1,3007Victims (the remainder of the Croatian Government) at Lancovo: 200Total number of victims =SUM(ABOVE) 222,500In addition to the above, in the death marches from the Croatian/Slovene frontier (a total of over 2000kms), approximately a further 144,500 Croats were killed or died from starvation and exhaustion. There is no pit or trench along these roads that is not filled with the bodies of these Croats.The 52 Investigated mass graves in Slovenia were:No. 17 - PodutikAbout 100 Slovene soldiers and between 700 and 900 CroatsNo. 34 - Ko?evski Rog7,000 – 8,000 Croat soldiers killed by communists afterthe hand-over by the British.No. 35 - KrenVictims Croatian soldiers.No. 49 - Lancovo (Predgrad):1,300 Croatian civilians killed by the Serbian communists on 15th/16th May 1945.Other Mass Graves:No. 1 - Huda Jama mineshaft, La?koThe communists were throwing many victims alive into the shaft. The majority of the victims were Croats and Slovenes, a total of about 12,000 No. 2 - Second mass gravein the mineshaft: Several hundred victims, mainlyCroats and some Slovenes. No. 4 - JelencVictims Slovenes and CroatsNo. 17 - Ro?ev quarryCroatian civilians killed and the quarry blown up afterwards with mines.Nos. 18,19, 20 - At Visoke, Galetove and ?picberkThe trenches are full of the remains of killed Croatian civilians.No. 21 - Chappel PrapretnoIn the vicinity are Croatian civilians buried.No. 29 - Rimske TopliceBuried Croatian soldiers and civilians killed by the communists on 9th May 1945.Mostec (Bre?ice) - anti-tank trenchesThe column of Croats stopped on 7th May 1945 by Montenegrin Partisans and killed. Graves later covered with concrete. No. 24 - Podgorje (Suhadol)Victims Croatian soldiers. No. 25 - From Mislinj Valley to the River Paki. Victims Croatian soldiers and civilians. No. 30 - Strni?ce-Kidri?evo. Croat soldiers and civilian victims. When the builders dug the foundations for an industrial building in 1985, they uncovered the grave. The order from ‘above’ was to cover it with reinforced concrete slab and proceed with the construction. 8,000No. 31- Borl v HalozahIn a trench of Croatian soldiers. No. 33 - Dravograd.Victims - Slovene and Croat soldiers.No. 34 - Gorica and ?o?tanjem: Victims - Croatian civilians and soldiers. No. 38 - Kamni?ka Bistrica: Victims - Croatian civilians. No. 51 - Crnogrob: Victims - Croatian civilians killed in May 1945.During the construction of the section of the motorway from Posnica to Fram (near Maribor) in 1990 the largest mass grave of murdered Croats in Slovenia was uncovered. The numbers have not been finally assessed but are upwards of 10,000 victims.The Slovene-Croat State Commission demanded a decent exhumation and burial of the victims with appropriate markings.Other mass graves:A Slovene woman, Reza ?upan, witnessed the taking of about 2,000 Croatian civilians by the Partisans to be murdered after 15th May 1945:“They all were tied with wire. The communists took them to a place called Podgrad and killed them with grenades. We could hear the detonations clearly. Many of these civilians were either children or nurses and nuns.” “The transport of Croats and some Magyars was stopped at Jesenice. There were about 2,000 people. 1,400 were killed at Lancovo, and the rest were taken on the 23rd May to Crni Grob, undressed, tied up with wire in groups of threes and shot in the evening. On 24th May, two lorry loads of women were shot. On 25th May another 80 men were shot. Some tried to escape by jumping through the windows but the Partisans shot them. In the meantime, local Slovene people were celebrating Tito’s birthday.”In 1990/91 a Commission called ‘Demos’, formed by the Slovene political parties, examined further mass graves:Mass Graves at4.Kr?ko - bodies of Croats. 1,5005Dobru?ka Vas – Croatian bodies. 608Skalce - Croatian bodies 509Grave at Dravinja Pri Lipi, 213Stranice - bodies of Croatian civilians1,000213 Mass graves at Vi?nja - Croats and some Slovenes. 30022Vojnik - Croatian bodies. 30029In an anti-tank trench at Teharje, Zg. Hudinja, Golovec, Nova Vas - 4 km long, 2.5m deep and 3m wide. Bodies, mainly Croats, some Slovenes and Jews were thrown into it in August 1945. At the moment the trench is covered with buildings and roads: a transport centre, customs building, road and railway, corn silos, factory, school, housing estate, garages, etc. 23,000- 25,00032.Near Celje: Concreted trench 150m long, 5m wide and 3m deep. Bodies ofSlovenes and Croats, some Serbian Chetniks, Germans and even Russians. 4,000- 6,00034.Mlinarjev Janez Teharje – bodies of Croats and Slovenes 1,500- 2,00035.Tehar - bodies of Croats and Germans 150- 20036.Pecovnik mine – bodies of Croats, Slovenes. Access closed by explosivesand concrete. 7,000- 8,00043.Golovec – bodies of Croats, Slovenes and some Serbian Chetniks. 2,00044.Sejmi??e-Golovec - bodies of Slovenes, Croats, Germans and some Serbian Chetniks 1,50046Lipo?kov meadow, Medlog - bodies of Croats who were forced to dig their own graves. 80047.Zg. Medlog - bodies in an old quarry. All Croats. Motorway to Slovenija runs over it. 3,00048Medlog - bodies of Croats in old military trenches and rubbish pits 10,000-15,00051Medlog north - bodies of Croatian refugees 50058.?entjur - bodies of Croatian refugees 6060.?empeter pod. Sv. Gorami - bodies of Croatian refugees. 1,50061.Pil?tanj - bodies of Croatian refugees 40062.Rogatec -bodies of Croatian refugees 50084.Veliki Kamen-Cret - bodies of Croatian soldiers shot on the 15th May 1945. 300- 50085.Veliki Kamen - bodies of Croatian soldiers shot on the 15th May 1945. 50- 60While constructing the new motorway bypass around Maribor in April/May 2000, the contractors dug up as many as 1,179 bodies within the short distance of 70m of the former anti-tank trench.According to the leading Slovene newspaper Delo dated 27th August 1999, a mass grave at Zan?ani near Slovenjgradec holds 3-7,000 Croatian bodies.According to the Croatian evening newspaper Ve?ernji List, Zagreb 18th April 1999, a former Slovene communist Party Secretary Albert Svetina confirmed that the order to the Slovene Secret Police (OZNA) in the spring of 1945 stated: “The Russians maintained that the end of the war was nigh. Tito and Rankovi? [the head of OZNA] agreed. Therefore, they were to ‘liquidate’ everyone they could. These ‘liquidations’ would not be subject to court processes and in that way, we’ll get rid of the enemies of the State.”4.9.2 Yugoslav Utopia under the Scrutiny of the Big Powers XE "Yugoslav Utopia under Scrutiny of Big Powers" The attitude of the Versailles powers that all the enemies of Yugoslavia were automatically traitors and Quislings helped the rise of the communist party in Yugoslavia. The mental block that prevented Western democracies from allowing the self-determination of the ‘Yugoslav’ nations in accordance with the Atlantic Charter, helped to establish the totalitarian communist regime under Tito. The communists thus got all the Allied help they asked for, and more, including the handing over to Tito of hundreds of thousands of PoWs, the majority of whom as individuals, without any doubt, were the supporters of the Western democracies. Fortunately, the Western politicians could not pretend that they did not know what was happening in Yugoslavia. Fitzroy MacLean, when pointing out to Churchill that Tito et al. were communists and that they would eventually follow the Soviet line, was faced with a question: “Do you intend to live in Yugoslavia after the war?” (MacLean actually had a summer villa on the Island Kor?ula in the Adriatic.) “No Sir” he replied. “Neither shall I, and therefore the less we are concerned about the regime that they install the better. They must decide. The matter that interests us is who is able to do more damage to the Germans.” Quoted exactly.President Roosevelt, on the other hand, maintained that the solution to the Yugoslav problem was the separation of Croatia and Serbia. According to the Yugoslav Ambassador to the US in Washington, at the time (a Great Serb), K. Foti?, on the occasion of his audience with the President on 3rd April 1941, Roosevelt remarked: “Do you not think that it would be better for you for the Serbs to be again a homogeneous country after parting with your Western provinces [i.e., Croatia and Slovenia?]”Secretary of State, Sumner Wells, wrote in his book The Seven Decisions that Shaped History of how Roosevelt argued with him for over an hour about the advantages of a plebiscite to sort out, once forever, the conflicts between the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes.Harry Hopkins took the same attitude during talks held in mid-March, 1943 in the White House with Anthony Eden. “The President has expressed many times his opinion that the Croats and Serbs have nothing in common and therefore it is ridiculous to insist that these two such diverse peoples live under the same government.”Eden, a well-known Serbophile (yet at the same time a heart-throb of many Croat women), commented that on that subject the President was actually “too pessimistic”.Eventually, Roosevelt succumbed to the pressure of events and particularly the British nagging. At the meeting between Cardinal Spellman and the President on 3rd September 1943 before the Teheran Conference, Roosevelt admitted that Austria, Hungary and Croatia would fall under a kind of Russian Protectorate.Unlike the British politicians, the British media commentators had a more lucid insight into the fate of the Yugoslav utopia.E.H. Carr noted that the Versailles System in Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia would lead to new splits “once the premise of nationalism is accepted XE "Once the premise of nationalism is accepted" – its development becomes natural and systematic”.What was crucial, E.H. Carr warned, was that nations accused of collaboration (with the Nazis) were in fact fighting for their national liberation and that “it was necessary to pause for a time on repatriations in order to obtain complete and objective information”.Alas, this warning fell on deaf ears. The British perception of the problem was a mirror picture of the Great-Serbian one that, on the principle of the domination of the strongest nation in a multinational state, the strongest must prevail. Arnold Toynbee XE "Toynbee, Arnold" pointed to the absurd situation in Croatia after the fall of Mussolini: “All the Balkan Peninsula awaited the Allied forces and the best part of the Croatian army was ready to greet them.” The American conscience reacted strongly against the forced repatriations. Albert H. Hock proposed a resolution to the Congress on 8th February 1954 to study the circumstances and responsibility for the repatriations between 1945 and 1947. Julius Epstein, a member of the American Commission for Refugees XE "Epstein, Julius - member of American Commission for Refugees" , in a speech to a Conference on refugees, demanded that the US Government clean up this difficult mistake, which all decent people consider to be a crime in accordance with American and International Law.At the same time, A.J. Hoch XE "Hoch, A.J." pointed out that the forced repatriations “could not be justified under the Yalta agreements” and that de facto they were an infringement of the directives on the Agreements on prisoners of war promulgated by the Secretary of State on 8th March 1945. These repatriations were also in “contravention of the opinion of the Supreme Court as stated over the past 40 years” and “left an indelible mark on the North American tradition, which always offered asylum to political refugees.”In Britain, however, nobody suffered any headache on this account, with the minor exception of some Catholic circles.In the summer of 1948, a group of Roman Catholic MPs raised the issue in Parliament. The reply was that in May 1945, only 600 Yugoslav collaborators were repatriated from Austria “in harmony with International law”.When John Cornellis, a British Welfare Officer in Austria XE "Cornellis, John - British Welfare Officer in Austria" pointed out that no less than 10,000 Slovenes were forcibly repatriated, the reply was that the British officials in Austria at that time were too busy so “that their reports admittedly could have contained some incorrect data, but that as far as the Government is concerned that is all the information at its disposal. The number of 600 remains as reported in the official reports.”The communists in Yugoslavia had taken power in Belgrade in October 1944 having had it served up to them on a plate by the Red Army. Up to that time, they were, de facto, brigands. Only when the German and NDH Army withdrew to Austria, unbeaten, were they able to ‘liberate’ Croatia.Thus, Croatia became a part of the Soviet occupied Europe by proxy, i.e., occupied by the Great Serbian Soviet Quislings. This was convenient as the Soviets were weary of direct involvement in the Yugoslav wasps' nest. Curiously enough, the Soviets approached Paveli? in March 1945, offering ‘recognition’ of the NDH on condition that the NDH would fall under the direct influence of Moscow, bypassing Belgrade. Paveli? allegedly rejected this offer for the sake of extending his power for an additional two months.Tito, in the meantime, was scared stiff about the possibility of an Allied landing in Dalmatia and offered his co-operation to the Germans XE "Tito offered his co-operation to the Germans" , allegedly with Stalin’s approval.Who then was responsible for the Apocalypse? Firstly, in the late 18th and later in the 19th century, the folly of Yugoslavism was born in Croatia as a utopian concept and it evolved by several different approaches in realising it. The worst of all these approaches was that of union with Serbia. It took a whole century and immeasurable bloodshed to restore reason in the 1990's after the conflict in which Aleksandar Karadjordjevi?, Paveli?, Tito, the British, the French, the Russians, the Chetniks, the Ustashas and the communists devoured each other.The balance sheet of the 1941-45 Apocalypse shows that it was the worst bloodbath in the whole history of Croatia. Yet, the fate of the once great democratic party of Stjepan Radi?, the HSS, which succumbed to the Yugoslav utopia, was an even greater tragedy. The meekness, hesitation, and utopian belief for a 'secure place for Croatia within the future Yugoslavia' made the HRSS (Croatian Republican Peasant Party, a splinter group of the HSS in 1945) a useful tool of the communists. It made the co-called ?uba?ic’s group XE "?uba?ic’s group" – Juraj ?utej XE "?utej, Juraj " and Tomo Jancikovi? XE "Jancikovi?, Tomo " – traitors by inaction both ways. In his diary, dated 13th April 1944, Jan?ikovi? stated: “In my opinion . . . the policy of the HSS must be redirected towards Moscow” (!) [just at the time when Europe was falling into the lap of the Soviets].At the same time, writing on the other side of the Atlantic (20th April 1944) to the State Department, Jan?ikovi? stated: “ . . . due to the sincere and deep understanding of the brotherly link of all the Slav nations, Croatian as well as Serbian, the HSS has never pursued a policy of breaking up the Yugoslav state . . . ” ?uba?i?, who arrived in Bari after negotiations with Tito on the Island of Vis, told Jan?ikovi?: “Tito is a good Croat; he does not allow attacks on President Ma?ek.”After declarations of this sort, the leaders of the HSS, like Ma?ek and Krnjevi?, became irrelevant.The only faction of the HSS that remained faithful to Radi? and the Croatian people were his own family, August Ko?uti?, Radi?'s son-in-law who was imprisoned, Mira Ko?uti?, Radi?’s daughter, and Marija Radi?, his wife who were both persecuted by the communists.The British did not like being associated together with Ma?ek in London XE "British did not like being associated with Ma?ek in London" , as this was upsetting the New Yugoslavia, which accused Ma?ek of being an enemy of the State. On 6th October 1945 in his letter of resignation to Tito, ?uba?i?, stated: “As a co-signatory to the Tito-?uba?i? agreement about the [national] freedoms [in Vis and Belgrade], I have come to the conclusion that in spite of the promises given, the people still live in fear of self-willed and uncontrollable state organs.”Tito’s reply on 9th October 1945: “Mr. Minister, . . . your attitude puzzles me. On the eve of these elections when the campaign by the reactionaries against our country [is in full swing] . . . one cannot avoid the impression that your resignation is synchronised with that campaign. . . . What have we not done? The unified Government was formed . . . democratisation of the country is in progress . . . political parties are allowed . . . the opposition has its own press . . . The elections have been called. Is it [your resignation] not an invitation for the intervention of foreign powers [in our country] . . . That will not happen . . . We have taken the path chosen by our peoples."Death to fascism - Freedom to the people. President of the Ministerial Council (Tito)”No signature. During the pre-election campaign, the HSS distributed a pamphlet in which it stated that the Croatian people had made the utmost effort to build democracy in the New Yugoslavia – alas, in vain and concluded: “In Yugoslavia there is no freedom, and where freedom doesn’t exist there cannot be free elections.”The Croatian writer, Bogdan Radica XE "Radica, Bogdan" (then Tito's press secretary), expressed a similar sentiment: “In communism coalitions [with other political parties] do not exist. I have the impression that we are entering a period in which to be a Croat will be extremely difficult . . . and that will convince the Serbs that they are the ones who should be in charge of the country.”Parliamentary elections were held on 11th November 1945, but without opposition parties. Instead, there was a ‘black box’ for those who did not vote for the communists. The reign of terror was in full swing. Tomo Jan?ikovi?, a left wing intellectual and a leading member of the HSS, became the scapegoat on behalf of the whole party and was put on trial in the People’s Court on the questionable Indictment:That the policy of wait and see by the HSS helped the occupiers.That the policy of the HSS of mobilisation of the Croatian peasants into the NDH Domobran Army to safeguard the Allied invasion, deprived NOV of taking power in Dalmatia.That the HSS pursued reactionary activities in opposition to the National Front after 1945.That the HSS acted on the orders of foreign intelligence services, with a link to Clissold.That the HSS kept the foreign agents informed about Yugoslav police activities during the elections, and it had direct links with H.W. Seton-Watson, the British Intelligence Service man, and also with Randolph Churchill.That the HSS was a leading capitalist reactionary political party movement in Yugoslavia in the years before 1941. This can be confirmed by the meetings between August Ko?uti? and Paveli? in 1929, and also between Ma?ek and the ?migré General Sarkoti? in 1930.That the HSS was in favour of the sale of Dalmatia and discussed this in the meeting between Ciano and Carnelluti.That the HSS organised the Citizens and Peasant Guards between 1939 and 1941 easing the German occupation.That the HSS established the assembly camps for anti-fascists and surreptitiously passed control of them to the Ustashas in 1941.That the HSS leader Ma?ek signed the Agreement with Hitler in 1941.That Dr. Ma?ek met German Emissary Vessenmeyer in 1941.That Dr. Ma?ek asked the people on 10th April 1941 to co-operate with the new Ustasha Government.All the above helped the occupation, the break-up of Yugoslavia and the creation of the NDH. De facto the above indictment was described as treason. The final insult to Dr. Ma?ek was that he had left the country in 1945 as a courier of King Peter with 1,000 goulders in his pocket, which he received from Ante Paveli? as a gift.On the contrary, the trumped-up charges against Jan?ikovi? about the HSS policy of wait and see were much more favourable to Tito than to the 'Imperialists'. If Ma?ek had taken charge of the NDH in 1941, Croatia probably would have ended up in another Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The German-Italian-British-American-Russian conflict was not a Croatian war, but only the enabler of the war of the Yugoslav utopia. According to Franjo Ga?i, XE "Ga?i, Franjo" after the November 1945 elections, British Agent Clissold was deliberately trying to stir the HSS into ‘action and struggle’ against Tito’s government.Our old friend, Professor Seton-Watson, visited Juraj ?utej in Zagreb during the worst communist terror in mid-1946, and urged him to “unite the peasant opposition in Yugoslavia,” bring them together with all the ‘reactionary elements’ and link them to the Serbian opposition groups. The British Intelligence, aware that the HSS did not have the ghost of a chance, were deliberately pushing it into the bloody hands of Tito.An exception to the general rule was Franjo Ga?i, XE "Ga?i, Franjo" who was accused by the communists of being a foreign agent (and probably was their own), miraculously ended up as deputy Prime Minister of the NRH.On 25th February 1949, the People’s Court in Belgrade pronounced the following prison sentences:NameSentenceDr. Tomo Jan?ikovi?10 yearsDr. K. ?ujevi?5 yearsIvan ?tefanac9 yearsMirko Petravi?2 and a half yearsP. Mihanovi? 3 yearsM. Juri?i? 4 yearsNikola Rasti?1 and a half yearsJosip Furac4 yearsZlatko Matijak2 and a half yearsV. Gjuri?1 and a half yearsLeonard Bljaji?3 yearsI. Roviskjak2 yearsZ. Matojak was the only accused who was freed; thus liquidating the Ustashas in 1945-1948 and the HSS now in 1949, the communists crushed the remainder of the Croatian opposition XE "Communists crushed remainder of Croatian opposition" .The pre-war and war-time communist propaganda was that the HSS originally fought against Belgrade centralism, but that the bourgeoisie took hold of its leadership and used the peasants for their own interests. This was gauche proletarian claptrap, pure and simple. The claim that the HSS Party was democratic, but that its leadership was reactionary deserves the same comment.The State Prosecutor in the People’s Court at the Jan?ikovi? trial, with the exaggerated paranoia, tried hard to prove that “between Paveli? and Ma?ek there was no difference in principle. . . . While Paveli? took the path of open treason, Ma?ek and his clique acted in the same way but under cover.”The trial judges dispensed with judicial formalities, which they viewed as a bourgeois farce: “The aim of a sentence in the Yugoslav Criminal Law is to re-educate the prisoners.”Indeed.To speak about power and death in the same breath was a frivolous matter in the ‘new’ Yugoslavia. XE "Power and death in same breath was frivolous matter in ‘new’ Yugoslavia" Tito’s picture always twinned with that of Stalin, except in Zagreb where Stalin was replaced by Stjepan Radi?, displayed next to the list of the executed enemies of the state. The ‘vertical revolution’ had done its bit. Macedonians, Montenegrins, Vlachs from Dalmatia, Lika and Hercegovina were floating up from the bottom to the top, like scum on the backwater. The ‘Liberation’ of Zagreb was eagerly awaited in Belgrade. But before that happened, another 60,000 Serbs had to die, complained the Belgrade reactionaries. Tito stood in front of the microphone – reading - boring everyone to death! There was nothing in him either of a Croat or a Serb. Maybe a Slovene or a Jew from the Austrian border? People were wondering about his real identity. 'Ooz 'e? Never ‘eard of 'im before – a Bolshevik import.' Clerks, personnel officers, and commissars ran the ministries. Comrades and comradesses ran the incessant conferences. Brainwashing and personal discrimination were the order of the day along with poking noses into private lives. The ideology, naturally, produced a new rhetoric.The Belgrade cafes were teeming with Russians and Montenegrins - dividing the globe. The whole world would be theirs - the Soviet Union would be the master. England has had its day! In America, strikes, reactionary-fascist regime, civil war and finally the dictatorship of the proletariat were replacing the weather forecasts. Outside in the streets the Partisans were intoning another first in the charts“America and England will be proletarian lands”.Montenegrins believed that in America capitalists literally drank the blood of the workers from the silver cups. Printers were extremely busy churning out masses of pamphlets on the achievements of Tito, Stalin, Lenin, and Marx, followed by those about Kardelj and Mo?a Pijade. But they did not mention what Marx thought of the Russians and Slavs in 1848; much worse than Rosenberg and Hitler . . . but that was censored! Vladimir Dedijer, in his Diary, insisted that only those who died for the ideals of the Party died for freedom. Bolshevik exclusivism. At the 1st of May 1945 Victory Parade in Belgrade, Tito could hardly move from the weight of the heavy metal, silver and gold on his chest. “We are Tito’s, Tito is ours” yelled the crowds.Belgrade ‘reactionaries’ had their own version: “We are Mosha’s, Mosha is ours.” Mosha Pijade, Serbian-Jewish Party ideologist XE "Pijade, Mosha - Serbian-Jewish Party ideologist" Somebody shouted: “Mr. Partisan, when will the liberation stop?”In Dalmatia, which had lost some 100,000 people in the war, people quickly cooled to the ‘Liberation’. Split itself gave 17,000 Partisans. Most of them now shut themselves in their homes or in the Churches.The judgment day and an Apocalypse had arrived.Workers were dissatisfied. Stakhanovite work was killing them. They earned a pittance, ate thinly and consequently crapped thinly. XE "Stakhanov, Aleksei Grigor’evich (Алексе?й Григо?рьевич Стаха?нов), Russian coal miner whose prodigious output was publicised by Stalin as part of a 1935 campaign" OZNA, the Secret Police, imprisoned the Bishop of Split, Dr. Bonefa?i?. XE "Bonefa?i?, Dr. - Bishop of Split - imprisoned by OZNA, Secret Police" Dr. Leonti?, XE "Leonti?, Dr." a member of the former infamous Organisation of the Yugo Nationalists (ORJUNA) was demanding the death penalty for him. “One has to destroy two strongholds (in Croatia) – the HSS and the Catholic Church. Let the whole world see that we are not scared of the Church and the HSS” the old fascist Leonti? babbled.It is curious how this obdurate Chetnik character turned into a communist and, as if by magic, became Tito’s ambassador to the Court of St. James! That very same Leonti? advised Edvard Kardelj, then Tito’s Foreign Minister, to appoint Dr. Dragan Proti?, intimus of Herman Goering, as the Yugoslav Ambassador to the UN! XE "Proti?, Dr. Dragan, intimus of Herman Goering, Yugoslav Ambassador to UN!" The logic of Tito’s diplomacy followed mysterious paths.Split and Dubrovnik cooled off after the ‘Liberation’ and the only slogans one could see on the walls at that time were ‘Death to Communism – Freedom to the people’, a parody of the official slogans!Even fascism had changed. XE "Fascism changed." It was no longer the label for the traitors. Now it became the label for anyone who rejected communism. People in the street were greeting each other surreptitiously “Zdravo reakcijo” (Hello Reactionary). The catalyst for Tito's success appears to have been his bloody and ruthless experience as a Soviet intelligence agent up to 1937, and particularly, his opportunistic liquidation of the leading Croatian communists, who opposed the centralism of the KPJ. Bosnian Muslims switched casually to Tito because he beat the Chetniks, and the Croats from Dalmatia (who had rebelled against the Italian occupation) helped him to grab power in Croatia.The reconstruction of the second 'Yugoslav Reich' XE "Second 'Yugoslav Reich'" was not due only to the fanaticism of the Yugoslav communists and the skills of Tito but also, in large measure, to Whitehall's strange ‘sense of humour’ XE "Whitehall's strange ‘sense of humour’" . "The help given to the National Liberation Movement [Tito] by Great Britain has been extensive and, in the opinion of many observers, decisive,” [observed Evelyn Waugh XE "Waugh, Evelyn" ]. Some responsibility therefore rests with Great Britain for the consequence of its success. The regime they [Tito] imposed in the rear of the retreating Germans has, to the superficial observer, most of the signs of Nazism . . ." The British Establishment now joined the men of the Yugoslav utopia and shared with them the taste for pain and cruelty over and above the bounds of the stiff upper lip syndrome. Their policy of ‘reconciliation’ between the Great Serbian ?migré Government in London (the Chetniks) and Tito's communists failed dismally. “That was the logical result of the unbridgeable gap between the revolutionary forces and the social forces, which were descending from the stage of history.”Compromise, an attitude uncharacteristic of the utopian forces in combat, was out of the question. However, the British laboured strongly on the plan and for a short time, a compromise was enforced. On 17th May 1945, Churchill informed Tito that King Peter was finally persuaded to form a Government with Ivan ?uba?i? (the former Ban of Croatia). At its head, the Government would include several ministers from Tito’s National Liberation Movement. What cheek.Tito needed the Allies XE "Tito needed the Allies" , and yet from 1941 he had avoided subjugating his aims to their military and political interests.Tito's soap opera of agreeing to enter into negotiations with ?uba?i? for the creation of a united government, but only on condition that the AVNOJ principles were not challenged proceeded with hiccups. His somewhat disturbed followers were, however, reassured that he would not give in to Churchill's demands and that the compromise “opened a perspective for the coalition of the NKOJ and the ?migré Government.”Yet, Tito surpassed even himself by turning the ?migré Government under ?uba?i? into an international spokesperson for his own foreign affairs. The British, exchanging consistency for indignation, were not happy and decided to exert an old-fashioned arm twist by withdrawing military help. “O.K., I will get military help from the Soviet Union then” was Tito’s riposte.It worked. Churchill gave in and met Tito in Caserta and Naples in August 1944. Tito was wearing his gilded Marshall’s uniform Number 2. (The first one had been captured by the Germans in Drvar in 1943.) They agreed that Tito would omit all references to communism and allow the people to decide what kind of state system they wanted. Tito agreed, but was silent on the definition of ‘people’, which in Marxist thinking meant its avant-garde, i.e. the communist party. The only request that Tito flatly refused was to meet King Peter. (A communist slogan of the time was“The king was marrying while Tito was fighting”.The Churchill-Tito meeting inflated Tito's big head even further.In a footnote Churchill warned Tito against a Balkan federation, a part of the KPJ long-term aim, and asked Tito to be ‘nice’ to King Peter.The ?uba?i? government called for the uniting of all the forces for the liberation of Yugoslavia XE "Uniting all the forces for liberation of Yugoslavia" under Tito’s leadership. It accepted the Federal Yugoslavia, supported the annexation of the Croatian and Slovene provinces occupied by Italy after 1918, and agreed to supply Tito with arms. “In that way the first phase of the complex [political] struggle was complete. This struggle was imposed on the new Yugoslavia by the actions of the British whose aim was to unite all the forces of the internal counter-evolution, in order to stop the revolutionary changes in the land.”The KPJ assessed correctly that “the compromise led to the falling apart of the counter-evolutionary front.” The Serbian ‘bourgeoisie’ were aghast when, on 25th August 1944, King Peter was forced to disband his Chetnik forces XE "King Peter forced to disband his Chetnik forces" . No one now remained among the Great-Serbian ranks that could stand up to Tito. Tito's agreement with the Red Army XE "Tito's agreement with Red Army" confused the British who, as a rejected suitor, attacked this action as a Sovietisation of Yugoslavia. Downing Street retaliated by recognising only the Government of ?uba?i?, and the confused British agents described Tito’s activities in Serbia as civil war.In a meeting on 9th October 1944 between Churchill and Stalin, they agreed to balance their influence in Yugoslavia. Tito crossed the t’s and dotted the i’s of a new agreement with ?uba?i? in Belgrade on 1st November 1944:“The AVNOJ continues to be a new government until elections, and the King has to transfer his powers to a Regency. This new government will announce elections, and guarantee all the usual ‘citizens rights’, including the establishment of political parties.”Britain did not share the sentiments of this agreement XE "Britain did not share sentiments of this agreement" and continued to press to get the best possible position for “the old ruling class, which was already removed from the stage of history.”These terms were unacceptable to King Peter but Churchill declined to intervene further on his behalf.On 7th March 1945, a temporary government was formed under Tito. Milan Grol (a Serb) and Ivan ?uba?i? and Juraj ?utej (Croats) represented the ‘bourgeoisie’. The communists held the majority of the seats.The communists had a lot of difficulties with the Allies (the acceptance of the ‘Yugoslav’ anti-Tito refugees and the vicious press campaign against the communist dictatorship in Yugoslavia).Even so, the impoverished and exhausted Britain had not yet lost its taste for uniting all the reactionary forces in Yugoslavia for one last battle. The criterion for a good ‘reactionary’ was not his standing with the occupiers but his attitude: “for or against communism”, “for Tito or the King”, and for “democracy or the communist dictatorship. De facto, this was the last attempt by the British to unite opposition against the National Liberation Front on an anti-communist basis.” In order to avoid the danger of civil war XE "Avoid danger of civil war" , there was a need for the creation of a united political platform, which would eradicate the effects of the former multi-party system. The National Front became an all-embracing ‘peoples' political organisation under the surveillance of the KPJ. Croatia was silenced. Yet the executions went unheeded: "Due to the over-estimation of the importance of the HSS and because of certain nationalist attitudes [KPH instead of KPJ], the secretary of the CK of the KPH, Andrija Hebrang was removed in October 1944” and subsequently murdered.The forces of the counter-revolution within the provisional government of the Democratic Federative Yugoslavia (DFJ) were represented by a few remaining bourgeois ministers.The Croats blindly joined the Yugoslav utopian state (1918) and left it in 1941 in a manner that received general popular acclaim. Their entry into the Second ‘Yugoslav Reich’ in 1945, apart from being bloody, was as cynical as anything to do with Yugoslavia always was. The communist Great-Serbian gangs, which now invaded Croatia, perceived the Croats as an anti-Yugoslav element to be ethnically cleansed as soon as convenient, with the aim of the creation of Great-Serbia in the guise of Yugoslavia."All our efforts from then on [August 1941] sought to revive enthusiasm for the preservation of unity,"wrote Djilas. This concern for Yugoslav ‘unity’ XE "Yugoslav ‘unity’" was, unfortunately, shared also by the Western European and American ‘liberal society’."Yugoslav hysteria is not a pathological phenomenon and can, from the ‘liberal’ point of view, be considered as a supreme means of escape from ‘nationalism’. The ‘liberal’ misunderstanding of the real needs of the individual, i.e., a need for the group identification, somewhere between himself and the ‘whole’, makes the ‘liberals’ unholy allies of the holistic totalitarian systems [such as Yugoslavia], and adversaries of the genuinely liberal and democratic peoples, [such as the Croats] were throughout their long history." (After K. Popper)The wartime barbarism and brutality, just at the moment when every sane person abhors violence thought that this had been forgotten, "celebrated something [in a way] like a victory in what should have been a defeat".Here is how Lawrence Durrell XE "Durrell, Lawrence" , then the British Consul in Belgrade, saw the Yugoslav reality in a letter to Theodore Stephanides XE "Stephanides, Theodore" :British Legation, Belgrade, 1949.Theo,Just a brief line to tell you we've arrived safely. Conditions are rather gloomy here - almost mid-war conditions, overcrowding, poverty. As for communism - my dear Theodore, a short visit here is enough to make one decide that capitalism is worth fighting for. Black as it may be, with all its bloodstains, it is less gloomy and arid and hopeless than this inert and ghastly police state . . .Love Larry. and British Embassy,Belgrade, 1949.Dear Theodore,There is little news, except that what I have seen here has turned me firmly reactionary and Tory: the blank dead-end, which Labour leads towards, seems to be this machine state, with its censored press, its long marching columns of political prisoners guarded by Tommy guns. Philistinism, Puritanism and cruelty. Luckily the whole edifice has begun to crumble, and one has the pleasurable job of aiding and abetting these blockheaded people to demolish their own ideological palace of pleasures . . ."Love, LarryThe novelist Evelyn Waugh, who had been sent to Croatia as a member of a military mission in 1944, described the situation rhetorically yet with great insight:"The political and military situations in Yugoslavia were complicated beyond all possibilities of simple outline description. Especially is this true in writing for the English-speaking reader. There is no episode either in his experience or ‘folk memory’, which is likely to provoke thoughts of a parallel, unless it is the situation, whose unravelment defies all but specialist historians, of Scotland in the early years of the Puritan Commonwealth, the situation terminated only by Cromwell's crushing military victories and the flight of Charles II. Using recourse to crude generalisations: here in Yugoslavia in 1944, as in Scotland in the mid-17th century, there was a war-situation between the native population and exterior enemies, masked by a fraudulent peace. This war situation in turn masked a civil war situation, both situations involving exterior interests, which became more and more closely involved. Great Britain held a foremost place among these exterior interests in Yugoslavia and interpreted the situation in over-simplified terms. In 1944 a heaven-sent solution appeared to British policy-makers in the person of the communist leader, Josip Broz, who has already appeared in this story under his ‘nom de guerre’ Tito. He was far more interested in the civil war than in the world war . . . " One cannot help wondering how the Allies could have maintained (after the appalling results of the Croato-Yugoslav war) their ‘pragmatic attitude’ in the planned reconstruction of Yugoslavia; the ‘New Yugoslavia’ would be no different from the old one, ignoring all the social and political laws that rendered that monstrously engineered utopian state unworkable.The British, with the aim of renewing Yugoslavia, found a useful tool in the person of the former Ban of Croatia, Ivan ?uba?i?.The intention that Tito and the King should meet face-to-face and form one united government, made up from the ?migré Yugoslav Government and the Partisans, was a non-starter.Whereas the value of the ?uba?i?-Tito agreement on the Island of Vis – in which Tito got all, and the King got nothing – was in getting rid of the King, the value of the AVNOJ session in Jajce on 29th November 1943 XE " AVNOJ session in Jajce on 29th November 1943" was in getting rid of the Yugoslav ?migré Government altogether. In fact, the power struggle was not between Tito and ?uba?i?, but Tito and the British who were backing ?uba?i?.?uba?i?, as a committed Yugoslav, a crypto ‘Croat’, was, as the Croat saying goes 'boiled and baked' for that role. Yet at the same time the British were anxious that the two crypto Croats, ?uba?i? and Tito, might double-cross them and subjugate the future Yugoslavia to Croatian domination. In such a bizarre scenario the British would play the role of ‘patron saint’ of the Serbs XE "‘Patron saint’ of the Serbs" . In the meantime, Churchill took a shine to and became the godfather and tutor to King Peter.According to the British policy, the King would remain the King and Tito would be allocated the position of Governor of Yugoslavia. On 7th March 1945, a unified Yugoslav Government was finally formed, with ?uba?i? as its Foreign Minister. Earlier on, at the end of December 1944, Dr. Krnjevi? (in London) who was nominally ?uba?i?'s boss, remonstrated with Churchill and King Peter: “The Partisans do not represent the majority of the Croats. ?uba?i? is not a legitimate representative of the Croatian people. The HSS can co-operate with Tito but not be swallowed up by him in the process. ?uba?i?’s government is the King’s personal government and cannot be imposed on the [Croatian] people. A one-party system in Yugoslavia is against the United Nations charter.”During the summit in Teheran, the British succeeded in retaining, for the time being, King Peter as a kind of assurance for the continuation of that influence. Tito eliminated him later by the decision of AVNOJ on 29th November 1943, which forbade the King to return. Yet Tito could not afford to be absolutely stubborn, as he needed international recognition in order to remain in power. He found a saving formula in the 'free' elections to be held after the war, and until then the question of the King was kept in abeyance. At the end of 1943, Churchill had to admit, "We shall never make peace between these two sides until we, as well as the King, chop Mihajlovi?. To my mind this is Peter's last chance."The Tito-King game of these two pro-Yugoslav contestants kept the British busy right up to 1945.However, the US State Department was suspicious of such policies. The British were pushing Dr. ?uba?i? as a potential prime minister in the Yugoslav exiled government. ?uba?i? declined the offer with the excuse that "a Serb must be Yugoslavia's Prime Minister, because the Serbs are the biggest of the three Yugoslav nations,"an excuse worthy only of a 'good Croat'.On 19th May 1944 Prime Minister Puri?'s XE "Puri?, Prime Minister" government in exile resigned and with it Mihajlovi?, as a Minister of War, was swept away. Churchill, satisfied, informed Roosevelt and Stalin.Roosevelt's response was curious: "Personally, I would prefer Yugoslavia with three separate states, a kind of Balkan con-federation."The post-war arrangement of Yugoslavia was still an open question and, as a result, all the contestants within the tug-of-war for the Yugoslav utopia were pulling for their own side.Churchill's attempt to install ?uba?i? as the new Prime Minister in London met with the strongest resistance from the Great Serbian circles, headed by the King.Eventually, on 1st June 1944, ?uba?i? became Prime Minister of the Government in Exile by Royal Decree. King Peter was threatened by both the British and Americans to either toe the line or be abandoned. On 14th June 1944, ?uba?i? arrived on the Dalmatian Island Vis to start negotiations with Tito. ?uba?i? and the British Ambassador accepted Tito's word of honour "that he does not intend to introduce a communist regime in Yugoslavia." The British Ambassador, in a note to the Foreign Office, reiterated: "I believe he is serious about this".The first ?uba?i?-Tito agreement was signed on 17th June 1944, based on the NKOJ draft. London was doubtful about this agreement and the attitude of the US too was rather negative.Dr. Krnjevi?, XE "Krnjevi?, Dr." the Croat Minister in London, reprimanded ?uba?i?: "It is an absolute disgrace that you, as an elected member of Radi?'s party, have signed such an agreement, which de facto justifies the introduction of communism in Croatia".?uba?i? retorted "that Tito assured him in confidence that he doesn't have any particular ambitions in the post-war Yugoslavia; everything will be decided by the people and the HSS, if they wish with Ma?ek at its head, could join the government in Croatia. I have total trust in Tito", stated ?uba?i?.In August of that year the British organised a threesome meeting between Churchill, Tito and ?uba?i? in Caserta in Italy. The British observer at the talks noted:"Tito and ?uba?i? harmonized beautifully; i.e., Tito swallowed the Ban, who behaved like an inexperienced virgin".The same month, in a BBC broadcast, the King invited Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes to join the NOP under Tito's leadership; at the same time, he retired Mihajlovi?. As a result of this speech, tens of thousands of Chetniks removed the royal insignia and fixed the communist red star onto their caps and switched to the NOP.In September, Tito flew secretly to Moscow to meet Stalin and Molotov, to arrange Soviet help for 'liberating' Belgrade.In the meeting at the top between Churchill and Stalin in Moscow on 9th October 1944, the spheres of influence in Yugoslavia were divided on a 50/50 basis. The US Ambassador noted: "Churchill and Stalin agreed that Yugoslavia be a federative state, but if as such it would not function, then Serbia must become independent".In the meantime, Tito invited ?uba?i? to visit him in Yugoslavia. On 23rd October 1944 a Soviet plane dropped ?uba?i? at Bela Crkva (three days before Tito entered Belgrade).The meeting on 1st November 1944 agreed the composition of the new Yugoslav government in which Tito became Prime Minister and ?uba?i? Foreign Minister.The British had some misgivings about this, and even Stalin attacked the Yugoslav communists for sectarianism, "because of Tito's refusal to allow the King to return to Yugoslavia."The reaction of the Yugoslav émigrés in London was total opposition. In his Memorandum to Churchill, the US and the USSR, Dr. Krnjevi? stated: "The recent agreements about the future of Yugoslavia were made without the representatives of the Croatian people being present," (as if that was something new).King Peter, in his letter to Churchill, refused to abdicate. In spite of the protestations, the Government in Exile and the NKOJ resigned on 5th March 1945 and Tito was free to put together his own government. Naturally, the majority of the portfolios were taken by the communists and only six by the 'bourgeois' representatives. The temporary government of the Federative Democratic Yugoslavia (DFJ) took an oath on 7th March 1945 and was immediately recognised by Britain, the US and the USSR XE "Temporary government of Federative Democratic Yugoslavia (DFJ) took an oath on 7th March 1945 and was immediately recognised by Britain, US and USSR" .Thus, under the tutorship of the Great Powers the two inimical pro-Yugoslav contestants got together to introduce the totalitarian communist system in the second Yugoslavia.After the Conference in Potsdam, held from 16th July to 1st August 1945 XE "Potsdam Conference from 16th July to 1st August 1945" , and after the Labour victory in the UK, not much thought was given to Yugoslavia and the progress of the Yalta agreement. Therefore, Tito was given a lot of space and gained the upper hand in the evolving events.Western public opinion couldn't have cared less what Tito was up to. "On 30th May 1945, one of the last days on which the House of Commons sat under the first premiership of Winston Churchill, the following exchange occurred at Question Time: Captain McEwen XE "Captain McEwen" asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs [Anthony Eden XE "Eden, Anthony" ] what action His Majesty's Government proposed to take to alleviate the sufferings of the Catholic population of Croatia under Marshall Tito’s regime, in view of the responsibility incurred by Great Britain through the assistance rendered by us to the National Liberation Movement."Mr. Eden replied: "My honourable and gallant Friend will understand that I cannot accept the implication that the assistance rendered by us to the National Liberation Movement of Yugoslavia in the struggle against Germany makes His Majesty’s Government responsible for the internal administration of the Yugoslav State. This must remain the responsibility of the Yugoslav Government." Captain McEwen: "Would it not be as well, in any case, to make it clear to Marshall Tito that it is not the policy of the Allied Powers, having got rid of one illiberal power in Europe, to encourage the substitution of another?" Anthony Eden was spared the necessity of answering Jock McEwen’s supplementary question by the intervention of William Gallagher, communist M.P. XE "Gallagher, William - communist M.P." who put a somewhat irrelevant supplementary question of his own. (Hansard, May 1945.p.)Thus, the immediate fate of Croatia was dismissed by two unanswered questions.Let the last word be with Anthony Rhodes XE "Rhodes, Anthony" , writing nearly 30 years after these events, in 1973: "The whole episode is proof of the strong support given to Marshall Tito by the British Government, disinclined to hear a word against him and his communist regime, because he had resisted Hitler. Yet events in the communist ‘satellite’ countries since 1945, the arrests and persecution of priests still not abated today, would seem to confirm that Captain Evelyn Waugh’s diagnosis of communist persecution of the Church in the new ‘satellite’ states was broadly correct." For the proper understanding of the communist repression, one must realise that the end of WWII was not the end of the repression, but rather, the beginning of the dictatorship of the proletariat.Throughout its existence since 1919, the KPJ kept changing its attitude towards the Yugoslav state. In the twenties, under the directive of the Komintern, it propagated the break-up of the Versailles-created states, which of course included the break-up of Yugoslavia and propagated the creation of national states to be absorbed into the Soviet orbit. As a result, the KPJ tried to stir up a revolution in Yugoslavia in 1929-30, which was quashed, and a great number of communists were killed and imprisoned by the Aleksandar dictatorship.Yet in 1936, the rise of fascism became the greater danger and the KPJ made a u-turn towards the preservation of Yugoslavia based on the 'equality' of its nations.The KPJ itself did not follow that rhetoric and remained a rigidly centralist party. XE "KPJ remained rigidly centralist party" In 1940 the leadership of the Croatian KP was liquidated "as it fell under the spell of the bourgeois opposition parties and nationalist elements".At the time the KPH had 3,200 members out of a total of 6,500 for the whole KPJ. At the KPJ Fifth Conference in Zagreb in October 1940 under the chairmanship of Tito himself, it was concluded "that there was no real difference between the imperialist powers of Britain and Germany . . . which work on pushing Yugoslavia into the war".Du?an Biland?i? XE "Biland?i?, Du?an" , the communist historian elaborated: "Yugoslav communists were conscious of their aim, i.e., revolutionary change . . . within which they were not prepared to share power with any other political formation".In its proclamation on 22nd June 1941, the KPJ stated, "that in its struggle there will be no pardon for the criminal fascist leaders and their servants".Naturally the KPJ would decide who was not going to be pardoned.In February 1942 in Fo?a, the cliché of who is the 'people's enemy' was clearly defined: "a)active Usta?as, b)all servants of the occupiers, spies, suppliers, curriers, agitators and the deserters".At the end of 1942, the Partisans held considerable territory, particularly in BiH. In his circular letter, Tito stated that "this territory must not remain only militarily occupied, but it must be politically tied up with our armed forces".All NOOs (The National Liberation Committees) documents in these territories were rubber stamped with the five-pronged red star, so that there would be no doubt as to what kind of power it represented.The AVNOJ (Anti-Fascist Council of the National Liberation of Yugoslavia), XE "AVNOJ - Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia" as a supreme body, was founded on 26th and 27th November 1942 in Biha?.Yet the real purpose of its policies was covered up for the time being. So in February 1943, V? NOV and POJ and the AVNOJ sent to the Allies a declaration in which they stated their policies:"1.The liberation of the country from the occupiers, the independence and the democracy for all peoples of Yugoslavia.2.Guaranteeing the inviolable right to private property and self-initiative in the economy.3.There would not be any radical changes in the social life.4.The unlawfulness is totally alien to the spirit of the National Liberation Movement as a truly Peoples' Army."ZAVNOH (The Anti-Fascist Council of the National Liberation of Croatia), as a branch of AVNOJ in its inaugural address in June 1943, went even further with its nonsense: "The Croatian people . . . fight for their freedom and independence . . . The centuries-old yearnings of the Croatian people [for independence] have not been realised until today."The above statement was rather confusing as it was ambiguous, as some simple people could have taken it to mean that it referred to the extant Independent State of Croatia. The 'freedom' was quickly followed by the organisation of the NOOs courts in August 1943, and for the first time it was stated that these Courts must act in the interests of and follow the aims of the national liberation struggle, "and must be under constant political control,"was one of many sick Partisan jokes.The Second Session of the AVNOJ (29th November 1943 in Jajce) confirmed all the previous decisions of the V? and ANOJ since 1941, i.e., confirmed the legal and factual continuity of the totalitarian system of the KPJ. However, it was not all plain sailing. Very soon it came to an internal clash amongst the 'liberators' themselves.Andrija Hebrang, secretary of the CKKPH, was accused of separatism, for his relation to the HSS, for the trials of Serbian Chetniks in Kordun, for the establishment of TAH, the separate telegraphic agency for Croatia, and for allowing religious studies in schools. He was moved to the position of Minister of Trade in the NKOJ in Belgrade, i.e., kept away from the centre of his power in Croatia.In the summer of 1944, ZAVNOH issued directives for the takeover of the 'occupied' territories of the NDH, particularly Zagreb. The communists were instructed to make up the records of the institutions, industry, archives, courts and private individuals. "We must not be caught napping", was the slogan.The takeover of newspapers and radio were next on the list. Photographs and posters were to express admiration for Marshall Tito as 'our leader and Saviour' . . . Wow.The plans for the schools and universities included posts for communist commissioners; the study of German ceased and Russian was introduced. All the textbooks were rewritten, the attitude of the teaching staff was to be reviewed, and most of them were replaced by new teachers, qualified on express courses.With the creation of the preliminary government of the DFJ XE "Creation of preliminary government of DFJ" on 7th March 1945, the continuity of the first and second Yugoslavias was internationally recognised.In practice, this gave the KPJ a free hand to deal with the complex military situation in its own well-tried Bolshevik way. The confiscation of the property of the 'people’s enemies' and the creation of the national liberation funds, i.e., de facto, 'lawful' plunder, followed. The law regarding the agrarian reform and colonization of 23rd August 1945 enforced the repossession of the land from the large landowners, which was turned into state controlled agrarian KOLHOZs.In tandem with this, the political totalitarian rule was reinforced. In the Declaration by the Peoples Government of Croatia (22nd April 1945) XE "Declaration by Peoples Government of Croatia (22nd April 1945)" , it was stated that the 'strictest measures will be undertaken against the servants of the occupiers, the Usta?as and the Chetniks. In particular the Usta?as must be severely punished for shaming the Croatian name.'It was unusual to see Churchill in a state of utter impotence during the Potsdam Conference when the issue of the mounting totalitarianism in Yugoslavia was discussed. He complained that Tito did not respect the agreement he had made with ?uba?i?, a na?ve reaction for an experienced statesman, as if he had been dealing with a democrat and not with an international conspirator.The communist hardliners "successfully stopped the maneuvers of the bourgeois political reactionaries" at the preliminary National Assembly.Throughout the Croato-Yugoslav war (1941-45), the Yugoslav communists were fighting in a discordant alliance with the Great Serbian nationalists against the breakaway Croatian State XE "Yugoslav communists fighting in discordant alliance with the Great Serbian nationalists against the breakaway Croatian State" (the NDH). This struggle was waged in accordance with Lenin’s dictum of grabbing power under the conditions of disorder. The anti-Yugoslav contestants were, not surprisingly the Croats, the victims of vicious propaganda, and remain so to this very day. It does no good sending sweet letters to the editors of influential broadsheets, pointing out that Croats are not, nor ever were Fascists. At first, it may have appeared that they were fascists through incomprehension of the war-torn and violent NDH environment. Actually, Croats were too sophisticated for that kind of out-and-out ism, unlike several other European nations. The threat of yet another Yugoslavia was the sole Croatian preoccupation.At a purely functional level, the "painful essence and insane grandeur’.of the war-time violence was the sole consequence of the blind belief in the utopian destiny of the ‘South Slavs’ in a Yugoslav State.Djilas interpreted a subtle shift from the intended to the unintended consequences of utopia: "Yet that life, that war, however much we communists prepared for it through our ideas and activities and in our whole being, inflicted on us unforeseen circumstances which ravaged our previous mode of life and turned acquired views and intellectual preconceptions upside down."Utopia for the Yugoslav Communists meant "metaphysical ambition to achieve absolute evil . . .” in order to gain power. The history of the Yugoslav violent environment may be symbolised by a grave, which Alexandar Karadjordjevi? commenced digging back in 1929, and which was considerably enlarged during the war of 1941-45. During Tito’s era, the question was raised if it actually was large enough to accommodate all the communist victims? In parallel with the increase in the numbers of victims and in order to keep the balance of power, the membership of the KPJ also increased from 20,000 in 1943 to 141,000 by the end of the war. This relatively small number of communists, when seen in relation to the huge masses they controlled, was the greatest puzzle.In Bosnia-Hercegovina, the KPJ had 11,684 members in January 1945. From 1943, when the KPJ in Croatia (in its present frontiers) had only 10,000 members, in 1945 this number had increased to 25,000. The Yugoslav Army was the wasps' nest, XE "Yugoslav Army was the wasps' nest" with the highest membership in the KPJ. By the end of the war it numbered 70,000 members, including the political commissars. Almost all the officers were KPJ members. These figures confirm that the mainstay of the new ‘socialist’ 'Brotherhood and Unity' was the KPJ with its army and Secret Police.The networking of the Communist Party organisations covered all the villages, offices, factories and institutions. They headed the territorial, regional, district, urban, communal and quartier committees.The process of its enlargement did not change its structure and its core philosophy remained the ‘democratic centralism’ and firm ideological-political unity. During the process of the breaking-up of ‘the counter-evolution’, the KPJ remained conspiratorial in organisation and structure, and its members kept secret their membership.As throughout the war, the Politburo of the CK of the KPJ remained the brains behind the policies and tactics of the Party, which was passed to the membership in the form of decrees. Due to the ‘high consciousness’ of its members, a curious state of mind by the way, there was no room for interpretation in the execution of these orders.The KPJ had its fingers in everything XE "KPJ had its fingers in everything" : the army, the state administration, industry, education and culture, health, and in the mass political organisations.The KPJ rejected the notion that the ‘national liberation movement’ was involved in a civil war and insisted that its struggle was a socialist revolution. The subtle differentiation accordingly divided the war-time mass murders into the acceptable and the non-acceptable.The KPJ maintained that it struggled for the recognition of the right of the nations of Yugoslavia to decide for themselves their own fate.The key question was: did the Croats, as a nation, also have the same rights? 4.9.3 Croatian Jewish Community and Ante Paveli? XE "Croatian Jewish Community and Ante Paveli?" The edict of the Emperor Joseph II (1782) permitted Jews to settle in Habsburg lands. The first Jew settled in Zagreb in 1786 (Jakov Stiegler XE "Stiegler Jakov" ). In the 19th century there were only nine Jewish families in Zagreb. In 1806, the first Jewish community was established.Many Croatian Jews took part in the revolutionary events of 1848 on the side of Ban Josip Jela?i? XE "Jela?i?, Ban Josip" , who demanded citizen's rights for the Jews. In 1910, Jews made up only 1% of the total population of Croatia, and yet 17% of them were lawyers, 25% medical doctors, and many were architects, artists, industrialists and bankers. In 1921, with a population of 131,707, there were 6,000 Jews (4.56%) in Zagreb, and before WWII out of Zagreb's population of 250,000 there were 12,000 Jews. The first large synagogue in Zagreb was built in 1867. The Jews in Zagreb followed the reformist trend, so that in 1941 only 2% of the Jews were Orthodox.From the mid-19th century, integration with the Croat population was in full progress. In 1931, 73.6% of the Jews in Zagreb declared Croatian to be their mother tongue, i.e., they considered themselves to be Croats of the Jewish religion. The first 'anti-Jewish' rumblings occurred when the two nationalist magazines, Mlada Hrvatska and Nezavisnost (after 1938) presented the Jews as the pushy element in the Croatian economy. Thus, Mlada Hrvatska cited passages from Stjepan Radi?'s mildly anti-Semitic tract The Jewry (1906, reprinted in 1938). Nezavisnost went even further and accused, unjustifiably, Ante Star?evi? of being a voice for the removal of the Jews from public life.Professor Ivo Goldstein XE "Goldstein, Professor Ivo" , in his book Holokaust u Zagrebu, which the author quotes extensively, maintains that some of the WWII right-wing publications (Hrvatska Smotra etc.) were ideologically on the same wavelength as the Ustasha movement, "although they did not join it formally". On the other hand, the Croatian newspapers of democratic/liberal orientation, such as Jutarnji List, Obzor and Ve?er, were condemning the persecution of the Jews in the Reich already in the 1930's. The general attitude of the Roman Catholic Church towards the Jews was negative, claims Goldstein.Goldstein is fair in reiterating that, apart from an occasional anti-Semitic jibe in the press, no Croatian political party had an open anti-Semitic programme. Dr. Ma?ek, leader of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS), which represented then the majority of the Croatian people, stated that, "anti-Semitism does not have fertile ground in Croatia". Goldstein reiterates again that "there is no doubt whatsoever that Ma?ek, unlike his predecessor at the head of the HSS, Stjepan Radi?, condemned the anti-Semitism irrevocably and was most strongly against its dissemination".Whatever Goldstein thinks of the Roman Catholic Church, the truth is that there were within its ranks quite a few outspoken enemies of racism. In an article in the Katoli?ki List (1938) by Andrija ?ivkovi? XE "?ivkovi?, Andrija" , it was stated: "anti-Semitism is a scientifically totally false argument, which we do not intend to elaborate on here . . . "On New Year’s Eve 1938, Archbishop Stepinac condemned racism in his sermon in Zagreb Cathedral. Yet, Goldstein cannot help but, on the same page, 'balance' this Archbishop's sermon with an alleged entry the Archbishop made in his diary on 25th and 27th April 1935: "The Church cannot have much trust either in the Left or the Right and does not have any faith in the justice in this state (i.e., the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), which is run by the freemasons and the Jews." Goldstein believes that the Catholic Church in Croatia had to take into account the Vatican policies, i.e., the encyclical of Pope Pius XI (1937), XE "Encyclical of Pope Pius XI (1937)" which condemned Nazism but allowed itself some departure to the Right or to the Left.While the main Croatian dailies, Jutarnji List, Novosti and Hrvatski Dnevnik defended the Jews and were anti-racist, Jugoslovenska Re?, the voice of the Yugoslav nationalists, which was published in Zagreb (1932-34), was mimicking the Nazis in propagating the idea of the Yugoslav race. In its issue of January 1932, Dragutin Dominko XE "Dominko, Dragutin" argued, "that the people holding the capital, concentrated in the hands of the egotistic and non-racial Yugoslavs, . . . could not have constructive feelings towards our nation and the state, but only the aim of putting itself above the state."In August 1933, Mlada Jugoslavija, the organ of the Yugoslav nationalists, invited the Yugoslav patriots to rise up against the Jews.Goldstein is objective enough in accepting that the anti-Semitic excesses in Zagreb were isolated cases, but that they were more common in the rest of Yugoslavia, particularly in Belgrade and generally in Serbia. In Zrenjanin (Serbia) in 1936 there appeared a German newspaper Die Erwache as the organ of the Yugoslav national-socialist's organisation Zbor, led by the Serbian fascist Dimitrije Ljoti?, XE "Ljoti?, Dimitrije" under the slogan 'The Jews are our misfortune'. And in 1935 the Serbian Episcope Nikola I. Velimirovi? XE "Velimirovi?, Nikola I - Serbian Episcope" praised the German Fuehrer. " . . . We are children of God," Velimirovi? stated, "people of the Aryan race, and fate gave us the honourable position of the Fuehrer, who is leading Christianity in the world."The Belgrade newspaper Balkan "made anti-Semitism the centre of its editorial policy."Vreme, the Belgrade daily pro-government paper commenced in September 1940 a series of the anti-Semitic articles. British diplomats in Belgrade argued that the Minister of the Interior, Anton Koro?ec, a Slovene Roman Catholic Priest XE "Koro?ec, Anton - Slovene Roman Catholic Priest" , "was clearly anti-Semitic orientated, under whose influence the Yugoslav government [in 1938] showed a tendency towards to be anti-Jewish."In January 1939, in an interview with the Paris paper Le Petit Parisien, Yugoslav Prime Minister Stojadinovi? XE "Stojadinovi?, Yugoslav Prime Minister 1939" denied that anti-Jewish measures were in the offing and stated: "So long as the Jews show their loyalty . . . the question does not exist. The future, however, will depend upon the [behaviour] of the Jews."In September/October 1940, the Yugoslav government issued two decrees, the first dealing with the re-organisation of trade in food owned by the Jews, and the second on the limitation of entry to universities for Jewish students. Turning back to the situation in Croatia, Goldstein tries hard to be objective, but his Yugoslav-communist heart lets him down. The signaling functions of some of his definitions are naively transparent. In the title From the Exclusive Croatianhood to Ustasha Anti-Semitism, he becomes trapped. What does the 'exclusive Croatianhood' actually mean? Is the quest for an independent Croatian state exclusivism? On page 85 he quotes a letter to the Editor of the publication ?idov (The Jew - 43/1939) that contradicts him, in which the writer shows displeasure for the Jewish converts to Christianity."We must isolate these people, socially and personally." The question is, is that also exclusivism? What then is the problem?In dealing with Ante Star?evi? (1823-1896), Goldstein, as a historian, is fair in saying that Star?evi?, as a liberal democrat, imagined "his future Independent Croatian state will be in harmony with the state and society."Josip Frank (who was Jewish) led Star?evi?'s Party in 1890, and in fact was more down to earth and exclusivist in his policies when, for example, he dropped Star?evi?'s far-fetched idea that all the South Slavs were really Croats. Milan ?uflay XE "?uflay, Milan" , a great Croat patriot and a world-renowned Albanologist, killed by the Yugoslav nationalists in broad daylight in a Zagreb street in 1931, inexplicably became a victim of Goldstein's Yugo-communism.He quotes ?uflay's collection of essays Hrvatska u svijetlu svjetske historije i politike (Croatia in Light of World History and Politics) and ridicules his "particular national mysticism" within the Western civilization. Yet such 'historical and national mysticism' more than anything else has helped the survival of the Jewish people.?uflay was, by the way, extremely clear in his thinking: "He who knows history must know that the Yugoslav idea is without dynamism. It cannot compare with the mighty Croat idea. The Yugoslav idea in Croatia is only a thin shell underneath which lies the Croatian national volcano; only a little stimulus would be sufficient to cause an eruption."Pity - Goldstein's investigation into the suffering of the Jews during Paveli?'s dictatorship (1941-45) shows a constant tendency for linking ?uflay's 'Croatian National Volcano' with this tragedy, in spite of a number of examples he quotes that contradict such a rationalisation. In sneering, for example, at Mladen Lorkovi?'s XE "Lorkovi?, Mladen" book, Narod i zemlja Hrvata (People and Land of Croats, 1940), which expounds the Croatian historical right to BiH, Goldstein doesn't refrain from his prejudices. When he comes to discussing the exclusive Croatianhood of the Ustasha movement, Goldstein states: "Neither in the Ustasha [magazine] published during the emigration in 1932-32, nor in the Ustasha Statute [Na?ela] is there mention of direct anti-Semitism."Yet, this contradicts what he already said previously on page 89 of his book. In the early days, several people who considered themselves as Catholics and Croats, but who were of Jewish origin, played an outstanding role in the Ustasha movement. The 'assimilants', e.g., Dr. Vladimir Sachs and Ivo Frank, son of Josip Frank, the uncle of Eugen Dido Kvaternik, considered themselves as Croats. Another such 'assimilant', Vladimir Singer XE "Singer, Vladimir" , was one of the key figures in the original Ustasha movement. Sadly, he fell later on by an Ustasha hand. To admit the possibility that Paveli? himself might have not been an anti-Semite after all, surrounded, as he was by the Jewish 'assimilants' right down to his very own bed (his wife was half Jewish), Goldstein's arguments strike at the very foundations of the liberal society. Such an admission would refute Goldstein's own theories on the link between Croatian nationalism and anti-Semitism. That Paveli? hit at the Jews "who, with great pleasure, greeted the foundation of the so-called Yugoslav State . . . as a multi-ethnic state" . . . and also, at those Jews in Croatia who, in their own peculiar way, have expressed their loyalty to Yugoslavism and 'the state unity' . . . sounds hardly like anti-Semititry. Paveli? hit hard at many pro-Yugoslavs in the same way as he hit at many Croats too. That Paveli? became one of the butchers in the war of the Yugoslav utopia was as natural as it was for the Serbian Chetniks and Tito's Partisan cut-throats XE "Serbian Chetniks and Tito's Partisan cut-throats" . The Yugoslav utopian system as a source of the inevitable violence was de facto its progenitor. While Paveli?'s part in that context is easily explicable, his part in the extermination of Jews is inexplicable and amounts to a clear-cut crime against humanity, for which, on his part, there was neither need nor excuse. Yet the intriguing question of why he involved himself in that despicable activity (Mussolini, an equally extreme nationalist, did not) still remains a great mystery.On Friday, 11th April 1941, the Gestapo took over the building of the Jewish Council (?idovska Op?ina) in Zagreb.The Ustashas moved in a few days later and plundered the place,. although Marshall Slavko Kvaternik warned "that various Chetnik and other bandits under the name of 'Ustashas' plundered the Jewish citizens and ordered the security organisations to shoot such individuals on the spot". "From April 1941 to August 1942," writes Goldstein, "the Reich representatives entrusted the solution of the 'Jewish Question' in Croatia to the Ustasha regime. Out of 39,000 Jews in the NDH in 1941, 24,000 were killed and the SS, with the aid of Ustashas, deported 7,000 to Auschwitz. 8,000-9,000 survived, out of which 4,000 joined Tito's Partisan ranks."However, historian Jakov Gumzej XE "Gumzej, Jakov" contested these figures and cited the Belgrade 'Jewish Review' (Jevrejski Pregled) in the Zagreb daily Vjesnik dated 9th September 1998, in which he stated: "Consequently, it becomes clear that in the NDH not 30,000 Jews were killed but approximately 10,000, which also is a terrible number for which a criminal element within the Ustasha movement is partly responsible; the fact is that Mr. Bulaji?, Director of the Museum of Genocide in Belgrade, multiplied the number of Jewish victims in NDH by three in order to foist upon the Croats the holocaust actually perpetrated in Belgrade during General Nedi?'s rule." Thus, it transpires that Belgrade was exploiting Jewish victims for its own end in order to cover up the fact that at that time in Serbia 45,000 rather than 24,000 Jews were killed. Goldstein never disputed Gumzej's statement, quoted in the Jewish Review. As a pro-Yugoslav historicist, he feels that it would be unwise to tamper with the 'landmark' figure of 30,000, supporting the message about the Croats as a 'genocidal' people.The Ustasha Security (UNS) were in constant touch with the SD (Sicherheitsdienst) and the Gestapo.The media joined the anti-Jewish 'harangue' (article in Hrvatski Narod, 20th April 1941, under the title: 'Strictest measures must be undertaken against Jews').A few days later in the same paper on 6th April 1941 Paveli? himself is quoted: "The Jewish question will be solved in a radical manner, on the basis of the racial and economic principles." Goldstein counted on average some eight anti-Jewish articles in the daily newspapers. The total number of anti-Jewish titles for 1941-1945, according to him, was 589. It is perplexing as to why should, for example, Milovan ?ani?, XE "?ani?, Milovan" the NDH high-ranking minister, join the anti-Jewish harangue in his speech in Daruvar, when his own wife was Jewish. The Zagreb paper Novi List (15th June) argued that Croatia was, for the Jews, a subject of exploitation . . . and therefore that nobody reasonably can reproach us for the measures we have taken "to drive the Jews into their own natural borders" (whatever that meant). More serious were a number of new laws, such as The Law for the Defence of the People and the State, (17th April 1941), under which law, if anyone threatened the NDH in any way, such an act was treated as high treason, punishable by the death penalty.The law regarding the establishment of the Court Marshal (Prijeki Sud), XE "Establishment of Court Marshal (Prijeki Sud)," which specified one sentence only, the death penalty carried out within three hours from the verdict, was developed from the same law of 17th May 1941. Not only Jews, Serbs, communists and other opponents of the regime but also many Croats were on the receiving end of these courts. The law for the preservation of the Croatian national property seriously affected the Jews, 18th April 1941.More directly the Jews were affected by the laws for 'the protection of the Aryan blood and the honour of the Croatian people, the law regarding racial affiliation' and 'the law regarding the State affiliation' [Dr?avljanstvo]. These laws had many exclusions, and "thus were not so comprehensive as those of the Nüremberg laws in Germany". The exceptions were the "persons who were, before 10th April 1941, meritorious for the Croatian people". In this case, curiously enough, many Jews and Jewish assimilants within the leadership of the Ustasha movement or in marital relationships with them, good examples being the Chief of the NDH Police, Eugen Dido Kvaternik XE "Kvaternik, Eugen Dido" , and Paveli? himself.The law regarding 'the protection of the Aryan blood' (30th April 1941) forbade marriages and extra-marital sex between Jews and Aryans, and the employment by the Jews of Aryan women under the age of 45. The law regarding statehood affiliation (nationality), which states, "the Croatian national is a person of Aryan origin . . . who is prepared to serve the Croatian people and the NDH" excluded Jews automatically. Switching to Catholicism, covered by the law of religious conversion, did not help in the long term (3rd May 1941). Almost one third of all the Jews in the NDH (i.e., in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina) lived in Zagreb. Goldstein ascribes these anti-Jewish measures solely to Paveli? and Artukovi? who were ingratiating themselves to the Germans, which sounds conceivable.He believes that while the Serbs were liquidated by the lawless Ustasha elements, the liquidation of the Jews was justified by the 'Laws' in a more preplanned way: ex-communication, concentration and extermination inspired by the Nazi model."There is no doubt that this took place not only under the general influence of the Reich's policies . . . but also by the direct German advice, and later even by order. Even so, during all this period, there was a lot of Ustasha self-initiative and willfulness in that respect."An order dated 22nd May 1941 forced the Jews to wear a badge marked with a letter '?' (Jew) although this order was in many cases ignored and became counter- productive as the wearers of the badge attracted the sympathy of many Croatian citizens. The leader of the Italian mission in Zagreb, Eugenio Coselschi, is quoted as saying: "Croat public opinion condemned this order, and even Paveli? himself doesn't like it that much." Petar Grgec, XE "Grgec, Petar" a Catholic writer and professor of the Archbishops' Classical Gymnasium, greeted the Jews wearing a badge by the removal of his hat."It is ironical", writes Goldstein, "that this man was persecuted by the communists after 1945."Even Catholic priests of Jewish origin were not excluded from this order. The petitions for the relaxation from this order were elastic, and even some Ustashas were supporting such appeals (e.g., Stjepan Bari?evi? XE "Bari?evi?, Stjepan" in May 1942). The official record stated that 9,087 Jews in Zagreb were forced to wear either armbands, or metal badges. An appeal against carrying a badge by the architect Stjepan Gombo? XE "Gombo?, Stjepan - architect" (the author’s professor at the Faculty of Architecture in Zagreb in 1946) was refused. Fortunately, he left Zagreb prior to that. Up to the autumn of 1941, 2,000 Zagreb Jews appealed against such humiliation, and petitioned for the recognition of the Aryan rights. These were mainly pre-war converts to Catholicism. Many interventions on behalf of the Jews, "due to corruption or because of who you knew, could not have been effectively stopped.""In September 1941 Paveli? himself granted the Aryan rights to Eleanora Feldmann and her descendants and asked the Jewish Department to positively respond to the appeal by the family Justitz, which he knew well personally."The director of the Croatian State Opera, Milan Sachs, was left alone by means of such 'who you knew' links.Five Hundred other Jews were also left alone by the intervention of Paveli?'s own office sent in September 1941 to Eugen Dido Kvaternik (himself half-Jewish), boss of the State Security Department. In June 1941, 40% of such appeals were positively solved, only to fall in August to only 10%.Two outstanding Jewish families, Deutsch-Maceljski XE "Deutsch-Maceljski" and Alexander XE "Alexander" remained in Zagreb through the intervention of Paveli? himself. However, many others came to grief, in spite of Paveli? or Archbishop Stepinac's intervention. Cases in point are the families of Oscar Stern XE "Stern, Oscar" and his father-in-law, a banker, Sigmund Pordes XE "Pordes, Sigmund" and a medical doctor Milan Schwartz XE "Schwartz, Milan" who were protected by Field Marshall Slavko Kvaternik. However, when Paveli? removed Kvaternik in 1942, these families had to flee. The apparatus of repression was headed by Eugen Dido Kvaternik as the director of RAVSIGUR (Department for Public Order and Security XE "RAVSIGUR (Department for Public Order and Security" , 7th May 1941). As the police boss, Kvaternik did not have confidence in the inherited Yugoslav police apparatus and, as a result, he formed a parallel Ustasha police, headed by an old Ustasha emigrant, Bo?idar Cerovski XE "Cerovski, Bo?idar" (22nd April 1941). Ivica Barakovi? XE "Barakovi?, Ivica" headed its Jewish Department.On 16th August 1941, Paveli? established a central organisation UNS (Usta?ka Nadzorna Sluzba), i.e., Ustasha counter-intelligence XE "UNS (Usta?ka Nadzorna Sluzba), Ustasha counter-intelligence" , to supervise the entire Ustasha and State organisation, and put Eugen Kvaternik at its head. The UNS had four departments. The first, the RUR (Department of the Ustasha police), was headed by Vilko Pe?nikar XE "Pe?nikar, Vilko" who was in charge of imprisonments. The second department was the Intelligence Service, and the third was the Ustasha Defence Department in charge of the concentration camps."In the combined function of Director of RAVSIGUR and the Head of the UNS, Eugen Dido Kvaternik de facto became the almighty boss of all the police, intelligence and security apparatus of the NDH – a kind of 'Croatian Himmler'."Goldstein goes into fine detail in describing the so-called contributions for “the needs of the state”, which Jews were forced to make, usually in solid gold.Vilko Kühnel XE "Kühnel, Vilko" , a local ethnic German and a lawyer, who was in charge of the Department of the Ustasha police, began issuing exit passes for those Jews who fulfilled this demand. It is believed that 2,000 Jews escaped from Zagreb in that way. Many people also succeeded in escaping by using false passes. Kvaternik himself, however, tried to put a stop to such 'corruption'.Kühnel suffered from 'double standards': on one side helping the Jews to escape, and on the other, deporting them to Auschwitz (in August 1942 and May 1943). He was demoted when the Ustasha intelligence services found out his link with the German SS-Police Attaché in Zagreb, Hans Helm (later the organiser of Tito's Secret Police in 1945). He specialised in passing to the SS reports on the attitudes and plans of the highest Ustasha functionaries. Bo?idar Cerovski XE "Cerovski, Bo?idar" , in the UDBA prison in 1945, blamed the raison d'êtat for all the injustices, crimes and persecutions in the NDH. As a result, he was sentenced to death by another kind of raison d'êtat, that of communist 'justice'.All revolutions, dictatorships, and even 'liberal-democratic states, use raison d'êtat as an excuse. It is only a question of degree. The raison d'êtat in the autumn of 1942 forced Paveli? to depose the mighty Eugen Kvaternik, very likely under German and Italian pressure, blaming him for the chaos in the State. He ended up in Argentina via Slovakia, Austria and Italy, where he was killed in a car accident in 1962. "From time to time he wrote very critically about the dictatorship of the NDH regime," (although he himself was for a long time at its very head), blaming Paveli? for the failure of the state direction, and accusing him of treason; Paveli?'s followers after WW2, never failed to answer back, describing E. Kvaternik as a psychopath, exactly the same adjective that E. Kvaternik used about Paveli? in return.The order of 2nd May 1941, regarding regular business transactions and the prevention of sabotage in business XE "Regular business transactions and prevention of sabotage in business" , affected many Jews. This order was superceded by a new order about marking Jewish companies and shops in order to prevent the hiding of Jewish property, and was enforced by another order about the obligatory registration of the Jews and their businesses, all subject to a prison sentence up to 10 years for the non-compliance. The forms registering the property XE "Registering property" were well detailed over thirteen pages. In Zagreb alone 1,456 such businesses were registered. The commissioners supervising these businesses were initially under German control. The final blow was de facto nationalization of the Jewish properties by the Law of Nationalisation, dated 10th October 1941. In practice this allowed shady individuals to help themselves as they pleased. In October 1942 alone the value of the requisitioned precious carpets amounted to 1 billion Kunas. The nationalization worked in two ways: enforced by the Laws on the one hand, and by stealth on the other.Paveli? himself, shaken by the extent of the corruption and its implications, stated in a mocking speech to University students "he was sure that they did not wish their patriotism to be financed by Jewish shops and carpets."The total confiscation of Jewish property XE "Total confiscation of Jewish property" was carried out on the basis of the new Law of 30th October 1942. Its value in 1945 was assessed at 25 billion dinars held by the population of 30,000 Jews (the white-collar salary at that time was 18,000 dinars per annum.) In Zagreb, the capital of the NDH, there were at that time 1,200 buildings worth more than 3 million Kunas, 90% of them owned by Jews and the remaining 10% by the Serbs. The NDH Minister of Finance later stated that most of the Jewish valuables ended up in the pockets of police officials, particularly their boss, Eugen Kvaternik. Former Minister of the Foreign Affairs in the NDH Mehmed Alajbegovi?, a Muslim, stated to the Yugoslav authorities in 1947 that by the order of Paveli?, he sent 1,000 kg. of gold to Switzerland before 1944.On 8th May 1941, the police published an order for the evacuation of the Serbs and Jews from the northern posh part of Zagreb within eight days. The top echelons of the Ustasha regime soon moved into these properties, only to be replaced in 1945 by the communist New Class. In June 1941, with Paveli?'s knowledge, 81 Jewish medical doctors were sent to Eastern Bosnia (who later eloped to the Partisans) where endemic syphilis was rampant among the Muslim population, XE "Endemic syphilis rampant among Muslim population" originally infected by the French soldiers during the Napoleonic occupation in the 19th century. The idea of sending them to BiH came from the Croatian dermatologist Dr. Ante Vuleti? XE "Vuleti?, Dr. Ante" who, in this way, saved many Jewish lives. Dr. Vuleti? commented ironically that as Paveli? maintained that the BiH Muslims were the 'flower of Croatianhood', it would be a shame to let them wilt from endemic syphilis. The unexpected consequence of Paveli?'s action was to provide the Partisans with 60 eminent physicians and surgeons.The Serbs and Jews in Zagreb were subject to a curfew from 6 p.m. to 9 a.m. Even so, the Jewish Council (now in new smaller premises) was active in Zagreb throughout the war, an exception to the rule in Nazi occupied Europe. A Jewish school was allowed to proceed with normal work. All the remaining Jews were obliged to pay regular dues for the financial support of these institutions. The Ustasha authorities, surprisingly enough, allowed an international (which also included an American) organisation to make contact with the Zagreb Jewish Council via Switzerland. The first major imprisonment of the Jews took place in April 1941, when the Gestapo imprisoned 50 persons; all except one were released.The second wave of imprisonments took place on 27th/28th April when the Zagreb police imprisoned 79 Zagreb Jewish Lawyers who were sent into camp Kerestine?, six of whom were released on 10th June 1941.The third mass imprisonment was on 27th-29th April May, when 165 youths between 18 and 21 years were apprehended and sent to Koprivnica, and the camp of Jadovno (Gospi?) where they were killed. The Deputy Minister of the Interior, Stjepan Vukovac, commented ironically apropos these Ustasha actions that "according to all the indications", Dido Kvaternik and the other relevant bigwigs were getting ready for open warfare with the Serbs and Jews."Further deportation of two hundred Jews to Gospi? took place on the 21st June 1941.By the end of June 1941, the total number of deportees had reached 800.On 12th July a further 400 and at the end of July another 700 Jews were deported. The total number of deportees at the end of August 1941 was 2,500.Paveli? tried to justify this outrage in the magazine Ustasha on 3rd August 1941:"The Jews plundered and skimmed the Croatian people, and were always on the side, and openly supported, its enemies. At present they are on the side of the enemies of Croatia and its allies. They always took the side of the Serbs, the Russians and the English . . . They are allies of the Serbian Chetniks, who are now killing under the red Bolshevik banner . . . In spite of all that, there are still some unfortunate wretches among the Croats who are trying to protect them, saying 'he was on our side; he deserved protection; he was supporting us.' "A new wave of imprisonments took place after that (some 700 persons). By the end of September 1941, some 3,000 Jews had been imprisoned, deported or killed.From the first days of the NDH, Germany encouraged the Ustasha regime to do its dirty work in organizing concentration camps on their behalf. For this purpose, Eugen Kvaternik actually visited the SS Headquarters in the Reich at the end of May and the beginning of June 1941 in the company of the Attaché SS-Obersturmbannführer in NDH, Willy Beisner XE "Beisner, Willy - Attaché" . After the talks with the chief of the SS Headquarters, SS Grupenführer Gottlob Berger XE "Berger, Gottlob" , it was agreed that one hundred Ustasha police officers would be trained in the Reich for this purpose.Goldstein makes an assumption without any documentary evidence that at that meeting "Kvaternik and his collaborators received detailed instructions about the final solution to the Jewish Question". The original camps were open-air assembly camps on the outskirts of the major towns. The inmates were a mixed lot of Serbian rebels, some Jews, and Croatian and other communists, (e.g. Savska Cesta Camp in Zagreb). At the end of May, the first large group of 165 Jews was transferred to Gospi? camp from camp Danica near Koprivnica. By mid-July 1941 there were in this camp 3,000 Serbs, as many as 1,000 Croats, 600 Jews and 400 Gypsies.Goldstein relies heavily on the unreliable Yugoslav communist sources for this information; these figures vary from 2,658 to 5,600 prisoners. The camps were under the direct control of RAVSIGUR (i.e., E. Kvaternik). The food supplied by the Jewish Council in Zagreb was reaching the Jewish prisoners with some difficulty. No one was killed in this camp. 150 Zagreb Jews and 400 Jews from the Reich passed through the camp at Kerestinec. The treatment of the prisoners here was better than in other camps. Out of 224 prisoners, 119 were leading communists (26 among them Jews). The total number of Jews was 70.On 4th July 1941, the NDH policeman Ljudevit Tiljak XE "Tiljak, Ljudevit" was found dead and disfigured in a Zagreb street. The 'spiritual movers' of this murder were 10 communists from Kerestinac XE "Kerestinac" who were shot without much ado on 9th July 1941. Six out of the ten were Jews.In the night of 13th/14th July, 89 communists from Kerestinac attacked the camp guards and succeeded in escaping. However, the link with the Zagreb Communist Party committee failed, so that thirty-one fugitives were killed in the clashes with the police and forty-four others were taken prisoner and shot (10 out of this group were Jews).On 4th August 1941, a marching regiment of the University Ustasha students was attacked with grenades in a street in Zagreb. The same day 98 'Jews and communists' were shot and on 6th August another 87 were executed after a bomb exploded in the main Zagreb Post Office. On 14th September a further 50 hostages were shot. According to Goldstein, some 150 Jews were killed in these reprisals. The leading article in the magazine Usta?a under the title 'Another warning' threatened that anyone attempting similar actions "will pay for it even more dearly". On 11th September 50 'Jews and communists' were shot after a Zagreb communist group killed Ustasha police agent Majerhold. On the 2nd October, a Law relating to the actions to be taken after the communist attacks', if the perpetrators could not be found, de facto, legalized the reprisals to be carried out on the hostages. This decision was made by RAVSIGUR (i.e., E. Kvaternik).In June 1941, a further three camps in Gospi?, XE "Gospi?," Mount Velebit XE "Mount Velebit" and the Island Pag XE "Island Pag" were completed. In these camps from 21st June to 21st August, there were about 2,500 Jews. 1,000 of prisoners from BiH in the camp Jadovno (Gospi?) were liquidated. Less than 100 Jews survived, mainly by the intervention of some Ustasha officials, or because the persons involved were in mixed marriages with Croats.According to the statement of Stjepan Rubini?, XE "Rubini?, Stjepan" Chief of the Gospi? Police, made to the communist court in 1945, 28,700 prisoners, most of them Serbs, 3,000 Jews and 1,000 Croats (mainly communists) passed through this camp. The worst treatment was applied to the Croats, who were treated as traitors. On 21st August 1941, the camp at Slano XE "Slano" , on the Island of Pag, to which a number of the Gospi? prisoners were transferred, was abandoned. The assessment of the total number of the victims in this camp, as usual, was subject to dispute. Don Joso Felicinovi? XE "Felicinovi?, Don Joso" , the local Roman Catholic parish priest, gave perhaps the most reliable account. In his opinion, there were in that camp some 12,000 victims.Camp Jadovno XE "Jadovno Camp" was situated in the mountains, 22km from Gospi? in an isolated location. The first prisoners, 200 Jews from Zagreb, arrived on 24th June 1941. The number killed in the camps Jadovno, Island of Pag and Gospi?"were subject to different assessments, i.e., between 20,000 and 40,000 . . . According to the already mentioned witness Rubini?, the total number was 28,700. If one omits [deliberates Goldstein] 4,000 prisoners that left Gospi? in August 1941, and also that some prisoners before that were released, the figure of 24,000 liquidated prisoners in Jadovno, Pag and Gospi? remains. Among them were 2,500 Jews.""About 3,000-4,000 people . . . out of whom 90% were Jews" passed through the camp near Vitez XE "Vitez" in BiH.The largest concentration camp, Jasenovac XE "Jasenovac" , was in the past sixty years the subject of massive historical, scientific, analytical and, most of all, propaganda literature. In all, there were 1,106 books, 1,482 memoirs and articles, and 109 collections of documents published in various parts of the world on the subject.The last word on Jasenovac has not yet been written, mainly due to the politicization of the subject. Goldstein, however, makes an attempt at objectivity:"The irresponsible number [of the victims] is used to prove that Jasenovac was a camp which exclusively dealt with killings, and was an enormous and horrifying death factory, which by its scale [it was intended] became the indictment of one whole nation, [i.e., the Croats] and, on the other hand, in the cover-up, Jasenovac is depicted as a labour camp, a lawfully established institution for the internment of the proven enemies of the state, a method with which it is attempted to rehabilitate the genocidal policy of the Ustasha NDH, [i.e., the regime]" Ljubo Milo?, Commander of the Jasenovac camp XE "Jasenovac camp" , stated in the communist jail in 1947, that Eugen Dido Kvaternik established Jasenovac in mid-July 1941, and that in October 1941, he personally made a register of 4-5,000 prisoners.Albert Maestro XE "Maestro, Albert" , a Jasenovac Jewish inmate, stated however, in 1945 and also repeated in 1971, that the civilian population (i.e., Croats) of Jasenovac and Krapje"tried on every occasion to help us with food, although they were exposing themselves to a great danger ".At the end of October 1941, 1,000 Jews were imprisoned in Sarajevo, and transported to Jasenovac. (On that occasion and exposing himself to great danger, the author’s father, Vinco (Vincent) Tvrtkovi? XE "Tvrtkovi?, Vinco (Vincent)" , collected over 100 hundred signatures in favour of our family GP, Dr. Alkalaj XE " Alkalaj, Dr." , who was saved and who emigrated to Israel after WWII.)According to Ljubo Milo?' statement to the communist court in 1945 the first mass liquidations of the inmates commenced at the end of October and beginning of November 1941. Maks Luburi?, the Commander in Chief of the Jasenovac camp XE "Jasenovac camp" , ordered that the liquidation of the camp in Krapje (a part of camp Jasenovac) be carried out by means of starvation. As a result, the uprising that followed was quashed, and the death sentence was carried out on about 100 inmates. The inmates of Jasenovac camps I and II were transferred to Camp III on 14th November 1941, due to flooding of the Sava River. According to further statements made by Ljubo Milo?, from that date on transports with prisoners from all parts of NDH were arriving regularly at Jasenovac. The prisoners were sentenced on the basis of the 'Law about directing of objectionable and dangerous persons to forced labour camps [dated 25th November 1941] against which Law there was no appeal'.According to Milo?, at the time the prisoners were classified into two groups. The first ones were those dispatched by order of RAVSIGUR and they had only limited sentences. The second group was simply transported ad hoc from all parts of the NDH. Milo? stated that "the number of inmates was kept at 3,000, and that any surplus were liquidated".This situation lasted from November 1941 to March 1942.A curious statement was made by one Gabrijel Winter XE "Winter, Gabrijel" , a Jewish prisoner from Zagreb who escaped from the camp: "The head of the grave diggers group responsible for burying the dead was one Dudo Bararon XE "Bararon, Dudo" , a Jew from Tuzla [BiH] who walked around the camp with an open jacket, so one could appreciate his gun. He was the most notorious member of the so-called 'D' group of gravediggers, who were also taking part in the liquidations of their co-religionists. In the end, they were also killed."The Ustasha authorities were neither completely insensitive about the horror stories about Jasenovac circulating in Zagreb, nor to admonitions by the Catholic Church, and the Italian and German diplomats. For this reason, Dido Kvaternik arranged for an international inspection to visit Jasenovac on 6th February 1942, which plainly inspection was manipulated.During 1941/42, prisoners were classified by trades and professions, and were employed in workshops. XE "Prisoners classified by trades and professions and employed in workshops." Their treatment was relatively better. In the spring of 1942 these workshops had some 3,000 imprisoned workers. During the period from 15th June to 7th July 1942, the camp at Djakovo was closed and between 2,400 and 3,200 Jewish women and children were transferred to Jasenovac. Most of them died from hunger and the remainder were killed.In September 1942, Paveli? demoted Eugen Kvaternik after pressure from the Germans, who complained that his terror against the Serbs (they did not mention the Jews) created many problems affecting their military operations.In October, Luburi? and Milo? were also demoted. The last large liquidation of the Jews occurred on 17th, 18th and 19th November 1992, when some 700-800 Jews were killed.At the beginning of 1943, there were about 1,800 Jews still in Jasenovac III, IV and V. From then on, until the beginning of 1944, were the most peaceful days at Jasenovac. During the four years of the camp's existence only 300 inmates succeeded in escaping.According to German sources, during the same period 2,000 prisoners were exchanged for German PoWs.Jasenovac V had a special prison for transgressed Ustashas. Although they were treated better, even they could not feel their lives were safe. Luburi? killed the leading Ustasha, Vlado Singer (a Jew) and a Croat provincial governor of Banja Luka, Dragutin Hadrovi? XE "Hadrovi?, Dragutin" .From September 1944 the situation in the camp changed again. The worst period at Jasenovac began. Mass liquidations were in full swing. Luburi? was in charge again.During this period the two leading Ustasha ministers, Ante Voki? and Mladen Lorkovi? were shot for attempting a coup against the Germans with the aim of bringing the NDH on the side of the Allies.The total number killed during 1944 was, according to the inmates' estimate, about 14,000.In the early autumn of 1944, 748 Jews were deported to the camp at Jasenovac, out of whom 11 escaped and 89 died or were killed. On 18th February 1945, in Jasenovac IV camp, there were 700 Jewish prisoners, 650 of whom were later killed. The last liquidations took place on 21st April 1945 when about 700 Jewish women were liquidated, and on 22nd April when 600 Jewish inmates attempted a break out but were cut down by machine gun fire from the guard's towers. On 1st May 1945 the Ustashas razed the camps to the ground. The internal running of the camps was organised by the inmates themselves. 22 camp leaders (logornik) were in charge, six of them were Jews. Bruno Diamentstein (35 years), Herman Spiller and Bernhard Weiner were despised by the other inmates. They had special privileges, received salaries and maltreated their comrades. Ante Ciliga, a leading Croat communist, himself a prisoner, accused several Jews for similar outrages. In the end, the camp leaders were also shot.The Federal Institute for the Statistics of Yugoslavia carried out detailed research about the camps at Jasenovac as early as 1967, but the results were kept under wraps until 1998 when the Bosnian Institute in Zurich published results. This book contains the names of 59,188 prisoners in the camps at Jasenovac and Stara Gradi?ka (33,944 Serbs, 9,044 Jews, 6,546 Croats, 1,471 Gypsies, 194 Slovenes, 105 other nationalities and 6,850 of undetermined nationality). However, the total number of 67,198 does not tally with the figure of 59,188 given above. "If we take this number as a starting point," speculates Goldstein "and enlarge it by 40% or a maximum of 50% [on the basis of some partial evidence], we shall arrive at the total figure of 80-90,000 victims that died in the Jasenovac camps, i.e., the figure established by the demographer ?erjavi?."Demographer ?erjavi?, in his work 'Megalomanije i Opsesije' (Megalomania and Obsessions), estimated that 48-52,000 Serbs, 13,000 Jews, 12,000 Croats and 10,000 Gypsies were killed in Jasenovac.These horrifying numbers are, however, miles apart from the 750,000 to one million Serbs killed in Jasenovac, the number branded about by Serbian propaganda. "Most of the Jews in mixed marriages and the 'honorary Aryans' survived the war . . . although even they could never have been sure about their ultimate fate."The demolition of the Jewish Temple in Zagreb, which started on 10th October 1942, was decided at the highest level, on the transparent excuse that the building was not in keeping with its surroundings, although it had stood there already for some 75 years. Archbishop Stepinac reacted most strongly at this outrage in his Sermon in Zagreb Cathedral: "The House of God of any religion is a sacred place, and he who dares to tamper with it will pay for that with his life. He will find peace neither in this nor in the other world."The Archbishop was also involved in saving Jewish children. During the first half of 1943, these children were entrusted to a number of Croatian families, and in that way most of them survived. In February 1942, the Nazis informed the NDH authorities that the remaining Jews must be transported 'to the East'. In the meantime, Paveli? convened the only session of the Croatian Parliament (Sabor) in February 1942. In his opening speech he stated: "In the former Yugoslavia, all the power was in the hands of the freemasons and the Jews . . . the NDH has however succeeded . . . in cutting down to size these foreigners who held almost all of the trade and industry in their hands, and who had only their self-interest in mind."The 'solution of the Jewish question' was passed to the Minister of the Interior, Andrija Artukovi?, XE "Artukovi?, Andrija" who 'explained' the Jewish aims as: "creating dissention among the political parties and classes, denigrating the state authorities, liquidating the political leaders, because everything must be submitted to their will, and those who resist must be smothered in blood. . . . The Jews have two groups working for them . . . the communists and the freemasons. Therefore," Artukovi? went on, "the Croatian people could not but act decisively in order to cleanse its national and spiritual body of these poisonous and intrusive pests: Jews, communists and freemasons. The NDH . . . has acted decisively and has solved the so-called Jewish question . . . This cleansing action was justified, not only from the moral, religious and the social aspects, but also from the national-political point of view: because International Jewry is in cahoots with communism . . . and freemasonry intended, and still intends, to destroy the Croatian people."At the session of the Sabor the following day, Minister Mirko Puk XE "Puk, Mirko" justified the racial laws: ". . . the state requires the liquidation of those elements who disturb the peace and the existence of the community . . . As far as the Jewish property is concerned, it belonged anyway to the Croatian people, and therefore it is logical that it is being returned to the people . . ."When Marshall Kvaternik stood up to speak, somebody from the benches yelled: "Death to Jews." It is not clear if this was meant to be a dig at Kvaternik, whose wife was the Jewish daughter of Josip Frank (the founder of the Pure Party of Croatian Rights) and mother of Eugene Dido Kvaternik, the boss of RAVSIGUR.Also, a few more weak voices from the 'opposition' demanded punishment for all those who illegally acquired Jewish or Serbian property.On 7th April 1942, the President of the Jewish Council, Dr. Kon, in his letter to Paveli? pleaded "that it will be a lofty God-pleasing deed, if Your Excellency, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the proclamation of the NDH, would consider clemency, and close down the Jewish concentration camps, and release the prisoners . . ." Somebody made a note in the margin of Kon's letter: "No intervention", and that was that.The anti-Semitic campaign in 1942 ended with the 'Anti-Semitic Exhibition' in Zagreb. The exhibits attempted to explain 'how the foreign Jews interloped into the ranks of the Croatian nobility' and increased their activities as the Serbian allies in the oppression of Croatia from 1918 to 1941.However, there were some courageous views of criticism expressed on the subject of this campaign: Fran Milobar, an outstanding member of the Croatian Parliament and a member of the Party of Croatian Rights, was quoted as saying somewhat ironically: "Nowadays, anyone who wants to prove to be a great Croat, goes on and bumps the Jews."A relatively small number of Jews exploited three alternatives for saving their lives: by joining the Partisans, escaping into the Italian zone of occupation or joining the Roman Catholic Church, which was believed to be the best way out, although even this was not a foolproof solution for avoiding deportations. The record of those leaving the faith (in 1941), held in the Zagreb Jewish Council, lists 3,578 persons, (i.e., for the year 1885, 12 persons; before 1910, 37 persons; between 1910 and 1919, 92 persons; between 1920 and 1929, 117 persons; between 1930 and 1937, 94 persons; 1938, 166 persons; 1939, 70 persons and 1940, 65 persons; 1941, 2,877 persons).As far as the regime was concerned, it was irrelevant which religion these people joined, as Jewishness was treated as a racial and not a religious question.The Jewish Council took a rather hard attitude towards the baptized Jews: "At the beginning of 1943, Miroslav ?alom Freiberger XE "Freiberger, Miroslav ?alom" , the head of the Jewish Council in Zagreb, required the baptized Jews to pay the Zagreb Jewish Council contributions irrespective, by stating that the Council does not take into consideration the non-affiliation to our religious community," thus, ironically enough, treating these converts as Jews by race.The Roman Catholic Church had long-established rules for the converts, i.e.,"that it does not receive anyone under its wing unless he or she is completely conscious of the importance and the consequences of such a step."Later, due to exceptional circumstances, the rigorous rules of the church were eased in order to save the lives of the many applicants. In spite of that, many came to grief. Those who converted had more chance of survival. In 1941, 30% of Zagreb Jews were baptized. Several baptized Jews returned to Judaism later when the situation became more secure. In all, in 1945 there were 626 such persons. There were also 16 Jews that converted to Islam in 1941.The instinct to flee XE "Instinct to flee" was restrained only by the hope that their Croat neighbours would succeed in saving them (which many did). Many Jews had considerable wealth, which they were reluctant to abandon. Ironically enough, most of those who succeeded in escaping were the wealthy ones."Mr. Singer from Vara?din, escaped to the Island of Rab, which was under Italian occupation, and arrived there with 150 pieces of luggage."Half of the wealthiest Jews from Zagreb eventually survived. After 1943, only 800 Jews remained living in Zagreb.12,000 Jews, mostly from the territory of the NDH, escaped to Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria. In Kraljevica and on the Island Kor?ula, which were both under Italian occupation, the refugees settled in the abandoned tourist hotels.Similar 'camps' on the Islands of Hvar, Bra? and Lopud were organised on the same pattern. Some of these refugees had links with the Communist Party of Croatia (KPH) and the Partisans. Kraljevica, on the Northern Croatian coast, was legally a part of the NDH territory but was under Italian occupation. Paveli? gave his agreement for the establishment of the Kraljevica XE "Kraljevica" camp on condition that the refugees there give up their Croatian nationality and abandon their property. Out of 1,185 Jews interned in Kraljevica, half of them were from Zagreb. They were allowed to bathe on restricted beaches. Catholic converts attended regular weekly mass. The Germans were peeved by the idyllic situation of this camp. In July 1943 some 3,500 Jews from there were transferred to the Island of Rab, out of reach of the Germans. On 8th September 1943, on the capitulation of Italy, 243 Jewish refugees succeeded in disarming the Italians and joined the Partisans. After a German offensive, the Partisans were forced to evacuate 3,151 refugees from the Island; 1,339 of them joined the Partisans. The Partisans asked the British to fly 700 Jews to Italy, but the British claimed that they lacked aircraft for that purpose. The 204 remaining Jews on Rab were taken to Auschwitz after the Germans occupied Rab in March 1944. In October 1943, 121 Jews from Split were deported to the camp at Zemun. The Spanish and Portuguese Consulates in Zagreb specialised in issuing passports and visas to the Jews, naturally for large sums of money. Thus, 700 Jews from the NDH reached Switzerland, 800 arrived in Palestine and 1,000 went to the USA.Up to the end of 1941, only 612 Jews and during 1942/43 a further 452 Jews from the NDH joined the Partisans. Most of them were communists, 15 were old fighters from the Spanish civil war. Up to the end of the war there were 200 Jewish medical doctors and 400 other Jewish medical staff in the ranks of the Partisans.Some Jews who joined the Partisans soon came to blows with the rigid communist-revolutionary criteria and were summarily liquidated. Helga Hein XE "Hein, Helga " , a well-known Zagreb beauty, was shot for refusing the advances of a Partisan Commandant. Dr. Leo Wilf, XE "Wilf, Dr. Leo" Tito's dentist, and his wife, were shot as spies. As the Jews were among the few people in Croatia who could speak English, they were accused of fraternizing with members of the British delegation. The verdicts for the executions came from Tito himself.At the end of the war, the KPJ practiced openly the so-called 'soviet model' and many Jews (as in the Soviet Union) were suspected of or accused of collaboration with the British Intelligence Service. One such individual was Pavao Breyer (born 1904) XE "Breyer, Pavao" who in 1928 shared 3? years of his imprisonment with Tito who was in prison at the same time. He escaped in 1941 to Italy but returned to Croatia in 1943. In 1944, he was shot for selling Trotskyite literature in his newly opened bookshop. His acquaintance with Tito did not help him much.2,339 Jews who joined the Partisans survived to the end of the war. 804 were killed. Half of the 9,000 surviving Jews were saved by joining the Partisans, i.e., 10% of the total number of the Jewish population in the NDH.Goldstein's research up to this point is objective and well-informed. However, on reaching Chapter 37 entitled 'The Catholic Church, Archbishop Stepinac and the Jews', his subjectivity increases in line with his downright dislike of the great Man. "It may be said," goes on Goldstein, "that Aloysius Stepinac XE "Stepinac, Aloysius" was a man of high moral standards, powerful passion and a narrow political horizon. He was fanatically devout to the Catholic Church, who passionately hated communism. He was a courageous man."The Catholic Church in Croatia was in a much more sensitive position than the Catholic Church as a whole. The Croatian people and the Catholic Church were linked and intertwined over the centuries, so that the NDH satisfied, up to a point, some aims of the Church while lacking the Kingdom of Yugoslavia.Goldstein accepts theoretically the fact that to pray for the Head of State, whoever he might have been, was a traditional expression of loyalty to the State by the Church. Yet, he is less than happy when Archbishop Stepinac visited Marshall Slavko Kvaternik already on 12th April 1941 (two days after the proclamation of the NDH) and expressed loyalty to Paveli? on 16th. "Stepinac (like the majority of the Croats) was fascinated by the fact that the Croatian state was established and maintained that it had to be supported absolutely," continues Goldstein. Goldstein blames the Archbishop XE "Goldstein blames the Archbishop" for waiting seven months before criticising the regime's attitude towards the Orthodox population (i.e., the Serbs, with the emphasis on their conversions to Catholicism). He blames for this irresponsible view only those "who were not conscious of the consequences of their actions." "The Archbishop's criticisms of the regime were contained only within the framework of the system," complains Goldstein.Does Goldstein seriously expect that the Archbishop was able to abseil down the entire Ustasha regime, redraft the system, and change its policies, hoping that with a bit of luck, the regime would go away? Goldstein contradicts his own statement "that no institutions which include the Church, can act outside the strict control of the state power," in order to isolate Archbishop Stepinac by pitting against him the role models that he should have followed, i.e., "75 priests who took part in the war on the side of the Partisans, out of which 52 were Catholics and 18 of whom were killed."Does Goldstein really believe that the Archbishop, in addition to everything else he did, should have joined the Partisans and given his life for Yugoslavia and communism?The Franciscan historian, Fr. Dominik Mandi? XE "Mandi?, Fr. Dominik" who was then in Rome, followed the Archbishop's shiny example and wrote to the Franciscan Provincials in Croatia asking them "to warn the faithful and the people in power not to get involved in any injustice towards the Serbs and the Jews," and particularly that the "Franciscans must not take part in the persecution of the Serbs and Jews or seize their property." "On 23rd April 1941, Archbishop Stepinac, in his letter to Artukovi? in connection with the proclamation of the anti-Jewish laws, turns his attention to cases of good Catholics of the Jewish race . . . the fact that I believe should be taken into account in formulating these laws.""He is, in principle, not opposed to these laws," complains Goldstein, "only to some aspects of these laws." Yet by quoting Stepinac's letter to Artukovi? on 23rd May, he contradicts himself. In that letter, the Archbishop protested and maintained that he was led to believe "that these laws were promulgated for reasons outside of our (i.e., the NDH) power, but that in practice they will not be so cruel. In spite of that we are witnesses that daily more and more such orders affect those who are guilty and those who are not. It is not clear who are those Jews that the Archbishop considers guilty," interrupts Goldstein. The Archbishop clarified this in the rest of the same letter: "It is understandable that the foreign elements cannot be decisive in the matter of the state and the people. Yet to deprive the other national races of the basic existence and to expose them to disgrace, this is an act against humanity and morality. Moral principles are applicable not only in the life of the individual but also to the state apparatus."In an ironic twist too serious to be farcical, the Yugo-communist historian Goldstein is asked to put himself in the lion's den in which the Archbishop found himself. It was barely a month since the new revolutionary regime took over and the Archbishop had already given it a talking to. In the deadly silence around him, he stood as a solitary spokesman for justice.In a letter to Paveli? dated 21st July 1941, the Archbishop stated "that hardly anyone would find sufficient courage to turn your attention to the inhuman treatment of the non-Aryans so it is even more important for me to do so."Goldstein harps repeatedly that, yes, the Archbishop protested against inhuman practices, but never against the laws as such. That, in fact, is not true.The Bishop of Kri?evci XE "Kri?evci, Bishop of" (probably with the agreement of Stepinac) intervened with Slavko Kvaternik (always keeping in mind that Kvaternik's wife was Jewish), "who replied . . . that nothing can be done as these (anti-Jewish laws) are a concession that has to be made to the Germans."Goldstein puts the Archbishop under the microscope that by using the term 'non-Aryans' he de facto accepted racist terminology. Goldstein knows that his remark is unfair, but he means to be unfair.Even when the Archbishop hit the jugular in October 1941 in his sermon in Zagreb Cathedral, when he rhetorically asked, "What are the races and the nations on the earth, before God? . . . All the nations and races come from God. In reality there is only one race: that is God's race . . . For this reason, the Catholic Church always condemned and today condemns every injustice and oppression carried out in the name of class, racial or ethnic theories."“Yes,” goes on Goldstein, “all this is very well, but these are only the Church principles, which the Archbishop could spell out (as a matter of his religious duty), that even the Ustasha regime could not negate.”Couldn't the Archbishop have been more specific is what Goldstein implies, and then immediately in the next paragraph he quotes the Archbishop's letter to Minister Puk in November 1942 in which he was even more specific: "I received several questions from many Jews [baptized or not] who are in mixed marriages with so-called Aryans, asking what ‘will be the fate of their property?’"The Minister replied that the matter was under consideration, and he would give a reply in due course.Professor Goldstein seems finally satisfied with the Archbishop's 'evolution' that intervenes on behalf of all the Jews (baptized or not.) Goldstein's indictment of Archbishop Stepinac lasts an entire chapter and is divided in paragraph-by-paragraph private trials. Then unexpectedly, faced with the facts, he turns reluctantly into Stepinac's Defence Counsel: "In a letter to Paveli? in February 1943, when in Jasenovac several Slovene priests were killed, Stepinac said that Jasenovac is a shameful blot on the NDH."On 14th March 1943 in a sermon in the Cathedral the Archbishop spoke of how"we have not remained insensitive to the sighs of the serious men, and the screams of the unprotected women who are threatened in their own homes for the simple reason that they do not fit the racial theories. How could we remain silent? . . . The Church obviously cannot approve measures which infringe the foundations of human rights."The secretary of the Apostolic Visitator to the NDH, Guiseppe Ramiro Marcone, XE "Guiseppe Ramiro Marcone," Benedictine Guiseppe Masucci, XE "Guiseppe Masucci, Benedictine" in his diary published in Madrid in 1967, also talks about his constant protest against the persecution of the Jews. He described Eugen Dido Kvaternik as a pathological criminal.In the spring of 1943, it was generally considered that the Archbishop was a friend of the Jews and the enemy of the regime. Goldstein speculates that he became more critical of the regime because his own brother was killed by the Germans (or Ustashas), at the end of 1942 or the beginning of 1943, as a collaborator with the Partisans. After another similar sermon, the Archbishop became well-known all over Europe. According to rumours, he had been imprisoned or will be imprisoned.In spite of the well-documented work, Goldstein was subjectively incapable of constructing and supporting a long-term fair judgment on Archbishop Stepinac. To say "that the Archbishop supported the NDH [i.e., the Independent Croatian State] to the end" and not be able to distinguish between the NDH and the ruling Ustasha regime is rather disturbing. Goldstein's final sentence in this saga states that"Aloysius Stepinac was a man with many dilemmas in an agonizing period,"sounds like a mea culpa and sure enough, the Archbishop would forgive him."Who was responsible?" asks Goldstein rhetorically in the next chapter.From May 1941 to July 1942 (i.e., 14 months), the Germans handed over the solution of 'the Jewish question' to the Ustasha authorities. The guiding force behind it "was beyond any doubt Ante Paveli?," goes on Goldstein. He relies on a generalisation by the Croat historian Jere Jareb's XE "Jareb, Jere" in Pola Stolje?a Hrvatske Politike [Half a Century of Croatian Politics]. This is the generalisation:"The decisions were arrived at, it transpires, privately: in conversations between individual ministers, the state councilors, representatives of GUS [General Ustasha Headquarters] on the one side and Dr. Paveli? on the other. Dr. Paveli? concentrated all the power into his own hands. All the fundamental political and personal decisions he made himself," (on his own admission).The second Goldstein argument for this theory is that, "although Paveli? wished to give to the Ustasha actions an illusion of legality, on the other hand his frequent and extreme anti-Jewish inflammatory statements gave an incentive to his followers to become more and more ruthless."The third argument that Goldstein quotes is the statement by Field Marshall Slavko Kvaternik to the communist court in 1947 that "the persecution of the Jews has not occurred on the initiative of Paveli?, but because of the German demands via Paveli?. He is guilty because he allowed them to go ahead . . . in order to cover up that his own wife was of Jewish origin . . . and finally because the Germans knew about his obligations to the Italians and could have exposed him in public if he did not comply."The fourth of Goldstein's arguments is that "the more analytical and more intelligent witness of the circumstances was Vladimir ?idovec XE "?idovec, Vladimir" , a high ranking Ustasha diplomat who, in the communist court in 1947, was of the opinion that Dr. Mile Budak's harangue 'Dirty Dogs get lost over the River Drina" (i.e., then the NDH frontier with Serbia) and Dr. Ante Nik?i?'s XE "Nik?i?, Dr. Ante" statement in 1941 "that in our (Ustasha) revolution we shall wade in blood up to our knees,"were de facto the representations of the spirit and the ideas of Dr. Paveli?. These provocative slogans, however, were directed against the Serbs and had nothing to do with the Jews. ?idovec thought that the persecution of Jews was the only plan that Paveli? brought back upon his return from emigration in 1941. However, this was wrong. If there was a plan it was a plan of how to sort out the Serbs.Goldstein contradicts himself by quoting General Ante Mo?kov's statement to the communist court after the war "that Paveli?'s hard attitude towards the Jews was taken in order to please the Germans, although earlier in the emigration . . . he had a totally different opinion on the subject."(According to this a prepared plan for the liquidation of the Jews did not exist.)"Paveli?'s solution to the Jewish question was spurred on by the pre-war anti-Jewish propaganda in Zagreb. Paveli?'s personal interests met with the interests of certain competing financial circles, which were contrary to the Jewish interests."Goldstein's final argument on the subject is "that there is nothing on record that any member of the NDH government or the members of GUS opposed these policies in principle . . . although there were some exceptions to this . . ." From the preceding, it logically follows that: (a)Paveli? and co. could not have been anti-Semites; (b)that the statements made by the various Ustasha leaders in the communist courts after WWII where they were under the threat of death would not be acceptable in Western Courts of Law, and (c)that under German pressure, Paveli? had a choice; either to go ahead with the persecution of the Jews or resign. Taking into account his Vlach Balkan mindset, the only choice open to him was to go ahead with the persecutions, because the choice for him was between the 'annihilation of his own people or theirs', to use one of the classic Serbian phrases.The decrees 'about the social adherence' and 'the protection of the Aryan blood and the honour of the Croatian people', were signed by Paveli?, Artukovi?, Dumand?i? and Puk. In practice, these were applied by the 'Law about the protection of the national and Aryan culture of the Croatian people' of 4th July 1941', signed by Paveli?, ?ani? (both of whom had Jewish wives), and Budak. Budak's statement in the communist court "that all the members of the government were taking an anti-Semitic position . . . as the Jews in Croatia were always pursuing anti-Croat policies . . . " contradicts the fact that, according to Slavko Kvaternik (whose wife was also Jewish), "the racial laws of 30th April 1941 were not as far-reaching as the German laws, because if they were, many Ustasha functionaries (which included himself and Paveli?) and their wives and families would fall under the hammer of such laws . . . yet in practice these laws were more cruel in order to placate the Germans . . ."This statement, as it springs from a most intimate experience, can be taken as reasonably credible."The whole Ustasha leadership," goes on Goldstein, "was in agreement with the execution of anti-Jewish Laws. Later excuses by some individual Ustashas that they were protecting or saving Jews were totally displaced." Curiously enough, Goldstein accepts that "it is true that almost all of them had their own Jew whom they protected and who survived, but as far as other thousands of Jews that were killed, one can detect the passivity on the part of the Ustashas in the persecution of the Jews, as demanded by the Nazis. This was the basis for the revisionist historiography, which attempts to create a false picture that in the NDH Jews were generally protected."The question of why some Jews were protected and many were not, still remains.Both Paveli? and Eugen Dido Kvaternik survived the war, but subsequently said nothing on the subject.The attributes given to E. Kvaternik were from "clever and intelligent man" to "a figure from hell", "madman and maniac", "abnormal", "sadist" and a "perverse criminal", yet Kvaternik accused Paveli?, after the war, of being the sole creator of the chaotic situation in the state.In September 1958, he wrote, "that it is a notorious fact, which cannot be denied, that many mistakes were made by the Croatian side [i.e., Ustashas] during the last war [WWII], which mistakes from the moral point of view were sinful, from the legal point of view criminal, and from the political point of view, madness."He did not deny that during the seventeen months (while in power) he was a tool of a despot (i.e., Paveli?) whose orders "he put into practice."Mo?kov also accused Paveli? of exploiting, in the most refined way, the fact that Kvaternik's mother was a member of the Jewish family Frank, and that Kvaternik only wanted to prove himself and, as such, came out openly against the Jews.After Paveli? sacked Kvaternik in the summer of 1942, Kvaternik realised that he had been exploited. Even so, "he realised that somebody must sacrifice himself to put in practice these odious but necessary measures." It is true that he kept some sort of control over the events, so that some "of his men, Ustashas Stjepan Crnogaj, Henrik Ger?ik, Branko Randi? and Vladimir Valent, 'who went too far', were sentenced on 9th February 1942 to 3 years imprisonment in Jasenovac. Also, in January/February 1942, 6 old emigrant Ustashas were, for the same reason, under investigation in the Zagreb prison. It appears that Maks Luburi? was in a similar relationship with Paveli? as was Kvaternik."Paveli? was the brain behind the persecutions; Kvaternik was the organiser and Luburi? the executioner, according to Goldstein.The fact that Luburi? was appointed Commander in Chief of the NDH armed forces at the very end on 5th May 1945, although without practical significance, shows Paveli?'s personal affinity with the man who, as himself, was of the Vlach (Morlack) origin. Budak explained the two-track method of Paveli?'s leadership. The first one was legitimate and the second one illegitimate (vlada i strahovlada).From the point of view of the revolutionary agenda, this method of rule proved itself effective – in a head-on collision with the even bloodier communist and Serbian nationalist pro-Yugoslav forces. One reign of terror balanced the other reign of terror. That Paveli? exploited ruthlessly the historical situation of 1941 for his anti-Yugoslav revolution was the logical outcome of the previous Yugoslav terror. The Ustasha involvement as the 'agile executors' of the Nazi order for the solution of 'the Jewish question', as Goldstein describes it, was a needless deviation from the anti-Yugoslav revolution, and contributed to its downfall. The fact is, however, that the Jewish Department within the Ustasha Ministry of the Interior was under the strict control of the German Military Einsatzgruppe XE "German Military Einsatzgruppe" in Zagreb. Siegfried von Kasche, XE "von Kasche, Siegfried" the German Ambassador to the NDH, claimed that as far as the Jewish question was concerned "it was possible that this was discussed between Heydrich and Dido Kvaternik" when they met in Berlin in May 1941. The anti-Jewish measures, as far as the Germans were concerned, took priority over Paveli?'s anti-Yugoslav revolution. With the exception of Artukovi?, the German Secret Services assessed the rest of the Ustasha regime government 'as anti-German', 'pro-Jewish,' and 'under the influence of clericals and freemasons, and only mildly anti-communist', probably as it focused too much on the 'persecution' of the Serbs.Curiously enough, in its beginning (1929), the Ustasha movement had in its ranks many leading Jews. Outstanding among them was Ivo Frank, former member of the Croatian Sabor, son of Josip Frank, leader of the Pure Party of Croatian Rights. Paveli? was financed by the lawyer, Vladimir Sachs, an early Jewish convert (1919), who already then maintained that the Jews were not a nation but Croats of the Moses rite. In 1933, Dido Kvaternik, grandson of Josip Frank through his mother, thus a Jew by Jewish law, and a Catholic, who considered himself a Croat, joined Paveli?. Vlado Singer, a baptized Jew who also considered himself a Croat, introduced Kvaternik to the Movement. From 1929 to 1933 he was the main organiser of the nationalist groups at Zagreb University.He joined Paveli? in Italy. Upon his return to Croatia, he was imprisoned for criticizing Paveli? and was deported to the concentration camp in Stara Gradi?ka XE "Stara Gradi?ka" , and killed in 1943.Inevitably, the revolution began to eat its own children.Later, many other leading Ustashas, non-Jews, would also meet a similar end: Voki?, Lorkovi?, Karamarko and Toma?i?. Singer was imprisoned together with Dr. Vlatko Ma?ek, leader of the HSS. In the concentration camp they had plenty of opportunity to lament over the tragic fate of Croatia.Minister Milovan ?ani?'s wife, Alma St?ger, was also Jewish. Of Jewish origin were Ustasha's Vilko Lehner, Robert Vilcek, David Karlovi?, Ljubomir Kremzir, Oktavijan Svje?i?, Viktor Gutman, David Sin?i?, Ernest Bauer and Ivo Korsky. Vladimir ?idovec (and not only him) found it ironical "that the anti-Jewish measures were brought about by the people intimately linked with Jewishness."Paveli?'s wife was half Jewish (note on family tree of Mara Paveli? in references), as was the wife of the Youth Leader, Ivo Or?ani?, and many others, perhaps also that of General Per?evi?. All these people considered themselves to be Croats. Ljubomir Kremzir had three brothers in the Ustasha ranks. Paveli? himself had his own favorites among the Jews. The owner of the villa in Zagreb, into which he moved in 1941, reached Switzerland with his help. The Weinberger family relations got passports for Switzerland in 1941, and eventually reached the USA. Curiously enough, neither Paveli?, who survived for years after the end of the war nor Eugen Kvaternik, who also survived for years, were pursued, to the author’s knowledge, by the Nazi-hunting Jewish organisations, but only by the Yugoslav UDBA.Paveli?, who had 'his own Jews' who protected him after WWII, and whom he protected during the war, on the basis of 'I scratch your back and you scratch mine', safeguarded his escape route in good time. As an old revolutionary and a shrewd man, he did not put all his eggs into one basket, in spite of his admiration for Hitler. I do not think that he actually believed that Hitler would win the war in spite of his public declaration on that score. Morlachism XE "Morlachism and Byzantianism" and Byzantianism XE "Byzantianism and Morlachism " were the prevailing factors in his psyche.Hitler, who enabled him to take power in Croatia from 1941 to 1945, simply created for him a long-awaited opportunity to get even with a big bang against the Serbs. Paveli? exploited that situation skillfully, exploiting even Hitler in return for a modest return on his war effort for Hitler. In this process, he revealed very little of his own thoughts, either during or after WWII. Finally, it did not even occur to him in his wildest dream to kill himself. Suicide is left to those people who feel a certain spiritual unease in critical situations. Not to the Morlachs.Paveli? also protected Aleksandar Klein XE "Klein Aleksandar " , the chief supplier of Ustasha uniforms in Hungary, for years. Slavko Kvaternik, when responding in the communist court in 1947 to the question about the persecution of the Jews, stated: "Not one of us in the government agreed totally with the anti-Jewish laws, at least not in that form, but that was required from us and we did not have any other choice."Goldstein argues that all these intimate Ustasha links with the Jews cannot eradicate their direct or indirect responsibility for the death of 30,000 Jews. In this he is absolutely right. The Jews in the Ustasha ranks were strictly volunteers, and the Jews in the Croatian Regular Army, the Domobrans, equally so as they were not forced to join. Yet, out of a total number of 131 generals in the regular NDH army (Domobrans), twenty-eight were of Jewish origin, i.e. 21.4%, four of whom had the highest decoration of Vitez (a Knight). Two of them were killed fighting the Partisans: Ivo (Vitez) ?nur was killed in the battle near ?panovica and died in Zagreb on 31st May 1944. Ivan (Vitez) Zgaga was killed in defence of Gospi? against the Partisans on 24th October 1942.General Ferdinand (Vitez) Halla XE "Halla, General Ferdinand (Vitez)" committed suicide on 14th May 1945 rather than surrender to the British.The Partisans killed General Bo?idar Zorn on 23rd May 1945 after being handed over to them by the British.Generals Oton ?u?, Josip (Vitez) Metzger and Nikola (Vitez) Steinfel were killed by the Partisans in Zagreb.Generals Julije Fritz and ?olc were handed over by the British to the Partisans and were shot in Belgrade on 24th September 1945.General Slavko (Vitez) ?tancer, Commander in Chief of the Croatian Regular Army, was killed in Belgrade without trial.General Josip Gamberger died in the communist concentration camp of Goli Otok XE "Goli Otok" in 1956.General Hinko Alabanda died as an emigrant in Germany in 1959.General Djuro Isser died after being released from the communist concentration camp on 19th January 1963 (after eighteen years). General Dr. Milan Praunsberger died on 21st September 1960 in Zagreb after six years in the communist concentration camp.All these honourable men, Croats of Jewish origin, served their homeland (not the regime); they fought, suffered and died for Croatia.Professor Goldstein carefully avoids mentioning the other side of the coin to the jaundiced pro-Yugoslav communist view.In 1941 almost 90% of the Croatian people were peasants, most of whom were members of the HSS. If there was any 'anti-Semitism' among them, it was a kind of traditional weariness of the local Jewish traders, such as it existed among the peasantry all over Europe.Goldstein accepts that if the leader of the HSS, Dr. Ma?ek, had come to power in the NDH (which he declined), there would not have been persecution of the Jews in Croatia, "but the Nazis would have carried it out themselves".Would the NDH have been acceptable, in that case, is the question that Goldstein was not prepared to answer?As a pro-Yugoslav orientated former member of the Yugoslav communist party, Goldstein throughout his book, emphasizes the 'Ustasha' genocide of the Jews, and minimizes that of the Nazis. Thus, the Germans in his book appear to be Ustasha lackeys. Goldstein's bitterness against the NDH, which he deliberately equates with the Ustasha regime, is best expressed in the following sentence: "When in 1941 the Ustasha genocide of the Jews and others commenced, the fact is that some Croats were ready to take part in it, but also that a great number of Croats put up resistance against it actively or passively."In order to be historically correct this sentence should be rephrased: "When in 1941, the Nazi genocide of the Jews in the NDH began, the fact is that some Croats (i.e., some Ustashas or their sympathizers) joined them readily . . . but the majority of the Croats put up resistance to this outrage, actively and passively." There are, in fact, hundreds of similar statements in Goldstein's book that bend the historically proven facts in order to coincide with the Yugo-communist view of this tragedy of the Jewish people."Communism attracted many followers among the Jews [and these were obviously Ustashas targets] but one must not forget that there were many Jews who were attached to the Ustasha movement or other radical right-wing options." [Globus, Croatian newspaper, date.]In answering the question, "what was the reason for the attachment of some Jews to the Ustasha movement?" Goldstein became evasive. Was it self-hatred, fear, Croatian Statehood or something else? "It was a bit of everything. I do not have enough information on what they thought or said. Vlado Singer or Oktavian Muci Svje?i? [Frischmann], brothers Kremzir and others, became Croatian nationalists, but I don't think that was out of fear. They simply integrated; most of them became Catholic and declared themselves as Croats. This new identity did not have anything to do with their previous Jewishness. It is difficult to speak about it, because some people believe that identity is fixed by birth. That is partly correct. Others think that identity may change during a lifetime. And that too is partly correct. Vlado Singer did not think of himself as a Jew and also did not change his name. He was killed in Stara Gradi?ka camp, probably because he was a Jew." (Globus, Croatian newspaper, date.)A few years ago, the subject would have been taboo, but now Goldstein tells us firstly that identity is fixed and secondly that it may change, and that both situations are partly correct. Then he tells us that Singer was a Croat but, in the end, he was killed probably because he was a Jew. However, Goldstein is not quite sure about that. He also underlines his lack of information on what these Ustasha Jews actually thought and felt.Conscious of the need to reposition everything that has been historically established, Goldstein seems to cast doubts about the dangers of the identity mutation. What he tells us in his complicated roundabout way, contrary to the evidence, is that some Jews who had lived in Croatia for a long time could not have been Croatian nationalists and remain Jews at the same time. For that to happen, they must have passed through an identity crisis, must have become assimilated, and must have changed their religion. He is telling us all this at the time when, for example, in Britain, the leader of the British Tories was a Jew and an emigrant of the third generation. The traditional argument about identity vs. nationalism has now become, like everything else, an argument about rebranding. By the way, Prof. Goldstein who teaches history to young Croatians at Zagreb University, knows where he himself stands in this identity debate.On another occasion, Goldstein addressed the question of historical guilt vs. punishment with much more vigour: "The victims of the [Ustasha] concentration camp in Jasenovac were all innocent and the victims of Bleiburg were all guilty." What we are looking at here is a form of historical Croatian roulette XE "Historical Croatian roulette" . The opposite may just as easily be true: that the victims of Jasenovac were all guilty and the victims of Bleiburg were all innocent. Yet it does not occur to Prof. Goldstein that in both cases some victims were guilty and some were innocent. Guilt, then, is only a question of proportion. A massive literature exists on the great Croatian exodus from Yugo-communism, which in the post-1945 years was not unique. Virtually millions of people in Europe were escaping the delights of communism. At least 75% of the people in the Bleiburg exodus (some quarter of a million) were civilian refugees. To state that these people were guilty because they refused to live in the Yugoslav utopia, and therefore they had to be slaughtered, puts the history of genocide on escalated alert until the day this question is finally resolved, if ever.The Croatian Regular Army included all sections of the Croatian population: Muslims, Jews and even many Serbs. 50,000 BiH Muslims died in the Bleiburg exodus. Some 7,000 Jews were killed in the various branches of that army. They were not Ustashas, and even all the Ustashas were not guilty of any punishable war crimes except for the 'historical' crime that they stood up to the Yugoslav utopia and its allies, thus being on the 'wrong side in the war', and thus ‘opting’ to be liquidated. The same logic applies to those people in the Jasenovac camp XE "Jasenovac camp" who were on the 'wrong side' to the NDH state, and as such had to be eliminated by force of the raison d'êtat.However, the Bleiburg liquidation XE "Bleiburg liquidation" was at least four times greater than the Jasenovac liquidation. This was the reason that Dr. Milan Bulaji?, XE "Bulaji?, Dr. Milan" as the Yugoslav Minister in charge of the Jasenovac myth, had to inflate the number of the victims in Jasenovac to 750,000 and even to over one million, 'buried in graves scattered over an area of 240 square kilometres.' It is very regrettable that well-researched and informed overview of the Jewish tragedy in the NDH is constantly interrupted by Yugo-communist propaganda and deviations. Often in such passages, a kind of analytical fatigue sets in. One begins to wonder whether Goldstein is actually a credible figure and, if he is, then to wish for somewhat less apocalyptic language in which to avoid these deviations. That Paveli? and co. were not alone in the organisation of extermination, and that "numerous executioners were unconscious tools of the real culprits," is an indisputable fact, but it is debatable whether they were "blinded by racial and other theories". The whole subject matter of the persecution of the Jews in the NDH rests on the question: What was the motive of the regime in such a criminal pursuit?The focus and the attention of the NDH regime, as the anti-Yugoslav contestants in the war of the Yugoslav utopia, were the communist Partisans and the Great Serbian Chetniks and not any involvement in the "solution of the Jewish question".To quote Goldstein himself: "The Ustasha regime did not represent a majority, and not all the Ustashas took part in the anti-Semitic propaganda and other anti-Jewish activities," And"[according to Goldstein when he published his book], up to 2001 there were 83 Croats proclaimed as the Righteous among the people, i.e., those who were saying the Jews put their own lives in danger". Paveli?'s decision to get involved in the persecution of the Jews, taking into account his family and friendship links with the Jews, and the fact that two thirds of the Jews in the NDH were Croatian nationals, is difficult to explain. To hit at the Jewish community that for all intents and purposes was a valuable part of the Croatian nation with influential international links, could do nothing but weaken the state's struggle with its deadly enemies, the Yugoslav communists and the Great Serbian Chetniks. It would also lead, without a shadow of doubt, to the fall of the NDH. Within the comprehensive picture of the Yugoslav utopia, the NDH struggle against the Yugoslav forces was not only justified but also inevitable and could have been readily understood at the end of WWII. The persecution of the Jews XE "persecution of the Jews" , however, put a black blot on the existence of the NDH.Occupying the bulk of Goldstein's book are the detailed descriptions of the tragedies of the Jewish individuals and their families. Most works on the subject have passed over these in silence. The reason that these descriptions in Goldstein's book are impressive is because they are based on detailed accounts. When dealing with mass deportations, on the other hand, executions, and the responsibility for them, Goldstein is stuck, so to speak, in the arithmetical generalisations about the accountability for these crimes: "There exist separate lists of the members of the Jewish community: in the territory of the NDH approximately 38-39,000 Jews lived before the war, including those who were baptized and who, by the racial laws, were treated as Jews, and only 9,000 of them lived to see the end of the war. So, it may be said that during the genocide of the Jews in the NDH and Zagreb between 1941 and 1945 75%-80% of the Jewish community lost their lives, or that only every fifth Jew in that territory lived to see the liberation in 1945."In the discussion about the conflict of the Yugoslav utopia, raising the subject of the suffering of the Jews is unavoidable. It is essentially a story of despair - for the victims, and to a lesser degree, for the perpetrators of these crimes. Frustration provoked by the simplification and politicisation of this subject led to a kind of analytical fatigue. On the other hand, telling people what they would most hate to hear might be a way of learning to deal with such a tragic and difficult past. In the chapter 'About revisionism in historiography', Goldstein meets the so-called 'Croatian revisionism' head on. He quotes three reasons for this. Firstly, that communist Yugoslavia treated the subject of Ustashism and the NDH with sweeping condemnation and often exaggeration. At the same time, the communist Partisan war and post-war crimes were under absolute embargo. At the end of the 1980s, the discovery of these Partisan crimes became media-sensations, used for the purpose of making the Ustasha crimes seem relatively less horrendous.Secondly, the motives for the author’s dealing with this subject were determined considerably by their political bent. These authors were not prepared to face head on the Ustasha, as well as the Partisan and Chetnik crimes in the way that they are faced in this book. Thirdly, the Croatian historiographic ‘revisionism’ was partly a reaction to the explosion of the Serbian nationalism and revisionism at the end of the 1980s.It is rather strange that Goldstein's deeply held antipathy and dislike of Franjo Tudjman makes Tudjman a scapegoat for the Croat ‘revisionism’ XE "Tudjman, Franjo – dislike of makes Tudjman a scapegoat for Croat ‘revisionism’" over the next eleven pages of his book, which have nothing to do with the holocaust in Croatia. This is deliberate. The reason is quite clear: the lover of all things Yugoslav, Goldstein, who had also the misfortune to have been reared by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, could not forget Tudjman coming to his senses, and rejecting his own communist past, lock, stock and barrel. Next, he could not forgive Tudjman for the renewal of the Croatian state, which Goldstein tendentiously compares with the NDH. Again, he cannot forgive Tudjman for courageously bringing into the open the communist war and post-war crimes, which, by Goldstein's own admission, had been kept under embargo in Yugoslavia. Finally, Tudjman did not cover up the Ustasha crimes. What he did was base all his findings on the research of the Institute of the Workers Movement XE "Institute of the Workers Movement" , of which he was the President, and which Institute operated in Zagreb officially during the Yugoslav communist regime. What Tudjman actually did was to tell people like Goldstein that which they did not want to hear: the truth.However, Goldstein, in spite of all the considerable credits in his book, was not prepared to learn how to deal with the difficult past, fairly and squarely, like Tudjman. After all, Tudjman the Partisan lost his own father by the Partisan Communist hand. What one cannot excuse is that Goldstein, when hitting at Tudjman, does it with such venom: "Tudjman's book 'The wilderness of historical reality' [Bespu?a povijesne zbiljnosti, 1981], stands on the very foundations of the Croatian historiographic revisionism. The book is dominated by two themes: an analysis of the phenomenon of the religious and the state persecutions in history, and the negation of 'The Jasenovac Myth', and the genocidal character of the Croatian people. Goldstein deliberately exploits Tudjman's generalisation that "persecution, hatred, crime and revenge were an inseparable part of the lives of individuals, nations and human society throughout history", and his "general condemnation of genocide and its perpetrators up to and including WWII.". Tudjman proved in practice more than once in the Croato-Yugoslav conflict (1990-95) that his principle was the 'overcoming' of the differences between Croatia and its aggressors. He had little success, until he was finally pushed to use force."The overcoming of the differences" without the use of force in international affairs might be the ideal. Yet in practice, after WWII, there were more than one hundred conflicts and wars, including the Iraq war, that could not have been solved within the "political tendencies of the enlightened world."Then Goldstein quotes five standard components of the historiographic revisionism:1.A politically inspired theme, supported by the selective use of arguments.2.The sources and the arguments for the theme are not checked but taken as they are.3.The sources and arguments, which refute a priori a given theme are systematically avoided and are mentioned only if they can be refuted.4.Individual cases are generalized.5.The revisionist historiography doesn't shy from falsification.Goldstein goes on to argue that Tudjman's description of the behaviour of (some) Jews in the Jasenovac camp XE "Jasenovac camp" contain all the above five components.So regrettably does Goldstein's book, in spite of its valuable informational character.This being so, the question is how to read this book, which in turn is part of the larger debate about how Goldstein's Yugoslav consciousness affects the way we read it. Then we are left on our own to count and apportion 'the blame' in the accusatory text, only to find that we are tempted involuntarily to come to the conclusion that the Goldstein book was written solely with the aim of proving that the NDH was a criminal state, i.e., "a highly politically inspired theme, supported by the selective use of arguments. The establishment of the NDH was therefore a serious step backwards because it meant, to all intents and purposes, the elimination of everything valuable that Zagreb Jews, together with other Zagreb citizens, had created in the previous hundred years in the political, economic and cultural field."The gist of his argument for the above seems to be that neither Nazism nor even Paveli?'s willfulness and servility to Hitler were so much responsible for the suffering of the Jews in the NDH, but that the establishment of the NDH, i.e., the Croatian State, per se, was the chief culprit."That [Goldstein's] revisionist historiography doesn't shy from falsification" is corroborated by the Dean of the Philosophical Faculty, in Zagreb University, Professor Neven Budak: XE " Budak, Professor Neven - Dean of Philosophical Faculty, Zagreb University" "A great number of the methodical mistakes show again the author [Goldstein] approaches the scientific work superficially and carelessly. His habit of inventing sources where they don't exist is most dangerous in science and then on the basis of such fictions, he develops further conclusions . . . it may be said that de facto he is writing sci-fi." Goldstein's statement "that the German Army located in Zagreb an Einsatzgruppe, which controlled the execution of the genocide over the Jews . . .", by immediately adding that "the Ustashas were more than keen executors" corresponds exactly to the revisionist practice "that the sources . . . which refute a priori given theme . . . are mentioned only if they can be refuted." Goldstein also takes for granted and quotes as the sources the admissions given to the communist courts in 1945 by the imprisoned NDH functionaries.Absolutely without exception, the so-called Partisan 'revolutionary laws' XE "Partisan 'revolutionary laws'" defined everything that occurred after 1941, either before the Partisan, or later before the civil and military courts. The Yugoslav communists did not liquidate Croatian PoWs only because they were Croats. They were liquidated also as a 'revolutionary' warning to others. The fact is that the communists repeated that the NOB was a revolution. Whoever was brought before the Yugo-communist courts (Kvaternik, Mo?kov, et al.) did not have any choice: now those who were dead or beyond the reach of the Yugo-communists became the only hopeful alibi; there was no doubt at all what the 'Peoples Organs' expected to hear from the accused: the vibrations emitted by the investigators were well-understood by the accused. It was logical then to transfer the burden of the responsibility to the dead or the absent. So, the confessions, during the investigations in 1945, fitted the way that the comrades extracted, by hook or by crook, the confessions as they arose.These confessions for the Yugo-communist investigators had a confirmative power of their then revolutionary theory. The accused, after being most horribly tortured, "began to sing", hoping that the victors would be merciful. There were, as always, honourable and exceptional cases. These admissions, from the point of view of the law, were precisely and absolutely valueless. Prior to the confessions, the accused experienced imprisonment, gross humiliations, and both physical and psychological torture. These ruins of human beings, who passed through such hard experiences, cannot be proof of the relevant legal object (let alone historiographic documentary references). The admissions and the stories given by the accused were not only null, but also void; no Court of Law would accept such admissions without a valid, objective, and real confirmation; as such, these could not form part of a legal basis about guilt and punishment. All the admissions given after WWII to the communist courts by the NDH functionaries must be put into the context of the victorious communist dictatorship and its interest in the destruction of its anti-Yugoslav communist competitor. Already in 387 BC, the Gaelic General Breno, when captured, (according to Livius) yelled: "Vae Victis". In the meantime, Paveli?, the only one who could have contributed to the clarification of these events, remained strangely silent.A case in point is Tudjman's quotation of the anti-Semitic statement made by a former Jasenovac inmate Serb, Vojislav Prnjatovi? XE "Prnjatovi?, Vojislav" , in Belgrade in 1942, which Goldstein proved was a falsification. Even so, he reprimanded Tudjman for taking for granted this statement, quoting Tudjman: "The statement made by Prnjatovi? breathes with exaggerations, or we may say even anti-Semitism, but other witnesses also spoke in a similar way." Goldstein, however, accepts that Tudjman in his work 'The Wilderness of the Historical Reality' "in a good part of it refuted successfully the myth about the 700,000 killed in Jasenovac and about the genocidal character of the Croats, but here and there falls into the other extreme . . . by minimizing the total number of victims . . . and by the strange distribution of the responsibility [for these crimes] indirectly minimizing Ustasha responsibility."The subject matter of the number of victims in Jasenovac and other concentration camps in the NDH was already discussed in other chapters, and there is no need to repeat it here."The other source for Tudjman's book," Goldstein goes on, "was Ante Ciliga's memoirs 'Sam kroz Europu u Ratu, 1939-1945' (Alone through Europe during the War, 1939-1945). XE "Ciliga, Ante - Memoirs 'Sam kroz Europu u Ratu, 1939-1945' (Alone through Europe during the War, 1939-1945)" Ciliga was probably the oldest high-ranking Croatian communist who spent a lot of time in the Soviet Union and ended up in the Jasenovac concentration camp from December 1941 to December 1942. One hundred and forty-five mildly anti-Semitic pages of his book relate to Jews, one way or another, or to the subject of their behaviour in Jasenovac. Goldstein describes Ciliga as a Fabulist: "Ciliga's fables are perhaps good material for pulp fiction, but as memoirs they expose Ciliga as an unreliable witness," and then goes on: "Tudjman is perhaps the only historian in Europe who accepted Ciliga's memoirs as genuine. . . . He avoided mentioning passages in Ciliga's book that speak positively about Jews. . . . Tudjman has, however, omitted the offending passages from the American edition of his book, with an apology to B’nei B’rith."Goldstein's revisionist account of Tudjman's 'revisionism' XE "Tudjman's 'revisionism'" , even if it is here and there persuasive, is unlikely to catch on as long as there exists (on both sides of the argument) a mythology as emotionally compelling as that of Jasenovac. Goldstein should abandon all hope of winning in a confrontation with Tudjman. On page 609 he goes even further into open warfare with the 'revisionism' in the political and public life of the present-day democratic state of Croatia.Apropos Ciliga, nobody has as yet produced such an eclectic curriculum vitae on the origins of Paveli?'s party (Ustashe) as Ciliga did: "It was a philo-Semite party, a one person 'Jewish party among the Croats' . . . originally the old Germanophile party, which later turned 'Anglophile', headed by the 'Catholic Anglophiles', pieced together from the intelligentsia and non-Ustasha factors which controlled the editorship of the chief Ustasha ideological newspaper 'Spremnost' (Readiness) (with the sub-title 'The Thought and Anchor of the Ustasha Croatia'). By means of this paper it took a determined pro-Allied line, and in the legal framework of the Paveli? regime had considerable influence. Even so, that regime at the top was terrorist, in the middle anarchic and at the base primitively patriarchal."Goldstein quotes Tudjman's statement at the first session of the HDZ in February 1990 that "The NDH was not only a fascist creation but was also an expression of the centennial yearnings of the Croatian people for an independent state."Goldstein fails to distinguish between the regime and the state.This is deliberate. The fact that these two fundamentally different components, XE "Two fundamentally different components" philosophically disparate, fused at a particular historical moment cannot annul their individual meaning. The argument that the NDH state and the Ustasha regime were ultimately an unhappy fusion, stands. Cardinal Stepinac understood this dichotomy profoundly. Most dictatorships are good examples of such states, as dictators habitually identify themselves with the nations over which they rule.Goldstein himself is aware that the majority of the Croatian people put up with that regime for the sake of the state, and most of them defended it honourably against its bitter enemies. To say then, "that if it is right that the NDH really was "an expression of the centennial yearnings of the Croatian people" then it would bring other nations, first and foremost the Serbs, the Jews and the Gypsies who were subject to genocidal crimes by that state, into confrontation with the Croatian historical memory and the Croatian people generally." It is deliberately misleading.Goldstein objects, for example, that during Tudjman's term in office (1990-2000), the communist term 'Ustasha-Domobran' army was swapped for the term 'Croatian Army', and that for the other side the term 'Yugo-communist forces' was used. He does not mention that this Croatian army was massacred by the communists (without a doubt a (post)-war crime) but is quick to point out that in the last few days of the NDH, Paveli? made Maks Luburi?, the former commander of all the concentration camps in the NDH, its Commander in Chief. According to Goldstein, this irrelevance disqualifies that army from the Croatian name.Essentially, Goldstein is pulling our leg (zajebava), as he cannot get rid of, shall we spell it out, his Yugo-communist mind-set. He analyses another 'revisionist' work – that of Jere Jareb's 'Half a Century of Croatian Politics' (Pola Stolje?a Hrvatske Politike). XE "Jareb, Jere - 'Half a Century of Croatian Politics' (Pola Stolje?a Hrvatske Politike)" On the one hand, he finds this work 'competent', and on the other objects to Jareb's use of euphemisms, e.g., instead of using a generally understood word like 'crimes', he describes them "as the Ustasha Balkan political methods".Jareb clearly distinguishes, and Goldstein objects, to the difference between Ustashas soldiers and the Ustasha Defence Forces (a political-police formation) created in 1941 as a para-military army, "which did not operate according to the generally accepted military code."In reviewing other 'revisionist' books, Goldstein agrees that Josip Jur?evi? XE "Jur?evi?, Josip" , in his book Nastanak Jasenova?kog Mita (The Genesis of the Jasenovac Myth), "by and large rationally refutes the exaggerated numbers of the Jasenovac victims"but at the same time, implicitly and sometimes explicitly, negates "the genocidal purpose and the criminal character of the Ustasha camps, particularly that of Jasenovac . . . . " "Jur?evi? is suggesting that Jasenovac was only a labour camp, and not also a place for the massive destruction of people." In trying to demolish Josip Pe?ari?'s 'revisionist' book Srpski Mit o Jasenovcu (The Serbian Myth about Jasenovac), which deals mainly with the number of victims (this number is disputed all round, and on Goldstein's own admission is hugely exaggerated), Goldstein again returns to his favourite kc Cardinal Stepinac. Pe?ari? complains that the Commission of the Jerusalem Yad Vashem Museum which "under the influence of the Great Serbian propaganda about the genocidal character of the Croatian people" has dropped the Stepinac candidacy for the status of 'The Righteous among the Nations' for his work in saving the Jews.Goldstein, however, found a loophole in the argument and states, "that Stepinac, among other things, simply did not fulfill the conditions for this status, as while he was saving the Jews, he failed to bring his own life in danger, which is one of the two basic conditions for this status".This is, at least, debatable. To my knowledge, nobody in Britain brought their life in danger to save the Jews in Europe.In reference to Himmler's visit to Zagreb on 5th May 1943, Goldstein states, "the Ustasha and Nazis services had already completed that business (i.e., the deportation of all the Jews to the camps). Up to these deportations in May 1943, the Ustashas and Germans have, without Himmler's help or direct influence, deported and liquidated about 30,000 Croatian and Bosnian Jews."Is he really saying then that from May 1943 up to May 1945 not a single Jew was killed or deported? If the answer is yes, this is a significant admission.His rather stereotyped arguments require a lot of clarification. One is left feeling that Professor Goldstein as a historian might have done better to devote more thought to the clearer apportionment of the blame for the liquidation of the Jews between the Germans and the Ustashas rather than deliberately lumping them together.One cannot have it both ways, i.e., did the Ustashas have the upper hand over the Germans? It simply does not make any sense. Goldstein's reference throughout the book to "the Ustashas and the Germans", like Siamese twins, conveys a deliberate intent not to distinguish between two very disparate groups of military organisations with different aims.In an interview in Globus (24th May 2002, p.11) Goldstein tried to rationalise the irrational: "The crime of Jasenovac and the crime of Bleiburg cannot be one and the same thing. The first one was the crime of genocide and the other a crime of revenge. Besides, all those who perished in Jasenovac were innocent, and in Bleiburg and after, many who perished any court would sentence with more severe sentences."We have already replied to this previously.Referring to the reconciliation of all the Croats, the policy that Tudjman advocated, Goldstein stated: "There cannot be reconciliation between the executioners [Ustashas] and the victims [i.e., the innocent Jews]".Indeed, neither could there be reconciliation between the Croats and their Yugoslav persecutors. INDEX \e "" \c "2" \z "2057" ‘Croatian’ Serbs, encouraged by American noises are naming their own price1133‘Patron saint’ of the Serbs755‘Red Charity’, monies for Partisan communists in woods858Act of terrorism678Adopted socialist rhetoric1017Ad?i?, General Blagoje1081AGITPROP - Commissions for Agitation and Propaganda928AGIT-PROP of the CK KPJ.871Agrarian reform930Agrarian Reform855Agreement ambiguous585Ajdukovi?,Dane - Col. Lieutenant1117Akmadji?1267Albright, Madeleine1132Alexander771, 1065Alexander, Field Marshal Sir Harold724Alkalaj, Dr.777All dictators 'rule in name of people'693All hell broke loose when Movement tried to unveil mysteries of Belgrade financial concerns957All Tito’s representatives in US were Serbs (Markovi?, Prica, Stevan Dedijer)528Alliance between USSR and Western powers removed all doubts about character of alliance578America vs. Europe?1240American Marshall Plan939Amnesty International1021An Alternative Bill of Health1135An alternative rational political solution977Anecdotal Evidence711Anne McElvoy1097Ante Markovi?1081Ante Parad?ik1049Anti-Communist Militia585Anti-Croat campaign in Britain and US525Anti-Croat insinuations592Anti-Semitism in Croatia (and Bosnia-Hercegovina, then part of NDH) never existed beyond odd jibe and nothing like that which existed in England531Apocalyptic events of 1945708Appendix 11045Appendix I1249Arbour, Luise1111Archbishop Stepinac as Scapegoat831Arkan, -?eljko Ra?njatovi?1109Artukovi?, Andrija780, 930Asanovi?, Aljo?a1185Ashdown, Paddy1109Assembly camps (sabirni logori)623Assembly of European regions1202Assistance of German units592Atanastje Jevti? - Episcope of Banat1112Atlantic Charter861Attack on Kupres – 11th/12th August 1942656Augustin?i?, sculptor937Autonomous Croatian Principality540Aversion to cultural achievements928AVNOJ - Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia760AVNOJ session in Jajce on 29th November 1943755Avoid danger of civil war752Avramov, Smilja1270Axis863B’nai B’rith - Kent Schiner, President of the Jewish Organisation1138Babi?1114, 1246Babi?, Du?ko1113Babi?, Du?ko - Lieutenant Colonel1112Babi?, Ivan - Croatian Regular Army Col.671Babi?, Milan1078, 1103, 1116, 1246Badel, Marijan1036Bakari?, Dr. - President of Federative Republic of Croatia854Bakari?, Dr. V.1015Bakari?, Dr. Vladimir692, 966Baker, James1083, 1096Balti?, Milutin974Bamburac, Dr. Jovan1044Banac1154Banovina Hrvatska’1153Barakovi?, Ivica771Bararon, Dudo777Barber, Tony1094Bari?evi?, Stjepan770Basset, Richard1073Basta, Milan Commissar, Great-Serb, lied as a matter of principle703Battle of Kosovo965Battles around Kupres, Tomislav Grad, ?ujica and Livno652Battles for Livno and Kupres – 2nd to 11th August 1942655Battles for Prozor Basin and Valley of River Vrbas649Beisner, Willy - Attaché774Beissner, Gestapo Obersturmbannführer532Belgrade Agreement between Tito and ?uba?i?929Belgrade Mafia1077Belgrade media cover964Belgrade Ministry of Information970Belgrade propaganda1093, 1098Belgrade’s New Class’s clowns980Belini? Marko1036Belini?, Marko1149Bellum omnium contra omnes587Benzler, Felix - Representative of German Foreign Ministry in occupied Belgrade584Berger, Gottlob774Bernard Levin1063Be?ovan, Professor Gojko1196Bi?ani?, Dr. Rudolf1193Biggest pockets of resistance591Biggest slaughter occurred at end of July in Western Bosnia623Biland?i?1270Bilandzic, Du?an1043Biland?i?, Du?an759Binder, David1007Bir?anin, Trifunovi? Ilija - Chetnik Commander594Black Legion (Crna Legija)665Black Legion, most experienced fighting unit, sent towards Livno653Bla?ki?, General Tihomi1243Bla?ki?. Tihomir1276Bla?evi?, ?iro1174Blazevi?, Jakov858Bla?evi?, Jakov - communist State Prosecutor1036Bleiburg868, 877, 1161Bleiburg and its consequences722Bleiburg liquidation795Bleiburgs1031Blewitt, Graham1111Blindness of British Government's policy722Bljesak (Lightning)1107Bloch, Ernst1002Boban, Ljubo1041Boban, Mate1267Boban, Mate - President of Herceg-Bosna1163, 1166Boban, Rafael - Commander874Boljkovac, Josip1251Bolshevik system of running the State1203Bonefa?i?, Dr. - Bishop of Split - imprisoned by OZNA, Secret Police749Book of Visitors in the President’s Office?1254Bo?kovi?, Dr. Milo996Bosnia – A War within War644Bosnia-Hercegovina610Bosnia-HercegovinaH formed part of the NDH870Bosnian Muslims1100, 1249Bosnian Pashaluk1105Bouchers, Richard1094Boutros-Ghali - General Boutros UN Secretary1245Bozani?, Archbishop1201Breakup of Yugoslavia525Breier, Louis - President of American Jewish Union864Breyer, Pavao783Brezhnev’s Moscow952Brioni Island957Britain did not share sentiments of this agreement752Britain relaxed its support for Chetniks675Britain was conspicuous by its absence864British air lifted Tito to Italy680British did not like being associated with Ma?ek in London745British Helsinki Group1232British in favour of Chetniks526British met this arrival with horror875British should have treated this matter as a purely ‘Yugoslav affair’704British stiff upper lip with which they handed over hundreds of thousands of innocent Croatian soldiers and civilians to Tito’s butchers679British sympathetic to ‘information’ emanating from their favourite protégés617British turned a blind eye to these ‘formalities’694British went cool on idea of invading the Balkans668Brki?, Du?ko - CK KPH882Brki?, Kri?an1022Brocks, George1085Brotherhood and Unity569, 945, 955Bruno Bu?i?867, 1006, 1020Bruno, Giordano1162Budak, Professor Neven - Dean of Philosophical Faculty, Zagreb University799Budi?a, Dra?en1187, 1233Budi?a, Drazen - Croatian students' leader973Buerger, Professor from the Abwehr centre Klagenfurt573Buha (flea), Milorad1108Bukinac, Dr. Beato -Franciscan Friar853Bulaji?, Dr. Milan795Bulat, Rade1040Bulldozing of military cemeteries699Burning of ‘enemy’ villages, killing ‘bourgeois’ politicians and wealthy people solely on ideological grounds579Bush, George1089Bu?ic, Bruno1003, 1015Bu?i?, Bruno1006, 1022, 1024Butorac, Mile1187Byzantianism and Morlachism791Byzantine tradition1063Cairo Government676Capitulation of Italy 1943583Captain McEwen758Cardinal Kuhari?1097Carissimi-Priori, Luigi - former Italian anti-fascist partisan, wrote in Storia Nuova Contemporanea (Milan) about Winston Churchill’s friendly correspondence with Mussolini in 1939585Carrington, Lord1086Cash nexus980Castro – nickname of Mesi?’1234Casual Yugoslav policemen950Catholic Action860Catholic Episcopate857?engi?843Centralist backlash967CEREO - Croatian Centre for the Development of Non-Governmental Organisations1196Cerovski, Bo?idar771, 772?ervenko, Zvonimir - General1124?eta - regiment582Cetineo, Dr. Ante860Chamberlain1099Champion, Marc1089, 1092Champion, Mark1096Character Assassination of President Tudjman by the Soro? Press Continues in Boring Instalments1152Chenus, Georges-Marie - French Ambassador to Croatia from 1991-951220Chetnik aim the destruction of NDH619Chetnik aim was creation of Great-Serbia within Yugoslavia540Chetnik anti-Muslim hatred was forgotten for moment625Chetnik Crimes637Chetnik fight against Partisans583Chetnik outrages in Bosnia-Hercegovina during 1941-45 were, in essence genocide611Chetnik policy of swallowing up Bosnia-Hercegovina into Great Serbia618Chetnik regiments of Royal Yugoslav army murdered twenty-five Croats in ?apljina (Hercegovina) yelling,533Chetnik revenge591Chetnik strategy583Chetnik-Partisan relationship pivoted on an anomaly562Chetniks581Chetniks - para-military organisation540Chetniks assembled at Vran mountain626Chetniks could not accept NDH613Chetniks in Bosnia-Hercegovina568Chetniks propagated renewal of Yugoslavia on lines of Allies policies544Christ stands behind the Church859Christian morality, private property885Churchill was for England1207Churchill, Randolph858Churchill’s orders731Churkin1114CIA1095, 1128, 1156?i?ak Ivan Zvonimir1040?i?ak, Ivan Zvonimir1143?i?ak, Zvonimir - Student Leader of Faculty of Philosophy973Cigoj, Ante1022Ciliga, Ante - Memoirs 'Sam kroz Europu u Ratu, 1939-1945' (Alone through Europe during the War, 1939-1945)801?i?ek, Vjenceslav1022Clark, Bruce1088Cleansing of Ustasha ranks601Clissold quotes Tito674Clissold, Stephen, former member of British Consulate in Zagreb and British spy671CNN1135, 1143, 1211Co-existence with the Third World943Col. Jure Francetic650Col. Kosta Mu?icki, member of ZBOR and former aide to King Aleksandar640Collaboration in Serbia639Collaboration with occupiers all over ex-Yugoslavia556Commission for Establishment of crimes of occupiers and their servants’677Communist ideology gave Partisans (or should it be Chetniks?) convenient and ‘respectable anti-fascist’ cover-up.587Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) collaborated with Nazis, SS and Gestapo571Communists crushed remainder of Croatian opposition747Communists did not mind collaborating with bourgeois politicians536Communists would not share power with anyone534Conclusions of Fifth Conference of KPJ536Concordat between new State and Holy See852Concordat with Kingdom of Yugoslavia852Conference between Ribbentrop and Ambassador Alfieri in Salzburg on 10th June 1943635Conference in Teheran on 28th November 1943669Conference of Great Fascist Council in which Il Duce remained in minority, Attaché Helm was asked to resign.637Conflict between Belgrade Great-Serbian Royalist Mafia and communists dated from 1919562Conflict between Partisans and Chetniks in Bosnia-Hercegovina was complicated by mixed structure of population. The war there turned into carnage564Confusion about democratisation946Connection between Ustashas and Serbian traitors is one and same557Conquest of Croatia694Conspiracy against Paveli?679Conspiracy by anti-communist alliance in all parts of ‘Yugoslavia’, helped by the Allies,576Conspiracy theory about ‘Croatian collective responsibility’561Conspiracy theory of the society is just a version of theism558Constitution of Socialist Republic of Croatia1102Contact Group1117, 1132, 1178Cook1142Cook1141Cook, Robin1141Cornellis, John - British Welfare Officer in Austria743Corpses were mutilated in the most disgusting way626Correct treatment of PoWs706Corruption of its institutions959?osi?, Dobrica1104?osi?, Dobrica1221Council of Europe1015Counter attack by Ustashas in 1941 was radical636Counter-intelligence886Counter-intelligence in the army886Courage of the Bishops851Cowan, Edward1090Crawshaw, Steven1082Creation of preliminary government of DFJ761Crnkovi?. Josip859Croat commitment to political independence1059Croat gastarbeiters in Germany962Croatia again became an independent State after 1990611Croatia demanded reform of Federation948Croatia in 1941 (as in 1990) did not possess any armed forces580Croatia Waking Up965Croatia was strangled by the Yugoslav communist utopia722Croatian ‘guerrillas’ from Australia1022Croatian ‘separatism’1001Croatian Catholic Bishops856Croatian Catholic Church missions1004Croatian Communist Party - KPH - saved Partisans from Serbia and also saved Tito's neck580Croatian Diaspora1014Croatian Domobran (Regular NDH Army - i.e., uniformed peasants)528Croatian emigrants were publishing highest number of regular publications1007Croatian Football1174Croatian Gastarbeiters in Germany1004Croatian Helsinki Committee (HHO)1120Croatian Information Centre869Croatian intellectuals990Croatian Jewish Community and Ante Paveli?763Croatian national anti-Yugoslav revolution, was infiltrated by foreign intelligence services, working hard for break-up of NDH603Croatian National Socialists Infected with Marxist communist elements532Croatian Orthography - Hrvatski Pravopis1013Croatian Orthography in 19711240Croatian paranoia’1069Croatian Parliament set up by the communists1035Croatian peasant rebellions for ‘the old rights’ never had much to do with carnage610Croatian refugees836Croatian resistance to Italian and Chetnik terror in Dalmatia became core of Partisan resistance movement in Croatia643Croatian Sabor1103, 1136, 1272Croatian socialist party1015Croatian Spring949, 1070Croatian Spring 19711153Croatian State Archives (HDA)869Croatian tragedy684Croatian writers produced Manifesto (22nd October 1971)956Croatia's 'prêt-a-culture'952Croato-Yugoslav conflict1059, 1067Croats in Dalmatia abhorred Paveli? for his servility to the Italians686Croats in Dalmatia, with help of British, liberated island of Vis in 1943 for Tito's own safety687Croats managed reasonably well for some 800 years in various multi-national states1061Croats pioneers of profound Christian Universalism965Croats were playing Italy and Germany against each other.630Croats, of course, were not worth mentioning629Crusaders (Kri?ari)860?ubrilovi?, Bo?ko1102Cvetkovi?-Ma?ek Agreement612Cvetkovi?-Ma?ek Agreement in 19391153Cvii?, Cristof1154Cyrus Vance1109Dab?evi?, Madam Savka951, 966Dabcevi?, Savka949Dab?evi?, Savka1066Daki?, Mile1103Dance-macabre frenzy606D'Annunzio1202Dante in Paradiso [Canto XXXI, 103]1014Dap?evi?, Col. Vlado940Dayton Accord 1995585Dayton Agreement1166, 1167, 1220, 1256Dayton and Erdut Agreements1132de Gaulle was for France1207de Gaulle, Charles629de Michelis1089de Michelis, Gianni1081de Michelis, Gianni994Deakin, Bill - reports from Belgrade712Death Marches698Death Marches’923Deathbed of Yugoslavia1073Declaration by Peoples Government of Croatia (22nd April 1945)761Dedijer, Vladimir831, 1103Defender of the Faith1142Degenerate Godfathers986del Ponte, Carla1244Demands of Europe1174Demirel, Suleyman - President of Turkey1211Democratic centralism984Demonisation of the Archbishop845Deportation of the Serbs from NDH614Destroy the NDH670Deutsch-Maceljski771Dictatorship of King Aleksandar 1929535Dictatorship of the Proletariat867Dimitrovi?1207, 1208Diplomatic and military pressure from Soviet Union935Discriminating world of the class struggle981Dizdarevi?, Raif1209Djilas accused of revisionism981Djilas and Velebit spent many pleasant hours incognito with Herr Ott in Zagreb cafes574Djilas losing his marbles609Djilas, Milovan923, 1019Djindji?, Zoran1140Djujic, Momcilo1011Djuji?, Serbian Priest1112Djurekovi?, Stjepan1020Djurovi? - Yugoslav Consul in Spain1002Do Croats Still Suffer from Yugo-Nostalgia?1145Do the Jews Hate the New Croatia1135Dobroslav Paraga1142Documentary evidence that the offensive by Serbian and Montenegrin Proletarian brigades was aggression against Croatian State and Croatian territory664Doder, Du?ko1097Dominko, Dragutin765Domobran, Regular Army of NDH579Domobrans996, 1031, 1037, 1043Domobranstvo1153Dositej, Serbian Orthodox Priest Father1244Dostoyevsky842Dr. Andrija Hebrang1135Dr. Branimir996Dr. Franjo Tudjman1001Dr. Tudjman1220Draconian sentences1022Draganovi?, Dr. Krunoslav869Dragi?a Cvetkovi?, Prime Minister540Dragosavac, Dr. Du?an966Dramatic developments influenced Tito’s emotional life573Dra?kovi?, Vuk1020, 1088Dra?a Mihajlovi? took command of Serbian State Guard and volunteer Corps641Dubaji?722Dubcek’s Party in Prague in 1968955During course of civil war537Durrell, Lawrence753Dutch forces in Srebrenica877Eastern Hercegovina and Montenegro662EC initiative1081Economic Strategy of Croatia1168Economy959Eden, Anthony672, 758Emilijan, Serbian Orthodox Bishop862Encyclical of Pope Pius XI (1937)765Encyclopaedia of historicists' deceptions987Endemic syphilis rampant among Muslim population773Enormity of terror and slaughter began to have an effect on killers568Episcope Lukijan1109, 1111Epstein, Julius - member of American Commission for Refugees743Erdut Agreement1164Escaping refugees were machine-gunned by Chetniks625Establishment insisted its 'Constitution' was embodiment of individual950Establishment of Court Marshal (Prijeki Sud),769Establishment of NDH, which incorporated Bosnia-Hercegovina613EU Human Rights Commission Report1116Eugen Kvaternik836European Parliament1015European Social Democratic family967Evans-Pritchard, Ambrose1097Events were repeated all over Croatia689Exact number of people in exodus will never be known696Exaggerated figures about Serbian wartime victims in NDH617Extraordinary Meeting of CK SKJ942Fall of Mussolini on 25th July 1943668Fall of Yugoslavia and creation of NDH614Fascism changed.750Federal Government in Belgrade931Fejt?, Francois954Felicinovi?, Don Joso776Feral Tribune1157Field of Blackbirds - Kosovo 13891119Fifth column873Fifth Column835, 997Fifty Croatian writers executed700Fight of all 'democratic forces' (Partisans wrongly included themselves) against Axis551Figures useless except as refutation of Belgrade propaganda954Finkielkraut, Alain - French philosopher1199First Chetnik organisation created 1921 in Belgrade.539Flores, Eduardo1096FNRJ867Foreign Office in London673Former Chetniks in 1945 surpassed even themselves in scope and massive scale of post-war murders of Croats639Forty planeloads of supplies of arms and medicines dropped by the British to Partisans669Fourth hypothesis is politics of revenge709Fractured Yugoslav economy985Franciscan historians833Franjo Tudjman1075, 1128, 1150, 1151, 1152, 1159, 1221Frankfurt International Book Fair1013Franoli?, Professor Branko1020Franz Ferdinand833, 1086, 1102, 1222Free Croatia in free Yugoslavia528Free Elections867Freedman, Lawrence1082Freedom House1157Freedom of the media1147Freeman, Simon1091Freiberger, Miroslav ?alom781French Revolution1130Freundlich, Maja1242Friends of Yugoslavia994Fund of Public Prosecutor of Socialist Republic of Croatia869Gabeli?, Andro1150Galbraith1132, 1163, 1164, 1165, 1166, 1167, 1189Galbraith, Peter1112, 1113, 1132Gali?, Mirko - Croatian TV1183Gallagher, William - communist M.P.758Gani?1165Gara?amin, Ilija1103Garde, Dr. Paul - French linguist and maverick1223Garde, Paul1222Gavrilovi?, Milan930Ga?i, Franjo747General Governing Representation584General Headquarters of National Liberation Partisan Formations of Yugoslavia established in Belgrade under Tito's command538General Peoples Defence System’984General Tolj1258General?tab JA874Genocide of Croats and Slovenes710Genocide of non-Serbs, mainly Croats and Muslims541Genscher1089Genscher, Hans-Dietrich1089Georgijevski, Ljup?e - Prime Minister of Macedonia1211German Collaborators in Serbia 1941-45639German 'E' army874German Military Einsatzgruppe790German Plenipotentiary General in Zagreb, Gleise von Horstenau618Germans888Germans in Serbia succeeded in organising ‘Serbian bourgeoisie’ under leadership of General Milan Nedi?552Germans pursued their own strategies and were not interested in this Croato-Serbian war, which did not impinge on their own interests648Gestapo862Gestapo Attaché Helm593Glava?, Branimir1092Gojko ?u?ak1164, 1167Goldstein blames the Archbishop784Goldstein, Ivo1041Goldstein, Ivo - Professor of ‘Croatian’ history at Croatian University in Zagreb,1240Goldstein, Professor Ivo764Goldstein, Slavko866, 1042, 1128, 1136Goli Otok792, 934, 1144, 1146Gombo?, Stjepan - architect770GONG1232Gospi?,775Gotovac, Vlado1006Gotovina, Ante, General1118Gotovina, General Ante1104, 1110Grabovac, Dr. Igor608Grani?1178, 1204, 1205, 1206, 1207, 1210Grani?, Dr.1141Grani?, Mate1189Great Britain granted diplomatic recognition to their blue-eyed boy, Tito858Great offensive by Germans and Italians628Great Powers1068, 1106, 1224Great Serbian aim525Greatest majority of Bosnian-Hercegovian Croats were staunch supporters of NDH667Great-Powers, creators of Yugoslavia in 1918716Great-Serbian State structure staffed by corrupt Serbian diplomats528Gregori?, Mirko - Commander874Grgec, Petar770Grous, J.1014Guberina, Dr. Ivo853Guiseppe Masucci, Benedictine786Guiseppe Ramiro Marcone,786Gulin, Dr. Pavao859Gumzej, Jakov768Habsburgs842Hadrovi?, Dragutin778Hague Conventions of 1907863Hajduks - traditional Balkan outlaws against Turks586Hall, Peter1129Halla, General Ferdinand (Vitez)792Hans Helm of Gestapo would play Machiavellian role in next ten years in NDH and later in Tito’s Yugoslavia532Harald Turner, chief Nazi Civil Administrator for Serbia640Harmon, Mark - Prosecutor1249Hassan II of Morocco in 19901231Healthy forces within KPJ to remove Tito934Heavenly Serbia1101Hebrang Case575Hebrang, Andrija - Croat934Hebrang, Andrija, leader of KPH678Hebrang, Dr. Andrija1147Hefer, Stjepan - Croatian historian877Hegel’s principle989Hein, Helga783Heinemann, Herr1015Helsinki Agreement963High Mass in Zagreb Cathedral1074Himmler887Himmler believed that some Croats who had volunteered for Waffen SS were put in concentration camps by NDH government636HIS [Croatian Intelligence Service],1204Historical Croatian roulette794Historical, social and political explanation for nature of revenge murders of Serbs by Bosnian Muslims (Turks) in 1941-45609History of KPJ manipulates this figure in its own peculiar way692Hitler1088, 1096, 1129, 1144Hitler blitzed Yugoslavia572Hitler considered Yugoslavia an artificial creation529Hitler decided that uprising in Serbia be quashed538Hitler never intended to invade Yugoslavia in 1941716Hitler railed against ‘danger of Greater Serbia’ - even suggested ‘communism was more acceptable’641Hitler’s losses near Moscow570Hitler's attack on Soviet Union551Hitler's personal knowledge of Serbs in First World War convinced him Serbia was snake’s head of Yugoslav state that had to be crushed529Hoch, A.J.743Holjevac, Colonel Vje?eslav1035Holjevac, Vje?eslav1040Holy Inquisition832Horvat, Josip1039HOS (Hrvatske Oru?ane Snage)874How Mad, if at all, is Dobroslav Paraga?1142How the other half -1175HRT (Croatian Radio and TV)1149Hrvatska Rije?1004Hrvatski Knji?evni List - Croatian Literary Review1006Hrvatsko Narodno Vije?e - The Croatian National Council997Hrvoje ?arini?1175HSS - Croatian Peasant Party1192HSS (Croatian Peasant Party – Hrvatska Selja?ka Stranke) great pre-war Croatian Democratic Party - in state of confusion525HSS as truly democratic Croatian political party, succumbed completely to utopian Yugoslav aim526HSS assumed an unrealistic role to frustrate such a war and prevent bloodshed527HSS politicians in London under Dr. Krnjevi? (?uba?i?, ?utej, and Bi?ani?)674Hudelist, Darko1152Hudson, D.T.526Human Rights847Hungarian revolution943Hungarians888Hurd1081Hurd, Douglas1089Hurd, Douglas1081, 1087, 1089Hurd, Douglas1099Hurd, Douglas1099Hurley, Msgr Patrick - American Bishop857HV (Croatian Army)1191I Krajina and II Proletarian Brigades redirected to Mrkonji? Grad659In 1942 Croatian Orthodox Church established581In God we Trust1133In order to woo sentiments of Croatian people, they were attacking the Kingdom of Yugoslavia534In the 70's and 80's, Yugoslavia gradually started to lose its war against the Croats1062Incestuous relationship between these two pro-Yugoslav contestants, obsessed by slaughter and sacrifice563Independent State of Croatia834, 863, 884Independent State of Croatia (NDH) head Ante Paveli?, staunch Catholic Croat,525Indictment of the Archbishop864Information and Disinformation - Propaganda987INFORMBURO932INFORMBUROISTS937Innocent persons, 200 - professors, doctors, engineers, priests and other Croatian intellectuals have been sentenced to death by shooting854Instinct to flee782Institute for Peace in Washington1155Institute of the Workers Movement797Intelligence886intelligence services1084, 1158, 1170, 1186, 1187, 1195, 1196, 1197, 1203, 1204Intelligence services1203International Helsinki Group1015International News Service862International Tribunal For the Former Yugoslavia1122Iron curtain has fallen925Irrepressible mood of violence609Is President Tudjman Really an Anti-Semite?1135Isakovi?, Antonije958Isklju?enje i Zagrljaj (Exclusion and Embrace),1148Island Pag775It is imperative to discuss these events dispassionately,693Italian activities doubly damaging600Italian capitulation 1943586Italian Dalmatia542Italian press full of utopian blueprints for political order580Italian-Chetnik ‘offensives’ in NDH607Italian-Chetnik gatherings586Italians had taken over NDH occupation Zones II and III618Italians investigated Chetnik mass murders586Italy far cry from being ‘ally’ of Croatia,581Ivan Zvonimir ?i?ak1049Ivani?evi?, Goran991Ivankovi?-Vonta, Zvonimir1042Ivankovi?-Vonta, Zvonko1040Ivo Sanader1124Izetbegovi?1133, 1142, 1180, 1182, 1215, 1216, 1222, 1257, 1266Izetbegovi?, Alija1092, 1176Izvestija1168Jadovno Camp776Jakov?i?, Ivan - maverick politician from Istria, leader of Istrian Democratic Party (IDS),1200Jan?ikovi?681Jancikovi?, Tomo744Jareb, Jere787Jareb, Jere - 'Half a Century of Croatian Politics' (Pola Stolje?a Hrvatske Politike)802Jasenovac776, 1120, 1137, 1230Jasenovac camp605, 624, 776, 777, 795, 798Jasenovac concentration camp604Jazovka868Jela?i?1073, 1078, 1159Jela?i? Officers School in Zagreb1167Jela?i?, Ban Josip763Jeli?, Dr. Branimir1022Jeli?, Dr. Ivan996Jeli?-Buti?, Fikreta - communist Muslim historian735Jeli?-Buti?, Fikreta - Yugoslav Muslim communist historian622Jessell, David - front man of BBC’s Europe Direct1239Jewish question531Jewish Stand866Jews in Croatia (and particularly in Zagreb) made major contribution to professions and business out of all proportion to their numbers531JNA1076, 1098, 1099, 1100, 1103, 1106, 1109, 1114, 1115, 1117, 1126, 1128, 1129, 1150, 1152, 1219, 1253, 1263Jokovi?, Daniel736Jorga - Judge Claude1250Josip Manoli?1267Jovanovi? Arso - Gen. Col.940Jovanovi?, Slobodan930Jovi?, Bora - Serbian President of [Yugoslav] Presidency1253Jur?evi?, Josip802Juri?, Perica1158Jurjevi?-Baja, Ante689Jutarnji1157Ka?i?, Bozo737Kadijevi?1078, 1098, 1099, 1128, 1219Kaganovi?943Kalajd?i?, Josip853Kanoti, Mihael853Karadji?,1253Karadji?, Radovan1106, 1107Karadjordjevi?, ‘Prince’ Tomislav’s Sussex born ‘Princess Lynda’, with her two children1087Karadjordjevi?, Prince Paul848Karadjordjevo982, 1065Karadjordjevo,1249, 1261Kardelj, Edvard923, 926Kardelj, Edward984Kartoteka - January 1944878Kati?i?, Dr. Natko859Kauzlari?1165Keightley, General - 10th May 1945707Kennedy, John1087Kent Schiner, President of the Jewish Organisation B’nai B’rith1138Kerestinac775Kerestinec Manor House prison616Khrushchev, Nikita - visited Belgrade on 26th May 1955 - he apologised for actions of INFORMBURO resulting in Belgrade Declaration943Khrushchev’s famous ‘shoe banging’ session944Khrushchev’s sensational disclosure943Kikel, Zlata-Golda - mysterious and irrepressible woman-spy. During WWII was editor in Nazi DNB (Nazi Inform Bureau)573King Aleksandar842King Peter525, 676King Peter forced to disband his Chetnik forces751King Peter from London ordered that all the Croats must be murdered570Kingdom of Yugoslavia529, 834Kingdom of Yugoslavia - 23-years long political history662Kingdom of Yugoslavia initiated Croato-Serbian conflict 1918555Kirk, General728Kiss-and-tell Stories On the Subject of Tudjman Are Becoming More Bizarre1149Klein Aleksandar792Kljui?, S.1251Kljui?, Stjepan1142Knezovi?, Dr. Zvonko1044Knin1075, 1077, 1078, 1102, 1106, 1107, 1112, 1114, 1117, 1119, 1121, 1125, 1140, 1177, 1181Ko?evje696Komintern669Komintern changed the goalposts550Kopini?, Ivan - Komintern agent537Kordi?, Dario1141Koro?ec, Anton - Slovene Roman Catholic Priest765Korry, Edward - of the United Press845KOS1079, 1186, 1195Kosanovic, Sava - Great-Serb, later Tito’s Ambassador to US was frequent guest of Queen Marie and King Peter.576Kostovi?, Dr. Ivica1210Kova?evi?, Du?an1106Kova?i?, Petar853KPH propaganda719KPJ - Political expediency870KPJ (Communist Party of Yugoslavia)570KPJ had its fingers in everything763KPJ remained rigidly centralist party759KPJ renamed Union of Communists of Yugoslavia - SKJ941KPJ was lackey of Komintern up to 1948.884Kraja?i?-Stevo, Ivan887, 937Krajina1101, 1102, 1103, 1104, 1105, 1117, 1120, 1121, 1246'Krajina'1101Kraji?nik1177Kraljevi?, Bla?1143, 1144Kraljevica782Kramar, Professor Stjepan853Kranj?i?, Dr. Matija853Krbek, Dr. Ivo - former Vice-Ban of Croatia675Kremzir Ljubomir531Kri?kovi?, Professor Vinko603Kri?evci, Bishop of785Krizman, Bogdan597, 735Krle?a, Miroslav1121Krle?a, Miroslav - Grandfather of Croatian Marxism845Krnjevi?, Dr.756Krnjevi?, Dr. Juraj - HSS Leader within Yugoslav Emigrant Government in London525Krnjevi?, Dr. Juraj,1004Kroatische Berichte1003Krstulovi?, Maksim1021Krstulovi?, Vicko1021Kru?elj, ?eljko733, 1030Kühnel, Vilko771Kufrin, Milka1037Kuhari?, Cardinal1075Kulenovi?, Dr. D?afer - Muslim politician who would later become an NDH Minister)612Kulenovi?, Dr. Muradif1043Ku?an, Jak?a1003Kvaternik, Eugen Dido530, 769Kvaternik, Slavko - Field Marshall838Kvaternik, Slavko - Statement to ‘Yugoslav Communist Court’530Kveder, General’ Du?an1032L’Osservatore Romano864La Petite Entente1222Lali?1115Lali?, Col.1115Lang, Dr. Branko1044Large-scale unemployment946Laughland, John1154Laurence Durrell1060Lautenberg Amendment [to Dayton]1190Law published on 30th April 1941 aimed at Jews and Gypsies530Law regarding change of religion534Law, Toby who, as Lord Aldington708Lebensraum959Lechene, Evelyn1020Lee, Jennie1019Lemnitzer, General - Deputy Chief of Staff727Lenin842Leninism872Leonti?, Dr.749Lepaglava prison865Letica, Prof. Dr. Slaven1216Letica, Prof. Dr. Slaven1145Le?aji?, Ranko1108Liber Croaticus Verlag GmbH1003Liberation of Belgrade by Red Army687liberation of Livno Partisans imprisoned seven German civilian technicians595Liquidations in Bosnia & Hercegovina886Liquidations of the 'peoples enemies'880Lisak, Ustasha Colonel Erih - Director of Public Security in NDH,859Liszt, Field-Marshal - proposal for more direct German involvement598Ljoti?, Dimitrije765Ljubljana water supply became contaminated697Local Councils (NOOS,)870Log revolution1080log revolution’1076Logic of historical situation717Lon?ar, Budimir1101Lon?ar, Dr. Pavao862London Yugoslav ?migré Government nagged Soviet Government565Lord Aldington723Lord Carrington1086, 1116Lorkovi?, Mladen767Luburi?, Maks996Luburi?, Vjekoslav930Lucas, James876Luftwaffe made sure that this single Partisan plane did not leave the ground688Luther, Martin - pointed out Govedi?’s trip clearly raised many political questions532Ma?ek842Ma?ek - co-operation with Paveli? and Hitler out of the question526Ma?ek accepted Pact between Hitler and Belgrade Government (1941)526Ma?ek Dr. Vlatko, leader of HSS540Ma?ek, Vladko860Ma?ek, Vlatko1213Ma?ek's endeavours shot through with ingrained Yugoslavism599MacLean, Fitzroy - Brigadier669MacLean, Sir Fitzroy1085Macmillan, Harold725Occupation forces (1941) increased to 25 divisions550Madeleine Albright1132Maestro, Albert777Maffiaesque practice980Majstorovi? Miroslav1011Maljenkov943Mandi?, Fr. Dominik784Mandi?, Igor - columnist for Belgrade magazine Nin1242Manoli?1185, 1186, 1187, 1188, 1195, 1196, 1209Manoli?, Josip1185, 1194, 1209, 1251Many intriguing gaps in documentation of Chetnik crimes in NDH during 1941-45608Marcus Tanner1079, 1139Marcus Tanner and the Western Press1139Margaret Thatcher985, 1016, 1087Marija-Bistica843Markovi?1127Markovi?, Ante1081, 1099Markovi?, Mihajlo1107Markovi?, Mira530Markovi?, Pero1260Marovi?, Stevan - President of Serbia1123Marshall Grechko’s visit to Belgrade in 1972975Marti?1114, 1119, 1246Martin?i?, Father Modest - Franciscan Provincial860Maruna, Boris1198Marx realised that a capitalist was not demonic conspirator, but man who was forced by circumstances to act as he did.559Marxism872Marxist economy941Marxist-Leninist and Bolshevik933Mass exodus of Croats included political and cultural elite of Croatia and large masses of patriotic citizens695Mass grave near Zagreb1075Mass liquidations of 'peoples’ enemies'887Mass student demonstrations946Mass Terror was the depressing start to 'Liberation'699Mass, led by Pope John Paul II in Croatian language for first time in Rome’s St. Peter’s Basilica on 10th July 19871011Massacres in Croatia697Massive ethnic cleansing607Massuci, Don - Secretary the Papal Emissary Marcone836Masterman, Sue1094Masucci, Don - Secretary to Papal Legate Marcone856Mati?, Dr. ?eljko1019Matica Hrvatska949Matijaca Yugoslav, Consul1013McElvoy, Anne1097McElvoy, Anne1097McLean, General Fitzroy1033Meeting in Berchtesgarden643Meier, Victor1007Menshevik party933Mesi?1234Mesi?1101, 1122, 1123, 1155Mesi1234Mesi?1234Mesi?1234Mesi?1235Mesi?1235Mesi?1236Mesi?1236Mesi?1236Mesi?1236Mesi?1237Mesi?1237Mesi?1238Mesi?1239Mesi?1239Mesi?1239Mesi?1242Mesi?1249Mesi?1250Mesi?1250Mesi?1250Mesi?1258Mesi?1260Mesi?1276Mesi?, Stipe1233Mesi?, Stipe1081Mesi?, Stipe1233Mesi?, Vlatko1272Message of Blood983Me?trovi?, Dr. Mate998Me?trovi?, Ivan835Me?trovi?, Professor Mate1003Me?trovi?, Stjepan1136Meyer, Viktor1016Mihajlovi?, Draza929Mihajlovi?, Dra?a - Colonel in Yugoslav Army533Mihajlovi?, Dra?a - invitation in October 1941 to all Serbs, Croats and Slovenes to join ‘National Army’ by swearing oath to ‘King and Country’582Mihajlovi?, Genera l- their spiritus movens589Mihajlovi?’s Chetniks, escaping to Serbia620Mika ?piljak1208Mikeli?1113, 1114, 1115, 1116Mikeli?, Borislav1107Mikuli?, Stipe1022Milan Babi?1246Mile Daki?1118Military Courts854Milo?evi?1074, 1080, 1083, 1084, 1087, 1089, 1096, 1097, 1098, 1099, 1102, 1104, 1107, 1114, 1116, 1126, 1128, 1129, 1133, 1136, 1144, 1175, 1176, 1177, 1178, 1179, 1180, 1181, 1182, 1183, 1216, 1219, 1221, 1222, 1224, 1228, 1236, 1246, 1249, 1261, 1262Milo?evi?, Mirjana1077Milo?evi?, Slobodan1077Milovan ?ani?838Milovanovi?, Milan961Mini-Contact Group1117Mitterrand, President1216Mladi?, Ratko1123, 1228, 1246Moljevi?, Pavao - Minister of Defence1218Moljevi?, Stevan538Moljevi?, Stevan – author of ‘Homogeneous Serbia’, 30th June 1941540Molotov943Monitoring Mission of the EC1094Montgomery1189, 1190Montgomery, Bill1189Montgomery, Lynne1189Moral responsibility713MORH - Defence Ministry1164Morlachism and Byzantianism791Morlachs1064, 1108Moscow alarmed at Tito's antics577Mo?kov, Ante874Mo?kov, Colonel - statement to Yugoslav Communist Court530Mount Velebit775Mrk?i?, Mile1118Msgr. Rittig, parish priest of St. Marks in Zagreb,844Mueller, K.1014MUP (Police)1191Murdering of wounded prisoners was Chetnik speciality595Nardelli, Antun - Commander874National Assembly in Belgrade856National Front926National Liberation Army – Liberators or Murderers?666National Liberation Movement983National Liberation Struggle888National Liberation Voluntary Units872Nationalism and separatism must be punished953Nationalism in Contemporary Europe1021Nationalist deviations’576Nationalist Serbian595Nationalists949NATO925Nazi Munich bierkellers958Nazis attack 1941528Nazism less popular for broad masses under influence of Roman Catholic Church, which was openly opposed to Nazism718Nazor, Vladimir1035NDH - included Bosnia-Hercegovina, Hitler's ‘quisling state’529NDH authorities tried hard to grant amnesty to all rebels554Nedi?, General Milan930Negotiations at Bleiburg between British, Croats and Partisans were carried out deliberately only orally, without minutes taken or any other written documents ever signed877Negovanovi?, General Marko1081Nenad Piska?1100New attack on Kupres – 13th/14th August 1942658New Class951New Class’942New danger appeared on horizon1021New Deal for Croatia966New Law530New school curriculum941New York Times866Nicholson, Captain Nigel725Nikezi?, Marko983Nikola Tesla telecommunication factory973Nikolic, Professor Vinko1018Nik?i?, Dr. Ante787Nixon’s visit to Yugoslavia in September 1970948NKVD - Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del938No compromise in dealing with Serbian question535No war in Serbia between 1941 and 1943544Non-Aligned Movement’985NOOS867North of River Sava fight between Croat armed forces and stronger communist bands in progress605Novakovi?-Longo, Niko - former Minister in fascist-orientated Yugoslav Stojadinovi? government542Novi List1157Nüremberg racial laws840Number Games in War of Yugoslav Utopia733Objective necessities blow egalitarianism away969ObU GSOS - Intelligence Board of Supreme Command of Armed Forces of Republic of Croatia1203October Revolution936Offensive Bljesak1191Ogre of the year610On the Dunkirk pattern668Once the premise of nationalism is accepted742Only 13,243 persons deported from NDH to Serbia.615Opa?i?, Jovan1103Opa?i?, Jovo1121Open Encyclical836Operation End Game1126Operation Schwarz commenced on 15th May 1943632Operation 'Storm'1124Operation Weiss630Operation Weiss offensive643Opposition coalition1193Organisation for the Protection of Human Rights1128Organisational Report of II Department OZNA for Croatia879Or?ani?, Professor838OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe)1146OSCE Task Force1192Osim Agreements985Ottoman Empire1105Owen, Lord David1163, 1166, 1179OZNA (Secret Police)858OZNA carried out individual and mass liquidations without any legal procedures878OZNA executioners881Papandreou1177Paradjik, Ante - President of Students’ Union973Parad?ik, Ante1037Paraga1143, 1144, 1145Paraga, Dobroslav1142Paravac, Borislav1123Paris Peace Conference 1946926Partisan 'courts'888Partisan Historicism664Partisan massacres continue688Partisan 'revolutionary laws'799Partisan women excelled in cruelty700Partisans572Partisans ‘liquidated’ in Serbia, lost contact with Croatia and Slovenia.579Partisans and Chetniks527Partisans claimed a hugely exaggerated figure of 600,000 fighters690Partisans embraced Red Army soldiers680Partisans, if taken prisoner by Chetniks, were killed as a rule629Pa?ali?1158, 1197Pa?i?, Nikola - Serbian Prime Minister539Pastoral Letter856Patched-up German-Croat relationship630Pattern of killings repeated itself throughout western Bosnia621Paveli? met Hitler in Vinica (Ukraine)599Paveli? visited Hitler on 18th/19th September 1944680Paveli? would be abandoned if he did not toe the German line632Paveli?, Ante832, 1143, 1213Paveli?, Ante - staunch Catholic Croat head of Independent State of Croatia (NDH)525Paveli?’s1199, 1222Paveli?’s stronghold consists of six colonels, Mo?kov, Serwatzy, Heren?i?, Bzik, Pe?nikar and Lisak.672Pavi?, Dr. Radovan1119Pavi?i?, Sofija Ma?a1038Pavle, Serbian Patriarch1116Pavleti?, Professor Vlatko1200Pavleti?, Vlatko1210Pavlica, Dane1039Pavlini?1154'PAX' Americana1126Peace Treaty with Italy 10th February 1947926Pe?anac, Kosta611Pe?anac, Kosta - Chtnik Leader, issued call to Chetniks to collaborate with Germans539Pe?nikar, Vilko771Penalty was death529Peoples Defence - KNOJ930Peoples Power861Perfidious 'Allies'586Perica Juri?,1078persecution of the Jews796Peter II, King860Pete?i?, Ciril1041Petkovi?, Milivoj1258Petkovi?, Sne?ana1084Petri?evi? Branko - Gen. Major940Petrovi? Gajo1002PHARE1197, 1205Philosophy of wilfulness558Pijade, Mo?a926Pijade, Mosha - Serbian-Jewish Party ideologist749Piska?, Nenad1101Piv?evi?, Edo - professor at UK Bristol University, friend of author607Plav?i?, Biljana1106, 1122Plebiscite 19911211Plenum of CK SKJ on 16th and 17th of June 1953 in Brioni941Pletikosa, Professor Ivan1019Poldruga?, Ivan860Police outfits masquerading as Embassies977Politburo members873Politeo, Dr. Ivo859Political correctness527Political decisions agreed at informal meetings between top Party members and Tito personally927Political Intelligence Centre, Middle East673Political opposition to Yugoslav dictatorship1000Polycentrism994Poos, Jacques1089Pope Gregory XVI - Sollicitudo Ecclesiarum of 5th August 1831863Pope John Paul II833Pope John Paul II beatified Cardinal Stepinac865Pope John XXIII931Pope Pius XII835Pordes, Sigmund771Post-war communist repression870Post-war liquidations881Potsdam Conference867Potsdam Conference from 16th July to 1st August 1945758Power and death in same breath was frivolous matter in ‘new’ Yugoslavia748Praljak, Slobodan1258Prenato, Sig.1020President Tudjman1102, 1150, 1155, 1183, 1222Presidential Interregnum1233Princip, Gavrilo1086Prisoners classified by trades and professions and employed in workshops.778Prnjatovi?, Vojislav800Problems with the HNV (Croatian National Council)1014Prodanovi?, ?edo1111Prodi, Romano1155Prodi, Romano - Think-Tank1231Prohibition on use of Cyrillic alphabet535Proletarian Brigades872Proletarian brigades were Communist Party Army646Promemoriam sent by Archbishop Stepinac to Paveli?839Propaganda of revenge and repression871Proti?, Dr. Dragan, intimus of Herman Goering, Yugoslav Ambassador to UN!749Protunarodna843Pro-Yugoslav Croats, such as exiled Ban (Governor of Croatia) ?uba?i?, dubbed reactionaries528Psychological crisis for many Yugoslav communists936Publishing editor of Serbian cultural society ‘Prosveta’ to talk to Zagreb magazine, January 1999.1172Puk, Mirko780Pupovac, Milorad1134Puri?, Prime Minister756Putting males into ranks of Partisans628Queen Elizabeth II858Queen of Croatia966Quietly liberalised Croatia978Quisling, Vidkum715Quislings884Ra?an1239Ra?an, Ivan1101Ra?an, Ivica870, 1037, 1073, 1102, 1145, 1160, 1225, 1233Ra?ki845Rade Kon?ar electrical concern973Radi?, Stjepan1169Radica, Bogdan745Radica, Bogdan844Radica, Professor Bogdan1018Radios Moscow and London adding oil to fire552Radovi?, Bishop Amfilohije1120Ragu?, Vitomir Miles1244Raji?, Ivica1141Raki?, Milan961Rako, Ante1019Randolph831Rankovi?1063Rankovi?, Aleksandar877, 887Rankovi?, Aleksandar - head of Secret Police940Ranogajac, Captain Vladimir1039RAPOTEC1055Rappoport955Ra?kovi?, Jovan1102, 1103Ratio of forces was 21 in favour of Partisans658RAVSIGUR (Department for Public Order and Security771Reactionaries844Rebi?, General Markica - Deputy Defence Minister1164Reconciliation Has Very Little to Offer1134Red Army and Allied fighters873Red Cross1113Reformed Bolshevik1154Registering property772Regular business transactions and prevention of sabotage in business772Rejecting every criticism963Rejecting liberation struggle578Relations between HSS and communists even worse.533Release of some British documents706Reliable scientific research was impossible.867Religious gatherings1011Religious war?1148Remi?1091Repressed anxieties of British about collaboration of Chetnik protégés with Germans667Republic Srpska in BiH1104Revel, Jean-Francois1222Revenge was prerogative888Revisionist1136Revolutionary Etatism and bureaucracy931Revolutions and totalitarian ideas do not know or recognize anything but themselves561Rhodes, Anthony758Ribbentrop532, 579, 598, 599, 615, 628, 631, 632, 635, 636, 641Ribi?, Rikardo - Franciscan Friar853Rihtman-Augu?tin, Dr. Dunja - Professor of Ethno Anthropology1215Risorgimento581Rittig, Msgr. Svetozar849Roads and rails could not support such an exodus731Robertson, General727ROC for Prigorje - March 1944879Role of ‘Church’ very similar to that played by Church in resistance against Turks842Role of Nazi Germany584Rolovi? - Yugoslav Ambassador to Sweden1002Roman Catholic Church878Rome Agreement 18th May 1941601Ronaldo1175Ropu?, Ivica - HDZ spokesman1170Roso, Ante1258Royal Yugoslav Army873Rubini?, Stjepan776Rukovodioci874Rulm, Hans Peter1007Rulman, Hans Peter1002Russell Court831, 1103Russell, Lord and his Kangaroo Court847Russian Tsarist, Okhrana Secret Police961Sabotage - 760 acts - on railways took place in NDH606Sachs-Petrovi?, Dr. Vladimir531?acirbey1165Sacra Congregatio Councilii of 14th October 1946865?alic, Ivan - Archbishop’s Secretary860Salis-Sewis, Bishop - Archbishop Stepinac’s auxiliary849Samardji?, Radovan1119Sample Documents889Sanader, Ivo1123San?evi?, Dr. Z.1266Sarajlic, Janjko1019Sardeli?, Celestin1208?arini?1177, 1270?arini?, Hrvoje1175, 1216Sartre, Jean Paul831Satanisation of Croats by Yugoslav ?migré Government meant a blessing on Chetnik genocide617Savo ?trbac1110Scheffer, David1111Schwartz, Milan771Schwartz, Mladen1144SDS (State Security Service)880Second example of British trickery709Second leg of Constitutional reforms was accomplished984Second stage of revolution577Second 'Yugoslav Reich'750Secret OSCE document1192Security Council1109, 1117, 1190, 1191, 1245, 1267Security Headquarters of Reich in Berlin593Sedlo Tomislav1022?egedin, Petar1006?egvi?, Father Kerubin853?egvi?, Kerubin - Father 79-years old853Self-management system955Seni?, Josip1022?eparovi?, Miroslav - lawyer and former Chief of Croatian Intelligence Service (HIS)1202?eparovi?, Zvonimir, Minister of Justice1190Serbia - where anti-Semitism was rampant.531Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Belgrade (SANU)1112Serbian Chetniks and Tito's Partisan cut-throats767Serbian cutthroats, who descended from the Balkan hillsides1071Serbian expansionism832Serbian minority in Croatia975Serbian National Movement569Serbian Orthodox Church834Serbian propaganda created thyth of traditional Serbian-Jewish friendship642Serbian Republic Krajina1102Serbian Royalists528, 1065, 1072Serbian 'uprising'622Serbs, As Parasitic As Mistletoe, Still 'Love' Croatia1147Sermon openly condemned National Socialism842Server, Daniel1155?e?elj1177?e?elj, Vojislav1088, 1092?evo family in Italy1022SFRJ - Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia)944Shapel, Robert1007?ID879SID - Service for Information and Documentation of Ministry of Foreign Affairs1020Sidonovi? - Soviet General940Silajd?i?1177, 1180, 1182, 1267?imi?, Franjo - Colonel of the Regular Army - Paveli? promoted as Commander in Chief645Singer, Vladimir767Singer, Vlado531Siroki Brijeg in Hercegovina857Situation in Bosnia-Hercegovina, part of NDH, was more complicated610Situation in Central Bosnia at end of summer 1942660Situation in NDH642?krabalo, Ivo1043Slano776Slaughter of Croat and Muslim civilians620Slavery for the working class596Slovene Partisans876Slovenes bumped off the Yugoslav Army1081Slovenia1130Slovenia – Mass Graveyard of Croats738Snippets from Foreign Office documents712Socialism with a human face967Socialism with human face951Socialist Programme966Socialist Union947Socialist Yugoslavia1008?olaja, Simo - Partisan Commander,657?olaja, Simo - Serb Communist ‘peoples hero’543Sollicitudo Ecclesiarum of 5th August 1831 by Pope Gregory XVI863Soro?1111, 1150, 1152, 1159, 1188, 1189, 1197, 1198South Slavs1070Soviet Communist Party842Soviet policies against KPJ943Soviet Union (in spite of confusion created by Pact between Hitler and Stalin)536Soviet Union and Yugoslav Government in Exile in London renewed diplomatic relations551Soviet Union cheerfully handed over ‘Yugoslav problem’ to British676Soviet Union withdrew military and other advisers933Spanish Civil War936Spanish Inquisition832?panovi?, Stojan1106Spasi?, Bo?idar1020Spasi?, Dr. Aleksandar1016Speer, Albert at Nüremberg1243?pegelj1079, 1080?pegelj, Martin1079?pegelj.1080?piljak, Mika1040, 1209?piljak, Mika - old communist fox1208Splajt, Sister Fanika853Split, capital city of Dalmatia844?ram, Mrs. Mila1021Stability Pact1240Stakhanov, Aleksei Grigor’evich (Алексе?й Григо?рьевич Стаха?нов), Russian coal miner whose prodigious output was publicised by Stalin as part of a 1935 campaign749Stakhanovite brigades1146Stakhanovite competitions927Stalin842, 924, 1065Stalin and Tito - personal clash between934Stalin was preoccupied with events in Carinthia707Stalin, Josif Visarionovi? died940Stanimirovi?1120, 1133Stanimirovi?, Dr. Vojislav1120, 1123Stanley, Alessandra866Stara Gradi?ka791, 1114Star?evi?, Dr. Ante1124Star?evi?, Dr. Ante - Father of the Homeland679Stark illustration of Utopia677State Commission for the Establishment of the War and Post-War Victims869State Department681, 1079, 1082, 1094, 1110, 1155, 1156, 1209, 1240, 1242Statehood1159Statements of several imprisoned Partisans involved in these massacres566Stealing and amassing fortunes at expense of ordinary people949?tefan, Ljubica1112Stephanides, Theodore753Stepinac Archbishop - released852Stepinac, Aloysius783Stepinac, Cardinal832Stern, Oscar771Stevenson British Ambassador672Stiegler Jakov763Stipe Mesi?1076, 1111Stipeti?, Sister Blanda853Stjepan Radi?1186, 1213Stojadinovi?, Yugoslav Prime Minister 1939766Stoj?evi?, Stanko1208Stone, Christine1241Stone, Norman1094Storm1110'Storm'1104Strategy of Disgust588?trbac1110, 1111?trbac, Savo1120Str?hm, Carl Gustav1007Strossmayer845Students of Croatian University in Zagreb issued the following Manifesto971Studin-Lavrin, Beba1019?tulhover, Dr. Aleksandar - Docent (Dean) of Philosophical Faculty in Zagreb1184?uba?i? - Ban of Croatia, in London under British surveillance674?uba?ic, British protégé867?uba?i?, Dr. Ivan525?uba?ic’s group744Subject of war crimes in Yugoslavia664?uflay, Milan766?uker, Davor991, 1174Sulimanac, Stjepan1038Sulzberger - New York Times, 11th November 1950:846Suni?, Mirko1019Supek, Rudi1002?u?ak1164?u?ak, Gojko1142?u?ak, Gojko1208?u?ak, Gojko1209?u?ak, Gojko - Croatian Minister of Defence1167Suspended the Monarchy931?utej, Juraj744?uvar1145?uvar, Professor Stipe1145Svetovid992Sweeney, John1096SZUP [Service for Protection of the Constitution]1204Talbot-Rice, Col. of the S.O.E.672Tanjga, Radoslav1103Tanner1140, 1141Tanner, Marcus1077, 1095, 1098, 1139Technical Department886Technocrats took over947Teheran Summit682Temporary government of Federative Democratic Yugoslavia (DFJ) took an oath on 7th March 1945 and was immediately recognised by Britain, US and USSR758Territorial Army984Terzi?, V. - General-Lieutenant882Testimony given by Stipe Mesi?1249Thatcher, Margaret1087, 1099, 1211The Battle with UDBA1018The Communist Secret Police (UDBA)1194The Counterpoint1013The Epilogue1246The European Union1238The Hague 1085, 1086, 1096, 1101, 1103, 1104, 1108, 1110, 1114, 1118, 1122, 1142, 1143, 1147, 1159, 1160, 1174, 1188, 1189, 1190, 1191, 1192, 1199, 1205, 1216, 1228, 1230, 1234, 1243, 1246, 1249, 1274, 1276The Hague Tribunal should not be immune from critical judgement1190The liberation of Krijina from the Serbs1124The Reality and the Independence1073The Roman Catholic Church in Croatia1010The Serbian Lobby in UK991The Serbian Orthodox Church as a Political Party1111The 'Sixth Column'996The Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe’1245The Storm Troopers1188The two pro-Yugoslav ideologies completely contradictory except in their aim of recreating Yugoslav utopia538The Violence of Yugoslavia923The War in Peace1016Theories that self-management948Tiljak, Ljudevit775Time for 'Rationalisation'1035Time for sweet revenge finally arrived.576Tito527, 1061, 1063, 1065, 1070, 1073, 1075, 1085, 1086, 1088, 1128, 1131, 1144, 1145, 1151, 1159, 1209, 1210, 1213, 1215, 1221, 1225, 1231Tito and Jovanka931Tito attacked centralism and dogmatism944Tito cobbled together three extravagantly-named new Proletarian brigades646Tito escaped blockade635Tito established legislative and executive bodies676Tito feared British landing in Dalmatia676Tito moved from Zagreb to Belgrade. As a good 'Croat' he felt safer among Serbs!536Tito needed the Allies750Tito offered his co-operation to the Germans744Tito ordered Sreten-?ujovi? Crni to re-organise brigade653Tito organised National Committee for Liberation of Yugoslavia551Tito still preoccupied with Kupres656Tito wanted to kill two birds with one stone969Tito, anxious about these developments691Tito, as a so-called 'Croat', wrote in Serbian656Tito’s cult of personality932Tito’s exposé851Tito’s fantasies834Tito’s genocide997Tito’s report to Fifth Congress of KPJ in 1948715Titoe did not refer to Croat PoWs he had murdered,631Tito's agreement with Red Army751Tito's credibility in question843Tito's Crimes - Documents885Tito's Marxist sophistry560Tito's Operative Group683Tito's Partisans527Tito's Partisans were de facto only illegitimate force in war of Yugoslav Utopia, fact that caused Tito many sleepless nights661Tito's previous instructions were confused651Tito's Reich981Tito's Stalinism842Tolstoy, Nikolai706Tom?i?, Dr. Zlatko1134Tom?i?, Zlatko1169, 1192Tomi?i?, Zlatko1006Tomuli?, Velimir1022Too many Cooks Spoil the Broth1141Total confiscation of Jewish property772Totalitarian model of power873Totally uncalled-for concession to Hitler by Paveli? unacceptable even in Italy529Toynbee, Arnold743Trades Unions - Sindikati974Treason in revolutionary situation defined very flexibly529Treaty of Consultation932Trifunovi?-Bir?anin, Ilija611Tripalo, Miko949, 1066Tripalo, Miko951Tristissimo processo859Trotsky933Truman's doctrine925Trumbeta?1019Tsar Du?an965Tudjman1167, 1181, 1182, 1183, 1184, 1185, 1188, 1190, 1198, 1200, 1202, 1205, 1208, 1209, 1210, 1214, 1234, 1240Tudjman1075, 1102, 1103, 1121, 1126, 1129, 1130, 1131, 1133, 1134, 1135, 1136, 1137, 1138, 1139, 1141, 1142, 1143, 1144, 1145, 1146, 1149, 1150, 1151, 1152, 1153, 1154, 1155, 1156, 1157, 1158, 1159, 1160, 1161, 1162, 1163, 1164, 1165, 1167-1261Tudjman1171Tudjman1172Tudjman1175Tudjman1175Tudjman1175Tudjman1176Tudjman1176Tudjman1177Tudjman1177Tudjman1178Tudjman1178Tudjman1178Tudjman1180Tudjman1181Tudjman1182Tudjman1182Tudjman1182Tudjman1183Tudjman1184Tudjman1185Tudjman1187Tudjman1187Tudjman1187Tudjman1190Tudjman1190Tudjman1192Tudjman1196Tudjman1196Tudjman1196Tudjman1196Tudjman1197Tudjman1198Tudjman1198Tudjman1198Tudjman1200Tudjman1201Tudjman1201Tudjman1201Tudjman1202Tudjman1203Tudjman1204Tudjman1204Tudjman1205Tudjman1205Tudjman1205Tudjman1206Tudjman1206Tudjman1206Tudjman1206Tudjman1207Tudjman1207Tudjman1207Tudjman1207Tudjman1207Tudjman1207Tudjman1208Tudjman1208Tudjman1209Tudjman1209Tudjman1209Tudjman1209Tudjman1209Tudjman1209Tudjman1210Tudjman1210Tudjman1210Tudjman1210Tudjman1210Tudjman1211Tudjman1211Tudjman1211Tudjman1212Tudjman1212Tudjman1213Tudjman1213Tudjman1213Tudjman1213Tudjman1215Tudjman1215Tudjman1215Tudjman1215Tudjman1216Tudjman1216Tudjman1216Tudjman1216Tudjman1217Tudjman1217Tudjman1218Tudjman1218Tudjman1218Tudjman1219Tudjman1219Tudjman1219Tudjman1220Tudjman1220Tudjman1220Tudjman1220Tudjman1221Tudjman1222Tudjman1223Tudjman1223Tudjman1223Tudjman1223Tudjman1223Tudjman1223Tudjman1223Tudjman1224Tudjman1224Tudjman1224Tudjman1225Tudjman1225Tudjman1225Tudjman1225Tudjman1225Tudjman1225Tudjman1225Tudjman1229Tudjman1230Tudjman1230Tudjman1230Tudjman1233Tudjman1234Tudjman1236Tudjman1236Tudjman1236Tudjman1237Tudjman1237Tudjman1238Tudjman1239Tudjman1240Tudjman1242Tudjman1242Tudjman1243Tudjman1243Tudjman1249Tudjman1250Tudjman1251Tudjman1251Tudjman1255Tudjman1255Tudjman1255Tudjman1257Tudjman1259Tudjman1260Tudjman1260Tudjman1261Tudjman1261Tudjman, Dr. Franjo1003, 1021, 1026, 1038, 1074, 1077, 1102Tudjman, Franjo1079Tudjman, Franjo1154Tudjman, Franjo – dislike of makes Tudjman a scapegoat for Croat ‘revisionism’797Tudjman, President1118, 1132, 1133Tudjman, President1118Tudjman, President1121Tudjman, President1132Tudjman, President Franjo866Tudjman's 'revisionism'801Tuksor, Ivan1022Turner, Dr. Harold - Chief of Military Governing Body588Tvrtkovi?, Vinco (Vincent)777Two contesting sides, Communist Partisans and Serbian Chetniks, inevitably come to blows, this would result in civil war during war527Two fundamentally different components802UDBA1063, 1150, 1151, 1185, 1186, 1194, 1195, 1209, 1210, 1240, 1251UDBA (successor to OZNA)880Unbearable Senility of the ‘Croatian Opposition’1156Underdeveloped Republics (Bosnia-Hercegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia945Unfounded accusations of terrorism999Uniqueness of this world of infernal violence923United Alliance of Anti-fascist Youth of Yugoslavia928United Nations924Uniting all the forces for liberation of Yugoslavia751UNPROFOR1106, 1113, 1114, 1115, 1119, 1221UNRRA940UNS (Usta?ka Nadzorna Sluzba), Ustasha counter-intelligence771UNS [The Office for National Security]1204Uprising of Serbs against new Croatian State in April 1941 in Bosnia-Hercegovina620US granted diplomatic recognition to their blue-eyed boy, Tito858Ustasha movement526Ustasha nest861Ustasha oath861Ustasha policy of national exclusivism found greatest opposition in Bosnia-Hercegovina613Ustasha reacts to Chetniks608Ustasha revolution in progress719Ustasha revolutionary movement abstained from unnecessary bloodshed555Ustasha Supervisory Service (UNS) counter intelligence service535Utopia inevitably leads to violence587Utopian Absolute950Valenti?, Prime Minister1175Vance Plan1110, 1117Vance plan (1991)1108Vance, Cyrus1117Vance, Cyrus - Plan1109Vance-Owen Peace Plan1163Vasiljkovi?, Dragan1088Vatican832Vatican and Jasenovac833Vatican Archives833Velimirovi?, Jovan - Orthodox Archiepiscop1107Velimirovi?, Nikola I - Serbian Episcope765Versailles1084, 1222Veselica, Dr. Marko1021Veselinovi?, Ratko1106Vidnjevi?, Ustasha State Prosecutor844Vidovi?, Mirko999Vilder, Vje?eslav930Vimpul?ek, Judge Dr. Zarko858Violence was biggest Yugoslav export960Vi?nji?, Goran991Vitez776Vjesnik844, 868, 974, 1015, 1025, 1027, 1029, 1030, 1036, 1037, 1038, 1039, 1041Vlatko Pavleti?1200Vojislav ?e?elj1090, 1111Vojnovi?, Milo?1123Voki?-Lorkovi? coup843Volf, Dr. Miroslav1148von Horstenau, Gleise - reported to Berlin589von Kasche - German Ambassador in Zagreb532von Kasche reported to Berlin589von Kasche, Siegfried790von Kohl, Christine1007Vu?i?, Ilija1022Vukovar1093, 1094, 1095, 1098, 1099, 1100, 1111, 1120, 1121, 1122, 1123, 1132, 1133, 1219Vuleti?, Dr. Ante773Vulliamy, Ed1098War crimes of Tito's 'liberators'700War for and against Yugoslav utopia within WWII interfered with German operations624War for Yugoslav Utopia –Price Paid in Croatian Blood682War-time ‘Government of Commissariat’ in Belgrade (Nedi? – 1941-1944), formed by Germans, inherited all its Civil Service from Kingdom of Yugoslavia533Was the Croatian Mass Movement in good taste and worth the price?951Washington Agreement1110, 1205Waspish OSCE (Office for Security and Co-operation in Europe)1148Waugh, Evelyn750Wesker, Arnold1019Western Bosnia661Western liberals993West's attitude1109White House1110Whitehall's strange ‘sense of humour’750Wiesel, Elie - Professor1136Wilf, Dr. Leo783Williams, Ed1085Winston Churchill’s friendly correspondence with Mussolini in 1939585Winter, Gabrijel777Withdrawal of the Italians from Zones II and III619Witness Documents701Wittgensteinian way973Working classes in tenant, or feudal relationship with State941World Bank1141, 1190, 1197World of the Western media979worldwide obsession with Yugoslavia993Yalta861Yalta Repatriation Agreements of 11th February 1945730Yugoslav ‘Constitution’963Yugoslav ‘New Class’1151Yugoslav ‘unity’753Yugoslav Army in Homeland582Yugoslav Army was the wasps' nest763Yugoslav avant-garde976Yugoslav Communist Party527Yugoslav communists after WW2 expurgate themselves from bloodshed they inflicted on Croatian people, put their own crimes in their secret records (ad acta)559Yugoslav communists blamed West for encouraging counter-revolutionary forces929Yugoslav communists fighting in discordant alliance with the Great Serbian nationalists against the breakaway Croatian State762Yugoslav conspiracy theory about 'inherent fascist mentality'610Yugoslav Diplomatic Service961Yugoslav ?migré Government in London616Yugoslav Grey968Yugoslav Partisans and Chetniks fighting the Croatian state on matter of principle, with aim of recreating Yugoslavia660Yugoslav press960Yugoslav State busy clarifying its empty ideological guidelines976Yugoslav Utopia under Scrutiny of Big Powers741Yugoslavia created by Versailles powers863Z-4 plan1117Zagreb Agreement 19th June 1942585Zagreb Agreement with the Italians662Zagreb became city of parallel fear699Zagreb Dustmen’s Union973Zagreb polemics of 1971969?ani?, Milovan769Zatezalo, Dr. Djuro1040, 1041Zavadlav, Zdenko885Zbirni camps882Ze?evi?, Zdravko1110Zelenbaba, Du?an1103?erjavi?, Yugoslav demographer734Zhdanov, Andrej925Zhdanov's assessment932Zidane1175Zidne Novine871?idovec, Vladimir787Zimmerman1111, 1126, 1127, 1128, 1129, 1130, 1131, 1132Zimmerman, Warren1080, 1126Zimpermann, Dr. Ljudevit600?ivkovi?, Andrija764Zori?, Vuka?in1037Zorza, Victor967?ujovi? - Montenegrin communist933?ujovi? his report of 1st August to Tito654?ujovi?, Sreten - Montenegrin934?unec, Dr. Ozren1218 INDEX \h "A" \c "2" \z "2057" 4.10 Notes4.10.1: The programme of the HSSThe ‘programme’ of the HSS “that there would not be peace and understanding until the nations of Yugoslavia gained their independence” as stated by Dr. Ma?ek to the correspondent of le Petit Parisien (January 1993), was virtual reality, a fantasy, which was perpetuated by the leadership of the HSS under pressure from public opinion in Croatia, that there should not be a compromise with the Serbian occupation of the country established in 1918. Dr. Milan ?ufflay, Croatian scientist, illustrated this point in his defence speech in the Yugoslav Court: “As far as I am concerned, it doesn’t make much difference whether one is sitting in a prison cell or in the larger prison which is Yugoslavia, holding captive the whole of the Croatian people.”In 1930 a memorandum by the Croat organisations in Germany was sent to the League of Nations, demanding the end of the Serbian occupation.When Dr. Ma?ek was elected successor to Stjepan Radi? after Radi?’s death, Radi?’s quip “Never again in Belgrade” was forgotten by the HSS leadership. Dr. Ma?ek stopped his colaborateur, Dr. Krnjevi?, from submitting a paper, in which Krnjevi? attacked the Serbian occupation, to the Congress of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Berlin chaired by Dr. Loebe, President of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic.This was the first slap in the face by Dr. Ma?ek to Croat public opinion.After the assassination of King Aleksandar and Dr. Ma?ek’s release from prison, the elections of 1935 were another great opportunity to inflict a death blow to the Serbian occupation while Serbs were on their knees. Instead, Dr. Ma?ek sent a telegram to Prince Paul, thanking him for the “act of the Royal clemency”, pointing out that this act “opened the door for agreement between the Croats and the Serbs.”Croat public opinion was astonished at what kind of agreement could be made with the Serbian occupiers. Even so, most of the Croatian people supported Ma?ek in the elections. It was expected that, after the victory, he would lead the struggle for the liberation of Croatia without any compromise.At that time Ma?ek produced the slogan “Our riffles on our shoulders, and our money in our pocket,” which reinforced the illusion that he believed what he was saying. The HSS propaganda blasted that slogan while Ma?ek, at the same time, negotiated with the Serbian occupiers. His policy appeared to be the demolition of Yugoslavia and the establishment of an independent Croatian State. In reality, this was a cover-up for emaciating the revolutionary spirit of the Croatian people, and for the HSS policy in the preservation of Yugoslavia. In fact, according to Ma?ek, it was not necessary for Yugoslavia to be destroyed, as a ‘Free Croatia’ could be achieved within that state.The Croatian masses were moving very slowly in penetrating Ma?ek’s mind. As late as 1938, he was supported by the majority of the Croatian people in the general elections.Instead of pressing for the programme of liberation, Ma?ek negotiated the establishment of the Croatian Province (Banovina) under the ‘Ban’ Ivan ?uba?i?, a royal appointee who was then totally unknown. Ma?ek’s propaganda presented it as a first step towards independence. To celebrate the establishment of the Croatian Banovina Ma?ek was invited to two banquets in Belgrade, in one of which he embraced the Serbian Patriarch and exclaimed: “Now the Croats can sail freely into Yugoslavism.” Half Slovene and half Croat, Ma?ek thus fulfilled the dreams of all the previous Croat utopians.The new Ban was the Serbian lackey par excellence who initiated the first concentration camps in which to lock up the Croatian ‘nationalists’. This was the point of awakening when the Croat fighters for independence decided to carry on without Ma?ek et al. Expecting help for the liberation from London and Paris was futile. They turned to Berlin and Rome. Such pragmatism, characteristic of the British, who joined Stalin and Tito, was not permitted to Croats. It was an unforgivable crime. Nobody in England crucified Churchill for his links with Stalin. On the contrary, this link was in the British interest. The choice between the Serbian occupier and the unreliable German ally for the Croats was imposed by itself. The first ‘Quisling’ actually (before Paveli?) was Ma?ek himself, who took part in the Tripartite Pact with Hitler only in order to save Yugoslavia.In that context, joining the tripartite pact by the NDH later, for the sake of saving the Croatian State, is an explicable antithesis.According to Ma?ek, Croatia before 10th April 1941 was free and during 1941-1945 it was occupied.Yet there is no case in history in which an occupied region is given sovereignty and diplomatic recognition.The Croatian Banovina within Yugoslavia was not only without sovereignty but it was also occupied. The laws in NDH (such as they were) were enacted by the Croatian State. In the Banovina they were enacted by Belgrade. The Banovina, in exceptional circumstances, could have been suspended by a Belgrade Skup?tina decree. The NDH had its own army, which even at the end of the war numbered some 250,000 men. In the Banovina Croats had to serve in the Yugoslav army. The Croatian army and the Civil Service gave an oath to the Croatian State and not to the Fuehrer or il Duce. In the Banovina, the oath was given to the Serbian King. Nazi Germany was an enemy of the Catholic Church. In ‘occupied’ NDH, it was just the opposite. Occupied countries do not issue their own currency, which the NDH did. In the ‘free Croatian Banovina’, any expression of Croat patriotism was punished by long terms of imprisonment. At the onset of the war in April 1941 when the Croatian people rejected Ma?ek’s agreement with the Serbian occupation and created the NDH, the Chetniks started killing Croat soldiers in the Yugoslav army under the auspices of the Government in which Ma?ek was a deputy Prime Minister. Over a period of 3 years during the NDH some of Ma?ek’s collaborators were working for the destruction of the NDH and only later were they apprehended.The ultimate insult to the Croatian people was the fact that an HSS splinter group maintained that they took on their backs the brunt of the ‘national liberation army’, i.e., that they were a chief factor for the renewed occupation of Croatia now by the commies. Dr. Ivan Pernar, i.e., collaborated with the infamous British agent and Croat devourer Stephen Clissold.No one was persecuted in the NDH for belonging to the HSS.After the fall of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, there was no earthly reason whatsoever for the HSS deputies (Krnjevi? and ?uba?i?) to flee to London to join the Yugoslav ?migré Government, which was in coalition with the Chetniks.In fact, at that time in London there was for them a wonderful opportunity to defend Croatian interests and denounce the crimes of the Chetniks and other enemies.The excuse that Britain and America dictated the terms does not hold water, blasting as the British were about democracy and the self-determination of nations. Croat democrats did, in the majority, support the Croatian State (although not necessarily the regime), and as such could not have been the servants of the occupiers on the pattern of the HSS splinter group around Ma?ek. The Croats who were in the Partisan ranks were already amply described and explicated. Dr. ?uba?i? exerted himself on lecturing in America, proclaiming the Serbo-communists under Tito as fighting for freedom and democracy. Finally, he signed in the name of the King (Peter II) (!) an agreement with Tito to form a bastard coalition government – HSS-Tito. This offshoot of Ma?ek’s HSS was in fact covering up Tito’s mass murders of the Croat soldiers and civilians in the immediate post-war period.In May 1945 Ma?ek packed his cases and, with Paveli?’s donation of 1,000 gold coins, left Croatia under Serb-commie occupation, which he directly or indirectly aided and abetted throughout the rest of his life.4.10.2: Ma?ek in NDH PrisonRef: Ivan Mu?i?, Ma?ek u Luburi?evu Zato?eni?tu, Laus, Split, 1999On the 10th October 1941, the Germans asked Ma?ek to take over from the Usta?as in NDH, as that would be the only way to pacify the state. Ma?ek refused but suggested that the Germans remove the Usta?as and put a German general in charge of the NDH, on the model of General Nedi? in Serbia. The idea had sprung from Gleise von Horstenau, the German Military Attaché cortex.Usta?a intelligence service got wind of this information and on the 15th October 1941 Ma?ek was imprisoned by a platoon of Usta?as led by Vjekoslav (Maks) Luburi? and Viktor Tomi? in an annex of Jasenovac concentration camp.Ljubo Milo? “one of the biggest cut-throats” was put at the disposal of Ma?ek. “I could not complain about his treatment of me,” recalled Ma?ek. The following day Ma?ek was visited by the Chief of Public Security, Eugen Kvaternik, who told Ma?ek that he will be interned until the end of the war. Ma?ek had at his disposal two rooms and a kitchen.In long conversations with Milo?, Ma?ek asked him if he was not concerned by God’s punishment for his deeds. Milo? confessed that he was, but commented with some irony that the communists solved that problem more elegantly by being atheists so in that respect they were in a much better position.On the 16th March 1942 Ma?ek was transferred to his estate in Kupinec and kept under house arrest, together with all of his family. Here it seems Ma?ek’s main concern was not the fate of Croatia but rather the management of his farm.On the 9th December 1943 Ma?ek was transferred to his old apartment in Zagreb, and the next day Kupinec farm was taken by the partisans, and completely ransacked. Ma?ek under house arrest was briefed regularly about the political situation and was even covertly listening to the BBC broadcasts to ‘Yugoslavia’.On the 4th May 1945 Ma?ek was persuaded by Usta?a General Ante Mo?kov to emigrate from the country, as otherwise he for sure would be liquidated by the commies. After hesitating he agreed and was put into a motorcar, wrapped in an Usta?a uniform overcoat and in that way crossed into Austria.Thus Ma?ek.Luburi?, his jailer, on the other hand, saved his life four times: from the Abwher, Usta?a paramilitaries, and from the commies.From Luburi?’s observations, Ma?ek was not such a great pacifist or democrat as he wished to be described; on the contrary, he had a strong dose of dictatorship in him. At the same time, he was an honest person.The dark side of Ma?ek (who was an ethnic Slovene) was the fact that he strained to save Yugoslavia at the time when even the Serbs had lost faith in it.When Luburi? questioned him on this subject he would respond coolly “My dear, this is politics.” The unpleasant role that Luburi? had to carry out in apprehending Ma?ek he executed with considerable consideration. Ma?ek was technically in Jasenovac but never in the camp, but rather in a private flat annex. Luburi? himself fed Ma?ek with confidential reports of the foreign radio stations in order to suss out his reactions. Ma?ek was entirely concerned with the fate of the HSS (his party) rather than the fate of the Croatian state (NDH).He, at his most revealing, was exposed by Vlado Singer, and old Ustasha, who himself was locked up in Jasenovac camp XE "Jasenovac camp" along with Ma?ek and shot there in 1943. According to Singer (who was Jewish), the basic difference between Paveli? and Ma?ek was that Paveli? collaborated with the Germans for the sake of the Croatian State and Ma?ek (in 1941) was prepared to do the same thing for the sake of the salvation of Yugoslavia.The key statement made by Ma?ek and noted by Singer was: “To be quite open, I do not believe that an independent Croatian state could exist – we are too small and too weak …” This was the ‘leader’ of Croatia from 1928 to 1941 (i.e., 13 years).4.10.3: Luburi?LUBURI? - Ref.: Stjepan Crni?ki in Ivan Mu?i? – Ma?ek u Luburi?evu Zato?eni?tvu, Laus, Split, 1999At the Usta?a emigrant camp in Janka Puszta (Hungary), Vjekoslav Luburi? got his nom de guerre, Maks.Arriving in Croatia in 1941, he got the duty to organise the Usta?a advance brigades, which he immediately posted in Kordun and Bosnia to clear the Chetnik insurgents. Luburi? took part in these battles with the rank of captain.He was founder of the Jasenovac concentration camp in Croatia for the imprisonment of the Chetniks and Partisans and their followers.At a later stage he was put in charge of the southern front (Ivan Planina in Bosnia) and remained there until the end of the war.In March 1945 Croatian forces under his command (some 9,000 men) broke the Chetnik forces in Bosnia (39,000 men) under the leadership of the Chetnik ‘Duke’ Pavle Djuri?i?. Djuri?i? was taken prisoner.At the end of the war Paveli? nominated Luburi? to be Commander in Chief of the Croatian Army.Nine brigades of Usta?a Obrana (Defence) under his command lost their lives in order to enable the bulk of the Croatian army to withdraw to Austria.Luburi? returned to Croatia from the Austrian frontier and organised guerrilla forces to fight the communists for the next three years. Eventually, Luburi? escaped to Vienna via Budapest and finally made his way to Spain via France.Ironically enough, in Spain Luburi? advocated the reconciliation of the Croat Usta?a and Partisans in his newspaper Obrana (Defence).In 1968, the UDBA (Yugoslav Secret Police) infiltrated the ‘Croat’ criminal Ilija Stani? into Luburi? home, who liquidated Luburi?, aka Trotsky, with an iron bar to the back of his head.Marko Lopu?ina, the Serbian journalist, interviewed the assassin and published a book under the title ‘Kill thy neighbour’, published by NIP “TV Novosti”, Biblioteka, Revija92, Belgrade, 1996, p.301-302. He wrote: “On the 20th April 1969 Stani? got up, checked that all his preparations were o.k. and perspired. His nerves were tense. He got into the ground floor [of Luburi?’s house], knocked on the door and Maks asked me to enter. “Dobro jutro [good morning] General, have you slept well?” “Very well” Luburi? replied. It was twenty-five past ten a.m. Luburi?’s son Ton?i brought a newspaper and went to church. Maks asked me to make coffee. Ready in 3 minutes. The poison I brought was bad, melted. I had to spread it in the cup. Washed hands. I grabbed a hammer and tucked it behind my belt and brought the coffee. Twenty-five to eleven. Maks drinking coffee. Drinking, but was not affected. I took the cup back to the kitchen and put the hammer into the sink. I wanted to go into my room to get hold of an iron bar. Fuck the poison. Iron bar is the best medicine, like the one I finished off Hrvoje Ursa [another Croat political emigrant] in Frankfurt. Ten to eleven. Maks calling “Ilija, I do not feel well”. I enter. His face/mouth is as black as sod. Sick like a dog. I took him to the kitchen to vomit over the sink. In a split second I hit him with a hammer in the forehead. TUP. Maks fell like a candle. I thought that is that. He stared at me like a wild animal. I waved hammer again. He put his arms forward to protect himself. I shouted “I fuck your Usta?a mother”. This is the way you were killing children in Jasenovac. Now it’s your turn.” Hammer hit him again on the forehead. His scull cracked. I pull hammer from the scull and went to kitchen. Maks got up and panted like an animal. Heavy weight. I took the iron bar and walloped him in the forehead again. He crashed to the floor. I walloped him again. He was quiet. I wrapped him in a blanket and pulled him on to the ottoman. I packed him well so that the Spanish police believe that he was kidnapped. Hammer and bar I left in a hut. I changed my clothes and called taxi for Valencia. “How much?” “35 peseta” said the driver. “Here you are 500, it’s my treat today.” At 8.05 p.m. I sent a telegram to my brother in Konjic “M. never more.” ”I do not believe it is possible to improve on the colourfulness of the bragging by this builder of the Yugoslav Utopia.4.10 4: The Dinaric MountainsThe Dinaric Mountains - (Lika, Hercegovinia, Bosnia)Anthropological continuity of the Croatian Dinaric race goes back to the floods. The main characteristic of this race is its war-like quality. Their violent character was noted by Livius (violentia insita in genio) coupled with trickery, inherited from the Illyrians. In peace-time these characteristics are displayed in considerable business acumen – another form of struggle. Machismo, a patriarchal mentality and strength of leadership of the Dinaric Croats are contradictory traits in relation to the Mediterranean and Northern Croatian men of the peaceful mindset. These people (often confused with Vlachs) produce the most outstanding and honourable characters on the one hand and on the other one can find among them also the most criminal individuals. The contradictions of character are strongly accentuated. The first medieval Croatian state was formed in these regions. The Croat invaders were warriors who eventually amalgamated with that autochthonous majority. The Turkish occupation in the 15th century hardened these characteristics so that violence as a means of defence or survival was their only means to counteract that violence.Paveli?, typical of this character, summed it up thus: “One needs a bitter herb in order to treat a bitter wound.”The psychosomatic character thus divided Croatia more or less 50/50 into revolutionaries versus pacifists (Paveli? versus Ma?ek). Between 1904 and 1914, Likaners (from Lika) were in the forefront of the radical Croatian political struggle. After 1918, the Hercegovinians took over this leadership. Thus in the struggle for the renewal of the Croatian state, the ‘pacifists’ were not able to cope with the merciless struggle against the violent Yugoslav state. Paveli? could not find understanding in democratic Washington and London and had to lean on Berlin and Rome. The hatred of the Croatian nationalists was logically directed against everything internationalist, e.g., communism. The NDH armed forces, including the Ustasha volunteers, were formed from men from these Dinaric mountains. They sacrificed their lives for their beliefs and were not demoralised even at the end of the war.The Croatian army had 230,000 soldiers in 1945 and was destroyed only by the indifference of the British and the post-war carnage of the communists.The communists have proved themselves considerably more cruel than their Ustasha protagonists. It is therefore not surprising that Tito (jealous as he was of everyone) found the Ustashas to be “the best enemy fighters” (a statement made to the correspondent of Reuter, J. Tabor and published in the New York Times on the 15th May 1944).The armed struggle against Yugoslavia was led by the Dinaric Croat men, among them 60% Hercegovinians, who are currently on the receiving end of the attacks by the pro-Yugoslav ‘Croats’ and are blamed for all the problems of the Tudjman era.The fact, however, is that Hercegovinians did not get much in return for spilling their blood in the Homeland war and did not get any say in foreign and economic policy. 4.10.5: TeznoTezno - The Biggest Graveyard of the Croats - (Jutarnji List, Wednesday, 12th September 2007, p.10.)The Commission of the Republic of Slovenia, working on the thankless task of recording the war-time graveyards of the communist victims, presented its findings on the mass graveyards in Tezno (near Maribor), which contained the bodies of a minimum of 15,000 prisoners of war whom the Yugoslav army executed in May/June 1945. These victims were, in the majority, Croats.Slovenia contains, according to the Commission, 530 of these mass graves, Tezno being the biggest grave of Croats.The President of the Commission, Jo?e De?man, stated that the Commission used the Hague anthropological-archaeological methods in the probes and pointed out that Slovenia already signed an agreement on the subject with Italy and Germany, and asked the Republic of Croatia to do the same, but the Government of the Republic of Croatia [full of former communists] have for years ignored this invitation.Mitja Ferenc, Professor of History of the Philosophical Faculty in Ljubljana spoke in Tezno on the subject of the mass graves.The British handed over some 100,000 prisoners of war to Tito, who proceeded to systematically carry out mass murders of these prisoners. The anti-tank trench in Tezno, one kilometre long, contains the partisan victims, their hands tied with wire lying on their backs, the bodies were ferried in lorry loads from Maribor to Tezno. Fourteen probes of the trench, 3-4m wide, revealed that the skeletons were spread over the 740m long trench.Human remains have been uncovered at depths of from 120 to 170 cm. Accordingly, some 15,000 bodies were buried in this mass grave.After execution, the bodies were covered with lime and bitumen. All the victims were executed by gunshots from close quarters, communist-style into the back of the head.The order for this post-war crime came from the top of the Yugoslav State (i.e., Tito, who still has one of the most beautiful squares in Zagreb named after him) and Army top brass. The organiser and executioner was OZNA of the Third Yugoslav Army (members of the 15th Majevica Brigade).150 mass graves, out of a total of 540 in Slovenia, contain 100,000 Croats in addition to 14,000 Slovenes, Professor Ferenc ended his statement.4.10.6: The ‘programme’ of the HSS The ‘programme’ of the HSS“that there would not be peace and understanding until the nations of Yugoslavia gained their independence” as stated by Dr. Ma?ek to the correspondent of le Petit Parisien (January 1993), was virtual reality, a fantasy, which was perpetuated by the leadership of the HSS under pressure from public opinion in Croatia, that there should not be a compromise with the Serbian occupation of the country established in 1918.Dr. Milan ?ufflay, Croatian scientist, illustrated this point in his defence speech in the Yugoslav Court: “As far as I am concerned, it doesn’t make much difference whether one is sitting in a prison cell or in the larger prison which is Yugoslavia, holding captive the whole of the Croatian people.”In 1930 a memorandum by the Croat organisations in Germany was sent to the League of Nations, demanding the end of the Serbian occupation.When Dr. Ma?ek was elected successor to Stjepan Radi? after Radi?’s death, Radi?’s quip “Never again in Belgrade” was forgotten by the HSS leadership. Dr. Ma?ek stopped his colaborateur, Dr. Krnjevi?, from submitting a paper, in which Krnjevi? attacked the Serbian occupation, to the Congress of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Berlin chaired by Dr. Loebe, President of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic.This was the first slap in the face by Dr. Ma?ek to Croat public opinion.After the assassination of King Aleksandar and Dr. Ma?ek’s release from prison, the elections of 1935 were another great opportunity to inflict a death blow to the Serbian occupation while Serbs were on their knees. Instead, Dr. Ma?ek sent a telegram to Prince Paul, thanking him for the “act of the Royal clemency”, pointing out that this act “opened the door for agreement between the Croats and the Serbs.”Croat public opinion was astonished at what kind of agreement could be made with the Serbian occupiers. Even so, most of the Croatian people supported Ma?ek in the elections. It was expected that, after the victory, he would lead the struggle for the liberation of Croatia without any compromise.At that time Ma?ek produced the slogan “Our riffles on our shoulders, and our money in our pocket,” which reinforced the illusion that he believed what he was saying. The HSS propaganda blasted that slogan while Ma?ek, at the same time, negotiated with the Serbian occupiers. His policy appeared to be the demolition of Yugoslavia and the establishment of an independent Croatian State. In reality, this was a cover-up for emaciating the revolutionary spirit of the Croatian people, and for the HSS policy in the preservation of Yugoslavia. In fact, according to Ma?ek, it was not necessary for Yugoslavia to be destroyed, as a ‘Free Croatia’ could be achieved within that state.The Croatian masses were moving very slowly in penetrating Ma?ek’s mind. As late as 1938, he was supported by the majority of the Croatian people in the general elections.Instead of pressing for the programme of liberation, Ma?ek negotiated the establishment of the Croatian Province (Banovina) under the ‘Ban’ Ivan ?uba?i?, a royal appointee who was then totally unknown. Ma?ek’s propaganda presented it as a first step towards independence. To celebrate the establishment of the Croatian Banovina Ma?ek was invited to two banquets in Belgrade, in one of which he embraced the Serbian Patriarch and exclaimed: “Now the Croats can sail freely into Yugoslavism.” Half Slovene and half Croat, Ma?ek thus fulfilled the dreams of all the previous Croat utopians.The new Ban was the Serbian lackey par excellence who initiated the first concentration camps in which to lock up the Croatian ‘nationalists’. This was the point of awakening when the Croat fighters for independence decided to carry on without Ma?ek et al. Expecting help for the liberation from London and Paris was futile. They turned to Berlin and Rome. Such pragmatism, characteristic of the British, who joined Stalin and Tito, was not permitted to Croats. It was an unforgivable crime. Nobody in England crucified Churchill for his links with Stalin. On the contrary, this link was in the British interest. The choice between the Serbian occupier and the unreliable German ally for the Croats was imposed itself by itself. The first ‘Quisling’ actually (before Paveli?) was Ma?ek himself, who took part in the Tripartite Pact with Hitler only in order to save Yugoslavia.In that context, joining the tripartite pact by the NDH later, for the sake of saving the Croatian State, is an explicable antithesis.According to Ma?ek, Croatia before 10th April 1941 was free and during 1941-1945 it was occupied.Yet there is no case in history in which an occupied region is given sovereignty and diplomatic recognition.The Croatian Banovina within Yugoslavia was not only without sovereignty but it was also occupied. The laws in NDH (such as they were) were enacted by the Croatian State. In the Banovina they were enacted by Belgrade. The Banovina, in exceptional circumstances, could have been suspended by a Belgrade Skup?tina decree. The NDH had its own army, which even at the end of the war numbered some 250,000 men. In the Banovina Croats had to serve in the Yugoslav army. The Croatian army and the Civil Service gave an oath to the Croatian State and not to the Fuehrer or il Duce. In the Banovina, the oath was given to the Serbian King. Nazi Germany was an enemy of the Catholic Church. In ‘occupied’ NDH, it was just the opposite. Occupied countries do not issue their own currency, which the NDH did. In the ‘free Croatian Banovina’, any expression of Croat patriotism was punished by long terms of imprisonment. At the onset of the war in April 1941 when the Croatian people rejected Ma?ek’s agreement with the Serbian occupation and created the NDH, the Chetniks started killing Croat soldiers in the Yugoslav army under the auspices of the Government in which Ma?ek was a deputy Prime Minister. Over a period of 3 years during the NDH some of Ma?ek’s collaborators were working for the destruction of the NDH and only later were they apprehended.The ultimate insult to the Croatian people was the fact that an HSS splinter group maintained that they took on their backs the brunt of the ‘national liberation army’, i.e., that they were a chief factor for the renewed occupation of Croatia now by the commies. Dr. Ivan Pernar, i.e., collaborated with the infamous British agent and Croat devourer Stephen Clissold.No one was persecuted in the NDH for belonging to the HSS.After the fall of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, there was no earthly reason whatsoever for the HSS deputies (Krnjevi? and ?uba?i?) to flee to London to join the Yugoslav ?migré Government, which was in coalition with the Chetniks.In fact, at that time in London there was for them a wonderful opportunity to defend Croatian interests and denounce the crimes of the Chetniks and other enemies.The excuse that Britain and America dictated the terms does not hold water, blasting as the British were about democracy and the self-determination of nations. Croat democrats did, in the majority, support the Croatian State (although not necessarily the regime), and as such could not have been the servants of the occupiers on the pattern of the HSS splinter group around Ma?ek. The Croats who were in the Partisan ranks were already amply described and explicated. Dr. ?uba?i? exerted himself on lecturing in America, proclaiming the Serbo-communists under Tito as fighting for freedom and democracy. Finally, he signed in the name of the King (Peter II) (!) an agreement with Tito to form a bastard coalition government – HSS-Tito. This offshoot of Ma?ek’s HSS was in fact covering up Tito’s mass murders of the Croat soldiers and civilians in the immediate post-war period.In May 1945 Ma?ek packed his cases and, with Paveli?’s donation of 1,000 gold coins, left Croatia under Serb-communist occupation, which he directly or indirectly aided and abetted throughout the rest of his life.4.10.7: Abbreviations and Acronyms for Chapter 4AYAFArchive of the Yugoslav Armed Forces, Belgrade, Archive NDH, Box 236, Reg. No. 1-2AMAnte Mo?kov, Paveli?evo Doba, Laus, Split, 1999.AOAnto Orlovac, Trinaest ugaslih svije?a,AOS, SRJ?etni?ka Arhiva, Chetnik Archives.BDDr. Branko Dubravica, Vojska Antifa?isti?ke Hrvatske, 1941-45, Zagreb, 1996.BJBoban Ljubo i Dr. Tomo Jan?ikovi?, HSS izmedju Zapadnih Saveznika i Jugoslavenskih Komunista, ?kolska Knjiga, Zagreb, 1966.BJE B. Jela?i?, History of the Balkans, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1983.BKJVBogdan Krizman, Jugoslavenska Vlada u Izbjegli?tvu, Knjiga 1. Zagreb, 1981, BKPHMBogdan Krizman, Paveli? izmedju Hitlera i Musolinija, Zagreb, 1978.BMBalfour & MacKay, Paul of Yugoslavia; Britain’s Maligned Friend, London, Hamish Hamilton, 1980.BORBorkovi?, Milan, Kontrarevolucija u Srbiji, 1941-44, Knjiga I, Beograd, Sloboda 1979.BPB. Petranovi?, Revolucija i Kontrarevolucija u Jugoslaviji, 1941-45, Knjiga 2.BRBogdan Radica, Hrvatska 1945, Hrvatska Revija, Barcelona.BTHNBlajbur?ka tragedija Hrvatskoga naroda, Hrvatski Revija, München-Barcelona, 1976.DI DMDokumenti o izdajstvu Dra?e Mihajlovi?a, Knjiga I, Beograd, 1945.DM Davor Marijan, Borbe za Kupres, 1942, AGM, Zagreb, 1999.DSZ. Dizdar, M. Sobolevski, Pre?u?ivani ?etni?ki zlo?ini u Hrvatskoj i u Bosni.EHCE.H. Carr, Nationalisme èt Apres? Nations ou Féderalisme? Plon, Paris, 1946.FD Fedor Dragojlov, Der Krieg, 1941-45: Auf dem Gebiete des Unabh?ngigen States Kroatien.FJB Fikreta Jeli?-Buti?, ?etnici u Hrvatskoj, 1941-45, Zagreb, 1986.FTFranjo Tudjman, Vojno-Historijski Glasnik, No. 5. 1961.GFB Gregory-Freemont-Barnes, The Boer War, 1899-1902, Osprey Publications, 2003.GICTito, Govori i ?lanci, I.GLIGli?i?, Venceslav, Concentration camps in Serbia, 1941-44 in The Third Reich in Yugoslavia, Belgrade, 1977.GM Vlaldimir Dedijer, Antun Mileti?, Genocid nad Muslimanima, Sarajevo, 1990.HDA-NDHFond: Upravno Povjereni?tvo kod Druge Armate Italijanske vojske na Su?aku,IG Ivo Goldstein, Holokaust u Zagrebu, Novi Liber, Zagreb, 2001.IMIvan Me?trovi?, Uspomene na politi?ke ljude i dogadjaje, Hrvatska Revija, Buenos Aires, 1961.JANTomo Jan?ikovi? (?) in F. Jeli?-Buti?, HSS, Zagreb, 1983.JASJasenovac, ?rtve rata prema podacima Statisti?kog Zavoda Jugoslavije, Bo?nja?ki Institut, Sarajevo, 1998.JC John Cornellis, Vetrinjska Tragedija, Cleveland, 1960, pp.133-4.JEJeli?, Ivan, Hrvatska u ratu i Revoluciji, 1941-45, ?kolska Knjiga, Zagreb, 1978. JJJosip Jur?evi?, Bleiburg, Jugoslavenski Poratni zlo?ini nad Hrvatima, Zagreb, May 2005.JNAAJNA Archive, Belgrade. State Archive of the NDH, Box 51.JTJozo Toma?evi?, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, ?etnici u Drugom Svjetskom ratu, 1941-45, Stanford University Press 1975.JUKJuki?, Ilija, The Fall of Yugoslavia, New York, Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich,1974.KOSKosti?, Bo?ko, Za Istoriju na?ih dana. Belgrade 1991.KPKarl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations,MDJMilovan Djilas, Wartime, New York, Harcourt i Brace Jovanovich, 1977.MIMilazzo, Matteo, The Chetnik Movement and the Yugoslav Resistance, Baltimore, J. Hopkins University Press, 1975.MPMo?a Pijade, Govori i ?lanci.MSM. Sobolevski, Pre?u?ena istina, ?asopis za Suvremenu povijest, Zagreb, 1993.NBNicholas Bethel, The Last Secret, NHNova Hrvatska, (New Croatia),London.NOBDNarodno-Oslobodica?ka Borba u Dalmaciji, 1941-45, Zbornik Dokumenata, Split, 1982.N?Nusret ?ehi?, ?etni?tvo u BiH, 1918-1941, Sarajevo, 1971.NTNikolai Tolstoy, The Minister and the Massacres, Century Hutchinson Ltd., London, Melbourne, Auckland, Johannesburg, 1986.NTBNikolai Tolstoy, in Bleiburg 1945-95, Symposium, Zagreb, 1995.OKOdi?, Komarica, No? i Magla, Gestapo u Jugoslaviji, Vol. 2, Zagreb, 1977.PCPhilip Cohen, Serbia’s Secret War, Texas A&M University Press, 1996.PGPrcela, Guldescu, Operation Slaughterhouse, Philadelphia, 1970.PRP. Richardson,PSKJPovijest Saveza Komunista Jugoslavije, Komunist, Narodna Knjiga, Rad, Beograd, 1985.RRappoport, Conflict,RICEugen (Dido) Kvaternik, Rije?i i ?injenice,ROMRomano, Ja?a, Jevreji Jugoslavije, 1941-45, Belgrade, 1980.SASlovenija, 1941-48-52, Tudi mi smo umrli za Domovino, Zbornik, Ljubljana-Grosuplje, 2000.SA NDHDr?avni Arhiv NDH (The State Archive of the NDH).SKOdmetni?ka zvjerstva i pusto?enja u NDH, u prvim mjesecima ?ivota Hrvatske narodne dr?ave, Ministarstvo vanjskih poslova NDH, ‘Siva Knjiga’, Zagreb, Lipanj 1942, STEStefanovi?, Mladen, Zbor Dimitrija Ljoti?a, 1934-45, Belgrade.VBDVjekoslav Vran?i?, Branili smo Dr?avu, Barcelona, 1985.VMVladko Ma?ek, In the Struggle for Freedom, N.Y. Robert Speller & Sons, 1957.VNViktor Novak, Magnum Crimen, Zagreb, 1948.VVVjekoslav Vran?i?, S bijelom zastavom preko Alpa, Buenos Aires, 1953.WStephen Clissold, Whirlwind, Philosophical Library, New York, 1949.WBWerner Brockdorff, Geheim-Kommandos des Zweitenwelt-Krieges,Z????? p.302-306, Ch. IV Apocalypse?Vladimir ?erjavi?, Demographic and War-time losses of Croatia during WW2 and the Post-war Years, in Bleiburg 1945-95, Symposium, Zagreb, 1995, pp.75-90.ZDP-NORZbornik Dokumenata i Podataka o Narodno-Oslobodila?kom ratu Naroda Jugoslavije, Vol. XIV, Knj. 1, pp.1-10. Beograd, 1981.CHAPTER 5 - THE YUGOSLAV GOD MARX (1945-1990)5.1 Archbishop Stepinac as Scapegoat XE "Archbishop Stepinac as Scapegoat"Evelyn Waugh, as a first-hand witness of the religious situation in the Yugoslavia of 1945, captured its flavour in his own flamboyant way: "In the Orthodox Church, a long tradition of subservience to temporal rulers, emperors and sultans has reduced the legacy of the apostles to, at best, an oriental mysticism remote from human obligations or, at worst, to the mere observance of a Right unconnected with moral and social duty and, accordingly, amenable to absorption in the civil government. Hitherto communism has mainly dealt with the Orthodox Christians; now it is advancing west, raising an unsolved [and perhaps insoluble] problem in the relations of Church and State. Croatia, where, as the Germans retreat, a predominantly Catholic country is falling under a predominantly communist rule, provides an example of this problem, though local peculiarities, both of Church and State examined below, complicates and confuses the essential issue." The stark reality, combined with the surreal effect of these, events are described in Evelyn Waugh's recollection:"Randolph [Churchill]" XE Randolph [Churchill]" Waugh related, "asked me to go with him to Croatia in the belief that I should be able to heal the Great Schism between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches - something with which he has just become acquainted and finds a hindrance to British war policy." The local historicists, such as Vladimir Dedijer XE "Dedijer, Vladimir" , a Great-Serbian chauvinist turned Tito’s biographer, were enraged by the ‘conspiracy of silence’ by 5until Bertrand Russell came to his aid: “Jean Paul Sartre XE "Sartre, Jean Paul " entrusted me [in the Russell Court] XE "Russell Court" to research the phenomenon of genocide generally [Macedonia, Vietnam, Russia, Ireland, France, Soviet Union, Latin America, Romania, Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Palestine, Kosovo].”Then Dedijer puts a positive spin on the subject: “In situations where the religious institutions identify with the State they adopt proselytism by force.”This describes beautifully the Serbian expansionism XE "Serbian expansionism" . He even has an excuse for it: “Judaism, in its initial stages, used proselytism by force also.”Then, in order to appear objective, he shifts his focus from the Vatican XE "Vatican" to the home territory and admits that during the Balkan wars, the Serbs and Montenegrins used strong-arm tactics in the conversion of Muslims. Incidentally, this coincided with the period of the West’s greatest admiration for the emerging Serbia.Other examples include the persecution of the Jews by the Russian Orthodox Church in the 19th century, yet his eclectic lists omit deliberately proselytism by the Serbian Orthodox church in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (conversion of about 200,000 Croats into Orthodoxy).Unavoidably, the ‘Holy Inquisition’ XE "Holy Inquisition" of the Roman Catholic Church (Gregory IX) is invoked with passion and, to a lesser extent, the inquisition of the Russian Orthodox Church in the 17th and 18th centuries during which heretics were locked up in monasteries and burned alive. Incineration as a weapon in the Protestant/Catholic Church confrontations in England was, of course, diplomatically ignored.Dedijer offers a chilling vision of the Roman Catholic Church as an institution with an enormous economic and financial structure, fulfilling its world mission in cahoots with imperialist states by means of forced conversions., This long introduction serves to make the point that this is nothing in comparison with the treatment of the Serbs in the NDH (1941-45) during their ‘Croatisation and assimilation’.In his three-dimensional reconstruction of these horrors, Dedijer paints a suitably grim picture, which he compares with the Spanish Inquisition XE "Spanish Inquisition" in the 15th century. When pressed to explain, his focus shifts again to the Spanish Inquisition ‘merchants of death’ who rented themselves out as the executers to the State authority. By analogy, the Vatican 'execution' of the Serbs in the NDH was done by proxy, i.e. by the Ustasha regime.The aim of the Ustasha regime was not ‘Catholicisation’ per se, goes on Dedijer, rather it was ‘Croatisation’, and, believe it or not, both the Churches, Catholic and Orthodox, were, to a certain extent, used by the State in the realisation of this policy.Now, thanks to Dedijer, we know why Ante Paveli? XE "Paveli?, Ante" experimented with a Croatian Orthodox Church, why he disliked Cardinal Stepinac XE "Stepinac, Cardinal " and why he advertised his willingness to convert to Orthodoxy on condition that the Serbs in NDH recognise the Croatian State.According to Dedijer, the Vatican and the NDH colluded during 1941-45 in order to increase their conspiratorial scores. Finally, it will not be easy to decide which of Dedijer's ideas best expresses the spirit of his conspiracy theories, because “the Vatican tries by all the means at its disposal to hide and destroy all the written documents which could reveal its complicity in the murder of hundreds of thousands of [Serbian] people.”By the time he reached page 750 of his thriller (The Vatican and Jasenovac XE "Vatican and Jasenovac" , Rad, Belgrade, 1987), he forgot what he had written on page 28 – on which he listed an extensive bibliography from the Vatican Archives XE "Vatican Archives" ), which largely discredited what he said in the previous pages.Another shift of focus led Dedijer to the Austrian Pretender, Franz Ferdinand XE "Franz Ferdinand" , who allegedly stated: “First of all, they [the Orthodox, Muslims and Catholics] should be put [to simmer] into one cauldron and then the Catholics would float to the surface.”This quotation is presumably used as a powerful propaganda piece that challenges the public perception of Franz Ferdinand and has something to do with his assassination in 1914 on page 37.“The Vatican was preparing an attack on Yugoslavia for a long time as it saw fantastic possibilities for the forced conversion of the Serbs [to Catholicism]”is a 'welcome' return by Dedijer to his leitmotif. Misjudging the intelligence of his readers, Dedijer goes on: “The Franciscan historians XE "Franciscan historians" wrote doctoral theses about the Serbs who were originally Catholics [in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina] in order to present their forced conversions as a wish of the Serbs to return to the faith of their fathers. The Vatican also encouraged the Roman Catholic Church in Croatia to give a helping hand in the organisation of the Ustasha formations.”I wonder what effect Dedijer intended to produce with the following quotation: “Amongst others, one of the roles of the priests was the incitement of the Ustasha regiments for the mass killing of the Serbian peasants.”And then he contradicted himself: “There are, however, a lot of documents of German and Italian origin [which show that] Jasenovac and other concentration camps were under the direct control of the Gestapo and Abwher [German military intelligence services].” In 1986 his capacity as the President of the Russell Court, Dedijer sent, on 6th September, an impertinent and provocative letter to Pope John Paul II, XE "Pope John Paul II" on the same subject: “For the sake of a correct historical assessment of the question of who was responsible for the genocide in Yugoslavia . . . it is very important that we receive an immediate and precise answer [to our question]. Is the avoidance of giving respect to the victims of fascism in Jasenovac the real reason for your decision not to visit Yugoslavia?”The Russell Court, which represented only itself, condemned the Vatican for genocide, even though “it was lacking Vatican documentation.” Burdened with the Marxist way of thinking, this 'Court' lumped together diverse people (and institutions) into a single sinister movement in order to decapitate it in one Caligulian sweep. A most curious title on page 47 of Dedijer’s book states: “Vatican, Hitler, Mussolini, Horty, Emperor Boris and the Albanian Nationalists demolished Yugoslavia in April 1941.”Croats were not mentioned. Was it a misprint? In any case, was the demolition of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia XE "Kingdom of Yugoslavia" such a bad thing after all?Froghopping from one obsession to another, Dedijer returns to Paveli?’s attitude“that he does not intend to be tolerant towards the Serbian-Orthodox church, because, as far as he is concerned, it is a political organisation rather than a church,”and is consistent with his other statements on the same subject.That Paveli?'s attitude towards the Serbian Orthodox Church XE "Serbian Orthodox Church" was broadly related to reality is confirmed from an unexpected communist source: “The Serbian Orthodox Church has an independent Patriarch, St. Sava, the Myth of Kosovo [perpetrated by Milo?evi? in 1989], the King [in exile] and, most important of all in my opinion, the guns.”The Serbian Orthodox Church (the soul of the Serbian State) could not exist apart from its body (the Serbian State, i.e., Yugoslavia) and particularly not in the Independent State of Croatia XE "Independent State of Croatia" .On the other hand, the Roman Catholic Church in the Independent State of Croatia XE "Independent State of Croatia" had Cardinal Stepinac at its head, who became the scapegoat for the contestants in the conflict of the Yugoslav Utopia.“The Croatian man for all seasons,” Cardinal Stepinac, was hated bitterly by the Serbian Royalists, despised by Paveli?, and later imprisoned, tortured and poisoned by the communists in order to satisfy Tito’s fantasies XE "Tito’s fantasies" about being both Cromwell and Henry VIII at the same time.Yet the Cardinal floored them all at his trial by the most Christian of Christian statements: “My conscience is clear.”The Ustasha ‘baptism' of keeping the Serbs under water for five minutes had nothing to do with the Cardinal. A note in the Cardinal’s his diary on 27th April 1941 states that from his first meeting with Paveli?, he got the impression that he was a sincere Catholic and that the Church would have freedom in its activities, yet he also noted that he was under no illusion that his work might proceed “without difficulties”.Such scepticism at the first meeting with Paveli? does not go together with the Archbishop's admiration for Paveli?, as Dedijer implies.Archbishop Stepinac evidently faced the dilemma of how to reconcile his position as the Head of the Roman Catholic Church, which was dominant in the NDH, with his Christian attitude towards the Serbian Orthodox Church, which was an institution openly inimical to that state. That “the Church teaching” in this matter was his guide became plain from his later sermons and proclamations in defence of the Orthodox Serbs and the Jews.In conformity with this teaching and as a Croat patriot naturally he “most warmly recommended the de facto recognition of the NDH by the Holy See” on 27th April 1941, seventeen days after the proclamation of its 'independence'.He had an acute sense of duty and obedience to the Roman Catholic Church and as such, he remained firm and impartial in the chaos of wartime centrifugal political forces.The difficulty was that the Roman Catholic Church in Croatia was a universal organisation, unlike the Serbian Church, and had in its membership individuals belonging to all three contesting forces (Paveli?, Tito) and even a few in the ranks of the Serbian Chetniks (in Dubrovnik). The Church, however, embraced all of them as ‘Sons of God’, and viewed even the Jews as ‘senior brethren’.The most explicit attitude of Paveli? towards the Serbs was recorded in his conversation with the sculptor Ivan Me?trovi? XE "Me?trovi?, Ivan " : “It is not my intention to exterminate the so-called Serbs. Rather I want to get rid of the Serbian Fifth Column XE "Fifth Column" [in Croatia] whose aim it is to keep us in subservience forever, as if we were their colony. Many were killed in order to frighten the others so that they escape across the river Drina [into Serbia] or in order to pacify them so that they become loyal citizens. There is no need to force them to become Catholics, as is widely believed [that this is my policy]. I could not care less about the Catholic Church. Let the Serbs declare themselves as Croats and I’ll join them in the Orthodox Church. We will create a Croatian Orthodox Church and dispose of the misunderstanding.”On the evening of 18th May 1941, Pope Pius XII XE "Pope Pius XII" received Paveli? in private audience. The Pope intimated that, de iure, recognition of the NDH will have to wait until the end of the war. Paveli?, in turn, pointed out that it was the wish of the Croatian people to arrange its Constitution along the lines and on the principles of the Catholic Church teaching. The Yugoslav Ambassador to the Vatican immediately lodged a protest note against this visit.During a meeting with the NDH Minister of the Interior, Eugen Kvaternik XE "Eugen Kvaternik" , Don Massuci, Secretary to the Papal Emissary Marcone XE " Massuci, Don - Secretary the Papal Emissary Marcone" in Zagreb spoke openly about the alleged crimes that were ascribed to him. Kvaternik took it lightly: “some cases for which I am accused are true, others are exaggerated”.He accepted that some Ustashas were perpetrating terrible crimes and promised,“they would be shot for these crimes.”Archbishop Stepinac’s contacts with the NDH authorities were prescribed by formal protocol (as they were in both Yugoslavias). More often these contacts were for the purpose of intervening on behalf of endangered individuals or groups. In that context he met first Field Marshall Kvaternik on 12th April 1941 and then Paveli? himself four days later on 16th April. On 28th April 1941, the Archbishop issued an Open Encyclical XE "Open Encyclical" addressed to the Croatian clergy, which amongst other matters beseeched them: “ . . . I speak to you, therefore, as a representative of the Church and as the Shepherd of souls. I beg you and invite you to put all your energies into the creation of a Croatia as a land of God, as it is the only way in which it can fulfill its mission. Knowing the men in charge of the fate of the Croatian people today, we are deeply convinced that our work will meet with their understanding. On the occasion of the visit of the Croatian Bishops to Paveli? on 26th June 1941 Cardinal Stepinac stated: “We pray to the Father of the Stars . . . to give you that spirit which the Head of State requires in order to rule with justice and truth . . .”During the bitter Croato-Serbian conflict between 1942 and 1944, Archbishop Stepinac saved 6,717 child victims of the war, 6,000 of them Serbian. May this remind us that Christian concerns have never been immune from political counter attacks on the pattern of Dedijer's accusations.The Archbishop took care also of 10,545 Croatian refugees XE "Croatian refugees" from the camps in Northern Italy.The latent epidemic of warring excesses occurred in the town of Glina on 13th May 1941 when the para-military Ustashas killed 260 Serbs. Archbishop Stepinac sent Paveli? a protest letter the following day, 14th May 1941.“Poglavnik (Paveli?)! I have just now received the news that Ustashas have shot 260 Serbs in [the town of] Glina without investigation and without (proper) court procedure. I know that the Serbs have committed serious crimes in our country in the past twenty years. Yet, I believe that it is my duty as Bishop to raise my voice and state that this [act] is not permissible in accordance with the Catholic moral code. For this reason, I would request you to undertake the most urgent measures in the whole territory of the NDH, with orders not to execute a single Serb unless his guilt can be proven and particularly those for which the death penalty is prescribed [by law]. Otherwise we [the Croats] cannot expect the heavenly blessing, without which we shall end in ruin . . .” On 21st July 1941, the Archbishop wrote to Paveli? again, asking him to stop the inhuman and cruel treatment of the non-Aryans in the camps and during deportations. A few days later, a Canon of the Zagreb diocese, Dr. Pavao Lon?ar, was sentenced to death for insulting Paveli?, later commuted to a prison sentence on the intervention of the Papal Legate Marcone. In December 1941, Belgrade Catholic Archbishop Dr. Josip Uj?i? asked for the intervention of Archbishop Stepinac with Paveli? in favour of some Serbs in concentration camps.A German guard who was a Serb from Belgrade, accompanied Dr. Uj?i?’s representative M. Ra?kovic, and thanked Archbishop Stepinac for his help. The Archbishop told him that he was against the mass conversions of the Serbs. Dra?kovi? replied: “Let them all convert in order to save their lives.” The Croatian Bishops’ conference in November 1941 requested Paveli? to put a stop to the vandalising of the Serbian Orthodox Churches.On13th February 1942, Dr. Andrija Artukovi?, Minister of the Interior, responded by issuing an official order to stop this outrage. In a letter dated 2nd November 1942, Archbishop Stepinac wrote to Dr. Artukovi?: “Although Poglavnik [Paveli?] promised to allow the priests to attend the dying prisoners in the camps, they were denied access. No wonder that many honest people ask themselves if there is any difference between the Bolshevik camps and our camps. And can the Ustasha movement expect heavenly blessing while refusing dying people that which is not refused by any civilised state?”The Archbishop raised his voice against the prosecution of the Jews in his memo to the Minister of the Interior On23rd April and 22nd May 1941, stating that these activities affect humanity and morals.“If, in the present state of social and moral perceptions, even the criminals escape the stigma of shame that they deserve, why is this stigma applied to those people who are, through no fault of their own, adherents of other religions and nationality? This persecution will affect the youth the most who will, because of such a law [the “Law for the Preservation of the Aryan Race and the Honour of the Croatian People”] develop an instinct for revenge . . . Nobody has the right to inflict such an assassination on the human personality.”On a visit by Paveli? to the Pope shortly afterwards, during which Paveli? requested recognition of the NDH, the Archbishop commented: “Is it necessary, in such a situation, to create difficulties [for the Holy See] because the Holy See frowns upon such laws?”The Croatian Bishops’ Conference held in Zagreb on18th November 1941 demanded protection of the personal and citizen’s rights of those Jews who were of the Catholic religion. This action for the protection of the Jews was taken at the height of the Nazi power and did not have a parallel either in England or the USA.When in March 1942, the news about further deportation of Jews spread through Zagreb, Archbishop Stepinac wrote On7th March to the Minister of the Interior: “I maintain that we cannot be proud of the fact that, if it is assumed, we have solved the ‘Jewish question’ in the most radical, i.e. the cruelest, way.” The Archbishop wrote to Paveli? on 6th March 1943 on the matter of mixed marriages officiated in the Catholic Church: “If it is a question of the validity of the marriages performed in the Catholic church, I must raise my voice against the State interference in this matter . . . Accordingly, no State has the right to break up such marriages . . . It is well known that such marriages exist [among the persons] of the highest ranks in [our] State and that such marriages are protected,”referring to Paveli?, Field Marshall Slavko Kvaternik XE "Kvaternik, Slavko - Field Marshall " , Ministers Milovan ?ani? XE "Milovan ?ani?" and Professor Or?ani? XE "Or?ani?, Professor" who all had Jewish wives. “If it is, in fact, the case of a foreign power interfering with our national and political life, then I am not afraid if my voice of protest comes to the ears of the foreign power in question. The Catholic Church does not know fear when facing any temporal power and when defending the most basic human rights. Do not allow that the irresponsible and uninvited elements offend against the very ethical values of our people. The breaking of the natural law in the name of the [Croatian] people and the [Croatian] State will bring revenge against [our] people and [our] State: the bitterness is rising in the country which in turn seeks revenge.” In the circumstances of occupied Europe, who else would have dared to refer to the Nazis, however ambiguously, in the way the Archbishop did.In his circular of 15th May 1941, Stepinac stated clearly the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church in the matter of conversions, rejecting those who became the blind instruments in the regime’s pursuit of ‘conversion’ of the orthodox Serbs, and after the little known fact that some (200,000) thousand Roman Catholics were converted to Orthodoxy in the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia in order to gain high positions in the armed forces and the civil service.“Nobody must be forced or rejected to join the Roman Catholic Church, providing that he wishes to join the Church sincerely and with the right conviction.” In spite of all the Archbishop’s directives and due to the arbitrary actions of some priests, mainly in Bosnia Hercegovina, which was outside Cardinal Stepinac’s jurisdiction, many serious irregularities occurred in that respect.The local Ustasha authorities, or the responsible Ministry, appointed many of these ‘missionaries’. On the other hand, it was even more common that many Orthodox Serbs pressurized absolutely impeccable Catholic priests to speed up their conversions, frequently threatening them physically and even threatening death. A Promemoriam sent by Archbishop Stepinac to Paveli? XE "Promemoriam sent by Archbishop Stepinac to Paveli?" on 20th November 1941 spelled out the position of the Church on the matter: “Nobody can deny that terrible violence and cruelty occurred because you yourself, Poglavnik, publicly condemned the violence of various so-called paramilitary Ustasha forces [divlji Usta?e] and even more, you ordered people to be shot for such crimes. Your determination to preserve justice and order in the country deserves due recognition. We believe, Poglavnik, that you will do all in your power to stop the [further] violence by [irresponsible] individuals and that the country will be run only by the rule of law.”On 27th March 1942, the Archbishop received Pope Pius XII's approval for his actions.This Promemoriam irritated the Ustasha regime and they even considered imprisoning the Archbishop. The fact that the Bishops’ Conference in Zagreb (on18th November 1941) demanded that the Orthodox Serbs (in spite of their rebellion against the State) in the NDH should have their basic human rights guaranteed is an extraordinary act which current 'liberal' history has ignored.All this occurred in a small occupied European country on whose territory the two greatest totalitarian ideologies the world has ever known, Nazism and Communism, collided.On the very day that the Nüremberg racial laws XE "Nüremberg racial laws" were extended to the NDH, (14th March 1943), the Archbishop in his sermon in Zagreb Cathedral said: “Without doubt the greatest fallacy of our time is that the value of the human individual has fallen to zero. Yet no normal human being can accept the fall of human dignity and the denial of human values . . . Therefore, every man, irrespective of his race or nationality, whether he had a university education in Europe or was hunting in the jungles of Africa, every man equally has the stamp of God the Creator upon him and has the inalienable rights that no other human power can limit or take away from him . . . We had an opportunity last week to watch the tears and listen to the sighs of grown men and the cries of helpless women who were in danger for one reason only, and that was that their family sanctuary does not fit the theories of racism. We, as representatives of the Church, could not and have not dared to be silent, if we were not prepared to deny our duty . . . ”As early as in 1938, Archbishop Stepinac had tackled the racial theories in relation to Catholicism in his talk to the Croatian University students: “Modern racism resents the fact that the Church refuses to fall on its knees in front of this fetish . . . Is nationality the highest human achievement? Of course it isn’t. If it were it would be able to satisfy the entire human needs. But it cannot, and in any case, death ends all racial differences. If, therefore, love for the nation goes beyond common sense, it is not love but rather a passion . . . But the Church, on the other hand, directs that indifference towards one’s own people is a sin, contrary to communist doctrine.”The fundamental confrontation with racism was the theme of Stepinac’s sermon in Zagreb Cathedral on 25th October 1942 at the height of the Nazi power: “What are the races and nations in the face of God? Firstly, we maintain that all nations facing God represent nothing. Secondly, there is only one race and that is God’s race . . . The members of this race can be of a higher or lower civilisation, can be white or black, . . . but essentially, they hark back to God and have to serve God . . . But these differences cannot be the reason for mutual destruction . . . And thirdly, we maintain that all races and all nations . . . have the right to a dignified human life and to dignified human treatment. All, without any exception, be they Gypsies, Negroes or Europeans, be they despised Jews or haughty Aryans, have equal rights when they say: "Our Father, who art in heaven" . . . This is the reason that the Catholic Church always condemned, and condemns today, all injustices and oppression, executed in the name of class, racial or nationalist theories. One cannot exterminate the intelligentsia from the face of the earth for the pleasure of the working class, as Bolshevism teaches. One cannot exterminate Gypsies and the Jews because they are considered to be inferior. If the principles of these theories were adopted loosely, there would exist no security for any nation on this earth.” The next profoundly significant sermon the Archbishop gave in Zagreb Cathedral was on 21st October 1943.“Some people accuse us [the Catholic Church] of not raising our voice at the right time against the crimes being carried out in our country. My answer to them is that we did not wish to be anybody’s political trumpet adjusting its tune to the wishes of political parties or individuals. In public life we have instead always articulated the principles of the eternal laws of God, no matter who was involved: Croats, Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, Catholics, Muslims, Orthodox or any others. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for any hothead in the ranks of the priesthood. The fact that the Catholic Church has not capitulated, even in times like these, will become plain in the future when it will be possible to discuss more sedately many of the present issues on the basis of original documents . . . We shall reply also to those who accuse us of being the protagonists of racism . . . The Catholic Church cannot accept that a certain race or nation, because of its numerical and military strength, can oppress numerically weaker and smaller nations. We cannot approve of the killing of the innocent just because someone has ambushed and killed a soldier, even if he were of the noblest race. The system of shooting of hundreds of hostages because of crimes committed by unknown individuals is a pagan system, which never has and never will achieve any good. It is quite plain, therefore, that if the order is made by such measures that many of those who, so far, have listened to the voice of the Church will now seek safety in the woods. If you ask me what kind of order is supported by the Church today when everyone fights for the ‘new order’ [Hitler’s Neue Ordnung], I answer: The Church is for that order that is as old as the Ten Commandments.”This sermon, which openly condemned National Socialism XE "Sermon openly condemned National Socialism" , could have been delivered in a more subtle less profiled manner. Yet, the Archbishop’s message was direct - there was no alternative style for him when talking about crimes.Up to 1918, i.e., the realisation of the Yugoslav Utopian State, the two churches, Catholic and Orthodox, in spite of some mutual skirmishes, served the Habsburgs XE "Habsburgs" in their fight against the Turks.In the 19th century, during the Habsburg monarchy, the Orthodox Church became decidedly more chauvinist, turning most of the Orthodox population in Croatia and Bosnia into political Serbs. The Catholic Church, as a universal institution, shunned nationalism.During the dictatorship of King Aleksandar (after 1929), XE "King Aleksandar" the link between the Government and the Serbian Orthodox Church blossomed into a rampant Byzantine clericalism. The Serbian Orthodox Churches were built in purely Croatian regions even in Slovenia which was 100% Catholic. The period from 1921 to 1931 became the age of Orthodox proselytism. The Catholic population in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina fell by 4% (some 200,000) by switching to the Serbian Orthodox Church for opportunistic reasons and for the purpose of advancement in public life. The germ of a violent reaction that would take a radical form in the NDH was thus sown.In the poorer parts of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina, where the Croats were most severely oppressed during the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the only significant forces that could stand up to this oppression in an organised way were the Catholic quasi-nationalist organisations. Thus, Catholicism as a reactive force in these poor regions became almost a national Croatian Church, in which Paveli? easily found adherents.The role of this ‘Church’ was very similar to that played by the Church in the resistance against the Turks. XE "Role of ‘Church’ very similar to that played by Church in resistance against Turks" In 1936, strangely enough, Stalin XE "Stalin" and the Soviet Communist Party XE "Soviet Communist Party" inspired the delirium of the Serbian national and religious chauvinism. Serbian writer Nikolajevi? produced a notorious play called ‘Volga, Volga’ in which Dostoyevsky XE "Dostoyevsky" meets Lenin XE "Lenin" and is prepared to be crucified in order to expiate his sins, exclaiming: “Let the Roman Church disappear from the face of the earth and let only our Orthodox mother remain.”The universalism of Catholicism inevitably brought Croats into conflict with narrow Serbian nationalism and later Tito's Stalinism XE "Tito's Stalinism" .A whole series of circumstances were favourable for the trial of Archbishop Stepinac. He was a follower of Ma?ek XE "Ma?ek" and Ma?ek was already condemned. As a Metropolitan Bishop at the beginning of the war in 1941, he had to communicate with the NDH regime. This exposed him to the accusation of ‘collaboration’. Yet at the same time, he was an outspoken defender of justice. At the Midnight Mass of 1942, he delivered a rather provocative sermon as far as the Ustasha regime was concerned, which included: “All the people on the earth are brothers, be they Jews, Serbs or others."However, in the communist eyes, his collaboration with the Ustashas was indisputable. His 'anti-communist' sermon in the pilgrimage sanctuary of Marija-Bistica XE "Marija-Bistica" at the end of the war was, allegedly, inspired by the British and linked with the Voki?-Lorkovi? coup XE "Voki?-Lorkovi? coup" , which indicated that there was a political alternative in Croatia which would have welcomed the British landing in Dalmatia."This speech was sufficient, in my (?engi?’s XE "?engi?" ), opinion to put him on trial.”Paveli?, as the anti-Yugoslav contestant in the war of Yugoslav utopia, exploited the Church also. His intentions were always covered up with a mantle of Catholicism. He controlled a number of the lower clergy, especially those in Bosnia-Hercegovina, some of whom were directly involved in the physical conflict with the communists, and who, of course, were demoted by the Church. Yet he could not manipulate the hierarchy, and particularly not Archbishop Stepinac himself.The intellectual Catholic circles in Croatia took Paveli?’s rule as only temporary and hoped that a democratic replacement for his regime would be found eventually, which hopefully would save the Croatian State.In 1943, when it became obvious that Tito would be installed as the ruler of the ‘New Yugoslavia’ with the help of the Great Serbs, the Church tried to thwart this threat. From this point on, one can date the most vicious communist propaganda against the Church as an anti-national (Protunarodna XE "Protunarodna" ) and ‘reactionary’ force. Archbishop Stepinac had by then already been sentenced to death (Smrt Stepincu) by their propaganda. This, rather than Stepinac’s collaboration with Paveli? was his undoing.The Archbishop was apolitical and a devoted man of the Church of Rome. As a leading and trusted Croat patriot, he was expected by the majority of the Croatian people to stand up and be counted as an uncrowned Croatian leader. As such, he put Tito's credibility in question XE "Tito's credibility in question" .Confidential conversations by the ‘Croatian (Communist) Government’, were taking place in the bourgeois Palace Hotel in Zagreb in 1945. The questions raised dealt with the subject of who should be liquidated, and who should be spared. The execution schedules were carefully reviewed, but it was decided that the Archbishop should be released from prison for the time being.The conflict with the Church in Bosnia was at the level of the early Christian persecutions in ancient Rome.At a dinner to which Msgr. Rittig, parish priest of St. Marks in Zagreb, XE "Msgr. Rittig, parish priest of St. Marks in Zagreb," an old Pan-Slavist and a communist fellow traveller, invited Croatian writer Bogdan Radica XE "Radica, Bogdan " , the conversation turned to the Archbishop. Rittig thought that Stepinac's difficulty was in the lack of understanding of the meaning of the revolutionary changes in the world.The main culprit for all Croatia's troubles, according to Rittig, was the Papal Legate Marcone, who persuaded Paveli? that the Allies would take over the NDH and thus the state would be saved after the war.Rittig may have understood the 'revolutionary changes', but plainly he did not understand Paveli?'s mind. "I joined the Partisans because they represented a Renaissance of the South Slav ideas," he exclaimed grandiloquently.Vjesnik XE "Vjesnik" , Zagreb Daily of 30th June 1945 published a list of those people who had been hung and shot as enemies of the people. (Quote lists, BR on p.207 and follow with the comment on BR, p.206.) The great fear in Zagreb in May, June 1945 was of the revenge by the Communist Revolution, mother of Fascism and Nazism, now devouring its own children. It was a fear not only of individuals but also of the whole Croatian people, psychosis aka the French and Russian Revolutions. While the unruly crowds of Partisans yelled the songs of liberation, in fact there was no freedom for anyone, neither for the majority nor even for the minority, which was now in the forefront of the terror.Split, the capital city of Dalmatia XE "Split, capital city of Dalmatia" , which for centuries was a doorway to the mellow influences of the Mediterranean, was already on the first day of its ‘liberation’ faced with the liquidation of some hundreds of its distinguished citizens. Parents, who had spent miserable days under the Italian occupation, were suddenly in fear of the death of their own ‘revolutionary’ offspring who descended from the woods into the town. The whole of Croatia was bloodstained, a torched land reverberating to the detonations and the clatter of long columns of prisoners of war. If the year 1941 was the year of the nationalist revenge, the year 1945 became the year of communist revenge of the revenge. In the sick minds of the brainwashed Partisans, the ‘Reactionaries’ XE "Reactionaries" (reakcija - opposition to the new communist regime), although broken and invisible, loomed threateningly large. The terror produced even some instances of ‘inverted heroism’: when the communists sentenced the Ustasha State Prosecutor Vidnjevi? XE "Vidnjevi?, Ustasha State Prosecutor" to death, his response at the ‘Peoples Court’, was cool, logical and straightforward: “It is perfectly natural that you want to cut our throats. If we won, we would have cut yours.” This courtroom drama distills the true synthesis of the head-on collision between the two contestants in the ‘Yugoslav’ Utopia and its violence.Revolutions eat their own children but in Croatia the hotheaded young communists wanted even to devour the ‘Grandfather of Croatian Marxism’, Miroslav Krle?a, XE "Krle?a, Miroslav - Grandfather of Croatian Marxism" for not joining them in the woods.The notorious Serbian minority in Croatia, slippery as hell in 'revolutionary terms', was determined now to show to the citizens of Zagreb that ‘Croatian times have gone forever’. Msgr. Rittig, the very image of a Renaissance man, during the already mentioned dinner chat came out with the preposterous comment:“Partisans are our Pan-Slavist children. We are going back to the era of a ‘Great Slav’ and ‘South Slav’ brotherhood. Everything that was written and spoken by Strossmayer XE "Strossmayer" and Ra?ki XE "Ra?ki" is becoming reality.”Rittig maintained that the Catholic Church in Croatia would have benefited if the priesthood and hierarchy had followed his course.Stepinac’s invisible leadership of a humiliated Croatia became crystal clear during his show-trial. Thus, the trial, at which Stepinac behaved with great dignity and heroism, became counter-productive. Tito’s lackeys, like Dedijer, could do nothing to diminish his stature in spite of their hysterical anti-Church campaign, weak on evidence and strong on propaganda. In the eyes of the Western ‘liberals’, fellow travellers, the Protestant and some of the Jewish press in England and in the US (with rare exceptions), Stepinac was an obstinate reactionary and as far as they were concerned, the author of his own misfortune.The demonisation of the Archbishop XE "Demonisation of the Archbishop" discredited eventually the Croatian communists in the eyes of the Croats in the USA, and shaped American anti-Yugoslav policy for several years to come. Tito decided to have an open confrontation with Stepinac, not because he believed he was a war criminal, but because he believed that his own personality cult, such as it was, would suffer if he did not. Later, in a conversation with Edward Korry of the United Press XE "Korry, Edward - of the United Press" (published in Borba on 10th January 1951), Tito finally accepted that he was impotent to stop the religious and national conflict between the Croats and Serbs, a conflict that in reality he (Tito) himself was inflaming. His power was based on the support of the Great-Serbs (overnight ardent communist party members), openly admitted in a conversation he had with Sulzberger, the correspondent of the New York Times in November 1950, in which he stated: “The interpretation of that conversation, in the sense that Stepinac would be freed if he leaves the country, is not accurate inasmuch as it would not be acceptable to the 'Orthodox' population, which maintains that he is, in fact, a war criminal. They maintain this and nothing can be done about it. We have to take into account the feelings of the Orthodox population.” Ergo, the Archbishop must remain locked up because ‘the Orthodox’ population is against his release, although Tito would have released him on condition that he left the country.This ‘raison d’état’ became even plainer in the course of the conversation when Tito elaborated: “[Anyway] there were many cases in the world where innocent people were imprisoned and even executed in the interest of the State.” Strangely enough, Tito never bothered about the feelings of the Catholics and the Muslims, i.e., half of his population.Sulzberger summed it up succinctly in the New York Times of 11th November 1950: XE "Sulzberger - New York Times, 11th November 1950\:" “All the Serbs are in favour of the imprisonment of Stepinac, and all the Croats demand his release; the first see in him as a war criminal and the second a hero and martyr.”While on the one hand Tito advertised ‘brotherhood and unity’, on the other he was acting to divide Croats and Serbs. In this scenario, he followed the immutable well-tested law of 'divide et impera'. Between 13th and 16th August 1950, the French media reported, “The Marshall stated that although Cardinal Stepinac is supported by the ‘Yugoslav’ Catholics [i.e., the Croats], he is heavily criticised by the Serbian-Orthodox population, which is in the majority in Yugoslavia.”Thus, Tito’s claim that the national question, i.e., the Croato-Serbian conflict, was solved was nonsense. That the Serbs were deciding the fate of the Catholic Church in Croatia came out into the open.Only Tito’s dictatorship kept the three phases of communist Yugoslavia together:1.1944-46 - Yugoslavia was dominated by communism and Great-Serbianism, and these factors were interchangeable and identical.2.1946 to 1948 - Submission to Moscow.3.After 1948 - Yugoslavia returned to Phase 1 - communism and Great Serbianism, but without pressure from Moscow.The trial of Archbishop Stepinac fused all the Great-Serbian forces - monarchists as well as the communists. The Serbian emigrant press became indistinguishable and interchangeable with that of Belgrade. That propaganda was fuelled by the anti-Catholic, Protestant and some Jewish press, ‘liberal’ thinkers in the West. It was also fueled by atheists like Lord Russell and his Kangaroo Court XE "Russell, Lord and his Kangaroo Court" , led by the Great-Serbian Chetnik turned communist, Vladimir Dedijer.Many years before the Human Rights XE "Human Rights" issue became the order of the day, Archbishop Stepinac spoke about the natural right of small nations to have equal rights with those of the Great Powers. At a reception for Prince Paul Karadjordjevi? in the Church of St. Mark’s in Zagreb in 1940, he stated: “At the entrance to this ancient Church which, throughout its centuries long history witnessed that any attempt at trampling on the rights of the Croatian people, always ended with defeat for those who forgot that no rights and power that go against God could ever prevail. On 9th July 1944, at the Marija Bisrica pilgrimage, he stated: “Is the war clique perhaps under the illusion that, while hitting our country hard with terror, it is a crime if the Croatian people, with all the force of their being, defend today their independence with unprecedented sacrifices? If that would be true, then all the other nations that yearn for freedom and independence would be criminal. Let no one doubt that the Croats will never give up their rights.” The Archbishop’s attitude towards communism was expressed on 31st October 1943: “When we say that we cannot approve of a system which aims at taking the land from the peasants and which intends to turn them into slaves, then we draw from long experience, as well as from common sense, which tells us that our peasants would rather die than become slaves on their own land.”In a sermon of 18th March 1945, the Archbishop stated: “We are puzzled at the sudden appearance of certain fighters for ‘freedom’, attacking the Church because it loves its people . . . In the same way, this very Church did its utmost not to allow anyone, irrespective of their religion, race or nationality, to be unjustly wronged, however much this fact is arrogantly denied . . . We therefore are not afraid to state this, even at the risk of being again branded ‘war criminals’. If all other nations have a right to safeguard their life and independence, then the Croatian people cannot be the subject of an imposition that it rejects, because the Croatian people know best what is its downfall and what is in its best interests. Equally, we are not afraid to state that the Croatian people will, ad limine, reject any regime, be it on the extreme left or the extreme right, which does not intend to respect its thousand-year old Catholic tradition.”Referring to the Ustasha regime’s policy on the conversion of Orthodox Serbs, Stepinac stated as early as 29th June 1942: “God is our witness that we are against anyone joining the Catholic Church by force . . . and if we, regretfully, have not succeeded in protecting the Serbs, it is not the fault of the Church but of the irresponsible elements which, because of [previous] injustices, are now taking revenge on innocent individuals.”In the same way, as in 1940, when the Archbishop received Prince Paul Karadjordjevi? XE "Karadjordjevi?, Prince Paul" on the doorstep of St. Mark’s Church in Zagreb, so on 23rd February 1942, he received Paveli? on the occasion of the re-opening of the Croatian Parliament and warned him: “Let [the Parliament] bring about honest laws which will not contravene the laws of God! . . . Let it bring just laws with equally distributed burdens and equally distributed rights. Let it institute feasible laws in order to avoid burdening people with laws that are impossible to keep.”From everything the Archbishop said up to that time, there was no single obvious reason for Paveli?'s displeasure with the Archbishop, who stood firm on moral grounds, and defended Croatian independence as a patriotic principle, but rejected violence in achieving that aim.Paveli? resented the Archbishop. He called the Archbishop “Balavac”, i.e., whipper-snapper, not for what he said but for what he perceived as his interference in the affaires d’état and saw it as a demoralising influence on the Croatian armed forces.In order to establish a tolerable co-existence, Archbishop Stepinac outlined 18 points of contention that muddied the waters between the State and the Church and submitted them to Paveli? at their meeting in the spring of 1944.Paveli?, who listened carefully, skillfully avoided the issue: “Your Eminence, in my opinion there are certain people who do not have anything better to do than to drive a wedge between you and me”.With that, the Archbishop was dismissed.The Croatian Bishops held a conference in Zagreb in March 1945, at which they made three responses to recent events:1.The Bishops, in the name of the Church in Croatia reject the blame for the bloody conflict in the country.2.They demand respect for law and order and for the protection of the clergy against persecution by the Chetniks and Partisans in the ‘liberated’ territory. They also reject the communist accusation that the clergy were ‘war criminals’.3.The Bishops supported the right of the Croatian people to freedom and independence and when, as a result of the WWII, that aim was realised, the Church would respect the will of the people.On 8th May 1945, the Yugoslav Partisan communist forces crept, in a battered single column, into Zagreb.On 17th May 1945, nine days after the ‘liberation’, Archbishop Stepinac was imprisoned.Msgr. Svetozar Rittig, XE "Rittig, Msgr. Svetozar" the Parish Priest of St. Marks in Zagreb, former secretary to the pro-Yugoslav activist Bishop Strossmayer and himself a great pro-Yugoslav fan, returned to Zagreb after a spell in the woods with Tito’s Partisans. Soon he became Minister for Religious Affairs in the ‘Federal Republic’ of Croatia.On 2nd June 1945, on his first post-war visit to Zagreb, Tito received at his own request a delegation of bishops and priests while Archbishop Stepinac was still kept in prison.Msgr. Rittig was in the chair.Bishop Salis-Sewis, Archbishop Stepinac’s auxiliary, XE "Salis-Sewis, Bishop - Archbishop Stepinac’s auxiliary" expressed the hope that the Archbishop would soon be released, and that the new State would fulfill the principles of its own Declaration on freedom of religion and conscience, so that the Church could fulfill its role towards the people and its obligations towards the State.Tito responded that he was ‘pleased’ to see them and promised that the ‘Yugoslav Government’ would act in the spirit of the Declaration.He then opined: “On this occasion I would like to express my personal thoughts on how I see the question of the relations between the Church and the State and between the people and the Church. I must tell you that I, as a Croat and a Catholic, was not satisfied with the behaviour of some Catholic clergy in these difficult historical moments that cost us so many lives. I shall speak plainly and openly. Forgive my openness - I am not satisfied, but that does not mean that we accuse, that I accuse the [Catholic] clergy as a whole. In my opinion, and you are aware of this, there were a number of young priests who parted from the [influence of the] older ones, and particularly from those who followed the great [Bishop] Strossmayer, protagonist and follower of the Yugoslav idea. Naturally, throughout our struggle we always took into account the fact that religion is deeply rooted in our people and consequently this question cannot be solved by decree because such a solution would always end in failure. Indeed, it would be damaging to the community and [to] the [resolution of the] national question. Having this in mind, we intend to negotiate in a friendly manner in order to find the best possible solution. I wish, and I put this to Msgr. Rittig, that you prepare a proposal, as you see it, of how the question of the [relations between the] Catholic Church in Croatia and the State should be resolved. We intend to do the same with the Orthodox Church. As for myself, I would like our [Catholic] Church to become more national, and [more] synchronised with the people. Maybe you are surprised at me saying this and that I champion such an uncompromising national approach. Too much blood was shed; too many people have suffered [which I have witnessed], so my wish is that from now on the Catholic Clergy in Croatia become more deeply involved with the people than was the case so far. I must state openly that I do not accuse Rome, your supreme forum. At the same time, I must say that I view it [the Vatican] critically as it always leaned more towards Italy than towards our people. I should like to see the Catholic Church in Croatia now, when conditions become right, acquire more independence [from Rome]. That is what I have in mind and this is the fundamental question – the question that we wish to resolve. Everything else is of secondary importance and will be much easier to accomplish. Take it from me; I am putting this on your conscience. This is my aim, which, by the way, is shared with many of my collaborators. “We wish to create one great union of South Slavs, which will contain both members of the Orthodox Church and also Catholics. That union must be firmly linked with the other Slavs. It will consist of somewhat more Orthodox than Catholics and, for that reason, the question of the relations between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches will have to be harmonised vis-à-vis the great idea of the rapprochement and collaboration between all the Slav nations. These [Slav] nations have suffered from disunity, which came to a pitch in this war when Slavdom was meant to be destroyed. Here you are, these are my thoughts. This is the essence of the problem.”Tito's speech, in the author’s English translation, has been transposed into a statesman's-like exposé, giving a more coherent message than in his halting 'Serbo-Croat' babbling. It was obvious that this, 'Tito’s exposé' XE "Tito’s exposé" was drafted by the old Yugoslav utopianist fox, Msgr. Rittig himself.Now, imagine that you are a Roman Catholic bishop and a distinguished churchman, accustomed to the discipline of the Roman Church; that you are unexpectedly called away from your priestly duties in order to mount a serious defence of the Holy See and what it meant to the Croatian people, and then you find yourself face to face with a communist dictator, how could you take his gibberish seriously? Surely the bishops had much better things to do than explain to him the subtle dogmatic and disciplinary link between the Croatian Church and the Holy See – even if he would listen. All they could do was to respond on the primary school subject of the ‘Slav idea’ and point out that Croatia was a unique country in the 'Slav' world in being permitted by Rome to celebrate mass in the Croatian language for already a thousand years. Touché.Tito, ignorant of this fact, turned the conversation to the subject of Archbishop Stepinac, saying that as long as he was sub judice he could not comment on his case. The distinguished churchmen then piled up evidence to show that Archbishop Stepinac had saved lives, explained his care for nearly 7,000 (mainly Serb) partisan children, and emphasised his interventions on behalf of Orthodox Serbs, Jews and Gypsies. They reminded Tito of the Archbishop’s sermons against the racist laws, Nazi persecution and the shooting of hostages. The very fact that Paveli? had asked the Holy See to replace him did not stop the Archbishop from acting as his conscience dictated.Summing up, the Bishops made a major faux pas by saying that Archbishop Stepinac was the 'greatest living Croat', a comment that jolted Tito.Visibly enraged, Tito hit back with a Marxist dialectic detour and did not mince his words: “Many priests were members of the Ustasha movement and now they have fled or are in prison!”The Bishops explained that there were many and complicated reasons for this, the chief one being the enthusiasm for the Croatian independence long before the persecution of the Serbs by the regime occurred and eventually got out of hand, but there was no way out for them later on after they were committed. The courage of the Bishops XE "Courage of the Bishops" in exposing the evils of the new communist political system at the peak of the terror and in Tito’s presence is almost inexplicable. They enumerated communist prison camps, the persecution of priests and nuns, but emphasised that all this occurred, of course, without his knowledge. Tito’s dialectic trick found its match in that characteristic Jesuitical counter-argument and he felt rewarded and promised to review these cases.Just at the point when the conversation seemed to have taken a more rational turn, Msgr. Rittig intervened: “Comrade Tito, you know as I do that the [Catholic] clergy are guilty and for that reason they will have to suffer penitence . . .”The impact of Rittig’s comment was lost in the face of a loud protest by the Bishops who, having put the terror under the spotlight had eluded Tito’s criticism. “That’s right, only some priests have made mistakes” Tito interrupted diplomatically. “Yet from the moral point of view these mistakes reflect on the whole church,” a reply that exposed him again as an irreparable Marxist dialectic. The first act of the mutual exorcism was over. The next day, 3rd June 1945, Archbishop Stepinac was released XE "Stepinac Archbishop - released" .On 4th June 1945, Tito met with the Archbishop. The Archbishop appropriately devoted the whole time available to him to championing the individual freedom of citizens, explaining to Tito the ancient dictum that wise statesmen respect the religious sentiments of their citizens, and that they back it by law. The best form for this, suggested the Archbishop, would be a Concordat between the new State and the Holy See XE "Concordat between new State and Holy See" .Tito listened carefully to the Archbishop’s exposé (the room was very likely bugged) and didn’t have any other option but to agree in principle as, otherwise he would appear to be an ‘unwise statesman’. Yet, he remained somewhat dubious about the good will of the Holy See towards the Slavs, and particularly towards Yugoslavia.The Archbishop pointed out that, on the contrary, the Holy See had taken the ‘pro-Slav’ side on many occasions in the past, particularly in relations between Hungary, Italy and Croatia.Tito immediately exploited this comment politically and asked that the Holy See give support to Yugoslavia in its claim on the territory of Istria as ‘Slav’ region. ‘The fact that Istria is still Croatian is to the merit of the Catholic Church’, responded the Archbishop. The Archbishop then turned up the heat.The Holy See had signed a Concordat with the Kingdom of Yugoslavia XE "Concordat with Kingdom of Yugoslavia" , which had failed, as it was unacceptable to the unruly elements in the Belgrade Parliament.The Archbishop paused, took a deep breath and proceeded: “So far I have spoken as a Bishop. Now I should like, if I am permitted, to add something as a human being that observes the situation objectively . . . The lives must be saved [referring particularly to the mass revenge killings of Croats by the communists after Bleiburg and all over Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina in 1945). We are a small nation . . . and another catastrophe like this would mean the total annihilation of the Slav nations in Southern Europe.”Tito was obviously moved by the phrase ‘annihilation of the Slav nations’ and responded that the same sentiments were (held) in his heart and that he would do what he could to stop these killings. 'Although his heart was grieving' “It is not easy, however, because justice must be done for the great injuries to humanity,” Tito ended.A crafty Marxist fox, Tito presented himself as a humanist while holding an executioner’s hatchet behind his back. The Archbishop, already put on his guard in the face of this Marxist fraud, pursued not only the criticism of the new regime, but balanced it equally with sincerity and courage in trying truly to resolve the relations between the Church and the new State. In spite of Tito’s promises, the anti-Catholic persecution intensified. Imprisonments of priests and lay Catholics, anti-religious media-campaigns, and every kind of terror were in full swing. The hierarchy submitted a promemoriam to Vladimir Bakari?, President of the Federative Republic of Croatia, listing the “questions that troubled them” (in Tito’s own words) on 21st July 1945.This promemoriam listed the names of the priests sentenced to death by the ‘Peoples Courts’: 79-year old Father Kerubin ?egvi? XE "?egvi?, Kerubin - Father 79-years old" , Professor Stjepan Kramar XE "Kramar, Professor Stjepan " , Dr. Matija Kranj?i?, XE "Kranj?i?, Dr. Matija" Petar Kova?i?, XE "Kova?i?, Petar" Josip Kalajd?i? XE "Kalajd?i?, Josip" , Mihael Kanoti XE "Kanoti, Mihael" and Dr. Ivo Guberina XE "Guberina, Dr. Ivo" .The following were sentenced to death by shooting: Sisters Blanda Stipeti?, XE "Stipeti?, Sister Blanda" Fanika Splajt XE "Splajt, Sister Fanika " and the Franciscan Friars Rikardo Ribi? XE " Ribi?, Rikardo - Franciscan Friar" and Dr. Beato Bukinac. XE "Bukinac, Dr. Beato -Franciscan Friar" These priests were told of the charges against them only upon their arrival at the court. Due to this, they remained without defence witnesses. The trials themselves were carried out in secret by a regime that prided itself with the name of a ‘People’s democracy’.The media campaign, prior and after these show trials, was brimming over with cynical sarcasm. A case in point was the death sentence given to Father Kerubin ?egvi? XE "?egvi?, Father Kerubin" who, as an outstanding Croatian historian, was a protagonist of the theory of the Nordic, rather than the Slav origin of the Croats, and for that theory he was shot.“Evidently” stated the Archbishop “a progressive Croatian ‘Peoples Court’ in Zagreb in 1945 practiced the principles of the 16th and 17th century.”Hundreds of other priests were rotting in prisons and camps. The ‘Peoples’ and the Military Courts XE "Military Courts" pronounced some 80 (mostly death) sentences every day as if on a conveyor belt.The Archbishop demanded the outlawing of the Military and the reversal back to civilian Courts presided over by qualified judges. He added that the mass imprisonment of civilians (or political prisoners) on the evidence of false informants was totally unacceptable.Dr. Bakari?, President of the Federative Republic of Croatia XE "Bakari?, Dr. - President of Federative Republic of Croatia" visited the Archbishop on 28th June 1945.The Archbishop complained: “Generally speaking it is a great injustice to imprison people for alleged collaboration with the occupiers . . . It appears that, according to the present government, everybody had to stop living between 1941 and 45. Why is all this necessary? What is, in essence, the meaning of liberation if the identity of the victims is the only change? Pondering over this raises only one question: has the Croatian people suffered so much as throughout the past four years and these few months since the end of the war in all its history? . . . The final question is: what moral authority is the basis for the persecution of thousands of Croatian officers and soldiers who, in good faith, served the Croatian people? In accordance with the ethical principles of waging wars, none of them should be punished, with the exception of very few who broke the international laws of war.” The Croatian Bishops’ conference sent Tito a telegram on 19th September 1945: ”We have found that 200 innocent persons, professors, doctors, engineers, priests and other Croatian intellectuals have been sentenced to death by shooting XE "Innocent persons, 200 - professors, doctors, engineers, priests and other Croatian intellectuals have been sentenced to death by shooting" and are now in the military prison in Zagreb. Marshall, we request that you grant an amnesty to these people.”On 22nd September 1945, the Bishops sent another promemoriam to Tito stating that during the ‘national liberation’ war the Partisans and Chetniks killed 243 Catholic priests, 169 were still in prison and 89 had disappeared. In addition, two bishops were still in prison.There was no response from the ‘Marshall’ to this appeal, only the bitter realisation that the demands of common humanity stood for nothing against the brute force of the particular aims of the communist contestant within the Yugoslav Utopia.However, the case to which the Archbishop devoted the greatest attention was the underhanded attack on religious education, the obstruction of spiritual comfort to the sick, and to those sentenced to death. The vicious attack on, and the suspension of, the Catholic press opened a huge chasm between the Catholic Church and the communist Yugoslav State.“The regime’s press attacks on the clergy, describing them as reactionaries, and propaganda cartoons, showed that we [the priests] are outside the law. Everybody can attack the clergy but they in turn must remain silent, fill the prisons or enrich the list of those sentenced to death. At the same time this remarkable increase in death and destruction is accompanied by slogans about the freedom of conscience and religious belief.” On 18th August 1945 the Archbishop wrote again to Dr. Bakari?: "I am informed that on somebody’s instigation, the graves of Ustasha and German soldiers are being leveled. This is a cultural scandal of the first order. You, Mr. President, as a lawyer, are acquainted with the pagan Roman law that punished the cases of ‘de laesione sepulchri’. Have we fallen that low, even below pagan behaviour? I, as representative of the Catholic Church, protest most energetically against this savagery and would ask you to issue an urgent order to respect the Catholic cemeteries. In the cemeteries there are no longer friends or enemies, neither Partisans nor Ustashas, nor Germans or Slavs. In the cemeteries there are only the dead who are awaiting the judgment of the Eternal Judge, who will judge us only on our human merits and on the observance of his laws - and not in accordance with our political affiliation or nationality.” On 21st July 1945, the Archbishop wrote to Dr. Bakari?: “In parallel with the imprisonment of the priests, the authorities are requisitioning property of the church.”On 17th August 1945, the Archbishop wrote to Tito and Bakari? on the matter of the Agrarian Reform XE "Agrarian Reform" : “The Church must support its servants, seminaries, schools, hospitals and parishes. The Croatian people respect property rights, particularly those of the Church. The principle that “the land belongs to those who till the land” is not feasible. No single peasant is able to till his land without the help of his neighbours. Civil Servants do not till the State-owned land. How does the State intend to negotiate with the Holy See if prior to negotiations the Church will be stripped of its property? For this reason, I cannot accept the new law of Agrarian Reform. The argument that the Church lands were acquired through benefaction, ergo people have given it to the Church - people can take it from the Church - is a transparent expedient. The Church is in possession of documents, which are based on voluntary bi-lateral agreements, which [in a civilised society] cannot be abrogated by one-sided actions. A State that indulges in abrogation of such agreements will lose all credibility in the eyes of its citizens. Finally, there are more than 600,000 acres of unoccupied land, more than sufficient to satisfy all those who were promised the land.”Tito’s answer to that was that before and during the session of the National Assembly in Belgrade XE "National Assembly in Belgrade" there were many discussions on the subject “but at all times there was a complete agreement that the Agrarian Reform must apply also to the Church lands. Naturally, this unanimous opinion is the result of the feeling of the peasant masses, rather than the will of the individual representatives. The only easement was an increase from five to ten hectares, which the Churches and Church institutions of historical significance will be able to retain as ‘a historical maximum’”.The gist of the letter that a conference of Croatian Catholic Bishops in Zagreb sent to Tito on 17th to 22nd September 1945 was:1.Rejection of the Agrarian Reform.2.Request for the respect of Christian marriage, religious instructions and respect for the Catholic cemeteries.3.Express belief in the possibility of a satisfactory agreement between the Roman Catholic Church and the State.4.Express loyalty to the new State.The regime showed great interest in the proceedings of this conference.The Black Sheep amongst the bishops (although not a bishop himself), Monsignor Rittig, in conversation with Don Masucci, Secretary to the Papal Legate Marcone XE "Masucci, Don - Secretary to Papal Legate Marcone" , expressed his great reservations about the attitude taken by conference.The real aim of Rittig’s interference was to silence the bishops, but that the Archbishop ignored. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the so-called ‘Pastoral Letter’ XE "Pastoral Letter" of 22nd September 1945 issued by the Croatian Catholic Bishops XE "Croatian Catholic Bishops" , and directed at the congregations of the faithful.Firstly, the Bishops raised the issue of the victims of the communist regime in the ranks of the clergy as a result of the terror show trials in the ‘People’s Courts’, i.e., 243 priests were executed, 169 were in prisons, 89 disappeared - a total of 491. In addition to these, there were nineteen seminarians, three monks and four nuns who were the victims of gross persecution.In the Franciscan monastery of Siroki Brijeg in Hercegovina XE "Siroki Brijeg in Hercegovina" , twenty-eight Franciscans were executed after the Partisan onslaught on this ‘Ustasha fortress’, although none of them were armed. The letter enumerated all the previous demands for full religious freedom and expressed the wish for peace and co-operation with the State.It ended with the statement that its authors, the collective Catholic Episcopate, XE "Catholic Episcopate" took full responsibility for its content.The essence of the letter, i.e., that the Catholic Church in communist Yugoslavia was subject to persecution, found a passionate response with the Croatian people.The communist press used the usual worn out Marxist bleat in attacking the bishops as reactionaries and fascists.“Down with the pastoral letter - down with the bandit Stepinac” were the red paint graffiti adorning the walls of Zagreb buildings. The communists organised demonstrations lead by the fanatical big mouths’ yelling: “Down with Christ, down with the Pope, down with the Vatican, down with the bishops, down with the Gospel, down with religion”.The terror, caused by this verbal diarrhea, was observed by the world media which, commenting on these events, were polarised between the enemies of the Catholic Church and Croatia and its gagged sympathizers. On 22nd October 1945 Pope Pius XII nominated the American Bishop Msgr. Patrick Hurley XE "Hurley, Msgr Patrick - American Bishop" as his delegate in Yugoslavia.On 4th November, Archbishop Stepinac was stoned during a visit to a Parish Church near Zagreb.After the publication of the ‘Pastoral letter’, the communist party decided to make a final step and to imprison the Archbishop and put him on a show trial. As the communists needed to appear to act in a legal manner, it took them almost a year to concoct ‘credible’ material for the prosecution.Don Massuci, the Secretary to the former Papal Legate in Zagreb, Msgr. Marcone, entered the following in his diary for 25th November 1945: “Bitter tears are flowing with no end. [The communists] are continuously sending people to the gallows. The whole land [Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina] is flooded with tears. After the massacre of several hundreds of thousands of Croatian soldiers and citizens in the first months of the communist regime, shootings and hangings are still going on and on daily. There is no one here without somebody to cry for.”On 23rd December 1945, Great Britain and the US granted diplomatic recognition to their blue-eyed boy, Tito XE "US granted diplomatic recognition to their blue-eyed boy, Tito" XE "Great Britain granted diplomatic recognition to their blue-eyed boy, Tito" .A delegation of five British and six American newspaper correspondents visited Yugoslavia and reported back home that “Yugoslavia was a real paradise”.Randolph Churchill XE "Churchill, Randolph" decided to return to Yugoslavia to see if this was so.On 5th January 1946, he called on Archbishop Stepinac. The Archbishop was surprised that Churchill was not yet imprisoned. “That cannot happen to me,” said Randolph. However, as soon as he left the Archbishop’s palace, he was held by the OZNA (Secret Police) XE "OZNA (Secret Police)" for four hours.At 5.30 a.m. on 18th September 1946, police entered the Archbishop’s palace with a warrant for his imprisonment signed by Jakov Blazevi? XE "Blazevi?, Jakov" , a communist cut-throat from the region of Lika, whose fifteen minutes of glory was achieved a few years later in 1971 escorting Queen Elizabeth II XE "Queen Elizabeth II" through the streets of Zagreb.The Archbishop responded peacefully: “Here I am, if you are thirsting after my blood.” The well-organised circus of the communist pre-trials was orchestrated with solo partituras on the leitmotif of the regime’s favourite slogans: “war criminal, cut-throat, bandit Stepinac”.The campaign demanding the death penalty was stirred up in all the factories and offices. Anyone refusing to sign Stepinac’s death warrant was proclaimed a reactionary, fascist, and an enemy of the people. Yet 7,000 Croatian railway men refused to sign.Nobody could say a word in public in his defence.The communist Mafia was yelling, “Crucify him”, which echoed the yelling of the crowd against Christ nearly 2,000 years ago.A few days before the trial, the Archbishop was visited by the Judge, Dr. Zarko Vimpul?ek XE "Vimpul?ek, Judge Dr. Zarko" , a shady character, and invited to choose his defence lawyers.“I am not prepared to defend myself before a Court that is the lackey of a certain organisation. Shoot me, put me on the gallows, I will not respond” was one of the first statements by the Archbishop. The Archbishop then enumerated crimes that Tito’s regime had committed against the Church. He turned from the role of accuser to that of Prosecutor: “You are accusing us of being butchers. Even I was called that. Yet it would be much better to find out how our country has been turned into one enormous cemetery. Is it all the work of only the Ustashas and the Croatian army, or are there some other reasons for this state of affairs. Were all those who were killed by “the Peoples Liberation Army” really guilty? Taking everything into account, I have decided not to defend myself, not to be represented by the Defence Counsel and will not appeal against the sentence, whatever it will be, as it does not make any sense to do so. Everyone knows that the sentence has already been decided [by the Party]. If the present regime cares for the consolidation of the country, there is a way. The State now has diplomatic links with the Holy See and should use these for sincere negotiations. The Church does not recognise the Dictat . . . As far as I am concerned, I can be sentenced, other bishops can be sentenced, you may kill priests and the faithful but that will not change the situation. A living example of that was Hitler. Like many processes instigated by Hitler against the Church, they only increased its glory - so will this, as Christ stands behind the Church XE "Christ stands behind the Church" . You should know that Christ is the keystone of the World. He who falls on this stone will be injured, and he on whom this stone falls he will be pulverised.”The investigating Judge fell into uncontrolled frenzy, threatening: “You will speak only when you are faced with the people.”“We shall see,” answered the Archbishop quietly.The Court accepted Dr. Ivo Politeo XE "Politeo, Dr. Ivo" as Defence Counsel for the Archbishop on the recommendation of the Church and nominated Dr. Natko Kati?i? XE "Kati?i?, Dr. Natko" as his Deputy.Both lawyers, although independent, were under extreme pressure from the Communist Party. They had only four days to prepare the defence, while the Party had spent a whole year concocting ‘credible’ charges.The Archbishop had only one hour-long session with his Defence Counsel, Dr. Politeo, prior to the trial.The trial itself was a sadistic communist farce, called a “tristissimo processo XE "Tristissimo processo" ” by Pope Pius XII., It was deliberately linked to the unrelated trial of Ustasha Colonel Erih Lisak, Director of Public Security in the NDH, XE "Lisak, Ustasha Colonel Erih - Director of Public Security in NDH," and two other administrators of the Ministry of the Interior, Dr. Pavao Gulin XE "Gulin, Dr. Pavao" and Josip Crnkovi? XE "Crnkovi?. Josip " . The trial had formally started on 9th September 1946 and had been deliberately synchronised with the Nüremberg trials.The Archbishop’s trial was also linked to another unrelated trial, that of the Archbishop’s Secretary, Ivan ?alic XE "?alic, Ivan - Archbishop’s Secretary" , Franciscan Provincial Father Modest Martin?i? XE "Martin?i?, Father Modest - Franciscan Provincial" and eight other Franciscans, accused of hiding some gold from the State treasury of the NDH. The implication of the inclusion of the Archbishop in this group was that he was the fulcrum of the anti-State conspiracy.The hearing commenced on 30th September 1946 in Zagreb. The judges, apart from Vimpul?ek, were Dr. Ante Cetineo XE "Cetineo, Dr. Ante" and Ivan Poldruga?. XE "Poldruga?, Ivan" One would have expected that the ‘Peoples Court’ would open its doors to the people of all shades of opinion. Yet ‘the people’ who entered the Court with special tickets that had been issued by OZNA (the Secret Police) were those only to yell well-rehearsed slogans throughout the hearing. Frenetic applause greeted the appearance of the judges. A monometric rhythm of applause met with sarcastic remarks by the Prosecutor and derisory laughter accompanied the rare replies by the Archbishop. The Court titled the Archbishop as “the Accused Stepinac”. Jakov Bla?evi?, the Prosecutor, an obdurate character, led in the display of his hatred for the Archbishop.Thus, any claim on the part of the State to be ‘Socialist’ and ‘Peoples’’ power was refuted in pursuit of the cheap humiliation of the Archbishop. The Court was operating at a discriminatory and vulgar level.The sessions lasted 8 to 16 hours each day with only one short break. The aim was to tire the defendants and deprive the Defence of time to answer.The Prosecutor spoke in excess of 48 hours and the Defence was allowed only intermittent periods of 20 minutes at a time. The records of the proceedings were edited and re-edited at the Court’s pleasure, and the press reports were totally out of synch with the events in the Court.In order to reinforce the ‘revolutionary’ atmosphere of the Gymnasium in which the Court was held, the indictment piled up accusation upon accusation against the Archbishop: collaboration with the occupiers and particularly with Paveli?; treason; enrichment of the Church; directing the ‘anti-national’ Catholic press and acting as the Chief Military Vicar of the NDH Army; presiding over the ‘clerico-fascist’ organisations of the so-called Crusaders (Kri?ari) XE "Crusaders (Kri?ari)" and the ‘Catholic Action’ XE "Catholic Action" which were allegedly the mainstay of the Ustasha movement; ‘baptizing’ Orthodox Serbs to Catholicism; enmity towards the ‘Peoples Power’ after the ‘Liberation’ and awaiting the return of King Peter II XE "Peter II, King " and Vladko Ma?ek XE "Ma?ek, Vladko " to Yugoslavia.Finally, he was accused of turning the Archbishop’s Palace into an ‘Ustasha nest XE "Ustasha nest" ’, and of welcoming Ustasha Colonel Erih Lisak and other Ustasha emigrants in September 1945.The law of 15th August 1945 concerning criminal acts against the People and the State was the basis of the indictment yet the final draft of this indictment carried the date of the amended law (9th July 1946). Once again, ‘the rule of law’ was a loose concept in the revolutionary minds of the representatives of the ‘Peoples Power’ XE "Peoples Power" .On 3rd October 1946, the fourth day of the trial, the Archbishop was allowed to make a statement in his defence: “To all the accusations brought against me, I reply that my conscience is clear in spite of the laughter of the public. I do not intend to defend myself, or appeal against the sentence. . . . Hundreds of times it was repeated here ‘the accused Stepinac’. However, no one is so naive as not to know that behind that ‘accused Stepinac’ sits on the trial the Archbishop of Zagreb, the Croatian Metropolitan Bishop and the representative of the Catholic Church in Yugoslavia . . . I am being accused of the ‘baptising’ of Serbs. In fact, this is wrong because somebody who was baptised does not need another baptism. This is a case of changing their religion . . . I don’t intent to discuss this matter at length, only to say that my conscience is clear and that history will judge me one day. . . . I was not ‘persona grata’ either with the Germans or with the Ustashas. I was not an Ustasha and have not sworn an Ustasha oath XE "Ustasha oath" , as has been done by some of your [Court] officials present here . . . Everything I have said about the rights of the Croatian people to freedom and independence is in harmony with the basic principles agreed at Yalta XE "Yalta" and with the Atlantic Charter XE "Atlantic Charter" . If, according to these conclusions, every nation possesses the right to independence, why should the Croatian people be an exception? . . . I stand accused as an enemy of the State and of the Peoples’ rule. Will you please explain to me which Government I was answerable to in 1941? General Simovi? in Belgrade or, as you say the treasonable Government in London; or the one in Jerusalem: yours in the woods, or the one here in Zagreb? As far as I am concerned, you became an authority for me only since 8th May 1945. The State Prosecutor has repeatedly maintained that nowhere is there so much freedom of conscience as in this State. I am taking the liberty to state some [contradictory] facts: I again state that between 260 and 270 priests have been killed by the People’s ‘Liberation’ army. In no civilised State would they have been sentenced like that . . . You have made a fatal mistake in killing these priests. The [Croatian] people will never forgive you. Our Catholic schools, built with so much sacrifice, were expropriated. . . . In fact, nothing less than [exactly] the same practices that were pursued by the Gestapo XE "Gestapo" . Our [Catholic] press no longer exists. Is it not a scandal to maintain that nowhere is the Church more free than it is here? No priest or bishop can feel his life is safe nowadays. . . . Such freedom we call an illusion; we refuse to be slaves. We shall fight with all lawful means for our rights in this State. [A voice from the public shouted: “You don’t deserve them.” Finally, let me say a few words about the Communist Party, my accuser. If it is free to propagate materialism, let the communists allow us to propagate freely our principles. Catholics are dying and will die for those principles.”Thus concluded the Archbishop’s statement.The International News Service XE "International News Service" of 4th October 1946 stated that two contradictory worlds were facing each other in this Court. With his heroism the Archbishop not only refuted the accusations against himself but became a prosecutor of the regime. This fact stunned even his enemies. After listening to 58 prosecution ‘witnesses’, whose irrelevant statements were chiefly a repetition of the communist propaganda, the Defence demanded that its own witnesses be heard.Blazevi?, the Prosecutor refused, saying: “Your demand would amount to an insult which the Court cannot allow. The proposed witnesses for the Defence are all known fascists. Stepinac was supporting terrorism and collaborated with Paveli?. His policies were identical to those of Paveli?.”Dr. Politeo, the Defence Counsel responded: “You mentioned the insult [to the people] and I agree that it would have been an insult if only the witnesses for the Prosecution were heard.” Finally Vimpul?ek, the Judge, interrupted: “The Court will decide to allow or not to allow other witnesses.”On 7th October 1946 the Court rejected 28 and permitted only 7 witnesses for the Defence. Amongst those rejected there were 3 Serb University Professors, and a Serbian Orthodox Bishop, Emilijan XE "Emilijan, Serbian Orthodox Bishop" .A Catholic priest, Dr. Pavao Lon?ar XE "Lon?ar, Dr. Pavao" , who stood as a witness for the Defence, was accused of being an Ustasha.“Was it likely that I was an Ustasha, when I was sentenced to death by an Ustasha Court?” asked Dr. Lon?ar.On 8th October the Defence Counsel, Dr. Ivo Politeo, took the stand: “The Defendant, Archbishop Stepinac, stands accused of activities against the State and the people. I will base my defence on the truth, the law and justice, although my task will be very difficult, not because of the Prosecutor’s evidence but rather because of the authority backing the Prosecutor. Added to that, the hostile attitude in the Court and the attacks by the media on the Archbishop make my task difficult. Finally, the Archbishop refuses to defend himself, which does not mean acceptance of guilt on his part [but makes my task more difficult].”Yet, in a single legal paragraph, Politeo refuted the three commonly held criticisms of the NDH as a state: “The Prosecution stated that the NDH was not a State. The fact that it was not independent and that it was ‘bloody’ could not de facto make it defunct. And the fact that it was created by the Axis XE "Axis" cannot make it defunct. After all, Yugoslavia was created by the Versailles powers XE "Yugoslavia created by Versailles powers" . If it could be said that it was not a State, the only reason for that would be actual occupation by the Axis forces.”Dr. Politeo then elaborated the international legal rules of The Hague Conventions of 1907 XE "Hague Conventions of 1907" , prescribing the relations between occupiers and occupied.“The Yugoslav Government itself invoked these conventions many times. The Hague conventions exonerated the Archbishop totally for his essential and formal relations with the NDH regime. In addition, the Church constitution ‘Sollicitudo Ecclesiarum’ of 5th August 1831 by Pope Gregory XVI XE "Sollicitudo Ecclesiarum of 5th August 1831 by Pope Gregory XVI" , XE "Pope Gregory XVI - Sollicitudo Ecclesiarum of 5th August 1831" which states that de facto recognition of the rulers during revolutionary times does not constitute their ‘de iure’ recognition. This constitution also exonerates the Archbishop from any formal links with the regime.”Dr. Politeo then rejected the Archbishop’s responsibility for the excesses of some individual priests or ex-priests, rejected collective responsibility, explained the individual responsibility of the editors of the Catholic newspapers, fully described the Archbishops sermons against the persecution of the ‘undesirables’, his criticism of the totalitarian systems, and explained his relations with Paveli? and described reports to the Holy See.Dr. Kati?i?, the Assistant Defence Counsel, explained the Archbishop’s attitude to the Croatian people’s right to their own independence rather than ‘the Independent State of Croatia XE "Independent State of Croatia" ’ (1941-1945).Is not the Archbishop’s stance against the ‘dictatorship of proletariat’ the same as the attitude of our American Allies in the same respect? What is the problem? asked Dr. Kati?i?.He then covered the implications of the Archbishop’s activities since 8th May 1945 chiefly in relation to the already mentioned ‘Pastoral letter’ of 20th September 1945. The indictment of the Archbishop XE "Indictment of the Archbishop" was based partly on the prejudices formed about him by the frustration of the Partisans in ‘the woods’, Kati?i? stated. "All in all, this indictment cannot tarnish the Archbishop’s integrity and therefore I demand his release."While the communist mob in the Court clamoured for the crucifixion of the Archbishop, up and down the country millions of Croatian people prayed for him. His brave stand, after years of humiliation of the Croatian nation by the Yugoslav regimes, made them proud to be Croats again.On 11th October 1945, the Archbishop was sentenced “to 16 years imprisonment with hard labour and the loss of political and citizen’s rights for a period of five years.” Immediately after his incarceration, his elderly mother and the Vatican Nuncio in Belgrade, Msgr. J.P. Hurley visited the Archbishop, kissing his hand.L’Osservatore Romano XE "L’Osservatore Romano" of 12th October 1946 described the process as essentially political, pretending to be based on the ‘People’s’ law.A few years later, in conversations between the Croatian sculptor Me?trovi? and Tito’s henchman Milovan Djilas, Djilas stated: “He [the Archbishop] was innocent. However, as happens in history, the innocents are very often persecuted for the sake of the realisation of certain [in this case utopian] political aims.”Djilas continued: “We did not have anything against his Croatian nationalism but we could not stomach his attachment to the Roman Pontiff. We removed all the obstacles in our way. The ends justify the means.”The news of the imprisonment of the Archbishop shook the Catholic world and other impartial observers. Louis Breier, the President of the American Jewish Union XE "Breier, Louis - President of American Jewish Union" stated: “He was one of those rare men in Europe who stood up to the Nazi tyranny at a time when such action was extremely dangerous.”The protests against this outrage were arriving at the Vatican address from Japan, San Salvador, Argentina, the USA, Ecuador, Guatemala, Switzerland, Spain, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Italy, and even Iraq. Britain conspicuous by its absence XE "Britain was conspicuous by its absence" .The excommunication of all those (Catholics by birth) who were involved in this trial against the Archbishop (which formally included Tito), declared by the Sacra Congregatio Councilii of 14th October 1946 XE "Sacra Congregatio Councilii of 14th October 1946" , must have produced only sarcastic grins on the faces of the Yugoslav 'heroes'.A last attempt to break the spirit of the Archbishop was made by the visit of Dr. Bakari?, President of the Federative Republic of Croatia to the Archbishop’s prison in March 1947. Bakari? tried to persuade him to make an appeal for clemency personally to Tito - guaranteeing him “a release to the Americans.”The Archbishop rejected the perfidious offer and demanded a re-trial in an independent (internationally supervised) Court.After five years in the notorious Lepaglava prison XE "Lepaglava prison" (where according to the recent forensic findings, he was slowly being poisoned), the Archbishop was released to house arrest in his village of Kra?i? where he died on 10th February 1960.Tito returned again to his pet idea when he spoke to the Society of the ‘Peoples (Catholic) Priests’ in 1949: “Why don’t you make a break with Rome in the same way that we made a break with Moscow?” he asked them, as if they bore comparison. Yet it did not stop him and his wife Jovanka a few years later from bowing down to Pope John XXIII, who described Archbishop Stepinac to Tito as: There is a quote missing from here.In the Secret Consistory of 12th January 1953, at which he nominated twenty-four new cardinals (one of whom was Aloysius Stepinac), Pius XII stated: “We are pleased to see you here honourable brothers, yet we must direct our thoughts with sadness towards our honourable brother, the Archbishop of Zagreb who, due to the circumstances in which he finds himself, found it impossible to come to Rome and to return [home] freely again. Although he is absent . . . we wish the world to know that we honour him with Roman purple, for no other reason than to praise his extraordinary merits . . . as well as to confirm our goodwill towards his people.”It took a further thirty-eight years before Pope John Paul II beatified Cardinal Stepinac XE "Pope John Paul II beatified Cardinal Stepinac" on Sunday, 4th October 1998 in Cardinal Stepinac’s Marian Sanctuary in Marija Bistrica near Zagreb now in the free and democratic Republic of Croatia.Yet, even this happy occasion for the Croatian people could not pass without totally uninvited controversy.The New York Times XE "New York Times" of the same date published a report under the long provocative headline: “Pope Beatifies a Croat, fanning enmities - Hailing the World War II Archbishop of Zagreb as a martyr to the ‘atrocities of the communist system’, Pope John Paul II beatified him today.”The NYT correspondent, Alessandra Stanley XE "Stanley, Alessandra" , attempted to make three points. Firstly “Cardinal Stepinac is a national hero to millions of Roman Catholic Croats”.This fact did not need confirmation by the New York Times. She then proceeded to say that “To Orthodox Serbs who formed a minority in Croatia for centuries but have largely left or been driven from Mr. Tudjman’s State, the beatification is a political provocation. They have long viewed Cardinal Stepinac as a war-time sympathiser with the pro-Nazi puppet regime that killed tens, even hundreds, of thousands of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, a regime that many here see as the precursor of today’s independent state.” Shifting decimal points Alessandra Stanley then toyed with the figures of the victims of the Ustasha regime, linking the Cardinal with that regime and making him a hero of Croatia’s ‘nationalist’ President Franjo Tudjman XE "Tudjman, President Franjo" , all at the same time.Finally, her report from Marija Bistrica was as transparent as it was resentful:“many historians credit him with saving hundreds of Jewish and Serbian lives, but his critics maintain that by not speaking out more he condoned and effectively supported the Ustasha regime”.Spiritually, Archbishop Stepinac was of a unique breed, but as a human being he was no different from the rest of us. He had no wish needlessly to put his head on the block! Why did not the Archbishop of Canterbury, the British Government and Establishment, and the BBC speak out openly on behalf of the Jews? Have they condoned the Nazi Regime by being silent? To the author’s knowledge, nobody in the US spoke out on behalf of the Jews, yet at the same time many Americans spoke about a Jewish conspiracy with constitutional impunity. You would also have to be one Slavko Goldstein XE "Goldstein, Slavko" , the Jewish Yugo-liberal publisher to violate common sense by saying: “He [Stepinac] tried to correct some of the worst aspects [of the Ustasha regime] but he never condemned the regime as such”.Many eminent members of the Jewish community in Zagreb would strongly disagree with Goldstein. The fallacy that there is such a thing as a monolithic ‘Jewish Stand XE "Jewish Stand" ’ in relation to Stepinac is, in itself, mystifying.3285.2 Free’ Elections XE "Free Elections" In the summer and autumn of 1945, the elections for the NOOS XE "NOOS" took place. All those who were against the revolutionary measures were removed from the Peoples Councils. 194,158 persons were removed from the electoral lists, for active collaboration with the occupiers, and 300,000 people left the country. Tens of thousands of people were put under police investigation. In spite of the terror, there were still some 800 insurgent groups with 12,000 'collaborators' scattered around the country.When it became clear that after the Potsdam Conference XE "Potsdam Conference" , the Great Powers would not be interested in what was going on in Yugoslavia, the British protégé ?uba?ic XE "?uba?ic, British protégé " resigned on 6th October 1945. On 11th December 1945, general 'elections' took place. 88.43% of the voters took part, and the (communist) National Front received 88.69% of votes, and the Opposition 'Black Box' was left with only 11.13% of those who voted.The National Assembly held its inaugural session on 29th November 1945 and as a matter of urgency tabled a resolution to end the Monarchy.Great Britain, as is its practice, rushed to bow to the new Yugoslav despots and recognised the FNRJ XE "FNRJ" as early as 22nd December 1945. The of the Proletariat XE "Dictatorship of the Proletariat" was now in full swing. 94% (i.e., 85,000) of the commanders of the army were communists. All the power was firmly in the hands of the KPJ.As a result of the communist dictatorship (1945-90) there does not exist, even today in 2010, a complete scientific documentation about the Croatian victims during, and particularly after, WWII.The Croatian victims of WWII was a theme that the Yugoslav state exploited for its own political aims. Thus, these victims were not counted as war or post-war victims at all. They were simply lumped together and discounted as 'enemies'.In the direction given to the commissions for the assessment of the war victims in 1950 and 1964, it was stated: "All those who, during the National Liberation Struggle, lost their lives on the side of the occupiers and the local traitors . . . are not to be counted as war victims".It is clear, on the basis of the above, that any reliable scientific research was impossible. XE "Reliable scientific research was impossible." A case in point is the treatment accorded in the 1960's to the Croatian researcher Bruno Bu?i? XE "Bruno Bu?i?" , who tried to apply scientific methods to this research. He was assassinated in Paris by the Yugoslav secret police in 1978.However, the Yugoslav communists could not avoid acknowledging indirectly the mass liquidations of Croatian victims for the simple reason that after 'the national liberation struggle' became victorious under the leadership of the KPJ they were bragging about the destruction of hundreds of thousands of ‘enemies of the people' Such a large number of victims as a result of the war of the Yugoslav Utopia could not be covered up, so it was presented as a historical necessity from the point of view of the revolution. It was therefore confined to the quasi-metaphysical cliché of the 'justified punishment of the peoples' enemies'. After WWII the communist repression drove large numbers of Croats (those who considered themselves lucky) to emigrate to the West. Up to June 1945, mass deportations of Croatian refugees from Austria by the British military authorities to the mercy of Tito's executioners were in full swing.Even after 4th June 1945, when the British military were ordered to stop this practice, they continued to go out of their way to zealously hunt down Croatian 'war criminals' in Austria and Italy and hand them over to Tito.Croatian emigrants followed the Bleiburg XE "Bleiburg" tragedy (the handing over of some 70,000 Croats by the British to Tito) as an historical beacon leading them in the struggle for the renewal of the Croatian state. The enormous energy they put into researching that national tragedy, however, due to the lack of documentation (held in the Yugoslav archives), frustrated such research on a fully scientific basis. As a result, this mass tragedy of the Croatian people remained unknown in the West.Even in the democratic Republic of Croatia in June 1990, with the communists-turned-'social democrats' still in power, efforts still continued to pervert the full truth about the Croatian victims from reaching the light of day.A mass grave of the communist’s victims was discovered in a pit in Jazovka XE "Jazovka" near Zagreb on Friday, 6th June, 2003, which became the main target of the Croatian media. The Zagreb daily Vjesnik XE "Vjesnik" published a booklet on the subject in 30,000 copies, which were snapped up, but then suddenly, and without explanation, the remainder were withdrawn.It is curious that it is still not yet possible to deal with this grim subject scientifically and openly in a free democratic Croatian State!Although a law established 'The Commission for the Research on the WWII and post-WWII Croatian Victims' in 1991, it was starved of money until 1994.Current research on the subject is being carried out on the basis of newly available documents.5.3 Secret Police and Military Court Documents1.Documents of the National Commission for the Establishment of the Crimes of the Occupiers and their Helpers are held in the Croatian State Archives (HDA) XE "Croatian State Archives (HDA)" in 749 boxes. The importance of this documentation is considerable, in spite of the lack of professionalism and the ideological bent of its authors in the years 1944-45. This shows that the authors (mainly the Secret Police and Military Courts) intended to articulate their own revolutionary achievements for posterity, but when faced with personal repercussions, resorted to the massive destruction of these documents.2.The documents of OZNA (the Secret Police) are deposited in the HDA in 44 boxes. These documents are fundamental for the establishment of the facts of the communist repression, facts that cannot be found in any other collection. This documentation was systematically destroyed in the 1980's when the communists realised that very soon their own necks would be on the block. Even so, what remains gives more than sufficient evidence about the enormity of the mass murders and the communist repression.On 3rd March 1986, someone in the Republic's Ministry of the Interior warned his superiors about these remaining documents, dealing with 325 murdered people without any written evidence, and suggested "this documentation, because of its delicacy, be immediately destroyed for well-known reasons".It is, however, almost certain that copies of the destroyed original documents were deposited in the former OZNA and SDS archives in Belgrade.3.The documents of the Ministry of the Interior of Croatia are deposited in the HDA in 100 boxes. These boxes contain several documents that cover the complete war period.4.The Fund of the Public Prosecutor of the Socialist Republic of Croatia XE "Fund of Public Prosecutor of Socialist Republic of Croatia" is in the HDA in 136 boxes, and covers the period from 1945 to 1972. Many of these documents were destroyed in the 1980's because they gave evidence of the most serious mass repression.5.The documents of Dr. Krunoslav Draganovi? XE "Draganovi?, Dr. Krunoslav" are held in the Croatian Information Centre XE "Croatian Information Centre" and the State Commission for the Establishment of the War and Post-War Victims XE "State Commission for the Establishment of the War and Post-War Victims" in Zagreb. These contain accounts of the Yugoslav communist's crimes taken from actual witnesses. This collection is probably still held by the former BiH UDBA, and has not yet been returned to the HDA.6.The documents of the Commission for the Establishment of War and Post-War Victims are historically most important as they are based on the statements of the witnesses. This is original source material that cannot be found anywhere else.When the former communists, in the guise of social democrats led by Ivica Ra?an XE "Ra?an, Ivica" , took power in 2,000, the work of the Commission was frustrated, and in 2003 the Commission was formally abolished. Even so, the Commission was able, up to mid-1999, to register approximately 1,000 unregistered mass graves of the post-war victims of the communists’ crimes. One must not forget, however, that BiH formed part of the NDH XE "Bosnia-HercegovinaH formed part of the NDH" , and that the crimes against the Croats there were numerically and 'qualitatively' superior to those on the territory of the present-day Republic of Croatia. Only when all this information is pooled together will one be able to appreciate the enormity of the crimes of the Yugoslav communists.Violent revolutionary action is the essence of the communist's praxis. This is followed by the dictatorship of the proletariat, whose objective is to square accounts with the reactionaries in the post-revolutionary period.On the basis of this warped revolutionary logic, the KPJ spent the war cultivating revenge against the 'peoples' enemies', a very broad church of the population. Political expediency XE "KPJ - Political expediency" forced them to cover up their real aims during the war.Even so, already in the Proclamation of 22nd June 1941, the KPJ made it clear, "that there will not be a pardon for the criminal fascist leaders and their servants".In the Resolution of the First AVNOJ in November 1942, it was stated that the success of the Partisan struggle is the essential condition for "bringing about the moment of retribution".The post-war communist repression XE "Post-war communist repression" systematically prepared during the war, somehow managed to be both a parody of retribution and at the same time an appalling demonstration of it. The institutions in charge of the lists of the 'peoples' enemies', apart from the OZNA, were the local councils (NOOS,) XE "Local Councils (NOOS,)" and the statistics were drawn up on the basis of the liquidations and confiscation of property actually carried out. Propaganda was of equal importance in the realization of the takeover of power, and the main evangelists of the KPJ propaganda campaign, political commissars who aimed at convincing the people that their effort against the peoples' enemies was more interesting than the people might have thought. Thus, in the Partisan 'liberated' territory they published 3,500 pamphlets, 11 books and 151 collections of poems that were read to the fighters by the commissars, as most of the rank and file were illiterate. At the end of the war, propaganda was centralized in the AGIT-PROP of the CK KPJ. XE "AGIT-PROP of the CK KPJ." It was a discipline obsessed with slogans. Thus, in the slogan of the First Proletarian Brigade hygiene became an integral part of the revolutionary consciousness: "Forward into the struggle against lice", together with the struggle against fascism. "Lice live off human blood, just like the fascists." These things were, of course, immensely important, but they were not, the author hopes, the reason that the 'progressive' individuals got into this struggle in the first place. Images became the metamorphosis of the written word displayed on the 'wall newspapers' (Zidne Novine XE "Zidne Novine" ). Over 20,000 Partisan chants with banal lyrics such 'Comrade Tito, our White Violet,' (Dru?e Tito, Ljubi?i?e Bijela) were transferred from unit to unit by way of the Balkan oral tradition.The reading courses for grown-up fighters were organised in 1,051 primary schools in 1944. The school texts were politicised: the letter P stood for Partisan, the letter S for the SSSR. These were the shorthand manifestos of the revolution. No wonder at the end of the war the public and its communications were spelled out letter by letter by the KPJ. Thank God there, as yet, was no television. Thus, the propaganda of revenge and repression XE "Propaganda of revenge and repression" penetrated all the pores of life in a market where everyone was forced to listen. The boredom of complying with lots of crazy conditions was almost worse than death. The 'peoples' enemies' were the subjects of derision and at the same time served as the general entertainment of the 'working people'. The problem with all this crap was that the communist values were at sharp odds with the ingrained traditions, and as such found little support in the Croatian people.The illiterate, and even worse, the semi-literate communist leaders, accused the perfectly educated people of lacking culture and class-consciousness. The only way to retort was by inventing tens of thousands of 'reactionary' political jokes which were circulated clandestinely up and down the country. The history of that precious material has yet to be written. The KPJ entered the war with only 12,000 members (0.085% of the total population of Yugoslavia), out of which 9,000 were killed during the war. At the end of the war the KPJ had 141,066 members (still only 1% of the total population). Some 138,000 KPJ members were freshly-baked communists. The question is how did such a marginal political party succeed in taking over power in the country, and even more importantly, who were these people? The answer, without a shadow of doubt, is that the communists were able to take power only with the help of the protagonists of the renewal of Yugoslavia, mainly the Serbs, and, as it happened, that happened to meet with the interests of the Great Powers.That the communist propaganda situation in Croatia was not all plain sailing, even in 1945, must be concluded from the fact that the communists were forced to resort cynically to 'nationalist' slogans, particularly during the 'elections' in November 1945: 'For the Unity of the Croatian People' and 'For the Realization of the Croatian Statehood' are good examples.Illiterate or semi-literate Party cadres were put in charge of the government, culture and economy, trying to get the core of the party line across. Anyone who took part in the Peoples' Liberation struggle, and had more than a passing acquaintance with Marxism XE "Marxism" , was put in charge. The uninitiated passed through express courses of Marxism and Leninism XE "Leninism" in Universities filled with Soviet professors. The texts were verbatim translations of Soviet books, and Croatian history was dropped altogether from the curriculum in 1945/6. The new party cadres were educated in the Party schools. The subjects were: A short history of the SKP(B) (The Bolsheviks); Dialectical and Historical Materialism; Political Economy; The Peoples' Liberation Struggle of Yugoslavia; The Structure of the KPJ; Russian language and Orthography, a curriculum of which the London School of Economics could be extremely proud. Stalin's outpourings were considered to be irrefutable Biblical texts. If you think this sounds boring, you probably ought to have joined the course.The Yugoslav Army and NOV and POJ were turned into a cult of the communist revolution. After WWII, it became an unquestionable force for the preservation of the revolutionary achievements and the key within the magic triangle KPJ-People-JA. In a word, the JA was an army of the revolution.The KPJ made sure that the army didn't escape its iron control, or even worse, takes over. The Proletarian Brigades XE "Proletarian Brigades" , which were formed at the end of 1941, became a kind of party army on the pattern of the SS and SA, and had the duty to keep an eye on the other units. The essence of its discipline was based on its communist belief and the 'measureless love' for the just cause of the working class. These units fought under the red banner marked with the hammer and sickle and the five-pointed star, and imposed themselves over the hotchpotch guerilla groups wandering through the countryside in 1941. The majority of these groups were not in the mood to fight under the Chetnik or the communist Partisan leadership. One has to take one's hat off to Tito's skill in organizing these unruly brigands into something called the National Liberation Voluntary Units XE "National Liberation Voluntary Units" , the first of which appeared in BiH, and which very soon fell apart. At the beginning of 1942, there were only some 20,000 Tito-led Partisans on the territory of the NDH. At the end of 1942 this number had risen to 100,000 as against the total of 150,000 for the whole of Yugoslavia. This number was to drop to about 70,000 in mid-1943, due to the Partisans having to face the Germans and the NDH forces.After the capitulation of Italy on 8th September 1943, Partisan forces in the NDH increased to 150,000 out of the total of 200,000 for the whole of Yugoslavia.By the end of 1944, there were 420,000 Partisans in the NDH out of a total of 650,000 for the whole 'Yugoslavia'. Partisan forces in the NDH included at that time some 120,000 Partisans from Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, as well as some Red Army and Allied fighters XE "Red Army and Allied fighters" . Such high concentrations of pro-Yugoslav forces were in a life or death struggle with the NDH as the anti-Yugoslav contestant in the conflict. The considerable forces in Serbia, on the other hand, were almost on a continuous holiday. The rear echelons of the Partisan units had the task of fighting the 'fifth column' XE "Fifth column" and acting in the capacity of military courts, registering 'the peoples' enemies' and liquidating them at Tito's pleasure. In a sense, Tito's Partisans could not have survived without long lists of peoples' enemies, Germans, Ustashas, Chetniks, members of the former Royal Yugoslav Army XE "Royal Yugoslav Army" , and a separate list that included Partisans who could not be completely trusted. Remove the lists of 'the peoples' enemies' and all that remained were staring sans culottes in search of revolutionary fulfillment. These lists, after all, made sure that the 'peoples' enemies' were appropriately punished during or after the war.In cases where Partisan forces had to rapidly abandon the 'liberated' territory, their 'justice' was carried out on the spot without waiting for the end of the 'financial' year. In 1944 there were 21 Military Districts, 93 Military Regions and 478 Commands in towns and villages, active in this peculiar business.The KPJ established a profoundly totalitarian model of power XE "Totalitarian model of power" , particularly within the army, which represented a revolutionary force on the Soviet model. It was headed by the supreme headquarters, with Tito sitting as the cherry on the top of the rather unsavoury cake.The institution of the political commissars within the army controlled, by the KPJ, meant de facto a parallel structure of command, characteristic of totalitarian systems.To make things even more cheerful, members of the Politburo XE "Politburo members" held the key positions both in the army and in the civilian state organisations. Tito, for example, was the General Secretary of the KPJ, Supreme Commander of the JA, Prime Minister and the President of the National Liberation Front, weighed down with several kilograms of heavy metal decorations, matching his magnetic personality.At the end of WWII, the V? changed its name to General?tab JA, XE "General?tab JA" with seven departments and 330 personnel.Thus "our Partisan Army became the school which educated the new man and the new society," isolated in utopian time and space and removed from the search for the meaning of existence.The armies of illiterate peasants were bored to tears, day in and day out, with crumbs of Marxism-Leninism, the only available cultural heritage available at the time. This 'knowledge', after the war, was applied dogmatically in running the country. For instance, during the war, all the leaders (Rukovodioci XE "Rukovodioci" et al., i.e., those who led you by holding your hand, while at the same time pulling your leg) were committed members of the KPJ!The complex military situation on the territory of the NDH at the end of WWII, with the German and Hungarian forces, the forces of the NDH, the communist NOVJ, and the Serbian Chetniks, some 1,200,000 soldiers in total, was the grand finale in the resolution of an even more convoluted political state of affairs. The German 'E' army XE "German 'E' army" was in full withdrawal from Greece over the territory of the NDH towards Austria.The chief aim of the pro-Yugoslav communist forces was to "encircle and destroy the forces of the occupiers and their collaborators." "Only with 'the military victory over the [anti-Yugoslav] contestant could they realise the political aims of the revolution, established already in 1941." 'Misunderstandings' in Carinthia added fuel to other deeper British-Yugoslav diplomatic disagreements and the clash of their peculiar political interests.The decision by the British to hand over to Tito Croatian PoWs from Austria was the price the British paid (with somebody else's lives) for mollifying Tito the dictator. There were other games that the British also played: there was a curious plan to employ the Croatian Domobran and Usta?a forces who were supposed to hold Tito at the Zagreb front, in order to make life for the British in Carinthia easier. In the face of the serious military situation, the government of the NDH unified all its armed forces into the HOS (Hrvatske Oru?ane Snage XE "HOS (Hrvatske Oru?ane Snage)" ), i.e., Croatian Armed Forces, and the general mobilisation was proclaimed as late as 11th December 1944.The HOS had 18 divisions in 5 corps.In April 1945, in the First Paveli? Corps (Commander, Ante Mo?kov XE "Mo?kov, Ante" ) there were three divisions: the First Croatian Assault Division, Paveli?'s Body Guard Regiment and the Fifth Usta?a Division (Commanders Antun Nardelli, XE "Nardelli, Antun - Commander" Mirko Gregori? XE "Gregori?, Mirko - Commander" and Rafael Boban XE "Boban, Rafael - Commander" ).The Second Corps (Vjekoslav Luburi?) had the First HOS Division (Julije Fritz), the Seventeenth Division (Roman Domanik) and the Eighteenth Division (Vladimir Majer), including the Usta?a Defence Group with the rank of a division.The Third Corps (Artur Gustovic) had three divisions: the Second (Stjepan Peri?i?), the Seventh (Stjepan Mifek) and the Eighth.The Fourth Corps (Josip Metzger) had three divisions: the Third (Zdenko Begi?), the Sixth (Valdimir Metiko?) and the Fifteenth (Milan ?udina).The Fifth Corps (Ivo Heren?i?) had four divisions: the First Garrison, the Tenth (Ivan Toma?evi?), the Eleventh (Josip Aleksi?) and the Twelth (Ivan Brozovi?).In December 1944, Paveli? took over the supreme command of all the HOS forces.All these reforms had to reassure psychologically the rank and file, and avoid the attempts of switching to the Allies, as Paveli? himself decided to stand firmly by Germany to the bitter end.Inexplicably, the NDH remained almost the only significant ally of Germany at the very end. HOS itself was operatively under German command and saved the lives of thousands of Germans during their withdrawal from Greece.In March 1945, the frontline in the NDH made a significant part of the gigantic European German-Soviet front, 1,500km long with 280,000 HOS fighters. Failing everything else, the aim of HOS was to withdraw to Austria.The Fourth Army JA arrived on 30th April 1945 in the suburbs of Trieste, Gorizia Monfalcone and Videm. The British met this arrival with horror XE "British met this arrival with horror" . Soon after, Tito ordered it to march to Carinthia in order to frustrate the German and Croat withdrawal to Austria.Two Brigades of the Second JA army entered Zagreb on 8th May 1945. Withdrawal of the Croat HOS forces to Austria consisted of a mixture of several well-armed and organised military units and disorganized and confused withdrawal of the hundreds of thousands of civilians.The NDH government and the Croat elite succeeded in crossing into Austria in Dravograd on 7th May 1945. Paveli? left Zagreb on 7th May at 18.15 p.m. On 8th May he gave instructions to the HOS and the civilians to withdraw 'at their own discretion'. Thus he became the first ruler of Croatia to abandon the army and thus to rewrite Croatia's history. From the point of view of the JA, the liberation of Yugoslavia was achieved and now they faced "disarmament and destruction of the remaining German and Quisling forces on the territory of Yugoslavia," following literally the persuasiveness of the brainwashing and the slogans about its own mythic status. Even so, everything was not plain sailing for the JA. On 9th May, the Croatian generals negotiated with the Slovene Partisans XE "Slovene Partisans" for a free passage through the town of Celje for the retreating Croats. In return, the HOS spared the town.The withdrawal of the Croats to Maribor was cut off on 10th May by the 51st Division of the Third JA army, so that the route of withdrawal changed towards Dravograd On 11th May 1945.Croat officers tried to negotiate with the Yugoslav and Bulgarian Partisans without success. An appeal to the Anglo-American forces in Carinthia to allow 200,000 Croatian soldiers and half a million civilians to cross to Austria was turned down.The Croats could not break the bridgehead in Dravograd, which was held by the Bulgarian and Yugoslav forces under the supreme command of the Soviet Field Marshall Tolbuhin and were suspended. On 12th May 1945 the JA gave the Croats an ultimatum – to capitulate by 10.00 a.m. on 13th May, which the Croats refused. The last battle of WWII in Europe then commenced south of Dravograd and Ravne, west of Slovenjgradec.The Croat forces, led by the legendary General Rafael Boban, broke the blockade with some 70,000 soldiers and a mass of civilians who crossed the hills of Karavanken into Austria near Bleiburg. There they were faced by the 38th Brigade of the 5th Corps of the 8th British Army, a totally different force than that of bare-footed and ragged-clothed Partisans. The main body of the HOS and the Croatian civilians remained encircled by the JA in Slovenia, and, without much ado, the butchery commenced. This is how the last battle of WWII in Europe was described by James Lucas XE "Lucas, James" , a soldier of the 8th British Army stationed on the spot: "The Croats were unwilling to wait and even more unwilling to surrender their weapons, which was the demand made by the Bulgars. The Croats moved towards the small market town of Bleiburg where their forces were already battling against the 51st Partisan Division. The Croat Guard Regiment [Tjelesna Bojna] and the army's paratroop battalion, as well as other units, were put into action, and in a hard-fought battle, cleared the road to Bleiburg. Some idea of how bitter the fighting had been can be gained from the fact that Partisan losses exceeded 80% [some 3,000 dead]. These terrible casualties were the result of the Partisans abandoning their standard guerrilla tactics and sweeping forward in successive lines of infantry, advancing shoulder to shoulder in the wasteful 'wave' tactics taken from the Red Army's Training Manual. To use such primitive and suicidal methods against skilled, professional and hate-filled men could only have one result – a blood bath. At the end of the day, it seemed as if the road to Bleiburg was finally open, but then a new enemy appeared – the British 8th Army." The reason for the handing over of the 70,000-strong Croatian army and more than 100,000 civilians to Tito by the British was apparently based on the mixture of naivety and revenge presented as the British ‘national interests’.The British punitive action in dealing with the Croatian PoWs, and particularly the civilians, was clearly in breach of the Geneva Convention, of which the NDH was a signatory. The sang-froid displayed in the handing over of the Croats, knowing very well the fate that awaited them, was an act of capitulation to Yugoslav barbarism by the highest echelons of the then British government and the Military. De facto, it meant taking part in a massive war crime on the pattern of the Dutch forces in Srebrenica XE "Dutch forces in Srebrenica" in later years. Plainly, the interest of the states cannot be limitless by any stretch of the imagination, and the refusal of the British establishment to apologise, even after 60 years, shows an astonishing resistance to redemption and good manners. Croatian historian Stjepan Hefer XE "Hefer, Stjepan - Croatian historian" , in an essay on the subject published in the Croatian Calendar in Chicago in 1955, justifiably concluded that Great Britain broke Clause 2 and Clause 7 of the Geneva Convention (which the NDH signed On 20th January 1943), which states that PoWs have to be situated as far as possible away from any danger. Besides, the negotiations between the British, the Croats and the Partisans at Bleiburg XE "Bleiburg" were carried out deliberately only orally, without minutes taken or any other written documents ever signed. XE "Negotiations at Bleiburg between British, Croats and Partisans were carried out deliberately only orally, without minutes taken or any other written documents ever signed" The previously described repressive bodies of the communist Yugoslav OZNA and KNOJ had orders to safeguard 'the unified and hard political line'.Tito's decree of 2nd December 1942, sent to the headquarters of NOV and PO of Croatia, created a Central Intelligence node for Croatia (GOC), with the directive to"organise, direct and lead the total intelligence service in Croatia". Although formally this service was outside the party organisation, de facto, it was tightly controlled by the KPJ. The intelligence activities of these organisations were of secondary importance to the primary function of the repressive organisations to safeguard the totalitarian KPJ system.In his letter to political leaders dated 18th May 1944, the head of OZNA, Aleksandar Rankovi? XE "Rankovi?, Aleksandar" , expressed a most extraordinary belief that OZNA "will become the most beloved organisation in our nation". The instructions for the cruelest repression were only ever given orally. OZNA was a strictly hierarchical organisation with Tito himself at the top.It carried out individual and mass liquidations without any legal procedures XE "OZNA carried out individual and mass liquidations without any legal procedures" , and was hierarchically above the KNOJ, which was essentially the executioner of OZNA's directives. OZNA's network was such that nothing could escape its attention. The more sinister aspect of OZNA was its undercover work based on the network of informers, collaborators and intelligence creeps.A curious order, dated April 1945, required the local branches of OZNA for Croatia to supply the biographies of all the members of ZAVNOH to Department II of OZNA for Croatia, thus putting even members of the highest political body in Croatia on the OZNA register.KNOJ had an even more convoluted function to, from time to time; cleanse its very own ranks. Thus, all the organs of repression were totally centralized and subordinated to Tito himself.In the spring of 1945, KNOJ had 120,000 executioners on its payroll, out of whom, in the First Croatian Division, there were some 25,000 men covering the whole territory of Croatia. The Yugoslav communist repressive system included psychological, political and physical methods of enforcement, and this state of affairs clashed with the legal, moral and cultural traditions of the Croatian people developed over the centuries.The only institution that had the courage to raise its voice against the terror (as during the Ustasha regime) was the Roman Catholic Church XE "Roman Catholic Church" , which found itself also on the receiving end of the communist repression.The documents quoted here show plainly that the Yugo-communists gave its utmost priority to the 'squaring of accounts' with the CroatsThe definition of the 'peoples enemies' was generalized to the extent that it included not only criminals, spies, and collaborators, but also members of enemy armies, the civil servants of the first Yugoslavia, and of course the NDH. In fact, almost everyone could have been categorized as 'the enemy of the people' or 'war criminal'.A document entitled Kartoteka (January 1944), XE "Kartoteka - January 1944" sent to the District of Central Dalmatia (ROC) defines in detail this activity: "Apart from the collection of information about the peoples’ enemies, . . . it is necessary to focus on the census of the whole population . . . with comments for each individual . . . so that after the liberation we have a detailed insight into the behaviour and attitude of each individual towards the NOP. . . . in that way we shall be able to punish the criminals . . ." Naturally, the criminals included "all those who, with their passive attitude towards the NOP, helped the enemy . . ." The real operative potential of OZNA in Croatia in 1945 is confirmed by the document called 'The Organisational Report of the II Department OZNA for Croatia' XE "Organisational Report of II Department OZNA for Croatia" which states that the total number of its informers was 7,250, excluding Dalmatia, Istria and the Littoral.'The report for March 1945 made by the IV Department of OZNA for Zagreb states that "during this month a further 4,800 criminals have been entered in the District Register, now totalling 8,141 persons".Apart from the OZNA ledgers about individuals, all the Croatian people outside the Partisan ranks were instilled with a collective guilt, particularly those who took part in the state and the social institutions in the NDH. The next to be accused were the followers of the HSS. The Roman Catholic Church stood at the top of the pile of the people's enemies. . The State Prosecutor of Croatia, in his report dated July 1945, stated: "the pillar of the reactionaries, its organiser and support is the Catholic Church and its priesthood, with Archbishop Stepinac at its head."The system of repression included almost all the remaining populace, which at public meetings was harangued to take part in the pursuit of the 'fascist criminals'.From a document of ROC for Prigorje (March 1944) XE "ROC for Prigorje - March 1944" it is evident that "for all those who were liquidated prior to 1943, we do not possess data, as our (intelligence Service) was not yet established at that time".The anonymity of most of those murdered by the communists was not due to apathy but rather to a cover-up. The NDH authorities identified only a few of the victims. The families of such persons lived in fear of God until 1990. For the people who shared the communist passion for liquidations, there was a reward. A rare document was uncovered that shows that the mass liquidations were carried out from the beginning of 1941. For example, the document, dated August 1941, addressed to the Posavina NOP regiment, issued an instruction to the organisation NOF, that its duty was the“liquidation of the enemy formations and the fifth column".Another document prepared at the end of 1945 by the statistics office for ?ID XE "?ID" , which lists the names of 199 persons liquidated by the Partisans during the war, coupled conveniently with the names and titles of the 'liquidators': "Killed by the II SREM regiment", "Killed by the ?ID command 1943", "Killed by the Partisans" (1943), "Killed by the NOV in 1944". An especially curious document is a tragi-comic list of 24 people killed during the war in Slakovci. The usual comments beside the names were: "Killed 1943, possesses a house". "Killed by the Partisans 1943, has a couple of acres of land". "Killed fighting Partisans 1944. Gestapo man, his wife a sympathiser, don't process anything". etc. At the end of 1947 when UDBA (the successor to OZNA) XE "UDBA (successor to OZNA)" began to 'have pangs of conscience', it indulged in writing its own premature memoirs by reconstructing its glorious liquidations for posterity. In that document, UDBA for Dubrovnik is asked to furnish a list of "all the persons liquidated after the liberation, by summary procedure or trial", as well as "the list of their families with their CVs".The SDS (State Security Service) XE "SDS (State Security Service)" document states, "that many people were liquidated during and after the war without a hearing", and due to that the statistics on the reconstruction of the liquidations cannot be completed. The fate of each person is set against his or her name. A document that confirms the mass liquidations of the Croatian PoWs and the civilians, written by the Public Prosecutor for Croatia (July 1945), states: "that the II Army despatched 1,700 PoWs for liquidation. OZNA for Croatia murdered only 300 and the Karlovac division demanded 500 to be transferred to its jurisdiction for liquidation." The Report of the Public Prosecutor of the II Army describes how "a battalion of the 9th Brigade of the 10th Division accompanied a column of Croatian PoWs. On 17th June 1945 from Slavonska Po?ega to Nova Gradi?ka on the way for liquidation." In the same report, there is the following statement made by the Commandant of the OZNA prison (Dept. III Nova Gradi?ka) "On 18th June I received an order from the Chief of the District OZNA to liquidate a group of Usta?as, legionnaires and gendarmes. I executed the order."A report made by the III Dept. of OZNA for Croatia sent to the Commissar for OZNA for Croatia (April 1944) describes the liquidations of the 'peoples enemies' XE "Liquidations of the 'peoples enemies'" within the Partisan ranks (!), probably newly mobilised soldiers: "Among the uncovered criminals 3 were liquidated after investigation, 3 passed to the Court, 17 sent to OZNA, and from the rest 4 were shot in front of the regiment, 12 illegally liquidated, 11 sent to Court, and the other 30 are under our control . . ."In the report of April 1945, the III Section of OZNA for IV Assault Corpus JA, it is stated: "7 enemy soldiers taken near Biha? were liquidated without much ado, and in the Second Division out of 17, one was sent to Court, and six were shot by our forces."In June 1945 OZNA for Banija reported to OZNA for Croatia about the liquidation of 194 (Croat) PoWs by the KNOJ. They were liquidated near the village of Kne?ovljani, and were not properly buried. In April 1945 OZNA for the Croatian Littoral sent a report to OZNA for Croatia: "We have imprisoned 1,000 people; so far we have liquidated 120."Most of the post-war liquidations XE "Post-war liquidations" were carried out not only without the Courts but also without any evidence, in accordance with the directives of the Supreme Command (Tito).400 The material proofs for the mass liquidations are found in numerous mass graves scattered all over Slovenia, Croatia, and BiH (Jazovka, Macelj, Oku?ani, Bjelovar Ov?ara, Graci??e, Ar?ano, Ko?evski Rog and Tezno).After 1990, the Commission appointed by the Government of the Republic of Croatia for the establishment of war and post-war victims has located over 1,000 unmarked mass graves. The key document (dated 3rd July 1945) received by the Commissar for OZNA for Croatia states: "Our reply to your message is: The NDH had 5-6,000 active and 8,000 reserve Domobran, and 2,500-3,000 Usta?a officers. They were taken prisoners in Slovenia and those who were not sorted out immediately on the spot were sent (on marches) to Srijem . . . In Zagreb we registered in May 2,882 Domobran officers (1,607 active and 1,275 reserve). Half of them were already sorted out and the rest sent to camps. . . . Others registered were non-commissioned officers, altogether 17,000. The majority were sorted out and the remainder are to follow . . ." A document dated March 1945 that refers to the city of Vara?din lists 173 persons with descriptions such as Usta?a, great Usta?a, small Usta?a, fascist etc., all these were liquidated without recourse to the Courts. A report by OZNA for Slavonija described the liquidation of 102 persons without Court. OZNA executioners XE "OZNA executioners" were murdering these people 'at their own discretion'. This was justified by the statement that "without many scruples, all those for whom we know as our enemies, and may in future be against us, must be liquidated."The key document that proves that "the fish starts to stink from its head" records a meeting of the OZNA leaders for Croatia (July 1945) at which a member of the CK KPH, Du?ko Brki? XE "Brki?, Du?ko - CK KPH" , was present, who stated: " . . . the directives from OZNA for Croatia that you receive are not only directives from Comrade Stevo [Ivan Kraja?i?], Commissar of OZNA for Croatia, but also directives of the CK KPH and CK KPJ and you have to take this into account when executing these directives . . . i.e., these are the directives of our Party, and our Central Committee."The available communist documents prove that already before the end of WWII there existed in the Partisan territory a system of concentration camps (and the order about the camps issued on 3rd May 1945 by the General Headquarters of the JA, signed by General-Lieutenant V. Terzi? XE "Terzi?, V. - General-Lieutenant" on the order of the Minister of Defence (i.e., Tito). The system of the concentration (Zbirni) camps XE "Zbirni camps" after WWII was one of the main means of repression in communist Yugoslavia. It is curious that after WWII the communists used the existing German and Usta?a camps, including Jasenovac.The more than 50 camps were dispersed all over Yugoslavia, only on the soil of Croatia and BiH The treatment in the concentration camps included all sorts of persecution and crimes, including individual and mass liquidations. The majority of districts had their own camps: Zagreb having four (Maksimir, Kanal, Pre?ko and Borongaj).One document specifies three different kinds of concentration camps:1.PoW camps; 2. Penal camps and 3. Camps for internment. The penal camps were run by OZNA III, and Section II of OZNA controlled the camps for internment.The attitude of the Yugoslav communists towards the local ethnic Germans (some 500,000) was essentially racist. Every German was guilty.According to the decree by the AVNOJ (21st November 1944) all the property of these ethnic Germans was nationalised with a few exceptions, i.e., of those Germans who fought in the NOV. The Germans owned the biggest and best farms in Vojvodina, which were then handed over to communist ruffians from Montenegro and Serbia, who were unable to run them and totally destroyed them, as is currently happening in Zimbabwe.There were forty-one concentration camps specifically for the Germans in Vojvodina. At the consultation of OZNA leaders for Croatia in July 1945, a directive was issued as to how to treat these Germans (whose ancestors had lived there for over 500 years): "First of all lock them up in the camps, stop them returning to their villages, and then push them over the river Drava [i.e., into Austria]. That way we shall secure the new colonisation."In May 1945, Tito himself issued an order for the use of German labour from the camps as slave labour. The camps were also classified according to the kinds of 'people’s enemies' they held in order to speed up their processing.A document quoting a message from OZNA for the Croatian littoral (May 1945) gives useful statistics, "that in Zurkovo and Martin??ica there are at the moment 25,000 prisoners", and in the message of OZNA for Croatia that "on the Kanal [Zagreb] there are 7,000 prisoners," and the report by the Public Prosecutor of the II Army "that in Slavonska Po?ega there are 30,000 prisoners".A document issued by OZNA proves that the concentration camps in Yugoslavia existed up to the end of 1947.The statistics by the Yugoslav authorities, now recovered, are not only a 'celebration' of, but also a covert lament for a time when the liquidations were the stuff that made the communists’ life worthwhile.JA ArmyTotalDeadWoundedPrisoners takenLast operation of WWIIFirst110,0007,43324,554Took Germans, Usta?a and Domobran PoWs only between 4-10 May 1945 10,000Last operation Second48,0004,45512,889Took Killed enemy soldiers 36,000 PoWs 30,000Last operation of WWIIThird50,0004,70517,176KilledWoundedImprisoned enemy soldiers 17,000 10,000100,000Last operation of WWIIFourth67,0002,3237,053Took 41,000 PoWsThe report of the 11th Dalmatian Brigade, 26th Division of the 4th Army, which was in Carinthia when the British handed over 70,000 Croatian soldiers, is totally silent as to their fate. However, the other documents quoted here confirm the mass liquidations.According to the above, the four JA armies took 170,000 PoWs, out of whom 80,000 were killed and 10,000 wounded.According to the Report of the Ministry of the Interior (1949), it is stated that in the final operation of WWII (in Austria and Slovenia) it took 341,000 PoWs, and killed 100,000. Out of the total number of PoWs, 120,150 were 'Quislings' XE "Quislings" (Usta?as and others). The discrepancy in the numbers disappeared into the ether. Also, no mention was made of the fate of some 500,000 Croatian civilian refugees taken prisoner at the same time.For OZNA and KNOJ, however, WWII did not finish on 15th May 1945. They proceeded with liquidations of the 'counter-revolutionary' groups and 'reactionary' individuals right up to their dismantling in 1953. In that period, KNOJ liquidated several thousands of 'war criminals' operating in some 8,000 disparate groups.Only in the period of 1945-47 KNOJ imprisoned "116,000 Usta?as, Chetniks and others, and killed 26,947, wounded 2,590 and imprisoned 86,031".In addition, 300,000 people emigrated, 200,000 were without citizen's rights and tens of thousands were under investigations.Politicising the fate of the war victims on both sides had extremely negative consequences for the image of Croats in the West. All those who died fighting communism were not counted as war victims, and of course, the Croat victims of the mass communist liquidations were kept under wraps. Any mention of these in Yugoslavia was punishable by long prison sentences.5.4 Independent State of Croatia XE "Independent State of Croatia" The start of the war in Croatia (March 1941) was characterised by the complete failure of the HSS, the biggest Croatian pre-war Democratic Party. Two marginal political groups took the initiative – UHRO (Usta?a) as the anti-Yugoslav and the KPJ (communists) as the pro-Yugoslav contestants in the war of the Yugoslav Utopia. In the complex and contradictory historical context of WWII in which the NDH regime found itself, it had no choice but to lean on the Axis, which compromised its justified anti-Yugoslav struggle. One problem with the war of the Yugoslav Utopia is defining where 'normal killings' end and murder addiction begins.The KPJ was a lackey of the Komintern up to 1948. XE "KPJ was lackey of Komintern up to 1948." These two contestants (Ustashas and communists) became eventually irreconcilable in spite of some pre-war collaboration. Croatian communist historian Ljubo Boban quotes the proclamation of the CK KPJ (during the Velebit uprising in 1932): "The communist party is appealing to the whole Croatian people with an invitation to support the struggle of the Usta?as with all their capabilities. . . . Workers and peasants of Serbia! Help with all your might the struggle of the Usta?as and the people of Lika in Croatia. Do not allow the Serb bourgeoisie to exploit you as the executioners of that movement! It is the duty of all the communists in Croatia and in the other oppressed regions to organise workers and peasant masses in mighty actions of solidarity with the Usta?a movement." The Usta?a movement cannot be reduced to only a relatively small number of revolutionaries but in essence held its place within the broad spectrum of the bourgeois values (Christian morality, private property XE "Christian morality, private property" ), and the realisation of these values and the protection from communism it found in the renewal of the Croatian National State. As the Usta?a regime, during WWII, applied the totalitarian model of power, the bourgeois democratic parties (the HSS) could not take part in it.Thus KPJ, as a pro-Yugoslav contestant became the most dangerous enemy of the Usta?a movement. Putting the ideologies of these two groups aside, both of them had similarities as totalitarian one-party systems of state, headed by a cult figure. Yet the real essence of the power of these two contestants lay in their repressive policies. The condemnation of the NDH regime is justified for siding with the Axis, which is the subject for another study. This book, however, stands firmly on the principle that once the utopian construct of Yugoslavia was created in 1918, all-round violence was inevitable.A macabre confession by the former Slovene Commissar of the Communist Secret Police OZNA, Zdenko Zavadlav XE "Zavadlav, Zdenko" (born in 1925, and aged 81 when he made this confession) in the Zagreb magazine Panorama (2004), illustrates utopia run berserk:"We were ordered to kill. And yet we have already then respected the brotherhood and unity [of the Yugoslav nations], and have agreed that members of each national group kills only their own nationals – we Slovenes, Slovenes, and Croats and Serbs their own." 5.5 Tito’s Crimes - The DocumentsThis collection of available documents provides evidence of Tito's crimes XE "Tito's Crimes - Documents" over his military and political enemies within the war for the Yugoslav Utopia. The anti-Yugoslav forces were considered, or perceived, as a real threat in the realization of his total power and were given the fancy name of the 'Peoples' enemies' (Narodni Neprijatelji).During WWII, the KPJ (Communist Party of Yugoslavia) pretended that violence was not a part of its ideology. The KPJ made the same statements after the war. Yet, the enclosed documents from the KPJ's own sources are proof of a totally different reality. In order to get rid of its political enemies during and after WWII, the KPJ organised several special units, i.e., OZNA (Department for the Protection of the People) and KNOJ (Corpus of the National Defence of Yugoslavia). OZNA, as a part of KNOJ, was established on 13th May 1944. The political intelligence and counter-intelligence on the occupied territory of Yugoslavia (mainly on the territory of the NDH) and also abroad, and the counter-intelligence abroad and also within the Partisan forces (later the Yugoslav) army was the main purpose of OZNA. It was divided into the following four departments: 1.Intelligence XE "Intelligence" ; 2. Counter-intelligence XE "Counter-intelligence" ; 3. Counter-intelligence in the army XE "Counter-intelligence in the army" and 4. Technical department XE "Technical Department" .OZNA was active also in the General Headquarters of the army and in the Corps on the pattern of OZNA within the NKOJ.KNOJ (People's Defence Corps of Yugoslavia) was established on 15th August 1944 with the task of safeguarding the rear of the NOV, keeping order in the liberated territories and for the purpose of the "liquidation of the Chetniks, the Ustashas, the White Guards [White Russians] and other anti-national groups".KNOJ was under the direct command of Tito. Up until the 15th May 1945 KNOJ had seven divisions; the 'Croatian' first division of KNOJ was established on the 5th August 1944. It consisted of five brigades. The First Brigade operated in the region of Lika, Kordun, Banovina and Pokuplje. The Second Brigade operated in Slavonija. The Third Brigade operated in Zagorje, Moslavina and Kalnik. The Fourth Brigade operated in Istria and Gorski Kotar, and the Fifth in Dalmatia.This documentation, however, does not give the much more bloody and numerous 'liquidations' in Bosnia and Hercegovina XE "Liquidations in Bosnia & Hercegovina" that were part of the NDH up to 8th May 1945.In spite of the (cynical) command of the Head Quarters of the NOV and the POJ dated 6th December 1944 (rather late in the day for the massive liquidations before that date), that the prisoners of war must be treated in accordance with international laws, the numerous documents quoted here confirm that the murder of the prisoners of war was the rule rather than the exception (even after that date). These murders have remained unpunished and unmentioned until now.Mass liquidations of the 'people’s enemies' XE "Mass liquidations of 'peoples’ enemies'" during 1944 and 1945 were carried out on the carefully planned decisions of the highest Partisan and Party leadership.Although the existence of the documents held in the Headquarters of NOV and POJ, the General Headquarters of the Yugoslav Army and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia had not yet been established, the documents quoted here indicate without a shadow of a doubt that the decisions about the 'liquidations' of political adversaries could not have been made without orders from the highest level.Two documents quoted here (i.e., the telegram of Aleksandar Rankovi? XE "Rankovi?, Aleksandar" , the second in command in Yugoslavia) mention directly the 'decisions' and 'directives' about the mass liquidations. Rankovi? (recalling Himmler XE "Himmler" in Zagreb in 1942), dissatisfied with the 'liquidations' of the Zagreb OZNA warns on 15th May 1945:"Only 200 bandits in the liberated Zagreb were shot in the past ten days . . . you are acting against our directive, which ordered you to act quickly and energetically in order to complete everything during the first few days."Or the directive about the mass liquidations in Dalmatia, "that during the liberation, you must imprison as many people as possible, some of whom, those who fulfill the necessary conditions, must be liquidated." The other documents describe mass liquidations in all parts of Croatia, carried by the units of NOV and POJ, which could not have occurred without orders from the highest leadership.It is curious that at the end of November 1944, OZNA received a directive not to carry out the liquidations without the prior approval of the courts, except in particular cases and yet the documents prove that most of the liquidations were carried out by OZNA, particularly after that date.So, in July 1945 the head of OZNA for Croatia, Ivan Kraja?i?-Stevo XE "Kraja?i?-Stevo, Ivan" at a session of the OZNA leaders stated: "Comrades, end the liquidations" because of the alarm they have caused in the population.Individual Partisans from OZNA and KNOJ carried out mass liquidations. Killings without court sentences were carried out very often conspiratorially. The criticism of the leaders on the subject quoted in these documents was focused on the mode of execution rather than on the crimes themselves.In the beginning of the war, Partisan 'courts' XE "Partisan 'courts'" acted in a revolutionary manner and the liquidations were carried out without much discussion, inspired by the slogan "Death to fascism - freedom to the people".Death penalties were frequently carried out in a haphazard and capricious manner.The system of the military and civilian courts was turned into revolutionary courts in 1945-1946, when many politically rigged trials were carried out as the rule rather than the exception. The law governing criminal acts 'against the people' and 'the state' (25th August 1945) defined how to protect 'the achievements of the National Liberation Struggle XE "National Liberation Struggle" '.In spite of that, the leadership very often expressed dissatisfaction with the slapdashness of some courts that were given clear directives to "clear the country of the enemy, by means of the death penalty or long-term jail sentences". The lack of revolutionary zeal was condemned as ‘political immaturity’, ‘lack of sympathy for the movement’ and the ‘bourgeois attitude’ of the staff in these courts.Strangely enough, none of these courts could define what a ‘war criminal’ or ‘enemy of the people’ actually meant.The fact is that in the case of the fanatical communists, the mass liquidations were carried out ‘naturally’ with pre-planning and less out of revenge. Revenge was the prerogative XE "Revenge was prerogative" of the former Serbian Chetniks who, at the end of WWII, switched to the Partisans and were given a free hand to vent their hatred of the Croats.The enemies were destroyed physically, materially and politically. Mass ethnic cleansing of Hungarians XE "Hungarians" and Germans XE "Germans" is a case in point. The communists’ squaring of accounts with the real or imaginary enemies was massive and pitiless. The order issued for the removal of the military cemeteries of the occupants (6th July 1945) destroyed even the memory of the dead.Although most of the documents of OZNA, UDBA and KNOJ were deliberately destroyed, the documents quoted here are sufficiently representative of the criminal times during the so-called National Liberation Struggle, so much so that the style and wording of these documents have a macabre life of their own.5.6 Sample Documents XE "Sample Documents" Declaration of the Third Session of ZAVNOH (Session of the Anti-Fascist Council of the Peoples Liberation of Croatia), 9th May 1944, TOPUSKO.(PKRZH, p.33.)Paragraph 6 of the Declaration states: “All citizens are guaranteed freedom of speech, press, gathering, consultation and association. The citizens, in the spirit of the National Liberation Movement, exercise these rights.Para. 8 states: “Treason, service to the enemy and espionage for the enemy will be punished by death.Para. 4 of the Order about the military courts of the 14th May 1944 signed by Tito himself, states “that these courts will try all the accused in the territory of its operation, only when and where a speedy court decision is necessary.”Para. 5 states:“ . . . that the Military Corps Courts will be active [also] in the unliberated or abandoned territories.”Criminal Acts, sentences and protective actionsPara. 12 states . “that Military Courts will be responsible for administering justice for (a) war crimes; (b) activities of the people's enemies; (c) criminal acts committed by the Military and the prisoners-of-war.”Para. 13 states“that the war criminals, be they citizens of Yugoslavia, occupiers or citizens of other countries, are defined as: the movers, organisers, commanders and the helpers and the direct performers of the mass murders, torture, forced extraditions, taking people into the forced labour camps, arson, destruction of and robbery of the people's and state property; all the owners of property and businesses in Yugoslavia, occupiers of other countries who exploited inhumanely the forced labour in the labour camps; the functionaries of the terrorist apparatus and the terrorist armed forces of the occupier and the local persons in the service of the occupier; and also those who were in charge of the mobilisation of our people into the enemy ranks.Para. 14 states“that the enemies of the people are considered to be: all active Ustashas, Chetniks and the members of other armed forces in the service of the enemy and their organisers and helpers; all those in the service of the enemy – spies, suppliers, curriers, agitators et al.; those who forced the people to surrender their arms to the occupiers; all thetraitors to the People's Struggle who were in league with the enemy; all those who abandoned the peoples authority and work against it; all those breaking up the People's Army or in any other way helping the occupier; all those who commit murder, plunder and similar.Para. 17 states“ . . . that when the Court issues a death sentence this will be coupled with the loss of citizenship rights and/or military ranks, including confiscation of the property in favour of the People's Liberation Fund.”Method and execution of the sentencePara. 18 states:“that the method of execution of the sentence must be swift, without long-windedness and must be complete.“The Investigator will commence legal action on receipt of either written, or oral denunciation, or by way of official duty.”Para. 20 states:If the person [accused or a witness] is illiterate he/she will make a right-hand thumb print on the document, which will be verified by the Recording Secretary.Para. 26: “The Court will announce a verdict after secret consultation. The Investigator will not be present during the consultation. Para. 26 states: . . . “that in considering the truth about the guilt of the accused the Court will not be tied to any proof, but it will make its decision purely by a free judgment.Para. 28. “The sentences will be pronounced "in the name of the peoples of Yugoslavia".Para. 29. “In the case of the death penalty, the Court's duty is to pass all the documents to a Military High Court for the approval, change or dismissal, prior to the execution.Para. 30. “The Death Penalty is executed by shooting, and in particularly serious cases by hanging, immediately after the decision of the Military High Court.Para. 31. “The Supreme Commander of NOV and POJ [i.e., Tito] could, by his order . . . grant pardon, reduce the sentence, or stop the trial of the sentenced persons.Signed: The Supreme Commander of the NOV and POJMarshall of YugoslaviaJ. B. Tito(PKRZH, pp.35-42; Original document, HAD, Zagreb, 1491.1.1.1.)There is no doubt whatsoever that, under most of the laws decreed in this document, the whole of the leadership of NOV and POJ, including the Marshall himself, were closely involved. Document 2 dated 18th September 1944Tito quotes the order, giving the deadline of 15th September 1944 for the voluntary switching of the Croatian Domobran and Serbian Chetnik enemy units into the NOV and POJ, and points out that "this date had already passed. Therefore the following measures must be taken:Item 2.Those switching over to NOV and POJ are from now on to be individually investigated and if found guilty are to be put before the Military Court. Those who want to join the units of the NOV must be dispersed in various units, and those who do not wish to join the NOV must be put into the PoW camps. Signed: Death to fascism, Freedom to the PeopleJosip Broz-TitoOn the basis of the above order, up to and including 30th April 1945, there were in Croatia 19 Partisan PoW camps with 77,049 prisoners.Document 3 dated 29th September 1944Political intelligence report by the OZNA Zagreb, sent toII department OZNA for Croatia.. . . Taking into account the switchover of several thousands of [Croatian] Domobrans . . . mass desertions [from our own units] are occurring. Deserters are saying, "We were not given arms, we are wasting our time." They do not hide, but are causing disorder in the villages . . . We have imprisoned the leading deserters . . . however, they escaped again . . .Document 4 dated 27th September 1944Letter by the Zagreb OZNA sent to the Regional Committee of the communist Party of Croatia.Dear Comrades,. . . The Military Court of the Command of the Bjelovar region showed itself so opportunistic that it is causing serious damage to our struggle. The fact is that in the past month and a half the Court failed to pronounce a single death penalty, although several accused deserved death. The cases of espionage are sentenced to two months of jail or, alternatively, to confiscation of a pig.Death to fascism, Freedom to the peopleSigned: Marijan (Lacan)Document 6 dated 1st December 1944.District Committee of the KPH report to the regional committeeof the KPH. Political Report. . . We were active in the exposure of the internal and external enemies and explained our activities to the people during the mass meetings. . . . The other problem we had on our plate was the deportation of families of the [local ethnic] Germans and Ustashas . . .In the village of Drenje the Army gave us a helping hand during the deportation of a Hungarian villager who protested, so that one comrade had to shoot him on the spot . . .Death to fascism - Freedom to the peopleDocument 8 dated January 1945OZNA III the VIth Corpus.According to Comrade Ga?par [Karlo Mrazovi?], people are talking about the liquidation of [the Croatian] Domobran officers and soldiers [some 200-300], those who [in good faith], answered the Amnesty of comrade Tito and have joined our ranks after 15th September 1944 . . .After the Investigation the following were liquidated: a. in Section III of the VIth Corpus, 17 men; b. in the region of Po?ega 29 men; c. in the region of Nova Gradi?ka 4 men; d. in the XIIth Division 13 men; e. in the XIth Division 14 men; and f. Chetniks and Nedic troops 25 men, making a total of 102.This number is approximate. Smaller numbers were shot after the Court sentence. The majority were liquidated without court proceedings; liquidations were carried out ad hoc. The reasons for the liquidations, not only in Slavonija but also in other regions, were a 'belief' that all those scheduled as enemies "who might 'tomorrow' be against us, must be liquidated." It is characteristic that the liquidations were carried out on the suggestion of individual members of the Corpus HQ put forward to the comrades from OZNA, e.g. "What's happening with this, that or the other individual? What - you haven't killed him yet? Kill him without much ado." Another reason for swift liquidations was a lack of trust by OZNA III for the Courts in Slavonski Brod.After the investigations the comrades in OZNA accepted their mistakes and agreed to carry on with the liquidations only on instructions 'from above'.Document 10 dated 17th January 1945Report by Drago Desput, member of the Court of HQ NOV and POH sent to the Central Committee of the KPH about the situation in the Military Courts in Dalmatia.The Commissioner of OZNA for Knin [Ivan Rukavina] told me that he received a directive during the liberation tp imprison as many people as possible. “Those who fulfil the conditions” must be liquidated and the remaining freed. Among the liquidated there were many locals, and prisoners-of-war, our citizens. For a certain number of these, the Courts were required to produce verdicts posthumously in order to justify the liquidations. Some liquidations were carried out in a slapdash manner, e.g., a group of people were killed in Drini?, some of them, half alive, thrown in the crevices were shouting “F . . . your mother, kill us properly.” The case in Dubrovnik was even more radical; the liquidations were not carried out by shooting but by butchery. One man in Dubrovnik saw his name on the poster as “already liquidated”. There were also those who were secretly liquidated (20 Roman Catholic priests) but who should have really been punished in public.”What is the number of liquidated? Who knows, e.g. in Dubrovnik only 100 people were liquidated. To our mind, that is too little.When in November 1945 a new directive for liquidations was given to OZNA, i.e., not to liquidate without the Courts, this order was largely ignored.Some people were tortured, after which the Courts were asked to fabricate their guilt in order to justify the tortures. "It would have been awkward to release them as innocent in such a broken state."Confiscation of property of the 'peoples enemies' was carried out by way of plunder. In a case in Dubrovnik even baby's prams were confiscated.Further cases were of the individuals who were sent to XIX division with the comment "to be liquidated in an appropriate manner, because if tried by the Courts they would be spared death sentences."In the report of the Knin region addressed to the Military Court of the VIII Corpus Military Region it is stated, "The Peoples' rule and the OZNA are the apple of our eye. They watch the political situation, and are acquainted with the public opinion . . . The most important aim of the Peoples' Courts is to keep the balance between public will and the formal side of the judiciary.The Peoples' Courts take care of their high authority. The Courts, as a rule, do not denigrate other Peoples' institutions, particularly not OZNA. "Yet [sometimes] everything has its limits."Continued from aboveThe Military Court of the Dubrovnik region sentenced to death by shooting [14th, 15th November 1944] Bilobrk Jakov, Zajer Marinko [teacher], Ba?i? Ante, RC parish priest, ?ihter Rikard, dentist; Egekher Frano, barber; ?usti? Marijan, gendarme; and Ba?ica Jovo, peasant [a Serb][!] as active Ustashas.On the 19th November 1944 OZNA published the verdict. The citizens complained that the post-mortem displayed in the town was "too abstract". Document 11 dated 25th January 1945.Department of OZNA for the VI Corpus reporting to III Dept. of OZNA for Croatia sent a list of liquidated (Croatian) Domobran officers and others in the period from 15th September 1944 to 1st January 1945.There follows a list of 110 Croatian officers who switched to Tito's ranks but who subsequently (after their first-hand experience of partisan life) belittled the Partisans as 'forest bandits', hated the communists, hated Serbs, called the Partisan Press rubbish, were shot for having German wives, for denunciation, for lack of discipline, for bragging about Partisan losses, for working against the people, for saying that Partisans are illiterate bandits, for desertion, for defacing communist slogans, for sabotage, for saying that the wind will blow the red star off the Partisan caps, for passing intelligence to Croatian forces, for links with the Jews and the British Intelligence Service, and for previously fighting against the Partisans in various 'enemy' formations. Document 12 dated 30th January 1945.Report by the IV Section of OZNA for Zagreb, for the period from 8th December 1944 to 30th January 1945, sent to IV department of OZNA for Croatia. No. 20/1945A further 822 persons were entered into our register, the total now being 2,828; in the local registers there were listed an additional 393 persons from 3,946 to 4,339.In the military register there were listed a further 1,882 persons from 4,164 to 6,046 in the territory of Zagreb.The register for the investigation of the persons in Zagreb increased by 164 persons to a total of 906.The registers of those sentenced to hard labour and those who were shot have been rearranged in alphabetical order. The first list contains 524 and the second 458 persons. The register contains also the persons shot before 1943.The CV's of all those who switched to our ranks were sorted out.Document 14 dated 12th April 1945 – No. 561/1945Report about the work of the IVth section of OZNA for Zagreb for March 1945, sent to the IVth department of OZNA for Croatia.During March we listed in our register a further 4,800 criminals so that the register now contains 8,141 entries.Military register contains 6,441 persons.Register for Zagreb contains 974 persons.Register of those executed had an additional 156 persons, totaling 661.Register of those sentenced to hard labour totals 320.Register of the enemy archives contains 101 entries.Document 15 dated 13th April 1945Report of the IIIrd Department of OZNA for Croatia sent to the Commissar of the GHQ of Croatia – No. 246/45-6. . . A Military intelligence officer reported that during the battle for Knin the prisoners of war were shot some 500m away from the front during the battle. . . . Units of the 34th Division imprisoned four Ustashas, disrobed them, shot them then threw them in the river Kupa. The bodies surfaced near the village of Ljetovani? . . .Death to fascism – Freedom to the people.(PKRZH, p.93.)Document 17 dated 26th April 1945, No. 2.Report by the Prosecutor General for the LIKA region on the situation after Partisans took Gospic.Dear Comrades,. . . While entering Gospic, 12 innocent persons were deliberately killed. This is under investigation. Similar cases occurred in Oto?ac. This is the reason that some Croats consider our theory about the brotherhood and unity as a story for children . . .The process of selection of murderers from other murderers is going on. Up to date we hold in the Sinacka district 800 Ustashas.. . . We have also quashed the plunder of the Croatian villages by the Serbs, although it still goes on . . .Death to fascism – Freedom to the people.Document 22 dated 12th May 1945, Zagreb.Minutes of the meeting of the City Committee of the KPH.. . . It is necessary to activate the JNOF [The United Peoples Liberation Front] and the citizens for the purpose of imprisonment and denunciation of the enemy . . . The people have received a supply of bread and the poor are consequently enjoying themselves. . . .The camps are full of prisoners, [Croatian] Domobrans and other culprits. In the Kanal camp [Zagreb] there are 1,000 and at the Airport [Zagreb] 7,000 Germans. 2,000 Ustashas are arriving in the Vrap?e [Zagreb] camp.As the daily intake at the camps was enormous the whole apparatus of OZNA for the city of Zagreb was stretched into an organ for investigation and imprisonment.Document 25 dated 15th May 1945 – Petrinja.Reports by the Prosecutor General for Banija about the situation in the occupied locations; plunder by the Units II of the JA, liquidation of the wounded in the Sisak hospital, the situation in the PoW camps and about the treatment of the 'Peoples enemies'.With the liberation of Petrinja, Sisak, Kostajnica and Dvor we faced many problems. The [Croatian] people live in fear and are awaiting a mass revenge. They were convinced that we fought for the Great Serbia.. . . A lot of people escaped into the woods. We tried everything to catch these bandits. So far we got 300. . . .People in the newly liberated areas are friendly towards the criminals [i.e., Croatian PoW's] and our urgent duty is to stir up hatred towards them.During our entry into villages and towns there was a lot of plundering going on by [our] II Army.In Sisak two days after our arrival, one of our battalions entered the city hospital, took away 19 wounded enemy soldiers and murdered them. Nobody talks about it due to great fear.Document 28 dated 15th May 1945, Zagreb.A message of the GHQ/Aleksandar Rankovi? No. 124 sent to OZNA for Croatia expressing displeasure with a small number of 'liquidated' in Zagreb."Your work in Zagreb is unsatisfactory. In the past 10 days you have shot only 200 bandits. We are surprised at the indecisiveness in cleansing Zagreb of criminals."You are working contrary to our orders, i.e., to act swiftly and energetically so that everything has to be completed in the first days. You are forgetting that Zagreb now has one million population, which includes all the Ustasha apparatus that was fleeing before us. Apart from the imprisonment of the outstanding HSS members, their incarceration may serve as an example to the others. For this reason, the chief of the IInd Department is being dismissed forthwith. Please present this message to comrade Vlado [Bakari?]."Signed:Rankovi?Document 29 dated 16th May 1945, Zagreb.A message from OZNA for Croatia No. 118 sent to OZNA for Bosnia and Hercegovina about the number of refugees in Zagreb.In the opinion of the comrades here, it is impossible as yet to draw a complete list of the refugees. There are some 250,000 refugees [from BiH] here at the moment. We are focusing now on investigations, prisons and camps.Document 30 dated 17th May 1945 (11-112)A message from the GHQ of the JA sent to the HQ of the III JA.The Soviet Government allowed us to occupy a part of the Austrian territory, therefore I order:1.Occupy a part of the Austrian territory within the limits ordered by Marshall Tolbuhin.2.Your forces are under the command of Marshall Tolbuhin.Confirm immediately receipt of the order.Marshall of Yugoslavia Tito(11-22) 16th May 1945. Receive the Ustasha units, which were disarmed by the Bulgarians, by order of Marshall Tolbuhin. Signed: Kulundji?.(11-35) You hold a great number of PoW's, well-known criminals; make sure they do not escape. Signed: General Velimir Terzi?.(19-32) Send immediately to Vojvodina 75,000 PoWs; 5,000 to Ba?ka, 30,000 to Srijem, 10,000 to Baranja and 30,000 to Banat. [Command No. 155] Signed: Gen. Arso Jovanovi?. [18-66] The Allies in Carinthia will hand over to you 200,000 PoWs. Arrange a five-member commission for the takeover. Use particular officers. [Command No. 156.] Signed:Gen. Arso Jovanovi?.Document 31 dated 17th May 1945, BelgradeCabinet of the Marshall of Yugoslavia, No. 15To the Chief of the British Military delegation.We request you to inform Field Marshall Alexander that Marshall Tito acknowledges the receipt of his telegram dated 16th May 1945 about the handing over of 200,000 Yugoslavs who are in Austria and also about the evacuation of your troops from the Island Vis.The Marshall agrees fully with the suggestions of the Field Marshall Alexander and expresses his gratitude.The above-mentioned 200,000 [persons] will be taken over by the HQ of the IIIrd Army, which was given all the necessary instructions. We take the liberty to request you to let us know the location for the commission for the takeover of the PoWs, which has to meet with the delegation specified by the Field Marshall Alexander.Please receive expressions of my regards.On the order of the MarshallSigned:Gen. Major Ljubodrag Djuri?Document 33 dated 17th May 1945A message sent by the HQ of the 48th Division to the HQ I of the JA.We have imprisoned 1,264 soldiers and officers, almost all Ustashas. Many of them are from Kupres and ?iroki Brijeg [Hercegovina] and Fazlagi?a Kula [Muslims].Received at 13.45 p.m. Signed: VujadinWe have imprisoned 950 more Ustashas, among them 2 Lieutenant Colonels, 1 Colonel and a Major. One Colonel committed suicide. The officers will be transferred by lorries to stop them escaping.Received 18th May 1945, 11.35 a.m.Signed:VujadinDocument 34 May 1945A message from IIIrd Dept. of OZNA for the region of the Xth Corpus [Zagreb] sent to OZNA IInd (Zagreb). Official 362/1.At the arrival of our army at Ivani?grad on 8th May 1945, the 215th Macedonian division imprisoned 8 persons [names given]. Comrades from the OZNA of the 21st Macedonian division informed the Commissioner for the IInd District [?azma] who told them that all the above are Ustasha bandits** so all of them were shot in Lupoglav on 10th May 1945.Some of those killed were even members of the local Peoples Committee. People are bitter. We are of the opinion that Comrade Gretic Rudo [responsible one] must be most strictly punished.Death to fascism – Freedom to the people.Signed:Le? Mato for OZNA III ** Although this was not correct Document 35 dated 18th May 1945A message of the First Army (IJA) to the GHQ of 16th and 18th May 1945 about the situation in the PoW camps and the imprisonment of a group of Ustashas.Dr. 266In the camps there are:Zagreb2,500 Germans, 1,800 Ustashas, 12,000 DomobransBrod2 Germans, 14 Ustashas, 220 Domobrans and 195 Italians.Mitrovica606 GermansVinkovci162 Germans, 156 Ustashas, 1,254 Domobrans, 115 White Guards [Cossacks], 700 Poles, 11 Russians and 145 Italians.Celje7,600 Germans, 4,550 Ustashas, 2,709 Domobrans, 500 Chetniks, 38 White Guards, 28 Poles and 25 Italians.7,000 Germans dispatched from Zagreb for Bjelovar.The surrender and liquidation of a group of 2,000 Ustashas in Pravni Laz is in process.Signed: Milutin Mora?a, Chief of Staff of the I.JA.During 16th and 17th May we have imprisoned 2,000 Ustashas, among them a lot of criminals.Signed:Milutin Mora?a, Chief of Staff of the I.JADocument 36 dated 13-19th May 1945.From the messages of OZNA for Croatia in respect of the actions against the Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac.No. 108 dated 13th May 1945 sent to the GHQ. One of our men was talking to Stepinac. He stated that he was scared and therefore collaborated with the Ustashas authorities.Signed:Stevo [Ivan Kraja?i?]No. 115 dated 15th May 1945 sent to the GHQ.In agreement with comrade Vlado [Vladimir Bakari?] not to imprison Stepinac among the first, but only to imprison a number of the reactionaries. However, we think that we could go ahead now. Let us have your opinion in connection with this and the action against Stepinac.Signed:Stevo [Ivan Kraja?i?]No. 119 dated 17th May 1945 sent to the GHQ (V?)Stepinac, who was today quietly imprisoned, is being investigated. Please let us know what further action should be taken.Signed:Stevo [Ivan Kraja?i?]No. 124 dated 17th May 1945 received from the GHQ (V?)Stepinac must be held in prison. He must be investigated swiftly and material collected about his enemy activities. The action against him must be fair. You can keep him in a private house under guard.No. 123 dated19th May 1945 sent to GHQ (V?)Stepinac is held as you suggested.Signed:Stevo [Ivan Kraja?i?]Document 41 dated 21st May 1945From the register of the messages of the 15th Majevica Brigade sent to the HQ of XVIIth division about the 'liquidation' of a group of Ustashas and the continuation of the shooting of the PoWs.20th May 1945 No. 25 dr. 70We have sent one battalion to St. Veit-Miklau? together with the First Battalion of the 6th Brigade to liquidate 500 Ustashas in the sector of Miklau?.Signed: Miki [Rade Hamovi?]No. 26 dr.75Continued from aboveWe are linked with OZNA. Our order is to liquidate 2,500 [Serbian] Chetniks and [Croatian] Ustashas. . . . We are proceeding with the shooting as from today.Signed: Miki [Rade Hamovi?] Chief of the Operative Dept. of the GHQ JA21st May 1945 No. 27 dr. 55We are stationed in the same place as yesterday and are proceeding with the same work [i.e., liquidations] . . .Signed:MikiDocument 43 dated 25th May 1945 MariborExcerpt from the operational diary of the Third Battalion of the 6th East-Bosnian Brigade, XVII East-Bosnian division III JA about the 'liquidation of the peoples' traitors' from 23rd-25th May 1945.23rd May 1945 Maribor, sunnyOn order of the HQ of our Brigade, the Battalion had the task of the liquidation of the people's traitors. Due to this work, all other work was postponed.24th May 1945 Maribor, overcast.As yesterday, the Battalion on the same task.25th May 1945, Maribor, sunnyAs yesterday the Battalion proceeding with the same order. . . . In the evening, after satisfactorily accomplished task, the Battalion returned to barracks, and resumed regular military life.Document 49 dated 31st May 1945From the report of the Secretary KPH IV Assault Brigade sent to the Secretary of the Division Commission KPH IIIrd Assault Division about the Party activities and relations with the PoWs.. . . Hatred towards the enemy [PoWs] in our units is weak, particularly in those who joined our ranks recently. We have, by means of the Party work, done everything to increase this hatred . . . pointing out that these people are the greatest executioners of our people and that we have to be sharp with them . . . We have succeeded in increasing the hatred towards these bandits and of lately our fighters are killing them if they fall back behind the column. ...Death to fascism – Freedom to the people.Signed:Secretary Obradovi? StankoDocument 50 dated June 1945Report of OZNA (Banija) for May 1945As far as bandits [Croatian PoWs] are concerned we have killed 50 and caught 7. An additional 700 we have sent to a concentration camp.In the jails there are 344 prisoners, 80 were sent to trial. 8 were sentenced to death. . . .Our plan includes also the liquidation of opportunists. (!).Signed:Major PutnikDocument 52 dated 2nd June 1945, Nova Gradi?kaReport of the Committee of the KPH Nova Gradi?ka, to the regional committee of the KPH, Osijek. No. 342/1945The reactionaries who began to recover from the initial shock are starting again to stir up the people against us, congregating particularly around the [Roman Catholic] church. Women are complaining: "You told us that you were bringing freedom, and our men are rotting in jails." The [RC] priests are the strongest reactionaries. They started to celebrate masses for bloody Ustashas who were liquidated by us. One morning, in Po?ega, there appeared a poster with the inscription 'Down with the Gypsy Party – Croats wake up to the communists'. The conflict between the Croats and Serbs is sharpening, particularly after Serbian refugees from Serbia arrived back. In Nova Gradi?ka OZNA from the IVth Brigade Xth Division shot some people and haven't buried them properly, so that parts of bodies were visible. Reactionaries immediately complained that we are as bad as Ustashas. During the shooting one man succeeded in escaping and trumpeted around the town that people are being shot without trial.Document 53 dated 3rd June 1945Report by the Secretary of the KPH Proletarian Assault Brigade sent to Secretary of the Divisional Committee of the KPH Assault Division.. . . In connection with Istria, some of our fighters started complaining that the English want to take Istria away from us. Some were prepared to go to war against them. However, the fighters have convinced themselves when in Bleiburg that the English kept their word and handed over the fascist scum to our Army. . . .The hatred for our enemies then built up, so much so that our fighters were not murdering them because of the orders, but because of the deep hatred for them. . . .Death to fascism – Freedom to the people.Signed:N. BjelajacDocument 55 dated 6th June 1945Report by OZNA (Banija) sent to OZNA for Croatia – No. 87/45The collaborators with the [British] Intelligence Service are mostly Jews from Glina and Topusko. However, they have now left. We wish to inform you about the liquidations [5-6 days ago] carried out by Deputy Commissar Firga, who took a group of 194 people a kilometer from the village of Knezovljani and shot them beside the main road. The bodies were not properly buried and people complained. . . .Another anomaly is that persons for whom we demand the death penalty are jailed, and those whom we ask to be jailed are shot.Death to fascism – freedom to the people.Signed: Major Putnik.Document 56 dated 12th June 1945Report by Dimitrije Georgijevi?, Commissioner of OZNA for Yugoslavia sent to Aleksandar Rankovi?, Chief of OZNA at the Ministry of Peoples' Defence DFJ.(From this document it is obvious that the Croatian PoWs, particularly Ustashas, were deliberately marched from Austria and Slovenia into Serbia, some 1,000 kilometres away, for 'liquidation'.)Concentration camp in Pazova - 5,000 PoWs; in Apatin - 5,001 PoWs; in Sombor - 6,025 PoWs and in Glogonj - 5,000 PoWs.It is also stated that after the cleansing of some unknown group, 43,901 PoWs were handed to the Units of the II Army. Signed: Col. D. Georgijevi?Document 58 dated 18th June 1945Telegram received from 17th Brigade XXVIII Division JAFive Ustashas escaped from the shooting of 312 people in the village Grac [Virovitica]. When they arrived in the village of Donje they boasted about the event.Signed: HamdoDocument 59 dated 3rd July 1945A report sent to the Chief of OZNA for Croatia.In the NDH there were 5-6,000 Domobran officers, 8,000 reserve Domobran officers, and 2,500-3,000 Ustasha officers.All of them were imprisoned in Slovenia and if they were not immediately finished off were sent to Srijem [Serbia] for further treatment.Signature - illegibleDocument 60 dated 5th July 1945Report on KNOJ and the mass liquidations sent to OZNA for Croatia.Strictly confidential. No. 72A negative state of affairs within the KNOJ in the early period before the liberation may be illustrated by the rigidity of its fighters. For example, 3 members of KNOJ have taken a man in Split in broad daylight through the centre of town and have shot him on the spot there and then. He fell into a hole and shouted "I am only wounded" so they emptied the remainder of their ammunition into him.At the moment discipline has weakened, particularly in respect of the special actions. In Gospic, for example, 8 women and ten men were shot and covered only with branches.Near Petrinja, during the shooting of one large group of bandits [Croatian PoWs], an officer of KNOJ asked for help from the volunteers in the surrounding villages [Serbs].The new members of KNOJ [Muslims] from the VIII Division refused to shoot the bandits [the Croats] as Allah forbids that.Another case in Djurmanac occurred when 2 railway wagons full of the bandits [Croat PoWs] were ferried for shooting. The bandits broke the doors and 30 of them escaped.Robbing the prisoners is becoming a more common occurrence.Continued from aboveA very common occurrence is that the Serbs torture Croats, and shoot Ustasha woman, very attractive. The Ustasha and this incident speaks for itself. All this indulgence towards the bandits is being excused as good The political situation in the ranks of KNOJ for Croatia is not good. There are some members who do not know who the Supreme Commander [Tito] is. The commander of the regiment of the VI Brigade, Su?a Ilija, [a Serb] is bragging openly that when he arrives in the first Croatian village he will set it on fire.A very common occurrence is that the Serbs torture Croats, and shoot them with great enthusiasm. There are cases [particularly in Zagreb] when the KNOJ guards act as bankers and suppliers to imprisoned bandits. There was a case of a Second Lieutenant writing love letters to an imprisoned Ustasha woman, very attractive. All this indulgence towards the bandits is being excused as good manners on the part of our soldiers. On the other hand, the old fighters [Serbs] are going to the other extreme and sadistically torturing the bandits [e.g. in the Petrinja Battalion of the I Brigade] before shooting them. Now this has become an obsession so that it is no longer a question of torturing the bandits, but the moral status of our fighters and their leaders is now in question.Death to fascism – Freedom to the people.Signed:Chief Commissioner Zvonko KomaricaDocument 65 dated 6th July 1945, ZagrebMinistry of the Interior for the Federal State of Croatia information sent to the regional NOOs (Peoples Liberation Committees) regarding its decision for the removal of the cemeteries of the enemy soldiers. No. 2. 811/45The occupiers have buried their dead in the special cemeteries which are spacious and well looked after, while the bones of our own fighters are scattered anonymously all over the country. It is imperative therefore to flatten the demons of fascism and remove all the signs of their existence. All their burial grounds must be steamrollered. The bones are not to be exhumed. Some burial places can be reused. However, during this operation, it is important not to give the impression that we are taking revenge. The graves of the [Croatian] Domobrans are not to be touched.Death to fascism – Freedom to the people.Minister Vi?ko Krstulovi?Document 65 dated 8th July 1945A message by the Regional Committee of the KPH for Lika sent to the Central Committee of the KPH about the intention to shoot sixty prisoners as a reprisal for the killing of two communists.Gospic, No. 847Ustashas today killed Sokol [Ivan Do?en] and Djuro Calic, members of the Regional Committee of the KPH. We intend to shoot immediately 60 criminals [Croat PoWs] without trial. Please let us know if you are happy with this number or should we add a few more?No. 848Comrades were killed in the Bru?anski pass. We have imprisoned immediately 35 persons known for their links with Ustashas.Document 66 dated 9th July 1945Verdict of the Military Court of the Command of the City of Zagreb in the trial of the military padres of the NDH armed forces.Confidential No. 347/1945 – In the name of the people.The sentence:The named: Bo?ak Valentin [b. 1913] Roman Catholic Priest [Croat]; ?abalja Ivan [b. 1915] Roman Catholic Priest [Croat]; Vran?i? Antun [b. 1913] Roman Catholic Priest [Croat]; ?ivkovi? Ilija [b. 1910] Roman Catholic priest and Professor of Theology [Croat] andMedi? Herbert [b. 1913] Roman Catholic Priest [Croat], These Priests are guilty because as priests and higher officers in the enemy forces they have exploited their position for propaganda purposes in favour of the cut-throat Paveli? and the NDH and were instilling hatred against the peoples of Yugoslavia.All the above are sentenced to death by shooting.*Death to fascism – freedom to the peopleSigned:President of the CouncilKova?evi? ?arko [a Serb]Minutes taken by Dr. Radan*NB. With the exception of Vran?i? Antun.Document 67 dated 10th July 1945Report by the Ministry of the Interior of Croatia sent to the Central Committee of the KPH about the situation in Slavonija.Confidential – No. 67/1945The brutal treatment and plunder of the region by the JA, Militia and OZNA.The Peoples’ Militia is totally unsatisfactory. It was mobilized from the ranks of criminals, black marketeers, deserters and the former ranks of the enemy forces. It is supposed to be the guardian of the Peoples’ Power. The daily plunder by the Militia, the JA and OZNA is compromising us.There are cases where the JA are imprisoning members of the Militia and vice versa, all done with the knowledge of the Commander of the City of Osijek, who, instead of resolving the situation sent their secretary pointing a gun at the staff of the City Commanders. This of course is inflaming a difficult situation. The OZNA plunder and kill the people without trial. Fear has spread not only within the people but also within the Peoples' Councils. If you dare to complain, the answer is, [i.e., in Brod]: "If you poke your nose into our business, you will also end under the turf." Several soldiers of KNOJ in Sibinj killed 15 [Croatian] Domobrans for no reason whatsoever. Corruption among them is rampant. Some councilors [specifically Katalenac] have 7 suits, 2 motorcars, several motorbikes, a coach and riding horse, not to speak about luxury flats.Reactionaries are on the march, particularly the Roman Catholic Priests who preach "If someone hits you with a stone you hit him back with a piece of bread" and have announced the appearance of the Virgin Mary in the Po?ega valley. As a result, when columns of the [Croatian] PoWs pass through the villages, people are offering them wine, bacon, chicken and cakes, and our wounded in hospitals are virtually starving. The army, on the other hand, plunders everything in its away.The Serbs returning from Serbia after the liberation also create political mischief. They may be even former Chetniks who now support the King [Peter]. These elements are destroying brotherhood and unity. It came to an armed fight between the Borovo Commander [a Serb] and a Vinkovci Commander [a Croat].Death to fascism – Freedom to the people.Signed: Major – Polit CommissarDocument 68 dated 11th July 1945Report by the Prosecutor General of the II JA about the irregularities relating to the treatment of PoWs.Confidential - No. 44/45, 1st May 19451.The guards in the camp in Pakrac killed 2 [Croatian] Domobrans, and were beating the people who are bringing food to the PoWs.2.In Slavonska Po?ega ditto.3.On 17th June 1945 in the village of Cernik four [Croatian] Domobrans were killed from the transport of 3,000 PoWs, for taking bread offered by the people. The PoWs were Ustashas on their way for liquidation.4.OZNA of the IX Krajina Brigade killed 5 Ustashas on the 22nd June 1945.5.20 soldiers of the IX Krajina Brigade killed 50 [Croatian] Domobrans in the nearby forest on the 18th/19th June 1945. . . .6.5 [Croatian] Domobrans were killed [one had his throat cut and another had his skull smashed] from a 900-long column of PoWs near the village of Muratovac.Death to fascism – freedom to the people.Signed: – Prosecutor General of the II Army, Second Lieutenant Drago Polak.Document 69 dated 11th July 1945Report by Danilo Plamenac about the work of the State Prosecutor for Karlovac and Banija.. . . In Banija a certain number of hard-line followers of Ma?ek are proceeding with their work against the people. . . . The trial started on the 7th July of the well-known businessman Gavrilovi? in Petrinja [the producer of the world-famous salami] in the Court for the Protection of National Dignity. . . . On the same day the trial of the notorious Ustasha Soldo was held . . . he still maintained that the NDH was the proper state for the Croatian people, and that Croatia is the country for the Croats only and no-one else. . . . It was a mistake to try him in the Court for the Protection of the National Dignity. The Military Court should have tried him.. . . The State Prosecutor for Karlovac reported that 1,700 imprisoned Ustashas and Domobrans were dispatched by the II Army to the local division for liquidation. However, OZNA for Croatia asked for the sifting of these criminals. So only 300 of them were liquidated. The Division insisted on the liquidation of a further 500. . . .Continued from aboveThe local Courts in the District of Karlovac are now dealing mainly with divorce cases instigated by the Partisan husbands who are accusing their wives of lack of engagement in the people's life, and also for their general backwardness . . Document 70 dated 12th July 1945Report by Dimitrije Georgijevi?, Commissioner of OZNA for Yugoslavia, sent to Aleksandar Rankovi?, head of OZNA of the Ministry of the National Defence, of the Democratic Federative Yugoslavia (DFJ).I am sending you a schedule of the PoWs held in the territory of Yugoslavia: Germans 81,376Austrians948Italians12,123Ustashas16,030Chetniks544Hungarians___929Total115,440The OZNA policy was to send Croats [i.e., Ustashas and Domobrans] to Serbia. Thus, the PoW camp for officers in Vr?ac [Serbia] held 1,802 Croatian officers.NB: The Serb PoWs made up only 0.47% of the total.Document 73 dated 18th July 1945Report by the State Prosecutor for Lika about the political situation and the work of the Military Court sent to the State Prosecutor for Croatia.Confidential No. 31/1945Gospi?,The great problem for the anti-fascist organisations is a high number of Ustashas and Chetniks who escaped into the Lika woods, i.e., some 1,100 out of which 250 are Chetniks.The battalion of the NO [Peoples' Council] kills one or two bandits daily. . . . A few days ago, 7km away from Gospic, Ustasha bandits killed two members of the District Committee of the Party. So far, we were unable to get them.165 cases of crimes submitted to us deal with acts against our National Dignity (80), murder (2), wounding (4), link with Ustashas (4),link with Chetniks (1), spreading of false propaganda (4), incitement to murder (1), plunder (18), stealing (15),insulting the Peoples' Representatives (5) etc.The trial will begin on the 20th July against Poli? Frane and Tesli? Nikola, both from Gospi?, for incitement to murder.It was decided to hold both trials on the same day . . . the intention is to achieve a political effect among the People [by trying one Croat and one Serb]. Both crimes are essentially crimes against the achievements of the Liberation struggle.On 1st July 1945 at the Military Court for Lika there were only 323 inmates out of whom 91 were sentenced to death and 11 to life imprisonment.From 1st July 1945 to 15th July 1945, 181 prisoners were sentenced:120 to death, 20 to life imprisonment and 41 to hard labour. 9 were killed while trying to escape, 3 escaped. During that time 135 prisoners were shot.On 15th July 1945 the situation was as follows:total number of prisoners 463; 148 sentenced – 76 to death,31 to life imprisonment and41 to forced labour.Signed:Vujinovi? MarkoDocument 74 dated 18th July 1945Karlovac No. KS 50/1-1945Report by the State Prosecutor for the Karlovac District about the activities of OZNA sent to the State Prosecutor for Croatia.The interest of the public in the trials particularly in the Courts for the Protection of the National Dignity is such that we cannot accommodate all of them in the courtroom. For that reason, we have installed loud speakers in the Square to satisfy the demand. . . . In the OZNA prisons there are 205 persons, and in the Military Barracks under the control of OZNA 1,800 Domobrans and Ustashas; 300 will be sent to hard labour, 300 mobilised into the JA, 200 freed and the rest [1,200] we shall decide what to do with them in due course.Death to fascism – Freedom to the peopleSigned:Milutin Ko?ari?Document 75 dated 19th July 1945Karlovac, Department of the General Control, No. Confidential 51-1/1945Report by the State Prosecutor for the District of Karlovac about OZNA errors, sent to the State Prosecutor of Croatia.As far as OZNA is concerned, certain errors were made, damaging the current political situation, which is not that bright in any case. These errors deal with imprisonments without sufficient evidence. If some people had already been imprisoned, it was an even bigger mistake to release them. It is obvious that their facilities are too small to cope with such an enormous workload. There are 2,000 Ustashas and Domobrans in the PoW camps and the apparatus for dealing with them consists of only 3 or 4 men. . . .The political situation among the workers is not satisfactory and the enemy agents are exploiting the situation for propaganda purposes.Death to fascism – Freedom to the peopleSigned:Janko NejakDocument 76 dated 20th July 1945Minutes of the meeting of the Old Partisan fighters from Suhopolje, sent to Andrija Hebrang, Minister in Belgrade.Dear Comrade Andrija,I wrote to you before but have not received a reply.The situation here works against the interests of our movement.Serbs are trying again to establish absolute rule here . . . as a result of which dissatisfaction among the people [Croats] is rampant at the expense of our Cause that was achieved with our hard and bloody struggle.Serbs are destroying our New Order. The returnees from Serbia [those who escaped from the NDH] are saying that work is something only Croats should do. They expect to live from our own sweat. They openly talk about the liquidation of the Croatian communists in order to achieve their own purpose.A few months ago, several hundred [Croat] PoWs came here and were taken to the nearby woods. They were beaten up and then murdered. This was done by the comrades from the 4th Battalion of the Vth Montenegrin Proletarian Brigade. They bragged about it in Suhopolje.They were saying openly that they were Chetniks before they switched to the Partisans. The only conclusion is that the Serbs are killing the Croats now but under a different mask.The local [Croatian] people are aghast – seeing the Serbs sharpening knives and collecting ropes from the local houses. . . .At the meeting of the AFZ [Antifascist Front of Women], the President, Micika Huber, talked about the dissatisfaction of the local people with the current state of affairs, i.e., dead bodies of the murdered PoWs, cut out hearts and chopped off legs and arms scattered around. People are not allowed to feed Croat PoWs, while the Serbian Chetniks are not only fed but also embraced and kissed.Because of Comrade Huber's criticism she was removed from the Presidency of the AFZ in spite of the fact that her comrade [husband] was an old Partisan fighter.The total number of murdered PoWs is 1,416 [mainly Croats] . . . .In Virovitica, President of the NOO [Peoples Liberation Council], Mili Latinovi? warned that all those who defend the bandits must watch themselves. This warning gagged all the honest people from expressing any criticism. . . .The Serbs [that escaped from Croatia to Serbia at the beginning of the war, and thus saved their lives] are now coming back and stopping the Croats from joining the NOOs on the pretext that all Croats are Ustashas.Suhopolje has 36 Serbian and 150 Croat houses, and the NOO has 2 Serbs and 3 Croat councilors.The commission for the Resettlement is staffed by the Serbs who are driving people out of their homes at the point of a gun. So far, 1,700 [mainly Croat] families were driven out of their homes. Some are coming back but are immediately sent to the concentration camps.Serbian refugees are demanding the return of the last nail missing from their houses. If pointed out that they should consider themselves lucky to find their houses in one piece, they retort "It would have been better if they were burned down". We old fighters, who were fighting for the unity of the Croats and Serbs, now realise that the Serbs aim at something else. It is obvious from their howling: "We don't want Tito, Croatian bandit, what we want is the King, even if he is useless."Death to fascism – Freedom to the peopleSigned:Lucovi? Ivan, Reder Stjepan, Mirko Vinter, Gjuro Stipi?, ?kov Josip, Ferdinand Lisinski.Document 77 dated 20th July 1945Report by the State Prosecutor for Bjelovar sent to the State Prosecutor for Croatia (for the period from 15th June to 20th July 1945)No. 36/45 ConfidentialThe political situation in some villages is getting worse due to the return of the Serbian refugees from Serbia, whose attitude towards the local Croats is plainly chauvinistic. . . .The reactionaries are exploiting this situation for the purpose of breaking the brotherhood and unity, although most of the reactionaries have been by now imprisoned by OZNA. . . .The reason for our inability to bring more culprits to the Court for the Protection of the National Dignity is that most of them were already sentenced by the Military Courts as enemies of the people.Death to fascism – Freedom to the people.Signed:Lupert IvanDocument 79 dated 31st July 1945Slavonski Brod – No. 5/45State Prosecutor for Slavonski Brod reports to the State Prosecutor for CroatiaThe situation in the PoW camp Vinkovici – the camp is holding 2,500 PoWs, among them 450 Croats and Serbs [the rest are Germans]. Croat and Serb (!) PoWs are active Ustashas from various parts of Croatia and will be passed to their Districts for treatment.Death to fascism – Freedom to the peopleSignature illegibleDocument 80 dated July 1945Minutes of the meeting of the Commissioners and leaders of OZNA for Croatia.Word has it from Comrade Du?ko Brki? that Chauvinism, organised chauvinism, is spreading, coming from Serbia . . . and taking a deep root in Croatia. . . .We are trying to solve the social problem by means of the colonization . . . but the enemy is stopping us in that aim . . . The OZNA acted too mildly with the [ethnic] Germans, who were coming back to [their own] villages . . . we had to act more energetically, shove them into camps and later push them over the frontier. . . . In that way we would have to safeguard the colonization [of the Serbian peasants from Lika, Hercegovina and Montenegro]. . . . The Courts for the Protection of the National Dignity have failed, as they have not maintained their status as the revolutionary courts, i.e., as the means for the efficient cleansing of the enemy from our ranks, by applying death sentences or life imprisonments.The Commissar of the OZNA for Gorski Kotar has a word:In the early liberated territories, we were successful in removing the reactionaries, specifically the HSS . . . either by imprisonment, liquidation or purely by political means. . . . Now, in Ogulin, which was the centre of the Ustasha power we are faced with a lot of problems. . . . The HSS leaders, who were persecuted by Ustashas, now appear to be martyrs in the eyes of the people . . . and the people representing our Movement are Great Serbian ogres in their eyes . . .The Commissar for OZNA, District of Gradi?ka has a word:Comrade Stevo [Ivan Kraja?i?], the Chief of the OZNA for Croatia concluded:he chauvinist hatred is at its peak . . . Croatian and Serbian villages are at the point of clashing. In Kostajnica and Dvor people are saying that the Serbs are again in charge and the Croats are nowhere to be seen. . . . . In order to sort that out, our authorities imprisoned a few people, cut with knivesthe letter 'U' on their foreheads, walked them through the villages and then liquidated them. . . .Comrades, those who remain are now spreading dissatisfaction among the people, the very people who used to be on our side. . . . The chauvinism is being spread with the return of the refugees from Serbia who are yelling: "What are you waiting for, why are you not liquidating the Croats . . . ? On the the other hand, in Serbia the King has the majority on his side . . ."Comrades, I say stop the liquidations. Not because I feel sorry for the enemy, I don't feel sorry even for my own father, but because the people are being stirred up. . . . We have to find a completely new way of getting rid of our enemies . . . We have our courts. . . . We must remove the enemy in a legal way. Continued from above:There was never a case in history that a political party created an organisation such as OZNA, and then left it to do its own thing. . . . All the members of OZNA are automatically members of the Party. They have to think in a political way, and not turn into gendarmes and police agents. . . . They must think of themselves as the supporting organ of the Party in order to gain a positive image in the world. . . .Document 81 dated 3rd August 1945 – BelgradeOrder by the Presidency of the AVNOJ about the general amnesty. . . .Para. 1The general amnesty is granted to:All persons who took part in Chetnik and Nedi? units, units of the Croatian and Slovene Domobrans, the Muslim militia, Shiptar formations and other armed units in the service of the Occupiers. Para. 2The exceptions from the Amnesty under para. 2 are:Ustashas, Ljoti? Chetniks, members of the Russian Voluntary Corps, except those mobilized by force after 1st January 1942.(There follow a further 8 paragraphs in similar vein.)The Presidency of the AVNOJ – President Dr. I. RibarSecretary:M. Pervni?i?Document 83 dated 5th August 1945Excerpt from the Communist Party Conference of the 34th Assault Division of the JA, sent to the CK KPH:Due to the arbitrariness of some of our officers and fighters who are guarding the columns of PoWs, several serious political mistakes have occurred, i.e., the mass murder of the PoWs and even some civilians who were trying to offer food and water to the PoWs, coupled with the plunder of their possessions [watches, rings, etc.], committed by the Karlovac Assault [SELJO] Brigade, have been used by our enemies in propaganda against our state. . . .Document 87 dated 31st August 1945Report by the Commission of the OZNA of the Croatian KNOJ Division sent to OZNA for Croatia. No. 16During our action against the enemy group in the Slunj sector, our fighters caught Ustasha Nikola Obajdin. The Commission of the OZNA in Slunj decided to liquidate the bandit.He and another ten Ustasha bandits were taken to Ze?eva Varo? and were thrown into a deep pothole. He, however, remained alive, and in the early morning he succeeded in crawling out into the woods and recovering from the beating. Eventually he was caught again by the OZNA [which got hold of the correspondence between him and his girlfriend]. He was asked if anyone else escaped from the pothole. He said he was not sure, all he knew was that he heard them groaning and moaning.Death to fascism – Freedom to the peopleSigned: Captain FrancDocument 88 dated 18th September 1945 – ZagrebReport by the Ministry of Justice of the Federal State of Croatia sent to the State Prosecutor of Croatia on the subject of the activities of the Courts for the Protection of the National Dignity of the Croats and Serbs.No. 485/43 – ConfidentialExcerptThis report represents only 80% of the sentences pronounced so far.DistrictSentencedCroats SerbsBjelovar681Delnice502Dubrovnik30Gospi?3510Karlovac273Makarska260Nova Gradi?ka421Osijek18610Petrinja100Slavonski Brod1932Split240Su?ak255Vara?din591Virovitica653Zagreb1690Totals_98238Total1,020Death to fascism – Freedom to the peopleDocument 92 dated 18th October 1945 – ZagrebLetter sent by Milka Vukeli? to Vladimir Bakari?, Secretary of the CK KPH about the Partisan crimes during the liberation of Gospi?.Comrade Vlado,I believe it is best to write to you directly. . . .I am well acquainted with the pre-war situation in Gospi? . . . .On the one hand the great Serbian activities of Duki? and Zec, and on the other Ustasha-Frankist policies of Jurica Frkovi?, as well as the HSS leader Ivan Murkovi?, are well known.Dukic and Zec's gangs were setting Croatian houses on fire already in the years 1935-37. Some of these terrorist gangs have now returned to Gospi?.The truth is that in 1941 Ustashas tried to hire some of the Croats in Gospi? for the purpose of the liquidation of the Serbs. In my village Lipovljani Croats refused to do that, but were threatened with death, so that only a few formally attended the executions. It follows that all the Croats cannot be guilty. There were many Croats in Gospi? who were looking forward to receiving our army. Yet, after our army arrived, it committed many murders on totally innocent Croats. The greatest murderer was Nikola Tesli? [a Serb], who received only 10 years prison sentence. People are confused and ask why the Party allowed murders only against the Croats. Tesli? was murdering old people, women, girls, gauging out their eyes, and cutting off breasts. And what's worse, at Tesli?'s trial, the State Defence lawyer, Vujnovi?, was brazenly defending his crimes. . . .Croats here feel that the Serbs are favoured everywhere. The Yugoslav Army plundered even those who helped our Movement. They took cattle, equipment, jewellery, money, etc.Croats are saying, we are helpless . . . the Serbs have arms, and if you dare to say something the night is going to swallow you up. The Peoples' Courts have sentenced to death many innocent people. To try to defend oneself is useless . . . the slogan is 'all the Croats must disappear'.In order to find out more about Nikola Tesli?, I interviewed his neighbour an old [Croat] woman, Magda Meduli?, who told me:"When our army arrived in Gospi?, Tesli? took us, 15 old people, and locked us up near the station. Some were later released, some shot on the order of the Peoples' Court, and some were murdered under Teslic's own orders."Tesli?'s house was always full of Chetniks. As a Serb in the past he co-operated with Ustashas and was in charge of the black market in this region."I waited for the Partisans as if waiting for sunshine. And what did I get? Tesli? married his daughters to Ustasha officers. They then switched to the Partisans. And when they returned, they were saying it was all a big mistake – to support and feed the Partisan lice. ...Continued from aboveDocument 92 dated 18th October 1945 – Zagreb"People are talking about the tortures in our prisons, and the methods are the same as those in their prisons [breaking necks, breaking limbs, flogging, knocking out teeth, electrical shocks, starving. . . .]""Forgive me, Comrade Vlado, but this matter is so important that you must be informed personally, as soon as radely greetings - Mica Vukeli? Lipovska [who later became a correspondent of the leading communist newspaper Naprijed].Document 93 dated 19th October 1945Reports by the Deputy State Prosecutor of Croatia, Department of the OZNA, about the situation in the Zagreb prisons. No. 99/45 – ZagrebEarly during our struggle, it was customary to keep imprisonments secret, i.e., the prisoner was taken away and simply disappeared. In the past few days there were similar cases in Zagreb. . . .Although the work of OZNA is lawful, from time to time organs of OZNA make mistakes. There was a recent case in Zagreb when the OZNA detective grabbed a girl at a dance in the Hotel Esplanade. She resisted and screamed so that the guests realised what was going on. . . .OZNA in Zagreb has locked up 65 people in the former Gestapo prisons [Square N]. Many of the prisoners there are starving, and have been imprisoned without evidence, only on the basis of suspicion. The justification for their imprisonment is only now being made up.In the Zagreb prison in Djordjiceva St. and Savska St. there are 235 prisoners locked up without an indictment. . . .These errors are being rectified on the basis of ‘who you know’, i.e., personal contacts. . . .The conflict between the Public Prosecution and the OZNA is still going on. For example, the Public Prosecutor in Slavonski Brod waited 'to infiltrate' the OZNA, in order to find out what is going on there. He was, for example, releasing prisoners whom OZNA believed had to be put on trial. . . .This Department is still busy with searching for people who were originally imprisoned by the OZNA, and who have now disappeared without trace.Death to fascism – Freedom to the peopleSigned: Robi? IvoDocument 95 dated 3rd November 1945Reports of the Public Prosecutor in the District of Banija about the situation in the PoW prisoner's camp in Glina sent to the State Prosecutor of Croatia. No. 70/45 Confidential – PetrinjaWe have not yet dealt with the amnesties of those sentenced to death by the Military Court. So far, we have solved only 12 appeals, all of them rejected. . . .The biggest problem of the camp in Glina is the lack of guards, so that many prisoners are escaping only to be caught again and returned to the camp.Death to fascism – Freedom to the people.Signed: Branko DrezgaDocument 97 dated 12th November 1945Reports by the Ministry of the Interior of the Peoples Government of Croatia sent to the CK KPH. No. 563/45 – ConfidentialThere are at the moment about 1,000 insurgents in this district; out of that number 700 are Ustashas and about 350 Chetniks.They are attacking mainly unprotected villages and the weak militia patrols lightly armed, they are recruited from the former Ustasha ranks. Some of them are called 'Kri?ari' [crusaders] descendents of the former clero-fascist Kri?ari Society.The number of the insurgents killed cannot be established. The Army Militia and the KNOJ are after them.In the Federal State of Croatia there are the following prisons:1.Stara Gradi?ka2.Lepoglava3.Bohn (Vinkovci)4.Gospi?5.Women's prison Po?ega6Women's prison Zagreb.In Stara Gradi?ka there are at the moment 1,300 prisoners and 500-interned Germans. After refurbishment of the camp we shall be able to accommodate 2,000 prisoners.Lepoglava camp is under repair and for the time being it can take only 500 prisoners. 90 prisoners from Belgrade and 400 prisoners from Popova?a will be sent to Lepoglava. The pre-war capacity of 1,100 prisoners will be achieved only after the reconstruction.Gospi? can take 80 prisoners. Now it holds only 65.Apart from the above-mentioned prisons there are another 7 military camps for forced labour, with 4,257 prisoners. The special problem is at the moment the accommodation of 11,000 Germans.Death to fascism – Freedom to the people.Signed: Minister Vi?ko Krstulovi?Document 98 dated November 1945Report by the Political Secretary of the District Committee of the KPH for Slavonija Zvonko Brki? sent to CK KPH.In the region of Andrijevci and Zupanja there are about 15 Ustashas. They killed a few of our soldiers. . . .An intelligence regiment was sent after them but without success. One of our soldiers joined the Ustashas and handed them a machine gun. Ustashas have great support in the villages.Eventually 23 persons [linked with the Kri?ari] were killed, including 3 women and a 15-year-old boy. The whole Crnolatac family was wiped out. The peasants agree that the family needed some punishment but not in the way that it was done. People are living in fear, and the reactionary elements are using this opportunity to smear the communist party. The District Committee tried to transfer the blame for these killings onto the agents of the reactionaries. There is the possibility that our army has been infiltrated with a lot of cut- throat Ustashas since the Liberation. They are camouflaged as former Domobrans. Now they are trying to create confusion, just before the general elections.However the excuse we made that the current killings were Ustasha provocations does not hold water. Firstly, because some of our well-known officers took part in the incidents and secondly one cannot trick the people, they know that we were the killers. The investigation of the political commissar Vjekoslav Krea?i?, who was involved in the murders, was made at the office of the OZNA of the XII Proletarian Brigade, on the 14th November 1945, at 14.30 p.m.Who gave you the directive for imprisonment?VKCommandant of the Brigade . . . the order was that the officers must remain in the barracks . . . in strict readiness . . . and that the guards must be formed strictly from the communists . . . [Ustasha General] Luburi? was sighted in Vukovar in the uniform of a Partisan Captain. All those destroying our posters or spraying anti-communist graffiti must be shot. And all those interfering with the elections must disappear in a clever way . . . I don't think the commandant meant that the prisoners should be killed, however I understood Continued from abovethe order in a crude way . . . on the 8th November 1945 I went to Slavonski ?amac and arrived there at midnight.What were you doing there?VKThe same day I had a meeting with the Commandant of the Battalion and told him that all those interfering with the elections must be liquidated.What did the Commandant say?VKCommandant Prodanovi? Stojan did not say much but remarked [don't worry] nobody else will make an issue out of this. Then he collected details of those we intended to imprison.How many people were on the list?VKThe first night we imprisoned 11 people.Who was in charge of the imprisonments and shooting? Who gave the orders?VKThe first night [8th November] I imprisoned 5 people, and the others were jailed by Prodanovi?. I was in charge of shooting.Where did you execute the shooting and how?VKThe shooting took place after midnight on the left bank of the River Sava, and in the morning we checked the [situation on the] bank.How many people were shot?VKThe first night 11, among them 2 women, and the next night 10, among them 1 woman.Why did you provoke people when imprisoning them?VKI don't think it was a provocation when we entered the houses disguised as 'Kri?ari' [crusaders]. We wanted to find out how the people would react.Who took part in the killings?VKMyself, Prodanovi? and five other officers and non-commissioned officers.On what basis were you shooting these people?VKOn the basis of details that Mihajlo Nikoli? gave to Commandant Stojan Prodanovi?. We have not investigated further. The prisoners were tied up with wire and beaten only occasionally.Why did you imprison women?VKBecause they were helping the Kri?ari.Who was carrying out the imprisonments in Sikirevci and Jaruge?VKProdanovi? and Nikoli?.What do you know about the case in Kopanica?VKOne civilian who was tearing our posters and painting over Tito's picture was shot. Another who was detained only over night during the elections was also shot for expediency.Did you know the names of the people, their past and the reason for their imprisonment?Continued from aboveVKI knew only Nikola Crnolatac, Ustasha, who was saying that our regime won't last long. Also, Nikola his son, an Ustasha airman. And also, Toma?i? Stipo who said that the authorities put a communist bandit as a lodger in his house, and that he should be finished off.Have you anything else to say?VKI am withdrawing the first statement about the boat [that overturned] in the River Sava. Prisoners were actually killed on the bank and pushed into the river.The investigation ended on the 14th November at 16.00 p.m.Investigator:Captain Vedri?Investigated:Captain Krea?i? Vjekoslav (son of the highest ranking of Tito's Generals, Otmar Krea?i?)Document 99 dated 3rd December 1945 – BjelovarReport by the Public Prosecutor for Bjelovar District sent to the State Prosecutor for Croatia. No. 872 – ConfidentialThe prisoner camp in Velika Pisanica holds 933 prisoners. In our prisons there are at the moment 266 people, 37 already sentenced, 229 being investigated and 100 on hold. ...Death to fascism – Freedom to the people.Public Prosecutor for Bjelovar, ?ivoder.Document 100 dated 9th December 1945Report by OZNA sent to the CK KPH. No. 4993 - ZagrebLast night the [Roman Catholic] Parish Priest from Prevlaka [Zadar] Don Eugen ?utrin was taken away, murdered and his body was thrown into the sea.An investigation has shown that the Secretary of the Peoples' Council Committee at Nin executed the killing for political reasons. It would be possible to put the blame for this murder on Matacin Sto?a, sister of the former Parish Priest. Let us know what line to take.The fact is that Don Eugen was killed by the Secretary of the Peoples' Council Committee Nin, Djani Pavlovi?, and also a member of the District Committee of the Communist Party, Pero Curko. This was due to the ignorance of the Party line and it would be extremely damaging for the Party if these two comrades were actually accused of the murder. Blaming him for collaboration with Matacin Sto?a [a former Ustasha] would solve the problem.Death to fascism – Freedom to the peopleSigned:Secretary Captain Krsto.Document 102 dated 12th January 1946 – No. 378The Health Department of the District Peoples Committee Valpovo informing Health Department of the Peoples Committee of Osijek about the spread of typhus in the labour camp Valpovo.Due to overcrowding and sporadic delousing the infection of typhus spread like wild fire. The measures taken were vaccination, delousing and quarantine.Death to fascism – Freedom to the peopleNote:Some 4,000 ethnic Germans passed through this camp. Their ancestors had lived in Croatia for at least 300 years. Their eventual fate can be attributed to bad nutrition, bad hygiene, lack of medicines and heavy labour, all measures applied deliberately.Up to May 1946 when the camp was dismantled, 1,074 persons had died, many of them were elderly and children (86 below the age of 14), and also 55 babies.The communists have kept this genocide of ethnic Germans in Croatia under wraps.Document 106 dated 4th March 1946 – KarlovacReport by OZNA for Karlovac sent to the Public Prosecutor for Karlovac - No. 730/46Fifteen prisoners sentenced to death succeeded in escaping from the prison in the District Court in Karlovac.Ten of the above were caught and executed.Death to fascism – Freedom to the peopleCommissioner Major Novakovi?Document 108 dated 27th April 1946 – Vara?dinReport of the District Committee KPH Vara?din sent to the CK KPH – No. 28/46Dear Comrades,We have investigated the murder of four people in Lepoglava, executed by members of the District Committee of the KPH Ivanec.The investigation has shown that not only comrades from Lepoglava but also the comrades from the District Committee made the decision for the execution at their meeting held on 27th March 1946.In connection with the campaign of the cleansing of our country from the armed insurgents the above comrades have not kept to the official line, i.e., that only armed bandits are liquidated, but they went further. They concluded at the meeting that some people in the village that were known to have had links with the Kri?ari and are enemies of our movement should be liquidated. The condition was that only the good Party members should carry out this liquidation, in order that the execution would remain secret. As a result of this decision, comrades Josip ?piranec, August ?o?tarek and Andrija Ur?ani? [all of them 'Croats'] have carried out the plan.The murdered men indeed worked against us, but very craftily, so that we were unable to produce any evidence against rade ?piranec, instead of trying to stop their anti-national work by persuasion and lawful means, took a short cut on his own initiative. . . .The comrades involved, together with the Secretary of the District Committee Ivica Greti?, told the people that four Ustashas, who escaped from Lepoglava prison, carried out these murders.It seems that the people were satisfied with that explanation, and were not asking further questions. . . .Death to fascism – Freedom to the people.Document 96 dated 1946From the report of the Chief of the II Department of the OZNA for VojvodinaWe enclose the statistic account from the various Districts of the persons imprisoned, handed to the Courts, liquidated and freed as follows:Srijem - 846 persons imprisoned, 639 liquidated, out of which 340 were Ustashas.The total number of persons shot in Vojvodina is 9,668, out of whom 6,763 were Germans, 1,776 were Hungarians, 436 were Croats, and 693 Others.Signed: Chief of the II Department5.7 The Violence of Yugoslavia XE "The Violence of Yugoslavia" How is one to address oneself to the subject of Yugoslavia’s violence?The struggle for and against its utopia (1941-45) resulted in hundreds of thousands dead, including some 300,000 Croat prisoners-of-war and civilians, murdered ‘unofficially’ in ‘Death Marches’ XE "Death Marches’" after the Second World War ended. Milovan Djilas XE "Djilas, Milovan" , the Montenegrin bootlegger turned philosopher, who has had links with death squads himself, enjoys the deserved reputation as an authoritative source of reference for these murders: “the Croats had to die in order that ‘Yugoslavia may live’”.Edvard Kardelj XE "Kardelj, Edvard" , a Slovene ex-school teacher, an equally odd but a more phlegmatic type, who described Djilas' character as a butcher (although Djilas, naturally, sneered at Kardelj's recollections), confirms that this is not without foundation. A bad memory is the fate of the Partisan heroes. Kardelj goes on "During the war of National Liberation, we had to recall him [Djilas] from Montenegro because of his personal responsibility for excessively repressive measures which resulted in unnecessary bloodshed and greatly impaired the reputation not only of the communist party but of the National Liberation Movement in general."Even at that early stage, the communist leaders in the war for Yugoslav utopia commenced stabbing each other in the back and, at the same time in their mountain lairs, were progressively reshaping their programme of violence - remembering all the time to take careful notes for their future autobiographies as they were driven from one rock to another.In order to explain the whole complex of the contemporaneous events, interrelations of people, weather, and so on, one has to drift from the world of everyday experience to that of abstract thought. On this journey, the senses become numbed by the uniqueness of this world of infernal violence XE "Uniqueness of this world of infernal violence" , which was like a story of a Balkan Rip Van Winkle who fell asleep just before 1918 (prior to Unification) and woke up 27 years later to find everything in Yugoslavia had changed for the worse; disloyalty, treachery, and indecency were now the norm in place of the former respect for the law. The KPJ (the Communist Party of Yugoslavia) fancied itself as a leading force of the socialist revolution in the changing post-World WarII world, bleating about the strengthening of the socialist, anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist and national liberation movements and processes. The Soviet Union, now a world power with a reputation in the anti-fascist war, absorbed a host of new socialist countries. From 1945 to 1948 Yugoslavia was a most militant and slavish Moscow follower. The National Front became a fake fa?ade screening the impurities of the communist levers of power. The New Constitution advertised Yugoslavia as the ‘People’s Republic’, people being a social experiment by the Army, Party and the Secret Police, following the Soviet model. “It was an experiment in which its leaders could avoid having to solve [urgent] problems rationally and escape from the overwhelming responsibility of thinking for themselves." The particularly important changes in the post-war world in the view of the KPJ were those seen as “strengthening the working class and the democratic forces in the Western countries, particularly in Italy and France. A great break-through for socialism was the victory of the Chinese Revolution in 1949, in spite of US support for the Kuomitang”The powerful new organisation, the United Nations XE "United Nations" , was established in San Francisco between April and June 1945 in which, paradoxically, Yugoslavia, with its totalitarian and utopian ethos, became one of the leading members. The UN charter was the result of a compromise between the Great Powers who dominated the Security Council, in spite of its formal declaration about the sovereign equality of all its member states. The KPJ, with sadistic delight, welcomed the weakening of the power of the pre-war capitalist states, particularly that of France, and the fall in the status of Great Britain, which became the lackey of the US. The Soviet Union, however, was on the way up.But Soviet growth was miniscule in comparison with the US, which came out of the war as the strongest capitalist country, with 56% of the world grain production. In addition, the US had a monopoly on the atom bomb and an 85% monopoly on world scientific discoveries. The KPJ feared that since the US had abandoned the ideal of isolationism and that it became the capitalist policemen of the world, it would threaten to break up socialist movements. Stalin XE "Stalin" could not do much except match this monopoly with a centralist state hegemony within the socialist block, completely under his own control. Anti-colonial movements in Africa and Asia remained for him a second echelon of the socialist revolution. He perceived the states of the socialist block as the ‘people’s democracies’, a kind of transition from the bourgeois to the socialist type of state. The Croatian bodies now having been dumped in mass graves, the Yugoslav communists could finally relax and start to tackle the urgent policies on the pattern of the revolutionary populism. Their war-time experience rejected the deadly dogmatic approach of the Soviets, because they deluded themselves that the victory in the 'national liberation' struggle was in itself a process of the socialist revolution.The delusion of grandeur that took over made them believe that the KPJ had an important role to play in the socialist revolution within the European framework. The US and Britain, in the meantime, concerned as they were about the increase in the Soviet power, put their foot down when in March 1946 Winston Churchill in his speech in Fulton, US, called openly for a crusade against communism. “An iron curtain has fallen XE "Iron curtain has fallen" ”, he stated “from Lübeck to Trieste and from the Baltic to the Adriatic as the frontier between the free world and communism.”The ‘cold war’ had begun.As a result of Truman's XE "Truman's doctrine" doctrine from March 1947, the US developed a policy of military, political, and economic aid to the countries that were threatened by communism. This deepened the abyss between the two inimical camps. Stalin hit back by establishing Informburo, which was joined by most of the communist parties in September 1947. According to Andrej Zhdanov XE "Zhdanov, Andrej" , the communist block was anti-imperialist and democratic and the Western block was imperialist and anti-democratic; as simple as that. In April 1949 a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO XE "NATO" ) was drawn up between the US, Britain, France, Italy, Canada, and other west European states. The answer to that was the establishment by the Warsaw Treaty of 1955 of the communist military block. At that point, we were sheepishly informed that the Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, signed on the 11th April 1945, was seen as strengthening the international status of Yugoslavia. There was a note of triumph in Tito's exposé about Yugoslavia's foreign policy in the National Assembly on the 1st April 1946 when he pointed out that the programme of the UN mirrored completely Yugoslavia's internal political system. Tito was gradually becoming too big for his boots.In reality, Yugoslavia’s evolution was out of character with its imagined international status. The expropriation of the bourgeoisie and the foreign capitalist interests was seen in the capitalist countries as proof of Yugoslavia's ‘Sovietisation’. The West was unhappy about the failure of the Tito-?uba?i?, agreement, and the destruction of the ‘counter-revolutionary forces’ (Chetniks) as well as with the results of the elections in November 1945. Although the US had recognised the provisional Yugoslav government in March 1945, it took until April of that year before it gave it full recognition. The pressure for the return of the Slovene and Croatian territories, which were lost in 1918 to Italy, was the main international activity of the Provisional Yugoslav Government in March 1945. Yugoslavia based its demand on the supposed “self-determination of the people”, proclaimed by the anti-fascist powers during the war.As a result of this demand and the Trieste crisis which followed in May 1945, the Western powers demanded that Yugoslav forces withdraw from Trieste, Pula, Western Istria, Carinthia, and Styria, under threat of military confrontation. Stalin sent a formal protest to President Truman on 22nd May 1945, but Yugoslavia remained isolated in that conflict. During the Paris Peace Conference in 1946 XE "Paris Peace Conference 1946" , the US and Britain took a negative stand towards Yugoslavia and favoured Italy (paradoxically enough until recently a fascist country in conflict with both of them), clearly seeing Yugoslavia as a Soviet puppet in the region. As a result of the Peace Treaty with Italy of 10th February 1947 XE "Peace Treaty with Italy 10th February 1947" , Yugoslavia exchanged 7,000 square kilometres of Italian-occupied territory for 470,000 inhabitants, thus partially rectifying the injustice of 1918. This remained the only positive achievement of Yugoslav foreign policy as far as the Croats were concerned. The alliance of ‘the workers, peasants and other working people’ the KPJ claimed was the fundamental class basis of the new peoples’ power. It claimed that the leading ideological-political role of the centralist KPJ in the institutions of the ‘revolutionary peoples’ democracy’ (the National Front XE "National Front" ) was the main achievement of the national liberation struggle.The monolithic principle of the political organisations was cloned from the Soviets in order not to repeat the negative experience of the conflicting aims among the bourgeois political parties in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The KPJ thus became the only political force and possessor of unlimited power in the state. Members of the KPJ appropriated all the key positions in the State, the National Front, and the organs of power.Out of 524 members of the National Assembly, 404 were members of the KPJ and out of 1,062 members of the Assemblies of the Republics only 170 were not communists. “The citizens elected them [the communists] because they had unlimited trust in them” was the slogan. The ratio between the communists and non-communists in the higher echelons of the State in 1948 was 83% to 17% in Serbia, 89% to 11% in Croatia, 71% to 29% in Slovenia, 83% to 17% in Bosnia-Hercegovina, 81% to 19% in Macedonia and 90% to 10% in Montenegro; 67% of the Federal Government were communists.Tito, Edvard Kardelj XE "Kardelj, Edvard" , Mo?a Pijade XE "Pijade, Mo?a" and Milovan Djilas were the adored chief analysts of the ‘social reality’ who issued directives for social development. At that time, it was widely believed that there was an express way to socialism: expropriating the wealth of the bourgeoisie. In reality, however, there was only an inexpensive and arduous way, i.e., the rebuilding of the country by ‘voluntary’ physical work (slave labour) with the ‘moral acknowledgement’ (and the cheap metal decorations) handed out by the Party. The Soviet theory and practice was the Yugoslav role model in the organisation of the State, Party, culture, etc. Encouraging mass membership of the Party was an imperative in the situation where the Party ran the apparatus of the State, the army and the economy; but was it wise?From ‘the liberation’ in 1945 until the end of 1946, party membership increased by 48,492, and from the end of 1946 to July 1948 by 278,617 members (jumping on the bandwagon). The KPJ had in mid-1948 468,175 full members and 331,940 members of the communist Youth (SKOJ). There were 231,333 peasants, 138,235 workers and 67,329 intellectuals in the Party. Not a bad number of workers for a proletarian organisation! 93,604 (19.99%) women became Party members. In spite of the customary exaggeration, the KPJ succeeded in preserving the hierarchical system, strict discipline and central control over the membership. The KPJ policy of proportional national representation in positions of power was wishful thinking – even in Croatia where the Serbs predominated. This handicap was overcome by means of dialectic tricks. For example, at the inaugural meeting of the KP of Serbia Tito stated, "to love one's federal republic means to love Yugoslavia," and vice versa.After the war, as during the war, the meetings of the Central Committee of the KPJ were casual affairs. In practice its Politburo acted as the central state organ, which dictated all political decisions and enforced the strategy for the development of the socialist utopian society. Most of the political decisions were agreed at the informal meetings between the top Party members and Tito personally XE "Political decisions agreed at informal meetings between top Party members and Tito personally" .The basic party organisation was the cell - in offices, factories, villages, streets in towns, in the Army, etc. The cells met twice a week and each member had his own strictly defined duties and all they had to do was to carry them out. In 1948, there were as many as 35,635 party cells. One of their more elevated duties was to increase the ‘socialist consciousness’ of the workers, since the raw policies no longer held any mystery: in organising the mass meetings, Stakhanovite competitions XE "Stakhanovite competitions" , supervising the productivity of work, and agrarian reforms, enforcing the collection of taxes, intensifying the struggle against corruption, clericalism and illiteracy, etc.The principle of democratic socialism expressed itself in the strict centralism, decisions made by the apparent majority, by acclamation (i.e., do you agree Comrades? – and of course everyone agreed), the responsibility of the communists for their own narrow sphere of work and the election of members to the leading organs of the Party (again by centralist directives).The KPJ directed the social development outside of the Party organisations with the ‘help’ of the ‘organs of the state’ (Secret Police) and the suitable legislature. The decisions made by the high party bodies obliged all communists within the state organisations to carry them out without question.On 10th August 1945, the Central Committee of the KPJ took into its own hands complete control of the party organisations in the Yugoslav army. The role of the army was, it goes without saying, the defence of the State from without and, in the best communist tradition, from within. 41.9% of the soldiers and 96% of the officers were members of the KPJ. As the commanding ranks of the Yugoslav Army rose from the peasant class during the war, in 1945 84% of the officers were without basic education.At the heart of the ‘creative process’ run by the KPJ was the ‘Department for the Protection of the People’ (OZNA), in other words the Secret Police, to be known later as UDBA. This police organisation controlled the State Prosecutor’s Department, which in turn influenced the work and decisions of the courts. The Commissions for Agitation and Propaganda (AGITPROP), XE "AGITPROP - Commissions for Agitation and Propaganda" under the auspices of the Central Committee, ran the intricacies of the ideological work of the KPJ. Agitprop formulated cultural and educational policies and was supported in its work by the State organs dealing with culture and the press, the duties of which were to evade the unpalatable facts of socialist life. An aversion to cultural achievements XE "Aversion to cultural achievements" in the West was reinforced in the works of the Yugoslav leaders and the Marxist classics. The history of the national liberation struggle, the party organisation, political economy, dialectical, and historical materialism, the origins of fascism, the national question and the Soviet State were shared preoccupations.The National Front (an extended hand of the Party) was a mass organisation for the purpose of flogging ideological work, organising working brigades, etc. Its programme crept along behind the policies of the KPJ, such as the defence of the independence of Yugoslavia from internal and external enemies, the development of ‘brotherhood and unity’ and mass literacy. For tactical reasons, the ideological gain of the NF was subordinated temporarily to the admission of the ‘progressive’ pre-war bourgeois parties, the HRSS, the Union of Agricultural Workers, the Peoples Peasant Party, and the Yugoslav Republican Party. The blitz force in the political activities of the National Front was the United Alliance of Anti-fascist Youth of Yugoslavia XE "United Alliance of Anti-fascist Youth of Yugoslavia" . In November 1945, it numbered 1,374,000 members and was under the thumb of the Union of Communist Youth (SKOJ).Although the KPJ did not advertise itself as the boss of the National Front, it used the Front for the spinning of the elections (where only the KPJ was electable), for pushing agrarian reform, for agitation and for propaganda. In September 1947, the National Front numbered seven million nominal members. The KPJ thus used the National Front for making its policies a compulsory subject for the masses, linking the masses and the organs of the State and generally keeping an eye on what was going on in every sphere of life.On the basis of the Belgrade Agreement between Tito and ?uba?i? XE "Belgrade Agreement between Tito and ?uba?i?" dated 1st November 1944, the representatives of the bourgeois parties joined the Provisional Government (Grol, ?uba?ic and ?utej). The KPJ believed that the remnants of the destroyed ‘counter-revolutionary’ forces could no longer endanger the New Yugoslavia.Those who had collaborated with the occupiers left or were buried in mass graves while of the rest, only about 21,000 miraculously remained in the country. These were mainly Great-Serbian Chetniks. The ‘reactionaries’, those who would not accept communism, which included the hierarchy and the priesthood of the main churches and the citizens disqualified from voting because of collaboration with the occupiers (who numbered some 200,000 people), and of course the ‘legal opposition’ in the Tito-?uba?ic government as a result of the British policy of compromise, were outcasts. The remnants of the bourgeois forces, with a false sense of security and the feeling of temporariness of the new regime, somehow retained illegal links with foreign capitalist countries, and expected a new war to break out soon between the former Allies. They were codified as inciters of chauvinism and enemies of the utopian ‘brotherhood and unity’ (the slogan at the foundation of the Yugoslav idea), and generally spreaders of defeatism. Ungrateful as they were, for all the help they got from the West during WWII, the Yugoslav communists blamed the West for encouraging these counter-revolutionary forces XE "Yugoslav communists blamed West for encouraging counter-revolutionary forces" and thus endangering the consolidation of the Yugoslav State. The communists were peeved that the West also helped the Yugoslav political emigrants who received moral and material help, mainly from the US. According to the KPJ, these Quislings were trained in anti-Yugoslav terrorism. They complained that the West obstructed the extradition of ‘war criminals’, and froze the Yugoslav gold reserves in foreign banks; the ‘anti-Yugoslav’ propaganda from that source was spread by radio and through the press. This attack was intensified after the death penalty was passed on Draza Mihajlovi? XE "Mihajlovi?, Draza" , the Chetnik leader in 1946, and particularly after the trial of Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac. Britain and the US were particularly singled out for a series of military provocations on the Yugoslav frontiers and for their increased economic pressure.The ‘intellectual efforts’ of the ‘Peoples Courts’ were exercised in the trials of Ustashas, Chetniks, White Guards, Balists and other ‘traitors’. The Yugoslav Government complained that, although the Allies extradited General Milan Nedi? XE "Nedi?, General Milan" , the Prime Minister of the war-time Serbian Quisling Government, they failed to extradite the “war criminals, such as Ante Paveli?, Vjekoslav Luburi? XE "Luburi?, Vjekoslav" and Andrija Artukovi? XE "Artukovi?, Andrija" and many other Croatian and Serbian collaborators. The remaining terrorist groups of Ustashas, Chetniks and others were halved by the actions of the Yugoslav Army and the corpus of the Peoples Defence (KNOJ), XE "Peoples Defence - KNOJ" the Department for the Protection of the People (OZNA) and the activists of the Peoples Power. The remainder of these groups in the inaccessible regions were involved in terrorist actions against the members of the National Front and the Communist Party in order to demoralise the population. The hope that the West would help them did not materialise." A group of emigrant Great-Serbian politicians in the so-called Yugoslav National Committee in London (Slobodan Jovanovi? XE "Jovanovi?, Slobodan" , Milan Gavrilovi? XE "Gavrilovi?, Milan" , Vje?eslav Vilder XE "Vilder, Vje?eslav" ) naively demanded direct Allied intervention in the Yugoslav ‘elections’, that they be supervised by international observers and demanded the non-interference of the Secret Police (OZNA) in the proceedings. The vicious attacks on the church hierarchy, particularly of the Roman Catholic Church, which "proceeded with enmity towards the national liberation struggle from the war time under the leadership of Cardinal Stepinac, who lead resistance to the new peoples’ power". As a result of the new laws on agrarian reform XE "Agrarian reform" and the separation of Church and State, became hysterical. In their objective evaluation of the reasons for the reaction to the dictatorship of the proletariat, the KPJ stated: "The Roman Catholic Church rejected the Agrarian Reform, protected Croatian collaborators and war criminals and demanded that the relationship between the Church and the State in Yugoslavia be arranged through the Holy See. Bringing Cardinal Stepinac to trial in 1946 brought about vicious attacks against Yugoslavia in the Western media because of the persecution of religion. Sentencing that Church dignitary, who had given legitimacy to the Ustasha laws during the Second World War and who had put into action the Ustasha's legislature about the forcible conversion of Orthodox [Serbs] into the Catholic Church, the relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the State lost the sharpness of the frontal conflict but remained simmering for many years," (until, on the . . . . . .1947? . . . Tito and Jovanka XE "Tito and Jovanka" , her head covered in a black scarf, bowed to Pope John XXIII XE "Pope John XXIII" ). The KPJ realised that this conflict with the Roman Catholic Church (which in the Marxist philosophy was a socio-historical phenomenon) could not be eradicated by administrative means, because of its long tradition in Croatia. In order to avoid a direct collision with the might of the Vatican, some other way had to be found.In practice, the Church was free in the spiritual sphere, but had an embargo on its influence in political life. Harshly persecuting many Catholic priests because of ‘collaboration’ with the occupiers was in strong contradiction with working towards an agreement between the Church and the State. Despite its 99% ‘electoral’ success, the newly elected Assembly, never quite lived up to its ambitions. Its duty was to bring about a new constitution, so it suspended the Monarchy XE "Suspended the Monarchy" and established ‘the Peoples Republic’ of the ‘Equal Nations of Yugoslavia’, Proclaimed on the 31st January 1946. The ‘Equal Nations of Yugoslavia’ with the rights of the minorities was not worth the paper it was written on. (The communists had, for example, ethnically cleansed 500,000 people, members of the German minority who had lived in Vojvodina for several centuries).The Peoples Republics formally exercised political power independently, but were in practice limited by the centralised power of the Federal Government in Belgrade XE "Federal Government in Belgrade" . The Five-Year plans, based on the Soviet pattern, mobilised the ‘voluntary’ slave labour of the ‘people’s youth’ for rebuilding the rail tracks and roads. A force of 212,000 youths built the new rail track from ?amac to Sarajevo (242 km). They were helped in that endeavour by the ‘communists’ and communist fellow traveller youths from 42 countries of all the continents, reinforcing the incestuous relationship of the ‘proletariats of all lands’. The fusion of the Party and the State organs became absolute - centralist bureaucracy was physically tied up with central control in Belgrade. Its praxis brought about lethargy in social activities and loss of interest in political work among the ordinary people who were still a vast majority.The revolutionary fervour and enthusiasm was gradually withering away except among the communist women who, as a rule, were plain, and their fanaticism seemed to be the only compensation for their lack of appeal. Inevitably, the central administrative organisation of the economy led to the Soviet style ‘revolutionary Etatism’ and bureaucracy XE "Revolutionary Etatism and bureaucracy" , yet the KPJ was quite happy that this did not cause big social upheavals. The reason for this was that OZNA (Secret Police) was awake for any sign of revolt and were ever ready to pounce on it and quash it in the bud.In September 1947, four years after the extinguishing of the Communist International, the Soviet Union and a number of other communist parties formed a new organisation known as ‘INFORMBURO XE "INFORMBURO" ’. Its members were drawn from the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the communist parties of France and Italy. The excuse for the creation of this organisation was the ‘wider contradictions’ between the Soviet Union and the capitalist countries of the West. At this time, the Yugoslav leadership was still in a state of revolutionary euphoria, and the Yugoslav way of ‘building socialism’ gave them a unique authority in the socialist camp. But in Kremlin eyes, their arrogant attitude made the Yugoslav comrades suspect. Moscow welcomed only crawlers. Belgrade, as the seat of this new organisation, was Stalin’s personal ‘gift of appreciation’ to Tito, yet in reality it was kept under close scrutiny by the Soviets and under Soviet domination as much as the Komintern had ever been. It was accepted that Zhdanov's assessment that the two camps XE "Zhdanov's assessment" , the imperialists and anti-imperialists, were involved in this struggle during a general crisis of capitalism and the strengthening of socialism, was the correct one. INFORMBURO, with its headquarters in Belgrade, would be used for the exchange of experiences between the fraternal communist parties. Yugoslavia maintained at that time that the Soviet Union was at the centre of the struggle against imperialism and the fulcrum of the revolutionary processes in the world. However, in practice INFORMBURO remained a vehicle for the foreign policy of the Soviet Union as the only correct path to socialism. It remained the tool of Stalin's hegemony in the communist world. Stalin did not accept any individual efforts or any separate political initiative on the way to Socialism without his imprimatur. His infallibility inevitably led to conflict with the KPJ when the Party tried to fall back on its own revolutionary experience in its own political decisions. The geopolitical situation of Yugoslavia, and Tito’s cult of personality XE "Tito’s cult of personality" , clashed with that of Stalin. At a meeting in the Kremlin on 10th February 1948, Stalin criticised the Treaty drawn up between the Bulgarian and Yugoslav communist parties, whose main aim was the creation of a Balkan and Danubian federation. The Yugoslav delegation (Djilas, Kardelj and Bakari?) returned to Belgrade after the meeting very dispirited.The Yugoslav communists, who were always ready to describe the NDH as a German ‘puppet state’, were forced to sign a ‘Treaty of Consultation’ XE "Treaty of Consultation" pledging the Yugoslav government to consult with Moscow on all foreign policy issues. Djilas reported to the Central Committee on the meeting, pointing out 'the great love' Comrade Stalin bears for our entire party, the Central Committee and particularly Comrade Tito. Yet, at the same time, French newspapers reported that the Romanian Communist Party had ordered Tito's portraits to be removed from its walls. On 1st March 1948, the Central Committee of the KPJ rejected Stalin's proposal for the alternative Yugoslav-Bulgarian federation, as it would have affected the sovereignty of Yugoslavia. As a result, the Soviet Union withdrew its military and other advisers XE "Soviet Union withdrew military and other advisers" from Belgrade on 18th March 1948. Tito wrote to Molotov on 20th March about the damage thereby created and Stalin answered on 27th March insisting on the subjugation of the KPJ. He attacked the KPJ for its ‘semi-legality’ and the lack of party democracy. He ruled that the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, CK SKP(b), could not accept such a party as being Marxist-Leninist and Bolshevik XE "Marxist-Leninist and Bolshevik" .Derogatory remarks about the Red Army made by Djilas were quoted, and complaints were made about the surveillance of the Soviet Officials by the Yugoslav Secret Police, just as in a hostile bourgeois country. It hit at ‘questionable Marxists’ such as Djilas, Rankovi? etc., and in this connection “we think the political career of Trotsky XE "Trotsky" quite instructive”. Among others, it accused Vladimir Velebit, Yugoslav Ambassador in London, of being an ‘English Spy’. Copies of that letter were sent without the knowledge of the KPJ to other members of the INFORMBURO. The KPJ answered Stalin on the 12/13th April 1948. It pointed out “that however much one loved the Soviet Union, one must love one’s own country not less, as the country that builds socialism”, stating out that the Soviet allegations were based on false information supplied by Croatian communist Hebrang and Montenegrin communist ?ujovi? XE "?ujovi? - Montenegrin communist" . This was essentially a conflict in the perception of the relations between the various communist parties, i.e., equality versus hegemony. Yet, the Kremlin saw in this the culmination of the process of insubordination and arrogance stretching back to the Partisan conduct of the war.In its reply of 4th May, the CKSKP(b), which was even sharper, defined this conflict "as the anti-Soviet attitude of Comrade Tito" and an uncritical attitude of the Yugoslav leaders; it was stated that the Yugoslav Army had not contributed much to the liberation of Yugoslavia and implied its liberation was achieved thanks to the Soviet Union. In short, the KPJ was a Menshevik party XE "Menshevik party" led by the ‘unbounded arrogance’ of its leaders. They exaggerated their military achievements, for they have been all but destroyed by the German Croat attack at Drvar after which ‘the Soviet Army came to its aid, crushed the Germans, and liberated Belgrade’. This Soviet assessment was in broad outline correct.Due to a clash between leading members of the KPJ, it was decided at the meeting of the CK KPJ on 9th May that they would not go to Bucharest for a meeting of the INFORMBURO (for fear they would be imprisoned) but that they would call the 5th Congress of the KPJ instead. Because of this clash with the CK KPJ, two of its leading members, Croat Andrija Hebrang XE "Hebrang, Andrija - Croat" and Montenegrin Sreten ?ujovi?, XE "?ujovi?, Sreten - Montenegrin" were expelled from the Party; Hebrang on the grounds that doubts had arisen as to the circumstances in which he had been released from prison by the Ustashas during the war. Both of them were subsequently re-arrested. The Soviet response was to call the Yugoslav leaders ‘the criminal murderers,’ which of course was even more appropriate. In May 1948, the Central Committee of the KPJ answered the charge by saying that they ‘never made preparations to kill anyone, including Hebrang and Zujovi?’. Sensing the danger in which it found itself, the KPJ referred the matter to its members in the Party organisation's grass roots. There was a lively debate at the 5th Congress at the end of which the KPJ rejected the accusations of the INFORMBURO. At the INFORMBURO meeting in Bucharest on 28th June a resolution about the state of affairs in the KPJ was tabled, and a unanimous anathema was declared.It stated that the nationalist (i.e., Yugo nationalist) policies of the Yugoslav communists would turn Yugoslavia into a bourgeois republic, lose its independence and become a colony of imperialism. In that way the KPJ would exclude itself from the family of communist parties.The resolution invited the ‘healthy forces’ within the KPJ to remove Tito XE "Healthy forces within KPJ to remove Tito" and his leadership and return the KPJ to the fold of the international communist movement. This conflict came as a complete surprise to the West, which immediately sought ways to exploit the situation. The ink on the paper was not yet dry when the ‘healthy forces’ (8,400 Yugoslav pro-Soviet communist sympathisers) were ‘despatched’ by Tito to Goli Otok XE "Goli Otok" (the barren island off the coast of Dalmatia). In the meantime, Belgrade acted as if nothing had happened and allowed no relaxation in its intransigent anti-Western policies or in the pace of its revolutionary domestic changes. ‘The reactionaries’ (mainly in Croatia) filled the jails, as usual.The 5th Congress of the KPJ approved Tito’s stand. Even so, the membership of the KPJ was shaken to its foundations as it had been brought up on the cult of Stalin. This break was a personal clash between Stalin and Tito XE "Stalin and Tito - personal clash between" . Tito, however, broke with Stalin, but not with Stalinism. In the cultural and artistic sphere, ‘socialist realism’ was retained, ensuring that the purest Marxist theory was applied (AGITPROP). The new Politburo was made up of Tito, Kardelj and Djilas; the secretaries were Kidri?, Salaj, Go?njak Lesko?ek and Ne?kovi?, i.e., 3 Slovenes, 2 Serbs, 1 Yugoslav (Tito) and two co-called Croats. The Congress ended hypocritically with cries of ‘Tito, Stalin’. As Tito later explained, “I had to give Stalin time to behave in such a way that people in Yugoslavia would say ‘Down with Stalin’ of their own accord.” The INFORMBURO press attacked the conclusions of the 5th Congress of the KPJ:“1.The Congress was organised under the conditions of a 'police regime'. [Spot on.]2.The Yugoslav leaders were traitors to socialism. [Devastating but true.]3.They were Tito's clique and a degenerate band of killers. [Spot on.]4.Tito's minority faction was supported by the administrative and police apparatus. [True.]5.Yugoslavia was joining the imperialist camp and becoming the international imperialist spy centre.” [It always was.]The KPJ itself probably could not have written a better CV for itself.The official paper stated that “The Yugoslav Communist Party was in the hands of spies and killers”, which line was adopted at the third session of the INFORMBURO Conference in Budapest in November 1949. It stated “the leadership of the KPJ had passed from bourgeois nationalism into fascism and was in open treason to the national interests of Yugoslavia.” Also, that Yugoslavia was an “entrenched anti-communist police state regime in the fascist model”. It concluded that therefore “the struggle against Tito’s clique of paid spies and killers is the price which the international communists have to pay [for socialism].” Anyone reading this now could be forgiven for smiling wryly at Tito’s YU-TOPIA and its vision of the police-operated cyber-future, which is now, thank God, past history.Diplomatic and military pressure from the Soviet Union XE "Diplomatic and military pressure from Soviet Union" reached its height in 1949 when there was a serious threat of invasion. Tito retorted by threatening to use his ‘Partisan’ forces. This made Stalin laugh. The West as usual exploited the situation. Yugoslavia could not, for political, ideological and technical reasons, integrate itself up with the Western economy. The massive 42-44% interest charges on Yugoslavia’s purchase of arms from the West were the rule rather than an exception. Yugoslavia, therefore, was forced to turn to building its own military industry. Twenty per cent of the GNP was spent on this and it meant that tightening of belts had to be imposed. This change in foreign policy led to the tightrope walk of the ‘policy of non-alignment’.To increase efficiency in industrial output, the KPJ leant on the bureaucracy that was manned by the communists. Workers were largely ignored - this was an entirely Party apparatchik show.The political and economic pressures from INFORMBURO created a difficult psychological crisis for many Yugoslav communists XE "Psychological crisis for many Yugoslav communists" . The world revolution, led by the Soviet Union, that was supposed to encapsulate their dreams of the future and make them tangible, suddenly collapsed. Tens of thousands of members of the KPJ supported the resolution of the INFORMBURO and became restive, if not inimical to Tito’s loosely strung-together Yu-topian vision. At meetings of the Party and the Secret Police (OZNA), these individuals were exposed, excluded from the Party and lost their jobs. Any activity which was seen as pro-INFORMBURO was taken as treason against the State – those engaged in this were rounded up and exiled onto two uninhabited islands in the North Adriatic (Goli Otok and Grgur) as slave labour, were treated more than harshly, and ‘re-educated’. These two gulags held 16,312 people - 12 participants of the October Revolution XE "October Revolution" , 36 participants of the Spanish Civil War XE "Spanish Civil War" , 268 pre-war members of the Party, 1,673 Partisan veterans from 1941, 2,300 officers of the Yugoslav Army, 1,618 ex-Secret Policemen, 23 ex-Ministers, and 125 ex-high ranking civil servants Totally isolated as the islands were, the KPJ was devouring its own children in defence of the Yugoslav utopian way to socialism and against the ‘counter-revolution’ of the rest of the communist world. 5.8 Goli Otok Island ('Hell's Island')Goli Otok, situated in the northern Adriatic off Croatia, went under different aliases: 'Hell's Island', 'Marble', 'Stone', and 'Hawaii', depending upon one’s political point of view.As a symbol of the repression of the adherents of the INFORMBURO, it remains even today a taboo topic. Its archives have been totally destroyed for political reasons. Goli Otok was much worse than any Soviet Gulag. The communists dealt with their own comrades who had 'fought shoulder to shoulder' with Tito "to build the new Utopian Social-Political System". Many of them did not know why they had been imprisoned. According to one anecdote, a candidate was imprisoned for yelling 'Long live Stalin', and another also for yelling, 'Long live Stalin'. Tito made sure that his revolution ate its children a la carte.The menu contained such delicacies as "drawing out a devil", "driving out a warm rabbit", "drawing out a swan", "sautéed mine", followed with "après diner digestives": "Peter's bog", "standing in the donkey's corner", "facing contempt by the prisoner's collective", "spitting in the face", "kicking", and "threatening". The mystery is - why was all this kept a state secret? The 'restaurants' serving these specialities had appropriate names, '101, 'the Monastery', 'Peter's bog' (a hole seven metres deep and 20 metres wide, the top of which was imaginatively decorated with a three-metres frieze of barbed wire on top of a high wall). The access to the bog was by means of a ladder, and it was lit with external floodlights. An exceptionally imaginative design indeed!Who went there?The most dangerous INFORMBUROISTS XE "INFORMBUROISTS" , communists schooled in the USSR, ministers, generals, and NKVD agents, i.e., the super commie elite. 'The Swan' was carried shoulder high, while the bearers were stimulated and motivated by being beaten with clubs and stones. They were usually the so-called 'twin-engines', i.e., the returnees to the Island, those who had not taken 'the re-education' seriously enough.'The Mine' was a cast-iron cauldron (180lts, weighing 280kg). It had to be carried by four bearers to the top of the stone hill over a distance of four to six kilometres. The bearers, if they survived, returned with broken bones. The decision to establish this Gulag could have been made only by the 'master chef', Tito himself. The idea was based on the logic of 'either we create a Gulag for the Stalinists' or 'Stalin will turn Yugoslavia into an even bigger Gulag'.The inspiration for the Goli Otok site was, however, even more bizarre. According to the Minister of the Interior for Croatia (i.e., the Secret Police boss, Ivan Kraja?i?-Stevo XE "Kraja?i?-Stevo, Ivan" ), he was on a trip with the renowned sculptor Augustin?i? XE "Augustin?i?, sculptor" (who, by the way, sculpted both Paveli? and Tito) in search of marble similar to Carrara. What the Chief of the Secret Police was doing in searching for marble is equally bizarre."They hit on Goli Otok, a small stony island off the coast of Senj, which had an old marble quarry established by the Austrians." Kraja?i? mentioned this trip to Edward Kardelj, to whom it occurred that this location would make an ideal Gulag "from whose 'freedom' only a bird could escape". The first inhabitants were 200 criminals whose task was to lay the foundation stone, then erect thirteen timber huts for the accommodation of "the enemies of the social system of the New Yugoslavia".The first group of 12,000 informburoists arrived on 9th July 1949. In the busiest period of the first eighteen months, there were 8,250 prisoners. One of the conditions of release was an oath of secrecy about what was going on at the Island. So, who actually established the inhuman and sadistic methods of torture (in comparison to which, Ustasha treatments pale) remains a mystery. The prisoners were welcomed by flogging. The labour consisted of moving piles of stones from one location to another in temperatures reaching 40oC, without being given any water. They were subjected to continuous interrogations, so-called 'conveyer belts', where they were forced to admit to non-existent crimes for which they had to repent. Epidemics were part of the 'treatment'. The system of mutual denunciation was developed to a very sophisticated level. In such a situation, those who couldn't stand the torture committed suicide by jumping from the high rocks into the sea. Most of the OZNA staff in charge of the island were schooled by the NKVD (Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del XE " NKVD - Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del" , People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) in Moscow. The system, in addition to the physical torture, was based on psychological torture and humiliation. The new arrivals were greeted with yelling of PARTIJA (Party) Tito, Marko (Rankovi?). One of the witnesses stated: "I didn't know what they did to me. I was naked and barefoot, covered in blood with broken skin, running over stones for one and a half kilometres, running the gauntlet, through a line of 400 prisoners who were beating me without mercy".All this was accompanied by yelling of 'Bandit' by the ranks of purified re-educated prisoners, those who had already repented for their sins. Most accused were imprisoned by the UDBA and KOS organisations, which had previously gained great experience in dealing with the Croatian 'reactionaries' and the 'enemies of the people' in the period from 1945 to 1949. Those accused of sympathising with the INFORMBURO were treated swiftly. Those who were also members of the communist party had first to go through the mill of their own party organisation, i.e., criticism of their lives and work before, during, and after WWII, including all the 'mistakes' they made. If these were not serious, additional mistakes could be added at the pleasure of the investigators. The greatest number of imprisonments was made by KOS (3,678) whose goal was 'the ideological purity' of the JNA.UDBA imprisoned 2,099 persons in Croatia alone. The most unfortunate group were those who did not have anything to do with the INFORMBURO but became victims of the private squaring of accounts. These, as such, were revenges for all those 'who thought differently', on the basis that "If they are not with us, they are against us". Many innocent people were thus put under the common denominator as representatives of the 'social danger', and as such received a visa for 'Hawaii ' (one of the nick-names for Goli Otok!).The length of imprisonment was no less than two years, and more likely to have been four to six years; the average imprisonment was ten years.In such a situation, it paid to be an ordinary 'reactionary' who was forgotten for the time being. The total number of prisoners who passed through this kind of 'socially useful work' on Goli Otok was between 31,000 and 32,000. Analysing by National grouping, the highest number of prisoners were: SerbsMontenegrinsCroats7,2353,4392,588They were ranked in accordance with the degree of enthusiasm shown for INFORMBURO (i.e., Stalin), out of a total number of officially registered prisoners of 15,729. The official number of dead was 242. However, according to 'private statistics', the number of dead was between 3,000 and 3,800 prisoners. No wonder under conditions of torture, the squaring of accounts, 'Warm rabbit', 'Swan', 'Mine', 'Peter's bog', sleeping on bare boards in the cold, standing in a hole full of water, starvation, thirst, vicious Bura wind, winter, working naked in the sea at temperatures of –15oC, snow, heat (+40oC), epidemics, typhus, diarrhoea, dysentery, broken arms and legs, broken heads, and suicide, and having an appropriate 'anti-fascist' definition of 'socially useful work'.Yugoslavia's stand against the INFORMBURO started even before its establishment. Stalin considered the American Marshall Plan XE "American Marshall Plan" as a great danger for the socialist model of the development of the society under his leadership. He, therefore, demanded that the 'people’s democracies' should follow the Soviet model. At that time, Tito still agreed with Stalin, and expressed his opinion on the Marshall Plan as follows: "The Marshall Plan is the salvaging of the American financial oligarchy from the crisis, which it will hit inevitably. . . . American financiers wish to dump American products on the European market. They want Europe to be a market for their exports and a source of their own profits. This is why the European industry is not allowed to operate without US permission."Very soon it became apparent that the Soviets practiced the same policies in Yugoslavia. The Soviet-Yugoslav mixed companies were pushing only the Soviet interests.The conflict expanded and reached its climax when Djilas insulted the Red Army at one of the meetings of the CK KPJ: "That Soviet officers stand, from a moral point of view, below British officers."Tito realised that Stalin's attack was "an attack on the Yugoslav state under the ideological cover-up."He naturally wanted to rule, to be in charge, and not indulge in Marxists fiddle-faddle. Without a state, he would have remained only that which he always was, an international terrorist.However, the situation was serious, as was proved by the 'General's conspiracy' when Gen. Col. Arso Jovanovi? XE "Jovanovi? Arso - Gen. Col." , Gen. Major Branko Petri?evi?, XE "Petri?evi? Branko - Gen. Major" Col. Vlado Dap?evi? XE "Dap?evi?, Col. Vlado" , helped by the Soviet General Sidonovi? XE "Sidonovi? - Soviet General" , attempted a coup, which failed.Sacrificing his own comrades, by putting them through monstrous, inhumane and the sadistic mill of Goli Otok, was a small price for Tito to pay in return for one billion dollars from the US, four hundred and twenty million dollars from UNRRA, XE "UNRRA" and an additional four hundred million dollars from the World Bank.Tito changed tack and joined in 'the salvaging of the American oligarchy' from the crisis. He explained this: "It is in our interest to receive this help. We cannot be bothered what the INFORMBURO will say. They were saying the same thing two years ago. By taking this help, we shall be happy to confirm their accusations."On 5th March 1953, the great 'Hozjain', Josif Visarionovi? Stalin died XE "Stalin, Josif Visarionovi? died" ! Tito could breathe a sigh of relief and proceeded with Stalinism without hindrance. With so many members deserting it, the KPJ had to examine its own ‘conscience’ as grave doubts must have occurred even in the minds of the pro-Tito clique. In June 1951 Aleksandar Rankovi?, head of the Secret Police XE "Rankovi?, Aleksandar - head of Secret Police" , was forced to re-examine the ‘administrative’ methods of his henchmen and demanded respect for the ‘law’, such as it was. The time for the rehabilitation of wrongly imprisoned and long dead (murdered) ‘enemies’ of the regime had come. Yet the KPJ, even at this critical moment, retained ‘administrative’ methods in its actions against the ‘Ustasha terrorists’ infiltrating the country. As a result, the national conflict between the Croats and Serbs warmed up and was egged on by the ‘socialist camp’ for their own purpose in destroying Tito. Surreptitiously new economic and social theories were developed away from the Marxist-Leninist principles and at the same time contradictorily rejected publicly any departure from the Marxist dogma. The way out was that no Party had a monopoly on the explication of Marxism. The outcome was that bureaucratism (the link between the Party and the State) acted as a brake on the development of socialism - the State owned everything and the working classes were in a tenant, or feudal, relationship with the State XE "Working classes in tenant, or feudal relationship with State" . The political and social implication of this was the need for something that was neither State (public) nor yet private property. The dialectic trick of the Party thinkers was the invention of the so-called ‘self-management system’, a sort of high-tech version of the Marxist economy XE "Marxist economy" that would lead to a ‘withering away of the State’, and socially owned means of production and the socialist democratisation of social relations. Tito’s exposé in the National Assembly on 26th June 1950 was full of contradictions - that the process of the withering away of the State cannot be delayed any longer at a time when the Yugoslav Army and Police were at the height of their power; that the KPJ must not lose its revolutionary characteristics and turn into an executive State power; and that the State property must become socially owned property. In 1949, there were two million illiterate people in Yugoslavia. What was even more worrying was that there must have been a further two million semi-literates (mainly Yugoslav army officers and party functionaries) who were responsible for saying “this is how it’s gonna be because we say so.” The rest of the population was on stand-by because of its future potential for ‘counter-revolution’. The churches, which in the past were the main source of literacy, were now excluded from the educational process and had to follow school curriculum based on Marxism. It seemed increasingly unlikely that such a highly regulated education system, devoid of the ‘religious mysticism’ could continue indefinitely.The new school curriculum XE "New school curriculum" was a menu offering topics such as the Yugoslav socialist revolution, the national liberation struggle and the national question, not forgetting other innovations such as a pre-military education. The Sixth Congress of the KPJ held in Zagreb between 2nd and 7th November 1952 gave a comprehensive critique of Stalinist theory and practice, explaining that the original aping of the Soviet experience was an expression of the Yugoslav ‘naive honesty’. The KPJ was renamed the Union of Communists of Yugoslavia (SKJ). XE "KPJ renamed Union of Communists of Yugoslavia - SKJ" No wonder that the confusion in theory and practice after this Congress led to confusion in the heads of the ordinary party members and also to increased indiscipline and demoralisation.The Plenum of the CK SKJ on 16th and 17th of June 1953, in Brioni XE "Plenum of CK SKJ on 16th and 17th of June 1953 in Brioni" was an incestuous affair criticising the lapses, the anti-Marxist theories, and the bourgeois-liberal tendencies within the Party. The giddy limit in the ‘anarcho-liberalist’ attitude was reached by Milovan Djilas, a member of the CK SKJ who, in a series of articles in the communist party newspaper Borba expressed ideas highly contrary to the conclusions of the 6th Congress and thereby created great confusion. Djilas thought that the working class had already played its historical role. The utopian aim was an illusion - the actual process towards communism was all.According to him, the struggle for democratisation (of the Party) would create two or more socialist parties, some more, some less democratic (!). Therefore, the existing Union of Communists (SKJ) was actually an impediment to democracy and socialist development. He called for ideological purification rather than unity, and attacked the Party Establishment as an alienated class of bureaucrats or the privileged class of power holders and produced a considerable metaphor - a ‘New Class’ XE "New Class’" . These theories attracted right wing orientated intellectuals, pseudo-liberals, anarchists and the defeated bourgeois forces, and were welcomed by the West.Djilas, who was au fait with these subtleties, was in a minority of one. The rest of his cut-throat comrades felt that life under Tito's regime was not all that uncomfortable, and they began to wonder if they should not abandon the ideals of revolution, and set-up merchant banks - anything in fact, but accept a rational discussion with the Croatian ‘reactionaries’. The desertion rate from the Party of those who could still talk sensibly was falling off, and left an open field for those who preferred to shoot you rather than to be convinced by you. In any event, the ‘Yugoslavs’ were busy people; they simply did not have time for rational discussions.On 16th and 17th January 1954, the third Extraordinary Meeting of the CK SKJ XE "Extraordinary Meeting of CK SKJ" decided that Djilas’s ideas were not in line with the conclusions of the 6th Congress, and were damaging the Party and the State. It was decided that the SKJ (the new Class) was still in charge of the direction of the socialist revolution and in the struggle against the counter-revolution. Tito decreed that the “withering away of the leading role of the Party” would be delayed for the foreseeable future. Refuting the ideas of Djilas, the chief Party ideologist Kardelj stated that "there is no socialism without democracy, but the aim of such democracy is the removal of all class antagonisms, [and] in extremis the removal of any [political] power generally”. This convoluted ‘utopian’ theory was sufficient grounds for the removal of Djilas from the Party. He accepted the criticism and punishment (i.e., socialist masochism). This upheaval was reflected in the membership of the Party. 273,464 people were excluded from the Party between 1950 and 1955; the Party also censured 112,537 members. At the end of 1957, there were in the Party 243,819 workers, 130,783 peasants, 244,592 administrators, 27,455 students and 108,418 others. The Yugoslavs insisted that they were the purest Marxists-Leninists. The immediate repost to the Soviet onslaught was a radicalisation rather than liberalisation; the nationalisation of small businesses, pushing ‘social idlers’ to factories and pushing peasants into collectives.After Stalin's death, apparently from a heart attack (which occurred about one hour before he was discovered by a terrified personal guard) there occurred a visible slackening in the aggressiveness of the Soviet policies against the KPJ XE "Soviet policies against KPJ" . Thus, in June 1954, a letter from the CK KPSS was sent to the CK SKJ with a proposal for the normalisation of relations between the two parties. Khrushchev visited Belgrade on 26th May 1955 during which visit he apologised for the actions of the INFORMBURO resulting in the Belgrade Declaration XE "Khrushchev, Nikita - visited Belgrade on 26th May 1955 - he apologised for actions of INFORMBURO resulting in Belgrade Declaration" , agreeing to the peaceful co-existence of the two parties, and ended the seven-year rift. The 20th Congress of the KPSS (14th-25th February 1956) abandoned Stalinism (on paper). The victims of Stalin's purges were rehabilitated (most of them in their graves!) and the INFORMBURO was closed. Khrushchev’s sensational disclosure XE "Khrushchev’s sensational disclosure" of Stalin’s personal responsibility for the abuses of his regime came in his famous ‘secret speech’ in which he admitted the shameful role played by Stalin in relation to Yugoslavia. This was as much a private revenge as it was a matter of policy by Khrushchev for all the personal humiliations inflicted on him by Stalin (the dancing of the Kozachok in front of foreign dignitaries, according to Djilas, for example). The Congress removed his claim of infallibility and admitted the right of the individual communist party to work out its own salvation, meandering through the confusing Marxist inheritance. From 1st to 23rd June 1956, Tito visited the Soviet Union and signed the Moscow Declaration, repeating the principle of co-existence. As a consequence, the Titoists were rehabilitated (most of them posthumously).Yugoslavia insisted that it was an independent socialist state outside the two power blocks, developing peaceful co-existence with the Third World XE "Co-existence with the Third World" . In order to get money, Yugoslavia opened its gates to tourism, which in turn had its downside. That nothing had changed in the Soviet Union was evident by the explosion of the Hungarian revolution XE "Hungarian revolution" , followed by the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. Tito was sitting on the fence during these events, playing it by ear. Relations with the Soviet Union cooled again, and after the removal of the old Stalinists - Molotov XE "Molotov" , Maljenkov XE "Maljenkov" and Kaganovi? XE "Kaganovi?" - improved slightly. At the meeting of the Communist Parties in Moscow between 14th to 16th November 1957, Yugoslavia refused to sign a Declaration that would have swallowed it up into a ‘socialist camp’ again. This brought about savage attacks on Yugoslavia by the ‘fraternal parties’. The 7th Congress of the SKJ in Ljubljana between 22nd to 26th April 1958 concluded that self-management improved industrial development and raised living standards. The new STATUT of the SKJ confirmed that the SKJ remained faithful to ‘democratic centralism’. The Congress also delivered a radical Marxist critique of Stalinism. On the other hand, in his speech in Split in May 1962, Tito criticised the large differences in the earnings (some up to a ratio of 1:20), general corruption and the ‘erection of market barriers’ between the individual Yugoslav republics’. At the Plenum of CK SKJ between 22nd and 23rd July 1962, Tito attacked centralism and dogmatism XE "Tito attacked centralism and dogmatism" . Contradictorily, he also attacked decentralisation of the State into the Republics, which he said would lead to the break-up of Yugoslavia. He wanted the economy to be run within the framework of the Yugoslav market. A new Constitution was inaugurated in 1963 with three basic topics: social organisation, self-managing enterprise, and the commune and the Federation.The name of the State was changed from the Federative Peoples Republic of Yugoslavia to the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ) XE "SFRJ - Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia)" – an acronym turned into a joke circulating at the time ‘Sedam filozofira, radi jedan’ (seven are philosophising and only one works). The Constitution separated the function of the President of the Republic from that of the Prime Minister. The President would be elected on a four-year term and could have only two mandates (except Tito, of course, who had the privilege of a lifelong presidency!).The system of rotation in the high state functions was also introduced. Tito got hold of the UN in September 1960 (wherein the majority of the States were from the Third World) and imposed himself upon it with his policy of ‘non-alignment and peaceful co-existence’ during Khrushchev’s famous ‘shoe banging’ session XE "Khrushchev’s famous ‘shoe banging’ session" . The 1st Conference of the ‘Non-aligned’ nations was held in Belgrade from 1st to 6th September 1961, with Tito as its uncrowned king.At the 8th Congress of the SKJ in December 1964, it was agreed with much self-congratulation that the ‘non-alignment became a lasting factor of peace and social progress in world’. In the first half of the 60’s, the ideology of self-management came into conflict with the rampant intervention of the State (Belgrade), which was fixing the prices, holding the majority capital in Belgrade Banks and intervening in international trade. At the 8th Congress of the SKJ held between 7th to 13th December 1964 in Belgrade, it was decided to “strengthen the financial basis of the working organisations; that these organisations should decide for themselves what the conditions and the rational division of the fruits of their work should be, and how the 'free-market' would operate." All these pronouncements came under the contrived heading of ‘de-Etatisation’.For the first time at this Congress, the communists dared to mention the national question, even though it had been a crucial issue since 1945. Tito maintained that the Yugoslav nations had resolved this problem during the national liberation struggle of 1941-45; he maintained that the contradictions between the Republics were due to different economic development and cultural differences (as if that was something new). He pointed out that some communists maintained that in the process of socialist development, the ‘nationalities’ had withered away, that the unity of the people was confused with the creation of one single Yugoslav nation, which was very similar to ‘assimilation, unitarism and hegemonism’. On the other hand, he babbled that nationalism was beginning to pop up everywhere, “in culture, art and historiography". This was no less counter-revolutionary than the classic bourgeois nationalism, and therefore the struggle against nationalism was still the main duty of the SKJ. Tito championed “the socialist character of international relations [between the nations of Yugoslavia], which meant a balancing act between democratic centralism and shutting oneself into one's own Republic frontiers”. The ‘socialist humanism’ between the Yugoslav Republics should be expressed in the speedy development of the underdeveloped Republics (Bosnia-Hercegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia XE "Underdeveloped Republics (Bosnia-Hercegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia" ). The Congress resolution rejected the idea that ‘one united Yugoslav nation’ should be created (a proposal coming from the Serbs). Brotherhood and Unity XE "Brotherhood and Unity" (two mutually exclusive ideas) should be at the forefront of the ideological action of the SKJ. As a result, the monetary capital of the State was dispersed into the ‘Federal Republican’ and communal banks.The economic reforms and ‘semi free’ market economy soon got into contradictions. Resistance came from the State-protected organisations which were unaffected by world prices. Increases of 35% in world prices in 1965 lead to large-scale unemployment XE "Large-scale unemployment" and led to massive emigration into Western Europe (in 1968 approximately 400,000 people, mainly from Croatia, left Yugoslavia). At the Plenum of the CK SKJ held on 26th and 27th February 1966, Tito attacked some communist leaders for passivity towards economic reforms. The political squaring of accounts with these leaders came to the boil at the 4th Plenum of the CK SKJ at Brioni on 1st July 1966, when Tito attacked Aleksandar Rankovi?, the chief of the Secret Police who had bugged his bedroom, for becoming a fulcrum of the political power that had resisted the conclusions of the 8th Congress. Tito correctly judged that this was a case of a struggle for power in which he was scheduled for toppling. The Secret Police controlled even the highest Party Executives and was controlling the whole Yugoslav society. In August 1966, it became apparent that this was the D-day for the removal of Rankovi?. Many communists were at a loss to understand how to act if they were not allowed to ‘command’. Tito had to clarify that the SKJ must be the centre of the ideological and political initiative and not simply a command post. The confusion about the democratisation XE "Confusion about democratisation" of the economy peaked in 1967 when the State dispersed the financial capital between the banks instead of allocating it to the basic organisations of production (factories, farms, etc.).This enabled particularly the Belgrade Banks to acquire extraordinary power for investment at home and abroad. Production was now at the mercy of the concentrated centre of financial capital, i.e., Belgrade. The old-style ‘economic reform’ was on its last legs. Contradictions in the level of economic development between the various ‘Yugoslav’ nations led to social and political confrontations and were condensed in ‘conflicts’ between their Marxist philosophers (in Zagreb headed by the magazine ‘Praxis’ and in Belgrade ‘Filozofija’). These philosophers point of departure was the Marx’s principle of ‘criticism of everything existing’, which, logically applied, opened the way to criticism of the self-management system as well as the ‘democratic centralism’ itself as a Stalinist inheritance. The SKJ could be democratised, according to praxis, only if it could absorb within its organisation different ideological-political opinions. This argument activated the students. As in Paris, so in Belgrade in June 1968 - there were continuous mass student demonstrations XE "Mass student demonstrations" . On paper, the SKJ considered students' protests as a spontaneous revolt with ‘positive socialist tendencies’. In reality and behind closed doors, the Party was terrified of these demonstrations, stirring up an already unsatisfactory economic and social situation; so far, the New Class lived off the fat of the land but students, hungry and cold, were demanding a slice of the cake. Social upheavals revived the idea of a multiparty system. In order to frustrate this, the Party devised a system of free expression of 'interests of different social strata’ within the newly-baked organisation of the Socialist Union XE "Socialist Union" , which as such could be easily controlled.The SKJ was hesitant about putting the control of production into the hands of technocrats as this could possibly lead to the creation of strong centres of ‘estranged capital’ and ‘estranged social power’, bringing the Party and the national equality into question.There were more and more demands for the restructuring of the Yugoslav State along the lines of strengthening the Republics. The centralism of Belgrade would automatically bring into argument ‘brotherhood and unity’ as well as the establishment of the ‘total national defence’ territorial armies and citizen soldiers organised by the Republics, after Tito’s demise. The ominous threat from above came with Brezhnev’s speech at the 5th Congress of the Polish United Worker’s Party on 12th November 1968, inaugurating the so-called ‘Doctrine of Limited Sovereignty’.The 9th Congress of the Party in Belgrade on 11th to 15th March 1969 demanded the confrontation with contradictory phenomena of ‘unitarism, nationalist particularism and separatism’. The role of the Union of Communists within the Republics can be strengthened only within the framework of the united SKJ, it was stated “For this reason the Presidents of the Central Committees of the Party in the Republics automatically became members of the Presidency of the SKJ. The Central Committee of the SKJ was revoked.” After the 9th Congress, the conflict between the protagonists of the self-management system and champions of unitarism (Belgrade) and ‘Etatism’ within the Republics sharpened. The technocrats took over XE "Technocrats took over" , and the structures, made up of the Party big-shots and technocrats, became extremely powerful. Workers were beyond out-lines. In reality, the centralist Belgrade, as well as Republican capitalism hijacked the economy. In the conflict of interests between the particular Republics, the interest of the State as a whole was on a slippery path. In November 1969, a delegation of the KPJ to Moscow was irritated by the reference to the Partisan struggle in the new history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union sponsored by Ponomarev, a Secretary of the Party Central Committee. This entry belittled the role of the Partisans in the ‘liberation’ of Yugoslavia and blamed the KPJ for the 1948 split.A sharp criticism, delivered from the Republic of Croatia in 1969 and 1970, about machinations of the Federal Administration and the ‘alienated centres of financial power’ in Belgrade with its unitarism and bureaucratic centralism, fell on deaf ears. Croatia demanded reform of the Federation XE "Croatia demanded reform of Federation" , and a fair distribution of the hard currency to the people who had earned it. At the 10th Session of the CK SK of Croatia in January 1970, it was concluded that unitarism was of greater danger to Yugoslavia (as before the Second World War) than the nationalism in Croatia, which, although rampant, was not on the increase. That assessment was not received with approval in the other Yugoslav Republics; the SKJ accused the responsible comrades of fostering nationalism, anarcho-liberalism and dogmatism, which de facto amounted to an open attack on the ‘constitutional position of the revolutionary socialist forces within the system of State power’.Nixon’s visit to Yugoslavia in September 1970 XE "Nixon’s visit to Yugoslavia in September 1970" showed that the Soviet Union was not the only pillar on which Yugoslavia based its foreign policy. The events in Croatia caused Nixon to make a spontaneous unscheduled visit to Zagreb to placate the Croatian/American electorate at home. 300,000 ‘umbrellas’ welcomed Nixon in Zagreb, surging forward to greet him in spite of a terrible downpour. Tito was alarmed and rushed to Zagreb in his blue train behind Nixon, appearing for the first time as an insignificant homunculus.Theories that self-management XE "Theories that self-management" did not go hand in hand with the progress of the modern technology cropped up repeatedly. According to the SKJ this led to ideological and political disintegration and the division of the working class between the developed and less developed Republics. Marxism became a more and more out-of-date theory akin to Stalinism. ‘The revolutionary sensitivity’ towards the bourgeois ideologies weakened. Yet, another Constitutional reform became long overdue. Thus, at the end of June 1971, the Amendments to the Constitution of the SFRJ were adopted. The ‘Yugoslav’ nations accordingly were achieving their sovereign rights within their own national Republics. Each ‘Yugoslav’ nation had the right to decide on the conditions of its own socio-economic and cultural development, to retain its own earnings and to decide the common issues among the Republics on a fair and equal footing. The common issues were defence, a unified market and the common platform about the socio-economic relations and the political system.These amendments were sheer formalism in order to satisfy the ideological requirements of the Party and narrowed the field of action for the political activities of the nationalist and other opposition forces. According to the SKJ, the current wave of nationalism had its origins in ‘bureaucratic-?tatistic’ forces, whose power lay in their ability to dispose of the ‘alienated means of social accumulation’ (i.e., stealing and amassing fortunes at the expense of the ordinary people XE "Stealing and amassing fortunes at expense of ordinary people" ). The ‘Nationalists’ XE "Nationalists" found support among some leaders of the SK, networking with the forces of the ‘counter-revolution’, i.e. with the Yugoslav political dissidents abroad. The ideological-political struggle for the changes to the Constitution had to be paid for by squaring of the accounts with the ‘Nationalist and Anarcho-Liberal’ forces within the Party. This sounded very threatening. At the 17th Session of the Presidency of the SKJ at Brioni on 28th to 30th April 1971, these matters were put on the table.Tito scheduled this meeting opportunistically immediately after the SKH leaders accused the Unitarist centralist forces in Belgrade of a conspiracy against Croatia.The meeting insisted that the unity of the Party was the key to the Reforms of the Constitution. Nationalism was singled out as the greatest danger to this unity. The Leaders of the Republics, including those from Croatia, bowed their heads and had no choice but to keep quiet. The SKJ maintained that one section of the Croatian leadership, led by Savka Dabcevi? XE "Dabcevi?, Savka" and Miko Tripalo XE "Tripalo, Miko" , offered the patronage to the ‘Mass Movement’ (popularly known as the Mas-Pok – or ‘Croatian Spring’ XE "Croatian Spring" ). They however pointed out that the Mass Movement had arisen in defence of the national and democratic rights of the Croatian people against the unitarism and centralism of Belgrade, which were frustrating the reform of the Federation and posed a threat of the destruction of Yugoslavia. The fulcrum of the Movement was ‘Matica Hrvatska’ XE "Matica Hrvatska" (a 150-year old Croatian cultural organisation) which, the SKJ alleged, became de facto a political party in opposition to the SKJ. Its publications inflamed nationalist views and threatened a new Croato-Serbian conflict. ‘Matica Hrvatska’ established branches in factories and offices and counted the employees on the basis of nationality. For Croatian nationalists, their variants and successors, took what turned out in the long run to be a more sustainable tack - keeping the lot and insisting that Yugoslavia was a ‘Croatian prison’, that the users of the Croatian language were persecuted and that the Croatian economy was plundered was a rule rather than an exception. They maintained, quite rightly, that only within an independent Croatia would Croats be able to be sovereign. They accused the Croatian communists of ‘treason of national interests’ and pointed out generously and pragmatically that only the progressive communist leaders in this historical situation were able to deliver ‘national liberation’. Yugoslav political theory had a single-minded approach to the Utopian Absolute. XE "Utopian Absolute" This could not have been attained without violence, and therefore, its praxis permanently contradicted itself and at the same time reconciled these contradictions in a dialectical fashion in order to perpetuate itself.From the liberal point of view, political progress can be achieved only by ironing out contradictions with discussion. However, within Yugoslavia, effective criticism was proscribed. Dialectical tricks were used to entomb the Croato-Serbian conflict. This also re-ignited ‘meaningful’ confrontations with impressive consistency.As this manipulation was applied dogmatically, all progress in the country had ultimately come to an end, oscillating between periods of relative ‘liberal’ development (1965-71) and iron-handed centralism. These countless Marxist dialectic charades extended the life of the dictatorship until 1990.Popular compliance with oppression took two forms: opportunism (in the hope of reward), and defeatism through subsistence. All possible choices for survival (including corruption) were negative and in all cases the people were deliberately deprived of the influence of their symbolic and traditional environment. This created frustration and strengthened political opposition. The Establishment, however, insisted that its 'Constitution' was the embodiment of individual, XE "Establishment insisted its 'Constitution' was embodiment of individual" as well as national, freedom. This they pronounced with the emphasis of a universal truth. All would-be, have-been, and true-blue Yugoslavs were genuinely happy with this formulation. The bizarre chronology of the Constitutional Reforms in Croatia in the spring of 1971 was cut short with the popular demand for an economic fair deal for the Croatian people. The casual Yugoslav policemen XE "Casual Yugoslav policemen" displayed no reluctance in using brute force, should force be needed to quash the slightly awkward Croatian Mass Movement. The phantom of a ‘counter-revolution’ kept the intrinsically violent Yugoslav State always on its mettle. The entire Croatian people were under suspicion as counter-revolutionaries, and there were already 1,300,000 Croats actually on the register of the Secret Police. Yet, instead of the anticipated Croatian armed rising, there was only a peaceful invocation of liberal democracy, to be achieved by means of decentralisation of the Yugoslav State. This was a harmless concept, one would have thought, championed by several Croatian newspapers, a couple of strikes and a rather sentimental patriotic euphoria which were hardly likely to undermine the State. Such decentralisation would have required the development of a system, which would have allowed reforms without violence. The 1971 Mass Movement in Croatia would at least have had to take control of the local Government and the police in the Republic of Croatia. The network of the organisation of the Movement was, however, tenuous. Several prominent ‘liberal communist’ leaders, such as Miko Tripalo XE "Tripalo, Miko " and Madam Savka Dab?evi? XE "Dab?evi?, Madam Savka" , remained strangely aloof from the mainstream of the events and the more positive activities of the 130-year-old cultural organisation Matica Hrvatska.The marvelous enthusiasm and irreverence of the students and workers was frustrated by last minute back-pedaling by these leaders, who cut themselves off from the Movement, afraid that suppression by Belgrade was looming around the corner. 5.9 Was the Croatian Mass Movement in Good Taste and Worth the Price? XE "Was the Croatian Mass Movement in good taste and worth the price?" Recklessly compounding accusations about Croatian nationalism, Belgrade succeeded in putting a hermetic seal over Croato-Serbian political and economic contradictions, freezing them in a steady state.There were bad days for losers; workers subsisted absent-mindedly on a mix of increased misery and the decreased wages, which were kept just above the poverty level.The New Class XE "New Class" , on the other hand, happily went along with the cohabitation with the West German capitalists who were the chief importers of the proletarian ‘gastarbeiters’ from Croatia.This kept the pressure valve of the political discontent at home in balance.The Croatian people took the attitude that if the State was a prison, the most appropriate method for breaking out of it was by an exodus. This led to the endless loneliness of the émigré life and to an anonymous future. The supremacy of the New Class became identified chiefly with Belgrade in confrontation with Croatia, but also more surreptitiously with Slovenia. Even in the Marxist sense, a revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist apparatus of the Yugoslav state in 1971 should have been acceptable. Yet the Croatian Mass Movement which had been developing quietly from 1965-1971, and which wore its ideas on its sleeve, was gradually introducing the rather contemplative concept of ‘Socialism with a human face’ XE "Socialism with human face" . In that endeavour, the Movement received mass popular support, but without practical results.Belgrade was very determined to establish itself as the seat of influence and the top of the political pyramid. It was resourceful, active and quite neurotic about imposing its will on others. It had a proliferation of institutions, which were in the business of manufacturing ready-made heroes and socialist lineages for the new self-managing aristocracy.It was a situation reminiscent perhaps of 19th century Prussia or, more recently, Brezhnev’s Moscow, XE "Brezhnev’s Moscow" where every nuance, every coincidence was taken seriously and picked over for evidence of intent - because the correct intent always had to follow the Party line.It was partly a matter of Serbia being more frenetically concerned with establishing an ‘heroic’ culture which was definitely related to a lack of rationalism and critical ideas.This can be regarded either as beautiful extroversion or as sheer laziness. It meant that Zagreb’s own political energy system had to be involved in the game: it had to keep pretending that it was not up to anything even if, in reality, it was. The impressive array of rational arguments against the myths of the Yugoslav utopia, which the Croats had acquired over time, laid unused or locked up behind bars. Zagreb had acquired, only as late as 1989, the degree of arrogance that was a necessary prerequisite for a really definitive showdown with Belgrade.It is only very recently that the Croats got bored with being bullied. Their traditional tolerance was closely linked with a political demand for the rationalisation of the Yugoslav State. Croatia's 'prêt-a-culture' XE "Croatia's 'prêt-a-culture'" demanded the substitution of myth (unity) for responsibility (independence). Croatia began to amaze all those people who had never heard of it.In particular, Croatia is to be respected for having most effectively resisted to the totalitarian activities of the Yugoslav State, and for erecting a most effective system of rational argument in favour of its independence. As such, Croatia still deserves international support on the wider front in acclaiming its struggle for liberation from the emotions, passions and scandals that pass as ‘Yugoslav History’.The Croatian Mas-Pok movement of 1965-71, which culminated in the events of 1971, was neither a revivalist - nationalist in the classic sense - nor mainstream reform movement - though even the latter would have been better than nothing. It was rather determined by the existential needs of the Croatian people (to be or not to be), and by a demand for reason, which was a rare commodity in Yugoslavia.After the years of political oppression, it seemed the time had come again to shed the servile attitude towards Belgrade.The intellectual honesty of the Movement in responding to a new, more pragmatic, political course led by the younger ‘communist’ leaders of Croatia was expressed as a rejection of the dead hand of Yugoslav centralism.The prevailing ethical assumption of the time was that a critical argument would form the basis for the resolution of accumulated political contradictions. Croatia would then become a home for all its inhabitants, and a constant watch would be kept on safeguarding individual freedoms and maintaining social justice.However, these calls transgressed the prescribed established standards of the Yugoslav regime. The backlash was all too terribly familiar. The Croats needed slapping down. 'Nationalism' and 'separatism' must be punished XE "Nationalism and separatism must be punished" . However, the Croatian working class resisted for a time the reaction of Belgrade, which regarded the Croatian national question as a peripheral issue. Croats refused to be an international category with no fixed abode, subject to Belgrade’s doctrine of limited sovereignty for Croatia. The Croat Mass Movement was now up against some ‘brilliant’ Marxist minds, who dredged up the démodé primacy of class over national interests, and who insisted that class interests determine our actions. Their oration was, as usual, accompanied by a heavy fusillade of trite propaganda in the state-controlled media.Although social inequality jeopardised the position of the working class of each component nation of Yugoslavia, it did not lead to a common solidarity of its working class as a whole. In reality, it proved that the conflict of national interests had a primacy over the class issues, and led to conflict among the working classes of the Yugoslav republics.The most vociferous critics of the Yugoslav system were the Croatian workers, who expressed their true feelings by mass emigration to the capitalist world.Croatian reformers failed too. They believed that rational unity and the social and political equality of all the nations of Yugoslavia was possible. By modifying the rhetoric of the Constitution, it was hoped that the ailing picture of the Yugoslav State would be removed and be replaced with a New Image. The New Class, however, pressed on with an already well-established political farce: the component nations of Yugoslavia must be re-educated in a monolithic spirit before they could proceed on the journey to Utopia. They were, they maintained, only the raw material in a Yugoslav junkyard from which a new Utopian nation would be recycled. The end result was supposed to eliminate all future national conflicts.Such a bizarre programme was fundamentally at odds with the somewhat shop-soiled rhetoric of the 'National Liberation Struggle' and its deceptive vision of the future state: "that the aim of the revolution was the sovereignty and equality of all the nations of Yugoslavia." For this purpose, a rudimentary form of not very competent Peoples Councils (4,596 'National Liberation' Committees) was established in the mountains of the war-time State of Croatia in order to push on with the ‘Liberation'. (Croatia was composed of 57% Croats, 33% Serbs, 10% others). These figures are useless except as a refutation of the Belgrade propaganda XE "Figures useless except as refutation of Belgrade propaganda" that only the Serbs were smart, ‘progressive’ and a kind of frozen monument to the ‘national liberation’ and ‘anti-fascist’ struggle. Croats were certainly not single-minded about their wartime record and, as ever, took an eclectic view of these events.In 1971, the Croatian Mass Movement picked out some of these long-forgotten ‘National Liberation’ aspirations as a theme for its rationalisational programme. In the end, the dream model for the new ‘'Constitutional amendments’ came to nothing.The rhetoric of the New Class tried to create a mood of relief by arguing that Croatian Statehood would be realised only through the withering away of the ‘People's Republic of Croatia’! Naturally, no mention was made of the withering away of the Yugoslav State.In mid-1971, the Western Press began to recall ‘forgotten Croatia’ which was the nicest compliment ever paid to it."Does the action of centrifugal forces endanger the existence of the [Yugoslav] federation?" asked Francois Fejt? XE "Fejt?, Francois" . Sensing the West’s continuing support for the Yugoslav procrastination over reforms, Fejt? wrote that the "Croats, a people of courage, extraordinary strength and tolerance, could never digest the fact . . . that they were conned by history. Yugoslavism radiated from the Croatian lands, confronting the Austro-Hungarian expansion towards the Balkans. But Yugoslavia, created in 1918, quickly became Yugoslavia under Serbian domination. Croatia which, before the Second World War, had a leading financial position and which today represents 33% of the total industrial output and 27% of the gross national product, has at its disposal only 17% of the capital in comparison with Serbia's 60%." Fejt? set out Croatia's claim for the proportional and rational division of the state’s financial capital, and the nationalisation of banks and exporting consortia and pointed out that Serbia, with 33% of the population had 73.6% representation in the Federal Government and Croatia, with a 23% population, had only 8.5%.Paradoxically, the men surrounding the 1971 Croatian Mass Movement still had no idea of what the Yugoslav world was really like as if they lived on Mars. These Croatian intellectuals argued about human rights, tolerance, freedom from criticism, freedom of thought, and social and political equality - in short, about the rational unity of the nations of Yugoslavia.However, the Belgrade message was uncompromising as if they quoted Rappoport XE "Rappoport" - we'll talk about that subject another day . . . “after all, refusal to settle by compromise is not always an unreasonable position, because the impossibility of compromise is inherent in the very nature of the conflict." The Tenth Session of the Communist Party of Croatia in 1971 on the other hand (like Dubcek’s Party in Prague in 1968 XE "Dubcek’s Party in Prague in 1968" ) summed it up something like this: "The Croatian working people are not ethnic freaks, expendable entities, people under suspicion by the Secret Police, who could become respectable Yugoslavs only by a radical knock on their head with a sledge-hammer; and indeed if Croats are not strong enough, their death is in any event imperative.” This kind of straight talk by the Croatian communists had not been heard for twenty-five years.The Yugoslav Secret Police could, on the other hand, produce at any time a ‘Who's Who’ of the living and dead Croat nationalists on request.Their enthusiasm for reforms was counteracted with the repetition of one of the best Yugoslav jokes: ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ XE "Brotherhood and Unity" . The routine ritual laugh-in about the defence of Socialism turned into a slapstick comedy, with the ex-Partisans making a comeback in the remake of their wartime butcheries into a pastiche of a Hollywood movie (The Battle of the River Neretva, starring Richard Burton in the role of Tito).In a desperate attempt to ward off the Croats, Belgrade was forced to put into circulation the outworn myths such as the substitution of the notion of equality by that of the stylish ‘self-managing democracy of the working people’. The Sixth Amendment of the proposed new Constitution (para. Item 2) was already threatening in its opening shot: "If the workers do not adhere to the letter of the self-management and the social contract, then the Law may prescribe the rules that will be applied to the self-managing agreements.” The self-management system XE "Self-management system" , by the way, fostered an approach to work that was too academic to be effective, i.e., as previously mentioned, the seven workers who wrote it, philosophised and only one worked. Clause 10 of the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution pushed even further towards centralism. It allowed the State to enforce almost unlimited taxes for financing the insatiable needs of the Central Government. Even by Marxists standards, and its ‘primacy of the working-class’, these amendments looked pretty reactionary. Not only did the working class of the component nations of Yugoslavia and the ruling New Class act in deference to each other - they were also in confrontation with each other. Life in this hostile environment has been always a confidence trick, but at that particular moment, the Yugoslav hysteria reached a high pitch. The twisting, procrastination, and mystification that filled pages and pages of paper on amendments to the Constitution, spelled out Belgrade's final solution to the 'Croatian problem': i.e., Clause 2 of the First Amendment stated: "The Socialist Republic of Croatia is the sovereign national state of the Croatian people, the state of the Serbian people in Croatia and the state of the nationalities that live there . . . .” In this amendment, the godfathers did not even make pretence of being ambiguous. It was stated quite clearly: Croatia, in addition to being the ‘sovereign state’ of the Croatian people, possessed also the wonderful privilege of being a sovereign national state of the Serbs in Croatia (12% of the total population) so that presumably this minority could celebrate undisturbed the birthday of the retired Secret Police boss, Aleksandar Rankovi?.Those were the times when losing one's temper meant losing one's head. While the Croats were made to feel guilty about once having had an independent state and were beginning to grope their way towards feeling guilty about not having it any longer, the Serbs managed to end up with three states at once: one in 'Yugoslavia', one in Serbia - and the third one in Croatia.Surely the whole idea of a national state implies a state in which the eponymous nation constitutes a predominant majority, and gives its name to that state. In defining a national state on the other hand, it is of no importance if the said state contains minorities. A modern national state is defined a priori as a union of the citizens possessing equal rights and equal duties within its territory, irrespective of their national, religious and racial affiliations.But in Croatia in 1971, the basic premises for a meaningful and rational dialogue about this issue simply did not exist. A rational dialogue - as opposed to the prevailing theorising - was urgently needed. Such debate as took place was all in the realm of impressive pseudo-arguments.The Croatian writers (those largely invisible men) produced a Manifesto (22nd October 1971) XE "Croatian writers produced Manifesto (22nd October 1971)" calling for a rational re-design of the Constitution. "Croatian sovereignty cannot be part of a complicated bargain since that would marginalise the Croats politically in their own land" the manifesto stated.Belgrade replied with an elaborate conceit that such an indivisible sovereignty would bring into jeopardy the rights of the Serbian minority in Croatia.Intrigues about linguistic issues poisoned the atmosphere even more. The profound respect that the Croats have for their language was never popular with the over-worked Yugoslav policemen. Croatia, however, was always eccentric enough to tolerate the various linguistic labels for her own language. She survived a series of most fanciful misleading descriptions, such as: Slavonia, Schiavonia, Illyria, Bosnia, Dalmatia (all Croatian provincial or ancient labels) but strongly resisted the cock-eyed name of Yugoslavia.All hell broke loose when the Movement tried to unveil the mysteries of Belgrade financial concerns, XE "All hell broke loose when Movement tried to unveil mysteries of Belgrade financial concerns" central banks, and some specific institutions such as the Diplomatic Service, the Central Government, the Army and the Police, all of them staffed mainly by the Great Serbs and headed by Tito, that old fashioned ornament of Europe with the life style of an Emperor. The schmaltzy atmosphere of his old Habsburg summer retreat on Brioni Island XE "Brioni Island" looked like a shabby pantomime set where Partisan heroes spat in oleander pots, particularly after the successful bagging a brace of Croatian ‘separatists’.The Yugoslav dialecticians usually kicked off their pseudo-arguments by asking: "What on earth is it that the Croats really want?" No wonder the uninitiated Western pundits decided that there was something deeply paranoiac about the Croats. As Croatia was sub judice since 1918, it was hardly in a position to offer any counter-argument. By packing Croatia away in a kind of lunatic asylum for politically dissident nations, the Yugoslavs hoped it would stop whinging.The only way to proscribe this propaganda massacre was by satirising the chauvinism that still (even after the appalling carnage in Croatia of 1992) leads to those weedy, wet, and very Western politicians’ arguments about finding an overall political solution for Yugoslavia - and the long life and loose fit of the European Union would automatically be guaranteed.During 'Emperor Tito's' reign, these pundits used to go to Belgrade because of the myth that a new set of self-managing socialist theories was about to hatch there: that the philosophies of Europe would be deliberately re-interpreted in a most curious nonconformist way, and that the Yugoslav heroes, like Djilas or one Antonije Isakovi?, would be really open and highly approachable people. All that kept the media ticking, particularly when in addition to reporting, they were provided with helicopters, 5-star hotels on the Croatian Adriatic coast, and call-girls thrown in gratis for good measure.Who cared about a crowd of Croatian peasants anyway? Yet, in the end, it is the West that has ultimately benefited from the sum total of Croatian dissent."The revolution is an Open Altar" - an exorbitant and deleterious article in the Belgrade Literary News by the Serbian Marxist, Antonije Isakovi? XE "Isakovi?, Antonije" , presented a panchromatic picture of the prostitution of language, and the flight from reason and intellectual responsibility. In order to keep the Yugoslav system going, he mocked the allegiance to the Croatian Mass Movement. "This allegiance, in turn, called for a Cause, and the Cause required an enemy [i.e., Yugoslavia]”. Yet by inversion, Isakovi? was really talking about the Croatian Mass Movement of 1971 as an enemy. Its crime: Revisionism of the aims of the Socialist Revolution. Ironically enough, the outcome of his musings was: a New Irrationalism and New Mysticism followed by a witch-hunt of the members of the Movement. But Isakovi? was unrepentant: "We are witnesses that, in recent days in our midst, the concepts of the National primacy and the Class primacy are being identified by claiming that the Proletariat needs the Fatherland and the Fatherland needs the Proletariat." The attempt to identify the Croatian Workers within the Movement with the days of the Nazi Munich bierkellers XE " Nazi Munich bierkellers" was provocative. Yet, ironically enough in that respect, there was no essential difference between the Munich bierkellers and the Belgrade shish kebab joints of the New Class.In reality, it was a sick irony that Croatian workers were literally driven into bierkellers as German ‘gastarbeiters’ because Yugoslav socialism could not feed them. "The third guiding idea of Marxism," [Isakovi? rambles] "is the delineation of other national groups as an obstacle to the chief nation; these being responsible for all the historical injustices, for the failure of the economy, and for Lebensraum . . . In our midst there also exist attitudes which, in one way or another, characterise the other national group as the culprit and the main obstacle, and this already means the beginning of that dangerous and fatal game which had happened before in history. As soon as certain circles abandon, or rather play around with, Brotherhood and Unity, the slogan of the Yugoslav revolution, at the same time they work on its defeat. It is impossible to be a fighter for national equality within the framework of Yugoslavia and at the same time be a Unitarist within the framework of each Republic. The slogan of ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ has already overcome the regionalism, sectionalism and Balkan particularism, and the desire to shut oneself up into one's own patch. This slogan was, and will be, the herald of the Great Balkan System, the World System.” Isakovi?'s reference to the expansion of the Lebensraum XE "Lebensraum" , aimed at the Croatian Mass Movement, fitted the political practice of the Yugoslav utopia to a T. We have analysed this before. Croats were singled out as the chief obstacle to the Yugoslav nation.Since WWII, Croats were the victims of the neurotic conspiracy theories accusing them of being Nazis and fascists, theories that have been trumpeted all over the world. Yet it is a paradox of the highest order, however, that while the Croats can easily refute fascism, Isakovi?'s invocation of ‘the Great Balkan System, the World System’, was raised just at the time when his apostolic creed of the ‘Brotherhood and Unity’ came under serious threat.Lebensraum equals expansionism. It may be easily established from the historical maps which have expanded where in Yugoslavia over the years. Isakovi?’s musings on the theory of Croat ‘unitarism’ within the ‘Croatian’ Republic grew more confident as he went on. However, it is pointless to push the 'unitarism' argument and, at the same time, keep up the pretence of national 'liberation' struggle's slogan, which granted the sovereignty of the Yugoslav Republics. Any attempt to rationalise the Yugoslav utopian system was bound to tackle the entrenched corruption of its institutions XE "Corruption of its institutions" . An anthology of the institutional corruption in the former Yugoslavia would fill a fair-sized library.As far as the individuals who used to run the Yugoslav State institutions were concerned, influenced as they were by their own traditions, they consistently displayed a notable lack of the integrity, which, in a normal democratic society, would be demanded by their roles.No political system is so smart that it can go on indefinitely without pausing to ponder its shortcomings and listen to constructive criticism. It was a curious irony, therefore, when the SKJ began to distrust its own reactions and went too far in its counter-attack against the Croatian Mass Movement in 1971. This counter attack probed the depths of the Yugoslav myth, tested and then analysed it, argued through the media and supported its arguments by masses of figures, reports, and statistics, to check if that myth could stand the heat. Such action had long been overdue in order to bring some rational predictability into the social and political relations between the 'Yugoslav' Republics.The economy XE "Economy" was the basis from which the Movement commenced its attempts at the rationalisation of the institutions of the State. This rested on the assumption (later proved wrong) that Yugoslavia could become workable only if its leaders possessed the will and courage to adapt to the new circumstances.Yugoslav unity was a dogma that was not open to discussion - the ultimate sacred cow. The people who ran the Yugoslav State institutions came down from their Balkan mountains and have now acquired a touch of polish. Their fake servility towards foreigners was quite amazing. Very few of the foreigners remained unimpressed by the hypnotic quality of Yugoslav public relations. The comrades had special offers for all occasions.Talking specifically about the Serbs in charge of these institutions and their traditions, one cannot avoid mentioning their ruthlessness and a condescending pedantry in the execution of ideological duties. 'Rukovodioci’, i.e., the communist leaders, who lead you by the hand on the Russian pattern, were Party apparatchiks who, in spite of their pretence, in no way could ever resemble the accepted image of fair-minded bureaucrats in the West. Away from Belgrade and back at the Institutions of the individual Republics, one might have hoped matters would have been more ethical. After all, one was dealing here with local men. In Croatia, for example, where by and large the local Serbs ran the public institutions, the situation turned out to be even worse.It is uncanny how these Serbianised Morlach descendants boasted openly about their corruption and violence, as if they had a world patent on it. In fact, violence was the biggest Yugoslav export XE "Violence was biggest Yugoslav export" . Yugoslav embassies and consulates abroad were de facto only public fa?ades for the Secret Police stations in pursuit of the external enemies.The Yugoslav ‘Peoples’ Army’ was ready at all times to pounce on the internal enemies. The counter intelligence service (KOS) controlled both the Army and the Secret Police (UDBA); the Central Government by-passed the Governments of the Republics; the Party controlled the Workers Councils; the Secret Police even muscled in on Tito himself; the Secret Police boss, Aleksandar Rankovi?, bugged Tito's bedroom before being kicked out of UDBA. Surveillance was active right from the top and down to the ordinary Party chisellers; snoopers were everywhere, taking notes of what ordinary people were saying in cafes and bars, never obvious - yet one could sniff them everywhere.The workers, hemmed in between these heavy characters, were nevertheless expected to enjoy their ‘intellectual’ company. Confused and uncertain as to whether they had already reached the stage of Communism, they drowned their anxieties in alcoholism.As in the Rome of Juvenal, "For a hated [Croatian ‘Nationalist’] there was always death by poison, or even, where that failed, a knife blade in the back. In [Yugoslavia], the horrors of reality surpassed the worst deeds of mythology".The Yugoslav press XE "Yugoslav press" flogged messages of determinism on the Yugoslav way to socialism for the sake of political advantage. There were some fascinating paradoxes there: the accredited media correspondents chose not to spend much of their time in Yugoslavia but rather in London, Paris and New York. In spite of that, their output was ideologically identical to that of Belgrade and Moscow, which were far more conspiratorially neurotic places than the Western capitals. These elite journalists chose to surround themselves by Western goodies and hard currency, but in their dogmatism they were anything but Western. Operating within the Party and State Press Lobby systems, they functioned in manner far removed from the prima facie function of the press: providing the public with impartial information; they did not inform - they infiltrated. Although they had some knowledge and even a taste for the freer, more experimental aspects of reporting, they did not have any other option but to stick to the releases from Tito’s propaganda news agency. "The Press in Croatia is a sentimental virgin and the Press in Serbia is a bucketful of crap," observed Krle?a long before the WWII. Nothing changed in that respect in Tito's Reich. The Yugoslav press had, quite incorrectly, been bracketed with the New Left. This was a convenient, but superficial classification. Serbian ‘revolver’ journalism particularly created wilful and fundamentally totalitarian compositions; totems for moulding fantasy rather than information - in particular, the Belgrade daily Politika. Yet there was sometimes a kind of nostalgia for decorative embellishments, dare one suggest even for democracy (Demokratija), although this occurred in Politika only rarely, when the adjective 'Peoples' was dropped out in an occasional printing error. In this context, one must not forget the humourless New Class bureaucracy, archetypal roughnecks and their contribution to the building of socialism. I have deliberately left out all the ‘juiciest’ adjectives. They were seen to best advantage in a mix of creative corruption and the dogmatic heroism that recalled to mind the perversity of Stalin’s, and the earlier Russian Tsarist, Okhrana Secret Police XE "Russian Tsarist, Okhrana Secret Police" experiments with the same subject. The Yugoslav Diplomatic Service XE "Yugoslav Diplomatic Service" provided a world of opportunity where its diplomats could put into action all their well-tested con tricks and embezzlement that fuelled their privileged livelihoods. They were operating at the fantasy level - in which all distinctions between political correctness and political propaganda became utterly blurred. Bullying and servility in Great Serbian foreign policy were two sides of the same coin. The bizarre historical incident of the young Serbian poet, Milan Raki? XE "Raki?, Milan" , is a case in point. Milan Milovanovi? XE "Milovanovi?, Milan" , then the Foreign Secretary to the Kingdom of Serbia (1893), appointed Raki? to a new diplomatic post in Bitolj, Macedonia, (at that time part of the Ottoman Empire) with the following brief: "You are now going to Bitolj, which is under the Turks. As you are very well aware, you can get away with the Turks only in two ways - with your fist or with your arse. As Serbia is not in the position to use its fist at present, you have the discretion to employ your arse as skilfully as possible.” As the Yugoslav corrupt economy could not be quoted on the International Exchange with its worthless dinar, the New Class was prepared to compromise everything: integrity, ideals, family; in fact, everything for their mediocre currency, the Yugoslav dinar. The dinar incentive was the motivation for any criminal action, any corruption, any pseudo-argument, any propaganda, and for the elimination of political opponents.The trouble arose, however, when the Croat gastarbeiters in Germany XE "Croat gastarbeiters in Germany" , despising the worthless Yugoslav dinar, preferred to hold on to their hard earned Deutsche marks and in that way outstripped the New Class dinar privileges.So, entirely new ways had to be found to fleece them of their hard currency. The corruption in Tito's Yugoslavia was remarkably like that in the Kingdom, described by Krle?a, in spite of a time-lag of twenty years. "No one maintains that corruption does not exist in the West, but there such intermezzos provoke very loud daily protests. Alas, when a certain country is covered with silence, you may rest assured that there is no freedom there. The silence of the graveyard of reason and public courage . . . But silence facing injustice is an insult to reason . . . There is no end, however, in sight to this [Yugoslav] steeplechase, because as soon as you jump one hurdle, another one appears in front of you in an unending perspective." It would be unfair to pass judgement on the Croatian mentality before incorporating some afterthoughts on the Belgrade New Class with the help of Lenin, the language they understood: "Marx questions a socialist belonging to an oppressor nation about his attitude to the oppressed nation and at once reveals a defect common to the socialists of the dominant nations: the failure to understand their socialist duties towards downtrodden nations, their echoing of the prejudices acquired from the bourgeoisie of the 'dominant' nation." The Croatian reformers were cagey about making any reference to the above stricture. They had, therefore, to devise other counter-arguments in order to adjust to the pitch and wavelength of Belgrade's hearing capability, and had to start at the very beginning, from basic premises about political morality. In fact, the whole Croato-Yugoslav conflict boiled down to precisely that premise.It was ultimately a question of human rights. In spite of the thousand-fold infringements of the Helsinki Agreement XE "Helsinki Agreement" , Croatia, instead of protesting, was silent. It was, therefore, rather offensive in the circumstances if a few hard-core communists, such as Djilas tried to utter a few consoling words on Croatia’s behalf.Why was there this deadly silence in Croatia during the period of Yugoslavia? A traditionally humanistic people, the Croats seemed to have felt instinctively that, on the basis of their recent bitter historical experience, whatever they said about injustice it would undoubtedly be misinterpreted. The silence was, therefore, incomparably more significant than anything they could have said in their own defence.The manifestation of political style lies in its performance. The New Class performance in 1971 - by any standards - was decidedly consistent. Imprisonments of 1-2 years were meted out for referring to Tito's wife Jovanka's miniskirt; 1-3 years for a reminder that Marx made his maid-servant pregnant; 2-5 years for referring to Yugoslav culture as a kind of supermarket; 3-5 years for insulting the New Class life-style; from 5 to anything up to 15 years for sneering at Party slogans; 5-10 years for saying that the solution of the state bankruptcy lies in the removal of the epic Partisan heroes from the Banks' directorships; at least 30 years for saying ‘No separatism but independence’. By rejecting every criticism XE "Rejecting every criticism" and every rational argument, the Yugoslav utopians created a political tsunami from which there was no escape except into indiscriminate violence, and if you were lucky, social waste, the negation of any value of common logic, clarity, content and truth. The year 1971 was a year of communication by dialectic gills, abstract phraseology, verbosity, half-truths, false reasoning, and as a result, a total conundrum which, in its turn, was ‘resolved’ by decree from above, and by the Belgrade radical sledge-hammer tactics. For a long time, the Croato-Yugoslav conflict remained in a steady state – institutionalised and entrenched in the symbolic environment of the State - occasionally disturbed by a burst of justified Croat demands - after which it rapidly returned to its former steady state. The Croatian opposition thus became isolated, internalised and confined until the next incident.The breakdown in communication between Zagreb and the Belgrade Establishment explained itself in the mystification of the definition of Paragraph 41, Clause 1 of the Yugoslav ‘Constitution’ XE "Yugoslav ‘Constitution’" : "Freedom of expression of one's own nationality and culture, including the freedom to use one's own language, is guaranteed to every citizen."Although this Clause appears at first glance to be straightforward, a moment's thought reveals that it has unlimited interpretations. Although the freedom of expression of one's nationality, culture and the use of one's language were (or ought to have been) quite legitimate rights, they could have easily become interpreted as elitist nationalism and chauvinism. The decision as to what constituted a legitimate national sentiment and what was nationalism and what was chauvinism rested with Belgrade, which was at liberty to slot them into any convenient conspiracy theory. The Croats thus were diagnosed as a nation with a conspiratorial group personality.Ironically enough, anti-Croat propaganda actually made the Croats fashionable - just as the books on the Vatican Index boosted their sales. This miscalculation was a high price for the Yugoslav fanaticism to pay. In spite of the high profiling of Croat Nationalism, Croats do not have a monopoly on it. For its sheer longevity, as much as anything else, the Serbian version will beat it any time. The same rule can be applied to all the countries of Europe: "All nations cultivate their own brand of Nationalism, according to the same rules, in the same way, on the same pattern, and with the same words; all nations deceive themselves and the world with the same slogans, and their [superior] racial and genetic characteristics. Take for example all the nations in the Balkans, or even in Europe. All of them shout; all of them try to drown the others out with their phrases, with their traditions and their race, with their Messianism, History and Iconostases. And this entire clamour is rather undignified, unreasonable, boring and imbecilic." If this was broadly correct, why did everyone come out in a cold sweat whenever a stray ‘nationalist’ commercial from Zagreb slipped the Belgrade censorship? Belgrade media cover XE "Belgrade media cover" told us always more than we wanted to know about the Algerian, Vietnamese and Palestinian liberation movements, about African and Asian Nationalisms, but when it came to Croatian ‘Nationalism’, they turned it into an hysterical outburst. It appears that the Great-Serbs find it easier to love any other nationalist rather than love their own Croat nationalist ‘brothers’. Does this have something to do with genetics? The Belgrade bloody-mindedness has kept Croatia ad Acta since 1918. Any expression of legitimate patriotism through language, culture and folk traditions, was stigmatised as the work of the Dark and Reactionary Forces.And yet the Croats were pioneers of a profound Christian Universalism XE "Croats pioneers of profound Christian Universalism" . They took part in the Reformation, made a proportionate contribution to the art of the Renaissance, and were unfortunately the pioneers of the utopian Pan-Slavism and its nastier derivative, Yugoslavism.It was these same people who, driven to breaking point by the terror in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, rebelled in great numbers against the NDH war-time regime, only to fall, at the end of WWII, into the Yugoslav communist bog. However, Croatian multi-ethnic tolerance of a thousand years cannot be obliterated by the Yugoslav smear campaign.5.10 Croatia Waking Up XE "Croatia Waking Up" There was a striking tension in the 10th Session of the Communist Party of Croatia (1971) on the sensitive subjects of nationalism and anti-fascism. A certain sanctimonious grandeur by the Belgrade mafia, that they and they alone have given Croatia its ‘anti-fascist’ status was reverberating to the hip-hop clatter on Belgrade's regular evening TV programmes, belching out an orgy of Serbian glory: St. Sava, Tsar Du?an XE "Tsar Du?an" , the Battle of Kosovo XE "Battle of Kosovo" , Aleksandar Karadjordjevi?, et al. The Croatian past was a black hole. Where were the Croats? Where, indeed? That was the mystery. Yet the Belgrade initiative to extend itself upwards to the ionosphere failed to twist the legacy of Croatian history, here and there triumphant and always ambiguous. It hoped that this would confuse the Croats and make them anxious and insecure, so that they would eventually become as grey as the rest of the Yugoslav utopian world.In spite of bleatings about the ‘scientific’ nature of Yugoslav socialism, the trouble with Yugoslavia was that it was impossible to analyse it either as a serious political system, or even less on the basis of its propaganda fiction. We must first analyse the carbon monoxide of Clause 1 of the First Amendment of the ‘Croatian Constitution’ (1971), which speaks of the ‘National State of the Croatian people’; then we must look at Clause 2 which speaks about the ‘Socialist Republic of Croatia, which is a sovereign national state of the Croatian people, the State of the Serbian people in Croatia, and the state of the nationalities that live there’.This means de facto that, according to Clause 1, Croatia was a National State and not a Federal one, but according to Clause 2, it was a Federal state and not a National one.The 22nd Plenum of the Central Committee of the League of the Communists of Croatia met of 5th November 1971, under the chairmanship of Madam Savka Dab?evi? XE "Dab?evi?, Madam Savka" whom the Serbs mockingly named the ‘Queen of Croatia’ XE "Queen of Croatia" . This Plenum tried to blow open the issue of Great Serbian containment of Croatia, in order that the monster state-machine could have been, hopefully, guided towards a new more democratic and liberal role. Fifty members of this session declared unequivocally that the Belgrade press had made misleading statements about alleged Croatian Nationalism within its leadership, in order to discredit the Croatian League of Communists. There seemed little danger of making such a statement, as Tito himself had made a similar pronouncement only a few days earlier.Madam Dab?evi? stressed that the Croatian Mass Movement was very keen to pursue theoretical as well as practical dialogue with Belgrade on the basis of the ‘Socialist Programme’ XE "Socialist Programme" put forward by the Croatian League of Communists.Her presentation of Croatia's programme for the realisation of the interests of the Croatian workers through self-management, and on the basis of the equality of the nations and nationalities of Yugoslavia, should have come as no surprise.Yet this became a kind of catharsis for the Serbs vis-à-vis Croatia's Mass Movement. The dissonant voice of Dr. Du?an Dragosavac XE "Dragosavac, Dr. Du?an " , the Serbian representative in the Croatian Parliament, tried to sideline the debate by some sardonic comments about the 'nationalist excesses'. Dragosavac had his own high-powered hot line to the new charshiya of Belgrade political ruling class. He felt completely at home in that world of sophisticated unitarism. The other MPs reminded Dr. Dragosavac that centralist Yugoslavia could not masquerade as an innocent political party, less dangerous than Croatian ‘nationalism’. Even Dr. Vladimir Bakari? XE "Bakari?, Dr. Vladimir" , one of the main props of Yugoslavism in Croatia, who always insisted on explaining everything to the smallest detail, could not but become moved:"Centralism, taken objectively on the basis of its physical existence, is more dangerous than nationalism which has already, as a matter of history, been destroyed. The political climate in Croatia is very positive, not only because of the favourable economic situation, but also because of the overwhelming support by the workers for the policies of the new course of the Croatian communists." The 1971-montage world of the 'new course of the Croatian communists' was a world in which a New Deal for Croatia XE "New Deal for Croatia" might have developed. The international pundits had, simplistically, dismissed many of its demands as surreal. Surreal or not, the Mass Movement’s approach to the mid-71’s debates about self-management, economic equality, culture and the software of the politics of the new responsive multi-national environment made it immediately one of the European Social Democratic family XE "European Social Democratic family" and ‘Socialism with a human face’ XE "Socialism with a human face" .What about the Centralist backlash XE "Centralist backlash" ? In the beginning, it appeared quite modest. Belgrade claimed that it possessed dignified Institutions for resolving all internal conflicts. In reality, however, these institutions were too bureaucratic to do anything of the kind, and although they had a dozen legitimate facades, all of them were fake. The main ‘achievements’ of the New Class were, as always, the control and containment of the violence, which was kept on the boil by its own utopian aims.The Western Press following these events revealed a great deal of ignorance which could have been anticipated. There were a few notable exceptions of course. Writing in the Guardian, Victor Zorza XE "Zorza, Victor" spattered over the centre page that the “Croats want to be masters in their own house” and continued “They now say that they want to be masters in their own house and cannot see why they should foot further bills for that which they consider their inalienable right." Zorza went on to describe Belgrade's reaction to this demand: “Behind the sudden renaissance of the long suppressed extreme conservative forces in the direction of the restoration of Stalinism, there is the hand of a certain Socialist country . . . One can count also on the political forces that were represented by Rankovi?, which forces remained largely unaffected after his removal and are now, once again, raising their ugly heads." Zorza thus cut through the thick smog of Yugoslav propaganda concerning the alleged ‘collusion’ of the Croatian communist Leaders and certain Croatian nationalist émigré circles. "Gossip about this collusion was first heard in Belgrade, among those Great Serbs who wished to discredit the national ambition of the Croatian communist leaders and to undermine their demands for a higher degree of independence in relation to Belgrade. The Croatian Central Committee had declared that there is an organised action in progress with the aim of discrediting the political leadership of the Socialist Republic of Croatia." That leadership, he wrote "insists that these allegations were spread through certain federal organs from Belgrade and most strongly emphasises that the Secret Police had their fingers in that pie. The Great Serbs dominate this Police force, which leans towards the Centralists, and anti-liberal elements entrenched in some parts of the Belgrade political apparatus. The Centralists fear that the recognition of Croat rights will inevitably lead to the recognition of the same rights for the other nations and nationalities, . . . and this would then lead to a break-up of the State." “This argument was now rejected by Marshall Tito . . . putting himself strongly on the side of those who are in favour of the greater transfer of power to the Republics. In Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, there is now excitement. “In the last few weeks the Croatian Nation closed its ranks in an unprecedented public display of patriotism and political solidarity, which was hardly apparent in the past. All the indications in Zagreb suggest that the 'Socialism with a human face' may be even more human than that which Dubcek intended to introduce into Czechoslovakia, and may be evolving in Croatia now.” It is intriguing to ask what it was that made the British media so susceptible to gossip, controversy and rumours served from Belgrade. This was simply tantalising but ineffectual gossip, embellished with passé revolutionary slogans that had lost most of their relevance in the utopian imagery of Brotherhood and Unity.FFtThe Western European ‘liberals’ talked at that time about the ultimate line of fire for Socialism, the stage at which egalitarianism would take its place beside universal justice and decentralisation beside equality between nations. The Western fellow travellers with not only two left hearts but also two left heads talked that way, yet always kept a safe distance from the carnage; those blinkered fellows were reluctant to criticise Yugoslavia because they could not have thought about an alternative. Anyway, if it did come to its break-up, it would be a pity not to save all its tourist attractions and keep them in one spot, along with those colourful Great Serbian Komitadji, Rankovi?, Popovi?, and the middle-aged Montenegrin bootlegger and charmer of the West, Djilas; this alone was the point at which the West felt threatened - by the giant slug of indifference for its protégé. The Great Yugoslav Grey was the real reason why the noise of the Croatian nationalist euphoria had to be channelled through the proper system. Trust not the false idols of the ‘Croatian Spring’, which were so palliative. Trust not all those eager faces of Croatian crypto-communists who would have thrown all your socialist buzzwords back at you until Croatian independence was safe inside their pockets, and they could then breathe a sigh of relief after the euphoric exertion. By tradition, the Yugoslav Grey XE "Yugoslav Grey" was a battlefield where the incessant and fanatical struggle for the retention of power by the predominantly Great Serbian communists was an antithesis of the democratic aims of the Croatian ‘socialism with a human face’ in spite of the fact that Tito found it offensive in the past: "We were defamed and are being defamed at present, in accordance with a master plan. All the occupiers, all the quislings declared that our National Liberation struggle in Yugoslavia represents purely a communist plot . . . Bolshevisation of the land, a communist attempt to gain power . . ." end of FFtAt that time, Tito wanted to kill two birds with one stone XE "Tito wanted to kill two birds with one stone" and pandered to the as yet non-existent audience, though he knew very well how many worrisome tentacles linked his revolution with Lenin’s model of turning the Imperialist war into a civil one. If nothing else, it still gives one heart to know, as the events in Croatia in 1971 have shown, that a revolution can be conjured out of thin air and have far more attraction for the wits on the international scene because of it.How did the ‘National Liberation Struggle’ (which probably killed most of the wrong people) and the struggle for the Yugoslav regime's three hundred 'Objective necessities' blow egalitarianism away XE "Objective necessities blow egalitarianism away" became the key question? ‘Objective necessities’ were defined as the antitheses to the actions of the Class Enemies, External Pressures, Internal Enemies, Nationalists, Fascists, Technocrats, Rotten Liberals, Ustashas, Deviationists, Revisionists, Monarcho-Fascists, Clero-Fascists, Chauvinists, Anarchists, and Bureaucrats. If something was decreed ‘objectively necessary’, no further questions were asked, and in this way the Belgrade New Class leadership maintained this violent system in a steady state and entrenched itself even more immovably in its position of power.The Croatian Mass Movement started to bombard Belgrade with articulate and identifiable demands for national equality and to document these demands with evidence. The protest within the system had to be developed to the point at which its message would be clearly heard.It was the propaganda for the perpetually dialectically directed and unattainable aim of the Brotherhood and Unity, rather than equality in this hostile environment that irritated the people of the Movement.Strangely, the Zagreb polemics of 1971 XE "Zagreb polemics of 1971" , with their sometimes-ambiguous messages, eventually penetrated Belgrade. What the people in Zagreb wanted them to do was to refer to Lenin’s Notes: ". . . Self-determination in the Marxist programme cannot have any other meaning, from the historic-economic point of view, other than political Self-determination, State Independence and the formation of the National State." However, keeping the mirage of the ‘National Liberation’ alive and in perspective as a counter argument became taxing for Belgrade. After twenty-five years, it was harder to understand the meaning of it all. In spite of all the appalling sacrifices, all the old problems remained unresolved. Did the meaning of revolution simply consist of making revolutions, or did it lie in the resolution of urgent social problems? To a rationalist, a single human life is of more value than any doctrine, even a Socialist one.In real terms, nothing had changed. It was as if time was frozen and the Yugoslavs whistled gaily as they turned another corner. After the recurring euphoria of the Croatian 'Spring' Movement, the Yugoslav hardliners’ policy-making got the better of them; they reverted back to the use of force and the cycle was then complete, which is exactly the meaning of dialectics. Even so, that bloody Yugoslav State was kept pinned down long enough for everyone willing to get twitchy and rebellious once again.The old messages became less and less defined and more and more circuitous. Or, at any rate, they became less articulate and coherent. The attraction, which the utopian programme had for Belgrade, irritated the Croats who were keen to reach reasoned solutions, debated at length in the dimly-lit cafes of Zagreb’s Old Town.Unhappily, these debates developed only messages of despair, full of surreal details, and the realisation that the Croats had only miniscule power in their own hands made them even more depressed. In the end, poetry rather than bloodshed came to the fore, which, however elevating, had little relevance to political reality.The Belgrade leitmotif about the Croatian Mass Movement as a chauvinist nationalism became coherent only after drinking three bottles of Serbian ?ljivovica. In spite of the rumours, the Croat Movement was caused by spontaneous combustion. It thrashed out the Serbian tribalism and uncritical acceptance of its myths, nourished by unrivalled primitivism and fear of change, particularly in Croatia.The Belgrade Ministry of Information XE "Belgrade Ministry of Information" , whose job it was to run its finger down the Who’s Who in the Croatian Nationalism for 1971 attempted to design a performance-related system in which the Croatian Nationalism had to feature prominently, but was short on hard facts for it to acquire any significance.The sheer pressure of the popular opposition in Croatia seriously threatened the Yugoslav establishment. Yet, Belgrade’s 25-year old dialectical tricks were still stretching to keep the conflict at simmering point, although it had become not only an irritation but also a nuisance in the new European political situation. Judging by its traditional position, it was clear that Belgrade in the long run would not give away its power without bloodshed. Nevertheless, it somehow came about that the relaxation of crippling Centralism in the period of 1965-71, on the one hand, aroused hopes and, on the other, built up tensions. The indigenous conflict, nurtured by a revulsion against the Yugoslav utopian vision, escalated in 1971 with compelling force. Everyone began to think on their feet or had powerful views on decentralisation and self-management. Then suddenly, the timid little Croatian students who had simply parroted Belgrade slogans three years before acquired charisma and recognition in their own right. It illuminated those who could make something trite seem to have compelling significance and those who could raise an interest in something intrinsically boring, like Yugoslavia. The Great Serbs were heard to say, "The students are crap, but we must take them seriously!"After two late night deliberations, the students of the Croatian University in Zagreb issued the following: XE "Students of Croatian University in Zagreb issued the following Manifesto" M A N I F E S T O The students of the Croatian University in Zagreb support the reforms within the social-political system, which reforms would establish the Socialist Republic of Croatia as a sovereign National State of the Croatian People.We support these reforms together with the support already given by the Zagreb City Council.We offer our full support to the policies outlined in the Report made by Dr. Savka Dab?evi?-Ku?ar at the 22nd Conference of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Croatia. We believe that this Report represents a realistic base for a dialogue between all the revolutionary and progressive forces of our Society.We condemn all the attempts to present certain isolated ‘nationalist excesses’ as characteristic of the present Social Political Revival in Croatia.We dismiss those people whose political actions are aimed at retribution against the Croatian Intelligentsia, Croatian students and the Croatian Institutions. We believe that the individuals who pursue that path have not been in the past, and cannot be in the future, a guarantee for real social and political reforms. We point out most strongly that the revolutionary and radical reforms in our Society cannot be brought about until action is taken to fundamentally change the system of selecting the cadres running the social and other institutions in Croatia, as well as in the whole of Yugoslavia.As the rhetoric in itself is not sufficient expression of confidence in the League of Communists of Croatia, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia and in the word of Comrade Tito, we have decided to undertake positive action - a stoppage of work at the Croatian University.By this action, we morally and actively express our solidarity with the interests of the working class of Croatia.We were forced to undertake this action because of the continuous procrastination about a solution of the foreign exchange, the banking and foreign trade policies that at the moment do not accord with the tenets of socialism.We demand that the Croatian University remains on strike until the responsible factors in this country change radically these policies, the resolution of which we maintain would bring about a profound change of status of the working class in our Society.We strongly condemn all those forces, which attempt to present the left-wing intelligentsia and especially the Croatian students as Nationalists and Chauvinists.We propose an immediate Conference of the Students Union of the City of Zagreb, and the Students Union of Croatia, to enable these Forums to organise the stoppage of work also at other Croatian Universities. We pledge our full support for President Tito from whom this initiative for a radical reform of the foreign exchange policies, and also reforms of other numerous problems in our Society originated.Signed: The Executive CommitteeThe Manifesto was quite clear in its demand for equality, especially in the economic sphere. The Slovene students immediately gave their support to the demands of their Croatian colleagues and pointed out that these demands are applicable to almost all the Republics.Drazen Budi?a, the Croatian students' leader XE "Budi?a, Drazen - Croatian students' leader" , warned the students to be wary of provocateurs who could use the smallest excess to pounce: "Either the monopoly of the New Class goes, or we go, and you all know what will happen if the New Class goes . . . Beautiful corruption has produced a not-so-beautiful bureaucracy, but if we are to prevent catastrophe, it must be by a more sophisticated social system, not by dropping out.”Out of necessity, the students' Manifesto had to be somewhat ambiguous (which the Croatian communist Parry neither condemned nor explicitly approved), otherwise it would have been doomed from the start. The sense of urgency was a critical part of this action. The students showed some impatience with the progress of the Reform, in the way that Tito himself showed two months before the strike:“up there in our Leadership there are men on whose deaf ears our words fall.”The surfeit of well co-ordinated demonstrations did serve to bring to the attention of the general public certain people of whom they could hardly have heard before but who later became unforgettable, namely three very bright Zagreb student activists - Drazen Budi?a, the Student Leader, Ante Paradjik, President of the Students’ Union XE "Paradjik, Ante - President of Students’ Union" , and Zvonimir ?i?ak, Student Leader of the Faculty of Philosophy. XE "?i?ak, Zvonimir - Student Leader of Faculty of Philosophy" All of these had faces to remember, all were able to argue the rotten situation of the de facto occupied Croatia. One could hardly have expected a Great Serb to understand when Budi?a raised the issues of procrastination about solving Croatia’s urgent problems, or why Paradjik was angry at being labelled a ‘Nationalist’, or grasp ?i?ak’s comparison of Yugoslavism to a certain kind of religious fanaticism. But all three of them possessed visible charisma. They asked questions in the Wittgensteinian way XE "Wittgensteinian way" , because doubts existed and they demanded answers because the questions existed.The vital characteristic of these young men was their refusal to be manipulated, and their ability to wring support from unexpected quarters; for example, the Dean and Professors of the University of Split, the workers of the Rade Kon?ar electrical concern XE "Rade Kon?ar electrical concern" in Zagreb, the workers of the Nikola Tesla telecommunication factory XE "Nikola Tesla telecommunication factory" in Zagreb, the workers from the town of Vinkovci, and from the Zagreb Dustmen’s Union XE "Zagreb Dustmen’s Union" . 4,500 workers were present at the mass meeting in the Rade Kon?ar factory (23rd November 1971) when a certain communist Party chiseller got up and commenced to read a prepared diatribe against the students' action. The noise and whistling with which he was received showed that traditional Croatian oppositional wit was still alive and kicking. The time when workers automatically acclaimed Party crap was over and gone. With hindsight, it was the media correspondents covering this meeting who were able to twist effortlessly anything they were asked to do on paper, but who needed a similar definition when they were up on their feet. They lacked any sense of humour and proved Sartre's insight that "communism was incompatible with the honest exercise of the journalistic profession”. Unable to appreciate the momentous nature of the occasion and peeved by the Workers’ enmity, correspondents left the meeting disgruntled. On the same day, 2,000 workers of the Zagreb factory ‘Nikola Tesla’ saw off another Party provocateur. The Zagreb dustmen refused to pay their union contributions and instead gave the money to the students and the Red Cross.The unhealthy situation in the so-called ‘Trades Unions’ (Sindikati XE "Trades Unions - Sindikati" ) of Croatia demands it own paragraph.Milutin Balti? XE "Balti?, Milutin" , the Trade Union's President, a Serb from Krajina, who was totally humourless and who, in many ways, personified all the underlying problems of this quasi-police organisation, summoned a conference of the ‘Trades Unions’, at which he bored everyone to tears with his Stalinist diatribes. Once again, the workers rejected his dialectic con-tricks and demanded that the Trades Unions got on with solving the urgent economic and political problems affecting the livelihood of the working class, and to stop messing about with a political pantomime which matched the ever-changing Party moods. Balti?, a slippery character if ever there was one, demanded that the meeting carries on its 'struggle' through the ‘official channels’, which the workers wanted abolished.The fact that the workers of Croatia were not in love with the Trades’ Unions ‘leadership’ was made clear in a letter to the newspaper Vjesnik XE "Vjesnik" (Zagreb, 24th November 1971), which attacked Balti?’s ad hominem, accusing him of engaging in ‘certain peripheral activities’ and following the policies of the Croatian communist Party leadership only with the greatest reluctance. In practice, he paid less than minimal attention to the basic rights of the workers. Balti?, said the letter, was a ‘deaf ear floater’ and hoped that the Croatian Mas-Pok Movement would soon collapse. The Belgrade aficionados were on the alert and retaliated with a counter-blast about the danger threatening the ‘spiritual totality’ of the notorious Serbian minority in Croatia XE "Serbian minority in Croatia" .To the initiated, the failure of the Croatian Mass Movement was not unexpected. Although its programme was progressive, it fell into the trap of trying to rationalise the problems of the Yugoslav Utopian state which, by definition, were beyond rational solution. Belgrade now threatened a closer relationship with the Soviet Union. Marshall Grechko’s visit to Belgrade in 1972 XE "Marshall Grechko’s visit to Belgrade in 1972" had the effect of synchronising the rattling of sabres with the JA, which was to play such a bloody role in the post-Tito era.All we can do is to remember the long post-mortem of the Croatian Spring of 1971/72 as it was picked up by the international press, during the period when Yugoslavia bared its hairy chest and admitted that it had no solutions, just problems, problems, ad infinitum problems.The purge of the 'nationalists' followed, and tough measures were taken against some Croatian publications, which had supported the Movement. Tito, as ever, an unreliable 'ally', changed his mind and stated that the Croatian Communist Party was infested with ‘rotten liberalism’ and that the ten-day long Croatian students' strike amounted to a ‘Counter-Revolutionary’ action. University lecturers, who had supported the students’ strike, were sacked. “Counter-revolutionary activities should be suppressed by revolutionary means.” Tito was warning about the dangers of 'nationalism'. The con was that there was no revolution, only Tito's punitive action. So, to look back at these events through the eyes of the Western press of the day see Appendix.The events described therein were only a small part of the year-long Marxist games, with Tito in the main role. Hugely overweight, with a Brioni hangover and a microphone two-feet away, he was trying, without any embarrassment, to pull off yet another dialectic trick on his own home ground among his own crowd (the army and the Secret Police), camera zooming in on the choicest bits - and trying to say it all in Croatian (or was it Serbian?), heavy on the Russian accent and onions. An ongoing Yugoslav situation. It is still not clear who suggested to Tito that he should retire to the fashionable old Habsburg Island resort of Brioni. Maybe a wind from across the Adriatic inspired him to copy the frenetic Roman pursuit of pleasure. One story from those ‘in the know’ maintains that the place had been described years previously in Roman Satire, in all probability as an island “where old men become boys again”.Comrade Tito, we all loved you, particularly when you were being incredibly boring. The times we’ve sat there thinking but, damn it all, we are not really interested in how ‘self-managing democracy’ works . . . We were not really interested, but we were fascinated that anyone found it interesting . . . particularly the British (with a minimum knowledge of Croatian or Serbian) found it gripping. Lines such as: The “Statehood of the Yugoslav Republics being contained in the determinism of the self-managing development”; or Tito’s very own incoherent contribution: “For Socialist Yugoslavia there is no dilemma regarding the priority of the ‘national’ concept over the ‘class’ one, and vice versa”. To which Croatian communists responded with ‘ambiguity’.“In the concrete conditions of the multi-national state, class and national emancipation cannot be divided from and counter-poised against each other; so that in fact they represent dialectic reciprocity.” While the communist Yugoslav State was busy clarifying its empty ideological guidelines, XE "Yugoslav State busy clarifying its empty ideological guidelines" the great majority of people were on the poverty line, unemployed, and with over one million workers (mostly Croats) gastarbeiting abroad.The discussion about class emancipation through the self-managing system had therefore become circular - from Marxist dialectics to gossip to money talk, and back to dialectics. As somebody already summed it up - there were so many ways to go nuts in that self-managing state. Yet one could not help wondering how it would feel to belong to the Yugoslav avant-garde XE "Yugoslav avant-garde" .What a state: the wheeling, dealing, double-crossing: the sheer ‘self-managing democracy’ of it all by the ideological opposition to national emancipation. The export of slave labour was intensified. On the other hand, if the Class and National concepts were merely two forms of the same thing, why should not, for example, the class concept become redundant? No, said Tito firmly: National emancipation as a ‘bourgeois concept’ was a ‘logical’ candidate for elimination without fear about the loss of ‘Statehood Identity’, since the latter was contained within the system of self-management.Ergo, if the elimination of the national concept meant ‘the final solution’ of the national question in Yugoslavia, a large mass of people outside the self-management system (half a million gastarbeiters abroad) would have found themselves in a social vacuum. Thus, the self-managing wow factor meant that these workers were, by sending home foreign currency, indirectly supporting the system of their own destruction.Ironically, the characteristic of real emancipation may well be that its true nature might pass unobserved. Sometimes it saves a lot of bother to take things at face value. However, in former Yugoslavia, one was surrounded by contradictory forces, contradictory evidence, and contradictory motives and beset by doubt, crawling into sophistic corners in order to replace all these with socialist fetishes. Surely, such a situation made the best excuse to sit back and play impotent. All the nations in that madhouse of a State were paranoid since they could not express their positive traditions for fear of police oppression. Negating these traditions for ideological reasons was, by definition, aggression by other means.In 1971 the Croats dreamed of having some sort of workable political system. But those dreams could operate only on an anti status quo action. The entire attempt to rationalise the Yugoslav system was a great ride, but hardly a journey. Was there anywhere that one could have looked for another system? Could one get it from a scrap yard?An alternative rational political solution XE "An alternative rational political solution" needs somehow to retain the advantages of existing traditions, while discarding their negative input. Somehow these traditions have to take on new and different qualities. They must be relaxed and unexpected. Could the emancipation of the individual (political and economic equality) have developed without the interference of the communist apparatus of the Yugoslav State, without corruption, police outfits masquerading as Embassies XE "Police outfits masquerading as Embassies" , Central Committees containing armed arsenals, protection rackets masquerading as Trades’ Unions? However, to remove all this junk would have simply meant removing the entire Yugoslav system. Clearly, no rational political system was possible within a state with so many handicaps. The removal of these handicaps would automatically mean the removal of Yugoslavia.What about the ‘Yugoslav’ reluctance to being removed?The ideological enforcement of the dialectical jiggery-pokery caused Yugoslavia to be less rational than any other state in Europe. It remained suspicious of human rights, sniggered at the idea of confederalism, was terrified of liberalism and, what was worse, failed to recognise the irony of its slogan of Brotherhood and Unity. The value of restraint was the trickiest issue of the former Yugoslav scene. Yet even with extreme restraint, the whole set-up was turned into a battleground. If some of the more intelligent nations, caged in the former Yugoslav Hicksville, did not realise in time that the withering away of Yugoslavia was inevitable, they would have probably still remained trapped in its inherent violence for several decades.What was really lurking behind the Yugoslav hedgerows?Yugoslavia maintained that it had the quality to become all things in all places, advertised with a pungent rhetoric. Essentially it needed a permanent input of ‘Croatian nationalism’ to keep itself going. The value of the Yugoslav system lay in this input, which in its turn justified Belgrade's centralism, but with a warning that if it allowed its free run, the socialism contained within the framework of the separate Yugoslav republics would eventually lead to National Socialism.Wow!Yet ‘soft soc’ (socialism) developing naturally within the boundaries of the established traditions of the individual 'Yugoslav' nations contrasted strongly with Belgrade ‘hard-soc’. The ‘soft-soc’ was there when you wanted it; the ‘hard-soc’ went with ‘look-no-hands’ propaganda, calling attention to itself and its clever-by-halfness. It simply did not go together with cosy things, like roses and the ivy-clad walls of the Croatian landscape.This raises the question of the status of the Croatian bourgeoisie that has been maligned with being the bug carrier of Croatian Nationalism, notwithstanding the fact that in a strict class sense, an independent bourgeois class had, in reality, never existed in Croatia.The paradox lies in the fact that the Yugoslav communist New Class popped up under the conditions of ‘hard soc’, and that its ideology was, de facto, the ideology of warped bourgeois nationalism. At the same time, the New Class hid the proletariat of Croatia behind the bushes, pauperised, economically passive, unemployed, and exported in droves to Germany. In fact, never have so many Croats 'collaborated' with the Germans as during Tito's Yugoslavia of the 70’s and 80’s. The consequence of all this for the Croats was a dangerous drop in the birth rate, cultural suppression, and lack of adequate representation in the Federal Institutions, the Government, the army and the police.What the Croats wanted was a quietly liberalised Croatia XE "Quietly liberalised Croatia" , and on the other hand, "If there was shooting in Croatia, it was carried out subjectively, out of the conviction that this was the only method of struggle for a nation which wishes to raise the alarm in order to show how, in the middle of Europe, as a European nation, it is still subject to colonial slavery." Most of the Croats are, or have been, open to progressive ideas, but their accumulated experience was inevitably linked to their own democratic traditions and their own environment. In spite of that, Croatia could not have lived only off its own wits while thousands of its best-educated and able people now make an essential contribution to many foreign countries. Croatia could not pull itself up by its bootstraps, because the Yugoslav system was impossible to rationalise, in the sense of being made workable for the Croats.So how about a Croatia that was the product of its people? A community really ad hoc, a great give-and-take agglomeration, loosely knit and not burdened with the utopian Yugoslav social engineering experimentation. Nobody has the right to deprive anyone of his own full life and demand that he sacrifices himself in utopian experiments. The height of arrogance was achieved in a statement made by a former Yugoslav diplomat: "Those who do not like our system are free to emigrate". Nobody has the right to deprive any human being of his habitat and, although the opportunity to voluntarily emigrate from Yugoslavia showed some improvement in the later post-war years, it was unsatisfactory. There was a whole gamut of specifically Yugoslav crimes, the chief among them being misrepresentation of the Croato-Serbian conflict in the Western media.The world of the Western media XE "World of the Western media" is a fantasy world that enables us rapidly to transcend our misgivings about ‘familiar’ ideas, such as freedom. To support holding different nations together against their will and to approve of putting them through the mill of communist engineering was an activity of gross injustice. Like any other political process, though, it depended upon the knowledge of the material used. In this case, it was diverse human material that was erratic and incomprehensible to the elephantine body of the Western media responsible for commenting and synthesising the situation in Croatia. The Western media had to be cajoled and occasionally tempered by the rule of reason, but in their case, this was in rather short supply. Yet understanding the Yugo technique was brutally simple. One was pursued by the regime until exposed, brainwashed or made to confess in order to enter into meaningful self-criticism, and that, if you were lucky. Self-criticism in Yugoslavia included notions of ‘criticism from above’ as well as ‘criticism from below’ as illustrated by a popular joke: the Belgrade New Class, pissing down from a factory chimney onto the working man on the ground (criticism from above) yelling "now you piss at us". A faint voice was heard from the ground: "We tried to piss on you up there, but whatever we do, we are pissing on ourselves," (criticism from below).Rational people found it much easier just to slip away from the Yugoslav paradise. However, if walking out on that loony state was seen as reactionary and even criminal, there was always a consolation in the surreal: "We have devised a self-managing system of industrial democracy, which offers a fair share to all professions, all nations, and all social strata to participate in the system." This was the kind of statement that made the Yugoslav system so ideologically dreary. One should take note of the phrase: "We have devised . . . " and also the order of preference: "all professions, all nations and all social strata . . ."The cash nexus XE "Cash nexus" was the speciality of Belgrade. Yet, as its irrational system, could not devise a rational distribution of the means of production, it could not make any progress.Such Maffiaesque practice XE "Maffiaesque practice" could not possibly have safeguarded its separate republics from economic exploitation by each other. Since the socialist aim of "to each according to his needs" could never be attained, the Yugoslav social engineers started messing about with the market economy which, in spite of being considered archaic, was welcomed by the Party. Like everything else in Yugoslavia this had a pretty name: "Active Participation of the Organised Socialist Forces in the economy". The fact is that, with or without the centralist control, the whole system would eventually collapse, yet somehow it (self) managed. As the Yugoslav utopian political programme became ever harder to achieve because of inevitable changes, it became deflected from its original path. A constant fluctuation between centralisation and de-centralisation caused confrontations, which in turn were suppressed by another form centralisation whenever Tito got indigestion. The Belgrade New Class, in order to justify its existence, reached again and again into the well-stocked bag of 57 varieties of ‘key socialist clichés’, in this case the ‘Active and reasserted role of the Party’ which, put into plain English, meant Police terror.The extreme deviousness of Belgrade’s New Class’s clowns XE "Belgrade’s New Class’s clowns" was only fully revealed when questioned: "Who was supposed to decide on the Party role?" The answer was as dispiriting as it was repetitive: "The 'leading' people in the Party came to the conclusion that the previous course was wrong, and we are now in the process of reasserting the Party role". It is obvious that the arguments about the political and economic interests of the various 'Yugoslav' nations could never have been resolved on such a basis.Such a situation produced a rather amusing kind of Great-Serbian relativism: ‘Croats have their fate in our hands and we have their fate in our hands, but we are in a relatively better position!'A disenchanted look at Tito’s Yugoslavia (just like a disenchanted look at Hollywood by an old film star) may be summed up in the words which we might attribute to Djilas: "It [was] impossible to change anything essential. Probably in the distant future self-management may prove itself, but at the moment it is impossible because now the Party control is too strong, too one-sided and too dogmatic." It was curious how Djilas, who was accused of revisionism XE "Djilas accused of revisionism" (a mortal sin in communism), was free to walk around Belgrade chewing gum, a case which showed dynamic congruence with the old Croatian saying that: ‘one crow does not gauge out the eyes of another one’.The Croatian Mass Movement of 1971 obviously tried to achieve the impossible: to instil some reason into the Yugoslav system while failing to understand that police brains were not governed by the rules of common sense:"We cannot put on velvet gloves and discuss moral issues when dealing with the regions which we consider to be ours since time immemorial," was an ironic (pre-WWII) comment by Krle?a about the state of the Great Serbian mind on the subject of Croatia. This remained valid also in Tito's Reich XE "Tito's Reich" and was justified by myriad conspiracy theories. The case of Croatia was a case of sinister forces lurking permanently behind its hedgerows.In an existential sense, Tito's Yugoslav state barn was an amateurish conversion job that gave preference to the concept of Unity instead of Brotherhood. It was a depressing political market of comers and goers (goers always finishing up in the better Western world). I have spent so much time trying to explain to the English-speaking readers that the year 1971 turned out to be as bad as any other year for the resolution of the Croato-Yugoslav conflict. Tempers were frayed at a meeting between Tito and the Executive Committee of the CK SKH in Zagreb on 4th July 1971 when Tito splathered that“Croatia became the key problem of Yugoslavia in respect of its savage nationalism”, a concept to which Yugoslavia itself religiously subscribed.In the discriminating world of the class struggle XE "Discriminating world of the class struggle" , the question was raised – will nationalism or socialism win? Soon after the adoption of the Amendments to the Constitution (they were deliberately ambiguous as was everything in communist praxis so it could be interpreted at will), there occurred a confrontation within the CK SKH itself between the hard-liners and the ‘Liberals’ on the subject of the interpretation of these Amendments. Clearly something more contemporary was needed. This was achieved by the ‘nationalist’ opposition, which gained strength and took control of Zagreb University. The students went on strike and demanded the immediate removal of the hardliners.Tito ordered the Croatian communist leaders to report to him at Karadjordjevic XE "Karadjordjevo" (the dreaded hunting grounds of the Serbian kings) on 30th November and 1st December 1971 (the anniversary of the unification of Yugoslavia in 1918). The choice of the place itself was symbolically much closer to the Karadjordjevi? dictatorship than to self-managing socialism. There were no hecklers. At the 21st Session of the Presidency of the SKJ, held on 2nd and 3rd December 1971, Tito attacked the rampant nationalist movement in Croatia, particularly its fulcrum, the weekly journal ‘Matica’. The strike at Zagreb University was a ‘counter-revolutionary’ activity, he stated to the spellbound audience. Castigating nationalism as well as unitarism, Tito rejected the breaking-up of the Yugoslav working class by the Republics, because the working class as a whole stood at the foundation of Yugoslavia itself. He did not mince his words –"this is the node where political power will stay".The debate on this subject took place throughout the country on Tito’s explicit order. The communist Party Central Committees (of the Republics), he pointed out, must be responsible for what was going on not only in their own Republic but also in the whole of Yugoslavia. That the Presidency of the SKJ had the right to intervene in the workings of the Republican leaderships was presented as news, although, ironically enough, this is what had been practiced for years. Strong actions against the anti-self managing and anti-socialist forces must be taken immediately, it was stated. The Presidency of the SKJ hoped that the SKH would act with determination against the counter-revolution.At the 23rd session of the CK SKH, held on 12/13th December, an ‘Action Programme’ was agreed in the ‘struggle against the nationalist forces’. As a result, Mrs. Savka Dab?evi?, President of the CKH and Miko Tripalo, a member of the Presidency of the SKJ and SFRJ, were forced to resign.Mass resignations were roller-balling in parallel with the sacking of members of the various committees and their removal from the membership of the SKH. Some 947 people were removed from the Party in Croatia alone and the leaders of the Croatian ‘Mass Movement’ were prosecuted and put on trial. At the second Conference of the SKJ on 25th to 27th January 1972 in Belgrade, a further ‘Action Plan’ was agreed against the danger of ‘nationalism, separatism, hegemonism and technocratic usurpation of the power of the working class’. As a result of the considerable resistance to the conclusions of these conferences, Tito decreed that “the SKJ itself becomes ‘an organisation of the revolutionary action’ in order to stop itself turning into a ‘coalition of the liberal organisations’ in the Republics which would split the working class by national and republican affiliation”. While it 'believed’ in freedom and self-determination’, the Yugoslav communist Establishment made sure that the Croats had a little more education in the ‘Message of Blood’ XE "Message of Blood" before discussing any possibility of democratic reforms. This state was built on the blood of the heroes of the National Liberation Movement XE "National Liberation Movement" and we shall wade in blood again, rather than allow the destruction of our great achievement, that of Brotherhood and Unity was more or less how the message ran. Until then, all the Croats had to do was to continue to make sure that Belgrade central banks were regularly supplied with hard currency and were squeaky-clean.Yet in reality, the revolution and the liberation were a lot of hot air, and, in any event, when “what-ever-it-was” was over and the 'oppressed' took power, they immediately began acting like oppressors.At the same time, Tito hit out at the ‘technocratic and pseudo-liberal’ ideas in the communist leadership of Serbia, pointing out 'the danger' that the ‘modern Serbia’ might turn itself one of these days into a capitalist macro-economic-financial system. He strongly opposed the nationalisation of the former ‘state capital’ (finance from the holiday resorts on the Croatian coast) of the Federation by means of which Serbia tried to free itself from the tutelage of the Federal political leadership.At the meeting between Tito and the communist leadership of Serbia in Belgrade on 9th to 12th October 1972, Tito hit at the concentration of capital and foreign trade in Belgrade, which according to his rhetoric, became a nest of ‘liberalism and technocratism’. Tito, against the opposition in Belgrade, insisted that in spite of the decentralisation of the economy, the unity of the SKJ must be even firmer and based on the principle of ‘democratic centralism’. Incredibly, he spoke as if he was not perched on the top of this nest.Marko Nikezi?, XE "Nikezi?, Marko" President of the CK SKS was removed. Without further ado, the Party cleansing proceeded smoothly. The ‘working class’, a long forgotten Marxist cliché, was suddenly remembered – but the twin problems of unemployment and emigration came to haunt the Party. On paper, the class role of the SKJ as the leading ideological-political force of the socialist revolution was reaffirmed. It was the Party that was still responsible for the ‘revolutionary character of the rule by the working classes. Theoretically, the SKJ remained a united ‘revolutionary’ organisation, but it now strained to put this rhetoric into practice. Between 1973 and February 1974, the second leg of the Constitutional reforms was accomplished XE "Second leg of Constitutional reforms was accomplished" – the new Constitutions of the SFRJ and of the Republics were proclaimed on the 21st February 1974.The reforms produced a new invention, the so-called ‘Delegate’ system. The duty of each basic ‘self-managing organisation’ was to appoint its own delegates to represent them at the higher and the highest institutional forums. The ‘General Peoples Defence System’ XE "General Peoples Defence System’" and the ‘Territorial Army’ XE "Territorial Army" were de facto the revival of the long-forgotten Marx’s idea of ‘the armed people’. The ‘leading role’ in this defence system remained with the SK of each Republic. The Jugoslav National Army became the mainstay of political stability from within rather than from without. The truth of this would be confirmed by the events of 1990-1995.The 10th Congress of the SKJ was held in Belgrade on 27th to 30th May 1974 affirming the unity of the SKJ. The SKJ had, at that time, 1,192,466 members. The confusing dogma of ‘the system of socialist self-management within its class context, as a specific form of dictatorship of the proletariat’ became infallible’. Due to its change of mind, the State had not withered away as predicted, but its role as a defender of the socialist system and the independence and the integrity of Yugoslavia as a whole was reaffirmed. ‘Democratic centralism’ XE "Democratic centralism" and the role of the SKJ as the ‘unified revolutionary organisation’ in the whole State received formal blessing once again. In 1977, a new foreign currency law allowed the Republics to dispose of their own capital. After 32 years, the SKJ had, at the end of 1977, 1,629,029 members, a significant drop of 563,437 members since 1974.The 11th Congress of the SKJ in Belgrade on 20th to 23rd June 1978 repeated again parrot fashion the ‘need for the struggle against bureaucratic-centralism’ as well as ‘federalist tendencies’. Early in 1979, Edward Kardelj, XE "Kardelj, Edward" the closest of Tito's war-time collaborators died. Soon afterwards, on 4th May 1980, Tito himself, after his hunger for power, was ‘turned into a one-legged God’ by the self-inflicted humiliation of having one of his legs amputated.A total of 209 delegates from 127 countries, 35 heads of State, 8 Vice-Presidents, 24 Prime Ministers (including Maggie Thatcher XE "Margaret Thatcher" ) and 46 Foreign Ministers, in fact everyone who was anyone in the political celebrity directory, turned up for his funeral in Belgrade. (Insert in the notes ‘Do vraga pretvaram se u Boga’ – see glossary.) The funeral orations were full of cynicism, but they also got all the wrong headlines. It is curious that immediately upon Tito’s death, membership of the SKJ at the end of 1981 was 2,117,083 (9.5% of the population - the communists in Croatia made up 7.6% of its population), i.e., an increase of 488,054 members, which ironically enough, proved that through his continuous self-promotion, Tito seemed to have been the main obstacle for the popularity of the Party.Although the pinnacle of the so-called ‘Non-Aligned Movement’ XE "Non-Aligned Movement’" , Yugoslavia’s external policy was not ‘neutral’, and although it rejected the ‘Brezhnev doctrine’ of ‘limited sovereignty’ and perceived this doctrine to be the greatest threat to its independence, Yugoslavia practiced its facsimile internally. On 10th November 1975, the ‘Osim Agreements’ XE "Osim Agreements" between Yugoslavia and Italy were finally ratified, establishing the definite frontiers with Italy, the only success of Yugoslavia that benefited Croatia, as well as Slovenia.The artificially created ‘ideological’ conflict between ‘?t?tism’ and ‘self-management’ was the chief time-wasting preoccupation of Yugoslavia in the 70’s and 80’s. In practice, ‘the social accumulation’ (finance) remained mainly in the hands of the Belgrade banks. Instead of capital being passed as decreed to the ‘basic allied organisations’ (udru?eni rad), they were by-passed and the cash was concentrated in the hands of the Establishments in each Republic at the expense of the ‘self-managing organisations’.This economic pressure from within and from without strengthened the ‘?t?tism’ of the Republics as against the Etatism of Yugoslavia as a whole. The repercussions were felt in the SKJ, which in practice had turned itself into a federal organisation.In the period between 1971 and 1980, the State expenditure was 8% higher than its Gross National Product - GNP. Money was printed regardless in order to cover this deficit and this in turn increased the rate of inflation.The fractured Yugoslav economy XE "Fractured Yugoslav economy" could not compete in the international markets (imported oil alone cost 7 billion dollars). The economy was surviving upon imports. In 1976, the international debt of Yugoslavia amounted to 7 billion dollars and in 1981 it had increased to a sky-high 20 billion dollars. Unemployment was out of control. The lowest unemployment was in Croatia (3%) and Slovenia (1.3% - the lowest in the world), as against for example Serbia with 7.2% unemployed. In 1981 alone, 870,000 people emigrated to become the ‘gastarbeiters’ in Western Europe, mainly in Germany.In 1981, the population of Yugoslavia was 22,427,585.The ‘increase in the living standards’ (in 1965 54-55% of the GNP) was based on borrowed money, i.e. inflation – the spend-now-pay-later principle. In July 1983, the ‘stabilisation programme’ (aped by the International Community in 2000/2001) was enforced on the basis of the conclusions of the 12th Congress of the SKJ held in Belgrade on 19th to 23rd June 1982 at which session the Congress finally realised that ‘enough was enough’.In spite of the obvious fact that the Yugoslavia ship was going to hit an iceberg, nobody was at the helm. The Congress warmed up the stale soup of ‘the ideological and active unity of the revolutionary organisation of the working class’ under the SKJ. This frustrated any form of confederal State.It is ironical that under the dictatorship of the Monarchy (1918-41) the ‘conscience and responsibility’ of the communist Party led to take up the cause of the oppressed Croatian and other non-Serbian peoples in Yugoslavia. However, it was struck impotent by the brutal parody of the ‘new’ Yugoslavia (1945) in which the sons of these pioneers became its degenerate Godfathers XE "Degenerate Godfathers" . Yesterday the communists fired on Belgrade; today they fire on Zagreb. In 1991, this situation was repeated: bloody hatred arising out of the enforced utopian unity has encumbered Yugoslavia for over 70 years and it was difficult to see how it would end.Consequently, the Croat attempt in1971 to leave this bloody place through the first open window was not only more ethical, but also a more far-sighted step.As in tragic opera, things deteriorated in the last act. Nobody should be shocked to hear that Paveli? was neither the only, nor even the bloodiest member of the cast in that show, because there was a certain kind of bloody carnage that only Tito (as Stalin's pupil) could produce and it was hard to find anyone else to match it."All those who died fighting for the creation of the new Yugoslavia have not died in vain!" was one of Tito's frequent interjections. He failed to see what was so funny about such a statement. There was nothing new in the “new” State? The old myths had been reworked in a new script; it was neither a supranational state nor a union of independent states. There were several theories of how a state like this could work. It was hoped that communism would erase the social and political traditions and particularisms, but what transpired had little to do with this theory. It turned out to be simply impossible. The whole idea of Tito’s Yugoslavia lacked insight. Indeed no one of sound mind, except of course, the British could believe in it. Partisan ideologists wrote their jokes, rewrote them, and polished them. The romantic idea of Yugoslavism was officially abandoned in 1964 at the eighth Congress of the CPY.This was a rather masochistic move on the part of Tito's Partisans who regarded themselves as super-heroes. The Eighth Congress of the CPY (1964) produced a spate of memorable insights worth recording for posterity. We were told that the Croato-Serbian conflict ‘was rooted in Bureaucratic Centralism’, although it was not explained how or why. Yet the remedy for Bureaucratic Centralism was immediately dismissed with:"Do you realise how much this remedy would cost?" The whole country talked and talked about reforms and counter-reforms, straining to keep the system alive with the help of the Secret Police... No voluntary agreement on change could be applied because the democratisation process advocated by ‘liberal’ Croatian communists created the morbid apprehension in Belgrade that Yugoslavia might one day actually wind up as a democratic state.Now the reader may be puzzled as to why then, if the Croats could not beat the Belgrade circus, did they not join it? One of the most interesting reasons for this was the disjunction between Croatian and Serbian traditions and their mutual dislike of each other. 5.11 Information and Disinformation - Propaganda XE "Information and Disinformation - Propaganda" A bizarre book published in Belgrade as an ‘Official History of Yugoslavia’ (Prosveta, 1972) was, in effect, a propaganda drive, in which information and disinformation were all equally balanced. (One felt that the bloodthirsty days of the 1941-45 Croato-Yugoslav war were with us Croats again.) This encyclopaedia of historicists' deceptions XE "Encyclopaedia of historicists' deceptions" pursued with almost demented single-mindedness the grotesque aim of a utopian Yugoslavia. Yet none of its politically tendentious polemics and maladroit heroics tallied with generally accepted historical facts. The result, not surprisingly, was a grossly lopsided vision of the Serbo-Croat world.Frustrated by a lack of progress in crystallising unity (the country contained, as it were, a dozen or more centrifugal languages and ideologies), Yugoslavia foolishly tried to ignore the essential presence of two powerful forces of polarisation - the long statehood traditions of both Croatia and Serbia.The omission of this fundamental fact in ‘The History of Yugoslavia’ was deliberate. Let’s face it, ‘Yugoslavs’ (those who wished to deny their nationality) were far more interested in themselves than in examining their consciences. They had their self-appointed ‘mandate’ to which, until recently, no voices were raised in opposition. The Author’s note: I hope that the insights that inspired this book have shown that the lack of political progress in the re-evaluation of these traditions is now a little less obscure.abandonment of Hegel’s principle XE "Hegel’s principle" that the state be determined by the nation and not the nation by the state became inevitable. The ‘Yugoslav’ nation, whose existence was achieved by labelling, like giving a name to Brussels sprouts, ignored the sprouts themselves.In the ‘scientific’ approach of this ‘History’, Croatia’s one-thousand-year-old tradition of statehood was reduced to a kind of reactionary rhetoric. Any argument about whether the Yugoslav State determined the ‘Yugoslav Nation’ or vice-versa was feeble, since it was based on a giant deception.The system has shown itself to be entirely independent of the psychology of the majority of its human constituents. We may, therefore, conclude that its murderous tendencies were inherent in the system, not the people.The existence of the two Yugoslav states (1918-1941 and 1945-1990) was, depending upon one’s point of view, either the highest achievement in the realisation of the ‘South Slav’ common destiny, or a cataclysmic threat to Europe. Probing between the cracks revealed that the system was the chief enemy of reason, relying perpetually on deceptive slogans, pseudo-concepts, and perversions of simple truths. All these had been synthesised in a grand design slogan of ‘Brotherhood and Unity’.This slogan had the function of instilling an irrational and emotional belief, whose aim was to act as a ‘hidden persuader’ about the monolithic nature of the ‘Slav’ nations. Yet the tradition of reason cannot lead to Brotherhood. Friendship is compatible with choice, and choice is subject to reason. Brotherhood is incompatible with choice and is plainly an imposition.So what about the notion of unity? On the basis of the historical evidence, Croats and Serbs may well have decided that they were not really good material from which to build true friendship.There was an irksome reality there too - something that could be more correctly described as unity without brotherhood - and that unity was imposed by force. Since there were no institutions to safeguard the freedom of choice, and since the ruling New Class was ‘human’ after all, one was supposed to forgive them for their robbery and fraud.At the local level the individuals belonging to the New Class were prepared to compromise everything: integrity, ideals, and family. In fact, they compromised everything for their mediocre currency, the Yugoslav dinar. The dinar incentive had been the motivation for any criminal action, any corruption, any pseudo-argument, any propaganda, particularly in the pursuit of power and the motivation for the elimination of political opponents since 1918.So, this situation was nothing new.Krle?a reminisced in 199? on 'the Constitution' factor in the pre-WWII Kingdom:"Everything that happened in Croatia was just a syphilitic episode from beginning to the end. The whole ‘Constitution’ was reduced to the specification of the Secret Police handcuffs and the police gun butts, and the only real politics in this country was the politics of the gun, because without this tyranny, this Yugoslav Satrapian State would not have lasted 24 hours. That was its raison d'être. It's like this in almost every state, so why should Croatia be an exception? The whole Yugoslav Constitution was just a decorative comedy, and the 'Croatian Parliament' was not its front view but its rear view. If the situation was bad for us, we couldn't help it; this was the fact of life; we had inherited this fate, we were born in this crap . . ." The style and the wit, ambiguity and irony of Krle?a's quotation encapsulated the parched world of Yugoslavia, from the violence of its pre-war days to the present time (2009). Ten years or ten minutes in the lifestyle of that state hardly mattered. The perennial constitutional games were an inevitable outgrowth of that backward world. Nevertheless, that world eventually made it to the jet set club of Western Europe, which, incidentally, glossed over each and every one of Yugoslavia's seventy-three bloody years.The West has the capacity to acquire and to digest all information with a minimum of delay. It means that it is au fait with ‘The Times’, ‘Frankfurter Algemeine’ and ‘Figaro’ and possesses an ability to sniff out the real circumstances in which it finds itself. However, this same West was the first to express its indifference and ignorance about Croatia’s plight.This needs some explanation. Croats, in spite of their Western cultural and political heritage, always had a problem in their political links with the Western powers. The fact that the latter always tended to deliberately misunderstand the Croato-Yugoslav conflict did not help. However, there is a huge gulf between simply misunderstanding this conflict and supporting the repressive regime, which engenders it. As far as the Croats were concerned, their inspired people, such as Frano Supilo, Ivan Me?trovi?, and Stjepan Radi? tried hard over the years to forge political links with these powers, but to no avail. Somewhat more servile Croat politicians, like Vladko Ma?ek and Ivan ?uba?i?, who followed in their footsteps, failed equally.It is only comparatively recently that a mass exodus of Croatian intellectuals XE "Croatian intellectuals" made an impact in the Western world. In the United States, a number of Croatian emigrants (out of some 5 million people of Croat origin) attained high positions in politics and academe in Cleveland, New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles - a few of them became Congressmen. Yet between Croatia and the West, paradoxically, there has been nothing like the long-developed love affair that exists between aggressive Serbia and Britain, France and, to a lesser degree, U.S.A.. Somehow, the Western media (through the intervention of the powerful Serbian lobbies – e.g., ‘The Serbian Lobby’ in the UK XE "The Serbian Lobby in UK" ) got a lopsided image about this exodus, although intelligent people in the West instinctively felt that there must be more to it than what ‘Yugoslav’ propaganda described as ‘separatism’.Fairly soon, however, Croatia began to attract quite different, albeit rare, critical acclaim. Each of its political moves in the past forty years made a seminal statement, rich with intricacies, deliberate political ironies and nice little asides for the political connoisseur.The Croats, having managed to keep their heads above water, are now becoming the fast-living pop-stars of politics, arts, and sports with their own regular TV spot somewhere in the West, offering every conceivable type of sensation on almost every conceivable subject (Davor ?uker, XE "?uker, Davor" the Golden Boot in the World Cup – 1998; Goran Ivani?evi? XE "Ivani?evi?, Goran" – the Wimbledon tennis champion - 2001; Goran Vi?nji? XE "Vi?nji?, Goran" , heart-throb actor in the American ER TV series, etc.).Before discussing Croatian politics in depth, it is worth filling in a little more of the background of the mediaeval barbarism endemic in the former Yugoslav state, since it is this which sustained Croatia's own struggle and gave her an incentive to interweave many ideas about ways and means of ridding herself of it. One must never tolerate intolerance, a fundamental Croatian belief.God knows there were some people even in 1999 who expected this historical freak-accident of a Yugoslav state to have survived in a recognisable form, and who were content to polish away at it. However, the Croats were too interested in their own identity to want to take part in the Yugoslav punk-politics any longer. In fact, they never really wanted to at all, while the Serbs, strangely enough, seem happiest in the company of the Croats (whom they abhor) but without whom they would feel somehow unfulfilled and incomplete.The notorious sheepskin-clad Serbianised Vlach minority in Croatia (Krajina) seemed to have been equipped by nature with well-developed fifth-column swift-response antennae for acting on behalf of Belgrade. The eagerness and a curious shamelessness about the interference of this Serbian minority in Croatian affairs were permanently irritating. This activity has a long history. In 1861, the Croatian Parliament strongly rejected the arrogant attempts of this minority to change the name of the inhabitants of Croatia from the official ‘Croatian’ to the fancy ‘Croato-Serbian people’. A rather exceptionally decent Serbian paper of the time, the ‘Svetovid’, commented on the subject: "The South Slavs will never achieve real unity without respecting each other's identity on their own home ground. The Croats should remain Croats in their own ancient state, the continuity of which, without interruption, harks back from the early Middle Ages until the present time. Croats may recognise the existence of other ethnic groups within their own state but in no way can they recognise them as a political 'corpus separatum'. In Serbia, for example, we recognise the Bulgarians and the Vlachs, but politically it is a Serbian nation and not a Bulgaro-Vlach nation. Why then do people throw stones at the Croats and accuse them of enmity towards the Serbs? Why do they make demands in Croatia that, in Serbia, would never be allowed? The Croats have accepted the term the ‘Croato-Serbian language’ and also recognised the Serbian minority in Croatia (1861). The Croatian Parliament in 1861 went too far in the negation of the Croat national name and has, for the sake of the Serbian minority, voted for a politically neutral label of ‘Our People’ instead of ‘The Croatian people’. Yet, in spite of this, the Croats are taken to be our enemies."All of which is eminently reasonable; indeed, it is extremely liberal. Yet it is sickening to see what Yugoslavia has done to the character of the Serbs since that time, particularly the Serbs in Croatia.One of today’s pseudo arguments posits that the gap between the capitalist and the socialist view of the national problem cannot be bridged. As there was no comfortable way of dividing Yugoslavia, the Serbs exerted their determination by playing with fear, guns and terror in complete disregard of the progressive attitudes championed on this subject by the Serbian newspaper ‘Svetovid’ XE "Svetovid" a hundred years ago.This is how the Yugoslavs felt about the matter: Yugoslavia was a compendium State. But since the Croats kept harping on about confederation, the Serbs produced a more radical strategy: Croatia itself should also have become a compendium State, since it contains that notorious Serbian minority.According to this proposal, Croatia would have been condemned to live under house arrest in its own horseshoe-shaped territory with its very precious Serbian minority sitting at the steering wheel guided by a laser beam from Belgrade.With the discovery of the concept of modern dictatorship, the concept of tribal conquests virtually vanished. Yet, the Yugoslav real politic retained an eclectic mixture of dictatorship and medieval conquest. While the Great Serbs preferred to amuse themselves infiltrating the Croatian lands, the Croats wasted their time fighting centralism, something they had cut their teeth on in confrontation with the Habsburgs and the Hungarians. The Yugoslav ruling class did not want to share power with the Croats or anyone else, and, being in power, it did not need to justify itself to anyone. The Croats and Serbs were de facto united only by dislike of each other's traditions and their rulers. These thoughts should be an eye-opener as to the true nature of the lack of political progress in the re-evaluation of these traditions. Such was the disparity between Croatian and Serbian logic that the Serbs maintained to the very end that in Yugoslavia the Croats enjoyed the great privilege of membership of the most superb state on the earth - Yugoslavia.While the controversy over the break-up of Yugoslavia went on, one clue must have been firmly established: a proposition that must restrict reality to two alternatives. In the previous chapters, we have given a full run-down on the arguments in favour of ‘no to the break-up’ but have kept until last some of the best arguments in favour of the break-up. The almost worldwide obsession with Yugoslavia XE "worldwide obsession with Yugoslavia" which stated that Yugoslavia was still the best, although the most difficult method of solving conflicts of its own making, suggested an unendingly nightmarish future. Nonetheless, some Western politicians were convinced that a united Yugoslavia was preferable to nude Croats turning up in their front garden. This is what they expected might be a side effect of the international recognition of Croatia. Since this recognition in January 1992, they have been shocked even more to find out that Croats are very charming people indeed.The Western liberals XE "Western liberals" have become the most outspoken protagonists of a monolithic Yugoslavia by means of its ‘public opinion’, delivering long and boring harangues on the indispensability of the status quo. Curiously enough, what they were actually saying was that perpetual violence was the ultimate survival strategy and the most efficient method of keeping that Yugoslavia together.Up to its very last hour, the diplomatic aide-memoires by the USA and the EU were flying around urging the preservation of Yugoslavia ‘within its existing borders’, and at the same time contradicting themselves by ‘leaving it to the Yugoslav nations to find the most suitable form of their future life’. The bitter experience of the Croats within the two Yugoslavias, both by the way imposed by the West, thank God, took precedence over the political decisions of the West.The Italian Foreign Minister at the time (1989-1992), Gianni de Michelis XE "de Michelis, Gianni " , ‘warned’ that the departure from Yugoslavia of any of its Republics would be "a 50-year step back" as far as Europe was concerned. In the same breath he insisted on a "peaceful and democratic resolution of the Yugoslavia's crisis" while omitting of course, to explain how to achieve it. The threat about possible territorial demands by Yugoslavia’s neighbours (Greece, Hungary, Italy and Austria) after the break-up of Yugoslavia was of course a red herring, since all the above countries were either members or would-be members of the EU, whose constitution explicitly forbade any such unilateral act.Those friends of Yugoslavia XE "Friends of Yugoslavia" , whose political convictions about its feasibility were not quite so radical and who would have been very reluctant to undertake a hunger strike on its behalf, maintained that Croatian political scepticism was nonsense because it tried to raise doubts where no valid questions could have been asked. If this viewpoint had been accepted then nothing could have ever changed, except that these ‘well-meaning’ politicians would change their underwear once a year, and then pretend that the Yugoslav policies had also changed by shifting their captions: ‘Polycentrism XE "Polycentrism" ’ could replace centralism, and the ‘indispensability’ of Yugoslavia would replace its ‘disintegration’. When, for example, the Belgrade regime became ‘soft’ and gives in on the decentralisation of the ‘constituent Republics’, it would simply rely on ‘polycentrism’. The catch was in the fact that each of these decentralized institutions would be run from the top by a Belgrade commissar. The theory of the “indispensability” of Yugoslavia gave us Croats no joy at all. To argue that the constituent Yugoslav Republics would become an easy prey of imperialists, if they became independent, was a handy but specious last minute pseudo-theory. Firstly, we were never told who these ‘imperialists’ were. Yugoslavia itself was the only likely ‘imperialist‘. We rest our case. No alternative to Yugoslavia’ was plainly a utopian myth, as was Yugoslavia itself.Long and tortured silences in the political life of that country were interrupted only by a plague of perennial central government reforms. These were then discussed to destruction, until the quick-tempered Serbian commissar had enough and eventually harpooned his Croat collocutor, nota bene, as happened in 1918, 1928, 1941, and 1971. A stop was put to the Croatian Mass Movement 'since its policies would have led to fratricide'. Croats were extremely puzzled: were the Yugoslavs not caricaturing the whole situation when they continued to insist on Yugoslavia? The mystery deepened. Yugoslavia, it was now supposed, was designed solely for the purpose of protecting Croats from the misery that might befall them if Croatia were ever to become an independent state again. 5.12 The 'Sixth Column' XE "The 'Sixth Column'" Historically, the phenomenon of political emigration was always linked with deep social changes, and for that reason it was rarely understood. Before 1941, political emigrants were either waving the red star banners of the revolution, i.e., those who ‘have written the most beautiful pledges in the struggle for freedom:’ or those who ‘opposed’ communism and Yugoslavia, i.e., the Ustasha, the Croatian revolutionary movement. The end of the Second World War turned the situation upside down and resulted in the formation of ‘the new fascist Quisling Yugoslav emigration, which was 'in cahoots with the home-grown and foreign reactionaries’, babbles Dr. Milo Bo?kovi?, XE "Bo?kovi?, Dr. Milo" the official UDBA biographer of this anti-Yugoslav force, in his 'Sixth Column Diary'.Tito's blood pressure rose during the First Congress of the National Front on 7th August 1945, when he referred to this issue: “These bandits were not only supported by the Germans but also by the various reactionary elements, home-grown and foreign, in order to create insecurity in our country.Although ‘these bandits’ originated from the whole of Yugoslavia, Chetniks, Ljoti? groups, Nedic groups, the Blue and White Guardists, Van?o Mihajlov (Macedonian) groups, Croatian Domobrans XE "Domobrans" , ‘the reactionary priesthood’ of all confessions, members of the former bourgeois parties, war profiteers, former Yugoslav Royal Army soldiers and officers, politicians and diplomats of ‘the old Yugoslavia’, i.e., a fairly 'democratic' representation 'reactionaries' from the whole of Yugoslavia; the UDBA (the Yugoslav Secret Police) focused specifically on the Croatian political emigrants.The anti-communist pro-Yugoslavs (mainly Serbs) were not the greatest irritant to the Yugoslav communists. The Croatian anti-communist, anti-Yugoslav emigrants, among whom “there were 3,764 war criminals for the salvation of whose souls the Vatican was responsible, were classified by Western intelligence services in order to recruit those who were prepared to work actively against the new Yugoslavia." The main Croat emigrant groups were Hrvatski Narodni Odpor (under Maks Luburi? XE "Luburi?, Maks" ), Hrvatski Narodni Odbor (led by Dr. Branimir XE "Dr. Branimir" and Dr. Ivan Jeli? XE "Jeli?, Dr. Ivan" ), Hrvatski Oslobodila?ki Pokret (lead by Ante Paveli? until his death and later by Dr. Vran?i? and Dr. Hefer), Hrvatsko Revolucionarno Bratstvo (in Sidney in 1961), and Hrvatski Drzavotvorni Pokret (Lund, Sweden, 1981. The last two were described by the Yugoslavs as ‘clearly terrorist organisations’. The ideological compass of these organisations was highly emotionally charged yet with one or two exceptions, these organisations were mainly preoccupied with day-to-day anti-Yugoslav propaganda, awaiting the fall of Tito's dictatorship. They focused on the struggle for the re-creation of the Croatian State, even where their methods and links were not clearly visible, uniformly decipherable or plausible.The brand new organisation, that made the Yugoslav communists hot under the collar, was HNV, Hrvatsko Narodno Vije?e (The Croatian National Council) XE "Hrvatsko Narodno Vije?e - The Croatian National Council" founded in Toronto, Canada in 1974 that embraced some of the above groups into a 'national unity' forum. The fact that the HNV presented itself as a credible political opposition movement to the Yugoslav communist regime and that it consisted mainly of younger intellectuals who had emigrated from Croatia after the ‘Croatian Spring’ debacle in 1971 (who had nothing to do with the Ustasha movement, on the contrary, many of whom were ex-communist party members) put the cat amongst the Yugoslav pigeons. Even so, as far as the stubbornly conspiratorial Yugoslav mind was concerned, it lumped all the emigrants together: “The basic platform of all these organisations was open extreme nationalism, and chauvinist hatred towards other Yugoslav nations, i.e., a counter-revolutionary sentiment against the national liberation struggle. Their function was that of the Sixth Column, in cahoots with the Fifth Column XE "Fifth Column" within Yugoslavia.”Taking into account that many of these immediate post-WWII Croatian emigrants were the survivors of Tito’s genocide XE "Tito’s genocide" (from 1941-1950), the numbers of Croat violent revenge were infinitesimal in comparison with Tito's post-WWII carnage, yet rightly considered criminal by the Western states that offered them asylum. The Croatian National Council (HNV - 1974, Toronto, Canada) strained to cleanse from its ranks the inherited wartime Ustasha burden and concentrated on the struggle for human rights and political and religious freedom for the Croatian people in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina and as such it became a serious threat to the Yugoslav utopian system.The Yugoslav communists became deeply concerned that HNV and most of the Croatian emigrant press raised the issue of ‘the crisis of the Yugoslav society’. They maintained that the so-called democratic opposition in the country and some foreign journalists were pursuing a campaign to undermine the image of Yugoslavia and they were pushing ideas about ‘the democratic changes which in the broader context would mean the destruction of Yugoslavia’. “In that context the members of the Ustasha groups and the Albanian fascist emigrants argued [quite rightly] that the real danger for the West would not be an independent Croatian State or the ‘Great Albania’, but rather Yugoslavia in a permanent state of crisis. “This propaganda was directed at the ‘gastarbeiters’ who used the Yugoslav Clubs in the West. These clubs were, allegedly, centres for the Yugoslav intelligence services.” Belgrade turned on the HNV and particularly on its president Dr. Mate Me?trovi? XE "Me?trovi?, Dr. Mate" (son of the Croatian sculptor Me?trovi?), Professor of Political Science in New Jersey, USA as the leader in the ‘psychological warfare’ against Yugoslavia.They were particularly concerned "that some members of the Ustasha, Chetnik and other Quisling organisations worked in the military and other institutions in the West as experts on the Balkans, and Yugoslav issues. The members of these emigrant groups were active also in the radio stations ’Deutsche Welle’, Free Europe and the BBC. At the same time they were also active in various scientific institutions working for the intelligence services, the armed forces and propaganda in the West. Some emigrants were even included in the electoral college of the Republican Party in the USA and no wonder that its attitude was contrary to the official US policy towards Yugoslavia. The funds were allocated to the so-called ethnic groups’ by the Western governments for the purpose of various festivals held under the leadership of members of the fascist Quisling organisations.Yet at the same time the Yugoslav police maintained that the 'fascist Quisling emigration' "did not represent a force that could endanger the security of Yugoslavia.” The period between 1969-1970 as well as after the debacle of the ‘Croatian Spring’ in 1971 stimulated a profound and intense political debate among the old Croatian political emigrants and the new arrivals of the so-called Prolje?ari (the participants in the events in Zagreb in 1971) and led to sharply polarised political views on the question of how to break free from Yugoslavia.The action of uniting all these forces began seriously in 1969-70 and was taken up in 1974 with the foundation of the Croatian National Council (HNV) in Toronto. The communists defined HNV as “An organisation of the Ustasha emigrants in collaboration with the nationalist forces and the forces of the bourgeois Right in Yugoslavia itself, with the purpose of the destruction of the SFRJ [The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia]”. The emotionally charged atmosphere of 1971 resulted in exaggerated reactions and conspiracy theories amongst the Croatian emigrants, as a reaction to those by the Yugoslav leadership, which was convinced that the establishment of the HNV “was undoubtedly engineered by the Western intelligence services and certain American and Canadian circles.” True to its character, the Yugoslav communist regime claimed that among the 30 members of the First Congress of the HNV there were “16 war criminals”. Those who had seriously studied the meaning of such labels as ‘Ustasha’ and ‘war criminal’ in the context of the HNV have long-recognised that the preoccupation with the people behind these labels indicated that the Yugoslav regime’s genuine aim was to create alarm and paranoia, rather than describe reality. The 'war of the labels' raised false questions, i.e., whether the identified groups of leading Croatian intellectuals were now seeking to achieve the revolutionary ends by violent means, or whether it was only rhetoric for the purpose of shutting up the vociferous critics Yugoslav?Naturally, there were differences of opinion within the HNV as to the best method of finishing off Yugoslavia. In the end, the prevailing view was that the HNV should develop as an all-Croatian opposition body using legitimate means of political struggle, and that as such it should be internationally recognised. This aim really caused panic among the Yugoslav communists.The unfounded accusations of terrorism XE "Unfounded accusations of terrorism" by the Yugoslav government against certain individuals within the HNV proceeded unabated. For example in accusing Mirko Vidovi? XE "Vidovi?, Mirko" , a poet and at the time president of the HNV Congress, born in 1940 of being an Ustasha and fascist, was in itself pitiful. On returning from France to Croatia in 1971, Vidovi? was imprisoned for 6? years accused of “hostile activities at home and abroad” and released later as a French citizen in 1976 under pressure from the French Government.The HNV Congress in Toronto in September 1975 was described by the communist regime as “aiming to focus more perfidiously on seditious actions against Yugoslavia”. Much effort by the Yugoslav regime had gone into exploring the HNV activities but with little result, except for their old-fashioned plotting of the assassinations of the most outstanding Croatian emigrants.To cover up these activities, the Yugoslav communist regime described the 2nd Congress of the HNV, held in Brussels in 1977, as “directed towards a more terrorist character”. Yet the structure of the new HNV leadership, although ironically enough anti-communist and anti-Yugoslav, was made up of the post-1971 emigrants, some of whom were former communists. The Yugoslav regime described this as “a tactical move in order to show that the HNV was led by former communists.’ In the ensuing ideological skirmish, both these groups were preoccupied with the precise meaning of the aim of 'an all-Croatian reconciliation' between the Ustashas and the Croatian ex-communists. While the HNV genuinely held the view that the time had come to end the century old fratricide between the Croatian nationalists and the Croat adherents to the Yugoslav utopia, Tito's regime described the conclusions of the 2nd Congress of the HNV as “only a masque for its link with the hostile and opposition forces in Yugoslavia.” The ‘threat’ of ‘the all-Croatian reconciliation’ took on greater significance in the debates about the future state organisation in liberated Croatia. The communists believed that the HNV was relying heavily on the internal opposition and on the belief that “the Croatian people at home and not the emigrants will play a crucial role in the struggle for the liberation of Croatia" at the right moment “when the situation at home develops in the right direction.” The truth of this belief was confirmed in 1990.In seeking to intensify the struggle for the liberation of the oppressed Croatian nation, the HNV genuinely tried to distance itself from its representation by the Yugoslav propaganda as a ‘terrorist, fascist organisation’. De facto it became a political opposition to the Yugoslav dictatorship XE "Political opposition to Yugoslav dictatorship" , particularly after its 4th Congress in Toronto in 1982.The Yugoslav propaganda tripped itself on the insistence that the aim between "helping the Croatian people by all available means to the realisation of an independent Croatian State" (quoting the Statute of the HNV of 1978), and that of Ustashaism, was one and the same. The Yugoslav regime hugely exaggerated the radical threat from the HNV for its own political ends: “the involvement of the HNV and certain circles in the West, particularly those in the USA, aiming at unifying the Ustasha emigrants in order to act as the so-called Croatian government in the West,” was highly transparent. All this is rather strange because, according to Yugo-Marxists, separatism is a positive force, the result of the maturing national conscience and the liberation from foreign domination. Yet this positive force, in the case of Croatian ‘separatism’ XE "Croatian ‘separatism’" was taken to have a fascist character because it aimed at breaking the 'unity of the Yugoslav nations'. Thus, the conflict between the Yugoslav utopians and the Croatian 'reactionaries' resulted in a zero sum game.The Yugoslavs castigated the Croat demand for independence as “treachery towards one’s own people [by which they meant the 'Yugoslavs'], guided by its own selfish interests." Neither Yugoslavia was really a country in which a reasonable person would wish to live. In such circumstances, separatism could have only been a liberating force. The mass political emigration (i.e., escape) from Yugoslavia confirms this hypothesis as correct.The tolerance of the Croatian political emigrant activists by the neutral and democratic states in the West, such as Sweden and Germany, really got up Yugoslav's nose. The Yugoslavs hit back by repeating boringly the story of the Croats as fascists.5.13 Dr. Franjo Tudjman XE "Dr. Franjo Tudjman" On 2nd February 1978, Dr. Franjo Tudjman XE "Dr. Franjo Tudjman" gave an interview on Swedish TV in which he tried to fend off the anti-Croat propaganda: This interview was repeated on 11th February 1978. (FTST) Q.Every time the Swedish press has an opportunity to write about the Croatian question, it is flooded with accusations against the Croats for the genocide of the Serbian people. Jasenovac is mentioned, and the number of victims quoted as 700,000-900,000. Such accusations have given the Croatian question a special character. Are they true?Dr. Tudjman:No. Not only are these figures not true, they have been multiplied tenfold. According to the Federal Institute for Statistics regarding the number of war victims from 1941-1945, the fact is that in all the concentration camps and prisons in Croatia there were only 59,635 casualties. These included not only Serbs, but also a great number of Croat democrats, anti-fascists, Jews and Gypsies and other minorities. This is an enormous number, some 60,000 people, and should not minimize in any way the responsibility of those who took part in these crimes. It appears that those who multiply this number tenfold do so in order to blow up the guilt of the Croatian people, in fact of all the Croatian people. I must also add that apart from the 60,000 quoted above, a further 68,505 Partisans were killed, and an additional 50,806 persons were killed as a direct result of the terror of the German and Italian fascist occupiers as well as Ustashas and Chetniks.“The total number of victims killed during the so-called Peoples Socialist Revolution [without those who were killed fighting for the NDH] is 185,327 persons. Within this number of 185,327 persons Croats made up the majority, according to my estimate two thirds of the total, the remainder being Serbs and other minorities. This is the historical fact.”Q:How is it possible that such a gross lie can persist for some 30 or more years, as proof of the Croat guilt? I would like to remind you that even Ernst Bloch XE "Bloch, Ernst" stated that “all Croats in Western Europe are fascists and those in Croatia semi-fascists”. How is this possible?Dr. Tudjman:The leftist intellectuals, Gajo Petrovi? XE "Petrovi? Gajo" and Rudi Supek XE "Supek, Rudi" , so-called humanists who, for various reasons, have taken the side of unitarism in Croatia, and have been the main movers in blackening the so-called Croatian nationalism. They are the sources from which this twisted image of the Croatian history and reality has been dissipated.The tolerance of Croatian 'extremists' and turning a blind eye to their activities had its limits, as it could have damaged the reputation of democratic states (the assassination of the Yugoslav Ambassador to Sweden Rolovi?, XE "Rolovi? - Yugoslav Ambassador to Sweden" and an attempt at assassination on the Yugoslav Consul Djurovi? in Spain XE "Djurovi? - Yugoslav Consul in Spain" in May 1979 are two cases in point).The Yugoslav diplomats were extremely irritated by the access to the free media given to the anti-Yugoslav political emigrants in order to explain themselves, even in cases of real terrorism. Such activities were condemned as the ‘subversive propaganda activity of the reactionary circles against our country’. Not only Croats, but also some foreign journalists were under permanent Yugoslav UDBA threat as a result.Hans Peter Rulman XE "Rulman, Hans Peter" , the Belgrade correspondent of Der Spiegel, who was tried in Yugoslavia for ‘espionage’, is a good example. The accessibility of the pages, particularly of the German magazines and broadsheets such as Quick, Die Welt, Boner Rundschau, Süddeusche Zeitung, and others to the Croatian political opposition, was castigated by Yugoslavia as ‘subversive Ustasha activity’.Even the sober political criticism directed against the Yugoslav dictatorship in the intellectual monthly Kroatische Berichte XE "Kroatische Berichte" and the activities of the publishing organisation ‘Liber Croaticus Verlag GmbH’ XE "Liber Croaticus Verlag GmbH" in Germany, sometimes irreverent, but always to the point, were treated as subversive.The support for the Croatian political emigrants in France "was manifested by permitting terrorist activities [!], such as demonstrations, and enabling them to hold various conferences and congresses directed towards the destruction of the Yugoslav system and the break-up of its territory." The Yugoslav attitude towards the Croatian political emigrants in England (mainly in London) was distinctly different. Apart from the realisation that the British authorities would not put up with any nonsense on the part of UDBA (the Yugoslav Secret Police), they realised that these people were a political and intellectual elite not to be underestimated. So, they were described as spies “because these structures have certain links with the police and the intelligence services”. The chief target was Jak?a Ku?an XE "Ku?an, Jak?a" , lawyer and journalist and information director of the HNV, and his bi-weekly journal Nova Hrvatska (New Croatia), eminently the best newspaper published by the Croatian political emigrants, quoted not only by the Western press but also misquoted by the Yugoslav media, and clandestinely passed and read in Croatia itself.Inevitably, the focused assault on Nova Hrvatska, after the publication of the interview with Professor Mate Me?trovi? XE "Me?trovi?, Professor Mate" about his visit to Bulgaria in 1982 in the capacity of President of the HNV, would not have been complete without peppering it with the ‘Ustasha’ label, ridiculous as it was.The refutations of these ridiculous charges against Nova Hrvatska are all available in the impressive amount of printed material during the 40 years of its publication. This material will help the future scholars to understand better the political, social and cultural history of the Croatian political émigrés.The problem with the Croatian anti-Yugoslav emigrant activities was that there has always been a large number of contenders with different political views for its leadership. A case in point was the alleged ‘pro-Soviet’ and ‘socialist’ orientation, which it was believed would help the renewal of the Independent Croatian State, however declarative and ambiguous it was. This policy was advocated by Bruno Bu?ic XE "Bu?ic, Bruno" , journalist and the former assistant to Dr. Franjo Tudjman XE "Tudjman, Dr. Franjo" in the Zagreb Institute for the History of the Workers Movement, who emigrated to the West after 1971, and was assassinated by the Yugoslav Secret Police in Paris on 16th October 1978. The continuous attack by the Yugoslav Secret Police was reserved particularly for Dr. Juraj Krnjevi?, XE "Krnjevi?, Dr. Juraj," the leader of the HSS, the pre-war democratic Croatian Peasant Party, who was resident in London since April 1941.Krnjevi? was attacked not only for his maintenance of the diplomatic contacts with the British government and the international organisations, but also for his links with the British Intelligence Service and particularly with Professor Seaton Watson.The HSS mouthpiece was a bi-weekly ‘Hrvatska Rije?’ XE "Hrvatska Rije?" (Croatian Word) published in Canada. Belgrade was particularly peeved with the HSS to which it could not attach the Ustasha label, as the Party was not compromised by collaboration with the Ustasha regime in the NDH, and was de facto a single Croat pro-Yugoslav, although fiercely anti-communist, political party.However, Krnjevi?, particularly at the end of his long life, switched to the programme of the Croatian Independence as a result of his own refutation of the theory and practice of Utopian Yugoslavism. A thorn in the flesh of the Yugoslav Regime was the price it had to pay for the hard currency it obtained from the (mainly) Croatian Gastarbeiters in Germany XE "Croatian Gastarbeiters in Germany" and in other Western countries.“The access of the foreign intelligence services and [Croatian] emigrant organisations to the guest workers was facilitated by the restrictive policies towards foreign workers, as well as the anti-communist and anti-Yugoslav propaganda, social advancement by means of naturalisation, mixed marriages, perennial extensions of stay, loosing contact with the homeland, and uncertainty about return and re-integration [infected as they were with the bug of Western democracy]."The fact that the emigrant political organisations exploited this situation was natural and logical, yet it became a major irritant for the Yugoslav ‘diplomatic’ outfits. In such a situation their campaign was orientated towards the (Yugoslav) clubs and organisations with a view to breaking them up. "The workers were dissuaded from putting their savings into the Yugoslav banks as they could easily lose their hard-earned money. Many emigrant publications, newspapers and even Radio and TV broadcasts had the same advice." The well organised and highly developed Croatian Catholic Church missions XE "Croatian Catholic Church missions" were particular targets for Yugoslav attacks. "The circumstance in which the Croatian [and other] guest workers were tooing and froing legally from Yugoslavia to the West was logically exploited by the emigrant political organisations for the gathering of intelligence about the situation in Yugoslavia; about military and political activities, the State and Community Party organisations and about soft spots within the Yugoslav Secret Police."The Yugoslav regime pooh-poohed the importance of this intelligence for the Yugoslav emigrant organisations but was rather concerned about the highly exaggerated collection of this intelligence for the purpose of the intelligence services of Western countries. Even the folklore and sports events organised by the emigrant organisations were seen as a threat by the conspiratorial minds of the Yugoslav Secret Police.A more difficult aspect of the activities of the Croatian political emigrant organisations, ascribed to Yugoslav paranoia, was “the subversive character of linking emigrant organisations to the internal opposition and counter-revolutionary and other enemy forces.” This link with the internal opposition “was expressed in the link between the HSS and the remainder of the old class structures in the country . . . as at that time the intelligence services of some Western countries, linked through the emigrant intellectuals at universities with an intellectual elite in the country, while the appearance of the liberalism and nationalism was in its initial stages . . . These actions were directed against the foundation of our society, i.e., brotherhood and unity.” It seemed that any rough and ready bomb explosions by the more fanatical Croat emigrants were preferable to Belgrade to any democratic evolutive ‘process of disintegration of the Yugoslav society’.The main excuse for the clampdown on the Croatian Mass Movement (aka the Croatian Spring or Maspok) was the link between the “ideological and material illegal collaboration between this Movement and the extreme Croatian Diaspora.” The culmination of these subversive activities, according to the Yugoslav regime, was the “creation of political opposition within the existing social organisations, exploiting the democratic freedoms of our society. That was the only way, in collusion with the class enemy within the country, to realise the aims of the nationalist-separatist concept of the counter-revolutionary activities and at the same time to avoid coming into conflict with our social system.” The over 100-year old Croatian cultural institution Matica Hrvatska was such an organisation, which published 14 publications between 1970 and 1971. It had 41,000 members all over Croatia. “The aim of Matica is to help a radical wing of the SKH to fight the [Belgrade] unitarism and in that way to become a more independent political force with its own programme (Independent Croatian Army and membership of the UN). The subversive bridge between the country and the Diaspora was built by means of an identical Croatian culture at the forefront of which was an outstanding intellectual organisation called ‘The Croatian Academy of America’ and the quarterly ‘Hrvatska Revija’, numerous seminars and symposia, and its annual appearance at the International Book Fair at Frankfurt.”These ‘subversive bridges’ between the Croatian emigrants and the Homeland were built also ‘by the mutual exchange of visits’. Bruno Bu?i? XE "Bruno Bu?i?" , XE "Bu?i?, Bruno" surprisingly enough, returned to Zagreb and became one of the editors of the main opposition paper Hrvatski Knji?evni List (Croatian Literary Review). XE "Hrvatski Knji?evni List - Croatian Literary Review" “Among the [Croatian] emigrants the most active were those whose links with the foreign intelligence services were well-known: Professor Mate Me?trovi?, Juraj Petri?evi?, Jak?a Ku?an and others, who also maintained links with personalities around Matica Hrvatska: i.e., with Franjo Tudjman, Petar ?egedin XE "?egedin, Petar" , Vlado Gotovac XE "Gotovac, Vlado" , Zlatko Tomi?i? XE "Tomi?i?, Zlatko" and others.” Naturally, the Croatian ‘intellectual’ emigrants gave their full support to the ‘fractionary’ groups within the SKH before the 21st Session of the Presidency of the SKJ, which clamped down on the Croatian Mass Movement. Afterwards, equally sharply, it gave full support to the imprisoned members of the SKH and the leaders of the Mass Movement. At the trial of eleven leaders of the Movement they were accused as counter-revolutionaries and that during 1969 to 1971: “They involved themselves in a systematic and all-round enemy propaganda in the press and in other ways, which was based on the counter-revolutionary nationalist-separatist programme, and were acting against the state system that Croatian people established in the revolution [!] . . . For that purpose they have established a counter-revolutionary organisation ... against the interests of the historical struggle of the Croatian people. They have links with the various Ustasha organisations abroad which themselves were in the service of foreign intelligence services, whose aim is the separation of Croatia from Yugoslavia by force.”While the activity of the Croatian emigrant propaganda was by definition anti-Yugoslav, the Serbian emigrant propaganda was solely anti-communist and both“have avoided any activities which would indicate their fascist past.”[!] Croatian emigrants were publishing the highest number of regular publications XE "Croatian emigrants were publishing highest number of regular publications" , i.e., 36 against 41 for the Serbian, Slovene and Albanian publications put together in which, according to the Yugoslav regime, they strained to prove their ‘democratic’ character. The publishing was evenly spread from Chicago, New York, and Washington, to London, Munich, Lund (Sweden), Sydney, Melbourne, and Buenos Aires, de facto covering the whole globe.The realisation that an alternative parallel system to that of the Yugoslav regime was in existence abroad, and that the Croatian opposition to Yugoslavia was not an endemic crime, but a viable fact of life, was met with hardly suppressed irony:“Characteristic of the emigrant press in the past few years . . . is that it abandoned the slogans of the open anti-communism and chauvinism . . . Instead of that the new platform offers objective analyses of the situation in Yugoslavia, confirms the crisis of the regime and offers an invitation to ‘democratic’ forces to join the struggle for the new multi-party system which would resolve all the national contradictions.”The anti-Yugoslav quotations from the Western press in the ‘Ustasha’ publications (!) (Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung, Die Welt, The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Kleine Zeitung) and their correspondents Victor Meier XE "Meier, Victor " , Carl Gustav Str?hm XE "Str?hm, Carl Gustav" , Christine von Kohl XE "von Kohl, Christine" , David Binder XE "Binder, David" and Robert Shapel, XE "Shapel, Robert" were the particular targets of Yugoslav ire.Hans Peter Rulm XE "Rulm, Hans Peter " an (Der Spiegel) was for them Satan incarnate, with his publications Ost Dienst, Hrvatska Domovina (Croatian Homeland) and That is Yugoslavia, in which he demolished the Yugoslav myth.The newspaper Nova Hrvatska, distributed illegally two leaflets: ‘An Open Letter to the Croatian Communists’ (1962) and ‘The Socialist Party of Croatia’ (1964), in which it was acknowledged that the Croatian communists were the leading political force in Croatia, pointing out that Croatian prosperity was the most important aim, more important than the Croatian internal ideological differences, and that the new democratic Croatia would be able to accommodate all the political parties, including the ‘honest’ communists. Ironically enough, now over forty-six years afterwards, this call is becoming more urgent than ever before, in the internationally recognised Republic of Croatia.The legitimate call by the Croatian emigrants to the West to make the economic aid to Yugoslavia conditional on the evidence of the liberalisation and the democratisation of Yugoslavia was ignored. Now half a century later, the enforcement of the Western policies in the former Yugoslavia has become the rule rather than the exception.The approach favoured in Yugoslav police circles was to see Croat emigrant activities as consequences of wider international developments, preferably conspiratorial, and originating in the West.“In the period from 1945 to 1947, 826 diversionary-espionage groups infiltrated Yugoslavia from the West . . . The years from 1950 to 1959 were characterised by the absence of the sharper actions by the fascist emigrants . . . due to the normalisation of relations between our country and the Western allies . . .” “However, from 1960, due to increased international tensions, the diversionary-terrorist activities were on the increase again. In that period 70 emigrants entered the country with the task of organising illegal organisations for the purpose of armed uprising . . . In the same period 40 illegal organisations with 600 members were uncovered in the country. In 1960 there were 3, in 1951 21, and in 1952 23 terrorist attacks on the Yugoslav Embassies and citizens abroad by the [various] Yugoslav emigrants.”“In the period from 1966 to 1972 there were 54 Ustasha actions.” “After the unsuccessful attempt at counter-revolution by the Croatian ‘Maspok’ [i.e., the 1971 Croatian Mass Movement] the Ustasha emigrants have in 1972 alone caused the death of 46 of our citizens . . .” The Yugoslav Secret Police summarised the MNV attitude to terrorism as follows. “The new leadership of the HNV do not publicly support terrorism, yet at the same time they do not condemn these kinds of activities.” The activities of the Croatian ‘terrorist organisations’ were seen by the Yugoslavs as inextricably intertwined with a kind of political Mafia involving ‘the foreign factor’, a whole system of conspiratorial power against 'Socialist Yugoslavia' XE "Socialist Yugoslavia" , in which all those who, in one way or another, condone their activities were to be seen as participants in these actions:“In the period from 1982 to 1984 Ustasha emigrants in the West have caused 56 provocative actions and the murder of one of our citizens. In that period 24 emigrants were imprisoned and only 11 tried. Only in two cases was life imprisonment pronounced . . . while the other sentences were only symbolic, which confirms that the West had a policy of double standards.”The Croat extremists hit exclusively at the Yugoslav State organisations (Embassies, Consulates, Commercial Representatives and Clubs) as a tit-for-tat for the terror at home. The Yugoslav Secret Police revenged itself instead on Croatian political and intellectual personalities and their families in Croatia.The tendentious allegation by the Yugoslav dictatorship that “the political and extreme terrorist émigrés are one and the same” because the first never condemned the actions of the second one, lacks analytical precision.In the Yugoslav Police vocabulary, the terms ‘terrorist’ and ‘fascist’ became semantically inflated and intertwined so that it became hard to see where active collusion, if any, between the two begins and where it ends.“In the period from 1945 to 1977 (i.e., 32 years) 72 Yugoslavs were killed and 232 wounded by members of terrorist fascist organisations (originating from all ethnic groups in Yugoslavia)”. (Note: At this point give the number of Croats killed by UDBA in the same period.)Viewed as a wider phenomenon, the Croat emigration was fundamentally anti-Yugoslav and, as such, an extension of the opposition that never ceased in Croatia since 1918. The Serbian emigration was essentially anti-communist, and of course, pro-Yugoslav, yet in the books of Tito’s police, no less ‘admirable’.The Yugoslav regime hoped that the destruction of emigrant terrorism could be achieved only in co-operation with those Western states (that signed the UN charter) harbouring the Yugoslav emigrants. “Any other excuse [by these States], the temporary stoppage of emigrant activities, apologies after the event, promises, individual extraditions, would be nothing else than political perfidy, the root of which lies either in impotence or collusion with the political aims of the emigrants.”If this argument is correct, it engenders the most seductive hypothesis, i.e., that the Western countries had a more objective insight into the causes and effects of the Yugoslav utopia and acted accordingly.The war of the Yugoslav utopia continued even after the ‘victory of the revolution’ in 1945 unabated, yet on a smaller scale. From 1945 to 1955, 790 ‘counter revolutionary’ groups (of all descriptions) were uncovered in Yugoslavia. In 1947 there were 5,600 armed ‘outlaws’ (3,000 Chetniks, 1,400 Ustashas and others) formed into 60 groups of between 40 and 60 men. In the same period, 1,100 soldiers of the Yugoslav army and members of the Secret Police were killed.The economic warfare within the Yugoslav utopia that bothered the Yugoslav communists even more was enumerated at the 10th Session of the CK SKJ in 1975:“The link between the techno-managerial groups in the country with the foreign trading companies [very often in the ownership of the Yugoslav political émigrés], which enabled them to enrich themselves at the expense of our society; the profits from illegal financial transactions in foreign trade were going to unknown channels; the uncontrolled establishment of mixed companies with foreign partners, whereby the State owned hard currency investments disappeared into the pockets of the Yugoslav political émigrés and their foreign partners. The falsification of the origins of imports and exports in order to avoid payment of customs duty; from 1972 to 1975, 186 people involved in these activities left Yugoslavia damaging its economy by millions of dollars. About 300 Yugoslav emigrant companies were pursuing the business of laundering or transferring capital from the country. All these activities were in essence counter-revolutionary. This modern form of subversive activities is essentially no different from those that developed countries use as a form of pressure and counter-revolutionary activity towards socialist systems in the interstate relations" [e.g., Chile, Cuba]” This subversion is carried out by means of funding the ‘free media’ and ‘non-governmental organisations’ and even in the direct involvement of diplomatic and other international representatives in what are purely domestic matters of Croatia from 1990-2001.The Roman Catholic Church in Croatia XE "The Roman Catholic Church in Croatia" The Roman Catholic Church, not surprisingly, has tended to focus on active spiritual and physical help to the Croatian emigrants. An ‘army’ of some 1,300 Roman Catholic priests was ready to speak explicitly about the persecution and plight of the Croatian people, who had been swept away from their country to all parts of the world by the consequences of their ‘national liberation’.The reaction to these activities by ‘people’s power’ was not unexpected:“In the West European countries the majority of the Roman Catholic priests have Yugoslav travel documents. They were loyal, and apart from individual cases, they do not take part in anti-Yugoslav activities. However, in overseas countries, the Church almost completely identified itself with the enemy emigrants and, not rarely, even appeared as a spiritual inspiration in terrorist actions i.e., the Bishop’s Conference of the Federal German Republic in 1978].” As such, the Yugoslav regime did not hesitate to cram some eminent and honourable Croatian Roman Catholic priests onto the list of ‘criminals’ or ‘war criminals’ together with Serbian Chetnik priest Momcilo Djujic XE "Djujic, Momcilo" and an ex-Roman Catholic priest, Miroslav Majstorovi? XE "Majstorovi? Miroslav" , who in the author’s opinion, deserved that label.The religious gatherings XE "Religious gatherings" , pilgrimages, lay apostolate, and even social and creative activities were described by the regime as political and clerico-fascist activities if they were undertaken on behalf of Croatian emigrants.On the one hand, they castigated these events as nationalist activities and on the other and at the same time, as an international Roman Catholic conspiracy against ‘Yugoslav unity’; these emigrant activities were taken to be ‘counter-revolutionary’ “as they were under the indirect influence of international factors. The link between the clerico-nationalists at home and the anti-Yugoslav emigrants is plain from the synchronised activities in the rehabilitation of the well-known war criminals such as were the Zagreb Archbishop Stepinac and Ljubljana Archbishop Ro?man.” No sane person could have accused the Roman Catholic Croat missions abroad as being headquarters of clericalism. Yet for the paranoiac Yugoslav Secret Police, they were wrapping “their anti-socialist tendencies into religious dogma and their own interpretation of our social-political reality, i.e., propagating political pluralism, spreading fear about the imperilled national identity, etc.” . . . Recent demonstrations displaying the emigrant flags [i.e., the Croatian national flag] took place even in the presence of the Pope.”The Mass, led by Pope John Paul II in the Croatian language for the first time in Rome’s St. Peter’s Basilica on 10th July 1987, XE "Mass, led by Pope John Paul II in Croatian language for first time in Rome’s St. Peter’s Basilica on 10th July 1987" really got up the nose of the Yugoslav police.The Yugoslav regime wanted to have it both ways. While attacking the Church for clerico-fascism, at the same time it attacked some Croatian nationalists for criticism of the Church in Croatia “because it had remained silent in the face of the suffering and the persecution of so many people in Croatia.”In conclusion, the dependence, almost drug-like addiction, of the Yugoslav utopianism on propaganda exploitation of the clericalism (not only of the Croatian but also that of Serbian and Muslim origins) held the Yugoslav society together, though at quite different levels of efficiency and institutional performance.5.14 The Counterpoint XE "The Counterpoint" Jak?a Ku?an, the editor of the most intelligent and democratic Croatian émigré bi-weekly Nova Hrvatska (New Croatia) raised a number of controversial questions in his book ‘Bitka za Novu Hrvatsku’, (Battle for New Croatia - Rijeka, 2000). One of these was how the national symbols and myths, if you can, lend force to a reality which would otherwise not be able to manifest itself. The case in point was the appearance of the Croatian emigrant publishers at the Frankfurt International Book Fair XE "Frankfurt International Book Fair" in the period from 1973 up to and including 1990.“Was it really possible that Croats appear for the first time at an international gathering under their own [national] name?” Then Ku?an hit a key note, again rather exceptional in the emigrant circles:“After the success in Frankfurt, it should have become clear that such a desirable outcome was not the result of mere bragging about Croatianhood and indulgence by emigrant political parties, but that the sympathies of foreign circles could be achieved by means of hard and constructive work.”He referred, of course, to the numerous legal options available to the Croatian opposition in the struggle against the Yugoslav regime. The free Croatian books showed up the regime far more than the assassination of their diplomatic representatives.(Add SB, British Croatian Society in the notes.)As a result, the correspondent of the ‘Deutschlandfunk’, in his broadcast on 19th October 1973 about the Book Fair, pointed out the irony that the publisher (?kolska Knjiga in Zagreb) of the Croatian Orthography (Hrvatski Pravopis XE "Croatian Orthography - Hrvatski Pravopis" ), of which 40,000 copies were burned by the Yugoslav regime (without publishers’ protest), was now considering legal action against Nova Hrvatska for reprinting and exhibiting this book at the Frankfurt International Book Fair.The considerable international interest in this book confirmed for the world (which at that time was ignorant of it) the authenticity of the Croatian culture. Yet while a great show about Croatia’s plight was successfully made at Frankfurt, the Yugoslav regime, in reaction to it, stuck stubbornly to its old-fashioned police methods. The Yugoslav Consul, Matijaca XE "Matijaca Yugoslav, Consul" , reported the event to the Foreign Minister in Belgrade: “The general Consulate SFRJ, Frankfurt on Maine, No. 77/758th October 1975. In conversation with the Inspector of [the German] Police, K. Mueller XE "Mueller, K." on the 7th October 1975, I have raised the issue of the repeated appearance of the Ustasha emigrants at the Frankfurt International Book Fair, pointing out particularly the political aspect of the exhibits . . . which do not have anything to do with the exhibition of books. . . . In the opinion of Mueller the most effective measure that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs [of the Federal Republic of Germany] could undertake would be the prohibition to the entry to the Federal Republic for individuals coming from abroad," [i.e., to visit the International Book Fair].The Director of the Criminal Police, J. Grous, XE "Grous, J." was also present at the meeting. Nova Hrvatska commented: “It was said that the area around the Croatian stand looked like a busy railway station. It really was like that. We have not actually worked a miracle, or overnight increased the Croatian love for books, particularly with the gastarbeiters. Many have arrived, paid for an expensive entry ticket, without even having glanced at a single book. For them [coming from all over Europe, the US, Canada and even Australia] it was most important for them to see with their own eyes the forbidden name of Croatia displayed publicly and on an equal footing with the names of all other small and big nations of the world. They took photographs standing in front of the stand as if in front of a monument, in order to witness the unbelievable reality – similar to that of the Croatian pilgrims to Rome in 1250, eternalised by Dante in Paradiso. [Canto XXXI, 103.] XE "Dante in Paradiso [Canto XXXI, 103]" 'As is he who comes perchance from Croatia to look on our Veronica, and whose old hunger is not sated but says in thought ‘so long as it is shown, My Lord Jesus Christ, True God, was then your semblance like to this?’” (Ref. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, Paradiso, Princeton University Press, 1975.)Problems with the HNV (Croatian National Council) XE "Problems with the HNV (Croatian National Council)" From within, the idea of an illuminating conceptual framework of a unified organisation representing the entire Croatian Diaspora XE "Croatian Diaspora" speaking with one voice, there arose a lot of controversy. The first attempt (The All Croat Congress in New York in 1962) to the Action for Croat Solidarity in Cleveland 1972, and the Session of the HNV in 1973, to the reincarnation of the HNV on 22nd February 1974, reduced these palavers to arguments between the people burdened with the symbols of the past, and on the other hand those who put all their hopes in democratic representation. In the end, the elections for the HNV split the two groups, fifty-fifty.The elections for the Second Session of the Sabor (Parliament) of the HNV in 1978 (due to Tito's backlash against the Croatian ‘nationalists’ in Yugoslavia) were won by the ‘hardliners’, led by Bruno Bu?ic XE "Bu?ic, Bruno" .Nova Hrvatska, (dissident Croats fighting the idiocy of the communist regime for a free and democratic Croatia) true to its nature, described this result as an unfortunate undermining of the HNV representing Croatian interests in the West.The situation changed at the Third Session of the HNV in London from 18th to 22nd January 1980, when the political purpose of the organisation was defined as ‘non-communist and aiming at Croatia’s integration with the West and NATO’. That the HNV was not only a polemical society was proved by many isolated achievements, such as the Kroatische Berichte, a magazine (in German) making inroads into the Council of Europe XE "Council of Europe" and the European Parliament, XE "European Parliament" and establishing a link with the International Helsinki Group XE "International Helsinki Group" .The moral commitment to reciprocity in political relations, and the consistent stand in defence of Croatian rights by Nova Hrvatska, paid off. Subscriptions to the magazine by the Foreign Office and the State Department, perusal of the quotations from its articles in the Swiss newspaper l’Echo, the Viennese Die Fürche, the London Guardian, Gazette de Lausanne and the German magazine Der Spiegel were proof of the pudding. The letter that Nova Hrvatska addressed to the President of the Federal German Republic, Herr Heinemann XE "Heinemann, Herr" , on the occasion of Tito’s visit to Germany in ????, raised the issue of the imprisoned Croatian writers, students, journalists, rotting in Yugoslav gaols since 1971 . . . and also that of the hundreds of thousands of Croatian gastarbeiters in Germany who were being controlled and spied on by the agents of the Yugoslav Secret Police. In spite of its liberally orientated texts, Nova Hrvatska was continually accused by the regime of being an ‘Ustasha newspaper’ which was contradicted even by such a totem as Dr. V. Bakari? XE "Bakari?, Dr. V." at the Tenth Session of the CK SKH. He described the group around Nova Hrvatska as being ‘a Croatian socialist party’ XE "Croatian socialist party" , although it was de facto a very eclectic group. The price for such an image was paid in that Nova Hrvatska became the target of the Croatian extreme right emigrants.Even the Zagreb broadsheet Vjesnik XE "Vjesnik" committed an own-goal when it attacked Der Spiegel for writing in the same way as Nova Hrvatska (!), a compliment that was appreciated. The Daily Telegraph reported on 27th September 1980 on a trip Margaret Thatcher XE "Margaret Thatcher" made to Athens and Belgrade. On that occasion, she dismissed the Yugoslav Government with short shrift when she refused to“undertake measures against the Croatian separatists in London. Freedom of speech is guaranteed in Britain you know” she was quoted as saying. In a direct attack on ‘the link’ between the well-known German journalist Viktor Meyer XE "Meyer, Viktor" and Nova Hrvatska, Dr. Aleksandar Spasi? XE "Spasi?, Dr. Aleksandar" in the Bulletin of journalists of Yugoslavia Na?a Stampa (Our Press) under the title The War in Peace XE "The War in Peace" harangued:“What kind of strange editorial policy of the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung is it . . . when its texts are reprinted lock, stock and barrel by our emigrants, whose programme is the destruction of Yugoslavia? Since when have certain circles in England developed a taste for the ‘Ustasha’ ideas published by Nova Hrvatska . . . whose correspondent is Viktor Meyer?”The constructive criticism of the Croatian reality at home and abroad was the chief line of the editor of Nova Hrvatska. In October 1962, an imaginative bombshell, unexpected at the time, was published in Nova Hrvatska under the title ‘An open letter to the Croatian communists’. “The fundamental principle [of our call] is that the Croats must work for the benefit of Croatia, and abandon their ideological differences . . .”It invited Croatian communists to put up resistance to the centralism of Belgrade and stop the drain of Croatian capital for the sake of ‘Brotherhood and Unity’. In October 1963, Nova Hrvatska published another manifesto under the title ‘Work - Not War’ demanding "a better standard of living for all citizens; the liberalisation of the [Yugoslav] regime and an end to the Police state; the strengthening of Croatian national consciousness.” Just before the 8th Congress of the SKJ in Belgrade on 1st December 1964, Nova Hrvatska produced another manifesto under the title of the fake ‘Central Committee of the Socialist Party of Croatia’. This allowed it to say the unsayable, simply by not addressing Yugoslavia, under its own title: “The fact that the social progress of our country has gone backwards in the past ten years can be blamed on the disguised Stalinists and former fascists, and particularly on the Chetnik-orientated elements which nowadays have decisive influence in the SKJ. The anti-socialist and anti-national policies of the SKJ are plain from the pursuit of the rigid centralism . . . the economic exploitation of the Republic of Croatia, which contributes one third of the Yugoslav GNP and has a twenty times smaller budget than that of Belgrade. . . . The natural oppression of Croats drives the younger generations [without any prospects] into the ranks of the extreme right-wing circles, resorting to terrorist actions . . . We demand free elections, the liquidation of the Secret Police, the release of political prisoners, the right to strike, tax reforms, and disarmament. Workers, peasants and citizens, rise up against the criminal UDBA.Long live the Socialist Party of Croatia. Death to Centralism - Freedom to the People.”Signed by The Central Committee of the Socialist Party of Croatia.The adopted socialist rhetoric XE "Adopted socialist rhetoric" and the spirit of the Left helped to expose the acute home truths and reality of Croatia in the lingo the regime (and its protagonists in the West) understood.In June 1966, Nova Hrvatska came out with the proposals for an integrated Croatian political programme:“Nationalism at this particular period is a positive force for self-preservation and affirmation. It points out that the integration in the West is based on the principle of the national State. Only an independent Croatia would be able to remove all the present social and political deformations, and offer Croats an optimal economic, social and cultural development.“The individual freedoms are frustrated by any Yugoslavia that is based on the principle of the suppression of national identity. Our aim is to respect individual freedoms.“We shall struggle for the Rule of Law in Croatia.“We also propose the de-centralisation of the Yugoslav State.“The question of the future of Bosnia-Hercegovina must be decided realistically, e.g., by a referendum.“Croatia at the moment allocates 10% of its GNP for the undeveloped Republics, and double that amount for funding the Federal budget, a situation that cannot be permitted to persist.“We advocate the principles of social justice.“The workers self-management must be under the control of the Trade Unions and not of the political party. There must be a guarantee of the right to strike. The workers must control the amount and distribution of their wages.“We must draw a firm line between ourselves and past regimes, particularly the ‘Ustasha’ regime. We point out that the new Croatian generations are not mortgaged to the past; we must draw a line between nationalism [positive], and chauvinism [negative].”A pragmatic programme was put forward a for the solution to the accumulated economic problems (that should have more than satisfied the 'nationalists') was proposedl that tackled the problem of the Serbs in Croatia.“We don’t have anything against the Serbian people, it is their imperialism [that is the problem] . . . The Serbs in Croatia should not fear for their positions. Our attitude is that only competent people should be engaged in key positions . . .”In the July/August 1966 edition of Nova Hrvatska and after the fall of the Secret Police boss, Aleksandar Rankovi?, Nova Hrvatska produced another ‘Manifesto’ addressed directly to the Croatian communists.It invoked a crucial need for co-operation between the Croatian Communist Party members and the vast majority outside its organisation.“If the Croatian people are required to restrict their legitimate democratic aims because Belgrade is falling behind, then this becomes the strongest argument against [the existence of] Yugoslavia.”The Manifesto demanded the separation between the Party and the UDBA (the Secret Police). It appealed also for freedom from criticism within the Party and ended:“Croatia does not have [except yourselves] any other [political] representatives. Do your historic duty, and achieve freedom for yourselves and for Croatia.” The Manifesto was signed by Jak?a Ku?an (the Editor of Nova Hrvatska), Professor Vinko Nikolic XE "Nikolic, Professor Vinko" , a reformed Ustasha intellectual (editor of the Croatian Review) and Professor Bogdan Radica XE "Radica, Professor Bogdan" , Tito’s former Private Press Secretary also a reformed Yugoslav idealist.All these activities were ahead of their time and undertaken three years before the Croatian Mass Movement took off in 1971, and a whole year before the revolutionary “Declaration about the name and status of the Croatian Literary Language” in 1967 [!].The Battle with UDBA XE "The Battle with UDBA" Nova Hrvatska was ‘tested’ by the UDBA agent, Beba Studin-Lavrin XE "Studin-Lavrin, Beba" , a niece of the patriotic Croatian sculptor, Ivan Me?trovi?. On one side she moved in the highest British circles, and on the other, in the socialist group, led by the playwright Arnold Wesker XE "Wesker, Arnold" . She succeeded in tricking Jennie Lee, XE "Lee, Jennie" offering to take her messages to dissident Milovan Djilas XE "Djilas, Milovan" in Belgrade, only to hand them on a plate to the UDBA. Yet the well-tested game of misinformation applied by Nova Hrvatska floored her. Forced to leave Britain after a spy affair involving a German Naval Attaché, she disappeared into thin air.The second attempt at Nova Hrvatska was in the affair of the Yugoslav Consul in London, Ante Rako, XE "Rako, Ante" who was snooping around the houses of the Croatian emigrants, blackmailing them for subscribing to Nova Hrvatska. Duly despatched back to Yugoslavia by the British authorities very soon afterwards, he too disappeared from the scene. UDBA’s revenge was the all-too-familiar terror of the readers of Nova Hrvatska in Croatia. A 70-year old retired judge, Mirko Suni?, XE "Suni?, Mirko" received a one-year prison sentence in 1985, and his daughter 10 months imprisonment, only for possessing a few copies of the paper. Further penalties of imprisonment were handed out to the artist called ‘Trumbeta?’ XE "Trumbeta?" , who received an eighteen-month sentence in 1980, and a coach driver, Janjko Sarajlic, XE "Sarajlic, Janjko" who received a 4-year sentence in 1982, for the same reason. Professor Ivan Pletikosa XE "Pletikosa, Professor Ivan" received a six-year sentence in 1983 for receiving a pile of emigrant newspapers by post, probably planted by UDBA. The best characteristics (communist jargon) of UDBA were given in a secret letter by Dr. ?eljko Mati? XE "Mati?, Dr. ?eljko" , a Yugoslav diplomat and school-friend of the editor of Nova Hrvatska, sent from Philadelphia to Nova Hrvatska in London on 1st June 1964: “It seems to me that UDBA is becoming a more introverted organisation inasmuch as that, in some situations, it could compromise the Party. Most of the UDBA spies are materialists who keep themselves to themselves, and in that way have penetrated the top economic and social circles. It seems to me also that there is some anxiety on the part of the communist politicians that UDBA may try to control the party, like the NKVD controlled it in the USSR. You should try to play on this card and try to encourage that anxiety. The doubt there already exists, but it has to be nurtured.” If an individual Croat emigrant succumbed to UDBA under pressure and was ordered to snoop on Nova Hrvatska, one could almost understand. However, when the UDBA snooper was a foreigner and a journalist, this became an altogether different matter. Evident from the documents of the Federal Yugoslav Police dated 1979, it was Evelyn Lechene, XE "Lechene, Evelyn" the English journalist who chatted with the Yugoslav agent of SID (Service for Information and Documentation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) XE "SID - Service for Information and Documentation of Ministry of Foreign Affairs" :“On the basis of the conversation which E. Lechene had on her own initiative with J. Ku?an [editor of Nova Hrvatska] and Professor Branko Franoli? XE "Franoli?, Professor Branko" on the subject of the post-Tito era, she arrived at the following conclusion: The two of them, following in the footsteps of Bruno Bu?i? XE "Bruno Bu?i?" , actively mobilise the intellectuals in the Croatian enemy emigration in order to gain influence in the media, academic, political and scientific circles in the West with the aim of gaining their sympathy for the Croatian cause, which will erupt on ‘X’ day . . . In that direction, they have already gained good contacts with the Italian magazine Tempo [Sig. Prenato XE "Prenato, Sig." ], the French l’Express and the British Daily Telegraph and Encounter, and some German and Spanish newspapers.”However, there is no such thing as a free lunch. As a reward for the above information, Lechene “asked us to enable her to gain access to President [Tito] with a view to interviewing him on the subject of foreign policy for the new magazine ‘Now’, the first issue of which was scheduled for the end of September 1979 . . .” in order to obtain a scoop.The epidemic of UDBA misinformation spread usually in preparation as an alibi for a planned assassination of Croatian emigrants. Two weeks before Stjepan Djurekovi? XE "Djurekovi?, Stjepan" , the former director of the oil company INA, was assassinated by UDBA on 28th July 1983. UDBA published in Belgrade a fake issue of Nova Hrvatska (No. 14/1983), including an ‘interview’ with Djurekovi?, the aim of which was to compromise him in the eyes of the Croatian emigrants.Confirmation of this came some twenty years later in the Zagreb newspaper Nacional (16th February 1996) in an interview with the former UDBA agent from Belgrade, Bo?idar Spasi?, XE "Spasi?, Bo?idar" who openly confirmed that the No. 14 issue of Nova Hrvatska was fake ‘in the function of the liquidation of Stjepan Djurekovi?’. He described how he lost 15kg in weight on that difficult task and he himself had to carry 5,000 copies of the fake journal from Yugoslavia to Germany for distribution. He bragged about his part in the assassination, in which six hit men took part, one of whom was a member of the notorious Serbian Chetnik gang of Vuk Dra?kovi? XE "Dra?kovi?, Vuk" .The backlash from Nova Hrvatska was an invitation to all Croats to sniff out the whereabouts of Yugoslav agents and, at the same time, it warned that the emigrants must not react to the assassination of Djurekovi? by “taking up arms in revenge for Djurekovi?” and “one head of ours for ten of theirs. Do not fall into their trap.” Ironically enough, five Yugoslav agents preying on Nova Hrvatska were themselves victims of blackmail. One of them was a former priest who had offered his services to UDBA. The assassination in a Kensington hotel room remained a mystery, even for Nova Hrvatska. Maksim Krstulovi? XE "Krstulovi?, Maksim" , the son of a high-ranking communist leader from Split, Vicko Krstulovi?, XE "Krstulovi?, Vicko" was found dead, with his throat and wrists cut. Scotland Yard treated it as a suicide and closed the case speedily.The success of Nova Hrvatska, to a large extent, was due to the collaboration with numerous contacts in Croatia, most of whom were never uncovered.The tragic exception was that of Mrs. Mila ?ram XE "?ram, Mrs. Mila" who returned from Switzerland to Zagreb in 1979 because of illness. She was an important link with the outstanding opposition personalities in Croatia, Dr. Marko Veselica, XE "Veselica, Dr. Marko" Dr. Franjo Tudjman XE "Tudjman, Dr. Franjo" and others. Amnesty International XE "Amnesty International" used her for sending financial help to the families of the political prisoners in Yugoslavia. According to official sources at the time, there were 509 political prisoners (mainly Croats) in Yugoslavia.Mrs. ?ram, even after an operation for cancer, was faithfully tooing and froing between Switzerland and Croatia and was responsible for bringing to England a manuscript of Dr. Tudjman’s book Nationalism in Contemporary Europe XE "Nationalism in Contemporary Europe" for the purpose of publication. She was eventually apprehended at the Yugoslav border, accused of links with Dr. Veselica and imprisoned. The final tragedy was that she was used as a ‘witness’ in the Veselica Trial (he was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for ‘nationalism’) and proclaimed to be an UDBA spy. This being the final straw for her, she died soon afterwards. The records in the UDBA dossier, when opened in 1990, confirmed the complete integrity of this heroic woman. UDBA was one side of the coin in the Nova Hrvatska battle. The other side was the conflict with Croatian extremists. These two factions were intertwined and no one really knew where one began and the other ended. Both groups were of the totalitarian mindset.Nova Hrvatska’s leading article on 5th June 1964 rationalised: “That right wing, and even some extreme groups among the Croatian emigrants, can play a useful role as ‘pressure’ on the regime, but only if led by the national, and not sectarian, interests.” A new danger appeared on the horizon XE "New danger appeared on horizon" with the Croatian emigrant splinter group pro-Soviet line, i.e., the fanciful belief that the Soviets could help Croatia to gain its independence. The spiritus movens of this dangerous idea was Dr. Branimir Jeli?, XE "Jeli?, Dr. Branimir" leader of the Croatian National Committee in Berlin who, along with Paveli?, was one of the most senior Croatian political emigrants.In order to nip this idea in the bud, Nova Hrvatska published a Manifesto signed by eight prominent Croatian intellectuals: “The fact that in his newspaper ‘Hrvatska Drzava’ (Croatian State) Dr. Jeli? is offering the Soviets use of the naval bases in the Adriatic . . . serves only the interests of Belgrade . . . That the West, as the cradle of democracy, is a more natural ally of Croatia rather than the East, is useless to argue with a man with a totalitarian frame of mind.”The Yugoslav police oppression, after 1971, engendered a reciprocal and parallel terror – on the one side from the Yugoslav police, and on the other from the various Croatian ‘revolutionary’ groups.The conclusion of these groups was that terror was the only successful way to deal with the Yugoslav totalitarian regime.In July 1972 19 Croatian ‘guerrillas’ from Australia XE "Croatian ‘guerrillas’ from Australia" infiltrated Yugoslavia. In September a Swedish aeroplane was hijacked in Malm?. A deliberate confusion was created by the fake guerrilla groups, such as SHKUI (Union of Croatian Communists Abroad), led by Tomislav Sedlo XE "Sedlo Tomislav" and Velimir Tomuli? XE "Tomuli?, Velimir" . They spread bogus news about the actions of the Brigade ‘Andrija Hebrang’, led by the HSGV group (Croatian Socialist Guerrilla Army).In the same month, the even more obscure 'Croatian Liberation Forces' in Paraguay hijacked an American TWA aircraft. They used blackmail to obtain funds from the Croatian workers and, in that connection, a Croat emigrant Ante Cigoj XE "Cigoj, Ante" was murdered in New York, and another emigrant Kri?an Brki? XE "Brki?, Kri?an " , in Los Angeles, in September 1978.UDBA cleverly exploited and inspired the assassination Josip Seni? XE "Seni?, Josip" in Germany in early 1972 and of the entire family ?evo in Italy XE "?evo family in Italy" in September of the same year. Croat emigrant Ilija Vu?i? XE "Vu?i?, Ilija" was murdered in Sweden at the end of 1975, and his friend Stipe Mikuli? XE "Mikuli?, Stipe" three months later. In August 1976, UDBA murdered Ivan Tuksor XE "Tuksor, Ivan" in Nice. At the end of 1977, Vjenceslav ?i?ek XE "?i?ek, Vjenceslav" was kidnapped from Germany and sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment in Sarajevo. The culmination of UDBA murders was reached on 16th October 1978, when Croat journalist and radical politician Bruno Bu?i? XE "Bu?i?, Bruno" was shot and murdered in Paris.The atmosphere of terror was kept on the boil by the draconian sentences XE "Draconian sentences" meted out to the followers of the ‘Croatian Spring’. In September 1975, UDBA exploded a mine in Zagreb during Tito’s visit. About one hundred people were imprisoned on that pretext.The moderates within the Croat emigrants (being the large majority) found themselves between two fires, those of ‘The Greatest Croats’ and UDBA.Yet there were many other imaginative ways of getting on the Yugoslav nerves without recourse to ‘revolution’.Croat intellectual Mario De?poja, for example, opened the ‘Croatian Embassy’ in Canberra, Australia, in the midst of the most ferocious Australian-Croatian ‘revolutionary’ hotspot, as it were.Nova Hrvatska, in the meantime, increased its publication activities: it published the forbidden book on the Croatian Orthography and Croatian Grammar, and pushed on with its annual appearance at the Frankfurt International Book Fair.In its issue No. 13/1977, Nova Hrvatska published a letter written by its Editor on his visit to Canada: “ . . . My impressions from Australia, the US and Canada are that the silent majority allows itself to be terrorised by a few ratchet-rousers, demagogues and fanatics . . . always far below the intelligence and political sense of the majority.” and “From this, it is evident that the culprits do not or do not wish to understand that they are playing right into Yugoslavia’s hands . . . ” In Nova Hrvatska (No. 17/1979), the Editor pursued the same line: “Just when the Croats living in democracies are in a position to continue with the struggle which commenced in Croatia in 1971, the political life of the emigrant population toppled down to its lowest level, due to the actions of those who claim to be representatives of the ‘Croatian Spring’ . . . What is surprising, unlike in other emigrant movements, is that our ‘revolutionary’ groups do not target their offensives on the enemy but rather on Croatian moderates.” To that Hrvatski Tjednik, the Croat Australian weekly dated 17th July 1979, responded: “The revolution must not fight only the enemy, but it must also resolve its internal problems, otherwise it will become one-sided and sterile.”On the eve of the Third Congress of the HNV in 1979, fifty-four leading luminaries in the Croatian political emigration stated in their appeal: “ . . . Instead of a broad democratic co-operation, the enemy agents are trying to impose onto the Croatian emigrants the leadership of only one group . . . which clearly is orientated towards the totalitarianism of the extreme left.” In issue Nos. 17-19/1979, Nova Hrvatska published in three consecutive instalments the recollections of Colonel Ivan Babi? about the charismatic Croatian emigrant, Bruno Bu?i? XE "Bu?i?, Bruno" , during his stay as his guest in Torremolinos in August 1978, two months before Bu?ic was murdered: “Bruno is not ideologically coloured - neither right nor left. His all being is the aim of the re-creation of a free Croatian State. Taking the nature of the Yugoslav regime into account, in his opinion this could be done only by revolutionary means. He realised that the US and Europe firmly supported the status quo in Yugoslavia. Even so, there are certain influential circles in the West that might be interested in supporting the Croatian cause, providing only that there would be continuous ferment in Croatia, i.e., that Croatia becomes ‘revolutionised’. If one could define such a possible and useful revolutionary action with some precision, and if it could be tied up with the legal activities of the Croatian emigrants in the West, Bruno’s views would be acceptable in principle. Bruno agreed that the HNV cannot be involved in revolutionary activities but it should not be against the revolutionary dynamics as such, for which it does not have any understanding’. He accepted that his followers [‘?opor’, The Pack] were ‘undisciplined’, but that they could be reined in after the meeting in Amsterdam [which eventually was held in Lund], at which meeting a clear programme of the group will be agreed. Bruno warned that the leaders of the revolutionary action in Croatia itself were underestimated by the average emigrants.”Bruno's assassination, by gunshot, on the 16th October 1978 by UDBA, unfortunately, left most of these questions open.Bruno’s ‘revolutionising of the homeland’ came to the fore only in 1989 when the world conditions became right for the action in Croatia as well as in the whole of the Soviet-controlled Central and Eastern Europe.Frustrations with the inability for revolutionary action after Bu?ic’s death took some groups down the path of terror, thus enabling the Yugoslav regime to label the Croatian Liberation Struggle within HNV as terrorism. The nastier side of these activities was the ‘moral assassination’ of the groups and individuals within the Croatian émigré population, unwilling to accept terror as an option, describing them as spies of the foreign agencies, etc.No wonder that these turmoils created terrible confusion in the minds of the ordinary ‘non-political’ emigrants who had serious doubts about whether the ‘revolutionary gangs’ themselves had been infiltrated by UDBA.Bu?i? firmly believed that his group was impenetrable by UDBA. Yet his own death was proof that he was not only surrounded by spies but also by murderers.Nova Hrvatska found itself in the crossfire of attacks, on the one side by the Yugoslav newspapers (Borba, Politika, and Vjesnik XE "Vjesnik" ) and on the other by the Croatian ‘revolutionary’ emigrant press, Hrvatski List and Republika Hrvatska.For better or worse, Nova Hrvatska found it necessary to go into the counter-attack, ad hominem. “The fact that we were silent so far makes us also responsible for this situation . . . The destructive work of the ‘revolutionaries’ is putting the whole struggle for the liberation of Croatia into question, and therefore we have no alternative but to speak the truth.” Nova Hrvatska (Nos. 4,6,7/1980) then injected a note of political realism into its invective: “The death of the Yugoslav dictator does not mean the automatic death of Yugoslavia . . . The difficulty is the international situation in which the status quo looms large. Therefore, it is up to us to act wisely and in a disciplined way, and in that way to try to influence world political opinion. It is necessary to recreate in Croatia the process of the Liberalisation of 1971, which now, after Tito, has a much greater prospect of success.” The reaction came in an article by Die Welt in which “the co-ordination centre of the emigrant Croats do not dream any longer the ‘Ustasha dreams’, but rather intends to clear from their ranks irreparable fascists who are in cahoots with ‘the socialists and communists.” The ideological leader of such a 'fascist group', a Croatian Jew, Mladen Schwartz, stated, “no deals will be made with compatriots who are ready to compromise.”He warned the West not to support Yugoslavia “if they do not wish us to find allies on the other side . . . “ Nova Hrvatska hit back against the “charlatans and provocateurs, who could destroy the weakest of the links between ourselves and the International community.” Nova Hrvatska recalled the Croatian successes in trade, financial and intellectual links with the West in 1971, all achieved spontaneously and without the smothering interference of Belgrade. In its issue no. 14/1981 the editor of Nova Hrvatska summed up the situation:“For some, our neighbours [presumably the Serbs] or even the whole world, are responsible for our tragic situation, and yet no one will accept the fact that we ourselves are most answerable for such a negative state of affairs.”In conclusion, the psychology of the Croatian emigrants was as naive as it was dangerous: too much emotion and too little hard calculation; too much passion and too little perseverance; too much rhetoric, and too few political results.The consolation was in the fact that in the following period from 1980 to 1990, the Croatian political emigrants learned, to a large extent, from their mistakes. Paradise was still a long way away, but purgatory was not too uncomfortable. The adage that each generation of political emigrants, in general, create two versions of revolution – for and against – was a perception that did not escape the Croatian emigrants during this period.The final clash between the ‘revolutionaries’ and the 'liberal democrats' as represented by Nova Hrvatska occurred on the signing of the ‘Appeal to the President of the SFRJ and other foreign governments by CADDY’ (the American Committee to Aid Democratic Dissidents in Yugoslavia) demanding the release of all political prisoners, the dismantling of Clause 133 of the Criminal Code regarding ‘enemy propaganda’, the ending of the policy of fear, the granting of freedom of expression and the right to struggle for human rights, etc. An appeal to Western Governments asking that the credits and financial help to Yugoslavia be always proportionate to the degree of the application of the above freedoms in practice. 154 people, from all the Republics of Yugoslavia (and possibly Dr. Franjo Tudjman XE "Tudjman, Dr. Franjo" ), and two members of Nova Hrvatska signed this document. “The signature meant salvaging Yugoslavia” was the immediate reaction on the part of the ‘revolutionaries’.The attitude of Nova Hrvatska was that the opposition to the Yugoslav regime from the whole of Yugoslavia must act collectively “because our problems are common to all until the people of Croatia shall be able to express their opinions freely.” This rational paradigm tripped, however (and in good faith), on the false premise of the ‘common problems of all Yugoslav nations in relation to Yugoslavia’.First and foremost, the utopian state of Yugoslavia was not a rational construct. Secondly, apart from the Croats (and with the possible exception of some Slovenes and Albanians), all the other nations and ethnic groups in that country were pro-Yugoslav orientated.The events of 1990 have shown that the liberal/democratic emigrants (led by Nova Hrvatska) did everything right but were ultimately wrong in that ‘the struggle for the democratisation of Yugoslavia within its own system’ was impossible.The irony for the Croat political émigrés, on the other hand, was that the ‘revolutionaries’ did everything wrong, but the events of 1990 proved them right, i.e., that the nature of the Utopian Yugoslavia was such that it could not have been democratised, and that it was ultimately and inevitably ripe for violent dismemberment.5.15 Yugoslav murders still being uncoveredThe acid test of the Yugoslav utopia, I suggest, were the comments made on the enduring legacy of its crimes as published in the Zagreb broadsheet Vjesnik XE "Vjesnik" on the 2nd July 1990 after the discovery of the mass grave at Jazovka (So?ice – 20km south-west of Zagreb), which contained thousands of skeletons of the post WWII Croat victims, murdered by the communists in 1945. By opening another mass grave of the Croat victims of communism, the investigating group of the Zagreb daily broadsheet Vjesnik XE "Vjesnik" , opened a new debate about the genocidal nature of the Yugoslav Utopia. As such it became a paradigm for all future investigations of the mass graves from Carinthia, Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia as far as the Greek border.In penetrating the ‘zone of darkness’ of the Croatian WWII history, Hido Bi??evi?, the editor, pointed out the difficulty in keeping cool in the face of communist barbarity, and looking at this gruesome discovery rationally, in order to avoid the investigation becoming exploited for political-ideological corrida. That there was great risk for that to happen is due to the fact that there are still a number of the original executioners around, alive and well living in Serbia (and even in Croatia) on state pensions. Indeed, many of their relatives and ideological followers are still in positions of power.Vjesnik XE "Vjesnik" team’s speleological investigation of the foundations of this ‘underground socialism’ ((JAZ), p.6) was de facto an investigation into the depths of the Yugoslav hell. The media, local and foreign, jumped onto the discovery and subverted it to the rule of its own unremitting laws.In Ve?ernje Novosti (Belgrade) on the 11th July 1990, Dragan Glu??evi?, under the jokey title ‘Gambling with dead souls’ stated, in a convoluted way that the aim of the Tudjman regime was to "finally compromise and deconstruct the red communist dragon or any reminder of it, by exploiting the SKH-SDP (Communist Party of Croatia – The Party of Democratic Changes) in the Parliament."Glu??evi? intimated that the nod for the investigation of this mass grave was given by a certain Branko Muli?, a former truck driver of the OZNA (Yugoslav Secret Police), who was present at the pit at the time of the slaughters. Muli? was asked to get his truck ready to transfer wounded (Croatian soldiers) from the hospital of Sveti Duh in Zagreb to another hospital but, 'by mistake', they ended up in the pit. Those in charge were Joza Brn?i? from OZNA and officers of KNOJ, Slavko Urek, Drago Rafaj and ?ivko Vuj?i?. Muli?, Glu??evi? maintains, blames the Serbs, as they held key positions in OZNA and were in the business of avenging Ustasha crimes. According to him, the top shots in the KPH, Stevo Kraja?i? and Vladimir Bakari?, could not have made such a criminal decision on their own – they were after all not the executioners but only the executives. So those responsible, ‘in reverse order’, were ‘somebody at the top’ in Belgrade, followed by the executives Kraja?i? and Bakari? in Zagreb, and finally at the bottom of the upside down pyramid, the executioners themselves. To be fair to the Serbs, the three executioners named above were ‘Croats’, and only one was a Serb. Yet, when Glu??evi? tries to rationalise, he is at his worst: “It is clear that during the war and afterwards there were some crimes committed in the name of the anti-fascist struggle; these crimes being in total contrast with the spirit of that struggle, and therefore the unacceptable hypothesis about the genocidal nature of the Croatian people cannot be defended with another one – that of the genocidal nature of the communist movement.”The above quote is one of the many memorable dialectic tricks played by the communists, but it won’t wash for the simple reason that nations cannot be genocidal, but political and ideological movements can and often are.On the other hand, the correspondent of the Belgrade Politika, P. Dmitrovi?, under the title ‘What is the purpose behind Jazovka’ was inspired by the alleged statement by Ivan Veki?, a member of the Croatian Parliament: “Nobody will escape our hatred”.In the Belgrade Borba dated 14/15th July 1990, Mirko Mlakar pointed out “that the question of the [war] victims will be irretrievably lost, so that nobody will know that the communists were actually fighting the fascists and the occupiers. We have progressed somewhat however,” commented Mlakar ironically “and at least the surviving communists will not have to emigrate to America and England and will be able to die a natural death, unlike those who, because of their different political opinions, had to die abroad, with the qualification that they were ‘Ustashas’ or ‘Chetniks’, and yet have never killed anyone, nor even sniffed the gunpowder."Touché, by a correspondent of the former communist paper.The correspondent of the Nedjeljna Borba of 14th/15th July 1990, Seada Vrani?, argues “that only democracy will bring reconciliation”. Miodrag Djuri?, correspondent of the Belgrade Express Politika, writes under the title ‘The impertinence of the trade with human bones’ on 5th July 1990, that the bones in the mass grave at Jazovka have a thankless task to prove that “the Partisans were not less charitable murderers than were the Ustashas” and that “it will be difficult to establish the balance in the slaughters”, allocating to the Belgrade press a place of high honour among the reformed Yugoslav communists.The British press, as presented by The Independent on Sunday, however, cries not for the victims but for the fate of the Yugoslav Utopia: “The discovery of the massacre at Jazovka could not have happened at a worst moment for Yugoslavia”. (The Independent on Sunday, July 1990) quoting Vjesnik XE "Vjesnik" that “hundreds of people must have known about the massacres but nobody could summon the courage to mention them. We are talking here about an episode which the post-war Yugoslav history puts into a new perspective.”It goes on “that the discovery of the mass grave in So?ice will feed, however, the Yugoslav national hatreds, which are on the increase daily.”In order to prove its ‘objectivity’, The Independent on Sunday states “that the victims of Jazovka were mainly the soldiers fighting for the marionette, pro-Nazi state known as the NDH . . . and, by the way, that among the victims are nurses, nuns and children as well as wounded soldiers whom the communists dragged from their hospital beds, some 4,000-5,000 victims in the pit, according to the estimate by the historian Darko Beki?."Tony Barber was forced at the end to reluctantly accept “that, for the most murders at the end of the war, the responsibility must fall on the communists” and sheepishly mentioned the mass liquidations of the Croatian PoWs, which the British extradited cheerfully back to Tito from Austria in 1945.“The irony is”, goes on Barber, “that Franjo Tudjman, who this year won the elections on the non-communist ticket, was at the time [of the massacres] one of Tito’s generals.”The Trieste daily Piccolo of 3rd July 1990, in an article signed by Mauro Manzini and Piero Spirito writes: “With the help of carbide lamps, the speleologists were faced with a hallucinatory sight, thousands of skeletons, as apparent from the photographs taken, published by Vjesnik XE "Vjesnik" . Heaped on the top of each other, it is plain that this is another Katyn. . . Many sculls had visible bullet holes. The people have opened their mouths as they are no longer scared of police persecution so that Vjesnik receives daily many similar stories and on about different locations.” [Piccolo of 3rd July 1990.] The people do not perceive the police as an instrument of control in the service of the communist party any longer. The new young Croatian generation wish to live in freedom and democracy. Il Giorno, the Milan daily of 2nd July 1990, under the title ‘A mass grave of 40,000 Ustashas in Croatia’ writes about “the ‘former’ Partisans talking about trucks full of wounded Croatian soldiers, members of the Ustasha youth, nurses and others who were killed with fire arms, systematically one by one”. ?eljko Kru?elj XE "Kru?elj, ?eljko" , the former communist regime’s correspondent of Vjesnik XE "Vjesnik" , writes: “In order to create an impression of the exodus of the whole Croatian people, Paveli?, in the withdrawal from Srijem and Slavonia, exercised a forced mobilisation, not infrequently even the schoolboys, persuading the others to move to save themselves.” Kru?elj’s statement, though, is misleading in one crucial respect. Implicit in what he is trying to convey is that the people had nothing to fear from the advancing hordes of the ‘national liberation army’. Jazovka is proof that this is false: thousands of those at the bottom of the pit were the people who did not join the exodus; many of them dragged from their hospital beds in Zagreb. The resulting discussion of the events in Bleiburg and after by Kru?elj is illuminating: “From the statements made by the former officers of the Yugoslav army, one could conclude that the various Quisling formations, out of which the Croatian ones were the most numerous, had about 100,000 dead, after the end of the war, i.e., almost half of their losses during the four years” Yet if the victory was a matter of ‘national liberation’, what were the executions for? “The ambivalent nature of the spiritual climate of the birth of the new communist power ipso facto, promoted the murderous interests of the only powerful and politically effective groups in the post-war Yugoslavia. Therefore, after 45 years, there has occurred a need for the ‘nocturnal visits’ to Jazovka to become a part of the painful and yet completely legitimate testimony of the run-amuck ideologies.” This kind of rationalisation may have little or nothing to offer the dead, but it only benefits a former communist like Kru?elj, who, concerned about his own neck in 1990 when the 'run-amuck ideology of communism' was on its last leg, had to find for himself a viable political alternative and, as such, is a prototype for all the ‘reformed’ communists now in Croatia and even in Europe. Dr. Vladimir Bakari?, secretary general of the KPH, died at the right time in order to escape the need for the reformation, or the rope around his fat neck.Even Kru?elj admits that the first months of the ‘liberation of Yugoslavia’ were full of mini-Bleiburgs XE "Bleiburgs" XE "Bleiburgs" . The excuses for this were ‘years-long sediments of the ideological enmities’, which turned into real pogroms of the ‘enemies’, a category which included all political opponents of the KPJ. The imprisonments went on 24 hours a day and all those who were invited for ‘informative conversations’ never returned. Ordinary people dared not mention the pogroms, even at the closed communist party meetings. For that reason, one much prefers to hear what the 'unreformed' Dr. Bakari? said to the Fourth Congress of ZAVNOH on 24th/25th July 1945, with the aim of dampening the ‘street gossips’, which were fuelled by ‘the imperialist intelligence services’. Stating that although ‘the battle with the remnants of the Ustashas was not yet complete’, Bakari? did take the opportunity to attack also members of the Domobran Formations (the NDH regular army): “Today we hear the accusations: you were imprisoning and persecuting the best sons of the Croatian people; you are punishing them and starving them, you are killing them; this is a land of concentration camps, this is a land of anti-Croatian politics. Domobrans XE "Domobrans" have surrendered fully armed; that was a regular army and nowhere in the world were there examples of persecution of PoWs. For them the war has ended and they must be freed. But, Comrades, the crux of the matter is altogether different. When the occupiers enter the country, and when some people were willing to mobilise in the service of the occupiers, then, in accordance with the International Laws, such actions are taken to be a war crime. To serve the enemy in the struggle against one’s own homeland [supposedly Yugoslavia] is treason by all the international criteria. These people, willy nilly, personally guilty or not, come under the hammer of the ‘Law for the protection of people’, and must be punished. But that is not all. By their actions they made possible the continuity of the bloody Ustasha regime, because without the Domobrans, the Ustashas could not persist. They were those who were killing in our villages, and who smeared our Croatian name. They were those whom we had to get rid of, and who we need to re-educate and put on a different path. Further, comrades, I do not wish to argue that there were no instances of incorrect behaviour [among the Partisans]. On the contrary, there were. Some of our self-willed officers, or the self-willed peoples’ representatives behaved inhumanely [with the prisoners]; such individuals must and will have to answer for their behaviour.”Here we are, the undiluted and ‘unreformed’ statement by the ‘Croat’ believer in the Yugoslav utopia.The significance of the opening of the Jazovka mass grave as a ‘model’ mass grave lies in the refutation of Bakari?’s dialectic tricks that: “To serve the enemy in the struggle of one’s own homeland [Bakaric means Yugoslavia] is treason . . . so that these people, willy nilly, guilty or not came under the hammer of the ‘Law for the protection of people’ and had to be punished.”Even on Bakari?’s own warped account it is clear that “those whom we had to get rid of”, [i.e., an imperative in his impenetrable communist and pro-Yugoslav model,] were fighting against the Yugoslav utopia out of their deep conviction and could not in anyone's wildest imagination be “the traitors of their own homeland [Croatia]”.Let’s face it, the ‘treason of the homeland’ and ‘fighting with the occupiers’ had nothing to do with it. Ultimately the outcome of the conflict depended on the ability of the Yugoslav communists to maim and ‘liquidate’ their ideological opponents. And thousands were liquidated, without ever fighting with the occupiers.The Yugoslav communists have not only committed murders in Austria but also in Trieste, which, at the time, was governed by the British. Some 7,000 Trieste inhabitants (among them many Croats) were executed there during the 40 days of terror under ‘General’ Du?an Kveder XE "Kveder, General’ Du?an" , and thrown into 50 mass graves. They were not citizens of the NDH.Naturally the British, and even the Americans, knew what was going on there. On 12th May 1945, President Truman wrote an angry letter to Churchill on the subject but without response. Not satisfied with the thousands of Croats extradited from Austria into his hands, Tito prepared an additional list of 20,000 ‘war criminals’ that had escaped his clutches and demanded from the Allies that they hunt them down. This list was rejected. Tito eventually trimmed it down to 660 people 'for special treatment'. The Brits, always obliging, were acting on that list as late as 1948.British Major Stephen Clissold of the British Intelligence Service (quoted extensively in this book) was a head-hunter par excellence. Before WWII, Clissold had worked in the British Consulate in Zagreb. Married to a pro-Yugoslav Croat woman, he was primed on the Croatian political history in the comfort of his own marital bed.Under the extravagant title of The Secretary of the Commission for the Investigation of War Criminals, Clissold organised the arrest of 120 Croats in Rome on the 27th March 1947. General Fitzroy McLean XE "McLean, General Fitzroy" was at the head of this body.In April 1947, the British carried out an ‘offensive’ on the PoW camp Fermo in Forli in Puglia. There were some 2,500 Croats there. Fifteen Croats were transferred from Fermo to the notorious Rome prison Regina Elena and from there were sent to Belgrade. The hunt was organised all over Italy. Amongst those arrested were some prominent historians and journalists, such as Milivoj Magdi? and Dane Uvanovi?, and the Croat poet, Vinko Nikoli?, who jumped from an express train and thus saved himself. The Uvanovi? case is illustrative. He was quite friendly with Clissold while in Zagreb before WWII. When they met again in Rome, Clissold pretended they were still good friends until the day Uvanovi? found himself extradited to Yugoslavia, the arrest engineered by Clissold himself. In Letters to the Editor of The Times (23rd May 1945, p.5) a former British soldier who had spent some time on the ‘Yugoslav’ scene, released from the bounds of duty, felt that, as a decent human being, he should write freely about his experiences: "We have, in our thanksgiving for victory, reaffirmed the fact that we are a Christian nation and have solemnly and sincerely dedicated the peace to Christian principles. Within a few days of these ceremonies, we were invited to acquiesce in a gross extension of a spectacle, which touched the conscience of our grandfathers - the subjection of the Christian peoples of the Balkans to a non-Christian tyrannical rule. The peoples, now overrun by the forces of Marshal Tito, are predominantly Roman Catholic. The attitude of his regime to their church is not a matter of conjecture: it has long been evident in Croatia; but the knowledge is confined to those who, owing to official sources, may not speak. . . . There can now be no honourable reason for further concealment if, when the truth is published, it is revealed that the regime of Marshall Tito has all the characteristics of Nazism - a secret political police, judicial murders of political opponents, the arrest and disappearance of civilians.”Time magazine wrote in similar vein on the 16th September 1946, Vol. 48, pp.26-30 under the title ‘The Nations: Proletarian Proconsul’.The fact that the British and Americans knew very well what was going on is plain from Winston Churchill's gross understatement: "Their [the Partisans] behaviour, both in Austria and Venezia Giulia . . . made a bad impression on the Allied troops, both of the United States and the British. Our men were obliged to look on, without the power to intervene, at actions which offended their sense of justice and felt they were condoning wrong doing.” They did not, but the British Establishment which handed them to the communists, did. 5.16 Time for 'Rationalisation' XE "Time for 'Rationalisation'" All the pointers indicate that the mass massacres of the Croats during and after WWII were based on a previously well-planned operation. The commands for the massacres were directed from the top echelons of the KPJ, and the dirty work of actual physical executions was passed to the local party organisations.The time has now come to put names to the anonymous faces of some of these ‘comrades’ and reveal their true characters. Some of these characters sat, until recently, in the Croatian Parliament set up by the communists XE "Croatian Parliament set up by the communists" , worked for the Government, the universities and Yugoslav Embassies. And many of them are now creeping back into various institutions of the Republic in Croatia.In order not to grind the old ideological axe, since 1990 it has become a political imperative not to minimise the claim for the anti-fascist character of the ‘Liberation Struggle’ on the one hand, and not to cover up its dark side, on the other.The urgency that arose from this discovery, however, is the need for an acid test of the nature of anti-fascism itself. There is a world of difference between the anti-fascism of the Western democracies, expressed in the rejection of the fascist totalitarian ideas, and the ‘anti-fascism’ of the communist totalitarian states and movements (and the ‘Croatian president Mesi?), which is simply a competitive totalitarian ideology.In this light, the Yugoslav communists bragging about the ‘anti-fascism of the national liberation struggle’ means, purely and simply, the replacement of one totalitarian ideology by another.The idea of a reconciliation between the former ‘fascists’ and the ‘anti-fascists’ in Croatia was a utopian pursuit, although in the 1990s it was the only possible temporary approach in overcoming the Great Serbian aggression. Of course, the definition of 'who is and who isn’t' fascist was always up to the 'anti-fascists'. Sadly, a leading Croatian poet and communist stooge, Vladimir Nazor XE "Nazor, Vladimir" , who joined the Partisans in 1942, found it necessary to state in his speech upon his return to Zagreb from the woods during the peak of the communist terror in May 1945:“Only murderers and traitors will be put on trial but deciding who the traitor is will be the privilege of the anti-fascists.”Colonel Vje?eslav Holjevac, XE "Holjevac, Colonel Vje?eslav" later Mayor of Zagreb, who in the 1960’s was a defender of the ‘Croatian interests’ in competition with Belgrade, stated in June 1945:“Zagreb is being cleansed of its shameful past” but it was he who was to decide who and how it would be cleansed.Mika ?piljak, top communist hotshot in Zagreb stated at the time: “All the organisations, without exception, are active in the destruction of the remnants of fascism but the Party has to decide who these remnants of fascism are.” The ‘peoples masses’ took very seriously the task for the action in uncovering the ‘anti-national elements’. As a result, the offices and factories were cleansed of the ‘fascist elements’, and only the ‘progressive sons of the working class’ remained to polish factory floors. No wonder the Yugoslav economy went to pot.Vjesnik XE "Vjesnik" , the Zagreb broadsheet of 19th May 1945, printed the proclamation by the ‘Anti-fascist Youth’ of Croatia: “The spring sunshine has appeared over our dear Zagreb. Our Yugoslav Army is cleansing the homeland of the broken fascist gangs. We have achieved one of the greatest ideals through our struggle; we have created the unity and brotherhood of the Croatian and Serbian peoples . . . “ The newspapers published daily lists of ‘war criminals'. The death penalty was the rule rather than the exception, the only question was the method of the execution: by hanging, shooting, or stabbing.The giddy limit was reached with the publication of an article by the notorious Jakov Bla?evi?, the communist State Prosecutor XE "Bla?evi?, Jakov - communist State Prosecutor" , under the title ‘The Prosecutors as the Organs of the Peoples’ Control’: “The role of the Prosecutors is to act as the extended hand of the people,"mused Bla?evi?, justifying the mob lynching of all those who did not appeal to the ‘people’.The rationalisation of the savagery of half a century ago by the still-living 'Croatian' communists is growing more eccentric by the week. Unbelievably, they try to justify these ‘liquidations’ on the basis of the still widely approved ‘revolutionary’ expediency. Can these people ever be truly reformed? Marko Belini? XE "Belini? Marko" , Partisan commandant of the region in which the Jazovka mass grave was uncovered, stated coolly: “I didn’t order the liquidation of the PoWs nor was I present there. The order was issued by the local party organisation, headed by Jurica Drau?nik and Marijan Badel XE "Badel, Marijan" [whose name now graces the Zagreb distillery exporting ?livovitz (plum brandy)]: there were 400 PoWs there and we liquidated only 218. We did it because they were murderers. We did not allow the people to lynch them so we tried them. The war-time period [for me] is now rather hazy. With hindsight it is difficult to understand these events. The liquidations in So?ice commenced earlier than 1945. At the beginning of 1943, we had taken 200 Ustashas and Domobrans XE "Domobrans" prisoners and liquidated them on the spot.”In view of the above, the statement made by a former woman Partisan commissar Milka Kufrin XE "Kufrin, Milka" sounds less than hollow. She was a member of the Regional Committee of the KPH in the area, and said “Our [Partisan] movement was a broad church, national-liberation anti-fascist, with the most noble aims of freedom and a better life for all, applying [in that endeavour] the most humane methods of struggle”. Ante Parad?ik XE "Parad?ik, Ante" , one of the leaders of the Party of Croatian Rights put his finger on the problem: “The discovery of the mass grave at Jazovka will contribute to the discovery of the historical truth in order to put a stop to the imputation of the collective genocidal character of the Croatian people. Jazovka is just the beginning; over the past few days we have received many more witness accounts of a similar nature, so much so that the number of mass grave pits rose to over one hundred. These pits are physical evidence of the suffering of the Croatian people.” Vjesnik XE "Vjesnik" , of the 10th July 1990, changed its communist spots, and called for the truth to come to the fore, to be investigated scientifically as the only way to achieve reconciliation and also to be a warning that something like this must never be repeated.The call for reconciliation of the irreconcilable, i.e., between the contestants for and against Yugoslav utopia, by the Tudjman Government in 1990, was, in itself, a self-defeating Utopia. The arrogance expressed by the Union of the Former Fighters of the ‘National Liberation Army’ of Croatia makes this absolutely clear:“The moral obligations [killings] of the Partisans in that most difficult period [WWII] have never been transgressed.” What is the nature of redemption? The few still surviving Yugoslav Partisans insist that they have a monopoly on the truth.Vuka?in Zori? XE "Zori?, Vuka?in" (a Serb), general secretary of the Yugoslav Independent Democratic Party stated: “I feel bitter with the manoeuvres coming from the arsenal of the crypto leader of the Social Democratic Party, Ivica Ra?an XE "Ra?an, Ivica" [former communist leader] who calls for the beginning of reconciliation, not only of the two nations [Croatia and Serbia] but also for the reconciliation of their dead. Nobody has the right, particularly Mister-Comrade Ra?an, to utter a single word in the name of the dead. Can anyone join the ‘game of skeletons’ with impunity as the boss of the SDP [Ra?an] does? What is the purpose of all this posthumous equalising of the innocent victims and the cruel murderers? Why was Glina chosen for such a manoeuvre [Ra?an's speech - (????. . . . . . .2000) in Glina, that prided itself with brotherhood, until the day that Ivica Ra?an spoke from the pedestal of the CK KPJ and ended a long-drawn out scenario of demolishing the Left and the wholesome forces of Yugoslavia. Is that how Mister-Comrade Ra?an shows gratitude to the Serbs of Glina and the Yugoslav-orientated Croats who gave their votes to his Party?” The ranting of Vuka?in Zori? was, in many ways, more illuminating as to the nature of the Yugoslav utopia than all the well-intentioned calls for reconciliation.The Vice-President of the Croatian Parliament, Stjepan Sulimanac XE "Sulimanac, Stjepan" , pointed out the fact that there were many more victims after the war than during the war.“We want the investigation of these post-war crimes [by the communists] to be reactivated in order to find the truth. What were the motives, what was at the bottom of it, whose genocide was it?” Dr. Franjo Tudjman XE "Tudjman, Dr. Franjo" , with international diplomacy on his mind, stated, “that many are falling into the trap of identifying anti-fascism and crime. Anti-fascism was, one must not forget, the basis for the establishment of the Federal Republic of Croatia.” ‘Anti-fascism’ as practiced by the KPJ and the Yugoslav Army after 1945 under the mask of ‘The National Liberation’, in no way could have been the basis for the establishment of the Federal Republic of Croatia. That 'anti-fascism' was simply a mass crime.The ‘anti-fascists’ in Croatia have never been so insecure. Ra?an, the leader of the SKH-SDP elaborated: “We remain true to our initiative of general reconciliation of all our citizens as a condition of peaceful and democratic life in Croatia in spite of resistance. The persistent pushing of the idea of the ‘national’ reconciliation [between Croats and Serbs], instead of the ‘citizens’ reconciliation, is not accidental.” Sofija Ma?a Pavi?i? XE "Pavi?i?, Sofija Ma?a" , in her letter to the Editor of Vjesnik XE "Vjesnik" in July 1990 stated: “I joined the Partisans after three years of illegal work in Zagreb as a member of the SKOJ [communist Youth]. One cannot call all those who were killed and thrown into Jazovka the ‘Croatian Army’ [as quoted in Vjesnik XE "Vjesnik" ] because the Ustashas were Quisling-fascist criminals who were not recognised by the Croatian people. As a living witness of the Partisan mode of warfare, I am well acquainted with its political line, which was against criminal acts of any description. I maintain that a general reconciliation is not possible because that can be done only if no one’s crimes are forgiven.” Dane Pavlica XE "Pavlica, Dane" , in his letter to the Editor of Vjesnik XE "Vjesnik" , in July 1990 writes:“Jazovka will be the motive for the opening of many other mass graves of the Serbs and anti-fascist [pro-Yugoslav] Croats killed by the Ustashas from May to August 1941. At a scientific meeting in Jasenovac on the 15th-17th October 1989, it was stated that there would be no peace [then still in Yugoslavia] until all the victims of the war [he does not mention the post-war Croatian victims] are identified by name. Therefore, the researchers will be very busy.”Dr. Ljubomir Anti?, quoting the book ‘To Survive in Zagreb’ by Josip Horvat XE "Horvat, Josip" under the entry of 11th July 1945, states: “I cannot understand how the new [communist] regime was so insensitive as to automatically re-use the improvised Ustasha jails where, very often, one could find the same people who were there during Paveli?’s regime?” Stjepan Horvat in his letter to Vjesnik XE "Vjesnik" in July 1990 states: “Three to four days after the ‘liberation’, people were ‘liquidated’ without trial. Those were the days of lawlessness and free-for-all revenge. Jazovka happened after the war, during the ‘liberation’, which unfortunately was not for everyone. I enclose a photocopy of one of the thousands of formal documents, which might interest you: the Military Court of the Command of the City of Zagreb dated 5th September 1945 addressed to the family of Kniewald Hinko: “According to the verdict of this court No. 126/45 dated 31st May 1945, Kniewald Hinko, born 14th January 1912 in Graz, Austria, but who was resident in Zagreb at Pavleti? St., No. 6, is sentenced to death by shooting, as the 'people’s enemy', including the loss of all political and citizens rights, except the rights of parenthood, and the confiscation of all his property”. The sentence was carried out.Death to Fascism – Freedom to the People”President – Captain Vladimir Ranogajac XE "Ranogajac, Captain Vladimir" .” Why So?ice? This region in the county of Zagreb – 20km south-west of Zagreb, was a stronghold of the Partisans, their political and military command and their hospital. By tragi-comic logic, it was also convenient to have a black hole nearby to accommodate the ‘liquidated’ enemy, in order to save on transport.After 8th May 1945, some 20,000 people were murdered in Zagreb alone. The top echelons of the communist Government in Zagreb was made up of ‘Croat’ Mika ?piljak, XE "?piljak, Mika" the Secretary of the communist Party, ‘Croat’ Vje?eslav Holjevac XE "Holjevac, Vje?eslav" , Commandant of the City, and the Commandant of the 10th Corpus; a Serb Rade Bulat XE "Bulat, Rade" , who was responsible for the liquidation of the NDH military. The fact is that extant written documents are still under lock and key (mainly in Belgrade Archives of the JNA and the CK KPJ), and the intelligence service documents in the Federal Ministry of Interior. So what do they have to hide?Communist Dr. Djuro Zatezalo XE "Zatezalo, Dr. Djuro" , one of the rare researchers on the subject for the past 40 years, maintained in 2001 that there were 102 pits in Croatia, graves of the Serbs, Jews and Croats. He also maintained that in Jadovno camp alone in Lika there were some 62,000 victims of the fascist terror during the period from 11th April to 15th August 1941."I am against the common memorial for all the victims of the war because their aims and consequences were not identical. “We have not made a list of all the victims of the war [as in some other countries], because somebody was sabotaging that effort in the former Yugoslavia. If that list was made we would have today a clearer picture of the true number of the victims of the fascist and other [i.e., communist] terror and would not be today in such an ‘atmosphere of enmity’." An old communist-turned-Social Liberal, Zvonko Ivankovi?-Vonta XE "Ivankovi?-Vonta, Zvonko" stated in July 2000: “If Parliament favours the correct and accurate registration of the victims, it must also state clearly if it intends to punish those killers still around. If that is the case, then it is senseless to talk about forgiveness and reconciliation. If the intention is to punish the guilty, then it must be stated who is guilty - all of them, or only a few."Vonta goes on: “I was disappointed to hear Ivan Zvonimir ?i?ak XE "?i?ak Ivan Zvonimir" [Chairman of the European Humanitarian Commission in Croatia] say that ‘communism was a criminal ideology in the same way as was fascism’. It is well-known that Hitler’s national-socialism and Paveli?’s Ustasha movement had genocide built into their programmes. Communism and Christianity do not have such aims. On the basis of the same criteria, even the Christian ideology could be made to be criminal. After all, Christians caused two world wars in this century. Both the Ustashas and Chetniks were Christians. Yet any rational man knows that it is not the ideology that is to blame, but the disregard of it. One has to assess also the moral gravity of the demand for the respect of International Law in the case of those [i.e., the NDH] who, throughout the four years of the war, ignored that Law, not only in killing Partisans but also civilians. It was not easy to reduce the numerous demands for revenge because of one’s own losses and suffering. Then, also, the ‘Serbian factor’ demanded its own pound of flesh." Ljubo Boban XE "Boban, Ljubo" , historian, commented: “So far the victims were exploited for everyday politics. I have repeated many times that the former regime [Titoism] depended heavily on the high number of victims. We are witnesses of the imputation of the collective Croatian responsibility [for the Ustasha war crimes]. It was said that the Croatian people collectively should fall on their knees before any parleys [on reconciliation] take place. Take, for example, the Ustasha camp Jadovno. The estimate of the dead started with 8,000 victims, which increased to 35,000 with alacrity - and now, it is ‘assumed’ that there were 43,000 victims there. This ‘it is assumed’ next day I read in the newspapers, appeared as ‘it was established’ by my colleague Dr. Djuro Zatezalo XE "Zatezalo, Dr. Djuro" that there were, according to him, no more and no less than 67,000 victims there, and yet according to the register of names the camp had only 17,030 victims. It is not beyond our capability to seriously and conscientiously establish the real number of all the victims, plus or minus 10%.” Ivo Goldstein XE "Goldstein, Ivo" , Professor of Medieval History at Zagreb University, whose life’s aim is to re-write Croatian history commented: “I am interested in the current trend of reconciliation and forgiveness. But I ask, "Who has to reconcile with whom?” ?erjavi? [Croatian demographer] worked out that the Croat and Serbian victims number between 7% and 8% of the total number of the population. In my opinion, the first nation that that must forgive practically disappeared [in Croatia] are the Jews. I am half-Jew and half-Croat. On the territory of the NDH before the war, there were 41,000 Jews and after the war 30,000 returned. Accordingly, if the Vjesnik XE "Vjesnik" campaign proceeds as it is, without anyone apologising for anti-Semite pronouncements, it seems to me that Croatia cannot join Europe,” warns Goldstein. Ciril Pete?i? XE "Pete?i?, Ciril" commented: “In my book ‘The Children’s Home in Jastrebarsko’ I have refuted the assertion that 230 children were killed there [by the Ustashas]. I based this on the documents of the State Commission of ZAVNOH and the notes made by Professor Kamilo Bresler and the district doctor, Dr. Davile. All the ‘facts’ so far were based on Partisan loose talk, i.e., ‘pouring from an empty vessel into another hollow one’. In fact, no children were killed, but 452 children died as a result of harsh treatment in Jasenovac camps before they arrived at Jastrebarsko. I am sad that the journalist Dara Jankovi?, only a few days before, stated at the Congress of SUBNOR [Union of the Fighters of the National Liberation Army] in Belgrade that ‘in the horrifying children’s concentration camp at Jastrebarsko' children were killed in the most cruel manner with the assistance of the [Roman Catholic] nuns and their superior. It was stated that 1,018 children were involved.” Ivan Cerovac, journalist, stated: “It is a grotesque situation in which Zvonimir Ivankovi?-Vonta XE "Ivankovi?-Vonta, Zvonimir" [a former communist], now in 1990 a member of the HSLS [Croatian Social Liberal Party] speaks on the subject of the war-time crimes. He, of all people, who was a member of OZNA [The Secret Police], in fact, is the very man whose crimes we should now discuss. Yet discussing the matter is just flogging a dead horse. We shall never clear ourselves in the eyes of the world until we have our own diplomacy [here Cerovac hit the nail on the head]. The present Croatian diplomatic representatives [in the Republic of Croatia] are fundamentally anti-Croat.” Slavko Goldstein XE "Goldstein, Slavko" , a publisher, “I could not agree with those who maintain that the post-war crimes were more serious than those during the war. The question of the war-time victims is particularly sensitive for us Jews who suffered because of our religion. As 80% of the Jews on the territory of the former NDH were killed, it is logical that we are sensitive on this subject. [See statement above by his son, Ivo that 75% of the Croatian Jews returned after the war]. We must not forget that in Jadovno and Jasenovac [the Ustasha concentration camps] are not buried those who were killed in So?ice and Bleiburg [the communist killing fields]. On the other hand, in So?ice and Bleiburg are buried some of those who were killed in the Ustasha camps.” Darko ?krinjar made a clear distinction: “After the First World War some Croatian officers joined the Yugoslav Army and others were pensioned off. After 1941 and the coming to power of the NDH regime, Serbs, gypsies and Jews were outlawed. [Note Dragojlov.] After 1945, Croatian Domobrans XE "Domobrans" were not only outlawed by Tito’s regime but slaughtered.” Zvonimir Komarica commented: “He who breaks the OZNA code on the Belgrade-Zagreb line will have a clear picture of the recorded crimes [by the communists]. The magnitude of the unrecorded crimes could then be assessed on that basis. The Archives will also uncover the real witnesses – after all, not all of them are yet dead.” Ivo ?krabalo XE "?krabalo, Ivo" , a Liberal MP, commented: “Talking in terms of film genre, we can say that the National Liberation Struggle was a multi-faceted war. It was a national war as well as a class war. It left a terrible mark on all sides of the [utopian] spectrum.” Du?an Bilandzic XE "Bilandzic, Du?an" , a respected Serbian historian in Croatia, commented ingeniously, but still missed the point “Yugoslavia is in the whirlwind of international conflict. [He was talking in 1990.] Citizens’ reconciliation within Croatia is already in existence; the next step is reconciliation among the [Yugoslav] nations. There were situations in history when complete nations went barmy. Take, for example, Germany. Yet if we throw away everything that Germany gave to civilisation, we would be paupers. If we consider this phenomenon philosophically, it is clear that nobody is guilty."Dr. Muradif Kulenovi? XE "Kulenovi?, Dr. Muradif" (a Muslim), Head of the Clinic for Psychological Medicine at the Medical Faculty in Zagreb stated: “The unknown is the source of fear, and as we live in a state of uncertainty, we cannot be normal as the sum total of individuals, nor as a nation. On the other hand, there exists a completely real fear from revenge, and revenge is an inbuilt phenomenon in human beings. In the recent past, people lived either with the regime or as an [silent] opponent to it. The norms were clear and for transgressing them the reprisals were also clear. Today, these norms are disturbed and the consequence of that is fear. The present post-modern society, as a factor in deconstruction of ideologies, is not a stable society. In fact it is full of sociological holes. Such a society lacks leadership and this leads to uncertainty. To forgive is extremely difficult; for that one needs intellect as well as emotions. Yet it is essential to demand forgiveness as a way back to dignity. The principle of 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' is a never-ending phenomenon.” Dr. Zvonko Knezovi? XE "Knezovi?, Dr. Zvonko" , psychologist at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Zagreb commented: “One must differentiate between fear and anxiety. The source of fear is known, unlike anxiety. At the collective level, politically speaking, therapy for both is democracy. Discovery of the mass graves should not become a call for more murders, but should become transparent and, as such, treatment for traumas. The fact is that the people on both sides [of the conflict] were simply human beings, allowing, of course, for the 1% who were psychopaths. The fact that, from the majority of the people, you can make them one or the other depends on the situation.” Dr. Jovan Bamburac XE "Bamburac, Dr. Jovan" (a Serb), psychiatrist commented: “Our memories are made from facts and emotions. However, the process of forgetting is not a parallel phenomenon. The facts we forget, but we cannot rid ourselves of the emotions so easily. If the book-keeping of the victims was in order, we would have reduced by now the irrational charges.”Dr. Branko Lang XE "Lang, Dr. Branko " , Chief of the Neurology Department of Dr. Mladen Stojanovi? Hospital in Zagreb commented: “Fear and anxiety are emotions of the higher existential nature. The truth is that the international problem between the Croats and the Serbs is still acute today. There exist parallel fears - those from the past and those about the future. This problem is due to, what we call in psychotherapy, 'the weakest link’ between the Croats and the Serbs, i.e., a link of low quality. In psychoanalysis the past always crops up; we cannot get rid of it. Yet politically speaking, we have to now live in the present. Concretely speaking, all of us must become conscious that we now live in a [democratic] Croatian State and that we must all work for its progress. [That ‘all’ presumably should also include the Serbs in Croatia]. I propose [a mass] group therapy in order to achieve this aim.” 5.17 APPENDIX I5.17.1 Overkill in Yugoslavia . . . The debate that has been going on in Croatia and between Croatia and Belgrade has been a complex and seriously conducted tussle over the devolution of power. Croatia has a good deal of support in other parts of the country, like Macedonia and Kosovo which, in the past, have had cause to complain of dominance from Serbia. To a 79-year old President whose life work it has been to create and preserve a united Yugoslavia, the split with the Soviet Union in 1948 and the country's heroic resistance then was the high moment since the liberation from fascism. But to many other Yugoslavs the key moment was more recent - the fall of the Serbian police chief Rankovi? in 1966. That was the moment which allowed liberalisation in the country and permitted the long-suppressed and legitimate national debate to re-start. If some genuinely chauvinistic voices were added to the debate, that was and is an inevitable price of allowing freer discussion. But to suggest that they had gained the upper hand and to weigh in with fire and sword because a few hundred students exercised the right to have a prolonged demonstration was excessive. Now the arrests are starting. ‘The strong Yugoslavia which President Tito wants to preserve will not be strengthened by a policy that breeds bitterness and injustice. 5.17.2 A few days before in another place . . . . ."Civil war averted," says Tito."Could I, as Head of State and chairman of the Yugoslav communist Party, allow somebody else to come and establish peace and order for us?"I have said I will never allow this. I would rather use the ultimate means - and you know what that means." 5.17.3 At Dedinje Palace, Belgrade. . . . . Tito gets tough. Tito has won the immediate battle, but he has done nothing to solve the problems, which made the battle necessary. On the contrary, the chances are that his action will generate fierce resentment and even more determined opposition among the Croats.The Croatian leaders, whom Tito has ousted, are all good communists, but they are of the younger generation that did not come to power by virtue of their services in the partisan forces in the last war. What is more, they are not Yugoslav figures like many of the wartime leaders, but Croats, owing their positions to their defence of Croat interests in the Yugoslav Federation.Miko Tripalo, only 46, who represented Croatia on the new Presidency of Yugoslavia, is a former leader of the Youth and Student movements. He is the third generation in his family to be deeply involved in Croat politics. Mrs. Savka Dab?evi?, chairman of the Croat communist Party and one of the few women to achieve prominence in a communist country, is 48.And pressure on the Matica Hrvatska (Croatian Queen) organisation, which has been active in the defence of Croat culture for a century or more, is extreme. It is clear that its activities are to be severely restricted.But last week, at Tito’s behest, Yugoslavia took a big step backwards. The results of that retreat are yet to be seen. At his retreat on the Island of Brioni (I imagine sucking a lollipop and referring to wide differences of income), Tito went on:"I would not want to see workers in the streets one day instead of students.Many Croatian students, rebuffed by their failure in 1968 to form a Paris-style link with the workers, had decided that some national self-assertion was the best way to break the hold of bureaucratic and centralist tendencies in Belgrade. 5.17.4 And a week later . . . In an ominous speech shortly before Christmas, President Tito said, "Order will have to be put into the judiciary and prosecuting institutions, which have been considerably relaxed."He complained that criminal proceedings ought long ago to have been initiated against newspapers but had not been. "We shall have to ensure that the Socialist consciousness of anyone who administers justice will be of a standard which will enable him to administer justice," he said.5.17.5 At the same time . . .“In the short run, the situation will be stabilised, if need be by naked force. In the long run, however, the faith of many Croats in the new Yugoslavia may have suffered a mortal blow. 5.17.6 Somewhere in London . . . Some of Mr. Tito's senior colleagues appear to be having second thoughts about the course on which they have all embarked.Why the sudden doubts? To begin with, President Tito has been finding it trickier than he may have expected to ‘normalise’ Croatia. The party leaders . . . stepped down quietly. But they have been followed by a lot of other big fish. These resignations have got some people worried.And when Czechs and East Germans start clapping their hands, it may be time for Yugoslavs to tremble. In mid-December, Radio Prague praised Mr. Tito for treading on ‘rotten liberals’ and made a detailed analogy between contemporary Croatia and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Can the new signs of Stalinism be turned back in Yugoslavia?The trouble is that in communist regimes a straightforward confrontation between hard liners and liberals almost invariably ends with the hard liners winning. The coup that President Tito carried out over the weekend in Croatia . . . was a pushover . . . It was, as Lloyd George once said of another country, "a rape, but only a little one"; and everything was over before you could say "Long live the self-managing, socialist, federative republic of Yugoslavia".So why did President Tito order this purge?He may have feared that the forming of a coalition of radical students and disgruntled workers, of which there were some signs during the recent student strike in Croatia, could set a dangerous precedent at a time when the whole of Yugoslavia is experiencing a wave of social discontent. But it is much more likely that he decided to ditch the Croat leaders because he feared that Croatia had become too liberal and that the party’s monopoly of power was in danger. 5.17.7 In a hotel room somewhere in Zagreb . . . End of the federal dream?The core of the militant student leadership at Zagreb University, whose strike in November and December apparently pushed Tito beyond the brink, came from the ‘Yugoslav Appalachia’.This is a mountainous, underdeveloped region of Croatia and Hercegovina, inhabited by unemployed men, embittered by lack of social security and an area where primitive ethnic hatreds abound. 5.17.8 Still in prison, one and a half years later . . . Croat student leader in Zagreb trial attempts suicide.He is Ivan Zvonimir ?i?ak, 25, former student Pro-Rector of Zagreb University.?i?ak is one of four Croat student leaders on trial for ‘nationalist subversion and counter-revolutionary attacks on the Yugoslav State’.He was taken to hospital after swallowing barbiturates but had sufficiently recovered by yesterday to reappear at the trial. He told the court that he had seen no sense in going on with the trial as "everything was fixed in advance."He was described as a ‘clerical nationalist’ and an ‘unrepresentative student’ who had only been elected because the [Catholic] Church "misused its influence".Before his suicide attempt on Monday, ?i?ak had read a prepared statement in court claiming the trials were an expression of ‘neo Stalinism’ and questioning the objectivity of the prosecution. 5.17.9 And a few months later . . . Croats sentenced up to 4 years.Yugoslavia’s longest political trial in recent times ended in Zagreb yesterday with jail sentences of between 1 and 4 years passed on four former Croatian student leaders. The four, who were all arrested last December, when President Tito decided to crack down on ‘chauvinism’ and ‘rotten liberalism’ in Croatia, have ended up with lighter sentences than at one time seemed likely. The trial began two months ago when all were charged with ‘counter-revolutionary activity’ and with trying to separate Croatia from Yugoslavia, carrying a maximum sentence of 15 years. In the event, Dra?en Budi?a, the former president of the Zagreb Students’ Organisation, was sentenced to four years; the former student Pro-Rector, Ivan Zvonimir ?i?ak XE "Ivan Zvonimir ?i?ak" , and the former president of the Croatian Students’ Union, Ante Parad?ik XE "Ante Parad?ik" , got three years. None of them had recognised the validity of the court, and they refused to answer questions on the grounds that the trial was rigged. Twenty-three other Croats are still on trial for their roles in the nationalism crisis. The trials have aroused criticism from a number of quarters, including staunch Federalists and Marxists, who argue that they may presage a kind of neo-Stalinism. 5.17.10 One year before . . . Zagreb teachers face dismissal in Tito purge.The Central Committee of the communist Party of Croatia has told Zagreb University Faculty Heads to name all professors and teaching staff who are considered no longer suitable for educating the younger generation.This is the first step in what is expected to develop into a sweeping purge of intellectuals throughout Yugoslavia. President Tito has made several bitter attacks on members of university staffs who, he said, have poisoned the minds of young people with ‘anti-communist, anti-Socialist poisons’. In a recent speech he recalled that in other countries ‘class enemies’ had been dealt with very severely.President Tito’s determination to reassert the exclusive authority of the Yugoslav Mr. Stane Dolanc, secretary of the party, reaffirmed last week's Communist Party Executive Bureau: "People seemed to have forgotten that it is the communists who are in power in Yugoslavia." 5.17.11 A few days later . . . The Marxist Broz and the CriticsThe courtroom in Zagreb in which Dr. Marko Veselica and three other Croats are being tried on charges of ‘nationalism’ and attempting to overthrow the present regime in Croatia is the one in which, 44 years previously, President Tito himself was tried - as plain Josip Broz - for carrying on communist propaganda and organising protests against the Government.The 1928 ‘bomb trial’, as it was called, is regarded in official histories as marking Tito's first emergence as a public figure in Yugoslav life. He used the court as a platform to proclaim his revolutionary views and was not afraid to admit that he was then the agent of a foreign power. When the judge asked him if the Yugoslav communist Party was in correspondence with Moscow he replied: "Yes it is. We are in correspondence with Moscow because we are Moscow's organisation". [But in 1972] Dr. Veselica and his co-defendants have made no attempt to exploit their trial to promote the Croat cause. But he has taken advantage of every opportunity to intervene and question the prosecution witnesses. Unlike Tito in his day, Veselica was certainly NOT the agent for a foreign power, and his organisation, the ‘Matica Hrvatska’, is not part of an ‘international’ organisation. In 1928 Josip Broz was sentenced to five years prison for daring to challenge the monarchy. This week we shall learn whether, now that he is in the monarch's place, he will prove more or less severe in punishing his critics. 5.17.12 And a few days before . . . King Tito at home to Queen Elizabeth II. President Tito is both by personality and style of rule the nearest thing to a European monarch in the communist world. And it is fitting that he should play host to the Queen of a country, which helped him when he was in difficulties . . . The Queen's visit to him is also linked with the fact that the British Government wants to demonstrate . . . Britain's abiding interest in Yugoslavia developing as a relatively enlightened and independent communist country. Unfortunately, this development can no longer be taken for granted . . . The large area of relatively free political and intellectual activity that constituted the main achievement of two decades of liberalisation has shrunk visibly since the President's personal intervention in Croatia last December. The press has been so tightly muzzled that the people of Yugoslavia now stand little chance of finding out what, if anything, these supposedly wicked and dangerous nationalists, Trotskyites and other 'enemies of socialism' have really done. 5.17.13 One week later . . . A helping hand for King Tito.Crowds cheer as Queen Elizabeth II strolls in Zagreb streetsLater the Queen travelled in President Tito’s train to Zagreb to receive yet another enthusiastic welcome from the citizens. It seemed the most rousing welcome of the whole royal tour of Yugoslavia. The Queen, dressed in a pale blue outfit [and chaperoned by Jakov Bla?evi?, the notorious prosecutor of Cardinal Stepinac trial], appeared at ease as she walked down Ilica [High Street] with thousands of people crowded on both sides of the pavement smiling and applauding. Later at the reception in a toast the Queen spoke of the close contacts over the ages between Britain and Croatia. Today, she said, new contacts were being made as more and more British people came to enjoy the hospitality and sunshine of Croatian Coastal resorts. 5.17.14 Meanwhile, on the same day in another part of the city . . .It was a political trial - no doubt about it - but of a very weird kind. Then nothing that happens in Yugoslavia can easily be fitted into any Western or eastern slot. Why should one expect their political trials to look like the case of the Angry Brigade in London or the recent trials in Czechoslovakia? It was Monday morning in Zagreb, capital of the Croatian Republic. Access for foreign journalists to the ugly 19th century district court building was easy. Go down to the local Secretariat of Information. Yes sir, which trials would you like? The relevant permit comes quickly.A trial is now in its seventh day up on the second floor in a small room, a judge's private office. Here sit two of Croatia's apparently most dangerous men, Vlado Gotovac [poet], chief editor of the now banned Croatian Journal, Hrvatski Tjednik, and Hrvoje ?o?i?, its economic editor.They have been charged with counter revolutionary activity, and with having links with hostile émigrés. Their journal, it is claimed, was used to foster separatism by inspiring a nationalistic mass movement in Croatia. Both had been arrested last December, a few weeks after President Tito's decision to clamp down on ‘rotten liberalism’ and ‘chauvinism’.The trial had begun on Friday, 6th October, with the reading of the indictment and a brief reply by Gotovac. Like all well educated Yugoslav intellectuals he knows the classics. He quoted Lenin, Marx and Rosa Luxemburg on the national question, and then used Tito’s own challenge to Soviet orthodoxy in 1948, to argue that there must be a diversity of views in the development of socialism. The most concrete attempt made to connect Gotovac with émigrés was to point to the allegedly strange coincidence of his use of a phrase about Croatia ‘rising like a phoenix from the ashes’ with the same phrase in an article in Croatian Review, an émigré journal published in New York. Gotovac said the phrase was a cliché rather than an indication of a conspiracy.The next week was given up to ?o?i?’s defence, two days of which the court spent listening to him defending his demand that Croatia should have a seat in the United Nations. This was not ‘separatist’ but on the analogy of the position of the Ukrainian SSR in the U.N.The morning I was there ?o?i? was explaining his plan to set up a National or People’s Bank of Croatia. The accused he may be, but lucid too. Another of the weird things about the trial was the completely attentive and absorbed way that everybody listened; the judge, the assessors, and the woman with the idle typewriter. ?o?i? quoted from one of his own articles last year: "We don't want Croatia exploited by the banks". It all sounded rather less than counter-revolution . . . The public had been told only of the indictment and would presumably be told of the outcome.That was the most surrealistic part of all. A guilty verdict and a prison sentence must surely be a foregone conclusion. Else why waste the court's time? 5.17.15 In the meantime, in another hemisphere . . . Geoffrey Tebbut reports on New Guinea’s preparation for Independence and its taking a seat in the UN with a picture of Dani tribesmen assembling for ritual warfare.In one episode of ‘McCabe, PM.’, John Rowe’s horrendous novel of Australia’s political future, riots against independence from Australia break out in the New Guinea highlands. New Guinea is moving quickly through progressive stages towards control of her own affairs, so far without any destructive collision. But there are anxieties and imponderables. Tribalism and regionalism are still strong. [Some of her (New Guinea's) remoter inhabitants saw white men for the first time only last year.] 5.17.16 One year later . . . On Thursday, the communist regime in Yugoslavia will be 30 years old and there are rumours that President Tito will declare an amnesty for the people in prisons.(In) The case of Vlado Gotovac, the Croat poet and former editor of the HRVATSKI TJEDNIK, now serving a four-year sentence - I have just received this account of his condition in the Stara Gradi?ka prison camp:"Vlado is working in the carpenter’s shop, so that when he comes out of prison he will be able to make furniture for us all! He has had no opportunity of reading or of writing, because he is a 'political criminal', and in fact, can do nothing at all.”For a writer to be deprived of reading matter and the materials for writing is worse than making him perform physical labour. Even Andrei Sinyavsky, the Russian author now safely in France, was allowed to write and to bring out of his Soviet camp the ‘prison notebooks’ now published in the West.Marshall Tito was himself a political prisoner in the thirties. But prison conditions under the Yugoslav monarchy were such that Tito could make use of his sentence to study Marxism . . ." 5.18APPENDIX II5.18.1 Assassinations of Political Personnel by the dissidents/Yugoslav Police 25221st November 1952, the Yugoslav Diplomat Mom?ilo Popovi? was assassinated in Bad Godesberg. 8th June 1965, Yugoslav Consul in Munich, Andrija Klari?, was assassinated. 31st August 1955, the Yugoslav Consul in Munich, Savo Milovanovi? was assassinated in Stuttgart. 30th June 1969, the Yugoslav Military Attaché in West Berlin and Dr. Anton Kolendi?, was assassinated. 7th April 1971, the Yugoslav Ambassador in Stockholm, Vladimir Rolovi?, was assassinated. 29th March 1975, the Yugoslav Consul in Lyon, Mladen Djogovi?, was wounded in an assassination attempt. In March 1975, the Yugoslav Consul Milan Bulaji? was attacked. 29th December 1975, a mine exploded at the entrance to the house of the Yugoslav Consul, Savo Temer.7th February 1976, the Yugoslav Consul Edvin Zdovi? was assassinated. 28th June 1976, six shots were fired at the Yugoslav Ambassador in Düsseldorf.5.18.2 Note:Archbishop Alojzije StepinacUnder the sensational title ‘Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac worked during the NDH for the British Intelligence Service’, Zagreb yellow press leader Globus (No. 347, 1st August 1998, p.4-9) published the findings in released documents from the Public Records Office in London, which threw new light on the activities of the Archbishop.The Archbishop was treated as ‘the traitor of the people’ and as a collaborator of the Occupiers by the communists. In fact, the Archbishop put his own life in danger by helping the Jews and the Serbs.According to the above documents, the Archbishop started with these helping actions as early as 1942. Although Globus twists the emphasis by articulating the Archbishop’s work as work for the British Intelligence, de facto his actions had nothing to do with the intelligence but were purely humanitarian. He was no James Bond. He passed false passports and money sent from abroad to those endangered by the NDH regime, and not to ‘patriot forces’. The following document is self-explanatory:“Secret – Officer only:To SOE Cairo for DPA.Copy to London for DHV, 626/18/35, Istanbul, 11th July 1942.Co-operation with Bishop Stepinac in Zagreb:The following scheme is proposed by RAPOTEC:While in Zagreb he was in contact with Bishop Stepinac who informed him that he would be willing to receive money for distribution to the patriot forces, as well as passports – Swiss or Turkish – for the evacuation of selected personnel, through the Swiss Consulate in Zagreb.I understand that you have some possibility for using this bag, etc.”Author’s note:RAPOTEC XE "RAPOTEC" was a Slovene, a fully-fledged agent of the British Intelligence Service.Clearly, the Archbishop was unaware that by his actions he may be enmeshed in the mischief of the British Intelligence Service, but he plainly acted on the basis of his Christian conscience.When in 1946 the British blue-eyed boy Tito locked up the Archbishop for 16 years, the event was covered by the most shameful silence on the part of the British Government at a time when the entire civilised world raised their voices against that outrage, but the British did not summon up the decency to say a few helpful words in defence of the Archbishop.At the bottom of this unsavoury behaviour was nobody less than our old friend, Stephen Clissold. The Archbishop was reproached that while his outspoken stand against Nazi terror was appreciated, he never actually put his own life in danger. However, now the documents coming into the public domain prove that this was just the opposite. “To SOE Cairo for DPA from DH18,Copy to London, 668/18/34, Istanbul, 4th August 1942.Letter to All AH69:1.. . . . . . .2.. . . do not write any more. It is very dangerous here. They have discovered us and you. It is dangerous for Alois . . . ”Author’s note:The British developed the fine art of apology for the misdemeanours of their own governments but only after most of the people involved in these events were already long dead.CHAPTER 6 - The Phoenix in the Ashes – 1990-2003At their best, Croats were only unsuccessful nationalists. Let’s face it; all the successful nationalists (particularly the British) had their own nationalist states for a long time, which demonstrates that the conventional image of nationalism is a carefully created myth.When Croatia, as a small ancient European nation, continuously demanded its independence, one had to allow the unprejudiced view of history that the realisation of such a demand was possible and desirable and could not have been frustrated on the grounds that it might have violated the tenet of the Yugoslav status quo. Up to this point, I have questioned whether it was possible for Croatians to act rationally in the Croato-Yugoslav conflict XE "Croato-Yugoslav conflict" . From now on, I will chronicle the progress of the Croatian radical action for independence which has finally resulted from the failed trial and error of the utopian Yugoslav experiment. If, during this radical action, Croats have caught the bug of ‘nationalism’, they must have caught it from the Serbs. This now provides the Croats with a perfect alibi.Serbian propaganda, which identified the Croatian struggle for independence with the WWII Ustasha regime in order to discredit it, was an amazing hoax that fooled many of the best-intentioned commentators. Yugoslavia almost convinced them that Croatian independence would equal fascism; almost, because the fine art of swindling requires great skill which, although the Great-Serb possess it in a large measure, did not work this time. The Croat commitment to political independence XE "Croat commitment to political independence" was absolutely consistent with the democratic traditions of the Croatian people.The 60’s and 70’s were the heyday of the Yugoslav State and Croats, who wore the label proudly, deserved their distinction as State Enemy No.1.On the other hand, this publicity damaged Croatia in the eyes of the so-called ‘liberal’ West. Many times in history Croats have had to make political choices under uncertainty and risk but with an unusual difference this time. In the past they had to resist their instinctive impulse to be on the winning side in some political situations, as the outcome spelled out for them even greater possible disasters. Choices of this type were mainly responsible for the failure of this extremely democratic people to achieve their own national state. Yet even in these unfavourable situations, Croats preserved one of their fundamental characteristics, active opposition to oppressive regimes which kept the regimes on their toes at all times.After the WWII, Yugoslav fans from all over the world descended on Croatia in their thousands, determined to be even-handed. Yet, after being fed with the ‘official’ Yugoslav propaganda, they got it all wrong. Surprising? Not when the Croats said a few things that sounded a little hostile, such as that, for tackling of the practical political and social problems of Yugoslavia fresh thinking was needed. In return, they got vicious write-ups from the press. Foreign correspondents wrote bread and butter columns in favour of Yugoslavia. They were terrified of loosing Yugoslav ads. This was very odd because Yugoslav propaganda spoke of the Yugoslav system as a showpiece workers’ state, while the final product defied all belief that the regime was acting in the interest of anyone else but itself.New (1945) Yugoslavia pretended to be an ‘anti-fascist’ society, while at the same time, it exported Croatian workers to 'fascist' Germany.The question was: were the Croatian workers optional extras to socialist Yugoslavia? If so, why was there so much noise about Croatian separatism? After all, Yugoslavia separated itself a long time ago from the Croatian workers who were racy, irreverent and fiercely disdainful of Yugoslav 'socialism', a mere front for the Great-Serbia. Yet Belgrade has gone a long way on the backs of the Croatian workers, when described in 1952 by Laurence Durrell XE "Laurence Durrell" : "God! This place feels so far from the Mediterranean. Flat, land-locked, inhabited by pigs indistinguishable from Serbs and vice versa: no olives: blank stupid geese: dust in summer and fog in winter . . .” The backwater of Croatia had become by the 60's and 70's the setting where the predatory New Class Yugoslav financial patriarchs resided, those who had separated Croats from their money. Analysed on this basis, Croatian ‘separatism’, in all fairness, was a false alarm. It already existed.The new men of the ‘revolution’, repeating the pre-WWII Monarchist years, made their way to power by plunder and brute force.“Military command and political office went to Party triumvirs with no family tradition of service to the state but with an interest in the continuance of the Great Serbia. From the beginning of his career emperor Tito XE "Tito" collected around him henchmen . . . In his struggle for absolute supremacy he organised appropriate propaganda in order to ensure personal support for himself and his regime . . . No poet of consequence survived from former times. It was the task of [the Party] to gather 'new talent' which could celebrate the glories [of Tito’s] martial [misdeeds] and rally public opinion to his policies." Roman Satire, Suetonius, p.65.In an atmosphere like this, the Croat politicians captured only minuscule control over the decisions made in the political and economic field in Belgrade. In the power game strategies, Belgrade always had two moves for every move in Zagreb, taken with smoothness and alacrity. Every Serb imbibed how to play this game instinctively with his/her mother’s milk.Through a series of seasonal showdowns with Zagreb, the Serbs have shown Zagreb who was in complete control. The Croats were supposed to know nothing about the economy, except what money looked like. Their attempt to communicate with the Serbs in the most direct way, by trying to make them laugh, i.e., to conciliate or collude, simply did not work: it always hit a brick wall. A brief reminder is in order that Croats managed reasonably well for some 800 years in various multi-national states XE "Croats managed reasonably well for some 800 years in various multi-national states" . How were they so unsuccessful in dealing with the Yugoslav state? It was simply because Yugoslavia believed in upsetting Croats as a matter of principle.When Croats exposed Yugoslavia as a fake, the state kept making money by displaying its qualities as an ‘authentic fake’. Yugoslavia was always the largest museum of foreign loans. Belgrade had control over the Croatian workers exported to the capitalist world, but it ignored the ‘danger’ of importing ‘counter-revolution’. This gamble was taken with a calculated risk and practical advantage: the overheads were low (stationery was shared with the Secret Police), and Yugoslavia used this vent to get rid of surplus 'reactionaries'. If Yugoslavia was a 'liberty-loving' country, so was its system with no independent legislature and no fair taxation. The accumulation of capital in Belgrade equalled surplus of labour in the difficult non-Serbian republics. Wages were just above starvation levels. The New Class learned English; they chose English because it would be an advantage if they had to leave for England or the USA. The unemployed and those fortunate enough to be employed were finely balanced. Those at home were permanently pestered by the returning gastarbeiters who, in their turn, received by injection political guilt. This kept the Secret Police’s psychoanalysts busy. Croats never had all that much confidence in local justice, but visiting Croatia just reminded them of the great divide between the democratic standards they witnessed in the West and the so-called democracy at home.In spite of this the Western pundits believed Yugoslavia was irremovable. "There is no way of overthrowing a modern totalitarian state from within and in the era of nuclear weapons no way of destroying it from without."Yet in the 70's and 80's, Yugoslavia gradually started to lose its war against the Croats. XE "In the 70's and 80's, Yugoslavia gradually started to lose its war against the Croats" The conflict has finally moved from the position of ambiguity to a position where both sides were fully cognisant of the outcome: the Croats of the gains through political independence and the Serbs of the loss of their medium of financial and economic exploitation. Croats began to understand that this was a game they must not lose. Consequently, an overwhelming demand for ending the contest developed. And yet a rational solution was still available: peaceful separation, on the pattern of Czechoslovakia. But the West frustrated any attempt at this solution.Why should the West take this position? Partly because Yugoslavia was perceived as a custodian of the Western real politic in the Balkans and for that it was paid hundreds of millions of pounds each year in loans which had not yet been repaid. In the hope of any eventual repayment it was thought vital to preserve these policies that collectively were also perceived as essential to European stability.The fact that this ‘stabilising’ state has produced over one hundred political murders in a few years, the victims being mainly Croats, was neither here nor there. And how had these Croats qualified for execution? By as little as reading the émigré press or moving in 'reactionary circles'.Until that time, Croatia virtually had the Great Serbian garrotte around its neck. But the Serbs could not keep screwing Croatia indefinitely because a moral crisis began to develop among the Serbs themselves. The Serbs, believe it or not, became disorganised, frightened, disturbed and hysterical as they realised that the Yugoslav utopia could not make any rational predictions about the future,But Croats in Yugoslavia were imperilled by anything that might have been construed even as innuendo against the regime. The lack of satire became noticeable, except for privately exchanged political jokes. There was also a shortage of talent for any literary activity. The long period of suppression had deprived Croatia of a substantial number of its educated men who had emigrated, and this political and social oppression caused a failure of nerve in the remainder.Yugoslavs, whom the West believed to be the most liberal communists, were so cruel and unthinking to a very small number of Western critics, such as Bernard Levin XE "Bernard Levin" . He took a good look at Yugoslavia and then despaired:"Recently hypocritical comments are being spread around in the elegant and radical circles, and this comes from the people who should know better, about the delights of the Yugoslav political system, and about its extraordinary form of communism. There was even some talk in those circles about Great Britain becoming another Yugoslavia without the loss of any of the freedoms and rights we enjoy at present, and that this was a form of progress to which we should aspire. I maintain that the time has come for sobering up, particularly because the repression in Yugoslavia in the past year became worse and worse."After countless political and economic 'reforms', a judicial reform was proposed that would include a criminal liability by the state for its own unlawful acts. This was treated as obscene. Croats were obscene for demanding such reforms and as this was treated as obscene, Croats protected their Constitutional rights. Therefore, Croats were ‘gonna do some time’, out of sheer ‘historical necessity’ and with no embarrassment, Yugoslavia was bound to behave like this - by tradition - Byzantine tradition XE "Byzantine tradition" . One could not fail to have been fascinated by the grandeur of repression as a political method in Yugoslavia. It continued even after the Fourth Plenum of the Central Committee of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) in 1966 when the Secret Police boss Rankovi? XE "Rankovi?" was removed for bugging Tito XE "Tito" 's bedroom. Rankovi? was in charge of a Mob Organisation (UDBA XE "UDBA" ), structured as a Government Department. These 'intellectual' men wanted the Croats dead, in fact, very dead. Those who were lucky enough to escape bursts of machine gun fire were entered on the 'pending' lists. By the time Rankovi? was rudely interrupted by his own downfall, he had compiled 1,300,000 names of Croatian citizens listed for 'special treatment'. Only in 1947, 10,211 Croats were locked up for anything up to 30 years for thinking against the state.Without doubt, Yugoslavia's most frustrated nation was Croatia. But to be frustrated in Yugoslavia was considered to be bad manners, because the regime expected everyone to be happy. The Western 'pragmatism' in its approach to Yugoslavia played a great role in this frustration.Wherever there was a case of emotionalism about the Croat demand for independence, there was also the old-fashioned Western `liberal' helping hand for Yugoslavia. These were the people sitting in London and Washington air- conditioned offices who hypothesised about the fate of Yugoslavia, boring us with monotonous regularity with their press reports and TV programmes which had little, if any, relation to reality. They were trying to imagine what Croatia would be like without Yugoslavia and decided that it would be a place of very square people like themselves.Yugoslavia's scandals have managed to draw the world's attention to itself. Were we really supposed to preserve this ridiculous contraption, with its weird agglomeration of nations who were unable to speak or move together without knives, as a transcending subject for its media incapacity?In order to keep the conflict with the Croats slightly deviating from the equilibrium strategy apart from police alchemy, Belgrade relied mainly on the notorious Serbian minority in Croatia, because its own physical power was inadequate, and it no longer felt in control.The Serbs in Croatia (remember the Morlachs XE "Morlachs" ) knew that they were supposed to police Croatia but no longer understood how; their schizophrenic leaders, by taking too much power in their own hands alienated themselves now from their Belgrade masters. So, the old-fashioned Yugoslav had lost confidence in Yugoslavia. This was why Belgrade repeated tediously its stories about internal enemies. What if Croats, rather than wishing to play ‘a more active political role in building ‘brotherhood and unity’ just wanted to be left alone? What if - horror of horrors - they wished to become independent? Well, the trouble begun only when Belgrade tried to put a stop to it by force of arms.Transient phenomena, such as politics, are heaven-sent subjects for comedy. In such a scenario, yesterday’s Croatian ‘separatists’ actually did what was prescribed by pre-WWII – Yugoslav Communists:"The aim of the struggle of the Croatian National Revolutionary Movement [Ustasha] is the realisation of the self- determination of the Croatian people, the realisation of its right of separation from Yugoslavia, the unification, independence and liberation of the Croatian people from the Great Serbian and any other imperialist yoke, and the creation of the free Republic of Croatia, in which its people will decide their own fate."In the meantime, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia had changed its mind - not the Croats. It transpires that the desire for Croatian independence was, for the Communists, merely a slogan.The coming of age for Tito XE "Tito" was inspired by Stalin’s XE "Stalin" organising Komintern evenings, at which, among other subjects, the inquisition of ‘counter-revolutionary’ comrades from the KPJ took place.Consequently, the greatest penalty that Stalin imposed on Tito XE "Tito" was to put him in charge of the KPJ ?istka. As a good Marxist he could always pull a dialectical trick out of his hat: a ‘Federal’ Yugoslavia with equality for all its nations; and the Yugoslav bourgeoisie replaced by the monolithic working class as glue keeping Yugoslav nations together. Tito figured he had pulled things off in his usual smooth way - and was more than shocked when he suddenly found himself at the centre of Yugoslav violence. For a man who had never read much, it was remarkable how he hit the bulls-eye in the continuous conflict, got himself into power and still wound up on international relief.If one compares the two former Yugoslavias (Alexander’s XE "Alexander" and Tito XE "Tito" ’s) even if they were lying on a plate beside each other, one wouldn't have been able to tell much difference between them: both were sick with violence and the unresolved national question. Tito XE "Tito" ’s fondling of the Serbian Royalists XE "Serbian Royalists" was such that he not only occupied the former Royal Palace but also used the estate of Karadjordjevo, XE "Karadjordjevo" the stamping ground of the Karadjordjevi?s, as the place in which to crush the Croatian Mass Movement in 1971. Bizarrely enough, European and USA ‘liberals’ supported him when he removed the popular Croatian leaders Miko Tripalo XE "Tripalo, Miko" and Savka Dab?evi? XE "Dab?evi?, Savka" in 1971 for getting involved in the movement with a ‘counter revolutionary-rotten-liberal’ flavour.These purged Croatian leaders, as good Communists, believed blindly in their ready-made ideas. Yet according to the Communist Party standards they were a part of their own 'credo', they were now traitors.One can only marvel at the enduring surrealism of the juxtaposition between the Communist manifestos of the forties and the goings-on in Zagreb of 1971: "The liberation of Croatia requires uncompromising an unrelenting struggle against the traitors of the Croatian people, and generally against the various allies and protagonists of the Great-Serbian dictatorship . . . It is a deception that the liberation of Croatia can be achieved through federalistic or any other reform of the imperialistic Great-Serbia, called Yugoslavia, through a new agreement either with the present regime, or with any other representatives of the Great-Serbian ruling Class . . . "In constant opposition to Belgrade, and almost repeating the KPJ lines of 40 years ago, Croatia was charged again in 1971 for performing unnatural experiments. In his written communiqué, "My trips with the Croatian Counter-revolutionary" the Chief of the Secret Police accused Croatia of heresy and so justified the great purge. Disowned once again, the Croats had inevitably to ask themselves a serious question: Can Yugoslavism aspire to an ethical status or was it too late for that?This question had to be asked in order to prove once again the untenability of Yugoslavism as an all-embracing political philosophy that was offered to the world at fantastic Grandes rebajas. When Croats insisted that all the arguments about the pros of this bizarre state were fake and that all well-informed people should accept the tenets of the rational argument contra, a charismatic Belgrade spokesman stated: "I feel that Yugoslavia's record has improved [in the meantime] by 500% over the past few years".The cocksureness of the Yugoslav Utopian confirmatory power and the bashing of its critics had an even higher reputation than the one that the bankruptcy of its economy enjoyed. In spite of its failure after 70 bloody years of testing, Yugoslavia was continuously being reinterpreted in order to prolong its life and thus make it irrefutable. While the Croatian independence movement at that time was not yet waterproof, it has taken a million-to-one chance to prove itself in practice, to be tested.For almost everyone but the Serbs accepted Yugoslavia was dead, nobody was prepared to bury it. The Croats were adamant in pressing for separation. But the Serbs insisted that they still loved the Croats and wanted them back, although they thought of them only as rather reactionary overweight Catholics.So the Croatian opposition to Yugoslav centralism, which led to the development of brand new underground political parties and programmes for Croatian independence, became the only rational way out of the political impasse. What appeared to be politically naive in the past now appeared to have been the only rational approach to the resolution of the conflict. Although Yugoslavism was never a political theory in a scientific sense, there was no reason whatsoever not to subject it to serious tests. There exists a major inconsistency in the historical sources in relation to the reality of the Croato-Yugoslav conflict XE "Croato-Yugoslav conflict" , as a result of the Yugoslav propaganda and a general ignorance of the subject. So what then was the philosophy of the Croato-Yugoslav conflict XE "Croato-Yugoslav conflict" ? It was simply a philosophy of a multitude of problems of the Croato-Serbian relations, arising from the utopian approach to ‘Yugoslav’ unity. Although the struggle between these two contestants was changing throughout recent history, the essence of the conflict remained the same: the reform of the Yugoslav state system remained circuitous from within. The reason for this was that it depended theoretically upon the equilibrium strategy of the two contestants with totally opposing self-interests. There came a time when these self-interests demanded a break-up of Yugoslavia itself, because the state was unable to balance them through its reforms. Contrary to the opinion in the West, to delay a rational pursuit of separation, as the outcome of these tests would have been not only senseless, but also extremely dangerous for peace in Europe, which eventually was proved in the recent 'Balkans' wars.Refusal by the Yugoslav regimes even to contemplate Croatian autonomy, let alone Independence was justified by means of clichéd existential statements that were, by their nature, irrefutable but nonetheless false. Yugoslav propaganda thrived on statements such as: "Croatia cannot exist as an independent state."An even more common and more restricted cliché was very often heard: "Croatia cannot exist as an independent state because it would be an easy prey to foreign imperialists". One could not do anything about a statement like this except to find out who these imperialists were and if we find them, the statement could have become refutable and, therefore, would cut both ways. However, even in this exercise, refutability presupposed the existence of an Independent Croatian state.The question was - was such a state feasible and would it fit into the Great Powers XE "Great Powers" real politic strategy?Ignoring the international pressure, the logic and reality of the Croatian Independence programme per se represented an internally consistent Croatian world that did not depend upon the whims of the external forces. It was indestructible because it belonged to a different realm, a realm of fulfilment to its own people. In their refusal even to think about the separation, Belgrade presented this conflict as a pseudo-problem. Apparently, the Croatian ‘separatists’ and their ‘imperialist’ masters invented all the ‘problems’ of Yugoslavia. However, when the Yugoslavs were cornered, they always had a dialectic trick or two available to slip through the net. Yes, Yugoslavs accepted that problems did exist, but if one removed the problems one immediately removed an essential part of human nature, they argued. In common with the other Unitarists, the Yugoslavs believed that “the world is a photocopy of facts" in a sense in which it might be said to consist of political show-trials and Secret Police joints.For this reason, the method of presentation of certain historical facts for this book's arguments and the conclusions derived from the melee of the confused events, were pinned down by a considerable dose of irony, a kind of intellectual brinkmanship, in order to turn attention onto the subject matter head-on.By tradition satire as a literary form proclaimed that it had the right and duty to attack erring contemporaries and events. The history of Yugoslav abracadabra, in which conjectural political theories and practices were constantly recycled in order to stop any progress in that state, was as far as I was concerned a heaven-sent subject for this kind of treatment. As the bogeymen of Europe, Croats have for a long time been used for frightening public opinion in the Unitarist states particularly, from my own experience, in England. However, the voters in the democratic countries are no longer prepared to back the governments of the totalitarian states, be it declamatory or financially. Conceivably, the Croats might have been considered veritable dreamers and yet they were thoroughly rational men in political matters. The quest for the Croat Independence was the result of the empirical refutation of the Yugoslav Utopia. While a magnitude of problems can be resolved within a given system, sometimes the system itself, in this case Yugoslavia was the problem, which had to be removed in order to avoid, ultimately, the war.More to the point, support for yet another Yugoslav alternative pursued until recently by the West (and even secretly now) was clearly founded on power politics and on the subjective assessments, whose origins and sources were deliberately kept unclear. It was also based on the conviction about its inevitability and the inability to think otherwise. The fact that someone may have preferred an Independent Croatia as a force of stability in that part of Europe was, in the eyes of the Unitarist states, the ultimate proof of insanity. The more incompatible the observable facts about Yugoslavia were vis-à-vis the Croatian Independence programme, the more this programme corresponded with a need for realisation. At that crucial time, Croats have alerted the World about their economic, social and political misery, as a result of their treatment as criminals in their own country only because they resisted the Yugoslav 'march of history'. Recently, Time magazine called the Croat alert to this injustice ‘a Croatian paranoia’ XE "Croatian paranoia’" . To dispel all doubt about whether or not Croatia was sane, and whether or not she required the Great-Serbian guardian, we need only to have referred to the headlines of some Western newspapers, usually by the correspondents who were not on the spot, but who maintained that they could properly diagnose its condition. Yugoslavia extolled the virtue of its unity with a religious fervour, but intellectually, that aim was totally absurd, as it had, in the name of unity, created the greatest imaginable dissention in the history of the 'South Slavs' XE "South Slavs" . Yugoslavism failed because it did not eradicate poverty, unemployment, penal cruelty, national discrimination, economical exploitation of non-Serbian nations, and instead introduced educational and cultural totalitarianism, exploitation of emigrant workers, oppression, intolerance, corruption, and violence.The accumulation of capital by the New Class in Belgrade was accompanied by a decline in political morality.“[Croatia] was a place for plunder and extortion. [The army and Police] consisted of men of questionable honesty. The perfidy and greed [of Tito XE "Tito" ] was mindless and who, after treachery and exploitation [in Croatia], died and thus evaded prosecution. There was also an increase in military brutality: [tanks surrounding Zagreb 1971]: the destruction of [the ‘Croatian Spring’ XE "Croatian Spring" in 1971 caused international disgust] . . . and the liberty [of Croatia] . . . ended in the grim sacking of another talented generation. Croatian history shows little, if any, evidence of self-righteousness. On the contrary, that history is full of self-deprecation, bordering very often on nihilism. Croats became advocates for their own opponents, joining cheerfully a considerably large league of international Croat-bashers, and became blind to their own achievements. The only lodestone for this Croatian restraint was anonymity and being branded as incorrigible nationalistic perverts. It is only through separation that the Croats and the Serbs have eventually broken through the shell of the subjectivity of the historical accidents upon which their own worlds depended, and which I have put through severe grilling process.Contemplating the recent wars, one could ask what common criterion could have possibly linked together a collection of people that extended from clean, sensible, close-shaven and God fearing to apparitions whose blood-shot eyes asking for perpetual violence. What could have otherwise linked together Yugoslav utopians with those thinking men, hopefully on both sides, who were in search of a more orderly world? Evidently quite different levels of discrimination have been set into motion here. Quite different worlds were seen colliding or choosing to stay out of each other’s orbit.Prior to 1989, Croats have pursued several alternatives: firstly, a re-examination of the claim of the ‘Heroic’ Yugoslav centralist State, vis-à-vis a myriad of science fiction ideas in support of its further existence.The second alternative has been a last-minute pursuit of several Decentralisation Programmes, but it was found out that these experiments (after the 1965 fall of police Godfather Rankovi?) needed an infusion of large amount of money and moral support from the West, and it did not matter if the resulting package did not feel like Yugoslavia, did not look like Yugoslavia and in fact was not Yugoslavia.The failure of these experiments, as it could have been expected within the Utopian system, revealed that only permanent state of violence was capable of keeping the two polarising thrusts together: that of the unitary Yugoslav State and that of the forces working for its disintegration.Disintegration has been extolled by the Croats on and off since 1965 by the notion of the Non-Integral State (a well-serviced unit maintaining the functions of the Autonomous Republics) as a first step to the removal of the centralist apparatus in Belgrade.A more abstract re-analysis of the Yugoslav State lead to a notion of the Conceptual State: its substantive and disintegrative elements balancing together in the air (it is there - it is not there state), a notion that contained too many sophisticated elements, unachievable in this primitive Balkan political environment.But none of these Ideas for the resolution of the Yugoslav contradictions had worked.In sophisticated situations, one might have conceived Ideas of Non-State, Anti-State or an Ironic Object that looked like a State, none of which, however, should have been taken too seriously. However, this chaotic situation was augmented by an instinctive revival of Western nastiness in supporting the boring and dangerous status quo, which, after the end of the Cold War had become meaningless. Yugoslavia regarded a non-centralist-State as extravagant bourgeois fiddling, while there was real work to be done by the Serbian cutthroats, who descended from the Balkan hillsides XE "Serbian cutthroats, who descended from the Balkan hillsides" after 1945.The present analysis can only be given coherence if one does not allow oneself to be derailed by the current Yugoslav nostalgia circuit, and which still harks back to the 'good old days'. Even those Croats who would have preferred not to think in terms of political Independence (a large number of pro-Yugoslavs and Communists) have in 1989 joined the Independence bandwagon. Some of them are still taking a detached conceptual position - but the question is for how much longer?Are those who are still in love with the idea of saving what can be saved of the Yugoslav idea merely playing out a game of procrastination hoping for its resurrection? Are they merely repeating the gambitry of the earlier utopian deceptions and the fact that Croatia has become eventually an internationally recognised democratic state means little or nothing to them? Many of them, however, switched to the new seats of power in the new Croatian state out of fear of losing the power or probably the profits. Did all phases of the withering away of Yugoslavia contain an element of hard political logic when it came to the crunch? The fact that totalitarian hardness was characteristic of the Yugoslav pragmatism gives us a clue. However, what was characteristic after the breakup of Yugoslavia was that the Yugoslav pragmatists and conceptualists, Titoists, Stalinists, ‘Communist Liberals’, Serbian Royalists XE "Serbian Royalists" , shameless opportunists, etc. suddenly dissipated into separate and very often contradictory and inimical camps. Here, there was not only ambiguity, because we could not easily place their clandestine operations, but also because their protagonists wish to exist deliberately within this ambiguous territory, or alternatively to occupy high-ranking political positions in the new Republic of Croatia.Am I suggesting that we are still in a loose, dangerous minefield territory? Perhaps. If so, I am also expecting that out of it might hopefully come some positive results.The pursuit of these chapters is riddled inevitably with the quirks and tragic-comic ironies in following the complicated byways of Balkan politics, in order to explain that the logic of the Croatian struggle for independence existed not in the abstract but was carried out not by the forces of nationalism but by the force of reason - against the dictatorship of the utopian Yugoslav state. 6.1 The Reality and the Independence XE "The Reality and the Independence" With the discovery of the concept of modern dictatorship, the concept of tribal conquests virtually vanished. Yet Yugoslavia retained a mixture of dictatorship and medieval conquest. While the Great Serbs preferred to amuse themselves infiltrating the Croatian lands, the Croats passed their time fighting centralism, something they knew all about from their historical struggle against the Habsburgs, Hungarians and Belgrade. Who would have predicted the sudden collapse of the Soviet Eastern European Empire with its domino effect in the Balkans? Yet if one was patient enough to study this book (which I started writing in 1971), the text became less ambiguous and more prophetic. There was never any doubt in my mind that the codes I have developed also explained the sudden collapse of the fanatically utopian Yugoslavia, with its formidably complex national question. Beneath the calm surface of the official Communist Party line, the national question was boiling. The unstoppable reform movement within the Communist Party of Croatia blew up in a TV programme in which Ivica Ra?an XE "Ra?an, Ivica" , presidential Party candidate, came out openly in favour of a multi-party democracy. The debacle of the 14th Extraordinary Congress of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia held in January 1990 was the last nail in the coffin of centralism. The frenetic accusations against the Croat Communist Party for the break-up of the State bring us full circle back to our previous chapters. A cyclical national fervour engulfed Croatia. This was not surprising. Richard Basset XE "Basset, Richard" , reporting from Zagreb for the Times witnessed the re-erection of the equestrian statue of Jela?i? XE "Jela?i?" , Viceroy of Croatia (1848), which had been melted down by Tito XE "Tito" some years before. “Jela?i? XE "Jela?i?" , a Croat version of Wellington-cum-Tennyson, saved Austria in 1848 and was finally returned to the main Zagreb Square.” It was unpopular and unfashionable until recently, but absolutely essential to carry out a rigorous reappraisal of the former Yugo-nation on the grounds of its blatant illegality, injustice and political and moral failure.We are at this point contemplating at the deathbed of Yugoslavia XE "Deathbed of Yugoslavia" , confronted with a dynamic political shifting pattern of events that were both confusing and promising, but in both cases, very, dangerous.It is, however, becoming increasingly apparent that the Yugoslav ghosts of the past - those grim, humourless, and utopian historicists - have succumbed to the weapons of exorcism, the intelligent insight and savage irony.On 30th May 1990, Croats voted in the first free democratic elections since World War II and the Croatian Democratic Union, under the leadership of Dr. Franjo Tudjman XE "Tudjman, Dr. Franjo" won a landslide victory.“Serbs tighten grip on media,” was another message from Bassett in Belgrade. “Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" , Serbian Communist leader, has turned what was once the most liberal press in Yugoslavia into what a British diplomat here described as ‘a shameful propaganda machine worthy of G?bbels’”. ‘Politika’, the leading Serbian daily and the oldest newspaper in Yugoslavia, has heaped abuse on all who question Mr. Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" ’s campaign for a Centralised state, ruled by a Communist party adhering to Bolshevik traditions and ill at ease with the reforms sweeping across Eastern Europe.The Times leading article on 18th April 1990 pointed out that "The impending defeat of the Communist Party in Croatia next Sunday, which follows its sister party's Easter rout in Slovenia, has implications for the whole political economy of Eastern Europe. These elections are billed as nationalist triumphs, and so they are; but they have another dimension too. . . . Proponents of a free market philosophy will have achieved the peaceful conquest of the two provinces - the most advanced in the Balkans - that are preparing to pursue an independent destiny outside the ramshackle and Serb-dominated Yugoslav federation. . . . Slovenia and Croatia may yet become a Balkan Benelux on the fringes of an enlarged European Community, while Mr. Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" maintains hegemony of the Serbs over an impoverished Macedonian, Montenegrin and Albanian rump". In the former Yugoslav Empire run by the Byzantine autocrats, it would have been unthinkable to hold the solemn High Mass in Zagreb Cathedral XE "High Mass in Zagreb Cathedral" to celebrate the first freely elected Croatian Parliament."Bells tolled throughout the city as the black limousines of government ministers sped to the cathedral past crowds waving flags and singing the Croatian national anthem. Inside the Parliament, the 205 nationalist delegates cheered and sang as Cardinal Kuhari? XE "Kuhari?, Cardinal" arrived and sat down beside Mr. Tudjman XE "Tudjman" . The five seats reserved for the Serbian delegates remained empty. Mr. Tudjman has failed in his attempt to heal the ethnic bitterness that erupted during the elections by offering a Serb the vice-presidency." The newspapers capacity to provide explanations of what was going on in Yugoslavia was further compromised by pervasive contradictions. General Franjo Tudjman XE "Franjo Tudjman" , a former Communist and Tito XE "Tito" ’s youngest general in WWII, is plotting the downfall of communism. "His campaign hums like a military machine. Aides, mostly young men in their 20’s, scurry up and down long corridors relaying orders. Tudjman XE "Tudjman" has little time for pleasantries: "Look at me when you ask a question!" he admonishes an unwitting interviewer, with the authority of a man who was once a military hero. Until two months ago, Tudjman was a political outcast. He was imprisoned and stripped of his rank in the 1970’s because of his Croatian nationalism but is one of many former Communists who feel their time has come."Thanks to the realities of the Byzantine power struggle there, we are never allowed to forget for long the vicissitudes of the Croato-Serbian war (1941-45). Like a discussion of Herophilus’ difficulties in obtaining young female corpses to dissect, we have from the Zagreb paper Vjesnik a brisk couple of paragraphs on a mass grave that was discovered recently near Zagreb XE "Mass grave near Zagreb" , an abyss that contains the remains of 40,000 people executed by the victorious Communists in 1945."Piles of bones, estimated to be up to 30ft deep in places, were found in a pit near the village of So?ice, 47 miles west of the Croatian capital of Zagreb . . . Local people and former partisans, quoted by newspapers, said lorry loads of wounded Croatian soldiers, members of the Ustasha Youth Movement, army nurses and other people were brought to the site. They were then shot and thrown in the pit."The peaceful life of the first three-month old democratic Croatia did, in a real sense, come to an end in the hot summer of August 1991. A Serbian minority living even with the idea, let alone the reality, of any Croatian State would be a formidable burden for their heroic emasculation. Highwaymen ringed the Croatian town of Knin XE "Knin" ; roads were barricaded with felled trees in order to stop ‘Croatian police agents’ disrupting the referendum for ‘Serbian autonomy’ within the Croatian state. The cult of the so-called ‘log revolution’ XE "log revolution’" came into full swing with a bold defence of a deeply unfashionable epic of Great Serbianhood during the 1992-1998 Croatian-Bosnian war. The uprising of part of the Serbian minority population, manipulated from Belgrade against the democratically elected Croatian Government, directed its activities for the ‘preservation of Serbianhood’ by terrorising international tourists and holidaymakers and setting fire to forests along the Dalmatian Coast. Police stations were robbed of their arms. Three helicopters of the Croatian Police were turned back from the area by the Yugoslav 'Peoples’ Air Force with the threatening line: "If only one head falls, the [JNA XE "JNA" ] Army will intervene". The defence of the Great Serbian rule was always a favourite role of the Peoples’ Army, and it still is.Thanks to this technique we are never allowed to forget the realities of power there for long; an argument for the arming of the legitimate forces of law and order in Croatia was frustrated by the disarming of the Croatian Territorial Army following the elections. The Croatian Government, failing to obtain the necessary arms in Yugoslavia, bought them through legitimate commercial channels. Vice-President of the central Government, Croat Stipe Mesi? XE "Stipe Mesi?" , put it succinctly: "In a situation where the ‘log revolution’ XE "log revolution’" is spreading from the south to the north, did they expect us to buy loads of fountain pens? Croatia needs self-defence and for that purpose it obtained the arms."The Army accusations against the democratic Government of Croatia were accompanied by the establishment of a brand new political party, the ‘Communist Union-Movement for Yugoslavia’, a collection of retired army hacks and former Communist hard-liners, with the aim of becoming a leading political force which would absorb all the left orientated parties in the country. Yet from the start, its activities displayed their real face, commemorating as it were the socialist doctrine for the rebuilding of the state. Time and again, the accusations were pouring down on the democracy in Croatia, singling it out as the chief cause in the break-up of Yugoslavia and socialism. There is, though, something paradoxical about this development. While kicking Croatia for legitimate re-arming, the Federal Peoples’ Army did not forget to arm the Serbian bandits in the town of Knin XE "Knin" . This was quite deliberate. For better or worse, the Croatian Government hit back: "The Republic of Croatia will resist with all the means at its disposal the Federal Army’s interference with the Croatian Home Office’s responsibilities for keeping law and order".At the meeting of the Council for Defence and Protection of the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia held on 9th January 1991, under the chairmanship of the President of Croatia, Dr. Tudjman XE "Tudjman, Dr. Franjo" , the Order of the Federal Government about the disarming of the ‘armed units that do not form part of the common armed forces of Yugoslavia’ was analysed. Clearly this was the case of the Federal Army turning into an inter-Republic police force which appears very likely might be used for the demolition of the lawfully established democratic institutions in Croatia."Defiant Croatia issues last-minute plea,” was how Marcus Tanner XE "Tanner, Marcus" , in his report from Zagreb (22nd January 1991) interpreted the situation. "Croatian policemen, armed with sub-machine guns bought in Singapore, were maintaining watchful guard yesterday outside the Sabor, the republic's Parliament, on the roof of the TV centre. . . . The question that nearly all the 5 million inhabitants of Croatia was asking last night was whether Yugoslavia's Communist-run Army would try to topple the pro-Western Democratic Governments of Croatia and Slovenia. 'I do not believe the Yugoslav Peoples’ Army will intervene in Croatia’ said General Spegelj. 'If it does, it will be war and bloodshed on such a scale that neither Yugoslavia nor the Army will survive. That is not in anyone's interest.'"The Yugoslav Army was a gold-mine of lost power metaphors - old Bolshevik chestnuts and counter-espionage codes, linked to Slobodan Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?, Slobodan" , the virulently nationalistic Serbian leader and still a Communist, who in tandem see the maintenance of the federal arrangement as the only way of keeping and expanding Serbian power. Elena Ceausescu is a privy code for Mirjana Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?, Mirjana" , Slobodan’s wife whose dimmed marriage situation was made up in large measure with the support of the Army’s own political Mafia, physically and metaphorically. The Army generals, after all, are always working their way up from the bottom.The ten-day limit for disarmament, which the central Government imposed on the Democratic Government in Croatia, was at an end. The Belgrade Mafia XE "Belgrade Mafia" was asking for blood and the immediate use of force with no thought of the consequences. This atmosphere was kept constantly warmed up by the bucketfuls of crap unloaded from the Belgrade press and TV. The papers were full of various ‘discoveries’ and conspiracies that involved members of the Croatian Government from gunrunning to a black-market in alcohol. The aim was to create total confusion. Under all the farce, there ran strains of Yugoslav absurdism and the surreal darkness of the insistence by the West on the preservation of Yugoslavia in any shape or form. The preservation of ‘Socialism’ there was evoked with a mixture of devoutness and ruthlessness by no less than Yugoslav Army General and Central Government Minister for Defence, Kadijevi? XE "Kadijevi?" in an interview for the Belgrade press.An orchestrated flood of letters to the editors has shown apparently that there is another invisible army in Communist Serbia ‘that there are masses of people there who will not allow the breaking up of Yugoslavia under any circumstances’. In this entire melee, not a word was mentioned about the unnamed banditos of Knin XE "Knin" , ‘the log revolutionaries’ to whom the Yugoslav Army supplied arms. The history of that summer's (1991) terrorism hardly impinged on the Belgrade Government enforcement. At this moment, the twisting tangents of Byzantianism sprang into action. Milan Babi? XE "Babi?, Milan" , the ‘greatest living Serb in Croatia’ ordered the ‘log army’ to return the arms because they have ‘complete confidence in the Yugoslav Army that it will protect them from the ‘Ustashoid Croatian Special Police’. The cream on top of the Serbian press muck, Belgrade Express Politika (20th January 1991) published an ‘in depth’ investigation under the tendentious title of ‘Storm-troopers in black’ about the secret training centres in Croatia in which imported volunteers from Kosovo, Albanians together with Croats, are trained under the command of the Croatian chief of the Police, Perica Juri?, XE "Perica Juri?," who, according to the latest information, was himself trained in terrorist warfare in Germany and Australia. So the Byzantine investigation remained true to its Great Serbian and Socialist commitment by insinuating the trilogy of the terrorist axis of Ljubljana-Zagreb-Pri?tina.An increased psychological-propaganda pressure was exercised in the territory of the Republic of Croatia. Military activities took place during the day and night of 21st January 1991, the night ‘when Croatia did not sleep’. At midnight, a peaceful candle-lit demonstration took place in the Jela?i? XE "Jela?i?" Square in Zagreb. All the main roads to Zagreb were barricaded against any possible tank attacks. The people of Croatia were ready to defend once again their hard-won sovereignty and freedom. Unlike in 1918, all the Croatian political parties stuck together for the common cause. Britain summoned the Yugoslav Charge d'Affairs in order to express grave concern over Belgrade’s threat to use force against Croatia and Slovenia. Britain believed that the latest threats by the Yugoslav Army to suppress the independence movements in both republics had reached a critical point and that the West must now take a firm stand to warn Belgrade of the outrage this would cause.In Washington, the State Department XE "State Department" stated that it had urged on Yugoslav leaders the need for peaceful dialogue. The US took ‘very seriously’ the ‘significant danger of violence’. "Croatia pulls back from brink of war," was how Marcus Tanner XE "Marcus Tanner" reported from Zagreb on 27th January 1991 in The Independent. "Croatia’s leader, Franjo Tudjman XE "Tudjman, Franjo" , yesterday wrenched his small Republic back from an unwinnable conflict with the Yugoslav Army just as it seemed impossible to escape a reprise of the horrific civil war in the 1940’s between Yugoslavia’s warring Croats and Serbs. Most Croats were relieved to have been spared the immediate prospect of military occupation and its inevitable accompaniment: a civil war between occupied Croatia and the Serbian-controlled Yugoslav Army. The core of the dilemma - how to peacefully dismantle a failed experiment in creating a multi-national state without resorting to arms - remains untouched." This is what Yugoslavia was all about; and any presentation of Belgrade Mafiosi properly classifiable as cheap propaganda was bound to be obscurantist. During the weekend of 25th January 1991, the Yugoslav Army High Command broadcast a half-hour TV programme about a sedition conspiracy being hatched in Croatia. Filmed and directed by the Army Counter-espionage (KOS XE "KOS" ), with clandestine cameras set in various private homes of senior Croatian leaders, the footage was a Byzantine montage of bits and pieces of off-the-cuff remarks and après dinner loose conversations carefully edited in the chiaroscuro, with the participants hardly distinguishable. Martin ?pegelj XE "?pegelj" , XE "?pegelj, Martin" Croatia’s Minister of Defence, cast as the star in this dangerous farce, was talking of an urgent need ‘to kill the wives and children’ of the Army personnel. The dramatic force of this diet supplanted a meagre table d'h?te of ?evap?i?i and ?ljivovica for millions of Serbia's bloodthirsty viewers. This Bolshevik fabrication soon became irrelevant except for the Serbian Academy portfolios to be passed on to future generations for the already bulging folklore department. ‘The ?pegelj XE "?pegelj" Affair’ thus became yet another great event in the Serbian history of vernacular oddities. On the following Wednesday, the Military Prosecutor issued a list of criminal charges against ?pegelj. XE "?pegelj." The Croatian President rejected this as preposterous nonsense, as ?pegelj, being a member of the Croatian Government was immune from such action. ?pegelj XE "?pegelj" hit back at the Army (of which he was a former general), as ‘a cruel KGB, Stalinist organisation’. The end game between the Federal Army and Croatia could be alleviated for the time being through parleying. Elusive and ambiguous though the answer to this question may be, it should be remembered when considering it that the shadowy leader of the Serbian ‘log revolution’ XE "Log revolution" in Croatia was in permanent contact with the ‘highest organs of the Federation’ in order that the Serbian minority in the self-styled ‘autonomous region’ could contemplate the beneficial fragrance of the Yugoslav Army boots. As an image of timeless Serbianhood, the Damocles sword of the Army intervention is hanging over Croatia against the dramatic mis-en-scene of the absurdly naive meetings and conversations at the highest level about the salvation of Yugoslavia, even in a loose con-federative form. Every time the Belgrade press indulges in a particularly dreadful pastiche of itself, it tries to increase our irritation by telling us "Warren Zimmerman XE "Zimmerman, Warren" , American Ambassador, thinks that we are naive to the extent that we cannot understand the significance of the presence of the Sixth Fleet in the port of Trieste during the 'fascist' elections in Croatia. We Serbs have a long memory."At the same time in the Yugoslav Army barracks, curious political philosophies were being hatched: Socialism in Yugoslavia was not yet on its knees, and the destruction of communism has failed. An ever more sardonic humour characterised a political tour de force by Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" ’s Serbian policies of “keeping all the Serbs in Yugoslavia in one state” which would give future Great Serbia ludicrous frontiers bordering Slovenia on one side and Greece on the other. This incomprehensible concept was at the crux of the political and even physical battles between Croats and Serbs. The ostensible expectations were that the well-meaning and peaceful way in which the present Croatian Democratic Government tried to resolve the Yugoslav crises will, in the end, be the victim in spite of the acclaim by the democratic West. The most cynical view of the Serbian character and motivations was probably the most accurate. The naked physical power and territorial claims not only over the ancient Croatian lands in Bosnia and Hercegovina, but also of one third of the Republic of Croatia, a delight in the degradation of the European liberal and democratic principles, was thus complete.In the meantime, as the Slovenes bumped off the Yugoslav Army XE "Slovenes bumped off the Yugoslav Army" , an order for military withdrawal came in talks between the federal Prime Minister, Ante Markovi? XE "Ante Markovi?" , and Slovene leaders. The Slovenes took control of the disputed frontier passes and prepared to deliver the coup de grace. However, they had to reckon with Gianni de Michelis’s XE "de Michelis, Gianni" blame for the collapse of the EC initiative XE "EC initiative" : “Everyone is saying yes, but waiting for the others to implement the Agreement” IIn Zagreb, the Croatian parliament pressed ahead with the plans for Independence. Outwitting the Yugoslav beast illustrates the bizarre anachronism of seeking military solutions to delicate political problems. However, the confusion is also illustrated by the Foreign Secretary Hurd XE "Hurd" ’s XE "Hurd, Douglas" statement on 30th June expressing impatience with those who argue, “that Yugoslavia is an artificial creation and must therefore be allowed to break up”. But the reality that Yugoslavia was breaking up it seemed had not yet matched with his deductive mind. In a dramatic announcement, Stipe Mesi? XE "Mesi?, Stipe" (a 'Croat') finally became the President of the collapsing Yugoslavia. This ended a 6-week deadlock engendered by the hard-liners of Serbia, blocking what should have been a routine rotating election. A large supporting cast played their parts in the continuing intrigues: General Marko Negovanovi? XE "Negovanovi?, General Marko" , a confused member of the Army High Command, appeared on Belgrade TV warning Slovenia of the decisive military action, just at the time of the Army's capitulation. Ante Markovi? XE "Markovi?, Ante" (another 'Croat'), despised Croat-basher and federal Prime Minister, thought that less force could have been used in this operation. General Blagoje Ad?i? XE "Ad?i?, General Blagoje " , the C-in-C of the Army Command, a demented Serb whose operational strategies were based on the memories of the alleged killing of his entire family by the Croatian fascists during the WWII. At the same, time the level of morale among the ordinary soldiers was far from enthusiastic about fighting for Yugoslavia in which only Serbs still seem to believe.The new realism of the West was widely expressed in The Times leader on 3rd July 1991: "Whether the EC recognises the sovereignty or not, Slovenia and Croatia are acting as autonomous states and must be dealt with as such". On 3rd July, writing in the Independent, Lawrence Freedman XE "Freedman, Lawrence" confirmed belatedly the philosophy of this book's previous chapters: “The European Community’s early efforts were hampered by its preoccupation with Yugoslav Unity, which prevented it from threatening recognition of the breakaway republics . . .”Of all the successful thrillers on the subject ‘the word from Washington that the US would recognise the Yugoslav Republics if their independence could be achieved peacefully’ was the most misleading. The realisation that the Chicago gang syndrome of punishment for the secession was valid in the circumstances was beyond the State Department XE "State Department" 's comprehension. One must accept that more lives will be lost and property destroyed, in order that the Serbian domination is decisively curtailed. In the long run this is the only strategy for survival of the non-Serbian nations on this eerie land. The military, as the last bastion of the unitary Yugoslavia, veered between retreat and revenge. The military crackdown, now being redirected towards Croatia, followed a well-prepared plan. The collapse of the Communist rule brought the Army into the corner. Quietly Yugoslavia's supposedly ‘federal forces’ turned into a great Serbian Army.Despite German insistence, the EC foreign ministers backed away from formal recognition of Croatia and Slovenia. A community-wide arms embargo and ?595 million of EC funds to Yugoslavia were frozen. Obviously, the EC seemed unable to understand the Croat and Slovene predicament. In order to compile an anthology of this madness one has to hear the statement of a doctor in the war-torn frontier town of Borovo: “Yesterday, in the small Croatian town of Borovo, you could see the beginnings of the true, all engulfing civil war. In Borovo and the surrounding area, European resolutions are simply meaningless,” reported Steven Crawshaw XE "Crawshaw, Steven" . “Everything we learned in the history books is repeating itself. All the garbage of our past is coming to the surface of our lives.” In such a situation, you survive by skipping. In Washington, the world's single remaining superpower was expected to influence every crisis around the globe. Yet in this case, Washington waxed impotent. Just four days before Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence (7th July 1991), the US Secretary of State, James Baker XE "Baker, James" , was in Belgrade insisting that Yugoslavia must remain a single state. This statement signalled to the Yugoslav Army that the US would tacitly accept the use of force to preserve the status quo.Now the Army was trying to secure a frontier for ‘Greater Serbia’ halfway in Croatia, including the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina.From the Yugoslav point of view, madness is ever fascinating.Mothers of Serbian conscripts occupied the parliament building in Belgrade yelling: “We have not borne our sons to die for Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" .” Despite losing their breath, this is exactly what they were doing - because, on the other side of Belgrade other Serbian mothers (or were they the same) were throwing flowers and distributing chocolates and cigarettes to the tank crews on the way to Croatia. Naturally Mr. Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" was speechless. The popular mood in Serbia against Croatia was a mixture of madness and suffering at the same time - and for the Belgrade Politika newspaper to ignore it must have been a great disservice to the entertainment industry. Milo?evi? insisted that Yugoslavia must remain a federation and that wherever Serbs crap there is Serbia. A declaration for the annexation of the whole of Bosnia and one third of Croatia was responsible for the bloody conflict. In a quiet corner, Lord Weidenfeld posed a crucial question "What Europe can do, what Europe must do: “Who will decide about the future shape of the . . . continent,” and gave us a classical answer: “What wants to grow together must not be kept apart. By aiding the Slovenes and Croats we should also honour the reverse: what does not want to stay together must be allowed to live apart”.In the meantime, Slobodan Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" , the Serbian leader, appeared on the air calling for the Serbs to prepare for war: "The Serbian people throughout their history never waged wars of conquest . . . ” while the ‘Yugoslav’ army sat in Belgrade barracks, polishing their guns.Although making parallels between the collapse of Yugoslavia with the TV chat shows may be disconcerting, the appearance of the pop singer Sne?ana Petkovi? XE "Petkovi?, Sne?ana" with the latest hit ‘Slobodan brother’, in spite of enthusiasm, pointed towards total collapse. The Sarajevo newspaper Oslobodjenje, Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" ’s mouthpiece commented: “Slobo is a real star of stars . . . He is a showbiz star of the first magnitude.” As a former banker and the son of an Orthodox priest, Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" possessed an extremely sound pedigree - the traditional twin pillars of Serbianhood."He is now turning his guns on Croatia, whose Serbian minority [about 12% of the Republic’s population] faces the same danger, in his view, as the Kosovo Serbs . . . Mr. Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" , clearly in co-operation with the army . . . has raised the risk of a Serb-Croat bloodbath to perilous levels. No sooner has the mind grappled with these lines, one realised that our own era can boast more interesting politicians than Versailles XE "Versailles" ones."European Communist leaders made little headway yesterday in their last-minute attempt to prevent Yugoslavia from slipping further into civil war," reported Steve Crawshaw [from the Adriatic Island of Brioni]. "The discussions, which were still going late last night, were overshadowed by the growing violence in Eastern Croatia - where a Serb-Croat war has in effect broken out." If the reader has failed so far to enter into the spirit of the events, his interest might be titillated by the latest news that the "Fourth Reich is after the Balkans". The Yugoslav army magazine Narodna Armija launched this news the other day, alleging German and Austrian intelligence services XE "intelligence services" were attempting to break up Yugoslavia by encouraging secessionist sentiments in Slovenia and Croatia. It's a siege mentality in Serbia that counts, and that it merges imperceptibly into the false consciousness that a tribal culture claps on to raw experience of the Serbian myths seems to be of no importance.Some Western journalists were turned on by the nastier aspects of their imagination as useful raw material for the entertainment of their readers. Thus Ed Williams XE "Williams, Ed" (The Guardian, 9th July 1991) misinforms:“Croats want to be independent . . . and, like Ulster’s Protestants, they harbour a plentiful supply of thugs. The Serbs in Croatia are more roguish, usually more genial people . . ..” Correspondents now compete for work in the schizophrenic Croatian theatre of war - some reports are near enough the truth, some evidently too freely interpret the events, which they hardly comprehend. For this reason, their observations are unbalanced and uninformed, and their perception of that collective madness is left largely unilluminated.One does not have to be either a political or military specialist to distinguish between attack and defence and the fact that this war is waged on Croatian territory.The fact that a small Croatian village, ?elije, was robbed and burned on the day when the European Community Peace Accord collapsed does not make reporting more glamorous but puts the irrationality of this war in its true perspective.George Brocks' XE "Brocks, George" report from Brussels (The Times, 10th July 1991) might lack technical information but for all that was more illuminating: a small self-conscious band of Croat demonstrators unfurled the red, white and blue flag of their new Republic outside the Netherlands Foreign Ministry in The Hague XE "The Hague" last Friday. One of their number wore a badge reading “Kiss me: I am Croatian.” Inside, European Community foreign ministers debated the break-up of Yugoslavia, a subject they return to today.What is interesting at this stage is that the old cronies of the Yugoslav lobby in Britain are not just raising their ugly heads again but are deliberately misinterpreting the causes of this conflict and, at the same time, suggesting its therapy. Sir Fitzroy MacLean XE "MacLean, Sir Fitzroy" , in his report on Yugoslavia (Marshall Tito XE "Tito" 's Shattered Legacy, The Times, 10th July 1991), maintained that “at the bottom of Yugoslavia’s troubles lies the strong mutual antagonisms, which have developed between the Serbs and Croats,” a hypothesis that we have refuted already in the previous chapters. His jokey one-liners, such as that “the aims [of the Croats and Serbs] appear to be almost identical; a multi-party system; a market economy, a united Yugoslavia,” are not merely irritating but become positively obnoxious. It seems that the ghost of his pal Tito XE "Tito" whispers in his hairy ear and the shadow of the prison window bars falls over Sir Fitzroy's pages. Yet, Tito’s whispering is not as ominous as the whispering (as one suspects) of Sir Fitzroy’s into the ear of Lord Carrington XE "Lord Carrington" , whose current ideas for the solution of this conflict convey the same message: loose alliance of the independent republics, but with synchronised foreign and economic policy. Such thoughts suggest that despite Lord Carrington’s integrity and verve, it is difficult to teach old dogs new tricks. It is ironical that the well-meaning Lord Carrington XE "Carrington, Lord" , as the former Foreign Secretary, i.e., in charge of the pro-Yugoslav Foreign Office, creator of both Yugoslavias, is now in charge not only of its obsequies, but also of being its obstetrician. To put a distinguished man in such a predicament was not only a technical mistake but also the result of an absurd logic.What is interesting about these proposals is not just the contradiction between the independence and sharing of foreign and economic policies, i.e. creating a third Yugoslavia, but also the insistence that there are no alternatives to these ideas.This brings us back to our old friend Djilas who, only recently (12th October 1991), on Radio France Inter I, stated that there is no alternative to Yugoslavia "as the Croat and Serb populations are terribly mixed on the ground".)As one would expect, The Hague XE "The Hague" ’s procrastination on recognition of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia as independent states and bringing them back to status quo ante 1918 is nothing new. To learn about Gavrilo Princip XE "Princip, Gavrilo" , who shot Franz Ferdinand XE "Franz Ferdinand" in Sarajevo in 1914 so that Yugoslavia could be cobbled together might not be illuminating, yet it may remind the gentlemen of The Hague that, to the West of the fault line with Serbia prior to 1918, a more bearable world existed in an era subject to less delusions.Is it beyond the imagination that with all that scholarship around, to envisage loose associations of these republics with Austria, Hungary and even Italy, rather than with the inmates of Serbia and Montenegro? Or do we all have to suffer post-Yugoslav depression and commit suicide in anticipation of lateral thinking?At the end of June 1991, when Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence, there “was still some confusion,” in the Foreign Office about the policies towards “Yugoslavia”. In their heart of hearts they decided, “That, on balance, it would be better to keep Yugoslavia together.” Now it appears they have changed their minds. Keeping Yugoslavia together means sustaining Serbian nationalist and Communist aggression, going against the democratically expressed wishes of the people. If Croatia and Slovenia are recognised then the Foreign Office should be prepared to give immediate military assistance to these republics. Douglas Hurd XE "Hurd, Douglas" , with his civilised hesitation on this issue, has certainly encouraged further Yugoslav army onslaughts. So the Foreign Office had initially a free hand in the proceedings. The Falklands campaign, so it is whispered, has shattered Margaret Thatcher XE "Margaret Thatcher" ’s XE "Thatcher, Margaret" respect for the Foreign Office. When it comes to cutting off the umbilical cord with its baby Yugoslavia, one may hardly notice the difference in the Foreign Office's composure but the effect on its credibility could be dramatic.The impenetrable Balkan intrigue had some mellow moments on the British TV screens. It was the occasion when ‘Prince’ Tomislav Karadjordjevi?’s Sussex born ‘Princess Lynda’, with her two children XE "Karadjordjevi?, ‘Prince’ Tomislav’s Sussex born ‘Princess Lynda’, with her two children" (under armed escort), visited the Croatian front. Inevitably, Mr. John Kennedy XE "Kennedy, John" (unfair to his presidential namesake), ‘prospective’ parliamentary Tory candidate for Barking, was in the company of the ‘prospective’ "King of Yugoslavia" (Kennedy claims royal descent “through a Montenegrin line”).This gave him credentials for political talks with Slobodan Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" . "Croatia must be trimmed to size and absorbed into Austria-Hungary"according to Mr. Kennedy. The Serbs could have overrun Croatia in a couple of days, he said, and the fact that it has not done so is “evidence of Serbian innate inclination to democracy.” Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" , on the other hand, said he is prepared to see Croatia secede, but that it first has to relinquish the land where ‘about 700,000’ Serbs live. He grows uncomfortable, however, when asked why Croatia should do so, when Serbia continues to repress two million Albanians in Kosovo. Thus, in spite of his innate Great Serbian skill in political machinations, Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" lost credibility and a propaganda war with Croatia. He became isolated almost as much as his Captain Dragan was over-advertised. A Rambo, who it now appears, was a petty criminal ‘down under’. He is Dragan Vasiljkovi? XE "Vasiljkovi?, Dragan" , 36, say Melbourne police, convicted in 1974 for handling stolen goods (or was it whorehouses?). In any event, Dragan is a suitable candidate for the heroic epic poetry to supplant the hefty diet of that ‘Prince Marko of Kosovo’ for the future Great Serbian generations. These are the characters that are now in the act of carving Great Serbia out of Croatian and Bosnian territory. Belgrade is already doing good business in selling maps and T-shirts of the ‘Great Serbia’. The authors, Vuk Dra?kovi? XE "Dra?kovi?, Vuk" , a poet who intends “to restore Serbia’s pride by bloodshed,” and more pragmatic Milo?evi?, who is registering Serbian graves in Croatia one might note, are not prepared to cut out the region of Kosovo (with 2 million Albanians) from this map.In the meantime, Vojislav ?e?elj XE "?e?elj, Vojislav" , the Chetnik ‘Duke’, boasts openly in the Serbian ‘Parliament’ of gouging out Croatian policemen's eyes with rusty (!) spoons, and is given tumultuous applause for saying so.For the Serbs in Croatia to learn to live as a minority is nothing in comparison with these apocalyptic outbursts.Not to outshine its internal policies, Serbia has now (as reported in the Guardian - 10th August 1991) decided to match them with the policies on the grand international scale. All the international agreements made by Tito XE "Tito" , in respect of the annulment of the WWII reparations against Germany, have been now made null and void. Thus, Serbia claims billions of dollars in damages from Germany and Croatia (!). The Serbian ‘Parliament’ declared that Tito had ‘no right’ to forgive reparations amounting to $84 billion.At the same time, the traditional Serbian conspiracy theories bandwagon is gaining momentum. In order to avoid blame for breaking up Yugoslavia, Belgrade came up with the newest ‘Unified Germany expansionist threat’. At the beginning of July 1991, the main evening TV News bulletin dragged out the old Nazi Wochenschau footage of a triumphant Hitler XE "Hitler" entering Maribor in Slovenia in April 1941. The idea was to link the past events with the present. The Kremlin, as reported by Bruce Clark XE "Clark, Bruce" from Moscow (The Times, 8th August 1991), even in its own death throes, has found it necessary to threaten that those "proposing sending foreign troops to Yugoslavia did not realise the consequences".On the front, in the meantime, Marc Champion XE "Champion, Marc" could still see ‘trails of dried blood’ in the Croatian village of Dalj after it has been ‘liberated’ by the Serbs. “In the local school, bloodstains covered almost the entire ground floor - the Croats in the school had made a desperate last stand.” 36 Croatian residents of Dalj were massacred.“We knew everyone who was shooting, of course; they are our neighbours,” was the statement by ‘Mr.’ Ili?i?, local Serbian ‘Liberator’.Finally, it dawned on Jacques Poos XE "Poos, Jacques" , the Luxembourg Foreign Minister, and Mr. Dumas, French Foreign Minister that an international force similar to that used in the Gulf conflict, must be used, and that the dirty war by Serbia against Croatia is not acceptable by the International Community. However, the European action in this respect was bordering on farce: Dumas favoured a peacekeeping force and the setting-up of safety zones; Genscher XE "Genscher" supported an independent Croatia and sought sanctions against the Serbs; De Michelis XE "de Michelis" was ready to accept a peacekeeping force under WEU; and Hurd XE "Hurd, Douglas" was concerned about Serbs, but wary of sending a peacekeeping force.The Great Serbs, with the help of the big army guns and rockets, were pushing to build a ‘Great Serbia’ that will last and that will not be dumped after a couple of years. However, they have not taken into account the Croat resolve to kick them out. Yet the key question is “what do the Serbs want to do with an enlarged Serbia?” If Croats could have any confidence in what Europe says and compare it with what Europe does then they should take things very cautiously. Hans-Dietrich Genscher XE "Genscher, Hans-Dietrich" stated on 6th August 1991 "Nobody should be allowed to help put Serbia in the position of continuing its efforts to redraw Yugoslavia’s internal borders by force”. The Serbs are fooling themselves that they now control most of the territory in Croatia to which they lay claim. They are now calling for a cease-fire. It looks as if Britain has suddenly taken events much more seriously. British sources suddenly said on 5th August 1991 that it was possible that Douglas Hurd XE " Hurd, Douglas" , the Foreign Secretary, might even break off his holiday. The alarm clock has awoken also the US administration. US officials became concerned by the precedent that will be set if Slobodan Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" is allowed to create a Great Serbia by force. It looks as if Mr. Bush XE "Bush, George" is looking again at the effect of the East European ethnic vote, among them the Croats, will have for the Republican campaign in 1992. For this reason, the possibility of putting Western troops in Croatia must now be approached. If Milo?evi?, an unstable character with a family history of mental illness, were allowed to succeed, there would be no end to his ambitions.Sanctions against Serbia obviously would not be enough. Recognition of Croatia as an independent state should follow, thus legitimising international intervention. It looks as if it had dawned on the West that small states like Croatia and Slovenia are viable after all - providing they have access to larger markets - and are protected militarily.Belgrade was banking that the West will not have the stomach for armed intervention.“We will not tolerate any sort of foreign troops here,” stated Vojislav ?e?elj XE "Vojislav ?e?elj" , Chetnik ‘Duke’. “If the West interferes, tens of thousands of Western soldiers will be killed. It will be total war, a war without mercy. That will be a war without prisoners. We would kill them in every place, wherever we could. We would poison their food. We would poison their water. There are no means we would not use against foreign intervention.”The outburst of the bully who, in essence, was a psychopathic coward is in line with the Great Serbian Byzantine tradition. We have already heard about gouged eyes – next we heard about poison. Former British Defence Attaché to Yugoslavia, Edward Cowan XE "Cowan, Edward" , ignored the Duke's threats and suggested that “The EC better act quickly and decisively to deploy a well-balanced peace-keeping force, composed of experienced military and diplomatic observers, infantry armed with anti-tank guns and anti-aircraft weapons, armoured reconnaissance vehicles, helicopters and extensive communications with air power on call.” The fundamental difference arose between France and Germany on the underlying issue, which was whether Yugoslavia should remain in being as a federation or be split up into independent republics. In France, the architect of the little Entente, a common thread, however, remained weeping for the continued existence of its protégé, because it might compromise the very tradition of France. It is ironical how the mother of democracy gave up its principles in order to save its totalitarian baby.Germany, supposedly ‘expansionist’, took the thoroughly democratic view: Die Welt (29th July 1991) commented “the Yugoslav army, protectors of the murderers, only laugh when they are urged to enter into a ‘dialogue’. They see the hesitation of the West as a sign of weakness.” In the editorial on 30th July 1991, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung wrote “the Western World must recognise Croatia [and Slovenia] as a state and then protect them with all means, even armed force if necessary, until they are able to fend off the Serbian aggression themselves.” On 3rd August 1991, the Yugoslav Communist newspaper Borba reported that most of the 40 Croatian policemen in Dalj were killed. Several thousands of Croatian civilians in eastern Croatia were abandoning their homes as a handful of ill-armed Croatian policemen line up for a final stand against Serbian 'Federal' army and guerrillas. According to The Independent (2nd August 1991) more than 100 people died in Croatia last weekend alone. Europe has seen nothing as violent as this since the end of the WWII. The war has explicitly become a war for territory, with Serbs seizing more villages and towns each day; they do not hide their desire for a ‘Greater Serbia’. The ‘Yugoslav’ army is acting openly in concert with the Serbian guerrillas.What the Croats were suffering was obscene, since they were being terrorised into leaving their homes, pounded by mortars, rockets and even aircraft released at them by the Yugoslav army. Simon Freeman XE "Freeman, Simon" commented aptly in The European (2-4th August 1991) "Europe will suffer serious and lasting damage if it sits and does nothing".During April/May/June 1991, the Croat National Guard was set up. The force numbered about 30,000 men and was growing rapidly. "I think we will have to attack the army. This is a war between Croatia and Serbia, and not a civil war"said Commander Remi? XE "Remi?" of the Guard.Struga, a village south of Zagreb, was bombed flat. According to eyewitnesses, the Chetniks (Serbian nationalists) entered the village in two trucks using 40 Croats as a human shield. In a pattern that is by now familiar, the Chetniks then withdrew leaving the army to move in with heavy armour. Several thousands of Croatian refugees witnessed the Serbian atrocities on the very doorstep of Zagreb.The bombardment of Osijek, a Croatian city, brought fears that the Army and Chetniks intended to overrun the Republic. History is repeating itself. During the WWII the pattern of the Chetnik atrocities was the same – the atrocities that were later attributed to Ustashas. This time, the deception was impossible. The Croatian authorities gave almost free access to the battleground area for the international media. So the facts were there, available on paper, tapes, and film. When Marc Champion XE "Champion, Marc" interviewed the Chetnik ‘Duke’ Vojislav ?e?elj XE "?e?elj, Vojislav" , there was no doubt of his intentions.“The Croats must either move or die,” he said. “Before Croatia is freed it should amputate the arm of its territory that runs south along the Dalmatian coast, all of Slavonia - its eastern shoulder - and part of its centre. Everything south and east of the new Croatian border would then become Greater Serbia . . . There will not be a real war, because the Croats are not capable [of fighting],” although counter attacks by the Croats could belie such over-confidence. Cowardly Chetnik hit and run units showed their prowess, traditionally, in committing atrocities. Supported by the Italians during the WWII, and in the 1990's supported by the ‘Yugoslav’ army, they continued this 'glorious' tradition but, without army support, they were not a match for the Croatian forces.In mid-August 1991, more than 500 ‘Yugoslav’ army tanks surrounded Osijek, capital of Eastern Croatia. So Osijek was next on Serbia’s territorial shopping list. "Croatia will never abandon Osijek", said Branimir Glava? XE "Glava?, Branimir" , Commander of the Croatian defence of the town. "People will fight until every centimetre of Croatia has been liberated". In the mean time, Bosnian President Mr. Izetbegovi? XE "Izetbegovi?, Alija" woke up and stated,”We shall not allow Serbia to impose its rule on Bosnia - and if they do so there will be continued resistance.” The paradigm for the forthcoming battles was the battle for the Croatian town of Tenja that had suddenly been propelled into the front line of the Croato-Serbian conflict. The ferocity with which this small town was attacked, and the heroic determination of its Croatian defenders to hold onto it was beyond belief. On 25th August 1991, Croats shot down their first ‘Yugoslav’ warplane during the undeclared war. At the end of August, Croatia and the ‘Yugoslav’ army appeared to be on the brink of all-out war as the biggest battle raged for control of Vukovar XE "Vukovar" , a strategic town on the eastern border of Croatia. The town was encircled by the Yugoslav army and the Chetniks, and pounded by heavy artillery, tanks, and aircraft. At the same time, Croatian forces moved into the offensive after considerable territorial losses.The Belgrade propaganda XE "Belgrade propaganda" , true to its tradition, was pumping out accusations that it was the Croatian National Guards who were attacking and that the army was only responding to ‘provocations’. On 27th August 1991, Die Welt wrote: "The time has come to differentiate clearly between perpetrators and victims in Yugoslavia".Western military experts were of the opinion that the ‘Yugoslav’ army was making a blitz on Croatia, intent on creating a front line deep inside the Republic, before peace negotiations began. The ‘truce’ was violated more than 250 times since it was declared in the early part of August.Germany began a campaign, warning the Serbian Foreign Minister that the army has to pull out of Croatia. Italy and Austria supported the move. In the battle for Vukovar XE "Vukovar" , a small band of Croats destroyed twenty tanks, five aircraft, and seven armoured personnel carriers.Overnight, the ‘Yugoslav’ army and the Chetniks attacked the Croatian village of Kijevo in northern Dalmatia. The village was totally destroyed. The houses were plundered and set on fire. “Serbia must be stopped,” was the heading of the leader in The Independent on 28th August 1991. "Serbia is engaged in a campaign of systematic destruction and territorial aggrandisement against Croatia. The death toll is rising, and the conflict is spreading. The [Serbian] regime would deserve no place in today's Europe, even if it had not turned murderous. It must be stopped. The first step, as the Germans have suggested, must be to recognise Croatia as an independent state, thereby making Serbia guilty of international aggression, in law as well as in fact. The next serious consideration should be given to arming the Croats, particularly with anti-aircraft missiles.”After Croats argued the point for months, Tony Barber XE "Barber, Tony" of The Independent (28th August 1991) spelled it out: “Yugoslavia's existence is not sacred, and ethnic groups need not share statehood. We are faced, in short, with the most intractable conflict in Europe since 1945.”"500 die in battle for Croatian town,” reported Sue Masterman XE "Masterman, Sue" from Vukovar XE "Vukovar" (Evening Standard, 29th August 1991)."Vukovar XE "Vukovar" , the town that will go down in Croatian history as much as York Town in America, has been the scene of fierce fighting for a week. A division of 48 ‘Yugoslav’ army tanks was reported to be moving towards the town, where Croatian Guardsmen had dug in for a last stand."The ‘Federal’ army seems to have abandoned all pretence at playing an objective role. Now even children are victims of the assault on Vukovar XE "Vukovar" . They inspire most sorrow and anger. The centre of Vukovar XE "Vukovar" was almost destroyed by air raids by ‘Yugoslav’ jets and bombardment from ships in the Danube. Electricity and water supplies were cut off. 3,000 Croatian soldiers remain in tenuous control of the City. The systematic destruction of people and property, worse than during the WWII, goes on.Even the US State Department XE "State Department" woke up to the reality of this dirty war. On 29th August 1991, Richard Bouchers XE "Bouchers, Richard" , its Spokesman, blamed the leaders of the Serbian Republic and the ‘Yugoslav’ army for escalating the violence. The European Council EC involvement was hopelessly disorganised and its Monitoring Mission XE "Monitoring Mission of the EC" was mocked by both Croats and Serbs as 'ice-cream sellers'.Norman Stone XE "Stone, Norman" , the Oxford historian, commented in the Sunday Times (1st September 1991): "The first lesson is that, if you start with nation states that do not claim each other’s territory, you have a formula for peace."However, mediation of this kind, although helpful, was of no use to 20,000 Croat civilians having to spend days and nights underground as the fighting in Vukovar XE "Vukovar" intensified. A vicious, vindictive attack shattered once elegant baroque buildings and historic monuments. In essence, this is the meaning of Serbianhood. "If we cannot have it, you will not have it." Another old Serbian adage runs as follows: "Revenge is preferable to sainthood".Great Serbia turned everything to hate. The Vukovar XE "Vukovar" hospital was hit more times than can be counted and the patients had to be were transferred to the cellars. The Serbs bombed even the graveyards.As Croatia prepared for a concerted war, it was pinning its hopes on support from the outside world. During December 1991 a small Dalmatian village, Kru?evo, had been the scene of some of the most ferocious ‘Yugoslav’ army and air force bombardments in Croatia. No cease-fire had a chance in Croatia, it seemed. Without Croatian oil, industry and tourism, Serbia could not survive. So it was essential for Serbia to occupy Croatian territory and no cease-fire would stop them.In spite of its bullying, the Serbian ‘Federal’ army was on the way to collapse. Its remaining officers were hardcore Serbian Chetniks. Even so, the ‘Yugoslav’ army still retained enormous firepower, perhaps the third largest in Europe, which was now directed indiscriminately against civilian targets. The particular delight for the Serbs was shooting at catholic churches in a systematic campaign to wipe out Croatian identity from the mixed population areas. This was a conquest for territory led by the Serbian Orthodox Church - in its role as the Serbian war propaganda machine.The Western media largely underestimated the resolve and stamina of Croats in defence of their country. Even Marcus Tanner XE "Tanner, Marcus" , an objective observer of the events, misjudged the situation in The Independent (6th September 1991): “Croatia seemed closer than ever to military defeat as Federal army units stepped up the bombardment of key towns in the eastern part of the Republic. . . . It appears only a matter of days before Croatia is divided militarily into four parts.” In the meantime, the EC dragged its feet and thus helped the paranoid Serbian nationalist regime and its army that believed that Yugoslavia was threatened by a Western imperialist plot inspired by the CIA XE "CIA" . How this belief could fit with US secretary of State James Baker XE "Baker, James" 's support for Yugoslav unity remains a mystery.In the meantime, the Serbian military campaign against Croatia was continuing with extraordinary brutality and total disregard for civilian casualties. The leading article in The Independent, on the 7th September 1991, commented:"The Serbs must also be disabused of the illusion that they can present the International Community with a fait accompli. Greater Serbia does not provide the basis for a viable solution . . . there cannot be any compromise with the principle that frontiers must not be changed by force." "Angry Croats call for all out war," wrote Mark Champion XE "Champion, Mark" (The Independent, 7th September 1991). Peace conferences were meaningless as far as the suffering Croatian population was concerned. Serbian rebel leaders in Croatia repeated again and again that they would not respect a cease-fire or a European-sponsored solution to the crisis, unless they were treated as equal partners in negotiations. Serbian generals showed profound contempt for peace deals, cease-fires and peace-mongers. Osijek, an 80% Croatian town, a prosperous cosy place, has suffered the worst of the Serbian onslaught. "A war-crime of Guernica proportions is taking place in Osijek. The war psychosis, like Sadam Hussein's or Hitler XE "Hitler" 's, gives Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" the impetus in violence. There will be no hope of peace in Europe while Slobodan is riding the Serbian tiger. Yugoslav army shells were flying at the TV centre and us, so that the Serbs could get on with their murder in private,".wrote John Sweeney XE "Sweeney, John" of the Observer, 8th September 1991.What was quite clear, both at the table in The Hague XE "The Hague" and in the battlefields of Croatia, was that the fundamental issue was the possession of territory. The ‘ethnic’ patchwork of Croatia, Bosnia and, even more, Serbia, called for retention of the existing borders, solid guarantees to minorities within them or, in extremis, voluntary repatriation. However, this could come about only after the dirty war had burned itself out. This dirty war made Eduardo Flores XE "Flores, Eduardo " , who was reporting on the fighting for the Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia, quit in order to enlist in the Croatian defence forces. These were the media heroes who reported from on the spot. Some others, such as The Times’ Anne McElvoy XE "Anne McElvoy" , the woman who insisted that Dubrovnik was a Serbian city, "because it was night and she did not have a map" when she was there last time. She then chews the old cud about Ustasha atrocities, to give a helping hand to her embattled Chetnik friends in London."The Pope has said that he intends to visit the Republic of Croatia and has thrown himself behind the efforts for independence." McElvoy embroiders her favourite subject. "Cardinal Kuhari? XE "Cardinal Kuhari?" [of Croatia] speaks eloquently of the need for peace, for respect for human life and of universal ethical codes, but conciliatory words soon spill over into declarations which could as easily come from Croatia's most militant politicians. The effect of McElvoy’s XE "McElvoy, Anne" transparent anti-Catholic eulogy creates the impression that Serbian towns, hospitals and churches were being attacked and not vice versa. Yet the facts coming from all sides were so much more effective than the hot air coming from our dear Anne McElvoy XE " McElvoy, Anne " ’s mouth.Instead, she would be better off reading a report from the front by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard XE "Evans-Pritchard, Ambrose" where, in the village of Dalj, a Croatian journalist was killed and his severed head sent back to the Croats as a warning to anybody trying to document the atrocity “of 60 people who were butchered there by the Serbian Chetniks. Contrary to general belief" wrote Evans-Pritchard "the areas being conquered do not have a majority of Serbs. Not a single county in Slavonia . . . has more than 30% Serbs, and in most counties, the proportion is less than 15%. Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" has to be stopped immediately, not by gradual escalation of pressure but by force."This advice is very apt if one takes into account what my old neighbour from Sarajevo, Du?ko Doder XE "Doder, Du?ko " (by the way a Serb), correspondent of The European wrote (13th September 1991): "Last week, 22 civilian residents of the Croatian village of ?edekovac were found murdered, some allegedly with their hearts ripped out and dumped on the shattered thresholds of what were once their homes."The way that some correspondents went about chopping Croatia to pieces was illustrated by Ed Vulliamy's XE "Vulliamy, Ed" statement (The Guardian, 12th September 1991) that describes the Croatian region of Baranja as “a Serbian enclave in Croatia which declared itself independent in July.”According to the 1991 census, the 55,000 population was 42% Croat, 25% Serb and 20% Hungarian. After the Serbian invasion in May 1991, 50% of the population (Croats and Hungarian) has either been expelled or fled. Those who remained were terrorised or were executed. The Western 'experts' were quick to prophesy the end of Croatia. Their ‘pragmatism’ blinded them into accepting the re-drawing of the existing frontiers. It also made them negotiate with Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" and General Kadijevi? XE "Kadijevi?" , war criminals, who should have been locked up and not appeased. They couldn't understand that compromise in this war was not the name of the game, and that Serbs have bitten off more than they could chew, and that they would be driven back into their mountains.“Croatia goes on offensive “Croatia launched a big military offensive against the Yugoslav army yesterday, taking army barracks throughout the Republic and battling gunboats and jets for control of a port near Dubrovnik. During the weekend offensive in Croatia, 15 Yugoslav army barracks surrendered, about 400 Yugoslav officers and soldiers had surrendered to Croatian forces."reported Marcus Tanner XE "Tanner, Marcus" from Zagreb (The Independent, 16th September 1991). Croatian forces were handicapped from the beginning of the Serbian invasion in a struggle against well-supplied Chetnik forces and later on against 'the third largest army in Europe'. The territorial defence weaponry of the Republic had been confiscated by the JNA XE "JNA" before the multi-party elections in 1990. Thus, Croatia faced these superior forces virtually unarmed. In spite of that and with a serious shortage of arms, Croatian fighters fought with captured arms - and some improvised homemade weapons. Facing this homespun weaponry, Yugoslav warships blockaded seven ports on the Adriatic, including Rijeka, Split, ?ibenik, Zadar, and Dubrovnik. Mortar bombs seriously damaged the Renaissance Cathedral in ?ibenik on 16th September 1991. Street fighting erupted for the first time in the strategic Croatian City of Vukovar XE "Vukovar" . The Belgrade propaganda XE "Belgrade propaganda" blitz left little to the imagination, and Belgrade’s independent TV station ‘Studio 8’ cautioned its viewers that “people with weak nerves should not watch their documentaries about Croatia.” In the meantime, the ‘Yugoslav’ air force destroyed the Croatian TV transmitters to ensure its monopoly in war propaganda. The EC parroted with a monotonous warning "the peace monitors could only be sent if there was a demonstrable cease-fire and with the full consent of all parties in Yugoslavia." Its sense of humour equated the victim with the aggressor. This was matched with Douglas Hurd XE "Hurd, Douglas" ’s warning (parroting Chamberlain XE "Chamberlain" ) that "a European peacekeeping force could ensnare Western countries in a long and lethal involvement, with their soldiers dying in an essentially alien war" as if Britain had nothing to do with the creation of both Yugoslavias.About 700 Yugoslav army tanks, armoured vehicles, and trucks with thousands of soldiers thrust into Eastern Croatia on 20th September 1991 in the direction of Vukovar XE "Vukovar" , Osijek and Vinkovci. Part of this army branched via Bosnia, raising the fear that Bosnia was the next target, with its Muslim and Croat population. The war clearly turned into a war between two states - Croatia and Yugoslavia. In the circumstances, Douglas Hurd XE "Hurd, Douglas" ’s quip that “the time will come when people will actually get fed up with killing each other” was totally irresponsible.More than 10,000 Croatian soldiers were now defending Vukovar XE "Vukovar" almost completely surrounded.Margaret Thatcher XE "Thatcher, Margaret" , former Prime Minister, insisted that the world cannot watch while Croats are being slaughtered, but the British Government found her argument rather ‘unhelpful’.Heavy losses by the ‘Yugoslav’ army, inflicted by the Croatian forces, led to a truce called by the Yugoslav ‘Defence’ Minister, General Kadijevi? XE "Kadijevi?" on 22nd September 1991.Witnesses reported many JNA XE "JNA" tanks destroyed in villages in Eastern Croatia. In Herzegovina, a convoy of 35 busloads of Serbian reservists and 100 armoured vehicles were stopped at the armed barricades erected by the local Croatian peasants. Yugoslav Prime Minister, Ante Markovi? XE "Markovi?, Ante" , who claimed that he had obtained proof that General Kadijevi? XE "Kadijevi?" had plotted with Slobodan Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" for the creation of a Greater Serbia, called for the resignation of the General. He supported his statement with the evidence of a recording of the talks between Kadijevi? and Milo?evi? in which they discussed the strategy for this plan.The tentacles of this plan stretched also to Bosnia. The memory of how Serbian Chetniks slaughtered tens of thousands of Muslims in Eastern Bosnia during the WWII was still fresh in the minds of many Bosnian Muslims XE "Bosnian Muslims" . Various ideas for the ‘division’ of Bosnia between the three nations were pouring daily from the Belgrade kitchen. However, Bosnia could not be dismembered.For weeks, the Serbian media had been trumpeting their military victories. However, news began filtering back from the front line of mass desertions and a conveyor belt of coffins suddenly began to reach Belgrade.The slogan: "Liberation from Croatian fascism,” had been was a hoax from the start. The majority of the members of the Croatian Parliament and Government and the President of the Republic were ex-Communists. The fact that the former communist leaders were now pointing guns at reservists’ heads created total chaos in the ranks of the Serbian reservists in Croatia."I was ready to kill myself," said one of the JNA XE "JNA" reservists. "We were cut off for two days. Our own planes bombed us. There were no officers. The last one got into a car and disappeared. He just fled. They sent us off in a column and the Croats were waiting for us on all sides." Having established the Serbian credentials for cowardice, we may now observe their natural trait for the destruction of cultural heritage."This war has taken a savage toll on Croatia’s rich cultural heritage. According to figures issued by the Croatian Government, 116 cultural monuments have been damaged, including 71 churches and monasteries, 23 palaces and mansions, five fortresses and three archaeological sites."It was obvious that all these attacks had been pre-planned. The saddest of these casualties so far were the Baroque cities of Vukovar XE "Vukovar" , Vara?din and Karlovac, and the Renaissance and Baroque city of Dubrovnik. Nenad Piska? XE "Nenad Piska?" , Nebeska Srbija u Hrvatskoj, (NSH) ‘Heavenly Serbia in Croatia', Grafi?ki Studio Zapre?i?, 2005. 6.2 Heavenly Serbia XE "Heavenly Serbia" The presentation of the 'wars' of the 'Heavenly Serbia in Croatia' (i.e., the terrorist’s actions in so-called 'Krajina' XE "'Krajina'" - 1990-1995) by Serbian historicists was typical of the sort of mind-boggling, anti-civilisational outrage that stimulated Serbs everywhere. When they deal with the historical period between 1918 and 1945, it turns out to be a combination of parody and a spy thriller. However, when they write about the period between 1989 and 2000 (which period was covered in miniscule detail by the world media), their sensibilities have become so blunted that parody turns into sheer falsehood. In the present situation in Croatia, (2009) where many seats of political power are still held by the former communists (Mesi? XE "Mesi?" , Budimir Lon?ar XE "Lon?ar, Budimir" , Ivan Ra?an XE "Ra?an, Ivan" , et al.), it is not easy to stand up to these falsehoods. As the original Serbian documents from 'Krajina' (captured by the Croatian army) are now available, and have been published in a remarkable book 'The Heavenly Serbia in Croatia' by journalist Nenad Piska? XE "Piska?, Nenad" , they prove, without any shadow of a doubt, that the 'Serbs' in 'Krajina' (our old friends, the Vlachs) have rejected any compromise with the Republic of Croatia.These documents describe the elaborate preparations by the 'Krajina' XE "Krajina" leaders for the evacuation of the Serbian population in the event of the reintegration of this territory into Croatia, and thus expose the falsehoods given to the International Community (and the Court in The Hague XE "The Hague" ) about the alleged 'ethnic cleansing' of this population by the Croatian State. The period between 1990 and 1995 was de facto yet another attempt at the realisation of Great Serbia at the expense of Croatia. The powerful EU political big wigs (most of them anarcho-liberals and former communists) have turned the Croatian defensive war into a 'civil war' in which both sides were equally to blame.This explains how many individuals, identified as terrorists by name in these documents, have already gained positions of power in the political and media structures of the Republic of Croatia.How the support for the Great-Serbianism ties up with the 'Stabilisation Pact of the Western Balkans' also becomes clearer from these documents.Only on the basis of this support can one understand the establishment of the 'Krajina' XE "Krajina" para-state in Croatia - the so-called 'Serbian autonomous region of Krajina' (19th February 1990 to 19th December 1991) and the 'Serbian Republic Krajina' XE "Serbian Republic Krajina" (19th December 1991 to 5th August 1995).The communist rulers in Croatia prior to 1989, due to the international situation, did not have any option but to cave in and ratify an Amendment to the Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Croatia XE "Constitution of Socialist Republic of Croatia" (21st June 1989), which opened the door to a multi-party system and democratic processes.Already in 1989, the Serbian leaders in Croatia were organising provocative anti-Croat meetings, which were followed by the so-called 'log revolution', terrorist actions of cutting road and rail communications by log roadblocks.At a mass meeting on the 9th July 1989 in Kosovo near Knin XE "Knin" , there were present some 50,000 Serbs from all over Yugoslavia.The cries of "This is Serbia," and "Comrade Slobo [Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" ] send us some salad, there will be plenty of meat when we butcher Croats," was a demented refrain during the proceedings. On 28th January 1989, Dr. Franjo Tudjman XE "Tudjman, Dr. Franjo" organised the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) in order to break the intolerable Croat Silence vis-à-vis these provocations. On 12th December 1989 the KPH (the ruling Croatian Communists) adopted the multi-party system. Ivica Ra?an XE "Ra?an, Ivica" led the Central Committee of the KRH. On 22nd January 1990, the 14th Extraordinary Congress of the KPJ in Belgrade fell apart in tatters, and put itself, lock, stock and barrel, into the service of the Great Serbian policies. Croats and Slovenes, therefore, abandoned the Congress.On 17th February 1990 the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), led appropriately by psychiatrist Jovan Ra?kovi? XE "Ra?kovi?, Jovan" , was established in Knin XE "Knin" .At the meeting of the HDZ in Benkovac in Dalmatia, a Serb, Bo?ko ?ubrilovi?, XE "?ubrilovi?, Bo?ko" inspired by his namesake, one of the assassins of Franz Ferdinand XE "Franz Ferdinand" in Sarajevo on 28th June 1914) attempted the assassination of President Tudjman XE "President Tudjman" .In the multi-party elections in Croatia on 22nd April and 6th May 1990, Tudjman XE "Tudjman" 's HDZ won with an overwhelming victory.The SDS in 'Krajina' XE "Krajina" won 83% of the Serbian votes and elected three Serbian MPs to sit in the Croatian Parliament: Jovan Opa?i? XE "Opa?i?, Jovan" , Du?an Zelenbaba XE "Zelenbaba, Du?an" and Radoslav Tanjga XE "Tanjga, Radoslav" .The Serbian provocations, declaring Tudjman XE "Tudjman" 's government 'a new Ustasha state', did not slacken.A mass meeting in the village of Srb on 25th July 1990 heard Jovan Ra?kovi? XE "Ra?kovi?, Jovan" , Jovan Opa?i? XE "Opa?i?, Jovan" , Mile Daki? XE "Daki?, Mile" and Milan Babi? XE "Babi?, Milan" ranting along the well-know Great-Serbian lines. The meeting ratified the so-called 'Declaration of the establishment of the Serbian National Council'. All this was going on at the time when the Serbs in Croatia (12%) were still constitutionally a sovereign nation. The meeting concluded "that the Serbs do not want to leave Yugoslavia, but if the Croats wish to do so, they can count only on the territory remaining outside ‘Great Serbia'."On 17th August 1990, Milan Babi? XE "Babi?, Milan" (he later committed suicide on 6th March 2006 while imprisoned in the Court of The Hague XE "The Hague" ,, chairman of the 'Krajina' XE "Krajina" Assembly, proclaimed a state of war against the Republic of Croatia.On 30th September 'The Serbian National Council' proclaimed Serbian autonomy in Croatia and the Krajina Serbs commenced open terrorist warfare. In the meantime, the so-called Yugoslav Democratic Party indicted the Republic of Croatia in the Russell Court XE "Russell Court" (headed by Vladimir Dedijer XE "Dedijer, Vladimir" ) in London for the "preparation of genocide against Serbs". The Croatian parliament voted in a new Constitution on 22nd December 1990, the day before the Serbian National Council proclaimed the 'Statute of the Serbian Autonomous Region of Krajina'.Croatia was now faced with an internal terrorist uprising, which eventually led, with the help of the JNA XE "JNA" , to a creeping occupation of almost a third of Croatian territory. The new 'frontiers' of the Great-Serbia were identical with those outlined by Ilija Gara?amin XE "Gara?amin, Ilija" in 1844. The Serbian MPs withdrew from the Croatian Sabor XE "Croatian Sabor" . Our old Morlach friends from Krajina now revived their old game of creating a state within a state in Croatia.The Republic of Croatia proposed a confederative arrangement for Socialist Federation Republic of Yugoslavia as the first step for its democratisation, but this proposal was rejected not only by Serbia but, ironically enough, also by the International Community. The Great-Serbian academician Dobrica ?osi? XE "?osi?, Dobrica" commented: "The idea of the confederative Yugoslavia is vulgar political trickery."Serbian terrorism in 'Krajina' XE "Krajina" , Slavonia, and Srijem was maintained by continuous anti-Croat harangues in a series of political mass meetings, and with the open egging on from Serbia. Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" stated: "The fate of Yugoslavia must be decided by those who want to stay in it, and not by those who want to leave it."In the meantime, Croatia suspended all the former Yugoslav legislation not in conformity with its new Constitution.On 28th February 1991, the 'Serbian National Council' brought about a resolution on the separation of Krajina from Croatia "because Krajina intends to remain in Yugoslavia". Yugoslavia was, as ever, used as a cover-up for the creation of Great-Serbia.Finally, on 19th December 1991, the Serbian Assembly in 'Krajina' XE "Krajina" proclaimed the notorious 'Republic of Serbian Krajina' with the aim of linking it in the future with the Republic Srpska in BiH XE "Republic Srpska in BiH" , to be eventually incorporated into the Republic of Serbia with Belgrade as its capital. The 'Republic of Serbian Krajina', believe it or not, lasted four years, eight months and fifteen days, i.e., longer than the Independent State of Croatia (the NDH, 1941-45), and in terror it certainly outmatched the NDH's worst outrages.The final failure of the 'Republic of Serbian Krajina' (RSK) by a military defeat in confrontation with Croatia in 2000 is being rectified by the tendentious political verdicts of the International Court in The Hague XE "The Hague" . For example: The Croatian General Ante Gotovina XE "Gotovina, General Ante" , apprehended by the Court in The Hague XE "The Hague" , was indicted for leading ‘Operation 'Storm' XE "'Storm'" , which is described as part of a "joint criminal enterprise, the general purpose of which was the forcible and permanent removal of the Serb population from the Krajina region".Coupled with this, the EU ruling 'liberals' and former communists are now pressing for the 'return of the Serbs', who abandoned Croatia in an organised and voluntary manner. We are again faced with yet another attempt at the recreation of the 'Heavenly Serbia in Croatia', only now with rowdy revellers waving EU banners.The break-up of the Croatian territory was 'ratified' in two documents: the Declaration about Sovereignty and Autonomy of the Serbian people (25th July 1990) and the text of the Proclamation of the Serbian Republic (30th October 1990).The fact that the Serbs in Croatia had the status of a sovereign people was not enough for them, because the Serbs were after the territory, "without which the plan for a Great-Serbia would collapse."The Serbian sovereign rights in Croatia were matching the best European democratic models. No state in Europe would allow a minority to create a 'state-within-a-state'.A series of 'Krajina' XE "Krajina" 'plebiscites' were arranged and, according to Serbian data, out of 567,731 Serbs in Croatia, 567,127 were in favour of autonomy, 144 against and 46 voting papers were spoiled.Out of 189,464 Serbs who had escaped from Croatia, 189,422 were for autonomy, 28 were against and 14 voting papers were spoiled.A 'Protocol' about co-operation between the RSK and the RS (in BiH) dated 22nd October 1992 became an open call for the unification of these two rebellious 'Serbian' territories. It states: "The fact is that on these two territories live one people . . . and that never in history did there exist a frontier between these two regions . . . "The fact that Croats also lived in these territories was ignored. The frontiers indeed did exist, as the frontier of the Bosnian Pashaluk XE "Bosnian Pashaluk" during the Ottoman occupation was an international frontier between the Ottoman Empire XE "Ottoman Empire" and the Kingdom of Croatia for some 400 years until 1878.The Declaration of the Assembly of the RSK and the RS in Prijedor (BiH) on 30th October 1992 stated that, "the RSK and the RS are state entities arising out of the break-up of Yugoslavia. They will have the unified legal system, the same nationality, the state symbols will be the same, and the banner and the national anthem will be identical. . . . The RSK and the RS are in favour of state unification."At the consultation meeting of the leading RSK and RS leaders in Bijeljina (BiH) on 30th May 1993, the Serbian people were invited to vote for unification. Radovan Karadji? XE "Karadji?, Radovan" explained: "The yearnings of the [Serbian] people for unification must be respected . . . This will happen, sooner or later. If and when this state [i.e., the RSK in Croatia and the RS in BiH] will unite with Serbia is up to the Great Powers XE "Great Powers" who, by the way, at the moment do not respect International Law." Biljana Plav?i? XE "Plav?i?, Biljana" , Karadji?’s supporter, was more to the point: "Our consultations are meaningless if we do not establish the Common Assembly, Government and the State."On 5th June 1993 the RSK Assembly called a Referendum to be held on 19th/20th June 1993. The Referendum question was: "Are you in favour of the unification of the RSK [in Croatia] and the RS [in BiH] in a unified state, with the possibility of further union with other Serbian lands?"After the 'satisfactory' referendum, the governments of the RSK and RS met in Knin XE "Knin" on 19th July 1993."The Agreement regarding the unification of these two 'republics' covered the subjects of defence and internal affairs."Stojan ?panovi? XE "?panovi?, Stojan" , the Vice-President of the RSK stated: "If the UNPROFOR XE "UNPROFOR" mandate is not extended we must be ready to immediately proclaim a unified state with 1,800,000 inhabitants. Now is the time for the Serbs to realise their dream, now or never," stated Minister Du?an Kova?evi? XE "Kova?evi?, Du?an" .On the subject of the army, Stojan ?panovi? XE "?panovi?, Stojan" clarified: "The army of the Krajina is part of the JNA XE "JNA" ."The effort on the 'unification' proceeded in 1994, according to the minutes of the 77th session of the government of the RSK held on 11th March 1994 in Knin XE "Knin" .Ratko Veselinovi? XE "Veselinovi?, Ratko" informed those present that a signed protocol made the RSK and SRJ (i.e., Yugoslavia) a unified military system. The question of the unification of the RSK and RS came to the boil in the beginning of 1995. The RSK 'government' rejected the so-called plan Z-4 of 8th February 1995 that was 'ratified' by the RSK Assembly.In February of 1995 Belgrade emissaries visited Knin XE "Knin" . When asked if Yugoslavia (SRJ) would recognise Croatia within its (former Yugoslav) borders, one of them, Mihajlo Markovi? XE "Markovi?, Mihajlo" , stated: "Nobody in the SRJ has the courage to do that. He would be immediately removed from power." On 6th of March 1995, Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" received the leaders of the RSK in Belgrade.On 24th April 1995 the RSK 'Defence Council' made the decision to close the motorway between Zagreb and Belgrade.On 1st May 1995 the Croatian offensive Bljesak (Lightning) XE "Bljesak (Lightning)" commenced, which numbered the days of the RSK.The leaders of the RSK went on another homage visit to Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" on 9th May.On 13th May Radovan Karadji? XE "Karadji?, Radovan" openly invited the Serbs in the RSK and the RS to unite, but it was already too late.The RSK assembly (after the Croat offensive) removed its 'prime minister, Borislav Mikeli? XE "Mikeli?, Borislav" .The Great-Serbs in Eastern Slavonia, leaning on Belgrade, started bickering with Knin XE "Knin" , which was leaning on Radovan Karadji? XE "Karadji?, Radovan" . The group pressed for unification, which is plain from the document titled 'The President of the Republic, No. 020/3-661/2-95, Knin, 29th June 1995.' 'Heavenly Serbia' (in Croatia) was defined for the first time by the Serbian Orthodox Archiepiscop Jovan Velimirovi? XE " Velimirovi?, Jovan - Orthodox Archiepiscop" . In his epistle, on the occasion of the celebration of the transference of the holy relics of the 'Emperor' Lazar in 1989, he stated: "From the time of the Emperor Lazar and the Kosovo battle [1389], the Serbs have been engaged on the building of 'Heavenly Serbia', which today has risen into one of the greatest heavenly states. Only when we take into account the millions of Serbs murdered by the Ustasha criminals can we realise how the Serbian Empire took its place in Heaven."However, this 'heavenly Serbia' turned into an imperialist movement based on the 'Regional Plan of the RSK for the period from 1996 to 2015'. This plan covered all the oases where the Serbs were in the majority, in towns or villages scattered all over Croatia. The Serbian frontiers stipulated by this 'plan' covered the region defined by the Vance plan (1991) XE "Vance plan (1991)" , i.e., an area of some 13,200 km2. With additional 'Serbian' areas in Croatia, the superficial area of the RSK covered 16,400 km2.Adding to that the lands in Serbian private ownership in purely Croat inhabited regions, the RSK claim was increased to 20,452 km2, i.e., almost half of the territory of the Republic of Croatia (for the Serbian minority of 12%).The RSK 'Regional Plan' has not been realised, yet nobody really knows what the 'heavenly EU' has in its programme for Croatia in the future.The government of the RSK organised general elections on 12th December 1993; as a result the 'ministerial' positions were overbooked.The Morlachs XE "Morlachs" don't give up easily. Even after losing all the battles, they congregated on 26th February 2005 in Belgrade on the so-called 'first extraordinary assembly of the RSK', under the chairmanship of Ranko Le?aji? XE "Le?aji?, Ranko" .This new 'emigrant' government elected Milorad Buha (‘flea’) XE "Buha (flea), Milorad" as the Prime Minister, together with another six ministers.This 'government' received a mandate to 'proceed with dialogue with the Croatian Government in Zagreb', with the support of the EU and the UN. The aim of this was to solve the 'Serbian question' in Croatia.This, de facto, means that the RSK has not given up on its 'state within a state' in Croatia, even today 2010.It is indicative that this RSK Belgrade Assembly has not produced a generalised political declaration, but rather a firm political 'Resolution'. This 'Resolution' condenses the continuity of the Great-Serbian policies in Croatia, which in many ways, go in parallel with the policies of The Hagu XE "The Hague" e indictments against the Croatian generals, and at the same time, it revives the ridiculous claim of the 'thousand years old presence of the Serbs in Croatia'. The parrot-like repetition of the slogans that "the RSK had all the attributes of a state", "that Croatia occupied the RSK with brutal aggression", "that the Serbian national question in Croatia can be resolved only by ending that occupation," etc. etc., aims at preventing Croatia's admission to the EU. The EU, on the other hand, continues to perpetrate the deceit about the 'ethnic cleansing of the Serbs in Croatia'."A State founded on the ethnic cleansing of the Serbs cannot become a part of the integrated European," is the latest fad by the RSK 'emigrant' ministers in Belgrade.The International Community must study the Resolutions and the Minutes of the RSK Assembly closely before it insists on the return of the 'ethnically cleansed' Serbs to Croatia. It is strange that while these characters hate Croatia so much, they are so eager to rush back.The West's attitude XE "West's attitude" towards this problem can be best illustrated by yet another wisecrack made by Paddy Ashdown XE "Ashdown, Paddy" in August 1992 when visiting the Serbian PoW camps for Croats and Muslims in Omarska and Manja?a: "The assembly camps for the PoWs, Muslims and Croats, in Omarska and Manja?a are not concentration camps, although the conditions there are very difficult. I was convinced that the Geneva Convention regarding PoWs is fully respected there." The Session of the RSK Assembly on 10th February 1992 rejected the Cyrus Vance XE "Cyrus Vance" Plan XE "Vance, Cyrus - Plan" , which was accepted by the Government of the Republic of Croatia on 11th February, as well as Resolution 740 of the Security Council XE "Security Council" . Resolution 743 (21st February 1992) accredited the UN forces to the territory of the 'former Yugoslavia'.At the end of January 1992, in Mirkovci (Eastern Croatia), the Serbian Chetnik forces organised a parade of its 'territorial defence' forces, at which the unavoidable Episcope Lukijan XE "Episcope Lukijan" insisted "that the Serbian people are holy people, who never led the wars of conquest."His brother in arms - the notorious criminal ?eljko Ra?njatovi? 'Arkan' XE "Arkan, -?eljko Ra?njatovi? " - spoke next: "There cannot be peace as long as the Serbs in Croatia are hostages of the Ustashas and Fascists . . ."Four days later, in order to prove their holiness, the JNA XE "JNA" and the Chetniks drove 5,000 Croats out of their homes in the region of Ilok.Belgrade eventually tripped the RSK by accepting the Vance Plan XE "Vance Plan" , i.e., accepted the reality of the International recognition of the Republic of Croatia, in order to save its own skin.Now the RSK ministers turned into attacking Belgrade, accusing it of 'disuniting the Serbian people'.On 1st March 1992, the Great-Serbs in BiH seceded from the internationally recognised Republic of BiH and formed their own government and constitution.The RSK government of Zdravko Ze?evi? XE "Ze?evi?, Zdravko" marked the period from 26th February 1992 to 28th March 1993.Savo ?trbac XE "Savo ?trbac" was nominated as Secretary of the 'Government'. ?trbac XE "?trbac" is now an active collaboratorr of the International Court in The Hague XE "The Hague" and also chief of the Serbian society Veritas in Belgrade. He recently stated in 1994: "The indictment against [Croat] General Ante Gotovina XE "Gotovina, General Ante" is redefining history or, in Croat parlance, it criminalizes the [Croat] homeland war. Clause 37 of Gotovina's indictment states that the state of RSK was recognised and not 'so-called' any longer. That state had its own army. In Clause 39 of this indictment it is confirmed that with five offensives on the RSK, the territory which was protected by the UN, Croatia as a member of the UN, executed de facto an aggression on the UN itself.""This opens enormous possibilities," opines ?trbac XE "?trbac" . "Because if in The Hague XE "The Hague" the guilt of the Croat commanders is proved, which we demand, then these commanders will become war criminals, and their actions will also be criminal. The war waged with criminal actions cannot be a defensive 'homeland' war, but only an aggression. On this basis, the state that arose on such a crime cannot remain in existence, but its statute must be redefined. This is a great opportunity for us Serbs to receive the recognition of our state in a legitimate way. In fact, even to pose the above question exposes the foolishness and injustice of the case. The US does not participate in or closes its eyes to war crimes. Yet the US certainly encouraged, assisted and monitored 'Storm' XE "Storm" at every stage. The White House XE "White House" and the State Department XE "State Department" knew, because since the previous years' Washington Agreement XE "Washington Agreement" , it had been US policy to create a Croatian-Bosnian military alliance to roll back Serb territorial gains, so as to make a just peace possible. . . . The main loser, apart from Gotovina, will be the US . . . if its successful intervention to end the Bosnian war will be effectively criminalized."?trbac XE "?trbac" 's XE "?trbac" Byzantine mind, whether it be infected with nationalist bacterium or simply lacking a coherent overview, inevitably results in playing to the tune of the International Community's current policies.?trbac XE "?trbac" was present also at the International Conference for War Crimes in Belgrade on 7th/8th November 1998. In his company were Luise Arbour, XE "Arbour, Luise" Graham Blewitt XE "Blewitt, Graham" and ?edo Prodanovi?, XE "Prodanovi?, ?edo" members of Soro? XE "Soro?" 's XE "Soro?" open society, and also David Scheffer XE "Scheffer, David" , US Ambassador for war crimes.Yet the fact that ?trbac XE "?trbac" was at the head of the Great-Serbian uprising in Croatia from the very beginning is, for these luminaries, neither here nor there.6.2.1The Serbian Orthodox Church as a Political Party XE "The Serbian Orthodox Church as a Political Party" The Great-Serbian fanatics, such as the notorious Serbian Orthodox Priest and the WWII war criminal Mom?ilo Djuji?, now a US citizen, encouraged the RSK after the massacre of 12 Croat policemen on the 2nd May 1991 in Borovo Selo. He stated on Belgrade radio B-92: "Don't be afraid of the Croats. They are frightened animals, scavengers. I squared accounts with them in WWII. Remember one thing about the Croats. There cannot be any discussion with them – we can talk with them only through the barrel of a gun. They are the black army of the Vatican. The frontiers of Serbia extend as far as the last of our graves . . . " The American Ambassador to Croatia Zimmerman XE "Zimmerman" ignored this provocation by a US subject. Even Stipe Mesi? XE "Stipe Mesi?" , then President of Yugoslavia commented: "The policemen in Borovo Selo were decapitated. This was a massacre carried out in the most bestial way." Who was responsible?According to Novi Sad newspaper Stav (9th August 1991), Episcope Lukijan XE "Episcope Lukijan" met Vojislav ?e?elj XE "Vojislav ?e?elj" , the notorious war criminal, in Borovo Selo. Lukijan then stated: "We have to act swiftly to liberate Vukovar XE "Vukovar" , our cultural centre." ?e?elj added: "Also Osijek and Beli Manastir . . . "Ljubica ?tefan XE "?tefan, Ljubica" (1921-2002), Croatian historian who received the title 'The Righteous Woman among the Nations' from Israel, wrote: "The Serbian Orthodox Church carries justifiably the rich name of 'The Spiritual Yugoslav National Army', because it is not a Christian Church, but a political party of St. Sava", the Serbian patron saint.No wonder that the same motives, on the admission of the Serbian Priest Djuji? XE "Djuji?, Serbian Priest " , led the RSK in the crimes and massacres in Croatia, which were comparable only to those committed by the Serbian Chetniks in WWII.At the installation of Atanastje Jevti? as Episcope of Banat XE "Atanastje Jevti? - Episcope of Banat" (7th July 1991) his congregation heard the following homily: "The Serbian people in Kosovo, Dalmatia, Krajina, Slavonia, Banija, Lika, Kordun, Srijem and BiH are crucified again . . . But let me assure you that, in spite of that, we will remain in those terrible regions."The Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Belgrade (SANU) XE "Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Belgrade (SANU)" addressed a letter to the world community on 16th October 1991 under the title 'Several fundamental facts about the situation of the Serbs in Croatia' in which it stated, "that the life of the Serbian people in Croatia is impossible."Yet, the Republic of Croatia's Government, in spite of a multitude of provocations, never took such an attitude towards the Serbs in Croatia.In an order from the 'Ministry of Defence' of the RSK (No. POJ 1013-1, Knin XE "Knin" , 7th October 1992), signed by Lieutenant Colonel Du?ko Babi? XE "Babi?, Du?ko - Lieutenant Colonel" , it was stated: "In the case of the evacuation of the citizens, businesses, schools and other organisations from the endangered areas, it is necessary to carry out an evacuation plan as soon as possible."Contrary to the propaganda about the ethnic cleansing of the Serbs from the RSK, the planning of the evacuation of its population commenced as early as 1992 and it formed part and parcel of the RSK policy. This voluntary evacuation occurred in July 1995, before the successful operations of the Croatian army."The point has been made very clearly by Peter Galbraith XE "Galbraith, Peter" , US Ambassador to Croatia at the time: The fact is the [Serb] population left Krajina before the Croatian Army got there. You can't deport people who have already left." "The safeguarding of the reserves of fuel for the purpose of this evacuation was ordered in a document issued by the headquarters for the Civil Protection of the RSK on 14th June 1993.A plan of evacuation of the Serbs from Vrginmost stipulates: "The evacuation from the 11 border areas towards Cazin [in BiH] includes 1,213 persons, with secured accommodation." The plan was worked out in fine detail, allocating places in the motor vehicles, and assuring fuel reserves of 1,670 litres of D-2, and 150 litres of MB-98. A similar plan was worked out in detail for each region and village.The self-induced ethnic cleansing, organised by the Serbs themselves in case of Croatia regaining its occupied territory, was a self-inflicted wound.Similar directives were issued in the document dated 29th July 1995, No. 01-78/95 marked 'Strictly Confidential', and signed by Du?ko Babi? XE "Babi?, Du?ko" , and also in the document dated 3rd August 1995, No. 370-29/95.A curious detail in all this 'ethnic cleansing' is the co-operation given to it by the Red Cross XE "Red Cross" , and the political farce played by the US Ambassador in Zagreb Galbraith XE "Galbraith, Peter" , who was sitting on a motor vehicle at the head of one of the columns leading the 'ethnically cleansed' Serbs from Croatia. In contrast in BiH, the Croats and Muslims 'ethnically cleansed' by the Serbs were not only hungry, naked, and barefoot, but were murdered along the way. The 'ethnically cleansed' Serbs from Croatia were motorised, heavily loaded with all their household goods, fridges, TV sets, computers, cattle, and even the structural rafters of their houses. The Serbs, of course, are always an exception to the general rule.At the meeting of the RSK 'Mikeli? XE "Mikeli?" ' Government on 10th May 1994, the business transactions between the RSK and UNPROFOR XE "UNPROFOR" were discussed (i.e., the robbery of Croatian goods). Mikeli? stated: "We shall start pumping oil in Western Slavonia . . . we asked for another 1,000 tons of oil from UNPROFOR XE "UNPROFOR" . . . we have to establish the debt of UNPROFOR towards the RSK. Akashi agreed to give oil to pay this debt. We have already an agreement with UNPROFOR for the import of an additional 10,000 tons of oil. We shall supply them with timber [i.e., destroying the Croatian forests] at world prices, and they will supply us with oil in the same way."'President' Mikeli? XE "Mikeli?" informed those present about the conversations he and Marti? XE "Marti?" and Babi? XE "Babi?" had had in the Russian Embassy in Belgrade with Mr. Churkin XE "Churkin" . The discussion was about the Zagreb Agreement (Z-4), and it was decided that the 'Croatian side' (i.e., the Republic of Croatia) did not honour its part of the deal. Mikeli? commented:"We shall demand from UNPROFOR XE "UNPROFOR" that the Croatian army withdraws from the buffer zone, otherwise we shall enter the areas from which we withdrew . . . . We stipulated that this must be done first, and after it is done we can talk about the economic relations with Croatia. Mr. Churkin XE "Churkin" agreed with this decision."After that Babi? XE "Babi?" informed Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" about the talks. The minutes of the meeting of the RSK 'Mikeli? XE "Mikeli?" ' Government of 15th/16th June 1994 describe preparations for talks with the Croatian Government.The curious thing about these deliberations is that the terrorist 'Government of the RSK' considered talks with the Croatian Government, as late as 1994, as 'international negotiations'.The security and criminal situation in the RSK is best illustrated by the fact that in such a relatively small territory there existed three prisons (Glina, Knin XE "Knin" and Beli Manastir). The prison in Knin had 60-100 inmates. 148 persons were locked up in the old Austro-Hungarian jail in Stara Gradi?ka XE "Stara Gradi?ka" . This jail had the capacity for 600 inmates, so there was plenty of additional room for the citizens of 'Heavenly Serbia'.The minutes of the meeting of the 'RSK Government' dated 6th July 1994 state that "A new aggression by Croatian forces is expected soon. To that extent, the possibility of help from the RS and JNA XE "JNA" armies was considered."It was significant "that a great number of professional soldiers on the front line in the RSK had families which lived in barracks in Serbia in intolerable conditions".The co-called 'aggression' (i.e., the recovery of its own territory) by the Republic of Croatia was a happily adopted definition in the indictments of the Court in The Hague XE "The Hague" , after the communists got back in power in Croatia on 1st January 2000. The quality of life in 'Heavenly Serbia', where the Serbs were exploited by other Serbs, was worse for the Serbs even than that in the NDH during 1941-450. The same minutes state: "We must safeguard 280 millions [presumably dinars] for armaments. One way of financing this is from the RSK budget [taxes and foreign aid]."A certain Col. Lali? XE "Lali?, Col." , who stated that the RSK terrain, from the military point of view, was not satisfactory, gave the military assessment. The irony was in the fact that Lali? XE "Lali?" knew all about the ability of the Croatian army but was ignorant about the readiness of his own RSK army.'President' Mikeli? XE "Mikeli?" was irritated 'by such slapdashness' and could not see how to defend the RSK 'from Croatia' if the situation as described was true. "If there is no help from Yugoslavia, our prospects are rather small," he concluded.Now Lali? XE "Lali?" quoted the facts: "In the SVK [the army of the RSK] we have 1,227 professional officers and non-commissioned officers from the JNA XE "JNA" , i.e., 50% of the JNA officers born on the territory of the Republic of Croatia. The other 50% are still registered in the JNA. We have formed 2 brigades and have at our disposal only a minimum of 20-30-year old mortars, 82 mm guns, some howitzers, some anti-aircraft guns, several armoured cars, a few JASTREB J21 planes, a few Gazela helicopters, and several 26-year old JASTREB J20 aeroplanes. We have plenty of land mines. We lack ammunition. We normally use 16-18 tons of ammunition daily, but during severe fighting 80 tons per day. The RSK has, at the moment, 21,300 tons of fuel."This was the firepower that the Serbian (Vlach) minority in Croatia threw at their Croatian neighbours and their local homeland for the sake of building Great-Serbia.'President' Mikeli? XE "Mikeli?" butted in: "UNPROFOR XE "UNPROFOR" is taking the side of the Ustashas [i.e., the Republic of Croatia]. We must stop that. UNPROFOR owe us $10 million. We shall break our agreement with them. We must not only defend ourselves, we must attack Croats and take more territory from them."Already in 1993 'president' Mikeli? XE "Mikeli?" was sentenced in abstentia in the Court in ?upanja to 20 years imprisonment for terrorism.Both 'urban' and 'rural' Serbs in Croatia adopted the same Great-Serbian terrorist policies.This is not just empty talk, but proved by an anti-Croat letter, dated 7th June 1994, addressed to the RSK 'Ministry of Information', and signed by the Orthodox Episcope of Slavonia, Lukijan & Co. This group were the authors of an almost Nazi-style film dealing "with the impossibility of co-habitation between the Serbs and Croats".At the beginning of 1994, 883 persons were employed in the Judiciary of the RSK. The RSK ignored the anti-Croat verbal offences, such as the chanting of "There will be butchery, there will be rape" and "Hey Ustashas, a deep pit is waiting for you".That this is not cheap Croatian propaganda is confirmed by the EU Human Rights Commission Report XE "EU Human Rights Commission Report" published in the New York Times on 9th January 1993: "The rape of the Bosnian and Croatian women by the Serbs is not accidental, but a strategic plan devised by Belgrade."On 8th February 1992, a fax was sent from the 'Washington RSK office' to ‘President’ Milan Babi? XE "Babi?, Milan" , informing him about the discussions on the subject of Yugoslavia in the American Congress. The correspondent regretted that in Belgrade on 12th July 1992 Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" recognised the existing frontiers of the Republic of Croatia. He, in return, received half of BiH plus economic help. The condition for this was the abandonment of Krajina."As far as Krajina is concerned, we have to fight the war for self-determination, or go to Serbia," was the end of the Report.Numerous original documents from the same source confirm that the Great-Serbian terrorism generally and in Croatia particularly, was financed from Belgrade.Serbian Patriarch Pavle XE "Pavle, Serbian Patriarch" wrote to Lord Carrington XE "Lord Carrington" on the 1st November 1991 to compare the Republic of Croatia with the NDH, stating "either the Serbs [in Krajina] will succeed in the war with the Croats and remain in the same state with other Serbs or they will have to emigrate. This is the reason that Serbia has to protect them." The 'Ministry of Defence' of the RSK sent a letter from Knin XE "Knin" dated 13th January 1993, No. 02-6/93, to the Accounting Department of the JNA XE "JNA" in Belgrade with the demand "for payments for the military purposes of the RSK". The reply by Col. Lieutenant Dane Ajdukovi? XE "Ajdukovi?,Dane - Col. Lieutenant" on behalf of the JNA from Belgrade dated the 9th September 1993 confirmed "the JNA regularly pays the former members of the JNA who are now in the army of the RSK."In spite of the crimes and terrorism perpetrated by the RSK against Croatia, the International Community offered them several ways out of the quagmire. At the beginning of October 1991, the RSK rejected the 'Special Status' and the Vance Plan XE "Vance Plan" of November 1991.Finally, it rejected Plan Z-4, i.e., a state within a state, and chose to evacuate its population into its ancestral homeland of Serbia. The Z-4 plan XE "Z-4 plan" devised by the perfidious governments of the US, UK, France and Russia offered the 'Krajina' XE "Krajina" Serbs a 'federation' between the Republic of Croatia and the RSK. Thus, they legalised Great-Serbian terrorism as a means for achieving the shady political end of the breaking-up of the internationally recognised Republic of Croatia, a member of the UN.Plan Z-4 was an infringement of all International rights and agreements. The Z-4 Plan or Draft agreement on the Krajina, Slavonia, Southern Baranja and Western Sirmium stands for the Zagreb 4 peace proposal to end the Croatian War of Independence. The proposal was made by the Zagreb 4 group (also known as the Mini-Contact Group XE "Contact Group" XE "Mini-Contact Group" ) and would have reintegrated the Republic of Serbian Krajina into Croatia. The Zagreb 4 group consisted of the United States (through former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance XE "Vance, Cyrus" ), Russia, and the European Union (through France and Germany). Their plan was never implemented due to the onset of Operation ‘Storm’, a military operation in which Croatia defeated the Krajina Serbs and captured its territory.On 30th March 1995, 'the Government of the RSK’, in reply to the Resolution of the Security Council XE "Security Council" proposed by the Contact Group XE "Contact Group" , among other matters, stated "that the RSK, as a sovereign state of the Serbian people [in Croatia] is not a part of any Croatian State, and therefore rejects any UN arrangement which would bring her into such a situation".The RSK Government in exile' stands, even today, on the same premise.Mile Daki? XE "Mile Daki?" wrote in 2002: "The Serbs in Krajina had their internationally unrecognised republic under international protection, with all the characteristics of a state . . ." [implying that that meant recognition].To the question of why the RSK has not accepted the Z-4 plan, Daki? answered: "Belgrade forbade discussion of that plan in the RSK Assembly."In July 1995, Commander of the Army of the RSK, Mile Mrk?i? XE "Mrk?i?, Mile" , ordered “the complete withdrawal of the civilian population from the RSK.”President Tudjman XE "Tudjman, President" tried to stop the Serbs leaving by appealing to them through the Media, but in vain.After several years of planning by the so called ‘President of Krajina and his ‘cabinet’’, the evacuation went ahead without a hitch, with the population using tractors, mules and all types of vehicles piled high with their possessions.There is no doubt whatsoever that all this farce was well-planned in order to achieve a particular world reaction. The 'Ministry of Defence' of the RSK published a leaflet which states:"Due to the offensive of the Ustasha army, which is expected soon, and in order to safeguard conditions for satisfactory defence, I order that the complete civilian population be evacuated from the regions affected by the fighting, in the direction of Benkovac-?egar-Srb."Signed: Commander of the General Headquarters of the Serbian Krajina Army,Mile Mrk?i?The documents also show that the indictment of General Ante Gotovina XE "Gotovina, Ante, General" and the accusation of President Tudjman XE "Tudjman, President " by the Court in The Hague XE "The Hague" are political machinations on the part of the pro-Serbian orientated International power wielders.The Serbs, who habitually turn their defeats into victories (Kosovo 1389 ‘The Field of Blackbirds XE "Field of Blackbirds - Kosovo 1389" ), now found another opportunity to rejoice in their defeat by Croatia in August 1995.A document dated 4th August 1994, No. 2-3113-1/95 quotes Mile Marti? XE "Marti?" in the name of the 'High Council of Defence': "Due to the new circumstances caused by the general aggression by the Republic of Croatia on the RSK . . . we order you: 1)to put into effect the planned evacuation of the non-fighting population from Knin XE "Knin" , Benkovac, Obrovac, Drni? and Gra?ac; 2)the evacuation to be carried out in accordance with the pre-planned directions, towards Knin XE "Knin" , Otric, Srb and Lapac;3)to request the help of UNPROFOR XE "UNPROFOR" to aid the evacuation." Member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Radovan Samardji?, XE "Samardji?, Radovan" explained the Serbian mind-set when he 'criticised' the Serbian atrocities in Dubrovnik, which was ravaged by hordes of Serbian and Montenegrin Chetniks:"The situation in Dubrovnik is not dangerous. Dubrovnik is a prostituted city of hoteliers, visited by American grannies, British poofs, horny Frenchmen and German typists."Dr. Radovan Pavi? XE "Pavi?, Dr. Radovan" , Croatian politico, summarised the strategies of the current Great-Serbian policies: 1)To keep Croatia under permanent political and economic pressure; 2)To co-ordinate efforts with all those who have appetites for Croatian territory. 3)To brag permanently about the "unresolved Serbian question in Croatia". 4)To remember that as far as these policies are concerned, the Serbian population in Croatia is not important, the Croatian territory is. 5)To focus efforts on the revival of the dead Plan Z-4, i.e., activate the return of Serbs in Croatia to achieve a critical mass. 6)To repeat incessantly that Croatia occupied the RSK, and therefore that the question of the RSK must be internationalised.Savo ?trbac XE "?trbac, Savo" , of the RSK 'Emigrant Government in Belgrade' (with the blessing of the metropolitan Bishop Amfilohije Radovi? XE "Radovi?, Bishop Amfilohije" ) published a pamphlet 'The Serbian Krajina' in August 1995 about the victims of the 'Croatian aggression'. The document, an obvious falsification, counts 1,542 dead Serbs "as a result of that aggression". Even the Croatian Helsinki Committee (HHO) XE "Croatian Helsinki Committee (HHO)" , a pro-Yugoslav orientated NGO organisation, counted with great effort only 677 dead Serbs, more or less the same number of Croats killed during the liberation of the Eastern Slavonia region (1995-98), which was controlled by International forces. The Serbian penchant for multiplying the number of their own victims by ten has already been analysed ad nauseam in the case of Jasenovac XE "Jasenovac" .While the Serbs brag about Croat aggression against Krajina, they are quick to forget their murderous atrocities in the Croat martyr city of Vukovar XE "Vukovar" .The proof for that is the newspaper of the Serbian Army of Krajina, Vojska Krajine, which described how, on 18th November 1991 "the last bastion of the Ustasha Government in Vukovar XE "Vukovar" fell," i.e., Vukovar hospital. This murderous Serbian action was blessed by the Orthodox hierarchy on 13th January 1992. This was the same hospital from which over a thousand wounded Croatian soldiers and civilians were dragged and shot en masse. The same paper, dated 7th/8th October 1993, p.43, writes: "The consultants, Dr. Vojislav Stanimirovi? XE "Stanimirovi?, Dr. Vojislav" et al., stated: "The Ustasha foot did not tread on the territory of Kordun . . . if they decide to attack, they will be sorry . . ."The trouble with Stanimirovi? XE "Stanimirovi?" is that he is currently the leader of the Serbian Democratic Socialist Party (SDSS) and is sitting now as an MP in that hated 'Ustasha parliament' in Zagreb.Everyone assumes Stanimirovi? XE "Stanimirovi?" would now oblige with some anodyne drivel congratulating the Croatian Parliament on the 10th anniversary of the liberation of 'Krajina' XE "Krajina" . Instead, he refuses to answer the question of 'when the Republic of Croatia stopped being an Ustasha state?' One should ask him if he can remember what he was ranting in 1993. He still probably knows it by heart. "Vukovar XE "Vukovar" hospital was the last stronghold of Ustasha power." Then in a Byzantine way, he states:"Perhaps one day the true extent of my love for Croatia will be appreciated, but for now let us draw a veil over the matter."This is not an ironical comment on my part. The following is taken from a letter addressed to the Government of the Republic of Croatia dated 17th February 1996 by Jovo Opa?i? XE "Opa?i?, Jovo" , a refugee from Knin XE "Knin" (and one of the leading lights of the 'log revolution' when the Serbs in Krajina blocked the roads with logs in an attempt to stop the Croat forces entering the area). In this letter, he requests his return to Croatia: "As a citizen of the Republic of Croatia, and as a faithful and devoted son of my only and dearest homeland [i.e., Croatia]," then, in farcical sentences at the end of the letter, he exclaims: "Long live the democratic and sovereign Republic of Croatia, and long live the reconciliation between the Croats and Serbs."The trouble with the Serbs in Croatia is that no amount of forgiving on the part of the Croats does the trick. The Serbs are like haemorrhoids in the Croatian body politic, they prevent one from sitting comfortably in a world of order and sanity. In the immortal words of Miroslav Krle?a XE "Krle?a, Miroslav" "there won't be peace in Croatia as long as the Serbian MPs fart in the Croatian Parliament". The impertinence of the Serbian Orthodox Church and its Byzantianism is best illustrated by Patriarch Pavle's request to be received by President Tudjman XE "Tudjman, President " . On 15th March 1999, only four years after the same individual was blessing the Serbian terrorists in Knin XE "Knin" , Vukovar XE "Vukovar" and Dubrovnik, Patriarch Pavle stated to President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , shedding crocodile tears: "There is no dilemma on our part as far as respect for the Croatian Constitution, the laws relating to [our] homeland [i.e., Croatia], and the civilised integration into Croatian society, as well as our contribution in support of Croatia's integration into Europe and the world is concerned." This Patriarch is not for turning!The Holy Synod of the SPC invited all the voluntarily escaped Serbs from 'Krajina' XE "Krajina" to come back home. This was the end of an elaborate chess game, at which the Serbs excel. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.Did the Patriarch's coming to Canossa, with his bald patch well peppered with Croat ashes, change anything? I doubt it. He may look sulky now, but very soon, I expect we shall meet him again in another guise.In this effort, the Patriarch surprisingly found an ally in the 'Croatian' President Mesi? XE "Mesi?" , who as a protected witness in The Hague XE "The Hague" Court in March 1998 adopted the very same Patriarch's formula of equalisation of terrorism with the legitimate defence of one's own country. Protected witness Mesi? stated in the ITFY Court (International Tribunal For the Former Yugoslavia XE "International Tribunal For the Former Yugoslavia" ) in The Hague that the Z-4 Plan of 1995 was fully effective, contradictory to all the documentary evidence, thereby giving legitimacy to the terrorist outfit RSK to proceed with the political offensive against Croatia in the company of the International Court in The Hague, which became an obedient servant of the Great-Serbian policies.We should have no illusions: Croatia's problems regarding the Serbs in Krajina will not end with its entry into the EU, but they will re-commence. The desynthesising and deconstruction of Croatia will start all over again. After the frustrating realisation that membership of the EU for Croatia will mean the entrance of 'the Serbian question' through the back door (i.e., by means of free movement of goods, finances and labour).In this opinion, the author had the support of the Serbian fanatic Mrs. Biljana Plav?i? XE "Plav?i?, Biljana" :"If six million Serbs must die in order to build the Great-Serbia, there will always remain another 6 million."Surprisingly the Serbian returnee terrorists to Croatia are not keeping a low profile, as would be expected of normal people. Nowadays, they stand on the lists for positions in local government. Many of those who are sub judice for terrorism are being freed left, right and centre. This is a unique situation in Europe.The other puzzle is, why so many of these characters are now pushing to enter into the Croatian Government structures when only a few years ago they were spitting on them?Do the 'Vlachs' actually remember the biggest uncovered mass grave after WWII in the Vukovar XE "Vukovar" new cemetery containing 938 bodies, out of which, up to 6th July 2005, only 798 could be identified? Croatia is still 'in pursuit' of 1,148 missing persons.The lunacy of the Croatian Government of Ivo Sanader XE "Sanader, Ivo" (under enormous pressure from the so-called International Community) goes so far in its servility as to decorate Milo? Vojnovi? XE "Vojnovi?, Milo?" and our old friend, Dr. Vojislav Stanimirovi? XE "Stanimirovi?, Dr. Vojislav" , Vukovar XE "Vukovar" Serbian terrorists, yet could not find a medal for a single Croat defender of Vukovar.Only a few days after the farce of decorating these terrorists in May 2005, an additional 141 mass graves were discovered in Croatia (Vukovar XE "Vukovar" , ?elije, Dalj, Srijemska Mitrovica and Oku?ani) in the territory of the 'Heavenly Serbian Republic of Krajina'.In the meantime, the Congress of the Serbs in Paris on 1st August 2005 adopted a Resolution on the subject of the 'Tenth anniversary of the aggression and crimes of the Republic of Croatia against the civilian population of the RSK'.The reconciliation between the Croats and Serbs forced on them by the International Community was acknowledged by Mesi? XE "Mesi?" 's signature to the so-called NGO Igman initiative, co-signed by the President of Serbia Stevan Marovi? XE "Marovi?, Stevan - President of Serbia " , and that of BiH Borislav Paravac XE "Paravac, Borislav" in Belgrade on 27th June 2005. Reconciliation de facto means in my opinion a renewal of the Yugoslav Utopia, with all its violent consequences, which we have more than fully documented. In the meantime, with great delay, i.e., on 27th February 2006,"Serbia became the first country [in Europe] to be tried for genocide at the world's highest Court, just as the European Union shies from punishing the Balkan nation for failing to hand over Ratko Mladi? XE "Mladi?, Ratko" and other war criminals."To conciliate, or not to conciliate (with people like that), that is the question?The Yugoslav aim works on the principle of long-term survival, exploiting true reconciliation, which for them means you stay in your patch, and we stay in ours. But some just believe: enough is enough.All these pro-Yugoslav efforts are without any democratic legitimacy. The only forum that the Croatian people still respect is the Catholic Church. The anarcho-liberal (so-called secular-liberal) forces that rule Europe and to a large extent the world, are a crypto-communist mafia whose combative stand includes non-recognition of the Christian tradition in Europe. This is why they identify Croats and Croatia as a real challenge to a low-cost multi-ethnic Europe, and welcome anyone who is prepared to frustrate it. The political options are running out fast for the chronically, over-crowded, 'Western Balkans', which is now so polluted there is virtually no difference between the air Croats breath in, and air that the Serbs and Muslims breath out.Only three solutions remain: The recovery of the Yugoslav utopia favoured by the International Community, for which I believe there is no longer a ghost of a chance:The utopian European solution allowing free circulation of the Serbian 'consultants' in the Republic of Croatia. Or the third, advocated by Dr. Ante Star?evi? XE "Star?evi?, Dr. Ante" : don't trust anyone.Trusting everyone has been our tragedy in Croatia. We don't easily forget injuries committed against us by others. From now on we must stand our own ground.The former Prime Minister of Croatia, Ivo Sanader XE "Ivo Sanader" , stated that Croatia, on its entrance into the EU in July 2013, would have to put up with some sacrifices. What are these sacrifices? Have we not had enough of them? Is that the price the Croats have to pay for entrance into the EU Utopian World with the blessing of the Patriarch Pavle (an EU which, to the author’s knowledge, the majority of people in the UK seem instinctively to dislike)?6.3 Operation ‘Storm ‘95’ XE "Operation 'Storm'" 6.3.1 The liberation of Krijina from the Serbs XE "The liberation of Krijina from the Serbs" General Zvonimir ?ervenko XE "?ervenko, Zvonimir - General" , Commander in Chief of the Croatian army talked to the Zagreb daily Ve?ernji List in 1996 about the operation ‘Storm ’95’:“The results of that offensive, which in 84 hours resolved the Croatian war entanglement, stunned many international observers. Only 4 years before Croatia was without a single gun, so to speak, and was expected to be steam-rollered by the Yugoslav Army. In July 1995 the Fifth Corps of the Bosnian Muslim army was at the end of its tether. The Bosnian town of Biha? was near to collapse with the real danger that 16,000 Muslims would meet the fate of those in Srebrenica. After the success of the Croatian army in Glamo? and Grahovo [Bosnia] neither the international community nor the Serbs could blackmail Croatia any longer. The US had definitely not given the green light for ‘Storm ’95’ [Croatian = Oluja] but had let it be known that it wouldn’t interfere. On fbnFive Guards’ brigades were involved in the offensive operations on the front between Zagreb, Karlovac, Gospi? and Split. The total number of operative army forces was 190,000 soldiers, out of which those in the actual battles were 130,000. The operation lasted from 4th to 10th August 1995. In only 84 hours Croatia liberated 11,000 square kilometres of territory. The front line was 630 kilometres long. The strategy was a ‘massive retaliation’.“Already on the first day of the offensive, the Serbian defences were broken in 40 places. The so-called Serbian Krajina army collapsed and began a speedy withdrawal, their elite troops at the head of the escaping columns. The second day, 5th August, Knin XE "Knin" was liberated."‘Storm ’95’ was without doubt one of the greatest victories of the Croatian army in its history. Croatian soldiers confirmed their traditionally high military qualities. Offensive ‘Storm 95’ ended the war in BiH, integrated Eastern Slavonia, and was the decisive victory for the future of the Croatian state.“The Croatian army was trained not to lose this battle. The organisational strategy had worked out the smallest tactical detail and was impeccable. What is most important is that the élan and the enthusiasm were such that it had to wipe out the Serbian army it was facing, nothing less. The Croatian army did this with the expenditure of 1,200 tonnes of ammunition, 400 tonnes of petrol, and 300 tonnes of food and drink daily. The enemy did not have even a theoretical chance of stopping us.” The Serbian army had 41,000 soldiers, 430 tanks, 210 armoured vehicles, 570 guns, 25 aircraft, 13 helicopters and 340 anti-aircraft guns. All this went up in a puff of smoke.(VL, pp.82-348. Reference p.82 to 348 chronology "Six bloody years" based on reports by Zagreb Ve?ernji List.)6.4 'PAX' Americana XE "'PAX' Americana" 6.4.1 Operation End Game XE "Operation End Game" In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, Warren Zimmerman XE "Zimmerman, Warren" , the man on the spot, in his Origins of Catastrophe, as late as 1996, cried about the fate of Yugoslavia, which he argued that it was“destroyed from the top to the bottom by scoundrels”. Zimmerman XE "Zimmerman" appears to share the simplistic American view of historical events, i.e., that all ‘nationalists’ are savages and tyrants or alternatively fascists – take your pick. Tudjman XE "Tudjman" he describes as the personification of Croatian nationalism “who hated Yugoslavia and its multi-ethnic values”, and “whose arrogance in proclaiming Croatian Independence without laws to protect the equal rights of the Croat and Serb citizens was an excuse for Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" and the JNA XE "JNA" for the aggression against Croatia in 1991.”Zimmerman XE "Zimmerman" could not allow the possibility that Tudjman XE "Tudjman" might have had a genuine change of heart after experiencing the consequences of the Yugoslav Utopia, whose protagonist he was, after all, most of his life.Zimmerman XE "Zimmerman" believed, quite rightly, that the death of Yugoslavia could have come about only if coupled with extreme violence, but he failed to understand the origins of this menace, and therefore, his arguments end up in an upside-down logic, i.e., it was nationalism that was the cause of the break-up of Yugoslavia rather than the other way around, being its consequence. He hugely overestimates the negative power of nationalism in contemporary Europe and underestimates the utopian character of the multinational centralist nation states.Zimmerman XE "Zimmerman" gives the impression that his life as the US Ambassador to Belgrade had been a total failure. He ended up as the chief pallbearer at the funeral of his beloved Yugoslavia. His enemies whom he proscribes, enumerates and attacks ad hominem had destroyed the policies that he represented as the US Ambassador. He feels that the deep misunderstanding of his surroundings, which had turned into paranoia and pathetic outpourings, had darkened his life: “Political Yugoslavia was nothing less attractive. Even as a communist state it was so delightful [!] so much so that the British Labourites were holidaying there in search of political correctness.”Then there follows the humiliating distortion: “But Yugoslavia’s greatest value was its civility and tolerance among the peoples of the different ethnic background and different historical experience.”In Yugoslavia, Zimmerman XE "Zimmerman" identifies the most favoured totalitarianism as an ideal model for the East European political system to be treated as the “protected and sometimes spoiled child” by the US and Western diplomacy.Any attempt to keep the memory of the Yugo-communist crimes alive was dismissed by the mantra of the US support for Yugoslavia’s unity, independence, and territorial integrity.In denying that Yugoslavia as a philosophy was a crime, at the same time he had serious doubts about this US protégé: “I must add that we could support the unity of the country only within the context of progress towards democracy; we would strongly oppose any unity imposed or maintained by force.”The attribution to totalitarianism of the characteristics of democracy is quite simply naive. Thus, ‘the origins of the catastrophe’ were in fact the consequences of the catastrophe, i.e., the creation of both Yugoslavias.“That democracy and unity were the inseparable Siamese twins of the Yugoslav fate, and that the loss of one meant the disappearance of the other,” the Zimmerman XE "Zimmerman" interpretation of the Yugoslav Utopia is a contradiction that turns the tables: democracy and utopian unity in Yugoslavia were mutually exclusive.The financial circles of Washington understood this and therefore considered the last-minute reforms of Markovi? XE "Markovi?" (Prime Minister of Yugoslavia, March 1989 to 1991). as “a valueless [financial] risk of low priority.”The fact that the American ‘ultra liberalism’ was intent on rescuing the ‘democratic ideal’ from the wreckage of the Yugoslav Utopia did not make sense in reality. For example, saying that the 1990 elections were, 'on the one hand democratic and on the other undemocratic’ because the victors were not to the US's liking was absurd.In spite of the fact that the CIA XE "CIA" concluded “that neither the US nor Europe can do anything to preserve the [Yugoslav] unity,” Zimmerman XE "Zimmerman" in his pathetic report to the US Government in November 1990 admitted that “it is possible to stop the breakdown” After all, the 155mm field guns of the JNA XE "JNA" were supplied by the US.The final irony of the US efforts to save Yugoslavia was that Yugoslavia’s Minister of Defence, a Serb, General Kadijevi? XE "Kadijevi?" , as an American-trained soldier whose chief duty was to save the Yugoslav unity, if necessary by force, “doubted American motives and sincerity.”On the political front, this irony turned into a farce when in a dramatic TV broadcast on 16th March 1989 Slobodan Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" announced“that Yugoslavia doesn’t exist any longer.” This, as an act of Serbia’s separation from Yugoslavia, a year before the proclamation of the independence by Slovenia and Croatia, speaks for itself. That proclamation in fact allowed the JNA XE "JNA" to use the US supplied arms on behalf of Serbia against the rebellious Slovenes and Croats.The US support for the ‘last stand’ of the Yugoslav intellectuals who fought concurrently for human rights and the Yugoslav unity, as if they were identical and not contradictory concepts, was frustrated by the history of the US involvement. They had turned a blind eye on the infringement of human rights in Yugoslavia for the sake of good relations with Tito XE "Tito" , as long ago as 1966. Would the US do the same at this critical moment and for the same reasons? That was the question.Thus, in Zagreb, Croatian Jew Slavko Goldstein XE "Goldstein, Slavko" founded the Organisation for the Protection of Human Rights XE "Organisation for the Protection of Human Rights" and as a first 'liberal' act demanded the resignation of Franjo Tudjman XE "Franjo Tudjman" .‘Human rights’ are thus a lot of dinosaur attitudes lurking behind ‘liberal’ bushes, and its supporters, it appears, are driven by the very pragmatic desire to have lots of fun.The sad thing is that the breakdown of Yugoslavia shocked its American and British protectors more than it shocked ‘the apostle of the unitary Yugoslavia’, Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" himself. “Peter [Hall XE "Hall, Peter" , British Ambassador in Belgrade] and I asked Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" about the future of Yugoslavia – “Who cares if it breaks down” was his answer. “Serbia and Montenegro will exist as a federal state and the legitimate successor to Yugoslavia. We shall be pleased to talk to others about confederation."”“Turning to the question of Croatia, Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" dismissed Tudjman XE "Tudjman" as a fascist. "He is arming his own party, which nobody did since Hitler XE "Hitler" ’s time."”Zimmerman XE "Zimmerman" ’s mindset explains a great deal about American policy towards Yugoslavia.“As the blood flowed [in the Croatian/Serbian war], Serbian hotheads in Krajina and Eastern Slavonia commenced with provocations. They already held ‘democratic’ referendums . . . , which showed that the Serbs there rejected Croatian authority. Now, under the leadership of Belgrade paramilitaries and the JNA XE "JNA" itself, they decided to cut off those territories from Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s police and army.”How many Serbian hotheads? That was the question.Although not very original and even less objective, Zimmerman XE "Zimmerman" has raised his objections to an art form:“The war made it possible for Tudjman XE "Tudjman" to turn Croatia into a nationalist police state, a dream that he had always cultivated.” Zimmerman XE "Zimmerman" ’s book is a delightful romp through fairly familiar material, interlaced with quotations attributed to Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , which to Zimmerman’s regret stood the test of time:“In late August 1991 Tudjman XE "Tudjman" informed me about his plan to activate ‘his war option’ against the JNA XE "JNA" and the ‘Chetnik separatists’. When I asked him how was he going to stand up to them with his nascent army, he drolled: “Your country will help me”. When I told him there was not a ghost of a chance of that, grinning he quipped: “Mr. Ambassador, maybe I know more about your country than you do yourself.”“In fact, in July [and August 1995], Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s Croatian army hit, 'illegitimately', mercilessly, but victoriously Krajina, held by the Serbs . . . With this blitzkrieg Croatia returned the majority of the territory that Serbs occupied in 1991 and also changed the power structure in Bosnia.”Tudjman XE "Tudjman" flatly but amiably rejected the malicious suggestion by Zimmerman XE "Zimmerman" that he should offer the Krajina Serbs autonomy.The US and EU anarchic approach to the recognition of Slovenia’s XE "Slovenia" and Croatia’s independence contained an extraordinary element of farce. Fortunately, not one of the US and EU calls for a deferment found a response. “The EU leaders gave in under German pressure and on 17th December 1991 they decided to recognise Slovenia and Croatia.”On his departure from Belgrade, which was accompanied by ‘Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Zimmermann’ in the Serbian press, Zimmerman XE "Zimmerman" intuitively asked himself a profound question: “How was it possible that such attractive men, on whom the gods of nature and the goddess of fortune smiled, dug out a path which would lead them directly to hell?”I hope he will now read this book. The answer is surreal in-as-much-as it is farcical: Sorry, it was all a huge misunderstanding – the Yugoslavs were engaged in a quest for Utopia. They had discovered that their shared fascination for Yugoslavism led to the tragic consequences described in Zimmerman XE "Zimmerman" ’s book. Furthermore, Yugoslavism was largely a western import, with an origin in the French Revolution XE "French Revolution" , of which America itself was an overweight white baby elephant.The ‘pyramids’ to which Zimmermann refers were the creators of Yugoslavia themselves, as he himself admits: “Serbs and Croats, today the fiercest antagonists, have never, before the 20th century, fought each other.” The statement is, at the same time proof of the arguments pursued in this book.In between the covers of Zimmerman XE "Zimmerman" ’s book, one finds a selection of totalitarian thoughts extraordinary for an American liberal: “There are a few people, even in Russia, who have an understanding of the beastly crimes which were committed by the Russian Army in Chechnya. However, these crimes cannot justify the granting of independence to Chechnya, as this would lead to the breakdown of Russia, which consists of twenty autonomous Republics . . . What Zimmermann suggests in a nutshell is that the seventy years long terror in Yugoslavia was preferable to its breakdown. Here we are already in the realms of surrealism, taking into account that the argument comes from the mouth of the ambassador of the greatest democracy the world has ever known.The argument that the ‘world’ should support the idea of multi-ethnicity as a liberating force in history above that of the national state in reductio ad absurdum would turn mankind into a world of minorities ruled by the absurd bullies like the US, Russia and China. In the age of globalism, when the global village is a multi-ethnic world in itself, killing individual ethnic cultures would kill that world.In order to underline his arguments Zimmerman XE "Zimmerman" develops his mythology in a surprising direction. “The propagation of democracy, a political system which is logically sensitive to the will of the people, is unavoidable. Elections are a necessary, although not a sufficient condition for democratic life. Taken in the short term, they can be counter-productive,” plainly referring to Tudjman XE "Tudjman" 's victories in three democratic elections.It is clear what he is talking about and he adopts a radical stance: “In order to preserve democratic ideals in multi-ethnic surroundings, there must exist some kind of international coercion.” As he took his arguments logically a little further, he arrived at an unexpected conclusion: “Tito XE "Tito" ’s responsibility for the break-up of Yugoslavia was well deserved since he was responsible for the creation of the country out of the ashes of WWII.”The utopian circle was thus closed. This confirms our arguments that Yugoslavia and Utopianism had a common source and common aims.Zimmermann’s holy madness that one day “somebody, maybe from Bosnia,” might again initiate “the creation of a new state. It will not be called Yugoslavia, but it will have historical roots there,” is mind-boggling surrealism agitating for continuous bloodshed.In an interview for Globus 339 (6th June 1997), Peter Galbraith XE "Galbraith, Peter" , like Zimmerman XE "Zimmerman" , looked forward to a new golden age of the American era in the Balkans: “We insist that Croatia, Serbia and BiH fulfil totally all the decisions in the Dayton and Erdut Agreements XE "Dayton and Erdut Agreements" , i.e., the right of return of refugees to their homes, the return of property, the free movement of people, the indictment of war criminals and the control of armaments.”“If the leaders of the countries do not fulfil these obligations, they will remain isolated outside the EU and NATO.“Allow me to add that Madeleine Albright XE "Madeleine Albright" was upset with the statement made by President Tudjman XE "Tudjman, President " at a meeting of the Contact Group XE "Contact Group" that the US, in the long run, has done nothing for Croatia during the war . . . Let me tell you that without the US Vukovar XE "Vukovar" today would have been a Serbian city. The progress in Eastern Slavonia is not yet solved. The return of the refugees and their security is the most important feature for the success of the Erdut agreement.”“President Tudjman XE "Tudjman, President" stated many times that he couldn’t accept the international pressure for the return of all the Serbs. Why does the US insist on this?” asked the Interviewer.“The US attitude is that all the ‘Croatian’ Serbs that wish to return should be able to do so. However, nobody seriously believes that 200,000 Serbian refugees will zoom back to Croatia. According to our assessment it is more likely to be between 30,000 and 50,000. The choice is clear: does Croatia want to be a part of the democratic EU?” responded Galbraith XE "Galbraith" In September 1995, Madeleine Albright XE "Albright, Madeleine" , not to be outdone, caused a deliberate debacle in Kostajnica, Croatia, saying: “I am shocked, that is disgusting”in reference to Croatia’s unwillingness to accept the return of all the Serbs. This had repercussions on the US policies towards BiH.“Is the West feverishly searching for the replacement of Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" and Izetbegovi? XE "Izetbegovi?" ?”asked Globus. What is the problem? President Tudjman XE "Tudjman, President" still refuses to accept a unitary BiH with all its consequences. It is clear that the Croats in the unitary BiH would not be equal with the Muslims. Ipso facto, President Tudjman is in opposition to the US policy on BiH. The US, on the other hand, like an overgrown school bully, is increasing the pressure. Yet it seems that the US media-political spectacle has nothing to do with a sentiment for the Serbian refugees but a lot to do with the diplomatic compromisation of Croatia. If Tudjman made a U-turn, the US would soon forget the Serbs. In that context, the American media are showing an excessive and distasteful interest in the medical condition of President Tudjman, trying hard to find an acceptable successor to him in the near future.‘Croatian’ Serbs, encouraged by American noises are naming their own price XE "‘Croatian’ Serbs, encouraged by American noises are naming their own price" Vojislav Stanimirovi? XE "Stanimirovi?" , an MP in the Croatian Parliament and leader of the Serbs in Eastern Slavonia, is not satisfied with President Tudjman XE "Tudjman, President" ’s recent speech in liberated Vukovar XE "Vukovar" “The words of President Tudjman XE "Tudjman, President" , to the effect that all the escaped Serbs cannot return home, are neither humane nor democratic. . . . For our part we have made a list of the Croats [which list is not small] that we accuse of war crimes. This list includes some people who are now in high political positions in Croatia,” he stated. 6.5 In God we Trust XE "In God we Trust" The results of an in-depth poll of 1,620 people in Croatia shows the increased popularity of President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , who will very likely win the Presidential Elections in the first round. He leads with 53.4%, in front of the SDP candidate with 16.4%. In a riposte to this success, “President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , The HDZ and the HTV are spreading hatred against the opposition presidential candidates and are responsible for the assassination attempts on them,”states Dr. Zlatko Tom?i? XE "Tom?i?, Dr. Zlatko" , the HSS ‘peasant leader.In a separate Globus poll of 1,000 persons from all parts of Croatia, it was shown that 67% of Croats trust their scientific institutions, 58.4% trust the Croatian police but only 22% and 21% respectively trust the press and TV.The status of the church in society, 85.2% pollsters consider to be better, 74.1% have confidence in the Croatian army; 52.9% in the media freedom; 53.5% in the democracy of the government, but as far as living standards are concerned, only 18.5% find them satisfactory.6.5.1 Reconciliation Has Very Little to Offer XE "Reconciliation Has Very Little to Offer" Milorad Pupovac XE "Pupovac, Milorad" , President of the Serbian Forum stated in an interview with Globus stated:“As far as I am concerned, the speech by President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" that we would again have an uprising on our hands if more than 100-150,000 Serbs return does not sound very pleasant,” “We have experienced Oluja [Storm ’95] as a tragedy for our people, who had to go into exile with unknown prospects for their return. For us it was a tragic epilogue . . . Our proposal in 1991 included a demand for a territorial autonomy. . . . What we have today is only a proportionate representation in Parliament, and cultural autonomy,” stated Pupovac.“Do you believe in reconciliation between Croats and Serbs?”“Reconciliation exists at the level of the political elite, but that is not enough. . . . Reconciliation in the first instance demands mutual recognition of [national] identity. We hope that Serbian citizens will be treated as citizens, and not just as Serbs. We are trying to protect the Serbian people from a negative perception of their national identity. The Serbian question in Croatia is a monopoly of the ruling [HDZ] party. We wish to stop being a taboo-subject in Croatia,” ended Pupovac whining. 6.5.2 An Alternative Bill of Health XE "An Alternative Bill of Health" Dr. Andrija Hebrang XE "Dr. Andrija Hebrang" , Minister of Health, in an interview in Globus condemned the bleakest outlook about President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s health, broadcast by CNN XE "CNN" after his return from his medical check-up in the US.“The CNN XE "CNN" broadcast was a political spin with serious international implications,” he stated. Unfortunately, in this part of Europe the interests of America, Russia, France and England are intertwined. The US interests in the oil-rich Arab states, linked as they are to the Bosnian-Hercegovinian Muslims, have priority over those interests in Croatia.6.6 Do the Jews Hate the New Croatia XE "Do the Jews Hate the New Croatia" 6.6.1 Is President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" Really an Anti-Semite? XE "Is President Tudjman Really an Anti-Semite?" Here in 2009, Croatia is under enormous pressure in the American media, which is in Jewish ownership, and it is no longer possible to close one’s eyes to this, because of the repercussions for the future of the Croatian state.The political game with President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s ‘anti-Semitism’ has been in the process already for the past seven years, in spite of his apology for the suffering of the Jews in the NDH, his personal participation in the Partisans and in spite of the omission of the awkward quotations from his book, Horrors of War: Historical Reality and Philosophy (Croatian: Bespu?a povijesne zbiljnosti; literal translation ‘Wastelands of Historical Reality’) published in 1989 (‘The Wilderness of the Historical Reality’ in its American edition).Linking President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" with anti-Semitism could have unknown negative consequences for the international status of Croatia.The Holocaust Museum in Washington was opened on 20th April 1993, at which ceremony President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" was present at the invitation of the Department of State. Instead of welcoming him, the US media opened a vicious campaign against him, which in turn cemented the anti-Tudjman XE "Tudjman" prejudices in the US. The irony was that he was actually the only living participant among the invited statesmen of the anti-fascist coalition in WWII.The campaign by numerous objective intellectuals of the highest standing, from Croatia, the US, France and Britain directed at defending Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , remained without result.President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" is definitely condemned by the prevailing media inquisition as a Revisionist XE "Revisionist" , a term of communist origin, which in the West today is linked with neo-fascism.Professor Elie Wiesel XE "Wiesel, Elie - Professor " , the authority on the Holocaust in reply to the American-Croatian sociologist Stjepan Me?trovi? XE "Me?trovi?, Stjepan" , explained why he did not wish to meet Tudjman XE "Tudjman" (yet he visited the concentration camps run by the Serbs in BiH and met Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" in Belgrade.)“As far as Tudjman XE "Tudjman" is concerned, his book is anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish. That does not mean that I am anti-Croat. I am against collective responsibility . . . maybe you can explain to me why the Croatian Sabor XE "Croatian Sabor" chose the Kuna as its national currency, the money introduced by the Paveli? regime. Too many reports talk about the rehabilitation of the Ustashas. How can we remain undisturbed?”Yet political life cannot be understood in terms of the operation of only one parameter. It was the price to be paid for the reconciliation of the descendants of the former Ustashas and Partisans, i.e., the reconciliation of the Croatian nation. The persecution of the Jews in itself was not necessarily only a fascist policy. How could one otherwise explain the protection of the Jews by Mussolini’s Italy, the homeland of fascism? Was Tudjman XE "Tudjman" then an anti-Semite? In The Times of 24th July 1993, Slavko Goldstein XE "Goldstein, Slavko" , the outstanding member of the Croatian Jewish Community in Zagreb who knew President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" for over 30 years commented: “Tudjman XE "Tudjman" is neither an anti-Semite, nor a fascist nor a war-monger.”So let’s examine the three paragraphs from Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s book on which his alleged anti-Semitism is based: “As far as the total number of the Jewish victims in WWII is concerned, in the world literature there do not exist yet, even approximately, scientifically established facts. On the one hand, estimates vary from four million [G. Reitlinger, 1953], to about six million [J. Lestchinsky and the American Jewish Congress, and N. Levih, 1968 and 1973]. Raul Hilberg, whose book [1961 and 1973] by its range and breadth of information [prior to that of Nora Levin] estimates that the total losses amount to approximately 5 million or one third of the pre-WWII Jewish population, but in its statistical chart states that out of 5,100,000 victims only 900,000 were identified as dead, and puts a question mark over some other numbers within the above total.“These are probably the reasons for mentioning that, on the other hand, the number of six million dead some [historians] regard as extremely ‘exaggerated’, quoting a million victims as an ‘objective assessment.”In the second excerpt, Tudjman XE "Tudjman" quotes and comments upon the provocative statement of one Vojislav Prnjatovi?, a Serb who was a prisoner in the Jasenovac XE "Jasenovac" concentration camp: “A Jew remains a Jew, even in the Jasenovac XE "Jasenovac" camp. They retained all their faults, but in those circumstances, they became more pronounced. Selfishness, cunning, unreliability, meanness, perfidiousness, and secretiveness are their chief qualities.”“This judgement of Prnjatovi?’s smacks of exaggeration, even anti-Semitism yet some other witnesses speak in the same vein. Some of the Jewish camp wardens were armed and even took part in the killings. Even more, the ‘selection’ of the inmates for ‘liquidation’ and occasionally even the execution, was in their hands.”The third excerpt states: “And the fact that the persecution of the Jews, members of one of the oldest and the most civilised nations on earth, occurs continually in history even when they live in the midst of the most civilised societies of the particular age, and not only, as is otherwise the case, in the midst of the clash of the opposing cultures, doubtlessly shows that this evil cannot be eradicated by means of any higher degree of ‘social development’. Not even on the basis of the historical experience, as is shown by the present-day Jewish-Arab conflict, in which the State of Israel practices terrorist attacks against the Palestinian civilian population, with the rationalisation that it is forced to break ‘the norms of the normal human behaviour’ because of Palestinian terrorism. The fact that the Jews provoked hatred against themselves due to the preservation of their ethnic-religious separateness among the foreign nations, in spite of their declarative cosmopolitan ideas, is particularly interesting, in this context.”Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , who pursued a properly exclusive enquiry as an object of historical study, overlooked the limitations imposed upon his attempt to regard the past as an object in the pursuit of practical concern. The realisation that the offending quotations might be misread as an anti-Semitic tract, and their subsequent omission from the American edition of his book ‘The Horrors of War’, cannot be taken as trivial. In a letter addressed to the US Congress on 21st January 1992 he states:“I condemn, most strongly, the evil of genocide that Nazis and their collaborators in Croatia and other lands have visited on the Jews, Gypsies, Croats, Serbs and others. The process of systematic destruction of the Jews in Europe . . . unfortunately is one of the greatest crimes against humanity in the whole of history. In that respect the Ustasha regime in the NDH committed numerous crimes against humanity. I deeply regret that the Jewish community in Croatia was the victim, as a part of the holocaust in WWII.”In February 1994, President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" sent a letter of apology to Kent Schiner, President of the Jewish Organisation B’nai B’rith XE " B’nai B’rith - Kent Schiner, President of the Jewish Organisation " XE "Kent Schiner, President of the Jewish Organisation B’nai B’rith" .“My book, ‘The Wilderness of the Historical Reality’ [Bespu?a], since its publication in 1989, has provoked strong and unfortunately negative reactions with some members of the International Jewish community. These reactions have deeply upset me and caused me to reconsider my statements and also to reassess the parts of the book in which I quoted the documents and the opinions of certain writers or participants of these events.” Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , the man in a struggle to disengage himself from the muddle in the pursuit of a proper historical enquiry, was “the only active anti-fascist combatant among the post-communist statesmen; one of the few PhD’s among them; a dissident in a communist regime, a political prisoner and outcast, deprived of all human rights for 20 years because of his theoretical and political opinions; the leader of Croatia, a victim of the Great-Serbian aggression, which with the consent of the ‘free world’ was disarmed and deprived of its right to self-defence. A communist and an anti-communist, an internationalist and a nationalist, an atheist and a believer, an admirer and opponent of Belgrade and both an elitist and a populist.”“The Tudjman XE "Tudjman" family was tragically divided by ideology and party affiliations during WWII. The common trait within the family was anti-fascism. The divided loyalty between the [Utopian] Yugoslavia and Croatianhood was the fate his family shared with the majority of the Croatian people.”A poll taken by the Zagreb glossy Globus in 1993 shows that hard anti-Semitic attitudes occur only in 5-7% of the Croatian population, which is about 50% of the norm in the West. The citizens of Croatia reject the idea that President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" is an anti-Semite and, in the most sensitive question, when asked if they would object to their children marrying a Jew, 55% of those questioned would not object. To the question “Do you hate the Jews?” 78% answered in the negative.6.6.2 Marcus Tanner XE "Marcus Tanner" and the Western Press XE "Marcus Tanner and the Western Press" History can be recorded by witnesses such as war correspondents on the spot at the time of the event (and even by myself).The observations of the Croatian Homeland war scene by Marcus Tanner XE "Tanner, Marcus" , author of ‘Croatia: A Nation Forged in War’ have a plausible ring about them.“One has to admire the fact that Tudjman XE "Tudjman" never gives up. When his plans went down the hill in 1991, many people would have written off Croatian independence. Even then, he did not give up. In that sense, I respect him, but don’t respect him on the other hand because he is not a democrat. This characteristic is contributing to the terrible image that Croatia has in the world. That is a pity.”“On the other hand, it is often forgotten that Croatia has recently come out of a war, and that the questions such as ‘why don’t you have such and such a law for the protection of human rights’ or ‘why is your president such and such?’ is a bit displaced.” As talk of minority rights has become commonplace, the very idea of these rights has become problematic. Tanner XE "Tanner" comments:“I think that it is dishonest to insist on minority rights [i.e., the rights of the Serbs] so pedantically, when it is well known that they have been killing Croats, demolishing Catholic Churches, and did other terrible things until recently. This is not a normal situation.”“Knin XE "Knin" appeared to me to be a criminal loony-bin, without a single rational person. The situation there was bizarre, to say the least. If you entered the City Hall, you would inevitably trip over a drunken poet who would try to persuade you that Great Britain and Serbia were always allies and friends. I felt like throwing up.” “The question is why did the Serbs in Knin XE "Knin" burn all their bridges with Croatia? That was stupid. If they left the Croats, who were the majority in the region, in peace their separatist ideas might have found more support in the world. The Serbs in Knin are difficult to understand. They negate history, even current facts. They simply argue that the Knin region was never a part of Croatia.”Theorising about Serbian ‘democracy’ in terms of the media is not very enlightening. Tanner XE "Tanner" elucidates:“The Serbian opposition was criticising the running of the war [by Serbia] rather than the war itself. Therefore, the West had the wrong impression about the Serbian opposition - that it was against the war, which was wrong. The majority of the Serbs wanted Great Serbia to be realised as soon as possible, but without the blood of their own children.”“I was irritated by the Western press which, for example, presented Zoran Djindji? XE "Djindji?, Zoran" as a great democrat. In reality he was very close to Karad?i? and the Serbian extremists in BiH. However strong the pressure by the International Community for the Croats and Serbs to continue living together, it seems to me unrealistic. In the present day BiH, everyone is pressing to create a multi-cultural community of three nations; this is plainly ridiculous. ”When he identified Croatia as a volatile society, he explained why Croatia looked precarious.“It seems to me that the perspective of Croatia at the moment is not brilliant . . . Croatia will always remain a hostage to its neighbours. Looking from the standpoint of the objective reporter on the spot, Tanner XE "Tanner" appears to have noticed how bizarre the efforts of the International Community were to try to control the image of the Croats in BiH by propaganda exposure.“As far as BiH is concerned, the events in Central Bosnia were very complex. And therefore, I am irritated when these events are described as Croatian aggression, and the Muslims exclusively as the victims. It was not that simple. . . . the Croats have not always attacked the Muslims. Very often the Muslims retorted with the same meanness, particularly in Zenica. Therefore, the way that this mini war will be registered in history as the innocent Muslims tortured by the Croatian Nazis, appears unbelievable.”6.6.3 Too many Cooks Spoil the Broth XE "Too many Cooks Spoil the Broth" Robin Cook XE "Cook, Robin" in Zagreb has rejected President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s arguments (30th July 1997) about the freedom of the press in Croatia. Nor has Foreign Minister, Dr. Grani? XE " Grani?, Dr." , left a better impression on Cook, and on the basis of that impression the British and the EU policies would be hatched.Cook’s XE "Cook" message in a nutshell is “keep up the pressure on Croatia until President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" fulfils all his promises to Bill Richardson, President Clinton’s emissary.”In practice that means a blockade of the credits from the World Bank XE "World Bank" and the IMF. On top of that, the International Community insists on the extradition of Dario Kordi? XE "Kordi?, Dario" and Ivica Raji? XE "Raji?, Ivica" , Croat leaders in BiH, accused of ‘war crimes’. This, of course, has to be balanced with the bitterness and protests of the Croats in BiH.6.6.4 Defender of the Faith XE "Defender of the Faith" Croat Stjepan Kljui? XE "Kljui?, Stjepan" , leader of the Republican Party of BiH, attacked Izetbegovi? XE "Izetbegovi?" for exploiting religion for his own political ends:“When Izetbegovi? XE "Izetbegovi?" recently greeted a regiment of Bosnian-Hercegovinian soldiers in Zenica with ‘Es’ Selam Al’Leikum’, there were 380 Croats and Serbs present in that regiment. At that moment the army stopped being the Bosnian-Hercegovinian army.” Globus:It is a well-known fact that the only public function open to the Croats in Sarajevo is the directorship of the cemeteries [subject to threats of assassination]. And yet you maintain that the Croat officials should blame themselves for such a state of affairs.Kljui?:“Croats in BiH originally had five strong cards in their own hands: the backing of the Republic of Croatia; the universal Catholic Church; high literacy; the strongest Diaspora and 70% of the Bosnian-Hercegovinian financial capital. Yet they blew it, for the sake of Hercegovina.”Globus:Were you surprised by the statement by Robin Cook XE " Cook" that $80 million of International help to BiH has disappeared in the pockets of the Bosnian-Hercegovinian officials?Kljui?:“I proposed a parliamentary enquiry to look into the affair.”Globus:But Izetbegovi? XE "Izetbegovi?" nominated his own enquiry.Kljui?:“Yes, because the SDA MPs have taken my initiative to be a personal insult to Izetbegovi? XE "Izetbegovi?" .”6.6.5 How Mad, if at all, is Dobroslav Paraga XE "Dobroslav Paraga" ? XE "How Mad, if at all, is Dobroslav Paraga?" Dobroslav Paraga XE "Paraga, Dobroslav" (37), President of the restored Party of the Croatian Rights (established in 1861) was put under investigation by the Croatian State Prosecution, because, on 9th August 1997 in the name of his miniscule party, he denounced President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , Minister of Defence Gojko ?u?ak XE " ?u?ak, Gojko " , et al., to the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague XE "The Hague" .Paraga XE "Paraga" spent several years in Yugoslav jails as a Croatian 'nationalist'. Is he, if at all, a traitor to the present Croatian Government? From the start, he was accused by the Government of regurgitating Paveli?’s XE "Paveli?, Ante" extreme ideas. The more often his ideas were questioned, the more they were obscure or interpreted in a diplomatic way to suit his own purposes. His Party was also subject to various allegations, many suggestive rather than documented. Paraga organised the HOS (Croatian Armed Forces), which the Croatian Government accused of being a paramilitary force, and the International Community condemned as the successor to Paveli?’s WWII forces, which Paraga strongly denied. He stood strongly for the defence of Croatia, he said. Eventually the HOS was incorporated into the regular Croatian army after a ‘fixed’ military court trial.This did not, however, stop Paraga XE "Paraga" from embarrassing President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" and his Government. It seems that the Tudjman XE "Tudjman" -Paraga incestuous relationship was based entirely on the principle of mutual embarrassment.The Croatian Government reacted quickly to Paraga XE "Paraga" ’s latest provocations and ordered a judicial enquiry into the activities of Paraga and also Ivan Zvonimir ?i?ak XE "?i?ak, Ivan Zvonimir" , President of the Croatian Helsinki Committee, who was expressing similar views.Paraga XE "Paraga" implied that a general of the HOS, Bla? Kraljevi? XE "Kraljevi?, Bla?" , ‘a man who fought for Croatia’, was not killed by the Serbs, but was literally stabbed in the back by the HVO (Croatian Council for Defence of BiH), who were loyal to President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" .“As an MP in the Croatian Parliament,” stated Paraga XE "Paraga" , “I should be allowed to speak on Croatian TV rather than be forced to speak to CNN XE "CNN" or in the American Congress. I asked Parliament to make an order for Croatian MPs to speak in our own Parliament, rather than somebody else doing it for us. I was laughed out, and was forced therefore to seek justice under the dome of Capitol Hill . . . I will seek justice for the Croatian people anywhere on the plant, if necessary.”“The gods [i.e., the Croatian Government] that think they can do whatever pleases them are responsible for the present bad image of Croatia in the world. Tihomir Bla?ki? and Dario Kordi? are suffering today [in The Hague XE "The Hague" ] for their sins. There is a clear indication that Tudjman XE "Tudjman" and Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" engineered the aggression on BiH, which led to the Croato-Muslim war.” In pursuing this conspiracy theory, Paraga XE "Paraga" stated sarcastically that while his party is ‘the victim of a programmed aggression on BiH’ nobody actually moved a little finger against the dividers of BiH [i.e., President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ].Paraga XE "Paraga" seems here to have been tempted, ‘by his conviction about the conspiracy’, to the conclusion that the “the murder of one of his generals, Bla? Kraljevi? XE "Kraljevi?, Bla?" , was a death blow to the previous co-operation of the Croats and the Muslims” against the Serbian aggression in BiH.However, contentions present themselves straight away. Paraga XE "Paraga" dismisses the contention that he acts as a permanent opposition to all regimes in principle, not only to Tudjman XE "Tudjman" . “In the former Yugoslavia I was one of the rare dissidents who was not afraid to collaborate with Amnesty International and inform the International Community about the infringement of human rights in Croatia.”“I ended up in one of Tito XE "Tito" ’s concentration camps ‘Goli Otok’ XE "Goli Otok" , embedded literally into a stone wall. Afterwards I was put in an underground concrete cell in the notorious 102 Department, tied up with chains and beaten black and blue. On 4th August 1989 I succeeded in initiating the Resolution No. 169 of the US Senate, which demanded the unconditional release of all political prisoners in Yugoslavia.”There seems to be here two debates going on at the same time.Firstly, is Paraga XE "Paraga" guilty of treason?The image of his party is still that of an extreme party, e.g., Mladen Schwartz XE "Schwartz, Mladen" , an apologist of Hitler XE "Hitler" and Mussolini, was once in its ranks. “Yes, he was” proceeded Paraga XE "Paraga" , “but before he propagated these ideas. Thank God he left us. By the way, the HDZ needed such people as a counterpoint for their ‘pseudo centric orientation’.”Secondly, is Paraga XE "Paraga" ‘the lightning conductor for the HDZ’, which formulates its policies as a reaction to his extraordinary outbursts?“The essence of my application to the ITFY is that we have to individualise the responsibility for the policy of the division of BiH in order to avoid collective guilt,” Paraga XE "Paraga" went on.Although Paraga XE "Paraga" ’s accusations against the Croatian Government hovered on the edge of ‘treason’, other people made similar accusations against the Tudjman XE "Tudjman" Government daily, with constitutional impunity.As ever, during the present dramatic convulsions, the Croatian history, conspiracy, ‘treason’, insinuations, madness, personal interests and paranoia raised their ugly heads.Yet, nobody could contest the fact that freedom of expression in Croatia survived the self-inflicted handicaps in spite of all the worrisome contradictions.6.6.6 Do Croats Still Suffer from Yugo-Nostalgia? XE "Do Croats Still Suffer from Yugo-Nostalgia?" "The present Croatian anti-communist revolution is not yet at an end," writes Prof. Dr. Slaven Letica XE "Letica, Prof. Dr. Slaven" . In spite of that, it is clear that all the former communist grandees can sleep peacefully in the new Croatian State.Do these carriers of Yugo-nostalgia present a real danger for the existence of the Croatian State?The tears shed for the fallen self-managing system of Tito XE "Tito" is symbolised by the establishment of the Socialist Workers Party (the SRP), by the former Central Committee member, Professor Stipe ?uvar XE "?uvar, Professor Stipe" , with a programme putting together a jig-saw of Croatia made up of the remnants of inconsolable members of Tito’s followers. They represent about 2% of Croatia’s voters.The exhibitionism of this extreme party helps the pretence by the SDP to be a Social Democratic Party, under the leadership of Ivica Ra?an XE "Ra?an, Ivica" , ?uvar’s XE "?uvar" former comrade. “In the present period of the birth of the ‘wild capitalism’, it is natural that the formerly pampered ‘working classes’ recall nostalgically the ‘self-managing' socialism of the 70’s and 80’s. The guaranteed employment, pension rights, health insurance, free schooling, low living costs, have become the rationale for the nostalgia for ‘the communist hell’. Yet, on the way from prison to freedom, everybody tends to lose their orientation, as observed penetratingly by Vaclav Havel.”The nostalgia for Partisan-Bolshevik, Ustasha and Chetnik ideologies, described by Tudjman XE "Tudjman" in his book ‘Great Ideas and Small Nations’, has tragically broken the Croatian nation.The uncritical glorification of these stereotypes is nostalgia, as the logical side effect of these phenomena.The next threat is the fear that stems from the factual or imagined ‘Yugoslav conspiracy’ as part of the Yugoslav Utopia on retreat.However irrational it may be, it has its rational roots in the factual seventy-year long history of the experience of the Yugoslav Utopia.The ‘heavy metal’ Yugoslavism of the Partisan ‘heroism’, Stakhanovite brigades XE "Stakhanovite brigades" , and concentration camps such as Goli Otok, XE "Goli Otok" are meaningless for the generation born after 1960, the generation that is now in its ‘horny years’.The Yugoslav nostalgia insanity has clearly become debatable. The acute panic of its eventual consequences is, by and large, cured automatically by a rational reflection about the inchoate period of the Yugoslav utopia, which, on the evidence of the very recent past, turned into hell.The indecipherable, as well as confused, Yugo-nostalgia, while it cannot present a serious threat to the democratic Croatian state, will certainly be a source of many frustrations for at least the next generation.6.6.7 OSCE fills all the LoopholesThe OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe) XE "OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe)" accuses Croatia of discrimination against Serbs in schools. "The new schoolbooks on history, geography and the Croatian language express intolerance towards the Serbs," it is stated in its Zagreb office.Descriptions such as ‘barbarians’, ‘uncivilised’ and ‘cruel’ are the most common adjectives used for the Serbs.The international ‘liberal’ historians condemn Croatia for reinventing its history, i.e., for insisting on the continuity of the Croatian statehood since the Middle Ages, which was supposedly interrupted only by the Yugoslav episode, runs the OSCE report.The chapters on the terror of the Chetniks and Partisans particularly irritated the Serbs and irritate the OSCE. This is the result of the ‘nationalist curriculum’.Yet, in the same report, the OSCE confirmed that 960 Serbian teachers in Croatia received permanent tenure of their jobs already in 1997.The political bias of this report is meant to add another loadstone to the bad international image of Croatia, designed by the left-wing politicians and ideologists of the New European order. 6.6.8 Serbs, As Parasitic as Mistletoe, Still 'Love' Croatia XE "Serbs, As Parasitic As Mistletoe, Still 'Love' Croatia" Dr. Andrija Hebrang XE "Hebrang, Dr. Andrija" , Croatian Minister of Health commented:“We cannot allow the return of all the Serbs who escaped as that would destabilise Croatia”.“Croatia is a small country, which must synchronise with the new division of the world, dictated by the big powers, i.e., Yalta, the new edition. Squeezed between the interests of the West, and the interests of the Russian block and the oil-rich Muslim world, Croatia in such a world must find its own place without backing. It must achieve this only on the basis of its rational actions.”“The pressure on us to accept the return of all the Serbs who escaped after the Storm ’95 offensive would mean the return of all those who have blood on their hands. We cannot allow that.”“We cannot accept also the demand by the ITFY to send a ‘certain number of our people to The Hague XE "The Hague" ’ without evidence of proper and individual indictments. The justification for such a demand was that Croatia, as a ‘co-operative country’, must do that, but we reject such an attitude. After all, national dignity is the absolute minimum that all nations worth their salt must maintain.”“The freedom of the media XE "Freedom of the media" ? If I would accuse Croatia of anything it would not be a lack of freedom for the media – this interview is proof of that – but rather about the anarchy in the Croatian media. Such anarchy is unknown in the civilised world. Look at what is written about the President of the State. And, as to myself, one weekly described me as a killer and another accused me of being a Croatian Mengele.”The Serbian question was tackled also in Isklju?enje i Zagrljaj (Exclusion and Embrace), XE "Isklju?enje i Zagrljaj (Exclusion and Embrace)," a book written by Dr. Miroslav Volf XE "Volf, Dr. Miroslav" (aged 43), an American of Croat origin, professor of Systemic Theology at Yale University, a post modern political theology. This deals with the problem of reconciliation, i.e., is it possible for a Croat victim to embrace a Serbian Chetnik killer?“The problem of conflict is a complex one. One component aims to achieve a pure identity, from which the other component is excluded. This is linked to the aim of the increase of power, and consequently with the economic reasons. Evil is irrational and cannot be rationalised. If this would not be the case, it would be difficult to explain the bestialities that occurred in this war. Croats and Serbs are not an exception in this. European civilisation left the biggest blood mark. The claim that the Croato-Serbian conflict was a fratricide is true only inasmuch as we are all brothers in God. Religious war? XE "Religious war?" In our regions, religion was mainly of a cultural value. The churches were destroyed – mainly because they were symbols of a particular nation. The struggle for justice is not per se a struggle for revenge – it is before all a struggle for clarity in relations. For their integrity.” 6.6.9 Waspish OSCE (Office for Security and Co-operation in Europe) XE "Waspish OSCE (Office for Security and Co-operation in Europe)" Pressure on Croatia is not diminishing. The OSCE condemned the Croatian Government for issuing Croatian passports to Croats living in the Diaspora on the basis of ‘the ethnic criterion’, rather than on the basis of their fixed abode, a criterion valid in other OSCE states. The OSCE estimates that 380,000 Croats got such passports, 330,000 out of the above living in BiH. They all have voting rights in Croatia and receive twelve seats in the Croatian parliament.This practice must be removed from the Croatian electoral law, demands the OSCE.The OSCE is peeved also that the Croatian Government denied voting rights to 300,000 Serbs who escaped to Serbia and BiH after the Storm ’95 offensive. Further, the OSCE demands establishment of an unbiased electoral commission that must include members of different political parties.The independence of the HRT (Croatian Radio and TV) XE "HRT (Croatian Radio and TV)" now dominated by the HDZ is also on the OSCE list.The OSCE accuses the Croatian Government of financing the HDZ election campaign out of the state budget.The situation in the press has improved, although the Government's relation with the International community has not changed.The only 'positive' comment by the OSCE states that 190,000 Croats who were ethnically cleansed from BiH and the SRJ cannot return home because the social and political conditions there are not favourable.6.7 Kiss-and-tell Stories on the Subject of Tudjman Are Becoming More Bizarre XE "Kiss-and-tell Stories On the Subject of Tudjman Are Becoming More Bizarre" Marko Belini? XE "Belini?, Marko" (aged 87), a top communist Party dude and a member of the Politburo of the KPH since 1943, in an extraordinary interview with Globus, related the following reminiscence: “I told Tudjman XE "Tudjman" in 1942: ‘you have fulfilled all the instructions I gave you. Do you accept membership of the Communist Party?’” At that crucial point, Belini? (a Senex Comicus of the Party), interrupted the interview with a non-sequitur, in order to brag about his great revolutionary past: “As a young furrier, I was working in the elegant shop Vinicki in Zagreb. At the beginning of 1931 during the worst dictatorship, King Aleksandar visited Zagreb with his wife, Queen Marie and his mother-in-law, Queen Mother Marie Hohenzollern Sigmaringen. They were walking around Zagreb and were impressed by our shop window display. They entered and the Queen Mother ordered a sealskin full-length fur coat. It fell to me to tailor it. Rascal that I was, I thought I will show her how a Zagreb communist takes measurements! I insisted on making the coat myself. Anti-Royalist that I was, I thought ‘fuck the Queen, I’ll teach her a lesson.’ About 50 and in good shape, she was turning in front of the mirror, not looking at herself but surreptitiously at me. I took a measurement around her thighs and gently tapped her on the bottom. She did not react. Then I thought I have to take the measurements from shoulders to her breasts, so that they fit in the coat as if in a nest. ‘Unwittingly’ I touched her nipple. She jerked but did not complain. I realised that the Queen rather enjoyed the fittings, so I went a bit further and bet 1,000 dinars with my comrades that I will produce a sample of the Queen’s pubic hair. On the second fitting the lining was ‘pulling’ so I crawled all over her legs to make an ‘adjustment’ and finally reached into her old-fashioned French silk knickers with a slit and cut a few pubic hairs with my sharp farrier's nails. The Queen did not budge. The fur coat was a great success and fit.”Globus:Let’s get back to the subject. What impression did Tudjman XE "Tudjman" make on you?Belini?:“It was a good impression. He was good looking and a talented lad. The second time I met him, I let him know that he is on the list of candidates for the Party. The first condition, I impressed upon him, was to learn the rules of conspiracy, because the Party was illegal. He accepted this without comment.”Globus, the shining star of the new ‘free Croatian press’ found plenty of space on the warpath of its deconstruction of President Tudjman XE "President Tudjman" , digging out skeletons in his cupboard. Yet, Globus’s postmodernist project for dissolving the ‘Tudjman XE "Tudjman" cult’ had just the opposite effect on the Croatian voters. Tudjman simply was winning all his elections by considerable margins. It is ironical that based on the above evidence, while the OSCE were criticising Croatia on the subject of ‘freedom of the press’, the moral beliefs that underpinned that freedom lost all the appeal for the press under the Soro? XE "Soro?" ‘non-governmental’ control.Then Globus 409 came out with a one-inch high headline: “UDBA XE "UDBA" [the Yugoslav Secret Police] reported me to Colonel Franjo Tudjman XE "Franjo Tudjman" as a supporter of Milovan Djilas at the time when Tudjman XE "Tudjman" was in pursuit of Djilas’s followers,” the statement attributed to one Andro Gabeli? XE "Gabeli?, Andro" (aged 78),) the well-known military commentator. Gabeli? met Tudjman XE "Tudjman" in 1954 when Tudjman was Party Leader in the JNA XE "JNA" .In his articles in the Party paper Borba from 11th October 1953 to 7th January 1954, Milovan Djilas criticised the Yugoslav ‘New Class’ XE "Yugoslav ‘New Class’" and Party bureaucracy. Djilas’s articles, so he says, delighted Gabeli?. On 10th January 1954 the CK KPJ decided to square accounts with Djilas. “As a consequence, I was reported to Franjo Tudjman XE "Franjo Tudjman" by the UDBA XE "UDBA" . I entered his room. He behaved as a gentleman. Without much ado, he told me ‘Gabeli?, we have information that in the case Djilas you no longer have confidence in the CK, Tito XE "Tito" and the Party.’ Tudjman XE "Tudjman" gave me a lecture on Djilas as a confused apologist for capitalism and a protagonist of bourgeois ideology and on how Tito is infallible.” To cut a long story short, Globus’s conclusion was suggestive rather than demonstrative, i.e., that Tudjman XE "Tudjman" was always a totalitarian. He never got rid of this trait, even as a Croatian 'nationalist', when he established another totalitarian system based this time on the Croatian statehood tradition. (Tudjman and Tito XE "Tito" photograph p.34.)Photograph of Tito and Tudjman6.7.1 The Character Assassination of President Tudjman by the Soro? XE "Soro?" Press in Boring Instalments XE "Character Assassination of President Tudjman by the Soro? Press in Boring Instalments" “Franjo Tudjman XE "Franjo Tudjman" was not jailed in1940 because of his involvement in the national but rather in the communist movement,” as another sour grapes headline.Globus argues by way of biographical excerpts, analogies, and metaphors rather than through the rigorous analysis of evidence, that Tudjman XE "Tudjman" is a totally different personality today from that in the 1940’s and 50’s. This, supposedly, was contrary to Tudjman’s own ‘clean Croatianhood, Croatian nationalism, even, if you will, fundamentalism,’ that he developed on a cause and effect principle.Soro? XE "Soro?" 's XE "Soro?" mouthpiece Globus (quoted here ad nauseam because it is so funny) rejects the description of Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s own activities in the 1940’s as ‘that of a national democrat’, which appeared recently on the Internet. Darko Hudelist XE "Hudelist, Darko" , a Globus writer, argues that ‘on the contrary, Tudjman was imprisoned in the 1940’s because he was present at the celebration of the October revolution organised by the ‘Cultural Union of Pacifist Students’.Globus's second proof [that he was not a national democrat] is his books written before 1960, ‘The war against peace’ and ‘The creation of the Socialist Yugoslavia’, which prove beyond any doubt that Tudjman XE "Tudjman" was an orthodox communist of the Bolshevik type’. The third proof of Globus are the high functions that Tudjman XE "Tudjman" held in the NOR and the JNA XE "JNA" , functions that could have been entrusted only to a person of immaculate communist background and loyalty to a regime that Tudjman calls today disparagingly ‘Yugo-communism’.The question then is how is it that Tudjman XE "Tudjman" turned from an orthodox communist into a Croatian nationalist, asks Darko Hudelist XE "Hudelist, Darko" , biographer of Tudjman.In order to unravel this mystery, Hudelist calls on the method of deduction, i.e., an intelligent guess. Any such simple causality between masses of facts from Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s communist era and his ‘Croatian nationalism’ is inherently implausible.The first hypothesis for Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s ‘conversion’, according to Hudelist, was his frustration in the Yugoslav National Army (JNA XE "JNA" ) where he could never rise to the top. In order to counteract this, Tudjman, allegedly, commenced with the propagation of his own cult and merits in the NOP in his native region of Croatian Zagorje, and later in the rest of Croatia, as a balance to the ‘heroism’ of the high-ranking officers in the Supreme Headquarters of the JNA, who were mainly pro-Serb orientated Montenegrins. Allegedly, this was the first step towards his ‘nationalism’.To be fair, Hudelist accepts that the real reason that the Tudjman XE "Tudjman" books were under attack in Belgrade was that in his writing “he resisted the attempts by the Belgrade establishment to minimise the anti-fascist struggle of the Croatian people. A further reason was that the Croatianhood and Ustashaism were put on the same level. Tudjman XE "Tudjman" made a giant leap forward in his rehabilitation of Domobranstvo XE "Domobranstvo" [the regular NDH army] and the defence of the Cvetkovi?-Ma?ek Agreement in 1939 XE "Cvetkovi?-Ma?ek Agreement in 1939" .” Hudelist’s account of Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s evolution into a nationalist is highly speculative and not the last word on the subject. For example: the fact that Tudjman XE "Tudjman" was “Ma?ek's mouthpiece on the concept of the Banovina Hrvatska” (which included part of BiH) would not be sufficient to take him into the camp of the followers of the ‘Great Croatia’. The explanation for such a ‘Banovina Hrvatska’ XE "Banovina Hrvatska’" may well be found in a changing cultural orientation among the large proportion of Muslim intellectuals in the 1930’s in favour of Croatia, in the inhospitable world of the Yugoslav Utopia, in which Bosnia was an ethnically riven geographical area soon to be swallowed by the Serbs.Tudjman XE "Tudjman" borrowed only politically feasible ideas. In reality, these ideas would sometimes turn out to be the world of gang warfare is another story. Not even in such a scenario can Tudjman be described as a Bolshevik and even less a Great Croat devourer of BiH.While the International Community was floating aimlessly, observing the bloody conflict of the post-modernist Yugoslav Utopia, where literally everyone was dividing BiH, Tudjman XE "Tudjman" had a responsibility to act in what he believed to be the best interests of the Croatian people as a whole.Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s role in the 'Croatian Spring' of 1971 XE "Croatian Spring 1971" was not that of an outsider as Hudelist correctly believes. The fact that he possessed a long-term political vision, and acted accordingly, nobody can deny. Ultimately, his political success in re-establishing the Independent Croatian State made him the target for a relatively small number of ‘liberal’ Croatian intellectuals who suffered from hypertrophy of their own role in the Croatian movement for independence, and later, in the homeland war.It is inconceivable that any of these dreamers hope to have achieved anything as spectacular as he did. In recent times, they have turned into pathological (post-mortem) Tudjman XE "Tudjman" haters (Banac, XE "Banac" Cvii? XE "Cvii?, Cristof" , Pavlini? XE "Pavlini?" , et al.,) and would deny him the credit that is his due. Their negative approach and peevishness, very often presented as rational criticism, made them willing to sacrifice Tudjman on the altar of a post-modern utopian ‘liberalism’, ‘human rightism’ and ‘pluralism’.These recherché doctrines were irrelevant in the historical situation when the aggression of the Yugoslav Utopia landed heavily on the unarmed Croatian people. In such a scenario, it was irrelevant as to whether Tudjman XE "Tudjman" was a ‘Bolshevik’ or a ‘reformed Bolshevik’ XE "Reformed Bolshevik" . The gross difference between him and them lies in the fact that he delivered what the Croatian people wanted. As it turned out, maybe that his ‘Bolshevik’ past eventually made him eminently suitable to wrestle with his former ideological buddies who were now after his own head. There were no irrational anti-Serb hatreds in that struggle on his part (Tudjman tried to talk the Krajina Serbs to their senses for four years – his darling daughter being married to a Serb). He simply rejected the idea of being a utopian, a rare quality in a Croat. His thinking, on the evidence of the outcome of the Croato-Serbian war, was realistic about his aims and limitations and therefore it was successful. Most of the objective foreign observers agree with this.“What is the real reason why Tudjman XE "Tudjman" is so disliked in Brussels?” asks John Laughland XE "Laughland, John" in the title of an article in The Times to which he replies immediately: “The reason is that he is the democratically elected and popular architect of Croatia’s national sovereignty. The European Union seems to be determined to resurrect the practice of unilateral demands by powerful governments upon weak ones. On 27th October, Brussels issued a ‘demarche’ to the Government of Franjo Tudjman XE "Tudjman, Franjo " in Zagreb as Croatia prepared to hold parliamentary elections on 22nd December. Its message was simple: ‘If the ruling party stays in power, Croatia will be economically and diplomatically isolated.’”The requirements that Croatia adheres to ‘democratic standards’ [ironically enough, the return of the Serbs], media neutrality ‘even though most of the press already supports the opposition’, change of the electoral laws ‘even though the EU said four years ago that the country fulfilled all the political conditions for EU membership’, in reality are little more than a pretext for attacking the HDZ ruling party. In May Romano Prodi XE "Prodi, Romano " (former Italian Prime Minister) demanded ‘political normalisation in Croatia before the end of the year’, no more no less.“In the middle of the election campaign the EU invited Croatian opposition leaders to Brussels. Tudjman XE "Tudjman" has a true democratic mandate and is demonised for recapturing Croatian territory from the rebellious Serbs. He may also prove difficult to manipulate [unlike Mesi? XE "Mesi?" ] when the EU tries to shoehorn Croatia into some new South Eastern European Federation, or a new supper-Yugoslavia called ‘The Stability Pact’. It is already clear that sovereignty and the defence of national borders are considered to be outdated concepts in the New Year Europe, or in other words back to utopia on the model of Europe itself.”From the other side of the Atlantic, Daniel Server XE "Server, Daniel" , a member of the State Department XE "State Department" in ‘charge’ of Croatia and BiH, screams in Globus: “Tudjman XE "Tudjman" and HDZ must be removed from power. The conclusion arrived at in our document ‘Croatia after Tudjman’ is not a conspiracy against Croatia,” he tries to soften the blow in the second sentence.In the opinion of the Institute for Peace in Washington XE "Institute for Peace in Washington" , Croatia must now accomplish the process of democratisation. To the criticism that the Institute talked only with the Croatian opposition, Server’s answer was that nobody from the Croatian Government was on the other side of the line. “To start with,” goes on Server, “we have greeted President Tudjman XE "President Tudjman" and his policies inasmuch as he freed the occupied regions of Croatia and began reconstruction. But now, his time has come and gone.” This report is simply about the future of Croatia.“I don’t believe that the aim of the US is to crush Croatian nationalism. Even American patriots are, if you will, almost nationalists. What we are talking about here is democracy, i.e., if all the citizens are equal before the law. . . . The International Community wishes that the Serbs return . . .” The demise of Tudjman XE "Tudjman" created the illusion that America had ‘won’ the ideological war in Croatia. Of course, it was an illusion, because the laissez-faire American type of democracy can no more be realised in Croatia than can communism.6.7.2 The Unbearable Senility of the ‘Croatian Opposition’ XE "Unbearable Senility of the ‘Croatian Opposition’" The leaders of the five Croatian Opposition Parties departed for the US to pay homage to their masters in Washington and report on the situation in Croatia.In July this year (1998), at the Institute for Peace in Washington, a conference on the theme ‘Croatia after Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’ was held. The Croatian public found out about it three months after the event. The US government agencies, the Ministry of Defence, the State Department XE "State Department" and the CIA XE "CIA" were present.“Democratic change in Croatia will only happen after the demise of Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ,” it was stated in the concluding document. “Until then Croatia will remain a hybrid state with an autocratic leader who controls everything and with a democratic system that hardly survives.”The Americans, with their usual precision, have detailed and even timed the breakdown of HDZ.The post-Tudjman XE "Tudjman" coalition will meet with difficult problems (the creation of an independent media, civil and a pluralistic society). Privatisation of state property, which was transferred previously into private hands without a transparent procedure, will be reconsidered. Economic and social problems will become the numero uno problem.In BiH, (Croatian) Hercegovina, isolated, economically under-developed and with a small population, will have no choice but to put itself under the control of Sarajevo.The character of the regime in Croatia, the Americans thought, is very similar to that of France under General de Gaulle. After Tudjman XE "Tudjman" there will be no support for his Bosnian-Hercegovinian policies.The Croatian aim to be included in the European integrations gives a golden opportunity for the West to twist the arm of Croatia, it was concluded.Finally, a schedule of demands that Croatia must fulfil was put on the table.1)The return of the Serbs (naturally);The creation of an independent media (so what was the magazine Globus?);Multi-party control over the electoral process;The end of the Zagreb-Mostar axis, and the end of the electoral list for the Croatian Diaspora;A reduction in presidential power;The creation of a transparent programme of privatisation. If Croatia fulfils all the above requirements, it will become truly independent, it was concluded.The American organisation Freedom House XE "Freedom House" put Croatia beside Cambodia, Chad, Congo, Ethiopia, the Ivory Coast, and Yugoslavia on the list of countries with non-free media. The lack of freedom of expression, political, and economic pressure, including the repressive measures towards journalists, contributed to these very low marks. Curiously enough, Turkey, a member of NATO, got even worse marks, but this was ignored. Freedom House formed its opinions on the basis of information from the ‘various sources’.“Tudjman XE "Tudjman" is deciding the freedom of the media, and in response we shall increase the pressure on him as much as we can,” stated a foreign diplomat who wanted to remain anonymous.A brief summary of the extravagantly called Freedom House project is as follows: It begins with the belief that the free media (a did-you-see-that-programme) can be put in order according to the dictates of the US. Just as Yugoslavia failed to realise its utopia, America will fail to bring about the equally utopian freedom of the press. What it will do, it will generate a rival raucous and anarchic press locked in a life-and-death struggle. Current examples in Croatia are foreign financed ‘journals’ such as the Feral Tribune XE "Feral Tribune" , Novi List XE "Novi List" , Jutarnji XE "Jutarnji" List and Globus, vis-à-vis a government-sponsored press.Globus investigates how the Service for the protection of the Constitution monitors the editors of the independent newspapers in Croatia. In that way it repudiates the propaganda line about the non-existence of the ‘free press’ itself. “As soon as a journalist mentions the names of Tudjman XE "Tudjman" or Pa?ali? XE "Pa?ali?" , the Service monitors start ticking. The digital telephones recently introduced into Croatia enable completely undetectable monitoring. The central computer memorises the telephone numbers in question. Terrorism and the foreign embassies, particularly those of the US, BiH and Yugoslavia, each have different codes. The conversations recorded on hard discs are later analysed. However, as there are not many qualified analysts, the security reports deal mainly with the private lives of those monitored.”In 1990, Perica Juri?, XE "Juri?, Perica" the Deputy Minister of the Interior (now retired) and the architect of the Service for the protection of the Constitution stated in an interview with Globus: “When the Intelligence Services appear in the media, that becomes their downfall. By definition they must remain secret. The current hoo-hah about the Secret Services in Croatia is cooked up by an intelligent brain, which does not wish to come out into the open about its real aim, i.e., the demolition of President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" . Anybody who tried to interfere with this immune system of the State [the intelligence services XE "intelligence services" ] obviously wishes to undermine the President. I am sure that any future government will not only inherit the Secret Services but it will boost them up. The hullabaloo about the Services in the press is therefore bullshit. The chaos that the opposition is creating in such a way is bringing the country to its knees. Let me explain. Look at the attitude of the International community towards Croatia; in a word, it is absolute arrogance.“We have the situation in Croatia where foreign ambassadors stand on public soap boxes and make speeches to our people as if they were leaders of the local political parties. We have been brought into the situation where we don’t respect ourselves. The Constitution is being questioned and that is the real aim of these actions.“I do not think that the Services have the constitutional right to monitor newspapers and the leaders of the opposition. But if journalists are constantly preoccupied with the Intelligence Services, it is only logical that the Services will take an interest in them. This is a simple matter of self-defence.“May I tell you that the Croatian Intelligence Services are lead by ethical and honest people who do their job properly. Croatia will pay dearly for the fact that we lacked ‘media planning’ or a proper propaganda machine during the Homeland war. And this is the weakness that the anti-Tudjman XE "Tudjman" media people are ready to exploit. Today journalists are trying to find out if they are monitored. Of course they are monitored, that is the general practice everywhere.”Globus:Do you agree that at the Fourth Session the HDZ has gone too far to the right?Juri?:“Nonsense. We were at the extreme right in 1989 and 1990. Today we have gone back into the ranks of the WWII Partisans. The deconstruction of the Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ‘personality cult’, pursued by the ‘independent media’ and financed by people like Soro? XE "Soro?" , the demolisher of the pound Stirling on ‘Black Wednesday’ is lead by the avant-garde of the ‘free press’.The matter under investigation was the publication of the so-called Statehood XE "Statehood" , produced by the HDZ.“The contents of ‘The Statehood’ are proof that the HDZ openly pursues the personality cult of Tudjman XE "Tudjman" on the Tito XE "Tito" pattern,” was the opening shot by Globus. “Here Tudjman XE "Tudjman" is presented as the great man of Croatian history. He is the seafarer of the Croatian ship exposed to the fury of the storms, whose statesmanship was realised in the monumental deed of the reinstatement of the Croatian State.” Part of the reason that Globus succumbed to paranoiac political radicalism, whose enmity was to nothing less than carefully wrap up the reinstatement of the Croatian State into the ‘cult’ of Franjo Tudjman XE "Franjo Tudjman" , is precisely the subject matter Globus had been founded and financed to explore and flog.With headlines like ‘Are the Supreme Commander, Franjo Tudjman XE "Franjo Tudjman" and six Croatian generals on the list for The Hague XE "The Hague" ?’ puts the Zagreb Globus magazine at the head of the ‘independent’ press nudging the end of the Tudjman XE "Tudjman" era.The fact that President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , in his speech at the opening of the premier officers’ school ‘Ban Josip Jela?i? XE "Jela?i?" ’ in Zagreb articulated: “I must tell you The Hague XE "The Hague" is preparing indictments for you, for all of us. They have five or six generals from Croatia, and also some from BiH on the list”was probably a rhetorical phrase by the Commander-in-Chief who knew that the external pressures put upon Croatia could be better understood by applied moral psychology behind the political principles of his ruling party. After all, he was talking to the new generation of defenders of Croatia.Globus’s argument about Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s ‘conspiracy theory’ about the internal and external enemies of Croatia is too shallow to be considered seriously. Nor could it be ‘sentimentalist’, as Globus implies. After all, the fact is that The Hague XE "The Hague" investigators are roaming around Croatia freely, relying on the Amnesty International censure of the leading Croatian generals in the operation ‘Storm ’95’, for the alleged ‘liquidation’ of the 450 Serbian civilians in Krajina, as absolute truth.The Croatian parliament voted a constitutional law about co-operation of Croatia with the ITFY in The Hague XE "The Hague" back in April 1996. The conclusion, therefore, must be that the only rational position defensible in this matter is the factual co-operation of both sides and not straying through political minefields laid by the ITFY in The Hague in the first place.“Tudjman XE "Tudjman" was never a democrat and never will be” stated the leader of the opposition, Ivica Ra?an XE "Ra?an, Ivica" (SDP), himself a former secretary of the totalitarian Communist Party and its ideological guru.“He compensates this deficit with his merits for the creation of [the independent] Croatia. We never minimised these merits. But now, when it is a question of will Croatia be a democratic state, Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s deficit becomes decisive. Yet he is also pragmatic and knows when to give up if he has to [in international affairs] but as to the problems at home, that is a different matter.”Ra?an squeezed skilfully out of the awkward accusation by the HDZ that he"was imprisoning the very people with whom he now hopes to build a democratic Croatia today", while he was in power in the communist Yugoslavia.“If one accepts the argument of the personal responsibility for everything that was happening during communism, then one can also accuse Tudjman XE "Tudjman" of more serious matters, such as for the slaughter of the Croatian army at Bleiburg XE "Bleiburg" . This kind of propaganda is returning us back into the Balkans again.”To the criticism that the SDP is de facto only a ‘reformed communist’ party rather than a democratic socialists party, Ra?an replied:“Such a jibe doesn’t work any longer with the Croatian people. We have proved ourselves in the Homeland war, in the first democratic elections, in abandoning Belgrade, and also by a firm aim to take the country into a democratic Europe. Let’s face it, the HDZ has the highest number of former communists within it,” he stated ambiguously.For all his psychological acuity and intellectual reach, Ra?an’s moral register is rather limited. His political vision and praxis is still Marxist. The way to power for the communists was always on the back of some kind of ‘national front’; in this case it was the front of the power hungry HSLS (Croatian Socialist Liberal Party) and even more of the HSS (the old, worn-out, pro-Yugoslav Croatian Peasant Party). These parties now serve him as a ‘democratic’ step ladder.HDZ on the other hand, has departed publicly from its psychological communist instincts, and as a convert to ‘nationalism’ shouts louder in order to redeem its previous sins. It is openly contemptuous of the ‘social democrats’ for their crypto communism. For this, it should be congratulated.The psychology of the Croatian six-party coalition opposition, therefore, on this score is rubbish, pure and simple. The Croatian electorate is prone to have mixed feelings about this coalition and yet it seems it is ready for a change at any price. The price will be paid and the lesson will only be learned after this motley crowd is put into power.His warnings of internal and external enemies that try to remove him from power is not just empty words on the part of President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" . Although such a negative approach does not illuminate the core of the current Croatian political experience, it reveals the essence of the antagonism by the ‘International Community’ towards his style of government.Tudjman XE "Tudjman" describes this opposition as the ‘adversary’ of the Croatian State. However, coming from his mouth, the public read the word ‘adversary’ as the ‘enemy of the state’, which gives his words a conspiratorial character. At the First Session of the Central Council of the HDZ on 7th December 1998, Tudjman declared: “The internal and external adversaries plan to create a crisis and the collapse of the HDZ and of our kind of Croatia. The aim of the unnaturally composed opposition coalition is the removal of the HDZ, the destabilisation of Croatia and the creation of a kind of Croatia that will be ready to obey the others.”“We are being attacked by the yellow press and an opposition serving fiendish [paklene] lies in order to blame the HDZ for all the problems . . . This is unthinkable in the civilised world. The freedom of the media in Croatia is without parallel compared to the countries that brag about it. Dear friends, we have to spell it out to these democratic divines, to reconsider their own governments in their own countries; when these change government, everything goes, not only the editors of the newspapers but also the office cleaners. Let them not try to sell to us something which they cannot push anywhere else.”Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s ‘zoological’ metaphors met with considerable disapproval:“There are too many wolves and sheep in Croatia and too few sensible foxes. We were wolves when we defended ourselves but we cannot allow ourselves to be lead into the fog by sheep and geese.”‘Public opinion’ dismissed such a description of the opposition to the tune of 74.1%, according to the ‘independent’ magazine Globus.Yet the anger of President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" cannot be dismissed lightly. The fact that the West wished that he would give up power ‘democratically’ put unfair pressure on the electorate. Numerous foreign diplomats and ‘liberal’ politicians, whose effort in the choice of words and composition of sentences is equally entertaining, spelled this aim out daily.All of which raises an important question: How exactly does Croatian public opinion distinguish between the Western pluralism so persistently and often arrogantly pushed onto Croatia, and Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s relativism, which he so insistently maintains?The simple answer is that it does not. ‘Democratic public opinion’ is a myth and may be more often wrong than right. After all, Giordano Bruno XE "Bruno, Giordano" was yelling “Eppur si muove” [in spite of what you say, I insist that the earth moves around the sun] while burning at the stake. He was right, and the rest of the democratic world was wrong. The ‘democratic’ argument can go both ways.The opposition campaign against Tudjman XE "Tudjman" would not be complete without the ‘American view’, as spelled out by the former US Ambassador to Zagreb, Peter W. Galbraith XE "Galbraith" : “The long-term outlook for Croato-American relations is very good. The US and Croatia are linked with a series of historical and cultural links. A large number of Croats live in the US.”He sighed and moved along to a more serious issue: “The Serbs [in Croatia] must be adopted as fully-fledged citizens,” and: “Zagreb must realise that BiH is another state.”The two fundamental clichés of the US policy towards Croatia were thus clearly stated.“As soon as political change occurs, Croatia will very quickly catch up with Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Hungary. 1993 was the worst year for Croatia. One third was occupied by the ‘forces which had the support of Belgrade’, and the Croats in BiH were losing the war with the Muslims . . . I tried to remove Mate Boban, President of Herceg-Bosna XE "Boban, Mate - President of Herceg-Bosna" . I (Galbraith XE "Galbraith" ) maintained that he was responsible for the war crimes and was the No. 1 problem. Naturally we knew that Zagreb then completely controlled the Bosnian Croats, although the causes of the Croato-Muslim war are very complex. David Owen XE "Owen, Lord David" , the Peace Intermediary accused the US for the failure of the so-called Vance-Owen Peace Plan XE "Vance-Owen Peace Plan" . That’s ridiculous, as it is well known that Karad?i? rejected that plan. The fact is that the Bosnian Croats initiated military operations . . . because they aimed at occupying the regions that were allocated to them in that plan. They had not consulted the Muslims. Briefly, these were the provocations that confronted the US policies in 1993 in Croatia. . . . I spent the first half of the year trying to persuade Tudjman XE "Tudjman" to break up with the separatists in Herzegovina, their plan about a Croatian state in BiH and the crimes that occurred because of that.[ In return the US promised to help Croats in BiH as well as in Croatia. Only on the 19th February 1994, after a long indecision, Tudjman decided to play the American card. That decision was correct because the US, with a great deal of effort, have helped to stop the war between the Croats and the Muslims in BiH and reintegrate [Eastern Slavonia] after the Erdut Agreement XE "Erdut Agreement" .“As far as the bugging of the media by the secret services in Croatia is concerned, this is another problem . . . Tudjman XE "Tudjman" cannot differentiate between his critics and his enemies. I am afraid this is a communist inheritance. I have always considered President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" a successful leader, although I have not agreed with his aims. Naturally I admired his abilities . . . The late Gojko ?u?ak XE "Gojko ?u?ak" was an able Minister of Defence.”“One can agree or not agree with what he did, but the fact is that he excellently organised the Croatian army as well as the Defence Ministry (MORH) XE "MORH - Defence Ministry" .”“?u?ak was a man who understood US policies. He was straightforward. Tudjman XE "Tudjman" trusted him. ?u?ak XE "?u?ak" had a clear vision of the organisation of the Croatian army on American principles. He believed in human rights and maintained that the Croatian army was the most western orientated armed force in the former communist countries and I believe he was right. I doubt that the Croatian army could be an obstacle to democratisation of the state or to change the government. It is unthinkable that President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" or the HDZ would use such raw methods in order to retain power . . . . After all, if they would choose such a way, they would wipe out all the democratic inheritance that Tudjman and the HDZ left to Croatia. Tudjman and the HDZ brought about Croatian independence and territorial integrity and in this way established the foundations of democracy." When provoked that General Markica Rebi?, Deputy Defence Minister XE "Rebi?, General Markica - Deputy Defence Minister" , is taken to be the America’s man in MORH, Galbraith XE "Galbraith" answered:“Markica Rebi? was the officer for the intelligence matters in MORH [Croatian Ministry of Defence]; he was of great help and kept us informed consistently about the key events. Naturally we were grateful for this help and therefore we decorated him. However, that did not make him an American man. During the war [in Croatia] we needed many sources of information. Some of them we could obtain by satellite. Even so, many of them we had to obtain on the ground, and Rebi? helped us in that respect.”When asked by Globus if it was true that Rebi? received American satellite photos of the Serbian position in Krajina before the Operation Storm ’95', Galbraith XE "Galbraith" answered: “No, that is not true. The fact is that there were no Serbian military positions in Krajina. Krajina was an almost abandoned region. The Serbs did not organise the defence of Krajina.”Are you saying that Operation Storm ’95 was a victory over a decrepit adversary who did not have the intention to defend itself?Galbraith XE "Galbraith" :“Exactly. This is the reason that you needed only four days to beat them. The Croatian army was well organised, which I admired. Even so, that does not mean that its adversary was strong. On the contrary.”Like many American diplomats whose acknowledgement of the ‘historical and cultural links between the US and Croatia’ is essentially Olympian, Galbraith XE "Galbraith" ’s knowledge of the historical and cultural terrain of Croatia and BiH was very superficial. For example, he emphasises the fact that ‘a large number of Croats live in the US’ as if that fact was a decisive influence in American policy towards Croatia in 1991-95. On the contrary, it had a dislocating effect. It ignored the large Croat immigration (approximately five million) in the US since the early 19th century. In spite of having several US senators and congressmen, governors and mayors of Croat origin, the US policy was mobilised to favour the Muslims in BiH even though the Bosnian-Hercegovinian Muslims had no traditional links with America apart from a few individual exceptions. However, these exceptions (?acirbey XE "?acirbey" and Gani? XE "Gani?" who studied in the US and had the backing of the oil rich Muslim states) had a more radical influence on US policy than all the long historical Croatian links with America. This is rather curious. The root cause of the failure of the American Croats to influence a more balanced US policy, particularly towards the Croats in BiH, lies in their profound Americanisation (with the minor exception of the pro-Tudjman XE "Tudjman" post-WWII emigrants) and therefore, their support for the ‘Clinton outcome of the war’ in BiH. Clinton’s first appointments of US ambassadors in BiH, who were Americanised Croats by origin (Kauzlari? XE "Kauzlari?" ) proves this is no mere confection.American policy in BiH was above all a matter of political allegiances and massive backhanders from the Arab countries, it could be claimed. That is, it was a matter of balancing the Serbian presence on the ground and a ‘compassionate’ attitude towards the suffering of the Muslims. In that scenario, the Croats in BiH, as the weakest link who were suffering even more, were subject to the unavoidable pressure between the reality on the ground and Clinton’s projected ‘different outcome in BiH’. As such, the 'different outcome' was used by the US to pressurise Croatia ‘to adopt the Serbs as fully-fledged citizens’ and to complete Croatia’s reintegration. Such pragmatism could not be applied without virtually destroying the indigenous and the numerically smallest Croatian community. Morality had nothing to do with that goal, if at all. This fits perfectly with Galbraith XE "Galbraith" ’s sophism, that ‘Mate Boban, President of Herceg-Bosna XE "Boban, Mate - President of Herceg-Bosna" , was responsible for war crimes’ and therefore, he [Galbraith] ‘tried to remove him’. The persistence of such sophistry in the American 'different outcome in BiH' policies is precisely the reason why these policies were so opportunistic. What was the business of the US Ambassador in Zagreb anyway to try to remove Boban ‘in another state’, to use his phrase? Galbraith XE "Galbraith" ’s admission that the ‘causes of the Croato-Muslim war were very complex’, a truism that, with all due allowances, disqualifies his contradictory statement that Zagreb and Boban were a motive for the Croato-Muslim war.What of the moral equivalence of the American policies in BiH with the Vance-Owen plan? Galbraith XE "Galbraith" took offence that David Owen XE "Owen, Lord David" accused the US for this failure. In that, Owen was right. The Vance-Owen plan was in many ways more equitable and just than the Dayton Agreement XE "Dayton Agreement" , but it did not meet with Clinton’s policy of a ‘different outcome in BiH’. The qualitative judgment that it incited the Croats in BiH ‘to occupy the regions that were allocated to them in that plan’ (i.e., their own land which they had inhabited since the dark Middle Ages) are scandalously out of line with the balance sheet of the Croato-Muslim relations between 1990 and 1993, as recorded in the chronology of the war on the following pages. The Vance-Owen plan, in spite of all its weaknesses and in spite of ‘Karad?i?’s rejection and the lack of consultation with the Muslims’, was enforceable, providing it had the support of the US. But this was not forthcoming for obvious reasons.The author wrote to Lord Owen on 18th January 1993, criticising the plan as based too much on the ‘Anglo-Saxon centralist tradition’, to which Lord Owen answered on 19th January 1993: “I fear some of your references to our plan distort what we said; that far from being part of the ‘Anglo-Saxon centralist tradition’, it proposes arguably the most de-centralist government [in BiH] that has ever existed”. (Letter to Lord Owen from author dated 18th January 1993 in Author’s archives.) . .”The very absurdity of Galbraith XE "Galbraith" ’s contentions brings us to a crucial point. ‘Separatism in Hercegovina’ and the ‘Croatian state in BiH’ and ‘crimes that occurred because of that’ did not stop the US from pushing through the Dayton Agreement XE "Dayton Agreement" , which divided BiH between the Serbs and the Muslims and created a Serbian state within BiH for the first time in its history, in spite of the massive genocide of the Muslims by the Serbs in Srebrenica, which 'Serbian state' now demands a referendum on independence. Such contradictions in the US policies cannot redress the balance of injustices on both sides. Moreover, the interview with Galbraith XE "Galbraith" came at a time when an historical appraisal of the events of the few previous years was still fresh in the minds of the still living participants.The retrospective assessment stumbles, however, on a contradictory obstacle:Gojko ?u?ak XE "Gojko ?u?ak" , the Croatian Minister of Defence XE "?u?ak, Gojko - Croatian Minister of Defence" , the very example of that ‘Hercegovinian separatist’, got full marks from Galbraith XE "Galbraith" ‘because he understood US policies’. General Markica Rebi? of the same Hercegovinian ilk was for Galbraith ‘of great help to US intelligence . . . and therefore we decorated him.’ Any realistic account of the events would effectively shut the door on the justification for the American strategy in BiH. As to the American interests there, that is another story!!By the same token, Galbraith XE "Galbraith" ’s perverse contention that the mighty Croatian army in a homeland war (Operation Storm’95) fell on the defenceless Serbian adversary, was meant to be a portent for demonising Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s Croatia in order to hold it hostage to the new American world order in the Balkans.The speech made by President Tudjman XE " Tudjman" in the ‘Ban Josip Jela?i? XE "Jela?i? Officers School in Zagreb" ’ Officers School in Zagreb, was received in Russia with great sympathy, particularly in the nationalist and communist circles, writes Globus on the occasion of Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s visit to Moscow and his meeting with President Yeltsin.However, the ‘pro-democratic’ Izvestija XE "Izvestija" , in its inflated commentary stated, “a Croatian dictator was warmly received in the Kremlin”.In spite of that, Izvestija XE "Izvestija" goes on, “it is difficult to believe that Croatia will change its pro-western orientation.” Although Russia and Croatia signed an agreement on co-operation, Tudjman XE "Tudjman" could not retrieve Russia’s debt due to Croatia as part of the debt to the former Yugoslavia in the amount of $1.5 billion. The magazine Komersant commented that Russia aimed to have one foot in Serbia and the other in Croatia, with a large gap between the two.The Communist press, on the other hand, commented that ‘The US is interfering in the internal affairs of Croatia, and that Russia is in that respect much more discrete.’ The Croatian proposal that the oil pipeline from Russia be extended to the Croatian port of Rijeka in the Adriatic to enable Russia to sell the oil directly to the US was found to be of some interest in the American business circles.The Croato-Russian military agreement and the Tudjman XE "Tudjman" -Yeltsin meeting in Moscow, as expected, were totally ignored in the Western media.6.7.3 Economic Strategy of Croatia XE "Economic Strategy of Croatia" The opposition press claims that the Economic Strategy of Croatia was planned by the politicians and not by the economists. The Croatian citizens asked what was going to happen to their living standards. This dilemma must be resolved between the international financial circles, which prophesy economic collapse and the government, which describes them as pessimists.The aim of the press campaign was to show that the government and the experts are at loggerheads. While the economic problems of the country for obvious reasons are considerable, in no way could they be described as chaotic in the way that the opposition claimed. The central concern of the press remained negative reporting, i.e., from only one angle, that of propaganda: ‘the stagnation of the economic development; the fall in exports and in investment; the falling behind in technology, and a rise of unemployment. The excuses for such reporting were ‘to present the realistic assessment of the economic policies of the government so far’, they argue. It is to journalists’ pulpits that the nation is looking for a weekly dose of fix.Naturally, the opposition concentrated on picking holes in these policies. Political pragmatism dictated the ‘correctness’ of the government policies, the opposition claims.The HSS, the party with the big Croatian name and the pro-Yugoslav past after the assassination of Stjepan Radi? XE "Radi?, Stjepan" in 1928, has charged boldly into post-communist ideological vacuum of social democracy with the air of people who have nothing to lose and everything to gain by joining the reformed communist bandwagon.Zlatko Tom?i? XE "Tom?i?, Zlatko" (53), its leader at this time (January 1999), embarked on a campaign to sell a radical re-working of the ‘Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’ state.“The HDZ will lose the next election,” he stated with an ideological lightness unburdened by ‘nationalist’ inhibitions. Sitting on the fence does not pose large problems for the HSS leadership, on the basis of long historical experience.“The HDZ can hardly summon 17% of votes, yet in spite of that it is still a dangerous adversary,” he back pedals a bit. “And that’s not all. The fact is that it is not only HDZ that is in crisis. The whole of the Croatian society and the Croatian State is in crisis. Although the interests of the international community and the interest of the opposition are, by and large identical, it does not mean that we are a satellite or an agent of the international community as HDZ argues. We agree with that community in all the key questions of democracy.“In our communication with the international community we are not ‘denouncing’ the Croatian state simply because there is nothing that the international community does not know about Croatia. We cannot allow that for example the European Union punishes Croatia because of the HDZ.“Western integration, unlike isolation, can speed up democracy in Croatia. Out of the 21 conditions which the EU prescribed as necessary for Croatia’s entry into the Council of Europe, only 17 have been so far fulfilled.” “The foreign policy of the present government is totally unclear. We also demand transparency in the activities of the intelligence services XE "intelligence services" . At the moment I am not clear what they do and how many people work for them . . .” Tom?i? is very clear – the prospect of the Opposition meeting President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" is still in the realms of the unknown.“In the case of the Opposition victory at the next elections, the Government will inevitably enter into a period of coalition with President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , and he will be forced by circumstances to behave democratically.” Ivica Ropu?, HDZ spokesman XE "Ropu?, Ivica - HDZ spokesman" , however, repudiated Tom?i?’s view that all Croatian politics is structured in terms of friend and foe, and gave a more balanced view of the current state of Croatia.“It is incomprehensible that the opposition parties, such as the HSS and HSLS, to which we offer collaboration, are turning this offer down. The only glue that holds the Opposition together is the aim of the removal of HDZ from power, otherwise in all other aspects, they are at loggerheads amongst themselves. The insignificant parties serve only as a decorative element within the opposition coalition. More than 50% of the membership of HSS and HSLS do not agree on collaboration with the SDP [reformed communists]. ‘Sleepers’ and ‘Moles’ are hatched, due to contradictions within the parties themselves, and are not the result of the HDZ demolition of their activities.“HDZ still counts on a safe 35-37% electoral support, which is 20% higher than the support for the SDP, with 17-19% of the votes. The new political situation requires new ideas. The ‘Sleepers’ in the Opposition are frankly wasting their energies in the internal party squabbles instead of latching on to the political reality.“Social democracy is the political trend in Europe today and the SDP are jumping on that band wagon, in spite of all its negative communist baggage from the past. The Social Democrats also made very few political errors in relation to the policies of national importance. Yet of late they have started to behave haughtily as if they are already in power.”The exchange of accusations among the political parties became a metaphor for the chaotic situation in the media, where accusations are flung about without any proof, behaviour that perfectly agrees with the querulous Croat character inherited from the Illyrians.The opposition ideologists, in their quest for moral perfection, aim to destroy the HDZ government because of its ‘criminal activities’ in the privatisation of Croatian property. The government does not deny that the crime in that respect existed and as such those responsible must be punished. This effort had been threatened, however, by conspiracy theorists who are conveying the idea that in the deep crevices of the HDZ, evil characters are plotting the seizure of everything that moves. A case in point for such paranoia has been the suggestion that President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" personally was involved in conducting such practices.If the President of Croatia, after fifty years of work, cannot have ?60,000 in his savings account, like any other well-off person, without others grumbling, it would be a rather sad state of affairs.All this is an attempt by peripheral ‘liberal’ elites to dominate the centre of political life. This reflects more on this periphery rather than on the government. Was it a concern for the common good of Croatia or, here we go again, a motive of interest that stimulated the publishing editor of the Serbian cultural society ‘Prosveta’ to talk to a Zagreb magazine (January 1999), about the sensitive issues of the Serbian minority? Or it may be increased respect for the Croats after dismally losing the war with them? It seems to me more likely that it has something to do with the lack of good manners since he still talks about Croats as if they were a subservient rather than an independent people.“In whichever way the Serbs in Croatia express their identity today they always do it in a close circle. To openly declare Serbian identity in some Croatian heartlands, such as Sisak, Gospi? and Osijek where they experienced tragic consequences of the war, demands an extraordinary effort. In Rijeka, Zagreb and Pula, this is incomparably easier. Although the Serbs in Croatia had already established their socio-psychological portrait with not always the well-intentioned assistance of others, now everything is back to square one. The Serbian minority has been halved, physically and psychologically. The young ones have left for Serbia forever, and the old ones, who totally identified with Yugoslavia, were crushed in the apocalypse. Now in the psychological underworld, they refuse to declare themselves openly politically, except maybe that the majority will vote for the left political parties behind the curtain of the polling booth.“The problem of the Serbs in Croatia was often an irrational identification with Yugoslavia. . . . In that way it was imposed on them to be its protectors which they accepted uncritically. Yugoslavia was an acceptable solution for the Serbs in Croatia [12% of the total population], offering them a peaceful existence [at the expense of the 88% majority]. When they felt that the Croats did not understand their problems, they tended to identify more strongly with Serbia. Added to that, their local problems, such as something that smelled like a policy of rehabilitation of the Ustashas, led to their irrational behaviour in the 1980’s and 1990’s.” 6.7.4 Publishing editor of Serbian Cultural Society ‘Prosveta’ talks to a Zagreb magazine, January 1999. XE "Publishing editor of Serbian cultural society ‘Prosveta’ to talk to Zagreb magazine, January 1999." The ambiguity of this confession leaves us with an open question – whether the defence of the ‘peculiarities’ of this Helot minority in Croatia is intrinsically bound up with moral relativism, almost entirely devoid of the interest in the development of an understanding with the Croat majority, except on its own terms, or was it in reality something else.“It is very difficult for the opposition parties (former communists, Yugoslav nostalgics and the ‘liberal’ leftists) up to the present (Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ) government to approach the remaining Serbs, and not be accused by the ‘nationalists’ of being Yugophiles. In these regions there is a permanent competition to be first in the league of victims. This comes as a result of the frustrations and complexes of the past. The permanent tension between suffering and ‘astral euphoria’ cannot be a foundation for national pride. Serbs in Croatia [and not only in Croatia] feel that they are ‘permanent victims’, which attribute cannot be assigned only to them. They were never willing to accept their responsibility for such a state of affairs.“Socialist Yugoslavia was the black hole of Croato-Serbian relations, because it encouraged the phenomenon of collective victims and collective responsibility. The recent war was a repetition of that of 50 years ago, on the symbolical and rhetorical level.”Much of this confession is devoted to tracing and rationalising the visible surface of the events. Yet the fact is that the values of these two cultures (Croatian and Serbian) were incompatible with each other to start with and inevitably came into conflict within the Yugoslav Utopia. A lack of understanding of this crucial point leaves us unavoidably in ambiguous territory, open to laying landmines for subjective ends.“The problem lies in the fact that the Serbs in Croatia interpreted the legitimate yearning of the Croats for the creation of their own state as the demolition of Yugoslavia and, as such, something anti-Serbian. This burdened the Croato-Serbian relations. Thank God the Serbs can now relax in this respect: they are freed from their duty as the keepers of Yugoslavia. Now it is up to the Croats to take care of their own State and, culturally, our position as the losers is much more attractive. Personally, I believe in the moral gesture of the apology to the Croats.”"In Prosveta we are working on a list of ‘Serbian outrages’ during the past war (1992-1998). We wish to present them statistically, as precisely as possible, in order to gain positive energy. For this we need time. We Serbs in Croatia have reached the very bottom and now we have to start clearing everything around us. If this does not happen, old problems this will be revived.” So the editor of Prosveta, with vapid self-parody, looks across the decades, past the laden 1918, 1928, 1929, 1941, 1945, 1971 and 1990, with both yearning and nostalgia. Luckily, he is not ranting, only whinging. 6.7.5 The Demands of Europe XE "Demands of Europe" The Council of Europe is again warning Croatia to change the election laws before the forthcoming parliamentary elections. This warning via negativa is supposed to lead us to the core of the EU political philosophy, i.e., the principle of a pluralist democracy. According to this, all the inhabitants of Croatia must be subject to equal treatment under the rule of law. This warning, wrapped up in diplomatic jargon, relates essentially to the demand for the return of the escaped Serbs who, only a few years ago, were burning, maiming, and killing Croatian civilians. As such, it could hardly be expected to reveal the essence of liberalism unless one looked at it standing on one’s head.The second group of demands by the EU - about local democracy, the legal system, freedom of the press etc., ad nauseam - is an object of passionate EU attachment, for which it fanatically strives, works, suffers and, one of these days, hopefully dies for. This leads us to the third group of demands - that Croatia must fulfil, i.e., the Dayton and Erdut Agreements, and last but not least, collaborate with the International Court in The Hague XE "The Hague" .However, it is at the psychological level that the Croatian reflections upon these demands are most depressing. The democratic principles that Croatia could have easily complied with, when enacted in practice, are always followed by EU caveats, suspicion and political machinations. No wonder Croatia has serious doubts about EU ‘democracy’.6.7.6 Croatian Football XE "Croatian Football" On Sunday, 31st January 1999 in the exclusive Barcelona hotel Rey Juan Carlos I, the stars of the Croatian football ?iro Bla?evi? XE "Bla?evi?, ?iro" and the star of the Golden Boot, Davor ?uker XE "?uker, Davor" , reflected on the democratic passions of the virtually millions of Croatian admirers all over the world. Protected by a police barrier in the VIP lounge, Zidane XE "Zidane" , ?uker and Ronaldo XE "Ronaldo" could finally relax. The manager, ?iro Blazevi?, spent the day answering numerous questions spat at him at speed by the correspondents of the 'liberal' world press. “Not one question was malevolent,” stated ?iro. “Unfortunately, nowhere is the press so malevolent as in Croatia. Today the entire world talks about little Croatia, proud Croatia and its success in the World Cup. Yet I myself was at the receiving end of a malicious campaign by the ‘Croatian’ journalists. However, President Tudjman trusted me. Had it not been for President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , we would not have achieved third place in the World Cup. President Tudjman is at the foundation of all the successes of Croatia.” On the one hand, the popular psychology of football leaves out too much that is psychologically relevant to politics. On the other, it points to something profound that any politician will ignore only at his peril. The general acclaim that Croatian football received found only one exception – the bitterness of the sports commentator of the Evening Standard in London.6.7.7 How the other half - XE "How the other half -" 'All my Secret Negotiations with Slobodan Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" ', a book of memoirs by Hrvoje ?arini? XE "?arini?, Hrvoje" , the former adviser to President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" and Prime Minister Valenti? XE "Valenti?, Prime Minister" , published on 24th February 1999, provoked considerable public interest. The exorcism of Milo?evi? commenced on 9th November 1993, two and a half years after the Serbian aggression against Croatia began with a telephone call to ?arini? from President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" : “Hrvoje, ring [Belgrade] and find out how Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" ticks.” Under the weight of sanctions Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" had changed his tactics, while time was on Croatia’s side. The conversations were secret and direct. The International Community, with its own interests and machinations, was dropped like a hot potato. On 11th November 1993, Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" was on the telephone. “Dobar dan [Good day] Mr. President,” I (Hrvoje ?arini? XE "Hrvoje ?arini?" ) said. “Dobar dan Hrvoje,” Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" responded. “Mr. President, the process for the normalisation of our relations is too slow, therefore we believe that a direct meeting would be justified,” I said. The fact that he was very interested was confirmed by the arrangement for a meeting for the very next day.12th November 1993 – “Belgrade appeared to be as depressing as ever – rain, mud and fog, reflecting the political situation in Serbia. We met in Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" ’s office in Ivo Andri? Street. I started by saying that we agree with the Greek initiative for a Conference of the states of the former Yugoslavia at which we would sign three agreements: mutual recognition, a declaration of the rights of minorities and an agreement about the succession. All the time Milo?evi? observed me attentively. After I had finished, he quipped: “The recent actions of President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" are puzzling. You do not keep your word in negotiations with the Krajina leaders. I agree to commence negotiations on the end of enmities, and proceed with the opening of the roads and finally to search for a political solution, but you always break the agreements.” “Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" ’s unwillingness to negotiate seems to have been, above all, motivated by the desperate psychological predicament he found himself in, entangled as he was in a mixture of frustration and ambition. “As far as a joint conference is concerned, we can accept that, but BiH cannot join it as a state led by Alija Izetbegovi? XE "Izetbegovi?, Alija" . BiH must be represented by all the nations that live in it,” mused Milo?evi?. A minute later he returned to the subject of BiH: “Do you know that Izetbegovi? is amassing his forces around Novi Travnik, Vitez, Brusnica and Gornji Vakuf. Yesterday I spoke on the telephone with Alija and proposed to him a Serbian-Muslim secret meeting on the subject of Sarajevo. We are prepared to concede on Sarajevo if the Muslims become flexible on the matter of eastern BiH.” I interpreted this link between Sarajevo and the military front in Western BiH as a hint for a better understanding between Serbian and Croatian interests. This was not the first time that Milo?evi? initiated a pact against the Muslims and the division of BiH. It was one of his rare consistent policies. At another meeting in 1991 [Yugoslavia was still in existence], Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" scribbled a message for President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" pointing out the danger of Muslim expansion. That was a ploy. He underestimated President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , who naturally ignored the suggestions. Milo?evi? informed me that Kraji?nik XE "Kraji?nik" and Silajd?i? XE "Silajd?i?" met regularly once a week in Sarajevo and as a result of these meetings, he pointed out the next urgent problem would be the Muslim demand for an exit to the sea and quipped: “For God’s sake, why are you so cheeseparing with that twenty kilometres of the coast when you already have more than a thousand kilometres?” “You haven’t given me your answer on the proposal for a joint Conference, Mr. President.” I revived the subject. “Succession and minorities are not the problem, but the political solution is the obstacle to an overall recognition,” he replied. “Anyway, we shall see. I have to talk with Papandreou XE "Papandreou" .” I decided to be more explicit: “I know that you maintain that Knin XE "Knin" is Croatian but what about Baranja [Eastern Croatia]?” “Let me tell you quite clearly that with the establishment of the Republika Srpska in BiH I have solved 90% of the Serbian question. Anyway, sooner or later it will be a part of Serbia. Tudjman XE "Tudjman" did likewise with Herceg-Bosna.” Rather cheekily I asked: “And what about the theory that Serbia is there where even only one Serb lives?” He was not put out. “I never said that. The political problem of Krajina we have to solve rationally. An imposed solution would only mean 25 years of Northern Ireland for you. Those people there are complete madmen.” I said: “Stop helping them. Without you they will never sign a truce.” “Proceed with negotiations next week and if you get stuck I will intervene. We must agree on the oil pipe-line, Belgrade is freezing,” he proceeded. “?e?elj XE "?e?elj" is a radical extremist and the next elections will be his end.” Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" appeared to be sincere. He knew that the dream of a Great Serbia had evaporated. Our conversation, which had lasted two hours and fifteen minutes, was at an end. “The next meeting between myself (?arini? XE "?arini?" ) and Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" was held on 12th February 1991 in Belgrade. The city was like the stage set for Les Miserables, starving shadows of human beings in nylon raincoats, selling bottles of petrol, lined the road. “What a way to end the dream of a Great Serbia. At the same time Croatia, with almost one million refugees and displaced persons, and defending its newly won independence, did not have rationing and nobody was starving. I (?arini?) was on the way to meet the very man who had reduced them to beggary.”Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" : “Serbs cannot claim more than 60% of the BiH territory” was his opening shot. “Those in Pale [Karad?i? et al.] are totally mad and I have decided to remove them. We shall then work on the basis of the proposals of the Contact Group XE "Contact Group" . . . . As far as our relations are concerned, I propose to raise the present representation to the level of Embassies. The recognition comes only after an overall agreement. After the opening of the motorway between Zagreb and Belgrade, Grani? XE "Grani?" [Croatian Foreign Minister] can come to Belgrade to discuss the [mutual] recognition.”“Mr. President, the crucial problems are the Croato-Serbian relations. Are you ready for recognition?”Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" : “I have an idea on that subject and I will divulge it to Tudjman XE "Tudjman" . The idea includes the sovereignty of the Republic of Croatia.”?arini?:“That in the internationally recognised borders?”Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" :“I’ll talk about that with Tudjman XE "Tudjman" . If you insist, yes, in the internationally recognised borders. Anyway, I like the Croats.”?arini?:“You like the Croats, but do you like Croatia?”Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" :“There is no reason for me not to like it.”?arini?:“If I could only read your mind. I would like to know the borders within which you like Croatia?”Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" :“You would be pleasantly surprised.”?arini?:“Touché.”Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" then switched to the existential theme:Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" :“By your support of the sanctions [against Serbia] you fuel the policy of war, and yet I am 100% for peace. As far as the recognition is concerned, I follow the only possible path, one step at a time. I would like to discuss this with Franjo [Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ].”?arini?:“We cannot support the removal of sanctions while the rebellious Serbs [in Krajina] refuse all attempts at reintegration.”The third meeting between ?arini? and Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" was held on 13th January 1995 in Belgrade.Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" :“You should exploit to the maximum the economic agreement [with Krajina]. You should allow trade from Serbia to flow to Krajina. We have to safeguard the work and living conditions there and get rid of the madness there. Everyone is telling me to recognise the Republic of Croatia and that in that way the sanctions will be lifted. Help me to get out of the sanctions in order to normalise our relations.” He was clearly horse-trading.?arini?:“After some interruption, I tried a lighter subject. Is it true, Mr. President, that your wife wrote a book published recently in Russia with an introduction written by Lord David Owen XE "Owen, Lord David" ?”Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" :“Lord Owen is our good friend, but he did not write an introduction. He just made certain suggestions. In any case, the book made us a clean 340,000 DM.”?arini?:I used the opportunity to ask him about the missing Croat prisoners in Serbia.Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" :“I promise you I will take action on that matter today.”?arini?:“What about the status of the Croatian minority in Serbia?”Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" : “They have all rights, the same at the rest of the citizens of the SRJ.”?arini?:After sliding over problems in BiH and humiliating Karad?i?, Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" turned again to Krajina.Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" : “Many are telling me, including you Hrvoje, that Krajina is my Trojan Horse [in Croatia]. The truth is however that you and those madmen who live there have invented Krajina out of thin air. While all this Krajina business was happening I was on holiday in Dubrovnik and immediately realised what it’s all about. I can’t wait for all this to end so that I can go to Dubrovnik again. I will do everything in my power to do that this year. Some idiots were telling me that Dubrovnik was a Serbian city. In fact, Serbia doesn’t have any territorial pretensions, even on Baranja [eastern Croatia].”?arini?:I left Belgrade with the offices and apartments wrapped in fog in which the radiators were on for only two hours each day and people were sitting shivering in their winter coats and hats. Seventeen days later, ?arini? and Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" met again in Belgrade.Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" : “How long will you Croats keep helping Alija with arms? What is going on around Banja Luka is the result of your actions. They could not do that to us on their own. I am ready for a resolution of relations with Croatia but only in parallel with the solutions to the problems in BiH. It is essential also that we solve the problem of Eastern Slavonia.”?arini?: “In what borders do you intend to recognise Croatia?”Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" : “The maximum I am prepared to recognise are the borders recognised by the United Nations. Otherwise I will have an additional 200,000 Serbian refugees on my neck in addition to the 600,000 already here. We need a referendum about the overall solution to that question.”?arini?: “We cannot accept that. A referendum can only be about the status of Eastern Slavonia within the Republic of Croatia.”Belgrade on the 20th September 1995 was the venue for the next meeting.Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" : “We shall, Hrvoje, resolve our problems without the International Community. We both shall annex our part of BiH. The USA is rocking that bastard in its cradle, without a clue about its real nature. We shall propose the symmetry of the two entities and you will support us in that. We must not allow the unitary BiH. Although there will be two entities, three nations must make decisions within a consensus, and the two entities will have a right to confederate with Croatia and Yugoslavia respectively. Let Bosnia be a state in its own frontiers, and later we shall see.”The Muslims sabotaged the Geneva meeting between Presidents Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" and Izetbegovi? XE "Izetbegovi?" until the International Community restart the air attacks on the Serbs because of their heavy gun blockade of Sarajevo.Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" : “The biggest obstacle is Silajd?i? XE "Silajd?i?" [BiH Foreign Minister]. I know for sure that he is a poof, but with them [Muslims] that is quite normal. Even the Americans intend to exclude him from this game.” ?arini?:Turning to Eastern Slavonia again he quipped: Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" : “A war there would be terrible. Do not make any foolish moves.”?arini?: “Does that mean that you would intervene?”Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" : “I told you all. Anyway, why can’t you give them [the Serbs in Eastern Slavonia] some kind of autonomy?” He was horse-trading with Serbian flesh again.The next meeting between ?arini? and Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" was held on 12th September 1995, again in Belgrade.Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" “We have to work on the Axis Zagreb-Belgrade,” handing the proposal of his Declaration. “If we can agree on this, then Franjo [Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ] and I will meet and sign the mutual recognition document.”I (?arini?) commented to Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" that the decision on his Declaration would be made at the top level in Zagreb.29th September 1995 - ?arini? was back in Belgrade.Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" : “I must say that your nervousness about problems in Croatia is counter- productive. You are driving the Serbs from their territory into Serbia. There are now three nodes: us, you and the Eastern Sector.”?arini?: “I beg to differ. The Eastern Sector is Slavonia, a part of Croatia.”Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" :“But you must realise that the Serbs who live there must have some guarantees which must be supported by the International Community. That must be resolved. A referendum is the elegant solution to this problem. We can drop the idea of autonomy. In that case, I would be prepared to recognise the Republic of Croatia.”?arini?: “But, Mr. President, Human Rights are part of the Croatian Constitution. There is no need for repetition of that issue.”Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" : “I hope you do not think that the Serbs will fall on their knees in front of your Constitution. You have to move gradually. You cannot take Eastern Slavonia like you have taken Knin XE "Knin" , I guarantee you. There would be one hundred thousand dead.”?arini?: “Maybe we cannot. But do not forget that that war, if we were forced into it, would be waged on the territory of Serbia, which was saved from it so far. You must not forget that.” Before I left Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" said: “I promise you the highest Serbian medal when this madness stops.” In a post mortem interview with Globus magazine, Hrvoje ?arinic reminisced about his break with President Tudjman XE " Tudjman" .“As far as I am concerned there are two Tudjmans. The first was the one who created an independent Croatia and the other one who has allowed the HDZ [his party] to move in the wrong direction. The first Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , I must say, was a good negotiator; lucid, courageous, resolute, who moved all the diplomatic actions.”Globus:Did Presidents Tudjman XE "Tudjman" and Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" in their meetings in Karadjordjevo and Tikve? in 1991 discuss the division of BiH??arini?:“90% of their conversations were held tête-à-tête and I was present at only 10% of them. President Tudjman XE " Tudjman" , I know for sure, did not join the game of dividing BiH in the way that Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" intended. That part of Milo?evi?’s policy was one of his most consistent features, i.e., the creation of the Republika Srpska [in 49% of BiH], which, in his opinion, would solve the Serbian national question. [In fact, the Americans have done it for him with Dayton.] President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" was concerned for the fate of the Croats in BiH, but he never thought of the arithmetical division. By the way, I cannot accept that President Tudjman’s opinion about the nature of the Bosnian-Hercegovinian Muslims was the same as that of Milo?evi?. The fact that Tudjman did not believe in the feasibility of a Bosnian-Hercegovinian state, which he did not keep under wraps, is another matter.Globus:You are of the opinion that the Muslims started the war with the Croats??arini?:“I have no doubts about it. The Serbs held 70% of the Bosnian-Hercegovinian territory. The Muslims decided to compensate for that which they had lost by taking the territory inhabited by the Croats. The exit to the sea was their obsession. They started the war and the Serbs were fanning it. The Muslims turned to the Islamic countries and even to the Serbs in search of allies. Nothing at the time was as simple as you think.”Globus:In Croatia we were shocked that even Croats collaborated with the Serbs in BiH.?arini?:“Yes, that happened occasionally. But one must not forget that Haris Silajd?i? XE "Silajd?i?" met Karad?i? regularly once a week, Milo?evic himself told me that. And Izetbegovi? XE "Izetbegovi?" met Karad?i? in Pale in 1993. In that situation, the Croats in BiH were forced to talk sometimes with the Serbs. I maintain that the meeting between Boban and Karad?i? in Graz was inevitable. The situation was very complicated. I agree that the Croato-Muslim war had catastrophic political consequences. Such wars are unfortunately very bloodthirsty. The hatreds and frustrations of centuries come to a head. Nobody was innocent in BiH. Naturally the sins of BiH are exploited for political pressures, particularly on Croatia. The International Community does not choose the means of achieving its kind of solution for BiH. While the International Community is optimistic I remain pessimistic as the frustrations are now suppressed by force. Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" still dreams of annexing the Republika Srpska. I maintain that the International Community must take into account the sensitivity of all the victims in BiH and must not ignore the responsibility of the Muslims for their crimes against the Croats.”The politician who looks for signs of dissidence in a politically unstable period treads on slippery ground. On the other hand, there is little political kudos to be found in identifying subversive elements in these statements, which, by their very nature, were meant to be more signalling than ambiguous.Globus:When the journalists asked President Tudjman XE " Tudjman" to comment on the resignation of Branko Salaj, director of HINA (the Croatian Press agency) and Mirko Gali? from the Croatian TV XE "Gali?, Mirko - Croatian TV" , he stated that that completed the resignations of ‘The Paris circle’ (both of them lived and worked in Paris). There is no doubt that he also alluded to you??arini?:“When I returned from abroad I was really shocked to find out that the interpretations of President Tudjman XE " Tudjman" ’s term ‘Paris circle’ included all of us as the ‘French spies’. Tudjman XE "Tudjman" never refuted these interpretations. Simply, one cannot accuse everyone who criticises policies of the HDZ as spies. I thought the times of paranoia and the search for the internal and external enemies had gone forever. I did work in France for many years and made many contacts there, but on my return, I put all my contacts at the disposal of the government. President Tudjman personally used these contacts.”Globus:The magazine National came out first with such accusations, to be followed by the official HDZ weekly, and then President Tudjman XE "President Tudjman" ’s statement.?arini?:“One thing is the National magazine and the other President Tudjman XE " Tudjman" . Tudjman XE "Tudjman" knew why I resigned. The Croatian political scene is very dramatic today. HDZ wants to remain in power, and there is a lot of unclear and unhealthy talk in the Opposition. People think about a third way. An alibi for the war, transition from the nationalised to a private economy, the burdens of the past are still with us, but the people search for an exit from this difficult situation. The National has the priority, and the Existential has been pushed into in the second plan.”However, everything was not lost in Croatia. An analytical work that addresses the political ups and downs of the country often excludes from consideration the nature of this work’s relationship to its socio-political context. It is therefore commendable of Dr. Aleksandar ?tulhover, Docent (Dean) of the Philosophical Faculty in Zagreb XE "?tulhover, Dr. Aleksandar - Docent (Dean) of Philosophical Faculty in Zagreb" to publish the results on his research on the sexual life of the women of Croatia during the time of the transition, i.e., roughly 50% of the electorate. “The classic heterosexual relationship for the majority of the Croatian women is essential. It may be said that in respect of the enjoyment factor, qualitatively and quantitatively Croatian women do not fall behind those in the USA, Britain and France. For example, in those countries 4-8% of women never reach organism. In Croatia this percentage is only 2%. In fact 57% of Croatian women do so, on average 3 times a week. Croatian women are both liberal and traditional at the same time. Even so, 70% of those polled think that sexual instruction should be a part of the school curriculum. 80% of them think that women should be allowed to decide freely on abortion. The majority think that contraception is up to the women. And finally, younger women believe that in the 21st century, their enjoyment will be impossible unless they take the bull by the horns themselves.[!] The gulf that combines politics, psychology, and the inevitable end of Yugoslavia in a turmoil where words and deeds contradict themselves and hang in suspension is bridged now by the prospect of the war on the football pitch, the forthcoming match between Croatia and (the remnants) of Yugoslavia in Belgrade for the European Championship. Aljo?a Asanovi? XE "Asanovi?, Aljo?a" , the extremely talented forward of the Croatian National team stated: “Many will say that for us the most important thing is having a place in the finals of the cup. Yet the match with Yugoslavia in Belgrade is something more important than football. We have high expectations. I can already imagine the atmosphere: 100,000 Serbs in the stadium will yell and demand compensation for everything that happened to them in the past few years. They are already saying how they will crush us. They want to justify themselves against us as the third country in the World Championship. I hope they will not shoot at us from the stands, and that we do not need to wear bulletproof jackets. In any case it will be a clash of great risk. All of us are conscious of its importance, and when we run out onto the pitch in our red and white checkered shirts, the Chetniks, with their black skull and bones emblazoned flags, will insult us: ‘Ustashas, Ustashas’. As far as I am concerned I can’t wait for that moment.” Josip Manoli? XE "Manoli?, Josip" (79 years old) had his moment of notoriety. However, the terror carried out under his leadership as the head of the UDBA XE "UDBA" , the Secret Police of the Socialist Republic of Croatia, 1949-1960 and in Zagreb from 1960 to 1965, seems to have already faded away into history.Since Franjo Tudjman XE " Tudjman" realised that the liberation and independence of Croatia could come about only as a result of the reconciliation between the nationalists and communists, he needed communists within his new party, the HDZ (The Croatian Democratic Union) in order to gain a majority in the first free democratic elections in 1990. Therefore Manoli? XE "Manoli?" , with his former police network, became one of the indispensable founding fathers of the HDZ. The nationalists outside the HDZ attacked Tudjman XE "Tudjman" for harbouring allies with an unrepentant criminal past. Tudjman, in many ways, recalled De Gaulle and his coalition with the communists in the liberation of France. With that kind of political aptitude, Tudjman believed that despite past sins, the communists (he himself a former one) could be harnessed into the camp of democratic progress. For nationalists who led in the liberation, it was not too difficult to swallow that bitter pill, as both sides now rallied in the revolutionary Independence euphoria. Thus, the communists also escaped being put on trial and punished for the 45-year long terror. Indeed, those who did not join the HDZ competed in the nascent democracy now under different party names.Manoli? XE "Manoli?" thus, in an interview with Globus (Globus 430, 5th March 1999) appeared as the President of the Croatian Independent Democrats (HND), whatever that meant. In 1990, he organised (or reorganised!) the Croatian Secret Services and, from 1991-93, he was the Head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution. Globus:How do you comment on the new situation in the Croatian Intelligence Services?Manoli? XE "Manoli?" :“When I say that the role of the Intelligence Services should not be overestimated, I mean that these services are always in the service of certain politics: when these politics dominate then the Services dominate in those particular fields. When people speak today of UDBA XE "UDBA" and KOS XE "KOS" [the Yugoslav Communist Secret Service and Military Counter-Intelligence Service] they believe these services ended with the ending of the former state. Those who were active in these former services then looked for another master. That is inevitable and that happened also in Croatia. HDZ was established as a liberation movement. Now when it tends to turn into a political party there is a clash between different political structures and aims. HDZ originally was built on the ideas of Stjepan Radi? XE "Stjepan Radi?" , the left wing anti-fascist ideology and also the statehood philosophy of Ante Star?evi?. Its success was based on the unique complexity and contradiction, the force that beat the one party system. In spite of the fact that the HDZ is in a permanent division with many of its own deserters, it holds on because it holds the power. As long as it is able to satisfy the most acute social problems [the transition to a market economy, European integration and Dayton] it will remain in power. Consequently, the intelligence services XE "intelligence services" will protect HDZ for which they were originally organised. The fact that the intelligence services are misused for squaring accounts within the same ranks is tragic. Since the decision made by the Presidency of Croatia on 30th May 1990, the UDBA as a political police force was disbanded. It was transformed into an intelligence and counter-intelligence service in the service of the New Croatian State interests.Globus:Why do we journalists have intelligence dossiers?Manoli? XE "Manoli?" :“Do not separate this problem from politics: that is one of its components. At a certain point in time it found itself threatened by certain security elements and it was only a question of judgment of what operative measures were necessary in its administration in respect of the affected citizens. If, for example, you became interesting to me because of the security of the state, then I would wrench back your intestines in order to find out if the suspicion is justified or not. I do not know if the Opposition politicians are now under that treatment, but it is possible. However, from a democratic point of view, that cannot be justified.”Globus:Do you agree with the statement of Dra?en Budi?a XE "Budi?a, Dra?en" , leader of the Opposition HSLS (Croatian Social Liberal Party) that the political programmes of the HRT (Croatian Radio and Television) are edited by the Secret Services?Manoli? XE "Manoli?" :“Budi?a is probably right. But this is not a case of the influence of certain state security, but rather abuse within the security system. Tudjman XE "Tudjman" is accused of control over TV and because of that he is pressurised by the International Community. However, within the HRT there are three to four different political fractions, and there lies the problem.”Globus:How do you comment on the statement by President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" that the resignations of the ‘Paris circle’ are now at an end?Manoli? XE "Manoli?" :“When somebody talks today about ?arini? as a foreign agent, he shows that he ran out of any other arguments. ?arini? is a man who served faithfully a certain political cause [Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s policies].Globus:A certain Mile Butorac XE "Butorac, Mile" , a member of your own party, stated that he has proof that the leaders of the Opposition parties are agents of foreign intelligence services XE "intelligence services" .Manoli? XE "Manoli?" :“Those who today use that argument lack any political arguments of their own.”Globus:Do you maintain that as a (former) founder of the HDZ, that that party is ready to get out of power in a dignified way?Manoli? XE "Manoli?" :“That question is creating a lot of hullabaloo. Some talk about a military coup. That is nonsense. We live in Europe. Political pluralism is active in Croatia. The media are free and Croats were never inclined towards dictatorships. The loss of power by the HDZ will be only the beginning but not its end. President Tudjman XE " Tudjman" has a mandate until 2002. If he now invites the Opposition into a coalition government, this is positive for our democratic development. By the way, the Opposition is very antagonistic towards the HDZ. Will it lead to revenge seeking if it wins the next elections? The policy of revenge seeking is counter-productive for the nation. If we did that in 1990 we would have never won the elections.” The old Secret Police fox Manoli? XE "Manoli?" appears to have striven to show that the status of the ‘ex-communists’ carries with it no stigma, even when unaccompanied by any expression of regret. Yet, this hypothesis will stand or fall on the policy of revenge-seeking, indicated by the antagonism of the Opposition to the HDZ, led by the SDP (Socialist Democratic Party – ‘reformed’ communists) if it gains power in the elections in the year 2000.Manoli? XE "Manoli?" 'passed the test.' Radio Croatia reported on 5th July 2006 that Manoli? appeared in the ITFY Court in The Hague XE "The Hague" 'witnessing' against the indicted 'Bosnian' Croats.“George Soro? XE "Soro?" and other foreign donors are investing in democracy in Croatia with approximately $3 US million.” This heading in one-inch high letters, boasting it would change Croatian society, appeared in Globus 436, 16th April 1999, p.24-26.6.7.8 The Storm Troopers XE "The Storm Troopers" The storm troopers in this revolution would be non-governmental and non-party organisations made up of fit and young youths below the age of 35. They would be the builders of the great utopian liberal-democratic transformation of Croatia. They would invite the citizens to come out to the polling stations and take part in the ‘democratisation’ process. Their invisible bosses warn them that they must not agitate by nominating any particular political party. For that purpose, the foreign donors have splashed $3 US million, out of which 1,200,000 is the personal contribution of Soro? XE "Soro?" himself. From the standpoint of the specific nature of Croatian society, it is difficult not to notice how bizarre such international efforts are in order to control the individual lives of the Croatian voters by this cash incentive First of all, there is in Croatia an almost traditional attachment to particular political parties and ideologies and the volatile electorate makes up a very small percentage of the total. The war for independence, in which the International Community was anything but helpful, made a profound difference. It allowed the populace to think anew about their political traditions.Arising from this is the question of trust. Would you buy a second-hand newspaper editorship from Soro? XE "Soro?" ?The realisation of western values by the growing power of the diversity of life styles by means of the modern media, which in the Croatian society has created more confusion than certainty, became an important factor. No way of life in the post-modern society at the end of the 20th century can credibly claim a universal authority and that includes western values too. In spite of the ‘moral’ decline of the ruling HDZ party in respect of the corruption in the transition to a market economy, it still preserves a strong national charge and credit in the revolution for independence to be able to commandingly claim that Soro? XE "Soro?" ’s money stands behind the usurpation of the state.The prospective donors themselves who claim that the civil society in Croatia in fact does not exist give the final blow to the non-governmental effort in ‘democratisation’. After all, why should they throw good money on the inflated egos of the non-governmental organisations whose ‘generals without armies have the minimum influence on the voters’?Their self-importance has captured the moral high ground in which all the political parties are dismissed as pompous and hypocritical.Apart from being vibrant, sensuous and robust (judging by the pop culture irrelevant outpourings in the Lynne Montgomery XE "Montgomery, Lynne" columns in Globus), Bill Montgomery XE "Montgomery, Bill" her husband, the US Ambassador in Zagreb, is unambiguous. “You have got only two days to decide to pass the required documentation to The Hague XE "The Hague" tribunal on contentious events that took place in the Bljesak [Lightning] and Oluja [Storm ’95] offensives before 28th August 1999,”was his message to Mate Grani? XE "Grani?, Mate" , the Croatian Foreign Minister. Perhaps a head counting on behalf of The Hague XE "The Hague" Tribunal is inappropriate in diplomatic affairs, but American diplomacy in Croatia on the line of the Galbraith XE "Galbraith" -Montgomery XE "Montgomery" model happened, at that time, not to be a diplomatic genre, whereas the threat of sanctions, even a botched one, is. “The US will be forced to activate the Lautenberg Amendment [to Dayton], XE "Lautenberg Amendment [to Dayton]" which gives the US Government the right to stop the aid,” [i.e., a break in trade and military collaboration, loss of support with the IMF, the World Bank XE "World Bank" , and the suspension of diplomatic relations].The desperate strategy by President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" in the face of that dictat was to seek to undercut the importance of the message altogether. Zvonimir ?eparovi?, the Minister of Justice XE "?eparovi?, Zvonimir, Minister of Justice" , was thus sacrificed “for a speech in ?iroki Brijeg” (Hercegovina) in which he attacked the bizarre judicial methods of the Tribunal, i.e., he said exactly what 75% of the Croatian people think below the sheets of their own beds. “You had no business to do that,” President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" told ?eparovi?.The problem with this coup de main is that there is no reason whatsoever why the whole matter of The Hague XE "The Hague Tribunal should not be immune from critical judgement " Tribunal should be immune from critical judgement.A few Croatian ministers with balls maintained, quite rightly, that the Croatian Government was too soft in the face of foreign threats, which are an insult to the defenders of Croatia.The outcome of such a fracas makes a diplomatic discourse clamorously undiplomatic, politically vacuous, but entertaining.Croatia, while scrambling for diplomatic acceptance, which is occasionally knocked down in the Parliament by some militant opposition to diplomatic harassment by the US, is eventually forced into capitulation. In a curious reversal, what starts out as a radical challenge by the International Community to the Croatian Government, ends up as a ghastly mirror image of it, as those for whom high diplomacy is a form of political harassment claim that their function is not only in line with the Security Council XE "Security Council" resolutions, but is also ethically liberating.When asked if President Tudjman XE " Tudjman" himself is on The Hague XE "The Hague" list, Montgomery XE "Montgomery" drew a distinction between the politically ‘conscientious’ side of US policies: “there is no way in which the US can influence The Tribunal,” and a hypocritical abandonment of all responsibility for the Tribunal’s decisions. “If such an indictment exists the US has nothing to do with it. Yet Croatia must co-operate, because if the problem comes on the agenda of the Security Council XE "Security Council" , it will not finish in Croatia’s favour.” From the judicial and historical point of view, The Hague XE "The Hague" Tribunal was within its rights to investigate the rather unclear nature of the ‘collateral damage’ which occurred on 1st and 2nd of May 1995 (in Offensive Bljesak XE "Offensive Bljesak" ) that inevitably accompanies every war conflict, irrespective of the justification or the loftiness of the motives for the war.It is therefore rather intriguing that the Croatian judicial system dragged its feet with the urgent matter of the alleged war crimes (in operation Bljesak), which, in itself, was absolutely justified, and a brilliantly executed liberation action. This is even more surprising in view of the fact that the later much larger operation, Oluja, provided meticulous evidence of all criminal acts, during and mainly after that operation.The onus was on The Hague XE "The Hague" Tribunal thus to prove that the collateral damage did not occur during the military operations, but that it was a case of deliberate executions.The liberation operation Bljesak lasted only thirty-six hours and was carried out by the combined forces of the MUP (Police) XE "MUP (Police)" and HV (Croatian Army) XE "HV (Croatian Army)" . The 51st Serbian Krajina regiment fell into the trap of the Croatian army, having given its arms, prior to the event, to the UN forces in order to pretend to be a group of civilian refugees. The Croatian army had fifty and the Serbs four hundred soldiers killed. However, the disappearance of the Serbian civilian victims so far remains a mystery. The Serbs were running away southwards to BiH and a three-kilometre long column of refugees disappeared into thin air. According to the Serb ‘witnesses’, this column was “wiped off the face of the earth” by the Croats. According to other explanations, the column fell into the crossfire between the Croatian and Serbian forces. There are indications that the Serbian army on its withdrawal may have trampled over their own civilians. The number of victims was allegedly in the region of 900.Be that as it may, the ‘ordinary’ folk witnesses do not always observe the correct course of events; on the contrary, they are capable of putting popular ‘facts’ to unpredictably even subversive uses. The situation is that if the relationship between a ‘fact’ and the response it elicits is not predictable, it cannot be also wholly illuminating before some tawdry non-Croatian speaking judicial functionary sitting at the bench of The Hague XE "The Hague" Tribunal.The outcome of this case must depend entirely on a radical judicial enquiry to be carried out by the Croatian Courts. “Croatian politics behind the scene on the eve of the election campaign 2000 leads to a catastrophe,” was the conclusion of a ‘secret’ OSCE document XE "Secret OSCE document" . “The voters are disappointed, bitter and frustrated and the times when the HDZ ruling party could evoke the liberation of the homeland as a corollary, have long gone. Voters are turning back to their existential problems.”As a result, the OSCE Task Force XE "OSCE Task Force" has abandoned its fact-finding mission to Croatia. The Croatian sins, according to the OSCE, are as ‘repeatable’ as they are ‘discreditable’: the inferior election laws, the non-co-operation with The Hague XE "The Hague" , Government controlled Croatian TV and the limping in the democratisation of the society. The dense report is squeezed into seven A4 typed pages. The OSCE estimates that the initial enthusiasm for the achievement of independence among the voters in central Croatia has fallen. The toss between the OSCE’s ‘objective’ report and its flagrant pro-Opposition bias will no doubt continue. Yet what this report, however, fails to see is that these apparently contentious issues are in themselves necessary ingredients, real or imaginary, in the current political struggle in building up Croatian democracy. “President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , clearly, cannot escape from his spiritual captivity,”stated Zlatko Tom?i? XE "Tom?i?, Zlatko" , leader of the HSS (the Croatian Peasant Party XE "HSS - Croatian Peasant Party" , a member of the Opposition). “He lives in his own world and cannot or does not want to see the wishes of the people. To call his political opponents ‘enemies’ is untactful, to say the least. His recent speech to the Police Officers was threatening rhetoric. The HDZ will, it appears, lead its election campaign on the policy of isolationism and against European and International co-operation. Recently, one can hear rumours that the HDZ would try to stay in power by means of military and police action. Personally, I doubt it. The Croatian people are sufficiently mature not to be derailed by such psychological pressures.” The Opposition coalition XE "Opposition coalition" , made up of the six miniscule political parties which, with the exception of the HSS and SDP (the former communists) were never in power, has excellent reasons for finding the HDZ objectionable, purely out of an inferiority complex. After all, none of these parties could win the elections on their own account.There is nothing in the least bit new about political judgments being shaped by ideological ones; in this case it is just that the bickering amongst the Croatian Opposition political parties is not particularly to the taste of the International Community’s dictat. But if there is anything of potential injustice here, then it is the very current political pressure by the International Community on Croatia to stop whinging and start co-operating.The political hedonism of the current Croatian political elite will inevitably remain murky as long and unless we dig into its origins, i.e., how does the primitive way of life of the people in the former Yugoslavia, in itself enforced by the utopian Yugoslav unity, particularly in the passive regions of BiH, on the Dalmatian islands, in the Dalmatian hinterland, Slavonia, and Zagorje from which regions this elite sprang, reflect on the nature of the current political, economic and military structure of the state.The recent re-publication of the pre-WWII book ‘How do the People Live,’ (2 volumes, 1937, 1939), written by the left-wing member of the HSS, Dr. Rudolf Bi?ani? XE "Bi?ani?, Dr. Rudolf" , throws light on the people’s past: (During the 1930’s) “Three-quarters of the Croats did not possess a bed” From this point of view all those Croats who were in possession of a bed were in a privileged position. The sociological impact of this fact cannot be minimised by the deeply ingrained conviction in these regions that a bed, as an item of furniture in itself, is not essential. It was the current political elite’s sheer luck to come along in power just at a time when increasing literacy and education in Croatia were creating a new market for this kind of European furniture.Before WWII, 80% of the Croatian population lived in villages. Analysing the conditions of their lives, one perceives almost everywhere a common ingredient: coping, doggedness, and hard work. In the present turbulent times, people like these inevitably floated to the top. “Yet in parallel with their propellancy they were unable to develop ethos. They propelled themselves by a sheer [primeval] force,” runs the argument of the Zagreb sophisticates. So, what's the problem?The rash Western judgement is actually misinterpreting the situation. The Croatian socio-political circumstances are simply a case of disorganisation. The highly educated and now urbane Croatian nationalists who led the struggle for Independence against all odds are perfectly justified in rejecting the Western challenge in the name of the ‘Nation’, up to a point. The fact that in their grandparent’s houses there was not sufficient room for beds (as in Japanese houses for different reasons) and no internal toilets, as in 75% of the English houses (when I arrived in England in 1955). Yet that did not stop the English from building an Empire, which was, for them (and ultimately for Croatia it now transpires) a blessing in disguise. 6.7.9 The Communist Secret Police (UDBA) XE "The Communist Secret Police (UDBA)" The sensational list of secret agents of the notorious Communist Secret Police (UDBA XE "UDBA" ) published in the pro-government daily Vjesnik has stirred great public interest. The UDBA concentrated enormous public resources and almost subordinated all political power in its own hands. This in turn generated fear, resentment, envy and was an abuse of power.“The publication of the list of agents from the former regime is rather sordid,” commented our old friend, Josip Manoli? XE "Manoli?, Josip" , its former overall boss in an interview with Globus on 22nd October 1999. “The fact that it was published in Vjesnik shows its political dimension. This list is only an excerpt from the authentic documents that HDZ inherited from the former regime. The UDBA XE "UDBA" archive was preserved to a large measure; only a minor part of it was destroyed before HDZ took over in 1990. The fact that the photocopies of these documents are also in Belgrade leads to all possible speculations. We have reconstructed a list of all our agents in 1990 in order to prevent them being used by the other side. The ‘Vjesnik’ list is authentic; even so it does not give the real picture about either individuals or the networks.” (There speaks a sophisticated UDBA?!)Globus:People talk about 150 agents.Manoli? XE "Manoli?" :“If one would make a register of all UDBA XE "UDBA" collaborators, it would be more like hundreds of thousands in its service [!]. The state security of the former Yugoslavia was based on total espionage, as in other communist, fascist or totalitarian regimes. This included, of course, military intelligence and its foreign branch. The most common was a voluntary collaboration, because it was expected of the citizens to show their loyalty to socialism. The other category of collaborators was recruited on the basis of their compromised past, i.e., they were blackmailed into the service, particularly Croatian emigrants. The function of the Security Service was to systematically analyse various categories of our citizens abroad, those who were politically on the other side. The Croatian emigration was infiltrated with UDBA agents. They always monitored each other. Among the half million Croatian emigrants there were around 100,000 UDBA and KOS XE "KOS" agents [!]. These people were not paid. They believed that they were an important part of the process of building a socialist society. The journalists are now singled out as former UDBA collaborators for political reasons. Collaborators of UDBA were found among politicians, scientists and journalists. In socialism there were no mavericks in the press. One could progress in the media only if one accepted the principles of the building of socialism. And for that they did not need a Secret Police dossier They were at the cutting edge of the dominating policy.“To give credit where it is due, the HDZ when it took over power did not apply a policy of revenge against the communists. It gave everyone the freedom to choose his or her own political option under the conditions of the emerging political pluralism. The same applied to the intelligence services XE "intelligence services" ’ personnel. Some people were reproaching me that within HDZ and the new state structures there were a lot of former agents. I maintained that now they have the opportunity to show their worth freely without political pressure. In fact, many have proved their democratic orientation, and thus have been rehabilitated in the eyes of the public.”Globus:How many of these emigrants who returned home after 1990 were agents of the former Yugoslav Secret Services?Manoli? XE "Manoli?" :“Not many. There were among them many more agents of the foreign intelligence services XE "intelligence services" and those were creating problems. Some of the crimes in the Homeland war were executed under their direction in order to embarrass the Croatian State. I warned the Head of State [President Franjo Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ] about some of the individuals at the top in HDZ and the Government, but he did not consider them to be dangerous. Yet many of them have left their mark as war criminals.”“In 1990 Dr. Tudjman XE "Tudjman" let these people define themselves politically, some were for us, and some were against. At present, however, the policy of the intelligence service is to create confusion. The question is – for whose interests? The Vjesnik list is certainly a game in the squaring of the accounts between the two political factions at the top of the State. The weakness of the HDZ lies in upsetting up the harmony within its own ranks rather than hitting at the real enemies of the Croatian State. I believe that President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" is allowing the internal party squabbles to go on and yet at the same time he controls the situation. The aim being the victory of the ‘Hercegovina Lobby’ [the hard-line nationalist faction from BiH]. On the other hand, legalising the factions within the HDZ may be its salvation. The tragedy is that most of the 42% of the HDZ original voters in the 1990 elections will remain passive in the next election, dissatisfied with the results of the HDZ ten-year rule.” On the basis of this evidence it would be interesting to study the reactions of the Western politicians turning to President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" for inspiration in dealing with the infighting in their own parties."Professor Gojko Be?ovan XE "Be?ovan, Professor Gojko" , director of the Croatian Centre for the Development of Non-Governmental Organisations (CEREO) XE "CEREO - Croatian Centre for the Development of Non-Governmental Organisations" stated in 1990:“The attack by the Government on the non-Governmental civil organisations implying that they are agencies of foreign intelligence services XE "intelligence services" is de facto a clash between the tame European and the wild Turkish Croatia mentality,” He continued:“For those who are protagonists of the pre-civil society and suffer from “the wild mentality”, engagement in civil affairs is now like a thorn in their side.” “De facto, it means that they must now be worried that the hardworking people will have a key influence in society and that politicians will have to respect their opinion. Today, in Croatia, political society is a dominant factor. If you are not in its ranks you are nobody.”“The interview in ‘Jutarnji List’ with Dr. Pa?ali? XE "Pa?ali?" , President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s adviser, in which he intimates that we are in the service of foreign intelligence services XE "intelligence services" , is sheer paranoia. Only its citizens in co-operation with the world can solve the problems of this country. Integration with the rest of the world is a threat to our politician’s existence. Therefore they prefer isolationism. Out of the total funds supplied by the PHARE XE "PHARE" programme, 25% goes to non-governmental organisations. The modern elite in the world is a network of the civil society organisations and its influence is dominant. Nobody can push laws through Parliaments without consultation with this elite.”Globus:Who is financing the CEREO?Be?ovan:“The largest donors are the EU, several American foundations, partly the Institute for Open Society [Soro? XE "Soro?" ], the World Bank XE "World Bank" and a few Croatian banks. Croatian intellectuals have given up on joining us, as they do not wish to be ‘set up’ by the media. The risk for their positions is too great.”Globus:There are 16,000 (!) non-governmental organisations in Croatia today, i.e., one per 281 people. Do you think that this is too high a number for a population of 4.5 million?Be?ovan:“Many of these organisations act on the basis of the family links principle[]: when they come into conflict, the fight amongst them is below civilised behaviour. A lot of money disappears into thin air. Some of these organisations have pursued confrontational relations with the Government and have thus created unnecessary enemies. If they had shown more interest in the social problems of citizens, they would have been more respected. But such [ethical] organisations do not exist here in this country.” If the views expressed above had the task of defining post-modern democracy, they have failed, simply because the non-governmental elite obviously lack public appeal. What that elite (businessmen, lawyers, academics) is trying to tell us is that the old institutions of democracy, the National Parliament and its elected representatives, are not to the taste of the International Community and to Soro? XE "Soro?" as a supra-national guru. Therefore, they must be ratified by the unelected non-governmental organisations under their control. Is that what a ‘tame European Croatia’ means as opposed to a ‘backward looking’ Tudjman XE "Tudjman" state with its nationalist myths?However, this is where the difficulties begin because manifestos that proclaim a progressive spirit are, as a rule, old utopian tat. In 1998, dubious speculations concerning President Tudjman XE " Tudjman" ’s illness are circulating again in the media. The chronology of his health crisis began in Rome when it was said he was suffering from diverticulitis. On the 1st November 1998 the perforation of the diverticula occurred suddenly and President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" was immediately operated on in Zagreb. The guessing game is that the President actually is suffering from malignant lymphoma rather than cancer of the stomach, which is somewhat less aggressive. A general weakness, increased temperature, loss of appetite, and loss of weight are manifested in the President’s appearance.It is believed that the President has had several intensive chemotherapy treatments in the past three years. Unfortunately, in 80% of cases, the illness returns within a couple of years. His health is in a serious state. While pessimism can be creative, promotional pessimism, if it is not tendentious, is meaningless. The theory of chaos in a ‘perverse state like Croatia’ [written by my old acquaintance, Boris Maruna XE "Maruna, Boris" , Globus No. 466, p.14] is a humble but dangerous indulgence. ‘The crisis of identity,’ due to President Tudjman XE " Tudjman" ’s illness, ‘creates unease’ and the loss of orientation. What is normal in ‘normal’ states here becomes questionable. Maruna continues: In spite of the fact that the Tudjman XE "Tudjman" bootlickers ‘argue that Croatia presents the regional force, it is not clear what an average state can do today in the economy of global propositions?’ Croatia, which is economically weaker than an ‘average international oil company, is unwanted in the world. What I want to say is that national dignity cannot be defended in collision with the world but in co-operation with it.’ ‘The compensation for a certain loss of sovereignty may be prosperity, influence, wealth and real power, and for that we have to change our mentality,’ is a platitude. There is, however, a profound connection between pessimism and a proponent of the profitable sovereignty, which Maruna, a poet and writer, must fathom out if he is to persuade us. The belief that the pluralistic society is prepared to share and disperse political power and wealth indiscriminately and automatically is plainly utopian and is met more and more with hostility by the protagonists of a holistic concept of national well-being.Alain Finkielkraut, the French philosopher XE "Finkielkraut, Alain - French philosopher" in an interview in Globus stated:“I have the impression that economics is replacing politics, and that worries me. The manoeuvring space for individual states is becoming smaller,”stated Finkielkraut, who defended the Croat position in his pamphlet ‘How is it possible to be a Croat’, (1995) was on the receiving end of polemical fury over the following.“Life on the internet is responsible for the neglect of the fact that man lives within a certain limited territory. Due to that, even the most legitimate nationalisms, like the Croatian one, become much harder. Croatia deserves something better than narrow-minded nationalism, obsession with independence and its national interests. In spite of that, Europe is wrong not to recognise the justified Croatian national aspirations. Now when Croatia realised its national dream, it is important to define what it can do with that sovereignty. The national pride must not be satisfied only with sovereignty, which Croatia jealously preserves. After all, Croatia did not fight for independence in order to become hostage to another power. The real question, however, is what Croatia owes to itself and what to America and Europe? Doesn’t Croatia owe to itself, for example, to investigate what happened during WWII Paveli?’s XE "Paveli?’s" regime? Or a transparent privatisation and open media. On the other hand, the frenetic development of the International Court in The Hague XE "The Hague" does not appeal to me. One cannot equate disrespect for human rights with the submission to supranational bodies. At the same time I believe that every nation must itself undertake the responsibility for universal values. My intervention on behalf of Croatia was not easy. Yet if Croatia moves towards democracy it may soon become very popular. I am not advocating democracy in Croatia for the sake of the International Community. On the contrary, Croatia needs democracy for itself. If that happens I am sure that many misunderstandings and prejudices will soon disappear.” Professor Vlatko Pavleti? XE "Vlatko Pavleti?" , XE "Pavleti?, Professor Vlatko" President of the Croatian Parliament stated: “I would not remain a member of the party [HDZ] which would behave undemocratically.” Pavleti? is constitutionally the second man in the State and as such would step into the shoes of President Tudjman XE " Tudjman" if he is permanently incapacitated or dies.“In this situation nobody should give priority to one’s own party above that of the national interests. I am prepared to take over all powers granted to me by the Constitution in order to safeguard the stable functioning of the institutions of the State.”Globus:Do you fear the possibility of political or constitutional crisis?Pavleti?:“There will not be, and must not be, such a crisis.”Globus:How do you see the future of the Croatian State – are all the dangers behind us? Is there a danger that Croatia would return to some new Balkan union?Pavleti?:“Croatia is a law-abiding, internationally recognised state so, as far as that is concerned, there is no danger from that side. All the proposals about any Balkan association we have decisively rejected.”Globus:Croatia is the only post-communist state that is led by a political party, which removed communism and created the national state. Do you think HDZ will give up power if the Opposition wins the next election?Pavleti?:“I cannot understand the doubts about the HDZ not respecting the results of the elections. I myself would not remain a member of such a party.”Ivan Jakov?i?, a maverick politician from Istria, and leader of the Istrian Democratic Party (IDS), XE "Jakov?i?, Ivan - maverick politician from Istria, leader of Istrian Democratic Party (IDS)," talked in a characteristic anti-Tudjman XE "Tudjman" blurb about reclaiming politics for the people. “We have entered the post-Tudjman XE "Tudjman" era in the worst possible manner. The President is leaving Croatia in a great mess. The State institutions do not work, while the para-State bodies are taking over. The classic political voluntarism is now in action, with several HDZ lobbies in competition for their own interests.”Globus:It appears that HDZ tries to present President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" as immortal.Jakov?i?:“It seems like that. They are showing a great irresponsibility towards the citizens of Croatia. Even so, I do not think that HDZ will have sufficient energy to contest the opposition victory in an undemocratic way. The changes will be great and painful. We don’t intend to seek revenge but the responsibility for the [HDZ] ‘privatisation’ of the economy must be confronted. The people responsible have names and surnames and will have to answer in the independent courts. The Croatian State must be totally redesigned, and I am sure that the Opposition can do that.”Globus:What are, in your opinion, the characteristics of the Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ten-year rule?Jakov?i?:“An autocratic rule, of centralist, immoral, dishonest, extravagant and undemocratic behaviour. Our chief moves will be the reduction of public expenditure on the unemployed and retired, the reduction of the budget for the army, police and the Government, a change in taxation, the encouragement of foreign investment, joining NATO and the EU. Apart from these matters, the State must be decentralised. The Opposition will remove all those who got their positions on the basis of their political credentials. The public demands that the guilty individuals must be removed from all the key political positions in the State. These removals must be achieved in the first 100 days. We are talking here about thousands of jobs and therefore we must be thoughtful. When one political group loses the confidence of the voters its ‘cadres’ must be removed at the same time. This is neither evolutionary nor revolutionary; it is democratic and European.Globus:Archbishop Bozani? XE "Bozani?, Archbishop" stated that all the parties contain many former communists. Are we going to get rid of them after the elections?Jakov?i?:“I respect the Archbishop’s message. HDZ is in the forefront of the anti-communist propaganda, yet their ranks are full of orthodox communist hardliners.”Globus:Your party was heavily criticised for the policy of regionalism.Jakov?i?:“I propose that all the parties work out a programme of decentralisation and of regional development. Since 1994 Istria is a member of the Assembly of European regions XE "Assembly of European regions" . But it will be difficult to achieve this decentralisation on the basis of the historical divisions of Dalmatia, Slavonia and Istria. In order to achieve this the citizens of these Croatian regions would have to see themselves more as regionalists. The IDS as a protagonist of such a move is seen by the HDZ as an extremist separatist party.”The ghost of D'Annunzio XE "D'Annunzio" hovers above as Jakov?i? reinvents regionalism in a nation not much bigger than a large London borough. Is this the recipe for Croatia's prosperous future?Miroslav ?eparovi?, a lawyer and former Chief of the Croatian Intelligence Service (HIS) XE "?eparovi?, Miroslav - lawyer and former Chief of Croatian Intelligence Service (HIS)" who, in dramatic circumstances, parted from President Tudjman XE " Tudjman" , provides us cheerfully with a list of the ‘deficiencies’ of the Intelligence Services; at the same time he moralises about the existing state of Croatian society. His approach may be a valuable one if taken with some caution, as it bridges the gap between the need for an axe to grind and real-politics. ?eparovi?:“I have definitely decided to abandon politics because, as a lawyer, I am not willing to cover-up unlawful and immoral deeds.”He continues ab ovo: “Who created the Croatian State? It was the result of the plebiscitary will of the Croatian people, expressed democratically and realised through armed struggle under the leadership of President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" and his party. It then received the people’s mandate. Ergo, the establishment of the Croatian State cannot be the result of the efforts on the part of only one person or only one political party. The aim was democracy, the rule of law, the Western orientation, the well-being and social justice for all its citizens. Unfortunately, after eight years Croatian society is still divided and dissatisfied. The reasons are many; people are resigned and the Government without aim or strategy. Internal and external enemies are being invented from thin air and the people are being frightened by a vision of a new Yugoslav with Balkan associations. Those who make well-intentioned criticisms are proclaimed to be dilettantes and traitors. Warnings by the media are suppressed. Illegal actions in the privatisation of the national property are quashed by political means. Negotiations with the International Community are sheer formalism with no intention of solving the problems. The Bolshevik system of running the State XE "Bolshevik system of running the State" is being re-introduced, where the ruling party [HDZ] and the State are taken to be one and the same. Even the Opposition does not give any concrete answers as to how to get Croatia out of such a situation. I wish to point out that President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" and his system of power is exclusively responsible for this state of affairs, even taking into account all his unquestionable achievements in the creation of the State.”“The intelligence services XE "Intelligence services" are at the receiving end of the media attack because of their infringement of basic freedoms. These services are now in the grip of various internal squabbles, due to conflicting political interests. Even so, these services, in the Homeland war and post-war period, have fulfilled satisfactorily their tasks in the field of national security. Naturally, little is known by the general public about this work.”“The present state of the intelligence services XE "intelligence services" is characterised by politisation, unlawfulness, lack of control and lack of clear aims. The attachment of the services to the particular political lobbies within the ruling party [HDZ], and the lack of trust among different services reduces their efficiency. At the moment there are in Croatia nine intelligence and counter-intelligence services. In May 1991, two independent bodies for military intelligence were established: SIS and the Military police. The Security Information Service [SIS] is responsible for counter-intelligence for the protection of the armed services. Therefore, SIS should not be involved in intelligence matters related to civilian and non-Governmental bodies, except in a war situation and as prescribed by law.”“The Intelligence Board of the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Croatia [ObU GSOS] XE "ObU GSOS - Intelligence Board of Supreme Command of Armed Forces of Republic of Croatia" is collecting intelligence for the purpose of the armed forces. It should not operate abroad except in a war situation.”“The SZUP [Service for the Protection of the Constitution] XE "SZUP [Service for Protection of the Constitution]" of the Ministry of the Interior prevents violent infringements of the Constitution, be it terrorism or organised crime. This service, however, is open to many unlawful infringements carried out under the guise of the protection of national security.” “The activities of the UNS [The Office for National Security] XE "UNS [The Office for National Security]" are defined by law dated May 1995. This is an Executive body for the direction and control of the institutions linked with national security. One of the services within it is the so-called HIS [Croatian Intelligence Service], XE "HIS [Croatian Intelligence Service]," which in practice does not control but co-ordinates the other services. This is unlawful. HIS collects and analyses data for constitutionally-approved use by the President and the Government. In addition to this, HIS collects foreign intelligence; both activities are thus conflicting demands. In spite of these irregularities the HIS activities were given due recognition by friendly foreign intelligence services XE "intelligence services" .”“The most serious consequence of the clannishness of the Croatian Intelligence Services is the lack of control of their activities by Parliament.”Like all the former 'liberal' intelligence servicemen, ?eparovi? has his own personal dislikes, but he does not actually suggest a workable alternative.Faced with the melancholy events of the serious illness of President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , Dr. Mate Grani? XE "Grani?" , Minister of Foreign Affairs and a loyal ally of the President and a habitually straightforward man, looked back on the last ten years of the life of the founder of the Croatian State. Grani?’s apologia on this score is notable for its detail and candour. What kind of a man emerges then from this ante-mortem? “Tudjman XE "Tudjman" is a charismatic personality who appeared in a given time and space: that is the time of the demolition of the Yugoslav communist system. He marked that time, created a political party [the HDZ] at the right time, and gave a clear direction to the Croatian people. Firstly he aimed at a sovereign, democratic and independent Croatian State; secondly, he stated clearly that he did not want divisions between Croats.”“The referendum for Independence, resistance to the Serbian aggression, the international recognition of Croatia are also his achievements. Simply stated, President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" fought for the Croatian State and made it victorious. After Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , nothing will be the same, that is for sure. Yet, even in this most difficult period, may I say that all the institutions of the State function smoothly.”When challenged, Grani? XE "Grani?" was at pains to point out that the democratisation and the integration of Croatia into the International Community had objective difficulties.“Up to the completion of the peaceful re-integration of Croatia in 1995, Croatia was under permanent pressure by the International Community, with the constant threat of sanctions. Perhaps President Tudjman XE " Tudjman" could have done some things better, but I know this can’t be an excuse.” The tendency of the International Community to see Croatia’s non-compliance with agreements in terms of conspiracy was formally rejected by Grani? XE "Grani?" .“I personally insisted on honouring International agreements. After all, in the key agreements, the Washington Agreement XE "Washington Agreement" , the Split, Vienna and Dayton agreements, Croatia was on the side of the democratic states. Even the most delicate requirement, such as the return of the fleeing Serbs, was fulfilled. And of course, The Hague XE "The Hague" . It is unjust that Croatia was not included in the PHARE XE "PHARE" programme, the Partnership for Peace, and that the International Community tied Croatia to the Balkan region and rejected Croatia’s individual entry into the EU. As far as Croatia is concerned, that is unacceptable.”“Whoever wins the next elections the relations with the US and the EU won’t be easy. Yet, ironically enough, Brussels is awaiting Croatia’s entry very keenly.”.The conventional anti-Tudjman XE "Tudjman" view portrays him as an autocrat who gained power through the help of the hard-line Hercegovian lobby, who survived in power for ten years by a combination of demagogy and luck. This, and his alleged obsession with BiH, explains little, yet Grani? XE "Grani?" challenges these views.“BiH was a great burden for Croatia as far as its foreign policy was concerned because the Croats there are the smallest national group, the most endangered, the most dispersed and, together with the Muslims, were the victims of Serbian aggression. It is clear that Croatia could not abandon them. The existence of the BiH Croats was necessary for the existence of the state of BiH as such. Our constitution obliges us to help all the Croats outside Croatia.”The fact that European opinion, Grani? XE "Grani?" argues, perceived the Croatian policy toward BiH as aimed at the division of the country was an error. “I can tell you with absolute assurance, as I myself was a participant in the Washington and Dayton negotiations, that we perceive BiH as a neighbouring friendly state in which Croats are a constitutive nation. The BiH Federation was created as early as 1994 after the agreement between the Bo?njak [Muslims] and the Croats. It is in our interest that the Croats in BiH will preserve their national, cultural, political and religious identity and that our help for them is transparent. But we also demand that the help from the Islamic countries to the Muslims, and Yugoslavia’s help to the Serbs in BiH must also be transparent.”When asked about his personal relations with President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , and his uncanny ability to ride out dangerous storms in foreign policy, due to international pressure and the sanctions blackmail, Grani? XE "Grani?" was adamant:“According to the Constitution, the foundation of foreign policy was the prerogative of President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" . The problem was that the situation in BiH influenced enormously the international position of Croatia. The question was how to harmonise the situation in the country with the expectations of the International community.”Such a delicate political balance, of course, indicated a lack of servility and blind faith in the International Community by Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , which servility was put in action by the former communists (SDP) and their coalition partners after the victory in the elections on the 3rd January 2000. Grani? XE "Grani?" insisted that his contribution to foreign policy was achieved in a direct and open collaboration with President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" .“I was always loyal to President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , and we both had only one vision for Croatia, that of a modern democratic and civil state. I never succumbed to the theories of foreign conspiracies.”The conflict within the HDZ, as a result of differences of opinion among different coteries, was apparently eliminated by the dying Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , the implication being that Tudjman kept these simmering under control until the very end.“President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" was, without doubt, a charismatic personality who kept the HDZ united. The President’s illness, in my opinion, made everyone in the party more responsible. The HDZ is transforming itself from the liberation movement into a political party. The need for a right of centre political party is indispensable.”The conflict of the HDZ with the International Community and vice-versa is put forward as an explanation for the ‘world’ push for a change of regime in Croatia. The HDZ is an obstacle to this, yet there is room for serious doubt on this issue.“This is a complicated question. The Social Democrats and Liberal coalitions are in power in most countries in the West. It is perfectly natural that the HDZ should be orientated towards them. On the other hand, a part of the International Community was not keen on President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" personally. This is nothing new. Yet in crucial situations they collaborated with him perfectly, as for example in Washington and Dayton. Thirdly, the International Community could not swallow [or understand] the Croatian link with the Croats in BiH. The different interests of the US and the EU reflect this in their policies towards Croatia.”It remains difficult for the critics of President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" to arrive at a balanced judgment of his importance. Grani? XE "Grani?" is, however, completely firm on that score.“Irrespective of other opinions Tudjman XE "Tudjman" is for Croatia, as Churchill was for England XE "Churchill was for England" , and de Gaulle was for France XE "de Gaulle was for France" ; there is absolutely no doubt about that.”In the flood of memoirs of who deserves the credit for the free elections in Croatia in 1990 and, by implication, for Croatian independence, that of Dragutin Dimitrovi? XE "Dimitrovi?" , the former Secretary of the Presidency of the CKSKH is the latest pretender. ‘It was an idea that occurred to him on 8th December 1989, two days before the Communist Party of Croatia decided ‘voluntarily’ to get out of power and proclaim free elections.’ The Party thus fulfilled its task with a thorough sense of (patriotic) duty, living up to its fetish for heroism. Never mind that prior to this heroic event, the ‘nationalist’ Opposition had already arranged for a collection of signatures in the whole of Croatia demanding free elections.Thus, Dimitrovi? XE "Dimitrovi?" was the spiritus movens of the independence in the Central Committee with the helping hand of only one other member, Celestin Sardeli? XE "Sardeli?, Celestin" . With President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" dying and no longer capable of contesting the claim of virile heroism by the Party that kept the Croatian people in the Yugoslav utopia for 45 years, the purpose of Dimitrovi?’s claim was transparent. The Croatian Communist Party set itself up as the body which would eliminate its shameful legacy, transform itself like a bankrupt company and re-register under a new name, while its nature remained the same.“On 9th December 1989, I did not need more than half-an-hour to persuade Stanko Stoj?evi? XE "Stoj?evi?, Stanko" , President of the Presidency of the SKH, to accept ‘my’ idea about the announcement for the free elections. Parliamentary elections were for sure the process to open new relations in Croatia. The crucial session of the presidency of the CK SKH on 10th December 1989 resulted in the vote to go ahead with free elections in the ratio of 7:6 in favour, i.e., by one single vote. The free elections were held in April 1990.”Dimitrovi? XE "Dimitrovi?" took immense pleasure in the pseudo-medieval choreography of the Croatian Communists turning into social democrats; a ‘trivial’ process accepted by the West as a model of representative democracy. Not to be outdone in the meritorious order for the achievement of the Croatian independence, Mika ?piljak XE "Mika ?piljak" , the old communist fox XE "?piljak, Mika - old communist fox" and leading Croatian politician in the 1980’s stated: “I made it possible for Franjo Tudjman XE " Tudjman" to receive a passport in 1987 to travel to Canada” for a meeting with Gojko ?u?ak XE "?u?ak, Gojko" , (1945-1998) the former minister of Defence during the crucial period of the independence movement and in the Homeland war. ?piljak was a controversial figure and the key man in the realisation of Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s policies of arming Croatia during the arms embargo.President Tudjman XE " Tudjman" ’s death agony prompted speculations to identify who it was that made possible his link with the nationalists in Canada in 1987. Thus Josip Manoli? XE "Manoli?, Josip" , the former boss of the UDBA XE "UDBA" insists that the UDBA itself ‘bought the plane tickets for Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’. He bases this hypothesis on the premise that Gojko ?u?ak XE "?u?ak, Gojko" and other Croatian nationalists in Canada collaborated with the UDBA, but he has not produced any evidence for this statement. Allegedly, the top brass of the Party and the State in Belgrade, failing to stop the breakdown of Yugoslavia, tried at least to keep the breakdown under control. In his memoirs From the Death of Tito XE "Tito" to the Death of Yugoslavia, [Studio Oko, Sarajevo 1999], Raif Dizdarevi? XE "Dizdarevi?, Raif" , President of the Presidency of the SFRJ wrote: “. . . During the years of my presidency, we were receiving regular information about the contacts Franjo Tudjman XE " Tudjman" made with the fascist Ustasha emigrants during his visits to Canada, the US and Germany, on which occasions he encouraged them to act as a nationalist-separatist opposition. The fact that Tudjman XE "Tudjman" was received in the US Congress and the State Department XE "State Department" during his visit to the USA indicated a certain political acknowledgement of his status, even without explicit support for his political arguments.”According to Manoli? XE "Manoli?" , the Yugoslav Embassy in Ottawa received regular daily reports on the contacts Tudjman XE "Tudjman" made on that visit. In fact, this claim appears to be a deliberate UDBA XE "UDBA" confusion trick. The truth seems much simpler.The Yugoslav Utopia was in a state of debacle. In such a situation, it was fairly easy to obtain a passport from an opportunist career administrator trying to safeguard himself by links to the ‘other side’, just in case!The story of the passport skulduggery landed on the desk of Mika ?piljak XE "?piljak, Mika" . Tudjman XE "Tudjman" allegedly asked for his help. The matter was passed to the ‘Croatian’ Minister of the Interior, Vilim Mulc. “Listen Mika, I hear that Djilas obtained a passport in Belgrade recently. There is no reason for us not to give one to Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ,” was Mulc’s answer to ?piljak. It was characteristic of the period of the breakdown of the Yugoslav State that Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , and for that matter Djilas, could go abroad and talk openly to their respective ‘nationalist’ coteries. The reins of power had fallen out of the hands of the ‘heroic’ Communist Yugoslav Utopians. The Croatian UDBA XE "UDBA" was in a mess, as was the ‘Croatian’ Communist party.Be that as it may, whoever gave Tudjman XE "Tudjman" the passport and with whatever intention, Tudjman had a controlling role in the matter. His ambitions and sentiments were in no doubt: Croatian Statehood. The Nationalism that he embraced and preached had nothing to do with collaboration with the UDBA XE "UDBA" and the preservation of Yugoslavia. On the contrary, for him as a pragmatic, it was essential to receive financial support from the powerful Croatian emigrants in Canada in order to build up the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and to win the free elections. And he delivered. 10th December 1999 - Vlatko Pavleti? XE "Pavleti?, Vlatko" , acting President of the Republic, held a working meeting with Dr. Ivica Kostovi? XE " Kostovi?, Dr. Ivica" , Dr. Mate Grani? XE "Grani?" and other HDZ grandees, at 10.15 a.m.At an 11.00 o’clock meeting he met with the diplomatic corps and explained the current situation: the critical moments for President Tudjman XE " Tudjman" and the date for the next elections to be held on 2nd January 2000. In the evening at 23.00 hours Dr. Kostovi?, attending to President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , telephoned Pavleti? asking him to come to the Parliament as soon as possible. Late in the evening Pavleti? made a TV proclamation to Croatia, and the Croats abroad, that “the struggle for President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s life had ended unfortunately with inevitable death. Franjo Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , statesman and the first President of the modern Independent and Democratic Republic of Croatia, is dead. The name of Franjo Tudjman XE "Tudjman" will remain the symbol of the determination, courage, persistence and the highest political skill, an inspiration for all those who will remain upright in the defence of the interests of the free and proud Croatia.”11th December 1999 - A regular meeting at the Presidency. A flood of telegrams of condolence arrived.12th December 1999 - Long processions of mourners passing continually the President’s coffin during the day and night since yesterday. Very spontaneous and impressive. The days of the enforced march-pasts in Tito XE "Tito" -land have long gone. It is all rather curious. What is moving these masses to give their respects to ‘the autocrat’ and even the ‘dictator’? How come that nobody was really scared of this ‘dictator’, about whom many wrote not only critically but also insultingly, arguing that there was no freedom in Croatia? St. Mark’s Square is a carpet of burning candles. The conventional anti-Tudjman XE "Tudjman" propaganda has now found its match in this quiet spectacle.13th December 1999 - At 9 a.m. an all-night procession of Croats of all generations and all classes has ended. Even the increasingly invasive rain did not stop them. From 9 a.m. official guests were arriving. Ljup?e Georgijevski, Prime Minister of Macedonia. XE "Georgijevski, Ljup?e - Prime Minister of Macedonia" At 10 a.m. President of Turkey, Suleyman Demirel XE "Demirel, Suleyman - President of Turkey" has arrived, followed by representatives of BiH. The most moving telegram was received from Baroness Margaret Thatcher XE "Thatcher, Margaret" of the UK (find this telegram.) The President’s coffin, covered with the Croatian tricolour on a gun carriage, was already moving slowly towards the cemetery in Mirogoj. CNN XE "CNN" broadcast the event in its entirety. More than 100,000 citizens passed the coffin and 250,000 Croats from the homeland and from all over the world attended the funeral. All that without a single incident.For the majority of Croats, to whom the rebirth of the Croatian Independent State was of paramount importance, ‘Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s historical role was the primary factor’ that explained almost all. For his critics, hardly anything is right. Tudjman was the devil incarnate for a hotchpotch of Serbs, the hardcore of the Yugoslav Utopians, those who do not like ‘the nature’ of the newly created State, the relentless communists and the ambiguous ‘liberal democrats’.As the war clearly became the price for independence, Tudjman XE "Tudjman" faced the challenge and became victorious. For his critics, whom he described as ‘internal enemies’, this was the last straw. For them the ‘nature’ of the Croatian State (which they did not want but were prepared opportunistically to jump onto its bandwagon) became so ambiguous, not enough ‘liberal-democratic’ and Western that it was hardly worthy to be recognised as a Croatian State. Such an ‘intellectual’ attitude naturally came into collision with the political decision-making of Tudjman’s ruling party, the HDZ.Inevitably, the Serbs in Croatia lost the war that they themselves provoked. In order to stop the recreation of the Independent Croatian State as demanded in the 1991 plebiscite XE "Plebiscite 1991" , they had no choice but to run to BiH and Serbia.Quite rightly, the majority of the Croats took the attitude of ‘good riddance’, and the later insistence by the West that the Serbs should return was taken as a negation of the victory in the Homeland war. Even the rationalists believed that the loss of the Serbs was directly proportionate to the development of democracy in Croatia. After all, the Serbs as the policemen of the Yugoslav Utopian system were directly responsible for the birth of the political radicalism and extremism in Croatia and consequently for the inevitable violence. The added difficulty was the fact that the West not only encouraged the Croatian critics of Tudjman XE "Tudjman" but also was literally sitting on their backs. So it is difficult for the Tudjman critics to arrive at a balanced judgment. To portray Tudjman as a mercenary at the service of Croatian nationalism and an enemy of democracy (in all its infinite interpretations) is to miss the point. The argument that he needed the ‘Serbian question’ as a means of national mobilisation, in alliance with the BiH Muslims and other Balkan variants, explains almost as little. The Western critics argued that his rule was far from ‘exemplary’ democracy. They said that it was selective, delegated and defective anocracy, personal autocracy, corrupt populist pluralism, presidential democracy, and ‘semi-democracy’. But they are derogating the majority who put him in power in free elections and ‘put up with him’ in power for ten years. How was it possible for Tudjman to win the hearts and minds of the majority of the Croats to start with, to win the Homeland war, and to survive the ostracism by the ‘democratic’ Western powers, if the Croatian majority had no confidence in him? This is the crucial question.The arguments advanced were that he did not trust the remaining minority that stood in opposition against him, that he was a victim of delusion and needed to be controlled for the sake of Croatia. While true, these arguments were at the same time provocations fuelled by the West, which really never became reconciled to the break-up of Yugoslavia, above all a Yugoslavia with Croatian Independence. The fact is that the West needed ‘the Croatian question’ (as before WWII) in order to actively impose its political solution and keep its control over Croatia. All of this was done under the guise of introducing ‘liberal democracy’. This was the international context, not of Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s making, in which he was forced to operate. No wonder that in such a situation Tudjman had no option but to personalise ‘Croatian politics’ with the support of the majority of the electorate. He spoke on its behalf; he became the ‘embodiment of the State and the Nation’ and put up resistance to the unelected institutions and non-Governmental organisations that the West imposed on Croatia. Yet the fact is that the HDZ itself, as the ruling party, could not control all of its components, neither those of the ‘Ustasha revisionists’ ilk or those of the conservative demo-Christians, the right-wing populists, nor the liberal techno-managers. Ironically enough, in relation to Tudjman, all of them were de facto Tudjman’s men. In the power vacuum of the late 1980’s, Tudjman’s ability to manipulate and organise and yet remain apart, ostensibly committed to nothing except his historical call, was central to his and Croatia’s survival.Tudjman XE "Tudjman" learned a lot from the Croatian historical tragedy. He was aware that his project could not be achieved by recourse to the style of the populist policies of Stjepan Radi? XE "Stjepan Radi?" , making a compromise with the Belgrade of Vlatko Ma?ek XE "Ma?ek, Vlatko" , the dictatorship of Ante Paveli? XE "Paveli?, Ante" , or even Tito XE "Tito" ’s manipulation of the international fora.He had an uncanny ability to use the heterogeneous human and political potential of Croatia after the break-up of communist Yugoslavia, to use individuals and groups of differing social and political origins, former political dissidents and prisoners, political emigrants, refugees, and displaced persons from the Croatian regions of BiH, Vojvodina and Kosovo. He was also able to ride out the dangerous storms at acutely difficult moments of international isolation. This made him (unusually in Croatian history) the right man in the right place at the right time. The Opposition caricaturing of Tudjman XE "Tudjman" as ‘an all-seeing omnipotent crusader entrusted with God’s mission’ was a trifling price to pay for his real achievements.Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s death was felt most deeply in the Croatian heartland of BiH, that of Western Hercegovina. The message ‘Let the Croatian soil weigh lightly on you’ had more than an idiomatic meaning. On the day of his funeral, Hercegovina emptied itself. For the thousands of its citizens, there was only one place to be – Zagreb.The Zagreb youth, on the other hand, took a more cynical view. There was much of it in the attitude of the young layabouts in the punk and rock cafes, those great institutions of western democracy, in Zagreb, on the subject of the death of the President. All the discos were closed. “We do not know what to do, everything is closed and the TV is pure brainwashing about Franjo Tudjman XE "Tudjman" .”Obviously among these spongers, there are very few war heroes, or none of any significance. This sub-urban generation gathered in the centre of Zagreb was profoundly bored. “We are sorry about the President, but he is not a subject on our 'A' list. As far as we are concerned, politics is out,” one of them yawns. “Maybe I shall give my vote to Ra?an, he is not a hypocrite.” Deprived of any ability to rationalise (maybe even drugged up to the eyeballs), two girls try to speak while chewing gum: “It is unfortunate that President Tudjman XE " Tudjman" died during the weekend so now we can’t go anywhere.”It is not just that their statements were disturbing. It is that these throwbacks of the Yugo-communist utopia found even the death of the first President of an Independent Croatia politically suspect and boredom (in an English way) a supreme achievement. “We are drowning our sorrow in alcohol,” another one stated with an exaggerated sense of importance. ‘The golden youth’ are determined to vote for a ‘radical change of power’. Although poor, most of their parents burn candles in the windows of their houses in the outlying suburbs, and many have gone to offer their last respects to the dead President.Another crowd of youths wandering in the penumbra, repelled by a mixture of sentimentality, show more spirit: “We youngsters do not see this as a tragedy yet the situation will not change so soon, if ever. It does not mean that we love our country less . . . on the contrary.”The thingy world of a few larger Croatian towns, Zagreb, Rijeka, and Split, not free from malice, is far removed from the otherness, archaic dignity and even epic grandeur of the world of Western Hercegovina, Dalmatia, Lika, and Slavonia. In Hercegovina, a seven-day mourning period was declared. A thousand or so people crowded into the unfinished reinforced concrete cathedral of St. Peter & Paul in Mostar, a symbol of Catholicism and the Croatianhood, built right on the front line of the Bosnian war. All the buildings in Mostar are covered in the red, white and blue Croatian tricolour, covering the pockmarked concrete walls. In City Hall, a book of condolences was most often carrying the message: ‘Let the Croatian soil weigh lightly on you.’ In the world-famous pilgrim place of Medjugorje there was not one, but two tricolours, at half-mast on the Church. Alija Izetbegovi? XE "Izetbegovi?" ignored the funeral and his half-hearted condolence arrived a few days late. Thousands of Croats from Hercegovina were on the way to their own capital, Zagreb, contemptuous of ?evap?i?i-fragrant Sarajevo. These were the people that were on the receiving end of the ultimate bloody outrages of the burnt-out case of the Yugoslav utopia. The same picture repeated itself all over the plains and improbable mountain treks of Croatia.Dr. Dunja Rihtman-Augu?tin, Professor of Ethno Anthropology XE "Rihtman-Augu?tin, Dr. Dunja - Professor of Ethno Anthropology" , took up a different angle on the demise of the legendary hero of Croatian liberation: “Croats have proved that they belong to the Western civilisation; nobody wailed at Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s funeral.” “According to Durkheim, the group that depended on the dead person implodes after his death. It tightens its ranks and increases its solidarity. But such solidarity does not necessarily mean a consensus. People that have passed the coffin of President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" are not necessarily all HDZ voters. The funeral ritual was a mixture of two rhetorics, that of historical and that of a more liberal view. Television was the projector of the historical rhetoric.”While Dr. Rihtman offered a general theory of the demise of the charismatic leader, her offer in this particular case remained synthetic. The ‘liberal’ rhetoric of a type of ‘what kind of a state’ was superfluous without the a priori historical fact of the establishment of the Croatian State. Dr. Rihtman is putting the cart before the horse. Accordingly, she cannot be an exemplary witness to legendary times. Even so, she explained the mind-set of the International Community leaders absent from President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s funeral. Was their intention to humiliate Croatia? “I believe that we should be more rational and use that demarche as an indication of our position in Europe. Tito XE "Tito" was perhaps a bigger dictator and yet, thanks to his policies, more than a hundred foreign leaders attended his funeral. . . . ”“The present ritual expressed suppressed emotions. There was no wailing and hysteria [as at Tito XE "Tito" 's funeral] as the control of emotions is a sign of a civilised man. Accordingly, Croats belong to the Western civilisation – President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , had he known this, would have been a happy man.”Dr. Hrvoje ?arini? XE "?arini?, Hrvoje" , former adviser to President Tudjman, surveyed the variety of reactions that the death of President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" evoked.“How do you comment on the fact that Slobodan Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" sent a telegram of condolence and Alija Izetbegovi? XE "Izetbegovi?" did so but only at the last moment?”“Milo?evi? exploited the situation to show off in public. On the other hand, it is rather strange that Izetbegovi? "" ’s telegram was strictly formal, taking into account all the contacts [and the help given to BiH] during the war. But on such occasions politicians must display a certain degree of wisdom.”Globus:Did you expect more foreign leaders at the funeral?Dr. Hrvoje ?arini? XE "?arini?, Hrvoje" : “President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" often displayed spite towards the International Community and they are now returning this in kind. Even so, such an attitude by the world powers is counter-productive in relation to Croatia, and this does not help the Opposition.”Globus:Can you tell us now if the President ordered that his diagnosis be kept secret??arini?:“May I remind you that President Mitterrand XE "Mitterrand, President" kept his illness and many other secrets too, under close wraps? This is human. Illness is an intimate concern. When the President returned in 1996 from the Walter Reed Hospital, the outlook for his cure was zero. He defied the illness. And yes, he was against publicity on that score. He maintained that this was a sphere of his private life. Let’s be realistic. With the passage of time, President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s contribution to the Croatian Statehood will be the only thing that will remain. The details will disappear in the winds of history.” Prof. Dr. Slaven Letica XE " Letica, Prof. Dr. Slaven" , who himself had presidential ambitions, tells us and fleshes out what most of the ‘liberal’ politicians have told us already in the post mortem, yet: “President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" will be missed in Croatia and abroad as the scapegoat for all the problems in the country and abroad [BiH and The Hague XE "The Hague" ], which more often than not, have occurred as a result of wrong decisions made by the West, the USA, the EU and the UN. . . . It is very difficult to write about Croatia after Tudjman in the melee of high emotions, and its exploitation by the media. . . . For the creation of Tudjman’s Croatia we needed patriotism, inspiration, courage and sacrifice, characteristics we had in abundance. For Croatia after Tudjman we need professionalism, hard work, political wisdom and diplomatic skills, in which we are sadly lacking. The creation of the Croatian State was a great historical and personal achievement of Tudjman’s. That State could not have been created by political inertia, as occurred in the other post-communist countries, simply because the aim of the Great-Serbian aggression was to prevent such a State being set up. While President Tudjman believed that that was an end in itself, we have to take it as a new beginning, in the development of democracy, the rule of law, human rights and prosperity for all.”Letica raised also the issue of the responsibility of ‘the executors, (i.e., the Croatian people), Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s symbolic heritage’. The hypertrophy of the national symbolism was inevitable during the revolution of the Independence, embodied in the President himself. No doubt his charisma had become the attribute of the State as a primary institution. No need to argue that at that stage, the ‘institutional presidential charisma’ was unavoidable."A professional sociological team of Snje?ana Bero?, writes Letica, has examined the state symbolism on the basis of 1,000 examinees, which, while it is not absolutely convincing, may throw light on the subject. Kuna, as a name of the currency, was approved by 87.3% of the population; the title ‘The Croatian State Parliament’ (the Sabor) by 69.6%; the laying of wreaths on the Altar of the Homeland approved by 60.3%; the presidential swearing-in ceremony in St. Mark’s Square approved by 54.9% and the annual State of the Nation speech by 78.6%. The remainder, such as ‘the need for the Presidential aircraft, military aid-de-camp, the title of honourable member of Parliament, the Presidential Residence at Brioni, the title of the Supreme Commander, the wearing of the Presidential sash, the holding of the right hand on the heart in the American style during the intonation of the national anthem, the review of the troops on going to and returning from abroad, the Presidential guard, and so on, were dismissed as perfunctory. The number of unemployed (320,000 people) and the debt of $9 billion, while blamed on Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s leadership, on the contrary was the inevitable price to pay for the ten-year long building and defence of the State. What are the chances of reform by the new government led by the ‘reformed’ communists? To hope that six different parties under the leadership of the communists could make the State more just, cheaper and more European, is more entertaining than it is convincing.Scandal-mongering by the Opposition press was a striking fact of life during the Tudjman XE "Tudjman" decade (1990-2000). Yet, curiously enough, the Croatian army was immune from this scandal-contaminated media attention. Now, after President TudjmanE " Error! Bookmark not defined.’s death and the parliamentary elections in the offing in January 2002, the press resumedits ‘prerogative’ to stir up the military establishment.“How will the army react to the situation in which the HDZ loses the elections?” was a provocative question to Pavao Moljevi?, the Minister of Defence XE "Moljevi?, Pavao - Minister of Defence" . He responded as follows:“The Croatian army sprang from the Croatian people. Accordingly, it is the army of this people, whose duty it is to protect the State; getting involved in the outcome of the elections would be contrary to the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia.” Globus:How do you explain the thesis that the Opposition intends to return Croatia into the Balkans and that therefore the Opposition represents a threat to national security?”PM“I don’t think that the Opposition represents a threat to national security. Rather, I think it overlooked the important fact that Croatia is encircled by states unfavourable to this kind of Croatia. The Opposition wants to placate them at the expense of our national security.”In the same issue of Globus, Dr. Ozren ?unec XE "?unec, Dr. Ozren" asked a mildly provocative question: “Was President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" really a good war leader?” the implication being that no serious political discussion would be complete without clarifying this question.?unec answered as follows:“Tudjman XE "Tudjman" overcame enormous obstacles: the creation of the army, the defence from external aggression and the battle with the internal Serbian rebels who occupied one third of the country. No wonder that, at the beginning of the Homeland war, the foreign experts gave Croatia a maximum of one month’s existence.”?unec argued that a critical history would be faced with a paradox that in December 1992 President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" became the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, which was without a single soldier. The Yugoslav army seized the former Territorial Army armoury at the time of the first elections in April 1990 and Croatia thus remained defenceless. The argument that President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" wrote off the Territorial Army for ideological reasons and that he was shilly-shallying for a whole year, indulging in political sophistries with Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" and the Yugoslav Defence Minister Kadijevi? XE "Kadijevi?" , is unproven. He was under no obligation to explain his policies (in a semi-presidential system) and it was up to him to choose the time, the place, and the nature of his actions. ?unec was, however, correct that President Tudjman fought the war with political rather than military logic. To argue that, in all his actions, there was no logic is therefore nonsense.Although the JNA XE "JNA" , as a ‘third military power’ in Europe was largely a myth, it retained a sufficiently powerful thug and bully-boy power to inflict irreparable damage, which it displayed in Croatia and BiH from 1991 to 1995, either directly or indirectly, by the aggression of its affiliated forces. The proof for this is that the rag-tag army of Krajina kept Croatia in a checkmate position until 1995.It was shown very quickly that the Tudjman XE "Tudjman" -?u?ak duo was acting systematically and covertly at organising and arming several brigades and introducing a workable chain of command. President Tudjman’s policy of reconciliation in general included also accepting the Croatian officers, deserters from the JNA XE "JNA" , into the Croatian Army. The crucial point for the Croatian Amy’s success was that President Tudjman’s charisma permeated this new defence force.The inability to break the Serbian blockade of Vukovar XE "Vukovar" was a debacle, while letting the JNA XE "JNA" forces off the hook in Croatia sometimes with complete armaments, was in hindsight a wise move. After getting rid of the disgraced JNA from Croatia, the deck was clear for the systematic build-up of forces, which would operate like clockwork in the Bljesak and Oluja offensives in 1995.There is more to the debate on the Croatian army’s controversial involvement in BiH than the ad hoc argument ‘that it was disastrous’. Those who argue that its involvement in BiH was inevitable in the context of the Bosnian war ‘directly or indirectly’ have proof of the pudding on their side. The Croatian army offensives in BiH, on the admission of the British and the Americans, enabled the Dayton Agreement XE "Dayton Agreement" at a price, of course. They saved the necks of the ungrateful Muslims. On the contrary, if President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" did not act that would have been really disastrous. This military ‘involvement in BiH’, after many critical analyses, is now widely, although grudgingly, accepted as pragmatic.Dr. ?unec’s argument that President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" now exploited his experience, which was based on the ideological correctness and loyalty to the communist party, is broadly correct. On the other hand, the charge that he assessed the loyalty of his men on the disproportion between their abilities and the high-ranking position they were holding, is however an exaggeration. The communist who turned into ‘a despot’ if not into an absolute monarch, his image tarnished by ‘antiquated statements a la Clausevitz and Huntington’ is a caricature rather than a reasonable appraisal. There was much more to Tudjman XE "Tudjman" than met the eye. By and large, Franjo Tudjman " handled cohabitation with the hostile Opposition at home and abroad with great skill and panache.Georges-Marie Chenus, the French Ambassador to Croatia from 1991-95, XE "Chenus, Georges-Marie - French Ambassador to Croatia from 1991-95" wrote: “Dr. Tudjman XE "Dr. Tudjman" was a lonely and preoccupied man, who hoped to receive partnership support from Europe.” “First of all, President Tudjman was a much more complex personality than generally thought, and he belonged to a generation distinguished by indestructible determination. In France his image was of a self-confident, cool politician. In private however, he deliberated over his decisions and then suddenly put them into practice firmly and with alacrity.”Chenus’s impressions of what was implied but not quite said by President Tudjman were supported by his own enormous patience in listening to long monologues from Tudjman XE "Tudjman" in response to his own brief exposés. “Under the cool and ceremonial exterior, I found him to be a kind and thoughtful host who would, if the guest displayed an interest in his country, become a warm and friendly collocutor. Talking about the sufferings of the Croatian people he would deliver passionate explanations, after which he would fall silent.”How can one hope to penetrate the psyche of a man who was trained to give nothing away apart from elaborate historical explanations?“The first Croatian president was often described as a thoughtless ringleader whose hasty decisions contributed to the fomenting of violence in the former Yugoslavia. The reality however was quite different. Although a fighter in WWII and with a military background, he has shown surprisingly extreme restraint and caution in the defence of Croatia in 1991, and also in its liberation in 1995. He waited patiently for a full four years to expose the impotence of the UN diplomacy and the UNPROFOR XE "UNPROFOR" forces.”Habitually, the great issues of Croatia were discussed only in the Presidential Villa among a narrow circle of unelected advisers, “who had to be disciplined and obedient. Criticism was not allowed in the State that was presidential, authoritarian and centralised. This trait was the result of a 50-year long struggle which, in 1990, culminated in him becoming the President of the new Croatian State.” There is no doubt that the Croatian people wholly conferred the indivisible authority of the State on him. He delegated all others.“Franjo Tudjman XE "Franjo Tudjman" plainly enjoyed power. He maintained that he himself was uniquely suited to deal with Serbs, Muslims and the International Community. He admired General de Gaulle’ and his ‘domaine reserve’, a doctrine that foreign policy was a ‘presidential preserve’. He was not averse to copying French presidents and encircling himself with great splendour and luxury as a corollary to many years of bleakness. In different circumstances quite seemly, this behaviour in a small country in the middle of a vicious war appeared to be uncomfortable, particularly when the mis-en-scene for this luxury were the former dictator Tito XE "Tito" ’s residences.”Chenus’s argument about ‘tragic and fatalistic’ talks between Tudjman XE "Tudjman" and Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" in Karadjordjevo about ‘the division of BiH’, the agreement with Dobrica ?osi? XE "?osi?, Dobrica " in Geneva about the ‘voluntary and civilised exchange of populations between Vojvodina and Slavonia’, support for Herceg-Bosnia and the proposal that Kosovo be divided between the Serbs and Albanians ‘on the pattern of his historical predecessors’ is the weakest and least understood of his observations.Tudjman XE "Tudjman" talked to President Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" in the same way that everyone else did, including Izetbegovi? XE "Izetbegovi?" . He was ‘dividing BiH’ when everyone else was doing the same and proposed the ‘civilised exchange’ of populations, as an already well established historical practice, like everyone else did (notably the British and the French). So what was the problem? Ironically enough, by copying Western European practices, he caused their displeasure.These very decisions have caused a cooling of the relations between Zagreb and Western Europe. Yet, President Mitterrand, President Tudjman XE "President Tudjman" ’s contemporary, was immune from scandal. He never had to answer for the illegal arms sales to Iran, the embezzlement of foreign aid by Cabinet Officials, the attempt to block a corruption inquiry, and his collaboration with the Vichy government during WWII. (Jean-Francois Revel XE "Revel, Jean-Francois" , L’Absolutisme inefficace, Paris.) “After six months stay in Croatia,” went on Chenus, “as an observer, I was shocked by the extent of the ignorance by the French politicians about the situation in Croatia, and how their ideas on the subject were exaggerated and deformed by prejudices towards the Croats whom they confused with Paveli?’s XE "Paveli?’s" Ustashas.” France’s problems with Croatia, curiously enough, the country with which historically it had important links (a Catholic country like France, the Anjous, Napoleon’s Illyiria, Napoleon’s Croat units, etc.) can be traced mainly to its Balkan policies (1900-1920), the elevation of the Karadjordjevi?s and their Russophile and Francophile policies inimical to Austro-Hungary. After 1918, with the Versailles XE "Versailles" Treaty and La Petite Entente XE "La Petite Entente" that locked the Croats into the Yugoslav Utopia, the Croats that resisted it were, in French eyes, doomed.”On 28th June 1992 (the 78th anniversary of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand XE "Franz Ferdinand" in Sarajevo in 1914), President Mitterrand was on the way to this very city. One could not avoid the feeling that he was placating the Serbs who were blockading Sarajevo.Paul Garde XE "Garde, Paul" recorded:“I had breakfast with President Mitterrand that morning, before he embarked on his helicopter for Sarajevo. I tried to explain to him that Croatia is rather different from its conventional ‘reputation’. After listening carefully for some minutes, the President changed the subject to Africa where I was stationed on my prior engagement. A few days later, before the Mitterrand-Tudjman XE "Tudjman" meeting at the session of the UN in New York, I made another attempt and sent President Mitterrand a long telegram in which I described in detail President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s Partisan and dissident past, and the nature of the aggression against his country. I never found out what was the outcome of the talks between the two Presidents.”“The President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" that Croatia buried on 13th December 1999 was a European statesman, of whom his European colleagues had undoubtedly been very critical, and towards whom they had a very sharp attitude. I believe that they should have been more modest and understanding and accepting that in 1990 they lost many opportunities to receive President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" into their circle and offer him help in discharging his high responsibilities. Behind his brusque, haughty and slightly absent-minded fa?ade, there was a shy, lonely and preoccupied man, expecting some sort of partnership support from Europe.” A problem here – He’s on both sides.The tone and finesse of the French Ambassador in assessing President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" could not have been more different from that of the odium of the Croatian Opposition media. Chenus’s objective in the interview was to set the record straight, rather than to pass judgment or to argue about the merits of the choices Tudjman made. One must applaud his modesty, which his European colleagues lack in large measure.In contrast, Dr. Paul Garde, a French linguist and maverick XE "Garde, Dr. Paul - French linguist and maverick" , stated in an interview with Globus (472, 24th December 1999): “I was shocked by the eulogy at President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s funeral. Even Australian Croats were mentioned but not the Serbs in Croatia. The negative obituaries in the Western press cannot be attributed to some special interests. I believe they are the result of his policies. I believe that President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" deserves credit for the realisation of Croatian independence. However, I could not call him Croatia’s Washington. The West does not recognise his worth, as it considers that the break-up of Yugoslavia was a disaster, which caused war and massacres – in a single word, a catastrophe.”“It was considered that the break-up of Yugoslavia was undesirable. This led to two conclusions: in the beginning it was believed that the Serbs intended to preserve Yugoslavia. Therefore they were right. Unfortunately President Mitterrand believed that. But as time passed there were less and less people who agreed. Eventually, everyone realised that actually the Serbs were responsible; even so, the creation of the new independent States was taken to be a negative consequence and the result of having no other option. Therefore the founders of these States were seen as almost responsible for war crimes. The West makes President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" responsible for the Croato-Muslim conflict in BiH. Then President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s concept of an ethnically pure Croatian State is precisely one which Western public opinion rejected. The same applied to Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" . Unfortunately the West, up to 1995, did not defend either BiH or Croatia. Ultimately the concept of an ethnically pure state led to massacre and genocide. Today, the moral assessment of the statesmen is more important in the overall assessment of their achievements. A great number of Croats condemned such policies. That’s the basic difference between Croatia and Serbia. The West is expecting first and foremost a change in the concept of the State in Croatia. The regime in Croatia, with President Tudjman’s death, has reached its own end. We expect a lot from Croatia. I believe that Croatia will very quickly fulfil the conditions necessary for joining the European Union.”In spite of all the erudition and contradictions in the obituaries, they leave us saying “yes, but”. The reactions to President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s rule were inferred from the point of view of political and ideological interest, occasional personal pronouncements, from hearsay, anecdotes, scribbles on napkins, and prejudices described finely by Ambassador Chenus and from reminiscences and interpretations of people who may have been trying to recreate him to their own liking or disliking. Essentially rejecting anything that smacks of these hypotheses, one has to confine oneself to the essence of the subject matter, i.e., the Yugoslav Utopia, which was created and supported by the Great Powers XE "Great Powers" , and consequently disaster had to happen. All the protagonists on that stage were the victims as well as occasional victors in its continuous violence. Croatia, which succeeded in escaping from the iron embrace of the Yugoslav Utopia, should consider itself extremely fortunate. The rash condemnation by the International Community of President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" for his part in this action did not make his life easier, in fact it is a further tribute to his success. The well-synchronised and shameful boycott of his funeral by Western leaders has to be seen in that context.For this reason, the sado-masochistic theory that Croatian state policies faced a complete debacle at the funeral of its creator can only be homage to the absent international supporters of the Yugoslav Utopia. Their absence is neither a triumph nor a tragedy. Only someone insane would expect the mourners from President Tito XE "Tito" ’s funeral to turn up at President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s obsequies.‘The King is dead, long live the King!’ Only eighteen days after the death of President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" on the 3rd December 1999, the pretender to the throne of the Republic of Croatia, one Ivica Ra?an XE "Ra?an, Ivica" , Marxist mystic, communist pragmatic, social idealist and political chameleon in an interview with Globus on the last day of the 20th century and the second millennium declared “A good democratic alternative to President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s policies and style of government had developed during his rule,” a statement intellectually tidy and ambiguous at the same time, implying that the freely elected Tudjman XE "Tudjman" government was a dictatorship by other means. One should not be surprised by such a formulation. A student of the Marxist school that analyses phenomena in terms of economics and class rather than politics, Ra?an, now wrapped up in the hoop petticoat of the Social Democracy, is explaining how his views will shape future political events.Ra?an:“I am sure that after the 3rd January 2000 [Election day] the HDZ rule will be at an end, and a new dawn of democracy will begin. Franjo Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , the man who led Croatia in the struggle for independence, its international recognition and territorial integrity was in that respect successful. Where he failed was afterwards [after 1995] to introduce democracy. Without Tudjman XE "Tudjman" there will be fewer problems in the country.”As a Marxist, Ra?an cannot avoid involvement with prophetism: Ra?an:“The new government will pull Croatia out of its economic and social crisis. To start with we shall try to stop economic collapse and safeguard economic development. For that we need capital, programmes of development, and various fiscal measures in order to stimulate investment and employment, increase production, particularly exports, and at the same time reduce State expenditure and reduce prices. Our citizens will not need to go to Slovenia, Hungary, Austria and Hercegovina to buy cheaper.” All in all, a utopian task.From everything said, the future Ra?an government is the constitutional heir of its enemies (the HDZ), as well as by the makeup of his membership, an ideological heir to its communist Yugoslav ancestors, and a fine example of dialectic hocus-pocus. It had accepted West European democracy formally, as a source of legitimacy, without any obligations to actually put it into practice. There are many more facets in Ra?an’s game, not only the durable allure of communism, but also the joys and terrors of lurking Yugoslavism. Not everyone will accept his arguments, but none could fail to prick up their ears to benefit from the gaps in his blurb.Q.How do you intend to achieve all that with $2 billion debt repayments and with 300,000 unemployed?Ra?an: “There is no miraculous solution. Firstly, we must obtain certain capital and then bridge the social gap, i.e., sort out the problems of health insurance and old age pensions. I believe that we can achieve this with the help of foreign capital, as a contribution by Europe to the stability of Croatia (!).”Q.Have you got any promises?Ra?an:“We had some talks on that subject, even some concrete offers, which raises my hopes.”Q.Without conditions? The HDZ accuse you of selling out on Croatia.Ra?an “This is empty rhetoric. We shall preserve Croatia with development, employment, and a satisfied people. Apart from foreign loans we must cut down on State expenditure. Everyone must contribute; workers, trade unions and the employers. We shall change the taxation system radically in order to stimulate employment, as well as the legal conditions to encourage foreign investment.”Q.Does the reduction in State expenditure contain certain dangers?Ra?an:“The new leadership must give a lead in this respect [accept a reduction in salaries] as a sign of solidarity with the people.Q.Is this demagogy? Ra?an:I don’t care. For us solidarity with the people is not demagogy.”Q.Are you worried about the radical reactions in case you win? You have already asked for protection by the police. You are not yet in government and yet, you are already distancing yourself from the people?Ra?an“This interpretation contains a lot of political spin. It is true that we are protecting our meetings. We shall synchronise the functions of the police with western standards. The army will be depoliticised and organised on the pattern of the professional army of NATO. From the war-time army, it must reduce to a peacetime force. However, we don’t intend to add to the army of the unemployed by dismissing the surplus from the existing army ranks. We have already prepared a study of 400 pages on this subject.”Q.What are you going to do with the generals who are, in the majority, members of the HDZ?Ra?an“It will depend on them how they treat their nation and State. Do they intend to help Croatia to become a stable and respected State within Europe or not? That will be the criterion for our relations with them.”Q.How will the new government be different from that of the HDZ?Ra?an:“Firstly, in order to be credible, it must be modest; without luxury, unnecessary expenses, nepotism, be resistant to corruption, and most importantly reject political suitability in favour of ability. It is most important ministerial seats will be filled with people orientated towards the future. If we win, from the first day we will move in a new direction. For example, it is up to us to defend our interests in Europe with dialogue and not with conflict. If we do that we shall be accused of being traitors to our national interests. There is no reason for us not to be principled, for example, on the subject of BiH. We were always in favour of an integral BiH with a democratic system that will protect the interests of the Croats there. We will help our people there, but this will be a transparent help.”Q.What will be the relations with Yugoslavia (Serbia), taking into account the situation with the Serbs in Croatia?Ra?an:“We shall proceed with a policy of “return home” for all. The Serbian minority in Croatia must not and cannot any longer be a danger to Croatia. There can no longer be any horse trading in relation to the Croatian State.”Q.Will the new government be more co-operative towards The Hague XE "The Hague" , and can this go against the national dignity and sovereignty?Ra?an:“Our national dignity will be defended by the fulfilment of our International Agreements. Our own judiciary failed in prosecuting certain crimes and in that way failed to remove the stigma from the operations Bljesak and Oluja. We shall not co-operate at the expense of the national interest. I realise that The Hague XE "The Hague" Court flirts with politics and pressure. I am not satisfied with that Court because it has not processed the greatest war criminals, Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" , Karad?i? and Mladi? XE "Mladi?, Ratko" . Yet in a general we have to find more flexibility in dealing with them, particularly as a small state with certain liabilities.Q.Do you have any promises from Brussels for help on the way to Europe?Ra?an:“Some promises are there, but we have to complete our own part of work at home first. Croatia can capitalise on its geo-strategic place in Europe in order to be a bridge to the south east of Europe. Nobody demands from us that we co-operate with undemocratic states, such as present-day Serbia.”Q.Will your government introduce a policy of revenge?Ra?an:“Nobody who is a member of the HDZ should fear for his position. However, I cannot guarantee security for crooks and plunderers. We will not make willingness to seek revenge a criterion for suitability in political life.”Q.Some members of the Opposition are already threatened with imprisonment.Ra?an:“In this respect the most important thing is to establish if guilt exists or not.”Q.Isn’t that the job of the judiciary and not politicians?Ra?an:“Absolutely. It disturbs me that some of my colleagues in the Opposition, perhaps subconsciously, negate the division between politics and the judiciary.”Q.Is the relationship between the SDP and the HSLS mercenary rather than strategic?Ra?an:“I believe that we have a common political and economic programme.”Q.Is the essential part of that programme a change to the parliamentary system?Ra?an:“Yes, absolutely. We have to keep our word and be credible as an alternative to Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s autocratic system.”Q.Will you prove this in the controversial cases of transition to a market economy?Ra?an:“Yes we will keep our word. This will be the first law in the first Parliament.”Q.Some people fear that within the SDP will spring up the old communist ghost of the State as the owner and master?Ra?an:“Stuff and nonsense. We intend to divide the executive power from the economy and the banks. Private property is the system on which we stand conceptually and ideologically.” Q.Modern social democracy in the West respects the logic of the market and private property. Are you close to that principle?Ra?an:“The answer was given by Europe itself when it received the SDP into the Socialist International. The market and private property are for us the alpha and omega of economic policy. And in order to be a social state we have to have a strong economy. We believe in creating employment rather than distributing social security.”Q.What is going to be the relationship between the Church, religion and the SDP?Ra?an:“We don’t intend to jeopardise in any way the freedom of religion. We are prepared for a dialogue with the Church on practical issues.”Q.The HDZ and some media rebuke the SDP for its communist past?Ra?an:“We have proved ourselves already in 1990: by abandoning Belgrade; the struggle for the sovereign Croatia; accepting the results of the first democratic elections and respecting the will of the people. We condemn many things in our history, apologise for the injustices to people because of their political convictions in ‘the system that possessed a drastic lack of democracy’ [i.e., Yugoslav communism] and the national rights. We apologised, for example, for Bleiburg, we who were then not even born. Franjo Tudjman XE "Tudjman" could have been more responsible for Bleiburg and not my generation. Bleiburg is a tragic theme of our history, but one must not forget Jasenovac XE "Jasenovac" and some other tragedies. We are for clarification of history but not in order to use it for the political purpose. Croatia is exhausted from history.”The fourth multi-party elections in Croatia since 1990 were awaited with anticipation by the United States and the European Union in particular, which had long criticised the outgoing government for its alleged ‘democratic deficit’ wrote Christine Stone. “The 3rd January 2000 elections were widely seen as the first serious opportunity for a democratically based change of power. Despite Croatia’s help in bringing the Bosnian war to an end, there were those who persisted in accusing the Croats of human rights abuses at this time.” Rumours that those responsible, including President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , should be brought before the ITFY in The Hague XE "The Hague" “were [to some extent] a hangover from the days when it suited Western governments to justify their collusive involvement with the Bosnian Serbs . . . by tarring all sides as equally guilty.” Blackmailing Croatia included also bitter attacks on Tudjman XE "Tudjman" “because he betrayed many on the Left by abandoning communism to become a prominent dissident imprisoned in the 1970’s because of his support for Croatian Independence.” While Tudjman had never been the dictator portrayed by Western policy-makers who disliked his insubordinate attitude towards Washington and Brussels, he still held a dominant role in the country’s political life and perceptions. The contempt with which leading Western countries treated his death – apart from Turkey and Hungary, no one sent a high-level representative to the funeral - shocked even some of his critics. However, it should come as no surprise that countries like the US, France and the UK behaved this way. It contrasted sharply with the homage paid by Western leaders to the never-elected Tito XE "Tito" in 1980, or more recently to the absolute monarch, Hassan II of Morocco in 1990 XE "Hassan II of Morocco in 1990" .” The report rightly emphasised that the ‘unpopularity’ of the HDZ in the country was due to the economy rather than “the human rights issues blown up by the Western-sponsored sections of the media. Ironically though, much of the nagging criticism of the HDZ as a high-handed, dictatorial, corrupt and incompetent regime came from the Western-sponsored media, it was the pursuit of Euro-conformist policies that caused the ruling HDZ to forfeit much of its popularity.” The clear insight “that the constant criticism from abroad eventually infected morale in the ruling party” is decisive. The internal HDZ squabbles, about whether to work with the West, or to use one’s own commonsense depending on the situation on the ground, led to splits and defections within its own ranks.Some “viewed the endless carping [by the West] as an attempt to damage Croat independence by forcing the country into some kind of new Yugoslav-type formation.”“There were 4,006 candidates registered on 284 lists. They belonged to 55 parties, 15 coalitions, 20 independent lists and there were 30 candidates representing ethnic minorities.” Yet all this riot of ‘democracy’ would have been in vain had not the“opposition finally got its act together and formed proper coalitions.” “Foreign sponsors, like the US-based International Republican Institute [IRI] and Romano Prodi XE "Prodi, Romano - Think-Tank" ’s Think-Tank, had urged the Croat opposition to follow the so-called ‘Slovak model’. Foreign backers provided a lot of the organisational and spin-doctor expertise to make a success of the united opposition front tactic as they did in Slovakia’s 1998 parliamentary election.” The British Helsinki Group XE "British Helsinki Group" monitored the elections and reported the conduct of the elections as fair and lively. The accusation by state TV, which was pro-HDZ “that certain foreign powers were supporting the opposition . . . perhaps was not as paranoid as was made out.” The pro-Serb German Deutsche Welle TV ‘reminded’ Croats on election day, 3rd January 2000: “Are the people of Croatia aware that they will continue to be left out in the cold until they get a government which conducts itself in a more civilised and co-operative manner?” Prior accusations that the HDZ would falsify the results and interfere with the election’s central computer system were forgotten after the opposition victory. The criticisms of the electoral law, which allowed Croats abroad and particularly those in BiH to vote in the elections, can be refuted by similar practices elsewhere (Russians in Latvia and Estonia, Latvians in Australia). Objections to this system “because the voters in the Diaspora are more patriotic” are paranoiac. In Croatia’s case, “it is not true to say that the votes of such people are decisive in an election’s outcome.” “The turnout was 70.48% of the electorate and the elections were conducted in an orderly manner.” “The elections were observed by 5,864 non-governmental local monitors [GONG XE "GONG" ] in 671 polling stations. However, their neutrality is open to question . . . it should be noted that GONG’s main headquarters are in the same building in Zagreb as the SDP main opposition party, and other organisations critical of the HDZ, like the Croatian Helsinki Committee, the newspaper Feral Tribune and Radio Free Europe, funded by a clutch of foreign countries known for their hostility to the HDZ government.” The reason for criticism of the past Croatian elections by the International observers “had nothing to do with the conduct of the poll itself but involved allegations that the media coverage had not been fair [see OSCE Reports from 1992, 1995 and 1997]. In other words, malpractice at polling station level in Croatia had never been alleged. Why then was it necessary to flood the country with these observers whose presence, in a way, accorded the country the status of a banana republic?”After ten years in power, the HDZ was defeated.Out of 151 seats in the Sabor (Parliament), the SDP-HSLS got 71, HDZ 46, the Coalition of the HSS, LS, IDS and ASD (Action for Social Democrats) 24, HSP and HKDU 5 seats and the minorities 5 seats.The SDP chairman, Ivica Ra?an XE "Ra?an, Ivica" , became Prime Minister while the HSLS leader, Dra?en Budi?a XE "Budi?a, Dra?en" , became a presidential candidate. He eventually lost the Presidency to Stipe Mesi? XE " Mesi?, Stipe" on 29th January 2000.“There can be no doubt that the population was tired of the HDZ and wanted change.” The victors had promised the moon, “yet Prime-Minister Designate Ra?an was soon hinting that many promises would be difficult to put into practice immediately. Rumours that the HDZ would cheat or refuse, in some way, to accept the results of the election proved to be unfounded.” “However, Croatia has been subjected to improper and unwarranted interference from the US and certain European countries who made their preferences all too clear, hinting that failure to elect the Opposition would lead to greater isolation from the International Community.” “One American media commentator warned on election day that should Croatia fail to elect the Opposition there would be ‘no Christmas presents for their children next year’.” The Presidential Interregnum XE "Presidential Interregnum" was skidding off course, subject to a debate on the history of the past ten years, politically unedifying, illogically circular and intellectually untidy, yet in some respects inspirational and brilliantly argued. It brought to mind a prophesy from 21st April 1997 in Studentski List (Students’ Newspaper), made by Viktor Ivan?i?, the chief editor of the Opposition paper Feral Tribune: “I believe that the best medicine for this country would be, when Tudjman XE "Tudjman" goes, that the presidential seat is taken by somebody with the qualification of “total imbecile”, or “total cretin” [Stipe Mesi? XE "Mesi?, Stipe" ] . . . somebody who would be the subject for the nation’s laughter, during his four years term and who would give people an opportunity to claim: ‘Finally we have a president who is a total cretin’. One would have to search for such an ideal candidate, maybe among the Opposition grandees, yet who in the final analysis would lack just that little bit to achieve the sublime . . .” On 24th January 2000 the International Community found such a character in the populist former President of the former Yugoslavia, Stipe Mesi? XE " Mesi?" . Between 1990 and the year 2000, Mesi?’s life had been suspended between the HDZ, defection from its ranks, Opposition and bitterness towards Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , reporting to his US and EU masters, witnessing against President Tudjman, the HDZ and the Croatian generals in The Hague XE "The Hague" , smoking, drinking, and telling Balkan jokes in the cafes, an improbable yet veritable qualification for a new ‘democratic’ Croatian President indeed. Perhaps the right conclusion is that Mesi?’s life was all fiction and in very large quantities, a falsehood.Before 1990, being obsessive about the proletarian issues he got the nickname ‘Castro’ XE "Castro – nickname of Mesi?’" . Mesi? XE "Mesi?" was vaguely political in a communist apparatchik sort of way, leftist and in boom times (konjuktura) rightist, a sort of wishy-washy ‘anarchist’ in terms of Marxist dogma, the last Hun or alternatively Avar (on his own admission), Utopian Yugoslavist and an expert on shish-kebab. All these characteristics can apparently be dismissed as youthful indiscretions, yet when he became the President of Croatia he actually did not refute any of these charges.On 15th January 2002, President of the Republic of Croatia, Stjepan Mesi? XE "Mesi?" , stood on the platform of the ancient Croatian Parliament to deliver a commemorative speech on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the International recognition of the Republic of Croatia.Three years previously, this had been the victorious President Franjo Tudjman XE " Tudjman" ’s platform. Now it was time for Mesi? XE "Mesi?" to exact his revenge against him. For here was a monologue composed in the repentant manner but dripping with the philosophy of the ‘reformed’ Yugoslav communist blasphemy.“Ladies and Gentlemen, members of the Parliament and the Government, heads of religious communities, members of the diplomatic corps and the entire Croatian community:“After ten years it is opportune to remind you of the days of struggle for international recognition. What has been achieved and what has been missed; where are we now and where are we going?”By this time the listeners became instinctively uneasy, facing the problem of how to take the philosophical argument of “what has been missed” that undoubtedly lay at the heart of Mesi? XE "Mesi?" ’s alter ego. They did not have to wait too long.“We definitely have to break with certain illusions . . . with the embrace of our manipulated past. Only if we can remove the load of that past which weighs down upon us even today . . . shall we be able to build a future in a United Europe. Only then shall we be able to move forward with others and not against them, conscious that today no state can be an isolated island, and that the resistance to this process would lead only to destructive isolation.”The flavour of the speech suddenly became too theological. Mesi? XE "Mesi?" , like his previous Moscow and Belgrade and present London and Washington masters, himself became wickedly manipulative of the ‘manipulated past’. As he proceeded, he ignored his own treacherous role in that past. What we were hearing in this ancient and noble Assembly Hall was not a neutral commemoration speech but a subversively repellent mixture of parody and platitude; a parody of the ‘manipulated past’ and a platitude about a United Europe. Having sensed that he had gone too far, Mesi? changed gear:“Croatia is not from yesterday . . . its documents date from the 10th century . . . . And throughout all its bloody history it never allowed itself to be wiped off the map . . . .” followed immediately by a statement, not free from malice, that “Croatia’s independence was not a one-sided secession from Yugoslavia but simply the utilisation and realisation of the rights that Croatia, as the Yugoslav federal unit, had in harmony with its constitution from 1974.”A statement worthy of the last President of Yugoslavia who, in an arcane circular ritual had now become President of Croatia. We were now faced with the problem of how to interpret the parodic arguments that undoubtedly lay at the base of Mesi? XE "Mesi?" ’s fiction. If we took them seriously we were unable to explain the need for Croatia’s ten-year long life and death struggle against this very Yugoslavia if the rights under the 1974 Yugoslav Constitution had already supposedly been achieved in 1990.With a surreal immediacy and scheming opportunism Mesi? XE "Mesi?" acknowledged, “that the then leadership of the Croatian State [i.e., President Franjo Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ] had identified the key factors that enabled Croatia to embark on the path of independence. History remembers that and will remember it. However, history also remembers certain moves that then helped the Great Serbian ambitions of Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" . By that I mean the conscious policy of antagonising the Serbian minority in Croatia”. At this point, Mesi? XE "Mesi?" ’s speech reached a critical raw point in which he strained to explain the irony in which this antagonism was met with general rebellion, shelling of the Croatian cities, the murders of the Croatian civilians and finally the proclamation of the autonomous Serbian Republic of Krajina. On some other occasion, one could perhaps explain this as a peculiarly scholarly joke, but on this solemn occasion a statement like this went far beyond treachery. Glossing over his malign attack on the then Croatian leadership (i.e., Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ), he pontificated: “Some will say: this is not the day or place for washing our dirty linen in public. I say, on the contrary, every day, even this day, is the right day to speak the truth.”[!]Mesi? XE "Mesi?" , a former communist apparatchik, the last president of Yugoslavia, desperately tried to cover up his own jealous and paranoiac attitude to Franjo Tudjman XE "Tudjman" by daft and subversively outdated arguments. “Tudjman’s excesses on the battleground with the rebellious Serbs complicated the international recognition of our country. Were these excesses only excesses or the key factors of a certain systematic policy?"Mesi? dramatised a demagogic question. Yet unexpectedly and in a contradictory turnabout, the European Union came to a facile decision“respecting the right of every nation to self-determination, to recognise the independent Croatian State.”Then he made another u-turn. “Although Croatia was recognised, it was not accepted.” In a one-sided attack on Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s ghost, Mesi? XE "Mesi?" proceeded: “Thanks to the policies that ignored human rights, which interpreted democracy in the most original way, which aspired to parts of neighbouring internationally recognised state [i.e., BiH], Croatia created serious doubts within the International Community and nearly came under the hammer of sanctions. I say our preparedness to face our mistakes is a sign of our democratic maturity.” Having parodied the subversively unfashionable prompting by the originators of this diatribe (Mesi? was primed in London the fortnight prior to the speech), he outlined the great successes of the new Croatian Government now approved by the International Community.“The privatisation, political nepotism, crime and corruption of the previous [Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ] government are now being met with the successes of the new democratic government: entrance into the ‘Partnership for Peace’, the world Trade organisation, the Stabilisation Pact. Today, the Republic of Croatia is accepted by the whole world. Externally we have to meet the European standards, and internally strengthen democracy and civil society. If we have accepted a democratic, civilised European law respecting society, we must reject any doubts on that score.” It seems relatively easy to diagnose the political arriviste content of Mesi? XE "Mesi?" ’s speech. In a nutshell his message proclaims that “if we have accepted that Croatia,” blah, blah, blah, “it is a case of either or.” One wonders why?Is it because there is no alternative to a utopian United Europe and its strange interpretation of civil multi-ethnic society and democracy, which has already caused the most unimaginable crime and the greatest multi-ethnic conflicts in the world?The insistence that the only alternative to that is “isolation, pseudo democracy. foaming chauvinism and flirting with fascism” is a self-deception of the liberal and social-democratic world in which communism ceased to be a terrible danger, but was rapidly replaced by another kind of dogmatism.The objections raised by the majority of Croats to this kind of commemoration of its hard-won independence by reminding the great ‘democratic’ powers that they were the creators and the keepers of the Yugoslav Utopia and the protractors of its bloody agony and bloodshed, are long overdue. Theories about the sado-masochistic, multi-ethnic democracy whispered by the Foreign Office into Mesi? XE "Mesi?" ’s hairy ear, are definitely not enjoyed in the Croatian world.6.7.10 The European Union XE "The European Union" Populist slapstick humour of the café environment entertained by the President and the deportment of the parliament are two entirely different things.In the mis-en-scene to the elections in Croatia on 3rd January 2002, there was the attitude of the “European governments and the United States [that] have interfered in elections across Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to support politicians who bend the knee to the doctrine of the end to national sovereignty. Integrated into the European Union, these controlled governments will provide convenient institutional lobby-fodder in EU councils to outvote any country like Britain which might be foolish enough to try standing up for its own interests.” “All Western leaders are now in hock to the old Brezhnevite doctrine of ‘limited sovereignty’. The communist tenets of internationalism and bogus-antifascism have now migrated from Moscow and East Berlin to make their nests instead in the chancelleries of Europe and the United States.” No wonder then that in the world of opposition to Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , the world of youthful and cool infidelities, of alcohol, hallucinating drugs, serendipity, and gaping open vaginas smiling at one from the glossies of the free opposition press, no wonder that “not an eyebrow is raised when communists come to power in Italy and France [and now in Croatia] or when former communists, like Peter Mandelson, enter the government in Britain.” Messrs. Mesi? XE "Mesi?" and Ra?an are the New Left protagonists of no fixed abode and no fixed reputation, who have “enthusiastically embraced ‘the market’, giving the illusion of a right-ward shift in world politics” because they believe “that the withering away of the [Croatian] state will be more efficiently promoted by big corporate mercantilism than by [their self-managing] socialism.” “An end of the era of fear, corruption and blood” declared David Jessell, front man of the BBC’s Europe Direct XE "Jessell, David - front man of BBC’s Europe Direct" magazine on 25th January 2000. Such hyperbole might have lead viewers to think they were going to be treated to a programme about the fall of Mobutu or Pol Pot. No so. Jessell was referring to the death of Croatia’s President Franjo Tudjman XE "Tudjman" and the election of a new Croatian Government in January this year.” The new Croatian leaders liken themselves to film stars, and scarcely a day went by without photo-sessions, to make sure that they are really accessible and alive. “Accessibility therefore is all the rage. The new Prime Minister, Ivica Ra?an XE "Ra?an" , we are told, wears jeans and goes to rock concerts, a gruesome thought for a 56-year old, some might think. He is also just like you and me, having smoked and inhaled pot in the past.” Events have demonstrated the potential durability of the communists on the Western front. Mesi? XE "Mesi?" , the man of real qualities “has vowed to abandon the Hercegovinian Croats, a thorn in the side of the International Community’s efforts to properly pacify Bosnia. He has also personally provided evidence of Croat war crimes to the ITFY where he could, theoretically, be called as a witness. Other candidates have been more circumspect, including Budi?a. But Mesi? XE "Mesi?" , a person of no known scruples, seems happy to give evidence against his fellow citizens in a forum strongly criticized for its flawed procedures and overtly political agenda. He has also made florid charges and threats against former HDZ officials: “I am certain,” he says “that many people will be brought before the courts.” This could explain why his election campaign took off and seemed to be so lavish. Even the ‘Nacional’ (Croatian newspaper) has hinted that he is supported by American money. If doing one’s own thing was the authentic behaviour of Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s Croatia, which was condemned for its nationalist goals, the new Croatia was pushed forward to embrace the boring Slovak model after the elections to ensure that it becomes a proper democracy.“The Slovak model goes thus: if there is a government you don’t like, accuse it of fascist (communist) leanings and human rights abuse. Inject large sums of money to pay local non-government organisations and ‘independent media’ to pump out propaganda to the locals suggesting that, unless they change their government they will become poor and isolated. Hint that elections will be manipulated and introduce all kinds of foreign and domestic ‘monitors’ to intimidate voters. Battered and bewildered, the evil ones are seen off and the prize – entry into all kinds of international clubs – is immediately on offer.” “Croatia is one of the most beautiful countries in Europe. Its former government – and Franjo Tudjman XE " Tudjman" – probably thought that the West would welcome its independence. How wrong they were. In 1991 the world of the British Foreign Office and the US State Department XE "State Department" did not want Yugoslavia to break up. It has taken them nearly 10 years to be on the brink of putting it back together again under the subterfuge of the Stability Pact XE "Stability Pact" .” 6.7.11 America vs. Europe? XE "America vs. Europe?" A characteristic of Yugoslav Utopianism is that history seems to repeat itself. When Ivo Goldstein, Professor of ‘Croatian’ history at the Croatian University in Zagreb, XE "Goldstein, Ivo - Professor of ‘Croatian’ history at Croatian University in Zagreb," presented his book ‘Croatia: A history’ in the Croatian Embassy in London on 16th March 2000, as a ‘real Croatian history’, (which event the Author attended) one was struck by a feeling of dejas-vu. “Not only should the presentation of the Croatian history be fundamentally revised . . . but also certain textbooks are so bad that they must be withdrawn from distribution, and some totally revised, so as not to be used by the students in the coming autumn,” was ominously reminiscent of the UDBA XE "UDBA" burning the newly printed book on Croatian Orthography in 1971 XE "Croatian Orthography in 1971" . Then, without any ambiguity, Professor Goldstein showed his real face:“If we do not revise them, do not have any illusions; the International Community will thrust in our face the unacceptable way in which we present our history. The HDZ presentation of history was Croato-centric, and from that to Xenophobia is only one step.”What Professor Goldstein had in mind is more than clear. His Utopian Yugoslavia, created as a result of “the unification with Serbia [in 1918] which seemed the only relatively good solution” was reinstated by him in AD2000, officially, ex cathedra at the Croatian University.“Things are much better now,” said one of Croatia’s former Ambassadors last week . . . dining in a Zagreb hotel. Meanwhile, workmen in the same hotel were dismantling its unique Art Deco dining room, turning it into a sparkling new casino. Down town, sex clubs are appearing and a new Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet will soon open. Bankruptcies are on the increase. In other words, ‘reform’ is under way in Croatia.” “But, reforms of another kind are also taking place. As one seasoned observer of the Croatian scene remarked “revenge and hatred” are at work in all areas of society. After ten years in the wilderness, the six-party coalition government under the leadership of former communists [chiefly Yugoslav utopians] wants its pound of flesh and they have lost no time in going about getting it.” Christine Stone’s XE "Stone, Christine" account reveals the extraordinary paradoxes and tensions within the culture of “the 21st century American imperialism” which “has not only overtaken communism in the race for world domination but also in the tactics it is employing to get there”. All those who vociferously oppose the world of consumption in the US client states of the Balkans are steam rollered. “In the latest issue, the rabid Croat weekly ‘Nacional’ is already threatening Prime Minister Ra?an with the sack for not favouring American over European investors. . . . In the privatisation now forging ahead, as the EU, EBRD and IMF release funding to foreign investors, the government must tread carefully – it will have to sell to the correct as well as to the highest buyer.” If American imperialism gave the Croatian client state a role in the moral redemption of Croatian nationalism, at the same time it confined its legitimate realm of action to one determined by US policies.“The US embassy in Zagreb has fostered an alternative power centre to the Ra?an government. No one doubts the US backing for Stipe Mesi? XE "Mesi?" , whose blind adherence to every jot and tittle of State Department XE "State Department" policy’ means that Ra?an’s genuine power-base in old communist institutions . . . can be held in check . . . ” The extraordinary and outrageous outcome of this ‘culture of the “21st century American Imperialism” in Croatia as “the epicentre of what may be the end game in the present Balkan conflicts” is the alacrity with which a large number of people are put out of work.40,000 have joined the ranks of the unemployed since the government came to power in January, i.e., in a mere three and a half months.However, not all those sacked from their jobs were dominating and flamboyant during Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s ‘regime’. More often than not, they were retiring or even shadowy figures. An example would be the administrative staff in the main hospital in Split and the complete staff of the Croatian Studies Institute at Zagreb University. “Many suspect that it is revenge on the part of many of the old guard at the University who despise Croat culture and hanker after the [utopian] Yugoslav model. None of the old communist party-dominated faculty members at Zagreb University were purged in 1990, after Tudjman’s victory in the first multi-candidate elections." So it was ‘Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ’s fault. On the contrary - the individuals full of the sternest principles of Yugoslav Utopianism have now floated to the top. Igor Mandi?, a sharp-tongued columnist for many years for the Belgrade magazine Nin, XE "Mandi?, Igor - columnist for Belgrade magazine Nin" was appointed as the editor of the main pro-government newspaper ‘Vjesnik’ at the same time that Maja Freundlich XE "Freundlich, Maja" , a leading Vjesnik columnist, was dismissed. “No protests from the Helsinki Watch.”“The mainstream press is owned by a large well-funded group, Europa Press Holdings which publish glossy weeklies ‘Nacional’ and ‘Globus’, as well as the daily ‘Jutarnji List’. . . . All these papers have conducted vicious campaigns against the Tudjman XE "Tudjman" regime in the past.” Yet, even this was not enough - a gap in the market – the key to every successful business – was filled with another glossy, ‘Imperijal’.The journalists of Split’s daily ‘Slobodna Dalmacija’ were expecting dismissal for criticising “Croatia’s subservience to the United States and Europe”. The impetus of the new press was the presentation of a “remorseless diet of corruption and sleaze which targeted former HDZ government politicians and party members. . . . The allegations had their effect. Readers like stories of corruption and sleaze. A mixture of prurience and resentment towards those better off or better known than oneself is an unfailing recipe for success. The constant drip of sleaze allegations also meant that the former [Tudjman] government was kept firmly in its place – down and out.” In the meantime, the new ‘Croatian’ government made up mainly of Yugoslav utopians, avoided a clash with the International Community not by avoiding, which would have been logical, the accusations for Croatia’s sins, but by procuring the Croatian generals for The Hague XE "The Hague" War Crimes Tribunal, never mind that their actions in the 1995 offensives were applauded by the US policy makers.“Nothing prepared Croats for the 45-year sentence handed down by the Tribunal on 3rd March 2000 to General Tihomil Bla?ki? XE "Bla?ki?, General Tihomi " for crimes committed in the Croat-dominated part of BiH in 1993-94 . . . the sentence [that] was twice that handed out to Albert Speer at Nüremberg,” XE "Speer, Albert at Nüremberg" (CS) although Bla?ki? gave himself up voluntarily, believing in his innocence.Even the new ‘Croatian’ government was prompted “to look through their old drawers and cupboards. For, lo and behold, new documents have been recovered which . . . may at best exculpate him completely or, at the very least, reduce the unprecedented sentence . . . This turn of events [having] something to offer everybody . . . Croat public opinion will be assuaged if the Tribunal accepts all or even part of Bla?ki?’s appeal. The government gains in popularity while, simultaneously, the Tudjman XE "Tudjman" regime is blackened. . . At the same time, the Tribunal which has developed a [well-earned] reputation as a kangaroo court can claim some well-needed kudos for its ‘clemency’” One arrives at the end of this marathon race breathless only to realise that one is not at the end but at the beginning. With the new ‘Croatian’ government promising the Serbian ruffians who escaped from Krajina in 1995 an opportunity to return back home, the utopian circle has again been closed. “$55 million has been set aside by the US government to facilitate this process.”“But the real purpose behind the West’s clamour for the repatriation of the Serbs is not kindness – it is strategic. A reactivated Serb population could always be used to temper any unacceptable manifestations of Croat nationalism in the future, as they did in 1991 when Croatian independence was originally declared. The Serbian Orthodox Priest Father Dositej XE " Dositej, Serbian Orthodox Priest Father" returned to the monastery [Krka] two years ago hoping that things will improve for Serbs with the new government in Zagreb. With his mobile phone and impeccable English, he is ready to alert the outside world of any trouble.” Thus, the Krajina Serbs who have shed their sheepskins in 1990 are becoming not only the fifth column in Croatia under the new masters, but also the central issue in the current Croato-Morlach political life. “When members of Israel’s Knesset discuss the PLO . . . behind closed doors, questions of borders and Jerusalem take a back seat to another important issue: will the final documents conclude that the Palestinians left Israel on their own after 1947 or that they were expelled?” asks Vitomir Miles Ragu? XE "Ragu?, Vitomir Miles" .“On Sunday, 15th April 2001, the Croatian Parliament will debate an almost identical issue: Did the Serbs leave Krajina in 1995 or were they expelled? The extraordinary session of the Sabor was triggered by last week’s visit of Carla del Ponte XE "del Ponte, Carla" with two sealed indictments of Senior Croatian military figures, not for individual crimes, but for command responsibility for condoning a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing of Serb civilians.“The Serbs in Croatia were victims indeed, but not because of guns from Zagreb. The chief blame rests with the folly of their own leaders when they failed in their unrealistic demands and realised that Zagreb was about to commence its 1995 operation. These leaders called on the entire Serb population to pack up and leave. The exodus of 100,000 people was a sad moment in the history of Europe, but it was not of Croatia’s making. The UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali XE "Boutros-Ghali - General Boutros UN Secretary " reported to the Security Council XE "Security Council" on 23rd August 1995 that the issue at hand was a mass exodus, and that there was no evidence of systematic and widespread humanitarian law violations arising from the Croatian offensive.”The ‘Serbian question’ is now raised as a form of pressure on Croatia to make a u-turn back to Yugoslav Utopia. “Certainly, the European Union shows no sign of forgiving the HDZ [for toppling communism and Yugoslavia]. A compliant, pro-integrationist government in Zagreb is a key piece in the jigsaw the EU is painfully trying to assemble in south-eastern Europe. The EU’s plan involves the creation of a new super-Yugoslavia, including also the former Yugoslav republics, Albania, Bulgaria and Romania, an entity that goes under the cumbersome name of ‘The Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe’ XE "The Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe’" XE "The Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe’" . Acceptance of this plan by Croatia is a condition for becoming a candidate for EU membership.” “. . . the EU game plan for Croatia was explicitly described as ‘political normalisation’ by January 2000, the very vocabulary Leonid Brezhnev used to describe the re-assertion of Soviet Power over the renegade regime in Prague in 1968. For ordinary Croats, by contrast, the sad irony is that they support the process of European integration because they believe it will take them out of the Balkans and into Europe. Little do they realise that the European Union, to which they aspire bears, an uncanny resemblance to the old communist Yugoslavia from which they have just escaped, and that the ideals for which they fought the war are as unpopular in Brussels as they were in Belgrade.” “The communist tenets of internationalism and bogus anti-fascism have now migrated from Moscow and East Berlin to make their nests instead in the chancelleries of Europe and the United States.” Croatia’s was not an easy ride. Its people, who have overcome the utmost humiliation and suffering throughout its history, when everything is said and done, will be recognised as fine, brave, and ethical only within themselves, rather than in anything that Utopian Europe or the so-called International Community can confer upon them. 6.7.12 The Epilogue XE "The Epilogue" The Obituary to Milan Babi? XE "Babi?, Milan" (The Times, 10th March 2006, p.83) not only confirms, but also elaborates my text on 'Heavenly Serbia', written more than a year before Babi? XE "Babi?" 's suicide in The Hague XE "The Hague" on 5th March 2006. "Milan Babi? XE "Milan Babi?" may well take the unfortunate historical credit for beginning the 'ethnic cleansing' that characterised the destruction of Yugoslavia. . . . Babi? and his accomplices, the Police Chief Milan Marti? XE "Marti?" and the dreaded 'Krajina' XE "Krajina" Corps' General Ratko Mladi? XE "Mladi?, Ratko" , expelled tens of thousands of Croats from their homes, and defied even their mentor in Belgrade, Slobodan Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" , as they strove to protect their vision of a Greater Serbia. By 1995, however, Babi?'s fiefdom had become untenable. Abandoned by Milo?evi?, he fled ahead of his 200,000 ethnic kin in the greatest exodus seen in mainland Europe since WWII, as Croat forces, trained and armed by America, swept through Krajina. . . . Babi? re-emerged into the limelight in 2002 at the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague XE "The Hague" , where, from being a simple indictee facing charges of crimes against Croats, he was transformed into the ultimate plea-bargainer. A man, once derided as Milo?evi?'s poodle, developed a humility rarely seen in the Court. Babi? apologised for his crimes in a moving speech and testified against Milo?evi?. . . . As it became clear that he was prepared to do the same against almost the entire Serb war crimes fraternity, he became a figure of hate. . . . Babi? was betraying some truly dangerous characters and playing with fire. . . . As a protected witness CO61, Babi? took the extraordinary step of revealing himself to the Court, and responded to Milo?evi?'s taunts: "It is you who put misfortune on the Croats, on Muslims and eventually on the Serbs. . . ." He confessed to inciting his Krajina Serbs to take up arms, and to giving inflammatory speeches. He said the prosecution was correct in its assertion that the Serbian police and Secret Service DB were responsible for war crimes. In his own guilty plea Babi? described himself as an 'ethnical egoist'. "I plead to my brother Croats to forgive their Serb brothers, and I beg Serbs to leave the past behind," he said in one of The Hague's few moments of high court drama. "I am speechless when I have to express the depth of my remorse for what I have done and for the effect my sins have had on others." "Last couple of pages missing.6.8 Appendix I: Testimony of Stip Mesi? vs General Tihomir Bla?ki? at The Hague Court between March 16 and March 19 1998 XE "Appendix I" The testimony given by Stipe Mesi? XE "Testimony given by Stipe Mesi?" , as a protected prosecution witness, in the proceedings against General Tihomir Bla?ki?, Commander of the Croatian Armed Forces for Operation ‘Storm ‘95’ against the forces of the Serbian enclave of the Krajina region of Croatia in The Hague XE "The Hague" Court between 16th and 19th March 1998.Closed session at 16.23 p.m.Prosecutor Mark Harmon XE "Harmon, Mark - Prosecutor" :As I mentioned previously, the next witness, Mr. Mesi? XE "Mesi?" , is an important political figure in the history of the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the break-up of Yugoslavia, who played an important role in the political life of Croatia and the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia. Instead of enumerating now all the parts of his outstanding career, I will request him to summarise his career, in order that you are informed about him when he appears in the Court. He will give testimony about the development of the political party HDZ from its inception in Croatia and about its establishment in Bosnia, and he will explain the relationship between the HDZ in Bosnia and the HDZ in Croatia.As he is an intimus of Franjo Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , the present President of the Republic of Croatia, he had the opportunity to become acquainted with the attitudes of Dr. Tudjman about Bosnia and Bosnian Muslims XE "Bosnian Muslims" . He will convey Dr. Tudjman's views in relation to both of these themes.He will give testimony about the parallel policies of President Tudjman towards Bosnia, the first public policy for the recognition of the independence of Bosnia and about the covered up policy for the division of Bosnia between Croatia and Serbia. In this context, he will give testimony about the meeting between Slobodan Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" and President Tudjman, held in 1991 in Karadjordjevo, XE "Karadjordjevo," after which the covered-up policy of Dr. Tudjman about the division of Bosnia became active. He will give witness about certain meetings in Zagreb between Franjo Tudjman and Mate Boban, Dario Kordi?, Ante Valenta, Ignac Ko?troman and other dignitaries of Herceg-Bosna. He will explain the current Croatian laws, about valid laws during the independence of Bosnia, particularly those relating to the elections and those enabling the abolition of the independence of Bosnia.He will give witness about the [Croat] involvement in the Croato-Muslim war. He will describe to the honourable court the influence of the Vance-Owen Peace Plan on the opinion of the political leaders in Croatia and in Herceg-Bosna and, finally, he will give testimony about the conversations he had in connection with the 'Ahmi?i case'.This is, Mr. President, the content of his testimony. His testimony relates to paragraphs 5.0 and 5.1 of the Chapter dealing with the subsection of the Prosecution, which states the existence of the international armed conflict, and his testimony relates to all clauses of the Prosecution dealing with serious infringements contained in the Clauses 5, 8, 11, 15, 17 and 19. With this I conclude my introductory comments, Mr. President.Judge Claude Jorga XE "Jorga - Judge Claude " :Have you talked with this witness about Rule 90(F), because this is a closed session; he took part, if I understand it correctly, in the policies of Mr. Tudjman XE "Tudjman" at the highest level. I am not aware if he was involved in any actions. Have you spoken to him about that, because we shall question him on that subject?Prosecutor Mark Harmon:I have not analysed with him that part of Rule 90 as I thought that it does not relate to him, because of the nature of the testimony for which he was prepared.Judge Claude Jorga:O.k. If you are sure, o.k., thank you. Bring Mr. Mesi? XE "Mesi?" . [Mesi? entered.]The questions of the Prosecutor and the answers of Stjepan Mesi? XE "Mesi?" .Judge Claude Jorga:Thank you. Please sit down. You will answer the questions of the Prosecution, who invited you to give witness in the International Court for the crimes in the indictment against General Bla?ki?, the accused, who is held by this Court. You will give your testimony freely, in order, and the Prosecutor will explain the mode with which to achieve cohesion in the presentation to the Judges.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:Good afternoon, Mr. Mesi?.Mr. Mesi? XE "Mesi?" , I will put to you a series of questions whose framework and content I will now outline. After which I will ask you to tell the judges in a narrative form the answers that you possess in connection with the particular subject . . .Did the growing nationalism have an influence on the HDZ and its leadership?Stjepan Mesi?:Yes, of course, when we established the HDZ, I must say that the leadership, from every point of view, was more democratically orientated. A great number were anti-fascists. Starting with Franjo Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , Josip Boljkovac XE "Boljkovac, Josip" and Josip Manoli? XE "Manoli?, Josip" [both of them UDBA XE "UDBA" bosses], all of them were veterans of WWII, so that for [nationalism] at the time of the establishment of the HDZ there was no possibility. However, later, the policy became more radical, and the elements that had the inspiration in the marionette Croatian state in WWII, a marionette of fascist Italy and Germany, became stronger. It was clear that today's Croatia could be established only on anti-fascists traditions. It [i.e., Croatia] was established in WWII as a federative unit [of Yugoslavija], which later was confirmed in the Constitution, but there are still some obstacles, which emanate from those who believe that it is possible to return to certain historical illusions.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:Mr. Mesi?, was the HDZ a political party from Croatia, li7nked with such a party in Bosnia? Can you describe that relationship for the Judges?Stjepan Mesi?:From the formal point of view, I must say, for the sake of truth, formally the HDZ in Croatia was separated from the HDZ in BiH – that was formally, but in reality, all the decisions were made in Zagreb, and I believe, on that point, there cannot be any doubt. I do not think how – there is no question about whether the HDZ in Bosnia was an independent party in BiH – formally yes, but not in reality.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:Mr. Mesi?, allow me to put some questions about parts of your just completed testimony. You said that you were instructed to dismiss S. Kljui? from the leadership of the HDZ in Bosnia; who instructed you?Stjepan Mesi?:The same person [!] who decided to elect S. Kljui? XE "Kljui?, S." as the President of the HDZ in BiH, and that is the President of the S Croatian HDZ, Dr. Franjo Tudjman XE "Tudjman" . . . . But as the power in the HDZ was taken by those who were not truthfully interested in the survival of BiH, those who spoke of the Croatian zones, and never about BiH, and those who finally decided the policy – not the policy of co-existence, but the policy of separation between Serbs, Croats and Muslims i.e., the thesis that the Serbs, Croats and the Muslims in Bosnia cannot live together but that separation is inevitable.There were a lot of contributory factors for that, one of which was that it was argued by the opponents of the existence of Bosnia, that BiH as an entity is an unrealizable project, in the same way that Yugoslavia was unrealizable, and that the reason for its fall, that it was an illogical community and that for this reason it had to break up into [its constituent] parts.Author’s note – see below.The Court session was adjourned until Tuesday, 17th March 1998 at 14.30 p.m.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:Mr. Mesi?, in your meetings with President Tudjman, did he ever express his attitude towards Bosnia, and if he did, can you tell the Judges what it was?Stjepan Mesi? :I think that that can be gained from his books, but, if I summarise, in these works and elsewhere, and when he spoke in public, his attitude is that after WWII it was a great mistake to establish Bosnia as a Republic. He believed that it was not necessary to establish Bosnia as a separate republic but instead, that it had to be established, like Kosovo and Vojvodina [autonomous regions], which were annexed to Serbia. He believed that for the Bosnyaks the best development, because of their origins, because it was held that they were in the majority Croats, would have been if Bosnia was annexed to Croatia, but for that must be found a way, in order that Bosnia could become annexed to Croatia.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:He thought that the territory that belonged to Banovina should be annexed or absorbed into Croatia; is that right?Stjepan Mesi?:Yes, his attitude was that that would be logical, as in that way the conflicts would be reduced.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:Mr. Mesi?, can you describe the meeting between President Tudjman and President Milo?evi?, which was held in 1991 at Karadjordjevo?Can you tell the Judges what you know about that meeting and what consequences that meeting had in respect of the Croatian policy towards Bosnia? Stjepan Mesi?:I believe that the meeting in Karadjordjevo was a kind of turning point when the policy changed, when in the beginning it was accepted that there cannot be Bosnia without Croatia, and vice versa, and after that meeting, the first [war] successes of the Serbs were taken into account. I must say that the European States tolerated this in the beginning and believed that the observers could come to the conclusion that Bosnia is finished and that it is lost, so that out of such a situation Tudjman arrived at his conclusions. . . . I asked Bora Jovi?, the Serbian President of the [Yugoslav] Presidency XE "Jovi?, Bora - Serbian President of [Yugoslav] Presidency" "What do they [the Serbs] want?" He said that they are not interested in the Serbs in Croatia, that they are our citizens, that we can do with them whatever we want and also that they are not interested in the Croatian territory, that that is the territory of the Croatian State. I said "What are you interested in then?" He replied that they were interested in Serbia and 66% of Bosnia. He stated that that was Serbia and it will remain so. As they were not interested in Croatia, i.e., Croatian territory, nor the Serbs in Croatia, I said: "Why don't you sit down then at the table? Why don't we try to avoid war? People are armed and matters can get out of hand. There is no need to shed blood if we can sit down and resolve the problems at the table." He agreed, but said that he must speak with Milo?evi?. I said I will speak with Tudjman and said: "Why don't the four of us sit down at the table and see what are the problems of the Serbs in Croatia, so we can resolve matters without armed conflict, while the opportunity exists?" As Milo?evi? agreed to the meeting, wherever we want, at home or abroad, I went to Zagreb and spoke with Tudjman and told him what transpired, and asked if he agreed with the proposal. After that I was expecting the invitation to see how to organise this meeting. However, Tudjman told us that he would go to Karadjordjevo alone (that was on 30th March 1991) to find out what they wanted. . . . .Tudjman returned from Karadjordjevo the same day and told us that the Army [the JNA XE "JNA" ] will not attack us, that for that we had the word of Veljko Kadjevi?, CinC of the JNA headquarters, and also the word of Milo?evi?, and that Bosnia will survive with difficulty, and that we can achieve the frontiers of Banovina [i.e., the Croatian province in 1939]. He also said that Milo?evi? made a grand gesture and agreed that Croatia may take Cazin, Kladu?a and Biha?, because this was [historical Croatian territory], the so-called Turkish Croatia, and that the Serbs were not interested in it.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:Therefore, after the return of President Tudjman from Karadjordjevo he informed you that Bosnia would be divided between Croatia and Serbia; is that right?Stjepan Mesi? :Roughly speaking from that which he said one could have come to the conclusion that Bosnia cannot survive, and that we will achieve the frontiers of Banovina. . . . Naturally, nothing intimated the fact that there existed a written document about it. . . . That was not mentioned.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:Mr. Mesi?, can you describe a meeting in Graz between Mate Boban and Radovan Karadji? XE Karadji?, Radovan" , a meeting on 6th May 1992. Can you tell the Judges something about that meeting and what Mr. Boban told you afterwards?Stjepan Mesi?:After I found out about that meeting I asked Mate Boban what he could tell me about it. He replied: "Nothing much; very little was agreed at that meeting. However now we know that Croats and Serbs have sorted out all the dilemmas and that there are no unresolved themes. Indeed, there is no reason whatsoever for further conflict between the Croats and the Serbs in BiH.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:Mr. Mesi?, can you tell the Judges what was the attitude of President Tudjman and President Milo?evi? in respect of the exchange of population, and what effect that had on the division of Bosnia?Stjepan Mesi?:In Croatia and Slovenia, we proposed a temporary confederative model of 3-5 years and if it did not work we would part, like the Czechs and Slovaks. . . .It was clear that Milo?evi? wanted something else. Today, we see the consequences of his policies. He wanted a Great Serbia, wanted to enlarge its territory and use the fall of Yugoslavia to expand the frontiers of Serbia. However, his model included a policy of genocide, because he not only wanted a larger Serbia, but Serbia for the Serbs only, and therefore his excadrones (expeditions?) of death, destruction and killing anyone in his path.The world was patient with Milo?evi? "" and I assume that Tudjman concluded that the world wanted the division of BiH, and plainly played with the enlargement of his own territory, because he stated often that whatever we held with force of arms would sooner or later remain ours.He was not explicit. He did not say that that will be Croatia. He said that will be ours. That can be explained as Croatian territory over which Croats would dominate. I believe it is up to us, to draw certain conclusions, because he was not quite clear . . .Prosecutor Mark Harmon:Would it be o.k. in your opinion, Mr. Mesi?, to say that the leaders of Herceg-Bosna were influenced in their policies by the Croatian leadership?Stjepan Mesi? :I believe, and can argue with certainty, that the HDZ-BiH, was under the leadership of the HVO in Zagreb, because every decision had to be made first in Zagreb. May I add that, during these deliberations, some differences of opinion occurred, but as I was not present . . . in my opinion the representatives of Herceg-Bosna were coming to Zagreb to receive directions.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:Have these meetings been recorded in the Book of Visitors in the President’s Office? XE "Book of Visitors in the President’s Office?" Stjepan Mesi?:Every meeting was minuted – and then recorded on tape, and President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" was making his own notes. We were warned that the meetings were recorded, and that for that purpose we had to spell our names, so that the speakers could be later identified.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:Therefore, have you during one of these meetings heard President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" state: "That what we hold with arms will be ours?"Stjepan Mesi?:Yes. However, has the President talked about Croatia, or the Croatian regions in BiH - that was not specified? It was simply stated: "That will be ours." But what he wished to say with these words, I really do not know.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:Have you heard the President say these words to the leaders of Herceg-Bosna in the context of deliberating about the Vance-Owen Plan?Stjepan Mesi?:These conversations were held at that time because the Croatian advice was to agree the Vance-Owen Plan as soon as possible. However, the Serbs did not sign it and the Croatian Parliament never ratified it, so it failed.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:Allow me, Mr. Mesi? to ask you if, in your opinion the leaders of Herceg-Bosna were the instruments of the implementation of President Tudjman's policy about the division of Bosnia?Stjepan Mesi?:De facto, in the final analysis, it was that Bosnian policy that made me split with President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" .I had other reasons but, because of the insistence on the ethnic purity of Bosnia, I believed it was the wrong policy, and those who carried it out were the instruments of a devious Croatian policy in that respect.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:Allow me, Mr. Mesi?, to turn to the subject of the dual nationality, and what its effect had on the sovereignty of BiH.Stjepan Mesi?:I was against it. 10% of the representatives in the Croatian Parliament were from the diaspora [mainly BiH]. They were manipulated by the HDZ, which in that way had an advantage in the elections. As far as BiH was concerned, these people were focused on Croatia, instead of finding their happiness and their future in the state in which they were born and such co-existence with other people living there.I spoke with the representatives of the BiH in Sarajevo [i.e., with the Muslims during the Croato-Muslim war] many times, and they told me that they did not wish to aggravate the situation, as the aid was coming through [and from] Croatia.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:What was the effect on the independence of BiH that these people were sitting in the Croatian Parliament?Stjepan Mesi?:I believe that led to the destruction of BiH. I thought this was a damaging policy. I believe that, without the Washington and Dayton Agreements, with the fall of Bosnia Croatia would also fall. Prosecutor Mark Harmon:Mr. Mesi?, in your opinion, was it logical that the Muslims started the Bosnian-Croatian conflict?Stjepan Mesi?:I do not see any logic in that the Bosnyaks were absolutely in terror in relation to our common aggressors, i.e., Serbia and its army.After the Muslims had lost 100,000 people, to open a new front against the Croats would be strange. There is no foundation for the belief that the Muslims started the war. Prosecutor Mark Harmon:During that war, did Croatia supply the HVO?Stjepan Mesi?:Croatia helped them, that was not a secret. Very likely, the aid was flowing from the Ministry of Defence of Croatia to the Ministry of Defence of Herceg-Bosna. However, I cannot confirm explicitly the details.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:Mr. Mesi?, have the Ministers you mentioned held documentation on this aid?Stjepan Mesi?:I haven't seen any documents, but they must exist somewhere. Neither the public, nor Parliament have any details about these transactions.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:In the period of 1992 to 1994, have the Croatian forces and the Croatian police been in Bosnia?Stjepan Mesi?:I can vouch with certainty that the Croatian Army could not enter BiH legally without the approval of the Croatian Parliament. Such approval was neven given - a decision does not exist. Has any individual unit been in BiH – that is another matter. There existed an agreement between Tudjman XE "Tudjman" and Izetbegovi? XE "Izetbegovi?" during the Serbian attacks on Dubrovnik. But some soldiers complained to me that they were suspended for refusing to go to Bosnia. I was always told they were volunteers.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:Therefore, Mr. Mesi? , is your reply that Croatian forces were or were not in Bosnia between 1992 and 1994?Stjepan Mesi?:I believe they were, but not legally.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:According to your knowledge, Mr. Mesi?, have the members of the Croatian army in Bosnia had casualties, and are there any documents about this?Stjepan Mesi?:I must confess that I have not researched that. The phrase used in the newspapers for the killed soldiers was "fell for the homeland" and I was told that this referred to the Bosnian front. Prosecutor Mark Harmon:Mr. Mesi?, has any soldier returning from Bosnia told you that they had labels HV [Croatian Army] or if they were told to remove these and put on the label HVO?Stjepan Mesi?:Several people told me that on going into Bosnia they had to remove the HV label.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:Mr. Mesi?, what was the relationship between the Croatian army and the HVO officers? Have the members of the HV served in the HVO in command positions, and then returned to HV? Can you name them?Stjepan Mesi?:That was not in my report; Milivoj Petkovi? XE "Petkovi?, Milivoj" , Ante Roso XE "Roso, Ante" , Slobodan Praljak XE "Praljak, Slobodan" , General Tolj XE "General Tolj" – they were in the HVO and then in the HV.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:Mr. Mesi?, has Zagreb rejected the linked command or has it accepted it in principle?Stjepan Mesi?:Zagreb accepted the linked command, but not any particular command.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:Mr. Mesi? XE "Mesi?" , thank you. Mr. President, I conclude my examination.Judge Claude Jorga:Thank you, Mr. Harmon. I turn now to the Defence.Questioning by the Defence Attorney of General Bla?ki?, Anto Nobilo.Anto Nobilo:[Mr. Mesi?] You said that the HDZ was an obstacle to democracy, that it was a one-party system, that they robbed property during the transformation, that they were nationalists. Can you tell me when the HDZ got such characteristics?Stjepan Mesi? :I believe after Karadjordjevo.Anto Nobilo:When?Stjepan Mesi?:30th March 1991.Anto Nobilo:That means that the HDZ had these characteristics from 1991. When did you leave that party?Stjepan Mesi?:I left HDZ in 1993. I was already then in a deep conflict with it; as you know a step in politics is made at the right moment, when I hoped to have public support. I did not want to end my career without achieving anything. Judge Claude Jorga:Mr. Mesi? . . . Mr. Nobilo was clear. I believe that you have not replied to the question.Stjepan Mesi?:I can answer this question. The HDZ-BiH and its political leadership were meeting [in Zagreb] the political leadership of Croatia. When the referendum about independence of BiH was discussed, I must say that the representatives of HDZ-BiH were against Croatian participation in that referendum, and their decision was supported by President Tudjman XE "Tudjman" and the Croatian HDZ. After I persuaded Tudjman that if Croats did not participate, BiH would remain a part of Yugoslavia, only then they changed their decision: what the date of that meeting was I cannot say. When the Vance-Owen Plan was ready, on one such meeting it was urged that this Plan must be implemented immediately as it was in the interest of Croatia, because it completed Croatian territory.Anto Nobilo:Therefore, you were invited to these meetings during the Croato-Serbian conflict. Was there ever a decision made to start the war against the Muslims?Stjepan Mesi?:No. Formally, such a decision was never made.Anto Nobilo:I do not speak about a formal decision. Have you ever been present in such a situation?Stjepan Mesi?:A formal decision was not made, but it is clear that was being implemented.Anto Nobilo:It is very clear that the war started but I do not know if that was a formal decision or not. Has such a decision ever been made?Stjepan Mesi?:No. Such a decision was never made.Anto Nobilo:You were in the HDZ leadership during the Croato-Muslim conflict. Has a decision ever been made about the ethnic cleansing of the Muslim population on the territory controlled by the Croats and the HVO?Stjepan Mesi?:I could give one example. I was sitting next to Pero Markovi? XE "Markovi?, Pero" , Mayor of ?apljina. When I asked him "What is the situation between Croats and Muslims in your town?" he said: "There is no situation in our town. We have cleared all the Muslims."Anto Nobilo:He said that about ?apljina. Has a decision ever been made about the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in certain regions, to burn their houses, was there such a decision?Stjepan Mesi?:Such a decision was implemented.Anto Nobilo:Mr. Mesi?, I would ask you to answer in a conventional way. I asked you, when the HDZ-BiH men arrived at these meetings, has a decision ever been made about the ethnic cleansing under the control of the HVO? Have you heard of such a decision, have you been present, did you take part in it?Stjepan Mesi?:No, I have not, nor was such a decision ever formally made.Anto Nobilo:Have you heard that somebody ever informally said: "Let's get on with it; we do not need formal decisions"? Has this ever occurred in a meeting with Mr. Tudjman XE "Tudjman" ?Stjepan Mesi? XE "Mesi?" :Since the arrival of the representatives from the regions of BiH, where there was a movement of the Muslim population, it was clear to me that such a policy was somehow implemented, in a strange way, while officially it was always maintained that Bosnia contained three constitutive nations . . .Anto Nobilo:These meetings were not public but internal meetings. The contents of these meetings were not published . . . but what I am asking you, has anyone, e.g., Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , ever said, "Let's go and clear the Muslims from the region of Travnik"? Have you ever heard something like that?Stjepan Mesi?:No.Anto Nobilo:Has the Muslim leadership often come to Zagreb?Stjepan Mesi?:Yes, so that via Zagreb they can communicate with the rest of the world. Anto Nobilo:Therefore, you have seen them often.Stjepan Mesi?:Yes.Anto Nobilo:You described Perinovi?, Kljui? and Brki? as persons in favour of a united BiH.Stjepan Mesi?:Yes.Anto Nobilo:How do you explain that Tudjman XE "Tudjman" , whom you said had a decisive influence in BiH, agreed that these people be elected to such a position [i.e., the leadership of the HDZ-BiH]?Stjepan Mesi?:I suppose that they did not want to pursue the required [Tudjman XE "Tudjman" 's] policies. Anto Nobilo:O.k. There were reasons for removing them from the leadership but how could Tudjman accept three such different people who rejected his policies? Stjepan Mesi? :I tried to explain that Tudjman's policies towards BiH changed from time to time, from the time he supported a unified Bosnia, until Karadjordjevo, XE "Karadjordjevo," after which he believed that Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" would break up Bosnia, and that would be in his interest.Judge Claude Jorga:We shall take a break and restart at 15.00 hrs.Anto Nobilo resuming at 15.00 hrs:Can I refresh your memory? You said that at that session nobody asked for Kljui?'s resignation. Do you still maintain that?Stjepan Mesi?:Yes, I cannot say that Tudjman demanded it.Anto Nobilo:If Tudjman demanded that, why can you not say that he demanded that?Stjepan Mesi?:I was Party Secretary to the HDZ, and Tudjman gave me an order to remove Kljui? in secret, and I could not publish that.Anto Nobilo:Can you recall any meetings at which you were present, and what was talked about at such meetings? Do you remember any meeting with Tudjman and [HDZ-BiH] representatives at which the war was discussed, and what was said and by whom?Stjepan Mesi? :The fate of BiH was discussed, and about the defence of some regions, but these meetings never had an agenda. I cannot say what was discussed, but this was double policy; officially we recognised BiH, but we had different policies. We established Herceg-Bosna as Milo?evi? XE "Milo?evi?" established Republika Srpska, which did not support a unified Bosnia.Anto Nobilo:So you cannot remember a specific meeting. Was there ever a decision to start the war, to attack the Muslims, at any meeting at which you were present?Stjepan Mesi?:I do not know of such a decision.Anto Nobilo:You were in the Government [of Croatia]. What was the cause for the conflict between the Croats and Muslims in BiH?Stjepan Mesi?:Do you wish to hear my opinion?Anto Nobilo:Yes.Stjepan Mesi?:I believed that Tudjman was impressed by Milo?evi?, and believed that BiH could not survive. He believed that the regions inhabited by the Croats could be in time joined to Croatia, and that the remaining 'little Bosnia' would be left to the Muslims.I don't see any other reason that the Muslims would want to attack the Croatian regions, because Bosnia was totally supported by Croatia, otherwise Bosnia would lose the only support it had. There is no logic in it.Anto Nobilo:And what was the logic that led Croatia to support the Bosnian Army, and then fight with it?Stjepan Mesi?:Maybe that it judged that Bosnia wanted to survive and that Croatia would get its part of it. [Marvellous.]Anto Nobilo:You have stated that the main culprits were the Serbs who squeezed the Croats and Muslims into a small area, and that that was the cause of the conflict. Do you still believe that?Stjepan Mesi?:I represented the HDZ and the State Institutions in Croatia until the end of co-operation with the Muslims and until the end of our conversations with Milo?evi?. I tried to unite Croats and Muslims in order to isolate the aggressor - Milo?evi?.Anto Nobilo:And have you then abandoned the argument that the chief reason for the Croat-Muslim conflict is that they were squeezed into 30% of the territory and that that was a war for territory?Stjepan Mesi?:That was one of the reasons, but Serbian aggression was the chief reason.Anto Nobilo:This is document No. 2, three pages of the magazine Globus [11th March 1992]. Page 2: The question: In the late autumn of 1992 came the first Croato-Muslim conflict. The Muslims accused the Croats of planning and provoking the conflict and the end of negotiations.Your reply was: "That is not true. I was a member of the highest State Institutions and we never planned the war with the Muslims." Therefore, my question is: did you say this, is this correct, and do you still believe this?Stjepan Mesi?:I stated that officially. The decision to go to war with the Muslims was never made by the Croatian leadership.Anto Nobilo:This is Ve?ernji List [1st October 1993]. This is your statement: "We said that the JNA XE "JNA" occupied 70% of the territory of BiH, although the Serbs made up only 33% of the population. The Muslims and Croats were squeezed onto only 30% of the territory."Stjepan Mesi?:My interest was to achieve peace between the Croats and the Muslims.Anto Nobilo:Can you reply in simple terms; is this true or not, this that is written here?Stjepan Mesi?:What I said was true. However, as a member of the State I was not able to state that the Croats provoked the conflict with the Muslims, either due to lack of courage or fear that my predictions would come true, which happened in 1997 when I established a new party of which you were also a member.Anto Nobilo:You said that Herceg-Bosna was formed similarly as the Republika Srpska, as a result of the agreement between Tudjman and Milo?evi??Stjepan Mesi?:I don't know what was agreed in Karadjordjevo. All I know is what I was told. I am only conscious of the consequences.Anto Nobilo:You have Globus [11th October 1994], page 3. You will see your reply: "The Croatian people in BiH, through Herceg-Bosna, achieved basic territorial power, without which the negotiations about the Croato-Muslim Federation would have been impossible. That's the only raison d’être of Herceg-Bosna." Did you say that?Stjepan Mesi?:Yes. The HDZ leadership, however, insisted that Herceg-Bosna was the only achievement of the Croatian sovereignty in BiH. Finally, we agreed that Herceg-Bosna was only one of many forms of Croat sovereignty in BiH.Anto Nobilo:Please can you look at Globus of 20th August 1993, page 2? The question was: 'Do you think that the policy of Herceg-Bosna started the exodus of Croats from Central Bosnia?' Your reply was: "Herceg-Bosna had a year earlier enabled the existence of Bosnia as a state. It helped the Muslims to organise defence." . . . Was that your interview?Stjepan Mesi?:Yes.Anto Nobilo:Do you support the statement that Herceg-Bosna was stopping Serbian attacks: and as the Croats were better organised they have in that way preserved Bosnia as a state?Stjepan Mesi?:As a high functionary of the State I had to use Aesop's language to support that policy. Anto Nobilo:The Court wishes to know - was that what you said at the time true or false?Stjepan Mesi?:It is not possible to answer if this was true or not. That was the HDZ truth, and the second part was my truth in order to collaborate, as the victims of aggression.Anto Nobilo:If I understand properly, you spoke the truth independently from the party to which you belonged.Stjepan Mesi?:I stated the official policy of the Party (HDZ) as my own . . .Anto Nobilo:Let's return to your statements. Can we assume that you did not always state the truth, depending on the attitudes of the Party to which you belonged?Stjepan Mesi?:[In an outburst of demagogy.] Only my wife believes that I always speak the truth.Anto Nobilo:I would ask you to give me very clear answers to the following questions:If Tudjman and Milo?evi? made an agreement in 1991, how do you explain that after Karadjordjevo when the war started [Vukovar, Dubrovnik] that the Croats lost Posavina and Jajce? The greatest fighting between the Croats and the Serbs started after Karadjordjevo, and it was supposed to have finished in an agreement?Stjepan Mesi?:I can only repeat what Tudjman said after Karadjordjevo. I do not know what they agreed to. If you ask for my opinion, Milo?evi? " and Tudjman were in conflict about Croatia, although Milo?evi? later on let down the Serbs in Croatia. He was interested only in 66% of the territory of Bosnia. Thus everything boiled down to the division of Bosnia. For example, Mate Boban, after meeting Karadji? in Graz, stated that there are no unresolved questions between the Croats and the Serbs on the question of Bosnia.Anto Nobilo:You said that Tudjman stated after returning from Karadjordjevo that the JNA would not attack [Croatia]. "He agreed with Milo?evi?, who wanted a few percentages more of Bosnia," and in spite of that the JNA attacked. Therefore, was the agreement achieved, as they have not annulled it – and the JNA attacked? How does this agree with the Milo?evi?/Tudjman agreement?Stjepan Mesi? :This means that they did not keep to the agreement. (!)Anto Nobilo:The referendum on independence was on 1st March 1992 and 6th April 1992 BiH proclaimed independence. Immediately on 7th April Croatia recognised BiH. Is that so?Stjepan Mesi?:Yes.Anto Nobilo:On the 8th June 1992 a common declaration, signed by Tudjman and Izetbegovi? was signed in Helsinki. Do you remember?Stjepan Mesi?:Not completely, but it is possible.Anto Nobilo:On the 19th June 1992 the Presidency of BiH established a temporary office of BiH in Croatia.Stjepan Mesi?:I believe so.Anto Nobilo:On 21st July 1992 an agreement on diplomatic relations between Croatia and BiH was signed.Stjepan Mesi?:Yes.Anto Nobilo:On 23rd September 1992 representatives at the London Conference signed an annex (agreement?) in New York for friendship and co-operation between Tudjman and Izetbegovi? " .Stjepan Mesi?:Correct.Anto Nobilo:On 29th September 1992 Dr. Z. San?evi? XE "San?evi?, Dr. Z." was appointed as the Croatian Ambassador in BiH.Stjepan Mesi?:Yes. His seat was in Zagreb and allow me to state how he later left.Anto Nobilo:When the enmities subsided?Stjepan Mesi?:Yes.Anto Nobilo:Dr. San?evi? was the first diplomat to support Izetbegovi? XE "Izetbegovi?" in Sarajevo?Stjepan Mesi?:Yes.Anto Nobilo:On 12th December 1992 in reply to a letter from Izetbegovi? dated 6th November 1992, Tudjman agreed on economic co-operation. There was a meeting in New York [Izetbegovi?, Silajd?i? XE "Silajd?i?" , Boban, XE "Boban, Mate" Akmadji? XE "Akmadji?" ] about the future constitution.Stjepan Mesi?:I don't remember.Anto Nobilo:On 27th March 1993 Tudjman and Izetbegovi? signed a declaration about close co-operation between Croatia and BiH.Stjepan Mesi?:I don't remember.Anto Nobilo:On 2nd May 1993 a meeting was held in Athens about the peace negotiations for BiH?Stjepan Mesi?:I remember, but not about its content.Anto Nobilo:Document dated 11th May 1993, i.e., IX Session of the Security Council XE "Security Council" , discussing the renewal of enmities between Croat [HVO] and Bosnian units:It was agreed: 1) Immediate cessation of enmities; 2) acceptance of the Vance-Owen Plan as soon as possible; 3) Common command for the HVO and Muslim units; 4) The Security Council denies the involvement of the Croatian Army in Bosnia. Izetbegovi? and Akmadji? proposed a meeting with Tudjman. Do you remember that?Stjepan Mesi?:Yes. Luckily, the Serbs had not signed, as [the V-O] Plan was one of the chief reasons for the suffering of the Croats and Muslims. The Plan would mean ethnic division, and ethnic cleansing that actually happened.Anto Nobilo:Here we have something for you personally. On 10th June 1993 in Zagreb, the President of the Sabor, Stj. Mesi? and Josip Manoli? XE "Josip Manoli?" received a delegation of 6 people from Travnik [Bosnia]. The discussion was about Croato-Muslim co-operation, pacification, the defence of the Valley of La?va and the protection of the Muslim refugees. You spoke with Izetbegovi? on the telephone, and he arrived the same day in Zagreb. Can you add to that?Stjepan Mesi?:No.Anto Nobilo:Do you remember an open letter that ?emso Tankovi?, President of the SDA in Croatia sent to Izetbegovi? and Boban asking them to talk about defence against the common enemy?Stjepan Mesi?:I remember that he intervened several times.Anto Nobilo:Would you agree that all the army supplies for the Bosnian Army came from Croatia or through Croatia?Stjepan Mesi?:I would not agree completely. The Army of BiH captured some from the Serbs who had been in Croatia.Anto Nobilo:Can you think about the arms which it did not capture?Stjepan Mesi?:Yes. It could get them only through Croatia.Anto Nobilo:Did humanitarian aid arrive also through Croatia?Stjepan Mesi?:Yes, and through HVO controlled areas.Anto Nobilo:With the permission of the Croatian government?Stjepan Mesi?:Yes, but it would take its share of supplies.Anto Nobilo:Can we say that a number [!] of Muslim refugees were accommodated in Croatia even during the Croato-Muslim conflict?Stjepan Mesi?:I must restrain myself. A much-respected Croatian official stated "We have to make their life so unbearable that they will want to go."Anto Nobilo:This is not a statement by President Tudjman?Stjepan Mesi?:No.Anto Nobilo:Do you know that wounded Bosnian army soldiers were treated in Split hospital?Stjepan Mesi?:I am not conscious of such details, but I know they were treated in our hospitals.Anto Nobilo:Your interview for the Hercegova?ki Tjednik. The question was "What was the official attitude of Croatia and the HDZ towards BiH"? Your answer was: "Our attitude was always principled, and that is that the boundaries cannot change." Is that right?Stjepan Mesi?:That was official policy.Anto Nobilo:You gave that interview?Stjepan Mesi?:I do not even know whether that magazine existed. I have not authorised it.Anto Nobilo:That was at the time of the referendum.Judge Claude Jorga:I would like to know the date of that statement.Anto Nobilo:Unfortunately, I do not have a date but it was in the beginning of 1992.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:Please allow the witness to read the document.Judge Claude Jorga:I have to ask Judge Raid how to proceed.Stjepan Mesi?:I cannot remember, but judging by the answers maybe that I spoke with a correspondent, but was it correctly interpreted . . . ?Anto Nobilo:Have you in 1992 stated to correspondents that that was the attitude?Stjepan Mesi?:Our attitude was principled, that the boundaries cannot change.Anto Nobilo:On page 2, column 2, the question was: "Will Croatia recognise an independent and sovereign BiH?" Your answer was: "BiH did not seek the recognition, but if it asks for it, Croatia will take a principled attitude and be the first to recognise BiH." Was that your attitude?Stjepan Mesi?:That was my attitude.Anto Nobilo:Is it correct to say that Tudjman strove to avoid the war, and that that was the mysterious reason for the agreement in Karadjordjevo?Stjepan Mesi?:I do not know.Anto Nobilo:And what was your aim?Stjepan Mesi?:I have replied to that question already. Anto Nobilo:Have not the meetings between the Croats and Bosnyaks formed a part of international negotiations, bilateral discussions, within the international framework?Stjepan Mesi?:Yes they have. In fact, the International Community can be accused for the breakdown of BiH. [Lord Owen] he is guilty of the outcome.Anto Nobilo:What was the aim of the meeting?Stjepan Mesi?:I was excluded from that meeting.Anto Nobilo:However, what was the aim of that meeting - to avoid the war?Stjepan Mesi?:When Tudjman departed he said: "I am going to see what they want."Anto Nobilo:Did not the International Community support such meetings to avoid the war? Let me have a clear answer on what was the outcome of the meeting between Smilja Avramov XE "Avramov, Smilja" , ?arini? XE "?arini?" and Biland?i? XE "Biland?i?" ? What maps were they preparing, and how do you know about that?Stjepan Mesi?:Biland?i? told me.Anto Nobilo:What kind of maps?Stjepan Mesi?:Maps about the territorial division. In 1994 in Geneva, around the maps on the table sat Tudjman, Boban, Milo?evi? and Karadji?, but without the Muslims.Anto Nobilo:Was not that a part of the International negotiations?Stjepan Mesi?:Yes. Even the International Community can be accused. I believe that Lord Owen encouraged the fall of BiH, and I won't forgive him for that. []Anto Nobilo:You don't have any precise details about the maps?Stjepan Mesi?:People from BiH were bringing various maps for the division of territory by ethnic groups.Anto Nobilo:That was in harmony with the Vance-Owen Plan?Stjepan Mesi?:Yes. But they should be blamed for that.Anto Nobilo:About the meeting between Boban and Karadji? which you assessed negatively: Let's see the interview you gave to Novi List, page 1. The question was: "We are interested in what your opinion is about the Boban-Karadji? meeting?" Your reply in 1992 was: "If the meeting results in ending the war and leads to further negotiations it would be positive."Was that your interview?Stjepan Mesi?:Yes.Anto Nobilo:Not to rush. Tell me if Tudjman ever stated 'burn five villages and the people from the sixth will escape?'Stjepan Mesi?:Humane resettling is a euphemism for ethnic cleansing and genocide.Anto Nobilo:You gave an example of the Croat aspirations on BiH - the introduction of the Kuna in Herceg Bosna. What was the current money in BiH; was it not the dinar, with which Belgrade bankrupted BiH?Witness for the Prosecution, Stjepan Mesi?:Correct. I just stated the fact.Anto Nobilo:Have you ever heard Tudjman or anyone else from the Croatian leadership support ethnic purity, and state that other ethnic groups have to abandon the regions controlled by the Croats?Stjepan Mesi?:I remember that Tudjman said that after the war only 5% of Serbs would remain in Croatia. But this can be interpreted in various ways. [Of course.]Anto Nobilo:My question was directed to BiH. At these meetings did Tudjman state that non-Croat populations must be cleansed in the regions controlled by the Croats?Stjepan Mesi?:He never said that openly.Anto Nobilo:Do you actually know how the war in the La?va Valley started? What was the balance of power between Croats and Muslims?Stjepan Mesi?:I don't have real information, only fragmentary.Anto Nobilo:You told us that you heard that Croat soldiers were in BiH.Stjepan Mesi?:I asked clarification from the Minister of Defence and was told that Croat units were not in BiH. I don't know. My nephew, Vlatko Mesi? XE "Mesi?, Vlatko" , was a Croat soldier and he was in Bosnia, he was not a volunteer. He does not have anything to do with Bosnia and he was there.Anto Nobilo:Here I have Narodne Novine, No. 43, of 10th May 1993, which quotes decisions of the Croatian Sabor XE "Croatian Sabor" of 30th April 1993 calling for Croats and Muslims to stop the conflict on the basis of the already signed agreement to do so - appealing to those not conforming to that to do so immediately, peacefully. The Sabor invokes the historical co-operation of Croats and Muslims for the sake of the preservation of the sovereignty of BiH. The Sabor calls for common resistance to Serbian aggression. The Sabor will, therefore, send its delegation to BiH as a mission of goodwill. This was signed: President of the House of Deputies of the Sabor, Stjepan Mesi?. Is this document authentic?Stjepan Mesi?:Yes.Anto Nobilo:The next text is a Declaration about the foreign policy of the Republic of Croatia: "Ch. 4 – We support state unity of the independent and sovereign internationally recognised state of the Republic of BiH, and its constitution based on three constitutive nations." This declaration was adopted on 30th June 1993 and signed by Stjepan Mesi?. Is this document authentic?Stjepan Mesi?:Yes.Anto Nobilo:I am interested to know if you believe in victory over the HDZ [Tudjman] at the next election?Stjepan Mesi?:You don't need to be confused by the composition of the Sabor. . . . You should be proud of the fact that you were once a member of my party.Anto Nobilo:I conclude my examination.I believe that it is important to note that Mr. Mesi? had certain political ambitions in 1992-93.Questions by the Prosecutor, Mr. Mark Harmon.Prosecutor Mark Harmon:Thank you, Mr. President . Has Croatia received international aid for the Muslim refugees?Stjepan Mesi?:Yes. I believe that that aid was sufficient.Mark Harmon:Was Croatia a transit route for the arms and humanitarian aid on the way to BiH? You said that a part of that aid Croatia retained.Stjepan Mesi?:Because this is a closed session we can spell out here certain matters, which cannot be stated publicly, otherwise I would not dare to say it.We were under embargo, and therefore could not receive arms.However, we had to get hold of the arms, as the situation was absurd. In other words, we were left at the mercy of the Serbs. The aid was coming [from the Muslim world], and it was a matter of agreement how much of it would remain in Croatia, because of need and also because of the risk for Croatia.I asked Izetbegovi? was he satisfied with the arrangement and he said: "I would be, if the other part did not remain in Hercegovina."Prosecutor Mark Harmon:You are in opposition to President Tudjman and therefore it has been intimated that your testimony in The Hague XE "The Hague" is politically motivated?Stjepan Mesi?:If anyone will use my testimony politically it will be Tudjman. Last month Tudjman stated: "In the organizational committee of the four trade unions demonstrating in the main Square of Zagreb are sitting persons who slander Croatia in The Hague” (referring to me as a member of that committee).Further questions by the judges.Judge Fouad Riad:Was the HVO a disciplined force?Stjepan Mesi?:I believe that the HVO was under the control of the Croatian Ministry of Defence and that military operations were synchronised between the two.Judge Fouad Riad: So you believe that the actions by the HVO were ordered by Zagreb and executed in the La?va Valley?Stjepan Mesi?:Mate Boban always maintained that he was executing Zagreb policy.Judge Fouad Riad:You stated that Tudjman advocated the 1939 borders of Banovina. Where was the La?va Valley in 1939?Stjepan Mesi?:The La?va Valley was in [Croatian] Banovina.Judge Mohammed Shahabudeen:Have you personally been present when the official decisions were made about the use of force against the Muslims in Herceg-Bosna?Stjepan Mesi?:I was never present when such decisions were made. After Ahmi?i, I asked Boban if they investigated the crime. He said,' Yes, and the executioners had black uniforms . . .' [!]Judge Mohammed Shahabudeen:In your political experience, does there exist the possibility of ‘not rocking the boat', which means keeping a balance between official policy and personal belief?Stjepan Mesi?:I was always defending Bosnia because if it failed it is questionable if Croatia could have survived. While I was in the government I supported it, but always warned that the HVO and the BiH army must have a unified command. Judge Mohammed Shahabudeen:Do you feel freer to speak in this closed Court than during the Croato-Muslim conflict?Stjepan Mesi?:Of course I feel freer, as life in Croatia at that time was not highly priced.[!!]Judge Mohammed Shahabudeen:Can you state to the Court that your testimony is truthful?Stjepan Mesi?:It is truthful.Judge Claude Jorga:The Serbian Assembly did not ratify the Vance-Owen Plan. What do you think about that? How much influence did you have on Mr. Tudjman?Stjepan Mesi?:The Serbian Assembly did not ratify the Vance-Owen Plan. Croatia and the Bosnian side accepted it, but it was fortunate that it was not put into force, because it shifted populations.Judge Claude Jorga:Was the Plan o.k.?Stjepan Mesi?:I was personally against the Plan, because I knew how it would end up. I hoped that all three peoples would remain as residents in all three constitutive cantons. In that way, Bosnia would be saved. Judge Claude Jorga to Mesi?: This was an historical testimony. The Court has to have an insight into what was happening in relation to the command responsibilities of General Bla?ki?. We hope this testimony will not turn people against you.The Court has and will give you the best possible protection.Reference: Transcript from The Hague XE "The Hague" testimonies by Stjepan Mesi? XE "Mesi?" in the process against Tihomir Bla?ki? XE "Bla?ki?. Tihomir" , as a witness for the prosecution in the ITFY in The Hague, from 16th to 19th March 1998. Translated and edited from Croatian by Court officials.CHAPTER 7: SIX BLOODY YEARS (2003- 2009) In view of the controversial nature of its content, this Chapter has been separated into a publication on its own, and will be available only to parties who agree to strict conditions about the use of its content for any form of legal or other prosection.INDEX INDEX \h "A" \c "2" \z "2057" TO PART 2: Chapters 4,5 & 6‘‘Croatian’ Serbs, encouraged by American noises are naming their own price, 588‘Patron saint’ of the Serbs, 230‘Red Charity’, monies for Partisan communists in woods, 319AAct of terrorism, 154Adopted socialist rhetoric, 473Ad?i?, General Blagoje, 536AGITPROP - Commissions for Agitation and Propaganda, 388AGIT-PROP of the CK KPJ., 331Agrarian reform, 390Agrarian Reform, 316Agreement ambiguous, 61Ajdukovi?,Dane - Col. Lieutenant, 572Akmadji?, 722Albright, Madeleine, 587Alexander, 246, 520Alexander, Field Marshal Sir Harold, 201Alkalaj, Dr., 252All dictators 'rule in name of people', 169All hell broke loose when Movement tried to unveil mysteries of Belgrade financial concerns, 416All Tito’s representatives in US were Serbs (Markovi?, Prica, Stevan Dedijer), 5Alliance between USSR and Western powers removed all doubts about character of alliance, 54America vs. Europe?, 695American Marshall Plan, 399Amnesty International, 477An Alternative Bill of Health, 590An alternative rational political solution, 436Anecdotal Evidence, 187Anne McElvoy, 552Ante Markovi?, 536Ante Parad?ik, 504Anti-Communist Militia, 61Anti-Croat campaign in Britain and US, 2Anti-Croat insinuations, 68Anti-Semitism in Croatia (and Bosnia-Hercegovina, then part of NDH) never existed beyond odd jibe and nothing like that which existed in England, 8Apocalyptic events of 1945, 184Appendix 1, 500Appendix I, 704Arbour, Luise, 566Archbishop Stepinac as Scapegoat, 292Arkan, -?eljko Ra?njatovi?, 564Artukovi?, Andrija, 255, 390Asanovi?, Aljo?a, 640Ashdown, Paddy, 564Assembly camps (sabirni logori), 99Assembly of European regions, 657Assistance of German units, 68Atanastje Jevti? - Episcope of Banat, 567Atlantic Charter, 322Attack on Kupres – 11th/12th August 1942, 133Augustin?i?, sculptor, 397Autonomous Croatian Principality, 17Aversion to cultural achievements, 388AVNOJ - Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia, 235AVNOJ session in Jajce on 29th November 1943, 230Avoid danger of civil war, 228Avramov, Smilja, 726Axis, 323BB’nai B’rith - Kent Schiner, President of the Jewish Organisation, 593Babi?, 569, 701Babi?, Du?ko, 568Babi?, Du?ko - Lieutenant Colonel, 567Babi?, Ivan - Croatian Regular Army Col., 147Babi?, Milan, 533, 558, 571, 701Badel, Marijan, 491Bakari?, Dr. - President of Federative Republic of Croatia, 314Bakari?, Dr. V., 471Bakari?, Dr. Vladimir, 168, 426Baker, James, 538, 551Balti?, Milutin, 433Bamburac, Dr. Jovan, 499Banac, 609Banovina Hrvatska’, 608Barakovi?, Ivica, 246Bararon, Dudo, 252Barber, Tony, 549Bari?evi?, Stjepan, 245Basset, Richard, 528Basta, Milan Commissar, Great-Serb, lied as a matter of principle, 179Battle of Kosovo, 424Battles around Kupres, Tomislav Grad, ?ujica and Livno, 128Battles for Livno and Kupres – 2nd to 11th August 1942, 131Battles for Prozor Basin and Valley of River Vrbas, 125Beisner, Willy - Attaché, 249Beissner, Gestapo Obersturmbannführer, 9Belgrade Agreement between Tito and ?uba?i?, 389Belgrade Mafia, 532Belgrade media cover, 424Belgrade Ministry of Information, 430Belgrade propaganda, 548, 553Belgrade’s New Class’s clowns, 439Belini? Marko, 491Belini?, Marko, 604Bellum omnium contra omnes, 63Benzler, Felix - Representative of German Foreign Ministry in occupied Belgrade, 60Berger, Gottlob, 249Bernard Levin, 518Be?ovan, Professor Gojko, 651Bi?ani?, Dr. Rudolf, 648Biggest pockets of resistance, 67Biggest slaughter occurred at end of July in Western Bosnia, 99Biland?i?, 726Bilandzic, Du?an, 498Biland?i?, Du?an, 235Binder, David, 464Bir?anin, Trifunovi? Ilija - Chetnik Commander, 71Black Legion (Crna Legija), 141Black Legion, most experienced fighting unit, sent towards Livno, 129Bla?ki?, General Tihomi, 698Bla?ki?. Tihomir, 732Bla?evi?, ?iro, 629Blazevi?, Jakov, 318Bla?evi?, Jakov - communist State Prosecutor, 491Bleiburg, 328, 337, 616Bleiburg and its consequences, 198Bleiburg liquidation, 270Bleiburgs, 486Blewitt, Graham, 566Blindness of British Government's policy, 199Bljesak (Lightning), 562Bloch, Ernst, 459Boban, Ljubo, 496Boban, Mate, 722Boban, Mate - President of Herceg-Bosna, 618, 621Boban, Rafael - Commander, 335Boljkovac, Josip, 706Bolshevik system of running the State, 658Bonefa?i?, Dr. - Bishop of Split - imprisoned by OZNA, Secret Police, 225Book of Visitors in the President’s Office?, 710Bo?kovi?, Dr. Milo, 453Bosnia – A War within War, 120Bosnia-Hercegovina, 86Bosnia-HercegovinaH formed part of the NDH, 330Bosnian Muslims, 555, 704Bosnian Pashaluk, 560Bouchers, Richard, 549Boutros-Ghali - General Boutros UN Secretary, 700Bozani?, Archbishop, 656Breakup of Yugoslavia, 2Breier, Louis - President of American Jewish Union, 325Breyer, Pavao, 258Brezhnev’s Moscow, 411Brioni Island, 416Britain did not share sentiments of this agreement, 227Britain relaxed its support for Chetniks, 151Britain was conspicuous by its absence, 325British air lifted Tito to Italy, 156British did not like being associated with Ma?ek in London, 220British Helsinki Group, 687British in favour of Chetniks, 3British met this arrival with horror, 335British should have treated this matter as a purely ‘Yugoslav affair’, 180British stiff upper lip with which they handed over hundreds of thousands of innocent Croatian soldiers and civilians to Tito’s butchers, 155British sympathetic to ‘information’ emanating from their favourite protégés, 93British turned a blind eye to these ‘formalities’, 170British went cool on idea of invading the Balkans, 144Brki?, Du?ko - CK KPH, 341Brki?, Kri?an, 478Brocks, George, 540Brotherhood and Unity, 46, 405, 415Bruno Bu?i?, 328, 463, 476Bruno, Giordano, 617Budak, Professor Neven - Dean of Philosophical Faculty, Zagreb University, 274Budi?a, Dra?en, 642, 688Budi?a, Drazen - Croatian students' leader, 432Buerger, Professor from the Abwehr centre Klagenfurt, 49Buha (flea), Milorad, 563Bukinac, Dr. Beato -Franciscan Friar, 314Bulaji?, Dr. Milan, 270Bulat, Rade, 494Bulldozing of military cemeteries, 175Burning of ‘enemy’ villages, killing ‘bourgeois’ politicians and wealthy people solely on ideological grounds, 55Bush, George, 544Bu?ic, Bruno, 460, 471Bu?i?, Bruno, 463, 478, 479Butorac, Mile, 642Byzantianism and Morlachism, 266Byzantine tradition, 518CCairo Government, 152Capitulation of Italy 1943, 59Captain McEwen, 233Cardinal Kuhari?, 552Carissimi-Priori, Luigi - former Italian anti-fascist partisan, wrote in Storia Nuova Contemporanea (Milan) about Winston Churchill’s friendly correspondence with Mussolini in 1939, 61Carrington, Lord, 541Cash nexus, 439Castro – nickname of Mesi?’, 689Casual Yugoslav policemen, 410Catholic Action, 321Catholic Episcopate, 317?engi?, 303Centralist backlash, 426CEREO - Croatian Centre for the Development of Non-Governmental Organisations, 651Cerovski, Bo?idar, 246, 247?ervenko, Zvonimir - General, 579?eta - regiment, 58Cetineo, Dr. Ante, 320Chamberlain, 554Champion, Marc, 544, 547Champion, Mark, 551Character Assassination of President Tudjman by the Soro? Press Continues in Boring Instalments, 607Chenus, Georges-Marie - French Ambassador to Croatia from 1991-95, 675Chetnik aim the destruction of NDH, 95Chetnik aim was creation of Great-Serbia within Yugoslavia, 17Chetnik anti-Muslim hatred was forgotten for moment, 101Chetnik Crimes, 113Chetnik fight against Partisans, 60Chetnik outrages in Bosnia-Hercegovina during 1941-45 were, in essence genocide, 87Chetnik policy of swallowing up Bosnia-Hercegovina into Great Serbia, 94Chetnik regiments of Royal Yugoslav army murdered twenty-five Croats in ?apljina (Hercegovina) yelling,, 10Chetnik revenge, 67Chetnik strategy, 59Chetnik-Partisan relationship pivoted on an anomaly, 38Chetniks, 57Chetniks - para-military organisation, 17Chetniks assembled at Vran mountain, 102Chetniks could not accept NDH, 89Chetniks in Bosnia-Hercegovina, 45Chetniks propagated renewal of Yugoslavia on lines of Allies policies, 21Christ stands behind the Church, 319Christian morality, private property, 345Churchill was for England, 662Churchill, Randolph, 318Churchill’s orders, 207Churkin, 569CIA, 550, 583, 611?i?ak Ivan Zvonimir, 495?i?ak, Ivan Zvonimir, 598?i?ak, Zvonimir - Student Leader of Faculty of Philosophy, 432Cigoj, Ante, 478Ciliga, Ante - Memoirs 'Sam kroz Europu u Ratu, 1939-1945' (Alone through Europe during the War, 1939-1945), 275?i?ek, Vjenceslav, 478Clark, Bruce, 543Cleansing of Ustasha ranks, 77Clissold quotes Tito, 150Clissold, Stephen, former member of British Consulate in Zagreb and British spy, 148CNN, 590, 598, 666Co-existence with the Third World, 403Col. Jure Francetic, 126Col. Kosta Mu?icki, member of ZBOR and former aide to King Aleksandar, 116Collaboration in Serbia, 115Collaboration with occupiers all over ex-Yugoslavia, 33Commission for Establishment of crimes of occupiers and their servants’, 153Communist ideology gave Partisans (or should it be Chetniks?) convenient and ‘respectable anti-fascist’ cover-up., 63Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) collaborated with Nazis, SS and Gestapo, 47Communists crushed remainder of Croatian opposition, 223Communists did not mind collaborating with bourgeois politicians, 13Communists would not share power with anyone, 11Conclusions of Fifth Conference of KPJ, 13Concordat between new State and Holy See, 313Concordat with Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 313Conference between Ribbentrop and Ambassador Alfieri in Salzburg on 10th June 1943, 111Conference in Teheran on 28th November 1943, 145Conference of Great Fascist Council in which Il Duce remained in minority, Attaché Helm was asked to resign., 113Conflict between Belgrade Great-Serbian Royalist Mafia and communists dated from 1919, 39Conflict between Partisans and Chetniks in Bosnia-Hercegovina was complicated by mixed structure of population. The war there turned into carnage, 41Confusion about democratisation, 406Connection between Ustashas and Serbian traitors is one and same, 34Conquest of Croatia, 170Conspiracy against Paveli?, 155Conspiracy by anti-communist alliance in all parts of ‘Yugoslavia’, helped by the Allies,, 52Conspiracy theory about ‘Croatian collective responsibility’, 37Conspiracy theory of the society is just a version of theism, 35Constitution of Socialist Republic of Croatia, 557Contact Group, 572, 587, 633Cook, 597Cook, 596Cook, Robin, 596Cornellis, John - British Welfare Officer in Austria, 219Corpses were mutilated in the most disgusting way, 102Correct treatment of PoWs, 182Corruption of its institutions, 419?osi?, Dobrica, 559?osi?, Dobrica, 676Council of Europe, 471Counter attack by Ustashas in 1941 was radical, 112Counter-intelligence, 346Counter-intelligence in the army, 346Courage of the Bishops, 312Cowan, Edward, 545Crawshaw, Steven, 537Creation of preliminary government of DFJ, 236Crnkovi?. Josip, 320Croat commitment to political independence, 514Croat gastarbeiters in Germany, 421Croatia again became an independent State after 1990, 87Croatia demanded reform of Federation, 407Croatia in 1941 (as in 1990) did not possess any armed forces, 56Croatia Waking Up, 424Croatia was strangled by the Yugoslav communist utopia, 198Croatian ‘guerrillas’ from Australia, 478Croatian ‘separatism’, 458Croatian Catholic Bishops, 317Croatian Catholic Church missions, 461Croatian Communist Party - KPH - saved Partisans from Serbia and also saved Tito's neck, 56Croatian Diaspora, 470Croatian Domobran (Regular NDH Army - i.e., uniformed peasants), 5Croatian emigrants were publishing highest number of regular publications, 464Croatian Football, 629Croatian Gastarbeiters in Germany, 461Croatian Helsinki Committee (HHO), 575Croatian Information Centre, 330Croatian intellectuals, 448Croatian Jewish Community and Ante Paveli?, 239Croatian national anti-Yugoslav revolution, was infiltrated by foreign intelligence services, working hard for break-up of NDH, 79Croatian National Socialists Infected with Marxist communist elements, 9Croatian Orthography - Hrvatski Pravopis, 469Croatian Orthography in 1971, 695Croatian paranoia’, 524Croatian Parliament set up by the communists, 490Croatian peasant rebellions for ‘the old rights’ never had much to do with carnage, 86Croatian refugees, 297Croatian resistance to Italian and Chetnik terror in Dalmatia became core of Partisan resistance movement in Croatia, 119Croatian Sabor, 558, 591, 728Croatian socialist party, 471Croatian Spring, 409, 525Croatian Spring 1971, 608Croatian State Archives (HDA), 329Croatian tragedy, 160Croatian writers produced Manifesto (22nd October 1971), 416Croatia's 'prêt-a-culture', 412Croato-Yugoslav conflict, 514, 522Croats in Dalmatia abhorred Paveli? for his servility to the Italians, 162Croats in Dalmatia, with help of British, liberated island of Vis in 1943 for Tito's own safety, 163Croats managed reasonably well for some 800 years in various multi-national states, 516Croats pioneers of profound Christian Universalism, 424Croats were playing Italy and Germany against each other., 106Croats, of course, were not worth mentioning, 105Crusaders (Kri?ari), 321?ubrilovi?, Bo?ko, 557Cvetkovi?-Ma?ek Agreement, 88Cvetkovi?-Ma?ek Agreement in 1939, 608Cvii?, Cristof, 609Cyrus Vance, 564DDab?evi?, Madam Savka, 410, 425Dabcevi?, Savka, 409Dab?evi?, Savka, 521Daki?, Mile, 558Dance-macabre frenzy, 82D'Annunzio, 657Dante in Paradiso [Canto XXXI, 103], 470Dap?evi?, Col. Vlado, 400Dayton Accord 1995, 61Dayton Agreement, 621, 622, 675, 711Dayton and Erdut Agreements, 587de Gaulle was for France, 662de Gaulle, Charles, 105de Michelis, 544de Michelis, Gianni, 536de Michelis, Gianni, 451Deakin, Bill - reports from Belgrade, 188Death Marches, 174Death Marches’, 383Deathbed of Yugoslavia, 528Declaration by Peoples Government of Croatia (22nd April 1945), 237Dedijer, Vladimir, 292, 558Defender of the Faith, 597Degenerate Godfathers, 445del Ponte, Carla, 699Demands of Europe, 629Demirel, Suleyman - President of Turkey, 666Democratic centralism, 443Demonisation of the Archbishop, 306Deportation of the Serbs from NDH, 90Destroy the NDH, 146Deutsch-Maceljski, 246Dictatorship of King Aleksandar 1929, 12Dictatorship of the Proletariat, 327Dimitrovi?, 662, 663Diplomatic and military pressure from Soviet Union, 395Discriminating world of the class struggle, 440Dizdarevi?, Raif, 664Djilas accused of revisionism, 440Djilas and Velebit spent many pleasant hours incognito with Herr Ott in Zagreb cafes, 50Djilas losing his marbles, 85Djilas, Milovan, 383, 475Djindji?, Zoran, 595Djujic, Momcilo, 468Djuji?, Serbian Priest, 567Djurekovi?, Stjepan, 476Djurovi? - Yugoslav Consul in Spain, 459Do Croats Still Suffer from Yugo-Nostalgia?, 600Do the Jews Hate the New Croatia, 590Dobroslav Paraga, 597Documentary evidence that the offensive by Serbian and Montenegrin Proletarian brigades was aggression against Croatian State and Croatian territory, 140Doder, Du?ko, 552Dominko, Dragutin, 240Domobran, Regular Army of NDH, 55Domobrans, 453, 487, 491, 497Domobranstvo, 608Dositej, Serbian Orthodox Priest Father, 699Dostoyevsky, 303Dr. Andrija Hebrang, 590Dr. Branimir, 453Dr. Franjo Tudjman, 458Dr. Tudjman, 675Draconian sentences, 478Draganovi?, Dr. Krunoslav, 330Dragi?a Cvetkovi?, Prime Minister, 17Dragosavac, Dr. Du?an, 425Dramatic developments influenced Tito’s emotional life, 49Dra?kovi?, Vuk, 476, 543Dra?a Mihajlovi? took command of Serbian State Guard and volunteer Corps, 117Dubaji?, 198Dubcek’s Party in Prague in 1968, 414During course of civil war, 14Durrell, Lawrence, 229Dutch forces in Srebrenica, 337EEastern Hercegovina and Montenegro, 138EC initiative, 536Economic Strategy of Croatia, 623Economy, 419Eden, Anthony, 148, 233Emilijan, Serbian Orthodox Bishop, 323Encyclical of Pope Pius XI (1937), 240Encyclopaedia of historicists' deceptions, 446Endemic syphilis rampant among Muslim population, 248Enormity of terror and slaughter began to have an effect on killers, 45Episcope Lukijan, 564, 566Epstein, Julius - member of American Commission for Refugees, 218Erdut Agreement, 619Escaping refugees were machine-gunned by Chetniks, 101Establishment insisted its 'Constitution' was embodiment of individual, 410Establishment of Court Marshal (Prijeki Sud),, 244Establishment of NDH, which incorporated Bosnia-Hercegovina, 89EU Human Rights Commission Report, 571Eugen Kvaternik, 296European Parliament, 471European Social Democratic family, 426Evans-Pritchard, Ambrose, 552Events were repeated all over Croatia, 166Exact number of people in exodus will never be known, 172Exaggerated figures about Serbian wartime victims in NDH, 93Extraordinary Meeting of CK SKJ, 402FFall of Mussolini on 25th July 1943, 144Fall of Yugoslavia and creation of NDH, 90Fascism changed., 225Federal Government in Belgrade, 391Fejt?, Francois, 414Felicinovi?, Don Joso, 251Feral Tribune, 612Field of Blackbirds - Kosovo 1389, 574Fifth column, 333Fifth Column, 296, 454Fifty Croatian writers executed, 176Fight of all 'democratic forces' (Partisans wrongly included themselves) against Axis, 28Figures useless except as refutation of Belgrade propaganda, 413Finkielkraut, Alain - French philosopher, 654First Chetnik organisation created 1921 in Belgrade., 16Flores, Eduardo, 551FNRJ, 327Foreign Office in London, 149Former Chetniks in 1945 surpassed even themselves in scope and massive scale of post-war murders of Croats, 115Forty planeloads of supplies of arms and medicines dropped by the British to Partisans, 145Fourth hypothesis is politics of revenge, 185Fractured Yugoslav economy, 444Franciscan historians, 294Franjo Tudjman, 530, 583, 605, 606, 607, 614, 676Frankfurt International Book Fair, 469Franoli?, Professor Branko, 475Franz Ferdinand, 294, 541, 557, 677Free Croatia in free Yugoslavia, 5Free Elections, 327Freedman, Lawrence, 537Freedom House, 612Freedom of the media, 602Freeman, Simon, 546Freiberger, Miroslav ?alom, 256French Revolution, 585Freundlich, Maja, 697Friends of Yugoslavia, 452Fund of Public Prosecutor of Socialist Republic of Croatia, 329GGabeli?, Andro, 605Galbraith, 587, 618, 619, 620, 621, 622, 644Galbraith, Peter, 567, 568, 587Gali?, Mirko - Croatian TV, 638Gallagher, William - communist M.P., 234Gani?, 620Gara?amin, Ilija, 558Garde, Dr. Paul - French linguist and maverick, 678Garde, Paul, 677Gavrilovi?, Milan, 390Ga?i, Franjo, 222, 223General Governing Representation, 60General Headquarters of National Liberation Partisan Formations of Yugoslavia established in Belgrade under Tito's command, 15General Peoples Defence System’, 443General Tolj, 713General?tab JA, 334Genocide of Croats and Slovenes, 187Genocide of non-Serbs, mainly Croats and Muslims, 18Genscher, 544Genscher, Hans-Dietrich, 544Georgijevski, Ljup?e - Prime Minister of Macedonia, 666German Collaborators in Serbia 1941-45, 115German 'E' army, 334German Military Einsatzgruppe, 265German Plenipotentiary General in Zagreb, Gleise von Horstenau, 94Germans, 348Germans in Serbia succeeded in organising ‘Serbian bourgeoisie’ under leadership of General Milan Nedi?, 29Germans pursued their own strategies and were not interested in this Croato-Serbian war, which did not impinge on their own interests, 124Gestapo, 322Gestapo Attaché Helm, 69Glava?, Branimir, 547Gojko ?u?ak, 619, 622Goldstein blames the Archbishop, 259Goldstein, Ivo, 496Goldstein, Ivo - Professor of ‘Croatian’ history at Croatian University in Zagreb,, 695Goldstein, Professor Ivo, 239Goldstein, Slavko, 327, 497, 583, 591Goli Otok, 267, 394, 599, 601Gombo?, Stjepan - architect, 245GONG, 687Gospi?,, 251Gotovac, Vlado, 463Gotovina, Ante, General, 573Gotovina, General Ante, 559, 565Grabovac, Dr. Igor, 84Grani?, 633, 659, 660, 661, 662, 665Grani?, Dr., 596Grani?, Mate, 644Great Britain granted diplomatic recognition to their blue-eyed boy, Tito, 318Great offensive by Germans and Italians, 104Great Powers, 523, 561, 679Great Serbian aim, 2Greatest majority of Bosnian-Hercegovian Croats were staunch supporters of NDH, 143Great-Powers, creators of Yugoslavia in 1918, 192Great-Serbian State structure staffed by corrupt Serbian diplomats, 5Gregori?, Mirko - Commander, 335Grgec, Petar, 245Grous, J., 470Guberina, Dr. Ivo, 314Guiseppe Masucci, Benedictine, 261Guiseppe Ramiro Marcone,, 261 Gulin, Dr. Pavao, 320Gumzej, Jakov, 243HHabsburgs, 302Hadrovi?, Dragutin, 253Hague Conventions of 1907, 323Hajduks - traditional Balkan outlaws against Turks, 63Hall, Peter, 584Halla, General Ferdinand (Vitez), 267Hans Helm of Gestapo would play Machiavellian role in next ten years in NDH and later in Tito’s Yugoslavia, 9Harald Turner, chief Nazi Civil Administrator for Serbia, 116Harmon, Mark - Prosecutor, 704Hassan II of Morocco in 1990, 686Healthy forces within KPJ to remove Tito, 394Heavenly Serbia, 556Hebrang Case, 51Hebrang, Andrija - Croat, 394Hebrang, Andrija, leader of KPH, 154Hebrang, Dr. Andrija, 602Hefer, Stjepan - Croatian historian, 337Hegel’s principle, 447Hein, Helga, 258Heinemann, Herr, 471Helsinki Agreement, 422High Mass in Zagreb Cathedral, 529Himmler, 346Himmler believed that some Croats who had volunteered for Waffen SS were put in concentration camps by NDH government, 112HIS [Croatian Intelligence Service],, 659Historical Croatian roulette, 269Historical, social and political explanation for nature of revenge murders of Serbs by Bosnian Muslims (Turks) in 1941-45, 85History of KPJ manipulates this figure in its own peculiar way, 168Hitler, 543, 551, 584, 599Hitler blitzed Yugoslavia, 48Hitler considered Yugoslavia an artificial creation, 6Hitler decided that uprising in Serbia be quashed, 15Hitler never intended to invade Yugoslavia in 1941, 192Hitler railed against ‘danger of Greater Serbia’ - even suggested ‘communism was more acceptable’, 117Hitler’s losses near Moscow, 47Hitler's attack on Soviet Union, 28Hitler's personal knowledge of Serbs in First World War convinced him Serbia was snake’s head of Yugoslav state that had to be crushed, 6Hoch, A.J., 219Holjevac, Colonel Vje?eslav, 490Holjevac, Vje?eslav, 494Holy Inquisition, 293Horvat, Josip, 494HOS (Hrvatske Oru?ane Snage), 334How Mad, if at all, is Dobroslav Paraga?, 597How the other half -, 630HRT (Croatian Radio and TV), 604Hrvatska Rije?, 461Hrvatski Knji?evni List - Croatian Literary Review, 463Hrvatsko Narodno Vije?e - The Croatian National Council, 454Hrvoje ?arini?, 630HSS - Croatian Peasant Party, 647HSS (Croatian Peasant Party – Hrvatska Selja?ka Stranke) great pre-war Croatian Democratic Party - in state of confusion, 2HSS as truly democratic Croatian political party, succumbed completely to utopian Yugoslav aim, 3HSS assumed an unrealistic role to frustrate such a war and prevent bloodshed, 4HSS politicians in London under Dr. Krnjevi? (?uba?i?, ?utej, and Bi?ani?), 151Hudelist, Darko, 607Hudson, D.T., 3Human Rights, 307Hungarian revolution, 403Hungarians, 348Hurd, 536Hurd, Douglas, 544Hurd, Douglas, 536, 542, 544Hurd, Douglas, 554Hurd, Douglas, 554Hurley, Msgr Patrick - American Bishop, 318HV (Croatian Army), 646II Krajina and II Proletarian Brigades redirected to Mrkonji? Grad, 135In 1942 Croatian Orthodox Church established, 57In God we Trust, 588In order to woo sentiments of Croatian people, they were attacking the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 11In the 70's and 80's, Yugoslavia gradually started to lose its war against the Croats, 517Incestuous relationship between these two pro-Yugoslav contestants, obsessed by slaughter and sacrifice, 39Independent State of Croatia, 291, 295, 324, 344Independent State of Croatia (NDH) head Ante Paveli?, staunch Catholic Croat,, 2Indictment of the Archbishop, 324Information and Disinformation - Propaganda, 446INFORMBURO, 392INFORMBUROISTS, 397Innocent persons, 200 - professors, doctors, engineers, priests and other Croatian intellectuals have been sentenced to death by shooting, 315Instinct to flee, 257Institute for Peace in Washington, 610Institute of the Workers Movement, 272Intelligence, 346intelligence services, 539, 613, 625, 641, 642, 650, 651, 652, 658, 659Intelligence services, 658International Helsinki Group, 471International News Service, 322International Tribunal For the Former Yugoslavia, 577Iron curtain has fallen, 385Irrepressible mood of violence, 85Is President Tudjman Really an Anti-Semite?, 590Isakovi?, Antonije, 417Isklju?enje i Zagrljaj (Exclusion and Embrace),, 603Island Pag, 251It is imperative to discuss these events dispassionately,, 169Italian activities doubly damaging, 76Italian capitulation 1943, 62Italian Dalmatia, 19Italian press full of utopian blueprints for political order, 56Italian-Chetnik ‘offensives’ in NDH, 83Italian-Chetnik gatherings, 62Italians had taken over NDH occupation Zones II and III, 94Italians investigated Chetnik mass murders, 62Italy far cry from being ‘ally’ of Croatia,, 57Ivan Zvonimir ?i?ak, 504Ivani?evi?, Goran, 449Ivankovi?-Vonta, Zvonimir, 497Ivankovi?-Vonta, Zvonko, 495Ivo Sanader, 579Izetbegovi?, 588, 597, 635, 637, 670, 671, 677, 712, 722Izetbegovi?, Alija, 547, 631Izvestija, 623JJadovno Camp, 251Jakov?i?, Ivan - maverick politician from Istria, leader of Istrian Democratic Party (IDS),, 655Jan?ikovi?, 157Jancikovi?, Tomo, 220Jareb, Jere, 262Jareb, Jere - 'Half a Century of Croatian Politics' (Pola Stolje?a Hrvatske Politike), 277Jasenovac, 251, 575, 592, 685Jasenovac camp, 81, 100, 252, 270, 273Jasenovac concentration camp, 80Jazovka, 328Jela?i?, 528, 533, 614Jela?i? Officers School in Zagreb, 622Jela?i?, Ban Josip, 239Jeli?, Dr. Branimir, 477Jeli?, Dr. Ivan, 453Jeli?-Buti?, Fikreta - communist Muslim historian, 211Jeli?-Buti?, Fikreta - Yugoslav Muslim communist historian, 98Jessell, David - front man of BBC’s Europe Direct, 694Jewish question, 8Jewish Stand, 327Jews in Croatia (and particularly in Zagreb) made major contribution to professions and business out of all proportion to their numbers, 8JNA, 531, 553, 554, 555, 558, 561, 564, 569, 570, 572, 581, 583, 584, 605, 607, 674, 708, 719Jokovi?, Daniel, 212Jorga - Judge Claude, 705Josip Manoli?, 723Jovanovi? Arso - Gen. Col., 400Jovanovi?, Slobodan, 390Jovi?, Bora - Serbian President of [Yugoslav] Presidency, 708Jur?evi?, Josip, 277Juri?, Perica, 613Jurjevi?-Baja, Ante, 165Jutarnji, 612KKa?i?, Bozo, 213Kadijevi?, 533, 553, 554, 583, 674Kaganovi?, 403Kalajd?i?, Josip, 314Kanoti, Mihael, 314Karadji?,, 709Karadji?, Radovan, 561, 562Karadjordjevi?, ‘Prince’ Tomislav’s Sussex born ‘Princess Lynda’, with her two children, 542Karadjordjevi?, Prince Paul, 309Karadjordjevo, 441, 520Karadjordjevo,, 704, 717Kardelj, Edvard, 383, 386Kardelj, Edward, 443Kartoteka - January 1944, 338Kati?i?, Dr. Natko, 320Kauzlari?, 620Keightley, General - 10th May 1945, 183Kennedy, John, 542Kent Schiner, President of the Jewish Organisation B’nai B’rith, 593Kerestinac, 250Kerestinec Manor House prison, 92Khrushchev, Nikita - visited Belgrade on 26th May 1955 - he apologised for actions of INFORMBURO resulting in Belgrade Declaration, 403Khrushchev’s famous ‘shoe banging’ session, 404Khrushchev’s sensational disclosure, 403Kikel, Zlata-Golda - mysterious and irrepressible woman-spy. During WWII was editor in Nazi DNB (Nazi Inform Bureau), 49King Aleksandar, 302King Peter, 2, 152King Peter forced to disband his Chetnik forces, 227King Peter from London ordered that all the Croats must be murdered, 46Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 6, 295Kingdom of Yugoslavia - 23-years long political history, 138Kingdom of Yugoslavia initiated Croato-Serbian conflict 1918, 32Kirk, General, 204Kiss-and-tell Stories On the Subject of Tudjman Are Becoming More Bizarre, 604Klein Aleksandar, 267Kljui?, S., 706Kljui?, Stjepan, 597Knezovi?, Dr. Zvonko, 498Knin, 530, 532, 533, 557, 561, 562, 567, 569, 572, 574, 576, 580, 595, 632, 636Ko?evje, 172Komintern, 145Komintern changed the goalposts, 27Kopini?, Ivan - Komintern agent, 14Kordi?, Dario, 596Koro?ec, Anton - Slovene Roman Catholic Priest, 241Korry, Edward - of the United Press, 306KOS, 534, 641, 650Kosanovic, Sava - Great-Serb, later Tito’s Ambassador to US was frequent guest of Queen Marie and King Peter., 52Kostovi?, Dr. Ivica, 665Kova?evi?, Du?an, 561Kova?i?, Petar, 314KPH propaganda, 196KPJ - Political expediency, 330KPJ (Communist Party of Yugoslavia), 46KPJ had its fingers in everything, 238KPJ remained rigidly centralist party, 234KPJ renamed Union of Communists of Yugoslavia - SKJ, 401KPJ was lackey of Komintern up to 1948., 344Kraja?i?-Stevo, Ivan, 347, 397Krajina, 556, 557, 558, 559, 560, 572, 575, 576, 701''Krajina', 556KKraji?nik, 632Kraljevi?, Bla?, 598, 599Kraljevica, 257Kramar, Professor Stjepan, 314Kranj?i?, Dr. Matija, 314Krbek, Dr. Ivo - former Vice-Ban of Croatia, 151Kremzir Ljubomir, 8Kri?kovi?, Professor Vinko, 79Kri?evci, Bishop of, 260Krizman, Bogdan, 73, 211Krle?a, Miroslav, 576Krle?a, Miroslav - Grandfather of Croatian Marxism, 305Krnjevi?, Dr., 232Krnjevi?, Dr. Juraj - HSS Leader within Yugoslav Emigrant Government in London, 2Krnjevi?, Dr. Juraj,, 461Kroatische Berichte, 459Krstulovi?, Maksim, 477Krstulovi?, Vicko, 477Kru?elj, ?eljko, 209, 486Kufrin, Milka, 492Kuhari?, Cardinal, 530Kühnel, Vilko, 247Kulenovi?, Dr. D?afer - Muslim politician who would later become an NDH Minister), 88Kulenovi?, Dr. Muradif, 498Ku?an, Jak?a, 460Kvaternik, Eugen Dido, 7, 245Kvaternik, Slavko - Field Marshall, 299Kvaternik, Slavko - Statement to ‘Yugoslav Communist Court’, 7Kveder, General’ Du?an, 488LL’Osservatore Romano, 324La Petite Entente, 677Lali?, 570Lali?, Col., 570Lang, Dr. Branko, 499Large-scale unemployment, 405Laughland, John, 609Laurence Durrell, 515Lautenberg Amendment [to Dayton], 645Law published on 30th April 1941 aimed at Jews and Gypsies, 7Law regarding change of religion, 11Law, Toby who, as Lord Aldington, 184Lebensraum, 418Lechene, Evelyn, 475Lee, Jennie, 475Lemnitzer, General - Deputy Chief of Staff, 204Lenin, 303Leninism, 332Leonti?, Dr., 225Lepaglava prison, 325Letica, Prof. Dr. Slaven, 671Letica, Prof. Dr. Slaven, 600Le?aji?, Ranko, 563Liber Croaticus Verlag GmbH, 460Liberation of Belgrade by Red Army, 163liberation of Livno Partisans imprisoned seven German civilian technicians, 72Liquidations in Bosnia & Hercegovina, 346Liquidations of the 'peoples enemies', 340Lisak, Ustasha Colonel Erih - Director of Public Security in NDH,, 320Liszt, Field-Marshal - proposal for more direct German involvement, 74Ljoti?, Dimitrije, 241Ljubljana water supply became contaminated, 174Local Councils (NOOS,), 330Log revolution, 535log revolution’, 531Logic of historical situation, 193Lon?ar, Budimir, 556Lon?ar, Dr. Pavao, 323London Yugoslav ?migré Government nagged Soviet Government, 42Lord Aldington, 199Lord Carrington, 541, 571Lorkovi?, Mladen, 242Luburi?, Maks, 453Luburi?, Vjekoslav, 390Lucas, James, 336Luftwaffe made sure that this single Partisan plane did not leave the ground, 164Luther, Martin - pointed out Govedi?’s trip clearly raised many political questions, 9MMa?ek, 303Ma?ek - co-operation with Paveli? and Hitler out of the question, 3Ma?ek accepted Pact between Hitler and Belgrade Government (1941), 3Ma?ek Dr. Vlatko, leader of HSS, 17Ma?ek, Vladko, 321Ma?ek, Vlatko, 668Ma?ek's endeavours shot through with ingrained Yugoslavism, 75MacLean, Fitzroy - Brigadier, 145MacLean, Sir Fitzroy, 540Macmillan, Harold, 201Occupation forces (1941) increased to 25 divisions, 27Madeleine Albright, 587Maestro, Albert, 252Maffiaesque practice, 439Majstorovi? Miroslav, 468Maljenkov, 403Mandi?, Fr. Dominik, 259Mandi?, Igor - columnist for Belgrade magazine Nin, 697Manoli?, 640, 641, 642, 643, 650, 651, 664Manoli?, Josip, 640, 649, 664, 706Many intriguing gaps in documentation of Chetnik crimes in NDH during 1941-45, 84Marcus Tanner, 534, 594Marcus Tanner and the Western Press, 594Margaret Thatcher, 443, 472, 542Marija-Bistica, 303Markovi?, 582Markovi?, Ante, 536, 554Markovi?, Mihajlo, 562Markovi?, Mira, 7Markovi?, Pero, 715Marovi?, Stevan - President of Serbia, 578Marshall Grechko’s visit to Belgrade in 1972, 434Marti?, 569, 574, 701Martin?i?, Father Modest - Franciscan Provincial, 320Maruna, Boris, 653Marx realised that a capitalist was not demonic conspirator, but man who was forced by circumstances to act as he did., 36Marxism, 332Marxist economy, 400Marxist-Leninist and Bolshevik, 393Mass exodus of Croats included political and cultural elite of Croatia and large masses of patriotic citizens, 171Mass grave near Zagreb, 530Mass liquidations of 'peoples’ enemies', 346Mass student demonstrations, 406Mass Terror was the depressing start to 'Liberation', 175Mass, led by Pope John Paul II in Croatian language for first time in Rome’s St. Peter’s Basilica on 10th July 1987, 468Massacres in Croatia, 174Massive ethnic cleansing, 83Massuci, Don - Secretary the Papal Emissary Marcone, 296Masterman, Sue, 549Masucci, Don - Secretary to Papal Legate Marcone, 317Mati?, Dr. ?eljko, 475Matica Hrvatska, 409Matijaca Yugoslav, Consul, 469McElvoy, Anne, 552McElvoy, Anne, 552McLean, General Fitzroy, 488Meeting in Berchtesgarden, 119Meier, Victor, 464Menshevik party, 393Mesi?, 689Mesi?, 556, 577, 578, 610Mesi?, 689Mesi?, 689Mesi?, 689Mesi?, 690Mesi?, 690Mesi?, 691Mesi?, 691Mesi?, 691Mesi?, 691Mesi?, 692Mesi?, 692Mesi?, 693Mesi?, 694Mesi?, 694Mesi?, 694Mesi?, 697Mesi?, 704Mesi?, 705Mesi?, 705Mesi?, 705Mesi?, 713Mesi?, 716Mesi?, 732Mesi?, Stipe, 688Mesi?, Stipe, 536Mesi?, Stipe, 688Mesi?, Vlatko, 728Message of Blood, 442Me?trovi?, Dr. Mate, 455Me?trovi?, Ivan, 296Me?trovi?, Professor Mate, 460Me?trovi?, Stjepan, 591Meyer, Viktor, 472Mihajlovi?, Draza, 389Mihajlovi?, Dra?a - Colonel in Yugoslav Army, 10Mihajlovi?, Dra?a - invitation in October 1941 to all Serbs, Croats and Slovenes to join ‘National Army’ by swearing oath to ‘King and Country’, 58Mihajlovi?, Genera l- their spiritus movens, 66Mihajlovi?’s Chetniks, escaping to Serbia, 96Mika ?piljak, 663Mikeli?, 568, 569, 570, 571Mikeli?, Borislav, 562Mikuli?, Stipe, 478Milan Babi?, 701Mile Daki?, 573Military Courts, 314Milo?evi?, 529, 535, 538, 539, 542, 544, 551, 552, 553, 554, 557, 559, 562, 569, 571, 581, 583, 584, 588, 591, 599, 630, 631, 632, 633, 634, 635, 636, 637, 638, 671, 674, 676, 677, 679, 683, 691, 701, 704, 717Milo?evi?, Mirjana, 532Milo?evi?, Slobodan, 532Milovan ?ani?, 299Milovanovi?, Milan, 421Mini-Contact Group, 572Mitterrand, President, 671Mladi?, Ratko, 578, 683, 701Moljevi?, Pavao - Minister of Defence, 673Moljevi?, Stevan, 15Moljevi?, Stevan – author of ‘Homogeneous Serbia’, 30th June 1941, 17Molotov, 403Monitoring Mission of the EC, 549Montgomery, 644, 645Montgomery, Bill, 644Montgomery, Lynne, 644Moral responsibility, 190MORH - Defence Ministry, 619Morlachism and Byzantianism, 266Morlachs, 519, 563Moscow alarmed at Tito's antics, 53Mo?kov, Ante, 335Mo?kov, Colonel - statement to Yugoslav Communist Court, 7Mount Velebit, 251Mrk?i?, Mile, 573Msgr. Rittig, parish priest of St. Marks in Zagreb,, 304Mueller, K., 470MUP (Police), 646Murdering of wounded prisoners was Chetnik speciality, 71NNardelli, Antun - Commander, 335National Assembly in Belgrade, 316National Front, 386National Liberation Army – Liberators or Murderers?, 142National Liberation Movement, 442National Liberation Struggle, 347National Liberation Voluntary Units, 333Nationalism and separatism must be punished, 412Nationalism in Contemporary Europe, 477Nationalist deviations’, 52Nationalist Serbian, 71Nationalists, 408NATO, 385Nazi Munich bierkellers, 418Nazis attack 1941, 5Nazism less popular for broad masses under influence of Roman Catholic Church, which was openly opposed to Nazism, 194Nazor, Vladimir, 490NDH - included Bosnia-Hercegovina, Hitler's ‘quisling state’, 6NDH authorities tried hard to grant amnesty to all rebels, 31Nedi?, General Milan, 390Negotiations at Bleiburg between British, Croats and Partisans were carried out deliberately only orally, without minutes taken or any other written documents ever signed, 337Negovanovi?, General Marko, 536Nenad Piska?, 555New attack on Kupres – 13th/14th August 1942, 134New Class, 411New Class’, 402New danger appeared on horizon, 477New Deal for Croatia, 426New Law, 7New school curriculum, 401New York Times, 326Nicholson, Captain Nigel, 201Nikezi?, Marko, 442Nikola Tesla telecommunication factory, 432Nikolic, Professor Vinko, 474Nik?i?, Dr. Ante, 262Nixon’s visit to Yugoslavia in September 1970, 408NKVD - Narodnyi Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del, 398No compromise in dealing with Serbian question, 12No war in Serbia between 1941 and 1943, 21Non-Aligned Movement’, 444NOOS, 327North of River Sava fight between Croat armed forces and stronger communist bands in progress, 81Novakovi?-Longo, Niko - former Minister in fascist-orientated Yugoslav Stojadinovi? government, 19Novi List, 612Number Games in War of Yugoslav Utopia, 209Nüremberg racial laws, 300OObjective necessities blow egalitarianism away, 428ObU GSOS - Intelligence Board of Supreme Command of Armed Forces of Republic of Croatia, 658October Revolution, 396Offensive Bljesak, 646Ogre of the year, 86On the Dunkirk pattern, 144Once the premise of nationalism is accepted, 218Only 13,243 persons deported from NDH to Serbia., 91Opa?i?, Jovan, 558Opa?i?, Jovo, 576Open Encyclical, 297Operation End Game, 581Operation Schwarz commenced on 15th May 1943, 108Operation 'Storm', 579Operation Weiss, 106Operation Weiss offensive, 119Opposition coalition, 648Organisation for the Protection of Human Rights, 583Organisational Report of II Department OZNA for Croatia, 339Or?ani?, Professor, 299OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe), 601OSCE Task Force, 647Osim Agreements, 444Ottoman Empire, 560Owen, Lord David, 618, 621, 634OZNA (Secret Police), 318OZNA carried out individual and mass liquidations without any legal procedures, 338OZNA executioners, 341PPapandreou, 632Paradjik, Ante - President of Students’ Union, 432Parad?ik, Ante, 492Paraga, 598, 599, 600Paraga, Dobroslav, 597Paravac, Borislav, 578Paris Peace Conference 1946, 386Partisan 'courts', 347Partisan Historicism, 141Partisan massacres continue, 165Partisan 'revolutionary laws', 274Partisan women excelled in cruelty, 177Partisans, 48Partisans ‘liquidated’ in Serbia, lost contact with Croatia and Slovenia., 55Partisans and Chetniks, 4Partisans claimed a hugely exaggerated figure of 600,000 fighters, 166Partisans embraced Red Army soldiers, 156Partisans, if taken prisoner by Chetniks, were killed as a rule, 105Pa?ali?, 613, 652Pa?i?, Nikola - Serbian Prime Minister, 16Pastoral Letter, 317Patched-up German-Croat relationship, 106Pattern of killings repeated itself throughout western Bosnia, 97Paveli? met Hitler in Vinica (Ukraine), 75Paveli? visited Hitler on 18th/19th September 1944, 156Paveli? would be abandoned if he did not toe the German line, 108Paveli?, Ante, 293, 598, 668Paveli?, Ante - staunch Catholic Croat head of Independent State of Croatia (NDH), 2Paveli?’s, 654, 677Paveli?’s stronghold consists of six colonels, Mo?kov, Serwatzy, Heren?i?, Bzik, Pe?nikar and Lisak., 148Pavi?, Dr. Radovan, 574Pavi?i?, Sofija Ma?a, 493Pavle, Serbian Patriarch, 571Pavleti?, Professor Vlatko, 655Pavleti?, Vlatko, 665Pavlica, Dane, 494Pavlini?, 609''PAX' Americana, 581PPeace Treaty with Italy 10th February 1947, 386Pe?anac, Kosta, 87Pe?anac, Kosta - Chtnik Leader, issued call to Chetniks to collaborate with Germans, 16Pe?nikar, Vilko, 246Penalty was death, 6Peoples Defence - KNOJ, 390Peoples Power, 321Perfidious 'Allies', 62Perica Juri?,, 533persecution of the Jews, 271Peter II, King, 321Pete?i?, Ciril, 496Petkovi?, Milivoj, 713Petkovi?, Sne?ana, 539Petri?evi? Branko - Gen. Major, 400Petrovi? Gajo, 459PHARE, 652, 660Philosophy of wilfulness, 35Pijade, Mo?a, 386Pijade, Mosha - Serbian-Jewish Party ideologist, 224Piska?, Nenad, 556Piv?evi?, Edo - professor at UK Bristol University, friend of author, 83Plav?i?, Biljana, 561, 577Plebiscite 1991, 666Plenum of CK SKJ on 16th and 17th of June 1953 in Brioni, 401Pletikosa, Professor Ivan, 475Poldruga?, Ivan, 320Police outfits masquerading as Embassies, 436Politburo members, 333Politeo, Dr. Ivo, 320Political correctness, 4Political decisions agreed at informal meetings between top Party members and Tito personally, 387Political Intelligence Centre, Middle East, 149Political opposition to Yugoslav dictatorship, 457Polycentrism, 452Poos, Jacques, 544Pope Gregory XVI - Sollicitudo Ecclesiarum of 5th August 1831, 323Pope John Paul II, 294Pope John Paul II beatified Cardinal Stepinac, 326Pope John XXIII, 391Pope Pius XII, 296Pordes, Sigmund, 246Post-war communist repression, 330Post-war liquidations, 341Potsdam Conference, 327Potsdam Conference from 16th July to 1st August 1945, 233Power and death in same breath was frivolous matter in ‘new’ Yugoslavia, 223Praljak, Slobodan, 713Prenato, Sig., 476President Tudjman, 557, 605, 610, 638, 677Presidential Interregnum, 688Princip, Gavrilo, 541Prisoners classified by trades and professions and employed in workshops., 253Prnjatovi?, Vojislav, 275Problems with the HNV (Croatian National Council), 470Prodanovi?, ?edo, 566Prodi, Romano, 610Prodi, Romano - Think-Tank, 686Prohibition on use of Cyrillic alphabet, 12Proletarian Brigades, 332Proletarian brigades were Communist Party Army, 122Promemoriam sent by Archbishop Stepinac to Paveli?, 300Propaganda of revenge and repression, 331Proti?, Dr. Dragan, intimus of Herman Goering, Yugoslav Ambassador to UN!, 225Protunarodna, 304Pro-Yugoslav Croats, such as exiled Ban (Governor of Croatia) ?uba?i?, dubbed reactionaries, 5Psychological crisis for many Yugoslav communists, 396Publishing editor of Serbian cultural society ‘Prosveta’ to talk to Zagreb magazine, January 1999., 627Puk, Mirko, 255Pupovac, Milorad, 589Puri?, Prime Minister, 231Putting males into ranks of Partisans, 104QQueen Elizabeth II, 318Queen of Croatia, 425Quietly liberalised Croatia, 437Quisling, Vidkum, 191Quislings, 343RRa?an, 694Ra?an, Ivan, 556Ra?an, Ivica, 330, 492, 528, 557, 600, 615, 680, 688Ra?ki, 306Rade Kon?ar electrical concern, 432Radi?, Stjepan, 624Radica, Bogdan, 221Radica, Bogdan, 304Radica, Professor Bogdan, 474Radios Moscow and London adding oil to fire, 29Radovi?, Bishop Amfilohije, 575Ragu?, Vitomir Miles, 699Raji?, Ivica, 596Raki?, Milan, 421Rako, Ante, 475Randolph, 292Rankovi?, 518Rankovi?, Aleksandar, 337, 346Rankovi?, Aleksandar - head of Secret Police, 400Ranogajac, Captain Vladimir, 494RAPOTEC, 510Rappoport, 414Ra?kovi?, Jovan, 557, 558Ratio of forces was 21 in favour of Partisans, 134RAVSIGUR (Department for Public Order and Security, 246Reactionaries, 305Rebi?, General Markica - Deputy Defence Minister, 619Reconciliation Has Very Little to Offer, 589Red Army and Allied fighters, 333Red Cross, 568Reformed Bolshevik, 609Registering property, 247Regular business transactions and prevention of sabotage in business, 247Rejecting every criticism, 423Rejecting liberation struggle, 54Relations between HSS and communists even worse., 10Release of some British documents, 182Reliable scientific research was impossible., 328Religious gatherings, 468Religious war?, 603Remi?, 546Repressed anxieties of British about collaboration of Chetnik protégés with Germans, 143Republic Srpska in BiH, 559Revel, Jean-Francois, 677Revenge was prerogative, 348Revisionist, 591Revolutionary Etatism and bureaucracy, 391Revolutions and totalitarian ideas do not know or recognize anything but themselves, 38Rhodes, Anthony, 234Ribbentrop, 9, 55, 74, 75, 91, 104, 107, 108, 111, 112, 117Ribi?, Rikardo - Franciscan Friar, 314Rihtman-Augu?tin, Dr. Dunja - Professor of Ethno Anthropology, 670Risorgimento, 57Rittig, Msgr. Svetozar, 310Roads and rails could not support such an exodus, 207Robertson, General, 203ROC for Prigorje - March 1944, 339Role of ‘Church’ very similar to that played by Church in resistance against Turks, 303Role of Nazi Germany, 60Rolovi? - Yugoslav Ambassador to Sweden, 459Roman Catholic Church, 338Rome Agreement 18th May 1941, 77Ronaldo, 630Ropu?, Ivica - HDZ spokesman, 625Roso, Ante, 713Royal Yugoslav Army, 333Rubini?, Stjepan, 251Rukovodioci, 334Rulm, Hans Peter, 464Rulman, Hans Peter, 459Russell Court, 292, 558Russell, Lord and his Kangaroo Court, 307Russian Tsarist, Okhrana Secret Police, 421SSabotage - 760 acts - on railways took place in NDH, 82Sachs-Petrovi?, Dr. Vladimir, 8?acirbey, 620Sacra Congregatio Councilii of 14th October 1946, 325?alic, Ivan - Archbishop’s Secretary, 320Salis-Sewis, Bishop - Archbishop Stepinac’s auxiliary, 310Samardji?, Radovan, 574Sample Documents, 349Sanader, Ivo, 578San?evi?, Dr. Z., 722Sarajlic, Janjko, 475Sardeli?, Celestin, 663?arini?, 632, 726?arini?, Hrvoje, 630, 671Sartre, Jean Paul, 292Satanisation of Croats by Yugoslav ?migré Government meant a blessing on Chetnik genocide, 93Savo ?trbac, 565Scheffer, David, 566Schwartz, Milan, 246Schwartz, Mladen, 599SDS (State Security Service), 340Second example of British trickery, 185Second leg of Constitutional reforms was accomplished, 443Second stage of revolution, 53Second 'Yugoslav Reich', 225Secret OSCE document, 647Security Council, 564, 572, 645, 646, 700, 723Security Headquarters of Reich in Berlin, 69Sedlo Tomislav, 478?egedin, Petar, 463?egvi?, Father Kerubin, 314?egvi?, Kerubin - Father 79-years old, 314Self-management system, 415Seni?, Josip, 478?eparovi?, Miroslav - lawyer and former Chief of Croatian Intelligence Service (HIS), 657?eparovi?, Zvonimir, Minister of Justice, 645Serbia - where anti-Semitism was rampant., 8Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Belgrade (SANU), 567Serbian Chetniks and Tito's Partisan cut-throats, 243Serbian cutthroats, who descended from the Balkan hillsides, 526Serbian expansionism, 292Serbian minority in Croatia, 434Serbian National Movement, 45Serbian Orthodox Church, 295Serbian propaganda created thyth of traditional Serbian-Jewish friendship, 118Serbian Republic Krajina, 557Serbian Royalists, 5, 520, 527Serbian 'uprising', 98Serbs, As Parasitic As Mistletoe, Still 'Love' Croatia, 602Sermon openly condemned National Socialism, 302Server, Daniel, 610?e?elj, 632?e?elj, Vojislav, 543, 547?evo family in Italy, 478SFRJ - Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia), 404Shapel, Robert, 464?ID, 339SID - Service for Information and Documentation of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 475Sidonovi? - Soviet General, 400Silajd?i?, 632, 635, 637, 722?imi?, Franjo - Colonel of the Regular Army - Paveli? promoted as Commander in Chief, 121Singer, Vladimir, 242Singer, Vlado, 8Siroki Brijeg in Hercegovina, 317Situation in Bosnia-Hercegovina, part of NDH, was more complicated, 86Situation in Central Bosnia at end of summer 1942, 136Situation in NDH, 118?krabalo, Ivo, 498Slano, 251Slaughter of Croat and Muslim civilians, 96Slavery for the working class, 72Slovene Partisans, 336Slovenes bumped off the Yugoslav Army, 536Slovenia, 585Slovenia – Mass Graveyard of Croats, 214Snippets from Foreign Office documents, 188Socialism with a human face, 426Socialism with human face, 411Socialist Programme, 425Socialist Union, 406Socialist Yugoslavia, 465?olaja, Simo - Partisan Commander,, 133?olaja, Simo - Serb Communist ‘peoples hero’, 20Sollicitudo Ecclesiarum of 5th August 1831 by Pope Gregory XVI, 323Soro?, 566, 605, 607, 614, 643, 644, 652, 653South Slavs, 525Soviet Communist Party, 303Soviet policies against KPJ, 403Soviet Union (in spite of confusion created by Pact between Hitler and Stalin), 13Soviet Union and Yugoslav Government in Exile in London renewed diplomatic relations, 28Soviet Union cheerfully handed over ‘Yugoslav problem’ to British, 152Soviet Union withdrew military and other advisers, 393Spanish Civil War, 396Spanish Inquisition, 293?panovi?, Stojan, 561Spasi?, Bo?idar, 476Spasi?, Dr. Aleksandar, 472Speer, Albert at Nüremberg, 698?pegelj, 534, 535?pegelj, Martin, 534?pegelj., 535?piljak, Mika, 494, 664?piljak, Mika - old communist fox, 663Splajt, Sister Fanika, 314Split, capital city of Dalmatia, 305?ram, Mrs. Mila, 477Stability Pact, 695Stakhanov, Aleksei Grigor’evich (Алексе?й Григо?рьевич Стаха?нов), Russian coal miner whose prodigious output was publicised by Stalin as part of a 1935 campaign, 225Stakhanovite brigades, 601Stakhanovite competitions, 387Stalin, 303, 384, 520Stalin and Tito - personal clash between, 394Stalin was preoccupied with events in Carinthia, 184Stalin, Josif Visarionovi? died, 400Stanimirovi?, 575, 588Stanimirovi?, Dr. Vojislav, 575, 578Stanley, Alessandra, 326Stara Gradi?ka, 266, 569Star?evi?, Dr. Ante, 579Star?evi?, Dr. Ante - Father of the Homeland, 155Stark illustration of Utopia, 153State Commission for the Establishment of the War and Post-War Victims, 330State Department, 157, 534, 537, 549, 565, 610, 611, 664, 695, 697Statehood, 614Statements of several imprisoned Partisans involved in these massacres, 43Stealing and amassing fortunes at expense of ordinary people, 408?tefan, Ljubica, 567Stephanides, Theodore, 229Stepinac Archbishop - released, 312Stepinac, Aloysius, 258Stepinac, Cardinal, 293Stern, Oscar, 246Stevenson British Ambassador, 148Stiegler Jakov, 239Stipe Mesi?, 531, 566Stipeti?, Sister Blanda, 314Stjepan Radi?, 641, 668Stojadinovi?, Yugoslav Prime Minister 1939, 241Stoj?evi?, Stanko, 663Stone, Christine, 696Stone, Norman, 549Storm, 565''Storm', 559SStrategy of Disgust, 64?trbac, 565, 566?trbac, Savo, 575Str?hm, Carl Gustav, 464Strossmayer, 306Students of Croatian University in Zagreb issued the following Manifesto, 430Studin-Lavrin, Beba, 474?tulhover, Dr. Aleksandar - Docent (Dean) of Philosophical Faculty in Zagreb, 639?uba?i? - Ban of Croatia, in London under British surveillance, 150?uba?ic, British protégé, 327?uba?i?, Dr. Ivan, 2?uba?ic’s group, 220Subject of war crimes in Yugoslavia, 140?uflay, Milan, 242?uker, Davor, 449, 629Sulimanac, Stjepan, 493Sulzberger - New York Times, 11th November 1950:, 307Suni?, Mirko, 475Supek, Rudi, 459?u?ak, 619?u?ak, Gojko, 597?u?ak, Gojko, 663?u?ak, Gojko, 664?u?ak, Gojko - Croatian Minister of Defence, 622Suspended the Monarchy, 391?utej, Juraj, 220?uvar, 600?uvar, Professor Stipe, 600Svetovid, 450Sweeney, John, 551SZUP [Service for Protection of the Constitution], 659TTalbot-Rice, Col. of the S.O.E., 148Tanjga, Radoslav, 558Tanner, 595, 596Tanner, Marcus, 532, 550, 553, 594Technical Department, 346Technocrats took over, 407Teheran Summit, 158Temporary government of Federative Democratic Yugoslavia (DFJ) took an oath on 7th March 1945 and was immediately recognised by Britain, US and USSR, 233Territorial Army, 443Terzi?, V. - General-Lieutenant, 342Testimony given by Stipe Mesi?, 704Thatcher, Margaret, 542, 554, 666The Battle with UDBA, 474The Communist Secret Police (UDBA), 649The Counterpoint, 469The Epilogue, 701The European Union, 693The Hague, 540, 541, 551, 556, 558, 559, 563, 565, 569, 573, 577, 597, 598, 602, 614, 615, 629, 643, 644, 645, 646, 647, 654, 660, 671, 683, 685, 689, 698, 701, 704, 730, 732The Hague Tribunal should not be immune from critical judgement, 645The liberation of Krijina from the Serbs, 579The Reality and the Independence, 528The Roman Catholic Church in Croatia, 467The Serbian Lobby in UK, 449The Serbian Orthodox Church as a Political Party, 566The 'Sixth Column', 453The Stability Pact for South-Eastern Europe’, 700The Storm Troopers, 643The two pro-Yugoslav ideologies completely contradictory except in their aim of recreating Yugoslav utopia, 15The Violence of Yugoslavia, 383The War in Peace, 472Theories that self-management, 408Tiljak, Ljudevit, 250Time for 'Rationalisation', 490Time for sweet revenge finally arrived., 52Tito, 4, 516, 518, 520, 525, 528, 530, 540, 541, 543, 583, 586, 599, 600, 606, 614, 664, 665, 668, 670, 676, 680, 686Tito and Jovanka, 391Tito attacked centralism and dogmatism, 404Tito cobbled together three extravagantly-named new Proletarian brigades, 122Tito escaped blockade, 111Tito established legislative and executive bodies, 152Tito feared British landing in Dalmatia, 152Tito moved from Zagreb to Belgrade. As a good 'Croat' he felt safer among Serbs!, 13Tito needed the Allies, 226Tito offered his co-operation to the Germans, 219Tito ordered Sreten-?ujovi? Crni to re-organise brigade, 129Tito organised National Committee for Liberation of Yugoslavia, 28Tito still preoccupied with Kupres, 132Tito wanted to kill two birds with one stone, 428Tito, anxious about these developments, 168Tito, as a so-called 'Croat', wrote in Serbian, 132Tito’s cult of personality, 392Tito’s exposé, 311Tito’s fantasies, 295Tito’s genocide, 454Tito’s report to Fifth Congress of KPJ in 1948, 191Titoe did not refer to Croat PoWs he had murdered,, 107Tito's agreement with Red Army, 227Tito's credibility in question, 304Tito's Crimes - Documents, 345Tito's Marxist sophistry, 37Tito's Operative Group, 159Tito's Partisans, 4Tito's Partisans were de facto only illegitimate force in war of Yugoslav Utopia, fact that caused Tito many sleepless nights, 138Tito's previous instructions were confused, 127Tito's Reich, 440Tito's Stalinism, 303Tolstoy, Nikolai, 182Tom?i?, Dr. Zlatko, 589Tom?i?, Zlatko, 624, 647Tomi?i?, Zlatko, 463Tomuli?, Velimir, 478Too many Cooks Spoil the Broth, 596Total confiscation of Jewish property, 248Totalitarian model of power, 333Totally uncalled-for concession to Hitler by Paveli? unacceptable even in Italy, 6Toynbee, Arnold, 218Trades Unions - Sindikati, 433Treason in revolutionary situation defined very flexibly, 6Treaty of Consultation, 392Trifunovi?-Bir?anin, Ilija, 87Tripalo, Miko, 409, 521Tripalo, Miko, 410Tristissimo processo, 320Trotsky, 393Truman's doctrine, 385Trumbeta?, 475Tsar Du?an, 424Tudjman, 622, 636, 637, 638, 639, 640, 643, 645, 653, 655, 657, 660, 663, 664, 665, 669, 689, 695Tudjman, 530, 557, 558, 576, 581, 584, 585, 586, 588, 589, 590, 591, 592, 593, 594, 596, 597, 598, 599, 600, 601, 604, 605, 606, 607, 608, 609, 610, 611, 612, 613, 614, 615, 616, 617, 618, 619, 620, 622Tudjman, 623Tudjman, 623Tudjman, 623Tudjman, 624Tudjman, 625Tudjman, 625Tudjman, 626Tudjman, 627Tudjman, 630Tudjman, 630Tudjman, 630Tudjman, 631Tudjman, 631Tudjman, 632Tudjman, 632Tudjman, 633Tudjman, 633Tudjman, 633Tudjman, 635Tudjman, 636Tudjman, 637Tudjman, 637Tudjman, 637Tudjman, 638Tudjman, 639Tudjman, 640Tudjman, 642Tudjman, 642Tudjman, 642Tudjman, 645Tudjman, 645Tudjman, 647Tudjman, 651Tudjman, 651Tudjman, 651Tudjman, 651Tudjman, 652Tudjman, 653Tudjman, 653Tudjman, 653Tudjman, 655Tudjman, 656Tudjman, 656Tudjman, 656Tudjman, 657Tudjman, 658Tudjman, 659Tudjman, 659Tudjman, 660Tudjman, 660Tudjman, 660Tudjman, 661Tudjman, 661Tudjman, 661Tudjman, 661Tudjman, 662Tudjman, 662Tudjman, 662Tudjman, 662Tudjman, 662Tudjman, 662Tudjman, 663Tudjman, 663Tudjman, 664Tudjman, 664Tudjman, 664Tudjman, 664Tudjman, 664Tudjman, 664Tudjman, 665Tudjman, 665Tudjman, 665Tudjman, 665Tudjman, 665Tudjman, 666Tudjman, 666Tudjman, 666Tudjman, 667Tudjman, 667Tudjman, 668Tudjman, 668Tudjman, 668Tudjman, 668Tudjman, 670Tudjman, 670Tudjman, 670Tudjman, 670Tudjman, 671Tudjman, 671Tudjman, 671Tudjman, 671Tudjman, 672Tudjman, 672Tudjman, 673Tudjman, 673Tudjman, 673Tudjman, 674Tudjman, 674Tudjman, 674Tudjman, 675Tudjman, 675Tudjman, 675Tudjman, 675Tudjman, 676Tudjman, 677Tudjman, 678Tudjman, 678Tudjman, 678Tudjman, 678Tudjman, 678Tudjman, 678Tudjman, 678Tudjman, 679Tudjman, 679Tudjman, 679Tudjman, 680Tudjman, 680Tudjman, 680Tudjman, 680Tudjman, 680Tudjman, 680Tudjman, 680Tudjman, 684Tudjman, 685Tudjman, 685Tudjman, 685Tudjman, 688Tudjman, 689Tudjman, 691Tudjman, 691Tudjman, 691Tudjman, 692Tudjman, 692Tudjman, 693Tudjman, 694Tudjman, 695Tudjman, 697Tudjman, 697Tudjman, 698Tudjman, 698Tudjman, 704Tudjman, 705Tudjman, 706Tudjman, 706Tudjman, 710Tudjman, 710Tudjman, 711Tudjman, 712Tudjman, 714Tudjman, 716Tudjman, 716Tudjman, 716Tudjman, 717Tudjman, Dr. Franjo, 291, 460, 477, 482, 493, 529, 532, 557Tudjman, Franjo, 534Tudjman, Franjo, 609Tudjman, Franjo – dislike of makes Tudjman a scapegoat for Croat ‘revisionism’, 272Tudjman, President, 573, 587, 588Tudjman, President, 573Tudjman, President, 576Tudjman, President, 587Tudjman, President Franjo, 326Tudjman's 'revisionism', 276Tuksor, Ivan, 478Turner, Dr. Harold - Chief of Military Governing Body, 64Tvrtkovi?, Vinco (Vincent), 252Two contesting sides, Communist Partisans and Serbian Chetniks, inevitably come to blows, this would result in civil war during war, 4Two fundamentally different components, 276UUDBA, 518, 605, 606, 640, 641, 649, 650, 664, 665, 695, 706UDBA (successor to OZNA), 340Unbearable Senility of the ‘Croatian Opposition’, 611Underdeveloped Republics (Bosnia-Hercegovina, Montenegro and Macedonia, 405Unfounded accusations of terrorism, 456Uniqueness of this world of infernal violence, 383United Alliance of Anti-fascist Youth of Yugoslavia, 388United Nations, 384Uniting all the forces for liberation of Yugoslavia, 227UNPROFOR, 561, 568, 569, 570, 574, 676UNRRA, 400UNS (Usta?ka Nadzorna Sluzba), Ustasha counter-intelligence, 246UNS [The Office for National Security], 659Uprising of Serbs against new Croatian State in April 1941 in Bosnia-Hercegovina, 96US granted diplomatic recognition to their blue-eyed boy, Tito, 318Ustasha movement, 3Ustasha nest, 321Ustasha oath, 321Ustasha policy of national exclusivism found greatest opposition in Bosnia-Hercegovina, 89Ustasha reacts to Chetniks, 84Ustasha revolution in progress, 195Ustasha revolutionary movement abstained from unnecessary bloodshed, 31Ustasha Supervisory Service (UNS) counter intelligence service, 12Utopia inevitably leads to violence, 63Utopian Absolute, 409VValenti?, Prime Minister, 630Vance Plan, 565, 572Vance plan (1991), 563Vance, Cyrus, 572Vance, Cyrus - Plan, 564Vance-Owen Peace Plan, 618Vasiljkovi?, Dragan, 543Vatican, 293Vatican and Jasenovac, 294Vatican Archives, 294Velimirovi?, Jovan - Orthodox Archiepiscop, 562Velimirovi?, Nikola I - Serbian Episcope, 241Versailles, 539, 677Veselica, Dr. Marko, 477Veselinovi?, Ratko, 561Vidnjevi?, Ustasha State Prosecutor, 305Vidovi?, Mirko, 456Vilder, Vje?eslav, 390Vimpul?ek, Judge Dr. Zarko, 319Violence was biggest Yugoslav export, 420Vi?nji?, Goran, 449Vitez, 251Vjesnik, 305, 328, 433, 471, 480, 482, 483, 485, 486, 491, 492, 493, 494, 496Vlatko Pavleti?, 655Vojislav ?e?elj, 545, 566Vojnovi?, Milo?, 578Voki?-Lorkovi? coup, 303Volf, Dr. Miroslav, 603von Horstenau, Gleise - reported to Berlin, 66von Kasche - German Ambassador in Zagreb, 9von Kasche reported to Berlin, 65von Kasche, Siegfried, 265von Kohl, Christine, 464Vu?i?, Ilija, 478Vukovar, 548, 549, 550, 553, 554, 555, 566, 575, 576, 577, 578, 587, 588, 674Vuleti?, Dr. Ante, 248Vulliamy, Ed, 553WWar crimes of Tito's 'liberators', 176War for and against Yugoslav utopia within WWII interfered with German operations, 100War for Yugoslav Utopia –Price Paid in Croatian Blood, 158War-time ‘Government of Commissariat’ in Belgrade (Nedi? – 1941-1944), formed by Germans, inherited all its Civil Service from Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 10Was the Croatian Mass Movement in good taste and worth the price?, 410Washington Agreement, 565, 660Waspish OSCE (Office for Security and Co-operation in Europe), 603Waugh, Evelyn, 226Wesker, Arnold, 474Western Bosnia, 137Western liberals, 451West's attitude, 564White House, 565Whitehall's strange ‘sense of humour’, 225Wiesel, Elie - Professor, 591Wilf, Dr. Leo, 258Williams, Ed, 540Winston Churchill’s friendly correspondence with Mussolini in 1939, 61Winter, Gabrijel, 252Withdrawal of the Italians from Zones II and III, 95Witness Documents, 177Wittgensteinian way, 432Working classes in tenant, or feudal relationship with State, 400World Bank, 596, 645, 652World of the Western media, 438worldwide obsession with Yugoslavia, 451YYalta, 322Yalta Repatriation Agreements of 11th February 1945, 206Yugoslav ‘Constitution’, 423Yugoslav ‘New Class’, 606Yugoslav ‘unity’, 228Yugoslav Army in Homeland, 58Yugoslav Army was the wasps' nest, 238Yugoslav avant-garde, 435Yugoslav Communist Party, 4Yugoslav communists after WW2 expurgate themselves from bloodshed they inflicted on Croatian people, put their own crimes in their secret records (ad acta), 36Yugoslav communists blamed West for encouraging counter-revolutionary forces, 389Yugoslav communists fighting in discordant alliance with the Great Serbian nationalists against the breakaway Croatian State, 237Yugoslav conspiracy theory about 'inherent fascist mentality', 86Yugoslav Diplomatic Service, 421Yugoslav ?migré Government in London, 92Yugoslav Grey, 428Yugoslav Partisans and Chetniks fighting the Croatian state on matter of principle, with aim of recreating Yugoslavia, 136Yugoslav press, 420Yugoslav State busy clarifying its empty ideological guidelines, 435Yugoslav Utopia under Scrutiny of Big Powers, 217Yugoslavia created by Versailles powers, 323ZZ-4 plan, 572Zagreb Agreement 19th June 1942, 61Zagreb Agreement with the Italians, 138Zagreb became city of parallel fear, 175Zagreb Dustmen’s Union, 432Zagreb polemics of 1971, 429?ani?, Milovan, 244Zatezalo, Dr. Djuro, 495, 496Zavadlav, Zdenko, 345Zbirni camps, 342Ze?evi?, Zdravko, 565Zelenbaba, Du?an, 558?erjavi?, Yugoslav demographer, 210Zhdanov, Andrej, 385Zhdanov's assessment, 392Zidane, 630Zidne Novine, 331?idovec, Vladimir, 262Zimmerman, 566, 581, 582, 583, 584, 585, 586, 587Zimmerman, Warren, 535, 581Zimpermann, Dr. Ljudevit, 76?ivkovi?, Andrija, 240Zori?, Vuka?in, 492Zorza, Victor, 426?ujovi? - Montenegrin communist, 393?ujovi? his report of 1st August to Tito, 130?ujovi?, Sreten - Montenegrin, 394?unec, Dr. Ozren, 673References for PART 2: Chapters 4, 5 & 6 ................
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