Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Peakingana Show.
Speaker 1: Thomas is back and we're gonna start something new.
Speaker 2: Hey doing Thomas, I'm well, thank you thanks for hosting me.
Speaker 1: Of course we have gotten several requests for your take
Speaker 1: on the Balkans Wars, Bosnia, Yugoslavia, maybe even talk about
Speaker 1: Tito a little bit. But yeah, where do you want
Speaker 1: to Where do you want to start this one.
Speaker 2: Today? I anticipate this series naturally kind of like organically
Speaker 2: we'll go three episodes obviously as your show, figuratively and literally,
Speaker 2: we'll go as many as you wish on the topic.
Speaker 2: What I'd like to do today, I'm want to focus
Speaker 2: on what the Croatians called the Homeland War. That was
Speaker 2: the war that approximately was caused by you know, Croatis
Speaker 2: declaration to pay in Croatia and Macedonia essentially seceding from
Speaker 2: the Yugoslavian political structure in nineteen ninety one, and the
Speaker 2: Serbian response to that, and the relationship of that to
Speaker 2: the situation then underway in the Soviet Union, and what Berlin,
Speaker 2: where Helmet Cole was still consler at the time, what
Speaker 2: Berlin's response was, how the world in turn reacted to
Speaker 2: that and what the relationship of that constellation, effectors and
Speaker 2: those developments were on the situation in the Soviet Union,
Speaker 2: which was at that time very volatile. In the second episode,
Speaker 2: I think we should get into the history of the
Speaker 2: Independent State of Croatia. I've got a particular interest in
Speaker 2: Croatia for a few reasons, and they were especially for
Speaker 2: such a small country. They played an important and very
Speaker 2: outsized role in the Access Alliance, Okay, but also it's
Speaker 2: key to understanding what happened not just in the Homeland War,
Speaker 2: but in the Bosnian War and later in the adjacent
Speaker 2: conflicts like that, you know, in Kosovo, where Croatia wasn't
Speaker 2: a combatant party, but Croatia and what Croatia did or
Speaker 2: did not do was instrumental in how events developed. And Croatia,
Speaker 2: it's inarguable this isn't some Slam and Serbian people or
Speaker 2: anything of the sort. You know, Croatia is the most
Speaker 2: insinuated into the kind of Western conceptual paradigm. I mean,
Speaker 2: part of that is for very pragmatic strategic reasons. Part
Speaker 2: of that is for reasons of values and for lack
Speaker 2: of a better term, familiarity. But Croatia and particularly Tujiman,
Speaker 2: who was at the helm of Croatia as it achieved independence.
Speaker 2: He was a he was in some ways a kind
Speaker 2: of perfect foil to almost in like manny Keian terms,
Speaker 2: so Melosovich and he was a very unique individual, and
Speaker 2: I think he was one of the most significant figures
Speaker 2: of the later twentieth century. So I want to today,
Speaker 2: I want to I want to get into the the
Speaker 2: conditions that led to the the Homeland War with a
Speaker 2: focus on, you know, the Croatian internal situation. Next time,
Speaker 2: I think we should deal with the Second World War
Speaker 2: and the constellation of factors therein and the independent state
Speaker 2: of Croatia. And then in the final episode, I think
Speaker 2: we should deal with the Serbian situation, like their internal
Speaker 2: situation and more of like a deep capacity and what
Speaker 2: the relationship of that is to what I believe was
Speaker 2: you know, the kind of the kind of final like
Speaker 2: poisoning of relations between you know, the United States and
Speaker 2: the Russian Federation was when America assaulted Serbia nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: nine without provocation. So that's the way I think it
Speaker 2: should break down, if that's agreeable to both you and subscribers.
Speaker 2: But there's a lot here, so bear with me, and
Speaker 2: there's terms that I'll do my best to clarify as
Speaker 2: we go, But go ahead, it all sounds good to me. Okay, No, great,
Speaker 2: There's terms that I will define as we go, but
Speaker 2: aren't going to be fully fleshed out until we get
Speaker 2: into the deep dive context of you know, there the
Speaker 2: significance of these of these things. So bear that in
Speaker 2: mind too. I will I will come back to anything
Speaker 2: that seems ambiguous, and I'm aware that a lot of
Speaker 2: the seams ambiguous to the uninitiated. The key to understanding
Speaker 2: how things developed in the way Yugoslavia broke apart, particularly
Speaker 2: what guided decision making in the Croatian Control Group around
Speaker 2: tu Jaman, You've got to understand what was underway vis
Speaker 2: are the Bush forty one administration and why they were
Speaker 2: so zealously behind Gorbachev and Chevin Narze, who was a
Speaker 2: Grbachev's you know, top advisor. He was kind of the
Speaker 2: man behind Perastrika in conceptual and policy terms. There was
Speaker 2: this basic concord between you know, Bush and James Baker
Speaker 2: and uh people within you know Bush and Baker's orbit,
Speaker 2: like Brent Scowcroft, you know, contra the team b Coterie
Speaker 2: kind of best exemplified by people like were most purely
Speaker 2: exemplified by people like Cheney, you know, who wanted who
Speaker 2: wanted who wanted the Soviet Union dismantled and and and
Speaker 2: kind of you know laid prostrate and the most you know,
Speaker 2: and the and the most complete and punitive way possible.
Speaker 2: Bush and Bakers. Uh kind of absolute imperative was that
Speaker 2: they wanted to preserve the Soviet structure, not its internal constitution,
Speaker 2: but it's basic structure. It's like kind of you know,
Speaker 2: essentially administrated government, mental organizational modality until full disarmament had
Speaker 2: benefit accomplished. Okay, you know, total nuclear disarmament, a drawing
Speaker 2: down of Soviet conventional forces, you know, to something minuscule,
Speaker 2: you know, to to to levels of some kind of
Speaker 2: like internal you know, constabulary element. And only then would
Speaker 2: there be discussion about, you know, moving forward, like how
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union would be structured or whether it would
Speaker 2: continue to exist at all. You know, it ending up
Speaker 2: with you know, tanks Uh in a in red Square
Speaker 2: and Yeltson literally banning the Communist Party, declaring himself President
Speaker 2: of the New Russian Federation and then holding what I'm
Speaker 2: on to do you know, like an add doct plebiscite
Speaker 2: that was totally at odds with what the Bush administration
Speaker 2: wanted to develop, Okay, and why that became possible in
Speaker 2: an indirect but essential way was impacted by what happened
Speaker 2: in Yugoslavia. And for people wh think I'm overemphasizing this,
Speaker 2: there's a fascinating memo that circulated the Department of State.
Speaker 2: I mean, all the minutes of any like official meeting
Speaker 2: between the Secretary of State and his Soviet counterpart or
Speaker 2: the or the Soviet chief executive would obviously, you know,
Speaker 2: be widely circulated. May eleventh of eighty nine, Gorbachev met
Speaker 2: with Baker and Chevin Nards. It was present to the
Speaker 2: topic of discussion was, uh, was force levels in Europe
Speaker 2: with a particular focus on nuclear weapons, and Garbage Off
Speaker 2: initiated the conversation by putting it to Baker, I know,
Speaker 2: because we know, you know through our intelligence apparatus that
Speaker 2: you're planning to deploy you know, a missile platform in
Speaker 2: the nineteen nineties that's analogous to the then very feared
Speaker 2: you know, Soviet SS twenty three, and uh, you know
Speaker 2: this is a problem you know it, uh, Grocha is
Speaker 2: basically like I, you know, I'm not concerned with how
Speaker 2: this looks on the perspective of a reality, but obviously
Speaker 2: we need some kind of guarantee from you that you know,
Speaker 2: you're not gonna you're not gonna You're not gonna pursue
Speaker 2: these hyper advanced like next generation like strategic nuclear weapons platforms.
Speaker 2: We need to guarantee from you that that's not going
Speaker 2: to happen, you know, before we go any further here.
Speaker 2: Gorrichoff further said that he and Warsaw he and his
Speaker 2: warsaw Peck counterparts were prepared to conduct negotiations on a
Speaker 2: total draw down tactical nuclear forces, you know, just outright
Speaker 2: and uh, as well as the abolition of the nuclear
Speaker 2: capability of you know, quote du dual purpose platforms primarily
Speaker 2: cruise missiles, you know, basically put placing them beyond use,
Speaker 2: as far as being married the nuclear warheads. Okay, if
Speaker 2: all this seems very esoteric, but that's my whole point, okay,
Speaker 2: is that you know, this was this was the issue,
Speaker 2: the only issue really in the minds of Bush and Baker,
Speaker 2: you know. In Bush forty one, he was described by
Speaker 2: Conda Leeza Reyes is constantly cautious. I think that's that's
Speaker 2: the wrong way to characterize it. Calculating, yes, you know,
Speaker 2: incredibly thorough, Yes, but uh Bush was thinking systemically. And
Speaker 2: that's exactly like, that's exactly the the the model that
Speaker 2: Nixon had for bringing about, you know, the the end
Speaker 2: of UH Soviet hard power, you know, by negotiated means,
Speaker 2: you know. And I I invoked that because I don't
Speaker 2: I don't think anybody could say that Nixon was cautious. Okay,
Speaker 2: the UH or chaf Further, the remainder of the discussion
Speaker 2: is reflected in the minutes memorializing the memo. He basically
Speaker 2: click ticks off a list of concession as the Soviets
Speaker 2: have made. You know, they would draw on over five
Speaker 2: hundred uh tactical nuclear munitions from the European theater. If
Speaker 2: they could expect reciprocity from NATO, they they they'd be
Speaker 2: willing to withdraw all nuclear forces, tactical nuclear forces, more
Speaker 2: self packed territory between that day in nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 2: you know, and obviously tactical nuclear weapons to the Soviets
Speaker 2: were uh, this was this was this was within this
Speaker 2: was this was literally a local threat, you know. I
Speaker 2: mean that's why if there seems to be a strange
Speaker 2: imbalance and you know, kind of the the types of
Speaker 2: forces that are emphasized, I mean, that's that that should be.
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously people have basically understand a geography anybody
Speaker 2: who's bothering to listen to these talks that we have,
Speaker 2: but people might not be familiar with, you know, the
Speaker 2: strategic and tactical distinction is applied to weapons platforms like
Speaker 2: that's that's why these battlefield nuclear weapons are of such
Speaker 2: a concern to Moscow, Like then is now okay? Because
Speaker 2: deployed in the European theater that that's got they've got
Speaker 2: tremendous destructive power, and that that has implications for you know, uh,
Speaker 2: for first strike as well as myriad other things the
Speaker 2: second uh interestingly too. Gorbichoff says he's convinced that there's
Speaker 2: a special working group within the National Security Council as
Speaker 2: well as the intelligence community in Washington that's working to
Speaker 2: discredit Pair of Strike up and that Robert Gate is
Speaker 2: probably behind this effort and this needs to be openly
Speaker 2: discussed less you know, public opinion, you know, converge around
Speaker 2: this kind of narrative, and as as I've indicated before,
Speaker 2: like CIA at this point was really something of a joke,
Speaker 2: although they did still have some power to impact perception
Speaker 2: and particularly through public diplomacy efforts. And Gorbacheff I believe
Speaker 2: is absolutely right. Like CI, at that point, Aldridge Aims
Speaker 2: had sold out every human asset they had behind the
Speaker 2: Iron curtain, all of whom, of course, had been unceremoniously
Speaker 2: executed by KGB and gru So CIA was not just
Speaker 2: flying blind, but you know, them pretending that it's forever
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty. I mean that they that was their raison
Speaker 2: detra you know, so grow Withrow's basically going down the
Speaker 2: list of things that can potentially derail this sort of
Speaker 2: disarmam and Concord and UH Bakers you know, playing it
Speaker 2: close to the chest, but obviously warming up to these,
Speaker 2: to these, to these do these efforts by Moscow, and
Speaker 2: you know he's he guarantees UH an elimination of you know,
Speaker 2: any kind of tactically symmetry as regardless tactical forces, and
Speaker 2: being in Europe, you know, immediately be followed up by
Speaker 2: you know, a further draw down in total nuclear forces
Speaker 2: and UH the emphasis uh by Baker as well as
Speaker 2: you know what's emerging from the White House and visa
Speaker 2: via Bush's uh contentious dealings with Poland and some of
Speaker 2: the other Warsaw Pact satellites, the opposition elements in these states,
Speaker 2: you know, Uh, Bush is essentially insisting on patients and
Speaker 2: you know, people particularly like Valenca, who despised allow this
Speaker 2: process to work, and that negotiation has to come from
Speaker 2: the top down, meaning uh, you know, agreements between Moscow
Speaker 2: and and and Washington, and only then, you know, can
Speaker 2: we talk about the future of the satellite states and
Speaker 2: transition to you know, normalized government outside of you know,
Speaker 2: the the captives oviate orbit. So obviously we'll move on here.
Speaker 2: But this is obviously like this was obviously an extraordinarily
Speaker 2: delicate minuet. Even if there was general stability in the
Speaker 2: Balkan theater and other potential kind of flashpoint locales, you
Speaker 2: know it, Uh, it would require a real commitment probably
Speaker 2: over two administrations on you know, on on on the
Speaker 2: American side, who were you know, fully committed to the
Speaker 2: program and as and and and reciprocally in Moscow. It
Speaker 2: would have required I mean, garbage off ended up being
Speaker 2: very long lived. But it would have required Grbachoff retaining
Speaker 2: his mandate probably for the subsequent decade, and if not
Speaker 2: he himself, you know, uh, a protege who could be
Speaker 2: expected to essentially carry out exactly the policy program outlined
Speaker 2: by Shepard Nardsen and you know, kind of the Perastrika concepts.
Speaker 2: What was happening in Yugoslavia at this time. Yugoslavia was
Speaker 2: outside of the warsawf HAAG orbit you know, they they
Speaker 2: and they uh they were treated after the cruise, chief
Speaker 2: thought led to the re establishment of of of of
Speaker 2: cordial relations with Yugoslavia, and Tito himself and Moscow always
Speaker 2: treated Yugoslavia as part of the socialist community of Nations
Speaker 2: and there was complex interdependence in the form of UH
Speaker 2: common form and comic con But Ugoslavia stood, you know,
Speaker 2: as AH as a genuine neutral in the Cold War.
Speaker 1: Did do you do you consider did you consider them
Speaker 1: to be socialists?
Speaker 2: The Slabs? Yeah?
Speaker 1: In what way though?
Speaker 2: I mean it was a planned economy, you know, based
Speaker 2: upon you know, the essentially administered inputs and production schemes
Speaker 2: and everything else. I mean, like they they praacticed socialist
Speaker 2: economics to a t. They were thirsty for foreign currency
Speaker 2: in a way that really no other East Bloc country was,
Speaker 2: save East Germany, but East Germany was kind of in
Speaker 2: the role of Hong Kong is to you know, vis
Speaker 2: a vis the PRCS. That was unusual. So, I mean
Speaker 2: Yugoslavia was able to draw direct investment in a way
Speaker 2: that you know, say, like Poland and Czechoslovakia wasn't. But
Speaker 2: I mean they absolutely, you know, they absolutely were practicing
Speaker 2: state socialism and.
Speaker 1: They had they were like water water treatment plants and
Speaker 1: all sorts of things as such that were like guild
Speaker 1: owned that were like guild run.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they had, and they allowed they allowed, uh, they
Speaker 2: allowed certain like NGOs to exist like at least nominally,
Speaker 2: like outside the formal party structure, like which wouldn't have
Speaker 2: washed and you know, the Soviet Union itself, but that
Speaker 2: was not alike the kind of stuff that was emerging
Speaker 2: in Hungary after nineteen fifty six. I mean a lot
Speaker 2: of this stuff was uh, a lot of stuff was
Speaker 2: like cosmetic and also like it you could you could
Speaker 2: carry on autonomously within certain parameters in the Yugoslavian system,
Speaker 2: but if you took on a political if you took
Speaker 2: on a political commitment like you'd be crushed by the
Speaker 2: secret police, you know, just like you would anywhere else
Speaker 2: by in the wall. I mean, that's that's the that's
Speaker 2: that's the key takeaway. And uh, Tito was a real
Speaker 2: Communist in my opinion, you know, I mean he in
Speaker 2: order to the whole idea of a Yugoslavia is is
Speaker 2: uh is was was doomed from inception for all kinds
Speaker 2: of reasons. But the idea was the most turtle of
Speaker 2: you of Tito in terms of the geostrategic mind. An
Speaker 2: impulse is that he realized that the United States and
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union both had to be kept out or
Speaker 2: you know, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, would would would would
Speaker 2: they would? They would stand together or fall together amidst
Speaker 2: the the Cold War dynamic. And we'll get into the
Speaker 2: kind of basic suspicion of Serbs and Croats to UH,
Speaker 2: inter governmental organizations, including I might add the Catholic Church,
Speaker 2: despite the fact, I mean croats and work are like
Speaker 2: a Catholic vanguard, but they're not. They were always they
Speaker 2: were always suspicious of of you know, UH, any kind
Speaker 2: of vaticant effort to directly impact their politics and the
Speaker 2: internal situation they're in, which is interesting. But there's a
Speaker 2: strong heritage of that and the Balkans, and we'll get
Speaker 2: into the Bosniaks of people too. I'm not leaving them out.
Speaker 2: They're they're hugely important. Uh but that but for our
Speaker 2: purposes right now, they kind of don't feature center stage.
Speaker 2: But May thirteenth, nineteen ninety that was the infamous that's
Speaker 2: something the football game that I'm talking about soccer, not
Speaker 2: the pigskin game obviously. That's in the soccer match at
Speaker 2: the Zagreb at the Maximir Stadium between Zagreb Dynamo and
Speaker 2: Belgrade Red Star, which are like too like very they're
Speaker 2: they're kind of like Ranger and Celtic, Okay, like they're
Speaker 2: the Rangers and Celtic, like they're you know, like the
Speaker 2: old firm rivalry, like very nationalistic, very much a stand
Speaker 2: in for a you know, ethno sectarian nationalism. The game
Speaker 2: erupted into like this general like melee between like cross
Speaker 2: and Serbians as well as the police and at uh
Speaker 2: like the the level of violence, it was clear that
Speaker 2: something was afoot, that that this was just typical like
Speaker 2: football pitch, you know, dust up kind of stuff, and
Speaker 2: sure enough I put it an underway. All that preceding
Speaker 2: Spring was the new Croatian Parliament had been convening. They
Speaker 2: formally held its first session, held the first session on
Speaker 2: May thirtieth of nineteen ninety. But President to Jamon, and
Speaker 2: we'll get into who he was in a minute, he
Speaker 2: formally announced the manifesto for a new Croatian Constitution and
Speaker 2: an entire like multitude literally of political, economic and social changes,
Speaker 2: most of most concern to non Croats. The extent that
Speaker 2: this constitution outline to what extent minority rights would be guaranteed,
Speaker 2: I mean mainly for Serbs. The relationship between Croats and
Speaker 2: Bosniax is complicated. We'll get into that as we proceed
Speaker 2: with the series. But local Serb politicians just opposed this outright,
Speaker 2: you know, they said it's a it's a manifesto for
Speaker 2: ethnic cleansing with someone ironic if you consider the source.
Speaker 2: It's important understand Tujeman was not a bigot. I mean,
Speaker 2: he was a He was a He was a racial patriot,
Speaker 2: I believe, despite his background, and we'll get into that
Speaker 2: in a minute, I believe he was something of a
Speaker 2: national socialist, but he he was not a bigot. His
Speaker 2: view of a his view of democracy, his view of
Speaker 2: representative government was basically like the Schmidtian view. You know
Speaker 2: that democracy is the expressed will of the demos. It
Speaker 2: will always there. It represents domination by you know, one
Speaker 2: cohesive like ethnic, sectarian or racial group. You know, it's
Speaker 2: the exclusion of the expression of other cultures in a
Speaker 2: full and complete way. Okay, and in a place like
Speaker 2: the Balkans, that's an arguable if one is prone to
Speaker 2: kind of universalist conceits otherwise. For context, as of nineteen ninety,
Speaker 2: Cross represented seventy eight point one percent and Serbs self identified.
Speaker 2: I think Serbs represented twelve just word, twelve percent of
Speaker 2: the total population. But the Serbs held a disapportionate number
Speaker 2: of official posts closed somewhere between fifteen and twenty percent. And
Speaker 2: these these these posts were loaded in the police and military.
Speaker 2: And this is something that had been underway for a
Speaker 2: couple of decades, you know, Serbians becoming insinuated into the
Speaker 2: security element as well as uh adjacent institutions of the
Speaker 2: party apparatus. You know, it was the after after the
Speaker 2: death of the Communist Party in in Croatia and uh
Speaker 2: to uh a striking degree in Bosnia. Hear Segovina as well.
Speaker 2: You know, the uh, the like the Yugoslavian security apparatus
Speaker 2: was becoming a like like a Serbian institution, you know.
Speaker 2: And this, uh, this more than anything, kind of prompted
Speaker 2: public reception in Croatia among cross at their back was
Speaker 2: against the wall because it's not, uh, it's not the
Speaker 2: Croati at this time had its own army or something.
Speaker 2: The only army was the Yugoslav National Army like the
Speaker 2: j and A, And immediately after the Slovenians also held
Speaker 2: a parliamentary election they held there's in April in nineteen ninety,
Speaker 2: you know, and then the cross as we just mentioned
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety. In May nineteen ninety, the j and A,
Speaker 2: the Yugoslav National Army, they announced an end to the
Speaker 2: Tito era adoption of general People's Defense. That what general
Speaker 2: People's Defense in practice meant was that each discreet republic
Speaker 2: within Yugoslavia maintained a territorial defense force that basically, you know,
Speaker 2: at absence like a general mobilization, knowing to total war,
Speaker 2: you know, the local territorial defense would be responsible for
Speaker 2: you know, responding to emergency situations as well as acting
Speaker 2: in in you know, the kind of constabulary role for
Speaker 2: policing the internal situation, an event of a crisis. This
Speaker 2: was this was this was just abolished and henceforth it
Speaker 2: would be replaced by essentially directed system of defense you
Speaker 2: know UH from the J and A's UH General Staff,
Speaker 2: which again was what was was re pradical purposes, you know,
Speaker 2: like a Serbian element. The Slovenians acted rapidly to try
Speaker 2: and retain control over their over their territorial element. The
Speaker 2: Croatians played it very cool, which is fascinating, and people
Speaker 2: have a couple of ideas about that. The UH, the
Speaker 2: weapon stockpiles of the Territorial Defense Force element in Croad
Speaker 2: majority regions were seized by the us Lav National Army
Speaker 2: and it was UH, Serbia's representative in the Federal Presidency
Speaker 2: of Yugoslavia, which was then still let theoretically intact. He
Speaker 2: claimed that this action came basically at the demand of
Speaker 2: Serbia because again, you know, they were claiming that, you know,
Speaker 2: we represent all you know, Yugoslavians, but the Serbian minority
Speaker 2: is under direct you know, like mortal physical threat in
Speaker 2: newly independent Croatia, which according to Belgrade was a was
Speaker 2: was it was a fascist state. So Tujman realized he
Speaker 2: had to proceed carefully. A lot of people believe Tujman
Speaker 2: was in We'll get into his background a minute, but
Speaker 2: he was. He was an inn eellectual. He was a
Speaker 2: military officer, but he was he was kind of the
Speaker 2: constant East Block intellectual. People think he was basically playing
Speaker 2: like a master chess game. And he realized, uh that
Speaker 2: owing to you know, the good offices with with with
Speaker 2: Germany and particularly Cole, as well as America's need h
Speaker 2: you know, kind of control the situation without simply seating
Speaker 2: responsibility for any intervention to the Russians, which was unthinkable.
Speaker 2: That basically, like if he allowed the Serbs to continue
Speaker 2: to you know, basically kind of outrage world opinion by
Speaker 2: carrying out what was by all appearances kind of like
Speaker 2: nakedly like uh ethno sectarian program of oppression against all
Speaker 2: attempts at secession and self determination. That either there'd be
Speaker 2: direct intervention by some combination of the U N and
Speaker 2: the EU backed up by natal force of arms, or
Speaker 2: that the United States and Germany would allow you know,
Speaker 2: weapons to stream in and essentially give the Cross them
Speaker 2: they needed UH to win when push came to shove,
Speaker 2: and ultimately four years later that's exactly what happened, and UH,
Speaker 2: the Cross you know, launched this mass assault operations storm
Speaker 2: against the Serbian U slav National Army and like quite
Speaker 2: literally like liberating Croatia. And we'll get into that in
Speaker 2: later episodes. But I basically accept that view of two Jeman,
Speaker 2: which is why, as I suggested, has we commenced this discussion.
Speaker 2: He's you know, worthy of the praise that he receives.
Speaker 2: And and then more who was too Juman. He was
Speaker 2: born on May fourteenth, nineteen twenty two. He died in
Speaker 2: December of nineteen ninety nine. It's an arguable that he
Speaker 2: played he played the pivotal role in the in the
Speaker 2: creation of like the modern Croatian state, the contemporary state.
Speaker 2: It uh his vision of Croatia. It was. He didn't
Speaker 2: run from the it's it's it's passed as a fascist state,
Speaker 2: a national socialist state. He didn't even particularly deemphasize it.
Speaker 2: His background, he'd he'd fought with the Partisans against the Ustasia,
Speaker 2: which is interesting in art, motivated probably by the fact
Speaker 2: that his brother had been murdered by the Eustasha, but
Speaker 2: he could not be called an anti fascist, and in
Speaker 2: the thirty years preceding the Homeland War he was periodically
Speaker 2: imprisoned for nationalist activities. He wrote a History from the
Speaker 2: Croatian Perspective of World War Two, whereby he essentially said
Speaker 2: that the Croatians of the people had to work within
Speaker 2: the communist paradigm in order to achieve self determination, and
Speaker 2: that was his motivation for joining the Partisans, and in
Speaker 2: other men's cases, especially after the wall came down, that
Speaker 2: would seem laughable, and to Jamon's case, it's entirely credible,
Speaker 2: owing to you know, the way he lived his life
Speaker 2: and and frankly the kind of regime that he created
Speaker 2: when he came to the Helm he Uh. It's important
Speaker 2: note too that Tito was a crawat, and even then, uh,
Speaker 2: there was a strong uh, there was a Serbian plurality,
Speaker 2: if not across party offices, you know, within the vanguardist
Speaker 2: elements as well as you know, in the security apparatus
Speaker 2: that followed. So it's a crawat who a crowd who
Speaker 2: was a partisan during the war years and then later
Speaker 2: became an arch nationalist. The way to look at that
Speaker 2: is you can't look at that the way you would
Speaker 2: in some in some in some national narratives. It's not
Speaker 2: it's not a matter of what's changing, changing their ats
Speaker 2: according to politic, according to historical currents. There is an
Speaker 2: internal logic there. You know, Convolutism might seem outside of
Speaker 2: the Balkan situation. But revisionists who write about the Balkans,
Speaker 2: and there are some, they made the point that it's
Speaker 2: incredibly misguided and just kind of like a I mean,
Speaker 2: just kind of like a midw conceit to paint tu
Speaker 2: Jaman and Melosovich's, you know, as these kind of twin
Speaker 2: like Balkan dictators. They were totally different kinds of people.
Speaker 2: They were different generations. You know, they were born, you know,
Speaker 2: over twenty years apart. Melosovich was the consummate kind of
Speaker 2: company man communist. Interestingly, he was the man the State
Speaker 2: department favored for a kind of perastrika in Yugoslavia to
Speaker 2: be overseen. And you know, uh, when I was a
Speaker 2: wating to what the odds of this discussion with in
Speaker 2: my opinion, the Bulgan situation kind of dooming the Bush
Speaker 2: Baker Gorba show off. Shepherd nards a concord was when,
Speaker 2: as I think we discussed before the UH Tujmon met
Speaker 2: with Helmet Cole on October seventh, nineteen ninety one, and
Speaker 2: raw m the Cole met on October seventh with UH Separovich,
Speaker 2: with Tujiman's foreign minister, and he reiterated and knowing certain
Speaker 2: terms that you know, as long as Croatia like abides,
Speaker 2: you know, the ceasefire that was then periodically in place
Speaker 2: and you know, continues to hold, you know, regular elections
Speaker 2: that you know, beyond mere cosmetic affairs that UH you know,
Speaker 2: the end that the newly independent Croatia has Germany's full support.
Speaker 2: Within the notes of the meeting is fastening. Scepparovic says,
Speaker 2: you know, we were painted as we're painted as national
Speaker 2: socialist by the UH American world press. We we we
Speaker 2: fear this is gonna harm our cause, like Cole says, like,
Speaker 2: don't worry about that. You know, when when push comes
Speaker 2: to shove, basically l L, I'm gonna I'm gonna reform
Speaker 2: Washington that this issue is non negotiable, you know, so
Speaker 2: Cole and of course UH Belgrade went nuts and claimed
Speaker 2: that UH they they they claim that tou Jaman and
Speaker 2: Cole were conspiring to develop a fourth Reich, that you know,
Speaker 2: NATO was supporting UH, a Nazi client state of Germany
Speaker 2: in Croatia and UH the You know that the response
Speaker 2: from Zagreb was that, you know, we've abided every UN
Speaker 2: resolution that has been assigned to us in order to
Speaker 2: mitigate hostilities. We are under attack. We want nothing more
Speaker 2: than self determination. You know, we're at risk of ceasing
Speaker 2: to exist at a people, as a people based on
Speaker 2: our unwillingness to abide communist tyranny. You know, isn't that
Speaker 2: what the American way is all about? And what the
Speaker 2: NATO enterprise was was UH was tailed and maintained to guarantee.
Speaker 2: And Yelton's people in Moscow obviously were listening, as were
Speaker 2: well less his people in Poland, I mean, as was UH,
Speaker 2: as was you know, all these young Turks throughout the UH,
Speaker 2: throughout the East Bloc, and they were saying, you know,
Speaker 2: who the hell is Bush to tell the Russians that
Speaker 2: they've just got to tolerate, you know, they've got to
Speaker 2: They've got to tolerate a communist tyranny for the sake
Speaker 2: of stability. You know, this is uh, this is egregious.
Speaker 2: You're telling people they've got to willfully avail themselves as
Speaker 2: captives to communism or something even worse and refrain from
Speaker 2: pursuing self determination. You know, simply, uh, it's simply simply
Speaker 2: to abide you know, some kind of you know, some
Speaker 2: kind of vision that allows Gorbachev and Hivin Nards to
Speaker 2: make make heroes of themselves and possibly enriched themselves exponentially,
Speaker 2: you know, in pursuit of this kind of a policy
Speaker 2: of h of non action.
Speaker 1: And that's really can jump n jump in for a second. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: how much at this point, how much influence is coming
Speaker 1: from outside like NGO types in the in nineteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: the I can't remember the name of the guy who
Speaker 1: started the National Endowment for Democracy, but he he bragged
Speaker 1: them New York Times that you know, the National Endowment
Speaker 1: for Democracy is now going to start doing the work
Speaker 1: of the CIA, and we have our eyes on Yugoslavia.
Speaker 2: There was some of that, but it's also what uh
Speaker 2: what Separovic said that Cole was correct, and there were
Speaker 2: there were national Socialist guys who joined up to go
Speaker 2: fight and uh fight against the Serbs with the cross.
Speaker 2: I met some of them, and uh Ingo Hasselbach is
Speaker 2: not an admirable guy, but he did write a very
Speaker 2: interesting book. He talked about that you know that that
Speaker 2: that that that that was a shot in the yard
Speaker 2: of the national socialist cause, especially in East Germany. You know,
Speaker 2: like the independent State of Croatia was back. It's one
Speaker 2: thing to uh it's one it's fun thing to have.
Speaker 2: It's one thing to to to to repurpose Ukraine as
Speaker 2: like a human torpedo and install like a clown, like
Speaker 2: a literal clown like Zelenski at the helm and then
Speaker 2: like watch it destroy itself. You know, while you allow
Speaker 2: these why why well, while you allow them to like
Speaker 2: dress up and play Nazi, that's one thing. Is another
Speaker 2: thing to have, like an actual national socialist state that's
Speaker 2: flying the standard of uh that that that Pavlich's NDH
Speaker 2: did and having a you know, helmet cole like standing
Speaker 2: literally arm in arm with like the president of the
Speaker 2: newly independent Croatia as a totally are in ball game
Speaker 2: and selling that. Selling that in Washington, you know, as
Speaker 2: part of a neo contage program was not an easy sell.
Speaker 2: What did going to carry the day m p r I,
Speaker 2: which was a precursor to Blackwater and a lot more
Speaker 2: effective in my opinion, there were much more other tradition
Speaker 2: of outfits like executive outcomes that people are familiar with
Speaker 2: that m p r I was Military Products and Resources Incorporated.
Speaker 2: They were they were a PMC outfit that was very
Speaker 2: much responsible for getting the Cross and fighting shape in
Speaker 2: terms of material and training the Cross. There were very
Speaker 2: martial people and UH that's a facilitated operations storm. But
Speaker 2: it's a totally different world. And like the UH, the
Speaker 2: Croats were like an underdog people. It's like, yeah, they
Speaker 2: had Germany behind them, Like yeah, I'm like American media
Speaker 2: basically cast them as like the good guys. But they
Speaker 2: also if you go to UH, you know like ed Vashim,
Speaker 2: like they got au, they got a whole, they got
Speaker 2: a whole exhibit like permon an exhibit on like you know,
Speaker 2: the crimes of the Ustasha. You know, they're not that's
Speaker 2: wonder if that's so many neo cons that clicked up
Speaker 2: with like Serge Trifkovic, whoite met and he doesn't like
Speaker 2: me very much. But that's why that's why during like
Speaker 2: the height of UH the height of like war on
Speaker 2: terror bullshit. Yeah, these like crazy like Laura Lumer type
Speaker 2: Zionists saying like see, like we we stay with the
Speaker 2: Syrups because they're victims the Holocaust too, and like they're
Speaker 2: they're they're also fighting Islam like that that's their big thing,
Speaker 2: you know, So like Krawats are not people who they
Speaker 2: kind of the kind of in Gio macro verse likes
Speaker 2: to help. Okay, that's the short answer. We can get
Speaker 2: more into that in a subsequent episode. It'll become particularly
Speaker 2: relevant as we get into Operations Storm and kind of
Speaker 2: like the how that developed, and there's the planning and
Speaker 2: execution as well as you know, kind of the order
Speaker 2: of battle for the Rubber met the road. But you know,
Speaker 2: the uh, what was obviously the forefront of embody's mind
Speaker 2: was what would Croatia's treatment of minorities be? You know,
Speaker 2: uh two junt Finesse did very well. Separovich openly stated that,
Speaker 2: uh there that the Zagreb government and the Futmont government
Speaker 2: they have actually no problem with you know, an opening
Speaker 2: hearing at the Hague conference that was then looming for
Speaker 2: the winter time, or participating representatives of you know, all
Speaker 2: all of of you know, the three ethnic groups, you know,
Speaker 2: Cross servant Bosniak, he could you know, get some declaration
Speaker 2: or rights from this zagarea government that would be guaranteed
Speaker 2: by you know, like you had observers or whatever like
Speaker 2: upon sensation of hostilities. You know, Uh, the true problem,
Speaker 2: the truth throw on the side of the server became
Speaker 2: the Albanians and Kosovo. But that's we're not there yet.
Speaker 2: But the point is, like at least more than superficially,
Speaker 2: the Cross said, like, look, we we would be willing
Speaker 2: to accept some international controls in terms of settlement of
Speaker 2: the Serbian minority, and we will definitely allow observers on
Speaker 2: the ground. We've got an to hide here. But again,
Speaker 2: you know, Tujman was unwilling to compromise in his statement
Speaker 2: that self determination involves the dominance of you know, homogeneous
Speaker 2: culture and its ability to get guarantee that culture's posterity
Speaker 2: and the practice of that culture by the people constitute it.
Speaker 2: And this is absolute that the self determination is, you know,
Speaker 2: you will not force us into some multi ethnic state
Speaker 2: under Serbian dominion. You know, we will not become a
Speaker 2: minority in our own country again, and this is not negotiable.
Speaker 2: And that was very baldy. But again it uh, you know,
Speaker 2: the this was exactly the right tactic to take. And
Speaker 2: again some would say tu Jaman gambled by holding back
Speaker 2: the way that he did and kind of letting the
Speaker 2: war be fought in Bosnia, while like the Cross, you know,
Speaker 2: we're able to kind of build political cache by appearing
Speaker 2: to you know, be the party that was most compliant,
Speaker 2: you know, with you know, law and order as as
Speaker 2: as a devised by NATO and the Hague. Like cynical
Speaker 2: as that might have been, it was a master stroke
Speaker 2: and tu Jaman could not have known that Operations Storm
Speaker 2: would develop way that it did. The subtext of the
Speaker 2: cole Separovic meeting is is Coal is telling him You're
Speaker 2: going to have the weapons you need to to win
Speaker 2: the homeland war when the time comes. Okay. That's if
Speaker 2: you know what to look for in analyzing these kinds
Speaker 2: of this kind of language and placing it in context
Speaker 2: of uh, you know, the parties and what brings them
Speaker 2: to the table. I think that can't be disputed. So
Speaker 2: that's it's basically what we think of as you know,
Speaker 2: the Balkan Wars like in our lifetime. That's what kicked
Speaker 2: off the conflict cycle and again autumn of ninety one,
Speaker 2: like the Cross, the first UH like real kind of
Speaker 2: conventional engagement was the siege of the Jillivar Barracks, whereby
Speaker 2: the jy and A was UH aiming to continue their
Speaker 2: campaign to disarmament against the Cross in Croatia proper what
Speaker 2: was to become Croatia proper, and Toujman eventually called off
Speaker 2: after after approximately fourteen days, he called off the siege
Speaker 2: and allowed the j and A to seize what they
Speaker 2: had come to take. Stood down or remained of a
Speaker 2: territorial forces adopted a purely kind of defensive posture, and UH. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: UH took the waging the active conflict by proxy in Bosnia,
Speaker 2: which again was a UH was a political and strategic
Speaker 2: master stroke. Did that prolong the suffering of people? I mean,
Speaker 2: what happened in Bosnia is horrible, like beyond belief, But
Speaker 2: I mean Toujman did what he had to do to
Speaker 2: win the war, okay, and UH if with within the
Speaker 2: bound of rationality of that, like Belgrade had to be defeated.
Speaker 2: You know, I know that sounds like callous to but
Speaker 2: I mean the fact is it's you know, yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean subjecting, subjecting people in the Bosnian battle space, including
Speaker 2: Croats obviously, you know, to those guys of horrors for
Speaker 2: the greater good. I mean that that's those those are
Speaker 2: the kinds of decisions that that that real statesmen, you know,
Speaker 2: like warranty statesmen have to make, and it was the
Speaker 2: right call. I'm not trying to upset people. I'm not
Speaker 2: like at all. I'm speaking in in terms of you know,
Speaker 2: strategic matters, not moral ones, and uh, I'm not Uh,
Speaker 2: I've got a lot of respect for the Serbian people.
Speaker 2: I'm certainly not down on them or bashing them or anything,
Speaker 2: and we will give them like their fear hearing too,
Speaker 2: like in the concluding episode. But I think, uh, I'm
Speaker 2: frankly getting kind of tired. I don't know, you any
Speaker 2: hour that was kind of dense, So I don't want
Speaker 2: to get into the second. What I'm gonna get into
Speaker 2: next is kind of is like equally dense, and we'll
Speaker 2: be here in anunder two hours that I get into
Speaker 2: it now. So I want to. I want to say
Speaker 2: it because it basically ties together too Jmud regime as
Speaker 2: a legacy government of poplished and I want to drop.
Speaker 2: I want to drop the context of what the public
Speaker 2: regime was as it existed from five in the second episode.
Speaker 2: I don't want to get into it now and then
Speaker 2: just like have to stop in ten minutes.
Speaker 1: Is that there, Yep, no problem, Junior plugs.
Speaker 2: Yes, sir. I'm very excited to say I've got a
Speaker 2: bunch of video that's actually ready to go, and everybody's
Speaker 2: been like very patient with that, and this has been
Speaker 2: a learning process for me, so like I I forgive
Speaker 2: me for that. Have been like a hype for like
Speaker 2: months and months, but I think I think people really
Speaker 2: enjoy what I got and I'm shooting even more tomorrow.
Speaker 2: So sometime this week I plan to have something to upload,
Speaker 2: so be looking for that. You can always find me
Speaker 2: on substack at real Thomas seven seven seven at substick
Speaker 2: dot com. I've been dropping as much fresh content there
Speaker 2: as I can, including our dear friend Jay Burden has
Speaker 2: been transcribing our just our dialogues here, which is great.
Speaker 2: He's a real prince, and I've been uploading those. I've
Speaker 2: been uploading new pod content audio. So that's there. You
Speaker 2: can find on my website. It's Thomas seven seven seven
Speaker 2: dot com number seven h M S seven seven seven
Speaker 2: dot com. You can find me on x at capitol
Speaker 2: R E A L underscore number seven h O A
Speaker 2: S seven seven seven. I'm also on Instagram. I can
Speaker 2: never remember. Just search Thomas seven seven seven on Instagram
Speaker 2: and you'll find me just like at number seven h
Speaker 2: O A S seven seven seven. And yeah, let's let's
Speaker 2: reconvene later this week, man, and it will continue on
Speaker 2: the Balkan Wars. We're gonna do it, all right, thank you, Yeah,
Speaker 2: thank you. Man.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pecanana Show. Thomas,
Speaker 1: how are you doing.
Speaker 2: I'm doing very well. Thanks.
Speaker 1: All right, that's part two of the Balkans what we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about today today.
Speaker 2: I wanted to provide a bit of context to understand
Speaker 2: the conflict cycle of the Balkan Wars from nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: one to ninety five and then later from nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: nine into two thousand. Approximately, one has to understand the
Speaker 2: situation of the first attempt at creating a Yugoslavian state,
Speaker 2: which was a fool's errand from inception. But this didn't
Speaker 2: originate with the Partisans or with you know, the the
Speaker 2: It didn't originate in the minds of the same kinds
Speaker 2: of people who you know, conspired with the cynics like
Speaker 2: Venice and Czechoslovakia. You know, it was it, there was,
Speaker 2: there was deep precedent for it, not into it had
Speaker 2: no there was no organic support for it among the
Speaker 2: constituent populations, but among various coteries and categories of elites
Speaker 2: like this is an ongoing effort. So that's number one.
Speaker 2: Number two, there's many, many misconceptions about the Independent State
Speaker 2: of Croatia as it existed from Many forty one to
Speaker 2: forty five. For a small country, it had a tremendously
Speaker 2: outsized impact. It was incredibly committed to the acts As cause,
Speaker 2: and a lot of people claim otherwise by conflating support
Speaker 2: for the Usta Show regime with support for the x
Speaker 2: IS cause and Adol Hitler, and that's misguided. But also
Speaker 2: people mischaracterize the relationship of Proosa as a people to
Speaker 2: the Usta Shaw and the Eustasha movement was a Bosnian
Speaker 2: crad movement at base, and discussing the view of the
Speaker 2: Ustasha in Croatia proper, it's almost like it's an impertinentalogy.
Speaker 2: But it's almost like it's almost like polling people like
Speaker 2: in England or like UH London about how they feel
Speaker 2: about like loyalism in Northern Ireland. You know, like you're
Speaker 2: you're remote from the conflict zone. And yes, I mean
Speaker 2: cross were really proud people, they're really like aware of
Speaker 2: this situation contra the civilization of other I'm speaking within
Speaker 2: the terms of the conflict in amics present and not
Speaker 2: making some value judgment or suggesting anything in absolute terms
Speaker 2: about the populations under discussion. But in the Bosnia is
Speaker 2: literally like a powder keg of of ethno sectarian conflict dynamics.
Speaker 2: So one's got understand the emergence of the Ustasha as
Speaker 2: well as the emergence of of the the Chetnik movement
Speaker 2: as as a as a as A as a Bosnian
Speaker 2: phenomenon very much. You know, on the Chetnik side, just
Speaker 2: complexities and ambitions that you know kind of transcended and
Speaker 2: superseded that. But if you're talking about kind of the
Speaker 2: core based of organic radical support for these UH, for
Speaker 2: these for these ethnic UH political programs and in ideological crusades,
Speaker 2: you know, the the dynamics of Bosnia Herzegovina are essential
Speaker 2: understanding it. So today we're gonna get into that stuff,
Speaker 2: and then then that and then then the next episode.
Speaker 2: I think, uh, you know, we'll get into the we'll
Speaker 2: get into the Homeland war itself and kind of how
Speaker 2: it resolved and with the implications where they're in. There's
Speaker 2: a lot here. If we start going too long, we
Speaker 2: might drag this out into another episode. But we've not
Speaker 2: been informed yet that we're boring people when we go
Speaker 2: longer than expected, at least, I mean, I haven't gotten
Speaker 2: any feedback in the regard, and I assume if that
Speaker 2: was underway, you you wouldn't continue to you know, be
Speaker 2: so kind as to host me.
Speaker 1: So if I think if we go beyond three episodes,
Speaker 1: no one's gonna complain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was the Yeah. Yeah, And I mean I
Speaker 2: think we're I think we understand each other enough, you know. Uh,
Speaker 2: we we've got we've got kind of like a rhythm
Speaker 2: going and the way we produce content that. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: think we've got a common vision in mind. The uh,
Speaker 2: the Balkans is a peculiar significance. There's a little kind
Speaker 2: of like cliche discussion about it, or cliche discussion. The
Speaker 2: Balkans doesn't outside significance, particularly particularly into strategic terms, just
Speaker 2: owing to like owing to situatedness, like literal geography, and
Speaker 2: in the case of Germany, a hostile Balkans or even
Speaker 2: in neutral Balkans, whereby the Germans for denied the ability
Speaker 2: to deploy, specifically to reinforce Hungary and to you know, uh,
Speaker 2: create any kind of defense and depth or alternatively, you know,
Speaker 2: traverse the frontiers of Hungary, Romania and creation Balghanichlovina proper
Speaker 2: if they were if they were denied the ability to
Speaker 2: do that, that would essentially like cut Europe in half
Speaker 2: in operational terms. And obviously, as it became clear that
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union was Germany's primary adversary and really the
Speaker 2: only the only path to victory in World War Two
Speaker 2: was was the defeat of the Soviet Union. Okay, I
Speaker 2: mean this was this was emergent long before Barbarossa kicked off. Okay.
Speaker 2: So that's the key to understanding the situation the Balkans,
Speaker 2: and that endures to this day. Okay, I mean, that's
Speaker 2: that doesn't change. Secondly, the kind of unique the unique
Speaker 2: affinity that great powers have for the constituent populations there.
Speaker 2: It creates, it creates dynamics that have a unique with escalation,
Speaker 2: you know, like as we talked about it a little
Speaker 2: bit more in today, the Craoats and the Germans, especially
Speaker 2: uh Austrians and Bavarians, but also I mean even the
Speaker 2: you know, even Slavians and and and the and the
Speaker 2: Prussian Officer UH Corps such that it still existed, you know,
Speaker 2: and in the nineteen thirties and forties, there's a basic
Speaker 2: affinity between Germany and Croatia, you know, and that was
Speaker 2: essential understanding what Helmet col did in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2: So I mean that endoors to the state too, and
Speaker 2: the Russians as a people, well, they've got a they've
Speaker 2: got a unique affinity for the Serbs. Okay, And I'm
Speaker 2: oversimplifying a bit for this sake of conceptual clarity. But also,
Speaker 2: you know, we've talked a little bit about the kind
Speaker 2: of Islamic awakening or revival of the late twentieth century
Speaker 2: and it's and its significance as an essential one of
Speaker 2: many essential causes and and kind of bringing down the
Speaker 2: U the Warsaw pack structure and kind of like the
Speaker 2: Stalnist model of regime model Bosnia was very much gram zero.
Speaker 2: Bosniaks became very radicalized and what became al Qaeda was
Speaker 2: very active there and kind of bringing Bosniac people like
Speaker 2: back into the Islamic fold. Okay, and Bosniaks have something
Speaker 2: of a complicated relationship to Islam, but traditionally, you know,
Speaker 2: they were very much adjacent and integrated into into into
Speaker 2: the Ottoman structure. Okay, So these are not this is
Speaker 2: not just something like middling ethnic conflict whereby the subject
Speaker 2: populations you know, aren't viewed as are aren't aren't viewed
Speaker 2: as holding any inherent significance historical or otherwise, save for
Speaker 2: you know, the pragmatic business of attempting to you know,
Speaker 2: resolve and enduring conflicts in such a way that you know,
Speaker 2: great powers can at least work with whoever emerges triumphant.
Speaker 2: You know, it's very very deep affinities here of you
Speaker 2: basically pre rational nature, a lot of which date to
Speaker 2: the Thirty Years War, but even that precede, you know,
Speaker 2: that's important to them, that's important to keep in mind.
Speaker 2: And then jump around a bit here. But the Bulkan
Speaker 2: theater of World War two was incredibly brutal. It was
Speaker 2: almost like that it was almost like a verymont experience
Speaker 2: like Vietnam type experience, you know, the uh the Chetniks
Speaker 2: led by uh Asa Mahalovich kind of cloak really called
Speaker 2: the Hell of Its Chetnicks, because there's various Chetnik factions
Speaker 2: party of the conflict and in various kind of like
Speaker 2: offshoots with the main sort of chet Nick movement. First
Speaker 2: and foremost, they were fighting for the restoration the monarchy.
Speaker 2: The monarchy as we got into, like the like the
Speaker 2: Yugoslav monarchy as we got into in our World War
Speaker 2: One series, had become for all practical purposes like a
Speaker 2: like you know, like a monarchy that was what was
Speaker 2: was was very much captivated by Serbian interests. Okay, the
Speaker 2: chet Nicks. The Chetnicks were found in sulant situations somewhat
Speaker 2: somewhat like Shankai checks forces did in their own theater.
Speaker 2: The primary ops of the Ustasha and the Vermoncht at
Speaker 2: critical moments or the Chetnicks like not the Partisans. The
Speaker 2: Partisans would often avoid engaging the Verhrmacht when possible, you know,
Speaker 2: unless it was critical for them to contest an objective.
Speaker 2: And this led to very high Chetnik body counts, and
Speaker 2: you know, it allowed Tito to spare is arguably is
Speaker 2: kind of like a best cadres. Okay. There was also
Speaker 2: complexities where you know, there are some Chetniks who were
Speaker 2: like somewhat adjacent almost allied with the Italians, and the
Speaker 2: Italians are kind of trying to play everybody off against
Speaker 2: each other. There was some Chetniks who ultimately defected in
Speaker 2: real terms, you know, to the ax Aside, and one
Speaker 2: of whom uh actually received the Knight's Cross. So, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's incredibly it was a mess, you know, But the
Speaker 2: degree to which two Hitler was forced to kind of
Speaker 2: abide all all these competing interests and all these conspiratorial
Speaker 2: designs of other essential allies, you know, whether you're talking
Speaker 2: about the Romania's, the Hungarians or like all Ducha himself.
Speaker 2: That's key understanding why Ante Pavolich became the the you know,
Speaker 2: the the chief executive of of the Independent State of Croatia.
Speaker 2: Because Pavlich was a very very unusual guy, as we'll
Speaker 2: see in a minute, and as I've emphasized before, because
Speaker 2: it's not a middling point, and it also it's important
Speaker 2: to emphasize it's rebuttal to a lot of the fallacious
Speaker 2: assertions in court history. The third Reich wasn't trying to
Speaker 2: expe weren't fascism. In fact, they were doing the opposite.
Speaker 2: They didn't want these stabilizing regimes to pop up that
Speaker 2: had a shaky mandate, you know that we're uh, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of blowing up the internal constitution of traditional German allies.
Speaker 2: Like they didn't want that at all. Okay, A rare
Speaker 2: incidence of a like a radical cadre based revolutionary fascist
Speaker 2: do Waight Elements being wholly supported by Berlin and becoming
Speaker 2: the official government of an essential ally like independent state
Speaker 2: of Croatia was really the only instance of that. I
Speaker 2: know some people watching this are going to say, like, well,
Speaker 2: what about the arrow cross in Hungary? Okay? That was
Speaker 2: the war was I mean, this was the final months
Speaker 2: of the war like that. That was you know though
Speaker 2: those were desperate conditions were by you know, moment to
Speaker 2: moment what was ah, what what was what was going
Speaker 2: to allow the you know, what was going to allow
Speaker 2: Hungary to survive? Like as a state? Like was what
Speaker 2: was you know, circumstances were changing, if not weak to
Speaker 2: you know, if not day to day and then week
Speaker 2: to week. So I don't think that's a fair comparison.
Speaker 2: But a point I'm making people again and again too,
Speaker 2: is you know, there was there was a peculiar almost
Speaker 2: kind of like internal conflict in the in the right
Speaker 2: security apparatus we're about like in Romania. Okay, you like
Speaker 2: the Iron Guard. Hitler did not back the Iron Guard.
Speaker 2: He backed anton Escu, who I think in a lot
Speaker 2: of ways was was was Hitler's best ally like he
Speaker 2: was closer obviously to Duce like uh like the fear
Speaker 2: what was I mean? But anton Escu made a huge
Speaker 2: commitment to Barbarossa and he was he was uh, he
Speaker 2: was a highly competent general officer. But that's that's the
Speaker 2: that's the peribial horse Hitler backed, I mean all the
Speaker 2: s S and the s D like they backed the
Speaker 2: Iron Guard. I mean owing to their owing to their
Speaker 2: own kind of radical inclinations and and and desire to
Speaker 2: sort of develop a kind of foreign policy and to
Speaker 2: itself like go ahead.
Speaker 1: Didn't Evola say that he thought the Iron Guard was
Speaker 1: one of the best chances to defeat communism?
Speaker 2: Yes, he did. The place eval was coming from. He
Speaker 2: looked at the Iron Guard basically as like an orthodox
Speaker 2: mosen and like that's not misplaced. But he if all
Speaker 2: this whole thing was that he looked at fascism and
Speaker 2: national socialism. It's just like another kind of iteration of
Speaker 2: of degenerated like modern materialism. If you like, the iron
Speaker 2: Guard is like this return to you know, the kind
Speaker 2: of if you would buy Doomazel's trifunctional hypothesis, if you
Speaker 2: the iron guards are returned like a combination of of
Speaker 2: of of the of functions, you know, the warrior function
Speaker 2: and the priestly function, which is uniquely aryan sociological paradigm,
Speaker 2: and that in Evel's view, you know, represented you know,
Speaker 2: owing to the kind of the peculiar conditions of Romania
Speaker 2: and kind of you know, a culture that it's still
Speaker 2: managed to sustain this kind of like linear consciousness of
Speaker 2: like ancient ways. You know it was it was it
Speaker 2: was like capital t tradition sort of like reaching into
Speaker 2: the modern era and like captivating, you know, captivating a
Speaker 2: national population in a way that you know, it was
Speaker 2: both anachronistic as as well as you know, revolutionary and
Speaker 2: in all the most unique ways in an Evol's opinion,
Speaker 2: like that's that's the only way that that's the only
Speaker 2: way that communists could be eradicated, like the entire like
Speaker 2: modality of communists thought like if you'd like preview, pretty
Speaker 2: much every like oppositional tendency is essentially derived from the
Speaker 2: same the same lapse like materialists like conceptual biases. So yeah,
Speaker 2: but it's like why the s S and the s
Speaker 2: D likes them. That's a little more complicated, not philosophically,
Speaker 2: I mean, when it's like it's it's murky, but it's
Speaker 2: But the point is, uh, the Independent State of Croatia
Speaker 2: stands out for a lot of reasons. But that's not
Speaker 2: to say that it had some kind of like weak
Speaker 2: mandate like people corny storians always claim it like, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, the Ustasha had no popular support, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean, I can't really be true when I mean,
Speaker 2: first of all, is the fact of you know, Bosnia
Speaker 2: being the true kind of the true kind of source
Speaker 2: of of of those kinds of conceptual imperatives ideologically not
Speaker 2: Croatia proper, but also the uh there was Croatia committed
Speaker 2: UH at least one division sized element, the three sixty
Speaker 2: ninth Reinforced Infantry of the Wehrmacht was one hundred percent Croatian.
Speaker 2: The three ninety second, which is also called the Blue Division,
Speaker 2: not to be confused with the Spanish Blue Division. The
Speaker 2: three ninety second was regiment sized, but you know you're
Speaker 2: talking about you're talking about thousands of men, all volunteers,
Speaker 2: who were also honored, as you know, being assimilated into
Speaker 2: the the The chap punk like lead element of Army
Speaker 2: Group South was Sault Stalingrid and all there was there's
Speaker 2: a Croatian Air Force legion that fought exclusively on the
Speaker 2: Eastern Front, and they scored like over two hundred kills
Speaker 2: or like victories. You know, I mean this was I mean,
Speaker 2: I mean the Croats. The Croats were one hundred percent
Speaker 2: on board with the Axis Crusade. You know the fact
Speaker 2: that people didn't like love the Ustasha or something that's
Speaker 2: not that's not you can't really derive anything from that.
Speaker 2: And as we'll get into their reasons for their objections,
Speaker 2: oh to publish his Machiavelian tendencies more than it did that.
Speaker 2: Oh they're too radical and violent, you know, they're this
Speaker 2: myth too that like oh the East sure were just
Speaker 2: too savage, so that even even the horrible evil SS
Speaker 2: said tried to stand them down. That's not That wasn't
Speaker 2: their objection. Their objection was that, you know, when publish,
Speaker 2: was essentially there to kind of like balance these furies
Speaker 2: you know of Italy, Romania, Hungary as well as as
Speaker 2: as well as as well as rooting out you know,
Speaker 2: the partisan threat in Bosnia Hertzklovina. You know. Meanwhile, while
Speaker 2: they were doing that, they're also ethnically cleansing the Ndah
Speaker 2: of Serbs. Like their their notion was deport a third,
Speaker 2: like slaughter a third and like forcibly convert a third
Speaker 2: to Catholicism. And they published absolutely no problem with maslums.
Speaker 2: In fact, like he identified with them strongly. And we'll
Speaker 2: get into that in the minute when we get into
Speaker 2: some of his bi biographic data. But that that was
Speaker 2: the The objection was like look like this this you
Speaker 2: know it was it was it was a question of
Speaker 2: like misplaced priorities. It wasn't like that, you know. The
Speaker 2: view was that like the regime and Zagreb was being
Speaker 2: too mean or something. But moving on it, uh the
Speaker 2: uh help me scroll down here and see what I've
Speaker 2: got on my outline. There's a uh such that it existed,
Speaker 2: I mean such that there was it didn't matter. The
Speaker 2: Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Hitler realized, you know, which still existed
Speaker 2: until nineteen four one. Hiller realized that he had what
Speaker 2: all costs the court them into the Tripartite pect, which
Speaker 2: eventually he did and famously famously UH the Yugoslav regient
Speaker 2: Prince Paul on June third, ninety thirty nine, the the
Speaker 2: Prince Yugoslavia and his him, his wife was wasn't was
Speaker 2: was an english woman, you know, like born and bred.
Speaker 2: They were invited to Berlin. There was this whole gala celebration.
Speaker 2: There's a banquet through in their honor. There was like
Speaker 2: a full military parade, you know. And Hitler's notion was twofold,
Speaker 2: like first of all the Yugoslav UH monarchy and it's
Speaker 2: it's its cabinet was was served dominated. Okay, And we
Speaker 2: talked about some of these dynamics again like in our
Speaker 2: World War One series. They were absolutely they were they
Speaker 2: were they were pursuing a course of declared neutrality, which
Speaker 2: in reality was a was a politic area denial to
Speaker 2: forbid that Bermach from any kind of operational ingress or
Speaker 2: egress or Yugoslav territory. All right, this had to be
Speaker 2: resolved in some way, not just because it's becoming clear
Speaker 2: and clearer that again, you know, Germany's that the primary
Speaker 2: threat to Germany was was was the Soviet Union, but
Speaker 2: also you know, the only the only way Germany could
Speaker 2: the only Germany could could could literally fuel its war
Speaker 2: machine as well as deploy in the as it needed to,
Speaker 2: was if there was you know, access to Romania, which
Speaker 2: and uh you know who these oil fields were were
Speaker 2: literally fueling the German economy as well as it's as
Speaker 2: well as it's a nascent war machine. But also again too,
Speaker 2: there was Jewish strategic imperatives that you know, it's it's
Speaker 2: simply as as ah as the Balkans couldn't seply just
Speaker 2: be like written off an area of operations for all
Speaker 2: kinds of reasons, and especially as it became clear, you know,
Speaker 2: even before the advent of hostilities in ninety thirty nine,
Speaker 2: it was clear that you know, if the British intended
Speaker 2: to like see through on what they were you know,
Speaker 2: allegending was the these guarantees on the continent that you know,
Speaker 2: the really the only really really in operational terms, like
Speaker 2: the only the only kind of assault upon Europe that
Speaker 2: could be staged conceptually or conceivably at that time would
Speaker 2: would have been you know, through the through the Balkan theater,
Speaker 2: you know, be it be it Greece, be it you know, Yugoslavia,
Speaker 2: or or otherwise. But that's when Chagrin. Paul traveled to
Speaker 2: London soon afterwards, and it was clear that he was
Speaker 2: being actively courted by you know, the uh, the the
Speaker 2: intelligence establishment there, you know, and this becomes, uh, this
Speaker 2: is Keith understanding what developed in around Pavolic and we'll
Speaker 2: see in a minute. It's uh, it's you know, and
Speaker 2: that's something I this is something I emphasized again and
Speaker 2: again to like people tend to view Germany's attack upon Greece,
Speaker 2: which really o do the the operational shortcomings the Talian
Speaker 2: army as Hitler trying to force the British to stand
Speaker 2: down and abandon any abandon any claim to the Mediterranean,
Speaker 2: as well as it's some kind of just like show
Speaker 2: a force, you know, based upon I mean, I guess
Speaker 2: the the first true like paratroop assault was on Crete
Speaker 2: and it was a disaster. But this idea that that
Speaker 2: was some kind of flex intended to signal the UK.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's ridiculous. The reason why this was critical
Speaker 2: is for the reasons why I said, like the entire
Speaker 2: Bulkan campaign of the Vermont it owed entirely like Germany's
Speaker 2: security concerns, like conceptually orbited entirely around the Soviet Union,
Speaker 2: and like existential terms. Okay, that's not in political terms obviously, Yeah,
Speaker 2: like the UK's on willingness to come to terms and
Speaker 2: it's you know, unrelenting pasture bellicosity like, yes, that that
Speaker 2: was hugely impactful and kind of the course of of
Speaker 2: of policy in Germany, you know, from the Foreign Ministry
Speaker 2: to the o k W and everything else. But in
Speaker 2: in in raw strategic terms what I what I just
Speaker 2: said is not impeachable. The uh if the r F
Speaker 2: had gotten a toe hold too, I mean again, like
Speaker 2: they could have basically they could have they could have
Speaker 2: laid Romania to waste. It was you know, those foreig
Speaker 2: engine bombers that ultimately return to loose on germany civilian population.
Speaker 2: You know, if if if put to if it put
Speaker 2: to that purpose, you know what, it would have been devastating.
Speaker 2: I mean, this was the concrete particulars of that, those
Speaker 2: sort of of of ara of strategic bombing at scale
Speaker 2: wasn't yet known, but it was. It was. It was
Speaker 2: known that you know, power projection against of what would
Speaker 2: you consider it be like a both the counterforce and
Speaker 2: counter value nature like it was. It was it was
Speaker 2: clear that this was going to be hugely impactful in
Speaker 2: the next war. And it's also you know, the like
Speaker 2: we talked about before. I mean, by this time the
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union had or by by the advent of
Speaker 2: hostilities between Germany and Poland, the Soviet Unity captured you know,
Speaker 2: four hundred and ten thousand square kilometers, which was the
Speaker 2: size the entire German empires of nineteen nineteen. I mean,
Speaker 2: this was not this was not Hitler couldn't afford to
Speaker 2: wait and see you know what developed and then trying
Speaker 2: to sinuate it, you know, a kind of a kind
Speaker 2: of you know, kind of a kind of meaningful Ford
Speaker 2: deployment in the Balkans by you know, a combination of
Speaker 2: like threats and incentivization like it just like was not
Speaker 2: in the cards the and especially when it became clear
Speaker 2: that Turkey is not gonna you know, Turkey traditionally was
Speaker 2: ah was one of was one of the ways Germany
Speaker 2: hedged against them, you know, both UH, Russian and and
Speaker 2: British power in the Mediterranean. That was that was off
Speaker 2: the table. It's an interesting subtext. Late in the war,
Speaker 2: the foreign ministries, like the vertures of the Foreign Ministry,
Speaker 2: did make towards Ankara, but it was never I mean,
Speaker 2: by that point they were you know, they were in
Speaker 2: the thrones of desperation and and seeking any port in
Speaker 2: a storm. It was never a serious never serious, It
Speaker 2: was never seriously within the minds of anybody who who
Speaker 2: was you know, realistic. But by UH by March.
Speaker 1: Of UH.
Speaker 2: Nineteen forty one, Hungary, Romania Slovakia had all joined the
Speaker 2: Tripartheid Pact. This was a big coover Hitler because the
Speaker 2: Hungarian Prime Minister finally agreed to allow German troops to
Speaker 2: cross through Hungarian territory to axis you know, Romania and
Speaker 2: and and and and and as well as like deploy.
Speaker 2: They're basically allowed like free like in rest and egress
Speaker 2: across like the Hungarian frontier. And Horthy, Admiral Horthy, who.
Speaker 1: Was a.
Speaker 2: Was very much adjacent to Berlin. The Hungarian foreign ministry
Speaker 2: had to that point been overly hostile. They'd taken the
Speaker 2: same tech as Yugoslavia had, and it was a complicated
Speaker 2: Horthy's role as a regent. Uh, he was far from
Speaker 2: like on more. In peace questions he had something of
Speaker 2: an absolute mandate, but in in times of peace or
Speaker 2: in conditions short of war, foreign relations was basically in
Speaker 2: the hands of a cabinet that had you know, like
Speaker 2: a long history really going, that had like you know,
Speaker 2: deep roots in the in the kind of was failing system,
Speaker 2: you know. So it's it's important to consider that. So
Speaker 2: Hiller realized that, uh all this though, was essentially null
Speaker 2: and void. If Yugoslavia couldn't it couldn't be wooed. Some
Speaker 2: people speculate that the Greek operation was uh with prioritized
Speaker 2: as it was because Hitler aimed to offer part of
Speaker 2: northern Greece to the Ugslav government as some kind of concession.
Speaker 2: Like I don't know if that's true or not, but
Speaker 2: it finally, at the close of March of forty one, uh,
Speaker 2: the perpetually ambivalent Yugoslavs signed a tripartit pecked psychological blow
Speaker 2: to London was tremendous, you know, this was, uh, this
Speaker 2: is probably the biggest, this is arguably more significant and
Speaker 2: more significant policy coup then had been with Hitler. Tiso
Speaker 2: had accomplished in Czechoslovakia with like discrediting Britain's claim to
Speaker 2: you know, the moral high ground or to you know
Speaker 2: it insinuating itself as this, you know, p part of
Speaker 2: the rational arbiter of the power political affairs in the continent.
Speaker 2: You know, because it was it's all of all of
Speaker 2: its moves that had been couched and you know, either
Speaker 2: h imperatives laid down at Versailles related the self determination,
Speaker 2: which of course was ridiculous in these you know, multi
Speaker 2: monstrosities that had no actual organic support or it was
Speaker 2: or they were framed in terms of you know, systemic stability.
Speaker 2: And obviously the fact that you know, the US law
Speaker 2: to join the Tripartid Pact owing to a basic appreciation
Speaker 2: of Soviet aggression and the exsidential threat represented to them,
Speaker 2: because it nothing would have golled him more than again,
Speaker 2: you know, like allowing Germany basically a free hand to
Speaker 2: deploy across the frontiers. I mean, it speaks for itself,
Speaker 2: okay it but March twenty seventh, you know, literally days
Speaker 2: later Hewell reported to Hitler that they've been a cut
Speaker 2: in Belgrade, Paul had been overthrown. There was crowds masking
Speaker 2: outside the German legation demanding, you know, Germany get out
Speaker 2: of Yugoslavia. Like you know, it's it's diplomatic representatives. We're
Speaker 2: being physically threatened. The Swedish envoy had been mistaken for
Speaker 2: a German, had been like beaten within an inch of
Speaker 2: his life. The uh, the British diplomatic legation, which quite
Speaker 2: clearly was you know, the British intelligence Service under lake
Speaker 2: diplomatic cover. They were doing everything they could stir up crowds,
Speaker 2: you know, and and and and and arm them. This
Speaker 2: cup had been engineered. You the commanders alav Air Force.
Speaker 2: He was a career officer named Dustan Samovich. He was
Speaker 2: a a rabid chetnik who uh hated Germany. He organized
Speaker 2: revolutionary camed it around himself. The Canra refused to ratify
Speaker 2: the Tripartheid pecked however, they said they they they mouthed
Speaker 2: these like mild protestations. Some of its office did saying
Speaker 2: that like, well we remain you know, allied with Germany
Speaker 2: against the Soviet Union, you know, which obviously was I
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, it was bizarre, okay, I mean,
Speaker 2: obviously this was a move to the belief probably was
Speaker 2: that like confusion would reign in Berlin such that you know,
Speaker 2: there'd be some sort of paralysis of of policy decisionism.
Speaker 2: And by the time that was all worked out to
Speaker 2: be too late. But that was an incredibly stupid gamble,
Speaker 2: especially considering the man who was at the Helm in Berlin, Hitler.
Speaker 2: Uh there's Hugh Will relayed later, there's only a few
Speaker 2: times he ever saw Hitler like actually like enraged, you know,
Speaker 2: like uh like yelling and like slamming his fist on
Speaker 2: the desk and like visibly like agitated and angry. Because
Speaker 2: despite what Hollywood suggests, like Hitler wasn't that that wasn't
Speaker 2: his nature, but that he uh summoned uh title immediate
Speaker 2: and yodo and immediately he apparently, uh I called himself
Speaker 2: down and he said that, you know, owing a chorus,
Speaker 2: and I just to his Austrian upbringing, what his experience
Speaker 2: in the Great War, you know, he said that, you know,
Speaker 2: chauvinistic Serbs, you know, they've always been they've the've always
Speaker 2: been responsible for you know, catastrophes at scale, you know,
Speaker 2: and uh, they're they're they're doing this again, and this
Speaker 2: will not stand, he said. He already fueled the send immediately.
Speaker 2: Von Brausich at that time was still the Army chief
Speaker 2: of staff. He summoned the Hungarian, the Hungarian and Bulgarian
Speaker 2: diplomatic and boys. He told the Hungarian envoy that Uh,
Speaker 2: the hour had struck. Quote for Hungary's revenge, he said that.
Speaker 2: Hitler said that Berlin would support any, any, all territorial
Speaker 2: claims against Yugoslavia held by Hungary. He offered the Hungarians
Speaker 2: access to the port of Flume or Fume, I don't
Speaker 2: know how it's pronounced, which would give them interesting to
Speaker 2: the Adriatic. The Bulgarian envoy name of dragon off he offered, uh.
Speaker 2: He offered Bulgaria Macedonia. Is it just outright? He had
Speaker 2: a brief work conference with the holder brush it's and
Speaker 2: riven up, he said. The broad plan of assault in
Speaker 2: the Balkans, he said, politically, it's vital to fall upon
Speaker 2: the Balkans without mercy. And again this was actually rare
Speaker 2: language for Hitler. He said, Yugoslavia to be your garden,
Speaker 2: is an enemy and there were to be destroyed as
Speaker 2: rapidly as possible, whatever protestations of loyalty should momentarily utter
Speaker 2: now again the it's uh, the subjects here wasn't just
Speaker 2: that the Semovich coup had been facilitated not an absolute measure,
Speaker 2: but in essential terms by London, but the communist part
Speaker 2: of Yugoslavia. They played no part in the coup, but
Speaker 2: they made a significant contribution to the mass like street
Speaker 2: protests and uprising that is signal popular support for it.
Speaker 2: And again too, this was a a dicinctly like anti
Speaker 2: German flavor, you know, so like Moscow's hand was in
Speaker 2: this two you know, And that's the point I'm making
Speaker 2: people again and again, you know, like the Germans where
Speaker 2: you're talking about the okaw, whether you're talking like this
Speaker 2: is a rare example of a quorum. You had a Hitler,
Speaker 2: you had a Quel, We had Don Browschitch, you had
Speaker 2: Ribbon Trup, you totally had title, basically had everybody who
Speaker 2: later on, you know, basically by December forty one, it
Speaker 2: was like a total fracturing here of of of worldview
Speaker 2: as well as ideas on strategy, both immediate and grand.
Speaker 2: But there was like an absolute consensus that then they
Speaker 2: were there. The permimborial news was tightening around Germany owing
Speaker 2: to these developments in Yugoslavia. And UH that was not
Speaker 2: unfounded paranoia, that was absolutely correct, okay, which begs the
Speaker 2: question as to what London was thinking. I mean, Salin, Stalin,
Speaker 2: Stalin could afford to kind of like wait and see
Speaker 2: how these machinations would develop, Like why what what that
Speaker 2: was London doing with you know, provoking the Reich again
Speaker 2: and again into like a war that the British couldn't win.
Speaker 2: I think it was just it was raw hubers in
Speaker 2: my opinion, and they they underestimated Hitler again and again
Speaker 2: and again and again. The UH official directive April sixth,
Speaker 2: nineteen forty one, it was fear Directive of twenty five.
Speaker 2: It's coloqually known as Operation twenty five, okay, or the
Speaker 2: April War. April six forty one. The invaded. The assault
Speaker 2: and Yugoslavia commenced and overwhelming, first with an overwhelming air
Speaker 2: assault and Belgrade with aloof off of targeting all facilities.
Speaker 2: The Royal Yugoslav Air Force. The Vermont assaulted from southwestern Bulgaria.
Speaker 2: They were reinforced by thrust from Romania, Hungary and UH.
Speaker 2: The Ostmark which is Austria, Los Angeles. Italian forces were
Speaker 2: limited to air and artillery assaults until the Elemath to April,
Speaker 2: when the Italian Army was permitted to assault towards what's
Speaker 2: modern day Slovenia across uh Jubijana, which I'm sure I
Speaker 2: butchered the pronunciation. On the same day Hungarian forces and
Speaker 2: their the was then Baca and Aranya. But like and
Speaker 2: both the Italians, Hungarians faced basically no resistance. Okay, there
Speaker 2: was a roslav counter assault into the northern parts of
Speaker 2: the Italian protector of Albania, which gained some initial ground,
Speaker 2: but the like the Yugoslavs, the Yugoslav army was in
Speaker 2: total collapse by that point. Now, why did the Yugoslav
Speaker 2: army just suddenly, like rapidly collapse, Well, I believe, and
Speaker 2: people have downplayed this lately owing to their own sort
Speaker 2: of misguided concepts that the ideological narrative. I mean, there's
Speaker 2: a substantial uh Volksdotch community in Croatia and Valdier Slovena also,
Speaker 2: I mean Croatians, Slovenians, Croatians and Slovenians had you know,
Speaker 2: they were abjectly opposed to the Yugoslav regime, which was
Speaker 2: essentially like a Chetnick regime in disguise, and this constant
Speaker 2: had been a very effective fifth column and at least superficially,
Speaker 2: the Royal the Royal Goslav Royal Yugoslav Army was a
Speaker 2: multi ethnic army. It uh, it had to maintain the
Speaker 2: appearance of not just being you know, a like like
Speaker 2: a like a chet Nik revolutionary element. So I mean,
Speaker 2: I I think basically nobody but the Serbs were going
Speaker 2: to fight, okay, and the mask the mask dropped. Proverbially,
Speaker 2: the armistice was signed on the seventeenth of April forty one.
Speaker 2: You know, based on the what amount of the uncungental
Speaker 2: surrender Yuoslav Army, it just no longer existed, okay. I
Speaker 2: mean a combination of annihilation of forces and being like
Speaker 2: mass desertion and you know, just garrisons, you know, command
Speaker 2: garrison commanders just surrendering without firing a shot. You know.
Speaker 2: The armists came into effect at noon the next day.
Speaker 2: The Commomity with Slavia was an occupying partition by the Axis.
Speaker 2: Most of Serbia and but not became a German occupation zone.
Speaker 2: Other areas or other areas of what had been Yugoslavia
Speaker 2: were annexed by Hungary, Italy, Albania, Bulgaria, and of course
Speaker 2: Croatia became the nd H. And we'll get into that momentarily.
Speaker 2: But the the Yugoslav army or what remained of it
Speaker 2: military command like officially you know, and uh what what
Speaker 2: remained of its infrastructure just formally became under you know,
Speaker 2: like SETNA authority in command. So I mean, obviously this
Speaker 2: this happened literally within hours, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: That's it's it's obvious. What was that the reality of
Speaker 2: the you know, the like the the Yugoslavian state, they
Speaker 2: became you know, a like kind of negatively apparent to all.
Speaker 2: But it's but again it's one of the I guess
Speaker 2: Hitler's exact words. Inf're a directive of twenty five and
Speaker 2: forgive me, forgive me if my Chicagoese excellent butchers. This
Speaker 2: is Yugoslavian militarish und stops builds Schlagen, which means the
Speaker 2: the total instruction of Yugoslavia militarily and as a state
Speaker 2: for all time, and to do so with pitiless, without
Speaker 2: without mercy. Okay, Now enter the Shah and Polovich and
Speaker 2: like who were they and who was he? Because this
Speaker 2: is key I just doneerstanding how events developed, but it's
Speaker 2: also it's key understanding the like the modern Croatian state,
Speaker 2: including the Croatia that exists today. I'm not saying that
Speaker 2: Croatia today or we're even tu to my Croati was
Speaker 2: just literally like the NDH. But Tujman deliberately drew upon
Speaker 2: that precedence, you know, which again kind of defeats this
Speaker 2: claim by court history that oh, well, you know the list,
Speaker 2: this show was nothing. But you know what, this this
Speaker 2: this client regime with no depth that nobody supported, you know,
Speaker 2: whether I mean, how anybody feels about it. It's you know,
Speaker 2: if we're talking about modern creation statehood, we're talking about
Speaker 2: the Eustashire regime. And Pavlich himself was an incredibly dynamic person.
Speaker 2: You know. It was not some peasant rabble rouser or
Speaker 2: some or some military straw man. You know, he was
Speaker 2: actually he was. He was quite talking about politan and
Speaker 2: and and just lived a remarkable life. And he was
Speaker 2: a lawyer by trade versu and foremost, I mean he
Speaker 2: very early on bloodied his hands as a political soldier
Speaker 2: and a partisan. But that wasn't that that he was
Speaker 2: a man of many faces. Okay, he dasha, I wrote, Canaries,
Speaker 2: you know, the chief of the adverb, which was Germany's
Speaker 2: foreign intelligence service. This is one of the AD there's
Speaker 2: greatest successes. Okay. And there are some key successes of
Speaker 2: the AD there, despite the fact Canaries was not just
Speaker 2: a fifth columnist, he was an active trader. He was
Speaker 2: collaborating with the Allies. Okay. So the AD there was
Speaker 2: totally compromised from the top down on some level. The
Speaker 2: s S always knew this, and this was one of
Speaker 2: the imperatives for the development of the s D, which
Speaker 2: would seem on his face to be just like a
Speaker 2: redundant bureaucracy within the security apparatus. But there were some
Speaker 2: bona fide, brilliant operational successes carried off by the AD there.
Speaker 2: Like whether that was because in at operational levels there
Speaker 2: were committed national socialists who were following through as if
Speaker 2: you know, there the institution they started to not being compromised.
Speaker 2: Whether Canaris had you know, mixed feelings about his loyalties
Speaker 2: like this is not clear, but the EUSTA shows a
Speaker 2: sendency owed obviously not exclusively, but an essential contributing cause
Speaker 2: of its success was the fact that, uh, you know,
Speaker 2: Canaris had had fermented a breakaway Croatian movement from early on. Okay,
Speaker 2: and a A this is this, this is an armed
Speaker 2: vanguardist around movement. There was no concept of it, you know,
Speaker 2: abiding legality. There was no concept of it standing for
Speaker 2: contested elections. A different situation than in Weymar. Okay. The only,
Speaker 2: the only, the only way a prod national constitution, a
Speaker 2: prod national state was going to be realized was was
Speaker 2: through was was by the gun and by the knife. Okay,
Speaker 2: Canaris is obvious kind of a choice for a leadership
Speaker 2: element was a general named Sladko Katternic. He was an
Speaker 2: officer of the old Hasperg Army.
Speaker 1: He uh.
Speaker 2: When the USA shad did seize power. He initially was
Speaker 2: the kind of the figurehead aided by the adverts what
Speaker 2: was code named in Jupiter organization, which was it's kind
Speaker 2: of like direct action. Elements after the indefinite state have
Speaker 2: been set up like Povlish, doctor Ante Povlish, who spent
Speaker 2: long years in exile in Italy by that point was
Speaker 2: like revealed as Cooklovnik, which means approximately means fure Cervil Croatian. Okay,
Speaker 2: why the bait and switch of a figureheads like no
Speaker 2: Pavlic Noura Laura Fetternic. We're we're ciphers. They both wielded
Speaker 2: tremendous power and cloud. But I'm talking when I say figurehead,
Speaker 2: I mean in terms of outward appearances. When of Hitler's
Speaker 2: challenges with balancing Italian demands on the Balkans and specifically Croatia,
Speaker 2: in order to placate Mussolini over among other things, the
Speaker 2: murder of Dolphus and the subsequent ansaluse and other things,
Speaker 2: early on, he agreed to see the Dalmatian coast to
Speaker 2: Italy at least as a sphere of influence and an
Speaker 2: event of in an event in general war, you know,
Speaker 2: as a as a territorial imperative that they would be
Speaker 2: permitted to capture. This caused intense resentment in Zagreb, but
Speaker 2: Hitler realized it was unnecessary evil. Okay, Now, Pavolic, having
Speaker 2: spent so many years in Italy and having courted, really
Speaker 2: since nineteen thirty two thirty three alliance with the Italian fascists,
Speaker 2: he was kind of Mussolini. He wasn't Mussolini's man, is
Speaker 2: sometimes alleged in Zagreb, but he was Italians, and frankly,
Speaker 2: when it game clear that if he was gonna do Croatia,
Speaker 2: just kind of like this exploitable aspect I brought published
Speaker 2: in the National Socialist camps so firmly. Okay Canarius is
Speaker 2: uh adjutant was a He was an officer by name
Speaker 2: of u Lahausen. He warned Uh the fear as well
Speaker 2: as his boss Canarios, that they had to proceed very delicately,
Speaker 2: that the resentment over the loss of Dalmatia and just
Speaker 2: kind of the the arrogance which the Italians were proceeding
Speaker 2: was wreaking absolutely havoc. He's at the literally said, Uh,
Speaker 2: the Cross are people of honor with a long military tradition,
Speaker 2: and it is better beyond words to be trodden down
Speaker 2: and humiliated now by an army has not been able
Speaker 2: to pin one victory to its colors, speaking of the
Speaker 2: Italian army. Okay now who was Ante Pavolich public was
Speaker 2: born and Hurtzegovina. The village of Redina, which is literally
Speaker 2: in the mountains Okay in a central Bosnia, roughly nine
Speaker 2: miles southwest of Hezichi. It was then part of the
Speaker 2: Ottoman Empire, but it had been seated. It was formerly
Speaker 2: under the sovereignty of the Sultan, but it had been
Speaker 2: but the entirety of Bosnians to go Vina had phone
Speaker 2: under Habsburg rule by eighteen seventy eight order the Congress
Speaker 2: of Berlin. Okay, And essentially it was it was a
Speaker 2: conquest without a shot being fired, as the Habsburgs raidn
Speaker 2: army of a on thirty thousand men and threatened to
Speaker 2: assault it. And this is this is one of the
Speaker 2: if you'll allow the tangent, this is this is one
Speaker 2: indicator of Ottoman power, like precipitously having deteriorated. They didn't
Speaker 2: even they didn't even take the field of battle. They
Speaker 2: just like seed it with some meaningless with with the
Speaker 2: concession of some meaningless declaration that it remained under perhaps
Speaker 2: remained under Ottoman authority. But there's an interesting dynamic here
Speaker 2: of a cultural nature, and this impacted powers just upbringing directly. Now,
Speaker 2: all of his parents had moved to Bosnia from a
Speaker 2: village that was in Croatia proper or like what what
Speaker 2: would be in Croatia within Croatia propers borders today. His
Speaker 2: father had done so to work on UH the Sarajevo
Speaker 2: rail line, but ultimately as a small child, the family
Speaker 2: settled in a village called gi Zitto or Ja Zero
Speaker 2: or public in a primary school. But Zero was a
Speaker 2: Bosnia majority domain. It was overwhelmingly sunny Moslim, so pabolish
Speaker 2: the crowd he attended.
Speaker 1: UH.
Speaker 2: The primary schools he attended were maktub like a maktab
Speaker 2: is a is like an Islamic elementary school. Okay, So
Speaker 2: Pablics learned published until the day he died, you know,
Speaker 2: confessed his sins and went to mass daily. But he
Speaker 2: was raised literally like in Moslim traditions and lessons, and
Speaker 2: he knew the deep wore of his lamb like he
Speaker 2: knew it's like liturgical practice, like he knew like it's
Speaker 2: he knew everything about it. He was like almost he
Speaker 2: was almost like half raised as like a Maslim. Okay.
Speaker 2: And this is why in the NBA Sunni Islam was
Speaker 2: the other state religion, along with Catholicism and uh Hanjar.
Speaker 2: The bosniakafnss it's national identifier was first Croatian because official
Speaker 2: policy by order of povl It was it was that
Speaker 2: Bosnian Muslims are racial Croatians, and I'm going to I'm
Speaker 2: gonna make people happy because like I brought like props today.
Speaker 2: This is like the fez that like Hanjar like division
Speaker 2: would where can people see that? I think this is awesome,
Speaker 2: Like uh, the other people don't. But it's like literally
Speaker 2: like a fez with a totem Kopp and a reich Saddler.
Speaker 2: You know, I don't think it would look too like
Speaker 2: cool on me, but like it's it's just freaking cool.
Speaker 2: But but I mean, this is the this is like
Speaker 2: I'm seriously like this was taken. This wasn't just like superficial.
Speaker 2: So you know, Pavlic was h quintessentially cosmopolitan and like
Speaker 2: that even more than it was apparent in his early
Speaker 2: life as we'll get into but he uh he As
Speaker 2: he became a teenager and a young adult, he had
Speaker 2: a he had a much older brother who lived in
Speaker 2: uh in Zagreb and during kind of like as as
Speaker 2: as police got an adolescence when he was attending school
Speaker 2: and trad and he became a hero in a nationalist
Speaker 2: idealogues like guys who who proceeded what we came with
Speaker 2: the Croatian Party of rights first and foremost a guy
Speaker 2: named uh Anteashevich was like an early uh like like
Speaker 2: like you know, like like froat nationalist, you know, and
Speaker 2: like one of his uh like one of one of
Speaker 2: the one of his that one of his, like like
Speaker 2: one of his followers or or uh one of the
Speaker 2: guys he mentored kind of like in in In in
Speaker 2: the art of uh In philosophy of like you know,
Speaker 2: political warfare was a you'll said Frank, who later became
Speaker 2: like the leader of the Party of Rights. But Polloch's
Speaker 2: notion was like, well, this is great that you know,
Speaker 2: crowds have like this kind of like of Covid, this
Speaker 2: kind of like racial sense of self, you know, and
Speaker 2: and kind of a path forward for an independent state.
Speaker 2: But his concern was that, like this is too much
Speaker 2: of like a peasant phenomenon. But when he when he
Speaker 2: when he when he went to stay with his elder
Speaker 2: brother in Zagreb, like he realized that, you know, the
Speaker 2: dialect was very much alive in Zagreb and people were
Speaker 2: openly identifying, you know in you know, in what we're
Speaker 2: traditionally you know, cosmopol and Habsburg cities, you know, croats.
Speaker 2: We're living openly as Croats. I mean, I'm not trying
Speaker 2: to be silly, but i mean like I'm trying to
Speaker 2: think of the best way to characterize it and that
Speaker 2: and that that. From that point on, you know, like
Speaker 2: he public realized like this was this was a viable
Speaker 2: way forward. Okay again as like a vang artist like
Speaker 2: revolutionary imperative, you know, like again, this was the the
Speaker 2: Yugoslav situation was nothing at all like the Viymor situation. It. Uh.
Speaker 2: Polish was always beset by health problems from the time
Speaker 2: he was like kid until he was murdered, like you know,
Speaker 2: years after the war. And we'll get into that in
Speaker 2: a later episode. But he uh he ultimately, he ultimately
Speaker 2: took a law degree as a frankly, it was like
Speaker 2: part of the chorus for partisans of the time on
Speaker 2: both sides of the idological divide revolutionaries. Rather, he obtained
Speaker 2: his doctorate in nineteenth July ninety fifteen, and he basically
Speaker 2: uh he joined the Croatian part of the rights formally
Speaker 2: around nineteen eighteen and worked as a lawyer in Zagreb.
Speaker 2: It was uh nineteen twenty nine when his kind of
Speaker 2: radicalization and tactical terms at least really ossified, and that
Speaker 2: was around the time or it was it was literally
Speaker 2: as it was at the same time as what became
Speaker 2: to be known as the January Dictatorship January sixth, ninety
Speaker 2: twenty nine, part literally a royal dictatorship was declared and
Speaker 2: what was then the Kingdom of Serbs Cross and Slovenes,
Speaker 2: King Alexander the first we talked about some in our
Speaker 2: World War One episodes. Alexander's notion was quite literally to
Speaker 2: create a Yugoslav ideology and a single Yugoslav nation, you know,
Speaker 2: like under his dictatorship through you know, a combination of
Speaker 2: of of a population force, population transfer, suppression of discrete languages,
Speaker 2: presumably you know, outright suppression of the Islamic religion. You know, UH,
Speaker 2: attempts to strip the Cross of the ability to pursue
Speaker 2: and express culture and in public and shared forums. It
Speaker 2: ended in nineteen thirty one with the adoption of Yugoslav
Speaker 2: constitution what was called the Yugoslat ninth round Uslut Constitution.
Speaker 2: But the but the damage was done, Okay, Any people
Speaker 2: realize that in their view, UH, the two probable outcomes
Speaker 2: for any Yugoslavian enterprises, either that there's going to be
Speaker 2: a Chetnik dictatorship, you know, with the alibi or the
Speaker 2: mask rather of oh, this is you know, a multi
Speaker 2: this is a multi ethnic state. You know, we're all
Speaker 2: where the rights of all all the all three ethnic
Speaker 2: groups are are honored. Or it was going to be,
Speaker 2: you know, uh, it was going to be a matter
Speaker 2: of you know, the act of suppression essentially of all
Speaker 2: of all cultural Russian, not unlike what's happening in the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union, you know, under the but without even the
Speaker 2: kind of ideological culture of Marcist Leninism to prop it up.
Speaker 2: You know, this kind of this kind of utterly contrived
Speaker 2: you know, Yugoslavism as a little more than a pretext
Speaker 2: for you know, the crushing of of discreet historical identities
Speaker 2: at this time published formerly organized the Eustaship. I have
Speaker 2: absolutely no fluency in serbral croat as I understand it,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure the fellows who do will correct me
Speaker 2: if I'm wrong. I believe USTA should roughly translates to
Speaker 2: insurgents or insurgency. Okay. The official founding in Ustacial lore
Speaker 2: like to this day, is that the party was founded
Speaker 2: on January seventh, nineteen twenty nine, It was around this
Speaker 2: time UH published came under basically like constant um police surveillance.
Speaker 2: During one during a lapse in this surveillance, uh he
Speaker 2: fled to Austria and uh proceeded like nominally under the
Speaker 2: with with under the predext of you know, seeking medical treatment.
Speaker 2: But it's not going health problems there. You know, Vienna
Speaker 2: at that time was completely lit, you know, by conspiratorial
Speaker 2: designs and people pursuing those designs, and I mean that
Speaker 2: that was the place to be frankly, if you were
Speaker 2: trying to accomplish what he was trying to accomplish. You know,
Speaker 2: he he made he made contact with other craigras who were,
Speaker 2: you know, looking for some kind of catalyzing or organizational imperative,
Speaker 2: you know, to develop cadres. Most of these guys were
Speaker 2: political refugees, you know, they've been chased out of of
Speaker 2: Soviet territory, or they were being terrorized by the Yugoslavian
Speaker 2: secret police, you know, or they were they were for
Speaker 2: Habsburg army officers, you know, who'd refused to return Yugoslavia,
Speaker 2: you know, after the succession of you know, chetnik and
Speaker 2: royalist intrigues. After a short stay there where he made
Speaker 2: contact with, among other people, some Bulgarian radicals. What a
Speaker 2: similar you know, with similar ambitions in mind to their
Speaker 2: own peoples. He moved to Budapest, where there was a
Speaker 2: more kind of welcoming environment for partisans the right Okay.
Speaker 2: In March of nineteen twenty nine, the Eustasha elements still
Speaker 2: within Yugoslavia undertook a campaign a direct action, the first
Speaker 2: incidents of which was the assassination of A Tony Schigel
Speaker 2: in Zagre. Schigel was basically a regime mouthpiece. He was
Speaker 2: editor of at the top newspaper in Zagora. It was
Speaker 2: a close comment on a King Alexander and Verty much
Speaker 2: the mouthpiece of the regime. Like uh Lewis is should
Speaker 2: murdered him? Well, this was going on the pavlic. Uh
Speaker 2: He managed established contact with an element that was known
Speaker 2: as the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization. This is about a
Speaker 2: month subsequent to the murder of a Schlegel. Schlegel or Schligel,
Speaker 2: I think it's Schlagel, but and the uh He in
Speaker 2: some of his contexts Bulgarian contexts that he made in Vienna.
Speaker 2: They traveled to Bulgaria in April. This led to the
Speaker 2: signing by a number of partisans ethno nationalist partisan types
Speaker 2: of what came to be the Sofia Declaration. It formalized
Speaker 2: up It formalized cooperation between Croatian, Macedonian and Bulgarian radicals
Speaker 2: like radical nationalists were posed, uh, you know, the the
Speaker 2: Belgrade regime as well as the the communists and the
Speaker 2: chip Nicks. Yuoslavia formally protested the government and Sofia publics
Speaker 2: was then he was tried for high treason and absentia
Speaker 2: and sentenced to death on the seventeenth of August nineteen
Speaker 2: twenty nine. Owing to that verdict, a month subsequent, in September,
Speaker 2: Publisher was arrested in Vienna. The Viennese, or sympathetic, at
Speaker 2: least those in the security apparatus, you know, had more
Speaker 2: than a fledging sympathy for him and his cause. Rather
Speaker 2: than extraditing him, they expelled him to Germany. This caused
Speaker 2: some problems because at this time there were still formally
Speaker 2: good offices dilomatically speaking between Germany and Yugoslavia. The German
Speaker 2: and Batchigoslavia was a typical foreign ministry veteran of the
Speaker 2: time named Adolf cost was a supporter of Yugoslavia. He
Speaker 2: was literally a personal friend of Tom Alexander, so this
Speaker 2: obviously not bode well for Poblished before this kind of
Speaker 2: hostile sentiment from you know, costas friends and my places
Speaker 2: could develop into truly threatening police action against his person.
Speaker 2: Published left Germany under an assumed name and went to Italy,
Speaker 2: where he already had family as well as in theological contacts.
Speaker 2: Now in Italy, at least for a couple of years,
Speaker 2: he frequently changed location and lived under a false name.
Speaker 2: He lived as an Italian national with his assuming identity
Speaker 2: was at an Italian national, most Alban's Antonio Sendar or Serdar.
Speaker 2: He had contact with Italian authorities at least you know,
Speaker 2: the intelligence apparatus of the Fishes since at least ninety
Speaker 2: twenty six, nine twenty seven. In n twenty nine he
Speaker 2: managed established deeper contexts and through his UH friends in
Speaker 2: the legal profession as well as some as well as
Speaker 2: some radical right journalists that he befriended, he managed to
Speaker 2: UH court. Mussolini's brother, Ornaldo Mussolini, was a strong supporter
Speaker 2: of crowd independence, just outright and like a very like
Speaker 2: a very like hardline fascist. Publish again owing to whether
Speaker 2: it's his cosmopolitan upbringing or just his kind of natural
Speaker 2: intelligence for sociological affairs. Wherever he went, he seemed to
Speaker 2: create a basic sympathy and understanding of the crowd situation
Speaker 2: among Italians, at least Italian fascist and adjacent wright wingers.
Speaker 2: He was very good at this. Okay, that Fall Publish
Speaker 2: published what became a widely circulated treaties really more than
Speaker 2: a brochure of a less than like an actual book.
Speaker 2: This ends us being widely circulated in the Third Reich,
Speaker 2: especially in later years, which uh became significant for various reasons.
Speaker 2: But this this, this is this brochure, if you, was
Speaker 2: called the Salesment of the Croatian State Lasting Peace in
Speaker 2: the Balkans, which was kind of like a it's like
Speaker 2: a it was a summary of Croatian history, you know,
Speaker 2: from kind of like the the you know, the the
Speaker 2: Habsburg German like and and and adjacent Ustaship perspective. The
Speaker 2: Italian authorities did not want to formally support the Ustaship,
Speaker 2: not just because I believe it or not at this time,
Speaker 2: and we made the point before, you know, kind of
Speaker 2: like the zenith of this was Musolini presiding over the
Speaker 2: four powers packed. But Musolini was he didn't seem it
Speaker 2: himself as this as this is. It's kind of like
Speaker 2: is this kind of like great negotiator who like presided
Speaker 2: over these kinds of diplomatic concords and like it leads
Speaker 2: a stabilizing influence. So the Italians for all of it's uh,
Speaker 2: for for all of its revolutionary aptitude and capturing power,
Speaker 2: like the fascists in this epoch and especially before the
Speaker 2: non solution things, they were behaving very much like a
Speaker 2: national conservative party, and a lot of these guys authority,
Speaker 2: they didn't want to they didn't want to openly support
Speaker 2: some like some like radical right partisan you know, like
Speaker 2: poplished and like the Ustaship, you know, to protect the
Speaker 2: reputation and for sake of optics of nothing else. And
Speaker 2: that's important to understand. This is like an odd period
Speaker 2: and in kind of like the the Inner Warriors, but
Speaker 2: Mussolini saw them as a Mussolini at all, first and
Speaker 2: foremost wanted to destroy Yugoslavia and the capture you know,
Speaker 2: some kind of ingress of the Adriatic. So Publish almost
Speaker 2: undoubtedly received personal support from Mussolini, and so did the
Speaker 2: Ustasha generally like their offices in in Zagreb and elsewhere.
Speaker 2: And towards that end, Mussolini allowed Publish to remain in
Speaker 2: exile in Rome and openly trained his paramilitaries in preparation
Speaker 2: for war with Yugoslavia. And UH Publish made it so.
Speaker 2: He developed association with Croatian expats in Italy as well
Speaker 2: as as well as HAPs for garment veterans and UH
Speaker 2: Germans uh Volksdeutsch who were had direct connection, direct links
Speaker 2: to the to the to the government of the Reich,
Speaker 2: and a lot of these guys had very strong like
Speaker 2: military experience. Okay, So he was making all that, he
Speaker 2: was making all the right moves and connecting with all
Speaker 2: the right people to accomplish what he wanted to accomplish.
Speaker 2: Nineteen thirty one, again a financial up from Mussolini, Pobles
Speaker 2: established formal camps for partisans, first UH in Boveno, Italy,
Speaker 2: and ultimately UH there was camps you know, throughout throughout
Speaker 2: Italy and as well as Hungary and almost certainly Bosnia,
Speaker 2: though under obviously like deep cover. The UH. This created
Speaker 2: this this, this, this, this kind of infrastructure facility A
Speaker 2: Mussolini facilitated the smuggling of weapons and political literature in
Speaker 2: Tropaganda into Yugoslavia proper. The camps were moved around constantly,
Speaker 2: again at the behest of Mussolini, which you know, and
Speaker 2: Musolini was kind of like he like shined brightest when
Speaker 2: he was charged with a revolutionary task. You know, once
Speaker 2: such revolutions had been ambitions have been consolidated, Mussolin didn't
Speaker 2: shine so bright, but he was very much in his
Speaker 2: element here, and Poblich was very, very fortunate to be
Speaker 2: able to curry his favor and learn from him. And
Speaker 2: again that's why politics can't be just be dismissed as
Speaker 2: some third rate dictator or something. What he accomplished here
Speaker 2: basically as a wanted man showing up in Rome without
Speaker 2: any particular cloud or money and just you know, within
Speaker 2: within months, you know, getting an ear with al Duce.
Speaker 2: That's nothing sort of remarkable, that's Hitler like, and it's
Speaker 2: an unlikelihood of ascendancy. But the Ustasha have managed to
Speaker 2: establish adjacent associations not just of ethnic cross but a
Speaker 2: sympathetic fascist and national socialist all throughout Western Europe and
Speaker 2: in Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Brazil, and even in the United
Speaker 2: States and Canada did agree to which the croas developed
Speaker 2: a kind of outsized cloud and national socialists and fascists
Speaker 2: and adjacent circles, like they can't be overstated. I mean,
Speaker 2: this is a tiny country with like a very very
Speaker 2: small XPA community is because there's not that many of them,
Speaker 2: and the fact that there's this kind of reach is incredible,
Speaker 2: I think. I mean, obviously I'm gonna admire a pobliss
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's being unclear by now, but
Speaker 2: the uh this undoubtedly in ninety three, as as these
Speaker 2: elements who had been training diligently were turned loose. You know,
Speaker 2: there's a series of bombings and shootings in the us
Speaker 2: Lavia proper which led to just this blanket cracked down
Speaker 2: a political activity as the state declared, you know, a
Speaker 2: state of emergency and this counter terrorist regime. It it
Speaker 2: exploited that mandate to profoundly abuse impoverished crot peasants, you know,
Speaker 2: the brutality towards which was almost always meted out by
Speaker 2: by Serbian police and and insecurity elements. So this was
Speaker 2: kind of like a splendid example of cultivating a strategy attention,
Speaker 2: you know, like among among other things, in order to
Speaker 2: facilitate the emergency of a revolutionary paradigm beyond the kind
Speaker 2: of narrow cadre structure. We've been going for like an
Speaker 2: hour and twenty minutes and I still probably got another
Speaker 2: hour material. I'm thinking if we get break in a
Speaker 2: minute and then take this up in the next episode,
Speaker 2: that would be fantastic. Let's do it. Let's take Yeah. Well,
Speaker 2: I forgive me if that was too like long winded,
Speaker 2: but there's a lot here and next episode will we'll
Speaker 2: we'll deal with this, you know, the the formal ascendancy
Speaker 2: of Pavlich to the office of Poklovnik, and you know,
Speaker 2: the war years and sick for cash and all of
Speaker 2: that stuff. I didn't realize it been going on that long.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's okay, Yeah, thanks, Yeah, do plugs real quick.
Speaker 1: We'll get out here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Man. You can always find me on substack real
Speaker 2: Thomas seven seven seven dot substick dot com. Actually can
Speaker 2: always find me on my website. That's the best kind
Speaker 2: of one stop place to find my content of all kinds.
Speaker 2: It's literally Thomas seven seven seven dot com number seven
Speaker 2: h O A S seven seven seven dot com. You
Speaker 2: can hit me up on Telegram it's Thomas Graham again
Speaker 2: number seven h O A S. Graham. You can find
Speaker 2: me on x uh real capital r e A L
Speaker 2: underscore number seven h O A S seven seven seven. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we're we're all over the place in this in this
Speaker 2: bitch man. Oh on my Instagram too, So you're gonna
Speaker 2: like if you if you like, you can find like
Speaker 2: my my photographs if you want to.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny. I never go on I rarely
Speaker 1: go on Instagram. Sometimes someone will link me like something
Speaker 1: on Instagram, like yeah or something, and it'll take me
Speaker 1: to it, and then I'll back out of it and inevitably.
Speaker 2: There you are.
Speaker 1: There's your Instagram because you're like only one of you're
Speaker 1: one of very few people that I follow, so it's
Speaker 1: like I but I always see your posts.
Speaker 2: It's like it's I take like a lot of photos,
Speaker 2: you know, and like Instagram, it's kind of like I
Speaker 2: don't like the user interface and like there it's full
Speaker 2: of bots and and like creepy bullshit, like porn bullshit.
Speaker 2: But it's some you know, I mean, it's a good
Speaker 2: there's like that's why I met like Nego Klaw and stuff,
Speaker 2: and like it's it's a good place to reach out,
Speaker 2: especially the kind of like artsy people who are like
Speaker 2: politically politically adjacent but not really kind of like in
Speaker 2: in the sphere of activity. But it's also it's just
Speaker 2: like a good repository of like photos man, you know,
Speaker 2: and it's it's I can rationalize like dumping a lot
Speaker 2: of photos there without feeling like a fucking guro.
Speaker 1: All right, till the next time. Thank you, Thomas. I
Speaker 1: want to welcome everyone back to the Pekanona Show. Thomas
Speaker 1: is here and part three of the Balkans. How are
Speaker 1: you doing?
Speaker 2: I'm doing well. Thanks for hosting me. Of course, some
Speaker 2: people got upset thinking that I wasn't telling the Serbian
Speaker 2: side of the story. I mean, that wasn't my intention
Speaker 2: at all. Like I got kind of irritated and I
Speaker 2: wasn't feeling very well. So if I said some things
Speaker 2: that upset people, I mean in response to some of
Speaker 2: their complaints, I wasn't trying to be up too. The
Speaker 2: reason why I focused on the Croatian side is for
Speaker 2: a few reasons. The whole Raizon detra of what the
Speaker 2: State Department did. Even after even post Bush and Baker,
Speaker 2: I'll be out of the Clint administration like went about
Speaker 2: it in kind of any illiterate way in terms of
Speaker 2: their rationale. I mean, like the military in those days
Speaker 2: was still pretty they had their stuff together operationally. But
Speaker 2: to understand why Helmet Cole did what he did, understand
Speaker 2: what the view was from Washington, you've got to you've
Speaker 2: got to look at what the Croatians were doing. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's why today I'm gonna take up what the Serbian
Speaker 2: case was and why it was entirely misguided for them
Speaker 2: to be accused of starting the wars. They absolutely didn't.
Speaker 2: I mean that that's that's asked on any way, to
Speaker 2: claim that, you know, an ethnic conflict is like a
Speaker 2: schoolyard fight and and some party combat and it's oh,
Speaker 2: it's their fault. That's not how things work. And even
Speaker 2: though he even though he doesn't gain a lot of sympathy,
Speaker 2: I mean even from like his own people like I
Speaker 2: I found slobod on the lowst Divage to actually be
Speaker 2: quite a sympathetic figure what was done with with the Hague.
Speaker 2: He was quite literally killed by being put on trial,
Speaker 2: and I mean that was grotesque. I've actually always considered
Speaker 2: myself to be pretty sympathetic to the Chetnik cause. I
Speaker 2: mean not not because I find common cause with it,
Speaker 2: but I mean I I'm sim of that to anybody
Speaker 2: who you know, who's whose ambition is to address the
Speaker 2: historical grievance of their people and in a way that
Speaker 2: guarantees their posterity in the future. So today we're go
Speaker 2: get a little bit into like the Serbian situation as
Speaker 2: it was in nineteen ninety one, and why you know,
Speaker 2: Meloseovich was basically somebody who was He was the only
Speaker 2: as ahead of state other than Gerzelski, who doesn't really count.
Speaker 2: He was the only he was the only Communist functionary
Speaker 2: who made in an executive role after the inner German
Speaker 2: border collapsed, which is interesting. So this idea that he
Speaker 2: was some archchetnik, genocidal mediac, I mean that, I mean,
Speaker 2: that's that that's just that's that's a propaganda narrative anyway.
Speaker 2: But you know, were they were those stripes, I mean,
Speaker 2: he wouldn't he wouldn't have enjoyed the posterity he did,
Speaker 2: which should be obvious. But wellokre some of that stuff
Speaker 2: today and hopefully people will realizing that, you know, trying
Speaker 2: to assign blame to any party combat and dur any side.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't do that anyway. I mean, there's rare.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons why the Ukraine situation is bizarre,
Speaker 2: it's because it's a rare case of quite literally a
Speaker 2: conspiracy to provoke an irrational war that almost never happens,
Speaker 2: you know. But even in that case, obviously there's there's
Speaker 2: conditions on the ground that make that possible. It's not
Speaker 2: just some sort of spontaneous contrivance or conspiratorial design made real,
Speaker 2: because that's not that's not how political affairs develop. But
Speaker 2: the Third Balkan War. Misha Glenny, he's a guy who
Speaker 2: I don't particularly like. I mean, he's he's basically he's
Speaker 2: kind of like a typical like globalist liberal. But he
Speaker 2: did actually write about the only apologia the Serbian people
Speaker 2: that got like mainstream promotion, which is interesting. So he's
Speaker 2: more complicated than some of his declared positions on sociological
Speaker 2: things would suggest. He assigns the onset of the Third
Speaker 2: Balkan War, which is what you know, people in the
Speaker 2: West lump people in the West lump. The Homeland War
Speaker 2: like the Bosnian War and the coast of Low conflict
Speaker 2: into like one conflict. I understand why. I understand why
Speaker 2: they do that, even if it's an incomplete shorthand for
Speaker 2: what really is you know, free discrete conflicts that derived
Speaker 2: from a common next is a causality, but something that
Speaker 2: shouldn't be controversial. June twenty fifth, nineteen ninety one, that's
Speaker 2: that's when hostilities arrived in the Balkans within the conflict
Speaker 2: cycle that is referred to as the Third Balkan War
Speaker 2: in at least an Anglophone countries. That was the date
Speaker 2: that the Republican Slovenia, which led the charge towards THEE Session.
Speaker 2: It wasn't the cross initially. I mean, I think they
Speaker 2: would have anyway. I mean, it's an open ended question,
Speaker 2: but they're the ones who who took that step that theretofore.
Speaker 2: You know, tu Jaman for all of his talk of
Speaker 2: creating a truly Croatian republic that like reflected you know,
Speaker 2: the the singular and an exclusive culture and the Croatian people.
Speaker 2: I mean, he didn't make that move, okay, until after
Speaker 2: the Slovenians declared independence, after the Republic of Croatia did.
Speaker 2: The Yugoslav People's Army, which was Serbian led. Some people
Speaker 2: attacked me for suggesting that the security apparatus was Serb heavy.
Speaker 2: Yugoslav National Army was. It wasn't overwhelmingly Serbian, but the
Speaker 2: majority of general officers, to the tune of about sixty
Speaker 2: and seventy percent, where ethnic Serbs. Like that, they can't
Speaker 2: be denied what their symbolies were. I mean that I
Speaker 2: can't tell you. I mean, I'm sure it varied. I mean,
Speaker 2: but the fact of their majoritarian status can't be denied. Okay,
Speaker 2: the Ugoslav army in Vados, Slovenia, and that was really
Speaker 2: when the die was cast. Now the State Department claim
Speaker 2: as well as what was pontificated about on the floor
Speaker 2: of the United Nations, which in those days, on the
Speaker 2: heels of the Gulf War, the UN still had clout,
Speaker 2: which seems strange today. But there was this big hope
Speaker 2: that the UN was gonna finally fulfill its you know,
Speaker 2: intended function since the Cold War was over. And now
Speaker 2: the reasoning was that, you know, decision making is no
Speaker 2: longer going to be colored by these these kinds of
Speaker 2: strategic exigencies, you know, and now the sort of community
Speaker 2: and nations is going to emerge you know, and and
Speaker 2: work towards like a truly globalized plege of security. That's
Speaker 2: as nine in my opinion, for all kinds of reasons.
Speaker 2: But that was the belief and coming off of the
Speaker 2: Gulf War, which really even more so than the Korean War,
Speaker 2: because I mean the Korean War, the Soviets were boycotting
Speaker 2: the Security Council and so it was, and so were
Speaker 2: a bunch of their client states like this when one
Speaker 2: of Bush's master strokes was the Gulf War, and it
Speaker 2: wasn't just a military operation executed with Prussian efficiency. There
Speaker 2: was truly like a quorum of of of civilized nations
Speaker 2: as it were, including the then still like said Soviet Union.
Speaker 2: So when things what the hell in Yugoslavia, everybody, whether
Speaker 2: you know, from Berlin to Paris to London and to
Speaker 2: Tokyo to Washington, oh well, this is a un matter,
Speaker 2: will come to some sort of we'll come to some
Speaker 2: sort of you know, solution there. And we'll get into
Speaker 2: that in a minute. But because in my opinion, conceptually
Speaker 2: even people don't realize they're doing it, and even that
Speaker 2: coterie of national leadership that was in place in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety one, globally, even the more sophisticated among them, they
Speaker 2: were still sort of drunk on their own rhetoric, which
Speaker 2: for decades by that point had been derived from you know,
Speaker 2: the judgment levity at Nuremberg. They still were operating according
Speaker 2: to this idea that, well, warfare has aggressors and victims,
Speaker 2: or you know, it has people who strike first and
Speaker 2: people are defending themselves. So I think a genuine prejudice
Speaker 2: set in against the Setnik cause for a lot of reasons.
Speaker 2: But initially the claim was, oh, you know, the US
Speaker 2: law people's army, that that's a s Bean, that that's
Speaker 2: a Serbian military force and all but names. So when
Speaker 2: the Yugoslav Mansion army intervene and Slovenia, the claim was, oh,
Speaker 2: this is an example of Serbia identism, you know, and
Speaker 2: that's that's that that that's what's causing all of this.
Speaker 2: And of course Newsweek, which in Time magazine and all
Speaker 2: these kind of print media outlets which in those days too,
Speaker 2: I mean, this is when the legacy media was argulated Zenith.
Speaker 2: They started running these stories about you know, ethnic cleansing
Speaker 2: and mass rate in Bosnia, and the framing of the
Speaker 2: narrative was well, this is all happening because of Serbia identism,
Speaker 2: you know, and Slovanon Belosovich is this mad dictator and
Speaker 2: the only way he's hanging on to power is because
Speaker 2: he's taken on a chetnik guy's none of which makes
Speaker 2: any sense. And for context, at the beginning of nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety one, on Yugoslavia, which still existed, there was a
Speaker 2: federation of six republics with Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Herzegovina,
Speaker 2: Montenegro and Macedonia. Plus there's two autonomous provinces, Virtual Dina
Speaker 2: and Coastovoe. The eight major ethnic populations that lived in
Speaker 2: those regions, they approximately correspond in the political divisions of
Speaker 2: the federation, and this is by design. And in each
Speaker 2: region there could each region could claim an ethnic concentration
Speaker 2: that corresponded to their national signifier. But there were there
Speaker 2: were deep minority populations in all of these loka. Now,
Speaker 2: one big weakness in the narrative, I mean there's many, okay,
Speaker 2: but one big weakness the narrative of Serbs going crazy
Speaker 2: is that not not all Serbs lived in the geographic
Speaker 2: region arbitually designated Serbia. There were six hundred thousand Serbs
Speaker 2: lived in Croatia. The majority of these were urbanized, and
Speaker 2: it went so far as tu Jaman for all, I've
Speaker 2: got a lot of respect for tou Jaman and for
Speaker 2: all of his sophistication as a statesman, and he wasn't
Speaker 2: a military veteran, but he was basically an academic and
Speaker 2: he hung around with the Serbians he hung around were
Speaker 2: in Zagreb or they were cosmopolitan types, you know, who
Speaker 2: he'd met in like university life. And there was the
Speaker 2: urbanized Serbs in Zagreb. They had a symbiotic relationship with
Speaker 2: their Croatian neighbors. Like how much of this owed to
Speaker 2: the fact that they were the minority, and when you
Speaker 2: were a minority, you told the line. That's an open
Speaker 2: ended question. But there was even a portmanteau called Herbie,
Speaker 2: which as of her body, which means cross, and serby,
Speaker 2: which means serbs. So this was like a thing, all right.
Speaker 2: But the core of kind of Serbian identity and patriotism
Speaker 2: in Croatia it was a rural It was concentrated. Uh
Speaker 2: brought slots of the countryside, particularly in Kanin Kanean, which
Speaker 2: is once for context, in the medieval period that's like
Speaker 2: do like the habs for Europe. That's where Croatian kings
Speaker 2: were coronated. Okay, it became a militant home of Serb nationalism. Okay,
Speaker 2: it's very impoverished. People's fortunes and outcomes are very limited
Speaker 2: even today. It's also on the path literally to Dalmatian,
Speaker 2: which is essential. That's a life splood of Croatia and
Speaker 2: like the Balkans in general, Okay, for obvious reasons. You know,
Speaker 2: that's that's the uh, that's the ngress and the negress
Speaker 2: of the Adriatic. See these oral serbs really for the
Speaker 2: I mean they these are the These are the guys
Speaker 2: who are then elderly and the descendants of guys who
Speaker 2: who had fought with you know, the the hail of
Speaker 2: its Chetnicks, you know, like they didn't suddenly become cosmopolitans
Speaker 2: who wanted to live in some Croatian republic. And Tujman,
Speaker 2: now mind you, he's a guy who came up through
Speaker 2: that Tito with stapparatus, So it's not like he was
Speaker 2: like some arch Eusta share or something. And he wasn't
Speaker 2: a fascist, despite what people claimed in Belgrade and what
Speaker 2: a lot of left wingers claimed in Germany and elsewhere.
Speaker 2: But he did draw upon a lot of ustas symbol
Speaker 2: and he did say like, we're not gonna run from
Speaker 2: our leg you know, for our heritage in the indefended
Speaker 2: state of Croatia. You know, basically people who said they
Speaker 2: wanted some sort of disallow of the state, He's like,
Speaker 2: fuck you. And uh, you know, the two Jami regimes
Speaker 2: started doing things, you know, like only conducting official business
Speaker 2: in the Western alphabet. Okay, Serbs used to really and
Speaker 2: this isn't a small thing, Okay, Like even if you
Speaker 2: speak the same common language, you know, even even in dialect,
Speaker 2: that's pretty similar. If suddenly, if suddenly you go outside
Speaker 2: and like, you know, the garments not connucting business and
Speaker 2: an alphabet you can read, they're gonna feel pretty fucking marginalized,
Speaker 2: you know. And even beyond that, it like symbolically it
Speaker 2: it it made the Serbs feel, I'm just profoundly disrespected.
Speaker 2: But when you consider that an act of war was
Speaker 2: on you know, the UH, the Slovenes as well as UH,
Speaker 2: as well as both the Bosnian craws us in the
Speaker 2: Bosnia acts. You know, the Bosnian Moslims who in the
Speaker 2: next episode. Will we'll get into their story a bit
Speaker 2: if if that's agreeable. You know, they were they were
Speaker 2: looking around themselves saying like, there's there's there's there's an
Speaker 2: ethnic war on. You know, this isn't hypothetical anymore. There's
Speaker 2: a shooting war going on between ethnic secession, this and
Speaker 2: the us LAV Army, which at least at the general
Speaker 2: officer level is majoritarian serve. And Tujaman now was saying
Speaker 2: that Croatia is a state exclusively the Croatian people, the
Speaker 2: only democracy that's valid. And Tujiman did run a democracy.
Speaker 2: There were contested elections, that's and arguable. However, as a
Speaker 2: matter of constitutional mandate, you know, the new infendent Croatia
Speaker 2: was exclusively Croatian, you know, and if you didn't identify
Speaker 2: that way, you better start otherwise, you know, you're not
Speaker 2: one of us. And they jump from that in the
Speaker 2: wake of a Ross and Creed which has actually already
Speaker 2: jumped off. I'lbeit in a different theater, but still, you know,
Speaker 2: local to where you live, you're gonna realize that you
Speaker 2: can be very able to find yourself ethnically cleansed. And
Speaker 2: the guys putting the bandit at you could be guys
Speaker 2: who you were totally at peace with, you know, a
Speaker 2: year ago or a month ago or a day ago,
Speaker 2: you know, and people think that's not possible, like even
Speaker 2: in America. Obviously I'm not comparing the two situations, but
Speaker 2: when the Floyd bullshit jumped off, that's right before I
Speaker 2: got off probation, like right before I got back on
Speaker 2: the internet, and I was like, I was living in
Speaker 2: this like ghetto YMCA that was like eighty percent black,
Speaker 2: and I was like, okay with those guys, but I realized,
Speaker 2: like at the worst of it, I'm like, you know,
Speaker 2: if things get like really bad, like these guys aren't
Speaker 2: going to be my friend, you know, like, and it's
Speaker 2: I think most people don't think that way in this country.
Speaker 2: And I mean I'm a minority here. I mean, thankuly
Speaker 2: not in my town, but I mean this palm like
Speaker 2: a minority of one. But I mean, so this idea
Speaker 2: that oh, those people just went crazy, like your neighbors
Speaker 2: wouldn't fucking whack you. Yeah they would. Yeah. I mean
Speaker 2: like even here, let alone in a place things that
Speaker 2: bad enough, you know. I'm not saying people should be
Speaker 2: paranoid or something or you know, order mac and cheese
Speaker 2: buckets from Alex Jones and you know, pretend that the
Speaker 2: fucking apocalypse is coming. But this idea that you know,
Speaker 2: politics can't turn on you because oh we there was
Speaker 2: some kind of concord with my neighbors and they like
Speaker 2: me like that's all bits are often and and and
Speaker 2: a rossen Krieger or whatever equivalent is. You know, So
Speaker 2: that's that's basically that's basically what the perception was. And
Speaker 2: you go Slavia like a lot of the satellite states.
Speaker 2: You know. One of the reasons why East Berlin was
Speaker 2: so important to the Warsaw Pact. It wasn't just because
Speaker 2: that was, you know, the westernmost frontier of the communist world.
Speaker 2: It was because of the Communists, especially because of their
Speaker 2: pretensions about you know, the industrial proletariat and the degree
Speaker 2: to which they relied kind of upon these intellectual university
Speaker 2: types to kind of facilitate the program. You know, they
Speaker 2: they really it's like the countryside like didn't exist to them,
Speaker 2: you know, and even people like too Juman, even though
Speaker 2: in Yugoslavia, I don't believe, I don't believe Titoism was
Speaker 2: ever adoptionary kind of Marxist Leninism, but it definitely the
Speaker 2: political culture definitely was similar in terms of blind spots
Speaker 2: and these guys. It's like even in the small country,
Speaker 2: you know, it's like it's like the countryside you know
Speaker 2: where three you know, six indreo thousand Serbs live, you know,
Speaker 2: who view life and the ethnic situation the same way
Speaker 2: they did in nineteen forty one. It's like this didn't
Speaker 2: exist because like, oh, here in Zagreb, you know, we
Speaker 2: were all the same and our served neighbors, you know
Speaker 2: them gon a funny customs to go to the wrong church,
Speaker 2: but they can learn to be Croatian ha ha, Like
Speaker 2: there really is something to that, and you know that
Speaker 2: that really can't be overstated, you know, the uh so
Speaker 2: it was basically in Canean the canon and basically what
Speaker 2: became the secessionist crane uh Serb Republic. This is where
Speaker 2: this is where the crowd say, actually could not afford
Speaker 2: going to be some kind of iridescent Serbian movement or
Speaker 2: some kind of mobilized Chitnik response to what Zagreb was doing.
Speaker 2: That's the last place they can afford this to happen.
Speaker 2: And it's absolutely where it did happen. And there's also
Speaker 2: going to be the toughest Serbs live the creation that's
Speaker 2: where they lived, you know. The uh So, in the
Speaker 2: first month at two Jamond's election, and again I emphasized
Speaker 2: that Tujman was elected, people are gonna say whatever they
Speaker 2: you know, it's kind of like people have become less
Speaker 2: friendly to Croatia, the Croatia of history in academic treat medisine.
Speaker 2: Know now that we're like thirty years out and you know,
Speaker 2: they're they're increasingly casting to Jaman is so I'm going
Speaker 2: to dictator. I mean, the Croatian system of this day
Speaker 2: is a strongly presidential system. But tou Jaman was elected
Speaker 2: president and a normal election. You know, you can't you
Speaker 2: can't just say you can't claim you know that like
Speaker 2: Russia is not a democracy. I mean Croatia is a
Speaker 2: democratic is any other country on Earth? Okay? And it
Speaker 2: was in nineteen ninety one as it is today, you know.
Speaker 2: And uh in the lead up to tu Jemon's election,
Speaker 2: again it was its academic university friends, but not only
Speaker 2: ran his campaign and sort of integrated his platform and
Speaker 2: his optics into a modern media apparatus at a kind
Speaker 2: that you know existed in the West. But these are
Speaker 2: the guys who are advising him on policy also, you know,
Speaker 2: and what he needed, I mean, frankly, he needed the
Speaker 2: defectors from the usav National Army who knew the situation
Speaker 2: and the military apparatus as it stood then, not twenty
Speaker 2: years ago. You know, he needed he needed guys who
Speaker 2: could tell him what the situation was on the ground,
Speaker 2: you know, in the countryside where you know, when war came.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's not only worth decided, but that's that's
Speaker 2: what Croage would have to capture in order to remain
Speaker 2: viable as a state. And uh the uh. There was
Speaker 2: also two the local cadres that facilitated Tujeman's ascendancy. In
Speaker 2: contrast to the people who constitute his cabinet. A lot
Speaker 2: of these guys were probably what would be viewed under
Speaker 2: normal conditions as extreme. You know. There were guys who
Speaker 2: for years or for decades in some cases that they
Speaker 2: were middle aged. There were guys who'd basically been like
Speaker 2: carrying the torch of of crawd nationalism, you know, and
Speaker 2: biding their time until the Titos regime could be torn down.
Speaker 2: These guys had a basic antipathy to serbs like that
Speaker 2: that can't be denied. You know, such a ground organization
Speaker 2: are basically guys who hate serves anyway, It doesn't matter what,
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter what your control group is saying. It
Speaker 2: doesn't matter what Tujman, you know, playing mellow academic is
Speaker 2: talking about a conciliatory posture between populations. You know, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's not it's not it's not something, it's not something
Speaker 2: that's that's gonna resolve in anything but a violent separation. Now.
Speaker 2: I I mean again, like nobody's in augur and I think,
Speaker 2: I think key political figures, even people who had a
Speaker 2: better understanding, remember realistic understanding of the situation than perhaps
Speaker 2: Chujiman himself did, they couldn't have foreseen the extent of
Speaker 2: the differences, and like the degree of the division and
Speaker 2: the kind of hostility just beneath the surface, like coming
Speaker 2: from both sides. And when Tujman won the nineteen ninety election,
Speaker 2: what he should have done, regardless of what he intended
Speaker 2: in terms of you know, making the city apparatus, you know,
Speaker 2: truly like a truly national, democratically exclusively crowd apparatus, Like
Speaker 2: he absolutely should not have done anything provocative until it
Speaker 2: was clear where the cards were gonna fall and in
Speaker 2: terms of secession and what the response in Belgrade was
Speaker 2: gonna be. But at the same time too, there's a
Speaker 2: twenty twenty hindsight, and even even in a relatively unfree country,
Speaker 2: which Creatia was not. Again, but even under conditions where
Speaker 2: an executive doesn't have to abide some sort of direct
Speaker 2: ballot mandate, I mean, every every chief executive is bound
Speaker 2: by the tenor of the of a opinion in the
Speaker 2: body politic, you know, So, I mean I Tujuman was
Speaker 2: in part be kind of carried on a current of
Speaker 2: of of zeitgeist that probably was irrepressible. And there's also
Speaker 2: I mean, there's always there's always something of uh, I
Speaker 2: mean you as you know, because of where you live
Speaker 2: now when compared to the locale of your birth and upbringing,
Speaker 2: there's always some kind of disdain that the city has
Speaker 2: for the country. Like all these people they're they're just
Speaker 2: simple fucking people. Like they they're passive, they're going to
Speaker 2: tolerate whatever we kind of put on them. Like that's
Speaker 2: never the case, you know, and particularly not when there's
Speaker 2: a tradition of partisanship that breaks down rigidly on ethnic lines.
Speaker 2: I mean, like there wasn't Croatia. But you know, again,
Speaker 2: a lot of this I think is out of a
Speaker 2: Hegelian A lot of this is out of man's hands,
Speaker 2: you know. And it's also the uh, the one thing
Speaker 2: people did say at the time. And you know, Tito
Speaker 2: himself was a Croat and he successfully suppressed Serb fraud
Speaker 2: enemity during the totality of his rule. But I mean,
Speaker 2: I think that's misguided too, man. I mean, one of
Speaker 2: the things Tito he drives his mandate not from the
Speaker 2: fact that cross and Serbs suddenly decided they love one another.
Speaker 2: It's because the genius and Tito is he found a
Speaker 2: way to keep both uncle saying man the Soviets out,
Speaker 2: you know. And I mean that even the most even
Speaker 2: the most kind of sectarian minded, ethnically chauvinistic minded Prome
Speaker 2: Serb or Bosniak would realize that, you know. And within
Speaker 2: this paradigm, you know, we stand together, or we at
Speaker 2: least tolerate the situation as it is, or or or
Speaker 2: or we all die, you know. I know, I don't
Speaker 2: think that's entirely fair, you know. And there was other
Speaker 2: things too, I mean, the this was documented. It wasn't
Speaker 2: just probably probably in it from Belgrade, like upon the
Speaker 2: ascendancy of upon two mins of elections, there was like
Speaker 2: a massed emotion and termination to serves from from high
Speaker 2: and intermediate government positions, you know, literary Craat, literary Croatian.
Speaker 2: It had to be spoken in administrative positions of officialdom.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just the Western alphabet had to be used
Speaker 2: by everybody, but you were basically prohibited from speaking with
Speaker 2: a Serbian accent. I mean that that's stuff and stuff
Speaker 2: like that as a flex you know, I mean, it
Speaker 2: doesn't there there's no other way to characterize it. And
Speaker 2: the the failed conflict resolution model again, I mean, frankly,
Speaker 2: uh however misguided in terms of the assumptions people held
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety one about the potentiality of a truly
Speaker 2: global collective security. At least, thank god it was that
Speaker 2: coterie at Department of State and not this current crop
Speaker 2: of INSANE'SUS and out and out you know, mental subnormals.
Speaker 2: I mean, when I can't even imagine that would play out.
Speaker 2: But the the big believe it or not, the big
Speaker 2: question was on the U and the U and General
Speaker 2: Assembly and Security Council, like is this an international conflict
Speaker 2: or is this a civil war? And that significance was key, okay,
Speaker 2: because the United Nations, misguided as it may have been,
Speaker 2: you know, philosophically to suggest that such a thing could
Speaker 2: be viable. The Charter was written with an eye for restraint,
Speaker 2: in part because you know, obviously Stalin's representatives had to
Speaker 2: be placated and ironically, you know, as Yaki pointed out
Speaker 2: again and again, I mean that actually had the effect
Speaker 2: of imposing restraint upon Washington dominating the world and facilitating
Speaker 2: as social engineering regime or the officer is a collective security.
Speaker 2: But the UN General Assembly had no they had they
Speaker 2: had no grounds to vote a resolution on a civil
Speaker 2: war as regards you know, sanctioning that the party combatants
Speaker 2: or directly or the UN Security counts let no grounds
Speaker 2: to intervene, you know, unless there was an international dimension
Speaker 2: to the conflict. You know, it would be suggested by people.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons why in the era of everybody
Speaker 2: loved to bandy genocide and accused people who didn't like
Speaker 2: of committing it. This is arguably the Genocide Convention superseded
Speaker 2: the WIN Charter as a Djiurie grounds for intervention if
Speaker 2: one accepts international law paradigms as legitimate. But obviously, UH
Speaker 2: in nineteen ninety one it wasn't credible to talk that way.
Speaker 2: I mean, it wasn't particularly in subsequent years. But you
Speaker 2: can't levy. You can't levy in an accusation of genocide
Speaker 2: within like once the anside of hostilities, like it's that
Speaker 2: obviously be a propaganda ployd but you know Belgrade, which
Speaker 2: to Belgrade at the time it was and really until
Speaker 2: the conclusion of hostilities, the UH, the Serbians identified as
Speaker 2: the Union of you you know, the Yuoslavian Union of
Speaker 2: Serbia and Montenegro. You know, they never claimed like, oh,
Speaker 2: we are Serbia where you know, we're creating, you know,
Speaker 2: like an ethno national state of Serbians, mirroring Tujman. They
Speaker 2: claimed Yugoslavia is you know where the Yugoslavian government and
Speaker 2: secession is against the law. These people are engaged in.
Speaker 2: They're they're waging war on on the sovereign government of Yugoslavia,
Speaker 2: you know, which is UH, which is UH, which is
Speaker 2: both illegal and as well as an internal affair. You know,
Speaker 2: now it's key the UH until the end The official
Speaker 2: position at Belgrade was that this is a civil war,
Speaker 2: you know, and Yugoslavia never ceased to exist, you know,
Speaker 2: and the people are claiming that it's a dead letter
Speaker 2: in the Yugoslavia's could put our our fascists, who have,
Speaker 2: you know, a racialized view of of of high politics
Speaker 2: like over dishonest. That may have been depending your perspective,
Speaker 2: I mean it, it was it, you know. Bea never succeeded,
Speaker 2: and Servia never claimed that the US Slabbian constitution was
Speaker 2: no avoid and that we're reconstituting as a Serb republic.
Speaker 2: Criina did constitute itself as the Republic of the Republic
Speaker 2: of Serbia. But you know, this is this is important.
Speaker 2: It's not just legal eese. It had real war and
Speaker 2: peace impactfulness. But it's also the i mean, the key
Speaker 2: the key shortcoming of the United Nations and executive terms.
Speaker 2: I'm a sorry from the fact, however much philosophically these
Speaker 2: things aren't viable. I mean, what what what what? What?
Speaker 2: What are you and Blue is gonna do? Are they
Speaker 2: gonna Are they gonna occupy I think occupy Bosnian assault
Speaker 2: the Yugoslav army with combined arms, I mean no one's
Speaker 2: ever been able to explicate how this works. And even
Speaker 2: in situations like in Lebanon after eighty two, or the
Speaker 2: United Nations deployees you know what, the United Nations deployees
Speaker 2: permissively because all party combat and just allow it to deploy,
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, it's not you know, you can't
Speaker 2: speak of international law when it's when categorically it can't
Speaker 2: be compulsory. So it's sort of paralysis set it in.
Speaker 2: But it's also there was a broader problem that we
Speaker 2: touched on in the first episode. If the UN to
Speaker 2: come out and said this is an international conflict just
Speaker 2: in absolute terms, it's not a civil war, you know,
Speaker 2: that would have at this time there was still a
Speaker 2: truly conciliatory posture towards the Soviet Union, which was about
Speaker 2: to dissolve, albeit but saying suddenly, this is Croatia ors
Speaker 2: a Serbia with Bosnia caught in the middle, when the
Speaker 2: Bosniaks kind of just trying to survive, It's like, well,
Speaker 2: Cole already a me recognized the independent state of Croatia.
Speaker 2: You know, you'd essentially be sowing the seeds of a
Speaker 2: wider ethnic conflict between Germany and Russia, like each backing
Speaker 2: their client regime and a sort of a zero sum
Speaker 2: paradigm developing. I think that was underway anyway. But again,
Speaker 2: you've got to put yourself in the year nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2: You know, this wasn't this wasn't accepted thinking. The idea
Speaker 2: was that this is sort of a blip on the
Speaker 2: path to you know, global clicktive security arrangement. People are
Speaker 2: still seriously talking about the Bush Baker model of we're gonna,
Speaker 2: we're gonna totally the Soviet Union is gonna totally disarm
Speaker 2: its strategic nuclear forces and draw down it's conventional force
Speaker 2: divine or levels, and like we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna,
Speaker 2: we're gonna with draw from Germany, and like NATO basically
Speaker 2: isn't gonna exist anymore. Like this was the way people think,
Speaker 2: not just talking. So that's important to consider, you know.
Speaker 2: And again the uh IF, I think some of the
Speaker 2: uh I think some of what was alleged in terms
Speaker 2: of ethnic cleansing and and mass rape, like organized like
Speaker 2: sexual violence, some of that was overstated. Some of it
Speaker 2: was not okay. And we're loving to use the term
Speaker 2: war crimes because said dandy so much to the floating
Speaker 2: signifier has become meaningless. But there is direct testimony that
Speaker 2: I I from, you know, n c o s and
Speaker 2: junior officers who were witnessed to these events and they
Speaker 2: have no reason to lie about it and every reason
Speaker 2: to deny it. And I find that test somebody persuaded them.
Speaker 2: And these weren't guys to themselves who were under indictment,
Speaker 2: you know. And I think anybody doesn't believe those kind
Speaker 2: of things happen in a ross and creeze being naive,
Speaker 2: and I think everybody agrees that that kind of stuff
Speaker 2: is horrible. But again it's like what do you It's
Speaker 2: never been clear with the people who claim that you
Speaker 2: should have the quote done something, So like what do
Speaker 2: you do? You know, you deploy the combined arms and
Speaker 2: assault the USLAV armies, like now you're at war with Serbia,
Speaker 2: Like I don't know, give us idea that somehow you
Speaker 2: can enter a combay zone, like an active conflict zone,
Speaker 2: you know, with combined arms and like be like the
Speaker 2: police or something and people stop what they're doing. You know,
Speaker 2: like you you just become a party combatant when you
Speaker 2: do that, you know you're you're you're you're joining a
Speaker 2: gunfight that you didn't have to, you know, and that's
Speaker 2: basically it. You know, it doesn't there's not that, there's
Speaker 2: not there's not there's not some equitable resolution because oh,
Speaker 2: they represent the United Nations. You know, it's preposterous. Now,
Speaker 2: there was a claim Bosnia Herzegovina, which I think everybody
Speaker 2: will agree was on the receiving end of the worst
Speaker 2: excesses by all by all party combatants. Under Article twenty
Speaker 2: five of the UN Charter, member states can vote to
Speaker 2: intervene in a conflict zone where to not intervene would
Speaker 2: be inconsistent with you know, like the fundamental protection human
Speaker 2: rights and things of this sort. The language is ambiguous,
Speaker 2: But the fact of the situation in Bosnia, where arguably
Speaker 2: there was no majoritarian ethnos and even if you disagreed
Speaker 2: with the idea that you know, the Yugoslavian, the Balkan,
Speaker 2: the Third Broken War was an international conflict. Obviously whatever
Speaker 2: government had could be said to exist in Vazio Scovina
Speaker 2: had totally broken down. That would have been the best
Speaker 2: case if you were gonna rely upon United Nations legal
Speaker 2: rationales to intervene. But again like what what would that
Speaker 2: force have been made up of? You you're gonna send
Speaker 2: like the Buddhist far in there is you got like
Speaker 2: a German army now marching in under the Office of
Speaker 2: the UN saying oh, well we're here, you know, to
Speaker 2: represent all nations. You're gonna you know, the Russians a
Speaker 2: piece of that. You know, again, like the degree to
Speaker 2: which real politique emergent earnest but of a start that
Speaker 2: was somewhat more complicated than during the Cold War, just
Speaker 2: in terms of that kind of conflict diets potentially that
Speaker 2: we're emerging like that can't be overstated too. I mean,
Speaker 2: so then it's some of you're left with, Like even
Speaker 2: if the political will is there, even if there's some
Speaker 2: sort of operational roadmap two resolve or you know, to
Speaker 2: enforce the cease fire, like who do you deploy? You're
Speaker 2: gonna get a bunch of You're gonna get a bunch
Speaker 2: of like third world like like dealisters from like Ecuador
Speaker 2: or to you know, to police Bosnia. I mean that's
Speaker 2: on some level. You know, there was kind of a
Speaker 2: hard lesson driven home about what a foolish move it
Speaker 2: was to destroy Europe and kind of like rob the
Speaker 2: it's constituent states a sovereignty because something like this happens,
Speaker 2: like you need hasperg Empire interview. You know, you needed
Speaker 2: Germany intervene, or you needed Germany and a Russia to
Speaker 2: intervene and kind of decide among themselves. What's fear of influences?
Speaker 2: You know, people can say all they want, like, well,
Speaker 2: that doesn't matter if we're talking about the rule of law.
Speaker 2: It absolutely doesn't matter, you know, because like the human
Speaker 2: dimension always matters, and we're talking about human affairs. So
Speaker 2: it was this kind of paralysis that just dragged on.
Speaker 2: And Lawrence Egelberger, I'm actually more sympathetic too than a
Speaker 2: lot of people. And I'm more simple to him as
Speaker 2: a man. I mean he's dead now, but and as well,
Speaker 2: I'm more sympathetic to him than a lot of the
Speaker 2: hoy PELOI say nasty things about him, not unlike the Kissinger.
Speaker 2: But he was under Secretary of State for a time
Speaker 2: in the Bush forty one administration. He said immediately the
Speaker 2: honesset of hostilities. Look, you've got to let this conflicts.
Speaker 2: I will punch itself out, because if you intervene, you're
Speaker 2: just gonna upset the balance. They're gonna drag out hostilities,
Speaker 2: you know, and there isn't a solution basically, you know,
Speaker 2: the the new Croatia and the New Serbia and whatever
Speaker 2: the fate of Bosnia is, it's going to be decided
Speaker 2: on the battlefield. And obviously he was you know, raked
Speaker 2: from the cold and media like, oh, how dare you
Speaker 2: say this, You're encouraging mass reef and genocide. I mean no, Actually,
Speaker 2: exactly what Egoberger said like ended up happening in uh
Speaker 2: N five. America intervened uh the Facilitati operations storm was
Speaker 2: is the Croatian liberation of the Crimea, which you know
Speaker 2: was the belated victory in the Homeland War for Croatia.
Speaker 2: But that was a that was only the that was
Speaker 2: only the that was America facilitated that by use of
Speaker 2: a PMC outfit called m PRI, which was incorporated essentially
Speaker 2: for that purpose, you know, for the for an operation
Speaker 2: in Croatia, which is very interesting and in the final
Speaker 2: episode we'll get into that. But basically, you know, for
Speaker 2: all the talk about Wilberger was saying was was horrifically callous.
Speaker 2: I mean that what it came down to was what
Speaker 2: what resolved the conflict? The comics was deafly what he said,
Speaker 2: you know, the party combats exhausted their ability to wage
Speaker 2: war and UH battlefield battlefield victory and crina albeit with
Speaker 2: you know, American assistance is what resolved for all time,
Speaker 2: the the disputed or the contested UH objective that was crime.
Speaker 2: I hope, hope people will back off of that I'm
Speaker 2: saying that I hate Serbs, what I'm saying bad things
Speaker 2: about them, or that I I've got some conceptual bias
Speaker 2: and favor of Croatia. We should talk a little bit
Speaker 2: about Slogani on the walls.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been a lot of people's lifetimes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I understand why if I was a Serbian
Speaker 2: and I was in America or the UK, like I
Speaker 2: feel very much like a population designated for hostility. You know,
Speaker 2: I understand that completely, Okay, but I don't think people
Speaker 2: One of the one of the reasons I focus so
Speaker 2: much on the Third Right is because is the international
Speaker 2: system and the entire sort of conceptual horizon that's been
Speaker 2: crafted around World War Two. You've got to deal with
Speaker 2: the Third Reich as sort of like the primary like
Speaker 2: agent like in that narrative. Okay, So I'm not just
Speaker 2: like fixated on these things at a smaller scale if
Speaker 2: you're talking about if you're talking about the Yugoslavian wars
Speaker 2: or what or what you know, the the Third Balkan
Speaker 2: War at least the ninety one ninety five phase that
Speaker 2: led to the creation of an independent Croatia. Like you've
Speaker 2: got to deal with the Croatian political culture and what
Speaker 2: and basically you know what the West view of Croatia
Speaker 2: was and what tu Jaman was doing, That's what was
Speaker 2: the dispositive variable. Okay, So like I begin with discussing
Speaker 2: their Croatian situation. Also because CROs or are like German
Speaker 2: adjacent and thus like Western adjacent, I frankly know more
Speaker 2: about them than I do Serbians. But in my defense, again,
Speaker 2: what was happening in Zagreb, and uh, it wasn't the
Speaker 2: sole approximate cause of the conflict, but it was it
Speaker 2: was the essential cause. Okay. The what Croatia did decided
Speaker 2: the course of the war and the ultimately became the
Speaker 2: political resolution. Like where like when the shooting stopped, you know,
Speaker 2: the frontiers were established and accepted. It wasn't what Slovenian
Speaker 2: or Macedonia was doing. It wasn't what the Bosniaks were doing.
Speaker 2: Like those things had an impact. But again, like that's why, so,
Speaker 2: I mean, I would have dealt with a Serbian perspective anyway,
Speaker 2: but I thought it was especially imperative to do so
Speaker 2: for for that reason. But Melosovich himself, I mean again,
Speaker 2: he was He was a career communistep arratchik. He rose
Speaker 2: to a general secretary positionary equivalent around nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 2: and actually the late Reagan administration looked at him as
Speaker 2: their guy, like he was going to be like this
Speaker 2: big liberalizer like he was. Basically he was supposed to
Speaker 2: be like the Yugoslavian garbage show off. Okay, that's one
Speaker 2: of the ways he got swept into power, was able
Speaker 2: to consolidate his authority the way that he did, you know,
Speaker 2: Like so this this kind of this exupposed facto rationalization,
Speaker 2: you know that really began in Earnest in ninety one
Speaker 2: and kind of just when it became totally irrational impunitive
Speaker 2: during the Clinton regime. That Melosovich is like this madman
Speaker 2: like chetnik, like there's completely at odds with reality and history,
Speaker 2: Like the face he he he was this big like
Speaker 2: liberal moderate. That's how he enjoyed the kind of patronage
Speaker 2: that he did it. Uh And honestly, you know, Melissa
Speaker 2: Benches fall from grace and power within his own country.
Speaker 2: Kastunisha was elected president on October fifth, two thousand and
Speaker 2: part of the big the big reason why Kristunika or Kostunisha,
Speaker 2: if you're give me, if I'm booksuring the pronunciation, one
Speaker 2: of the big reasons why he was able to break
Speaker 2: through is because he was a Serb nationalist and Melosovich.
Speaker 2: The big criticism Melosavich within Serbia was he turned his
Speaker 2: back on the on the Serbian refugees. He didn't care
Speaker 2: about our people. You know, he didn't fight hard enough,
Speaker 2: you know, for the for the for the coast of
Speaker 2: our Serbs. You know, like he he wasn't this big chetnik,
Speaker 2: you know, like he was basically pragmatic. And this claim
Speaker 2: that you know, most of the most of the grossest
Speaker 2: excesses wherever one falls in their sympathy or background or whatever,
Speaker 2: I don't think I would disagree that the worst excess
Speaker 2: is carried out by all party. Combats took place in Bosnia, Okay,
Speaker 2: and the idea that from Belgrade Melosevitch was somehow directing
Speaker 2: like the Bosnian Serbs to do his bidding. Like this
Speaker 2: is not I mean, that's not the way command authority
Speaker 2: works in a modern state. But it's also like the
Speaker 2: Bosnian Stirs might as well have been in a different country. Okay,
Speaker 2: Like I'm not saying that, you know, the the affinity
Speaker 2: that their co ethnics had for them was misplaced. I'm
Speaker 2: not saying that at all, Like it was not misplaced,
Speaker 2: But the point is it was almost it was a
Speaker 2: totally it was a totally different socio political situation, you know,
Speaker 2: like it'd be it's it'd be like saying like Jefferson
Speaker 2: Davis was like it was ordering buddy Billy Anderson to
Speaker 2: do things. You It's like that sounds asidine, but the
Speaker 2: klan that I just raised is acidine. And people accepted
Speaker 2: this is oh most of it is this a bad guy.
Speaker 2: And like again I think I think sometimes that's like,
Speaker 2: you know, the propaganda being distilled down into the most
Speaker 2: kind of idiots caricature of reality. But it's also you
Speaker 2: know the problem with assigning legalists legalisms and parent legalism.
Speaker 2: Parent legalist paradigms and legalisms. The high politics, as was
Speaker 2: done at Nuremberg, is it creates these perverse narratives where they're, oh,
Speaker 2: there's there's there's command authorities who are bad actors, you know,
Speaker 2: and they're the approximate cause of conflict, and everybody within
Speaker 2: that chain of command is accountable to this bad actor.
Speaker 2: Like this is not reality. You know. The uh I
Speaker 2: guarantee you that some of the most hardened chet knicks
Speaker 2: in uh Crina and in Bosnia and probably never even
Speaker 2: heard most of it speak in their lives, like even
Speaker 2: on the radio, you know, like he had nothing to
Speaker 2: do with their conceptual horizon other than he was like
Speaker 2: this remote like boss who in del Reid who Yeah,
Speaker 2: we like that he's Serbian. But other than that, you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's ridiculous, you know. And it's also too. I mean, basically,
Speaker 2: if you look at the modern Serbian state under Melosovich
Speaker 2: and now, and you look at the modern Croatian state,
Speaker 2: I know too, Jaman and now, like basically everything else
Speaker 2: suggested to be this kind of like a horrible and
Speaker 2: democratic feature of Serbia or what they called Yugoslavia after
Speaker 2: the secession of Croatia and UH Slovenia. I mean those
Speaker 2: are basically features common to Croatia. You know, there's there's
Speaker 2: what we would consider it basically chauvinus, UH, you know
Speaker 2: nationalism that you know, characterized the party politics. There's a
Speaker 2: basic discrount, distrust of pluralism and UH casting UH candidates
Speaker 2: who talked about like, you know, a multi ethnic uh
Speaker 2: Croatia where we're reviewed as traders, you know, UH, bad
Speaker 2: relations with the West, you know, and and and admittedly
Speaker 2: they had more we're to do with what the West
Speaker 2: was doing than what Serbian Croatia were doing, but you know,
Speaker 2: consistent economic stagnation, you know, reliance on subsidies, and you
Speaker 2: know a handful of kind of key like national industries.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is like everything they say about Serbia,
Speaker 2: like being dysfunctional. It's like a mirror image of the
Speaker 2: reality in Croatia. So I mean there's that too, like
Speaker 2: I and I mean, I'm not I'm not saying to
Speaker 2: be punitive. I got I think the Cross deserves about
Speaker 2: great people, and I respect the fact that they've resisted,
Speaker 2: you know, the the social engine regime astauantcy as they have.
Speaker 2: But you can't you can't cast Serbian this light and say, oh,
Speaker 2: but Croatia is not like that, because they're basically mirrors
Speaker 2: of each other, like structurally, you know. And and frankly,
Speaker 2: tu Jman Uh, he was a lot different than Melosovich,
Speaker 2: like in terms of his character and in terms of
Speaker 2: like his background, like we talked about in the first episode,
Speaker 2: but he in terms of he was no more autocratic
Speaker 2: than Melosovich was, Like arguably, I mean Tujman once the
Speaker 2: war kicked off. I yes, Tujon was elected. Yes there
Speaker 2: were fair elections in Croatia, but I don't think he
Speaker 2: could have been removed like during this you know, the
Speaker 2: State Act at war. Okay. Arguably he was like more
Speaker 2: like like Molosa, which was more susceptible you know, to
Speaker 2: like removal by due process than Tujman was. So there's
Speaker 2: I mean, there's that too, Like you can't that this
Speaker 2: attempt like other like the Serbians is is bullshit, okay.
Speaker 2: And I mean, I I had thought that I conveyed
Speaker 2: that clearly in our previous discussions, but because apparently I didn't,
Speaker 2: I wanted our Serbian Orthodox friends to know that I
Speaker 2: take that very seriously, and I'm I'm not disdaining them
Speaker 2: or their considerations. But it's also too and the reason
Speaker 2: why I'm Melosovich in his favor. One of the reasons
Speaker 2: why he enjoyed the incumbentcated for thirteen years, you know,
Speaker 2: like he did implement a market economy in a way
Speaker 2: that didn't completely crash the the country, you know, unlike Yelson,
Speaker 2: for example, he did tolerate multi party elections. I mean, admittedly,
Speaker 2: like the political culture was exclusively you know, kind of
Speaker 2: like Serb centric, but I mean again, that's appropriate. The
Speaker 2: national democracy there was, there was an actual opposition, you know,
Speaker 2: they did it media access. I mean, this wasn't like
Speaker 2: all the kind of all the kind of pole stars
Speaker 2: that these m g O types claim like constitute you know,
Speaker 2: like a democratic state we approve of like he met
Speaker 2: those Okay, I mean Serbia is a hell a lot
Speaker 2: more free than israel Is, I'll tell you that much.
Speaker 2: I mean, if that's you know, if that's any if
Speaker 2: if that's the metric, you know, you can't you can't
Speaker 2: claim that it was it was like Saddam's Iraq or
Speaker 2: like it was this dictatorship or something, you know. I
Speaker 2: mean it basically one of the reasons why again, like
Speaker 2: Reagan's people and then Bushes people. Initially Melosmitch was their
Speaker 2: guy is because he was basically doing he was basically
Speaker 2: acting like a like a post communist, the like European
Speaker 2: politician is supposed to act. You know. So this the
Speaker 2: fact he was hailed into the Hague, you know, I think,
Speaker 2: but you know, he he he died when he was
Speaker 2: on trial, and I but I thought he had quoting
Speaker 2: himself very honorably, you know. I like, well, and we'll
Speaker 2: get into that in the in the book and episode.
Speaker 2: I think, Uh, it's about all I got for to day.
Speaker 2: Like frankly, I don't mean to be a I don't
Speaker 2: mean to be a uh F A or p h
Speaker 2: A G d O T. But I'm in a lot
Speaker 2: of pain right now. Uh go ahead, I'm sorry, Yeah,
Speaker 2: no problem at all.
Speaker 1: Just uh hit hit up whatever you want to promote
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, we'll get out of here.
Speaker 2: No, that's great, Thank you, Pete. You can find me
Speaker 2: on substack real Thomas seven seven seven substack dot com.
Speaker 2: I'm having to report to annaly Pill Publishing. They're dear
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Speaker 2: You're find me on YouTube and Thomas TV number seven
Speaker 2: H one A S TV. I'm uploading some like videos
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Speaker 2: with some of the people I talk to and things.
Speaker 2: So that's gonna I'm hoping that's gonna pop a little
Speaker 2: more as I upload more stuff. But that's what I
Speaker 2: got all right until the next time. Thank you,