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