The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel YUGOSLAVIA: A VERSAILLES FAILURE SINCE JUNE 1942, when I returned to America, startling events, the seeds of which I saw planted both before the German invasion and afterward, have profoundly affected the political and military situation in the Balkans. I feel obliged, therefore, to supplement my narrative of personal experience by a more systematic account of what happened to the doomed kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. On December I, 1918, a new state was created: the kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Officially proclaimed in Belgrade, it was immediately recognized by the United States. It was composed of the three countries previously known as Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia and soon changed its name for convenience to Yugoslavia, i.e., the country of the southern Slavs. The Serbs live mainly in the eastern, the Croats in the western, and the Slovenes in the northwestern part of the kingdom and, as is often the case in mountainous countries, the characteristics of these different races are strikingly distinct. Although small, the Balkans have played an important role in European history, not so much because of natural resources, but because they form the age-old corridor from Asia to Europe. The shortest route from northern Europe to the Near East follows the river valleys of the Danube, Morava, and Nishava as they flow through Yugoslavia. One of the shortest routes to Germany for a land army invading Europe leads from Salonika in Greece, one of the two best harbors in the Balkans, up the Vardar and Morava river valleys of Serbia to Vienna. The fact that the Serbs stand astride this strategic highway largely explains the troubled history of these people. Kipling's famous war correspondent who used to go around muttering "Mark my words, there'll be trouble in the Balkans in the spring" often saw his predictions fulfilled. But Balkan trouble was caused, not by an essential instability of the inhabitants themselves, but by the "divide and rule" policy which the would-be masters of the world have always used to further their ends. This policy was applied first by the Turks, then with great astuteness by Italy, and last by Germany during the period between World War I and World War II. The chief industry of Yugoslavia was agriculture. Serbia proper is predominantly devoted to farming and the average landholding is about twenty acres. There are almost no large landed proprietors and no near-feudal agricultural serfs, as in many other parts of Europe. Ancient laws forbid the breaking up of these family farms. The care of the soil is well understood, nutritional standards are high, and the people are extraordinarily hardy. Only Slovenia and the northern part of Croatia are industrialized. In blood and language the people of Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia are homogeneous. But in historical conditioning and religion the races are very different. When in the seventh century the great schism between the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church of Constantinople split the Mediterranean world into halves, the territory now called Yugoslavia lay on the border line of the two religious faiths. The Serbs developed their own church with a Patriarch independent of Constantinople. But whenever a great power considered it profitable to intrigue in the Balkans, religious rivalry was there, ready to be fanned into hot flame. A further fact of importance is that the province of Croatia adjoins Austro-Hungary and that the ties between the cultural life of Croatia and of Austria have always been close. For over a thousand years the province of Croatia was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Students from Croatia finished their education in the universities of Vienna and Prague, and there were heavy settlements of Germans in Croatian territory, deliberately fostered by Austro-Hungary for her own ends. These Germanic immigrants displaced Serbs, who retired to the mountains and became the ancestors of the Chetniks who are now battling dauntlessly under Mihailovich. In contrast to the Croats, the Serbs, never a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, have been relatively unaffected by German culture. They are the heirs of a Byzantine civilization. From 1166 to 1389 Serbia was an independent state. In 1389 the Serbs were conquered by the Turks and after many struggles regained their freedom in 1814 The Croats, on the other hand, had always been a subject people, fighting only on the side of their overlords, agitating always for their own advantage. Therefore, while the Serbs became adepts with the sword, the Croats became experts at intrigue. In the nineteenth century the independence and demonstrated military ability of the Serbs was, of course, viewed with disfavor and anxiety by Austro-Hungary. In 1879 she occupied Bosnia, a Serbian province lying west of Serbia proper, and in 1908 she annexed both the provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, an incident which almost provoked a world war. Not feeling herself safe even after the acquisition of all these territories in her empire, Austria decided in 1914 to attack the Serbs. Says Leon Dominian, the geographer: "The presentation of an ultimatum to Serbia by Austria on July I, 1914, was the preliminary step toward opening a pathway for Germany and Austria to Salonica and Constantinople. Then, as soon as Austro-German power should be solidly established athwart the Bosphorus, the intention was to secure control of the land routes to Egypt, the Persian Gulf, and India." The Serbs determined to defend their dearly bought liberty against any odds, and-World War I started. THE RELATIONS OF THE SERBS AND THE CROATS In view of the basic historical differences between the Croats and the Serbs it was hardly to be expected that the kingdom of Yugoslavia, hastily put together in 1918, would work out smoothly. In fact, dissension between the Croats and the Serbs began almost immediately. The new state was composed as follows: Population of Yugoslavia in 1940 Serbs . . . . . -. . 8,000,000 Croats . . . . . . . 3,000,000 Slovenes . . . . . .1,500,000 #Mixed Elements . . 3,500,000 6,000,000 *Mixed elements include approximately: 1,250,000 Mohammedan Serbs and Turks, 500,000 Germans, 500,000 Hungarians, 500,000 Albanians, 300,000 Rumanians, 75,000 Jews. Yugoslavia was patched together out of Serbia and Montenegro, a Serb principality which had achieved its independence from Turkey in the nineteenth century; Croatia and Voivodina, taken from Hungary; Dalmatia and Slovenia, taken from Austria; and Bosnia and Herzegovina, taken from the Austro-Hungarian condominium. A union of all the South Slavs had long been a dream in the Balkans, and the idealistic Serbs shared this dream. In November 1914 the Serbian Parliament had passed a declaration asking for the unity of all Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes into an independent state. In 1917 a Yugoslav Committee was formed in London and, aided by the Dalmatian Croats, also asked for a national state, to consist of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. An agreement to this effect was concluded between the Serbian Government and the Yugoslav Committee in London and promulgated in the famous Corfu Declaration of July 1917. Because the Croats of the province of Dalmatia, which lies on the Adriatic, and also France and the other Allies feared that Italy would claim Dalmatia in the peace settlement, a Declaration of Unity was hastily rushed through on December I, 1918, placing authority over the new state in the hands of the Serbian prince regent, later King Alexander. Thus the members of this new state, especially the Croats, were given no time to consider and decide the terms on which they were to be included or what the form of government should be. Hardly was the new kingdom a month old when some of the Croats were already loudly voicing their dissatisfaction with their new political status. The dream of a South Slav union had not originated either in Serbia or Croatia, but among the Slav students in the University of Prague in Czechoslovakia. It is true that most Croats had wanted to belong to a Slav state, but the state they had envisaged was one in which they themselves would be the dominant element, and in which they would form, together with Austria and Hungary, a third and coequal part of an Austro-Hungarian-Slav Empire. When this aspiration showed itself a mirage, their desire to belong to a Slavic state led them during the last war to seek union with the Serbs. They were also influenced by the fact that Germany was clearly losing the war and that Austro-Hungary would obviously be dismembered. They preferred union with the Serbs to the possibility of being gobbled up by Italy. However, the Croats soon found, greatly to their displeasure, that as citizens of the new kingdom they were no longer the most important and coddled group of South Slavs, a position which they had occupied in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Because of their expertness in agitation, the Croats had long been a focus of Austro-Hungarian intrigues. In the new kingdom, however, they found themselves second to the Serbs, who-outnumbered them by almost three to one. This was a comedown, especially for the Croat intellectuals, who considered themselves to be much more "enlightened" than the Serb intellectuals, because of their familiarity with German culture. It is difficult for Americans to appreciate how important is the role of the so-called intellectual, especially in the smaller states of Europe. In Serbia and Croatia, for instance, there were in 1918 only two classes, the educated men or intellectuals, the class from which all government officials were drawn, and the relatively uneducated farmers. Politics were controlled and political opinion colored by these intellectuals to a much greater degree than here. Because about 98 per cent of the educated classes in Yugoslavia made their living by holding government positions and only 2 per cent entered business or the professions, the competition for government jobs was intense. Since the Serbs were in the majority, they held at least half of the government jobs, a situation the Croat intellectuals found irksome. Just how the- Croats felt about their own abilities as compared with those of the Serbs is indicated in an article which appeared in a Croatian paper of Zagreb in December 1942: "The Croats composed, with the exception of a few Slovenes, the most intelligent, cultured, and humane part of the former Yugoslav Army. Owing to this the Croats handled the greater share of responsibility in maintaining the Serbian Army.... In the technical troops also the Croats were in the majority, since they were the most cultured, polite, experienced, and adaptable element of the former army." Interesting is the fact that the majority of Croatian intellectuals in Zagreb, the largest city of Croatia, were not Croatians by birth, but of German, Hungarian, or non-Slavic extraction. The relations of the Serbs and Croats were complicated not only by the rivalries of intellectuals, but by financial considerations. There was, first of all, the matter of the war debts. Although the Croats, as citizens of Austro-Hungary, fought the Serbs in World War I, and did great damage to Serbia, they never paid Serbia a penny in reparations. On the contrary, Croatia, as part of the new kingdom, shared in the reparations which Germany paid to Serbia. There was, secondly, the question of taxes. A uniform tax law for the new state was worked out in 1926, by which-without protest- Voivodina, by far the richest agricultural area in the kingdom, paid almost 50 per cent of the country's taxes. But Croatia, while a poor province agriculturally compared with Voivodina or Serbia, was rich in industries, especially in the area centering around the city of Zagreb. Because Vienna had lost much of its former charm and Gemutichkeit when World War I ended, the nexus of retired businessmen and officials who had used Vienna as a center moved on to Zagreb, which became known as the Little Vienna of Europe. Foreign capital, mostly from Vienna and Budapest, was suddenly available in abundance. Between 1918 and 1940 the population of Zagreb increased from 80,000 to 350,000. Since income taxes had been introduced by the state considerable sums were collected from the prosperous and in some cases extremely wealthy citizens of Croatia. The policy of the new state was to spend part of the national taxes on developing the poorer and more backward sections of the kingdom. At this the Croatians balked. They wanted all the taxes collected in Croatia to be spent on Croatia. They refused to subscribe to state loans and opposed the construction of railroads in any part of the kingdom except Croatia itself. They also did their best to prevent the reconstruction of highways and railroads outside of Croatia, which had been destroyed, partly by Croats themselves, in World War I. THE CROATIANS DEMAND AN INDEPENDENT CROATIA From the beginning there were many individuals and political parties in Croatia that wanted to secede from the kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Their goal was complete independence for the Goats. But Croatia, which had only 3,000,000 people, was obviously too small to achieve or hold political independence without selling out to one of the great European powers. A Yugoslav constitutional assembly was held in 1920 and a Parliament was established, deputies being elected from the old historic provinces out of which the kingdom had been composed. In 1930, in an attempt to promote national unity and to forget old rivalries, these provinces were divided into nine administrative districts named after the rivers of Yugoslavia. The Croats were, therefore, able to elect deputies from districts where they constituted the majority of the population. There were twelve political parties in the kingdom, three of them purely Croatian: the Croat Peasant Party, to which about 80 per cent of the Croats belonged, the Croat Clerical Party, and the Croat Frankist Party. Stepan Radich, leader of the Croat Peasant Party, at first refused to participate in the Yugoslav Parliament. This meant that during the early years of the kingdom the representation of Croats in Parliament was small. This was unfortunate and made the task of the new state much more difficult than it might otherwise have been. In 1928 a Montenegrin deputy killed two Croatian deputies during a session of Parliament. While the deputy, Punisha Rachich, was advocating the necessity of developing a backward section of the kingdom, Ivan Pernar, a member of the Croat Peasant Party, in a violent diatribe threw doubt upon the honesty of his intentions. Rachich, a hardy mountaineer, could not tamely submit to attacks upon his honor, and demanded that Pernar retract his insults. Pernar appearing reluctant, Rachich, stung beyond bearing, drew a gun and shot him. Matters were made much worse by the fact that while Pernar was only lightly wounded, two other Croatian deputies were accidentally killed, one of whom was Stepan Radich, president of the Croat Peasant Party. The uproar can be imagined. The situation quickly became so impossible that on January 6, 1929, King Alexander dissolved Parliament and announced his own dictatorship. This dictatorship was disliked not only by the Croats but even more by the Serbs, who are justifiably proud of their great democratic tradition. Alexander realized that he was acting contrary to popular feeling, but he considered that no other step could prevent the complete dissolution of his country. He believed, as did Abraham Lincoln when the southern states wished to secede from the Union, that the unity of the state must be upheld by force. He therefore tried to suppress disruptive elements by imprisonment. (It should, however, be noted that no political prisoner ever died in a Yugoslav prison.) The Croats now shrieked that the whole world must see how they were being suppressed by a dictatorial government. The sincerity of the King's intentions is shown by the fact that he again reconstituted Parliament in 1931, after giving much thought to improving the constitution and voting practices of the country. One great difficulty had been that there were too many political parties and that consequently the ministry in power frequently did not have a sufficient majority to act effectively. The King devoted himself to trying to resolve this difficulty. ENTER THE CROAT USTASHI In January 1939, shortly after the shooting of Stepan Radich, Dr. Ante Pavelich, a Croat lawyer of Zagreb, Croatia, organized a secret terrorist organization known as the Ustashi, or Rebels. Pavelich was ambitious to become ruler of an independent Croatia. Since adequate funds for a revolt of the Croats against the Serbs could not be obtained from Vienna or Budapest, Pavelich turned to Rome and immediately found an enthusiastic patron in Mussolini. Pavelich recruited his Ustashi army from Croats living in Croatia and Dalmatia and from those living in Belgium and South America. These men were sent to Italy and Hungary and drilled in terrorist tactics. Italy paid the bill but for some time got nothing in return. A few trains, police stations, and barracks in Yugoslavia were blown up. But an actual invasion of the province of Lika in 1932 proved a fiasco. An attempt by his henchmen to assassinate King Alexander in Zagreb in 1933 failed. Mussolini began to put pressure on Pavelich, and the Croatian Ustashi succeeded in murdering King Alexander in Marseilles on October 10, 1934. By accident, they also killed the French Foreign Minister, Barthou. A judicial investigation of the murder by the International Tribunal at Geneva was actually by-passed by Laval, but the French courts condemned the assassins in absentia. However, when Mussolini refused to extradite Dr. Ante Pavelich or any of the other Croatian Ustashi implicated in the killing, the French did not press him. (The relations between Laval and Pavelich still require clarification.) The Croats of the United States, who were afire with the hope of political independence for Croatia to be guaranteed by the Great contained the provision that German troops were not to pass through Yugoslav territory, this was, of course, purely hypocritical, since the right of passage to Greece was what Germany wanted. As is now known, secret clauses in the Vienna pact granted this and other concessions to the Germans. It is certain that about go per cent of the Croats were strongly pro-German, while go per cent of the Serbs were strongly anti-German. The Vienna pact came as a great shock to most Serbs, who had not realized that Yugoslavia had already moved so far Axisward. Two days after the signing of the Vienna pact, on March 27, 1941, the Serbs acted. The Serbian general Simovich, with the help of almost all the political leaders of Serbia, carried out a coup d'etat, forced the resignation of the pro-German ministry, sent the regent Prince Paul into exile, and put the young King Peter on the throne. This was equivalent to declaring war on the Axis. From a common-sense point of view, it was a suicidal step. The Serbs, however, were determined not to become German subjects, but to sacrifice their lives and all they possessed rather than to lose the liberty which they had achieved after centuries of bitter struggle. On March 27 the Serbs began desperately arming. They needed fifteen days to mobilize and would have been ready April 12. Well aware of that fact, Germany attacked Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941. On April 10 the German troops marched into the city of Zagreb, in Croatia proper, and were greeted by the wildly enthusiastic cheers of a people who only twenty-three years before had received their Serb "brothers" and "liberators" in exactly the same way. Dr. Machek, who had carried on the intrigues with Germany, gave orders on the radio to all his followers to co-operate with the Axis. HOW CROATIA FOUGHT AGAINST SERBIA On the same day that the Germans entered Zagreb, Croatia was proclaimed an independent state, "forever free" of the kingdom of Yugoslavia. When Dr. Pavelich arrived with his Ustashi, he was proclaimed its leader. Simultaneously, the Independent State of Croatia joined the war on the side of the Axis, declared war on the Allies, and later on America. As part of the price for her "independence," Croatia was to fight on Germany's side, not only against Russia, but especially against the Serbs. On April 3, three days before Germany declared war on Yugoslavia, a Croatian officer of the Yugoslav Army, Colonel Kren, flew to Graz and handed over to the Nazis the war plans of the Serbian Army, as well as maps of the carefully hidden mountain landing fields of Serbia to be used by the Yugoslav air forces. Result: Belgrade, though declared an "open city," was bombed on April 6 and the Serbian landing fields were all destroyed. The help given by the Croats to the German armies in their attack on the Serbs has been often and proudly described by Croat writers. We give here a typical example from the Croatian newspaper, Nova Hrvatska (New Croatia), in its Christmas issue of 1942. The article is titled "The Croat Soldier in the Present War": "It is now clear," says the Croat author, "that the German Army, in its victorious swing, with its tremendous technical equipment, its indescribable moral enthusiasm, its knowledge, and its adeptness, was the main factor which caused the defeat of the enemy at the Balkan front and smashed Greece.... "However, the internal role, the revolutionary, destructive role, that which caused the breakdown inside, so that there was nothing in order, nothing in its proper place, nothing prepared or dispatched at the right moment, nothing fired or aimed correctly, nothing running as it should-that was the important role of the Croats in the collapse of the Balkan front. In such roles, the Croats worked splendidly. Just as they proved themselves in peacetime in their fight against the Serbian megalomania and hegemony, against terror and exploitation -so now in the war all Croats acted as a unit in refusing obedience, in ignoring orders, in preventing liaisons, in creating panics, in firing incorrectly, in disabling tanks and guns, and in destroying all sorts of military equipment, in disarming the disbanded Serb soldiers and people. In a word, in all those battles the Croats acted according to an issued order, destroyed the resistance deep inside enemy (Serbian) lines on the Balkan front as the Germans did outside. "Even before the beginning of the war, the joining the colors of the Croats in the infantry was reduced to about 30 to 40 per cent; all others remained at home or fled to the woods, went to places other than the ones designated, or visited relatives. During the war there were many indescribable cases of sabotage and defeatism done by the Croats while in the service of the former (Yugoslav) army. For instance, according to the statement of a soldier, when the Supreme Command at Belgrade ordered him to identify aircraft flying toward Belgrade, this Croat telephonist replied that he had seen some planes flying but they appeared to be 'ours,' although not far from him these same planes (enemy) were bombarding military objects. "At another place some Croat soldiers (telephonists), instead of dispatching the orders issued to various commands, were listening to the Ustashi radio station 'Velebit' (the Croat Ustashi radio in Italy). One very confidential courier (Croat) carrying important military messages from one army to another, simply departed to his home with all the confidential material. At a very important railroad junction the commanding officer-a Croat first lieutenant-threw into the stove all his orders and instructions and, in his 'alertness' for the maintenance of order in dispatching military transports, managed to bring into the station ten trainloads of soldiers who did not know where to proceed, and who finally, not knowing what to do, left for their homes, together with their prompt and heroic commander. "What happened in the airdromes is generally known now. On Palm Sunday the situation was normal, but on Tuesday everything was disrupted. The Croat technicians, mechanics, as well as other air service crews, left the airdromes; the Serb officers were deserted and left without any crews; they were unable to use their planes and so to attack the enemy from the air. There was sabotage even among the anti-aircraft units which turned out to be even a little comical. The 'old gunners' of the last war found means to fire shots in all but the right direction-at German planes. "The artillery, too, thanks to the Croats, was rendered useless on the whole Balkan front-on the Nishava, Kolubara, Bregalnica, Struma, and Vardar. Five or six weeks before the war, experienced, competent, and excellent soldiers chiefly Croats were sent there to insure this important flank at the cost of their lives, in case the great and powerful, indivisible and unconquerable former (Yugoslav) army became impotent, conquered, and inclined to flee through the valley of the Vardar toward Salonica and from there to any place which the great, mighty, and unconquerable democrats and allies of Albion might determine. "In the great German offensive toward Nish, Pirot, Skoplye, when the hour came for Serbia to fight, Croat hands, to the last Croat artilleryman, stuffed the gun barrels, and all went wrong on the Nishava, Struma, Bregalnica, and Vardar front. Thanks to the Croats, all firing was into empty space, the guns that did fire were damaged, the instruments for aiming and the mechanical implements were ruined. Finally the Croats either deserted or surrendered. The Serbs, seeing the destruction of their most important, most decisive, and strongest line, were paralyzed, stunned by this Croatian sabotage. "Although a small nation, the Croats played indeed a great role that brought about the collapse of the Balkan front, which cost them heavy and bloody casualties. They were instrumental in destroying, in co-operation with the Germans, first the former state (Yugoslavia) and with it the eventual collapse of the Balkan front, although this had been denied them when they (Croats and Germans) fought shoulder to shoulder in the last war. The Germans and Croats performed these great acts, because by the collapse of the former state (Yugoslavia) they smashed after the English the most stubborn, most resisting, and most bloodthirsty Versailleist in the Balkans, and thus was created the Independent Croatian State." Thus a Croat describes one of Croatia's proud achievements in the military history of World War II. The fact that the Croats made themselves so eagerly the tools of a foreign power proves that peoples dissimilar in political experience, character, and aims must never again be so closely bound together. The price which the Serbs, through the Cain-like treachery of the Croats, had to pay for the dream of a great South Slav state, is one which no Serbs or any other sensible people would ever let themselves in for a second time. The Croat betrayal was not only an aid to Germany and an almost deadly blow to the Serbs, but also a very great misfortune to the United Nations. Only by the miracle of a centuries old fighting tradition, by the stanchness of their hearts and the military brilliance of their leader did the Serbs turn the military defeat of the spring of 1941 into a resistance which the Germans, in spite of every force and trickery, have never been able to shatter. But from the Croats even worse was to come. Previous Chapter | Content | Next Chapter The Serbs Chose War, Ruth Mitchel