war crimes
FROM THE VATICAN TO THE KLA:
THE ORIGINS OF ANGLO-AMERICAN COMPLICITY IN CRIMES OF GENOCIDE IN YUGOSLAVIA, 1945-1999
by Barry Lituchy
31, July 1999
SYNOPSIS FOR COMMISSION REPORT ONLY
When we organized the First International Conference and Exhibition on the Jasenovac Concentration Camps in 1997, and then established the Jasenovac Research Institute in 1998, we did so based on the belief that the failure to learn the lessons of the genocide committed against Serbs, Jews and Gypsies in Yugoslavia during World War II lies at the very core of recent events in the Balkans and in the decade long effort to destroy Yugoslavia. This "triple genocide," as it is called, which took place from 1941 to 1945, represents the greatest crime of genocide and series of war crimes ever committed in the Balkans to date. Moreover, the history of how these crimes were covered up, how their perpetrators were protected and employed, and how justice for the victims of these crimes was repeatedly denied and obstructed by the United States and Great Britain over the course of fifty-five years—indeed until the present day—is truly the best reflection of how the US and Great Britain have used war crimes and crimes of genocide to further their long term interests in the Balkans and of their complicity in the deliberate destruction of Yugoslavia.
From August 1941 to April 1945, hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, and Romas, as well as anti-fascists of many nationalities, were murdered at the death camp known as Jasenovac. Estimates of the total numbers of men, women, and children killed there range from 300,000 to 700,000. And yet, despite the scale of the crimes committed there, most of the world has never heard of Jasenovac.
Following the Nazi invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the "Independent State of Croatia" was established as a pro-Nazi government. It was dedicated to a clerical-fascist ideology influenced both by Nazism and extreme Roman Catholic fanaticism. On coming to power, the Ustashe Party dictatorship in Croatia quickly commenced on a systematic policy of racial extermination of all Serbs, Jews and Romas living within its borders.
Jasenovac was actually a complex of five major and three smaller "special" camps spread out over 240 square kilometers (150 sq.miles) in southeastern Croatia. Along with hundreds of thousands of Serbs, some 25,000 Jews and at least 30,000 Romas were murdered in these camps. The names of some 20,000 murdered children of all three nationalities collected thus far by historians provides only a hint of the scale of the crimes committed there. Jasenovac is also known for having been one of the most barbaric death camps of the Holocaust for the extreme cruelty in which its victims were tortured and murdered. Jasenovac was not the only death camp in fascist occupied Yugoslavia, but its significance lies in the fact that it was by far the largest and the one in which a majority of the some one million victims of racial genocide in World War II fascist Croatia were exterminated.
The issue of war crimes emerged as an important issue in international law not after World War II, but rather in the aftermath of World War I at the Versailles Conference. To understand how the US has manipulated the issue of war crimes and genocide throughout the twentieth century one needs to take a look at how this whole issue emerged as a valuable weapon in the arsenal of twentieth century imperialism. During World War I the US granted Britain and France some $40 billion in loans and supplies. Had the Triple Entente gone down to defeat and not repaid these loans the United States would have faced imminent economic collapse. Consequently, it was necessary for the US to enter the war and to force a repayment of these debts out of the Central Powers in the form of reparations. Basing themselves on the earlier Hague and Geneva Conventions, the victorious powers at Versailles elaborated the concept of war crimes primarily as a means for creating a legal framework for wresting financial benefits and a new balance of power from war. Thus, the history of American involvement in the issue of war crimes has been more closely connected with the economics and geopolitics of imperialism than with justice for the victims of actual crimes.
Contrary to the image of an anti-fascist American government at the end of World War II, if we consider for a moment how the US and British governments dealt with the crimes of genocide committed by the fascist powers in wartime Yugoslavia from 1945 on, we come away with a vastly different picture. Once again the US and Britain exploited the issue of war crimes for political purposes. This is especially true in the case of Yugoslavia. In November 1943 the US, along with Britain and the Soviet Union, was a signatory of the document known as the Moscow Agreement. This agreement committed the three powers to the arrest and return of all fascists guilty of war crimes to the country where they stood accused. Over the course of the next fifty-six years the US government continuously violated this agreement in regard to Yugoslavia by protecting and employing these very same criminals they had promised to arrest.
American and British violation of the Moscow Agreement was a necessary reaction to the Cold War and the development of US imperialist strategy, policies and institutions in its struggle to overthrow the Soviet Union and the other communist led governments in Eastern Europe in the post-WWII era. US intelligence agencies and covert operations in Europe got their start with considerable help from two European institutions: the Nazi intelligence service and the Roman Catholic Church, both in search of new political allies after the defeat of fascism in Europe. This confirms the view that the states in Eastern Europe, particularly those of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, did not fall simply on account of their own internal problems; they were on the receiving end of decades of US sponsored covert military operations working at their destruction. In the case of Yugoslavia, these forces played key roles in the break-up of the country and in the establishment of post-communist regimes.
US policy toward Yugoslavia after WWII flowed from a larger, general overall strategy or program for overthrowing communism worldwide. In other words, while the historical record clearly shows that US foreign policy had a unique tactical approach toward Yugoslavia within the broader context of the Cold War that was supportive, the ultimate foreign policy aims or goals of the US toward Yugoslavia were essentially identical to those of the US everywhere else in Eastern Europe: the restoration of capitalism through counter-revolution.
In regard to Yugoslavia in the long range goal of US and Western imperialism was to partition and destroy Communist Yugoslavia, a plan which depended on the support of the thousands of escaped Croatian and Albanian fascists subsidized by the US for decades in anticipation of this long goal. The need to suppress such information from the public and from political discourse is obvious: a self-proclaimed moral superiority based on genocide is a fraud the whole world can see.
US strategy toward Yugoslavia necessitated a policy of covert action involving both intelligence gathering and military operations. Initially, this consisted of the recruitment, training and deployment of large international networks of anti-Communist agents for covert operations. It was followed and greatly supported by the creation of CIA-financed, domestically based emigre organizations in the US. These emigre organizations (often affiliated in one way or another to the Assembly of Captive European Nations—ACEN) were dedicated to the building of counter-revolutionary emigre armies and to assisting the US achieve its policy goals of destabilizing, invading and militarily overthrowing all of the communist states in Europe. Of these agents and emigres recruited by the US government in Europe, the vast majority of them were either former Nazis, former members of other fascist parties, or simply former Nazi collaborators.
In the immediate aftermath of the war, the Croatian fascist party (the Ustasha) built their own covert network for organizing and defending themselves and evading the scrutiny of international war crimes tribunals. These escape networks were called "ratlines." These Ustashi "ratlines" were based in Rome and were built with the indispensable assistance and protection of the Vatican. The Catholic Church played a significant role in the post-war strategies and policies of the US in Europe. These ratlines were quickly discovered and soon thereafter protected and employed by the CIC (Counter Intelligence Corps of the US Army, a predecessor to the CIA). From about 1948 on, the US government greatly expanded the scope of its covert operations by relying on former fascists from Europe, spending millions of dollars annually on fascist Croatian and Albanian organizations, publications and agents, both in Europe and in the US. It is essential to point out that the policy of these Yugoslavian groups and individuals sponsored by the US has been and continues to this day to be violently nationalistic, anti-communist, and anti-Yugoslavian, i.e. advocating the break-up of Yugoslavia.
We can see the full and inescapable responsibility of the US government and the CIA for the survival, preservation and resurrection of Croatian (Ustashe) fascism, which thanks to fifty years of US government support, today once again rules in Zagreb. With the help of the Roman Catholic Church, the US government and its fledgling intelligence agencies saved and preserved pre-war Nazism and European fascism to the present day, carving out an important role for it throughout the Cold War, and positioning it for a reconquest of state power in the event of counter-revolution. The preservation of pre-war Croatian fascism and other extreme right wing nationalist movements in the Balkans (particularly Albanian fascism which is discussed here as well) is directly responsible for the break-up of Yugoslavia and for the current civil war in Bosnia.
The reliance of the US government on Nazi fascism for implementing covert action in its struggle against communism was no anomaly. The US government had a parallel policy for recruiting, staffing and carrying out its chemical, biological, missile, rocket and space research and development programs with Nazi scientists as well.
The most important ratlines in Europe following the collapse of Hitler’s regime were those running away from Soviet controlled territories, for example like those running from Vienna to Rome—Rome being the true center of post-war Nazism and fascism for many years. Here fascists and fascist collaborators fleeing justice from all over Europe could find protection, a safe house, new identities and papers, as well as relocation in new lands such as in South America.
While American and British authorities protected and employed the perpetrators of genocide in wartime Yugoslavia and hindered investigation into and prosecution of these crimes during the Cold War, Western scholars tended to overlook or downplay the existence of these crimes. Historians have called Jasenovac "the dark secret of the Holocaust" and "the suppressed chapter of Holocaust history." Public recognition of the tragedy that occurred there has been suppressed either partially or completely by governments and institutions for a variety of reasons. It is an odd omission considering the fact that if one defines the Holocaust from the first mass murders of civilians, then the Holocaust itself began in Croatia with the first murder of Serbs, Jews and Romas by the Croatian fascist regime in April 1941—some nine months before the Wannsee Conference, more than two months before the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. It is like a book whose first chapter is torn out. Today the site is located in the newly created state of Croatia, whose government has vandalized the site and refused to recognize the horrors that took place there. The failure of some leading Western academic and humanitarian institutions to fully recognize the historic dimensions of Jasenovac is a shameful omission that will tarnish their reputations forever.
At the US Holocaust Museum for example the history of the Holocaust has been tailored to fit the political fashions of the Clinton administration and the New World Order: hence, one finds the words "Serbs" and "Russians" are altogether absent from the official record of the Holocaust, and instead are replaced in the most obscene Orwellian manner by the words "Yugoslavs" and "Soviets." A most vicious and ironic cover up, considering that the US today does not even recognize the existence of these states or peoples. In all of these cases we see instances of the suppression of the history of genocide against certain peoples for clearly political purposes (not the least of which is the desire to target these same peoples for future destruction). The role of the US and British governments in protecting and employing Nazi and fascist mass murderers will probably never be incorporated into history books in our lifetimes.
The failure to recognize the great crimes committed by the fascists in WWII Yugoslavia resulted in horrible consequences for the second and third post-war generations of the peoples of Yugoslavia, and especially for the Serbian people. Not only did it result in the revival of fascism in the Balkans and in a deadly, racist demonization of Serbs, but also in a new round of genocidal wars against the Serbs. Perhaps greater public awareness of these crimes might not have prevented the reemergence of historic patterns of fascism in the Balkans, or the destruction of Yugoslavia; but I do believe that it would have made such events less likely.
Had the lessons of Jasenovac been learned earlier, and not just in Yugoslavia, would it have been possible to wage a sympathetic campaign of demonization against the Serbs in the Western media? Serbs, who had been the victims of racial extermination at the hands of Nazi and Ustashe fascism, were obscenely portrayed in the likeness of their executioners by the Western media. Stories and cartoons depicting Serbs as sub-human became regular features in the US press. Anthony Lewis declared Serbs to be "at the level of beasts" in his New York Times op-ed column of August 27, 1994. Could Lewis have made such a vulgar racist comment against Jews or African-Americans in this country and gotten away with it? The answer is, of course, no.
In conclusion, we can see that the suppression of historical truth lays the groundwork for the repetition of war crimes of genocide and that its aim is ultimately the victimization of entire nations. Likewise, we can see that the recovery of historical truth is essential for the political, cultural and biological health and survival of nations. The recovery of historical truth can give people at least confidence that past crimes of genocide will not be repeated in the future. Learning this most fundamental lesson of the Holocaust—"Never Again!"—was what enabled the Jewish people to avoid its repeat. The Serbs and Roma unfortunately did not embrace this slogan and paid the price for it. For these reasons much of my work in recent years as well as the work of the Jasenovac Research Institute has been dedicated to placing discussion of Jasenovac and American and British complicity in the Holocaust in the Balkans at the very center of scholarly and public discourse on the history of Yugoslavia—which is precisely where it belongs.
Commission of Inquiry
c/o International Action Center
39 West 14th Street, Room 206
New York, NY 10011
email: iacenter@iacenter.org
http://www.iacenter.org/
phone: 212 633-6646
fax: 212 633-2889
