Srdja Trifkovic | When the man destined to become the 44th Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church was conceived in the the winter 1913-1914, horses and steam moved the world. That world appeared ordered and stable. The calamities of the 20th century – two world wars, revolutions and civil wars, genocides and expulsions, and the suffering of tens of millions of Christian New Martyrs – could not be foreseen. In the Old World the Serbian nation, although divided into two small kingdoms and two mighty alien empires, the Habsburg and the Ottoman, appeared vigorous and full of hope for the future.

Shortly after “the lights went out over Europe,” on September 11, 1914 (n.s.) – the Feast of the Beheading of Saint John the Baptist – a boy was born to the Stojčević family in the village of Kućanci, in today’s eastern Croatia. The family’s ancestors came to the Turk-devastated borderlands of the Habsburg Monarchy with the Great Serb Migration of 1690 from Kosovo, the martyred Serbian province with which the future Patriarch’s life was destined to be closely intertwined.

The weeks that followed the outbreak of World War I were a trying time for the Serbs in the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy: they were collectively blamed for the assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand in Sarajevo and subjected to mob violence and police persecution. For newborn Gojko’s mother Ana, however, the main worry was the fact that the war was raging, the prices were soaring, and her husband Stevan was far away: he had left for America only months earlier in search of work.

Small in stature, modest at heart, great in spirit: Patriarch loved to go about by foot, without any escort.

In early 1917, just before the United States joined the fray and made the war truly global, Stevan Stojčević came back home – without a penny to his name – to die of tuberculosis contracted in the workshops and rented rooms of western Pennsylvania. A year later Ana remarried but died in childbirth soon thereafter. Gojko and his elder brother Dušan were left in the care of their paternal aunt who raised them as her own children. He was a sickly child unfit for farm work, but the aunt recognized his aptitude for learning and – although poor herself – endeavored to give him a good education.

After graduating from the Fourth Gymnasium (high school) in Belgrade young Gojko enrolled at the Orthodox Seminary in Sarajevo. During World War II, suffering from tuberculosis, he took refuge in the Holy Trinity monastery in Ovčar, in central Serbia. In 1944 he was given only three months to live. His recovery, miraculous in those pre-penicillin times, prompted him to take monastic vows in 1946 and assume the name of his favorite saint, Pavle (Paul)..

The Serbian Orthodox Church, which had a quarter of its shrines destroyed and a fifth of its clergy killed during World War II, was left in 1945 at the mercy of Tito’s militantly atheist clique. Most of its property was confiscated immediately after the war, religious education was effectively banned, and the political cost of liturgical attendance was high, often prohibitive. Yet monk Pavle visibly thrived in those years, spiritually and intellectually. In 1954 he was ordained hieromonk. After completing postgraduate studies in Athens (1955-1957) he became archimandrite, and only months later elected the Bishop of Ras and Prizren. Bishop Pavle remained at the helm of that ancient diocese, which includes Kosovo and Metohija, for 33 years – until he was elected Patriarch in 1990.

The long decades of Tito’s autocracy were a trying time for the Serbian Orthodox Church. Patriarch German, elected in 1958, had to strike a sensitive balance between the imperative of keeping his Church alive in an inherently hostile political environment and the necessity of establishing a workable modus vivendi with the communist regime. The dilemma, well known to the Russians, had a similar consequence in the misnamed “American Schism” (raskol) of 1963. The split soon spread from the United States to all other communities in the Diaspora. It caused deep divisions that left a lasting scar on the Serbian community as a whole. It is now known that the split was surreptitiously encouraged by the regime in Belgrade, and fanned by the divisive work of its agents infiltrated into the émigré ranks.

As the Bishop of Kosovo, Pavle faced tribulations that were of different nature but similar magnitude. In seeking to win over the Albanians of Kosovo during his wartime struggle to seize power, Tito promised them autonomy and duly proceeded to change the character of the province in their favor after the war. Over 100,000 Serbs were forced out of Kosovo by Albanian Quislings during World War II; incredibly, they were not permitted to return after 1945. An additional 200,000 Serbs left the province, often under duress, between the late 1950s and early 1980s. On the other hand, 200,000 Albanians from Albania settled on deserted Serbian farms after 1945. Their “cadres” took control of the local Communist apparatus. In 1948 the Albanians made a half of the population of Kosovo; by 1981 78 percent; and over 90 percent today.

By the 1970s Orthodox priests in Kosovo were routinely harrassed. Bishop Pavle himself was assailed by an Albanian while walking to the post office in Prizren, and slapped in the face by another at the city’s main bus station. The authorities were invariably “unable” to identify the culprits, however, let alone to bring them to justice. Monastic properties were damaged or confiscated, well before the wave of KLA destruction unleashed by NATO in 1999. The biggest church in Metohia, in Djakovica, was demolished by the authorities to make room for a massive “Partisan” monument. The secessionist movement of the Albanians in Kosovo, derived from the logic of the Titoist order, eventually produced Slobodan Milosevic – the neo-communist quasi-nationalist. The violent disintegration of Yugoslavia in 1991-1999 was the belated revenge of Tito and his ideological heirs.

Bishop Pavle was elected to the Throne of St. Sava in December 1990, on the eve of that disintegration. He did not seek the post but was chosen as a compromise candidate because neither of the two front-runners could secure the necessary majority in the Assembly. In the dark years that followed he would repeat many times that “there can be no interest, individual or national, which could be used as an excuse for becoming inhuman.” As the former Yugoslavia descended into violence, he appealed on the faithful to pray not only for those of good will but for those of ill will, too, as “they are in an even greater need of salvation.” When meeting the late U.S. Ambassador Warren Zimmermann in 1991, he was asked what could America do to help him and the bChurch. He replied, without batting an eyelid, “Your Excellency, the most you can do to help us is not to do anything to harm us!”

This was not to be. Yugoslavia was a deeply flawed polity, and there could have been no serious objection to the striving of Croats and Bosnian Muslims to create their own nation-states. But equally there could have been no justification for forcing over two million Serbs west of the Drina River to be incorporated into those states against their will, and without any guarantees of their rights. Yugoslavia came together in 1918 as a union of South Slav peoples, and not of states. Its divorce should have been effected on the same basis. This is, and has been, the real foundation of the Yugoslav conflict ever since the first shots were fired in the summer of 1991. This political essence of the war has been systematically hidden, all over the Western world but especially in the United States, behind the portrayal of the Serbs as primitive ultranationalists who sought to conquer other peoples’ lands. The most vehement such accusations, coming from Muslim and Croat sources, went wholesale into the media machine, Congressional resolutions, the pseudolegal fatuities of The Hague “tribunal,” and finally into NATO’s marching orders.

Sadly, there are many Serbs who have not followed Patriarch Pavle’s instruction: “If we live as people of God, there will be room for all nations in the Balkans and in the world. If we liken ourselves to Cain, then the entire earth will be too small even for two people.” But the systematic portrayal of the Serbs as demons, and the Muslims of Bosnia or Kosovo as innocent martyrs in the cause of multi-ethnic-cultural tolerance, was a crude exercise in the construction of postmodern quasi-reality. Patriarch Pavle was painfully aware of this fact, but decided to refrain from statements that could be construed as political. He remained silent even when the Croatian authorities demolished the Orthodox church in his native village, in which he was baptized in 1914. He was often criticized in the Western press for making appearances at official functions attended by Milosevic, even though the protocol and tradition demanded his presence, but in 1997 he also appeared, silently, at a rally demanding Milosevic’s resignation.

Patriarch Pavle was deply pained by the Mammonic spirit that became dominant in Serbia in the aftermath of the collapse of communism: “I wish I could stand and beg outside the banqueting halls and other gathering venues of the rich, beg for our poor brothers and sisters and their children. We should actively shame those who sink into arrogant greed so openly, instead of expressing our anguish behind closed doors.” His proverbial modesty was reflected in his use of public transport and dislike of chauffeur-driven cars. During the Assembly of Bishops in 2006 he walked our of the Patriarchate and saw a long line of shiny black Mercedes-Benz, Audi and BMW cars parked outside the building. “Who do these belong to?” Pavle asked his secretary. “Em, to the Bishops who came to the Assembly, Your Grace.” “I only wonder,” the Patriarch commented, “what would they have driven if they had not taken the vow of poverty…”

Serbia was blessed with several politically astute Patriarchs in some critical moments of its history, notably Arsenije III (Charnojevich) at the time of the Turkish wars and Great Migration of 1690, and Gavrilo (Dozhich) during World War II.

Patriarch Pavle belonged to a different tradition. He was a mystically prayerful monk, rather than a sanguine Prince of the Church. He was a Patriarch who blended, harmoniously, three key functions of his throne: that of the father, of the priest, and of the prophet. He understood, and lived, the legacy of Prince Lazar, martyred at Kosovo in 1389: “The Kingdom on Earth is but paltry and small; yet the Kingdom of Heaven is forever and knows no bounds.

I met Greg five years ago, while he was producing and directing the must-see documentary Islam: What the West Needs to Know. He is a soft-spoken convert to Orthodoxy, in his mid-30’s, with a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford and an abiding sense that our civilization is collapsing. Western conservatives, he says, are hoping to save the key institution of the West—namely, Christianity—but Christianity did not originate in the West, and therein lies the crux of the matter: “The development of the West since 1054, in opposition to the Orthodox East, was a revolutionary act. The West, at its core, is revolutionary; hence the shouting of our conservatives for history to stop, while intermittently effective in slowing the slide, has proven vain. The West’s defining act was the fundamental innovation of the filioque. The fruit of the schism was apparent in successive heresies and rebellions, which led to the wars of religion that would kill millions and tear Europe apart. Later subversives would translate the revolutionary logic into decidedly unchristian contexts such as the French and Bolshevik revolutions, with monstrous results.”

While the unraveling of Western Christianity has been under way for a thousand years, it gained a new head of steam in our time. With Vatican II, Greg says, Roman traditionalists were dealt a tremendous blow, and they are still suffering its consequences. Meanwhile, “The more traditionally minded Protestant denominations are now sprinting toward Sodom, while the newer ‘Bible churches,’ holding the line somewhat more effectively on the moral front, show themselves very much of this world in their Dionysian revels featuring ‘Christian’ rock music and self-help philosophies about how to succeed in the world of mammon without really trying. The job of shoring up what remains of traditional Western Christianity is, needless to say, not getting any easier.”

Orthodoxy, on the other hand, does not lend itself to the political realm, precisely because its kingdom is not of this world. It is impossible to turn Orthodoxy into a “movement” in the modern political sense, yet the Orthodox view on most political issues today largely tracks the views of traditional Roman Catholics and Protestants, in spite of their theological and ecclesiological differences: “Even in a decidedly Protestant and “revolutionary” country such as the United States, the Orthodox easily recognize the practical wisdom embodied in a document such as the Constitution and its principle of limited government. They are more than anyone averse to the deification of political figures and of the state that has been the bane of the modern era. But they are by nature ill-adapted to navigating the turbulent waters of modern politics, which grow ever more frenzied and anti-Christian.”

The Orthodox countries still outside the Western orbit have shown themselves routinely outclassed in the geopolitical great game to extend U.S.-style materialism and “democracy” to the far reaches of the galaxy. Davis points out how the Serbs have consistently underestimated the malevolence of U.S.-led designs on their country and culture, and how Russia naively undertook a series of Western-inspired “reforms” in the 1990’s that devastated the country: “Now, however, Russia is pulling herself together. Vladimir Putin, regularly portrayed in Western media as a cross between Nicholas I and Darth Vader, refuses to let his people commit suicide along the lines of Western Europe, which continues to renew its vote of no confidence in itself. With the ancient enemy of both Western and Eastern Christianity, Islam, once again making inroads into both, Western conservatives should see Russia and Orthodox civilization generally as a natural ally. Yet prominent conservatives continue to support the U.S.-led prosecution of Russia. Their support for an ever-expanding NATO, for the missile shield, and for Western-sponsored color-coded revolutions is the support for a revolutionary power that recognizes no limit to its hegemony.”

During the Cold War, it was still possible to regard the West, the adversary of revolutionary communism, as a netconservative force in the world, but no longer. Western, and especially American, conservatives are now in the illogical position of defending the actions of the world’s leading revolutionary power. For Western conservatives to remain “conservative,” Davis concludes, they must be willing to support the cause of the few genuinely conservative forces left in the world—namely, those Orthodox nations still willing and able to resist indefinite Western cultural and geopolitical expansion.

Bosko Obradovic is a Serb of Greg Davis’s age who is resisting both prongs of that expansion. He is one of the founders and leaders of Dveri (The Doors, www.dverisrpske.com), a Belgrade-based NGO distinguished from most others by two key facts: It does not get a penny from George Soros, and in its many social and cultural endeavors it seeks the blessing of the Serbian Orthodox Church and spiritual guidance from its hierarchs. Bosko is a philosophy and literature graduate in his mid-30’s, a teacher, librarian, and father of three. He was in the news recently for making a key contribution to the cancelation of the planned “gay-pride” parade in downtown Belgrade: “The organizers had everything lined up. The government of Serbia was supporting them because the ruling Democratic Party thought this was one way to show to Brussels that we are progressive enough for E.U. membership. All of the major media, all of the Western-funded NGOs, and countless fashionably enlightened public figures were on their side. This was supposed to be yet another proof of Serbia’s terminal fall, its readiness to sell its soul for the elusive ‘European integration.’”

In the end the parade was called off because of security concerns. Its organizers were offered another location, but they rejected it. This, Bosko says, indicates their real agenda: They did not merely want to march; they wanted to provoke. “Their goal had never been to protect anyone’s ‘human rights’ or to protest ‘discrimination.’ Their goal was to promote a clearly defined ideology, lifestyle, and value system, and symbolically to impose it on Belgrade and on Serbia by taking over, however briefly, the old city center. Their objective was also to assert their political power as a privileged and protected group that promotes modernity. Their goal was to inflict a devastating blow on the traditional spiritual, moral, and cultural code, to present it as marginal, obsolete, and doomed to die out. Last but not least, calling the event off amidst a blaze of publicity was a call to their sponsors to continue and even increase their largesse, because the job is not done: Serbia is still its ugly, reactionary old self.”

Bosko and his friends have been called some nasty names since the parade was canceled in mid-September. There have been calls for a ban on Dveri, supposedly for violating recently enacted “antidiscrimination” legislation, which was drafted completely in accordance with E.U. guidelines. He says attacks are “a compliment to all of us who are determined not to give up on the value system that has kept our people alive through the centuries.” He is nevertheless concerned about the future: “We appear to be well on the way to 2084, when totalitarian NGO types will impose their blueprint for the eradication of our traditional spiritual, moral, and national identity. The NGO elite claims to act for and on behalf of ‘the West’ and enjoys the status of protected species, but no such protection will be extended to anyone if they have their way. Our “democracy” is heading for the abolition of the freedom to think differently from the high priests of Western postmodernity. Just look at the media treatment of Metropolitan Amfilohije, our acting Patriarch, for daring to quote the Scripture on sodomy! Is it not paradoxical? The Orthodox Church and all other mainstream religious communities in Serbia are asked to refrain from stating their position on this issue because doing so makes them liable to prosecution for advocating ‘intolerance.’”

Bosko Obradovic sees the problem in clear-cut terms. Either the Church will speak Her mind clearly and without euphemistic evasiveness, or else She will lose the purpose of Her existence as the saving community based on faith and the teaching of two millennia: “The Church as a whole and individual Christians are expected to refrain from taking a position if it does not conform to the standards of acceptable discourse as proclaimed by those who are not Christians, or—to be more precise—who are determined anti-Christians. Of course, Metropolitan Amfilohije and other bishops did not have any choice: Rather than ignore the intended moral and cultural onslaught, they spoke out clearly and authoritatively. Their authority comes from the Scripture and the Fathers, not from our ‘pro-E.U.’ government, or the ‘progressive’ NGOs, or their foreign mentors. They also condemned all forms of hate and violence, in accordance with the Christian principles, but they, and we, cannot accept a self-isolation that can only end in criminalizing any open profession of our faith.”

Bosko believes that the exclusion of the Orthodox Church from Serbia’s social and cultural life remains the final goal of the parade’s organizers and sponsors. He points out that the chorus of condemnation and indignant disgust against Metropolitan Amfilohije came simultaneously from the usual standard-bearers of “all progressive humanity”—Helsinki human-rights groups, sociology professors, foreign-sponsored “independent analysts,” Soros-financed media outlets—and all had a common accusation: By daring to mention Sodom and Gomorrah, Metropolitan Amfilohije is “objectively” condoning violence and promoting discrimination. Ergo he is guilty of practicing violence and discrimination, of inspiring “far-right groups and all other extremists”: “Their goal is to force the Church into internal exile, just like under communism. This goal is the raison d’etre of many NGOs in Serbia. They always react swiftly and indignantly when the Church adopts a position, treating it as something inherently illegitimate. The Metropolitan’s scriptural reference threw them into rage, as witnessed by the media conglomerate B92, which has assumed the role of ideological prosecutors and star chamber. His reminder that ‘the tree that bears no fruit is cut down’ was twisted in the best tradition of the French Revolution and Bolshevism.”

So what should be a believer’s position on homosexuality—or, for that matter, on any number of postmodernity’s sacred cows? Bosko Obradovic concludes that on this and every other social and political issue of our time, a distinct Christian position can and should be developed: “My faith does not allow it, and I do not want to mistreat, threaten, or discriminate against anyone. At the same time I am obliged to confess my faith, to bring up my children and to contribute to my society in accordance with what has been passed on to me—even if this means suffering legal punishment at the hands of the state.”

That punishment is coming soon to America and Europe alike, and Christians like Greg Davis and Bosko Obradovic are ready for it. They know that the earthly and temporal powers of the state can and should be recognized as imperative only to the degree that they are used to support good and limit evil. In America and Serbia alike, they both agree, a Christian may obey state laws only if such obedience does not demand apostasy or sin. We do not know which of my two friends will be the first to endure martyrdom, but I fear that both will.

Srdja Trifkovic is the author of Defeating Jihad and The Sword of the Prophet.

By Julia Gorin | It was a perverse Orwellianism to see Bob Dole opining on Bosnia in the Wall St. Journal ( “Bosnia and American Exceptionalism,” Oct. 23). He was criticizing President Obama for not demonstrating the traditional U.S. “leadership” in the region — that is, urging greater centralization of government in the 44% Muslim country, and strong-arming those “recalcitrant” Serbs in the direction that the country’s Muslim leadership wants to go.

For a snapshot of the Bosnia Mr. Dole hopes American leadership has created, he should look at Sarajevo, where the long tradition of Grandfather Frost — a non-denominational Santa — was recently banned from schools, and exclusively Islamic education introduced, while Sharia police crack down on hand-holding couples and pig-shaped toys in malls. Such is the “democratic development” that Mr. Dole worries will be impeded by a more loosely organized system among the Croats, Serbs and Muslims.

He goes on to lament that “The current [U.S. and EU-sponsored] reform package will vindicate Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik in his years-long, nationalist campaign to weaken and undermine the state of Bosnia…”

It’s interesting to see how Milorad Dodik went from being a Western favorite to being — what else — a Serbian “nationalist.” We saw the same labeling arch with Milosevic’s pro-Western, U.S.-backed successor Vojislav Kostunica. When this Constitutional scholar didn’t bend to our will on the illegal Kosovo secession, by 2005 he too was a “nationalist” according to our bureaucrats. Indeed, the man whom Bill Clinton declared a partner for peace at the 1995 Dayton Accords was none other than Slobodan Milosevic. But by 1999 we needed this multiculti socialist trying to keep the union together to become a virulent “nationalist” so that we could label as “ethnic cleansing” his belated crackdown targeting the cop-killing, civilian-dismembering, Albanian terrorists known as our friends the KLA.

Specifically, the “ethnic cleansing” was what we called the Yugoslav Army’s temporarily clearing out civilians from areas where they’d get caught in the crossfire, and then it’s what we called the Albanians, Serbs and everyone else running from our bombs.

If there is one place on earth where the opposite of “American exceptionalism” is on display it’s the Balkans. The Dayton Accords that Bob Dole, like every other politician, cites as American leadership that “ended the war” and “brought peace” in fact achieved the same result that the 1992 Lisbon Agreement — signed by Bosnia’s Serbs, Muslims and Croats — was about to achieve without bloodshed. But our ambassador Warren Zimmermann flew to Sarajevo with a wink and a nod to the fundamentalist Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic by essentially telling him, “You know, you don’t have to settle for that; you can get more.” Confident that he had Western backing, Izetbegovic promptly removed his signature and the war was on. This is well known among diplomatic circles from that time.

There is perhaps no harder realization or admission for any patriotic American to make than to understand that U.S. leadership is what ensured the horrific Bosnian war. America simply wasn’t America in the 1990s, when we stoked and joined an aggressive war against a natural post-Cold War ally — indeed our ally from two world wars — with one goal being to win over a new global enemy, and reassure the Muslim world after Desert Storm. Yugoslavia had been the most Western-facing, Hollywood-devouring country in the Communist Bloc next to Poland, and it was useful to us against Soviet Russia — while it was useful to us. Afterwards, it went on the chopping block.

If there is one place that calls for “multilateralism” and “dialogue” — which Mr. Dole urges Obama against — it’s the Balkans. And if there is one thing Obama is doing right, despite his VP’s violent Balkans record which Mr. Dole hails ( “All Serbs should be placed in Nazi-style concentration camps,” and “Serbs are illiterate degenerates, baby killers, butchers and rapists” — “Larry King”, Aug 1, 1993), it’s that an American president is finally listening to the very real concerns of Serbs sharing power with a Muslim majority — rather than consistently spitting into Serbian faces the way Mr. Dole is used to America operating in the Balkans. Naturally, Mr. Dole calls this unusual non-hostility “empowering the Serb entity.”

About that entity, he should try talking to a true Muslim reformer in Bosnia rather than the closet radicals we like to back. His name is Dzevad Galijasevic and in Sept. 2008 he said, “[The] Serb Republic is the better half of Bosnia…That is how it has to stay, because that is the only way that at least half of Bosnia remains unwelcoming for operatives, terrorists and al-Qaeda criminal[s].” This is because, as Galijasevic has been screaming from the rooftops, the Bosnian-Muslim third of the presidency, Haris Silajdzic, nurtures Wahhabists and harbors terrorists. Had Mr. Dole been following the Balkans at all, he would also know that increasing numbers of Serb-loathing Croatians are scampering out of Sarajevo and moving to the Serb Republic. Indeed, the Croatians are calling for a separation from Bosnia’s Croat-Muslim Federation, to have an entity of their own like the Serb Republic. But it’s understandable that Mr. Dole, like the other architects of our “successes” in Bosnia, doesn’t want to see the charade fall apart.

Mr. Dole writes that in Bosnia “a country and its people were under attack,” perpetuating the popular mythology that Bosnian Muslims, like Catholic Croatians, were responding to some kind of aggression by Yugoslavia. Aside from underscoring that our foreign policy elite is unable to grasp the basic concept that you can’t “invade” your own country, the easily followable chronology shows that the multi-ethnic Yugoslav Army responded to illegal secessions and border usurpations by Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia — entities that wanted to have their own countries, where their race or religion would reign supreme. That is not an assessment — it is documented fact, and was stated by the then leaders of those republics, by their publics, and by the discriminatory laws on their books.

In both Croatia and Bosnia, regions of Serbs who had been there for generations suddenly found themselves no longer in Yugoslavia, but at the mercy of the Croatians and Bosnians who exterminated their families in Croatia’s Jasenovac camp, the third-largest and conspicuously never mentioned concentration camp system of WWII. Naturally, these Serbian populations wanted to remain part of multi-ethnic UN member Yugoslavia. Survival dictated that they secede from the secessionists. Hence, war.

The US actively aided the supremacist designs of our old WWII Croatian and Albanian enemies — with weapons, military strategists, money and mujahedeen –alongside Iran and bin Laden himself, as the record shows, available even at the time. We then cleverly inverted the roles of aggressor and responder. It worked brilliantly every time. Because us exceptional Americans just can’t be bothered with figuring out the Balkans, and so our bureaucrats and “leaders” like Bob Dole have the continued luxury of operating in the shadows.

Very much like the Dole-praised Joe Biden and Richard Holbrooke, who called Serbs “murderous a**holes,” Mr. Dole’s own blind hatred for the Serbs was on display via his wife, who as president of the American Red Cross refused to leave any supplies for Serbian babies at the sanctions-starved Serbian hospitals as her convoys made their Serb-approved way through Serbia to the Bosnian Muslims.

More directly, and more disturbingly, Mr. Dole’s own anti-Serbism was bought and paid for going back to the 1970s and culminating in his unsuccessful 1986 Senate Resolution No. 150 decrying Yugoslavian repression of Kosovo Albanians — which is what we called the boycott of Yugoslav institutions by the Albanians building up a parallel system in preparation for a turf war of their own. In these parallel institutions, the Serbian language was banned, Serbian books burned and Serbian workers fired. Our major newspapers reported on the oft-declared nationalist goal to secede and create a Greater Albania, and on the violent intimidation — which included rape as a tool — that was causing an exodus of Serbs and others from Kosovo. This was while the province still enjoyed autonomous status and Slobodan Milosevic hadn’t even consolidated power to make a bid for presidency.

Bob Dole meets with the Kosovo Albanian separatist leader Rugova.

In 1987 Mr. Dole received $1.2 million from Albanian-Americans for his unsuccessful 1988 campaign against George Bush Sr. Albanian PAC money helped carry him and his wife through their 1996 and 2000 campaigns, respectively. In a July 1999 article, a researcher and Vietnam vet named Benjamin Works noted that “most of the Congressmen speaking loudest against Serbia and Serbs are those receiving money from [Joe] DioGuardi’s PAC,” referring to the Republican former Congressman (and father of “Idol” judge Kara DioGuardi), who after his congressional defeat discovered his Albanian roots and became Albanian for a living.

Warning against the creation of “mono-ethnic conclaves,” Mr. Dole writes that “preserving and defending our values at home and promoting them abroad are essential to protecting our national interests.” This, after leading the way in creating an all but mono-ethnic second Albanian state, where after our intervention even the most basic of American values — rule of law — doesn’t exist. Instead, the Americans and other internationals operating there are being corrupted or blackmailed into falling in line with the thugocracy that we bolstered.

It’s also worth mentioning that a Dole staffer advising the then congressman on foreign policy was a Croatian woman named Mira Baratta, granddaughter of an officer of the Ustasha regime (the Nazis’ Croatian incarnation) and daughter of Petar Radielovic, who called Croatian Fuehrer Ante Pavelic “the greatest man in Croatian history” — and who in 1985 defended Andrija Artukovic, “the Himmler of the Balkans” at his L.A. trial. Artukovic had said, “Kill all Serbs and Jews including children so that not even the seeds of the beasts are left.” Baratta helped frame a 1995 Senate bill lifting the U.S. arms embargo against Croatia and Bosnia, and even advocated for the Albanian cause against the Serbs. To quote Richard Perle, “Other than Richard Holbrooke, Baratta has been the most influential individual in shaping U.S. policy” in the Balkans.

Mira Baratta, left, as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Eurasia Mira Baratta in a meeting in Uzbekistan.

But again, money played a role. A March 1993 issue of Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy quoted a congressional investigator saying that Croatian lobbies spent more than $50 million on Capitol Hill in two years. He added, “Elected officials are being told to either support the Croatian line or face either a removal of funding or are told that funding will be given to their opponents. Or they are literally bribed into supporting the Croatian line. This was going on long before Croatia even made its open bid for recognition as an independent state.”

This sheds light on what former Senate Republican Foreign Policy Committee analyst James Jatras once told me about how when he would schedule meetings on Capitol Hill in the early 90s, to call attention to documented evidence and photos of some of the suffering in Yugoslavia, he would get the meetings easily enough. But when he would reveal that the victims of the slaughter and rape were Bosnian or Croatian Serbs, the doors would shut in his face:

Near the early stages of the Bosnia war — this would have been in late 1992 or early 1993 — Bishop Atanasije of Trebinje (in Herzegovina), whose diocese includes Mostar, visited me at my Senate office. He came with massive documentation of atrocities committed against his people by a militia under the command of [Croatian] Dobroslav Paraga, whose movement openly patterns itself on the WWII Ustashe. These included murders, arson, torture and rape in concentration camps. I phoned a number of Congressional offices (don’t remember which ones) and media (I do remember Washington Times), telling them I had a bishop from Bosnia with information about war crimes and human rights abuses. Their response was one of positive interest until it became clear we were talking about Serbian victims. At that point the tone of conversation changed to one of hesitancy, coupled with some lame excuse why a meeting would not be possible.

Italian General Mauro Del Vecchio told Italy’s “Panorama” publication earlier this year about the same phenomenon in Kosovo:

[D]uring the first three weeks of the [Kosovo] mandate “reports on the found bodies of killed Serbs and Romas arrived on his table each morning”, but that was a taboo topic they were not allowed to speak about with journalists…”The killing continued later but not so frequently. Those that have not fled Kosovo were under permanent risk to be killed or raped. Deserted Serbian houses were leveled to the ground or set on fire. Albanians were attacking the churches and monasteries, too. Their goal was to erase every trace of the Serbian presence in Kosovo,” Del Vecchio said…

As Mr. Works summarized, “All along it has been the ethnic nationalist fascist losers of World War II in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo who have been exploiting the political process in Germany and the United States. Their goal has been to effect the division of Yugoslavia and the cleansing of Serbian populations from their territories, while purporting that ‘Greater Serbia’ was the menace to European security and not the post-fascist ‘Greater Croatia’ and ‘Greater Albania.’”

Given that Mr. Dole fought in WWII, he should be familiar with the Serbian name Draza Mihailovic, the anti-Nazi and anti-Communist Serbian guerilla commander whose men saved 513 downed American pilots in 1944 and who graced the cover of Time magazine in 1942. Shame on Bob Dole for allowing himself to be co-opted to the other side by Nazi dollars and descendants.

Mr. Dole quotes Madeleine Albright about America being “the indispensable nation,” but it’s thanks to their ilk that America won’t remain such for long. He can thank himself for helping knock America down from exceptionalism to a for-sale thug like the rest.

As for The Journal, might it have been relevant to mention in Mr. Dole’s bio that he gets a paycheck from a law firm whose senior policy advisor worked for the Bosnian-Muslims and Kosovo Albanians — and has been Dole’s foreign policy advisor since 1999? See Marshall F. Harris, of Alston & Bird LLP.

An edited version of this text appeared in The Wall Street Journal on November 9, 2009, US edition.

Book Review.

Sergeant Nikola: A Novel of the Chetnik Brigades by Istvan Tamas. New York: L.B. Fischer Publishing Corporation, 1942. 311 pp.

The resistance and guerrilla movement of Draza Mihailovich and the Chetniks electrified and stunned the United States in 1941 and 1942. TIME magazine reported on Monday, December 15, 1941, in “Occupied Europe: Police Call”: “Chetnik guerrillas and Serbian regulars, united under Serbian General Draja Mikhailovitch, were reported standing off as many as seven German divisions in the mountains south and west of Belgrade.”

In “Yugoslavia: Island of Freedom”, from Monday, January 26, 1942, TIME reported:

“The most unsung hero of World War II had last week gained control of 20,000 of the 96,000 square miles of a nation which Adolf Hitler imagined he had conquered early last spring. The Nazis had quit trying to dislodge Yugoslavia’s General Draja Mihailovich from the cold mountains southwest of Belgrade and had retired to that city to await warmer weather. General Mihailovich was issuing passports for ‘Unoccupied Serbia,’ which he also called ‘an island of freedom.’ Draja Mihailovich’s fiery army of 145-150,000 former Yugoslav regulars, Serb Chetnik guerrillas, Croats, Slovenes, Jews, Bulgarian and Austrian deserters, has often been called a guerrilla force. It usually fights in small, separated groups like guerrillas. But General Mihailovich has a radio sending station. His forces have countless portable radio receiving sets of the former Yugoslav Army. His war is not impromptu guerrilla warfare. It is an organized, continuous raiding operation—mobile, swift, deceptive—which in years to come will undoubtedly rank as an epic.”

In “World War: Balkan Theater: War Without End”, from Monday, November 10, 1941, TIME reported: “The most hushed-up campaign of World War II is the war in the steep barren mountains of Serbia that the Axis has not, after more than six months, been able to end. … Meeting with Colonel Mihailovitch, they asked him to name his peace terms. But Mihailovitch and his army wanted no German peace. After a two-hour talk, he gave his final word. The Chetniks would fight to the end.”

The wraparound cover of the 1942 first edition of Sergeant Nikola: A Novel of the Chetnik Brigades by Istvan Tamas, published in New York by Fischer.

In “The Balkans: Down the Danube”, from Monday, March 23, 1942, TIME reported: “Hitler would be tired and fretful after the 500-mile voyage south to Belgrade, but the sight of mile-long food queues along Mihilova Street and the devastation wrought by his bombers a year ago might soothe him. He would not dare to make side trips up rivers like the Bosna or the Drina, because they lead to regions held by General Draja Mihailovich’s growing guerrilla army. This band of 145-150,000 Serbs, Greeks and Bulgars is becoming a symbol of freedom to all the silent people of the Balkans. The Germans and Italians have increased their armies in Yugoslavia to 400,000. They have ordered peasants to grow no tall crops within 500 yards of rail lines or main roads.”

The adulation and praise would result in Draza Mihailovich appearing on the cover of TIME magazine on Monday, May 25, 1942 under the title “Mihailovich: Yugoslavia’s Unconquered”, in a portrait by Montenegrin-born artist Vuk Vuchinich (1901-1974).

This frenzy of U.S. acclaim and popular support resulted in the nomination of Mihailovich for TIME magazine’s Man of the Year award, as reflected in the Letters section, on Monday, December 7, 1942, under the heading “Man of the Year”:

“Sirs: For Man of the Year—Draja Mihailovich, leader of the Yugoslav Chetniks! …

Politically and spiritually, his contribution to civilization in 1942 has been priceless.

In that dark corner of the Balkans, surrounded by vulture-like Hungary; by corrupt and degenerate Rumania; by venal Bulgaria and the contemptible Italian Blackshirts, he has kept liberty’s torch flaring in the murderous Nazi night like a beacon on the Adriatic.

History has already marked him for all time among the great fighters for liberty. Wallace and Bruce from the Scottish moors; Alfred of England; Garibaldi, Bolivar, Kosciuszko, Washington (just try to find one German among them from the days of the Teutoburg barbarians to the Burning of the Books!)—all the great Liberators salute him. Our own “Swamp Fox” Marion of the Revolution would have delighted in this peerless guerrilla. Among the great mountain fighters for human dignity and freedom he has held the pass as surely as Leonidas did at Thermopylae. …

But if by such a recognition you run any chance whatsoever of anglicizing and softening him, withhold the award! The Chetnik’s knife must remain keen and the Chetnik’s arm like steel, when the day of reckoning comes with the unspeakable Nazi. … DAVID S. LEVY Salt Lake City

Sirs: … I urge the candidacy of Draja Mihailovich, because:

1) No other man has accomplished as much in 1942 for the Allied cause or for any one nation, as an individual.

2) His army is his own creation.

3) His army’s exploits are his own.

4) He took to the field minus any promises from any Allied nation.

5) He has pinned down a sizable Axis force.

6) He is an effective symbol of the Allied cause.

7) He sets an example for guerrillas in other conquered countries—when opportunity permits them to operate.

8) His success develops double importance with our own forces now gathering to strike through the Balkans. (His troops one day will become an arm of an Allied nutcracker.) G. S. YORKE Los Angeles

Sirs: … A man, who, in my humble opinion, will go down in the annals of historic achievement as one of the most remarkable characters, and perhaps one of the greatest patriots of Allied Nations embroiled in World War II. I refer to General Draja Mihailovich, Minister of War to the Yugoslav Government-in-Exile. . . . This little man with an iron will whose unsung praises will one day be heralded to a people victoriously released from the yoke of our common enemy. . . . E. H. KEATE Indianapolis

Sirs: Greatness in a man is too often measured by the amount of publicity he received. Many a man has had to wait until the hand of death opened the eyes of the world to the greatness of him who had passed. …

I would like to present for your consideration as TIME’S Man of the Year … the one-man Blitzkrieg of Yugoslavia, General Draja Mihailovich.

Here is a man who doesn’t know the definition of the word “defeat.” …

A man, too—mark you—from whom much will be heard during and after the final victorious peace!

I salute the glorious Chetniks!—and give you their supreme commander, Generalissimo Draja Mihailovich! ALBERT E. FOWLER Newburyport, Mass.

Sirs: I offer the one man who really stands out in this warring world: General Draja Mihailovich, who in his own way is raising more hell with Hitler than all the rest of us put together. …

Not only as a fighting man, but as a symbol of smoldering, starving Europe, General Mihailovich alone deserves the title. TED SMILEY Jacksonville

Sirs: … Draja Mihailovich as the Man of the Year. … Every citizen of freedom-loving countries throughout the world should literally take off their hats to him. BERNIE HEAD Tampa

Sirs: … General Draja Mihailovich … whose feats fire the imagination as did Lawrence of Arabia in World War I. HARRY REMINGTON Chicago

Sirs: … Draja Mihailovich… WALLY ALLEN Pittsburgh

Sirs: One vote for Draja Mihailovich. … NED ALVORD Rock Island, Ill.

Sirs: … General Draja Mihailovich. … SPENCE PIERCE Atlanta

Sirs: … Draja Mihailovich. … Z. M. HARRIS New York City”

 The cover of the 1943 Spanish language version, El Sargento Nicolas: La Novela de los Guerrilleros Yugoslavos, published by Poseidon in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In the midst of widespread, unprecedented national popular acclaim, on November 23, 1942, the first major novel on Draza Mihailovich and the Chetnik guerrillas was published in the United States. The novel was entitled Sergeant Nikola: A Novel of the Chetnik Brigades by Istvan Tamas, a Hungarian-born chemist, playwright, and author who had settled in the U.S. The novel, published by L.B. Fischer in New York, became a best-seller, a Book-of-the-Month Club selection in 1943, and went through a second printing. The novel was also translated into Spanish by Santiago A. Ferrari and published as El Sargento Nicolas: La Novela de los Guerrilleros Yugoslavos by Poseidon in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The plot of the novel revolved around three brothers, Nikola, Stoyan, and Joco Vasiljevich, who join the guerrilla army of General Draza Mihailovich after Yugoslavia is invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany in 1941. The slogan of the Chetnik guerrillas was: “The war has ended, the fight begins”.

The publisher compared the guerrillas with American historical figures: “Few Americans realize, from the meager newspaper stories, how much like Robin Hood, John Paul Jones and Ethan Allen are Draja Mikhailovitch and his valiant Chetniks. … [E]ach Chetnik seems to be a mixture of Tom Sawyer and D’Artagnan.”

Istvan Tamas, who lived in Belgrade for several years, wrote in the Prologue that his goal was to focus on the Chetnik guerrillas and not the history of the conflict. He did not want to begin the story as: “Once upon a time in the city of Belgrade there lived a poor widow with her three sons …”

“Chetniks of Yugoslavia” on the cover of Newsweek magazine, November 8, 1943.

“‘Sergeant Nikola’ is the story of a struggling, romantic people midst romantic surroundings.

“It would have been simpler to assemble the strictly gathered facts and in chronological order recount the battles, and make a list of those tortured and those executed. But this would be a painting of the course of the war and not of the Chetniks. Yet in my eyes it is they who are important, the brave, brief-spoken, all-suffering heroes who, instead of surrendering, retired from their towns and villages into the vastnesses of the mountains, there to face the fortunes of battle at odds of a hundred to one. Only such a fanatically freedom-loving people, whose past is woven with legends, is capable of such superhuman heroism, which challenges the sober mind and the soldier’s most elementary strategy. … [A]nd although officially the war in fourteen countries of Europe is over, the Southern Slav guerrillas have become an obstacle in the path of the world-plundering swastika, making a human barricade…”

Istvan Tamas was born on August 8, 1907 in Pecsvarad, Hungary and died on May 5, 1974 in St. Petersburg, Florida. He studied chemistry and literature at the University of Budapest and the Sorbonne in Paris, France. He was the editor of Magyar magazine in Budapest.

After receiving his degree in chemistry, he spent the next twelve years writing plays and stories. He wrote more than a dozen novels and children’s books and four scenarios or screenplays. His short story “Moscow-Paris and Return” became the basis of the 1939 Greta Garbo film, Ninotchka. He wrote the story, “A Potyanlas”, “The Stowaway”, which was the basis for the Shirley Temple movie The Stowaway (1936) and also wrote the screenplay for Café Moszkva, a Hungarian film made in 1936 by director Steve Sekely.

Tamas was “always a political activist” who settled in the United States with his wife Ily in 1940. His wife stated that during the pre-war period he “was in Yugoslavia (working in the underground).” Tamas fled from Hungary after the war started: “More and more the war approaches and my husband as a political writer had to escape. … They knew my husband was very much in the underground ….” He wrote a second novel on wartime Yugoslavia, The Students of Spalato, which was published in 1944 in the U.S.

During the Cold War, four of his books were banned by the Communist government of Hungary. As a chemist, Tamas developed a cellulose cigarette wrapper in 1938 and a coating for razor blades that was marketed in 1960 as the Gillette Super Blue Blade.

Sergeant Nikola: A Novel of the Chetnik Brigades became a best-selling wartime novel in the U.S. and was reviewed in: 1) the Sunday, December 13, 1942 issue of the New York Times by Fred T. Marsh; 2) the January, 1943 issue of Harper’s magazine by Katherine Gauss Jackson; 3) the December 5, 1942 issue of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette by John Selby in the section “This World of Books”; and, 4) The New Yorker magazine, December 5, 1942, in the section Briefly Noted Fiction: “Sergeant Nikola, by Istvan Tamas. ‘Stirring exploits of General Mikhailovitch’s guerrillas, recorded in the form of the diary.’”

As a wartime novel, on the back cover appeared an ad for U.S. war bonds and stamps: “For victory buy United States war bonds and stamps. Invest in victory! Your money invested in your country can help to win your war. Invest your dollars and dimes in U.S. war bonds and stamps.”

Draza Mihailovich on the cover of TIME magazine, May 25, 1942, under the title “Mihailovich: Yugoslavia’s Unconquered”. He was a main contender for the TIME Man of the Year award for 1942. Joseph Stalin was selected as the TIME Man of the Year in 1942 by the editors of TIME.

In the Sunday, December 13, 1942 New York Times Book Review, Section 6, pages 26-27, “The New Works of Fiction: The Chetniks”, Fred T. Marsh reviewed the novel. Marsh described the novel as “this story of the Serbian irregulars under General Draja Mikhailovitch of the Chetniks”: “Charm and humor and the touch of legend and fairy tale are not ordinarily associated with Nazi invasions.”

Marsh noted “the unconquerable spirit” that runs throughout the novel: “But here, in these letters Sergeant Nikola of the guerrillas writes home to his mother, not knowing that she is dead, a victim of the Nazi terror, the details of everyday life, the amusing as well as the heroic exploits, the horseplay and practical jokes of the front, the character descriptions—all of these are given in a fashion intended to hearten and amuse. And they are all the more heartening for the truth one reads between the lines—the unconquerable spirit through all hardships.”

Marsh describes the novel as “this running account of the way of it in modern irregular and guerrilla warfare.” His conclusion was that the novel was convincing and authentic: “Certainly his story of the Chetniks brings with it convincingness, the stamp of a certain authority.”

John Selby described the plot and emphasized the humor in the novel: “’Sergeant Nikola’ is a book to be read alongside Erskine Caldwell’s ‘All Night Long.’ It is a novel of the Chetniks, celebrating the exploits of three brothers who took to Serbia’s mountains with Mikhailovitch, who helped that almost legendary general immobilize some ten Nazi divisions, and did it with a dash and swing that are rather like some episodes of American history. Istvan Tamas is an experienced novelist, and he has provided something that Mr. Caldwell, also experienced, has overlooked. This is humor.”

The novel is about the three Vasiljevich brothers, Nikola, Joco, and Stoyan, and their widowed mother, Lizaveta, who live in Belgrade. Their mother owns a Belgrade news stand. Nikola is a paper boy who sells and delivers newspapers. Nikola, the oldest, went to the same school as Yugoslav King Peter II, along with 11 other poor students. Joco shines shoes. Stoyan is a waiter. The novel consists of letters that Nikola has written to his mother, who he does not know is dead, “a victim of the Nazi terror.” 

In Part I, Belgrade’s Last Spring of Peace, the novel opens as the narrator arrives at the railroad station in Belgrade on February 19, 1941. The narrator is an American writer who is in Belgrade on a stopover on his travels on the Orient Express to Istanbul. While going to buy postcards on the platform, he is able to see King Peter II of Yugoslavia and Regent Prince Paul come by automobile to greet King Michael of Roumania, who is also travelling on the same train. At the station platform he is prevented by security from returning to the train, which leaves without him with his luggage on board. While in Belgrade waiting for the next train, he decides to stay in the city during the crucial period when the controversial pact with Germany is being discussed. During his stay in the city, the narrator gets to know Nikola, Stojan, Joco, and their mother Lizaveta.

Nikola’s father was Pero Vasiljevich, a corporal of the King’s bodyguard, who was killed on October 9, 1934 during the assassination of King Alexander Karageorgevich I in Marseilles while on an official visit to France.

Nikola explained the dilemma that Yugoslavia faced: “’Our country is big enough, and we don’t covet our neighbor’s land. But today we can’t remain neutral.’

“’Do you think Yugoslavia can resist a German attack?’

“’A war with Germany may mean a second battle of Kossovo,’ said the boy gravely, ‘but even so, we must fight to the end.’”

The narrator noted the significance of the Battle of Kosovo in 1389: “To further understand the Serbian people, one should be familiar with this chapter in their history:

Over five hundred years ago—in 1389—on St. Vitus Day, the Serbs were defeated by the Turks at Kossovo Polje, the Field of the Blackbirds. Prince Lazarus, his sons, and the flower of Serbian manhood were killed in this battle. The invader, Sultan Murad, was also killed. Today Serbian men, women and children still chant about the battle of the Field of the Blackbirds, which only widows and orphans survived. Serbia became a vassal of Turkey. Vidovdan, The Day of Widows, is still celebrated as one of the national holidays in Serbia. In the Church of Dechani Prince Lazarus’ widow placed a giant candle, stipulating that it was to be lit only after Kossovo had been avenged. The candle remained there, upright and unlit, until after the Balkan wars of 1913, when Serbia regained her independence, and King Peter I, the grandfather of the child, Peter II, lit it.”

Nikola tells the narrator about the conflict between Yugoslav Secretary of War Milan Nedich and Draza Mihailovich.

“’Mihailovich? Is he the young general whose court-martial Nedich instigated because he insisted that the Serbian border fortifications were of no value as long as spies and fifth columnists I high positions can go and come as they please?’” …

“’It’s the old story of a young officer, with aggressive ideas, whom reactionary brass-hats squelch much too often.’”…

Nikola related the career of Mihailovich: “’He is the son of a Serbian colonel. He graduated from the Military Academy of Belgrade, fought in the Balkan Wars, and in the first World War, where he was wounded twice. He became a professor of strategy in the Military Academy, but was soon shunted into inconsequential jobs because his ideas about modern warfare were a little too advanced.’…

“’Mihailovich warned that our fortresses are not an effective defense against a mechanized army. He recommended that the members of the patriotic societies be armed, and that they, along with the army, should, when the time comes, fight a guerrilla warfare with the enemy. But the government refused to give arms to the people, for Nedich frightened Prince Paul, the Regent, with the assertion that if the people were armed they would revolt against the government, and that the only way they could avoid war was to come to terms with the Nazis. Mihailovich, who had a great many followers among the younger officers, was convicted and condemned to prison, and had not Prince Paul intervened, he would have been executed as a traitor. Mihailovich who is married and has four children, wrote this letter from prison to Milan Nedich, his bitterest enemy: ‘God grant that you should be right, and I should be wrong; but beware if you should be wrong and our country be led to destruction.’

“’Where is Mihailovich now?’ I asked.

“’They sent him to Mostar, Herzegovina, where his presence won’t disturb the conscience of the military clique in Belgrade.’”

He recounted the announcement of the pact between Yugoslavia and the Axis over a Belgrade radio: “Vienna announces that Yugoslavia has joined the Axis. In Belvedere Palace, in the presence of Chancellor Hitler, the Prime Minister, Cvetkovich, and Foreign Minister Markovich, representing the Yugoslav government, signed the three-power pact.”

The announcement resulted in street demonstrations, protests, marches, and riots in Belgrade: “The city buzzed like a disturbed beehive. All activity at the University came to a halt. The students dropped their books and marched out in fours, damning the government and the Axis. The police and the gendarmes made no attempt to interfere. Flattened against the wall, the tourists watched the demonstration.”

Lizaveta Vasiljevich stated: “’This is just the way it started in 1914.’”

Peter II then made a speech to the crowd making the analogy of another Kosovo: “’My beloved people: The Vienna pact, forced upon us by the Nazis, I do not recognize and will not sign. We want peace, but we don’t want it at such a disgraceful price. Rather another ‘Kossovo’ than that we should sell our country. Zivio Yugoslavia!’“

Patriarch Gavrillo, the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, “appeared on the balcony and in front of the cheering crowd thanked Peter for having saved the nation’s honor.”

The Regent Prince Paul was recalled from Zagreb and forced to resign while the Minister of War Nedich and the members of the Cvetkovich cabinet were taken into custody. A new government was proclaimed at the Dedinye Palace with Peter II as the leader on March 28.

Tamas made the analogy with Kosovo, with Nazi Germany as Ottoman Turkey, and Adolf Hitler as Sultan Murad I: “They knew that they would fight, and that they might lose the fight, just as they lost it against the Turks throughout the centuries. But just as they had not compromised with the Turks, so now they would not compromise with the Germans.”

The people prepared for war: “The men went home for their guns and ammunition, the women packed provisions. This was the last spring of peace in Belgrade.”

Nikola joined his regiment, announcing: “’It’s the people’s battle that is now beginning … until we are free again.’”

On April 3, the city was abuzz with the news of the suicide of the Hungarian Prime Minister: “The sixty-one-year-old Count Paul Teleki had shot himself because he did not want to give military assistance to the Germans against Yugoslavia.”

In Moscow, a five year agreement of friendship was signed between Russia and Yugoslavia.

“While all this was going on, the first German troops marched into Albania.”

Amid the chaos and confusion, the narrator decides not to depart on the next train on the Orient Express. He is warned by police officer Toso Blagovics that Belgrade is likely to be bombed by the Luftwaffe and that there are no air-raid shelters. The narrator declares that it is his intention to stay in the city: “’I shall remain.’”

“’Why?’

“’I want to help.’

“’What does it matter to you what happens to our people?’

“’Because I like them. And now this is not Yugoslavia’s private affair. This is the whole of mankind’s business.’”

The narrator described the bombing of Belgrade by waves of Luftwaffe aircraft in sorties over civilian and residential targets: “Over the slumbering city the Luftwaffe made its appearance, two hundred planes strong, and for eight terrifying hours the bombs thundered like brimstone from hell on the roofs, squares and streets. The Stukas vomited fire and smoke, the thatched and reed-covered houses in the suburbs stood in a sea of flame. The half-sleeping populace ran out into the streets in their night clothes, mothers with their bawling infants in their arms. … The next day, the seventh of April, the entire city was busy extinguishing fires, rescuing people. Nowhere were there signs of complaint, lament or panic; only sullen, silent wrath was visible on the Yugoslav faces. The air attack had left in its wake twenty thousand dead. In front of our gate lay a woman’s corpse. … The adjacent house was blown in two by the bombs. … The other half had been carried away, small testimony to the Stuka’s might.”

“Among the ruins, with hair disheveled and ragged clothing, a woman dashed around and shrieked incoherently.

“’Where is Lyubitza? Have you seen Lyubitza?’ and rushed on among the crumbling walls.

“’Poor thing,’ said Zorica, ‘she went mad when she saw here daughter killed by a bomb. The explosion tore the child’s head off, and the mother didn’t want her buried without her head.’”

The military fortress of Kalimegdan “lay in ruins”, the seventeenth time that it had been destroyed in three hundred years.

On April 8, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had sent King Peter a message promising American aid.

The narrator encountered Lizaveta, who tells him that Joco and Stoyan had left the city and that Nikola was engaged in fighting in Kragujevac. He tries to convince her unsuccessfully to leave the destroyed city: “What could a foreigner, viewing this deathly scene from under the protection of his neutrality, say to a mother who was willing to sacrifice three sons for her country?”

On April 13, he described finding Lizaveta’s body: “In place of the olive green newsstand there was a bomb crater. I hurried to it. The hole was filled with rain water, on which a few splinters of wood floated. A woman’s hand stuck out of the murky water. The long, naked fingers seemed to be reaching for something. On the third finger was the familiar wedding ring.” He attended her funeral as German troops entered the city.

After the Axis invasion and occupation, Yugoslavia was dismembered and divided up among Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Albania while Serbia was stripped of territory. Serbia was under direct German military occupation while a Greater Croatia was created consisting of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina under a Nazi puppet regime by Ante Pavelich, who had been sentenced to death in absentia by French courts for his role in the assassination of Alexander in Marseille on October 9, 1934. He formed an Ustashi Guard which was armed by Germany and Italy and received protection by the Vatican. The Croatian regime set up its own network of concentration and death camps and Croats and Bosnian Muslims conducted a planned and systematic genocide against the Orthodox Serb, Jewish, and gypsy populations.

In London, on May 9, an exile Yugoslav government was established under Air Force General Dusan Simovich as the Prime Minister with Draza Mihailovich as the War Minister. In Serbia, Serbian Orthodox priests, Jews, and gypsies were forbidden to travel on trains and trolleys in Serbia by the German occupation authorities.

Uprisings and insurrections erupted in Serbia. The Axis sent “order-restoring” troops to “pacify” the country but these measures were not successful.

A wanted poster for Draza Mihailovich issued by the German High Command in Serbia, offering 200,000 dinars for his capture.

“The population sympathized with the guerrillas, and a new hero was born to the Balkans, General Draja Mihailovich, the forty-eight-year-old leader of the guerrillas, who struck at the German, Italian and Bulgarian garrisons from the black mountains.”

The narrator described the guerrillas and their success in creating a quagmire for German troops: “These two hundred thousand fighting Chetniks, with their patched-up little air force, their stolen tanks and smuggled ammunition, are keeping about three hundred thousand well-equipped Nazis busy on a ‘second front’ of this war. They are making it impossible for Hitler to maintain uninterrupted railway or other communications through Yugoslavia, to the Bulgarian jumping-off places he needs for an invasion of the oil regions of the Middle East. Mihailovich, with the price of one million dollars on his head, controls about twenty thousand square miles of old Serbia, Slovenia, Montenegro and Bosnia. The Nazi-held territory does not extend much farther than fifty miles south of Belgrade.”

On July 5, the narrator received a letter from Nikola: “I don’t dare write directly to my dear mother because the enemy, knowing that her sons are Chetniks, are perhaps watching her….As you know, dear friend, I am serving in Draja Mihailovich’s army. After the shameful surrender of the army, we have continued to fight. We fought our way through German and Italian divisions, until we could plant our feet in the mountains. Just yesterday in Kossovo, The Field of the Blackbirds, we destroyed a detachment of Nazis. It wasn’t an epic fight—just a small skirmish—but we remained masters of Serbia’s holy soil. From the time of the Turkish invasion until yesterday, we celebrated Vidovdan, the day of the widows; since the German invasion our nation has become the Land of Widows…. In our legend Prince Lazarus, who had to choose between an earthly and heavenly kingdom, said this:

‘An earthly kingdom lasts only a short time; but a heavenly kingdom will last for eternity.’”

Nikola wrote about the inaction and appeasement of the European countries: “The rulers of Europe … rushed so blindly and unheedingly into the arms of the Nazi bandits. But not we! The war in our country is over. But the fight is just beginning.” He signed his letter: “Nikola Vasiljevich Corporal of the Draja Mihailovich Brigade.”

Nikola continued to send letters to his dead mother, Lizaveta Vasiljevich, not knowing that she had been killed in the bombing of Belgrade. The narrator kept the letters and published them as “a diary of the entire bitter, intrepid guerrilla warfare, a new saga in prose.”

The narrator explained their purpose: “Since their mother cannot see them, let them be read by the American mothers whose sons are now waging battle on seven seas and five continents against the common enemy. Their fate is one with the Chetnik boys in the ‘Land of the Widows,’ standing guard on one of the bloodiest sectors of the world battlefront, where the earth is still quaking with terror.”

The events in the novel are subsequently told in the form of an epistolary novel, through the letters that Nikola sends to his mother.

In Part II, The Peoples’ War, the nature of the conflict is described: “It is the people’s war that now is being fought. There will be no compromise.” In the first chapter of Part II, “The War is Over: The Fight Begins”, Nikola writes a letter dated July 3, 1941 “in the guerrilla camps, somewhere in South Serbia” describing how he joined the guerrillas of Draza Mihailovich, who vows to fight on: “On April 18^th came the news that the army had laid down its arms, and the enemy had captured two hundred thousand prisoners.” …

“After conferring with his officers, General Mihailovich addressed his ten thousand good soldiers:

“’Comrades, our battle can’t stop while the enemy is on Yugoslav soil. Those who wish may go and surrender to the Nazi; I will remain here.’”

“The division shouted at the top of its lungs: ‘We’ll stay with you, Draja Mihailovich.’”

In the chapter “Resist and Rebuild”, Nikola described how the guerrillas engaged in “hand-to-hand fighting” with Nazi forces while the guerrillas moved south to Macedonia: “With perseverance we sped toward Macedonia, sometimes on foot, sometimes on horseback or muleback, by canoe, or swimming.”

“During the day we hid in the woods, so that the enemy would not be able to trace us. The General frequently disappeared from our midst and when he returned he brought with him hundreds of other fugitives.

“At first there were hardly three thousand of us, and from this group developed the Mihailovich brigade, in which I am a corporal. Village by village our army grew larger. Truly, the country is in a miserable state. Our journey led us through burning, deserted villages and farms laid waste.”

In Macedonia, where the population had mixed and conflicting loyalties, “the Serb-Macedonians fought on our side against the Bulgars and Nazis.”

“Pero, the best known Macedon comitadji leader, with his three hundred men, joined Mihailovich. … We have amongst us Roman Catholics, Mohammedans, Jews, Greek Orthodox, but we are one in the mutual love of our country and in the mutual hatred of our enemy.”

Near the Babuna Mountains, the guerrillas came across an Orthodox Church and witnessed Nazi atrocities: “The village church stood on a hill, its peaceful Byzantine cupola overlooking the surrounding countryside. There on the strong wooden bars of the superstructure of the church tower was the priest, hanging, as a living clapper to the bell, with his head down.”

The Nazi troops had sought to terrorize the population: “The peasants told us how the enemy had forced them along as living shields, after punishing the priest for refusing to cooperate.”

Nikola described how he got used to war and death: “Later I became used to death.”

He explained in his letter to his mother his opposition, antipathy, and distaste for war: “My dear mother, you know I never yearned for a soldier’s life—how I dreaded the very thought of it. Hunting human heads in the twentieth century is repugnant to me, but when I see women hanging from the girders of bridges, children from roadside trees, and priests in front of their churches, my only regret is that I don’t have a hundred arms with which to wipe out the Nazis more rapidly!”

In the chapter “A Day in a Guerrilla Camp”, Nikola described a wanted posted which the Nazis had posted for Mihailovich.

A wanted poster issued by the Supreme Commander of German Troops in Serbia: “Reward of 100,000 Reichsmarks in Gold! Whoever brings in dead or alive the bandit leader Draza Mihailovich will receive 100,000 Reichsmarks in gold.”

“A peasant from the town of Skoplje arrived with a placard which he had scraped from the wall, half of it decorated by Mihailovich’s photograph, under which, in fat letters, was the following:

Wanted, dead or alive, the chetnik bandit Draja Mihailovich, for whose capture we offer 1,000,000 dinars. Signed, Milan Nedich, Prime Minister.”

The guerrillas joked that the photograph was not a good likeness and that the description of Mihailovich was not accurate: “The description didn’t fit, either. ‘Red hair, red mustache, deep-set black eyes,’ we read, laughing, because Mihailovich has big blue eyes, and through his wavy chestnut hair the thick silver strands sparkle like the trimmings on a Christmas tree.”

Mihailovich spent his free time reading books: “Plutarch and Cicero have always been my favorite reading.” Nikola described the scene: “He picked up a volume, and settling himself under a shady tree, for half an hour he turned the pages to see what ideas these ancients might supply to help him liberate his country.”

The guerrillas had “portable, high-powered radio transmitters” and receivers.

Nikola described a speech that Mihailovich made: “Everything was ready and Popov gave the signal to be quiet, when a pair of quarreling orioles shot up from a bush. The female chased away the loving male which lit on the microphone and sang his sorrow to the world. Perhaps some other lonely oriole will hear it in America or England.

“The General began his speech. He asked for rifles and munitions from the Americans and English. We yesterday received word that the Luftwaffe had bombed Sabatz for two hours, leveling the city as ‘punishment’ for our Chetniks’ seizing some anti-aircraft guns and machine guns from their camps.

“Then he spoke to the nation.

“’Serbian brothers, be united against the Nazi, who have destroyed our homes. You can help us in two ways: By joining us with your rifles, or by giving us food, clothing, shelter and news. Remember that our woods are full of waifs, living like wild beasts. Find them, feed them and wash them. The reward and the punishment will come later.’”

Nikola described his reaction to the Nazi proxy and puppet Milan Nedich: “He’s being consumed by rage because the people despise him; and if he weren’t guarded by the S.S. he’d be in hell long ago keeping Lucifer’s fires burning.”

Lacking state-of-the-art weapons and equipment, the guerrillas constructed their own “home-made airplane” and tank. One of the Chetnik guerrillas, Bosko Cvetkovich, “the pilot lieutenant”, built a make-shift airplane from “a half-burned monoplane” which was found in Kragujevac and a wrecked plane near Prilep. Using this plane, the guerrillas were able to bomb a Nazi arsenal using their “air force” by dropping home-made bombs. Bosko and a mechanic, Slobodan, also constructed a home-made tank from “a broken-down threshing machine and a wrecked truck.” The tank, a “war monster” which “looked much more like a prehistoric animal”, was dubbed the “Blitz of the Black Mountains”, which was painted on its side. On the front, a mouth, nose, and eyes were painted with fire streaming out of the mouth like from a dragon.

The next guerrilla attack was an assault on the mines in Kosovska Mitrovica in northern Kosovo: “Mihailovich sent four hundred of us to Kossovska Mitrovitsa, including myself.” The makeshift tank, “the iron crocodile”, was used in the attack on German troops in Kosovska Mitrovica where German forces had sought to exploit the magnesium, silver, coal, and sulphur mines of northern Kosovo: “The Nazi needs the coal and magnesium.” The guerrillas dynamited the mines which they were able to destroy.

In the ensuing battle, the “Germans ran toward the Field of Blackbirds.” In his description of the attack, Nikola invokes the analogy with the 1389 Battle of Kosovo: “After methodically blowing up all the buildings and machines, we pursued the enemy relentlessly. On the field of Kossovo Polje, where once our ancestors were chased by the Turks, we were now hunting the Nazis. They had trucks and could move faster, nevertheless, by midnight we had caught up with them at the Mausoleum of Sultan Murad.” Nikola described how “the Germans were shooting at us from behind the Turkish tombstones.” Using dynamite and engaging in hand-to-hand combat, they were able to drive back the German troops: “The last Nazi fell beside the stone coffin of the Sultan, his effigy’s carved turban painted red by German blood. One hundred dead Germans lay in the mausoleum of the Sultan, who once had destroyed the 100,000 good Serbs of Czar Lazarus’s army.”

After “the Battle of Mitrovitsa” in Kosovo, the guerrillas celebrated by eating lamb stew. The cook of the brigade, Miho Soksics, made corn porridge with milk and letso, made with sausage, green peppers, tomatoes, onions, and rice, musaka, a shepherd’s pie with pork and potatoes and cream-cheese, mutton paprikash, pura, made of cornbread, and sarma, stuffed cabbage leaves with minced beef and rice. They also ate djuvech, vegetables mixed in a tomato sauce, and drank rakija.

In the chapter “Guerrilla Doctor”, the guerrillas were able to find a doctor to assist them after their radio operator, Svetozar Popov, became ill. In Bitolj, they found Dr. Steve Gara, an obstetrician. Nikola sought to conceal the fact that they were guerrillas from him. The deception was necessary because “in war necessity is the only law.”  They eventually revealed their identity to him when he suspected them of being bandits: “We are soldiers of General Mihailovich.” He later helped the wife of one of the guerrillas, Janko, give birth: “The youngest Chetnik entered the world with a shrill, triumphant voice like that of a sailor who reaches after a long journey.” The mother wanted to name him “Draja”, while the father “insisted that it should be Franklin Delano, in honor of the President of the United States, whom he admired so much.” Gara joined the guerrillas and even sang with them: “In the evening by the campfire he sang with us about our heroes, Czar Dusan and Marko Kraljevich.”

“Mihailovich warned him: ‘If you stay with us, you cannot return to Bitolj. You will be an outlaw, just like any of us, and if the Nazis should capture you, nothing can save you from the noose.’…

“’We can pay you only with our thanks and our gratitude.’

“’My salary shall be a dead Nazi for every healed Chetnik.’

“’Agreed,’ said Mihailovich, shaking hands with him.”

The guerrillas were betrayed to the Nazis by Nikola’s uncle, Ilija Dulin, and were forced to engage German troops in a battle in Kumanovo in which many are killed on both sides.

On August 1, 1941, Mihailovich promoted Nikola to the rank of sergeant. Nikola thus became “Sergeant Nikola of General Mikhailovitch’s heroic Chetniks.”

Mihailovich sent Nikola on a secret mission to make contact with guerrilla leaders in other regions of the country: “’We want to send a messenger to our Slovenian, Bosnian and Dalmatian brothers,’ explained the General, ‘with an important and confidential message. We have selected you, Sergeant Nikola Vasiljevich. … Your first stop is Nish, the second Sarajevo, the third Dubrovnik. If on your way you should meet some refugees, direct them to us. Where the danger is great, travel by night and avoid the highways, because motorized Nazi sentries are on patrol everywhere.’” Nikola then set off on his secret mission.

In Nish, he made contact with Gospodin X and with his grandfather. In Sarajevo, he met with Chief Radu, a leader of gypsies in Bosnia, who informed him of Captain Adrian, “the mad traitor”: “The Italians have given him permission to recruit troops. Ustashis from Croatia and all types of gangsters are helping him fight the Chetniks.” Count Petrushka Adrian was born in Yugoslavia: “His blackshirt legion consists of nine hundred Italians, Croatians and Macedon-Bulgarians, whom the … Nazis armed against us. Officially they are under Ante Pavelich’s ‘Independent Croatian Government,’ but Adrian acknowledges this only when he wants something from the Prime Minister.”

In Sarajevo, Nikola participated in an attack on a German munitions train loaded with gasoline. He was able to fire his revolver into the gasoline tanks, blowing up the train, which became “a snake of fire”. He was to take Mihailovich’s message to the leader of the Green Guards who had been captured by German troops. He described Bosnia: “A third of the people of Bosnia are Byzantine Christians, another third pagan, and the rest are Moslems.” There was no majority population in Bosnia. He described Ante Pavelich: “Ante Pavelich, the head of the present government of Zagreb, recently made prime minister by the Italians and Nazis, is despised by the people. And though the Croatians, Slovenians and Bosnians never got along with us before the war, they would rather be ruled by the devil than by Pavelich.”

Nikola then went to the spot where the assassination in 1914 occurred: “I stood on the bridge where on June 28, 1914, Gavrillo Princip fired the shot at Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife which started the first World War.”

“The memorial plaque of Narodna Obranja on the bridge railing has been torn down by the Nazis. I would like to put up a monument for the one who fires the last shot in this World War.”

In the chapter “Hero’s Reward”, Nikola described how he had met up with his brothers Joco and Stoyan in Split.  He then reached Mostar, “and from there, on a guerrilla road on which our people had fought for five hundred years with the Turks. I wandered down the banks of the Neretva across Karst to the sea.” He described how he felt more at safety among the bears, wild hogs, dear, chamois, marmots, and vultures than he did among Nazi forces: “I walked among them with greater safety than among the two-footed beasts of the Swastika.”

“A fisherman took me in his boat downward on the Neretva. He told me that after the battle at Mostar, for days there was no fishing in the river because the water was full of corpses which had been hurled into it by the Germans. Excepting the Chinese and Russians, no people have suffered such horrors in modern times as we, my dear mother. This district has no Mihailovich, so a few thousand men are fighting in widely separated bands and, of course, the Nazi easily disperses them. The survivors are tired and apathetic and are awaiting the aid of Russia and England.”

“’Brother,’ I said to the fisherman, ‘help must come from within. We have to stick together.’

“The fisherman shook his head sadly.

“’You saw how far the Green Guards were able to go. The Germans scattered them and the prisoners are being tortured to death.’

“’But not our Chetniks,’ I said, ‘because Mihailovich understands his business. Not only Serbs, but Greeks, and Hungarian deserters are joining us.’”

Nikola met his brothers and explained what had happened to him after they had parted: “I told them briefly that I am a sergeant in Mihailovich’s brigade, and the boys were surprised to hear that we have an army of 50,000 Chetniks in the mountains. They heard for the first time that our raids are not just haphazard hit-and-miss affairs but organized military operations.”

“’Magnificent,’ they said warmly. ‘We will join you, too.’”

In Dubrovnik, he was able to give Mihailovich’s message to Gospodin Z, his contact there. Joco played a gusle, a stringed instrument whose strings are made from horses’ tails. Nikola explained how Joco was able to motivate those who were uncommitted towards the resistance movement: “During this time I spoke to the assembled group about General Mihailovich. … Joco was singing the Ballad of Kosovo. … Stoyan and I paid no attention to him, for we were used to his singing since our childhood. But this stirring song roused the Dalmatians, and another man jumped up. ‘Down with the Naizs!’ he yelled, and he also threw his glass to the floor.” All of them joined in singing the ballad of Marko Kraljevich.

“The hundred year old great-grandfather, sitting on the hearth and smoothing the fur of a purring cat, said, nodding, ‘It was this way in the time of the Turks, too. Blind gusle-players went from village to village singing about their heroes, and those who heard them seized their guns and swords and followed the hayduks.’”

Similarly, Montenegrins in Cetinje were persuaded to join the guerrillas led by Mihailovich. Nikola described how along their trek, “we were joined by fugitives and shepherds” and that those who were too old to fight gave them mules, goats, and donkeys to bring as gifts to Mihailovich.

When Nikola and his men were trapped in the forest by German troops, they were rescued by a group of Chetnik guerrillas who were able to locate them.

“’Down with the Nazi,’ we cried, and in the same moment from the valley like a distant echo came, ‘Down with the Nazi,’ from Mihailovich’s brigade.”

After the battle, Mihailovich awarded Nikola with a medal.

“He removed one of his own gold medals—we do not have a supply—and pinned it on my chest. ‘I received this in the first World War near Sabac.’

“The comrades cheered. From the near-by village a priest and a rabbi came out to bury our dead. There among the dead lay Ashkenazi, the grocer from Pasicseva Street.” Stoyan placed a wooden cross on his grave. The rabbi left the cross on the grave.

Nikola explained to Mihailovich, who was reported to have played a mandolin, that Joco’s gusle-playing had resulted in new recruits.

“’That’s the way it was in the first World War,’ said Mihailovich. ‘In 1917 a gusle player recruited a thousand immigrants in Chicago, and they returned home to fight for Serbia. The gusle player also brought our sons home from Canada, South America, and from every corner of the globe. They formed the first overseas division on the Salonika front.’”

In a railroad station in Prilep, they found another wanted poster for Mihailovich:

“Fifty million to him who delivers to us, dead or alive, Draja Mihailovich.”

“’The price certainly went up since the last time I saw one of these,’ was the Generals remark, as the placard was handed to him. …

“’I’d rather shoot the photographer for making such a rotten picture of the General,’ said Popov, the radio operator, indignantly.”

Nikola again alluded to the analogy of the Battle of Kosovo: “Surely we could use a new Milos Obilich to stab that Nazi Sultan, Adolf, in the belly!”

Their grandfather explained that German forces were increasingly more vigilant: “The Nazis don’t take the Chetniks so lightly any more.” He told them how the German officers regarded Yugoslavia as part of “the darkest Balkans” where they are sent “to pacify the people”. The new German commander, General Otto von Burgenfeld, “is in a continual dread of an uprising. Not that he minds shooting people, but the Chetniks have already drained the Nazis of more manpower than they care to divert to this area… Also, the Belgrade commandant had warned him before not to excite the public but rather to try and mollify them.” German occupation forces had launched “punitive expeditions” that were “decimating the population”, in a futile policy of “pacification”.

The 1941 Kragujevac Massacre: A German soldier points to the bodies of executed Serbian civilians, indicating the body of a victim that is still alive that has to be finished off.

Nikola described the Kragujevac Massacre in which thousands of Serbian civilians were executed in retaliation for guerrilla attacks: “Burgenfeld … rules the town comparatively peacefully, but because of the bloodshed at Kragujevac, the people of Nish are very bitter and only a spark is needed to light the flame of a riot. I suppose that you, too, have heard the news that in Kragujevac, in retaliation for the death of twenty-three Nazis, four thousand six hundred Serbs were executed. For three days, from October 22^nd through October 24^th, they butchered the town’s male population, and because there were not enough adults to fill the quota, they dragged the children from their classrooms and with their priests and teachers stood them before the firing squad. They wanted to reprieve a seventy-year-old teacher.”

“The old man turned to the officer in charge:

“’The only favor I’d like to ask is that I should be permitted to die with my pupils.’ His request was granted.”

Another German commander, Colonel Weisskopf, “suggested in one of his reports to Berlin that they should take drastic measures regarding the Serb question.” He also suggested that “more energetic steps must be taken in dealing with the Chetniks.” In one episode, Nikola, Stoyan, and Joco seek to discredit and humiliate him by forcing him to walk naked in the town after taking his clothes at gunpoint.

In Part V, The King of Macedonia, Adrian is determined to take over Macedonia and to apprehend Mihailovich to receive the one million dollar reward offered by the Nazis: “’They’ve drained all the small change out of Yugoslavia,’ he told his henchmen; ‘there’s just one large bill running around unbroken, a live million-dollar banknote in the form of Mihailovich.’”

Nikola recounted the efforts of Mihailovich to enlist new recruits: “Hunger and misery brought refugees from villages and towns to us in droves. Our General is overworked. He is constantly on the go, from one Chetnik hideout to another, in the neighboring mountains. Either jogging on muleback, or skiing from division to division, gathering new recruits, planning surprise attacks, collecting munitions.”

Nikola described his reconnaissance trips he made with Mihailovich in disguise. In one encounter on the bank of the Vardar River, they were stopped by “Nazis on motorcycles” who asked them for directions to Vranje.

“The Nazis pulled away. They didn’t even dream that the bronzed peasant with chestnut-brown hair was their most sought-after enemy; that fifty million dinars slipped out of their paws when they permitted us to go on.”

After an attack against German tanks, Nikola is told that two of the German officers killed in the operation were “the most decent men in the entire fortress.”

He described his reaction: “I became angry, ‘And the three hundred thousand Serbs whom they’ve wiped out in a year—-weren’t they decent men?’”

In his letter of December 19, 1941, Nikola finds out “that the United States is now also at war with Hitler. This has raised everybody’s spirit greatly, for Janko claims that in America they can make airplanes and tanks so fast that they will be able to use a separate tank and a separate plane on every Nazi soldier.”

Adrian was transferred to Ochrid in Macedonia from Nish by Burgenfeld to “make order” there. He is accompanied by Marica, the daughter of the gypsy leader Radu, an ally of the Chetnik guerrillas. Adrian seeks to extort “a half-million dinars” from the Orthodox priests and churches in Ochrid. He shows a forged letter and signature by the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Gavrillo, purporting to urge all priests to help him, in order to convince the priests to give him the money.

The priest sees through the ruse, replying to Adrian: “The Patriarch is a prisoner who has been beaten up by the Nazis for refusing to cooperate with them.”

Adrian plans to marry Marica. He has looted and robbed the Orthodox churches and monasteries and has seized the crown of King Milutin.

Adrian planned to sow discord and to engender animosity towards the Chetnik guerrillas. He robbed Bulgarian villages in incursions across the border which he blamed on the Chetniks.

Adrian accused the Chetnik guerrillas: “It must have been Mihailovich’s Chetniks; if you would let me have a complete division and some artillery, I could capture him and his gang.”

He sought to capture Mihailovich to receive the reward: “Adrian never for a moment gave up the idea that he would somehow trap Mihailovich and earn the million-dollar reward.”

Nikola noted that Mihailovich developed a camaraderie with the guerrillas and endured the same hardships and “ate exactly the same thing as the rest of us. When we ran out of bread and dried fruit, he joined us in chewing sweet roots.”

When German troops seized Miho Soksics, the cook in the guerrilla camp, Burgenfeld “hastened to make much out of the affair. He wired to Dankellmann, Nazi chief commandant in Belgrade, to announce that he had bagged the man that had been cook to Mihailovich as well as to the king.” Burgenfeld interrogated him to find out “what and how much aid we had received from the English in Egypt”, the number of men in the guerrilla camp, and the strength of Mihailovich’s forces.

“’If I count every Slav citizen in the country, there are exactly ten millions in our camp,’ he asserted.

“’What I want to know is how many divisions has Mihailovich?’

“’Oh, those ten millions will never leave Mihailovich in the lurch,’ replied Soksics. ‘They are all his soldiers.’”

German forces tortured Soksics to death.

After Mihailovich left with a large part of the regiment for Bosnia, Nikola and his group were buried alive by an avalanche and survived for days without food or water. They were rescued by other guerrillas. They celebrated by singing a Chetnik song.

“Darling, please do not cry,
 It need not be good bye.
 Under the blue Serb sky,
 True Chetniks never die.”

“Then the whole group came in as a chorus: ‘Never die! Never die! Never die!’”

On April 5, 1942, to commemorate the one year anniversary of the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia, Mihailovich attacked the Italian garrison based at the Bay of Cattaro or Kotor with a Chetnik division: “They blew up the warehouses and set the barracks on fire.”

In the chapter “Football Game: Chetniks 11—Rome-Zagreb 0”, Zorica, a nurse who joined the guerrillas, informed Nikola in a letter about an attempted assassination against Ante Pavelich in Ljubljana in Slovenia during a soccer match between Croatia and Italy. The guerrillas were able to throw a bomb into the stands, killing eleven Ustashi, Nazi, and Italian fascist leaders. Pavelich had decided not to attend the match.

The next attack by the Chetniks was against Axis forces in Debar in western Macedonia: “The Nazi commandant of Debar was killed, and his men ran away to Ochrid.” Mihailovich held a war council and made the decision to attack Ochrid before the Axis troops could regroup.

Nikola was able to get into the fortress at Ochrid, Adrian’s headquarters, by telling a guard that he knew “where Mihailovich is hiding out” and that he wanted to be assured that he would receive the reward of “fifty million dinars”.

Nikola attacked Adrian with a dagger and was apprehended. Adrian interrogated Nikola but was unable to get him to reveal Mihailovich’s location.

“’What’s your job with the Chetniks?’

“’I’m sergeant of the Mihailovich Brigade.’”

Mihailovich and his guerrilla army were waiting to attack the fortress. The signal for the attack was when Marica sets a fire in the fortress. The fire, however, is put out and no signal is sent.

Nikola and his brother Joco were ordered to be executed by Adrian. Nikola anticipates that the July 28, 1942 letter from the dungeon of the Ochrid Fortress would be his last. Nikola, however, survives while he witnessed Joco’s death and “Mihailovich’s victory a little north of Ochrid.”

Adrian sought to make a deal with Joco by getting him to lead a “peace delegation” to Mihailovich.

“’What kind of peace delegation?’

“’You will take a few of our men to the mountains. I’d like to start discussing peace terms with Mihailovich.’” Joco refused to cooperate.

The fortress was attacked by Bosko, who bombed the fortress with his monoplane along with other planes with Yugoslav insignia consisting of returning pilots “who had escaped to Russia with their machines at the time of the surrender.”

The pilots had returned to help Mihailovich and his guerrillas: “When they had heard that Mihailovich had organized a successful resistance, they radioed that they wanted to join him in the fight for their country’s liberation.”

After hearing Joco’s bugle call, the guerrillas attacked the fortress: “Ten thousand Chetniks surged toward the bastion. Only three thousand were armed with modern weapons. The rest fought with their grandfathers’ old muskets and aimed with them as accurately as though they had been modern Skoda precision guns.” They fought “as in the days of the Turks.”

“After two hours of bitter fighting, by seven o’clock the Mihailovich legion succeeded in breaking into the courtyard and through the crumbled walls of the fortress, and after a brief, wild hand-to-hand struggle the machine guns and cannon were silenced.” Joco dies from his wounds received when he killed Adrian with his horn.

The novel closed with Mihailovich vowing to fight on.

“From the Sava River to the Adriatic Sea, 100,000 battle-ready patriots await the order to march.…

“The object of my secret mission was to unite the scattered guerrillas throughout the country. Mihailovich organized them from several nuisance bands into a great army of liberation.

“The King, who had been to America for several weeks, informed us by short-wave toward the end of June, that the headquarters of the military staff had been turned back from Cairo to Yugoslavia, and Mihailovich had been named Commander-in-Chief.

“This afternoon, after we had rested, the General reviewed the new divisions. Then he broadcast to the people:

“’Our next aim is Bitolj.  Then will follow Prilep, Sarajevo, Skoplje, Nish, Kragujevac and Belgrade!  We shall not rest until every German has been swept from our country!’

“’Zivio!’ cheered our troops again.…

“Mihailovich continued thus: ‘If the United Nations want to gain a foothold, they would have to come across the Dalmatian Coast, since the Balkans are the Achilles’ heel of the Axis.  We can break the Italian blockade with a minimum of losses and the least opposition by landing in the ports of Dubrovnik and Durazzo. They could come not only on ships, but on troop transport planes, landing on airports held by us, while our troops would cover the invasion.  Then, with the Black Mountains, better than any man-made fortress, behind us, we could launch a general offensive against the army of occupation.  The completely equipped American-English army could finish Italy off in a few weeks; and across Bulgaria, caught in a pincers, and weakened Roumania, uniting with Russia, we could also deliver the stab of mercy to the Germans caught between two fires.’

“Then Popov, our radio officer, excitedly announced: ‘The Belgrade Oberkommando is paging the Commander-in-Chief!’

“Mihailovich took the microphone into his hand.

“’I am listening.’

“’Draja Mihailovich,’ we recognized the voice of Milan Nedich, ‘your wife and four children have been our prisoners since yesterday. If you do not stop your campaign against us, they will be executed within twenty-four hours.’ …

“’Draja Mihailovich,’ continued Nedich, ‘so that you will not think I am deceiving you, listen to your oldest son with your own ears.’ …

“’Father! Yes, it is I, with my mother and my brother and sisters. I send you this message: Don’t retreat! Forward to vic …’ …

“’You know who spoke to you, don’t you Mihailovich?’ …

“’You also understand that you have twenty-four hours to withdraw?’

“The oppressive silence was again broken by the threatening shout of the General.

“’We will continue to fight until we are dead or the enemy has left our soil! So help me God!’

“From 100,000 throats came the battlecry: ‘Death to the Nazis! Forward to Victory!’”

“And the Chetnik divisions, legions and brigades marched forward …”

In the Epilogue, the narrator offers his closing statement: “This was the last letter I received from Nikola…. What happened to the boys thereafter, I don’t know…. In September, 1942, I left Belgrade…. But I am convinced that some day, when the war is over, we shall meet again …”

We never find out if the brothers learn of the death of their mother. The narrator himself does not know if Nikola and Stoyan are alive after his departure. The novel reveals the pathos and loss and destruction of families in all wars. Lives and families are destroyed. This fact is lost in the euphoria and elation and manic rush to war. Was this a “good war”? Is there such a thing as a “good war”? Benjamin Franklin observed on July 27, 1783 during the American Revolutionary War: “There never was a good war or a bad peace.” Franklin hoped that “mankind will at length … have reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats.” Aristotle, however, regarded war as necessary to ensure and safeguard peace: “We make war that we may live in peace.”

An overarching theme of the novel is the connection between the Battle of Kosovo and World War II. Mihailovich and the Chetnik guerrillas are portrayed as citizen soldiers defending their own country and their own homes after an attack and invasion by a aggressor, an country bent of conquest and aggrandizement. Adolf Hitler is perceived as the new Sultan Murad I and Nazi Germany is compared to Ottoman Turkey, the Third Reich versus the Ottoman Empire. Tamas grasps the history, customs, folklore, and traditions of Yugoslavia well.

There are some discrepancies in his chronology of events. For example, Mihailovich was a Colonel during the German attack and was promoted to Major-General on December 7, 1941 and was made Minister of War on January 11, 1942, Lieutenant-General on January 19, 1942, and he was appointed General and Deputy Commander-in-Chief on June 17, 1942. Nevertheless, as a work of fiction, Tamas is not bound to strict factual verisimilitude.

Moreover, it was the German military occupation commanders and authorities who sought to apprehend Mihailovich with wanted posters, not Milan Nedich, who assumed the role of figurehead leader only because the Germans threatened to install a German or Bulgarian leader instead. Politically and ideologically, Nedich did not share anything in common with the Axis leaders, unlike, Ante Pavelich, for instance, who was a hardcore fascist and Nazi who supported and who instituted an organized and planned policy of genocide against Serbs, Jews, and gypsies. Pavelich, for example, established his own network and system of concentration camps to exterminate Serbs, Jews, and gypsies, supported the Holocaust wholeheartedly, and committed genocide on his own initiative independently of the Axis powers. It is fallacious and inaccurate to equate Nedich with Pavelich, as Tamas does in the novel.

The setting of Macedonia is also slightly far-fetched and unrealistic because the Chetnik guerrillas, in fact, operated primarily in Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia. Mihailovich was much less familiar with the Macedonian terrain and the population was a mixed and divided one. Moreover, Macedonia did not exist at that time, being annexed by Bulgaria and Albania.

Ultimately, the novel is about a people and a leader who remain unconquered and unconquerable, unvanquished and unbowed, who refuse to accept defeat. Indeed, who do not know the meaning of defeat or surrender. These are human values and aspirations that transcend time and place. That gives the novel a timeless and universal appeal.

From the filmmaker behind the controversial documentary “Kosovo | Can You Imagine?”, which brought to light the unimaginable suffering of Kosovo’s besieged Serbian population, comes word that a brand new film dealing with the complex issues of Western involvement in the internal affairs of the former Yugoslav republics has been green lit for production.

Canadian filmmaker Boris Malagurski, winner of the Silver Palm Award at the Mexico International Film Festival for his 2008 exposé on the gross violations of basic human rights that Kosovo’s remaining Serbs and other non-Albanians are being subjected to in the 21st century, has begun work on an even more ambitious project that aims to uncover the real truth behind Western involvement in the bloody breakup of the former Yugoslavia.

 “The Weight Of Chains”, a documentary film planned for release in late 2010, will deal with tough issues concerning the breakup of Yugoslavia and the deadly consequences brought on by a decade of instability and war. The film’s ultimate goal is to present a Canadian perspective on Western involvement in the bloody ethnic conflicts that ravaged Yugoslavia during the 1990’s through interviews with important Western political and military figures, including Ret. Maj. Gen. Lewis Mackenzie, Form. Amb. James Bissett, Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, Prof. Sunil Ram, and Mr. Scott Taylor, among others. The film will challenge preconceived notions about the Yugoslav Civil War as it attempts to show that the fires of ethnic hatred that tore apart the former Yugoslavia were fanned from outside the country, by powerful Western interests. The new documentary will examine previously neglected evidence, including the NSDD 133, a 1984 secret memo of the Reagan administration the contents of which will be uncovered on screen for the first time, and the 1991 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act 101-513.

As an example of such neglected evidence, the film examines a May 8th, 1992 New York Times article which revealed that the Pentagon had begun to function under the assumption that no country other than the United States had the right to aspire to any significant leadership roles in the New World Order, be it on a global or on a regional level. However, such evidence had been readily ignored by regional leaders of the former Yugoslav republics, who sold out the interests of their people for the shameless pursuit of personal wealth and prestige, and who were used as pawns by Western powers in a global economic and geopolitical game of chess.

Apart from taking a closer look at what really happened in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s, “The Weight Of Chains” will examine the current economic situation in the newly independent former Yugoslav republics and offer a unique perspective on the major political and social issues facing the people still living in that part of the world.

Nevertheless, without substantial support from donors and sponsors, this ambitious documentary will not see the light of day. Along with Boris Malagurski, others working to make the film a reality include Slobodan Gudelj, Goran Mihajlovic, Maja Romano, Filip Vukadinovic and many others, while the Global Research Centre, which is committed to curbing the tide of globalization and disarming the New World Order, has become the first sponsor of this project. The filmmaker invites those interested in donating or becoming sponsors of this documentary to visit the official web-site for “The Weight Of Chains”, which offers information on sponsorship opportunities and a brand new Trailer for the film:

On the Internet:
www.WeightOfChains.com

Following the successful organized uprising, the first of its kind in occupied Europe, by the Serbian resistance forces under the command of Serbia’s General Draza Mihailovich that not only threatened Germany’s southern flank in Europe and her occupation of Serbia after Yugoslavia fell to Hitler in April of 1941, but critically delayed Hitler’s planned attack on the Soviet Union that summer, the Germans retaliated. But it wasn’t in the usual way, man to man, soldier to soldier. The method of Nazi retaliation initiated against the Serbs was unprecedented, and the target was the civilian population. Hitler’s aim was to suppress the Serbian insurgency against the Nazis and to do so by the most brutal means. He intended to literally terrorize the Serbs into submission by going after their most vulnerable citizens, and he decreed his intention via the new “law” in Serbia that took effect in the late summer of 1941.

Kragujevac monument

Although there are so many documented atrocities that were committed against civilians during the course of World War Two throughout Europe, there are still those atrocities that stand out as singular examples of man’s capacity for inhumanity against man. The Kragujevac Massacre of October 1941 is one of those singular examples, and it would have a profound effect on the way that General Mihailovich and his Chetnik forces would conduct their military operations against the enemy German forces ever afterward.

On September 6, 1941, after a series of successful Chetnik attacks against German forces in western Serbia, Adolph Hitler issued the unprecedented reprisal decree that for every German killed, 100 Serbian hostages would be executed. For every German wounded, 50 Serbs would be shot. This decree was posted throughout Belgrade, Serbia on September 13, 1941.

General Boehme, the German Commanding General of the occupation forces in Serbia from September 16 to December 2 of 1941, issued three orders to supplement Hitler’s decree. These orders were dated September 25, October 14, and November 10th of 1941. “Order to the German Army in Serbia” was the first of Boehme’s orders, and it was unequivocal in its lack of mercy:

“As a result of the Serbian rebellion, hundreds of German soldiers have been killed. Our losses will be enormous unless we crush the rebellion without mercy.

Your task always is to be in total control of every village in this country in which German blood was shed also in 1914.

The heavy hand of our retribution must be felt by the entire population of Serbia. Those who show them pity, thereby deny pity to their own. Any such person will be court-martialed, whoever he may be.”

Danau Zeitung, German newspaper

October of that same year, 1941, would prove just how “unequivocal” the lack of German mercy against their chosen victims would turn out to be. At the end of September, continued Serbian successes against the advancing Wehrmacht forces in a Chetnik anti-Axis action that took place between Gornji Milanovac and Kragujevac in Serbia resulted in 10 Germans killed and 26 Germans wounded. The German forces that were deployed at that time in the Serbian city of Kragujevac were under the command of Major Paul Koenig. In response to the German casualties, Koenig ordered a “comprehensive reprisal” to be carried out against the Serbian civilians living in Kragujevac, even though no attacks had been made in that city against the Wehrmacht!

Wehrmacht troops lead Serbian civilians from Kragujevac to execution

The reprisals began on October 19th as Germany military forces burned several villages and several hundred Serbian civilians were executed in the Groznice area. But, that did not satisfy the Nazis. On October 20th, 2,300 men and young boys were rounded up, all between the ages of 16 and 60. In this group were included civil servants from city offices that the Germans raided, who were not engaged in any military actions. But the crowning atrocity was the inclusion of 300 innocent children from the high school and 18 teachers who were ripped from their classrooms. On October 21, 1941, those lives were mercilessly ended. All in all, the number of civilians who were executed in Kragujevac and the surrounding area was over 5000.

The reprisal quota was indeed fulfilled and more so. When an inquiry was made as to why civilians in Kragujevac had been chosen for execution when there had been no German casualties in that city, the answer was simply that “not enough hostages to fulfill the quota had been found elsewhere”.

In memory of the innocent Serbian children who were executed that October 21st day in 1941 in Kragujevac, poet Desanka Maksimovic wrote the following tribute:

The Bloody Fairytale

It was in a land of peasants
in the mountainous Balkans,
that a company of schoolchildren
died a martyr’s death
in one day.

They were all born
in the same year,
their school days passed the same,
taken together to the same festivities,
vaccinated against the same diseases,
and all died on the same day.

It was in a land of peasants
in the mountainous Balkans,
that a company of schoolchildren
died a martyr’s death
in one day.

And fifty-five minutes
before the moment of death
the company of small ones
sat at its desk
and the same difficult assignments
they solved: how far can a
traveler go if he is on foot…
and so on.

Their thoughts were full
of the same numbers
and throughout their notebooks in school bags
lay an infinite number
of senseless A’s and F’s.
A pile of the same dreams
and the same secrets,
patriotic and romantic,
they clenched in the depths of their pockets.
And it seemed to everyone
that they would run
for a long time beneath the blue arch
until all the assignments in the world
were completed.

It was in a land of peasants
in the mountainous Balkans,
that a company of small ones
died a martyr’s death
in one day.

Whole rows of boys
took each other by the hand
and from their last class
went peacefully to slaughter
as if death was nothing.

Whole lines of friends
ascended at the same moment
to their eternal residence.

It is almost indescribable how deeply this tragedy impacted on the people of Serbia. The impact on General Mihailovich was particularly profound. Though he had participated in several wars, beginning with the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913, followed by World War One and now World War Two, he now realized that to continue to attack German occupational forces indiscriminately would mean national suicide for his beloved Serbian people, as the October tragedy proved. Mihailovic, who as a participant in the First World War had witnessed his beloved Serbian nation losing one third of its population and her army suffering enormous casualties, with 450,000 active soldiers at the beginning of the war declining to 60,000 by the time of the Salonica Front breakthrough of September 1918, would adjust his resistance policy to consider the benefit and effectiveness of each action against the German enemy in proportion to the human cost in Serbian civilian lives. General Draza Mihailovich genuinely cared about human cost and would conduct himself for the rest of the war accordingly.

Germans assemble Ser civilians for execution outside Kragujevac

October 9, 2009 marks the 75th anniversary of the assassination of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia. This assassination of the Serbian king by a Macedonian terrorist working with Croatian separatists never garnered the notoriety that the June 28, 1914 assassination of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand by Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip did. However, the impact of the assassination of King Alexander I and French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou in Marseille, France, though not as “immediate” as the Sarajevo assassination in 1914 that precipitated World War I, was a harbinger of the even greater cataclysm that was coming.

Given the climate in Europe in 1934 and what was brewing in Germany, the assassination in Marseille was one of those singular moments that should have served as a red flag that the “peace” being enjoyed in 1930s Europe was in peril.

Who was King Alexander I Karageorgevich of Yugoslavia and why did his life and death matter?

This was a man who was born into a family with an already incredible legacy and a legendary name. Alexander I Karageorgevich was born the second son of King Peter I of Serbia and Princess Zorka of Montenegro in Cetinje, Montenegro on December 16, 1888. His grandfather was Prince Alexander Karageorgevich who had ruled the Serbian state from 1842-1858. His great grandfather was George Petrovich, “Karageorge” (“Black George”), founder of the Karageorgevich dynasty and leader of the First Serbian Uprising against the Turks of the Ottoman Empire in 1804.

Alexander’s childhood was spent in Montenegro and Geneva, Switzerland, where his family was living prior to their return to Serbia. His grandfather, Prince Alexander, had abdicated in 1858, leaving Serbia and taking his family into exile. His son, Peter, would return from exile to his Serbian homeland in 1903 to become the first elected constitutional monarch of Serbia, King Peter I. The Karageorgevich’s return to Serbia followed the death of King Alexander Obrenovich during a violent coup in Belgrade on June 11, 1903 that ended the reign of the Obrenovich dynasty. Unlike his father Prince Alexander who had abdicated in 1858, King Peter I would become one of the most respected and beloved figures in the history of the Serbian people. His oldest son George would have been first in line to King Peter’s throne, but because George was involved in incidents and scandals that forced him to renounce his inheritance of his father’s throne, Peter’s second son, Alexander, came to the head of the line in 1909, becoming Crown Prince Alexander Karageorgevich.

Crown Prince Alexander’s military training began in 1904 when he joined the Russian Imperial Corps in St. Petersburg, Russia. He would distinguish himself in the two Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913. In the First Balkan War of 1912 he fought victorious and significant battles at Bitola and Kumanovo as commander of the First Army. During the Second Balkan War in 1913 his army was victorious once again at the Battle of Bregalnica. The Balkan Wars would be good training for what was coming just around the corner.

Because King Peter I was in ill health, he was persuaded to name his son as Prince Regent of Serbia on June 24, 1914, handing over royal power to Alexander. Peter I would, however, remain King and, despite his ill health, would conduct himself over the course of the next four years in such a way that would forever endear him in the hearts and minds of his people. Less than two months later, upon the onset of World War I, Prince Regent Alexander would inherit the role of Supreme Commander of the Serbian Army, the commander in chief, although in reality the true command of the Serbian Army would lay in the hands of four men who would distinguish themselves valiantly in the annals of warfare – Stepa Stepanovic, Radomir Putnik, Petar Bojovic, and Zivojin Misic.

The Serbian government would once again find itself in exile, this time leaving Belgrade and finally settling on the island of Corfu, where it would remain for most of the duration of the war. The Serbs, though brutally attacked by the superior Austro-Hungarian forces, immediately distinguished themselves as a force to be reckoned with in the Battles of Cer and Kolubara in 1914, successfully evicting the Austro-Hungarian invaders from their country.

This success, however, was fleeting, for in 1915 the vicious onslaught of the combined alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria against the Serbs forced them to withdraw in order to survive and regroup. The Serbs had no choice, and survival was not guaranteed.

Things were very bad. Many would fall, never to rise again, as they withdrew through the difficult Albanian mountains. Finally, those who survived the “Albanian Golgotha” of the winter of 1915/1916 reached the Greek Island of Corfu. King Peter I, despite his health, had marched right along with his people, remaining with them no matter what. Despite their huge human losses, both military and civilian, the unforgiving terrain and weather, the diseases that ravaged them, the lack of adequate arms, and the paucity of necessary reinforcements during their long and difficult march, the Serbs were able to regroup on Corfu in 1916. Those that survived would ultimately be victorious over the enemy, contributing splendidly to the significant and decisive Allied breakthrough on the Salonika Front at Kajmakcalan in September of 1918 that forced Bulgaria’s surrender and signaled the beginning of the end of WWI.

As it became increasingly evident during the war that the Dual Monarchy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, might become relegated to history and that the peoples who lived on its territories would be liberated and finally have the opportunity to enjoy autonomy and self-determination, the issue of the post war reality and political organization of these peoples and territories had to be dealt with.

Even as the World War One raged, Prince Regent Alexander found himself having to contend with how things would be established and organized once the war was finished. The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (the precursor to “Yugoslavia”), formally established on December 1, 1918, was born out of the combined desire for unification manifested during the war between the parties for whom the postwar fate of the southern Slavs was relevant, and this included the Americans.

King Peter I, who survived the war, would be King of this new “country” and would remain so until his death in 1921. Upon his death, Prince Regent Alexander would take the throne on August 16th. At that time, Alexander was seen as the channel by which Yugoslav (southern Slav) unification and solidarity could be achieved most effectively.

It can be argued, and has been passionately, whether or not this new “unified Yugoslav state”, comprised of specific groups of southern Slavs who now found themselves liberated from both the Ottoman and the Austro-Hungarian Empires, was a good idea based on the best of intentions and principles, or the making of a tragedy whose consequences would be far reaching. King Alexander I Karageorgevich would soon learn that this new Kingdom of which he was now the supreme ruler was not going to be the postwar Utopia that some had hoped for.

On January 6, 1929, due to internal political conflicts that were escalating, King Alexander took the decisive measure of establishing a sort of necessary “dictatorship” in order to restore order. He abolished both the parliament and the constitution. It was impossible to assume that a cohesive and stable government could function given the conflicts that had developed between all the different political factions that existed within it. Despite the now proven difficulties, Alexander would continue attempting to unify the various elements in Yugoslavia. The measures he took included outlawing religious, ethnic, or regionally based political groups. Anyone knowing the make-up of the southern Slavs who comprised Yugoslavia would have appreciated the difficulty inherent in trying to enforce such measures.

On October 3rd of that year he also formally changed the name of the country to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which, in light of developments in the future, would become known as “The First Yugoslavia”.

Among the diplomatic goals King Alexander I would accomplish during his reign was bringing his country into the “Little Entente” with Czechoslovakia and Romania in 1933. It was a time when the nations of Europe were once again seeking to establish alliances. These alliances would have great bearing on future events.

King Alexander I Karageorgevich’s merits as ruler of Yugoslavia have been argued and debated and will continue to be. What would have become of Yugoslavia as the peaceful 1930s progressed into the nightmare years of the Second World War that would begin at the end of that decade had King Alexander I continued his reign was left to conjecture on October 9, 1934.
 
One of the smart men of Europe, who was trying to organize an effective proactive front in the early 1930s against Germany’s new leader Adolf Hitler early enough when it was still possible, was French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou. His foreign policy was to create an anti-Hitler defense ring to be achieved by what was known as the Eastern Pact – binding the Soviet Union and Poland and the Little Entente, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania, to France. But while he was trying to organize a defense against German territorial expansions three months after he became foreign minister, the British were going in the opposite direction. In May of 1934 the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sir John Simon, insisted that Germany should be permitted to rearm even though re-armament had been expressly forbidden by the Versailles Peace Treaty.

Barthou went to Belgrade, Serbia at the end of June 1934 for successful introductory talks regarding a Franco-Yugoslav alliance, and it was agreed that King Alexander would pay a two week state visit to France starting on October 9th to lay the groundwork for an anti-Hitler alliance. French support against the terrorist activities of the Croatian separatists and their sponsor, the fascist dictator of Italy Mussolini, was also going to be negotiated. But as soon as Alexander’s planned visit to France was announced, Mussolini began working with his Italian Military Intelligence Service and the Croat and Macedonian terrorists to plan King Alexander’s assassination. The plan for the assassination was finalized by Vancha Mihailov, the leader of Macedonian terrorists, and Ante Pavelic, the leader of the Croatian terrorists.

On October 9, 1934 the terrorists made their move and succeeded. King Alexander I of Yugoslavia and Jean Louis Barthou were assassinated in Marseilles, France. This assassination, though never assigned the significance that Gavrilo Princip’s assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 was, turned out to be a precursor of the events to come in 1939. With the Franco-Yugoslav bond now weakened with his and Barthou’s deaths, Germany would tighten her economic hold in the Balkans. This would further augment Hitler’s growing confidence and the Balkans would provide more resources for Nazi Germany. It is said that Hitler watched the film that was taken of the assassination that day and upon observing the panic of the crowd and the inability of the police to deal with it effectively, he was reassured that France was weak and that she could be beaten. Whether he watched the film or not, there is no question that he grew more confident. Every subsequent action he would take in the following years would reflect a hubris that only grew with the parallel incompetence of the democracies to stop it from manifesting.

Without having to worry about Britain or France or Italy, Hitler was able to proceed with enhancing his war machine. Seeing an opportunity to side up with an obvious future victor, Mussolini distanced himself carefully from England and France to eventually join Hitler. When the free world woke up to the reality of what was evolving it was too late to change the course of the future of Europe. The greatest war machine ever built up to that time was poised to march and conquer the world.

King Alexander I established his legacy during pivotal times in the history of his people in the Balkans. He participated in war after war and survived as a successful hero who went on to become King. An assassin’s bullet ended his reign, and we will never know how he would have handled the events that led his country into yet another war just a few short years later, this time the biggest and baddest of them all. His young son, Peter II Karageorgevich, would be the one to inherit that legacy.

What we do know is that he is well remembered and remains honored in the hearts of his family and his people on this, the 75th anniversary of his death, October 9, 2009. He is buried in the beautiful Church of St. George Mausoleum on the hill of Oplenac in Serbia, where so many of the other members of the Karageorgevich dynasty lay as well. The record of the final decisive event in King Alexander’s life remains one of the most significant pieces of history captured on film that exists to this day.

Book Review.

The Chetniks by George Sava. London: Faber and Faber, Ltd. 24 Russell Square, 1942. 260 pages with black and white photographs and a map. Reprint: Regular Publication, London, 1955.

The guerrilla movement of Draza Mihailovich in German-occupied Yugoslavia created an unprecedented sensation in the United States and Great Britain during World War II. Mihailovich was unique in that he led a resistance movement against Adolf Hitler at a time when the rest of Europe had surrendered. He became a lightning rod in the U.S. and the UK and galvanized resistance to Hitler. One reason for this acclaim was that the U.S. needed a stimulus or a spark. After years of neutrality and “isolationism” and indifference, the U.S. was forced reluctantly into World War II by the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan on December 7, 1941. While U.S. interests were hostile and opposed to those of the Axis, the U.S. public, nevertheless, opposed entry into the war because U.S. interests were not directly involved.

A malaise and apathy had developed in the U.S. where life went on as if nothing had happened when Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. The U.S. public needed a symbol and an example of a firebrand, of a resistance leader who was defiant, dynamic, and active, a fighter. Draza Mihailovich fit the bill. He was elevated to superhero and comic-book status in the U.S., where he and his exploits assumed mythic and legendary proportions and his guerrillas were likened to invincible supermen. He was featured in magazines, comic books, movies, and novels. Five major novels were published in 1942 and 1943: The Chetniks by George Sava, The Ragged Guard, A Tale of 1941 by Paul Tabori,  and The Valley of Fear (republished as The Perilous Country) by John Creasey in Great Britain, Sergeant Nikola: A Novel of the Chetnik Brigades (also published in Argentina in 1943 in a Spanish translation as El Sargento Nicolas: La Novela de los Guerrilleros Yugoslavos) by Istvan Tamas and The Wrath of the Eagles: A Novel of the Chetniks by Frederick Heydenau in the United States.

The cover of the 1955 reprint edition of The Chetniks by George Sava published as “A Regular Publication” in London.

One of the first major novels written during World War II to appear on Draza Mihailovich and the Chetnik guerrillas was the eponymous The Chetniks by George Sava, first published in November, 1942 by Faber and Faber in London, in the United Kingdom. The original edition featured a photograph of “General Mihailovich” on the frontispiece. The book was a continuation of the 1940 book Donkey Serenade: Travels in Bulgaria. Sava combined a travelogue with an adventure novel. It was reprinted in 1955 in London as a Regular Publication. The reprint cover had the following description: “General Mihailovich, the famous guerrilla leader and the story of the heroic struggle of these guerrillas is told in the pages of this book.”

Draza Mihailovich and his Chetnik guerrilla forces represented the antithesis to the foreign policy pursued by Great Britain in the 1930s termed “appeasement”. British appeasement culminated in the 1938 Munich Agreement which allowed Adolf Hitler to annex the Sudetenland and to eventually occupy all of Czechoslovakia. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain described the abandonment of Czechoslovakia on September 30, 1938 as “peace for our time” and he characterized the Munich Agreement as an example of “peace with honour”: “My good friends, this is the second time in our history that there has come back from Germany to Downing Street peace with honour. I believe it is peace for our time. … And now I recommend you to go home and sleep quietly in your beds.” The first time that Chamberlain referred to was on July 18, 1878, when Benjamin Disraeli characterized the Berlin Conference ending the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, which was an escalation of the Serbian insurgency in Bosnia-Hercegovina and the subsequent war between Serbia and Montenegro against Turkey, as “a peace … with honour”: “Lord Salisbury and myself have brought you back peace—but a peace I hope with honour.” The failure of the Treaty of Berlin resulted in the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 and World War I.

The cover of the 1942 first edition with the alternate title of “The Chetniks of Yugoslavia”.

George Sava (1903-1996), a British author who was a surgeon and medical doctor by training, had written The Healing Knife: A Surgeon’s Destiny (1938), They Stayed in London (1941), Valley of Forgotten People (1941), A Tale of Ten Cities (1942), School for War (1942), Peace in Nobody’s Time (1943), Russia Triumphant: The Story of the Russian People (1943), Twice the Clock Round: One Day of a Surgeon’s Life (1948), One Russian’s Story (1970), The Years of the Healing Knife: A Surgeon’s Autobiography (1976), and approximately 120 other books. He was born George Alexis Milkomanov or Milkomanovich Milkomane on October 15, 1903 from a Russian and Bulgarian background and died on March 15, 1996. He wrote approximately 120 books under the pseudonyms George Sava, George Bankoff, George Borodin, George Braddon, Peter Conway, and Alec Redwood.

The Chetniks was reviewed in The War Illustrated, Volume 6, No. 146, page 499, in the January 22, 1943 issue by war correspondent Hamilton Fyfe in the Views and Reviews section, in the review “The Chetniks of Yugoslavia”. Fyfe emphasized that Draza Mihailovich and the Chetnik guerrillas understood the tactics and strategy for conducting a guerrilla war better than German commanders: “‘Irregulars’ though they are, these Yugoslavs know more about the sort of warfare that is going on in the region between their country and Montenegro, Albania and Greece, than any of the scientifically-trained German staff officers. Mihailovich had a training of that kind himself.” Mihailovich had given lectures on guerrilla warfare before the war at the Belgrade military academy. Mihailovich advocated guerrilla warfare as the best suited for the terrain, size, and resources of Yugoslavia. Fyfe concluded that Mihailovich was leading “boldly and cleverly” the guerrillas under his command, who were “brave men who are fighting for their country’s independence and freedom”, who “are showing the Germans what the spirit of Yugoslavia is.”

Sava described the structure and the sources for the novel in his preface:

“The names of friends I have re-christened. I have altered dates and changed the names of places. This much is fiction: the rest is fact. The subsequent exploits of the guerrillas, the Chetniks, I have reconstructed from letters and reports. But I have a story to tell and I shall not delay in the telling.”

The frontispiece of the first edition of The Chetniks published in November, 1942 in London by Faber and Faber contained a photograph of “General Mihailovich”.

There was a wartime paper shortage in Britain so paper had to be regulated. On January 1, 1942, the voluntary Book Production War Economy Agreement went into effect which stipulated a minimum number of words per page, placed limits on the quality of the materials used in production, and streamlined book design by eliminating chapter and cross headings, wide margins, heavy paper, bindings, and large type. The standards applied to all publications over 64 pages in length, while poetry collections, children’s books, and technical treatises and manuals were excluded. The Chetniks contained the following acknowledgement under a lion logo: “Book Production War Economy Standard. This book is produced in complete conformity with the authorized economy standards.” This meant that the type was smaller and the paper was of lower grade.

The Chetniks was rushed into publication in November, 1942 as a wartime novel. The text contained several typographical errors or errata with several key dates that were transposed: “1839” should be “1389”; “1341” should be “1431”; “Jadodin” should be “Jagodin”. Moreover, Sava confused celnik with Chetnik, describing Radic Postupovic as a Chetnik and referred to Milosh Obilic by the Turkish form of his name, Kobilic. Nevertheless, Sava manages to encapsulate the entire history of Serbia and Montenegro and to highlight the most significant and salient historical events and milestones.

Sava began his account by detailing the trip he made in February, 1939 to Belgrade, “The White City”, traveling by automobile: “The same spirit that took me and a donkey on my travels through Bulgaria seized me to explore parts of Jugoslavia in the early spring of 1939.”

He described Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia, in 1939: “Who calls the Danube blue is an infernal liar. Anyway, the Danube that flows by Belgrade city is not blue. … But Belgrade … Belgrade is white. … Chromium still thrilled the people in 1939. It was sky-scraper conscious. The centre hid its untidy spots in a maze of new buildings, government edifices and hotels. … But Belgrade is really an old city.”

The book consists of two parts. The first part, narrated by George Sava, details his 1939 trip to Yugoslavia where he meets and travels with Kristo. The second part of the book, narrated by Kristo, takes place during the period before the German invasion of Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941, the subsequent occupation, and the emergence of the Chetnik guerrilla movement in Serbia. The main character of the novel is Kristo, who emerges as a Chetnik guerrilla leader. Sava tells the story of Draza Mihailovich and the Chetnik guerrillas through him.

A map showing George Sava’s trek across Yugoslavia in 1939.

George Sava spent three months in Yugoslavia in 1939 after his arrival in February. He traveled from Belgrade to Kriva Palanka near the Bulgarian border in Macedonia, then to Skopska Tserna Gora in Skopje, “the Black Mountains of Skoplje”, then to Grachanica in Kosovo and the site where the 1389 battle was fought, “the Plain of Blackbirds”, then to Pec (which he calls Perch) in Metohija, then finally to Montenegro, going to the capital, Cetinje.

What explains the Serbian history of resistance and independence? From what sources did the Chetnik guerrilla movement of Draza Mihailovich spring? Was it sui generis or did it have antecedents and roots? What was its origin, historically, psychologically, and culturally? Why did Serbia resist and defy Adolf Hitler when the rest of Europe surrendered and capitulated? Sava seeks to find the origins for the history and culture of resistance in Serbian history, in Kosovo.

In Part One, Chapter VIII, “The Plain of Blackbirds”, Sava described his visit to Kosovo with Kristo: “Rarely have I been more conscious of the presence of history than when I and my two companions reached the small white church at Grachanitsa, on the very limit of the Field of Kossovo. Before us stretched an endless plain, hummocked, green with waving grass and a deep blue dome of a sky covering the lowland; cloudless and yet so solemn that for a while even the sun seemed cold.

“To Kristo it was holy ground.

“‘This is the field of blackbirds, the sad plain of Kossovo, where in 1839 [1389]’—he spoke as if it were yesterday—‘the whole of our civilization collapsed. Here on the very grass you tread, the destiny of the Balkans was decided. Many men lie buried here. This was our Waterloo. This one battle created those conditions from which we suffer even to this day: our disunity, our animosities. Do you wonder when we sing?:

On the plains of Kossovo, on the fields of Kossovo                                             
They are fighting, they are fighting,
The kings and the princes, on the Kossovo field.                                                  
They are fighting, they have fallen                                                                               
The kings and the princes                                                                                                    
On the fields of Kossovo, on the plains of Kossovo.

“I listened with reverence as Kristo sang the ancient melody which every child learns as soon as he can speak. I had heard it often. Never had it sounded so poignant as it did that day, as I stood on the very site of that terrible defeat, when Tsar Lazar and his knights fell before the better armed hordes of the Osmanli Turks. I thought of Europe, of Czechoslovakia, and wondered whether history ever taught its lesson to the sons of men, or whether they would eternally blunder, hoping to compromise, to escape the inevitable slavery which comes to the timorous and the weak.

“‘We at least stood our ground and fought like men,’ said Kristo, breaking into my thoughts. ‘The Czechs would have done no less if the Powers that be had let them. We had our appeasers too, even our quislings in the days of Kossovo, but our eyes had looked too long on freedom. We preferred to die rather than surrender.’”

The first page of Part One, Chapter I, “The White City”.

In Chapter IX, “Dushan the Mighty”, on pages 95-96, Kristo recounts a Kosovo ballad, from the medieval Kosovo Cycle, epic Serbian poetry recounting the battle of Kosovo in 1389.

“’Lazar was praying,’ said Kristo. ‘Lazar was busily praying. His men were about to build a church. Don’t you know our famous ballad?

There flies a grey bird, a falcon                                                                                  
From Jerusalem the holy,                                                                                                
And in his beak he bears a swallow.                                                                                 
That is no falcon, no grey bird                                                                                         
But it is the Saint Elijah.                                                                                                        
He carries no swallow                                                                                                           
But a book from the Mother of God.

He comes to the Tsar at Kossovo                                                                                     
He lays the book on the Tsar’s knees,                                                                            
His book without like told the Tsar:                                                                          
“Tsar Lazar of honourable stock,                                                                                      
Of what type will you have your kingdom?                                                                
Do you want a heavenly kingdom?                                                                                
Do you want an earthly kingdom?”

If you want an earthly kingdom                                                                              
Saddle your horses, tighten your horses’ girths                                                    
Gird on your swords                                                                                                         
Then put an end to the Turkish attacks                                                                      
And drive out every Turkish soldier.

But if you want a heavenly kingdom                                                                        
Build you a church on Kossovo.                                                                                      
Build it not with a floor of marble                                                                                  
But lay down silk and scarlet on the ground.                                                          
Give the Eucharist and battle orders to your soldiers,                                         
For all your soldiers shall be destroyed                                                                    
And you, prince, you shall be destroyed with them.”

When the Tsar read the words                                                                                       
The Tsar pondered, and he pondered thus:                                                          
“Dear God, where are these things, and how are they!                                   
What kingdom shall I choose?                                                                                     
Shall I choose a heavenly kingdom?                                                                         
Shall I choose an earthly kingdom?                                                                                 
If I choose an earthly kingdom                                                                                       
An earthly kingdom lasts only a little time                                                               
But a heavenly kingdom will last for eternity and its centuries!”

The Tsar chose a heavenly kingdom                                                                          
And not an earthly kingdom.                                                                                           
He built a church on Kossovo.                                                                                         
He built it not with floor of marble                                                                               
But laid down silk and scarlet on the ground.                                                    
There he summoned the Serbian Patriarch                                                             
And twelve great bishops.                                                                                            
Then he gave his soldiers the Eucharist and their battle orders.                      
In the same hour as the prince gave orders to his soldiers                               
The Turks attacked Kossovo.

“’So you see, our Tsar preferred a heavenly crown rather than an earthly one. He chose to go to heaven with his seventy thousand men,’ concluded Kristo.

“‘Very altruistic of him!’ I said. ‘But which would you have chosen?’”

For 523 years after Lazar’s defeat at Kosovo, Kosovo remained part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. In 1912, however, the Ottoman Turks were defeated by the Serbian army and Kosovo again became part of Serbia. It took over half a millennium for the defeat to be turned into a victory. It was the endurance and faith of a people defeated but unconquered and unvanquished which endured and which led to ultimate national revival and resurgence.

In Chapter X, “Kristo’s Native Land”, Sava and Kristo reach Montenegro where Kristo will marry Dobrussa. Kristo exclaimed upon his arrival in Montenegro: “’The mountains, the mountains. … This is the real Serbia,’ he exclaimed, ‘the Serbia of freedom.’” In Chapter XI, “Freedom’s Acre”, he discussed the history of Montenegro where Serbs were able to successfully resist the incursions of the Ottoman Muslim Turks. Montenegro remained an unconquered territory, “freedom’s acre”, where the most defiant and most independent Serbs fled: “So the Montenegrins are the pure Serbs.” Sava described the Montenegrin capital Centinje near Mt. Lovcen, which he visited. He recounted local customs and traditions such as tales of Vjeshtitzas, witches which suck the blood of their victims, similar to vampires, and vilas, fairly-like creatures which seduce men.

On left, a photograph of the Vracevsnica Monastery built by knez or prince Radic Postupovic in 1431, dedicated to St. George, located on the southern side of the Rudnik Mountains between Gornji Milanovac and Kragujevac in Serbia. According to legend, Postupovic, a Serbian celnik or court dignitary under Djuradj Brankovic and the despot Stefan Lazarevic, began the construction of the monastery in 1428 as an answer to his prayer to St. George for the safe return from the Battle of Kosovo. On right, the “Original Cross” of St. Sava, “patron saint of all the Slavs”.

A view of Cetinje in Montenegro, top. A street in Trebinje, in Hercegovina, bottom.

Kristo described himself and the history, origins, and objectives of the Chetniks in Part Two, Chapter I, “O, Serbia!”, in a series of letters, as follows: “I am a leader of Chetniks. We are an old organization. We are outlaws. Yet no government has been able to suppress us. None has dared, nor, I think, has any ever thought it wise to make the attempt. We came into being to fight the Turks. We have our own uniforms and our own code of laws. We have fought in every Balkan war. We are the natural guerrillas of our country, and we work behind the enemy. We harass his lines of communication, his transport, his munition wagons. Our men are all chosen for their bravery, but we make no boast of that. We are proud only because we know that in time of need we are able and ready to serve our country. We are, if you like, a standing army whose numbers no-one knows, not even our chief. We have allied ourselves with every patriot in the field, and we have no aims beyond the liberation of Serbia. We never surrender. We are never taken alive. In the lapels of the coats of each one of us is poison, one draught of which is sufficient. We take it and die.”

British wartime poster, “Leaders of the Allied Nations Whose Headquarters are in Britain”, showing King Peter Karageorgevich II of Yugoslavia at the bottom of the V. Also pictured are Hubert Pierlot of Belgium, Eduard Benes, Charles de Gaulle, George II of Greece, “King of the Hellenes”, and the Grand Duchess Charlotte Aldegonde Elise Marie Wilhelmine of Luxembourg.

In Chapter II, “The Angels of Death”, Sava details the frenzied and chaotic period when the pact with Germany was rejected. Kristo listened to a March 26 radio speech or address to the Yugoslav people on the BBC by “Mr. Amery”, Leopold Amery, a Conservative British MP and Secretary of State for India and Burma, delivered in Serbian, at the time of the crisis over the Tripartite Pact before the German attack. Amery focused his appeal to the Serbs in Yugoslavia. He recounted Serbian valor in World War I as an ally of Great Britain and he queried why the Serbs should now abandon the Greeks and ally themselves with Germany like the Bulgarians and the Rumanians. Amery maintained that the Allies would win the war. He addressed Serbian clergymen and students who he maintained had kept the flames of nationalism and national identity burning when the Balkans were subjugated and annexed by the Muslim Ottoman Turks. He reminded them of the tradition of Kosovo and of King Lazar, who chose a heavenly kingdom over one on earth:

“I appeal to you clergymen and students who, throughout the centuries of oppression, kept the flame of the national spirit alive. I appeal to you on even higher ground than that of old comradeship or the certainty of our victory. Will you let your people become once more a subject race? On the field of Kossovo, Tsar Lazar preferred a heavenly to an earthly crown. Serbia was defeated, but her spirit never dies.”

Kristo hears the German declaration of war on a radio broadcast in Belgrade. The German speaker announced: ‘Der Fuehrer hat seiner Armee zu marschieren befohlen. Wir erklaeren Krieg an Jugoslavien.’ The Fuehrer has commanded that the Army march. ‘We are declaring war on Jugoslavia.’

The bombing of Belgrade on April 6, 1941, Palm Sunday, consisting of a series of air attacks and sorties by the German Luftwaffe, which killed thousands of civilians, is described by Kristo:

“Twenty feet ahead of us a man and a girl had been walking, fearfully and anxiously, yet trying not to run and show panic. A single piece of glass decapitated both of them. No executioner could have done it more neatly or more expeditiously. Their heads fell off like cut flowers, and their bodies, still surprised, still unprepared for death, wavered a little as if uncertain whether to stand or fall down. Then they lurched drunkenly and fell with a nauseating thud, still holding hands.”

“I caught sight of women dashing frantically into the street, their clothes aflame, and their hands tearing helplessly at their burning flesh. For all the world, they looked like ghouls, these fantastic human torches that danced a demented dance before collapsing into the all-encircling flame. A few men tore off their coats and tried to do their best by wrapping the victims in them. But it was of no avail. Helper and helped alike were cremated alive together.

“Belgrade had become a city of hell populated by madmen.”

Kristo recounted how a fire-engine in Belgrade drove over corpses with “the grating of bones and the slushy trail of blood”. Slates from roofs fell off: ‘”One fireman was hit across the face, so that a great, oozing gash was left where his nose had been. … Part of the slate still protruded from his face like some obscene proboscis.”

Kristo witnessed the German bombing of Belgrade ordered by Adolf Hitler as Operation Punishment and described the devastation: “For out of three hundred thousand people in Belgrade, twenty thousand died. It was as if half a million had perished in a city of London’s size.”

He recounted the aftermath of the German invasion: “The capitulation was never complete. Many of the forces refused to surrender, and the task of the Chetniks was to collect together these scattered fragments so that they might to make a new fighting force in the heart of the country….Whatever may have happened to the land itself, it was clear that the spirit of Jugoslavia lived on as proudly as ever. From all over the country peasants came to the centres of resistance bringing with them old guns and hunting rifles, some of them muzzle loaders complete with ramrod and powder-horn. …And against these weapons, the Germans used all the resources of a modern army. They bombed us with their Junkers and their Heinkels and machine-gunned us with their Messerschmitts. …It must have seemed to the Nazis that for every one Jugoslav they crushed, two more made their appearance.

“But even then we did not despair. The Turks had been in the White Fortress—and where were they now? The Turkish Empire had ceased to be. The Austrians had been there, too; and like the Turkish Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was also no more than a record in the history books.”

Kristo described how English soldiers, fleeing capture after the German invasion of Greece, joined the ranks of the Chetniks. Women also were members of the guerrillas. Kristo explained how though “on paper, our activities look slight”, they were having an impact: “But none the less we were achieving success. Not only were we making things difficult for the German administration and harassing its communications; we were holding down men whom … the Germans were anxious to employ elsewhere. In this way, we felt we were being of service not only to our own tortured country, but also to the wider cause of the Allies.”

Kristo explained how the Chetnik guerrillas were like brothers who were all equal. Kristo and Vuk made expeditions as commanders that they should have delegated to the soldiers: “But that is a rule among the Chetniks. A commander must be able to do anything he asks his men to do, and must prove it from time to time.”

As the number of recruits grew and their ranks swelled, the Chetniks needed more arms, weapons, and supplies: “We were, after all, the only army in Europe fighting the Germans. We made a small front, but nevertheless it was something. We held down and immobilized forces quite disproportionate to our own numbers. We knew that no matter how many gallows might raise their arms to the Serbian sky, no matter how many Chetniks might be slain, we were aiding that greater struggle on which, we now realized, the fate of the world hung. It was no longer simply Serbia. It was the world’s fight for those things which Serbia always cherished: peace to live one’s own life, freedom, independence.”

Kristo’s wife Dobrussa also joined the Chetniks. “’Jugoslavia’, she said, ‘has been occupied, but not vanquished.’”

Kristo, Vuk, and Milan Frankovich, Chetnik guerrillas in Belgrade, launched one of the first guerrilla attacks against German occupation forces in the city. They boarded a German troop and ammunition train in Belgrade and derailed and destroyed it, killing 200 German troops and taking 80 as POWs.

One weapon which the guerrillas devised was a specially-constructed thermometer which would explode at a set temperature. A thermometer was developed that was filled with fulminate of mercury with a device that would explode it with a spark when the temperature reached 65 degrees. The fulminate would in turn ignite a mine. This device was successfully used against German forces.

The Axis occupation forces retaliated against Serbian civilians for Chetnik guerrilla activity. Budva, a coastal village in Montenegro on the Adriatic Sea, was destroyed by Italian naval vessels as retaliation for Chetnik guerrilla attacks.

In Part Two, Chapter III, “The New Leader”, Kristo is introduced to Draza Mihailovich, on page 222: “One day, the chief called us all together. …

“‘My sons, my brothers,’ he said solemnly, ‘I want to introduce to you your commander-in-chief, General Draza Mihailovich.’

“The name was known to every one of us. Tales of his exploits were familiar to every Chetnik band roaming the hills.”

Kristo described his impressions of Draza Mihailovich as a leader: “We saw before us a man in the late forties, of medium height, and with striking eyes of a bright mountain-flower blue and fairish curly hair. But his physical details were dominated by hi presence. It was that of the born natural leader. Here was a man, one said at once, in whom one could place one’s entire faith, a man to die for. Yet there was nothing aloof about him.”

Mihailovich then answered questions from the assembled Chetnik commanders and presented an account of his life and career: “In the last war … I was a lieutenant. … Then I became a staff officer. In 1935 I was military attaché in Sofia, and later I held the same appointment in Prague.”  One of the commanders asked him a question: “Where were you when we were invaded?” Mihailovich replied: “With the Second Army fighting the Hungarians. But you know what it was like. It was impossible to stand up against their tanks and artillery, though we strangled every son of a dog we could lay hands on. At Losnitza, I found myself left with a few battalions of Chetniks. The order to capitulate came through, but, of course, we ignored it. Things got hotter, so we moved into the mountains, where we were soon joined by your chief here and others willing to carry on the war to the victorious conclusion. More and more men joined us. Serbia still lives. And that, comrades, is my story.”

Kristo described the effect Mihailovich had on the guerrillas: “We listened to his simple words and stared at him wonderingly. He was wearing rough peasant clothing, his fair hair covered by a tattered cap, yet even so he seemed set above us in the natural power of his leadership. Where that power came from and how we recognized it at once, I scarcely know, unless it be that he was the incarnation of our own determination. We accepted him at once as one of us, rough and hard, and prepared to live hard amongst us. He did not walk about in beautiful clothes with enormous epaulettes on his shoulders—he had no need to. Nor did he treat us as though we were imbeciles or children. To him we were fellow men in a cause. We were irregular soldiers, but, he added, the best in the world. We cheered that because, without pride, we knew it to be true. And henceforth the only possible warfare in Jugoslavia would be that for which we had trained since childhood. We were the people’s protectors, the guardians of our own soil, because we were the people and sprang from the soil.”

Kristo recounted Draza’s activities which Draza related to him. Draza recalled how he had one time eaten lunch at the same café in Belgrade with German officers and troops in order to gather information from them: “The other day they were cursing me roundly right to my face without knowing it.” Draza always carried bombs and threw them at the German troops in the café when they tried to have him thrown out.

Kristo proposed a plan to Draza for returning the 80 captured German POWs, which was a “mock interment”. They were to be tied and put in coffins with straw in their mouths so they could not speak. Then on their backsides of the “living mummies” in “indelible vegetable dye” the exploits of Mihailovich were written. Holes were drilled in the coffins so they could breathe. Eight ox carts with ten coffins bedecked with flowers on each were then taken to Belgrade and presented to the German headquarters. The effect on the German troops was described: “Fear struck deep into their hearts.” The German occupation forces retaliated: “It gave the Germans a fresh excuse for exercising their favorite weapon—terror. Overnight the gallows shot up like rank toadstools that fed their fetid growth with human lives.”

Kristo then presented an account of the guerrilla war against the Axis forces that they engaged in: “For nine months we fought. During the single month of August we destroyed something like twelve thousand fascist soldiers, including officers, blew up two hundred bridges, set fire to between three and four hundred petrol, ammunition, and store dumps, and wrecked seventeen trains.” The Germans retaliated for these guerrilla attacks: “During the first half of the month, ten thousand Serbs were sent to German concentration camps … In Belgrade alone four hundred Jugoslavs were executed.” For Kristo, the guerrillas had the support of the population: “It showed us … how well we … represented the heart and the soul of the people.”

He described how they heard the news that Mihailovich was made the War Minister by the Yugoslav Government-in-Exile in London “as symbol of the confidence of the government and as evidence of the strength of their solidarity with the forces fighting for liberty.” The strength and the size of the guerrillas grew with each new successful attack: “Now we had something like eighty thousand men behind us, but no matter how the army grew, Mihailovich was like a personal friend to each man. There was no clicking of heels when he came among us. … But Mihailovich was our true leader, needing neither such supports nor a bodyguard wherever he went among us.”

As their size grew, they needed more weapons, which were scare. They did manage to seize weapons from the German, Italian, and Hungarian troops, however, and to obtain weapons from deserters. Kristo described their successful sabotage activities.

He described the reaction to the broadcast of Alexei Tolstoy’s address made in August, 1944 in Moscow reaffirming the role of Russia as an ally of the occupied countries, as “The Elder Brother”. In his message Tolstoy called for Pan-Slavic unity and a united effort or front to defeat Nazism and fascism: “I appeal to all Slavs … The hour will strike when not a hundred Serbs or Poles or guerrilla fighters in the mountains of Macedonia and Montenegro will be shot for every German soldier killed, but when every tortured Serb, Pole, Montenegrin, Slovene, or Macedonian, will be avenged in thousands of fascists. … The charred ruins of Warsaw, Belgrade, Chachak, Jadodin [Jagodin], and Banya are still glowing. … Liberty or death! … Health and vigour to all people and countries fighting fascism!”

Kristo described the impact of the speech on the Chetnik guerrillas: “‘Liberty or death!’ he had said. It was no new appeal to us. It had ever been the cry of the Chetniks, the cry, in his heart, of every Serb.”

Kristo then joined a guerrilla attack on a village held by German troops. He was a member of a guerrilla detachment, “the bravest of a corps of heroes”, that included his wife Dobrussa and an elderly woman who had fought in World War I. He described Mihailovich during the attack: “I caught sight of Mihailovich in the thick of the fight. He was directing here and there, ordering the retirement so as to minimize losses and preserve as much of as he could of his men and material. But he had time to smile at me and whisper an explanation.

“‘We shall disappear,’ he said. ‘Our headquarters must be moved into the heart of the mountains. If they care to follow us there, well and good.’ He shrugged. ‘They cannot bring up tanks to where we shall go.”

The guerrillas attacked the village and were able to kill the German sentries. Kristo and the Chetnik guerrillas were captured, however, when the German commander ordered that everyone in the village assemble in the village square. The Germans then lined everyone up in the square and separated them in groups of men and women. The men were killed by a German officer who stabbed them in the back with a knife and cuts downwards along the torso. The women were lashed with whips. Kristo was able to escape.

Kristo’s wife Dobrussa is taken prisoner by German troops. He also suspects that his son Nicholas may be in the village. Mihailovich tells Kristo that the conflict is larger than any individual, that it is based on a cause and that personal feelings should not intrude. Mihailovich urges balance and equanimity and sangfroid. Killing German troops in retaliation and revenge would be futile and self-defeating and counter-productive.

Kristo then goes on a desperate and reckless search for his wife Dobrussa and his son Nicholas. In his search, he discovered that the Germans had abducted children and were using them for blood transfusions and as blood donors. They were also used as donors for skin grafts for injured German troops. He also discovered that the Germans were using women as surrogate mothers to produce children for the Third Reich. He finds out that Dobrussa died during childbirth. He suspected that she was a surrogate.

After this ordeal, Kristo returns to the Chetnik camp and listens to a speech by Mihailovich to the assembled guerrillas. Mihailovich recounted how German forces had targeted his own wife and children and had presented him with an ultimatum. The choice was simple: He either surrendered or his wife and children would be killed. Mihailovich addressed the men, explaining the German ultimatum to them: “’You have suffered,’ he said to us all, but I felt he was addressing me personally, ‘and I have kept silent. But you know I have shared your sorrow. To-day I can speak to you as one who has a right to do so. To-day, the ultimatum that the Nazis have sent me expires.’

“‘Two months ago,’ he went on in the same passionless voice, ‘the Germans seized my wife and four children. With what penalties they threatened them you will all remember. They sought, through them, to break my will. They thought that the cry of my own flesh would drown the cry of the desecrated and torn body of my country. They have now asked me to pass a message on to you. They gave us another five days, which now have expired. If we do not surrender, they say, the relatives of all Chetniks and of all guerrillas will be held as hostages. They say they will take immediate action. I need not tell you what that means.

“‘Comrades, our country asks for our lives. It asks also for the lives of our loved ones. I have two boys and two girls. The girls are aged nine and fifteen. They are very young, but the elder is ripe for the Nazi bestiality. They have not had their chance of life. What answer shall I return? …

“‘I have made reply in your name. This is what I have said: ‘I intend to go on fighting until my death or until you, the enemy, have been thrown out of my country. Our first units of deliverance are already in the field. Large territories have been freed. Jugoslavia is a State of Free Citizens. I call on all able-bodied Jugoslavs to fight for their country.’”

Kristo described the reaction of the guerrillas: “We did not cheer. Our hearts were too full. But the very silence was more impressive. Mihailovich had spoken. But it was not Mihailovich. It was the voice of Jugoslavia.”

In a postscript, “L’envoi”, Sava concluded: “This, then, is the story of Kristo, my friend. It is the story also of his brave comrades and their leader, Draza Mihailovich.” Sava is able to grasp the appeal of Kristo and Mihailovich: “For Kristo belongs to the salt of the earth, he is a man who would win honour in any country and in any age.” His appeal is to the “common man”, an appeal that is universal and transcends time and place.

Why did Draza Mihailovich and the Chetnik guerrillas have universal appeal that transcended religion, nationality, race, language, creed, or politics? Underneath language, ethnicity, race, religion, culture, ideology, we are all the same. The differences are skin-deep and superficial. What is heroic and what constitutes a hero is essentially the same for all people. This is the story of a common and simple man or woman who emerges from the people who is defeated but not conquered, who remains unconquered or unvanquished. They then engage in trials or a struggle to free their country from a foreign invader or power, hiding in mountains, hills, the wilderness, the sea, forests, deserts, caves, or underground hideouts. The ideals that motivate them are freedom and equality and justice. To achieve them they will put their own life in peril and will sacrifice their wife and children. They will push themselves to achieve what they never believed was possible or attainable, successes that are described as superhuman or heroic. They become supermen, legendary and mythic figures. Everyone can identify with them and projects their own ideals and aspirations onto them. These projections emerge as novels and fictional or literary accounts. The novels are the projections of our own unconscious, an unconscious that is common to all and is not limited to any time or space. It is the part of our subconscious which we repress or deny. We project this denied or suppressed part of our own subconscious on others. We project it on characters such as Robin Hood, Zorro, Batman, Superman, Luke Skywalker, or real life individuals such as Draza Mihailovich.

They have a populist appeal. They are ordinary individuals, emerging from the people, opposed to war, reluctant to fight, thrust on the world stage to confront extraordinary odds and challenges. Like the Minutemen during the American Revolutionary War, members of the colonial militia who were mobile and could be rapidly deployed, they were citizen soldiers who emerged to defend their country and homeland. Like all guerrillas, their source of power was found in the population, in the people. Mihailovich emphasized this when he noted: “My strength is in the people.”

George Sava’s fictional account is most effective and most realistic when he focuses on Draza Mihailovich and the guerrillas. This is the part of the novel that is the most enduring, memorable, meaningful, and timeless. Unlike people, myths and legends have no lifespan and do not die. And they will always be invaluable to us because they tell us about ourselves, about all humanity.

Although, for the time being, the Balkan issues have not attracted the eye of the global media, it is of importance to note that the probabilities for a “winter of discontent” are growing in parallel with the aftershocks of the world economic crisis that has affected gravely the perennial fragile economies of the region.

In FYR-Macedonia the state is experiencing tension with its restive Albanian minority which already numbers some 25% of its population and has demanded more power-sharing with the central government in Skopje. Already student groups in the Albanian university of Tetovo have demanded adamantly to become equalized with the Slavic majority in all fields of public and political life, bringing up memories of the 2001 civil war, that prompted an international EU and NATO interference in order to stop the crisis escalating in the Balkans and keep the country united.

In parallel the Albanian President Berisha in a recent visit of his in Kosovo, has stated that there should be no borders between the Albanian communities in the Balkans, a policy that enacted a series of counter-arguments by most leaders in the region but also from Russia through Lavrov the Russian foreign minister. In Skopje in particular the press paid great attention in this latest round of Albanian statements, since that directly interacts with the unity of their state.

Moreover the newly elected Bulgarian government of Prime Minister Borisov and especially the Diaspora issue Dimitrov have started pressing the Skopje government on a variety of issues, and it should not be omitted that over the past five years, Sofia has issued at least 50,000 Bulgarian passports to citizens of FYROM, an issue that has created tension between the two countries. From their part the Bulgarian press is making a series of analysis around the greater role that Bulgaria should play in the region, centered on the status of FYROM.

Serbia from its side is getting closer to Russia, and recently signed a 1 billion Euros loan from Moscow with favorable terms. Russia is also investing heavily in the energy and real estate sector in the country, whilst Belgrade according to a Wall Street Journal report is eager in securing a 1 billion Euros loan from China as well and it has already achieved in agreeing in a 200 million investment by Chinese state enterprises in its construction sector. At the same time the EU seems disoriented and lacks will power to invest in the region which is crucial for its security.

It is notable to mention, that the EU has promised only a 50 million Euros loan to Belgrade for the whole of 2010 citing economic trouble in the economies of the EU. Certainly the stability in the region is worth much more, especially when the memories of the ’90’s are still vividly portrayed by myriads of first hand eye-witnesses and policy makers alike.

In the Kosovo front, the economic crisis has gravely affected the local economy, and the ethno catharsis of the Serbia, Roma and Gorani minorities has almost been complete. That has as an effect the renewed Albanian-Serbian confrontation on a diplomatic level, rendering any chances of reconciliation. Belgrade has taken the Kosovo independence issue in the international court of Hague, a process that still continues and is another factor to assess for in the cloudy Balkan scene.

In Bosnia, the three nationalities, have great cooperation problems and the state is virtually controlled by the international community otherwise it would fall apart. Endemic state corruption, coupled with intense antagonism by the local vested and often criminal interests, does not pay a positive view for a future peaceful and progressive society.

In fact one can call Bosnia as the “Political barometer of the Balkans” and the stirring of ethnic passions that has been increasing since summer 2009, is a perfect testament of that, implying trouble in the near future.

In Albania, the incumbent Berisha administration is facing a political storm from the Socialist opposition that does not recognize the election outcome, citing electoral fraud of a nationwide level, thus refusing to participate in the national parliament.

In sort the Albanian society is polarized between Socialists and conservatives and this antithesis fuels social tension, especially from those feeling marginalized by the state which is firmly under Berisha’s control.

Montenegro was badly affected by the global financial crisis, due to decreasing tourism receipts and lack of new investments. Being a small country it has managed to stay aloof of the wider regional developments, but well informed sources point out that clientism and state corruption will sooner rather than later lead to a social crisis and the heavy involvement of organized crime in local politics is a perfect recipe for instability.

The European Union is on the verge of making some hard decisions in the near future, relating to the accession process of the Western Balkans and there has not been a coherent plan of what direction Brussels should follow.

A fast track option regardless of the problems involved or an a-la-carte negotiation process with each individual state?

In any case, the present report aims to alarm that time may be of importance, since there are clouds in the Balkan blue sky that are gathering in a fast pace. Judging by the volatile history of the region and the intensity of the competition by various political and economic interests, it would be wise for the European countries to pay a greater attention in that part of Europe and form a strategy in order to overcome any potential catastrophic scenarios that would bring great hardship not just in the area but also in the wider European political landscape.

The Lisbon treaty and its ratification by Ireland, has proved that the EU is moving forward towards establishing a unified structure of political and economic power in the greater part of the Continent. It would be unwise if “some silly thing in the Balkans” tears that apart, as one great politician once said more than a century ago.

Competition – or development – of EU’s eastern gas supply routes has intensified this year. Both EU/U.S. backed Nabucco and Russia’s South Stream have made deals to guarantee realization of new pipelines until 2015. The EU’s new “southern corridor” – Nabucco as essential part of it – has been dubbed a version of U.S. “Silk Road Strategy” aimed to block Russia from gas fields around Caspian Sea and its connection to Iran. Russia on the other hand wants direct access to EU markets without transit via Ukraine.

Until this summer the gas game has been seen as battle between Russia and the West. Now the world economic crisis and current low price of gas have brought a new player to game in the fuel sector – China.

With its financial strength China has now had ability to intensify its offensive towards the Caspian Sea energy sources especially in Kazakhstan (oil) and Turkmenistan (gas). Could the outcome be a loss for both Russia and the West whose companies could see the Caspian oil and gas flow to the East? Not necessary, but from now on one can not ignore China as a key player in region.

Kazakhstan

Back in the 1990s Kazakhstan made its mineral wealth to American, British, French and Italian companies easily available. The bulk of the generated profit was channeled to Kazakhstan’s new partners. With its dependence on exports of raw materials, Kazakhstan was in danger of turning into a third world country.

However, the phenomenal rise in world’s prices for the hydrocarbons strengthened Kazakhstan and induced their leaders to rethink their old policies.

Kazakhstan began to reconsider the agreements they signed earlier, and Astana specifically proclaimed the objective of establishing state control over the oil and gas sector. The Kazakh authorities brought pressure to bear on the foreign companies in a bid to force the latter to accept changes to the earlier signed contracts.

The national company “KazMunaiGaz” was made responsible for advancing Kazakhstan’s state interests in the oil and gas field institutionally. Initially Kazakhstan leaders applied much the same tactic to pursue the same objective to one of Kazakhstan’s three oil refineries, the Pavlodar refinery, which is located by the Russian border and technologically oriented to Russian oil refining. The facility was privatized in January 1997 and the government’s stake placed in management by the US CCL Oil Ltd. Company on the terms of a public-private partnership agreement. But the Kazakh government prematurely terminated the agreement a few years later and handed over a 51% stake to the OAO “Mangistaumunaigaz”. The company later brought its stock of shares to 58%, with 42% of the Pavlodar oil refinery’s stock capital owned by the state. After that the national company “KazMunaiGaz” bought 51% of the “Mangistaumunaigaz” stock of shares from Indonesia’s Central Asia Petroleum and consequently gained control over the facility.

It was reported on the 16th of April 2009 that amid the world economic crisis Kazakhstan borrowed from China 10 billion dollars during N. Nazarbayev’s visit to Beijing. The Chinese CNPC Company bought a 50% stake of “Mangistaumunaigaz” for 1.4 billion dollars. Kazakhstan leaders are ousting western partners from the hydrocarbons market and refusing to meet Russian companies halfway, while losing ground to China. Chinese companies already own a third of Kazakhstan-produced oil, or more than 20 million tons per year. The purchasing of Kazakhstan’s “Mangistaumunaigaz” assets by China’s CNPC further tightens China’s grip on the Kazakh oil market and weakens the positions of Russia and the West in Kazakhstan’s fuel and energy complex.

Turkmenistan

Turkmenistan is also the target of China’s policy that seeks to capture the Caspian Sea region resources.

Ashgabat has long discussed the construction of a 6,500 kilometer gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to China to Japan. The construction project was due to be carried out in 10 years and was rather costly – $11 billion of which some $1.7 billion would account for the sea section of the pipeline. Later the easterly direction of Turkmen natural gas deliveries was sort of “updated”, namely the option for laying a pipeline to Japan was dropped, with China having been made the only terminal point of delivery.

A more important development for Turkmenistan in 2006 was the republic’s president S. Niyazov’s visit to China in early April. The main agreement in a package he signed in Beijing was the General intergovernmental agreement on the implementation of the Turkmenistan – China gas pipeline project and on selling natural gas from Turkmenistan to the People’s Republic of China in the volume of 30 billion cubic meters annually for 30 years since the time the gas pipeline was commissioned, which was due in 2009.

The new Turkmenistan-China gas pipeline will be nearly 6,500 kilometers, with over 180 kilometers due to be laid in Turkmenistan, 530 kilometers in Uzbekistan, 1,300 kilometers in Kazakhstan, and over 4,500 kilometers in China. The overall cost of the project is around $20 billion. 17 billion cubic meters of Turkmen gas were due to be annually exported through the development of new gas fields, while the remaining 13 billion cubic meters of annual gas exports through the construction of gas purification and treatment plants at the largest gas condense field Bagtyyarlyk.

The construction of the pipeline (Turkmenistan-China) got under way in 2008 when a Russian company “Stroytransgaz” won 395 m€ contract for laying the Turkmen section of project and also plant to purify and dehydrate gas and a gas-measuring station. The Turkmen stage is expected to be finished by December 2009 and the entire pipeline in late 2010.

Iran?

On February 21st 2009 the Iranian and Turkmeni governments signed an agreement that will give Iran the rights to develop the Yolotan gas field in Turkmenistan. The deal will help Iran resolve gas supply problems in its north-eastern provinces. Turkmenistan will sell Iran an additional 350 billion cubic feet of gas annually, more than doubling current supplies of almost 300 bcf a year, according to the agreement first disclosed by Iran’s official media and later confirmed by Turkmenistan.

Iran also recently offered to invest $1.7 billion for a 10 percent stake in the second phase of Azerbaijan’s huge Shah-Deniz gas field which will come on line by 2014. Iran already has a 10 percent share in the first phase and it wants to import large volumes of gas from the Azeri field. For Iran, the deals could not be better suited to its objectives. It’s economically unlivable currently to supply gas to its isolated, north-eastern third of the country. Getting gas from Turkmenistan would therefore make more Iranian gas available for export to Turkey.

Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI)

The Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline on the other hand would feed natural gas into downstream economies that are desperate for natural gas supplies. Afghanistan is the first of these, and energy shortages are rarely discussed as one of the problems of their economy, but with only 10 – 12% of the populace having access to electricity and with only limited natural gas resources (perhaps enough for a 100 megawatt power station), the country needs to import natural gas in large volumes. Pakistan is still desperate for help with natural gas and other energy fuels. But so far there is no pipeline to help.

There is some base to claim that U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan is directly related to the large reserves of natural gas in Turkmenistan. While the U.S. military may be a wholly owned subsidiary of the international (i.e. American and British) oil companies), its anyway clear that demand to increase troop levels in Afghanistan jumped a bit along with the recently publicized discovery of the very large large natural gas reserves in the Yoloten-Osman gas field in southern Turkmenistan.

Some geo-political remarks

In March 1999, the U.S. Congress adopted the Silk Road Strategy Act, which defined America’s broad economic and strategic interests in a region extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to Central Asia. The act was revised in 2006 to include the energy interests of the US as one of the primary reasons for the US to be in Afghanistan – note no reference to Osama Bin Laden or Al Qaeda.

The Silk Road Strategy (SRS) outlines a framework for the development of America’s business empire along an extensive geographical corridor. The successful implementation of the SRS requires the concurrent “militarization” of the entire Eurasian corridor as a means to securing control over extensive oil and gas reserves, as well as “protecting” pipeline routes and trading corridors. This militarization is largely directed against China, Russia and Iran.

As said the new pipeline will run through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to Xinjiang in western China. Xinjiang is becoming increasingly important as a transit route for gas pipelines from Russia and Central Asia. Given the vast region’s location several thousand kilometers inside China, it is impractical for the Chinese to protect fully the long stretches of pipelines through Xinjiang’s vast mountains and deserts so they are trying to eliminate the militant groups before the pipelines become operational. So far the unrest in Xinjiang has be seen based to ethnic questions. The energy aspect explains why China’s response to unrest is and will be strong also in future.

Summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that was called in Yekaterinburg on the 16th of June, besides some universal ideas in statements and declarations, the SCO Energy Club has to this day failed to come up with a cooperation model that would suit all member-states. China’s actions on the ground will lay the basis for actual energy cooperation in the SCO framework since instead of some remote private owner China as state (via state owned company) is implementing the projects. Promoting energy cooperation in SCO framework must from now on take the “Chinese Factor” seriously.

The bad news for Russia is that there is a customer willing to take all the gas that Turkmenistan has for sale: China. It has been steadily gaining access to the energy wealth of Central Asia, while ousting American, European and Russian companies from the area. Beside oil and gas the Chinese are simultaneously planing to transport also the mineral resources in question to China’s western border.

For contest between EU’s Nabucco and Russia’s South Stream China’s actions favor the later. Today’s arrangements are securing gas for South Stream while Nabucco is still searching the supply. It is clear that Nabucco should be filled with Iraqi and/or Iranian gas and political aspects related to this may delay finding (private) investors and the implementation of the project as whole. In bottom line while Russia is taking its part from old gas fields and China from old and new gas fields the Nabucco pipe still is more than half empty.

Implications on the Balkans

Gas dispute between Ukraine and Russia last winter hit especially heavy Balkans and central Europe, it also gave boost to implement alternative supply routes as soon as possible. When China now is taking the main part of gas which was originally planned to fill Nabucco pipeline it probably delays this project orchestrated mainly EU commission.

Nabucco is now desperately seeking gas from Iraq and Iran but increasing pressure over Iran’s controversial nuclear program is making political problems to west as well internal dispute between Baghdad and its Kurd dominated northern province are not helping situation soon. Besides Tehran plans to move ahead with the Persian pipeline to Europe independent of the planned Nabucco gas project with Russian support.

Bulgaria has been pressed by Brussels to favour Nabucco and to put an obstacle in the way of South Stream. That is why Russia has been very active with Turkey and with Romania, trying to find alternatives and show Bulgaria it can implement this project without it. However now Bulgaria and Russia have agreed to set up a number of working groups to focus on the development of South Stream indicated that Bulgaria is committed to the project.

Russia and Turkey have agreed on the construction of South Stream pipeline under the Black Sea soon after the EU signed a deal with Ankara on the Nabucco pipeline. The Ankara protocol also involves plans to extend the existing Blue Stream gas pipeline between Turkey and Russia. On September 1st Russia side proposed creating a joint working group with Croatia’s gas transmission system operator, Plinacro, to examine a possible branch-off from the projected South Stream system into Croatia from Serbia. South Stream has been successful also at economical front as French power group EDF said it was in talks to take part in South Stream.

While putting latest developments of Nabucco/South Stream projects to context of Chinese invasion to Caspian Sea gas game the bottom line from my point of view is that for South Stream the consequences are smaller than for Nabucco and related more to prise than supply: Nabucco still lacks gas while Russia (and later clients) must pay ca market price about gas from Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. Also Ukraine will be deprived of its status as an important transit country to Turkey.

Ari Rusila is a development project management expert and freelancer from Finland with a special interest in the Balkan and Black Sea regions.