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It is ironic that a country, which reunited after tearing a wall between its people in 1989, had a major role in breaking an almost neighboring country apart, t
by binarray2000 9y ago
It is ironic that a country, which reunited after tearing a wall between its people in 1989, had a major role in breaking an almost neighboring country apart, taking part in its destruction and (subsequently) raising walls between people. I am talking about the former Yugoslavia.
A quote from a book "The Beast Reawakens: Fascism's Resurgence from Hitler's Spymasters to Today's Neo-Nazi Groups and Right-Wing Extremists" (published in 1999) by Martin A. Lee:
(Chapter eight "Shadow over the East", Page 299) Whereas the United States and the rest of the European Community tried to prevent the breakup of Yugoslavia, Bonn unilaterally recognized Croatia as an independent nation at the end of 1991 and twisted arms to get other countries to comply with its wishes. American officials subsequently charged that Bonn was responsible for provoking the crisis in Yugoslavia, which had existed as a single country since 1919, except for the gruesome interlude when Hitler created a Croatian client state.
Reunified Germany’s preemptive diplomatic maneuver led to a major escalation of the civil war in the Balkans, which took hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced more than a million people. Bonn exacerbated the conflict by supplying Croatia with large quantities of weapons. Between 1992 and 1994, Germany exported $320 million of military hardware — including MiG fighter jets, surface-to-air missiles, and late-model tanks — to Croatia, despite a United Nations arms embargo forbidding such commerce. Convoys of up to fifteen hundred military vehicles from former East Germany were discovered en route to the Balkan farrago. Germany also trained Croatian pilots and provided intelligence reports in an effort to vanquish their mutual enemy. Heleno Sano, an expert on German defense issues, commented on the psychological underpinnings of this policy: “In their ‘historic unconscious,’ the Germans have resented the Serbs since World War II, because despite the fact that Hitler sent in thirty divisions, he was unable to defeat the antifascist guerrillas led by Tito.”
Under the auspices of NATO, German warplanes saw action for the first time since 1945, carrying out aerial patrols to prevent Serbian fighter jets from flying over Bosnian territory. And when the tide turned in Croatia’s favor in the summer of 1995, Bonn agreed to contribute up to four thousand military personnel to enforce a tenuous peace accord. German intervention was widely depicted in humanitarian terms, but General Klaus Naumann had something else in mind when he lobbied behind the scenes for a wider military role. While some German officials expressed a genuine reluctance to interfere in a place that had been devastated by Hitler, Naumann saw a chance for his men to test their mettle in a combat setting.
- woodpanel 9y agoMartin. A. Lee: When you thought conspiracy theorists were a specialty of the far-right, the left fringe is always good for a surprise.
- binarray2000 9y agoWhy am I not surprised? (1) You are a German. (2) You are advocating for German imperial interests. (3) "Drang nach Osten" (und Süden) is alive and kicking! Thus, if anyone interferes with that by quoting facts they are "conspiracy theorists", "heretics", "far-whatever". Croatia is today, for the second time since the WWII, a German vassal. To "pay" for the German political and military support in the 90ies, they have had to sell everything of value to German interests for peanuts: Most hotels on the Croatian part of the Adria coast are in German hand, Croatian telecom company (actually, a strategic resource for every country) is now "Deutsche Telekom", every Croatian company of value is owned by some German company. The consequence are a high unemployment and a mass exodus: 300.000, some figures go as far as 500.000, Croats have left Croatia since it became the EU member in 2013 (2017 figures; according to Wikipedia, population estimate for Croatia in 2017 is 4.154.200). Croatian MD's and nurses are in Germany, keeping the German wages low for German hospital owners while German nurses live off of social security (because they don't want to break their backs in 12 hour shifts for chump change). Needless to say, Croatian medical system is in disarray. And this is only a part of economic woes Croatia goes through. I will not go deep into political woes but name one: Croatia is the only country in the EU and NATO, in which the highest ranking officials (President, cabinet members) (1) attend openly fascistic and nazistic concerts, (2) make a yearly pilgrimage to an Austrian town of Bleiburg where Tito (with the blessing from US and GB) has killed some 90.000 Ustasha (Croats) in 1945, (3) deny the role of the Croat people and their WWII Independent State in the genocide on Serbs, Jews and Roma, (4) actively work (together with the Roman-Catholic church) on rehabilitation of people responsible for those crimes. One episode is illustrative: End of 2016, in the city of Jasenovac, which is near the concentration camp Jasenovac, Croatian veterans from the 90ties have installed a memorial plaque with words "Za dom spremni!" on it. It is Ustasha greet during WWII, similar to "Sieg Heil" of the German Nazis. Now, as a German, imagine that in the city of Dachau, near former Dachau concentration camp, some veteran group puts a memorial plaque with "Sieg Heil" on it. What would happen? They would be punished at the speed of light while the outcry in the media would be enormous. In Croatia that memorial plaque stood there for almost a year! (it was removed after 10 months in September 2017 and put in the city of Novska, mere 10 km from the old spot) And what does a "democratic" and "denazified" Germany do while Croatia revives Nazism? It is DEAD silent! Vassal is still needed to do the dirty work (wage a war, any kind of it) for German interests (again: "Drang nach Osten" (und Süden))! Now that we can understand who you are protecting by accusing others of being "conspiracy theorists" (it took me awhile), one last question: If Martin A. Lee is a "conspiracy theorist", what about New York Times? http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/08/world/germans-follow-own-line-on-yugoslav-republics.html http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/08/world/germans-follow-own-l... http://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/16/world/europe-backing-germans-accepts-yugoslav-breakup.html?pagewanted=all http://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/16/world/europe-backing-germa...