HoT_Steppa
Član broj: 25399 Poruke: 1940
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The West’s Long War Against Serbia and The Paradox of Yugoslav History
A long-time defender of historical justice in the Balkans recently wrote, "I have become so disillusioned with this whole situation. The media and our politicians have demonized the Serbs so successfully, that I doubt they will ever be able to come back as a people. We didn't even treat the Germans this badly after they lost the war." by Gilles d'Aymery in a SWANS.com Commentary
An entire nation (Serbia) is being satanized in a fantastic media campaign- what the world does not know yet – that a Nazi state is emerging in Croatia – Daniel Schiffer, associate of the Elie Wiesel Foundation
What is the well spring for the West’s fearing, loathing, and hate of Serbia and everything connected to Serbian ethnic identity. What have the Serbs done to deserve such treatment - assaults in every way imaginable – economic, political, propaganda, and military? As Gilles d’Aymery stated above, the West did not treat the Germans as badly after World War II in which 50 million people died or did the West treat the Soviets, the Arabs, or any other enemy as cruelly as they have the Serbs. And then consider that Serbia was the US and UK strongest ally in both World Wars, such that the flag of Serbia flew of the US Capitol on June 28, 1918 in appreciation for the super human efforts and sacrifices Serbia made in the First World War. What is the answer to this paradox of Serbian history?
The most important and traumatic event in Serbia’s modern history is one no one talks about, yet is the root cause of all the troubles that have plagued the former Yugoslavia for the past 20 years. Psychiatrist often use a phrase, “the 800lb gorilla in the living room” to describe an abusive family relationship, This phrase is used typically to described an alcoholic that terrorizes a family with unspeakable violence, yet the family, out of fear, misplaced shame, guilt, and exhaustion covers up the abuse so that everything appears somewhat normal to the outside world. The Serbs have had an “800lb gorilla” in their house for the last 60 years. A event so traumatic and yet important to Serbs that the effort of the abusers to make everything appear to be “normal” has been the inspiration for a 60 year long effort to destroy Serbian history, cultural, and their ethnic identity. The event that no one dare speak of, Serbia’s 800lb gorilla goes by many names – the Serbian Holocaust, the Vatican’s Holocaust, the Vatican’s Auschwitz, Genocide in the Independent State of Croatia, and perhaps the most accurate name – the Unknown Holocaust.
The central question, to those who are pondering this great paradox (the most important event in modern Serb history and yet for all practical purposes Serbs do not speak of it) of Serbian history, is, “How is it that the Spanish Inquisition is still well know by the world’s general public even though it happened five hundred years ago and its death toll (100,000) was just a fraction of the Catholic Church inspired Serbian Holocaust (750,000+) and yet the Serbian Holocaust which happened in the age of mass communication and the living memory of millions of people is virtually unknown outside of Serbia? Of course the answer is easy and clear, The British, the Americans, the Vatican, the rest of the West wanted it that way. Collectively they had the power to change regimes, the power to intimidate the survivors, the money to buy silence, and a mass media that practiced self censorship.
The West’s on going war against Serbia began as the winners and losers of World War II became obvious by late 1942 - early 1943, when the British realized that a Soviet victory was a certainty and that the post war political landscape of Europe would see the Red Army occupying much of Catholic Europe. Thus began the largest covert intelligence operation in WW II history – destroy an entire nation of innocent witnesses to history greatest crime. Because of the crime’s magnitude and the ultimate guilty party, the Roman Catholic Church, deception became the strategy for the cover up. Make the actual guilty (fanatic Catholics and Muslims) nameless, make the real victims (Serb Orthodox) guilty.
“It is an irony of history that Tito should have been the creation of the capitalist democracies of Great Britain and the United States. His movement, even at its height, was a minority that had won itself the active hostility of the mass of Serbs, Croats, and Slovene peoples. By arming the movement, by providing it with the services of the BBC and American radio, by converting the democratic press into a propaganda agent for it, by sending Allied officers into Yugoslavia to be used as propaganda exhibits in its recruiting efforts, and finally cloaking it in their own enormous moral authority, Great Britain and the United States made themselves directly responsible for Tito’s rise to power”. From the “Web of Disinformation, Churchill’s Yugoslav Blunder” by David Martin, 1990, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, San Diego and New York.
Yes, the decisive role of the UK/US in bringing Tito to power in Yugoslavia is universally acknowledge, but was British and American support for Tito a blunder or a mistake as David Martin and many Serb believe or was it the oldest strategy of warfare – the enemy of my enemy is my friend?
“Military deception was as old as warfare itself, but it is doubtful whether any military command ever employed deception as a fundamental tool of strategic planning as completely and rigorously as did the British did during World War II”. General Eisenhower aptly concluded, “they (the British) resorted to every type of subterfuge”.
From Deceiving the Deceivers by Samuel J. Hamrick, 2004, Yale Press.
It was Gen. Eisenhower who insisted that Draza Mihailovic receive America’s Legion of Merit, its highest foreign recipient military award.
[President] Roosevelt asked him [Yugoslav Ambassador to the US Fotic] on December 20, 1941 “How, after such horrible crimes we could expect (the Serbs) to live in the same state with the Croats”. And on an earlier occasion he [Roosevelt] had said, “it would be for the Serbs to decide what sort of community they intended to retain with the Croats after the war”.
Hamilton Fish Armstrong told me [Ambassador Fotic], “We never understood his [Churchill] enthusiasm for Tito and his conviction he could get Tito away from the Russians”. From the “Fall of Yugoslavia” by Ilija Jukic, 1974, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York, London
As US Army Colonel Robert McDowell pointed out, Stalin tried several times from 1942 until early 1944 to have the British send a Soviet mission to Mihailovich and help prevent the war between Chetniks and Paritasns. Molotov told Eden (British Foreign Minister), in November 1943 at the end of the Tehran Conference “I would rather send our mission to Mihailovich than Tito to find out more information on events there”.
In January 1944 General Kornevv who was sent as Chief of Soviet mission to Tito, asked Bill Deakin who was sent in May 1943 as the first British mission with Tito, why were the British helping Tito when the Soviets had no confidence in the military worth of the Partisans and consider Mihailovich resistance as the only group of some significance … at the time, Deakin said “I thought Korneev must have believed that we were helping Tito because of some secret political motive”. From a speech by Nikola R. Pasic May 15, 1993
“According to Edvard Kardelj, prime minister of Yugoslavia under Tito, Stalin exerted pressure on the Partisans “to reach an understanding with the Cetniks at all cost and set up a joint army under the command of Mihailovic”.
In mid 1942, however something strange happened to change Soviet policy towards Yugoslavia. In one way or another the supercautious Stalin must have received intelligence that it has become safe to break with Mihailovic without endangering the relationship with Churchill. Indeed, the abrupt and dramatic manner in which the change occurred strongly suggest that the Soviet government must have possessed intelligence leading it to believe, even at that early date, that Churchill could be persuaded on his own, to backing Tito. Certainly Stalin was in no position and would be in no position before the Red Army entered in Yugoslavia, to assist Tito materially.
It can be taken for granted that one of the factors of Stalin’s decision was the almost irresistible prospect of brining Soviet power to the shores of the Adriatic, thus achieving the age old Russian dream of access to warm water seas. One would have imagined that an old war horse like Winston Churchill, no admirer of Bolshevism and accustomed to think in strategic terms, would have understood the basic implication of this switch in Soviet policy. But he did not. – from The Web of Disinformation Churchill’s Yugoslav Blunder by David Martin,1990, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, San Diego and New York.
Poor David Martin and Stalin, they both took the British bait that Churchill supported Tito because his forces were killing more Germans. And who was the source of the phony intelligence that changed Stalin’s mind from supporting Mihailovic to Tito, why none other than the British themselves. And poor Mr. Martin also wants us to believe that Churchill couldn’t see that he was handing Yugoslavia to the communist. Mr. Martin, that’s exactly what Churchill wanted to do with Yugoslavia – hand it to the communist. It was a win – win for the British. If Tito did as the British expected and let “Brotherhood and Unity cover up the Serbian Holocaust, then that’s a win. On the other hand, if Tito became a true communist, then the British would propagandize that “look, Tito is a communist attacking the Catholic Church, therefore its all just communist propaganda and not to be believed”, another win. However, given Serbia’s WWI contributions to the Allied victory and its WW II, March 27th revolution that stunned the world, and Mihailovic’s early war fame, its world wide acclamation and reservoir of good will would give any Serb charges against the Catholic Church enormous credibility. So, the British needed to prevent a Serbian Orthodox victory at any cost by destroying Mihailovic’s credibility. What really concerned the British as we will see, was the world to come after the war. A Serbian pawn would be sacrificed to save the Roman Catholic Queen for the coming chess game of the Cold War.
The above introduction serve as ample illustrations that Yugoslav history in WWII is the most complex, contradictory and paradoxical in modern world history. Just consider the following:
• Within WWII Yugoslavia, you find the most fanatic Nazi ally Catholic Croatia and the most anti Nazi foe Orthodox Serbia
• President Roosevelt supports Draza Mihailovich and the Serbian Orthodox pro Western and democratic Serbian resistance movement while the British support the so called communist Tito
• Stalin supports the Serbian Orthodox Mihailovic until his mind is changed by British deception
• Mihailovich and the Serbian Orthodox resistance fight Nazi Germany when it is at the height of it power, but according to the British start collaborating with the Germans as soon as Germany’s defeat becomes inevitable.
• Churchill sends emissaries to Tito who are personally loyal to him, including his son Randolph and his secretary William Deakin, while the British send Col William Bailey to Mihailovich. Bailey immediate previous assignment was organizing Croat émigré communist in Canada for guerilla warfare training and insertion into Yugoslavia. While with Mihailovich, Bailey attempts to orchestrate the assassination of Mihailovich.
• The British claim that they support Tito because he is more effective at fighting the Germans, yet US General Eisenhower accuse the British of cowardliness for refusing to fight the Germans and delaying D Day for nearly two years.
• American Admiral King stops all joint naval operations with the British after the British sabotage the largest supply convoy (Convoy PQ 17) to Russia.
• Tito is the only communist resistance movement supported by the British. He receives more material aid than all other resistance movements in Europe combined. The much larger (respectively in their countries) and more effective French, Greek and Italian communist not only do not receive aid from the British, they are opposed by the British.
Most of the problems of present day former Yugoslavia and the catalyst for the wars of the 1990s can trace their roots directly to how Yugoslavia came out of WW II. More specifically, the problem Serbs (both in Serbia and the Diaspora) have faced since WW II is that their history is a lie. The most monstrous lie of the 20th century based on misinformation, half truth, outright fabrications and propaganda and crafted primarily by the British, the Vatican and the US.
Even the so called revisions, such as the “communist mole in British intelligence tricked the British into supporting Tito” are a just another British deception, hence a lie based on a lie.
The standard Western reason the British (who were "in charge of Yugoslavia during the war) have spun for the betrayal of Serbia in WW II was that Tito’s communist Partisans were a more effective fighting force against the Germans than the Serbian Orthodox (Chetnik) resistance. As we will see a bit later, the British really could care less who was killing more Germans or any Germans for that matter in Yugoslavia. However, when the debriefings of Allied intelligence officers were made public, it became clear that the actual and potential military contributions and power of the Serbian Orthodox resistance was an order of magnitude greater then the Partisan. Then the story that the Serbian Diaspora at least, seems to believe is "we (US/UK) were tricked by communist moles into supporting Tito". The truth is that the "Communist mole" story is just another half clever deception game (much like the phony weapons of mass destruction gambit was used against Iraq and believed by most unquestioning Americans). So, let’s get the communist mole theory out of the way upfront.
US state department official and Cold War espionage researcher Samuel J. Hamrick proves beyond doubt and as his obituary in the Boston Globe tells us in the review of his book “Deceiving the Deceivers”, “Philby and his four associates who had been exposed in 1967 for passing top secret information to the Soviets, had in fact been unwitting tools in a disinformation campaign staged by their superiors in British intelligence” In other words, what the British did was not to expose Philby and company, but rather use them as unwitting accomplices to conduit misinformation to the Soviets, hence the title of Hamrick’s book “Deceivers the Deceivers” So, in reality, among other things, the Soviets were trick by the British into believing Tito was a legitimate resistance leader instead of what he really was - a tool of the British. As noted above, Molotov wanted British help (which the British refused) to send a Soviet mission to Mihailovic to gather intelligence and prevent the civil war between Partisans and Chetniks. The Soviets had virtually no contact with Tito for at least three years and were highly suspicious of British involvement with Tito. It was the British who were controlling Tito, not the Soviets.
Further, take the case of James Klugman, the man the British put in charge of the Yugoslav desk in SOE Cairo. Klugman according to the “communist mole theorist” was falsifying intelligence coming out of Yugoslavia to bolster the Partisan image and minimize the Chetnik contributions. To be sure, Klugman did do this, but was he a mole. Absolutely not, Klugman was a well known, even flamboyant communist in England for years before the war.
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