SOME DAMN FOOLISH THING IN THE BALKANS - how Britain, Germany and Austria started World War 1

GAVRILO PRINCIP is famous for Gavrila Princip Street in Belgrade, home to my favourite restaurant Zavičaj's, where I have enjoyed three times now the best craft sausage, roast potatoes, cabbage salad, mustard and a memorable house red.

GAVRILO PRINCIP is also famous for assassinating the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and starting World War One.

"Assassinate" is too strong a word. I believe he was provoked. 

The underdog is the eternal scapegoat, and Gavrila Princip was a Bosnian Serb, an excellent example of the species because he and his friends were poor, passionate nationalists in a world of rich, arrogant empires. Had he been British or German or even a disgruntled Austrian or Turk, would the notion that one young man could be the cause of such a cataclysmic catastrophe have been quite so popular with our history books?

Serbs had lived in Bosnia for thirteen hundred years and at the time Gavrila fired the fatal shot (or shots, actually, because he killed the Archduchess as well) there were 800,000 Serbs living in Bosnia out of a population of 1.9 million.

Why were the Balkans the underdogs, and why Bosnia in particular?

To answer that question, here is what the Germans thought of the Balkans.

“One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans” -

Otto von Bismarck 1888, founding Chancellor of Germany and wealthy aristocrat.

And here is what the British thought.

"All these Balkan peoples are trash" -

Alexander Cadogan 1941, Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and wealthy aristocrat.

I haven't tracked down the originator of the phrase describing the Balkans as "the powder keg of Europe" but it would have to have been a member of one of the many empires that taxed them, exploited their natural resources and used their populations for military service - the Austrians, Hungarians, Germans, Ottoman Turks, Venetians, Italians, the British or the Russians - and who discovered the hard way that the Balkans didn't appreciate being exploited. 

Here is what Gavrila Princip thought. "I am a Yugoslav nationalist, aiming for the unification of all Yugoslavs, and I do not care what form of state, but it must be free from Austria."

Why did Austria get control over Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in the first place?

[In April 1877] Russia went to war with the Turks...Such a general conflagration was just what European Diplomats feared. It was the dreaded Eastern Question, or what to do with Turkey's European possessions once the [Ottoman} Empire collapsed...At the Congress of Berlin in 1878...the Balkans states were not invited to participate beyond presenting their views. The decisions of the Congress were to have tremendous historical impact...In a great blow to Serbia, the provinces of Bosnia and Hercegovina were given to Austria-Hungary to adminsister...[This occupation] contained within it the seeds of the First World War. (2)

Those seeds were fertilized and watered with the connivance of Britain and Germany.

In the war of 1877 Serbia allied with Russian against the Turks, during which the Serbs 'reoccupied the whole of Southern Serbia . [but] the agreement that had been reached by the Russians and the Turks ...did not suit Britain or Germany, who feared that they would mean Russian control of the Balkans through a puppet state in Bulgaria. [So] at the Treaty of Berlin Serbia and Montenegro acquired almost complete independence from Turkey but Bosnia and Herzegovina were handed over to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. ...Bismarck insisted on this to offset what he regarded as the undue support for Turkey given at the Congress by the British Government. The Austrian garrisons stationed throughout the territories were bitterly resented by the Serbian population...as was the separation of Serbia and Montenegro ...by a fortified strip of territory under Austrian control.'(3)

Bosnia is a country of three faiths but two of these have strong ties to Croatia and Serbia. Austria's actions in Bosnia only amplified Serbian and Croatian nationalism.

'In 1878 the Austro-Hungarian Empire occupied Bosnia...until it was formally annexed in 1908. Fearing general unrest, Austria initially maintained the Ottoman laws, including the agrarian privileging of Muslim landholders. Gradually, however, the new colonial government began establishing control over the three religious communities [Muslim, Catholic and Orthodox] with the aim of curbing political and ideological ties between Bosnia and the neighboring Croatia and Serbia...It tried to promote a sense of unified Bosnian identity [and] it tried to cut off religious ties with the immediate neighbours [Croatia and Serbia]. As education and literacy among the local populations improved, so did their ties with national movements in Serbia and Croatia.[There was a] zeal of national awakening pouring in from Serbia and Croatia.(4)

And then in 1914 on the 28th June, the most sacred day in the Serbian calendar, Archduke Franz Ferdinand chose to parade Austrian imperialism through the streets of Sarajevo.

'Why ever did the royal visit take place on Vidovdan, a great day of mourning for the defeat of the Serbs by the Turks in the fourteenth century?...Was the visit a provocation? Did the Vienna government want some incident to occur that would give an excuse for the subjugation of Serbia?' (1)

I would like to say that Empires have the best interests of their territories at heart but that would be naive. Empires want resources and here are just a few examples of many.

Immediately after it took control in 1878 Austria began to construct a narrow-gauge railway system in BiH to transport Bosnian timber, bauxite, coal, iron ore, zinc and lead. Although the country in World War 2 was supposedly divided by the Vienna Line into Croatian and Italian sections, Hitler helped himself to the bauxite mines near Mostar for aeroplane manufacture. 'In 1900, [in] the rural economy of Croatia-Slavonia 56% of the direct taxes … went to Hungary' (6) and countries under Ottoman Turkey were so heavily taxed that whenever people could leave, they did. Most couldn't, and in Serbia the Ottomans harvested local boys every five years, forcing them to convert to Islam and using them as troops called Janissaries. Between the wars Britain posted mining engineers in Belgrade to help Britain, not Serbia, and was widely believed to have manipulated Serbian politics in order to precipitate the coup d’etat that led to the disastrous invasion of Belgrade in 1941.

After World War 2 a political agitator from Jerusalem named Al Husseini was wanted by Tito’s Yugoslav government as a war criminal, so it is worthwhile taking a look at Britain’s relationship with the Arabs. A day after the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, five Arab states invaded in a joint land grab. The evangelist Derek Prince was living in Jerusalem when ‘a fragment [of a shell] flew through an open window…When it was cool enough to handle, I picked it up and examined it…Neatly imprinted on it were the words “Made in Britain”’. (7)

That the British Empire was a cruel colonizer is well known but it seems to have enjoyed better relations in the Middle East. The explanation can be long and convoluted but, put simply, it was due to oil. Britain had established oil supplies in Iraq and Iran during the 1920’s and 30’s, having discovered oil in Iran in 1908. 'Iranian popular opposition to the ... royalty terms [where Iran received only 16% of the profits] was widespread and created political discontent throughout the country' (5). In 1921 Britain gave two thirds of the Holy Land to Jordan in order to protect British interests and the British oil pipeline that ran through it. The action pacified the Arabs alarmed by the arrival of Jewish settlers from Europe. In the remaining land west of the Jordan River, Al Husseini incited violence against the Jews and in 1921, Britain made him grand mufti of Jerusalem in the hope of calming him down. Instead, it made him more violent and, as the official leader of Muslim Arabs he later moved to Berlin to assist Hitler in carrying out the Holocaust. In BiH he formed three SS divisions of Muslim soldiers who committed atrocities against Jews and Serbs, and attracted the ire of Tito.

So, go to Sarajevo and stand in the footsteps of Gavrilo Princip, but don't blame him for starting World War 1. As Tito said: foreign land we don't want, our land we don't give.

1. Balkan Essays of Hubert Butler. The Irish Pages Press 2016

2. The Serbs by Tim Judah

3. Conflict in the Balkans by Malcolm Booker. Catalyst Press Sydney 1994.

4. Good People in an Evil Time by Svetlana Broz. Other Press, New York 2004. 

5. The Discovery of Oil in the Middle East | World History

6.  Rural Women in Croatia/Slavonia in 1900 Elinor MURRAY DESPALATOVIC   14421755.pdf 

7. The Key to the Middle East by Derek Prince. Thomas Nelson 1982. 

Adoption, Belonging and Identity - why I write about Yugoslavia

 

Me in Belgrade 1985

I’m not English. I am Yugoslav, Irish and German. Let’s get that straight before we begin. Because I was adopted at birth, identity is my issue. This is what this article is about.

According to the zeitgeist, you have a baby because you love them. You’re gay, or trans, or cis, or whatever you are, but love is what matters.

Okay. The zeitgeist is BS. I am 63 and I have struggled with identity my whole life. You need to know where you come from and you need photos. No child should be conceived without access to photos of their relatives. I didn’t see photos of my relatives until I was 50, but they absolutely opened my world. Here was my hair, my height, my eyes, my whole belonging.

So you might say, my child is happy without photos. But life is long. You don’t give birth to a baby, you give birth to a person and it is that person who will ultimately decide the rights or wrongs of the matter, not you. Unfortunately, when I was born in 1960, the government made the choice that you were a new person without access to your old family. No photos. It was a social experiment and it failed.    

I am an example of why.

I was adopted into a colonial Australian family of English origins, although I’m not English. (About three sixteenths and even two sixteenths of that, my aunt told me, considered themselves Irish. So, we’re down to one sixteenth.)

I cannot be what anyone wants me to be. I have to be myself.

When you’re a child, you do as you’re told. I grew up on English literature, English history, English war stories, English politics, English movies. When I was in kindergarten, we celebrated Empire Day. I read the English novels and poems my mother gave me.

When I was 29, my adoptive father died. My adoptive Mum died when I was 42. The day after her funeral, I met my biological sisters, having met my brother earlier that year.

From that day, everything changed.

As the years went on, I discovered that I no longer enjoyed the English authors Mum had enjoyed. I discovered the truth about English history and English war stories, not the sanitised versions. After marriage to my half Italian husband when I was 31, my tastes began to alter radically.

Now, I really loved my Mum. I loved her family history in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. Once she died and my new family began talking about their European roots (which were my roots because we had the same parents) the tug-of-war between the old and the new nearly tore me apart. With a husband and two small children to look after, daily I had this nasty little voice in my head telling me that Mum’s family, which I had loved, was no longer mine because now I had a Real Family. I was one of the Lucky Adoptees who had actually Found Out Where They’d Come From.

This insidious chatterer tortured me. Without mercy it went on and on, week after week until one night three months after Mum died I was in the kitchen washing up while my husband and daughters were watching TV. Suddenly in the dark, Mum was behind me. Suddenly I started to cry. I said, ‘Hi, Mum.’ And then she was gone.

In an instant I was healed. From that brief encounter I knew that Mum’s family and my new family both belonged to me. The Lord had allowed Mum to come and reassure me of that.

People may think I’m crazy being so interested in Yugoslavia, a country that no longer exists, but I look like them. When I got off the train in Belgrade in 1985 and for the first time in my life met people as big as I was, I thought, ‘What is this wonderful place?’ I thought Belgrade was the best city in the whole world. I loved the story of the Yugoslav Partisans in World War 2. When I was only twelve Mum had told me about the women who fought alongside the men.

These Partisans were fighting for the country where I felt I belonged, where half of me had come from. Who I looked like. They impressed the Germans, they impressed the British, they were the only country to stand up to Stalin. I am old enough to remember watching Soviet tanks roll into Prague in 1968 on the TV, merely because Czechoslovakia longed to be free of Moscow. Russia never attempted that stunt in Yugoslavia. Why? One name: Tito. Not a perfect man, but a very interesting one. I loved Yugoslavia because it was wild and mysterious and brave. What did Tito say about it? ‘Yugoslavs are a proud people.’

War is a terrible thing, but I have often wondered, with envy I am ashamed to say, what it would be like to fight passionately for the country where your roots had been for a thousand years or maybe more. How I envy the Australian Aborigines because they belong to the land.

So this is my little piece of history. I like to write about Yugoslavia because I think it’s a great story.

Post Script: It was with some trepidation that I finally took the plunge in April 2024 and had my DNA tested. Below is what awaited me when I opened the email:

My German great grandfather Frank Neimann, who was born in Barth in 1851, has disappeared as has my Italian great grandmother Clementina Cerocchi , born and died in Trieste 1856 - 1916. The 69.4% French was the real surprise. That's from Clementina's husband, Giovanni Tonon. My birth mother knew little about him except that he was an artist and ran a hat store in Trieste with his brother Gastone. She described his origins as 'mysterious' and speculated that he might have been French. 

Well, now we know, although 69.4% does seem an awful lot to get from a great grandfather. 

...three weeks have passed and I have decided that it is impossible to get 69.4% from a great grandfather, so it must be coming from somewhere else. The problem with this theory is that I am in possession of virtually all the births, marriages and nationalization certificates that would disprove it, unless we have serious incest going on and an awful lot of lying.

Have a look at this new table below. This is what happened when I changed the confidence levels on the 23andMe website. (The old results were only 50% confident.) Look at the French when it's 90% confident. Our 69.4% has fallen to 16.9% . Now 16.9% can come from a great grandfather, who is 12.5% plus or minus. (The plus can be pushed up to 22%.) The rest of the WEST section is accounted for by births and marriage records and the naturalization certificate of my German great grandfather.

The EAST section can mostly be accounted for by birth records, with two exceptions. My Slovenian great grandmother we know from the birth records of my grandmother and the testimony of my birth mother. She said she came from a village 100 miles of Istria on the border of Austria. The other exception is my Italian great grandmother Clementina Cerocchi. However, as I got hold of her vital dates from the registry office in Trieste (I walked in off the street), I am reasonably confident.

By looking at the 90% confidence level instead of the 50%, I am left with 38.5% NW Europe whose records I have (except for the Frenchman), and broadly European 35.5%, the records of which I discussed above. 

This makes a great deal more sense.    

Regarding 'broadly European' 23andMe has this to say: 'Much of Europe was buried under miles of ice ten thousand years ago. As the glaciers receded over millennia, Neolithic farmers from western Asia joined Paleolithic hunter-gatherers to settle Europe. Some European DNA is difficult to assign confidently to one population and receives a “Broadly European” designation.'

'Italian by Default'. Adopted? No identity? No problem.

https://www.mwalkeristra.com

 

 

  

 

Rijeka 1919: a decadent poet and an Italian land claim

 

‘Posing for his sexual partner as a martyred saint, Gabriele d’Annuncio was titillating himself with the image of a young man tortured and killed.’

The Pike, Lucy Hughes-Hallett’s biography of the Italian poet Gabriele d’Annuncio, is an unrivalled story of decadence and hedonism requiring, at times, a suspension of disbelief. Death, sadism and eroticism are constant and intertwining themes, to the extent that I wondered, when d’Annuncio urged young Italians into World War 1, whether he did so for the glory of Italy or for his own sexual pleasure. Hughes-Hallett has no scruples on the matter. ‘Throughout the Great War, d’Annuncio was to refer over and over again, and in increasingly exulted tones, to dead soldiers as “martyrs”, whose deaths must be honoured by the sacrifice of further beautiful youths. What had begun as an erotic fantasy shaped by an aesthetic trend would become a motive for slaughter.’ (1)

Before World War 1, Italy was a poor, politically unstable country wracked by feudal lords and mafiosi, and the exodus of families looking for a better life had already begun to give the world its plethora of Italian restaurants. (Read Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi (2), written after Mussolini had locked away the mafia and made the trains run on time.) Abiding by a belief that war, hatred and bloodshed would strengthen it and in order to redeem territory promised to it at the Secret Treaty of London in 1915, Italy deserted its allies, Austria-Hungary and Germany, and sent its young men to World War 1 on a salary of a third of a lire per day (3). My husband’s grandfather travelled from Turin to fight on the northeastern frontier. Because he was illegitimate he was put on the front line in the hope that he would be shot first. It was not until he died in 1971 that the Italian government sent his daughter his war medals which she promptly sent back.

Italy is a strange country, held together by dreams of ancient Rome, the Renaissance and a hasty revision of its modern history textbooks. The last time I was in Turin I went for a walk along the Po and read there a series of mounted plaques glorifying the Risorgimento and the rise of the Italian military, both historical failures and examples of the importance to Italy of its own propaganda.

Indeed, what would Italy do without words? It is built entirely upon them, as The Pike proves. It is a very long book, but it is d’Annuncio’s self-styled takeover of Rijeka in 1919, surfing in on a wave of alcohol and cocaine, that concerns my study of War in the Balkans.

At the time Italy had a population of over 38 million and Croatia just 3 million. It was hardly surprising then that d’Annuncio and his contemporaries could claim Rijeka (Fiume), Istria and Dalmatia as Italian merely because a few Italian businesses had crossed the Adriatic and doubled the population in the cities. Yet it is doubtful for how long even this had been going on, for according to Viscountess Strangford who visited Rijeka in 1863, ‘There was but little Italian to be heard, but much more German, and all the rest Slavonic or Hungarian.’ (4) That there had been an increase in Italian settlers since then is likely, because I noticed a steady increase in Italian surnames in the church registries of my mother's village in Istria after Italian unification in 1860. Nevertheless, in 1910, Maude M Holbach, another British visitor to Dalmatia, recorded the following, ‘The population of Dalmatia at the census of 1890 was 507,000 souls of whom 417,000 are of Croatian stock, 90,000 of Serbian, and 16,000 were returned as Italian, the rest being Austrians, Hungarians and Poles.’ (5) 

The chapters in The Pike concerning the fate of Italian soldiers during the war are horrifying and, after the bloodbath when Italy demanded the Slavic territories promised it in 1915, America's Woodrow Wilson retorted, ‘Why does Italy want all these countries that don’t speak Italian?’ (3) 

The answer in part was Gabriele D’Annuncio, the voice of irredentism. Irredentism was an Italian word which meant land that should be considered unredeemed Italian territory. The criteria were:

i) it had once been part of the Roman Empire,

ii) it had once been part of the Venetian Empire,

iii) a few Italians lived there,

iv) a few Slavs lived there who wanted to be Italian (my grandmother),

v) it was south of the Alps and thus its acquisition made the map of Italy look better (the South Tyrol and the western third of Slovenia).

Istria was a good fit for points i) to iv). My mother, however, felt displaced in Italy and after World War 2, took on Yugoslav citizenship. Of Istria she said, ‘We were Austrian then Austria lost the war, then we were Italian and Italy lost the war.’ These Venetian-speaking Istrians lived on the west coast in a strip so thin that my mother told me that Croatian speakers came to her village of Tar in the 1920’s to buy fish. In the days before refrigeration, they couldn't have lived very far away.

It is evident from The Pike that Gabriele D'Annuncio was a metaphorical magician. Though small and unattractive (some would call him odious and repellent) he cast his spell over countless women who didn’t like the look of him but slept with him anyway, actresses, editors, musicians, politicians, the great mass of the Italian populace and sundry minor aristocracy. His mastery with words and manipulation of emotions invariably got him what he wanted, and it’s only a shame that he didn’t live long enough to see Italy after World War 2 lose all the territory his efforts had gained it.

But let us return to Rijeka in 1919.

The war was over and d'Annuncio was 'foremost among those shaping the story of the war's end as one of Italian humiliation, Italian victimisation.' (1) In Paris, the Allies allowed Italy only temporary occupation of the Croatian coast but delayed in granting it the territory promised in the Secret Treaty of London. D'Annuncio 'swore to fight on for the cause of an Italian Dalmatia' even as Italy slumped into depression and civil war. In an ugly mood, a million and a half demobbed soldiers trained in violence filled the cities and countryside, including the elite Italian troops, the arditi. Feared by the people, these arditi were unwelcome at home, they had nothing to do, and they were itching for a fight. They and d'Annuncio were mutually attracted.

Ignoring Italy's dire economic position, D'Annuncio then produced a series of incendiary speeches in Rome to the effect that Italy should 'seize by force what the peace-makers in Paris refused to grant them.' For his efforts in destabilizing an already unstable country, he was kicked out of Rome by the military authorities and sent back to Venice.

Anxious to belong to a Greater Italy, Rijeka's Italian population wrote to d'Annuncio asking him to lead them. The local arditi prepared to mobilize. Emotions ruled the day and violence towards non-Italians quickly overcame the city. D'Annuncio's ego was fueled and, although the government in Rome would not sanction any action against the city by him, on 11th September 1919 he decided to satisfy his fans and enter Rijeka. As if under d'Annuncio's spell, the Italian general protecting the city for the Allies let him and his arditi pass.

Once installed, however, the poet had no idea how to run a city in ways that didn't mimic his own lifestyle, and Rijeka swiftly became 'a bordello, a refuge for criminals and prostitutes...disorder, corruption and craziness.' 'D'Annuncio ‘staged pseudo-sacred ceremonies in the cathedral…and encourage a cult of his own personality so fervid that the Bishop…noted furiously that his flock were forsaking Christ for this modern Orpheus.’(1)

After three months, the government in Rome offered the citizens of Rijeka the option to remain a free city under the protection of Italy, and a plebiscite voted d'Annuncio out. Yet still he remained, ruling his totalitarian city-state by intimidation while the government commenced a blockade. 

Finally, as the new wave of violent fascism erupted around Trieste and Italian ships trained their guns on Rijeka's harbour, d'Annuncio was ordered to vacate the city by 6pm on Christmas Eve 1920. Three days of fighting came to end when the city begged him to leave.

Gabriele d'Annuncio departed Rijeka on 18th January 1921 and in October 1922 Mussolini marched on Rome.

References

1. Hughes-Hallett, Lucy   The Pike WF Howes 2014

2. Levi, Carlo   Christ Stopped at Eboli, Einaudi 1945.

3. Duggan Christopher   The Force of Destiny, Penguin 2008

 

4. Strangford, Emily Anne Beaufort Smythe   The Eastern Shores of the Adriatic in 1863. Richard Bentley, London 1864

5. Holbach, Maude M   Dalmatia, the Land Where East Meets West, 1910. William Clowes and Sons Ltd, London.

His Most Italian City | Mysite (mwalkeristra.com)

https://www.mwalkeristra.com

WHY HITLER (AND CHURCHILL) NEEDED BELGRADE

 

‘”On the morning of Palm Sunday, while children slept their innocent sleep and the church bells were ringing for prayer to God, the German aeroplanes without warning let fall a rain of bombs on this historic town”’.

So wrote King Peter of Yugoslavia after the bombing of Belgrade 6^th April 1941. ‘The King went on to describe the terror of the women and children who were machine-gunned as they fled from their homes by low-flying planes.’ (1)

Hitler termed this invasion Operation Strafgericht, a word that in English means Retribution or Punishment. To understand why Hitler labelled it like this, it is necessary first to know something of Belgrade's geography and then something of its history. 

Belgrade lies at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, and the modern visitor taking a stroll down its Sava shoreline passed the boats to the left and the restaurants to the right, can see without difficulty the strategic importance of the city. Anyone who controls Belgrade controls the river traffic from the far east of Europe to its west. In the days before air freight and autobahns this was of vital importance, as the Celts, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Huns, the Slavs, the Bulgars, the Hungarians, the Turks, the Austrians, the Serbs and the Nazis will tell you. 

To the left in this image is the Sava River flowing westwards to Zagreb and Ljubljana. In the distance, the trees run along the shore of the mighty Danube that flows all the way from Romania to Germany. 

 

  

 

The Fort built for the defence of Belgrade sits directly on this confluence, at Stari Grad, the old town, and some sort of military fortress has existed here since Roman times.

An army cannot function without supplies and communication. Belgrade, in its position on the rivers and the railways was nec-essary to Hitler for both. This image from my 1915 World Atlas shows the route of the Danube from Romania through Belgrade to Germany. The oil fields of Romania were the largest in Europe and ess-ential to the Nazi war machine. (4) Later on in the war, the Allies attempted to derail the industry by bombing the oil fields and disrupting the transport system that took it by river to Germany. 

Next, let us take a look at the railways from my 2007 Heinemann Atlas. I took the 24 hour train trip from Athens to Belgrade in 1985, and it is an easy connection from there all the way to Germany. The Germans needed control of the railways to supply their troops in North Africa. Every day 48 trains ran through Belgrade to Athens, there to load their supplies onto ships that crossed the Mediterranean to where Rommel and his army awaited them. (2)

Between the convenient rivers and the convenient railway, it doesn't take much imagination to understand why Hitler wished to punish the Yugoslavs for not rolling out the red carpet. 

Enter the British. 

The British had had connections in Yugoslavia for years before the war, particularly in Belgrade. Significantly, their Intelligence Service had been active during Germany's march towards war in order to monitor and assess the response it was provoking in the Balkans. The Yugoslav regent Prince Paul was something of an Anglophile. Like his nephew, the seventeen-year-old King Peter who was a descendent of Queen Victoria through his mother, Paul had been to school in England. Serbia, Bosnia and Macedonia were rich in bauxite, coal, iron ore, lead and zinc, and British mining engineers and businessmen had been working in Yugoslavia before the war. At least one of them, Captain Bill Hudson, fluent in Serbo Croat and allegedly one of Ian Flemming's inspirations for James Bond, was later used as part of Special Operations (7). 

Britain wanted Yugoslavia as an ally.

Although the reasons would change as the war continued, in 1941 Yugoslavia was also the gateway to Greece and of great significance to the British defence of Greece which was to occur that April. 'The important thing, Eden [the British Foreign Secretary] said, was that the Yugoslavs should deny the passage of German troops, especially through the Monastir Gap, which would threaten the Greek flank.' (8)

Under the regency of Prince Paul from 1934, Yugoslavia had maintained a semi-peaceful relationship with Nazi Germany with the aim of not getting involved in war, but in February 1941, Hitler suddenly called upon the Yugoslav Prime Minister and Foreign Minister to throw their lot in with Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Japan, and on 25th March Prince Paul signed the Tripartite Pact (5). Two days later on a wave of public indignation, a military coup disposed him, made his nephew Peter the King, and General Dušan Simović of the Yugoslav Air Force the leader of a National Government.

Churchill, needless to say, watched all this with interest. Yugoslavia had "found its soul", he remarked. But 'The Fűhrer had at first refused to believe the news – "I thought," he said later, "that it was a joke."' (5)

We all know what happened next. Hitler lost his famous temper and ordered that Yugoslavia be wiped from the map 'with unmerciful harshness and the military destruction done in lightning-like fashion' (5). Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria and Italy invaded the country from all sides and dismantled it between them. Naturally, Germany claimed first rights to its natural resources, particularly the bauxite mines in Herzegovina, to the south east of Bosnia, because it needed aluminium for the construction of aeroplanes. 

Nor was this the end. Christie Lawrence in Irregular Adventure recalls later in 1941 seeing half the sky in flames in the rural areas south of Belgrade. It was German terror tactics, the systematic destruction of Serbian villages in response to any show of resistance by the Yugoslavs to the Nazi occupation. ‘The total result of our revolution was that we killed about seven or eight thousand Germans and lost 125,000 men and women shot by them. Three towns and fifty-three villages ...were burned out, and our organization was virtually destroyed.’ (6) 

The question is, what part had Britain played in the Belgrade coup d'etat that had precipitated this disaster and why? (8) 

Britain, of course, had been kept well-informed of the political jostling in Belgrade prior to Prince Paul putting his pen to the poisoned Pact. 'In the six months prior to the coup, the British attitude toward Yugoslavia had changed from accepting Yugoslav benevolent neutrality, to that of pressing the Yugoslavs for more active support in the war against Germany.' (8) Romania with its all-important oil fields had already signed the Pact on 23rd November 1940 after Hungary on 20th November, Slovakia followed on 24th November and lastly Bulgaria on 1st March 1941. Aside from Ustasha-controlled Croatia, already loyal to the Nazis, only Yugoslavia remained. To the British, two things were clear, one, that Prince Paul should not sign the Tripartite Pact with Germany and two, if he did, 'subversive political action' should be placed that ultimately supported the military coup of March 27th.' The British planned to persuade the Yugoslav people and its political parties to exert pressure on Prince Paul and, failing that, to get rid of him. They succeeded only in the latter. They first persuaded several cabinet members to resign in order to destabilize the government, and the final step was to get the Yugoslav military involved in a coup. 

As I read this article (8) I wondered, as I often do with British war history, how much British self-glorification was involved. In any event, whatever they might have been planning bore no fruit. It is true that the Yugoslav military was not prepared for war and collapsed in only eleven days. I have read that Ustasha fifth columnists also had a hand in it (3). Prince Paul, King Peter, General Simović and what would become the Yugoslav Government-in-Exile in Claridge's Hotel London fled the country. The Commando Captain Christie Lawrence who had been captured in Crete, jumped into Serbia from a German train in June 1941. During the twelve months he spent in the country, it seemed to him preindustrial, its remaining leaders confused and bewildered, wanting to help but not knowing what to do. Draža Mihailović, whom everyone had just run off and left, sounded forlorn and Lawrence had not even heard of Tito (6). It wasn't until May 1943 that Churchill parachuted a military party into the country to investigate the Yugoslav Partisans about whom he was beginning to receive rumours. During the Allied Invasion of Sicily in July 1943, the Partisans kept dozens of German Battalions occupied and out of Italy, which pleased Churchill. Of course. 

NOTES

1 - Balkan Essays Hubert Butler, the Irish Pages Press 2016
2 - Glenny, Misha: The Balkans 1804 - 2012 Penguin books 1999
3 - 1941 the Year That Keeps Returning, Slavko Goldstein New York Review BooksNov 05, 2013
4 - Romania's Age Of Oil (rferl.org)
5 - Maclean, Fitzroy: The Heretic: the life and times of Josip Broz-Tito. Harley and Brothers NY, 1957
6 - Christie Laurence Lawrence, Christie Irregular Adventure Faber and Faber 1947
7 - Deakin, FWD: The Embattled Mountain Oxford University Press 1971
8. soe-and-british-involvement-in-the-belgrade-coup-detat-of-march-1941.pdf (cambridge.org) From this article comes the notable quote from Sir Alexander Cadogan, the permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office, "All these Balkan peoples are trash."

 

HELL HATH NO FURY – the poetry of women Partisans in Yugoslavia 1941 – 1945

‘You who burned my house and killed my child, who shelters

beneath a foreign wing, a traitor who accepts a salary from the

enemy! Did you know that I carry a firearm now? I’ll get you!’ (1)

With the barrel of her gun up his nose, he pleads that he only did what he was ordered to do, but the feeble excuse doesn’t save him.

‘I have a gun always ready,’ she replies with the same mercy he showed her. ‘Aim that bullet into the disgusting fascist! We will obliterate the black blood of fascism forever.' (2) (3)

This female Partisan is well aware that her old mother is sitting at home worrying about her, yet the urge to fight is too strong to resist.

She writes, 'The struggle was difficult, bloody and angry. Everything is broken, falling apart, crumbling. Beside the narrow muddy path you still experience the smell of spilled blood. Yes, many young lives fell, young patriots, heroes. The struggle was an appalling Golgotha and those heroes, mother, were your children. I know that you worry, mother, but I can’t help you now. I still feel that the only place for me is in the brigade. Believe me, mother! The hour is near when I will return to your place for ever, and then surely your wounded heart will stop suffering.' (5)

Still concerned for her mother, she tries to explain how she feels, 'I am a woman fighter, a young partisan. I fight for my people as long as freedom does not prevail. I carry a rifle in my hand, I move boldly forward until the last village is free. Hurry everyone into the struggle, all those homes which are still reluctant to get involved, so that after this war you will experience no shame. When they ask you: "Where were you, comrade?" what will you say?' (6)

But here is a surprise! Her mother responds that she wishes she could be a Partisan nurse. The instant one young soldier recovers from his wound, she knows exactly what to tell him, 'And when his wound eased, I would say to him: “Go, comrade, and keep fighting! Avenge your other friends and don't let the enemy prevail. Don't complain about your young life while one of the bastards remains."' (4)

These women entered World War 2 without illusions. Their country was divided between Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and their allies, the Ustasha in Croatia, and Hungary. Owing to the widespread destruction of their villages, they often had no homes to return to. At first, they supported the men as nurses and typists, and continued the same domestic tasks as they had in the villages. Then, early in 1942, at their request, Tito allowed them to bear rifles. 

Many girls joined the Partisans to avenge brothers who had fallen in battle. One such was the Croatian poet Anđelka Martić who, after the war, became a well-known translator and children's author. She wrote to her brother, 'You are no more, but the place in the line of soldiers at which you waited is not empty. Your young sister gladly took your heavy rifle in her tender hands. Now I am walking where you would have been, by the mountain, stifling my pain for you in a blaze of colour. Dream quietly, brother, I know what you wanted. Until the end your faithful rifle will be heard.' (7)

This poem was written in 1943 when Anđelka was 19. Many girls were younger. The British liaison officer to the Partisans, Fitzroy Maclean records a twelve-year-old girl throwing a grenade into a bunker full of Germans, all of whom were killed. She may well have been the girl who wrote this,

'I am a little female partisan ready every hour, so that in the fight I can avenge my dead brothers. One brother still remains to me, and I would give him all of my little heart, although I fall too. I will give my life for our dear people, I am fighting for freedom against the Kraut forces. I will give my life to defend mother, and in this way I will say to my own dear Dad: "Don't, Dad, regret the lives of your darling children. We must all fight to destroy the devil.” Therefore, I go forward into the holy battle to avenge my brothers, because freedom is here, shining at the door.' (8)

Freedom is a constant theme in the women's poetry. Even when they waited by graves, they looked towards freedom, and everywhere they recorded their love of the countryside. To me this reads as if nature was in their hearts and souls, therefore it understood their struggle.  

 'On the graves of our comrades the cyclamens are without number. Their red is everywhere in the forests through which the fighters move. We twitch the gentle stems, we roll up the small flowerets and our thoughts lead us back into a warm childhood. Once we ran in the woods, gathering red cyclamen, our song filled the paths and tracks. But today the forests have become the graves of our fallen comrades, the sons of our land. The scent of cyclamen spreads everywhere. It announces our freedom, and these graves stand as a symbol of victory.' (9)

'A lonely grave in a pine forest. Silence everywhere, only the wind whistles, while with tearful eyes a mother weeps for her son. But the forest trembles! It is ardent, it is quiet. The branches are sobbing, too! Why does your wood disturb the silence on a peaceful day, forest? It is because the trees are telling the story of that dead partisan. The forest is whispering to his mother about our struggle, about our joy when the people win, and about how much her son’s grave is worth.' (10)

I have found no reference to communism in the women's poetry, although there is some hero worship of Tito. From the poems I learned much about the beauty of the land and the connection of its people to it. Basil Davison, another British officer who worked with the Yugoslav Partisans, wrote that they weren't interested in politics, they just wanted their land back.      

'Bend your ear to the ground and listen to the murmur. That it is not the murmur of the wind. It is neither waterfalls nor mountain rapids, nor the moaning in the dense forest of firs. Because it rumbles loudly, vigorously and terribly from the strong walk of the victorious.' (12)

Meanwhile, our Partisan blows the smoke from the barrel of her gun. At her feet, the Nazi lies dead.

'Oh, my rifle, I will never part with you! You will be with me at the end of my wrist until the last day.' (1) She turns to her comrades. 'Through fire and blood, through the persecution of these violent monsters, through concentration camps, harshness and humiliation, you are welcome, women, mothers, our daughters, to your new baptism of fire. You have found yourselves alone at a terrible price, but you have created a new and combative woman.' (11)

Illustration, Zlatko Prica

  

Note: The poems are written almost entirely in rhythmic, rhyming stanzas. To replicate this in an English translation, I would have had to rewrite the poems, which I decided not to do.             

For a complete account of these courageous women, I recommend Women and Yugoslav Partisans by Jelena Batinić, Cambridge University Press, 2015. 

THE POEMS

from PO ŠUMAMA I GORAMA  (Through Forests and Mountains)

Poems of the Fighters of the National War of Liberation, Zagreb 1952

1. A Woman Under Arms by Franjo Mraz

2. Female Partisan on Guard Duty by Slavica Havelka III ćeta I bataljan II brigade 33 rd division

3.The Female Partisan by Gabro Vidović-Buco 1941

4. The Conscientious Mother by Života Čitaković borac, IV batajon “S.O” II. Prolet. brigada

5. To Mother by Verica Gabor, Hospital company, II brigade, XXXIII div.

6. Young Partisan by Ana Langeneker, delegate 1st Brigade 32nd division

7. To My Fallen Brother by Anđelka Martić 1943

8. A Female Partizan by Micika Biškup II. Brig., XXXIII, div.

9. Cyclamen by Anđelka Martić XXI. NO brigada

10. The Lonely Grave by Anđelka Martić

 
11. You Have Arisen by Mileva Jorgić I batajon, XVII. Ud. Brig. XXVIII, div. 

12. Spring by Nada Valenčić 1944

WINTER BATTLES: BOSNIA 1941

December 1941: Fleeing the German destruction of Užice in Serbia,
Tito and the Partisans crossed the River Drina in winter,

climbed the mountains of Bosnia on the other side, 

and walked through the forests.    

Bosnia Herzegovina is a very mountainous country. In winter it is snow bound.

As someone who has actually driven through Bosnia in the snow, I have difficulty understanding why the Nazis thought that they could successfully invade the country. Even today, the roads seem to be a collection of mule tracks up and down the formidable Dinaric Alps with the addition of a few optimistic motorways. In Eastern Approaches (Jonathon Cape pub. 1949) Fitzroy Maclean writes, 'the Germans, with an elusive enemy, with unreliable allies, and without enough troops of their own to occupy the country effectively, could do little more than garrison the large towns and try to guard the lines of communication between them'.

However, during the war they needed bauxite from the mines near Mostar, the mediaeval capital of Herzegovina, for use in the construction of aeroplanes. Bosnia Herzegovina is also rich in coal, iron ore, zinc and lead. There were two ways to transport coal and ore to Germany. One was along the system of Bosnian narrow-gauge railways built by the Austrians which was extended between the wars to connect the coast to Belgrade, and the other was by sea to Trieste. The railways ran the gauntlet of demolition by the Partisans, and ships in the Adriatic risked being sunk by the Allies. 

The Partisans needed Bosnia to connect with their operational zones in Croatia, Dalmatia, Slovenia and Montenegro. The Nazis waged a series of offensives against them. They were assisted in this by the Italians, the Croatian Ustasha and the Chetniks. The Partisans held up to twenty-eight German divisions in Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia and Montenegro which suited Churchill as the Allied Invasion of Sicily approached.

To understand the creation of the Partisans from a motley collection of local fighters engaged over the centuries in battling Turks, we must go to Bosnia in December 1941.

'Tito and his staff had formed a conception of Partisan warfare which deviated from past Soviet practice...where a Partisan unit was an auxiliary weapon of a regular army...To the Yugoslavs the Partisan units were the army, organized in mobile formations and in territorial defense units.'

from The Embattled Mountain, FWD Deakin, Oxford University Press, 1971.

Between December 1941 and May 1942 Tito formed five Proletarian Brigades of up to 1000 fighters each, as a military striking force under his direct command. By November they had increased to 28.

 Deakin continues, 

'The immediate task of the First Proletarian Brigade [in December 1941] was in ensure the hold of the Partisans over the key strategic areas of East Bosnia.'

The chief difference between these forces and the old local fighters was their mobility. They no longer defended only their home territories. 

'Long before the Allies, the Germans and Italians came to realize that the Partisans constituted a military factor of first rate importance against which a modern army was in many respects powerless.,,During each of [their seven] offensives, the extensive troop movements involved exposed [them] more than ever to the attacks and ambushes of the Partisans.'   

from Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy Maclean  

The contrast between the Partisans and the Germans was striking. The Germans in Bosnia were an efficient modern army, often using Alpine troops, with field kitchens and heavy artillery, 'lumbering, snail-like'. The Partisans were organized into small, mobile, lightly armed units who were familiar with the terrain. Much of the reason for the failure of the Germans to subdue the Partisans was their inability to embrace change. Tito told Deakin that the Germans 'had missed the lesson of creating mobile units with special anti-Partisan training. German forward units were always pressing behind the Yugoslavs and could never move with speed in self-contained columns to attack the Partisan forces from the rear. By not winning every grim race for each mountain crest, the German operation failed in its central purpose of annihilating the Yugoslav main operational group.' 

Yet the Germans were supported from the air, as we read in the poem The Bombed Forest by Josip Cazi, a Partisan Political Commissar. Papuk is a mountain in Slavonija in Croatia.

'This morning over Papuk a reconnaissance plane is searching, an ominous buzzard in that dreary first light...Death comes from the air, seeking with fiery claws the heart of the Partisans.'

The forest burns all day. Frightened animals run from the wildfire. 

'But at sunset Partisan songs sweep through it like an inexhaustible fountain. Along the slopes the column of soldiers moves out into the lowlands. They will go into action at night – the cycle of history is still turning. Above Papuk the fires die in the evening.' 

The typical enemy tactic was encirclement, and getting out of the ring was the Partisan aim, as we read in A Partisan Letter by Josip Cazi,

Yesterday, with a fiery partisan sledgehammer, we fought the fascist regiment on Mt Psunj, so hurriedly that I didn’t send you the letter I had written. We penetrated the ring by a stormy impact, blasting the fiery chain in a bloody assault. And while to you, my orphan, I write this letter, our columns on the September roads are singing of victory in the morning sun.

'The ring' is a constant observation in British eyewitness accounts. For example, from Partisan Picture' by Basil Davison (Bedford Books, 1946) at the Battle of the Neretva River, from January to March 1943,

To hold the ring the German Command then made an arrangement with 12,000 of Mihaylovitch's chetniks, commanded by Col. Stanisitch and General Djukanovitch and others, by which the latter would attempt to seal off any further partisan retreat by taking up positions along the left bank of the River Neretva. [The fourth offensive.]

The fifth offensive ended with the breaking of the ring in Montenegro and the escape of Tito and the main formations into Eastern Bosnia. That was in mid-June 1943 [the Battle of the Sutjeska].

An account of the same battle from The Heretic by Fitzroy Maclean (Harper and Brother, NY, 1957), 

'"Now that the ring is completely closed," ran a captured German operation order, "the communists will try to break through. You will ensure that no able-bodied man leaves the ring alive."' 

 'If guerillas are to survive in conditions comparable to those in which the Partisans were fighting,' wrote Fitzroy Maclean in Eastern Approaches, 'they must...deny the enemy a target.' The Partisans did this by 'extricating themselves, fading away, reappearing elsewhere and attacking the enemy where he least expected it.' They did not stand and fight to the last man. We see this 'escape in defeat' in the poem The Battle at Twenty Below Zero. Having sown the seeds of dissent among the local population, they returned later to the same area from which the enemy had driven them out. No author is given, but it was evidently written by one of the brigades in 1945. Gradina is in northwest Bosnia.  

The sun itself is flaming on these clouds,
and on their serene heights, a grey aspect,
but on the people and villages, snows are falling.

The hoarfrost is silent, the chirp of the birds dies.
Until the middle of November its sting has dug in.
But the heart of the people beats like a burning spark.

The column of soldiers steps into the blizzard, the angry ice,
on callused feet, by swift, firm steps.
The bold ones focus on the view in the distance where autumns produce bloody fruits.
In their hearts they carry spring blossoms and their deadly rifles are loaded with freedom.

Hurry! It will be an onslaught in Gradina,
Because Tito’s heart has won the battle of the cold,
An irresistible heart for freedom.

Shh! The soldiers creep on, still on track,
What leads to the bunker? The stone tower?
The shots…the cheers… and the escape in defeat?

Five dead Nazis and three frozen traitors,
Because the stiffs in uniform have no heart.
The thermometer says: twenty below zero.

 In a further post, I will comment on the poems written by and about female Yugoslav Partisans. To close, here is a small sample.   

From A Woman Under Arms by Franjo Mraz

Oh my rifle, I will never part with you!
You will be with me at the end of my wrist until the last day
To protect the paths of freedom along which the conquered are moving.
Tremble, look, listen to the woman warrior, the woman Partisan!

                                                                                     

(Images M Walker 2023. The first three images were taken driving from Belgrade over the Drina to Sarajevo and the last on the motorway from Sarajevo towards the Neretva River and Mostar.)