Croatian literature in the diaspora has influenced my writing over the years and a constant theme has been the issue of British responsibility for the Bleiburg Genocide of Croatian people after WWII. My Open Letters to television Channels 10 and 28, and articles such as 'Hiding Bleiburg Won't Lessen the Guilt' are typical of much of my earlier writings.(see Appendix) In those articles I have suggested that the genocide of Croatian people was the result of collusion between the British and the Yugoslavs as part of a deal to solve a border dispute.
In hindsight however it is clear that the genocide of Croatian people was not the intention of the British leadership. In the West, WWII had officially ended, but in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe the war was not over. Indeed, the Churchill-Tito border conflict over Trieste and Carinthia in 1945 was the reason for Churchill's famous original Iron Curtain statement, and marked the beginning of the Cold War.
In what is also known as the 'Klagenfurt Conspiracy' thousands of surrendered Croats were disarmed and repatriated from the British sector of post-WWII Austria, but the great majority of those Croats who were massacred by the Yugoslavs never reached the point of surrender, so were the British totally to blame for the massacres because of their relationship with Tito?
Croatia's Untold Story
Rather, it appears in hindsight that post-WWII political decisions illustrated British naivety and the necessary evil of having to spontaneously deal with Bolshevik tactics just when they thought they had won the war against totalitarianism. The 50-50 division of Yugoslavia never transpired as intended by Churchill and Stalin at Yalta. A lot had happened since that time. Although the Soviets did not move into the Croatian territory, their Partisans allies did enter wearing the soviet-supplied red stars. In addition, at the end of WWII most of the former Serbian Chetniks had joined the Partisans, thereafter dominating the ranks of the communist Yugoslav forces. The genocide of Croatian people was ordered by a Serbian-dominated Yugoslav Communist Central Committee.
Croatian people in the diaspora believe that Yugoslav Bolsheviks instigated and carried out the massacres, so it is ironic that they have been influenced by anti-western propaganda that it was the West's fault. But, perhaps that is not so surprising, in the absence of an official enquiry in the West. Decades after the event some western archives have been opened, and in addition, it is now known that the West itself had been infiltrated by soviet spies preceding and during the Cold War. It is indeed unfortunate for the victims of Bleiburg, even after those discoveries, that no official British enquiry has been forthcoming.
As argued above, the responsibility for the genocide of Croatian people does not fit so easily into just one category, and so one needs to look further for answers.
There were other historical factors which led up to the tragedy. Perpetual Italian irredentism was an inextricable part of the border issues which the Allies found themselves caught-up in during May 1945. In this context between 1941 and 1945, the Croatian leadership had made flawed political decisions. Unfortunately the Croatian leadership had given in to WWII Italian demands and this decision had an direct effect on the outcome of the war.
For example, the Rome pact signed between Italy and Pavelic in 1941, was a significant cause of disunity amongst Croatian people, and as a result many Croats formed their own partisan resistance against Italian occupation. In addition, the Croatian leadership had not had the vision to change allegiance in 1943 at the time of the initial Italian capitulation. It is possible that the 50-50 Yalta agreement between Stalin and Churchill could have been facilitated if the Zagreb leadership had adopted a different foreign policy. The Croatian decision to change allegiance at the end of the war was too late to be of any interest to the Allies who had been forced instead to win the war with the help of the partisans.
The political decision to retreat from all Croatian front lines, and to take the same route as the retreating Germans in May 1945, had been made at a parliamentary level in Zagreb on April 30, and carried out after a personal appeal by Archbishop Stepinac. Military advice had not been taken into consideration. This depressing episode of Croatian political history is dealt with in detail in the book, 'Operation Slaughterhouse'.
Another factor may have had a detrimental effect on Allied-Croatian negotiations at Bleiburg. In the poem "The Bleiburg Connection" (see Appendix) the verse "Croatian refugees, lost without a leader" refers to the mysterious disappearance of the Croatian leader Pavelic and his government Ministers in May 1945 Austria. Thus abandoned, the remainder of the Croatian army and civilians were left to deal with the ill-advised political command to abandon the front lines in Croatia, and to evacuate Zagreb en masse.
It was revealed later that many WWII Axis leaders had been smuggled out of Europe to South America with the help of the Vatican, and this included Pavelic and many Croatian government Ministers. The top secret Allied-Tito collusion over border issues was not the only clandestine activity going on. Vatican concordats existed with Mussolini, Hitler, and Yugoslavia, but not with Croatia.
A concordat between the Vatican and Yugoslavia had been the dream of Croatian pan-slavists since the 19th century. The rise to power of Tito in communist Yugoslavia was facilitated by the Allies in 1945, but Yugoslavism had its roots in the politicisation of a pseudo Yugoslav culture in 19th century Zagreb.
Without the political support of the feudal estates the 19th century grass-roots Croatian national movement of Starcevic had no hope of survival. In addition, an entire culture, that of the Croatian Orthodox, albeit disappeared from the world. The disappearance of Croatian/Greek Orthodox Churches was the result of an expanding Serbian Orthodox church in the latter half of the 19th century in places it had never existed before inside Croatia and Dalmatia.
An artificial south-slavic culture was imposed on Croatian people by the clerical elite who ignored Croatian national aspirations. In 1850 an artificial Serbo-Croatian language had been standardized (Vienna Convention). In 1861 in the sabor Serbs within Croatia were given a constituent status. In 1867 a south-slav or Yugoslav Academy of Arts and Sciences was built in Zagreb, and a Yugoslav 'National' Party was created to foster Croatian and Serbian unity, in Zagreb, by Bishop Strossmayer in 1871. So strong was the impetus of pro-Russian slavic ecumenism in Croatia that the London Times wrote in 1870 that Strossmayer wanted to fuse the Catholic minority in South-East Europe with the Greek Orthodox Slavs for the sake of obtaining political unity of the South-Slav nations.
The political coalition between Serbs and Croats in the Croatian sabor culminated in the creation of a Yugoslav Committee and the Corfu Declaration of July 1917. In October 1918 the state of Serbs Croats and Slovenes was declared in the Zagreb sabor, which included Serbs and Croats within Croatia, and Slovenia; this union was later joined by Serbia in November 1918 to become the Kingdom of Serbs Croats & Slovenes with its capital in Belgrade.
It is clear that 19th century south-slavism, or Yugoslavism in Croatia directly led to the creation of despotic Royalist Yugoslavia and Tito's rise to power. In the book entitled, "Hrvatski Narodni Preporod U Dalmaciji i Don Mihovil Pavlinovic", by Benedikta Zelic-Bucan, Matica Hrvatska, Split 1992, it is clear that south slavism in particular was connected to the Croatian religious elite's ecumenical agenda. Other books confirm this unfortunate development in Croatia, such as "Bishop J.G.Strossmayer: New Light on Vatican I", by Ivo Sivric, Ziral, Chicago 1975.
Nearly fifty years after the Bleiburg Genocide, Croatian people won their freedom. The Yugoslav totalitarian state imploded, yes, but inside Croatia ubiquitous symbols of the artificial south-slavic culture are in every city. There is constant political opposition to public expression of the Croatian national consciousness, except perhaps in sport. Monuments to Croatia's national leaders, heroes and kings can be only found in sparsely populated villages off the beaten track, with a few exceptions. Croatian people must accept the fact that Yugoslavia was not a British invention and that south-slavism was first politicised in Croatia, and was in fact criticized in the contemporary British press.
In conclusion the British may have been instrumental in Tito's rise to power during WWII, for the purpose of defeating the Axis, but the genocide of Croatian people was never intended by the British, and the belief that the British created Yugoslavia is ridiculous.
Jean Lunt Marinovic
May 2006
Appendix:
A Condensed anthology of Bleiburg articles by Jean Lunt Marinovic
The concept of 'equal guilt' applied at the ad hoc Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia is unsustainable unless the post WWII genocide of Croatian people is kept hidden from the world. When international law has to serve an agenda of 'equal guilt' the victim is justice.
The guidelines adopted for the 'equal guilt' scenario were inherited from UNPROFOR, and involve the censorship of the post-WWII genocide of Croatian people, a genocide acknowledged by American President Truman, and Sir Winston Churchill. Indeed Churchill first coined the Cold War phrase 'iron curtain' in reaction to the terrorism of the former communist Yugoslav dictatorship.
The public has been deceived about the role of Serbia in the genocide of Croatian people in the former Yugoslavia. In place of the truth it has been falsely claimed that it was Serbian people who were killed by Croats during WWII. Due to this pro-Serbian propaganda, the UN has been able to 'balance' the one-sided Serbian aggression between 1991 and 1995. The discrepancies in various ICTY indictments and pattern of arrests suggest that an 'equal guilt' paradigm does exist, a model which the UN believes should lead to 'reconciliation'. 'Reconciliation' is the raison d'etre of UN missions.
UN Peacekeeping Monument "Reconciliation" Ottawa Canada, August 14, 2003. (JLM)
The fact is that although the former Yugoslav Central Committee was led by Tito, it was dominated by Serbs. Serbian cadres dominated all layers of the infrastructure and military. This Serbian coup of power was the result of the massive post WWII slaughter, incarceration, torture and exodus of Croatian people. The demographics speak for themselves.
What really happened? In what is also known as the 'Klagenfurt Conspiracy' thousands of surrendered Croats were disarmed and repatriated from the British sector of post WWII Austria, although the great majority of those Croats who were massacred by the Yugoslavs never reached the point of surrender. In an article in Zadarski List, Ivo Matanovic from Zadar, commented that under Tito it was the bloodiest era which Croatia ever experienced in its history. (HV, 23.1.04)
After WWII famous leaders commented on this tragedy but their words have been conveniently forgotten since 1990. The Yugoslav/Montenegrin dissident, Milovan Djilas was quoted as saying that Croats had to die that Yugoslavia could live. According to former President Truman in the book 'Strategies of Containment', Tito killed more than 400,000 of his opponents in communist Yugoslavia before he could finally establish himself as a dictator. And, it was Tito's bolshevik tactics which led to Churchill's famous 'iron curtain' statement.
If Tito's western allies acknowledged that more than 400,000 of Tito's opponents were murdered, and other sources agreed that those killed were mostly Croats, then there was surely even more Croatian victims. Indeed more Croats died under Serbian-led communist Yugoslavia during 40 years than in the previous 400 years of occupied Croatia. These crimes need to be acknowledged, and investigated officially. So after 50 years why has this never happened?
The United Nations Security Council is composed of the same colonial powers which formed the Allies in May 1945--those same countries which were competing for zones of influence in post WW II Austria. Operating within the environment of the WW II allied intelligence community, and benefiting from their supplies and clandestine support from 1943 to 1945, the Yugoslav partisans in tandem with the SOE and OSS penetrated and occupied the Slovenian-Austrian border region. It is within this occupied region that hundreds of thousands of disarmed Croats after WWII lost their lives, in total disregard of the Geneva Convention re treatment of Prisoners of War and civilians.
The book, "The Repatriations from Austria in 1945: Report of an Enquiry", Cowgill, Brimelow and Booker, 1990, has taken the place of an official enquiry in Britain into the fate of Croats, and others at what is known as the 'Bleiburg Genocide'. Cowgill's book is an alleged "private" response to, and denial of, issues raised by Tolstoy's publication entitled, "The Minister and the Massacres" regarding the massacre of Croats on Austrian soil. An enquiry at this unofficial level is a slap in the face to the Croatian nation and to western justice.
In the forward of this publication, Brigadier Anthony Cowgill reduces the number and identity of Croats repatriated from Austria in May 1945 to "many". Cowgill refers to the Croatian refugees as an "incursion" of "fugitives" in chapter five which deals with Bleiburg in particular. Cowgill claims that no massacre of Croats took place on Austrian soil, but rather at a place called Poljana in Yugoslavia .
But the Allies were responsible for the partisans being in the Bleiburg region in the first place. The book, "Beacons in the Night: With the OSS and Tito's partisans in Wartime Yugoslavia", by Franklin Lindsay, 1993, details the British-led operations in the northern Slovenian-Austrian border zone. Lindsay's account of Allied-partisan co-operation contradicts the claim by Cowgill that there was a "confrontation between Tito's forces and the British forces" which forced the British to hand over Croats to the partisans or prevent their "incursion".
The truth comes out in Lindsay's book that there had been vague reference as to just where the actual Yugoslav/Austrian border fell. We cannot learn much about the actual location of the border from Cowgill: "the frontier between Dravograd and Bleiburg"; "200,000 Croats wishing to enter Austria via Bleiburg"; "Croats to be handed over to the Yugoslavs were encamped to the south of the main road leading from the Austrian frontier to Bleiburg"; "The column passed through Bleiburg, stumbling along the road eight to ten deep, for over twelve hours.".
Of relevance is the fact that the Slovenian-partisan ambition to gain territory (as after WW I) was encouraged by the British. This is exposed in Lindsay's book in detail, for example: "Both the British and later the Americans had supplied several planeloads of weapons on the understanding that the partisans would cross the Drava with the SOE and OSS parties."; "I began to piece together what I could find out about partisan capabilities for Austrian penetration."
So the question arises, which Austrian border were the Allies recognising at the time, and under whose jurisdiction did the initial massacre of Croats on "Austrian" soil, as described by Tolstoy, actually happen? If both the collaboration and the confrontation with Tito have been acknowledged, why is the Bleiburg Genocide still virtually unheard of?
Croatian survivors from 'Bleiburg' expect and deserve an official Allied acknowledgement of the Bleiburg massacres, so that Serbian aggression towards Croats in the early 1990s can be interpreted in a just manner. Croatian generals Ante Gotovina, Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac, the 'Croatian Three', appear at the ICTY on 9 February, 2007. If these flawed indictments of the Croatian generals are any indication the West has not yet won the Cold War.
I have sat and reflected amongst the ruins of Zadar, bombed by the western Allies in 1944 to defeat Italian occupation. I have also sat and reflected at the Camp X memorial near Toronto where Anglo/American and pro-Yugoslav resistance forces were trained, some ultimately ending up in the Slovenian mountains in 1944. In 1989, I reflected on makeshift barbed-wire handcuffs, as I held them in my hand, removed by journalists from the skeletons of Tito's victims found in mass graves at Jazovka .
I have come to understand the need to defeat Nazism and Fascism, as German submarines sank ships in Canadian waters. When you are under attack you organize your defence, the defence of your civilians and your property and your nation. After a war you commit to reconstruction. Tito did the opposite, at least in Croatia , and evidence is there if you search for it.
In contrast to the western society I grew up in, I could not begin to understand Tito's brutal tactics, even though I have come to know about them. The concept of genocide was outside the realm of my personal understanding. I knew it happened but it didn't fully register in my mind because it was foreign to me, as if from Mars. My sheltered and privileged upbringing had not prepared me for such horrendous concepts. For me, oppression equated with poverty, and discrimination equated with racism. These are things I witnessed in contrast to my own personal experience. There was nothing I could equate genocide with in my mind.
I had heard about Tito, read about Tito, learned about Tito and Titoism at university, and witnessed the legacy of trauma survivors experienced from living under Tito's rule, yet it still wasn't registering! Even amongst the old surviving Croatian communist elite it does not seem to have registered, as to what it was like to be an ordinary Croatian citizen. The current Croatian President Mesic's comment about the Tito win in the opinion poll illustrates just how out of touch he is with his people when he alleged that Tito fulfilled the destiny of the Croatian nation!
Genocide of Croatian People
One of the ministers of the first Kingdom of Croats Serbs and Slovenes, Pribitchevic, remarked in the 1920s that the Sava River would flow backwards before the Croats would ever accept Serbian hegemony. In between the collapse of the first Royalist Yugoslavia and the imposition of Communist Yugoslavia, there was Croatian resistance to Serbian hegemony. However, most of that generation were massacred during Tito's "peace" as Tito uttered the words that the Sava River would flow backwards before Croats ever got their freedom.
Immediately following WWII Tito organized a genocide of the Croatian population. The genocide of Croatian people is known as the "Bleiburg Genocide". It began after massive columns of Croatian people, in May 1945, were turned back from various crossings at the British Sector of the Austrian border. But the Austrian border region itself was a matter of contention between Tito and the Western Allies in May 1945. Some Croats, including civilians and women and children, who had already surrendered, were immediately killed by Tito's Partisans in this no man's land.
Tito's terrorism took the form of mass executions, death marches , gulag imprisonment, purges (32,000 Croatian intellectuals lost their livelihood in the 1971 Croatian Spring), the highest number of political prisoners per capita in the world, assassinations of dissidents , loss of Croatian population due to illegal border escapes, underdevelopment of Croatian regions and later-on, deals with western nations to get rid of his rural unemployed Croatian population overseas. Statistics in all host nations where people from former Yugoslavia settled, show that Croats were in the majority. How many hundreds of thousands of deaths might have been avoided with a 50-50 presence in 1944-45?
Tito's Iron Curtain
Because the Churchill-Stalin "50-50 Split" failed to take place after WWII, Tito, emboldened by a strong Soviet presence, was able to consolidate his totalitarian control and exterminate an entire generation of Croatian citizens. Indeed, what happened in reality was a 'Tito-Churchill Split', but nobody has invented a phrase for that era! Tito was, for the West, a Benedict Arnold. Tito accepted Western supplies and money to fight fascism but then used it to consolidate his own pro-soviet power base, and betrayed western interests, and terrorized his own citizens. By the time there was a temporary break in Soviet-Yugoslav relations, it was already too late for half a million Croatian citizens. Indeed Tito's immediate post-WWII terrorism was part of the reason why Churchill commented that an "iron curtain" had descended upon Europe .
Instead of cooperation from Tito or Stalin, or any 50-50 division, the West had to deal with Tito's threats, emboldened by his pro-Soviet Central Committee. It is highly unlikely that these Croatian civilians would have been turned back from the British Sector in May 1945, en masse, had the command realized the enormity of the massacres to follow. There were no satellite cameras then. How could the elite command in the West who had led privileged lives begin to imagine or understand what lay in store for Croatian people? They had heard about Stalin's genocide in the Ukraine but didn't yet equate Stalin with Tito.
After the release of documents thirty years later we learned that it was Tito who had been responsible for the absence of any timely territorial 50-50 division at the end of 1944, and not the fault of Western Allies.
Instead the Western Allies had to deal with Tito's defiance regarding Anglo/American landings on the Dalmatian coast (as revealed in archival accounts re Tito & his Prime Minister, Subasic); and with Tito's territorial ambitions in Carinthia and Trieste . More than once Tito made it clear to the western Allies that if they landed in Croatia they would have to deal with a powerful resistance by his Yugoslav Partisan divisions along the Dalmatian coastline.
Thus, massacres of hospital patients from Vukovar occurred in 1991 just as they had occurred in Jazovka in 1945. For example, a karst sinkhole in Sosice near Zagreb contains the remains of 40,000 skeletons and evidence from the Croatian hospital. Similarly during recent construction of a highway in Slovenia tens of thousands of skeletons were uncovered with evidence that they were men, women and children, mostly of Croatian origin.
Time for an Accountable Leadership
A recent critic of an article in Zadarski List, Ivo Matanovic from Zadar, commented that under Tito it was the bloodiest era which Croatia ever experienced in its history. (HV, 23.1.04) The Yugoslav/Montenegran dissident, Milovan Djilas was quoted as saying that Croats had to die that Yugoslavia could live. American President Truman also remarked on the genocidal policies of Tito. ("Strategies of containment" oxford Uni Press 1982) Indeed more Croats died under Tito during 40 years than in the previous 400 years of occupied Croatia . Tito's infamous reign of terror is similar to Pol Pot's, and he certainly did not "fulfil the destiny of the Croatian nation".
For the sake of regional stability in the 21st century, it's time for old Croatian cadres to get in touch with their fellow man. If the Croatian media and the Croatian leadership cannot get it right today, how can Croatian people expect the rest of the world to really understand their plight? In the British House of Commons in 1874, Disraeli remarked that "Upon the education of the people, the fate of this country depends". In the same theme, according to H.G. Wells, "Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe". In the Croatian nation there is a need for deeper understanding about the cruel decades of terror under Tito!
There have been two defining moments in American culture in the 20 th century which have bound American people in common suffering - and suffering is what ultimately binds a nation - the assassination of President Kennedy and the terrorist attacks on the 11 th of September. The Croatian nation and its people have been bound in common suffering during the 20 th century also.
Firstly, the unprecedented assassination of five Croatian 'front benchers' in a full session of parliament in Belgrade, by Serbian assassin Punisa Racic, brought the entire Croatian nation into the streets in mourning and in protest for several days in 1928.
Secondly, after World War II, hundreds of thousands of Croatian men, women and children were massacred and thrown into various pits along a march of death ordered by Tito. Current excavations in Slovenia are uncovering horrific evidence, and many other sources acknowledge that this tragedy undeniably happened - sources differing only as to numbers and who was actually guilty: the Yugoslav Partisans or the British. In the spring of 1945 the Croatian nation and half a million of its people were butchered because of the bloody Yugoslav idea - every Croatian family has its own Bleiburg victims.
In December 2001, Croatia 's President Mesic awarded the highest Croatian medal to the widow of Sir Fitzroy Maclean posthumously on his behalf. This latest anti-Croatian outrage is proof that President Mesic of Croatia has lost all touch with his own people.
Neither the British nor the Americans are anxious to bring up these terrible crimes against humanity and have kept as much evidence as possible hidden in archives since WW II. To date no attempt to investigate those post WW II crimes (against the Geneva Convention 1929), known as the
Bleiburg Genocide , have been carried out at an official level in Britain .
In World War II the British people and Allies worked and fought to defeat Nazism - the installation of post-war communist regimes in East and South Eastern Europe was definitely not the reason that they fought and died. According to former President Truman in the book 'Strategies of Containment', Tito killed more than 400,000 of his opponents in communist Yugoslavia before he could finally establish himself as a dictator. If at least one of Tito's western allies acknowledged that more than 400,000 of Tito's opponents were murdered, and other sources agreed that those killed were mostly Croats, then there was surely even more Croatian victims. These crimes need to be investigated officially, and certainly not rewarded.
Some evidence has gradually surfaced over the decades from archives to prove that high-ranking British officials were instrumental in bringing Tito to power. During WW II Fitzroy Maclean had been the key figure in the making or breaking of the Yugoslav Partisans. As the British Liaison officer for Prime Minister Churchill, already stationed inside wartime Yugoslavia, Fitzroy Maclean (formerly of the British diplomatic service in Moscow and fluent in Russian) secured Allied support for Tito and the communist 'Yugoslav' partisans. The legacy of Fitzroy Maclean went beyond the defeat of Hitler however. The British decision to support Tito secured the creation of a second totalitarian communist Yugoslavia which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent Croatian civilians.
There is no doubt that Fitzroy Maclean was well aware of high level orders regarding the fate of Tito's Croatian opponents, as he dined in Belgrade in the spring of 1945 with Tito. According to F. Lindsay in his book, 'Beacons in the Night - With the OSS and Tito's Partisans in Wartime Yugoslavia', Americans assigned to Fitzroy Maclean during WW II accepted the fact that the Yugoslav operation was under British command. Thus any knowledge or complicity regarding the post-war genocide of Croatian civilians and prisoners of war rests with the British more than the Americans, and certainly with Tito's terrorists.
To this day much controversy and buck-passing still surrounds the responsibility for the murder of all of Tito's Croatian opposition during the spring of 1945. The awarding of a medal posthumously to Fitzroy Maclean is incomprehensible to me, and to Croatian people, and the rational judgment of the current Croatian president is in question, as is his next election victory. Who will Mesic punish, or reward next? Punisa Racic? It is as if Americans awarded a medal to Lee Harvey Oswald or Benedict Arnold, or to Bin Laden. One thing is for sure, no German leader would ever award a medal posthumously to Air Vice Marshal Arthur Harris of Bomber Command for the unnecessary cruel bombing and killing of over a hundred thousand refugees and civilians in Dresden .
An Open Letter to: The Croatian Government and Religious Leaders
Croats Living Outside of Croatia
As you know, the United Nations Security Council is composed of the same colonial powers who formed the Allies in May 1945 - those who were competing for zones of influence in post WW II Austria. Operating within the environment of the WW II allied intelligence community, and benefiting from their supplies and clandestine support from 1943 to 1945, the Yugoslav partisans in tandem with the SOE and OSS penetrated the Slovenian-Austrian border region. It is within this context that hundreds of thousands of disarmed Croats after WW II lost their lives, in total disregard of the Geneva Convention re treatment of Prisoners of War and civilians. Croatian survivors from 'Bleiburg' expect and deserve an official Allied acknowledgement of the Bleiburg massacres, so that Yugoslav aggression towards Croats in the early 1990s can be interpreted in a just manner.
In lieu of any official Allied or UN statements about the Bleiburg massacres, it is time that you learned from the history of duplicity perpetrated against your leaders across the socio/political spectrum. The names Tudjman, Hebrang, Radic, Jelacic, Zrinski, etc., and more recently Jelavic, should all be discussed within this context of superpower rivalry and betrayal. It becomes apparent to any analyst of Croatian history that nothing short of the continual destruction, humiliation, and annihilation of Croatian culture and leadership seems to satisfy foreign strategists. Over the past century Croatian territory has been the target of the Allies, but previously the Russians, Germans, Italians, Austrians, Napoleon, the Ottomans and forever the Hungarians have competed for their own interest there.
You, the Croatian political and spiritual leadership need to unite, not only with each other, but with Croatian people. However, it's not simply enough to 'be' Croatian or to 'speak' Croatian. Croatian unity will only thrive in a climate of honesty and solidarity. As long as you allow ideology and dogmatism to govern your agenda, division will preclude Croatian unity.
Already President Mesic, it is being suggested that you should be tried at the Hague , in spite of your compliance with anti-Croatian demands. And Medjugorje? Its good spiritual fruits are denied, insulted even from within Croatian society, and as a result the (UN) British troops have no qualms about their military show of force in the streets of Medjugorje during Easter 2001.
Let us turn to what lessons can be learned from Bleiburg, because it is the anniversary time of the year again.
The book, "The Repatriations from Austria in 1945: Report of an Enquiry", Cowgill, Brimelow and Booker, 1990, has taken the place of an official enquiry in Britain into the fate of Croats, and others at what is known as the 'Bleiburg Genocide'. Cowgill's book is an alleged "private" response to, and denial of, issues raised by Tolstoy's publication entitled, "The Minister and the Massacres" regarding the massacre of Croats on Austrian soil. An enquiry at this unofficial level is a slap in the face to the Croatian nation.
In the foreward of this publication, Brigadier Anthony Cowgill reduces the number and identity of Croats repatriated from Austria in May 1945 to "many". Cowgill refers to the Croatian refugees as an "incursion" of "fugitives" in chapter five which deals with Bleiburg in particular. Cowgill claims that no massacre of Croats took place on Austrian soil, but rather at a place called Poljana in Yugoslavia .
The real issues have been evaded by anti-Croatian historians about Bleiburg
Firstly, it is time that you acknowledge that the partisans would not have done anything at all if it weren't for the British-led Allied total support which came in the form of supplies, munitions, intelligence and money. What this means is that the Allies were responsible for the partisans being in the Bleiburg region in the first place. This information is not available from either Tolstoy or Cowgill, but from the book, "Beacons in the Night: With the OSS and Tito's partisans in Wartime Yugoslavia", by Franklin Lindsay, 1993, who details the British-led operations in the northern Slovenian-Austrian border zone. Lindsay's account of Allied-partisan co-operation contradicts the common claim by Cowgill that there was a "confrontation between Tito's forces and the British forces" which forced the British to hand over Croats to the partisans or prevent their "incursion".
Secondly, there is always vague reference as to just where the actual Yugoslav/Austrian border fell. We cannot learn much from Cowgill: "the frontier between Dravograd and Bleiburg"; "200,000 Croats wishing to enter Austria via Bleiburg"; "Croats to be handed over to the Yugoslavs were encamped to the south of the main road leading from the Austrian frontier to Bleiburg"; "The column passed through Bleiburg, stumbling along the road eight to ten deep, for over twelve hours, intermittently drenched by rain."
But the fact that Slovenian-partisan ambition to gain territory (as after WW I) was encouraged by the British is exposed in Lindsay's book in detail, for example: "Both the British and later the Americans had supplied several planeloads of weapons on the understanding that the partisans would cross the Drava with the SOE and OSS parties."; "I began to piece together what I could find out about partisan capabilities for Austrian penetration . ". So how many Austrian borders were the Allies recognising at the time, and under whose jurisdiction did the initial massacre of Croats on "Austrian" soil, as described by Tolstoy, actually happen?
In addition, with all these recent conflicting revelations which expose the nature and source of partisan strength after the end of WW II, it is clear that the western allies are not interested anymore in protecting them. In fact, the partisans are now the scapegoats, the fall-guys taking the rap for the Allies-this is the message I want you, the current leadership in Croatia , to understand. The strong signals were already there in BBC documentaries about Tito and the sins of the partisans after WW II - and the first of these documentaries was shown to university students, in Melbourne , as Serbian bombs were falling over Croatia in 1991. Titoism was also being re-interpreted as Stalinist at the same time on campuses by ultra-left groups.
When the history of Croatia is examined, it becomes quite clear that the chronic source of instability in the Balkans has always been the competition between rival imperialists. The cost to Croatia has been the genocide of its population, the humiliation and assassination of its leaders, and the under-development of the Croatian coast and its hinterland. It is time that you accept that Croatian unity, and indeed regional stability, depends upon your ability to reconcile historical issues with your own people, instead of looking outside your borders for approval!
Why did the Allies disarm Croatian 'surrendered' civilians and soldiers in a refugee camp in Austria, and then repatriate over half a million of them, either into an ambush of so-called Communist Yugoslav 'allies' to be massacred on Austrian soil; or onto death trains back through Slovenia (whilst assuring the tens of thousands of people inside the box cars, trainload after trainload, that they were going to Italy) - knowing it would be "fatal to their health"?
Why does Maribor City Council call for the cremation of thousands of Bleiburg victims' skeletal remains as discovered in June 1999, instead of photographing, displaying, analysing DNA or documenting them?
Why is " Katyn" a metaphor for wrongful accusation and genocide, but "Bleiburg", " Koceve" or "Jazovka" etc. are virtually unheard of?
Near Maribor , Slovenia , the construction of the Slivnica-Pesnica Highway has been the cause of the discovery of 1179 skeletons, as at June 26, 1999 , from a road-side former anti-tank trench. The remains in these mass graves have been acknowledged as being primarily of Croatian WWII refugees and their families. These mass graves have been widely documented as being part of what has been termed the Bleiburg Genocide . The tens of thousands of bodies buried in Slovenian forests and ravines were those Croatian refugees, together with a small proportion of others, who had been told by British forces in post WWII Austria that they were being transported by rail to Italy . The victims recently discovered near Maribor had been shot after being tied up. It is the decision of the Maribor City Council to have these remains 'cremated' at the Crematorium of the Maribor Cemetery .
It is my contention that there is no legal or moral precedent in the world for the cremation of victims of unknown origin, or murder, or battles, or genocide. A simple search on the internet serves to illustrate my point.
In New York City there is an African Burial Ground, formerly called a 'Negro Burial Ground' from the 17 th century which spans a six acre site which includes the City Hall Park . The remains were removed when a skyscraper was planned for the site, but eventually building was halted and a memorial designed and an ' Interpretive Center ' were created. From the remains, scientists have been able to carry out extensive analysis of DNA and teeth. Cremation of these remains would be absolutely unthinkable! Also, in America there is a debate between Native Americans and anthropologists regarding the right to burial of skeletal remains. The resolution of the court has been backed away from until the 'origins' of the remains are determined. My point with the above examples is that neither party is suggesting that the remains be 'cremated'.
American relatives, including members of my own family, of soldiers who were 'missing in action' overseas, still search for their loved ones from Vietnam , Korea , WWII, etc. and when information or graves are discovered there is a demand to return the bodies. My points with this example are that not only is there no suggestion of 'cremation' but there is an additional demand for the 'return' of skeletal remains to their rightful burial place.
In the Mexico City National Cemetery American soldiers have been buried since 1847, and those who served and died in battles there have been recorded on a data base. Some of the officer's bodies however were returned to the United States at the expense of their family or friends. My points with this example are that bodies were not 'cremated', some bodies whose identity was established easily because they were officers were 'returned', and these graves were of men who died in 'battle'.
Next I will cite a better-known example of mass graves of a genocide, where bodies were 'not cremated'. I speak of the Katyn Forest Massacre, when Soviet Secret Police massacred 15,400 Polish officers. For a memorial to Katyn the American State of Maryland has provided a $200,000 grant of matching funds. The Polish American Congress and Polish National Alliance have provided an additional $25,000 for a memorial to Katyn. Even the Baltimore Maryland Jewish community have donated $35,000 to the project in recognition of tyranny against victims in WWII Poland. Of course donations from Polish Americans were also forthcoming. My points with the Katyn Massacre example is that no mention of 'cremation' would be considered, and that money has been raised and donated in reference to this genocide. Speaking of genocide further we have the more recent example of human skeletons stacked for all the world to see in Cambodia . In addition a Cambodian data base of victims, perpetrators and geographical mass grave sites exists. And guess what, no cremations.
Perpetrators of genocide try to deny that war crimes have taken place. What better way to deny this to future generations than to allow a legal precedent to be set to cremate whatever remains are discovered. Then, next year or the year after, as more and more remains are discovered, more cremations can take place.
Documentary evidence about the Bleiburg Genocide has been available for decades. Two of the best known sources are the books: "Operation Slaughterhouse", [Ed. John Prcela & S.Guldescu, Dorrance Pub. Co. Inc., Pittsburgh , 1970 & 1995], and "The Minister and the Massacres", [N. Tolstoy, Century Hutchinson Ltd., London , 1986]. I am sure that these researchers would be against the 'cremation' decision.
There is no dispute that the genocide of Croatian people occurred. What there should be a dispute about is the intended course of action by the Maribor City Council, about the intended cremation of Croatian victims of genocide. An issue of such international proportions surely is beyond the mandate of an ordinary local City Council. An urgent legal process must be instigated to prevent the cremation of these unfortunate souls.
Whether in the so-called diaspora, or in their homeland, the relatives of those recently discovered remains of Croatian victims deserve to have an input on any decisions made as to their disposal. These skeletons should not be cremated, rather they should be buried, in Croatia if possible, and a data base, a memorial wall, and an ' Interpretive Center ' created concerning all known victims who were murdered. A petition with signatures should be forwarded to the Maribor City Council in Slovenia , or to an authority to be determined, by a newly formed committee made up of all parties concerned, to prevent a local authority from dealing, in haste, with an international issue. In the meantime, bones should be examined, documented and a report filed to this newly created committee, made up of representatives for relatives who never stopped grieving, before any decision is made. Ultimately, new legislation needs to be formulated on this issue at an international level. At least it should be an 'issue'.
The 1986 Britannica, in spite of recently published documentary evidence from British archives, ignores Yugoslav and British guilt in connection with the Bleiburg massacres. Hiding Bleiburg won't lessen the guilt. Any remnants of British honour have been taken into the dark ages. The ghosts of over half a million slaughtered Croats, and Slovenes, have not been laid to rest yet. They won't rest until their murders are acknowledged and they live in all the world's history books. ... Croatian professors from all over the world, including Zagreb and Sarajevo,. Should protest to British historians who are responsible for the lies and omissions in the pages of Encyclopaedia Britannica. No, things inside Yugoslavia are not like it is claimed in British fairy tales. ... Today even those who fought for Yugoslavia not only live with the ghosts of Bleiburg, but they must cope with unfulfilled promises and empty dreams. Their reward for their bloody hand in genocide has often been a passport to hard labour abroad. . Those in today's republics of Yugoslavia live with disappointments, bad experiences, the haunting screams of terror of Bleiburg victims, and nationalism and all these factors combine to out-rank Serbian authority. ... I am positive that if Croatian generals had known any British history, they would have never trusted or followed the decision to retreat to Austria after the war, in May 1945. .
I am pleased to write to you about your programme which was screened on 28 September 1986 about the Croatian community in Canberra Australia. ... Forty short years ago the Croats paid with the genocide of one-sixth of their nation. After world war two when the Allied Powers were 'impatiently' tidying-up displaced persons' camps so they could get on with their peaceful existence, hundreds of thousands of Croatian men, women and children were repatriated after their surrender, after being disarmed. They were sacrificed to their enemy from whom they had fled knowing death awaited, so that the Allies would not be inconvenienced, so that the western world's newly won peace could take place swiftly without any further burdens on their schedule. ... I was surprised that SBS (TV) felt a need to protect itself with a clause at the end of the credits...
The Yugoslav Terror. ... post WWII death marches and genocide with murder of over half a million Croatian men women and children and of Slovenes between 1945 and 1947 (acknowledged by former US President Truman)...
1986: THERE IS NOT A SINGLE BIRD, WHICH AFTER TAKING FLIGHT, STOPS IN MID AIR
In the speech I wrote: Croatia's ... "leaders failed in their attempt to contact the Allied Command with the aim of changing their allegiance officially; and, her people after this denial, attempted to surrender at the refugee camp in Bleiburg Austria. They also met with denial. Hundreds of thousands of civilian men, women and children were sent back after their surrender, to their death inside the borders of the new communist Yugoslavia, including the entire Croatian army, who had also surrendered." ...
1986: OPEN LETTER TO THE AUSTRALIAN COORDINATOR FOR THE UN INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF PEACE
We all share a legacy of injustice left from WWII in one way or another. ... In this letter I will be concerned with another equally terrible injustice in the world today. That is the case of Croatia and Croatian people. What has come to be known as the 'Bleiburg Genocide' took place as half a million Croatian men, women and children were slaughtered after WWII. Today, the cover up of this crime continues on by the world media and this is what causes recurring damage to the Croatian people all over the world. ... At the end of the second world war, with the help from the Allies, the 'second' Yugoslavia was formed, under Tito-this time on the skeletons of half a million Croats. Hundreds of thousands of Croatian refugees were turned back at the Yugoslav border after trying to surrender in Austria in the British sector. Of those who were able to enter Austria, they were sent back to their enemies, like lambs to the slaughter, unarmed. For example, one devious method used was to tell the Croats that the trains which carried thousands of their unarmed soldiers were going to Italy, when the trains arrived at their destination they found themselves back inside 'Yugoslav' territory. ... Why do I call the Bleiburg genocide a so-called 'perfect crime'? The dream of every criminal, the perfect crime, is one which goes undetected and unpunished. If there is no crime who bothers to look for the criminal? Serbian-controlled Yugoslavia is a master at deception. The Bleiburg genocide of Croats is still virtually unknown to the world and the cover up allows Yugoslavia to go unpunished and to carry on to repeat her crimes...
On the third day of your (TV) series you reported on "Lake Bled" in Slovenia ... You mentioned the local history during the war and its Nazi occupiers but you didn't mention its occupiers 'after' WWII. Lake Bled served as a holiday camp for Tito's special murder squads (Operation Slaughterhouse, page 376, & page 382, 1970 edition). The train line between Villach, Austria and Lake Bled, Slovenia is where several hundred thousand innocent Croatian refugees (and thousands of other minority groups including Slovenians) were tricked by the British in collaboration with Tito, to think that they were being transported to Italy. The locked box cars however were turned back to Yugoslavia. Along this train line they were murdered in groups of thousands and thrown into mass graves and gorges where your "walking trails" are (as shown on TV). The ground had to be dynamited in several places to hide its swelling and heaving after complaints by the local people...
1985: The Ambush at Bleiburg - The 40 th Anniversary
I was born in nineteen hundred forty-five
My parents and I were lucky to be alive
Because in Croatia where I was born
Every city and village was ravaged and torn.
For our people there was no tomorrow
We were left with our dead and our sorrow
For the duration of the forty-five and six
Croatians were victims of Allied tricks.
On a mission of peace Croatians went ahead
To a meeting with the British they were lead
But little did they know at that very time
Tito had already arranged his bloody crime.
With the Soviets acting as his liberator
And the Allies helping this Yugo dictator
Croatian independence was to be crushed
And their genocide to be carefully hushed.
For those Croatians who chose to remain
In Zagreb , their life was to end in pain
While the other hundreds of thousands fled
From the communists and their star of red.
Bleiburg for those who came was hell on earth
Where they realised how little their worth
As soon as their position became indefensible
It was clear that Croatian life was expendable!
This was the beginning of the end of fair play
Now 'divide and conquer' was the British way
The human tidal wave at the Yugo border-line
Had not been made aware of the Allies' design.
The Croatians, army, priests, civilians alike
Across the Klagenfurt Valley were made to hike
They were bluffed into becoming a human cargo
On route to Italy - with a short cut to Yugo!
The devil himself sealed the pact that day
When Yugoslav partisans got their own way
Screams echoed across the land, in vain
As Tito executed his merciless campaign.
And in Carinthia in the dead of night
Unarmed Croatians were killed out of sight
The Allied forces pretended not to hear
As the shots rang out in May that year.
Of course the British had no blood on their hands
Their only crime to send ex-patriots to their lands
Carrying out the order to prevent their surrender
Proving to be the world's greatest pretender.
Once back across the Yugoslav-Austrian border
Murder was carried out with precision and order
Columns of hundreds and thousands of Croatians
Marched to their graves in unmarked locations!
Once peaceful valleys became mass graves
As the ground itself swelled up in waves
With one-sixth of their nation crucified
Croatians knew their salvation had been denied.
Nineteen eight-five is the anniversary year
For Croatians it marks forty years of fear
With half a million having died that way
It's the reason that Yugoslavia lives today.
In Bleiburg , Austria , valley of fear
Allied camp, the point of no return
Nineteen forty-five was the tragic year
Croatians had nowhere else to turn
Farewell dear Zagreb , old friend
With guns in their backs, evacuation
Croatian masses march to their end
Thousands walking in the same direction
To Bleiburg in Austria Croatians pour
Both soldiers and civilians knew not why
With new hopes in the aftermath of war
Surely not the time or place to die
Frightened children and old women too
Trudging on Croatian blood spilled underneath
Joining soldiers young and old, who knew
That to turn back would mean certain death
Naively, 150,000 lay their guns down
On May 15 th , their day of arrival
Of conspiracy or betrayal there was no sound
Holding onto hopes for their survival
Croatian refugees, lost without a leader
In silence waited never questioning any order
Who were unwillingly forced by their deceiver
To Tito and his Serbian butchers at the border
Thousands massacred, fell to each other's feet
While at Maribor were slaughtered 40,000 more
Trainloads at Kocevje, victims of British deceit
Many thousands murdered, after the end of war
And on their 'March of Death ' thousands went
Dropping dead in pain in the dirt along the way
And those not thrown into mass graves, were sent
To rot in concentration camps, that year, in May
From this genocide disappeared half a million
History shows us that this was just the start
In four decades Croatia has lost three more million
For them Croatia is real, only in their heart
The path away from tyranny for today's emigrants
Is not so blood stained as it used to be
The Croatian exodus from Yugoslavia never ends
In air-conditioned comfort with passports, free
But those who stay behind live in silent fear
As second class citizens or cheap European labour
To be separated from their family, year after year
While imprisonment and assassination numbers soar
Would it be possible that from places near and far
Croatians who are able could return from everywhere
With those souls at Bleiburg as their guiding star
So relatives who still mourn need no longer despair
About the suffering at Bleiburg the world must hear
Of inhumane acts those responsible wish us to forget
Those of us, who can come, make 1985 the year
And the date May 15 for a Croatian pilgrimage set
Croatian brothers and sisters in Bleiburg, unite
Join, in strength, in remembrance of this tragedy
For our homeland we will not give up our right
To live as one nation, one people, free.
In the shadows of night at Sosice
There's an eerie whisper in the air
The branches of the old oak trees
Have witnessed a tragedy there.
No one passes that bottomless pit
The place which nature forsook
Scarcely wide enough across to fit
One man . yet so many men it took.
It's forbidden to go near that hole
Because if you listen near its top
You'll hear the echo from every soul
As one after another they dropped.
Like a sea shell's constant call
From the sea bed underneath
The young cadets tell of their fall.
How they were pushed to their death.
Five hundred cadets fell so young
To their death that fateful day
Murdered before they could belong
But their spirit still lives to say:
Croatia had been in the dark
For many centuries it's true
But in 1941 she set her mark
And raised her 'red white blue'.
"We were young and proud to enlist
Though little of Croatia we'd seen
Yet the one thing we'd always missed
Was the freedom 'that might have been'.
If only our fathers and theirs before
Hadn't won wars for a foreign race
If only they'd known what lay in store
Of the veil on their Motherland's face."
"The uniforms we wore were Croatian
And we pledged our lives for her
Never again to be in the situation
That our enslaved forefathers were.
It was our privilege to defend
We were proud unto the last fellow
Who'd have known we'd meet our end
On the path towards Gornje Selo."
"Captured before we'd seen battle
By a yugoslav partisan band
We were then herded like cattle
And swallowed up in the land.
The flesh was ripped from our side
As our bodies plunged into the deep
But we screamed out before we died:
'Our Croatian spirit will never sleep'."
