Chapter Eight: The Habsburg Empire, Budapest (Hungary), Vienna (Austria), Prague (Czech Republic), Bucharest (Rumania), Sofia (Bulgaria) and Belgrade (Serbia) [An Abridged History of Europe]

AN ABRIDGED HISTORY OF EUROPE 
by William M. Brinton 

Chapter Eight:
The Habsburg Empire — Budapest (Hungary), Vienna (Austria), Prague (Czech Republic), Bucharest (Rumania), Sofia (Bulgaria) and Belgrade (Serbia)

European history would be incomplete without considering the ethnic feuds that seem to generate military action by way of settlement. From the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand that started World War I to the ethnic warfare now sweeping Serbia and Yugoslavia, the Balkans (a Turkish word for mountains) have been the crucible of the 20th century, the place where terrorism and genocide became tools of policy. Robert D. Kaplan's book, Balkan Ghosts A Journey Through History, published in 1995, seems to have warned us of Serbia's death wish or war until Gotterdammerung.

Freudenreicher Postilioin von Munster (Netherlands, 1648) Marx Anton Hannas
Freudenreicher Postilioin von Münster (Netherlands, 1648)
Marx Anton Hannas
1648 War and Peace, p. 220

In his new book, The First World War, the author suggests that had Austria not dithered after the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife on June 16,1914, it could have taken care of Serbia on its own. Instead, Austria sought Berlin's approval for moving against Serbia. Serbia knowingly harbored terrorists like Gavrilo Princip, the assassin. Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm thought so little of the incident in Sarajevo that he took off for three weeks of sailing the Norwegian fjords on his yacht. In the meantime other great powers, enmeshed in entangling alliances, had time to mobilize their armies. The first real clash of arms occurred in Belgium where German troops were about to execute the von Schlieffen Plan and move on to Paris. Great Britain saw its duty and sent an ultimatum to Berlin to halt its march through Belgium. It was not until the end of August 1914, that French troops mobilized to defeat German forces. Russia, too, mobilized to defeat Germany. Thus, had Austria settled its dispute with Serbia quickly, there might have been no World War I. History would unquestionably have been quite different. Speculation, however, is not history.

The history of the Habsburg empire began with the union of the Alpine hereditary lands and the crowns of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia in 1526-27. National groups within this vast empire included Germans, Magyars, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Rumanians, Ruthenians (Carpatho-Ukrainians),Croats, Slovenes, Serbs, Italians and Szekerls. The Szekerls were a Magyar-speaking tribe and later completely identified with the Magyars. Their ethnic origin has never been traced back in time, so an ethnic difference, if any, has never been satisfactorily established. Religious groups included Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox adherents, Protestants and Muslims. To this linguistic, ethnic and religious tower of Babel was added the title of emperor. This referred to the crown of the Holy Roman Empire until August 6, 1806, when Francis II, the Austrian emperor, officially laid down the old imperial crown. Thus, it must be noted that thereafter the same land, or almost the same land, became an Austrian empire under the Austrian emperor. The impending dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire came about because of Napoleon Bonaparte. During the period between 1529 and 1618, this vast area was the site of wars spreading from Spain to Turkey. In 1529, for example, Turkey invaded Hungary and Austria. Its armies were stopped at the gates of Vienna. Sultan Suliman of Turkey died in 1565, temporarily ending Ottoman ambitions for land of the Holy Roman Empire. A new Turkish war began in 1593 and lasted until 1606. After a settlement that further weakened the Habsburg empire, it became involved in the Thirty Years' War that broke out in 1618 over a dispute in Bohemia — now part of the Czech Republic.

Leaf From a Royal Manuscript (Hungary, 1320-42)
Leaf From a Royal Manuscript (Hungary, 1320-42)
Mirror of Medieval World, p. 144

The Thirty Years War was the major international conflict of the 17th century. When the dust settled on this savage war in 1648, Germany was a wasteland, and the Habsburg empire was further weakened. The Turkish wars resumed in 1683. The Turkish army assembled at Adrianople, prepared for a major push against Hungary. Once again, Vienna was threatened. The Turks were defeated at both Budapest and at a battlefield close to Mohacs. Hungarian weakness prompted the Habsburg leaders to look toward Russia. This country was only too pleased to see Austria follow the Russian dog. Austria's claim was cashed out in 1737 when she joined Russia against Turkey. Austria made a poor military showing and Russia was duly critical. Part of one province, northern Bosnia and Serbia were all lost to the Turks in the peace of Belgrade. Temporary peace occurred in 1699, when the Treaty of Karlowitz was signed, transferring most of Hungary from the Turks to the Austrians. In his book Lords of the Horizon, Jason Goodman wrote of Belgrade:

In 1717 the brilliant Prince Eugene [Austrian] retook the city [Belgrade] for Austria, but his military successors lost it again in 1739. After half a century of peace, the Ottomans surrendered the city in 1789, but then two years later it was surrendered back to them. It was still a bunker in 1804, though meaner, and dirtier, and more cruel, pinched by want and pricked on by greed, when the janissaries solemnized their affection for the place, and made it the base of a sort of janissary, ruling over Serbia in defiance of everybody else in Constantinople. It had complex treaty obligations to carry out involving the removal of the Turkish cavalrymen, who tended to live on their Serbian estates and whose rivalry with the janissaries stretched back centuries, ...sharpened by the prospect of carving up Serbia for themselves; ...of the Serbs, led by the janissary turned rebel, Kara George, at the head of a national uprising. ...(He) and his Serbs finally took Belgrade in 1806. In the process he dealt a death blow to the janissary junta, and a more regular Ottoman army retook it in 1813.

Belgrade remained an Ottoman-occupied city until 1867. By this date, inflation and corruption had so undermined the Ottoman Empire that its influence and power were no longer effective in extending Ottoman rule or even maintaining it any longer.

Painting of Delegates at Congress Of Vienna. CORBIS/Bettmann
Painting of Delegates at Congress Of Vienna. CORBIS/Bettmann

The War of the Austrian Succession ended in 1748. The outcome proved that the Habsburg power could withstand the concerted attack of a major European coalition. Austria was faced by the same threats to which Spain succumbed a generation earlier and Poland a half century later. In addition, Austria had to deal with the French Revolution of 1789 and the upheavals that followed. Austria's leaders between 1740 and 1815 were, in order: Empress Maria Theresa, her son Joseph II and his brother Leopold II. Joseph never quite understood this revolution. It was in fact a direct threat to royalty throughout Western Europe, or at the very least a displacement of royal power in favor of a parliament with power over taxes and other limited powers. King Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were executed in 1793. Leopold's successor was Francis I, who began his reign in the face of the conflagration spreading across Europe in the aftermath of the French Revolution. Napoleon Bonaparte marched through Europe as a conquering hero and was stopped only at the gates of Moscow. In his retreat, Napoleon lost the battle, and he was finally sent off to exile, only to return by escaping from Elba. Napoleon and his quickly-assembled soldiers lost the war at Waterloo. Austrian Chancellor, Clemens Lothar Metternich negotiated the Congress of Vienna. Among other things, this congress produced the Confederation of Germany, which in the end led to the collapse of peace because there were too many ambiguities in the language used. Rather than peace the Congress of Vienna led to war involving another Napoleon, this time the Third, who came to power in France in 1848. In 1851, Louis Bonaparte converted his presidency into a dictatorship, and he proclaimed himself emperor a year later.

Europe in general, and Austria in particular, expressed concern when Russia moved troops into the Danube countries. Russia thus expanded its common frontier with Austria. War was once more on the horizon, and Tzar Nicholas asked for an Austrian guarantee for the termination of hostilities — Britain and France had declared war against Russia — on the part of its enemies in exchange for recall of the Russian forces occupying parts of the Danubian nations. All this was a prelude to the Crimean War of 1854 in which British, French and Austrian forces united against Russia for reasons not even clear today. The outcome was a victory of those armies arrayed against Russia. Thirteen years later, the Austro-Hungarian Compromise was agreed on, settling the common problems of the dual monarchy, a combination that was to last until 1918. In 1870, Count Otto von Bismarck, chancellor of Germany, forcibly obtained from France what was needed to unify Germany. In fact, Paris was occupied by German troops until the final agreement was signed. The Balkan nations, including Serbia, Rumania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro were almost all omitted from negotiations regarding their status leading up to World War I. Austria, however, announced in 1908 that it had annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina. To ensure Russia's acquiescence, Austria said it would not oppose opening of the Dardenelles to Russian warships. Serbia was displeased by this development, seeing her hopes for a Yugoslav empire put on hold. The Serbian government initiated a passionate campaign of irredentist propaganda and denounced Austria for its duplicity. In 1908, Austria paid compensation to the Ottoman Empire, but this did not prevent Serbia from continuing its military preparations backed by Russia. Germany had told Russia it should abandon plans to support Serbian military preparations. Russia, still hurting after its defeat by Japan in 1905, had to comply with Germany's demand or risk war. Serbia, now the victim of power politics, had to accept the humiliating Austrian ultimatum.

Victory at Nordlingen (1635), Cornelius Schut
Victory at Nordlingen (1635)
Cornelius Schut

The first Balkan War broke out in 1912. This involved a coalition of Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece and Montenegro arrayed against the Ottoman Empire. The Turks were defeated and literally pushed out of Europe. In the ensuing peace talks in London in 1913, Britain and France agreed on the creation of a new state in the region, Albania. Serbia had had other plans. Austria the new state, thus barring Serbia access to the Adriatic Sea. The creation of this new state alienated Greece and infuriated Serbia, which saw itself as victimized by the great powers. It was not until 1926, however, that Albania had fixed its boundaries to reflect the southern frontier of Serbia with Kosovo, long after the Treaties of Versailles and Trianon in 1920. See www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/versa/versa2.html and www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/versa/tri1.htm. Articles 2, 3, and 4 of the Treaty of Lebanon to define the boundaries of the Hungarian State "the Serb-Croat-Slovene State" Czechoslovakia and Rumania. Article 44 expressed a determination to "protect the interests of inhabitants of that State who differ from the majority of the population in race, language or religion..." According to one writer, the new country was supposed to become the nation-state of the South Slavs, or Yugoslavia. It became the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929. After years of political instability, its King Alexander I Karadjordevic declared a dictatorship and created a police state. On April 6, 1941, German Nazi aircraft bombed Belgrade. Hitler had little use for Yugoslavia except to neutralize it to guarantee secure supply lines to troops on the way to Russia. Hitler also created the puppet Independent State of Croatia and endowed it with all of Bosnia. Its president was a Serb-hating Croat, Ante Pavelic, who for years commanded a gang of terrorists. The terrorists were perfect for Hitler's purposes. Pavelic's gangs known as Ustase, killed some 40,000 Jews in a bestial campaign to "purify" the population. "Ethnic cleansing" was another way of describing the brutal conduct of these gangs. Serb civilians finally organized a resistance. One resistance group was called "Chetniks" and another was Tito's Partisans of communist persuasion. Civil war in Yugoslavia continued from 1940 to 1943, when an anti-Fascist organization nominated Tito to lead a temporary Yugoslav government. At news of this, thousands of Chetnik Serbs went over to Tito's Partisans. Allied governments were told that Chekniks had slaughtered thousands of Muslims and were waging ethnic war.

Rudolf II on Horseback (Prague, 1590s), Giovanni Da Bologana
Rudolf II on Horseback (Prague, 1590s)
Giovanni Da Bologana
1648 War and Peace, p. 406

From 1926 to 1939 Albania was an anarchic state, until Benito Mussolini invaded Albania and annexed it to Italy. In 1944, German paratroops occupied Albania, while Albanian nationalist guerillas and Greek forces fought the Nazis and each other. Post-war Yugoslavia inherited some unsavory characters. Josip Broz (Tito) was one of them. His something-less-than communist government ruled Yugoslavia with an iron hand, keeping its unruly population from flying apart. Tito had his historic break with the Soviet Union in 1948, and the United States gave this country special help. It was special because of the strategic importance of supporting an anti-Soviet state, albeit a communist and undemocratic state. Tito died in 1980 and the interim government existed until 1987 when elections were held. Those who witnessed this election said it was a fraud with stuffed ballots and intimidation at the polls. Slobodan Milosevic was elected and almost immediately — 1989 — announced that Serb defeat at Kosovo in 1389 was an annual national holiday. This use of nationalism entrenched his leadership. This announcement played to Serbian nationalism, a factor that seems to have united Serbs in Belgrade against NATO. Some authorities have said that many Serbians in Belgrade are fearful of publicly showing opposing views because of censorship and/or jail for enemies of the state. In 1990, support for Yugoslavia no longer rested on an invalid policy. The Soviet Union had collapsed and broken into fifteen independent nations. On June 27, 1991, Yugoslavia, i.e., Serbia, invaded Slovenia, the wealthiest new state of Yugoslavia which had declared its independence. Then, a few days later, three Balkan wars flared up; Croats and Serbs fought one war, Serbs and Bosnians fought another, and Croats and Bosnians fought a third war. In one war, there were some 175,000 Serb refugees from Croatia in 1995. This fact indeed made it easier for Milosevic to ultimately agree with the Dayton Accords negotiated by a team headed by Richard Holbrooke. On March 3, 1992, Bosnia declared itself an independent nation. The United States and the European Union recognized it about 30 days later. Bosnian Serbs demanded that Bosnia withdraw its declaration. Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic refused and sought help from the United Nations. As early as 1992, a new euphemism entered the English language, "ethnic cleansing," a phrase coined by Milosevic. Within a year, Americans were getting news about unfamiliar cities in Bosnia — Srebrenica, Zepa and Sarajevo. According to the International Red Cross, the death toll in Srebrenicca alone was 7,079. Most of these victims were Bosnian Muslims; they were slaughtered in the local soccer stadium. Just before leaving Sarajevo, Holbrooke publicly recommended NATO bombing, but this policy was unpopular with countries who had troops in Yugoslavia. The following day — August 28, 1995 — Serbs launched a mortar shell into the Sarajevo marketplace, killing some 38 shoppers and injuring far more. Holbrooke described this as "brutal stupidity," and it was the forerunner of NATO bombing which resumed on September 5, 1995.

Ambassador Holbrooke described further steps toward agreement in his book, To End a War, published by Random House in 1998. Holbrooke noted that NATO did unleash a two-week bombing campaign against the Bosnian Serbs in August and September 1995, which played a pivotal role in bringing peace to the region. But it was in conjunction with a successful Croatian Army offensive in western Bosnia that carved out some Bosnian Serb holdings, and it was preceded by months of diplomatic negotiations with Slobodan Milosevic. Furthermore, Milosevic told negotiators he was hamstrung by two Bosnian Serb generals, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. These men are now war criminals, having been indicted by the International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia. This court was established by the United Nations under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Its pertinent sections are as follows:

Article 1
The International Tribunal shall have the power to prosecute persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1991 in accordance with the provisions of the present Statute.

Article 2
Grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.

The International Tribunal shall have the power to prosecute persons committing or ordering to be committed grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949, namely the following acts against persons or property protected under the provisions of the relevant Geneva Convention.

  1. wilful killing;
  2. torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments;
  3. wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health;
  4. extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly;
  5. compelling a prisoner of war or civilian to serve in the forces of a hostile power;
  6. wilfully depriving a prisoner of war or a civilian of the rights of fair and regular trial;
  7. unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of civilians;
  8. taking civilian hostages.

Article 3
The International Tribunal shall have the power to prosecute persons violating the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to:

  1. employment of poisonous weapons or other weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering;
  2. wanton destruction of cities, towns, villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity;
  3. attack, or bombardment, by whatever means, of undefended towns, villages, dwellings or buildings;
  4. seizure of, destruction or wilful damage done to institutions dedicated to religion, charity and education, the arts and sciences, historical monuments and works of art and science;
  5. plunder of public or private property.

Article 4
The International Tribunal shall have the power to prosecute persons committing genocide as defined in paragraph 2 of this article or of committing any of the other acts enumerated in paragraph 3 of this article.

(2) Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

  1. killing members of the group;
  2. causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
  3. deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
  4. imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
  5. forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

(3) The following acts shall be punishable:

  1. genocide;
  2. conspiracy to commit genocide;
  3. direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
  4. attempt to commit genocide;
  5. complicity in genocide.

Article 5 - Crimes Against Humanity
The International Tribunal shall have the power to prosecute persons responsible for the following crimes when committed in armed conflict, whether international or internal in character, and directed against any civilian population:

  1. murder;
  2. extermination;
  3. enslavement;
  4. deportation;
  5. imprisonment;
  6. torture;
  7. rape;
  8. persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds;
  9. other inhumane acts.

In 1951, Yugoslavia deposited an instrument of ratification of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide with the Treaty Office of the United Nations in New York.It did the same with the Convention Against Torture. Yet, President Milosevic has committed a kind of in-your-face genocide defying NATO to indict him or arrest him on a warrant issued by the International Tribunal. There can be little or no doubt that Milosevic may be criminally liable for war crimes including genocide. Thus, the statute states:

  1. A person who planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided or abetted in the planning, preparation or execution of a crime referred to in articles 2 to 5 of the present Statute, shall be individually responsible for the crime.
  2. The official position of any accused person, whether as Head of State or Government or as a responsible Government official, shall not relieve such person of criminal responsibility nor mitigate the crime.
  3. The fact that any of the acts referred to in articles 2 to 5 of the present Statute was committed by a subordinate does not relieve his superior of criminal responsibility if he knew or had reason to know that the subordinate was about to commit such acts or had done so and the superior failed to take the necessary and reasonable measures to prevent such acts or punish the perpetrators thereof.
  4. The fact that an accused person acted pursuant to an order of the Government or of a superior shall not relieve him of criminal responsibility, but may be considered in mitigation of punishment if the International Tribunal determines that justice so requires.

Article 9 of the Statute confers concurrent jurisdiction on the Tribunal but it must request a national court to defer to the competence of the International Tribunal.

The war crimes listed above may all be proved. NATO has aerial photographs of all Kosovo, it knows the names and rank of the police, paramilitary forces and the armed forces of the Yugoslavia National Army (JNA) and the commanding officers of these forces. Some of them have been put on notice of their role in committing war crimes. The information now known to NATO is certainly enough to get an indictment of these officers who are responsible for the barbarous conduct of troops under their command. The high-resolution photos show individual homes being torched in Kosovo. The photos have resolution so high that some individuals may be identified from 35,000 feet. Colonel Arkan, General Ratko Mladic and General Radovan Karadzic have all been indicted and are subject to immediate arrest if they set foot outside the boundaries of Serbia. One writer, Owen Harries, in The New York Times for May 16, 1999, dismissed the Kosovo crisis as no more than "one of those small but nasty local disputes that happen regularly all over the world." Here is a nation that has ignored all the laws for which there should be punishment. Harries, however, dismissed war crimes as little more than an "issue of little geopolitical significance" that now threatens to destabilize the whole structure of American foreign policy. "Russia did not come to Serbia's side in World War I and there is no reason to think it would have been better to act as a 'messenger' between Belgrade and Moscow in this war of 'ethnic cleansing.'" Someone has to tell Milosevic the bad news that his country will be destroyed unless he gets Yugoslav troops out of Kosovo and ends his depraved barbarity. He insists on not being humiliated by any peace plan, but he has already gone past that point with more ethnic cleansing. He is a serial killer and must be stopped by force.

These war crimes follow a horrifying pattern. First, Serbs in Kosovo pay an unwanted middle-of-the night call on inhabitants of Pristina and the many surrounding villages. The standard advice to these Kosovars, enforced by Russian-made machine guns, is to leave before dawn the next day, but only after they have given all their worldly possessions to the thugs. These same thugs also demand the surrender of all travel documents including passports. Men between 14 and 50 are sent out together with other men similarly situated and often killed on the spot. A very few are lucky enough to survive. A few have even survived after filming the atrocities that a court will see when the dust has settled. The Serbian thugs even pay visits to the local repository of deeds to property, marriage records, birth certificates, death certificates, and other documents that represent the lives of refugees as committed to paper. These refugees then are allowed to walk out of Kosova to its borders with Albania, Macedonia or Montenegro.

The International Red Cross and other refugee agencies estimate that 850,000 refugees have arrived at these borders in approximately two weeks from the beginning of NATO bombing. The evidence shows that Serbian leaders were planning these war crimes for months ahead of the time the Albanians became refugees. Slobodan Milosevic has a lot to answer for, having invited NATO weapons instead of opting for peace by calling off the dogs of war in the Balkans. The Turkish defeat of Serbs at Kosovo in 1389 is no excuse for war crimes and the slaughter of thousands of innocent, unarmed civilians.

The humanitarian nightmare in Kosovo may not by itself be a strategic interest of NATO and the United States. Greece, however, is a member of NATO, and both Bulgaria and Rumania would like to be members. These three countries may be lost to NATO if Serbia prevails in the Balkans. NATO has nineteen members who all agree that the Serbs must be stopped by armed force, because nothing less than the contours of Europe are now being decided. Early in 1999, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland all formally became members of NATO. In 1989, the Soviet Union collapsed, and its former republics spun off in favor of independence. These free countries are poor beyond belief, and nationalism has reared its ugly head in countries like Yugoslavia, i.e., Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia. Milosevic has been trumpeting nationalism principally to hang on to his power. Recently, Milosevic had been helped by Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian federation. In March, Yeltsin sent a signal to Clinton warning him of Russian intervention. Two months later, NATO bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and demonstrations in Beijing followed. China might not like the local reaction. One unnamed Chinese historian was quoted as saying "He who climbs aboard the tiger, may have trouble getting down." This means that conservative Chinese Communists may still undermine the state-sponsored plans to establish a market economy. One thing seems certain: the peace process in Yugoslavia was slowed down or even ended.

On March 23, 1999, Petar Stoyanov, President of Bulgaria, addressed the Bulgarian parliament regarding the situation in Kosovo. He carefully kept Bulgarian troops out of any conflict in Kosovo and no Bulgarian soldiers will fight in any military operations that are part of this conflict. Stoyanov also renewed his promise to lead Bulgaria into membership in NATO. Sofia is Bulgaria's capital.

Like Bulgaria, Rumania had a long history of cruelty to its inhabitants. Its early kings may have been public heroes, but privately their enemies were punished with a depraved indifference to human life and the elevation of torture to the level of public policy. Throughout the 15th century, the Rumanian-speaking feudal principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia offered strong resistance to the Ottomans. Vlad Tepes the Impaler (1456-62), became a legendary figure by his habit of impaling his enemies on specially-sharpened wooden stakes.A short history of Rumania by Florin Burhala appears at www.vicnet.net.au/~romclub/florin/ancient.htm. The period covered includes a Brief Ancient, Medieval and World War II History of Rumania, a Post World War II History of Rumania and The Revolution (of 1989) in which Nicolae Ceausescu and Elena, his wife, were summarily shot by high-ranking army officers on Christmas Day, 1989. The World Wide Web also carries a three-page history of Rumania at rotravel.com/romania/history/cap7.htm. After World War II, Rumania, with Bucharest as its capital, was influenced by Russia and its political system that promised a classless, egalitarian society. Its president today (1999) is Emil Constantinescu, who has been working to gain membership in NATO for his country. Both Rumania and Bulgaria adjoin Serbia.

During the NATO bombing of Belgrade and Kosovo, NATO intelligence also gathered evidence to be presented to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (hereinafter Criminal Tribunal). So far most of the evidence cannot be confirmed except through interviews of refugees who have been subjected to atrocities by Serbian troops in Kosovo. High-altitude photographs are thought to show mass graves in Kosovo where executed Albanians have been buried recently. Refugees in Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro, with nothing but the clothes on their backs, are mute evidence of refugee status. Their stories are being recorded for future use in the Criminal Tribunal. However, their status as homeless may be used as evidence of torching or otherwise destroying homes from which these refugees have been forcibly evicted; this may be seen as wanton destruction of housing without any military necessity. In the process of evicting Albanians, Serb irregulars and soldiers responsible to a higher authority shot and killed members of this group. This is genocide. See www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/fron.shows/rwanda/reports/dsetexhe.html.

The definition of what constitutes a crime against humanity was established at the Nuremberg Trials. However, despite the significance of this, the jurists at Nuremberg had invented nothing new. They were simply advancing Montesquieu's ideas on international law, which he described as 'universal civil law in the sense that all peoples are citizens of the universe.' Killing someone simply because he or she exists is a crime against humanity; it is a crime against the very essence of what it is to be human. This is not an elimination of individuals because they are political adversaries or because they hold to what are regarded as false beliefs or dangerous theories, but a crime directed against the person as a person, against the very humanity of the individual victim. Thus, it cannot be categorized as a war crime. As Alain Finkielkraut, the French philosopher, has pointed out, "is quite a different thing to be regarded as an enemy than as a particular species of vermin to be systematically wiped out."

This definition appears in a book by Alain Destexhe. See Prosecutor v. Dusko Tadic 35 I.L.M. 32 (1996). The text in this decision was reproduced from the original case brought in the United Nations-created court, The International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of Former Yugoslavia Since 1991 (hereinafter International Tribunal). In this case an Appeals Chamber of this court dismissed an appeal by Tadic by a 4-1 vote. Tadic had appealed alleging the Trial Chamber had been illegally founded, that the Appeals Chamber had authority to decide all the issues raised by Tadic. He also argued unsuccessfully that no state can assume prosecutorial jurisdiction over crimes committed on the territory of another state, barring a universal interest; the Appeals Chamber ruled that the alleged crimes were of universal interest. Tadic argued that he had a right to be tried by his national court under his national laws. The Appeals Chamber ruled that the principle is tied to the very sovereignty that has been surrendered by UN member nations, including all of Yugoslavia. In what seems an afterthought, the court held on page 73 of International Legal Materials that "genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law." Yugoslavia deposited an instrument of ratification of the Genocide Convention with the UN Treaty Office in 1951. Most other Western European nations ratified this convention in 1951. The United States ratified it in 1988.

The Dayton Accords culminating forty-four months of delicate negotiations with at least four prima donna participants may be read at 35 ILM 75 (1995). The text also appears at www1.umn.edu/humanrts/icty/dayton/daytonaccord.html It was signed in Paris. The Dayton Accords also have 12 Annexes, and it is formidable in its complexity. Actually, it makes more sense to read Richard Holbrooke's book, To End a War. He writes well and one gets a fresh profile of the participants. In another case before the International Tribunal, the opinion of the court offers more than the court did in Tadic. The Prosecutor v. Rajic appears at 91 American Journal of International Law 523 (1996). In this case, the prosecutor tried Ivica Rajic, a Bosnian Croat, with grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions for the Protection of Victims of War. The violations alleged were serious because they undermined important values, had serious consequences for the victims, and involved the individual criminal responsibility of the perpetrators. The court also cited the Dayton Accords Annex 1-A wherein the Accords provided that the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina undertook to "cooperate fully with all entities involved in implementation of this peace agreement... including the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia." The Tadic case was subject to editorial comment in 90 AJIL 64 (1996). These cases all related to criminal responsibility of Serbs during the Bosnia and Croatian wars that were ostensibly settled by the Dayton Accords.

The jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court relates to four categories of crimes: grave breaches of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, violations of the laws or customs of war, genocide, or crimes against humanity. To sustain charges of grave breaches, violations of the laws and customs of war, or crimes against humanity, the prosecutor must show the existence of an armed conflict, while such a showing is not necessary to sustain a charge of genocide.

A look at the history of Kosovo, this tiny enclave within Yugoslavia, seems appropriate. The province was created in 1918 by the Versailles and related treaties. At the outset this area operated with local autonomy. More than 90 percent of Kosovo's population were ethnic Albanians. Leaders in Kosovo really look to union with Albania, but they saw no real prospect of this long before war broke out in 1998. The potential for violence in Yugoslavia was first visible in 1991. Tito had died in 1980 and the 1974 constitution for Yugoslavia proclaimed local autonomy for Kosovo. However, the post-Tito government in 1989 revoked this autonomy and closed all Albanian language schools. The local parliament was closed and some 3,000 police officers of Albanian descent lost their jobs after refusing to take oaths of allegiance to Belgrade. Opposition to Serb rule in Kosovo was dominated by the Democratic League of Kosovo, a political movement that appears to have widespread support. Rexhep Ismajli, an organizer of the Democratic League was pessimistic about the future. He was a professor of linguistics at Pristina University until it was closed in 1990. When war broke out in 1998, an ethnic Albanian named lawyer Bajram Kelmendi, who specialized in human rights, was the first casualty. He and his two sons were taken from their home and murdered.

A great deal of e-mail and public comment has been generated by this ethnic conflict. Serbian television has shown scenes of Serbs in Belgrade with rock singers flaunting target cards, the symbol of NATO bombing, to huge crowds. A Serb official of state-owned television appeared on Larry King Live and answered a question about free speech. He replied that Yugoslsvia did indeed support free speech and added that "quite a few reporters are in court for expressing their views about free speech too freely." Comments from Belgrade have been characterized by an overwhelming sense of defensiveness. A state of complete denial is one way of viewing these musical spectacles. There is no sense that NATO bombs have been a response to Serbian atrocities. Serbs have been consistently portrayed as defenders of Christianity in Europe, heroic fighters in two world wars whose contributions to civilization have gone unrewarded. When American television provided extensive coverage of a Serbian Orthodox celebration of Easter, it should have been preceded by a caveat. Furthermore, there is no mention of the destruction of Vukovar by Serbs in 1991, or the massacre of men and boys in Srebenica in 1995. This barbarism led to the criminal indictment of at least two military leaders. Such things appear to be missing from the context although there have been infrequent accurate references to the Croats having waged campaigns of ethnic cleansing that chased Serbs into flight.

For The New York Times of April 11, 1999, Michael T. Kaufman thought it appropriate to question the conduct of the Serb population just as though Daniel Goldhagen were asking questions of Nazi "eliminationists" who were killing Jews during World War II. Do the vast majority of Serbs really want to eliminate all ethnic Albanians to ensure an all-Serb population when the dust has settled in Kosovo? Kaufman's first paragraph stated:

In view of the accumulating evidence of a genocidal campaign unleased against Kosovo's Albanians by the Serbian government of President Milosevic, the conduct of ordinary Serbs is starting to attract the kinds of questions raised in Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's book, Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.

In the introduction to his book Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, Daniel Goldhagen offers an intellectually complex explanation:

"Germans' anti-semitic beliefs about Jews were the central causal agent of the Holocaust. They were the central causal agent not only of Hitler's decision to annihilate European Jewry [which is accepted by many] but also of the perpetrators' willingness to kill and brutalize Jews. The conclusion of this book is that anti-semitism moved many thousands of 'ordinary' Germans — and would have moved millions more, had they been appropriately positioned — to slaughter Jews. Not economic hardship, nor the coercive means of a totalitarian state, nor social pressure, not invariable psychological propensities, but ideas about Jews that were pervasive in Germany, and had been for decades, induced ordinary Germans to kill unarmed, defenseless Jewish men and women and children by the thousands, systematically and without pity."

Serbs have acted in ways beyond savagery in some of Kosovo's towns and villages. They, and the paramilitary forces, have engaged in random killings of entire families, slaughtering the men first and then urging the women and children to run for their lives. Most of them never made it. A few from one village were exhumed to show the bullet holes in the backs of women and children, almost all of them Albanian.

With ground forces not being a near-term option, NATO forces are doing only what they can to bring Slobodan Milosevic to the bargaining table. NATO was not organized to supervise or even end ethnic trauma and murder by paranoid Serbs or, for that matter, by a grossly unpopular leader like Saddam Hussein. The United States is doing both, by intermittently bombing Iraq at the same time its jet aircraft, and those of other NATO members, are bombing Serbia. General Klaus Naumann, a senior German officer on the verge of retirement, spoke out. "We have conditions we have to follow," he said at a press conference in Brussels, "which degrade our own military campaign, especially the need to limit civilian casualties." In NATO-speak, civilian casualties represent "collateral damage." At a farewell press conference, General Naumann said the NATO alliance needed to reflect on how best it could reconcile the requirements of political control in a democratic alliance with the need to maximize effectiveness in future military operations. "We need to think through our organization's structure in time of war." The bombing of Serbian targets was continued after this press conference — it had never stopped even after a missile accidentally hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese staff members.

Vienna

Burgtheater by Night, Vienna
Burgtheater by Night, Vienna
CORBIS/Angelo Hornak

The Austrian Hungarian Empire was divided up after World War I, and the Treaty of Versailles was the treaty. Its French, British, and American participants divided southeastern Europe with minimum regard for ethnic boundaries. The divided empire left Austria as a separate German-speaking nation. This was to have fateful consequences. In Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's Apprenticeship by Brigitte Hamann These consequences were seen as molding Hitler's character. Hitler was born in Linz, Austria in 1889. In 1908, he travelled to Vienna, remaining there for five years and returning to Munich in 1913. Much of the ideas expressed by Hitler in Mein Kampf were related to his years in Vienna. A festering and widespread anti-Semitism in this second capital of the Dual Monarchy was picked up by Hitler. The author of Hitler's Vienna: Apprenticeship of a Dictator was published in 1999. It used quotes from Mein Kampf to illuminate its pages. This book was published in two volumes, one in 1927 and a second volume in 1931. Munich was the city in which Hitler became a leading participation for the abortive beer hall putsch in 1927 and where he as thought to have met Joseph Goebbels, later Hitler's Minister of Propaganda. Hitler never returned to Vienna until 1938, when he drove through the cheering crowds celebrating German annexation (Anschluss) of Austria.

That Vienna should have had at its center a huge tract of open land available for modern development was ironic in that it was a consequence of its historical backwardness. By 1857, Vienna had not razed its fortifications left over after the Napoleonic period beginning with the Revolution of 1848. Thus, it led to the construction of the Ring Strasse beginning in 1857. In 1850, statute created municipal government which was not fully implemented until 1860 and constitutional government was approved for all Austria. Structures were added to the Ringstrasse, not necessarily in order. By 1888 a photograph showed Parliament, Rathaus, the University, and the Burgtheater. All this appears in Fin de Siecle Vienna: Politics and Culture by Carle E. Schorske and published in 1981. Later, there were additions. An Art Museum was designed and built for the Ringstrasse. Emperor Franz Josef was benign in many respects. Possibly urged by planners, his Commission designed living quarters, initially for the wealthy and/or noble, followed by socially important low to moderate income rental housing and condominiums. Otto Wagner was one of the socially conscious architects. Throughout the construction period of the Ringstrasse, anti-Semite and organizer of pan German political groups, Karl Lueger, was quite different from Schonerer. The latter was often heard expressing opinions that might have come from the nobility, while Lueger was the son of a civil servant. In 1895, Lueger was elected mayor of Vienna by the city council. The emperor, however, refused to ratify his accession to office. Despite great pressure from the Catholic Church, the Emperor persisted until 1897 when a second election reaffirmed the results of the first. The final crisis of politics in Vienna was a selection of languages in the Reichsrat or Parliament. In 1910, there were ten languages in use for legislation, but no money was appropriated for interpreters. Finally, the Parliament that had approached the edge of chaos was finally suspended by the Emperor just in time to avoid authorizing war after June 14, 1914 when an assassin shot and killed the heir presumptive of the Emperor, the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife.

During this entire period from 1908 to 1913, Adolph Hitler was absorbing the politics of a nation quite conscious of its declining role in the affairs of Europe and even more aware of a spreading and vicious anti-Semitism. Here's how the author of Hitler's Vienna: A Dictator's Apprenticeship puts it on page 347 of her invaluable text:

There can be no doubt that while in Vienna, young Hitler studied anti-Semitism among other matters. The four politicians who may be called his political models — Schonerer, Lueger, Wolf and Stein — were radical anti-Semites. Many newspapers which Hitler read in Vienna, and many pamphlets he perused for his for his self-education, were anti-Semitic. Even when he was already Reich chancellor, Hitler's way of expressing himself had a Viennese ring to it when he elaborated on the 'Jews.' This proves that he mastered the anti-Semitic vocabulary of his Vienna period with all its characteristic clichés perfectly. Therefore many later observers, such as Albert Speer, initially took Hitler's anti-Semitism 'for a somewhat vulgar by-product, a relic from his days in Vienna... and only God knows why he couldn't shed it' Thus it seems to be clear that Hitler's anti-Semitism developed in a straightforward line, especially if one reads Hitler's description in Mein Kampf of how he became an anti-Semite in Vienna: For me this was a time of the greatest spiritual upheaval. I have ever had to go through. I had ceased to be a weak-kneed cosmopolitan and became an anti-Semite. Vienna, he said had significantly contributed to his becoming an anti-Semite: At the time of this bitter struggle between spiritual education and cold reason, the visual instruction of the Vienna streets had performed valuable services.

The words in italics were written in Mein Kampf in 1924. Brigitte Hamann has cautioned the reader not to see Mein Kampf as an autobiography. "This book," she wrote, "was clearly a work of political propaganda, in which a power-hungry politician on the rise buttresses his political slogans through a fitting life story to form a weltanschauung (a philosophy of life)." Those who knew Hitler in Vienna days argued strenuously that Hitler never spoke meanly of Jews and had many friends who were themselves Jewish. Brigitte Hamann even mentioned some who said he liked music, especially Gustav Mahler, a Jew, who Hitler said interpreted Richard Wagner and his mythic heroes in the Ring cycle. (Click to hear music of Mahler's Tenth). Hitler lacked originality, especially in architecture where he copied the architectural style of those architects who built the Ringstrasse. In fact, the day before his death in the Fuhrer's bunker he bequeathed his model of Linz as a cultural center for the Reich. A rather grainy photograph on page four shows Hitler peering at his model which apparently did not survive the chaos of the next day and Hitler's suicide.



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All contents © 1999 William M. Brinton