How to Tell That A Book Has An Ideological Axe to Grind

In the spirit of "I don't need to eat the whole fish to know it's rotten", I will not be launching a comprehensive, chapter-by-chapter review of Shadows on the Mountain: The Allies, the Resistance, and the Rivalries That Doomed WWII Yugoslavia by Marcia Christoff Kurapovna. The book is concerned with the rescue of 500 American airment by Chetnik forces near the end of World War II, but while this incident is often used as propaganday by Serbian nationalists and their allies, Kurapovna has gone one better and written an entire book centered on that rescue. However, she seems to engage in quite a bit of questionable revisionism and out-and-out one-sided propagandizing in her efforts to not only put the rescue in "context" but to give it a significance that it does not warrant.

The subtitle of the book hints at what this context is--she argues that the Allies wrongly betrayed Mihailovic and the Chetniks (who at least once she claims were fighting for "Western values"), were duped into supporting the Partisans, and therefore "doomed" Yugoslavia.

Needless to say, it takes a lot of creative use of selectively chosen facts to make this argument; but while Kurapovna's footnote-laden book certainly manages to avoid the bombast of more obviously biased works, her agenda is clear. One can learn this with a cursory read through, but one can save even more time by restricting oneself to the mercifully brief Preface. There is enough coded language and unexamined inferences in these first four pages to alert the reader.

Echoing Diana Johnstone's disclaimer near the beginning of Fool's Cruade, she immediately begins with the "I'm only pro-Serb in the sense that the big bad Western media is anti-Serb" rhetoric, Kurapovna immediately plays to the nationalist mythological motifs of Serbia's specialness and it's sense of martyrdom. She is not subtle. The third sentence reads:

"Yet anyone writing about Serbia must remain constantly on the defensive--to respond to usually knee-jerk, ill-informed hostility toward the country and to the questionable tallying of its various abuses and atrocities as recorded by less than scrupulous international media."

The contradiction between the book's ostensible concern with the fate of Yugoslavia versus the singular concern with Serbia in the Preface is quite telling. Considering that the book goes on to portray Serbia as surrounded by enemies , one wonders what sort of Yugoslavia would have been possible under the royalist Chetniks and the Nedic government.

To date, this book has received very little traction. Rather than give it any more attention, I am merely greatful that the propagandists for the other side are often so clumsy.

"Human Smoke": The Troubling Pacifism of Nicholson Baker

In March of 2008, Simon & Schuster published a new work of nonfiction by critically acclaimed author Nicholson Baker. The book is titled Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization, and it seeks to be nothing less than a pacifist revision of World War II history. As a work of responsible scholarship and serious historical inquiry, it fails miserably; as a work of polemic, it manages to be simultaneously tedious and infuriating.

As for the general tone, the construction of the text, and the tone of the prose, this review from the New York Times, or this one from the New York Sun. Both short reviews are worth reading for the quick summary of this loathsome book.

As noted in the cited reviews, the book consists of hundreds of short, clipped snippets of prose, often only a sentence or two in length and very rarely exceeding one page in length. Almost every single one of these paragraph "snapshots" includes the date, usually in the form of the mind-numbingly repeated format "It was [Month XX, 19XX]." I suppose this device was intended to give the book a sonorous, sobering tone of creeping death and destruction being brought on by the foolish and bloodthirsty actions of the leaders of the world, but especially Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Adolf Hitler, apparently, was mostly reacting to British and American provocation. The Imperial Japanese, for that matter, seemed to have been dragged into a war they wanted no part of. Baker's selective ability to take certain incidents and completely strip them of any context before presenting them to the reader would make Diana Johnstone proud if she were to ever read this book.

One of the most breathtakingly offensive aspects of this book, which NY Sun reporter Adam Kirsch comments on, is his willingness to take Axis leaders at their word while consistently highlighting every inconsistency and public lie Churchill and Roosevelt he seems to have come across in his "research". This is no exaggeration. Baker very rarely allows an overtly editorial tone to creep into his narrative (like Johnstone, he prefers to frame his warped narrative in a tone of faux objectivity); typical of the rare occasions when he does is this passage from page 214:

"An hour after the broadcast of Hitler's final appeal to reason, one of the BBC's German-language newsmen, Sefton Delmer, transmitted an unofficial response for German listeners: "Let me tell you what we here in Britain think of this appeal of yours to what you are pleased to call our reason and common sense," Delmer said in German. "Herr Fuhrer and Reichskanzler, we hurl it right back at you, right in your evil-smelling teeth."

That's no typo, and nothing in the text up to this point suggests any irony on Baker's part--Hitler was the one making the appeal to reason; by this point in the book, it should be noted, Baker has fully rounded out his portrait of Churchill as a racist, bloodthirsty monster indifferent to human suffering. Such a bastard, he wouldn't even listen to reason--from Hitler.

Another recurring theme in the book--"theme" giving Baker a little too much credit for this muddled mess of incident and contemporary reportage divorced from historical context or analysis--is the suggestion that the Holocaust was the unfortunate result of Allied stubbornness. The refusal of Allied and neutral nations to accept Jewish refugees is a well-documented historical fact, and rightly a source of shame for the United States and many other nations. And there is no doubt that the food shortages resulting from the British blockade weighed more heavily on Jews and other "undesirables" than on German civilians. But Baker is not content with such obvious observations--as the book progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that he blames the Allies for the Holocaust, since they wouldn't take the Jews, and the blockade made the Nazi plan of deportation to Palestine or Madagascar impossible. The "final solution," as it turns out, was the only option the Nazis had for ridding Europe of Jews once the Allies didn't give them anywhere to send them.

Logistically, of course, this is idiotic--there were several million Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe at the time, far too many for any sort of emergency evacuation and relocation efforts. Morally, this is appalling. Baker, by focusing purely on the evolution of Nazi treatment of the Jews from ghettos and slave labor to comprehensive annihilation, has accepted the logic of Nazi racism. Much like apologists for Serb nationalists in Bosnia, Baker treats the Nazis as being purely reactive, simply guided by outside stimuli. Sure, they killed millions of Jews, Baker concedes, but the Allies knew how the Nazi leadership viewed them; the Holocaust is here presented as an inevitable outcome not of Nazi propaganda and state power, not of the ideology of genocide developed over the course of more than a decade by a totalitarian state, but by callous Allied war-mongering.

The examples of Baker's moral relativism-gone-amok are legion. I marked many examples in the text, but now that I have finished this book I realize it would be unfair of me to inflict the dreary monotony of this book on my readers. While his horrific attempts to blame the Allies for the Holocaust will rightly most outrage readers, there are other aspects of the book which should raise eyebrows. Baker is obsessed with the carnage and military ineffectiveness of the strategic bombing tactics of the war, but rather than conclude that the strategy itself was flawed and a massive, tragic mistake by the Allies, he uses the horrors of a particular strategy and a particular technology as a blanket indictment of all war. There is no suggestion in the book that different tactics or different weaponry would meet with any more authorial approval.

I read this book because I knew it was a pacifist revision of the standard narrative of World War II--a necessary war, it must be remembered. Baker holds the Allies responsible for most of the deaths in that war because they refused to negotiate with Hitler after the fall of France and because they refused to cooperate with his efforts to removed the Jews from Europe. The Japanese leadership gets treated with even kinder treatment; one would never know that the war in China was a war of aggression by the Japanese military, or that the Japanese Empire had imperial designs on much of Southeast Asia from reading this book. One does learn that the civilian deaths at Pearl Harbor were caused by misfiring American anti-aircraft shells; I shudder to think what point Baker feels the inclusion of this detail makes. Being an interventionist and a believer that pacifism is, as a political and ideological belief, fundamentally immoral, I wanted to see how Baker would spin events like the Holocaust and the Rape of Nanking. The answers were troubling, and validate my convictions that pacifism in the real world is simply not a moral or responsible position.

What makes this book especially relevant to this blog, however, is how similar Baker's methods are to Balkan revisionists, particularly Diana Johnstone. Like her, Baker begins his narrative of particular events at certain moments without giving prior context, so that Japanese defensiveness is reported without noting that Japan was trying to consolidate its military gains in Manchuria. He presents incidents and conversations completely devoid of context or nuance. He accepts the words of Nazi leaders at face value while insinuating the basest and darkest of motives to the Allied leaders, just as Johnstone is willing to believe reports from Serb state media while dismissing firsthand accounts of rape from ordinary women. And like her, he presents the argument that the inclusive, secular, democratic values of our civilization are simply not worth fighting for.

Baker would have had the Allies make peace with Hitler; this way, he argues, the Jews would have been spared the Holocaust. But he has nothing to say of allowing a regime which would be capable of killing millions of people for the crime of being Jewish to reap the rewards for its conquests and violence. Like Jimmy Carter, Baker, seems to believe that being able to convince the bullies to stop shooting just for a little while, so that some of their victims have time to crawl away, is the best that we can do. Like Johnstone, Baker sees the hypocrisies of our own leaders more clearly than he does the gross moral failings of our enemies. Or perhaps I should not say "our." Perhaps the fact that Nicholson Baker, Diana Johnstone, and I all live "in" the West is merely incidental.

The subtitle of "Human Smoke" is, as noted above, "The Beginning of World War II, the End of Civilization." On one level, this is merely absurd--civilization survived the end of World War II and in many ways is better off today. In 1939, most of the "Third World" was still in colonial bondage; today, nearly all of the former colonial world has achieved independence. And so on; yet, the absurdity of this pretentious subtitle is the least of it. I wonder what sort of "civilization" Baker thinks we would have had the Allies made peace and fascism had been allowed to rule over much of Europe and its population of several million Jews. If Nicholson Baker cares so damn much about "civilization" it would behoove him to at least define it since he does not care to see anyone take up arms to defend it.

"Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia" by Marko Attila Hoare [8]

CONCLUSION

Dr. Hoare concludes by briefly recounting a central theme of his book; namely, that the war in Bosnia was a war of competing--and fundamentally incompatible--ideologies. The war was, at root, political rather than ethnic--which is not to say that the "national question" wasn't important, or to deny that widespread tribal bigotry was an important factor fueling much of the resulting violence.

"Genocide in Bosnia" makes this argument forcefully and convincingly. In the final page, Dr. Hoare concludes by noting that the Partisans and the postwar Communist never completely succeeded in ridding the country of some of the baser passions and more chauvinistic political impulses. In this light, the Bosnian war of the 1990s was in many ways a continuation of the same political/ideological war that raged in the 1940s.

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I highly recommend this well-documented, assiduously argued, and quite readable book to anyone interested in the development of 20th Century Bosnia as well as anyone looking to broaden their understanding of Yugoslav history. More importantly, this book is an authoritative refutation of the simplistic histories of Yugoslavia's World War II experience wielded by nationalists and their enablers. As such, this isn't just a valuable work of history, but also a substantive piece of academic activism. Dr. Hoare's book stands both as a sober piece of scholarship and a strong rationale for supporting and believing in the integrity of Bosnia-Hercegovina.

"Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia" by Marko Attila Hoare [7]

CHAPTER SIX: BOSNIA-HERCEGOVINA DEFEATS GREAT SERBIA, c. JUNE 1942-OCTOBER 1943

This is the final chapter of this excellent book, documenting the triumph of the Partisans over the Chetniks in Bosnia. This event was an important turning point in the history of Yugoslavia, but also a telling event in the national history of Bosnia itself. One of the main themes of this book is the specifically Bosnian character of the Partisan movement there, and how Bosnian characteristics and realities helped shape it. In fact, Dr. Hoare even shows that the Bosnian Chetnik movement, despite its allegiance to a "Greater Serb" ideology, was fundamentally a Bosnian movement, often at odds with the Serbian leadership (including Mihailovic himself). The culmination of the events and dynamics mapped out in the preceding five chapters is the unity and institutional strength of the Partisan movement in western Bosnia, and a string of military successes against both the NDH and the Chetniks, which solidified the supremacy of the Partisans and helped assure their eventual victory.

There is little need for a detailed summary--the narrative arc of this chapter is relatively simple and straightforward. First, the author details the temporary ascendancy of the Chetniks in eastern Bosnia-Hercegovina, which was ultimately transient for reasons Dr. Hoare neatly encapsulates:

"Yet the Great Serb project rested on shaky foundations: poor organization, primitive leaders, an administration riddled with Partisan sympathizers, a popular base that could not expand beyond the Serb minority of the population, and an often bitter animosity between its Serbian and its Bosnian adherents. The pyrrhic Chetnik victory merely set the scene for the subsequent Partisan resurgence."

And so, the avowedly provincial and self-limiting Chetnik movement would not be able to overcome its intrinsic limitations, nor would Bosnian Chetniks be able to transcend their own Bosnian loyalties in order to cooperate fully with a pan-Serb movement run by a Serbian and Montenegrin leadership.

Meanwhile, in western Bosnia, the Partisan movement--in a move driven by native Bosnian Partisans as much as by the Supreme Staff and Tito--would succeed in their greatest military triumph to date; the liberation of Bihac, which would allow for the creation of a nascent Partisan state in an area of Bosnia where it would be possible to draw a large number of Croats and Muslims into their ranks. The Partisans were then able to hold the first 'Anti-Fascist Council of the People's Liberation of Yugoslavia' in this liberated territory; this council was an important step towards the goal of creating a truly pan-Yugoslav, multinational movement.

These developments were followed by a series of military moves as the Supreme Staff sought to move back east and take the Chetniks on; these moves were initially successful, including the great victory of the Battle of the River Neretna, during which the Partisans both managed to hold off a coordinated Axis/Chetnik/Ustasha offensive and break the back of the Chetniks (although by no means completely destroy them as a military threat). An ill-advised attempt to return to Serbia ended in the near-catastrophe of the Battle of the River Sutjeska, at which the Partisan forces had to fight desperately just to escape a fierce Axis/Chetnik attack, one which still managed to destroy fully a third of the Partisan forces involved. Yet they did escape, and survived to link up with other Partisan forces.

Bosnia was won. The Chetniks, while not finished, could not hope to prevail. And then the Italian surrender to the Allies took their forces out of the equation, leaving the Partisans free to deal with the wholly inadequate Ustasha and NDH forces in western Yugoslavia. Serbia itself would not fall to the Partisans until the arrival of Soviet military power in 1944, but by then it had long been clear who was the dominant domestic power in the country.

"Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia" by Marko Attila Hoare [6]

CHAPTER FIVE: THE PARTISANS IN WESTERN BOSNIA, c. JULY 1941-OCTOBER 1942

This chapter covers events in Western Bosnia, which became the center of Partisan resistance after the collapse in eastern Bosnia under Chetnik, Nedicite, and Axis assault. In order to explain the dynamics at work in this region, Dr. Hoare moves back in time to the period just before the outbreak of the rebellion, in order to examine the regional particulars at work in this region; and also to explain why the Partisans were ultimately more successful in western Bosnia, and why this became the heart of the movement.

These developments are covered in extensive detail; rather than summarizing them all, I will merely note that in very broad terms some of the underlying challenges for the Partisans were the same--the chasm between city and country, the political immaturity of the Serb peasant soldiers, distrust between Partisan units and Croat and Muslim peasants, competition from Chetnik-sympathetic leaders, and so forth. There wasn't a war between Partisan and Chetnik armies, but rather a competition within one disparate resistance force from competing ideologies.

The Communists realized that they needed to increase their political presence in order to combat the appeal of crude Serb nationalist propaganda, and to make other institutional changes as well. When warfare finally did break out between the two groups, the Chetniks--further removed from Serbia than those in eastern Bosnia--were forced to turn to, of all possible allies, the Ustasha and the NDH state; the alliance between the two was never very stable or wholly productive, but along with the cooperation of the Italian and German occupiers this put the Partisan forces at an overwhelming disadvantage. Yet the inevitable defeat was almost temporary; for reasons which are complex and I haven't summarized here, the Partisans had greater public support and a more developed political infrastructure than in eastern Bosnia; once Axis troops pulled out, Partisan forces were easily able to resume control in spite of having been "defeated" the the Chetniks and their allies.

In short, the Partisans were ultimately more successful because in western Bosnia they not only realized that their best hope of defeating the Chetniks and uniting the people behind them was to put their multinational rhetoric and ideals into practice, they were--for a variety of local demographic, political, economic, and social factors--actually able to do so.

By the end of this chapter, the seeds of the future multinational Partisan army are beginning to bear fruit; the Croats of the Livno area were providing a solid base of Croat support, and Croats and Muslims of Bosanka Krajina were beginning to sense that there was a real difference between the Partisans and their Chetnik opponents. Real efforts were made to restrain the bigoted passions of peasant soldiers, to educate them in Partisan ideology and the nascent dogma of what would become known as "Brotherhood and Unity", and to articulate a Bosnian patriotism which could serve as a tangible, livable counter to Great Serb propaganda.

The chapter ends with a consideration of how Partisan efforts on behalf of gender equity were crucial to their ultimate success; Chetnik ideology was conservative in all respects, while Partisan rhetoric about the equality of women and their political and cultural liberation spoke to half of Bosnia's population. This was ultimately a great advantage for the Partisans--and their opponents knew it, as shown by the frequency of Ustasha and Chetnik propaganda about "women of low morals" and such.

It cannot be overstressed how much of Dr. Hoare's book focuses on the fact that the Partisans succeeded because they were ultimately able to impose an urban, literate, cosmopolitan leadership onto an army filled with recruits from rural, provincial, conservative villages and hamlets. The Chetniks--proudly rural, anti-urban, and conservative in all ways--ceded the cities to the Partisans, as well as the potential of Bosnia's women, and they would pay for their stubborn provinicialism.

"Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia" by Marko Attila Hoare [5]

CHAPTER FOUR: THE 'LEFT ERRORS' AND THE PARTISAN CRISIS, c. FEBRUARY-JUNE 1942

This chapter details the period when the Partisans began moving away from "a Serb-oriented resistance strategy, towards one that was genuinely multinational." But the transition wasn't smooth, and even as the Chetniks held the upper hand the Partisans committed serious errors of judgment and worse as they pursued often contradictory policies.

One major problem was that, partly due to the politically unformed nature of most troops and partly because of an embrace of extreme measures implicitly condoned by a shift in policy, atrocities against Croats and especially Muslims continued apace. These atrocities were now often carried out under the aegis of eliminating fifth columnists, but in the eyes of many Partisan troops and even some leaders all Muslims were fifth columnists.

Even as these massacres were eroding Partisan support in the countryside, the increasingly aggressive and confident Chetniks were carrying out putsches in Partisan units throughout eastern Bosnia, killing the Communist leadership and assuming command of military units.

This increasing threat even drove Tito to contemplate a temporary alliance with the Ustasha, a testiment to how precarious the Partisan situation was. Meanwhile, in eastern Herzegovina, a tragedy was taking shape--while this region had, in theory, a strong Partisan presence, in reality there was disconnection between the Serb-peasant countryside and the radicalized, multiethnic urban proletariat in Mostar. The dangerous brew of Leninist extremism proclaimed by the central command combined with the politically crude consciousness of the Herzegovina Partisans to form a perfect storm of revolutionary violence--much of the infamous and tragic "Left Errors" of the war happened here. Scenes of doctrinaire Communist violence against fifth columnists real and imagined (even "future traitors") were common, and the end result was predictable enough--the Partisans in the area completely lost the support of the local population. The remnants of the Mostar Battalion were forced to hide with family, as they had no network of support whatsoever.

Under the 'Third Offensive', the Partisan resistance in east Bosnia and Hercegovina collapsed; ultimately the Partisan leadership was forced to concede that they would not be retaking Serbia in the near future, so rather than stubbornly hold out in a doomed battle, they retreated towards western and central Bosnia--the Partisan "Long March." The remnants of some units from eastern Hercegovina and Bosnia were combined and reorganized; ironically, these stragglers who had escaped from a total defeat would form the experienced, dedicated, and politically mature core of a stronger, more enlightened and ideologically coherent Partisan movement.

"Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia" by Marko Attila Hoare [4]

CHAPTER THREE: FROM SERB REBELLION TO BOSNIAN REVOLUTION, c. DECEMBER 1941-MARCH 1942

The breakdown in the Partisan-Chetnik alliance had the effect of moving both movements toward their ideological extremes; the Partisans became a more explicitly Marxist/Communist movement fighting for social revolution as well as liberation, even as the Chetniks virtually ceased all resistance activities, and instead made deals and alliances with the occupying forces while laying the groundwork for an ethnically "pure" future Greater Serbia.

The Chetniks in East Bosnia soon turned to full-fledged genocide against the Muslims of the region (Jews were also targeted), while plans for a "Homogenous Serbia" were drawn up; the ideology of the movement was now fully developed and driving events at least as much, if not more, than the current political situation. This genocide would have been much worse than it was had it not been for the fact that the Chetnik movement was not as centrally organized and controlled as the Partisans were (a fact which would ultimately favor the Partisans, although not yet).

Much of the first pages of this chapter are concerned with the attempts to build this "Greater Serbia" within the confines of Axis occupation, as well as continuing cooperation between the Bosnian Chetnik movement and the Nedic regime (which was never total). Chetnik propaganda at this point stressed the non-Serb nature of the Partisan movement, and was drenched in virulent anti-Semitic rhetoric. The irreligious nature of the Partisans was also stressed, as well as their urban and non-patriarchal ways.

The Partisan leadership came to recognize that Great Serb sentiment was their greatest enemy, and that they would have to combat it with appeals to pan-Bosnian unity and patriotism. They also realized that they had made insufficient efforts to politicize the masses, who were easily swayed by crude nationalist hate-mongering.

For awhile, the Partisan military leadership even became (unrealistically) focused on liberating Sarajevo; aside from the economic desirability of this then-unattainable goal, this fixation on the Bosnian capital revealed how the Bosnian focus of Partisan activity was morphing into a specifically Bosnian Partisan revolution and movement.

As the Partisans increased their efforts to reach out to Croats and Muslims, they also tried to keep the door open to Serbs by setting up "Volunteer" units; military units of Serbs who fought alongside Partisan units without becoming Communists themselves. This effort to allow Serb peasant soldiers to maintain solidarity while fighting the occupation ended up being more trouble than it was worth, as the loyalty and military worth of these units was always questionable; ultimately, most would go over to the Chetniks regardless.

The Partisans also broke with Marxist orthodoxy in one important way--they made great efforts to show sensitivity to and respect for religious traditions, even assigning members of the clergy to units and giving them distinctive religious insignia.

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There is a great deal of detail I am bypassing in this extremely brief account of this chapter; in the interests of finishing this review in a timely manner, I will continue to provide bare-bones summaries of the final three chapters as well. I cannot stress enough how substantive and readable the book is. I highly recommend it.

"Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia" by Marko Attila Hoare [3]

CHAPTER TWO: THE GREAT SERB REACTION, c. AUGUST-DECEMBER 1941

Briefly stated, this chapter covers the period when the Partisan movement tried, and ultimately failed, to achieve a military and governmental alliance with the growing Chetnik movement; this policy was driven by expediency--the reality that in the opening months of the rebellion, the vast majority of footsoldiers were conservative rural Serbs. As noted in the first chapter, the KPJ had done a reasonably good job of taking command of an uprising not entirely of its making, but there were limits to how much control cadres actually had.

This chapter details the ups and downs of this ultimately failed enterprise; the author is sensitive to the difficulties the KPJ faced even while he does not shy away from mistakes made. The details of this phase of the uprising--when the Partisans were still "riding the tiger" of a Serb-peasant uprising, attempting to take command of politically unformed rebel bands are thoroughly documented.

Roughly speaking the Partisans were between a rock and hard place; while they needed to appeal to Serb nationalist sentiment in order to maintain even nominal control over the armed rebel bands, this also meant that all too often they had to pander to the bigotry and worse of their own soldiers. This translated to Partisan acquiescence with--and occasionally participation in--atrocities against Croat and especially Muslim civilians, especially as Chetnik influence and propaganda became more prevalent in Bosnia. This often pushed Croats and Muslims into collaboration with the Ustasha, which only fed Great-Serb propaganda even more while weakening Partisan pretensions to multiethnic cooperation and unity--which at this point was little more than a rhetorical flourish.

Still, for awhile the Partisans were able to build a nascent "state" in Eastern Bosnia by cooperating with Bosnian Chetniks, who were more inclined to some sort of accommodation with the Partisans (who's ranks were mostly filled with Serbs anyway) against their common Ustasha enemy than the Chetnik leadership in Nedic's Serbian state. This delicate balance was shattered when the Partisans were defeated in, and driven out of, Serbia, and the Chetnik alliance with Nedic became obvious, as did their decision to collaborate with the fascist occupiers. This triggered a breakdown in the Partisan-Chetnik alliance in east Bosnia.

The chapter ends with a case study of sorts; because of the still-underdeveloped nature of KPJ organization at local levels and other factors, some regional branches of the Partisan movement reacted to local conditions and these extraordinary stresses through their own dynamics, usually not with good results. Dr. Hoare examines the case of the "Drvar Republic", a Partisan mini-state which ultimately fell to Italian troops. Like the rest of this very interesting chapter, the story is far too complex for me to adequately summarize without going to great lengths--I would much rather prefer to encourage you to read the original.

"Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia" by Marko Attila Hoare [2]

CHAPTER ONE: THE COMMUNISTS AND THE SERB REBELLION, c. APRIL-SEPTEMBER 1941

I will make no effort to systematically summarize and review the entire contents of this substantial work, which manages to synthesize a great deal of archival information, documentation, and historical data into a coherent and readable narrative without sacrificing clarity or comprehensiveness. Instead, I will very briefly summarize the general focus of each chapter so that I might communicate some minimal sense of the larger framework Dr. Hoare richly illustrates. This entire review comes with the implied caveat that I cannot hope to do full justice to the book.

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This 80-page chapter covers the initial uprising in Bosnia, which was initially a home-grown resistance to the Ustasha genocide committed by the NDH fascist regime. Because my summary will be far too brief to do justice to the themes covered in this chapter, I will take the liberty of quoting the entire opening paragraph--which serves as something of an extended thesis statement--in full:

"The Partisan movement in Bosnia-Hercegovina was the product both of long-term socio-economic developments at home and of the short-term 'accident' of foreign invasion and occupation; it involved the merger of a traditional Serb-peasant uprising and a modern urban-revolutionary movement; and it represented both a characteristic chapter and a turning-point in modern Bosnian history. The Axis powers of Germany and Italy, by destroying the Yugoslav kingdom, changed the course of Bosnian history. Their installation in power of the Ustasha regime, and the latter's genocide of the Serb population in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina, unleashed a resistance movement that would take shape as the Partisans. Yet the Partisans were not simply an armed response to the new order, but a revolutionary movement of a specifically Bosnian kind."

The Axis invasion of Yugoslavia led to an occupation where the country was split into German and Italian zones of control; the Nazi leadership made sure to control the parts of Yugoslavia essential to their greater strategic aims as well as assuring control over key mineral deposits in Bosnia, for example. The Axis also set up puppet regimes, both in a truncated Serbia and in a greatly enlarged Croatian Ustasha state, the NDH.

The necessity of maintaining some degree of independence ultimately proved a boon to the resistance, as the armed forces of the NDH were inadequate for the task of successfully defeating a mass armed uprising. The creation of this "greater Croatia" in fact if not in name actually exacerbating the Ustasha's difficulties, as ethnic Croats made up just barely over half of the population of the NDH, and the Ustasha were of course only a minority faction of this bare majority.

So while the ruling party dutifully carried out their duties as Nazi allies in committing genocide against the Jewish and Gypsy minorities, the demographic realities of their new state combined with their toxic ideology led the Ustasha leadership to simultaneously pursue a policy of genocide against the sizable Serb population (Muslims being considered Croats who had converted to Islam). Whether this genocide had been planned from the outset, or was a decision that was arrived at later is a matter of debate; what is clear is that the genocide was a product both of Ustasha ideology and the circumstances of World War II but not of Croat nationalism itself.

The Ustasha genocide was brutal and savage, but limited by the military weakness of the NDH state. Dr. Hoare wades briefly into the controversy over the numbers killed both in the genocide generally and at Jasenovac specifically; no need to rehash that argument here. The relevant point is that the genocide was real, it did happen, but it was neither as efficient nor as thorough as the Holocaust both because of the lack of manpower and logistical support that the Nazi state had at its disposal, and also because it does seem that the genocide was carried out with varying degrees of ruthlessness and systematic thoroughness from place to place. The infamous Ustasha aim of (to paraphrase) killing one-third of Serbs, expelling another third, and converting the final third to Catholicism, while vile beyond measure, actually serves to illustrate the difference; one cannot fathom a high-ranking Nazi contemplating assimilating any number of the Jews of Europe.

[Note: In the interests of keeping this post at a manageable length, I will be grossly oversimplifying the narrative; my apologies to the author if I neglect any important nuances or fail to properly emphasize certain key points. Any incoherence in the following account is entirely my own, and does not reflect the much more comprehensive and well-developed account in the book]

In the meantime, the KPJ (Communist Party of Yugoslavia) was preparing and organizing for resistance, while waiting for authorization from Moscow (which would come after the German invasion). Dr. Hoare has done an admirable job of explaining the process by which the party organized, and by which connections between Bosnia's small but growing urban working class and the villages were developed and utilized. For example, seasonal timber workers were often exposed to Communist ideas while working at mills with other workers, then took those ideas home with them. Schoolteachers were another important conduit of Communist indoctrination, since they brought ideas to the villages they had picked up at universities and in cities; the author points out that educated and literate people often served as important providers of news and information in provincial isolated villages where illiteracy was common and there was little if any access to broadcast media.

Because of the unique nature of the uprising in Bosnia, Communist proclamations usually stressed Bosnian--rather than Yugoslavian--patriotism; appeals were made to all the peoples of Bosnia. This was a multinational, inclusive ideology, but it often jarred with the sentiments of the fighters in the field, and would not go unchallenged by rebel leadership.

I should note that there is a great deal of material detailing the political development of the Bosnian branch of the KPJ and its relation to the central organization, as well as a great deal of information regarding key figures involved; in the interests of brevity I will not dwell on these admittedly important aspects to the story.

The uprising, when it came, was fought largely in rural areas at first, and most soldiers were Serb peasants from the countryside; yet the majority of Bosnian KPJ cadres and leaders were urban-based, and frequently non-Serbs. The KPJ was not in a position to create this rebellion on its own, nor to completely control it. However, the KPJ was able to "ride the tiger" with an admirable degree of success and step into a leadership role once events were underway; the hard work of organizing throughout the towns and cities of Bosnia had born fruit, as the Partisans were able to provide the logistical and institutional leadership apparatus necessary to coordinate and direct disparate rebel units--the countryside needed urban centers to act as the "nerve centers" of the uprising. Hoare writes:

"Bosnia-Hercegovina created the Bosnian KPJ organization, not vice versa, and the Communists and the peasant rebels formed an organic whole."

The revolt spread across all of Bosnia, although it broke out at different times and with differing levels of success and participation, some of which was arguably due to institutional in-fighting which I won't recount now, and some of which was due to jurisdictional issues; i.e., some areas fell into a no-man's land between regional organizations. In the meantime, the KPJ was busy trying to normalize the structure of the Partisan movement; a thorough reorganization of the military and civilian institutions was carried out. The Partisan army was reordered, and the introduction of Communist insignia, flags, and other symbols was introduced. In liberated areas, governing was carried out by "People's Liberation Councils" (NOOs), which combined Communist organization with traditional village government quite effectively.

None of these potentially positive developments could obscure the central challenge to the Partisan effort at multinational Bosnian state-building--the fact that the military rank-and-file was overwhelmingly Serb. This was no matter for idle ideological speculation, either, once the the Chetnik movement became active.

"Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia" by Mark Attila Hoare [1]

Introduction: Understanding the Partisan-Chetnik Conflict

In the wake of my review of How Bosnia Armed by Dr. Marko Attila Hoare, I am now reading another excellent work by the same author: Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia, subtitled "The Partisans and the Chetniks 1941-1943".

The Introduction begins--after briefly defining the geographical and temporal parameters of his subject--in 1992:

"The war that erupted in Bosnia-Hercegovina in 1992 involved the clash of two mutually exclusive political projects. On the one hand was the goal of a sovereign Republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina as a state of Muslims, Serbs, Croats, and others, for which the majority of Bosnia-Hercegovina's citizens had voted and to which the Republic's leadership was formally committed. On the other hand was the goal of the partition of Bosnia-Hercegovina into separate Serb, Croat, and Muslim entities. This second goal was supported by the leadership of the principal Bosnian Serb political party, increasingly by the leadership of the principal Bosnian Croat party, and was gradually accepted de facto by the leadership of the principal Bosnian Muslim party. "

I quoted this section at length because it is noteworthy for what it does not say--that the war in Bosnia was an ethnic between different ethnic groups. No honest inquiry into the root causes of the Yugoslav wars is possible unless one first understands the ideological and political roots of the situation. One must study the past in order to understand the present; but the past cannot illuminate the present unless one is willing and able to recognize current realities.

This is important, because Dr. Hoare goes on to elaborate that while Western supporters of Bosnia-Hercegovina "argued on the basis of contemporary values--multiethnicity, democracy, state sovereignty, and human rights", supporters of the Serb nationalist project relied more on historical arguments, with an emphasis on the events of World War II. Serbs, it was argued, had sound historical reasons to fear living in a multiethnic republic they did not dominate.

The pro-Serb nationalist version of WWII history depicted it as a period of ethnic civil war between heroic, anti-Nazi Serbs fought against pro-Nazi and/or avowedly fascist Croats and Muslims. Dr. Hoare also points out that all to often, Westerners sympathetic to Bosnia reversed the ethnic stereotypes and portrayed 'the Muslims' as good and tolerant and 'the Serbs' as evil and intolerant.

Dr. Hoare argues that the reality of World War II in Yugoslavia was quite different, that members of every national group fought on "both" sides (he understands quite well that the situation in Yugoslavia during the occupation was complex and that it is often quite difficult to generalize about the loyalty and motivations of disparate military units across time and space); it is also true that many Yugoslavs were caught up in the internal war between Partisans and Chetniks without being loyal to or supportive of either side.

That is not to say that the "national question" wasn't present in or important to events in World War II; rather, Dr. Hoare notes that:

"...it is often forgotten that the national question is not just about the claims of one nation set against those of another, but about different concepts of the nation held by members of the same nation."

More specifically, it needs to be explained how the Partisans came to triumph over the Chetniks while following an ideology of multiethnic cooperation and coexistence versus the Chetniks Great Serb ideology which soon led to genocide against non-Serbs in areas they controlled. While outside observers have assumed that the answer is self-evident--the Partisans were able to appeal to all Yugoslavs, while the Chetnik appeal was necessarily limited to Serbs--the answer is actually more complex, because while the Partisan movement ultimately became truly multiethnic at the grassroots level, it began as an anti-Ustasha uprising by almost exclusively Serb peasants. How did the Partisans succeed in establishing leadership over a resistance movement of mostly provincial and often chauvinistic Serbs? Why were the Partisans originally willing and able to cooperate with the Chetniks, and why did this cooperation eventually break down? These are some of the questions Dr. Hoare addresses in this fascinating study.

Finally, Dr. Hoare is determined to show that the Partisan struggle in Bosnia was not merely an important battlefield in a larger Yugoslav resistance movement, but also the creature of a distinct "Bosnian revolution," in which an ideology of multiethnic cooperation and a Bosnian patriotism triumphed over a Chetnik movement and its diametrically opposed ideology of Serb nationalism and ethnic exclusivism; what is more, the Bosnian Partisan rank-and-file numbered thousands of ethnic Serbs who fought and died for this Bosnian revolution.

How did all this happen? These are some of the major themes of this excellent book.

"To Kill A Nation" by Michael Parenti [13]

CHAPTER FIVE: CROATIA: NEW REPUBLIC, OLD REACTIONARIES

Having acknowledged some of the troubling issues surrounding Croatia, Tudjman, the HDZ in both Croatia and Bosnia, and the lingering poison of Ustashe nostalgia, let us now consider Parenti's far less balanced and nuanced consideration of Croatia during the 1990s.

----------------

Parenti and Johnstone share many underlying assumptions about events and realities in the Balkans, but they also operate under a similar overriding assumption about their intended readership; they assume--or, more likely, they hope--that the reader is not particularly well-read on the subject. Aside from being able to pass off biased or even incorrect information as fact without fear of challenge, and being able to decontextualize at will, they also rely on a sense of astonishment and outrage at "revelations" which should be common knowledge to anyone with even a modicum of interest in the historical context of the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

Which means this--the first three pages of this chapter consists of a brief rehash of Franjo Tudjman's fascist past. This is not news to most people, but that doesn't stop Parenti from presenting this portrait of who he strangely names "the White House's man-of-the-hour" as a devastating expose. His summary of the Usatshe years is predictably gruesome and devoid of nuance. Parenti shares Johnstone's penchant for ethnic collectivism, so any indication that the Ustashe only represented a minority of Croats is missing in his version of history. Indeed, I suspect that Parenti would be incapable of acknowledging the complexities and ambiguities of individual affiliations and actions during such a conflict.

Perhaps I am not expressing myself well; Parenti's disingenuous analysis is so devoid of balance and nuance, not mention factual comprehensiveness, that it becomes nearly impossible to find a coherent position to critique. Parenti is not making an argument or developing a thesis, he is merely waving the bogeyman of resurgent fascism in the reader's face, seeking to incite revulsion and shut down critical faculties.

I will resist the urge to respond in kind. In my previous post, I considered the importance of acknowledging and examining the sins of Tudjman and the HDZ during the Balkan wars. Wallowing in the horrors of World War II is not the path towards unlocking the political motives of cynical autocrats and hate-driven nationalists in the 1980s and 1990s. Let me state--I absolutely agree that Franjo Tudjman was a thug, a Holocaust denier (Parenti's outrage about this point is repulsively ironic, given later chapters of Omarska and Srebrenica), and on the whole a toxic and destructive factor in the Bosnian war.

I will not indulge Parenti's crude rhetoric any further. In the next post, I will continue with the rest of the chapter, where Parenti begins to consider contemporary issues.

"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Five [2]

CHAPTER FIVE: THE NEW IMPERIAL MODEL

THE CROWDED "CRADLE OF CIVLIZATION"

A Balkan history lesson that picks and chooses its facts carefully, this section traces the history of Albanian-Serb relations in Kosovo with an almost believable facade of even-handedness. Out of context, these six pages very nearly approximate a serious and objective summary of early Albanian nationalism in Kosovo.

Johnstone acknowledges that the incorporation of Kosovo into the modern Serb nation-state was a 20th-Century phenomena, and her assertion that the Albanian state that emerged after World War I was too institutionally immature to incorporate all Albanian-speaking territories is at least plausible. Were that she so even-handed and historically grounded in the rest of this book.

She even acknowledges the bloody consequences of the Serb takeover of Kosovo--although (and this is telling of her point of view) without the graphic anecdotes and damning hard data that she deploys when the victims in question were Serbs--to the point where even I was half-willing to believe that the woman may only be misguided rather than dishonest and sinister. And then, without a change in tone, she shifts emphasis ever so slightly, and her true nature comes through.

She wants to discount the importance of the writings of Vaso Cubrilovic, who wrote dispassionately and bluntly about the rationale for, the logistics of, ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. To this end, she deploys some very valid points--there is nothing he suggests which had not recently been put into practice in the Balkans, and his ideas hardly shocked European sensibilities at the time. And, furthermore, some elites in Albania and Turkey were receptive to his ideas.

So far, so good, or at least not so bad. It is only fair to put his comments and the actions of the government of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes into the context of time and place. But then she goes further; and this is where the illusion of objectivity and fairness slips away:

"Cubrilovic was thinking primarily in strategic terms and saw future Albanian irredentism (whose rise he foresaw) as a threat to the viability of the Yugoslav state. This was cold realipolitik rather than emotional racism."

[As always, underlined text was italicized in the original.]

So ethnic cleansing is an acceptable strategy if it is deployed as part of realipolitik on behalf of the state, rather than as "emotional racism". This is on behalf of the same Belgrade regime that Johnstone previously claimed subverted the interests of the Serbian people, mind you.

In case the reader feels I am exaggerating, Johnstone goes on to document his suggested strategies--ethnic cleansing by various means (including terror) was his stated goal. More to the point, since Johnstone validates the logic behind his strategy, one expects her to condemn his methods all the more. She does not. She notes that his plan was inspired by what he saw as a far too Western-influenced strategy carried out by the government in Belgrade. She smugly notes that this shows that the Serbs were, contrary to the label given them in the 1990s, not historically wedded to an ethnic cleansing project. As I noted just above--suddenly, The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was Serb-controlled. When it's convenient for her argument, that is.

The section ends by noting that thousands of Serbs and Montenegrins were driven from Kosovo during World War II, and that Tito refused to allow them back in order to appease the Albanian majority. This was tragic and unfair; typically of Johnstone, instead of stepping back and viewing this as part of the larger tragedy of the Balkans--a region where local coexistence has been all too often thwarted by outside interference stirring up inflated national differences--she frames the matter in crude terms of Serbs victimized by brutal Albanians.

"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Three [28]

CHAPTER THREE: COMPARATIVE NATIONALISMS

TUDJMAN'S HISTORIC COMPROMISE

The previous section concluded by noting that the Ustashe went into exile after World War II ended. Johnstone picks up the story of the right-wing Croatian emigre network of well-funded extremists, terrorists, and activists from there. It's hardly an uplifting story, but neither is it as completely obscure as Johnstone makes it out to be.

Which is typical of her approach throughout the book--the audience Johnstone is writing for is certainly not comprised of specialists or even people with a prior interest in the region. Her entire strategy boils down to this--she assumes (hopefully, I would think) that she knows more about the region than her region. Much, much more. This might explain some of her unwarranted arrogance and self-proclaimed grasp of nuance and context which most of us ignorant Westerners presumably lack. If one were a young, idealistic leftist of a certain type, predisposed to think the worst of Western actions and rhetoric, this book might very well seem impressive, with a broad scope of knowledge and a detailed analysis of issues. If some ideal reader like that wanted to know more about the wars in Yugoslavia, something beyond the coverage done by major Western broadcasters and publications, this book might very well appear to be authoritative, or at least worthy of respect.

Alas, Ms. Johnstone. Most anyone reading this blog knows a little more about the region than would be ideal for your purposes.

-------

Which is my way of saying I'm really tempted to skip this part. It's yet more 'Ustashe-as-epitome-of-Croatian-nationalism' history by selective anecdote; a strategy she seems to have settled quite comfortably into. If you don't know about Tudjman's Ustashe leanings, his connections to the nationalist emigre communities which nurtured dreams of resurgent Croat nationalism, his background as a nationalist agitator in the 1970s, or of the distasteful--when not downright despicable--rhetoric of his government once he came into power in Croatia...well, if you don't know that, I'd be very surprised that you're reading this blog.

It's not that she gets the facts wrong in this section, even though there are the usual distortions and disproportional presentations of isolated incidents. Nor do I believe that it is not important to understand the role played by extreme Croat nationalism in Bosnia, especially in Hercegovina.

Diana Johnstone is in no way interested in putting the war in Bosnia in context; this section was not written to enlighten or instruct, but rather to distract and shift blame. And once again, she ignores chronology completely--the ideal naive reader she hopes for knows all about the resurgence of nationalism in Croatia, but has no idea about the rise of Serbian nationalism coming from Belgrade, and infecting the ethnic Serb communities in Croatian and Bosnia.

I trust that any reasonably informed reader already knows all this. If so, you're overqualified to read this book.

"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Three [27]

CHAPTER THREE: COMPARATIVE NATIONALISMS

WHY SUCH HATRED?

A short section, worthy of little if any commentary. Beginning with the true-enough observation that people often don't hate the other who are different but rather the other who, in many ways, are very similar (putting aside the issue of causation), she proceeds to extrapolate one more criticism of Croatian nationalism from this unexamined bit of insight.

Essentially, her point is that Croatian nationalism was not a "broad liberation movement" like that of their poor, pig-farming cousins the Serbs, but rather a "fairly narrow effort to gain prestige within a hierarchical order." Remember, the Croats developed their national identity in the context of being a subject people of the Catholic Hapsburg Empire. Johnstone believes that there is a hierarchical order of nationalisms as well, and the Serbs are much higher up the chain the snobbish, elitist Croats, who upon independence were, in her telling, dismayed to find themselves lumped in with all those dirty, Orthodox Slavs to the south.

Of course, it is easy to find bigoted, racist, and elitist statements by leading Croats, including Ante Staveric, the founder of the Croatian Party of Rights. Establish a direct line between the chauvinism of Staveric to the outright insane bigotry of Pavelic, demonstrate that many hard-line Ustashe went into exile after World War II, and you've got yourself one sinister-looking piece of damning evidence.

That's about it for this section, which is only two pages long. Again, I have no love for the Ustashe or its ideology. I shouldn't have to make that disclaimer, but in Johnstone's version of history I must--all Croatian nationalism, in her version of history, revolves around the Ustashe. Croatian nationalism, in her telling, was a direct line leading the Pavelic's regime. All Croatian history after the War was simply a long period of waiting before Croatia's true nature would again reveal itself.

One last note--it's very distressing how lively and focused Johnstone's prose is in this section; her writing is much more direct and less cluttered with unrelated trivia. I fear she is enjoying this dragging through the muck just as much as I find it depressing.

"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Three [26]

CHAPTER THREE: COMPARATIVE NATIONALISMS

THE SPIRIT OF THE CRUSADES

In this section, Johnstone addresses the role the Catholic Church played in the Ustashe regime. This is, no doubt, not a pretty story. The Ustashe regime was nauseatingly pious, and the Vatican certainly did not seem overly concerned about the atrocities being committed at least partially in the name of Catholicism.

Where Johnstone goes overboard is not in her condemnation of the Vatican's complicity in Ustashe crimes--this may be the first time, after 148 pages, where Johnstone and I actually agree on something--but in her typical failure to examine the wider context.

The Catholic Church was, as any reader of her book should know, rather chummy with fascist and far-right authoritarian regimes in places other than Croatia. While it's true that Pavelic and his government called forth the spirit of earlier Crusades against heretics, such rhetorical flourishes should not distract us from the wider issues at hand.

Her claims that the Ustashe regime was a direct rebirth of Franciscan persecution of Christians in the Middle Ages is strained, to put it mildly. Her assertion that the Bosnian Church were Bogomil heretics is mistaken, although this misconception is rather widespread and she really cannot be faulted for it. However, she also claims that the Orthodox Christians of Bosnia were Serbs, a very debatable point at best. It is doubtful that the Orthodox Christians of medieval Bosnia thought of themselves as Serbs; not all of them at least. Once again, she makes a direct connection between modern nationalism and pre-modern ethnic/religious identity.

The paragraph I have been discussing closes with this curious quote:

"Elsewhere esteemed for their unworldly pacifism, the Franciscans of Bosnia-Herzegovina (whose stronghold is in the district of the recent "miracles" of Medjugorje in western Herzegovina) acted as a virtual military order to propagate the official doctrine of the Church against both the heretics (Bogomils) and the "schismatics" (Greek Orthodox, that is, Serbs). In those border territories of the faith, along the East-West border with Orthodoxy, the Catholic Church sponsored a militant aggression in total contrast to the meek, ecumenical attitudes displayed in other times and places."

So you have Johnstone making the implicit claim that all Orthodox Slavs in the western Balkans were Serbs, centuries before the onset modern nationalism and the development of modern national identities. But what is more striking about that passage is the final sentence--Johnstone might be the only person in the world who thinks of the medieval Catholic Church as having been meek and ecumenical. This is the same church she was damning for Crusades against multiple heresies, after all.

The rest of this short section continues in the same vein, going over the details of the Ustashe campaign of forced conversions and fanatically relgious rhetoric. Not much to say--it's a horrible chapter in history, and most anyone interested enough in the region to bother with my blog most likely knows about the hell on earth that was Jasenovac. As I said in my previous post--I hesitate to dwell too long on the distortions and selectivity of Johnstone's version of events in Ustashe Croatia because I do not want to counter her callousness to the victims of the Bosnian war with an implied indifference to the victims of Ante Pavelic's insane campaign against Serbs and others. Suffice it to say--Johnstone does nothing to illuminate or understand the horror of that time. Instead, she feeds the fires of resentment by wallowing in exaggerated notions of a quasi-myth papist plot.

"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Three [25]

CHAPTER THREE: COMPARATIVE NATIONALISMS

AN OBSCURE FRATRICIDE

I don't have a lot of time tonight. Fortunately for me, this section won't take much time.

The "obscure fratricide" refers to the barbarous Ustashe regime during World War II. I'm going to assume that anyone reading this blog already knows enough about the subject; no need to reiterate that not-so-obscure bit of history here. Johnstone--normally breezy and glib with the details of history--is painfully detailed and anecdotal in this section. Rather than the broad outlines of events from Slovene and Croat history, we get specific dates and events here. It goes without saying that her version of Yugoslavia's WWII was a black-and-white struggle between fascist Croats and their Muslim allies versus heroic, anti-fascist Serbs.

I feel dirty writing stuff like the above paragraph; it makes me sound dismissive and callous to the suffering of the hundreds of thousands of victims of the Ustasha regime. I don't wish to convey that impression. However, the one-sided, grossly oversimplified version of history Johnstone is peddling here is stifling and claustrophobic; it is nearly impossible to change the subject from the victims of Ustasha terror without appearing unfeeling. To point out that only a minority of Croats supported the Ustasha, or that the quisling Serb regime in Belgrade was also guilty of atrocities against Jews and others, or that the civil war between Partisans and Chetniks was multi-faceted and involved members of all the ethnic groups fighting on all different sides might only seem to clutter the table.

Johnstone throws the corpses of the Serbs and others murdered by the government of Ante Pavelic on the table like the most obscene of trump cards. Her willingness to indulge in the pornography of war at the expense of the convoluted reality of the time (where's her 'nuance' now?) is infuriating and insulting. And, ultimately, not worth discussing.

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That's pretty much it for this section. In the next post, we will examine the point she makes at the end of this disagreeable little history lesson--the involvement of the Catholic Church in the Ustasha reign of terror.