MP3 Side 1 | Side 2

From the begin­ning of the bomb­ing of Yugoslavia in 1999, the story dom­i­nated news cov­er­age. Unfor­tu­nately, the cov­er­age (in the United States, at least) has been long on rhetoric/propaganda and short on facts. This broad­cast addresses one of the most badly over­looked aspects of the con­flict — the pro­found role played by Ger­many in the breakup of Yugoslavia and the result­ing pre­cip­i­ta­tion of hostilities.

Before the main body of dis­cus­sion, the pro­gram delin­eates two exam­ples of the wealth of Yugoslavia, one stolen in World War II and the other in jeop­ardy as a result of the war in Kosovo. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of Ital­ian fas­cist, Wehrma­cht liai­son offi­cer and head of the P-2 Lodge Licio Gelli, the pro­gram details dis­cov­ery of what appears to be part of the Yugosla­vian gold reserves looted by Ital­ian fas­cists in World War II. Ital­ian police found the ingots buried in terra cotta pots in Gelli’s villa in Arrento. (Gelli was assigned to guard the gold dur­ing the war. He is pic­tured above, and at right.)

Fol­low­ing dis­cus­sion of Gelli, the focus shifts to the Trepca min­ing com­plex in Kosovo, the most valu­able piece of eco­nomic real estate in the Balkans. As the eco­nomic heart of Yugoslavia, the Trepca mines are essen­tial to the country’s econ­omy. Com­pound­ing the his­tor­i­cal and reli­gious sig­nif­i­cance that Kosovo holds for the Serbs, the eco­nomic impor­tance of the Trepca com­plex is a major rea­son for Ser­bian oppo­si­tion to Koso­var independence.

The bal­ance of the pro­gram draws on a paper pre­sented in 1995 by British defense expert T.W. “Bill” Carr at a sym­po­sium on the gen­e­sis of the Balkans war. Inci­sive, infor­ma­tive and bril­liant, the Carr paper high­lights the man­ner in which Ger­many has under­taken the sub­ver­sion of Yugoslavia, begin­ning before Ger­man reunification.

The analy­sis sets Ger­man covert action in Yugoslavia in the con­text of the Ger­man drive for polit­i­cal and eco­nomic dom­i­na­tion of Europe, renewed with vigor at the end of the Cold War.

Pro­gram high­lights include: Ger­man eco­nomic and polit­i­cal war­fare against the United King­dom (includ­ing the Bundesbank’s war against the pound ster­ling in the early 1990’s); Germany’s pre­cip­i­ta­tion of higher inter­est rates through­out Europe as a result of Ger­man reuni­fi­ca­tion (those high inter­est rates have much to do with the eco­nomic hard­ship expe­ri­enced by much of West­ern Europe); secret Ger­man prepa­ra­tions for reuni­fi­ca­tion in the mid 1980’s; col­lab­o­ra­tion between Ger­many and Croa­t­ian fas­cists dat­ing from the time of World War II; a secret trip to Ger­many in the 1980’s by Franjo Tudj­man (pres­i­dent of Croa­tia) in order to lay the ground­work for Croa­t­ian seces­sion from Yugoslavia; a syn­op­tic his­tory of the Croa­t­ian fas­cist move­ment, its alliance with Ger­many and its mur­der­ous per­se­cu­tion of Serbs dur­ing World War II; a 2 bil­lion dol­lar interest-free loan to finance Croa­t­ian inde­pen­dence, arranged by the Amer­i­can branch of the Knights of Malta (see also: M-6); the Vatican’s role in estab­lish­ing the myth of the Serbs as the last bas­tion of hard-line, Soviet-style com­mu­nism in Europe; Ger­man par­rot­ing and dis­sem­i­na­tion of the Vat­i­can pro­pa­ganda line about Yugoslavia; Croatia’s human rights abuses against Serbs liv­ing in Croa­tia (they were fired from gov­ern­ment jobs, denied employ­ment in the media, sub­jected to heavy tax­a­tion, forced to carry iden­tity cards iden­ti­fy­ing them as Serbs and, finally, eth­ni­cally cleansed); the Croa­t­ian clergy’s bless­ing of the eth­nic cleans­ing of 250,000 Serbs in 1991 and 92; the Islamic fun­da­men­tal­ism and anti-democratic ori­en­ta­tion of Bosn­ian pres­i­dent Alija Izetbe­govic; the over­rid­ing and extreme bias against the Serbs in West­ern diplo­matic and mil­i­tary pol­icy; Vat­i­can endorse­ment of Croa­t­ian and Sloven­ian inde­pen­dence from Yugoslavia; Germany’s arm­ing of the Croa­t­ian armed forces in the early 90s; how Ger­many blud­geoned the rest of the Euro­pean Union into endors­ing the breakup of Yugoslavia (the EU ini­tially voted 11 to 1 in favor of main­tain­ing the unity of the Yugoslav Fed­er­a­tion.)  (Recorded on 5/16/99.)