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As much of the world’s atten­tion focused on the NATO aer­i­al assault on Yugoslavia in March of 1999, few under­stood the fac­tors under­ly­ing the strife between Serbs and eth­nic Alba­ni­ans in Koso­vo. This pro­gram sets forth some of those fac­tors. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of eth­nic and polit­i­cal divi­sions in Yugoslavia dur­ing World War II, the broad­cast high­lights Kosovo’s eth­nic Alba­ni­ans’ sup­port for the fas­cist invaders of Yugoslavia and their pro­gram of exter­mi­na­tion against the Serbs. Alone among Yugosla­vian eth­nic groups, the Serbs fought on the side of the Allies.

Next, the broad­cast repris­es infor­ma­tion from FTR #48, con­cern­ing the Nazi char­ac­ter of the Eth­nic Out­reach Divi­sion of the Repub­li­can Par­ty, lit­er­al­ly an out­growth of the Third Reich. Grow­ing out of the “Cru­sade for Free­dom” (an ille­gal domes­tic intel­li­gence oper­a­tion), this impor­tant but lit­tle-known branch of the Repub­li­can Par­ty can deliv­er the swing vote in five key states dur­ing pres­i­den­tial elec­tion years. The Croa­t­ian emi­gre com­mu­ni­ty that fled Europe along with the resid­ua of the Third Reich plays an essen­tial role in the Eth­nic Out­reach Divi­sion. George Bush (for­mer CIA direc­tor and Pres­i­dent when Yugoslavia was dis­solved) was heav­i­ly involved with this Nazi milieu, along with for­mer CIA direc­tor Allen Dulles, for­mer Pres­i­dent Richard Nixon, for­mer Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan and for­mer CIA direc­tor William Casey. This Croa­t­ian emi­gre milieu was piv­otal to the estab­lish­ment of Croa­t­ian inde­pen­dence (a crit­i­cal event in the dis­so­lu­tion of Yugoslavia) and is deeply involved with the regime of Fran­jo Tudj­man (a reca­pit­u­la­tion of the Ustashe fas­cist col­lab­o­ra­tionist gov­ern­ment of World War II.)

Much of the pro­gram cen­ters on Ger­many’s cen­tral role in caus­ing the breakup of Yugoslavia and active­ly pro­mot­ing and par­tic­i­pat­ing in hos­til­i­ties there. After sin­gle-hand­ed­ly pre­vail­ing on the EU to rec­og­nize the seces­sion of Croa­t­ia and Slove­nia, Ger­many pre­vailed on the U.S. to fol­low suit. In addi­tion to pro­vid­ing train­ing, arms, media and diplo­mat­ic sup­port for both their Croa­t­ian pro­teges and the Koso­vo Lib­er­a­tion Army, Ger­many has sent mer­ce­nar­ies to Yugoslavia and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the aer­i­al assault on the Serbs. This was the first time the Luft­waffe had been in com­bat since World War II.

Oth­er pro­gram high­lights include: the Waf­fen SS back­ground of Bosn­ian Pres­i­dent Ali­ja Izbe­gov­ic; for­mer Pres­i­dent George Bush’s 1993 warn­ing that troops would be sent to Koso­vo if fight­ing broke out there; major petro­le­um explo­ration in neigh­bor­ing Alba­nia; Croa­t­ian war crimes com­mit­ted dur­ing an August 1995 offen­sive sup­port­ed by both Ger­many and the Unit­ed States; the crit­i­cal issue of the sta­tion­ing of 28,000 NATO troops in Koso­vo (the hos­til­i­ties erupt­ed over dif­fer­ences on this issue.) (Record­ed on 4/4/99)