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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.)