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are not necessarily endorsed nor are they ignored. [I think they call this
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>From wsws.org
WSWS : News & Analysis : Europe : The Balkan Crisis
The Kosovo refugee crisis and the Holocaust: How the German government
defends its military policy
By Ulrich Rippert
16 April 1999
Three weeks of permanent air attacks by NATO have been insufficient to bring
Serbia to heel. The commanders of the Alliance forces have reacted with
intensified air strikes and preparations for the intervention of ground
troops. Increasingly it is civilian targets which are being identified and
hit in the strikes. The NATO war is rapidly developing into a form of
general terror against the Serb population.
At the same time the doubts and questions regarding the purpose of the war
have grown. The original propaganda, which claimed that the offensive was
being waged for humanitarian purposes, has long since been overtaken by
reality. The editor of Germany's major news magazine Der Spiegel has posed
the question: "What are we doing in the Balkans?" The co-editor of the
weekly Die Zeit newspaper, Theo Summer, asks: "Is there the danger of a
fiasco?" and hesitatingly but clearly answers his own question in the
affirmative. Former SPD (Social Democratic Party) chancellor Helmut Schmidt
has delivered his own devastating judgement: "International law has been
broken at the behest of the Americans. This war is a mistake." Even the
ultra-patriotic Bild newspaper has expressed doubts: "Is the war correct?"
Under these conditions the ruling German coalition government of the SPD and
the Greens have pulled out all the stops and begun a propaganda campaign
which, in terms of demagogy and manipulation, puts all previous efforts in
the shade.
Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping (SPD), up until now a colourless political
technocrat with sleep-inducing rhetoric and the charisma of an office
manager, suddenly functions as the principal demagogue for the military
brass.
At the first press conference, immediately following the beginning of the
war, Scharping delivered a warning to journalists, demanding that they
openly exercise self-censorship. Every word critical of the NATO offensive
must be avoided, he argued, because it would strengthen the enemy, prolong
the war and therefore lead to increasing numbers of victims amongst the NATO
and German troops. However, this attempt to revive the infamous "Dolchsto�"
Legend* showed little signs of working. Critical voices became louder.
Over the past few days the government has stepped up the war of words. Now,
according to Defence Minister Scharping and Foreign Minister Joschka
Fischer, the behaviour of Slobodan Milosevic must be compared to the
"inhuman activities of Adolf Hitler". Fischer declared to journalists that
the actions of the Serb militias against the drained and exhausted refugees
reminded him of the worst pictures of the burning down of the Warsaw ghetto.
"For the first time in this century Germany is on the right side," Fischer
added. And at every available opportunity Scharping has repeated his formula
that the "unimaginable cruelty in Kosovo recalls the twisted face of
Germany's past".
With increasing clarity they draw a parallel with the National Socialist
holocaust. Every press statement by the foreign and defence ministries is
loaded with the appropriate vocabulary: "massacres, slaughterhouses,
selection, concentration camp, mountains of bodies".
Der Spiegel reported a week ago on a "media offensive" by the defence
ministry aimed at defusing the growing criticism. "Air reconnaissance photos
must prove the existence of concentration camps in Kosovo. Scharping and the
chancellor's office have ordered the urgent acquisition of such items of
evidence.... Since last Monday the German army sends out unmanned
reconnaissance planes stationed in Macedonia, Tornados are also taking part
in the search.... As soon as the photographic evidence has been acquired the
government intends to use it to justify its war effort. In this way the
Russians will also be publicly put under pressure. The search continued
until the middle of the week without success. A German reconnaissance plane
took photos of the sports stadium in Pristina--an alleged concentration
camp--but the stadium was empty."
The daily press conferences by the defence ministry are aimed exclusively at
issuing instructions, not providing information. Any critical questions are
sharply rebuffed. Die Zeit questioned: "What lay behind the furious
eruptions--on one occasion by Fischer, another time by Scharping--merely
because the media were not willing to clearly distinguish between
perpetrator and victim, were not prepared to accept as fact the 'cynicism',
the 'mountains of bodies', the 'concentration camps' or 'the slaughter
house'?"
Any comparison between Milosevic's soldiers and the bunch of murderers
organised in the SA and the SS, or the drawing of parallels between the
present refugee camps and the destruction chambers of the Nazis, involves a
massive distortion of history.
Six million Jews were systematically and brutally murdered in the
concentration camps. Whoever then draws a parallel with the present
repression of the Kosovars in fact derides the victims of the Holocaust.
Such a belittling of the crimes of the Nazis comes close to a denial of the
Holocaust itself.
In Yugoslavia the crimes of the Nazis during the Second World War assumed
monstrous proportions. In Croatia, under the supervision of the Nazis, the
Ustasha carried out a systematic massacre of the Serb people. In the biggest
of the 20 concentration camps 800,000 people were murdered. In Serbia the
German army sought to break the resistance by shooting first 50 and later
100 civilians selected at random for every one dead German soldier. In
October 1941 the commanding German army general for Serbia, Franz B�hme,
reported that for the 21 German soldiers killed in exchanges with the
partisans, 21,000 Serbs--men, women and children--had been shot.
In light of this history it is no surprise that the Serb people have little
inclination to believe that the NATO bombs being dropped on their heads
today are for their own good.
What is taking place at present in Kosovo has roots which differ from those
of the Nazi terror. Leaving aside the issue that many totally
unsubstantiated rumours and accusations of mass terror are treated as facts
by the media, nevertheless it is clear that a systematic and violent
expulsion is being carried out by the government in Belgrade. These violent
actions by Milosevic must be condemned, but unfortunately they correspond to
a pattern which has been repeated in many countries in the post-war period.
The response of the German government with regard to such developments is,
however, highly selective.
Fifty years ago the state of Israel was established through the brutal
expulsion and suppression of the Palestinians. In Turkey the government has
refused to acknowledge the right of existence of the Kurdish minority and
has destroyed 3,000 Kurdish villages. In this regard, it is in no respect
any better than the Milosevic government in Belgrade, but nevertheless
enjoys membership in NATO and financial and military assistance from the
German government.
The government is also equally one-sided and arbitrary with regard to the
expulsions in the Balkans--its policy varying according to its own immediate
interests. The April 8 edition of the Frankfurter Rundschau drew attention
to this point in an article by Pierre Simonitsch titled: "A History of
Expulsions".
Simonitsch wrote that the history of the Balkans was "always a history of
expulsions and mass murders", the only exception being the years of the Tito
government. At the beginning of the nineties the German government played a
key role in re-igniting national conflicts when it insisted on the
recognition of Slovenia and Croatia as independent states. Simonitsch wrote:
"The situation is dramatic. But not exactly new for the Balkans. One had
forgotten the 600,000 Serbs, who since 1991 had fled Croatia and
Bosnia-Herzegovina. With NATO logistical support the Croat army drove
200,000 Serbs from Krajina where they had lived for 250 years. Many of them
were lodged in army barracks, where they can become unintentional targets
for NATO bombers."
In light of these considerations Simonitsch poses the justified question of
whether the German government was really so surprised by the events in
Kosovo as it claims to be today: "Did the Western governments consciously
take into account the expulsion of the Kosovar Albanians when they ordered
the air attacks against the rest of Yugoslavia? It is difficult to believe
that the NATO strategists overlooked the possible consequences of their
plans. Instead of preventing a human tragedy the bombings have had the
opposite affect."
That the German government adopts an increasingly grotesque demagogy and
falsification of history results from the fact that it is attempting to
defend a war which is indefensible. At the start it was: "For humanity!",
but the bombing brought destruction and waste. Then came the slogan: "Stop
the expulsions!" under conditions where the air strikes became the cover for
the biggest expulsions in recent history. Now they just say: "For or against
fascism!" What a declaration of political bankruptcy!
*After the First World War reactionary, nationalist forces claimed that
Germany lost the war not because it was militarily defeated at the front,
but because it was stabbed in the back ("Dolchsto�") by socialist and
communist minded workers at home.
See Also:
What does the bombing of Kosovar refugees say about NATO's "humanitarian"
war?
[16 April 1999]
As Washington escalates air war
US-NATO jets bomb Kosovan civilians
[15 April 1999]
The US and ethnic cleansing--the case of Croatia
[15 April 1999]
What would be the consequences of a US declaration of war on Yugoslavia?
[15 April 1999]
What will be left of Yugoslavia after the bombing?
[13 April 1999]
War in the Balkans
[WSWS Full Coverage]
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Readers: The WSWS invites your comments. Please send e-mail.
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