German historical revisionism in the Balkans at the turn of the 21st century

The result was:
– More than 100 thousand Serbs were ethnically cleansed.
– More than 240 thousand Serbs were forcibly converted to Catholicism.
– According to as of yet incomplete information, which has not
been definitively confirmed and comes mostly from Nazi and fascist
eye-witnesses to the genocide (who were themselves backers of the
Croatian state), at least 750 thousand Serbs were exterminated. This
information comes from valuable, primary historical sources. Never-
theless, the final figure may still climb because it was never verified
through exhumation, identification, etc. Nonetheless, the number of
the victims of genocide does not determine or characterize the condi-
tion of this “most terrible crime that the history of mankind has wit-
nessed.” (R. Lemkin). How does Korb deal with these issues?

He immediately dismisses a shockingly large portion of primary his-
torical sources and removes them completely from academic analysis.
All Serbian sources are either “nationalist” (pg. 18, 24, 45), or “com-
munist” because they were put together in a Stalinist “diction” (pg. 45).
In addition, witness statements from Serbian genocide survivors and
refugees contain merely “individual accounts, which appear falsified.”
(pg. 46)
The reason behind this last determination is that it is “problematic
material, because it was manipulated by the Serbian government for
nationalist reasons” (pg. 45). Similarly, he rejects the reliability and his-
torical accuracy of all first-hand accounts by German and Italian wit-
nesses to the crimes, with the same intriguing explanation, that the
persons in question were simply “relying on evidence and information
provided by Serbian nationalists” (pg. 16, 17, 18, 24, 25, 35). This radical-
ly exclusive stance in regard to invaluable primary historical facts ren-
ders virtually all serious discussion on the topic meaningless, because
how can we engage in an argumentative discussion with someone who
makes the following claims?
– The statement by then Croatian minister of culture Mile Budak
that “we will ethnically cleanse one third of Serbs, convert one third to
Catholicism and thereby Croatianize them, and exterminate one third”
(as dolus specialis, “special intent”, which is by definition a precondi-
tion for the crime of genocide) essentially did not exist, it was merely
“Serbian war propaganda, which was effectively spread to the occupy-
ing German officers by the Serbian Orthodox clergy” and so made its
way into official German documents (pg. 35). It is telling that for this
particular claim Korb cites exclusively Croatian sources.
– The leader of the Nazi civil administration in Serbia, Harald
Turner, “wrote in his reports exaggerated numbers of Serbian civilian
casualties, which were given to him by Serbian nationalists” (pg. 16).
For this claim Korb, who has exactly 1365 footnotes in his work, does
not provide a single source.
– He explains this “uncritical” reporting by Nazi witnesses by
claiming that “through the alleged brutality of the Ustashe they were
trying to distract from their own responsibility for the entire affair”
(pg. 27). Here as well there is no footnote. We are dealing with the au-
thor’s own interpretation.
– Korb even calls the highest representative of Nazi Germany in
Croatia and thus an invaluable eye-witness to the crimes, General
Glaise von Horstenau, “incompetent, lost in his Austro-Hungarian
past, an Operetta general” (pg. 19) and by so doing is undoubtedly
trying to disqualify the importance of his accounts.
– “Serbian nationalists were successful in their propaganda cam-
paign of demonizing the Ustashe even before the end of the war and
with their completely exaggerated numbers of Serbian casualties were
able to set in stone their myth about over 1 million Serbian victims
of Croatian genocide” (pg. 18). Here again there is no corresponding
footnote.
– “In Serbia we saw the rise of a cynical cult in regard to the number
of victims, which led to its absolute over-exaggeration” (pg. 24). Yet
again there is no footnote of any kind.
– “Nationalists in Serbia are exploiting the suffering of Serbs perse-
cuted by the Ustashe, forcing them into a paradigm of Serbian victim-
hood. There is talk of some sort of Serbo-Jewish holocaust, about an
alleged community of victimhood between the two groups” (pg. 25).
– On the other hand, Korb tells us that for his study “Croatian
sources represent the central bank of information for the scientific
study of Ustasha politics.” (pg. 41).
– He denies the genocide against the Serbs in the Croatian state be-
tween 1941-1945 and calls these events “mass violence”. “Nothing sug-
gests that the Croatian government, in assuming power, planned mass
killings” (pg. 114). Here as well no footnote or reference is provided.
– For Korb even the statement made by Ante Pavelić to the Nazi
diplomat Veesenmayer, in which the Croatian Fascist leader explains
that the Turkish genocide of Armenians serves as an example for his
own actions against the Serbs and Jews (which Korb himself cites here),
does not demonstrate the intent to commit mass murder, or at the very
least provide insight into the Croatian leader’s state of mind. Pavelić
stated: “The destruction and suppression of Armenians in the Otto-
man Empire eased significantly the ultimate construction of the Turk-
ish state... after his death Ataturk was remembered in history as one of
the most important people...“ (pg. 137). Perhaps Korb also thinks that
the essentially identical statement made by Adolf Hitler in his book
“Mein Kampf“ did not signal intent to commit the Holocaust? It is well
documented that Adolf Hitler was in no small part inspired and en-
couraged by the Turkish genocide of Armenians. As he was planning
the final solution for European Jews, Hitler told his generals, among
other things, the following: “And who today still talks about the Ar-
menians?!“
– Korb, however, is not always consistent. Thus, he still happens to
(accidently?) concede that “since the Ustashe regime came to power in
April 1941, their groups flooded the Serb-populated areas with their
massacres” (pg. 203).
– Hence, there was no genocide against the Serbs, and the actions
of those who committed the “mass violence” against them were “dif-
fused, did not have a central leadership”, so that the “Ustashe leader-
ship felt compelled to tolerate these kinds of actions by their troops on
the ground” (pg. 252). This is another claim that is supposed to rule
out the crime of genocide. Once again, there is no footnote or refer-
ence here. Yet again, we appear to be dealing with the author’s own
interpretations.
– According to Korb, these wrongdoings had diverse and banal
rather than genocide intentions. There were “numerous revenge kill-
ings and the settling of personal and political scores” (pg. 125), “the
internal struggle for power among the different Ustashe groups, which
resulted in the use of force against third parties” (pg. 126), “common
eruptions of spontaneous violence that emerged out of concrete cir-
cumstances” (pg. 204), “the struggle for food” (pg. 243), and on occa-
sion “the planning of one Croatian national park, as was the case in the
Plitvice Lakes region” (pg. 163).
– Korb explains the inhuman savagery of the “mass violence”
against the Serbs in a psychoanalytical fashion: “the Ustashe who car-
ried out the crimes were afraid of their Serbian enemies and this fear
was fed by mythical stories, the paranoia of civil war, and also by jus-
tified anxieties. The use of brute force on their part was to serve the
purpose of conquering that fear (pg. 251). “Some of the locals respon-
sible for committing crimes, apparently, entered into a type of trance
in order to become immune to the suffering of their victims, in order
to silence their screams and cries” (pg. 232).
– “Mass violence” against the Serbs was primarily aimed at the
“deportation and assimilation of Serbs at the insistence of Germany.
The Germans wanted to deport 180 thousand Slovenians into Croatia,
and Croatians reacted by demanding the deportation of 200 thousand
Serbs to Serbia” (pg. 131). “The primary motivation was deportation
and not physical destruction. The resistance of the afflicted and the
newly emerging problems surrounding it radicalized the persecutors”
(pg. 155). And so the “massacres and mass killings in concentration
camps were simply the result of a causal chain that began with the
failed attempts at deportation” (pg. 133).
– Korb mentions the concentration camps of the Croatian state and
stays true to his assertions; when referring to the concentration camp
at Jadovno, he claims that they “primarily were not intended for the
planned mass killing of prisoners” (pg. 160), because the “establish-
ing of the camps is reminiscent of the Croatian government plans to
employ the prisoners in saline mines and in the fields. However, the
administrators of the camps were disappointed when they saw that