The European Union advocates democracy, justice and standards which potential EU members must take account of. It has been constantly broadcasted from European capitals that all war criminals from the Yugoslavian separatist wars (from 1990 to 1999) must be put on trial. This advocacy by the European Union will go down in history as hypocrisy, since EU does not act upon it, just as the forefathers of this organization never did on theirs. The German leaders from 1933 to 1945 claimed as well to be the representatives of the highest norms and values, insisting that they were building a new world order. If today’s leaders of the EU honestly respected the international law and justice, then they would not neglect the fact that the Bosnian Muslim army murdered 8,000 Serbs in Sarajevo from 1992 to 1995. These crimes are terrible since they include atrocities committed against entire Serbian Orthodox families. When it comes to cruelty, the crimes against Serbs of Sarajevo outweigh to a great extent the other war crimes, perpetrated in other places, for instance the crime against the Bosnian Muslim soldiers in Srebrenica in 1995. The lists of the murdered Serbs of Sarajevo are supported with strong concrete evidence such as: complete names, addresses, the exact location of the crime, etc. Furthermore, the private property of these exterminated Serbs has been identified as well. But that property has now been seized by Muslims from Bosnia and Herzegovina and even by those of non-European origin. The Vatican, EU and USA do not take these facts into consideration, probably because they were involved in organizing and arming the Croatian and Bosnian Muslim military formations during the disintegration of Yugoslavia. When these atrocities took place in the period between 1992 and 1995, the West (the same players named above) was well-informed of these crimes, executed by the Bosnian Muslims against the Serbs of Sarajevo. However, the West kept this information hidden from the general public and did not notify the UN of it, let alone pursue any course of action to put an end to this rampage. From the standpoint of international rights, when one ignores crimes committed by others he becomes a co-perpetrator. The reason why the EU, Vatican and USA supported these mass crimes against Serbs will be explained and exposed by history.

The question which should be raised is: would the West also tolerate if 8.000 civilians were to be exterminated in European cities?

Bosnian Muslim warcrimes – Sarajevo (english subtitles)

Diplomatic scandal!

After the premiere of “In the Land of Blood and Honey”, in which Serbs were represented as killers and rapists, actress and director announced the action against the “genocidal creation” …..

BIG PROPAGANDA………

Angelina in the movie claims that in the Bosnian war Serbs killed 300,000 Muslims and 50,000 Muslim women were raped……

Sarajevo Center for Research and Documentation in 2006. year after years of research revealed the fact that during the four-year war in Bosnia WERE killed 96,175 people, of whom 63,994 were Bosniaks, 24,200 Serbs and Croats, 7338

If this data is not convincing, it could be called the demographic department of the Hague Tribunal, which has reported that the number of victims of the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina 102,622, of whom 72,000 were Bosniaks and Croats , and 30,700 Serbs.

Petar Djokic, Minister of Labour, Veterans and Disability Protection of Republika Srpska, the messenger says that it is clear that the part of a new attack on RS.

- But with a new approach! Angelina used to continue to attack us. That was the thing. Starting with the OHR and other international organizations, is always their aim was – to bust the RS, and even to abolish it. And now that they have not succeeded, try-tried methods, through art. Hollywood movie should be animated by the world public and that the Serbs are again on a pillar of shame. But these are futile attempts, but we will react if they are making false data. How is it possible that the Serbs in their own home are criminals and aggressors? It is obvious that Angelina has received a lot of money to do it, it’s all orchestrated!

What is the content of the film

At the beginning of the film Ajla is preparing for a meeting with the Serbian police. In the next scene they are dancing in a Sarajevo nightclub, when a bomb explodes, disrupting the peace in this multiethnic city. The bombs, of course, set up by Serbs.

In the next scene a woman distracting a bus that takes them into the Serbian camp, where they are raped! Serbian policeman throws a woman on the hood of the car and raped her. The policeman grabs Ajlu that her rape, but he stopped Daniel, “her” a Serb, who is protected from rape and tells her that nobody dares to touch. Ajla survives so it is locked in a room that sleeps only with Daniel. The reason why someone would spent the entire war defending the woman he had only one meeting remains unknown….

RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty

In Sarajevo, Irma Maric’s Friday afternoon on October 28 . 2011 was shattered by gunfire. She describes watching a brazen 30-minute rifle assault carried out by a suspected Islamist on the U.S. embassy unfold from her office window:

“I looked out of the window and I saw people running, like kids, also. They were [fleeing], because of the fear…When you see, through the window, people lying down on the streets, it’s the first thing I remember: the 1990s in Sarajevo,” Maric said.

The Bosnian capital was under siege during the region’s 1992-1995 war. Maric, a 28-year-old born and raised in Sarajevo, describes the city as calm today.

Political and religious leaders in the Balkans are voicing concerns over what some are describing as a “terrorist” attack on the embassy on October 28. The building has been temporarily closed.

Armed With A Kalashnikov

Sarajevo Mayor Alija Behmen said the attacker “got off a tram with a Kalashnikov and started shooting at the American embassy.” He was wounded in the leg by a police sniper and is now in custody. At least one police officer was also reported injured. An eyewitness to the incident, who gave his name as Admir, told RFE/RL by phone from his car that the shooting spree outside the embassy lasted some 10 minutes as police rushed onto the scene.  ”There was the sound of automatic weapon fire like in a war. Individual shots were heard. It didn’t last just a minute or two,” he said.

The attack is believed to be the work of 23-year-old Mevlid Jasarevic from the southern Serbian city of Novi Pazar. Bosnian officials say the gunman is tied to the fundamentalist Wahhabi branch of Islam brought to the region during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war by way of fighters from Algeria, Afghanistan, the Caucasus, and the Middle East.  The Saudi-based movement is connected to various religious militants in parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. They represent a minority, however, within Bosnia’s large Muslim community. Bosnian Security Ministry Sadik Ahmetovic told reporters in Sarajevo on October 29 that authorities are working together to investigate the attack.

“This attack against the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo is a terrorist attack and the authorities are coordinating their investigation with the Serbian authorities,” Ahmetovic said. He continued, “the Security Ministry of Bosnia-Herzegovina, along with other law-enforcement agencies, will make every possible effort to ensure that all possible perpetrators and accomplices of this serious act are apprehended and prosecuted. The authorities of Bosnia-Herzegovina will search all the sites that have any kind of links to the bombing of the U.S. embassy.”

Both Jasarevic and his home town of Novi Pazar have been in trouble with the law before. Officials say Jasarevic entered Bosnia on October 28, although it was not immediately clear whether or not he entered legally. He was convicted for robbery in Austria in 2005 and deported to Serbia. Serbian police said he was also detained for a short time last year on charges of wielding “a large knife” during a visit by the U.S. ambassador to Serbia and other officials to Novi Pazar.

Arrests

Meanwhile, at least 15 people suspected of belonging to a Wahhabi sect were detained early this morning in Novi Pazar and two other Serbian towns. Novi Pazar, which has a large Muslim community, was in the spotlight in 2007 after the police found what they said was an Islamist “terrorist” training camp there. The incident resurrects long-standing concerns over the rise of Islamic extremism in the region. Reports in recent years have warned that some areas serve as breeding grounds for the so-called “white” Al-Qaeda — a term used to refer to Islamic fundamentalists with European features thought able to blend in more easily in the West.  The incident is likely to have Muslims on their guard for potential reprisals against the attack. Maric worries that her last name — which she describes as “very Islamic” — will cause her problems

.

http://www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=53006

(Reuters) – Kosovo Albanian protesters hurled stones at an armored motorcade carrying Serbian President Boris Tadic Friday as he marked Orthodox Christmas in the former Serbian province, where Serb-Albanian tensions have resurfaced.

Kosovo’s population is 90 percent ethnic Albanian, and it became the last state to emerge from the remains of federal Yugoslavia when it declared independence from Serbia in 2008.

Serbia rejects the secession, and tensions have been rising since July last year when Kosovo’s government tried to stamp its authority on a largely lawless slice of north Kosovo inhabited by minority Serbs.

A crowd of some 200 Kosovo Albanians in the western town of Decani lobbed stones at Tadic’s convoy, which was escorted by officers of the European Union’s police and justice mission in Kosovo.

Kosovo police secured the route, jostling with protesters to keep them back from the road. The convoy managed to enter the grounds of the Decani Orthodox monastery, where Tadic will mark Serbian Orthodox Christmas.

“A number of stones were thrown, a number of cars received minor damage. President Boris Tadic’s car was not hit,” said Nicholas Hawton, spokesman for the EU mission, EULEX.

Tadic traditionally visits the 14th century marble monastery in Decani to mark Serbian Orthodox Christmas on January 7.

Americans are leaving Kosovo   to the end of the year

U.S. troops will soon leave Kosovo, despite the loud protests of the Albanian lobby in the United States, contending that such a move could lead to new instability in the region. Closing time and base Bondsteel, where the summer of 1999. The soldiers were even 7000.

United States by the end of the year to pull troops from Kosovo, as part of general austerity measures in the U.S. armed forces.

Departure of Americans from Kosovo means the abandonment of Camp Bondsteel near Urosevac. Great base near Urosevac became the “financial burden” America and the new military budget and strategy in the region provides its fire. U.S. diplomats have stated that the U.S. does not want to “keep more of what is necessary”, especially in the regions “are not so high on the list of American priorities.” Camp Bondsteel was built in June 1999. , immediately after the arrival of U.S. Marines to Kosovo. Tents, set by the vanguard of U.S. forces in the next few years were replaced by prefabricated homes. In connection with this base has never mentioned a few unresolved controversy, as the report of the Council of Europe in 2005. year in which he described Bondsteel as a “little Guantanamo” because there were allegedly taking place rather dull action in relation to persons suspected of radical Islam. In May 2001. year, he ran away from Bondsteel Florim Ejupi, suspected of having planted the bomb that exploded under the bus “Nišekspres” near Podujevo, killing 11 and injuring 40 passengers, the Serbs. From Bondsteel in Germany, was transferred and Ramush Haradinaj, secretly, when he was wounded in a clash with rival clan Musaj, and American officers, on this occasion, the fighting took place all of the evidence.

Dr. David Albala – born in 1886, a Serbian Sephardic Jew, a WW1 war hero who founded the Zionist Party in Yugoslavia. In 1915, he was sent to the USA to help with the Serbian war effort; and because of his efforts, Yugoslavia was the first country to back the Balfour Declaration – establishing the independent state of Israel. After WW1, he was sent to Versailles to collaborate on the peace treaty, forming the new country of Yugoslavia. Through his fundraising efforts, two forests were planted in Israel dedicated to the late King Alexander and his father King Peter. Paul sent Albala to America in 1939, for another fundraising trip. He died there in 1942, some say of a broken heart, after hearing the terrible news of the destruction and extermination of the Serbian and Jewish people of Yugoslavia.

     Captain Dr. David Albala and Major Weiss at the Fifth Avenue parade in 1918 for the liberation of Palestine from the Turkish occupier.)

Following a pattern set during the War in Bosnia, public opinion has been carefully misled. The multi-billion dollar Balkans narcotics trade has played a crucial role in financing the conflict in Kosovo in accordance with Western economic, strategic and military objectives. Amply documented by European police files, acknowledged by numerous studies, the links of the KLA to criminal syndicates in Albania, Turkey and the European Union have been known to Western governments and intelligence agencies since the mid-1990s.

…The financing of the Kosovo guerilla war poses critical questions and it sorely test claims of an “ethical” foreign policy. Should the West back a guerrilla army that appears to partly financed by organized crime?

- Drugs Money Linked to the Kosovo Rebels (The Times, London, March 24, 1999)

While KLA leaders were shaking hands with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at Rambouillet, Europol (the European Police Organization based in the Hague) was “preparing a report for European interior and justice ministers on a connection between the KLA and Albanian drug gangs.” In the meantime, the rebel army has been skilfully heralded by the global media (in the months preceding the NATO bombings) as broadly representative of the interests of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

With KLA leader Hashim Thaci (a 29 year “freedom fighter”) appointed as chief negotiator at Rambouillet, the KLA has become the de facto helmsman of the peace process on behalf of the ethnic Albanian majority, despite its links to the drug trade. The West was relying on its KLA puppets to rubber-stamp an agreement which would have transformed Kosovo into an occupied territory under Western Administration.

Ironically Robert Gelbard, America’s special envoy to Bosnia, had described the KLA last year as “terrorists.” Christopher Hill, America’s chief negotiator and architect of the Rambouillet agreement “has also been a strong critic of the KLA for its alleged dealings in drugs,” the London Daily Telegraph noted last week.

And barely a few two months before Rambouillet, the U.S. State Department had acknowledged (based on reports from the U.S. Observer Mission) the role of the KLA in terrorizing and uprooting ethnic Albanians: “…the KLA harass or kidnap anyone who comes to the police, … KLA representatives had threatened to kill villagers and burn their homes if they did not join the KLA [a process which has continued since the NATO bombings]… [T]he KLA harassment has reached such intensity that residents of six villages in the Stimlje region are “ready to flee.”

While backing a “freedom movement” with links to the drug trade, the West seems also intent in bypassing the civilian Kosovo Democratic League and its leader Ibrahim Rugova who has called for an end to the bombings and expressed his desire to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the Yugoslav authorities. It is worth recalling that a few days before his March 31st Press Conference, Rugova had been reported by the KLA (alongside three other leaders including Fehmi Agani) to have been killed by the Serbs.

COVERT FINANCING OF `FREEDOM FIGHTERS’
Remember Oliver North and the Contras? The pattern in Kosovo is similar to other CIA covert operations in Central America, Haiti and Afghanistan where “freedom fighters” were financed through the laundering of drug money. Since the onslaught of the Cold War, Western intelligence agencies have developed a complex relationship to the illegal narcotics trade. In case after case, drug money laundered in the international banking system has financed covert operations.

According to author Alfred McCoy, the pattern of covert financing was established in the Indochina war. In the 1960s, the Meo army in Laos was funded by the narcotics trade as part of Washington’s military strategy against the combined forces of the neutralist government of Prince Souvanna Phouma and the Pathet Lao.

The pattern of drug politics set in Indochina has since been replicated in Central America and the Caribbean. “The rising curve of cocaine imports to the U.S.” wrote journalist John Dinges in his portrait of Manuel Noriega, “followed almost exactly the flow of U.S. arms and military advisers to Central America.”

The military in Guatemala and Haiti, to which the CIA provided covert support, were known to be involved in the trade of narcotics into Southern Florida. And as revealed in the Iran-Contra and Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) scandals, there was strong evidence that covert operations were funded through the laundering of drug money. “Dirty money” recycled through the banking system — often through an anonymous shell company — became “covert money,” used to finance various rebel groups and guerilla movements including the Nicaraguan Contras and the Afghan Mujahadeen. According to a 1991 Time Magazine report:

Because the U.S. wanted to supply the Mujehadeen rebels in Afghanistan with stinger missiles and other military hardware it needed the full cooperation of Pakistan. By the mid-1980s, the CIA operation in Islamabad was one of the largest U.S. intelligence stations in the World. ‘If BCCI is such an embarrassment to the U.S. that forthright investigations are not being pursued it has a lot to do with the blind eye the U.S. turned to the heroin trafficking in Pakistan,’ said a U.S. intelligence officer.

AMERICA AND GERMANY JOIN HANDS
Since the early 1990s, Bonn and Washington have joined hands in establishing their respective spheres of influence in the Balkans. Their intelligence agencies have also collaborated. According to intelligence analyst John Whitley, covert support to the Kosovo rebel army was established as a joint endeavor between the CIA and Germany’s Bundes Nachrichten Dienst (BND) — which previously played a key role in installing a right wing nationalist government under Franjo Tudjman in Croatia. The task to create and finance the KLA was initially given to Germany: “They used German uniforms, East German weapons and were financed, in part, with drug money.” According to Whitley, the CIA was, subsequently instrumental in training and equipping the KLA in Albania.

The covert activities of Germany’s BND were consistent with Bonn’s intent to expand its “Lebensraum” into the Balkans. Prior to the onset of the civil war in Bosnia, Germany and its Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich Genscher had actively supported secession; it had “forced the pace of international diplomacy” and pressured its Western allies to recognize Slovenia and Croatia. According to the Geopolitical Drug Watch, both Germany and the U.S. favored (although not officially) the formation of a “Greater Albania” encompassing Albania, Kosovo and parts of Macedonia.

ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM IN SUPPORT OF THE KLA
Bonn and Washington’s “hidden agenda” consisted in triggering nationalist liberation movements in Bosnia and Kosovo with the ultimate purpose of destabilizing Yugoslavia. The latter objective was also carried out “by turning a blind eye” to the influx of mercenaries and financial support from Islamic fundamentalist organizations.

Mercenaries financed by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait had been fighting in Bosnia. And the Bosnian pattern was replicated in Kosovo: Mujahadeen mercenaries from various Islamic countries are reported to be fighting alongside the KLA in Kosovo. German, Turkish and Afghan instructors were reported to be training the KLA in guerilla and diversion tactics.

According to a German news report, financial support from Islamic countries to the KLA was channelled through the former Albanian chief of the National Information Service (NIS), Bashkim Gazidede. “Gazidede, reportedly a devout Moslem who fled Albania in March of last year [1997], is presently [1998] being investigated for his contacts with Islamic terrorist organizations.”

The supply route for arming KLA “freedom fighters” are the rugged mountainous borders of Albania with Kosovo and Macedonia. Albania is also a key point of transit of the Balkans drug route which supplies Western Europe with grade four heroin. 75 percent of the heroin entering Western Europe is from Turkey. And a large part of drug shipments originating in Turkey transits through the Balkans. According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), “it is estimated that 4-6 metric tons of heroin leave each month from Turkey having [through the Balkans] as destination Western Europe.” A recent intelligence report by Germany’s Federal Criminal Agency suggests that: “Ethnic Albanians are now the most prominent group in the distribution of heroin in Western consumer countries.”

THE LAUNDERING OF DIRTY MONEY
In order to thrive, the criminal syndicates involved in the Balkans narcotics trade need friends in high places. Smuggling rings with alleged links to the Turkish State are said to control the trafficking of heroin through the Balkans “cooperating closely with other groups with which they have political or religious ties” including criminal groups in Albanian and Kosovo, the Associated Press noted earlier this month. In this new global financial environment, powerful undercover political lobbies connected to organized crime cultivate links to prominent political figures and officials of the military and intelligence establishment.

The narcotics trade nonetheless uses respectable banks to launder large amounts of dirty money. While comfortably removed from the smuggling operations, powerful banking interests in Turkey but mainly those in financial centers in Western Europe discretely collect fat commissions in a multi-billion dollar money laundering operation. These interests have high stakes in ensuring a safe passage of drug shipments into Western European markets.

THE ALBANIAN CONNECTION
Arms smuggling from Albania into Kosovo and Macedonia started at the beginning of 1992, when the Democratic Party came to power, headed by President Sali Berisha. An expansive underground economy and cross border trade had unfolded. A triangular trade in oil, arms and narcotics had developed largely as a result of the embargo imposed by the international community on Serbia and Montenegro and the blockade enforced by Greece against Macedonia.

Industry and agriculture in Kosovo were spearheaded into bankruptcy following the IMF’s lethal “economic medicine” imposed on Belgrade in 1990. The embargo was imposed on Yugoslavia. Ethnic Albanians and Serbs were driven into abysmal poverty. Economic collapse created an environment which fostered the progress of illicit trade. In Kosovo, the rate of unemployment increased to a staggering 70 percent.

Poverty and economic collapse served to exacerbate simmering ethnic tensions. A wire service report noted that thousands of unemployed youths “barely out of their teens” and from an impoverished population were drafted into the ranks of the KLA.

In neighboring Albania, the free market reforms adopted since 1992 created conditions which favored the criminalization of State institutions. Drug money was also laundered in the Albanian pyramids (Ponzi schemes) which mushroomed during the government of former President Sali Berisha (1992-1997). These shady investment funds were an integral part of the economic reforms inflicted by Western creditors on Albania.

rug barons in Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia — with links to the Italian Mafia — had become the new economic elites, often associated with Western business interests. In turn the financial proceeds of the trade in drugs and arms were recycled towards other illicit activities (and vice versa) including a vast prostitution racket between Albania and Italy. Albanian criminal groups operating in Milan, “have become so powerful running prostitution rackets that they have even taken over the Calabrians in strength and influence,” according to an article last year in The Guardian.

The application of “strong economic medicine” under the guidance of the Washington- based Bretton Woods institutions had contributed to wrecking Albania’s banking system and precipitating the collapse of the Albanian economy. The resulting chaos enabled American and European transnationals to carefully position themselves. Several Western oil companies including Occidental, Shell and British Petroleum had their eyes riveted on Albania’s abundant and unexplored oil-deposits. Western investors were also gawking Albania’s extensive reserves of chrome, copper, gold, nickel and platinum… The Adenauer Foundation had been lobbying in the background on behalf of German mining interests.

Berisha’s Minister of Defence Safet Zoulali — alleged to have been involved in the illegal oil and narcotics trade — was the architect of the agreement with Germany’s Preussag (handing over control over Albania’s chrome mines) against the competing bid of a U.S.- led consortium.

Large amounts of narco-dollars had also been recycled into the privatization programs leading to the acquisition of State assets by the mafias. In Albania, the privatization program had led virtually overnight to the development of a property-owning class firmly committed to the “free marke.” In Northern Albania, this class was associated with the Guegue “families” linked to the Democratic Party.

Controlled by the Democratic Party under the presidency of Sali Berisha, Albania’s largest financial “pyramid” VEFA Holdings had been set up by the Guegue “families” of Northern Albania with the support of Western banking interests. VEFA was under investigation in Italy in 1997 for its ties to the Mafia which allegedly used VEFA to launder large amounts of dirty money.

In “The Gangster Regime We Fund,” author Andrew Gumbel wrote in The Independent that senior members of the Albanian government during the Berisha presidency were alleged to be involved in drugs trafficking and illegal arms trading into Kosovo:

The allegations are very serious. Drugs, arms, contraband cigarettes all are believed to have been handled by a company run openly by Albania’s ruling Democratic Party, Shqiponja (…). In the course of 1996 Defense Minister, Safet Zhulali [was alleged] to had used his office to facilitate the transport of arms, oil and contraband cigarettes. (…) Drugs barons from Kosovo (…) operate in Albania with impunity, and much of the transportation of heroin and other drugs across Albania, from Macedonia and Greece en route to Italy, is believed to be organised by Shik, the state security police (…). Intelligence agents are convinced the chain of command in the rackets goes all the way to the top and have had no hesitation in naming ministers in their reports.

The trade in narcotics and weapons was allowed to prosper despite the presence since 1993 of a large contingent of American troops at the Albanian-Macedonian border with a mandate to enforce the embargo. The West had turned a blind eye. The revenues from oil and narcotics were used to finance the purchase of arms (often in terms of direct barter): “Deliveries of oil to Macedonia (skirting the Greek embargo [in 1993-4] can be used to cover heroin, as do deliveries of Kalachnikov rifles to Albanian `brothers’ in Kosovo.”

The Northern tribal clans — or “fares” — had also developed links with Italy’s crime syndicates. In turn, the latter played a key role in smuggling arms across the Adriatic into the Albanian ports of Dures and Valona. At the outset in 1992, the weapons channelled into Kosovo were largely small arms including Kalashnikov AK-47 rifles, RPK and PPK machine-guns, heavy machineguns, and more.

The proceeds of the narcotics trade has enabled the KLA to rapidly develop a force of some 30,000 men. More recently, the KLA has acquired more sophisticated weaponry including anti- aircraft and anti-armor rockets. According to Belgrade, some of the funds have come directly from the CIA “funnelled through a so-called “Government of Kosovo” based in Geneva, Switzerland.

The KLA has also acquired electronic surveillance equipment which enables it to receive NATO satellite information concerning the movement of the Yugoslav Army. The KLA training camp in Albania is said to “concentrate on heavy weapons training — rocket propelled grenades, medium caliber cannons, tanks and transporter use, as well as on communications, and command and control.” (According to Yugoslav government sources).

These extensive deliveries of weapons to the Kosovo rebel army were consistent with Western geopolitical objectives. Not surprisingly, there has been a deafening silence of the international media regarding the Kosovo arms-drugs trade. In the words of a 1994 Report of the Geopolitical Drug Watch: “the trafficking [of drugs and arms] is basically being judged on its geostrategic implications (…) In Kosovo, drugs and weapons trafficking is fuelling geopolitical hopes and fears…”

The fate of Kosovo had already been carefully laid out prior to the signing of the 1995 Dayton agreement. NATO had entered an unwholesome “marriage of convenience” with the Mafia. “Freedom fighters” were put in place, the narcotics trade enabled Washington and Bonn to “finance the Kosovo conflict” with the ultimate objective of destabilizing the Belgrade government and fully recolonizing the Balkans. The destruction of an entire country is the outcome.

Western governments which participated in the NATO operation bear a heavy burden of responsibility in the deaths of civilians, the impoverishment of both the ethnic Albanian and Serbian populations and the plight of those who were brutally uprooted from towns and villages in Kosovo as a result of the bombings.

(Roman Catholic Croatian guards at the Jasenovac concentration camp prepare to execute an inmate. Source: US Holocaust Memorial Museum.)

What role, if any, did the Vatican play in the genocide committed in the Independent State of Croatia, a Roman Catholic state sponsored by the Vatican? This has been a controversial topic regarding World War II historiography. Renewed debate was stirred in 1999 with the publication of Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII (New York: Viking, 1999) by John Cornwell.

Vatican Knowledge

The nature of the Ustasha NDH regime was well-known by the Vatican and by the US government as early as 1941. It was no secret that the Ustasha government sought to exterminate the entire Serbian, Jewish, and Roma populations of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. There was never any intention to deny or to hide this policy by the NDH government itself. In fact, the Ustasha documented the genocide with photographs and even film. Education Minister in the NDH regime Mile Budak openly announced that the policy was to kill a third, deport a third, and forcefully convert a third of the Serbian population of Croatia and Bosnia. Budak stated in 1941: “Thus, our new Croatia will get rid of all Serbs in our midst in order to become one hundred per cent Catholic within ten years.”  A policy of mass murder and genocide was openly declared. In a speech made in Zagreb, NDH leader or Poglavnik Ante Pavelic stated: “A good Ustase is one who can use his knife to cut a child from the womb of its mother.”

Pope Pius XII defended Ante Pavelic as “a much maligned man” and sent Papal Nuncio Giuseppe Ramiro Marcone (1882-1952) to the NDH regime during World War II as his personal representative. The Vatican did not de jure recognize the NDH state but did send Giuseppe Ramiro Marcone as a delegate or emissary of the Holy See to the Zagreb Episcopaly on August 5, 1941. Marcone was publicly seen and photographed with Ante Pavelic and prominent Ustasha religious, political, and military leaders.

(Ante Pavelic, center, with Vatican Nuncio or legate Ramiro Marcone, left, and Vatican Secretary to the Nuncio Giuseppe Masucci, at a ceremony in Zapresic, a town northwest of Zagreb.)

The Vatican did, however, de facto recognize the NDH.  The countries which recognized de jure the NDH, legally, diplomatically, and officially, were: Finland (July 2, 1941); Hungary (April 10, 1941); Germany, Italy and Slovakia (April 15, 1941); Bulgaria (April 21, 1941); Romania (May 6, 1941); Japan (June 7, 1941);  Spain (June 27, 1941);  Japanese-occupied China (July 5, 1941); Denmark (July 10, 1941); Japanese-occupied Manchuria in China, Manchukuo (August 2, 1941); Japanese-occupied Burma, Japanese-occupied Philippines, the “Free Indian” government, and, Thailand (April 27, 1943). Vichy France did not de jure recognize the NDH state but sent a trade representative, Andre Gailliard, to Zagreb. Vichy negotiated a trade agreement with the NDH on March 16, 1942, thus establishing de facto recognition. Switzerland established a trade agreement with the NDH on September 10, 1941 through trade representative Friedrich Kaestli. The Vatican established immediate and direct diplomatic relations with the NDH Ustasha regime in 1941. What prevented the Vatican from legally recognizing its puppet and proxy NDH state was the potential backlash from the Allies, particularly Great Britain and the US.

The Vatican also had unofficial diplomatic relations with the NDH government through contacts with Croat representatives of the NDH regime Nicola Rusinovic and Erwin Lobkowicz. “These arrangements were semi-secret”. But “by March 1942, despite the abundance of evidence pointing to mass killings, the Holy See was nevertheless drawing the Croatian representatives toward official relations.” With Germany and Italy poised to win the war in 1942, the Vatican was moving closer to establishing official diplomatic relations with the NDH.

Did the Vatican know of the mass murders and genocide being committed in the NDH? The three heads of the Vatican Secretariat of State, Domenico Tardini, Giovanni Battista Montini, later Pope Paul VI, and Luigi Maglione, knew of the atrocities in the NDH but did nothing to stop them, remaining passive.

Eugene Tisserant, a French cardinal prominent in the Vatican hierarchy, told Rusinovic on March 6, 1942 that he was aware of Croatian Roman Catholic clerical involvement in the mass murders:

“I know for a fact that it is the Franciscans themselves, as for example Father [[Vjekoslav] Simic of Knin, who have taken part in attacks against the Orthodox populations so as to destroy the Orthodox Church. In the same way you destroyed the Orthodox Church in Banja Luka. I know for sure that the Franciscans in Bosnia and Herzegovina have acted abominably, and this pains me. Such acts should not be committed by educated, cultured, civilized people, let alone by priests.” In a meeting of May 27, 1942, Tisserant informed Rusinovic that based on German figures, “350,000 Serbs had disappeared” in the NDH and that “in one single concentration camp there are 20,000 Serbs.” The full extent and nature of the genocide committed in the NDH was fully known by the Vatican by early 1942. The role and complicity of the Roman Catholic Church in Croatia and Bosnia in the genocide was also fully known. And yet Eugenio Pacelli, Pope Pius XII, did absolutely nothing. In fact, “Pacelli was never anything but benevolent to the leaders and representatives of the Pavelic regime.” As late as 1943, he expressed to Lobkowicz “his pleasure at the personal letter he had received from our Poglavnik.” And Ante Pavelic was Pacelli’s Poglavnik or Fuehrer in the NDH. Pacelli was not only Hitler’s Pope. He was also Pavelic’s Pope.

Vatican legate, or personal representative from the Pope to the NDH from 1941 to 1945, Ramiro Marcone, right, with Ustasha leader Ante Pavelic, center. The Vatican Secretary to the Vatican legate is Giuseppe Masucci on left. The Vatican de facto recognized the Independent State of Croatia and established diplomatic relations.

The objectives of the Ustasha regime were known by the Italian government and by the Vatican. Cornwell described “the campaign of terror and extermination conducted by the Ustashe of Croatia against two million Serb Orthodox Christians” that occurred in the Nazi puppet state of Greater Croatia, which included Bosnia-Hercegovina, from 1941-1945:

“An act of ‘ethnic cleansing’ before that hideous term came into vogue, it was an attempt to create a ‘pure’ Catholic Croatia by enforced conversions, deportations, and mass extermination. So dreadful were the acts of torture and murder that even hardened German troops registered their horror. … Pavelic’s onslaught against the Orthodox Serbs remains one of the most appalling civilian massacres known to history.”

What knowledge did the Vatican have of these atrocities? Could it have intervened to lessen or to stop them? What actions did the Vatican take after the war?

NDH Poglavnik Ante Pavelic, left, with the Papal Emissary Ramiro Marcone.

What did Pope Pius know about the Ustasha? In 1939, “Pacelli had warmly endorsed Croat nationalism and confirmed the Ustashe perception of history” according to Cornwell when in November, 1939, Alojzije Stepinac came to Rome to meet with the Pope in an attempt to promote the canonization of Nicola Tavelic. Tavelic was a Croat martyr who had been killed in 1591 in Jerusalem and who was canonized by Pope VI in 1970. At that time, Pacelli reiterated a term that Pope Leo X had used to describe the Croats as “the outpost of Christianity”, meaning, the outpost of Roman Catholicism. They were seen as a spearhead and as a bulwark against not only the Serbian and Greek Orthodox, but against the Russian Orthodox as well. The Croats were the Vatican’s ramrod against the Orthodox.

Immediately after its inception, the NDH engaged in a policy of genocide. On April 25, 1941, the NDH promulgated legislation banning the Cyrillic script. By June, Serbian Orthodox primary and pre-schools were shut down. In May, anti-Jewish laws were passed defining Jews in racial terms, prohibiting the marriage of Jews and Aryans, and sending Jews to the Croat concentration camp of Danica. The Croat Roman Catholic Church immediately sought to convert the Orthodox Serbs to Roman Catholicism. Official statements from the NDH government, however, showed that the policy was to be exclusion, deportation, and extermination, genocide, rather than assimilation. Did the Vatican know of these objectives?

Cornwell wrote that the nature of the Ustasha regime was well-known to the Vatican from the beginning:

“From the outset, the public acts and statements concerning ethnic cleansing and the anti-Semitic programs were well-known to the Catholic episcopate and Catholic Action… These racist and anti-Semitic programs were therefore also known by the Holy See, and thus by Pacelli, at the point when he greeted Pavelic at the Vatican. These acts were known, moreover, at the very point when clandestine diplomatic links were being forged between Croatia and the Holy See.”

On May 18, 1941, Pavelic met Pope Pius XII at the Vatican in what Cornwell described as “a ‘devotional’ audience” with the Pope. At this meeting, the Vatican de facto recognized the so-called Independent State of Croatia, which included Bosnia-Hercegovina, even though the NDH was an occupied Nazi puppet state, or the creation of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, maintained not by popular will but by military force. Moreover, Abbot Ramiro Marcone was appointed the apostolic legate or Nuncio to Zagreb, the personal representative of the Pope to the NDH. Marcone was a priest of the Benedictine Monastery of Montevergine. He was the personal emissary or ambassador of the Pope to the NDH regime. Marcone and his Secretary, Giuseppe Masucci, would visit the NDH and be photographed with Ante Pavelic, Andrija Artukovic, Alojzije Stepinac, and German and Italian military officers. He was photographed with Pavelic in the town of Zapresic northwest of Zagreb with his secretary Giuseppe Masucci. He was also photographed with Stepinac together with Roman Catholic priests and fascist military officers who are shown giving a fascist salute.

Giuseppe Ramiro Marcone was born in 1882 in Italy. He was ordained a priest of the Order of St. Benedict in 1906. In 1918, he was appointed the Abbot of Montevergine monastery in Italy. He lectured in philosophy at the college of San Anselmo in Rome. According to Cornwell, Marcone “had clearly been selected to soothe and encourage” the Ustasha leaders by Pacelli himself. Marcone died in 1952.

At the time the Vatican de facto recognized the Ustasha NDH state, did it know of the massacres against Serbs? The atrocities were described by Carlo Falconi in his documentation of the crimes in The Silence of Pius XII (London: Faber, 1970). On April 28, 1941, Ustasha troops attacked the Bjelovar district where 250 Serbs were killed by being buried alive. In Otocac, several days later, 331 Serbs were murdered. On May 14, in Glina, hundreds of Serbs were murdered in the Orthodox Church after being forcefully converted to Roman Catholicism. There is no evidence that the Vatican or Pope Pius knew of these mass murders.

What did the Vatican know and when? The Vatican knew that Ante Pavelic was “a totalitarian dictator”, a fanatical Croat ultra-nationalist zealot and Roman Catholic who was sponsored and installed in power by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. They knew Pavelic was a hardcore fascist who supported and endorsed Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. They knew about the anti-Serbian, anti-Jewish, and anti-Roma laws that the NDH had passed. They knew Pavelic was committed to the policy of forceful conversions of Orthodox Serbs to Roman Catholicism. Moreover, the Vatican knew that the NDH was a Nazi puppet state created by Nazi Germany that was under German military occupation and control. The NDH was not recognized by the US, Great Britain, or the Soviet Union. The NDH declared war against the Soviet Union and sent Croatian volunteers to participate in Operation Barbarossa. The NDH had even declared war on the Allies, declaring war against the US and Britain on December 12, 1941, and had sent 8,000 troops to the Russian Front, even sending troops to Stalingrad. The Allies did not recognize the NDH, an Axis belligerent or enemy state. The Vatican, however, did, even if de facto.

The genocide committed in the NDH was open and common knowledge. In The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000), historian Michael Phayer concluded that “it is impossible to believe that Stepinac and the Vatican did not know that the Ustasha murders amounted to genocide”.

The massacres and atrocities, indeed, the planned and systematic genocide, were known to the Croatian Catholic clergy and to the episcopate. As Cornwell noted, “the clergy often took a leading part.” Not only did the Croatian Church and clergy know, they were at the forefront of the genocide. The Croatian Roman Catholic priests organized and led the mass murders. As Cornwell noted, priests were in many instances the instigators and leaders of the genocide: “Priests, invariably Franciscans, took a leading part in the massacres. … Individual Franciscans killed, set fire to homes, sacked villages, and laid waste the Bosnian countryside at the head of Ustashe bands.” He cited an Italian reporter who described an attack in September, 1941 south of Banja Luka in northern Bosnia. A Franciscan priest was exhorting Ustashe troops with a crucifix. It was the intervention of Italian troops that prevented a larger bloodbath. The Italian Army provided protection to Serbs, Jews, and Roma, saving thousands of lives.

The Vatican could plead ignorance with what was occurring in Poland and elsewhere in Europe, but not in Croatia. According to Cornwell, Pacelli was “better informed of the situation in Croatia” than he was of anywhere else in Europe other than Italy. His legate Marcone made repeated visits to Croatia and brought back eyewitness accounts. Croatian bishops, some of who sat in the Ustasha parliament, communicated with the Pope and the Vatican on a regular basis. Pacelli also had access to the BBC, which was monitored and translated for the Vatican by Francis Osborne, the British minister to the Vatican. The BBC broadcast news reports on the atrocities in Croatia which no one could miss. On February 16, 1942, the BBC broadcast the following report attacking Zagreb archbishop Stepinac for his complicity in the mass murders:

“The worst atrocities are being committed in the environs of the archbishop of Zagreb. The blood of brothers is flowing in streams. The Orthodox are being forcibly converted to Catholicism and we do not hear the archbishop’s voice preaching revolt. Instead it is reported that he is taking part in Nazi and Fascist parades.”

How was it possible for the Vatican not to know of these mass murders and forceful conversions when the Roman Catholic Church was hierarchical in organization? As Cornwell asked: “How was it that despite the strictly authoritarian power relationship between the papacy and the local Church—a power relationship that Pacelli had done so much to establish—no attempt was made from the Vatican center to halt the killings, the forced conversions, the appropriation of Orthodox property?” Why didn’t Pacelli “dissociate” the Vatican from the Ustasha genocidal policies? Why didn’t Pacelli “condemn the perpetrators”, attacking the genocide? If the Vatican took a more forceful stance, could lives have been saved? The answer to this question can be found in the actions of the Vatican, before, during, and after the Roman Catholic-sponsored genocide in the NDH. What is most revealing is the position of the Church after the war, when the full extent of the genocide was fully known.

What was the extent of the genocide in the NDH? Cornwell remarked: “The tally almost defies belief.” He offers these numbers from The Final Solution: Origins and Implementation, edited by David Cesarini (London: Routledge, 1996): 487,000 Orthodox Serbs and 27,000 Gypsies were murdered between 1941 and 1945 in the NDH. Out of a population of 45,000 Jews, approximately 30,000 were murdered during the same period. 20,000-25,000 were murdered in the Croatian death camps, such as Jasenovac and Nova Gradiska, while 7,000 were sent to the gas chambers. Even if we assume these figures are inflated and subject to debate, the extent of the genocide was not minimal or insignificant. This was a genocide.

(Vatican Nuncio or legate Ramiro Marcone, center, with Poglavnik Ante Pavelic, right, and Vatican Secretary to the Nuncio Giuseppe Masucci.)

Operation Barbarossa and the Tisserant Plan

The Vatican regarded the Soviet Union and the spread of Communism as their greatest threats. The Balkans were seen as a buffer between the Vatican and Soviet Russia, Eastern Orthodox Russia. As Cornwell noted, Benito Mussolini’s invasion and occupation of Greece and Yugoslavia was supported. The Italian war against Greece was seen with “a measure of optimism” by the Vatican. Benito Mussolini had provided bases and training camps to Ante Pavelic before the war. Croat and Bosnian Muslim troops from the NDH would join Italian and German troops on the Eastern Front, in the Soviet Union.

The Vatican saw the conquest and destruction of Yugoslavia and Russia by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy as opportunities for the expansion of Roman Catholicism into the East. Eugene Tisserant was appointed in 1936 the Vatican Secretary of the Congregation for the Eastern Churches, holding the post until 1959. He was a French priest who held several prominent high level positions at the Vatican. He was infamous for the so-called Tisserant Plan which was a plan to convert Eastern Orthodox to Roman Catholicism.

The decisive battle of World War II: Russian Red Army troops with T-34 tanks attack German positions at Kursk, 1943.

The Tisserant Plan was documented by Reinhard Heydrich, head of the RSHA, in his report “New Tactics in Vatican Russia Work”. For the Vatican, the destruction and dismemberment of Yugoslavia was an opportunity to expand Roman Catholicism in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. The weakening, and even outright destruction, of the rival Orthodox Church was planned and expected. The Vatican had its sights on Russia and Eastern Europe as well. In The Entity: Five Centuries of Secret Vatican Espionage (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008) by Eric Frattini, translated by Dick Cluster, the Tisserant Plan is analyzed. Tisserant and Father Robert Leiber devised the plan to use the German conquest and occupation of the Soviet Union to expand Roman Catholic influence. Testifying at the Nuremberg Trials on October 12, 1945, Franz von Papen stated: “The reevangelization of the Soviet union was a Vatican operation, whether carried out through its missionary department or its secret service.” In the Soviet Union, the plan was led by Niccolo Estorzi and Holy Alliance agents. Heydrich wrote in his report: “The pope’s agents are taking advantage of the situation, and this must be stopped.” Vatican agents were infiltrating Nazi-occupied areas of Russia to convert them to Catholicism.

The decisive battle of World War II was on the Eastern Front in 1943 at Kursk. This battle broke the back of the German Army and forced it into a strategic retreat for the remainder of the war. Germany would lose the war. What the Vatican did was to prepare for the military defeat of Germany. The Vatican began to disassociate itself from the more extreme elements of fascism. It was at this time that Krunoslav Draganovic settled at the Vatican, leaving his position in the NDH regime, and preparing the way for the escape of the leaders of the NDH regime and the plundered property and assets they had seized from murdered Serbs, Jews, and Roma. Investigators after the war determined that $80 million was smuggled out of the NDH. The Vatican provided help in storing the proceeds and in allowing it to be laundered.

American Knowledge

When did the US government learn of the massacres and systematic genocide in the NDH? The US knew of the mass murders and genocide in the NDH in 1941. Yugoslav ambassador to the US Konstantin Fotich met with FDR on December 20, 1941 and informed him of the massacres in the NDH. Fotich had sent a memorandum to FDR on December 5 which described the massacres with a request that he be allowed to present further documentation and support. According to Fotich, on August 19, 1941, the chief of the Balkans desk of the US State Department had given him a report on the NDH’s “comprehensive policy of extermination of the Serbian race in the Independent State of Croatia”. FDR was “deeply shocked by the atrocities perpetrated against the Serbs”. He expressed to Fotich “his great sympathy” for the Serbs. FDR “spoke with admiration of the resistance” He told him after the war “the Serbs will rise again as a great people.”

(From left, Andrija Artukovic, the Interior Minister of the NDH, Vatican Legate Ramiro Marcone, and Zagreb Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac, at an Ustasha ceremony.)

Eleanor Roosevelt had also learned of the mass murders and atrocities in the NDH in 1941-42. The author Avro Manhattan met Eleanor Roosevelt at a private dinner party in Upper Brook Street, Mayfair, London in the late 1940s. At the time he was researching and writing his book on the Ustasha massacres in the NDH. In 1953, he published Terror Over Yugoslavia: The Threat to Europe, (London, UK: C.A. Watts, 1953). In 1986, he published The Vatican’s Holocaust: The sensational account of the most horrifying religious massacre of the 20th century (Springfield, MO: Ozark Books, 1986).

He asked her if she had ever heard of the massacres and atrocities in the NDH. She replied: “One of the worst, if not the worst, crimes of the war. I heard of them in the winter of 1941-2. Neither I nor my husband [FDR] at first believed them to be true.”

“I did not believe them either,” Manhattan told her. “I assumed them to be propaganda.”

“We thought the same,” replied Mrs. Roosevelt. “The Catholic lobby was the most successful at the White House for years.”

He asked her if she was familiar with Slovenian Roman Catholic author Louis Adamic. She replied that she was. Adamic had been one of the many who had persuaded her husband that the atrocity stories from Croatia had been concocted by the Nazi propaganda machine.

He inquired if she could explain why the Catholic atrocities were not as well known as the Nazi ones?

“Nazi Germany is no more,” replied Mrs. Roosevelt. “The Catholic Church is still here with us. More powerful than ever. With her own Press and the World Press at her bidding. Anything published about the atrocities in the future will not be believed. . .”

Manhattan then informed her that he was writing a book on the Vatican role in the atrocities in the NDH.

“Your book might convince a few,” she commented. “But what about the hundreds of millions already brainwashed by Catholic propaganda?”

Manhattan recalled: “A few years later, in 1953, when the book was eventually published, although two editions were sold within weeks, no part of the British or American Press dared even to mention it.” Adamic wrote that “the atrocities were all propaganda … to stir up anti-Catholicism…”

FDR knew of the genocide in Croatia and Bosnia and was appalled to the point that he did not think it possible for Serbs and Croats to live in the same country. In Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate Biography (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948, p. 711) by Robert E. Sherwood, Harry L. Hopkins, one of FDR’s closest advisers, took notes on the meeting held on March 15, 1943 between FDR and Anthony Eden, the British Foreign Secretary. They discussed the post-war European landscape. Regarding Serbia, FDR was adamant that Serbs and Croats should not be in the same country:

“The President expressed his oft repeated opinion that the Croats and Serbs had nothing in common and that it is ridiculous to try to force two such antagonistic peoples to live together under one government. He, the President, thought that Serbia, itself, should be established by itself and the Croats put under a trusteeship. At this point Eden indicated his first obvious objection to the Trustee method which the President is going to propose for many states. Eden did not push it but it was clear to me that the British Government have made up their minds that they are going to oppose this. Eden thought the President’s opinion about the inability of the Croats and the Serbs to live together a little pessimistic and he, Eden, believed it could be done.”

Vatican Reaction

How did the Vatican react to the genocide committed in the NDH? Not only did the Vatican deny and ignore it, but took an active part to hide and suppress it and to protect the perpetrators from prosecution and justice. After the war, the major planners of the genocide, Ante Pavelic and Andrija Artukovic, were helped to escape by the Vatican through the Ratlines. Dinko Sakic and Vjekoslav Maks Luburic also escaped. A Croatian Roman Catholic priest, Krunoslav Draganovic, who himself had been a part of the Ustasha NDH regime, organized and masterminded the escapes. In addition, he was able to launder the assets that were seized from Serbs, Jews, and Roma in the NDH. The Vatican has never acknowledged its role in the genocide committed in the NDH. This is genocide denial. It is denial of the Holocaust.

The Vatican protected the accused Ustasha war criminals and assisted them in escaping prosecution for war crimes. In Pius XII, The Holocaust, and the Cold War (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2008), Phayer showed that the Vatican put diplomatic pressure on the US and the UK not to apprehend Ante Pavelic or any other wanted Ustasha war criminals. US intelligence had located Pavelic but was prevented from arresting him. Why would the US not arrest arguably one of the most notorious mass murderers of World War II? Why would the US help to shield an accused war criminal suspected of committing genocide? Why and how could such a fanatical fascist accused of genocide escape arrest and prosecution? Why was Ante Pavelic allowed to escape to Argentina by the US government?

The answer is that the Vatican orchestrated his escape. Why? Phayer quoted US Counter Intelligence Corps agent William Gowen (the son of Franklin Gowen, a US diplomat in the Vatican), who reported in 1947 that Pavelic’s “contacts are so high and his present position is so compromising to the Vatican, that any extradition of the subject would be a staggering blow to the Roman Catholic Church”. Pavelic and the other Ustasha war criminals guilty of genocide were allowed to escape to protect the Vatican.

Both Britain and the US could have arrested Pavelic and the other Ustasha war crime suspects but chose not to, enabling them to escape and to elude prosecution for war crimes and for genocide. InHunting Evil: The Nazi War Criminals Who Escaped and the Quest to Bring Them to Justice (New York: Broadway Books, a division of Random House, 2009), Guy Walters documented a US CIC report that stated that the British had allowed Ante Pavelic to escape. In October, 1946, a CIC report stated that “there can no longer be any doubt that the British aided the escape of Dr. Ante Pavelich.” The US also knew of Pavelic’s location but refused to arrest him. Walters showed that the US knew where Pavelic’s daughter lived as she reported regularly to US occupation authorities. According to Walters, the British reported that: “It’s no use trying to get Pavelic, the Yanks are backing him.” In August, 1947, US CIC agent William Gowen reported that Pavelic was “receiving the protection of the Vatican.” Why were Britain, the US, and the Vatican all helping Pavelic to elude capture? Gowen wrote that the Vatican opposed the extradition of Pavelic because his capture would only “weaken the forces fighting against atheism and Communism in its fight against the Church.” In other words, the Serbs would only benefit. The Orthodox would benefit. The Russians would benefit. And ultimately Communism and the USSR would be the beneficiaries. It was a zero sum game.

Cui bono? Who benefits? Who would gain if Pavelic was arrested and prosecuted for war crimes and genocide? Certainly not the Vatican. Only the Orthodox would benefit. Only the Serbs would benefit. Only Communism would benefit. Only the USSR would benefit. This is how the Vatican sold the idea to the US government. Arresting Pavelic would be detrimental in the Cold War against the USSR. This had much wider political implications. If the Vatican were discredited, the Communist Party in Italy would benefit, which might allow it to win the elections. The US supported democracy in Italy only if a non-Communist party won the elections. Because the Italian Communist Party was poised for victory in Italy, the US did everything it could to rig the elections, to deny democracy.

Moreover, this had the potential to set off a chain reaction for other parts of Western Europe. More importantly, it would reveal the true core of Roman Catholicism to the mass public. People would see that the Vatican was corrupt and hollow at its center, obsessed with power at any price, even genocide. It would show the moral bankruptcy of the Vatican, or the Roman Catholic Church. And this could not be allowed to happen. Especially not during the ideological conflict of the Cold War, which was ultimately a contest for the hearts and minds of the people.

The Vatican could never acknowledge that it was complicit in genocide, even though the evidence is abundantly clear that it was. The largest religious denomination in the US is Roman Catholicism at 23% of the population. There are over a billion Roman Catholics globally. The decision was an easy one for the US. As a result, Pavelic was allowed to settle in Argentina and live a comfortable life there, while Artukovic was allowed to settle in the US itself, living in Seal Beach, California as a model American citizen.

The Vatican continues to suppress information on its role in the NDH. John Cornwell noted that “more than half a century after the war, the Vatican has still failed to make a clean breast of what it knew about the Croatian atrocities and the early stages of the Final Solution, and when it knew it.”

(Vatican Legate Ramiro Marcone, third from right, Alojzije Stepinac, first on right, and Ante Pavelic, partially obscured, far left, at the 1944 funeral for Marko Dosen, the President of the Ustasha Parliament.)