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June 9, 2000
Western media consumers may be forgiven for thinking that the history of Kosovo starts in 1989, when the Serbs supposedly abolished the autonomy of that hitherto happy and harmonious multicultural province. Indeed, the moral absolutism that was invoked by the proponents of intervention as a substitute for rational argument relied heavily on the presumed ignorance of history among their captive audiences.
History is not “bunk,” however, and unless we get our facts right about the past we are condemned to repeat its mistakes. As per Cicero, we’ll remain children forever. This brief summary of the history of Kosovo is presented not in order to advocate one side over another in the conflict in the Balkans, or to lobby for any particular set of policy options. It is presented because historical, political, legal, and moral arguments need to be cleansed of propagandistic spin if we are to have a proper debate. Because the treatment of the Kosovo episode by the media and politicians has been largely one-sided and propagandistic – and, at times, mendacious – that debate is sorely needed to restore balance in public perceptions and in policy making.
Though few English and even
fewer American history books tell us much about her, in the 300 years which lie
between the Norman Conquest of England and the death of Edward III, Serbia was
one of the strongest and most culturally and economically advanced states in
the whole of Europe.
The preconditions for the creation of the Serbian nation came about in the seventh century when part of the Serbian tribes settled in the Roman province of Dalmatia, along with other groups of Slavs. The Slavs spread out widely across the Balkan peninsula and formed a large number of small principalities. Byzantine writers of the day took notice of their number, and described them with the characteristic name “Sclavinia.” The Byzantine Empire scored a great success in 870 when it baptized the Serbian rulers. Mass conversion of the Serbs to Christianity soon followed, accompanied by strong political and cultural influences from the Empire. The path to unification was opened up on the basis of a common Christian culture.
A significant role was played by the translation of biblical and liturgical texts and by the alphabets adapted to the Slavonic languages. But the triumph of the Byzantine Empire during the rule of Emmanuel Comnen (1143-1180), when Hungary and the surrounding Serbian territories were subdued, was paid for by the sapping of the empire’s strength, so that after the death of the militant emperor there was a long period of crisis.
Serbia as a nation came into
its own sometime in the 11th century, in the center of the Balkan peninsula,
which at that time was within the vast realm of the mighty Byzantine Empire. A
lighthouse between two continents, Constantinople in those days was a beacon
light for all sorts of wayfarers: those in submission, those in power, those in
revolt, those hungry for culture, and those driven by greed. As any potentate,
Constantinople at that time had no friends in the whole world. Byzantium had
very little reason to cherish the Slavs in the Balkan area, Serbs or Bulgars,
because they proved to be a lasting nuisance from the time of their arrival,
together with or before the marauding Avars.
To Byzantium, incursions of
most barbarians were basically a passing irritant, for even when they ransacked
the walled cities they soon left. Slavs, on the other hand, inherently were not
nomadic types. Once having arrived, they tended to settle, and by doing so they
changed the ethnic character of the area. Byzantine rulers, especially Emperor
Basil II, tried to drive the Slavs out, particularly the Bulgars, but in the
long run military valor gave way to political realism, which forced the
beleaguered Byzantine emperors to accept Serbs and Bulgars as permanent
inhabitants of the Balkans.
In time they learned to deal
with the Slavs on almost equal terms, partly because there were more serious
problems confronting them. There were the Persians, Muslim Arabs, and Seljuk
Turks, who kept the Byzantines occupied in the east for several centuries. In
the west the Normans and the Venetians were sapping Byzantium's military
strength. The Slavs, for their part, exploited these troubles to expand and
solidify their positions. Even after Constantinople managed to restore much of
its imperial prestige, it was challenged in the north by the invading Magyars,
who waged four successive wars against Byzantium.
This presented the Serbian ruler of Raska, Nemanja (1168-1196) an opportunity not to be missed. Talented and determined, Nemanja took advantage of the weaknesses of the Byzantine Empire and greatly extended his authority, territorially and politically. He ruled the best part of today’s Serbia (including the state’s heartland of Kosovo) and Montenegro. He also moved quickly toward full Serbian independence. It was not an easy task, and he was not continually successful in the process. There were times when his supporters, Hungary and Venice, could not help him. Facing the angry Byzantine Emperor Manuel I alone, Nemanja was defeated and taken a prisoner to Constantinople, where he was led through the streets with a rope around his neck, to the wild rejoicing of the crowds.
Since Raska was under the
overlordship of Byzantium, Manuel thought that his humiliation of an unfaithful
prince would be enough and let Nemanja return to his people. In addition,
Nemanja was forced to pay tribute and to provide auxiliary troops. What really
may have saved Nemanja's life was the proximity of Raska to the Western world.
After all, at that time Christendom was seriously endangered by Islam, and the
emperor badly needed the support of the West, and even of those annoying Slavs
in the Balkans. In the confused evolution of developments, Nemanja sought to
exploit the situation. He played the Latin world against the Greek, and in the
process obtained from the West political recognition for Raska and a crown for
his son Stefan.
Stefan Nemanjic (1196-1227) initially enjoyed the support of the Byzantine Empire and
managed to maintain the heritage left him by Nemanja. Yet, when the situation
changed after the western crusaders led by the Venetians conquered
Constantinople, Stefan turned to the West. Through clever political maneuvering
he managed to remove threats from Hungary, from the Latin Empire of the
Crusaders, from the revived Bulgaria and from the newly independent rulers in
the Byzantine provinces. In this period of turbulence and violent change, he
managed to keep his own state intact. He improved its reputation and rank by receiving
a royal crown from the Pope (1217), which among his descendants and heirs
brought him the appellation of the “First-Crowned King” - Stefan Prvovencani.
The King’s youngest brother, Sava, sought to obtain a unified ecclesiastical framework within Serbia, torn – as it was at that time – between Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy under local leadership, the king supported the Orthodox tradition of the regions in the interior in spite of his relationship to the Catholic Holy See. Sava Nemanjic obtained agreement from the Byzantine Emperor and from the Patriarch to form a separate archbishopric. He was appointed Archbishop of Serbia in 1219 in Nicaea, and it was decided that his successors would be chosen and appointed by the Serbs themselves. This gave an impetus to the vibrant growth of the Serbian Church. New bishoprics were founded, with their sees in the monasteries where the priests were educated, and the books necessary for the life of the church were copied. Sava provided for a translation of the Byzantine code of church laws and rules for the use of the clergy, the Nomokanon.
The Serbian kingdom and its
autocephalous church provided the framework for the flowering of an
authentically national culture and arts. This is best evidenced in the Raska
School which has given Europe some of the most notable examples of medieval
architecture and painting (the monasteries of Studenica, Zica, Mileseva,
Sopocani et al). Intra-dynastic disputes, bloody at times, did not stop
Serbia’s growth in territorial scope, wealth, and cultural significance.
Serbian medieval documents use the terms Rascian
lands and Rascian king only in a
few instances. Serbs nearly always referred to their territories as Serbian
lands, especially in the post-Nemanja period. Merchants and diplomats from the
coast city Republic of Dubrovnik, who maintained close links with Serbian
authorities and courts, used Vatican nomenclature and called Serbia Slavonia, although subsequently they
adopted the term Serbia. Because the
two main caravan routes to Constantinople passed through Serbian territories,
custom bills were due to Serbian rulers, complaints were filed, requests for
protection or bailing out of jail submitted, down payments made, and court
cases litigated. Thanks to all the resulting documents, filed in the Dubrovnik
archives, historians have been able to reconstruct the fabric of life in
medieval Serbia.
Medieval Serbia was an
integral part of “the international community” of its time, relating on a state
to state basis in matters of political, military, and cultural concern. Serbian
royal courts communicated on levels of respect and honor in diplomatic
relations with Venetian doges, Hungarian kings, Bulgarian tsars, and Byzantine
emperors. In addition, they were connected through marital arrangements with
most of them. The first wife of Stefan the First Crowned was Eudocia, daughter
of Byzantine Emperor Alexis III. King Stefan Uros I married the French princess
Helene (House of Anjou), and Stefan Dragutin married Katherine, daughter of
Hungarian King Stephen V, just to name a few.
It is only natural that a
society with its own alphabet, language, state, and autocephalous Church should
have the urge to create its own literature and culture. A large body of Western
medieval literature, such as the Old and New Testaments, liturgical books,
theological treatises, dogmatic and apocryphal works, and chronicles and lives
of the saints, was present either in the original or in translation. Major
medieval novels, such as tales about Alexander the Great and Tristan and
Isolde, were also known. But this was not enough. The need to have their own
literature was strongly felt by Serbian rulers and their associates.
Among the Serbian medieval
literati were ecclesiastics and lay people. Some of them were of royal blood
(Nemanja’s two sons). Others were of peasant stock, monks or priests. Still
others were foreign-born and educated, having found cultural refuge in Serbian
courts or monasteries. The very proximity to the great Hellenic culture almost
guaranteed that many cultured men would be roaming the Balkan spaces.
Monastics, courtiers, and a maze of Slavic-speaking subjects of Venice,
Byzantium, Hungary, and Bulgaria swarmed around Serbian literary centers.
Knowing the Serbian language was an asset in other than literary activities.
Venice and Byzantium, and later the Turks, quickly discovered that interstate
and other correspondence was likely to be more efficient if carried out in
Serbian.
Many Serbian rulers, in a manner of speaking, were seeking to pursue a "non-aligned" policy. On the one hand they fought Byzantium, but could never rid themselves of its spell. Serbia was never governed directly by Byzantium - but, as the well-known Byzantinist, George Ostrogorski, says, It is impossible to separate its medieval history from Byzantium. Constantinople was the cultural capital of the world at that time. No wonder that young, emerging, neighboring states should look to it as a model. The influence of the Romanized world, on the other hand, was far from negligible, and at times a source of great tension. In the entourage of Serbian kings, Roman Catholic courtiers, German guards, and French ladies wed to Serbian knights tried to interject aspects of Latin style, fashion, and mores. The most notable application of Romanized culture in Serbia is Stefan Decanski's (1321-1331) beautiful Monastery Church of Decani, built by a Franciscan friar and Dalmatian stone masons, with fresco works by artists of the Kotor school . It is known, however, that both King Milutin and later Stefan Decanski's son, Stefan Dusan, were occasionally annoyed by the Western influence but tolerated it.
Stefan Dusan (1331-1355),
whose formative years were spent in Constantinople during his father's exile
there, conquered half of it (Macedonia, Epirus, and Thessaly), and made Serbia
the strongest empire in the Balkans. Serbia's territory in Dusan's time covered
the vast area from the Danube to the lower Adriatic and the Aegean. He signed
his edicts Emperor and Autocrat of the
Serbs, Byzantines, Bulgars, and Albanians.
Dusan did not hide his ambitions to aspire to the throne of Byzantium. By 1345 his authority reached from Macedonia and Albania to Epirus and Thessaly. He wanted the powerful Greek clergy in Byzantium to recognize him. When the patriarch at Constantinople hesitated to crown him, he summoned the Serbian and Bulgarian bishops for a council at Skoplje. The bishops raised the Serbian archbishopric of Pec to the rank of patriarchate (1346), and in less than a month the newly elected Serbian Patriarch Joanikije II crowned Stefan Dusan emperor. Most of Dusan's imperial time was spent in the Hellenic area of his realm. Knowing Greek he felt at home there. Dusan replaced the Greek aristocracy with Serbian administrators, his comrades in arms, and gave them Byzantine titles. This could not have pleased the Greeks, but Dusan was more interested in courting Venetians, who could give him the ships necessary to take Constantinople.
Dusan may have grown up in
Constantinople, but he also sought approval in the West, notably from Venice
and the papacy, suggesting that he be regarded as “Captain of Christendom.” But
to the Roman Catholic West, Dusan essentially remained an "Eastern
schismatic" who was not to be trusted. In a sense they were right, because
Dusan was seeking to shape the culture of his realm through the use of the
Serbian clergy and nobility, recruited from the Serbian peasantry, anti-Western
as much as anti-Eastern. He was not a successful
soldier but also a lawgiver, a builder of churches and a generous patron of art
and literature. The devotion with which he inspired the Serbian nation is
reflected in the famous words in which the nobles of his Court answered his
appeal for military help: “Wherever thou leadest us, most glorious Tsar, we
will follow thee.” But Dusan died before he was fifty, and when his strong hand
was removed, rival princes quarreled among themselves, instead of uniting
against the growing menace of the Turks, who now crossed over into Europe and
began to extend their conquests in all directions.
Serbia of the Nemanjic
dynasty was without doubt a land of economic and cultural progress that
surpassed the existing European average. Apart from the well-known monasteries
and their impressive frescoes, there are smaller but masterly art objects from
that era: golden cups and chalices, candlesticks and silver plates, jeweled
reliquaries, delicate embroideries, book bindings, and artistic illuminations -
produced by talented people in a society which gave them an opportunity to
express themselves. As for the Serbian rulers, unlike those in the West, they
did not build enduring castles, but each one of them felt duty-bound to build
at least one monastery.
Kosovo is many diverse things to different living Serbs, but they all have it in their blood. They are born with it. The variety of meanings is easily explained by the symbolism and emotions that the word "Kosovo" embodies, clearly above anything that the geographic concept might imply. It is in Serbian blood because it is a transcendental phenomenon. Serbs who have a visual memory of Kosovo see it as a somewhat sleepy valley with surrounding hills seeming to have overstretched in their descent. Some 4,200 square miles in size (with an additional 2,000 square miles of adjacent Metohija), this cradle of the Serbian nation is carried by two broad-shouldered gentle giants, somber and dark Mount Kopaonik in the north, and white-capped and fair Mount Shara in the south.
In the heyday of
Serbia’s medieval glory the region of Kosovo and Metohija was its very
heartland. It was populated, since the early medieval times, by a homogenous
Serbian population. Under the Byzantine rule, and until well after the area’s
final inclusion into the Serbian House of Nemanjic (late 12th
century) Kosovo and Metohija’s population was overwhelmingly Serb. This is
confirmed by the many royal charters and by the recorded personal and
geographic names in the area. The old toponims, names of mountains, rivers, and
many towns and villages of Kosovo and Metohija (as well as northern Albania)
are predominantly of Slav origin. The very name of the region - Kosovo and Metohija - is derived from
the Serbian word kos (“the field of
the blackbird”) and metoh, a word of
Greek origin which means “church estate.” Albanian nomads accounted for about
two percent of the total population in the western parts of the region, in the
mountains along the present border region between Serbia and Albania.
Kosovo is good pastureland,
as well as corn, wheat, and fruit land. Yet Kosovo peasants can barely scratch
out a subsistence tilling the clayish soil that is exposed to winds that dry
the ground. For these peasants, Kosovo provides a lean and meager lot. To
others, Kosovo is a breadbasket. To those who descended from the slopes of the
mountains, or who came there from poorer regions as homesteaders, Kosovo seems
a promised land. Kosovo is a bottomless ancient mining pit, rich in zinc, lead,
and silver, but it is not a melting pot. Some decades ago it was aptly
described as “a plain where the Serbs bend over to work the soil, Albanians
sweat in the mining shafts underground, Turks (largely spent and reminiscing
about past glories) grow poppies and peppers, while the Gypsies fill the air
with the sounds of life.” To the Serbs, that plain of suffering, of want, and
of sacrifice is holy ground. They come there to clench their fists and shout at
the earth where dead Turks lie. As Rebecca West has written, Dead Christians are in Heaven, or ghosts,
not scattered lifeless bones ... only Turks perish thus utterly.
The Lord Almighty, some
might say, must have predestined Kosovo as a battlefield, a rendezvous for
hostile earthly encounters. It is a junction that led many a nation astray, if
not to a dead end. Byzantines, Bulgars, Serbs, Magyars, Austrians, Albanians,
and Turks - all marched through it at certain times, but in a sense got
nowhere. Kosovo can be viewed as nature’s boxing ring where world ideologies
(Christian, Bogomil, Muslim, Marxist, and most recently Atlanticist “liberal
democratic”) each won individual rounds, but not the fight.
Not counting the War of
1999, there must have been six major human slaughters in as many centuries on
this peaceful stretch of land. The soil in this valley appears to have fed on
human flesh and blood. Kosovo is commemorated in that heartbreaking medieval
embroidery made in 1402 in the stillness of the Serbian Monastery of
Ljubostinja with the needle of the pious Serbian Princess Euphemia. She
sketched her requiem in gold thread on a pall to cover the severed head of
Prince Lazar:
In courage and piety did you go out to do battle against the snake Murad ... your heart could not bear to see the hosts of Ismail rule Christian lands. You were determined that if you failed you would leave this crumbling fortress of earthly power and, red in your own blood, be one with the hosts of the heavenly King ...
Kosovo is a grave, and a
grave means death and dust. But it also means rebirth and a source of new life.
Kosovo is therefore transcendental. Many battles have taken place there, but of
all Kosovo battles only one counts in the formation of the psyche of a Serb. It
is the one that began in the early hours of Vidovdan (St. Vitus' Day, June 15,
1389, June 28 by the New Calendar). The Turks had already been on the European
continent for some time, seemingly unstoppable and intoxicated by easy
victories over the rival and disunited infidels.
The Battle took place on the
part of Kosovo Plain that the Turks called Mazgit, where the rivulet Lab flows
into the Sitnica River. Today's visitors learn where Sultan Murad's intestines
were buried, where the Turkish standard bearer (Gazimestan) fell, where
grateful Serbia erected a "memorial to the fallen heroes of Kosovo,"
and where a marble column once stood (placed there on the order of, and
authored by, Prince Lazar's son, Despot Stefan Lazarevic), which had the
following inscription:
Oh man, stranger or hailing from this soil, when you enter this Serbian land, whoever you may be ... when you come to this field called Kosovo, you will see all over it plenty of bones of the dead, and with them myself in stone nature, standing upright in the middle of the field, representing both the cross and the flag. So as not to pass by and overlook me as something unworthy and hollow, approach me, I beg you, oh my dear, and study the words I bring to your attention, which will make you understand why I am standing here ... At this place there once was a great autocrat, a world wonder and Serbian ruler by the name of Lazar, an unwavering tower of piety, a sea of reason and depth of wisdom ... who loved everything that Christ wanted ... He accepted the sacrificial wreath of struggle and heavenly glory ... The daring fighter was captured and the wrath of martyrdom he himself accepted ... the great Prince Lazar ... Everything said here took place in 1389 ... the fifteenth day of June, Tuesday, at the sixth or seventh hour, I do not know exactly, God knows.
Following World War II, a
redesigned monument was erected, a 100-foot tower, together with 25 acres of
the surrounding land, where the famous Kosovo poppies supposedly sprout from
the blood of the Kosovo heroes. The Serbian army in 1389 was encamped along the
right bank of the Lab, an area suitable for both infantry and cavalry. The
right wing of the Serbian army was commanded by Vojvoda Dimitrije Vojinovic.
The left wing was under Vojvoda Vlatko Vukovic, sent by Bosnian King Tvrtko.
Prince Lazar kept the command of the center for himself. The reserve was under
the command of Prince Lazar's son-in-law, Vojvoda Vuk Brankovic. Prince Lazar
had many reasons to worry about the outcome of the forthcoming encounter. Murad
gave him no time to rally his vassals and tributary lords, some of whom were
conspicuously slow in marshaling their troops.
I found this article to be very informative, must read it at least once for all.
From the time that the
Serbian notables and Church dignitaries met in the city of Skopia (Skoplje),
after the fatal battle in which King Vukasin and his army perished (Marica,
1371), and chose Lazar Hrebeljanovic as their leader, he enjoyed great
popularity and respect. In addition to his personal qualities, he was also the
husband of Milica, the great granddaughter of Stefan Nemanja, the founder of
the Nemanjic dynasty. He, therefore, had some hereditary right to the throne of
Serbia. Wise, charitable, cultured, and a skillful soldier, he defeated the
Turks in encounters that took place in 1381 and 1386, but it was becoming ever
more evident that Lazar was winning battles but losing the war.
Lazar’s Bosnian ally, Tvrtko
I, defeated the Turks when they probed Bosnian territory (1386 and 1388). All
this, however, made the Turks only more resolute, and as the year 1389 came,
they were ready. The Eastern Christians in the Balkans were now faced not by
scattered Turkish forces, but by a great army. Sultan Murad led his army
straight toward Lazar's capital (Krusevac). There was a bloody Turkish assault
on the fortress at Nis, which the Serbs defended heroically for 25 days. This
is where Murad himself had an opportunity to evaluate the morale and
effectiveness of the enemy. When Murad's scouts reported the concentration of a
large Serbian army at Kosovo, he marched immediately to meet it. Thus, the
Balkan Christians and the Muslims were locked in a decisive battle, a battle
that the Muslims saw as an opportunity to break the backbone of Serbian
resistance. According to Serbian bards and tradition, Murad sent the following
message to Lazar:
- Oh Lazar, thou head of the Serbians:
- There was not and never can be one land in the hands of two masters.
- No more can two sultans rule here ...
- Come straight to meet me at Kosovo!
- The sword will decide for us.
Lazar’s frantic effort to
obtain help from allies such as the king of Hungary failed because it was
difficult, if not impossible, to organize it on such short notice.
Nevertheless, although ill-prepared, Lazar had no other choice but to face the
enemy. Murad's advisers, a group of extremely skilled military veterans,
insisted on immediate and fast action. Amassed in the area of today's Nis and
Kumanovo, the Turkish generals were eager to meet the Serbs while still
possessing the momentum of previously victorious campaigns.
Morale in the Serbian camp was not high at first. Lazar’s commanders were torn apart by local rivalries, ominous jealousies, and distrust. Historians are still trying to ascertain whether the revolts were real or simply used as excuses. Two of Lazar's sons-in-law, according to national tradition and accepted by some historians, were bitterly divided, under the influence of their wives. To make things worse, several well-known and gallant Serbian and Bulgarian princes were at that time already in the service of the Turkish conqueror, burdened by the obligations of vassalage. At that time feudal mores required the vassal to serve his lord and not his people.
Prince Lazar could have
taken some moral comfort from the fact that he and his people were defenders of
Christian civilization and that the forthcoming battle would probably be the
last chance for Balkan Christians to repulse the Muslims. Among those who
joined the Serbs were some Albanian princes. Even though no Albanian state had
yet existed Albanian tribes were close allies of the Serbs, and friendly
relations between Serbian and Albanian chieftains were the natural result of
their common desire to get rid of first the Byzantine and then the Turkish
opponents. John Castriota (of Serbian origin), the father of the most prominent
Albanian, Skanderbeg, came to Kosovo at the head of a combined Serbian-Albanian
force mobilized in the area of Debar. Among auxiliary troops were the
volunteers led by Palatine Nicolas Gara (Gorjanski), another one of Lazar's
sons-in-law.
Modern historians have had
understandable difficulties in trying to decipher the realities of the Battle
of Kosovo. They have had to sift through a myriad of often rhapsodic and
idealized, mostly apologetical, renditions of relevant decisions and events.
Contemporary chroniclers, and later a lot of biographers and "history
writers," as a rule, had to keep in mind the interest of their protectors
and sponsors, with objectivity not always their trademark. Groping through all
this poetic license was unavoidable. But to the credit of epic writers, many of
them provided data that were later corroborated by more reliable sources.
It is certain that Prince
Lazar must have held a war council with his vojvodas
on the eve of the battle. Some among those present must have had
apprehensions about Serbian prospects, especially in the light of the
hesitancy, lukewarm enthusiasm, and even disloyalty among some Serbian
warriors. Prince Lazar could easily have agreed with the evaluation which a
national bard put into the mouth of Vuk Brankovic: Fight we may, but conquer we cannot. Lazar could also have believed
that some of his vojvodas were seriously thinking of passing over to the camp
of the sultan, among them Milos Obilic, who was seen conferring with two other
commanders and inquiring about Turkish battle deployment.
On the eve of the battle,
Prince Lazar, according to the Chronicle of Monk Pahomije, asked for a golden
goblet of wine to be brought to him. In his toast he mentioned three brave and
dashing vojvodas as possible
traitors, who were thinking of deserting
me and going over to the Turkish side, including Milos Obilic. Prince Lazar
appealed to Milos not to betray him, and drank a toast to him: Do not be faithless, and take this golden
cup from me as a memento. Milos responded with a few words of noble
indignation: Oh Tsar, treachery now sits
alongside your knee, an allusion that Vuk Brankovic was responsible for
this lack of confidence. This scene on the eve of the battle reminds one very
much of the Christian saga of the Last Supper, where Lazar emerges as a
Christ-like figure, aware of treachery among humans and of his own fate. Lazar
behaved as a good Christian should, and had no rancor even toward those who
failed him. Milos, too, behaved as a gallant Christian: For thy goblet I thank you; for thy speech, Tsar Lazar, I thank you not
... Tomorrow, in the Battle of Kosovo, I will perish fighting for the Christian
faith.
It is indeed interesting
that the Romanized West never saw Lazar and Milos, and their likes of Serbian
Orthodoxy, as fighters for Christianity. It is well to recall, however, that
before going into battle, Lazar left the Serbian people the famous statement,
which they have eternally treasured and which is the essence of the Gospel
Message:
The Earthly Kingdom is short-lived, but the Heavenly One is forever.
As for the Kosovo Battle,
all available information seems to confirm that Murad succeeded in surprising
the Serbian army, as he had done at Marica in 1371. In accordance with the
advice of his commander Evrenos Bey (of Greek origin), he launched his attack
early in the morning while Lazar and his comrades were at prayers in the nearby
Samodreza Church. It was there that news reached him that the enemy was already
attacking his front lines. It was there, also, that he was informed that Milos
and his two godbrothers, Ivan and Milan, had been seen riding out in the early
dawn toward the Turkish lines. This must have strengthened his belief that the
three vojvodas were indeed traitors, and that Vuk Brankovic was right when he
expressed doubts about Milos. Lazar must have thought of the summons he had
sent to all Serbs before the battle, which, according to the bards’ tradition,
reads:
- Whoever born of Serbian blood or kin comes not to fight the Turks at Kosovo,
- to him never son or daughter born, no child to heir his land or bear his name.
- For him no grape grow red, no corn grow white, in his hand nothing prosper.
- May he live alone, unloved, and die unmourned, alone!
As Lazar blessed his
soldiers, he led them into battle, the clash that was to decide the fate of
Balkan Eastern Orthodox nations for a long period to come. The Turkish
historian Neshri describes the first phase of the battle in the following
words:
The archers of the faithful shot their
arrows from both sides. Numerous Serbians stood as if they were mountains of
iron. When the rain of arrows was a little too sharp for them, they began to
move, and it seemed as if the waves of the Black Sea were making noise ...
Suddenly the infidels stormed against the archers of the left wing, attacked
them in the front, and, having divided their ranks, pushed them back. The
infidels destroyed also the regiment ... that stood behind the left wing ...
Thus the Serbians pushed back the whole left wing, and when the confounding
news of this disaster was spread among the Turks they became very low-spirited
... Bayazet, with the right wing, was as little moved as the mountain on the
right of his position (Kopaonik). But he saw that very little was wanting to
lose the sultan's whole army.
But the quick thinking and
decisiveness of the sultan’s son turned the flow of the battle. Among the Turks
he was known as Ildarin (Lightning).
He attacked the flank of the advancing Serbian force, and succeeded in
repulsing and throwing into considerable disarray the hitherto victorious
Christians. At that critical moment, a corps of some twelve thousand
cuirassiers was supposedly withdrawn from the battle by their commander, Vuk
Brankovic. Documentary evidence is scant, but he apparently either lost his
nerve or thought it inadvisable to lose all of his men in a futile battle. His
name, justly or not, still lives in ignominy among the Serbs as the epitome of
treachery.
But Lazar was of a different
disposition. He tried to rally his disheartened troops around him, and led them
into a new attack, which failed. Inevitably, the morale of the Serbs plummeted.
Wounded, Lazar was taken prisoner, and his army, rapidly falling apart, was
beaten and dispersed on the early afternoon of that very day. Serbian
chroniclers maintain that, as he was led to Murad’s tent, Lazar saw the wounded
Vojvoda Milos there, and only then realized what heroic deed he had done.
Deeply touched, Lazar gave Milos his blessing, as he realized that Milos had
mortally wounded the sultan, striking him in the abdomen with a concealed
dagger. Milos got access to Murad’s tent by pretending he had come to surrender
and wanted to kiss the sultan’s foot.
There they were, in that
tent, all the featured actors of the Kosovo drama, ready for the final
Shakespearean resolution of the plot. One of Murad’s close advisers (Ali Pasha)
lay dead already; he, too, a victim of Milos’ dagger. Prince Bayazet ordered
Lazar and his nobles executed by the sword, in the presence of the dying
sultan. The Serbian nobles asked to be beheaded first. Bayazet turned down
their plea. But when one of Lazar’s vojvodas asked for permission to hold his
own robe so that Lazar’s head would not fall to the bare ground, Bayazet,
impressed by such loyalty, granted the request. Milos Obilic was beheaded
first. Lazar’s last words were My God,
receive my soul.
Murad lived long enough to see his enemies beheaded. As he died, his younger son Bayazet made sure immediately to eliminate his brother, Jacub, who had also taken part in the battle, and thus assure his ascendance. As Vidovdan 1389 came to a close and the sun went down behind the mountains of Zeta (Montenegro) in the west, the night that would last five centuries began.
For the Serbs, Kosovo became a symbol of steadfast courage and sacrifice for honor, much as the Alamo for the Americans of yesteryear - only Kosovo was the Alamo writ large, where Serbs lost their whole nation. To them, too, in the words of Sam Houston, the site of their defeat was to be remembered - and avenged.
Serbs were
defending themselves and Christian Europe from the Ottoman invasion, and at Kosovo
they were defeated. Prince Lazar and the cream of the Serbian nobility died
heroically. Over the centuries the sacrificial courage of Prince Lazar and his
army on that day in 1389 has epitomized the dictum that it was better to die
heroically than to live under the alien yoke.
To the Serbs the lesson of that fateful St. Vitus Day is that eternal values must be placed before earthly ones, that spiritual force is superior to the force of arms, that by moral fortitude alone we can transcend our mortal frame and step from time into Eternity. The legacy of Vidovdan teaches them that the forces of darkness are defeated in the end and that those of light and virtue ultimately triumph - even when such victory may seem impossible - because there is God. Kosovo has redefined the Serbs as an eminently, quintessentially Christian nation.
The battle of Kosovo was one
of the most decisive events in the whole history of South Eastern Europe. It
meant not merely the fall of the medieval Serbian Empire and the conquest of
the whole Balkan Peninsula by a barbarous Asiatic invader, but also an
important stepping stone in the struggle of Islam against Christianity.
In the aftermath of the
battle Serbia was ruled by Lazar’s son, Despot Stefan (1389-1427), who was an
exceptional person. A dashing man of war, letters, and politics, he was the
hero of the Battle of Angora (Asia Minor, 1402), where he fought as a Turkish
vassal. Despot Stefan was a great benefactor, protector of refugees, writers,
and artists. A humanist of wide culture, he was also an author in his own
right. One of his poetic scripts is entitled Love Surpasses Everything, and No Wonder Because God Is Love.
Another was the Ode to Prince Lazar,
a beautiful text chiseled in the marble column which was placed at the spot of
the Kosovo Battle. A third, An Ode to
Love, was dedicated to his brother Vuk, whom he once fought at that very
Kosovo Field. In Stefan's monastery, Resava, generations of monks, scribes, and
artists have worked unremittingly to preserve the Serbian heritage.
Stefan Lazarevic had the misfortune of presiding over the declining days of his beloved country. Had he been Dusan's successor, instead of Lazar's, the history of the Serbian people might have been different. At a crucial time when Serbia had a chance to outdo Byzantium, Dusan's son Uros ruled (1355-1371). He was a weakling, lacking the necessary firmness and general leadership qualities. Stefan commanded respect and awe among the Turks and Tartars alike. At Angora he rode at the head of three gallant charges against Tamerlane, in an effort to save his surrounded suzerain.
Today, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see the situation clearly, but could King Vukasin and Despot Uglesa ever have anticipated Kosovo? Could the Hungarian kings have foreseen Mohacs? Could John VI Cantacuzenus have known what he was doing to himself, to Byzantium, and to the Christian world, by leaning on the support of his powerful but dangerous Muslim ally? And the countries of the West, could they have known what their insistence on ecclesiastical submission to Rome, as a price of aid, would lead to?
When in desperation,
Byzantine Emperor Manuel II begged for assistance from the pope, the doge, and
the kings of France, England, and Aragon, his plea for help in fighting against
the "infidels" went unanswered. The emperor spent several years on
this tragic mission to Venice, Paris, London, and other cities. Reconciliation
between East and West, the Greek and the Latin worlds, Eastern Orthodoxy and
Roman Catholicism, was a vexed question. The two sides did not attempt to do
together what they were unable to achieve alone, i.e., to stop the Turks. One
wonders, would there have been two sieges of Vienna (1529 and 1683) if Roman
Catholic Europe had come to the aid of the Eastern Orthodox emperor (Dusan) in
the 1350s?
Even the defeats at
Nicopolis (a town in Bulgaria on the Danube, 1396), and Varna (1444), which
wiped out all hopes for Christendom to clear the Balkans of Islam, could not bring
unity. At Varna the Christian leaders did not have an opportunity to flee. King
Vladislav of Hungary and Poland, and the pope's delegate, Cardinal Giulio
Cesarini, fell on the field. Djuradj Brankovic, the last of the Serbian despots
and a weak member of the Christian coalition, realized even before Varna that
the coalition's chance for success was poor, and withdrew. This did not help,
however, the despotate, which succumbed in 1459, 6 years after Constantinople
fell to the Turks (1453). The black two-headed eagle of Byzantium moved to
Moscow to become the symbol of the "Third Rome," nourishing the fancy
of Balkan Slavs for centuries to come.
For the next half-century the
Serbs retained some fragments of their self-rule and liberty; but in 1459 their
country finally became a mere province of Turkey. The nobles were completely
exterminated. Not content with seizing their country, the Turks used the
unhappy Serbs as the instrument of their own enslavement. One boy in every
family was torn away from his home, and brought up as a Turk and a Mohammedan;
and thus were formed the so-called Janissaries, the famous crack regiments
which made the Turks so long the terror of Europe. So completely were the Turks
masters of Serbia, that no Christian dared ride into a town on horseback: if he
failed to dismount when he met a Turk on the highroad, he risked being killed
upon the spot. He was not allowed to have firearms, and was at the mercy of the
Turkish soldiery when they chose to plunder. A proverb which dates from those
terrible times says that grass never
grows where the hoofs of the Turkish horses once tread.
In the books of travelers who
passed through Serbia when she was still under the Turks it is possible to get
some idea of the misery of the people, and of the cruelty of their rulers. What
are now fertile and prosperous valleys, full of corn and pasture and little
farmsteads, were in those days uncultivated and almost deserted lands. It was
only in those districts which lay off the beaten track, where the soldiers and
tax-collectors did not come so often, that the Serbs had any chance of living
peaceful and settled lives.
From 1459 to 1804 Serbia
ceased to exist as a state and a self-governing nation. How was it that she was
able to rise again from the dead? There is hardly another instance of a nation
that saved itself by its national poetry. It has been said that “every Serb is
a half-poet.” When everything seemed lost, many turned into local bards to keep
alive the memories of their people’s past glories by their songs, and ballads,
and tales - always with an eye to the great days which would come again and
console them for the miseries of the present. For centuries every village had
its own singer, often a blind man, sometimes even a man gifted with the “second
sight,” as the bards of the Scottish Highlands in past days. In the long winter
evenings the villagers gathered round these singers and listened to them as
they chanted, to the accompaniment of their primitive one-stringed fiddle (gusle), the adventures and victories of
dead Serbian heroes. The battle of Kosovo was one of the most decisive events
in the whole history of Europe. It meant not merely the fall of the medieval
Serbian Empire and the conquest of the whole Balkan Peninsula by a barbarous
Asiatic invader, but also the triumph of Islam over Christianity in the Balkans
for 500 years.
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I think that most of you would find this interesting reading.
bmp
Thanks. I have read this before but I am pleased to see it here in Fr.
"There is hardly another instance of a nation that saved itself by its national poetry. It has been said that “every Serb is a half-poet.” When everything seemed lost, many turned into local bards to keep alive the memories of their people’s past glories by their songs, and ballads, and tales - always with an eye to the great days which would come again and console them for the miseries of the present. For centuries every village had its own singer, often a blind man, sometimes even a man gifted with the “second sight,” as the bards of the Scottish Highlands in past days. In the long winter evenings the villagers gathered round these singers and listened to them as they chanted, to the accompaniment of their primitive one-stringed fiddle (gusle), the adventures and victories of dead Serbian heroes."
I read this much...will get the rest tomorrow. "History is not bunk."
Here is a more detail and well written description of Kosovo During World War II, 1941-1945.
Historical evidence demonstrates that genocide and ethnic cleansing were perpetrated upon the Serbian population of Kosovo and Metohija, first by the Ottoman Turks, by Albanian leaders and the populace , then during the occupation by fascist Italy and Nazi Germany by Albanian fascists and Nazis, and continued throughout the Communist period , during which periods the ethnic Serbian population was forced to emigrate..
The historical and political precedent for the creation of a Greater Albania or Greater Shqiperia was set during World War II when the Kosovo and Metohija regions, along with territory southwest of Lake Scutari from Montenegro and the western region of Macedonia,, which was then southern Serbia, or Juzna Srbija, were annexed to Albania by the Axis powers, led by fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, under a plan devised by Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler which sought to dismember the Serbian nation and people, which the Germans and Italians perceived as the main threat to the Axis powers and to the Third Reich in the Balkans.
On April 7, 1939, Italian troops invaded and occupied Albania, forcing the Albanian ruler King Zog I, Ahmed Bey Zogu, to flee to Greece.Italy next formally annexed Albania into the Kingdom of Italy under the Italian King Victor Immanuel and established a military government and Viceroy.The Italians began a program to colonize the country when thousands of settlers emigrated to Albania.An Albanian Fascist Party was established with Albanian Blackshirts based on the Italian models.The Albanian army consisted of three infantry brigades of 12,000 men.
On October 28, 1940, Italy invaded Greece from Albania with 10 Italian divisions and the Albanian army but were driven back.
Germany sought to assist the Italian-Albanian offensive by Operation Alpine Violet, a plan to move a corps of three German mountain divisions to Albania by air and sea. Instead, the Germans built up a heavy concentration of the German Twelfth Army on the northwest Greek border with Bulgaria, from where the German invasion was launched.
On April 6, l941, Nazi Germany and the Axis powers invaded Yugoslavia, Operation Punishment, and Greece, forcing the capitulation of Yugoslavia on the 17th and Greece on the 23rd.Yugoslavia was subsequently occupied and dismembered.The Axis powers established a Greater Albania or Greater Shqiperia at the expense of Serbia and Montenegro. Territory from Montenegro was annexed to Greater Albania. From Serbia, the Kosovo and Metohija regions were ceded to Greater Albania, along with the western part of southern Serbia (Juzna Srbija), now part of Macedonia, an area which was part of Stara Srbija (Ancient or Old Serbia).This Kosovo-Metohija region and the durrounding territory annexed to Greater Albania was called ěNew Albaniaî.
To create an ethnically pure Albanian Kosovo, which the Albanians called ěKosovaî,the Albanians (Shqiptari) launched a widescale campaigns of ethnic cleansing and genocide.Ethnic Serbs in the Kosovo-Metohija regions were massacred, and their homes were burned, and the survivors were brutally driven out and expelled in a policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
The Balli Kombetar (BK or National Union) was an Albanian nationalist group led by Midhat Frasheri and Ali Klissura whose political objective was to incorporate Kosovo-Metohija into a Greater Albania and to ethnically cleanse the region of Orthodox Serbs.
The Albanian Committee of Kosovo organized massive campaigns
of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Orthodox Serbian inhabitants
of Kosovo-Metohija.A contemporary report described the ethnic cleansing
and genocide of Serbs as follows:
Armed with material supplied by the Italians, the Albanians
hurled themselves against the helpless settlers in their homes and villages.
Accoring to the most reliables sources the Albanians burned many Serbian
settlements, killing some of the people and driving out others who escaped
to the mountains. At present other Serbian settlements are being attacked
and the property of indviduals and of communities is either being confiscated
or destroyed. It is not possible to ascertain at the present the exact
number of victims of those atrocities, but it may be estimated that at
least between 30,000 and 50,000 perished.
Bedri Pejani, the Muslim leader of the Albanian National Committee, called for the extermination of Orthodox Serbian Christians in Kosovo-Metohija and for a union of a Greater Albania with Bosnia-Hercegovina and the Rashka (Sandzak) region of Serbia into a Greater Islamic State. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el Husseini, was presented the Pejani plan which he approved as being in the interest of Islam. The Germans,however, rejected the plan.
On September 3, 1943, Italy capitulated by signing an armistice with the Allies. The Germans were then forced to occupy Albania with the collapse of the Italian forces.The Germans sent he 100th Jaeger Division from Greece and the 297th Infantry Division from Serbia and the German 1st Mountain Division to occupy Albania. These troops were organized into the XXI Mountain Corps, which was under the command of General Paul Bader.
Bedri Pejani organized and headed the Second Albanian League of Prizren in 1943, which sought to revive the goals of the First League of Prizren in 1878, whiich were to unite all the lands where Albanians lived into a single, unified Greater Albania. The Second Albanian League,like the First, was reactionary, anti-democratic, racist, authoritarian, and allied with Nazi Germany. Pejani found an ardent supporter of the Second League in Heinrich Himmler, the ěarchitect of genocideî and the person who oversaw the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem. The Second League fit perfectly into Hitlerís New Order in Europe. Moreover, Italian anthropological research had revealed that the Ghegs were Aryans or Nordic, the herrenvolk or master race like the Germans.Pejani and the Second League opposed democracy and human rights but sought to create a Greater Albania through genocide and ethnic cleansing. The 21st Waffen SS Division Skanderbeg resulted from the efforts of the Second League of Prizren.
Germany re-occupied Albania and Kosovo in 1943. Additional security forces for the interior were needed,however, to free up German troops for defense of the coastline. The decision was made to form an Albanian SS mountain division for this purpose. In April, 1944, recruitment for the Albanian SS Division began under the direction of the newly formed Albanian Nazi Party, which had been formed through the efforts of Ernst Kaltenbrunner. Acting upon the instructions of Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler, the SS Main Office ordered the formation of an Albanian Volunteer mountain Division on April 17,1944. Himmler planned to create two Albanian SS divisions. SS Brigadefuehrer and Generalmajor of the Waffen SS Josef Fitzhum, who headed the Higher SS and Police Command in Albania, oversaw the formation and training of the division.
The SS High Command planned to create a mountain division of 10,000 men. The Higher SS and Police Command in Albania, in conjunction with the Albanian National Committee, listed 11,398 possible recruits for the Waffen SS mountain division. Most of these recruits, roughly two-thirds were Kosovars, Albanian (Shqiptar) Ghegs from Kosovo-Metohija in Serbia. The Shqiptar Tosks were found mainly in southern Albania. Most of the Shqiptar collaborators with the Nazi forces were the so-called Kosovars, ethnic Shqiptars from the Kosmet of Serbia. The Albanian gendarmes, special police, and para-military units were Kosovars. The Kosovars were under the direct control of the Albanian Interior Minister, Xhafer Deva.
The Skanderbeg Division was formed and trained in Kosovo and was made up mostly of Muslim Shqiptar Kosovars.There were only a small number of Albanians from Albania proper in the division, about one-third. The Skanderbeg Mountain Division of the Waffen SS was thus essentially a Kosovo or Kosmet division. The division was stationed and operated in Kosovo and other Serbian regions almost exclusively.
Of the 11,398 recruits listed for the division, 9,275 were ascertained to be suitable to draft in the Waffen SS. Of those suitable to be drafted, 6,491 Albanians were chosen and inducted into the Skanderbeg Division. To this Albanian core were added veteran German troops, primarily Reichdeutsche from Austria and Volkdeutsche officers, NCOs, and enlisted men, transferred from the 7th SS Mountain Division ěPrinz Eugenî which was stationed in Bosnia-Hercegovina.The Kosovo Albanian 21st Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS ěSkanderbegî consisted in total of 8,500-9,000 men of all ranks.The 6,491 Albanian recruits were assembled at depots in Kosovo where the formation and the training of the division began.
The official designation for the division was 21. Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS ěSkanderbegî (Albanische Nr.1).The SS Main Office designed a distinctive arm patch for the division, consisting of a black, double-headed eagle on a red background, the national symbol for Albania. The word ěSkanderbegî , embroidered in white, appeared above the eagle and was worn on the left sleeve.The left collar patch consisted of a helmet with a goatís head on the top, the helmet supposedly worn by George Kastrioti, Skanderbeg, after whom the division was named. The Shqiptar recruits in the division wore a white skullcap, the national attire of the Shqiptar Ghegs. The SS Main Office also issued gray skullcaps with the Totenkopf (Deathís Head) insignia sewn on the front below the Hoheitzeichen (the national symbol of Nazi Germany, consisting of a white eagle over a Nazi swastika).
The division was named after George Kastrioti, or Gjergj Kastriota, also as Kastriotis (1405-1468), a national hero of Albania, who fought against the Ottoman Turks.As a child, Kastrioti was given as a hostage to Sultan Murad II to be brought us as a Muslim at Adrianople (Edirne).Kastrioti became an officer in the Ottoman Turkish army and led the Turkish forces in many victories over Christian troops.Murad II was impressed with his valor and bravery in his battles for Islam and gave him the name Iskander Bey in Turkish, from ěIskanderî, Alexander the Great, or Prince Alexander, and ěBeyî, master.
The name was shortened to Skanderbeg, beg being the local variant of beg.Later, Kastrioti renounced Islam and converted to Christianity and attacking his former Ottoman Turkish masters. He captured the Albanian capital Kruja from the Turkish governor and proclaimed a revolt against the Turks in 1442.Sultan Mohammed II sent Turkish armies to defeat the renegade Kastrioti, but he was able to defeat the Turkish forces, which besieged Kruja but could not capture it. Kastrioti died in 1468. Kruja surrendered in 1479 and the Turks occupied Albania.
The Albanians in the Skanderbeg Division were mostly Muslims, of the Bektashi and Sunni sects of IslamThe division contained several hundred Albanian Catholics, followers of Jon Marko Joni.
The first commander of the Skanderbeg division was SS Brigadefuehrer and Generalmajor of the Waffen SS Josef Fitzhum, who commanded the division from April to June, 1944. After the July 20, 1944 assassination plot against Hitler, Fitzhum was appointed supreme commander in Albania. In June, SS Standartenfuehrer August Schmidhuber, who had been a member of the 7th SS Mountain Division ěPrinz Eugenî, was appointed commander of the division, a post he would hold until August, 1944. On June 21, 1944, Schmidhuber was promoted to SS Oberfuehrer, and later in the war, he would be promoted to SS Brigadefuehrer. SS Obersturmbannfuehrer Alfred Graf commanded the reorganized remnants of the Skanderbeg Division from August, 1944, to May, 1945.
The Schutzstaffel or SS was created in the period 1923-1925 and was initially known as the Stosstrupp (Shock Troop) ěAdolf Hitlerî. On January 16, 1929, Hitler appointed Heinrich Himmler leader of the SS, Reichsfuehrer SS. The SS was envisioned as an elite troop of the Party, a Praetorian bodyguard to Hitler and the Nazi leadership. The SS was a formation ěcomposed of the best physically, the most dependable, and the most faithful men in the Nazi movement.î In 1940, combat units of the SS were formed, collectively termed the Waffen SS. Approximately 30-40 Waffen SS divisions were formed during the war,divided into three groupings, Waffen SS divisions made up of Germans, those made up of ethnic Germans outside the Reich, and those made up of non-Germans, ěDivisions der SS, Divisions of the SS.
On September 27, 1939, Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler as Chief of German Police consolidated the Gestapo, Kripo, and SD under an SS Main Office of Reich Security, or the RSHA. The RSHA was the actual body entrusted with the overall administration of the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem, what became known as the Holocaust. The SS Economic and Administrative Main Office, or WVHA, ran the concentration camp system. Nazi concentration camp personnel and guards, although not under the command of the Army or the Kommandoamt der Waffen SS, nevertheless, wore Waffen SS uniforms and received Waffen SS paybooks. Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler oversaw a program that resulted in the extermination of millions of men, women, and children. Himmler was the architect of genocide and of the Holocaust and the Waffen SS was his ěprivate armyî, the ěblack angelsî. As part of the Skanderbeg Waffen SS Division, Kosovar Albanians would play a role in the Final Solution, the Holocaust. Kosovo Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies would be victims.
In June, 1944, the Skanderbeg Waffen SS Mountain Division engaged in large-scale field maneuvers in the area between the towns of Berane and Andrijevica in Montenegro ( Crna Gora). Garrisons of the Skanderbeg division were established in the Kosovo towns of Pec, Djakovica, Prizren, and Pristina. Further training of the division continued in August as new recruits were inducted in the division. An artillery battalion of the division, consisting of two batteries, was located in Gnjilane.
The first major action of the division occurred in August, 1944 in Kosovo. In September, 1944, the Skanderbeg Division occupied Macedonia, then denoted as southern Serbia, and helped to garrison the region. The Skanderbeg Division was ordered into the areas surrounding the towns of Skopje, Kumanovo, Presevo, and Bujanovac. Skanderbeg operated in the Stara Srbija (Old Serbia) region, in the Kosovo-Metohija towns of Pec, Gnjilane, Djakovica, Kosovska Mitrovica, and the Macedonian towns of Tetovo and Gostivar. The city of Tetovo was a major base for the Skanderbeg Division.
In November, 1944, when the German armies in the Balkans were retreating from Yugoslavia and Greece, the Skanderbeg Division remnants were reorganized into Regimentgruppe 21. SS Gebirgs ěSkanderbegî and was transferred to Skopje, according to an account of the movements of the Battle Group. This SS Kampfgruppe ěSkanderbegî, along with the Prinz Eugen Division, defended the Vardar valley. The Battle Group ěSkanderbegî and Prinz Eugen held the Vardar area because it was the sole corridor of escape for the retreating German armies in Alexander Loehrís Army Group E, which was then retreating from Greece and the Aegean Islands.
The Skanderbeg Battle Group along with the Prinz Eugen Division retreated to the Brcko region of Bosnia-Hercegovina by mid-January, 1945. At this time, the remaining Skanderbeg personnel were incorporated into the 14th SS Volunteer Mountain infantry Regiment of the 7th SS Division Prinz Eugen. The remnants of the Skanderbeg division fought in this formation until the end of the war, retreating to Austria in May, 1945.
The Skanderbeg Division engaged in a policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Serbian Orthodox population of the regions under occupation by the division in Kosovo-Metohija, Montenegro, and Macedonia. Balkan historian Robert Lee Wolff, in The Balkans in Our Time, described the genocide committed against Kosovo Serbs by the Albanian 21st Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS ěSkanderbegî as follows:
In the regions annexed by the Albanians, their so-called
Skanderbeg division,
made up of members of the Albanian minority in Yugoslavia,
massacred Serbs with impunity..
Historian L.S. Stavrianos, in The Balkans Since 1453, described the genocide committed against Orthodox Kosovo Serbs by the Skanderbeg Division in these terms:
Yugoslav Albanians, organized in their fascist Skanderbeg Division, conducted an indiscriminate massacre of Serbians.
The Skanderbeg Division played a role in the Holocaust, the genocide of European Jewry. In Kosovo: A Short History, Noel Malcolm noted that in the Djakovica region of Kosovo-Metohija, the Skanderbeg Division engaged in ěthe round-up and deportation of 281 Jewsî to the concentration-extermination camps in May, 1944. According to Malcolm, ěthey took part in the most shameful episode of Kosovoís wartime history.î p310 Skanderbeg rounded up scores of Jews in a group of approximately 500 Kosovans deemed enemies of the Third Reich when the Division occupied Prizren in Kosovo-Metohija. The division sought to create an ethnically pure Kosovo, ethnically cleansed of Orthodox Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies, the untermenschen (subhumans), not part of the so-called West, who were targeted for extermination.
According to Miranda Vickers in Between Serb and Albanian: A History of Kosovo, the Kosovo Albanian Skanderbeg SS Division ethnically cleansed an estimated 10,000 Kosovo Serbian families, most of whom fled as refugees to Serbia while Albanian colonists from Albania entered Kosovo and took over their lands and homes:
Until the first months of 1944 there were continued waves of migration from Kosovo of Serbs and Montenegrins,forced to flee following intimidation....The 21stSS ëSkanderbeg Divisioní (consisting, as already mentioned, of two battalions) formed out of Albanian volunteers in the spring of 1944, indiscriminately killed Serbs and Montenegrins in Kosovo. This led to the emigration of an estimated 10,000 Slav families, most of whom went to Serbia...replaced by new colonists from the poorer regions of northern Albania.
The Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal declared the Schutzstaffel or SS a criminal organization and every individual member of the SS was found to be a war criminal guilty of ěplanning and carrying out crimes against humanity.î The Albanian Kosovars in the 21st Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS ěSkanderbegî committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing, and genocide against the Orthodox Serbian population of Kosovo.This genocide would contribute to the Kosovar goal and policy to create an ethnically pure Kosova, in a attempt to create a Greater Albania.
During World War II, the Axis powers dismembered and occupied Yugoslavia and created a Greater Albania by annexing Kosovo-Metohija to Albania. During the occupation of Kosovo-Metohija by Nazi Germany, Germany formed an Albanian Kosovar Waffen SS Division, the 21st Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS ěSkanderbegî which engaged in a policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide against the Orthodox Serbian population of Kosovo. The result was that with the Albanians, with the help of Germany, were able to either kill or drive out entire Serbian families and to round up and deport Kosovo Jews to the extermination camps, thereby creating during World War II an ethnically pure, Nazi German-sponsored Greater Albania.
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I will bookmark this on, want to print it out later.
Very good.
Thank you.
bumpo
Wow - great stuff. No time to finish it now, but this one is being bookmarked for later perusal and digestion.
Me too....
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