Dear friends and comrades,
honored participants of our International Conference to honor PresidentMilošević!
Our International Committee Slobodan Milošević commemorates a number of anniversaries in this “Milošević Year”, as mentioned on various occasions: the birthday of President Milošević 80 years ago on August 20, 1941, as well as his abduction to The Hague 20 years ago, on June 28, 2001, by a puppet regime that seized power in a coup d’état following NATO aggression against Yugoslavia. This date also marks the founding of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milošević (ICDSM), and the last sad anniversary to be commemorated concerns his assassination 15 years ago in The Hague prison on March 11, 2006.
Historical anniversaries have for us not only the meaning of remembering, honoring or mourning. They should also serve as a reminder, they should keep alive and sharpen the historical consciousness of our contemporaries and future generations. And the most important lesson of the past decades, of more than 100 years is: the antagonistic contradiction between the forces of war, oppression and barbarism, and on the other hand the forces of peace, liberation and social progress persists, and we must make every effort to defend human civilization.
In order to learn from history for the struggles today, we should definitely add two dates to our series of anniversaries: the 80th anniversary of the fascist invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, called “Operation Barbarossa” by the Nazis, and – not present in the public consciousness to the same extent, but connected with it – the so-called “Operation Punitive Court” on April 6, 1941 against Yugoslavia, connected with the invasion against neutral Greece.
The driving forces behind these criminal aggressions in WW2 were the same as in WW1, and they remained the same after the liberation from fascism in the “Cold War”, in the counter-revolutionary events since 1989/90, in the aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999 and the imperialist wars until today, including the current confrontation policy of the “West” against the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China.
The war criminal Bill Clinton summed up the motivation exactly (with his 1992 campaign slogan): “It’s the economy, stupid!”. One would have to add:and the geopolitics required for it. Hitler formulated quite similarly that “these peoples’ primary duty toward us is to serve us economically.””The struggle for hegemony in the world will be decided for Europe by the possession of Russian space,” it would be a matter of “taking out of the occupied Russian territories what can be taken out.” This he justified in imperialist and racist terms: “Russian space is our India, and as the English rule it with a handful of people, so we shall rule this our colonial space. It would be mistaken to try to educate the native.””The Slavic peoples are not destined for a life of their own.” “The Slav is a born slave mass crying out for the master; the only question is who is the master.”
World War II, which was started by the German fascists in 1939, had a longer prehistory. Apart from the ideological and propagandistic preparation, Germany’s withdrawal from the League of Nations in October 1933 should be mentioned first, after Japan had already left in February. In 1936, both countries concluded the so-called “Anti-Comintern Pact” as a treaty under international law, the purpose of which was anti-communist propaganda, but which was straight directed against the Soviet Union. In 1937, Mussolini-Italy joined the pact.
This “Berlin-Rome-Tokyo axis” concluded the “Three-Power Pact” in 1940 on Hitler’s initiative, which included intensive military cooperation. After Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Bulgaria joined the Three-Power Pact, pressure increased on Yugoslavia and Greece to follow their example. However, after government representatives of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia signed the pact in Vienna on March 25, 1941, they have been received by a general strike and mass demonstrations upon their return to Belgrade. After the overthrow of the government on March 27, 1941, Hitler ordered a blitzkrieg against Yugoslavia on the same day to “smash it militarily and as a state entity.”
From April 6, 1941, the Airforce of fascist Germany flew bombing raids on Belgrade, dropping 440 tons of incendiary and splinter bombs, destroying 9,000 houses in the firestorm and killing 3,000 people. Germany annexed Slovenia, Italy annexed Dalmatia, Bulgaria annexed Macedonia and Albania,which was dependent on Italy,annexed Montenegro. In Croatia, on the other hand, nationalists gave the invading Wehrmacht an enthusiastic welcome, and the “Führer” Ante Pavelić was allowed to establish an “independent” Ustasha state in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, which included concentration camps.
Serbia was massively reduced in size and placed under German military forced administration with a Serbian administrator. About 350,000 Serbian and Montenegrin military personnel went into German captivity, 180,000 of them for forced labor in the German Reich. During World War 2, 1,690,000 million people lost their lives in Yugoslavia.
This was a high price to pay for the Serbian will to self-assertion and independence, but it was of the greatest, perhaps even decisive importance for the course and end of the criminal world war. With the Three-Power Pact, fascist Germany wanted to provide itself with a trouble-free deployment area and a free hand for the invasion of the Soviet Union. Due to the preceding Balkan campaign, the invasion of the Soviet Union planned for May 15 had to be postponed to June 22, 1941, resulting in the “Russian Winter” for the Wehrmacht. The supposedly incompetent Slavic peoples put an end to the bad dreams of the fascists, and at the greatest sacrifice won a brilliant victory against the imaginary “master race”.
Slobodan Milošević stands in the tradition of struggles against subjugation and domination, for liberation and national self-assertion, for the community of independent and equal nations. Precisely these positions made him an opponent for the protagonists of the neo-colonialism called “New World Order”, which had to be fought with all means.
The war of aggression against Yugoslavia was the first war in Europe after 1945, a caesura in postwar history. Yugoslavia had not attacked any other country. It was the first open war unleashed by NATO; it was not preceded – as in 1941 – by a declaration of war. NATO’s use of military force was without a UN mandate and therefore constituted aggression in violation of international law.
The World Union of Freethinkers stated at its conference in Munich on June 5, 1999: “The war against Yugoslavia is a violation of the United Nations Charter and has done immeasurable damage to international law. … This war marks an attempt to replace international law, which came into being after liberation from fascism in 1945 on the basis of the agreement of the anti-Hitler coalition and established the valid world order, this international law which guarantees the sovereignty and equality of all states, with a lawless state.”
We always assessed that the NATO aggression was a door-opener war for the imperialist wars of aggression and regime change that followed in quick succession in order to impose a neocolonial world order. With “Otpor” in Serbia, a “non-governmental organization” created by George Soros and other “philanthropists” was set in motion for the purpose of subversion and coup d’état, a blueprint for countless “colored revolutions”, proxy wars and coups, up to Venezuela and the Maidan. The assassination of Slobodan Milošević in The Hague ranks with the assassinations against Saddam Hussein and Muammar al-Gaddafi, and it takes little imagination to envision the fate of Bashar al-Assad if the Russian Federation would not have stopped the terrorists in Syria directed by the “West”.
However, a look at the world map also makes us realize that the conflicts and wars staged by imperialism, similar to a chain, take place around the western and southern flanks of the Russian Federation, serve to encircle Russia and thus also indicate the ultimate goal. Here arises the parallel with the fascist three-power pact, which also served the purpose of dismembering this country, enslaving it and appropriating its wealth. And since U.S. President Obama announced that he would now turn the “pivot on Asia,” China, too, has once again become a major adversary, just as it was the “pivot” of Japan at the timeof the 2nd world war.
Today, the U.S. President’s name is Joe Biden, and he is considered by many people to be a “nice guy” in misjudgment of reality.Before he became Vice President in 2009 – 2017 under Barack Obama, he was a U.S. Senator from 1973 – 2009, he was an early advocate of U.S. violent intervention in the Balkans, he incessantly beated the war drums with the final success of the NATO aggression in 1999. This fine Mr. Biden said in a U.S. Senate hearing on July 29, 2000: “If we beat Milošević to a pulp, it will have curative effects on the extremes in other countries.”
It cannot be said that the imperialists had a wrong assessment of Slobodan Milošević–It was more realistic than that of some peace activists. Slobodan Milošević left us the legacy of determined fighting for the defense of peace and international law, for national sovereignty and independence, for social justice and progress.
Today, the task is to oppose war propaganda and the production of enemy images against all those countries that strive for independent national development and thus serve as a model for other countries held in colonial dependence. NATO is a military alliance for the enforcement of imperialist predations. 80 years after the invasion of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, it is necessary to organize resistance against NATO’s policy of confrontation and high armament. We know Slobodan Milošević on our side as we work for: Peace and cooperation with the Russian Federation and the PR China!
Klaus Hartmann
Co-Chairman of the Slobodan Milošević International Committee
President of the World Union of Freethinkers
(Speech at the International Conference MILOSEVIC – AGAINST NATO CRIMES, FOR A NEW WORLD)