by Prof. Slobodan Antonić – (Translated by Joran Velikonja)
In this article I will present the various plans that Germany had with the Serbs and Russians after the expected victory in World War II. Why do I fall back to history? We frequently perceive Hitler and Nazism as an aberration in Western history. But Hitler was, in fact, just openly announcing that in Europe he will do what the West has already done elsewhere. As we’ll see, Hitler took the extermination of the Native Americans as a model for the colonization of Slavic lands, Russia in particular.
“It would be best if Serbia just disappeared from the map” —as attested by Hermann Neubacher, that opinion was prevalent within the German leadership in 1941 (see here, p. 89). But we find the same opinion in The Manchester Guardian (as The Guardian was formerly called), in August 1914: “If it were physically possible for Servia to be towed out to sea and sunk there, the air of Europe would at once seem cleaner” (here; here, p. 53).
Actually, the only difference between Hitler and the English was Hitler’s brutally proclaiming to do—and he had done as much as he could—what others in the West were doing slower and more subtly, the things they didn’t yet dare to undertake or weren’t able to accomplish.
* * *
Unlike the Kaiser, who wanted territorial expansion towards the Middle East and a redistribution of African and Asian colonies, Hitler’s primary goal was to colonize Slavic lands, from the Baltic to the Black Sea for starters and then onward to the Urals.
In Mein Kampf he writes that the Kaiser was mistaken in pushing Germany southwards. “When in today’s Europe we speak of new soil and land”, he wrote, “we primarily mean only Russia and the peripheral countries subservient to her. It appears that destiny itself wants to show us the way. […] The giant Empire in the East is ripe for its downfall.” (here; 44th unabridged German edition, p. 742-3; compare here, p. 118)
By the way, Hitler had adopted many concepts from the West. As J. Q. Whitman revealed in Hitlerʼs American Model (2017), race laws in the United States were the legal inspiration for the race laws in the Third Reich. In his book Hitler: The Definitive Biography (2014), John Toland showed how impressed Hitler had been with the system of Indian Reservations, the extermination of the indigenous peoples, the epidemics and starvation policies. According to Toland, when speaking to the German leaders, the Führer frequently “extolled the efficacy of the American extermination of the ‘red savages’ by starvation and in unequal combat” (here, p. 802).
“As a passionate reader of Karl May’s novels”, writes John Pool in his book Hitler and His Secret Partners (1997), “he would frequently refer to the Russians as redskins. He saw a parallel between his own efforts to occupy and colonize Russia and the conquest of the American West” (p. 272). He used to say that in the European East the Germans “had one single purpose: Germanization by peopling with Germans and treating the locals as redskins”. He even encouraged military officers to read Karl May and learn about all kinds of combat with the natives.
How did the Germans imagine their colonization of Russia and Eastern Europe?
The Generalplan Ost (1942) anticipated three types of agricultural estates to accomplish the colonization of Slavic lands between the Baltic and the Black Sea: individual (25-29 hectares; approx. 60-70 acres), intermediate (40-100 ha; approx. 100-250 acres) and large ones (250 ha; approx. 620 acres). The colonization was supposed to be carried out by some 6 to 12 million Germans, settled in areas from which 31 million Slavs would be banished across the Urals. The displacement would include 65 percent of Ukrainians and 75 percent of Belorusians, leaving behind 14 million Slavs, primarily as servants and unskilled workers (here).
The Plan foresaw an initial establishment of three settler colonies: in the Baltic (Memel-Narew Gebiet), in the Leningrad Oblast (Ingermannland) and in Crimea (Gotengau; see map here). Their foundation would have been Germanic farmers-warriors, living on family or collective estates, as in some form of a Military Frontier. Regional centers would have consisted of settler towns, 36 of them, numbering 20,000 inhabitants each, interconnected by a network of highways and railroad lines. The colonies were supposed to spread gradually, until they would merge into a unified whole.
The Slavs would have been exiled from their towns, whereas in the villages they would have been retained as farm hands. Slavic education wouldn’t have gone further than reading and writing (while also switching over to the Latin alphabet; here, p. 122). Hitler even thought that the Slavs should not be taught anything beyond the “knowledge of traffic signs, to be able to stay out of our way” (ibid.).
“Hitler liked to reiterate that the words Russia and Russian should be forbidden. Allowed are only Muscovy and Muscovites. After the victory of the Reich, the Muscovites will be simply driven onto their reservations, like the Indians in the USA” (here, p. 285).
* * *
What would have happened to Serbia?
In his book The German New Order and South-East Europe (in Serbian: Nemački novi poredak i Jugoistočna Evropa), Milan Ristović describes the plans for Serbia. Generally, there were two plans in existence.
According to the first one, submitted to the Ministry of External Affairs in July 1941, two million ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) from Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia were to be amassed in the Danubian German state Prinz Eugen Stadt. [or Staat?] It would have stood sentry over communications along the Danube and, akin to the Military Frontier, barring access to the Lebensraum from the south and east (here, pp. 101-106; 362-363).
Pursuant to that plan, the Serbs would have been exiled from Belgrade, Smederevo and other places along the Danube. The Plan stipulates that the “Serbs have to be driven away from the Danube and out of Belgrade in order to stress their political insignificance and to prevent any new plots against Germany, the order in the Balkans and in Europe — a frequent historical occurrence” (ibid., p. 106).
Belgrade was chosen as the heart of the German Danubian state, as the strategic center of the river basins of the Tisa, Drava, Sava and Morava. It was to become the “fortress of the Reich” in the borderland (Reichsfestung Belgrad), with the specific task of safeguarding two economic resources of key importance for Grossdeutschland: the Djerdap Gorge (Iron Gates) and the mining complex in Bor (ibid., pp. 105-106).
The Djerdap Gorge was essential for navigation control on the Danube and as the place where the Germans intended to build the largest hydropower plant in Europe.
On 25 September 1941 Hitler proudly proclaimed that now the Germans had finally returned to “places which already witnessed the breakthrough of the Germanic-German race: we were standing at the Iron Gates, we had been in Belgrade, we had entered the Russian space” (276). Two weeks later he speaks enthusiastically of the Danube as the “river course of the future” (der Zukunftsstrom). It will connect Germany, via the Black Sea, with the boundless granaries of her future colonies around the Dnieper and Don, then with the oil wells around Baku (the pipeline reached ports on the Black Sea), as well as with coal mines in the Donbas (276) [[1]].
Exhilarated by the conquests of Belarus and the Ukraine, Hitler then presents his vision of the future, in which the Danube is the main traffic artery of the Grossraum (the German economic space): “As big as it may become, the Danube-Main Canal cannot be built sufficiently large; of course, the Danube-Oder Canal should be added to it; thus, we will be getting an economic bloodstream of unheard-of proportions; Europe will be the land of unlimited possibilities” (276).
The Germans also worked out a plan (Grossprojekt “Eisernes Tor”) which anticipated the construction of a hydropower plant at the Iron Gates, “producing as much electricity as one half of all German power plants” (282). From the Iron Gates, electricity would have been transmitted to Graz and Vienna. Also foreseen was the “creation of one of the largest aluminum production facilities in Europe” due to the proximity of Romanian bauxite (Bihor Mountains) (ibid.). The Iron Gates Dam would be built by Russian prisoners and all construction was to be completed by 1947 (282-283).
The other key resource belonging to Serbia, was the Bor Mining Complex. It was the largest copper ore deposit in Europe, making Yugoslavia the top producer of copper on the continent in 1941 (here, p. 103). In 1943 the Germans were extracting up to 50,000 tonnes of ore per month (here, p. 354). Other Serbian ore resources, too, were of interest to the Greater Germanic Reich, such as lead mines (Trepča, Kopaonik, Avala, Ajvalija, Janjevo, Lece, Novo brdo i Rudnik) or antimony (40 % of European production: Krupanj, Zajača, Lisa and Bujanovac; here, p. 105).
So, all that had to be placed under control through the establishment of the Danubian German state, from which, as stated, the Serbs would have been displaced. Reichsminister Krosigk announced in 1942 the possibility of a new “Migration Period” (Völkerwanderung), with mass displacement—as he explicitly specified—of the Czechs, Poles and Serbs (here, p. 91).
* * *
But Hitler himself was not thrilled with the idea of a Prinz Eugen Stadt [or Staat?]. He planned to recruit the required six to twelve million German colonists of the European East by including those same two million Danube Swabians (111-113; 363). He did not, in fact, consider the area of the Danube basin in the Balkans as part of the German “living space” (Lebensraum), but rather as merely a piece of the Germanic “economic sphere” (Wirtschaftsraum; 172-173).
Hitler actually perceived the Balkans as a “junkyard of small states” (Kleinstaatgerümpel), which only the Germans can rearrange and civilize (50-51). After the Reichʼs victory those staes, too, would be placed into a special vassal relationship of stepwise arranged semi-sovereign and pseudo-sovereign statelets, as was planned in Berlin (ibid.).
Europe outside the Reich was regarded as the German Grossraum (larger habitat), which—after the victory—would see the establishment of a “hierarchy of peoples/nations” (Rangordnung der Völker/der Nationen). Even Italians were aware that within that order only the Germans would be at the top. As early as 13 October 1941 Mussolini was saying that Italy, too, would be reduced to a colony and might be forced to cede to the Reich parts of her territory, such as Trieste (334).
The Balkan peoples, deemed anyway poorly suitable for assimilation (nichtumvolkbar; 83), would be at the bottom of the European hierarchy, whereas the Serbs, as the “sworn enemies of order” (361), would find themselves on the bottom rung—provided, of course, that they were not re-educated in the meantime (362) [[2]].
That’s why the Serbs were treated as one of those peoples, along with the Russians and Poles, who “would have to remain under German dominion in the long run” (65). Unlike the vassal states, such as Croatia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania or Bulgaria, which still had certain elements of independence, Serbia and Greece (the latter also perceived as a “problematic” country; 70), were occupied territories, where the administration was directly installed by the occupying power (360). Serbia was put under a particularly strict occupation regime (62,184 people were executed by firing squads; here, 116,264), while the Serbs across the border on the Drina were even worse off, having been mercilessly turned over to the Croatian genocide.
Still, even the “truncated Serbia” (Rumpfserbien; 285) probably would have become part of the European order in the end. But what would have been her fate?
The Germans didn’t really see the future European Völkerordnung as an order of states (Denken in Staaten), but rather as a system of commercial colonies (74-75; 161). The countries outside the Reich, especially those at the edge of the Grossraum, would be “advised” to “refrain” from developing their own “manufacturing of automobiles, electrical devices, locomotives, engines for transportation and industry, precision mechanics, chemicals, dyes…”, which would be under the exclusive authority of Germany. Others would have to stick to agriculture, mining and the coarsest processing of raw materials, “which do not require a particularly qualified workforce” (187). In order to absorb the agricultural labor surplus, industry would have to be developed in the Balkans, too, but it would be primarily linked with the exploitation of natural resources and only for the first phase of their processing (188).
As part of the de-industrialization idea, particularly with regard to the defense industry, 268 railway freight cars containing 4,488 pieces of machinery were hauled off to Germany from the Military Engineering Plant in Kragujevac, Serbia, in the course of 1941 alone! In March of 1943, 43 more freight cars were towed away, followed by another 37 in April. In the second half of 1943, 94 additional carriages with machinery were taken from Kragujevac, 96 freight cars with machinery from the Military Engineering Plant in Čačak, 88 freight cars from the factory in Obilić, 140 freight cars from the plant in Ravnjak close to Kruševac, 75 freight cars from the Military Engineering Plant in Lazarevac, 84 carriages from the “Vistad” factory, and so on. “This was the best organized looting of third-party property in recorded history” (here, p. 106).
The plan was to eliminate any competition to the Reich’s economy in all European vassal states, so as to ensure “absolute supremacy of German corporations” (here, p. 200). By way of example, the administration and use of the remaining industrial facilities in Serbia was handed over to the management of 29 major German companies with the entire production intended for the Reich, so that “almost nothing was left for the needs of Serbia and the Serbian public” (here, p. 108). Only the rail-road network enjoyed unlimited investment, but its primary role was to enable a more efficient exploitation of natural resources for the Grossdeutsches Reich (here, p. 188).
In addition to ores, large amounts of grain and lumber from Serbia were also hauled off to Grossdeutschland. As early as 19 June 1941 it was announced that farmers must cede for compulsory purchase all grain except 30 kilograms of wheat or 60 kilograms of corn per household member (here, p. 117). In 1942 Serbia was forced to deliver 320,000 tonnes of wheat, 600,000 tonnes of corn and 90,000 tonnes of oats, rye and barley (118). The “purchase” of all commodities was paid for with the money which Serbia had to remit as contribution for its own occupation (119-120), so that Germany was getting all goods from Serbia literally free of charge.
As a result of the export of lumber (but also due to insurgent activities), Serbia—although densely forested—was left with almost no firewood. In Belgrade they even contemplated “to log the Košutnjak park-forest and Mount Avala, in order to save the urban population from the approaching winter” (123).
But still, despite all that, it was assessed in Germany that, in fact, “the workforce from the South-East (of Europe) is the most valuable export commodity these countries can give us even now, but especially after the war” (here, p. 255). The Balkans was regarded as an “inexhaustible workforce pool” (257), able to provide to the Reich “more than three million workers”, of which number at least 1.5 million would be seasonal labor (up to ten months per year; 255). The war interfered with a more substantial export of manpower to the Reich and yet, from Serbia alone, 80,000 workers went (or were deported) to Germany (268).
Most interesting of all, this entire colonial order in Europe, designed for the unrestrained exploitation of markets, labor and natural resources, was supposed to be masked beneath the narrative of a “common European future” and a Europe “from Sweden to the Balkans” (352). In order to minimize the resistance of the vanquished peoples, it was recommended as early as 1940 to avoid the term “German large-area economy” (Grossraumwirtschaft) and to speak “always and only of Europe” (151). In the propaganda it was emphasized that “Germany does not seek to hold sway over countries”, the only ostensible goal being “an economically whole” Europe in which the peoples would “economically complement” each other (155). This “complementing” became reality after Germany tore down almost all intra-European (zwischeneuropäische) borders (288).
Hitler himself was actually a great European, except that he equated “European” with “pan-German” (31-32). The Germans, by the way, did not view the ongoing war in Europe as merely a war of conquest, but as a form of great economic restructuring. “This is not a war for throne and altar”, as Goebbels kept explaining (31 May 1942)—or rather it is not a war about who will govern over the peoples nor what their religion will be. According to the Reichsminister für Propaganda, this is “a war for raw materials” because we Germans “only want to cash in” (150).
It is clear that in such a system Serbia would have been but a marginal colony, no more than a German depot from which cheap labor, food and raw materials are taken as needed.
* * *
I am sure that the the above text was triggering parallels with contemporary circumstances in the reader’s mind, both in the geostrategic [[3]] [3] and economic sense. Russia got away (for the time being)—although the West hasn’t given up its pretensions to dismember her as a nation and subdue her as a culture (patterned after the Vatican’s current formula of “consecrating Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary”). But today’s Serbia is clearly not too far from the position assigned to her by the Nazi Plan B.
Change of mindset, limited sovereignty, deindustrialization, a readily available source of auxiliary labor, cheap raw materials, a pliant market, unprotected workers, unpaid work of the “natives” (with subsidies to foreign investors)… All those things are of current significance even today and I have written about it all in my texts: To Understand What We Are, The Colonial Establishment in Serbia, Colonial Polyarchy, The Subservient Intelligentsia, Serbia — the “Territory” Grappled Over by Germany and Croatia…
Now, I would add to this only an insight into the current wave of mass exodus to Germany. The Germans, as they say, currently need 1.4 million workers and our people are in demand because they easily integrate and assimilate. But don’t you have the feeling that in today’s Serbia there appears to exist some hidden Ministry of Emigration and Propaganda to Depart for Germany?
Not only that the National Employment Service recruits workers and sends them to that country, but “employers from Germany and their local agents openly canvass pre-graduation highschoolers right in their classrooms, all with the consent of the education authorities”. By the way, who’s to blame that Serbia has as many as 17 medical school graduates annually for every 100,000 inhabitants whereas poor Germany has only 11.
Another story is the open propaganda to emigrate, cultivated by, say, the daily Danas, in its column charmingly titled “Our People around the World”. It was already pointed out by Zoran Ćirjaković that this column had been “converted into a campaign for turning oneʼs back on Serbia”. The captions from the column speak for themselves: “Leaving Serbia wasnʼt easy, but it was essential”; “Despite all changes, life in Dubai is incomparably better than in Serbia”; “I miss Serbia, but Austria has offered me security”; “Itʼs not our fault, our system is rotten”; “We Serbs know how to get by and to gain respect”; “People from Serbia are accustomed to being more resourceful than ‘normal folks’”; “I bid adieu to this Serbia, but the love for the country still remains”…
“Along with the columns of numerous haters of this country”, notes Ćirjaković, “those shamefully spun testimonies of the escapees paint an image of Serbia as a repugnant, hopeless gas chamber in which no progress is possible”.
Thus the young migrant A. Kosanović, a political scientist, says that “a normal person canʼt bear the amount of horror and barbarism by the people who run things around Serbia” and that therefore “the average Serb has an extraordinary poverty of mind (?!), is in moral crisis and wracked by the tough life”. His colleague M. Pantić even argues that “in Serbia, everything has to be built from scratch (?!), thereʼs nary a meter of room to mend anything” (?!). And a similar campaign is spearheaded by Radio Free Europe (e.g. here).
Danas brags about being the Croatian ambassadorʼs favorite morning reading. Maybe thatʼs one of the reasons this paper will never raise questions such as: why two hundred Croatian companies are doing business in Serbia, whereas the number of Serbian ones in Croatia is — eight? And whether it is really necessary that our children learn from schoolbooks by Croatian publishers, eat Croatian meat products, indulge in Croatian confectioneries, drink Croatian water… — while the opposite, of course, is beyond imagination.
But Danas is surely the favorite paper of the German ambassador, too. On its pages, denkverbot is any topic that could awaken an ever so slight awareness of the colonial status in which Serbia finds itself, but even more so of the possible ways out of that situation (about some of which I have written here and here).
“The greatest success of (neo)colonialism is to convince people that it does not exist”. That’s why the first step towards emancipation is for us to understand the nature of the Atlanticist spirit, then to recognize the strategic interests of the West and to vow to ourselves, but also to each other, that we won’t allow them to be ousted from the Danube (so they could settle here some other, more suitable people); and no, we won’t allow to be treated, or to treat ourselves, as if we were — redskins.
Himmler had suggested, in his time, that the “Serbian people has grown out of rebellions over the centuries” and that with us one has to be forever on guard. Because no matter how defeated he may appear, “a Serb is always a Serb” (here, p. 90).
We only have to remain Serbs. Is that so much of a problem?
- [] In other respects, too, the Danube was the main transportation route for bulk cargo (Massengüter) — oil, lumber, grain and ores, not only because back then the traffic network was less well developed, but also on account of the much cheaper fluvial transport as compared to road and railway traffic (here, p. 277; 286). For instance, all the oil from Ploeşti (Romania), the main European oilfield at that time (278), was transported to the Reich upstream the Danube. That’s why Hitler was saying that “to safeguard navigation, the Iron Gates have to be placed under the umbrella of the Wehrmacht and stay under it in perpetuity” (283). ↑
- [] It is a fact that the Germans held Serbs in high regard as warriors and on that account were seeing them as a dangerous disturbance factor of their New Order. Hitler lamented that he tried to win over the Serbs “by promising them Thessalonica” and “demanding nothing of them”, only to burst out that “never before in his life was he as outraged as on March 27”, when it became obvious that “the Serbs were just a gang of conspirators” (89).“The Serbs, as eternal instigators of unrest, have to be cornered and suppressed as much as possible” was the dominant view in the upper echelons of the Reich, as attested by Neubacher (89). When in 1943 he suggested to Hitler to annex Montenegro to Serbia, the latter responded that the “Serbs (historically) have demonstrated their state-building power and far-reaching goals, all the way to the Aegean Sea”, and that “a people with such a political sense of mission” should not be allowed “to become dominant in the Balkans” (90). ↑
- [] “A glance at the map of today’s European Union reveals its striking resemblance with the farthest reach of the German military forces during the First and Second World Wars, especially on the Eastern Fronts. The fact that some Eastern Orthodox countries, such as Bulgaria and Romania, already are in the European Union, doesn’t mean that there is room for other Eastern Orthodox nations, too. Their accession into the EU signifies the fulfilment of the old German strategic goal of exerting control over the Balkans. One also shouldn’t forget that these two countries, Serbia’s neighbors, were German allies in WW II, and Bulgaria even in the Great War”. ↑
Slobodan Antonić, great intelectual. Started his way as an western liberal in the 90s, now he cant phantom them, and those same liberals now hate him with passion
this is rather grim lesson from history – while eye opening at the same time
I am sure that the the above text was triggering parallels with contemporary circumstances in the reader’s mind, both in the geostrategic and economic sense.
The echoes are deafening! Nazi Germany/Serbia/Russia/UK, present day USA/UK/Canada/Poland/Germany/EU/Ukraine/Russia/neo-nazis/sadistic war crimes/genocide/covid crimes against humanity/Great Reset – it’s all one gigantic echo-chamber.
Even within the so-called “neo-nazis” – more accurately “Nazis” – the generational links are compelling. Ursula von der Leyen is granddaughter of one of the perpetrators of the greatest genocide of WWII in Babis Yar, became Defence Minister, now head of the Azov-adoring EU; then there is Chrystia Freeland; and a prominant statesman of another European state (sorry, can’t remember the specifics unfortunately) … these are all third generation nazis who have manipulated their way into power in countries around the western world.
History repeats itself – but gets amplified in the process.
European countries now members of the EU … are building their own prison (the EU) and digging their own graves by letting EU decide for them … EU decided to cut trade, with Russia and are doing their best to cut trade with China. …. Russia has the raw materials and the energy EU needs… without we will freeze, starve and production comes to a halt… China is the biiggest producer of big and small things, we need to a lesser of greater degree… due to the interconneted tradesystem that has allowed us in Europe to benefit immensely…
Without trade EU dies, TRADE is what made Europe rich, its still what makes Europe rich,. ”You cut trade… you go back to the dark ages”… where we had feudalism, all were poor except the rulers…. the people were just slaves…
Russia and China does not need Europe to survive … it is Europe who needs Russia and China to survive.
Europe has to realize that we live in the 21st century … not in the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th nor the 20th century… the 2 world wars changed the world, people and countries broke free…
The problem with west Europe is that it is too full of itself and needs to be knocked down at least a peg or two. They have what you might think of as a lesser version of the US disease and they also have a distant idle neighbor who is only too willing to sacrifice the interests of East and West European peoples for its own. So, remember that what the news media call Europe is only Western Europe whereas there is also this other Europe that can be properly called Eastern Europe and which includes Russia and Serbia. In simple terms, the conflict between these two regions of Europe can be thought of as a conflict rooted in cultural Orientation. The outlook preferring the past (at least as a starting point) is an Eastern orientation whereas the outlook preferring the future is a Western orientation. For example, the Russian and Serbian cultural outlook is primarily informed and strongly guided by the past, as the article demonstrates. For the west, the future is all and far more important than the past, and sometimes more than even the present, and pending consequences! This is the strange Janus-like Identity of the European continent. You can hold up the face of Janus for Europe.
Belgrade is a world city my friend. My impression of Serbia is of a vibrant and growing economy. I’ll agree a portion of the intelligentsia is fully in thrall to foreign exploitation, but generally society is fully aware of the perils of trusting anything Washington et. al says.
And I’ll strongly agree, there are many press platforms that are shamelessly subservient to foreign interests and full of self-hate.
Threading a neutral path is difficult these days – let’s hope Serbia politicians are successful in their efforts.
I have noticed years ago how the EU resembles Nazi German conquests. What Germany failed to do in the 1940s it is doing under EU auspices. EU=4th Reich.
I doubt it is Germany. Far from it.
Indeed, notice that the whole concept of the EU – including the way it has developed over the decades – was modelled very closely on the concrete plans made by IG Farben. Not only that, but even after the defeat of Germany, the legal foundations for the creation of the actual EU were drafted by relatively prominent German nazis. The link is unbroken.
Likewise the link from the wartime German nazis to the current US puppetmasters of the EU can also be considered unbroken in the sense of the key nazis absorbed into the CIA, the nazi banking families, the nazis absorbed into the US weapons industry, and of course the Bush family – and other key US elites – who are directly descended from German nazi families.
All of this was dreams of the radical element of the German elites, not the average German, aimed at increasing their own wealth and power.
Today the average German or western EU citizen would not like all this or want to live in or colonize Russia or Serbia.
Serbia was a target because Hitler was an Austrian and related to the cause of WW1.
True, average citizens harbor no such grandiose ambitions. Prinz Eugen Staat? Yup, that’s Austrian. The reason Austria made for such a great neutral state all these decades is because Austrians have a very healthy superiority complex and they had no problem snubbing and stiff-arming both the US and USSR, at the same time, or either/or. The perfect place for ground zero for Cold War diplomacy and espionage, although it goes without saying that neutrality is in reality a farce.
The problem with Ukraine as a neutral state is that the people suffer from appalling low self-esteem and want to self-identify as “European,” so they won’t stay neutral no matter what it says on paper. No wonder Nazism and neo-Nazi ideology comes so naturally to them. Germans obviously felt inferior when they were shut out of overseas colonies by France and Perfidious Albion, they had to look East to assuage their inferiority complex.
This is an incredibly well-written article; it really distills the essence of what is wrong with this planet. Beam me up, Scotty.
Agreed.
All these ambitious “plans” must have looked really great and, no doubt, achievable.. at the time. Now, these plans look simply.. beyond pathetic. History is a very strict teacher and one has to listen and pay attention to that teacher. Otherwise you will end up at the bottom of the class. That is exactly where EU is finding itself today. Dunces and abject losers. Punished. But what we are seeing now is something quite amazing – this “bulging eyes” and “foaming at the mouth” Russophobia, which, actually, has ALWAYS been there – has been psy-oped and turbo-charged to the levels never seen before! Now they want to CANCEL Russia! One can look at them as mental patients, ready to be put into straightjackets and deposited to a padded cell, but the most horrifying reality is that THESE people are in positions of power, apparently elected by the populations of these west European countries, to govern over them. Britain included. There, they went and cast a vote for a clown called Boris Johnson. In Germany they did the same – went and cast a vote for another clown called Olaf Scholz.
And I am not even mentioning the french, italians, scandinavians and the rest of them. WTF were you thinking!!
Yes, you are now all “Standing with Ukraine”, i.e. standing with the neo-nazi fascist scum but then, once again, this so-called “Europe” always had those inclinations and predilections to Fascism. In fact, that is where it originated. I am absolutely including England here. It’s that parasitic DNA, where they had been living off and enriching themselves through the labour and sweat of others. Throughout centuries. And want to continue to do that. Well, things have changed, world has changed, the ignorant, stupid, fat arse school-yard bully has been shown off the playground and his hangers-on are now in dissarray and don’t know what to do.
It is actually fun to watch.
I could feel sorry for the populations of these countries, but somehow, I don’t feel that, being Russian. I feel great satisfaction that Karma is real, that there WILL be the come-uppence for the most despicable, most abject, most grotesque and agressive behaviour that Russia had seen from the so-called West for most of Russian history.
Here is the price to pay. In Rubles! Ha-ha.
“The colonies were supposed to spread gradually, until they would merge into a unified whole”.
Why does the map of Palestine suddenly appear before my eyes?
Big, sincere love to Serbs and Russians from Poland. Such a shame we’re on different sides of the geopolitical table, my hopes and prayers are that sanity eventually wins here as well as in other slavic/central european nations. EU and USA proudly continue traditions od the 3rd reich in number of different ways. Instead of joining NATO and EU former Warsaw Pact members should have created an alternative economic and military allegiance without constantly warmongering westerners, especially anglosaxons. Hope its not to late for that!
I am serb and I was born in Sweden and i have lived there all my life.
I have decided to leave Sweden and move to Serbia.
Many serbs i know are planing to do the same.
There is no future in the West.
Sweden will be a majority muslim nation in 20 years.
I hope all serbs move back to Serbia and I have a feeling that they all will.
that’s because there’s not enough people to work and pay taxes to support the retirees. someone has to and they need population that will work, be subservient and pay taxes. Euros don’t trust Euros, asians look too different and the rest won’t move. that leaves MENA arabs and muslims, who they find tolerable
What if Western Europeans decide to do their own work without the assistance of cheap foreign labor? What if they decide to facilitate an increase of the birthrate of their own people? What if Western Europeans decide that they do not wish to become minorities in their own ethnic homelands? Would that be a positive development in your mind?
that’s a wishlist that no one wants to touch in the West. why? life is hard for them as they have become more self centered and nihilistic. that sense of belonging and family is something they don’t believe in anymore. that’s how societies crumble
Serbia could now be a refuge for migrating European companies, if the EU doesn’t strangle their energy supplies. The EU’s effort to include tiny Montenegro was clearly about landlocking Serbia.
Western countries digged their own hole, their way of life was suicide. You can wish as much you can the western person made the decision that he wants to be gay and lesbian and not want children and supported abortion….all this is the western made decision. the western person hanged him/herself. This will never change because the western person is already dead.
It’s not our way of life. The picture our media is completely overblown. They just use minority groups,to boast an image of progressiveness and high morality. The actual impact of those groups is pretty small.
e.g. in Germany, it’s allowed to write a 3rd or undefined gender into your passport. how many did that ,a year after the law passed? Fewer than 2 dozens.
You know who controls our BLM-, genderequality- and LBGT-Movements – just looneys without self esteem and otherwise without chance of any career.
I’ve known many lesbian or gay people in my life and most are pretty annoyed about what’s happening in their name.
So all these woke people don’t set the lifestyle, they just scream the loudest, to make personal profit.
The global elites have intentionally engineered the moral degeneration of Western Europeans as is reflected in the content of popular culture. Why would the global elites do this? Because self-absorbed, infantilized degenerates who give no thought to the future of their people are more easily controled and exploited.
In the sick cartoon world the global elites have created a cross-dressing Jewish comedian named Zelensky can become president of a European nation that commands a band of Nazi psychopaths as his personal goon squad. It simply boggles the mind that something so bizarre and absurd could have occurred by design, not merely by chance. It’s perhaps more comforting to believe that all this is just some unfortunate but accidental turn of history. Yet it is intentional, this is the global elites’ plan.
And Uncle Samantha pays them generously.
Will Ukrainians work, be subservient, and pay taxes, I wonder…
good idea – I have done the same after decades spent in UK/JUSA and Canadistan
I am very happy here in Serbia – I should have moved here decades ago
Were you the one that once said that the people in London were the most psychopathic – that you found both London and California to have a lot of psychopaths, but you gave the decider to London?
I respected your comment until you mentioned ”muslims” its like muslims are your problem. Your comment is misleading, leave muslims out of the problem in Europe and in the west in general.
It is a problem precisely because ethnic groups aren’t an invented ideology, they were created by God himself for a reason!
When you mix up 50 different ethnic groups in a small country you end up with a dystopic homo hellscape and destroy by the way also all ethnic identities and religions.
Russia doesn’t do that on its territories. While all citizens are free to move within the Russia we see the various ethnic groups living on their ancestral land with their own customs and religions intact even while it is still part of the Russian Federation.
Countries like Sweden on the other hand will have no custom, no religion and no common identity soon if this continues.
We will. U Srbiju, s ljubavlju!
Not only this but I see a trend developing during the plandemic of westerners moving to Serbia so they could live a free and dignified life.
Just Watching basketball match Zalgiris Kaunas against Red Star Belgrade.
They re playing in Kaunas.
Before match has started the Kaunas Clowns wanted that red star player must hold the ukraine flag
But red star players refused to hold the ukraine flag.
Hitler kaput. After reading this article Klaus Schwab seems to me like his reincarnation or offspring.
The EU is a Napolean dream. What’s missing is Moscow. Oh well, give them time.
A remarkably impressive and thought-provoking article. As a history graduate, who studied the history of Russia at school and has followed the course of geopolitics since 1991 with increasingly close attention, I was astonished at how many important facts it raises of which I had been quite unaware.
Many thanks to Professor Antonic and the excellent translator!
As a history graduate, don’t you think that the historical arguments and/or narrative reconstructions are more likely to be dubious when they rely on secondary sources?
It appears to me that this article is much more accurate where it quotes primary sources (the geopolitical plan of nullifying Serbia), less accurate when it quotes secondary sources (the exact german plan against all Slavs), almost total crap when it quotes unreliable secondary sources like Wikipedia or random MS writers (the alleged rants of Hitler regarding “redskins”).
The Banderastans should read this…
As much as we may dislike the Poles, you have to give them credit for preserving their culture and nation. Poland has to be included on that list.
If the Russian government was smart (or gets that way),they should be vying with the EU to get Serbian immigrants to come to Russia,and to the areas of liberated Novorussia. The Serbs are Slavs,almost all Orthodox,mostly pro-Russian,and had a long history during the days of the Russian Empire of settling in Russia. The hundreds of thousands of Serbs (including Bosnian and Montenegrin Serbs) moving to the EU and US are lost to the Slavic Orthodox World. Let them freely immigrate to Russia and allied areas,and they would be a great aid to Russia. And actually the same can be said for pro-Russian Slavic and Orthodox peoples throughout Europe. The Russian lands need population,population that will be easy to assimilate and loyal.There is the answer staring them in the face,make use of it.
As much as I love Russia,and agree with you that such a migration is preferable (I considered it) as a Serb I’d prefer if they’d all stay here and not go anywhere. They are sorely needed and if they just give up and leave things will never get better. This land is actually a great place to live if one has a bit of humility and humbleness and doesn’t want everything immediately, climate is good, ground is fertile, everything is green in spring and summer, people are easy going and friendly, you have family networks and friends to fall onto in hard times as well as some property somewhere… Thing is due to bombardment of doomerism from the media, most people don’t even notice or appreciate all the positive sides and only notice them once they get stuck in the grinder of working in the West. It could be amazing to live here if we didn’t have constant boot on our throat and incompetent (to say the least) elites. But that later part can never change if best and brightest just leave without a fight. Serbia was in much worse position during 19th and 20th century yet came through it all. But then again people then were more humble and more used to hardships.
Let us imagine a scenario in which the peoples native to Western Europe rekindle a commitment to the genetic and cultural survival of their people. Would Russophiles view such a development with hostility? The answer to that question will determine in the most fundamental sense whether Russophiles are friends or foes of Western European people.
That would be awesome and would solve a lot of our societal problems too. I certainly wouldn’t mind it. Cultures and way of life would be way more normalised and there wouldn’t be such a pressure and intense campaign on brain drain and globalism. I think as far as Western Europe goes equilibrium was achieved around 1965, peace, relative prosperity but not excesive splendor with much harder times still in living memory so the population was humbler and happier with less, balance between tradition and modernity, consumerism and humility, global and local, still proud of one’s country and culture but not chauvinistic, decolonisation just ended. Downfall began somewhat after that and disbalance became bigger and bigger.
Very happy to see prof. Antonić on The Saker page!
Prof.Antonic, I thank you for an enlightening article which touches several points in my own life.
As a native South African I recognise your description of “white-on-white colonialism” as more fundamental than the “white-on-black” colonialism of my childhood. “White colonialism” is the modern commercial incarnation of ancient slavery.
As an ardent advocate of the European Community I was appalled by the EU invasion of Serbia, and began to notice parallels between NAZO’s idea of Europe and Hitler’s idea of Europe. Your valuable article spells out these parallels in detail.
Your description of a Serbian “brain drain” touches me personally. I happen to know a couple of young South Africans with Serbo-Croat ancestry who plan to emigrate to Serbia, and they asked my advice. I told them to go for it even though life in Serbia might be hard at present, because it seems to be a country with great vitality. In view of your negative reports above, have you any comment on the positive side of joining a “reverse brain-drain” to Serbia?
I end with a quote from fifty years ago, from a YugoSlavian expatriate to the U$A: “In the old country we had no money but we lived nice. In the new country we have money but we do not live nice”.
Here is an interesting video on Ukrainian collaboration with the nazis in WW2. It’s a mixed bag,its anti-Soviet too. But once you leave out that,you get a lot of good information on the growth and crimes of the nazi supporting Ukrainians.There is one part talking about the nazi scorched earth retreat from Ukraine,that reminds me of what we are seeing from todays Ukie nazis. Destroying everything around them as they are pushed out by the Russians. They learned well from the nazi mentors of their fathers and grandfathers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cll91vfc_3Q&ab_channel=HistoryHustle
Re. Stepan Bandera:
In July 1941, Bandera was taken into German custody because of criminal acts and “war crimes” committed by Ukrainian soldiers and because he had proclaimed an “independent Ukrainian state” without collusion. He was released on September 25, 1944, and then went into hiding in Germany. “The Nazis” executed some of his platoon leaders for war crimes on the spot.
Bandera was arrested for going too far without German approval in proclaiming Ukrainian independence as a German satellite state. But was kept in more of a house arrest in prison. And continued with German approval to direct his followers to collaborate with the Germans.As is shown in the video many of the direct Ukrainian collaborators served the Germans till the end of the war.And the rest until many years into the war. The Germans weren’t punishing Ukrainians for war crimes,unless those crimes weren’t convenient for the Germans at that time.Many of the direct killers serving the nazis were Ukrainians.As well as many concentration camp guards were Ukrainians.
Hitler and the Nazis may have had such ideas and it explains their behavior in Russia/Eastern Europe but in fact they remained a tool. Both UK and US armed and funded Germany. UK as part of their old strategy of supporting the weakest power on the Continent to keep their rivals fighting; US as a strategy to weaken or destroy all possible rivals to control of the world reserve currency. Thus US provided Germany with fuel/oil products (additives) needed for the Blitz – in fact until 1944, over UK protests. Both UK and USSR were to be rendered bankrupt.
Eu is based on exploiting poorer member countries and neighbours. There is not enough domestic children so foreigners must be imported and domestic labour is too expensive so they need foreign countries for labour intensive production. As a economic partnership I can’t see an alternative. Poland was once a source of cheap labour but not any more. They now have foreigners to work for them. The standard of average Pole has grown significantly since they are members. Serbia is close to Eu. Infrastructure is good and everything manufactured there is in three days in almost all Eu places. They have a lot of foreign owned production firms there. They also have some Serbian firms which are active in many countries of the Eu. What to do? Being a small country it is difficult to cut ties with EU. What will be different? Emigration from Yugoslavia to the west started in 1958. Thee was not enough work for all the Yugoslavians. And it still exists. Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo all have the same problems. Also to lesser extent Slovenia. Young people get quite good education there and go west, others with lower incomes come. I think that Serbia is doing well between EU and other allies like Russia and China. Russia is unable to help Serbia economicly, China needs Serbia as a gate to EU market. There is no alternative for Serbia like maintainig good relation with Eu an have some sovereignity left. It’s a hard way but it is possible.
Mr. Antonic superb as always! All arguments supported by sources, thesis and conclusion out of the question. The liberal rented scum in Serbia goes bananas on every article he writes using the most primitive methods of personal attacks akin to their benefactors from the darkest corners of the Empire of Lies and its dominions. But being only the Serb (from the last paragraph of his article) he never fails to fight back debunking in his style all their manufactured BS.
I am so glad that one of his articles is finally on this blog!
All fair enough but why does Serbia insist on joining the EU? Why doesn’t it apy to be a member of the Eurasian Union? With all this emphasis on brotherhood between Russia and Serbia, wouldn’t this me the most logical way.
I wish Macedonia would do the same after it kicks out the traitors running the country.
“All fair enough but why does Serbia insist on joining the EU?”
I think it is the western-puppet leadership (& Serbia has had total puppets in power since the 2000 coup) plus all the western NGOs and western sponsored professors, journalists and media brainwashing the people continually, and which started years before the coup.
It’s a complicated subject.
Basically, we pretend that we want to be part of EU, and they pretend they want us.
Hating Germans for being superior is unseemly.
Germans extreme stealing and killing in these smaller countries to keep them down and “prove” German superiority is evil.
Excellent article. The rightwingers rag on incessantly that germany initially wanted to be buddies with Russia, but the Russians betrayed them and forced germany to attack. It is one of their standard trolls. The whole point of hitler, and western capitalist backing of his regime, was that they wanted him to do to Soviet Russia what they utterly failed to accomplish after the October Revolution and after. The nazis, and hitler, not only admired the american genocide of Native Americans, they admired the white supremacist policies long adopted in the american southeast, and the american southeast was a major influence on their thinking. It still is a major influence, btw, along with the justified named “flyover country”, the american central states and the midwest.
The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was only a temporary alliance of convenience for both Germany and Russia. Both ultimately intended to betray the other with a sneak attack. Hitler just got lucky and struck first.
Native Americans committed genocide against each other and stole each other’s land. The White man entered the scene and merely proved to be more efficient at the game. If Europeans hadn’t fulfilled the historic role of initial conquest over the natives of North America then some other people eventually would have. Perhaps the Chinese.
A cold, unflinching look at human nature doesn’t come easy. Nietzsche staring into the abyss and all that. Cheap moral vanity on the other…
Native Americans would have gotten a much better deal with the French. Unfortunately, the French lost the French & Indian War to the Brits who were far less fond of the Natives.
Here is a small piece of evidence that some Western designs never go out of fashion.
The day Germany sent 600 of its warplanes to level the National Library of Serbia and it’s 1,500 manuscripts older than the 1400’s along with most of Belgrade and other cities was April 6th 1941.
As the civil war was starting in Bosnia and Herzegovina thanks to CIA and MI6 snipers in Sarajevo, it was April 6th exactly in 1992 that Germany chose to recognize Bosnia and Herzegovina as an “independent country” against the will of the Serbian people inhabiting this Republic of former Yugoslavia, who at the time also owned 74% of the land in the Republic.
I am condused! Is S. Antonic writing about the past or about what is happening today ?
Wow! One would never know Germany was so aggressive and bold looking at today’s Germany, which is now, nothing but a spineless, obsequious, servant of Uncle $hmuel.