CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

What is the Lesson of the Serbian Twentieth Century?

Serb villagers taking refuge in the mountain of Kozara, mid 1942. Public Domain.

On 10 June 1942, the great German–Ustaše offensive against Kozara began, one of the largest anti-insurgency operations conducted in occupied Yugoslavia during the Second World War. Under the command of German General Friedrich Stahl, and involving approximately 40,000 German troops alongside the armed forces and Ustaše formations of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) – the Axis-sponsored fascist regime established in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina – a tightening ring of encirclement was gradually drawn around the Kozara and Prosara mountain regions.

The objective of the operation extended far beyond the defeat of the Partisan resistance movement. It was also intended to eliminate entire categories of civilians whom the occupation authorities regarded as politically unreliable or potentially sympathetic to the insurgency. In practice, this meant that thousands of Serbian villagers, together with other inhabitants of the region, found themselves trapped within an increasingly inescapable military cordon.

The campaign concluded in mid-July with German authorities proclaiming a “great success.” Yet behind the sterile, bureaucratic language of military communiqués lay one of the greatest human tragedies experienced by the Serbian population of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Second World War. According to figures cited by Croatian historian Nikica Barić, the fate of more than sixty thousand of the roughly eighty thousand people caught within the encirclement was directly shaped by the events that followed the closure of the Kozara ring. What military reports celebrated as a successful operation would be remembered by survivors and their descendants as a catastrophe marked by mass deportations, imprisonment, family separations, and immense human suffering.

The people trapped within the encirclement were not merely armed insurgents fighting against the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). They included peasants – elderly men and women, mothers carrying infants, children, and entire families who, fleeing the advancing enemy forces, had sought refuge in makeshift columns of refugees scattered through the forests, ravines, and rugged mountain wilderness of Kozara.

Thousands of men were executed as Partisans or suspected Partisan sympathizers. Tens of thousands of civilians – including women, children, and the elderly – were deported to the concentration camps of Zemun, Stara Gradiška, and Jasenovac, the largest camp complex operated by the Ustaše regime. Many others were sent to forced labour camps in Germany and occupied Norway, where they were effectively reduced to slave labourers serving the Axis war effort.

Particularly tragic was the fate........

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