Weren’t the Serbs our allies in WWII?

Interesting piece by Julia Gorin at Right Side News this week concerning Serbia, prompted by a story that ran in The Washington Times.

The author of that other piece characterized the Chetniks–a term for Serbian royalists during World War II–as “racist” and “far right.” He writes they engaged in “murderous ethnic cleansing, slaughtering tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims, Croatians and Kosovar Albanians.” He also takes to task their leader Draza Mihailovich, upon whom President Truman bestowed a posthumous Legion of Merit  and of whom President Reagan (at the time Governor of California) said, “The ultimate tragedy of Draza Mihailovich cannot erase the memory of his heroic and often lonely struggle against the twin tyrannies that afflicted his people, Nazism and Communism.”

I can’t claim any special knowledge of the history involving Serbs, Albanians, Croats, Bosnians, or any of the groups involved in what I understand to be extremely long-standing and brutal conflict. But the Western media’s characterization of the Serbs in recent years as perpetrators of unprovoked genocide and frequent analogizing their behavior (and perhaps their excesses) to that of the Nazis during World War II has struck me as one-sided and propagandistic.

Ms. Gorin’s very thoroughly researched article does suggest to me that perhaps there is more complexity to the tragic picture than most mainstream media accounts would suggest. At any rate, given that most governments and people cooperated with the Nazis readily in order to live one more day (some with alacrity and enthusiasm,) I give credit to any group of people–the Chetniks, in this case–who stood up to them and fought. Apparently, they also saved U.S. troops during World War II.

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