Ed Kennedy's War: V-E Day, Censorship, and the Associated Press

4. BALKAN INTERLUDE

48 Chapter 4 Balkan Interlude uneasy peace reigned in southeastern europe in the fall of 1939. Many there could hardly believe the strange turn of events—a war in Europe going into its second month and still not a shot fired in the Balkans. Amidst the relief there was almost a trace of disappointment among some more adventurous souls that this time the Continent’s much-advertised powder keg had not set the conflagration off. Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, was my first stop. The Croats had already got a dividend out of the war, or at least the promise of one. Dr. Vladko Matchek, the Croat leader, had taken advantage of the opening of hostilities to threaten to turn to Hitler for help if he couldn’t get satisfaction from the Serbs, who dominated the Yugoslav government. Belgrade agreed to Croatian autonomy. My first lesson in the intricacies of Balkan politics was that, despite all that was written outside Yugoslavia about Yugoslavs, inside the country there was no such thing as a Yugoslav. There were Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, and all three looked upon the designation “Yugoslav” with suspicion . The three peoples lumped together after World War I had been forged into a nation only on paper. Basically, there was scarcely any difference between the Serbs and the Croats. They spoke the same language, though they wrote it in different alphabets. Religion served to identify one from the other. In the borderline area, if a man was a Roman Catholic , they wrote him down as a Croat; if Orthodox, as a Serb. But even religion was not the real barrier between the two. It lay in the fact that the 1. This is a reference to the assassination in Sarajevo in June 1914 of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by a Bosnian Serb nationalist . The assassination led Austria-Hungary to declare war on Serbia, which was the beginning of World War I. BALKAN INTERLUDE 49 Croats, once integrated in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, had achieved a European veneer. Hence they considered themselves more civilized, more cultured, and generally superior to their uncouth Serb cousins. To the Serbs, who had never succumbed to the Habsburgs, the Croats were softies and smoothies, not to be compared to Serbs as fighters or rulers. * * * After a week in Yugoslavia, I reported to the AP office in Budapest, which was charged with covering all southeastern Europe. It was headed by Bob Parker, beside whom I had worked in Paris. In succeeding months, I filled a roving assignment in the region and was away from Budapest most of the time. Like Germany and Italy, Hungary was a have-not nation, another casualty of World War I and the peace treaties. She had a larger percentage of her people under foreign rule than any other European country. The fact that she was too small to do anything about it by herself only increased her bitterness and conviction of the righteousness of her cause. Despite century-old antipathy toward the Germans, Hungary’s course in World War II was set. Apart from German proximity and pressure , Revision was an obsession with Hungarians, and Hitler stood for Revision. By my arrival, Budapest had already played jackal to Hitler, and the pickings in Slovakia and Ruthenia whetted its appetite for a feast in Transylvania. To central European peoples, playing both ends against the middle is but common sense and essential to survival. While moving ever closer to Germany, Hungarian officials tried to keep on the best possible terms with the United States and even with the British. Each move toward Germany was accompanied by ever greater politeness toward American diplomats and correspondents. Throughout southeastern Europe, British and German agents were busily at work. The Germans were counting on the region for supplies and laying the groundwork for the manner in which they intended to use it in their later assault on Russia. The British, 2. Revision was a reaction to the Treaty of Trianon, which sharply reduced Hungary ’s territory in the wake of World War I and led to large numbers of Magyar-speaking peoples living in other countries. Hungarian sentiment toward the Treaty of Trianon was intensely hostile, especially in the interwar period. 50 ED KENNEDY’S WAR hampered by the muddling ways of the Chamberlain government, were making a half-hearted attempt to thwart...