>> From the Library of
Congress in Washington, D.C.
[ Silence ]
>> My name is András Simonyi
and I'm the Managing Director
of the Center for Transatlantic
Relations
at Johns Hopkins University
and it's my distinct pleasure
to open this great event.
Unfortunately, my friend and
colleague who is an American,
he fell ill but he's the
real expert on this subject.
So he asked me to stand in and I
as a Hungarian, said of course.
We used to have a stake in this.
Before I welcome the guests of honor
and the distinguished speakers,
let me just say last year with
the support of Sasha Topridge
who is really the man behind all
this and who is a great Bosnian.
I don't know envy the real
Bosnian Ambassador in Washington
because she's got competition.
We went to an event in Sarajevo last
year and it was really fascinating.
I hadn't been back in Sarajevo since
my days as the Ambassador to NATO.
It was just right after the
ceasefire and I can't tell you how,
how I was, how much impressed
I was by the changes.
And then friends of ours, Miriam
who is our, one of my colleagues,
we went down to the bridge
where the shooting happened.
And we stood there and all I
was able to say is Gavrilo,
what have you done,
what have you done?
And for those, I mean
you are all historians,
you wouldn't be here otherwise,
I was of course referring
to Gavrilo Princip who started
this whole mess and I have to say
that as a Hungarian, I'm not
a historian, I'm an economist
but trust me even in my profession,
the results of how had
done are felt to this day.
And I must say that I come from a
country that has suffered trauma
after the First World War,
which is almost incomparable
to the trauma suffered by others.
And the terrible thing,
it seems to me
that Hungarians haven't
gotten over it yet.
And it's 100 years ago but I'm
not here to speak about Hungary.
I'd like to great Minister
Trhulj, who is a frequent guest
with the Center and gave a very
important, very interesting lecture
about Bosnia-Herzegovina yesterday.
Dr. Dorn, dear guests,
ladies and gentlemen.
Let me start by thanking
the Library of Congress
for hosting us here today.
I am also very excited to read the
Library of Congress publication,
the First World War to
be published in 2016.
This event would not be possible
without the work and support
of the America-Bosnia
Foundation, our own center at CISE,
the European Division of
the Library of Congress,
the Campton of Sarajevo, the Federal
Ministry of Culture and Sports,
not your ministry and
many thanks for all
of you for making this happen.
We all know the assassination
of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
in Sarajevo trigged
the First World War
and we all think about the what ifs.
What would have happened
if this didn't happen?
How prosperous would Europe be?
How undivided would Europe be today?
We all think about the terrible
mistakes the big powers made
after the First World War.
We can't but think about the
role of the peace treaties
after the First World War which
were smallish, which were heartless
and basically paved the way for
Hitler, for Anti-Semitism even
and paved the way for
the Second World War.
All these thoughts come to mind.
I think even if you're not a history
buff but you can't avoid doing a lot
of reading, whether it's fine
literature, whether it's history
about the First World War and I just
want to say that in our profession,
we deal with the transatlantic
relations.
It's extremely important that
we understand how the happenings
of the First World War are impacting
our work still to this day, today.
I'd like to introduce our
distinguished speakers.
First Jacques Klein, who served
as the United Nations
traditional administration
for Eastern Slavonia Baranya
and Western Surmime from 96-98
with the rank of Undersecretary
General.
Jacques will not remember
that that's the time we met
when I was spending 24
hours a day with Bosnia.
He was Principal Deputy
High Representative
for Bosnia-Herzegovina from 98-2001.
The United Nations Special
Representative and Coordinator
of UN mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina
for 2001-2003.
Ambassador Klein was a career member
of the Senior Foreign
Service of the United States.
He also served over 35 years
in the United States Air Force,
rising to the rank of Major General.
Ambassador Klein has held
lectureships and professorships
at Princeton University,
The Woodrow Wilson School,
and the International
University of Dubrovnik.
He is a graduate of the Roosevelt
University which conferred
on him an honorary degree
of Doctor of Humane Letters.
Gerard Toal, to my left
is Professor of Government
and International Affairs
at Virginia Tech's National
Capital Region campus in Alexandria
where he directs the Government
and International Affairs program.
He has a Ph.D. in Political
Geography from Maxwell School
at Syracuse University and is
one of the founding figures
in establishing Critical
Geopolitics as a domain of research
within Political Geography
and International Relations.
He's most recent book, Bosnia
Remade, Ethnic Cleansing
and its Reversal, won the Julian
Minghi Outstanding Research Award
in Political Geography specialty
group of the Association
of American Geographers,
and was shortlisted
for the 2012 Joseph Rothschild prize
in Nationalism and Ethnic Studies.
Dr. Toal has held Fellowships at the
Copenhagen Peace Research Institute,
the Center for International Studies
at the University of
Southern California.
In 2005, he testified before
the United States Congress
about political developments
in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Professor Toal is a native
of County Monaghan in,
is that the right way to say it?
>> Close enough.
>> In the Republic of Ireland.
And last but not least, Paul Miller,
did his Ph.D. in Modern
European History at Yale.
In 95, his dissertation, From
Revolutionaries to Citizens,
Anti-Militarism in France,
1870-1914 was published
by Duke University Press in 2002.
Since 98, Dr. Miller has
taught at McDaniel College
in the U.S. I've been there.
I'm just telling you.
>> Maybe we'll have you back.
>> 2004 and 2005 he was a
Fulbright Fellow at the University
of Sarajevo, where he wrote
on genocide memory in Bosnia
and taught a course on
contemporary genocide.
From 2011 until 13, Dr. Miller was a
Marie Curie Fellow at the University
of Birmingham, that's in the U.K.
[ Laughter ]
>> It's still called the
U.K., where he worked.
I thought that was funny,
I'm sorry about that.
No Scotts here are there?
Anybody from Scotland?
Oh I'm sorry I'm making
a big mistake here.
Like the Queen did two days ago.
Where he worked on a book
on memory of Sarajevo.
That's what got [inaudible]
to Europe, I'm telling you.
Sarajevo Assassination
tentatively entitled June 28, 1914,
a Day in History and Memory.
Miller's article on Yugoslav
memory of the assassination,
Yugoslav Eulogies, the Footprints
of Gavrilo Princip was recently
published in the Carl Beck papers
in Russian and East
European studies.
Now I'd like to just explain to you
how we're going to run this event
and then we'll go over
to the speakers.
First, we've asked our speakers
to consider the centennial
of the Sarajevo assassination,
the long lasting ramifications
of that event and the
contextualization
of the Balkans 100 years later.
Of course within these broad
parameters each panelist will
concentrate on specific
aspects of the theme
which is closest to their heart.
Professor Miller will lead
off with an analysis of events
in Bosnia-Herzegovina surrounding
the following of the assassination
of Franz Ferdinand and his wife,
Sophie Chotek, Duchess of Hohenberg.
Ambassador Klein will follow
with a discussion of the impact
of World War I on civilians
using his own family history
as an example.
And then finally, Professor Toal
will wrap up the presentations
with a consideration of continuity
and change how the countries
of the western Balkans
today are influenced
by the events of June 28, 1914.
Each panelist will speak
for 10 to 15 minutes.
I hope that in the course
of the debate we will flesh
out the consequences for
today but without further ado,
I'd like to call up on
Georgette, whose a Hungarian.
Hungarians run the Library
of Congress as I can.
Okay, that's just a joke.
And I must say that I haven't seen
Georgette for a long, long time
but when I was the Hungarian
Ambassador to the United States,
many years ago, we used to
do some fun things together
so Georgette, thank you very much.
[inaudible]
>> I want to welcome you all in the
Library of Congress and I'm sorry
that Ambassador Jadranka
Negodic has been detained
at the State Department.
She will be with us later.
And the Minister, Dr. Erdal
Trhulj will say a few words.
But in the name of the
Library of Congress I want
to say there are very
nice Bosnian collection.
We have 7,500 books
published in Bosnia
and about 2,000 published
in other languages.
We also have book dealers
in Sarajevo
that send us important books that
we select for the collections.
Many others come by
exchange and gift.
We have a very important exchange
program with the Academy of Sciences
and Arts in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The curator of our Slovak
collection is Angela Cannon.
Thank you very much and I give you
[inaudible] do a much better job
than I.
>> I disagree.
Minister, can I call upon
you to make a few comments?
Please.
>> Thank you.
Dear friends, it gives me
great pleasure to address you
at the opening of such
an illustrious event.
I would like to thank our hosts
at the Library of Congress
and the Center for Transatlantic
Relations for arranging this event
which will give us an
opportunity for discussion
on the First World War
and its consequences
through the 20th and 21st centuries.
From the assassination of
Archduke Franz Ferdinand,
the spark of united Europe the
First World War brought death
and devastation across
the continent.
On the spot in Sarajevo from which
Gavrilo Princip fired his deadly
shots, a sign proclaims
in the street corner
that started the 20th century.
Indeed the war brought a
level of carnage to the world
that had never been seen.
A kind of madness that
would certainly be repeated
through the 20th century.
The United States played a critical
role in ending the First World War
and the sacrifice of
American lives in the war
to end all wars should
never be forgotten.
Americans willingness to stand
for the [inaudible] of freedom
and democracy was forever
sealed in the minds and hearts
of people worldwide and the
United States lent a decisive hand
to the Allied victory
in the Second World War.
The [inaudible] landing at
Normandy 70 years ago and the tens
of thousands of Americans buried
on European soil who fell fighting
for free the old content from the
forces of darkness stands alone
as an inspiration to all
of us trying to build free,
open and democratic society.
The United States came yet again
in the Balkan Wars in the 90s
in defense of life, freedom,
and dignity of people
in the former Yugoslavia.
We people and citizens of
Bosnia-Herzegovina are thankful
for your role in bringing
lasting peace in our country.
Maybe this event in
this famous library
in the world will be further
inspiration to remember our part
so we may work together
toward a better future.
Looking at the esteemed names of
today's moderator and panelists,
I'm sure they will be very
inspiring for thoughtful debate
and maybe today we will come to
the answer where we are 100 years
after from the corner where
the start of the 20th century
and what is the road
going last 100 years.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you Mr. Minister.
Professor Miller?
>> Okay great.
Thank you.
And first of all, let me just
thank the organizers at CISE
and the Library of
Congress for having me here.
It's just a tremendous
honor to be at this event
and also the Bosnian sponsors of
course for the privilege to perhaps,
say some controversial
things about their country
which I've done quite a lot of
in the last number of years.
As the lead offer speaker, the
only historian on the panel,
I was given the straightforward
task of discussing events
in Bosnia-Herzegovina before
and after the Sarajevo
assassination in 15 minutes.
Well it's a small country and I
read that sentence several times
and I thought to myself, well what
in fact was this Sarajevo
assassination
and why is it called the
Sarajevo assassination?
After all we don't talk about
the Dallas assassination
or the Memphis assassination, right?
We talk about the assassination of
John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King,
there's no other assassination
I can think of we talk
about in terms of where it happened.
Who was this forgettable
Franz Ferdinand then?
Besides the Indy rock
band Franz Ferdinand.
After all he happened to live for
50 years prior to getting killed
on June 28, 1914 in Sarajevo.
What kind of person was he?
What was his politics?
Why was he targeted for political
assassination by some very young men
from Bosnia and Herzegovina and
then finally, and most relevant
to this panel, what
can his assassination
and how it's understood in Bosnia-
Herzegovina today inform us,
tell us, in terms of the
country's 20th century.
After all, the world war and
the collapse of the empire,
Bosnia became part
of an independent,
south Slavic state, Yugoslavia.
That was the aim of the
assassins and many other Bosnians
as well though by no
means, all Bosnians.
That state no longer exists but
for many years during which it did,
many Yugoslavists constructed the
assassination as a positive act
of resistance against a
hegemonic, Colonial regime
since they alleged it had brought
about the country's liberation even
if in a rather indirect and
ruthless way, the First World War.
So if we start with the
question why is it we refer
to the Sarajevo assassination by
the name of where it took place,
the capital of Bosnia, where it
occurred rather than the name
of its victim like
most assassinations,
well there is no clear answer.
I'm not going to offer one
other than I'd like to suggest
that there is something different
about this assassination and that
of course, is that of the
many political assassinations
that took place, particularly in
the late 19th/early 20th century,
including an American president
by an Anarchist in 1901,
this one is directly
attached to a World War.
It's this irony.
It's this disproportionality.
This guy named Franz Ferdinand
who we know very little about.
Most people including myself
when I started my work,
certainly had these apocalyptic
kinds of consequences.
In response to that, one
writer, an American travel writer
in the 1930s sort of did a humph and
said "it is an intolerable affront
to human and political
nature that these wretched
and unhappy little countries
in the Balkan peninsula have
quarrels that cause world wars.
Some 150,000 young Americans
died because an event in 1914
in a mud caked, primitive
village, Sarajevo".
That's a pretty well known quote
by now but lest you think it's just
of its time, the interwar period,
let me quote the Oxford
University historian,
Margaret McMillan a few months
ago in the New York Times,
the Sarajevo assassination is
referred to as "a random event
in an Austro-Hungarian backwater."
So here's where we'll start
since that was my task,
to talk about Bosnia.
With this wretched, unhappy little
country in the Balkan Peninsula,
this Austro-Hungarian backwater.
This world war causing Bosnia and
Herzegovina which was once again,
at the center of international
attention at the end
of the century as we
all know as well.
Was it a backwater?
Bosnia and Herzegovina
may have been one
of Europe's poorest regions
despite more than 30 years
of Austro-Hungarian
administration, beginning in 1878,
but it was definitely no backwater,
particularly in a geopolitical
sense.
If at war, then it would not have
been visited by both the Emperor
of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy,
Franz Joseph and his nephew
and heir, the Archduke
Franz Ferdinand
in the space of four years.
The Emperor went to 1910.
His nephew, the Archduke
went in 1914.
Nor would it annexation by
Austria-Hungary in 1908 have led
to a six month long
diplomatic crisis
that brought Europe's great
powers to the very brink of war.
So why all this fuss over one of
Europe's least developed regions?
Well the starting point in this
history lesson, so to speak,
is the so-called eastern question,
in other words the decline,
the gradual decline of the
Ottoman Empire in the Balkans
and the instability that such
power vacuums invariably create.
What would become of the
European domains of the Empire,
that is the Bulgarian, Greek,
Macedonian, Montenegrins, Albanian,
Serbian, Romanian and of
course, Bosnian remnants?
Secondly, there's geography.
The Balkans is a kind of
land bridge towards Asia,
the Berlin Baghdad railway
project was underway.
Of course Russia's long term
ambitions for a warm water port
and control of the
straits, the Bosporus,
and the Dardanelles straits
to get into the Mediterranean.
But for Bosnia, this goes back and
I think that the place to start
because you know, when you talk
about the predecessors of all this,
how far back do we have to go to
the alleged vogamills of Bosnia
and the Medieval church debate, I
mean one has to think about this.
But for Bosnia, a good place
to start I think is 1875-1878,
the so called Great Eastern Crisis,
which was a series of uprisings
against the Ottoman Turks that began
in eastern Bosnia then
spread to Serbia.
It spread to Bulgaria.
It brought the Russians into a war
but it began exactly in the area
that Gavrilo Princip
lived and grew up and all
of his predecessors took part in it.
The most important outcome
of this Great Eastern Crisis,
is that it Europeanized
the Bosnian question.
In 1878, you had the
Congress of Berlin.
It was convened by the most
important political leader probably
in Europe, perhaps the world at the
time, Otto von Bismarck and they sat
around in Berlin and they drank
sherry and they looked at maps
and places that nobody
could pronounce.
Alright? Hard to understand how
that makes Bosnia a backwater.
The outcome of the Berlin
Congress was many things
but to be quick here,
completely independent Serbia.
Serbia had basically won
its own independence earlier
in the 19th century but now
it was completely independent
and in a few years would
be recognized as a kingdom.
Secondly, of course, for our
purposes, all of you realize this,
Bosnia and Herzegovina is put under
Austro-Hungarian administration.
It's still nominally part of the
Ottoman Empire under the Sultan.
Well why would Austro-Hungary
want Bosnia?
And by the way, the
Hungarians adamantly did not.
They didn't want to bring
more Slavs into the Empire.
They felt they had enough
on their hands as well.
This poor, pre-modern,
virtually totally undeveloped,
over 90% illiteracy.
No industry or infrastructure.
Largest peasant with
feudalistic system
with an exploitative
land owning class.
Well, it was a region
that had minerals.
It was the geopolitical significance
that mattered above all.
When it came to Bosnia, the one
reason for having Bosnia that Vienna
and Budapest could agree upon,
was in keeping out of the hands
of this new and upcoming,
independent Serbian state.
And the Serbian state saw
itself as the kind of Prussia
in the German sense of
unification or Piedmont as one
of their journals was called in
the Italian sense of unification.
It was going to be the
hinge, the focal point,
the fulcrum I should say
that was going to unite all
of the south Slavs into
one greater Serbian state
or if you are a Yugoslavist in the
Habsburg monarchy, a south Slav,
a Croat, a Bosnian Muslim, a
Bosnian Serb, a Serbian Croat,
etc. then it was a Yugoslavist,
more of a Yugoslavist vision
that the greater Serbian vision.
But in many ways it amounted
to similar things in terms
of the creation of a state.
So this is the big question then
for the multinational
Austro-Hungarian Empire.
In this age that a
country like Serbian
which was rather undeveloped itself
but had big visions and plans
to be the fulcrum of this
greater south Slavic state,
saw Austria-Hungary as
sort of next on the list.
After the Ottoman Empire
collapsed, Austria-Hungary
with its 11 recognized nationalities
would sort of be next in line.
It was part of the past, right?
And so this brings
us to Franz Ferdinand
who I'd love to talk
about at length.
He's a fascinating individual
but the counterfactual question
which was already mentioned
in the introduction,
the counterfactual,
what if question.
Would he be if he came to power,
which he never did of course,
the person who was able to
introduce political reforms
that would appease the
various nationalities
and not just the south Slavs,
they were the only ones
who had their grievances and
wanted more political autonomy
and rights for their people.
And he know political reforms
were necessary or was he just
so autocratic and overbearing
in his personality,
which has some interesting
roots, psychological roots
that I won't have time to go
into, that he would have been the
so called grave digger
of this empire?
Well one thing I do want to mention
and that's because the question
of the motivation of the
Sarajevo assassination is
that while Franz Ferdinand
had a difficult personality
and could be a kind of
uptight and suspicious person,
he believed strongly
in the monarchy.
He was highly politically skills.
This is the consensus of
most historians' writing,
including Al Mahonig's
new biography.
He was highly politically skills.
He was very involved
in daily political life
in the monarchy and he had a vision.
His vision was no war.
You need to first stabilize
the monarch and if we go to war
with Russian in particular,
that's going to be the end
of our empire and their empire.
And he said that many times.
So many historians have
pointed out the irony
that with his death you lose
the one person in Vienna
who would have spoken
out firmly against war.
So there's the interesting
counterfactual question
about Franz Ferdinand as well.
Of course there's lots of
counterfactual questions.
He was practically on his deathbed
with tuberculosis in the 1890s.
His uncle was on his
deathbed in April,
1914 but somehow pulled through.
All of these are counterfactual
questions
that take place before Gavrilo
Princip ever pulls the trigger.
So counterfactual questions
are an interesting exercise
but they go on ad infinitum.
So this brings us to
why he's targeted.
So we have the annexation
of Bosnia in 1908.
In 1910 when things settle down
after the annexation crisis,
the Kaiser, Franz Joseph
goes to Bosnia,
official visit stalked
by an assassin.
Nothing happens obviously.
Two Balkan wars, 1912, 1913,
the Ottoman Empire is
further pushed out.
Serbia doubles in size, becoming
a greater threat and then we get
to 1914 and Franz Ferdinand's
trip to Bosnia
to observe military maneuvers.
There was no military purpose beyond
observing maneuvers whatsoever.
Some people thought that at the time
but there's no evidence whatsoever.
The plotters themselves,
were all Bosnians.
They were not all Bosnian
Serbs, one of the seven
in the line was a Bosnian Muslim.
You might say the 20th
century began with a Christian,
the 24 Christian suicide
assassin, the 21st.
In any case, the first one in line,
Mohammed Mehmedbasic did not
act but they were Bosnians.
Some had been studying in
Belgrade, hanging out in cafes
and they were part of a loose,
completely non-hierarchical
organization,
unorganized organization called
Young Bosnia, Mlada Bosna.
Right? They did not have
one ideological perspective.
Some were Socialists, some were
Anarchists, some were Yugoslavists,
they were all smart young men.
They read a lot, they
discussed ideas, okay?
They got their weapons from a
conspiratorial group in Serbia,
called Unification or Death,
sometimes known as the Black Hand.
A group of army officers whose
newspaper was called Piedmont,
after the Italian state
that was the lynchpin
for the unification of Italy.
Well why did they want to kill him?
Now there's a question who
initiated the assassination?
And I'd be happy to talk about
that in discussion if we have time
but this is not the place for it
here based on what I was told,
what I was tasked to talk about.
The important question is why did
they want to kill Franz Ferdinand?
And this question has to do
with Austro-Hungarian rule
during its first 30 plus years
in Bosnia prior to 1914 and
this is a fascinating debate
and it's a debate that I think you
can make the argument on either side
that Austria-Hungary was a
ruthless, Colonial power that looked
down its nose at these so
called primitive Bosnians
and was going to bring them up.
It was sort of Austro-Hungarian
burden so to speak,
it was going to bring them
up into a better society
and this was a terrible
humiliation for many Bosnians.
On the other hand, they
built hundreds of schools,
they brought industry, people
emigrated, the economy flourished.
You got a Parliament in 1910.
There was the development of
a Bosnian Serb middle class,
urban middle class which is
very significant because most
of the Bosnian Serbs were peasants.
So this is the debate but the point
of all this, I mean the city hall
that Franz Ferdinand visits
was built by the Austrians,
the tramway line in Sarajevo,
etc., etc. So the point of this is
that if there's no consensus
today amongst historians
as to whether it was good or bad
and we really have to
look at both sides.
Back then there were people who
also saw both sides, the advantages
of being part of this large empire
and the advantages of acting,
agitating for liberation,
whatever that form
that agitation may have taken place.
Not necessarily through violence.
The assassination itself,
I've said was carried
out by these young Bosnians
who do choose violence
and they're all quite young.
Princip is 19 years old, though
that is not uncommon when it comes
to such acts in all
of world history.
Why did it lead to the European war,
especially if Bosnia-Herzegovina was
such a backwater as
Margaret McMillian, again,
tells us in the New York Times?
Global panic and stock market
sell offs did not follow the news
of the assassination, despite
numerous analogies you read today
to 9/11 and I would love to talk
about the analogies constantly
being made in the press today
to contemporary terrorism.
Sarajevo was more like
a sad headline
than a heart-stopping
preview of the upcoming era.
The assassination may have stirred
sober concern from Lord Grantham
in Downtown Abbey but most
Englishmen had the reaction
of Basil Thompson, a British
intelligence officer and I quote,
"like most Englishmen,
I read of the murder
at Sarajevo without a thought.
That it was to react upon
the destiny of this country.
It seemed to be an ordinary
case of Balkan manners out of
which would proceed diplomatic
correspondence, an arrest or two
and a trial imperfectly
reported in our newspapers."
Well a better quotation would be the
British Undersecretary of States,
Arthur Nickelson, in a letter
he wrote to his ambassador
in St. Petersburg, "The tragedy
which has just taken place
in Sarajevo will not, I trust,
lead to further complications."
Alright now you can find evidence
of people, higher ups generally
who were very worried
right away but Europeans,
Germans who were vacationing
in the south of France,
and British who were vacationing
in Vienna, did not go running home
until after the ultimatum
was sent on July 23rd.
The July crisis doesn't
really begin until July 23rd.
So the Serbian reaction to the
assassination is generally positive
but in Bosnia and this is
significant for our topic,
there is an outbreak
of outright violence
against Serbs throughout
Bosnia, not only Sarajevo.
Massive property damage.
There are pictures of this actually.
Even killings and hangings of Serbs.
In fact, some scholars have
pointed out that this violence
that took place following the
Sarajevo assassination again Bosnian
Serbs represented something
relatively new in Bosnia
and Herzegovina, the
first large scale outburst
of purely inter-ethnoreligious,
whatever you want
to call it, national hatred.
In other words, their argument is
that since Bosnian brutally prior
to 1914 was commonly of the
economic or anti-Imperialistic sort,
the inflamed anti-Serb feelings
set loose by the assassination,
were obviously not going
to be easily buried
when the assassins
themselves were buried.
And that leads to the question
how do we get from this disunity
to Bosnia's and the other former
Habsburg crown lands, Croatia,
Slovenia, etc. integration
after World War I,
four years after this assassination
into the kingdom of Yugoslavia?
After all, Croats, Serbs, Slovenes,
and Bosnians of all
ethnoreligious backgrounds fought
in the vengeful Austro-Hungarian
armies that devastated Belgrade
and then slashed, burned
and raped their way
through the rest of Serbia.
Forging political unity
at time during World War I appeared
pointless, if not impossible.
How did it come about?
Well as I've indicated, there was
a cultural Yugoslavist movement
that did gain strength
during the war.
That's relevant.
The straightforward answer is the
same one that you give students
with the Bolshevik Revolution,
it happens in the context
of the world war and the changes
that take place during
the war itself.
The survival of the
Serbian army, the eventual,
though by no means
inevitable, defeat and collapse
of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire at the end of world.
So on a purely political plane and
I like to consider culture as well,
the new south Slavic state
was principally a product
of wartime exigency.
Okay? The Austro-Hungarian
Yugoslavists
and Serbian nationalist leaders.
How long?
>> You're done.
>> We're done?
Oh, okay.
>> Well just finish
here, your thought.
>> Well, I'm sorry I didn't realize.
I was.
>> No worry.
>> How long have I been?
>> You're 20 minutes less.
>> 20 minutes in.
Okay, well this is
actually my conclusion.
So if I can do my conclusion?
>> Yes, please.
>> Yes, well I have to give
a conclusion as a historian.
So the question then, again, how
do we get to this Bosnian state
and this Yugoslavia
that no longer existed?
It's easy as you said in
the introductory remarks
to blame the Sarajevo
assassination for everything.
I wouldn't do that.
I recently published an article
on how the assassination has been
remembered in the two Yugoslavias
and the former Yugoslavia today.
One the one hand, the
findings are obvious.
Serbs think of the
assassin as a great hero,
they build statues to him.
And Muslims and Croats see him as a
terrorist and use that term today.
On the other hand,
it's the world war
which did not follow any other
major political assassinations.
In other words, the context
for grappling with the legacy
of 1914 is far broader
than Bosnia alone.
Of course there may have been
different paths in history.
It's irresponsible to assume that
World War I was somehow inevitable
with or without Sarajevo.
Thus, arguing as many Bosnian,
Croats and Bosniacs do today,
that the Serb, Princip halted
Bosnia's movement towards,
it's path towards Europe is
nationalist propaganda no less
than that.
At the same time, the
praise of Princip
as this great liberator is
also nationalist propaganda.
I would suggest that we go back to
1914 rather than focus on 1941 to 45
or 92 to 95, that this would be a
better starting point for grappling
with the unreconciled
past in Bosnia.
At that moment there were Bosnians
of all ethnoreligious backgrounds
who supported and even
worked towards,
their country's further integration
into the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
By the same token, there were the
far better know Bosnians who worked
for liberation for that empire.
These were both admirable positions.
These were by no means
non-incompatible positions.
What followed with the assassination
and the war, not to mention the rest
of the 20th century, was
a tragedy of Bosnians
of all backgrounds regardless
of those political visions.
But it was a European and
even a global tragedy,
one whose ramifications
we're still working through.
The fact that the Bosnians were
able to join the south Slavic state
after the war, only later to
see it bloodily torn apart,
first time from outside
in less than one century,
is just one further element of
the world war's wasteful legacy.
And despite the rhetoric and the
name, the Sarajevo assassination,
this global tragedy was not
made in Sarajevo or even
in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
where agitation
for greater political independence
was a little different from that
in other parts of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The formative tragedy
of the 20th century,
the First World War was made in
Vienna, Berlin, St. Petersburg,
Paris and London and nobody ever
called those places primitive,
mud caked backwards.
Thanks. Sorry.
>> Alright, thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> When the war began, obviously
the Prussian Empire drafted a lot
of young Alsatians,
both my grandfathers
were in the German army.
My oldest uncle, Eugene was in the
German army and father, Tannenburg
and received an Iron Cross.
My other uncle, Emile fought on the
western front and a bunker caved
in on them because of
oxygen deprivation.
He never recovered.
Even in the 1950s.
Those are the long-term
consequences of what war brings.
Now you can imagine then in
the 1920s if you're sitting
around the table in
our little village.
You have my grandfather who was in
the German army, the oldest brother,
who was in the German
army, my father,
who had been in the French
Medical Corp and my other uncle,
Joseph who had been
Chasseurs Alpins,
the French Alpine Mountain Troops.
And the dialogue that goes
on in a context like this.
One of the only positive
results of this Prussian rule was
that as you know, in 1904/1905,
France went through a
very anti-clerical period
where they closed all the
religious institutions, Jesuits
and others were driven out.
The Alsatians, when we became
French again, were somewhat revolted
by this and actually resisted Paris
and so if you find in France today
that if you go to Alsace,
the priest, the minister
and the rabbi becomes a [inaudible],
an administrator of the state
and receives a pension and a salary
from the French government
every month,
even though that this is
a religious phenomenon.
In 1940, when the Germans returned
and they once again, annexed Alsace,
on the 15th of June,
they crossed the border.
They immediately expelled 45,000
people as political undesirables.
They passed legislation.
French nationals, Alsatians
identified
as pro French also deemed
political unreliable, were expelled.
Additionally, a thousand of
other Alsatians who volunteered
in World War I were
also put upon and sent
to Struthof Concentration
Camp and Schirmeck-Vorbruck.
The process of Germanization,
that is the names of towns
with what the German's called
[inaudible] began immediately.
Towns and villages received
new names overnight.
Cernay became Sennheim.
Chalampe became Eichwald.
Dannemarie became Dammerkirch,
etc. etc. and our village,
Saint Hippolyte became Sankt Pilt.
Our names were changed.
Herman became Helman.
Goget became Rudy.
Etienne became Stefan.
Jean became Hans, etc. etc.
The use of the French language
and all French words
that has been assimilated
in the Alsatian dialect
were forbidden.
All street signs, store names,
restaurants, etc. etc. were changed.
There was a quite a bit of
resistance among young Alsatians.
All the heroes of the Napoleonic
period, General Rapp, Clavel,
Victor, all of the others,
there are 28 Alsatian generals.
The use of graves were resumed.
Statues were moved.
Public library French books
were burned and in December,
1941 it was decreased that the
beret could no longer be worn.
Mandatory six-week jail sentence.
Participation in General labor
service began immediately.
All the young males between
17 and 25 were called up.
Marcel Weinun, for an act
which he was condemned
and ultimately executed him.
All Alsatian Jews were
abducted and expelled.
Young men who had already done
military service in the French army,
37, 38, 39 and were
demobilized and had come home,
were now again drafted
into the Wehrmacht
and sent off to the eastern front.
Gauleiter Wagner had the
sobriquet Schlachter von Elsass,
The Butcher of Alsace.
What he was condemned for
was systematic recruitment
of French citizens from Alsace
to serve against France,
killing Allied prisoner or war,
mass execution of deportees.
One year group after
the other was called up.
Now repeated Nazi attempts to engage
voluntarily recruitment didn't work
very well.
Obergruppenfuhrer Gottlob Bergen,
Chief of Staff of the Military SS,
who didn't die until the 1950s after
collecting his pension for a number
of years, vented his frustration
on telegram to Himmler on 21,
June 1944, "Alsatians are, with all
due respect, a bunch of bastards.
They already believe the French
and English will return and,
in the last few days,
have increasingly shown
a particularly hostile
and hateful attitude."
In our own family, Uncle Joseph, and
you have to understand it's someone
who can be culturally very
German, [inaudible] etc.,
very German culturally but
hated Prussian aristocracy,
Prussian autocracy, and he
had been studying in Germany.
And when the war began, he saw it
coming, obviously in the summer.
He left by way of Switzerland and
entered France and immediately went
to the recruiting depot
and said I want to join up.
And as you can imagine, was
arrested as an enemy alien.
After trying to explain to them
that we thought one of the functions
of this war was to
liberate Alsace rule
and they finally agreed
and said fine.
And so his regiment
of 1,200 went off.
By the end of the war,
there were 340 or so left.
He was highly decorated by
the [inaudible] came back
to Selesel, where I was born.
Opened his business, had two girls,
one of whom became my godmother.
And in 1940, when the Nazis
showed up, first name on the list,
[inaudible] volunteer First World
War, concentration camp, Struthof.
Now what saved him as it turns
out, since they had called up a lot
of other people, my Uncle Eugene
was also conscripted in early 43
and sent off to the Russian front,
where he subsequently disappeared.
We don't know what happened to him.
All we know that is one of his
colleagues said they were refueling,
reloading, artillery fire commenced,
the whole thing went up in smoke
and that's the last they saw Eugene.
But the fact that he was on the
eastern front, my godmother,
who was President of
the Alsatian Red Cross,
could go to Gauleiter
Wagner and say listen,
[inaudible] may have committed
the youthful indiscretion
by volunteering for the
French arm but do remember,
his brother in law is in
Russia and so are two nephews.
It would be very unseemly if
anything happened to [inaudible].
Struthof is the only concentration
camp in France, up in the village.
1943 was not a good year for us.
Andreas Joseph Klein was killed
in October in Nikopol, Russia.
August Klein was killed July
13th 44 in Azrael in Poland.
My cousin Charles was luckier.
He was a little younger.
He was conscripted and oddly
enough, posted to Italy.
Because the German rule was
all Alsatians had to be sent
to the eastern front and let
the Russians grind them up.
In any case, as soon
as he got to Italy,
he and two other Alsatians deserted,
joined the Italian partisans,
fought with the Italians, but
were betrayed, court marshaled,
sentenced to death,
sent to Mauthausen Concentration
Camp outside of Vienna
but fortunately, as he said,
there are some decent people.
There was an old Austrian
Captain there who basically said,
I mean they were 17 and half, 18
years old, lay low the war will be
over soon and with some
luck, you'll survive.
My godfather, Emile
was also called up.
And after basic training was sent
by way of [inaudible] through Czech,
through Hungary, through Romania
out to somewhere near Odessa.
And there they're unit was overrun
by the Russians and he was sent
to a POW camp called Tambow, which
is 480 kilometers south of Moscow.
In that camp were thousands
of Alsatians
because the Russians are
very good at propaganda.
And I've seen all their
leaflets that they put out.
They lost because they
had the eastern front.
We know you were drafted against
your will, we know you don't want
to be here, here's a
leaflet, give yourself up,
you'll be treated humanely.
He said it was bizarre because after
being interrogated and debriefed
and what have you, he was given a
train ticket with two other POWs,
they had POW uniforms on
obviously, and said you go to Tambow
and they went by train to Tambow.
Now Tambow, after he got there,
they quickly organized themselves.
They grew their own vegetables
because people were dying
like flies, you can imagine,
every day, dysentery,
cholera, you name it, it existed.
And what they did, they trained
about 1,500 of them to be ready
to move if they had to
move and go somewhere.
And at that point you know,
the Gaul was in London,
obviously General Kerning
was the Chief of Staff,
and Kerning said you know, you
French have sold us out twice now.
In 1870 to avoid paying indemnity.
You gave up Alsace because you
didn't want Russian occupation
and 1940, under Vichy
you did the same thing.
You never protested once when
the Alsatians were called
up for military service
in the German army.
But he did do something.
And the Gaul said yes, you're right.
Go to Moscow, talk to the Russians.
See what they say.
And he went and met Voroshilov
and all the senior leadership
and basically the Russians said,
look we understand the situation.
Any of these people
you have down here
who are fit to travel we'll let go.
So General Petinan, the French
liaison office went to Tambow
and there were 1,500 of
them, physically fit.
So they took them down to first
of all, to Tehran, deloused them,
fed them, then put them in
trucks and then they went by way
of Baghdad all the way to Haifa.
Haifa they put them on ships, they
sent them back to North Africa,
and they landed at Algeria.
Now they're back in French control,
food, training, the uniforms
and then as Emile told
me, he said we were told
that there was an American
General was coming
and we're going to have a parade.
So we were on the parade.
The American General came,
he got up on a platform
and through a very good
interpreter, said boys,
are you ready to fight the Nazis?
Oui, Generale.
He said you boys look
awful young to me.
Do any of you have any
military experience?
Oui, Generale [inaudible] two years
in the French army and a year plus
in Russia and the Wehrmacht.
He said Holy Christ, how
can you be in the French
and Germany army in the same war?
But that is the reality
of the European situation.
In any case, they landed at Toulon
as you know, came up through France,
liberated France, liberated
[inaudible] but Tambow is valuable
for us as Alsatians because Tambow
has the largest military cemetery
outside of France.
10,000 young Alsatians
are buried there.
All in a war they wanted no part of,
being forcefully drafted to fight
in an area they never
wanted to fight in.
Those are in the sense the
ramifications, the vicissitudes
of World War I that never ended.
And indeed I remember my
grandmother and I were
in a town called Molsheim near
Strasbourg in the gorge and we were
on the train platform and my
grandmother had forgotten on thing
which I mentioned to you earlier,
the wearing of the
beret was forbidden
because it was considered
pro French.
And as I was standing there, I think
I was five, maybe five and a half,
I felt a hand reach from
behind me and whack me.
Very, very hard to the point where
I flew off the platform and landed
on the railroad tracks
and it was an SS man
who obviously resented
my wearing a beret.
Because obviously as a five year
old I was a real threat to Nazism.
My grandmother and two other
older ladies took their umbrellas
and literally started to
beat the crap out of him
as I found out later one.
And then the German military
police came and took them away
because they didn't want to have
a riot on this railroad station
in eastern France in
the fall of 1944
when they were already
losing the war.
So the vicissitudes of
history are all there.
My father died obviously early
on but my mother remarried
to a gentleman and was
married to him for 30 years.
He had the unique opportunity
of fighting
in Macedonia in World War I.
As you remember, after
the Serbs left and went
to [inaudible] they were retrained
by the French and British,
came back to [inaudible] on the
March of [inaudible] and relanded
and fought their way back inland.
Now the reason I mention him,
he passed away in the mid-80s.
Every year, at least once or twice,
he would have a malarial
typhus attack,
the result of World War I,
which he never got over.
Which obviously was still in
the blood system somewhere.
So the legacy was there and then
the last time I saw my uncle, Emile,
the one who had been in
the bunker that caved in
and oxygen deprivation, etc.,
my aunt and were walking
down the street and he
came walking towards us
and my aunt said, Emile, come here.
She said this is Jacques,
this is Joseph's boy.
And this is now 40 years after World
War I and he could just, you know,
oh Jacques, it's you know.
Never recovered.
Now millions never recovered.
As you know in France if you
rode the Metro or any train,
there's a little seat there reserved
for [inaudible] those
injured in the war.
Now fortunately when
you're civilized,
you sort these things out.
So all the Alsatians who
fought in the German army
in World War I were picked up in
the French Social Security system.
And the same thing
happened in World War II.
Because we lost a lot of people.
So at least at some level
of there is reconciliation.
The most positive thing is
when I saw Mitterrand and Kohl
at Verdun with Aaron Stebner.
If you remember Aaron Stebner, the
hero of World War I [inaudible]
and highly decorated novelist,
etc. and Junger was there at Verdun
as well and Kohl and Mitterrand
as they were standing there
said, look what did this?
Nationalism?
Imperialism?
Capitalism?
Stupidity?
Illogic? What did it?
But whatever it is, let's make
sure it doesn't happen again.
>> Thank you.
This was excellent.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> So in his 1994 book, The Age of
Extremes, the British historian,
Eric Hobsbawm outlines what he
terms the short 20th century.
And one from 1914 to 1991 that
begins and ends in Sarajevo.
Princip's assassination laughed the
geopolitical rivalry of the period
into a fatal spiral that ended
with the disaster of World War I
and the overthrown of
the then European order.
At the end of 1991, saw the
dissolution of the Soviet Union
on the 25th of December, resignation
of Mikhail Gorbachev as President
of the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics.
The office that he held was
declared extinct and all
of the powers were ceded to
Russian's President Yeltsin.
Geopolitical super power and system
that has held Europe in its grip
for over 40 years fell apart.
Well as we know, the transition to
the new era, the Post-Cold War era,
proved to be intensely
violent for Bosnia-Herzegovina.
In late November, 1991, the
International Conference
in Yugoslavia formed a
commission of prominent lawyers
to provide legal advice regarding
the legal status of Yugoslavia.
The President of the
French Constitutional Court,
Robert Badinter, led the commission.
It soon concluded that Yugoslavia
was in the process of dissolution
and that any future Yugoslav union
could only come from the alignment
of independent republics
that desired to integrate.
Furthermore, the commission
determined
that inter republic boundaries
should be deemed as borders subject
to international law and that they
were changeable only by agreement
of all sides, the legal doctrine
which knows as [inaudible].
And this placed the leading part
representing Serbs in Bosnia,
the Serb Democratic Party, the
party that had led a withdrawal
from the socialist Bosnian
parliament in protest
of the possibility of a
sovereign independent Bosnia.
That placed that party
in a serious bind.
Their preference was that Bosnia
should remain within Yugoslavia.
It was no longer legally possible in
the eyes of the European community
and the international community at
larger, rather Bosnia would have
to create a new union with Serbia
or a third Yugoslavia led by it
and this would occur
only with the consent
of other major actors in Bosnia.
Meanwhile, German officials
had announced their intention
to recognize the independent of
Slovenia and Croatia by Christmas
and were intensely lobbying
other European community members
to join them.
Britain, Greece and the United
States expressed concern
that such a decision would
aggravate the situation.
And on December 17th, the European
community reached a compromise
resolution, establishing
a December 23rd deadline
for submitting a petition
for independence
for the former Socialist
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
and those republics that desired it.
And having only a week to decide,
the Bosnian President submitted
a petition on behalf of Bosnia
on the 20th of December, 1991.
Only two months earlier,
the Bosnian President,
Alija Izetbegovic had stated
that his party would probably
not pursue independence
without SDS approval.
In early January of 1992, he
proclaimed that the presidency,
"didn't want to rush with
demands for recognition
but the European community was
moving ahead of us in that regard".
So immediately after that
presidency's decision to petition
for independence, the SDS
led Serb assembly decided
to unite the ethno territory units
that had been created that year,
the Serb autonomist into a republic
of Serb and Bosnia- Herzegovina.
The institutions of
this are SBI hitch,
were intended to exist parallel
to those of the Socialist Bosnia
until resolution of the crisis.
And on the 9th of January, 1992,
Radovan Cartage publicly declared
the foundation of the RSBI hitch
that they had chosen to preempt
possible, immediate recognition
of Bosnia buy the European
Union the next day.
The territorial breakup
of the Socialist Republic
of Bosnia had begun.
Now the legacy of that fatal,
territorial fragmentation,
the legacy was visible on how the
different parts of Bosnia chose
to commemorate the centenary of the
Archduke Ferdinand's assassination.
First there was no joint
commemoration but rival ceremonies
and spectacles as was widely
reported in the media here
and elsewhere, the Vienna
Philharmonic Orchestra played a
concert in historic and recently
restored, Sarajevo National Library.
There was a conference,
a special exhibition
for the chronically
underfunded National Historical
Museum Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Meanwhile in Visegrad in the theme
park, the movie studio created
by Emir Kusturica called Andricgrad,
the RS put on its commemoration
which could be described as more of
a celebration of the assassination.
In a speech, RS President
Milorad Dodik declared that,
"the shots fired 100 years ago
by Gavrilo Princip were not fired
at Europe, they were shots
for freedom marking the start
of the Serbs fight for
liberation from foreign occupiers."
New east's Sarajevo named
a park after Princip
and erected a large statue of him
overlooking a children's playground.
"We're connecting history
of which we are very proud
with the future our
children," said the Mayor.
Now the arc of history from
Sarajevo, 1914 to Sarajevo,
1991 through the Sarajevo,
2014 is long and whether
or not it bends towards justice,
it certainly has been buffeted
by a serious geopolitical
turbulence and political,
geographic change during the years.
The wars of the Yugoslav dissolution
ended with the cause of a war
of 1999 and in 2008, it's Euro
Atlantic supported government
unilaterally declared its
independence and later that year,
the NATO Bucharest Declaration of
April, 2008 declared that Ukraine
and Georgia would eventually
become members of the alliance.
Both of these events
propelled Russia
into a more assertive policy
towards geostrategic parts
of its near abroad,
beginning in the Caucasuses.
After the outbreak of war in August
2008, over Georgia's military moves
in South Ossetia, the Russian
Federation recognized the breakaway
territories of Abkhazia and South
Ossetia as independent states.
And as we know, the overthrow of the
democratically elected kleptocrat
in the Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych
wrote the stealthy Russian invasion
of Crimea and a hastily
sponsored referendum
that created supposed
self-deterministic legitimacy
for its annexation by the Russian
Federation in March of this year.
Thereafter the Kremlin
launched its Novorossiya project
that largely floundered
beyond some heartland areas
until a decisive recent intervention
of Russian heavy armor
in the Donbass Basin.
Ukraine is now joined Georgia
and Moldova in having portions
of its Duruy territory turned
into pro-Russian defacto states
beyond its practical writ
and control.
Tomorrow Scotland votes on
whether to leave the United Kingdom
and become an independent state.
Catalonia seeks independence
from Spain and will try again
to place a referendum for
independence on the ballot
for a 9th of November vote.
Milorad Dodik who is currently
in Moscow has long held
out the possibility that there will
be a referendum in Republic of Serb
on the independence of
that entity from Bosnia.
"It will happen all of a
sudden," he told a reporter
from Newsweek in April of this year.
So is a new separatist
self-determinist wave
about to be launched tomorrow
from the British Isles?
Perhaps, perhaps not.
Well we can say today is that
a statue of Gavrilo Princip,
a young idealist turned assassin
and killed a prominent
pregnant woman and her husband.
The statue of Princip
overshadowing a playground
in Bosnia does not bode well for
the future but simply Bosnia I think
for humanity were at large.
Hudson remarked in his book
that the third millennium
"will almost certainly continue
to be one of violent politics
and violent political changes.
The only thing uncertain about
them is where they will lead."
[ Applause ]
>> Good afternoon and thank
you all for joining us today.
I would like to express my
gratitude to our gracious host,
the Library of Congress for all the
time and energy they have invested
in making this event so successful.
Professor Miller, Professor
Toal, Mrs. Cartwright,
your efforts are much appreciated.
We look forward with
great enthusiasm
to the Library's publication
of the First World War in 2016.
Ambassador Klein, it's
great to have you here.
Thank you for taking part.
Thanks also to the Center
for Transatlantic Relations
and the American Bosnian Foundation
and to you, Ambassador Simonyi
for your dedicated efficacy
on behalf of my country
and the entire Balkan region.
We have heard a discussion
of a tragic event
and it's long lasting consequences
through the 20th century
until today.
In many ways, we are still feeling
the aftershocks of the assassination
of Archduke Franz Ferdinand
in Sarajevo in 1914,
which our distinguished
panel considered in detail.
But I'm here to tell you that
in spite of the difficulties
of the 20th century,
the future is bright
for my country and
the Balkan region.
Thanks in great part for the support
of friends of the United States.
These have come to Bosnia and
Herzegovina and the Balkans.
Our neighbor and friend, Croatia,
joined the union last year and we,
Bosnians and Herzegovinians are
united by a desire to join them.
With the young, hardworking,
and gifted population,
we are ready to meet the
challenges that lay in our path.
In many ways the world we know
began in Sarajevo in 1914.
As we listen to the discussion of
the past full of war and conflict
in the old continent and beyond,
I hope it will unite us further
in desire for a pleasant
future full of peace
and mutual understanding
and respect.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
>> Thank you, great.
>> Thanks so much.
So the floor is open and
I'm sure you have questions
about the past, present, future.
>> Hi, my name is Alexander Conner
from the National Democratic
Institute.
My question is actually
for Professor Toal.
Given that in five years we'll
have the 100th anniversary
of the Paris Peace Conference,
I was wondering your thoughts
on the impact that Isaiah Bowman
and Woodrow Wilson's little
black book had on the Europe
that we say immediately
after World War I as well
as the Europe that we see today?
And little more specifically
as to how their geopolitical molding
can be seen today in the boundaries
that we currently have
in the geopolitical situation
that we currently see.
>> Great question.
Professor?
>> Well, I don't know that
I can really answer that.
It's not something that's
a specialization of mine.
Obviously, Neil Smith's biography
of Isaiah Bowman is the kind
of standard and classic
work, American Empire.
I do think, however, that when one
general principle to keep in mind
and I think this was
partly the theme
of Professor Miller's presentation
too, is that we shouldn't point
to particular individuals as
having an inordinate influence
on the advance.
In this case, Bowman and his
inquiry project and for those of you
who are unfamiliar with
this, this is a particular,
Isaiah Bowman was the Chair of
the American Geographic Society.
He was a key advisor to Woodrow
Wilson and then later to FDR.
He was somehow who helped establish
the Council on Foreign Relations.
He was an editor of foreign affairs
and helped establish
that particular journal.
And he created what was, in
one sense, a mobile CIA archive
which went with Woodrow Wilson
to Paris, to Versailles to try
to inform the deliberations
that were taking place there
in the boundary drawing.
He subsequently wrote a book called
A New World in the 1920s, I believe,
a standard geopolitical text.
He was the most significant
political geographer I think
in American life that most
people probably haven't heard of.
But I don't think that he was
so influential, necessarily.
Certainly I haven't looked at or
seen kind of comparative analysis
of the intelligence that the
Americans had visage the boundaries
and boundary drawing
process relative to others.
But my understanding of it
in broad terms of the Vienna
or of the Versailles
peace negotiations,
perhaps Paul could talk to this,
is that the Americans didn't
get their way in many instances
and that they were ignored
by the European powers
and their particular interests
and their particular kind
of dogged pursuit of their ends.
So in that sense, I don't think you
could say it was an American shaped
world but it's a very good question.
>> I said I thought that
was a fair assessment.
It's Margaret McMillan who I
quoted and criticized her quote,
used it as sort of the
thread in my short piece.
Not short enough but nonetheless,
she wrote a major work on 1919
and to bring things to
Yugoslavia and the Peace of Paris
which is a great reach, she's
a great narrative writer
and I'm reading her book on the
origins of World War I right now
and getting a lot out of it,
though it's not really
paradigm shifting in any way.
It's a great narrative but the point
is, she has a chapter on Yugoslavia
and to bring things back to
Yugoslavia, she makes a statement
that its origins in World War I
were problematic to begin with
and she even goes so far
as to say that kind of,
it was kind of was
foresaw what was to come.
And I don't agree with that part
and I want to emphasize this.
I think that the way in which
Yugoslavia came together in war,
yeah, it was certainly
hastened into existence.
So to say by the collapse of
the Empire and the successes
of the regrouped Serbian
army, nonetheless,
it could have well worked.
There's lots of different paths in
history that one could march down
and so I didn't want to sound
exclusionist in that sense.
But as to American shaping
the world in Versailles,
yes clearly from what I
understand in the historiography,
though by no means is it my
specialty, Woodrow Wilson
who marched into Paris, you know,
Viva Wilson as the great hero
and obviously after the
destruction of World War I,
people wanted to make
it worth something.
Right? Reshape the world in some
sort of better order that he had
to compromise significantly
with Clemenceau with Lord George
and with the others and the
idea of self-determination
of peoples is probably also very
relevant to Professor Toal's talk,
which in the context, I was
also going to mention Scotland
but didn't quite get there.
This is an interesting idea because
there are differences to today.
I think we have to keep in mind the
EU makes a significant difference
when we talk about nations
wanting some sort of sovereignty
and the possibilities of Bosnia not
working out and the entities, etc.,
etc. There's a larger context
to date to be considered rather
than simply national
kind of you know,
thumping of your particular
groups, you know,
greatness or something like that.
But in any case, that's all
I have to say on Versailles.
>> It always struck me as odd
looking at a map of Europe
after World War I, how one
could rationally do the kinds
of things they did.
How could you leave basically
Hungarians in Slovakia,
Seminberger Germans in Romania,
Germans in the Vernacht,
[inaudible] in Poland,
Ukrainians in Poland?
I mean we're talking about
national self-determination.
When you look at a map
Europe, demographically
and you superimpose
these minorities,
folks like in Yugoslavia,
and you superimpose them,
it escapes all rational logic.
And for a statesman to have sat
there and said oh yes, this is fine,
these Germans will be very
happy in the new Czechoslovakia,
these Ukrainians will be
very happy in the new Poland,
these Germans will be happy in a
Banat or as said the Seminbergers,
wherever else you want
to stick them.
That always baffled me.
The rational of that because
you know it bodes nothing
but trouble ultimately.
>> Thank you, Mr. Ambassador.
I'm Joe Foley with the National
Federation of Croatian Americans
and while Professor Miller
may have answered some
of this question already,
I'd like to propose it to him
and I want to thank the panelists.
Excellent scholarship today
here at the Library of Congress.
Professor Miller, what
are you historical views
of the Yugoslavist
movement assessment today
in the Balkans, positive
and negative?
>> Well, I guess I would to be,
that is a great question, and I,
in the context of my talk
should have said much more
about Yugoslavism.
It has roots that go, the
Yugoslav idea, Yugoslavism,
the idea of a south Slavic state
goes back to the early 19th century
at least the Allerian movement is
usually the origins and it does pick
up a great deal of steam
during World War I.
There's an exhibition that takes
place in Victorian Albert Museum
in London and there are
publications about Yugoslavia.
And so people begin
seeing the possibilities
in a much more serious
sense during the war itself.
But as for today, well that breaks
down by political orientation,
clearly and a lot of people see,
you know, certainly many Serbs
on the right from what I read
and I'm not active in the region
in dealing with contemporary
issues and political issues.
There's a sense that this was a
bankrupt idea from the beginning
and that this led to
the repression of Serbs
within a greater Yugoslavia.
And then of course there's
the inevitability people
and that's what I also
criticize severely.
The idea it never would have worked.
I don't agree with that at all.
I think the conditions
that brought Yugoslavia
into existence did not necessarily
as problematic as they were,
mean that it was doomed somehow.
But today in terms of the general
atmosphere and environment,
there's Yugo nostalgia for the
Tito period for obvious reasons.
But in terms of constructing
a national identity based
on south Slavic identity, my
sense is that people have more
of their narrower ethno national
concerns to focus on today
than reviving ideas that
seem to have now sort
of made it into the past.
And the goal this super
national unit which is
of course, the European Union.
And it's important to remember,
you know, when you talked
about will Germans be happy in
the Banat and things like that.
You know, the people in
Paris weren't talking
about the happiness of these people.
>> It wasn't.
>> Sorry?
>> The could have cared less.
>> Yeah, exactly
and the Austro-Hungarian
Empire was a functional state
and the historiography that's
been done on it since the 80s.
I mean prior to the early 1980s, it
was always this descript monarchy
that was part of the
past and it was going
to break apart along
national lines and it fought
for years before it broke up.
The Russians didn't
make it that long.
It existed, it lasted, it held
together during the entire war
and this has been commented
upon by several historians.
And the new scholarship focuses
on things like language frontiers
and military veterans
organizations and cultural events
and the interactions
between Czechs and Germans
in what's today western Czech
Republic and it says wait a second,
the national mobilization
that was taking place was done
by political elites but when
you look at ordinary people,
things function and this was,
the analogy has been made
and it's problematic as most
of these historical analogies,
but this was an open economic
area, the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
You could move from one
linguistic region to the next
and it's the same currency, right?
So all of these people were
so called trapped in an empire
with a Austrian Habsburg ruler in
which Germans were only about 24%
of the entire ethnic
Germans including Austrians,
24% of the total approximately.
Hungarians were one or two
percent less than that and Slavs,
more than the two of them
together when you add
of the Slavic peoples together.
This was a complex place and
it functioned for a long time
and there's nothing to say too
that had Germany won and Germany
and Austria-Hungary won World
War I, which they almost did.
It would have existed,
it would have gone one.
And maybe the ideals of Gavrilo
Princip would have been reached
in a more independent
Bosnia-Herzegovina
within a larger central
European empire.
We have no way of knowing but that's
a deviation from your question.
I hope not too badly.
>> That was great.
Thank you.
>> Okay.
>> Thank you.
I'd like to, okay one more question
and then I'd like the panelists
to each comment and then we will
need to wrap it up, but please sir.
>> [inaudible] from [inaudible]
in D.C. My question is
to Professor Miller.
I wonder if you could expand
the analysis or perhaps,
the comparison that's being
made recently over the course
of this anniversary of
the beginning of the war.
The parallels between Austro-Hungary
and Yugoslavia in terms of,
do you see that as a historically,
something that can be compared?
Do you see something, especially
in terms of minorities and kind
of the weaknesses of the state?
>> Well that's an interesting
question.
Thank you very much.
And I'm going to have
to strain to answer it,
perhaps to your satisfaction.
I know, however, that is something
that was discussed in
the Socialist period.
That we are very much
the replacement state
of Austria-Hungary was part of the
rhetoric at that time and I think
that what you're getting at
and what I'm kind getting at
and what we're all
getting at as part
of this panel is the world war was a
tragedy on lots of different levels.
I mean first of all, ten
million young people died.
Alright? A million and a half
Armenians and all the consequences
that come out of the Great War.
And yet at another level, we
look back with a certain amount
of nostalgia of course, of
these multinational empires.
They were far from perfect but
they were if we tracked them
across the long dory, moving in
a secular, democratic direction
that was allowing more of a
political voice for minorities.
And whether Yugoslavia on a smaller
scale because it's minorities,
there were less of the various
national minorities but nonetheless,
very well distributed
by less, there was kind
of a dominant Serb core even
though they weren't 50% quite.
I don't think.
No, right?
I'm correct?
But there was more of a
dominant core just like you had
in the Russian empire, in the
European part of the Russian empire.
You had a dominate kind of core
group and that was the case
at all in Austria-Hungary.
I mean ethnic Germans as I said
were in the 20 percentiles.
So I mean I think that
if we look forward,
we look back on these multinational
states now with a certain kind
of what if nostalgia because of our
efforts to open up borders, clearly,
especially for peoples
in the Balkans.
I think it's important and
open up economic opportunities
and those were there in an earlier
era in a different kind of way.
>> Jacques?
>> Well looking back.
I was just going to say since those
people tried very hard to come
up with this concept of a
Slavism but it didn't work.
One thing I want to stress by the
way where it deserves credit for,
I think he was the only Cardinal who
voted against Papal infallibility
so he does deserve credit
for other things as well.
But the point is, if you
look at France and Germany
who fought for 300 years.
As long as there were 16
million Frenchmen and six
and a half million Germans, and
the French state was centralized,
they beat the hell
out of the Germans.
And all these castles,
Heidelberg, Rammstein,
etc. were blown up
by French engineers.
Once the Germans achieved population
supremacy, industrialization,
and also, centralization, then they
were able to take on the French.
But ultimately they had to say
to themselves what exactly
are we fighting for here?
World War I.
Were the Germans after colonies?
Well they lost what little they had.
But what was it all about?
And I think it took
them a long time,
now let's hope it doesn't take 300
years in the Balkans for people
to realize that this is all a futile
effort with endless heartache,
bloodshed and loss of largess
and revenue and what have you.
So it can be done.
It takes time.
It takes a lot of statesmanship
which also didn't exist
in World War I.
We had very few statesmen when
Europe stumbled into World War I,
to really make a difference.
The [inaudible] people of that sort.
So I think it can be done.
It's just going to take time.
And it should be easier than it
was between France and Germany.
All of you know there's a vast
difference between French Latin,
Romance culture, and Germanic
Teutonic Saxon culture.
The languages, the history,
the traditions yet all them
between Serb, Croat, Bosniac
or whomever, Slovenian,
whatever you want to throw in there.
Slovaks as well.
But the point is, it
should be a lot easier.
Fundamental same base
in language, etc.,
etc. Even though religions are
different still they're Christian
religions except for the
small Muslim minority.
So I think it could be done
but it takes an enormous
amount of good will.
It's hard to forget though and
that's the thing I really fear.
It's not what they say in public.
It's what I've heard them say
in private that worries me.
What's said at the dinner table?
Who was killed by whom?
Who injured whom?
>> They still have PTSD.
>> That's what I really worry about.
You know. When I hear stories like
when people are taking a census
and they say well who lived there?
And they say you should
know, you killed them.
That's not that long ago.
So that's what's going to be I think
the harder, the human dimension.
And unfortunately, I'm afraid the
children are not necessarily exposed
to the positive.
They're exposed to the most
negative at the dinner table.
And that's I think,
fundamentally the real problem.
How do we get over that?
Education, tolerance, learning, etc.
Now I'm a great believe in economy.
Let me digress for a minute.
If you take the Swiss,
Swiss, French, Calvinists
and German Catholic Swiss
and Italian Catholic Swiss
and Romansch are very,
very different.
Totally culturally.
But they long ago decided it's
not worth killing each other
or whether you're a Baptist
and a I'm a Catholic.
I don't know who the
president of Switzerland is.
No one cares.
I don't know who the
Fore Minister is.
Our goal is to create and
economy that profits all of us.
And what they have done
intelligently is kind
of driven government down to
the localist level, the canton.
In Switzerland the canton or
even city, Zurich and Geneva,
can make you a Swiss citizen.
And maybe that's the way,
this devolution of power
to much more smaller level.
And then we'll trade commerce, time,
majority rule, minority rights,
you may be able to
make some progress.
>> Thank you.
Professor, would you like to
say a few concluding remarks?
>> Concluding remarks, okay.
Let me actually put on my Irish
hat here and I'm not going
to tell a joke but I'm going to talk
about the larger context,
the larger sort of arc.
Last year the Queen visited
Ireland for the first time
and this year the Irish
president was part
of the ceremony marking the
outbreak of World War I in France.
It has taken a long, long time, an
awful long time for the Republic
of Ireland to come to terms with the
fact that thousands upon thousands
of its own men went to fight for
the British Empire and fought
and died horribly on the sand
and the fields in France.
They fought not for
Irish independence,
they fought for the British Empire.
But those same men who were
fighting were also often people
who supported Irish independence
or supported Irish home rule
and Irish autonomy within the
British Empire at the time.
But they were sort of an
embarrassment because the Princips
of Ireland, the young
heroes, the idealists,
took over the General Post Office
in 1916 and started a rebellion
which led to a wave of nationalism,
the rise of Shin Fein in Ireland
and then a very bloody war
for independence followed
by a very nasty civil war.
That created a so-called free
state in the Republic of Ireland
which was free of the British
Empire by and in large by 1922.
But that came at a
cost and the cost was
in part denying Ireland's full
history and denying the complexities
and the ambiguities of that history.
Not reading that in a way which was
sufficiently mature to recognize
that with national pride
comes also recognition
of your national weaknesses
and your national failures.
And things that are
embarrassing about your society.
There's lots of things that
are very, very embarrassing
about Irish nationalism and about
what happened during the war
of independence and
afterwards and some
of those things are only
now being discussed.
So all of this is to say that
what we see in Bosnia right now
and the tremendous difficulties of
that state has had over the last 20,
30 years, are human difficulties.
They are difficulties states
have had historically.
All different peoples and we should
kind of refrain from overly sort
of demonizing any particular group
in Bosnia or any particular sort
of practice in Bosnia because those
practices are often practices we
find throughout human history
in lots of different places.
>> Excellent.
Jacques. We really
have to wrap it up.
Keep it short please.
>> People do change.
You all remember that the
House Saxe-Coburg and Gotha,
suddenly when World War I began,
became the House of Windsor.
And Prince William
Mountbatten, the first Sea Lord
of the British Empire, very
quickly changed his name
to Louis Mountbatten
from Battenberg.
And one of the few humorous things
that Keiser Wilhelm
ever said was he said,
"perhaps we should change
Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor
to the Merry Wives of
Saxe-Coburg and Gotha."
>> Well thank you very much.
I don't think we could have
had a better final comment
that Professor Toal's but I'd love
to see all the three of you go
to Budapest and give
the same speech.
I'd like to thank Professor Miller,
Ambassador Klein, and Professor Toal
for an excellent, excellent
lecture and good discussion.
I appreciate you all coming
and I think there are drinks
and foods served and you
can all grill the professors
which you drink.
I think it's Hungarian champagne.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]
>> This has been a presentation
of the Library of Congress.
Visit us at loc.gov
[ Silence ]