The April 28 issue of Balkans Report by Radio Free Europe/Radio Libety (a US propaganda outfit with a HQ in Prague) features another piece by analyst Patrick Moore, Bota Sot's 2003 Person of the Year (notorious for his exclusive use of "Kosova" as the name for the occupied Serbian province). Moore is trying to describe the legacy of WW2 in what used to be Yugoslavia. But in attempting to describe the numerous crimes against humanity that had ravaged the region, he commits many crimes against reality.
One could raise many issues with Moore's history, but the most egregious has got to be his deliberate downplaying of the role, extent and atrocities of the Croatian Ustasha, first claiming the Pavelic regime was reluctantly accepted by the Germans "as the next best alternative" when Croat populist Vlatko Macek refused to become a quisling, then by claiming the Germans (i.e. not Pavelic) "lost little time in implementing their racial policies" in the NDH, and that German murders of Serbs "by the tens of thousands" were "assisted by Ustasha zealots." He also claims that Ustasha - an official government - had "command-and-control problems over their often widely scattered followers." This isn't history - it's pulp fiction!
The history of Yugoslavia is obscured by many dark shadows and deliberate distortions, and it is hard to distinguish between truth and fabrication. But I do think it is safe to say Moore's perspective is firmly tilted to the latter.
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