I've looked a bit more into the question of the Swabians and how their communities reacted to the Nazis. Of course, lumping them all together and judging in such a manner is too simplistic. That said, it's quite clear that there wasn't an organized anti-Nazi resistance from the Swabians.

It's important to view this in context, however. After invading, Germany conscripted German-speaking men of the area. Also, Yugoslavia had only been created 20 years earlier, at the end of WWI. A new border had been drawn around them. In this new era of nationalism, they found that they were minorities and treated as such as the Serbs looked to dominate the culture. Therefore there wasn't a strong bond to this new country that would drive them to defend it. And in response to some Swabians actively supporting the Nazi cause, Tito early on promised the partisan fighters Swabian lands if they were to win.

Still, some had identified with the new Yugoslavia, sending their children to the Slav schools. The response was mixed. The retribution was not, however, as everyone with a German name was declared guilty.

I'm troubled that in your response you brand those who were passive as "criminals". I think growing up in the US gives allows us to develop too simplistic of a view of WWII. For those who were there, just wanting to live their lives, there really were no 'right' answers. When an invading army points a gun at your head and tells you to fight or die, what do you do? Especially when the other side has declared your home as spoils? There is no doubt that the Nazis were manifestly evil. But, seeing what the Partisans did (it was the Partisans, not 'Stalinists'), they were not alone.

Racism, (more generally collectivism) does terrible things to individuals. It obliterates them. First in theory, then, as we've seen time and again, literally.

I am troubled by the words of Goran, who speaks like a war-monger. Is this the type of 'socialist' you identify with? Does he ever discuss what's happening in Kosovo? I can certainly understand his anger about the NATO bombing. But nothing of the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo -- just empty socialist hard-ass rhetoric.

From your response: "If your neighbors do nothing while someone burned down your house with your children in it, would you be inclined to call them simple neutrals? It's hard sitting in a warm house in Chicago to harshly judge the reactions of those who endured the horrors of Nazism." Do you apply this thinking to Goran?

Here are the names of some of the camps employed by the Partisans starting in 1944: Sombor, Kruschevlye/Gakova, Mitrovica Semlin and Rudolfsgnad. Please ask Goran to show these names to his grandmother.

I absolutely want the US to get out of the Balkans. But how can you take sides with Yugoslavia? Or Kosovo for that matter? I'm sure the KLA is just as ruthless as the Serbian death squads (just outnumbered). It's all a collectivist blood-bath. No one wins.

-Mark Roeser
p.s. I should disclose that my politics are generally in opposition to yours -- my politics are libertarian. I do not wish to debate you here about socialism, but I do hope we can agree about the horrors of war and how it destroys lives of the innocent and powerless.

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