Los Angeles Times
June 17, 1999
German force savors ‘moral’ postwar debut
Balkans: many older ethnic Albanians recall Nazi troops in WWII as
liberators from Serbs. Today’s soldiers are happy to hold their heads
high.
By Marjorie Miller
Prizren, Yugoslavia
For the German army, returning to Yugoslavia for the first time since
World War II as part of a NATO peacekeeping force marks a final break with a
terrible past.
The deployment of German combat troops and Leopard-2 tanks into Kosovo
province means that the Bundeswehr at last has become a “full partner
in NATO with all of the rights and responsibilities” of the other members,
said Lt. Col. Dietmar Jeserich.
It is a proud moment for the Germans.
But many Kosovo Albanians sided with the Nazis during World War II, and
today, some of them do not distinguish between the past and present
German armies–both of which, to their way of thinking, accomplished the same
feat: freeing them from Serbian rule.
“This is a second liberation,” said Ali Majo, 68, a native of this city
in southwestern Kosovo. “I can’t describe how it felt when we saw German
soldiers come to liberate us again.”
So much for moral victories in the Balkans.
Majo was 10 years old when the German Wehrmacht rolled into Prizren in
April 1941. The Nazis arrived in the hills around town on motorcycles,
looked through their binoculars and opened fire on a partisan artillery
position, he recalled.
“After that, they came in and circled the town,” Majo said. “We all
shouted, ‘Heil Hitler.’ We were proud of the German soldiers because
they liberated us from the Serbs.”
Naim Poloshka, 72, remembers how one of the Wehrmacht soldiers gave him
a chocolate and a ride on his motorcycle. They drove him around town so
he could point out houses where partisans lived.
Like much of Prizren, Poloshka was stunned when he woke one morning to
find that the Germans had hanged nine suspected partisans–five Serbs and
four ethnic Albanians–in the center of town overnight.
But it did not dampen his enthusiasm for the Nazis.
“The enemy of your enemy is your friend,” Poloshka said. “We were
occupied, and they liberated us.”
This historical baggage is lost on most of the Kosovars who welcomed
the German NATO troops with flowers, kisses and tears of relief this week,
as it may have been on the young German soldiers tossed into the air by
those celebrating their arrival.
“For me, the German troops are welcome,” Gafur Musaj, 21, a member of
the ethnic Albanians’ rebel Kosovo Liberation Army, said after posing for
snapshots with a group of Bundeswehr soldiers. “They mean peace for our
people.”
The German troops are happy to be appreciated and to be able to hold
their heads high on a foreign mission that finishes what the leaders of the
United States and Britain–their World War II enemies–described as a
“moral war.”
German planes flew alongside British fighters during the 11-week North
Atlantic Treaty Organization air war–the first time the Luftwaffe had
engaged in battle since 1945. A squadron of Tornado jets took off from
Piacenza, Italy, to fire missiles on key military targets.
Earlier this decade, the German government, still burdened by the
country’s history of aggression, forced its army to sit out the Persian Gulf War
and give only limited support to the peacekeepers in Bosnia-Herzegovina
when the war there ended in 1995. They moved into Bosnia only “after the
dirty work was done,” said a German officer.
This time, however, the Bundeswehr will contribute 8,500 troops to the
peacekeeping mission. And the troops were among the first to move into
Kosovo.
The first German contingent arrived in Prizren just after midnight
Sunday morning, when the city was still under Serbian control and the
situation unstable.
At the Morine border crossing with Albania that day, Gen. Helmut Harff
negotiated the withdrawal of about 60 Serbian soldiers in front of a
crowd of jeering refugees.
When the Serbian commander said he needed six hours to withdraw, the
general replied: “You have 30 minutes. In fact, now you’ve got 29
minutes.”
The Serbs pulled back.