| Cradle of Two Nations
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
February 2008
All remain, oh lady, on Kosovo,
Where has fallen Tsar Lazar the Glorious.
There are broken many battle-lances,
Serbian lance and Turkish, both are broken,
But more Serbian lances broke than Turkish
While defending Tsar Lazar, oh lady,
Glorious Tsar Lazar, the lord of Serbia.
When Serbia's knights fell like mown grass on the Kosovo Polje in 1389, six centuries of blood and fire began that still have not ended. Both Serb and Albanian would come to see the small region as holy ground for their people, and neither would be willing to give it up.
Albanians are the descendants of the ancient Illyrians. They adopted Roman culture, and were ruled by the Byzantine Empire until the invasion of Slavic tribes in the ninth century AD. The Ottoman Empire ruled the area following the defeat of Prince Lazar, but few Turkish settlers entered the region. Instead its Islamic character came from conversions. Albanian Catholics, having been oppressed by Serbs, accepted Islam in large numbers as did a minority of Orthodox Serbs.
The next wave of ethnic change came in 1689. Margrave Ludwig of Baden, known as "Turkish Lou," led an invading Imperial (mostly German) army that attracted large numbers of Serb Christian volunteers. When the Turks drove the Imperials back across the Danube, the Serbian Patriarch Arsenije III organized a mass exodus from the Kosovo region rather than remain to face Turkish retribution. These people — estimates range from 30,000 to over 100,000 — were settled along the Austro-Turkish frontier (in modern Croatia) and their descendants would become the center of other 1990's ethnic conflicts.
Kosovo gave its name to a Turkish vilayet, or province, which included most of the modern province of Kosovo plus areas to the north and east. It became a center of Albanian cultural awakening in the 19th century, as large numbers of Albanians entered the area in the wake of the Serbian exodus. Serbia gained full independence from Ottoman Turkey in 1885, and took the area of modern Kosovo at the conclusion of the First Balkan War in 1912. After the First World War, Kosovo remained part of Serbia in the new Kingdom of Yugoslavia, despite a short-lived attempt to found an Albanian Christian "Mirdite Republic" in and around Pristina, capital of modern Kosovo. When the Mirdite Republic failed to attract a following across the border, it lost Yugoslav backing and was dissolved.
Yugoslav meddling in Albanian affairs continued, and Ahmet Zogu's successful 1924 coup was based in Kosovo and depended on Kosovar volunteers — armed by the Yugoslavs — for much of its military strength. The Yugoslavs expected to receive territorial concession in exchange, but instead Zogu (eventually re-naming himself King Zog I) betrayed his early benefactors and turned to Italy for protection. The Serb-dominated central government then embarked on a repressive policy in the Kosovo area, expelling Albanians and settling Serbs in their place. Italian diplomats encouraged Albanian resentment, promising to aid Zog's dreams of adding the Kosovo region to his backward kingdom.
Yugoslavia collapsed rapidly under German and Italian attacks in April 1941, and the Kosovo area was allotted to Italy. Italy had conquered Albania in the spring of 1939 in the face of sporadic resistance, as Zog I was in turn betrayed by his patrons. In May the Kosovo region was added to the Kingdom of Albania, a popular move among both the Kosovo Albanians and those within the kingdom.
Italian occupation forces included a small number of Albanian militiamen, and the Kosovars soon organized their own Vulnetari militia units to fight alongside the occupiers. Italian policy attempted to show an even hand to both Albanian and Serb, but the Vulnetari apparently had no interest in this and carried out brutal assaults on their Serb neighbors.
When Italy left the war in September 1943, the occupation troops quickly abandoned Kosovo and German officials took over. Free of Italian interference, the Vulnetari and unorganized vigilante groups could now open an unimpeded terror campaign. Just how many Serbs were murdered is hard to determine for sure — in the Balkans, numbering the dead is a decidedly political act — but it surely tops 10,000, with possibly 100,000 others driven from their homes.
Kosovo appears to have been one of the few areas in the Balkans where the German occupation enjoyed at least some popularity, and in the spring of 1944 the Waffen SS organized an Albanian mountain division, drawing mostly on Kosovar manpower. The 21st SS Mountain Division, named "Skanderbeg" to slur the name of Albania's heroic 15th century anti-Turkish crusader, served as an occupation force in Kosovo and Macedonia. It drew its cadre from the 7th SS Mountain Division, a spectacularly inept unit known as the "Trash Division," and the new Albanian unit appears to have received that division's least-competent officers and NCO's.
The volunteers soon grew disgruntled. Their German officers discouraged slaughter of Serbs, instead attempting to direct the unit's energies toward rounding up Jews and Gypsies for transport to death camps. About half of Kosovo's small Jewish population was massacred on the spot, with the remainder bundled aboard a train bound for Bergen-Belsen. They were saved from murder when Soviet troops overran their train and liberated its occupants.
The new division numbered about 10,000 in the summer of 1944, and melted away quickly as the year wore on. By the time the Germans began their retreat from the southern Balkans in November 1944, the division had already lost so much of its strength that it was re-organized as a regiment. Mass desertions continued and by January 1945 even this organization could no longer be sustained. The handful of Kosovars still with the colors were absorbed into the 7th SS Mountain Division.
After the war, Kosovo returned to Yugoslav rule, and Yugoslavia's President Josip Broz Tito organized it as an autonomous province within the Republic of Serbia — a move unpopular with both Serbs and Albanians. Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic began his bloody campaign of ethnic cleansing with a fiery speech on the Field of the Blackbirds on the 600th anniversary of the first Battle of Kosovo, a strategy that would lead to the Yugoslav federation's destruction and eventually American-led military intervention in Kosovo.
Kosovo in Third Reich
Kosovo does not have any role in our Third Reich game, and probably isn’t important enough to deserve one. But that's no impediment to Daily Content variants. If Yugoslavia has been conquered by Germany or Italy, and Germany or Italy controls Albania, the player who conquered Yugoslavia may assign Kosovo (hex 2621) to Albania. The same player need not control both Yugoslavia and Albania to make this transfer. Kosovo is considered part of Albania for all game purposes, and Albania is now worth four BRPs.
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