|
|
Neonazisti di tutto il mondo
volontari per la "indipendenza" croata
UND MORGEN
SCHON TOT
Der
Spiegel 39/1992, 21.09.1992
Translated excerpts:
And tomorrow already dead
(Der
Spiegel 39/1992, 21.09.1992)
SPIEGEL editor Clemens Höges about neo-Nazis,
adventurer and madmen in the Croatian army
...
Peacefully the swastika waves above Klek. The
sun rises, from the requisitioned bar below at
the dock quietly penetrates "Lili Marleen",
the favorite song of the unit Chicago in the
Croatian version with the machine gun salvo at
the beginning. A new street sign hangs on the
confiscated Serb villa diagonally over the
way: the centre of the bathing resort was
named "Rudolf-Hess-Platz" by the squad. On the
balcony of Chicago's headquarters underpants
flap on the rope, besides the German imperial
war flag and the Croatian flag. In the shadow
stands the battered and painted troop carrier
with the peace sign on the door. This is thier
"Peacemaker", the soldiers tease.
Chicago, 32, returned exile Croat from the
USA, winks in the sun and tilts his first
water glass full of gin because he had nothing
else for breakfast. "I am a Nazi", he says, "I
am not interested in politics."
He wears black, only his gun belt is green.
This should remain in such a way, as long as
one more Serb stands in his country: "What
they have done to us, we will never forget."
On radio the Serbs offered the equivalent of
100,000 DM for Chicago's head.
Major Tomislav Madi, alias Chicago has three
principles. First two he reveals: "We appear
from behind." And: "We have never made
prisoners."
The third principle: If needed he uses his
squad of about 35 mostly youthful lunatics as
cannon fodder. His raiding patrol laughingly
attacks hostile positions like a herd of
mine-detecting dogs, and if the young men go
down, the real military knows where the Serbs
sit. Disposable soldiers with more courage
than skills.
Their commune of children between Split and
Dubrovnik bristles with weapons. In each case
in a group of four or five they live in
formerly Serbian houses. On beds guns and
magazines pile up, bandoleers hang on
coat-hangers, grenades stand in shelves.
The front meanders about 15 kilometres inland
through the jagged mountains. The Croatian
guerrillas mostly operate in Bosnian area.
They belong to the right wing HOS militia of
the Croatian nationalist Dobroslav Paraga (see
interview page 246) and at the same time to
the regular Croatian army since some weeks.
Since one year the group Chicago fights, eight
were killed up to now and twelve were injured.
However, no survivor thinks that he could be
hit. They are all immortal, until the next
raiding patrol. As with other units the rows
are willingly replenished with neo-Nazis from
all countries.
Nicolas, a French-German from Berlin, was
caught by a bullet from a distance of five
metres when Chicago let his boys attack an
artillery position in a Bosnian village. Now
neo-Nazi Nicolas lies in the hospital of
Zagreb.
...
As usual Nicolas filmed the attack with his
small Sony video camera, which he usually
strapped on the front of the Kalashnikov.
Ducked they crept to the little wall.
Movielike Nicolas crossed over as first. That
was what the Chetnik had waited for in the
house. He pulled the trigger once shortly.
Nicolas immediately regained consciousness and
noted that the "arm hung flabby around like a
sausage" and blood spurted from the bullet
hole. Then also Christof jumped over the wall
already. He wanted to save the video camera.
In the meantime the Chetnik had changed the
lever of his assault rifle to full automatic.
Nicolas saw "like the chain of impacts headed
to Christof's leg."
Seriously injured both figures from a shooting
gallery could bring themselves in cover,
however the Serbs have the video camera and
the cassette.
...
Only two of the followers of Küssel risked it.
The first one, Thomas Hainke from Bielefeld,
24, has "conquered" some "Chetnik positions"
near Osijek. Most time, however, he crouched
in the cellars above which the houses were
just shot away.
There the neo-Nazi learnt that he is "no Rambo
type" that the Croats like the Germans, "above
all Hitler and Genscher", and that "in Croatia
it is about the whole white race, Aryans
against subhumans", even if the Serbs are just
as white as the Croats. Then Hainke went back
to Germany.
...
The Croats carry swastikas, SS runes and other
Nazi junk primarily to impress the girls and
to annoy the Serbs. The hit is a T-shirt which
shows Hitler as a popstar. Above the portrait
stands "European Tour", under it "1939 - 45"
and on the back the tour stations like
"Stalingrad" and "Tobruk".
...
For money they did not come; the pay in the
HOS militia is about 130 DM in a month.
Neo-Nazi Jaffa was drawn to Croatia because he
thinks the HOS leader Paraga is the
"reincarnation of Hitler": "Croatia could
become the first national socialist country
after Germany."
NEO-NAZIS
HELP CROATIANS IN BOSNIA
Germans, Austrians recruited
by Eric Geiger, Chronicle Foreign Service
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, Tuesday, April 5,
1994, Page 1,
Hallein, Austria
Excerpts:
When wars approach their end - as the one
in Bosnia sporadically appears to be doing -
ugly matters that have been submerged from
public view tend to float to the surface.
One such matter in Bosnia is the role that
hundreds of Austrian and German neo-Nazis
mercenaries have played in the 23-month-old
conflict, Europe's bloodies since WWII.
The neo-Nazis, recruited for Croatian
extreme-rightist irregular militias and
paramilitary forces, may finally be out of
work if the current Croat-Muslim truce holds.
But the foreigners' legacy of brutality will
not soon be forgotten by their battle-field
foes and civilian victims... ... ...
Underground neo-Nazi publications in both
Germany and Austria published fervent appeals
for volunteers "to help out Croatian comrades
in defense of the white race". A similar
appeal was run by the German periodical Der
Freiwillige (The Volunteer), the official
organ of HIAS, the legally incorporated mutual
aid Association of Veterans of the Waffen SS.
Hundreds of skinheads and neo-Nazis in both
countries - including many sought by the
police for variety of offenses - reportedly
responded to the appeal, designed chiefly to
woo volunteers for the rightist Croat militia
HOS, led by Dobroslav Paraga...
Volunteers sent back glowing reports about
their enthusiastic reception in Bosnia by
their comrades-in-arms of the HOS, a welcome
complete with "Heil Hitler" salutes and the
waving of swastika flags. Some also found
their way to regular paramilitary units of the
Bosnian Croat army and were accorded an
equally warm welcome. ...Most of German
speaking volunteers in Bosnia, however, are
not remorseful. A young Austrian neo-Nazi
recently on brief "home leave from the Bosnian
front" was quoted by newspapers as saying that
German speaking mercenaries - paid $60 a month
- have often been involved in "ethnic
cleansing operations"... ... "Our job actually
is quite simple," the youth said. "After
regular Croat militiamen capture a village,
they earmark houses of Serbs... for us so we
can loot and destroy them." He said the
swaggering German-speaking mercenaries
generally have an image among the Bosnian
Croats as exceptionally tough and merciless -
"a sort of new German SS" - and for that
reason are often given dirty, dangerous
assignments.
THE NEW ORDER
(American Nazi periodical. It has American
flag to the left of the title of the
magazine and swastika inside "O" of the word
"ORDER"), Front page article
January/February 1993, (#104):
Excerpts:
National Socialist volunteers from
France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Hungary,
England, Austria and other countries are
fighting in an openly National Socialist in
Croatia...
The NSDAP/AO recently received combat footage
from this unit. It was aired on the NSDAP/AO
sponsored public access television program
"Race and Reason" on October 30th and November
6th. The following is an article by the French
National Socialist volunteer Michael Faci:
"In France we are a team of "old" National
Soicialists who were members of "Ordre
Nouveau", F.A.N.E., etc... As it is nearly
impossible for us to engage in openly National
Socialist political activity in France, we
have specialized ourselves for foreign
paramilitary action... Then came the
possibility to help the Croatian people
against the Serbo-Communist aggressor... The
head office of the HOS sent us along with some
French volunteers to Vinkovci...
Our assignment was to hold village of
Komletinci, the very first point of Croatian
defense in front of Vukovar... On the morning
of December 19th we were attacked by nearly
1200 Serbo-Communists. But they did not know
that we have asked for - and received - six
T-55 tanks the previous night! Our tanks
counterattacked and droved off the Serbs who
lost 17 dead....
I think it was the first National Socialist
tank attack since April 1945!
Ingo Hasselbach has asserted his right
under the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be
identified as the author
of this work.
First published in Great Britain in 1996 by
Chatto
& Windus Limited
Random
House, 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V
2SA
Random
House Australia (Pty) Limited
20 Alfred
Street, Milsons Point, Sydney
New South
Wales 2061, Australia
Random
House New Zealand Limited
18 Poland
Road, Glenfield
Auckland
10, New Zealand
Random
House South Africa (Pty) Limited
PO Box 337,
Bergvlei, South Africa
Random
House UK Limited Reg No. 954009
"Fuhrer Ex"
grew from:
Die Abrechnung: Ein
Neonazi steigt aus
by Ingo Hasselbach and
Winfried Bonengel
published
in Germany in 1993 by Aufbau Verlag GmbH
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 7011
6536 7
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Mackays of Chatham PLC, Chatham, Kent
Excerpts (Pages
207-9):
IN THE SPRING of 1991, the civil war in
Croatia began. The Movement saw it as the
perfect chance to give those who wanted it
real experience killing people. Moreover,
there was a historical tie: during World War
II Nazi Germany had played an active role in
Yugoslav ethnic politics; the Nazis had
supported a puppet dictatorship in Croatia,
the Ustashe, that had built concentration
camps in which mostly Serbs but also Jews were
killed.
The current government in Croatia was reviving
the tradition of the Ustashe and in many other
ways honoring the former Fascists. Units of
the Croatian Army were flying swastika flags,
and many more were flying the old Croatian
Fascist symbol. Croatia had become the first
European government since World War II to
openly embrace these symbols. (...) It was a
neo-Nazi dream come true.
...
All of the West German neo-Nazis saw it as a
wonderful opportunity, but Nero Reisz, the
barking anti-Semite from Hesse, was
particularly pleased. The problem for him was
that there weren't enough Jews being killed.
But Serbs would do.
A system was set up whereby potential recruits
for Croatia were first trained in paramilitary
camps in Germany, then passed on to middlemen
who were responsible for arranging their
transport, clothing, and food on the way to
the front.
The way it worked was first through a
word-of-mouth network. We had to be careful
about doing any advertising because hiring
mercenaries was strictly illegal in the
Federal Republic. It was simply known in the
scene that you could go to Croatia, if
fighting was your trip, and that in Berlin I
was one of the contacts. The other main
contact people in Berlin were Arnulf Priem and
Oliver Schweigert. Once we'd checked out
recruits to make sure they weren't spies, we
took them to a paramilitary camp to get tested
and trained. We were mainly interested in
whether they were physically fit to go down
there. Mental fitness didn't interest us much.
I knew one guy from the GDR who'd been loosely
involved in the Movement for about a year and
then went down to Croatia because it was a
chance to kill Communists, i.e., the Serbs. He
wasn't even much of a neo-Nazi, really. He
simply hated the Stasi, who'd tortured him in
jail, and was half crazy to get some revenge
on anyone for his suffering. He had
shoulder-length hair, like a hippie, and
hardly any sense of purpose at all. He just
wanted a chance to kill "Communists", and he
got it in Croatia. In a documentary some
television team made at the front, he was
interviewed and he talked about how many Serbs
he'd killed and how much he'd learned about
weapons. Less than a year later, he was killed
himself.
But the more sane and careful ones came back
after a few months or a year with valuable
training in weapons and explosives. They'd of
course also learned what it was like to kill
people. (Many stayed down there, living in the
hills, constantly involved in skirmishes no
one ever heard about, and are only now coming
back into Germany and Austria and forming the
basis of the most militant and dangerous
neo-Nazi cells.)
The effort to organize young German neo-Nazis
and send them to Croatia to fight and kill for
the Ustashe - as the SS had once done - was
organized largely by the Movement
representatives in Hesse, Bavaria, and-for
logistical reasons, as it was directly on the
border with Yugoslavia-Austria. The main man
in charge in Germany was Nero Reisz. He
organized transport and took care that
everyone got uniforms and weapons. Then Michel
Faci and his right-hand man, Nikolas,
organized most of the Croatian neo-Nazi units,
training both young Croatians and Germans
who'd come down for the ride. Faci trained
Croatians as young as ten years old to kill
"Communists" while teaching them the basics of
Nazism. With his childish antics, he is good
at making murder seem like a game.
The neo-Nazis mostly fought independently from
other units, as a legionnaire corps. But they
received arms and ammunition, even tanks, from
the Croatians.
From what I heard from men who came back, they
fought against Serbs but also against Bosnian
Muslims, even though the Muslims had been in
the SS during World War II. They simply fought
against whomever they could get an excuse to
kill. They kept track of how many Serbs they
killed and tried to collect per-body pay from
the Croatians, but they actually got hardly
anything, apart from invaluable experience.
I NEVER WENT down there. Personally, I
wouldn't have gone to Croatia for anything in
the world. I saw no reason to risk my neck for
another nation. I was only interested in the
potential of getting battle-hardened recruits
back from the front. The actual fight in
Yugoslavia didn't interest me.
So I organized paramilitary camps and helped
provide training, tested the recruits with the
help of a few sympathetic people from the
Bundeswehr. There was a lot of physical
training-jogging, crawling, scaling. Recruits
learned how to use firearms and how to
dismantle, clean, and reassemble them. There
was explosives training and practice in
throwing grenades and using bazookas. We
modeled our course on Bundeswehr training
exercises and what we could piece together
about the old Waffen SS training with the help
of training manuals and the memories of our
retired SS supporters. But the basic source
for our training was the West German Federal
Army.
|
|
