country to emerge again, whatever the cost to others. As will be seen, extremist Serbs began a campaign of what they called, "ethnic cleansing," the wholesale removal and slaughter of all Muslims and Croats from areas the Serbs wanted to control.
In his book, Bosnia: A Short History, Noel Malcolm (1994) "explodes the claim that the war in Bosnia was the inevitable consequence of "ancient ethnic hatreds" (Introduction). Malcolm (1994) illustrates that the cause of Bosnia's destruction came from outside Bosnia itself: "first through the political strategy of the Serbian leadership, and then from the fatal miscomprehension and interference of Western politicians" (Introduction). Actually, the "ancient ethnic hatreds" which analysts currently speak of are more accurately referred to as modern genocidal policies. No matter how blood-thirsty the Serbs have been in their own right, the fact remains that the Croatian government assisted Nazi Germans in their campaign of extermination against the Jews. As Malcolm (1994) tells it, "On 10 April 1941, even before their blitzkrieg had ended, the Germans proclaimed a new 'Independent State of Croatia (known by its Serbo-Croat initials as NDH), incorporating the whole of Bosnia and Hercegovina" (p. 175). The protection of Aryan blood (racial identity) and the honor of the Croatian people (strong nationalism) made modern those "ancient hatreds."
Most Serbs belong to the Orthodox Church, which split from the Roman Catholic Church in the eleventh century. Croats are mostly Roman Catholics, with ties to Germany and Austria. In his Serbs and Croats, Alex N. Dragnich (1992) explains the extreme significance of Roman Catholicism to the Croats, both historically and in the present:
It is significant in this context to suggest that no people in Europe, with the exception of the Irish and the Poles, were more inclined to defend themselves by Catholicism than the Croats. Catholics in Cro...