Milan RISTOVIC

THE BALKANS IN THE "NEW EUROPE" NAZI PROJECT DURING THE WORLD WAR II

This paper discusses some characteristic elements of the German concept of the European Southeast - the Balkans - during the World War II. This territory has become the subject of a wide planned activity and various theoretical deliberations not only regarding its role in the war, hut also in the German new European order whose "realization", as was considered, was to be effected by the war conquest which the German army forces effected throughout the European continent. The Southeast Europe was an important, but nevertheless second rate, "auxiliary" economic and geopolitical region which should have been entirely subordinated to the achievement of goals of the "great (economic) territory" at the center of which was placed the 'third Reich. In considering the role of the Southeast (The Balkans) numerous specialized organizations for the Southeast, like the Viennese Society for the Southeast Europe (SEG), the Middle European Economic Council (MWT), scientific institutions, institutions of higher education, prominent and influential individuals from the ranks of the Nazi party, state organs, private Enterprises, the army, the SS had a special role.

Various "theoretical concepts" of the Southeast had to be considered in parallel with war efforts of their "realization" by establishing brutal occupation systems, via genocide measures toward some of the peoples of this region, by chaotic war robbery, by the disintegration of Yugoslavia and Greece, by creating a vassal system, etc.

In this paper, the author has focused also on the discussions conducted in the German professional circles on the conceptualization and spatial definition of the Southeast and the Balkans, where these two concepts are always confronted. The Southeast has been given primarily an ideological (positive) contents, while the Balkans represented the "negative principle" in these discussions on the political- ethnic "restructuring of the territory" and in the plans on its economic exploitation as well.

All these "planned concepts" of the European Southeast of the Hitler regime ace only one of the segments of an universal anti-utopia of the Nazi "New Europe".

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