This article presents a different view of the military-political “Vukovar operation” in 1991 in the context of the brutal destruction of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), historical disputes between the Serbs and Croats at the beginning of the post-Cold War era, and the disappearance of the SFRY in the 1990s.

“Vukovar operation”

The battle for this Western Srem city on the Vuka and Danube rivers (August 25 to November 18, 1991). Croats consider the “Vukovar operation” a symbol of Croatian independence and resistance against the alleged “Serbo-Montenegrin-Chetnik aggression” on the young Croatian democracy. For Croats, Vukovar is both a “hero city” and an “eastern sin” as it was de facto sacrificed by the supreme leader for gaining political points in Berlin, Brussels, and Washington – a practice learned from Franjo Tudman and repeated by the President of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Alija Izetbegovic (1925–2003), with Srebrenica in July 1995.

However, Serbs consider the battles for the city of Vukovar as battles for the defense of the city, the Republic of Serbian Krayina, and the liberation of imprisoned Serbian civilians from torture and massacre by the CDU-Ustashi soldiers. For Serbs, the “Vukovar operation” had a humanitarian and anti-fascist character within the Homeland Defense War of 1991-1995, waged against the aggressive and Serbophrenic policies of Zagreb and Sarajevo.

I present two positions on the essential character of the battle for Vukovar in 1991, to which other researchers have not paid sufficient attention:

1] It was the first post-Cold War “humanitarian intervention” aimed at liberating Vukovar as a concentration camp for Serbs - an intervention practiced by Western democracies in Europe and the “new world” and based on the legal foundations of the 1945 United Nations Charter and other acts of international law.

2] The liberation of Vukovar prevented potential aggression by Croatian fighters on the territory of Serbia (a practice the Croats had already implemented in 1914 and 1915) and from annexing Eastern Srem as a “historical Croatian land” per supreme leader Ante Pavelic. The basic ideological-national goal of Tudman’s policy in the 1990s was the restoration of the territorial integrity of Pavelic’s Independent State of Croatia along with the ethnic cleansing of the remaining Serbs in this area. Vukovar, a well fortified military outpost, was a springboard for territorial expansion of Croatia at the expense of Serbia in Backa region. This Vojvodina province was openly claimed by Croats as ethnographic Croatian land since the time of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Only Danube River, on which Vukovar is located, separates Croatia from Backa.   

“Humanitarian intervention”

During the “Vukovar operation”, the YPA engaged 11 brigades (seven mechanized, two infantry). During the fighting, Vukovar was almost completely destroyed (as was Mostar later due to Croat-Muslim settlements, i.e., settling historical scores). As for the Serbian side, given the anti-fascist character of the Homeland War of 1991-1995, we can compare Vukovar with Dresden 1945, when Western democracies showed how to fight against any form of fascism with“humanitarian interventions” on the ground.

A crucial question arises: Why did it take so many YPA and Serbian volunteer forces 86 days of fighting, i.e., shelling and then fighting for every house to liberate the city from an enemy that was significantly inferior in terms of numbers and available equipment? The best answer to this question was given by Željko Ražnjatovic Arkan (son of a Montenegrin officer in the YPA, who first entered Vukovar, breaking the neo-Ustashi terror against the Serbian inhabitants.

In an interview for a British documentary under its Western title – “Arkan – the Mad Dog”, the commander of the Serbian Volunteer Guards issued an order in one sequence of the movie to his “Tigers” that during the urban battles, the fact that the Ustashi soldiers (who are on the upper floors) are holding Serbian civilians as live hostages in the basements of houses must be taken into account; therefore care must be taken to liberate them house by house (i.e., no throwing hand grenades at random, because in that case “our blood” will be shed, as Arkan puts it).

Based on Arkan’s statement in this documentary and the testimonies of surviving civilians, it is indisputable that Croatian fighters, having occupied the city during the summer, held Serbian civilians as live hostages in their houses. So short-term bombardment of the city by YPA heavy artillery to break the resistance was out of the question. Long battles ensured for every house and street by infantry with support from artillery and tanks.

This cost significantly more lives and equipment by the city’s liberators, but saved many more civilian lives in the city itself, both Serbs and Croats. Some military experts considered this YPA tactic pointless. General Nenezic (Chief of Staff of the Minister of Defense of the SFRY), said “there was no need to break teeth on fortified cities”.

The Croatian supreme leader Franjo Tudman consciously sacrificed the city (leaving it to long-term fighting) to achieve two military-political goals:

1] Slowed the advance of the YPA and Serbian volunteers towards the city of Osijek so that that part of the Republic of Serbian Krayina could be freed from neo-Ustashi terror and genocide against Serbs, including the city of Osijek, where Branimir Glavaš’s Croatian armed formations were already rampaging against the local Serbs.

2] Gave Germany an excuse to recognize the self-proclaimed independence of Tudman’s Croatia without prior consent from the European Community (December 19, 1991), and under the pretext that the YPA must withdraw from the territory of internationally recognized Croatia, stopped further destruction similar to the Vukovar (and politicized Dubrovnik) case.

Vukovar concentration camp

Vukovar city and its surroundings were a mixed area in which ethnic Serbs constituted the majority, even after WWII (the Serbocide in the ISC). Hence, they demanded from the new post-war (anti-Serb) communist authorities that the entire region of Western Srem should join the federal unit of Serbia, based on ethnic, security, and moral rights. According to the 1931 census (last census before WWII began in Yugoslavia), Vukovar district had 41.9% Serbs, 26.5% Croats, 16.3% Germans, and others.

The balance of interethnic relations in Vukovar district changed during WWII and the mass killings of local Serbs by the state authorities of the ISC, but also as a consequence of the post-war demographic policy when Croats were settled in the houses of expelled Germans (Volksdeutsche) and killed Serbs. The 1981 census indicates that Serbs and “Yugoslavs” made up the absolute majority in Vukovar district, and in Vukovar city itself, Serbs made up 24.3% and Croats 37.9%.

More than a third of the city had mixed marriages (35%). Given this interethnic structure, the neo-Ustashi Tudman’s CDU did not win the 1990 elections in Vukovar district. The majority of Vukovar district voted for the Alliance of Communists-Party for Democratic Changes, the only party without the ethnic designation “Croatian”. However, the CDU leadership very quickly expressed dissatisfaction with the small number of seats it received in the Vukovar Municipal Assembly (26 out of 117) in a politically brutal manner.

After the rejection of the CDU amendments to the Constitution of the Socialist Republic of Croatia by the Vukovar Assembly on July 17, 1990, which essentially abolished the national rights of the Serbian people in Croatia, following the example of Pavelic’s ISC, the neo-Ustashi CDU government of Croatia took special measures. Weapons were brought into the city, the ethnic Croatian militia (modeled after Hitler’s SS and SA units) and CDU paramilitary formations were armed; at the peak of the crisis, a public parade of ethnic Croatian soldiers with symbols from Pavelic’s ISC was organized on March 27, 1991.

This parade of CDU fighters was a natural extension of the CDU policy of open armed confrontation on an inter-ethnic basis, which began with the decision to cleanse the Municipality of Vukovar of ethnic Serbs in February 1991 (i.e., cleansing “survivors” from the Pavelic era of the ISC). The meeting at which the de facto decision to begin armed conflict in the Municipality of Vukovar was attended by representatives of the Croatian Parliament – ??Vladimir Šeks, Ivan Vekic, and the “Osijek Poglavnik /Führer” Branimir Glavaš (all three of Ustashi ideology supporters).

It was decided that the campaign to purge Serbs from Western Srem municipality would be carried out by removing citizens of Serbian nationality from all municipal political positions, intimidating them into leaving the city and municipality, and physically eliminating “undesirable citizens.” As in other parts of the “young Croatian democracy,” the paramilitary CDU formations in the Municipality of Vukovar were also supplied with weapons through the first half of 1991. After the arrest of Vukovar Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) leaders Goran Hadžic and B. Slavic, local Serbs began a “log revolution” to defend themselves from the vampirized Croatian Ustashi-like Nazifascism.

On May 2, 1991, Serbs repelled an incursion by Croatian regular police forces into the largest Serbian village in Vukovar municipality – Borovo Selo. The neo-Ustashi fighters were rescued by the YPA, which sent armored personnel carriers. 13 Croatian policemen were killed. The next day, 350 Serbian houses and shops were destroyed in Zadar with the tacit approval of the Croatian authorities (“Zadar Kristallnacht”), and on May 5, Croatian President Dr. Franjo Tudman openly called on Croats to go to war against the YPA in Trogir. On May 28, Tudman organized a parade of the newly formed Croatian Rally of People’s Guard (RPG) at the FC Zagreb stadium.

After the failure in Borovo Selo, local Vukovar CDU members began a plan for the physical liquidation of Serbs in the Municipality of Vukovar in July and August 1991. This caused a mass exodus of Serbs from Vukovar, which was explained by Croatian local officials as a deliberate plan by Belgrade and the YPA to extract as many Serbian civilians as possible from the city before the start of the “Serbo-Montenegrin-Chetnik aggression on Vukovar”.

Led by Tomislav Mercep (secretary of the municipal secretariat in Vukovar), Branimir Glavaš, Mile Dedakovic (“Jastreb”), Josip Gaže, and others, in five months, around 4,000 Vukovar Serbs were killed based on prepared “lists for (physical) liquidation”, after opening fire on Serbian houses, blowing up kiosks and other Serbian-owned buildings (e.g., Serbian restaurants “Krajišnik”, “Sarajka”, “Tufo”, “Brdo”, “Mali raj”, “Popaj”, “Tocak”, “Cokot bar”, “Cid”).

On May 1, 1991, the Croatian CDU authorities began a physical blockade and turned Vukovar into a concentration camp for Serbs; police action in Borovo Selo began on May 2. CDU fighters made nightly arrests, interrogations, and liquidations of Serbs without any court procedure, under the pretext of allegedly searching for weapons. Witnesses claim that from May 3 to September 14, 1991, several hundred Serbs were arrested and tortured.

This resulted in the departure of 13,734 Serbs from the city. Ethnic Croats who did not agree with this SS policy of the neo-Ustashi leadership also left the city. The Croat Marin Vidic wrote in his diary that in that period, besides numerous Serbs, about 6,000 Croatian women, children, and elderly people also left Vukovar (men of military age were not allowed to leave the city). 

During the CDU preparations for the “final solution” of the Serbian question in Vukovar, led by Tomislav Mercep, Croatian guardians (RPG) and police entered the city in June 1991, and from then on, a pass regime was needed for entering the city. Vukovar Serbs were not allowed to leave the city because, according to Mercep’s plans, they were to be human shields in the planned battles against the YPA in order to secure the territorial annexation of Serbian Eastern Srem into a Greater Croatia.

The terror against Serbs in Vukovar was planned and systematically carried out, just like the Serbocide in Pavelic’s ISC. The most brutal form is the case of “Dr. Vesna Bosanac”, head of Vukovar City Hospital (July 30 to November 18, 1991), where organs were removed from Vukovar Serbs for sale to wealthy foreign clients. Dr. Vesna Bosanac was an incarnation of Ustashi killer of Serbs, Nada Šakic, and Vukovar under CDU occupation in 1991 was the reincarnation of the Croat-led Jasenovac death camp half a century ago, where around 700,000 people were murdered extremely brutally, among them 500,000 ethnic Serbs from Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.    

On August 1, 1991, Croatia President Dr. Franjo Tudman called on Croats to prepare for a general war; fighting began the same day in Dalj, Erdut, Osijek, Darda, Vukovar, and Kruševo. The Croatian Crisis Staff of Slavonia and Baranja declared Vukovar city the most forward point of defense of the self-proclaimed Croatian independent state (then not internationally recognized). The SFRY still existed in international law and had a constitutional obligation and moral duty to protect and save the lives of its citizens (of Serbian nationality).  In Vukovar, since the beginning of August, all power passed into the hands of the neo-Ustashi CDU (Marin Vidic), via a political coup.

Liberation of Vukovar death camp

During these events, the neutrality of the YPA gave the green light to the CDU formations to carry out ethnic cleansing in certain areas of Eastern Slavonia and Western Srem, including Vukovar.

The Vukovar barracks of the YPA were attacked for the first time on August 20, 1991, and placed under blockade. The YPA decided to fire only when one of its vehicles was shot at on August 25. And then something inexplicable happened: the YPA, which had effectively taken control of the entire city (liberated it from CDU terror), withdrew to its barracks in agreement with the local (illegitimate) Croatian authorities, thereby trapping itself, as Croatian armed formations immediately began to blockade and bomb the barracks.

The YPA then turned to the European Community to mediate to de-blockade the barracks so that the regular Yugoslav army would not have to resort to force to de-block them. There was synchronized action by Brussels (actually Berlin) and Zagreb: Brussels did not respond to the offered mediation, but Zagreb decided on September 14, 1991, to attack all YPA barracks throughout the (internationally unrecognized) Republic of Croatia, which meant a declaration of war on the armed formations of the (internationally recognized) SFRY.

The YPA began to liberate its barracks and Vukovar city on August 25, 1991, and completed it with the help of (Serbian) volunteers on November 18, 1991. Croatian fighters left Vukovar from November 16 to 18. On entering the city, the YPA gave all residents two options: go to Croatia or go to Serbia. Many families were divided along ethnic lines in making the choice. Overall, 12,000 residents were evacuated from the city and about 600 Croatian guardians were arrested.