In 1914, Heinrich Jehlitschka, Austrian Consul Generale in Skopje no longer wanted to see the Serbian actions against the Albanians as an act of “spontaneous brutality” carried out in the fury of battle by a raw and bitter soldiery, but rather that “they carried out systematically with cold blood apparently under higher orders, an elimination and extermination operation.”[1]
During a meeting with the German delegate Austrian Major von Laffert summarized Serbia’s actions against the Albanians as follows:
“The Serbs were very lucky that the Albanians undertook this unfortunate
uprising. By declaring all Albanians indiscriminately rebels and shooting everyone,
whether armed or not, without mercy, they caused the tremendous panic that
freed them in one fell swoop from an unpopular population of over 100,000
people. With a ruthless sense of purpose and without caring about Europe’s philanthropic
cries, they drew the only right conclusion from their point of view.”[2]
References
- Staatsbürger aus Widerruf: Juden und Muslime als Alteritätspartner im rumänischen und serbischen Nationscode : ethnonationale Staatsbürgerschaftskonzepte 1878-1941. Dietmar Muller. 2005. p. 197.
- Konsul Jehlitschka, zitiert nach Boeckh, Von den Balkankriegen, p.168
- Major von Laffert, in: Die auswärtige Politik Serbiens 2. p.479
