# Part One: Radovan Karadžić: The Genocidal Dictator Who Became a New-Age Guru

An episode of [Behind the Bastards](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1373812661), 22 Sep 2026, 1 h 13 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pscrb.fm/rss/p/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/e5f91208-cc7e-4726-a312-ae280140ad11/9db629e4-a172-40a9-8343-b4cc0173e0d9/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=d64f756d-6d5e-4fae-b24f-ae280140ad36

Robert sits down with Jamie Loftus to discuss a bastard who really did it all: started his own country and became dictator, carried out a genocide, and matured to quack energy healer using magic to improve men's sperm count. Preorder Jamie's new novel, The Tower: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250480422/thetower/ Sources: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-19960285 https://www.npr.org/2008/07/22/92775717/timeline-the-political-life-of-radovan-karadzic https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/22/the-hunt-for-radovan-karadzic-ruthless-warlord-turned-spiritual-healer https://www.npr.org/2008/07/23/92809597/karadzics-dual-life-war-fugitive-new-age-mystic Radovan Karadzic’s New-Age Adventure - The New York Times https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jul-23-fg-warcrime23-story.html https://calivita.com/webshop https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/01/radovan-karadzic-war-crimes-trial-no-ethnic-cleansing-bosnia https://www.npr.org/2005/11/19/5020196/the-poetry-of-an-indicted-war-criminal https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/karadzic/radovan/poems.html https://jaapl.org/content/jaapl/25/4/485.full.pdf https://www.jessicasternbooks.com/my-war-criminal See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: Call zone media.
[0:05] Speaker 2: Never forget 9-11 and never forget to listen to Behind
[0:09] Speaker 2: the Bastards, the podcast that you are all listening to now.
[0:12] Speaker 2: This is our 9-11 episode extravaganza, even though you'll be
[0:16] Speaker 2: hearing it probably several weeks after 9-11. So I don't
[0:19] Speaker 2: even know why I'm like temporalizing this because it's just
[0:22] Speaker 2: going to feel old when it hits you. You already
[0:24] Speaker 2: have had your 9-11 cake. You'll have opened all of
[0:27] Speaker 2: your 9-11 presents.
[0:27] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[0:28] Speaker 4: I'm feeling a little somber.
[0:30] Speaker 3: So if you feel a tinge of sadness in my voice,
[0:33] Speaker 3: that's me not forgetting.
[0:36] Speaker 2: That's Jamie remembering.
[0:38] Speaker 4: I'm always remembering.
[0:40] Speaker 5: The discourse today online was the worst of the right
[0:45] Speaker 5: being like, did you see Mom Donnie and AOC having
[0:51] Speaker 5: a giggle during the 9-11 tribute in New York? During
[0:56] Speaker 5: the sacred 9-11.
[0:57] Speaker 4: Tribute, yeah.
[0:58] Speaker 5: You're like, did you see that Donald Trump wasn't there?
[1:02] Speaker 2: I don't care.
[1:03] Speaker 1: I don't care about any of these things. I don't
[1:06] Speaker 1: care about any of these things. Nah, it's fine.
[1:10] Speaker 3: It is bizarre that, like, Of all of the days
[1:15] Speaker 3: that we– the thousands of days, we've been very insincere
[1:19] Speaker 3: about it.
[1:19] Speaker 4: We're like, we're going to do just one.
[1:21] Speaker 2: We're going to remember. We're going to remember.
[1:23] Speaker 4: And today we're going to remember for real, for real.
[1:25] Speaker 1: For real, for real.
[1:27] Speaker 2: I'm– What I remember on 9-11 is the film Big Trouble,
[1:31] Speaker 2: which was tragically delayed as a result of 9-11 because
[1:34] Speaker 2: it featured a plot line in which a nuclear weapon
[1:36] Speaker 2: was set off in a commercial airliner.
[1:38] Speaker 1: That's right.
[1:39] Speaker 2: And so, tragically, Tim Allen lost what would have been
[1:42] Speaker 2: one of his better comedy releases.
[1:45] Speaker 4: And we won't forget that.
[1:47] Speaker 2: I will never forget that, Jamie.
[1:50] Speaker 3: I'll never forget they changed the climax of Lilo and Stitch.
[1:53] Speaker 3: Stitch hijacked a plane.
[1:54] Speaker 4: And then they said we could not be having... We
[1:58] Speaker 4: can't have Stitch be doing Al-Qaeda activity. Yeah.
[2:02] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[2:02] Speaker 2: You know what?
[2:03] Speaker 5: <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL> <HAL>.
[2:07] Speaker 4: <HAL> Oh, see, Sophie, that's not how you lead into this.
[2:10] Speaker 2: I was going to say, you know how there were
[2:12] Speaker 2: two towers on 9-11?
[2:14] Speaker 1: Oh, that's better.
[2:15] Speaker 2: Jamie Loftus has a book coming out called The Tower.
[2:19] Speaker 1: Wow, what a plug.
[2:20] Speaker 2: Jamie, you want to tell people about it? See, I'm ready.
[2:22] Speaker 2: I was ready to plug.
[2:24] Speaker 5: Wow.
[2:24] Speaker 4: Okay.
[2:26] Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a secret third tower. And what if it
[2:29] Speaker 3: was a 9-11 book? What if it wasn't WT7? I've
[2:33] Speaker 3: been secretly remembering for years.
[2:35] Speaker 4: You have no idea. Yeah, no. My first novel's coming out.
[2:40] Speaker 3: It's about just one tower, but a beautiful tower. It's
[2:47] Speaker 3: a novel about an architect who falls in love with
[2:50] Speaker 3: her own blueprint. And then spends 20 years trying to
[2:54] Speaker 3: get the love of her life built so she can
[2:57] Speaker 3: leave her husband for the building.
[3:00] Speaker 2: Awesome. I'm excited to read it.
[3:02] Speaker 4: The highs are high. The lows are low.
[3:04] Speaker 2: The lows of writing a book are very low.
[3:08] Speaker 4: It's the hardest thing in the world. That said.
[3:13] Speaker 4: I'm sure by the time you hear this, I've figured
[3:16] Speaker 4: it out.
[3:16] Speaker 2: Jamie, it's very appropriate that you said writing a book
[3:19] Speaker 2: is the hardest thing in the world because the subject,
[3:21] Speaker 2: the bastard that we're talking about this week is an author.
[3:24] Speaker 2: And I think would agree with you, writing a book
[3:26] Speaker 2: is the hardest thing in the world, which is impressive
[3:28] Speaker 2: because he also committed a genocide. So maybe not the
[3:33] Speaker 2: best way to talk about it, but we're talking about
[3:34] Speaker 2: the Balkans this week and there's no easy way to
[3:36] Speaker 2: lead into a story about the Balkans. If you are
[3:40] Speaker 2: talking about the Balkans, you're talking about a lot of
[3:42] Speaker 2: people dying. That's just history in the Balkans.
[3:46] Speaker 3: There's always a part of me that thinks someday you're
[3:48] Speaker 3: going to come in hot with Saddam too. You know,
[3:52] Speaker 3: like there's always just a little, like there's another novel.
[3:55] Speaker 2: That's been found. They made another. Saddam's lost novel, like Tupac,
[4:01] Speaker 2: he keeps dropping novels like every 15 years after his death.
[4:05] Speaker 3: Yeah, on the centennial, we're going to get a new
[4:08] Speaker 3: romance novel.
[4:10] Speaker 2: R.I.P.
[4:10] Speaker 4: Saddam, you would have loved the romantic trend going on
[4:13] Speaker 4: right now.
[4:14] Speaker 2: We are talking about a dictator. Unlike Saddam, he was
[4:18] Speaker 2: not a novelist, but he was a poet, kind of
[4:21] Speaker 2: like Joseph Stalin. And he also did commit a genocide.
[4:26] Speaker 2: And in addition to that, he lived as a New
[4:28] Speaker 2: Age healer for years after committing a genocide. This guy
[4:31] Speaker 2: goes so many places. You are not ready for the
[4:35] Speaker 2: Radovan Karadzic story. That's who we're talking about this week.
[4:39] Speaker 2: Have you heard about Radovan Karadzic? No, I have not.
[4:43] Speaker 4: I can't say how.
[4:45] Speaker 5: Before we get started, I just want to highlight for
[4:47] Speaker 5: the Netflix viewers, Jamie's fantastic John Locke t-shirt that she's wearing.
[4:51] Speaker 5: That's for you, Sophie.
[4:54] Speaker 2: The one from the show?
[4:56] Speaker 4: From Lost, the bald one.
[4:58] Speaker 2: Yeah, okay.
[4:59] Speaker 1: The bald king from Lost.
[5:00] Speaker 2: That's from Lost, okay.
[5:02] Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's low culture John Locke.
[5:04] Speaker 2: We're not going high today. It would have been really
[5:08] Speaker 2: funny if it was the same aesthetic, like fan cam shirt,
[5:10] Speaker 2: but it was like John Locke, the philosopher.
[5:14] Speaker 4: I am a thousand percent sure that shirt exists. It must.
[5:17] Speaker 4: It does. Yes.
[5:19] Speaker 2: All my philosophy girlies out there are just absolutely losing
[5:22] Speaker 2: their minds. And all of my Balkans girlies are going
[5:25] Speaker 2: to be losing their minds this week because, again, we're
[5:27] Speaker 2: talking about Radovan Karadzic, one of the people most responsible
[5:31] Speaker 2: for the Bosnian genocide, also a poet and an energy
[5:34] Speaker 2: healer who was really in Dariki.
[5:37] Speaker 4: So we're going to cover a lot of ground.
[5:39] Speaker 2: Sinister.
[5:40] Speaker 4: What a sinister multi-hyphenate situation that is.
[5:44] Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
[5:45] Speaker 2: I mean, cause in our country we're seeing like the
[5:47] Speaker 2: weird woo, you know, bullshit medicine stuff kind of as
[5:51] Speaker 2: a prelude to the fascism, right. Where it kind of
[5:54] Speaker 2: leads in and helps bring it for this guy. He
[5:57] Speaker 2: goes full fascist and then he becomes an energy healer.
[6:00] Speaker 2: It's an amazing journey. So I can't wait to talk
[6:02] Speaker 2: to you about Radovan.
[6:04] Speaker 3: That's how I always, I always think about like, uh,
[6:07] Speaker 3: george w as like a reverse hitler where he like
[6:10] Speaker 3: got the war crimes out of the way and then
[6:13] Speaker 3: retreated into painting.
[6:14] Speaker 2: Afterwards oh man i think hitler would have done better
[6:17] Speaker 2: painting if he'd taken the opposite route but then again
[6:19] Speaker 2: that what i mean is if he'd never painted because
[6:21] Speaker 2: he just shot himself first because he was a bad
[6:23] Speaker 2: painter i guess what i'm saying is george w bush
[6:26] Speaker 2: is a better artist than hitler you know i gotta
[6:29] Speaker 2: give bush that.
[6:30] Speaker 4: I mean, if we absolutely.
[6:33] Speaker 2: Have to give George W.
[6:35] Speaker 4: Flowers on 9-11, I guess so.
[6:38] Speaker 2: On 9-11.
[6:40] Speaker 4: I guess he's top of mind.
[6:42] Speaker 2: Look, Hitler's a better Hitler than George W. Bush was.
[6:44] Speaker 2: I'll say that, you know. That's true. It's not 100%
[6:47] Speaker 2: either way.
[6:48] Speaker 4: Jeez, what a rough lead-in. Doesn't George W.
[6:54] Speaker 3: like, doesn't he paint, like, his war crime? He, like,
[6:57] Speaker 3: paints injured veterans that are injured.
[6:59] Speaker 4: He paints a lot of us.
[7:00] Speaker 2: He's painted some injured veterans. That's not really a war crime.
[7:04] Speaker 2: That's just him being a shitty leader. I don't know.
[7:07] Speaker 2: But he also painted, like, Putin's face. He does a
[7:09] Speaker 2: lot of weird shit. I don't know. Anyway, speaking of
[7:20] Speaker 2: war crimes, let's talk a little bit about Balkan history, right?
[7:23] Speaker 4: Okay.
[7:25] Speaker 2: Because we can't just start talking about this guy's life.
[7:28] Speaker 2: There's too much complicated shit going on in the Balkans
[7:31] Speaker 2: that leads into this. So if you're not a map person,
[7:34] Speaker 2: the Balkans are kind of a chunk of Southeast Europe
[7:39] Speaker 2: leading up into Eastern Europe, but also in that southern
[7:42] Speaker 2: flank area. That includes like you've got Slovenia, you've got Croatia,
[7:47] Speaker 2: you've got Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia, like all these different areas
[7:51] Speaker 2: are like parts of the Balkans. And it's historically just
[7:56] Speaker 2: like the most quarrelsome part of Europe in the early
[7:59] Speaker 2: modern era. Right. And a big reason for that is
[8:02] Speaker 2: that because of geography. The Balkans are the major European
[8:06] Speaker 2: battleground for most of the fighting between like the Muslims
[8:09] Speaker 2: and the Christians. Right. When you get the Ottoman Empire
[8:11] Speaker 2: trying to make their way into Europe, they take a
[8:14] Speaker 2: lot of the Balkans. And for a lot of like
[8:17] Speaker 2: the early modern period, much of the Balkans is like
[8:20] Speaker 2: governed from Constantinople. Right. It's like part of the Ottoman Empire.
[8:25] Speaker 2: And that leads to a lot of fucking conflicts, right?
[8:28] Speaker 2: Because people in like modern day Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia
[8:32] Speaker 2: are subjects of the Ottoman Sultan for a very long time.
[8:35] Speaker 2: And some of these people convert to Islam. And of course,
[8:37] Speaker 2: a lot of Muslims from Anatolia and elsewhere migrate to
[8:40] Speaker 2: the Balkans, particularly Bosnia, right? Bosnia develops a very sizable
[8:45] Speaker 2: Muslim population. They're called Bosniaks. Those are like the Bosnian Muslims, right?
[8:51] Speaker 2: And obviously, there's also a lot of Christians, quite a
[8:53] Speaker 2: few Serbian Christians specifically, say fuck you to the idea
[8:56] Speaker 2: of serving a sultan. And the mountainous highlands, particularly around Montenegro,
[9:02] Speaker 2: the term they use is like a shatter zone, right?
[9:04] Speaker 2: It's this area on the edge of an empire and
[9:07] Speaker 2: in between other empires or kingdoms. where usually it's very mountainous,
[9:11] Speaker 2: and so it's hard to, like, govern in the pre-modern period.
[9:14] Speaker 2: Before you have helicopters, you can't really govern these island regions, because, like,
[9:18] Speaker 2: if you have an army and guys just go up
[9:20] Speaker 2: 2,000 feet, it's like, well, your army will die before
[9:22] Speaker 2: they reach them. You can't march them into the mountains.
[9:27] Speaker 2: So you wind up with this big shatter zone in, like,
[9:30] Speaker 2: kind of Montenegro, where there's all these Serb clans who
[9:33] Speaker 2: wish to escape the Sultan's law, would, like, flee and fight.
[9:36] Speaker 2: modern historians tend to emphasize their primary issue with the
[9:39] Speaker 2: ottomans was not even religion as much as it was
[9:42] Speaker 2: taxation which is usually the case with stuff like this
[9:45] Speaker 2: even if it gets written up as a big holy
[9:46] Speaker 2: wars because oh no that guy wants to tax us
[9:48] Speaker 2: and we have mountains so we don't have to pay
[9:50] Speaker 2: taxes yeah there's a.
[9:52] Speaker 3: Yeah there's always a secret there's there's always a back
[9:55] Speaker 3: alley reason for actually doing it.
[9:57] Speaker 2: And it's usually taxes right um That's a big part
[10:00] Speaker 2: of it, at least. Still, these mountain Serbs develop a
[10:03] Speaker 2: reputation among other Europeans as their primitives, right? They're these
[10:07] Speaker 2: very savage, like, you know, warriors who don't build big
[10:10] Speaker 2: cities because they live up in these highland areas. But
[10:12] Speaker 2: they're also these noble warriors defending Christendom against the Islamic hordes.
[10:16] Speaker 2: They're like the shield of Europe, too. So they develop
[10:18] Speaker 2: both of those kinds of reputations. During this period of time,
[10:22] Speaker 2: Montenegrin Serbs largely clustered in small clan and tribal groups
[10:26] Speaker 2: under the leadership of people called dukes. These aren't royalty
[10:29] Speaker 2: in the traditional sense. They're often from like the same families,
[10:32] Speaker 2: prominent families. But the leaders are like, you don't tend
[10:36] Speaker 2: to get like super hierarchical by like birth names. like
[10:40] Speaker 2: governance structures in these mountainous areas where it's just kind
[10:43] Speaker 2: of who's best at killing, right? Because if like someone's
[10:46] Speaker 2: shithead son tries to rule everybody and they're not great
[10:48] Speaker 2: at killing, they're going to get killed.
[10:50] Speaker 4: They're going to get killed. No one's going to follow them.
[10:53] Speaker 4: We really got to bring that back.
[10:54] Speaker 2: We should bring that back. They had some things right.
[10:57] Speaker 4: We could kill the Nepo baby discourse once and for.
[11:00] Speaker 2: All if we were just allowed to kill people. Yes,
[11:02] Speaker 2: the mountain serbs have much to teach us about governance structures.
[11:07] Speaker 2: I'm always saying so.
[11:08] Speaker 3: So it's not like an electoral system and it's not it's.
[11:11] Speaker 2: Certainly not electoral. OK, OK. Often by like who who
[11:16] Speaker 2: will the most people like follow into battle because like
[11:18] Speaker 2: they know you're not an idiot. You won't get them
[11:21] Speaker 2: killed pointlessly.
[11:22] Speaker 5: Right.
[11:23] Speaker 4: Okay, so it's Instagram rules. Largest following list.
[11:27] Speaker 2: It's Instagram rules, exactly. Instagram is actually based off of
[11:30] Speaker 2: the way the Montenegrin Serbs handle politics in this period
[11:34] Speaker 2: of time.
[11:34] Speaker 4: My friend Mark is always telling me about that.
[11:36] Speaker 2: The birth of influencer culture. And one of the families
[11:41] Speaker 2: in kind of this part of modern-day Montenegro where there's
[11:45] Speaker 2: all these clans, one of the families that produces a
[11:47] Speaker 2: lot of dukes are the Karajiks, right? The Karajiks are
[11:50] Speaker 2: like this kind of, When I say family, it's almost
[11:52] Speaker 2: more of like a clan or a tribal group. And
[11:55] Speaker 2: in around the 13th century, the Karajik families moved to
[11:58] Speaker 2: a village called Pejika and develop a reputation for producing
[12:02] Speaker 2: an outsized number of these military leaders. In her pseudo
[12:05] Speaker 2: biography of Radovan Karajik, My War Criminal, Jessica, and we'll
[12:09] Speaker 2: talk about that title a little bit later. Jessica Stern
[12:12] Speaker 2: interviewed several members of the Karajik clan to hunt down
[12:15] Speaker 2: family lore behind Radovan. She was told many stories about
[12:18] Speaker 2: like one of the most famous early members of the family,
[12:21] Speaker 2: this duke named Sujo Karajic, who was a duke who
[12:25] Speaker 2: assassinated the local Turkish leader and had this epic poem
[12:28] Speaker 2: written about like him killing, assassinating this guy, right? The
[12:32] Speaker 2: Balkans in general are big epic. It's a big epic
[12:35] Speaker 2: poem place, right? There's a lot of oral traditions, particularly
[12:39] Speaker 2: among like the Serbs. And that's how they tend to
[12:42] Speaker 2: like pass on stories. You make you make a mixtape
[12:45] Speaker 2: about a cool guy who like does cool shit.
[12:47] Speaker 6: Right.
[12:48] Speaker 3: You know, you got to you got to put that
[12:50] Speaker 3: shit on wax. Sometimes you kill a guy so well
[12:53] Speaker 3: that your friend writes an EP about it.
[12:57] Speaker 2: I am excited after like several rounds of nuclear war
[13:00] Speaker 2: and stuff for like what the story of that guy
[13:02] Speaker 2: who blasted Shinzo Abe becomes like a thousand years in
[13:06] Speaker 2: the future when people don't know what like a 3D
[13:09] Speaker 2: printed gun was or whatever.
[13:10] Speaker 4: Yes.
[13:13] Speaker 2: Looking forward to what people say about that one. So
[13:18] Speaker 2: the Karajic family and Radovan as a kid is going
[13:20] Speaker 2: to grow up being weaned on stories of like his famous,
[13:23] Speaker 2: you know, relative who was this great war leader, leader,
[13:26] Speaker 2: He was also told a lot about another one of
[13:28] Speaker 2: his ancestors, Vuk Karadzic, who was a writer and folklorist
[13:32] Speaker 2: born in 1787. And Vuk is credited with helping to
[13:35] Speaker 2: form and shape a lot of modern, the modern, he
[13:37] Speaker 2: helps invent Serbian grammar to a significant extent. This is
[13:41] Speaker 2: one of those languages where people have been speaking it
[13:43] Speaker 2: for a while, but once we start like writing books
[13:45] Speaker 2: and publishing them, there's like a couple dudes who figure
[13:48] Speaker 2: out like, how are we going to write stuff? Like,
[13:50] Speaker 2: what are the rules of our language? No one sat
[13:53] Speaker 2: down and decided that really.
[13:56] Speaker 3: That is, like, such a great hack into getting your
[14:00] Speaker 3: random story kind of, like, codified into history, is if
[14:03] Speaker 3: you can, like, write something down that is actually desperately
[14:07] Speaker 3: needed to preserve the culture, it doesn't even matter if
[14:09] Speaker 3: the story's good.
[14:10] Speaker 2: Is a good story not important? What matters is that
[14:13] Speaker 2: somebody wrote it down. Yeah.
[14:15] Speaker 4: We figured out Blue Perfect.
[14:20] Speaker 2: And he also writes, Vuk writes a collection of Balkan
[14:23] Speaker 2: fairy tales that are some of the first... grim stories,
[14:26] Speaker 2: like Jacob Grimm is inspired to do a lot of
[14:30] Speaker 2: the Grimm's fairy tales. If you think about a lot
[14:33] Speaker 2: of really dark Grimm fairy tales, some of them are
[14:35] Speaker 2: Serbian in origin.
[14:37] Speaker 1: You know, you're so right.
[14:40] Speaker 2: Not a lot of happy stories told by the Serbs.
[14:44] Speaker 3: For good reason. The Grimm's lifted stuff like crazy. I
[14:48] Speaker 3: just didn't know from here specifically.
[14:50] Speaker 2: Some of it's from the ancestor of this weird genocide
[14:53] Speaker 2: guy we're going to be talking.
[14:54] Speaker 5: About this week. The Grimm's a little grim. It was
[14:58] Speaker 5: right there, sorry.
[14:59] Speaker 2: Yeah, that's very true, Sophie. So in the centuries to come,
[15:03] Speaker 2: Many Serbs would need the distraction of fairy tales, even
[15:06] Speaker 2: dark ones, because their life was even darker, right? World
[15:09] Speaker 2: War I, as you might remember, was kicked off by
[15:12] Speaker 2: a Serb partisan in Sarajevo who shot the Archduke of Austria-Hungary.
[15:16] Speaker 2: When the Central Powers invaded Serbia to get revenge, Serbia
[15:20] Speaker 2: lost more than 265,000 soldiers in the war, which was
[15:24] Speaker 2: a quarter of their mobilized army. And in comparison, France
[15:28] Speaker 2: and Germany both lost, like, I think France loses like 16%
[15:31] Speaker 2: of their mobilized army. Germany loses like 15%. And you
[15:34] Speaker 2: know how horrible the casualties are for France and Germany
[15:37] Speaker 2: in World War I. Serbia loses a quarter of their
[15:40] Speaker 2: mobilized army, right? So it's even worse. And between half
[15:43] Speaker 2: a million and 800,000-ish civilians are also killed. Now there
[15:48] Speaker 2: has been and still is a great deal of debate
[15:51] Speaker 2: over like how many Serbs die in World War I.
[15:55] Speaker 2: But in a 2021 paper for the University of Belgrade,
[15:58] Speaker 2: Slobodan Markovic estimated that between 21 and 27.65% of the
[16:03] Speaker 2: entire Serbian population dies in that war. It kills a
[16:06] Speaker 2: quarter of all of the Serbs that exist.
[16:08] Speaker 3: Right?
[16:09] Speaker 2: That's a pretty good estimate.
[16:10] Speaker 3: Lord.
[16:11] Speaker 2: That's not good. That's pretty rough, right?
[16:13] Speaker 4: No. No, that's putting up genocide numbers. That is really scary.
[16:19] Speaker 4: It is.
[16:19] Speaker 2: And there's genocidal elements to that war.
[16:22] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[16:23] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[16:23] Speaker 2: So it's pretty bleak. It's a dark time. And it's
[16:27] Speaker 2: got to get even darker because on March 27th, 1941,
[16:31] Speaker 2: pro-fascist elements within the... World War II starts, obviously, just
[16:36] Speaker 2: as a little bit of a prelude, right?
[16:37] Speaker 4: Sure, sure, sure.
[16:38] Speaker 2: And kind of after World War I, because Austria-Hungary breaks up,
[16:42] Speaker 2: you have the establishment, I think, of the 20s of Yugoslavia, right?
[16:45] Speaker 2: That's when it becomes a thing. And it's independent for
[16:49] Speaker 2: a while. And at the outbreak of World War I,
[16:52] Speaker 2: Germany attempts to kind of co-opt the government of Yugoslavia,
[16:56] Speaker 2: and there's pro-fascist elements within the government who's agreed to
[16:59] Speaker 2: sign an armistice with Germany, right? So initially, it looks
[17:02] Speaker 2: like Yugoslavia is going to be kind of on the
[17:05] Speaker 2: Axis side of things, not as like a full member
[17:06] Speaker 2: of the Axis, obviously, but as like one of kind
[17:08] Speaker 2: of their allied states. But then, per History.com, quote, Yugoslav
[17:13] Speaker 2: air officers, aided by the British Secret Services, toppled the
[17:16] Speaker 2: country's pro-Axis regime. In response, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler launched
[17:20] Speaker 2: a massive invasion of the country that began on April
[17:22] Speaker 2: 6th with the bombing of Belgrade. The Yugoslav defenders, made
[17:25] Speaker 2: up of various politically unstable nationalities, were routed by the
[17:28] Speaker 2: hordes of German, Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian troops invading their country.
[17:33] Speaker 2: On April 17, Yugoslavia surrendered and was divided, except for
[17:36] Speaker 2: the puppet state of Croatia, between the four invading Axis powers.
[17:39] Speaker 2: The occupying troops aggravated the traditional religious and national differences
[17:43] Speaker 2: in the region, and the Serbs were especially brutalized. And
[17:46] Speaker 2: this is, things get so ugly in the Balkans, and
[17:50] Speaker 2: Serbia in particular, during World War II.
[17:53] Speaker 5: Right.
[17:53] Speaker 3: Right. Right.
[18:11] Speaker 2: But we don't it's also that the degree to which
[18:14] Speaker 2: what happens in the Balkans during World War Two is
[18:16] Speaker 2: horrific and not talked about is it's much more extreme
[18:19] Speaker 2: because everyone knows Poland.
[18:21] Speaker 3: Yes, I was going to say that this is yet
[18:23] Speaker 3: another sort of glaring gap in my American public schooling where.
[18:28] Speaker 2: We do not talk about this.
[18:30] Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely bashed over the head with World War Two
[18:32] Speaker 3: and the entire regions are just completely ignored. Right.
[18:38] Speaker 2: And there's an argument to be made. If you're talking
[18:40] Speaker 2: about what things are why the Germans lost the war, well,
[18:44] Speaker 2: one possible argument is because Germany has to invade the Balkans, Yugoslavia.
[18:51] Speaker 2: Because that's one of the things that delays in Greece, too,
[18:53] Speaker 2: that delays them invading Russia. They have to push back
[18:57] Speaker 2: until later in the year, Operation Barbarossa, and that That
[19:01] Speaker 2: is part of why Operation Barbara, I don't think it
[19:03] Speaker 2: would have worked either way, right? But because they're later,
[19:06] Speaker 2: that means they don't get as far before the winter hits, right?
[19:08] Speaker 2: It's one of these things that delays Hitler, that he
[19:10] Speaker 2: didn't want to do. He wanted to not have to invade.
[19:13] Speaker 2: So it is really important to the overall progress of
[19:16] Speaker 2: the war, too. Now, there's a lot of ugly things
[19:19] Speaker 2: going on in Yugoslavia during.
[19:22] Speaker 5: World War II.
[19:22] Speaker 4: This is maybe an all-timer bleak start to the episode.
[19:26] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[19:27] Speaker 4: Thank you for letting me have my George Bush moment earlier,
[19:30] Speaker 4: I guess.
[19:32] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[19:32] Speaker 2: I won't say it gets bleaker, but this is a
[19:34] Speaker 2: Serbian story, so it stays at a pretty high level
[19:37] Speaker 2: of bleak the entire time.
[19:38] Speaker 4: Right?
[19:38] Speaker 5: Sure.
[19:39] Speaker 2: Sure.
[19:40] Speaker 1: Thanks for the George Bush joke for me.
[19:42] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[19:45] Speaker 2: Now, the worst of all of the different bad actors,
[19:48] Speaker 2: and there's a lot of them, in World War II,
[19:50] Speaker 2: was the fascist, in the Balkans, was the fascist independent
[19:54] Speaker 2: state of Croatia. As I said, Croatia gets to be
[19:56] Speaker 2: independent because, like, the people in charge of Croatia are
[19:58] Speaker 2: basically Nazis, right? They have a militant movement that winds
[20:02] Speaker 2: up in charge over there and is active in other
[20:05] Speaker 2: parts of the Balkans called the Ustashi.
[20:08] Speaker 5: And.
[20:08] Speaker 2: They do. They're like they're like the fucking Nazis with
[20:12] Speaker 2: like a little bit of extra pep in their fucking step.
[20:15] Speaker 5: Right.
[20:15] Speaker 2: Obviously, they're targeting Jews and Roma. And that's who they
[20:18] Speaker 2: massacre first. And they the massacre of Jews in Yugoslavia
[20:22] Speaker 2: is like pretty nightmarishly like extensive. But they don't stop there. Also,
[20:27] Speaker 2: they're also massacring Serbs. As I said, there's a genocide
[20:30] Speaker 2: against the Serbs during World War Two, or at least
[20:32] Speaker 2: an attempted one. And the Bosniaks, these Bosnian Muslims are.
[20:36] Speaker 2: they wind up on both sides, right? Because a big chunk,
[20:40] Speaker 2: like the leadership of the independent state of Croatia sees
[20:43] Speaker 2: the Bosnia, the Bosniak Muslims as Muslim Croats, right? So
[20:47] Speaker 2: like they're, they're, they're, they're Muslim, but they're like part
[20:49] Speaker 2: of their Aryan, right? And they're offered Aryan status. And
[20:52] Speaker 2: a big chunk of like leaders within the Bosniak community
[20:55] Speaker 2: kind of take up and work, agree to work alongside
[20:58] Speaker 2: and fight alongside the independent state of Croatia. And particularly
[21:02] Speaker 2: in some heavily Muslim areas like Bosnia and The Ustasha
[21:05] Speaker 2: are something like 50% Muslim, right? Now, this has been
[21:09] Speaker 2: twisted by racists in the present, and you'll hear claims
[21:11] Speaker 2: that the Ustasha were like 90% Muslim and that the
[21:14] Speaker 2: Nazis in Yugoslavia were Muslim. They have these, you know,
[21:17] Speaker 2: Muslim genocide in Yugoslavia, and that 90% of the Muslims
[21:21] Speaker 2: fought alongside the Ustasha. This is all nonsense, right? The
[21:24] Speaker 2: Ustashi are primarily clerical fascists, and they are Catholics, right?
[21:28] Speaker 2: That is the primary religion behind the Ustashi, right? And
[21:32] Speaker 2: the Ustashi do offer tolerance to Islam for a variety
[21:35] Speaker 2: of complex reasons, but mostly out of military necessity. More
[21:38] Speaker 2: to the point, the Ustashi also massacre Muslims, right? A
[21:42] Speaker 2: lot of Muslims fight against them. A lot of Muslims
[21:44] Speaker 2: get put in concentration camps and wiped out. I want
[21:48] Speaker 2: to read a quote from an article for the Yasenovitz
[21:51] Speaker 2: Concentration Camp Memorial. Quote, The first Muslims were imprisoned in
[21:55] Speaker 2: Ustasha camps in 1941. They were mostly communists or opponents
[21:59] Speaker 2: of the Ustasha regime, who would have grown significantly in number.
[22:02] Speaker 2: The first group of Muslims was deported to Camp 3, Brickworks,
[22:05] Speaker 2: in mid-November 1941. The group consisted of 116 Jews and
[22:09] Speaker 2: communists from the Sarajevo area, amongst whom there were 16 Muslims.
[22:13] Speaker 2: Over the next few years, the number of imprisoned Muslims grew.
[22:15] Speaker 2: They were communists and members of the People's Liberation Movement
[22:18] Speaker 2: from all over Bosnia and Herzegovina. especially from Sarajevo, Banja Luka,
[22:22] Speaker 2: and parts of Bosnian Pozovina and central Bosnia. Only a
[22:25] Speaker 2: few managed to evade death. So they wipe out a
[22:28] Speaker 2: lot of Muslims, too. It's not as simple as like, oh,
[22:32] Speaker 2: the Muslims fought for the Ustashi. A bunch of them
[22:35] Speaker 2: fought against it. A bunch of them were genocided. But
[22:38] Speaker 2: this is going to get twisted in kind of a
[22:40] Speaker 2: lot of modern-day right-wing historiography about the period. Sure, sure.
[22:44] Speaker 3: I mean, we're so invested in Islamophobia, people will take
[22:48] Speaker 3: it wherever they can find it.
[22:51] Speaker 2: And there's a lot of complicated reasons for why a
[22:55] Speaker 2: big chunk of Muslims thought the Ustashi were the people
[22:57] Speaker 2: to back. And there's also other stuff. As I said,
[23:01] Speaker 2: there's a lot of different horrible groups fighting in Yugoslavia
[23:04] Speaker 2: in this period. One of the more complicated participants in
[23:07] Speaker 2: the fighting were the Chetniks. The Chetniks are essentially a
[23:10] Speaker 2: Serb-dominated royalist militia. They are fighting. They want independence from
[23:15] Speaker 2: the Nazis who have invaded their country, but they want
[23:17] Speaker 2: independence to put the ousted royal family back in power.
[23:20] Speaker 2: And the royal family are not nice people, as royal
[23:24] Speaker 2: families generally are not. And the Chetniks become known for
[23:27] Speaker 2: their use of brutal insurgent and terrorist tactics. which they
[23:30] Speaker 2: do use against the Ustasha, who had it coming, but
[23:33] Speaker 2: also against any Croats they could get their hands on.
[23:35] Speaker 2: Bosniaks and Muslims in Herzegovina and elsewhere were also slaughtered.
[23:39] Speaker 2: The nationalistic goals of the Chetniks set them against the
[23:42] Speaker 2: Axis long-term, but they also fought alongside the Axis, too,
[23:46] Speaker 2: strategically supporting Nazi efforts, particularly when the Nazis wanted to
[23:50] Speaker 2: wipe out a group of people that the Chetniks wanted slaughtered, right?
[23:54] Speaker 2: Because they're kind of thinking about the post-war period. This
[23:55] Speaker 2: is a fucking nightmare. It's horrible. This is a fucking nightmare.
[23:58] Speaker 2: It's horrible.
[24:00] Speaker 3: This is because, I mean, you just you hear this many,
[24:03] Speaker 3: this many horrible motivations and you're just like, well, civilians
[24:08] Speaker 3: are not going to be doing well.
[24:10] Speaker 2: There's no civilians in this war.
[24:12] Speaker 6: No.
[24:12] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[24:13] Speaker 4: So it doesn't sound like it's just. Oh, God.
[24:16] Speaker 2: The other thing you'll get. So generally, as a rule,
[24:19] Speaker 2: when you hear about like German soldiers and like their
[24:23] Speaker 2: opinion on like where they were stationed during World War Two,
[24:26] Speaker 2: the worst place you can get is the east. You
[24:27] Speaker 2: want to be anywhere but the east. German soldiers who
[24:30] Speaker 2: wind up in the Balkans are like asking to go
[24:34] Speaker 2: east sometimes because it's so bad because I will take
[24:37] Speaker 2: my fucking chances with the Russians. Like get me away
[24:40] Speaker 2: from these people. Like one of the chief weapons that
[24:45] Speaker 2: the Astasha are using to like do their genocide is
[24:48] Speaker 2: just this like glove with like a razor blade on
[24:51] Speaker 2: the hand that they just jab into people's necks hundreds
[24:54] Speaker 2: at a time. They just throw them down in front
[24:56] Speaker 2: of me. I'll cut their fucking necks with this hand
[24:57] Speaker 2: knife thing. Like, it's awful stuff. Like, I cannot exaggerate
[25:02] Speaker 2: how fucking ugly the war in the Balkans is.
[25:06] Speaker 4: Yeah, that's pretty fucking horrible.
[25:09] Speaker 2: It's pretty bad.
[25:10] Speaker 3: Such a simple device that also sounds like it would
[25:15] Speaker 3: take so long to kill someone.
[25:17] Speaker 2: It would take a lot of time to get through
[25:19] Speaker 2: a lot of people doing it that way. But bullets
[25:21] Speaker 2: are expensive, you know?
[25:23] Speaker 4: Yeah, sure. And this you can just make at home.
[25:26] Speaker 2: Well, and that's, you know, the Nazis have that problem, too.
[25:29] Speaker 2: They're like, shooting a whole bunch of people is really
[25:31] Speaker 2: bad for our troops. Their, like, brains break after a
[25:33] Speaker 2: while if they're just killing civilians with guns. And also,
[25:36] Speaker 2: we don't have unlimited bullets. That's why, like, gas chambers
[25:39] Speaker 2: and shit become popular, part of why. The Ustasha are
[25:42] Speaker 2: just like, what about hen knife?
[25:45] Speaker 3: What if it was harder and, like, that sounds like
[25:49] Speaker 3: the quickest route to breaking your brain is having to, like,
[25:53] Speaker 3: kitchen glove knife someone repeatedly.
[25:55] Speaker 2: Yeah. nobody fighting for that particular group had a soul
[26:00] Speaker 2: by the time the war started they had already seen
[26:02] Speaker 2: thousands of deaths i yeah i guess.
[26:05] Speaker 3: It's like that's not you don't put that glove on
[26:08] Speaker 3: for your first kill i suppose.
[26:10] Speaker 6: No god no you don't start with the knife glove
[26:13] Speaker 6: yeah it's pretty haunting stuff the balkans um so the
[26:18] Speaker 6: whole well you just made a t-shirt Yeah.
[26:22] Speaker 2: And I love the Balkans. I've spent a lot of
[26:23] Speaker 2: time there. It's a wonderful part of the world. Great food.
[26:26] Speaker 2: Anytime you get a coffee, there's a cigarette with it.
[26:28] Speaker 2: It's great nowadays. But yeah, they've had a rough history.
[26:32] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[26:33] Speaker 2: The whole ethnic and religious situation in the Balkans in
[26:36] Speaker 2: World War II and the details of everything that happened
[26:39] Speaker 2: are way too complicated for me to cover in more
[26:41] Speaker 2: depth during what is the prelude to a completely different genocide.
[26:45] Speaker 2: But there's a myth I do need to bust before
[26:47] Speaker 2: we go on because you will hear claims online that
[26:49] Speaker 2: the Ustasha were so viable that even the SS were
[26:52] Speaker 2: horrified by their actions, that they went too far for
[26:55] Speaker 2: even the SS. And the idea that they went too
[26:57] Speaker 2: far for the worst Nazis is very viral and it's
[27:00] Speaker 2: also untrue. Most of this rumor is due to the
[27:02] Speaker 2: fact that one specific Nazi, an Austrian named Edmund Gleis-Horstenau,
[27:08] Speaker 2: did attempt to halt the Ustasha's atrocities. He was like
[27:11] Speaker 2: a German diplomat who was stationed there. And he sent
[27:14] Speaker 2: a bunch of complaints to Berlin. And it were like,
[27:16] Speaker 2: these guys are going a little bit off, a little
[27:18] Speaker 2: bit out of pocket. And so a Nazi was horrified.
[27:22] Speaker 2: But like Himmler wasn't. Hitler wasn't. Like Berlin completely ignored
[27:26] Speaker 2: his complaints. They were like, yeah, it's fine that we
[27:28] Speaker 2: don't give a shit. Like we're the Nazis. And so
[27:31] Speaker 2: you can find SS reports describing the bestial manner that
[27:34] Speaker 2: the Ustashi used against, quote, helpless old people, women, and children.
[27:38] Speaker 2: But there's no evidence that like Himmler himself or anyone
[27:41] Speaker 2: high up in the SS gave a shit. And you
[27:43] Speaker 2: can also find, you can find similar individual SS men
[27:46] Speaker 2: writing about horrifying crimes other SS guys committed. This is
[27:50] Speaker 2: also true with Oscar Durlwanger. So it's not that the
[27:53] Speaker 2: Ustashi were too horrible for the SS. It's that there's
[27:55] Speaker 2: always some guys who are like a little bit, like softer.
[28:01] Speaker 3: Yeah that's like of course there are nazis who are
[28:04] Speaker 3: also like oh this cowardly and can yeah like.
[28:08] Speaker 2: I didn't i didn't know we were doing this yeah.
[28:12] Speaker 3: Yeah that that is like a piece of information that's
[28:14] Speaker 3: designed to go dishonestly viral.
[28:16] Speaker 2: Yes exactly Now, at most, what it is fair to say,
[28:21] Speaker 2: as I pointed out, is that the brutal hand-to-hand nature
[28:24] Speaker 2: with which a lot of the killing gets done in
[28:26] Speaker 2: the Balkans does nauseate a lot of SS guys. But
[28:29] Speaker 2: even Himmler got sick visiting Auschwitz, and that doesn't mean
[28:31] Speaker 2: he wasn't okay with it, right? Anyway, back to the Balkans. So,
[28:38] Speaker 2: Balkan World War II history knowers will be livid at
[28:40] Speaker 2: me not yet discussing in detail and arguably the most
[28:43] Speaker 2: important partisan militia of that period, which is the communists.
[28:46] Speaker 2: And this is because our bastard Radovan Karadzic's father, Vuko,
[28:50] Speaker 2: fought for the Chetniks against the communists. So he's a
[28:52] Speaker 2: member of this kind of right-wing Serbian militia that fights
[28:55] Speaker 2: the Nazis sometimes, but also fights alongside the Nazis, especially
[28:59] Speaker 2: when they want to kill communists. And the primary people
[29:02] Speaker 2: they hate are the communists, right? So our bastard's dad
[29:05] Speaker 2: may have fought the Nazis. I haven't seen any evidence
[29:08] Speaker 2: of this. It's probably a lot more likely that he
[29:10] Speaker 2: wanted to kill communists and Muslim Croats, right? So after
[29:15] Speaker 2: Yugoslavia fell to the Nazis, Josep Broz Tito formed a
[29:18] Speaker 2: resistance group made up of members of the former, of
[29:22] Speaker 2: the illegal communist party of Yugoslavia, right? There'd been a
[29:25] Speaker 2: communist party in Yugoslavia that's illegal. And these guys are like,
[29:29] Speaker 2: you know, probably mostly book nerds as communists tended to
[29:32] Speaker 2: be at the period. And Tito's just one of, he's,
[29:35] Speaker 2: we'll do an episode on him at some point. He's
[29:36] Speaker 2: one of the most interesting men who ever fucking lived.
[29:39] Speaker 2: I could easily do a two-part behind the bastards on
[29:41] Speaker 2: Tito but I would also have to have Margaret do
[29:43] Speaker 2: a two-part episode of cool people who did cool stuff
[29:46] Speaker 2: to accurately depict Tito's life he's that kind of guy
[29:49] Speaker 2: where it's like yeah he's like he was a dictator
[29:52] Speaker 2: but he was also pretty amazing that's that actually.
[29:56] Speaker 3: Sounds like an incredible uh game of volleyball We'll do
[30:00] Speaker 3: it one of these days.
[30:01] Speaker 2: Nightmare, that's great. For this week, we're not talking much
[30:05] Speaker 2: about Tito. What you need to know about him is
[30:07] Speaker 2: that he turns his former political party into a partisan
[30:11] Speaker 2: army strong enough that They win. Yugoslavia is the only
[30:15] Speaker 2: nation that gets conquered by the Nazis and independently frees themselves.
[30:20] Speaker 2: They don't have to be. Now, obviously, they receive some
[30:22] Speaker 2: assistance and stuff, but they don't have to be liberated.
[30:24] Speaker 2: There's not foreign troops who have to free. They do
[30:27] Speaker 2: it because they're that good. Like Tito is very, very
[30:31] Speaker 2: effective as a partisan leader.
[30:33] Speaker 4: Can I ask something, like.
[30:35] Speaker 3: Very, very tiny-brained question? Why do we not learn about
[30:40] Speaker 3: this area of World War II? What is the function?
[30:43] Speaker 2: Because it's way too complicated.
[30:45] Speaker 4: Okay.
[30:45] Speaker 2: None of this, and afterwards even, in, like, the Cold War.
[30:49] Speaker 2: Yugoslavia doesn't cleanly slot into any boxes, right? Because they
[30:53] Speaker 2: were communists, so you'd think they cleanly... But also, Tito
[30:56] Speaker 2: literally threatened to have Stalin murdered after Stalin... Stalin kept
[30:59] Speaker 2: sending assassins to kill Tito because Tito wouldn't do what
[31:01] Speaker 2: he wanted. And Tito eventually was like, if you keep sending...
[31:05] Speaker 2: You've sent like seven of these guys to kill me.
[31:07] Speaker 2: I've killed them all. If you send any more, I'll
[31:09] Speaker 2: send one man to kill you and I won't have
[31:11] Speaker 2: to send another. Like, this is at the height of Stalin.
[31:13] Speaker 2: That's who Tito is. Tito doesn't give a fuck. Like...
[31:20] Speaker 2: You know who would have hated ads?
[31:22] Speaker 4: Probably Tito. I guess anyone in this. Yeah, probably Tito.
[31:25] Speaker 2: Yeah, probably most of the communists in this story, but
[31:27] Speaker 2: certainly Tito. Yeah, definitely the communists. Yeah, yeah, basically, yeah.
[31:33] Speaker 4: Tito would not buy this.
[31:35] Speaker 2: He probably wouldn't.
[31:37] Speaker 4: Make of that what you will.
[31:45] Speaker 2: And we're back. Although, again, one of the complicated things
[31:47] Speaker 2: about Yugoslavia is that there are some points where they're
[31:50] Speaker 2: trying to align themselves closer to the West. So, again,
[31:53] Speaker 2: they don't fit super cleanly into any of the boxes.
[31:57] Speaker 2: That in our very simple histories, we like to assign
[32:00] Speaker 2: states to.
[32:01] Speaker 3: Okay, so we just don't learn about it because we
[32:03] Speaker 3: would have to teach children that more than one thing.
[32:06] Speaker 2: Can be true. I see, I see. It's also, it's
[32:10] Speaker 2: impossible to learn about Tito without being like, well, that's
[32:12] Speaker 2: kind of amazing. And you really don't want that with
[32:15] Speaker 2: like a communist dictator during like the Cold War era.
[32:18] Speaker 3: That's how I feel when a lot of people describe
[32:21] Speaker 3: their fathers, where you hear some real atrocities followed by like.
[32:25] Speaker 4: Man, but he was a great guy.
[32:27] Speaker 2: Tell me how to fish.
[32:28] Speaker 4: Ruined my life.
[32:31] Speaker 2: I learned how to fish. And Tito, I mean, the
[32:33] Speaker 2: thing about him is that after the war, he governs
[32:35] Speaker 2: for decades Yugoslavia up until like 1980. He's running it
[32:39] Speaker 2: from the end of World War II up to I
[32:41] Speaker 2: think 1980 is when he dies. And this is the
[32:43] Speaker 2: only period of time pretty much that like the Balkans
[32:46] Speaker 2: is one united thing. And it's because Tito's very good
[32:51] Speaker 2: at keeping this incredibly quarrelsome area together, right? He's going
[32:55] Speaker 2: to ultimately be unsuccessful. He tries to create this sense
[32:57] Speaker 2: of Yugoslav nationality. As you might guess by the fact
[33:01] Speaker 2: that there's no Yugoslavia today, it doesn't work out in
[33:03] Speaker 2: the long run, right?
[33:07] Speaker 6: Yeah.
[33:08] Speaker 2: Yeah. Anyway, that's enough backstory for us to finally turn
[33:12] Speaker 2: to the actual subject of these episodes.
[33:15] Speaker 4: God, that was a really.
[33:17] Speaker 3: Brutal journey to the beginning of the episode.
[33:19] Speaker 2: Long and ugly prelude.
[33:21] Speaker 4: Kind of an old timer.
[33:23] Speaker 3: The last, oh man, sometimes we get some fun ones.
[33:25] Speaker 3: Sometimes there's a witch at the beginning.
[33:27] Speaker 2: No, millions are already dead.
[33:29] Speaker 4: This time millions are dead. Okay.
[33:32] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[33:32] Speaker 2: Okay. So Radovan Karajic was born on June 19th, 1945
[33:36] Speaker 2: in Pejica, which is a tiny Montenegrin village that Wikipedia
[33:40] Speaker 2: notes is, quote, inhabited exclusively by the Karajic family. Yes.
[33:45] Speaker 2: So everyone's kind of related in this larger family group
[33:48] Speaker 2: in this small town. Maybe a few dozen people, right? Incest?
[33:54] Speaker 4: Question mark?
[33:56] Speaker 2: It's not family quite in the same sense. I think
[33:58] Speaker 2: these are more like a tribal group. Yeah, they're all
[34:01] Speaker 2: kind of related, definitely. There is going to be incest
[34:04] Speaker 2: in this story. Yes, Sophie.
[34:05] Speaker 4: It's like an improv group.
[34:07] Speaker 2: There's attempted incest in this story. Not quite Targaryens.
[34:11] Speaker 1: Got it.
[34:12] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. So, you know, and kind of, again, Radovan
[34:16] Speaker 2: comes into the world right at the end of World
[34:18] Speaker 2: War II after about a million Yugoslavians die in the war.
[34:21] Speaker 2: Mostly like Serbs are the largest number of that. A
[34:24] Speaker 2: lot of Serbs get killed in Yugoslavia and a lot
[34:27] Speaker 2: of Serbs get killed by Croats in particular. So there's
[34:29] Speaker 2: going to be anger over like what was effectively a
[34:32] Speaker 2: Serbian genocide that gets committed by these people who you're
[34:35] Speaker 2: now countrymen with some of them, right? Yeah, I mean,
[34:39] Speaker 2: that's just gonna simmer.
[34:41] Speaker 4: That has to be like categorically true, right?
[34:44] Speaker 3: Like there just was a massive genocide that it sounds
[34:48] Speaker 3: like most of the world was just ignoring because it
[34:51] Speaker 3: was World War II.
[34:53] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[34:53] Speaker 2: There was a lot of genocides going around. The Balkans
[34:55] Speaker 2: are complicated. None of it was easy to talk about.
[35:00] Speaker 2: So yeah, Radovan comes into the world in 45 and
[35:02] Speaker 2: his father Vuko, who again had fought with the Chetniks,
[35:04] Speaker 2: had been born in 1912 and he was not a
[35:05] Speaker 2: nice man. An analysis of Radovan's life published by the
[35:10] Speaker 2: Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry Law noted after
[35:13] Speaker 2: the war that media accounts described Vuko as, quote, a
[35:16] Speaker 2: poor tramp and a tenderent journeyman with a history of
[35:19] Speaker 2: incest and theft. And this is slightly incorrect, right? But
[35:24] Speaker 2: the truth is actually a little worse. He didn't, he
[35:28] Speaker 2: aspired to incest. He never quite made it happen, right?
[35:33] Speaker 4: I do think that's better. I do think that's better.
[35:36] Speaker 2: Well, you hear about what happens, Jamie. Maybe I should
[35:39] Speaker 2: read this story to you first.
[35:41] Speaker 4: What do we mean about failed incest guy? Okay.
[35:45] Speaker 2: He tries to marry his fifth cousin, right? Which is
[35:48] Speaker 2: legal at the time. Anything further than like third cousins
[35:51] Speaker 2: is legal. So it's not like illegal incest.
[35:53] Speaker 4: I know.
[35:53] Speaker 3: Anytime you need to pull out the law, it's like
[35:56] Speaker 3: when you're talking to someone or like you're in an
[35:58] Speaker 3: argument on Twitter and someone's like, actually, it's okay that
[36:01] Speaker 3: I said that.
[36:01] Speaker 4: And then they send you a picture of a map.
[36:03] Speaker 4: You're like.
[36:03] Speaker 5: Like, no.
[36:04] Speaker 2: Right, right, right. Yeah, or they're making a strong point
[36:07] Speaker 2: about age of consent law.
[36:08] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[36:08] Speaker 4: Exactly, exactly.
[36:09] Speaker 2: That wasn't creepy that I said that.
[36:12] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[36:12] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[36:13] Speaker 4: If you need a map, you're a pervert.
[36:16] Speaker 2: There's a couple different versions of the story of what
[36:19] Speaker 2: happens with Vuko and his fifth cousin. In the version
[36:23] Speaker 2: told by his family, this cousin does not love him back.
[36:26] Speaker 2: He's in love with her. And they're both cowherds. So
[36:28] Speaker 2: they spend a lot of time together. And one day
[36:31] Speaker 2: he tries to kiss her and she pushes him off
[36:34] Speaker 2: and the gun that he was carrying accidentally goes off
[36:37] Speaker 2: and hits an artery in her leg. And he tries to,
[36:40] Speaker 2: they're very specific, he tries to plug the wound with tobacco,
[36:43] Speaker 2: which was apparently a folk remedy for cuts, but she
[36:45] Speaker 2: bled out. You should not use tobacco as a folk
[36:48] Speaker 2: remedy for an arterial wound.
[36:51] Speaker 4: Oh, so he attempted incest and then killed her?
[36:54] Speaker 2: Yeah, he definitely killed her. The family version of the
[36:58] Speaker 2: story is, yeah. It was an accident. Let me go
[37:01] Speaker 2: with the other first. The family version is he loved her.
[37:05] Speaker 2: She didn't love him back. And his gun just went
[37:06] Speaker 2: off by accident as she's like pushing him away. There's
[37:10] Speaker 2: a second version of the story. And in the family
[37:12] Speaker 2: version of the story, the girl's family, after he kills her,
[37:15] Speaker 2: the girl's family understands it's an accident. But because of
[37:18] Speaker 2: his negligence, Vuko goes to prison for a year. Now,
[37:21] Speaker 2: Jessica Stern, the author of My War Criminal, does not
[37:24] Speaker 2: totally buy this story and finds a contemporary news article
[37:28] Speaker 2: about the killing. And this news article claimed that Vuko
[37:31] Speaker 2: and Zhella, who's his fifth cousin, were both in love, right?
[37:34] Speaker 2: So it's different from the family story. But her parents
[37:37] Speaker 2: wanted her to wait to marry him until he finished
[37:39] Speaker 2: his compulsory military service. As Stern summarizes, quote, Zhella promised
[37:44] Speaker 2: to marry Vuko, but in keeping with her parents' wishes,
[37:46] Speaker 2: insisted on delay. Vuko, on the other hand, wanted to
[37:49] Speaker 2: get married immediately. One day, Gela asked Vuko to meet
[37:52] Speaker 2: her at the top of the large hill above the village.
[37:54] Speaker 2: Vuko went to meet his cousin, as requested. He brought
[37:57] Speaker 2: a revolver, as well as the cows. He pressed once
[37:59] Speaker 2: again for Gela to marry him. When Gela refused, he
[38:02] Speaker 2: shot her. The bullet went through both of her thighs,
[38:04] Speaker 2: damaging the blood vessels. She died soon afterwards due to
[38:07] Speaker 2: the loss of blood. Vuko did not confess to the crime,
[38:10] Speaker 2: but told the court that the shooting was accidental. He
[38:12] Speaker 2: testified that his revolver had fallen out of his pocket
[38:14] Speaker 2: as he was seating himself next to his cousin Gela.
[38:17] Speaker 2: He said that Jella had asked him, why are you
[38:19] Speaker 2: carrying that devil with you? Then she grabbed the gun
[38:21] Speaker 2: and threw it away from where they were sitting. Vuko
[38:23] Speaker 2: testified that the gun hit a rock and accidentally discharged,
[38:26] Speaker 2: fatally wounding Jella in the thigh. The court did not
[38:29] Speaker 2: accept Vuko's version of what transpired. Yeah, no shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[38:35] Speaker 2: Of course they don't. That's the worst lie I've ever heard.
[38:38] Speaker 2: That's the most obvious lie.
[38:40] Speaker 3: He's like creating like an whatcha say kind of scenario
[38:43] Speaker 3: for what happened with the gun.
[38:45] Speaker 2: He really is. That's ridiculous.
[38:48] Speaker 1: Stop.
[38:48] Speaker 2: Stop. He's found with like a letter on his person.
[38:52] Speaker 5: That was the most impeccable reference I've ever heard.
[38:58] Speaker 4: Oh, my God.
[38:59] Speaker 3: If someone's dramatically shooting, I'm going.
[39:02] Speaker 2: Oh, my God.
[39:03] Speaker 5: If you didn't get that reference, message me on blue sky.
[39:07] Speaker 5: I'll send you the video. Oh, my God, Jamie.
[39:11] Speaker 4: Sorry, Robert.
[39:11] Speaker 2: Sorry, Robert.
[39:12] Speaker 4: That was amazing.
[39:13] Speaker 1: The court.
[39:15] Speaker 2: The court actually has access to a letter that Vuko
[39:18] Speaker 2: had in his bag when he gets taken into custody,
[39:20] Speaker 2: in which he threatens to kill Zhella and then himself
[39:23] Speaker 2: if she doesn't marry him immediately. And it read in part, quote,
[39:26] Speaker 2: Dear Zhella, if our marriage cannot be proclaimed, then thank
[39:29] Speaker 2: you for burying both of us in the black ground.
[39:31] Speaker 2: And Vuk was like, well, yeah, I wrote that letter,
[39:33] Speaker 2: but it was to scare her into marrying me. I
[39:36] Speaker 2: wouldn't have actually killed her.
[39:37] Speaker 4: I like that he is.
[39:38] Speaker 2: The fact that I killed her was a clear accident.
[39:41] Speaker 3: No matter what, no matter what, there is no doubt
[39:44] Speaker 3: that he shot her in the thigh and killed her.
[39:48] Speaker 2: He definitely shot her in the thigh and killed her.
[39:50] Speaker 4: I like that there is no interpretation of it.
[39:52] Speaker 3: It's like, okay, no, but so he definitely killed her,
[39:54] Speaker 3: but it was actually an accident and he was just.
[39:57] Speaker 4: Trying to trick her into marrying him.
[39:59] Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I guess, not that it doesn't matter which
[40:04] Speaker 3: version of the story is true, but I'm going to
[40:07] Speaker 3: go with the least charitable one.
[40:10] Speaker 2: He definitely killed her. Yeah, probably not the nicest one.
[40:13] Speaker 3: And it sounds like he kind of, I mean, a
[40:17] Speaker 3: shot to the thigh feels quite personal, I feel.
[40:21] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[40:22] Speaker 3: That is not giving an accident if you have just
[40:26] Speaker 3: rejected someone's advance.
[40:29] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. So, again, not a great dude, no matter
[40:32] Speaker 2: which version of the story is true. And Vuko gets
[40:34] Speaker 2: released from prison right at the start of the Axis invasion, right?
[40:39] Speaker 2: That's what gets him out of being locked up. And
[40:41] Speaker 2: that's when he joins the Chetniks. And then after the war,
[40:44] Speaker 2: right after his son is born, the communists wind up victorious.
[40:47] Speaker 2: And he gets arrested and imprisoned for another year because
[40:50] Speaker 2: he fought against the communists a bunch. Or another five years.
[40:52] Speaker 4: Who did he.
[40:53] Speaker 3: Who did he end up with after he killed his
[40:56] Speaker 3: cousin for sexually rejecting him?
[40:58] Speaker 2: He has to marry a, he has to, so everyone
[41:00] Speaker 2: will know the woman who becomes Radovan's mother, who he
[41:03] Speaker 2: eventually marries, is like illiterate and like comes from a
[41:05] Speaker 2: poor family. And so he has to like, he has
[41:07] Speaker 2: to go down a couple of steps. He was like,
[41:10] Speaker 2: because of his social position that the Karajiks had, he
[41:12] Speaker 2: should have been able to marry somebody better, but he's
[41:15] Speaker 2: not able to because he murders this woman, right? You know, she,
[41:18] Speaker 2: I mean. That's what people say.
[41:21] Speaker 4: And so does she. She has to marry a murderer.
[41:24] Speaker 2: She has to marry the murderer. Yeah.
[41:26] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[41:27] Speaker 2: So he misses the first five years of his son
[41:30] Speaker 2: Radovan's life, which is the happiest years of his son
[41:33] Speaker 2: Radovan's life. He's emphatic about the fact that, no, it
[41:36] Speaker 2: was great before dad came back from prison. The communist
[41:39] Speaker 2: did us a favor by taking him away. And so
[41:42] Speaker 2: his earliest memories when he's just with his mom would
[41:44] Speaker 2: have been a mix of heroic poems because his mom
[41:47] Speaker 2: sings a lot. They usually set their poems to music
[41:49] Speaker 2: in this part of the world. So His mom singing
[41:51] Speaker 2: him a lot of poems about his valiant ancestors fighting
[41:54] Speaker 2: the Muslims and, you know, furiously whispered tales of communist
[41:57] Speaker 2: violence against his family. He grows up knowing which oak
[42:01] Speaker 2: trees in town had been used as backstops for the
[42:03] Speaker 2: communists to execute his family members. Right. These are the
[42:06] Speaker 2: stories this kid grows up with. It's a very Serbian childhood.
[42:11] Speaker 4: Every boy knows.
[42:14] Speaker 2: Which trees your family members bled to death against?
[42:16] Speaker 5: Yes.
[42:17] Speaker 4: Wow, my mother would sing it to me as we
[42:20] Speaker 4: pass by.
[42:21] Speaker 2: Like the family stories that they shoot his dad too.
[42:24] Speaker 2: They try to kill him once and he like blocks
[42:26] Speaker 2: the bullet with his hand so they just put him
[42:28] Speaker 2: in prison instead.
[42:30] Speaker 4: This is hard.
[42:32] Speaker 2: It's a harsh, yeah, some hard stories to grow up with.
[42:35] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[42:36] Speaker 2: His mother, Jovanka, raises Radovan as an only child for
[42:40] Speaker 2: five happy years while his dad is away. Now she's
[42:42] Speaker 2: a decade younger. than her husband. She's also illiterate, and
[42:46] Speaker 2: Radovan later described her as a scrappy, energetic peasant girl. Quote,
[42:49] Speaker 2: she used to recite epic poetry for me every night.
[42:52] Speaker 2: I learned many of these poems by heart before I
[42:54] Speaker 2: learned to read. So for those first few years until
[42:57] Speaker 2: his dad came home and started producing what would become
[42:59] Speaker 2: four younger siblings, Radovan mostly remembers the songs of his
[43:03] Speaker 2: mother and the natural beauty of the rugged landscape around
[43:06] Speaker 2: their hometown. He grew up with an almost religious appreciation
[43:09] Speaker 2: for the ancient oaks. There's this like They're like, they
[43:12] Speaker 2: form part of like the, the like religious ceremonies. I mean,
[43:15] Speaker 2: they're Christian ceremonies, but in this region, like they are very,
[43:18] Speaker 2: very focused on their oak trees, right? It's like a
[43:20] Speaker 2: big deal to these Montenegrin Serbs. And so there's a
[43:23] Speaker 2: lot of, there's a lot of like both natural folk
[43:26] Speaker 2: remedies and kind of like magic, like natural, like, or not,
[43:29] Speaker 2: not natural, but like, um, Like folk magic that he's
[43:32] Speaker 2: also raised to believe in. This is an important part
[43:34] Speaker 2: of his childhood and his upbringing.
[43:36] Speaker 3: Like the thing when you shoot your cousin in the
[43:39] Speaker 3: crotch and then shove tobacco into the wound so that
[43:43] Speaker 3: she doesn't die.
[43:43] Speaker 2: Into the bleeding wound, yeah. It's not all very effective
[43:46] Speaker 2: folk medicine. It's not 100% effective, but what medicine is? Yeah.
[43:53] Speaker 2: His mother was peaceful and never used any corporal punishment
[43:56] Speaker 2: on him or his other siblings. He recalled later, in
[43:59] Speaker 2: the first five years of my life, I was never beaten.
[44:01] Speaker 2: I was never hit. My mother never kicked me. Now,
[44:04] Speaker 2: his biographer, Jessica Stern, because she's talking to him while
[44:07] Speaker 2: he's in prison after he does the things that we're
[44:08] Speaker 2: going to talk about.
[44:11] Speaker 4: She's Mrs. My War Criminal?
[44:13] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[44:14] Speaker 2: She's a little weird. Look, I'm going to be honest
[44:16] Speaker 2: with you.
[44:18] Speaker 4: Yeah, she's like... Is it like when the journalist fell
[44:20] Speaker 4: in love with Martin Shkreli?
[44:22] Speaker 5: Not.
[44:23] Speaker 2: Quite but she i will talk about this later i
[44:28] Speaker 2: don't want to because i rely on her book a
[44:30] Speaker 2: lot and she gets a lot of good details in
[44:32] Speaker 2: there she she writes some stuff in there that i
[44:34] Speaker 2: don't fully understand i'll say that much.
[44:36] Speaker 4: There's something about a horny journalist.
[44:40] Speaker 2: Maybe a little i don't know yeah it's more that
[44:44] Speaker 2: she was impressed by his charisma um let's say that
[44:47] Speaker 2: oh come on okay.
[44:49] Speaker 5: First of all dare i say jamie loftus times a
[44:54] Speaker 5: horny journalist oh no i.
[44:57] Speaker 4: Mean i'm i i'm interested to hear her point of view.
[45:01] Speaker 2: It's not horny it's just like weirdly uh weird i
[45:06] Speaker 2: don't know how else to describe it at one point
[45:08] Speaker 2: he does like reiki on her she's doing like energy
[45:11] Speaker 2: healing and she clearly believes in that stuff too so
[45:14] Speaker 2: she's like i can feel his energy like it's weird
[45:16] Speaker 2: it's a weird biography great i don't know how else
[45:19] Speaker 2: to say it guys Okay.
[45:21] Speaker 4: They're healing each other. Yeah, that's okay. I'm excited to
[45:25] Speaker 4: meet her. Okay.
[45:26] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[45:27] Speaker 4: Well, she sounds trustworthy.
[45:30] Speaker 2: And she suggests that the reason he emphasizes that his
[45:32] Speaker 2: mom never hits him is that his dad beats the
[45:34] Speaker 2: shit out of him when he gets back, right? And
[45:36] Speaker 2: for his part, Radovan more or less agrees. Quote, my
[45:39] Speaker 2: father was a strict disciplinarian, but he hit me less
[45:41] Speaker 2: than he hit my siblings. I was afraid that my
[45:44] Speaker 2: father was very harsh with the other children. My father
[45:46] Speaker 2: did beat me, but he didn't beat me that much. Okay,
[45:50] Speaker 2: I guess that's all you can ask for.
[45:51] Speaker 3: Okay, I do feel like a lot of Behind the
[45:53] Speaker 3: Bastards episodes kind of start with this dynamic.
[45:56] Speaker 4: This is feeling familiar. Yeah.
[46:00] Speaker 2: So he also grew up hearing poems from his father,
[46:02] Speaker 2: who was a great guslar, or player of an indigenous,
[46:05] Speaker 2: there's this indigenous Serbian instrument. And he plays it a lot.
[46:09] Speaker 2: And he sings. And singing seems to have been one
[46:12] Speaker 2: of the relatively few things that Vuko is both around
[46:15] Speaker 2: his kids to do, And also he's tolerable when he's singing.
[46:20] Speaker 2: Radovan later recalled to Stern, my friends and I once
[46:22] Speaker 2: asked my late father how it was possible to know
[46:24] Speaker 2: so many poems by heart. And my father said that
[46:26] Speaker 2: if a singer forgets a line, he can substitute a
[46:28] Speaker 2: new one. If this new line was better than the
[46:30] Speaker 2: old one, other singers will continue to use the, to
[46:33] Speaker 2: use the old one. Um, Interesting. So yeah, he's going
[46:38] Speaker 2: to learn a lot about like art from this. He
[46:40] Speaker 2: becomes like a poet and a musician. And he's also,
[46:44] Speaker 2: when he becomes a dictator, he gives all his speeches extemporaneously.
[46:47] Speaker 2: So I think this has a big influence on him, right? Okay.
[46:50] Speaker 2: From his parents.
[46:51] Speaker 3: It's pretty potent to say like, well, if you don't
[46:53] Speaker 3: know how it goes, just make it up and.
[46:55] Speaker 2: See what people say. Yeah.
[46:57] Speaker 4: Yeah.
[46:59] Speaker 2: So from his parents, Radovan would inherit a love of
[47:01] Speaker 2: poetry and an appreciation for being able to make shit
[47:04] Speaker 2: up on the spot. I haven't found a lot of
[47:06] Speaker 2: detail about how he spent his childhood and adolescence. One
[47:10] Speaker 2: BBC article summarizing interviews with his mother put it this way.
[47:14] Speaker 2: His mother described her son as loyal and a hard
[47:16] Speaker 2: worker who used to help her in the home and
[47:18] Speaker 2: in the fields. She said that he was a serious
[47:20] Speaker 2: boy who was respectful towards the elderly and helped his
[47:23] Speaker 2: school friends with their homework. So that's, you know, maybe.
[47:27] Speaker 2: The family left Pechika... not long after Vuko gets out
[47:30] Speaker 2: of prison and they move to another village, Sovnik. When
[47:33] Speaker 2: Radovan was 11, they leave for the big city, Nixik,
[47:36] Speaker 2: which is the second city of Montenegro. But he never
[47:39] Speaker 2: gets over the village that he's raised in, and he
[47:41] Speaker 2: would later complain to interviewers with vehement hatred that the
[47:44] Speaker 2: communists destroyed the ancient oak trees to build a highway,
[47:48] Speaker 2: and he calls this blasphemy, right? So he takes that
[47:50] Speaker 2: very seriously. He does not seem to have held any
[47:53] Speaker 2: ire against the communists as a young man, though, and
[47:56] Speaker 2: he's going to join the communist party for years. This
[47:58] Speaker 2: might be because he hated his father so much. It
[48:00] Speaker 2: may have been, well, my dad hates the communists, so
[48:02] Speaker 2: I'm going to like the communists for a while.
[48:04] Speaker 4: I mean, that feels like a safe bet.
[48:07] Speaker 2: Many such cases. At age 15, he leaves on his
[48:11] Speaker 2: own and moves to Sarajevo in nearby Bosnia. And everything
[48:15] Speaker 2: in the Balkans is kind of near Bosnia, but still.
[48:18] Speaker 2: Sarajevo is a strange choice for a man who would
[48:21] Speaker 2: later become a violent Serbian ethno-nationalist. Belgrade which is like
[48:25] Speaker 2: the capital of Yugoslavia is much larger and it's very
[48:29] Speaker 2: Serb Sarajevo meanwhile was and is a melting pot if
[48:32] Speaker 2: you've ever been there it's a wonderful city you can
[48:35] Speaker 2: see the influence of Turkish and even Arab culture alongside
[48:38] Speaker 2: Balkan and European influences it's a lot like Istanbul if
[48:41] Speaker 2: you've ever been right and that it's the city that
[48:43] Speaker 2: you can just see has been a crossroads for a
[48:46] Speaker 2: bunch of civilizations for forever it's a beautiful place I mean,
[48:51] Speaker 2: and I can't know why Radovan went to Sarajevo. He
[48:54] Speaker 2: would only explain to his biographer most Montenegrins would have
[48:57] Speaker 2: gone to Belgrade to study, right? So he's like, most
[49:00] Speaker 2: people would not have made the choice that I made.
[49:02] Speaker 2: But he doesn't really explain why. Maybe it is because
[49:05] Speaker 2: he's attracted to the cosmopolitanism of the city, right? He
[49:07] Speaker 2: is initially a pretty cosmopolitan guy. He has a lot
[49:09] Speaker 2: of Muslim friends when he's living in Sarajevo.
[49:11] Speaker 2: of his local trees type of guy.
[49:12] Speaker 5: Okay.
[49:12] Speaker 6: Yeah.
[49:12] Speaker 3: Right.
[49:12] Speaker 2: All great at trees.
[49:12] Speaker 2: Jessica Stern writes that when he starts college, he's largely
[49:14] Speaker 3: Right.
[49:15] Speaker 2: seen as a country bumpkin, a bit like a southerner
[49:18] Speaker 2: with a strong hillbilly accent. Okay. Sure. Who knows all
[49:29] Speaker 2: One of his friends tries to get him to change
[49:30] Speaker 2: his hillbilly haircut when he moves to Sarajevo, but he refuses,
[49:34] Speaker 2: despite seeming odd. And despite the fact that he's like
[49:36] Speaker 2: a weirdo, he's very charismatic. And so he becomes a
[49:39] Speaker 2: popular guy in short order, just as his intelligence makes
[49:43] Speaker 2: him a good student. He's going to opt to go
[49:45] Speaker 2: to medical school in order to become a psychiatrist. And
[49:48] Speaker 2: while he's studied, he marries a peer medical student named
[49:51] Speaker 2: Liliana Zelen in 1967. They had their daughter that year
[49:56] Speaker 2: and a son a couple of years later. And unlike
[49:58] Speaker 2: Radovan's family, Liliana's has money. She comes from like an
[50:01] Speaker 2: upper class family. She describes her husband as a poetic soul.
[50:05] Speaker 4: That's why you go to Sarajevo.
[50:07] Speaker 2: That's why you go to Sarajevo.
[50:09] Speaker 5: Right?
[50:09] Speaker 2: Marry a rich girl. Yeah. Now, per that American Academy
[50:14] Speaker 2: of Psychiatry Law article, others described Radovan differently. Other accounts
[50:19] Speaker 2: note his penchant for drinking, gambling, and spending thousands of
[50:22] Speaker 2: dollars over the years in casinos. So he's got a
[50:24] Speaker 2: wild side too, right?
[50:27] Speaker 3: Not to excuse it, but he's still in college right
[50:31] Speaker 3: now-ish age?
[50:32] Speaker 2: Yeah, he's in college, medical school, right?
[50:35] Speaker 3: Certain casino behaviors we can excuse.
[50:38] Speaker 2: Certain casino behavior. So when he's like 23 in 1968,
[50:43] Speaker 2: and he's become the president of the school communist party
[50:46] Speaker 2: by 1968, right? And that's the year that he starts activism, right?
[50:50] Speaker 2: He becomes a student activist, and he helps to organize it.
[50:53] Speaker 2: There's like a series of protests that culminates in this
[50:56] Speaker 2: like big day-long strike, right, of students at the school. Now,
[51:01] Speaker 2: everyone protesting are still communists. This is Yugoslavia. So they're
[51:05] Speaker 2: protesting the communist government by carrying pictures of Che Guevara
[51:09] Speaker 2: with them, because that's just, I guess, a universal protest thing,
[51:12] Speaker 2: even if you're a communist.
[51:16] Speaker 4: Wow, okay, potent, interesting.
[51:19] Speaker 2: He later explained this by saying that the protesters considered
[51:22] Speaker 2: the fight against their local elites to be part of
[51:24] Speaker 2: the global struggle against capitalism, even though their elites were communists.
[51:28] Speaker 4: I don't.
[51:29] Speaker 2: I don't know what they thought at the time. I
[51:31] Speaker 2: didn't grow up in Yugoslavia. That's what he says later,
[51:34] Speaker 2: but he is a liar. So maybe that's not how
[51:36] Speaker 2: everyone felt.
[51:37] Speaker 3: It's so, it's so, yeah, especially in a, I know
[51:41] Speaker 3: so little about Yugoslavia that I'm like, you could tell me.
[51:43] Speaker 4: Anything and I would have to take you at your word.
[51:47] Speaker 4: And he's, yeah, he's taking advantage of it.
[51:49] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[51:50] Speaker 2: It is very weird, though, that as a medical student,
[51:52] Speaker 2: he's the leader of these protests because he's the only
[51:55] Speaker 2: medical student who participates. Most medical students are from privileged
[51:59] Speaker 2: backgrounds and rarely become dissidents. So he is kind of unique.
[52:04] Speaker 2: And he's also his style changes during this time. He's
[52:06] Speaker 2: said to dress in flower children get up and wear
[52:09] Speaker 2: groovy outfits. So he's dressing like us. He's dressing like the.
[52:13] Speaker 2: Like a communist impression of a stereotypical hippie, right? Like
[52:17] Speaker 2: you have to assume they don't have access to the
[52:18] Speaker 2: same clothes. It's like shittier tie dye or something. I
[52:21] Speaker 2: don't know.
[52:22] Speaker 4: Walking around like a Gary Larson character.
[52:24] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[52:24] Speaker 2: Interesting. Okay. It must have looked fascinating. Okay.
[52:30] Speaker 4: Yeah. Especially for a medical student.
[52:32] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[52:32] Speaker 4: It's like, whatever. All right.
[52:34] Speaker 2: Long hair, weirdo hippie. During the main day of the protest,
[52:38] Speaker 2: he climbs onto the roof of the faculty building to
[52:40] Speaker 2: give what will be the first of many political speeches. Now,
[52:43] Speaker 2: this is also the year that he becomes a published
[52:45] Speaker 2: poet for the first time. And he fights with his
[52:48] Speaker 2: publisher to ensure that his first book of poems gets
[52:50] Speaker 2: published in Akavian, which is a Serb dialect common in
[52:55] Speaker 2: rural areas, as opposed to the Bosnian dialect of the
[52:58] Speaker 2: language that was much more common for literary works. Stern
[53:02] Speaker 2: sees this as an early example of the fact that
[53:04] Speaker 2: this guy has ethno-nationalist leanings. And he does note that
[53:07] Speaker 2: during this period, Radovan's activism has plugged him in with
[53:10] Speaker 2: the Serbian elite in Bosnia. He would later say, They
[53:13] Speaker 2: were all dissidents working in opposition to the regime. Now,
[53:17] Speaker 2: it's noteworthy that he specified they're part of the Serbian elite,
[53:21] Speaker 2: because the Yugoslav elite at the time were not dissidents.
[53:24] Speaker 2: They're communists, right? That's what makes them their elite. The
[53:27] Speaker 2: elite in a communist country are not anti-communists, right? So
[53:31] Speaker 2: when he says, I was like, when he's talking about
[53:34] Speaker 2: the Serbian elite, he's talking about the ethno-nationalist elite, like
[53:38] Speaker 2: among kind of the people who want independent Serbia to
[53:41] Speaker 2: Those are the people he's talking about, right? Because Tito,
[53:47] Speaker 2: the guy who's the dictator, had been born a Croat,
[53:49] Speaker 2: but he really emphasizes that he's Yugoslav and he tries
[53:52] Speaker 2: to build a Yugoslav identity. And some people buy that
[53:56] Speaker 2: and some people don't. And you get the feeling that
[53:58] Speaker 2: even when he's with the Communist Party for a while,
[54:02] Speaker 2: Radovan is never like a Yugoslav identity guy, right? He's
[54:06] Speaker 2: always kind of a little bit on the ethno-nationalist side
[54:09] Speaker 2: of things. And he resigns from the Communist Party after
[54:12] Speaker 2: these protests, right? So, you know, it makes sense.
[54:21] Speaker 4: It does. It does.
[54:22] Speaker 3: And it also feels very, like, I don't know, first
[54:25] Speaker 3: of all, a lot of intent for someone of his age.
[54:27] Speaker 3: And also just, like, what is the vision at this point?
[54:34] Speaker 3: I mean, it seems like.
[54:35] Speaker 2: It's... I don't know if it's a vision.
[54:36] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[54:37] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[54:38] Speaker 2: I think he's got some inclinations towards Serbian ethno-nationalism, right,
[54:43] Speaker 2: that are not fully formed yet. And I wouldn't want
[54:46] Speaker 2: people to think that he's fully the guy he's going
[54:48] Speaker 2: to be, but you can see he's on that path
[54:51] Speaker 2: a little bit even now. And you know what path
[54:53] Speaker 2: you're on right now?
[54:54] Speaker 5: The path to products and services.
[54:58] Speaker 2: That's right. That's right, baby.
[54:59] Speaker 4: That sweet, slick slide to products.
[55:03] Speaker 2: That's right. And we're back. So, yeah, it turns out later,
[55:16] Speaker 2: you know, I've just been talking about how maybe he
[55:18] Speaker 2: was like sympathetic to Serbian nationalist aims at this period
[55:22] Speaker 2: and started to be anti-communist. A lot of people would
[55:25] Speaker 2: disagree with that because interviews later, a bunch of his
[55:28] Speaker 2: friends who had been part of this activist campaign with
[55:31] Speaker 2: him immediately after it ends comes to suspect that he'd
[55:34] Speaker 2: been an informer for the regime and had been reporting
[55:38] Speaker 2: on their activities to the police. This seems like it
[55:41] Speaker 2: could be likely because not long after this, this supposed dissident,
[55:46] Speaker 2: this guy who would like led a protest campaign, is
[55:49] Speaker 2: granted permission by the government to move to the United
[55:51] Speaker 2: States and live in New York City, where he attends
[55:54] Speaker 2: Columbia University from 1974 to 75. So yeah, maybe he
[55:57] Speaker 2: did the government a solid.
[55:58] Speaker 4: Columbia has no history with feds?
[56:00] Speaker 2: That's so funny.
[56:01] Speaker 3: Okay, that actually, that makes so, I feel silly now.
[56:07] Speaker 4: Oh, he was dressing like a cartoon hippie?
[56:10] Speaker 3: Oh, he was getting on the roof.
[56:14] Speaker 4: And acting weird? Okay, he was a fag.
[56:18] Speaker 2: Okay. So he studies poetry at Columbia, which is weird
[56:21] Speaker 2: because he'd been in medical school, right? And he's going
[56:23] Speaker 2: to finish his medical degree later, but he's studying poetry
[56:28] Speaker 2: while he's at Columbia. This is basically like a hiatus
[56:32] Speaker 2: period for him, which suggests that maybe he had some
[56:34] Speaker 2: doubts about it.
[56:35] Speaker 4: Yeah. Still the 60s? Are we in the 70s now?
[56:37] Speaker 2: This is the 70s. 74 to 75 is when he's
[56:40] Speaker 2: in Columbia.
[56:42] Speaker 4: That's another suspicious move.
[56:43] Speaker 3: Poetry majors do not like when a science expat, you know,
[56:47] Speaker 3: wanders into their midst.
[56:49] Speaker 5: No, no.
[56:49] Speaker 4: Stay in your fucking lane.
[56:52] Speaker 2: And we do get very different opinions on the quality
[56:55] Speaker 2: of his poetry, depending on who we ask. Sometimes the
[56:57] Speaker 2: same person will say like, oh, he was good. And
[56:59] Speaker 2: they're like, nah, he was shitty. I can't judge his poetry.
[57:02] Speaker 2: So I'm not going to try, right? A lot of
[57:05] Speaker 2: people do say he was just kind of like a
[57:07] Speaker 2: nickel and dime poet. He was writing not high art.
[57:12] Speaker 2: One of his most noteworthy pieces, though, is a 1971
[57:15] Speaker 2: poem titled Sarajevo, which despite being set 21 years before
[57:19] Speaker 2: the war, seems to describe the horror that Radovan himself
[57:22] Speaker 2: would bring on his former home. Here's a selection of
[57:25] Speaker 2: the poem. The city lies ablaze like a rough lump
[57:29] Speaker 2: of incense, wherein the haze of our awareness twists. The
[57:32] Speaker 2: city implodes in that latent emptiness. A stone's crimson death
[57:35] Speaker 2: bespeaks the house's blood-soaked tide. Plague. Tranquility. Again, this is
[57:41] Speaker 2: the guy who's going to order the shell of Sarajevo
[57:43] Speaker 2: for three years, so it's weird that he wrote that
[57:45] Speaker 2: 20-something years beforehand.
[57:46] Speaker 1: Totally.
[57:49] Speaker 2: It'd be like if George Bush had written in 1970
[57:52] Speaker 2: a short story about invading Iraq and it not going well.
[57:56] Speaker 2: Or painted it, I guess.
[57:57] Speaker 4: He's like, all right, you know, I guess I'll just
[57:59] Speaker 4: put this in the back drawer. Yeah.
[58:03] Speaker 3: See how it fits with me? I will say very
[58:05] Speaker 3: beside the point, but you know what? That was mid.
[58:08] Speaker 3: That was a mid poem, I think.
[58:11] Speaker 2: I assume it rhymed better in Serb.
[58:14] Speaker 3: I'm sure, but, you know, the use of language is
[58:18] Speaker 3: a little obvious, you know?
[58:21] Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe a little. So while living in the U.S.,
[58:24] Speaker 2: Radovan was a loud and vocal supporter of Tito, although
[58:27] Speaker 2: this may be due to the fact that he had
[58:29] Speaker 2: minders regularly checking in and spying on him. His roommate
[58:32] Speaker 2: during this period was Barry Farber, who himself grew up
[58:35] Speaker 2: to become an influential right-wing radio talk show host in
[58:38] Speaker 2: the 1990s. It's just kind of weird that they live together.
[58:41] Speaker 2: I feel like any time you learn about— He's like
[58:45] Speaker 2: a Limbaugh contemporary.
[58:46] Speaker 4: Name two men who were roommates in New York, and
[58:50] Speaker 4: you get the scariest story you've ever heard.
[58:53] Speaker 2: The weirdest mixes.
[58:55] Speaker 3: You get like, or I mean, just two people. That's
[58:57] Speaker 3: how you get like Barry Weiss and Kate McKinnon. You're like,
[59:00] Speaker 3: what the.
[59:00] Speaker 4: Fuck are you talking about? You shouldn't be in the
[59:04] Speaker 4: same room. Yeah.
[59:07] Speaker 2: Barry later recalled this of Radovan. I should have seen
[59:10] Speaker 2: that Radovan would not remain just a poet. He was
[59:12] Speaker 2: much too smart and forceful a character. I could see
[59:14] Speaker 2: him running a country. He was formidable. He looked the part.
[59:18] Speaker 2: And while I don't have a picture of him from
[59:20] Speaker 2: the mid-70s, here's how he looked almost a decade later.
[59:22] Speaker 2: These are obviously mug shots. He's going to get arrested.
[59:24] Speaker 2: We'll talk about why a little later. But look at
[59:27] Speaker 2: that hair. Look at that hair.
[59:29] Speaker 4: Amazing.
[59:30] Speaker 1: It's great.
[59:32] Speaker 2: He looks incredible his entire life. He's an amazing looking man.
[59:36] Speaker 1: The hair is hair.
[59:38] Speaker 2: It's like a gray pompadour. It's insane.
[59:41] Speaker 4: It is.
[59:42] Speaker 3: And you can tell that it kind of just falls
[59:46] Speaker 3: that way, which I resent.
[59:47] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[59:48] Speaker 3: You know, a lot of us need to do a
[59:50] Speaker 3: lot of work to just get it to fall.
[59:51] Speaker 4: I mean, honestly, he's giving.
[59:53] Speaker 1: Like 2019 Harry Styles here.
[1:00:00] Speaker 5: Oh, wow.
[1:00:00] Speaker 2: Sure, Sophie. You're welcome.
[1:00:02] Speaker 3: Not in the face, but the hair and the suit.
[1:00:06] Speaker 5: Not in the face, but the hair and the suit.
[1:00:09] Speaker 5: And I agree with Antonio Banderas. Yes, I see that
[1:00:12] Speaker 5: as well.
[1:00:13] Speaker 2: Sure. I always agree with Antonio Banderas.
[1:00:15] Speaker 3: Look, I'm not going to speak against Harry Styles' hairline
[1:00:18] Speaker 3: today because I mean, I'm not seeing a hairline struggle.
[1:00:21] Speaker 4: From our bathroom.
[1:00:23] Speaker 2: There you go.
[1:00:24] Speaker 4: No, no, no, no.
[1:00:24] Speaker 5: Harry has a manuscript. Harry got the hair transplant situation.
[1:00:29] Speaker 1: He's open about it.
[1:00:29] Speaker 4: He got the plugs. He got the plugs. He's open
[1:00:31] Speaker 4: about it.
[1:00:32] Speaker 1: Anyways, bye, Harry.
[1:00:34] Speaker 2: So the differing accounts of Radovan make sense when you
[1:00:37] Speaker 2: learn that he's been described as a social chameleon later, right?
[1:00:43] Speaker 2: He's a guy who's really good at blending. He's good
[1:00:45] Speaker 2: at being whoever he needs to be in the room
[1:00:48] Speaker 2: that he's in, right? If he wants you to like him,
[1:00:50] Speaker 2: you'll like him. Historian Robert Donia, who testified at his
[1:00:53] Speaker 2: trial and was cross-examined by Radovan, noted he knew exactly
[1:00:57] Speaker 2: what to say, a different story for everyone, with perfect
[1:01:00] Speaker 2: knowledge of what people wanted to hear. After returning home,
[1:01:04] Speaker 2: Karajic began to work as a psychiatrist. His mentor, Dr. Sarek,
[1:01:08] Speaker 2: noted that he was not a very good psychiatrist due
[1:01:11] Speaker 2: to the fact that he's not interested in anyone but himself.
[1:01:13] Speaker 2: He does not care about people.
[1:01:16] Speaker 3: Well, I mean, it's... I also just going back to
[1:01:19] Speaker 3: that other comment that there's a world where Karajic is
[1:01:23] Speaker 3: like in court and he's like, your honor, I'm a
[1:01:25] Speaker 3: people pleaser.
[1:01:26] Speaker 2: I don't know what to tell you. I'm a people pleaser.
[1:01:28] Speaker 2: I'm just good at being liked.
[1:01:30] Speaker 3: I give the people what they want. Yeah, of course
[1:01:33] Speaker 3: he's a terrible psychiatrist. I guess that stands to reason.
[1:01:36] Speaker 2: That stands to be weird if he was good at it.
[1:01:38] Speaker 3: I mean, most psychiatrists are bad psychiatrists in my experience.
[1:01:44] Speaker 2: True of most people in most jobs.
[1:01:45] Speaker 4: Just throw a pill bottle at your head and tell
[1:01:47] Speaker 4: you to fuck off.
[1:01:48] Speaker 2: I wish. I have the opposite. Anyway, Radovan was very
[1:01:52] Speaker 2: popular and good at charming his colleagues, but he was
[1:01:54] Speaker 2: also lazy. Quote, he tried to find the easy way
[1:01:57] Speaker 2: for everything. Dr. Sarek described him also as having a
[1:02:01] Speaker 2: thousand faces. So again, he's a liar, he's a charmer,
[1:02:04] Speaker 2: and he's lazy. Radovan spoke highly of his mentor, though,
[1:02:08] Speaker 2: which is weird because his mentor is a Muslim man, right?
[1:02:11] Speaker 2: And several people who have noted that during this time,
[1:02:14] Speaker 2: most of the people in his social circle in Sarajevo
[1:02:17] Speaker 2: are Muslims. He does not have any visible or obvious
[1:02:21] Speaker 2: bias against Muslims. Again, he's going to do a genocide
[1:02:25] Speaker 2: against Bosniaks.
[1:02:26] Speaker 4: Yes.
[1:02:26] Speaker 2: But he doesn't seem to have an issue with them socially.
[1:02:28] Speaker 2: This is, okay. Because with Hitler, you can find like, yeah,
[1:02:34] Speaker 2: there was like one Jewish guy he was nice to
[1:02:36] Speaker 2: in his life. But like with Radovan, it's like, no,
[1:02:37] Speaker 2: like most of his friends were Muslim. It's kind of
[1:02:39] Speaker 2: weird that he did a genocide.
[1:02:42] Speaker 3: I'm really, I'm really, I mean, finding out he was
[1:02:46] Speaker 3: a fed for a period of time so far is
[1:02:48] Speaker 3: the thing that it makes the most sense to me
[1:02:50] Speaker 3: about this guy. Everything else is fairly baffling so far.
[1:02:54] Speaker 2: He's a complicated man, that's for sure.
[1:02:56] Speaker 3: He's had like 12 different professions before the age of 25.
[1:03:00] Speaker 3: He's basically on good terms with people he will later genocide.
[1:03:05] Speaker 4: Like, what do you mean?
[1:03:06] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[1:03:09] Speaker 2: He spent nearly a decade in the 70s to the
[1:03:12] Speaker 2: 80s working and living a fairly normal life.
[1:03:16] Speaker 5: No, no.
[1:03:17] Speaker 2: Jamie, you're not ready for where this man's hair is
[1:03:20] Speaker 2: in part two. I'm going to say that right now.
[1:03:22] Speaker 2: You are not ready. I cannot prepare you.
[1:03:25] Speaker 3: I'm just not seeing the source of, okay, yeah. Usually
[1:03:30] Speaker 3: I feel like we have the source of anger by college.
[1:03:34] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. He's a little hard to understand, I'll be honest.
[1:03:38] Speaker 2: So he spends a decade or so working as a psychiatrist.
[1:03:41] Speaker 2: He's like a successful upper middle class guy. I mean,
[1:03:44] Speaker 2: I don't know that those terms are super useful for Sarajevo,
[1:03:47] Speaker 2: but he's doing well, right? Perhaps his greatest professional achievement
[1:03:51] Speaker 2: was that he somehow gets hired as the team psychologist
[1:03:54] Speaker 2: for Red Star, Yugoslavia's premier football team. Per the book,
[1:03:58] Speaker 2: My War Criminal, quote, Karadzic instructed team members to lie
[1:04:02] Speaker 2: down together in a darkened room and imagine themselves to
[1:04:05] Speaker 2: be bumblebees flying from flower to flower. The captain recalled
[1:04:08] Speaker 2: the players' responses. Someone was sleeping, someone snoring, someone else
[1:04:12] Speaker 2: was farting, and someone cursing about bumblebees. The whole bumblebee
[1:04:15] Speaker 2: thing was a huge joke to us. For the Red
[1:04:18] Speaker 2: Star position, he moved to Belgrade, leaving his family behind
[1:04:20] Speaker 2: for a year in 1983. Karadzic was as boastful about
[1:04:24] Speaker 2: his skill as team psychologist as he was about everything else.
[1:04:27] Speaker 2: One of his friends recalled that if the team scored
[1:04:28] Speaker 2: a point, Karadzic felt that the point was due to
[1:04:30] Speaker 2: his psycho training of the players. He said he could
[1:04:33] Speaker 2: make Red Star the best team in the world.
[1:04:36] Speaker 5: Ha!
[1:04:36] Speaker 2: Everyone knows the most important part of a good football
[1:04:39] Speaker 2: team is the psychiatry.
[1:04:42] Speaker 4: He's like, guys, guys, guys.
[1:04:43] Speaker 2: During the World Cup, we were all competing psychiatrists.
[1:04:47] Speaker 4: We would not be in the semis without the bee thing.
[1:04:50] Speaker 3: No.
[1:04:51] Speaker 4: Oh, okay.
[1:04:53] Speaker 2: It's wild stuff.
[1:04:55] Speaker 4: This is so bizarre.
[1:04:56] Speaker 2: He's a little bit of an egomaniac.
[1:04:58] Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess that's like, I mean, he does chase
[1:05:01] Speaker 4: attention sometimes.
[1:05:02] Speaker 2: He's a narcissist. Yeah. Not a lot of humble, self-effacing
[1:05:07] Speaker 2: men become dictators. I'm sure even Tito was on that spectrum.
[1:05:11] Speaker 2: But again, one of the things Tito is known for
[1:05:13] Speaker 2: is he's really good at delegating and knowing his strengths
[1:05:16] Speaker 2: from his weaknesses, actually, which is very rare for a dictator.
[1:05:20] Speaker 2: Usually a problem for them.
[1:05:21] Speaker 3: Right. Right.
[1:05:22] Speaker 4: He's a dictator unicorn.
[1:05:24] Speaker 2: I'll say this about Tito. If you were going to
[1:05:26] Speaker 2: have a dictator in Eastern Europe in the post-war period,
[1:05:30] Speaker 2: you'd want it to be Tito. There's no one else
[1:05:32] Speaker 2: you would have wanted it to be. You'd want it
[1:05:35] Speaker 2: to have been, if you had to pick a dictator.
[1:05:38] Speaker 4: I think I just have to take your word for that. Yeah.
[1:05:42] Speaker 2: I'm taking the word of all of the Yugoslavian people,
[1:05:44] Speaker 2: former Yugoslav people that I met who were like, no,
[1:05:47] Speaker 2: Tito actually, we kind of miss him. It was a
[1:05:49] Speaker 2: lot better in some ways.
[1:05:50] Speaker 4: Say what you will about Tito.
[1:05:53] Speaker 2: Say what you will about Tito, but we weren't all
[1:05:55] Speaker 2: killing each other when he was in church. In 1984,
[1:06:02] Speaker 2: Karajic is arrested and he's convicted the next year of
[1:06:05] Speaker 2: fraud and misuse of public funds. He spends 11 months
[1:06:08] Speaker 2: in prison, like his dad did for murdering that lady.
[1:06:11] Speaker 2: Radovan would later call.
[1:06:12] Speaker 4: Himself- Wait, why does he have public funds?
[1:06:16] Speaker 2: Well, he's because, I mean, the soccer team is a
[1:06:18] Speaker 2: public team, I think. Like it's a communist state. There's
[1:06:22] Speaker 2: not like a billionaire that owns Red Star, right?
[1:06:25] Speaker 3: Sorry, I forgot that not just like some ugly guy
[1:06:30] Speaker 3: would own the team.
[1:06:31] Speaker 2: No, it wasn't just some billionaire fucking hedge fund asshole.
[1:06:34] Speaker 2: I'm sure it was some asshole.
[1:06:35] Speaker 3: Some fucking cube-headed guy who's 26 but looks 70.
[1:06:40] Speaker 2: They hired him to be the team psychiatrist, so he
[1:06:42] Speaker 2: couldn't have been that good, whoever the owner was. Radovan
[1:06:46] Speaker 2: would later say that this arrest was a he was
[1:06:48] Speaker 2: a political prisoner.
[1:06:50] Speaker 5: Right.
[1:06:50] Speaker 2: And that he was abused by the Muslim secret police
[1:06:52] Speaker 2: who definitely did not exist in Yugoslavia. And this time
[1:06:55] Speaker 2: it was not the Muslim secret police who took him
[1:06:57] Speaker 2: into custody because he was horribly corrupt.
[1:07:01] Speaker 4: So this is him revising it later or he is now.
[1:07:04] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[1:07:05] Speaker 4: OK.
[1:07:06] Speaker 3: OK.
[1:07:06] Speaker 2: This is later. This is later that he would blame
[1:07:08] Speaker 2: it on that.
[1:07:09] Speaker 3: Right.
[1:07:09] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[1:07:09] Speaker 4: He just stole money from his from his bumblebees.
[1:07:12] Speaker 2: Right.
[1:07:13] Speaker 4: Right.
[1:07:13] Speaker 2: He stole money from his bumblebees. That journal write-up notes
[1:07:16] Speaker 2: that he claimed he, quote, emerged psychically strengthened following the experience.
[1:07:21] Speaker 2: It further notes, allegations have been made of Karasik's corruptibility
[1:07:24] Speaker 2: of his selling fake prescriptions and providing false medical diagnoses
[1:07:28] Speaker 2: to help people collect insurance or pension benefits.
[1:07:31] Speaker 4: Again, this just sounds, many such psychiatrists.
[1:07:33] Speaker 2: Maybe that's why. Yeah. Maybe it was more that than
[1:07:36] Speaker 2: the Muslim secret police.
[1:07:38] Speaker 3: Anytime you hear that someone came out of, tax jail
[1:07:43] Speaker 3: feeling psychically strengthened it's like i don't i don't know.
[1:07:47] Speaker 2: I don't know i mean wesley snipes.
[1:07:50] Speaker 3: That's true i mean it's like and then you have
[1:07:52] Speaker 3: you have your martha stewart's the bracelet comes off and
[1:07:55] Speaker 3: all of a sudden she's like she's more powerful than ever.
[1:07:57] Speaker 1: And shakira shakira tax fraud.
[1:08:00] Speaker 2: I just and if we had to have one of
[1:08:03] Speaker 2: our tax fraud celebrities be a dictator i think i
[1:08:07] Speaker 2: would pick wesley snipes over martha stewart.
[1:08:11] Speaker 1: Oh snipes over stewart for sure.
[1:08:13] Speaker 2: Yeah yeah i'd pick wesley snipes over the current president
[1:08:17] Speaker 2: to be honest i'd pick wesley snipes over any president
[1:08:20] Speaker 2: because you know what none of our presidents have been
[1:08:22] Speaker 2: in blade that's true look it.
[1:08:25] Speaker 3: Up and that is that's a fact and we can't
[1:08:29] Speaker 3: know what a blade president would be until we have
[1:08:31] Speaker 3: one i think.
[1:08:32] Speaker 2: Although i think barack obama might have might have been
[1:08:34] Speaker 2: okay I don't know. He never had a chance. You
[1:08:37] Speaker 2: can tell he really wished he'd been an actor and
[1:08:39] Speaker 2: not the president. That's why he's making movies now. And
[1:08:42] Speaker 2: everyone who gets into politics wishes they'd succeeded in Hollywood.
[1:08:45] Speaker 3: That's basically every president from the past like 40 years.
[1:08:48] Speaker 2: Yeah. Ronald's the only one who did it the other way.
[1:08:51] Speaker 2: He's not alone.
[1:08:52] Speaker 6: Yeah.
[1:08:53] Speaker 2: It would have been really funny to watch Joe Biden
[1:08:55] Speaker 2: play Blade. I would watch Joe Biden as Blade. I mean,
[1:08:59] Speaker 2: I'd watch Trump as Blade. to be honest. I don't
[1:09:00] Speaker 2: think it would be as good, but I would watch it.
[1:09:02] Speaker 3: Wait, Biden as Blade is really disgusting to think about.
[1:09:07] Speaker 2: Just a shot-for-shot remake of Blade with Joe Biden.
[1:09:12] Speaker 4: That's really horrible to think about.
[1:09:15] Speaker 3: I mean, you could say Obama's kind of doing a
[1:09:17] Speaker 3: bit of a reverse Reagan in some ways, right?
[1:09:20] Speaker 4: He's kind of going into entertainment after.
[1:09:23] Speaker 2: He's going into entertainment after. I do wish we'd gotten
[1:09:25] Speaker 2: to see Joe Biden and Chris Christopherson opposite each other.
[1:09:32] Speaker 2: Two men whose, I could just imagine magnetic personal charisma
[1:09:36] Speaker 2: next to each other. Oh, God, if only that movie
[1:09:39] Speaker 2: had happened.
[1:09:40] Speaker 4: Talking in nonsense words to each other.
[1:09:42] Speaker 2: Just gibberish at each other. Just old man speak. Is
[1:09:47] Speaker 2: Joe Biden alive? Is the smell of people rubbed thick
[1:09:49] Speaker 2: in the air? Chris Christopherson's dead, unfortunately. We lost Chris
[1:09:54] Speaker 2: and we kept Joe Biden. I don't know why. So
[1:09:58] Speaker 2: he emerged from prison in the late 1980s. Not Joe Biden,
[1:10:01] Speaker 2: Radovan Karadzic. That would have been, again, weird if Joe
[1:10:04] Speaker 2: Biden had spent prison in the 80s in Yugoslavia. He
[1:10:06] Speaker 2: emerged from prison in the late 1980s to a Yugoslavia
[1:10:09] Speaker 2: that was in the slow process of collapse. As I said,
[1:10:11] Speaker 2: Tito died in 1980. So before he gets arrested, actually,
[1:10:14] Speaker 2: Tito is dead. And the government continues limping on for
[1:10:18] Speaker 2: a while after him. But Tito's force of personality had
[1:10:21] Speaker 2: held the entire Balkans together for pretty much the only
[1:10:24] Speaker 2: time that happened. And with his death, kind of these
[1:10:28] Speaker 2: nationalist differences occurred. that had been really prominent in and
[1:10:32] Speaker 2: after World War II, start to reassert themselves. They've been
[1:10:35] Speaker 2: kind of buried during the Tito years. And then the
[1:10:37] Speaker 2: years after his death, it becomes obvious to any intelligent observer,
[1:10:41] Speaker 2: communism is not going to last forever. And Yugoslavia is
[1:10:44] Speaker 2: not going to be one state forever, right? In 1974,
[1:10:48] Speaker 2: late in Tito's life, they had changed the constitution to
[1:10:51] Speaker 2: give each of these independent, not independent, there's these semi-autonomous
[1:10:55] Speaker 2: states that make up Yugoslavia, like Bosnia and Serbia, They
[1:10:58] Speaker 2: had the right to like secede if there was a–
[1:11:02] Speaker 2: if enough people wanted to leave. So like if Croatia
[1:11:04] Speaker 2: wants to leave, they could potentially. And so once Tito dies,
[1:11:08] Speaker 2: it becomes obvious that's going to happen at some point.
[1:11:11] Speaker 2: And as this sort of– you have the USSR, Glasnost,
[1:11:14] Speaker 2: and Perestroika around the same time, the Soviet Union is
[1:11:17] Speaker 2: also loosening stuff. politics starts to come to Yugoslavia in
[1:11:21] Speaker 2: a way that it just hadn't existed there for a while.
[1:11:24] Speaker 2: And a lot of people start looking at what's going
[1:11:25] Speaker 2: to happen next. And Radaban Karadzic is one of these guys.
[1:11:28] Speaker 2: And he starts increasingly thinking about politics and envisioning a
[1:11:33] Speaker 2: future for himself that's very different than his checkered past,
[1:11:36] Speaker 2: a future in which he would hold the kind of
[1:11:39] Speaker 2: power he always felt he deserved. And we'll talk about
[1:11:42] Speaker 2: that in part two. But, Jamie, why don't you plug
[1:11:46] Speaker 2: your new novel, The Tower, which I just plugged, but
[1:11:48] Speaker 2: you can plug it.
[1:11:49] Speaker 4: I'll do it again. Why the hell not?
[1:11:52] Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't stop you, and I won't.
[1:11:55] Speaker 3: You can preorder The Tower now. Again, it's about a
[1:12:00] Speaker 3: woman making beautiful love to her beautiful building. Yeah. And
[1:12:06] Speaker 3: it comes out in June. And also the Bechtelkasse is
[1:12:09] Speaker 3: on tour in the East Coast.
[1:12:11] Speaker 2: Damn right it is.
[1:12:12] Speaker 4: Throughout the fall.
[1:12:13] Speaker 3: So if you live in the Northeast, we're going there.
[1:12:17] Speaker 3: basically everywhere. So come out and see us. Everywhere.
[1:12:20] Speaker 2: That's the only part of the country. The Northeast.
[1:12:22] Speaker 4: And especially Baltimore. Baltimore extra.
[1:12:25] Speaker 2: Baltimore. The Serbia of the United States? Whoa. Almost certainly not. Whoa. Wow.
[1:12:31] Speaker 4: What an interesting thing to just throw in.
[1:12:33] Speaker 2: Did you say that?
[1:12:34] Speaker 4: Baltimore, weigh in.
[1:12:37] Speaker 2: Baltimore.
[1:12:38] Speaker 4: Come to the show and I'll say it to your face.
[1:12:40] Speaker 1: That's The episode, motherfuckers. Yeah.
[1:12:44] Speaker 2: Watch a Serbian film. Don't watch a Serbian film.
[1:12:46] Speaker 5: Actually, you do. It's pretty good.
[1:12:48] Speaker 2: But it's pretty messed up. Anyway, good night.
[1:12:50] Speaker 5: Bye. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media.
[1:12:56] Speaker 5: For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com.
[1:13:00] Speaker 5: Or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
[1:13:03] Speaker 5: or wherever you get your podcasts. Full video episodes of
[1:13:07] Speaker 5: Behind the Bastards are now streaming on Netflix, dropping every
[1:13:10] Speaker 5: Tuesday and Thursday. Hit remind me on Netflix so you
[1:13:12] Speaker 5: don't miss an episode. For clips and our older episode catalog,
[1:13:16] Speaker 5: continue to subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube.com slash at
[1:13:20] Speaker 5: Behind the Bastards. We love about 40% of you, statistically speaking.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.