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don 't think that "the New Gennany can defuse its neighbors' fears " for
generations to come. Apparently, the Gennans are still setting the tone,
not the French, not the British. It is the Gennans who are the loud–
mouths. Thank you.
Patrick Kelly:
Would you like to respond first?
Ljiljana Smajlovic: I
happen not to agree with the Serbs' explana–
tions for Gennany's behavior. I don' t think the N azi era is coming back,
or that the Germans are attempting to reach the Mediterranean. It is
unfortunate that Zagreb and Sarajevo were the cities that awaited the
Gennans with flowers in 1941; and that Croatia now has a president
who has said that the fascist puppet state in Zagreb was a true expression
of the historical yearning of the Croatian people for an independent
state. This is how things appear to Serbs. Gennany did not simply buckle
under the pressure of its own public opinion and television images of
horror, as is often said; it did not act only out of high principles and
moral considerations in recognizing Croatia and Slovenia as early as it
did and in the way it did. But Gennany may have wanted to become a
political power, not only an economic one.
Marta Halpert:
It is very difficult to discuss anything from such large
generalizations. I am the last one to make any apologies for Austria's
behavior or its share in the past. But I think we have to differentiate and
look at historical facts. About the Romany and Sinti Gypsies incident: it
is not yet clear who is responsible for these murders , but they belong to
a series of terrorist attacks which Austrian authorities attribute to right
extremists. But one cannot use this terrible bomb attack to accuse the
whole country of Austria of being a Nazi stronghold. You have terrorist
attacks in the United States, and it is not always evident who the perpe–
trators are. But I don't think you would call the United States a ter–
rorist country.
Vladimir Tismaneanu:
A number of points. I was born in Romania.
There, as in
all
the post-Communist countries, nationalism harks back to
the 1930s. But current events are not reproductions of what happened
then. I think one cannot speak of a full-fledged rehabilitation of fascism,
or of Romania, for instance, as being a fascist or a Communist state,
even though it has a strong authoritarian element in its political culture.
To Ljiljana Smajlovic: I think you made an important point, but I
would like to warn against a perception of Gennany as particularly in–
terested in establishing its new hegemony in the fonner Mittel-European
