Violence as a Creative Force: Identity, Nationalism and Memory in a Balkan Community

The frequent description of the Bosnian war of 1992–1995 as “the worst conflict in Europe since World War II” has had the perverse effect of deflecting attention from what went on there in 1941–1945, which was far worse than in the 1990s. In the 1992–1995 Bosnian war, approximately 102,000 people were killed, two-thirds of them Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims), 19 percent Serbs and 8 percent Croats. In contrast, in the 1941–1945 war, approximately 300,000 were killed, 73 percent of them Serbs, 17 percent Muslims (now Bosniaks), and 5 percent Croats. Further, in the 1990s, slightly more than half of the overall casualties were military personnel, whereas in the 1940s the great majority of those killed were civilians, including many massacres of women and children. Those massacres were not a matter of industrialized or even mechanized death. Instead, masses of people were executed at close range, with firearms but also knives, axes,...