The Balkans as a region has contributed disproportionately to the advance of political extremism in the twentieth century. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, setting off the conflagration of 1914, and the strong fillip to fascism in Fiume (today's Rijeka in Croatia) after World War I are but two cases in point. The Balkan Wars of 1912–13 also were extraordinarily bloody and affected this extremist trajectory.

This chapter examines four cases in the Balkans, two of which exhibited strong evidence of extremism, while the remaining two did not. Serbia not only gave rise to the extreme nationalist Chetniks, but was the only country to be complicit in a European genocide after 1945. Croatia, in its quasi-independent existence under Nazi tutelage in World War II, was led by the extraordinarily bloody fascist Ustaše. In strong contrast, Bulgaria and Greece were never led by extremist governments. This chapter will explore these contrasts, but after a brief discussion of the work of Ivo Andrić that will serve as an introduction. Romania has also exhibited extremist tendencies, especially in the form of the Iron Guard; this organization and Romanian electoral behavior are discussed elsewhere in this book (see Chapters 3, 4, and 13).

Ivo Andrić

“No better introduction to the study of Balkan and Ottoman history exists,” exclaims the distinguished historian, William McNeill, in his Introduction to the Nobel Laureate Ivo Andrić's The Bridge on the Drina.