Croatian forces

The Croatian force in Vukovar comprised 1,800 men assembled from units of the newly created Croatian National Guard, including 400 members of the 3rd Guards Brigade and the 1st Guards Brigade. The 4th Battalion of the 3rd Guards Brigade was stationed in the city from the beginning, while elements of the 1st Guards Brigade arrived retreating from elsewhere in western Syrmia. In addition to the guardsmen there were 300 police officers and 1,100 civilian volunteers from Vukovar and nearby communities.^[47] The bulk of the force had initially been organised in an improvised manner.^[48] In late September 1991, it was formally reorganised as the 204th Vukovar Brigade, also known as the 124th Brigade.^[48]

Volunteers arrived from other parts of Croatia, including 58 members of the far-right paramilitary Croatian Defence Forces (HOS),^[49] backed by Dobroslav Paraga's extreme nationalist Croatian Party of Rights (HSP).^[50] The defenders were a cross-section of Vukovar society. As many as one-third were non-Croats, including Serbs, Ruthenians, Hungarians and members of other ethnicities.^[46] About 100 of the defenders were Serbs. "We had complete confidence in them", one Croatian veteran later said. "They defended Vukovar alongside us."^[51]

Croatian forces in Vukovar were commanded by Mile Dedaković, a former JNA officer who had joined the ZNG and volunteered to take charge of the town's defences.^[52] During the battle, he went by the nom de guerre Jastreb ("Hawk").^[53] Gojko Šušak, by now Croatia's Minister of Defence, used Dedaković as an example of how Serbs were also taking part in Vukovar's defence.^[54] The claim was later reprinted by independent sources,^[53] but was false.^[54] Dedaković's second-in-command, Branko Borković, was another former JNA officer who had volunteered for service in Vukovar.^[55] The two men established a unified command structure, organised the defenders into a single brigade and implemented an integrated defence system.^[56] A defensive ring of six sectors was established, each assigned to one unit within the 204th Brigade.^[57] The defenders used a network of cellars, canals, ditches and trenches to redeploy around the sectors as needed.^[58]

At the start of the battle, they were poorly armed and many were equipped only with hunting rifles. They relied mostly on light infantry weapons, but obtained a few artillery pieces and anti-aircraft guns and improvised their own land mines.^[59] They also obtained several hundred anti-tank weapons such as M79 and M80 rocket launchers, but were critically short of ammunition throughout the battle.^[47][60] The capture of JNA barracks somewhat improved the situation as Vukovar had the priority in the supply of arms. It is estimated that the Vukovar battlefield consumed around 55–60 percent of all ammunition available to the Croatian forces.^[61]

Yugoslav and Serb forces

Attack aircraft, such as this Soko G-4 Super Galeb, were used in the battle by the Yugoslav Air Force.

The attacking force included JNA soldiers conscripted from across Yugoslavia, members of the TO, Chetniks (Serbian nationalist paramilitaries), local Serb militiamen and units of the Yugoslav Navy and the Yugoslav Air Force.^[59] At their peak, the Yugoslav and Serb forces in the vicinity of Vukovar numbered about 36,000.^[62] They were equipped with heavy artillery, rockets and tanks and supported by aircraft and naval vessels on the Danube.^[59]

Although the battle was fought primarily by the federal Yugoslav military, the government of Serbia was directly involved. The Serbian secret police agency, the SDB, took part in military operations, and some of its officers commanded Serbian TO units fighting in Vukovar.^[63] Serbia's Ministry of Internal Affairs directed the activities of the paramilitaries.^[64] It was also responsible for arming and equipping them.^[65] Slobodan Milošević was later accused of direct involvement. According to Veselin Šljivančanin, who was later convicted of war crimes committed at Vukovar, the order to shell Vukovar came "from Dedinje" – the elite Belgrade quarter where Milošević lived.^[66]

The JNA's strategic offensive plan in Croatia, 1991. The plan was abandoned after the Battle of Vukovar exhausted the JNA's ability to prosecute the war further into Croatia.

At the start of the war in Slovenia, the army still saw itself as the defender of a federal, communist Yugoslavia, rather than an instrument of Serbian nationalism. Its head, General Veljko Kadijević, the Yugoslav Minister of Defence and a committed communist, initially sought to forcibly keep Yugoslavia together and proclaimed the army's neutrality in the Serb-Croat conflict.^[67] The JNA leadership aimed to cut Croatia in two by seizing the Serb-inhabited inland regions, almost all of the Dalmatian coast and much of central and eastern Croatia. It aimed to force Croatia's political leadership to capitulate and renegotiate its membership of Yugoslavia.^[68] The JNA's leadership was not yet dominated by ethnic Serbs, and these early goals reflected the Yugoslav outlook of its multiethnic leadership. Kadijević was half-Croat and half-Serb, his deputy was a Slovene, the commander of the JNA forces in the first phase of the battle was a Macedonian, and the head of the Yugoslav Air Force, which repeatedly bombed Vukovar during the battle, was a Croat.^[45][69]

The loss of Slovenia in the Ten-Day War made it impossible to fulfil the original objective of keeping Yugoslavia intact. Many of the Serb members of the army no longer wanted to fight for a multiethnic Yugoslavia. The army developed an increasingly Serbian character as non-Serbs deserted or refused to be drafted.^[67] Some JNA commanders overtly supported the Serb rebels in Croatia and provided them with weapons.^[65] Although Kadijević and other senior JNA commanders initially argued that "the JNA must defend all the nations of Yugoslavia",^[65] they eventually recognised that they had no chance of achieving their original goals, and threw their support behind the rebel Serbs of Croatia.^[67]

Yugoslav and Serb propaganda portrayed Croatian separatists as genocidal Ustaše, who had illegally taken over Yugoslav territory and were threatening Serb civilians in a reprise of the anti-Serb pogroms of the Second World War.^[44] Kadijević later justified the JNA's offensive against Vukovar on the grounds that it was part of the "backbone of the Croatian army" and had to be "liberated". The JNA's periodical Narodna Armija claimed after the battle that Vukovar "had for decades been prepared to support German military penetration down the Danube."^[50] Šešelj declared: "We're all one army. This war is a great test for Serbs. Those who pass the test will become winners. Deserters cannot go unpunished. Not a single Ustaša must leave Vukovar alive."^[70]

JNA weaknesses and adoption of new tactics

A JNA M-84 tank disabled by a mine laid by the defenders of Vukovar in November 1991

The JNA's lack of infantry support was due to a disastrously low level of mobilisation in the preceding months. Many reservists – who were drawn from all the Yugoslav republics, including Croatia – refused to report for duty, and many serving soldiers deserted rather than fight.^[85] Serbia was never formally at war and no general mobilisation was carried out.^[86] An estimated 150,000 Serbs went abroad to avoid conscription, and many others deserted or went into hiding.^[87] Only 13 percent of conscripts reported for duty.^[88] Another 40,000 staged rebellions in towns across Serbia; the Serbian newspaper Vreme commented in July 1991 that the situation was one of "total military disintegration".^[89]

Morale on the battlefield was poor. JNA commanders resorted to firing on their own positions to motivate their men to fight. When the commander of a JNA unit at Vukovar demanded to know who was willing to fight and who wanted to go home, the unit split in two. One conscript, unable to decide which side to take, shot himself on the spot.^[90] A JNA officer who served at Vukovar later described how his men refused to obey orders on several occasions, "abandoning combat vehicles, discarding weapons, gathering on some flat ground, sitting and singing Give Peace a Chance by John Lennon." In late October, an entire infantry battalion from Novi Sad in Serbia abandoned an attack on Borovo Naselje and fled. Another group of reservists threw away their weapons and went back to Serbia on foot across a nearby bridge.^[91] A tank driver, Vladimir Živković, drove his vehicle from the front line at Vukovar to the Yugoslav parliament in Belgrade, where he parked on the steps in front of the building. He was arrested and declared insane by the authorities. His treatment enraged his colleagues, who protested by taking over a local radio station at gunpoint and issuing a declaration that "we are not traitors, but we do not want to be aggressors."^[92]

In late September, Lieutenant Colonel General Života Panić was put in charge of the operation against Vukovar. He established new headquarters and command-and-control arrangements to resolve the disorganisation that had hindered the JNA's operations. Panić divided the JNA forces into Northern and Southern Areas of Responsibility (AORs). The northern AOR was assigned to Major General Mladen Bratić, while Colonel Mile Mrkšić was given charge of the south.^[93] As well as fresh troops, paramilitary volunteers from Serbia were brought in. They were well armed and highly motivated but often undisciplined and brutal. They were formed into units of company and battalion size as substitutes for the missing reservists.^[62] The commander of the Novi Sad corps was videotaped after the battle praising the Serb Volunteer Guard ("Tigers") of Željko Ražnatović, known as "Arkan":^[94]

The greatest credit for this goes to Arkan's volunteers! Although some people accuse me of acting in collusion with paramilitary formations, these are not paramilitary formations here! They are men who came voluntarily to fight for the Serbian cause. We surround a village, he dashes in and kills whoever refuses to surrender. On we go!^[94]

Panić combined well-motivated paramilitary infantry with trained engineering units to clear mines and defensive positions, supported by heavy armour and artillery.^[95] The paramilitaries spearheaded a fresh offensive that began on 30 September. The assault succeeded in cutting the Croatian supply route to Vukovar when the village of Marinci, on the route out of the town, was captured on 1 October. Shortly afterwards, the Croatian 204th Brigade's commander, Mile Dedaković, broke out with a small escort, slipping through the Serbian lines to reach the Croatian-held town of Vinkovci. His deputy, Branko Borković, took over command of Vukovar's defences. General Anton Tus, commander of the Croatian forces outside the Vukovar perimeter, put Dedaković in charge of a breakthrough operation to relieve the town and launched a counter-offensive on 13 October.^[62][96] Around 800 soldiers and 10 tanks were engaged in the attack, which began in the early morning with artillery preparation. Special police forces entered Marinci before noon, but had to retreat as they did not have enough strength to hold their positions. Croatian tanks and infantry encountered heavy resistance from the JNA and were halted at Nuštar by artillery fire. The JNA's 252nd Armoured Brigade inflicted heavy losses on the Croatian side.^[97] The elite Lučko Anti-Terrorist Unit alone suffered 12 fatalities.^[98] Around 13:00 the attack was stopped by the HV General Staff. A humanitarian convoy of the Red Cross was let through to Vukovar.^[97]

Fall of Vukovar

Damage inflicted on Vukovar's hospital by a Yugoslav Air Force jet on 4 October 1991

JNA troops launched an amphibious assault across the Danube north of Lužac on 3 November to link up with Arkan's "Tigers". This attack split the Croatian perimeter in half and divided the main group of defenders in the town centre from a smaller stronghold in Borovo Naselje. The JNA's Operational Group South began systematically clearing the town centre, cutting off the remaining Croatian soldiers.^[95] On 5 November, Croatian forces shelled the Serbian town of Šid, killing three civilians and wounding several others.^[107] The JNA and paramilitaries captured a key hilltop, Milova Brda,^[105] on 9 November, giving them a clear view of Vukovar. The assault was spearheaded by paramilitaries, with JNA soldiers and TO fighters playing a supporting role, especially in demining operations and close artillery support.^[95] The Croatian-held village of Bogdanovci, just west of Vukovar, fell on 10 November.^[105] As many as 87 civilians were killed after its capture.^[108]

On 13 November, the JNA cut the last link between Borovo Naselje and Vukovar. Croatian forces outside the Vukovar perimeter mounted a last-ditch attempt to break the siege by attacking from the village of Nuštar, but were repelled by the JNA once again. By now, the Croatians were running out of ammunition and were exhausted from fighting around the clock without any prospect of relief.^[105] They had been reduced to three separate pockets. With defeat now inevitable, several hundred Croatian soldiers and civilians attempted to break out over the course of several days, as the JNA mounted its final offensive.^[105] Most of those in Borovo Naselje were unable to do so and were killed.^[58]

On 18 November, the last Croatian soldiers in Vukovar's town centre surrendered.^[95] By 18 November, many of Vukovar's civilian inhabitants were living in squalid conditions and nearing starvation. One woman told UN Special Envoy Cyrus Vance that she had spent the two previous months in a bomb shelter with her five children without toilets or water for washing. They lived on two slices of bread and a piece of pâté per day.^[109] One of the Croatian soldiers described conditions as the battle reached its peak:

By early October, there were no cigarettes. People were smoking grape leaves or tea. There was no yeast for bread. My son was eating tinned food with me and my wife. There was less and less of that. The shelling became 24 hours a day, and the cease-fires were worse. When people came out of the shelters to go to the well during the cease-fires, the snipers shot them. You can't keep children in for two months, and when they ran outside, when there was sun in the morning, they shot at them, too.^[110]

When the battle ended, the scale of the town's destruction shocked many who had not left their shelters in weeks. Siniša Glavašević, a reporter for Croatian Radio and a native of Vukovar, who had stayed in the town throughout the battle, described the scene as the survivors emerged:

The picture of Vukovar at the 22nd hour of the 87th day [of the siege] will stay forever in the memory of those who witnessed it. Unearthly scenes are endless, the smell of burning, under the feet the remnants of old roof tiles, building materials, glass, ruins, and a dreadful silence. ... We hope that the torments of Vukovar are over.^[111]

Vukovar ten days after the surrender; a street lies in ruins.

Although active combat had ended in central Vukovar by 18 November, sporadic fighting continued for several days elsewhere in the town. Some Croatian soldiers continued to resist until 20 November and a few managed to slip away from Borovo Naselje as late as 23 November.^[105] Foreign journalists and international monitors entered the town soon after the surrender and recorded what they saw. Blaine Harden of The Washington Post wrote:

Not one roof, door or wall in all of Vukovar seems to have escaped jagged gouges or gaping holes left by shrapnel, bullets, bombs or artillery shells – all delivered as part of a three-month effort by Serb insurgents and the Serb-led Yugoslav army to wrest the city from its Croatian defenders. Not one building appears habitable, or even repairable. Nearly every tree has been chopped to bits by firepower.^[112]

Chuck Sudetic of The New York Times reported:

Only soldiers of the Serbian-dominated army, stray dogs and a few journalists walked the smoky, rubble-choked streets amid the ruins of the apartment buildings, stores and hotel in Vukovar's center. Not one of the buildings seen during a daylong outing could be described as habitable. In one park, shell fire had sheared thick trees in half like blades of grass cut by a mower. Across the street, the dome of an Orthodox Christian church had fallen onto the altar. Automatic weapons fire erupted every few minutes as the prowling Serbian soldiers, some of them drunk, took aim at land mines, pigeons and windows that had survived the fighting.^[113]

Laura Silber and the BBC's Allan Little described how "corpses of people and animals littered the streets. Grisly skeletons of buildings still burned, barely a square inch had escaped damage. Serbian volunteers, wild-eyed, roared down the streets, their pockets full of looted treasures."^[114] The JNA celebrated its victory, as Marc Champion of The Independent described:

The colonels who ran "Operation Vukovar" entertained more than 100 journalists inside the ruins of the Dunav Hotel at a kind of Mad Hatter's victory celebration. They handed out picture postcards of the old Vukovar as mementoes and served drinks on starched white tablecloths, as wind and rain blew in through shattered windows ... Inside the Dunav Hotel was an Alice in Wonderland world where Colonel [Miodrag] Gvero announced that the gaping holes in the walls had been blasted by the Croatian defenders. They had placed sticks of dynamite in the brickwork to make the army look bad, he said.^[115]

Indictments and trials

The ICTY indicted several officials for war crimes in Vukovar: Prime Minister of SAO Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Syrmia and later President of the RSK Goran Hadžić (left), President of Serbia Slobodan Milošević (middle), and JNA Colonel Mile Mrkšić (right), who was convicted in 2007.

Three JNA officers – Mile Mrkšić, Veselin Šljivančanin and Miroslav Radić – were indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on multiple counts of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws of war, having surrendered or been captured in 2002 and 2003. On 27 September 2007, Mrkšić was sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment on charges of murder and torture, Šljivančanin was sentenced to five years' imprisonment for torture and Radić was acquitted.^[146] Šljivančanin's sentence was increased to 17 years on appeal.^[147] It was reduced to ten years after a second appeal and he was granted early release in July 2011.^[148] Slavko Dokmanović, the Serb mayor of Vukovar, was also indicted and arrested for his role in the massacre, but committed suicide in June 1998, shortly before judgement was to be passed.^[149]

Serbian paramilitary leader Vojislav Šešelj was indicted on war crimes charges, including several counts of extermination, for the Vukovar hospital massacre, in which his "White Eagles" were allegedly involved.^[150] In March 2016, Šešelj was acquitted on all counts pending appeal.^[151] On 11 April 2018, the Appeals Chamber of the follow-up Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals convicted him of crimes against humanity and sentenced him to 10 years' imprisonment for a speech delivered in May 1992 in which he called for the expulsion of Croats from Vojvodina. He was acquitted of the war crimes and crimes against humanity that he was alleged to have committed elsewhere, including in Vukovar.^[152]

The ICTY's indictment of Slobodan Milošević characterised the overall JNA and Serb offensive in Croatia – including the fighting in eastern Slavonia – as a "joint criminal enterprise" to remove non-Serb populations from Serb-inhabited areas of Croatia. Milošević was charged with numerous crimes against humanity, violations of the laws of war, and breaches of the Geneva Conventions in relation to the battle and its aftermath.^[10] He died in March 2006, before his trial could be completed.^[153] The Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadžić was indicted for "wanton destruction of homes, religious and cultural buildings" and "devastation not justified by military necessity" across eastern Slavonia, and for deporting Vukovar's non-Serb population.^[154] He was arrested in July 2011, after seven years on the run, and pleaded not guilty to 14 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.^[155] He died in July 2016, before his trial could be completed.^[156]

In December 2005, a Serbian court convicted 14 former paramilitaries for their involvement in the hospital massacre.^[157] In 2011, a Serbian court indicted more than 40 Croatians for alleged war crimes committed in Vukovar.^[158] An earlier indictment against a Croatian soldier was dropped because of irregularities in the investigation.^[159] Croatia also indicted a number of Serbs for war crimes committed in Vukovar,^[160] including former JNA generals Veljko Kadijević and Blagoje Adžić.^[161] Adžić died of natural causes in Belgrade in March 2012 and never faced trial.^[162] Kadijević fled Yugoslavia following Milošević's overthrow and sought asylum in Russia. He was granted Russian citizenship in 2008 and died in Moscow in November 2014.^[163] In 1999, Croatia sued Yugoslavia before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), claiming that genocide had been committed in Vukovar. Following Serbia and Montenegro's dissolution in 2006, this suit was passed on to Serbia. In February 2015, the ICJ ruled that the battle and ensuing massacre did not constitute genocide, but affirmed that serious crimes had been committed by the JNA and Serb paramilitaries.^[164][165]

Propaganda

The Serbian and Croatian media waged a fierce propaganda struggle over the progress of the battle and the reasons behind it. Both sides' propaganda machines aimed to promote ultra-nationalist sentiments and denigrate the other side with no pretence of objectivity or self-criticism. The Croatian media described the Serbian forces as "Serb terrorists" and a "Serbo-Communist army of occupation" intent on crushing the thousand-year dream of an independent Croatia.^[166] The propaganda reached peak intensity in the wake of Vukovar's fall. The Croatian newspaper Novi list denounced the Serbs as "cannibals" and "brutal Serb extremists". The Serbian media depicted the JNA and Serbian forces as "liberators" and "defenders" of the Serbian people, and the Croatian forces as "Ustashoid hordes", "blackshirts", "militants" and "drunk and stoned monsters". There were overt appeals to racial and gender prejudice, including claims that Croatian combatants had "put on female dress to escape from the town" and had recruited "black men".^[167]

Victim status became a central aim for the propaganda machines of both sides, and the battle was used to support claims of atrocities. Victims became interchangeable as anonymous victims were identified as Croats by the Croatian media and as Serbs by the Serbian media. According to the Serbian opposition periodical Republika, the state-owned station TV Novi Sad was under orders to identify any bodies its reporters filmed as being "Serbian corpses".^[168] After the battle, Belgrade television showed pictures of hundreds of corpses lined up outside Vukovar's hospital and claimed that they were Serbs who had been "massacred" by the Croats. According to Human Rights Watch, the bodies belonged to those who had died of their injuries at the hospital, whose staff had been prevented from burying them by the intense Serbian bombardment, and had been forced to leave them lying in the open. Serbian television continued to broadcast claims of "massacred Serbs in Vukovar" for some time after the town's fall.^[169]

Such victim-centred propaganda had a powerful motivating effect. One Serbian volunteer said that he had never seen the town before the war, but had come to fight because "the Croats had a network of catacombs under the city where they killed and tortured children just because they were Serbs."^[170] Reuters erroneously reported that 41 children had been massacred in Vukovar by Croatian soldiers. Although the claim was retracted a day later, it was used by the Serbian media to justify military action in Croatia.^[171] Many of those fighting at Vukovar believed that they were engaged in a struggle to liberate the town from a hostile occupier.^[172]

International reaction

The international community made repeated unsuccessful attempts to end the fighting. Both sides violated cease-fires, often within hours. Calls by some European Community members for the Western European Union to intervene militarily were vetoed by the British government. Instead, a Conference for Yugoslavia was established under the chairmanship of Lord Carrington to find a way to end the conflict. The United Nations (UN) imposed an arms embargo on all of the Yugoslav republics in September 1991 under Security Council Resolution 713, but this was ineffective, in part because the JNA had no need to import weapons. The European powers abandoned attempts to keep Yugoslavia united and agreed to recognise the independence of Croatia and Slovenia on 15 January 1992.^[173]

International observers tried unsuccessfully to prevent the human rights abuses that followed the battle. A visit by UN envoys Marrack Goulding and Cyrus Vance was systematically obstructed by the JNA. Vance's demands to see the hospital, from which wounded patients were being dragged out to be killed, were rebuffed by one of the massacre's chief architects, Major Veselin Šljivančanin.^[174] The major also blocked Red Cross representatives in an angry confrontation recorded by TV cameras: "This is my country, we have conquered this. This is Yugoslavia, and I am in command here!"^[175]

There was no international media presence in Vukovar, as there was in the simultaneous Siege of Dubrovnik and the subsequent Siege of Sarajevo, and relatively little of the fighting in Vukovar was broadcast to foreign audiences. The British journalist Misha Glenny commented that the JNA, the Croatian Serb government and many ordinary Serbs were often hostile to the foreign media, while the Croatians were more open and friendly.^[176]

Croatian reaction

The Croatian media gave heavy coverage to the battle, repeatedly airing broadcasts from the besieged town by the journalist Siniša Glavašević. Much popular war art focused on the "VukoWAR", as posters dubbed it.^[177] The Croatian government began suppressing Glavašević's broadcasts when it became clear that defeat was inevitable,^[177] despite the confident slogans of "Vukovar shall not fall" and "Vukovar must not fall." Two of the main daily newspapers, Večernji list and Novi list, failed to report the loss of Vukovar and, on 20 November, two days after it had fallen, repeated the official line that the fight was still continuing. News of the surrender was dismissed as Serbian propaganda.^[178] Many Croatians soon saw Western satellite broadcasts of JNA soldiers and Serb paramilitaries walking freely through the town and detaining its inhabitants.^[179] When the surrender could no longer be denied, the two newspapers interpreted the loss as a demonstration of Croatian bravery and resistance, blaming the international community for not intervening to help Croatia.^[178]

The Croatian government was criticised for its approach to the battle.^[178] Surviving defenders and right-wing politicians accused the government of betraying and deliberately sacrificing Vukovar to secure Croatia's international recognition. The only explanation that many were willing to accept for the town's fall was that it had been given up as part of a conspiracy.^[180] The Croatian commanders in Vukovar, Mile Dedaković and Branko Borković, both survived the battle and spoke out publicly against the government's actions. In an apparent attempt to silence them, both men were briefly detained by the Croatian military police.^[95] The Croatian government also suppressed an issue of the newspaper Slobodni tjednik that published a transcript of a telephone call from Vukovar, in which Dedaković had pleaded with an evasive Tuđman for military assistance. The revelations caused public outrage and reinforced perceptions that the defenders had been betrayed.^[181]

From a military point of view, the outcome at Vukovar was not a disaster for Croatia's overall war effort. The battle broke the back of the JNA, leaving it exhausted and unable to press deeper into the country. Vukovar was probably indefensible, being almost completely surrounded by Serb-held territory and located closer to Belgrade than to Zagreb. Although the defeat was damaging to Croatian morale, in a strategic context, the damage and delays inflicted on the JNA more than made up for the loss of the town.^[95]

Following the battle, Vukovar became a symbol of Croatian resistance and suffering. The survivors, veterans and journalists wrote numerous memoirs, songs and testimonies about the battle and its symbolism, calling it variously "the phenomenon", "the pride", "the hell" and "the Croatian knight". Writers appealed to the "Vukovar principle", the "spirituality of Vukovar" and "Vukovar ethics", the qualities said to have been exhibited by the defenders and townspeople.^[180] Croatian war veterans were presented with medals bearing the name of Vukovar.^[182] In 1994, when Croatia replaced the Croatian dinar with its new currency, the kuna, it used the destroyed Eltz Castle in Vukovar and the Vučedol Dove – an artefact from an ancient Neolithic culture centred on eastern Slavonia, which was discovered near Vukovar – on the new twenty-kuna note. The imagery emphasised the Croatian nature of Vukovar, which at the time was under Serb control.^[183] In 1993 and 1994, there was a national debate on how Vukovar should be rebuilt following its reintegration into Croatia, with some Croatians suggesting that it should be preserved as a monument.^[182]

The ruling HDZ made extensive use of popular culture relating to Vukovar as propaganda in the years before the region was reintegrated into Croatia.^[184] In 1997, President Tuđman mounted a tour of eastern Slavonia, accompanied by a musical campaign called Sve hrvatske pobjede za Vukovar ("All Croatian victories for Vukovar"). The campaign was commemorated by the release of a compilation of patriotic music from Croatia Records.^[185] When Vukovar was returned to Croatian control in 1998, its recovery was hailed as the completion of a long struggle for freedom and Croatian national identity.^[186] Tuđman alluded to such sentiments when he gave a speech in Vukovar to mark its reintegration into Croatia:

Our arrival in Vukovar – the symbol of Croatian suffering, Croatian resistance, Croatian aspirations for freedom, Croatian desire to return to its eastern borders on the Danube, of which the Croatian national anthem sings – is a sign of our determination to really achieve peace and reconciliation.^[186]

Serbian reaction

The Yugoslav flag hangs outside destroyed buildings in Vukovar to mark the Serb victory.

Although the battle had been fought in the name of Serbian defence and unity, reactions in Serbia were deeply divided. The JNA, the state-controlled Serbian media and Serbian ultra-nationalists hailed the victory as a triumph. The JNA even erected a triumphal arch in Belgrade through which its returning soldiers could march, and officers were congratulated for taking "the toughest and fiercest Ustaša fortress".^[187] The Serbian newspaper Politika ran a front-page headline on 20 November announcing: "Vukovar Finally Free".^[175] In January 1992, from the ruins of Vukovar, the ultranationalist painter Milić Stanković wrote an article for the Serbian periodical Pogledi ("Viewpoints"), in which he declared: "Europe must know Vukovar was liberated from the Croat Nazis. They were helped by Central European scum. They crawled from under the papal tiara, as a dart of the serpent's tongue that protruded from the bloated Kraut and overstretched Eurocommunal anus."^[188]

The Serbian geographer Jovan Ilić set out a vision for the future of the region, envisaging it being annexed to Serbia and its expelled Croatian population being replaced with Serbs from elsewhere in Croatia. The redrawing of Serbia's borders would unite all Serbs in a single state, and would cure Croats of opposition to Serbian nationalism, which Ilić termed an "ethno-psychic disorder". Thus, Ilić argued, "the new borders should primarily be a therapy for the treatment of ethno-psychic disorders, primarily among the Croatian population." Other Serbian nationalist writers acknowledged that the historical record showed that eastern Slavonia had been inhabited by Croats for centuries, but accused the region's Croat majority of "conversion to Catholicism, Uniating and Croatisation", as well as "genocidal destruction". Most irredentist propaganda focused on the region's proximity to Serbia and its sizeable Serb population.^[189]

The Croatian Serb leadership also took a positive view of the battle's outcome. Between 1991 and 1995, while Vukovar was under the control of the Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK), the city's fall was officially commemorated as "Liberation Day". The battle was portrayed as a successful struggle by local Serbs to defend their lives and property from the aggression of the Croatian state. Thousands of Vukovar Serbs that had suffered alongside their Croatian neighbours, sheltering in basements or bomb shelters for three months in appalling conditions, were now denigrated as podrumaši, the "people from the basement". Serb civilian dead were denied recognition, and the only people buried in the Serbian memorial cemetery at Vukovar were local Serbs who had fought with or alongside the JNA.^[190]

In contrast, many in Serbia were strongly opposed to the battle and the wider war, and resisted efforts by the state to involve them in the conflict.^[191] Multiple anti-war movements appeared in Serbia as Yugoslavia began to disintegrate. In Belgrade, sizeable anti-war protests were organized in opposition to the battle. The protesters demanded that a referendum be held on a formal declaration of war, as well as an end to conscription.^[192] When the JNA tried to call up reservists, parents and relatives gathered around barracks to prevent their children taking part in the operation.^[191] Resistance to conscription became widespread across Serbia, ranging from individual acts of defiance to collective mutinies by hundreds of reservists at a time. A number of Serbian opposition politicians condemned the war. Desimir Tošić of the Democratic Party accused Milošević of "using the conflict to cling to power", and Vuk Drašković, the leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement, appealed to JNA soldiers to "pick up their guns and run".^[193] After the fall of Vukovar, he condemned what had been done in the name of Yugoslavia, writing in the daily newspaper Borba:

I cannot applaud the Vukovar victory, which is so euphorically celebrated in the war propaganda of intoxicated Serbia. I cannot, for I won't violate the victims, thousands of dead, nor the pain and misfortune of all Vukovar survivors ... [Vukovar] is the Hiroshima of both Croatian and Serbian madness ... Everyone in this state, Serbs but especially Croats, have established days of the greatest shame and fall.^[194]

By late December 1991, just over a month after victory had been proclaimed in Vukovar, opinion polls found that 64 percent wanted to end the war immediately and only 27 percent were willing for it to continue. Milošević and other senior Serbian leaders decided against continuing the fighting, as they saw it as politically impossible to mobilise more conscripts to fight in Croatia. Desertions from the JNA continued as the well-motivated and increasingly well-equipped Croatian Army became more difficult to counter. By the end of 1991, Serbia's political and military leadership concluded that it would be counter-productive to continue the war. The looming conflict in Bosnia also required that the military resources tied up in Croatia be freed for future use.^[195]

Although the battle was publicly portrayed as a triumph, it profoundly affected the JNA's character and leadership behind the scenes. The army's leaders realised that they had overestimated their ability to pursue operations against heavily defended urban targets, such as the strategic central Croatian town of Gospić, which the JNA assessed as potentially a "second Vukovar". The "Serbianisation" of the army was greatly accelerated, and, by the end of 1991, it was estimated to be 90 percent Serb. Its formerly pro-communist, pan-Yugoslav identity was abandoned, and new officers were now advised to "love, above all else, their unit, their army and their homeland – Serbia and Montenegro". The JNA's failure enabled the Serbian government to tighten its control over the military, whose leadership was purged and replaced with pro-Milošević nationalists. After the battle, General Veljko Kadijević, commander of the JNA, was forced into retirement for "health reasons", and in early 1992, another 38 generals and other officers were forced to retire, with several put on trial for incompetence and treason.^[196]

Many individual JNA soldiers who took part in the battle were revolted by what they had seen and protested to their superiors about the behaviour of the paramilitaries. Colonel Milorad Vučić later commented that "they simply do not want to die for such things". The atrocities that they witnessed led some to experience subsequent feelings of trauma and guilt. A JNA veteran told a journalist from the Arabic-language newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat:

'I was in the Army and I did my duty. Vukovar was more of a slaughter than a battle. Many women and children were killed. Many, many.' I asked him: 'Did you take part in the killing?' He answered: 'I deserted.' I asked him: 'But did you kill anyone?' He replied: 'I deserted after that ... The slaughter of Vukovar continues to haunt me. Every night I imagine that the war has reached my home and that my own children are being butchered.'^[143]

Other Yugoslav reaction

In Bosnia and Herzegovina, President Alija Izetbegović made a televised appeal to Bosnian citizens to refuse the draft on the grounds that "this is not our war". He called it their "right and duty" to resist the "evil deeds" being committed in Croatia and said: "Let those who want it, wage it. We do not want this war."^[101] When JNA troops transferred to the front via the Višegrad region of north-eastern Bosnia, local Bosnian Croats and Muslims set up barricades and machine-gun posts. They halted a column of 60 JNA tanks but were dispersed by force the following day. More than 1,000 people had to flee the area. This action, nearly seven months before the start of the Bosnian War, caused the first casualties of the Yugoslav Wars in Bosnia.^[197]

Macedonia's parliament adopted a declaration of independence from Yugoslavia in January 1991, but it did not take effect until a referendum in September 1991 confirmed it. A group of Macedonian JNA officers secretly sought to prevent soldiers from Macedonia being sent to Croatia, and busloads of soldiers' parents, funded by the Macedonian government, travelled to Montenegro to find their sons and bring them home.^[198] Meanwhile, Macedonians continued to be conscripted into the JNA and serve in the war in Croatia.^[198] The commander of JNA forces in the first phase of the battle, General Aleksandar Spirkovski, was a Macedonian. His ethnicity was probably a significant factor in the decision to replace him with Života Panić, a Serb.^[45] In 2005, the Macedonian Army's Chief of Staff, General Miroslav Stojanovski, became the focus of international controversy after it was alleged that he had been involved in possible war crimes following the battle.^[199]