Analyzing Media's Role in the Balkan Campaign During World War II

This essay delves into the critical role of media during World War II, focusing specifically on the Balkan Campaign. It explores how media outlets, including newspapers, radio, and newsreels, shaped public perception, disseminated information, and influenced the course of the conflict. The essay highlights the impact of media in escalating ethnic tensions, promoting nationalist ideologies, and potentially contributing to war crimes. By examining the Balkan Campaign, the analysis underscores the complex relationship between media, conflict, and peace, emphasizing the need for responsible journalism and the importance of media literacy in mitigating the negative consequences of biased reporting and propaganda. The essay also discusses how media can be used for peace-building, conflict management, and the prevention of serious issues, highlighting that the role of media in both conflict and maintaining peace should not be underestimated.

Running head: MEDIA’S ROLE IN CONFLICT
Media’s role in conflict
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note

1MEDIA’S ROLE IN CONFLICT
Conflicts during World War II
The Second World War took place in the period of 1939- 1945. From the ending months
of 1940 till the beginning of 1941 a number of conflicts evolved which had ultimately taken the
shape of the deadly war. The campaign of East Africa and the Western Desert took place in this
period. The issue of the campaign had emerged due to the fighting between the Italian and
British forces across the deserts of Libya and Egypt from the stretch of Kenya to Ethiopia (Baden
and Tenenboim-Weinblatt 2017).
A cooperation declaration was signed in Berlin between Germany, Japan and Italy which
was named as the Tripartite Pact. There were incidents in which the forces of Japan had captured
Vietnam in order to establish their base in French Indo- China and kept on attacking China.
On the other hand, Mussolini had ordered his men to put an attack on Greece which
evolved as the Greco- Italian War and the Balkans campaign. The battle of Britain also continued
along with because the German and British forces continued their bombing raids and attacks in
the sea (Bell 2014).
The United States of America intensified the amount of the continuing global conflict by
commencing lend- lease program. As per the program, they had shipped arms and other materials
of worth $50 billion to the associated countries. A dark episode started shaping up in this way.
The Germans also added to the darkness by building up walled ghettos in Warsaw and other
places of Poland in order to collect the Jews and moving them forcefully into the enclaves
(Björkdahl and Buckley-Zistel 2016).
Balkans campaign

2MEDIA’S ROLE IN CONFLICT
Out of all the conflicts, the Balkan campaign can be selected as the topic of discussion for
the rest of the assignment. The Balkan campaign took place as a result of the Italian attack on
Greece. This incident happened in the year 1940 on 28th of October. The campaign got the name
from the Balkan Peninsula which is a situated in the disputed area of Eastern and South Eastern
Europe. This specific region has Balkan Mountains which continued from the Serbian- Bulgarian
border to the Black Sea (Crampton 2014).
In the beginning of 1941, Italy had started the invasion and Greece replied with a counter
attack in Albania. This lit the fire of the Balkan campaign. Germany arranged for troops to send
to Romania and Bulgaria so that Italy can get the required support to attack Greece from the
eastern side. At the same time, the British had also sent troops and air forces for defending
Greece (Duke, Phillips and Conover 2014).
On 27th March 1941 the Yugoslav coup d’état took place in Belgrade, the Kingdom of
Yugoslavia. This incident was planned and executed by a group of supporters of Western Serb
nationalist which made Hitler furious and he ordered for the capture of the country. As per the
order, the attack of Yugoslavia began with the joint effort of Italy and Germany on 6th April
alongside the Battle of Greece.
Again on 11th April, Hungary participated in the attack which made the Yugoslavs sign
for a settlement. By 30th April, all the major parts of Greece were under the control of German or
Italy. Again on 20th May Germany continued the conflict by invading Crete giving rise to the
Battle of Crete in 1941 (Elbasani and Roy 2015). By 1st June rest of the Greek and British forces
on the particular island had surrendered to Germany. Bulgaria was not a part of the attack that

3MEDIA’S ROLE IN CONFLICT
took place in April but it successfully captured some areas of Yugoslavia as well as Greece for
the rest of the Balkan war.
The conflict started taking shape in the year 1939 when Mussolini’s forces had attacked
Albania to capture Zog and occupied the country to the Italian Empire. On 1st June 1941, all the
areas Albania, Greece and Yugoslavia were under the Axis control with Greece being placed
under triple occupation and at the same time Yugoslavia was also captured and dissolved (Elbaz
and Bar-Tal 2016). In this way Germany had been able to get a significant advantage over
strategy by getting direct access to the Mediterranean. Although they joined the Axis powers but
Bulgaria did not participate in the attack of Yugoslavia and also in the battle of Greece. Again on
20th April, The Bulgarian forces captured a major part of the Western Thrace along with the
Greek province of Eastern Macedonia which was already under the control of Germany. Their
aim was to regain the 1st World War outlet to the Aegan Sea. The Bulgarian forces also captured
a lot of Eastern Serbia which was segregated between Bulgaria and Italy (Goul, Balkan and Dolk
2015).
For the remaining part of the war, active resistance from Greece, Yugoslavia and Albania
pushed Germany and the associated countries to stronghold a number of soldiers in the three
countries and with denied permission to other fronts. After 1943, the threats from the associated
countries in Yugoslavia and the activities of the supporters facilitated a large amount of opposing
and revolt operations which included numerous divisions. During World War II the incidents of
murder, rape and mass capital punishment were very common by the Partisan fighters and the
Chetnik rebels and German troops. The resistance posed to Hitler resulted in a terrible brutality
in Yugoslavia during the war (Hamelink 2015).

4MEDIA’S ROLE IN CONFLICT
It was mentioned in the previous paragraphs that the dictator Adolf Hitler had ordered for
the invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia. This assault was launched by him in order to protect the
Balkan border of Germany for his spring invasion of Soviet Union of 1941, Operation
Barbarossa. During the period of World War II the population structure of Yugoslavia was really
complicated. The two popular ethnic groups were the Serbs and Croats apart from the Albanians,
Slovenes and Macedonians. There was also a miniscule part of Muslim population. Hitler made
use of the situation caused due to tension between the ethnic groups specifically between the
Serbs and the Croats. This made the Yugoslav forces succumb to the attack that they faced from
all the three sides and the Croatian also surrendered in front of the attacking Germans (Hart
2015).
Role of media
Media plays a major role in the peace building, managing conflict and preventing serious
issues. This can change the perception of the general people about the media. The various
categories of media are used for the purpose of distributing knowledge on a global scale and thus
the free mass media is considered as a tool of democracy from a very long time.
Analysis of the role of media in the process of conflict has focuses on the potential of the
media to support the efforts of democracy in order to build up sustainable peace. It can be
mentioned in this regard that no similar efforts have been put before to analyze the role played
by the media in the prevention of conflict. Also, the media’s ability to provoke conflict has not
been evaluated properly (Irion and Jusic 2014).
Role of media in the World War II

5MEDIA’S ROLE IN CONFLICT
The media was the key source of information for the Americans during the era of World
War II. Moreover, the media has been responsible for shaping up the image of Adolf Hitler as it
was portrayed by most of the Americans during that time. The media had spread the information
about the war through radio, newspapers, newsreels and magazines.
Prior to the attack of Japan on the American fleet of ship in Pearl Harbor they were not
much involved in the war. As soon as the information had spread about the attack on Pearl
Harbor, all the Americans kept sitting in front of the radio. The information that the people got
through the media helped them to realize that Pearl Harbor was a part of their own country and
as a matter of fact they seemed to be at war. The newspaper sector of the press was established
long ago before the 1st World War which not only served the purpose of informing people about
the war but also played a part in civil rights which was not a popular issue for broadcasting till
that day (Kolstø 2016).
Balkan campaign and the media
The flame of Balkan conflict was ignited by newspapers and electronic media which
controlled the ultra nationalist government of that period. During the war period, the media
propagated the ideas of a ‘one man/ one party’ rule. The arrival of the national media all over the
Balkans in that period served the purpose of a middleman in the production of Milosevic tenet. It
is important to mark at this point that not all the media person in the Balkans were victim of
national extremism but there were many who had died in Bosnia. This resulted in the trial of
upholding the principles of free and independent journalism (Iriye 2014).
The significance of the role of media in both conflict and maintaining peace should not
be underestimated. Although media had been responsible for promoting ethnic tensions in the

6MEDIA’S ROLE IN CONFLICT
Balkans in the previous years but the issues of state, society and press were overlooked. This was
a major mistake which should have been prevented by the global community in the effort of
promoting peace to other areas of conflict all over the world. The media was considered as
powerful equipment in the process of balkanization as well as resolution. Even though there were
many media outlets in the Balkan areas which had changed from preaching unity to promote
cultural and patriotic hate in the later period.
The media during the Balkan conflict did not fail to prove their effectiveness as a symbol
of inter- cultural resolution when they were motivated to do so. The audience who appreciates
the good part in journalism exceeds cultural boundaries (Kaldellis 2013). In order to fight
nationalistic and cultural voices in the media sector, the global community required to back up
the democratic media organizations which look out to reach above the ethno- political
boundaries. The intervention done by the global community was on the basis of presumption that
the members of the Balkan areas do not share the same language. The ethnic tensions that were
created in the conflict areas were not possible to fight by the global community using the ethnic
responses. A huge amount of finance was used for the media to operate in different languages.
In order to fight the media the integrated with extreme patriotic or ethnocentric
promotion, the global community must look into the expansion of democratic media that is
considered as the possible alternative by the local community are not closely similar (Kaiser
2015). It can be stated that media reporting during the Balkan period escalated the conflict and
might have been responsible for inflicting war crimes. The working and contribution of the local
media gave rise to inter ethnic fear and hatred in the specific period. It can be undoubtedly
mentioned that the media was instrumental in arranging the stage for atrocities that took place in
the Balkans at that period.

7MEDIA’S ROLE IN CONFLICT
The war leaders of the former Yugoslavia would not have been successful in the use of
lethal mechanism of the army until nationalism was generated earlier. The Balkan conflict sets
an example how the media was developed in the post war period through positive and negative
intervention. Media in that specific region had been always facing criticism for igniting conflicts
and instigating hatred and fear among the local cultural community. The war in the former
Yugoslavia had taken a bad shape with the influence of the media and is still continuing. The
press and the electronic media controlled the political parties too who preferred conflict over
discussion and compromise. The whole assignment has focused on the role played by media in
evoking conflict since the Second World War and the effect of it is still in the run (Patrick 2016).

8MEDIA’S ROLE IN CONFLICT
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