Die Carnegie-Mission von 1913:: Ausgangslage, Durchführung und internationale Reaktionen

Abstract

In the autumn of 1913, the so-called Carnegie Committee visited the Balkan countries. The committee consisted of unbiased intellectuals, sent by the Carnegie Endowment for Peace in New York, in order to investigate the mutual accusations that the Balkan states uttered against each other about the course and conduct of the Balkan Wars. They were especially welcome in Bulgaria, the country that had sparked the second Balkan War and thus faced the largest number of war crime allegations. After their return, the members of the committee published the results of the investigation in an extensive volume, both in French and English. In the report, they concluded that the committed atrocities were generally characteristic of military actions at the time and that one could hardly determine that any of the Balkan nations was more guilty than the other. The paper examines the activity of the committee and analyses its publication by referring to the archives of the Carnegie endowment, materials from Bulgarian archives and the contemporary press.