The politico-economic relationship between Germany and the Balkan states was, from the end of the nineteenth century, one of unequal interdependence. The strategic value of the Balkan states for an export-dependent and resourcedependent industrial state like Germany was manifest in the Berlin–Bagdhad railway project, two world wars and the close relationship with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The region’s value to Germany’s economic and political elites has been manifest more recently in the wake of Yugoslavia’s disintegration More