Why was there nothing concerning the liberation of the Ustasha dea_th camps such as Jasenovac? Did they still exist? Was their liberation not documented?
@@Hope_Boat”liberation” of ac death camp is a bit of disconcerting way of putting it. Discovery of the remains is a better term. I’ve covered it in previous episodes.
@@spartacus-olsson liberation of concentration camps is the standard term used by everyone in schools and elsewhere. Discovery of remains is 2024 media line used to justify israel's genocide of palestinans. It is ok to have a belief Sir, but to pretend that it is facts is truly one of the most despicable ways to wage war against humanity
There is a famous joke in Slovenia regarding creation of borders after ww2: During border negotiations between Yugoslavia and Italy, all sides were at an impasse. Unable to reach a resolution through traditional diplomatic means, someone proposed a rather unconventional solution: a 24-hour war. The idea was simple - whichever side's frontline moved the furthest in 24 hours would determine the new border. Surprisingly, Great Britain, the USA, and the Soviet Union all agreed to the proposal. However, when France was approached, it strongly opposed the idea. Puzzled by France's adamant refusal, the other nations questioned why. The French president's response was unexpected yet humorous: "We don't want to share a border with Yugoslavia."
My dad, a vet of WWII and Korea, told me over and over again in the 60s and 70s, "Only Tito can hold Yugoslavia together. When he goes, it goes." And so we have seen. Tito played his own game, frustrating the USSR and confusing NATO.
My late dad was an tech army officer in Tito's JNA army. While serving in the Croatian capital Zagreb, the moment Tito died in 1980, civilians and some army members started to rumor that country SFRJ will for sure collapse. In the Yugoslav capital Belgrade where I live now, such a rumor was blasphemy.
@@SrdjanBasaric-w2s What about his Russian wife and their son Misha Hero of USSR Red Army living in Belgrade and teaching of communism ? He was most obviously colaborating with the both sides. He even got child with the Russian wife and not with the Croatian Lika Serb wife Jovanka. Clear sign that merging of the Croats and Serbs is not going to happen, same with the joint state.
My family fought for Croatia for centuries. After 1945 they were forced to leave Croatia and if they didnt they would be dead or in jail. They confiscated all our assest that we had for decades and centuries. My family is in USA since then and only my father, my mother, my brother and me are in Croatia. Thats Tito if you have doubts
Russian became the link language between Albanian technicians and the Soviet technicians sent to assist Albania with economic development. Following the break with the USSR, it apparently remained the lingua franca in use - Chinese technicians had often themselves learned their trade at Soviet technology institutes, including the Russian language, and when sent to Albania it was convenient for them to just keep using Russian. Although at one point during the Cultural Revolution, it seems the only permitted foreign language for Chinese to learn was Albanian.
I dated a girl from Yugoslavia about 15 years ago. Her parents had a picture of Tito over their fireplace. They said that he was tough but fair, and during the 60s-80s, Yugoslavia was a fine country and it wasn't nearly as oppressive as other communist countries and people were free to travel if they choose and religion was allowed and everyone got by and there was even Western music and media readily available without much censorship. Then he died and things went to Hell in a hand basket. I've met other people from the Balkans who also have a good opinion of him. One man's tyrant is another man's hero.
@@whiteoctober4582 What you call "brainwashing" a lot of people, including myself, a fair system. Definitely not perfect, but much better than the alternative capitalism, under which boot the balkans now rest. It is most interesting how you ascribe the trait "intimidation" to socialist regimes, but you would, I assume, ascribe "freedom" to capitalist ones, ones whose entire basis of ideology and existence rests in exploitation and materialism.
@@malimate2660 No where did i find that he got help or shelter by the Vatican, i found that he got those from Italy which is not the same. If you could share your sources i'd be interesting in reading.
I suggest you watch the 1980's Hollywood movie "The Scarlet and the Black" starring Gregory Peck which is based on true events in WW2 to understand the Vatican's view on helping the Allies and the Axis.
Thanks for deep words about Yugoslavia. My father, at that time time 17 years old, was one of only few suvivors from belogardists returned to Yugoslavia. Hate must stop. But never forget the war against humanity from whatever side.
As a stamp collector Yugoslavia is a fascinating place. It starts with the stamps from the Kingdom of Serbs Croats and Slovenes formed in 1918. Then we have the image of Peter the First on stamps and in the early stamp albums Yugoslavia was spelled Jugoslavia .And each government from the partisans in the war up into modern times produced their own stamps.
Yee they are fascinating I inherited a stamp collection from my great grandfather, he basically lived through all of those times and hand painted flags of nations as sections for different stamps
As a Croat that had one grandfather amongst the retreating NDH army, never to be heard of again (most likely died in the woods south of Maribor, in Tezno), and the other grandfather a Partisan officer having been ordered to execute political opposition around Zagreb, later tried for these war crimes, convicted and served 13 years for them (the commanding officer had been dealt with in Tito's purges prior to my grandfather trial, so no witnesses of the order), I can say this is one of the best historical episode about that very ugly ending of the war in Yugoslavia. Several things I feel worthy of mentioning (military wise): 1. Battle of Lijevča Polje early May 1945. - Draža Mihajlović did order the Chetnik army to form resistance in eastern Bosnia and Serbia, but the larger part of that army under Pavle Đurišić actually split off Mihajlović and started their march westwards. These troops were a mix of Serb Chetniks but also of Montenegrin Chetniks. The route they took was down Vrbas river, where the NDH troops awaited in order to square their own stuff with them. At that point the Monenegrin Chetniks switched sides and aided the Ustasha and Homeguard (domobrani) to completely destroy that large Chetnik formation (larger than Mihailović's). 2. Battle of Odžak - the last strongpoint of stranded Ustasha and Homeguard troops that could not (or would not) get out of Bosnia after the breakthrough of the Syrmian front in April 1945. was at Odžak pocket, an area south of the Sava river deep into now Partisan held territory. That group held against the Partisans sent to destroy them until its final demise on May 25th 1945, long after the official end of WW2 in Europe. To be honest, the partisan divisions were very badly led, and were getting in the battle piecemeal wishfully thinking they'll easily destroy the Ustashas that had no hope of survival thus fought to the death, and this prolonged the battle until reinforcements in tanks arrived. Another interesting point: at 1:20 the aerial photo of Vis shows a structure that doesn't exist anymore since 1964., namely the Orthodox church, and there is an interesting story behind it. The island of Vis used to be 99% catholic, as the rest of the Dalmatian coast, until after WW1. Then the new king of Yugoslavia proclaimed an imminent agrarian reform stating "the land shall belong to the person that cultivates it". This resounded among the peasants on the island of Vis as huge plot of land there were actually owned by the Roman Catholic church and other landlords, while the peasant worked on it and payed rent in 1/5 - 1/10 of the crops. Immediately an orthodox priest arrived from Obrovac (a Serb Orthodox area of Croatia) and agitated among the peasants that if they converted to Orthodoxy they would get the reform done much sooner (untrue), while the conservative Roman Catholic priest in Vis very much opposed the reform and still forced the peasants to pay the thithe. A large number of peasants, for their economic reason, then converted (didn't get the reform as promised, had to wait as the rest), but the Orthodox priest then got huge donations from other Orthodox communities and managed to build that church in 1931. Well, as the peasants didn't get what was promised, around 1933-34 onwards they stopped converting, with many of them reverting back to Catholicism. Then WW2 erupted. During 1944.-45. the island was the HQ of Tito's partisans, and since there was great danger of a German attack (as happened on all the other islands, including Hvar, Brač and Korčula), the partisans organized that the majority of the civilian population be relocated as refugees to El Shat in Egypt (via Italy). Upon landing in Italy though, the Orthodox part was approached by the Chetniks there and promised to get into much better refugee camps around Alexandria (El Shat being in the middle of the desert, really a pitiful place), and these Vis civilians of Orthodox faith agreed (again, for their own personal cause). Their opinion at the time was that after the war the King shall return and they shall be welcomed back, but that didn't happen. So, they never returned to Vis but after the war relocated mostly to USA, Canada and Australia, while the Catholics did return from El Shat. As there were no more Orthodox in Vis the church (meanwhile bombed by the Germans) became derelict, and finally in 1964. the Vis community asked and got permission by the head of Orthodox church in Dalmatia (presiding in Šibenik) to tear down the derelict building in order to make a park there. They payed a substantial sum of money for it, and that money was used by the Orthodox church to refurbish the destroyed Orthodox church building in Knin where the Serb Orthodox remained in Croatia.
Knowing the horrific persecutions of the orthodox by the Hustasha regime during WWII one should take any stories concerning how and why the orthodox churches were destroyed there with circonspection.
@@Hope_Boat the island of Vis NEVER fell in the hand of Ustashas, as it was in Italian hands until the Italian capitulation in september 1943., form then on it was under the Partisans with a large number of Allied liasion, navy and airforce personnel on it. Thus, NO, the church wasn't damaged on purpose by Ustashas, rather collaterally bombed during multiple German air raids on the Partisan main HQ. In 1964. the decision to remove it was through a joint agreement between the Vis community (ofc communist leaders) and the Orthodox mitropoly in Šibenik. The sum that was payed for the land by the community towards the Orthodox church is registered, and it was used to repair a working church building. Nothing funny there.
@@Hope_Boat Vis was first occupied by Italy and then was the headquarter for the partisans. I don't know more specifics, but it would surprise me to hear that orthodox were persecuted on Vis as much as in the NDH.
That didn't happen at Lijevča polje. There wasn't larger group of Chetniks than Draža's Chetniks that have spent more than 7 months on NDH grounds without being touched by Ustasha in surrounding garrisons (Brčko, Doboj, Odžak etc.). At that time, Draža even gives a rank in his army to Ustasha commander in Vareš for his cooperation. When Đurišić split with Draža, he made deal with Ustasha Poglavnik (Fuhrer) Pavelić. They decided to become army of independent Montenegro, even though they were for Greater Serbia, so Pavelić gave them a new leader, Sekula Drljević from Montenegro. In light of this agreement, on 22th of March 1945, 800 Chetniks that were sick of typhoid or wounded were transfered over Sava to Slavonski Brod for treatment. Đurišić, however, didn't listen to his order by Pavelić to stay put but continued westward. In 2 days battle, most Chetniks surrendered, with Đurišić being captured with his HQ and killed in Stara Gradiška concentration camp. rest of Chetniks were integrated in Ustasha forces as Montenegrian army but as soon as Ustasha retreated west to Slovenia they killed Drljević and became Chetniks again. In the end, they shared fate with Ustasha and were killed in Tezno, Zidani Most and other places. Group of modern Motenegro researches found names of 5221 people that retreated with Đurišić from Montengro to NDH in 1944. German estimate from December state that there were 7000 Chetnik retreating alongside them. Of 5221, 656 survived the war. 110 died retreating through Bosnia(79 of typhoid), 48 were KIA on Lijevče Polje (out of 222 KIA), 29 were killed in Ustasha camps and 3019 died in Slovenia, out of which 2328 were claimed to be shot by Partisans and others were just listed as died, missing or died in combat (71). Ustasha ministry of defense mentiones 69 dead Chetniks on 6th of April and 71 dead on 7th of April, with some 9000 captured. Keep in mind that these estimates are laregly exaggerated. Both Ustasha and Chetnik emigration blow this battle out of proportion for their purpouses, but it was small scale battle compared to other ones going on in Yugoslavia that day. It was very common that both German and Yugoslav divisions pile up hundreds of death in a day of action in last 2 months, more than died on Lijevča polje.
@@brankodrljaca1313 thx, I looked up the work of Milan Radanović, seems that what you wrote holds. One thing though, iirc Sekula Drljević was murdered AFTER the war, in a detention camp, not prior to the end of the war?
@@PeoplecallmeLucifer culture is also big factor. Serbs had lot of Ottoman influence while Croats had mostly Hungarian and Austrian influences. Religion wasnt the only difference.
@@madkoala2130 Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh Religion is waht carved us up. I mean Dalmatia, Lika, Slavonia and Istria are all pretty different from each other. But they are all catholic
Our moderators and TH-cam are not going to remove the warnings, but they will remove the hateful comments, justification of atrocities, and other filth. This is War Against Humanity - Humanity will win.
@@KroiAlbanoiArbanon I have already seen to many stupid pro Yugoslavia comments get upvoted & surprised they have not used the phrase “color revolutions”
Ok, let me address some issues I find here. My grandfather was a partisan from the start in Vojvodina. Not ideologically, but just because the Germans and the Nazis were, well Nazis and done some horrific stuff to their friends, loved ones etc. When the Soviets came, he joined them and fought with the Russians as a volunteer. His friends were Russians, he was treated as a friend, not as dirt as this video states. There was an attempt of rape by the Russians, and let me be clear, those were the penal battalions who did that. They fought without proper shoes or clothes and were convicted murderers. That one who attempted rape in my neighborhood, he was executed on the spot. Ok, and then another thing to add about ethnic cleansing of Germans from the Banat region. These were the people who got expelled from the country. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulturbund_(Yugoslavia) From the the books I have read, almost all of Germans in Yugoslavia actively supported Nazism, and collaborated, killed, tortured etc. On the other hand Hungarians were not that sympathetic to Hitler, and a lot of them joined partisans etc. and stayed and live to this day in northern Serbia. Also to add, most of the people in for example Bosnia, like my other grandparents, joined partisans, of Chetniks so they will be protected against the ustashe during the start of the war. They were not communists, or monarchists, it was a way to survive, because if you stayed in your village, minding your business, you were dead the next day. That's why a lot of people joined various sides, just to have some protection and to survive.
Attempted rape by the Russians? It's not attempted if they actually did it. Russian soldiers were rarely persecuted for raping Germans. The ones that saw any consequences were in the minority. I didn't expect a USSR apologist here.
Е, браћала мој Војвођански, тако је било у Срему, где су били партизански крајеви. Пошто с једне стране вучем порекло слично твојем, знам. Међутим, у Банату је било друго. У Банату су били четници. И силовања је било толико да су се четници, још увек савезници и неразоружани, дигли и осули паљбу по њима. О томе те нико није информисао до сад. И неће. Такве ствари ко би раније говорио, јео би га мрак. Тако се чувала "чедност комунистичке прошлости".
И... да знаш и ово.. то што су били код нас.. и направили масовну чистку .. нису били Руси, него Совјетија, а у оквиру Совјетије - Украјинци. Исти они код којих је данас то страшно стање. Не желим им зло, али ми је бар јасно зашто им се то страшно стање данас - дешава. Они .. тим заузећем мирне наше Краљевине.. нашу будућност.. уништише... све што вреди.. побили су.. у врло кратком року. Искуснији од Хитлерових одреда смрти у својим масовним егзекуцијама. Хитлеровци су имали праксе само десетак година уочи и у току 2.св. рата а ови су то радили ..д еценијама над јадним руским народом. Данас нико у 2.св.рату не прича и не говори уопште о руским и српским жртавама, само зато што су били словени и православци. Ко да тих жртава - испаде . и није било. А статистике кажу да је то национално и верски било најстрадалније становништво. Страдалније од жидова, које Холивуд за свеце, малтене прогласи. Док.. тај талас убијања.. БАШ они замесише... и сами учествоваше у покољима. Руске цареве Ромавнове - ОНИ су ритуално побили. Руски народ, то знај- никад не би убио свог цара. Нити би нашег Дражу - србин издо. Зато. је спремн посебан агент, жидов који се вратио у родни Дубровник да земени своје жидовско име и презиме за српско - Иван Ивановић. Нико није знао зашто. А ето.. зато.. да у историји остане уписан као "србин који издаде Дражу", а не као јеврејин. Да заштити своје од одмазде, да и нама одузме борбени дух и морал.
The American intelligence agency NSA speculated after WW2 (report declassified and published in 2013) that Tito was actually a Russian or a Pole, based on oddities in the way he spoke Serbo-Croatian. However, his native language was Kajkavian, generally regarded as a form of Croatian with some affinities to Slovene, and this explained the features of his dialect.
I always appreciate these episodes, particularly the ending statements which bring the history to a lesson point from which we can learn and act on today. Thank you for this great work!
I just wanted to say thank you for this essential series there is not a week that goes by that I have not learned something new, and yet been sadden by the plight of so so so many innocent people. I will promise you to never forget.
The thanks should really go to James who’s covering for me to write at the moment while I prepare our future series, and deal with the tedium of management responsibilities.
No. Already had a few removed for not sticking to the "liberalism good" narrative and actually criticizing their downright misleading comments about the nature of socialism.
Nah, the Adriatic coast might have been too soft an underbelly for Churchill. Between Gallipoli and Italy, Mr. Churchill seems to have preferred marching up long, mountainous, easily defensible peninsula.
Churchill was no strategist. He almost always confused political goals with strategic ones and he was delusional about "soft underbellies". Thankfully FDR and George Marshall vetoed the worst of his insane plans.
@@Conn30MtenorChurchill was a warmonger and a liability for europe. There is very little written about his involvement in fuelling tension through the interwar period, and his plan with Roosevelt on what to do with Germany after ww2 was what you could only describe as barbaric and despicable
@@euphoriaggaminghd This is harsh - Churchill had minimal influence interwar, he was very much a "voice in the wilderness" then. Also, when you talk about his plan with Roosevelt, you perhaps were thinking about the Morgenthau plan, which was never taken up. Remember that in reality, the allies were extraordinarily generous to Europe in reconstruction after the war.
@@markdurre2667 the allies were so generous that they let the Soviets annex half of Eastern Europe and puppet the rest! Make Germany bankrupt the first time and then split them in two! How generous. But absolutely no talk on how Churchill is an evil warmonger himself, they say he's a hero!
@@djetinjstvo_u_boji And there’s the folly of autocracy. It’s great if the one guy in charge knows what he’s doing, but all it takes is one guy who doesn’t. Just ask Cromwell’s son.
His solution to every political crisis was decentralization. Probably shouldn't have been that it imploded for secession crises and ethnic strife given that.
Yugoslavia was broken from outside not from inside,it was the foreign money and later on bombs that destroyed socialist republic of Yuoslavia,it was the blood money of the west that financed nationalist movements inside most of the yugoslavian republics.
I'm very gratefull to you all at timeghost for the amazing work that you do. Must be a nightmare researching for episodes like this. You've greatly broadend my horizons time and time again. Much love to you all and thank you
God bless you Sparty. It's a tough and thankless job being the guardian and conveyor of such dark chapters of history. I thank you nonetheless, cheers from Albany New York 🍻
For a long time, I have come to expect powerful closing narratives from Spartacus in each and every episode of War Against Humanity. My compliments to the TimeGhost team and a special mention to James Newman for his research and writing.
"[...] But when you idolize a leader who validates your anger and hatred and promises you retribution, it is not a place of suffering for your perceived enemies that you will get. You'll get, suffering for everyone. For these, leaders are no leaders, they are conmen who are just mirroring your hate. Anger breeds anger, and violence breeds violence. And choosing autocrats to represent you, sets you on a journey to a land of misery where anger and violence can grow unfettered. Sooner or later that terror will be yours to suffer. Never forget!" Ouch. That was heavy...
Have no idea what's he on about there. As a Croatian i'll tell you that Tito's Yugoslavia was the closes thing to Utopia the region saw since the Byzantine empire...the West helped with putting Tito on his throne and now claim he was a dictator hmmm...but than again...if he was so bad, why did he had the biggest funeral in history where every county in the world sent it's representative.
@@Omidion Tito kept Yugoslavia from being a Soviet puppet state, but he was a dictator. You can say he was a popular dictator or a benevolent dictator, but you can’t deny what he was, how he suppressed opposition, and how he ran Yugoslavia. During the Cold War he played both sides while publicly siding with the Soviets. This is because the Soviets were a greater threat to Yugoslavian sovereignty. I’m neither approving of Tito and his party nor disapproving. I’m just describing the delicate balance Tito achieved to maintain Yugoslavian independence from the Soviets. I don’t like “ends justify the means” arguments, but Tito’s bloody and inhumane suppression of identity based opposition (who had a history of being just as inhumane) probably avoided even greater bloodshed, at least until he died. Anyway, this is what I was taught about Yugoslavia in my youth, which was during the last decade of the Cold War. Yugoslavia was a socialist dictatorship, but maintained its independence from the Kremlin (unlike Poland, East Germany, and other Central European nations in the Soviet Bloc). Domestically, Tito kept a lid on ethnic tensions. We were taught that even though Tito was socialist, he was to be admired for not falling under the thumb of Stalinism. If this an is overly simple view, it’s because we weren’t taught much more.
An excellent presentation and a good speech at the end. I remember that some 1.7 Million Yugoslavs died in WW2, how many by each others hands is sobering to contemplate.
I was born in former Yugoslavia in one of those places that many post war massacres took place. They were discovering the caves and digging up bodies throughout all of my childhood in the 90s and 2000s and still probably many places are hidden. Even after Yugoslavia broke up and communism was gone the elderly locals were scared to give any information about bodies locations because they feared reprisals from previous system. It was really horrible to murder every single one from top to bottom (17, 16 years old soldiers) even the soviets didn't do that with the German POW. Machine guns were working all nights in the woods for weeks. Prisoners were brought infront of the ditches shoot with machine guns and feel down the ditch. Because there were so many some prisoners just got injured and fall down and hid under the bodies and later managed to escape out the ditch and after hiding and hiking through woods managed to escape out of Yugoslavia but those were very few.
Thanks Sparty and the crew. This is a tough subject. Like many, but it it's seriously divisive like no other I know. There is no winners in war, is all I can say, I felt you treated the subject matter with restraint and balance. Perhaps more restraint than normal, but I accept until this day , it's a hiding to nothing situation . maybe you should have turned the comments off for this one? I don't dare even read them. For fear of not coming out alive!
First, you guys become my favorite source of information about the first world war, and all topics directly related to it Now you did the same for second world war I look forward to your next series
Will simply link to the best most needed part to be heard in a sea of important parts needed to be heard in this modern youtube age, across the spectrum. 21:32
King Peter made that broadcast to join the Partisans due to the extreme pressure he was under to do so by Churchill / the Allies. He was exiled during the war in Great Britain and was their guest, so he really didn’t have a choice
As someone who lives in the region and as someone that has researched that period of Yugoslav history for over 10 years now i would like to thank you for making a video that shows not all but most of the truth of what happened. It is really hard to piece together what is true and false especially after 70 years
I'm always amazed how Churchill thought he had any right to decide other nations destiny , all his decisions are so dumb and out of touch with reality .
I've often thought to myself that Yugoslavia's existence essentially put a lid on the nationalistic wars of the early 20th century that gripped the rest of Europe, and that what we eventually saw in the 90's was the result of that pressure slowly building over the decades exploding outwards once there was no Tito there to force them all together sitting atop that ticking time bomb.
@@malimate2660 I'm getting the feeling English isn't your first language so I'll be brief; because your explanation downplays the very real nationalistic forces that gripped every part of former yugoslavia, which is a far bigger cause than Russian meddling. Countries are not poker chips for super powers with no agency of their own
@@ShadowGricken When you live on a powder keg, then you know where the fire could come from.I know the history of these areas very well and speak objectively, because the imperialist plans were published 150 years ago and renewed recently, together with Putin's announcements about the 'Russian world'.
You demonstrated a rather superficial understanding of the post 2nd WW Yugoslavia. Of course there were retributions, of course it was painful time because nations/families were torn apart between nazi collaborators and partisans. But to portray the situation as all hatred and Tito as a conman is not worth of a serious consideration. FYI, partisans didn’t fight Croatians. They fought nazi collaborators. Partisans were also Croatians.
Croatian partisans goal was not only liberation from occupying armies, but reorganizing the country and getting a self governed federal unit. They had a political leadership thinking far ahead in the future.
As a student working on my Master's in History and Teaching, with a minor in Political Science, I love and appreciate all of these episodes and entire series. As a Marxist though, I do sometimes have to sigh and shake my head. Equal parts that and love for the entire series so far. From the Great War series to now, and the Korea Series, I will continue to watch. Much love from the US
Good work Sparty. I may have criticized you in the past, but a couple of the later episodes are really good work. I noticed a certain deviation from the communist version of WWII history, which is usually the path of least resistance for any "Western" historian who has the ungrateful task of researching ex-Yugoslavia's WWII history. Their version is usually straightforward: we were the good guys in every possible way, never considered any rotten compromises, and like Prometheus, "we brought light" to this uncouth people who, before us, lived in the dark ages. As a kid growing up in the last decade of communist rule, I had the impression that everything prior to 1941 was the Stone Age, and the "true history" began after. Yes, it is depressing to dig deep into our endless shades of grey, but we (at least I do) very much appreciate your work. There were some other factions and militias that you probably never heard of, like Kosta Pećanac's Chetniks, the Russian Protective Corps (Russian Cossacks who fled to Yugoslavia after the Bolshevik Revolution), and the Serbian Volunteer Corps. Since the communists simplified the whole history and made it suitable for themselves, we need someone neutral, who has no connections to the region, to create a completely unbiased version of WWII history in our region.
Sorry Sparty, but your butchery of the Serbo-Croatian language and names is almost at the level of the butchery going on there in the 40s. Č/Ć= ch, C=ts, Ž=zh (or like a French j), Z=z, Š=sh, S=s, Đ=g as in George, D=d
My apologies… I should make more of an effort, and I would if it wasn’t for the pain it causes us to make videos about your region. It’s sad, because like all aspects of history, and all regions we love to dive into it - but the reactions we get when we make videos about “the Balkans” is just so bloody depressing that we end up treating it with less energy than it’s worthy of. My apologies, it’s not what we should do - but ten years of doing this and seeing the same result over, and over, and over again when we go here is just deflating. I’ll just quote what one of our team members said while working on this video: “it makes you suicidal.” Not because it’s the worst stuff we talk about (there are many things even more depressing) but because of the nearly impossible to research made up historiography and the way the comment section _always_ becomes another Balkan War battlefield.
@@spartacus-olsson nobody is perfect. Having said that, thank you for another great episode! As someone from the region, it's very refreshing to follow such detailed and unbiased coverage of this dark subject.
Tito had a small cottage on Divulje barracks right on the waters edge to the sea. I sat there enjoying a few local beers and a pizza with a small blue ringed octopus swimming near our feet. No massive palaces or opulence for him and his wife there unlike other dictators. I got the impression he was truly into communism.
@@tomokaramolko8560Briuni were used to meet internacional dignitaries. As a country you need stuff like that. But yes, he had Villas, but he also made avaliable almost every worker be able to go to sea vacation. Something unheared in times before.
@@siux94 meetings with foreign dignitaries like Epstein Island. maybe it was Brozstein Island, we'll never know? some honey pottery going on there for sure, otherwise he wouldn't be welcomed everywhere he went.
The Croatian coast has naturist or FKK resorts today, there was some of this under socialism, and I heard that Tito sometimes went down there to relax and let it all hang out...
Regarding Mihailović "successfully calling up thousands of new fighters", a note from my family history: one of my grandmother's brothers was among those "called up". He received that calling in the form of armed men at his doorstep who simply "recruited" him. And, as mentioned, they did not have a rifle to issue to him. His career as a Četnik was a short one: his unit was surrounded by partisans and, after a couple of warning shots they accepted the call to surrender. Then they were given a speech and two options: sign up, as Spartacus said, or simply go home. My relative choose the latter option and at that point he no longer feared the partisans, they had him and let him go, he was scared of running into other Četniks and being accused of desertion. The narration of this episode paints the Partisans as doing nothing but, at best, running a communist revolution and could make one wonder why on earth the Western Allies chose to cooperate with them and to cut off Četniks. Well, the answer is that throughout the war, they consistently fought the Nazis, while the Četniks (or at least their leadership) consistently wanted to fight the Partizans, more than occasionally joining with the Nazis (since 1941 and the fall of the Republic of Užice, which this channel covered), and preferred to leave fighting the Germans "for the right moment" - which never came. Still, the ones that end up retreating along side the Germans and who are caught at/near Bleiburg are only the ideologically most hard core ones and the most compromised ones, who couldn't or wouldn't accept the amnesty, and those unlucky enough to be dragged down by the former. Similarly, The Independent State of Croatia almost comes off as a victim of communist intolerance and only once it is called "collaborationist" whereas in fact it was a fascist regime, fully aligned with the Nazis from start to finish, that operated its own concentration camp network, matching the Nazi one in deadliness and bestiality. The fact that their leader escaped to Argentina with the help of the Catholic church is a disgrace for that religious organization. Regarding the plight of the Yugoslav Germans, the anger at them did not come simply from their nationality. In 1940, a year before Yugoslavia is dragged into the war, Josef Sepp Janko, the leader of the pro-Nazi Kulturbund claims more than 90% of Yugoslav Germans as its members. As the country is occupied, a large portion of that population reacts... predictably. As a side note, at the end of the war, Josef Janko escapes to Austria where the British investigate him for crimes in a concentration camp, but nothing comes of it and (a pattern emerges) he manages to get to Argentina using false identity papers. There he applies for the Argentinian citizenship under his real name, successfully, and lives to be nearly 96. None of what I wrote makes these times in Yugoslavia any less brutal, but the change in 1945 compared to what was happening before was that a lot of those mentioned in this episode were reaping what they had sown in the previous four years.
This is factually not truth and you know this (not speaking about your grandmother story), Tito occasionally did collaborated with Germans and both Partisans and Chetniks were in touch with them in an various places in a various ways while Chetniks also especially openly collaborated with Italians. This was visible during 1943 where all sides were expecting allies landing on the Balkans. Allies chose to cooperate with Tito because of pure interests as they are doing today with any nation which is in the war, where is interests on their side they will support it no matter who they are. Also Chetniks depending on the region were fighting Germans and Ustashe in the series of battles after the 1941 like in the Operation Teufel in April of 1943 where Germans and Ustashe combined launched an offensive on Chetniks in Bosnia. It is shame that people are learning selective history and are skipping some things that did happen and should be mentioned. It is not about defending Chetniks crimes but pretending that Partisans were way better is total nonsense, Tito just had opportunity to wash proofs against him after the war while the losing side did not have.
@rogyn8484 The history is a lot messier than can be summarised in a couple of sentences, no-one was anyone's friend, even the Germans and the Italians turned against each other at some point, causing some Italians to end up with the Partizanas. However, when you average things out over the 4 years of the war in Yugoslavia, the aggregate result is about what I wrote and arguing against it based on individual situations and what-ifs is relativisation and whitewashing. You look at the content on this channel and you find large scale German operations against the Partizans, such as Case White and Knight's Move, and when you look for the anti-Četnik equivalents, there aren't any. I'm guessing that that's for a reason.
@@ocudagledam History is the factual thing and not a fairytale summed up average stories from all sides. Deliberately mentioning that after 1941 Chetniks collaborated and did not have clashes with Germans after this is historically factually wrong and things should be chronologically placed as they were. Skipping to mention those things and facts that in 1943 Germans issued warrants for both Mihailović and Tito, that during 1943 both Partisans and Chetniks were being executed (this can be seen from German documents) it is just showing that Chetniks as a whole never signed any direct agreement of collaborations with Germans and that collaboration has happened occasionally on the local level by the local commanders mostly in the same time when they were attacking Partisans. This does not justify any war crimes, however this channel has deliberatly skipping to mention a bunch of events which would then clearly destroy the concept of "honorable" Tito's resistance.
@@rogyn8484 History is a factual thing, agreed. You have a problem with what I claim as facts, you have a problem with how this channel presents the facts... but the short version is that there was only ever one reason why the Western Allies would shift their supports from the Royalists to the communist Partizans, and that's that the Partizans were (by far) the most active and most effective anti-German group in the country. And to that end, you have western produced documentaries as well, not just this series. I had the opportunity to listen to an actual British veteran who was a liaison officer of sorts with the Četniks (Viasat History will probably re-run it sooner or later). He talked, among other things, about the dealings of Četniks with the Germans which he witnessed. He talked about how the squad he was attached to received a delivery of weapons directly from the Germans and how, after the Germans had left, the Četnik officer explained to his men something along the lines of "We got 200 rifles today, with 100 we fight the communists today, and with the other 100 we will fight the Germans when the time is right." And that's a single event, but the words of that Četnik officer sum the things up quite well. And what you are doing is relativization. It's like saying "Yeah, Al Capone sometimes broke the law, but you also sometimes broke the law, and Al Capone also ran a soup kitchen for the poor, so the two of you are basically the same."
@@ocudagledam Again l presented you with facts about the things that Germans did fight Chetniks after 1941 not only accessionally but in a large offensives dedicated to their surpression, they did shot Chetniks alongside Partisans on a multiple sites and concentration camps, they did issue warrants for Mihailović and Chetnik commanders and Chetniks saved bunch of American pilots in action Halliard. You were presenting as that has never happened skipping the whole part of this important history in the initial comment giving some example from a totally different events of local collaborations (about which we already confirmed that it happens on all sides), Why are you skipping to say this and relativize Partisans support which was clearly based on the pure political interests. You can believe the opposite if you wish, history itself showed that it was support based on interest as majority of supports from the west till these days are purely interest related
Surely many innocent people died among them but when you realize what the Ustashe were it becomes one of the very minor crimes of WW2. Not enough episodes focused on the monstrosity of the Ustashe.
THIS. I also am sorry for all the Innocent or at least "not guilty enough" or who were only guilty by association who got at the wrong end. And even those who are guilty should have been prosecuted properly. I am sure with the will to do so things could have been done in a more civilized and formal way with less innocent people suffering in the end. At the same time I don't think it could have been done without any. In the end you could fill a book or two with all the bad stuff that happened in the american, british and french occupied parts of germany and this was already "the best" that was executed with much bigger ressources. Yugoslavia on the other end barely survived the war and there were epidemics and famines all over the country. The task at hand was herculean. Also must we not forget that most of those who got punished did some of the most horrible things known to mankind and I really struggle to find any empathy with these.
Remember, the channel’s attitude is “war crimes are war crimes.” All the justification and whatabouting in the world will not excuse what Tito did, not for justice, but to establish power.
It is estimated by modern historians that the ustashe killed about 350.000 people (plus/minus 50.000, the estimates vary greatly). Tito killed about 80.000 people during the Bleiburg repatriations and 50.000 during the communist purges in Serbia. Thats about 130.000 people killed between 1944 and the end of the war alone. Then we have the tens of thousands of ethnic german civilians who died during their forced expulsion from Yugoslavia after the war. I certainly wouldn‘t call this „minor“.
The British actor Sir Alec Guinness late in WW2 was in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and involved in dropping off supplies on the coast of Yugoslavia for Partisans to collect. He noted that even as the crates were landed, inscriptions were painted on them by the Partisans describing them as aid from the USSR.
Coastal partisans were the Croats only. They were cunning and staged things skillfully. Island of Vis was liberated by the mighty British Navy and Army. Later were some naval battles of the German and British Navies, British won sinking German newly build destroyers. Yet partisans picture themselves as liberators. There is the British Navy military graveyard on the Vis, while serving in the Yugo Navy I passed by.
@@lukasunjic750 Churchill gave to JVUO guerilla of the regular Royal Yugoslav government in exile in London, in his city. Axis gave to the Axis loyal chetniks in ISC-NDH and Montenegro. Croatian partisans took themselves a lot of that weapons including tankettes in capturing the garrison of Split. There were plenty for everyone.
Knowing how terrible it was during the war in this region, the violence and atrocities feeding the insurgency and counterinsurgency, the endgame in the Balkans was going to be one huge pool of blood.
I had family and friends who were there at Bleiburg on both sides. The Partisan side was a general, the Ustasha side was a foot soldier. A division was sent to cut them off at the tunnel before Bleiburg, and the pursuing divisions were to allow the fascist retreat into the tunnel. There, in the tunnel, the remaining fascists were put to the wall and finished. Our foot soldier friend was warned by a Partisan insider to ditch his car in the shrubs several KM before the tunnel, and to run away from the column as far as possible. That's how he survived.
King Peter in his memoirs and interviews clearly stated that Churchill threatened him constantly and that the radio call to "join Partisans" he read by force from a text that British wrote for him. He was after the war treated way better and he also become very close to the British royal family but in any case he was used as a tool for Churchill goals to get what he wanted (or what he thought that he will get from having a young King in Britain). There are some other things worth to cover like trail against Mihailović that was both followed by the British and Americans and which was clearly set up so that he can get death penalty. Also after the war Tito destroyed bunch of documentation related to his war crimes during the whole WW2, not to mention how they were beating and executing random people that were for neither side in this conflict but they ended up being sent away that even their graveyards are unknown until today. Those who defend Tito with "he was not such as bad" they should live from 1945 until 1960 in ex Yugoslavia where there was extreme poverty and where his secret police was arresting people who think anything against their great "leader"; later on Tito was in any case forced to open a country, he becomes older and he change policies but until death he remain very strict to political prisoners and only few managed to stay untouched during his "power".
After the Sep 12ve 1944 Proclamation soon many Axis units originated from KoY started to switch on the Allied side. Since Tito's NOVJ was officially recognized as the Allied Army by the Vis Agreement 1944., many turned on his side. Hungarian Army units from annexed South Batcka region of the KoY turned in to NOVJ units, even invited other mainland units defending the Budapest, but they refused.
Can you make a video about the creation of the Macedonian state in Yugoslavia in 1944-45? As a bulgarian I’ve been interested in how it all came about.
My story about my two grandfathers Mato Kuzmanović ( gradfather of my dad) and Ivan Nikić ( my mother's )grandfahther was like this:1. in spring of 1941. Mato born in Bzenica 1920. was with his domobran brigade because he was recrutied to chop wood in forest near Slavonska Požega (Croatia) then came the Croatian communist partisans in july 1941. And he voluntarily join them until Bleiburg reparations happend 1945. and because of his chatolic view on world he din't wanted to kill people that he thinked that are inoccent civilians (altrough war criminals deserved the bullet for what they done in Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška.) Ivan Nikić born in Široki Brijeg in 1926. also was recrutied as a teen boy 1943. They even din't let him to finish gymnasium 3rd year( high school) ( because his father died in april war 1941. Wermacht killed him.) He was only male person in his house so it was him who must to go to war in february 1945. In battle for Mostar he was captured by partisans as POW. But my mother's grandmother Kata Knežević ( married Nikić) ( she was communist and joined partisans in january 1942.) when she saw the boy ( whom she liked) that partisans will shot him because they were in same class. Saved him telling her commander that he was SKOJ-evac( young communist too.) So she saved my gradfathers life. And her commander decided to Ivan became part of their movement that year he and my gradmother get married after the war they setteld in Slavonska Požega.
@@serdradion4010 Znam Kako vam je koji je god Režim došao za nas nikad nije bilo dobro. Uvijek su svi gledali svoju guzicu. A Tragedija 90tih. Nju neću ni spominjati. I Tuđman i Slobo Zajebali su nas samo da bi se para dokopali. Tito je donekle i bio nešto ako u obzir uzmemo Pokret Nesvrstanih i Da smo bili voljeni i od Rusa i Amerikanaca od 1945. Do 1990. Bleiburg ne opravdavam niti ću. Svim ljudima želim mir i nežičim da se više ikome ponovi ono što je nama.
Most epic ending speech in long time, it warns about the dangers of today's identitary extremisms, thus needs a revision or apendix about rights of nations on mass migration situation. So we get the needed decent debate which is always eluded. Thanks.
Hi Sparty and team. I read one of Sparty's comments here about the lack of appreciation for your video's on the Balkans. There's probably a silent majority that agrees with what is said in these video's. There are also a few that watch these video's that can't accept the past of some of their beloved historical figures, and comment about that, but that's a minority. And there are absolutely people, who had attachment to certain historical figures, that are questioning them now, even if they don't show or comment that. I think you guys can be proud for reaching these people. Never forget
Wasn't Ante Pavlic's independent Croatia the place where there was a concentration camp that made visiting Nazis gasp in horror? Where competitions were held to see who could kill the most Serbians in a certain time by slashing throats?
Why did 17,000 Serbs fight for Ante Pavelic and the Ustasha organisation during WW2? Have a look at the WW2 photo of Serbian Chetnik commander Uros Drenovic drinking and laughing with the Ustasha and Croatian Home Guard, in Bosnia, in 1943.
@@petergilkes7082 According to the Serbian propaganda the Ustasha wanted to kill them all in WW2. The WW2 photos of them socialising with each other and other evidence show something else was going on.
Your conclusions always bring me to tears. Spot on, as always. Like I already mentioned (in a much less mannered way in another video to which you replied appropriately snarkily), I do hope you cover the communist takeover of Bulgaria and subsequent crimes of the "fatherland front" at some point too.
@@nairpic7360 Not really, no. There are a few in Bulgarian, but it's really not a well-publicised topic internationally, mostly due to how quickly the iron curtain fell, as well as the fact that the allied control commission stood by and basically let the soviets have their way with us, since it was pre-agree in Yalta, as you know :)
@@r_rumenov I know the feeling, being from Bulgaria's Danubian northern neighbor and such. We got occupied by the soviets too and even lost a lot of land to them. The communist takeover here was just as harsh, but spread over 5 to 6 years. On the bright side, there were not registered acts of cannibalism in the late '40s, unlike in the Soviet occupied territories.
You can also tell your part story what happened to all those Germans living in kingdom of Yugoslavia, also Don't want to say but there are so many more important things that happened since middle of 1944. to end 1945. and after
Yugoslavia was liberated by the USSR. That Yugoslavia was liberated by the partisans is the most common myth. Specifically, partisans entered Serbia from Bosnia only after the entry of the Soviet and Bulgarian armies, until that moment there were no partisans in Serbia, almost all of them were expelled across the Drina and some to Montenegro.
It was an accurate evaluation and introduction on the humanitarian platforms. Where humanitarian sites aren't presenting in wartimes and competition amongst groups, whatever their's names
Soft underbelly? Understatement of the century by Churchill... I would compare the Balkan's with at sandbag full of unshapely rocks instead of sand... Anyone trying to punch it would smash his hands to mincemeat... Even our history schoolbooks didn't tell us about the true nature of the Yugoslav state... The Balkan War took me by surprise. So much hate... So much blodshed... So much division... The only peace to be obtained in these Countries' of conflict will be 'Eternal Peace'...
Anyone who has gone down far enough in the comments to see this comment has probably seen some unpleasant things on the way, so I'll provide some levity by letting everyone know that when I found out that an old animated Christmas special called The Night B4 Christmas included something called Tito's Burritos, I immediately thought of this Tito.
it was a multi-national country pretending to not be, not to be confused with a nation. DIvisions coming by refusing to look back at the past and say "we were wrong and we're sorry for having done these actions, hope you are too"
It also seems to me that the value of life in the western Balkans is not high. This episode combined with more recent events indicate no problem with committing genocide. NEVER FORGET!!!
I’m from former Yugoslavia. I’m too young to have lived under him but I don’t know a single person my dad’s age who didn’t love Tito. They only say good things about him.
And that justifies the democide of more than 500,000 people in what way? Because that’s how many people were killed by the Tito regime, most of them long after this war was over. Posthumous popularity does not justify mass murder and oppression.
@@spartacus-olsson And yet on the other hand, Tito's time was the only period of peace, stability and prosperity in the region since like beginning of time. During his rule illiteracy was eradicated, and for the first time in centuries people had access to health care and education and upward economic mobility regardless of their ethnic background or religious affiliation. Which is the main reason why he was and still remains popular. People were free to travel, do business, make money - the only freedom they lacked was the ability to criticize Tito. But then again, few really had much reasons to do so. Today Serb nationalists accuse Tito of favoring Croats against Serbs, while Croat nationalists accuse him of favoring Serbs against Croats. That alone tells that despite everything he did something right. Once these nationalists came to power they burned down the country Tito built turning it into a collection of tiny mafia-states ruled by despotic kleptocrats from where everyone who has the opportunity is trying to escape. The whole region is undergoing rapid depopulation as people are emigrating en masse. But hey, at least today they are free to criticize Tito, so it was worth it, eh?
@spartacus-olsson wait a minute was it 50K or 500K? Also since when we counting nazis as human beings? No Spartacus Tito was NOT a ruthless dictator. He was a glue that unified different Western Slav nations into successful socialist state with high standards of living. He also opposed cold war that flirted with nuclear annihilation by be becoming a leader of non allinged movement. P.S. at least you finally stop saying "Never again" when Palestinians are being starved and bombed with "western democracies" approval and full military support.
Thanks for this. I have never understood the 'history' of Yugoslavia but have always understood that the Balkans were a 'mess' of conflicting ideologies and religions. And have watched thousands of people die and many more wounded.
Astrid and Anna will cover the Ratlines in the next episode of Spies and Ties. Stay tuned.
So If Josip Broz Tito had had a son named Mario...would his name be Mario Broz?
Mario Broz Tito🤙🏼@@eduardogutierrez4698
Why was there nothing concerning the liberation of the Ustasha dea_th camps such as Jasenovac? Did they still exist? Was their liberation not documented?
@@Hope_Boat”liberation” of ac death camp is a bit of disconcerting way of putting it. Discovery of the remains is a better term. I’ve covered it in previous episodes.
@@spartacus-olsson liberation of concentration camps is the standard term used by everyone in schools and elsewhere. Discovery of remains is 2024 media line used to justify israel's genocide of palestinans. It is ok to have a belief Sir, but to pretend that it is facts is truly one of the most despicable ways to wage war against humanity
There is a famous joke in Slovenia regarding creation of borders after ww2:
During border negotiations between Yugoslavia and Italy, all sides were at an impasse. Unable to reach a resolution through traditional diplomatic means, someone proposed a rather unconventional solution: a 24-hour war. The idea was simple - whichever side's frontline moved the furthest in 24 hours would determine the new border.
Surprisingly, Great Britain, the USA, and the Soviet Union all agreed to the proposal. However, when France was approached, it strongly opposed the idea. Puzzled by France's adamant refusal, the other nations questioned why.
The French president's response was unexpected yet humorous: "We don't want to share a border with Yugoslavia."
Hahahaha Yogović rules
😂😂
Tito was the reason a friend of mines parents moved to Cleveland from Croatia.
@@michaelnewton5873 neznaš možda istinu pravu ?!
@@michaelnewton5873Tito wasn't reason, it was your neighborhood who force your family out
I'm going to the comment section, If I don't come back, send this letter to my family.
Godspeed soldier
Good luck, Lieutenant. Godspeed
Hahaha great comment
At least they're not shipping you out to Twitter
@@bman6065ah yes the eastern front of the internet
I am always amused by the Western "high moral ground" position when commenting on what happened in places such as Yugoslavia.
they have it everywhere, except for Israel ;)
My dad, a vet of WWII and Korea, told me over and over again in the 60s and 70s, "Only Tito can hold Yugoslavia together. When he goes, it goes." And so we have seen. Tito played his own game, frustrating the USSR and confusing NATO.
No,Tito was NATO player all the time.
My late dad was an tech army officer in Tito's JNA army.
While serving in the Croatian capital Zagreb, the moment Tito died in 1980, civilians and some army members started to rumor that country SFRJ will for sure collapse.
In the Yugoslav capital Belgrade where I live now, such a rumor was blasphemy.
My mother's family are Croats and they all said the same thing.
@@SrdjanBasaric-w2s
What about his Russian wife and their son Misha Hero of USSR Red Army living in Belgrade and teaching of communism ?
He was most obviously colaborating with the both sides.
He even got child with the Russian wife and not with the Croatian Lika Serb wife Jovanka.
Clear sign that merging of the Croats and Serbs is not going to happen, same with the joint state.
My family fought for Croatia for centuries. After 1945 they were forced to leave Croatia and if they didnt they would be dead or in jail. They confiscated all our assest that we had for decades and centuries. My family is in USA since then and only my father, my mother, my brother and me are in Croatia. Thats Tito if you have doubts
I’m sure Hoxha won’t become diss illusioned with the Soviets and Tito and turn Albania into a European North Korea
Russian became the link language between Albanian technicians and the Soviet technicians sent to assist Albania with economic development. Following the break with the USSR, it apparently remained the lingua franca in use - Chinese technicians had often themselves learned their trade at Soviet technology institutes, including the Russian language, and when sent to Albania it was convenient for them to just keep using Russian. Although at one point during the Cultural Revolution, it seems the only permitted foreign language for Chinese to learn was Albanian.
I dated a girl from Yugoslavia about 15 years ago. Her parents had a picture of Tito over their fireplace. They said that he was tough but fair, and during the 60s-80s, Yugoslavia was a fine country and it wasn't nearly as oppressive as other communist countries and people were free to travel if they choose and religion was allowed and everyone got by and there was even Western music and media readily available without much censorship.
Then he died and things went to Hell in a hand basket. I've met other people from the Balkans who also have a good opinion of him. One man's tyrant is another man's hero.
A hero only to those who were brainwashed or too intimidated to speak against him
@@whiteoctober4582 What you call "brainwashing" a lot of people, including myself, a fair system. Definitely not perfect, but much better than the alternative capitalism, under which boot the balkans now rest. It is most interesting how you ascribe the trait "intimidation" to socialist regimes, but you would, I assume, ascribe "freedom" to capitalist ones, ones whose entire basis of ideology and existence rests in exploitation and materialism.
The famous communist countries which takes IMF loans
I feel like he's alot like Castro. Both authoritarians, but better then what they replaced in the chetniks and the batista regime.
Tito was fine, unless you were the wrong kind of minority.
Don’t ask Tito why there are no more Swabians in the former Yugoslavia.
Vatican giving shelter to Ante Pavelic...how telling...
And to Dobrosav Jevdjević..........strange.
@@malimate2660 No where did i find that he got help or shelter by the Vatican, i found that he got those from Italy which is not the same.
If you could share your sources i'd be interesting in reading.
I suggest you watch the 1980's Hollywood movie "The Scarlet and the Black" starring Gregory Peck which is based on true events in WW2 to understand the Vatican's view on helping the Allies and the Axis.
@@TheSouth-j7f Tnx for the recommendation i'll surely watch it.
After that he fled to argentina where he was later assassinated by blagoje jovovic the serb in 1957. He died due to the wounds in spain
So if Josip Broz Tito had a son named Mario...would his name be Mario Broz?
lol
@@tomokaramolko8560 "recognized" 😏
@@tomokaramolko8560 ...Alright ..I already edited my comment..happy?
I once saw T-shirt with Tito and inscription: "Broz before hoes"
Yeap
Thanks for deep words about Yugoslavia. My father, at that time time 17 years old, was one of only few suvivors from belogardists returned to Yugoslavia.
Hate must stop. But never forget the war against humanity from whatever side.
Great tie and the usual intelligent and passionate delivery, Mr Olsson. And the customary superb script, Mr Newman. Thank you from Indonesia.
Thanks for watching, never forget.
@@WorldWarTwo Thanks for noticing
As a stamp collector Yugoslavia is a fascinating place. It starts with the stamps from the Kingdom of Serbs Croats and Slovenes formed in 1918. Then we have the image of Peter the First on stamps and in the early stamp albums Yugoslavia was spelled Jugoslavia .And each government from the partisans in the war up into modern times produced their own stamps.
Yee they are fascinating
I inherited a stamp collection from my great grandfather, he basically lived through all of those times and hand painted flags of nations as sections for different stamps
As a Croat that had one grandfather amongst the retreating NDH army, never to be heard of again (most likely died in the woods south of Maribor, in Tezno), and the other grandfather a Partisan officer having been ordered to execute political opposition around Zagreb, later tried for these war crimes, convicted and served 13 years for them (the commanding officer had been dealt with in Tito's purges prior to my grandfather trial, so no witnesses of the order), I can say this is one of the best historical episode about that very ugly ending of the war in Yugoslavia.
Several things I feel worthy of mentioning (military wise):
1. Battle of Lijevča Polje early May 1945. - Draža Mihajlović did order the Chetnik army to form resistance in eastern Bosnia and Serbia, but the larger part of that army under Pavle Đurišić actually split off Mihajlović and started their march westwards. These troops were a mix of Serb Chetniks but also of Montenegrin Chetniks. The route they took was down Vrbas river, where the NDH troops awaited in order to square their own stuff with them. At that point the Monenegrin Chetniks switched sides and aided the Ustasha and Homeguard (domobrani) to completely destroy that large Chetnik formation (larger than Mihailović's).
2. Battle of Odžak - the last strongpoint of stranded Ustasha and Homeguard troops that could not (or would not) get out of Bosnia after the breakthrough of the Syrmian front in April 1945. was at Odžak pocket, an area south of the Sava river deep into now Partisan held territory. That group held against the Partisans sent to destroy them until its final demise on May 25th 1945, long after the official end of WW2 in Europe. To be honest, the partisan divisions were very badly led, and were getting in the battle piecemeal wishfully thinking they'll easily destroy the Ustashas that had no hope of survival thus fought to the death, and this prolonged the battle until reinforcements in tanks arrived.
Another interesting point: at 1:20 the aerial photo of Vis shows a structure that doesn't exist anymore since 1964., namely the Orthodox church, and there is an interesting story behind it.
The island of Vis used to be 99% catholic, as the rest of the Dalmatian coast, until after WW1. Then the new king of Yugoslavia proclaimed an imminent agrarian reform stating "the land shall belong to the person that cultivates it". This resounded among the peasants on the island of Vis as huge plot of land there were actually owned by the Roman Catholic church and other landlords, while the peasant worked on it and payed rent in 1/5 - 1/10 of the crops.
Immediately an orthodox priest arrived from Obrovac (a Serb Orthodox area of Croatia) and agitated among the peasants that if they converted to Orthodoxy they would get the reform done much sooner (untrue), while the conservative Roman Catholic priest in Vis very much opposed the reform and still forced the peasants to pay the thithe. A large number of peasants, for their economic reason, then converted (didn't get the reform as promised, had to wait as the rest), but the Orthodox priest then got huge donations from other Orthodox communities and managed to build that church in 1931. Well, as the peasants didn't get what was promised, around 1933-34 onwards they stopped converting, with many of them reverting back to Catholicism.
Then WW2 erupted. During 1944.-45. the island was the HQ of Tito's partisans, and since there was great danger of a German attack (as happened on all the other islands, including Hvar, Brač and Korčula), the partisans organized that the majority of the civilian population be relocated as refugees to El Shat in Egypt (via Italy). Upon landing in Italy though, the Orthodox part was approached by the Chetniks there and promised to get into much better refugee camps around Alexandria (El Shat being in the middle of the desert, really a pitiful place), and these Vis civilians of Orthodox faith agreed (again, for their own personal cause). Their opinion at the time was that after the war the King shall return and they shall be welcomed back, but that didn't happen. So, they never returned to Vis but after the war relocated mostly to USA, Canada and Australia, while the Catholics did return from El Shat.
As there were no more Orthodox in Vis the church (meanwhile bombed by the Germans) became derelict, and finally in 1964. the Vis community asked and got permission by the head of Orthodox church in Dalmatia (presiding in Šibenik) to tear down the derelict building in order to make a park there. They payed a substantial sum of money for it, and that money was used by the Orthodox church to refurbish the destroyed Orthodox church building in Knin where the Serb Orthodox remained in Croatia.
Knowing the horrific persecutions of the orthodox by the Hustasha regime during WWII one should take any stories concerning how and why the orthodox churches were destroyed there with circonspection.
@@Hope_Boat the island of Vis NEVER fell in the hand of Ustashas, as it was in Italian hands until the Italian capitulation in september 1943., form then on it was under the Partisans with a large number of Allied liasion, navy and airforce personnel on it.
Thus, NO, the church wasn't damaged on purpose by Ustashas, rather collaterally bombed during multiple German air raids on the Partisan main HQ.
In 1964. the decision to remove it was through a joint agreement between the Vis community (ofc communist leaders) and the Orthodox mitropoly in Šibenik. The sum that was payed for the land by the community towards the Orthodox church is registered, and it was used to repair a working church building. Nothing funny there.
@@Hope_Boat Vis was first occupied by Italy and then was the headquarter for the partisans. I don't know more specifics, but it would surprise me to hear that orthodox were persecuted on Vis as much as in the NDH.
That didn't happen at Lijevča polje. There wasn't larger group of Chetniks than Draža's Chetniks that have spent more than 7 months on NDH grounds without being touched by Ustasha in surrounding garrisons (Brčko, Doboj, Odžak etc.). At that time, Draža even gives a rank in his army to Ustasha commander in Vareš for his cooperation. When Đurišić split with Draža, he made deal with Ustasha Poglavnik (Fuhrer) Pavelić. They decided to become army of independent Montenegro, even though they were for Greater Serbia, so Pavelić gave them a new leader, Sekula Drljević from Montenegro. In light of this agreement, on 22th of March 1945, 800 Chetniks that were sick of typhoid or wounded were transfered over Sava to Slavonski Brod for treatment. Đurišić, however, didn't listen to his order by Pavelić to stay put but continued westward. In 2 days battle, most Chetniks surrendered, with Đurišić being captured with his HQ and killed in Stara Gradiška concentration camp. rest of Chetniks were integrated in Ustasha forces as Montenegrian army but as soon as Ustasha retreated west to Slovenia they killed Drljević and became Chetniks again. In the end, they shared fate with Ustasha and were killed in Tezno, Zidani Most and other places. Group of modern Motenegro researches found names of 5221 people that retreated with Đurišić from Montengro to NDH in 1944. German estimate from December state that there were 7000 Chetnik retreating alongside them. Of 5221, 656 survived the war. 110 died retreating through Bosnia(79 of typhoid), 48 were KIA on Lijevče Polje (out of 222 KIA), 29 were killed in Ustasha camps and 3019 died in Slovenia, out of which 2328 were claimed to be shot by Partisans and others were just listed as died, missing or died in combat (71). Ustasha ministry of defense mentiones 69 dead Chetniks on 6th of April and 71 dead on 7th of April, with some 9000 captured. Keep in mind that these estimates are laregly exaggerated. Both Ustasha and Chetnik emigration blow this battle out of proportion for their purpouses, but it was small scale battle compared to other ones going on in Yugoslavia that day. It was very common that both German and Yugoslav divisions pile up hundreds of death in a day of action in last 2 months, more than died on Lijevča polje.
@@brankodrljaca1313 thx, I looked up the work of Milan Radanović, seems that what you wrote holds.
One thing though, iirc Sekula Drljević was murdered AFTER the war, in a detention camp, not prior to the end of the war?
This comment section is going to be like WW2 Yugoslavia, communists fighting chetniks fighting ustasa and so on 🍿
Why do they hate each other again...???
@@exeggcutertimur6091 because we're too similar
But for some reason religion that teaches "thou shall not kill" is an excuse to kill each other
and this will probablly never end..........sad but true
@@PeoplecallmeLucifer culture is also big factor. Serbs had lot of Ottoman influence while Croats had mostly Hungarian and Austrian influences. Religion wasnt the only difference.
@@madkoala2130 Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh Religion is waht carved us up. I mean Dalmatia, Lika, Slavonia and Istria are all pretty different from each other. But they are all catholic
It was born in a cradle of fire and blood.
It died in a cradle of fire and blood.
Life isn't repetitions, but it sure does rhyme very well.
"Those who live by the sword, shall die by the sword."
@@danielnavarro537 Those who do stupid shit pay stupid prizes
@@KroiAlbanoiArbanon very much agreed.
@@KroiAlbanoiArbanon Very much agreed.
Warning:more comments about the comment section becoming another warzone than actual war comments incoming.
Our moderators and TH-cam are not going to remove the warnings, but they will remove the hateful comments, justification of atrocities, and other filth. This is War Against Humanity - Humanity will win.
There are a few, but we do our best to keep it civil and within our code of conduct.
TH-cam needs to give all users the option to block and hide comments from selected accounts
Because seriously, I want to block all of those schmucks
@@christianweibrecht6555 Same. But better their comments than balkanics actually turning the commet section in a war zone.
@@KroiAlbanoiArbanon I have already seen to many stupid pro Yugoslavia comments get upvoted & surprised they have not used the phrase “color revolutions”
Ok, let me address some issues I find here. My grandfather was a partisan from the start in Vojvodina. Not ideologically, but just because the Germans and the Nazis were, well Nazis and done some horrific stuff to their friends, loved ones etc. When the Soviets came, he joined them and fought with the Russians as a volunteer. His friends were Russians, he was treated as a friend, not as dirt as this video states. There was an attempt of rape by the Russians, and let me be clear, those were the penal battalions who did that. They fought without proper shoes or clothes and were convicted murderers. That one who attempted rape in my neighborhood, he was executed on the spot.
Ok, and then another thing to add about ethnic cleansing of Germans from the Banat region.
These were the people who got expelled from the country. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulturbund_(Yugoslavia)
From the the books I have read, almost all of Germans in Yugoslavia actively supported Nazism, and collaborated, killed, tortured etc.
On the other hand Hungarians were not that sympathetic to Hitler, and a lot of them joined partisans etc. and stayed and live to this day in northern Serbia.
Also to add, most of the people in for example Bosnia, like my other grandparents, joined partisans, of Chetniks so they will be protected against the ustashe during the start of the war. They were not communists, or monarchists, it was a way to survive, because if you stayed in your village, minding your business, you were dead the next day. That's why a lot of people joined various sides, just to have some protection and to survive.
Good stuff, the video is pretty good but it could more stories and points like you brought up.
Attempted rape by the Russians? It's not attempted if they actually did it. Russian soldiers were rarely persecuted for raping Germans. The ones that saw any consequences were in the minority. I didn't expect a USSR apologist here.
Е, браћала мој Војвођански, тако је било у Срему, где су били партизански крајеви. Пошто с једне стране вучем порекло слично твојем, знам. Међутим, у Банату је било друго. У Банату су били четници. И силовања је било толико да су се четници, још увек савезници и неразоружани, дигли и осули паљбу по њима. О томе те нико није информисао до сад. И неће. Такве ствари ко би раније говорио, јео би га мрак. Тако се чувала "чедност комунистичке прошлости".
И... да знаш и ово.. то што су били код нас.. и направили масовну чистку .. нису били Руси, него Совјетија, а у оквиру Совјетије - Украјинци. Исти они код којих је данас то страшно стање. Не желим им зло, али ми је бар јасно зашто им се то страшно стање данас - дешава. Они .. тим заузећем мирне наше Краљевине.. нашу будућност.. уништише... све што вреди.. побили су.. у врло кратком року. Искуснији од Хитлерових одреда смрти у својим масовним егзекуцијама. Хитлеровци су имали праксе само десетак година уочи и у току 2.св. рата а ови су то радили ..д еценијама над јадним руским народом. Данас нико у 2.св.рату не прича и не говори уопште о руским и српским жртавама, само зато што су били словени и православци. Ко да тих жртава - испаде . и није било. А статистике кажу да је то национално и верски било најстрадалније становништво. Страдалније од жидова, које Холивуд за свеце, малтене прогласи. Док.. тај талас убијања.. БАШ они замесише... и сами учествоваше у покољима. Руске цареве Ромавнове - ОНИ су ритуално побили. Руски народ, то знај- никад не би убио свог цара. Нити би нашег Дражу - србин издо. Зато. је спремн посебан агент, жидов који се вратио у родни Дубровник да земени своје жидовско име и презиме за српско - Иван Ивановић. Нико није знао зашто. А ето.. зато.. да у историји остане уписан као "србин који издаде Дражу", а не као јеврејин. Да заштити своје од одмазде, да и нама одузме борбени дух и морал.
The American intelligence agency NSA speculated after WW2 (report declassified and published in 2013) that Tito was actually a Russian or a Pole, based on oddities in the way he spoke Serbo-Croatian. However, his native language was Kajkavian, generally regarded as a form of Croatian with some affinities to Slovene, and this explained the features of his dialect.
I really appreciate these episodes. They deepen my understanding of the larger War.
A most timely closing. Excellent work Sparty & team.
I always appreciate these episodes, particularly the ending statements which bring the history to a lesson point from which we can learn and act on today. Thank you for this great work!
I just wanted to say thank you for this essential series there is not a week that goes by that I have not learned something new, and yet been sadden by the plight of so so so many innocent people. I will promise you to never forget.
❤
Fantastic breakdown of an area of the war I have seldom found good information on, thank you Spartacus
The thanks should really go to James who’s covering for me to write at the moment while I prepare our future series, and deal with the tedium of management responsibilities.
Thank you...this is a well done historical account.
Glad you enjoyed, thanks for watching.
What a great conclusion, I'm subscribing :D
Comment section about to become war itself.
No. Radical comments will be censored.
Most original comment ever. Surely never seen hundreds of comments like these on every video covering the Balkans.
I can already hear the Accordion music. It's gonna get bad.
@@dragosstanciu9866That's gonna be ALOT of comments.
No. Already had a few removed for not sticking to the "liberalism good" narrative and actually criticizing their downright misleading comments about the nature of socialism.
Nah, the Adriatic coast might have been too soft an underbelly for Churchill. Between Gallipoli and Italy, Mr. Churchill seems to have preferred marching up long, mountainous, easily defensible peninsula.
Churchill was no strategist. He almost always confused political goals with strategic ones and he was delusional about "soft underbellies". Thankfully FDR and George Marshall vetoed the worst of his insane plans.
@@Conn30MtenorChurchill was a warmonger and a liability for europe. There is very little written about his involvement in fuelling tension through the interwar period, and his plan with Roosevelt on what to do with Germany after ww2 was what you could only describe as barbaric and despicable
@@euphoriaggaminghd This is harsh - Churchill had minimal influence interwar, he was very much a "voice in the wilderness" then. Also, when you talk about his plan with Roosevelt, you perhaps were thinking about the Morgenthau plan, which was never taken up. Remember that in reality, the allies were extraordinarily generous to Europe in reconstruction after the war.
The Adriatic coast is as defensible as Italy - if not more
@@markdurre2667 the allies were so generous that they let the Soviets annex half of Eastern Europe and puppet the rest! Make Germany bankrupt the first time and then split them in two! How generous. But absolutely no talk on how Churchill is an evil warmonger himself, they say he's a hero!
If the system falls apart after one man dies, it wasn’t a good system.
He was too democratic and letting the radical nationalists in.
If the system falls apart after one man dies, he was the system.
@@djetinjstvo_u_boji And there’s the folly of autocracy. It’s great if the one guy in charge knows what he’s doing, but all it takes is one guy who doesn’t. Just ask Cromwell’s son.
His solution to every political crisis was decentralization. Probably shouldn't have been that it imploded for secession crises and ethnic strife given that.
Yugoslavia was broken from outside not from inside,it was the foreign money and later on bombs that destroyed socialist republic of Yuoslavia,it was the blood money of the west that financed nationalist movements inside most of the yugoslavian republics.
I'm very gratefull to you all at timeghost for the amazing work that you do. Must be a nightmare researching for episodes like this. You've greatly broadend my horizons time and time again. Much love to you all and thank you
Thank you so much for the lovely comment!
As always, you never fail to bring it all home in the last few moments of the video.
God bless you Sparty. It's a tough and thankless job being the guardian and conveyor of such dark chapters of history. I thank you nonetheless, cheers from Albany New York 🍻
For a long time, I have come to expect powerful closing narratives from Spartacus in each and every episode of War Against Humanity. My compliments to the TimeGhost team and a special mention to James Newman for his research and writing.
Great video, Just please mention something about Jasenovac and how it sparked revenge and retribution.
"[...] But when you idolize a leader who validates your anger and hatred and promises you retribution, it is not a place of suffering for your perceived enemies that you will get. You'll get, suffering for everyone. For these, leaders are no leaders, they are conmen who are just mirroring your hate. Anger breeds anger, and violence breeds violence. And choosing autocrats to represent you, sets you on a journey to a land of misery where anger and violence can grow unfettered. Sooner or later that terror will be yours to suffer. Never forget!"
Ouch. That was heavy...
And true.
Have no idea what's he on about there. As a Croatian i'll tell you that Tito's Yugoslavia was the closes thing to Utopia the region saw since the Byzantine empire...the West helped with putting Tito on his throne and now claim he was a dictator hmmm...but than again...if he was so bad, why did he had the biggest funeral in history where every county in the world sent it's representative.
Thank you for watching.
@@Omidion Tito kept Yugoslavia from being a Soviet puppet state, but he was a dictator. You can say he was a popular dictator or a benevolent dictator, but you can’t deny what he was, how he suppressed opposition, and how he ran Yugoslavia.
During the Cold War he played both sides while publicly siding with the Soviets. This is because the Soviets were a greater threat to Yugoslavian sovereignty.
I’m neither approving of Tito and his party nor disapproving. I’m just describing the delicate balance Tito achieved to maintain Yugoslavian independence from the Soviets.
I don’t like “ends justify the means” arguments, but Tito’s bloody and inhumane suppression of identity based opposition (who had a history of being just as inhumane) probably avoided even greater bloodshed, at least until he died.
Anyway, this is what I was taught about Yugoslavia in my youth, which was during the last decade of the Cold War. Yugoslavia was a socialist dictatorship, but maintained its independence from the Kremlin (unlike Poland, East Germany, and other Central European nations in the Soviet Bloc). Domestically, Tito kept a lid on ethnic tensions.
We were taught that even though Tito was socialist, he was to be admired for not falling under the thumb of Stalinism. If this an is overly simple view, it’s because we weren’t taught much more.
"A benevolent dictatorship is about right for savages." - Gearge Will
22:26 Damn. An ending speech worthy of the tone. Nice work.
Never forget.
An excellent presentation and a good speech at the end. I remember that some 1.7 Million Yugoslavs died in WW2, how many by each others hands is sobering to contemplate.
I was born in former Yugoslavia in one of those places that many post war massacres took place. They were discovering the caves and digging up bodies throughout all of my childhood in the 90s and 2000s and still probably many places are hidden. Even after Yugoslavia broke up and communism was gone the elderly locals were scared to give any information about bodies locations because they feared reprisals from previous system. It was really horrible to murder every single one from top to bottom (17, 16 years old soldiers) even the soviets didn't do that with the German POW. Machine guns were working all nights in the woods for weeks. Prisoners were brought infront of the ditches shoot with machine guns and feel down the ditch. Because there were so many some prisoners just got injured and fall down and hid under the bodies and later managed to escape out the ditch and after hiding and hiking through woods managed to escape out of Yugoslavia but those were very few.
Thank you for this episode, Sparty and team. Never forget.
Great closing lines Sparty, you really nailed it.
Thanks Sparty and the crew. This is a tough subject. Like many, but it it's seriously divisive like no other I know.
There is no winners in war, is all I can say, I felt you treated the subject matter with restraint and balance. Perhaps more restraint than normal, but I accept until this day , it's a hiding to nothing situation .
maybe you should have turned the comments off for this one? I don't dare even read them. For fear of not coming out alive!
I see no way this will boil over down the line
First, you guys become my favorite source of information about the first world war, and all topics directly related to it
Now you did the same for second world war
I look forward to your next series
Will simply link to the best most needed part to be heard in a sea of important parts needed to be heard in this modern youtube age, across the spectrum.
21:32
King Peter made that broadcast to join the Partisans due to the extreme pressure he was under to do so by Churchill / the Allies. He was exiled during the war in Great Britain and was their guest, so he really didn’t have a choice
Outstanding wrap.
Thank you for the kind comment.
As someone who lives in the region and as someone that has researched that period of Yugoslav history for over 10 years now i would like to thank you for making a video that shows not all but most of the truth of what happened. It is really hard to piece together what is true and false especially after 70 years
I'm always amazed how Churchill thought he had any right to decide other nations destiny , all his decisions are so dumb and out of touch with reality .
I've often thought to myself that Yugoslavia's existence essentially put a lid on the nationalistic wars of the early 20th century that gripped the rest of Europe, and that what we eventually saw in the 90's was the result of that pressure slowly building over the decades exploding outwards once there was no Tito there to force them all together sitting atop that ticking time bomb.
Google Greater Serbia.........ties with Russia do not die and the exit to the Mediterranean.
@@malimate2660 okay? Not sure that has anything to do with what I said though.
@@ShadowGricken
Why do you think it's not a topic, if it's actually the reason for all the crises and wars in the '90s?
@@malimate2660 I'm getting the feeling English isn't your first language so I'll be brief; because your explanation downplays the very real nationalistic forces that gripped every part of former yugoslavia, which is a far bigger cause than Russian meddling. Countries are not poker chips for super powers with no agency of their own
@@ShadowGricken
When you live on a powder keg, then you know where the fire could come from.I know the history of these areas very well and speak objectively, because the imperialist plans were published 150 years ago and renewed recently, together with Putin's announcements about the 'Russian world'.
You demonstrated a rather superficial understanding of the post 2nd WW Yugoslavia. Of course there were retributions, of course it was painful time because nations/families were torn apart between nazi collaborators and partisans. But to portray the situation as all hatred and Tito as a conman is not worth of a serious consideration.
FYI, partisans didn’t fight Croatians. They fought nazi collaborators. Partisans were also Croatians.
unfortunately it may spoil the Korean War series they're making
Croatian partisans goal was not only liberation from occupying armies, but reorganizing the country and getting a self governed federal unit.
They had a political leadership thinking far ahead in the future.
Partisans killed more than 500 000 axis soldiers after fall of Italy, what excuse can you say about that
And that did mostly dalmatian and slovenian partisans, with chetniks who suddenly became partisans in 1945
As a student working on my Master's in History and Teaching, with a minor in Political Science, I love and appreciate all of these episodes and entire series.
As a Marxist though, I do sometimes have to sigh and shake my head. Equal parts that and love for the entire series so far. From the Great War series to now, and the Korea Series, I will continue to watch. Much love from the US
Sparty, this was one of your best closing monologues yet! Superbly done!
I'm seriously loving these epilogues, Sparty. ❤
the Ustase forgot the golden rule. i feel no sympathy for them.
Good work Sparty. I may have criticized you in the past, but a couple of the later episodes are really good work. I noticed a certain deviation from the communist version of WWII history, which is usually the path of least resistance for any "Western" historian who has the ungrateful task of researching ex-Yugoslavia's WWII history. Their version is usually straightforward: we were the good guys in every possible way, never considered any rotten compromises, and like Prometheus, "we brought light" to this uncouth people who, before us, lived in the dark ages. As a kid growing up in the last decade of communist rule, I had the impression that everything prior to 1941 was the Stone Age, and the "true history" began after. Yes, it is depressing to dig deep into our endless shades of grey, but we (at least I do) very much appreciate your work.
There were some other factions and militias that you probably never heard of, like Kosta Pećanac's Chetniks, the Russian Protective Corps (Russian Cossacks who fled to Yugoslavia after the Bolshevik Revolution), and the Serbian Volunteer Corps. Since the communists simplified the whole history and made it suitable for themselves, we need someone neutral, who has no connections to the region, to create a completely unbiased version of WWII history in our region.
Sorry Sparty, but your butchery of the Serbo-Croatian language and names is almost at the level of the butchery going on there in the 40s. Č/Ć= ch, C=ts, Ž=zh (or like a French j), Z=z, Š=sh, S=s, Đ=g as in George, D=d
I have the same with Naydell and his Italian pronunciation.
My apologies… I should make more of an effort, and I would if it wasn’t for the pain it causes us to make videos about your region. It’s sad, because like all aspects of history, and all regions we love to dive into it - but the reactions we get when we make videos about “the Balkans” is just so bloody depressing that we end up treating it with less energy than it’s worthy of.
My apologies, it’s not what we should do - but ten years of doing this and seeing the same result over, and over, and over again when we go here is just deflating. I’ll just quote what one of our team members said while working on this video: “it makes you suicidal.” Not because it’s the worst stuff we talk about (there are many things even more depressing) but because of the nearly impossible to research made up historiography and the way the comment section _always_ becomes another Balkan War battlefield.
@@spartacus-olsson nobody is perfect. Having said that, thank you for another great episode! As someone from the region, it's very refreshing to follow such detailed and unbiased coverage of this dark subject.
@@mg4361 ❤️
@spartacus-olsson Well, imagine then being born and raised in that kind of hellish stew. Since forever.
Great episode, finally I think we have a video where at least "most" of Yugoslav communist crimes are mentioned.
Tito had a small cottage on Divulje barracks right on the waters edge to the sea. I sat there enjoying a few local beers and a pizza with a small blue ringed octopus swimming near our feet. No massive palaces or opulence for him and his wife there unlike other dictators. I got the impression he was truly into communism.
@@tomokaramolko8560Briuni were used to meet internacional dignitaries. As a country you need stuff like that.
But yes, he had Villas, but he also made avaliable almost every worker be able to go to sea vacation. Something unheared in times before.
@@tomokaramolko8560 Im not talking about ability to travel. Im talking about free vacation workers got on Croatian or Montenegrin coast in the summer!
@@siux94 there is no such thing as a free vacation
@@siux94 meetings with foreign dignitaries like Epstein Island. maybe it was Brozstein Island, we'll never know? some honey pottery going on there for sure, otherwise he wouldn't be welcomed everywhere he went.
The Croatian coast has naturist or FKK resorts today, there was some of this under socialism, and I heard that Tito sometimes went down there to relax and let it all hang out...
Great video and a banger of an ending. Thanks Sparty and everyone involved in the Time Ghost team.
Regarding Mihailović "successfully calling up thousands of new fighters", a note from my family history: one of my grandmother's brothers was among those "called up". He received that calling in the form of armed men at his doorstep who simply "recruited" him. And, as mentioned, they did not have a rifle to issue to him. His career as a Četnik was a short one: his unit was surrounded by partisans and, after a couple of warning shots they accepted the call to surrender. Then they were given a speech and two options: sign up, as Spartacus said, or simply go home. My relative choose the latter option and at that point he no longer feared the partisans, they had him and let him go, he was scared of running into other Četniks and being accused of desertion.
The narration of this episode paints the Partisans as doing nothing but, at best, running a communist revolution and could make one wonder why on earth the Western Allies chose to cooperate with them and to cut off Četniks. Well, the answer is that throughout the war, they consistently fought the Nazis, while the Četniks (or at least their leadership) consistently wanted to fight the Partizans, more than occasionally joining with the Nazis (since 1941 and the fall of the Republic of Užice, which this channel covered), and preferred to leave fighting the Germans "for the right moment" - which never came. Still, the ones that end up retreating along side the Germans and who are caught at/near Bleiburg are only the ideologically most hard core ones and the most compromised ones, who couldn't or wouldn't accept the amnesty, and those unlucky enough to be dragged down by the former.
Similarly, The Independent State of Croatia almost comes off as a victim of communist intolerance and only once it is called "collaborationist" whereas in fact it was a fascist regime, fully aligned with the Nazis from start to finish, that operated its own concentration camp network, matching the Nazi one in deadliness and bestiality. The fact that their leader escaped to Argentina with the help of the Catholic church is a disgrace for that religious organization.
Regarding the plight of the Yugoslav Germans, the anger at them did not come simply from their nationality. In 1940, a year before Yugoslavia is dragged into the war, Josef Sepp Janko, the leader of the pro-Nazi Kulturbund claims more than 90% of Yugoslav Germans as its members. As the country is occupied, a large portion of that population reacts... predictably. As a side note, at the end of the war, Josef Janko escapes to Austria where the British investigate him for crimes in a concentration camp, but nothing comes of it and (a pattern emerges) he manages to get to Argentina using false identity papers. There he applies for the Argentinian citizenship under his real name, successfully, and lives to be nearly 96.
None of what I wrote makes these times in Yugoslavia any less brutal, but the change in 1945 compared to what was happening before was that a lot of those mentioned in this episode were reaping what they had sown in the previous four years.
This is factually not truth and you know this (not speaking about your grandmother story), Tito occasionally did collaborated with Germans and both Partisans and Chetniks were in touch with them in an various places in a various ways while Chetniks also especially openly collaborated with Italians. This was visible during 1943 where all sides were expecting allies landing on the Balkans. Allies chose to cooperate with Tito because of pure interests as they are doing today with any nation which is in the war, where is interests on their side they will support it no matter who they are. Also Chetniks depending on the region were fighting Germans and Ustashe in the series of battles after the 1941 like in the Operation Teufel in April of 1943 where Germans and Ustashe combined launched an offensive on Chetniks in Bosnia. It is shame that people are learning selective history and are skipping some things that did happen and should be mentioned. It is not about defending Chetniks crimes but pretending that Partisans were way better is total nonsense, Tito just had opportunity to wash proofs against him after the war while the losing side did not have.
@rogyn8484 The history is a lot messier than can be summarised in a couple of sentences, no-one was anyone's friend, even the Germans and the Italians turned against each other at some point, causing some Italians to end up with the Partizanas. However, when you average things out over the 4 years of the war in Yugoslavia, the aggregate result is about what I wrote and arguing against it based on individual situations and what-ifs is relativisation and whitewashing.
You look at the content on this channel and you find large scale German operations against the Partizans, such as Case White and Knight's Move, and when you look for the anti-Četnik equivalents, there aren't any. I'm guessing that that's for a reason.
@@ocudagledam History is the factual thing and not a fairytale summed up average stories from all sides. Deliberately mentioning that after 1941 Chetniks collaborated and did not have clashes with Germans after this is historically factually wrong and things should be chronologically placed as they were. Skipping to mention those things and facts that in 1943 Germans issued warrants for both Mihailović and Tito, that during 1943 both Partisans and Chetniks were being executed (this can be seen from German documents) it is just showing that Chetniks as a whole never signed any direct agreement of collaborations with Germans and that collaboration has happened occasionally on the local level by the local commanders mostly in the same time when they were attacking Partisans. This does not justify any war crimes, however this channel has deliberatly skipping to mention a bunch of events which would then clearly destroy the concept of "honorable" Tito's resistance.
@@rogyn8484 History is a factual thing, agreed. You have a problem with what I claim as facts, you have a problem with how this channel presents the facts... but the short version is that there was only ever one reason why the Western Allies would shift their supports from the Royalists to the communist Partizans, and that's that the Partizans were (by far) the most active and most effective anti-German group in the country.
And to that end, you have western produced documentaries as well, not just this series. I had the opportunity to listen to an actual British veteran who was a liaison officer of sorts with the Četniks (Viasat History will probably re-run it sooner or later). He talked, among other things, about the dealings of Četniks with the Germans which he witnessed. He talked about how the squad he was attached to received a delivery of weapons directly from the Germans and how, after the Germans had left, the Četnik officer explained to his men something along the lines of "We got 200 rifles today, with 100 we fight the communists today, and with the other 100 we will fight the Germans when the time is right." And that's a single event, but the words of that Četnik officer sum the things up quite well.
And what you are doing is relativization. It's like saying "Yeah, Al Capone sometimes broke the law, but you also sometimes broke the law, and Al Capone also ran a soup kitchen for the poor, so the two of you are basically the same."
@@ocudagledam Again l presented you with facts about the things that Germans did fight Chetniks after 1941 not only accessionally but in a large offensives dedicated to their surpression, they did shot Chetniks alongside Partisans on a multiple sites and concentration camps, they did issue warrants for Mihailović and Chetnik commanders and Chetniks saved bunch of American pilots in action Halliard. You were presenting as that has never happened skipping the whole part of this important history in the initial comment giving some example from a totally different events of local collaborations (about which we already confirmed that it happens on all sides), Why are you skipping to say this and relativize Partisans support which was clearly based on the pure political interests. You can believe the opposite if you wish, history itself showed that it was support based on interest as majority of supports from the west till these days are purely interest related
Nice video Spartacus!
Surely many innocent people died among them but when you realize what the Ustashe were it becomes one of the very minor crimes of WW2. Not enough episodes focused on the monstrosity of the Ustashe.
Churchill was implicated in the death transfers of ustashe partisans to Titos firing squads as well as chetniks. Bolje Grob.
Ustashe =/= NDH army
THIS.
I also am sorry for all the Innocent or at least "not guilty enough" or who were only guilty by association who got at the wrong end. And even those who are guilty should have been prosecuted properly. I am sure with the will to do so things could have been done in a more civilized and formal way with less innocent people suffering in the end. At the same time I don't think it could have been done without any. In the end you could fill a book or two with all the bad stuff that happened in the american, british and french occupied parts of germany and this was already "the best" that was executed with much bigger ressources. Yugoslavia on the other end barely survived the war and there were epidemics and famines all over the country. The task at hand was herculean.
Also must we not forget that most of those who got punished did some of the most horrible things known to mankind and I really struggle to find any empathy with these.
Remember, the channel’s attitude is “war crimes are war crimes.” All the justification and whatabouting in the world will not excuse what Tito did, not for justice, but to establish power.
It is estimated by modern historians that the ustashe killed about 350.000 people (plus/minus 50.000, the estimates vary greatly). Tito killed about 80.000 people during the Bleiburg repatriations and 50.000 during the communist purges in Serbia. Thats about 130.000 people killed between 1944 and the end of the war alone. Then we have the tens of thousands of ethnic german civilians who died during their forced expulsion from Yugoslavia after the war. I certainly wouldn‘t call this „minor“.
Strong message that far too many are not hearing, especially here in the US
Spartacus Olsson....please..sit in the 'chair"....it's calling you......hitting the LIKE to show support! Never Forget!
Damn good history video
The British actor Sir Alec Guinness late in WW2 was in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve and involved in dropping off supplies on the coast of Yugoslavia for Partisans to collect. He noted that even as the crates were landed, inscriptions were painted on them by the Partisans describing them as aid from the USSR.
Churchill gave weapons from 350 000 surrendered italian forces to chetniks, that's how much reliance he had for partisans..
Coastal partisans were the Croats only.
They were cunning and staged things skillfully.
Island of Vis was liberated by the mighty British Navy and Army.
Later were some naval battles of the German and British Navies, British won sinking German newly build destroyers.
Yet partisans picture themselves as liberators.
There is the British Navy military graveyard on the Vis, while serving in the Yugo Navy I passed by.
@@lukasunjic750
Churchill gave to JVUO guerilla of the regular Royal Yugoslav government in exile in London, in his city.
Axis gave to the Axis loyal chetniks in ISC-NDH and Montenegro.
Croatian partisans took themselves a lot of that weapons including tankettes in capturing the garrison of Split.
There were plenty for everyone.
Knowing how terrible it was during the war in this region, the violence and atrocities feeding the insurgency and counterinsurgency, the endgame in the Balkans was going to be one huge pool of blood.
I had family and friends who were there at Bleiburg on both sides. The Partisan side was a general, the Ustasha side was a foot soldier.
A division was sent to cut them off at the tunnel before Bleiburg, and the pursuing divisions were to allow the fascist retreat into the tunnel. There, in the tunnel, the remaining fascists were put to the wall and finished.
Our foot soldier friend was warned by a Partisan insider to ditch his car in the shrubs several KM before the tunnel, and to run away from the column as far as possible. That's how he survived.
This is a great compliment to that episode on Ustasha crimes
That final monologue.... Never forget!
King Peter in his memoirs and interviews clearly stated that Churchill threatened him constantly and that the radio call to "join Partisans" he read by force from a text that British wrote for him. He was after the war treated way better and he also become very close to the British royal family but in any case he was used as a tool for Churchill goals to get what he wanted (or what he thought that he will get from having a young King in Britain). There are some other things worth to cover like trail against Mihailović that was both followed by the British and Americans and which was clearly set up so that he can get death penalty. Also after the war Tito destroyed bunch of documentation related to his war crimes during the whole WW2, not to mention how they were beating and executing random people that were for neither side in this conflict but they ended up being sent away that even their graveyards are unknown until today. Those who defend Tito with "he was not such as bad" they should live from 1945 until 1960 in ex Yugoslavia where there was extreme poverty and where his secret police was arresting people who think anything against their great "leader"; later on Tito was in any case forced to open a country, he becomes older and he change policies but until death he remain very strict to political prisoners and only few managed to stay untouched during his "power".
After the Sep 12ve 1944 Proclamation soon many Axis units originated from KoY started to switch on the Allied side.
Since Tito's NOVJ was officially recognized as the Allied Army by the Vis Agreement 1944., many turned on his side.
Hungarian Army units from annexed South Batcka region of the KoY turned in to NOVJ units, even invited other mainland units defending the Budapest, but they refused.
This guy is not interested in the actual truth dont you get it? BECAUSE THE TRUTH WOULD INCLUDE WESTERN RESPONSIBILITY Vatican's, London's etc
Blud too much yapping
And this conflict gave the world Aleksandar Živojinović. We know him as Alex Lifeson.
There is a war on humanity happening right now
Can you make a video about the creation of the Macedonian state in Yugoslavia in 1944-45? As a bulgarian I’ve been interested in how it all came about.
Are you guys planning to cover Operation Keelhaul?
I sure hope so. As I understand, more and more document are revealed, so if they will cover it it will be some really new history stuff...
Yes
"Choosing autocrats to represent you, sets you on a journey to a land of misery, where anger and violence can grow unfettered."
WELL SAID, SIR
Autocrats tend to choose themselves, in fact that is what autocracy means.
My story about my two grandfathers Mato Kuzmanović ( gradfather of my dad) and Ivan Nikić ( my mother's )grandfahther was like this:1. in spring of 1941. Mato born in Bzenica 1920. was with his domobran brigade because he was recrutied to chop wood in forest near Slavonska Požega (Croatia) then came the Croatian communist partisans in july 1941. And he voluntarily join them until Bleiburg reparations happend 1945. and because of his chatolic view on world he din't wanted to kill people that he thinked that are inoccent civilians (altrough war criminals deserved the bullet for what they done in Jasenovac and Stara Gradiška.) Ivan Nikić born in Široki Brijeg in 1926. also was recrutied as a teen boy 1943. They even din't let him to finish gymnasium 3rd year( high school) ( because his father died in april war 1941. Wermacht killed him.) He was only male person in his house so it was him who must to go to war in february 1945. In battle for Mostar he was captured by partisans as POW. But my mother's grandmother Kata Knežević ( married Nikić) ( she was communist and joined partisans in january 1942.) when she saw the boy ( whom she liked) that partisans will shot him because they were in same class. Saved him telling her commander that he was SKOJ-evac( young communist too.) So she saved my gradfathers life. And her commander decided to Ivan became part of their movement that year he and my gradmother get married after the war they setteld in Slavonska Požega.
Serbian parts of the SFRJ have their tragic stories too.
Serbia and Croatia are just never meant to be.
@@serdradion4010 Znam Kako vam je koji je god Režim došao za nas nikad nije bilo dobro. Uvijek su svi gledali svoju guzicu. A Tragedija 90tih. Nju neću ni spominjati. I Tuđman i Slobo Zajebali su nas samo da bi se para dokopali. Tito je donekle i bio nešto ako u obzir uzmemo Pokret Nesvrstanih i Da smo bili voljeni i od Rusa i Amerikanaca od 1945. Do 1990. Bleiburg ne opravdavam niti ću. Svim ljudima želim mir i nežičim da se više ikome ponovi ono što je nama.
Most epic ending speech in long time, it warns about the dangers of today's identitary extremisms, thus needs a revision or apendix about rights of nations on mass migration situation. So we get the needed decent debate which is always eluded. Thanks.
Thank you for watching.
This is modern history that should be taught in western schools... So much of it reflects in today's political environments.
My family is from a small village next to Vinkovci still see houses blownout from the Yugoslav war
Hi Sparty and team. I read one of Sparty's comments here about the lack of appreciation for your video's on the Balkans.
There's probably a silent majority that agrees with what is said in these video's.
There are also a few that watch these video's that can't accept the past of some of their beloved historical figures, and comment about that, but that's a minority. And there are absolutely people, who had attachment to certain historical figures, that are questioning them now, even if they don't show or comment that.
I think you guys can be proud for reaching these people.
Never forget
Thank you for the comment.
Wars dont decide who is right, they decide who is left (alive)
Wasn't Ante Pavlic's independent Croatia the place where there was a concentration camp that made visiting Nazis gasp in horror? Where competitions were held to see who could kill the most Serbians in a certain time by slashing throats?
Why did 17,000 Serbs fight for Ante Pavelic and the Ustasha organisation during WW2?
Have a look at the WW2 photo of Serbian Chetnik commander Uros Drenovic drinking and laughing with the Ustasha and Croatian Home Guard, in Bosnia, in 1943.
@@TheSouth-j7f Because they were Right wingers. Simple,
@@petergilkes7082 According to the Serbian propaganda the Ustasha wanted to kill them all in WW2. The WW2 photos of them socialising with each other and other evidence show something else was going on.
Yes, Croats are the only nation who held concentration camps for children.
A "long march" by anti-communist Chetniks . . . the irony
The deletion of comments is strong in this one
You,Sir,have a soul of a poet.
Your conclusions always bring me to tears. Spot on, as always. Like I already mentioned (in a much less mannered way in another video to which you replied appropriately snarkily), I do hope you cover the communist takeover of Bulgaria and subsequent crimes of the "fatherland front" at some point too.
Any TH-cam documentaries in English, on this topic, you can recommend?
@@nairpic7360 Not really, no. There are a few in Bulgarian, but it's really not a well-publicised topic internationally, mostly due to how quickly the iron curtain fell, as well as the fact that the allied control commission stood by and basically let the soviets have their way with us, since it was pre-agree in Yalta, as you know :)
@@r_rumenov I know the feeling, being from Bulgaria's Danubian northern neighbor and such. We got occupied by the soviets too and even lost a lot of land to them. The communist takeover here was just as harsh, but spread over 5 to 6 years. On the bright side, there were not registered acts of cannibalism in the late '40s, unlike in the Soviet occupied territories.
The ending words powerful as ever and more important than ever since WWII ...
Smrt fašizmu-Sloboda narodu!
Како си онда жив, фашисто?
Smrt fasizmu i komunizmu.
🙄
@@БајоПивљанин-й9оtvoj fašist Draža je pušio kite po zatvorima. Pa ga ubili kao psa. Molila je pičkica da ga ne ubiju hahahs
You can also tell your part story what happened to all those Germans living in kingdom of Yugoslavia, also Don't want to say but there are so many more important things that happened since middle of 1944. to end 1945. and after
Those who were lucky fled, those who stayed were slauthered, everyone knows that
Hitler: "I have decided to destroy Yugoslavia."
Tito: "Destroy who?"
*Hitler Dead, Germany Surrenders!*
Yugoslavia was liberated by the USSR.
That Yugoslavia was liberated by the partisans is the most common myth.
Specifically, partisans entered Serbia from Bosnia only after the entry of the Soviet and Bulgarian armies, until that moment there were no partisans in Serbia, almost all of them were expelled across the Drina and some to Montenegro.
Ah yes, the 1940s equivalent to the “Who Must Go?” meme.
@@Prebaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ???
It was an accurate evaluation and introduction on the humanitarian platforms. Where humanitarian sites aren't presenting in wartimes and competition amongst groups, whatever their's names
Soft underbelly? Understatement of the century by Churchill...
I would compare the Balkan's with at sandbag full of unshapely rocks instead of sand...
Anyone trying to punch it would smash his hands to mincemeat...
Even our history schoolbooks didn't tell us about the true nature of the Yugoslav state...
The Balkan War took me by surprise. So much hate... So much blodshed... So much division...
The only peace to be obtained in these Countries' of conflict will be 'Eternal Peace'...
Anyone who has gone down far enough in the comments to see this comment has probably seen some unpleasant things on the way, so I'll provide some levity by letting everyone know that when I found out that an old animated Christmas special called The Night B4 Christmas included something called Tito's Burritos, I immediately thought of this Tito.
A Great Nation that seldom saw the Peace it deserved. Some divisions still run deep.
it was a multi-national country pretending to not be, not to be confused with a nation. DIvisions coming by refusing to look back at the past and say "we were wrong and we're sorry for having done these actions, hope you are too"
It also seems to me that the value of life in the western Balkans is not high. This episode combined with more recent events indicate no problem with committing genocide. NEVER FORGET!!!
The west and its dogs of war such as croats etc INDEED have no qualms with genocide. Or blaming others who did not commit any such thing.
Dont you f*cking worry we will NEVER forget what the west did here.
I’m from former Yugoslavia. I’m too young to have lived under him but I don’t know a single person my dad’s age who didn’t love Tito. They only say good things about him.
And that justifies the democide of more than 500,000 people in what way? Because that’s how many people were killed by the Tito regime, most of them long after this war was over. Posthumous popularity does not justify mass murder and oppression.
@@spartacus-olsson And yet on the other hand, Tito's time was the only period of peace, stability and prosperity in the region since like beginning of time. During his rule illiteracy was eradicated, and for the first time in centuries people had access to health care and education and upward economic mobility regardless of their ethnic background or religious affiliation. Which is the main reason why he was and still remains popular. People were free to travel, do business, make money - the only freedom they lacked was the ability to criticize Tito. But then again, few really had much reasons to do so.
Today Serb nationalists accuse Tito of favoring Croats against Serbs, while Croat nationalists accuse him of favoring Serbs against Croats. That alone tells that despite everything he did something right. Once these nationalists came to power they burned down the country Tito built turning it into a collection of tiny mafia-states ruled by despotic kleptocrats from where everyone who has the opportunity is trying to escape. The whole region is undergoing rapid depopulation as people are emigrating en masse. But hey, at least today they are free to criticize Tito, so it was worth it, eh?
@spartacus-olsson wait a minute was it 50K or 500K? Also since when we counting nazis as human beings? No Spartacus Tito was NOT a ruthless dictator. He was a glue that unified different Western Slav nations into successful socialist state with high standards of living. He also opposed cold war that flirted with nuclear annihilation by be becoming a leader of non allinged movement.
P.S. at least you finally stop saying "Never again" when Palestinians are being starved and bombed with "western democracies" approval and full military support.
everyone else was dead or in a jail cell.
delusional bastards all of them
Thanks for this. I have never understood the 'history' of Yugoslavia but have always understood that the Balkans were a 'mess' of conflicting ideologies and religions. And have watched thousands of people die and many more wounded.
I am a native speaker of Serbian and Spartys pronunciation of Milovan Djilas name gave me nightmares.
😂
Sometimes, it's good to be a Slav...
Thank you for the lesson.
Post war Britons have much to answer for. An episode of the crime drama Foyle's War attempts to address the post war issues.