The Britons really are a unsung hero of history. Media always tries to paint them as bad guys, but opposite is almost always the true. God to save the Queen!
@@ArcticTemper Swedes are pretty awesome overlords of Finland. However, it is easy to raise your hands in front of the Russians, leaving the Swedes played out of power. I mean no one wants some colonial Lord in their home. Tourism is a different matter.
In a sense it was a bit of a "Catch 22" situation of his own, and the Yugoslavian government-in-exile's making. Mihailovic and the Yugoslavian government wanted to protect the civilians, so didn't fight. But to get arms, he needed to have active resistance, which would have resulted in civilian casualties. Had Mihailovic chosen to "bite the bullet" and accepted the civilian losses, he might have garnered the Allied support and weapons he needed, garnered civilian support (as happened in France) and may even have been able to build a stronger position with the other forces. Of course, this is all speculation, and as we saw when Yugoslavia disintegrated in 1991-1992 (as well as watching the TimeGhost episodes on Yugoslavia during the 1920s and 1930s), there are a lot of very strong ethnic feelings in the area. And very long memories. So, it is also possible that anything Mihailovic tried would have been doomed from the very start as, unlike the Communists under Tito, they didn't have a philosophical or ideological "glue" to get them all fighting for a common cause against a common enemy.
@@eldragon4076 Yes, between that and trying to herd cats (i.e. trying to coordinate the various other disparate resistance groups), it was a very difficult row to hoe. Tito's biggest advantage was being able to gain control of and coordinate the activities of all the communist groups in Yugoslavia. Because of this, and the fact that the Chetniks were receiving weapons from, and sometimes working with, the Axis powers alienated them from the Allies and ruined any chance the Chetniks could form what the Allies would have considered to be a legitimate resistance movement worth supporting.
I get it why it isn't convenient to call them "The Partisans", but calling them "Tito's communists" is also kinda wrong. Not all of them were communists, a lot of the people in Tito's movement didn't care about communism or any other political idea, and were just people who wished to oppose the occupation.
I know it is painful your most effective resistance force was Sovjet Moscows arm, but it is true, regardless of some individual low ranking soldiers were or were not Communists, or political in nature.
Tito je 1937. postavljen na mesto sekretara KPJ licno od Staljina kao covek od poverenja. Usaglaseno je glediste sa Staljinom da KJ ne moze dugo da opstane, zbog etnickih problema,pa Tito po povratku u KJ osniva KP Slovenije i KP Hrvatske unutar KPJ. Ceo rat u grupi Vrhovnog staba oko Tita, bili su komunisti iz ostatka KPJ, a stabovi i CK KPS i KPH su bili posebno i odvojeni. Istorija koju smo ucili od Dedijera , Petranovica,Klaric, i drugih tog vremena je izkonstruisana da sakrije prava dogadjanja i uloge.
@@billbolton I watched that video and that is only scratching the surface (this comes from a Bosnian-Herzegovinian from one of the most complicated cities in former Yugoslavia)
I would like to share some of the real stories from my family, regarding Chetniks vs Partisans - After the destruction of Yugoslav army common people in Serbia wanted to fight the Germans, but there were no real, honourable options for that, so most of them avoided getting into the "wood-people" as they would call guerrilla units in the area I grew up. After Partisans and Chetniks units were formed, they would usually drafting young people into their ranks, just as they passed through some village, regardless of what those young guys wanted. My grandfather was drafted in Chetniks but when he realised that most of the fight was against Partisans, he deserted and hid in a watermill as a worker. Each time some unit went through the village, he would spray some flour on his beard, making himself look much older - so they left him alone. At the end of the war he joined the Partisans just so he could say he was on the right side. Most of the people in our village fled in front of the drafting units. They had a sign - when some unit was spot, they sent a kid to the hill to call for the pigs and that was the sign for hiding. I remember this one old guy from the village, when war in Croatia started ('90s), he said: "If it was the Germans, I would took my rifle right away and go to war, but how to fight against brothers Croatians?" - And he was the biggest deserter of them all in WWII :) During the war, Chetniks put telephone operator in our house, under the threat that they will kill all members of the family and burn the house if anybody complains (we still keep the written order, with the threat, typed and stamped). Later when Chetniks left, Partisans came and they wanted to execute my grandfather for collaboration with Chetniks and they performed a "pretend" execution, where they shot some rounds around my grandfather to try to break him. Partisans also executed one young Chetnik in front of our house. He was just a boy, maybe 18, crying and begging for his life. During the "trial" in our house, he asked my grandmother to bake him some bread. She asked the commissar and he said: "No reason for that, he will be shot!" However, the boy swore her on the lives of her children and since she lost two in labour, she just had to do it. He ate the bread and the Partisans shot him soon after, not paying attention to his cries and begging. The hole they dug up for him was too small, so they cut his legs with shovel to be able to put his body in. His father came after the war and took his body. Those were some terrible times... And at the end, a nice story - One German soldier saved my grandfather's life. There was a German unit going through the village, gathering men for forced labour in Germany or for hostages in case they would need to execute some. They sent one soldier to our house. The German soldier entered the house and saw my grandparents baby daughter who was 2 at the time and he probably felt sorry for them all. My grandfather told me that this German was just looking at the baby and smiling. So, the soldier got out, put his foot on the doorstep, untied his shoe and then started to tie it again slowly. The Germans from the unit couldn't see my grandfather who was standing in the doorway, only the soldier. While he was pretending to tie his shoelaces, the German soldier secretly gave my grandfather a sign to run away. He understood and started to run. After the distance was big enough, soldier started to yell "Halt, halt!" and started to shoot at him, all in pretend that my grandfather got away. Other Germans didn't want to chase him, so they just let him go. Edited just to correct typos and grammar.
@@menschmaschine-2483 Thanks! My grandfather's story about the good German soldier is the mayor reason I always avoided generalisations and I believed that people can be good and unselfish even at the risk for their own lives, even in those dark days, even to complete strangers in a strange country. Having that experience in the closest family marks you to always hope for good.
@@Beogrrr A serbian friend of mine was told by his grandparents that it were hard times. Then the red army came to free Serbia (so they believed) but first they raped their women. My father grew up in eastern Europe (as he was part of the German minority in Balkan) and told me communism is a big mess. It's never just black and white.
Same story about me, most of my family members were drafted into Chetniks but eventually changed sides in 1944 when king ordered them to do so. Although my own great grandfather was a Montenegrin Partisan since the beginning of that movement.
My grandad fought in Partizans but he was (listen to this) a royalist. The only reason he didn't joined Chetniks (using his words) is because they were mostly killing civilians of other ethnicities in the name of king and because they collaborated with nazis. After war he left his position in high command (he was radio code officer) even though he was decorated war hero and was offered a huge house and piece of land in Ruma. He left the Communist Party because after the war he saw bunch of ex Ustasha and ex Chetniks joining Communist party for their own interest. He was disgusted with them and accused them publicly which resulted in him being kicked out of party. They said he was a mad drunk talkig bullshit because he developed alcohol problem as consequence of PTSD. Later in 70's and 80's turns out he was right. Those same men he accused were kicked out of party and convicted becuse evidence of their war crimes emerged.
Very interesting topic! Together with some of my friends who are also military history aficionados, we distinguished 20 various military organizations that operated on teritory of Yugoslavia: 1. Wehrmacht 2. Waffen-SS 3. Italian troops 4. Hungarian troops 5. Yugoslav Army in Fatherland (Mihailovic's chetniks) 6. Croatian Ustashe 7. 13th Waffen SS Division Handschar (Bosnian Croats and Muslims) 8. Serbian Guard of Milan Nedic 9. Chetniks of Kosta Milovanovic Pecanac 10. Tito's partisans (communists) 11. Slovenian chetniks 12. Slovenian White Guard 13. Russian White Russians / Russian Protection Corps 14. Various armed troops that presented themselves as "Chetniks" 15. Dimitrije Ljotic's Serbian Voluntary Corps 16. Russian Liberation Army 17. MVAC (Italian Volunteer Anti Communist Militia consisted of local auxilary troops ) 18. Muslim Legion of Muhamed Hadziefendic 19. Bulgarian troops 20. Albanian fascist Balli Kombëtar I am sure we missed some. Now imagine the absolute hell among people of Yugoslavia and the beligerents who were opposed not only by their allegiance to Germany or Allies, but nationality and religion as well. Everyone was against everyone and every fraction collaborated with its enemy at some point, but ordinary civilians were the one to bear the brunt of the war.
Well some are the same like Wermacht and Waffen SS. You forget Montenegro Federalist, Montenegro Green or (Zelenaši) than you had Domobrani ( regular Croatian army)
@@tommy-er6hh There were some who joined up with partisans, probably those who had communist leanings, but majority suddenly found themselves no longer solders with everyone wanting them gone and no protection from anyone. Villagers in some places were literally taking them captive and putting them to work under threat of arms... How things changed in 3 years...
ali ne vidiš da je mapa kriva.ja sam iz međimurja...mi smo pod mađarima bili a po njegovom smo pod njemcima bili.moj deda je partizan bil ali je rekel da do 1943g i četnici i partizani su se borili protiv švaba........engleska je odabrala tita i tada je draža dok so 1943g talijani kapitulirali počel za švabe da se bori ne:(((((
These 30 minutes were about the best "one-stop" explanation given on the Yugoslav situation in WWII. The careful monologue with animated maps helped a GREAT deal. The various Yugo factions....essentially fighting a multi-faceted ( 3 or 4 way) civil war....WHILE....WWII was raging, made various other attempts to describe this, as almost impossible to follow. Thumbs up !....for a great video.
@@Cardan011 Let's be honest - most of the leadership of the Ustase were Herzegovni, not Croats. There is a joke in Zagreb that goes "Hercegovni think they are more Croatian than the Croats, bigger Catholics than the Pope and some pride themselves on being bigger fascists than Hitler!" Just like Princip, Mladic and his ilk were all born and raised in Bosnia with Biljana Plavšić herself also stating that the "Bosnian Serbs" were more "Serb than Serbs". Ultranationalism is a living hallucination, lol.
@@wudzahhe favourises ustashas because it is well known that both SHS and Yugoslavia were bring created for UK purposes. And the ustashas were being protected by Churchill as are now.
TIK, a medal for courage definitely, but you should have avoided this one. Firstly, it is too complicated for 30 minutes video, secondly it is still not sufficiently examined, thirdly it is hotly contested topic, not only between nations (CRO vs SER) but within nations (Serbs vs Serbs). And it's no wonder that you made several mistakes, but we cannot take it against you, one needs to be from around here (Balkans) to understand it all. - "Partisans" or "Communists". It's a mistake to call Yugoslav partisans communists. You should have just used the local word "partizan" (without attaching the meaning of the word 'partisan' to it) as you used local words for 'Chetniks' or 'Ustashe'. Or simply call them by their official name National Liberation Army (NLA), or by their local acronym NOV The NLA was far from being communists force. The communist party provided organizational structure, but they were just the most organized group in the movement. Majority of the people simply did not understand the ideology. They just fought against the invaders. My grandfather fought in partizans, but he had no particular inclination for communists. He just hated Germans and Italians. He might have well joined Chetniks for the matter of ideology. He chose side not based on ideology, but based on who is effectively fighting against the occupants. And it was the NLA In my native Montenegro, the nation wide rebellion against Italians started on 13.July 1941, sparked by revolt against Italian proclamation of puppet state of Montenegro a day before. The rebellion spread like a wildfire, within 3 days Italians controlled less than 20% of the territory. It would be stupid to assume that 80% of population of the country were communists. - Partizans being supplied by Moscow. Absolutelly off the mark. Yugoslav partizans did not get any supplies from Soviet Union before autumn of 1944, by which time NLA was already relatively well equipped and well supplied force, and had already clearly won the civil war in Yugoslavia I mean, how could Soviets supply Yugoslav partizans even if they had wanted so? By sea? By air? It was neither physically nor logistically possible. The Partizans were supplied initially by the remains of the Yugoslav Royal Army stock (which were abundant), then by their own production (when they held Uzice republic territory, but later too), then by stripping the German and Italian units, (Especially after the capitulation of Italy, when huge stacks of Italian equipment were captured by Partizans), and in the later part of the war (44 onwards) by British. This is confirmed by the equipment NLA used: most used rifle Belgian M24, (leftover from YRA), and Carcano ('gifts' from Italians), machine gun ZB27 (YRA leftover), etc. No PPSh, no DP. Only in Montenegro some Mossin Nagan rifles could be found, but even these were not of Soviet origins. "Moskovka" (as Mossin Nagan rifle was called locally) was a standard rifle of the Royal Army of Montenegro during WWI. So, it was a leftovers from previous war. Only in late 1944 when the Red Army entered Yugoslavia and made physical link with the Partizans they they supplied some of the equipment to NLA. And after that one could see a NLA officer having a PPSh or TT pistol. - While formally being a leader of Communist party of Yugoslavia, Tito was not that much of a staunch communist either. He was rather opportunistic than ideological. His love for Stalin did not last (and events in 1947-48 showed), if he ever had it. During the war he was trying to keep the middle ground between the Soviets and British. The later history of Yugoslavia confirms this. - Partisan non-agression pact with Germans. Even if it had existed (which I seriously doubt, not on ideological grounds though, but rather on German view of NLA) it was menttioned at completely wrong place, in the context of operation Weiss, as if it was the arrangement to protect the back of partizans while they deal with Chetniks. If there was such an agreement between NLA and Wehrmacht during operation Weiss, then someone forgot to notify German and NLA units fighting around Prozor, where they had some of the fiercest clashes of the war. During the operation Weiss there was certainly no such arrangement, since the goal of the operation was to crush the resistance and to get rid of NLA once and for all. Actually, the Germans were putting up their utmost to achieve this goal, by pressing the NLA from the northwest into the shrinking pocket against Neretva river. And this is where you made another mistake: the number of chetniks. Chetniks had around 15k (20+k according to official post war history) on the eastern bank of Neretva. Their task was to serve as the cap to the cauldron. But they utterly failed at it. NLA managed to force Neretva and crushed the Chetnik force in Jablanica. It was a blow from which they never recovered. It was the last time Chetniks force was used in such large formations. -Chetniks never operated in Croatia proper. They operated only in parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, (which were part of NDH - Independent State Of Croatia, but not Croatia itself). They needed supply and logistical support by local population to be able to operate, and this was possible only in Herzegovina and parts of Bosnia were there was at least some Serbian population. Serbs more further west (In Croatia proper) were mostly Partizan supporters because they saw them as protection against the Croatian NDH and it's genocidal agenda of ethnically cleansing Serbs from Croatia. Chetniks, who cooperated with Germans and Ustashe, could not find much love among that population of Serbs. - Mihailovic did not operate from nor in Montenegro. In Montenegro the leader of Chetnik movement was Pavle Djurisic, and he had love-hate relationship with Mihailovic. But that is a whole another story. - Where you place Mihailovic in northern Montenegro is actually a start of operation Schwartz, at which point it was controlled by NLA, and the whole point of the Schwartz was to eliminate that liberated territory and to get rid of NLA (again). (I think that thousands of Yugoslav partizans would have liked to see you shot for placing the Mihailovic icon at the place and time of their units were at the time. The Battle of Sutjeska was a pivotal moment for NLA and you had just did the equivalent of blasphemy). - The number of NLA is greatly played down. At any given time since second half of 1941 the movements strength did not fall below 100k combatants, and it linearly grew during the war, nearing million at the war end. - The Germans never left Yugoslavia. At any given time there were always at least few German divisions in the area, and after the capitulation of Italy, even more. There were few more mistakes. But this comment is too long already. The Balkans is never easy.
The most informative comment here. I have no idea how TIK could make such a mistake when he said Tito's partisans were supplied by Stalin. I mean, how? Maybe before Barbarossa, USSR did helped Tito and his communist groups with some supplies and light weaponry, but definitely not after Hitler's invasion in 1941. Btw when he said Tito's partisans were 25k strong, I believe TIK counted only the group in Bosnia, which was with Tito at the moment. He maybe isn't aware that partisan guerilla movements were scattered all over Yugoslavia, firstly independent, then later in war gradually joined under Tito's command.
Nice post but you too made a few errors. For example though inferior to the partisans there were in fact Chetnik formations in Croatia. Just google Momčilo Đujić or the Dinara Division.
@@careline23 Yes. That is right. But that was Djuic, not Mihailovic. And they did not 'move into Croatia' as video says. Djuic chetniks did not move from anywhere, they were recruited among the local Serbs around Knin as a response to Ustashe massacres in the area.
@@alleks1989 Well the logic goes like this. They might be godless communists (majority of fighters weren't ardent communists), but they are OUR godless communists. On the other hands these Germans are Turks all over again, and we have traditions on how we deal with occupiers that involves pits and tossing stuff into them. And traditions need to be upheld. Also fighting FOR the partisans makes it a bit less likely someone might decide you are an anti-revolutionary element in league with the fascist invader so a triad should be sent to pay you a "visit".
Yah, but the store owner will tell him, _"We don't carry any! There never was a Stalingrad. Some clever publisher came up with the idea of inventing Stalingrad so he could sell a ton of books on it to some guy named TIK."_ Then the crying (or shooting) begins! Little does TIK know the same publisher lobbied Russia to rename Stalingrad to Volgograd so now TIK is morally obligated to buy those books all over again under the name _The Siege of Volgograd_ . Ya gotta love free market capitalism. It just keeps the money flowing and flowing and flowing. If TIK were really good, he would lobby Russia to rename Stalingrad/Volgograd to TIKograd and be done with it. Shouldn't be too hard. Shouldn't cost more than a few hundred billion dollars. Perfect for a GOFUNDME project.
Not most, but all of the Brit supplies earmarked for Yugoslavia. He still received supplies from Moscow which was greater overall, but in those years most of his stuff was British. He was deamed as the better German killer by the alies.
You missed the beginning of that sentence.. Where he say's "Tito's communists were able to capture arms manufacturing facilities, and then LATER received aid from the Soviets"... So their primary early war guns and ammo were home-built. In the mountains/wilderness of Bosnia, something the Chetniks could not do.
@@TheImperatorKnight Also I would like to share some new info about ww2 in Balkan with you TiK. Becous I am from Balkan and nerd lover of ww2. Greetings from front!
Don't try to understand the Balkans FULL STOP. There are almost as many groups as there are people, and they are all ready to kill one another. The only way to gain any understanding is to consume large quantities of Slivovitz.
@@TheImperatorKnight Ustaše are generally called fascist in a broader sense. It is because of their ultra nationalism, militarism, glorification of violence, anti intellectualism, cult of masculinity and strict gender roles. Hello from Croatia. I am glad we can both agree to support Liberland.
maks zakošek Croatia is so beautiful Has a climate thats always warm The people are all good looking Serbs live in the past They also worship mother Russian Men in Croatia all pump weights look like they are on Steroids They have a tough guy culture And now Croatia is part of the EU and NATO ...... Tito was Croatian kept Yugoslavia Afloat till his death 1980
There are also countless stories about literal brothers from the same family,same blood,one in the Chetniks and one in the Partisan Commies,and sometimes they saved each others lives,sometimes they killed each other in the name of their ideologies.
@@juremustac3063 Rubbish. It has nothing to with "survival strategies". These men acted on impulse or were forcibly recruited. I know of many Serbs whose families were on bad terms due to some being pro-Tito Partisans and other pro-fascist Chetniks. I have also met Croats who had family members who were Usta, Domobran and Partisans. It really all depended on the experiences. A woman raped by fascists, it makes sense she will want to work with Partisans for revenge. Ditto if a boy saw a woman raped by Partisans, he will want to fight with fascists. Most civilians had no desire or love for either, but they were forced to endure a war they never asked for coming to their door. Than things happen, and people make choices and learn to live with the consequences of those choices.
Finally caught up on your work. Nice work with Stalingrad. Received the first two volumes of Stalingrad by David Glantz. They truly are doorstoppers. I do wonder how Glantz is able to write so much. It takes me a couple of months to write a 3000 word article. I appreciate the work you are doing with the occupation side of the war. Hunger is a terrible way to die, but must be taught. I'm going to try to get into some of the books I picked up for the Holocaust, starting with Raul Hilberg's work.
@@TheImperatorKnight It depends. It is for work, so normally a few hours per day. I end up write three to four sentences, then triple citing everything as I go along. Also trying not to make it too dry. How often do you work on your scripts?
Hard to say how often because I'm doing editing as well, but what I normally do is dedicate each day to one thing - scripting or research or editing etc. Then I'll do 5-6 hours on it (with a lunch break about 4 hours in). Can't put a word count something on it, but on certain topics I can easily do a few thousand words a day, especially when I'm inspired. But it really does depend on the subject.
Also I should say, I usually go over the 6 hours. I aim for 6 hours as a minimum. But usually by that point I'm done in and get headaches for concentrating too long
@@Natogoon I am a Croat nationalist and your question is idiotic. It is normal to assume your group is the best regardless if you are from a backward tribe or most advanced civilization. However wrong I consider Serb Religious nationalists, they lead their life based on more adaptive idias then secular hedonistic cosmopolitans. Nationalists have kids while the cosmopolitans don't.
This was brilliant! Most of my family that remained in Yugoslavia during WW2 had fought for the Chetniks . I learned many new things and some of this I have heard from my family. Thank you for the great work .
Yugoslavian king ordered in September 12. 1944. that all Mihailovich forces to join partizans under titos command and defeat enemy and called all people to rise against enemy.
300 filthy detailed super accurate videos? So much hard work and you have provided us with so much education and entertainment, TIK has definetly made it's mark in the world and I wish nothing but a continuation and greater improvement of this high standard of historical content
Well surprisingly balanced video. My grandmother and grandfather were communist before wwII and were part of resistance smuggling information inside city of occupied Serbia. They always differentiated Chetniks and Ljotics forces. There could be days that one day you would first chetniks coming into village the germans after them searching for chetniks and next day partisans searching for germans. It's never a clean cut situation in Balkans as people might think.
A very good friend of mine was a Chetnik his family came from Yugoslavia, and he lived in Newport, South Wales , he was definitely one of the most genuine people I’ve ever met in my life. I’m in England but I often think about Mr Chetnik like I said in my eyes he was one of the most honest and genuine person I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting .
Great video, great work! Now I would like to add some details... In autumn '41 Partisans and Chetniks did have some joint operations in Central Serbia. Germans ordered reprisals: The number of hostages to be shot was calculated as a ratio of 100 hostages executed for every German soldier killed and 50 hostages executed for every German soldier wounded, a formula devised by Adolf Hitler. Germans shot 3000 citizens of Kragujevac for example, among them 300 of elementary and high school students. Mihajlović said that price is way too high for active resistance. After all, in WW1 we lost more than a quarter of our population. This war was simply too much for Serbs. Tito as a Croat and Communist didn't pay much attention to civilian casualties. Partisans and Germans have had cease-fire negotiations in '43, and the delegation was: Milovan Đilas, Vladimir Velebit and Svetozar Vukomanović "Tempo". After 6 months Hitler dismissed any kind of agreement with communists. It was Đilas, later dissident who revealed this. Today's ˝Titoists˝ usually go berserk when you mention Đilas, saying "He was reactionary, malicious˝ or whatever. Many people would like Tito's regime back constantly forgetting that ˝Revolution always eats its own children˝. This video illustrates their mindset, especially when you come up with some fact that doesn't fit their narrative th-cam.com/video/9CitfXK_BvY/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=afroknot You forgot Đujić Chetniks in Dalmacija (Southern Croatia). Collaboration with Italians was necessary because Serbs over there was stuck between a rock and a hard place. There were no forests suitable for guerilla warfare like Bosnia, and Croats started with literal extermination of Serbs. No Serbs from that area joined Partisans because - Oh Suprise! - commanders was Croats. After the war communists simply pushed under the carpet all ethnic tensions, thinking that their ideology will be enough to solve all problems, or god knows what were they thinking of. Later, in new Yugoslavia, the secret police UDBA was watching constantly anything that can be able to disrupt their forced harmony and only city pigeons was not working as their informants. Of course, that kind of oppression didn't last forever, unsolved national questions came back like a boomerang in the nineties. Thank you TIK, all the best.
Đilas was a reactionary, that is not even the question, as for reason for fighting it is not true that Tito didn't care if civilians die, but partisans were populated mostly from people from NDH after Srb uprising, who would be killed regardless of Hitler's formula because ustasha goal was extermination of Serbs.
My villages in Dalmatia were massacred by Dujic. I have lost count how many Serbian historians revise history and falsely claim he collaborated to save Serbs. He was a known anti-Croat, anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish bigot. A fascist through and through until the day he died peacefully as an old man in San Diego. My great-grandfather in central Croatia was nearly murdered because local German Axis decreed if 1 German solider died 50 Croat civilians were executed. He was selected for extermination despite being an elder with no attraction to fascism or communism. He survived by pure chance.
Great video. The only issue I see is with defining the "chetnik movement". Chetnik was the word that meant "Guerilla fighter" in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. So any movement that was using guerilla warfare called themselves chetniks. Pećanac and his lot didn't have anything to do with Mihajlović, and Pećanac was assassinated by Mihajlović forces. Ljotić movement referred to themselves as ZBOR or chetniks, but was not part of Mihajlović's movement. All of these movements were independent from each other and on an off referring to themselves as chetniks. So to summarise you were talking about Mihajlović "Serbian army in the fatherland". Mihajlović also had very loose control of his commanders in the field such as Đujić in Dalmatia and Đurišić in Montenegro, which were able to decide on their current allegiance as the situation in the field would require. Some commanders were enacting reprisal against Ustasha crimes by attacking random Croatian and Bosnak villages (an eye for an eye sort of thing). It might be interesting to analyze Croatian genocide against Serbian population during the war.
@@Falcon-nj6kr Name was present in the Serbian language since the middle ages. "Četovanje" was guerilla fighting against the Turkish invaders. Matija Ban wrote a book "Pravila o cetnickoj vojni" in 1848.
Let's not pretend that many Serbians were not - and remain - Royalist fascists. Dujic was an avid anti-Croat, anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish bigot. Though I despise both Usta and Chetniks, let's not forget that the assassination of Croatian politicians like Stjepan Radic by Serb-Montenegrin politicians who were given the lenient verdict of "house arrest in 1928 for their crimes did not set in motion the existence of the Ustase. Ultranationalist Serbs have and will always remain their own worst enemy, no matter how much they claim to be the innocent victim "who did nothing!". They cannot consistently fight among themselves, and start problems with others than act horrified when the history they set in motion turns around and bites them in the ass. Now, does this excuse crimes against innocent persons? Never, not for a day. Let's not pretend the Ustase did not murder thousands of Croats, or that the Chetnik/Axis collaborations also did not murder numerous Croats in retaliation for them resisting Axis occupation which many Usta nostalgists do, for the record. But let's also not pretend who planted the seed of much insanity in the region. Ultranationalists, with ultranationalist Serbs (not including Bosnian Orthodox like Princip, Mladic etc) leading the way. F**k the Chetniks and the Usta sympathisers.
I came back here after 4 months to check the comment section. And it's surprisingly clean considering the topic. xD TIK made such a good job of it that not even Balkans had too much to complain about. Amazing.
How was Moscow supplying Tito with weapons? Remember that Barbarossa would start in a month, and the SU did not have anything to spare and certainly no way of delivering anything to Tito. Did they use UPS or Fedex?
Good point. I dwell into Yugoslavia's history a lot but I did not come across any serious mention of Soviet military aid before 1944. TIK??? Sources for this???
Giving a source to what folks are saying: Fitroy Maclean's The Heretic indicates that Tito received no Soviet supplies despite dozens of requests for support 1941-1944. In 1941-1942 the Chetniks under Mihalovic received British supplies, even while British intelligence began to suspect the collaboration. Eventually, Britain switch to sending supplies to the Tito's forces because they were viewed as the more effective anti-fascist fighting force. This probably doesn't detract from TIK's overall conclusion that the Chetniks were ineffective fighting forces that collaborated waaaaaay too often.
It became clear in 1941 in Serbia that Germany will loose another World War, especially after USSR and USA joined the WW2. The question was what will happen with Yugoslavia?Remain a monarchy or become a one party communist dictatorship? That is the reason why one of bloodiest civil wars began. Three of my great grandfathers were members of Mihailovic's Chetniks.
Thank you for another great video! Congratulations on keeping an honest and realistic narrative without any ideological prejudices still dominating our school books written by the leading post-communist historians from this region. I hope you will make even more videos covering 1941-1945 period in Yugoslavia. Keep the good work!
Ustaše considered Bosnian Muslims to be Muslim Croats, so in their eyes Independent State of Croatia was mostly populated by Croats. You did a great job but I think this is a important detail.
@@igordragicevic8835 in 1942 Croatian Orthodox Church was created and some Serbs joined Croatian army (domobrani) but this was just for propaganda purposes. Croats were also considered to be descendants of Goths (Germanic people) and Serbs of Slavs. Muslims Croats were considered to be more pure blood Croats than Catholic Croats.
@@leonmihalic4938 lol yea but the Serbian Orthodox Church has been in bosnia for 1000 years before that. And if the muslims were croatians y did they have Slava and orthodox icons. What they converted from islam to orthodoxy under the otomans 🤣🤣🤣 the ottomans showed them the divinity of christ
@@leonmihalic4938 y do some muslims still celebrate durdjevdan on the orthodox calander. The most numerous Slava of the Serbs. Because they were Orthodox Croatian created in 1942 🤣🤣🤣 ante pavelic show them divinity of Christ
Churchill: Fight for Yugoslavia, not Moscow. Mihailovich: I will fight for Yugoslavia by not fighting for Yugoslavia. But against the communists. Chetniks: We will fight for Yugoslavia by fighting all Yugoslavs who are not Serbian. Mikhailovich: Can I get weapons to fight the communists? Churchill: No, you are not fighting for Yugoslavia. Stalin: No, you are fighting the communists. Hitler: Of course. Take as much as you like, and kill communists. Tito: You are taking weapons from the Nazis! Mikhailovich: But I will use these weapons to fight the Nazis! Eventually. Churchill: You are working with the Nazis. No more weapons for you. Stalin: Adding your names to The List. Mussolini: Come and conspire with me against our own puppets and our Axis partners. Hitler: Come and conspire with me against our own puppets and our Axis partners. Chetniks: We are killing all Yugoslavs who are not Serbian. Mikhailovich: No, we should be struggling together! Chetniks: We ARE struggling together. Churchill: You are all mad. I hope the communists kill you all. Roosevelt: Who are these people!? Stalin: Soon, no one will even remember.
Hey TIK, found your channel about a month ago. I really enjoy the content! I’m studying history and German rn and the information contained in your videos really makes me wonder if I am as knowledgeable as I think I am 😂 well done!
What a great video,as expected from TIK. The armchair historians video on the Yugoslavian resistance primarily talks about how great Tito and his communists were at "liberating" Yugoslavia while lumping all of the chetniks into one group led by Mihailovic and saying that they *ALL* collaborated with the Axis(not entirely true), while making no mention of Tito making deals with the Germans.
Wow. Excellent. This is as spot on as it can be in 30 minutes. I knew some old real Chetniks (with Mihajlović) that emigrated to Canada via Italy, which lends credence to the Italian involvement part. One understated part was the viciousness of the Ustaša regime, but I doubt that people following this channel will be not informed about it. Hats off to you TIK, you did the impossible and explained this military and strategic cacophony as well and probably better than anyone else could. Bravo to you.
Great video, TIC. If you ever decide to expand upon the themes resistance and collaboration in your work, I would definitely recommend a comparative approach. There are many parallels to be drawn, for example, between the Chetniks and the Ustasha, and the Polish Home Army and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army respectively. I'll leave you to sort out the details, but it suffices to say that in contrast to the Allies, the Nazis and Bolsheviks looked out for their friends. Anyways, keep em coming man, all the best!
Balkanian here... I'm with you TIK... all the way... This was great... some things I knew.... some I didn't... but thank you for unbiased and balanced view of the situation... This video and lindybeige's recent video on the topic are awesome...
Damn, the Balkans were one confusing shit storm during WW2. I only knew one thing for sure before I started watching this video and that is that the Italians would find a way to weasel themselves out of fighting any major battles.
The Italians literally recruited Chetniks like Dujic to massacre my ancestral village/s. So your comment elicited a quiet laugh as even when they are attacking, they recruit someone to do the killing for them, lol. With that said, I bear no animosity towards Italians or Serbs unless they are ultranationalists. The average Italian or Serb is just a person who played no part in this insanity and is taken as the individual they are.
Thank again TIK, great video. How you managed to summarize such a complex and contentious issue is incredible. No wonder you didn't rush this. ;) I've just become a subscriber, after watching loads of your videos, including Operation Crusader and the Stalingrad ones. Will become one of your Patreons.
So many errors, for one Tito didn't get any aid from Moscow well until 1944 when he was already getting tons of supplies from Allies in Italy. Tito was begging Moscow for aid via radio far into 1942 and when nothing come he was pretty pissed because he didn't expect to be forced to fight entire Axis without any help from outside. Ljotić was never consider part of Chetnik movement he belongs to prewar Serbian fascist organization ZBOR. There was no German-Tito deal, this is pure post war Chetnik revisionist fantasies, there were negotiations initiated by Tito by using a captured German major Arthur Strecker, commander of the 3rd Battalion of the 738th Grenadier Regiment of the 718th Infantry Division, who was captured in Prozor counterattack and mining engineering group from Organization Todt which was captured earlier... Tito wanted temporary truce and recognition as warring faction in order to start prisoner exchanges instead of his captured Partisans being usually shot on the spot ("lucky" one got sent as forced labor to the Reich), Moscow sent a radio message complaining about Tito negotiation with Germans to which Tito responded to piss off since they have yet to send him any kind of aid. 7th SS Division was in no position to attack Tito while he was fighting Chetniks since it was in the wrong place, searching some mountain west of them which had no Partisans on it, it had to be then rushed east for the next part of the show... While Germans pretend to negotiate they were in fact redeploying their forces to finish Tito off while main body of Partisans were attempting to advance into Montenegro so whole negotiations thing backfired on Tito catching of guard resulting in Operation Schwarz in which Tito main force almost got annihilated... initially it was planed as operation to disarm Chetniks (which were entirely part of Italian MVAC) but with destruction most of Chetniks by Partisans operation goal was changed. German report for operation Schwarz from 20 June 1943 states that only 17 Chetniks were killed while 3764 were captured! Not much resisting... Tito's Partisans in post war bodycount of their own losses reached a figure of 6391 partisans killed. Same German report lists German losses as 583 killed, 1760 wounded and 425 missing while Croatian losses 40 killed, 166 wounded, 205 missing. Italians reported 290 killed, 541 wounded, 1502 missing. Oh yeah in order to fight communist and ustasha ideology, Chetnik movement adopt Greater Serbia ideology starting ethnic cleansing campaign against Muslims in Bosnia and Sandžak... Probably best book on Chetniks was written by Jozo Tomasevich, (1975). War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945: The Chetniks. Stanford University Press. Also in John Cripps: Action This Day there is a chapter "Mihailović or Tito? How the Codebreakers Helped Churchill Choose" on how Ultra intercepted tons of Axis communications so Churchill had better knowledge on conditions in Balkans then anyone.
Tito got a lot of weapons from Ustashe to fight against Chetniks during 1941 and 1942 until supplies started to come from British in 1942 and Soviets in 1944.
@@mythbuster860 Oh look informbiro is back... why don't you mention how Tito was actually Gestapo agent who worked for Hitler, how he deliberately started ill prepared uprising in '41 to get as many communists killed as possibles since after the war he recruited bunch of former nazis into his ranks... :-p There was no significant arms shipments form British until after operation Audrey was carried out by OSS from 15 October 1943 to early 1944. Before that from July to September 1943 only 190 tons were air dropped 107 to Mihailović and 82,5 tons to Tito. Oh look at that Dragoljub got more supplies by air then Tito! If only he actually did something with it could have might kept that "commie lover" Churchill on his side. :-p The fact that Dragoljub was sitting on his ass and failed to capture significant booty from Italians after their capitulation and failed to secure any area along Adriatic coast through which supplies from Italy could be easily landed only secured his doom.
Finished watching your video and all I can say really, is what a damned mess. "Damned if you do, damned it you don't" as someone else said in the comments. This to me looks like a good case of tribal asymmetrical warfare. You're dealing with so many little groups and bands, that it's bringing on images of Vietnam or Afghanistan to my mind. (I've never served BTW:) But still, what a mess and just a tumbled pile or issues. Wonder how much Axis man power was just tied up, dealing with all this. And the supplies been given away in this area. None the less, good video, and thank you for doing it as well TIK. Lindy did one as well and it was an hour long more or less. And it went into a great more detail than you did mostly. But yeah, nice work, and thank you from me here in Scotland. Remember, "Is this really the case?"
1.In 1944 many chetniks became partisans. It doubled partisans number. Communist in Serbia were in hundreds before the arrival of soviets 2. Explore the 19th century term Greater Serbia. That is the ultimate goal of all chetnik factions. It is 20th century Serbian doctrine.
Sure, many Chetniks became communists as this became the more formidable force. and Nope, Mihalovic literally fought for the kingdom of Yugoslavia (as presented correctly by TIK), took their orders when they were in London. The "Greater Serbia" was a hoax purported by the communists since the 4th communist congress in Dresden. Why wasn't it ever created? Serbs had all of the political power in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia yet gifted Croatia with Dubrovnik along with the rest of Dalmatia. "Greater Serbia" is not the topic at hand and the statements you make about it have no basis in facts. Greater Serbia is a hypothesis (never materialized or seriously acted upon) at best while NDH was the greater Croatia incarnate and a true evil enterprise.
@@carelesslad9931 wrong, greater serbia was official Serbian Kingdom policy. From nacretanje(midlle 19th century) to sanu memorandum(late 20th century) the goal was allways the same, all serbs in one country
@@portoroko611 You know that that memorandum was never made official, it was a draft that never passed? Either way, "all Serbs in a single country" was a war cry for liberation from Turks, that struggle started with the first uprising (1804) and ended with the first Balkan war (1912). In contrast "greater Serbian oppression" was a communist concoction of the KPJ. "All Serbs in one country" is also a bit counter to a Greater Serbia, since in order to achieve ASI1C a Yugoslavia had to be created which was never a Kingdom of Serbia, where a true greater Serbia was passed up as an option by the Karadjordjevic dynasty. Right upon seizing power communists acted on the Great Serbian Oppression hoax and partitioned Serbia under the pretext of the "great Serbian oppression". Yugoslavia only ever cost Serbs territory to the benefit of all others. Either way I appreciate your input.
@@portoroko611 If your statements about Great Serbia conspiracy was true, then after ww1 Serbia could just opted for Greater Serbia instead of Yugoslavia. So obviously what you are saying isn't true.
@@KuroiReaper you know they tried but there wasnt other way to do it. Nikola Pasic was the prime minister and he was a great serb. All of radical party was allways great serb, thats a fact!
Good overview. That is why we call it "Balkanski karakzan" Balkan Black Cattle. Result is 1.6 -1.7 million dead and only 350 - 400 thousand killed in combat.
The only thing that could unite Serbs and Croats is their mutual hatred of Bosnians The only thing that could unite Bosnians and Croats is their mutual hatred of Serbs The only thing that could unite Serbs and Bosnians is their mutual hatred of Croats The only thing that could unite Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians is their mutual hatred of TIK
You have an error on Tito's motivations regarding his his rebellion against Axis forces. I would agree that his strategy of open rebellion would bring about hardship and retaliation, but it was something that came about as a direct result Axis invasion in the first place. Had the Axis never have invaded... it's unlikely that Tito would have gotten much attention and with Yugoslavia then governed by their own government... uprisings against that government would not have effected the war on the Eastern Front even if Stalin ordered Tito to fight with the King of Yugoslavia (assuming Germany doesn't invade in 1941). It would only mean a bloody side war that likely would have concerned the Germans very little... at least in 1941. And this then leads into a more complicated issue over "Communists seek to destroy the economy to gain power." While various extremist parties have taken advantage of bad economic times... and Tito would be no different. I don't think that he would ideologically seek to destroy the countries economy just to get power. And in his own case, one could make the case that by the time that Tito's partisans began launching their uprisings, it would be likely that Germany or Italy would begin dismantling and destroying Yugoslavia's economy in order to enrich Germany and/or Italy. Thus, Yugoslavia might well have faced trouble regardless of what Tito did. And thus Tito figured to rebel and try to get the occupiers out of "his" country and promise to make Yugoslavia better once in power... Whether or not Tito actually did so after coming to power is a different issue... but I'd argue that the failures of parties that go extremes is more a result of their lack of experience in a democratic government and/or their lack of understanding on economic practices beyond that of a common worker that isn't running the business or responding to what is in "demand." Thus they respond to things they see as unfair and then try to bully their way through to get what they want, consequences be damned. Thus they end up causing as much damage as they wish to fix as a result because politically they don't support moderation and economically they aren't fully aware on how the system as a whole works.
HUH? I'm more confused than a person tuning into a reality show mid-season. lol -- Not that I watch that B.S. , but what a soap opera! Thankyou for sorting that all out for us TIK. Nice job.
Excellent, TIK, just excellent! I see no comment war happening! There are so many more details to this story, but you captured the essence. BTW, people in Serbia are more focused on Chetniks vs Partisans story, so sometimes we don't count in the Ustashas vs Chetniks or Chetniks vs Muslim and Croatian civilians stories. Since we usually only remember terrible Ustasha atrocities against Serbian civilians, we defend Chetnik atrocities as a revenge, but... Is that really the case? I would really like go through nationalistic fog of half-truths and analyse did Chetniks had any plans for ethic cleansing before Ustasha crimes, did they used it as an excuse or was it really just a revenge after realisation that life together is not possible anymore. This bothers me since it is hard to find any unbiased source.
Well, if the comment war doesn't happen, then great! I'll somehow have dodged a bullet 🙂 but as far as the "who started it" thing is concerned, I don't know the answer to that.
I can understand Serbians focusing on the elements that hurt Serbians the most, and neglecting the other parts. And I'm sure others will be doing the same with their nationalities. This is why tribalism is bad for an individual. It just warps your perspective.
@@TheImperatorKnight I noticed that comment wars in the last months regarding former Yugoslav nationalities died out... Maybe it is because of coronavirus, since we all realised that there are some bigger threats in life than our neighbours :). Maybe it is because we realised that these narratives are mostly used by our politicians and nobody has any trust in them any more... well see will it hold. Anyway, I hope some day we could discuss all these things and questions in details as it is very interesting... the more we discuss it the more we lose our biases (we shouldn't lose our feelings of course, we can't deny bad thigs happened on all sides, which influence us greatly) I wanted to emphasise one more thing - When Tito's partisans liberated any area, first thing they would do (as from fall 1941) they would burn down all documents and archives from municipalities. That was their way of saying they want a new state just for themselves - which pushed Chetniks away from any joined actions. Chetniks were so frustrated with Communists - once they sold for money around 200 Partisan POW to Germans, who executed them, of course - That was very dishonourable, and people from the Valjevo area still remember that.
from what i have read on the Ustasha they are often considered as Clerical-Fascist much like the Romanian Irion Guard or the Slovak fascists of Josif Tiso. where as religion was ostensibly antithetical fascism in central Europe (Italy and Germany) it became a core part of the movment in Eastern Europe especially in Croatia as Religion became one of the only ways to define ethnic differences between Serbs and Croats atlest such is the argumant of Paul Mojzes in his books "Balkan Genocide" and "Yugoslavian Inferno"
Religion is pretty much the only real differentiating things between a Serb a Croat and a Serbo-Croat speaking Muslim. What makes this more of a problem is that religion informs their customs and celebrations. Without the communist holidays, there aren't really many if at all celebrations of customs that aren't influenced by religion and thus not shared in the same way with other groups. Hence there is a limited number of common cultural things between groups to unify them. This is despite them all speaking mostly the same language with dialectal differences (mostly stemming from from which occupier did they borrow most words for things that poor peasants might not have) and looking pretty much the same. Hence the whole race angle had to be cast along the actual dividing line, religion. And in this case it tended to be less about actual religious beliefs and more about removing those that are alien.
@@Blazo_Djurovic i mean this is essentially the argument made by Mojzes he infact uses the term Ethno-religion or Ethno-religious to describe how intertwined ethnicity and religion are in the region though his books have seen criticism from both Serbs and Croats generally for being to lenient to the other side so to speak.
@@Tommy-5684 Of course they are. Everyone's losses hurt them most. The whataboutism is pretty much no1 reason any discussion of what really happened is impossible. Both sides will strive at any cost to prove they suffered most. It should also be mentioned again that it often wasn't out of religious grounds. Most people, especially in the cities were leaning to atheism or not going to church that often. They cared about religion just enough to perform the usual customs that made them part of a nationality. So ti would be prefectly possible to be a hard line atheist nationalist. The religious bits would be "nice national customs".
Where did you get the idea that "religion was ostensibly antithetical to fascism" ... anywhere in Europe. That's a nonsensical statement. There is NO fascism without religion. Ask any European. That's why the term clero-fascism is often used. You're wearing american glasses. In Europe - churches gape empty.
TIK, great job. I've seen TimeGhost's video about this topic, and their stuff tend to, unfortunately, be somewhat incomplete and relatively biased as of late. You've done an amazing job providing every group with a deserving criticism. Well done! You have a new subscriber sir.
I wouldn't say that if I were you. As of starting the year 1943, they dedicated multiple of their War Against Humanity videos towards covering Case White in super detail. Really recommend for you to check those out.
@@extrahistory8956 I only recall them criticizing Serbian side over the limit, while they have forgotten to call Croatian crimes against Serbs a "genocide". I've been closely following their WW1 and WW2 series (inter war Yugoslavia episodes were great), but after that all i see is standard anti Serbian bias straight from Viennese history books.
@@extrahistory8956 You've stirred up my curiosity so i looked up the CAH series you mentioned. Yeah, they labelled NDH genocide as "ethnical cleansing". 9 of my family members were burned alive, only my grandmother survived. Not to mention that 300,000 people were slaughtered and many more converted and their identity taken. That is not ethnical cleansing, and it's not the first time they dodged calling it a genocide.
@@extrahistory8956 i apologize. my personal bias has gotten the better of me. it's just personal and i've taken offense to that. those are great shows, but i feel like the topic is underrepresented, especially from a certain point of view. all best to you.
How exactly did Stalin manage to supply the Partizans? Until nearly the end of the war, the logistics must have been pretty difficult, considering the position of the front line.
He didn't. Soviet aid only came after liberation of Belgrade, near the end of 1944. USSR gave some 100 T-34s, dozen Yaks and lot of PPSh-41s. British also suplied partisans with M3 Stewarts, food, uniforms, shoes, mortars, mortars... Partisans upgraded Stewarts with captured German Paks. Also, partisans with flyiing skills would join RAF and formed two squadrons
@@mythbuster860 At no point whatsoever they were equipped by Ustazhi. Actually the main goal of Ustazhi was to fight partisans. There are milions of photos of Ustazhi and Chetniks fighting together against partisans
@@konstantincvetanovic5357 many of those were falsified. Actually, many cetnik victories in dalmatia abd lika were swept under the rug and the partizani would force the victorious cetniks to join them
To clarify your uncertainty about the Ustasha ideology - its typical clero-fascism. Otherwise an impressive video! The only thing it maybe lacks to explain in further detail in order to make matters more clear is the scope of genocide against Serbs in Independent State of Croatia.
Really good video, as always! I enjoy seeing these kinda of disorganized and confuse fronts, where there are people fighting each other and helping each other depending on the mood of the current situation. It makes the war seem less galant and cool like video games and movies would led you believe and more of a hot mess where people are making life changing decisions on the fly. I would hope one day you would talk about the action that the Brazilian division saw in Italy. I never really cared much about reading about our participation in the war, just the propaganda they fed us in the Army, and even my commanding sargeant would say it was all nationalist bullshit.
Ok so a few things. Mihailovic was the supreme commander of army in the fatherland as given to him by the king so the cetniks were a single thing. Yes there was separate commanders but he was the head of it. So yes they were collaborators with the germans, Italians and even in some instances the ustasa. There is documented proof in a Washington DC archive of this. Secondly they were the only Partizans. They weren't 100% communist. That was why people liked them so much. They had priests and non communists in their ranks but they did something the cetniks wouldnt, fight the occupiers. Tito wasnt following Moscow orders. He wanted to free his country and people into a single free country. Also seeing as he was the only one to snub his nose at stalin that should show his feelings towards Moscow. Mihaijlovic was a traitor who instead of trying to free his country, he thought it better to kill them. My family has many stories of the cetniks murdering members of it.
United Balkans, not a good idea we tried that already didn't end well, anyway props to you for even trying to figure out something that even we who live here still have different opinions
TIK, you made a few mistakes. Number 1, Tito didn't recive help from the Soviets until early 1944, because it was impossible for them to send aircraft to fly to Yugoslavia and back at that time. Number 2, Ljotic was not a chetnik, he was something like a national socialist, he even helped germans to kill serbian civilians in Kraljevo and Kragujevac in 1941. Number 3, you should have mentioned two important events: 1. Mihajlovic meeting the german delegation in the village Divci in november 1941, offering them colaboration, and 2. pertizan-german "march talks" in 1943. Not a bad video overall. Cheers from Bosnia
GOT SO EXCITED WHEN I SAW THE TITLE! FINALLY WE ARE DIGGING INTO LONG AWAITED BIGGEST GUERRILA WARFARE EVER FOUGHT! NOW LETS ENJOY THE VIDEO WITH MY BRAKFAST :)
@@TheImperatorKnight I AM STILL NOT THROUGH THE VIDEO BUT I AM ALL WARMED UP WRITING COMMENTS:) THERE ARE SOME OBJECTIONS, BUT I AM STILL ENJOYING IT AND I KNOW IF YOU DO THE BATTLESTORM OF THE 1943 AXIS OFFENSSIVES IN YUGOSLAVIA (BIGGER THAN THE OPERATION COMPASS IN TERMS OF MEN) IT WILL BE EPIC; I AM SURE THAT YUGOSLAV POST WAR GOVERNMENT WOULD HAVE HIRED YOU TO MAKE A STATE SPONSPORED DOCUMENTARY ON IT AND PAID YOU HANDSOMLY IF YOU WERE DOING YOUR GREAT THING BACK THEN ;)
Well, I'll be honest, I only used a few sources (and there's not particularly new either), and I was completely new to this particular topic, so I'm sure there are mistakes. I thought though that I'd put out the video, see what the criticisms are, then I could proceed to fill in the gaps. But as it stands, I've no idea what the counter-arguments are going to be, so it's hard to know what to look out for
@@TheImperatorKnight OVERALLY IT IS A GREAT EPISODE AND MY BRAKFAST WOULD NOT TASTE AS GOOD WITHOUG IT;) I WOULD SAY THAT YOUR OBJECTIVITY (CONSIDERING YOUR DISLIKE FOR COMMUNISM) IS PRETTY GOOD. I HAVE BEEN REALLY LEARNING A LOT FROM YOU AND I AM MORE THAN GLAD TO SHARE SOME INFO ON THIS TOPIC AS I HAVE READ AND HEARD A LOT OF FIRST HANDS ACOUNTS ABOUT WW2 IN YUGOSLAVIA. FOR INSTANCE (SINCE YOU MENTIONED DRAZA'S TRIAL) I HAVE READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT OF THE PROCEDURE AND EVEN THOUGH THE TRIAL AGAINST HIM WAS BREACHING SOME LEGAL PROTOCOLS, JUST THE EVIDENCE ABOUT THE ATROCITIES AGAINST THE CIVILIANS ARE SO OVERWHELMING THAT HE GOT WHAT HE DESERVED. NOT TO MENTION THAT STALIN WOULD NEVER GIVE TRAITORS THE TRIAL DRAZA RECEIVED, BEING COMPLETELY OPEN TO THE MEDIA, INCLUDING FOREIGN.
The Chetniks certainly were not all collaborators, but no matter what they were still an overall detriment to the effective resistance in the Balkans. Chetniks varied between collaboration and resistance but they did so along the ethnic lines that separated the Balkans. This was the Nazi intention. The Nazi strategy in the Balkans did not care about who collaborated or who resisted. What solely mattered was that those actions happened exclusively within the ethnic lines that divided the region for centuries because this guaranteed that resistance could not ever grow strong enough to challenge their war machine. Their strategy was based on the idea that the Balkan Slavs would succumb to their ancient, irrational hatred and that would do most of the work. "Brotherhood and Unity" was the only way the Balkans would have found victory and a level of independence from great powers the region has experienced for centuries. Živio Tito!
Crazy how he sort of took up the role of Mao in the resistance, consolidating power and fighting his rival instead of concentrating on the enemy. Of course this strategy didn't pay off because of the post-war Soviet influence, but it was worth a try.
U should make a video on the Algerian war of independence. That's another topic where everyone might unite in hating you. Anyway. Great job as always. Love your courage in tackling such topics despite ytube censorship and people who are gonna hate on you.
People did not fight with the Partizans because of communism. The Partizans were just the best group out there that you could join to get rid of the Axis. Also you said Russia supplied weapons...I find that hard to believe especially early on in the war.
Early in the war people used the guns they brought after the Yugoslav army collapsed. They also got their weapons from dead enemies, raided ammo depots and such. The arms & ammo situation improved a lot after italian capitulation in 1943.
abeleski TIKs point is that Tito caused civilians to be executed by the Axis because His partisans killed German soldiers Ok this is ass backwards logic must be a British thing !!!
@@belacheat8833 Axis puppet Croatia conducted genocide anyway so that argument about wanting civilians to be killed is just a stupid chetnik excuse. It was go to partisans or butchered.
We say: "jebo lud zbunjenog". Good video! My Grandmom's brothers were in King's army in 1941. The older one was captain of the guard, and the younger was in chetnik forces. He was eventually captured by communists and he served in some sort of penal unit. He died a couple of years ago. The older one was captured in April war, and was interned in officers camp, but he managed to escape into Switzerland, and via Lisabon he went to Australia. He died in 1986. On the other hand, most of family on my mom's side was brutally murdered by ustashas in Herzegovina. Sledgehammer in the head, and toss them into pit.
The majority of my family who were killed during WW2 were robbed and burned alive by Chetniks who collaborated with Axis forces. Pavelic himself provides the weapons to Italian units a month prior who in turn put said weapons in Dujic's hands. Many of the Croats hate/d the Ustase. They were commandered by Herzegovni for the most part, and believe in some mythical bullshit that Bosnia is the "true Croatia" and they are the "true Croats". To this day you hear them say they are more Croat than the Croatians, they speak the purest of the Croatian language, completely oblivious they are nigh identical to their Muslim and Othodox brethren in Bosnia, lol. This delusional approach to identity politics is why the NDH had no qualms annexing Dalmatia and seeing many of us Croats killed. I mean, who needs actual Croats, their historical lands and their culture when they believe they are true Croats, right, lol
the Ustashe were definitely fascist. The Vatican cooperated with the fascist powers. Spain was under Franco's fascism and the catholic church was part of that state. That being said being catholic does not make you fascist of course. You can be fascist and the religion does not matter.
"So I've decided to do what I do best - laying criticism at all sides and unite the balkans in their hatred of me" - Love it XD
BALLACKS to you. Xx
The hero we need
@@totallynotalpharius2283 Hear hear, a most refreshing standpoint... ;-}
Pretty good idea
You need correct Fact don't spread misinformation and lies
If history teaches us anything, it's that whatever happens, it's Britain's fault.
Or France
@Lovecraft Or even when they're Germans they are still British, in the style of Schindler's List
The Britons really are a unsung hero of history. Media always tries to paint them as bad guys, but opposite is almost always the true. God to save the Queen!
@@ArcticTemper Swedes are pretty awesome overlords of Finland. However, it is easy to raise your hands in front of the Russians, leaving the Swedes played out of power. I mean no one wants some colonial Lord in their home. Tourism is a different matter.
@@ArcticTemper sure they are...
This is the worst case of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" that I've ever seen.
Try the Home Army during the Warsaw Uprising. Rock and a hard place.
In a sense it was a bit of a "Catch 22" situation of his own, and the Yugoslavian government-in-exile's making. Mihailovic and the Yugoslavian government wanted to protect the civilians, so didn't fight. But to get arms, he needed to have active resistance, which would have resulted in civilian casualties. Had Mihailovic chosen to "bite the bullet" and accepted the civilian losses, he might have garnered the Allied support and weapons he needed, garnered civilian support (as happened in France) and may even have been able to build a stronger position with the other forces. Of course, this is all speculation, and as we saw when Yugoslavia disintegrated in 1991-1992 (as well as watching the TimeGhost episodes on Yugoslavia during the 1920s and 1930s), there are a lot of very strong ethnic feelings in the area. And very long memories. So, it is also possible that anything Mihailovic tried would have been doomed from the very start as, unlike the Communists under Tito, they didn't have a philosophical or ideological "glue" to get them all fighting for a common cause against a common enemy.
Nicholas Conder
Load of rubbish
Coming from deranged brain
@@nicholasconder4703 they didn't receive any directions from the government in exile. They were in a really precarious situation as you stated
@@eldragon4076 Yes, between that and trying to herd cats (i.e. trying to coordinate the various other disparate resistance groups), it was a very difficult row to hoe. Tito's biggest advantage was being able to gain control of and coordinate the activities of all the communist groups in Yugoslavia. Because of this, and the fact that the Chetniks were receiving weapons from, and sometimes working with, the Axis powers alienated them from the Allies and ruined any chance the Chetniks could form what the Allies would have considered to be a legitimate resistance movement worth supporting.
I get it why it isn't convenient to call them "The Partisans", but calling them "Tito's communists" is also kinda wrong. Not all of them were communists, a lot of the people in Tito's movement didn't care about communism or any other political idea, and were just people who wished to oppose the occupation.
This is true and it's quite tragic.
I know it is painful your most effective resistance force was Sovjet Moscows arm, but it is true, regardless of some individual low ranking soldiers were or were not Communists, or political in nature.
Tito je 1937. postavljen na mesto sekretara KPJ licno od Staljina kao covek od poverenja. Usaglaseno je glediste sa Staljinom da KJ ne moze dugo da opstane, zbog etnickih problema,pa Tito po povratku u KJ osniva KP Slovenije i KP Hrvatske unutar KPJ. Ceo rat u grupi Vrhovnog staba oko Tita, bili su komunisti iz ostatka KPJ, a stabovi i CK KPS i KPH su bili posebno i odvojeni.
Istorija koju smo ucili od Dedijera , Petranovica,Klaric, i drugih tog vremena je izkonstruisana da sakrije prava dogadjanja i uloge.
@@Svemirsky Why is it tragic? Under Tito the people of Yugoslavia saw the most peaceful, prosperous and prestigious periods in their entire history.
@@jamesburke9865 people still cope about the king lmao. It is good they got rid of those aristocrats
Trying to decipher politics in Yugoslavia... "It's complicated"
Best summary I have seen to date. Thank you for answering this question!
Yep, that word is very appropriate here!
It's not complicated...
Complicated can be understood if you apply enough brainpower, Yugoslavia is way beyond that.
Lindybeige, the TH-cam entertainer, recently did an hour long video on Yugoslavia and the resistance, he said it was complicated.
@@henleinkosh2613 what's interesting is he answered a question I hadn't even thought of asking!
@@billbolton I watched that video and that is only scratching the surface (this comes from a Bosnian-Herzegovinian from one of the most complicated cities in former Yugoslavia)
I would like to share some of the real stories from my family, regarding Chetniks vs Partisans - After the destruction of Yugoslav army common people in Serbia wanted to fight the Germans, but there were no real, honourable options for that, so most of them avoided getting into the "wood-people" as they would call guerrilla units in the area I grew up. After Partisans and Chetniks units were formed, they would usually drafting young people into their ranks, just as they passed through some village, regardless of what those young guys wanted.
My grandfather was drafted in Chetniks but when he realised that most of the fight was against Partisans, he deserted and hid in a watermill as a worker. Each time some unit went through the village, he would spray some flour on his beard, making himself look much older - so they left him alone. At the end of the war he joined the Partisans just so he could say he was on the right side. Most of the people in our village fled in front of the drafting units. They had a sign - when some unit was spot, they sent a kid to the hill to call for the pigs and that was the sign for hiding. I remember this one old guy from the village, when war in Croatia started ('90s), he said: "If it was the Germans, I would took my rifle right away and go to war, but how to fight against brothers Croatians?" - And he was the biggest deserter of them all in WWII :)
During the war, Chetniks put telephone operator in our house, under the threat that they will kill all members of the family and burn the house if anybody complains (we still keep the written order, with the threat, typed and stamped). Later when Chetniks left, Partisans came and they wanted to execute my grandfather for collaboration with Chetniks and they performed a "pretend" execution, where they shot some rounds around my grandfather to try to break him.
Partisans also executed one young Chetnik in front of our house. He was just a boy, maybe 18, crying and begging for his life. During the "trial" in our house, he asked my grandmother to bake him some bread. She asked the commissar and he said: "No reason for that, he will be shot!" However, the boy swore her on the lives of her children and since she lost two in labour, she just had to do it. He ate the bread and the Partisans shot him soon after, not paying attention to his cries and begging. The hole they dug up for him was too small, so they cut his legs with shovel to be able to put his body in. His father came after the war and took his body.
Those were some terrible times...
And at the end, a nice story - One German soldier saved my grandfather's life. There was a German unit going through the village, gathering men for forced labour in Germany or for hostages in case they would need to execute some. They sent one soldier to our house. The German soldier entered the house and saw my grandparents baby daughter who was 2 at the time and he probably felt sorry for them all. My grandfather told me that this German was just looking at the baby and smiling. So, the soldier got out, put his foot on the doorstep, untied his shoe and then started to tie it again slowly. The Germans from the unit couldn't see my grandfather who was standing in the doorway, only the soldier. While he was pretending to tie his shoelaces, the German soldier secretly gave my grandfather a sign to run away. He understood and started to run. After the distance was big enough, soldier started to yell "Halt, halt!" and started to shoot at him, all in pretend that my grandfather got away. Other Germans didn't want to chase him, so they just let him go.
Edited just to correct typos and grammar.
Very nice story.
Best regards from Germany.
Nie wieder Bruderkrieg!
@@menschmaschine-2483 Thanks! My grandfather's story about the good German soldier is the mayor reason I always avoided generalisations and I believed that people can be good and unselfish even at the risk for their own lives, even in those dark days, even to complete strangers in a strange country. Having that experience in the closest family marks you to always hope for good.
@@Beogrrr A serbian friend of mine was told by his grandparents that it were hard times.
Then the red army came to free Serbia (so they believed) but first they raped their women.
My father grew up in eastern Europe (as he was part of the German minority in Balkan) and told me communism is a big mess.
It's never just black and white.
Same story about me, most of my family members were drafted into Chetniks but eventually changed sides in 1944 when king ordered them to do so. Although my own great grandfather was a Montenegrin Partisan since the beginning of that movement.
My grandad fought in Partizans but he was (listen to this) a royalist.
The only reason he didn't joined Chetniks (using his words) is because they were mostly killing civilians of other ethnicities in the name of king and because they collaborated with nazis.
After war he left his position in high command (he was radio code officer) even though he was decorated war hero and was offered a huge house and piece of land in Ruma.
He left the Communist Party because after the war he saw bunch of ex Ustasha and ex Chetniks joining Communist party for their own interest. He was disgusted with them and accused them publicly which resulted in him being kicked out of party. They said he was a mad drunk talkig bullshit because he developed alcohol problem as consequence of PTSD.
Later in 70's and 80's turns out he was right. Those same men he accused were kicked out of party and convicted becuse evidence of their war crimes emerged.
“Uniting the Balkans in hatred of me” ‘
Well, as long is it is for peace.
TIK did the impossible, unified the Balkans in totality xD
Very interesting topic! Together with some of my friends who are also military history aficionados, we distinguished 20 various military organizations that operated on teritory of Yugoslavia:
1. Wehrmacht
2. Waffen-SS
3. Italian troops
4. Hungarian troops
5. Yugoslav Army in Fatherland (Mihailovic's chetniks)
6. Croatian Ustashe
7. 13th Waffen SS Division Handschar (Bosnian Croats and Muslims)
8. Serbian Guard of Milan Nedic
9. Chetniks of Kosta Milovanovic Pecanac
10. Tito's partisans (communists)
11. Slovenian chetniks
12. Slovenian White Guard
13. Russian White Russians / Russian Protection Corps
14. Various armed troops that presented themselves as "Chetniks"
15. Dimitrije Ljotic's Serbian Voluntary Corps
16. Russian Liberation Army
17. MVAC (Italian Volunteer Anti Communist Militia consisted of local auxilary troops )
18. Muslim Legion of Muhamed Hadziefendic
19. Bulgarian troops
20. Albanian fascist Balli Kombëtar
I am sure we missed some.
Now imagine the absolute hell among people of Yugoslavia and the beligerents who were opposed not only by their allegiance to Germany or Allies, but nationality and religion as well. Everyone was against everyone and every fraction collaborated with its enemy at some point, but ordinary civilians were the one to bear the brunt of the war.
Well done. I like the Italian/yugo uniforms of Ljotic's troops. Also, I noticed that they drink raki, which can be a problem.
Well some are the same like Wermacht and Waffen SS. You forget Montenegro Federalist, Montenegro Green or (Zelenaši) than you had Domobrani ( regular Croatian army)
What about the Italian occupation troops in Yugoslavia after Italy changed sides and became partisans also?
@@tommy-er6hh No they run back to Italy.
@@tommy-er6hh There were some who joined up with partisans, probably those who had communist leanings, but majority suddenly found themselves no longer solders with everyone wanting them gone and no protection from anyone. Villagers in some places were literally taking them captive and putting them to work under threat of arms... How things changed in 3 years...
My great grandfather was Chetnik. He once said to my father: "The teachers in school have only read about this, I have lived through it"
the commies rewrote history...
ali ne vidiš da je mapa kriva.ja sam iz međimurja...mi smo pod mađarima bili a po njegovom smo pod njemcima bili.moj deda je partizan bil ali je rekel da do 1943g i četnici i partizani su se borili protiv švaba........engleska je odabrala tita i tada je draža dok so 1943g talijani kapitulirali počel za švabe da se bori ne:(((((
@@marijataradi6659 ma nisu se nasi borili za svabe pobogu dijete
Did he fight the Nazis on behalf of Tito?
Tvoj deda nije imao izbora
Any conflict in the Balkans inevitably becomes 4D chess at the highest level
It comes from Vatican, Germany or England.
These 30 minutes were about the best "one-stop" explanation given on the Yugoslav situation in WWII. The careful monologue with animated maps helped a GREAT deal. The various Yugo factions....essentially fighting a multi-faceted ( 3 or 4 way) civil war....WHILE....WWII was raging, made various other attempts to describe this, as almost impossible to follow. Thumbs up !....for a great video.
As a Serb, amazing video. Well done. One of the best channels on youtube.
Did you watch his ustasha videos where he gushes about Croats....
@@Cardan011 I did, I saw a lot of Croats thanking him for saying the ustashe were fierce in combat in Stalingrad.
@@Cardan011 Let's be honest - most of the leadership of the Ustase were Herzegovni, not Croats. There is a joke in Zagreb that goes "Hercegovni think they are more Croatian than the Croats, bigger Catholics than the Pope and some pride themselves on being bigger fascists than Hitler!" Just like Princip, Mladic and his ilk were all born and raised in Bosnia with Biljana Plavšić herself also stating that the "Bosnian Serbs" were more "Serb than Serbs". Ultranationalism is a living hallucination, lol.
@@wudzahhe favourises ustashas because it is well known that both SHS and Yugoslavia were bring created for UK purposes. And the ustashas were being protected by Churchill as are now.
TIK, a medal for courage definitely, but you should have avoided this one. Firstly, it is too complicated for 30 minutes video, secondly it is still not sufficiently examined, thirdly it is hotly contested topic, not only between nations (CRO vs SER) but within nations (Serbs vs Serbs).
And it's no wonder that you made several mistakes, but we cannot take it against you, one needs to be from around here (Balkans) to understand it all.
- "Partisans" or "Communists". It's a mistake to call Yugoslav partisans communists. You should have just used the local word "partizan" (without attaching the meaning of the word 'partisan' to it) as you used local words for 'Chetniks' or 'Ustashe'. Or simply call them by their official name National Liberation Army (NLA), or by their local acronym NOV
The NLA was far from being communists force. The communist party provided organizational structure, but they were just the most organized group in the movement. Majority of the people simply did not understand the ideology. They just fought against the invaders.
My grandfather fought in partizans, but he had no particular inclination for communists. He just hated Germans and Italians. He might have well joined Chetniks for the matter of ideology. He chose side not based on ideology, but based on who is effectively fighting against the occupants. And it was the NLA
In my native Montenegro, the nation wide rebellion against Italians started on 13.July 1941, sparked by revolt against Italian proclamation of puppet state of Montenegro a day before. The rebellion spread like a wildfire, within 3 days Italians controlled less than 20% of the territory. It would be stupid to assume that 80% of population of the country were communists.
- Partizans being supplied by Moscow. Absolutelly off the mark. Yugoslav partizans did not get any supplies from Soviet Union before autumn of 1944, by which time NLA was already relatively well equipped and well supplied force, and had already clearly won the civil war in Yugoslavia
I mean, how could Soviets supply Yugoslav partizans even if they had wanted so? By sea? By air? It was neither physically nor logistically possible.
The Partizans were supplied initially by the remains of the Yugoslav Royal Army stock (which were abundant), then by their own production (when they held Uzice republic territory, but later too), then by stripping the German and Italian units, (Especially after the capitulation of Italy, when huge stacks of Italian equipment were captured by Partizans), and in the later part of the war (44 onwards) by British.
This is confirmed by the equipment NLA used: most used rifle Belgian M24, (leftover from YRA), and Carcano ('gifts' from Italians), machine gun ZB27 (YRA leftover), etc. No PPSh, no DP. Only in Montenegro some Mossin Nagan rifles could be found, but even these were not of Soviet origins. "Moskovka" (as Mossin Nagan rifle was called locally) was a standard rifle of the Royal Army of Montenegro during WWI. So, it was a leftovers from previous war.
Only in late 1944 when the Red Army entered Yugoslavia and made physical link with the Partizans they they supplied some of the equipment to NLA. And after that one could see a NLA officer having a PPSh or TT pistol.
- While formally being a leader of Communist party of Yugoslavia, Tito was not that much of a staunch communist either. He was rather opportunistic than ideological. His love for Stalin did not last (and events in 1947-48 showed), if he ever had it. During the war he was trying to keep the middle ground between the Soviets and British. The later history of Yugoslavia confirms this.
- Partisan non-agression pact with Germans. Even if it had existed (which I seriously doubt, not on ideological grounds though, but rather on German view of NLA) it was menttioned at completely wrong place, in the context of operation Weiss, as if it was the arrangement to protect the back of partizans while they deal with Chetniks. If there was such an agreement between NLA and Wehrmacht during operation Weiss, then someone forgot to notify German and NLA units fighting around Prozor, where they had some of the fiercest clashes of the war.
During the operation Weiss there was certainly no such arrangement, since the goal of the operation was to crush the resistance and to get rid of NLA once and for all. Actually, the Germans were putting up their utmost to achieve this goal, by pressing the NLA from the northwest into the shrinking pocket against Neretva river.
And this is where you made another mistake: the number of chetniks. Chetniks had around 15k (20+k according to official post war history) on the eastern bank of Neretva. Their task was to serve as the cap to the cauldron. But they utterly failed at it. NLA managed to force Neretva and crushed the Chetnik force in Jablanica. It was a blow from which they never recovered. It was the last time Chetniks force was used in such large formations.
-Chetniks never operated in Croatia proper. They operated only in parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, (which were part of NDH - Independent State Of Croatia, but not Croatia itself). They needed supply and logistical support by local population to be able to operate, and this was possible only in Herzegovina and parts of Bosnia were there was at least some Serbian population. Serbs more further west (In Croatia proper) were mostly Partizan supporters because they saw them as protection against the Croatian NDH and it's genocidal agenda of ethnically cleansing Serbs from Croatia. Chetniks, who cooperated with Germans and Ustashe, could not find much love among that population of Serbs.
- Mihailovic did not operate from nor in Montenegro. In Montenegro the leader of Chetnik movement was Pavle Djurisic, and he had love-hate relationship with Mihailovic. But that is a whole another story.
- Where you place Mihailovic in northern Montenegro is actually a start of operation Schwartz, at which point it was controlled by NLA, and the whole point of the Schwartz was to eliminate that liberated territory and to get rid of NLA (again). (I think that thousands of Yugoslav partizans would have liked to see you shot for placing the Mihailovic icon at the place and time of their units were at the time. The Battle of Sutjeska was a pivotal moment for NLA and you had just did the equivalent of blasphemy).
- The number of NLA is greatly played down. At any given time since second half of 1941 the movements strength did not fall below 100k combatants, and it linearly grew during the war, nearing million at the war end.
- The Germans never left Yugoslavia. At any given time there were always at least few German divisions in the area, and after the capitulation of Italy, even more.
There were few more mistakes. But this comment is too long already.
The Balkans is never easy.
This comment deserves more up votes.
The most informative comment here. I have no idea how TIK could make such a mistake when he said Tito's partisans were supplied by Stalin. I mean, how? Maybe before Barbarossa, USSR did helped Tito and his communist groups with some supplies and light weaponry, but definitely not after Hitler's invasion in 1941.
Btw when he said Tito's partisans were 25k strong, I believe TIK counted only the group in Bosnia, which was with Tito at the moment. He maybe isn't aware that partisan guerilla movements were scattered all over Yugoslavia, firstly independent, then later in war gradually joined under Tito's command.
Nice post but you too made a few errors. For example though inferior to the partisans there were in fact Chetnik formations in Croatia. Just google Momčilo Đujić or the Dinara Division.
@@careline23 Yes. That is right. But that was Djuic, not Mihailovic. And they did not 'move into Croatia' as video says. Djuic chetniks did not move from anywhere, they were recruited among the local Serbs around Knin as a response to Ustashe massacres in the area.
the brain is big
Oh God no...don't go there TIK...
"Unite the hatred of Balkans against me" - OH BOY THIS IS GONNA BE GOOD
Our lord has returned to the shadow realm
Shadow-ban realm 😉
Demonization cannot stop the neutral war machine
"Some even joined the communists"
Pro-Communist royalists?
That's such a Balkan thing to say.
There were even priests that were helping/fighting in Tito's army. Balkan is a place devoid of all logic and reason.
@@alleks1989 The Chaos Wastes of the Real World
Priest Vlada Zecevic is an interesting figure.
@@alleks1989 Well the logic goes like this. They might be godless communists (majority of fighters weren't ardent communists), but they are OUR godless communists. On the other hands these Germans are Turks all over again, and we have traditions on how we deal with occupiers that involves pits and tossing stuff into them. And traditions need to be upheld.
Also fighting FOR the partisans makes it a bit less likely someone might decide you are an anti-revolutionary element in league with the fascist invader so a triad should be sent to pay you a "visit".
yugo communism is very hard to perceive, especially regarding stereotypes that exist in the west
TIK walks into a book store: “I’ll have every book you have on Stalingrad”.
Yah, but the store owner will tell him, _"We don't carry any! There never was a Stalingrad. Some clever publisher came up with the idea of inventing Stalingrad so he could sell a ton of books on it to some guy named TIK."_ Then the crying (or shooting) begins! Little does TIK know the same publisher lobbied Russia to rename Stalingrad to Volgograd so now TIK is morally obligated to buy those books all over again under the name _The Siege of Volgograd_ . Ya gotta love free market capitalism. It just keeps the money flowing and flowing and flowing.
If TIK were really good, he would lobby Russia to rename Stalingrad/Volgograd to TIKograd and be done with it. Shouldn't be too hard. Shouldn't cost more than a few hundred billion dollars. Perfect for a GOFUNDME project.
I thought that Tito got most of his supplies from the british instead of the soviets, especially in '41 to '43.
Not most, but all of the Brit supplies earmarked for Yugoslavia. He still received supplies from Moscow which was greater overall, but in those years most of his stuff was British. He was deamed as the better German killer by the alies.
From second half of 1944, most and maybe even all divisions formed in Serbia and Macedonia were equiped by USSR.
British started supplying partisans after they landed in Italy in 1943, while Soviets started supplying them after they took Romania in 1944.
You missed the beginning of that sentence.. Where he say's "Tito's communists were able to capture arms manufacturing facilities, and then LATER received aid from the Soviets"... So their primary early war guns and ammo were home-built. In the mountains/wilderness of Bosnia, something the Chetniks could not do.
@@MarkVrem No, he think and he wrote in comments that Yugoslavs partisans got most weapons from Soviet airdrops.
Advice of history nerd from Balkan:
JUST DON'T TRY TO UNDERSTAND WW2 IN BALKANS!
That's probably the safest approach
@@TheImperatorKnight Also I would like to share some new info about ww2 in Balkan with you TiK. Becous I am from Balkan and nerd lover of ww2. Greetings from front!
Don't try to understand the Balkans FULL STOP.
There are almost as many groups as there are people, and they are all ready to kill one another.
The only way to gain any understanding is to consume large quantities of Slivovitz.
@@charlesphillips4575 you're close to truth
Actually, although complex, history of Balkan is not that complicated to understand.
People living at Balkan is other story tho.
Lindybeige posted a 90 minute video on this subject and Tito a month or so ago. I highly recommend it.
Yeah, he explained titos supply situation pretty well
I concur!
Lindybeige is entertaining.
Lindy is entertainig, but he made that video with too broad brush strokes
@@miroslavtordaji1675 actually its more complicated than that...is what he said throughout.
Oh boy... Bracing in for the angry comments
Already got one!
Yugoslavia is always a hot topic. Tito is always worth views just by himself.
As a Serb: Fourth Balkan War Incoming in the TH-cam Comments section
@@TheImperatorKnight Ustaše are generally called fascist in a broader sense. It is because of their ultra nationalism, militarism, glorification of violence, anti intellectualism, cult of masculinity and strict gender roles. Hello from Croatia. I am glad we can both agree to support Liberland.
maks zakošek
Croatia is so beautiful
Has a climate thats always warm
The people are all good looking
Serbs live in the past
They also worship mother Russian
Men in Croatia all pump weights look
like they are on Steroids
They have a tough guy culture
And now Croatia is part of the EU
and NATO ......
Tito was Croatian kept Yugoslavia
Afloat till his death 1980
There are also countless stories about literal brothers from the same family,same blood,one in the Chetniks and one in the Partisan Commies,and sometimes they saved each others lives,sometimes they killed each other in the name of their ideologies.
@@juremustac3063 Rubbish. It has nothing to with "survival strategies". These men acted on impulse or were forcibly recruited. I know of many Serbs whose families were on bad terms due to some being pro-Tito Partisans and other pro-fascist Chetniks. I have also met Croats who had family members who were Usta, Domobran and Partisans. It really all depended on the experiences. A woman raped by fascists, it makes sense she will want to work with Partisans for revenge. Ditto if a boy saw a woman raped by Partisans, he will want to fight with fascists. Most civilians had no desire or love for either, but they were forced to endure a war they never asked for coming to their door. Than things happen, and people make choices and learn to live with the consequences of those choices.
Same with Croatian Homeguard and Tito's Partisans
My grandma's father was drafted into the Homeguard (Domovrani) and his brother joined the Partisans
Finally caught up on your work. Nice work with Stalingrad. Received the first two volumes of Stalingrad by David Glantz. They truly are doorstoppers. I do wonder how Glantz is able to write so much. It takes me a couple of months to write a 3000 word article. I appreciate the work you are doing with the occupation side of the war. Hunger is a terrible way to die, but must be taught. I'm going to try to get into some of the books I picked up for the Holocaust, starting with Raul Hilberg's work.
It can take time to write a lot of words. How long per day or week do you spend writing?
@@TheImperatorKnight It depends. It is for work, so normally a few hours per day. I end up write three to four sentences, then triple citing everything as I go along. Also trying not to make it too dry. How often do you work on your scripts?
Hard to say how often because I'm doing editing as well, but what I normally do is dedicate each day to one thing - scripting or research or editing etc. Then I'll do 5-6 hours on it (with a lunch break about 4 hours in). Can't put a word count something on it, but on certain topics I can easily do a few thousand words a day, especially when I'm inspired. But it really does depend on the subject.
Also I should say, I usually go over the 6 hours. I aim for 6 hours as a minimum. But usually by that point I'm done in and get headaches for concentrating too long
@@TheImperatorKnight Sounds about right. 8 hours seems to be my limit for history focused work before my brain is fried.
Hi TIK, I am a Serb nationalist and I must say that I have never seen a video so well done about that, Great job. Keep it up :)
Why are you a Serb nationalist? What makes Serbia better than someone or something else?
@@Natogoon Before I continue, please research the word nationalist in a dictionary. Thank you
@@Natogoon I am a Croat nationalist and your question is idiotic. It is normal to assume your group is the best regardless if you are from a backward tribe or most advanced civilization. However wrong I consider Serb Religious nationalists, they lead their life based on more adaptive idias then secular hedonistic cosmopolitans. Nationalists have kids while the cosmopolitans don't.
@@kalifumestokalifa211 Not an argument.
@@Natogoon When you grow a brain, we shall talk, untill then ta -ta
This was brilliant! Most of my family that remained in Yugoslavia during WW2 had fought for the Chetniks . I learned many new things and some of this I have heard from my family. Thank you for the great work .
☦️☦️☦️☦️🏴☠️🇷🇸
Yugoslavian king ordered in September 12. 1944. that all Mihailovich forces to join partizans under titos command and defeat enemy and called all people to rise against enemy.
That's because the brits forced him to order it.
300 filthy detailed super accurate videos? So much hard work and you have provided us with so much education and entertainment, TIK has definetly made it's mark in the world and I wish nothing but a continuation and greater improvement of this high standard of historical content
Well surprisingly balanced video. My grandmother and grandfather were communist before wwII and were part of resistance smuggling information inside city of occupied Serbia. They always differentiated Chetniks and Ljotics forces. There could be days that one day you would first chetniks coming into village the germans after them searching for chetniks and next day partisans searching for germans. It's never a clean cut situation in Balkans as people might think.
A very good friend of mine was a Chetnik his family came from Yugoslavia, and he lived in Newport, South Wales , he was definitely one of the most genuine people I’ve ever met in my life. I’m in England but I often think about Mr Chetnik like I said in my eyes he was one of the most honest and genuine person I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting .
Great video, great work! Now I would like to add some details...
In autumn '41 Partisans and Chetniks did have some joint operations in Central Serbia. Germans ordered reprisals: The number of hostages to be shot was calculated as a ratio of 100 hostages executed for every German soldier killed and 50 hostages executed for every German soldier wounded, a formula devised by Adolf Hitler. Germans shot 3000 citizens of Kragujevac for example, among them 300 of elementary and high school students. Mihajlović said that price is way too high for active resistance. After all, in WW1 we lost more than a quarter of our population. This war was simply too much for Serbs.
Tito as a Croat and Communist didn't pay much attention to civilian casualties.
Partisans and Germans have had cease-fire negotiations in '43, and the delegation was: Milovan Đilas, Vladimir Velebit and Svetozar Vukomanović "Tempo". After 6 months Hitler dismissed any kind of agreement with communists. It was Đilas, later dissident who revealed this. Today's ˝Titoists˝ usually go berserk when you mention Đilas, saying "He was reactionary, malicious˝ or whatever. Many people would like Tito's regime back constantly forgetting that ˝Revolution always eats its own children˝. This video illustrates their mindset, especially when you come up with some fact that doesn't fit their narrative th-cam.com/video/9CitfXK_BvY/w-d-xo.html&ab_channel=afroknot
You forgot Đujić Chetniks in Dalmacija (Southern Croatia). Collaboration with Italians was necessary because Serbs over there was stuck between a rock and a hard place. There were no forests suitable for guerilla warfare like Bosnia, and Croats started with literal extermination of Serbs. No Serbs from that area joined Partisans because - Oh Suprise! - commanders was Croats.
After the war communists simply pushed under the carpet all ethnic tensions, thinking that their ideology will be enough to solve all problems, or god knows what were they thinking of. Later, in new Yugoslavia, the secret police UDBA was watching constantly anything that can be able to disrupt their forced harmony and only city pigeons was not working as their informants. Of course, that kind of oppression didn't last forever, unsolved national questions came back like a boomerang in the nineties.
Thank you TIK, all the best.
Đilas was a reactionary, that is not even the question, as for reason for fighting it is not true that Tito didn't care if civilians die, but partisans were populated mostly from people from NDH after Srb uprising, who would be killed regardless of Hitler's formula because ustasha goal was extermination of Serbs.
My villages in Dalmatia were massacred by Dujic. I have lost count how many Serbian historians revise history and falsely claim he collaborated to save Serbs. He was a known anti-Croat, anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish bigot. A fascist through and through until the day he died peacefully as an old man in San Diego. My great-grandfather in central Croatia was nearly murdered because local German Axis decreed if 1 German solider died 50 Croat civilians were executed. He was selected for extermination despite being an elder with no attraction to fascism or communism. He survived by pure chance.
For king and fatherland , Freedom or Death !
Great video. The only issue I see is with defining the "chetnik movement". Chetnik was the word that meant "Guerilla fighter" in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. So any movement that was using guerilla warfare called themselves chetniks. Pećanac and his lot didn't have anything to do with Mihajlović, and Pećanac was assassinated by Mihajlović forces. Ljotić movement referred to themselves as ZBOR or chetniks, but was not part of Mihajlović's movement. All of these movements were independent from each other and on an off referring to themselves as chetniks.
So to summarise you were talking about Mihajlović "Serbian army in the fatherland".
Mihajlović also had very loose control of his commanders in the field such as Đujić in Dalmatia and Đurišić in Montenegro, which were able to decide on their current allegiance as the situation in the field would require.
Some commanders were enacting reprisal against Ustasha crimes by attacking random Croatian and Bosnak villages (an eye for an eye sort of thing). It might be interesting to analyze Croatian genocide against Serbian population during the war.
Chetnik word doesnt mean guerill fighter it means members of companies/unit Cete means unit and nik short of member so member of unit...
@@Falcon-nj6kr Name was present in the Serbian language since the middle ages. "Četovanje" was guerilla fighting against the Turkish invaders. Matija Ban wrote a book "Pravila o cetnickoj vojni" in 1848.
Let's not pretend that many Serbians were not - and remain - Royalist fascists. Dujic was an avid anti-Croat, anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish bigot. Though I despise both Usta and Chetniks, let's not forget that the assassination of Croatian politicians like Stjepan Radic by Serb-Montenegrin politicians who were given the lenient verdict of "house arrest in 1928 for their crimes did not set in motion the existence of the Ustase. Ultranationalist Serbs have and will always remain their own worst enemy, no matter how much they claim to be the innocent victim "who did nothing!". They cannot consistently fight among themselves, and start problems with others than act horrified when the history they set in motion turns around and bites them in the ass. Now, does this excuse crimes against innocent persons? Never, not for a day. Let's not pretend the Ustase did not murder thousands of Croats, or that the Chetnik/Axis collaborations also did not murder numerous Croats in retaliation for them resisting Axis occupation which many Usta nostalgists do, for the record. But let's also not pretend who planted the seed of much insanity in the region. Ultranationalists, with ultranationalist Serbs (not including Bosnian Orthodox like Princip, Mladic etc) leading the way. F**k the Chetniks and the Usta sympathisers.
I came back here after 4 months to check the comment section.
And it's surprisingly clean considering the topic. xD
TIK made such a good job of it that not even Balkans had too much to complain about.
Amazing.
How was Moscow supplying Tito with weapons? Remember that Barbarossa would start in a month, and the SU did not have anything to spare and certainly no way of delivering anything to Tito.
Did they use UPS or Fedex?
Good point. I dwell into Yugoslavia's history a lot but I did not come across any serious mention of Soviet military aid before 1944. TIK??? Sources for this???
Thats what I thought too, British supplies and Personel were dropped from Planes, but how did the Soviets do it?
They used Churchill.
Soviets didn't supply until later half of 1944. Yugoslav partizans used captured weapons from Germans and Italians.
Giving a source to what folks are saying:
Fitroy Maclean's The Heretic indicates that Tito received no Soviet supplies despite dozens of requests for support 1941-1944. In 1941-1942 the Chetniks under Mihalovic received British supplies, even while British intelligence began to suspect the collaboration.
Eventually, Britain switch to sending supplies to the Tito's forces because they were viewed as the more effective anti-fascist fighting force.
This probably doesn't detract from TIK's overall conclusion that the Chetniks were ineffective fighting forces that collaborated waaaaaay too often.
It became clear in 1941 in Serbia that Germany will loose another World War, especially after USSR and USA joined the WW2.
The question was what will happen with Yugoslavia?Remain a monarchy or become a one party communist dictatorship?
That is the reason why one of bloodiest civil wars began.
Three of my great grandfathers were members of Mihailovic's Chetniks.
Thank you for another great video! Congratulations on keeping an honest and realistic narrative without any ideological prejudices still dominating our school books written by the leading post-communist historians from this region. I hope you will make even more videos covering 1941-1945 period in Yugoslavia. Keep the good work!
Ustaše considered Bosnian Muslims to be Muslim Croats, so in their eyes Independent State of Croatia was mostly populated by Croats. You did a great job but I think this is a important detail.
Also the existence of muslim Bosniak chetnik unit under Popovac
What about the orthodox in bosnia were they croatian too
@@igordragicevic8835 in 1942 Croatian Orthodox Church was created and some Serbs joined Croatian army (domobrani) but this was just for propaganda purposes. Croats were also considered to be descendants of Goths (Germanic people) and Serbs of Slavs. Muslims Croats were considered to be more pure blood Croats than Catholic Croats.
@@leonmihalic4938 lol yea but the Serbian Orthodox Church has been in bosnia for 1000 years before that. And if the muslims were croatians y did they have Slava and orthodox icons. What they converted from islam to orthodoxy under the otomans 🤣🤣🤣 the ottomans showed them the divinity of christ
@@leonmihalic4938 y do some muslims still celebrate durdjevdan on the orthodox calander. The most numerous Slava of the Serbs. Because they were Orthodox Croatian created in 1942 🤣🤣🤣 ante pavelic show them divinity of Christ
Wow, I have no idea how you did it, but I think you haven't made a single mistake. Excellent job!!!
Serbian girl and a Patron of yours.
Dobar dan honey:)
I would love to see evidence of USSR helping with weapons Yugoslav partisans in period 1941-43.
Churchill: Fight for Yugoslavia, not Moscow.
Mihailovich: I will fight for Yugoslavia by not fighting for Yugoslavia. But against the communists.
Chetniks: We will fight for Yugoslavia by fighting all Yugoslavs who are not Serbian.
Mikhailovich: Can I get weapons to fight the communists?
Churchill: No, you are not fighting for Yugoslavia.
Stalin: No, you are fighting the communists.
Hitler: Of course. Take as much as you like, and kill communists.
Tito: You are taking weapons from the Nazis!
Mikhailovich: But I will use these weapons to fight the Nazis! Eventually.
Churchill: You are working with the Nazis. No more weapons for you.
Stalin: Adding your names to The List.
Mussolini: Come and conspire with me against our own puppets and our Axis partners.
Hitler: Come and conspire with me against our own puppets and our Axis partners.
Chetniks: We are killing all Yugoslavs who are not Serbian.
Mikhailovich: No, we should be struggling together!
Chetniks: We ARE struggling together.
Churchill: You are all mad. I hope the communists kill you all.
Roosevelt: Who are these people!?
Stalin: Soon, no one will even remember.
Basically, a Benny Hill closing chase, only with six Bennies chasing each other, while Benny Churchill watches from a balcony.
@@Saeronor the Churchill Bennie just eventually kneels over and dies.
Great job man, so precise. Greetings from Belgrade, cheers ✊🏻
Hey TIK, found your channel about a month ago. I really enjoy the content! I’m studying history and German rn and the information contained in your videos really makes me wonder if I am as knowledgeable as I think I am 😂 well done!
Knowledge is gained by hard work and study. Do a little each day, and specialize on a particular subject, and you'll be there in no time
TIK German history is certainly my cup of tea. Doing my best sir! Thank you for the reply :)
What a great video,as expected from TIK. The armchair historians video on the Yugoslavian resistance primarily talks about how great Tito and his communists were at "liberating" Yugoslavia while lumping all of the chetniks into one group led by Mihailovic and saying that they *ALL* collaborated with the Axis(not entirely true), while making no mention of Tito making deals with the Germans.
Wow. Excellent. This is as spot on as it can be in 30 minutes. I knew some old real Chetniks (with Mihajlović) that emigrated to Canada via Italy, which lends credence to the Italian involvement part.
One understated part was the viciousness of the Ustaša regime, but I doubt that people following this channel will be not informed about it. Hats off to you TIK, you did the impossible and explained this military and strategic cacophony as well and probably better than anyone else could. Bravo to you.
lol i liked your vid at 1:30, the approach deserves it, whatever the outcome
Great video, TIC. If you ever decide to expand upon the themes resistance and collaboration in your work, I would definitely recommend a comparative approach. There are many parallels to be drawn, for example, between the Chetniks and the Ustasha, and the Polish Home Army and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army respectively. I'll leave you to sort out the details, but it suffices to say that in contrast to the Allies, the Nazis and Bolsheviks looked out for their friends. Anyways, keep em coming man, all the best!
Balkanian here...
I'm with you TIK... all the way...
This was great... some things I knew.... some I didn't... but thank you for unbiased and balanced view of the situation...
This video and lindybeige's recent video on the topic are awesome...
Damn, the Balkans were one confusing shit storm during WW2. I only knew one thing for sure before I started watching this video and that is that the Italians would find a way to weasel themselves out of fighting any major battles.
Hell yeah .. most of us from Serbia have family on both četnik and Communist side .. really sad
The Italians literally recruited Chetniks like Dujic to massacre my ancestral village/s. So your comment elicited a quiet laugh as even when they are attacking, they recruit someone to do the killing for them, lol. With that said, I bear no animosity towards Italians or Serbs unless they are ultranationalists. The average Italian or Serb is just a person who played no part in this insanity and is taken as the individual they are.
Thanks 42 for asking and even more TIK for answering. Very difficult topic and you did a great job on it. Been watching for years, keep it up please!
The God Emperor has blessed us again.
Know no fear
Are you homosexual?
Thank again TIK, great video. How you managed to summarize such a complex and contentious issue is incredible. No wonder you didn't rush this. ;) I've just become a subscriber, after watching loads of your videos, including Operation Crusader and the Stalingrad ones. Will become one of your Patreons.
So many errors, for one Tito didn't get any aid from Moscow well until 1944 when he was already getting tons of supplies from Allies in Italy. Tito was begging Moscow for aid via radio far into 1942 and when nothing come he was pretty pissed because he didn't expect to be forced to fight entire Axis without any help from outside. Ljotić was never consider part of Chetnik movement he belongs to prewar Serbian fascist organization ZBOR.
There was no German-Tito deal, this is pure post war Chetnik revisionist fantasies, there were negotiations initiated by Tito by using a captured German major Arthur Strecker, commander of the 3rd Battalion of the 738th Grenadier Regiment of the 718th Infantry Division, who was captured in Prozor counterattack and mining engineering group from Organization Todt which was captured earlier... Tito wanted temporary truce and recognition as warring faction in order to start prisoner exchanges instead of his captured Partisans being usually shot on the spot ("lucky" one got sent as forced labor to the Reich), Moscow sent a radio message complaining about Tito negotiation with Germans to which Tito responded to piss off since they have yet to send him any kind of aid.
7th SS Division was in no position to attack Tito while he was fighting Chetniks since it was in the wrong place, searching some mountain west of them which had no Partisans on it, it had to be then rushed east for the next part of the show...
While Germans pretend to negotiate they were in fact redeploying their forces to finish Tito off while main body of Partisans were attempting to advance into Montenegro so whole negotiations thing backfired on Tito catching of guard resulting in Operation Schwarz in which Tito main force almost got annihilated... initially it was planed as operation to disarm Chetniks (which were entirely part of Italian MVAC) but with destruction most of Chetniks by Partisans operation goal was changed.
German report for operation Schwarz from 20 June 1943 states that only 17 Chetniks were killed while 3764 were captured! Not much resisting... Tito's Partisans in post war bodycount of their own losses reached a figure of 6391 partisans killed. Same German report lists German losses as 583 killed, 1760 wounded and 425 missing while Croatian losses 40 killed, 166 wounded, 205 missing. Italians reported 290 killed, 541 wounded, 1502 missing.
Oh yeah in order to fight communist and ustasha ideology, Chetnik movement adopt Greater Serbia ideology starting ethnic cleansing campaign against Muslims in Bosnia and Sandžak...
Probably best book on Chetniks was written by Jozo Tomasevich, (1975). War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941-1945: The Chetniks. Stanford University Press. Also in John Cripps: Action This Day there is a chapter "Mihailović or Tito? How the Codebreakers Helped Churchill Choose" on how Ultra intercepted tons of Axis communications so Churchill had better knowledge on conditions in Balkans then anyone.
Tito got a lot of weapons from Ustashe to fight against Chetniks during 1941 and 1942 until supplies started to come from British in 1942 and Soviets in 1944.
@@mythbuster860 Oh look informbiro is back... why don't you mention how Tito was actually Gestapo agent who worked for Hitler, how he deliberately started ill prepared uprising in '41 to get as many communists killed as possibles since after the war he recruited bunch of former nazis into his ranks... :-p
There was no significant arms shipments form British until after operation Audrey was carried out by OSS from 15 October 1943 to early 1944.
Before that from July to September 1943 only 190 tons were air dropped 107 to Mihailović and 82,5 tons to Tito. Oh look at that Dragoljub got more supplies by air then Tito! If only he actually did something with it could have might kept that "commie lover" Churchill on his side. :-p
The fact that Dragoljub was sitting on his ass and failed to capture significant booty from Italians after their capitulation and failed to secure any area along Adriatic coast through which supplies from Italy could be easily landed only secured his doom.
GOOD OBSERVATIONS.
Finished watching your video and all I can say really, is what a damned mess.
"Damned if you do, damned it you don't" as someone else said in the comments.
This to me looks like a good case of tribal asymmetrical warfare. You're dealing with so many little groups and bands, that it's bringing on images of Vietnam or Afghanistan to my mind. (I've never served BTW:) But still, what a mess and just a tumbled pile or issues. Wonder how much Axis man power was just tied up, dealing with all this. And the supplies been given away in this area.
None the less, good video, and thank you for doing it as well TIK. Lindy did one as well and it was an hour long more or less. And it went into a great more detail than you did mostly. But yeah, nice work, and thank you from me here in Scotland.
Remember, "Is this really the case?"
1.In 1944 many chetniks became partisans. It doubled partisans number. Communist in Serbia were in hundreds before the arrival of soviets
2. Explore the 19th century term Greater Serbia. That is the ultimate goal of all chetnik factions. It is 20th century Serbian doctrine.
Sure, many Chetniks became communists as this became the more formidable force.
and
Nope, Mihalovic literally fought for the kingdom of Yugoslavia (as presented correctly by TIK), took their orders when they were in London. The "Greater Serbia" was a hoax purported by the communists since the 4th communist congress in Dresden. Why wasn't it ever created? Serbs had all of the political power in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia yet gifted Croatia with Dubrovnik along with the rest of Dalmatia. "Greater Serbia" is not the topic at hand and the statements you make about it have no basis in facts. Greater Serbia is a hypothesis (never materialized or seriously acted upon) at best while NDH was the greater Croatia incarnate and a true evil enterprise.
@@carelesslad9931 wrong, greater serbia was official Serbian Kingdom policy. From nacretanje(midlle 19th century) to sanu memorandum(late 20th century) the goal was allways the same, all serbs in one country
@@portoroko611 You know that that memorandum was never made official, it was a draft that never passed? Either way, "all Serbs in a single country" was a war cry for liberation from Turks, that struggle started with the first uprising (1804) and ended with the first Balkan war (1912). In contrast "greater Serbian oppression" was a communist concoction of the KPJ. "All Serbs in one country" is also a bit counter to a Greater Serbia, since in order to achieve ASI1C a Yugoslavia had to be created which was never a Kingdom of Serbia, where a true greater Serbia was passed up as an option by the Karadjordjevic dynasty. Right upon seizing power communists acted on the Great Serbian Oppression hoax and partitioned Serbia under the pretext of the "great Serbian oppression". Yugoslavia only ever cost Serbs territory to the benefit of all others.
Either way I appreciate your input.
@@portoroko611 If your statements about Great Serbia conspiracy was true, then after ww1 Serbia could just opted for Greater Serbia instead of Yugoslavia.
So obviously what you are saying isn't true.
@@KuroiReaper you know they tried but there wasnt other way to do it. Nikola Pasic was the prime minister and he was a great serb. All of radical party was allways great serb, thats a fact!
Good overview. That is why we call it "Balkanski karakzan" Balkan Black Cattle. Result is 1.6 -1.7 million dead and only 350 - 400 thousand killed in combat.
The only thing that could unite Serbs and Croats is their mutual hatred of Bosnians
The only thing that could unite Bosnians and Croats is their mutual hatred of Serbs
The only thing that could unite Serbs and Bosnians is their mutual hatred of Croats
The only thing that could unite Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians is their mutual hatred of TIK
same thing with Korea China and Japan
Thank you for helping me to understand this complex topic far better!
You have an error on Tito's motivations regarding his his rebellion against Axis forces. I would agree that his strategy of open rebellion would bring about hardship and retaliation, but it was something that came about as a direct result Axis invasion in the first place. Had the Axis never have invaded... it's unlikely that Tito would have gotten much attention and with Yugoslavia then governed by their own government... uprisings against that government would not have effected the war on the Eastern Front even if Stalin ordered Tito to fight with the King of Yugoslavia (assuming Germany doesn't invade in 1941). It would only mean a bloody side war that likely would have concerned the Germans very little... at least in 1941.
And this then leads into a more complicated issue over "Communists seek to destroy the economy to gain power." While various extremist parties have taken advantage of bad economic times... and Tito would be no different. I don't think that he would ideologically seek to destroy the countries economy just to get power. And in his own case, one could make the case that by the time that Tito's partisans began launching their uprisings, it would be likely that Germany or Italy would begin dismantling and destroying Yugoslavia's economy in order to enrich Germany and/or Italy. Thus, Yugoslavia might well have faced trouble regardless of what Tito did. And thus Tito figured to rebel and try to get the occupiers out of "his" country and promise to make Yugoslavia better once in power...
Whether or not Tito actually did so after coming to power is a different issue... but I'd argue that the failures of parties that go extremes is more a result of their lack of experience in a democratic government and/or their lack of understanding on economic practices beyond that of a common worker that isn't running the business or responding to what is in "demand." Thus they respond to things they see as unfair and then try to bully their way through to get what they want, consequences be damned. Thus they end up causing as much damage as they wish to fix as a result because politically they don't support moderation and economically they aren't fully aware on how the system as a whole works.
I like how this and Lindybeige's video came out within a month of each other. Amazing content!
HUH? I'm more confused than a person tuning into a reality show mid-season. lol -- Not that I watch that B.S. , but what a soap opera! Thankyou for sorting that all out for us TIK. Nice job.
great as always
Excellent, TIK, just excellent! I see no comment war happening! There are so many more details to this story, but you captured the essence. BTW, people in Serbia are more focused on Chetniks vs Partisans story, so sometimes we don't count in the Ustashas vs Chetniks or Chetniks vs Muslim and Croatian civilians stories. Since we usually only remember terrible Ustasha atrocities against Serbian civilians, we defend Chetnik atrocities as a revenge, but... Is that really the case? I would really like go through nationalistic fog of half-truths and analyse did Chetniks had any plans for ethic cleansing before Ustasha crimes, did they used it as an excuse or was it really just a revenge after realisation that life together is not possible anymore. This bothers me since it is hard to find any unbiased source.
Well, if the comment war doesn't happen, then great! I'll somehow have dodged a bullet 🙂 but as far as the "who started it" thing is concerned, I don't know the answer to that.
I can understand Serbians focusing on the elements that hurt Serbians the most, and neglecting the other parts. And I'm sure others will be doing the same with their nationalities. This is why tribalism is bad for an individual. It just warps your perspective.
Were you there? How can you post such bollox? Are you gay, Nazi, Dutch??
@@TheImperatorKnight I noticed that comment wars in the last months regarding former Yugoslav nationalities died out... Maybe it is because of coronavirus, since we all realised that there are some bigger threats in life than our neighbours :). Maybe it is because we realised that these narratives are mostly used by our politicians and nobody has any trust in them any more... well see will it hold. Anyway, I hope some day we could discuss all these things and questions in details as it is very interesting... the more we discuss it the more we lose our biases (we shouldn't lose our feelings of course, we can't deny bad thigs happened on all sides, which influence us greatly)
I wanted to emphasise one more thing - When Tito's partisans liberated any area, first thing they would do (as from fall 1941) they would burn down all documents and archives from municipalities. That was their way of saying they want a new state just for themselves - which pushed Chetniks away from any joined actions. Chetniks were so frustrated with Communists - once they sold for money around 200 Partisan POW to Germans, who executed them, of course - That was very dishonourable, and people from the Valjevo area still remember that.
@@DaveSCameron What? Where? I am not sure what are you referring to?!
Great Video, objective and informative!
Now that I've watched this video, I understand why I've never been able to understand any of the wars in the Balkans and why I probably never will.
Thumbs up. Another great video.
Chetniks wanted to save lives? In what parallel universe do you live? Chetniks burned villages od other Montengrins who didn't support them directly!
Based
Wow, great job in producing this video!
from what i have read on the Ustasha they are often considered as Clerical-Fascist much like the Romanian Irion Guard or the Slovak fascists of Josif Tiso. where as religion was ostensibly antithetical fascism in central Europe (Italy and Germany) it became a core part of the movment in Eastern Europe especially in Croatia as Religion became one of the only ways to define ethnic differences between Serbs and Croats atlest such is the argumant of Paul Mojzes in his books "Balkan Genocide" and "Yugoslavian Inferno"
Religion is pretty much the only real differentiating things between a Serb a Croat and a Serbo-Croat speaking Muslim. What makes this more of a problem is that religion informs their customs and celebrations. Without the communist holidays, there aren't really many if at all celebrations of customs that aren't influenced by religion and thus not shared in the same way with other groups. Hence there is a limited number of common cultural things between groups to unify them. This is despite them all speaking mostly the same language with dialectal differences (mostly stemming from from which occupier did they borrow most words for things that poor peasants might not have) and looking pretty much the same.
Hence the whole race angle had to be cast along the actual dividing line, religion. And in this case it tended to be less about actual religious beliefs and more about removing those that are alien.
@@Blazo_Djurovic i mean this is essentially the argument made by Mojzes he infact uses the term Ethno-religion or Ethno-religious to describe how intertwined ethnicity and religion are in the region though his books have seen criticism from both Serbs and Croats generally for being to lenient to the other side so to speak.
@@Tommy-5684 Of course they are. Everyone's losses hurt them most. The whataboutism is pretty much no1 reason any discussion of what really happened is impossible. Both sides will strive at any cost to prove they suffered most.
It should also be mentioned again that it often wasn't out of religious grounds. Most people, especially in the cities were leaning to atheism or not going to church that often. They cared about religion just enough to perform the usual customs that made them part of a nationality. So ti would be prefectly possible to be a hard line atheist nationalist. The religious bits would be "nice national customs".
Where did you get the idea that "religion was ostensibly antithetical to fascism" ... anywhere in Europe.
That's a nonsensical statement. There is NO fascism without religion.
Ask any European. That's why the term clero-fascism is often used.
You're wearing american glasses. In Europe - churches gape empty.
TIK, great job. I've seen TimeGhost's video about this topic, and their stuff tend to, unfortunately, be somewhat incomplete and relatively biased as of late. You've done an amazing job providing every group with a deserving criticism. Well done! You have a new subscriber sir.
I wouldn't say that if I were you. As of starting the year 1943, they dedicated multiple of their War Against Humanity videos towards covering Case White in super detail. Really recommend for you to check those out.
@@extrahistory8956 I only recall them criticizing Serbian side over the limit, while they have forgotten to call Croatian crimes against Serbs a "genocide". I've been closely following their WW1 and WW2 series (inter war Yugoslavia episodes were great), but after that all i see is standard anti Serbian bias straight from Viennese history books.
@@extrahistory8956 You've stirred up my curiosity so i looked up the CAH series you mentioned. Yeah, they labelled NDH genocide as "ethnical cleansing". 9 of my family members were burned alive, only my grandmother survived. Not to mention that 300,000 people were slaughtered and many more converted and their identity taken. That is not ethnical cleansing, and it's not the first time they dodged calling it a genocide.
@@vvkth2500 Alright. I'll take a closer look at those episode s again. Thank you.
@@extrahistory8956 i apologize. my personal bias has gotten the better of me. it's just personal and i've taken offense to that. those are great shows, but i feel like the topic is underrepresented, especially from a certain point of view.
all best to you.
How exactly did Stalin manage to supply the Partizans? Until nearly the end of the war, the logistics must have been pretty difficult, considering the position of the front line.
He didn't. Soviet aid only came after liberation of Belgrade, near the end of 1944. USSR gave some 100 T-34s, dozen Yaks and lot of PPSh-41s. British also suplied partisans with M3 Stewarts, food, uniforms, shoes, mortars, mortars... Partisans upgraded Stewarts with captured German Paks. Also, partisans with flyiing skills would join RAF and formed two squadrons
Thanks, TIK!
Partisans were equiped more from the british than from the moscow
They were equiped from Ustashe in 1941 and 1942 to fight against Chetniks and later in 1942 from British. Soviets equiped them in second half of 1944.
@@mythbuster860 At no point whatsoever they were equipped by Ustazhi. Actually the main goal of Ustazhi was to fight partisans. There are milions of photos of Ustazhi and Chetniks fighting together against partisans
@@konstantincvetanovic5357 many of those were falsified. Actually, many cetnik victories in dalmatia abd lika were swept under the rug and the partizani would force the victorious cetniks to join them
TiK: 'Look at this landmine of a history debate!' *rolls up sleeves* 'Let's get into it!'
To clarify your uncertainty about the Ustasha ideology - its typical clero-fascism. Otherwise an impressive video! The only thing it maybe lacks to explain in further detail in order to make matters more clear is the scope of genocide against Serbs in Independent State of Croatia.
ALL IN ALL A GREAT EPISODE TIK! I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO CONTINUATION!
The Forgotten 500 Hundred is worth reading to add to the complication that is this area and era!
Or Fitzroy McLeans "Eastern Aproaches"
The more controversial a topic is, the more it needs to be discussed, and discussed honestly, well done.
Really good video, as always! I enjoy seeing these kinda of disorganized and confuse fronts, where there are people fighting each other and helping each other depending on the mood of the current situation. It makes the war seem less galant and cool like video games and movies would led you believe and more of a hot mess where people are making life changing decisions on the fly. I would hope one day you would talk about the action that the Brazilian division saw in Italy. I never really cared much about reading about our participation in the war, just the propaganda they fed us in the Army, and even my commanding sargeant would say it was all nationalist bullshit.
Never thought id see a picture of Draza on one of your videos TIK, would love to see more on him, keep up the good work!
Ok so a few things. Mihailovic was the supreme commander of army in the fatherland as given to him by the king so the cetniks were a single thing. Yes there was separate commanders but he was the head of it. So yes they were collaborators with the germans, Italians and even in some instances the ustasa. There is documented proof in a Washington DC archive of this. Secondly they were the only Partizans. They weren't 100% communist. That was why people liked them so much. They had priests and non communists in their ranks but they did something the cetniks wouldnt, fight the occupiers. Tito wasnt following Moscow orders. He wanted to free his country and people into a single free country. Also seeing as he was the only one to snub his nose at stalin that should show his feelings towards Moscow. Mihaijlovic was a traitor who instead of trying to free his country, he thought it better to kill them. My family has many stories of the cetniks murdering members of it.
Real good explained video, even with this real confusing events.
United Balkans, not a good idea we tried that already didn't end well, anyway props to you for even trying to figure out something that even we who live here still have different opinions
TIK, you made a few mistakes. Number 1, Tito didn't recive help from the Soviets until early 1944, because it was impossible for them to send aircraft to fly to Yugoslavia and back at that time. Number 2, Ljotic was not a chetnik, he was something like a national socialist, he even helped germans to kill serbian civilians in Kraljevo and Kragujevac in 1941. Number 3, you should have mentioned two important events: 1. Mihajlovic meeting the german delegation in the village Divci in november 1941, offering them colaboration, and 2. pertizan-german "march talks" in 1943. Not a bad video overall. Cheers from Bosnia
15:30 he mentioned meeting in Divci.
22:12 he also mentioned the March talks.
brilliant analysis
I guess now's a bad time to have a German Last name
"The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more. No less" The Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries No29.
Well done. Spent two years in Tuzla and this has to be the most comprehensive overview I have seen to date.
He could do better
Mihailovic's situation really sounds like a modern marriage.
Great video TIK.
GOT SO EXCITED WHEN I SAW THE TITLE! FINALLY WE ARE DIGGING INTO LONG AWAITED BIGGEST GUERRILA WARFARE EVER FOUGHT! NOW LETS ENJOY THE VIDEO WITH MY BRAKFAST :)
Yeah I think this is just the start of a series on Yugoslavia
Not sure when the next video on this will be, of course, but very interesting topic.
@@TheImperatorKnight I AM STILL NOT THROUGH THE VIDEO BUT I AM ALL WARMED UP WRITING COMMENTS:) THERE ARE SOME OBJECTIONS, BUT I AM STILL ENJOYING IT AND I KNOW IF YOU DO THE BATTLESTORM OF THE 1943 AXIS OFFENSSIVES IN YUGOSLAVIA (BIGGER THAN THE OPERATION COMPASS IN TERMS OF MEN) IT WILL BE EPIC; I AM SURE THAT YUGOSLAV POST WAR GOVERNMENT WOULD HAVE HIRED YOU TO MAKE A STATE SPONSPORED DOCUMENTARY ON IT AND PAID YOU HANDSOMLY IF YOU WERE DOING YOUR GREAT THING BACK THEN ;)
Well, I'll be honest, I only used a few sources (and there's not particularly new either), and I was completely new to this particular topic, so I'm sure there are mistakes. I thought though that I'd put out the video, see what the criticisms are, then I could proceed to fill in the gaps. But as it stands, I've no idea what the counter-arguments are going to be, so it's hard to know what to look out for
@@TheImperatorKnight OVERALLY IT IS A GREAT EPISODE AND MY BRAKFAST WOULD NOT TASTE AS GOOD WITHOUG IT;) I WOULD SAY THAT YOUR OBJECTIVITY (CONSIDERING YOUR DISLIKE FOR COMMUNISM) IS PRETTY GOOD. I HAVE BEEN REALLY LEARNING A LOT FROM YOU AND I AM MORE THAN GLAD TO SHARE SOME INFO ON THIS TOPIC AS I HAVE READ AND HEARD A LOT OF FIRST HANDS ACOUNTS ABOUT WW2 IN YUGOSLAVIA. FOR INSTANCE (SINCE YOU MENTIONED DRAZA'S TRIAL) I HAVE READ THE FULL TRANSCRIPT OF THE PROCEDURE AND EVEN THOUGH THE TRIAL AGAINST HIM WAS BREACHING SOME LEGAL PROTOCOLS, JUST THE EVIDENCE ABOUT THE ATROCITIES AGAINST THE CIVILIANS ARE SO OVERWHELMING THAT HE GOT WHAT HE DESERVED. NOT TO MENTION THAT STALIN WOULD NEVER GIVE TRAITORS THE TRIAL DRAZA RECEIVED, BEING COMPLETELY OPEN TO THE MEDIA, INCLUDING FOREIGN.
@@LavrencicUrban Dude, why are you shouting?
The Chetniks certainly were not all collaborators, but no matter what they were still an overall detriment to the effective resistance in the Balkans. Chetniks varied between collaboration and resistance but they did so along the ethnic lines that separated the Balkans. This was the Nazi intention. The Nazi strategy in the Balkans did not care about who collaborated or who resisted. What solely mattered was that those actions happened exclusively within the ethnic lines that divided the region for centuries because this guaranteed that resistance could not ever grow strong enough to challenge their war machine.
Their strategy was based on the idea that the Balkan Slavs would succumb to their ancient, irrational hatred and that would do most of the work.
"Brotherhood and Unity" was the only way the Balkans would have found victory and a level of independence from great powers the region has experienced for centuries.
Živio Tito!
Translation: Everyone was fighting everyone else with ceasefires and alliances made and broken in every combination imaginable.
Most detailed video on WWII yugoslavia i have ever seen.
Crazy how he sort of took up the role of Mao in the resistance, consolidating power and fighting his rival instead of concentrating on the enemy. Of course this strategy didn't pay off because of the post-war Soviet influence, but it was worth a try.
Well, he was no backstabbing rat like Mao was to the nationalist army in the end so.
Pretty interesting comparison!
Both would later go against the Soviets as well
U should make a video on the Algerian war of independence. That's another topic where everyone might unite in hating you.
Anyway. Great job as always. Love your courage in tackling such topics despite ytube censorship and people
who are gonna hate on you.
People did not fight with the Partizans because of communism. The Partizans were just the best group out there that you could join to get rid of the Axis. Also you said Russia supplied weapons...I find that hard to believe especially early on in the war.
Early in the war people used the guns they brought after the Yugoslav army collapsed. They also got their weapons from dead enemies, raided ammo depots and such. The arms & ammo situation improved a lot after italian capitulation in 1943.
abeleski
TIKs point is that Tito caused civilians
to be executed by the Axis because
His partisans killed German soldiers
Ok this is ass backwards logic must be
a British thing !!!
@@belacheat8833 Axis puppet Croatia conducted genocide anyway so that argument about wanting civilians to be killed is just a stupid chetnik excuse. It was go to partisans or butchered.
Great job Brother
We say: "jebo lud zbunjenog". Good video!
My Grandmom's brothers were in King's army in 1941. The older one was captain of the guard, and the younger was in chetnik forces. He was eventually captured by communists and he served in some sort of penal unit. He died a couple of years ago. The older one was captured in April war, and was interned in officers camp, but he managed to escape into Switzerland, and via Lisabon he went to Australia. He died in 1986.
On the other hand, most of family on my mom's side was brutally murdered by ustashas in Herzegovina. Sledgehammer in the head, and toss them into pit.
The majority of my family who were killed during WW2 were robbed and burned alive by Chetniks who collaborated with Axis forces. Pavelic himself provides the weapons to Italian units a month prior who in turn put said weapons in Dujic's hands. Many of the Croats hate/d the Ustase. They were commandered by Herzegovni for the most part, and believe in some mythical bullshit that Bosnia is the "true Croatia" and they are the "true Croats". To this day you hear them say they are more Croat than the Croatians, they speak the purest of the Croatian language, completely oblivious they are nigh identical to their Muslim and Othodox brethren in Bosnia, lol. This delusional approach to identity politics is why the NDH had no qualms annexing Dalmatia and seeing many of us Croats killed. I mean, who needs actual Croats, their historical lands and their culture when they believe they are true Croats, right, lol
another good video TIK! you should have way more subs than what you do
the Ustashe were definitely fascist. The Vatican cooperated with the fascist powers. Spain was under Franco's fascism and the catholic church was part of that state. That being said being catholic does not make you fascist of course. You can be fascist and the religion does not matter.