Britany - Serbia WW II

[tokio]

Hello Mr. Bridge! I`m interested in Churchills` politics on Balkan especially in Yugoslavia!Please can You give me some good links or maybe a book about this problem! Thanks!


greetings from Serbia!!!!

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[Steven Hauser]

Hmm,

This really is still a boiling kettle.

Why discuss Churchill I wonder?

Can you tell me what you have learned so far?

:)

[John Bridge]

Hello, Tokio. Glad to see you. ;)

You give me credit I don't deserve. I know very little about World War Two history and even less about the dealings of Chruchill, Stalin and Roosevelt. I think, though, that the Big Three agreed to let Stalin and the USSR continue to hold sway in what was called Yugoslavia. A strongman named Josip Broz, who was called "Tito," was left in charge of things, and Yugoslavia remained a dictatorship (under the influence of the USSR) until the breakup and demise of the Soviet Socialists Republic. Marshall Tito remained in power nearly until his death.

From that point forward, we know that the internal strife that has existed in the region for decades if not centuries has come to the surface, most recently with the turmoil in Bosnia and Kosovo. Admittedly, I've lost track of current events in that part of the world since our invasion of Afghanistan and subsequently, Iraq.

So has anyone heard about Milosevic lately? Is he being tried?

[tokio]

I want to know about Churchill`s politics in yugoslavia becouse of a big turn in his politics between cetniks and communists!He was supporting monarchist cetniks and their goverment in London at the start of war but then in 1943. he tuned his support to Josip Broz Tito and his movement.
I heard that the news that was coming from Yugoslavia about cetnick`s attacks on Germans were reshaped in Cairo office so the news look like the communists made these attacks! I hardly belive that Churchill was that ignorent and i belive that there is something more there.So i want to know what is the english side of story!

And i also agrre with you that this is still a hot theme especially in Serbia where people are sepparated on monarchists(cetnicks) and communists(partisans)

[John Bridge]

We will have to wait for the Brits to give us a British perspective on those events, but from an American point of view, it seems clear that Roosevelt, and not Churchill, was driving the move toward communism in the area. To Churchill's dismay, it was Roosevelt who handed Stalin basically everything he wanted in an effort to keep Stalin engaged. Churchill managed to save Greece, but the remainder of the Balkans were offered up.

[jjwq8]

Cetniks participated in massacres by and were staunch allies of the Nazi's. The last dust-up in the Balkans had a huge amount to do with unfinished WWII business. More later.

[smee]

let's not forget that churchills knowledge of Serbia began long before WWII. It was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in Sarajavowhich began the first World War.


As I always say - it's likely that the 'history' and the subsequent events in Serbia began at least 30- 50 yrs before WWII.

"There is no way to understand what happened in Serbia and Bosnia [in the 90s] without going back to the extraordinary events on the 28th of June, 1914 when the heir apparent to the throne [Austria-Hungary], the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated.

A series of violent events followed that marked the civil war within the Balkan States becoming even more violent in the Second World War. And in turn, when the communist state of Yugoslavia unraveled in the 1990's, some cynical politicians like Milosovich tried to go right back to 1914. ... So the sequence of violent events in the 20th Century is like a fugue, with one instrument following another. And in the Serbian case, each one is worse than the one before."

historian - Jay Winter