Great read, Thanks.

As part of the dire Prespa agreement with Greece, there is an explicit clarification that the citizens of the country are not related to ancient Hellenic civilization that previously inhabited the northern regions of Greece. Specifically, Article 7 mentions that both countries acknowledge that their respective understanding of the terms “Macedonia” and “Macedonian” refers to a different historical context and cultural heritage. When reference is made to Greece, these terms denote the area and people of its northern region, as well as the Hellenic civilization, history and culture of that region. When reference is made to Republic of Northern Macedonia, these terms denote its territory, language and people, with their own, distinctly different, history and culture.

In effect, the Skopjans have officially renounced their claims to ancient Macedon and elements of Hellenic history. Unfortunately, that does not mean they will remove the kitsch statues to a culture they officially have no cultural connection too.

“Also, Alexander during his time was mostly feared and despised by Greeks, for he massacred so many of them.”

In Greece proper, he only massacred the inhabitants of Thebes. Massacres between Greek city-states and kingdoms was a regular occurrence.

“When the Branchidae in Persia welcomed conquering Alexander as a fellow Greek, he promptly slaughtered them.”

He slaughtered them not because they were Greek but because they were seen as traitors to Hellas and in the service of Persia when they were judged to have sided with Persia in the earlier Greek-Persian wars.

Many Greeks fought against Alexander, even as mercenaries for the Persians.

Many Greeks fought with Alexander too. At that time, the Greek hoplite was in high demand across the ancient world. Often soldiers who were exiled at home would seek employment elsewhere and sometimes against their fellow Greeks.

“Drunk, vain, touchy and paranoid, Alexander didn’t hesitate to kill his generals, soldiers, body guards, pages or court historian. Alexander murdered Cleitus, who had saved him in battle. When his lover, Hephaestion”

I would be really keen for you to post textual evidence that Hephaestion was Alexander’s lover.

“When Alexander died, Greeks rejoiced”

Only a few city-states and kingdoms rejoiced because they did not share his pan-Hellenic crusade. However, many others like Isocratis were very enthusiastic.

Ancient Greeks always squabbled and sometimes killed each other. This did not mean they considered their fellow Greek a barbarian. Likewise, when Alexander murdered Greeks like the Thebans he still considered them his fellow Hellenes.

Alexander’s Hellenization of the Middle East meant that Christ and his immediate followers had Greek, Roman, Jewish and Persian empires as cultural transmitters of the message of the Gospel. In addition, Islamic scholars, seeking intellectual energy for their theological writings, transmitted the texts of Plato, Aristotle and the rest of the classic Greek playwrights and philosophers to the West in time for Thomas Aquinas to justify Christian scholastics.

If it weren’t for Phillip II and Alexander, Western Culture would be primarily Druid.

Thanks for the travel log and history;-)

This is no different than Anglos in their neoclassical phase. The generic Brit is about as far removed from Rome spiritually, culturally, and genetically as the Macedonian Slav is from the Argiads.

Bulgaria and its people are an interesting study. The Bulgars who conquered that region were a Central Asian people similar to the Magyars that conquered Hungary. But unlike in the latter case, the Bulgars did not impress upon the land’s occupants their language, and as a result the Bulgarians speak a Slavic language.

Just a balkanized multicultural residue trying to achieve a false identity. Alexander’s empire quickly fell apart right after his death.

The New Testament gospel (good news) of Christ has resulted in the greater good for more people and societies than any other culture and philosophy. And this is just a byproduct of the message of salvation. These byproducts of Christianity have benefited mankind wherever they have taken root.

The first century gospel as preached by the Apostles has been subverted by false teachers and their doctrines of men as Paul warned would happen:
Acts 20: 28-30

Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood.

For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock.

Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.

You apparently don’t appreciate the wholesome synergistic effects of the Jews Kelergi Plan. This enlightened vision for true cultural enrichment financed by the altruistic Rothschilds and Warburgs will gradually eliminate the barbaric, slovenly low I.Q ethnic whites to be replaced by the high I.Q. industrious peace loving Africans. The African negroes have an impressive history of achievement and just because they had not yet figured out the wheel or built anything but mud huts when the first white men encountered them, only proves that they have been held back and discriminated against.

Despite the distorted picture we get from areas they and their descendants predominate in, such as Haiti, Zimbabwe, Camden N.J. and Detroit, all of us know deep down that given real equality and a bigger welfare check they will leave white western culture in the dustbin on history and achieve the dream of Wakanda as the Jews in Hollywood portray realty in the movie “Black Panther.”

Don’t speak so fast.

Conquerors may impose their language (like the Anglo-Saxons), or they may not (like the Franks). But the ancient bloodlines survive. The people who live in a place tend to keep living in that place, no matter who collects their taxes. There is a story about Chester, England, where a majority of the residents of that fair city are genetically related to some prehistoric bones dug up nearby.

And thus, the Slavic-speaking Macedonians may well have Alexander’s blood flowing in their veins. Language doth not maketh man.

Just don’t get into how modern Greeks aren’t particularly Greek either.

It’s not quite as bad as modern Jewry’s appropriation of Palestine, but there are similarities.

“Their logo featured a bearded, smiling skull in front of red wings.”

I recalled reading about “red wings” in Hunter Thompson’s Hells Angels, and Wikipedia confirms my memory:

Cunnilingus may be performed during menstruation, which may be called “to earn one’s red wings” in slang.[25][26] The phrase is a reference to menstrual blood stains in the shape of a small bird’s wings that are liable to form on the giving partner’s cheeks during the act.[26][27]

The red wing patch was common among the Hells Angels by the mid-1960s,[28] and the slang term continued to be known among biker gangs in the 1980s.[25] Gershon Legman saw the act/badge not only as functioning a homosocial tie, but also as reflecting a deep and primitive belief in the lifegiving powers of blood.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cunnilingus#During_menstruation

Don’t get me started on this one. Greece claims that’s 98% Greek – practically no minorities. When in reality, probably just barely over half of the population is Greek.

And the stupid Europe allows them to get away with this. I guess as long as you are “democracy” you can get away with murder.

Still, the biggest blame lies with the Serbs – who out of the generosity of their hearts gifted Macedonia to the Greeks, who based on the effort that they put in the Balkan wars shouldn’t have gotten almost anything, let alone 60% of Macedonia.

I believe that the curse of the 2nd Balkan war is haunting the Serbs to this day. Ever since that colossal betrayal of their Slavic brothers – Bulgarians and Macedonians, they had nothing but bad luck, and for what?

What did they got out of their “friendship” with the Greeks? Rent free stay on Corfu during the WW1 – when thousands of them died because their great friends the Greeks, couldn’t, or wouldn’t feed them.

That BS about democracy is all a joke. Europe allows the Greeks to deny the Macedonians the right to speak their language, what the hell, they deny them the right to give their kids Macedonian names. Some democracy is flourishing in Greece and in Europe. It’s all just a pile of BS.

https://www.refworld.org/docid/49749d1841.html

Prague Was bombed.

Hirsute = hairy
While I’ve seen that word thousands of times, for some reason (I’m stupid ?) wasn’t sure of its meaning.

Bucephalus…This led me to another google search, where I found “Comanche”, the horse ridden by Capt. Keogh of the 7th Cavalry in the battle of The Little Big Horn.
Comanche survived, Keogh did not.
Is there a more maligned animal in human history than the horse ?

Anyways Linh, thanks for the english & history lessons.

btw…Chris Hedges had a great interview with UK Ambassador Craig Murray recently regarding Julian Assange. Hope you get to see it.

When it was created in 1918, the former Yugoslavia first bore the name Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians because in reality, those were the three peoples living there. Then the communists usurped power during WWII and invented new nations to diminish the demographic weight of the Serbs and through constant Serb-shaming largely succeeded in dividing them, though when it comes to Serbs of islamic faith, the Serbian Orthodox Church’s refusal to call them Serbs also greatly contributed to the problem.
Today the Slavs on the territory of former Yugoslavia who aren’t Croats or Slovenians, are actually Serbs. There are Serbs who are just that in Republika Srpska, the Serb part of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Then there are Serbs who lie first to themselves then to the rest of the world that they aren’t Serbs, call themselves Bosniaks, Montenegrins, Macedonians and to prove they aren’t Serbs, they invent themselves histories from which historical evidence is purged because, well, historical evidence doesn’t really support their flights of fancy.
Last but not least, in what remains of Serbia, there are Serbs who if given the chance would be anything but Serbs. They’d be Yugoslavs again, Europeans, Turks, whatever, but they’re stuck with being Serbian and they just hate it. When they present themselves as Serbs before foreigners, it is only to conceal how much they loathe being what they are.
With the exception of Serbs from Republika Srpska, former Yugoslavs stink. In the whole of Europe, only the Albanians are less civilised. The only places worth visiting in Serbia and Northern Macedonia are the medieval monasteries but are they worth risking your life to reach them? A Serb behind a wheel is a road accident waiting to happen. If you can call those holed lanes roads. For the rest, if you like garbage everywhere, suit yourself.

PS: I almost forgot, prepare yourself also to the fact that usually, the first thing anyone there will tell you will be a lie. They don’t know you from Adam, and the first thing they do when they meet you, they lie.

Correct, the ethnic Greeks left in Greece are mostly from the Islands or refugees from Turkey, who settled in Greece 100 years ago. People on the mainland are mostly of Slavic descent, especially in the north of Greece

Alexander the Great was definitively a part of ancient Greek history and culture,although I doubt that he was considered one by them!But he certainly has no connection with modern day Macedonians!

But the ancient bloodlines survive

On an isolated island like Britain, sure. But look at the US. If you dig up a 1000 year old corpse from a bog in New Jersey or Georgia, what are the odds you will find any modern descendants living nearby? We know from history that large parts of the Balkans were depopulated many times by plague and war and resettled by “colonists” from Western Europe or Slavic invaders. There is probably an element of Ancient Macedonian blood in modern Macedonia, but probably no more than you would find in any random group in the Balkans or Asia Minor.

Can you give some of the detail, including numbers and dates preferably, of the replacement of Greeks by Slavs? How come they ended up speaking Greek?

Macedonians are Bulgarians, not Serbs. The Macedonian/Bulgarian languages are so degraded grammatically relative to the other Slavic languages that I have always assumed it was originally acquired as the second language of Turkic speaking Bulgars who passed that pidgin down as a language to their children. So not Serbs.

Vojvodina is quite nice, and worth visiting for the Habsburg architecture. So is Belgrade if you like beautiful women, grilled meat and alcohol.

Greek was still a prestige language of the Ottoman Empire right up to 1918. Still, I suspect most of the Slavs in Greece only really started speaking Greek in the 20th century when the State became powerful enough to introduce compulsory schooling, radio, and widespread literacy.

Half a kilometer away is a giant statue of Philip II, and he, too, is atop a column in the middle of a fountain, with warriors and lions. At its base, Philip reappears with Olympias and a boy Alexander.

Three lucky people. Olympias died in battle, Philip killed by an ex-lover, and Alexander… well, maybe fever and maybe his own general staff poisoned him to keep from joining their fellows Alexander already knocked off. Speculation continues to this very day.

Do Serbs spring from the Vincha culture?Did they arrive in the Balkans in the 8th. century?Were they always there?Were there Serbs among Alexander the Great”s troops?I think the answer to these questions is YES. The story that Slavs[Serbs] arrived in the Balkans in the 7th. century[more precisely 625A.D. supposedly] first started among the Greeks and Latins,old adversaries, and continued among colonial British and Germans which was used to justify their march to the East. If historians would drop their prejudices and studied the facts then we would know the real history of the Roman Empire,East and West, and other mysteries would be revealed.

Aristotle not only considered him to be Greek but educated him and encouraged him to become leader of the Greek. Saying that he wasn’t Greek because he was actually Macedonian is like saying that Bismarck wasn’t actually German because he was Prussian.

If it weren’t for Phillip II and Alexander, Western Culture would be primarily Druid.

Wouldn’t it be Celtic?

Why do so many Hispanic -Americans speak English?

Plus, overwhelming power awes, mesmerizes and seduces, as long as you’re not threatened, that is. Alexander will forever fascinate, as will Quin Shih Huang, Genghis Khan, Charlemagne or Napoleon, etc. AAA males are so rare, how can us tick-like wusses, fearful of our own shadows even, not buckle our knees?

Speak for yourself, Fraud.

Why the reluctance to call Macedonians in North Macedonia by their internationally recognized and accepted name? Why refer to them as Slavs in North Macedonia?

Here is Wikipedia on Macedonians as an ethnic group:

Macedonians (Macedonian: Македонци, romanized: Makedonci) are a South Slavic ethnic group native to the region of Macedonia in South-East Europe. They speak the Macedonian language, a South Slavic language. About two thirds of all ethnic Macedonians live in North Macedonia and there are also communities in a number of other countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonians_(ethnic_group)

And here is the same source about macedonian language:

Macedonian (/ˌmæsɪˈdoʊniən/; македонски јазик, translit. makedonski jazik, pronounced [maˈkɛdɔnski ˈjazik] (About this soundlisten)) is an Eastern South Slavic language. Spoken as a first language by around two million people, it serves as the official language of North Macedonia. Most speakers can be found in the country and its diaspora, with a smaller number of speakers throughout the transnational region of Macedonia. Macedonian is also a recognized minority language in parts of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, and Serbia and it is spoken by emigrant communities predominantly in Australia, Canada and the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonian_language

If someone has a beef with their name and language, they should bring their grievances, recent attempts to reach back to antiquity notwithstanding, to the UN Security Council.

Not your best. Aren’t you tired of wandering around noting how confused and tawdry everything is?

One thing Europeans across the board have down are statues and fountains – like nothing we have in the states.

Islam’s founder Mohammed is basically an Arab version of Alexander especially his military conquests, this was consciously done as the Arabs were in awe of Alexander for centuries. I also think Alexander’s sexual “choices” may have played a role in Mohammed’s personal “choices”.

It would be interesting to make a comparison which would include reasons for immigration, timeline of immigration including reference to any separate waves, education systems and more. I doubt that the economic incentives would have worked in the same way to produce what I take to be non Slavic speaking Greek families as the almost universal rule.

Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas has much more authenticity than the phoney, plaster statues of Skopje which risibly try to create an artificial history of an improvised state with an ersatz identity for a South Slavic-speaking people who desperately claim a connection to the ancient world though they migrated to that region some thousand years after that world had ended.

Alexander is celebrated in Greece because he made dominant the Greek language and culture throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and took it as far as India. It was the Hellenistic Age of Alexander’s conquests that enticed the Romans, that was the cultural foundation of the thousand year Greek-speaking “Byzantine” Empire, that preserved and disseminated the works of Classical Greece, that sparked the Renaissance, that connected modern Europe to its cultural origins, and that led, for better or worse, to the creation of the modern Greek state with its unbroken linguistic continuity of nearly four thousand years going back to the roots of Europe and the West.

Volga (Bolga) region where Bolgars originally are from is not Central Asia, in fact not Asia at all.

Most people have heard of the Great Khan from Mongolia but who is this Quin? An illegitimate son of the late great thespian of a half Mexican origin perhaps… and as to the Serbian-Pakis, most of them are driving Yellow cabs, recklessly, in the streets of New York City. So much for conquering the world!

Changing the language of a minority to that of the majority occurs often enough in countries to not be uncommon in the world, Irish, Scottish and Welsh to English and the harmonisation of France will do for a start. The dominant Greek-speaking majority of the modern Greek state most certainly followed that route with its own linguistic minorities that were far and isolated from their linguistic centres.

Their language is closer to Bulgarian than the Serbian spoken in Belgrade but isn’t that far off the Serbian spoken in Vranje. Whatever their language, the physionomy of the people in Skopje, Kumanovo, Prilep, Veles, Bitola, Ohrid is not the physionomy of the people in Sofia, Plovdiv, Burgas, Varna, Pernik, Pleven. It is the same physionomy as in the south of Serbia.
Northern Macedonians just aren’t Bulgarians. I have no problem with their current name. The only problem with them is that the history they boast is bullshit.

Maybe because wikipedia peddles total bullshit with regards to anything that isn’t experimentally or mathematically verifiable.

Linh, you wrote:

Ancient Greeks digged naked males. Again, North Macedonians are mostly Slavs.

But:

Digged is the older past tense and past participle of dig. The modern form dug is an innovation that has become standard.

It’s such an older past tense version of dig that I’ve never heard anyone use it ever. Maybe in the 1800s or earlier.

You’re watching nationbuilding of new nation states in real time. In 1887 it was recorded that there were 540,000 Serbs living in Macedonia. Today there’re 36,000 Serbs living on that territory. So what happened to them all? I suspect that most Serbs there changed the suffixes of their surnames and started declaring themselves Macedonian, then North Macedonian, whatever next?

Maybe because wikipedia peddles total bullshit with regards to anything that isn’t experimentally or mathematically verifiable.

Hmm.
How about this site:

Macedonian language, Macedonian Makedonski Jazik, South Slavic language that is most closely related to Bulgarian and is written in the Cyrillic alphabet. Macedonian is the official language of the Republic of North Macedonia, where it is spoken by more than 1.3 million people. The Macedonian language is also spoken in Greek Macedonia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Serbia, Slovenia, Albania, and Australia.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Macedonian-language

On Feb. 14, 1945 62 B-17 dropped 152 tons of bombs over the centre of Prague, including historical centre. It was rebuilt and reshaped after the war.

Aristotle was expelled (ostracized) from all Greek city states at the time, and when offered the job of tutoring the young Makedon prince, he had little choice.

Yes it varies depending on who and where. I’d say that in Hungary the ancient bloodlines survived to a great extent considering they hardly look like Asiatic Huns. Or the Finns. And the Mongols left their genes in those parts of Europe they conquered but these hardly predominate in the present day population. So I’d say that despite all the conquests in the Balkans, the bloodlines of the original inhabitants remain to this day, although mixed with others to some extent.

I wonder if there’s a statue of Dragutin Dimitrijević known as Apis (Апис) anywhere in this region.

Apis, Dragutin Dimitrijević

Dimitrijević was the supposedly charismatic Serbian colonel who led the so-called May Coup in Belgrade in 1903, a coup d’état in which Serbian King Alexander Obrenović and Queen Draga were assassinated inside the Royal Palace.

The Serbian “Unification or Death” secret society was formed in 1901 among junior officers of the Kingdom of Serbia Army, and is popularly known as “The Black Hand.” Supposedly inspired by the earlier unifications of both Italy and Germany in the 19th century, the military secret clique’s goal was unification of the Southern Slavs.

Dimitrijević later led the Black Hand, a society responsible for the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in June 1914, which led to the July Crisis and the outbreak of World War I. In 1916, Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić, who considered Dimitrijević as a potential threat, accused Dimitrijević and the Black Hand group of treason. Dimitrijević was executed by firing squad in June 1917.

Gavrilo Princip

Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip is usually identified as the assassin of Archduke Ferdinand, who was mortally wounded along with his wife Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg in Sarajevo on June 24, 1914.

Princip was one of a group of six assassins also containing Muhamed Mehmedbašić, Vaso Čubrilović, Nedeljko Čabrinović, Cvjetko Popović and Trifun Grabež (one Bosniak and five Serbs consecutively) coordinated by Danilo Ilić, a Bosnian Serb and a member of the Black Hand secret society. The political objective of the assassination was to break off Austria-Hungary’s South Slav provinces so they could be combined into a Yugoslavia. The conspirators’ motives were consistent with the movement that later became known as Young Bosnia. The assassination led directly to World War I when Austria-Hungary subsequently issued an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia, which was partially rejected. Austria-Hungary then declared war on Serbia, triggering actions leading to war between most European states.

In the aftermath of WWI, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was formed from territories of the former Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Kingdom of Serbia. It was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929, renamed the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia in 1946, renamed again in 1963 as the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and broke up beginning in 1991 when the Yugoslav War erupted.

Anyone who can keep track of this bloody mess is a better historian than I. How many died in all the wars of the 20th century? Are they back where they started yet?

The statue of Gavrilo Princip in the Park Gavrilo Princip, Belgrade

Well, if they’ve got a statue for this assassin, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s one for Dimitrijević too.

Thanks

I believe Olympia was stoned to death soon after Alexander died. . In revenge for all the people she killed after Alexander went off to conquer the world and left her as regent.

Supposedly she burnt to death another wife of Philip and their baby girl soon after Alexander left. And hired someone to kill Phillip a month after that baby girl was born. And arranged for Phillip’s assassin to be killed shortly after he killed Phillip. Alternate theory is that Phillip’s assassin was gang banged at some drunken orgy and Phillip refused to prosecute.

There’s a theory Alexander’s second wife, daughter of the king of Persia he defeated, poisoned him in revenge for Alexander’ conquering Persia.

I don’t know if he invented military police/political commissars. But he had an entire army standing behind the battles ready to kill anyone who retreated. So did the French revolutionary army from the very first. Napoleon continued the practice.

The Bolsheviks did it too, both in the civil war and WW2.

A unified Serbian nation would mean a strong nation state in the heart of the Balkans and it would actually mean stable Balkans. Imperial powers don’t want stable Balkans because instability provides them with a justification for their meddling.
Historically, the Serbian territory in the former Yugoslavia comprises Serbia proper with Kosovo but without Vojvodina – which is if one is to be honest about it historically Hungarian -, the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Pelješac peninsula – now part of Croatia and the only part of today Croatia that Serbs could have legitimately claimed -, Montenegro – there was a state of Montenegro but it was a Serbian state and there was no such thing as a Montenegrin nationality before WWII -, and finally Northern Macedonia.
Again, if one is to be honest, Serbs themselves are at least as responsible for the current situation as are Western imperial powers. To cut the story as short as possible, they thought they could command a bigger state if they simply stopped calling themselves Serbs and started using fake identities. The problem with that strategy is that during the communist period local potentates who couldn’t care less about national intereste but were very much interested in enriching themselves used those fake identities to consolidate their hold over fiefdoms and the fake identities were eventually recognised as real by Western powers because they served their interests.
So Serbs are indeed largely responsible for their predicament but it doesn’t change the fact that most of what is peddled as official history in the former Yugoslavia is really just a big load of crap.

The texts of the classical Greeks stayed right in Europe. The texts were also spread throughout the Middle East. Christian monks and priests preserved and endlessly copied the texts, you’ve been reading Wikipedia or standard anti White anti European, anti Christian propaganda again.

Why was Aristotle expelled?

You’d be abated too, buddy.

seriously? who writes like this?

I am with Stalin on this one, actually. Stalin thought that Macedonia should be part of Bulgaria, based on linguistic and racial similarities.

Macedonia has a lot (everything) in common with Bulgaria, almost nothing in common with Serbia and totally nothing with Greece.

If Greek culture was so dominant and overwhelming to the senses, why it didn’t impose itself on the Slavic newcomers when they settled in present day Macedonia, but it was the other way around – everybody spoke Slavic Macedonian language in ALL of Macedonia until the Balkan wars when the Serbs gifted Macedonia to the Greeks.

I wonder how did that “friendship” came about. Did the Greeks and the Serbs went Greek on each other or what? I mean such love is hard to explain otherwise except the Serbs falling for the Greeks charm.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=go%20greek

No, there is no statue for Apis anywhere. It is generally admitted among Serbs that his actions have caused a national catastrophe. As for Princip, he really became glorified only after WWII. The curious thing about him is that he was blind as a bat and allegedly couldn’t hit an oak from five meters. The assassination of archduke Franz-Ferdinand is one of those historical events with an official version more riddled with holes than a wheel of Emmenthal.

So? How does that change the fact that Alexander and the Macedonians were as Greek as the Thebans, the Spartans, the Ithakans, the Cretans or the Athenians?

“Aristotle was expelled (ostracized) from all city states at the time..”

What untutored nonsense, really.

Alexander was culturally and ethnically Greek. Long before being Macedonian turned to be cool, Herodotus had said that the Macedonian rulling class came from southern Greece.

I never heard about that, so I had to look it up. Yes, it happened the same day as Dresden. It was an American “mistake”. Why was the US and British bombing civilians anyway? Isn’t that a war crime? Amalek concept from Jewish advisors, perhaps.

http://www.ww2inprague.com/articles/1945-bombing-of-prague

The Bombing of Prague occurred during the end of World War II (February 14, 1945) when the US Army Air Forces carried out an air raid over Prague. The city was the capital of Czechoslovakia and (since the Nazi occupation in 1939) the main city of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. According to American pilots, it was the result of a navigation mistake—at the same time, a massive bombing of Dresden was under way, 120 km north from Prague.

Forty B-17 Flying Fortresses of the 8th American Air Force dropped about 152 tons of bombs on many populated areas of Prague. The carpet-bombing hit Vyšehrad, Zlíchov, Karlovo náměstí, Nusle, Vinohrady, Vršovice and Pankrác. The bombing resulted in the deaths of 701 people and the wounding of 1,184. About a hundred houses and historical sites were totally destroyed and another two hundred were heavily damaged. All the casualties were civilians, and not one of the city’s factories, which might have been of use to the Wehrmacht, was damaged.

In fact, the Hellenistic Period that resulted from Alexander’s conquests lasted for some 300 years after his death when the Greek language and culture dominated the eastern Mediterranean and enticed and influenced the Roman world which came after it. Its largest city, Alexandria, was a renowned centre of art, science and learning. Greek became a lingua franca of the region which is why the New Testament was written in Greek.

I never said that the Macedonian language and the Bulgarian language were unrelated and the fact that they are doesn’t prove that Macedonians are Bulgarians. They just don’t look alike.

If Greek culture was so dominant and overwhelming to the senses, why it didn’t impose itself on the Slavic newcomers when they settled in present day Macedonia, but it was the other way around

Macedonia was always a backwater in the Greek world, even in Alexander’s time. By the time Slavs showed up the centers of Greek civilization were Constantinople and Alexandria. There were no Greek elites left in Macedonia. Sort of similar to the way the Anglosphere has abandoned Birmingham, England to South Asians.

Thank you.

I think indigenes are even more common than you do. But at least you get the rather obvious point.

Blasphemy. Aristotle claimed that the death of Socrates was the greatest insult to Philosophy.
He was born in Stageira, bordering Makedon kingdom, his father served in the court of Makedonian king Aminta III. In Plato’s Academy where he studied and subsequently worked he was considered a foreigner, but well tolerated. However, after plato died he had to leave and went to live as a guest of some of his former students in Asia Minor. In 343 BC he was offered the job of tutoring young Alexander. In 335 he was brought to Athens by Alexander who concurred the city and opened Lycaeum as a rival to Plato Academy. After the death of Alexander, Aristotle had to run to save his life due to the high anti Makedonian movement. He died in exile.
Ref.: Arrian -Anabasis Alexandri
Plutarch – Paralel Lives
Diodorus – Bibliotheca Historica
Q. C. Rufus – Historiae Alexandri Magni

Why this is a “fact”?

Yes I understand that Greek civilization had a huge impact on Roman law, culture and education for the upper class and therefore on western civilization through to the founders of our once great republic. I just meant that Alexander’s Empire broke into three distinct entities upon his death unlike Rome which continued for some 800 years.

The Macedonian/Bulgarian languages are so degraded grammatically relative to the other Slavic languages

Interesting that you consider the disappearance of grammatical cases a degradation. It’s a major simplification, yes, but degradation?
In this respect Macedonian/Bulgarian languages are identical to the English language which, applying the same logic, would be considered a “degraded Germanic” language.
Among other things, its simple grammar helped English become the common language of the modern world.

Linh Dinh, that’s who…

> “Unfortunately, that does not mean they will remove the kitsch statues to a culture they officially have no cultural connection too.”

Why are you disparaging of the statues? I don’t get it. Sure, they might not be the best in the world, or authentic, but at least they are trying? Isn’t it better than to have no statues? Or to have giant buttplugs for statues? Or some ugly structuralist monstrosities?
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/20/paul-mccarthy-butt-plug-sculpture-paris-rightwing-backlash
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralism_(architecture)

What may be exceptionally tragic about the Alexander victory over the Persians, is that it represented the triumph of Western slavery cultures over the anti-slavery Asian ones, some of which were much more advanced and spiritual and humane at the time

It is too-little recalled in the West that Persia 2500 years ago, gave us the world’s ‘first human rights document’, the Cyrus cylinder in the picture below … Cyrus sought to grant freedom of religion and an end to slavery throughout his empire

As well, slavery was not a major part of ancient India, and apparently its caste system involved much more mobility than the modern one, with no ‘untouchables’ of a degraded order … Kingdoms of ancient India as well became the first nations to abolish the death penalty, some time approaching 2000 years ago … Here’s the Cyrus Cylinder, purloined for the British Museum as such things often are

In Skopje I was told several arguments why ancient Macedonians had a different origin than the Greeks;
-The ancient Macedonians were not allowed to participate in the Olympic games, as they were considered by the Greeks to be barbarians. Only after Philipp conquered Greece Macedonians were allowed to participate.
– When Alexander talked to his Macedonian generals, the Greek officers of his army did not understand their conversation.
– There are some words known of the language of the ancient Macedonians. These words are not belonging to a Greed vocabulary.
But there is no doubt the ancient Macedonians were under very strong influence of Greek culture, in a similar way as later the Romans and still today all of us.
If you visit the tomb of King Philipp II. In Vergina, you see not one inscription, nothing written. Isn’t Greeks culture dominated by written texts, books, inscriptions?. If even at the time of Alexander the Great the Macedonians buried their king without anything written then they must have still been under the influence of non-Greek traditions.

Netanyahu likes Cyrus and thinks Trump is a new one. Well, Cyrus created that Temple monster frenzy we have today. The third temple “Must be built. Must be built. Must be built.” It like a Frankenstein like monster repeating endlessly the same phrase. Not sure he was so good after all for our planet

https://www.timesofisrael.com/who-is-king-cyrus-and-why-is-netanyahu-comparing-him-to-trump/

I want to tell you that the Jewish people have a long memory, so we remember the proclamation of the great king, Cyrus the Great, the Persian king 2,500 years ago. He proclaimed that the Jewish exiles in Babylon could come back and rebuild our Temple in Jerusalem. We remember a hundred years ago, Lord Balfour, who issued the Balfour Proclamation that recognized the rights of the Jewish people in our ancestral homeland. We remember 70 years ago, President Harry S. Truman was the first leader to recognize the Jewish state. And we remember how a few weeks ago, President Donald J. Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Mr. President, this will be remembered by our people through the ages.

The Makedonians buried their dead – the Greeks cremated them. The burial rituals as well as rituals of birth and marriage are the most enduring the time and the most telling the differences between nations.

‘Greek was still a prestige language of the Ottoman Empire right up to 1918. Still, I suspect most of the Slavs in Greece only really started speaking Greek in the 20th century when the State became powerful enough to introduce compulsory schooling, radio, and widespread literacy.’

That’s more or less my understanding. I’m venturing into matters I don’t know much about, but my impression is that modern ‘Greek’ was more or less invented as a revival of classical Greek — then imposed on people speaking various dialects, some descended from Greek, some not so closely related.

Even as late as World War Two, Greek partisans in Northern Greece were embarrassed by the greater success Yugoslav Partisans enjoyed in the region. You see, the peasantry often still spoke dialects that were Slavic in origin rather than Greek.

To expand on all this, it should be noted that the ancient Greeks were largely people of the islands and coasts — they settled islands and coasts all the way from Sicily to the eastern end of the Black Sea. But the interior tended to be a different matter.

Modern Greece is a totally different proposition. It defines a solid bloc of territory — coast and interior — as ‘Greece.’ It more or less is now, but that didn’t happen by itself.

The story about Alexander talking to his Makedonian Hetairi, so the Greeks do not understand, is from Calisthenes, a contemporary and follower of Alexander.
The Greeks always had this hysterical obsession of declaring everything to be of Greek origin. For example, when Alexander’s army took Persepolis the Makedonians went to loot the city. The Greeks went to burn the ancient Persian library, one of the richest at the time, thus destroying the historical documents of not Greek origin. Also in Calisthenes. So, only the Greek version of history lives. When the Ottomans took the Bulgarian capital, the Greeks in the Ottoman army burned the library, one of the richest at the time, it took them two weeks to burn it. The same thing again.
Ancient Greeks gave Humanity a lot, but Greeks also destroyed a lot.

To turn all this around, though, one can wonder if being Greek was ever primarily an ethnic identity.

Surely all those roaming city founders and slave owners interbred with the local yokels a lot. One thinks here of the process that characterized much of central Europe up until two hundred years or so ago, where individuals would drift from the largely Slavic countryside into the largely ‘German’ cities. Eventually, they or their descendants would be quite sure they were Germans themselves.

So modern Greece may simply be replicating what classical Greece did. Taking bits and bobs and turning them into ‘Greeks.’ Perhaps the identity always was cultural rather than genetic.

In the 90s, during the war in Yougoslavia, I learned Serbian. I already knew Russian, so it was not that difficult. All Slavic languages are very similar and mutually understandable. And I have a gift for languages. Then five years later during the Kosovo war, I was in Makedonia, so I learned Makedonian. Then Bulgarian military arrived, they built one of the refugy camps. I thought. OK, now I will learn some Bulgarian. To my dismay, I already knew it. There is no similarity between Bulgarian and Makedonian, they are identical, the same language.

The Kazar thugs always make every effort to try to tie themselves to the real Biblical Jews of whom they have no genetic connection. The Kazars are not even semitic as they have no lineage to the scion Abraham as do the Arabs through Hagar and the true Jews through Sarah.

If not for the Balfour declaration addressed to Lord Rothschild and enforced by the Jew lackey British army the Arabs would have eliminated these Zionist thugs before they ever got a good foothold. Shabbos goy Truman put in office by Jew money (like Trump) was the second leader to recognize the Kazar criminals after their other shabbos goy helper Stalin. If Jewmerica would cut off the 11 million plus that we give them every day, the Arabs would still take care of this Zionist cancer on humanity.

“Interesting that you consider the disappearance of grammatical cases a degradation.”

It is a pain to google anything in Russian, as the cases make it impossible to use quotation marks. This way, the analytic nature of English is of benefit in the digital age.

The free word order of synthetic Russian irritates me to no end, too. The local Ukrainian writers evidently find it pleasurable and prestigious to use the abominable OVS word order for no reason.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object–verb–subject

In Belgrade, a woman told me Serbs sprung from the Vinča Culture, which dates to 5700BC, so her ancestors didn’t only arrive in the Balkans in the 8th century, after all. They’ve always been there. She also claimed there were Serbs among Alexander the Great’s troops, with many of their descendants now living in Pakistan.

This is very typical of Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims. They will make up whatever fits them.

An officer in the UN forces during the war said it was hopeless to talk to Croat officers, who were supposed to be friendly to the UN.

“Have you distributed the rice in the town?”
The answer was always yes. Even though you’d find out the next day that of course they hadn’t.

“Have you cleared this road from mines?”
They’d always say yes. And then a vehicle hit a mine.

When a UN vehicle was hit by a car, the villagers nearby all came to shout at the UN soldiers and started throwing rocks. They wanted to be appeased with apologies and more gifts from the wealthy Westerners. Just like Africans in a warzone.

Two Bosnian Serb women had grown up in the West, and worked as interpreters for the UN. They were disgusted by the constant lying in Bosnia, even from their own relatives. One woman’s brother had gone there to live with his relatives for some weeks, but he only lasted four days. He slept in his car. They made up lies to make themselves look big, and they were full of absolute, murderous hatred of the Croatians their side had attacked.

Old Serb women laughed and showed pride when hearing stories about Croatian or Muslim women being raped by Serbs. This is something feminists will never tell you. I’m sure that on the other side they did the same, but the Bosnian Serbs were absolute scum.

Slobodan Milosevic, president of Serbia, tried to reign in Radovan Karadciz, the rapist who led the Serb attacks in Bosnia. His crimes were immense. They had prisons where they tied captured women to barbed wire out in the open, raping them. They forced men and women to drink gasoline from a puddle.

Milosevic eventually washed his hands of him and refused further contact. Still he was prosecuted in the Hague for associating with Karadzic, and was refused enough time and resources to prepare his defense. Serbs had been paid to storm his residence and hand him over to the globalists. These Serbs were security personnel and police from cities loyal to those who starved and bombed Serbia, but they were declared “civilians” in the media. Milosevic’s cell was cold and small, and full of documents. When he asked for documentation the prosecution bombed him with tons of papers about every little detail, a common dirty tactic. He died in his cell. Afterward he was declared innocent of the charges. But I digress.

There is no similarity between Bulgarian and Makedonian, they are identical, the same language.

I know. If the Serbs and the Macedonians are brothers – which they are, the Macedonians and Bulgarians are identical twins. As for the Serbian brothers – even siblings can do stupid things, like the Serbs did in the 2nd Balkan war. Totally unforgivable, and for that they deserve the title of honorary Ukrainians.

Though I have yet to source it, my anecdotal understanding is that etymologically German surnames which end in the suffix “ow”. –as in Nienow or Turnow–strike me as being of a Slavic origin, related to the Russian “ov” or “off” or the south Slavic “ovitch” and “ovic”.

From history, I do know that when the Teutonic Knights/Prussians expanded eastwards during the post-Carolingian era; the regions they assimilated included Slavic tribes such as the Old Prussians, the Kashubians, the Borusians, the Wends and some smaller entities. So far as I know, the assimilation process enveloping small tribes was also practiced by the Polish state.

I have read reports that today’s Judaic peoples (there is NO Jewish People) include no more than a two to five percent proportion genetically descended from the ancient Hebrews.

My favored location for a new Jewish state would be in the very sparsely settled northwestern corner of Western Australia. Jews who cannot live amongst other people without being predatory parasites could then have a place of their own once they had met the purchase price by the affected state and federal governments as well as generous relocation benefits for the few people who actually live in that lonely and desiccated part of the continent.

Its only a war crime if you lose, otherwise it’s collateral damage.

Any plans to visit other republics for more comprehensive picture of former YU?
Wish that I am in Sarajevo since I would have loved to entertain you there, despite our differences when it comes to “dictator”.

Going back a generation, the Croats were far more bloodthirsty than the Serbs you describe. Under the fascist regime of Ante Pavelic, the Croats happily massacred entire villages of Serbs and also like their Nazi buddies, killed off every Gypsy, gay and Jew they could lay their hands on. During the recent troubles attendant upon the breakup of the Yugoslav state, the then leader of the Croats, FranjoTudjman, was in bed with the Vatican and with his Ustasha fascists.
Oddly, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Serbs and Croats got along quite well. Both peoples speak Serbo-Croatian, but the Croats are Romanists, while the Serbs are of the Orthodox persuasion. Something happened between WWI and the dirty Thirties to create the enmity which continues to this day. Perhaps one of the many erudite posters here can fill us in.

‘From history, I do know that when the Teutonic Knights/Prussians expanded eastwards during the post-Carolingian era; the regions they assimilated included Slavic tribes such as the Old Prussians, the Kashubians, the Borusians, the Wends and some smaller entities. So far as I know, the assimilation process enveloping small tribes was also practiced by the Polish state.’

Thanks. As I understand it, in Carolingian times the dividing line between Germans and Slavs lay along the Elbe — which comes out to the sea at Hamburg.

The German expansion to the East wasn’t particularly genocidal. From this flows my suspicion that ‘Germans’ must be genetically at least partially Slavic.

Wandering around Belgrade, I ran into the Hells Angels of Serbia’s clubhouse. I tried its door to find it locked. Weeks later, I discovered the Hillbillies MC’s pub, so I went in, had a couple beers and looked around. Their logo featured a bearded, smiling skull in front of red wing

Yeah ok. In reality you’all wouldve been too scared to even go near the place. Some of us know whats up.

The two young beggars photographed on the bridge look rather dark skinned. I thought they almost appear to be Indian. Would they be gypsies?

What an idiotic observation/obfuscation! Shame!

Slobodan Milosevic, president of Serbia, tried to reign in Radovan Karadciz, the rapist who led the Serb attacks in Bosnia. His crimes were immense. They had prisons where they tied captured women to barbed wire out in the open, raping them. They forced men and women to drink gasoline from a puddle.

What a load of bullshit. The biggest problem we Serbs have with so-called Bosniaks is that they smell bad, real bad. So raping their women…

Linh

Thanks for the cool & interesting stuff….”balls of Bucephalus” lol love it.

The mere fact you replied to my post made my day and I’m most appreciative.

I know it’s a million to one shot, but if ya ever make it back to the States and are anywhere near the southwest, I’ll buy beer all day long.

Looking forward to your next article.

Sullivan…aka Halcon

I believe Olympia was stoned to death soon after Alexander died.

But at least she commanded an army first! After taking her place (in armor) ahead of the troops of Epirus…

…The Macedonian army surrendered without a fight; Olympias had the supporters of Cassander executed, but by then Cassander had escaped. Around this time, Olympias formed an alliance with Polyperchon, Antipater’s successor, and Eurydice, the wife of Philip III. The latter provided soldiers for Olympias to command in battle.

Cassander maneuvered a surprise attack and Olympias fled; he then besieged Pydna, she fled again, and she finally surrendered in 316 BCE. Cassander, who had promised not to kill Olympias, arranged instead to have Olympias murdered by relatives of the people whom she had executed.

https://www.thoughtco.com/queen-olympias-biography-3528390

That’s when the rocks and bricks flew.

Historians all say “Cassander was treacherous” but he told the literal truth. He didn’t kill her. He turned her over to her those who wanted to kill her more. That was the Macedonian way.

Your figures are probably correct. I read that before WW1 the Native Jew population in Palestine was around 3-5%. Their was no problem between them and the Arabs and they were vehemently opposed to the influx of the European -Asian Kazars. There may be a remnant of ancient Hebrew DNA in todays Palestinians. Lots of Palestinians had been converted to Christianity but they are of no concern to the brainwashed Christian Zionists, determined to fulfill the Jew operative Scofield’s asinine prophecy of dispensational fantasy.

I think your location for the homeland they truly deserve is much too generous. Northern Siberia would be more in line with the environment they imposed on their millions of victims in the gulags of their “workers paradise.” A good book on this is Tim Tzouliadis “The Forsaken.”

STFU. I’ve already dismantled rubbish like this one, but mentally retarded Unz readers keep on blabbering their usual nonsense. It’s not worth the trouble writing the same stuff over & over again.

https://www.unz.com/?s=serbs&Action=Search&ptype=all&commentsearch=only&commenter=Bardon+Kaldian

An officer in the UN forces during the war said it was hopeless to talk to Croat officers, who were supposed to be friendly to the UN.

When a UN vehicle was hit by a car, the villagers nearby all came to shout at the UN soldiers and started throwing rocks. They wanted to be appeased with apologies and more gifts from the wealthy Westerners. Just like Africans in a warzone.

Those UN and other foreigners just go to those places for their high salaries, per diems, expenses, to help their careers along,and anything else they can get for themselves. It’s not surprising that they’re hated when this is what they do in disaster zones:

It’s time to stop funding aid groups whose officials in disaster zones exploit women for sex
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/502863-ngo-sex-abuse-funding/

And go ask the 15th most influential Jew in the World, Co-Founder of Médecins Sans Frontières and Médecins du Monde, Member of the European Parliament, France’s Minister of Health, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and UN Representative in Kosovo, 1999–2001 Bernard Kouchner about the “Yellow House” and human organ trafficking by Kosovar terrorists from murdered Serbs, and he’ll laugh in your face and deny it all. Then go ask Carla Del Ponte the same thing and she’ll confirm it. So how come Kouchner on the ground in Kosovo in his UN overlord position didn’t know about it? Maybe he profited some too from this filthy business.

If Yugoslavia was an artificial construct then North Macedonia is the artificial construct par excellence. I somehow don’t see a long-term future for it as a state.

Croats were the earliest champions for Yugoslavia. Knowing that they’ll need the military muscle of the Serbs to free them from Austro-Hungary, and not wanting to be ruled by the Serbs directly, the concocted the idea of Yugoslavia.

In their imaginarium, even though Yugoslavia was supposed to be created by the Serbs – militarily, they – the Croats were supposed to play the most prominent role in governing that country based on the “fact” that they possessed “superior” culture to the Serbs thanks to the lucky coincidence that the Croats were enslaved by Austro-Hungary, as opposed to the Serbs who were enslaved by the inferior Ottoman Turks – but who (the Serbs) nevertheless managed to free themselves from the Ottoman Turks without any help from the Croats.

Bottom line, Croats needed Yugoslavia, Serbs didn’t – in order to realize their dream (or nightmare for some) of nationhood.

“digged”?????? Come on, Linh Dinh, be real.

They can go to the Jewish Autonomous Oblast. Birobidzhan is calling them!

I also highly recommend “The Forsaken”. Absolutely haunting book.

My dream is that Linh Dinh runs into a Zorba the Greek character and finds the soul, perhaps his own soul, in that ancient land.

the Serbian territory in the former Yugoslavia comprises Serbia proper with Kosovo but without Vojvodina – which is if one is to be honest about it historically Hungarian

Which really means Serbs came out ahead in the end. Trading the shitty rocks of Kosovo for the fertile plains of Vojvodina is brilliant.

Serbia didn’t conquer or steal Vojvodina. She got it as a consequence of the war of aggression Austria-Hungary launched against her. So there can be no talk of a trade off.
Just for the sake of argument though, let’s assume it’s a trade off. How is losing the mineral riches of Kosovo, losing a seashore and leaving 2 million Serbs at the mercy of Islamic and Ustasha nutballs a positive trade off?
The only positive trade off is that the West’s obsession with teaching Serbs a lesson has made it shoot itself in the foot. You love Turks, you love Albanians, you love Muslims, well then, you are served.

Bummer. I just arrived in Belgrade and won’t be going back to the U.S. until Crazy Time is over.

I must say, though, that I formed a much better impression of Serbs when I was there for six weeks in 2014. They seemed friendly, politically aware, big personalities that come through in the English language. They’ve got every right to hate the U.S., but don’t hold it against individual Americans. And where else could you learn something like Hillary Clinton’s ownership of a factory in Kosovo? Serbs have been right where the rubber meets the road of Empire’s advances, and responded with admirable defiance.

Could you possibly be a bit irrationally prejudiced against your own people?

Well, I know Serbs for a little longer than six weeks. Still, others in the former Yugoslavia are far worse. There’s a lot of uncivil behaviour, of lying, cheating, thieving among Serbs and there are petty individuals, a lot of them are in politics, but unlike their former “brothers” in ex-Yugoslavia, pettiness is not in the national character.
The fact that we make the right moral choices in historical moments is misleading. It’s not so much that we chose what is morally right, it’s just that the morally wrong side usually poses such conditions that we are left with no other choice than to fight it.

I always enjoy your work, it’s like taking a trip myself. Thank you.

There were three bombing raids on Prague carried out by the American airforce between January and March. The raid on 14th February coincided with the bombing of Dresden and this coincidence was later exploited to create a legend that it was a mistake as the otherwise ”clever” planners confused Prague for Dresden. There are still enough fools who believe this nonsense as only seriously deranged pilots would not have known where they were. The raid on Prague happened on a sunny day while Dresden was still burning cf. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/firebombing-of-dresden. My mother told me that the glow of Dresden fires could be seen from hill tops in Prague. The raid on Prague was a deliberate criminal act to kill many civilians of an ally that joined the war effort against the Axis powers on 2nd October 1939. With allies like this, who needs any enemies.

Perhaps you will reveal for us, which were ”the largely ‘German’ cities”. This kind of ambiguity is typical for your confusing contributions. Are you by any chance a direct descendent of some ” local yokels ” that accidentally interbred with Übermenschen?

The “allies” also repeatedly bombarded Serbia between October 2oth, 1943 and September 18th, 1944. Belgrade was bombarded eleven times, Niš fifteen times. Thousands of civilians were killed. The “allies” didn’t bomb even once the “independent state of Croatia”.

Bohemia was rather lucky to be out of range for most of the war. But at the end of the war, there were not enough suitable targets in Germany so that the Americans had to use up their ”beautiful bombs”, to use the terminology of Trump. Hence, in some kind of murderous frenzy, they bombed even little towns like Mělnik, Neratovice, or Kralupy. Apparently, the inhabitants in Neratovice naively thought that they will not drop it on the old town center and watched the bombers with interest but soon they learned the lesson.

Pretty much every major town in modern Poland, Bohemia, Moravia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary and Romania was culturally German in the late middle ages. They were often governed by local elites but economic activity was usually in the hands of German speaking townsfolk in a sea of non-German peasants. Towns like Prague, Brünn, Klausenburg (Cluj), Torun, Laibach (Ljubljana) and Pressburg (Bratislava) were still dominated by German speakers at the end of the 18th century.

Croatia had very little worth bombing. It was (and still is) largely a country of farmers, shepherds and fishermen. Serbia did have an industrial base.

Did the allies used maps from the end of the 18th century to bomb these places?

I suppose that you must have counted the German population in the above cities in your wet dreams. In the 18th century, nothing existed that one may call a census. But perhaps you will pull some evidence out of your hat in support of your lie. Furthermore, the concept of national identity came to being only late in the 19th century. Up to then, the citizens identified with the locality of their abode and not the language they spoke. Most of the German-speaking city population were actually Jews, rather than Germans who immigrated from the Reich. Most of the landless peasants emigrating from Swabia or Bavaria to steal land in Bohemia did not get much further than to the border regions from which they were expelled after 1945. These German squatters were called by the locals ”skopčáci”, meaning people coming down from the hills, which makes sense if you look at the geography of the Bohemian borders. The centralized and with Alexander von Bach in power, neo-absolutist Habsburg monarchy supplied cretinous officials to the periphery just like the British Empire shipped loads of morons to India and Burmah to rule the natives. The stupidity and arrogance of the german speaking officials led eventually to their downfall as they could not or refused to master the Czech language and were gradually replaced by the bilingual Czechs.

A good point RT. I did not think of that. It is quite obvious that the allies possibly wanted to hit the evil Germans in those ”predominantly German cities”, like Prague. How very clever, but unfortunately no 18th-century maps, the allies relied on, showed any demarcation of the linguistic divisions.

In Prague, quarters like Letná and Dejvice, favoured by Jews before the war, were repopulated by fresh nazis coming from the Reich with loads of children right after the former dwellers had either emigrated (before March 1939) or were deported at a later date. But somehow these quarters called by Czechs ”Little Berlin” were spared during the bombing raids. How very humane.

the Croats happily massacred entire villages of Serbs and also like their Nazi buddies, killed off every Gypsy, gay and Jew they could lay their hands on.

WTF, I love Croats now.

You’re an idiot. A complete idiot. My great grandparents and great aunt were killed by Allied bombing in May 1944 when my hometown was bombed, you fucking idiot.

That’s exactly right. As for my home country of Silesia (which is equally true to Eastern Prussia/Ostpreußen) literally each town and city was established by Germans, you can see it when you look at the older buildings, there is nothing Slavic at them. Our family got the “von” – nobility – 1309AD from the German King, my forefathers lived there since at least the 12th century. Until 1945 the vast majority of the population was German. For example in my town over 96 percent, which did not prevent the League of Nations from giving it 1919 to the Poles (the same for the whole area of Upper Silesia which voted more than 90 percent for Germany).

Which town was that? As far as I am aware Slovenia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Hezegovina were also bombed by the Allies during WWII but not Croatia. If you mean Zadar (Zara), yes it was heavily bombed but is was considered Italian not Croatian. Although Ante Pavelic declared it part of NDH after Italy capitulated the local Italian administration did not accept this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Zadar_in_World_War_II

You can find the other targets here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_bombing_of_Yugoslavia_in_World_War_II

Similar to an American raid on Switzerland, also a mistake, albeit some 250km from Mannheim

Yes, good post, I’d just add as a nuance being there were a lot of areas where the larger villages, towns, and certainly cities, were mostly/vastly German, while surrounding rural areas were Slavic. Of course, there was a reason that a number of regents from different countries/areas courted German settlers for many centuries. And finally, of course, there is recognition that while a geographic-ethnic “map view” of certain territories may suggest smallish German ‘pockets’ within vast Slavic areas, the normal reality of urban concentrations still mandates that population numbers, and cultural/economic activity still weigh in favor of the Germans.

And I write also as the American grandson of German immigrants, one branch of which came from Breslau 🙂

An amazing discovery of yours that in the ”older buildings, there is nothing Slavic at them”. What would be the type of an architectural element that is actually Slavic? I have lived in Prague for ages but have so far not noticed any ”Slavic” looking building. What architectural features should I look for?

If you knew something of a history, then I would not be so certain that your supposed ancestry is German. cf.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wroc%C5%82aw
If your ”German immigrants”, were old settlers, then they would be either Czech or those ”Johny come lately” types who are descendants of yokels from the countryside, most of which, were Germanised in the 18th century.

The author of this ridiculous article lacks basic knowledge of the history and culture of the Balkans. This is total bullocks and I’ve lost all respect for Linh. He did not mention that Macedonians rejected the political agreement with the Turkish Helenics and everything that has happened is unconstitutional and illegal. By publishing this propaganda piece, the UNZ is denying the Universal human rights of all Macedonians and right to self identify as we wish. Shame on you Linh! To the editor of the UNZ, this is totally unacceptable from a respected site.

Since most of the beautiful bits of Prague were built by Germans, or Italian architects hired by Germans, it is unlikely you would find any “Slavic” buildings there. Prague became “Czech” when it was inundated by Czech speaking peasants in the 19th century who came to work in the German and Jewish owned factories. A group of aggrieved intellectuals then coalesced to fight for the rights of this oppressed population (sound familiar?) and took on a “Czech” identity even though many of them had grown up speaking German. Masaryk is a prime example.

Hitler of course came from a family that went the other way. Czech peasants who assimilated into German speaking Lower Austria. The Wehrmacht officers in WWII used to disparage him as the “Bohemian Corporal”.

You are correct. It is certainly a bit odd for an Italian to claim the allies bombed “Croatia” when an Italian war aim was to make Dalmatia Italian again.

You seem to have amnesia for the 15th and most of the 16th century when there were almost no Germans in Prague who left during and after the Hussite wars. But it is pointless to argue with you as you are as persistent in your convictions as Carolyn the Foxhunter. How can you be so certain that you are not a descendent of some yokels from the country? What is your pedigree, I would like to know?

Hitler was a true Austrian. The expression ”Bohemian Corporal” was invented by Paul v. Hindenburg who in his dotage confused Braunau in Austria for Braunau in Bohemia.
cf. https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broumov
As you are probably a Nazi leaning ”Strolch”, then you should praise the valiant Czech nation for giving the Germans and the world such a wonderful personality like Adolf. Be thankful for that and stop muttering about things you know nothing about.

Vegas apes real places, and Skopje seems to ape Vegas. Horrific!

I just arrived in Belgrade and won’t be going back to the U.S. until Crazy Time is over.

Then I hope you like borek.

‘…Hitler of course came from a family that went the other way. Czech peasants who assimilated into German speaking Lower Austria. The Wehrmacht officers in WWII used to disparage him as the “Bohemian Corporal”.’

I’m inclined to be skeptical of that — but something is perhaps telling. My impression is that Hitler’s oldest bias was not against Jews or Poles, but Czechs. It was somewhat ironic, since of the three groups, the Czechs wound up being the ones least mistreated by the Nazis.

Since most of the beautiful bits of Prague were built by Germans, or Italian architects hired by Germans, it is unlikely you would find any “Slavic” buildings there.

The same goes for today’s Poland. The most famous buildings – castles, palaces, representative buildings – were built by Germans or by Italian architects with German money.

Hitler was born in Braunau, Austria, but there was a Braunau in Bohemia, now called Broumov, that was predominantly German-speaking, and it has been speculated that they thought he came from the Bohemian Braunau. Bohemian Germans tended to be regarded as hicks elsewhere in the German-speaking world, and regional snobbery may have played a part in references to him as Bohemian. This did not imply they thought he was Czech.
Czech was very widely spoken in Vienna when Hitler was there in his youth, and they were the Slavic group he is most likely to have encountered. The penny pamphlets he seems to have read denouncing Jews quite often also complained about Czechs taking over “German Vienna”.

What would be the type of an architectural element that is actually Slavic? I have lived in Prague for ages but have so far not noticed any ”Slavic” looking building.

You got the point – this is exactly what I said: There is no Slavic architecture, not in Prague, not in Poland, nowhere. You may look into the Wikipedia-page:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kategorie:Architekturstil

Out of the 89 architectural styles there I estimate about 40 – 50 are genuinely Germanic, influenced or further developed by Germans. What’s left of it after WWII in Poland is entirely German architecture.

Colin, from your statement, ”the Czechs wound up being the ones least mistreated by the Nazis” emmanates a great sadness that they were not mistreated somewhat more. Hitler must loved Czechs, is the obvious answer. A more mundane explanation is that the war machinery did not want to risk any disruption of weapon production. Czechs, just as Poles or Russians were intended for liquidation after the final victory, which fortunately never came. There is a a nice speech by Reinhard Heydrich on that subject. I have found only its Czech version but not the original one in German. cf.
http://www.isstras.eu/cs/2018/05/18/3143/projev-reinharda-heydricha-o-planech-na-likvidaci-ceskeho-naroda/
Not that it matters much, as I guess that appart from ”Jawohl”, there are no other German expressions you can master.

From your great erudition, it seems that you must be a famous architect. Do not be so shy and send us an example of your latest designs. There is no typical German architecture in Prague e.g. the Nazi type in the style of Albert Speer. The fascist style, promoted by Mussolini, was much closer to the Czech heart and you can find few such buildings clad with travertine.

I am still perplexed by what you mean by the expression ”Slavic architecture”. Show us an example, just for our amusement.

A great revelation of yours that ”The most famous buildings – castles, palaces, representative buildings – were built by Germans or by Italian architects with German money.” The phrase ”with Germany money” said it all. You may be surprised to learn that the most famous buildings are now built by Ukrainians with Chinese money.

‘…Not that it matters much, as I guess that appart from ”Jawohl”, there are no other German expressions you can master.’

You really are an idiot, aren’t you?

‘…Czech was very widely spoken in Vienna when Hitler was there in his youth, and they were the Slavic group he is most likely to have encountered. The penny pamphlets he seems to have read denouncing Jews quite often also complained about Czechs taking over “German Vienna”.’

Very hypothetically, one might also wonder if Hitler’s family tended be biased against Czechs. On the face of it, that’s plausible, and if Hitler imbibed that as a prejudice in childhood, it would have been the first form his xenophobia would have taken.

Basically right, but Hitler‘s family moved to Braunau. They were originally from the “Waldviertel”, a very poor region north of Vienna next to Moravia. And supposedly Bohemia before that. As to whether Hitler really had Slavic blood, who knows? Hitler’s ancestors were certainly poor enough and his line riddled with enough illegitimate births that it is hard to imagine Adolf was pure Race anything.

It is hard to make a genetic distinction between Bohemian “Germans” and “Slavs” anyway since a lot of people were often bilingual up until 1945, and over the centuries it was quite common for people to switch identities depending on how the political wind was blowing, which church was better, whom they wanted to marry, or their economic prospects. It would be interesting to see a genetic study. Probably a lot of Bohemians are predominantly descended from the aboriginal Celt population. In any case Czechs are very different in temperament from “real” Slavs, like Poles, Slovaks or Russians. Czechs are very similar to Slovenians, who are also “pseudo Slavs”.

Quite possible. His family originated from the Waldviertel quarter of Lower Austria. Now it is right up against the Czech Republic, but although border areas of Bohemia tended at the time to be German-speaking, Czech-speaking areas were not far off geographically. In fact in his childhood he probably would have been more likely to encounter Czech speakers than Jews and speaking a different language, they would have been more identifiable.

I recall a Serb saying that he could not stand Germans, and for him the worst Germans of all were the Czechs (!)
Czechs certainly have a reputation for being somewhat sober and methodical, qualities often attributed to Germans but not to members of Slavic groups.

just arrived in Belgrade and won’t be going back to the U.S. until Crazy Time is over.

You gonna live to be three hundred?

‘I recall a Serb saying that he could not stand Germans, and for him the worst Germans of all were the Czechs (!)’

Given the location and history of Bohemia, one wonders just how distinct the Czechs and Germans would actually be.

The converse can be seen in Melita Maschmann’s Account Rendered, in which the author recounts her experience leading a bunch of Bessarabian Germans being resettled in Poland during the war. They were most distressingly un-German in their behavior.

As a further development of this line of thought, look up the ancestry of Hitler’s childhood friend, August Kubizek.

Wikipedia gives it as ‘Sudeten-German and Czech.’

People want these lines to be crisp, clean, and absolute. Actually, they tend to be kind of blurry.

Jawohl, Herr Colin! I suspected that a single word will make you go into a tailspin and there you are. This delightful news brightened me up on that dreary Tuesday so much that I spent singing lewd Czech songs for most of the afternoon. In any case, I hope that you will soon seek professional advice to do something about your obsessions.

You put too much trust in Wikipedia with their ” crisp, clean, and absolute” lines. If you think that Linz has something to do with the Nazi Arcadia, the famous Sudetenland, then you are no better than the old dotard Paul v. Hindenburg. Never mind, Linz is not so far away, just a few standard deviations from the assumed target, a mistake any American professor of Geography could have easily made.

Reich Germans sometimes doubted the German-ness of Volksdeutsch. One who helped a family of them move in somewhere in German-annexed Poland noted that their name was Kolodziejewicz, they spoke German badly and were really Poles rather than German, whatever the documents said.
Category III and IV Volksdeutsch from Poland or the Protectorate could be called up into the German armed forces but seem to have been regarded as Poles or Czechs by their officers, whatever their official status.

I have had some trouble finding it otherwise I would link to it, but I once found on the Web a German training manual for troops that used a lot of cartoon-style pictures and very basic German text. It may have been intended for Volksdeutsche although it is also possible it was aimed at Hiwis or Osttruppen who were not considered German at all but were sometimes expected to pick up basic German.

One thing Europeans across the board have down are statues and fountains – like nothing we have in the states.

Of course they have been putting these up for about 3,000 years or so, in some places. So they have quite a lead.

Here in the States the neo commies are tearing down statues. They have done that periodically in Europe too, due to political changes. But here it is just stupidity and meanness.

Come back to the USA in 2,500 years and the place with be covered with statues. We will eventually put up most of the ones being torn down now.

I don’t know if he invented military police/political commissars. But he had an entire army standing behind the battles ready to kill anyone who retreated. So did the French revolutionary army from the very first. Napoleon continued the practice.

The Bolsheviks did it too, both in the civil war and WW2.

This is a very old, ancient practice. The details vary widely but nearly all armies have special police or units which deter or round up deserters. In the UK they called them “battle police.”

Few were so obvious as the special NKVD units who machine gunned anyone retreating w/o orders. But desertion under fire has long been considered a capital crime by the military. Patriotism only goes so far, for some.

In many old battle accounts, it is the famous generals or leaders who using swords, etc. rally the panicking soldiers back to the front. Usually the role of all officers. In older times “breaking ranks to the rear” meant quick defeat, but were very hard to stop once begun.

I just meant that Alexander’s Empire broke into three distinct entities upon his death unlike Rome which continued for some 800 years.

There are many reasons for this, obviously, Alexander single-handedly created “his” empire which even his own troops finally forced him to stop expanding (in what is now Pakistan.)

Roman’s “empire” was originally a quasi democratic republic until Augustus (and Julius, for a while). So Rome had hundreds of years to form itself. Alexander’s had only a few decades.

Romans spent a lot of time building military roads and exporting their legal system and education of the local elites. They had centuries to build it.

Ultimately Alexander’s brief empire failed due to command & control. Much too big, and no longer had his personal godlike charisma to sustain itself. Rome was an “idea” that lasted until roughly 1100 AD when the Turks and Crusaders overran the Byzantine (eastern) Roman empire. Early Turk maps showed most of modern Turkey as “Rum” (i.e. Rome). up until then.

The original western Roman Empire crashed due to command & control problems, corruption and unstable “imperial” governance, among other things. Too many “undocumented migrants” as well.

You are somewhat inaccurate in that the Sudetendeutsche, who wanted so badly ”Heim ins Reich” acquired after 1938 German citizenship and thus could not qualify as Volkdeutsche. They had to serve in the Wehrmacht.

They presumably were treated as Germans, and perhaps unambiguously so, but there were also Volksdeutsche in the Protectorate, who ranged from people who were genuine ethnic Germans to Czechs who were opportunists of one type or another, or were playing a double game of some kind. A similar phenomenon existed in occupied Poland, affecting both people in the section directly annexed to Germany, and in the General Government. Certainly in Poland Volksdeutsche were classified in four categories and III and IV appear to have been seen by German officers as really Poles, although all four categories were liable to conscription into the German armed forces. For example a number of Category III who were called up were sent to fight the Red Army in Hungary in late 1944, where most of them were killed.
A number of German infantry divisions had a large number of Poles or Czechs in them who were officially Volksdeutsche.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/96th_Infantry_Division_(Wehrmacht)

No, there were not ”presumably treated” to use your weasel words as German, but were by definition
”Reichsbürger”, as described in article 2 of the Protectorate constitution.

Die volksdeutschen Bewohner des Protektorats werden deutsche Staatsangehörige und nach den Vorschriften des Reichsbürgergesetzes vom 15. September 1935 Reichsbürger. Für sie gelten daher auch die Bestimmungen zum Schutze des deutschen Blutes und der deutschen Ehre. Sie unterstehen deutscher Gerichtsbarkeit. Die übrigen Bewohner von Böhmen und Mähren werden Staatsangehörige des Protektorats Böhmen und Mähren.

cf. https://www.ns-archiv.de/krieg/1938/tschechoslowakei/verfassung-16-03-1939.php

If a Czech declared himself to be a German then unless he was a Jew, he was made a German. There were many mixed marriages and the spouses had to decide for which side they would play in the future. What you are performing here could be in German described as Eiertanz.

‘Reich Germans sometimes doubted the German-ness of Volksdeutsch. One who helped a family of them move in somewhere in German-annexed Poland noted that their name was Kolodziejewicz, they spoke German badly and were really Poles rather than German, whatever the documents said.
Category III and IV Volksdeutsch from Poland or the Protectorate could be called up into the German armed forces but seem to have been regarded as Poles or Czechs by their officers, whatever their official status.’

It was a mess. For one, the lines really were blurry. Melita Maschmann, who I mentioned earlier, recounts how when she was sent to Poland she was billeted with a family of ‘German’ farmers. Thing was, the wife would gossip in Polish with the servant girls, and the servant girls would go around singing German songs.

Obviously, the line was less than clear. Had Germany won the war, one can see those servant girls successfully deciding they were ‘German.’ Conversely, as things in fact went, maybe the farmer got away with deciding he was ‘Polish’ after all.

As I recall, there were two fairly clearly Polish districts annexed to Germany: West Prussia, and the Warthegau. Again as I recall, the Gauleiter in the Warthegau attempted to really implement Germanizing his district: forcible expulsions, crying families on the road in the middle of winter, and all the rest of it. Not really much fun even to watch — let alone be subjected to.

To his frustration, his neighbor in West Prussia hit upon a much simpler solution. He’d just go into villages, announce that everyone looked German to him, and declare them all German. No muss, no fuss, rapid progress.

Maybe the line never has been very clear. I believe I’ve read that up to the Nineteenth century, farm laborers and the poorer classes in much of East Prussia ordinarily spoke Polish.

It was only with the nineteenth century and the advent of universal public education that they came to speak German — and think of themselves as German.

No doubt, by 1945, they were quite sure they were German. Indeed and in truth, now they were German. They paid for that, though.

‘…A number of German infantry divisions had a large number of Poles or Czechs in them who were officially Volksdeutsche…’

An interesting story along these lines has to to with Gebirgsjaeger Regiment 756. It was raised in 1942 — apparently entirely from Slovenes, who were more or less summarily declared German.

Nowhere have I found a complete account, but apparently, there was some sort of a mutiny that resulted in a dozen executions and the reformation of the regiment — which then went on to perform perfectly well in the Tunisian campaign.

There are a lot of variations here. For example, 117 Jager Division — which was rebuilt from a Security Division — spent most of its career fighting partisans in Yugoslavia, although it was eventually transferred to Italy. Its enlisted personnel were entirely from Lorraine — declared German, although they may not have agreed with the classification.

…and of course there was the mysterious Asian in German uniform the Americans captured in Normandy. It was eventually determined he was Korean — long story.

Then there were all the Hilfswilligen attached to German infantry divisions on the Eastern front. Since they weren’t supposed to do this, the records are obscure — but I’ve often wondered just what the average German infantry division on the Eastern Front in mid-war really looked like. It could have been quite a gypsy caravan. After all, between the attrition rate in the Red Army, and the brutalities of the anti-partisan war, and the sweeps for slave labor, and just the general banditry, destruction, and lack of food, joining a German infantry division could have been one of the better options for survival if you found yourself as a young Slavic gentleman near the front in the East.

It could explain why those divisions proved so obstinately indestructible — even though their nominal strength was often absurdly low. Maybe they were carrying a lot of personnel off the books, so to speak.

Thank you for repeating the lie of Wielgus that ”A number of German infantry divisions had a large number of Poles or Czechs in them who were officially Volksdeutsche…’’. By definition, there were no Volksdeutsche in the Protectorate but only Reichsbürger, as spelled out in the constitution from 1939.

Well, that’s fascinating. all those Wehrmacht guys in Saving Private Ryan shouting for mercy in Czech that they aren’t German were full-fledged Reich Germans. So it must have been OK to kill them, then. I read that the Reich thought Czechs might be easier to assimilate than Poles – there were a lot fewer of them, for one thing – so if there was some differential treatment as compared to Poles that would be the reason.
However, among both Czechs and Poles there was a range of people who were officially German in one way or another, but not really. Whether the Germans called them Volksdeutsch, Reichsdeutsch or Isaac Deutscher.

I would not be too impressed by what some actors shout in Hollywood-made films. Shouting at you ”Stop writing this nonsense!”, is no evidence that I am a Hong Kong Chinese holding a British Overseas territory passport. Some Germans naturally spoke Czech just as they now speak English. If a Czech, who was a former citizen of Czechoslovakia fellt that he was in fact a German then such a traitor could have easily become Reichsbürger but never Volksdeutsche. I do not frankly understand what is your problem. Do not use words like Volksdeutsche if you do not quite understand their legal implications. It is immaterial what people called themselves but it was decisive what they were from a legal perspective. You could easily call yourself a Tartar, and it would be quite fine with me, but it would not entitle you to become a citizen od Tatarstan

You accused me of being a liar and then wonder why I have a “problem”? I know less about the situation of ethnic Germans in the Protectorate than in Poland and it is possible that the former were not technically called Volksdeutsch, and I am merely misinformed. (I have Polish roots, not Czech ones.) It is interesting that the Germans used different classifications compared to Poland, and it suggests they thought Czechs could be assimilated more easily.
Saying you are not impressed by a Hollywood film – were there no Czechs in the Wehrmacht? There were certainly hundreds of thousands of Poles (classified as Volksdeutsch) and indeed when I first saw the film I thought they were Poles until I listened more closely to the audio. In both occupied Poland and in the Protectorate, having some kind of German status tended to mean better treatment by officialdom, better food or more of it, etc. But it also meant you could be conscripted. Certain kinds of jobs in both places seem to have been reserved for people with some kind of German status – for example, prison guard. Julius Fučík, a Communist prisoner who smuggled writings out of jail in the Protectorate before he was taken to Germany and executed, mentioned that a guard named Kolinsky who was Czech but had applied for German status so he could guard prisoners was smuggling out Fučík’s writing. Kolinsky seems to have been the same sort of “official German” but not really that you could get in Poland and elsewhere. Fučík also mentions prison guards who would claim to be Czechs and that they only had consented to German classification under pressure. Fučík said such people were good weathervanes of how the war was going, because they came out with such statements when it was clear things were going against Germany. But basically, there were Czechs as well as Poles who were “officially German” but not really.

Very true. There is not much to notice in Prague indeed. Ethnic cleansing tends to do that.

Ok. I know little about the situation in Poland, hence I would not argue with you on that topic and I believe what you say. The low ranking police officers, prison guards, or petty bureaucrats remained where they were after the declaration of the Protectorate. There was no reason and no German manpower to replace them. The Reich’s primary interest was a functioning administration and even a partial replacement of Czechs by Germans, if the latter could have been miraculously found somewhere, would have led to chaos. Top posts in the administration and all jobs in the Gestapo were naturally reserved only for Germans. I know little about Kolinsky but it is obvious that he was just taken over by the new masters in a prison full of criminals who were already there when Germans troops occupied Prague on 15the March 1939. The case of Fucik is an unusual one in that he was held in Prague for a relatively long time before being transfered to Moabit prison in Berlin and hanged on 8. September 1943 in Plötzensee. Ordinary prisoners like thieves remained with their guards where they were and only those deemed dangerous to the Reich, like my Granduncle, were swiftly deported to prisons or concentration camps anywhere within the Reich proper or the occupied territories. That a lot of people were opportunists is no surprise, especially during the war when it was rather dangerous not to be one. There are probably more such people nowadays even though it is incomparatively less dangerous to be one in case of a sudden change of the regime.

Do not understand your comment. Can you be more precise?

Somehow that doesn’t sound right: it’s always “if only we weren’t such losers we’d be winners”… but you’re still a loser, Mark. Go back to bed