Word: balkans
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Renner's Europe consists of nine great states: a commonwealth of Great Britain and Holland, a Fennoscandic Union (Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Esthonia), Czecho-Polska ("already being planned by the Czech and Polish Governments-in-exile" and including Lithuania), a Balkan Union ("Some trouble may be expected from the Bulgars"), Italy (plus Dalmatia, Tunisia, Corsica, Nice), France (minus Alsace-Lorraine, plus the Spanish Basque provinces and parts of Switzerland), an Iberian Union (Spain and Portugal), Russia (with Latvia, and a corridor to the Dardanelles), a German-Magyar State (Germany, Austria, Alsace, part of Switzerland, Hungary...
...World War I a supposedly exhausted Serbia hurled back two Austrian attacks, was ravaged by typhus and gave way before a third, then fought back again from Salonika. Only a year ago a revolution in Yugoslavia, where the dream of Balkan federation was becoming an actual as well as a political fact, deposed the pro-Nazi regent Prince Paul, and Serbian General Dusan Simovich courageously challenged the juggernaut of Adolf Hitler. In Draja Mihailovich's mountains the challenge persists today...
After these two laboratory periods in the field, he studied military theory, held various Yugoslavian commands, was active in political bodies for the preservation of Balkan unity. He was sent as military attache to Sofia (1934) and Prague (1936), and is rumored to have been connected with underground movements working against Nazi influence in both Bulgaria and Czecho-Slovakia...
...chief of Yugoslavia's fortifications, he revealed himself as a Balkan De Gaulle, holding that a nation of such limited financial means should not try to build Maginot Lines but should concentrate on mobile and offensive possibilities. His superiors opposed him and he was transferred to the military inspection service...
...Nazi press has reviled Mihailovich's army as "rebels, Jews and Communists." Unquestionably they are rebels. Unquestionably some are Jews, some are Marxist Communists of one shade or another. Many more, probably, are Balkan "Communists," which usually means partisans of the country as against the city, the farmer as against the businessman. These people in general have Slavic, pro-Russian (Tsarist or Stalinist) leanings. The United Nations press has often referred to Mihailovich's forces as Chetniks -the name of a Serbian patriotic body which long fought guerrilla wars against Serbia's oppressors. Doubtless many are Chetniks...