The Bulgarian Occupation of Greece during World War II
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- Опубліковано 19 сер 2022
- During World War Two Bulgaria occupied a part of Greece: Eastern Macedonia and Thrace. During the occupation of Greece several tragedies occured such as the Drama Uprising where the Bulgarian Army of WW2 crushed a Greek revolt and conducted bloody reprisals. How was life in Bulgarian-annexed Greece?
History Hustle presents: the Bulgarian Occupation of Greece during World War II.
The Bulgarian Occupation of Yugoslavia during World War II (1941 - 1944):
• The Bulgarian Occupati...
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SOURCES
- Bulgaria during the Second World War (Marshall Lee Miller).
- Greece, the Decade at War. Occupation, Resistance and Civil War (David Brewer).
- Inside Hitler’s Greece. The Experience of Occupation, 1941-44 (Mark Mazower).
IMAGES
Images from commons.wikimedia.org / lostbulgaria.com / / viox.colorized
German Invasion of Greece:
ua-cam.com/video/AZ_k5TMse6c/v-deo.html
Axis Occupation of Greece:
ua-cam.com/video/RxaFsQmQogA/v-deo.html
( ͡❛ ͜ʖ ͡❛)凸 🇧🇷
@@marcoskehl 👍
@@bestof1782 Thank you for your reply. But, please, DON'T SHOUT SO MUCH! 📣
Obrigado! 🇧🇷
We were in constant war with Bulgaria for a millenia but they are our best neighbor nowadays and one of our allies ,let the past be the past and lets move forward
I understand.
Even if I'm 9 months late idc.
Bulgarians are not our friends and have huge hatred towards us.
They have not been given the chance to go to war with us again that's why they propose themselves as allies. When turkey declares war on us they will have the same tactic as in ww2 . They will let Turkish soldiers move from their country in hopes of turkey giving them Thrace .
Bulgarians don't belong here and their country shall be abolished and the people shall spread to other Slavic countries!
It's like France and the UK.
Some woke ideologues in the West are not happy with this friendship.
The story between Greece and Bulgaria, looks like that of France and Germany. Once, they were the worst enemies. Now, they are good friends, partners (in EU) and allies (in NATO).
Interesting comparison.
yep exactly
Make a video of How Greece and Serbia tried to steal Macedonia from Bulgaria.
@@geforcebg4256 steal? In the 1st Balkan war, Greece occupied western and Central Macedonia, Bulgaria occupied the eastern and North eastern part and Serbia the northern part of the region.
These three countries were allies against the ottoman empire.
In June 1913, Bulgaria, unprovocably attacked both Greece and Serbia, because she wanted to occupy the entire region of Macedonia. Within one month, the Bulgarian army was in full retreat. The Greek army counter attacked and by the end of June 1913 they had invaded deep in Bulgaria (Kresna). So did the Serbians. At that point, the Bulgarian government asked for armistice. In the peace treaty that was signed in Bucharest, Bulgary surrendered most of the eastern Macedonia to Greece (except the Pirin region), the region east of Skopje to the Serbians and some territory in the north to the Romanians.
Now. Come again and tell us who tried to steal what and from whom.
@@georget8008 I'm not a historian and I don't know much history and I don't care about the Balkan wars . Everything is politics and everybody is looking at their own interest .. I mean don't try to take Macedonia because it is ours now Macedonia is the second Bulgarian state in the world because we speak the same language and they are Bulgarians and we get along without a problem and it was part of Bulgaria before but thanks to our traitor politicians and the great powers it is not part of Bulgaria anymore, one day we will get it back peacefully or we will unite. And we the countries of the Balkans have to beware of Turkey because Turkey does not mean well to anyone and she has imperial thoughts even I saw recently that Turkey wants to occupy Greece and take back , we have to unite together against Turkey .
Sadly, our mutual relations in the first half of XX c. were based on war crimes and constant revenging. For example the burning of mainly Bulgarian Kukush (Kilkis) by the Greek Army and of mainly Greek Syar (Serres) by the Bulgarian Army.
Also, between 1919 - 1941 some major changes in the region's demography happened. There were some population exchanges, mainly the Mollov-Kafandaris agreement. Many Greeks from Black Sea coast (Sozopol) and other parts of Bulgaria (Melnik, Asenovgrad/Stanimaka, Plovdiv/Philipopolis) were driven to Greece while many Bulgarians from Kukush, Voden (Edessa), Kostur (Kastoria) were sent to Bulgaria. For all of them it was a huge trauma. Especially after the settlement of Greek refugees from Turkey, which changed the demographic picture even more
Between the two world wars the tension grew up because both countries tried to cleanse themselves from any "foreign" population. In Bulgaria particularly painful was the memory of the Zagorichani Massacre, the concentration camp on the island of Trykeri and the organization of the Greek Macedonian Fist with their language ban. Of course, we even had our small 10-days war, stopped by the League of Nations (probably the only successful intervention of this organization).
The education and religion question is even older, because of the Greco-Bulgarian Church struggle.
I'm so sorry of behalf of our army and country. And that's why I am so happy today, that our nations in general have great mutual understanding and coexist together as good neighbors. I don't justify these crimes, I just want add some color to this dark painting and to try to explain why all these things happened. So the painting today might be much brighter.
Live long and prosper, dear neighbors! Zito Ellas!
As a Greek i strongly believe that Past belong to Past.. In the Balkans none is innocent and none is guilty.
At least modern Greece and Bulgaria managed to let History aside and became close friends, partners and allies.. For Greece, Bulgaria is its favourite land neighbor.
Thanks for sharing this.
Unfortunately there are many more to be done in order to find peace and prosperity. That have been said we need to put aside the political aspirations of some people who want to create issues in order to build a political career (like we had Karamanlis) but also issues that are provoked by other countries like Russia and Turkey. Finally we need to sit down and write history based on facts and not propaganda.
As a Greek, I truly hope that we can live united one day
@@gnas1897 We basically are united, just look on the queues in Kulata-Promachon during some holidays : )
The conflict between Greece and Bulgaria began at Byzantine era between East Rome and Bulgarian kingdom. The worst time came in the Balkan wars and the ww2. A cold war period followed until the 1990s.
Fortunately nowadays things have changed for the better.The hatred that existed between the two sides disappeared Especially after Greece's help in Bulgaria's accession to the European Union, the new generation has left hostility behind.
We like the greek beaches and we like that more greek started checking out our folk music and music overall and liking it. As greeks history is obviously well known over the world we kinda have to know much of it.
so trueeeeeee. Nowadays Bulgaria is Greece's best neighbour and supports Greece against Erdogan and against North Macedonia claiming Alexander the great
not quite. things are better than 20 years ago but there are still so many things to be done. Unfortunately there are still some minorities that survive by promoting tensions for political agendas. Thus we need to end these minorities.
@@aleksk4151 and both will be TURKS AGEN
@@islammehmeov2334 lol you can only wish
The following story from my great-grandfather. During the occupation he lived in a small village in modern day western Macedonia region in Greece. At some point during the war the slav security battalions you mentioned killed some snakes and hanged the snakes at the village Square. Then the slavs would point at the dead snakes and tell to passers by "' Look , Greece is dead" . F-ed up times in my opinion
Thanks for sharing this. The SB troops were messed up.
And Greece was the one who occupied territories with Bulgarian population and banned the Bulgarian language for the local population of Macedonia and Thrace.What do you expect?
@@AB-sd8cl I expect nazi ollaborators to be punished and oh boy, shot after trial they were
Okupiren tajl
@@AB-sd8cl bulgarien grehen Rasen populosion ... arbaut nangolo tatars
My grandmother who is of Pontic Greek descent was born and raised in Doxato. When the occupation started she was 7-8 years old and she still remembers the uprising that took place. Her father was taken as a prisoner and some of her cousins were executed. What saved her father was the fact that he looked a lot like the Bulgarian officer's father and he didn't want to get him killed. She also stessed a lot how terrible the Bulgarians were when dealing with the Greeks. A lot of forced labour, expelling people from their homes, attempts to erase greek culture from the land and turn greeks into Bulgarians. Of course this behaviour originated from the Balkan wars during which hate was developed. That said, she stated that the food problem was not as bad as in the big cities like Thessaloniki or Athens.
After the uprising a lot of people from the village took up arms against the occupation forces forming local bands or siding with ELAS. Most of them were vereran guerillas from the Pontic Greek struggle against Ataturk's forces during the genocide and the Greco Turkish war of 1919-1922. Some of those guerillas even used the weapons they had captured from the Turks. Sadly, these people that have fought side by side against the Turks started killing each other during the occupation for political reasons. Such ideological differences later lead to the civil war which was by far the most brutal conflict in recent greek history.
Very well said my friend.
I have recently read a few lines about the local resistance in Eastern Macedonia.
The Pontic Greek that first came in the lines while reading, was Tsaous Anton or Antonis Phosteridis.
I think he was against ELAS and later even became a member of the parliament.
He was Pontic Greek, Turkish speaker if I remember correct.
Bulgarians are nice people. Those in the past were pieces of shit. War is bad thing for everyone, there is no real winner. Everybody suffers in war.
@@user-jf6yv8rj2s Yeah, that's true. I have also read about him and his band. Very interesting story, but a very sad one too as you also read about the infighting amongst greek resistance fighters over ideologies
@@aleksk4151 I have no doubt about that my friend. I have made friends with Bulgarians in Halkidiki during the summer drinking rakija together and having a laugh. All Balkan people have a lot in common, we lived side by side for centuries under ottoman rule. Unfortunately war always brings the worst out of people and leads them to do unspeakable things.
I just hope that all this belongs to the past and that humanity at some point will be able to finally live in peace.
@@Parsekh_G Yes. It's sad. But this is another story...
Another great, well researched presentation on an important episode of World War II not widely known in the west. Thanks Stefan and keep up the good work.
Great to read. Grattitude👍
My father lived in a fishing village on the island of Thassos. He went with his father to Thessaloniki to see what the government was doing about the German invasion. By the time they got back to Thassos, the Bulgarians were already in place.
He said that they didn't bother with the villagers all that much. They stayed garrisoned in a large building belonging to a German mining company and spent most of their time on the adjoining beach on the back side of a ridge, not having much contact with the locals. They had one Sergeant that could speak Greek that they used as a liaison to deal with the villagers. The guy was a Sgt. Schultz type (I see nothing, I know nothing...). Whenever they wanted to smuggle food in from Agios Oros for which they would trade fish, they'd tell him that they saw some suspicious activity at the point (about 3 miles away), and he conveniently would walk that way so he wouldn't see what they were smuggling into the village. I'm sure he got his cut for looking the other way. Consequently, the people on the island, who were fisherman and had regular catches, didn't starve like the rest of Greece did.
When the Bulgarians were ordered to pull out, they started shooting randomly into the village to keep the villager's heads down lest any villagers wanted to take potshots at them as they left. This resulted in the only casualty of the war for this village, a young boy, 7-10 years old who stuck his head out of his parents' shop to see what the commotion was and caught a stray round. Other than that, there was minimal impact on the people of the village due to the occupation.
One other story my father told me about the occupation. He was with his father in Kavala near the harbor. They heard some screaming, it was a Bulgarian soldier dragging a Greek woman into an alley to rape her. A German officer walked up to him and started dressing him down. After he told the woman to leave, he turned around and shot the Bulgarian in the head with his pistol. Although I wasn't expecting this, it really comes as no surprise considering how the Germans in general looked at Slavs as barely a step above Jews.
Very interesting to read. Thanks for sharing this.
A Cretan man , child back then, recounted to me that a German officer took out a German soldier of his who tried to rape a Cretan girl and shot him with his pistol in cold blood.
Sounds like it was standard procedure, at least for non SS units. @@nikosz66
Typical balkan brutality
Thank you for this video. You always manage to make them really captivating !
Great!
Another well done to you Stefan ! As I said previously the war in this region has had little coverage and to get a balanced view of what happened and why it needs to be investigated. As you said so much of the conflict had it roots in a very complicated past. Well done also for reaching out to the Greek community for first hand accounts from this area !
Thank you for the good video Stefan you have a lot of dedication to your yt video as you made the effort to record the video on site of the place you are talking about thank you for handwork Stefan
Many thanks!!
this video is rlly amazing for bulgarians (i am bulgarian) bcs we dont learn about OUR war crimes but we learn about other coutries war crimes
Thanks for your reply Vasil!
The same story in Greece
I guess is a Balkan thing 😁
@@Pavlos_Charalambous For better or worse it's not only Balkan thing. I see it now in The Russo-Ukranian War. Both sides believe they are perfect gentlemen. But there is more - The Western media has an absolute bias and is distorting the truth or turning a blind eye. E.g. Azov battallion are no more Nazies with Swastikas and Totenkopfs on their bodies, and they didn't surrender, they ''evacuated'' from Azovstal factory....
This was great to watch! Thank you so much!
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Our good neighbors the Bulgarians, their ancestors actually, were as brutal as the nazis during the occupation of a part of Macedonia during ww2. They committed atrocities, looted, pillaged, murdered civilians, and burned villages, all over the area of their " Responsibility ". I come from that part of Greece, and even now that we are full of tourists from Bulgaria every summer, I hear now and then the remaining grandmas in my village to curse badly when they hear the Bulgarian language...
i am so sorry
@@aleksk4151 Thanks Mate. And no worries. Past is past.
@@apostolisnatsios7953 Past is ALWAYS relevant. Unless you like repeats of events.
@@georgedevries3992 I don't disagree with that, I am just saying that there are no hard feelings on my part towards our Bulgarian neighbors.
@@apostolisnatsios7953 Mighty generous and kind to say this. Hope that your northern neighbors feel the same though.
Allot Thanks Sir STEFAN for sharing this informative Video about Eastern Macedonia under Bulgarian occupation during WW2....Good luck & appreciate your working hard for Preparation these informative Videos
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I was born in Kavalla and I remember when I was younger my grandfather telling me stories for the bulgarian occupation. I heard so many stories of looting and extortion by the bulgarian guards. The 5th junior high school was the place of the Bulgarian authorities of the city, where in the cellars everyday many people came for charges of conspiring with the rebels. The horrors of malnutrition like in Athens weren't as prevalent here since you could smuggle some food in order to survive. But due to the guerilla activities in the mountains the situation was tense.
Furthermore, as you stated the jewish population of the city was sadly whipped out. There is still a society of Jews in Kavalla, but the members are dwindling with some amazing testimonies from their ordeals. One story, stills haunts. The jews were all transported through Bulgaria to Treblinka. In one, stop inside the Bulgarian mainland some farmers were shouting for the people to try escape the trains because they knew where it was heading.
P.S There was a series of tomes translated Kavalla's historical archives about the occupation but it is only in greek. But it is an amazing book.
Thanks for taking the time to write this down.
At school, we also studied about the Forced Grecification of the Pomaks and local Bulgarians. Banning our culture, values and language. War is a terrible thing, and often there are no 'right' sides. Greeting from Sofia, and a Greek-lover!
@@SimplyMartin Well it's true. After the first world war, there was an effort from the greek government to assimilate everyone from the "new lands". Many songs were banned because there were deemed un-hellenic.
Thankfully, this is just a relic of the past. There are nowadays schools if other nationalities and the mentality is also changing.
P.S I heard a story from our literatury studies teacher in high school, that her father when he was younger was bullied because even though he was greek he spoke Bulgarian too. Because he was from a village near the borders were most villages were mixed back then.
@@SimplyMartin Strange how the Pomaks still speak their language *as they always did,* and worship their own God. Greeks never did harm to Greek citizens; not during ww2, nor during the Greek civil war. The Greek muslims always enjoyed what all Greek citizens enjoyed at a given time, whether this was hunger or prosperity. *Also,* every country has its own "myths" for the Pomaks: the Bulgarians present them as Bulgarians, the Slavomacedonians as Slavomacedonians, *and only the Greeks* regard them as the islamified descendants of the ancient PAEONIANS (an ancient indigenous Thracian tribe which were non-Greeks), which is probably closer to the truth. But this was/is not enough for the Bulgarian nationalism, nor the Slavomacedonian one, since they both used them for their own irredentist purposes towards Greece. Just to clarify...
@@papertoyss This sounds like a perfect point of view of a Greek nationalist. You want to say that Greece has never harmed any of its minorities and it always encouraged them to speak in their own languages without enforcing Greek on them?
I didn’t know that, Stefan. Thank you!
Thanks for your reply.
The First Balkan War, the Second Balkan War, World War 1, the Greco-Turkish war, World War 2, the Greek Civil War... the drama just went on and on for Greece.
It's actually first Greco Turkish war , fighting for Macedonia, first Balkan war , second Balkan war , ww1 second greco Turkish war , ww2, civil war.. almost a century
Add to that the Greek intervention in the Crimea war , the Russian civil war, Korean war , Cypriot fight against colonial rule, the Greek coup in Cyprus,the Turkish invasion of Cyprus and you can imagine why everything having to do with modern Greece is so complicated 😏
@@Pavlos_Charalambous Indeed a long and complicated era. I must say I have really enjoyed learning so much about the history of the area. Being from SA if you were to ask the average person about Greece, first thing would come to mind is the holidays and beautiful islands. They might remember a bit around the Greek Govt Debt Crisis in 09 and that’s it. I would be interested to know if this history is taught in Greta detail in school sin the region/continent?
@@mammuchan8923 if you mean outside of Greece, most of modern Greek history isn't well known . foreign education systems almost entirely focus on classical Greece.
If we are talking about the Greek educational system many of our modern history aspects are very controversial and often toned down for example it's often toned down that Metaxas was a dictator or the pogroms that took place after the axis retreat
By the way my parents grew up in South Africa
Thanks again for shedding light about the involvement of these unmentioned countries. I would definitely recommend my friends to your content because it's hard to find an unbiased historians that talk openly about these subjects. I would really like to learn more about the involvement of Turkey during ww2 and it would be perfect if you could make a video about it in the future. Keep up the good work!
Thanks for your reply..cannot then when I ll talk about Turkey.
Boris III of Bulgaria died in 1943 mysteriously some say he was poisoned by german agents for refusing to send troops to the eastern front some say soviet agents for negotiating with the allies awesome video mate keep it up cant wait for more from you😃😃😃😃😃😃😃
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Eso fue cosa de soviéticos o aliados. El rey Boris se llevaba bien con Alemania.
Stefan, love your history lessons on Europe, be safe friend 👍
Thanks Jesse.
It was 1995. As I walked past an elderly couple sat on a bench in Thessaloniki, just by the seafront, I overheard them talking to each other in archaic dialect of the Bulgarian language, quite obsolete and peculiar to my ears. I asked for the time in Bulgarian. The man said in Greek he didn’t know what I was on about, then, in Greek, he told me the time. I said συγνώμη and left. Sure they knew Bulgarian, yet I have no doubt their grandchildren feel Greek by ancestry and know no other mother tongue.
Now we book holidays there or buy property, what better way to bury the old hatchet and be friends with no border between us? That’s good enough for the moment.
Thanks for sharing this.
A teacher of mine when to Greece from Bulgaria for a WW2 play of an event of breking the Metaxas line, over these days as he talked in Bulgarian with friends a woman came to him and started asking things about Bulgaria in a strange dialect of Bulgarian, he was confused but it was kinda short as a friend of the woman came from the back speaking greek. The face on the first woman turned white and quickly switched aside and spoke in greek with the friend and went away. She never tried again. He was an arts teacher, he didn't keep nationalistic hatred or whatever but he noted that this might be something of the left Bulgarians in the region from the past, that was a while ago. Today should work like that anymore.
Probably spoke what was called back in the day Slav - Macedonian, people even if they wasn't Bulgarians often could understand because people in the ottoman times was living in mixed communities
But it's very rare today to find people that can understand any Balkan language in general..urbanisation, Tv and formal education made local tongues die out
@@Pavlos_Charalambous You of all people would expect to say slav macedonians as the nation werent a thing but ok.
Rural areas of Southern Macedonia back then had their own slavic dialects, which were a mixture of Slavic with some Turkish, Greek and Latin words in it. There was no absolute homogenity of this slavic idioma. In the period of the 2 Balkan Wars and before, there was still a fluid national sentiment in the rural slavic speaking people of Macedonia. Some started feeling Slavomacedonians and despicing the Serbs and Bulgarians, others were feeling Greek despite their slavic idioma, and others Bulgarian. I got to know one Greekfeeling but bilingual speaking communist guerilla, who found refuge in SSSR and finally returned to Greece. She was from Florina, and badly feeling against the Serbs who wanted to assimilate them in their new state.
I have a distant uncle that was born during the Bulgarian occupation
One thing about the Bulgarian occupation was that in order to get food coupons and not starve you got to learn to speak Bulgarian, it was a way to assimilate the population
Anyways his grandparents learnt to speak Bulgarian and kept working in the fields until the end of the war
Fearing that will be marked as " traitors" they went to Bulgaria but once there they found to be to much of " capitalist" for the communist government taste, their " crime " was that was trying to find a way to buy a tractor.
So eventually they came back in Greece and continued working as farm hands.... And finally got a tractor 😏
On that tractor my uncle learn how to drive
Having driving experience - of any sort ment that he became a truck driver during his national service
Being an ex army truck driver was able to find immediately a well paying job as a civilian driver as well
But that's a story for an other day
Man a tractor really influenced your uncle life 😂🤣
Very interesting to read. Thanks for sharing this.
@@ShubhamMishrabro indeed 😄😄 he used to joke all the time about it
When a tractor change the generation really positive
The fact that his grandparents (and not the young) learned Bulgarian leads me to believe that they were Bulgarian and didnt learn it rather it was their mother tongue. Also him going to Bulgaria is also quite fishy if he was truly Greek.
Thanks for the history lesson.
Thanks for watching!
Excellent. Thank you.
👍
You could have mentioned that most of the Greeks expelled from there were from Turkey after the Greek Turkish population exchange and the Bulgarians that were settled there were locals that were expelled from the region 15-30 years prior-
From 1913 till 1926.
Prior to the Balkan wars the region of modern day East Macedonia and West Thrace was about 1/3 Bulgarian and 1/4 Greek the rest being mainly Turks and Muslim Bulgarians. After the wars and population exchanges the Bulgarian population had dropped to around 10-20% in 1941 and after the Greek civil war it dropped close to zero, most of it being expelled or assimilated.
Thanks for sharing this additional information.
That's right... Nothng simple in the Balkans
@@HistoryHustle I don't know of you confirmed this information, but if you do please pin this.
By "exchange" you mean that the Greek government forcefully departured thousands of Bulgarians from their homes. With the Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine, gave the Bulgarian minorities in Yugoslavia and Greece some rights as refugees to live in the country they are settled in but both of the countries didn't follow the written
arrangements between Bulgaria and Entente.
@@vladpavlo bulgarian copers. Минло заминло. Не спори така.
You’ve recently started making quite a lot of videos on the forgotten Axis occupation of Yugoslavia and Greece, really cool to see content creators covering these obscure topics! One topic which I’d recommend is the Hungarian occupation of Yugoslavia
Hi, one day I hope to travel to Novi Sad (again) and cover that on location as I am used to do with these types of videos. Thanks!
@@HistoryHustle 👍👍👍
My great grandfather was stationed somewhere around Alexandroupolis and has said to my grandfather that there weren't any major problems during the occupation, other than one soldier entering a fight with local greek man.
Thanks for sharing this.
In Greece, the Bulgarian pocession of Northern Greece is considered the most brutal of all the 3 invadors: Italians, Germans and Bulgarians.
the best today between greece and bulgaria is the peace and the collaboration in various sections .
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I had a few relatives that served in the Bulgarian army at the time (though not in the occupied territories themselves) and they were quite adamant that this whole occupation effort and lifes lost was unnecessary waste for everyone involved. Maybe they had some benefit of hindsight but what they argued that most people were actually sceptical that Germany would just hand these territories over (even if it won). Rather, it was just letting the Bulgarian government act as a caretaker so that it frees up German troops for the war effort. There is also the context that the population in the interwar period was practically fed up and exhausted of wars. Its a major contrast to WW1 when Bulgaria put a lot more effort in establishing control of these regions, a time when both politicians and ordinary people were a lot more driven by the nationalist idea of restoring the San Stefano borders. They were of course those that believed its all going to turn out alright (and at least southern Yugoslavia will be kept) but there is an element of wishful thinking to it. By the way, the current issue between Bulgaria and N.Macedonia over the latter's EU application has some connection to this episode as there is quite a difference in the account on how Bulgarian troops were accepted when arriving in the region.
Nobody knows what is the real problem !
Not Axis , not Tsar Boris ( he was acceptable) !
The problem is diferent mentality of bulgarians !
They were not and will never be accepted as South Slavians to be together with !
For thousands of years you cannot explain to them !
What is a miracle,
they like us !
All the time I think that was the true case !
You are right !
Bulgaria was supposed to be organiser and a take care part , not taceover of the region !
Because of conection with Slav Enlightened Macedonian !
It was suposed to continue the aliancing of South Slavians !
That part of history is OK !
But what about young Bulgarians of today are famed that they must be recognised as a iniciator of Slav Enlightening and the Alphabet must be renames into Bulgarian Alphabet ?
It was common Old Slavic letterwriting used in that enlightening proces , aproved by Roman autorities at the Cirilo & Methodius time !
Something is wrong with Bulgarian educational sistem which is not in conformity with EU stipulation because we know what is the meaning of the expresion "Republic" !
Young generation of Bulgarians sre going in conspiracy with Helasians and calling for War like Serbians did and now Ukraineans are doing !
What is happening to Slav Enlightened World ?
What a shame !
@@voskreglavincevska3651 The bulgarians are accepted to be a mixture of South slavs/7 slavic tribes/ and protobulgars - turkish, or iranian tribe. They mixed in todays North East Bulgaria and the Danube delta /7-9 century/. Because the bulgarian language is slavic - obviously, we can suppose that the slavs were more than the protobulgars...
I don't know how you study that in Macedonia, but everywhere as in Bulgaria, it is accepted that the Cyrilic alphabet was created not by Cyril and Metodius/they created the glagolic letters/, but by their pupils - in Ohrid - Kliment and Preslav - Naum - mainly. So if Kliment of Ohrid is Macedonian, you have created the Cirilic Alphabet. In Bulgaria, he is considered Bulgarian, but definitely the Bulgarian state in late 9-th and early 10-th century promoted the new alphabet.
By the way, Putin said that the Cyrilic was created ""in the Macedonian lands"".
I guess, you are for Russia - in its conflict with Ukraine.
You know - so am I, as many Bulgarians...
@@voskreglavincevska3651 you tell me whats wrong with the macedonian educational system. Denying and twisting proven historical facts because these cant fit your ideology. Dont play the victim whenever suits you. Stand up and face the facts. Talk openly about all the controversies.
* 1st - The alphabet was supposed to be for Moravia. King Boris welcomed the missionaries in Bulgaria. It was initially an instrument for roman influence but it turned out well for all of us, since we have a distinct alphabet, representing our tongue.
2nd - you mix intentionally geographic, political and ethnical entities. After Alexander the Great, noone referred to Macedonia as Macedonia. It was Kutmichevitsa for centuries. Thema Makedonia was around Plovdiv. Ask yourself why.
3rd - During the revival, there was no ethnic tension between people from moesia, thrace and macedonia. Wonder why. There were political differences after the estsblishment of Kingdom of Bulgaria. In question was if the future Macedonian state shoult be separate or part of Bulgaria
4th - Greece wanted to influence the macedonian region through church. Failed. Serbia wanted to alter the self determination of the macedonians so they feel more like serbs. Failed. But succeeded in forming the macedomism as an ideology.
Macedonians and Bulgarians were on the same side for many years. Blood cant become water. And bit by bit the truth will be shared. There many people believing in what they find convenient. Not in the truth. In both bulgaria and macedonia. But this will change over time
@@andreytrifonov1614 repeating old comunist propaganda dont do you a favor. Modern dna sames show bulgarians are direct descendants of ... Bulgarians. So there are not old bulgars. Interestingly, the dna samples show close relations to thracians. We know thracian is an exonim. They didnt called themseves thracians. So the whole "slavic see" is a bit of a lie. Made up by the strong russian influence.
And the simple fact you support the russian autocratic regime shows how little you know about our history. How did they acted when Bulgaria united in 1885? What Stefan Stambolov thought of them? What did the ussr army did in 1944 in Bulgaria. Occupation, political repression, concentration camps and murders.
Look at all the ex soviet countries and the state of underdevelopment.
Bulgarian sentiment to russian ideology is sort of a Stockholm syndrome
I am really impressed by your efforts to talk about things not well known even in Greece.Another excellent and informative video.I have only to make some remarks and additions .
Some of the pictures (2 ,I think ,show Greek soldiers and gendarmes and not Bulgarians).
After the failed rebelion of 1941 and the reprisals most of the resistance groups were of more nationalistic ideology.When the communist partisans failed to inspire this groups to join them and being a small minority they joined forces in many occasions with the bulgarian occupiers.
On the other hand most of the partisans fighting the Bulgarians were experienced guerilla fighters who fought the Turks in a stand still in a prolonged war in the Pontus area of Asia Minor from 1915 to 1923.
There was for instance a two day battle of Papades that they fought off a bulgarian force that had aerial and artillery support.
When the bulgarian reprisals went harder,they raided bulgarian villages across the border promising to repeat these raids if they reprisals didn't stop and this worked somehow.
As for the town of Doxato, in 1913 the bulgarian army destroyed it killing about 650 people (around 1/3 of the town's population.So there was no love lost during the events of 1941.
Still amazed by the validity of your sources and impressed by your work.
Thanks for sharing this additional information.
I live in Doxato....who suffered so much from the Bulgarian occupation and cruelty...I have never had a grandpa....He and his two brothers managed to return safe from Greek Italian war but on 29 of September 1941 they executed by the Bulgarian army....My father told me what means "hunger"....When we want to describe hunger we just say.... Bulgaria...When we want to describe cruelty...we say Bulgarian cruelty.... Now we have good relationships and we travel to Bulgaria as well...But we can't forget....Never again war...
Nice to see some coverage of history in this complicated area of europe
Thanks Nick.
Excellent video 💙💙💙
Thanks!
Thank you for the video. I enjoyed it, as I enjoy your channel. I am glad that Bulgaria and Greece buried the tomahawks and are both EU and NATO members. It is time to look forward and handle the challenges we have in common (economy, climate change, authoritarian threats to the democracy etc.)... You made a good historical overview on the relations between the both peoples, but have in mind that the interactions (incl. conflicts) between Bulgarians and Greeks have a history of 14 centuries. Bulgaria itself was founded after a war against Byzantine in 680 AD and occupies more or less the same core territory ever since.
Back to the topic. I would point out, that even after WWI the population of what is now Northern Greece was far from being ethnically homogenous. Bulgarians, Turks and Jews were living alongside Greeks for ages. My mother's father, for instance, comes from a Bulgarian family that had to leave Dedeagach (now Alexandrupolis) for good in 1919. They settled in Northeast Bulgaria. And my wife's father is from another Bulgarian family that had to leave Gyumyurdjina region (now Komotini) in 1926. They settled just across the border, moved back to their home village in 1942 and than back to Bulgaria for good in 1945... So the region has a troubled and complicated history we have to remember in order NOT to repeat.
And last but not least, my family enjoys its summer holidays in Northern Greece and we even consider purchasing a small property there (Kavala or Khalkidhiki). We respect our neighbors and are glad that they respect us too. The Greeks we interact with are hospitable and hard working people and it is great that FINALLY there are neither conflicts, nor borders in our corner of Europe.
Thanks for sharing your insights sith us.
Valentin Stoyanov Well said!
That's too idealistic view unfortunately. Seen how the things are between BG and N.Macedonia, nationalism is alive and kicking....
Well said mate
Soon we will leave EU and Nato Because we are an American colony and we are dependent on the European Union:)
Thank you for almost completely covering Greece, no other foreigner else has ever done that. If you ever visit Athens again i'll buy you a beer in Peristeri ( for real ).
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i've been to Kavala and Drama. The Greeks i've met and spoke to , they love/respect Bulgarians.
@@aleksk4151 Bulgarians killed many Greeks in Drama during WW2 and many Greeks in Kavala during WW1, but it's on the past. Todays Bulgarians have gave up on Macedonia and Greeks gave up on Anatoliki Romilia and after the fall of communism the locals in those areas started cooperating in many fields. Another example is one my relatives from Thrace, he once said that the modern generation will never know what Bulgarians did to us, Thracians were more afraid of the Bulgarians than the Turks BUT as far as i know a large number of tourists comes from Bulgaria and many of the seasonal workers too, thus there is honestly no hate anymore. Now we are not fighting eatch other, now we cooperate. The modern enemy is one other nation that still believes in empires and if they defeat us, their next target is Bulgaria and Bulgarians have not understood that yet.
@@KiNGGAMESgr You are so right about Bulgaria been not able to see the danger from Turkey. Some crazy politicians on top positions are yelling all the time about the ""Russian threat". That in a country that was liberated and recreated by Russia in 1878, with a close language to add....
@@andreytrifonov1614 Well all i know is that you have a big muslim minority, unlike ours (about 120.000), yours is about 600.000 . And keep in mind in our muslim minority we got many Pomaks and Katsibelous as well, it's not a turkish minority, it's a muslim minority. So in many turkish nationalist and OFFICIALS account they claim Western Thrace and the Aegean islands of course including Crete (classic turks, no logic), but i am also starting to see maps claimming basically almost all of Southern Bulgaria ... .I a Greek of Western Thrace i am worried, i gotta somehow protect the Pomaks from turkiah propaganda, i gotta protect my home and my country in general and will do so successfully, but we could use an extra hand. 1)
There were a lot of bulgarians who lived in this region, after The First Balkan War Southern Thrace officially became a Bulgarian territory, but after WWI almost all the bulgarians were expelled from the region. I have ancestors on my mother's side who ware forced to move out of there!
Thanks for sharing.
You have perplexed the real dates in your mind.
these videos about the balkan in ww2 are really well made!
Glad you liked it. More will follow.
Maybe it's forgotten by the rest of the world but in Greece we very well remember that the burgarian occupation in Greece was the most vecious compared to the other two. Luckily there seems to be no grudges today between the two countries. I hope it stays that way
Thanks for your reply.
Do not touch Macedonia It is part of Bulgaria and every Bulgarian knows it and historian.. It is the second Bulgarian country in the world
@@geforcebg4256 😂🤣
Frankly we do appologize! Just after the fall of communism start to emerge some facts about Bulgarian occupation. There are many things I am not proud of...
@@slavzahariev3901 brother, some very serious shit have happened In our common past.. No one can forget them, from Bulgarslayer to kaloyan and the occupation of northern Hellas, we had some seriously bad blood between us. But from what I understand, Bulgars are people we can actually live together in proper peace. That is something really important and meaningful to me..
I come from a village near Drama. During the occupation a Bulgarian officer broke the two hands of my grandmother Maria (my father was 2 and she was pregnant). The fight between Greeks and Bulgarians started in myn region in the 1870's). We call this fight "Makedonikos Agon". The fights ended in 1912 with the liberation of East Macedonia by the Greek Army.
You forget to say that during the occupation in East Macedonia de partiasans were not communist but Nationalists . In the batlle of Potami this resistance group got the greatest victory that a greek resistrance group got against the occupation powers.
no wayy Bulgarians would do such a thing
@@aleksk4151 Bulgarians killed 42 boys and men on 2 sept 1941 in our village. The women of the village had to grave voor theyr killed childeren and husbands. And yes one Bulgarian Officer dit broke the hands of my grandmother! Everybody in my village knew it!
@@dexippos7721 Ok fare, but as you mentioned it started in the 1870s or even before for us as the churches all the way to centre Bulgaria were with greek clergymen and they did the same with the language and spreading the greek culture in the idea that the Ottomans will soon fall and Greek dominance must be paramount. You didnt negotiate and the protest of people created the Bulgarian Exarchate in 1871, if the greek church wasnt that ambitious most bulgarians would act as today, I guarantee it. The San Stefano treaty didnt help much in the public view of the topic but it was very based on ethnic maps around 50 such were created from 1842 to 1878 and later and only one made by a greek person was with more greek people in the border regions.
@@vasil.kamdzhalov In the reality we are the same people with two languages and three natinality's (Greek, Bulgarian and "Makednsky"). What I said is what all the old people have seen and lived during the 2nd occupation.
@@dexippos7721 I like the message.
"- Was the Bulgarian prisoners on that island [Trikeri]?" I ask naively.
- Yes, sir. How many died there. You can see their graves. But don't think that's all. How many were drowned. . . They don't have a number. . .
- Drowned?
- Of course. They will not jump into the sea alone. We threw them from the port of Thessaloniki.
- That why?
- How why? They were Bulgarians. . . A thousand, two thousand less - the better for us. . . Our captain said: "Come on guys, let's see how well the Bulgarians know how to sail. They wanted the sea - let them try it." . . We purposely stopped the steamer in the open sea, quite far from the shore. And we threw the Bulgarians into the sea. There was something to watch, it was fun, yes. . . Those who knew how to swim reached the shore, those who did not - to the bottom. You look at him - he beats his hands, chokes, then suddenly he sinks and is lost, as if you threw a stone into the sea. . ."
From "Graves of Trickery" by Vladimir Sis (1889-1957), 1914.
Interesting to read.
Thanks for this reference. Interestingly, the same place hosted female Greek communists 35 years later: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo_Trikeri
It will be fair to notice, some of the bulgarian "colonists" was actually returning tо their birth place, after being refugees in previous wars, and many "native" greeks was settled from anatolia after geco-turkish war. The demographic of the region was very different befor wwi and balkan wars. With greeks bulgarans being almost equal, and many turks also.
That is what the Russians say now about Ucraine, Hitler about Chekoslovakia, Poland etc There is no excuse, since before that some 250.000 prosperous Greeks were expelled from Varna and Anatoliki Romilia (Southeastern Bulgaria). Still Greece never intended to invade Bulgaria. On the contrary, Greece had to construct the Metaxas fortified line on the border to avoid a future Bulgarian invasion, which anyway took place through the massive German attack in the spring of 1940.
@@nikosz66 Le me ask you some Yes or No questions. Did bulgarians inhabit southern Teace in significant numbers befor balkan wars: Yes or No? Did bulgarians from the region get refugee in Bugaria: Yes or No? Did the region was colinizen with greeks from Anatolia: Yes or No? Did Greece forbid bulgarian language Yes or No? History is what it was, and statments like it is like Ucraine and Hitler is nothing more than manifestation of Godwin's Law!
My father lived in Kavala as a young boy during the occupation. He used to tell me the story of how he fought off a hungry donkey, so that he could eat a half eaten watermelon slice, without any of the red part left, of course. It was a great famine there too, like in the rest of Greece.
Thanks for sharing this.
This is a bit off the region of discussion but my mother told me years ago about being a little girl going in to the fields to play on the island of Lafkada (Greek island west coast of Greece) and finding dead Italian soldiers during WW2. She never expressed how that made her feel but she was a gentle and peaceful person and never said a bad word against any people of occupying counties from that period when she grew up. She did tell me that my uncle had been rounded up by what she thought were German soldiers (?) and thought they would be executed but were released. I need to do some research to see if the Germans made it on to the island or if it was just Italian soldiers...it could have been her memory.
Stefan if you are interested and have the opportunity a video about the occupation on the islands would be interesting.
Keep up the great Work!
Many thanks for sharing this.
Gute Sendung. Hab ich nie gewusst.
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Interesting video of the Bulgarian occupation. There is a good John Malkovich movie called "Eleni" where they detailed the Greek communist groups and the Bulgarians in a Greek village called Lea during the mid-1950's. When the nationalists moved in to drive the Greek communists out (note Greece was under a civil war immediately after WWII), many Greek children were abducted by the Greek Communists and taken to Bulgaria to be raised as Bulgarians as the communists fled northward into Bulgaria. That is why our two countries need to be careful in future conflicts as we are all blood brothers. Hopefully one day, these 1950's kids will find their way home.
Thanks for sharing this.
thnks for covering this unknown history our grandfathers were talking stories about bulgarian occupation in the thrace region in greece
Thanks for watching.
Drama indeed.. Horrible all those executions. Learned new things again! Thanks 👍
Greets from the Netherlands 🌷🇳🇱, T.
Once again thanks for replying.
Missing in this video, unsurprisingly, is that former Yugoslavian "Macedonian" organization IMRO (which current party VMRO is named after) supported the occupation of Greece by Bulgarian forces. (see Ivan Mihalov... the ethnic BULGARIAN leader of IMRO). This because back then most of what people today claim as "ethnic" Macedonians still self-identified as Bulgarian Macedonians.
The Bulgarian context of "Macedonian" changed in 1944 when Yugoslav communist Tito renamed Vardar Yugoslvia into People Socialist Republic of Macedonia and start oppressing the Bulgarian identity of most of its inhabitants. Tito used this a method to end Bulgarian irredentist claims on Yugoslavia as well as make irredentist claims on Greece. This is why during the Greek civil western powers not only refused to recognize the former Yugoslavian as "Macedonia' but provided Greeks the weapons to fight communist propagandist promoting this exact "Macedonian" name gibberish.
Unfortunately many have "forgotten" this history. Instead they lie by pretending only Greeks ever objected to the name, pretend they don't know the former Yugoslavians are mostly descendants of self-identifying Bulgarians, pretend not to notice VMRO recent dentity quick change from Slavs into ancient Macedonians, and pretend they don't notice how they abuse the name to promote irredentism against Greece to this day. (what they call "United Macedonia"). Skopje's foreign apologists that ridiculously recognized them as 'ethnic" Macedonians against Greek objections, frame their unethical evasions as "human rights". They claim to speak for the past then lie about the present.
Talk about the IMRO in my video about Slavo Macedonia in WW2. But thanks for sharing.
@@HistoryHustle
No. You misinformed by implying they were "Macedonians" back then rather than still self-identifying ethnic BULGARIAN "Macedonians" living in Vardar Yugoslavia.. This historical revisionism is typical evasive behavior of those that bizarrely recognized them as "macedonians" against Greek objections.
They are about as ethnic "Macedonians".. as they are ethnic "Athenians" or "Spartans"... exactly zero. Everyone that recognized them "macedonians" either an antihellenic liar or doesn't know the history of this issue.
Now that half the country claim not to slavs but ancient Macedonians, and use that to promote irredentism against Greece... nearly the entire global population patronizingly evades. This would include mainstream "journalists", foreign governments, self-annoted human rights defenders", and of course many academics.
Everyone seems more interested in hiding their mistake of recognizing them as "Macedonians" rather than the ethics and history they claim to speak for.
Thanks for replying though.
@@HistoryHustle
I can point you to one of your several mistakes in your slav "Macedonian" video. You most notably criticitically omit context of what "macedonian" actually meant back then.
You claimed in the video the population became disillusioned by Bulgarian occupation because you claim they were told by Bulgarians they were Bulgarians rather than Serbs. This is dead wrong. The reason why they supported Bulgarian occupation is precisely because they didn't want to be Serbianized because they still SELF-IDENTIFIED as Bulgarian "Macedonians" back then.
The context of "Macedonan" in Vardar Yugoslavia back then meant mostly people that sefl-identified as Bulgarians (to far lessor degree Serb) has been snipped into just "macedonian".
You are all essentially repeating Comintern propaganda that the former Yugoslavians themselves were taught post WW2. Unfortunately various academics, NGOS, and journalists incompetently repeated their communist era propaganda and rushed to recognize them against Greek objections.
ua-cam.com/video/ffOKKlbmsbY/v-deo.html
Now nearly everyone evades despite seeing captain obvious they can't even agree on their own alleged identity, half of them claim to be founders of the HELLENISTIC period (defies even basic common sense), and use that to promote what they call "United Macedonia"
@@HistoryHustle Another important detail you have left out is that so-called "Macedonian" revolutionary group IMRO... was actually a covert Bulgarian revolutionary group that sprang out of BMARC.
Prior to Yugoslavia taking over Vardar a small group of Bulgarian revolutionaries start consciously lying by claiming to be purely "Macedonians". The reason why they lied is because BMARC had failed to take over what is today framed as "region of Macedonia" because other minorities also lived in it. Most notably Greeks, Serbs, Turks and Jews.
By later claiming to be exclusively "Macedonian" under IMRO renaming they had hoped to trick both foreign powers at the time and local minorities into supporting Bulgarian interests. The ploy failed though and most of IMRO went back to calling themselves Bulgarian afterwards. (see Ivan Mihalov that later became leader of IMRO for a prime example)
After WW2 claiming to be Bulgarian in Vardar Yugoslavia was banned. Anyone that tried to link themselves to Bulgaria was persecuted. Communist authorities created a fake historical narrative they were purely "Macedonians". Yugoslav Communists modified their language written form and rename what was considered Bulgarian prior to that into "Macedonian".
@@HistoryHustle
"Let us not allow the splits and splintering to frighten us. It is, indeed, a pity, but what can we do, since we are Bulgarians and all suffer from one common disease. If this disease had not been present in our ancestors, from whom we inherited it, they would have never fallen under the sceptre of the Turkish Sultan... "
- Goce Delchev, prominent IMRO leader, , letter to Nikola Malashevski, Jan. 5 1899
My grandmother lived in a small village in Drama called Mylopotamos. She hated the Bulgarians more than the Nazis. That speaks volumes.
Your videos are a rare effort to cover virtually unknown aspects of WWII in Balkans. The Cold War era politics intermixed with preexisting internal divisions in Greece and Bulgaria created heavily distorted and conflicting narratives over the same events. Nowdays though the relationship between the 2 nations are really good, a very rare occurrence in the Balkans. Bulgarians have been through some serious hardships during the communist regime. I' ve been in Bulgaria a few times, there is more similarities than differences in my view.
Hi Jake, thanks for your reply!
My grand father lived in east Macedonia at that time and he was a runaway from the Bulgarian army because he terminated two Bulgarian shoulders after they tried to rape my grand mother. Both my grand parents hated Bulgaria till their last day. On the contrary my generation did not and does not share the same feelings.
Thanks for sharing your family's history. Very interesting to read.
wow interesting.
This very informative bro
Bulgaria was never featured in ww2 documentary
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Some hot title you got here, mate
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Helloo - I am trying to find out about Athens daily life in 1940/41. And then life in Naxos during the occupation. Do you have a video on that?
Nope.
My friend, I am Greek and Drama is my hometown. Thank you very much for this video. There is not a single Greek family here in the area of Drama and the surrounding villages that has not lost at least one person. Personally, my grandfather was murdered by the Bulgarians after horrible torture. Also several of my uncles and aunts were killed. During the Axis occupation of Greece, the most fortunate areas were those controlled by the Italians, who were particularly friendly and tolerant. The areas controlled by the Germans suffered from their cruelty, entire villages were wiped out from executions, but our own areas here in Macedonia controlled by the Bulgarians were truly the most unfortunate. I cannot describe the horrors that my grandmother and my older uncles have told me about the atrocities of the Bulgarians during that period... The good thing is that our younger generations do not keep the hatred alive and we have moved on. Now our relationship is restored and there is no bad blood between us. At least for the majority of the people.
Thanks for your reply.
You can move because greece/greeks were only collateral damage. But ask some of our Macedonian ancestors how they’re are going through that (this) genocide. Politics ruined Balkan
Occupation is forgotten only by those that wanted to be forgoten (from those that want to be forgoten the “masked” genocide of Macedonian people)
I was born in Bulgaria but have been living in the US for most of my life. I feel profoundly shamed of the acts of barbarism perpetrated by Bulgaria during WW2 to both the Greek people and the Jews of Greece. Please, accept my heartfelt apologies, though I can’t speak for Bulgaria.
If you want to know the reason why the Bulgarian occupation was so cruel, here is the Bulgarian point of view. After the Balkan wars and WWI the Greek government started ethnic cleansing of the Bulgarian population in now Greek Macedonia and Thrace - they did the same things you describe and a lot more - many were taken to the islands and killed or died of hunger, hundreds of thousands fled to Bulgaria in order to save their lives. In 1941 many of those refugees or their children returned within the Bulgarian army and administration, and you could guess the rest.
According to narrations of an elderly neighbour lived under Bulgarian occupation, the Bulgarian forces attempted to change the population on the region. That is why they brought their priests and schools, changed the names of the cities and villages, prohibited the greek language etc.
Not to forget that 20 years back (1922) the entire region of Macedonia was populated by christian orthodox greeks who were brutally expelled and pursed from Minor Asia by the Turks.
Thanks for sharing this.
What?! Sources, please! Because the ethnic counting from Ottoman times clearly states a majority of Greeks in the city centres, but the rest, the rural part were Bulgarian-speaking. The change of names of villages and topographic entities was a Greek doing! Bulgarian priests and teachers were brought in because since 1913 the Greek state commited to the ethnic cleansing of these land. As one of your National heroes, Pavlos Melas had said: Voulgaros Na Mi Meini - not a Bulgarian to be left! And that is 40 years prior WW2!
@@user-ci9gy2do1z by 1940 eastern Macedonia and Thrace were part of modern Greece. We are talking about WWII and not the Balkan wars as you imply
My family are Greek Sarakachans (transhumant shepards) and my grandfather was living in a suburb of Alexandroupolis by that time. He shared many stories about the Bujgarian occupation with me, he passed away 2014 at the age of 100.. Regular beating up by the Bulgarian authorities, repression and violence against civilians was very common. One of my favorite stories was that one of his cousins - although being Greek - was given a Bulgarian name (Bladen) on his baptism day against the will of his family. Their relatives living in the German occupation zone nearby were much better off. I do not doubt ethnic Bulgarians suffered a lot after the second Balkan war and I am the least qualified person to raise the question of guilt and who was more cruel to whom. What I can say is that my grandfather- who had a rather soft-spoken personality - went ballistic on two categories of people: Bulgarian in general (soldiers, policemen and paramilitaries) and Greek communists in the following Greek Civil War.
Very interesting to read. Thanks for taking the time to share this.
Dramatic events indeed. These events have been lost sight of by many as other events have been deemed more important World-shaking events.
Thanks for watching.
Ik weet weinig van de Bulgaarse betrokkenheid in WOII dus het is geweldig interessant om hier een les van te krijgen op locatie!
Top 👍
Treasures were removed from churches and transported to Bulgaria. There are still items that haven't returned
I come from a family of Bulgarians from Northern Greece. Most of the family were killed or expelled in the period 1912-1922. So when the BG forces came to occupy the Aegean and the Macedonian a lot of Bulgarians who originated from there were drafted as they have studied in Greek schools and knew the language. That explains some of the attrocities although it can not serve as excuse. Make a video about Trikalli and how thousands of Bulgarian civilians were starved to death there. Again I am not trying ro deny the content of the video I am just saying things are not that simple.
My grandmother and grandfather had the upper floor of their hourse confiscated in the town of Eleftheroupolis, by the Bulagarians which turned it into their police headquarters. My grandmother and my (then a child) mother, would tell me of the screams coming from their upper floor in the course of the bulgarian police interogations.
Thanks for sharing this.
Another interesting video. Bulgaria certainly has an unknown history in much of Europe.
Went there many years ago. I remember they nod their heads to say No and shake them to say Yes. Weird. (Perhaps it was to do with Ottoman rule?)
Thanks for your reply. I believe that too.
No. The head gestures system we use in Bulgaria is that of India, maybe also Iran, but not Ottoman.
From the Ottomans we inherited staying serious when talking to new people and not smiling. Because Ottomans considered smiling the same as laughter and as very impolite.
There is the story why we shake heads oposite,some like when ottomans wanted to change our religion and put sword under your head,research and you will find the story,i m no good storyteller :)
Interesting 👌
‘So, according to the legend, Bulgarians agreed to swap the two signs and when they were asked if they wanted to become Muslim, they nodded while actually meaning 'no' in their hearts.’
I read that many in India adopted the same tactic following numerous invasions.
@@rjames3981 That is misunderstanding. These are different gestures with the head from the Western ones. I saw it in Slumdog millionaire - this British - Indian moovie. The main character - still a small boy sleeping in the dump was awaken by the sly guy who owns and trains the begging kids. The boy was given a cold coke and asked - do you want it and the boy made this gesture with the head which means Yes. He moves his head right-left but more tilting it, not as in the West.
And about the nod - meaning Yes in the West. In Bulgaria it is energetic moving of the head up and down - meaning No, but definetely not just a nod....
Just another curiosity - Greek Nee means....Yes...
Will you do a video about the repression of bulgarians in macedonia after 1945
After 1945? Not anytime soon.
Hello Stefan.
I really liked your video.
Although I want to mention 2 things I didn't like in your narration.
1)I observe that this is the second time you talk about Greek resistance and you have a picture of Napoleon Zervas of EDES. Later yourself mentioned that when the Bulgarians left, ELAS took over.
Do you have any problem posting a picture of ELAS or is it hard to find?
2)ELAS wasn't a communist army or EAM was a communist party.
In my opinion western historians, such as you, viewed them like this because of the large involvement of KKE and you are bias for it.
ELAS manpower reached around 100 thousands men. In ELAS joined people by every political ideology, even royalists. For example captain Nikiphoros(Νικηφόρος), real name Demetrius Demetriou(Δημήτριος Δημητρίου), was of the best officers of ELAS, his whole family joined ELAS and they were royalists before the war.
Nevertheless there weren't so many thousands Greeks at the time believing in communism or had any idea what was it. They didn't care. They joined ELAS just to liberate their country.
Take all these under consideration ELAS was not in any case a communist army and I hope in your next videos don't mention that again.
EAM and ELAS were dominated by the communist party (KKE). At that point they were keeping secret their communist identity in order to attract into their ranks non communists. And they were very successful in doing so.Furthermore, they attacked and exterminated all non communist resistance groups that denied to dissolve and join ELAS. The fate of "5/42 regiment", a resistance group of centrist political orientation is a starking example. By the late 1943, the only resistance groups that had survived were EDES (in Western Greece), and the Tsaous Anton group (Antonis Fosterides), in Eastern Macedonia (the region which was occupied by the Bulgarians).
Before I reply you in all what you have commented. Let me make you a question. It was war. It's like in a war a country has 2 or 3 different armies with different and its own leadership. Would it be easy for a country to defend with different leaderships?
Why should be many resistance groups and no one united and more strong? If they all wanted the liberation and the independence of the country?
@@user-jf6yv8rj2s because they knew that ELAS did not care much about fighting the Germans. The other organisations knew that EAM-ELAS were communists and wanted to create an army just to impose a communist regime the day of liberation.
Who appointed ELAS as the "true" resistance group?
Who made EAM the superior judge of who truly resists to the Germans and who is not?
ELAS started a civil war in the second semester of 1943 by attacking all other resistance groups. This is beyond any doubt. EAM ELAS will be condemned by the United Nations for its acts. But this is something that we will discuss in 1944.
@@georget8008 How they knew all these? Which was its purpose? The declaration of EAM have you read it?
EAM and ELAS became the superior resistance group by the power and the support of the people. 2 million at least active members in EAM and about 100 thousands fighters in ELAS in all Greece.
Why all these people followed them?
Did they were so capable to fool so many people but the others weren't so capable to make people followed them?
@@user-jf6yv8rj2s these numbers are false. Never did EAM have 2 million members. Never did ELAS reach the number of 100.000 members. All these numbers were made up by the KKE, after the liberation, in order to "prove" that EAM represented the majority of the Greeks. Though EAM-ELAS tried to show a politically "neutral" and Patriotic face in its initial steps, everybody knew that the KKE was behind it. Many people from the rural areas joined EAM because they didn't know that. When they understood what was going on, some of them tried to leave and join other resistance group which were not politically affiliated to the communists. This was one of the reasons (though not the real cause) of the first civil war (1943-1944), when EAM attacked all of the other groups.
I am not going to continue this debate. We will have plenty of room to do it when EAM will attack EDES in the fall of 1943.
You are as much a historian as I am a theologian. For your information, from the little I have seen, the second Balkan war broke out when, behind the backs of the Bulgarians, the Greeks and the Serbs concluded a secret agreement for the annexation of territories inhabited mainly by Bulgarians. So while Bulgaria exported the main part of the war, they just grabbed what they wanted. And last but not least, loot can be had by English speakers when conquering lands across continents. We are not looting anything here, we are fighting for the land of our fathers.
Not really sure what you wanted to say.
@@HistoryHustle what I want to say is that it was a midday robbery, in territories inhabited mainly by Bulgarians. As you can check from the plebescite for inclusion in the Bulgarian exarchy. The other thing I want to say is that White Sea Thrace was annexed by England and given to Greece. Where they settled their refugees from Turkey. And the real population that lived there was chased, killed, and last but not least, as an audacity, declared to be Slavic-speaking Greeks. I don't know what nationality you are, but assuming you are English, can there be English speaking Greeks. So they were Greeks, but they forgot how to speak Greek, and now that they are forbidden to speak Bulgarian, will they become normal Greeks? In general, I look forward to you investigating the issue with the Greek Andarti, and that their motto Bulgarian does not remain. In this case, you are talking about the occupation of territories that, in part Macedonia, were taken out through a secret anti-Bulgarian treaty with Serbia, at the time when the Bulgarians were winning the war against the Ottomans, and territory that was gifted to Greece by England, without the Greeks having done anything is to earn it.
@@kalinxristov1654 You seem to be ignoring the fact that Bulgaria and Greece did a population exchange in 1926 with 50k Greeks from the Black Sea coast to Thrace and 70k Bulgarians from Thrace to Bulgaria. This coupled with the Turko-Greek population exchange them made Thrace majority Greek with a portion of whom could speak Bulgarian having recently lived there, but they were not Bulgarian hence them leaving. The later fact of taking Thrace as a "gift" from Germany and trying to remove the Greeks to make it ethnically Bulgarian broke the population exchange treaty. Cake and eat it situation really.
Kalin Xpristov, you need to read an account of the Balkan War II. The Serbian and Greek agreement was defensive against a Bulgaria (and most importantly Czar Ferdinand) that wanted both Greece and Serbia to give up land that they had occupied. Bulgaria and Serbia did have a defined agreement on how conquered territories would be divided up; however, the Great Powers taking Serbian-won land to create Albania prompted the Serbs to refuse to uphold the agreement. They would have been left with so much less. Bulgaria did not have a specific agreement with Greece, but they did agree that they would keep any land they took from the Ottomans. Bulgaria, underestimating the Greek army, believed they would take Thessaloniki. When that did not happen, they were pissed. Ferdinand, without the Bulgarian government’s approval, attacked both Greek and Serbian positions starting the second war. Stupid, megalomaniac Ferdinand had also been told that if a new war had started, Romania would join it to take land in the North that it claimed. Turkey, seeing that Bulgaria-even with its great army- could not stand against three countries, invaded to get back Adrianople.
You are correct, a great deal of the success of the Balkan League was due to the Bulgarians fighting the Ottomans to great success at Kirk Kilisse and Lule Burgas. But don’t deny the successes of the Greek army and navy, the Serbian drive down the Vadar Valley, and Montenegro’s taking of Scutari, all forces had a part to play in the League’s victory.
@@anthonyjames2021 You seem to forget the fact that we are essentially talking about receiving Thrace, in which at that time the Greeks were less than 17,000 and de facto there was no reason to receive it as a gift. If it is not a problem for the Greeks to occupy White Sea Thrace in 1918 and exchange the population, then what is the problem for the Bulgarians to occupy the same and exchange the population in 1942? Why does it seem to me that you have a different measure for the same situation?
the one to be blamed is the Byzantine emperor that in every 1000 Bulgarian prisoners left 1 with one eye to guide the 999 blinded,a pyramide from 1000 heads would be better
Before some years I met an old man in Kavala. Originally was from Thessalonica and described to me how during the Occupation fled the big city because of the famine. He arrived at Kavala on his small boat after days of rowing in the sea. He disembarked exhausted at the rocks under the old district of the city and he was immediately arrested by the Bulgarians who were vigilant around. He was brought to the Ohrana (the Bulgarian administration) and received a good beating. They hold him there several days interrogating and beating him. All these days saw dozens of people brought in and receiving the same brutal treatment. Some were released but most were moved to other location-God knows where. He was finally released but quickly realized that he made a grave mistake coming in Kavala. The city and the area around were under a reign of terror and many people were trying to escape to the German or Italian zones. It was not simply an occupation an ethnic cleansing was underway. The Jewish community was completely wiped out in everyone's astonishment and horror and the Greeks were all the time terrorized. He was able to survive the ordeal by the grace of Panaghia (Our Lady) as he said to me and finally made family and lived in Kavala till these days
I suggest you grab a copy of "the graves of Palio Trikeri". Explains allot about the Bulgarian lack of love for Greeks at the time.
Don't push that stupid Bulgarian propaganda on me. The '' lack of love'' for the Greeks has its roots in the Bulgarian nationalism and expansionism-the dream of the' 'Great Bulgaria' ' of the St. Stephen traty. But I will not start a debate here with a Bulgarian nationalist. End of the discussion
@@theodogeo my grandfather's grandfather is the last victim of the Greek occupation of Petrich in 1913. My grandmothers parents are both refugees from Kato Poroia. Half of Sofia can trace their origins back to refugees from Aegean Macedonia. I'm not denying Bulgarians did a lot of crappy things back then but you seem to close your eyes about the atrocities Greeks did. Any chance you own it up so we can move on? Also, the writer of the book is Vladimir Sis. A Czech writer and war correspondent. Blame the Czech for whistleblowing.
The mass migration of Bulgarians to these territories had one another premise. The territories were handed by Germany as an occupation zone not as part of Bulgaria proper (that is why the jews there were not saved as happened to the jews in pre WW2 Bulgaria) so after the war they could have been taken if the germans decided that they are not Bulgarian. That is also why the assimilation and resettlement of Thrace was done,so after the war the territories could be handed by Germany as part of Bulgaria proper and it did not happen in Vardar (Yugoslavia) Macedonia, because the population there was overwhelmingly bulgarian in the first place.
Bulgaria planned to annex this region several decades prior ww2 and this is a fact. This is why the Bulgarians the late 19th century and early 20th created the idea of a divided Macedonia, which the aimed to unify with the creation of the "Macedonian Revolutionary Organization" all of those who took part being *ethnic Bulgarians.* Later when the Serbs entered this race, they pioneered the "idea" of a seperate "macedonian" ethnicity (Stojan Novakovic, the Serbian Ambassandor in Constantinople 1885-1902), in order exactly to oppose the Bulgarian idea.
There was Bulgarian (and Serbian) plans of annexing these lands from Greece *up until the end of the Greek civil war.*
@@papertoyss in my comment I talk about Vardar Macedonia which was overwhelmingly bulgarian for most of it's history after the bulgarians arrived on the Balkans.We all know that the modern day ,,macedonians" are Bulgarians brainwashed by the serbs. You probably talk about Agean Macedonia which in the 19 century,early 20 century was ethnically mixed with greeks,turks and bulgarians. But after the Wars immigration in and out of Agean Macedonia, population swaps and etc. made it overwhelmingly greek.
@Skamaz BG
Well, my comment was because you mentioned a place which doesnt exists in both the Global Historiography *and* Geography. A place which you on your own termed as "Aegean Macedonia". There's no such place. There's also *no* "Vardar" *nor* a "Pirin" Macedonia. There's only one Macedonia and it lies in all its extends in Greece. In the mid 20th century Bulgarians and Serbs started calling "Aegean" right after they themselves (re)named their regions north of it as "Pirin Macedonia" and "Vardar Macedonia" respectivelly. All these started taking place due to Bulgarian late 19th c, early 20th c planning for annexing Macedonia (Greece), plans which *ethnic Bulgarians* tried to implement with the creation of the "Macedonian Revolutionary Organization". The Serbs joined this race about 20 years later (arround 1890). They both antagonized who's gonna annex this region which the Bulgarians baptised as "Macedonia" and now lies in both Bulgaria and Slavomacedonia; therefore they created a *devided* Macedonia *before procceding into* annexing the actual Macedonia, Greece, for its strategic possition (exit to Aegean Sea, control over the Aegean and over the Dardanelles, etc), and on the excuse of a supposed reunification of Macedonia (unseen!). Both of them on the regions they had under their control, they tried to replace the ethnic consciousness of the inhabitants and create "Bulgaromacedonian" and "Serbomacedonian" consciousness (in the sense that the new macedonian consciousness was part of a Bulgarian and identity respectivelly) and *soon* propagandized the supposed "reunification" of Macedonia within their own teritories, and each for its own purposes. Besides the tactics the goal was the same for both Bulgaria and Yugoslavia (and its predecessors).
When the communists took over Bulgaria, things changed dramatically on this matter. During the years of communism in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia the goal of these two countries was *common:* the creation of a Balkan USSR, with a "UNITED Macedonia" as part of it.
The resulted of the above is the nowadays North Macedonia aka *Slavomacedonia,* which is settled *hillariously* on a region which is NOT Macedonia, but on *Paeonia,* which Bulgarians first and followed by the Serbs baptised and presented to their own ppl as a (devided) part of Macedonia.
This newborn country with its severe delusions of past greatness which belongs to Greece (delusions *fed by* Yugoslav and Bulgarian communists though -- all of those described above became part of this country's foreign and internal policy, namely the goal for a "united Macedonia", Alexander was Slav and their own ancestor which the Greeks stole from them o.O, etc), became a pain in the ass to both Greece and Bulgaria. *This is what is happening when you play with ppls minds.*
Regards
@@papertoyss if you are saying that the northern part of Macedonia was populated by greeks in late 19th,early 20th century and beyond then i am thinking that you didn't get your study right.
@@skamazbg5675 I didnt mentioned this you wrote anywhere in my comments. This would mean that a "north part of Macedonia" actually exists, which it doesnt. I said did mentioned though the *northen part of Greece.* There's no northern part of Macedonia. North Macedonia (former Vardar) and Pirin Macedonia are initially Bulgarian artificial creations, followed by the Serbs (which added more elements to these unseen theories) and with communism later binding them both in one theory, which aimed to the creation of a Balkan USSR under Moscow's control.
1. To better understand you need to start from the treaty of st stephan. 2. Also do not forget the macedonian struggle in macedonia between the otyoman army and guerillas from bulgaria and greece. 3. The same strict meadures like with schools and language was not only in greece but also in what in now northern macedonia and southern serbia. 4. Finally from the attrocities there is a letter from the german command that if bulgarians do not stop killing greeks then the germans will retaliate. 5. Many bulgarians both from the army and from guerillas in 1944 they joined the communist guerillas in ELAS and fought against greece. Then during the greek civil the bularians of snof started calling themselves macedonians (makedonski) that conitued their fight against greece and now are settled in north macedonia.
Thanks for sharing this additional information.
Regarding your point #4. My father was with his father in Kavala near the harbor. They heard some screaming, it was a Bulgarian soldier dragging a Greek woman into an alley to rape her. A German officer walked up to him and started dressing him down. After he told the woman to leave, he turned around and shot the Bulgarian in the head with his pistol. I always thought the German's actions were the result of German hatred for the Slavs, but your comment makes it seem that it was actually German policy.
@@MrGyro16 I do not think they had an issue with the Bulgarians being slavs. I think they were repelled by the bulgarian attrocities.
@@theodorossarafis7370 Think about it, Nazis repelled by war crimes? They wrote several chapters in the book of war crimes. They didn't have problems with war crimes. They had problems with Slavs committing them on a populace that they didn't want exterminated. The Nazi hate for Slavs was well known. They treated the Poles much more harshly than they treated the French. When Hitler talked about lebensraum, he wasn't talking about moving the native Slavic populations in Russia, he was talking about eliminating them.
@@MrGyro16 has there been any shootings of bulgarians by the germans? Nope. However there is document from the high command in thessaloniki with threating the bulgarians in order to stop the crimes. I would like to remind you that germans did the same under von makensen to the croats when in ww1 were commiting massacres against the serbs. There is also that letter saved. So yes germans did many crimes and many crimes were against greeks. Yes german hated and many still hate greeks but there are also exeptions
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Ok.
I assure you that it is not forgotten at all in Greece. We are friends with Bulgaria now, but history is history and we know what the Bulgarian army did in greek areas during the war.
Funny, cause another Greek reaction stated it's forgotten by many Greeks. The title on the tumbnail refers to the average history buff outside of Greece.
I didn't realize that the Bulgarians had attempted *"annexation by resettlement"* in northeastern Greece.
Yes they did.
My grandmother lived in Serres and in Bulgarian occupation she was tortured by Bulgarian soldiers who claimed that she was a member of ELAS . They 've penetrated the palms of her hands with hot iron sticks and the holes were visible even at her old age . She was 18 years old. Her sister was raped and her brother was shot but luckily he lived. Grandma always told us that the Bulgarians were more barbaric even than the Germans and that is the reason that many flead to the German and Italian terittories .
Wait Bulgaria was in Greece?
Didnt know that
Now you know lol
Yes it was so harsh that the first Greek partizans was organised in the Bulgarian occupation zone
@@mrcocoloco7200 Your name gives me Loco Roco flashbacks
Good times
Yeap when greece was occupied by germany thrace and eastern macedonia were given to bulgaria to materialize the st staphan treaty
@@Pavlos_Charalambous the first guerillas were in crete
I am a Greek who was born and raised in Drama and my family is of Thracian and Anatolian decent.First of all, let me say I don't have any racist or hateful feelings against bulgarians or slavs but the things I have heard from my relatives are very disturbing. My grandma was 10-12 years old during the Bulgarian occupation in the village of Nevrokopi which is near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Even though the information we have about what happened then is very unclear because my grandma was too traumatized to tell us we know that Bulgarians and North Macedonians imprisoned some of my grandma's family members (mostly kids) and made them slavs, after years when these relatives came back they didn't even speak greek and in some way the despise us. Also we don't know if it's true but there's a lot of speculation and rumour that the bulgarian occupators pillaged and raped and killed young girls (maybe my grandma too) thus resulting in macedonian greeks hating no bulgarians. That's why I agree with the other comments, these were very fed-up times and I hope we can move past that and live peacefully.
Ask what they did before Bulgaria there
Well, if you're not biased you may start using capita letters when when refer to other people and languages apart from Greek! , i.e Bulgarian, etc. Will not refer Noth Macedonians as there wasn't such a nation at that time. It constitutes a few years later.
@itsthisRash: thanks for sharing this.
3:46 What a beautiful lady... ♀💗 Look at her...
Obrigado, Stefan! 🇧🇷
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Bulgaria should have settled with having a black sea and agaiis coasts, to circumvent the hegemony of the Bosporus, be it Turkish, Greek. Bulgaria could have built a huge railwaynetwork and two huge container ports on each coast.
The Bulgarian soldiers came to the village of my grandmother one day.nazi officers were present with big black dogs.the gathered the locals to a field mostly women children and old People.they looted the village searching for weapons.for ten long Hours they standed in the sun without moving.the troops left without finding anything after the insident.no killings happened that day.most men at that time were in the mountains or at the Bulgarian penal battalions named dourdouvakia, building roads it the Bulgarian mountains.
Thanks for sharing this.
i am a bulgar whatching this with tshirt from greece and the tshirt is from the island thassos which was occupied too by the bulgarians too . other thing i wanna say is about that in the land bulgaria occupied there were many bulgars but with time the integrated to the greek culture and language . many people forgot about the san stefano treaty 1878 which liberated bulgaria and the land we got was based on where the majority of population is bulgarians and all of the land we occupied during ww2 was similar to the land we got from san stefano treaty
A good video on a country not often mentioned on the topic of WWII. One thing that gave me a laugh was the picture of the Greek partisans at 6:55 shows a guy second from right who looks so much like Francisco ding dong Franco that he could be his twin brother. OK, take it easy.
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Yes from Macedonia serres regionmyfsther was15 years old at that time and told us that Bulgarians were more cruel than Germans during the occupation
My grandpa's brother refused to learn or speak Bulgarian, off with his head right in the middle of the village square, my grandpa got stubbed on the head by slavo Macedonian collaborators...he killed one of them and got away. Good times...
Lucky he got away..
It is very strange that Britains still occupy some european countries but decided to tell a story that is almost 100 yeras old how some slavs "occupy" lands where they have lived for centuries.
Please explain.
You should start with the plebiscite for the Bulgarian Exarchate during Ottoman rule of the Balkans to see the ethnic composition of the area and that will answer why Bulgaria strived to liberate (not occupy or more like administer) those lands! Furthermore, you should check the funds spend by Bulgaria to meliorate those areas!
Yeah, it's always a debate on how far to go back.
@@HistoryHustle Yeah, but in that case you are distorting the historical narrative!
Even people commenting here, tell that their ancestors came from the Pontic region ( like Vasilis Sevidikithes - Βασιλης Σεβιντικιδης) to settle in Thrace and Macedonia witness something! Why are they in the lands of Bulgarians turned refugees (amongst them my ancestors)? Because they were re-settled on lands where Bulgarians were exterminated or driven away!!! It does sound like ethnic cleansing/genocide! It is not just the Armenians! It is the first genocide in Europe proper! Bulgarian ethnos was living and predominant (according to a census)in around twice the territory of nowadays Bulgaria. And I am a person whose ancestors lived in close proximity to the Aegean sea and from nowadays Macedonia( which was called the Thracian Sea) in the Northernmost parts of it!)
@@HistoryHustle Your method is like the one Palestinian Arabs use to justify their presence in the Holy Land! The British Mandate had to be divided between the Arabs and Jews but the Mandate was divides into a Trans-Jordan and disputed territories and then sub-divided into Arab and Jewish territories! And to this day the Arabs dispute the presence of Jews in these lands! Same situation with Bulgarians living in the surrounding areas in Greece, Northern Macedonia, Northern Dobruja, the Western lands in Serbia and in Eastern Thrace in Turkey! They have been ethnically oppressed and culturally under-developed in those areas till this day! Many has left for Bulgaria and the wide world since! Is your thing a cherry-picking or an agenda?!
@@nyagolnyagolov7130 the nowadays Northern Greece was never part of the bulgarian nation. Most of the slavic speaking populations of our area were of greek national conscience. The area had a greek national character among the slavic populations long before the refugees from Asia Minor came. Deal with this fact and accept history. Bulgaria is a respected nation in Greece. Learn to respect Greece also as the mother of world culture.
@@jordantsak7683 Jordan Tsak, you are are talking here to a person whose half genetic inheritance comes from the area you call Northern Greece today and it is Bulgarian culturally and genetically! I have also half Bulgarian, half Greek (refugees from Asia Minor) cousins and they all know the reality who is who ethnically and genetically!
It is not a matter of respect towards Greeks, as you are trying to imply here!
It has been the policy of Athens to call those people Slavic (while in fact there was not such an identity till the imperial Russian policy was adopted) in order not to recognize their true national identity set in the Ottoman approved plebiscite, according to which there is no majority of Slavic population with Greek national conscience ( a small minority decided to go with the Constantinople Patriarchate but the majority was for the Bulgarian Exarchate) as you are claiming here without any support from any sources!
Many Bulgarians fought for the liberation of Greece (Greek territories) as volunteers - the most prominent of them Capitan Petko Voivoda with his fighters in Crete!
History I accept and cherish, but you try to distort it and in this way you disrespect Bulgarians! I lived in Greece and Cyprus and I know how respected are the Bulgarians there, the fans of a certain football team from Northern Greece are even derogatory called Bulgarians for example! There must be no chauvinism and nationalism between our people both nations filled their ranks with different ethnic groups, some the same in ethnic and genetic composition!
My grand father was between them who took the city of salonic, he fought in, lachanas, kilkis cresna, and finally pushed back bulgarians to tzoumayia, during the second balkanian war. He was ninteen year old.
Bulgarians always in the bad side of history.
He must have seen a lot!
@@HistoryHustle oh yeah for sure, very bloody battles. Greece could have benefited so much by taking Bulgarian side instead of Serbian side. Bulgaria could have helped Greece get back COnstantinople in WW1 and defeat Turkey decisively.
Wife is from Macedonia, Serres.
All 4 of her great-grandfathers were murdered during the Bulgarian occupation.
Probably coincidence.
Thanks for sharing.
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Bulgaria and Greece could not escape geography. Bulgaria, being closer to the capital of the Ottoman Empire paid by far the heaviest blood toll during the 1st Balkan war and was not compensated in territory gains accordingly. This left grievances that led to the 2nd Balkan war, and Bulgarian governments choosing opposing sides to the Greeks (and Serbs) in the 1st and 2nd WW. The pendulum of history swung in favour of Greece, on this case, but it could have been the other way around. Just imagine if Greece hadn't joined WW1, the way it did with the Royalist - Venizelist schism, and Bulgaria had remained with the gift of Eastern Macedonia it had received from the pro German King Constantine I. With access to the Mediterranean established, in this 'what if" scenario Bulgaria wouldn't have had the need to enter into the subsequent conflicts.
Thanks for sharing your insights.
Great coverage pf a rarely discussed topic.BZ.
How brutal was the Bulgarian attempt at de-hellenization that the Germans who set the benchmark for atrocities in Europe during the war, intervened?
The Germans didn’t set the record for atrocities in Europe , are you forgetting the Ukrainian Holocaust ( Holodymar) of 1933 ? You know stalins deliberate starvation deaths of over 6 million Ukrainians in just one year ! That was the greatest most horrific holocaust in European history ☝️ not committed by the Nazis but by 👉 the communists , and there are also hundreds of Katyns that were committed by the communists from 1917- 2 June 1962 Novocherkassk . Dresden was also a war crime of genocide , Plus allied deliberate targeting of civilians in their bombing raids like RAF war crime 👉 august 1943 hamburg fire bombing of the entire city with over 65,000 dead civilians , Darmstadt Bombing 11 sept 1944 With over 11,000 dead civilians in one night…Tokyo firebombing with 100,000 civilians dead, and we won’t talk about Hiroshima and Nagasaki using a bomb that deliberately targets the civilian population !
Thanks for your reply. One user commented that his relative once saw a German shooting a Bulgarian who tried to assault a Greek woman.
Even today, tens of thousands of Bulgarians living in the regions of Kavala, Serres, Xanthi and Thessaloniki (today in Greece) have preserved their language and speak Bulgarian, although they fear repression. These Bulgarians have had their names forcibly changed and bear Greek names, but they still call the villages and towns in what is now Northern Greece by their Bulgarian names for centuries. Not long ago, one of the most famous Greek composers, Stamatis Kraunakis, made a statement to the press in Greece that everyone in Northern Greece speaks Bulgarian, and Greek has only been spoken there for 100 years, with thousands of local residents not even understanding Greek, but perfectly understanding Bulgarian .
My grandfather from Drama, was tobacco merchant before the war. After the Bulgarian occupation he formed a guerilla unit and joined in the resistance against the Bulgarians and against the communist forces of ELAS. For years he and his unit where conducting guerilla warfare while hiding in the mountains around Drama.
If anyone is familiar with the area, it is extremely inhospitable Alpine terrain, high mountains. forests , deep ravines, freezing in winter very hot in the summer.
You do not mention two very significant events.
First, the collaboration between the Greek communist units of HELAS and the Bulgarian occupation forces. Often the two conducted operations simultaneously against the Greek Resistance. In fact it was stated policy of KKE to assist all russian controlled communist parties per order of the 3rd International/CommIntern at the expense of Greek national interests. In essence the greek communists hated the Greek Goverment strongly so as to aid the Bulgarians during the occupation of greek territories.
In fact, it was a greek communist, my grandfather's next door neighbor, who ratted on him. The Bulgarian Police barged in the house to arrest him. He was lucky as he had left home just an hour before. In turn the Bulgarians arrested my grandmother and two of the kids and kept them in jail for two weeks. (in reality they were kept HOSTAGE). One of the two kids that was KEPT HOSTAGE was a 14 yr old girl, who many years later gave birth to me.
The second girl-hostage, is now an octogenarian woman, who cries when reminisces seeing through the peep-hole of the front door in September 1941 Greek hostages , arms tied behind the back, walk at gun point to their execution. The bulgarians executed hundreds of Greeks about 400 meters away from the family home. The mass grave was near the General Hospital of Drama. The bodies were exhumed from the mass grave in the 1960s.
The 2nd event is the 3 day battle of the Bridge at Pappades.
In May 1943, the Bulgarians attempted to encircle and dislodge the Greek resistance from their bases up on the mountains. A strong bulgarian force, perhaps a brigade, suffered heavy casualties and was prevented from crossing the bridge at Pappades . This was a major blow to Bulgaria's attempt to control or annex the area of Northern Greece.
Proud my grandfather and his unit fought the Bulgarians at Pappades.
As a kid I heard stories from those who lived thru those years, of the suffering and carnage all Greeks endured during the years of bulgarian occupation.
Thanks for sharing this additional information.
Was ur grandfather greek pontic?
Yes/@@Unknown00432
To my Greek friends out there, I would really appreciate knowing what was the aftermath like for Greek Macedonia after the Axis retreat, what happened to the Bulgarian colonists there? Were there reprisals or what followed.
Последваха кланета 270 000 българи бяха изтеглени или първият концентрационен лагер в Европа е създаден за българи на някакъв остров ,пра дядо и трима братовчеди загиват там,както и други 30 000!
First of all, Bulgaria was not dissatisfied by its gains during the first Balkan War, it was dissatisfied with its allies(Primarily Serbia) who didn't keep their word and took land that was promised to Bulgaria...
Second you can't occupy land that is yours! To this day Bulgaria mostly borders itself!
This topic certainly doesn't get much attention.
Indeed.
Were the Bulgarian settlers expelled after the war?
I believe so yes.
A much-neglected aspect of wartime history. Pleasing to see it covered: thank you. It’s interesting to note the wrath the post-war Greek state visited upon almost the entirety of its Macedonian - speaking populace. This extended even into the 1980s : when the PASOK government allowed the very large Greek communist diaspora to return home, Slavic - speaking Greeks were excluded from this concession.
Thanks for your reply.
There is no Macedonian language.
There was no Macedonian language by that time, there was a Macedonian dialect of Bulgarian. Macedonian language was created by a decree and codified after WWII. Since 1913 the wrath was wrought upon Bulgarian population. Not Macedonian. And however the Greek state does not admit it, rural Northern Greece still speaks Bulgarian. Despite the forceful hellenisation, the change of names and the still valid ban on spoken Bulgarian by Greek citizens.
Partially true. Greece with PASOK allowed the Greeks who fought in the civil unrest from 1946-1949 to return back to Greek no matter is they were slavophones or not. The ones who were NOT allowed to return were the slavophones and the albanian who cooperated with the Axis forces and conducted attrocities. Thus you will see many slavophones who returned to Greece. The ones who did not return were the members of the SNOF. Then there was another issue with Greeks that fled to Yugoslavia. There Tito put all the Greeks in the current region of Northern Macedonia and forced them to change their names into Bulgarian. Thus a guy called Ioannou was renamed in 1947 Ivanov. Thus when in 1990s an Ivanov family came to Greece as Greeks they had issues since all their papers were stating them as Ivanov and not Ioannou that were in the Greek state. This problem happened only with the Greeks of Yugoslavia. Greeks that came in 1990s from former czechoslovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania and Poland did not face any issues.
@@user-ci9gy2do1z A minority in rural northern Greece still speaks Bulgarian due to your exarchic brutality NOT because they were bulgarians.
It's funny how centuries of oppression from the Greek church ended up in a violent atrocities contest between Greeks and Bulgarians. My mum's side of my family are refugees from Aegean Macedonia and my grandfather's grandfather is the last victim of the Greek occupation of the city of Petrich. We can tell the same stories about Greek crimes, but what is the point? If anyone wants to point fingers, point them at the phanariots and priests from the ottoman era.