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@@Nekromageofapocalyp As an example soneone may be a gypsy, and hate gypsys. Saying so would not be racist or xenophobic, but is still against the rules.
No it does not LITERALLY translate to Steve Jobs Jobs is Radovi or Poslovi in Balkan languages And Stjepan is not Steve it's more like Stephen or Stephan, Stivo is more like Steve There is no translation for Radić to a foreing language. Don't lie to people. Your fact may be fun but it is not true as you would imply with your use of "literally"
"Balkan nationalist" _He preaches unity will hill tribes and, may God forgive me for even saying it, _*_Bulgarians_*_ ! He is clearly not to be taken seriously._
4 роки тому+4
Yeah that’s a giant meatball for sure. You’d think that’d be enough for the Balkan princess, but no. These women want more meat and less balls. I personally think there’s plenty of meat in Italy without Albania and Abyssinia, although slightly less ethnic tasting. But hey, what do I know? I’m a Lebanese cowboy... All jokes aside, bless your people in Italy. You’ve inspired my little neighborhood in Austin Texas to all play music for each other on our porches during this nonsense. I actually teamed up with a nameless/faceless stranger playing the trumpet across the street with my gitane (Django Reinhardt) guitar. Never met him or her, but played an entire Duke Ellington song (Caravan) together. Be well amigo. 🇮🇹 🇱🇧
Legend has it that whenever Yugoslavia is mentioned, everyone from the Balkans senses it and feels compelled to go and quarrel with other people from the Balkans. As a Bulgarian, I believe this to be true.
As someone who has no connections to the balkans and yet feels drawn to it, I also believe this to be true, same goes for Austria-Hungary but its between former AH peoples and Serbs
only people still in the Balkans. probably not all of them, idk. But Balkan people here in Germany do not care (I've worked with about 300 of them so far) Once their politicians and ideologies and movements and ...isms are far away, Balkan people need a very short time to see each other as fellow human beings. They actually enjoy eachother's company because of their more or less shared languages and culture
@@istvansipos9940it's the same in Australia. they still have cultural jabs at each other but the various Balkan diaspora here largely stick together. I guess being in another part of the world helps them realise they have more in common than not
Indy says, _"Today I'm going to touch a Live wire."_ ... Me, sees a gigantic pylon that's supposed to serve electricity to an entire region. _"Um, Indy?"_
@@cwovictor3281 There were also small separatist movements in the Rhineland. Although compared to the forces dividing Yugoslavia, they were negligible, yes. :)
@@neues3691 Hmm, yes, occupation sucks. But then again, if you guys bring back the Wittelsbacher you'll be taxed to high Heaven. I mean, there's soooooo many castles still to build ;)
@voodoo star there is no "we". The people who lived during that period where diverse, not always linked to people today and it def. wasn't you. So saying "we" is cringey nationalistic
@@Solidoaf What he meant was the western protocivilization, namely the west wing Christianity, aka Catholicism. You are not right in that there wasn't certain sense of unity in motivations and deeds among the Western European rulers and populace. The fact that there were many rulers over a large area diminishes the apparent unity of command, but only when compared to the modern nations. There was a clear line between Byzantine Empire and the rest of the Europe that lingered long after the final fall of the Roman legacy. Heck, you could say the same thing for the Roman Empire, that there was no such thing, yet in today's terms we perceive it as a unified whole, because it largely moved throughout the history as a unit, even though it had its own share of coups and civil wars, complete set of military and economic collapses and a plethora of domestic crises. Today even the birds know exactly what West means. It has nothing to do with how well feudal rulers respected each other, but with the deeper unspoken affiliation to a certain ancestry. Just like being a Chinese or Hindu has a deep historical context and helps to establish a cultural background of an individual, that's exactly what West means. (And I am not talking here about patriotism or nationalism, as these are completely separate and largely ideological / artificially-rationalized notions of belonging, which I do not buy.) In a certain anthropological sense, if we (in this context, broad Europeans) are to pay homage to our long and perplexed heritage, there was definitely "West" since at least 333 CE, thus "we" helps to explain that there are those who feel that they don't belong to this type of civilization, either de facto or de jure. So please do your best to refrain from arbitrary judging, just because you feel threatened. Belonging to a Western civilization doesn't make you immune to criticism, and your defensive rhetoric is just as cringey.
@@milanstevic8424 lol unity. Clearly you know nothing about European history. Forget the thousands of power struggles between a thousand Noble/Royal families. Forget the thousands of small and big wars that had been fought between the multitude of principalities, dukes, barons, Kings, emperor's. Forget the constant splintering of Christianity with protestantism, Anglicanism, Catharism etc. And you completely missed my point buddy. The accusation that "the West" fucked up somehow is ignorant and inaccurate. There was no collective "West" to ask. Each king/duke or whatever made his own petty decisions with no obligations to each other. There is no East or West. Just countries laid out over large a piece of dirt. Counties near the old eastern Roman empire just had the bad luck a new superpower rose at their doorstep.
@@Solidoaf "Clearly you know nothing about European history." Clearly. Well let's just pretend that Crusades never happened. Umm, three times. It never happened. Or let's pretend that Colonialism was a random fluke randomly repeated by several Western powers, and no one else in the world had this idea for some reason. That every country had its own little Vatican. That there were no tight familial ties in feudal times, and that English or French rulers did not rule over each other's countries, sometimes at the same time. That a huge swathe of Central Europe wasn't actually called a Holy Roman Empire, and that it wasn't in fact under a control of a big ass Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, in the name of the Vatican. That modern NATO is somehow a logical alliance that has nothing to do with more than a thousand years of European heritage. No definitely the notion of anything Western does not exist and it is all in the heads of the non-Westerners. Oh and slavery was never a thing! Oh let's just pretend. Clearly I have no clue, but you have enlightened me, and I deeply apologize and remain eternally thankful for your illuminating insight.
The history of Yugoslavia is just so fascinating. You can learn so much about culture identity, nationalism, patriotism and politics just by studying that specific region.
I live here and the only thing I learned is that I want to get out. While many people are trying to move forward and look past the past events, many more still live in the 90s or even 40s. This is an example of Croatian news making fun of the whole country still living in 1945 and buying a new fighter squadron, you dont need to speak the language to get the point: www.rtl.hr/vijesti-hr/novosti/hrvatska/2729937/sprajc-na-samo-sebi-svojstven-nacin-prokomentirao-otvaranje-ponuda-za-nove-borbene-zrakoplove/
Not really. Unless you are Greek, Serb, Croat, Bulgarian or Turk then there is no reason for you to care and contribute to the venom. Also if you are not any of these people then you really shouldn't pass judgement on what toxic things they say to each other.
@Amon Ra Well, on UA-cam comment sections, between angry Serbs, ignorant Croats, virtue signalling Bosniaks and baiting Albanians, i really can't see much of a difference, they are all quite equally annoying to me personally. Of course, i will first look into my own backyard. But what triggered you to make such a comment? Mentioning how you are irritated by those angry Serbs who seem to be absent right now, is kinda inviting that sort of discussion in a way. If i was a half-asshole i'd be offended and go Gavrilo Princip on you. Have a nice weekend anyway.
All of my free time goes towards the TimeGhost crew, I was first pointed towards the world war 2 series, but I am all caught up on it and was recommended to come back and watch these. Your team is really doing something awesome here. You all just nail it. Thanks to entire team!
Very well managed. No ones ever going to agree on the details but you have done very well with a hotly contested topic. Great work even my kids can follow this and stay focussed. Cheers from the better late than never independent REPUBLIC of Croatia ;). Were now free to mess things up for ourselves for once.. & its going splendidly...
Minor detail, Radić said: ...ne srljajte kao guske u maglu. A more accurate translation would be: Don't rush like gesses in the fog. ( there is no drunk part, but it does sound cooler)
Well, Croats didn't have a choice by that time. Bosnia and Herzegovina(most of it), Vojvodina, Montenegro, large parts of the seashore, already joined Serbia(not Yugoslavia, but actual Kingdom of Serbia, and became Serbian territory), and even Dalmatia was threatening to join unilaterally, so the Serbs were taking lands they considered theirs, Hungarians theirs, Italians their, so what choice did Croats have, since Austria-Hungary was defeated. To become divided between Italy, Serbia and Hungary, perhaps even Slovenia or Austria? Yugoslavia was their best bet, and thanks to Yugoslavia, Croatia expanded into Dalmatia and Istria.
@@Porkeater2610957 Well, there was one more option, remobilize returning Croatian soldiers to halt Italian expanse (Austria and Hungary were in an even worse state than Croatia, no real danger there). But this would be equivalent to nuclear option today, complete and utter diplomatical and economical FUBAr. The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was best out of a multitude of horrible solutions.
I am croat and i dont know what to think of yugoslavia,on one side,joining yugoslavia makes all slavs together regional power On the other hand,there was always danger that some radical politician like milosevic will came to power and abuse its position I dont hate serbs,as metter of a fact i love and respect them,but they also have their dark side
USSR really hated the Kingdom of Yugoslavia because they were the last country to recognise them in 1940, since King Alexander I was bitter about the White defeat in Russian Civil War because he was in great relations with the Russian Emperor Nicholas II and even the country became a place where many Whites went and found jobs and settled. Also the King was a part of making ROCOR and there are rumours he even wanted to be the next Russian Emperor once the USSR falls
@@12345678900987659101 Yup, Wrangel led a fair bunch of them into Yugoslavia. Usually, the more affluent white emigrees went to western Europe, while the others stayed in Yugoslavia as king Alexander granted them citizenship because he had extremely friendly relationships with the emperor Nicolas the second earlier. Those white emigrees left a huge mark on interwar Yugoslavia, many famous architects, engineers, artists and historians were of Russian background. Having an influx of thousands of educated people in, what was basically a country with an illiteracy rate of more than 50%, was a huge deal. There are still many descendants of those white emigrees here, the most famous one being Viktor Troicki, the former top 10 tennis player. Another fun fact: Peter Wrangel died in Belgium but during his lifetime he told others that he wished to be burried in an orthodox christian country, so he is burried in Belgrade. The house where he lived is in Sremski Karlovci, a picturesque small town just north of Belgrade. It's kind of a hidden gem in Serbia so I recommend visiting the town.
As a Croat it is really hard to find the words to describe how fascinated I am with the coverage of this topic. History is my passion and the Yugoslav 20's have always been the most complex topic I have ever come across. I must say that I am really looking forward to Indy's coverage of WW2 Yugoslavia, as through this video an unseen level of Balkan-understanding has been shown. :) For anyone interested in other Yugoslav-themed interwar period topics I highly recommend reading about Yugoslav volunteers in the International Brigades fighting for the Spanish Republic (people who brought valuable experience back home that was necessary to wage an efficient resistance after the Axis invasion), or Fascist Italy's ambitions in the Adriatic and how they realized them through utilizing extreme nationalist sentiment ever present in the Balkans.
I heard you guys read every comment. That’s pretty cool! To the person reading this, keep up the great work! Love all your channels, and have a great day! #postivecomments
@@TimeGhost I too appreciate your group actually honoring the interactive purpose of the internet . Whenever I see a channel with comments turned off I immediately reject it . But also when I see a neglected cesspool of a comment section I am equally turned off . Great job .
I'm glad you guys read every single comment. I stopped posting because I knew you guys have better things to do spinning TimeGhost up. I'm going to leave more positive random comments because I really dig the greater effort you guys are trying to accomplish here. You're recording history on a new medium, which makes it available to an audience never before seen by humanity. I can think of only a few efforts as noble for humanity. Keep up the great work, TimeGhost.
Do you know way is there so much inflammatory comments on this topic? Despite world propaganda in media, in our schools, (meaning ex Yugoslavian) after all these years there is still propaganda in the school class. We need independent historians like Indy to present facts and only then people will start thinking with their heads. I only found Indy searching for WW1 history witch is overlooked completely by ex YU education system an i whose curious what rely hapend. That is why im still with Indy and the teem of Time Ghost preciously becose of unbiased and truly objective research. Good work. Keep it real.
the Balkans is like the hundred years war, the thirty years war, the war of the roses and the English civil war all mix together and then put on speed. :(
My "favourite" military conflict still remains War of the League of Cambrai. Open Wiki and check who fought against whom during various stages of the war and try to make sense of that :) And unlike the Thirty Years War this one lasted only eight.
Nice you mentioned Thirty years war. Schiller described how Croat mercenaries smashed the babies on stone walls. In WW2 they were the only nation that had concentration camp for children.
@@Chyornytulpan The American Civil War was a bit different, tensions and problems remained but the sides were much more reconciled afterwards than most of the others you mentioned. Some Confederate officers and soldiers (R.E. Lee's nephew Fitzhugh Lee, for example) even served in the US Army after the Civil War.
I would like to share that I, sometimes, keep you talking on my headphones and only hear words like Yuguslavia, General, Marchal... Yet is so calming and relaxing. You must have the best voice for your content. Oh, I keep a loop sometimes. When you are real good.
Well executed, Indy and the crew!. Concise, and (at least speaking from my, Serbian, side) quite impartial. There is one interesting detail I would like to add. Much as Czechs did in their newly-formed state, Serbia also tried to push the centralist idea by simply conflating everyone into a new, integral Yugoslav identity. However, this was done so lazily and with the traditional Balkan half-a**ery, that a large majority of population received it as something "imported", "synthetic", or simply didn't receive it at all... To understand this, You need to go no further than the National Anthem of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia: its three verses were actually the beginning verses of Serbian, Croatian and Slovene anthems respectively, just spliced together - All with different tempos and melodies! Much of contemporary works of art promoting the Yugoslav aesthetic also didn't resonate quite well with the common people for much the same reasons. There was simply no way of convincing, e.g. an ethnic Slovene that the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 was a "united battle of all Slavs on a path to a new, united state in the distant future", no matter how many modernist statues the king commissions from renowned artists such as Ivan Meštrović. I highly suggest looking up this utopian "Proto-Yugoslav Kosovo myth", especially the never-built Vidovdan temple. Regards, Aleksandar of Serbia
Thanks Indie it's easy to see now , the origins of the terrible civil war that occurred relatively recently. Once the strong man Tito was gone , old ethnic rivalries , that had been suppressed , burst out again with tragic consequences.
I absolutely love this series. I have been to both Macedonia and Kosovo, as a Soldier in the US Army in 1999. It is a beautiful area and now understand more of why my unit was sent there. Thank you.
It amazes me how far reaching this conflict was and still is to this day. Even as someone with no direct connection to the region (a french canadian) I have close friends who lost family members in the Yugoslav wars and members of my own family involved in the nato missions in the region. It shows how there’s no such thing as a “local” conflict in the modern era.
You might want to change "civil war" into just "war". Croats, Slovenes and Bosniaks see it as a Serbian agression (so not a civil war), while Serbs see it as a civil war. If you just change it to "war" you will speak in a more neutral manner.
The Region of former Yugoslavia changed alot of countries worldwide. Alot of UN missions where in the region. It is sad to see that a region with beautifull nature has become a battleground for hate. We can only hope that the worst is behind and the Region can go peacefull further forwards.
Evilsamar Good point, I used the term civil war not as a way of assigning blame or justification. But Yugoslavia was a sovereign country with war breaking out between different factions within itself. Kinda the definition of civil war. Makes an interesting distinction though, do other conflicts have the same debate as to what they should be called. For example I imagine a Tsarist Russian in 1919 wouldn’t call the conflict in Russia at the time “civil war” they probably saw it as revolutionaries bent on destroying there country. Where as a Bolshevik would have seen it as a war to spread the revolution and topple a unfair government. At the end of the day though does it really matter what prefix is used? War is still war...
@@calebminor6661 I dont know about other wars, just this one, since I live here. Many (maybe most) Croats, Slovenes, Bosniaks, Macedonians didnt see Yugoslavia as their country so view it as an agression to re-occupy the liberated land and not as a civil war. I dont know about other wars.
@Marko Djokovic its a strange way of fighting for your life by leveling a hospital in Vukovar and shelling a UNESCO world heritage site (Dubrovnik) for days with heavy artillery.
Jako vas volim i cijenim, mislim da radite odličan posao i čim skupim koju kunu postajem pokrovitelj vašeg kanala. Do tada pozdrav iz sunčanog i vrućeg Splita. :-) I really love and appreciate what are you all doing, I think you are doing a great job and as soon as I collect some kunas I will become the patron of your channel. Until then, greetings from sunny and hot Split. :-)
Hello Indy! Congrats on the fantastic work, and finally an episode about us Southern Slavs. I only have one comment for this video, you misspelled "Stepjan Radić" as the proper spelling and pronunciation is "Stjepan Radić" Greetings from Croatia!
Where have I been?! I've just stumbled upon this series and your channels. I've come late to the party. But, I'm thoroughly enjoying every episode and discovering how much I didn't know. Thank you TimeGhost team for making these fascinating and entertaining bite sized portions of history. They help explain what happened, how we got there, and how we've gotten to where we are now. Bravo!
@rtpl100 We're glad you finally found us! Check out all our episodes here and over on our WW2 channel covering the war week-by-week. Subscribe and stay tuned!
Hey Indy, found you on Sabaton History, got hooked on the Great War history and havent stopped looking it up. Enjoying these videos on your channel immensely. As far as your disclaimer about conduct here in the comments, it makes me sad. Folks can be upset but bashing others behind the veil of anonymity can't be tolerated. Thank you for your vigilance and hard stance on this!
Well the balkans are kind of (in)famous for regional and ethnic tension. I mean there is a process of violent regional self-destruction named after the Balkans - balkanization.
Greeting from American chetnik. I don't hate Croats since they are cool people along with the rest of the people of former Yugoslav nations. What happened in our history is a mess but we need to move forward! :)
@@lenini056 Totally true man, I think that too, thats why we are so back, cause we are moving all the times to ww2 and stuff, but we need to move foward, and be friendly.
Finally, someone actually covers this bit of history. Yugoslavia is basically a historic battle royale and it's nice to see people not from the Balkans getting a quality resource
Western Balkans* When talking about Balkans, people simply forget that Greece, Albania, Bulgaria and a large chunk of Turkey(tho more numerous than most of Yugoslavia) are also Balkans :D
What’s your point? Yugoslavia may have been located in the western part of the Balkans. But the sub-region still has it’s neighbors. Without the Turks, Albanians and Greeks in south. And the Bulgarians and Romanians in the east. The Balkans would never be whole.
@@justinian-the-great Culturally yes, Geographically no, except for Dobruja and Romanian seashore. Technically speaking, large parts of Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia are in Central Europe, and not in the Balkans.
@@Porkeater2610957 Clearly there is only one way to solve it. Make a BIGGER Yugoslavia covering the entire of the Balkans. So we can all be one nice murderous familly sitting atop a barrel of FOOF. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG! :D
Although, via cursory study of Yugoslavia, (place tongue in cheek) I knew there just might have been a problem or two, (remove tongue) I had no idea just how complex that situation was! ... and I'm sure that it was much more so, as "Time Ghost History" had such a short time with which to explain those detailed and at times confusing events. But, I think that all viewers would agree that the staff writers of TGH did an outstanding job of helping their audience to better understand this Versailles Treaty created powder keg. - complimenti a te, Indy, and all of the other awesome staff members!
Great vid, although it ignored the part where the National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs in Zagreb that is referred to in this vid actually became independent from Austria as the “State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs” on October 29, which actually remained in conflict with the Entente despite its intention to join with the Entente’s Serbia. While the Croats didn’t want to fight the Entente any longer, the Italians bombed their entire fleet to shreds. This is because it had been the Austrian-Hungarian fleet and Italy saw it as a threat, even if the Croats intended to let Serbia have it after the merger. I actually first learned about this in a video Indy did for “that other channel” Then finally the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs merged into the Kingdom of Serbia (which had puppetized and then absorbed Montenegro already) to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes as is detailed in this vid.
Serbia didnt puppetized or absorb Montenegro, they had national assembly which passed the law that will unite with Serbia,Montenegro or Crna Gora was always serbian,in montenegro first ever serbian official state was made,Montenegrin King Nikola is grandfather to Serbian King Aleksandar which this video talks
@@slobodanstojanovic8125 the Montenegrin royal house prior to the war, the house of Petrović, was not reinstated by the the new authorities set up in Montenegro by the Serb forces, the Grand National Assembly of Montenegro. Instead they held a vote on union with Serbia, and recognized the Serbian royal house of Karadjordjević as the sovereign of Montenegro. This severely angered the Italians, who were nearby after setting up an Italian protectorate in Albania, as the deposed house of Petrović had connections to the Italian royal house of Savoy. Italy sent warships to threaten their nominal Serb allies but didn’t go any further, especially as they were increasingly tied down in the Albanian Vlora War, eventually being forced out of Albania in 1920 (though they’d by back in 1939). Montenegro thus became part of the Karadjordjdvić crown lands, until the royal house suffered a similar fate in WWII to what had happened to the Montenegrin Petrović house in WWI: namely having their government-in-exile be usurped by events on the ground, this time by the takeover of Tito’s Communist partisans.
This entire series is long coming. Thank you for exposing the history that shaped our world. We were not told about most of the things you discuss. As a history buff, I am loving your conversation.
Thank you for a great episode! I would really like to see (for the sake of unbiased approach) if you could find and tell the world in the next episode the exact Stjepan Radić's last words to Puniša Račić before he (*SPOILER ALERT*) assassinated him...If I remember well, it went something like this: P. Račić: "We Serbs should have a privileged status in Yugoslavia since we liberated you all, so you Croats are in debt with us". S.Radić: "OK, so tell me, how much do you ask, so we pay you for your "liberation" and you just let us be!" (Basically a prequel of the: "I'll pay you 50 bucks to f*** off" meme...) P.Račić: *pulls the trigger*... Thank you again, TimeGhost History, for touching the livewire in quite an unbiased show. I enjoyed it very much. Well done!
Isnt it more like "We have spilt blood to liberate you and you are dicks" "How much for your blood he he" *gets flashbacks from the war and friends dying* "One 9mm"
Thank you Indy and all the people that works on this channel and The Great War channel, rarely we see channel that is this factual,true,deep,non-biased...Regards from Serbia
This channel gives the very best summation of the causes leading the world into its darkest period in history. It is a pure historical narrative. It never ceases to amaze me how people , especialky those who think history is irrelevant and boring, fail to understand that we must learn from our mistakes, so that we do not repeat them. We can not change the past, but we can change the future. This channel can help change the world, if people focus on the truth of the past and put away outdated ideas.
please, consider an episode about czechoslovakia. how it was created and how it proceeded. compared to all other post war countries it was considered as a real success story. though slovak now, i´m proud of my czecho-slovak heritage.
Indy and Company... thank you for your balanced reporting of history. I love that you state the facts from all side and leave interpretation up to the audience. History, politics, and people are complicated and you handle it with grace.
Love the Show! We follow Indy since The Great War show. I watched with my dad. I have to translate it for him. Hope you one day release the episodes with Spanish subtitles for people who doesn't know English. Keep the good work. Greetings from Chile.
I really like how you guys approach rocky topics that could spark toxicity and hatred. Shows how professional you are! I appreciated the episode as always, keep up the great work on WW2 and timeghost, love ya
I think that what I'm going to say it's not against your rules. If it is I apologise in advance. But the inhabitants of what is now recognized as North Macedonia should not be referred to as Macedonians. That's because the Prespa agreement between Greece and North Macedonia says that the citizens of this country (North Macedonia) have nothing to do with the first-original Macedonians (the ancient Greek Macedonians) and that the citizens of North Macedonia shall be referred to as citizens of North Macedonia and not simply as Macedonians.
I think it's pretty irresponsible to try and force so many different kinds of people to so drastically make up with their perceived enemies and become friends. If the king had made concessions to parliament and adopted a federalist system, there could have been future reforms that led to future centralization. (once time has passed, and old wounds are truly healed) But to try to force such closeness so quickly just seems foolish. IMHO, I prefer a more centralized society, but only when it can be stable. Stability, long term, is the most important thing. Economic development is great, but when that school gets blown up it does no good (for example).
Easy to criticize forced centralization/unification but if its between an plausible if unstable unified gov or very likely genocidal foreign occupation people tend to go for the rush job even if it doesn't prevent the genocide. Such are people
Yes you got to start loosely and then slowly centralize. Build a concept of siblinghood before you put the systems in place. Look at Germany it could not have united to way it did if it didn't have almost a thousand years of the holy Roman empire and the confederation of the Rhine to fall back on. Unity takes time. It also takes being willing allow failure confident that if the worst comes to worst you can start over from a more advantageous position than you did last time. There have been any number of pan Euopean movement before the EU for an example, they failed but we picked up the pieces and started over. Maybe this time will fail too and if it does we got to let it fails and then start over. Meanwhile Yugoslavia did the same thing the U.S. did they forced the separatists back into line and in the US the divide remains to this day, in Yugoslavia it tore the country apart.
@@virutech32 You bring up foreign intervention. Stability is important to combat that. If you don't have a stable country, it more likely to collapse, and you can't fight a war if your country collapsed. A federalist system wouldnt prevent them from fighting back and defending themselves. EDIT: And you may just get Anschlushed if the govt is unstable enough.
@@virutech32 And another thought. It wasn't exactly a "rush" job. The king wanted the be in control of the country. He didn't want to give up power to the provinces and to the parliament. To me it seems it wasn't done because "This is faster" but because "I want power".
First off just want to say I'm a long time fan since the literal first episode of TGW and will remain one. I'm not going to go into detail until I watch the second part of ''Enter Yugoslavia'', just wanted to say it seems there's a little bias towards Croats in this video, or better yet, anti Serb bias. Interestingly, the reason why it was called in the beginning The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and not Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, Slovenes,Bosniaks, Montenegrins, Macedonias (and so on) is because there was no such thing as a Bosniak, Montenegrin or Macedonian ethnicity back then. You're probably thinking if there was a country named Montenegro aren't there ethnic Montenegrins living in it? Actually no. The wast majority of people who lived back then thought of themselves as Serbs much like the majority of people in Montenegro today. The social construct of the Bosniak, Macedonian and Montenegrin ethnicity was the product of communists during the late phase of communist Yugoslavia and was cemented by propaganda during the Yugoslav wars of the 90's. P.S : Keep making quality videos like this one and there's no doubt you'll grow and reach all of your goals. Cheers
This was a tough episode to write. First of all some of the events are quite confusing as it is. Second of all many of them have been so thoroughly wrapped in waves of biased historiography that at times we had to quadruple check completely contradictory renditions of the same chain of events. Last but not least it’s hard to be completely balanced in such a short time. While it was intended to be one episode originally, Spartacus and Francis quickly agreed it needed to be split to allow more time and space for the narrative. Athough we were not all too happy with that as our original goal was to tell the story of how and why Aleksander bacame the absolute monarch of Yugoslavia in a fair and complete way. In the end Francis, Spartacus, and Indy sat together and went through the script repeatedly line by line to find the right balance and remove anything that was speculative, so that we focus solely on events and the values of the people involved, rather than values transposed to them posthumously. We hope that with the conclusion of the second episode you will agree that we found a fair and accurate balance.
@@TimeGhost I understand it was a tough episode to write, these were just my two cents plus a little historical trivia. Keep making videos like this one and we'll keep sharing them (because UA-cam's ''algorithm'' is ''working fine''). Cheers!
You could emphasize more that Croats and Slovenians really had no choice in 1918, Italy as winner nation wanted to take whole eastern Adriatic which she was promised by secret London agreement in 1915. That would left Croatia and Slovenia without major part of their ethnic territory. Serbia as winner nation offered protection and chance to keep those areas together in one country. Serbs speak same language and not to underestimate Croats and Slovenians were mostly on Insonzo / Soča front during the war basically kicking Italian ass for 3 years and now to lose all their territories to Italy was unacceptable to most.
Serbs speak very similar language as Croats and somewhat similar as Slovenes. Serbian and Croatian are approximately 90% the same while Serbian and Slovene are less than 50% same. Anyway these 3 languages are distinct.
Nice! No toxic waste in the comments. I wish other sites were like this. It is difficult to read dispicable and disgraceful comments from anyone and not respond in the same way. A respectable debate is most welcome. Usually people learn from such content.
I think we can all agree on one thing: King Alexander was handsome. Like, geez, just look at his moustache and glasses! The man had style and a pleasant face to complement it.
@Tomislav Vrban Hitler similarities? Not really. I don't see anything on him that resembles Hitler. No similar facial features, nor eyes. Is that some bias against Alexander? It can be felt from your comment. The guy wasn't evil. I mean, if Alexander was a dictator who tried to unify the people by force, then what was Tito? It was foolishness to try and unify different cultures under the same state. The only way you could do it is by an iron fist and suppression - what Tito did. But at least Alexander and the monarchy tried to keep some semblance of democracy.
@Tomislav Vrban So far in the story from the video, Radic was kind of an asshole. But I agree that it goes against democratic values to kill your political opponents. But this is also one of the major problems of the constitutional monarchy: the opposition. Just like Indy said, the opposition didn't really work towards a strong, unified state. I mean, it's the same today. Democracy has been a huge divide for the society. Just look at USA, where two different parties just squabble for control and undo what the previous government has accomplished. I'm not buying into the story that Radic was in the right, but neither was the radical party. The whole unification was kind of a bad idea to begin with, but neither parties did anything to make things better for everyone. Radic cared just about Croats, the radical party just about Serbs - neither about Yugoslavia.
Great episode. Although the Serbian/Croatian drama is put maybe too much to the extreme. Note that the first Yugoslavia died because of the war, while the second just collapsed. Italy was the biggest threat for Yugoslavia. About the Yugoslav political life, it must be said that each nation had it's own drama. Usually it was centralist liberals/Serbian nationalists against Catholic or just Christian farmer parties. Note that the Communist party was very much unimportant (which is interesting for what happened after the war). The biggest Social-democratic party was present in Slovenia, which is mainly due to Slovenia being the industrial powerhouse of the Kingdom. Yugoslavia had real problems when it came to the balance of power, since it was stuck still in the federalist vs centralist debate and lacked any major left force. In fact progressive policies were mostly concentrated in the north of the country with Christian Socialism and Social-democracy. Anyways really a good episode, which tells the truth, can't wait for the second.
We focus on the "Serbian/Croatian drama" because it encapsulates the very battle of federalism vs. centralism that was at the core of Yugoslavia's problems and that you describe. This is not a value judgement on our part. It is something well recognised and discussed in historiography. Maybe with more space this could have been fleshed out a bit but we already had to split this into two episodes and had to do everything we could not to make the topic too unwieldy.
@@TimeGhost Completely understandable. Although within the Federalist "side" there were also the JMO (muslim organisation) and other minorities. But it doesn't matter, since you mentioned them and that's already a really good thing, usually people just skip through them. Keep up the great work :D !
In fact, as far as I know, the Communists were a major political force in the country before they were banned and pushed into illegal activity. It was this very illegal activity that allowed them to organize effective resistance in the war afterwards. Also, the socialist movement had a great influence on the development of Serbia, throughout much of its modern history, before the Great War. In fact, the Radical Party itself stems from the socialist activities of Svetozar Markovic, Pasic being one of his disciples, since their time in Zurich. Unfortunately, he gradually turned away from fighting for the cause and made his stay in power the primary goal of all his future efforts (the memoires of Djordje Karadjordjevic gives a nice illustration of that). I only recently discovered this channel, so I have no idea if there are episodes about this part of our history (I suppose not), but they certainly offer a lot of interesting material, not only for Serbia, but other small nations as well. Markovic was a hell of a smart man that gave invaluable remarks on the local mentality and produced some pretty unique views of the future of the Balkans. Unfortunately, he died way too young and who knows what would have happened if this was not the case. Even so, he managed to do a lot more than most politicians before or after him did in their lifetime, not only in Serbia, but in general.
2:47 Not to mention the Croats to a great extent fought on the Austrian side against the serbs. Sure they have had their own pan South Slavic movement, illyrianism, but they meant to for their version of Yugoslavia to be croat led not Serb led. It's in many ways similair to the scandianvisnism of the 19th century and earlier. Both Danes and Swedes have pushed for it but when they're not the ones in ascendance they don't want it because it means it would be dominated by the other.
Good notice. Many avoid the core essence: battle was fought for dominant power between Croats and Serbs. Dictatorship of Alexander was the same balance factor as the dictatorship of Tito in post-WWII Yugoslavia. They tried to balance different nationalism in the state. One by pan yugoslav idea, and other by socialist idea.
The problem isnt even that as much, power can be shared. The real problem is that Yugoslavian couture... is noting more then Serbian re-branded. If it was truly something new instead us trying to turn us into Serbs, it might have worked out(ofc with a normal government)
One small correction,there were no ,,montenegrin,, ethnic tensions :) Montenegrins indientified themselves as Serbs in 1920-es,so they were rightfuly represented as Serbs in the name of the country :) Conflict in Montenegro was not ethnicly based but it was more of a dinastic struggle between two Serb royal houses that ruled then kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro,two internationally reckognized Serb states :) Otherwise great job as always,keep up your good work!Cheers from Montenegro!
What is the difference between a dictator like the ones in the Baltic countries in the 1920s and '30s and a monarch like Alexander I of Serbia, again? Asides from titles of course.
Its presumed(usually by parties interested in opholding a monarchy) that a monarch has some sort of, usually divine or otherwise dogmatic, justification for ruling & an established system for choosing them & keeping them in power. "Dictators" are basically just the first step in a line of monarchs since they almost always pass their authority on to family or close friends. The only difference is rhetorical as far as i can tell
Nothing really. A monarch can be a dictator, and some dictators are monarchs. They're referring to different aspects - dictatorship is about the style of government, monarchy about its legitimisation/justification.
Dictators rule by force alonewhile monarchs answer to and draws power from the concept of a higher power that power can be god, constitution, or tradition. But that other force is what sets monarchy apart from dictatorship.
@@virutech32 it anything but rethorical. If you take power by force you have to maintain it by ever greater amounts of force. Then you need to start placating those who help you have that force while also not allowing them enough power to usurp you. In a monarchy th he power of the crown does not come from force but from continuation.
@@DaDunge that's why they're a first step. Lines of succession don't go back arbitrarily far. At some point every monarchy started with a lucky, charismatic, &| militarily gifted dictator taking over lands by force. So they're basically dictatorships that have survived long enough to legitimize their conquest with tradition & propaganda.
and we are talking about couple of yrs here, imagine the whole history,Churchil once said for Serbs, they are working over-time to produce surplus of world history...
In my Bulgarian opinion some terms are unacceptable, BUT that are simply tha Balkans. And please make a episode for Bulgaria and it's connections with Yugoslavia and in particular the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation's ties with Bulgaria and it's history. As a proud Bulgarian I accept that the Balkans are a mess. Sorry if the comment is unapropriate and please, if you are deleting this comment at last point my mistakes. Thank you.
It amuses me to no end how Indy manages to correctly spell all names of Yugoslav people second to no other English speaking narrator! a BIG thumbs up from an ex Yugoslavian
I have friends and relatives from Yugoslavia. After helping a Bosnian friend, I asked him about the intense fighting and hostilities among the different groups in Yugoslavia. He said simply that some 800 years ago, the Turks took children from each of the group's back to Turkey and raised them with the Turkish codes of honor and vengeance and then returned the children to Yugoslavia. That is perhaps a simplistic view, but it explains the politics of my Yugoslavian relatives and friends.
So simplistic as to be dangerous. It's okay to try and work out how to explain such a complicated situation in a relatively plain manner, but placing the entirety of blame on the Ottomans is not only wrong but part of the wider anti-Bosnian narratives that are seen in the Balkans.
The Balkan nations exist. Their eyes slowly turn upon one another, the rest of Europe looking on. "I think you and I are destined to do this forever." They all say to one another at once. And that's the Balkans my friends.
That's a common view of Balkans which is in fact wholly inaccurate. For most of post-Roman history Balkans was generally much more peaceful than most of Europe (no 30 years war for starters lol, no 7 years war, no religious wars, no this war or that war of whatever succession. Balkans was a sleepy hollow, marred only by ocassional turkish or habsburg or hungarian invasion, but native peoples of balkans didn't war with each other). The "tumultuous region of warring tribes" picture emerged with relatively quite recent dissolution of turkish empire in these parts. The slavic peoples were always extremely friendly between themselves, and were constantly begrudging the fact that they were forcibly divided by conquering empires who happened to draw their borders there. Yugoslavia didn't come about for no reason at all. There was a very genuine sentiment of brotherhood and friendship between previously forcibly divided peoples. What came after that and for what reasons, which bad actors abused this good sentiment for their own selfish and evil ends is another story....
Indy, thanks for this episode! Just one note: Being from my father side a Montenegrin (and partially from my mother side as well), I can tell you that myself and all my ancestors as far as my grandfather thought me, consider ourselves Serbs. In WW1, more than 50 members of my family died as soldiers in the battle of Mojkovac (which you covered in an extra episode, thank you for that!). Great poet and prince-bishop Petar || Petrovic Njegos, in his magnum opus "Gorski Vijenac", refers to himself and his people as Serbs, of Serbian origin, and not as a separate "Montenegrin" nation. So when you mention that "Montenegrin" nation was not considered in this video, it really hurts me, as it implies there is such a thing. We, Montenegrins, are Serbian highlanders that live in Montenegro (Crna Gora) which was a shelter from Ottoman torture and terror, due to it's inaccessible terrain making it much harder for Ottomans to control the territory. My tribe originates from the place called Šekular, which, according to stories passed to me from my ancestors to my grandfather to my father to me, was NEVER under Ottoman boot. Also, Montenegro is covered with monasteries and churches built by Serbian dukes and princes, an example is church Djurdjevi Stupovi, located at Berane, built in 1213 by Nemanjic dynasty. Language-wise it's Serbian language, exactly the same like the one used in Serbia or in Bosnia, with differences in accents and with some differences in nouns used for some of the vegetables (eg. pipun = dinja). So it can't be considered a different nation, if it has the same history, genetically the same, and same language.
Pretty much every national identity is going to be something that is contested. In the case of your family, they clearly lived in the area that was and is now Montenegro but considered themselves to be Serbs. Fair enough, so did a great deal many others. But it is a historical fact that Montenegrin national identity existed in this time and that this went unrecognised by Belgrade. Take, for example, the Greens/Zelenaši who fought against unification and instigated the Christmas Uprising. It is not our business to decide which national identity is more 'valid' or 'true' than the other and nor should it be for any serious historian. But Montenegrin national identity certainly did exist due to the simple fact that people believed that it did. The fact that the Serb leaders ignored this is important to discuss because it gives an idea into how differing groups in the region struggled to gain dominance by professing who belonged to 'their' nation. Certain Croat nationalists did this as well. Ante Starčević, a man who laid many of the foundations for Croat nationalism, considered Slovenes to merely be 'mountain Croats'.
@@TimeGhost Hi Indy (I assume, or maybe someone from TG team), thanks for your reply! May I highlight part of your answer: "...did exist due to the simple fact that people believed that it did. " - I don't think just because someone believed it did exist, it's proof it did. For example, people believed that Earth was flat, yet it's not. Galileo was burned at stake because "people believed" Earth was center of the universe and he claimed otherwise. I'd rather we define first what constitutes "national identity" and then go from there. When you mention Zelenasi, they were political party that had candidates for Podgorica parliament, and they had around 3,000 of members at that time. As far as I know, there were also "Bjelasi" (Whites) that were against "Zelenasi" but it's important to note that both sides were not against unification with Serbia, rather conditions under which this unification would happen. It is also important to note that Zelenasi were financially supported by Italy, which had it's territorial desires on that side of Adriatic sea, but also the daughter of King Nikola I Petrovic, Jelena Petrovic (in other words princess of Montenegrin throne) was wife of Italian King Victor Emmanuel III, who told to Italian soldiers in 1941 that "they don't go to conquer Montenegro, but to liberate it" - clearly showing rivalry between Petrovic and Karadjordjevic. Due to this connection between Zelenasi and Italian crown, one should consider that they had an agenda that had nothing to do with "national identity".
@@TimeGhost another remarkably articulate, educated, and down to earth response from the timeghost team! Especially over an issue as contentious as conflicting balkan national identites. Glad to be a sub!
I'm surprised you didn't mention the ethnic Bulgars in Macedonia, considering the sheer animosity between them given the Balkan wars and their opposition in the first world war.
Probably because Bulgarians in Macedonia tended to be considered part of Macedonians, that is South Slavic people who didn't consider themselves Serb living in Macedonia.
@@dingusdean1905 as I understand it by now they were really tired of both Serbs and Bulgarians and just wanted to not have anything more to do with either.
@@dingusdean1905 Ehhh. The idea of nationality is REAAALY young thing, especially at this time. The idea that they might be Bulgarians, Serbs or neither of the two but Macedonians is at this point less then half a century old. So saying they felt as anything other than what they are (Orthodox South Slavs in Vardar valley) is iffy.
what I live about videos like this is showing that history is not as simple as A leads to B leads to C. causal relationships from multiple angles makes studying history absolutely fascinating while at the same time a daunting task because you almost have to be a professor of economics and human behaviour. thanks for these.
The ancient babylonians would have professionally trained people use reeds and sticks to etch strange symbols into wet clay. Today we use keyboards or pencil and paper :P xD
Dear Indie, the map at 13:58 has a wrong border of Italy with the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The Istrian peninsula, Western Slovenia and islands south of Istria were part of Italy then. Otherwise I enjoy your superb work! Greetings from Hungary!
I hope Part 2 takes more time to talk about the Serbization of Macedonia and, at least, acknowledge Bulgaria and the Bulgarian minorities in Yugoslavia. Otherwise, I fear you will miss out on a lot of context when 1934 comes around.
Come to south Serbia and ask people for Bulgarians.Every family have own family story about bulgarian crimes.Surdulica massacre and massacre in Toplica.First chetniks groups was fromed in Vardar area to defend serbian villages from VRMO.And what about bulgariazation in bouth world wars in Serbia?
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Well done trying to deal with the hate when talking about the Balkans history.
Thank you for this video i have been waiting for so long
Its amusing to me that Germany just cant help but be authoritarian, even while decrying authoritarianism.
Just interested in what is meant by "SLAMMING OF MINORITIES" that is not covered by "RACISM OR XENOPHOBIA". (Asking for a friend ;-))
@@Nekromageofapocalyp As an example soneone may be a gypsy, and hate gypsys. Saying so would not be racist or xenophobic, but is still against the rules.
Fun fact: Stjepan Radić's name can be literally translated to Steve Jobs.
Yugoslavia is a complex topic and you did a great job yet again.
Stephan Jobs!
so is Radko "worker" ?
@@ICULooking yes, Radko would be a worker. Right translation of the worker is radnik.
hahaha Slobodan Milošević's name could also be transcribed as Freeman Dearfuck if we squint a little.
No it does not LITERALLY translate to Steve Jobs
Jobs is Radovi or Poslovi in Balkan languages
And Stjepan is not Steve it's more like Stephen or Stephan, Stivo is more like Steve
There is no translation for Radić to a foreing language.
Don't lie to people.
Your fact may be fun but it is not true as you would imply with your use of "literally"
Her: I want a guy who’s passionate and committed
Me trying to impress her: I’m a Balkan nationalist
underrated comment
"Balkan nationalist"
_He preaches unity will hill tribes and, may God forgive me for even saying it, _*_Bulgarians_*_ ! He is clearly not to be taken seriously._
Yeah that’s a giant meatball for sure. You’d think that’d be enough for the Balkan princess, but no. These women want more meat and less balls. I personally think there’s plenty of meat in Italy without Albania and Abyssinia, although slightly less ethnic tasting. But hey, what do I know? I’m a Lebanese cowboy...
All jokes aside, bless your people in Italy. You’ve inspired my little neighborhood in Austin Texas to all play music for each other on our porches during this nonsense. I actually teamed up with a nameless/faceless stranger playing the trumpet across the street with my gitane (Django Reinhardt) guitar. Never met him or her, but played an entire Duke Ellington song (Caravan) together. Be well amigo. 🇮🇹 🇱🇧
Bravo!
I am the duke of Luxemburg.
Legend has it that whenever Yugoslavia is mentioned, everyone from the Balkans senses it and feels compelled to go and quarrel with other people from the Balkans.
As a Bulgarian, I believe this to be true.
As someone who has no connections to the balkans and yet feels drawn to it, I also believe this to be true, same goes for Austria-Hungary but its between former AH peoples and Serbs
only people still in the Balkans. probably not all of them, idk. But Balkan people here in Germany do not care (I've worked with about 300 of them so far) Once their politicians and ideologies and movements and ...isms are far away, Balkan people need a very short time to see each other as fellow human beings. They actually enjoy eachother's company because of their more or less shared languages and culture
So much hate and unnecessary wars happened on the Balkans. It is time to heal the wounds. The division brings death.
@@istvansipos9940it's the same in Australia. they still have cultural jabs at each other but the various Balkan diaspora here largely stick together. I guess being in another part of the world helps them realise they have more in common than not
Indy says, _"Today I'm going to touch a Live wire."_ ...
Me, sees a gigantic pylon that's supposed to serve electricity to an entire region. _"Um, Indy?"_
that´s funny, you make me laugh!
_"Today_ _I'm_ _going_ _to_ _hug_ _a_ _Tesla_ _coil."_
someone watche too many times eletro boom
Must be the Pervitin
HUH? WhUT?
You thought the Weimar Republic was chaotic? Boy oh boy!
Well... at least we didn't have ACTUAL Red revolutions and militias going about doing their thing...Until WWII.
@@Blazo_Djurovic Weimar was undeniably chaotic, yes, but at least everyone wanted to be the same country. Except from Bavaria that one time.
For many European nations war didn't ended in 1918 ..
@@cwovictor3281 There were also small separatist movements in the Rhineland. Although compared to the forces dividing Yugoslavia, they were negligible, yes. :)
@@neues3691 Hmm, yes, occupation sucks. But then again, if you guys bring back the Wittelsbacher you'll be taxed to high Heaven. I mean, there's soooooo many castles still to build ;)
The Balkans?
Ah shit, here we go again
@voodoo star there is no "we". The people who lived during that period where diverse, not always linked to people today and it def. wasn't you. So saying "we" is cringey nationalistic
And there def was no "West". There where lots of diff kingdoms etc. who most of the time didn't work together
@@Solidoaf What he meant was the western protocivilization, namely the west wing Christianity, aka Catholicism.
You are not right in that there wasn't certain sense of unity in motivations and deeds among the Western European rulers and populace.
The fact that there were many rulers over a large area diminishes the apparent unity of command, but only when compared to the modern nations. There was a clear line between Byzantine Empire and the rest of the Europe that lingered long after the final fall of the Roman legacy. Heck, you could say the same thing for the Roman Empire, that there was no such thing, yet in today's terms we perceive it as a unified whole, because it largely moved throughout the history as a unit, even though it had its own share of coups and civil wars, complete set of military and economic collapses and a plethora of domestic crises.
Today even the birds know exactly what West means. It has nothing to do with how well feudal rulers respected each other, but with the deeper unspoken affiliation to a certain ancestry. Just like being a Chinese or Hindu has a deep historical context and helps to establish a cultural background of an individual, that's exactly what West means. (And I am not talking here about patriotism or nationalism, as these are completely separate and largely ideological / artificially-rationalized notions of belonging, which I do not buy.)
In a certain anthropological sense, if we (in this context, broad Europeans) are to pay homage to our long and perplexed heritage, there was definitely "West" since at least 333 CE, thus "we" helps to explain that there are those who feel that they don't belong to this type of civilization, either de facto or de jure.
So please do your best to refrain from arbitrary judging, just because you feel threatened. Belonging to a Western civilization doesn't make you immune to criticism, and your defensive rhetoric is just as cringey.
@@milanstevic8424 lol unity. Clearly you know nothing about European history. Forget the thousands of power struggles between a thousand Noble/Royal families. Forget the thousands of small and big wars that had been fought between the multitude of principalities, dukes, barons, Kings, emperor's. Forget the constant splintering of Christianity with protestantism, Anglicanism, Catharism etc.
And you completely missed my point buddy. The accusation that "the West" fucked up somehow is ignorant and inaccurate. There was no collective "West" to ask. Each king/duke or whatever made his own petty decisions with no obligations to each other. There is no East or West. Just countries laid out over large a piece of dirt. Counties near the old eastern Roman empire just had the bad luck a new superpower rose at their doorstep.
@@Solidoaf "Clearly you know nothing about European history."
Clearly. Well let's just pretend that Crusades never happened. Umm, three times. It never happened. Or let's pretend that Colonialism was a random fluke randomly repeated by several Western powers, and no one else in the world had this idea for some reason. That every country had its own little Vatican. That there were no tight familial ties in feudal times, and that English or French rulers did not rule over each other's countries, sometimes at the same time. That a huge swathe of Central Europe wasn't actually called a Holy Roman Empire, and that it wasn't in fact under a control of a big ass Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, in the name of the Vatican. That modern NATO is somehow a logical alliance that has nothing to do with more than a thousand years of European heritage. No definitely the notion of anything Western does not exist and it is all in the heads of the non-Westerners. Oh and slavery was never a thing! Oh let's just pretend. Clearly I have no clue, but you have enlightened me, and I deeply apologize and remain eternally thankful for your illuminating insight.
The history of Yugoslavia is just so fascinating. You can learn so much about culture identity, nationalism, patriotism and politics just by studying that specific region.
I live here and the only thing I learned is that I want to get out. While many people are trying to move forward and look past the past events, many more still live in the 90s or even 40s.
This is an example of Croatian news making fun of the whole country still living in 1945 and buying a new fighter squadron, you dont need to speak the language to get the point: www.rtl.hr/vijesti-hr/novosti/hrvatska/2729937/sprajc-na-samo-sebi-svojstven-nacin-prokomentirao-otvaranje-ponuda-za-nove-borbene-zrakoplove/
What did you learn of Slovenes? I'm genuinely interested.
@@angels2online That they are the smartest South Slavs of us lol
@@angels2online That they are probably the sanest of us all? Almost seems like they aren't of this peninsula?
@@SuperLusername haha, awesome segment.
This subject is like using a pogostick in a minefield while juggling bottles of nitroglycerin, blindfolded.
@dcbanacek - Wow, what an expressive description! Thanks for that.
That, sir, is an amazing comment :)
I couldn´t have put it better. Chapeau!
Not really. Unless you are Greek, Serb, Croat, Bulgarian or Turk then there is no reason for you to care and contribute to the venom. Also if you are not any of these people then you really shouldn't pass judgement on what toxic things they say to each other.
I actually have some paper money from the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Not in the best of shape, but still pretty cool.
@Mika Shaorshadze - That is so cool, real history right there at your fingertips.
Gib monies
What were the currency notes called pre-dinar?
I have a coat made in Yugoslavia when it was under Tito
"We'll talk about the balkans"
People from the Balkans: It's free real comment section civil war
@Amon Ra Nothing to be angry about, it's an objective and well prepared video.
@Amon Ra y tho? Indy and the crew do a marvelous job of being objective.
@Amon Ra I am a Serb my dude.
@Amon Ra Well, on UA-cam comment sections, between angry Serbs, ignorant Croats, virtue signalling Bosniaks and baiting Albanians, i really can't see much of a difference, they are all quite equally annoying to me personally. Of course, i will first look into my own backyard. But what triggered you to make such a comment? Mentioning how you are irritated by those angry Serbs who seem to be absent right now, is kinda inviting that sort of discussion in a way. If i was a half-asshole i'd be offended and go Gavrilo Princip on you.
Have a nice weekend anyway.
they predicted that. it was obvious, given the subject :)))) see what Indy says at the beginning of episode.
why is there not a big ass tv series of this, this stuff is better than the movies
All of my free time goes towards the TimeGhost crew, I was first pointed towards the world war 2 series, but I am all caught up on it and was recommended to come back and watch these. Your team is really doing something awesome here. You all just nail it. Thanks to entire team!
You're welcome!
Ah shit here we go again.
*slowly nods*
Yep, here we go. Bosnians and Serbians will have some fun comments.
You might watch another video.
"Today I'm going to touch a live wire"
Indy's dry wit always gives me a smile. Keep up the good work!
Thanks! We need to find humour in these situations...
Very well managed.
No ones ever going to agree on the details but you have done very well with a hotly contested topic. Great work even my kids can follow this and stay focussed.
Cheers from the better late than never independent REPUBLIC of Croatia ;).
Were now free to mess things up for ourselves for once.. & its going splendidly...
Minor detail, Radić said: ...ne srljajte kao guske u maglu.
A more accurate translation would be: Don't rush like gesses in the fog. ( there is no drunk part, but it does sound cooler)
Well, Croats didn't have a choice by that time. Bosnia and Herzegovina(most of it), Vojvodina, Montenegro, large parts of the seashore, already joined Serbia(not Yugoslavia, but actual Kingdom of Serbia, and became Serbian territory), and even Dalmatia was threatening to join unilaterally, so the Serbs were taking lands they considered theirs, Hungarians theirs, Italians their, so what choice did Croats have, since Austria-Hungary was defeated. To become divided between Italy, Serbia and Hungary, perhaps even Slovenia or Austria? Yugoslavia was their best bet, and thanks to Yugoslavia, Croatia expanded into Dalmatia and Istria.
@@Porkeater2610957 Well, there was one more option, remobilize returning Croatian soldiers to halt Italian expanse (Austria and Hungary were in an even worse state than Croatia, no real danger there). But this would be equivalent to nuclear option today, complete and utter diplomatical and economical FUBAr.
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was best out of a multitude of horrible solutions.
Might sound odd, but the expression "drunken geese" exists in the Romanian language. Might be some sort of secondary translation mishap along the way.
Honestly, I was just glad it was mentioned
I am croat and i dont know what to think of yugoslavia,on one side,joining yugoslavia makes all slavs together regional power
On the other hand,there was always danger that some radical politician like milosevic will came to power and abuse its position
I dont hate serbs,as metter of a fact i love and respect them,but they also have their dark side
USSR really hated the Kingdom of Yugoslavia because they were the last country to recognise them in 1940, since King Alexander I was bitter about the White defeat in Russian Civil War because he was in great relations with the Russian Emperor Nicholas II and even the country became a place where many Whites went and found jobs and settled. Also the King was a part of making ROCOR and there are rumours he even wanted to be the next Russian Emperor once the USSR falls
Well my great grandfather was a White Russian of noble birth that stayed in Yugoslavia after WWI, so I can second this comment.
And then Stalin is happy to have a communist puppet but it doesn't want to play by his fiddle and makes it problematic and annoying for them again.
Didn't Wrangel lead a number of White Russian forces and their families to Yugoslavia following the end of the RCW?
@@12345678900987659101 Well yeah
@@12345678900987659101 Yup, Wrangel led a fair bunch of them into Yugoslavia. Usually, the more affluent white emigrees went to western Europe, while the others stayed in Yugoslavia as king Alexander granted them citizenship because he had extremely friendly relationships with the emperor Nicolas the second earlier. Those white emigrees left a huge mark on interwar Yugoslavia, many famous architects, engineers, artists and historians were of Russian background. Having an influx of thousands of educated people in, what was basically a country with an illiteracy rate of more than 50%, was a huge deal. There are still many descendants of those white emigrees here, the most famous one being Viktor Troicki, the former top 10 tennis player.
Another fun fact: Peter Wrangel died in Belgium but during his lifetime he told others that he wished to be burried in an orthodox christian country, so he is burried in Belgrade. The house where he lived is in Sremski Karlovci, a picturesque small town just north of Belgrade. It's kind of a hidden gem in Serbia so I recommend visiting the town.
As a Croat it is really hard to find the words to describe how fascinated I am with the coverage of this topic. History is my passion and the Yugoslav 20's have always been the most complex topic I have ever come across. I must say that I am really looking forward to Indy's coverage of WW2 Yugoslavia, as through this video an unseen level of Balkan-understanding has been shown. :)
For anyone interested in other Yugoslav-themed interwar period topics I highly recommend reading about Yugoslav volunteers in the International Brigades fighting for the Spanish Republic (people who brought valuable experience back home that was necessary to wage an efficient resistance after the Axis invasion), or Fascist Italy's ambitions in the Adriatic and how they realized them through utilizing extreme nationalist sentiment ever present in the Balkans.
I heard you guys read every comment. That’s pretty cool! To the person reading this, keep up the great work! Love all your channels, and have a great day! #postivecomments
Thanks! I'll pass your message on ;)
@@TimeGhost I too appreciate your group actually honoring the interactive purpose of the internet . Whenever I see a channel with comments turned off I immediately reject it . But also when I see a neglected cesspool of a comment section I am equally turned off . Great job .
I'm glad you guys read every single comment. I stopped posting because I knew you guys have better things to do spinning TimeGhost up. I'm going to leave more positive random comments because I really dig the greater effort you guys are trying to accomplish here. You're recording history on a new medium, which makes it available to an audience never before seen by humanity. I can think of only a few efforts as noble for humanity. Keep up the great work, TimeGhost.
Thanks! We really do read every comment (eventually...)
Do you know way is there so much inflammatory comments on this topic? Despite world propaganda in media, in our schools, (meaning ex Yugoslavian) after all these years there is still propaganda in the school class. We need independent historians like Indy to present facts and only then people will start thinking with their heads. I only found Indy searching for WW1 history witch is overlooked completely by ex YU education system an i whose curious what rely hapend. That is why im still with Indy and the teem of Time Ghost preciously becose of unbiased and truly objective research. Good work. Keep it real.
the Balkans is like the hundred years war, the thirty years war, the war of the roses and the English civil war all mix together and then put on speed. :(
Include few more wars maybe french revolution, american civil war and wars for Austrian succesion and that would be nearly it xD
My "favourite" military conflict still remains War of the League of Cambrai. Open Wiki and check who fought against whom during various stages of the war and try to make sense of that :) And unlike the Thirty Years War this one lasted only eight.
Nice you mentioned Thirty years war. Schiller described how Croat mercenaries smashed the babies on stone walls. In WW2 they were the only nation that had concentration camp for children.
@@Chyornytulpan The American Civil War was a bit different, tensions and problems remained but the sides were much more reconciled afterwards than most of the others you mentioned. Some Confederate officers and soldiers (R.E. Lee's nephew Fitzhugh Lee, for example) even served in the US Army after the Civil War.
@@brucetucker4847 yeah but the war was bloody enough that was my point.. afterwards well thats outta my scope of comment
I would like to share that I, sometimes, keep you talking on my headphones and only hear words like Yuguslavia, General, Marchal... Yet is so calming and relaxing. You must have the best voice for your content.
Oh, I keep a loop sometimes. When you are real good.
Well executed, Indy and the crew!. Concise, and (at least speaking from my, Serbian, side) quite impartial. There is one interesting detail I would like to add. Much as Czechs did in their newly-formed state, Serbia also tried to push the centralist idea by simply conflating everyone into a new, integral Yugoslav identity. However, this was done so lazily and with the traditional Balkan half-a**ery, that a large majority of population received it as something "imported", "synthetic", or simply didn't receive it at all... To understand this, You need to go no further than the National Anthem of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia: its three verses were actually the beginning verses of Serbian, Croatian and Slovene anthems respectively, just spliced together - All with different tempos and melodies! Much of contemporary works of art promoting the Yugoslav aesthetic also didn't resonate quite well with the common people for much the same reasons. There was simply no way of convincing, e.g. an ethnic Slovene that the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 was a "united battle of all Slavs on a path to a new, united state in the distant future", no matter how many modernist statues the king commissions from renowned artists such as Ivan Meštrović. I highly suggest looking up this utopian "Proto-Yugoslav Kosovo myth", especially the never-built Vidovdan temple. Regards, Aleksandar of Serbia
Thank you - interesting sign off btw - just change a 'from' to an 'of' and you'd be the man...
@@TimeGhost Haha, you got it, guys :)
Thanks for so many details about history of Yugoslavia, and many good videos about Serbia in WW1 series as well. Greetings from Serbia.
Thanks! It was definitely difficult to research but we feel like we did an okay job.
Indy I respect the hell out of you as a man, a content creator, a historian, and a pragmatist. Thanks for all of... well, everything.
You know, reading comments like that sorta male it all worthwhile. Thanks for that.
Thanks Indie it's easy to see now , the origins of the terrible civil war that occurred relatively recently. Once the strong man Tito was gone , old ethnic rivalries , that had been suppressed , burst out again with tragic consequences.
Unification of Serbs and Croats had at least one good outcome : I was born :)
Positives to everything!
I absolutely love this series. I have been to both Macedonia and Kosovo, as a Soldier in the US Army in 1999. It is a beautiful area and now understand more of why my unit was sent there. Thank you.
It amazes me how far reaching this conflict was and still is to this day. Even as someone with no direct connection to the region (a french canadian) I have close friends who lost family members in the Yugoslav wars and members of my own family involved in the nato missions in the region. It shows how there’s no such thing as a “local” conflict in the modern era.
You might want to change "civil war" into just "war". Croats, Slovenes and Bosniaks see it as a Serbian agression (so not a civil war), while Serbs see it as a civil war.
If you just change it to "war" you will speak in a more neutral manner.
The Region of former Yugoslavia changed alot of countries worldwide.
Alot of UN missions where in the region.
It is sad to see that a region with beautifull nature has become a battleground for hate.
We can only hope that the worst is behind and the Region can go peacefull further forwards.
Evilsamar Good point, I used the term civil war not as a way of assigning blame or justification. But Yugoslavia was a sovereign country with war breaking out between different factions within itself. Kinda the definition of civil war. Makes an interesting distinction though, do other conflicts have the same debate as to what they should be called. For example I imagine a Tsarist Russian in 1919 wouldn’t call the conflict in Russia at the time “civil war” they probably saw it as revolutionaries bent on destroying there country. Where as a Bolshevik would have seen it as a war to spread the revolution and topple a unfair government. At the end of the day though does it really matter what prefix is used? War is still war...
@@calebminor6661 I dont know about other wars, just this one, since I live here. Many (maybe most) Croats, Slovenes, Bosniaks, Macedonians didnt see Yugoslavia as their country so view it as an agression to re-occupy the liberated land and not as a civil war.
I dont know about other wars.
@Marko Djokovic its a strange way of fighting for your life by leveling a hospital in Vukovar and shelling a UNESCO world heritage site (Dubrovnik) for days with heavy artillery.
This series gets better with every episode. Narrated not like a history documentary, but with all the pomp and suspense of a well crafted novel.
thank you for your appreciation!
Jako vas volim i cijenim, mislim da radite odličan posao i čim skupim koju kunu postajem pokrovitelj vašeg kanala.
Do tada pozdrav iz sunčanog i vrućeg Splita.
:-)
I really love and appreciate what are you all doing, I think you are doing a great job and as soon as I collect some kunas I will become the patron of your channel.
Until then, greetings from sunny and hot Split.
:-)
Thank you very much for your support!
Thanks for keeping history relevant... Regardless of the UA-cam censorship. A truly noble cause. Society needs folks like you.
Thanks. We try.
Thanks, we try our best.
Hello Indy! Congrats on the fantastic work, and finally an episode about us Southern Slavs.
I only have one comment for this video, you misspelled "Stepjan Radić" as the proper spelling and pronunciation is "Stjepan Radić"
Greetings from Croatia!
Thanks for the kind words!
And yes a lot of people have pointed that out...very embarrassing on our parts.
Where have I been?! I've just stumbled upon this series and your channels. I've come late to the party. But, I'm thoroughly enjoying every episode and discovering how much I didn't know. Thank you TimeGhost team for making these fascinating and entertaining bite sized portions of history. They help explain what happened, how we got there, and how we've gotten to where we are now. Bravo!
@rtpl100 We're glad you finally found us! Check out all our episodes here and over on our WW2 channel covering the war week-by-week. Subscribe and stay tuned!
Great episode on a very controversial subject. Keep up the good work!
Thank you. Was a beast to research.
Hey Indy, found you on Sabaton History, got hooked on the Great War history and havent stopped looking it up. Enjoying these videos on your channel immensely. As far as your disclaimer about conduct here in the comments, it makes me sad. Folks can be upset but bashing others behind the veil of anonymity can't be tolerated. Thank you for your vigilance and hard stance on this!
Wow, you don't require such disclaimers and warnings about any other place.
Ekhem... Greco - Turkish war, Transcaucasia, Northern Ireland at some point... the list goes on :)
Well the balkans are kind of (in)famous for regional and ethnic tension.
I mean there is a process of violent regional self-destruction named after the Balkans - balkanization.
The emotions and thoughts from back then are still well and alive today only fueled by the conflicts in the 40s and 90s
This actually helps me understand the Yugoslavia and Bosnia stuff from the 90s. Thanks
You're welcome!
Im partly croatian, sebian and austrian and i wont say who is right and who is wrong. Episode is great and i cant wait to see 2nd episode.
Mate, this is history based on facts...no one is asking your opinion what is right or what is wrong...
That portrait of Alexander reminds me of Peter Sellers. 😄
Thank you time ghost hitory that you done something about the Balkans. Hi from Croatia :-)
Greeting from American chetnik. I don't hate Croats since they are cool people along with the rest of the people of former Yugoslav nations. What happened in our history is a mess but we need to move forward! :)
@@lenini056 Totally true man, I think that too, thats why we are so back, cause we are moving all the times to ww2 and stuff, but we need to move foward, and be friendly.
Finally, someone actually covers this bit of history. Yugoslavia is basically a historic battle royale and it's nice to see people not from the Balkans getting a quality resource
This video has to 721 viewers and ZERO dislikes.
Has the Balkans become a symbol of friendship, or what?
Perhaps I should be more optimistic.
Western Balkans*
When talking about Balkans, people simply forget that Greece, Albania, Bulgaria and a large chunk of Turkey(tho more numerous than most of Yugoslavia) are also Balkans :D
What’s your point?
Yugoslavia may have been located in the western part of the Balkans.
But the sub-region still has it’s neighbors.
Without the Turks, Albanians and Greeks in south. And the Bulgarians and Romanians in the east. The Balkans would never be whole.
@@Porkeater2610957 Romania too is culturally considered to be Balkans.
@@justinian-the-great Culturally yes, Geographically no, except for Dobruja and Romanian seashore.
Technically speaking, large parts of Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia are in Central Europe, and not in the Balkans.
@@Porkeater2610957 Clearly there is only one way to solve it. Make a BIGGER Yugoslavia covering the entire of the Balkans. So we can all be one nice murderous familly sitting atop a barrel of FOOF.
WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG! :D
Although, via cursory study of Yugoslavia, (place tongue in cheek) I knew there just might have been a problem or two, (remove tongue) I had no idea just how complex that situation was! ... and I'm sure that it was much more so, as "Time Ghost History" had such a short time with which to explain those detailed and at times confusing events. But, I think that all viewers would agree that the staff writers of TGH did an outstanding job of helping their audience to better understand this Versailles Treaty created powder keg. - complimenti a te, Indy, and all of the other awesome staff members!
Great vid, although it ignored the part where the National Council of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs in Zagreb that is referred to in this vid actually became independent from Austria as the “State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs” on October 29, which actually remained in conflict with the Entente despite its intention to join with the Entente’s Serbia.
While the Croats didn’t want to fight the Entente any longer, the Italians bombed their entire fleet to shreds. This is because it had been the Austrian-Hungarian fleet and Italy saw it as a threat, even if the Croats intended to let Serbia have it after the merger. I actually first learned about this in a video Indy did for “that other channel”
Then finally the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs merged into the Kingdom of Serbia (which had puppetized and then absorbed Montenegro already) to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes as is detailed in this vid.
Serbia didnt puppetized or absorb Montenegro, they had national assembly which passed the law that will unite with Serbia,Montenegro or Crna Gora was always serbian,in montenegro first ever serbian official state was made,Montenegrin King Nikola is grandfather to Serbian King Aleksandar which this video talks
@@slobodanstojanovic8125 the Montenegrin royal house prior to the war, the house of Petrović, was not reinstated by the the new authorities set up in Montenegro by the Serb forces, the Grand National Assembly of Montenegro. Instead they held a vote on union with Serbia, and recognized the Serbian royal house of Karadjordjević as the sovereign of Montenegro. This severely angered the Italians, who were nearby after setting up an Italian protectorate in Albania, as the deposed house of Petrović had connections to the Italian royal house of Savoy. Italy sent warships to threaten their nominal Serb allies but didn’t go any further, especially as they were increasingly tied down in the Albanian Vlora War, eventually being forced out of Albania in 1920 (though they’d by back in 1939). Montenegro thus became part of the Karadjordjdvić crown lands, until the royal house suffered a similar fate in WWII to what had happened to the Montenegrin Petrović house in WWI: namely having their government-in-exile be usurped by events on the ground, this time by the takeover of Tito’s Communist partisans.
@@TheLocalLt You are right over the target I suspect you might catch some flak :)
This entire series is long coming. Thank you for exposing the history that shaped our world. We were not told about most of the things you discuss. As a history buff, I am loving your conversation.
Thank you for a great episode! I would really like to see (for the sake of unbiased approach) if you could find and tell the world in the next episode the exact Stjepan Radić's last words to Puniša Račić before he (*SPOILER ALERT*) assassinated him...If I remember well, it went something like this:
P. Račić: "We Serbs should have a privileged status in Yugoslavia since we liberated you all, so you Croats are in debt with us".
S.Radić: "OK, so tell me, how much do you ask, so we pay you for your "liberation" and you just let us be!" (Basically a prequel of the: "I'll pay you 50 bucks to f*** off" meme...)
P.Račić: *pulls the trigger*...
Thank you again, TimeGhost History, for touching the livewire in quite an unbiased show. I enjoyed it very much. Well done!
Isnt it more like
"We have spilt blood to liberate you and you are dicks"
"How much for your blood he he"
*gets flashbacks from the war and friends dying* "One 9mm"
Thank you Indy and all the people that works on this channel and The Great War channel, rarely we see channel that is this factual,true,deep,non-biased...Regards from Serbia
Thank you - that means a lot.
Read "Thirty years war" by Schiller. There you can find roots of behavior that led to worst death camps of WW2 in Nazi Croatia.
This channel gives the very best summation of the causes leading the world into its darkest period in history. It is a pure historical narrative.
It never ceases to amaze me how people , especialky those who think history is irrelevant and boring, fail to understand that we must learn from our mistakes, so that we do not repeat them. We can not change the past, but we can change the future.
This channel can help change the world, if people focus on the truth of the past and put away outdated ideas.
Thanks!
please, consider an episode about czechoslovakia. how it was created and how it proceeded. compared to all other post war countries it was considered as a real success story. though slovak now, i´m proud of my czecho-slovak heritage.
Czech or Slovak? :)
Indy and Company... thank you for your balanced reporting of history. I love that you state the facts from all side and leave interpretation up to the audience. History, politics, and people are complicated and you handle it with grace.
And I thought the backstabbing in Crusader Kings II was explosive, guessing I was wrong...
Yo look for bulgarians to see what real backstabbing is...
Love the Show! We follow Indy since The Great War show. I watched with my dad. I have to translate it for him. Hope you one day release the episodes with Spanish subtitles for people who doesn't know English. Keep the good work. Greetings from Chile.
On some videos there are Spanish subs provided by the community. Thank you for watching and making it available to your dad as well!
Will you do a video about post great war Austria? (political, social and economic situation, the Civil War in the 30s and the aunchluss)
Yes, there is one in the works so watch this space!
I really like how you guys approach rocky topics that could spark toxicity and hatred. Shows how professional you are! I appreciated the episode as always, keep up the great work on WW2 and timeghost, love ya
Thanks! This was definitely a difficult one to research and navigate.
I think that what I'm going to say it's not against your rules. If it is I apologise in advance. But the inhabitants of what is now recognized as North Macedonia should not be referred to as Macedonians. That's because the Prespa agreement between Greece and North Macedonia says that the citizens of this country (North Macedonia) have nothing to do with the first-original Macedonians (the ancient Greek Macedonians) and that the citizens of North Macedonia shall be referred to as citizens of North Macedonia and not simply as Macedonians.
Prespa Agreement is recognized by both Parliaments, as they voted for it (Valantis Athanasiou)
I love how you felt the need to worn us Yugoslavs to be nice in the comments. Keep up with a good work.. Love your channels.
The problem is fog or no fog, geese are still geese ...
AMAZING! Indy is the best!
We're going to need an epic cat video to recover from this one...
...and a vacuum.
Indy Neidell you are a Saint amongst men! Thank you for your History series!
I think it's pretty irresponsible to try and force so many different kinds of people to so drastically make up with their perceived enemies and become friends. If the king had made concessions to parliament and adopted a federalist system, there could have been future reforms that led to future centralization. (once time has passed, and old wounds are truly healed)
But to try to force such closeness so quickly just seems foolish.
IMHO, I prefer a more centralized society, but only when it can be stable. Stability, long term, is the most important thing. Economic development is great, but when that school gets blown up it does no good (for example).
Preach it brother!
Easy to criticize forced centralization/unification but if its between an plausible if unstable unified gov or very likely genocidal foreign occupation people tend to go for the rush job even if it doesn't prevent the genocide. Such are people
Yes you got to start loosely and then slowly centralize. Build a concept of siblinghood before you put the systems in place.
Look at Germany it could not have united to way it did if it didn't have almost a thousand years of the holy Roman empire and the confederation of the Rhine to fall back on.
Unity takes time.
It also takes being willing allow failure confident that if the worst comes to worst you can start over from a more advantageous position than you did last time. There have been any number of pan Euopean movement before the EU for an example, they failed but we picked up the pieces and started over. Maybe this time will fail too and if it does we got to let it fails and then start over.
Meanwhile Yugoslavia did the same thing the U.S. did they forced the separatists back into line and in the US the divide remains to this day, in Yugoslavia it tore the country apart.
@@virutech32 You bring up foreign intervention. Stability is important to combat that. If you don't have a stable country, it more likely to collapse, and you can't fight a war if your country collapsed.
A federalist system wouldnt prevent them from fighting back and defending themselves.
EDIT: And you may just get Anschlushed if the govt is unstable enough.
@@virutech32 And another thought. It wasn't exactly a "rush" job. The king wanted the be in control of the country. He didn't want to give up power to the provinces and to the parliament.
To me it seems it wasn't done because "This is faster" but because "I want power".
Thank you everyone for all the hard work on these videos! It's really appreciated!
First off just want to say I'm a long time fan since the literal first episode of TGW and will remain one. I'm not going to go into detail until I watch the second part of ''Enter Yugoslavia'', just wanted to say it seems there's a little bias towards Croats in this video, or better yet, anti Serb bias. Interestingly, the reason why it was called in the beginning The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and not Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, Slovenes,Bosniaks, Montenegrins, Macedonias (and so on) is because there was no such thing as a Bosniak, Montenegrin or Macedonian ethnicity back then. You're probably thinking if there was a country named Montenegro aren't there ethnic Montenegrins living in it? Actually no. The wast majority of people who lived back then thought of themselves as Serbs much like the majority of people in Montenegro today. The social construct of the Bosniak, Macedonian and Montenegrin ethnicity was the product of communists during the late phase of communist Yugoslavia and was cemented by propaganda during the Yugoslav wars of the 90's.
P.S : Keep making quality videos like this one and there's no doubt you'll grow and reach all of your goals. Cheers
This was a tough episode to write. First of all some of the events are quite confusing as it is. Second of all many of them have been so thoroughly wrapped in waves of biased historiography that at times we had to quadruple check completely contradictory renditions of the same chain of events. Last but not least it’s hard to be completely balanced in such a short time.
While it was intended to be one episode originally, Spartacus and Francis quickly agreed it needed to be split to allow more time and space for the narrative. Athough we were not all too happy with that as our original goal was to tell the story of how and why Aleksander bacame the absolute monarch of Yugoslavia in a fair and complete way. In the end Francis, Spartacus, and Indy sat together and went through the script repeatedly line by line to find the right balance and remove anything that was speculative, so that we focus solely on events and the values of the people involved, rather than values transposed to them posthumously. We hope that with the conclusion of the second episode you will agree that we found a fair and accurate balance.
@@TimeGhost I understand it was a tough episode to write, these were just my two cents plus a little historical trivia. Keep making videos like this one and we'll keep sharing them (because UA-cam's ''algorithm'' is ''working fine''). Cheers!
This series is pure gold. thumbs up for all the hard work and effort poured it.
Thank you for your kind words!
You could emphasize more that Croats and Slovenians really had no choice in 1918, Italy as winner nation wanted to take whole eastern Adriatic which she was promised by secret London agreement in 1915. That would left Croatia and Slovenia without major part of their ethnic territory. Serbia as winner nation offered protection and chance to keep those areas together in one country. Serbs speak same language and not to underestimate Croats and Slovenians were mostly on Insonzo / Soča front during the war basically kicking Italian ass for 3 years and now to lose all their territories to Italy was unacceptable to most.
Serbs speak very similar language as Croats and somewhat similar as Slovenes. Serbian and Croatian are approximately 90% the same while Serbian and Slovene are less than 50% same. Anyway these 3 languages are distinct.
Nice! No toxic waste in the comments. I wish other sites were like this. It is difficult to read dispicable and disgraceful comments from anyone and not respond in the same way. A respectable debate is most welcome. Usually people learn from such content.
I think we can all agree on one thing:
King Alexander was handsome. Like, geez, just look at his moustache and glasses! The man had style and a pleasant face to complement it.
@Tomislav Vrban Hitler similarities? Not really. I don't see anything on him that resembles Hitler. No similar facial features, nor eyes.
Is that some bias against Alexander? It can be felt from your comment. The guy wasn't evil. I mean, if Alexander was a dictator who tried to unify the people by force, then what was Tito? It was foolishness to try and unify different cultures under the same state. The only way you could do it is by an iron fist and suppression - what Tito did. But at least Alexander and the monarchy tried to keep some semblance of democracy.
@Tomislav Vrban guy spent time in jail until ww2?
Pfff. Even Conrad and Willy looked better
@Tomislav Vrban ohh. Thats true. That was not even d of democracy.
@Tomislav Vrban So far in the story from the video, Radic was kind of an asshole. But I agree that it goes against democratic values to kill your political opponents. But this is also one of the major problems of the constitutional monarchy: the opposition. Just like Indy said, the opposition didn't really work towards a strong, unified state. I mean, it's the same today. Democracy has been a huge divide for the society. Just look at USA, where two different parties just squabble for control and undo what the previous government has accomplished. I'm not buying into the story that Radic was in the right, but neither was the radical party. The whole unification was kind of a bad idea to begin with, but neither parties did anything to make things better for everyone. Radic cared just about Croats, the radical party just about Serbs - neither about Yugoslavia.
I have always enjoyed your presentations. Thank you for the alternative presentation of history to your many viewers.
Why is this episode called "1929" and not "1924 part X"?
I really admire your stance on stopping arguments before they erupt. Very Captain Picard of yall.
Great episode. Although the Serbian/Croatian drama is put maybe too much to the extreme. Note that the first Yugoslavia died because of the war, while the second just collapsed. Italy was the biggest threat for Yugoslavia.
About the Yugoslav political life, it must be said that each nation had it's own drama. Usually it was centralist liberals/Serbian nationalists against Catholic or just Christian farmer parties. Note that the Communist party was very much unimportant (which is interesting for what happened after the war). The biggest Social-democratic party was present in Slovenia, which is mainly due to Slovenia being the industrial powerhouse of the Kingdom.
Yugoslavia had real problems when it came to the balance of power, since it was stuck still in the federalist vs centralist debate and lacked any major left force. In fact progressive policies were mostly concentrated in the north of the country with Christian Socialism and Social-democracy.
Anyways really a good episode, which tells the truth, can't wait for the second.
We focus on the "Serbian/Croatian drama" because it encapsulates the very battle of federalism vs. centralism that was at the core of Yugoslavia's problems and that you describe. This is not a value judgement on our part. It is something well recognised and discussed in historiography.
Maybe with more space this could have been fleshed out a bit but we already had to split this into two episodes and had to do everything we could not to make the topic too unwieldy.
@@TimeGhost Completely understandable. Although within the Federalist "side" there were also the JMO (muslim organisation) and other minorities. But it doesn't matter, since you mentioned them and that's already a really good thing, usually people just skip through them. Keep up the great work :D !
In fact, as far as I know, the Communists were a major political force in the country before they were banned and pushed into illegal activity. It was this very illegal activity that allowed them to organize effective resistance in the war afterwards. Also, the socialist movement had a great influence on the development of Serbia, throughout much of its modern history, before the Great War. In fact, the Radical Party itself stems from the socialist activities of Svetozar Markovic, Pasic being one of his disciples, since their time in Zurich. Unfortunately, he gradually turned away from fighting for the cause and made his stay in power the primary goal of all his future efforts (the memoires of Djordje Karadjordjevic gives a nice illustration of that). I only recently discovered this channel, so I have no idea if there are episodes about this part of our history (I suppose not), but they certainly offer a lot of interesting material, not only for Serbia, but other small nations as well. Markovic was a hell of a smart man that gave invaluable remarks on the local mentality and produced some pretty unique views of the future of the Balkans. Unfortunately, he died way too young and who knows what would have happened if this was not the case. Even so, he managed to do a lot more than most politicians before or after him did in their lifetime, not only in Serbia, but in general.
Indy I have always thought the way you and team deal with the comment section to be very fair. Just want to say I appreciate that.
Thanks for the encouragement.
2:47 Not to mention the Croats to a great extent fought on the Austrian side against the serbs. Sure they have had their own pan South Slavic movement, illyrianism, but they meant to for their version of Yugoslavia to be croat led not Serb led.
It's in many ways similair to the scandianvisnism of the 19th century and earlier. Both Danes and Swedes have pushed for it but when they're not the ones in ascendance they don't want it because it means it would be dominated by the other.
Good notice.
Many avoid the core essence: battle was fought for dominant power between Croats and Serbs.
Dictatorship of Alexander was the same balance factor as the dictatorship of Tito in post-WWII Yugoslavia.
They tried to balance different nationalism in the state. One by pan yugoslav idea, and other by socialist idea.
The problem isnt even that as much, power can be shared. The real problem is that Yugoslavian couture... is noting more then Serbian re-branded. If it was truly something new instead us trying to turn us into Serbs, it might have worked out(ofc with a normal government)
One small correction,there were no ,,montenegrin,, ethnic tensions :) Montenegrins indientified themselves as Serbs in 1920-es,so they were rightfuly represented as Serbs in the name of the country :) Conflict in Montenegro was not ethnicly based but it was more of a dinastic struggle between two Serb royal houses that ruled then kingdoms of Serbia and Montenegro,two internationally reckognized Serb states :)
Otherwise great job as always,keep up your good work!Cheers from Montenegro!
What is the difference between a dictator like the ones in the Baltic countries in the 1920s and '30s and a monarch like Alexander I of Serbia, again? Asides from titles of course.
Its presumed(usually by parties interested in opholding a monarchy) that a monarch has some sort of, usually divine or otherwise dogmatic, justification for ruling & an established system for choosing them & keeping them in power. "Dictators" are basically just the first step in a line of monarchs since they almost always pass their authority on to family or close friends. The only difference is rhetorical as far as i can tell
Nothing really.
A monarch can be a dictator, and some dictators are monarchs. They're referring to different aspects - dictatorship is about the style of government, monarchy about its legitimisation/justification.
Dictators rule by force alonewhile monarchs answer to and draws power from the concept of a higher power that power can be god, constitution, or tradition. But that other force is what sets monarchy apart from dictatorship.
@@virutech32 it anything but rethorical. If you take power by force you have to maintain it by ever greater amounts of force. Then you need to start placating those who help you have that force while also not allowing them enough power to usurp you. In a monarchy th he power of the crown does not come from force but from continuation.
@@DaDunge that's why they're a first step. Lines of succession don't go back arbitrarily far. At some point every monarchy started with a lucky, charismatic, &| militarily gifted dictator taking over lands by force. So they're basically dictatorships that have survived long enough to legitimize their conquest with tradition & propaganda.
Thank you for explaining a very complex subject clearly without any spin.
Thanks! This was a tough one to get to the bottom of.
Jiminy Friggin' Crickets this stuff gets complicated. I though European history was complex.
This IS European history
and we are talking about couple of yrs here, imagine the whole history,Churchil once said for Serbs, they are working over-time to produce surplus of world history...
I'm from ex-Yugoslavia, and there are a lot of details in this video I didn't know about. Thank you so much for making this! You guys are awesome!
Thanks! Good to know you got something out of it :)
In my Bulgarian opinion some terms are unacceptable, BUT that are simply tha Balkans.
And please make a episode for Bulgaria and it's connections with Yugoslavia and in particular the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation's ties with Bulgaria and it's history.
As a proud Bulgarian I accept that the Balkans are a mess.
Sorry if the comment is unapropriate and please, if you are deleting this comment at last point my mistakes. Thank you.
It amuses me to no end how Indy manages to correctly spell all names of Yugoslav people second to no other English speaking narrator!
a BIG thumbs up from an ex Yugoslavian
105 likes and yet no dislikes - impressive.
I have friends and relatives from Yugoslavia. After helping a Bosnian friend, I asked him about the intense fighting and hostilities among the different groups in Yugoslavia.
He said simply that some 800 years ago, the Turks took children from each of the group's back to Turkey and raised them with the Turkish codes of honor and vengeance and then returned the children to Yugoslavia.
That is perhaps a simplistic view, but it explains the politics of my Yugoslavian relatives and friends.
So simplistic as to be dangerous.
It's okay to try and work out how to explain such a complicated situation in a relatively plain manner, but placing the entirety of blame on the Ottomans is not only wrong but part of the wider anti-Bosnian narratives that are seen in the Balkans.
The Balkan nations exist. Their eyes slowly turn upon one another, the rest of Europe looking on.
"I think you and I are destined to do this forever." They all say to one another at once.
And that's the Balkans my friends.
That's a common view of Balkans which is in fact wholly inaccurate. For most of post-Roman history Balkans was generally much more peaceful than most of Europe (no 30 years war for starters lol, no 7 years war, no religious wars, no this war or that war of whatever succession. Balkans was a sleepy hollow, marred only by ocassional turkish or habsburg or hungarian invasion, but native peoples of balkans didn't war with each other). The "tumultuous region of warring tribes" picture emerged with relatively quite recent dissolution of turkish empire in these parts. The slavic peoples were always extremely friendly between themselves, and were constantly begrudging the fact that they were forcibly divided by conquering empires who happened to draw their borders there.
Yugoslavia didn't come about for no reason at all. There was a very genuine sentiment of brotherhood and friendship between previously forcibly divided peoples. What came after that and for what reasons, which bad actors abused this good sentiment for their own selfish and evil ends is another story....
This is great, I watched all your episodes. Keep up the good work. Greetings from Croatia!
You're welcome! Good to have you here.
*LOOKING AT THE BALKANS*
Thomas had never seen such a mess.
Well the Brexit situation is getting quite close... and we in the Balkans are just grabbing out popcorn, like you did in the nineties ;)
Indy, thanks for this episode! Just one note: Being from my father side a Montenegrin (and partially from my mother side as well), I can tell you that myself and all my ancestors as far as my grandfather thought me, consider ourselves Serbs. In WW1, more than 50 members of my family died as soldiers in the battle of Mojkovac (which you covered in an extra episode, thank you for that!). Great poet and prince-bishop Petar || Petrovic Njegos, in his magnum opus "Gorski Vijenac", refers to himself and his people as Serbs, of Serbian origin, and not as a separate "Montenegrin" nation. So when you mention that "Montenegrin" nation was not considered in this video, it really hurts me, as it implies there is such a thing. We, Montenegrins, are Serbian highlanders that live in Montenegro (Crna Gora) which was a shelter from Ottoman torture and terror, due to it's inaccessible terrain making it much harder for Ottomans to control the territory. My tribe originates from the place called Šekular, which, according to stories passed to me from my ancestors to my grandfather to my father to me, was NEVER under Ottoman boot. Also, Montenegro is covered with monasteries and churches built by Serbian dukes and princes, an example is church Djurdjevi Stupovi, located at Berane, built in 1213 by Nemanjic dynasty. Language-wise it's Serbian language, exactly the same like the one used in Serbia or in Bosnia, with differences in accents and with some differences in nouns used for some of the vegetables (eg. pipun = dinja). So it can't be considered a different nation, if it has the same history, genetically the same, and same language.
Pretty much every national identity is going to be something that is contested. In the case of your family, they clearly lived in the area that was and is now Montenegro but considered themselves to be Serbs. Fair enough, so did a great deal many others. But it is a historical fact that Montenegrin national identity existed in this time and that this went unrecognised by Belgrade. Take, for example, the Greens/Zelenaši who fought against unification and instigated the Christmas Uprising.
It is not our business to decide which national identity is more 'valid' or 'true' than the other and nor should it be for any serious historian. But Montenegrin national identity certainly did exist due to the simple fact that people believed that it did. The fact that the Serb leaders ignored this is important to discuss because it gives an idea into how differing groups in the region struggled to gain dominance by professing who belonged to 'their' nation. Certain Croat nationalists did this as well. Ante Starčević, a man who laid many of the foundations for Croat nationalism, considered Slovenes to merely be 'mountain Croats'.
@@TimeGhost Hi Indy (I assume, or maybe someone from TG team), thanks for your reply! May I highlight part of your answer: "...did exist due to the simple fact that people believed that it did. " - I don't think just because someone believed it did exist, it's proof it did. For example, people believed that Earth was flat, yet it's not. Galileo was burned at stake because "people believed" Earth was center of the universe and he claimed otherwise. I'd rather we define first what constitutes "national identity" and then go from there. When you mention Zelenasi, they were political party that had candidates for Podgorica parliament, and they had around 3,000 of members at that time. As far as I know, there were also "Bjelasi" (Whites) that were against "Zelenasi" but it's important to note that both sides were not against unification with Serbia, rather conditions under which this unification would happen. It is also important to note that Zelenasi were financially supported by Italy, which had it's territorial desires on that side of Adriatic sea, but also the daughter of King Nikola I Petrovic, Jelena Petrovic (in other words princess of Montenegrin throne) was wife of Italian King Victor Emmanuel III, who told to Italian soldiers in 1941 that "they don't go to conquer Montenegro, but to liberate it" - clearly showing rivalry between Petrovic and Karadjordjevic. Due to this connection between Zelenasi and Italian crown, one should consider that they had an agenda that had nothing to do with "national identity".
@@TimeGhost another remarkably articulate, educated, and down to earth response from the timeghost team! Especially over an issue as contentious as conflicting balkan national identites. Glad to be a sub!
I'm surprised you didn't mention the ethnic Bulgars in Macedonia, considering the sheer animosity between them given the Balkan wars and their opposition in the first world war.
Bigest crime in yugoslavia was being bulgarian :) thats why they invetnted mace.. #$% I am sory what? Nothing :D
Probably because Bulgarians in Macedonia tended to be considered part of Macedonians, that is South Slavic people who didn't consider themselves Serb living in Macedonia.
@@Blazo_Djurovic Good point, but I'd imagine given their ethnicity and how recently Macedonia was incorperated, they'd see themselves more as Bulgars
@@dingusdean1905 as I understand it by now they were really tired of both Serbs and Bulgarians and just wanted to not have anything more to do with either.
@@dingusdean1905 Ehhh. The idea of nationality is REAAALY young thing, especially at this time. The idea that they might be Bulgarians, Serbs or neither of the two but Macedonians is at this point less then half a century old. So saying they felt as anything other than what they are (Orthodox South Slavs in Vardar valley) is iffy.
what I live about videos like this is showing that history is not as simple as A leads to B leads to C. causal relationships from multiple angles makes studying history absolutely fascinating while at the same time a daunting task because you almost have to be a professor of economics and human behaviour. thanks for these.
You're very welcome! Thanks for the kind words!
I dont know how you can remember all those facts
The ancient babylonians would have professionally trained people use reeds and sticks to etch strange symbols into wet clay. Today we use keyboards or pencil and paper :P xD
Dear Indie, the map at 13:58 has a wrong border of Italy with the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. The Istrian peninsula, Western Slovenia and islands south of Istria were part of Italy then. Otherwise I enjoy your superb work! Greetings from Hungary!
Yugoslavia would've beaten France in the World Cup...
All jokes aside great video!
Blessed timeline
Both the 2018 and 1998 France
I still think that the 1998 Suker team was better than 2018.
Thanks!
As usual great work Indy and company hope you're doing well
Uh oh. Controversy in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. Where is Conrad von Hötzendorf when you need him?!
Love your documentaries.. you make an intensely complex subject even more interesting
I hope Part 2 takes more time to talk about the Serbization of Macedonia and, at least, acknowledge Bulgaria and the Bulgarian minorities in Yugoslavia. Otherwise, I fear you will miss out on a lot of context when 1934 comes around.
Come to south Serbia and ask people for Bulgarians.Every family have own family story about bulgarian crimes.Surdulica massacre and massacre in Toplica.First chetniks groups was fromed in Vardar area to defend serbian villages from VRMO.And what about bulgariazation in bouth world wars in Serbia?
I'm liking your channel more with every video. Great work TGH team.
Thank you for your support, we appreciate it greatly!