Free Republic

Monument to the victims of the Kragujevac Massacre of Serbian civilians by the Nazis in October of 1941. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.The policy was the Nazi response to the first successful organized uprising in occupied Europe. The Serbian resistance forces under the command of Serbia’s General Draza Mihailovich not only threatened Germany’s southern flank in Europe and her occupation of Serbia after Yugoslavia fell to Hitler in April of 1941, but critically delayed Hitler’s planned attack on the Soviet Union that summer. The Germans retaliated, but it wasn’t in the usual way - man to man, soldier to soldier....

Bosnian War (1992-1995 Bosnia, Intelligence and Clinton's Presidency CIA, State Department, Department of Defense & White House Files2,346 pages of CIA, State Department, DOD, National Security Council and White House files concerning the Bosnian War, CIA Intelligence, Clinton Administration's policy decisions, and the Dayton Peace Accords.This collection includes many documents that were not released by the CIA until October 1, 2013. The documents date from 1990 to 1997. The focus of this collection of files is a set of documents which reveal the role of the intelligence services in informing the Clinton Administration about the war in the Balkans. The...

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife descend the steps of the City Hall, Sarajevo, and innocent bystander Ferdinand Behr, inset Photo: © IWM History has not been kind to the teenager who triggered the First World War by assassinating Archduke Franz Ferdinand on a sunny Sunday morning in Sarajevo. So colossal was the impact of his actions and so modest his backwoodsman background that the story of Gavrilo Princip has often been overlooked, misrepresented and misunderstood. Muddled theories, often as batty as they are unverifiable, have circulated ever since Princip fired his Browning 9mm pistol on June 28,...

Aleksandra's Note: I had the pleasure of meeting RCAF veteran Norman Reid in Chicago in 1994 at the 50th anniversary celebration of the Halyard Mission, as part of a week long world-wide commemoration of the 50th anniversary of D-Day. He impressed me as a kind, soft-spoken, unassuming gentleman who escorted me to the D-Day activities on Lake Michigan that same week. I had hoped to keep in touch with Mr. Reid in the following years. I do not know if he is still alive and hope that if anyone does know, they will get in touch with me.These are the...

Curtis Diles' yard in Ohio with 500 American flags honoring the Mihailovich Serbs of WWII. Photo courtesy of the Diles family, date unknown. Aleksandra's Note:American WWII Air Force veteran Curtis "Bud" Diles, one of the "Forgotten 500" of the great Halyard Mission rescue operation, turned 88 on July 15, 2013. He has lived a full, rich life, and to his great credit to this day he has never forgotten what was done for him almost 70 years ago, a lifetime ago, by strangers whose language and culture he did not share and in whose land he had become a "visitor"...

The overwhelming reception for his forthcoming biopic about Nikola Tesla has led American director Michael Anton to deliver a new name to sum up the iconic nature of the man and his unique legacy. “Nikola Tesla does not need a controversial label,’ said Michael Anton. “The fact that his name is not as familiar as it should be is one of the issues we intend to address with this film, which has progressed from a strong script with a modest budget into a potential voice that will finally break the great silence that is the history of Nikola Tesla. “From...

"Were we to seize and eliminate from our industrial world the result of Mr. Tesla's work, the wheels of industry would cease to turn, our electric cars and trains would stop, our towns would be dark and our mills would be idle and dead. His name marks an epoch in the advance of electrical science."Vice President Behrend of the Institute of Electrical EngineersNikola Tesla symbolizes a unifying force and inspiration for all nations in the name of peace and science. He was a true visionary far ahead of his contemporaries in the field of scientific development. New York State and...

Field of Kosovo Peonies / Painting by Nadezda Petrovic "...A century later, we still do not know with certainty who knew what, and when they knew it."David FromkinJune 28th is a sacred day in Serbian history. It is on this day, "Vidovdan", many years ago, that the Christian Serbs, under the command of their beloved leader St. Lazar, sacrificed their entire army of 70,000 men on the fields of Kosovo, fighting against the Ottoman Turks, the Islamic army that was pushing into the Balkans and into the heart of Europe. That was 1389, and the beginning of Turkish rule over...

June 27, 2013 By Aleksandra Aleksandra's Note: Today is Thursday, June 27, 2013. Exactly 99 years ago today was the day before everything in the world changed forever. History tells us that it was a beautiful summer in 1914 - everything a summer should be. The peaceful atmosphere in Europe had only 24 hours left. The next day, June 28, 1914 was Vidovdan, a most sacred day in Serbian history. It was also the day that an Austrian Archduke and his wife would come visiting and go for a carriage ride in a city in Bosnia. It was a day...

Aleksandra's Note: June 10th marks the anniversary of when the Mihailovich Trial began in Belgrade in 1946. This trial would end in a "Guilty" verdict, a "Conviction", an "Appeal Denied", and an execution that would be carried out on July 17, 1946, only two days after the verdict and conviction were handed down. The trial was a sham, one of the biggest of the 20th century. It didn't last long by today's standards - just over a month. I'm convinced that General Mihailovich knew he was a "dead man walking" from day one, but he remained calm and testified and...

Ultimately, the Ustashe murdered more than 30,000 Jews, or 75 percent of the country’s [Croatia's] prewar Jewish community. Photo by: (Reuters) Just over a month from now, on July 1, a historic event will take place in the heart of Europe, when the EU welcomes Croatia as its 28th member state. The move will mark the culmination of a grueling decade long process, one in which the former Yugoslav republic had to implement widespread changes in a number of fields – ranging from intellectual property law to the free movement of capital – to bring itself in line with accepted...

On April 8, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi headlined a Boston conference on ''media reform.'' She was joined by four other congressmen, a senator, two FCC commissioners, a Nobel laureate and numerous liberal journalists. The 2,500-person event was sponsored by a group called Free Press, one of more than 180 different media-related organizations that receives money from liberal billionaire George Soros. Soros, who first made a name for himself in investing and currency trading, now makes his name in politics and policy. Since the 2004 election, the controversial financier has used his influence and billions to push a laundry list...

Painting of Kaiser Wilhelm II by Max Koner 1890 Aleksandra's Note: It never ceases to amaze me how decades, and in this case an entire century, of cataclysmic change can run its course through the world and the history of its nations and peoples, but some things truly don't change. For the Serbs, "Deja Vu" has become a constant common denominator in the course of their history. This important bit of history from a 100 years ago should serve as a reminder to the Serbs that the passage of time, even a full century of time, really means nothing when...

Christ opening the gates of Dachau In 1945, a Paschal Liturgy like no other was performed. Just days after their liberation by the US military on April 29, 1945, hundreds of Orthodox Christian prisoners at the Dachau concentration camp gathered to celebrate the Resurrection service and to give thanks. The Dachau concentration camp was opened in 1933 in a former gunpowder factory. The first prisoners interred there were political opponents of Adolf Hitler, who had become German chancellor that same year. During the twelve years of the camp's existence, over 200,000 prisoners were brought there. The majority of prisoners at...

Curtis Diles (left), with a friend in Italy, 1945, returned to safety and survived the war after being rescued by the Mihailovich Serbs.There are those people in life that are born unto their destiny, that come into life to be something special. They choose not their path, nor do they accept it willingly, it just is for them, despite their not even seeking it. You cannot create these people; you cannot groom them for their destiny is contained within every cell of their being. They cannot be drawn into a comic book or cast into a made for TV movie...

On November the 16th the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) outrageously reversed convictions, acquitted and ordered immediate release of the Croatian Colonel General Ante Gotovina, commander of a military offensive known as Operation Storm (Oluja in Serbian), and Colonel General Mladen Markac, Operation Commander of the Special Police in Croatia. Gotovina was on the run until 2005, when he was arrested in Spain and transferred to the ICTY. Needless to say the acquitted generals returned to Zagreb to a hero’s welcome with the 100,000 large crowd chanting “Victory, Victory.” In Belgrade there was a...

U.S. Kosovo policy pits National Guard against Christian Serbs resisting rule by U.S.-backed Muslim Albanian mafia rewarded with independence; ethnic cleansing threatens.Always on hand to promote the American-made Muslim state of Kosovo, The Wall St. Journal praised Obama’s praise and rhapsodized in typical Slavophobic tones how in 1999 President Clinton “bypassed the United Nations and sent in the U.S. Air Force…President Bush stood up to Russian bluster and European ambivalence to push for its independence.…though Serbia and Russia have tried to undermine it.” The editorial closed with a straight-faced reference to something that elicits snickers among those in the know:...

Clinton-era Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, confronted by pro-Serbian protesters who called her a war criminal during a recent book signing in her native Prague, pushed them aside as "disgusting Serbs" in a confrontation going viral on the internet. Displaying her trademark feistiness, Albright is seen in the video as sternly shouting "get out, get out," to the protesters who arrived with a film crew. As they closed in on her, she stood up and said, "That's it! Get out," and soon walked away with an aide after saying, "they are disgusting Serbs." Albright, on a book tour to tout...

Beautiful Montenegro Source: http://www.discover-montenegro.com/ Aleksandra's Note: In the beginning of the first decade of the twentieth century, the Prime Minister of Serbia began talks with the other Balkan nations of Bulgaria, Greece and Montenegro. When a pro-Russian government was formed in Bulgaria in March 1911, these talks became serious and evolved into a series of secret treaties. On March 13, 1912 a pact was signed between Serbia and Bulgaria. The plan was to jointly attack the Turks as soon as it was feasible to do so. On May 29, a military convention was signed between Bulgaria and Serbia, thus formalizing...

Aleksandra's Note: A great job by Nick Tintor in summarizing an often polarizing issue that is in need of resolution after all these years. I wanted to extend a special note of gratitude to The Jerusalem Post for publishing this important piece, and keeping it online despite the hostility it has evoked in some of the Post's readers. The Post is to be commended for this. Anyone who refers to Serbian "anti-Semitism" during WWII or General Mihailovich's alleged "collaboration with the Nazis" clearly is repeating the usual communist propaganda that has so infiltrated the historical record regarding the Chetnik movement...