Showing posts with label Macedonia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Macedonia. Show all posts

Saturday, July 22, 2023

Thursday, July 22, 1943. Palermo falls to the Seventh Army. Greeks riot over Macedonia, US landings at Munda Point.

Patton's Seventh Army entered Palermo to an enormous celebration by the residents of the ancient city.  Two captured Italian generals, in turn, claimed to be happy about the event because "the Sicilians were not human beings but animals" ("i Siciliani non erano esseri umani ma animali").

Seventh Army staff aboard SS Monrovia, en route to Sicily, June/July 1943.

The Italian fascist government had held anti-Sicilian views due to Sicily's long peculiar history.  

The island has been inhabited since ancient times and was a destination for Italic and Phoenician colonists as far back as 1200 BC, who displaced the already existing Sicilian population.  Greek colonization commenced around 750 BC.  In antiquity, it was contested by the Greeks and Carthaginians, both of whom conquered it at different times.  The Romans conquered it and displaced the Carthaginians and declared that the island should be latinized, although its culture remained, at the time, Greek.  With the fall of the Roman Empire, it fell to invading Germanic tribes, with the Vandals taking Palermo in 440.  The Byzantine Empire then retook it, as the Eastern Roman Empire, and ruled it from the 550s to the 960s, during which time the Arabs began to attempt to take it.  From the 820s through the 960s, it slowly fell to Muslim invaders.

The Normans arrived starting in 1038, around thirty years prior to their invasion of England, and began to take it from the Arabs.  They formed a Norman kingdom that lasted until 1198, becoming part of the typical drama of European kingdoms at the time.  The Normans imported European settlers to the island, which went from being 1/3d Greek speaking and 2/3s Arabic speaking to being latinized once again.  It went back and forth to varying European households until 1860, when the Italians conquered it.  It became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861.

During the fascist period the island was subject to unwelcome attention in part because Italians have never really regarded Sicilians as Italians, given their multi-ethnic heritage, and part because the strong local character of the island was unwelcome. Also, unwelcome was the fairly strong local Communist Party and the Sicilian Mafia. The fascist nearly crushed the Mafia during their period in power.

A general strike was called in Athens over Bulgarian intentions to annex Macedonia, which resulted in a massive protest in the city over the same thing.


The protests were successful in that they postponed the Bulgarian plans to the point that they were never carried out.

The SS executed all of the remaining 2,500 inmates of the Tarnopol concentration camp.

US infantry during the battle.

The Battle of Munda Point began on New Georgia.  The object was the points' airfield, in what would become a hard fought campaign.

The U.S. Navy raided Kiska.

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

April 20, 1941. Reversals in the Balkans.

 

Jubilant crowed in Skopje caring portraits of Bulgarian Tsar Boris III and Adolph Hitler.  Macedonia had a significant Bulgarian minority and Bulgarian troops occupied much of it during the war.  Given this, the region was at first sympathetic to the Axis in the form of Bulgaria.  Tsar Boris was a popular figure in Bulgaria who did not live to see the war completed.  He participated in the repression of his country's Jewish population but he would not agree to deportation to the death camps, nor would he agree to participate in the war against the Soviet Union.  He died in 1943 shortly after meeting with Hitler and some have suspected he was poisoned.

Things were not going well for the Allies in the Balkans.  

On this day Albania surrendered to Italy, something that was perhaps inevitable but which is remarkable not for occurring, but for how long Albania was able to manage to avoid that result.  It had held out with Greek support until the German intervention in the war reversed Greek and Albanian fortunes in the region.  Also on this day the Greek III Army Corps surrendered to the Germans.


The British did conduct a successful commando raid at Bardia, behind German lines in North Africa, causing the Germans to have to detail troops to their rear.

Sunday, October 28, 2018

Countdown on the Great War: October 28, 1918. The German Navy rebels and scuttles, the Hungarians quit Austria and the German army continues to take to the air.

1.  Having received orders to set sail to engage the British fleet, German sailors at Schillig Roads mutiny and refuse to prepare to get underway and refuse to weigh anchor  The crews of two of the ships, battleships, commit sabotage on their vessels.  What would become the Kiel Mutiny had commenced.

2.  The Germans scuttle seven submarines based at Pula, Austro Hungaria.  Another was scuttled at Trieste, Italy.

3.  Czechoslovakia declares independence from Austro Hungaria.

4.  Revolution breaks out in Hungary as the Hungarian National Council proclaims its independance from Austria.

Hungarian revolutionaries, including soldiers, with Aster flowers.  The flowers gave their name tot he rebellion, the Aster Revolution.

5.  The Austro Hungarian high command ordered a general retreat from all northern Italian positions.

6.  The Allies capture Makri and Evros in Macedonia.

7. The Germans established nine new air squadrons.