Quotulatiousness

March 17, 2023

Ukrainian, Yugoslav and Baltic Nazis? – ϟϟ Foreign Fighters Part 2

Filed under: Europe, Germany, History, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

World War Two
Published 16 Mar 2023

Across Europe, non-Germans are filling the ranks of Heinrich Himmler’s forces. These foreign fighters certainly don’t meet the racial standards of the SS but times are tough and the Reichsführer-SS needs warm bodies. So, does that mean Himmler’s given up on the idea of a Germanic master race? Not at all. And he uses all sorts of twisted esoteric logic to justify his latest moves.
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January 4, 2023

“Sarajevo” – Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand – Sabaton History 116

Filed under: Europe, History, Media, WW1 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Sabaton History
Published 3 Jan 2023

Where did the war to end all wars begin? The assassination in Sarajevo may have only killed two, but the repercussions killed millions, destroyed empires, and changed the course of history.
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January 2, 2023

How much of the media coverage of the Bosnian War was fake news?

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Military — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Kate at Small Dead Animals linked to this rather disturbing collection of intelligence cables from the Canadian peacekeeping force in Bosnia to NDHQ in Ottawa during the conflict, which contradicts the media narrative of the time:

Map of deployment of National Battalions in UN Forces in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina – Early 1993 (Balkan Battlegrounds Map I)
Balkan Battlegrounds: A Military History of the Yugoslav Conflict, 1990-1995 author credit: Central Intelligence Agency.

A trove of intelligence files sent by Canadian peacekeepers expose CIA black ops, illegal weapon shipments, imported jihadist fighters, potential false flags, and stage-managed atrocities.

The established mythos of the Bosnian War is that Serb separatists, encouraged and directed by Slobodan Milošević and his acolytes in Belgrade, sought to forcibly seize Croat and Bosniak territory in service of creating an irredentist “Greater Serbia”. Every step of the way, they purged indigenous Muslims in a concerted, deliberate genocide, while refusing to engage in constructive peace talks.

This narrative was aggressively perpetuated by the mainstream media at the time, and further legitimized by the UN-created International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) once the conflict ended. It has become axiomatic and unquestionable in Western consciousness ever since, enforcing the sense that negotiation invariably amounts to appeasement, a mentality that has enabled NATO war hawks to justify multiple military interventions over subsequent years.

However, a vast trove of intelligence cables sent by Canadian peacekeeping troops in Bosnia to Ottawa’s National Defence Headquarters, first published by Canada Declassified at the start of 2022, exposes this narrative as cynical farce.

The documents offer an unparalleled, first-hand, real-time view of the war as it developed, with the prospect of peace rapidly degrading into grinding bloodshed that ultimately caused the painful death of the multi-faith, multi-ethnic Yugoslavia.

The Canadian soldiers were part of a wider UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) dispatched to former Yugoslavia in 1992, in the vain hope tensions wouldn’t escalate to all-out-war, and an amicable settlement could be reached by all sides. They stayed until the bitter end, long past the point their mission was reduced to miserable, life-threatening failure.

The peacekeepers’ increasingly bleak analysis of the reality on the ground provides a candid perspective of the war’s history that has been largely concealed from the public. It is a story of CIA black ops, literally explosive provocations, illegal weapon shipments, imported jihadist fighters, potential false flags, and stage-managed atrocities.

Read the complete Canadian UNPROFOR cables here.

See key excerpts of the files referred to in this article here.

October 30, 2020

“We Burn” – The Road to Srebrenica – Sabaton History 091 [Official]

Filed under: Europe, History, Media, Military — Tags: , , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

Sabaton History
Published 29 Oct 2020

Srebrenica in the summer of 1995. The road to the bloodiest massacre since the end of the Second World War was paved by the violence that followed the breakdown of Yugoslavia. A series of wars and brutal atrocities accompanied the individual struggles for independence as old ethnic and nationalist hatred resurged. The Bosnian Serbs who followed the leadership of politician Radovan Karadžić and General Ratko Mladić sought to separate themselves within Bosnia. However their views soon radicalized and Kradazic began to advocate for a Serbian ethno-state utopia, free of the Muslim Bosniaks. And he was willing to use extreme violence to achieve it.

Support Sabaton History on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/sabatonhistory

Listen to “We Burn” on the album Attero Dominatus: https://music.sabaton.net/AtteroDomin…

Listen to Sabaton on Spotify: http://smarturl.it/SabatonSpotify
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Archive: Reuters/Screenocean – https://www.screenocean.com

Visual Sources:
– Library of Congress
– Portrait of Slobodan Milosevic courtesy of Stevan Kragujevic with the approval of daughter Tanja Kragujevic
– Icons from The Noun Project: Arrow by Dolly Holmes
– Pictures from Siege of Sarajevo, Portrait of Mladić & Karadžić and more courtesy of Mikhail Evstafiev
– Photograph of execution in Brcko in 1992 – Photograph provided courtesy of the ICTY
All music by: Sabaton

An OnLion Entertainment GmbH and Raging Beaver Publishing AB co-Production.

© Raging Beaver Publishing AB, 2019 – all rights reserved.

November 6, 2015

Canada’s new Minister of National Defence

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

In the National Post, Adrian Humphreys provides a look at the new defence minister in Justin Trudeau’s cabinet:

Defence minister Harjit Sajjan

Many defence ministers pose for photos with military hardware, but few pull off the true badass combat stance as well as Harjit Singh Sajjan — draped in flak jacket and camouflage, gripping an assault rifle on an actual battlefield.

Sajjan was, until recently, a decorated Lieutenant-Colonel in the Armed Forces, the first Sikh Canadian to command an army regiment.

“Command breaks down barriers because no one looks at what you look like when the bullets are flying,” he said in 2011. “Having to carry your, you know, wounded soldiers off the battlefield, not just wounded, but the ones that have been killed and place them into a helicopter, nothing prepares you for that.”

Sajjan, sworn in Wednesday as Canada’s new Minister of National Defence, was, in military lingo, “a trigger puller.”

He was deployed to Bosnia-Herzegovina and three times to Afghanistan, for which he was awarded one of the military’s highest recognitions, the Order of Military Merit, for reducing the Taliban’s influence in Kandahar Province.

“He has a taste for the reality of war and that’s very, very important,” said David Bercuson, director of the Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.

“He will have seen the aftermath of the effect of war on some of our men and women, which is a major issue with veteran’s affairs,” said Bercuson.

[…]

He served as a reservist, and was deployed with the Canadian peacekeeping forces to Bosnia in 1996.

In 2006 he served in Afghanistan, playing a key intelligence advisory role to Brig.-Gen David Fraser in the successful Operation Medusa offensive against the Taliban. He returned to Afghanistan in 2009 and 2011.

Rising to the rank of reserve lieutenant-colonel, he was named commander of the B.C. Regiment (Duke of Connaught’s Own), in 2012.

I’m pleased that Trudeau managed to find someone to fill this cabinet post who has actual military experience in the field (as opposed to a former general or admiral). I hope he can fight his political corner to get the Canadian Forces the updated equipment they so desperately need, even if the F-35 is not going to be part of the package (Trudeau explicitly promised to drop the F-35 purchase during the election).

October 10, 2015

QotD: The Balkans in the Early Roman Empire

Filed under: Europe, History, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Dalmatia, to which the name of Illyricum more properly belonged, was a long, but narrow tract, between the Save and the Adriatic. The best part of the sea-coast, which still retains its ancient appellation, is a province of the Venetian state, and the seat of the little republic of Ragusa. The inland parts have assumed the Sclavonian names of Croatia and Bosnia; the former obeys an Austrian governor, the latter a Turkish pacha; but the whole country is still infested by tribes of barbarians, whose savage independence irregularly marks the doubtful limit of the Christian and Mahometan power.

After the Danube had received the waters of the Teyss and the Save, it acquired, at least among the Greeks, the name of Ister. It formerly divided Maesia and Dacia, the latter of which, as we have already seen, was a conquest of Trajan, and the only province beyond the river. If we inquire into the present state of those countries, we shall find that, on the left hand of the Danube, Temeswar and Transylvania have been annexed, after many revolutions, to the crown of Hungary; whilst the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia acknowledge the supremacy of the Ottoman Porte. On the right hand of the Danube, Maesia, which, during the middle ages, was broken into the barbarian kingdoms of Servia and Bulgaria, is again united in Turkish slavery.

Edward Gibbon, “Chapter I: The Extent Of The Empire In The Age Of The Antonines — Part III”, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 1782.

March 30, 2010

Retired US general apologizes for smear on Dutch troops

Filed under: Europe, Military, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 07:57

Former USMC general John Sheehan has apologized for his remarks about gay Dutch soldiers in the Srebrenica massacre:

An ex-U.S. general has apologised after saying Dutch UN troops failed to prevent the Srebrenica genocide partly because their ranks included openly gay soldiers, the Dutch defence ministry said Tuesday.

John Sheehan, a retired former NATO commander and senior Marine officer, “wrote a letter of apology,” ministry spokeswoman Anne van Pinxteren told AFP.

In it, Mr. Sheehan said he was “sorry” for remarks made at a Senate hearing earlier this month where he argued against plans by President Barack Obama to end a ban on allowing gays to serve openly in the US military.

[. . .]

Mr. Sheehan claimed that Dutch leaders, including the former chief of staff of the Dutch army General Henk van den Breemen, had told him that the presence of gay soldiers had contributed to the fall of the enclave which led to the massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys.

There were a lot of reasons for the massacre, but the sexual orientation of individual soldiers in the Dutch contingent had nothing to do with it.

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