Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 182 - The War of the Stray Dog

Episode Date: November 15, 2021

Bulgaria (possibly) starts a war with Greece over a dog that strays over the border (maybe) and a bad dictator seizes on it as an opportunity to shore up a crumbling government. support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys sources: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/war-articles/wars-fought-stupid-reasons-stray-dog-caused-war-greece-bulgaria-1925.html https://militaryhistorynow.com/2012/09/07/roll-over-and-play-dead-the-ridiculous-war-of-the-stray-dog/ https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/desires-of-a-modern-indian/war-of-the-stray-dog-a-war-sparked-by-ridiculous-reasons/?source=app&frmapp=yes http://www.thathistorynerd.com/2017/03/war-of-stray-dog.html

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow by Donkeys podcast. I'm Joe. With me is Liam. Hello, Liam. Hello. Hi, Joe. How you doing, buddy? I'm Joe, and with me is Liam. matters um i mean it matters we know it matters it's just to prevent you from dying it's not right that's that's what i was worried about is the dying part uh but you imagine making it this far and covid will take you out that's exactly what would happen suck for you it would just be me and i guess the ghost of nick yeah yeah i'll make a soundboard on my deathbed and so like what really I don't like brag often or ever in fact I normally insult myself

but this morning I woke up or at least it's morning here and I found that my book hooligans of Kandahar was including a task and purpose article for military books so that's cool and that book came out years ago I'm really endlessly happy that people still find my misery.

So entertaining. But, you know, Liam, we're doing something new today. What are we doing, Joe? We are talking about the Balkans. Oh, dear. I apologize to... Are we sure we want to do this? Yeah, you know, I feel like I've

gotten in with the Albanians, so I got the Balkans card. Stop it. I said you were from Albania by mistake one time. Now, there's a specific war. It's not actually a war war more of a limited conflict if i was

to put on my america hat uh is what we call it uh that we're gonna talk about kind of like the football war that we talked about in a bonus episode not that long ago subscribe to the patreon go subscribe to patreon i i am going to new orleans in January, and I need you idiots to pay for it. It's a great sales line. Thank you, Liam. You're welcome. I can hear the cancellations. Subscribe to the Patreon, and I'll do dances for you. There you go.

Now, there's a reason why I bring up the football wards, because it has a cutesy name. Like, ah, it's about soccer. It's not. It's an outburst of state violence with a little nickname. And a few decades later, you get like a thousand listicles that talk about how some idiots are fighting over war about soccer and not like years of geopolitical conflict. Right. This happened to also sometimes there was soccer. Yes.

And this exact same thing leads us to today's topic. And it is known popularly as the War of the Stray Dog. Have you ever heard of this? I have not. It's a week-long event in the Balkans between Bulgaria and Greece. It's also sometimes known as the Incident of Petrich. I'm sure I'm going gonna pronounce a lot of fucking words wrong uh uh so much i'm sorry um like honestly like i i'm not good with languages

i'm not good with my own languages i i try my best but also also i know in the end no matter how hard i try i'll fail um now in order to lighten the mood or also possibly dig this hole even deeper of how much hate we're going to get for this episode. Strap on our Balkans jammies, which are just MBCR suits. I found a great Twitter account called Cursed Balkans YouTube Comments that I absolutely love. It is something I can get behind. I'm not of Balkans descent or ethnicity myself, though I know some people confuse me

for that. Not just Liam, but a lot of people honestly. But it's also a kind of like visceral hatred that borders on the comical that I am used to as an Armenian that you see that it's just like it is just insane batshit crazy racism that it's kind of like watching white boomers on Facebook try to dance around how they hate people so much but at a near regional basis

and I will make sure not to read off any of the particularly offensive ones because there are some slurs in there that I'm not going to say we're a progressive podcast thank you you can look up the slurs on your own time yeah you know look up slurs on your own time or don't and be a better person for

it there's a whole wikipedia article for it i bet there is uh literally is list of racial slurs now the first cursed youtube comment i found is from a merciless e john cena has says i hate serbia this is because he is Albanian. All right. Papa Francisco says he never said that to which a name which I cannot pronounce says at Papa Frisco. He said that you son of a bitch. Oh, dear. I just love it so much. I will. i'll try to read those off as we go um there's nothing particularly gruesome in this episode um wow um because like are we learning no not at all

it's just that they're the horrible things that occur um in this topic are more on the sideline and there'll be more episodes on those in the future such as i will get to the war crimes like i've had a lot of people say i need to talk about the yugoslavian wars uh sebranitsa you name it i'm like yes i will eventually you know at a long enough timeline i will in fact talk about all of military history if you keep subscribing. Now, in regards to comments or complaints from our audience, I'm going to ask you to please direct all of those

complaints to our Lions Led by Donkeys Balkan Branch Human Resource Manager, Liam Anderson. Yeah, go for it. You will handle all of your complaints. Talk yourselves out. People DM me and it just sits in the unread messages i get a lot of i get a lot of dms and i feel bad because i you know i

all click like the message request thing and just never respond to it and then like people you know will donate to abortion funds or whatever and i'll just be like oh this message is from six weeks ago i i try to answer all my dms i really do but i get a ton of them uh so like if you've sent me a dm and i did not answer i promise i'm not ignoring you i'm just very bad at this right like most things that have to do with the balkans prior to world war one this story brings us back to our noted pod favorite the ottoman empire i feel like at this rate they're more of a co-host than the cia anymore story brings us back to our noted pod favorite, the Ottoman Empire. I feel like at this rate, they're more of a co-host than the CIA anymore. I'm going to have to

fucking equalize this. I'm more comfortable sharing territory with the CIA, to be completely honest. Aren't you a CIA plant? That's what I always heard. Yes, I have been accused of that via exit surveys, which is interesting i i assumed

being a ca plan would pay more um you thought but you know government jobs yeah am i right uh hey maybe that means this podcast now has a pension i don't know i'll have to talk to my contacts yeah um oh oh no oh god i have havana syndrome this podcast must have somebody help him um now there's no goddamn way i can adequately cover the balkan uh the ottoman balkan territories and and their breakup in one episode unless i just leave a ton out and piss off a lot of people who i know this means a lot too so this is my peace offering i will eventually come back to this at a later date i don't know when uh but i will we will do right by you we promise uh now in order to sign this peace deal we will simply meet in

pristina kosovo to sign this deal and oh oh fuck shit i'm sorry oh the gods uh now with that I did find another cursed YouTube comment I will read so tell me do you believe the black man Martin Luther King was a Serb technically yes what

no no I subscribe to the timeline now fuck it I hope all of these aren't Serbian related. But fuck, this is good. Now, again, if you go back to our last episode or one of our last episodes, and we talked about the charge of the light brigade, we talked about the Eastern question, and we talked about it a fair amount of length there.

So I'm not going to talk about it again go back and listen to it it's free go listen to our back episodes um so but it is a little different flavor regarding the balkans um like every other place we've talked about regarding the eastern question the balkans were generally but not entirely members of the eastern orthodox church leading to all kinds of fuckery happening to them. Eventually, these people got sick of living as second-class citizens around the same time as the concepts of nationalism began to take hold and build within them.

Now, this concept of independence rather than existence within the Ottoman Empire's framework under a new form, whether it be a self-governing subject or something else, was a debate pretty much every part of the empire had at some point. This is a debate that was very, very popular within Armenian circles as well. A lot of people grappled with this because they were part of this empire for hundreds of years. There was no living memory of independence for any of these places. Slowly, those debates were solved for various reasons by the empire themselves, first simply failing to act or not really doing much of anything to calm down these people

who numbered in the tens of millions. On top of failing to handle growing nationalism, the Ottomans also failed to reform themselves in any meaningful way that made any minority feel like the empire could work for them in any real capacity furthermore the ottoman just kept their getting their shit rocked in war which is never good for an empire to to try to hold together because you know makes you look weak and uh you know suddenly of it's this this you know uh oppressive power suddenly looks really beatable um the the russians went through the same thing especially after the russo-japanese war where uh revolutionaries suddenly like czar looks like a bitch right about now like you know what i mean um that guy doesn't look so tough yeah this is something you really want to see if you happen to be say a bosnian revolutionary or

whatever like the the ott Ottoman army getting its shit kicked in across Europe and the Middle East. And one kind of hilarious event that would turn into the Albanian revolts, of which there were a ton, the Ottomans committed an amazing self-own in the form of attempting to change the demographics of a

country, only for it to blow up in their face. Which is, like, this is really common when facing instability in one region uh through empires uh time immoral right like uh immemorial like the us did this the usr ussr did this in ukraine um like when the indigenous population of of an area was becoming in uh like uh was fomenting revolt becoming unstable or unstable. Um, they would simply attempt to transplant a different population into it.

Um, now in this case is an area populated by Christians. So the Ottomans had a tendency to either forcefully or through coercion to get poor Muslims from other parts of the empire to relocate there. Um, now the goal of the empire to relocate there. Now, the goal, of course, is to build a base of people that would then support the empire in these areas that are going through revolts or whatever. During the Bosnian crisis of 1908, this would lead to the Austrians annexing it. And the Ottoman government paid huge amounts to Bosnian Muslims to move to Northern Macedonia, a place where at the time few Muslims lived.

It also happened to be a place that had been kind of simmering in a low-scale guerrilla war for almost a decade at that point. I like the way you talk, Joe. We like to keep our guerrilla war at a low simmer. Never bring it up to a boil. Yeah, you don't want a foamy guerrilla war. simmer uh never bring it up to a boil yeah you don't want a foamy gorilla war um now by 1911 the albanians in the area rose up against the government and to the shock of the ottomans uh the albanians who were overwhelmingly muslim who had been moved into the area and they figured

that they would still be cool with them then joined forces with the muslims from bosnia and decide to throw in with their new non-muslim albanian friends to all join the rebellion together i'd like that's good dialogue baby yeah congratulations you accidentally did a a unity uh but while you like own themselves which is incredible um now this is around the same time that the ottomans fought another war against italy and lost uh meaning that in one year they'd gotten their shit stomped in by some albanian rebels as well as one of the worst armies in europe that was not already part of the ottoman empire um now they're like sometimes when you talk about european uh military history people leave out the ottomans so like if you consider the Ottomans part of Europe,

which you do at this point, there's no way around that. Just because they're a mix of different races that are not white does not mean they're not part of Europe. Because remember, their empire extends into Bulgaria and Greece and Eastern Europe at this point as well. Italy, outside of the Ottoman Empire, worst army in Europe. Something that would continue for a whole other world war um so with the ottomans at their most pathetic the various

balkan states saw an opening and they formed the balkan league a quadruple alliance of greece bulgaria serbia and montenegro now your-oh. I hear League and International Relations and I just sort of panic. I will say this league was much more useful than the League of Nations, who will also make a guest appearance during this episode. Now, this league had the sole goal of breaking the Ottoman Empire's

grasp on the East. So, of course, the Russian Empire slid in and offered people as many guns as they could hold to shoot some Turks to make the whole thing easier for them. Because remember, this is very much in the era of constant Russo-Turkish wars that would eventually turn into World War I

where they'd both collapse. Talk about that in Charge of the Light Brigade. Sure did. Now this blew up into the first Balkans War of 1912, which would have been the most destructive war in the history of the Ottoman Empire if it wasn't for a little guy called World War One waiting in the wings in a couple of years. The combined force of the Balkan states, supported by a large amount of Italian volunteers for some reason and Russian money. Oh, boy.

Steam rolled the Ottoman army. I love this weird rivalry of Italy. Like, I get it because the Turks would have been on their southern border but like this weird rivalry between Italy and Turkey effectively I like that I don't know why but I like that it was like

a lot of it has to and we'll talk about this in a future episode I have planned a lot of the areas in the Balkans that the Turks controlled Italy considered theirs oh okay so it's it's more of a like yeah A lot of the areas in the Balkans that the Turks controlled, Italy considered theirs. Oh, okay. So it's more of a like, yeah, let's fuck this up because it's a lot easier to take like Albania and Bulgaria and then it is to invade the Ottoman Empire. Right. But the Ottoman army at this point was so terrible, they attempted to fight a war even before it fully mobilized.

So despite being far larger than their enemy, they managed to be outnumber even before it fully mobilized so despite being far larger than their enemy they managed to be outnumbered in every battle they fought um they still have 78 eager beaker eager beavers ready for war yeah it's like throw every conscript in the area don't bother to mobilize anybody uh i mean it's we we talked about this during the battle of sarah commish we've talked about this so many times before. It's like no communication, no logistical system, no medical system, no supply system. It was all just kind of like they'll figure it out as they go. But quite literally, there was no medical system.

So this meant that there are no doctors sent to the front line, really, which led to one of the most horrifically... That's ghastly. Oh, no. Yeah. It led to one of the most horrifically... That's ghastly. Oh no. Yeah, it led to one of the most horrifically one-sided result of wounded soldiers I had ever fucking seen. If you got wounded in the Turkish army during this war, statistically you will die.

Any wound really, if required, you go to a hospital you are probably not leaving that hospital because the hospital is more of a warehouse for the dying there was no treatment there um and a german officer since this is a point of um well we talked about this as well the germans were heavily influencing the ottoman attempted modernization of their military um and a german officer who was tasked with helping the ottomans during this time said that most of the soldiers in the army weren't even sure how to fire a rifle. So it's not good.

It's a bad look if you happen to be an empire. Why does my helmet just say cannon fodder? Oh, that's cute. You think they had helmets? I mean, besides the fact that like helmets wouldn't become common until about midwayway through world war one the ottomans never truly adopted them um now by the end of all of this the ottomans lost 80 percent of their european holdings and a full 69 percent nice of their european population yes it's bad it's real bad like if like i, if it wasn't

for World War I in like three years, that would entirely collapse the empire. This is one of the worst defeats in military history in general. It's hard to find a country that's lost so much territory and still exists at the end of it.

With the Ottomans defeated, the League divided up their spoils of war. And, of course, immediately began fucking hating one another. Remember, this is the common fuck that guy, the unifying theory of fuck that guy we always talk about. Without

the common enemy of the Turks, all of these guys fucking hated one another. And the reason for this was an ethnic hatred, like a lot of people like to say, though, obviously over time, these things would form. Um,

the reason for this was the treaty of London. And now because the treaty of London declared Albanian independent state and the territory that would become this state was occupied and wanted by both Greece and Serbia, who had no intention yeah now they had no intention of creating an albania they both wanted this for themselves now the creation of albania was mostly pushed by austria who wanted to counter any kind of serbian expansion buffer state yes and now this is austria hungary an empire that still exists and remember who they end up fighting throughout world war one so yeah they want now obviously i'm not taking anything away from albania at all i'm just talking about the attitude that they had at

the time is that albania should exist as a buffer state now this became a little bit of a problem because nobody in the league that fought the war austria not part of the war wanted albania to exist other than the albanians uh and even then only some of them this is a hard thing to parse but not albanians consider like alban thing. Like not to say Albanians, Albanians, not all Albanians can consider Albania to be a legitimate thing. Right. Um,

to get my outdoors kid from Albania. Yeah. People are not monoliths is what I'm trying to say now. I'm just being difficult about it. I know. Now, meanwhile, this is what i'm trying to say now i'm just being difficult about it i know now meanwhile the territories of the northern and southern macedonia and western thrace were wanted by everyone but particularly bulgaria the treaty ended with nobody agreeing on on any kind of border demarcations whatsoever and everyone threatening to kill one another over them two days after the

treaty was signed greece and serbia signed a secret defensive alliance with one another because they didn't trust bulgaria and then a month after that bulgaria sparked a war with pretty much all of europe that honestly somehow through the the grace of i guess, Germany not getting involved, did not start World War I. Wow. Go on. And with that, I believe it's time for another Cursed Content. Now, this is

from Bosenreiter? I don't know. I might be pronouncing that wrong. Wake up. The only religion for Albanians is albania did you say religion yes i sure did now bulgaria started its war against serbia and greece with which would then eventually rope in the rest of the league all against bulgaria uh now then Romania invaded, and then the Ottomans,

seeing that Bulgaria was getting its fucking teeth kicked in, joined in as well as one giant fuck you. Now, Bulgaria is able to hold on for about a month before finally like, all right, all right, fine, we'll stop. Sure. Now, this caused them to give up pretty much all of the lands they had just won in the first balkans war a month or two months before so

can you imagine going to your landlord being like listen you're not gonna believe this but i need a refund on rent it's like um uh going to buy a car and then paying the money and then having the used car dealer show up at your house, punch you in the throat and take it back. Ask me about my Wednesday, Joe. Now, just to clue you in how terrible these wars were for the regions, since I know I'm glossing over them a fair amount. a fair amount there is an entire wikipedia article dedicated to just the list of places that were burned down during the first and second balkans wars fuck yeah it is not a friendly war that has fought friendly war yeah um now this shit is still not over then world war one kicked off as just about as soon as the second Balkans War ended with Bulgaria, desperate to retake the lands they had just lost,

threw in the hat with the Germans because the rest of the Balkans joined the British and French. So this meant, once again, the entire Balkans was a raid against Bulgaria. Well, these poor bastards, Jesus. Well, I guess they kind of deserve it.

No. Now, if you know how World War I one ends you know that the german side loses which included which again included bulgaria and they lost even more territory this time sorry about that so they've now fought three wars in quick succession with two of them ending with them getting their absolute shit kicked in and losing more of Bulgaria. You don't need to do this anymore. Yeah, like, it's literally the scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It was like, nothing but a flesh wound.

It's like, there's a bloody stump. Yeah, I have you right where I want you. Sophia doesn't even exist anymore. Sophia is a smoldering pile of wreckage with one king sitting in the middle of it. Guys. Guys. Guys.

I'm not going to lie. I like our chances on round three. I know the situation looks bleak, but as you are legally prohibited from leaving here, where are you going to go? Everywhere that's not where you're currently standing isn't Bulgaria anymore. Now, at the end of world war one the balkan state that benefited the most from all

this was definitely greece now i know there's probably some greece greeks that will say that they're not a balkan state i'm just saying shut up you ally with balkan states an awful lot call yourself whatever you want. I don't care. Shut up. As someone who is connected to a country that people think is generally Eastern Europe, I understand why people get confused. Now, Greece controlled Western Thrace, which ended Bulgaria's direct access to the Aegean Sea, which was very, very, very important to them, as you can imagine. Right. This made Bulgaria even more mad with certain camps within the government

that they didn't need a World War... They didn't need World War I to end. They didn't need the Second Balkans War to end. They're doing just fine, and they would eventually retake these territories. Yeah. I'm sorry, the Bulgarians believed this? Yes.

Yeah. Sure. Yeah, all right. I like the confidence The Bulgarians believed this. Yes. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. All right. Yeah. I like the confidence. It's the military strategy from this episode of the Simpsons where Homer got punched in the face until his opponent got tired. It's like being down 57, nothing at halftime being like this game ain't over.

Yeah. Let's try an onside kick, guys. I like this idea. Fuck it. Soon, small Bulgarian army units are raiding over the border into grace as well. Into grace.

Into Greece. Into grace. I sent my brains. I'm all molded together. Thrace and Greece, which I think makes me a Greek. You're a dentist now. I'm not really sure.

But they're also raiding into the kingdom of serbs croats and slovenes one of the worst nations ever named in human history uh and then it says on the 10 i guess and then they just rename themselves yugoslavia within a couple of years because it rolls off the tongue a little better um it's also led to bulgaria forming guerrilla movements within thrace itself. Now, some of these formed organically, but Bulgaria and Bulgarian money and weapons had a lot to do with the formation of the Internal Thracian Revolutionary Organization, or the ITRO, as well as another one, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, or the IMRO. Okay.

Now, the Thracian one had actually existed for quite some time, but the Macedonian one was pretty much the complete creation of the Bulgarians. Bulgarian citizens, soldiers, and guns flowed into the groups that would then be used against the Greeks. And then the Bulgarians who were still suffering and recovering from the multiple wounds from the last couple wars could just be like, hey, we don't know these people. You know, how one does with proxy wars and groups.

The Greeks then began to do the same thing, though these weren't just military units either. At various points just some Greeks and some Bulgarians who were not even bearing weapons would just cross the border and steal shit from neighboring villages

I like that I mean that's bad but like oh that's pretty funny to be honest with you just some guy named like I don't know Papados kicking open your door and stealing your chickens and shit you call that Papados came for me at the night. Ha ha! Running away.

Windex on their wounds as they escape. Now this was pretty much the attitude that went on since the end of World War I and we're now in the 1920s meaning that there had been some years of this shit going on and that is when

Greece had an idea. There can't be any Bulgarian revolutionaries if we simply get rid of all the Bulgarians. That sounds like genocide to me, Joe. I believe one Holocaust book that I read called this The Devil's Arithmetic,

which fits pretty well. That's fair. They decided to forcefully expel them across the border back into Bulgaria. Now this isn't technically a genocide. I'm not going to go into it a whole lot but... It just feels like a preview of a genocide really. It definitely is.

I mean on a long enough timeline this has turned into one. It's certainly a forced expulsion and relocation. I've read Knight. It's a crime against humanity that is for certain. Now, of course, this turned into a full-on rebellion from the Bulgarians who had been living there for generations and didn't want to fucking leave their backyards.

And, you know, Bulgaria, right across the border, that was completely open due to insecurity, then flooded them with weapons, guns, and also soldiers to help because at this point, they hadn't learned their lesson. And this is an open secret. Everybody knows Bulgaria is doing this.

To the point that Greece and Yugoslavia forced them to sign the Treaty of Nice, which was Nice. Spelled nice, but it's not very nice. nice it's not that great you can skip it uh it's much prettier now uh this is their them effectively forcing the bulgarians who had gotten themselves up to this shit about neck level here to promise their neighbors they would stop letting rebel groups plan shit on their side of the border and they would clamp down on them.

Now, when the Bulgarians actually sent in the military to arrest these guys, a member of the IRMO killed the Bulgarian prime minister. Uh-oh. We call this the classic Uno reverse card. classic uno reverse card uh like and not only that the bulgarians were then like pretty much turned off from this whole idea of trying to enforce the law on these people mostly because these groups were now stronger than the bulgarian military and i don't mean this as like a knock against the bulgarian military but if you like literally stronger than yeah i mean if you had noticed from the last 30 minutes of podcast they weren't exactly in fighting shape anymore um right after the bulgarians decided to get their shit kicked in once again this time by their own rebel groups uh it was just another tough man that's a tough

way to go like at this point like the minister of defense of bulgaria is like i don't know what you want from me anymore guys like I've tried shooting at me. Please, can we just not do war? Like, not everybody can be good at knitting. Maybe we're just not good at war. Now, with another loss in the column, they pretty much ceded the entire border region of Purin Macedonia, which include the Petric district of the border over to the rebels. Like this, they pretty much effectively stopped governing it.

They lacked the, the security apparatus to actually enforce themselves over the rebels who use once again, use this entire region as a place to launch border attacks. Cause that's what started this whole thing in the first place. Right? Right. Now there was a change in the Bulgarian government around the same time

because remember the prime minister just got got who, you know, they came to power and they're pretty right wing. Some people call them proto-fascist. Cool. But the hardcore nationalists, you're a dentist. So they kind of gave like the wink nudge approval for this arrangement. hardcore nationalists that you're a dentist so they kind of gave like the wink nudge approval for

this arrangement also it was a better way this is my opinion this is now me you know not reading from my sources this is the way they make the government feel much better about the idea they lost control of a large swath of their country yeah that's not unfair

yeah and like I get it like sometimes he's gotta you know self-care you know right yeah that's not unfair yeah and like i get it like sometimes he's gotta you know self-care you know right yeah that's what this is the bulgarian institutional self-care small bean who lost a genocide yeah it's more of a war uh series of wars uh now fair enough this is uh another solid cursed comments now this is from uh someone someone that has a name I can't pronounce, but their avatar is, I believe, Rei Ayanami of Neon Genesis Evangelion fame. Oh, wow.

And someone says, ah, the Balkans, home. And someone replies, home, the Balkans is not Asia, kid. Go back to Japan or North Korea. What? Jesus Christ. Outstanding. That is spicy. Now, strangely enough, another support of the IRMO was Benito Mussolini.

their support of the IRMO was, uh, was Benito Mussolini. Um, because we can't make it a whole ass episode without talking about Nazis or fascists in some way. The fucking worst man. Uh, yeah,

this time we get to talk about the, the, the cartoon version of fascism, which is Mussolini, because while he may have revolutionized the concept of a fascist government, he was by far the worst at it. He had taken power in 1922, and he was not supporting the IRMO against Serbia,

Greece, and Yugoslavia, because he actually supported Bulgaria. One of the things that he had planned was a restoring of the Roman Empire, which sounds as dumb as it ended up being, I promise. One of the things that he had planned was a restoring of the Roman Empire. Right. Which sounds as dumb as it ended up being, I promise. And he thought destabilization efforts in this entire region were in his best interest, which they were if he was competent using the military in any capacity, which he was not. Did they follow this pattern in Ethiopia, Libya, all that?

I don't really know enough about the italians in north africa now in in ethiopia uh he just straight up invaded them uh he attempted to turn there was like a precursor or something well there was a whole first italio ethiopian war before mussolini came to power which ended in the italians uh legendarily getting their shit kicked in. I'm so surprised that that happened. Yeah, and during the second Italio-Ethiopian war,

Mussolini leveled the playing field by mustard gassing the shit out of Ethiopia. That seems cheap. Yeah, and he still even then barely won. See, this is why I know what no i'm not gonna say what nationality i don't like it's the italians like italians do i do i have a future series for you oh thank god uh i uh i come by so my great uncle was killed in action at anzio

and my grandmother never let that go and blamed the italians and for the rest of her days just hated italians it's like the fact that he would have been killed by nazis because at that point the italians had switched sides which my dad like always put it out there she was like okay i'm like hate italians now i'm dating and probably gonna marry a girl who is half italian that's best you tell her she's sicilian that's a that's an easy cop out yeah there we go now uh yeah i mean i'm not gonna get too far into the the mussolini woods here because i like i said i have an entire series planned for that uh thankfully the mussolini woods would actually be quite short you could see right over them um but yeah he he attempted to and he and he did help the irmo quite quite a bit uh just like you

know he ended up uh turning his support to the spanish civil war into a full-on military effort um for the same reason like he he his his whole goal in the spanish civil war is to actually turn spain into a puppet government um and like when the war was over he told uh like francisco franco's like so i'm gonna keep a couple thousand italian soldiers stationary and franco's like no fuck off and then mussolini had to go home which like fuck franco but hilarious even other fascists hated mussolini i i love the idea of like all right we're all like we're all friends we're all fascists and some guys and some franco's just like nah no not here this is sovereign spanish soil eat a dick yeah i mean he ended up pretty much doing the same thing for hitler too and like which is i mean again fuck him but also it's it's it's funny it's a hell of a thing to hear fuck hitler but yeah yeah like i know you're right yeah exactly it's like

uh man i don't like you but also fuck you like i guess franco's a broke-ass franco's right one day a week or whatever uh yeah that's fucking funny dude now it was 1925 so things have been going this way on the border for around a decade uh shootings across the border were on almost everyday occurrence um there was like people would break the border line shoot one another and run back home um and that's just kind of the new normal in this situation. Let's try to get to work. Dodging bullets like, dude, let's go to my goddamn cornfield and some Greek or Bulgarian takes a shot at my head like, fuck off. I'm fucking farming.

Oh, so you support Italian supremacy in the Balkans is what I'm hearing. I don't support Italian supremacy of anything. Not even Italy. Now it's Ethiopia. Fair, fair. I wouldn't say Ethiopia right about now. Things are going so hot. Oh yeah, that's right. He signed a peace deal with

Eritrea and now things are bad. You know, shout out to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia who, much like our own former president obama was awarded the uh the nobel peace prize and then bombed the shit out of civilians so maybe don't give that to our own civilians uh actually we did uh obama drone-striked american citizens in in yemen oh yeah that oh yeah that's true. So, you know, maybe stop handing out the Nobel Prize to

heads of state. I warm it on our soil before you all get mad at me in the comments. That's true. No, you're right. You're right. He did not specifically use drones for that in the United States. But then on October 18th, 1925,

two days before my birthday. Ooh. So happy early birthday. Joe, it's November. I meant in 1925. It's going to come out like December. You unborn bitch. You're not even alive yet.

Oh, dear. Okay. I'll interrupt you a little less. Go on, Joe. A Greek border guard whose name has lost the history was manning a post on the demir kapu pass which is uh on the side of the border where was controlled by the irmo and uh his watchdog got away from him you know running off and doing dog things the dog didn't enlist in the military he was drafted this job fucking sucks but the soldier not wanting to get in trouble probably

for losing his dog ran off after him and in doing so he crossed the Bulgarian side of the border leading to him getting shot and wounded he fell to the ground and both sides opened fire on one another as just a normal everyday explosion

of hate or whatever now as things began to calm down, there were no other casualties, and the Greeks realized what had caused it, and their man was still laying out in the middle of the street, bleeding out and screaming in pain. So, a Greek officer picked up a white flag and was unarmed and walked out onto the pass, being accompanied by another soldier to help him carry the wounded soldier back to the line.

This had happened multiple times before where officers had come forward with white flags to pick up the wounded. This was like old timey gentlemanly warfare and you would see a lot of this during World War I which a lot of the officers were probably veterans of, right? Now, the Bulgarians

probably finally seeing a battle they could win shot the shot the men they were carrying a white flag killing three of them dick move dick move i thought you said there were only two guys uh there's also the guy in the ground who was wounded oh so they killed all three okay yeah all right yeah they shot two men under a white flag and shot a wounded guy who was on the ground. Wow, that is war crimes. That's bad. That's what we call a hat trick of dick moves. Now, it was hardly uncommon for the decades long odd border war for people to be killed.

So this would not have really raised an eyebrow for anybody like this wouldn't have mattered. Right. But something had happened in Greece. And that something was a few months before this incident with the stray dog. There had been a military coup on June 24th, which actually is my birthday. 1925. Happy very early birthday, Joe. General Theodoros Pangalos,

supported by a group of loyal military officers overthrew the president. A man whose name is so Greek, I'm not even going to bother trying to pronounce. Y'all know who he is. The people who care know who he is. Right. Once in power, Pangalos was actually kind of a terrible leader, as all generals are.

Sorry, officers, if you're listening, you're bad military leaders. Where's political ones? And Pangalos turned into a dictator so petty, Emperor Bocasa would smile upon him. Oh, no. This include things like banning free speech and free press as you know is normal things for dictators to do as well as legally mandating the length of women's skirts no more than 30 centimeters off the ground by the way in case you're wondering hates freedom yeah that's right. Free the knees. Free the knees.

Now, it soon became clear to everyone, to include the military, that support his rise to power, that maybe they threw their dogs on the wrong side of this fight. And he became very unpopular, even amongst the inner circle of the Greek political world. So Pangalos gripped onto this flare-up at the border to distract everyone, but mostly the military because the military does, and this is going to sound weird to some people, the military likes fighting wars. It makes them look good. Assuming

they can win, I might suppose. Assuming? I wouldn't know what that's like. I was in the US Army. We don't win wars. But, like, yeah, like, if you talk to any or if you look at any military dictatorship like argentina comes to mind in the falklands war right like they were looking for a military basically a big pr exercise yeah two bald men fighting over a comb as it's as it's popularly known as um and so pangolos being a military officer is like if i give these people military glory i'll get off my ass right sure now the official version that made it to greek newspapers at the time omitted the dog completely which is unfortunate

because he's my favorite character in the story um now according yeah that's right old flantos i can't i can't think of many greek names that is the all-in-dose um according to the press according to the press some bulgarian border guards stormed the greek outpost for no reason whatsoever it was during this raid that the greek captain and one guard were apparently killed they just skipped the third guy i got even in their propaganda they they downplayed it a little jesus uh bulgaria probably sensing another ass kicking coming expressed regret for the incident and said it was all terrible misunderstandings please we don't want any more of that smoke. Just stop shooting at us.

They proposed a Greco-Bulgarian commission to investigate the matter unilaterally. Now, of course, Pangalos gave the Bulgarians an ultimatum, as people starting wars are wont to do. Sure. They had to punish those who were responsible, make an official apology, and pay two million French francs in compensation to the victim's family, which is a lot of fucking money. Yeah, that's crazy. Now, to make things even dumber, they gave them a 48-hour

window in order to comply with these demands, which is a sure fireway for diplomatic success. Come on, man! Come on, chance! That's the thing. He just wanted to fight a war. He's like, we is a sure fireway for diplomatic success. Come on, man! Come on, chance! That's the thing, he just wanted to fight a war. Like, he's like, we win a war, I get to stay in power, and next, I don't know, I'll legislate the sleeves on your shirt!

Uh, now... I'm drunk with power! Ha ha! Of course, Bulgaria, who, like I reminded you before, is controlled by something of a right-wing shithead themselves, told Greece to fuck off. Now, Bulgaria probably didn't assume what was going to happen next was actually going to happen next because Greece also wasn't exactly in a great place to fight a war. They probably just assumed that, well, we might be kind of weak right now,

but we're stronger than Bulgaria. Also, they were banking on the fact that everyone else in their former Balkans League still fucking hated Bulgaria, so they reached out to Serbia and all their other bros to see if they want to get the band back together and beat the shit out of Bulgaria again. One more time, you guys? Stop throwing rocks at me. Reunion tour!

Let's go! And Serbia, you know, probably seeing how dumb this whole thing was even for greece decided to sit this one out uh but that didn't stop pangolos and he ordered a greek the greek military to start shelling the bulgarians as well as sent an entire army corps across the border which is pretty large formation sure the bulgar, not expecting things to escalate at such quite a dumb scale, had not reinforced their side for an actual war. It was just small border emplacements.

You would not consider this a fortified front in any stretch of the imagination. Right. Most Bulgarian forces decided, fuck this this and they simply evacuated without much of a fight just giving the land over to the greeks um but like that's not what the greeks wanted they didn't want to storm in and take over petrich which is the town that they captured they wanted to fight a war so they began to rampage and loot and have parties and shit. And they took time out of the day to start fucking with the local Macedonians, hoping to shoot some holes in their ideas of independence while they're on that side of the border. Yeah. They're like, hey, we came here for a fight.

Why the fuck are you backing down? Like, we don't want to die anymore. Stop kicking me. Please just take what's left of this house and leave us alone. We're sorry about the dog. But Greece ran into some problems. Now, they had just lost the war three years before with the modern Turkish national movement that would eventually turn into the modern Turkish Republic. And they didn't lose this war by a little bit either.

It was something of a gigantic cluster fuck that would impact them going all the way into World War II it was pretty devastating right and one of the main characteristics of that loss was a near total collapse of their logistical system weird how that keeps happening oh which had not been reformed nor rebuilt at all prior to this battle or war, if you want to call it that. So the Greek army, once again, outran their own supply line, despite the fact they just barely crossed over the border. Yeah, they loved doing that.

Thinking this war was going to go further, Greece really did assume that this is going to be a full on third Balkans war. And so they dug their heels in and once again appealed to Serbia, who did agree finally to intervene on the side of Greece as long as they opened up a railroad corridor for Serbian use so they could access the Greek trade ports. This was kind of a shitty deal for the Greeks, but they also realized they needed to serve you yeah they may be kind of fucked um so they agreed and this soon set the table for things to really pop off and then bulgaria did something that kind of surprised me they called the league of nations um wow those poor things now it's important to remember here that bulgaria had no fucking allies anymore they had spent the last 20 fucking years fighting the entire region in one shape or another.

Even Russia was like, you're on your own. At this point, they are balls deep in the Civil War. And the Civil War is actually pretty much over at this point. Right. So, like, Bulgaria has no friends. So they appealed to the League of Nations. Mood. And what has to be the only time in the League of Nations short and pitiful existence, they actually did something to stop a war.

Wow. Yeah. Now they demanded a ceasefire and a full Greek withdrawal, which is one thing. You can demand things all you want. Furthermore, they said Greece owned Bulgaria money for storming in and breaking all of their shit. Now, at this point, Greece accused the League of Nations of hypocrisy because a couple years before, Italy, led by Benito Mussolini, had invaded the island of Corfu in 1923, which Italy considered part of the reborn Roman Empire. Now, at this point, for reasons that are not entirely clear, nor do they make any sense,

the League backed Italy in this situation and asked Greece to pay Italy reparations after they pulled out. What? Now, this is mostly to appease Mussolini. We had some pretty strong expansionist ideas. And remember, this is solidly in the mid-20s, all the way up until the mid-30s,

where people were just desperate to avoid another large-scale European war. Sure, okay. So it leads to them just constantly doing dumb shit. But Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece aren't exactly major European powers, nor are they in any position to threaten the European balance of power at this point. So the League of Nations is much more comfortable telling everybody to fuck off and go back home. Sure. Now, furthermore, which is actually kind of surprising,

the British said if the Greeks did not withdraw, they would join the war on the side of the Bulgarians. And they were also joined by the French and a few other members of the League of Nations, which is pretty surprising because when you see, for instance,

the Emperor of Ethiopia would eventually beg the League of Nations to get involved with the Italian invasion of his country, and the League of Nations sent Italy a strongly worded letter. Obviously, there's race at play here.

There's the fact that it's in Europe. There's the fact that it's in Europe is in play here. Nobody gives a fuck about a non colonized area of Africa. There's a lot at play here. But at this point, the League of Nations actually did something. Now, obviously, Italy would eventually leave the League of Nations over shit like this. But that actually worked. The Greeks withdrew and they actually

did pay reparations. Over the extent of the 10 day long conflict, which killed around 100 people, most of the soldiers that died were Greeks. Most of the people that died were Bulgarians. Because they were busy rampaging their way through.

Because most of the Bulgarians killed were civilians. Because the Bulgarian military was like, we're going to stay back here. And you guys just do your thing. See ya. Good luck at camp. Yeah. We'll see you guys in the next war. But this actually ruined Pangalos' reputation.

He didn't win a battle. He got cutted out of Bulgaria by the League of Nations. He ruined his reputation as a strong man, which is like the reputation you need if you're going to run a military dictatorship. The military needs to be strong, and the Greek military completely shit the bed. So

within like a couple months, he was kicked out of power by the same group of officers that had put him there in the first place replacing him with someone else yeah now this has nothing to do with anything but if Pongalos wasn't a big enough asshole when Greek when Greece

eventually capitulated to the Nazis I know it's a much longer story than that I have an entire series planned for the for the Italio and German evasion of Greece promise I'll go into much further but when greece capitulated he ended up turning sides and working for the nazis uh he became close friends with the psychotic ss officers who were really bad in greece and helped set up like their

call i believe the security battalions who literally swore allegiance to adolf hitler in greece and were mostly just a roving death squad. Um, and he was very, very nearly the prime minister of the Greek Nazi puppet state. So Pongalos is a fucking dick. Now the dog was unfortunately never heard from again.

We assume that he, he escaped to safety away from constant warfare. He made it to possibly the Isle of Dogs in the UK, which without looking into it, I assume is an island-wide sanctuary for dogs. We will not be taking any questions at this time.

I will not. Now, in closing, I will end with one more cursed comment and then we will go into our question from the Legion. And this was, what is the problem to be Serbian? We are all human beings. This is the problem.

They are not. Yeah, I was landing. Anyway, this is the I didn't talk to this guy before using the cursed balkan youtube comment page on twitter it's it's com comical uh i highly recommend everybody read there's a lot more worse ones on there that i don't find funny uh but i encourage everybody to check it out now liam we do a thing on this podcast called questions from the legion since when joe uh actually not that long ago we started this oh really but if you'd like to um

ask a question to legion donate a dollar to the show um ask us through patreon through discord through dms email um strap a letter to a greek border agent and send him across the border into bulgaria and i will

read it on here um now this one is what was your first car like my first car was a 1995 volvo 850R wagon. Outstanding. We never got the Canary Yellow in the United States. So I found basically a close enough color, repainted it Canary Yellow. That thing was amazing. It had an engine co-developed with Porsche, and it tricked all my friends' parents into thinking it was safe.

It was not. I don't know, besides enough, how unsafe that car was. Mine was also freakishly unsafe. So my first car was, I believe, in 1988 Crown Vic that my mom bought from a police

auction, like true Detroiters. It had electrical problems and it was my mom bought from a police auction like true detroiters yeah um it had like electrical problems uh and it was a uh one of those crown vex had bench seats hell yeah dude um and the the bolts on the bench seat were broken so every time i hit the gas and remember these these things have fucking huge engines in their land yachts right the whole bench seat would rock back um if i used turn signals every light in the cab like on my dashboard would blink and there were just were like weird unknown stains on the seat uh that came with it which were like almost certainly a mixture of common blood in there in there uh but i think my mom spent a grand total of like 200 300 on this piece of shit um how long did you have it for uh like two or three years how bad yeah i couldn't afford

anything else uh i i drove it to uh like i ended up enlisting in the army and i got my first duty station or my first place of duty was Fort Knox. So that was within feasibly driving distance. Right. So I drove it to Kentucky from Detroit, which is like four or five hours. That is a brave drive.

And as soon as I crossed the gate into Fort Knox, the car broke down and i left it there and it was towed and i never saw i don't need it anymore see you boys yeah i literally abandoned it on the other side of the gate um that's fucking funny but uh liam thank you for joining us everybody uh thank you for listening uh thank you for supporting the show check out the teespring story remember to say at this time I put new designs on that bitch.

Check them out. And until next time, don't invade Bulgaria, I guess. Yeah, invade Bulgaria if you know you're going to win. So I guess invade Bulgaria. Don't invade Bulgaria.