S2 Book Club: The Forgotten 500

hello again everyone and welcome back to the underground today we're going to get right back on track and talk about our latest book club offering in this case it is the book The Forgotten 500 by Gregory Freeman I know I'm a little bit behind schedule with regards to the book club so sorry about that but I'm I'm finally starting to get caught up and we can start to talk about the latest book that we uh chose for uh last month so just right up front before we get into the maps I wanted to talk about the book itself uh it's a very short read it's only about 300 pages so you can get through pretty quickly uh the ease of read is very easy to read not very hard at all uh you don't really need to have an understanding of what's going on or or the history of the Balkan region it does help uh because as we know this is probably the most complicated area of the whole planet to discuss in terms of the geopolitical history of how the region developed uh you have to really have kind of like a very basic understanding but uh the book kind of covers that as well because the book is trying to talk about a rescue mission so so that's the name of the book this is a book about a rescue mission uh that occurred during World War II in what was at the time Yugoslavia now of course we know that the book takes place or the events in the book the cities in the book mentioned uh take place in what is now modern day Serbia but at the time it was Yugoslavia again very contentious topic this book would make a pretty good book If you're looking for something for like a homeschool curriculum for like maybe an older young adult U maybe kind of like high school age this would be a a fantastic book um there's not a whole lot of vulgarity in the book uh there are some uh scenes of brutality for you know obviously this is World War II not exactly a a peaceful or happy time in many cases however uh it's pretty mild on that front so if you're looking for a you know decently family friendly book uh to to give to say like a younger adult who's got maybe a little bit more advanced reading level maybe High School level uh this will be a good book for that so for those of you who are looking for something there you go so what is the Forgotten 500 all about well let's jump to the map and we'll talk about it looking at this map from the time period we can see some of the challenges that the Allies might have had uh following their invasion of Sicily in 1943 once the Allies invaded Sicily and that sort of campaign kicked off and they expanded uh northward into Italy we can see that they had a few problems namely the German occupation of the Balkan region and what to do about it so obviously a lot of bombing raids of uh Allied Forces were carried out from bases in Italy and they were uh taking place over what at the time was Yugoslavia sometimes stretching as as far as Hungary or all the way over to Romania and Bulgaria the Germans had occupied the region a few years before and we're trying to to hold the region uh to make their Eastern uh campaign go a little bit easier so that's kind of the very broad brush understanding now this book picks up where a lot of um uh details sometimes get lost so as you have bombing raids uh we all know the sort of Target for tonight the 12:00 High version of um Americans and British uh Airmen taking off from Britain flying over Germany and dropping bombs on ball bearing factories right well the same thing was going on down in the south from Italy into this region well the problem is is that obviously Warfare is a pretty risky business and bombers are going to get shot down or they're going to be disabled to the point to where the crew has to bail out so the United States and Britain find themselves in a situation where they've got a lot of down Airmen in Yugoslavia so what do you do about it well first of all we have to have an understanding of who was on the ground in the area first of all we have the German occupiers uh the German Army who was occupying the area but we also have various partisan groups we have various resistance groups um that were local to the region that all had varying uh contrasting sometimes views one of the groups where the majority of you know Allied Airmen sort of came under the the purview of uh was led by General draza mahalovich now please forgive me if I'm not explaining this quite right uh it's very very challenging to kind of paint the sort of Bulan region with a broad brush sometimes and it's not as simple as good guy versus bad guy as we all know throughout the history but especially in this region so uh it's very hard and sometimes very contentious to even describe what's going on in the region but General mahalovich was the leader of the chetnik this was a local resistance group of ethnic serbs located in what is now uh modern day Serbia but at the time it was just basically a district of Yugoslavia or a region of Yugoslavia and he did not like the Germans so he was trying to fight off the occupying uh people who had invaded his country right so let's come back to the problem the Allies faced they have a lot of allies a lot of Allied Airmen that are down to the region they've got to get back to their home home base somehow they've got to get back to Friendly lines somehow they've got resistance guys on the ground willing to help them for sure and who are not super stoked to have the Germans in their country so what do we do about this well if you're the British and the Americans you do pretty much exactly what you did in France and set up a coordination movement between the uh resistance groups on the ground and say The British Special Operations executive the precursor to MI6 and the American office of strategic Services the precursor to the CIA so you can see how we get this sort of spy game going on here both of these agencies both the British and the American really sort of cut their teeth on these kinds of incidents throughout World War II the Americans already having experience in Burma and the British already having experience in France so we set up a coordination effort so the OSS and the S soe get together set up a coordination effort with this guy movich now most of the book uh the the first at least the first half of the book details the individual stories of the Airmen that were shot down so and I I think this is a lot less to do with politics or the time of the region it was probably more to do with just the good nature of human beings and Humanity at the time which is that if there's a person who's shot down they find themselves in a you know slung under a parachute you know floating gently down to a very unfriendly terrain well their average citizen wanted to take care of that person so uh a lot of the the the uh people throughout the region just wanted to help anyone really and we see this quite often we see uh a lot of mich's people not even really being affiliated with any resistance movement and just helping the Airmen and getting them uh to the to the right people so I think that it has less to do with um you know the serbs in the area at the time or the yugoslavs in the area at the time uh wanting to combat uh the Germans and this is just sort of the thing that they did so the first half of the book really cements the sort of good nature of of the people involved in the kindness and this comes back at the very end of the book so I I feel like I have to mention it it's not just a a tactical or strategic sort of situation there's a lot of humanity coming out here as well so again coming back to the Allies what do we do we've got a good resistance leader on the ground we've got coordination with the resistance how do we get our guys out well if you look at the map you can see that it's kind of a long way and and as uh you may not be able to see it from the map but most of the area at the time was absolutely covered in trees so as the book mentions most of the Allies even if they were damaged they did not even attempt to make an emergency landing anywhere in this region they just bailed out because they knew that there wasn't anywhere to land because of trees so the Germans were fairly confident that you know there wouldn't be any sort of you know Crash Landing attempts it's all basically just you know guys or Airmen jumping out of their planes when they become damaged to the point where they can't continue because of this the Germans also got a little sloppy and they assumed that the Americans would not be able to conduct any sort of large operation because they just couldn't land any planes there remember at the time World War II no helicopters right so you're only dealing with fixed wi aircraft which need a really long Runway right so the Germans were fairly confident that the Allies could not land any aircraft in the area so you know they they were kind of sloppy on that on that front so as we can see the Germans get a little bit complacent and they don't necessarily start putting uh this this many low-level uh anti-aircraft uh sites throughout uh their their occupied terrain now we can all see that this sort of sets the stage for what comes next enter operation halard this is the operation to do exactly what you might intuitively think the Americans the British the chetnik resistance fighters on the ground decided to all coordinate together to build an Airfield so they decide to uh build one uh major Airfield there were a couple others that were sort of involved uh this wasn't just one Rescue Mission this was a several uh Mission sort of thing so they decided let's cut an Airfield in the middle of this Forest here outside this town and we'll uh make it so that an American aircraft can take off from Italy fly really low come in land get all of the American Air Airmen that we have sort of um gotten together and put him on a plane and get him out of here sort of like a real life Hogan's Hero sort of situation the resistance Fighters uh would go out and find American Airmen that were down they would work with local people and sort of gather up all of the the people who jumped out of their planes and parachuted down to earth they would get them together run them through a secret Network rendevu them at a sight plane would land they would get on the plane and go back to Italy so that's basically how operation halard worked out uh there was very little confidence in working in the beginning but after the first uh first mission it actually worked very very well and uh as we can see uh little little more than 500 uh Airmen were able to get out of the area so it's not just Americans or British it's uh quite a few other Allied Nations as well uh had Personnel that were gotten out via this air strip so it's a fantastic story of uh evacuation Humanity uh you know humans helping out their fellow man regardless of being able to speak speak the same language or having the same culture or anything it's just the most wholesome story you could possibly imagine uh you know chetnik Fighters going to the woods taking fire losing men of their own in fact in many cases just to save one downed Airman that you know is is it's hard to top that in terms of you know rescue missions and Rescue Stories so why haven't we heard about it well here's the sad part of the story and why the book is called The Forgotten 500 and why the story was largely for Goten well if we back up a little bit in the story we remember that uh General movich was uh the leader of the chetniks right well the chetniks did not control the entire country they really just controlled what is now sort of Northwestern Serbia at the time it was like East Central Yugoslavia well up in the Northwestern part of at the time what was Yugoslavia now which is sort of uh Bosnia and some parts of Croatia uh there was another fella in town and he was the leader of the partisans and his name was Tito the man the myth The Legend Who eventually became known as Marshall ysep Broz Tito um so very very controversial figure he was essentially I know it's a loaded word to say but I think most people would consider him to be the dictator of Yugoslavia for many decades until his death and the breakup of Yugoslavia and the subsequent Balkan Wars so the reason why this story is largely forgotten and it did not get its own Blockbuster hit featuring Steve McQueen or Gregory pek the reason for this is because the United States decided to after the war side with Tito so even though movich helped these Airmen out he was able to coordinate and get the you know help out the United States you know rescu their Airmen the most wholesome thing you could possibly do right uh the United States abandoned him uh in favor of Tito for a few reasons so some of these reasons for the United States siding with Tito is well he had a larger resistance group for one uh and Winston Churchill personally intervened uh because he thought that movich had communist ideations there was also some conflict between movich and uh the UK so it was just kind of like a lukewarm situation uh there were some um uh the the book I I me I'll mention this and it's very inflammatory and I don't know how historically accurate it is but the book does mention it so I think I'll mention it as well uh the book sort of hints that this was a scop within a scup within a SC up sort of thing where the OSS and the S soe had been infiltrated by Communists and those Communists uh sort of spread the rumor that movich was a communist and the higher up leader leadership Winston Churchill in particular heard this heard this you know what the you know is asserted to be a lie sort of thing and said oh well we we don't want any commies so we've already got enough trouble with the Soviets so we don't need any more problems with communist so drop this guy movich and go with this new guy Tito see what he's got he's more of a Yugoslavian nationalist anyway so maybe maybe that'll you know work its way out after the war well it turns out this isn't really true uh movich uh was was persecuted targeted and executed by Tito's government uh immediately after the war and uh the United States and Britain are sort of left you know with the surprise Pikachu face sort of thing because uh they had put Tito in power and now Tito is not doing anything remotely close to what the Allies wanted him to do so classic case of the United States sort of installing a a leader who actually doesn't really um well I should say just results in a lot of conflict throughout the region the United States and uh the UK uh during this sort of kurur fuffle uh after World War II really just had to drop movich and kind of pretend that he never existed they forgot these 500 Airmen they dropped the whole story they swept it under the rug because if they publicized the fact that this guy had helped them out and saved hundreds of lives then they would be admitting that they left their savior out to dry that they you know they they sort of left him hanging so really this is just an exercise in propaganda information Warfare uh and covering up a story uh so that the United States and the UK don't look bad for hanging their friend out to dry that's what this book is about you know if you were expecting to come into this thinking oh it's just a you know rescue story uh of you know down D during World War II cool enough as is but but really just on a sort of foul and bitter note uh that reminds us that uh some very very ugly things happened during World War II and uh the Allies were not necessarily the good guys uh in many many cases after the war after mich's death and after it became clear that Tito was not their guy after all um and was Pro well they knew that he probably wasn't going to be their guy in the beginning but they they chose poorly so to speak uh but anyway after it became clear that and became public that uh through the surviving Airmen who voiced their objections until basically until their the end of their days uh once that became clear that the United States and the UK did the wrong thing and uh sort of left these guys out uh in the rain uh both Eisenhower and Churchill attempted to make good on this uh Churchill says this was uh some sources claimed that he said that this was his worst mistake of the war um not choosing to stand up for movich and sort of go along the lines of a more Serbian nationalistic route uh and Eisenhower after the war ended up giving uh movich the Legion of Merit ously of course and uh for his conduct during the war and things like that so you can see where uh there there is the the the tacit sort of lukewarm admission you know begrudgingly that this was a very dirty dirty deal um and of course it's very very complicated but uh it it also is a reminder and this is a totally different topic but it it is kind of interesting that people outside the United States have long memories have much longer memories than the than the United States than the average American does I think especially for for Warfare especially if they experienced a war in their own Homeland um and I think that's very very interesting you see this sort of thing happening uh out in the East uh you know Russia every single year uh still has um uh sort of Summer archaeological programs uh where they go out and they they um try to locate the the graves and uh do you know remains recovery of the Battle of Stalingrad you know so they do that every year they do it up in the north as well and things like that there's a very and they have ceremonies you know when they when they find our remains they rebry them they have a whole big deal you know um so for Russia it's a huge deal same thing in in what is now modern day Serbia as a matter of fact I'll throw it up on the screen here they've uh actually just a couple of years ago unveiled a massive Monument to the Americans and to the chetniks and to um those who lost their lives trying to get allies out of the region so uh you can see that the locals absolutely remember uh what happened even though even sometimes in some cases their parents weren't there it was their grandparents their great-grandparents that were involved in this sort of thing so I find it very interesting to see you know the younger Generations in other countries having a a more understanding respect for the events of World War II you know and recognizing that it's it's not as simple as we might want to make it sometimes so I think that's probably the overarching lesson that I think most people will kind of walk away from this as you know not only will you know the the story of you know government betrayal uh sort of you know ring true for many people but it's also the fact that we do remember these things and no matter how much uh governments sometimes want to suppress their crimes these things uh these things come out and people remember and they have very long memories in some cases so you know a lot of times we can't do anything uh we can't do anything to stop you know a a government from doing the wrong thing thing we can't do anything to stop a conflict breaking out sometimes uh as an average person but we can absolutely remember uh that is the absolute least that you can do no matter where you're at in the world is remember so and I think that's probably one of the better lessons that we can learn from this book uh it's not again something that you would probably read uh on your own if you had you know the choice if you saw this in the book story you probably just walk right past it not understanding that you know we may try to get like some tactical or strategic knowledge uh in in these days because I think that particularly if you're watching this uh you're probably trying to learn as much as you possibly can as efficiently as possible and you're trying to just cram in a lot of knowledge before um the knowledge becomes useful you know what I mean so and I think that a lot of people would probably just kind of skip over this because well it's a good story it's a good read it's a it's a well-written book but it's not entirely applicable in terms of strategic or tactical like densely packed knowledge that we're trying to go for sometimes but sometimes it's get to take a break and remember what all this is for and remember the warnings you know remember the uh the the things that can happen and uh remember the bigger picture sometimes so uh a lot of times at least my takeaway from this book is all we can do is remember what happened and uh make sure that people don't forget what happened and uh that we don't make the same mistakes again so I think I'll leave it there uh for today and we'll move on to the next one so thank you all for watching and we will see you next time and as always fight in the shade