Escape from the Balkans
By: by Michael Padev.
Publisher: The Bobbs-Merrill company
Published: 1943
Place of publication: Indianapolis; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 311
Subjects: World War, 1939-1945 -- Personal narratives, Bulgarian.; World War, 1939-1945 -- Balkan Peninsula.
Description: FOREWORD 
"In the summer of 1941, some weeks after Germany's  attack on Russia, several hundred parachutists were  dropped in the Balkans by Red Army planes to combat  the occupying forces in all the Balkan countries and to  assist in the organization of underground anti-Axis activities. Later in the year I myself saw some of these parachutists at work. I saw them fight and I saw them die.  Their heroism inspired me to write their story and that  story forms part of this book. But they had something  more and rarer than courage: they were animated by a clear and steadfast ideal and for that ideal they fought and  died. These parachutists were not Russians — they were  Bulgarians, Croats, Greeks, Rumanians, Serbs and Slovenes.  They fought — and some of them still fight — together,  and their example has laid the foundations of Balkan  underground unity on revolutionary bases. This underground unity, in my opinion, is the most significant political phenomenon of the war as far as the Balkans and  Southeastern Europe are concerned. It is bound to have —  as indeed present conditions (Spring 1943) in Yugoslavia show — great repercussions throughout the Balkans  and will be one of the most important factors to be reckoned with when peace comes. Unfortunately this unity is  hardly realized or taken into account in Britain and in the  United States, in spite of the great interest that is in evidence in both countries toward the peace problems of  Europe."
Notes: "First edition".
Table of contents: title: TABLE OF CONTENTS; title: CHAPTER PAGE; title: I Into Darkness; title: II Herr Drexler of the Gestapo 28; title: III Why I Didn't Kill Hitler 40; title: IV The Reichswehr Marches 55; title: V Where Homer Once Lived 61; title: VI Balkan Unity 81; title: VII Boris the Last 89; title: VIII Oil for Hitler's Tanks 97; title: IX Cripps the Prophet 112; title: X The American Spy 130; title: XI Taxi Drivers to the Rescue 151; title: XII Stalin Proposes, Hitler Disposes 156; title: XIII The Conference 163; title: XIV "The Rest is Silence ..." 174; title: XV What a Story! 181; title: XVI Robin Hood or Quisling? 195; title: XVII Only Moscow Knows 202; title: XVIII "Long Live Yugoslavia" 206; title: XIX Sky Guerrillas 229; title: XX The Red Flag Attacks 247; title: XXI Sonya's Life 254; title: XXII Sonya's Death 273; title: XXIII No German Will Leave the Balkans Alive! 278; title: XXIV No Man's Land 283; title: XXV Escape 299