Negotiations between German commanders and the Yugoslav Partisans
commenced on 11 March 1943 during an Axis offensive in World War II.
Focused on obtaining a ceasefire and establishing a prisoner exchange,
the talks were also used to delay the Axis forces while the Partisans
crossed the Neretva river and began attacking their Chetnik rivals, led
by Draža Mihailović. The talks were accompanied by an informal
ceasefire that lasted about six weeks before being called off by Adolf
Hitler. The advantage gained by the Partisans was lost when another Axis
offensive was launched in mid-May 1943. Some parts of the negotiations
were published from 1949 onwards, but many details were little known by
historians until the 1970s, including the identity of the chief Partisan
negotiator, Milovan Đilas (pictured). The US diplomat Walter Roberts
published a description of the talks in 1973 in a well-received book
that was protested by the Yugoslav government of Josip Broz Tito for its
depiction of the Partisans. Beginning in the 1980s, accounts of the
negotiations were published by Yugoslav historians and the main Yugoslav
protagonists.
Read more:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German%E2%80%93Yugoslav_Partisan_negotiations>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1707:
Queen Anne withheld royal assent from the Scottish Militia
Bill, the last time a British monarch vetoed legislation.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_assent>
1818:
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, a novel by Mary
Shelley, was first published in London.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankenstein>
1879:
Shō Tai, the last king of the Ryūkyū Kingdom, abdicated when
the kingdom was annexed by Japan and became Okinawa Prefecture.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%8D_Tai>
1993:
Janet Reno was confirmed by the Senate as the first female
United States Attorney General.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Reno>
2007:
Georgian authorities accused Russia of orchestrating a
helicopter attack in the Kodori Valley of the breakaway territory of
Abkhazia.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Georgia_helicopter_incident>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
garden path sentence:
(linguistics) A sentence that is easily parsed incorrectly when first
read, due to ambiguity of a word or words.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/garden_path_sentence>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of
people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
--The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy#The_Restaurant_at_the_End_of_the_Universe_.281980.29>