Conquering the Balkans, Act 2
This chapter discusses Marshal Tito's plan to take the whole of the Balkans, which failed before it even started to materialize due to the disintegration of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE). It details how the KKE survived the repression carried out by dictator Ioannis Metaxas between 1936 and 1941 and fell apart completely in 1940, when Italy invaded Greece from Albanian soil. It also describes the faction of the Bulgarians that became dominant in the KKE when the German armies entered Greece after having overrun Yugoslavia in their Balkan onslaught. The chapter discusses how the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact secured the position of the Bulgarian communists as collaborationists. It mentions Metodij Šatorov, a man installed into the Communist Party of Yugoslavia leadership for Macedonia by Georgi Dimitrov that detached the Skopje-based Regional Committee from the CPY and attached it to the Bulgarian Communist Party.