Bulken Balkans

So I’ve been watching this Military Channel series on people who collaborated with the Nazis. It’s called, amazingly enough, “Nazi Collaborators”. And it is actually imparting some interesting information.

There have been episodes about Pierre Laval (France), Chaim Rumkowski (the Łódź ghetto) and the Arajs Kommando (Latvia; their expert was a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina). The latest one I watched was about the Croatian Ustasha officer Dinko Šakić, subtitled “Beast of the Balkans”. 

(And here one would have to specify which Beast of the Balkans, because there are so many from that region who've spent lifetimes earning that epithet. Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžić are only two of the most recent.)

As you know, TV networks these days muck up the video with a permanent logo at one corner of the screen (in case you’ve forgotten what channel you’re watching), and often pop up little notices about future shows, because I guess they’re worried that the one you’re viewing isn’t interesting enough to hold your attention.

The Military Channel does all these things, plus splashing a banner reminding you what program you’re watching.

But as I idly noted that, here’s what really caught my eye:

Fine—whatever. Then:

Uh—seriously? All the people processing this stuff & you didn’t catch that?

I checked at the screen they broadcast after every commercial (all nine of them),and they did indeed know what geographical region Šakić was the beast of:

I don’t know what to say. Except that…Well, no—I just don’t know what to say.