A Civilization Defended by Slaves: When Skanderbeg Saved Europe

In 1953, Russian director Sergei Yutkevich arrived to Albania, a small country of three million people located in southeastern Europe along the Adriatic Sea. Yutkevich came to direct a feature film about the life of Albania’s national hero, George Skanderbeg. Born Gjergj Kastrioti, the man lived from the year 1405 to 1468. Taken hostage as a child by the Ottoman Turks, they named the boy after their word for Alexander the Great, İskender. Skanderbeg was to be raised as a Muslim and trained by the Turkish army to serve as a mercenary to Sultan Murad the Second. The Sultan recognized Skanderbeg’s strength as a warrior and decided to employ his servant in an elite army of foreign slaves called the Janissaries.

Adapted from https://blog.koenraadt.info/post/184548243486/before-pc-everyone-was-alt-right

Music

"The Pilgrim's Chorus" from Tannhäuser by Richard Wagner

References

The 1953 Soviet film about Skanderbeg by Sergei Yutkevich

The claim that the Ottoman Turks employed slaves to defend their civilization because they couldn't rely on the tribalist Muslims: Francis Fukuyama, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution, 1st ed. (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), chap. 13: "Slavery and the Muslim Exit from Tribalism".

Text adapted from the book 'Revival of the West: Securing a Future for European People' by Mathijs Koenraadt:
https://www.amazon.com/Revival-West-Securing-Future-European/dp/9082327570
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/912719
https://koenraadt.info/post/175669310802/revival-of-the-west-securing-a-future-for