History is rarely as clean as the winners write it. Bulgaria ended World War Two on the losing side, signed a peace treaty as a defeated nation, and yet walked away with more territory than it started with. Bulgaria set a precedent as the only defeated country in World War Two to emerge from the war with a territorial gain. No other country on the losing side can say that. To understand how that happened, you have to understand what Bulgaria was dealing with before the first shot was ever fired.