WHY HITLER (AND CHURCHILL) NEEDED BELGRADE

 

‘”On the morning of Palm Sunday, while children slept their innocent sleep and the church bells were ringing for prayer to God, the German aeroplanes without warning let fall a rain of bombs on this historic town”’.

So wrote King Peter of Yugoslavia after the bombing of Belgrade 6^th April 1941. ‘The King went on to describe the terror of the women and children who were machine-gunned as they fled from their homes by low-flying planes.’ (1)

Hitler termed this invasion Operation Strafgericht, a word that in English means Retribution or Punishment. To understand why Hitler labelled it like this, it is necessary first to know something of Belgrade's geography and then something of its history. 

Belgrade lies at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, and the modern visitor taking a stroll down its Sava shoreline passed the boats to the left and the restaurants to the right, can see without difficulty the strategic importance of the city. Anyone who controls Belgrade controls the river traffic from the far east of Europe to its west. In the days before air freight and autobahns this was of vital importance, as the Celts, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Huns, the Slavs, the Bulgars, the Hungarians, the Turks, the Austrians, the Serbs and the Nazis will tell you. 

To the left in this image is the Sava River flowing westwards to Zagreb and Ljubljana. In the distance, the trees run along the shore of the mighty Danube that flows all the way from Romania to Germany. 

 

  

 

The Fort built for the defence of Belgrade sits directly on this confluence, at Stari Grad, the old town, and some sort of military fortress has existed here since Roman times.

An army cannot function without supplies and communication. Belgrade, in its position on the rivers and the railways was nec-essary to Hitler for both. This image from my 1915 World Atlas shows the route of the Danube from Romania through Belgrade to Germany. The oil fields of Romania were the largest in Europe and ess-ential to the Nazi war machine. (4) Later on in the war, the Allies attempted to derail the industry by bombing the oil fields and disrupting the transport system that took it by river to Germany. 

Next, let us take a look at the railways from my 2007 Heinemann Atlas. I took the 24 hour train trip from Athens to Belgrade in 1985, and it is an easy connection from there all the way to Germany. The Germans needed control of the railways to supply their troops in North Africa. Every day 48 trains ran through Belgrade to Athens, there to load their supplies onto ships that crossed the Mediterranean to where Rommel and his army awaited them. (2)

Between the convenient rivers and the convenient railway, it doesn't take much imagination to understand why Hitler wished to punish the Yugoslavs for not rolling out the red carpet. 

Enter the British. 

The British had had connections in Yugoslavia for years before the war, particularly in Belgrade. Significantly, their Intelligence Service had been active during Germany's march towards war in order to monitor and assess the response it was provoking in the Balkans. The Yugoslav regent Prince Paul was something of an Anglophile. Like his nephew, the seventeen-year-old King Peter who was a descendent of Queen Victoria through his mother, Paul had been to school in England. Serbia, Bosnia and Macedonia were rich in bauxite, coal, iron ore, lead and zinc, and British mining engineers and businessmen had been working in Yugoslavia before the war. At least one of them, Captain Bill Hudson, fluent in Serbo Croat and allegedly one of Ian Flemming's inspirations for James Bond, was later used as part of Special Operations (7). 

Britain wanted Yugoslavia as an ally.

Although the reasons would change as the war continued, in 1941 Yugoslavia was also the gateway to Greece and of great significance to the British defence of Greece which was to occur that April. 'The important thing, Eden [the British Foreign Secretary] said, was that the Yugoslavs should deny the passage of German troops, especially through the Monastir Gap, which would threaten the Greek flank.' (8)

Under the regency of Prince Paul from 1934, Yugoslavia had maintained a semi-peaceful relationship with Nazi Germany with the aim of not getting involved in war, but in February 1941, Hitler suddenly called upon the Yugoslav Prime Minister and Foreign Minister to throw their lot in with Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Japan, and on 25th March Prince Paul signed the Tripartite Pact (5). Two days later on a wave of public indignation, a military coup disposed him, made his nephew Peter the King, and General Dušan Simović of the Yugoslav Air Force the leader of a National Government.

Churchill, needless to say, watched all this with interest. Yugoslavia had "found its soul", he remarked. But 'The Fűhrer had at first refused to believe the news – "I thought," he said later, "that it was a joke."' (5)

We all know what happened next. Hitler lost his famous temper and ordered that Yugoslavia be wiped from the map 'with unmerciful harshness and the military destruction done in lightning-like fashion' (5). Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria and Italy invaded the country from all sides and dismantled it between them. Naturally, Germany claimed first rights to its natural resources, particularly the bauxite mines in Herzegovina, to the south east of Bosnia, because it needed aluminium for the construction of aeroplanes. 

Nor was this the end. Christie Lawrence in Irregular Adventure recalls later in 1941 seeing half the sky in flames in the rural areas south of Belgrade. It was German terror tactics, the systematic destruction of Serbian villages in response to any show of resistance by the Yugoslavs to the Nazi occupation. ‘The total result of our revolution was that we killed about seven or eight thousand Germans and lost 125,000 men and women shot by them. Three towns and fifty-three villages ...were burned out, and our organization was virtually destroyed.’ (6) 

The question is, what part had Britain played in the Belgrade coup d'etat that had precipitated this disaster and why? (8) 

Britain, of course, had been kept well-informed of the political jostling in Belgrade prior to Prince Paul putting his pen to the poisoned Pact. 'In the six months prior to the coup, the British attitude toward Yugoslavia had changed from accepting Yugoslav benevolent neutrality, to that of pressing the Yugoslavs for more active support in the war against Germany.' (8) Romania with its all-important oil fields had already signed the Pact on 23rd November 1940 after Hungary on 20th November, Slovakia followed on 24th November and lastly Bulgaria on 1st March 1941. Aside from Ustasha-controlled Croatia, already loyal to the Nazis, only Yugoslavia remained. To the British, two things were clear, one, that Prince Paul should not sign the Tripartite Pact with Germany and two, if he did, 'subversive political action' should be placed that ultimately supported the military coup of March 27th.' The British planned to persuade the Yugoslav people and its political parties to exert pressure on Prince Paul and, failing that, to get rid of him. They succeeded only in the latter. They first persuaded several cabinet members to resign in order to destabilize the government, and the final step was to get the Yugoslav military involved in a coup. 

As I read this article (8) I wondered, as I often do with British war history, how much British self-glorification was involved. In any event, whatever they might have been planning bore no fruit. It is true that the Yugoslav military was not prepared for war and collapsed in only eleven days. I have read that Ustasha fifth columnists also had a hand in it (3). Prince Paul, King Peter, General Simović and what would become the Yugoslav Government-in-Exile in Claridge's Hotel London fled the country. The Commando Captain Christie Lawrence who had been captured in Crete, jumped into Serbia from a German train in June 1941. During the twelve months he spent in the country, it seemed to him preindustrial, its remaining leaders confused and bewildered, wanting to help but not knowing what to do. Draža Mihailović, whom everyone had just run off and left, sounded forlorn and Lawrence had not even heard of Tito (6). It wasn't until May 1943 that Churchill parachuted a military party into the country to investigate the Yugoslav Partisans about whom he was beginning to receive rumours. During the Allied Invasion of Sicily in July 1943, the Partisans kept dozens of German Battalions occupied and out of Italy, which pleased Churchill. Of course. 

NOTES

1 - Balkan Essays Hubert Butler, the Irish Pages Press 2016
2 - Glenny, Misha: The Balkans 1804 - 2012 Penguin books 1999
3 - 1941 the Year That Keeps Returning, Slavko Goldstein New York Review BooksNov 05, 2013
4 - Romania's Age Of Oil (rferl.org)
5 - Maclean, Fitzroy: The Heretic: the life and times of Josip Broz-Tito. Harley and Brothers NY, 1957
6 - Christie Laurence Lawrence, Christie Irregular Adventure Faber and Faber 1947
7 - Deakin, FWD: The Embattled Mountain Oxford University Press 1971
8. soe-and-british-involvement-in-the-belgrade-coup-detat-of-march-1941.pdf (cambridge.org) From this article comes the notable quote from Sir Alexander Cadogan, the permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office, "All these Balkan peoples are trash."

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WINTER BATTLES: BOSNIA 1941

December 1941: Fleeing the German destruction of Užice in Serbia,
Tito and the Partisans crossed the River Drina in winter,

climbed the mountains of Bosnia on the other side, 

and walked through the forests.    

Bosnia Herzegovina is a very mountainous country. In winter it is snow bound.

As someone who has actually driven through Bosnia in the snow, I have difficulty understanding why the Nazis thought that they could successfully invade the country. Even today, the roads seem to be a collection of mule tracks up and down the formidable Dinaric Alps with the addition of a few optimistic motorways. In Eastern Approaches (Jonathon Cape pub. 1949) Fitzroy Maclean writes, 'the Germans, with an elusive enemy, with unreliable allies, and without enough troops of their own to occupy the country effectively, could do little more than garrison the large towns and try to guard the lines of communication between them'.

However, during the war they needed bauxite from the mines near Mostar, the mediaeval capital of Herzegovina, for use in the construction of aeroplanes. Bosnia Herzegovina is also rich in coal, iron ore, zinc and lead. There were two ways to transport coal and ore to Germany. One was along the system of Bosnian narrow-gauge railways built by the Austrians which was extended between the wars to connect the coast to Belgrade, and the other was by sea to Trieste. The railways ran the gauntlet of demolition by the Partisans, and ships in the Adriatic risked being sunk by the Allies. 

The Partisans needed Bosnia to connect with their operational zones in Croatia, Dalmatia, Slovenia and Montenegro. The Nazis waged a series of offensives against them. They were assisted in this by the Italians, the Croatian Ustasha and the Chetniks. The Partisans held up to twenty-eight German divisions in Bosnia Herzegovina, Croatia and Montenegro which suited Churchill as the Allied Invasion of Sicily approached.

To understand the creation of the Partisans from a motley collection of local fighters engaged over the centuries in battling Turks, we must go to Bosnia in December 1941.

'Tito and his staff had formed a conception of Partisan warfare which deviated from past Soviet practice...where a Partisan unit was an auxiliary weapon of a regular army...To the Yugoslavs the Partisan units were the army, organized in mobile formations and in territorial defense units.'

from The Embattled Mountain, FWD Deakin, Oxford University Press, 1971.

Between December 1941 and May 1942 Tito formed five Proletarian Brigades of up to 1000 fighters each, as a military striking force under his direct command. By November they had increased to 28.

 Deakin continues, 

'The immediate task of the First Proletarian Brigade [in December 1941] was in ensure the hold of the Partisans over the key strategic areas of East Bosnia.'

The chief difference between these forces and the old local fighters was their mobility. They no longer defended only their home territories. 

'Long before the Allies, the Germans and Italians came to realize that the Partisans constituted a military factor of first rate importance against which a modern army was in many respects powerless.,,During each of [their seven] offensives, the extensive troop movements involved exposed [them] more than ever to the attacks and ambushes of the Partisans.'   

from Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy Maclean  

The contrast between the Partisans and the Germans was striking. The Germans in Bosnia were an efficient modern army, often using Alpine troops, with field kitchens and heavy artillery, 'lumbering, snail-like'. The Partisans were organized into small, mobile, lightly armed units who were familiar with the terrain. Much of the reason for the failure of the Germans to subdue the Partisans was their inability to embrace change. Tito told Deakin that the Germans 'had missed the lesson of creating mobile units with special anti-Partisan training. German forward units were always pressing behind the Yugoslavs and could never move with speed in self-contained columns to attack the Partisan forces from the rear. By not winning every grim race for each mountain crest, the German operation failed in its central purpose of annihilating the Yugoslav main operational group.' 

Yet the Germans were supported from the air, as we read in the poem The Bombed Forest by Josip Cazi, a Partisan Political Commissar. Papuk is a mountain in Slavonija in Croatia.

'This morning over Papuk a reconnaissance plane is searching, an ominous buzzard in that dreary first light...Death comes from the air, seeking with fiery claws the heart of the Partisans.'

The forest burns all day. Frightened animals run from the wildfire. 

'But at sunset Partisan songs sweep through it like an inexhaustible fountain. Along the slopes the column of soldiers moves out into the lowlands. They will go into action at night – the cycle of history is still turning. Above Papuk the fires die in the evening.' 

The typical enemy tactic was encirclement, and getting out of the ring was the Partisan aim, as we read in A Partisan Letter by Josip Cazi,

Yesterday, with a fiery partisan sledgehammer, we fought the fascist regiment on Mt Psunj, so hurriedly that I didn’t send you the letter I had written. We penetrated the ring by a stormy impact, blasting the fiery chain in a bloody assault. And while to you, my orphan, I write this letter, our columns on the September roads are singing of victory in the morning sun.

'The ring' is a constant observation in British eyewitness accounts. For example, from Partisan Picture' by Basil Davison (Bedford Books, 1946) at the Battle of the Neretva River, from January to March 1943,

To hold the ring the German Command then made an arrangement with 12,000 of Mihaylovitch's chetniks, commanded by Col. Stanisitch and General Djukanovitch and others, by which the latter would attempt to seal off any further partisan retreat by taking up positions along the left bank of the River Neretva. [The fourth offensive.]

The fifth offensive ended with the breaking of the ring in Montenegro and the escape of Tito and the main formations into Eastern Bosnia. That was in mid-June 1943 [the Battle of the Sutjeska].

An account of the same battle from The Heretic by Fitzroy Maclean (Harper and Brother, NY, 1957), 

'"Now that the ring is completely closed," ran a captured German operation order, "the communists will try to break through. You will ensure that no able-bodied man leaves the ring alive."' 

 'If guerillas are to survive in conditions comparable to those in which the Partisans were fighting,' wrote Fitzroy Maclean in Eastern Approaches, 'they must...deny the enemy a target.' The Partisans did this by 'extricating themselves, fading away, reappearing elsewhere and attacking the enemy where he least expected it.' They did not stand and fight to the last man. We see this 'escape in defeat' in the poem The Battle at Twenty Below Zero. Having sown the seeds of dissent among the local population, they returned later to the same area from which the enemy had driven them out. No author is given, but it was evidently written by one of the brigades in 1945. Gradina is in northwest Bosnia.  

The sun itself is flaming on these clouds,
and on their serene heights, a grey aspect,
but on the people and villages, snows are falling.

The hoarfrost is silent, the chirp of the birds dies.
Until the middle of November its sting has dug in.
But the heart of the people beats like a burning spark.

The column of soldiers steps into the blizzard, the angry ice,
on callused feet, by swift, firm steps.
The bold ones focus on the view in the distance where autumns produce bloody fruits.
In their hearts they carry spring blossoms and their deadly rifles are loaded with freedom.

Hurry! It will be an onslaught in Gradina,
Because Tito’s heart has won the battle of the cold,
An irresistible heart for freedom.

Shh! The soldiers creep on, still on track,
What leads to the bunker? The stone tower?
The shots…the cheers… and the escape in defeat?

Five dead Nazis and three frozen traitors,
Because the stiffs in uniform have no heart.
The thermometer says: twenty below zero.

 In a further post, I will comment on the poems written by and about female Yugoslav Partisans. To close, here is a small sample.   

From A Woman Under Arms by Franjo Mraz

Oh my rifle, I will never part with you!
You will be with me at the end of my wrist until the last day
To protect the paths of freedom along which the conquered are moving.
Tremble, look, listen to the woman warrior, the woman Partisan!

                                                                                     

(Images M Walker 2023. The first three images were taken driving from Belgrade over the Drina to Sarajevo and the last on the motorway from Sarajevo towards the Neretva River and Mostar.)

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TITO'S WAR CAVE

 

‘Despite his experiences at Drvar, Tito had not lost his liking for caves,’ wrote Fitzroy Maclean, Churchill’s liaison officer with the Yugoslav Partisans. Less than a fortnight after his dramatic rescue from a cave near Drvar in Bosnia during Operation Rösselsprung, Tito installed himself in yet another cave halfway up yet another mountain on the island of Vis, three hours south-west of Split on the Croatian coast. At this time, Vis remained the only island in the Adriatic unoccupied by the Nazis.

Tito lived and worked here from 7th June to 19th September 1944.

The plaque reads: "Here, from June to October 1944, were maintained the working parties of the Supreme Command of the Yugoslav Communist Party and other assistants in the War of National Liberation."

The cave looks 117 degrees ESE towards the expanse of Adriatic islands and left towards the World War Two Allied airstrip. The runway is east-west and can easily be seen with the naked eye.

To get to the cave on Mount Hum from the town of Komiža is a 10km drive or 2km as the crow flies. A slim, tortuous road that I suspect was once a donkey track, clings to the side of the mountain and looks directly over the sea, which was a vivid blue the morning we visited. Travelling down slightly, we passed through two villages and finally made a left turn at Borovik which, despite the name, doesn’t seem to be a village at all, then along a very narrow road up the mountain. About two thirds of the way to the top, we parked and walked up a steep winding track a further hundred metres to the cave.

The location is mountain quiet. Wild rosemary and oregano lightly scent the air and dry trees rise to a height of no more than 3 m. The dimensions of the cave are: 4m across the entrance, width 4.5m, depth 9m – a flat floor without a slope - domed ceiling to 4m. Three steps at the back lead to a flat area of 1.5m in depth. Although the steps suggest another room, there is nothing further back.

The cave is in a magnificent position with expansive views over the aerodrome, the Adriatic and the islands heading south down the coast. It looks down into a plunging valley which forms a V on two sides that expands at the bottom left to the airstrip and the sea. “A war cave entrusted to eagles!” I think. A perfect spot.

Grapes and olives are grown in the interior of the island and the rich red soil near the aerodrome, but in the remainder of Vis the soil is poor and supports only dry scrub. Harsh winds and an abundant scattering of limestone add to the impression of barrenness and a stark reminder that a farmer’s life is not as easy here as in the fertile northern plains of Slavonia and Serbia.

The cave is marked by a red dot and A is the airstrip, but don’t let the map fool you. Vis really isn’t very big. The landing area looks far away on the map, but once you’re there it is clear that everything is close to everything else. For a fascinating account of Vis airstrip, see Forgottenairfields europe .

See also: Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy Maclean, Jonathon Cape 1949

Photo credit LIFE The Balkans Time Life International 1966.

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JASENOVAC, THE OTHER AUSCHWITZ

To my Fellow Fighters by Anka Poznevija 33^rd Brigade

Yugoslav Partisans 

Comrades, my fighters, this poem testifies to you,

And my heart, which has seen and suffered many hurts, sings to you in thanks.

You rescued me from the concentration camp,

I was stuck there a long time

With thousands of those comrades,

Many fears I survived.

 The camp – the atrocities awe me by that single word,

The camp – full only of hungry skeletons,

The camp – from the smallest children in the grave.

Wire, walls, solitary confinement, dungeons…

A scream, hunger and moaning -

These are the beauties of the camps. 

Those words  - ‘Mother! Water, only give me a drop of water,’

You hear through the night’s silent cavern the supplications of the children,     

But the mother hasn’t water to give him,

She has only poor, powerless arms….

From thirst and grief the babies bite their own arms…

Then everything gets quieter,

Slowly the moaning and the noise fade,

Only the iron bar frantically tightens

The rusted barrier.

Comrades, you got me out of this fearsome horror.

I have no other words than these: comrades, thank you! 

The concentration camps of World War 2 hold a macabre grip over the modern imagination. Books on the topic sell in their millions. Tourists with questionable ethics wield selfie sticks in the death chambers. Of these Nazi camps of horror, Auschwitz remains the best known. 

Recently, however, a discussion with a girl on Goodreads led me to the website of Jasenovac, one of many Ustasha-run death camps and inevitably, when huge numbers and sadistic savagery are involved, the most notorious. Situated in Croatia near the border with Bosnia, Jasenovac was established in 1941 by the Independent State of Croatia, or NDH, a Nazi puppet state run by the Ustasha, the fascist terrorist organization nurtured by Mussolini and put in power over Croatia and Bosnia by Hitler. Its principal victims were the Orthodox Serbs, the Jews, and the Roma people. 

I must be twisted because, once I was on the site, I wacked the family name into the search bar – MIKATOVIĆ – and to my dismay discovered a relative: Paolo Mikatović from Dekovići. My mother was born in Tar in Istria, seven kilometres away. All the Mikatović’s had lived in the same area since the sixteenth century, so poor Paolo must have been a cousin. 

Google images of Dekovići reveal a farming hamlet so modest that it seems to turn its eyes from the camera. I was filled with sadness for its remoteness, its anonymity, and its slim connection with an infamous location. 

Seeking further information about Paolo, I wrote to Poreć, the nearby regional centre. They replied, but couldn’t help me. I knew that there had been a strong Partisan presence in that part of Istria because I took a photo of the Partisan cenotaph in Tar, and the Tar/Varbiga Partisans even have a Facebook page. I can only assume, therefore, that Paolo joined the local anti-fascist fight, was captured by the Ustasha and subsequently imprisoned in Jasenovac. 

I made the villain in Through Forests and Mountains a Ustasha supporter because I needed someone who was psychotic. When you read about the crimes of the Ustasha, psychotic is the only word suitable, and I urge those with an interest in them to read the Balkan Essays of Hubert Butler. 

Butler, an Irish writer who had taught in Croatia, set out to make ‘a study of the Christian crisis’ in Croatia from 1941 to 1945. 

What Christian crisis? 

First, a bit of background. The temptation for Christians under Fascism during the first half of the twentieth century was that no matter how much they disliked Hitler, Mussolini, Franco or the Croatian Ustasha, they always retained their church. Indeed, the Ustasha were very devout Catholics. Theirs was ‘an extraordinary alliance of religion and crime’, writes Butler. Their leaders went to daily Mass and local priests blessed the troops before battle. One renegade priest, Father Ribar, was arrested and killed in Jasenovac for refusing to celebrate High Mass on the anniversary of the founding of the NDH and to sing the ancient hymn of praise Te Deum Laudamus. Communism, by contrast, was the atheistic villain. Communism was feared by the churches. Yet Butler writes that, after the war, the Yugoslav communist authorities were very careful not to lie about their evidence regarding the activities of the church. 

The Christian crisis to which he refers was the mass murder by the Ustasha of their fellow Christians, the Orthodox Serbs. He continues, ‘I think there can be few parallels in European history for the religious massacres in Croatia in 1941 and ‘42 or for the lack of moral courage which Christians have shown in admitting them with honesty’. Four British authors, Hubert Butler, Stella Alexander, Evelyn Waugh, and Fitzroy Maclean, wrote that the Croatian church was sympathetic to the Ustasha, if not actually collaborating with them. A fifth, Marcus Tanner, noted that ‘the clericals were held back from opposing the NDH by their conviction that Croatian independence was a good thing.’ Many saw in the village massacres carried out by the Ustasha an opportunity to make converts of the terrified Orthodox peasants who queued up to be baptised Catholic in the hope of saving their lives. 

I am a Christian so what do I think? 

The French writer Celine Martin, sister of St Therese, noted that her mother had a ‘veritable cult for the church, for the Pope and for the priesthood,’ but Father Harry from St Agatha’s-down-the-road told me that Jesus didn’t come to found a church, he came to bring the kingdom of heaven to earth. Let Jasenovac stand as a salutary lesson for all Christians who justify division and murder between brothers. Jesus told Christians to make peace. 

References:

Marcus Tanner, Croatia, Yale University Press 1997 

Hubert Butler, the Balkan Essays, the Irish Pages Press 2016 

Stella Alexander, the Triple Myth, Cambridge University Press 1987 

Evelyn Waugh quoted in Hebblethwaite, Peter Paul VI the First Modern Pope 

                         Harper Collins 1993. 

Fitzroy Maclean, The Heretic: the life and times of Josip Broz-Tito. 

                         Harley and Brothers NY, 1957 (Published in the UK as Disputed Barricade) 

Celine Martin, the Mother of the Little Flower 

                         Tan Books and Publishers 2005

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TITO'S LAST STAND

Komiža, Vis - port of the Partisan 
and Allied navies

 

September 1943 – Fascist Italy capitulates to the Allies. Nazi Germany invades the Dalmatian coast and its Adriatic islands. Only Vis remains unoccupied.

January 1944 - Tito declares that Vis must be defended.

Island of Terrible Friends by Bill Strutton is the sixth eyewitness account I have read about World War 2 in Yugoslavia. The previous five were Embattled Mountain by Bill Deakin, Eastern Approaches and The Heretic by Fitzroy Maclean, Irregular Adventure by Christie Lawrence, and Partisan Picture by Basil Davidson. We have these British soldiers to thank for grit, honesty and a rough admiration of ruthlessness, and those contemporary politicians in Belgrade and Zagreb who rewrite their history in order to honour themselves would do well to read them.

War is a terrible thing and although one may commence a book of this sort believing that the British were British and the Yugoslavs were Yugoslav, and never the twain shall meet, yet these British authors give praise where it’s due. ‘But if the Commandoes imagined they were fighting a tough war, the [Yugoslavs] were fighting a far more desperate one, right by their side.’

Island of Terrible Friends is written like a novel and records the mission of Major James Rickett from the Royal Army Medical Corps to set up a field hospital in January 1944 on the Adriatic island of Vis for the 50 Commandos there at the time. Also present were 1000 Partisans and a steady stream of wounded civilians escaping from the German occupied coast.

The commando’s task was to harass the Germans.

Commando Lieutenant Barton ‘dressed as a peasant and with two Partisans to show him the way, loaded his Sten gun on a mule under a burden of firewood and walked passed a number of German sentries right into the village of Nerežiše on the island of Brać, garrisoned with 200 Germans. One of the Partisans stood guard outside while he knocked on the Commandant’s billet, was admitted, thrust past a screeching woman to a bedroom upstairs, and there, in the faint light of a candle, fired a burst at the German Commandant who, half risen and gaping wordlessly, leaned over and fell. Barton calmly helped himself to the dead commandant’s automatic, his compass, an excellent pair of binoculars and a rifle. [Then] he beat it with his two Jugoslav comrades through a thicket of sentries.’

With scant medical stores and a general reply of ‘No’ when he requested any more, Rickett begins treating injuries with a lack of everything except desperation, removing a ruptured spleen, for instance, by a Tilley lamp fuelled by rakija until he was able to ransack a Liberator that crashed on the island, for wire and switches to light his hospital.

‘The sea around [Vis] was busier after dark than Piccadilly in the blackout’ and the Germans were always at their door. Each morning Messerschmitts circled, attacking the settlements of Vis, and the Partisan Navy of tuna boats and trawlers camouflaged themselves in the steep bays, caves and inlets until setting out on their missions to sabotage the Germans bases on islands so close that they could be easily seen with the naked eye.

The British opinion of working with the Partisans varied between admiration and outrage. ‘Twenty-eight German divisions [were] drawn and pinned down in the Balkans by Partisan ebullience.’ Yet, their discipline and ruthlessness that sometimes shocked the British reflect the harshness of pre-war peasant life recorded in such works as Irregular Adventure by Christie Lawrence and Rural Women in Croatia-Slavonia in 1900 by Elinor Murray Despalatovic.

That these famers, labourers and housewives could so irritate the Germans to the extent of gaining their respect as an army, Strutton doesn’t seem to have appreciated as well as Basil Davidson or Bill Deakin, or even Fitzroy Maclean who was from the Scottish aristocracy. Strutton writes to entertain an English audience, and his descriptions of the Partisans lack the intimacy of the other writers. They are devoid of the solemn Partisan purpose and discipline that drove the resistance movement and was like a holy thing to them. It might be a language problem, as I noticed he made mistakes when transcribing what the partisans say in such simple things as numbers.

One can easily see from the photos of the Partisan Navy in the Adriatic Naval War (Freivogel/Rastelli, Despot Infinitus 2015) with what pride the sailors respond to Tito’s inspection of their fleet. ‘Continuously at sea in spite of adverse weather and taking every risk in the face of German and Italian revenge.’ Yet Strutton often describes the Partisan Navy like a ramshackle afterthought without an understanding of the lives of its members.

One scene, however, I cannot forget. A stricken Allied bomber crosses the island, blazing from nose to tail, and crashes into the sea. One young man alone parachutes out. Upon landing safely, he collapses in tears of shock all over an elderly peasant woman who has no idea who he is and can’t speak his language. She soothes and strokes him, calling him ‘my son’, until transport arrives to take him to hospital. It reminded me of the words of Jesus: wherever the Gospel goes in all the world, this story will be told in memory of her.

Through Forests and Mountains. Yugoslavia in World War 2 (mwalkeristra.com)

Through Forests and Mountains. Yugoslavia in World War 2 (mwalkeristra.com)

HIJACKING THE TIME MACHINE

'Truth and memory [are] exceedingly fragile,’ writes Deborah Lipstadt in Denying the Holocaust, the Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. She is my hero, a crusader against historical revisionism. In standing against holocaust denial, she provides me with the scaffolding to challenge contemporary historical revisionism in Croatia and Serbia, and the legacy of Fascist Italy in my mother’s homeland of Istria (1).

In this post I am considering three things: firstly, that Croatia’s crusade to canonize Aloysius Stepinac is a smoke screen to divert attention from the worst religious massacre in European history. Secondly, whether the Serbian General Draža Mihailović, who was well known to British soldiers in wartime Yugoslavia as a poor leader and an Axis collaborator, can justly be celebrated as a hero in Serbia today. Thirdly, why there is an endless stream of Italians denigrating Slavs on Facebook. (I won’t mention the page.) It was Fascist Italy that invaded Yugoslavia, not the other way round.

We do not deny other countries the right of free speech, Lipstadt teaches me, but ‘opinion must be grounded in fact.’

Historical revisionism in Italy is the biggest problem of the three because it involved the desire of America and Britain to recreate post-war Italy as part of the Western anti-communist block. It is not often realized how powerful communism was in Italy during the war and how near Italy itself came to being a communist country. My Australian father-in-law, who fought with the Italian Partisans and spoke fluent Italian, said that their muscle was communist and they were disappointed after the war not to have achieved the power they desired.

Along with her mother, my mother-in-law from Turin worked for the anti-fascist resistance in northern Italy, among other things housing Allied soldiers. The two women were betrayed and subsequently imprisoned for two and a half months, during which time they were assaulted and tortured. After her release, my mother-in-law received further harsh treatment from the Italian Partisans who were suspicious of the interest the fascists had taken in her. In 1945, she married and left Italy, returning only once in the next 55 years of her life, hating the country so much that she never went back a second time.

That there was a personal component to her distress is clear but, well before Mussolini founded the Fascist Party in 1919, the violence that was to have its full flower in fascism was part of Italian ultra-nationalistic doctrine. ‘Hatred is indeed no less necessary than love for nurturing civilization,’ wrote Luigi Federzoni, ‘a key figure in the fascist regime’ (2).

That the Italian war criminals who embraced this philosophy were never punished had as much do to with preserving Italy’s traditional place in the Western imagination as it did the fear of communism. In his book Piazza Oberdan the Slovenian writer Boris Pahor wrote an eye witness account of Fascist Italian crimes against Slovenes (3). This and other stories were refused an English translation by Pahor’s American editor. The reason? ‘The collection prints an anti-Italian mindset’ and Pahor’s ‘description[s] could damage the political coexistence’.

The first Prime Minister after the fall of Mussolini was General Badoglio . Although he had committed war crimes in Libya and Egypt, the British approved of him because he was anti-communist. Notable Italian war criminals were Generals Roatta (Slovenia and Dalmatia) and Graziani (Libya, Ethiopia), Giovanni Ravalli (Greece) and hundreds of others. As Britain, America and Russia argued about how to bring them to justice, ‘Italy… made it abundantly clear that it would not collaborate willingly with any attempts to extradite its citizens to face trial in Yugoslavia or any other country for that matter.’ (4) America dragged its feet until eventually Churchill shrugged his shoulders and walked away.

Needless to say, the Italian government took full advantage of Allied disinterest, and modern Italians know little about their dark past.

My mother came from the village of Tar in Istria, about two kilometres from the sea. She remembered Croatian-speaking people coming to Tar to buy fish in the 1920’s, which suggests that, before refrigeration, they couldn’t have lived far away from the coastal strip where the language was Venetian. It certainly supports the advice of Woodrow Wilson that, in the cause of the national self-determination of the Southern Slavs, the eastern bulk of Istria not be given to Italy in 1919, as it unfortunately was. My mother, who later gave her nationality as Yugoslavian, resented Fascist Italy for Italianising her family name from Mikatović to Di Micheli and for ruining her uncle’s and father’s careers because their professional qualifications were Austrian and not Italian. Her relative Paolo Mikatović from the next village, Dekovići, died in the notorious Jasenovac Concentration Camp run by the Croatian fascists, the Ustaša.

These genocidal maniacs and their twisted relationship with the Catholic Church are the subject of my previous post in which I reviewed Balkan Essays by Hubert Butler (5). This is not an easy book to forget. Whenever I reopen its pages, I have the superstitious sense that if I show too much interest, I will contaminate myself with something sinister. Indeed, the Vatican itself spent much of 1941 and 1942 puzzling exactly what was going on in the Independent State of Croatia (Croatia and Bosnia) as that devout Catholic Ante Pavelić littered his Nazi puppet state with the bodies of hundreds of thousands of Serbs and tens of thousands of Jews and Gypsies. In 1945, as the Ustaša leaders fled across the Atlantic, Croatians may have wanted nothing more than to put the horror behind them and get on with their lives, just as Italians had done after the fall of Mussolini (2).

It was at this point that Archbishop Stepinac embraced his most important mission, protecting his church from communism. Hubert Butler, who interviewed him, described him as a brave and kind man, yet one who had made errors of judgement (6). The fact that the hagiographers are in full swing at present (and the rightness or wrongness of that) obscures the main issue, that Stepinac did not separate church and state during the reign of the Ustaša and seemed unable to perceive that this could be interpreted as collaboration. His slip was effectively exploited by the post war Yugoslav government at his trial (7).

Their lengthy document outlines the relationship between the church and the Ustaša that existed before World War 2, attributing the growth of the terrorist organization to ‘too great a centralization under Serbian hegemony’ which resulted ‘among other things, in a corresponding separatist sentiment in Croatia’. As noted by others, ‘divisive feelings’ between Yugoslavs had long been fostered and exploited by European empires. Between the wars they were ‘kept alive’ by Germany and Italy for the benefit of those countries. For instance, in return for nurturing the Ustaša, Mussolini claimed the entire Dalmatian coast and Montenegro for Italy.

In November 1946, Pavelić’s Minister of the interior, Andrija Artuković, who had dedicated himself to ridding the state of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies, met a professor of theology from Zagreb ‘who was touring the post war [internment] camps with a Vatican passport. He had secured the release of many hundreds of Croatian priests who had fled with Pavelić.’ (6). A website of the Croatian Catholic church in Sydney (8) likewise states that its members emigrated to Australia from refugee camps in Italy and Austria.

Regarding why they might have fled, Fitzroy Maclean, the British liaison officer to Tito, who was in Yugoslavia from 1943 until March 1945, wrote: ‘Owing to the sympathy which many of the Catholic clergy had shown for the Ustaša movement, there were a number of priests among those imprisoned or executed as collaborators or war criminals. Although the charges brought against individual priests were frequently unfounded or exaggerated, there was often an element of truth in them which provided a ready-made pretext for repressive measures (9)’.

There are twice as many Croatians in Australia today than Serbs, even though Serbia has twice the population. Proportionally, this is a factor of four. If the Yugoslav communists persecuted Christians with vigour, why didn’t the Serbs emigrate as well? Were there simply more frightened Croatians after the war, and was this connected to Maclean’s ‘sympathy’ for the Ustaša?

I wonder why the Ustaša massacres against Serbs aren’t better known, because they should be. Which, of course, brings me to Serbia.

Deborah Lipstadt writes, ‘mythical thinking and the force of the irrational have a strange and compelling allure for the educated and uneducated alike.’ I don’t believe that what has been termed the ‘mystical nationalism’ of Serbia is necessarily irrational, but I suggest that it is a significant factor in its government rewriting its World War 2 history since 1985. 

(I say 1985 because I was in Belgrade that year, and they were still celebrating Tito and the Partisans.)

Serbian national identity is powerful and rooted in some interesting topics. Chief among them for me are the Mediaeval Serbian Empire of Stefan Dušan, the Battle of Kosovo in 1389, Serbia’s nineteenth century success in liberating itself from the Ottoman Turks, and its brave fight against the Austrians in World War 1. But the historical revisionism I am referring to concerns the Serbian 

General Draža Mihailović.

Mihailović was the Yugoslav Minister of War from 1941 to 1945 and contemporary references to him are legion – British, German, Italian, even Australian – easily enough to write a character study of the man during the war.

People seem to have liked him. Writes Maclean: ‘I was interested to find that some of those who knew him best, while liking him as a man, had little opinion of Mihailović as a leader (10)'. At his trial for treason and war crimes 'he spoke without oratory, without rancour towards political opponents or private enemies, lucidly and in detail (9).' Even Tito said that 'he had nothing against [him] personally' (11). The claims, however, of modern Serbian historians that Mihailović and the Četniks were victorious in the anti-fascist fight are contradicted by contemporary sources.

Matteo Milazzo’s book, The Chetnik Movement and the Yugoslav Resistance, published in 1975 (12), was based on newly released German and Italian documents. They relate that early in the confusion of occupied Serbia, Mihailović appears to have played the fascist field in order to supply his troops, with the aim of retaining Serbian hegemony in post war Yugoslavia by the planned defeat of the Partisans. From German documents, we learn that ‘either at the end of May [1941] or beginning of June, for example, Radivoje Jovanovic travelled to Chetnik headquarters to confer with their leader and was told [by Mihailović] that the strategy was to "organize, not to fight, and when the Germans begin to withdraw, then to move in and seize power"…to "preserve order in the country and to permit no brutal measures or robbery.”’

The most heinous German crimes against Serbian civilians were committed at Kragijevac and Kraljevo in October 1941 when thousands were killed, but dozens of other villages and towns were also destroyed and Serbians murdered as Nazi Germany used terror to gain control of the country. British commando Captain Christie Lawrence who fought with one group of Četniks and wrote his account in Irregular Adventure (13), reports witnessing half the sky in flames. It was the Germans systematically burning Serbian villages. The following week, Mihailović prepared to attack Partisans Headquarters at Užice. Lacking ‘sufficient guns and munitions…he turned to the Germans… offering as well ‘his services in the anti-Partisan struggle’ (12).

In December 1941, the Yugoslav Government-in-exile promoted Mihailović to General and made him Minister of War, and in April 1942, he was interviewed by Lawrence.

'That morning I met Mihailović, I was shocked at his appearance, for he looked an old man...He was small and slight with grey hair, a thin, lined face and gold-rimmed spectacles. His voice was tired and he spoke with a worried preoccupied abstraction.

'“You have heard," said Mihailović, “of the results of my revolution last autumn...I resolved that I would never again bring such misery on the country unless it could result in total liberation. We cannot, for the moment, maintain large illegal guerrilla companies. The misery which they cause to the peasants is too great....It is far better that my men should stay at home, work on the land, and look after their weapons if they have them. When the day comes for us to rise, we will rise."

'"Then, until Germany's final collapse, you intend to do nothing more active than organize?" I asked.

'"I did not say that. I said, until the Germans are too weak to deploy sufficient forces against us to retake what we shall have taken from them. In future, I do not intend to capture a town until I know that I can protect its inhabitants."' (13)

In February 1943, the British Colonel Bailey witnessed Mihailović telling a church gathering that ‘the Italians remained his sole adequate source of benefit and assistance…his enemies were the Partisans, the Ustaša, the Moslems and the Croats. When he had dealt with them, he would turn to the Italians and the Germans…the Serbs were “completely friendless” and the “English were now fighting to the last Serb in Yugoslavia.”’ (14) Bailey writes that Mihailović’ was ‘willing to compromise himself in order the defeat the Partisans’ and he trusts that 'the general joy and relief at the end of the war will conceal and pardon his misdeeds.'

In response, Churchill wrote, ‘His Majesty’s Government cannot ignore this outburst’… nor justify to the British public or to their other allies their continued support of a movement, the leader of which does not scruple publicly to declare that their enemies are his allies…and that his enemies are not the German and Italian invaders of his country, but his fellow Yugoslavs and chief among them men who …are giving their lives to free his country from the foreigners yoke.’ (14)

The result of losing one’s temper.

Colonel Bailey was the object of Mihailović’s wrath after he relayed this speech to London (14). In November 1941, Captain Bill Hudson, a British liaison officer fluent in Serbian, cancelled ‘all further consignments of arms’ to Mihailović upon observing his men fighting the Partisans (11). Mihailović was ‘furiously angry’, had to be restrained from shooting him, excluded him from meetings, and eventually abandoned him to the winter snows (11, 13). Likewise, Mihailović responded in anger to the British General Wilson's command: 'you are to advise Mihailović that the British General Headquarters in the Middle East requests that he, as an ally, stops all co-operation with the Axis and that he goes towards the east into Serbia. There he is to establish full authority and personal influence in order to continue the attacks on enemy communication lines' (14). This was just before the Allied Invasion of Sicily in July 1943, when the Allies needed the distraction of the resistance effort in Yugoslavia to keep as many Germans out of Italy as possible.

Helping the Allies invade Sicily was not Mihailović’s focus and he didn't appreciate being told what to do by the British.

The tale of the various Četnik bands would fill another article. Rather than a fighting force against the fascist Germans, fascist Italians and fascist Ustaša, Milazzo reports, ‘The Četnik officers …schooled in a tradition which identified Serb military prowess and political hegemony with the Yugoslav idea, not only tolerated but took part in a campaign of revenge against non-Serb civilians who had nothing to do with the Partisans or the Ustasi.’ (12) Marcus Tanner reports ‘the loathing they inspired among non-Serbs’ (15). Island of Terrible Friends by Bill Strutton refers to them as ‘the hated Četniks’ (16). ‘Mihailovic … evidently did little to restrain the prevailing mood of national revenge. His own appointees, like Petar Bacovic, a former reserve officer and lawyer and then commander of the Chetniks in Herzegovina and eastern Bosnia, openly announced plans to destroy whole Muslim villages. (12)’ In Irregular Adventure, the local bands of Četniks sound like the Mafia, and a female Slovene Partisan advises Lawrence to take care which of them he supports lest in the power struggle he gets caught in the crossfire. ‘Have you seen how these petty little local leaders squabble about a man and a gun?’ (13).

‘At his trial, When Mihailović came to speak of his commanders, it was a sad tale of disorganization, disloyalty and petty ambition’ (9). Milazzo wrote, ‘The argument will be developed that the failure of the Mihailovic movement was basically internal, and that the collapse of their relations with the British was of secondary importance. (12)’

On 6th February 1946 Mihailović wrote that “Under no conceivable circumstances will I leave my country and my people.” But ‘by March 1946 [he] was left with only four companions…one evening, early in March, he crept out of his hole and went, as usual, to this house. But this time he found waiting for him, not his friends, but Tito’s police…He was led off, handcuffs on his wrists, filthy and in rags, his steel rimmed spectacles awry, his hair and beard tangled and matted, to the car which was waiting to take him to Belgrade.’ He said at his trial: ‘A merciless fate threw me into this maelstrom. I wanted much. I began much, but the gale of the world carried away me and my work (9).’
 
It's a sad story of Serbia contra mundum, yet, despite all this, the modern Serbian government has rewritten the history of World War 2 in which Mihailović and the Četniks are victorious against the fascist invaders. One revisionist polemic was so unscholarly as to commence with a quotation from the well-known poem The Pit by Ivan Goran Kovačić, the very poet whom the Četniks had murdered (20).

My biggest beef with this aspect of modern Serbian historical revisionism is that it’s mean-spirited. When I think of all the young men and women Partisans, so many of whom were Serbian (17), who gave their lives in the anti-fascist fight, you might as well spit on their graves.

‘I am honoured and proud of these young lives,’ wrote the poet Andrija Nemit, ‘They stood up for freedom and justice. They did their courageous duty before the world for the homeland. They gave their lives for the freedom of the people.’ (18)

I like the Yugoslav Partisans because they were a genuine peoples’ movement. Whatever your sex, race, or religion, in the fight against fascism there was a place for you and, as Basil Davison pointed out in Partisan Picture, they weren't interested in politics, they just wanted their land back. (21) I’m sick of the attitude that, because Tito was a communist (and because he won), therefore he was the devil incarnate – case closed – and that his nasty Bolshevik beliefs doomed poor Yugoslavia until it fell apart at the seams: which would never, ever have happened had that nice Draža Mihailović not been unfairly shot on the former gold course of Topčider. Frankly, if I had come from Tito’s poverty-stricken village of subsistence farmers, bled dry by a tithing church and blood sucking Hungarian aristocrats too mean to pay for a school (19), I’d be a communist, too.

CONCLUSION

If it were merely a matter of revealing history, this article might be seen by some as unnecessary. My theme, however, is that the continual lying has created sour relations in our modern world, and that this could be fixed.

I congratulate Deborah Lipstadt for her endurance in wading through acres of puerile publications to write her landmark book. Unscholarly doesn’t begin to describe holocaust deniers. They are the most pathetic bunch of aggressive idiots I’ve ever read about, yet ‘a sober, scholarly effort’ is often their effect on a gullible public. Perhaps this is a testament to the power of print and, latterly, to the internet.

Their effect on me, who can diagnose nonsense, is different from the man on the street who may relish the buzz that controversy provides. From my science background, I proceed as follows: observation, inferences, hypothesis, test the hypothesis and from it make a theory. Holocaust deniers work in the opposite direction: theory first, then look for the evidence to prove it, a common fault with historical revisionists.

It is bad science.

https://www.mwalkeristra.com/

https://www.mwalkeristra.com/

 

REFERENCES

1   Cresciani, G    A Clash of Civilizations? The Slovene and Italian Minorities and the problem of Trieste. Italian Historical Society Journal Volume 12 #2 2004 July/December

2   Duggan, C    Fascist Voices, Vintage Books 2013 

3   Pahor, B    Piazza Oberdan, Kitab Vienna 2009   

4   Pedaliu, EGH    Britain and the 'Hand-over' of War Criminals to Yugoslavia 1945-48

Journal of Contemporary History, 2004. SAGE Publications, Vol 39 (4)

 

5   Margaret Walker - War in the Balkans: MURDER FROM THE PULPIT? (mwalkeristra.blogspot.com)

6   Butler, H   Balkan Essays, The Irish Pages Press 2016

7   Kosanović SN  Yugoslav Ambassador, Washington.  The Case of Archbishop Stepinac, 1947

8   HKC Summer Hill - Croatian Catholic Centres

9   Maclean, F   The Heretic. The Life and Times of Josip Broz Tito.  Harley and Brothers, NY 1957

10  Maclean, F   Eastern Approaches, Penguin Books 1991

11  Deakin, F   The Embattled Mountain, Oxford University Press 1971 

12  Milazzo, M   The Chetnik Movement and the Yugoslav Resistance, John Hopkins University Press, 1975 

13  Lawrence, C    Irregular Adventure, Faber and Faber 1947 

14  Catherwood, C    Churchill and Tito, Frontline 2017 

15  Tanner, M    Croatia, Yale University Press 1997 

16  Strutton, Bill, Island of Terrible Friends, Hodder and Stoughton, London 1961

17  The BRUTAL Execution Of Lepa Radic - The Teenage Girl Executed By The Nazis - YouTube

18  Po šumama i gorama, poems of the fighters of the National liberation War, Zagreb, 1952

19  Brkljačić, M     Pig's Head, Stories of Tito's Childhood,  

      Alltag und Ideologie im Realsozialismus  23/2005

20  Kovačić, I G   The Pitt, Matica Hrvatska, 1961  

21  Davidson, B  Partisan Picture   Bedford Books 1946