I found the Ambassador in a pleasant flat in Zamalek, overlooking the grounds of the Gezira Sporting Club, with a long drink waiting for me that was most welcome after a frustrating morning in the sweltering offices of G.H.Q. Better still, there was, it appeared, every prospect of a job on the lines I had in mind. He would make inquiries and let me know the result. Being blessed with a fairly lively imagination, I started on my return journey in a much better frame of mind, already picturing myself in any number of fascinating and agreeably spectacular situations amongst the thyme-scented mountains of Greece. When I got back, I asked Duncan and Sergeant Button whether they would like to come to Greece with me. They replied that they didn’t mind if they did.
The response to Rex Leeper’s inquiries came sooner than I had expected. I had hardly got back to Zahle when I received a message from him, asking me to return to Cairo without delay. On my arrival he showed me a telegram from London, saying that I was needed; but not in Greece. I was to be dropped in Jugoslavia. I was to fly to London forthwith and report to the Prime Minister himself, who would tell me what was required of me.
I did not have long to think out the implications of this telegram. An aircraft was leaving for England the same night. There was barely time to notify G.H.Q. and get the necessary movement order. I had not been home for nearly two years and to be going back was, in itself, exciting enough.
I knew little of the situation in Jugoslavia. I had never been there before the war and, since the German occupation, the only news of Jugoslavia which I remembered reading in the occasional copies of the Egyptian Mail which had happened to come my way, concerned the activities of General Mihajlović, who, by all accounts, was conducting a spirited resistance movement in the mountains. In so far as I speculated at all about the future, my guess was that I should in some way be associated with this legendary figure.
Once I reached London, I was soon put in the picture. Information reaching the British Government from a variety of sources had caused them to doubt whether the resistance of General Mihajlović and his Četniks to the enemy was all that it was made out to be. There were indications that at least as much was being done by armed bands bearing the name of Partisans and led by a shadowy figure known as Tito. Hitherto such support as we had been able to give had gone exclusively to Mihajlović. Now doubts as to the wisdom of this policy were beginning to creep in, and the task which I had been allotted was to form an estimate on the spot of the relative value of the Partisans’ contribution to the Allied cause and the best means of helping them to increase it. For this purpose I was to be dropped into Jugoslavia by parachute as head of a Military Mission accredited to Tito, or whoever I found to be in command of the Partisans.
My inquiries revealed that in fact little or nothing was known of the Partisans in Whitehall. Three or four British officers had been dropped in to them by parachute a few weeks before, but there had been fierce fighting in Jugoslavia since their arrival and no comprehensive report of the situation from them had reached London. It was, however, believed that the Partisans were under Communist leadership and that they were causing the Germans considerable inconvenience (an impression that was principally derived from German sources). Their principal sphere of activity was thought to be in Bosnia and it was there that I was to be dropped.
As to Tito, there were various theories concerning his identity. One school of thought refused to believe that he existed at all. The name, they said, stood for Tajna Internacionalna Teroristička Organizacija, or Secret International Terrorist Organization, and not for any individual leader. Another theory was that it was simply an appointment, and that a new Tito was nominated at frequent intervals. Finally, the more romantically inclined claimed that Tito was not a man, but a young woman of startling beauty and great force of character.
A day or two after I arrived in England I was rung up from No. 10 Downing Street and told that Mr. Churchill wanted me to come down to Chequers for a weekend so that he could himself explain to me what he had in mind.
When I reached Chequers, I wondered if the Prime Minister would ever find time to talk to me about Jugoslavia. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff was there, and Air-Marshal Harris, of Bomber Command, and an American General, and an expert on landing-craft, and any number of other people, all of whom clearly had matters of the utmost importance to discuss with Mr. Churchill. Red leather dispatch boxes, full of telegrams and signals from every theatre of war, kept arriving by dispatch rider from London.
Then there were the films; long films, short films, comic films and serious films, sandwiched in at all hours of the day and night. The great men stood by, waiting their turn, hoping that it would not come in the early hours of the morning, a time when the ordinary mortal does not feel at his brightest, especially if he has seen three or four films in succession, but when the Prime Minister, on the contrary, seemed filled with renewed vigour of mind and body.
Towards midnight, in the middle of a Mickey Mouse cartoon, a memorable interruption took place. A message was brought in to Mr. Churchill, who gave an exclamation of surprise. Then there was a scuffle and the film was stopped. As the squawking of Donald Duck and the baying of Pluto died away, the Prime Minister rose to his feet. ‘I have just,’ he said, ‘received some very important news. Signor Mussolini has resigned.’ Then the film was switched on again.
As we went downstairs, I reflected that in view of this startling new development it was now more unlikely than ever that the Prime Minister would find time to attend to my affairs. But I was mistaken. ‘This,’ he said, turning to me, ‘makes your job more important than ever. The German position in Italy is crumbling. We must now put all the pressure we can on them on the other side of the Adriatic. You must go in without delay.’ Mr. Churchill then went on to give me a splendidly lucid and at the same time vivid account of the strategic situation and of what he wanted me to try and do in Jugoslavia. I was amazed, as so often afterwards I was to be amazed, by his extraordinary grasp of detail in regard to what was, after all, only one of the innumerable problems confronting him.
After he had finished, there was only one point which, it seemed to me, still required clearing up. The years that I had spent in the Soviet Union had made me deeply and lastingly conscious of the expansionist tendencies of international Communism and of its intimate connection with Soviet foreign policy; after all, in my day, the Communist International had sported a brass plate in one of Moscow’s main thoroughfares and had numbered Stalin and several other leading Soviet public figures amongst the members of its Executive Committee. If, as I had been told, the Partisans were under Communist leadership, they might easily be fighting very well for the Allied cause, but their ultimate aim would undoubtedly be to establish in Jugoslavia a Communist regime closely linked to Moscow. How did His Majesty’s Government view such an eventuality? Was it at this stage their policy to obstruct Soviet expansion in the Balkans? If so, my task looked like being a ticklish one.
Mr. Churchill’s reply left me in no doubt as to the answer to my problem. So long, he said, as the whole of Western civilization was threatened by the Nazi menace, we could not afford to let our attention be diverted from the immediate issue by considerations of long-term policy. We were as loyal to our Soviet Allies as we hoped they were to us. My task was simply to find out who was killing the most Germans and suggest means by which we could help them to kill more. Politics must be a secondary consideration.
I was relieved at this. Although, as a Conservative, I had no liking for Communists or Communism, I had not fancied the idea of having to intrigue politically against men with whom I was co-operating militarily. Now, in the light of what the Prime Minister had told me, my position was clear.
Meanwhile the first thing was to refresh my knowledge of the country for which I was bound. While I was in England, I read every book about Jugoslavia that I could lay hands on. Seen from the angle of someone about to plunge headlong into it, the turbulent stream of Balkan history had a new fascina
tion. The details were as confusing as ever, but certain basic characteristics, certain constantly recurring themes, seemed to run right through the bewildering succession of war and rebellion, heroism, treachery and intrigue. In these might lie the key to much that was now happening.
I should be among Slavs once more. Some fifteen centuries ago, the forbears of the principal races which now inhabit Jugoslavia, the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Montenegrins and others had migrated there from the north to become a southern outpost of the Slav world. They were Jugo-Slavs, South Slavs. Even now their language, Serbo-Croat, which I had set myself to learn, had so much in common with Russian that soon I found that I could understand it and make myself understood in it.
From the first their history had been eventful, a story of bloodshed and violence: of feudal lords contending amongst themselves for supremacy in their own country; of overlords, their supremacy once established, seeking to impose their rule on neighbouring races and countries; striving to weld these into an Empire strong enough to hold its own in the rapidly diminishing power-vacuum between East and West. To overthrow each other, to rid themselves of dangerous rivals and settle their own internal quarrels, these Balkan chieftains would enlist the aid of outside powers, Byzantium, the Turks, the Emperor or the Pope. Then they would unite once more amongst themselves to cast off the foreign allegiance which a short time before they had seemed so ready to accept. They understood above all the art of playing off the Great Powers against each other: East against West, Rome against Byzantium, Pope against Emperor, Teuton against Turk. But the purpose of these manœuvres remained the same: the preservation of their own national independence. This end they pursued with a violence, a devotion, a turbulence and a resilience all of their own.
But for small national States the struggle for survival was then, as it is now, a hard one. The advance westwards of the Osmanli Turks grew ever harder to check. In 1389, at Kossovo, the famous Field of the Blackbirds, the Serbian Prince Lazar was killed and his people passed under Turkish sway. The neighbouring principalities succumbed one after another. Soon the whole peninsula was under alien domination, the Turks occupying the south and east, while the Austrians and the Hungarians advanced to meet them from the west and north, and the Venetians established themselves along the coast. It was destined to remain so for over three centuries.
In this way the South Slavs were divided up, the southern and eastern area of their territory, now Serbia, falling under Turkish rule and the northern and western, now Croatia and Slovenia, under Austro-Hungarian. The Dalmatian coastal strip passed into the hands of the Doges of Venice, until eventually, with the decline of the latter, it too was absorbed by Austria-Hungary.
Thus, although their language and racial origin were identical, the two groups of Slavs found themselves separated by the national frontiers of the Great Powers and gradually grew apart culturally, politically and traditionally. In the matter of religion also, for by now the division between the Eastern and Western Churches, Orthodox and Catholic, had finally crystallized into a fixed pattern. The results of this cleavage still make themselves felt today.
Under the loose, though often savage rule of the Sultans, the Serbs, while enjoying a certain degree of liberty and even autonomy, inevitably looked towards Constantinople as the political, religious and cultural centre of their world. For them the Church was the Eastern Orthodox Church, with the Patriarch of Constantinople at its head, while some, particularly in Bosnia, even went over to the faith of their conquerors and embraced Islam.
The Croats and Slovenes, on the other hand, looked westwards towards Vienna, the upper classes basking at a respectful distance in the reflected glory of the Imperial Court. In religion they were, like their Austrian masters, Roman Catholics, Christianity having in general first come to them with the Teutonic invaders from the north. Altogether, they became in their outlook generally, in their standard of civilization and in their attitude towards life, a Western rather than an Eastern people.
The Serbs, for their part, made, under Turkish rule, but little progress towards civilization as it existed in Western Europe. As administrators, the Turks were not greatly concerned with culture. In the outlying provinces of their Empire their main preoccupations were financial and military in nature: the levying of tribute and the defence of their frontiers. While Zagreb came to resemble a European town, Belgrade remained an oriental fortress.
But if the Serbs in some ways lagged behind their Slav brothers beyond the frontier, in one important respect they did not. They never lost their love of freedom, their sense of nationhood. All through the centuries of Turkish rule the spirit of independence was kept alive in the hill-country of Serbia by little bands of guerrilla fighters who harried the Turks, partly for the fun of it, and partly to keep in existence a nucleus, however small, of national independence. Most successful of all in this were the Montenegrins, who, in their mountains, held out unsubdued against all-comers for century after century. This tradition of resistance was to endure both in Serbia and in Montenegro.
At the start of the nineteenth century there came a change in the situation. The Ottoman Empire began to crumble. The new spirit of liberty and national independence which was sweeping through Europe like wildfire made itself felt in the Balkans with redoubled force. For the first time progressive elements in Europe, following the fashionable example of Lord Byron, began to interest themselves in the fate of the Balkan Christians. With the Russians the ties of race, language and religion carried particular weight; Panslavism, the all-Slav movement, was born. All of a sudden the patriots of the Balkans found that they had powerful friends.
In Serbia they also had effective leaders. The revolt which flared up in 1804 was led by Kara Djordje, or Black George, peasant, turned mercenary, turned brigand, turned guerrilla. Kara Djordje, who was to be the founder of the Karadjordjević dynasty, was a black-a-vised man, owing his name equally to his swarthy appearance and savage, morose nature. With his own hands he is said to have killed over a hundred men, including his own father and brother. A man of great determination and an effective commander in the field, he showed himself a forceful rather than a skilful statesman. By 1807 he had driven the Turks from Serbia. In 1809 they returned. With Russian help he drove them out again. In 1813 they returned again, this time in overwhelming force, and Kara Djordje was driven out and obliged to take refuge, first in Austria, then in Russia. The Turks appointed Miloš Obrenović, a former herdsman, to rule the conquered province for them.
But in 1815 there was a fresh rising against the Turks. This time it was led by Miloš Obrenović, the man the Turks had made their Viceroy. He, too, showed himself a man of determination. In a single campaign he expelled the Turks and proclaimed himself Prince of Serbia. After this he obtained Turkish recognition and in return accepted Turkish suzerainty. When Kara Djordje came back in 1817 he was assassinated and his head sent to the Turks. Miloš Obrenović, it was thought, had not been entirely unconnected with his assassination.
For the next hundred years Serbia presents an extraordinary picture of intrigue and unrest. Rival dynasties, founded by the two peasant-liberators, Kara Djordje and Miloš Obrenović, served as rallying points for opposing factions. Princes and Kings, Prime Ministers and Commanders-in-Chief followed one another in a bewildering succession, regulated by mob-violence, political assassination and the intrigues of the Great Powers. In her external relations, Serbia sided first with one Great Power and then with another, as her interests or the personal inclinations of her rulers demanded, while the Great Powers, for their part, lent their support first to one Serbian faction and then to another.
Seen from close by, these proceedings are far from edifying; but, regarded in the light of later events, they fall into their proper place as incidents in the struggle of a proud and naturally turbulent people for unity and nationhood. For that was the ultimate aim: the reunion with Serbia of the Croat, Slovene, Dalmatian, Bosnian and other provinces, still under Austro-Hungarian or Turkish
rule, and the maintenance, by judicious manœuvring, of Serbia’s independence in relation to the Great Powers.
With Kara Djordje out of the way and Russia supporting him, Miloš Obrenović reigned as Prince of a semi-autonomous Serbia under Turkish suzerainty until 1839. The ferocity of his despotism equalled that of the Turks. In 1839 he was ousted by his own son, Milan. But Milan died the same year and was succeeded by his brother, Michael, and Michael was in turn dethroned two years later by Alexander Karadjordjević, the son of Kara Djordje, who enjoyed the support of Austria-Hungary and Turkey. The Obrenovićs went into exile.
But Serbia had not seen the last of the Obrenović dynasty, or indeed of its founder, Miloš. Alexander’s policy of friendship with Austria was not popular, least of all with the Tsar, who was inclined to regard himself as the Protector of Serbia. In 1859 Alexander was driven out and, after twenty years of not entirely misspent exile, that aged but persistent herdsman, Miloš Obrenović, returned to the throne from which he had been driven by his son twenty years earlier. He, for one, knew the value of friendship with Russia.
In less than two years Miloš Obrenović was dead, succeeded by his son Michael, who had also returned from exile, and who now reigned wisely and well until 1868, when he was assassinated. The Karadjordje faction were, it was thought, not entirely unconnected with his demise.
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