Eastern Approaches

by Fitzroy MacLean

  Of actual Soviet Russian intervention and control there was no sign. No official Soviet representative had as yet reached the Partisans, though wireless contact of a sort seemed to have been established with the Soviet Union. But with a Moscow-trained Communist of Tito’s calibre at the head of the Movement, there was clearly no need for day to day instructions to be issued from Moscow. Indeed, with the familiar Communist jargon on everyone’s lips, the same old Party slogans scrawled on every wall and red star, hammer and sickle on the cap badges of the Partisans, ‘an observer familiar with the Soviet Union might’, I wrote in one of my earliest reports, ‘imagine himself in one of the Republics of the Union’.

  Gradually, too, we learned something of the situation in the rest of the country. Where large areas were constantly changing hands, this was not difficult.

  Bosnia, where we now found ourselves, was part of the independent State of Croatia. Nominally this was a kingdom, but its King, the Italian Duke of Spoleto, had wisely omitted to take up his appointment and power was in the hands of Ante Pavelić and his Ustaše, supported by the Wehrmacht. The form of government was a dictatorship on Fascist or Nazi lines, with Pavelić in the role of Poglavnik or Führer and the Ustaše as his Praetorian guards. In addition to the Ustaše, who formed units of their own corresponding to Hitler’s S.S., the new Croat State boasted its own army and air force, both under German operational control. These were more lukewarm in their loyalty to Pavelić and deserters from them came over to the Partisans in large numbers.

  Pavelić’s accession to power had been followed by a reign of terror unprecedented even in the Balkans. He had a lot of old scores to settle. There were widespread massacres and atrocities; Serbs, first of all, especially in Bosnia, where there was a large Serb population; then, to please his Nazi masters, Jews; and, finally, where he could catch them, Communists and Communist sympathizers. Racial and political persecution was accompanied by equally ferocious religious persecution. The Ustaše were fervent Roman Catholics. Now that they were at last in a position to do so, they set about liquidating the Greek Orthodox Church in their domains. Orthodox villages were sacked and pillaged and their inhabitants massacred; old and young, men, women and children alike. Orthodox clergy were tortured and killed, Orthodox churches were desecrated and destroyed, or burned down with the screaming congregation inside them (an Ustaše speciality, this). The Bosnian Moslems, equally fanatical and organized in special units by Pavelić and the Germans, helped by the Mufti of Jerusalem, joined in with gusto and a refined cruelty all of their own, delighted at the opportunity of massacring Christians of whatever denomination. At last the Croats were getting their own back for twenty years of Serb domination.

  In Serbia the Germans kept most of the power in their own hands. The German puppet government was headed by General Nedić, formerly Chief of Staff of the Royal Jugoslav Army, a considerably milder character than Pavelić, who took the line that in accepting office and collaborating with the Germans, he was acting in the best interests of the Serbian people. This did not, however, prevent him and his Government from acquiescing in the confinement of large numbers of Serbs in concentration camps, the massacre of Serbian hostages and in all the other usual accompaniments of a Nazi occupation. A more actively pro-Nazi part was played by Ljotić, the Serb Fascist leader, and by the Serb Volunteer Corps, which largely consisted of his supporters and whose principal task was the suppression of the Partisans.

  Of most interest to us were the Četniks. Theirs was essentially a Serb movement. From the start the main strength of the Četnik Movement was in Serbia, though Četniks were also active in Bosnia, Dalmatia and Montenegro. They derived their name from the Serb četas or companies which had fought the Turks in the Middle Ages. Their leader, Draža Mihajlović, was a Serb, a regular officer of the Royal Jugoslav Army who after its capitulation had taken to the woods with such of his men as he could gather round him with the intention of organizing resistance to the invader.

  So much we knew. What followed during the summer of 1941 was less clear. Četniks and Partisans had, it seemed, fought side by side against the Germans in Serbia. Then there were mutual accusations of treachery (I had heard Tito’s version) and by the end of 1941 they were fighting against each other. The combined onslaught of Germans and Četniks proved too much for the Partisans, and early in 1942 they were driven out of Serbia with heavy losses, to lick their wounds in the mountains of Bosnia and Montenegro.

  The way in which the situation now developed was truly Balkan in its complexity. Mihajlović by all accounts continued to hate the Germans and to hope for an Allied victory and the eventual liberation of his country. But the Četniks could not fight the Partisans and Germans simultaneously. From now onwards their attitude towards the Germans became increasingly passive, while they redoubled their efforts to crush the Partisans.

  The motives underlying this policy were not far to seek. In their early encounters with the Germans, the Četniks, like the Partisans, had suffered heavy casualties; their operations had also led to savage enemy reprisals against the civilian population. They lacked the ruthless determination of the Communist-led Partisans, and this had discouraged them. They had also received over the wireless messages from the Royal Jugoslav Government in exile and from the Allied High Command telling them to hold their hand. Henceforward their aim became to preserve rather than to destroy; to keep alive the flame of Serb patriotism, as their ancestors had done under the Turkish occupation, in order that at some future period, after the Allied victory to which they looked forward, they might restore the old Serb-dominated Jugoslavia, which had meant so much to them.

  But to be able to do this, they must first eliminate the Communist-led Partisans whose revolutionary tendencies clearly constituted a dangerous obstacle to the restoration of the old order, while their presumed allegiance to Moscow represented a threat to Jugoslav independence. What had started as a war of resistance became in a very short time a civil war, in which, needless to say, the Partisans gave as good as they got.

  The Germans were well pleased. Nothing could suit them better than for the Četniks to stop fighting them and turn all their energies against the Partisans, whose stubborn, savage resistance was already beginning to cause them serious embarrassment. A tacit agreement grew up by which Germans and Četniks left each other alone and concentrated on putting down the Partisans.

  It was the start of the slippery slope which leads to collaboration; collaboration from motives which were understandable, patriotic even, but nevertheless collaboration. What was more natural than that units fighting against a common enemy should co-ordinate their operations? Some Četnik Commanders went further still and attached liaison officers to German and Italian Headquarters, accepting German and Italian liaison officers in return. Some placed themselves and their troops under German and Italian command, allowed themselves to be supplied and equipped by them.

  Who was being fooled and who was getting the best of it? The Germans, who had succeeded in neutralizing what had started as a resistance movement? Or the Četniks, who were actually being armed by an enemy, against whom they hoped one day to rise? It was all in the best Balkan tradition. Had not Miloš Obrenović alternately fought the Turks and acted as their Viceroy? Had he not sent to Constantinople the severed head of his fellow-liberator, Kara Djordje?

  Mihajlović himself seems to have disapproved of actual collaboration with the enemy though he himself had originated the policy of abandoning active resistance and concentrating on the elimination of the Partisans. But the control which he exercised over his commanders was remote and spasmodic. Soon, while some Četnik commanders were still rather half-heartedly fighting the Axis forces, and others doing nothing, a number made no secret of their collaboration, and were living openly at German and Italian Headquarters.

  Already this kaleidoscope of heroism and treachery, rivalry and intrigue had become the background to our daily life. Bosnia, where we had our first sight of enemy-occupied Jugoslavi
a, was in a sense a microcosm of the country as a whole. In the past it had been fought over repeatedly by Turks, Austrians and Serbs, and most of the national trends and tendencies were represented there, all at their most violent. The population was made up of violently Catholic Croats and no less violently Orthodox Serbs, with a strong admixture of equally fanatical local Moslems. The mountainous, heavily wooded country was admirably suited to guerrilla warfare, and it had long been one of the principal Partisan strongholds, while there was also a considerable sprinkling of Četnik bands. It had been the scene of the worst of the atrocities committed by the Ustaše, of the not unnaturally drastic reprisals of the Četniks and Partisans.

  For anyone who was not himself in German-occupied Europe during the war it is hard to imagine the savage intensity of the passions which were aroused or the extremes of bitterness which they engendered. In Jugoslavia the old racial, religious and political feuds were, as it were, magnified and revitalized by the war, the occupation and the resistance, the latent tradition of violence revived. The lesson which we were having was an object-lesson, illustrated by burnt villages, desecrated churches, massacred hostages and mutilated corpses.

  Once, after a battle which had raged all day amid the green hills and valleys, I came on the terribly shattered corpse of an Ustaša. Seeing that capture was inevitable, he had taken the pin from a hand-grenade and, holding it against him, blown himself to bits. Somehow his face had escaped disfigurement, and his dead eyes stared horribly from the pale, drawn, disordered features. From under his blood-stained shirt protruded a crucifix, and a black and white medal ribbon, probably the Iron Cross, still hung to the shreds of his German-type tunic. Fighting for an alien power against his own countrymen, he had destroyed himself rather than fall into the hands of men of the same race as himself, but of different beliefs, beliefs to which they held as savagely as he held to his, for which they would kill and be killed as readily as he for his. There could have been no better symbol of the violence and fanaticism of this Balkan war.

  From this confused, this typically Balkan situation, one or two facts stood out clearly.

  Mine was a military mission; I had been told that politics were a secondary consideration; what mattered was who was fighting the Germans. And of that there could be no doubt. The Partisans, whatever their politics, were fighting them, and fighting them most effectively, while the Četniks, however admirable their motives, were largely either not fighting at all or fighting with the Germans against their own countrymen. Moreover, regarded as a military force, the Partisans were more numerous, better organized, better disciplined and better led than the Četniks.

  I had been told to consider how we could best help the Partisans. This, too, was clear. The Partisans were already containing a dozen or more enemy divisions. By increasing our at present practically non-existent supplies to them, and giving them air support, we could ensure that they continued to contain this force. Moreover their operations, if co-ordinated with our own, could be of direct assistance to the Allied armies in Italy. They would not need to change their strategy. Indeed it was most important that they should not depart from their guerrilla methods. If, by supplying them with arms and equipment and the air support for which they asked, we could ensure that they maintained and if possible intensified their present effort, we should be getting good value for what we gave them.

  There was another aspect of the supply situation. We were getting, it seemed, little or no return militarily from the arms we dropped to the Četniks, which had hitherto exceeded in quantity those sent to the Partisans. Indeed, in so far as they were used against the Partisans, who were fighting the Germans, they were impeding rather than furthering the war effort. Logically, therefore, and on purely military grounds, we should stop supplies to the Četniks and henceforth send all available arms and equipment to the Partisans.

  Politically, too, certain facts were clear. In the first place, the Partisans, whether we helped them or not, were going to be a decisive factor in the new Jugoslavia. Indeed there seemed no reason to doubt that, with their widespread and efficient organization, they would, when the Germans were driven out, become its effective rulers. Secondly, they were Communists, and must therefore be expected, when they came to power, to set up a totalitarian form of government on Soviet lines, in all probability strongly orientated towards Moscow.

  These, too, were facts of first-rate importance, likely to affect the future political orientation of the Balkans and ultimately the balance of power in Europe. Should they affect the British Government’s decision to give military support to the Partisans?

  The question was one which would have to be decided by the Government. I had, before ever leaving England, raised the then hypothetical question of whether or not we were concerned to check the spread of Soviet influence in the Balkans, and had been told that our policy was not influenced by such considerations. Would the Government change their mind when confronted with the more definite information which would now be laid before them? I could not tell. But, instinctively, I carried the argument a stage further.

  Clearly, whatever anyone might say, we could not regard with enthusiasm the establishment in Jugoslavia of a Communist regime under Soviet influence. But did the future political orientation of Jugoslavia depend on us? As far as I could see, it did not. If I had read the situation aright, nothing short of armed intervention on a larger and more effective scale than that undertaken by the Germans would dispose of the Partisans. And that, in the middle of a war in which they and their Soviet sponsors were our allies and at a time when we were in any case desperately short of troops, did not seem a practical proposition. Two years earlier, before the situation had crystallized, we might have been able to influence the course of events one way or the other. But not now.

  This being so, we might as well extract such benefit as we could from the situation militarily. To refuse to help the Partisans on the ground that they were Communists at a time when we were doing everything in our power to strengthen the Soviet Union would indeed be to strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Besides, if, as seemed probable, the Partisans were going to be the future masters of Jugoslavia, the sooner we established satisfactory relations with them, the better; although, if I knew anything about Communists, this would not be easy to do.

  There was one other factor to be considered. Human experience shapes human character. The impact of events on the individual cannot altogether be left out of account. Tito had been through a lot since 1937, when, as a reward for his orthodoxy, Moscow had appointed him Secretary-General of the Jugoslav Communist Party. Since then he had undergone the innumerable hazards and hardships of a bitter war fought for the independence of his own country; he had experienced the satisfaction of building up from nothing a powerful military and political organization, of which he himself was the absolute master. Would he emerge from these strenuous and stirring years completely unchanged? Would he accept Soviet dictation and interference as unquestioningly as before? Already I had been struck by his independence of mind. And independence of any kind was, I knew, incompatible with orthodox Communism.

  That Tito and those round him might in the course of time evolve into something more than mere Soviet puppets seemed too remote a possibility to serve as a basis for our calculations. But it was nevertheless an eventuality which seemed worth bearing in mind. ‘Much,’ I wrote in the report which I now started to draft against the day when I should find means of sending it out, ‘will depend on Tito, and whether he sees himself in his former role of Comintern agent or as the potential ruler of an independent Jugoslav State.’

  Chapter IV

  Alarms and Excursions

  THE weeks passed, and meanwhile the supply problem was no nearer solution. We still relied on what could be dropped by an occasional aeroplane, flying haphazard from North Africa, while for communications we still depended on a rather shaky wireless link with Cairo. Our improvised landing-strip at Glamoć was now ready but, from the messages we
received, the R.A.F. seemed disinclined to risk one of their aircraft on it and it was unlikely that the Partisans would be able to hold for much longer the area in which it was situated.

  Then one day came the news that the Navy were considering my suggestion that supplies could be run across the Adriatic by fast naval craft and landed by night on the Dalmatian Coast. They did not like the idea of running right in-shore, but they thought that they might take their cargoes as far as the outlying islands, now in Partisan hands, if we could find shipping to carry them from the islands to the coast and some means of carrying them inland from there.

  This was something. I climbed up the hill to talk things over with Tito in his castle.

  He greeted the news with enthusiasm. The Partisans, he said, had captured a certain number of light craft at the time of the Italian collapse. These they had manned with crews from their Dalmatian Brigade, the Dalmatians being born sailors, and had mounted with captured machine guns and twenty-millimetre Bredas. In fact, he said, they were already well on the way to having their own navy and could easily undertake the task of trans-shipping any quantity of supplies and ferrying them across the E-Boat infested coastal waters to a point in Dalmatia where they could be landed. But, if such operations were to do any good, they must begin at once, for already the Germans were pushing down towards the coast with tanks, artillery and air support, determined to re-occupy the territory which the Italian collapse had left unoccupied and which the Partisans were now holding as best they could against overwhelming odds. The port of Split had been recaptured by the enemy. Soon the Partisans would be cut off from the coast altogether, and then there would be no means of distributing supplies inland, even if they could be landed on the coast.