THE MIHAILOVICH STORY: A RETELLING

BY DAVID MARTIN

To those who are familiar with the story, General Draja Mihailovich ranks as perhaps the noblest, the most heroic and the most tragic and the most misunderstood figure of World War II.

The name of Mihailovich first appeared in the Western press during the summer of 1941 when the German armies were driving toward Moscow and Leningrad and the news was black from every side.

The story that a certain Colonel Draja Mihailovich had repudiated the capitulation to the Germans and had raised the flag of resistance in occupied Europe, came like a tonic after an unbroken diet of disaster. The name of Draja Mihailovich became an international symbol of resistance to Nazi tyranny. Time magazine voted him the man of the year. Most lavish of all in its praise of Mihailovich was the Communist press.

Two years later, in August, 1943, Draja Mihailovich had, for all practical purposes, been abandoned by Britain and America. Stories began to appear in the press to the effect that Mihailovich was collaborating with the Axis, that the Partisans were doing all the fighting against the Germans, and that it was for this reason that Anglo-American support was being shifted to the Partisans.

Once we committed ourselves to the support of Tito, the commitment was total. We armed his movement; we airdropped supplies to his forces when they were attacking the nationalist forces of General Mihailovich; we converted B.B.C. and the Voice of America into instruments of Tito's propaganda; we sent in recruiting missions to urge the Yugoslav peoples to join his forces; we carried out bombing at his request, directed against targets which he specified.

The scale of our military assistance to Tito was colossal. According to Brigadier General Fitzroy Maclean, during 1944 alone, the Western allies supplied the Partisans with over 100,000 rifles, over 50,000 light machine guns and submachine guns, 1,380 mortars, 324,000 mortar bombs, 636,000 grenades, 7,500,000 rounds of small-arm ammunition, 700 wireless sets, 175 000 suits of battle dress, 260,000 pairs of boots. In the light of these statistics, surely it is no exaggeration to say that Britain and America made Tito.

Inevitably, Mihailovich and the Serbian people were doomed by this betrayal.

The principal reason publicly advanced for the abandonment of Mihailovich was that his forces were collaborating with the Germans instead of fighting them.

Now that the German intelligence files of World War 11 have become available for research, we know that this was a monstrous lie.

Colonel Robert H. McDowell, the chief of the last American mission to General Mihailovich, who is fluent in Germ-an and a number of other languages, has gone through most of the German files on Yugoslavia. As he informed the meeting in Washington on July 17, 1974 (after the memorial service for Draja Mihailovich on the Capitol steps in Washington, D.C.) the German intelligence files over and over again reveal that the Germans feared Mihailovich far more that they did Tito.

The files reveal other things. In his recent book on Tito and Mihailovich, Walter R. Roberts, a former State Department official, quotes several German intelligence documents and documents captured from the Partisans. The following quote is from a letter which Tito wrote to a commander in Bosnia on March 30, 1943:

"On your way... do not fight Germans... tThis standstill took place at a time when highly sensitive Partisan-German negotiations were taking place in Zagreb.] The same letter continued: Your most important task at this moment is to annihilate the Chetniks of Draza Mihailovich and to destroy their command apparatus which represents the greatest danger to the development of the National Liberation Struggle ..."

It is also worth quoting Robert's des cription of a German memorandum dealing with a meeting between high ranking German officers and three of Tito's top commanders - Vladimir Velebit, Milovan Djilas, and Koca Popovic - on March 11, 1943.

"A German memorandum states that the German-Partisan conversation took place in Gornji Vakuf (west of Sarajevo) on March 11, 1943, from 9:30 to 11 A.M. It records that on the occasion of a previous prisoner exchange a German-Partisan discussion had taken place in Livno, November 17, 1942, at a lower level, with Ott participating on the German side, and that on that date a letter had been-dispatched to General Glaise von Horstenau which dealt with political questions. During the March discussions, the Partisan delegation stressed that the Partisans saw no reason for fighting the German Army - they added that they fought against Cerman troops only in self-defense - but wishes solely to fight the Chetniks;that they were orientedtoward the propaganda of the Soviet Union only because they rejected any connection with the British; that they would fight the British should the latter land in Yugoslavia; that they did not intend to capitulate, but inasmuch as they wanted to concentrate on fighting the Cetniks, they wished to suggest respective territories of interest."

And these are the people who accused Draza Mihailovich of collaborating with the Germans!

One of the principal reasons for the abandonment of Mihailovich was that there was a massive and systematic falsification of Allied intelligence by pro-communist elements in- British and American intelligence.

Ordinarily, political decisions are supposed to bear some relationship to the reports and recommendations of representatives in the field. But the fact is that the abandonment of Mihailovich was not recommended by a single one of the British or American of ficers attached to his forces. On the contrary, all of them reported that the Mihailovich movement had the backing of the overwhelming majority of the Serbian people, that it was not a collaborationist movement, and that it warranted Allied support. Indeed, without exception, they tore their hair over the folly and injustice of the decision to abandon Mihailovich.

Although some of the officers attached to Mihailovich were men of exceptional experience and competence, not a single one of them was consulted before the decision to abandon Mihailovich was reached. When Colonel William Bailey, the Chief of the first British mission to Mihailovich, an engineer with 20 years of experience in Yugoslavia, returned to London in February of 1944, he sought to persuade Churchill not to abandon Mihailovich. But his arguments, unfortunately, came too late to do any good.

In the course of writing my book "Ally Betrayed", I interviewed in depth every one of the British and American of ficers attached to Mihailovich. Every single one of them told me that they protested repeatedly over the intellectually dishonest manner in which their reports were suppressed, or rewritten, or compiled. So masive was the falsification that it became quite impossible for Churchill and Roosevelt to know what was going on in Yugoslavia.

Who were the falsifiers ? There were many procommunist elements in British and American intelligence because there was a widespread belief that our alliance with the Soviet Union made communists reliable members of the Western armed forces and of the Western intelligence services. It even went further than this: known communists and people of pro- communist views were actually sought out for service in Western intelligence because it was believed that their dedication as communists and their knowledge of world affairs made them particularly valuable in the intelligence field.

It has been pointed out, among other things, that one of the principal figures in British Balkan Intelligence during World War II, Major James Kluggman, emerged publicly after the War as a member of the Executive Committee of the British Communist Party.

Here are a few examples of the strange things that happened under this regime of managed and falsified intelligence.

In September, 1943, the Brtisih and American press informed their readers that the Germans had offered a reward of 100,000 gold marks for the head of Tito. Some papers printed a photographic reproduction of the offer of the reward for Tito's head, as it was printed in "Novo Vreme". The gist of these articles was that Tito was the man the Germans were really afraid of, whereas Mihailovich was involved in collaboration with the enemy...

The fact is that the Germans in their advertisements offered 100,000 gold marks for the head of Tito and another 100,000 gold marks for the head of Mihailovich.

But this the compilers of Yugoslav intelligence and those responsible for the dissemination of news on Yugoslavia to the press, saw fit to ignore.

Then there was the story of the Vishegrad Bridge.

In mid-September, 1943, Brigadier Armstrong and Colonel Albert Sitz arrived at Mihailovich's headquarters. The Brigadier was to asume command of the BritishMission;Colonel Seitz was to be in cornmandof the American Mission. Shortly after their arrival, they set out on a bridge-busting expedition directed against the UziceVishegrad railway, which was a vital link in the Nazi logistical network. As guerrilla warfare goes, the expedition was a major undertaking. The Chetnik forces, which were under the command of Colonel Ostoyich, blew up three small railway bridges down river from Vishegrad; then they stormed the town of Vishegrad, overcoming a garrison of 300 enemy troops at the bridge itself; and, on the following day, October 8, they set their charges and blew the bridge.

Colonel Seitz himself pushed the plunger that sent the bridge toppling down into the gorge.

The Vishegrad Bridge was a 500-foot double-track steel span. It was probably the biggest single bridgebusting job carried out by Balkan guerrillas during the war. Brigadier Armstrong, elated over the success of the expedition, sent in a report to headquaters, together with a request that the B.B.C. make a little fanfare by way of patting the Chetniks on the back.

Every day at the appointed hour they tuned in on B.B.C. But no announcement came. Some ten days later, back at Mihailovich's headquarters, Colonel Seitz, Brigadier Armstrong, and three other members of the British Mission were sitting in front of their tent, warming themselves at a log fire. They were chatting away against the background of the daily broadcast from B.B.C. Suddenly they caught the world "V ishe grad"

"The Partisans," said the announcer, "have destroyed the four bridges of the railway Uzice-Vishegrad."

There was a moment of stunned slence.

"Brigadier, this is a terrible thing," said Colonel Seitz. The Brigadier agreed that it was a terrible thing He immediately dispatched a message to Cairo informing them that he had personally witnessed the blowing of the Vishegrad Bridge by Chetnik forces. And he added some words which he had never used before in an official communication.

B.B.C. made no rectification. Nor has it ever been explained how it came about that, when a British Brigadier in the field requested that B.B.C. broadcast an account of an action of which he had been an eyewitness, this request was ignored, while, when a Partisan communique described an action which had not been witnessed by any Allied officer and which was in complete contradiction of intelligence already on file, B.B.C. reproduced the Partisan communique, thus endowing it with apparent authenticity.

Things like this happened over and over again. This systematic falsification and disinformation made it easy for the anti-Serbian prejudices of key people in the Foreign Office and of Winston Churchill himself to come into play.

The spirit of the Serbian people and the vital role they have played in the preservation of European freedom, were summed up in these words by an Englishman, Mr. Robin Laffan, who fought with the Serbs on the Salonika front in World War I and who, in World War II, was head of the Yugoslav desk in the British Foreign Of fice:

"If ever a nation bought its union and its liberty with blood and tears, the Serbs have paid that price. For five hundred years they have never been content to submit to slavery but have struggled unremittingly towards the light... They have kept faith with us to the utmost and have accepted the loss of all as better than surrender. Let us rather ask ourselves how it was that they came to be abandoned to their fate, and resolve that never now for lack of Great Britain's sympathy and help shall they fail in the achievement of their national liberty".

These words were written in 1918. They might well have been written again in 1945. It is sad to think that the man who wrote these words presided over the betrayal of Draza Mihailovich. What motivated him ?

Subsequent to World War I, Mr. Laffan became a convert to Catholicism. The author wishes to make it clear that he writes without personal religious prejudice of any kind. But the inevltable result of Mr. Laffan's conversion was that he lost some of his earlier enthusiasm for the Serbs and developed a new-found enthusiasm for the Croats. Mr. Laffan was one of those who were disposed to believe that the accounts of the Ustashi massacres were greatly exaggerated and who were inclined to look upon Mihailovich as the bearer of a Serbian vengeance. Mr. Laffan was in no way procommunist. He was a devout Catholic, a political conservative, a man of complete integrity, by every reasonable standard a man who was anti-Communist. But the sad fact is that Mr. Laffan and other Catholic conservatives were won over to the support of Tito, because Tito's propaganda succeeded in persuading

them that only he could save the Croatian people from a Serbian vengeance after the war.

Let me say first of all that, while I regard Winston Churchill as one of the truly great figures of the 20th Century, Churchill, like all great men, had his weaknesses, committed his share of blunders, and, on occasions, made decisions that llew in the face of all morality and decency. And the most serious of all of Churchill's blunders and the most indecent of all his actions was the offhand manner in which he settled the fate of the Balkan peoples with Stalin.

In the Big Three meeting in Moscow on October 9, 1944, Churchill, according to his own account, began the meeting with these words:

"Let us settle our affairs in the Balkans. Your armies are in Rumania and Bulgaria. We have interests, missions and agents there. Don't let us get at cross-purposes in small ways. So far as Britain and Russia are concerned, how would it do for you to have ninety per cent predominance in Rumania, for us to have ninety per cent of the say in Greece, and go fifty- fifty about Yugoslavia?"

Churchill described how he scribbled the whole suggestion on a piece of paper, Stalin made a large tick upon it and returned it to Churchill. "It was all settled in no more time than it takes to set down," said Churchill. Then Churchill asked Stalin: "Might it not be thought rather cynical if it seemed that we had disposed of these issues, so fateful to millions of people, in such an offhand manner ? Let us burn this paper." "No, you keep it," said Stalin.

The best that can be said for Churchill is that, even as he made the offer, he realized that the arrangement he was proposing was something shamefully evil and cynical. It was, to top everything, an act of unbelievable political naivete - almost stupidity. Stalin agreed to go 50-50 on Yugoslavia. But one wonders how Churchill could possibly have believed that Stalin would honor this agreement.

In the summer of 1944, Allied bombers by the hundreds were flying across Yugoslavia in an effort to wipe out the Rumanian oil installations. American bomber crews were being told in their briefings that, if they were shot down over Yugoslavia, they xhould endeavor to tie up with the Partisans, but should avoid the Chetniks because the Chetniks would probably turn them over to the Germans.

As matters turned out, many hundreds of American airmen were shot down over Chetnik territory and rescued by Chetniks, sometimes after bloody battles with the Germans.

At that time no British or American of ficers were attached to the forces of General Mihailovich; but the radio link with the British intelligence in Italy still remained in operation. Over this link, during June and July of 1944, Mihailovich sent repeated messages, asking the British to inform the Americans that the Chetniks had rescued many American airmen and that, with Allied cooperation, it would be possible to evacuate them.

These messages were never delivered to American headquarters, and as a result no action was taken.

Impatient and worried over the British failure to reply to his messages, Mihailovich wired to Ambassador Fotich in Washington on July 12, 1944:

"Please advise the American Air Ministry that there are more than one hundred American aviators in our midst. We notified the English Supreme Command for the Mediterranean a long time ago. The English replied that they would send an officer to take. care of the evacuation. Meanwhile, to this date, this has not been done... It would be better still if the Americans and not the English take part in the evacuation."

Over the next several weeks, Fotich received additional wires from Mihailovich, giving him the names and numbers of rescued airmen.

The American Air Force Command was concerned over the situation and decided to send in an Air Rescue Mission. British intelligence and some people in American intelligence continued to be negative about the project. They didn't believe the Mihailovich radio. They said that it might be a Nazi come-on. According to British intelligence maps, the position indicated by the Chetnik radio was supposed to be in an area firmly controlled by Partisans. On American insistence, however, the British agreed to cooperate.

But at this point something semed to be mysteriously wrong with the British radio link. Several sorties were attempted on the basis of arrangements made over the British link. All of them ended in failure. Either no ground signals were received, or the wrong ground signal were received or something else was amiss. American officers began to suspect sabotage.

Towards the end of July, an Arnerican monitoring set in Bari picked up a message from one of the rescued airmen. He had borrowed a transmitter from the Chetniks and, using American code and an American wavelength, had contrived to established an all-American radio link. Operating with this new link, a successful sortie was carried out on August 2.

Between the night of August 10 and the night of December 27, 1944, the American Air Rescue Mission attached to Mihailovich's headquarters evacuated to Italy 432 American airmen and some 100 other Allied personnel, including thirty Russians, who had been rescued by the Chetniks in various parts of Yugoslavia and had been concentrated at several points to assist in their evacuation.

The same American aircraft that were sent into the makeshift airstrip at Pranjane to evacuate the American airmen rescued by Mihailovich, on their way dropped arms and ammunition and supplies to the Partisan forces that were then attacking the Chetniks on many fronts. This testimony was given under oath by American officers before the Commission of Inquiry in the Case of Draza Mihailovich

In this way did we show our gratitude to General Mihailovich for the rescue of 432 American airmen.

Months later, when Captain Nick Lalich received the Legion of Merit for his services with the Air Crew Rescue Mission, his citation spoke of the "cooperation of Partisan groups" and of his proceeding "on foot northward with the Partisans through some 36 towns in rapid succession".

In this sordid and dishonorable history, the honor of America was in part redeemed by the gratitude of the hundreds of American airmen who were rescued by the forces of Mihailovich, and who moved heaven and earth to testify on his behalf at the time of his trial.

The American airmen did not lorget. Last summer, a group of them set up a National Committee of American Airmen Rescued by General Mihailovich. On July 17, the 28th anniversary of Mihailovich's execution, they held a memorial service on the steps of the United States Capitol and announced the launching of a movement for a memorial in Washington to "General Draza Mihailovich, Savior of American Airmen" (Editor's note: The story of this gathering is told on page 141).

The movement to erect a national memorial to the memory of Draza will, it is to be hoped, forever destroy the great historic coverup on Draza Mihailovich. It will establish,for the record of history, the true story of one of the bravest and noblest figures of World War 11.

Although President Roosevelt was never happy about the abandonment of Mihailovich, he was handicapped because of the agreement that the British would have final say on Allied policy towards Yugoslavia. The book was finally closed in November, 1944, when Roosevelt acceded to Churchill's insistent request for the recall of the McDowell Mission. In early December, the last American of ficer shook hands with Mihailovich for the last time.

"The Allies have made a mistake", Mihailovich told him, "but some day they will come back to us".

By this time, Mihailovich had already committed himself to the path of voluntary martyrdom. He could easily have saved his life, as Tsar l_azar could have saved his life in the battle of Kossovo in 1389. Indeed, the Allied Middle East Command urged him to leave Yugoslavia with the plane that brought out Colonel McDowell.

But like Tsar Lazar, Draza Mihailovich understood that men die all to quickly, while legends can live for a thousand years, giving strength and inspiration to all who love freedom.

The American of ficers who were with him during the last tragic months of 1944 have told me that there was an aura of saintliness about Mihailovich, which grew more pronounced as the night closed in around him and as his martyrdom came closer. To his. people, indeed, Draza Mihailovich had aleady become a saint. Though his armies were defeated, and though there was no possible hope that he 'could prevail against the combined forces of the Red Army and the Partisans, Mihailovich's retreat through Bosnia in the Fall of 1944 was like a great triumphal procession.

Whenever Mihailovich went, the peasants came thronging from miles around to see "Chicha". Elderly women knelt and kissed his hands; little children brought himeggs and apples;the peasants came with hams and chickens. Arid always Mihailovich mingled freely with his people - always completely unguarded. Three months after Tito's occupation of Belgrade, when the last Americans left Mihailovich, this incredible triumphal procession was still going on.

With the help and protection of his people, Mihailovich was able, to maintain himself for seventeen months after Tito was installed in Belgrade by the Red Army. In the Fall of 1945, Mihailovich contracted typhus. 111 to the point of death, his Chetniks carried him on a stretcher from village tovillage and mountain to mountain, always on the move to avoid the Partisan armies. In early 1946, friends wrote to him from Switzerland, urging that he leave the country for a while so that he could recover his strength. Though so weak that he still had to be carried, Mihailovich refused...

"Under no conceivable circumstances will l leave my country and my people,?' Mihailovich replied to his friends. 'You cannot carry your country with you on the soles of your shoes,' said Danton when he was urged to leave France. I can do no more than repeat those very words today. For I am not Josip Broz Tito, who has nothing in common with this land and these people, that I should run away at the first sign of danger to seek refuge in some isolated island."

It may be that I shall fall in our sacred cause. But you all know well that this woulel not mean that the righteous cause for which our nation is fighting would die with me. For I am only carrying out the will of the people - that is why I commenced the struggle against the oceypying forces and later against the communists."

"I do not doubt for one minute that the sunshine of freedom from Ravna Gora will soon brighten our troubled and suffering motherland."

Thus wrote Draza Mihailovich on February 2, 1946. But it was clear that he could not hold out for much longer. The entire Partisan Arrny of several hundred thousand men was moving heave n and earth to capture him, in the most relentless manhunt in history.

On March 24, the Communist press proudly announced to the world that General Mihailovich had been taken captive.

On June 10, Mihailovich was brought to trial. Requests by American officers who had served with Mihailovich that they be permitted to testify in his behalf were turned down. The testimony given by these officers to the Commission of Inquiry in the Case of Draza Mihailovich, when it was submitted to the court, was also refused. On July 15, after a hearing which made a mockery of the very word "trial", Draza Mihailovich was sentenced to death and on July 17, 1946, together with several of his of ficers he fell before the firing squad.

At the point of his martyrdom, the conscience of the free nations which had betrayed Mihailovich suddenly awoke. When the news came that he had fallen before a Partisan firing squad, there was hardly an editorial column in the entire country which did not speak its indignation. The New York Times, which had a few years earlier spearheaded the drive to sell Tito to the American people, now suggested a statue in Red Square, dedicated to Mihailovich, the savior of Moscow. "Political murder" was one of the milder terms used in describing the execution.

In his closing statement to the court, Mihailovich said: "I wanted much, l started much, but the gale of the world carried away me and my work."

With this one statement of Draza's I do not agree. The gale of the world may have carried away Draza Mihailovich, the man - but his work will never be carried away. His memory and his example will endure as long as men love freedom. And when the Yugoslav peoples throw of the yoke of communism, as they are some day bound to do, it will be thanks in very large measure to the martyrdom of Draza Mihailovich.