Serbia, Croatia and Germany 1941-1945: Civil War and Revolution in The Balkans

Canadian Slavonic Papers
ISSN: 0008-5006 (Print) 2375-2475 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcsp20
Serbia, Croatia and Germany 1941–1945: Civil War

and Revolution in the Balkans
Paul N. Hehn
To cite this article: Paul N. Hehn (1971) Serbia, Croatia and Germany 1941–1945: Civil
War and Revolution in the Balkans, Canadian Slavonic Papers, 13:4, 344-373, DOI:
10.1080/00085006.1971.11091249
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00085006.1971.11091249
Published online: 13 Apr 2015.
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Serbia, Croatia and Germany
1941-1945:
Civil War and Revolution in the Balkans
PAUL N. HEHN
Downloaded by [ECU Libraries] at 09:42 18 December 2017
The German High Command considered the Balkan theatre

during World War II a secondary war zone, a rear area, preferred
by the German Landser to the more perilous Russian and North
African fronts, though not as pleasant as occupation duty in
France or the Low Countries. By 1943 this conception had
changed. General Rendulic, summoned from Russia to eliminate
the guerrilla movement in Croatia, commented that after he as-
sumed his post, over 1,000 German soldiers requested transfer
to any other area, even the eastern front, rather than face the
savage, no-quarter battle conditions in the southeast. 1 Tito's
Communist-led partisans, the cetnik movement of Draza Mi-
hailovic, and the Greek resistance forces gave the Balkan theatre
new dimensions and involved the occupation forces in continuous
fighting.
While the mortality rate was not high, it was, nevertheless, not
negligible. One study of the southeastern European war zone
states that one out of seven soldiers in German uniform - whether
German or not - became a casualty by the close of operations. 2
Though the resistance movement's accomplishments, particularly
those of the partisans, have been greatly blown up by Yugoslav
historians, it is a mistake to assume that it never had more than
a gadfly value against the Germans. If German forces, at the
height of partisan and nationalist power, could march into and
occupy any portion of Greece, Albania or Yugoslavia at will, even
in their most weakened condition, this still does not diminish
the effectiveness of the resistance movement. 3 Hitler and Mus-
soHni were in constant communication on the guerrilla problem
in the south-east. The necessity of deploying troops from war
zones at critical moments during the war and the danger of a stab
1 Lothar Rendulic, Gekampft, Gesiegt, Geschlagen (Wells, 1952), p. 210.
2 German Anti-Guerrilla Operations in the Balkans (1941-1944), Dept. of the
Army, 1954, Pamphlet No. 20-243, p. 11.
3 Ibid, p. 53.
REVOLUTION IN THE BALKANS 345
in the back in the event of an Allied invasion of the Balkans made

it imperative for the German and Italian High Commands to
eliminate the guerrilla movement.
There were other reasons for Hitler's preoccupation with the
Balkans. The bauxite and copper mines of the former Yugoslav
area, the transshipped chrome of Turkey, as well as vital minerals
and foodstuffs were indispensable to the German economy and war
production. Even after the capture of Rome, the Germans were
compelled to remain in the Balkans, despite the danger of being
outflanked, out of sheer economic need. Approximately fifty per-

cent of Germany's oil, all of its chrome, sixty percent of its bauxite,
twenty-four percent of its antimony and twenty-one percent of its
copper were procured from Balkan sources. 4 Vast supplies of war
materials for Rommel's armies in Africa also passed down the
Balkan railway route, besides the continuous flow of raw materials
to Germany, any interruption of which would have had a serious
effect upon the German war effort. Keeping these transportation
arteries open at all times became one of the main tasks of the
occupation. Apart from economic requirements, the Balkans were
also the covering flank for Germany's south Russian position and
shielded Southern and Central Europe from Allied land forces.
An Allied assault in the Adriatic linking up with the Yugoslav
and Greek guerrillas was a nightmare possibility that haunted the
Wehrmact High Command and Hitler. Such an undertaking could
erode away Germany's East European satellites, leaving a wide
cleavage immediately before the eastern front and outflanking Ger-
many's position in Russia from the southeast. It would also trap
the Axis troops located in the southern Balkan region.
In retrospect, the resistance movement flowed directly from the
dismemberment of the Yugoslav state in April 1941. Hitler's rea-
sons for partitioning Yugoslavia - ordered on 27 March in
"Directive 25" and a Wehrmacht order of 1 April - are not dif-
ficult to ascertain. The major reason was undoubtedly his frustrated
rage and wounded vanity over the Simovic coup of March 1941. *
4 Ibid, p. 46.
*On 27 March 1941, a group of Serbian army officers headed by Air Force
General Simovic and General Bora Mirkovic overthrew the Cvetkovic govern-
ment which had signed, hours before, an agreement to join the Tripartite Pact
linking Yugoslavia with the Axis powers. The meaning of the pact and the
wisdom of the Simovic coup have been the subject of heated debate in emigration
between partisans of both sides ever since.
346 CANADIAN SLAVONIC PAPERS
This is clearly revealed in the documents of the German foreign

office published after World War II. 5 There are also glimmers of
his fear and respect for Serbian nationalism in his thinking. It is
clear from his numerous statements to foreign ambassadors and
German officials that he regarded Serbia as the driving force of the
Yugoslav state and the fragmentation of the latter as the best way
to cripple Serbia. The German foreign office official, Erich Kordt,
in a tantalizingly brief arriere-pensee hints at other more sinister
motives: Hitler partitioned Yugoslavia to deliberately foster quar-
rels between the national groups to enable him to dominate the

area more easily. 6 To keep the Italians from laying hands on the
French North African empire or from receiving an occupation
zone in southern France at a time when he was busy courting the
favor of Petain and the Vichy government, Hitler may have been
influenced into granting the Italians a share of the spoils in the
southeast. 7 Von Hassell's diary entry for May 1941 seems to
corroborate some of these considerations: "... a veritable chaos
is being let loose on the southeast. The basic principle is that in
order to keep the Italians in line they are to get everything they
want, no matter how absurd. There is no harm done if, later, they
and the Slavs get into one another's hair. Second principle: the
Serbs must be thoroughly squashed." 8
Others besides von Hassell had reservations over the course
chosen by Hitler. Among the sceptical was General Roatta. Com-
mander of the Italian Second Army and later Supreme Italian
Commander, General Mario Roatta believed that Hitler's policy
would produce a vast reservoir of nationalist discontent that could
rebound against the occupiers. If Yugoslavia had been preserved
intact, in Roatta's opinion the civil war which later occurred
would not have taken place. 9 Truncating Serbia and Montenegro,
5 For Hitler's reaction to the Belgrade coup see Documents on German Foreign
Policy, 0, XII, Docs. 215, 216, 423 (hereafter DGFP).
6 Kordt writes: "Hitler erkHirte auf den Hinweis dass dadurch unnotige Konflikte
heraufbeschworen wtirden, er wolle keine Befriedung des Balkans. Es sei gut,
wenn schlechte Grenzen standige Konflikte erzeugten. Dadurch werde es ihm
leichter werden, den Balkan zu beherrschen. Er scheint nicht begriffen zu
haben, dass er dadurch schliesslich eine Einigung aller gegen den Eindringling
herbeifiihrte." Erich Kordt, Wahn und Wirklichkeit (Stuttgart, 1948), p. 296 n.
7 Rendulic, Gekiimpjt, Gesiegt, Geschlagen, p. 165.
8 Ulrich von Hassell, Diaries, 1938-1944 (N.Y., 1947), p. 191.
9 Mario Roatta, Otti milioni di baionette (Milano, 1946), pp. 164-65.
incorporating Bosnia into the new Croatian state, and depriving

the Croats of ethnically Croatian territory (Dalmatia), drove the
nationalist forces into opposition to the occupation and into an
internal struggle between national groups.
In April Ciano met with Hitler at Monichkirchen and later with
Ribbentrop at Vienna. 10 The Italians had already been summarily
notified by Hitler, in a telegram three days before, of the terms of
Yugoslavia's impending partition. After having stated the previous
year that the Germans had no political interest in Yugoslavia,
Hitler now brusquely acquainted Ciano with his minimum demands

about which there could be no discussion.
All of northern Slovenia would be directly incorporated into
the Reich, leaving the southern portion with the Slovene capital,
Ljubljana, to the Italians - largely because the Italians occupied
it first - with the German-Italian border running only two kilo-
meters outside the city. Axis forces would occupy Croatia with the
line of demarcation running north to south, with Zagreb and
Sarajevo inside the German zone, leaving Germany in possession
of almost contiguous territory from the North Sea to the Bulgarian
border in Macedonia. The Germans appeared in the strange guise
of defender of Croatia's territorial rights when Ribbentrop opposed
the personal union of Croatia and Italy (through the appointment
of Prince Aimone, nephew of Victor Emmanuel, as Croatian
ruler) as well as the Italian annexation of Dalmatia, which, he
insisted, was ethnically Croatian. Ciano retorted that the Italian
case was not based upon ethnic considerations. At that moment,
Hitler was busy with preparations for the Russian campaign
and, once he had made certain Germany would have exclusive
use of the crucial Yugoslav mineral resources necessary to the
German war machine - i.e., the bauxite, lead, copper, and anti-
mony deposits - had little interest in the territorial squabble
between Rome and Zagreb, and recommended that the Croats
and Mussolini settle the issues between them by joint discussions.
By 10 April, hours before the Germans entered Zagreb, the
Ustasha leaders had proclaimed the birth of the "Independent
State of Croatia" and Ante Pavelic, Poglavnik (Leader) of the
10 The Monichkirchen conversations are described in Galeazzo Ciano (ed.

Malcolm Muggeridge), Diplomatic Papers (London, 1947), pp. 649-52; Ciano's
talks with Ribbentrop in Vienna are recorded in ibid, pp. 652ff. and DGFP, D,
XII, Docs. 378, 385, 398.
348 REVUE CANADIENNE DES SLAVISTES
Ustasha party, journeyed from Pistoia (Tuscany) in triumphal

procession to Croatia, ending his long exile in Italy. 11 In the
settlement which followed, both the Italian and Croat leaders
were under great pressure from their radical nationalist sup-
porters to secure as much territory as possible. Even before leav-
ing Italian soil, Pavelic met with Mussolini and agreed to a per-
sonal union between Croatia and Italy in which the problem of
Dalmatia would lose significance. Though he later denied it,
Pavelic may well have made some promises regarding Dalmatia
to gain Mussolini's support for the new state. The Croatian leader
would probably have promised even more than Dalmatia, to gain
Italian support for a Croatian state. 12
However, the Poglavnik's associates were less committed to
satisfying Italian demands for Dalmatia of the London Pact of
1915 and the bargaining became sharp. Italian demands for Dal-
matia, Pavelic told Ciano at Ljubljana, "would have thrown him
out of his job." The Croats, observed Ciano, "invoke statistics to
prove that in Dalmatia only the stones are Italian...." 13 Agree-
ment was finally reached on everything except Split (Spalato ) ,
which Mussolini adamantly refused to concede.
At Monfalcone Mussolini met with Pavelic to initial the final
terms of the boundary agreement (7 May 1941). Occupation of
many areas of Croatia and Dalmatia by the Italians gave Rome
powerful leverage. Dalmatia seethed with unrest against the Italians
and the future of the independent Croatian state hung in the
balance. The Italian-occupied area was divided into three zones:
the first zone, including northem.;md middle Dalmatia, was direct-
ly annexed and administered by Italy; the second and third zones
were given over to limited Croatian administration, while the
coastal region was demilitarized. Italy annexed Boka Kotorska
(the Bay of Cattaro) but agreed to a joint Italian-Croat administra-
tion for Split. To compensate Pavelic for the loss of Dalmatia
11 On 8 April 1941 Pavelic broadcasted from abroad an appeal to the Croats to

secede from the Serbs and to support the Axis powers. Raphael Lemkin. Axis
Rule in Occupied Europe (Washington, 1944), p. 243, quoting the Bulletin of
International News, XVIII, No.6, (19 April 1941), p. 518.
12 Discussions of the negotiations between Mussolini and Pavelic are contained
in the articles of E. Kvaternik in Hrvatska Revija of September 1952 and June
1953, and Rudolf Kiszling, Die Kroaten (Graz-Koln, 1956), pp. 169-77.
13 Galeazzo Ciano, The Ciano Diaries, 1939-1943 (Garden City, N.Y., 1946),
p.342.
and other territory, Croatia received Srem, a region ethnically

more than half-Serb, and Bosnia, whose eastern and western sec-
tions were thickly settled by Orthodox Serbs. Thus, the Croatian
state had a scant Catholic majority. Containing a total of 6.5 mil-
lion inhabitants, only 3.3 million were Catholic Croats, 800,000
were Moslems, 2.2 million Orthodox, 100,000 Germans, 18,000
Jews and several hundred Italians. 14 Loss of Dalmatia reduced
the percentage of Catholic Croats in the new state and may have
impelled the Zagreb regime to eliminate the Orthodox minority
in the horrible massacres during the summer of 1941 in order to

end the imbalance.
To gain Budapest's support, Hitler had originally offered the
Banat and a protectorate over Croatia to Hungary. Realizing that
Croatia might prove indigestible and wishing to avoid difficulties
with the Croats while concentrating on the hereditary Rumanian
foe, Budapest rejected the offer. Hitler, according to Kordt, had
other plans for the Banat: he wished to make it a German
Kerngebiet in which the Volksdeutsch would form the nucleus
of a Danubian marchland in the southeast. The historico-political
form of Hitler's plans for a southeastern Sudgau appendage of the
Reich reveals the grip of the past on his mind, and that he fully
intended to incorporate that region into Germany's sphere of in-
fluence, notwithstanding contrary assurances to the Italians. To
forestall a clash between the Rumanians and Magyars over the
Yugoslav Banat - the wedge of territory between the Rumanian
border and the Backa district - the Germans moved troops into
the disputed area. 15 Though the Bulgars were permitted to occupy
the Serbian part of Macedonia to Albania, Sofia was not allowed
14 Kiszling, Die Kroaten, p. 177. Similar figures are quoted in the unpublished
captured German documents. The Yugoslav writer, Jovan Marjanovic, gives
almost the same figures with slight differences: total population 6.3 million;
Croats 3.3 million; Serbs 1,925,000; Moslems 700,000; Germans 150,000;
Magyars 75,000; Slovaks 65,000; Slovenes 30,000; Italians 5,000; and about
40,000 Jews. Jovan Marjanovic, Ustanak i NarodnooslobodilaCki Pokret u
Srbiji 1941 (The Uprising and National Liberation Movement in Serbia 1941)
(Belgrade, 1963), p. 23.
15 For Antonescu's threat to occupy the Yugoslav Banat and bar the way to the
Magyars see Hermann Neubacher, Sonderauftrag Siidost 1940-1945; Bericht
eines fliegenden Diplomaten (Gottingen, 1956), p. 126. See also Erich Kordt,
Wahn und Wirklichkeit, p. 294; and DGFP, D, XII, Docs. 215, 276, 340, 353.
16 Gerald Reidinger, The Final Solution (N.Y., 1953), p. 367. Reidinger describes
Kasche as "a ham-fisted party fanatic with bushy eyebrows."
to formally annex the region to insure Bulgarian loyalty to the

Axis. For its Albanian dependency, Italy claimed Kosovo, Meto-
hije, and parts of Montenegro.
In early April Hitler appointed the Italianophobe General
Edmund von Glaise-Horstenau, a former Austro-Hungarian officer
and minister in the Schuschnig and Seyss-Inquart governments,
as German army chief in Croatia. His foreign office counterpart,
SA Obergruppenflihrer Siegfried Kasche, had narrowly escaped
execution during the Rohm purge in 1934 and entertained excel-

lent relations with Ribbentrop's foreign office favorite, Dr. Martin
LUther. Kasche quickly became a strong supporter of the Pavelie
regime in Croatia, while Glaise, notwithstanding his dislike of the
Italians with whom the Croats were constantly at loggerheads,
gradually came to regard the Ustasha regime as a liability.
By the end of April conditions in Serbia were chaotic. In the
capital thousands lay buried under the rubble of the 6 April
German bombardment and thousands more sought refuge inside
the country from areas outside Serbia. Officially labelled the
Gebiet des Militiirbefehlshaber SerMens (Territory of the Military
Commander in Serbia) , it comprised some 4 Y2 million in-
habitants, 28% of the original population of Yugoslavia. 17 The
peace treaties and boundary divisions produced a policy from
which the Germans did not deviate until their final withdrawal
from the Balkans in 1944. Serbia would be treated as a conquered
province while Croatia became a sovereign ally, even though, in
reality, it depended for its existence upon Axis military support.
This became official when Pavelie signed the Tripartite Pact in
June 1941.
Inside Serbia a "Commissariat Administration" emerged during
the chaotic days of April 1941, composed of second-echelon pre-
war politicians, for the most part from the former Stojadinovie
group and the "ZBOR" organization of Dimitri Ljotie, both pre-
war rightist and totalitarian movements with whom the Germans
17 Marjanovic gives slightly different figures for the population of occupied

Serbia: total population 3.810,000 (175.000 Rumanians). Marjanovic, Ustanak
i NarodnooslobodiiaCki Pokret u Srbiji. p. 23.
were willing to cooperate. 18 However, growing administrative and

economic distress, aggravated by the Ustasha atrocities and mas-
sive persecution of the Orthodox in the independent Croatian state
during the terrible summer of 1941, induced Ljotic, in a move
to create a stronger and more autonomous Serbian regime, to
withdraw his "ZBOR" representatives from the Commissariat Ad-
ministration and bring about its demise. 19
As a replacement the Germans persuaded the former army
chief, General Milan Nedic to form a "Government of National
Salvation," supported by LjotiC's followers and the Stojadinovic

group led by the former Belgrade police chief, Milan Acimovic,
and a medley of non-party bureaucratic figures. As a concession,
the military commander, without the knowledge of Berlin and the
Oberbefehlshaber Stidost, agreed to the beefing up of the Serbian
gendarmerie and the formation of para-military units to cope with
the growing domestic· paralysis, complicated by the upsurge of
guerrilla warfare during the summer of 1941. To avoid a general
uprising in Serbia which could not be put down with the meager
forces at its disposal, the German occupation administration in
Serbia treated the uprising, largely directed by the Communist-
led partisans in its initial stage from July-September 1941, as a
purely Serbian affair and employed Serbian forces under NediC's
nominal control to quell the disorders. These consisted of the en-
larged gendarmerie known as the Serbian State Guard (Srpska
Drzavna Straza), composed of separate units which protected the
frontiers, towns, and rural areas, forming a kind of military con-
stabulary. These forces were supplemented by the Volunteers
(Dobrovoljci), an elite organization of students and youthful mem-
bers of LjotiC's "ZBOR" movement, indoctrinated with a strong
Serbian nationalist and corporatist ideological outlook that in-
clined toward the totalitarianism of the Nazis. In addition, the
so-called "legal" cetniks of the aging pre-war leader and World
18 Details on the formation of the Commissariat Administration are provided in

Bosko Kostic, Za ]slOriju Nasih Dana (The History of Our Times) (Lille,
1946), pp. 20,23. Though one-sided and an apology for the Ljotic position,
this little book by the former assistant of Dimitri Ljotic nevertheless provides
much valuable information about the latter and his relations with the Germans
which cannot be found elsewhere. For a description of ~LjotiC's life and
political beliefs before the war see Dimitri Ljotic, /z moga Zi~'ola (From My
Life) (Munich, 1952).
19 Kostic, Za ]sloriju Nasih Dana, p. 22.
War I hero Kosta Pecanac joined the Nedic government after brief
inconclusive contacts with Mihailovic. The group around Colonel
Mihailovic arrived in western Serbia before the Communists in
May 1941, but held aloof from attacking NediC's organs and of-
ficials, many of whom were sympathetic to MihailoviC's movement.
In Slovenia the Germans hastily converted the northern section
into a German province (l0,000 sq.mi.; 850,000 pop.), fulfilling
Hitler's request, made during his visit to Maribor, for the Eindeut-
schung of the district. The gruesome repertoire of conversion in-
cluded mass deportations, murders, ,and the extinction of the

Slovene language and culture through book burnings, language
prohibitions, and even the expunging of Slovene inscriptions on
tombstones. 20 In place of the deported population, Germans from
Rumania, Italian-occupied Slovenia, and other areas were resettled
as part of the Heimholung program. 21
In Italian-occupied Slovenia, the so-called "Province of Lubiana"
(4,490 sq.mi.; 245,000 pop.), after a phase of mild administra-
tion calculated to contrast invidiously with the draconic condi-
tions in the German sector and to gain support for Italy, Slovene
resistance brought harsher and more repressive measures from the
police. According to one source, from 11 April 1941 to 8 Septem-
ber 1943, the Italians shot about 1,000 hostages, killed more
than 8,000 people, and sent 35,000 Slovenes to concentration
camps. Italianization efforts failed despite the presence of 40,000-
60,000 Italian troops and hordes of Carabinieri and secret
police. 22 The repression reached its height at the infamous meet-
ing in the German consulate at Zagreb under the chairmanship
of Siegfried Kasche and attended by Croat Foreign-Secretary
Mladen Lorkovic, Dumandzic, another Croatian minister, and
Glaise-Horstenau, during which those present discussed the ex-
pulsion of thousands of Slovenes to Serbia, Bulgaria, and other
areas. 23 Only the outbreak of revolts against the occupation dur-
ing autumn 1941 prevented the complete execution of these plans.
In Dalmatia the Italian government appointed Emilio Grazioli,
a Trieste Fascist official, as "governor" together with three pre-
20 The "Eindeutschung" of the Slovenes is described in great detail by John A.

Arnez, Slovenia in European Affairs (N.Y. 1958), pp. 83·90.
21 Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, p. 244.
22 Arnez, Slovenia in European Affairs, p. 82.
23 DGFP, D, XII, Doc. 525.
fects. The former Italian minister to Egypt and Uruguay and

career diplomat, Mazzolini, became commissioner to Montenegro
until the appointment of a ruler (which never occurred) attached
to the House of Savoy; and in July, after the outbreak of dis-
turbances, General Pirzio Biroli became military governor of the
country.
In the German-controlled areas administrative practices and
behavior were influenced by conscious feelings of condescension
toward the Slavs who were regarded as culturally inferior by

many of the Nazi occupation functionaries, producing, in turn, a
mutual feeling of hostility. (The Germans treated the Greeks, as the
founders of the culture of antiquity whose plucky resistance to the
Axis they admired, with far greater respect.) The Slavs of the
southeast disliked the Germans for a number of reasons. Memories
of World War I and the Salonika front, the humiliation of defeat
and conquest, particularly among Serb nationalists, and the fatal
German policy of reprisal shootings embittered them against the
Axis occupation.
In the summer and autumn of 1941 revolts broke out in Serbia,
Montenegro, Herzegovina, Bosnia, and Slovenia, following the
withdrawal of German troops for the Russian front. The resistance
erupted in the Serb-populated areas of the independent Croatian
state as a response to the massacres of large numbers of Serbs
by the Ustasha. Additional complicating factors were the pro-
clamation of an independent Montenegrin state through the con-
nivance of the Italians acting behind the scenes, and the entrance
of the Soviet Union into the war, encouraging both Communists
and non-Communists in the belief that the war had entered a new
phase and the Axis would be defeated.
In western Serbia after a short honeymoon of cooperation be-
tween MihaitoviC's cetnik forces and the Communist-led partisans
against German strong points, the two resistance groups fell out
in circumstances still confused and obscure, and began fighting
one another. 24 Mihailovic opposed attacking the Germans from
24 The conflict is described at length in The Trial of Dragoljub-Draza Mihailovic

(Belgrade, 1946), pp. 409-17 and Borivoj M. Karapandzic, Gradjanski Rat u
Srbiji 1941-45 (Civil War in Serbia 1941·45) (Cleveland, 1958), PP. 105-07
and PP. 118-22. See also the article of Jovan Marjanovic, in lstorija XX Veka
(History of the Twentieth Century), I (Belgrade, 1959), and Sergije M.
Zivanovic, Djeneral Mihailovic i Njegovo Delo (General Mihailovic and His
Work) (Chicago, 1962), III, passim.
the first, realizing that stronger enemy forces would immediately

be rushed in and the guerrilla forces would be engulfed. Orders
from London to avoid a frontal clash and the chastening effect of
German reprisal executions during the summer decided him upon
the policy he later adopted: to wait until German military strength
ebbed or had been dealt a decisive blow by the Allies before going
on the offensive again. 25 The Communists were less concerned
with the consequences for the civilian population and probably
hoped that the inevitable German reprisals would force many to

flee to the protection of the forests and into the ranks of the
partisans. During the summer and autumn MihailoviC's staff main-
tained connections with Nedic through some of his officers while
at the same time continuing his uneasy relationship with the parti-
sans. These contacts were discovered by the partisans who later
accused Mihailovic and his followers of treason. Through the
assiduous work of Wehrmacht intelligence, the contacts were
broadened to include the Germans, but were short-circuited by Dr.
Turner, Chief of the German Occupation Administration, Nedic,
and OB von Lohr, who believed Mihailovic was only playing for
time to avoid a decisive setback before winter set in. A secret
meeting between Mihailovic and the Germans at Divci failed to
achieve German intelligence hopes of separating the Mihailovic
forces from the partisans and winning them over to cooperation
against the latter. Concomitantly, Mihailovic failed to receive the
weapons and ammunition he sought to escape destruction from the
oncoming German punitive detachments. 26
25 At his post-war trial Mihailovic testified that he considered the partisans "were
amateurs in military science" and "the uprising was premature... the time had
not yet come to fight the invader." The Trial of Dragoljub-Draza Mihailovic,
pp. 110-12. Despite repeated Communist attempts to draw the nationalist forces
into attacks on NediC's organs and officials, Mihailovic held his units aside. Only
at the end of August did the nationalists begin to enter the struggle, as in the
case of Colonel Misite's attack on Loznice. In mid-September Major Dragoslav
Racic jointly invested Sabac with the partisans. In both cases the attacks
occurred without MihaiioviC's permission. Though the cetniks entered the
struggle late, it was only then that the sporadic efforts of the partisans matured
into a full-fledged uprising in western Serbia. However, at no time did Mihailovic
commit the bulk of his forces on the side of the revolt. Partisan historians insist
that the cetniks entered the struggle because they feared partisan successes
would make Tito too strong and because they wanted to share in the booty.
See lovan Marjanovic, Ustanak i Narodnooslobodilacki Pokret u Srbiji 1941,
p.247.
26 Anti-Guerrilla Operations in the Balkans, pp. 22ff.
Faced with overwhelming enemy forces (four German divisions

and innumerable Nedic units) and fighting among themselves,
both the nationalists and partisans were compelled to flee towards
the Sandzak and Montenegro. However, the 1941 revolt in Serbia
achieved a considerable success: the attacks on the Bor mining
complex (northeast of Nis) caused a production loss of a month's
requirement of copper for the German war industries. The disturb-
ances also disrupted vital German supply trains on the way to
North Africa. More importantly, the 1941 revolt in Serbia served

as the later model for the partisan struggle throughout the war.
In destroying archives, killing local officials, and replacing the
defunct Nedic organs in liberated regions with National Liberation
Committees, they revealed that their goal was not merely to drive
out the occupier but also to utilize the struggle to bring about a
seizure of power through a Communist revolution.
Some of the surviving Mihailovic forces filtered into the Nedic
units where they were equipped and enabled to exist until sum-
moned again by Mihailovic. These German-facilitated "accom-
modations" later became the subject of acrimonious debate. 27
However, the weak Mihailovic forces could do little else under the
circumstances and the "accommodations" seemed to be done more
out of motives of self-preservation. Mihailovic and Nedic had no
illusions about one another - they were pre-war enemies and
Nedic had once placed Mihailovic, then a staff officer, under house
arrest for criticizing the army's defense strategy. The two men
were studies in contrast: Mihailovic, a non-conformist, Russo-
phiIe and Slavophile, pro-Western nationalist, and Nedic, ideolo-
gically disposed towards an Axis victory, but probably not per-
sonally a Nazi.
In Montenegro a revolt erupted (13 July 1941) when a small
group of zelenasi (literally "greens" or Montenegrin autonomists),
under Italian prodding, declared Montenegro an independent state,
an action preliminary to its conversion into an Italian satrapy.
Communists and nationalists made common cause and seized con-
trol of the country with the exception of the largest towns. When
the exhilarated Montenegrin Communists, among the most fana-
27 For the legalization of some cetnik detachments see Karapandzic, Grad;anski

Rat u Srbi;i, pp. 158-62; Kostic, Za Istori;u Nasih Dana, p. 67; also The Trial
0/ Dragol;ub-Draza Mihailm'ic, pp. 429ff.
tical in Yugoslavia, began to execute many leading nationalists and

even declared Montenegro a Soviet republic - later condemned
as "sectarian" by Tito - civil war broke out between the two
groups. 28 The same mistakes occurred in Herzegovina, leading to
a certain disenchantment with the partisans. Reinforced Italian
forces, under the newly appointed Italian commander General
Pirzio Biroli, joined the nationalists in annihilating the partisans.
Arrangements were concluded between local nationalists and the
Italians, leaving the countryside to the former and the towns in

Italian possession. Cetnik power reached its apogee in 1942 when
they probably were stronger than their partisan rivals everywhere.
Both movements were almost exclusively Serb, filled with masses
of chauvinist Serb peasants. 29 Only in Dalmatia where liberal
Yugoslavist sentiments were strong did the Croats join the resis-
tance; only after 1943 did they enter partisan ranks in great
numbers to break the deadlock and swing the balance to the side
of the National Liberation Movement. 30
The defeat inflicted upon the Montenegrin partisans plunged
the National Liberation Movement into a grave crisis in the early
summer of 1942. Cut off from the masses in the sparsely populated
and bleak southeastern Bosnian region, the main partisan force
was in danger of disintegrating. When in July 1942 Tito made a
fateful decision for a "long march" to western Bosnia lasting 115
days, partisan forces were whittled down to four brigades, number-
ing some 3,100 men, all that remained of the partisan forces in
Bosnia, Montenegro, and the Sandzak; in Dalmatia there were only
2,000 combatants, almost none in Croatia, and in the Vojvodina
only 50 party members and candidates. 31 By July 1942 General
Robotti had crushed the Slovenian partisans. The decision to
retreat to western Bosnia, a region where the cetniks were not
numerous and the Serb population hostile to the Ustasha, saved
28 losip Broz Tito, Borba za Oslobodjenje Jugoslavije, 1941-1945 (Struggle For

the Liberation of Yugoslavia, 1941-1945) (Belgrade, 1947), p. 28.
29 Branko Lazitch, Tito et la Revolution Yougoslave 1937-1956 (Paris, 1957),
p. 97.
30 ibid, p. 98.
31 Ibid, pp. 89-91. Communist cadres in Serbia were almost completely extin-
guished in 1942 and the central committee of the party was defunct; its leading
members were either dead, in hiding or scattered to other regions. Marjanovic,
Ustanak i Narodnooslobodilacki Pokret u Srbiji, 1941, p. 386.
the party, according to Milovan Djilas. By early 1943 the partisans

had grown to 25,000 men and were again in fighting shape. 32
For their failure to follow up their victory in Montenegro and
deliver a final blow to the partisans in 1942, the cetniks later
paid dearly. They may have been too weak and disorganized
to mount any sustained attack upon the main partisan force at
Foca, and were preoccupied with maintaining their own positions
in Bosnia, Montenegro, and Serbia. Mihailovic may also have
underestimated the partisan ability to recuperate and concentrated
his attention on the struggle against his enemies Pavelic and Nedic
and the impending contest with the occupation forces.
Rome's relations with Zagreb reached a new low at the end of
1941. Italian occupation of zone three in front of the demarcation
line without consulting Zagreb threw the Pavelic regime into a
panic. 33 Italian troop movements were halted but the effect created
a permanent disjunction in Croat-Italian relations. In December
the Wehrmacht High Command briefly contemplated withdrawing
all German forces from Croatia and turning the area over to the
Italians but abruptly changed its mind under pressure from Pavelic
and Kvaternik, and fears of a Croatian nationalist reaction against
the Italians. 34 German-Italian rivalries in Croatia worsened: the
Italianophobe German commander Glaise-Horstenau complained
of anti-German speeches by his Italian counterpart, General Oxilia,
before Croat officers, and of Italian toleration of the cetniks and
Communists in their occupation zone, which was hampering
German anti-guerrilla efforts. 35 German-Italian frictions were not
lost on Pavelic who laconically commented: "They are like cat and
dog." 36 The Germans also complained that the Italians were drain-
ing Croatia's economic wealth: "Dalmatia," remarked Glaise in a
report to Berlin, "could very well become an Italian suction pump
for the Croatian economy." 37 The maintenance of eleven to twelve
32 Lazitch, Tito et la Revolution Yougoslave 1937-1956, pp. 89-91.

33 Unpublished German Documents of WW II, Agram (Zagreb), 1 October 1941,
Glaise to OKW, German General in Agram, File 308/41 (hereafter GGAF).
34 Agram, 1 October 1941, Glaise to OKW, GGAF 309/41; Agram, 3 October
1941, Glaise to OKW, GGAF 312/41; Agram, 30 December 1941, Glaise to
OKW, GGAF 431/41.
35 Agram, 5 October 1941, Glaise to OKW. GGAF 315/41.
36 Fitzroy Maclean, Tito, (N.Y., 1957), p. 84.
37 Agram, 16 November 1941, Glaise to OKW, GGAF 377/41.
Italian divisions was also a severe strain on the Croatian economy.

Even worse was Italian indifference to cetnik attacks upon the
Croat and Moslem population in their occupation zone which the
cetniks used as a base for attacks into the German zone. 38
The ineptitude of the Croatian army, built from the ground up
by Marshal Kvaternik, in dealing with the partisans and nationalists,
caused a seepage of support for the regime among Croats and
Moslems. 39 Kvaternik's inability to infuse the Domobran (Home
Guard) with a fighting spirit and PaveliC's failure to extend his
base of support from the minuscule Ustasha party to wider strata

of the population, were the two most acute problems facing the
Ustasha regime. The more the danger of the guerrilla movement
mounted, the more Pavelic felt compelled to fall back upon the
Ustasha as the only force capable of defending the Croatian state
against its enemies. Consequently, he became increasingly un-
willing to take a strong stand against the Ustasha persecutions of
the Orthodox Serbs which fueled the insurrectionary movement.
During 1942 the Italians concluded agreements with many
Orthodox nationalist groups inside the independent Croatian state
in the Italian-occupied zone, as convenient ballast against the
Pavelic regime, the Germans, and the partisans. Some nationalist
groups joined forces with the Ustasha against the partisans. These
"parallel actions" suited Rome and the local Italian commanders,
but disturbed Berlin and severely strained German-Italian relations
inside Croatia until Italy's collapse in September 1943.
Allied pressure in the Mediterranean area was also beginning
to affect Italy's policy in the southeast. Ciano journeyed to the
Fiihrerhauptquartier at G6rlitz (18-19 December 1942) with a
letter from Mussolini requesting an end to the Russian war and a
general disengagement in the east. 40 Hitler would not hear of the
38 Agram, 1 October 1941, Glaise to OKW, GGAF 309/41.

39 A German agent travelling through Banja Luka reported growing disenchant-
ment with the Ustasha regime among Moslems and the disappearance of the
previous antipathy of Moslems toward the Serbs. Moslem leaders maintained
"intensive contacts with the Italian military and civil officials and take an
oppositional attitude to the Agram government." Food shortages and the
inability of the Ustasha regime to deal with the guerrillas had shaken the
confidence of the public which "looks to any force that can bring order out of
chaos whether Italian or cetniks." Agram, 6 December 1941, Glaise to OKW
GGAF30~~I. '
40 The meeting of Ciano with Hitler in December 1942 is described in detail in
F.W. Deakin, The Brutal Friendship (London, 1962), pp. 134·155.
plan, an implicit admission of defeat that went counter to his all-

or-nothing psychology. Hitler was nervous over the looming pos-
sibility of an Allied landing in the Adriatic and the calamitous
presence of numerous guerrillas in the Balkan interior, cutting off
communications and attacking in the rear Germa-n troops engaged
in repelling the invaders. Ribbentrop reiterated these sentiments,
criticizing the Italians for supporting the cetniks and insisting that
Mussolini be telephoned to arrange an aggressive campaign against
the guerrillas. Mussolini agreed, but the following month, as the

prelude to diminishing Italian involvement in the Balkans and in-
creasing concentration on the defense of Italy and the Mediter-
ranean area, he replaced the pro-German chief of staff, General
Ugo Cavallero, with the Second Army Commander in Croatia,
General Ambrosio, an exponent of disengagement in the east. The
changes were disguised by the simultaneous dramatic dismissals of
Ciano, Count Dino Grandi, and others opposed to the continuation
of the war.
Plans were laid at the beginning of January 1943 to eliminate
the insurgents in Croatia; OB von Lohr held conversations with the
Italian military (i.e. Roatta and Cavallero) in preparation for
Plan Weiss, as the Germans called the operation. But Italian
interest withered a month later and Tito easily slipped his forces
past the slow moving Italian troops, moving the main partisan
group in the direction of the Neretva River. Despite German
prodding, the Italians had little interest in large scale campaigns in
the Balkan interior, and still less enthusiasm for German plans to
disarm the cetniks during the final phase of Plan Weiss. Italian
languor forced Ribbentrop to make a special trip to Rome (Febru-
ary 1943) accompanied by the Wehrmacht field representative
and Balkan specialist, General Warlimont.
Ribbentrop delivered Hitler's warning of the dangerous situation
in the Balkan peninsula and the poised threat of a stab in the back
by the guerrillas operating in the interior at the moment of an
Allied landing in the Balkans. Ambrosio pleaded a dearth of
Italian troops and insisted the local cetniks were useful and should
be eliminated only after the partisans. The Italians disputed Rib-
bentrop's contention that the partisans and cetniks should be
equally distrusted and had to be eradicated, and Mussolini took
side swipes at the Germans for also having made use of the cetniks
in battle. 41 Ambrosio was skeptical that new operations would be

successful: within a few weeks the same disorders would recur.
Mussolini's health was failing and his power over the generals
was waning. Since the appointment of Ambrosio, Italian military
strategy had undergone a revolution, indirectly influenced by events
on the Russian front. In early 1942 the Italian Expeditionary
Force in Russia had suffered heavy losses. The Italians were no
longer interested in German pacification plans and desired only to
hold Dalmatia and to defend Italy, letting the nationalists and
partisans fight it out in the interior after withdrawing their troops

to the coast.
Despite great odds the partisans succeeded in breaking through
the ring of foes surrounding them and, after crossing the Neretva
River, attacked and scattered the weaker Mihailovic forces op-
posing them. The cetnik defeat at Jablanica began a downturn in
MihailoviC's fortunes from which he never recovered. A second
blow against his forces occurred in mid-May 1943 when the
Germans swooped down on the Montenegrin nationalists (Plan
Schwarz), occupying Kolasin and capturing the main Montenegrin
nationalist leader, Pavle Djurisic, and several thousand of his men.
After Plan Schwarz the cetnik position in Montenegro began to
disintegrate and never again recovered its former vigor. In the
case of the Bosnian and Herzegovinian cetnik groups the Ger-
mans were less successful: forewarned by the Italians they fled
into the mountains. These German moves to eliminate the nation-
alists in the western regions produced "serious tensions" between
the Axis partners. 42
In mid-1943 Dr. Hermann Neubacher, former mayor of Vienna
and a Balkan specialist - he had formerly acted as an economic
specialist in the German legation at Bucharest - became Hitler's
special representative for the entire southeastern European region,
except for the Croat area. Neubacher saw the pacification of the
Serb-populated regions as the key to the insurgent problem and,
accordingly, began to reverse the anti-Serb policy of Berlin in
effect since 27 March 1941. After maneuvering the recall of
Goering's pro-consul in the southeast, Neuhausen, and SS Police
41 The Brutal Friendship, pp. 183-200.
42 Percy Ernst Schramm, Kriegstagebuch des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht,
1940-45. IV (Frankfort a.M., 1961), p. 634. Operations Weiss and Schwarz are
described in ibid, Ill, Pt. 1 (1943), passim.
Chief Meyszner, leading advocates of the hard line toward the

Serbs, Neubacher gradually eased the policy of reprisals and the
indiscriminate shooting of hostages which was driving many Serbs
into the arms of the insurgents. To shore up NediC's waning pres-
tige, Neubacher arranged a meeting between the Serb leader and
Hitler in Berlin. But Nedic's demands for Kosovo and other
historic Serb territories and a revision of Serbia's borders with
Croatia were curtly rejected by Ribbentrop. Although Hitler was
friendly and even agreed to minor concessions, the net result was
politically unsatisfying. 43
In October 1943 Neubacher unveiled his master plan for the
scrapping of the previous anti-Serb policy. From a pariah position,
the Serbs were to be transformed into a main stanchion of German
policy in the southeast through the creation of a "Great Serbian
Federation" uniting Serbia, Montenegro and the Sandzak in a
federal union presided over by Nedic. German administrative
control would be drastically curtailed; each unit, while preserving
its own autonomous life, would participate in an economic and cur-
rency union. Neubacher hoped through this design to satisfy the
Montenegrin separatists, strengthen NediC's hand and "bring about
a far reaching pacification in the Serbian area and the possibility
with national forces to press the Tito partisans from Montenegro
and create an anti-Communist bloc (isolierblock) consisting of the
Great Serbia Federation, Albania, PaveliC's Croatia and the Greek
area." 44
After some procrastination Hitler rejected the scheme. The
German leader shrank from any suggestion of restoring an enlarged
Serb state. The bitter residue of 27 March 1941, Hitler's in-bred
suspicion of all Serbs - he had the pre-World War I popular
Austrian view of Serbs as bomb-throwers and conspirators as-
sociated with the Sarajevo Thronmord - and probable difficulties
with Pavelic and the Ustasha regime, doomed the project. Hitler's
answer to Neubacher reflects his abiding suspicions of Pan-Serbism:
"We cannot permit a people with a political mission (einen politi-
schen Missionsgefiihl) to become powerful. The Serbs are such a
people. They have far reaching goals to reach the Aegean. I have
43 The meeting between Nedic and Hitler and Ribbentrop is described in

Neubacher, Sonderauftrag Siidost, pp. 134ff.
H Ibid, p. 157.
serious scruples against encouraging these people in any way toward

their aspirations." 45
As the partisan danger mounted in 1944 the Germans began to
search for other solutions. For a time German intelligence toyed
with a fantastic plan to bring King Peter back to Serbia as a rally-
ing point for all nationalist forces. However, Neubacher feared the
boy king would "go into the forest" and join Mihailovic, and, in the
end, vetoed the plan. Peter also briefly considered a dramatic
return, then decided against it. 46

At Jajce (Bosnia) the Anti-Fascist Assembly of the National
Liberation Movement of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ), disregarding
Soviet interdictions and perhaps anticipating Peter's return, trans-
formed itself into a provisional government and forbade the re-
establishment of the monarchy until the question of the form of
government Yugoslavia would have after the war had been settled
by the people. A partisan drive into Serbia in April 1944 designed
to establish partisan power in Serbia before the arrival of Allied
forces was opposed by meager German forces. At the decisive
moment the Mihailovic forces which had been watching the engage-
ment and holding back, entered the battle on the Ibar River and
drove the partisans back into Montenegro and the Sandzak. Such
parallel actions in which the partisans sometimes joined the
Germans against MihailoviC's forces, or the nationalists joined the
Germans or Italians against the partisans, occurred frequently and
gave rise to accusations of collaboration. 47
45 Ibid, p. 159f.
46 Kriegstagebuch, IV, pp. 637ff; also W. Hoettl, The Secret Front, (N.Y., 1954),
p. 155.
47 The subject of partisan "parallel actions" against the nationalists is less widely
known and understood than similar nationalist actions against the partisans. One
such action occurred when the Second Proletariat Brigade moved from Monte-
negro to East Bosnia and joined the Germans, Croatian Army forces, and
Ustasha in attacking the numerically strong nationalists, at the precise moment
the Germans were launching a campaign to cleanse East Bosnia. A German
Lagebericht states: "Between the Croatian Communists, Ustasha, and the
Proletariat Brigade thrusting from parts of Montenegro a kind of agreement
seems to have been struck according to which these groups will not fight one
another." German intelligence also reported "Ustasha units and partisans
fighting together against Dangic (the East Bosnian nationalist leader)." German
Military Commander in Serbia to WB Siidost, Lagebericht for the period
11-20 March 1942, No. 1868/42. Similar reports can be found for the period
March-April 1942. As a result of this collaboration the large Serbian nationalist
concentration in East Bosnia was successfully decimated by the Germans.
After Operation Rosse/sprung (Knight's Gambit) failed to

capture Tito by a surprise parachute drop on Tito's headquarters,
all German efforts to annihilate the partisans ceased. After autumn
1944 the Germans no longer referred to the partisans as "bands,"
recognizing the term as invalid in view of the growth of partisan
power and the impossibility of eradicating them completely. In
1944 the Partisan High Command reorganized the previously ter-
ritorial units into the conventional components of a national army,
i.e., corps, divisions, regiments, etc. Though partisan sources mini-
mize Tito's flight from Drvar and the effects of Operation Rosse/-
sprung as insignificant, considerable evidence exists to show that
the German stroke temporarily decapited and disorganized the
partisan organization. Tito later escaped to Italy, returning to the
Adriatic island of Vis on a British destroyer, H.M.S. Blackmore,
whose delighted officers and crew, according to his English admirer
and biographer, Fitzroy Maclean, he entertained with an English
recital of "The Owl and the Pussy Cat." 48
Italy's collapse in September 1943 terminated Italian pipe-
dreams of empire, and Pavelic, after denouncing the May 1941
Pact of Rome, quickly seized Dalmatia with German approval.
The return of the lost province did not arouse the emotion which
accompanied its loss to Italy two years before when black flags
hung outside homes and the Pavelic regime tottered precariously.
The Ustasha regime was approaching its end and last minute ter-
ritorial changes had little importance. The final two years of the
Independent State of Croatia's short life span were filled with a
flurry of cabinet changes beginning with the fall of the Kvaterniks
in early 1943. To gain a broader base of support and perhaps to
offer some appeal to the Allies in the likelihood of an Allied victory,
behind-the-scenes negotiations occurred with representatives of the
Croatian Peasant Party for their inclusion into the government.
However, these efforts by the moderate Ustasha leaders Lorkovic
and Kosak produced no results. Later Lorkovic and Vokic, the
newly appointed Croatian Army leader, made furtive attempts to
open secret contacts with the Western powers without the knowl-
edge of the Germans, for which they were later arrested and
imprisoned.
48 Maclean, Tito, p. 216.

Renewed Ustasha racial terror against the Orthodox provoked

constant protests by the German occupation authorities to Ber-
lin. 49 Hitler's attitude to the complaints of Wehrmacht officials
like Glaise-Horstenau was ambivalent, sometimes siding with the
Wehrmacht, sometimes with the Nazi Party officials like Kasche.
On one occasion he answered Wehrmacht complaints of Ustasha
misdeeds with: "Let the Poglavnik blow off a little steam." 50 Rela-
tions between Wehrmacht officers like General Rendulic and the
zealous Ustasha supporter, German consul Kasche, became so

strained that Rendulic forbade his officers to have any contacts
with the German consulate in Zagreb. 51
In early 1944 a congress of Serbs, Slovenes, and Moslems, repre-
senting national and other groups, met at the village of Ba in
Serbia to revitalize the Mihailovic movement. At the congress the
narrower Pan-Serb elements like Dragisa Vasic and Steven Mol-
jevic, previously the predominant political influence inside the
cetnik political direction, suffered a defeat and had to admit more
liberal, federalist-minded figures like the old syndicalist Zivko
Topalovic and the Croatian Serb leader, Adam Pribicevic, into the
main nationalist body, the Central National Committee. 52 But this
belated endeavor to respond to partisan moves at J ajce and Bihac
through AVNOJ to consolidate their grip over the country, failed
to achieve any signal advantage for Mihailovic or to shake off the
earlier Pan-Serb taint that was giving him an unfavourable image
in the world press. The growing enthusiasm of the press for Tito
and his partisans and the gradual erosion of public opinion away
from Mihailovic and in favor of Tito, powerfully influenced Western
leaders in their attitude toward Mihailovic and his sponsors in the
exile government in London. The cabals and intrigues of the politi-
cians in the emigre government were a perpetual irritant to Chur-
49 In an appraisal of the situation in Croatia in 1942 Glaise blamed the Ustasha

for the spread of the partisan movement: "Kann ich nicht verhehlen, dass ich
dem vielfach zugellosen Auftreten der Ustascha doch einen grosseren Anteil an
der Ausbreitung des Aufstandes zuschreibe, als er der Gesandte auf Grund
seiner Eindriicke zu tun vermag. Dies gilt zumal flir den Aufstand in der
Herzegovina der noch in die Zeit vor dem Russenkrieg fiel." GGAF, Glaise to
OKW, 10 February 1942, 50/42.
50 Kiszling, Die Kroalen, p. 222.
51 Rendulic, Gekamptl, Gesiegl, Geschlagen, p. 222.
5~ The February 1944 Ba Congress is described in Karapandzic, Grandjanski Rat u
Srbiji, pp. 288.
chill and the Foreign Office, adding yet another piece to the
emerging mosaic of the downfall of Mihailovic and the Yugoslav
monarchy.
After the 1943 decision of the Allied leaders at Teheran to send
available supplies to those forces inside Yugoslavia actually fighting
the Germans - a phrase designed to avert criticism and interpreted
in practice to mean the partisans rather than the cetniks - the
nationalist position began to deteriorate. MihailoviC's sensitivity
to accusations of collaboration and malingering occasionally boiled
over into waspish and sardonic replies to London's requests for

greater activity against the Germans which worsened his relations
with the British after 1943 and seriously damaged his cause. Lon-
don, which fashioned Western policy toward Yugoslavia, began to
gain the impression that MihailoviC's proud Serb independence
made it difficult for him to accept British direction, and rather
than be faced with another Sikorski or De Gaulle, increasingly
regarded Tito as an alternative, especially in the final phase of the
war as the latter began to appear as the probable winner in the
Yugoslav struggle. The approach of the Red Army to Yugoslavia's
borders in the fall of 1944 made it increasingly evident that the
country would fall into the Soviet sphere of interest which only
an Anglo-American invasion of the Balkans, or direct interven-
tion by the British as in Greece, where British interests were
vitally affected, could prevent from happening.
In the fall of 1942 Mihailovic summoned the population of
Serbia to civil disobedience and sabotage from which he hoped to
gain momentum to mount the long awaited ustanak (uprising). The
cetnik leader paid dearly with the loss of many of his leading col-
laborators and failed to achieve his purpose of toppling the Nedic
government and making himself factual master of Serbia. Massive
arrests destroyed the cetnik intelligence network in Belgrade and
the Prinz Eugen division, made up of Volksdeutsch recruited in
the former Yugoslav area, raged indiscriminately in the Kapaonik
mountains burning homes, shooting all suspected Mihailovic sym-
pathizers, and generally terrorizing the population into submission.
Nationalist losses and sacrifices went unnoticed outside Serbia, and
in the Western world Tito was increasingly lionized and regarded
as bearing the main burden of the struggle against the Germans.
The Teheran decision to shift Allied aid to Tito on grounds of
partisan activism in contrast to nationalist immobilism, created
panic and consternation among MihailoviC's followers and in the

Serb villages. Under pressure from his officers and advisers he
sought aid from his enemy, General Nedic, who was probably glad
to have entree into the other camp as German power began to
eclipse. Through the new German pro-consul in the southeast,
Hermann Neubacher, since August 1943 Hitler's plenipotentiary
in Belgrade, Nedic sought, without success, to secure arms and
equipment for 50,000 Mihailovic officers and men. Believing all
guerrillas, whether partisans or cetniks, to be untrustworthy and

predicting MihailoviC's men would turn their weapons against the
Germans in the event of an Allied landing on the Adriatic coast
or the first opportunity, Hitler rejected the request. 53
All such plans for a Balkan landing by Anglo-American forces
were scotched by the American veto of Churchill's plan for an
invasion of central Europe through the Balkans. American lack
of enthusiasm for such an undertaking, without which Mihailovic
would be doomed when the Red Army crossed the Danube, may
be summed up by the exasperated remark of General Eisenhower
after a conference with Churchill: "He wants me to go through
that gap whose name I can't even pronounce," - a reference to the
Ljubljana Gap. 54 The Balkans and any suggestion of a Balkan
landing continued to be regarded throughout the war with the
same superstitious dread which mariners before Columbus held
for the Atlantic waters beyond Europe. 55 According to some
evidence, Tito did not wish an Anglo-American landing in the
Balkans which would have strengthened MihailoviC's position and
led to the incorporation of Yugoslavia into the Western orbit. He
53 The negotiations between Nedic and Mihailovic are covered in Kostic, Za

Istori;u Na'Sih Dana, pp. 150-158. NediC's efforts to gain arms from the
Germans are described in Neubacher, Sonderauftrag Sudost, p. 170.
M H. Butcher, My Three Years With Eisenhower (N.Y., 1946). p. 664.
55 Churchill's Balkan invasion plans are too complicated to be fully discussed
here. The subject is discussed in the article of Richard M. Leighton, "Overlord
Revisited: An Interpretation of American Strategy in the European War, 1942-
1944," The American Historical Review, July 1963, LXVIII, pp. 919-937. The
subject is extensively examined in John A. Lukacs, The Great Powers and
Eastern Europe (N.Y., 1953), passim and appendix, PI. V, "Mr. Churchill and
the Balkan Invasion Debate," pp. 678-81. The writer takes the view that
Churchill anticipated that the Soviet thrust into east central Europe would
disturb the power balance and takes the American leaders to task for their
nai'vete.
was prepared to oppose such plans with armed resistance. 56 In

view of the Greek National Liberation Movement's later resistance
to British forces under General Scobie, such an eventuality cannot
be entirely dismissed. When it became obvious an Allied landing
in the Balkans was unlikely, the Western powers were less anxious
to see the Germans withdraw from the Balkans, leaving it open to
Communist penetration. In his memoirs Neubacher describes nego-
tiations with an American agent sent to persuade the Germans
to remain in the Balkans, but Hitler refused "to pull English chest-
nuts out of the fire." 57
The Red Army's arrival on the Danube and Serbia's eastern
border in September 1944 opened the final act in the southeastern
denouement. Though some Western observers believed the Soviets
would not cross the Danube and risk a confrontation with the
Western powers, Red Army troops and Tito's partisans - whioh
had invaded western Serbia during the summer to effect a juncture
with the advancing Russians and to destroy Mihailovic - liberated
Belgrade in mid-October 1944. Knowing that the partisans lacked
the necessary planes and heavy equipment to drive the Germans
from Serbia, Tito flew to Rumania and formally requested Soviet
assistance. At the request of partisan headquarters, partisan units
jointly investing Belgrade with Soviet troops were permitted to
enter the city seated on top of Soviet tanks for the propaganda
effect. Despite Yugoslav post-war denials the poorly equipped
partisan forces could not possibly have liberated the capital without
the Red Army's massive support.
56 This has been extremely difficult to document. It is mentioned in Wilhelm

Hoe ttl, The Secret Front (N.Y., 1954), p. 166. Maclean describes a curious
conversation in the Kremlin between Stalin and Tito after the partisan leader
flew from Vis to Moscow. At one point in the conversation Molotov announced
that he had just received news that the British had landed in Yugoslavia.
"Impossible," said Tito, when the agency report was shown to him.
"What do you mean - impossible?" said Stalin. "It's a fact." And he
listened irritably while Tito explained that he had asked General Alexander to
land three batteries of artillery to help the partisans with their operations in the
neighborhood of Mostar and Sarajevo. This had probably been confused with
a full scale invasion.
"Tell me, Walter (Tito's Comintern name)," he said, "What would you do
if the British really tried to land against your will in Yugoslavia?"
"We should offer determined resistance," Tito answered at once.
Maclean, Tito, p. 239.
57 Neubacher, Sonderauftrag Siidost, pp. 203-05.
On the eve of the Red Army and partisan assault on Belgrade,

Nedic and his government left Belgrade for Austria; Ljotic and his
Dobrovoljci followers, remnants of the Serbian Guard and some
nationalist units from the western areas, retreated to Slovenia for
a last ditch stand against Tito's partisans. After initial efforts to
establish contacts with the first Red Army units entering Serbia
ended in failure - Major Velimir Piletic was arrested and carried
into captivity in Russia while Major Dragutin Keserovic, after
banqueting with the Russians, barely escaped with his life -

Mihailovic withdrew his forces to Bosnia to avoid clashing with the
forces of an Allied power. Here the main force of Pavle DjurisiC's
Montenegrin nationalists joined MihailoviC's group. At the eleventh
hour Pavelic held discussions with MihailoviC's representatives in
Croatia (though possibly without his permission, as Mihailovic
disclaimed any knowledge of the talks at his post-war trial). Ad-
ditional talks were also held between Mihailovic and a German
official named Staerker to discuss the surrender of German forces
in Yugoslavia. Nothing conclusive occured in either case. 58 Deci-
mated by malnutrition, typhus, and enemy attacks, Mihailovic's
main force in Bosnia began to melt away. 59
All efforts to bring the cetnik leader out of the country failed,
though wireless contacts between the nationalists in Bosnia and
the remaining Serbian and Slovenian nationalist forces in the
Slovenian redoubt were maintained until the end. The Montenegrin
cetniks of Pavle Djurisic (he had escaped from a concentration
camp in Poland and made his way back to. Montenegro), ac-
companied by Dragisa Vasic and a number of other Serb leaders,
tried to force their way through to Slovenia but were intercepted
by Ustasha forces and in an ensuing battle many thousands of
nationalists were killed. Djurisic and the Serb leaders with him
either fell into Ustasha hands or perished in the "second Kosovo."
5R Pavelic sent his minister, Kosak, to see the German Finance Minister Schwerin-
Krosigk, after Hitler's demise, to persuade the Germans not to sign any
surrender agreement affecting the Croatian government. Pavelic had informed
him, he told Schwerin-Krosigk, "in disguised form" through a telephone call
that he had made an agreement with Mihailovic for a common resistance front
against the Bolsheviks and the Tito partisans. Microfilm No. T-77. Roll 775,
Frame 5635268.
ron The story of the Bosnian "Golgotha" is related in Karapandzic, Gradianski Rat
u Srbiji, pp. 385-446.
Only a small remnant managed to escape to Slovenia and join the

anti-Communist forces gathering there. Mihailovic refused last
(I/)
minute British offers to evacuate him and with his dwindling

forces tried to make his way back to Serbia, where he was finally
captured in 1946.
The Croatian Army and Ustasha tried to reach Austria, but like
the Slovenian and Serbian nationalists who surrendered to the
British, they were handed over to the partisans - either inadvertent-
ly out of political misjudgment or trickery - and the vast tragedies
of Bleiberg and other death marches occurred. Thousands fell in

the bloody aftermath of war, a final macabre scene in an era of
human suffering and bloodshed that has few parallels in modern
history.
As in the past, the interests and rivalries of the Great Powers
rather than purely internal forces and circumstances determined
the fate of the Yugoslav people. Mistakes Mihailovic may have
made, his political and organizational failures, and unwise quar-
rels with the British, were all quite secondary to the overriding
role of the Great Powers. Against the backdrop of a dying German
Reich whose armies were everywhere in dissolution and full retreat,
and a post-war world emerging on the smoldering ashes of the
old, whose classes, dynasties and traditions were being swept away,
these convoluted interests and rivalries, sometimes affected and
altered by the struggling forces inside the country, hesitantly groped
toward the solutions that shaped the outcome.
In the competing triad of Tito-Mihailovic-Pavelic, the weakest
was the last named. The German-installed Ustasha regime enjoyed
little honour and support among Croats and, in the end, rested
upon German bayonets. The Red Army's arrival in Eastern Europe
and the simultaneous German withdrawal from Croatia sealed the
fate of Pavelic.
The real contest, in its initial phase, was between Tito and
Mihailovic and the latter's Serb supporters in the London exile
government. Later, after the London Government divested itself
of the Mihailovic "millstone" under British pressure, the struggle
was between King Peter's government, under former Croatian Ban
6tl The destruction of DjurisiC's forces in a three day battle during April 1945 is
described in ibid, pp. 405-20.
Ivan SUbasic, and the National Liberation Movement, during which

SUbasic, supported by Churchill, tried to salvage the monarchy
from the debris. Watching all this from the sidelines in opportun-
istic silence were the Croat masses and their Peasant Party repre-
sentatives in the exile government. The Croats, generally speaking,
were enamoured of neither MihailoviC's Serb-oriented nationalist
movement nor the Communist-directed National Liberation Move-
ment. After the 1943 Teheran Conference and certainly by mid-
1944, when the partisans were using the huge quantities of the
American supplies sent them from Italy to annihilate their political
opponents the Mihailovic cetniks (which they had previously ac-
cused the cetniks of doing in collaboration with the Germans),
while the Western Powers looked on impotently or even on oc-
casion helped the partisans by bombing the MihailoviC's forces,
the handwriting appeared on the wall for all the hesitant and un-
committed among the other national groups, as well as the fence-
straddling Croats. The sight of well-armed partisans marching
through Croat and Serb villages in late 1944 dressed in British
supplied uniforms contrasted invidiously with the tatterdemalion
Mihailovic forces, and desertions to Tito's side began to mount.
When the Red Army crossed the Danube in September 1944, it
became clear that Yugoslavia would fall into the Soviet zone of
influence.
The role of the press in "selling" Tito and the National Libera-
tion Movement looms large. Influenced by improved partisan pro-
paganda - over which Mihailovic and the Royal Government had
hitherto exercised a monopoly - and direct contacts with partisan
leaders, the Anglo-American press's increasingly favourable dispo-
sition toward the National Liberation Movement "softened up"
public opinion to accept the triumph of a Communist-led move-
ment and invested Tito with the cloak of respectability. The naIve
and unabashed enthusiasms of the Western press for the legend-
izing of Tito as a dauntless partisan hero, fighting against hordes
of Germans from his craggy mountain lair, at times even embar-
rassed the partisan leaders. 61
British policy was double tracked. Officially the British
supported King Peter and his government, but in actuality
61 Dedijer refers to a New York Times article of 3 December 1943 and its
enthusiasm for the partisans as "the HoIlywoodization of our movement."
Dedijer, Dnevnik, III, p. 64.
after sending a number of agents in 1943 and a mission to Tito's

headquarters led by F.W. Deakin and Churchill's emissary Fitzroy
Maclean, this policy underwent a change. A variety of interests
now disposed them towards Tito: MihailoviC's intractability and
his refusal to subordinate his own interests to those of the British;
the desire of London to establish friendly relations with the parti-
sans whom it regarded after 1943 as the probable winner, fore-
seeing also the irreconcilability and eventual clash of Tito's and
Moscow's aspirations; the hope that once installed in Belgrade,
Tito and the partisans would pursue a pro-Western policy in gra-

titude for Western aid and equipment during and after the war;
and finally British interest in maintaining their position in the Bal-
kans, especially in the strategically vital Greek and Turkish region,
if need be, by sacrificing Yugoslavia. These concerns took shape
in the form of the October 1944 Moscow "percentage" agreements
in which the British received responsibility for Greece but agreed
to divide supervisory rights over Yugoslavia on a 50/50 basis,
which, in fact, meant British willingness to accept a partisan victory
in Yugoslavia. Thereafter, the diplomatic skirmishing to preserve
the monarchy as the price of a Tito victory may have been shadow-
acting, partially dictated by circumstances and the need to make a
convincing effort in that direction, and partially in the hope that
something could be saved. After the 16 June 1944 Vis agreement
between Tito and SUbasic, preliminary to the merger of the Nation-
al Liberation Movement with the Royal Government in London,
and the ouster of Mihailovic as War Minister from the cabinet, the
nationalist leader's position became hopeless. King Peter's broad-
cast in September 1944 urging MihailoviC's supporters to desert
him for the partisans was the final blow.
In retrospect the reasons for the partisan victory seem to be
more attributable to a favourable confluence of factors outside
Yugoslavia than to one attained by the efforts of the partisans.
While the fighting ability and policies of the partisans - e.g., their
federalist program, the partisan high command's superior organ-
izational abilities, success in disguising ultimate political aims under
a cloak of national liberation - undeniably facilitated their seizure
of power, in the final analysis, the Great Powers, particularly the
British and Churchill, made the key decisions that determined the
outcome. But more than this, new political forces unleashed by the
war - what Mihailovic in his tragic peroration at his trial called
372 REVUE CANADlENNE DES SLAVISTES
"the whirlwind of the world" which mercilessly swept him away -

propelled Tito into power. A final reason for partisan success was
the astute and single-minded diplomacy of Tito who utilized every
opportunity to strengthen his bargaining position to outmaneuver
and outfox all his opponents.
RESUME!ABSTRACT
Serbia, Croatia, and Germany 1941-1945: Civil War and

Revolution in the Balkans
La resistance yougoslave a joue un role important pendant la
deuxieme guerre mondiale en depit du fait que les forces de la
resistance n'ont pas pu empecher les troupes allemandes meme
dans leur plus faible situation de controler toutes les parties des
Balkans.
Le mouvement de la resistance yougoslave fut la consequence
directe du demembrement de l'etat yougoslave, qui etait peut-etre
menage deliberement par Hitler pour provoquer les groupes na-
tionaux les uns contre les autres afin de les dominer plus facile-
ment. La Serbie devient une region occupee, la Slovenie est divi-
see entre les Italiens et les Allemands, tandis que l'Etat Indepen-
dant de la Croatie est cree et maintenu par les balonettes de l'Axe.
Plus tard, les Italiens ont commence a soutenir les forces ortho-
doxes en Croatie contre Ie regime Oustascha et les Allemands.
Provoques par d'atroces massacres, les Serbes orthodoxes se sont
souleves contre les Oustaschas en Croatie au cours de rete et 1'au-
tomne de 1941. Puis la revolte s'est etendue contre les Allemands
en Serbie ou les partisans, conduits par Ie parti communiste,
s'etaient lies temporairement avec les cetniks royalistes. Cette col-
laboration devait bientot se dissoudre et ils ont commence a se
battre entre eux. Le soulevement en Serbie fut rapidement ecrase
par des unites allemandes envoyees de la France et de la Grece,
mais la rupture dans la resistance est restee permanente jusqu'a
1945.
La guerre contre les Allemands devient pour la Yougoslavie une
lutte entre les partisans et les cetniks, dans laquelle les Grandes
Puissances, surtout l'Angleterre ont joue Ie role decisif. Convain-
cus que les cetniks s'etaient trop compromis par leurs attaches et
leur collaboration avec les Allemands et les Italiens, les Allies ont
abandonne Ie General Mihailovic a Teheran en Novembre 1943,

et en 1944 ils ont commence a fournir aux partisans une quantite
considerable de materiaux de guerre. L'arrivee des Russes par Ie
Danube et la poussee des forces de Tito venues de l'ouest de la
Yougoslavie ont attrape les cetniks dans un etau. Apres des nego-
ciations futiles avec les cetniks qui ont fait des tentatives deses-
perees de se rendre aux Allies, l'Etat Independant de la Croatie
s'est ecroule.
P.H.

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Canadian Slavonic Papers

ISSN: 0008-5006 (Print) 2375-2475 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcsp20

Serbia, Croatia and Germany 1941–1945: Civil War

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Download by: [ECU Libraries] Date: 18 December 2017, At: 09:42

The German High Command considered the Balkan theatre

in the back in the event of an Allied invasion of the Balkans made

outflanked, out of sheer economic need. Approximately fifty per-

This is clearly revealed in the documents of the German foreign

rels between the national groups to enable him to dominate the

incorporating Bosnia into the new Croatian state, and depriving

Hitler now brusquely acquainted Ciano with his minimum demands

10 The Monichkirchen conversations are described in Galeazzo Ciano (ed.

Ustasha party, journeyed from Pistoia (Tuscany) in triumphal

11 On 8 April 1941 Pavelic broadcasted from abroad an appeal to the Croats to

and other territory, Croatia received Srem, a region ethnically

in the horrible massacres during the summer of 1941 in order to

to formally annex the region to insure Bulgarian loyalty to the

execution during the Rohm purge in 1934 and entertained excel-

17 Marjanovic gives slightly different figures for the population of occupied

were willing to cooperate. 18 However, growing administrative and

Salvation," supported by LjotiC's followers and the Stojadinovic

18 Details on the formation of the Commissariat Administration are provided in

cluded mass deportations, murders, ,and the extinction of the

20 The "Eindeutschung" of the Slovenes is described in great detail by John A.

fects. The former Italian minister to Egypt and Uruguay and

toward the Slavs who were regarded as culturally inferior by

24 The conflict is described at length in The Trial of Dragoljub-Draza Mihailovic

the first, realizing that stronger enemy forces would immediately

hoped that the inevitable German reprisals would force many to

Faced with overwhelming enemy forces (four German divisions

North Africa. More importantly, the 1941 revolt in Serbia served

27 For the legalization of some cetnik detachments see Karapandzic, Grad;anski

tical in Yugoslavia, began to execute many leading nationalists and

Italians, leaving the countryside to the former and the towns in

28 losip Broz Tito, Borba za Oslobodjenje Jugoslavije, 1941-1945 (Struggle For

the party, according to Milovan Djilas. By early 1943 the partisans

32 Lazitch, Tito et la Revolution Yougoslave 1937-1956, pp. 89-91.

Italian divisions was also a severe strain on the Croatian economy.

base of support from the minuscule Ustasha party to wider strata

38 Agram, 1 October 1941, Glaise to OKW, GGAF 309/41.

plan, an implicit admission of defeat that went counter to his all-

the guerrillas. Mussolini agreed, but the following month, as the

in battle. 41 Ambrosio was skeptical that new operations would be

partisans fight it out in the interior after withdrawing their troops

Chief Meyszner, leading advocates of the hard line toward the

43 The meeting between Nedic and Hitler and Ribbentrop is described in

serious scruples against encouraging these people in any way toward

return, then decided against it. 46

After Operation Rosse/sprung (Knight's Gambit) failed to

48 Maclean, Tito, p. 216.

Renewed Ustasha racial terror against the Orthodox provoked

zealous Ustasha supporter, German consul Kasche, became so

49 In an appraisal of the situation in Croatia in 1942 Glaise blamed the Ustasha

over into waspish and sardonic replies to London's requests for

panic and consternation among MihailoviC's followers and in the

guerrillas, whether partisans or cetniks, to be untrustworthy and

53 The negotiations between Nedic and Mihailovic are covered in Kostic, Za