Yugoslavia and the Allies
Encyclopedia
In 1941 when the Axis invaded Yugoslavia
, King Peter II
formed a Government in exile
in London, and in January 1942 the royalist Draža Mihailović
became the Minister of War with British backing. But by June or July 1943, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill
had decided to withdraw support from Mihailović and the Chetniks
he led, and support the Partisans headed by Josip Broz Tito
. The main reason for the change was not the reports by Fitzroy Maclean or William Deakin
, or as later alleged the influence of James Klugmann
in Special Operations Executive
(SOE) headquarters in Cairo or even Randolph Churchill
, but the evidence of Ultra
decrypts from the Government Code and Cipher School in Bletchley Park
that Tito's Partisans were a "much more effective and reliable ally in the war against Germany". Nor was it due to claims that the Chetniks were collaborating with the enemy, though there was some evidence from decrypts of collaboration with Italian and sometimes German forces.
in Serbia. Contacts with both groups were severed by the first Axis winter offensive
, but decrypts of German signals showed that the Chetniks were collaborating with the Italians. This collaboration was based on an old friendship of Serbs and Italians in Dalmatia going back to the times of the Austrian rule.
In June 1942 a report by Major General Francis Davidson, Director of Military Intelligence to Churchill, described the Partisans as "extreme elements and brigands". British Military Intelligence wanted to maintain support for Milhailović at the time that they were watching the progress of the German Operation Weiss against the Partisans, though they started having doubts by March 1943. Colonel Bateman in the Directorate of Military Operations also recommended supporting the "active and vigorous Partisans" rather than the "dormant and sluggish Chetniks."
An assessment by Major David Talbot Rice
of MI3
b in September 1943 confirmed that there had only been isolated anti-German activity by Milhailović and "the heroes of the hour are undoubtedly the Partisans". He recommended that Milhailović should be told to destroy German lines of communication in Serbia, otherwise Tito would be the sole recipient of British aid which they were at long last in a position to deliver. The Signals intelligence had completely changed the view of Talbot Rice and MI3b in six months.
When Milhailović was perceived as less effective than the communist Partisans, missions were sent to the Partisans. The first, led by Captain Bill Deakin
went to Tito's Headquarters in May 1943. He was joined the following September by Brigadier Fitzroy Maclean, an SAS
officer and also a Conservative
Member of Parliament
and former diplomat, with good language skills. Maclean subsequently sent a "blockbuster report" to Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden
, recommending that Britain should transfer support to Tito and sever links with Milhailović. In 1943 the SOE in England and the Foreign Office wanted to continue support for Milhailović, although as these organisations had only limited access to decrypts they were not so well-informed on the situation there. The SOE headquarters in Cairo (which was frequently at odds with the London headquarters), MI6, the Directorates of Military Intelligence and Operations, the Chiefs of Staff
and ultimately Churchill himself, wanted to switch support to Tito.
(much to his surprise) at the Tehran Conference
in November 1943, and publicly in an address to Parliament on 22 February 1944. This address referred to reports from Deakin and Maclean for justification, as the Ultra decryptions from Bletchley Park were secret even after the war
Fitzroy Maclean discussed Yugoslavia with Churchill in Cairo after the Tehran Conference
. Churchill said that as neither of them intended to live there after the war: "… the less you and I worry about the form of Government they set up, the better. That is for them to decide. What interests us is, which of them is doing most harm to the Germans." Maclean had already reported that "...the Partisans, whether we helped them or not, would be the decisive political factor in Jugoslavia after the war and, secondly that Tito and the other leaders of the movement were openly and avowedly Communist and that the system which they would establish would inevitably be on Soviet lines and, in all probability, strongly oriented towards the Soviet Union." However, Maclean had also noticed Tito's "independence of mind" and wondered whether Tito might evolve into something more than a Soviet puppet.)
While in England in the spring of 1944, Maclean discussed Yugoslavia with some of the British officers who had been attached to General Mihailović's Headquarters. One of the meetings was at Chequers
and was presided over by Churchill himself. "It was common ground that the Cetniks, though in the main well disposed towards Great Britain, were militarily less effective with the communist Partisans and that some of Mihailović’s subordinates had undoubtedly reached accommodation with the enemy." And some who knew him best "while liking and respecting him as a man, had little opinion of Mihailović as a leader", though the Cetnik detachments in Serbia at least could be a significant force with "new and more determined leadership and with better discipline." Maclean was also asked to Buckingham Palace
to brief King George VI
on the Jugoslav situation. He found him as well-informed on the situation as anyone else he had met back in England, and said he "took an entirely realistic view of it."
morse code traffic encoded by Enigma
; initially the general Luftwaffe Red key, then various German Army keys. They also decrypted various teleprinter links for high-level traffic: Fish (Vienna-Athens) then Codfish (Straussberg-Salonika), plus medium and low grade hand cyphers. For German policy on Yugoslavia, communications to Tokyo from the Japanese Ambassador, General Oshima Hiroshi, were also useful. With the primitive communications infrastructure and the disruption of land communications, the German forces in Yugoslavia relied heavily on radio communications which, unknown to themselves was insecure, so that a 1945 comment was that "never in the field of Signals intelligence has so much been decrypted about so little."
While the volume of messages was not great, Bletchley Park also intercepted messages from Tito and from the separate Slovene Communist Party to Georgi Dimitrov
, the Secretary-General of the Comintern
in Moscow. These messages to Dimitrov continued even after the Comintern was officially dissolved in June 1943.
The volume of Enigma decrypts from the Soviet Fronts and the Balkans declined substantially from the summer of 1944, but this was more than offset for the Soviet Fronts by success with Fish links.
(German military intelligence). A decrypted report from General Alexander Löhr
, the commander in chief of the German Army Group E
in the Balkans, reported on 22 June that 583 German soldiers and 7,489 Partisans had been killed, with the probability that the Partisans had lost another 4,000 men. Chetnik losses were put at 17, with nearly 4,000 taken prisoner. The contrast between the two resistance movements was stark. However, the decrypts, "far from providing evidence of Cetnik-German collaboration, continued to leave no doubt that at least at the highest level the Germans remained set on Milhailović's destruction. In July Hitler had suggested that the C-in-C South East [Löhr] should put a higher price on the heads of Milhailović and Tito."
The most significant report of Chetnik collaboration was the text of a treaty between Lukacević, one of Milhailović’s principal commanders, and the German Commander South East in September and October 1943, In the treaty, which was copied to Churchill, Lukacević agreed to a cessation of hostilities in his area of southern Serbia and joint action against the communist Partisans.
at Derna were to be left behind, as their despatch would infringe British obligations to the Royal Yugoslav government. The plane's crew complied, but loaded all the military items, e.g., boots, clothing, guns and ammunition, that they could loot at the airfield onto the aircraft.
Deakin had urged American representation on the mission, and on 21 August 1943 Captain Melvin O. (Benny) Benson of the Office of Strategic Services
(OSS) arrived, remaining in Yugoslavia for four months. Benson noted in his report "the giving of credit to the Cetniks for Partisan victories and otherwise referring to them as Patriots, in an attempt to include the Cetniks with the Partisans." The crediting of Partisan attacks to Chetniks was also being reported on the BBC
. Captain Benson was later replaced by Major Linn (Slim) Farish
The sending of the Maclean mission on 17 September 1943 placed the relations between Tito and the British on a more formal and senior level. Fitzroy Maclean was the personal representative of the Prime Minister, and his arrival marked implicitly the de facto recognition of the Yugoslav National Liberation Army, as the Partisans were formally known.
Maclean wondered whether officials in Cairo "quite realised the difficulties of travel in German-occupied Europe", when he was told in an official signal that he was to go to Cairo immediately but that the Partisan delegation could follow later if required... (it turned out that the British delegation was returning from the conference at Teheran via Cairo). While away down the coast Maclean was amazed to receive a garbled message from Cairo, with a clear sentence "King now in Cairo, Will be dropped to you at first opportunity." He thought that as part of London's gradual rapprochement policy between King Peter of Yugoslavia and the Partisans, the King was to be "dropped headlong into the seething centre of the Jugoslav cauldron." Later he was told that the message referred to their new signals officer, whose surname was King.
When the Italians surrendered the mission received a signal from the British General Headquarters in the Mediterranean regarding the Italian forces, which assumed that "the British mission attached to Tito’s headquarters was in some queer fashion in operational command of operational ‘guerrilla’ units." Similar orders were sent to Colonel Bailey at Mihailović’s headquarters and to the commanders of British missions in Greece and Albania, and the episode revealed "the extent to which our mission had not succeeded in conveying to our superiors the reality of the situation in Partisan-held territory."
Churchill's son Randolph
was on one of the missions to Yugoslavia. Evelyn Waugh
accompanied Randolph Churchill, and Waugh put in a report about Tito's persecution of the clergy, which was "buried" by Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden
. No evidence is given for the suggestion made in the article on Draža Mihailović that Randolph Churchill privately influenced his father to support Tito, and in any case he was recruited by Maclean for his mission after the Teheran Conference, when the decision to support Tito had already been made.
James Klugmann
was a Communist and was undoubtedly a KGB agent and linked to the Cambridge Five
. He joined the Yugoslav section of SOE Cairo in 1942, where he advocated and lobbied for Tito. But it was stated that "Whatever lobbying may have been taking place in Cairo, it would have been the overwhelming evidence of the Bletchley Park decrypts, Churchill's favoured source of intelligence, which persuaded Britain's wartime leader that Tito and his Partisans were a much more effective, and reliable, ally in the war against Germany."
Captain Bill Deakin, who led the first military mission in 1943 and was caught up in the Battle of the Sutjeska (hence the title of his book) had been Churchill’s researcher and librarian in the thirties.
Invasion of Yugoslavia
The Invasion of Yugoslavia , also known as the April War , was the Axis Powers' attack on the Kingdom of Yugoslavia which began on 6 April 1941 during World War II...
, King Peter II
Peter II of Yugoslavia
Peter II, also known as Peter II Karađorđević , was the third and last King of Yugoslavia...
formed a Government in exile
Government in exile
A government in exile is a political group that claims to be a country's legitimate government, but for various reasons is unable to exercise its legal power, and instead resides in a foreign country. Governments in exile usually operate under the assumption that they will one day return to their...
in London, and in January 1942 the royalist Draža Mihailović
Draža Mihailovic
Dragoljub "Draža" Mihailović was a Yugoslav Serbian general during World War II...
became the Minister of War with British backing. But by June or July 1943, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
had decided to withdraw support from Mihailović and the Chetniks
Chetniks
Chetniks, or the Chetnik movement , were Serbian nationalist and royalist paramilitary organizations from the first half of the 20th century. The Chetniks were formed as a Serbian resistance against the Ottoman Empire in 1904, and participated in the Balkan Wars, World War I, and World War II...
he led, and support the Partisans headed by Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz Tito
Marshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...
. The main reason for the change was not the reports by Fitzroy Maclean or William Deakin
William Deakin
Frederick William Dampier Deakin, Sir William Deakin was a historian, World War II veteran, and literary assistant to Winston Churchill....
, or as later alleged the influence of James Klugmann
James Klugmann
Norman John Klugmann , generally known as James Klugmann, was a leading British Communist writer who became the official historian of the Communist Party of Great Britain-Background and Early Career:...
in Special Operations Executive
Special Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive was a World War II organisation of the United Kingdom. It was officially formed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on 22 July 1940, to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Axis powers and to instruct and aid local...
(SOE) headquarters in Cairo or even Randolph Churchill
Randolph Churchill
Major Randolph Frederick Edward Spencer-Churchill, MBE was the son of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his wife Clementine. He was a Conservative Member of Parliament for Preston from 1940 to 1945....
, but the evidence of Ultra
Ultra
Ultra was the designation adopted by British military intelligence in June 1941 for wartime signals intelligence obtained by "breaking" high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications at the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. "Ultra" eventually became the standard...
decrypts from the Government Code and Cipher School in Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park
Bletchley Park is an estate located in the town of Bletchley, in Buckinghamshire, England, which currently houses the National Museum of Computing...
that Tito's Partisans were a "much more effective and reliable ally in the war against Germany". Nor was it due to claims that the Chetniks were collaborating with the enemy, though there was some evidence from decrypts of collaboration with Italian and sometimes German forces.
Contact with Yugoslavia
Limited resources meant that in 1942 support for the Chetniks was limited to "words rather than deeds". The SOE, charged with fostering resistance movements, initially sent Captain Marko Hudson to contact all resistance groups in September 1941. Hudson's reports on the meetings between Milhailović and Tito (and their staffs) were not encouraging, and he sent warnings that the communist Partisans suspected that Milhailović was collaborating with the government of Milan NedićMilan Nedic
Milan Nedić was a Serbian general and politician, he was the chief of the general staff of the Yugoslav Army, minister of war in the Royal Yugoslav Government and the prime minister of a Nazi-backed Serbian puppet government during World War II.After the war, Yugoslav communist authorities...
in Serbia. Contacts with both groups were severed by the first Axis winter offensive
First anti-partisan offensive
The First anti-Partisan Offensive, known in ex-Yugoslavia as the First Enemy Offensive , was the first major military confrontation on the Yugoslav Front of World War II. It was an offensive by German and collaborationist troops against the "Užice Republic", the first of a large number of...
, but decrypts of German signals showed that the Chetniks were collaborating with the Italians. This collaboration was based on an old friendship of Serbs and Italians in Dalmatia going back to the times of the Austrian rule.
In June 1942 a report by Major General Francis Davidson, Director of Military Intelligence to Churchill, described the Partisans as "extreme elements and brigands". British Military Intelligence wanted to maintain support for Milhailović at the time that they were watching the progress of the German Operation Weiss against the Partisans, though they started having doubts by March 1943. Colonel Bateman in the Directorate of Military Operations also recommended supporting the "active and vigorous Partisans" rather than the "dormant and sluggish Chetniks."
An assessment by Major David Talbot Rice
David Talbot Rice
David Talbot Rice CBE was a British art historian. His father was "Talbot-Rice" and both he and his wife published using "Talbot Rice" as a surname, but are also sometimes found under "Rice" alone....
of MI3
MI3
MI3, the British Military Intelligence Section 3, is a division of the British Directorate of Military Intelligence, part of the War Office. It was originally set up to handle geographical information...
b in September 1943 confirmed that there had only been isolated anti-German activity by Milhailović and "the heroes of the hour are undoubtedly the Partisans". He recommended that Milhailović should be told to destroy German lines of communication in Serbia, otherwise Tito would be the sole recipient of British aid which they were at long last in a position to deliver. The Signals intelligence had completely changed the view of Talbot Rice and MI3b in six months.
When Milhailović was perceived as less effective than the communist Partisans, missions were sent to the Partisans. The first, led by Captain Bill Deakin
William Deakin
Frederick William Dampier Deakin, Sir William Deakin was a historian, World War II veteran, and literary assistant to Winston Churchill....
went to Tito's Headquarters in May 1943. He was joined the following September by Brigadier Fitzroy Maclean, an SAS
Special Air Service
Special Air Service or SAS is a corps of the British Army constituted on 31 May 1950. They are part of the United Kingdom Special Forces and have served as a model for the special forces of many other countries all over the world...
officer and also a Conservative
Conservative Party (UK)
The Conservative Party, formally the Conservative and Unionist Party, is a centre-right political party in the United Kingdom that adheres to the philosophies of conservatism and British unionism. It is the largest political party in the UK, and is currently the largest single party in the House...
Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
and former diplomat, with good language skills. Maclean subsequently sent a "blockbuster report" to Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden
Anthony Eden
Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, KG, MC, PC was a British Conservative politician, who was Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957...
, recommending that Britain should transfer support to Tito and sever links with Milhailović. In 1943 the SOE in England and the Foreign Office wanted to continue support for Milhailović, although as these organisations had only limited access to decrypts they were not so well-informed on the situation there. The SOE headquarters in Cairo (which was frequently at odds with the London headquarters), MI6, the Directorates of Military Intelligence and Operations, the Chiefs of Staff
Chiefs of Staff Committee
The Chiefs of Staff Committee is composed of the most senior military personnel in the British Armed Forces.-History:The Chiefs of Staff Committee was initially established as a sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence in 1923. It remained as such until the abolition of the CID upon the...
and ultimately Churchill himself, wanted to switch support to Tito.
Churchill's sources
Churchill's main source was the intelligence decrypts from Bletchley Park which he saw "raw", as well as intelligence reports and digests. After receiving a signals intelligence digest in July 1943 he wrote that "it gave a full account of the marvellous resistance by the followers of Tito and the powerful cold-blooded manoeuvres of Milhailović in Serbia." Churchill announced his decision to support Tito to Soviet leader Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
(much to his surprise) at the Tehran Conference
Tehran Conference
The Tehran Conference was the meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill between November 28 and December 1, 1943, most of which was held at the Soviet Embassy in Tehran, Iran. It was the first World War II conference amongst the Big Three in which Stalin was present...
in November 1943, and publicly in an address to Parliament on 22 February 1944. This address referred to reports from Deakin and Maclean for justification, as the Ultra decryptions from Bletchley Park were secret even after the war
Fitzroy Maclean discussed Yugoslavia with Churchill in Cairo after the Tehran Conference
Tehran Conference
The Tehran Conference was the meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill between November 28 and December 1, 1943, most of which was held at the Soviet Embassy in Tehran, Iran. It was the first World War II conference amongst the Big Three in which Stalin was present...
. Churchill said that as neither of them intended to live there after the war: "… the less you and I worry about the form of Government they set up, the better. That is for them to decide. What interests us is, which of them is doing most harm to the Germans." Maclean had already reported that "...the Partisans, whether we helped them or not, would be the decisive political factor in Jugoslavia after the war and, secondly that Tito and the other leaders of the movement were openly and avowedly Communist and that the system which they would establish would inevitably be on Soviet lines and, in all probability, strongly oriented towards the Soviet Union." However, Maclean had also noticed Tito's "independence of mind" and wondered whether Tito might evolve into something more than a Soviet puppet.)
While in England in the spring of 1944, Maclean discussed Yugoslavia with some of the British officers who had been attached to General Mihailović's Headquarters. One of the meetings was at Chequers
Chequers
Chequers, or Chequers Court, is a country house near Ellesborough, to the south of Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, England, at the foot of the Chiltern Hills...
and was presided over by Churchill himself. "It was common ground that the Cetniks, though in the main well disposed towards Great Britain, were militarily less effective with the communist Partisans and that some of Mihailović’s subordinates had undoubtedly reached accommodation with the enemy." And some who knew him best "while liking and respecting him as a man, had little opinion of Mihailović as a leader", though the Cetnik detachments in Serbia at least could be a significant force with "new and more determined leadership and with better discipline." Maclean was also asked to Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace, in London, is the principal residence and office of the British monarch. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is a setting for state occasions and royal hospitality...
to brief King George VI
George VI of the United Kingdom
George VI was King of the United Kingdom and the Dominions of the British Commonwealth from 11 December 1936 until his death...
on the Jugoslav situation. He found him as well-informed on the situation as anyone else he had met back in England, and said he "took an entirely realistic view of it."
British Intelligence sources
Most of the Signals intelligence obtained by Bletchley Park on the Balkans was initially from LuftwaffeLuftwaffe
Luftwaffe is a generic German term for an air force. It is also the official name for two of the four historic German air forces, the Wehrmacht air arm founded in 1935 and disbanded in 1946; and the current Bundeswehr air arm founded in 1956....
morse code traffic encoded by Enigma
Enigma machine
An Enigma machine is any of a family of related electro-mechanical rotor cipher machines used for the encryption and decryption of secret messages. Enigma was invented by German engineer Arthur Scherbius at the end of World War I...
; initially the general Luftwaffe Red key, then various German Army keys. They also decrypted various teleprinter links for high-level traffic: Fish (Vienna-Athens) then Codfish (Straussberg-Salonika), plus medium and low grade hand cyphers. For German policy on Yugoslavia, communications to Tokyo from the Japanese Ambassador, General Oshima Hiroshi, were also useful. With the primitive communications infrastructure and the disruption of land communications, the German forces in Yugoslavia relied heavily on radio communications which, unknown to themselves was insecure, so that a 1945 comment was that "never in the field of Signals intelligence has so much been decrypted about so little."
While the volume of messages was not great, Bletchley Park also intercepted messages from Tito and from the separate Slovene Communist Party to Georgi Dimitrov
Georgi Dimitrov
Georgi Dimitrov Mikhaylov , also known as Georgi Mikhaylovich Dimitrov , was a Bulgarian Communist politician...
, the Secretary-General of the Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
in Moscow. These messages to Dimitrov continued even after the Comintern was officially dissolved in June 1943.
The volume of Enigma decrypts from the Soviet Fronts and the Balkans declined substantially from the summer of 1944, but this was more than offset for the Soviet Fronts by success with Fish links.
Collaboration with the Axis
During Operation Weiss against the Partisans in 1943, the Italian forces used Italian-officered Chetnik units against the communist Partisans despite German objections. Consequently, the German Operation Schwartz against the Chetniks and Partisans was kept secret from the Italians. Pavle Djurisić, one of Milhailović’s principal commanders, fell out with Milhailović as he wished to join the Germans against the Partisans, which Milhailović refused to contemplate. Both Axis operations were followed by Bletchley Park in decrypts from the AbwehrAbwehr
The Abwehr was a German military intelligence organisation from 1921 to 1944. The term Abwehr was used as a concession to Allied demands that Germany's post-World War I intelligence activities be for "defensive" purposes only...
(German military intelligence). A decrypted report from General Alexander Löhr
Alexander Löhr
Alexander Löhr was an Austrian Air Force commander during the 1930s and, after the "Political Union of Germany and Austria" , he was a German Air Force commander...
, the commander in chief of the German Army Group E
Army Group E
Army Group E was a German Army Group active during World War II.Army Group E was created on 1 January 1943 from the 12th Army...
in the Balkans, reported on 22 June that 583 German soldiers and 7,489 Partisans had been killed, with the probability that the Partisans had lost another 4,000 men. Chetnik losses were put at 17, with nearly 4,000 taken prisoner. The contrast between the two resistance movements was stark. However, the decrypts, "far from providing evidence of Cetnik-German collaboration, continued to leave no doubt that at least at the highest level the Germans remained set on Milhailović's destruction. In July Hitler had suggested that the C-in-C South East [Löhr] should put a higher price on the heads of Milhailović and Tito."
The most significant report of Chetnik collaboration was the text of a treaty between Lukacević, one of Milhailović’s principal commanders, and the German Commander South East in September and October 1943, In the treaty, which was copied to Churchill, Lukacević agreed to a cessation of hostilities in his area of southern Serbia and joint action against the communist Partisans.
British mission
Deakin's mission to the Partisans was called "Operation Typical", and it represented the British General Headquarters in the Middle East. The first parachuted supplies dropped to the Partisans had a very marked propaganda effect despite some bizarre episodes, e.g. a planeload of Atrobin for treating malaria, and a supply of badly needed boots, but all for the left foot. In May 1943, a signal from Cairo ordered that medical supplies, which had been loaded onto a Handley Page HalifaxHandley Page Halifax
The Handley Page Halifax was one of the British front-line, four-engined heavy bombers of the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. A contemporary of the famous Avro Lancaster, the Halifax remained in service until the end of the war, performing a variety of duties in addition to bombing...
at Derna were to be left behind, as their despatch would infringe British obligations to the Royal Yugoslav government. The plane's crew complied, but loaded all the military items, e.g., boots, clothing, guns and ammunition, that they could loot at the airfield onto the aircraft.
Deakin had urged American representation on the mission, and on 21 August 1943 Captain Melvin O. (Benny) Benson of the Office of Strategic Services
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
(OSS) arrived, remaining in Yugoslavia for four months. Benson noted in his report "the giving of credit to the Cetniks for Partisan victories and otherwise referring to them as Patriots, in an attempt to include the Cetniks with the Partisans." The crediting of Partisan attacks to Chetniks was also being reported on the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
. Captain Benson was later replaced by Major Linn (Slim) Farish
The sending of the Maclean mission on 17 September 1943 placed the relations between Tito and the British on a more formal and senior level. Fitzroy Maclean was the personal representative of the Prime Minister, and his arrival marked implicitly the de facto recognition of the Yugoslav National Liberation Army, as the Partisans were formally known.
Maclean wondered whether officials in Cairo "quite realised the difficulties of travel in German-occupied Europe", when he was told in an official signal that he was to go to Cairo immediately but that the Partisan delegation could follow later if required... (it turned out that the British delegation was returning from the conference at Teheran via Cairo). While away down the coast Maclean was amazed to receive a garbled message from Cairo, with a clear sentence "King now in Cairo, Will be dropped to you at first opportunity." He thought that as part of London's gradual rapprochement policy between King Peter of Yugoslavia and the Partisans, the King was to be "dropped headlong into the seething centre of the Jugoslav cauldron." Later he was told that the message referred to their new signals officer, whose surname was King.
When the Italians surrendered the mission received a signal from the British General Headquarters in the Mediterranean regarding the Italian forces, which assumed that "the British mission attached to Tito’s headquarters was in some queer fashion in operational command of operational ‘guerrilla’ units." Similar orders were sent to Colonel Bailey at Mihailović’s headquarters and to the commanders of British missions in Greece and Albania, and the episode revealed "the extent to which our mission had not succeeded in conveying to our superiors the reality of the situation in Partisan-held territory."
Conclusion
The change in Allied support in Yugoslavia from the Chetniks to the Partisans in 1943 was because they were a more effective ally. The public justification at the time was the reports from Maclean and Deakin; the real source was the signals intelligence decrypts, but they were secret at the time and remained so until the 1970s when the work of Bletchley Park was made public. The change was driven by Churchill and (British) Army Intelligence, but was not due to any supposed influence from Randolph Churchill or James Klugman.Churchill's son Randolph
Randolph Churchill
Major Randolph Frederick Edward Spencer-Churchill, MBE was the son of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his wife Clementine. He was a Conservative Member of Parliament for Preston from 1940 to 1945....
was on one of the missions to Yugoslavia. Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh , known as Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, travel books and biographies. He was also a prolific journalist and reviewer...
accompanied Randolph Churchill, and Waugh put in a report about Tito's persecution of the clergy, which was "buried" by Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden
Anthony Eden
Robert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, KG, MC, PC was a British Conservative politician, who was Prime Minister from 1955 to 1957...
. No evidence is given for the suggestion made in the article on Draža Mihailović that Randolph Churchill privately influenced his father to support Tito, and in any case he was recruited by Maclean for his mission after the Teheran Conference, when the decision to support Tito had already been made.
James Klugmann
James Klugmann
Norman John Klugmann , generally known as James Klugmann, was a leading British Communist writer who became the official historian of the Communist Party of Great Britain-Background and Early Career:...
was a Communist and was undoubtedly a KGB agent and linked to the Cambridge Five
Cambridge Five
The Cambridge Five was a ring of spies, recruited in part by Russian talent spotter Arnold Deutsch in the United Kingdom, who passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and at least into the early 1950s...
. He joined the Yugoslav section of SOE Cairo in 1942, where he advocated and lobbied for Tito. But it was stated that "Whatever lobbying may have been taking place in Cairo, it would have been the overwhelming evidence of the Bletchley Park decrypts, Churchill's favoured source of intelligence, which persuaded Britain's wartime leader that Tito and his Partisans were a much more effective, and reliable, ally in the war against Germany."
Captain Bill Deakin, who led the first military mission in 1943 and was caught up in the Battle of the Sutjeska (hence the title of his book) had been Churchill’s researcher and librarian in the thirties.