The Wrath of the Eagles: World War II Novels on Draza Mihailovich and the Chetniks
In 1943, a second major novel on Draza Mihailovich and the Chetnik guerrillas was published in the United States by E.P. Dutton in New York. The Wrath of the Eagles: A Novel of the Chetniks was written by Austrian-born émigré author Frederick Heydenau who recounted the emergence and exploits of the guerrilla resistance movement led by Draza Mihailovich.
Book Review.
The Wrath of the Eagles: A Novel of the Chetniks by Frederick Heydenau. Published by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., New York. Translated from German by Barrows Mussey. 318 pp.
As more and more news accounts of the guerrilla war and resistance movement in Yugoslavia appeared in the U.S., Draza Mihailovich and the Chetnik guerrillas assumed mythic and superhuman proportions. This impact was powerful and all-embracing. Twentieth Century Fox produced a movie, Chetniks! The Fighting Guerrillas starring Philip Dorn and Anna Sten. Draza Mihailovich appeared on the cover of Real Life Comics in November, 1942, as a comic-book hero. Hungarian émigré author Istvan Tamas wrote a novel in 1942 entitled Sergeant Nikola: A Novel of the Chetnik Brigades. In 1943, a second novel on Draza Mihailovich and the Chetniks was published in the U.S.
The Wrath of the Eagles: A Novel of the Chetniks by Frederick Heydenau, was published in 1943 in New York by E.P. Dutton. The novel was translated from the German, Der Zorn der Adler, by Barrows Mussey. The novel was also reviewed in the New York Times Book Review section by Robert St. John in the Sunday, June 27, 1943 issue in the Section: Book Review, Page BR6:” Balkan Supermen: Wrath of the Eagles: A Novel of the Chetniks. By Frederick Heydenau, translated by Barrows Mussey, 318 pp. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co.
The cover of the 1943 first edtion published by E.P. Dutton in New York.
The plot of the novel revolves around the main character, Ensign Mark Allan Stevens, an American commissioned naval officer, who joins the Chetniks, Yugoslav guerrillas under General Draza Mihailovich. His father came from Belgrade, his mother was American, and he was born in the U.S.
Chapter one opens with a description of the context for the novel: “It was summer, the second summer that Yugoslavia had been trampled by the oppressors: Germans, Italians, Magyars, Nazis, Fascists, and Ustashi, the hated traitors among the Croats.”
“Humiliated, bleeding, beaten down, the land endured. The army … had not surrendered. Thousands had gathered in the mountains… Everyone who could carry a gun was there… There this army without artillery or planes found its leader in Draja—Draja Mikhailovitch, general, hero, and deputy of the king.”
“No order of battle was issued. No regiments or battalions were established. Men and officers alike, the warriors called themselves Chetniks—members of a Cheta, a hundred. Their arms were nothing but rifles, including old carbines, and even breechloaders that their grandfathers had carried. Each man was an army in himself, each of his own general, alive with self-sacrifice, ready for death, and aflame with wrath. Their holy anger seemed to float above them constantly like a black cloud.
“They lived among gorges and abysses in forests reached only by hidden paths. Such were the barracks of an army that cared nothing either for hard work or for privation.”
The Wrath of the Eagles: World War II Novels on Draza Mihailovich and the Chetniks
Dec 25, 2009
By Carl Savich In 1943, a second major novel on Draza Mihailovich and the Chetnik guerrillas was published in the United States by E.P. Dutton in New York. The Wrath of the Eagles: A Novel of the Chetniks was written by Austrian-born émigré author Frederick Heydenau who recounted the emergence and exploits of the guerrilla resistance movement led by Draza Mihailovich.
Book Review.
The Wrath of the Eagles: A Novel of the Chetniks by Frederick Heydenau. Published by E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc., New York. Translated from German by Barrows Mussey. 318 pp.
As more and more news accounts of the guerrilla war and resistance movement in Yugoslavia appeared in the U.S., Draza Mihailovich and the Chetnik guerrillas assumed mythic and superhuman proportions. This impact was powerful and all-embracing. Twentieth Century Fox produced a movie, Chetniks! The Fighting Guerrillas starring Philip Dorn and Anna Sten. Draza Mihailovich appeared on the cover of Real Life Comics in November, 1942, as a comic-book hero. Hungarian émigré author Istvan Tamas wrote a novel in 1942 entitled Sergeant Nikola: A Novel of the Chetnik Brigades. In 1943, a second novel on Draza Mihailovich and the Chetniks was published in the U.S.
The Wrath of the Eagles: A Novel of the Chetniks by Frederick Heydenau, was published in 1943 in New York by E.P. Dutton. The novel was translated from the German, Der Zorn der Adler, by Barrows Mussey. The novel was also reviewed in the New York Times Book Review section by Robert St. John in the Sunday, June 27, 1943 issue in the Section: Book Review, Page BR6:” Balkan Supermen: Wrath of the Eagles: A Novel of the Chetniks. By Frederick Heydenau, translated by Barrows Mussey, 318 pp. New York: E.P. Dutton & Co. $2.50.”
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The cover of the 1943 first edtion published by E.P. Dutton in New York.
The plot of the novel revolves around the main character, Ensign Mark Allan Stevens, an American commissioned naval officer, who joins the Chetniks, Yugoslav guerrillas under General Draza Mihailovich. His father came from Belgrade, his mother was American, and he was born in the U.S.
Chapter one opens with a description of the context for the novel: “It was summer, the second summer that Yugoslavia had been trampled by the oppressors: Germans, Italians, Magyars, Nazis, Fascists, and Ustashi, the hated traitors among the Croats.”
“Humiliated, bleeding, beaten down, the land endured. The army … had not surrendered. Thousands had gathered in the mountains… Everyone who could carry a gun was there… There this army without artillery or planes found its leader in Draja—Draja Mikhailovitch, general, hero, and deputy of the king.”
“No order of battle was issued. No regiments or battalions were established. Men and officers alike, the warriors called themselves Chetniks—members of a Cheta, a hundred. Their arms were nothing but rifles, including old carbines, and even breechloaders that their grandfathers had carried. Each man was an army in himself, each of his own general, alive with self-sacrifice, ready for death, and aflame with wrath. Their holy anger seemed to float above them constantly like a black cloud.
“They lived among gorges and abysses in forests reached only by hidden paths. Such were the barracks of an army that cared nothing either for hard work or for privation.”
2Heyden2
Frederick Heydenau was an Austrian novelist who fled Austria after the Nazi takeover and settled in the U.S. during the war.
Two snow-white carrier pigeons are brought to Draza Mihailovich. Tiny slips of paper were attached in metal tubes to their legs. Only pigeons were able to find their way to the mountainous hideouts of the Chetniks, “an army of heroes”. The message gave the time and place for the arrival of three U.S. submarines in the Bay of Kotor on the Adriatic Sea. Draja then sent Pero, a Chetnik guerrilla, with a team of other Chetnik guerrillas accompanied by pack horses to meet the submarines and bring back arms, sub-machine-guns that fired fifty rounds, and medical supplies. Draja told Pero, who took his wolf-hound Junak: “The moon will help you.”
Pero met the U.S. sailors who landed in boats from the submarines. Ensign Mark Allan Stevens, who spoke Serbian, was accompanied by the Commander. Stevens asked Pero: “Are you an officer?” Pero replied by emphasizing that the guerrillas did not have ranks: “The Chetniks have no such rank as an officer.” The Ensign informed Pero that they had brought gas masks because he knew that a gas attack was planned against the Chetniks, to wipe them out. Pero, however, told him that they could not operate the equipment. This forced the Commander to have Ensign Stevens remain with the Chetnik guerrillas to show them how to operate the gas masks. The rest of the sailors and the Commander departed. Stevens was to be picked up by boats that would return in several weeks or by plane because future parachute drops of weapons were planned in the area.
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“1941: Serbian David and Nazi Goliath”.
Ceo tekst ovde
http://serbianna.com/analysis/?p=352
