- Poruka
- 292
LETTER OF GENERAL EAKER
On 13 July 1944 Lt General Ira Eaker of the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces sent a letter to General Wilson, Supreme Allied Commander, Mediterranean Theater.
Request approval for the following plans:
Make up a unit of twelve to twenty officers and men, to include a Flight Surgeon and medical personnel, to expedite the assembly and passage to the Balkans, principally Yugoslavia, of Strategic Air Force crews now in Balkan territory. It is estimated that at least 1100 crewmen of the Strategic Air Force have parachuted from disabled aircraft and are now in the Balkan areas. The great majoriy of these men are believed to be in Yugoslavia. Reports indicate that many of them are in need of medical assistance. I am convinced it will greatly facilitate the earlier return of these crewmen if a specially selected American unit is given the responsibility of collecting these individuals, giving them medical attention, and expediting their assembly and return.
It is clearly understood that the activities of this American unit will be non-diplomatic and non-military. It will will be devoted entirely to rescue purposes; its activities will be coordinated with the Balkan Air Force. I have discussed the subject with the Balkan Air Force commander, with General Devers and Mr. Murphy, all of whom agree with me that the project is feasible and necessary.
Before the Air Forces had established themselves in Italy, there had been little chance of recovering aircrews missing in action, even though many were known to have survived the loss of their planes. Though a few men escaped or evaded, most were imprisioned in closely guarded camps deep in enemy territory. But after the air forces settled in Italy and began concentrated attacks on the Balkans, partisans in Northern Italy and Yugoslavia began to assist downed aircrews, and a sizeable number of flyers trickled back to base.
But by late spring of 1944, the situation had reached emergency proportions. Until then, the Escape and Evasion sub-sections in Twelfth and Fifteenth Air Forces had handled the rescue of American airmen, using techniques developed earlier by the British. The Escape and Evasion staffs concentrated primarily on briefing crews and providing escape intelligence such as the following:
ESCAPE INTELLIGENCE: ESCAPE BULLETIN NO.29
23.April 1944
RECENT INFORMATION ON YUGOSLAVIA
1. GENERAL: The most important fact about Yugoslavia to bear in mind is the change that has taken place in the relative positions and importance of Partisans and Serbian Chetniks. From every point of view, including that of assistance in evasion and escape, Marshal TITO and his Partisans (or National Army of Liberation) are now the chief helpers in Yugoslavia, while, Mihailovic and the Chetniks have become altogether secondary and minor.
2. PARTISANS AND CHETNIKS: The National Army of Liberation does not, as is generally supposed, consist of scattered guerilla bands living in the mountains and woods, and carrying out haphazard raids on the enemy’s communications, but is in fact a well organlzed force, which completely controls large areas of Yugoslavia and has, almost unaided, forced the Germans to withdraw into the main towns and confine their activities to keeping open the roads to the towns which they occupy. The latest infomlation gives the number of Partisan divisions as 26 and the total number of troops as 250,000.
In this connection, it is well to remember that TITO's strategy involves a readiness to abandon any area at any time rather than risk his valuable troops in a last man-last round defense of it. Many parts of the country have been captured, evacuated, and recaptured two or three times in the past two years by the Partisans. This is particularly important in relation to evasion tactics.
The Serbian Chetniks number about l5.000 men, and are confined chiefly to the forest and hills of Serbia. At best, they remain in a static condition, at worst some of them collaborate with the Germans against the Partisans.
As a result of all of this, there are many more Allied Military Missions with the Partisans than with the Chetniks. In most cases, no doubt, Chetniks would be willing to help American or British soldiers, but there would always be the risk of running into those Chetniks who were cooperating with the Germans………
Michael Lees The Rape of Serbia: The British Role in Tito's Grab for Power 1943-1944

From Publishers Weekly
There were two major resistance movements in Yugoslavia during the war: Tito's Communist Partisans and Draza Mihailovic's Loyalist Chetniks. The author served as British liaison officer with the latter in 1943 and 1944. His memoir describes how Tito deceived Winston Churchill into believing Mihailovic was collaborating with the Germans, which resulted in the abrupt transfer of Allied aid from the Chetniks to the Partisans. The tragic upshot was that Tito then used Allied munitions against the Chetniks after the German retreat, launching an extermination campaign against thousands of rivals and potential enemies. The British prime minister, realizing too late his error in embracing Tito at the expense of Mihailovic, tried to intervene on the latter's behalf but was unable to prevent a Titoist court from convicting him of treason. Mihailovic was executed in 1946. Lees relates this grim story with unrestrained bitterness. His book is a powerful indictment of British wartime policy in the Balkans and an elegy for Yugoslav victims of Tito.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Lees combines his personal experience as British liaison officer with research in official declassified records to provide a revisionist account of the civil war in Yugoslavia at the end of World War II. The result is a fascinating investigation that effectively demolishes the reputation of Marshal Tito and blames his rise to power on the overt support of the Western allies. Lees indicts the British Secret Service for turning the tide toward Tito and against the non-Communist resistance leader General Draza Mihailovic, who was executed by Tito in 1946. Lees's involvement in some of these events adds an element of high drama to this study, and this unsettling work will cast serious doubt on all previous histories of this period, such as Walter Roberts's Tito, Mihailovic, and the Allies ( LJ 2/1/73). Recommended for most academic and larger public libraries.
- Thomas A. Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, Pa.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.
__________________________________________________________________________
Po ko zna koji put....naravno da si britanci morali da opravdaju svoje iznenadno napustanje Mihailovica, koga su do tada kovali u zvezde...Svedok svih tih desavanja i sramnih poteza svoje vlade, Majkl Liz...prica koja je britanska uloga u Titovom grabljenju vlasti, o sabotazama u kojima je licno ucestvovao sa cetnicima, a koje su preko radio Londona pripisivane partizanim, pogresnim izvestajima, naprasnom velicanju partizana itd. itd....Koga zanima procitace...koga ne zanima zadovoljice se i posticima poput ovog od piciginx-a...
Poslednja izmena: