up until now we only knew about the fact that throughout the Second
World War, British intercepted and read german radio dispatches ci-
phered with the help of “Enigma”, a machine Wehrmacht regarded as
fully reliable.
now, we are learning that the British success was mediocre and
that only a small part of german messages was decoded. With respect
to the Balkans, the only decoded messages were those that favoured
Churchill’s political agenda of abandoning the Yugoslav King, army
and the government in favour of the armed forces of the illegal Com-
munist Party of Yugoslavia. In other words, the reports that speak of
the alleged great contribution of the Partisans for an allied victory, but
not those that pointed to a different state of affairs.
This we learn from John Cripps’ article Mihailovic or Tito: How the
Codebreakers Helped Churchill Choose, an article that appeared in the
anthology action This Day, published by Bantam Press (london, 2001).

1.
Cripps begins his article with two false premises: that the Yugoslav
army surrendered unconditionally on april 17, 1941, and that by the
end of the same year “two resistance movements” were formed. To his
credit, he does mention that the British government recognized its
Yugoslav counterpart with the Minister of Defense Draza Mihailovic.
However, Cripps fails to disclose that we are dealing with legal insti-
tutions of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and that the “other resistance
movement” is represented by the armed forces of the illegal Commun-
ist party of Yugoslavia (KPY). Thus we are left without an explanation
as to why, by 1941, the British had placed the two on equal footing:  legal
institutions of a sovereign European state and a revolutionary group
whose raison d’être lies in the destruction of the former. also, why were
they concerned who provided more resistance against the germans
when it is clear that supporting the revolution in the midst of the war
diminishes the fighting ability of both the people and the state? Even
though Cripps doesn’t write about it, it may prove helpful to remember
that Camp X was established by the British in Canada in the spring of
1941. among the recruiters there were communists from the Yugoslav
Kingdom, mainly the participants of the Spanish Civil War who were
later sent back to Yugoslavia. It would have been more logical to have
recruited and trained the 1500 Yugoslav soldiers, sub-officers and offi-
cers who were at their disposal and have taken refuge in Egypt follo-
wing the april War, rather than communists. It is noteworthy that one
of the instructors at Camp X was Colonel William Bailey, the head of
the British Military Mission to the Supreme Command of the Yugo-
slav army, who from 1942 onwards systematically made life of general
Mihailovic difficult.
It is important to mention that while the British were gathering “the
Spanish fighters”, the germans were doing the same thing in occupied
france, at Camp garS. The gestapo was in charge of this operation,
aided at that time by the Comintern. In the spring of 1941, the gestapo
returned a group of a few hundred communists back to Yugoslavia.
There are consequences in accepting the term “two resistance mo-
vements”, as there were consequences for an early support of the Yugo-
slav communists. Cripps doesn’t only speak about the events that hap-
pened in the beginning of 1941, he also discusses the years of 1942 and
1943. for instance, he questions the accuracy of the events of June 1942
when Major Davidson, head of the British military intelligence, in-
formed Churchill that the Partisans were “extremists and thugs”. In
the autumn of 1943 Churchill decided to transfer all support to the
“thugs”, despite knowing that “Yugoslavia will become a communist
state after the war”.
Cripps rejects the influence of the “incriminating report” made by
a communications officer at the headquarters of the Partisan Com-
mander – fitzroy Maclean. Maclean was perhaps the only British “weasel
officer” during the war. a politician by trade and Churchill’s comrade,
Maclean was promoted overnight from a Captain in reserve directly
to a Brigadier general. later he was sent to Broz’ camp that was buzz-
ing with officers of that type. He accepted everything the communists
had told him and soon, Churchill received a firsthand report about the
exaggerated number of the Partisans (200,000) and their even more
exaggerated successes. Maclean also never failed to mention the oppo-
site when the Chetniks were in question. Cripps insists that Churchill
was aware of the falsity of these reports. However, the British premier
presented Maclean’s report as crucial evidence in order to mask the
real source of information – ciphered german dispatches decoded by
the Secret Service at Bletchley Park.
In the same manner, Cripps rejects the theory about Soviet officers
present in the British ranks, especially in reference to the Cairo branch
of SoE. However Churchill not only knew about it, he made sure that
certain crucial information was never received and we can assume
that the decoded german messages were most crucial in Churchill’s
decisions. This was kept as a high priority secret until the year 2000
when deciphered messages became available at the British national
archives and served as basis for Cripps’ work.

2.
Every morning Churchill received all of the vital german dispatches.
These included daily reports of the Command for the Southeast to Ber-
lin, the communications between certain german commands in the
Balkans, communication reports between german and Italian com-
mands, reports from the german air-force and german military intel-
ligence abwehr, and information on the Security Services in charge
of The gestapo. However, Cripps states that the British also received
the “local traffic between the Chetnik, Partisan and Croatian units”
and the german reports on the intercepted and decoded Chetnik and
Partisan radio dispatches.
Cripps does not give any details about the Chetnik system of com-
munication. on the basis of german documents, published by Ivan
avakumovic, as well as according to the Chetniks’ documents from
the military archives in Belgrade, we know that the best german wire-
tapping unit “Vod Volni” successfully deciphered about 4% of Chetnik
radio dispatches. More precisely, from July 1942 until July 1943 this unit
intercepted 17,067 Chetnik radio messages, and successfully deciphe-
red 731 of them. By all means there were more exchanged messages,
since this was the basic means of communication among Mihailovic’
units. at the end of this period, in May 1943, Mihailovic made the use
of double or English codes mandatory. There is no evidence of the ger-
mans getting a hold of any of those messages.
for a long time the communists had only two radio stations for co-
mmunication with Moscow and had no knowledge of ciphering, which
made it easy for the germans to decipher whatever they intercepted.
Tito and the Separatist Slovenian Communist Party maintained com-
munications with their masters in Moscow and the Comintern. accor-
ding to Cripps, this tie remained until the Comintrn collapsed in June
1943. In other words, the British were always aware that the Yugoslav
communists were Stalin’s supporters. Cripps cites that “The subservi-
ence of Tito towards Dimitrov was confirmed.”
according to Cripps, in the summer of 1941, abwehr reports refe-
rred to attacks on railway lines and confirmed that “…Serbs were being
shot by the Croats”. This was confirmed by all Serbian sides; however
the British always maintained the contrary.
In early august the first reports about the insurrection, that is,
about the killings of germans were received. The reports continued
throughout September and the germans were prepared to deny them.
Cripps writes: “This report was sent to Churchill, who underlined the-
se words in red.” However it stays unclear who were the insurgents, and
who was their leader; but not for the germans – they knew and needed
no explanations. over the summer they identified Colonel Mihailovic
as the “band leader” and a typical sentence in their reports ran like
this: “The command is in the hands of Serbian officers”.
The British erroneously concluded that the “germans used four
divisions” in order to stifle the insurrection. In reality, following the
april War, the germans used four divisions in the Serbian provinces
of the Kingdom and by September 1941, they brought additional two
and a half divisions.
This is how Cripps ends the description of the first year of the war:
“a letter from MI6 to MBb reveals that their view, probably formed
from the decrypts, was that Mihailovic’s forces appeared to be fighting
the communists rather than the germans and that if that were true
it was unlikely that the revolt could be maintained. The first doubts
about Mihailovic were already setting in.”