British History on General Mihailovic & Marshall Tito

those negotiations. Two abwehr transcripts have revealed that one of
the agents, a german who reported under the name of Dr. Bauks, was
really negotiating with the Partisans, but the exact subject of negotia-
tions remained unclear. later the transcripts did reveal that his real
name was Hans ott.
This seems quite logical, for only two out of dozens of german ra-
dio messages for the months of March, april and May of 1943 were suc-
cessfully deciphered by the British bureau. otherwise, it would have
been become clear to them that the Partisans wanted to unite with the
germans against the British. However even if the germans had accep-
ted the offer, they would have refused it a couple months later follow-
ing the orders from Berlin.
Here are some of the german reports that went unnoticed by the
British:
March 9, 1943, Commander of the 717th division to the Command
for nDH: noV (the Partisans) will fight against the English in the
event of their landing here; the Chetniks, on the contrary will not, they
eagerly await for such sequence of events.
March 9, 1943, lieutenant Colonel Pfaffenrot, Chief of Staff of the
Command for nDH, to general Von Horstenau: “They proclaim that
they do not fight against the Croatian State or the germans, but solely
against the Chetniks. They are ready to take arms against any german
enemy, including the British when they land here.”
March 17, 1943, Broz’s general Velebit to Hans ott in Zagreb: “In
case of the British troops landing on our territory without our consent,
we will be ready to put up resistance and utilize armed forces if neces-
sary.” (ott delivered the message to ambassador Kasche, and Kasche
to the Minister of foreign affairs – ribbentrop).
March 30, 1943, Kasche to ribbentrop: “These current events have
proven the reliability of Tito’s promises.”
april 17, 1943, Kasche to ribbentrop: “Since we are at all times well
informed about the happenings in Tito’s camp, there is no chance of
us being disappointed”.
May 10, 1943, ott to Kasche: “When I received the letter (from Broz,
inviting him to come to his headquarters) I tried to establish contact
with the Partisans via gorazde, who at tried to form a defense system
on the bridge south of foca but failed due to Chetniks’ presence. That
is why the conversation with Tito never took place and we never took
over the propaganda material (Chetnik materials against the germans
that were captured by the communists).
after May 28, 1943, the British began to arrive at the partisan head-
quarters, following the germans and the ustashe. When the chief of
the British army, general Maclean, asked Tito what he thought about
the allied landing in the adriatic, Tito’s response was to contact Mos-
cow on october 12 with the following statement: “We will not permit
such a landing without our approval and we are ready to resist it.”

8.
relying on the reports from the german transcripts, Cripps says that
the Partisans re-captured Herzegovina and Montenegro from the
Chetniks, but what he fails to mention is that this was only a tempor-
ary state of events. at this stage of his work, it is most interesting to
mention the report prepared by Captain Maclean from MI3b, advis-
ing that “Mihailovic had gravely prejudiced his long-term position by
mobilizing his men for the campaign against the Partisans…” In other
words, the British circles maintained the information that Mihailovic
has no right to oppose the communists, despite his constitutional obli-
gation. at the same time, they held an affirmative stance when it came
down to the communists’ attacks on Mihailovic.
Similar scenario took place in this particular case: while retreating
from the Bihac  republic, the Partisans attacked East Herzegovina,
which at that time was under the Chetnik’s occupation.
It seems absurd that the assertion that the Chetniks lost Herzego-
vina and Montenegro to the Partisans is the only way for Cripps’ read-
ers to find out how the Chetniks held any territories at all…
Cripps writes that the germans kept the plans of the operation
Schwartz secret from the Italians, fearing that they would reveal them
to the Chetniks. He fails to point out the anti-german, anti-Croatian
and pro-British background of the nature of contacts between so-
called legalized Chetniks and the Italians. In a similar fashion Cripps
failed to note how the germans unsuccessfully tried to conceal the
plan of the operation Weiss from the Croatians, fearing that they
would reveal it to the Partisans.
Mihailovic managed to escape the entrapment during the opera-
tion Weiss by only two hours; Broz, on the other hand, was less for-
tunate. He believed that the german-partisan agreement was still in
force, and that the germans would attack only the Chetniks (his staff
celebrated the commencement of the assault). and yet again, all of this
seemed to have escaped British code-breakers. Cripps goes on saying
that: “Decrypts revealed that for the first time the Partisans were ef-
fectively surrounded and were at real risk of being wiped out. abwehr
and german army decrypts referred to the bitter fighting and repeated
bombing of the Partisans. The battle was over by 14 June but it soon
became clear, from the decrypts, that once again a substantial body
of the Partisans had escaped and that Tito had given orders that they
should disperse and reform near Jajce in Bosnia. a decrypted report
from löhr on 22 June reported to the german High Command 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. “
adding to the confusion, we now encounter problems with transla-
tion nuances. More to the point, löhr did not write about the prob-
ability, but as in the rest of the reports, he spoke about the number of
counted corpses and additional estimated losses. During the operation
Weiss the germans counted 7,489 of killed Partisans and were afraid
to go any further fearing the outbreak of typhoid fever.
When various sources are compared, it is clear that they did not
count the 4,000 wounded and sick Partisans, who were killed too.
after the war löhr was sentenced to death in Belgrade, and this killing
of the wounded and the sick was taken as his heaviest crime. as a rule,
British code-breakers would lose sight of the data pertaining to num-
bers, and they missed the opportunity to discover the answers to the
most important questions: what was the total number of the remain-
ing Partisans? How many members did that “important group” really
have? It consisted of only 4,500 Partisans. according to their docu-
ments, in the summer of 1943 the total number of all Partisans across
country was around 25,000. This number agrees with the data pos-
sessed by the american Intelligence. as there were no americans in
the country at the time, it is safe to say that the British secretly passed
this information on to them. officially, though, they talked of 200,000
Partisans.
Is it even necessary to comment on the fact that all considerable
losses suffered by the Partisans were basically overlooked, meanwhile
insufficient losses by Chetniks were blown out of proportion? further
on, Cripps brings out the conclusion of the War Cabinet that states
the following: “…as the strongest anti-axis element outside of Serbia,
the Partisans deserve the strongest support.” Such a conclusion is not
in agreement with real numbers of the Partisans and Chetniks on the
field. This fabrication about the Partisans being the strongest element
outside of Serbia raises a whole series of questions.
Why the strongest outside of Serbia?
Why not the strongest outside of Croatia? Why not support them?
Is it not clear that Serbia was strategically the most important region?
are the Serbs not the well established allies of the British army?
Why was Serbia called nedic Serbia, instead of the pre-war Serbia
i.e. Serbian Provinces?
Does not all of this reveal the favoring not only of the communists,
but indirectly of the Croatians as well? and doesn’t it seem that all of it
is done at the expense of the Serbs? In fact, with whom was Britain at
war exactly: the Independent republic of Croatia or Serbia?
The following phrase relating to the year 1943, is referred to Church-
ill and is very characteristic to Cripps’ work: “While he had not finally
made up his mind whether to withdraw support from the Chetniks, it
was clear that he was set on a course to provide the Partisans with the
maximum support possible, whatever the political consequences for
postwar Yugoslavia.”

9.
The following sentence about the time of the Italian capitulation in Sep-
tember of 1943 especially stands out in Cripps’ work: “Some Chetniks,