British History on General Mihailovic & Marshall Tito

talk about the number of places Chetniks seized from the germans
during the battles. In general, they talk of the Chetnik offenses against
the axis troops.
at that time these offenses were taking place between Zvornik,
Zlatibor, Prijepolje, adriatic Sea coast east of Dubrovnik, and the out-
skirts of Sarajevo. according to Cripps, this is a half of Switzerland.
However, the point of the story is hidden somewhere else. We might
get to it by asking the following questions: what were the Partisans
doing in the meantime? Who did they attack? The answer is clear: the
Chetniks, of course.
all of the available mobile units – around 9,000 soldiers – were
sent to attack the Chetniks at the back frontier during the assault on
Sarajevo. That is how the axis troops in Sarajevo were saved.
With no visible signs of the connection to the real events on the
terrain, Cripps writes: “More reports were received of Chetnik colla-
boration, the most significant of which was the full text of a treaty
signed by one of Mihailovic’s principal commanders, lukacevic, and
the german Commander South East. lukacevic agreed a cessation of
hostilities in his area of southern Serbia and joint action against the
Partisans. a full copy of the treaty was sent to Churchill.”
This is a separate subject that merits a long discussion and I elabor-
ated on it in the fourth volume of General Draza Mihailovic and the
General History of the Chetnik Movement. In short, there was no agree-
ment. It was a german hoax as a way of psychological warfare. leaflets
with the text of the treaty were distributed from their planes through-
out Serbia. all in all, as far as Cripps is concerned, it is enough to say
that the copies of documents that are revealing Partisan ties with ger-
mans and the ustashe were never sent to Churchill.
This is how Cripps describes the denouement:
“Maclean delivered his report to anthony Eden on 7 november, rec-
ommending all-out support for the Partisans. This had been the view
of military intelligence since at least the end of September, when Talbot
rice's report backed the Partisans, and had also very probably been the
view of MI6 for some time. The Chiefs of Staff advised Churchill on 11
november that measures to support the Partisans should be intensi-
fied. The question of what to do about Mihailovic had still to be deci-
ded. Churchill took the decision to abandon him and his movement.
The existence of the principal source of Churchill's intelligence could
not be revealed – hence the publicity given to Maclean's report – altho-
ugh it told Churchill nothing he did not already know. In order to
justify the decision to Parliament, to allied governments, particularly
those in exile, and to the press, Mihailovic was told to blow up two im-
portant bridges in Serbia or lose British support. as expected, he failed
to act and British liaison officers were withdrawn from the Chetniks.
Churchill addressed the House of Commons for the first time in
six months on 22 february 1944. He dealt with the situation in Yugo-
slavia at length. He was unable to justify the decision by reference to
the decrypt and the advice he had received based on them, and there-
fore referred to reports received from Deakin and Maclean. In his per-
oration he advised that:
“our feelings, here, as elsewhere, I should like the House to see,
follow the principle of keeping good faith with those who keep good
faith with us, and of striving, without prejudice or regard for political
affections, to aid those who strike for freedom against nazi rule and
thus inflict the greatest injury on the enemy.”
Cripps concludes: “With these few words, Churchill publicly dis-
missed Mihailovic and the Chetniks, and embraced Tito and the Par-
tisans.”
Clearly Churchill was not concerned with certain details as to where
exactly were the Partisans launching their attacks on nazis? Cripps
doesn’t seem to be interested in this question either however he all of
a sudden refers to attacks as “instigations”, without explaining how
an army of two, three, four hundred thousand soldiers – enormous
numbers were used – was capable of nothing more but unsuccessfully
“instigate” the enemy. Cripps’ writes: “The Partisans continued to harry
the enemy, although the germans were able to keep the bauxite flow-
ing and to keep major communications routes open, allowing their
forces in greece to complete an orderly withdrawal in 1945. The Parti-
sans won the civil war and seized power in the immediate aftermath
of german surrender.”
It is noteworthy that at the end of his work Cripps finally provides
the reader with some correct information.

13.
To reach a general conclusion on this article would only be possible if
we ask one simple question: who is John Cripps? Even the omnipotent
google has no answer. There really is no answer. He is a fiction, he
does not exist. The name “Cripps” is nothing more than a pseudonym.
However, even if Cripps does not exist, his work does and a rather sub-
stantial one: a doctoral dissertation for one British university. More
to the point, the article is a summary of that dissertation. The author
did not publish anything under his name, neither the dissertation, nor
articles or any similar work. Why? We can assume that he was not too
proud of it. and he probably has valid reasons considering that a doc-
toral dissertation of a British scholar can be overturned by an average
Serbian high school student. Why is it so? let’s start by establishing
that we are not even concerned with “Cripps” here, so we will not refer
to him anymore. What we are dealing with here is a big solid system,
and our candidate for a doctorate was given only a selected portion of
documents at the archives to complete his research. He was only given
the materials that corresponded to the official version of British his-
tory on the situation in Balkans during the Second World War.
The undersigned author of this article thinks very highly of the
British view on history, except for the part where Byzantium’s role as
the most advanced and developed empire of its time is denied (no Brit-
ish historian would admit that for centuries Constantinople was what
New York stood for in the 20th century). However, when it comes to
recent events, which cross over into modern politics, British version of
historical events is simply appalling.

Translated by: Nenad Vojvodic
Edited by: Anastassia Pronsky-Stojanovic