Gestapo agent Tito and his gang sabotage the Popular Front against the Nazi occupation, pursue left-sectarian policies
Rather than fight Axis, Tito's group obsessed over Chetniks, when latter, under influence of British imperial allies of USSR, were temporarily engaged in a real fight against fascism. Against Comintern policy of promoting anti-fascist patriotism & downplaying communist symbols in war propaganda, Tito’s group pursued left-sectarian policies of elevating socialist symbols, downplaying patriotism, promoting a cult of personality around Stalin, and – skipping the bourgeois-democratic revolution phase – making Trotskyite leaps from feudalism to ‘socialist’ mode of production. Tito’s group also burnt down entire Montenegrin villages, thus carrying out ethnic cleansing and genocide against the population.
The History of the USSR & the Peoples’ Democracies
Chapter 12, Section 1 (C12S1)
Saed Teymuri
As shown in a previous article, the USSR accused Tito’s group of intelligence activities for the Gestapo during the Second World War. Hereby, in corroboration of the Soviet allegations, documentation on the Gestapo activities of Tito’s group will be provided using Anglo-American imperialist security sources as well as from the Djilas memoirs, with a focus on the Tito group’s left-sectarian policies in particular. Djilas admits to his own partaking in Tito’s policies.
In a long and well-sourced report to the US Congress, Joseph Martin – the official leader of the Republicans in the US Congress and thus the House Minority Leader – said:
when Hitler attacked Russia, Tito was killing Serbs – our allies – not Nazis. Tito was the best friend Hitler had. (Joseph Martin’s Report, May 24, 1945. Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 79th Congress, First Session, Volume 91, Part 4, May 7 1945 to June 1945. p. 4993. Bold added) (IMG)
The GOP/Republicans was more anti-Soviet and pro-Titoist than the ‘Democratic Party’ back then. Thus, as confirmed by the GOP’s leader in the Congress, Tito was ally of the Nazis in Yugoslavia as early as 1941, ‘when Hitler attacked’ the Soviet Union. (…).
Tito himself and the supreme staff of the Yugoslav partisan movement were busy conquering the Serbian-populated towns and implementing their Trotskyite policies there. The Uzice ‘Soviet’ Republic became the two-months-old capital of Tito’s gang:
It was in Uzice, a town of some 12,000 inhabitants, that Tito proclaimed a symbolic ‘Red Republic’ boasting its own hotel, bank, factories, newspaper and prison. All the future leaders of Yugoslavia held their positions in embryo, with Tito as President, Rankovic in charge of the secret police, Kardelj dealing with policy, and Djilas producing the newspaper Borba.
Tito worked and slept in the bank, whose coffers provided the Partisan treasury. On top of the bank building Tito erected a Partisan star, which glowed red at night and attracted German bombers. Factories turned out rifles, ammunition, matches, and uniforms, in which Tito took a particular interest. He had a Soviet pilot’s cap made for himself; this kind of cap, a pilotka, was later renamed the Titovka and became a standard issue to Yugoslav troops. While every other Partisan had a red star of cloth in his cap, Tito wore an enamel Soviet star with a hammer and sickle.
(Tito: and the Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia, Richard West, p. 113) (IMG)
Like Khrushchev and other Trotskyite enemies of Stalin, Tito tried to flatter the Soviet commander-in-chief, establishing the ‘Proletarian Brigade’ during the latter’s birthday:
On Stalin’s birthday, 21 December 1941, Tito established the ‘Proletarian Brigades’ which, as Djilas remarked, ‘were proletarian not in a literal but in an ideological sense’. Although these brigades later included genuine proletarians such as miners, shipyard workers and almost the whole of Split’s ‘Hajduk’ football team, most of the troops were Party activists from the urban middle class. The Marxist sound of the ‘Proletarian Brigades’ was to be a disadvantage … in the National Liberation Movement. (Tito: and the Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia, Richard West, p. 116) (IMG)
However, Yugoslavia did not need such ‘socialist’ slogans, phrase-mongering, and symbolism. Yugoslavia did not need a ‘socialist’ revolution at the time; what the Axis-occupied country needed more than ever was a progressive bourgeois-democratic revolution, much the better if communist-led, against the Axis occupation. The establishment of a ‘free’ ‘Red Republic’ with ‘socialist’ slogans and symbolism were measures hostile to the force of communism, the proletariat, and democracy, for such measures were Trotskyite left-sectarian. The communist line under the condition of fascist occupation was to downplay communist symbols and slogans and to emphasize the national-liberationist character of the struggle. Tito’s gang disagreed with such anti-fascist policy promoted by the Comintern.
Nor did Stalin ever need or desire the creation of a cult around him; he was opposed to such left-opportunist attempts by his fake ‘friends’ to etherealize him. In C5S8, it was mentioned that Stalin was opposed to the cult of personality fostered around him. While Tito’s gang was implementing Trotskyite policies in Serbia, Stalin – without directly naming Tito’s gang – condemned such left-opportunist attempts at imposing a ‘Soviet’ ‘regime’ on ‘the Slavonic or other enslaved nations of Europe’:
We have not, and cannot have, any such war aims at that of imposing our will and our regime upon the Slavonic or other enslaved nations of Europe, who are expecting our help. Our aim is to help these nations in the struggle for liberation they are waging against Hitler's tyranny and then to leave it to them quite freely to arrange their lives on their lands as they think fit. There must be no interference whatever in the internal affairs of other nations! (‘Speech on the Twenty-Fourth Anniversary of the October Revolution, to the Moscow Soviet and Representatives of Moscow party and Public Organizations’, Joseph Stalin, November 6, 1941. Cited in: A Documentary History of Communism and the World: From Revolution to Collapse, 3rd Edition, University Press of New England, Robert V. Daniels, pp. 88-89. Cited in: The Cold War: Interpreting Conflict through Primary Documents [2 volumes], edited by Priscilla Roberts, p. 105) (IMG)
Stalin’s opposition to Tito’s Trotskyite measures is confirmed by Franklin Lindsay, an OSS operative who landed in Yugoslavia to support Tito and later emerged as the head of the American Military Mission to Tito’s group. He later served as a founding official of the CIA, with a focus on widening the gap between Tito regime and the USSR. In his memoirs, Lindsay wrote:
The Comintern instructions, significantly, also directed the Yugoslav party to “take into consideration that at this stage your task is the liberation from Fascist oppression and not Socialist revolution” In March 1942 the Comintern repeated their guidance in a further message to Tito:
Study of all information you send gives the impression that the adherents of Great Britain and the Yugoslav Government have some [justification] in suspecting the Partisan movement of acquiring a Communist character, and aiming at the Sovietization of Yugoslavia. Why, for example, did you need to form a special Proletarian Brigade? We earnestly request you to give serious thought to your tactics in general and to your actions, and to make sure that you on your side have really done all you can to achieve a united national front.
The Comintern also advised Tito to play down the conflict with the Chetniks: “It is not opportune to emphasize that the struggle is mainly against the Chetniks. World opinion must first and foremost be mobilized against the invaders; mentioning or unmasking the Chetniks is secondary.” In spite of Moscow’s directives, Tito continued to concentrate on the defeat of the Chetniks and to prepare the ground» step by step, for the creation of a postwar Communist government.
Throughout the war Moscow continued to advise Tito to avoid anything that smacked of a provisional government, to play down the role of the party, to emphasize the role of the National Liberation Front, and to emphasize that the Front had representatives of all parties and groups resisting the German occupation. Yet Tito ignored Stalin’s advice. Instead he created a provisional government in liberated territory in 1943…. Stalin was furious when he learned of the former;
(Beacons in the Night: With the OSS and Tito’s Partisans in Yugoslavia, Franklin Lindsay, p. 334) (IMG)
Djilas too, in his memoirs, corroborated the suspicion of the Soviets that Tito’s group were essentially Trotskyites:
Though in May 1942 we scoffed at Mihailovic's claim that the Yugoslav Communists were Trotskyites because they didn't listen to Moscow, the suspicion was born in us that not only was this diabolical brew concocted by the British Secret Service, but that Moscow knew of it and chose to ignore it. All this was in time relegated to oblivion, only to be resurrected when Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union parted ways, and particularly when they crossed each other. (Wartime, Milovan Djilas, 1977, p. 144) (IMG)
It is no wonder then that Stalin for long refused to enthusiastically endorse the Trotskyite regime of Tito’s clique – the very regime that sought to flatter him by founding its ‘Proletarian Brigades’ on his birthday – and instead supported the Chetniks led by Dragoslav ‘Draza’ Mihalovic:
Stalin and Churchill supported Draza Mihailovic because he was popular with the Serbs and therefore the man most dangerous to the Germans. They thought that the Partisans, with their Communist slogans and red star camps, were alienating the Serbs and therefore splitting the opposition to Germany. And at that time Stalin and Churchill were right. (Tito: And the Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia, Richard West, p. 116) (IMG)
Tito and his group should have supported the common-sense line of Stalin by allying with the bourgeois forces against the fascist invaders. However, far from agreeing with the Soviet leader whom they had flattered to heavens, Tito’s gang obstructed all attempts for an alliance with the Soviet-backed Chetniks. A US intelligence document – undated but from the looks of it, most likely written between late June 1950 and early March 1953 – confirmed that Tito was responsible for the failure to reconcile the two forces against the Axis invaders:
All attempts on the part of the allies to reconcile the two armed factions of resistance [i.e. Chetniks and Partisans] so that they may cooperate with one another as was the case in other occupied countries, failed as a result of the obstructions of Tito … who on top of it shamelessly threw the blame for these very facts on Mihailovic. (Economic Situation in FNR Yugoslavia, CIA, p. 5) (IMG)
Richard West also confirmed:
Tito … wanted to conquer the Chetniks more than he wanted to drive the foreigners out of the country. (Tito: and the Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia, Richard West, p. 143) (IMG)
By warring against the Soviet-backed Chetnik forces, Tito’s gang was fighting the Nazis’ proxy war against the USSR. All of this was a part of Tito’s general activity on behalf of his Nazi German spymasters. Again, recall that in a long and well-sourced report to the US Congress, Joseph Martin – the official leader of the Republicans in the US Congress and thus the House Minority Leader – had said:
when Hitler attacked Russia, Tito was killing Serbs – our allies – not Nazis. Tito was the best friend Hitler had. (Joseph Martin’s Report, May 24, 1945. Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 79th Congress, First Session, Volume 91, Part 4, May 7 1945 to June 1945. p. 4993. Bold added) (IMG)
The Trotskyite measures of Tito’s gang in the Uzice Republic were all done in the names of ‘socialism’ and ‘communism’. Through their left-reactionary policies, the Trotskyites successfully tarnished the reputation of communism among the inhabitants of Uzice. The situation in Montenegro, if not worse, was no better. There, a popular anti-fascist uprising had taken place; but the Axis occupation forces were able to successfully crush the uprising. However, as time went by, the Trotskyite-led YCP partisans were able to take over some of the Axis-occupied territories, and thereby implemented Trotskyite policies in those Montenegrin territories. Elizabeth Roberts – member of the Australian Diplomatic Service serving in Paris and researcher in the House of Commons for the Liberal Party spokesman on Foreign Affairs – wrote:
as the Partisans began to retake some of the terrain lost after the crushing of the uprising, their return was accompanied by a spate of executions of their fellow Montenegrins. Many of those executed were denounced as spies or collaborators but others were in reality simply prominent citizens judged to be ‘class enemies’, a category that included former members of parliament, judges and larger landowners. Caught between the Partisans’ excesses and fear of Italian reprisals, many villagers turned instead to the nationalist bands as offering some degree of protection. So counterproductive was this upsurge of extremism that the Communists themselves later denounced it as an example of ‘left deviation’, a fundamental error for which Djilas was blamed. But it was in his absence from Montenegro, from November till the following March, that some of the worst atrocities were perpetrated including the macabre events that took place outside Kolasin over Orthodox Christmas of 1941-2. Here fanatical young Partisans carried out a particularly gruesome series of executions of prominent townspeople in a field where the bodies were then dumped together with that of a tortured dog at a site they dubbed the ‘Graveyard’. (Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro, Cornell University Press, Elizabeth Roberts, p. 361) (IMG)
The Trotskyite leader responsible for implementing such extreme-left measures in Montenegro was Milovan Djilas:
Djilas … was by his own admission involved in the executions of some civilians and prisoners. His account of the period, Wartime, published in the United States and Britain in 1977 at a time when publication was impossible in Yugoslavia, is a work that must stand as one of the great memoirs of warfare of modern history. In it Djilas admits to ordering or acquiescing in both the burning of villages and the execution individuals who were in no way collaborators but were deemed by virtue of their occupation or social position to be 'reactionaries' and class enemies…. (Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro, Cornell University Press, Elizabeth Roberts, pp. 361-362) (IMG)
More details will be provided later, concerning Djilas’s confessions on the burning of villages.
In his memoirs, Djilas recalls:
It became increasingly clear to me that our imprudent, hasty executions, along with hunger and war weariness, were helping to strengthen the Chetniks. Even more horrible and inconceivable was the killing of kinsmen and hurling of their bodies into ravines – less for convenience than to avoid the funeral processions and the inconsolable and fearless mourners. In Hercegovina it was still more horrible and ugly: Communist sons confirmed their devotion by killing their own fathers, and there was dancing and singing around the bodies. How many were executed in Montenegro and Sandzak at that time? I don't know, but several hundred doesn't seem exaggerated. All too lightly the Communists destroyed the inherited, primeval customs – as if they had new and immutable ones to replace them with. By retrieving the bodies from the ravines and giving them solemn burial, the Chetniks made impressive gains, while pinning on the Communists the horrible nickname of "pitmen." (Wartime, Milovan Djilas, 1977, p. 149) (IMG)
In a research book published by the Cornell University Press, Ivo Banac, a prominent Croatian-American historian at Yale University, described the events as follows:
The burning of “enemy” villages and the confiscation of “enemy” property were commonplace during the Left Errors. Partisan units were given quotas of “fifth columnists” to be shot. Perhaps as many as 500 were executed in Hercegovina alone. (…). Plans were laid for the building of soviets and kolkhozes. Churches were desecrated and such anti-Western jingles as “Partisans, prepare your machine guns to greet the king and Englishmen” were quite popular. In addition to the Partisan slogan, “Death to fascism – liberty to the people,” a new slogan was gaining currency: “The Red Army is with us – victory is ours.” Idleness in the villages was treated as military desertion, and peasants were fined or sentenced to forced labor if their houses were untidy or if they were infested by lice. (With Stalin against Tito: Cominformist Splits in Yugoslav Communism, Cornell University Press, Ivo Banac, 1988, p. 82) (IMG)
Moshe Pijade, said the MI6 operative Richard West, even went on to create his own pseudo-‘sovkhoz’:
In their isolation and hopelessness, some of the Partisans in Montenegro seem to have taken refuge in fantasy. The avant garde Mosa Pijade, or ‘Uncle Janko’, started a sovkhoz, or Soviet state farm, on Mount Durmitor, stocked with animals stolen from Chetnik peasants. (Tito: and the Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia, Richard West, pp. 119-120) (IMG)
This is confirmed based on Djilas’s memoirs. Djilas wrote:
Alongside the heroic and tragic undertakings, there were also the grotesque and the preposterous. Pijade concocted the idea of establishing on Mount Durmitor animal farms that would be modeled on the sovkhozes or Soviet state farms described by our Soviet-trained "Muscovites," and stocked with cattle seized from Chetnik peasants. With his lively imagination, Pijade threw himself into a detailed inventory and disposition of sheep, cows, bulls, sheds, pens, shepherds, milkmaids, herders, monthly and yearly yields of wool, milk, and meat. There was a fair supply of those animals – some twelve thousand sheep alone, with hopes for their increase along with improvement in planning and organization. For a beginning Pijade engaged Mitra, happy that he would at last have an intelligent and resourceful helper who, on top of everything, could take shorthand. True, neither of them knew much about farm animals. Mitra was from a small town where the well-to-do kept animals, so she might conceivably have known how many teats a cow had, but in the case of Mosa Pijade even this was unlikely. However, that seemed unimportant for the job at hand. Who can expect herders to manage farms? Mosa and Mitra zealously organized shepherd brigades, administrators, and inspectors. Provision was also made, to be sure, for competition between camps. Mosa established strict economy and discipline, yet the animals kept disappearing, and the yields fell short. Mitra made fun of the whole venture with a merriment no more restrained than her diligence and devotion to the job. Even so, this project might have survived until the end of the war, had not the Chetniks and Italians swept down upon us, and the Partisan units and the peasants appropriated the animals. Overnight, everything disappeared except Mosa's and Mitra's saddlebags crammed with regulations, inventories, decrees, and orders. (Wartime, Milovan Djilas, 1977, p. 175) (IMG)
Moshe Pijade, a sworn Nazi-collaborationist traitor to the Yiddish people and one of the closest henchmen of the Gestapo agent Tito, put to torch the entire village of Zabljak
The Chetniks had broken through in considerable force. We had only two small battalions left with which to confront them. But we did secure the withdrawal of our wounded, around six hundred of them. That evening the clouds grew red over Durmitor's peaks, as Pijade and Pekic set Zabljak on fire to keep it from serving as a Chetnik stronghold. (Wartime, Milovan Djilas, 1977, p. 177) (IMG)
Djilas comments:
the Chetniks were also a guerrilla army, so for them every village could be a stronghold. On the other hand, it was justified not to accept the Chetnik takeover of a town which had been ours for so long and with such devotion. Though there were regrets over the burning of Zabljak, there was no criticism. (Wartime, Milovan Djilas, 1977, p. 177) (IMG)
Again and again, entire villages were burnt down by the Trotskyite gang of Tito:
On their way to Bihac in the mainly Muslim north-west of Bosnia, the partisans put to the torch the Chetnik villages in the plain of Grahovo, and almost burnt to the ground the birthplace of Gavrilio Princip, the Sarajevo assassin of 1914. (Tito: and the Rise and Fall of Yugoslavia, Richard West, p. 124) (IMG)
Such Trotskyite policy lines were:
completely out of tune with the Soviet position…. (With Stalin against Tito: Cominformist Splits in Yugoslav Communism, Cornell University Press, Ivo Banac, 1988, p. 82) (IMG)
Note that the interests of Tito’s group were inversely correlated with the interests of the Yugoslav communist movement. The weaker the Yugoslav Communist Party, the more the casualties inflicted upon the Yugoslav communists and patriots, the stronger became the hand of Tito’s clique. As such, the Trotskyite left-opportunism of Tito’s group:
weakened the base of the Politburo's control to the point of virtual collapse. Terrorized peasants who were anything but kulaks or collaborators swelled the Chetnik ranks in Montenegro and eastern Hercegovina. (With Stalin against Tito: Cominformist Splits in Yugoslav Communism, Cornell University Press, Ivo Banac, 1988, p. 82) (IMG)
Indeed:
Partisan excesses were … why the winter of 1941 saw ordinary villagers deserting the Partisans and turning for support to local nationalists. (Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro, Cornell University Press, Elizabeth Roberts, p. 363) (IMG)
Precisely as the Gestapo agent Tito’s gang of Trotskyite wreckers intended, communism grew unpopular amongst the masses of the Yugoslav people. By the end of 1941, the Trotskyite regime became very unstable; it was unpopular internally, while susceptible to swift German assaults externally.
The Gestapo wreckers leading the Party ensured that as much casualties would be inflicted on the lower echelons of the Yugoslav Communist Party which were indeed predominantly made up of Soviet-friendly, non-Trotskyite communists. The German military itself would directly do the job for Tito’s gang. On November 25, 1941, the German 342nd Infantry Division (ID) launched their operation against the Uzice Republic:
The 342nd ID was still in use in the Valjevo area until 23rd November, repeating the "cleansing" of the surrounding area twice earlier during the previous month. From there, on 25 November, they pushed south to the capital of the partisans. The 113th ID started out from its Jagodina-Krusevac landing area, where it had arrived in full on the 24th of November, heading west the following day. Flanking were also four battalions of the occupying divisions and - as far as in the West, a novelty associations of the Serbian gendarmerie in use. According to German estimates, these forces faced about 10,000 partisans in the Cacak / Uzice area. (PARTISANENKRIEG IN JUGOSLAWIEN 1941-1944, Verlag E.S. Mittler & Sohn GmbH, Klaus Schmider, p. 78. Citing: ‘Ebd., S. 73-78 u. BA/MA, RW 40/14 10-Tage-Meldung der 342. ID an den Bev. Kdr. Gen. (10.12.1941).’) (IMG)
Of course, it would have been strategically unsound for the Nazis to kill their own agents at the helm of the Yugoslav Communist Party during the fighting. And indeed, the Nazis, when given the chance to shoot the Gestapo agent Tito and his gang, refused to fire at their own agents:
Although the enclosure was again not complete enough to allow a complete annihilation of the enemy, Tito and his supreme staff managed to escape only by German leadership mistakes in the Boehme entry. Thus, the partisan leadership had … to flee head over heels south towards the Italian-occupied Sandzak. In doing so, they benefited from the fact that such an escape route had either been overlooked or rejected as unlikely in the German Einsatz Order. Even more serious, however, was that the 342nd Infantry Division's peaks on pursuit of the Sandzak border, at the express command of the divisional commander, halted the persecution. (PARTISANENKRIEG IN JUGOSLAWIEN 1941-1944, Verlag E.S. Mittler & Sohn GmbH, Klaus Schmider, p. 78. Citing: Wartime, Milovan Djilas, pp. 103-115. BA/MA, RH 26-342/16 Einsatzbefehl zum Unternehmen Uzice (18.11.1941)) (IMG)
December 1: A comparison of German and Yugoslav battle reports shows that at this time the group led by Tito and the Supreme Staff was only a few minutes ahead of their German pursuers, and, with a push of the 342nd ID into the Italian occupation zone, would have been with high probability killed in battle or captured. (PARTISANENKRIEG IN JUGOSLAWIEN 1941-1944, Verlag E.S. Mittler & Sohn GmbH, Klaus Schmider, p. 80. Citing: Wartime, Milovan Djilas, pp. 109-113. BA/MA, RW 40/14 342. ID/Ia 10-Tage-Meldung vom 30.11. bis 10.12.41 (10.12.1941)) (IMG)
Again, the interests of the ‘Yugoslav Communist Party’ were inversely correlated with the interests of Tito’s terrorist organization which led the YCP. The Third Reich did not inflict any harm upon its spy ring in the Party leadership, but vigorously moved to exterminate thousands of lower-ranking YCP members, capturing thousands of rifles as spoils of war:
Nevertheless, the extent of the seized prey and especially the numerical relationship between it and the number of fatalities was a sure indication that the insurgency movement had been dealt a blow this time: 2,000 killed, 2,723 captured rifles. (PARTISANENKRIEG IN JUGOSLAWIEN 1941-1944, Verlag E.S. Mittler & Sohn GmbH, Klaus Schmider, p. 80. Citing his sources, Schmider says: ‘In a first report of December 5, the spoils are numbered 18 MG and 1,537 rifles; see. BA/MA, RH 20-12/121 Der Bev. Kdr. General an den Wehrmachtbefehlshaber Südost (5.12.1941). The 10-day announcement of the 342nd ID on 10 December speaks of 28 MG and 2,723 rifles; see. RW 40/14.’) (IMG)
With minimal casualties on the German side, the Third Reich triumphantly destroyed the lower-ranking members of the Yugoslav Party, while allowing the Trotskyite fascist agents on the upper echelons of the Party to escape. A remarkably similar incident would occur a few months later, this time as a result of direct collusion between Tito and the Italian Fascist command.
On Tito’s behalf, Milutinovic and Djilas, two ‘former’ Trotskyite associates of the notorious terrorist Petko Miletic, had been slaughtering the Slavs of Montenegro in the name of ‘socialism’. After his escape from Uzice, the Gestapo agent Tito called on Ivan Milutinovic to divert more Yugoslav revolutionary fighters into fighting the heavily fortified Italian Fascist positions in Pljevlja:
In early December the Partisans’ prestige had been deeply damaged by a failed attack on the Italian garrison at Pljevlja which left them with over 300 dead and two to three times that number wounded. Milutinovic believed that in order to send the Montenegrin Partisans into Serbia in compliance with Tito's orders he had first to drive the Italian forces out of Pljevlja, a key point in their battle to control the Sandzak. As he was to discover, his plan to reduce the garrison and capture the town was over-ambitious. Pljevlja was heavily fortified and defended by the highly capable Alpine Pusteria Division. Tito, who had been initially consulted by Milutinovic, had already expressed grave doubts over the viability of the plan…. Hoping for both glory and booty, Milutinovic went ahead with catastrophic consequences. Although some Partisan units fought bravely, others had melted away even before battle was engaged, thereby providing the nationalists with a demonstration of Partisan military ineptitude, if not actual cowardice, which they were quick to exploit.
(Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro, Cornell University Press, Elizabeth Roberts, p. 363) (IMG)
A look at the map of the Yugoslav war renders it clear that conquering Pljevlja was not strategically necessary for the survival of Tito and his staff who were migrating from Uzice. A much more powerful imperialist occupation force can be vanquished not by striking it where it is strongest, but by attacking it wheresoever it is weakest. To win, persistently attack the enemy from where it is weakest so that via that avenue, the enemy would be deprived of the resources with which it could even upkeep its strength. By contrast, to sabotage a military force, have that military force keep on attacking where the enemy is the strongest. The Gestapo agent Tito and the notorious Trotskyite Milutinovic knowingly sabotaged the military operations against the Nazis. They struck the enemy force wherever it was strongest. Naturally were yielded heavy casualties – approximately one thousand Yugoslav communists and progressives, the sons and daughters of Yugoslavia who laid their lives for freedom only to be stabbed in the back by the Trotskyite-Nazi wreckers leading them. This entire battle launched by Tito and Milutinovic was nothing short of military sabotage.
As always, Tito refused to accept blame for the catastrophic defeat he caused. He highly doubted that the YCP would triumph over the Nazis in that battle – and that was the point. The point was that the YCP would not triumph, which was the YCP leadership, Tito’s gang, did nothing to stop Milutinovic and his group from launching the doomed-to-fail military operation. Under great pressure, to deflect criticism away from himself, Tito was forced to rightly blame Milutinovic, but did not take any responsibility himself. In the post-war years, when the Yugoslav communist freedom-fighter and patriot Arso Jovanovic proved to be too anti-Trotskyite for Tito to tolerate, after the Tito group assassinated Jovanovic while he was on his escape route to the camp of the USSR and the Peoples’ Democracies, Tito decided to blame him for the Pljevlja battle as well:
On hearing the news Tito blamed both Arso Jovanovic, the commander, and Milutinovic for the defeat, although it was not until Arso Jovanovic broke with Tito over the split with Stalin in 1948 that his role in the debacle at Pljevlja resurfaced to set the seal on his disgrace. (Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro, Elizabeth Roberts, p. 363) (IMG)
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Red represents the YCP partisans. Photoshopped screenshot from a video. Video source: (Yugoslav Partisans during World War II, YouTube, Balkan History May 27, 2017) |
Afterwards, the YCP (abbreviated in Yugoslavia as KPJ) was attacked by Chetniks, who were aiming for self-defense against Titoist betrayals:
Buoyed by the self-inflicted propaganda defeat of the KPJ, the Chetniks and the occupiers inflicted several military defeats on the Partisans in the spring of 1942. (With Stalin against Tito: Cominformist Splits in Yugoslav Communism, Cornell University Press, Ivo Banac, 1988, p. 82) (IMG)
As confirmed by Djilas, the Trotskyite policies of Tito’s gang in Montenegro were precisely the key set of factors leading to the rise of the Chetnik movement in Montenegro:
And though I didn't have sufficient maturity to express it, I sensed that the Chetniks also profited from the Communists' excessive stress on Montenegrin, as distinct from Serbian, nationality. I thought then, and I believe to this day, that this explains in part why the Chetniks gained their most vital and broadest support from the Vasojevici, a region and clan which from ancient times has looked to Serbia for leadership. Serbianism was the most vociferous and emphatic sentiment of the Montenegrin Chetniks – all the more so in that the Montenegrins are, despite provincial and historical differences, quintessential Serbs, and Montenegro the cradle of Serbian myths and of aspirations for the unification of Serbs. (Wartime, Milovan Djilas, 1977, p. 149) (IMG)
The Trotskyite group of Tito had overwhelmingly lost support among the Montenegrins. Thus, a while after Djilas’s return from Montenegro, the Gestapo agent Tito, the systematic exterminator of the Montenegrin people, ordered Djilas to go back and restore ‘order’ by doing ‘whatever was necessary, including the burning of whole villages’:
Ostrog monastery on 8 and 9 February 1942 failed in its attempt to harness popular support by setting up a National Liberation Council intended to lay the foundations for a future Government of Montenegro. Meanwhile increasing hunger among the population was encouraging yet more defections among the Partisans' peasant supporters…. So concerned was Tito at the prospect of losing Montenegro that in March 1942 he ordered Djilas to return to Montenegro to replace the now out of favour Milutinovic. Not only was Montenegro a traditional bastion of Communist support, but its loss would rule out the prospect of the Partisans in Serbia receiving help by sea, as well as forfeiting large tracts of country best suited to guerrilla warfare. Tito therefore authorized Djilas to do whatever was necessary, including the burning of whole villages to discourage their inhabitants from going over to the Chetniks. (Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro, Cornell University Press, Elizabeth Roberts, p. 366) (IMG)
Djilas in his memoirs wrote:
The danger loomed of losing Montenegro, our most important base, and of its final separation from Serbia. An analysis was made of the situation and, naturally, of "errors." All along we were troubled by the peasants' excuse that they were going over to the Chetniks for fear of having their houses burned down and other reprisals. This issue came up at the meeting with Tito, and the following argument developed: If the peasants realize that if they go over to the invader we will also burn their houses, they will change their minds. This argument seemed logical to me, too, though I did not support it resolutely. Finally Tito made up his mind, though hesitantly: "Well, all right, we can burn a house or a village here and there." Later Tito issued orders to that effect – orders that were fairly bold, by virtue of being explicit. (Wartime, Milovan Djilas, 1977, p. 146) (IMG)
The prominent American anti-Soviet diplomatic official Walter Roberts wrote that the Trotskyite gang of the Gestapo agent Tito:
On February 8 … even proclaimed such territory of Montenegro as they held to be an integral part of the USSR. (‘Tito, Mihailović, and the Allies, 1941-1945’, Walter R. Roberts, p. 55) (IMG)
Although Stalin had emphatically condemned any attempts to impose the Soviet system on the Slavic countries, this did not stop the Yugoslav Trotskyites leading the YCP to call on Montenegro to be annexed by the USSR. The Titoists were effectively supporting the Nazi and Trotskyite propaganda depictions of the USSR as a ‘chauvinist’ ‘aggressive’ expansionist power.
By March of 1942, Tito’s Trotskyite group had overwhelmingly sabotaged the image of the Yugoslav Communist Party. As such, Tito’s group was pressured by public opinion to officially denounce its own Trotskyite policies:
The Politburo then repudiated the Left Errors, “ignoring the fact that the [wrong line] in fact was formulated by the KPJ CC.” The principal exponents of the Left Errors (Milovan Djilas and Ivan Milutinovié in Montenegro and Boris Kidrié in Slovenia) were not punished, but some local leaders were (Miro Popara and Petar Drapöin in Hercegovina and several members of the party leadership in Montenegro). (With Stalin against Tito: Cominformist Splits in Yugoslav Communism, Cornell University Press, Ivo Banac, 1988, pp. 82-83) (IMG)
In practice, however, the Trotskyite policies did not stop. As Elizabeth Roberts pointed out:
The killings … did not stop, and nor did burning of villages and settlements. (Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro, Cornell University Press, Elizabeth Roberts, p. 366) (IMG)
Nor did the left-sectarian phrase-mongering of Tito’s group stop:
in rejecting the excesses of the Left Errors, the KPJ leadership did not reject the leftist goals of class revolution and Communist control; (With Stalin against Tito: Cominformist Splits in Yugoslav Communism, Cornell University Press, Ivo Banac, 1988, p. 83) (IMG)
In early April of 1942 for instance:
thirty members of the Karadzici clan were deemed guilty of conspiracy and executed in Savnik. Many of them, as Djilas himself observes, were condemned solely on the basis of clan affiliation, although the Partisans themselves would have argued that while such a penalty was extreme, it was a reaction to the clan’s known nationalistic and anti-Communist fanaticism. (Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro, Cornell University Press, Elizabeth Roberts, p. 366) (IMG)
Boio Ljumovic, a YCP official who harbored a line to the right of the left-deviationists, would have served to reduce the leftist deviations of Tito’s gang. Thus, as the saboteur-in-chief Tito removed Ljumovic from his positions in Montenegro, thereupon tilting the balance further in the favour of the Trotskyite exterminators of the Montenegrin nation:
Curiously, Boio Ljumovic, political secretary of the KPJ regional committee for Montenegro and a future Cominformist, whom Djilas considered an opportunist and a rightist, was also removed from the Montenegrin party leadership, at least for the time being. (With Stalin against Tito: Cominformist Splits in Yugoslav Communism, Cornell University Press, Ivo Banac, 1988, p. 83) (IMG)
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