Professor Tomasevich's Book Is Not, However, Above Criticism, and Two Main Areas May Be Focused on Here

Professor Tomasevich's book is not, however, above criticism, and two main areas may be focused on here. First, while the author attempts to be as fair as possible to Chetnik policy, he is so clearly out of sympathy with them, and so determined to destroy the Mihailovich myth, that his critical eye is focused somewhat off center. In part this is caused by the structure of the work, but in part too by what must be seen as a pro-Partisan bias. It seems, for example, misleading to condemn so outrightly the Great Serbia plans discussed by the Chetniks in 1941-42 (pp. 166 et seq) without setting them in the context of the terrible Ustashi massacres of Serbs, which Tomasevich mentions solely en passant on p. 173. A genuine fear of racial extermination might explain a lot which the author ignores. His explanation might be that the Ustashi massacres will be dealt with in his second volume, but this is hardly satisfactory, and one detects an anti-Serb bias. This is confirmed by the author's double-edged statement in a later context that while to some extent Chetnik terrorist acts against the Croatian and Moslem populations were a reaction to prior Ustashi actions, "they were in essence of the same kind" (p. 259). Yet only a few pages previously in a discussion of Partisan contacts with the Germans, the author has stressed the need to see all apparently condemnable acts in a total context, and concludes that such contacts were not in the same category as Chetnik collaboration. The same could surely be said of Serb actions in reaction to Ustashi terror, but the author fails to make the point. This is not to excuse Chetnik Great Serb ambitions, but to ask for "the total context." This brings us to the second area where Professor Tomasevich is open to criticism. His explanation of the conversations between Dippold for the Germans on the one hand and Popovic, Djilas and Velebit on the other, on 11 March 1943 (pp. 244-246) is disingenuous. It is quite true that the Partisans were keen to obtain combatant status, and that the talks were produced by extreme circumstances. Nonetheless, the documentary evidence quoted by Tomasevich clearly indicates that the Partisans regarded the Chetniks as their number one enemy and that they were prepared to consider a territorial arrangement with the Germans (p. 245). This is explained away by Tomasevich on the grounds mentioned above, but he noticeably fails to relate it to the order issued by Tito only two days beforehand, on 9 March 1943, that the Chetniks were the main enemy and that all captured Chetnik leaders and commanders were to be shot. Indeed, throughout the volume discrete (and discreet) evidence is offered showing unequivocally that the main objective of the Partisans was elimination of the Chetniks; the evidence is not fully integrated with the analysis--presumably, again, it will be left to a future volume. Towards the end of 1943, for example, the CPY Provincial Committee for Serbia urged party members to infiltrate and serve in German, Quisling, and Chetnik formations in order to further Chetnik objectives, following Tito's decision to capture control of Serbia. The informa- tion is confined to a footnote (p. 398) and is not commented upon. Yet was this not "in essence" collaboration? Every such decision by the Chetniks is documented and commented on. Likewise, when Tito's forces attacked Lucacevic's Chetnik group which was fighting the Germans in September, 1944, because they (the Chetniks) threatened Partisan control in Her- zegovina (p. 427), was this not "in essence" a form of collaboration? And finally, when Rankovic and the Communist security forces decided "literally to destroy all their internal enemies" in December, 1944 (p. 437), when the war was still proceeding against the Germans, was this "in essence" different from similar Chetnik ambitions? It is not that such an admission would absolve the Chetniks-Professor Tomasevich has produced too much evidence for that-but it would remove the suspicion that the author suffers occasionally from a mild case of moral myopia. It has been said that "the true nature of war is composed of innumerable personal tragedies, of grief, waste and sacrifice, wholly evil and not redeemed by glory." It is clear from this first volume of Professor Tomasevich's magnum opus that this is undoubtedly true for the Yugoslav experience; and no one came out of it with very clean hands. It is no help to Tito or anyone else to pretend otherwise. David Stafford University of Victoria Marshall Lee Miller, Bulgaria During the Second World War, Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1975. xii, 290 pp. $10.95. Mr. Miller's work is the first monographic attempt to describe the total internal political situation of Bulgaria during World War II. As such, it is a welcome addition to existing historical literature for scholars of the war, of Europe, and of the Balkans. The monograph re¡@"sents a masterful job of research based on material from Bulgarian, German, English, American, Italian, Russian, and even important Israeli sources. Miller also conducted extensive interviews with persons who played prominent roles in the events of that period and had discreet access (through his own devices) to Bulgarian documents which were closed to Western scholars at the time of his research. Despite a few minor errors to be expected in a book of this scope, Bulgaria During the Second World War sheds much light on many common myths and erroneous assumptions about this Balkan kingdom during the war. Miller deals with a variety of questions affecting the kingdom in the war years-irredentism, the Axis alliance, cabinet changes, administration of the new territories, anti-Semitic legislation and the fate of the Jews, the course of the war and diplomacy, the death of King Boris and the estab- lishment of the regency, the activitity of the Communist Party and the partisan struggle, and the little-known conflict with Italy over the Albanian-Macedonian border. Although the work is marked by scholarly impartiality, the author seems to hold the thesis that Boris's acknowledged wiliness enabled the country to obtain territorial gains while avoiding the consequences of the war. "While resisting Nazi demands to sever diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, to deport Bul- garian Jews to Germany, and to join the war on the Eastern Front, he managed to gain their support for the occupations of Southern Dobrudja, Macedonia, and Aegean Thrace" (p. 1). The emphasis on the responsibility of the king is not totally unwarranted but perhaps overdrawn. It is certainly true that Bulgaria avoided the worst ravages of war, that the Bulgarian Jews unlike others in Europe avoided the Nazi death camps, and that, although not all of Bulgaria's gains were perma- nent, those in Dobrudja were. Furthermore, the fate of Bulgaria after World War II cannot be attributed to a failure of Boris' policy, even though the prevention of "Bolshevizing" the kingdom was his chief goal; as Seton-Watson has pointed out, both friend and foe of the Germans in Eastern Europe suffered similar consequences. Nevertheless, the reader should be aware that there is a contrary interpretation to these events which emphasizes the force of circumstances and external and internal political pressures that can be said had as much to do with Bulgaria's fortunes as the craftiness of the king. After all in Miller's statement quoted above, the occupation of territory all occurred well before Berlin applied the pressures indicated. One of the most welcome sections in the monograph is the author's investigation of the death of King Boris in 1943, still widely held to be a result of German or other assassination. Miller considers all possibilities and has examined all available sources and opinions. His conclusion is the most obvious and probably the correct one, namely that the king died of natural causes. Still he does not close the door to revelations which future evidence may bring. Throughout, Miller bases his conclusions on the evidence. In many cases, where it is vague, as in the case of Boris' death, he refuses to take a definite stand. Another example concerns the assassinations of 1943, particularly those of General Khristo Lukov and Colonel Atanas Pantev (pp. 117-119), two right-wing extremists whose elimination relieved the royal government of fears of a Nazi-inspired coup. Memoirs and books published in the last two decades have detailed the assassinations, and there has even been a popular film in Bulgaria describing them. Although the evidence overwhelmingly indicates that Communist partisans committed these acts, because the assassinations calmed the Bulgarian political scene and because the Bulgarian accounts did not appear until some ten or fifteen years after the war, Miller does not categorically accept these accounts. On several items I disagree with Miller's interpretation of events although I do not fault his general accuracy of description. Miller emphasizes the role of the king in preventing deportations of Jews to Poland although he does not go to the polemical lengths that some authors have. In general his interpretation is not that far different from mine (in Bulgaria and the Jews, the Final Solution, i940-1944). The main prop of Miller's thesis is "if the Tsar had wanted the Jews to be deported, they would have been" (p. 102). This is certainly true, but it is still clear that the facts testify to King Boris' passive rather than active role in this affair. Elsewhere Miller interprets the cabinet change of April, 1942, as a result of the discovery of Communist units in the army-in other words, because of internal Bulgarian events.

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