------ - ---------~"-~~~~-------~------=.. / - ) Tito's Yugoslav Partisan Movement By C. L. SULZBERGER By Special Permission from THE NEw YoRK TrMES, December 21-28, 1943 THE UNITED COMMITTEE OF SOUTH-SLAVIC AMERICANS 1010 Park Avenue, New York 28 , N. Y. " - -- - -- - - - - - -- Mr. C. L. Sulzberger's dispatches from Cairo to the New York Times-December 20-27, 1943-are an im­ portant contribution to the understanding of develop­ ments in embattled Yugoslavia. They are reprinted here in the belief that it will be useful to a good many people to have them together. To Mr. Edwin L. James, managing editor of the Times, many thanks for his permission to put the arti­ cles into a pamphlet issued by the United Committee of South-Slavic Americans. Louis ADAMIC New York, N . Y., January 20, 1944. STAMPING GROUND OF THE PARTISAN ARMY Yugoslavia, where Marshal Tito's forces have been pinning down some seven German army divisions by guerrilla warfare. 3 •, Yugoslavs Drawn to Tito By The smell of death Jay heavily in that city from twisted architectural skeletons and hanging human flesh. The bodies of persons slain by the Germans dan­ Gallant Uphill Fight gled from lamp-posts. Sharp bursts of automatic fire occasionally rattled across the bomb-torn squares as the By c. L. SULZBERGER seeds of new rebellious movements stirred in the By Wireless to THE NEw YORK TIMES. wreckage of the old. Today M. Broz as Marshal Tito commands the im­ CAIRO, Egypt, Dec. 21-There are now more than mense popular upheaval resulting and serves as the 250,000 men and women organized into approximately political president of its temporary Government which twenty-six divisions fighting a savage war aoa.inst some demands full recognition from the United Nations. He of Adolf Hitler's best veteran units alono Yuooslavia's sends and receives important military missions to and frontiers. That front stretches approximafely 3b50 miles from abroad. across forests, ravines and snow-covered mountains ranging between the Julian Alps of Slovenia and the Allies Send Him Supplies forbidding crags separating bleak Montenegro from Allied aircraft based in Italy are placed at the dis­ Albania and the south. posal of his specific commands. Sizable shipments, Bound together by aspirations for freedom, these which now number thousands of tons of Allied war soldiers, no matter what ideologists may think of them material, are being sent to his troops : guns, munitions, or their leaders, are, as admitted by Prime Minister trucks, uniforms, medicines and special apparatus. Churchill, opposing more enemy divisions than face His army includes a regular officers' corps with spe­ the Fifth and Eighth armies in Italy. As a result of cial insignia, from the rank of noncom to marshal. His their stubborn fight they are receivino American mate­ artillery, made up almost exclusively of captured wea­ rial ·a.nd military aid, and accomp~nying them are pons, has cannon as large as giant gun howitzers and Amencan and British missions that soon will be joined coastal riB.es. Officers' training schools, medical corps, by one from Russia. ordnance and adjutant generals' departments have They are openly and boastfully influenced by com­ been created within his supreme command. munism. Their chief is a Communist, and the Com­ His government, which includes a political melange munist party, as he declared in a public speech, initi­ ranging from old-line Communists to former right-wing ated and coordinated the peasants in their instinctive reactionaries,* has its own banking system, printing its yearning for liberty. They have proclaimed themselves own money and floating its own interest-bearing loans; for a .federation of the Southern Slav peoples without its own railroad, for which its own tickets are printed; favonng one over the other as do some of their oppo­ its own postal system, its own agricultural department, nents. and its own educational department, seeking to spread This force, which calls itself Yugoslav People's Army literacy among the peasantry. of Liberation, has been in process of formation for two In addition, there is a social organization that has and. a half years. It began with the gradual amalga­ arisen from the fires of national revolution which has mat10n of nationalist and patriotic guerrilla bands and its own churches with chaplains, Catholic, Orthodox their welding together by an underground political and Moslem, attached to fighting units; and theatres movement, fomented by a mixture of Communist and and ballets and hundreds of small newspapers. These democratic party leaders headed by a Croatian metal developments comprise the most interesting people's worker named Josip Broz, who has a Russian Soviet movement that has arisen from this war. It has now background. survived its terrible birth pangs, involving famine, For months M . Broz lived a furtive life in Belorade slaughter, battle and disease to the extent to which b under the eyes of the Gestapo. He sat quietly in a American history has only Valley Forge to offer in corner ?f cafes smoking endless cigarettes with a re­ comparison. volver m pocket, spreading his organization slowly while Nazi police and Serbian collaborationist oen­ ,,. This "political melange" is not a Yugoslav peculiarity. The January 3, 1944, Life magazine contains an article "Conserva­ darmerie hunted the capital's streets for him in s~out tives and Communists in Denmark Join Forces," by John cars mounting machine guns. Scott, who says that is true also in Poland and Norway.-L. A. 4 5 '• This is the story of that movement its victories its was magic. Thousands of peasants in that wide region defeats, its highest points, such as tl~e arrival of' the where his uncle is considered a sainted martyr joined first Allied mission in the midst of a terrible aale-swept the movement when word went about that "Principe's battle, and its nadirs, such as the fearful re~~ats across here." the wasted country~ide, with the rear brought up by M. Popora was captured by the Chetniks that same thousands of stragglmg wounded, feeding on raw meat year and turned over to the Italians. They shot him. and grass. He died courageously and stiff-backed, shouting, "Long Before commencing to tell this tale the writer wishes live Fatherland." to emphasize a desi.re to remain an objective reporter. He has no axe to grmd other than statino the facts and Killed by Germ.an Bomb ?epicting this heroic struggle which nowbis accomplish­ Young Ribar was killed by a German bomb just as mg so much to~~rd win~ing the war. The unhappy the plane he was about to take off to the Middle East aspects of fratnc1dal stnfe that accompanied these on a special military mission was hit last month. With developments cannot be ignored but can only be lamented. him died two British liaison officers and another mem­ ber of Marshal Tito's mission was wounded. Young Ribar's father today is president of the Partisans legis­ Nation's Defense Discussed lative assembly. The son was a colonel on Marshal This ... story beings in the period just before 1939, Tito's supreme command. ~h~n, on the eve of the cataclysm, this writer used to Olga Dedier died last June on top of Romanija sit m a smoky little Belgrade hafana, where gypsies Mountain near Sarajevo where she and Vladimir and b~nged tambourmes, called Triglav after Slovenia's the writer planned a fishing trip in 1940. As a qualified highest mountain, with a group of young Yugoslav doctor she was a major in the People's Army Medical men. named Ivan Ribar Jr., Mira Popora, Vladimir Corps. Dedier and ~lobodan Principe, nephew of that famous She was terribly wounded in the arm in the battle Bosman patnot whose assassination of Archduke Franz of Milin Klada while working with her surgical team Ferdinand in 1914 set the world ablaze for the first when the Luftwaffe delivered hundreds of successive time. bombing sorties. Marshal Tito was wounded there; a Occasionally the meetings took place in M. Dedier's nerve in his left arm was cut and he cannot yet close home, where Vladimir's handsome and oraceful wife his hand. A captain of the British Mission was killed Olga, . a Cabir:et Minister's daughter, ~sed to cook and Vladimir Dedier was struck in the head by a frag­ Amencan flapJacks, for which her husband had ac­ ment. quired ~ taste during his visit to the United States, Major Olga Dedier's shoulder was nearly cut off and when his brother, Stephen, was a Princeton under­ for nine days she staggered along, sometimes afoot, graduate.* sometimes on horseback, as the People's army fought ~hese young people used to discuss what they would its way out of encirclement. No medicine was avail­ do m the event of war and they formed a small oroani­ able and blood poisoning set in. On June 19 her left zation called the Anti-Fascist Youth Movement fo~ the arm was amputated in a dreary open field where the Defense of the Country, made up of university stu­ magpies picked its desolate earth for summer seedlings. dents: Sokol patriotic societies, Boy Scouts, etc. They When one of the few available ampules of heart stimu­ occa:10nally engaged in simple drills with a few rifles lant were brought to her, still conscious, she refused, provided for them by sympathetic officers. saying, "Don't give it to me. Save it for those who will !o?ay ~ll but one of this group are dead. Young live." Pnnc1pe died of wounds and typhus late in 1943 while The next day she died. Her husband and one officer commanding Partisan armies from East Bosnia.