Yugoslavia Betrayed: Tito Enables Soviet Oppression

During World War II, the country of Yugoslavia was occupied by Nazi troops. As in other occupied territories, local groups arose to resist the invading army.

In Yugoslavia, more than one resistance group existed. One group was led by General Dragoljub “Draza” Mihailovich. His fighters were called the Chetniks. They were very effective at guerilla warfare, and disrupted Nazi activity.

A second group was led by Josip “Tito” Broz, a communist. Tito was not very effective in military action against the Nazis, but he was politically astute: he worked to create conditions which would allow him to seize power once the war was over and the Nazis had left.

Draza worked continually to styme the Nazis. He also worked to link his Chetniks to the Allies, i.e., to England, France, and the United States. They could supply his group with materials and equipment; he could supply the Allies with information.

Tito’s communists worked with the USSR. They received support to set up Tito as a dictator after the war’s end; in return, Tito would rule Yugoslavia in a way that was favorable to the Soviet Socialists. Tito left Yugoslavia in May 1944, and spent the last year of the war hiding: his communist group gave little resistance to the Nazis.

Draza continued to fight against the Nazis until the end of the war, and he helped to liberate Yugoslavia.

The Allies were naturally inclined to support Draza. But the Soviets had a spy planted within the British intelligence agencies, specifically, in an office in Cairo, Egypt. James Klugmann worked for British intelligence, but was actually an agent for the USSR. For the British, he compiled reports about how the resistance movements were working in Yugoslavia. For the Soviets, he gave those reports a certain slant or bias.

Klugmann’s reports gave the impression that Tito was a brave hero, fighting the Nazis, and that Draza was ineffective in trying to liberate Yugoslavia.

Misled by Klugmann’s descriptions of the situation, the Allies gave less support to Draza and more to Tito. This slowed the eventual liberation of Yugoslavia, and meant that more people died in the fighting. As historians Stan Evans and Herbert Romerstein write,

Based on a steady stream of such reports, London turned decisively toward Tito. By the end of 1943, the British Foreign Office concluded that “There is no evidence of any effective anti-Nazi action initiated by Mihailovich,” and that “since he is doing nothing from a military point of view to justify our continued assistance,” a cutoff of material to the Chetniks was in order. A few months later, this would in fact be the policy adopted by the Western allies.

The war finally ended in May 1945. The Soviet army had large numbers of troops in Yugoslavia. More importantly, the Soviet espionage network was working to ensure that Tito could seize power without any meaningful resistance.

Before the end of 1945, the Soviet Socialists had staged a rigged election - the Communist Party was the only party on the ballot - and Tito was installed as dictator. Communists would oppress Yugoslavia for the next four decades.

Once in power, the communists moved quickly to arrest Draza. By July 1946, a show trial had convicted Draza of alleged crimes and executed him. In 2015, after documents from communist intelligence agencies revealed that the charges against Draza had been fabricated, a court in Serbia examined the documents, made them public for the first time, and declared that Draza was innocent.

Mussolini’s Fascism: One More Variety of European Socialism

The early years of the twentieth century saw a number of violent and radical political movements: fascism, communism, Naziism, and socialism. The revolution in Russia in October 1917 is the most famous incident in this trend, but it was not the only one.

Although carrying different names, these movements all shared several characteristics: they devalued individual political liberty, trading personal freedom for subordination to government directives; they reduced or eliminated the concept of a free market, instead requiring individuals and groups to buy and sell at certain prices.

These groups also increased taxation and brought various segments of the economy into government ownership.

These movements grew out of each other. Hitler’s Nazi Party was a socialist party: the word ‘Nazi’ means “national socialism.”

Benito Mussolini had experimented with various coalitions of socialists and communists before he formulated his own socialist movement: fascism. Mussolini was working on his political movement at the same time that Soviet Socialism was emerging from the October Revolution, as historian Dinesh D’Souza writes:

On March 23, 1919, one of the most famous socialists in Italy founded a new party, the Fasci di Combattimento, a term that means “fascist combat squad.” This was the first official fascist party and thus its founding represents the true birth of fascism. By the same token, this man was the first fascist. The term “fascism” can be traced back to 1914, when he founded the Fasci Rivoluzionari d’Azione Internazionalista, a political movement whose members called themselves fascisti or fascists.

Mussolini did not work in isolation. The socialist and communist activists of various countries constituted an informal network and were in communication with each other.

Both Hitler and Lenin worked with Mussolini. In 1930, Mussolini gave Hitler advice about how to take over the German government. Although Mussolini and Hitler had a disagreement in 1934, they soon got past the conflict and resumed working together. Lenin regarded Mussolini as a ‘rising star’ within the socialist movement, as Dinesh D’Souza reports:

In 1914, this founding father of fascism was, together with Vladimir Lenin of Russia, Rosa Luxemburg of Germany, and Antonio Gramsci of Italy, one of the best known Marxists in the world. His fellow Marxists and socialists recognized him as a great leader of socialism. His decision to become a fascist was controversial, yet he received congratulations from Lenin who continued to regard him as a faithful revolutionary socialist. And this is how he saw himself.

Competition between the different socialist groups became more intense: Hitler’s political party was the National Socialists, and he didn’t get along with other socialist parties in Germany, and ultimately didn’t get along with the Soviet Socialists.

Likewise, although Mussolini had enjoyed Lenin’s praise, fascist Italy declared war on the USSR in 1941.

These conflicts between various socialist and communist countries reflect competing ambitions and egos. These countries remained, even in war, agreed that government needed to regulate people’s lives.