86 World War Two and the Partisan Struggle
was resumed the following spring, this time with the help of the Italians, with
whom the Germans heatedly quarreled about whether it was right or wrong to
use the Chetniks in the struggle with the communists. Hitler claimed that they
too were nothing but outlaws with whom no collaboration was possible. Gen-
eral Mario Roatta, commander in chief of the Italian troops in the Balkans, was
of the opinion that, for the time being, they should be used and discarded later
when they were no longer needed. The discussion, which degenerated over the
following months into a serious quarrel between Rome and Berlin, came to
nothing. Although they agreed with the German objections, the Italians did
not renounce Chetnik aid, considering them an essential ally in the fight
against Tito’s forces.^201
Under the joint blows of the Germans, Italians, Ustaša, and Chetniks (there
were attempts at collaboration even between the latter), the Partisan detach-
ments vacillated. Tito tried to resist on the Serbian frontier, hoping to return to
Serbia and defeat the locally popular Chetniks, which he believed was impera-
tive in order to attain power.^202 However, in mid-May 1942, he lost his strong-
holds in the Foča area. The retreat from the town at the confluence of the
Drina and Čehotina rivers, ordered on 10 May, was inevitable.
Because of the difficult situation in which they found themselves, many
combatants deserted Tito’s camp and joined Mihailović, whose prestige was
growing thanks to the assistance of the Italians and the endorsement of the
British. The Partisans reacted by shooting deserters and burning villages, but
in so doing the civil war, which by now resembled a fratricidal massacre, gained
in strength. In order to escape from his entanglements, in mid-June 1942 Tito
reluctantly decided to move his forces to the Bosnian Krajina, stressing that it
was necessary “to go west in order to return east.”^203 He approached Croatia
and Slovenia, where the resistance was quite successful at the time. The inten-
sity of the outbreak of insurgent fighting in the province of Ljubljana in the
spring of 1942 surprised “the occupiers,” Kardelj noted, “but, it must be said,
even ourselves a little.”^204
The decision to move the bulk of the Partisan forces to western Bosnia,
where the Ustaše had committed some of their more heinous atrocities, was not
easy, since many in the Supreme Staff were against it, instead advocating a
return to Serbia. But Tito’s orders were categorical, and this probably kept the
resistance from breaking up.^205 “As the Red Army withdrew to the depths of
Russia,” Ranković recalled, “so we withdrew to the center of Yugoslavia.”^206
The “long march” of the bulk of the Partisan army (about 4,500 men) started
on 22 June 1942 and lasted for three weeks, with continuous clashes with Ger-
mans, Italians, Chetniks, Ustaše, and their Muslim collaborators. Tito took
advantage of the tensions between the Italians and the Germans, who jealously