100 World War Two and the Partisan Struggle
On 3 April 1943, Field Marshal Alfred Jodl signed an order entrusting General
Alexander Löhr to begin a new operation against the Yugoslav rebels, called
Schwarz. As Deakin describes it: “After the destruction of the Communist
Tito State, the question arises of destroying an array of national ‘Serbianism’
under the leadership of Draža Mihailović, so as to have, in the event of an
Allied landing in the Balkans, the hinterland cleared. Hitler and his generals
were unaware that they were victims of a British hoax, aimed at convincing
them, with forged documents, that the invasion was imminent.”^269 The Ger-
mans planned Operation Schwarz with the Chetniks as the primary object,
in full secrecy, so that even the Italians were not informed about it until the
last moment, in mid-May, when the formidable military machine organized
by Generals Alexander Löhr and Rudolf Lüters had already begun moving.^270
Lüters had at his disposal 127,000 men from the elite Edelweiss Division, trans-
ported for the occasion from the Caucasus, and the SS Division Prinz Eugen.^271
At dawn on 15 May 1943, he unleashed the attack, this time unhesitatingly
entering the territory occupied by the outraged Italians. Since it was soon clear
that the latter were protecting the Chetniks, at least those who did not run
away, he was forced to change his initial plan and to attack the Partisans, “the
only serious enemy.”^272 He encircled the Supreme Staff and the bulk of its
forces in the rugged mountainous area of Durmitor in northern Montenegro,
between the Piva and Tara rivers. To his great surprise, Tito, who was still hop-
ing for a cease-fire with the Germans, found himself besieged in a circle of fire,
with his men, about four thousand of whom were wounded and sick, exposed
to the attacks of the Luftwaffe, as well as Italian, Ustaša, and Bulgarian troops.
Since he had never organized any real intelligence, it was not until 18 May
1943 that he came to the realization that a new offensive against him was in
fact occurring. Moreover, the Germans were in possession of the codes used
in communications between the Supreme Staff and the General Staffs of its
divisions, and therefore had a pretty good idea of Tito’s whereabouts. Their
planes, and those of the Italians, regularly bombed the Supreme Staff and no
one knew what to do in the ensuing general chaos.^273 The problem, what to do
with the wounded, was once again pressing. Gojko Nikoliš, the chief of the
Sanitary Department at the Supreme Staff, describes the situation critically
and with bitterness: “The coolness, the optimism, the self-confidence, the faith
in the final victory, the refusal to think that the situation could be critical for us,
the trend to ‘ignore the peril’—all those traits were an ideal to which the entire
Partisan mentality was linked. But if such a mentality is not corrected by at
least some critical thought, then your eyes are shut to reality. I think that also
these details should be considered symptoms of the growing pains of a young
revolutionary army.”^274