World War Two and the Partisan Struggle 103
never forgave, suspecting that Koča had tried to run away, abandoning him with
the main body of the troops in the rout.^285 Later he demanded that Pop ović and
his deputy, Žujović, be tried by a court-martial, which Ranković prevented.^286
The Battle of Sutjeska was an absolute massacre and a terrible suffering, as it
resulted in seven thousand dead, including important Partisan commanders.
The Germans claimed that about eleven thousand Partisans had fallen, and ten
to twenty thousand had died from hunger and typhus fever. According to the
German report, there were fifteen thousand losses among civilians, as well.
Only three to four thousand combatants managed to escape from Durmitor,
heading in the direction of Bosnia.^287 As Bill Deakin’s assistant noted in his
diary: “We succeeded during the night in passing through German lines, about
one kilometer on one side and five hundred meters on the other. The circle was
closed again only fifty minutes after our sortie.”^288
For a moment, the Germans were even convinced they had taken Tito pris-
oner, according to a telegram General Lüters sent to Hitler’s High Command,
asserting that “the last hour of his army has struck.”^289 But shortly afterward it
became clear that this was just wishful thinking.
The Change in British PolicyWhen they reached the woods of eastern Bosnia, it was finally clear that the
Partisans were safe. Their morale of course was low, since news arrived from all
sides about enormous losses of life, numerous commanders fallen, and massa-
cres of the wounded and the sick.^290 The tragic experience, however, was not in
vain, since as early as 4 July 1943 the British ambassador in Moscow informed
the Soviet government that, from now on, Great Britain would assist all resis-
tance forces in Yugoslavia, in other words, that it would send aid to Tito’s Par-
tisans.^291 The reports that Bill Deakin, Churchill’s former research assistant,
sent to Cairo were decisive in changing the prime minister’s mind with regards
to the Partisan movement, inducing him to send military aid to Tito on the
con dition that he would not use it against Mihailović. This new attitude, par-
ticularly welcome to the British military, was influenced by the fact that during
Operation Schwarz the Germans had suffered about 2,500 casualties, an im-
pressive number, including the losses among dead, wounded, and dispersed,
“a remarkable feat... when one realizes that the Axis flew some 1,500 sorties
and dropped over 1,000,000 lbs. of bombs.”^292 The aid came quickly, in fact. On
25 June 1943 Allied planes had dropped explosives needed in the destruction of
the Sarajevo-Brod railway. Shortly after the landing of English and American
troops in Sicily on 10 July, dispatches of military material started to come regu-
larly, among them also unnecessary items such as shoes that were all left-footed
or food where there was an abundance of it and not where people were starving.