World War Two and the Partisan Struggle 115
about this.” This is why Radio Free Yugoslavia was compelled to keep silent
about the AVNOJ for two weeks. Only when it was evident that American and
British reactions were on the whole positive and that the Western media had
reported favorably on Jajce, could it broadcast a communiqué of which the
Soviet government would take notice.^338 “Only then,” added Kardelj in the
above quoted note, “did we get a telegram, in which they neither agreed, nor
disagreed, but only gave generic advice.”^339
Churchill’s IllusionsTito was well aware of the favor Churchill had done him by not taking a hostile
attitude toward the National Liberation Committee of Yugoslavia. “The Rus-
sians would not fight for us,” he said some years later. “Because of his interests,
Stalin would have left us alone. Churchill’s attitude brought the Great Powers
together and helped affirm us on the international level.”^340 Consequently the
royal government in exile became isolated in its protest against the “violence
of the terrorist movement” (as they called the Partisans), which, in its opinion,
did not represent the national, democratic, and social aspirations of the Yugo-
slav peoples, and was successful only because of the disgraceful support “of
some Allied institutions.” This thinly veiled criticism had no effect on Churchill,
and he remained firm in his decisions to abandon the Chetniks and help the
Partisans. On his return from the Tehran Conference, on 10 December 1943,
he received King Petar and his prime minister, Božidar Purić, in Cairo, in order
to inform them of the change in his policy regarding Tito and Mihailović.
Purić tried to protest: “You cannot betray Serbia, your ally in 1914, in this way.
For you only the English interests are important, the whole world and also his-
tory will judge you.” “But Mihailović collaborates with the Germans,” replied
Churchill. “Can you prove it?” asked Purić. “No, I cannot,” said Churchill, “but
I am sure he is a collaborationist.”^341
Churchill was not being entirely honest when he said he had no proof of
contacts between Mihailović and the Germans, for in fact he did. He himself
affirmed in a dispatch sent to Eden on 2 February 1943, that he had acquired
proof from Deakin and from British officers who were in the areas under
Mihailović’s control.^342 He had received proof mostly thanks to Ultra, a jealously
guarded secret that could not be revealed to the Yugoslav premier. The fact that
not even the British administrative and military apparatus at high levels had
been informed that their intelligence service was routinely cracking coded Nazi
communiqués (as well as bureaucratic inertia and Foreign Office skepticism)
prevented the immediate implementation of the prime minister’s policy—to
abandon Mihailović, denounce him as a collaborationist, and recall British