132 World War Two and the Partisan Struggle
gov ernment in exile in London, and especially the question of the king.”^428 An
assault group crossed the Ibar River at the beginning of August, occupying the
mountainous region of Kopaonik in central Serbia. On the twenty-fourth, the
First Proletarian Division reached Zlatibor and advanced toward Užice and
Požega. New brigades also formed in south Serbia and went on the offensive.^429
Heartened by this news, but mostly by the awareness that he could count on
the Soviet Union, Tito expressed his belief that victory was near in a speech
on 12 September 1944, after passing the First Dalmatian Brigade in review
at Vis. On that occasion, he openly affirmed that Yugoslavia would not accept
the northwestern frontiers that had been drawn up after 1918, but insisted upon
new borders with Italy and Austria: “We don’t want what belongs to others, we
will not cede what is ours.”^430
He greeted the arrival of the Soviet troops on the eastern Yugoslav frontier
with a manifesto, hailing “the great, long-awaited day,” and making a drastic
decision: he would go to Moscow, where he would coordinate the intervention
of the Red Army in Serbia with Stalin, killing two birds with one stone. He
would get control of those key territories for the domination of Yugoslavia
and the triumph of the revolution. In this way, he would thwart the West’s plan
to create a Karadjordjević bulwark in Serbia.^431
Meanwhile, the Americans, knowing that the Partisan units were blocking
fifteen German divisions and at least one hundred thousand collaborationists
in the Balkans, established their own autonomous contacts with the Supreme
Staff in spring of 1944, cutting themselves loose from the British. Tito and
William Donovan, director of the OSS, met secretly in August on the island of
Capri in a friendly atmosphere as the latter too followed Churchill’s decision to
sever links with Mihailović.^432 Within the OSS, however, the understanding
prevailed that it would be useful to maintain information groups in all the
Yugoslav territories, including those under Mihailović’s control. One of the
reasons for this was that there were of a good number of American pilots who
had participated in military actions in the skies of Bosnia and Serbia and had
been shot down by the Germans but rescued by the Chetniks. Ambassador
Robert Murphy and other top officials in Washington approved the implemen-
tation of this proposal. On 3 August 1944, a group of special soldiers was para-
chuted near the village of Pranjane, eighty kilometers from Belgrade, where
Mihail ović had gathered about 250 American pilots. A provisional airport was
built with the help of the local population. Between 9 and 10 August the pilots
were evacuated by C-47 planes, the beginning of an audacious rescue operation
that continued until November. In addition, on 25 August the OSS sent another
mission to the area under Mihailović’s control. Their leader, Colonel Robert