World War Two and the Partisan Struggle 133
McDowell, told the general that his only task was to collect military information
and that his mission should not be considered in support of the Chetnik move-
ment. Such, at least, was the official version. However, not long after his arrival,
a leaflet began circulating in which Mihailović wrote: “The Allied American
Government has sent [to our headquarters] delegates and personal representa-
tives of President Roosevelt, the faithful friend of peace-loving people.”^433 This
was not mere propaganda, since McDowell was openly pro-Chetnik, convinced
as he was that the arms sent to the Partisan communists would be used against
the Serbs and, later, against the Western forces as well.^434
When Tito was informed about this (from 1943 on, Ranković had his spies
in Mihailović’s General Staff ) he was furious, although Donovan had informed
him in advance about McDowell’s mission. He ordered his units to cease their
collaboration with American and British officers and to limit their freedom of
movement and their intelligence activities. The British later managed to miti-
gate these harsh measures, but not the Americans, toward whom Tito remained
very cool, considering them untrustworthy.^435 The Americans for their part
did not trust him either, to which a dispatch sent by the local OSS agent from
Tehran to Washington in June 1944 bears witness. Djilas, after leaving Moscow,
stopped on his way home in the Iranian capital and while drunk told a group
of Western officers some details about his conversations with Stalin. The Boss
had confided in him that after the war he would sever his relations with the
British and the Americans and that he was counting on Tito’s fidelity.^436 Presi-
dent Roosevelt’s decision not to answer two letters the marshal had sent him
further aggravated matters. The latent hostility between the Yugoslavs and the
Americans was eloquently expressed by William J. Donovan in a memo sent on
1 January 1945 to James V. Forrestal, the US defense secretary. In it, the chief of
the OSS stated that in the future it would be necessary to spread the clandes-
tine activity of his organization throughout Eastern Europe, considering that
“those who are not with us, are against us.” To give more weight to his words,
he quoted a declaration by Tito published on 29 September in The New York
Times that sounded like a prediction of imminent communist revolution in
that area.^437
It was within this framework of growing mutual suspicion between the West-
ern and Eastern partners of the anti-Hitler coalition that Tito’s trip, or rather
his flight from Vis, took place. With the help of the Soviets, it was prepared
in total secrecy by Ranković, head of the Service for the Defense of the People
(OZNA), which had been instituted the preceding May as the Partisans’ secu-
rity agency. The British, who were controlling the airport, were told that Soviet
pilots based in Bari had to practice nocturnal landings and that the island was