214 The Postwar Period
attack its neighbors as a preventive measure, not only Albania but also Bulgaria
and Romania.^330 Thanks to Djilas’s testimony, we know that Tito and his circle
actually considered this possibility. They also envisaged additional defensive
measures, even examining the possibility of taking refuge with the bulk of the
army abroad, evidently under the aegis of NATO. Meanwhile, a Partisan guer-
rilla war with 100,000 to 150,000 men would be waged in the country.^331 These
fears were not groundless, since in January 1951 Stalin invited the defense
ministers of the satellites to Moscow to discuss a possible invasion of Yugosla-
via the following spring. He argued that if Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and
Albania violated their borders at the same time, and the Red Army advanced
from Czechoslovakia and Hungary toward the Ljubljana gap, Yugoslavia could
be subjugated before the UN could intervene. Faced with a fait accompli, the
West would not risk a third world war in order to defend Tito’s regime. Mar-
shal Zhukov was ordered to review the invasion plans made the year before and
to organize an allied military action with forces three times stronger than those
of Yugoslavia.^332 At his debriefing, a Hungarian air force officer who defected
to the West in 1951 said that intense propaganda was in progress in his country’s
barracks to prepare the troops for war. Tito was described as America’s “chained
dog,” just waiting for a signal to attack Hungary.^333
The Clash of ArmsAt the Politburo session on 4 December 1950, Tito judged the situation to be
extremely serious. The Russians, he said, would use their “vassals” to attack
Yugoslavia, since they were arming them in contravention of the Paris Peace
Treaties, which prohibited Hungary and Bulgaria from having large armies.
In order to denounce this military pressure, in the spring of 1951 he published
a white paper to alert international public opinion of the danger to his coun-
t r y.^334 The repercussions of this denunciation, which was presented the follow-
ing autumn at the UN General Assembly in Paris, were particularly evident
among the delegates of the Asian, African, and Latin American countries,
who were impressed by the Yugoslav determination to resist the pressure of a
big power. Tito, aware that he could not do much without direct agreements
with the Truman administration, decided after much hesitation to “take con-
crete measures to get arms from the United States.”^335 He therefore sent a
secret mission headed by Vlatko Velebit and Chief of Staff Koča Popović to
Washington, where they found interlocutors quite willing to take their requests
into consideration, in view of discussions that had been going on in US diplo-
matic and military circles since November 1949 on how to arm Yugoslavia as
soon as possible.^336 The favorable atmosphere created between the two parties
was enhanced by the Yugoslav willingness to accept American “suggestions”