World War Two and the Partisan Struggle 63
the Hungarians the region of Prekmurje. The Italians sent their troops into
Montenegro and the greater part of Kosovo, annexing it to Albania. Central
Serbia was under the control of the Germans as a protectorate, ruled by local
Quislings (a term for collaborators in general, coined after a Norwegian politi-
cian, Vidkun Quisling, a prominent early collaborator). Vojvodina was given
to the Hungarians and the greater part of Macedonia to the Bulgarians. The
Yugoslav Army, considered strong and valiant, turned out to be completely
unprepared to fight the invading forces. On 17 April 1941, General Kalafatović
was forced to capitulate. Thousands of soldiers scattered in all directions, hop-
ing to avoid capture. The Germans took 344,000 prisoners, mostly Serbs,
whereas three hundred thousand men managed to escape.^67 At the same time,
King Petar II and the majority of Simović’s government followed Prince Paul
into exile, seeking refuge first in Athens, where British forces were still present,
then in Palestine and finally in London.
As Winston Churchill observed, with the 27 March putsch, the Yugoslav
nation had found its soul but was unable to save its territory.^68 The Wehrmacht
attack was an exemplary blitzkrieg, in the course of which the Germans were
primarily interested in maintaining communication lines with Bulgaria, Greece,
and Romania and in exploiting the chrome, bauxite, and copper mines that
were important for their military industry.^69
During these dramatic events, Tito was constantly in contact with Moscow.
One of his more important successes in 1940 was the installation of a radio link
between Zagreb and the Comintern, thanks to Josip Kopinič (who changed
his nickname from Vokšin to Vazduhk, similar to the Russian word for “air”)
and Stella Panajotis-Bamjazidos, a Greek telegrapher trained in Moscow. The
two had initially pretended they were married, but soon enough they actually
were. Vlatko (Vladimir) Velebit found them a house near a wood on the out-
skirts of Zagreb in case they needed to escape. This was an unnecessary precau-
tion as the transmitting apparatus, cleverly hidden in a bunker below stairs, was
never discovered by either the Ustaše or the Germans. In addition to the CPY,
seven other parties were linked to this clandestine center: the Italian, Swiss,
Austrian, Hungarian, Slovak, Bulgarian, and Greek parties.^70 This was the
beginning of an intense flow of communications, which grew to enormous
dimensions, first through Vokšin and then also through radio transmitters at
Tito’s headquarters. During the war, Tito exchanged hundreds of telegrams
with the Comintern and other Soviet services, unbeknownst even to his most
intimate collaborators. He wrote them personally and saw to them with great
care.^71 “At the Politburo sessions,” Ranković later said, “he told us only what he
considered opportune in the dispatches from Moscow or the Comintern. None
of us has ever seen any of these telegrams. During the war, Tito would take off