World War Two and the Partisan Struggle 89
his high office. Kopinič, who acquired copies of Fatty’s interrogation files
through his contacts with the Ustaša police, sent Tito dispatches regarding his
“behavior” via Moscow. Tito, however, later denied he had received them.^214
(There was a suspicion that the Russians withheld these signals on Hebrang’s
treachery, planning to use the Partisan leader as a double agent at the party
summit.) At the end of April 1943, Fatty was named secretary of the Croa-
tian CC CP, succeeding Rado Končar, who had been killed by the Fascists at
Šibenik on 24 May 1942. Later he was also co-opted into the Politburo of the
CPY. At the Croatian headquarters he became the most influential member of
a commission charged with interrogating the prisoners who had been exchanged
for German or Ustaša officers. He was extremely severe, requesting the death
penalty for those who had “sullied the banner of the party.” Later, of course, this
severity was interpreted as an attempt by Hebrang to get rid of possible wit-
nesses to his agreement with the Ustaša.^215 As he had since 1928, he still felt
equal to Tito, a dangerous conviction that he maintained almost to the end of
his life.^216 As prominent Croat communist Jakov Blažević said, “in that period
Andrija Hebrang was a great authority for us all, a famous convict who had
spent twelve years in jail, learning a lot. He knew how to speak in a convincing
manner, concise and with sentiment... like Stalin.”^217
The Formation of the Antifascist Council for the
Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ)The clashes that flared up in the spring of 1942 in Bosnia and Slovenia also
had international repercussions. The Soviet Union, which had long ignored
Tito’s repeated requests to denounce Mihailović as traitor, finally decided to
take action after a careful examination of the documents sent from Yugoslavia.
As Dimitrov wrote in his diary, it was clear even from the Fascist press “that
only our Partisans are fighting, whereas Mihailović, at best, remains in the
mountains.”^218 On 6 July 1942, Radio Free Yugoslavia broadcast an appeal by
patriots from Montenegro, Sandžak, and Bocche di Cattaro, pointing to the
Chetniks as collaborators and fomenters of civil war. The text of this document
was published on 19 July by the Soviet news agency TASS and, in the follow-
ing weeks, by the leftist press in Sweden and Great Britain and by The Daily
Worker in New York. The famous writer and publicist Louis Adamic subse-
quently organized a widespread press campaign against Mihailović in America,
in spite of the fact that on 24 July the White House spokesman hailed his fight
as an “autonomous and altruistic will to win.”^219
Moscow’s new policy was of considerable concern to the royal government
in exile and to that of Britain. Thanks to different sources, especially the Ultra
operation, which allowed British Intelligence to decipher Wehrmacht messages,