52 World War Two and the Partisan Struggle
in full swing, a policy of this sort, which did not take national interests and
the defense of independence into account, could be fatal.”^4 It would have been
even more fatal to him personally had he openly expressed his reservations
at the time. He therefore adhered to “Stalin’s wise peace policy,” which had
obliged Hitler to capitulate to the Soviet Union, “strong with its Army of
invincible peasants and workers.”^5 Consequently, Broz and his comrades
applauded Stalin’s behavior in the following months, when the Red Army “lib-
erated millions from capitalist slavery in Belarus and the West Ukraine, in
Bessarabia, Bukovina, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania.” In the Comintern paper,
Die Welt, published in Stockholm, he wrote that the Yugoslavs had greeted
these invasions with enthusiasm.^6
At least in the case of leftist youth, he certainly did not exaggerate. As Hans
Helm, chief of a police delegation to Yugoslavia, reported on 21 December
1939, the impact of communist activity on students was obvious. It was impos-
sible to overlook the fact that the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement had positive
consequences for Germany, since communist propaganda was working in its
favor. Anti-Nazi “excesses” had practically ceased in Yugoslavia, and instead the
polemics were all directed against British and French imperialism. “Before the
signing of the German-Russian Pact, the Yugoslav communists were the most
passionate nationalists in Yugoslavia. The communist students of the Belgrade
University formed volunteer battalions trained by army officers. After the Pact,
these volunteers disappeared. Up to 23 August, the communists could hardly
wait for the war to begin. Today they are pacifists à outrance.”^7 At the end
of November 1939, when the Soviet Union attacked Finland and was conse-
quently banished from the League of Nations, there were pro-Russian demon-
strations in Belgrade during which the students shouted: “It is better to die on
the streets of Belgrade [fighting their own bourgeoisie] than on the Slovenian
frontier [fighting the Germans].” In fact, they believed that “Hitler did not
represent any threat to Yugoslavia.” The British diplomats were convinced, as
they wrote in a dispatch to the Foreign Office, that “beyond doubt German
money and German agents are behind much of the Communist propaganda in
this country.” The communists were undoubtedly successful in exploiting the
social question as well as the pan-Slav sentiments of the population.^8
But this approach did not thrive everywhere or in every milieu, left wing
though it might be. In Belgrade and in Ljubljana many were unprepared to
swallow the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the ensuing political conversion of
the CPY; even less so in Zagreb, although there the communists kindled the
fire of Croat nationalism and anti-Serb sentiments. While fighting for survi-
val and power, Broz was also obliged during this period to cope with Croat
leftist intellectuals who did not like Moscow’s Socialist Realism in the arts, its