World War Two and the Partisan Struggle 67
wrote an article for the party’s newspaper published under the title: “Why Are
We Still in the Framework of the CPY?”
Since the imperialist bandits have occupied Yugoslavia and the “Independent”
State of Croatia has been created, it is not clear to many of our comrades why
our Croat Communist party is still in the framework of the Yugoslav Communist
Party.... They say that we are against the liberty and the independence of the
Croat people and in favor of a restoration of old Yugoslavia.... We communists
do not recognize this occupation and dismemberment of the country, since it was
not done according to the wish of the people, but with the violence of imperialist
conquerors.... When, joining our forces, we will gain true liberty and indepen-
dence, we will create fraternal relations, according to the interest of our peoples.
Just as the people of the Soviet Union have done.^90Tito came to Belgrade under the name of Slavko Babić, a representative of
Škoda, a Czech arms manufacturer, and found the Serb communists ready and
willing to fight the occupying forces and their own bourgeoisie. As he told the
Russian writer K. M. Simonov in October 1944, there was a reign of terror in
the city. If you went out into the street after sunset, you risked being killed.
Under pain of death, it was forbidden to lock the doors of your house: the
Germans were allowed to enter where and when they wanted. For some weeks,
he went to bed without taking off his clothes and with a gun under his pillow.
“The only thing that, in those days, assured me, was the fact that I lived just
four house numbers away from the residence of the Belgrade commander,
General Schröder. Yes, this was a period when it was necessary to live and die
thinking only about the future of the Country, and not for a moment of one’s
own future.”^91 The atmosphere of those days was tellingly described by Djilas:
“Patrols during the night, darkness and continuous shots from all over the city.
The Jews with yellow ribbons, with fear and anger, hunger and death, somber
faces of citizens, and young Germans, gay and arrogant, with prostitutes and
cameras. Flights of airplanes toward Greece and Romania. First local news-
papers at the service of the occupiers.”^92
At the end of April and again a month later, Tito tried to convince Moscow
that the tempest was approaching, informing “Grandpa,” as the Comintern
was called, through the military attaché of the Soviet Embassy still open in
Belgrade, that the German troops were advancing toward the frontiers of the
Soviet Union, and that the Wehrmacht officers in Zagreb did not hide this fact.
In contact with the local bourgeoisie, their generals were openly saying that they
would enter Russia like a “knife into butter.” Nach Moskau (To Moscow) was
written on the tanks passing through Belgrade in the direction of Romania,