The Forgotten 500

by Gregory A. Freeman

  The bottom line for Musulin was that Mihailovich represented a significant fighting force that was on the Allies’ side. “Mihailovich keeps a certain number of German and Bulgarian troops immobilized. Withdrawal of all Allied liaison or labeling him as a traitor would undoubtedly free some of these troops for use on some other front.” He also pushed for the Allies to exert more pressure on both Tito and Mihailovich to declare a truce with each other and concentrate on fighting the troops occupying their country, saying, “The Royal Yugoslav Government could make Mihailovich agree to a truce. It is up to the Great Powers to make Tito do the same by exercising sanctions they obviously possess.”

  That never happened.

  It would be decades before Mihailovich’s suspicions about a Communist plot to besmirch his reputation with the British was confirmed. Not until 1997 would the world understand that the switch of allegiance was orchestrated largely by a Soviet operative who convinced the British that Mihailovich could not be trusted.

  The abandonment of Mihailovich was the culmination of a long series of suspicions and mistrust, not just the work of a single man, and Mihailovich’s own missteps must be considered. But the information revealed fifty-four years later indicates that the general was right about the primary reason the British thought he was collaborating with the enemy and failing to fight the Germans and Italians in Yugoslavia. Communist moles had infiltrated both the OSS and the SOE, working to besmirch the name of Mihailovich to promote the postwar communization of Yugoslavia under Tito. In 1997 newly declassified secret reports on one of the most controversial British undercover operations of World War II showed a Soviet spy was responsible for the British switching support to Tito, confirming the suspicions of some experts who had been studying the case for years. The documents included transcripts of secret wartime signals to London and included evidence of the role played by James Klugmann, a confirmed Soviet mole.

  Reports sent by Klugmann, who was closely associated with the infamous British traitors known as the Cambridge Five, for the first time confirmed that he was principally responsible for sabotaging the Mihailovich supply operation and for keeping from London information about how much Mihailovich forces were fighting the Germans and how much success they were having. The Cambridge Five was a ring of British spies who passed information to the Soviet Union during World War II and on into the early 1950s. Proven members were Kim Philby, Guy Burgess, Anthony Blunt, Donald Maclean, and John Cairncross—all high-ranking members of the government and secret agents. Klugmann was essentially the sixth member, though his role as a spy was not confirmed until after the rest of group was identified. Philby served as head of the Soviet counterespionage section of MI6, Britain’s external security agency and top intelligence outfit. Burgess was secretary to the British Deputy Foreign Minister and able to transmit top-secret British Foreign Office documents to the KGB on a regular basis, secreting them out at night to be photographed by his Russian controller and returning them in the morning. Blunt was an art historian who had served the royal household as surveyor of the queen’s pictures. Maclean worked as a diplomat for the British Foreign Office, serving as secretary at the British embassy in Washington, DC, during the war and sending messages to Moscow revealing British efforts to develop an atomic bomb. Cairncross was an intelligence officer working on ciphers at Bletchley Park and MI6. He passed documents through secret channels to the Soviet Union.

  Klugmann spent two and a half years working in Bari on the staff of the Yugoslav section of the British SOE as an intelligence and coordination officer—the SOE that Vujnovich knew was favoring Tito over Mihailovich for no good reason, and which ultimately persuaded Churchill to side with the Communists in Yugoslavia’s civil war. Klugmann’s work with the Yugoslav section was so influential that his commanding officer, Basil Davidson, said—with admiration—that the time should be called the “Klugmann period.”

  The group of traitors was originally known as the Cambridge Spy Ring because all known members of the ring were recruited at Trinity College in Cambridge while members of the Cambridge Apostles, a secret debating society. They also were open Communists and Klugmann was secretary of the Cambridge Communist Party in the mid-1930s. Like the Cambridge Five, Klugmann could more accurately be described as a mole rather than a typical spy. The difference is that, unlike a spy who embarks on a mission with specific objectives, moles entrench themselves in key government roles or other positions that make them privy to secrets—or the ability to manipulate leaders—and then wait for the right time to act. Moles often are ideologically driven to betray their countries, as opposed to mercenaries who act for money. The Soviets recruited Klugmann because he displayed a sympathy to leftist causes and was well on the path to a career in government or other sensitive work, the same as Philby, Burgess, Blunt, Maclean, and Cairncross. Taking their orders from Moscow, their task was to direct British policy in a manner favorable to the worldwide Communist movement and Russia in particular. They did the job well. David Martin, the foremost historian on Yugoslavia during World War II, concluded that Klugmann was ultimately responsible for leading the British to abandon Mihailovich, and that he was responsible for the postwar Communist expansion in the Balkans. “Klugmann was a mole whose great accomplishment was to falsify information in a manner that resulted in handing over a nation of fifteen million people to Communist control,” he wrote.

  Klugmann was a bespectacled bookworm, warm-hearted and compassionate but so fiercely devoted to Communism that he had little time for personal relationships. Blunt, after he was exposed as a traitor and his knighthood for wartime service revoked, described Klugmann as “the pure intellectual of the Party,” more dedicated than any other Communist in Britain. Even though he spent little time on personal relationships, while at Cambridge he was among the most effective in recruiting other students to the Communist cause, and he could channel his political energy into manipulating those around him. The recently declassified files reveal that, for instance, Klugmann had great influence over Colonel Sir William Deakin, the senior intelligence officer in Yugoslavia, who said Klugmann provided “invaluable service.” The declassified files reveal that Klugmann used his relationship with Deakin to advance Tito’s cause, always claiming to act in the best interest of Great Britain but in fact working to further the Soviet Union’s goal of a Communist Yugoslavia after the war by exaggerating claims of Mihailovich’s transgressions, minimizing reports of his accomplishments, and glorifying the actions of Tito. All of the Cambridge Five used other unsuspecting people to serve the Soviet Union’s goals. While the Soviets had operatives in the British intelligence services, Martin notes that the actual number of Communists in the top ranks was small. “Far more numerous than the Communists, and infinitely more numerous than the committed agents, were the muddleheaded liberals who shared a nebulous feeling that they, too, were serving the cause of progress,” Martin writes. The naïveté of these government officials, and their desire to feel important, made them susceptible to Communist efforts to disseminate disinformation about Mihailovich. Klugmann and his fellow traitors may have been driving the effort to defeat Mihailovich from abroad, but there were many more British officials who unwittingly helped them along the way. As in the OSS, a person’s Communist beliefs did not necessarily bar one from serving in the SOE, and those around Klugmann knew of his party affiliation but overlooked it because he was so hard-working, amiable, and seemed to produce good results.

  On March 15, 1944, Klugmann moved from Cairo to Bari along with most of the other SOE staff. One of his duties was to educate newly arriving SOE staff about the Mihailovich and Tito conflict, briefing them on the opposing sides in Yugoslavia and where the British stood. The most influential Communist spy in Europe was working practically right alongside Vujnovich and his colleagues, quietly but effectively sabotaging every effort to help Mihailovich and ensuring that Yugoslavia would be in the hands of the Soviet Union after the war.

  One of the most active and overt Br
itish Communists of his generation, Klugmann became an influential left-wing journalist after the war, serving as editor of Marxism Today and writing the first two volumes of the official History of the Communist Party of Great Britain.

  So Mihailovich’s suspicions were on target.

  Vujnovich had no idea at the time that such a well-orchestrated and far-reaching Communist operation was at work within the OSS and SOE, but he would not have been overly surprised. He knew there were Communists infiltrating the ranks, and he hated every one of them.

  Meanwhile, Mihailovich and the peasants in the hillside who were loyal to him watched over the downed American boys with a stoic determination. Their abandonment by the Allies would not cause them to abandon these young men who were helping them fight back the Nazis.

  Chapter 10

  Screw the British

  A few months after the Allies officially turned their backs on Mihailovich, in March 1944, the British ordered all Allied units attached to Mihailovich to return home. The OSS’s man in Ravna Gora, Musulin, was ordered to leave the Yugoslav general’s stronghold in the mountains and report to the OSS post in Bari, Italy, where Vujnovich was in charge. He was instructed to leave as soon as an evacuation could be arranged for him and forty American airmen who were in the immediate area at that time. Musulin did not want to leave the field and tried to stall by saying that he had heard of an additional dozen men who were expected to arrive soon and also could be rescued if he stayed a while longer. His superiors knew that Musulin was trying to resist orders and supported the effort, appealing to President Roosevelt for permission to let him stay with Mihailovich. But the British would not relent and Churchill personally intervened to reiterate that Musulin had to come out. Mihailovich was no longer to receive any cooperation from the Allies, and that meant Musulin had no more business with the Chetnik guerillas, Churchill explained.

  In May 1944 a plane was sent to pick up Musulin and the downed fliers, and it successfully completed Musulin’s extraction and a noteworthy rescue of airmen. Meanwhile, the Allied support of Tito was on the upswing. In November 1943 only six men had been assigned to Tito’s group, but by October 1944 that number would reach forty.

  Musulin was one unhappy agent when he stepped off the plane in Bari, and he progressed into a rage when he heard what the SOE and the OSS had been saying about Mihailovich.

  Musulin was dumbfounded that anyone could believe the accusations that Mihailovich had collaborated with the Germans and Italians. When he heard that airmen were being warned to bail out only in the Yugoslav territory controlled by Tito, he was outraged. Musulin had personally witnessed the unwavering dedication of the Chetnik soldiers and the local villagers to the downed American airmen, and now his colleagues in Bari were trying to explain to him how Mihailovich was no longer a friend. They actually tried to tell Musulin that Mihailovich’s people would pretend to take in downed airmen and then turn them over to the enemy for a reward. He couldn’t believe the words he was hearing. Only days earlier he had seen these very people giving up their last bits of food, offering their beds to strangers from another country, risking their lives with every act of kindness to an American. Musulin was furious and he argued at every opportunity with anyone who would listen, trying to convince them that he had personally experienced life with the Chetniks, had become a good friend of Mihailovich himself, had lived with them for months, and he knew that they were loyal beyond belief.

  Vujnovich asked Musulin for details about how many more airmen Mihailovich was aiding in the region. Was it more than just a few stragglers here and there? He was looking for confirmation that the rumors from his wife back home were correct, that there were a lot of men awaiting rescue. Musulin’s response was quick and certain: Yes, Mihailovich was harboring a large number of airmen. He didn’t know exactly how many, but he guessed close to one hundred men were near Mihailovich’s headquarters in Pranjane. Nearly all were American, with a few British, French, Russians, and Italians.

  So Mirjana was right. Vujnovich had known he could trust his wife to have good information. He was glad he had trusted her and that he had already started pursuing a rescue attempt. The effort was much farther along than it would have been if Musulin’s report was the first anyone in Bari had heard of all those men awaiting rescue.

  Musulin could not be calmed, and he was a formidable sight when angered. Not only was Musulin not pleased to hear that Mihailovich had been abandoned, but he felt that the Allies had for all practical purposes abandoned him while he was behind enemy lines with the Chetniks. Despite his pleas for aid, virtually nothing was sent to Mihailovich and his men. The burly agent stormed into the OSS headquarters in Bari one day and demanded that someone listen to his complaints.

  “Listen, you bastards! You think I went in and risked my life for almost a year for nothing?” he screamed, instantly gaining the attention of everyone in the room. He went on for some time, railing about how he had almost no contact with the British the whole time he was in Yugoslavia and that when he arrived in Bari, the Brits weren’t even interested in hearing his report about Mihailovich. They were concerned only with dressing him down for bringing five members of Mihailovich’s political staff out with him. The general had requested that the men be evacuated, and since there was room on the plane, Musulin had obliged. After all, he explained, these were allies and he was doing a favor for the man who was supporting the American cause in Yugoslavia. Musulin refused to apologize for bringing the men out and grew more livid every time the British complained about it. He finally became so angry that he asked to be court-martialed for the incident so the truth of the whole ugly situation could be aired beyond the cloistered walls of the OSS.

  Wisely, his superiors did not take him up on the offer and the British backed down. But Musulin was still furious about how the OSS seemed to be turning Yugoslavia—and more—over to the Communists. He was so disgusted with what he found in Bari that he decided it was pointless to even write a report about his experience with Mihailovich. Referring to pro-Communists as Partisans, like the followers of Tito, Musulin complained that, “I came to Bari and saw Partisans all over the damn town. I saw them in our headquarters. They were packing supplies on our planes in Brindisi.” And he was right. The OSS officers’ mess in Bari had seven Yugoslav refugee girls working as waitresses who made no effort to conceal their pro-Communist politics, even wearing Partisan uniforms around Bari on their off hours. Musulin went on to complain that the OSS and SOE “forgot that I was even alive.”

  Musulin was a bitter man, dejected by the politically motivated betrayals and propaganda he found waiting for him in Bari. He eventually was convinced to write a nineteen-page report that declared Mihailovich was a loyal ally and that he saw no evidence of collaboration with the enemy. But his protests and his report changed no one’s position. London and Washington had painted their own picture of Mihailovich and the truth didn’t matter.

  Vujnovich listened to Musulin and believed him. Unlike many OSS leaders, Vujnovich understood what it meant for the Allies to throw their support behind a Communist, because he had seen them at work in Yugoslavia before the war and he knew their ideology and their tactics. He tried to explain to Musulin why his protests were going nowhere.

  “People in the OSS don’t have any real political orientation,” he said. “When they hear ‘Communist’ they just think of Russian Communists. When they hear ‘Fascist’ they think of Germany and Italy. They don’t realize what Communism really is, the way it works to overpower a country’s people and take everything from them. They don’t understand that Communism is a cancer that can spread all over if you don’t stop it. They just think it’s Russia and right now Russia is our ally.”

  Musulin found some solace in knowing that Vujnovich at least was on his side. And Vujnovich knew that Musulin was a man he could trust. That might come in handy, as Vujnovich was under fire in Bari from some of the pro-Communists in the OSS who thought he was too pro-Chetnik. Several of his
colleagues who were sympathetic to Tito and the Russians regularly harassed Vujnovich, making unfounded charges about the way he ran his operations and generally trying to create trouble for him.

  He had recently spent a difficult five months in Brindisi, Italy, at the air base from which the OSS launched incursions into Yugoslavia and Greece. (The OSS base in Bari was focused on analyzing intelligence and planning operations. The actual missions launched from Brindisi.) Vujnovich found himself under fire the whole time from other OSS officials who filed anonymous complaints and kept him busy responding to his superiors about supposedly poor performance on the job. It didn’t take long for Vujnovich to figure out that the pro-Communists were behind the harassment, which ended only when he was transferred back to the OSS post in Bari.

  That the OSS was full of Communist sympathizers, outright Communists, and even some people who were secretly spying and working behind the scenes to further the Communist cause came as no surprise to anyone familiar with the unusual makeup of the OSS. This group of operatives and analysts was unique in the history of the American military. They were given great leeway and resources to get the job done in unorthodox ways, with just about anything acceptable in the cause of defeating the Axis. The men and women of the OSS were some of the most dedicated fighters in World War II, many of them among the most idealistic patriots, but they also were a mix of down-to-earth “regular Joes” like Musulin and effete intellectual types who tended to the leftist, Socialist political spectrum. The mix made for an effective system overall, but it also created inevitable conflicts among people who had a common enemy—Hitler and the Axis—but who differed sharply on their basic political outlook and what they wanted for the country after the war. In that way, the struggle within the OSS mirrored the struggle within Yugoslavia.