FORTUNATELY, this piece of business came to light through an English captain, an officer attached to Mikhailovich by the British, who happened to be at Tito’s headquarters when the German attack started. It began a chain of circumstances that resulted in a British withdrawal of support from Mikhailovich and a transfer of support and liaison to Tito’s Partisans.
That day, the Stukas struck at Uzice. Wave after wave peeled off over the little town and grimly shattered building after building into rubble. With a grim face, Tito watched his headquarters being destroyed, his men being killed as they fired at the Stukas with rifles and pistols. A little later, the German tanks hurtled into the devastation the Stukas had left. Tito was one of the last to leave the town, the British officer with him.
Late that night, a battered, weary group of Partisan officers gathered at Zlatiber, some twenty miles distant from shattered Uzice. Tito and the British officer were the last to arrive. Their car had been strafed and destroyed. They had lain in a ditch, and then walked almost all of the twenty miles on foot. When Tito’s discouraged officers asked him, “What now?” he answered:
“We start again. They’ll give us no peace now. They understand that we arc an army.”
Actually, the disaster was not as bad as it might have been. The Partisans managed to bring most of their arms out of Uzice. Also, the bulk of their army was intact. Tito and his officers decided to move southwest into the wild mountains of Herzegovina, establish headquarters at Foca, and build their strength to a point where they could conduct an active offensive against the Germans. Five brigades of troops were singled out to accompany Tito and form the nucleus of the new army. The rest of the Partisans were divided into small guerrilla bands, and ordered to go south into Serbia, harass the enemy, cut communications, and in general seek support from the Serbians.
Foca continued to be Tito’s headquarters until May, 1942. Here, he and his staff whipped the new army into shape. Already, they constituted some of the hardest and most experienced troops in the world; by May, they were in shape to match strength with the Germans.
Meanwhile, the Partisan movement gathered strength in every part of Yugoslavia. In east Bosnia, a young guerrilla leader, Principe, the nephew of the man who had assassinated the Archduke of Austria in 1914, had formed and was leading a smaller but well trained Partisan Army. Another Partisan group functioned in Slovenia, and in Serbia, the Partisans gained in strength day by day. In every case, when the Germans attacked a Partisan group, it was like attacking a bank of mist. The Partisans fought as long as it was profitable—and then melted away into the hills and forests.
At the beginning of June, 1942, a year after he first began operations, Marshal Tito tested the strength of his main army against a full-fledged German offensive. The Nazis attacked him in Bosnia. His army withstood the German attack, and in places organized their own counter-offensive and drove back the Nazis. Bringing up more strength, the Germans cut off every avenue of escape.
Tito’s food was running low. He gathered his men, launched a heavy attack against one section of the German line, and broke through. His army, although almost without mechanization of any sort, moved with incredible speed. Before the Germans fully realized that he was out of their trap, Tito swung on their flank and attacked them from the rear. The attack was unanticipated and completely successful. The Germans had considered the Partisan Army trapped; and it was their experience that trapped armies surrendered. This one didn’t. It lashed out at them and sent them reeling. Tito gave them no rest. He attacked again, routing them and cutting the important Sarajevo-Mostar railroad.
His liaison reported a powerful force of Krajina Partisans on his left flank, separated from him by almost a division of German troops. Tito marched his men twenty miles through the night, attacked the Germans at dawn, routed them, and effected a junction with the Krajina Partisans.
The men were their own supply column. They took food and ammunition from the German dead. The augmented force now drove north through Bosnia in the direction of Croatia. Garrison after garrison of German and Italian troops were surrounded, attacked and destroyed. By August, all of North Bosnia was liberated, cleansed of Fascist troops. The slogan, DEATH TO ALL FASCISTS! LIBERTY TO THE PEOPLE! ran like fire through Yugoslavia.
As Tito’s army fought its way north, it gained in strength. In Bosnia, he was re-enforced by thousands of Bosnian Partisans. Hardly resting, he launched a new campaign into Croatia, and again he was joined by thousands of fresh troops, Croatian Partisans this time. As if in answer to Tom Paine’s battle cry of the American Revolution, the country and the city came forth as one man to support him.
During the Croatian campaign, Tito’s force swept north almost to the Hungarian border, and there they were joined by a detachment of Hungarian anti-fascist guerrillas. From Croatia, they crossed into Slovenia, pursuing their campaign of liberation almost to the German border.
By the end of 1942, the Yugoslav Liberation Front Radio was able to announce to the world that half of Yugoslavia had been liberated from the Fascists and was now under the control of Partisan forces.
A miracle had come to pass, in a sense as great a miracle as that of Russia. A tiny country, conquered in ten days by the Nazis, had risen in its anger and driven the invader from half its land.
And throughout the democratic world, people, reading about the Partisan exploits, began to speak a magic and romantic name—Tito!