Yugoslavia and The Allies - Churchill's Sources

Churchill's Sources

Churchill's main source was the intelligence decrypts from Bletchley Park which he saw "raw", as well as intelligence reports and digests. After receiving a signals intelligence digest in July 1943 he wrote that "it gave a full account of the marvellous resistance by the followers of Tito and the powerful cold-blooded manoeuvres of Mihailović in Serbia." Churchill announced his decision to support Tito to Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (much to his surprise) at the Tehran Conference in November 1943, and publicly in an address to Parliament on 22 February 1944. This address referred to reports from Deakin and Maclean for justification, as the Ultra decryptions from Bletchley Park were secret even after the war

Fitzroy Maclean discussed Yugoslavia with Churchill in Cairo after the Tehran Conference. Churchill said that as neither of them intended to live there after the war: "… the less you and I worry about the form of Government they set up, the better. That is for them to decide. What interests us is, which of them is doing most harm to the Germans." Maclean had already reported that "...the Partisans, whether we helped them or not, would be the decisive political factor in Jugoslavia after the war and, secondly that Tito and the other leaders of the movement were openly and avowedly Communist and that the system which they would establish would inevitably be on Soviet lines and, in all probability, strongly oriented towards the Soviet Union." However, Maclean had also noticed Tito's "independence of mind" and wondered whether Tito might evolve into something more than a Soviet puppet.)

While in England in the spring of 1944, Maclean discussed Yugoslavia with some of the British officers who had been attached to General Mihailović's Headquarters. One of the meetings was at Chequers and was presided over by Churchill himself. "It was common ground that the Cetniks, though in the main well disposed towards Great Britain, were militarily less effective with the communist Partisans and that some of Mihailović’s subordinates had undoubtedly reached accommodation with the enemy." And some who knew him best "while liking and respecting him as a man, had little opinion of Mihailović as a leader", though the Cetnik detachments in Serbia at least could be a significant force with "new and more determined leadership and with better discipline." Maclean was also asked to Buckingham Palace to brief King George VI on the Jugoslav situation. He found him as well-informed on the situation as anyone else he had met back in England, and said he "took an entirely realistic view of it."