The Embattled Mountain

Fülszöveg

F.WD DEAKIN THE EMBATTLED MOUNTAIN On 28 May 1943 the author of this book was parachuted, together with Captain Stuart and a small party, to the highlands of Montenegro. These two officers commanded the first British military mission to Tito's headquarters. They landed un' awares in the middle of the most critical Axis operation as yet mounted against the Yugoslav partisan movement, whose main forces of four divisions, lightly armed and burdened with three thousand wounded, were encircled on the "Embattled Mountain" of Durmitor-the symbol of this book -by double their number, headed by Germán mountain and SS troops, supported by artillery and aircraft. The struggle in which the Germans hoped to destroy the Yugoslav National Liberation Movement, became the grimmest and most crucial of the Balkan War. The epic of Durmitor, which has passed into Yugoslav legend, sets the frame of this book, which is alsó the story of one British wartime mission in the Balkans. It portrays the figures... Tovább

Fülszöveg

F.WD DEAKIN THE EMBATTLED MOUNTAIN On 28 May 1943 the author of this book was parachuted, together with Captain Stuart and a small party, to the highlands of Montenegro. These two officers commanded the first British military mission to Tito's headquarters. They landed un' awares in the middle of the most critical Axis operation as yet mounted against the Yugoslav partisan movement, whose main forces of four divisions, lightly armed and burdened with three thousand wounded, were encircled on the "Embattled Mountain" of Durmitor-the symbol of this book -by double their number, headed by Germán mountain and SS troops, supported by artillery and aircraft. The struggle in which the Germans hoped to destroy the Yugoslav National Liberation Movement, became the grimmest and most crucial of the Balkan War. The epic of Durmitor, which has passed into Yugoslav legend, sets the frame of this book, which is alsó the story of one British wartime mission in the Balkans. It portrays the figures of Tito and his immediate collaborators, and the nature and structure of the Yugoslav Partisan forces and their military and political organization as seen at the time, without the studied intrusion of hindsight. Although rooted in the personal experiences and memories of the author, this is not primarily a work of autobiography. It is conceived as a contribution to the history of the Yugoslav Partisan movement and of the chequered relations between the Allies and Yugoslavia during the Second World War. It is based on years of debate with witnesses, British and Yugo-
slav; on the collection of personal notes and diaries; and on the assembly of ungarnered material, especially in relation to those earlier British missions sent into Yugoslavia (after the defeat and surrender of the Royal Yugoslav Army in April 1941) with the task of rallying a united resistance within the country. the embattled mountain alsó illuminates the tragic failure of such a front to emerge; traces, as then seen and witnessed, the mounting and irreversible civil war between the Partisans of Tito and the Cetniks of Mihailovic; and clarifies the causes and extent of the collaboration of the latter with the Axis, which was to influence the final break between Mihailovic and the Allies. This remarkable book closes with the completion of the intial task of the British mission in September 1943, when Captain (now Colonel) Deakin handed over to his successor. f. w. d. deakin was Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Wadham College, Oxford, before 1939, and alsó literary assistant to Sir Winston Churchill. After the war he returned to both these activities, and in 1950 was appointed the first Warden of St. Antony's College in the same University. He retired recently, and is living in Francé, engaged in historical research. His previous published works include: The Brutal Friendship:Hitler, Mussolini, and the Fali of Italian Fascism. He is coeditor, with A. L. C. Bullock, of the Oxford History of Modern Europe. Vissza