Šimun Zimmerman, author of the book Battle of Sutjeska, is an interesting person. For four years, he played for the Zagreb water polo club "Mladost" and with that club he was the champion of Croatia four times, and once the vice-champion of Europe. With the USC Water Polo Club (The University of Southern California) was the vice-champion of the USA three times. In 1998, he graduated from that university with a degree in political science. In the same year, he started doing extreme sports. For example, as a member of the Croatian team, he participates in Discovery Eco Challenge Morocco, a 700-kilometer long survival race, and the following year in the same race in Patagonia. The next two ventures take him to Vietnam, Chile and Argentina, with these now being 1000 kilometer races. In these areas, in 25 years, he organized more than 150 races at 40 different locations. He studied jazz piano for a year in America and is a passionate jazz player. He points out that he also holds a "dumb record", which has not been broken for 15 years: he carried a man weighing more than 70 kilograms on his back to Sljeme, a mountain above Zagreb, in two hours and 15 minutes. Finally, on January 19, 2019, he won the Holy Cross in Visegrad. As such, he walked the vast area where the battle on Sutjeska took place - except for those paths that, over time, were lost in the vegetation - and, fascinated by both the landscape and the battle itself, decided to make a kind of guide to the battle. From that idea arose this extraordinary book.
......
"WEATHER" Did the decision to walk through the areas where the Battle of Sutjeska took place precede the book?, or you got the idea for the book while hiking?
SIMON ZIMMERMANN: I am a lover of mountains and adventures, so the idea for the book only came later, when I had walked a large part of those Bosnian and Montenegrin wildernesses. The original idea, which came to my mind, the bull is a "hiking" or "adventuring" guide through the Battle of Sutjeska. That idea came to my mind when I realized that the Battle of Sutjeska did not take place only and exclusively on Sutjeska, but on a huge area of 100 by 100 km, from Kalinovik to Pljevlje and Nikšić-Podgorica to Goražde. I was fascinated by that area because today it contains four national parks and is one of the most beautiful natural corners in Europe (perhaps the most beautiful) - but it certainly belongs to the wildest areas. Having traveled a lot of that terrain, I found the story of Sutjeska fascinating from a purely sports, human, and anthropological point of view: how could someone survive then, in such conditions and circumstances and in such a wilderness? I decided to make a guide, I traveled about 3000 km of trails, mapped it all and wanted to write "a little something" about the battle itself along with the "guide". I started writing, the material got bigger and bigger, as well as the data I found, and the end result is this book, and the "mountaineering guide" is actually there - an appendix.
What is, actually, was the Battle of Sutjeska?
First, we need to use the right terms. Yugoslav historiography called that event the Battle of Sutjeska or the Fifth Offensive. But the correct name is Operation Schwartz. So, it was not a "partisan battle" but a German operation that was primarily designed to completely destroy the partisan forces around the Supreme Headquarters and Tito. The second purpose of that operation was to disarm the Chetniks, that is, what was left of them, because after the Neretva they suffered a huge defeat, so the partisans in one hand made the Germans' job easier, since the Chetniks were disarmed in just two or three days. Secondly, it was not a "battle" in the true sense of the word, where two armies clashed, and then we count who had more dead, but a month-long environment that was characterized by dozens of small skirmishes and attempts by the partisan group to break through. In that month, several stronger skirmishes and mini-battles can be singled out, such as first the attempt to break through Foča, then the capture of Vučevo, and then the unsuccessful attempt to capture Košura, holding the bridgehead on Sutjeska for two whole weeks - that's how the event got its name - and the battle at Bari and the breakthrough at Zelengora and Miljevina. In the military sense, it was a complete partisan defeat, as more than 7500 partisans perished, while the Axis Powers suffered losses of around 2000 people. However, the Germans did not achieve their goal, which is the complete destruction of that group. In fact, the Germans realized how important Tito was in that story because if they killed Tito - they also killed the partisan movement - and they would probably trade for the fact that none of the partisans had died and that they had managed to liquidate Tito. However, the result was that the Germans did not realize their plan, which was their last chance to eliminate Tito with such a mega-operation. And in that sense, it is not a success for the Germans, because they did not manage to destroy Tito, and the Partisan forces replenished their losses very quickly. On the other hand, the partisans suffered huge losses, but most of them survived, including Tito. Furthermore, Captain Deakin survived, who was a member of the British mission and on the basis of whose report Churchill turned to the Partisans, leaving the Chetniks because of their collaboration and the ineffectiveness of the fight against the Axis Powers. And in this sense, the partisans on Sutjeska make a point in two ways: first, they survived and second, they get an ally who will help them win in the long run. From this point of view, we can say that the partisan forces won because they simply survived. And the guerrilla wins - if he survives. When you add to that the imminent capitulation of Italy, that was precisely the turning point: the survival of Sutjeska, Dickin's report and the capitulation of Italy.
The Germans gathered a considerable number of soldiers and serious equipment for Operation Schwarz. In the book, you describe the details of the battle in detail, but if you were to summarize: how was it even possible that the partisans were not destroyed?
As for the forces themselves, the Germans had their four divisions, one of which was truly elite, the First Mountain Division, which arrived from the Caucasus, and the well-armed, numerous and already experienced "Prinz Eugen" division. However, the biggest burden fell on the 118th fighter division, which for this operation was formatted from a crew to a fighter, and on the 369th division, which was filled with Croats (mostly conscripts from the area of Zagreb, Bjelovar, Koprivnica), and which had a German command staff. These last two divisions were the weakest, mostly soldiers who had already been trying to avoid death in the Balkans for two years. And it was precisely the partisan forces that broke through the ranks of those two weakest divisions, which was not a great tactical intention, but pure luck and coincidence, because they were exactly in the area that was the only one possible for a breakthrough. There were about 65000 Germans, and the rest of the force consisted of Italians, Bulgarians, one Home Guard brigade and some Chetniks who served as guides. However, the biggest burden of the battle was borne by these two weaker German divisions, the Italian ones took part in blocking the area. However, after the battle, there were many wounded in the woods, and the dirty work was done by Italians, Chetniks and Bulgarians, because the Germans had already left the area.
photo: military museumBATTLE ON THE STRAIT: Difficult and barely passable terrain
The battle for Vučevo and the breakthrough of the ring on Balinovac are perhaps the two most important moments of the battle on Sutjeska (there is also Ljuba's grave, of course). You have been to both places.? What kind of terrain is that??
The entire terrain, from Sandžak, through Durmitor, Piva and Tara canyons, Vučevo, Maglić, Zelengora, is difficult and wild, with more than 50 peaks of over 2000 meters and a dozen canyons. In terms of tourism, you don't know what is more beautiful. For example, Vučevo and Pivska planina are two plateaus above 1500 meters, measuring 10 x 15 km and they are completely waterless. So, in some moments, that terrain was a mother but also a stepmother to the partisans. The same applied to the Germans, because they could not wage war on that ground as they knew, but had to adapt to partisan tactics, and they were not bad at that. Furthermore, it is difficult to single out the most important moments because if Vučevo had not been occupied, the matter would have been over. Also, if Bare fell, where the Dalmatians were - it would also be over. If the bridgehead on Sutjeska hadn't withstood, it would have been over. That Ljubin Grob and Kosuta fell - the end of the story. Thus, we have one to five or six situations where the partisans were literally on the edge, it was only a matter of time before they would give in. However, the breakthrough at Balinovac under the command of Koča Popović created that key hole in the hoop through which half of the group was saved. However, the partisans were mostly saved by German miscalculations. For example, when the partisans split into two groups, the Germans were convinced that Tito was in the group with the 3rd division of Sava Kovačević, where the central hospital was, so they diverted a lot of forces there, while they qualified Balinovac as a "minor local breakthrough" and thought they would close it easily. They were simply deceived, and the partisans took advantage of their every mistake.
Partisans from Vučevo could not be removed even by airplanes, nor infantry assaults. Is the terrain such that it could be defended or are they partisans, absolutely, refused to retreat? How is it possible that such a superior enemy failed to occupy such an important position?
At Vučevo, the Germans made a big mistake, because they occupied it, pushed the partisans to the edge towards Piva, and instead of throwing them out of Vučevo - at one point they stopped, because night was approaching and - dinner. If they had persisted, the story would have been over. But that small moment of pause gave the partisans time to regroup, so three new brigades soon broke out on Vučevo and simply pushed the Germans back. The Germans were simply not "ready to die", they did not know the terrain, heavy machinery was unusable. I found some letters from German soldiers. It was not easy for them. Like the Americans in Vietnam, roughly. They seem to be winning, and fear is everywhere. Especially at night, because the night belonged to the partisans, who had sharpened their skills in night battles during the previous two years. Furthermore, the Germans hated and feared "hand-to-hand" combat the most - which the partisans insisted on because they knew they were better in that situation.
The Germans were dug in at Balinovac, well armed and well fed, and a good part of the partisans could hardly stay on their feet due to exhaustion and hunger. How was it even possible for the partisans to reach the German trenches? there were 80 to 100 meters between the forest from which the attack started and the German trenches, it's not a small space, and the Germans had machine guns...
Balinovac was a desperate move - "either us or them". Antonije Isaković says that at that moment the entire proletariat attacked: from cooks and grooms, to nurses and regular fighters. They knew they only had one shot. And they caught parts of the 369th division on the "left leg" at the moment when they had not yet deployed, they were just arriving at the roadless Zelengora. That attack lasted only 5-6 minutes, but the First Proletarian continued to pursue the 369th Division in flight for the next 20 km, so they quickly reached the next ring, the last one - in Miljevina. And there they caught the Germans on their "left foot" because the 724th regiment had just arrived and was not deployed. That move by the desperate who have nothing more to lose - opened the way for all the other desperate people who came through Zelengora.
photo: military museumPARTISANS: Supreme Commander JB Tito, Commander of the First Proletarian Division K. Popović;...
Koca Popovic, commander of the First Proletarian Division, he decided to order an assault on the enemy position without the prior approval of the supreme command. What is it?, in your opinion, prompted such a decision, despite strict respect for hierarchy in partisan units?
Koča was one of the most intelligent commanders in general, whom the Germans themselves respected. He took a good look at the situation and knew that if he didn't act now, the matter would be over. The Germans will gather, camp, dig in and there will be no way through. And he did what was best at that moment. He was on the front line, at the source of information and knew better than Tito what to do. Because Tito is waiting for the 3rd Division with the Central Hospital at Zelengora at that moment - which will never break through Sutjeska, where it will be destroyed. That was the situation: either we will all perish or some will be saved. And those "some" were the Supreme Staff and Tito. At that moment, Koča not only made a successful breakthrough, he opened the way for others - that breakthrough, looking from this perspective today, saved the partisan movement. If Koca had not done that, all of us peoples of the Balkans would have lived in a different present. Because, otherwise, the partisan movement would not have survived, Deakin's message would never have reached Churchill, the personality cult of leader Tito would be dead, and with it the entire movement.
photo: military museum…and their fighters
You mentioned that there were many wounded who were killed by the Italians, Chetniks and Bulgarians. They are partisans., at one point, they had to leave the wounded behind. It seems that was a more difficult decision than all the horrors they were going through...
I had the great honor and luck of meeting the last surviving partisan from Sutjeska and Neretva, Vjera Andrijić Ivanišević, who happens to be the grandmother of my water polo colleague from Split, Nikša Jaić. Vjera was a nurse of the 1st Dalmatian Brigade, who found herself in the area with the 3rd Sava Kovačević Division and the Central Hospital. Her testimony can give a picture of what that episode looked like. Namely, there was no escape for the wounded, especially the immobile ones. And there was no escape even for those healthy who intended to stay with the wounded. So the question was: either the wounded will be left hidden in ravines and caves, and we will come back for them later, or we will all perish together. It happened that many female nurses decided to stay and perished together with the wounded, and after an unsuccessful attempt to break through the 3rd division at Tjentište. Vjera says: "That was the worst thing in all the four years of the war. My friends, comrades, were lying on the stretcher, some of them were sitting with me in the bench until yesterday. The wounded spat and cursed at me, saying 'either kill me or take me with you!'. And I (then eighteen years old) could do neither. We gave them bombs and guns to kill themselves, and after we went to break through for our lives, we heard gunshots and explosions behind us.” Gojko Nikoliš, head of the medical staff of the Supreme Staff, claims that the crossing of the Central Hospital across the Piva River and the massacre of the hundreds of wounded who remained at Tjentište was the most difficult day of the entire war and the entire partisan history. However, when everything is considered, there was no salvation for the Central Hospital. And it was really a dilemma whether everyone would perish or the wounded should be left behind. Well, try to put yourself in that position.
You belong to the generation that got to know the socialist ideological matrix in which the battles on Neretva and Sutjeska were important (if I may say so) mythologemes of order. As a young man, How are you? you and your friends experienced a socialist interpretation of history?
My generation (I was born in 1974) still had the opportunity to live in such and such socialism, but I think that experiences differ from place to place, region to region, situation to situation. I don't know how it was in Nis or Prilep, but we in Zagreb, at least I, did not have any feeling of "excessive bombardment" with ideology, except when there was a school performance for the Republic Day, and some songs were sung and recited. Very little was said about it in the history class, because history was taught chronologically, "from the beginning", of Sumer and Egypt, Greece and Rome, so when the time came for this "most interesting", at least for me, which is the Second World War as the biggest event in the history of mankind - I was unpleasantly disappointed by how little there was in the reading books on the subject of NOB. If you look at elementary and high school textbooks from that time, it may have been discussed on several pages. And that's it. I don't fall for "subsequent" and "other people's" memories in the way that "we were bullied with it". They didn't. For example, I wasn't allowed to watch until I was 12-13 years old Sutjeska or Neretva because it was by standards - too violent for children of that age. Which was right. Our "partisanship" at school was reduced to Pirgo the deer. And the "ideology" itself was actually taught in the "Croatian-Serbian" language class, through songs, poems, etc. But it was all "in one ear, out the other" - you couldn't wait for the bell to ring and go outside to play basketball or hang from a branch, whether it was a biology, history or math class. It was all "the same burden" for us. Give us the ball, bro, and don't ask us about it.
You make a clear and explicit distinction between the partisan movement during the war and what happened after it I mean the revenge wave of the victors. If possible, however, I can clearly separate those two periods? Wasn't he already into the communist idea?, implicitly, terror written?
Certainly, "partisan history" is very interesting, complex and complex and cannot be generalized and said that it is only "communist", "Serbian" or "Croatian". Let's go in order. First, after the German attack on the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in April 1941, that movement did not exist. In fact, it did not exist for six months after the fateful April. Nothing even exists until June 22, 1941. and the Reich's attack on the Soviet Union - only then did the guerrillas appear under the leadership of the Communist Party (which had already appeared in Serbia as a Ravnogorsk movement), and were massively joined by the Serbian peasantry from the NDH area fleeing Ustasha repression. At that time, in the summer of 6.1941, we have total confusion as to who is who and what is what: first we have the emerging Chetnik movement, which has completely different characteristics in Serbia, Montenegro and the NDH (even in Slovenia), then the KPJ which is trying to start an uprising, but they do not have a clear vision of what and how, and then we have the Serbian peasantry in the NDH who find salvation either under the banner of communist guerrillas or Chetniks.
And then the partisan movement is articulated?
This is where the "partisan" story begins: very high-quality and organized cadres of the KPJ led by Croatian communists, predominantly "Spanish fighters", who have knowledge and organization, but - do not have mass, come together. On the other side is the Serbian peasantry, which finds an organized model of resistance and salvation under the auspices of communist guerrillas. And this is where the synergy arises: the communist Croatian leadership and the Serbian peasantry, which brings an important element: mass. The fact is that at that time Serbs in the NDH defected more to the partisan ranks than to the Chetnik ranks, for the simple reason that the communists offered a better framework for the fight and proved to be more zealous defenders of Serbian villages than the Chetniks. On the other hand, there is an uprising in Serbia led by the KPJ and the Chetniks. However, in the ranks of the "partisans" at that time, the majority were Serbian communists, and there was no such connection between the communist leadership and the peasantry, because, after all, the majority of Serbs were more inclined to the Chetniks. It was in that Serbian uprising - the so-called Užice Republic - that the term "partisan" was born, which was transferred to all other parts of Yugoslavia. In that period, in the summer and autumn of 1941, it is also interesting that the uprisings (some riots) in NDH, Montenegro and Serbia had a completely different character. And then, with the fall of the Republic of Užice, when the partisans are driven out of Serbia at the beginning of winter, a concrete "partisan story" begins, which is best received in the area of Croatia and the Bosnian border, and the biggest force then - and will remain so until the end of the war - is the Croatian General Staff, which becomes a partisan focal point and the basis for what will become the Republic of Bihać in the fall of 1942.
Partisan movement, therefore, starts from scratch?
Partisan movement arises almost out of nothing and takes an interesting direction that we take for granted. As a volunteer guerrilla, the partisan movement actually lasts until the summer of 1944, that is, until the moment when the "partisans" cease to be guerrillas and become a regular army, that is, an army in which the population is mobilized. And that is actually the end of the "partisan" story, because from that period on, guerrilla partisan warfare no longer exists. Furthermore, what is important for understanding that movement is the fact that there were only 20 percent communists in it - and here one must ask how much of that part Marx actually understood Capital - so calling that movement exclusively "communist" or "communists" is actually valid only for the end of 1941 and the beginning of 1942, but not for the following period, when it becomes a universal anti-fascist movement of different nations, religions, and political affiliations. And at the end of the story, yes, it's true, that movement eventually helped the communists take over power after 1945. But many of them believed - and justifiably so - that what happened after 1945 was not what was promised to them. But what can never be taken away from the Partisan movement is the fact that people, mostly aged 16-25, from the territory of the entire Yugoslavia, stood up against the greatest military force that history had seen until then, with a fascist side to it - and they managed to defeat that force and expel it from their territory. And no one in Europe has managed to do that. And that's why we all together, especially Croatia and Serbia, threw that brightest part of history into the trash. And not only that: we completely demonized him.
How was that even possible? To what extent is the communist government responsible for what happened in the nineties and, evo, in some way it continues to this day?
The bright spot of the entire partisan movement and NOB from 1941-1945. it was that an even bloodier civil war between peoples, religions and political options was prevented. That movement managed to convince people to some extent that not all Serbs are Chetniks and not all Croats are Ustashas and that it is possible to live together. And they succeeded under the slogan "brotherhood and unity". Ironically, these people could die together - but they could not live together afterwards. It seems it was all an illusion. And nationalism, with all the repression of the communist regime, is to be suppressed and to succeed as much as possible in creating a "Yugoslav nation" (for example, the most "Yugoslavs" in the population census in SFRY in 1981 were declared in Vojvodina and Croatia, about [only] 8 percent). Therefore, when Tito, who created the cult of personality, died, his conceptual creation also began to fall apart. You don't need to dig a lot, it all started already in 1983 with SANA, and then Milosevic, who let that nationalist genie out of the bottle. Well, just remember the end of the 1980s and all those "meetings" - how Tito's picture was suddenly replaced by Milošević's, and then by all the other relics - from St. Sava onwards. Ironically, at that time the communists themselves, like Milošević, qualified the communists as their greatest enemies. And the communists disappeared or changed their coats in 1990. But even today, the dead race of memory continues both in Serbia and in Croatia to whom the communists did more harm. But let's just start with illiteracy, whose rate in 1945 in Serbia was almost 80 percent, and after only 20 years it was suppressed. Or the infrastructure in Croatia: 80 percent of the entire infrastructure that we still use today was created in those 45 "dark" years. However, I think that this question is such an extensive topic that it cannot be answered with a short question, and perhaps not even with a book. But yes, I agree, it's still unbelievable to me that the war happened, that we are all still suffering the consequences of the same, and that there were no sober heads to solve it, like for example the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
