"There is a young forest below, and in front of us is a meadow." But the low, thick fog, like milk thick fog, almost nothing can be seen... Partisans are coming out of that forest, I can see them peeking out. The First Proletarian is coming out," says writer Antonije Lule Isaković in the book Bes/the final Tito (and Krležine 'fat lies') The wrinkles of Krivokapića. "Suddenly, the fog stopped, suddenly rose, clearing. And on the opposite side of the meadow, somewhere about eighty-hundred meters from us, a yellow redoubt, a trench. It's a Balinese. There are Germans. Married."
That morning, June 10, 1943, the First Proletarian Brigade hastily developed at the edge of the forest; they walked all night through the ruins and mountain wilderness. On the order of Koča Popović, the commander of the First Proletarian Division of which it is part, the brigade must break through the German lines at Balinovac. Their lives and the lives of all the fighters of the besieged main body of the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia depend on the execution of the order.
Isaković: "I remember well, Danilo Lekić immediately commanded: 'First proletarian - charge!' And probably, I think that is the only time when the whole First Proletarian stormed. Across that clearing. We were all in the same firing squad. For the first time, everyone... And all the company commands, and all the battalion headquarters, and the brigade headquarters and the Spaniard (
Commander Danilo Lekić) and Blue (
political commissar Mijalko Todorović) were on the attack, and all the couriers, and all the cooks, and all the paramedics... Everything came out there, how many of us there were."
How many were there? At the beginning of the battle on Sutjeska, May 15, 1943 - it is written in the capital book
Fighters of Sutjeska Viktor Kučan - The first proletarian had 1934 fighters - 1747 men and 187 women. In the end, on June 15, 1943, more than a quarter of them were missing. They perished in battles and raids, including this decisive one in Balinovac. On the other side, two battalions of the 369th Legionary Division - mostly people from the Independent State of Croatia in Quisling, German non-commissioned officers and officers.
Isaković again: "You just keep going... Fanatically forward." In my mind I saw a wounded comrade shooting himself. He will not remain as a wounded man. We flew out of that forest and just ran, unstoppable running... And our constant cry, more like a cry, from all of us: 'Proletarians are charging! You're rushing!...' You're just rushing... We know we have nowhere to go but - forward. We must have looked terrible, from that forest, overgrown and unshaven, starving, torn and tortured... You just run, and you can see that yellow trench better and better; The Germans lying there, theirs
hinges… The Germans shoot, but we advance; a German, I see, gets up to run away. I remember that image: a German officer shooting him with a pistol, shooting his soldiers. Don't let them run away. In vain, we defeated the Germans, I don't even know how. (…) It seemed that we were going to slaughter them with our teeth.
It's that Balinese."
The day was alternately cloudy, then stormy, rainy, and seventy-five percent of the fighters of the First Proletarian were under the age of twenty-five. Mostly peasants and workers, they had among them two hundred students, eight cadets, six gendarmes, five theologians, ten housewives, one writer and one musician each... Serbs made up a little more than half, Croats a quarter, Montenegrins an eighth of the brigade; the rest - everyone else, including two Germans. By breaking through the German lines, these boys and girls enabled the rescue of the besieged main body of the NOVJ at the end of the battle on Sutjeska. Only a month earlier, in the first half of May 1943, hardly any of them had heard of Balinovac; he hardly imagined that the most difficult and terrible battles during the Second World War were waiting for them; they could hardly believe that the First Proletarian Brigade would lose 564 men in them.
STARTING POSITION: The main part of the NOVJ - some eighteen thousand fighters and about three and a half thousand wounded and suffering from typhus - formed a free territory in parts of northern Montenegro, Sandžak and eastern Herzegovina in April 1943. Behind them is the battle on the Neretva. From December 1942 to March 1943, the partisans fought hard battles with the German and Italian occupiers, traveled five hundred kilometers from Kordun, Banija, across the Bosnian border to the eastern bank of the Neretva, and defeated twenty thousand members of the Yugoslav Army in the homeland, i.e. the Chetniks of General Dragoljub Draža Mihailović, forced the upper course of the swollen Drina and won the much-needed respite.
It was a ragged army, starving and exhausted: eighty percent of the fighters of the Seventh Banija Division fell ill with typhus. They don't have any other weapons, except an infantry one with a little ammunition. When crossing the Neretva, the partisans had to destroy almost all their artillery; in April and early May 1943, they were so pleased with the few cannons captured from the Italians that they named them - the most popular being "Krnjo". Nevertheless, these XNUMX-year-olds are, on average, volunteers, patriots. Aware that the occupiers and quislings only have a bullet and a rope waiting for them, homogenized by communist ideology, they all together form a solid and disciplined guerrilla army unmatched in Europe. Organized into extremely mobile proletarian brigades and divisions, which can only conditionally bear their formation names, they are ready to wage war anywhere in Yugoslavia, to kill and perish. Despite suffering and suffering, the successes during the battle on the Neretva further strengthened their determination and fighting morale.
"Our army just turned on the Germans," writes Milovan Đilas in the book
Revolutionary War that Sava Kovačević, the brigade commander famous for his boundless courage, told him in March 1943.
However, in the poor mountainous regions of Montenegro, Sandžak and eastern Herzegovina, the majority of NOVJ cannot survive for long.
"For three days, the most seriously wounded have not received a single piece of bread," he wrote in his
War diary On May 7, 1943, historian Vladimir Dedijer about the situation in hospitals. "It is a common occurrence that the wounded who can move at a certain hour go out with the commissar and the nurses to the nearby forest and the surrounding meadows and pick grass, which they then eat."
Partisans called the picking of sremusha and nettles "pasha". Famine also caused a relaxation of steel discipline in the army, especially among the wounded.
"Peasants come and ask the headquarters of this (hospital) battalion what they should do to stop the thefts," notes Dedier.
Supplying the army is not the only reason why NOVJ Supreme Commander Josip Broz Tito and his Supreme Staff want to expand the free territory to tamer and wealthier regions. Believing, namely, that they would be persecuted even after crossing the Neretva, the partisans secretly negotiated with the Germans in order to gain time. Except for the exchange of prisoners, no agreement was reached, but as both sides were exhausted by the winter warfare, mutual non-aggression was tacitly established. It is precisely this deceptive calm that Tito wants to use to break the Chetniks as the main political competition and for the NOVJ to penetrate into the north of Kosovo and the south of Serbia; here in the Italian and Bulgarian occupation zone, the enemies are incomparably "softer" than the Germans. All together, it is part of the realization of the most important, key goal.
"I am convinced that next May Day we will celebrate in Belgrade," Đilas quotes Tito's words by the camp fire. "It sounded too optimistic, in the Bosnian hinterland, with allied fronts thousands of kilometers away."
None of the young leaders of the NOVJ think of questioning the words of the fifty-year-old supreme commander and general secretary of the Communist Pariah of Yugoslavia.
"Everyone has a completely different relationship to the Old than to any other. The authority of a superior person", Koča Popović, a man otherwise known for his sharp language and lack of admiration for anyone, wrote about Tito in his notes.
And Tito knows what he is talking about. After the defeat of the Axis forces in North Africa, he counted with certainty that the Western Allies would land in the Balkans. If that happens, communications in the Morava and Vardar valleys will gain key military importance; the one who is present on them with weapons - will hold Serbia; whoever holds Serbia will have power in post-war Yugoslavia.
One man agreed with the first parts of this calculation; he really doesn't care about the last one. That man is Adolf Hitler.
MERCHANT OF RUBBER BALLOONS: "I intend to give the English a warm welcome if they land in Greece." In fact, I can't wait for that landing," said Führer Anto Pavelić, head of the Quisling Independent State of Croatia, in Klesheim Castle near Salzburg on April 27, 1943. The Axis is on the decline after the collapse in Stalingrad and North Africa. That's why Hitler receives the depressed leaders of the satellite states for a whole month: he tells everyone about a new Europe with a single currency and market; he promises everyone the stabilization of the Eastern Front as soon as he liquidates the bulge near Kursk; shows everyone photos of the bunkers of the Atlantic Wall.
"I myself look like a dealer in rubber toys and balloons," Hitler told associates after one of those meetings, according to the diary of Edmund Glaze von Horstenau, the plenipotentiary German general in the NDH.
The logorheic and increasingly driven Austrian did not just talk. At the beginning of March 1943, he ordered General Alexander von Lehr to make a plan for the destruction of the NOVJ - the only army that, besides the Red Army, fought on European soil. The commander of the German troops Southeast speaks Serbian-Croatian, knows the country and the people: as an Austro-Hungarian officer, he led a battalion against Serbia in the First World War and, for a time, the 85th Infantry Regiment in Visegrad; he is the man who bombed Belgrade on April 6, 1941. The author of the unsuccessful German winter offensive "Weis", "White", Ler the upcoming, summer one, that he has "Schwarz", "Black". On March 31, 1943, Hitler approved the plan: a wide encirclement of the partisans, their compression and destruction between the lower reaches of the Piva and Tara and the Durmitor massif - and, since he was convinced that Mihailović would join the allies as soon as they landed in the Balkans, the disarmament of the Chetniks.
"The plan was planned as if the military operation was being planned in Poznań, where everything is flat, not in high hills," wrote Gleiz von Horstenau, otherwise a friend of Lehr. This cynical and intelligent general doubts not only the "final victory", but also the possibility that Yugoslavia can be pacified by the army.
However, Siegfried Kasche, the German ambassador to the NDH, is worried about politics. This unsuspecting Gauleiter of Moscow and lover of Pavelic and the Ustasha knows that Lehr, Gleiz von Horstenau and other generals would gladly take advantage of the upcoming offensive to replace his protégés with a military administration; he also knows that in that case he would remain unaffected. That's why he speaks to his boss, Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, against the future operation: "Tito's gangs are in the fiercest battles with Mihailović's Chetniks." Those battles, which the German side directly follows, greatly weaken both parts and save German blood, while the blood of the enemy is spilled."
Kaše has no reason to worry - Hitler considers Pavelić to be his most faithful ally. The problem is the Italians: they hold up badly in battles, and in their occupation zone they persistently protect the Chetniks, using them as auxiliary units. That's why the Germans designate three Italian divisions for secondary directions; he will inform them about the actual operation "Schwarz" only when it begins.
The difference compared to the previous offensive is the composition of the German troops. Crew units with older personnel will not be re-engaged. The infamous Seventh SS Division "Prince Eugen" and the 369th Legionnaire Division - they will. And directly from the Eastern Front, Ler receives the elite 1st Mountain Division. All in all - with other German and Italian units along with one Bulgarian regiment - a little more than 120.000 soldiers with 160 planes and about fifty tanks. The operational commander is the same as in the winter operations - General Rudolf Litters. Only the "Prince Eugene" and 1st Mountain Divisions, with a little over twenty thousand men each, are stronger - each individually - than the main part of the NOVJ.
In the middle of May, the Germans finish their preparations. Partisans too - but for something completely different.
SURPRISE AND SHOCK: "I stopped by with Peck (
Dapcevic,
commander of the Second Proletarian Division) and Radovan (
Zogović,
poet) to Nazor (
Vladimir,
poet,
Councilor AVNOJA), to visit him. I don't think he knew us, but his delight was all the greater and more sincere when he saw that it was us. He compared us to Napoleon's marshals!", Koča Popović writes in his diary on May 11, 1943 (
Notes on warfare, edited by Miloš Vuksanović).
Popović and Dapčević are veterans of the International Brigades from the Spanish Civil War. In the East, in the Soviet Union, their comrades were stuck in the purges; in the West, they are suspected of communist subversion.
Spaniards are only in NOVJ at home and in the most prominent military positions. Especially Popović and Dapčević, commanders of the elite First and Second Proletarian Divisions. Tito expects them to take action against the Italians and Chetniks, to take Kolašin and Mojkovac in the north of Montenegro - this will be the beginning of the partisan offensive in the east, towards Serbia.
On May 14, 1943, Popović and Dapčević issued their last orders to their units. On the same day, at 19.40:3860 p.m., a telegraphist from Litters' headquarters sends telegram number 15: "Order to start Operation 'Schwarz'; Day X – May 00.00 at XNUMX hours".
The next morning, May 15, 1943, the First and Second Proletarian Divisions clashed with the German 1st Mountain Division. The battle on Sutjeska has begun.
"The enemy's action has the character of an offensive," Koča Popović reported to the Supreme Headquarters on May 17. The conclusion is based on the persistence of the enemy's infantry, the cooperation of artillery, tanks and aviation. Tito is not convinced. He believes that this is only a strong German outburst; First and Second Proletarian to continue according to plan.
However, is the order to the NOVJ Health Service from May 16, 1943 about the movement of the wounded, that is, the return to the units of all fighters who welcomed the preventive move? It's not. "The motive of this movement is the original plan of the Supreme Staff (penetration through Lim into Serbia); the mobile wounded should have moved together with the Main Operational Group to fill the units with recovered fighters, while the immobile wounded could be entrusted to the field units on the Piva Plateau, which was always hoped for as it was difficult to access," he writes in his memoirs.
Root,
tree,
pavement head of the NOVJ health department, Gojko Nikoliš.
The Germans, meanwhile, attack. The fighting was particularly difficult near Foča, where the partisans surrounded the Italians and the Chetniks.
"Terzic (
Velimir,
deputy of the absent Chief of the Supreme Staff, Arsa Jovanović) says that the aim of the Germans is to break out on the Adriatic Sea in order to prevent an Allied invasion; Gido (
Djilas) says that their main goal is to destroy us," writes Dedier.
Finally, on May 18, 1943, around eight in the evening, the Supreme Headquarters determined that it was a large-scale offensive. Why did they need three days? Did they believe that the Germans would stick to the tacit armistice? Or, perhaps, were they blinded by their own offensive plans? Is it a mere human need to close one's eyes out of helplessness in the face of impending disaster? Because the hospitals and units were not dispersed, nor were any significant security measures taken, and the intelligence service also failed...
"You should write something about 'tactical experiences'." Two years in a row, almost on the same ground to allow encirclement! Well, that's where the culprits should be looked for!", Koča Popović wrote in his notes shortly after the offensive.
DARLING,
CHURCHILL AND THE COMINTERNA: Having started fighting with the partisans, the German units simultaneously disarmed around 3200 Chetniks. No resistance was offered, no casualties. About 1600 Chetniks were then interned in prison camps in Poland and Greece. Among them is the famous duke from Montenegro Pavle Đurišić; he was liberated in November 1943 and, later, was awarded the Iron Cross for fighting against the partisans.
About 800 Chetniks will be used by the Germans as ammunition carriers, horsemen and, in general, manual workers during the battle on Sutjeska. However, the disarmament did not succeed: the Chetnik units successfully took refuge under Italian protection. Mihailović himself escaped capture and retreated to Serbia; by the way, there was a plan to capture him by special forces from the "Brandenburg" regiment, with knowledge of the Serbo-Croatian language and disguised as Chetniks.
There are also two British officers in Mihailović's staff - Captain Bill Hudson and Colonel William Bailey. They report to their superiors in Cairo about the situation in Yugoslavia. However, the British know much better who and how they are really fighting there than these two officers can even imagine. Namely, thanks to their best-kept military secret during the Second World War, operation "Ultra", they decrypted German radio traffic. That is why, in the spring of 1943, London decided to enter into a relationship with NOVJ as the most significant and strongest resistance movement in the Balkans, whose strategic importance suddenly increased.
A six-member British military mission led by Major William Deakin, Winston Churchill's former secretary from the years when the wartime prime minister was killing himself from boredom in the opposition, landed by parachute on May 28, 1943, near the Black Lake on Durmitor, where the Supreme Headquarters was located.
Đilas: "Tito also introduced them to the situation in which the units of the Supreme Staff found themselves, keeping silent about the dark forebodings that haunted him. (...) But Deakin and the members of the mission were silent - expressionless just as we imagined the English."
Dickin in his book
Boje mountain: "When, during our first meeting, we briefly explained the directives we received, it could only mean for Tito a confirmation of his own assessment of the general situation, namely, that the Allies are planning a major landing in the Balkans in the near future. (…) He left the impression on me of a seemingly calm personality, who is used to giving the impression of authority with few words and movements, who instinctively commands the full respect of all those around him, a personality sure in his judgment, with marked self-control."
In the same place where the British landed, partisans lit fires in 1942 while waiting for a plane with a Soviet military mission. He never came. However, on May 15, 1943, Stalin's dispatch arrived - asking the Politburo of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia to declare the dissolution of the Comintern. Unlike most other communist parties, Tito agreed without any reservations: he knows firsthand what Soviet tutelage through the Comintern looks like, and he sees himself as the head of an independent Yugoslav state. However, while the German hoop is tightening, even he did not believe that his ambitions would be fulfilled.
TWO CONDOTIERS: "In this offensive, the Germans are fighting in a completely different way," writes Dedier. "They're not just attacking communications, they're sending small mobile strike groups ahead where they wouldn't be expected before." (…) They make deep inroads with new methods. They choose ravines, bypass our positions and penetrate deep into our territory."
The resistance of the First and Second Proletarian Brigades and the raid in which three battalions from the 3rd and 4th Montenegrin Proletarian Brigades defeated the Chetniks and an Italian regiment not far from Podgorica are considered by the German command as an attempt to break through to Albania and merge with the communists there. They additionally strengthen this part of the hoop and thus give NOVJ some time. But just a little.
"I was and remain convinced that Tito was irreplaceable in our revolution," says Koča Popović in the book
Conversations with Koča Aleksandar Nenadović. "He was a real wolf, or if you want a condottiere." (…) I could also say for myself that I was a kind of condottiere. Well, like Tito, only on a smaller scale."
There are no successful condottiere without luck and a sixth sense; during the battle on Sutjeska they both have them. First, Tito: when on May 21, 1943 he ordered Koča Popović to march eighty kilometers with the First Proletarian Division, put under his command all the brigades gathered near Foča and make a breakthrough there, like a real condottiere, just in case, the supreme commander on May 23 In 1943, he sent two battalions of the Second Proletarian Brigade to occupy Vučevo - a plateau between the deep canyons of Piva, Drina and Sutjeska.
At Foča, the partisans were initially successful, but not later - artillery and aviation decimate them, the enemy is too numerous and strong. That's why Vučevo, where the partisans broke out a few hours before the Germans, became a key position: later, the main body of the NOVJ broke through there, along goat paths; there, the partisans are fighting bloody battles to keep this only way out of the ring.
"Under enemy fire (machine gun and rifle) from well-fortified nests of resistance, progress in the attack was slow," reads the report of Major Bauer, commander of the 1st Battalion of the 738th Infantry Regiment dated May 30, 1943. "Due to the terrain, it was not possible to bypass enemy fire and make an encircling attack on enemy positions. (...) In order to take the elevation, it was necessary to climb an almost vertical rock, 30 to 40 meters high, and the attackers (
The Germans), which were located below, were the best target for the bomb throwers engaged above (
partisans). "
Neither artillery nor airplanes could overthrow the partisans from Vučevo: by June 3, 1943, ten had crossed the Piva, and east of the river there were six brigades with two thousand wounded and typhus. However, the enemy immediately closes the Sutjeska valley. Koča Popović has less than seven days left for him, a condottiere of "smaller caliber", to make a decision more significant and fateful than Tito's.
BEFORE THE BREAKDOWN: "The Germans come in several waves," writes Dedier. "All their people are well fed, they march easily in these mountains of ours, and the air force constantly throws them ammunition and food." As soon as one unit gets tired, another replaces it, so the attack does not stop day or night. In addition, the Germans collected tens of thousands of horses together with horsemen from very distant regions. In this way, they managed to be as mobile as we are, they don't have to depend only on communications, but they can trust themselves on hills and hills."
Partisans are exhausted and hungry. They die in marches, they die in battles. A more serious injury is equal to a death sentence - many, then, judge themselves. All eyes are on the sky; they are hoping for rain and fog - then German and Italian planes cannot take off from the airports in Rajlovac, Butmir, Mostar and Shkodër. Even though it does not give up, even though it is fiercely fighting for every important position, the main part of NOVJ has fallen into a desperate situation.
A cave in the part of the Piva canyon called Mratinje, meeting of the Supreme Staff on June 3, 1943. Decision - division of forces: the First and Second Proletarian Divisions with the Supreme Staff to break through Sutjeska to the northwest; The Third Shock Division and the Seventh Banija Division to fight their way back to Sandžak with two thousand wounded and typhus - it is estimated that there are fewer enemies in that direction. Đilas, a member of the Politburo, was sent to the second group as a special delegate.
"I went thinking, not finding a way out that would save both the army and the several hundred wounded," writes Đilas.
And indeed, it starts badly: the First Proletarian Division cannot secure the crossing over the river Sutjeska, and the Second cannot occupy the dominant elevation - Košur.
"Of the sixty-five comrades with whom I came to the position, only twenty remain. The next night I sent a report that three more had died. Now there are only seventeen of us", reported the commander of a company from the Second Proletarian Division.
Finally, the First Proletarian Division changes its direction and succeeds in winning a passage - past Košura towards Tjentište and Zelengora.
"The enemy attacked the Second Company and, since it had no more ammunition, and was exhausted and under a certain shock from the previous day's attack, managed to repel it," says the report of the German Major Bauer.
Partisan units pass through a narrow and fragile gap. It was protected for four days by the Second Dalmatian Brigade. At the beginning of the battle on Sutjeska there are 1602 fighters; by the end, he would die in 715. "The Germans are attacking with ever stronger forces and ever more persistently." We have lost two thirds of our manpower, but count on us as if we were in full force," the Dalmatians reported to the Supreme Headquarters. On the morning of June 9, 1943, Tito and the British military mission were going along that corridor towards Tjentište. At some point the German pilots saw the column; that day - low cloud cover, warm - enemy aviation has ninety-six sorties.
Tito: "I took shelter behind a fallen beech tree; when the bomb hit next to me and darkness enveloped me, it seemed to me for a moment that I had died. My dog Lux, who covered my head with his body, was lying in pieces."
Deakin: "Tito, wounded in the shoulder by a fragment of a bomb, was lying under the body of his Alsatian dog." I was hooked too: my left shoe was blown off, I was limping with a slight gash on my leg. Stuart was not seen. He tried to protect himself in a standing position, taking cover behind a thick beech tree, but he was killed by a bomb fragment or grain in the head."
Tito was actually wounded in the arm, and his companion Đuro Vujović and a member of the British military mission, Captain Bill Stewart, were killed.
NOVJ units, including the wounded, were then stretched 35 kilometers - from the Piva canyon to the peaks of Zelengora. As they broke the codes of the Supreme Staff's radio traffic, the Germans broke out on Zelengor at the same time as the First Proletarian Division and closed a new ring. Partisans who arrive at Tjentište are running out of strength: fighters eat beech bark, collapse from fatigue and hunger, suffer huge losses in battles, from aviation, from artillery fire; no one has been burying the dead for a long time. The archives of the Supreme Staff and Central Committee of the KPJ were previously buried as well as several cannons and heavy mortars; the remaining horses are slaughtered. Although there are no deserters, although no one surrenders, it seems that a complete breakdown is inevitable. Litters was quite sure of this on June 10, 1943: "After the successful and complete closing of the ring, the communists will try to make a partial breakthrough of the front." Order: no man capable of bearing arms may leave the ring alive."
However, Koča Popović has already made a decision that will change history.
WHILE YOU HEAR OUR GUNS: Without anyone's consent and approval, at his own discretion, after examining the German positions in smaller groups, the commander of the First Proletarian Division ordered a breakthrough on June 9 at the only possible place - Balinovac. At dawn on June 10, 1943, the First Proletarian Brigade broke through the German positions, followed by other brigades, widening the breach and deepening the penetration. Koča Popović immediately tells Tito to go after them with the entire army as soon as possible. The Supreme Staff first reported that they had just left when, later, a dispatch arrived accusing him of the unauthorized use of brigades outside his division; in other words, that he left the main body and Tito in the lurch and ran away. "We will not come to you nor do we intend to move in your direction," reads the end of the message.
Insulted, Koča Popović replied that those brigades had no tasks or connection with the command anyway; basically - that the Supreme Headquarters has no idea about the situation on the ground and the position of the units.
Realistically - he didn't have any; based on the interrogation of peasants captured in the morning of June 11, 1943, and mobilized to carry food to the Germans, Tito believed that the ring was closed by 2000 soldiers of the 369th legionary division with a greater number of guns and six tanks. That information was not correct. However, even if they did, the supreme commander - as the hours went by - had no other option left. Finally, on June 12, 1943, Koča Popović received a message from Tito: "We also went in this direction yesterday evening..."
The First Proletarian Division was followed by the Second Proletarian and Seventh Banija Divisions, and some six hundred wounded. The Germans tried at all costs to close the narrow gap on Zelengora, and the partisans to maintain it. On one side of the corridor, on Košuta hill, only nine people from the company of the Second Proletarian Brigade were left alive; on the other, the Ljubin Grob pass, the Second Company of the Third Battalion of the Fourth Montenegrin Proletarian Brigade sent its last message to the Supreme Headquarters:
"Until you hear the firing of our rifles at Ljubina Grob, the Germans will not pass." And when that doesn't happen, know that there are no more living proletarians on it."
The proletarians perished. The Germans did not pass. The partisans broke through the hoop.
"
ORDER TO LEAVE US WEAPONS…”: Tito and the Supreme Staff did not only deal with the fog of war related to military units; they were tormented, at the same time, by the almost hopeless fate of the wounded column.
Dispatch from the Central Hospital: "The state of nutrition is becoming more and more unfavorable every day." Physical condition cannot be maintained even in a state of rest, let alone in overcoming such terrain obstacles. As proof of this, we cite the fact that these days fifteen to twenty comrades die daily in a state of rest."
The third shock division headed by Sava Kovačević could not force Tara: the Germans held the opposite bank. On June 7, 1943, Đilas asked Tito by radio for permission to cover up the seriously wounded and to immediately go after his group even though it had not yet achieved a breakthrough. Without approval, he and Sava Kovačević sent the Seventh Banija Division that way a day later, reduced due to fighting and typhus to one and a half thousand exhausted fighters barely able to fight, together with another six hundred mobile wounded.
"We, unfortunate typhusari", writes Olga Kojadinović (
Fighters of Sutjeska). "Everyone was running away from us. They recognized us immediately. Throw a blanket either cold or warm, over the shoulders or over the head. White shorn head without hair, neck elongated like a rod. (...) Always an empty portion, a spoon or a gnawed horse rib in hand. From the whole face only one thought: to eat. No matter what - live horse meat, beech bark, forest roots... Eating meant living."
Sava Kovačević and Đilas have been waiting for an answer for two days. "We can't leave them! "Neither as Secretary General, nor as Supreme Commander, nor as a human being can I make such a decision", says Tito. Nevertheless, he brings it - on June 9, when he himself was wounded. The third shock division then hides the most seriously wounded; the medical staff stays with them and leaves on the night of June 9-10, 1943.
"What to tell them?" How to explain to them why we are leaving them, why we do not agree to perish together with them", writes Đilas. "The wounded didn't ask anything, they didn't rebuke us." (…) "The only person who spoke to me was a ruddy, handsome young man with no legs, a battalion commander, a native of Kragujevac: 'Comrade Đido, please order that our weapons are not taken away...' ( …) I ordered them to leave their weapons. And spoke a few words - that we will take care of them if we break through. And the man from Kragujevac, the political commissar, told me: 'You just fight your way through, and we'll do it...'
In the meantime, the Germans closed the ring between the main body of the NOVJ and the Third Shock Division of Sava Kovačević. Its fighters are approaching the German positions under the attacks of airplanes and artillery fire... At the end of the column, several hundred wounded people are being dragged - some on crutches. Avetinj march: next to horse skeletons and corpses.
Olga Kojadinović: "Next to the banks of the Piva, there are dead fighters and wounded." Unburied. (...) "By the roadside, several groups of typhus patients are lying covered with blankets." It's like they're sleeping. Someone lifted the end of the blanket and we saw them embraced and dead."
However, it seems that the Third Strike Division will break through. On June 11, 1943, its First (Dalmatian) Brigade succeeds in repelling the Germans at Tjentište. But only for a short time. The Germans quickly regrouped and while parts of this brigade broke through, they closed the ring again. Inside it remained 1200 fighters of the Third Shock Division. Sava Kovačević then makes the decision to attack again – this time via Sutjeska.
"Our muffled, strained performance was interrupted by the weak wailing voice of the wounded man from the bushes above the road as soon as we turned down Tjentište: 'Comrades, help me!' Save me, comrades! Comrades, don't leave me!", writes Djilas. "But none of us spoke, nor slowed our pace..."
THE END AND CRIME: The attack of the Third Strike Division on the entrenched Germans began at dawn on June 13, 1943. At the head of his fighters, Sava Kovačević was among the first to die.
Đilas: "There were elders who were not behind Sava in anything, but not one was as directly, mythically and vitally connected to the fighters as he was." (...) I also felt the death of Sava Kovačević not only as a weakening of my otherwise weak prospects, but also as my own security and confidence..."
Attacks by partisans continue. The Germans, dug in above the Sutjeska, cut them down with machine guns and mortars.
"Twenty meters above the Sava - Božo Miletić was mowed down," writes Đilas. "He was still alive, struggling on the side of the road, trying to get up." Paramedics tried to pull him out - I believe they also died. He took out a revolver and killed himself - I didn't see it, I was carried away by something else. And 'Strunjo' died. And Moma Stanojlović - he tore himself away, wounded, in the attack..."
Having moved to the left of the place where they were attacking, towards the forests and the rock of Zelengora, the remaining few hundred fighters of the Third Shock Division managed to get out in groups and then break through in other places. Even in that situation, they did not become a broken, armed mob, they remained an army - commands were issued and carried out.
The group with Đilas stopped in the forest, some five hundred meters away from the breach; they listened to the shots German soldiers used to kill the wounded. There were also two Germans, captured by a group that had passed by before. In order not to reveal the direction in which the partisans were moving, but above all out of helplessness and revenge, Đilas slaughtered a German, and then passed the knife to Raja Nedeljković, a political worker whom I had known since before the war and whose village, Gronica, is located in the suburbs of Kragujevac , massacred by the Germans in 1941. Nedeljković pressed the German, the German struggled, but soon calmed down...".
A day later, on June 14, 1943, German units killed around one thousand and two hundred wounded partisans: they discovered their groups with dogs, followed tracks, combed sinkholes, forests, caves... In one of those wounded escapees was the hygienist Katica Nikoliš with her twelve-year-old daughter and a ten-year-old son:
"They find us. They chased us to a clearing where their headquarters was, making us sit in a row. Immediate search. They beat those who have any German military equipment. (...) Undressing. Undressed, they place them in a new row - sitting again. There were about seventy of us. I sat last, with the children, so I was the last to come to the search and the queue. The children remained undressed. And now we sit and look into each other's eyes. (…) They take them two by two. How slow the classes go. How much easier it would be if everything was already done... (...) I look around in order. I'm the sixth. So, only two more rounds and it will finally be my turn. And get rid of the pain. But two of them are already getting up, there is only one round ahead of me... In the tent, about twenty steps away, the phone conversation ends. An officer comes out of the tent. Take a look at the row of undressed. Then he notices two children. 'Whose children are these?' - he asked. 'Those over there' - an SS man points his hand at me. 'Get dressed and go children'" (
Fighters of Sutjeska).
SCARS: During the battle on Sutjeska, the partisans lost 7543 fighters - 6946 men and 597 women, of which 352 were paramedics, according to the book
Fighters of Sutjeska Viktor Kučan. The Germans also killed about a thousand and a half civilians, peasants. It was the hardest and bloodiest battle of NOVJ. And the greatest temptation. The survivors were forever marked, mutilated. Immediately after the breakthrough in the leadership, reviews, quarrels and name-calling began due to omissions, mistakes, inconsistencies. Tito even ordered Koča Popović to report to the Supreme Headquarters, where he was supposed to be dismissed because of his "self-inflicted" breakthrough, but he quickly cooled down and changed his mind. And Terzić, with whom Popović was in constant conflict, honestly eliminated the possibility of taking over the First Proletarian Division.
All these quarrels and conflicts are the result of the burden of the victims and the unspeakable remorse for the wounded left behind. Partisans, like the Serbian army and government after the collapse of 1915 and the transfer of Albania, in an attempt to rationalize the disaster, looked for real or imagined culprits in their ranks. And basically, they had nothing to do. The enemy was so much stronger and superior - ten times more numerous, unpredictably better armed - that the fact that they got away and broke through was a pure victory, tantamount to a miracle. Not a single partisan unit surrendered, not a single one deserted.
In the battle on Sutjeska, the Germans had about a thousand killed - 583 counted, 425 missing - and 1760 wounded soldiers. The Italians and the home defenders of the Quisling NDH still had about a thousand dead.
"The enemy led a very mobile fight and they were active in defense." Massed strikes by concentrated forces in one place, in weather that was favorable to the enemy (the aviation is lost!), and where the effect of our artillery did not reach, were characteristic. That's how the partisans managed to make up for the shortage of heavy weapons again and, using the darkness, fog and rain, go on the offensive, hand-to-hand combat. In doing so, they showed that they are fanatical fighters who are satisfied with little, who know well the difficult mountain terrain and who fight tenaciously," states the report of General Josef Kibler, commander of the German 118th Fighter Division.
Praise from the enemy must be treated with extreme skepticism. In this way, one's own success and skills are actually propagated. Because what kind of achievement is a victory over an incompetent, poorly armed and badly led opponent? Where are the reasons for promotions and awards?
After the first few optimistic reports, it soon became clear to the Germans that they had lost the battle at Sutjeska: the main part of the NOVJ not only broke through, but also remained operational, capable and ready for further fighting. Partisans continued to grow stronger.
EPILOGUE: Starving, emaciated, beaten and torn, Milovan Đilas fell asleep in the night after the unsuccessful breakthrough of the Third Shock Division across Sutjeska. He dreamed of Jesus Christ. When he woke up and opened his eyes, he was gone, when he closed them - he saw Christ again. A member of the Politburo of the CPJ Central Committee and the NOVJ Supreme Staff, a convinced communist, Milovan Đilas prayed:
"If you came into the world and suffered for the sake of good and truth - you must see that our cause is just and noble." We, in fact, continue, try to continue what you started. And you have not forgotten us, nor can you leave us..."
He did not forget them, he did not abandon them. He was with them.
2408 rifles with 106.758 bullets
208 machine guns with 115.214 bullets
36 heavy machine guns with 103.610 rounds
14 heavy mortars with 801 mines
12 light mortars with 1622 mines
12 guns with 1266 shells
37 automatic machines with 1861 bullets
446 revolvers with 4568 bullets
3086 offensive and defensive hand grenades
"Fighters of Sutjeska"
Men: 19.265
Women: 2883
TOTAL: 22.148
Under 25: 14.245 (67%)
Over 40: 785 (4%)
If you are looking for a place where you can get lost in forests like those from Robin Hood, and a land ancient and wild, like from a fairy tale, this is a place you must see, feel, experience. These words describe the National Park "Sutjeska", on one of the websites that promote the tourist offer of Bosnia and Herzegovina. For the middle-aged and elderly citizens of the former republics of the SFRY, Sutjeska nevertheless arouses another person's associative flow, which is less about Robin Hood and more about, say, the mustachioed Sava Kovačević. To the younger ones, the line of the Slovenian new-wave poet: "Tomorrow the bed will be the darkness of your hopes" is rather a mysterious code than an accumulated symbol of a time and order..."
See the photo report TEENTISTE, published on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Sutjeska (VREME No. 660, August 28, 2003)
