Slobodan Jovanović on General Mihailović

Slobodan Jovanović (1869–1958) the President of the Serbian Royal Academy, Rector of the University of Belgrade, Dean of the Faculty of Law, the founder and president of the Serbian Cultural Club, Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Jovanović left personal records that cover his war government experience, which he turned into memoirs based on his documents and notes immediately after the war in 1946. Even though he was involved either as a participant or an observer of the events that took place at the time, he never departed from his well-known objectivity when interpreting past events, which even his most ardent critics could not deny. Slobodan Jovanović served as Second Deputy Prime Minister in the government headed by General Dušan Simović (27 March 1941 – 11 January 1942). From the very beginning Jovanović dealt with military and propaganda matters (which used to be within his scope of work for five years, at a time when he was a young diplomat and chief of the Supreme Command War Press Bureaue during the First World War). After the fall of the Simović government, the first government headed by Slobodan Jovanović was established, in which he served as Prime Minister, Minister of the Interior and Deputy Minister of the Royal Army, Navy and Air Force (11 January 1942 – 2 January 1943). After the government resigned (28 December 1942), the second government led by Jovanović was established, in which he also assumed the role of the Minister of Foreign Affairs (2 January 1943 – 26 June 1943). In the next government, which was headed by the Radical Miloš Trifunović, Slobodan Jovanović once again served as Second Deputy Prime Minister (26 June 1943 – 10 August 1943). He was not a member of the government led by Božidar Purić (10 August 1943 – 1 June 1944). King Petar II offered Slobodan Jovanović to form new government, and all Serbian political parties, except the Democrats, agreed that he should be appointed as a representative of all ministers (25 May 1944). That never happened and, under the British pressure, the first government led by Ivan Šubašić was established instead, who was the former ban of the Banovina of Croatia (1 June 1944). As Prime Minister, Šubašić signed the Treaty on the island of Vis with the National Committee for the Liberation of Yugoslavia (NKOJ) on 16 June 1944. By royal decree, the new Šubašić government was formed on 10 July 1944. This was a process, supported by the British and the Soviets, that was leading to gradual abolishing of the existence of the two parallel governments (Yugoslav government-in-exile and the National Committee for the Liberation of Yugoslavia). By the royal regents’ decree, and at the proposal of the Presidency of the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ), a government was formed led by Josip Broz Tito on 7 March 1945. Slobodan Jovanović published several articles about General Dragoljub Draža Mihailović. He underlined that it was Mihailović’s resistance to the German occupation that emerged as the first organized resistance group in the country, whereas the Partisans’s actions were only later heard of, and as less important. He stressed that General Mihailović, as soon as the enemy invaded Yugoslavia, was the first in Europe who organized guerrilla forces to fight against Hitler, whereas Tito’s Partisans felt the need to fight against the Germans only after 22 June 1941. Mihailović was first appointed as Minister of the Army in the first Jovanović government on 11 January 1942, during whose term of office he was also appointed as Chief-of-Staff of the Supreme Command, which was on that occasion transferred from Cairo to the occupied country. During the Simović government Mihailović was promoted to the rank of brigade general, and during the Jovanović government to the rank of division and army general. By appointing Mihailović as a minister, the government wanted to support his resistance against the occupying forces in the country. The government did not approve of the capitulation of our army, which was carried out without its knowledge. Therefore, it was obliged to stand in solidarity with those national leaders and officers who, despite the capitulation, were resolved to continue the war. Under the circumstances, the general agreement on Mihailović’s modus operandi was reached. The government agreed with the British command and Mihailović that even though the people should get organized for fighting, the real and crucial battle should be postponed until the landing of the Allies in the Balkans. Until then, their actions should be limited to that the British Command would deem necessary. It would be sufficient if Mihailović would manage to lift people’s spirits with his organization and in addition to eliminate a certain number of enemy divisions. Jovanović also noted down his account of the attempts of providing potential assistance to Mihailović, about which he had talks with several British ministers under whose authority that issue was. In his memoirs Jovanović testifies to the fact that Mihailović always acted in line with the instructions he received from the Yugoslav government-in-exile, which, as in the case of other European governments-in-exile that were relocated to London, were in line with British politics. Jovanović pointed out that the British as early as in 1943 started to be reserved towards Mihailović. While Moscow played the Tito’s Partisans card all the time, Britain was weighing which of the two movements, the Chetniks or the Partisans, was more likely to turn against Russia in the long run. After the Russians had succeeded in winning the battle of Stalingrad in the winter of 1943, Germany was finaly defeated in Russia, and Russia’s return to Europe became imminent. Jovanović concludes that “Tito behaved much more like a leader of a revolution than as a leader of a guerilla. For sure, that revolution was not staged by the Russians [Soviets] so as to make it easier to King Petar and his London-based government-in-exile to return to the country“.Jovanović underlines that in time of world wars everything is intertwined at multiple levels: “Mihailović’s fate had already been sealed as early as at Tehran, when the plan for the landing of the British and Americans on the Balkan Peninsula failed”. Even before Tehran, the Americans were against Churchill’s plan of the landing on the Balkan Peninsula and opening up a southern battlefront modelled on the Salonika Front