DEFIES NAZIS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 229, 27 September 1943, Page 4

DEFIES NAZIS

A MYSTERY LEADER

MIHAILOVICH'S ARMY

To aid in the invasion of Southern Europe, the Allies have an Allied advance guard already in position, writes G. Ward Price, in the London Daily Mail. It is an army over 100,000 strong, and growing, capable of swift expansion as more munitions are supplied. Organised in brigades and divisions under the command of regular officers, it is connected by a clandestine line of communications with Allied Headquarters. General Draza Mihailovich, the Yugoslav Minister of Defence, who leads it, has declared that if a force is landed to join him, he will clear Central and Southern Serbia of German troops within 48 hours. This would provide a Balkan bridgehead against which the enemy could advance only by difficult routes through the mountains from the north, while his nearest airfields would be far away. The headquarters of General Mihailovich's army, which has never ceased its resistance from the day the Germans invaded Yugoslavia, are somewhere in the mountainous core of that country. From the rocky "slopes of the Zlatibor and Montenegrin ranges the soldiers of General Mihailovich look down upon their enemies, penned in the valleys below, dreading every night a raid of the fierce Chetniks, as these Serbian Highlanders are called. No railway line is safe from their sudden swoops. The Germans dare not run trains by night even along the European main line from Belgrade through Nish to Salonjka, while in daytime an armoured train is always sent ahead. The western section of this line along the valley of the Save from Belgrade to Vienna is in constant danger of attack. Three of the chief bridges along it have been blown up at different times. As for the remoter and less heavily guarded railways, the Yugoslav patriots simply destroy them. One 40-mile stretch in Montenegro some months ago disappeared entirely. The local peasants, under Mihailovich's orders, harnessed their oxen to the rails and dragged them off into the mountains.

Axis Troops Tied Up On a smaller scale the Yugoslavs have defeated Hitler's calculations in the same way as the Russians did. Over two years after beginning what he had planned as a Balkan blitzkrieg, which was to safeguard his rear for the Russian campaign, he still had to maintain nearly 40 divisions in Yugoslavia, not as garrison troops br' in continuous active operations. Creator and commander of this stubborn Serbian resistance, General Draza Mihailovich has spent most of his life as a professor of military strategy. After the last war Michailovich, still only a subaltern, was sent to complete his military education in; France. He returned to Yugoslavia as an instructor at the military college in Belgrade. Then he went as Military Attache to Prague and Sofia. By 1939 he was convinced that a great European war was imminent and that Yugoslavia was dangerously unprepared for it. He had then risen to be a colonel en the General Staff. He openly criticised the Regent, Prince Paul, and the present Yugoslav Quisling, General Nedich, then War Minister, for their neglect of national defence, with the result that he was put under arrest for three weeks, and When the war came was in command only of a small garrison near Nisch. As he had foreseen, the Yugoslav Army, despite its gallantry, was overwhelmed. But Mihailovich was determined that its defeat should not mean the conquest of his country. He took to the mountains at once, and there quickly became the rallying point of the national resistance.

Like Modern Robin Hood Mihailovich is himself of peasant parentage. He knows how to handle those tough Serb farmers who have a long fighting tradition based on bygone racial and religious quarrels with Turk and Bulgar. The. Chetniks were originally a peasant militia. From them, and from various detachments of regular troops which joined theni, the general built up a well-organised force of light infantry, men accustomed to a hard life in the open, who knew everv mountain track and could live "on the country. Much of their armament they captured from the enemy. Last September, for instance, Mihailovich carried out a sudden attack on the arsenal at Shabac, 45 miles west of Belgrade, and carried off a large amount of stores. Shortage of ammunition is his greatest handicap. He is in constant communication with the Yugoslav Government in London, which estimates that about two-thirds of the population of the country obey the general's orders Like a modern Robin Hood Mihailovich is often closer to his enemies than they suspect. Once wearing peasant dress, he was in a village that was suddenly surrounded by a German detachment. Everyone was closely interrogated the general among them, but he played so well the part of a simple farmer living on the spot that the raiders let him go.

His Wife a Hostage At the outset of his campaign, the Germans seized his wife and their two sons, aged 15 arid 13, together with the families of 14 of his staff officers. They had remained in Belgrade when Mihailovich and his comrades took to the mountains. So lar as is known, they are still held ma concentration camp as hostages His friends describe him as a man of simple tastes, whose favourite recreation is singing folk songs to his own accompaniment on a berbian stringed instrument. He speaks French, German and Russian, and is in his 50th year. By temperament he is studious and reserved, but his modest bearing conceals a will of steel. With every mile that the British and American forces in North Africa advance, the military outpost held by General Mihailovich gains l n ca im FQJo anc -?; Il ma y be tha t the year 1943 will see direct and regular communication established between him and the rest of the Allied lorces. Then the foothold that he has so resolutely kept in Nazi-dominated Europe will open the way for a powerful thrust at what the Prime of ttfe Lds " ° alled " the underbellv