The Road to Berlin (81 page)

In the countryside at large, within hundreds of small towns and villages, the partisans and local Communists now set up ‘national committees’, establishing a rough administration and meting out rough-and-ready justice, revenging themselves on the officials and policemen who had harried them in the past years. Though each committee was supposed to include representatives of all the Fatherland Front parties, only the Communists had maintained an effective provincial organization, with the result that Communists inevitably dominated the local committees, the Agrarians and Social Democrats falling a long way behind. In Sofia the partisans who moved into the capital and the ‘People’s Militia’ hastily flung together after the
coup
enjoyed their new authority to the full, taking over private property and commandeering cars, but there was little of the vengeance visited upon the countryside. Only at the beginning of 1945, with the opening of the trial of war criminals and the arraignment of the Regents, members of all governments since 1941 (including the Muraviev government, for all its attempt to bring Bulgaria out of the war) and assorted political lackeys, did the People’s Court mete out its own retribution. By that time the Fatherland Front had cracked wide open, setting in motion a running battle between the Communists and the Agrarians, but in September the profusion of partisans and committees served to spread the power and influence of the Front right across the country, even into the most isolated areas.

To secure Sofia against all surprises, Tolbukhin proposed to advance one corps (the 34th from 57th Army) with all speed; Soviet troops closed in on the Bulgarian capital from the north-west and the south-west, blocking the main roads. On 17 September the Bulgarian army came under formal Soviet command, duly arranged with the Bulgarian General Staff by Biryuzov. Meanwhile the planning of the Trans-Danubian campaign had just begun, the sense of urgency dictated by German troop movements through Yugoslav territory so recently
occupied by Bulgarian troops (who received orders to go over to the Yugoslav partisans) and by German troops who had pulled out of Greece concentrating in the area of Nis and Belgrade. On 20 September Tolbukhin received a fresh
Stavka
directive setting out the lines on which 3rd Ukrainian Front was to regroup: Soviet troops in the area of the Bulgarian capital were designated ‘the independent Sofia operational group’; 57th Army (with two corps) was to move up to the Bulgarian–Yugoslav frontier towards the Negotin–Belogradchik sector; 37th Army would make for the Sliven–Yambol area and south of Burgas, with 4th Guards Mechanized Corps concentrating at Yambol.

With this deployment the
Stavka
intended to move one Soviet army into north-western Bulgaria and to mount an operation aimed at Belgrade in co-operation with Bulgarian and Yugoslav forces: the southerly concentration was intended to cover the Soviet southern flank and to guard against ‘any unexpected moves from the direction of Turkey’. In view of the distances and difficulties involved—Tolbukhin’s forces were spread all the way back into Rumania—this redeployment would require some time; much of 3rd Ukrainian Front was either on the roads or shifting men and equipment down the Danube, with almost 600 kilometres to cover before the deployment on the Yugoslav frontier could be complete. An ‘operational group’ of 17th Air Army arrived at Sofia aerodrome on 14 September and in the next week two aviation divisions installed themselves at airfields in the area of Lom, Sofia and Plovdiv. For the forthcoming Belgrade operation, the
Stavka
proposed to commit almost the entire strength of 3rd Ukrainian Front, left-flank units of Malinovskii’s 2nd Ukrainian Front, 17th Air Army and elements of 5th Air Army (a total of thirteen air divisions) and the Danube Flotilla, altogether nineteen rifle divisions from 46th and 57th Armies, over 500 tanks and
SP
guns supported by 2,000 aircraft. For operations aimed at Nis, Leskovac, Kocana and Velec, the Soviet command intended to use three Bulgarian armies (1st, 2nd and 4th, with a strength of nine divisions); the Yugoslav National Liberation Army would employ two ‘army groups’—four corps—with Peko Dapcevic’s 1st Proletarian and 12th Corps fighting their way into Belgrade and Koca Popovic’s 13th and 14th Corps linked up with Soviet troops coming in from Rumania and Bulgaria.

The overall Soviet plan committed Tolbukhin’s 3rd Ukrainian Front to an attack aimed at Belgrade and to the clearing of the eastern regions of Yugoslavia, with the main thrust coming from the region of Vidin and directed towards Palanka–Belgrade: Malinovskii received instructions to use his left-flank units in an attack aligned from Vrsac to Pancevo and Belgrade. The
Stavka
proposed to start the Red Army’s attack at the end of September, with Yugoslav operations aimed at Belgrade timed for 9–10 October, the Bulgarian attack on Nis timed for 8 October and the additional Yugoslav operations in this southerly area set for 10–11 October. Meanwhile the German divisions from Army Groups F (Yugoslavia) and E (Greece and Albania) remained in positions that became steadily more dangerously exposed, their lines of communication threatened most
immediately by the defection of Bulgaria and the deterioration of the situation in Yugoslavia. As a precaution against Bulgaria abandoning Germany, Hitler had ordered the manning of a new ‘front’ running along the Yugoslav–Bulgarian border, and proposed to fight off invasion with the troops of Group ‘Serbia’, but his elaborate plans to reverse the Bulgarian
coup
proved to be nothing but military fantasies. Rumania and Bulgaria were irretrievably lost, though this did not prevent the
Führer
from clinging to the Balkans, or pieces of it, such as the chrome-ore mines of northern Greece to which he detached a strong force of
Luftwaffe
personnel; orders for the final evacuation of Greece, southern Albania and southern Macedonia he delayed until the beginning of October.

During the first half of September Hitler persuaded himself that all was not lost in the Balkans. The entry of Soviet troops into Bulgaria could only speed the prospect of an Anglo-Soviet collision, for it was not inconceivable that the Red Army would itself strike down to the Aegean and make for the Dardanelles, in which event the British would advance to bar the way to the Russians—and in such a situation Army Group E might act as a buffer or screen, all with British approval. German troops would constitute ‘a kind of police force’—
eine Art Polizeitruppe
—and would hold the line against Bolshevism both within and beyond Greece. But the devastating air attack by British and American aircraft on German airfields and the transports earmarked to lift German troops from the Aegean islands put paid on 15 September to any hopes of British ‘disinterest’ in German dispositions; it could only be assumed within the
Führer
’s staff that the British made their attack on the retreating German army ‘conditional’ on the Russians denying themselves the Aegean and Dardanelles. By this time also it was plain that ‘Possibility No. 2’—a Soviet thrust to Nis, coupled with an attack aimed at Belgrade and into Croatia, or north-westwards to Budapest and the Vienna basin—represented real Soviet intentions.

For all the eager German scrutiny, no sign of Soviet ‘military interest’ in the Aegean could be discerned. On the contrary, everything now pointed to the dangerous situation building up in southern Serbia and Macedonia, presenting a ‘mortal threat’ to Army Group E lines of communication; instead of striking on to the south, as Hitler had first anticipated, Soviet troops in Bulgaria were now swinging north-west towards the Yugoslav frontier, while the Soviet command in Sofia piled on the pressure to put the Bulgarian army in the field, stiffening Bulgarian divisions with ‘highly experienced’ Soviet officers, remedying the shortages of equipment and clamping on commissar control, all with a speed that plainly disconcerted the Germans.

During the first week in September—on the sixth, at 1700 hours, according to Soviet battle reports—Red Army troops liberated the first few yards of Yugoslav territory. The 4th Independent Motorcycle Regiment (6th Tank Army) had reached Turnu–Severin on 4 September, forced the Danube in the ensuing twenty-four
hours and cleared enemy troops out of the area of Kladovo, after which a section of Soviet riflemen entered a Yugoslav village. With the prospect of the Red Army rolling forward into Yugoslavia, the time had come for Tito to act, for Soviet troops would be entering the territory of an ally, not some craven and cringing ex-German satellite. The master now of a formidable partisan army which had already liberated sizeable areas of Yugoslavia from German occupation and torn great gaps in the German divisions holding down the country—the Yugoslav estimate of German losses in the latest offensive to wipe out the partisans amounted to 43,000 officers and men killed, wounded, or taken prisoner—Tito prudently resolved to discuss the terms of the Red Army’s entry into Yugoslavia with the Soviet command, even with Stalin himself. It was a proposal submitted in good time and well in advance of the inevitable Soviet entry into Yugoslavia, for at Tito’s prompting General Korneyev flew to Moscow at the beginning of July to sound ‘the Soviet government’ about a possible visit. Early in September Stalin presumably agreed; on hearing of this confirmation, General Korneyev expressed his satisfaction to Tito, but advised him to keep the time of departure ‘strictly secret’, one result of which was to enrage the British when Tito’s ‘disappearing act’ was discovered. Few Yugoslavs and none of the Soviet military mission learned of the impending visit; the Soviet pilot Mikhailov, flying the Dakota from Bari to the airfield on the island of Vis, then under British control, knew nothing about the passengers he was to take aboard. Shortly before midnight on 21 September, having evaded the
RAF
security guards, the Soviet Dakota carrying Tito, Korneyev, Ivan Milutinovic (from Yugoslav Supreme Headquarters), Mitar Bakic and Tito’s dog Tigar suitably muffled in a sack, left Vis for the Soviet lines in Rumania.

This ‘spiriting away’ of Tito—
ischesnovenie
, as General Korneyev called it subsequently—went without a hitch (though Molotov later attributed all the fuss about secrecy to Tito himself and dismissed the furore as something to be expected in any dealings with a ‘Balkan peasant’). From Tolbukhin’s Front
HQ
Marshal Tito, now wearing a high Soviet decoration—the Order of Suvorov, First Class—flew on to Moscow accompanied by an escort of Soviet fighters. The style (and the uniform) were a signal contrast to his last visit to the Soviet Union in 1940, when he used a forged passport and an assumed name, his business that of a Comintern agent representing a far from successful illegal communist party which was held to be of little account.

The first meeting between Tito and Stalin proved to be something of an encounter. Tito himself described it as being ‘very cool’. Though the details of joint Soviet–Yugoslav operations, plus the form of Soviet aid to the partisans, were worked out in some depth, if Stalin assumed that the Red Army would simply crash into Yugoslavia and bring all the ‘anti-fascist’ forces under immediate and unquestionable Soviet command, then he was speedily disabused by Tito, who spoke not merely for himself but also for the National Committee of Liberation—about which Stalin and Djilas had wrangled a few weeks earlier—
and for Supreme Headquarters. The public statement issued in Moscow on 28 September referred to the Soviet ‘request’ to the Yugoslav National Liberation Committee, which in turn consented to the ‘temporary entry of Soviet troops into Yugoslav territory’, with the proviso that the Red Army would leave Yugoslav soil once the ‘operational task’ was completed. The Soviet command also ‘accepted the condition advanced by the Yugoslav side’ that the civil administration in areas containing Soviet troops would remain in Yugoslav hands. For the forthcoming Belgrade operation Stalin promised Tito a tank corps and evidently agreed to the withdrawal of Soviet troops once the Yugoslav capital had been liberated. The Yugoslav partisans were to remain under Marshal Tito’s direct command, and the Russians were specifically denied the exercise of any power once they crossed into Yugoslavia.

The temperature rose uncomfortably and the tension increased visibly when Stalin insisted on advising Tito (whom he addressed as ‘Walter’, using Tito’s pre-war Comintern pseudonym) about what course he should adopt in Yugoslavia’s internal political affairs. Tito’s wartime telegrams to Moscow had already angered Stalin, not least the signal reading ‘If you cannot send us assistance, then at least do not hamper us …’, which put Stalin into a terrible rage. Now Tito talked back to Stalin in his own office, astonishing Molotov, Malenkov and Beria with his defiance of ‘the boss’. With the atmosphere already strained to the point of becoming ‘painful’, Stalin suffered another rebuff when he tried to urge Tito to take King Peter back. After listening to Tito’s passionately indignant outburst denouncing the ‘corruption and terror’ practised by the Karageorgevic dynasty, for which the people hated them, Stalin fell silent and then spoke quite tersely—‘take him back temporarily, and then you can slip a knife in his back at a suitable moment’. Whatever the eventual outcome of this line of conversation, it was interrupted by Molotov bringing news of a British landing in Yugoslavia, an item that brought Tito to his feet with a cry that this was impossible, whereupon Stalin rounded on him and proclaimed it ‘a fact’. A moment later Tito explained that the ‘British invasion’ was evidently the arrival of the artillery he had requested from General Alexander, but Stalin pressed him for an answer about his attitude ‘if the British really forced a landing’: the Yugoslavs would fight, Tito announced quite unequivocally.

By now in a thoroughly unpleasant mood, Stalin telephoned Malinovskii, who was trying to smash his way into northern Transylvania, berating the newly promoted Marshal for his slow progress and scoffing at his request for more armour—‘my grandma would know how to fight with tanks. It’s time you moved.’ Having worked off a little of his spleen, Stalin then invited Tito to his
dacha
for a supper that turned into a drinking bout, much to Tito’s discomfort and self-disgust when, at one stage, he made for the fresh air in a surge of sickness. It was no consolation that Beria, who followed him through the door, dismissed it all as of no consequence and as just one of the facts of life. When the alcoholic mists lifted and cold day came once again, neither Stalin nor Tito
could claim that their meeting had been either mutually congenial or wholly successful; the overbearing Stalin and the impenitently insubordinate Tito came into direct collision, though from his sessions with Milovan Djilas Stalin must have gathered that he was dealing with ‘Balkan peasants’ of more distinctive breed. But for the moment, both men chose to nurse their grudges in silence and in secret.