Based on archival and published sources and relevant literature, the article describes the struggles of the communist movement led by Josip Broz Tito, the National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia ...(NOVJ), against the Ravna Gora Chetnik monarchist movement led by Dragoljub Draža Mihailović, the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland (JVuO), in the fall of 1943 in eastern Bosnia and Sandžak. Based on primarily German archival sources, the article describes the course of the fighting between Tito’s and Mihailović’s forces in which Tito’s forces won. These struggles also had their international dimension, because shortly after their end, a conference was held in Tehran, at which Great Britain changed its previous policy. The change in British policy was reflected in the suspension of Mihailović’s support and open support given exclusively to Tito. The British state leadership, led by Winston Churchill, supported Tito because, due to the NOVJ’s military efficiency, he fit into the British strategy of inflicting as many losses as possible on German forces, while the support for Mihailović was suspended due to accusations of collaborating with German forces in the joint fight against the NOVJ. There have been numerous historiographical controversies about the reasons why Great Britain changed its policy towards Mihailović, ignoring the importance of the struggles waged by the NOVJ and JVuO forces in the autumn of 1943. What has been largely neglected in the literature so far is the fact that one of the immediate consequences of these battles was the open cooperation of the JVuO in the Sandžak area with German forces. Although the agreement signed with German forces by the JVuO commander in Sandžak, Vojislav Lukačević, is known in the literature, it was not placed in the context of previous NOVJ and JVuO battles in eastern Bosnia and Sandžak, nor in the changes in Churchill’s policy toward Mihailović. This paper aims to fill this gap and to explain the interdependence between these three events.
This paper examines the authenticity of the published document that, according to Yugoslav historiographical data, was sent by the 8th Dalmatian Corps to the General Staff of the Yugoslav Army on 25 ...February 1945. The document describes the Mostar Operation, which is thematically split into three phases (Operation Bora, the Battle for Široki Brijeg, and the Battle for Mostar). Yugoslav historiography treated this document as the basic historical source for the reconstruction of this military operation. However, there are five factors that put into question its authenticity, including not only its contents, but also the issue of the original document as well as its basic form.
U radu se propituje autentiènost objavljenoga dokumenta koji je, prema podacima jugoslavenske historiografi je, 8. dalmatinski korpus uputio Generalštabu Jugoslavenske armije 25. veljaèe 1945. ...godine. U dokumentu je opisana Mostarska operacija, koja je tematski podijeljena u tri faze (operacija Bura, bitka za Široki Brijeg i bitka za Mostar). Taj je dokument u jugoslavenskoj historiografi ji tretiran kao temeljni povijesni izvor pri rekonstrukciji te vojne akcije, premda pet razloga izaziva opravdane sumnje u njegovu autentiènost, ukljuèujuæi ne samo njegov sadržaj nego i pitanje njegova originala kao i njegov bazièni izgled.
This paper analyses the authenticity of the published document which, according to the official historiography of Socialist Yugoslavia, the 26th Dalmatian Division sent to the VIII Dalmatian Corps on ...16th February 1945. The document describes the arrival of the division on the territory of Herzegovina and a two-day battle for Široki Brijeg (6 – 7 February). Due to its use in the works of Yugoslav People’s Army colonel Nikola Anić, a prominent Yugoslav military writer and participant in the battle for Široki Brijeg, this document is considered to be the primary historical source for reconstructing the flow of this battle. However, its authenticity is questionable due to five key circumstances. The reasons for this include not only its contents, but also its physical appearance, which is substantially different from other reports made by the 26th Dalmatian Division.
The paper discusses the question of the authenticity of the published document which, according to the official version of the Yugoslav historiography, Josip Broz Tito and Aleksandar Ranković Marko ...sent to the Provincial Committee of the Yugoslav Communist Party for Serbia on December the 14th 1941. Because of its presence in the most known Yugoslav publications, this document is the most cited document in the official historiography of the socialist Yugoslavia. Its authenticity was tested by using the other published documents. The document was published in four different forms, and is debatable with regard to the content and style. The manner of its origin and the circumstances, in which it had been preserved in difficult conditions of partisan warfare, are also questionable. On this basis, one can conclude that it is not authentic, but was subsequently written for the needs of government. At the time when it was first published, in 1952, the Yugoslav Communist Party had changed its name to the League of Communists of Yugoslavia to symbolically show the distancing from the Soviet Union and the return to “the original Marxism”. In the same year the biography of Josip Broz Tito appeared in Life magazine, and the next year, in 1953, he visited Great Britain for the first time. Then his biography was published in Yugoslavia, where the said document had an important place.
Jedno od područnih vijeća Narodnooslobodilačkog pokreta (NOP) pod vodstvom Komunističke partije Jugoslavije bilo je i Zemaljsko antifašističko vijeće narodnoga oslobođenja Sandžaka (ZAVNOS), osnovano ...20. studenoga 1943. u Pljevljima. Za razliku od svih ostalih takvih vijeća, ZAVNOS je ukinut krajem ožujka 1945. kada je pobjeda NOP-a bila posve očita. Nakon toga je u historiografiji ZAVNOS bio uglavnom prešućivan što je rezultiralo i iznimno malim brojem objavljenih radova o njegovu djelovanju. Međutim, i iz tih oskudnih podataka vidljivi su datum njegova osnutka i raspuštanja, imena njegovih čelnih osoba na čelu s predsjednikom Izvršnog odbora Sretenom Vukosavljevićem, njegove glavne zadaće – opskrba hranom pripadnika Narodnooslobodilačke vojske Jugoslavije (NOVJ) i organizacija civilnoga saniteta.
The paper discusses the question of the authenticity of the published document which, according to the official version of the Yugoslav historiography, Josip Broz Tito and Aleksandar Rankovic Marko ...sent to the Provincial Committee of the Yugoslav Communist Party for Serbia on December the 14th 1941. Because of its presence in the most known Yugoslav publications, this document is the most cited document in the official historiography of the socialist Yugoslavia. Its authenticity was tested by using the other published documents. The document was published in four different forms, and is debatable with regard to the content and style. The manner of its origin and the circumstances, in which it had been preserved in difficult conditions of partisan warfare, are also questionable. On this basis, one can conclude that it is not authentic, but was subsequently written for the needs of government. At the time when it was first published, in 1952, the Yugoslav Communist Party had changed its name to the League of Communists of Yugoslavia to symbolically show the distancing from the Soviet Union and the return to 'the original Marxism'. In the same year the biography of Josip Broz Tito appeared in Life magazine, and the next year, in 1953, he visited Great Britain for the first time. Then his biography was published in Yugoslavia, where the said document had an important place.
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