Latest news with #Partisans
Sydney Morning Herald
4 days ago
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
How Anzacs became the forgotten heroes of a Balkans war
Both became spies. Sayers secretly became an agent of Britain's Special Operations Executive (SOE), formed to conduct espionage and sabotage in German-occupied Europe and to aid resistance movements. Loading Jones, also operating alongside an SOE agent, built up his own haunting store of secrets about the leader of the Chetniks, Draža Mihailović. The Chetniks, Jones saw, spent more time fighting the communist Partisans than the Germans despite begging for supplies from Britain. Mihailović pleaded he didn't want to provoke German massacres against the civilian population. It is unlikely you have heard of the two Victorian heroes. Raised in pinched circumstances during the Great Depression, neither was schooled beyond the age of 13. And yet, in the distant fastness of Serbia's mountains, valleys and high meadows, they learnt to speak Serbian and lived by their wits, figuring out how to survive a civil war within a war that took countless lives, often in the cruellest ways. Separately, too, they witnessed atrocities against men, women and children that remain lodged in the collective memory of the people and heritage organisations of today's Balkan countries. Both men eventually made it home to Australia where, after briefly becoming subjects of media interest, they locked away their memories and their trauma for the rest of their lives. In the last 40 years of Jones' life, he spoke not a word of what he endured in Serbia. Sayers refused to march on Anzac Day and became angry and fearful as immigrant Chetnik supporters paraded under their old flags through Australian streets among Anzac veterans. We are learning their stories now, in great and confronting detail, thanks to a new book, Anzac Guerillas, by Canberra-based historian Edmund Goldrick. Goldrick spent almost four years undertaking the most comprehensive research into the lives, the soldiering and the spying of Jones, Sayers and some of their fellow escapees. His searching took him through archives in Australia, the United Kingdom, Serbia, the modern former Yugoslavia, Germany and the United States. His book's bibliography extends for 12 closely typed pages. The result is a book that reads almost like a first-person adventure story, though Jones and Sayers and all the other Australians Goldrick mentions had died well before he began his research. One of the techniques he employed to achieve such vividness was to reconstruct the details buried in old intelligence and military reports, not just about the features of a battle or a massacre, but about the physical circumstances existing at each crucial moment of the narrative. British and German military planners, for instance, maintained exhaustive reports on weather conditions relating to battlefields and supply drops. Goldrick even studied the seasons and the phases of the moon from these times, and the geography of the areas he wrote about. Thus, when he was able to match up dates, he could refer to the guerillas marching through snow on a moonlit night, or in deep darkness when the moon had set or when cloud obscured a hillside or a valley. Within Goldrick's sprawling and endlessly fascinating chronicle is the secret that drove Jones to survive until he could deliver it to the Allies. The secret, according to Jones' resultant written testimony, which Goldrick found, was that Mihailović himself had told Jones that he planned to wait until the war was over and then to 'clean' Greater Serbia of all but ethnic Serbians. These days we'd call it genocide. But how could Jones warn the British? Jones, a lieutenant promoted from the ranks in Australia's 2/8th Battalion, had come a long way since he was taken prisoner on Crete and then escaped the Germans. He was initially taken in by generous Serbian peasants who provided food and safety, which enabled him to recuperate after the desperate deprivations of imprisonment by the Germans in Greece. His health restored, Jones set off on foot in the hope of finding a way to reunite with Australian troops in Egypt. Soon, however, he and a fellow escapee he came across on the road, an English officer named Maurice Vitou, were held up by a roving band of Partisans who placed them on trial as spies, or 'fifth columnists'. The penalty for such activity was death. Strange fate intervened. A Chetnik officer accompanied by an armed escort arrived and led Jones and Vitou away. At that early stage of the war, the Partisans and Chetniks observed a form of alliance against German invaders. The Partisans simply handed over Jones and Vitou as a goodwill gesture to the Chetniks. They were taken to the mountain redoubt of Draža Mihailović. Mihailović, it turned out, believed Jones and Vitou would have the codes that would make it easier for him to radio the Allies with requests for supplies. They didn't, but Mihailović chose to keep them by his side as guerilla soldiers. 'His idea of 'cleaning the country' as he called it, was firstly to eliminate the Partisans and then the Croats, [Muslims], Bulgarians, Romanians and all Roman Catholics in the country.' Ronald Jones' written testimony after his time with General Dragoljub 'Draža' Mihailović By mid-1942, Jones had seen and heard enough of Mihailović and the bloody civil war. He set off, burdened by his secret. He was promptly arrested by Italian soldiers. He was interrogated under torture and dumped in the first of three prisoner-of-war camps that would hold him until he escaped again, this time in northern Italy from yet another German train after Italy had capitulated. In November 1943, Jones, aided by three Italian mountain troops heading home themselves, staggered into Switzerland. Loading He sat down to write, believing he might be the only Allied prisoner to make it out of Yugoslavia alive. He unloaded everything that had happened to him since his first escape from the Germans and through his experiences with Mihailović. 'During the time that I was with him we had many discussions regarding the fate of Yugoslavia and its future after the war,' Jones wrote. 'He was never very interested in there being a Yugoslavia as a union of the Slav peoples who lived in the country, but considered the Serbs were the only people that had any right to live in the country. '... His idea of 'cleaning the country' as he called it, was firstly to eliminate the Partisans and then the Croats, [Muslims], Bulgarians, Romanians and all Roman Catholics in the country.' Ronald Jones had unburdened himself. He concluded his intelligence report by declaring that Mihailović 'was not worthy of the assistance granted him by Great Britain and that a better result would have been obtained in granting that assistance to the Partisans'. Within a month, Britain decided to dump Mihailović and his Chetniks and officially support the Partisans. Ronald Jones believed he had been vindicated. The less glorious truth, Goldrick ascertained, was that Jones' report had been read by few. Britain's decision to change sides in Yugoslavia was driven by the fact that Germany's secret codes had finally been broken by the Ultra project. German transmissions, decoded, made it clear Mihailović and his Chetniks had been collaborating and that the Partisans were the only guerillas feared by Axis forces. Sayers and his fellow spies knew it was now too dangerous to stay with the Chetniks. Guaranteed safe conduct by the Partisans, they were evacuated to Italy. Josip Broz Tito's Partisans were the victors of the war, and Tito's communist dictatorship of Yugoslavia lasted 35 years until his death in 1980. Mihailović was tried in 1946 by the communist authorities for high treason and war crimes, found guilty and put to death. He was officially rehabilitated by a Serbian court in 2015. Ronald Jones, double agent and deliverer of a secret that almost killed him, disappeared from the Australian story.
The Age
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Age
How Anzacs became the forgotten heroes of a Balkans war
Both became spies. Sayers secretly became an agent of Britain's Special Operations Executive (SOE), formed to conduct espionage and sabotage in German-occupied Europe and to aid resistance movements. Loading Jones, also operating alongside an SOE agent, built up his own haunting store of secrets about the leader of the Chetniks, Draža Mihailović. The Chetniks, Jones saw, spent more time fighting the communist Partisans than the Germans despite begging for supplies from Britain. Mihailović pleaded he didn't want to provoke German massacres against the civilian population. It is unlikely you have heard of the two Victorian heroes. Raised in pinched circumstances during the Great Depression, neither was schooled beyond the age of 13. And yet, in the distant fastness of Serbia's mountains, valleys and high meadows, they learnt to speak Serbian and lived by their wits, figuring out how to survive a civil war within a war that took countless lives, often in the cruellest ways. Separately, too, they witnessed atrocities against men, women and children that remain lodged in the collective memory of the people and heritage organisations of today's Balkan countries. Both men eventually made it home to Australia where, after briefly becoming subjects of media interest, they locked away their memories and their trauma for the rest of their lives. In the last 40 years of Jones' life, he spoke not a word of what he endured in Serbia. Sayers refused to march on Anzac Day and became angry and fearful as immigrant Chetnik supporters paraded under their old flags through Australian streets among Anzac veterans. We are learning their stories now, in great and confronting detail, thanks to a new book, Anzac Guerillas, by Canberra-based historian Edmund Goldrick. Goldrick spent almost four years undertaking the most comprehensive research into the lives, the soldiering and the spying of Jones, Sayers and some of their fellow escapees. His searching took him through archives in Australia, the United Kingdom, Serbia, the modern former Yugoslavia, Germany and the United States. His book's bibliography extends for 12 closely typed pages. The result is a book that reads almost like a first-person adventure story, though Jones and Sayers and all the other Australians Goldrick mentions had died well before he began his research. One of the techniques he employed to achieve such vividness was to reconstruct the details buried in old intelligence and military reports, not just about the features of a battle or a massacre, but about the physical circumstances existing at each crucial moment of the narrative. British and German military planners, for instance, maintained exhaustive reports on weather conditions relating to battlefields and supply drops. Goldrick even studied the seasons and the phases of the moon from these times, and the geography of the areas he wrote about. Thus, when he was able to match up dates, he could refer to the guerillas marching through snow on a moonlit night, or in deep darkness when the moon had set or when cloud obscured a hillside or a valley. Within Goldrick's sprawling and endlessly fascinating chronicle is the secret that drove Jones to survive until he could deliver it to the Allies. The secret, according to Jones' resultant written testimony, which Goldrick found, was that Mihailović himself had told Jones that he planned to wait until the war was over and then to 'clean' Greater Serbia of all but ethnic Serbians. These days we'd call it genocide. But how could Jones warn the British? Jones, a lieutenant promoted from the ranks in Australia's 2/8th Battalion, had come a long way since he was taken prisoner on Crete and then escaped the Germans. He was initially taken in by generous Serbian peasants who provided food and safety, which enabled him to recuperate after the desperate deprivations of imprisonment by the Germans in Greece. His health restored, Jones set off on foot in the hope of finding a way to reunite with Australian troops in Egypt. Soon, however, he and a fellow escapee he came across on the road, an English officer named Maurice Vitou, were held up by a roving band of Partisans who placed them on trial as spies, or 'fifth columnists'. The penalty for such activity was death. Strange fate intervened. A Chetnik officer accompanied by an armed escort arrived and led Jones and Vitou away. At that early stage of the war, the Partisans and Chetniks observed a form of alliance against German invaders. The Partisans simply handed over Jones and Vitou as a goodwill gesture to the Chetniks. They were taken to the mountain redoubt of Draža Mihailović. Mihailović, it turned out, believed Jones and Vitou would have the codes that would make it easier for him to radio the Allies with requests for supplies. They didn't, but Mihailović chose to keep them by his side as guerilla soldiers. 'His idea of 'cleaning the country' as he called it, was firstly to eliminate the Partisans and then the Croats, [Muslims], Bulgarians, Romanians and all Roman Catholics in the country.' Ronald Jones' written testimony after his time with General Dragoljub 'Draža' Mihailović By mid-1942, Jones had seen and heard enough of Mihailović and the bloody civil war. He set off, burdened by his secret. He was promptly arrested by Italian soldiers. He was interrogated under torture and dumped in the first of three prisoner-of-war camps that would hold him until he escaped again, this time in northern Italy from yet another German train after Italy had capitulated. In November 1943, Jones, aided by three Italian mountain troops heading home themselves, staggered into Switzerland. Loading He sat down to write, believing he might be the only Allied prisoner to make it out of Yugoslavia alive. He unloaded everything that had happened to him since his first escape from the Germans and through his experiences with Mihailović. 'During the time that I was with him we had many discussions regarding the fate of Yugoslavia and its future after the war,' Jones wrote. 'He was never very interested in there being a Yugoslavia as a union of the Slav peoples who lived in the country, but considered the Serbs were the only people that had any right to live in the country. '... His idea of 'cleaning the country' as he called it, was firstly to eliminate the Partisans and then the Croats, [Muslims], Bulgarians, Romanians and all Roman Catholics in the country.' Ronald Jones had unburdened himself. He concluded his intelligence report by declaring that Mihailović 'was not worthy of the assistance granted him by Great Britain and that a better result would have been obtained in granting that assistance to the Partisans'. Within a month, Britain decided to dump Mihailović and his Chetniks and officially support the Partisans. Ronald Jones believed he had been vindicated. The less glorious truth, Goldrick ascertained, was that Jones' report had been read by few. Britain's decision to change sides in Yugoslavia was driven by the fact that Germany's secret codes had finally been broken by the Ultra project. German transmissions, decoded, made it clear Mihailović and his Chetniks had been collaborating and that the Partisans were the only guerillas feared by Axis forces. Sayers and his fellow spies knew it was now too dangerous to stay with the Chetniks. Guaranteed safe conduct by the Partisans, they were evacuated to Italy. Josip Broz Tito's Partisans were the victors of the war, and Tito's communist dictatorship of Yugoslavia lasted 35 years until his death in 1980. Mihailović was tried in 1946 by the communist authorities for high treason and war crimes, found guilty and put to death. He was officially rehabilitated by a Serbian court in 2015. Ronald Jones, double agent and deliverer of a secret that almost killed him, disappeared from the Australian story.
Indian Express
19-06-2025
- Politics
- Indian Express
Explained: Significance of PM Modi's Croatia visit, and India's historic ties with the country
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in Croatia on the last leg of his three-nation tour, which included Cyprus and Canada. This is the PM's first foreign trip since Operation Sindoor, and an Indian Prime Minister's first visit to Croatia. While in Canada, Modi participated in the G7 summit, his visit to Cyprus and Croatia is largely being seen through the angle of strategic messaging and exploring new vistas for cooperation across sectors. After Modi's trip to Cyprus and Croatia, both members of the European Union (EU), External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar will visit France, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, and the EU within a month. This highlights the growing importance of India-EU ties, especially after the war in Ukraine, the election of Donald Trump to the White House, and the EU trying to de-risk from China. The unprecedented visit of Ursula von der Leyen to India in February this year was also part of this EU approach of diversification. Croatia: From Yugoslavia to Independence Three Slavic tribes formally united to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes under Alexander of Serbia in December 1918. The Croats and the Serbians, however, had a rivalry of their own, and their mutual antagonism shaped the volatility of the nascent kingdom throughout the 1920s. In 1929, King Alexander reorganised the Kingdom and revised the constitution to form six new republics of Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Macedonia, organised on the basis of river valleys, with Kosovo and Vojvodina as two autonomous provinces. Collectively this entity was named Yugoslavia (land of the south Slavs) by Alexander. With the ethnic rivalries intact, Yugoslavia was occupied by the Nazis in World War II, and was liberated by Joseph Broz Tito and his group of communist Partisans in 1944-45. Thus was laid the foundation of the Second Yugoslavia, roughly modelled on the Soviet system. Nationalist feelings among the various communities remained high and continued to influence tensions within Yugoslavia. The death of Marshal Tito exposed the inherent vulnerabilities of the communist state. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the reunification of Germany acting as strong catalysts, Yugoslavia finally disintegrated in 1991. Croatia and Slovenia were the first to break out and were recognised as members of the United Nations on May 22, 1992. Croatia joined NATO in 2009 and the EU in 2013. India-Croatia Ties: The beginning India was one the major non-European countries to recognise the independence of Croatia in May 1992 and diplomatic relations were established in July the same year. Croatia opened its diplomatic mission in New Delhi in February 1995 followed by the establishment of the Indian mission in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, in April 1996. India upgraded the relationship to the ambassadorial level in January 1998. The relationship has remained cordial since the days of Yugoslavia, when Croatia accounted for more than two-thirds of bilateral trade. Tito, an important pillar of the Non-Aligned Movement, was of mixed Croat and Slovenia parentage and maintained very friendly relations with India and its then leadership. The friendly linkages continued throughout the 1990s even when Croatia remained occupied with the ethnic conflicts that followed the disintegration of Yugoslavia. Strategically located on the Adriatic Sea coastline, acting as a significant gateway to Europe, Croatia offers India a crucial opportunity in engaging with the continent. The location of Croatian ports such as Rijeka, Split and Ploče puts the country at the intersection of key European transport corridors, such as the planned Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T). Its geographic location makes Croatia a potential hub in the ambitious India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), which aims to promote Indian trade with Europe through the Mediterranean. Extension of IMEC to the Adriatic will connect India with the Central and Eastern European nations that are also part of the Three Sea Initiative (3SI), a north-south axis of trade and energy cooperation among 12 countries (including Croatia). As per data from the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, bilateral trade with Croatia has gone up in recent years. From $199.45 million in 2017, it increased to $337.68 million in 2023. India primarily exports medicines, chemicals, machinery, apparels, and other consumer items. Croatia, on the other hand, has found Indian markets welcoming of its chemical products, precision instruments, timber products, rubber articles and animal and vegetable fats and oils among others. The cultural and civilisational connect between India and Croatia, though not often talked about, is deep-rooted. It was a Croatian scholar, Ivan Filip Vezdin, who printed the first copy of a Sanskrit grammar textbook in 1790. The Prime Minister of Croatia, Andrej Plenkovic, presented a copy of this book to PM Modi during this visit. 'Presented to the Indian Prime Minister a reprint of Vezdin's Sanskrit Grammar – the first printed Sanskrit grammar, written in Latin in 1790 by scientist and missionary Filip Vezdin (1748–1806), based on the knowledge he gained while living in India from Kerala Brahmins and local manuscripts,' Plenkovic posted on X. The Croatians also played an important role in the construction of the Church of Sao Braz in Goa in the 1560s. Indian cultural traditions remain a significant attraction in Croatian universities today. PM Modi's visit, thus, is aimed at giving new energy to bilateral relations with Croatia and facilitating India's broader engagement with the Balkans, and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), which has seen significant Chinese investments through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It is imperative that India specifically focuses on this region and does not let its engagement with Western Europe guide its relations with the CEE countries, which are at the crossroads of Europe and Asia and many of whom support India's bid for permanent membership in the UNSC. Aman K Pandey is a Research Associate with the Indian Council of World Affairs, Sapru House.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump family hotel project in Serbia in doubt after forgery probe
The future of a luxury property development by Donald Trump's son-in-law in Belgrade has been thrown into doubt over suspicions that documents used to revoke the site's protected status were forged. Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners signed a 99-year land deal with the Serbian government last year to redevelop the former Yugoslav Army Headquarters, just months after its designation as a "cultural asset" was removed. No work has yet started at the site, which has not been rebuilt since it was bombed several times in 1999 during the NATO air campaign that ended the war in Kosovo. But on Tuesday, the prosecutor's office said it had opened an investigation into whether the document used by the government to revoke the building's protected status was forged. The head of Serbia's Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, Goran Vasic, was arrested on suspicion of "forgery of an official document" and admitted the charge in court. He was given a restraining order barring him from contacting witnesses, the court told AFP in a statement on Friday. The government has so far kept tight-lipped about the case but President Aleksandar Vucic, at a European leaders' summit, denied "any halt to the project plans". "There was no forgery of any kind and we will discuss everything with everyone," he told a news conference in Tirana on Friday. But Kushner's company Affinity Partners told AFP they had played no role in the review of the site's cultural status and that the fate of the project was now unclear. - Opposition - The New York Times has reported that Kushner's $500 million plan involved turning the former army headquarters into a luxury hotel and 1,500 residential units. The Serbian government has said it would also include a memorial to the victims of the 1999 bombing, which still evokes strong feelings among Serbs -- and resentment to NATO -- today. The buildings, completed in 1965 and given protected status in 2005, were designed by Nikola Dobrovic as a brutalist homage to the Sutjeska River canyon, where the Partisans won a decisive battle against German forces in 1943. Respected Serbian architect Slobodan Maldini described the distinctive, red-bricked buildings, which cascade to street level, as "a monumental composition designed to evoke a strong sculptural impression". "It represents a leading work of post-war modernist architecture, not only in the former Yugoslavia but also more broadly in the region," he added. Maldini was one of 350 architects and engineers to call for the army headquarters to be restored to their former glory after the deal with Affinity Partners was signed. He said redevelopment would be a "loss of the finest architectural work of its kind" and the "damage caused by its demolition would be irreparable". oz-al/phz
