Island of Freedom

The most unsung hero of World War II had last week gained control of 20,000 of the 96,000 square miles of a nation which Adolf Hitler imagined he had conquered early last spring. The Nazis had quit trying to dislodge Yugoslavia's General Draja Mihailovich from the cold mountains southwest of Belgrade and had retired to that city to await warmer weather. General Mihailovich was issuing passports for "Unoccupied Serbia," which he also called "an island of freedom."

Draja Mihailovich's fiery army of 145-150,000 former Yugoslav regulars, Serb Chetnik guerrillas, Croats, Slovenes, Jews, Bulgarian and Austrian deserters, has often been called a guerrilla force. It usually fights in small, separated groups like guerrillas. But General Mihailovich has a radio sending station. His forces have countless portable radio receiving sets of the former Yugoslav Army. His war is not impromptu guerrilla warfare. It is an organized, continuous raiding operation--mobile, swift, deceptive--which in years to come will undoubtedly rank as an epic.

When Hitler's Panzers began rolling into Yugoslavia last April, General (then Colonel) Mihailovich led his regiment into the mountain fastnesses near the Albanian border and let the enemy roll on to Greece. The collapse of the only partly mobilized Yugoslav Army meant that thousands of soldiers, fully and modernly equipped, rushed to Mihailovich. Soon Mihailovich began systematically harassing Nazi police units and the pro-Nazi Croatian Ustashi.

Nazis called these raids, slicing down out of the mountains, the attacks of "Communists and rebels." But the Nazis presently felt obliged to declare a state of war in Yugoslavia, and in October even sued for peace. A Serb puppet and several Nazi officers were taken, blindfolded, on a long motor ride to Mihailovich's mountain headquarters. When they refused his demand that the execution of Serbs stop, that the Nazis withdraw from Serb provinces (except Belgrade and Nish), General Mihailovich is said to have sworn to fight "to the last German." By the end of November the Nazis had thrown five divisions at him without success.

Draja Mihailovich, 47, is a stocky, jovial father of five who with equal spirit plays the mandolin and fights. Born in Ivanjica, Serbia, in the territory he now holds, he was raised, after the early death of his parents, by an uncle who was a Serb colonel. Draja went to the Serbian Military Academy at 15, was wounded fighting the Turks in 1913 and the Austrians in 1915.

After World War I he spent years in Yugoslav staff activity, became an expert on Nazi fifth-column activity. Early in 1940 he was sentenced to 30 days in jail for "disloyalty" in filing documents on the fifth column with Regent Prince Paul and the Serb quisling-to-be, General Milutin Nedich. Friends near the high command had Mihailovich freed.

In London last week the Yugoslav Government-in-Exile did General Mihailovich proper honors; they made him Minister of War. At the same time General Dusan Simovich, who led last winter's revolt against the pro-Axis compromises of Regent Prince Paul, was succeeded as Premier by dwarfish, dynamic Slobodan Jovanovich, 72, a liberal, gifted historian and jurist who may be expected to harmonize all anti-Axis Yugoslav elements, Serb, Croat and Slovene.

Meanwhile young King Peter of Yugoslavia and George II of Greece signed an agreement for mutual post-war support in defense, foreign policy, foreign trade. With defiant bravery southwest of Belgrade and broad learning in the seat of exiled government, Yugoslavia was making a heroic bid for future freedom.

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