While Tito Fights

The Germans grew increasingly jittery about Allied designs on the mountainous shore of the Adriatic, just across from Italy. Axis-controlled Zagreb sent out a feeler. It reported Allied landings in force on the Yugoslav shore, where the Second German Tank Army keeps spotty guard. The report was wrong only in its exaggeration of the force: parties of officers and specialists had been landed to help the Partisans of Marshal Tito (Josip Broz).

The Blow That Failed. The Partisans had a hard week. Tito threw a unit of his fighters, scantily equipped with captured Nazi and Italian tanks and artillery, against Banja Luka--a rail terminus, communications center, headquarters of the Second Tank Army. After three days of fighting Tito reported that the Partisans had taken half the town, were moving through it block by block. Then the Germans rushed tanks and reinforcements from the northeast. Short of munitions, the Partisans had to pull out.

Other fighting in the mountains was aimed at railroad lines. These attacks were evidently keyed in with air raids by Allied Mitchell bombers from Italy. The U.S. Fifteenth Air Force, newly based in Italy, struck heavy blows at Pola, big supply center for Nazi forces in Yugoslavia (and at Sofia, Balkan communications hub.) Tito and Allied commanders were in communication; it was no longer a secret that some supply vessels and many liaison parties shuttled between Italy and Partisan-held points on the coast.

The Ways In. On the coast, Tito announced that the whole of the 60-mile-long Cetina River valley, slicing down to the little seaside town of Omis. had been cleared of Nazis. Omis lies only 15 miles below the Nazi-held port of Split, which was attacked from the air. Above Split, the stringy island of Pag was also in Partisan hands.

Gateways Closing? As this week began, five columns spearheaded by tanks moved against Tito's forces south and east of Benja Luka. Tito appeared to have suffered heavy losses. He called on Yugoslavs serving under Serbian Puppet Milan Nedich, Croatian Quisling Ante Pavelich, or Chetnik leaders (probably meaning General Draja Mihailovich) to join his forces. With seeming desperation he warned: "Those collaborators who fail to heed the final invitation will be treated as enemies when the day of settlement comes."

While Tito's conglomerate Croats, Slovenes and Serbs fought on, whatever forces remained to the lone-wolf Serb, General Mihailovich, were inactive somewhere in the interior. In Cairo, the coterie around exiled King Peter suggested that the Allies would yet thank Mihailovich for conserving his forces, holding his punch until invasion comes.

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