Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Tito's Rule Worse Than Hitler's in Yugoslavia











"In the eight months I spent in Yugoslavia with the Partisans, I never once saw them fight the Germans. I heard a continual stream of anti-capitalist propaganda and saw incessant fighting by the Partisans against the Yugoslav peasants to force them to accept Communism."



Joseph Veselinovich,
former American officer who
went on three secret missions
to the Partisans in Yugoslavia


TITO'S RULE WORSE THAN HITLER'S, VETERAN SAYS

Globe Democrat

St. Louis, Missouri

1946


A “reign of terror’ and anti-American propaganda in Yugoslavia under Marshal Tito has caused more suffering to the Yugoslavians under the Communists than the Nazis inflicted, Joseph Veselinovich, former American officer who went on three secret missions to the partisans in Yugoslavia, told the Globe-Democrat yesterday.

Discharged four months ago after four years in the Army, Veselinovich first parachuted into Yugoslavia in May, 1944, to establish contact with the partisan troops and organize supply lines for the resistance movement. With the aid of 200 partisan women, the St. Louisan succeeded in building an airport in the mountains near the Hungarian border, only six miles from German lines, for United States planes to fly supplies to Tito’s men and carry out the wounded.

“In the eight months I spent in Yugoslavia with the Partisans, I never once saw them fight the Germans,” Veselinovich said. “I heard a continual stream of anti-capitalist propaganda and saw incessant fight by the Partisans against the Yugoslav peasants to force them to accept Communism.

A native of Yugoslavia who came to St. Louis in 1929, Veselinovich said that Tito’s forces destroyed whole villages of loyal Yugoslavians because they had refused to join the communist movement. He stated that more than 100,000 Yugoslav men, women and children fled to Italy immediately after the German surrender to escape the communists and cannot return to their homes for fear of Tito’s “purge.”

“While I was in the hills with the Partisans,” he said, “I heard the commissars report regularly on strikes in this country, race riots, and predict the fall of American capitalism. They never once mentioned lend-lease aid to Russia and Yugoslavia.”

“More propaganda was distributed against the Chetniks than against the Nazis,” he reported. “Rumors of Chetnik collaboration with the Germans were spread, but not a single one was proved.”

Tito refused to allow UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) to distribute food and supplies to the liberated people as it did in other countries because he wanted to handle the relief material himself to use it as a political weapon, the St. Louisan declared. As a result, many hungry persons were denied aid.



Globe-Democrat

St. Louis, Missouri

1946






_________________________
Please feel free to contact me at ravnagora@hotmail.com
Aleksandra
_________________________

1 comment:

  1. Very interesting. I would love read anything you write and understand better what went down during that War. An uncensored edition, so to speak. My Uncle Kenneth was shot down over those very Mountains in 1944 and hidden by the peasants in the mountains until he could be rescued. He took me into Bosnia (Yugoslavia then) with his family in 1965 when I was just 18. Quite an experience for an 18 year old. It was the first year a Visa was allowed for Americans. We went to the village to meet the man who hid him. I walked those mountains up above Sveti Stefan in 1965. I met local sheep herders and grape growers, and a priest in a monastary. I have never forgotten those wonderful people. http://www.flickr.com/photos/66013135@N00/3586387906/

    ReplyDelete