I did not get your irony on Sluzkiy's memoirs as a source.
My irony is well placed since you put Mr.Sluzkiy's memoirs as the main source of the info on which the reader should form his opinion. Like all memoirs they suffer from the fact they're based on the memory and highly subjective. I don't remember seeing this Mr.Sluzkiy's book anywhere on the list of the serious works on the topic, like Schmieder's, Djilas', Roberts' etc.
Djilas also wrote (Conversations with Stalin) that in Balkans Stalin was basing his politics on the pan-Slavic union but not on unified struggle of communists (provided that Yugoslavian communists were supported by Brits).
As for the sources from the Alliens we should remember that the guerilla activities in Yugoslavia were supervised by British office of Department of Special Operations basing in Cairo. Andrew&Gordievskiy wrote that the senior expert in that office (Klugman) was a devoted and renowned communist, Philip Knightly recited that one of his contacts (liason officer in Mikhailovic' headquarters) reported to him that the office was a spawn of Soviet resident agents, and Sudoplatov in his Special Missions wrote that NKVD - ìû íàëàäèëè äåëîâîé êîíòàêò ñ ñîòðóäíèêàìè àíãëèéñêîé ðàçâåäêè, äåéñòâîâàâøèìè ïðè øòàáå ìàðøàëà Òèòî â Þãîñëàâèè - "established business relations with British intelligence officers acting in Marshal Tito's staff in Yugoslavia" (those who reported to McLean about the alignment of forces in the country).
Now,let's get something clear: favourite argument of the chetnik apologists is that the NKVD mole in Cairo was the sole reason why Churchill changed his horse on the Balkans. First,if it's true,would the NKVD agent dare to work on his own,since it's clear Stalin didn't prefer KPY as the sole reistance movement? Why would than an agent plant pro-communist forgeries therby going directly against Stalin's policy? Any evidence these moles worked on their own?
What do you think it it practical to assume taking into consideration all the above that the information sent to British command and then released to public about the scope of Mikhailovic' anti-German sabotage activities was corrupt by i
intermediaries?
You forget (or "forget" to write) that two British officers
who enjoyed particular Churchill's trust went to see for themselves if the reports were true and to report back (not to mention Churchill's son). How do you explain
their attitude towards the chetniks? Were they somehow brainwashed? And there was no intermediaries between them and chetniks or intercepted and captured chetnik dispatches (see Vlatko Velebit).
So what do we have then. We know that German command established equal award for the heads of Tito and Mikhailovic. Thus they evaluated their activities being equally harmful for Germans.
It means they evaluated
Tito's activity and
Draza's presence. First they hunted because he was fighting them,the other because there was a posibility he might,sometime,maybe fight them (in case of Allied landing).
We have the memoirs of independent observers (the Slovenie officer quoted by TISO and Sluzkiy's notes).
Slovene officer was a member of "Blue Guards",that handful of royalist Slovenes loyal to Mihailovic,so he can never be independent. Again,basing your whole picture just on memoirs could lead to serious distorting of the same. I ask you again: have you ever read Schmieder?
As for the numbers of forces of Tito and Mikhailovic. Numbers mean nothing.
Oh? Numbers mean nothing,eh? Just couple of posts ago you pompously mentioned 150,000 chetniks raised in September 1944. ( utter nonsense,by the way). So,are they important or not?
We all know that Tito drafted Serbian refugees from Croatia. Those were not only potential fighters but members of their families as well
.
Tito drafted Serb refugees you say? It wasn't hard to have thousands of Serbs swelling you ranks,knowing what they went through in puppet Croatia. Members of the familiy? Who are you aiming at precisely? Brothers,fathers,cousins? Or are you aiming at women,who were equal in rights to men in YPLA. So who do you aim at?
So the operational forces should have been remarkably smaller than the reported staff numbers .
What did the staff report? What figures do you have? Even most of the "western" sources claim that Partisan army had several hundred thousand men by 1945. Counter these figures using some serious source,please.
Gaius