Draza Mihailovich Documentary (English - 2016)

Started by milos, September 18, 2019, 02:41:53 AM

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milos

Few days ago, the 75th anniversary of the Operation Halyard was marked, but nobody even mentioned who organized and held this operation, like there were some random villagers who rescued more than 500 American airmen from the Germans. Why is this topic still a taboo, that is the question.

https://cordmagazine.com/events/after-work/us-embassy-and-halyard-mission-foundation-mark-75th-anniversary-of-operation-halyard/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxhcFvVCEnk

Colonel Dragoljub Draža Mihailović, during the war promoted into a General, was a military officer of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia specialized for the guerrilla warfare. After the Germans occupied Yugoslavia in the April of 1941, he did just what he was supposed to do - he gathered the remains of the military who did not want to surrender to the Germans, and organized a guerrilla resistance movement, called the Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland, or the Chetniks. (Meaning "Guerrillas".) They were under the supreme command of the Yugoslav King Peter II and the Yugoslav government in exile in Britain, receiving the orders and the financial help from them.



Draža Mihailović pictured on the cover of the Time magazine, May 25th 1942.



A poster for the 20th Century Fox movie "Chetniks! The Fighting Guerrillas" from January 1943.



Chetniks on the cover of the Newsweek magazine, November 8th 1943.

It was the largest and most effective resistance movement during the WWII. But near the end of the war, they were labeled as German collaborators by the Allies, who switched their support to the Yugoslav communist partisan movement, lead by Josip Broz Tito.

Just one small part of the Chetnik operations was the Group Gordon, organized by the British in order to sabotage the German reinforcements to the North African front. The British were sending the explosives by paradrop, which were then used by the Chetniks to destroy the German trains.

Mihailovic hinders Rommel

By Miloslav Samardzic



US Col. Robert McDowell, the most educated Allied officer in Yugoslavia during the war, says that any true history of WW2 should mention 1942 as the "year of the great Yugoslav, or Serb, counterattack."

"Gen. Mihailovich organized a network of saboteurs not just in Serbia, but in Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, to disrupt railway traffic headed for Africa and the Eastern Front. Col. McDowell found out about this in the summer of 1942, not just from the Mediterranean intelligence HQ, but from Jewish organizations involved in smuggling Jews out of occupied Europe ", said Colonel Dragan Krsmanovic.

At the People's Museum in Nis, historian Aleksandar Dincic also discovered a report from a German counter-sabotage group charged with tracking the most successful Chetnik saboteur unit, codenamed "Group Gordon." According to the Germans, "Gordon" performed an incredible 1499 acts of diversion and sabotage. It is the biggest documented tally of any sabotage unit in WW2. And those are just the ones the Germans knew about.

The Germans finally destroyed "Group Gordon" in the summer of 1943. They caught 773 suspected members, and executed 396 after interrogation. 207 of the detained were sent to hard labor, 120 were released for lack of evidence, and 50 were kept for further interrogation. During their missions, 35 members of "Gordon" had died fighting or in demolition-related accidents.

Another U.S. officer at the Chetnik HQ, guerrilla specialist Col. Albert Seitz, writes of Mihailovich: "I can't forget his magnificent struggle during the dark days when Rommel almost entered Alexandria... All the Chetnik efforts were devoted to blocking, diverting and destroying the railways in Morava Valley, leading to Salonica and Africa...The nationalists knew that war's increasing pace demanded they constantly pressure the Germans and Bulgarians, so they would need entire divisions to secure their long communication lines, going south towards Greece and Africa and east through Bulgaria and Romania to southern Russia."

http://kingdom-of-yugoslavia-in-ww2.com/mihailovic-hinders-rommel/



The Germans classified those 1499 documented acts of diversion and sabotage like this:
- Telephone and telegraph interruptions: 320,
- Traffic interruptions (halls sabotage and deliberate failures): 524,
- Train slippage due to track damage: 156,
- Mining of water towers: 2,
- Traffic interruptions (diversions of maneuver and train personnel): 350,
- Deliberate train collisions (diversions of maneuver and train personnel): 78,
- Attacks on train stations (as of 31 December 1942): 56,
- Railway station attacks and demolitions: 13.



Visegrad area, September 1943. From left to right: American colonel Albert Seitz, British general Charles Armstrong and General Mihailovic



General Mihailovic with the representatives of the American military (from left to right): Colonel Robert McDowell, Captain George Musulin and Captain Nick Lalic



General Mihailovic and Colonel McDowell with Bosnian Chetniks. October 1944



Legion of Merit Chief Commander for Dragoljub Mihailovic



President Nixon about General Mihailovic



President Reagan about General Mihailovic

https://www.pogledi.rs/en/general-dragoljub-draja-mihailovic/

And finally, a short documentary film (English - 2016): Draza Mihailovich: Hero & Punishment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yymGISP-COc
One Christ. One Body of Christ. One Eucharist. One Church.

Belseltad

I am very pleased to be a member here. In order for me to access the data fully.

milos

I have just come across this declassified CIA document on their official website: "Mission to Mihailovic by Albert B. Seitz, Lt. Col." It is 91 pages long, I have just read the Foreword, and it should be interesting.

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/OSS%20-%20SSU%20-%20CIG%20EARLY%20CIA%20DOCUMENTS%20%20%20VOL.%205_0015.pdf
One Christ. One Body of Christ. One Eucharist. One Church.