Real Dictators - Tito Part 3: The Partisan in the Mountains

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

When the Nazis invade Yugoslavia Tito takes to the mountains. Winston Churchill dispatches a crack team of paratroopers, led by a man rumoured to inspire the character of James Bond. Sneaking their way through the countryside, they will seek to rendezvous with the mysterious Partisan leader and take the fight to the German war machine… A Noiser podcast production. Narrated by Paul McGann. Featuring Neil Barnett, Branko Brkic, Christopher Catherwood, Richard Mills, Nicholas O’Shaughnessy, Geoffrey Swain, Susan L Woodward. This is Part 3 of 5. Written by Jeff Dawson | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound supervisor: Tom Pink | Sound design & audio editing by George Tapp | Assembly editing by Dorry Macaulay, Rob Plummer, Jacob Booth | Compositions by Oliver Baines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cian Ryan-Morgan | Recording engineer: Joseph McGann. You can listen to the final two episodes of the Tito story straight away, without waiting and without ads, by joining Noiser+. Just click the subscription banner at the top of the feed or go to noiser.com/subscriptions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's September the 18th, 1943, just before 4 a.m. local time, where in an RAF bomber, a Halifax, flying 10,000 feet over the Dinaric Alps, the jagged mountain range that runs through the middle of Bosnia. The plane has flown up from Cairo via Tunis, a journey of around 2,000 miles. It's a perilous mission, heading deep into the Nazi-occupied Balkans in pitch-blank. darkness in complete radio silence. The plane has been refitted, to drop not bombs, but people. The engines dip and it begins its descent. At just 500 feet it levels out. A crewman cranks open a modified hatch in the floor, what's known as the Joe hole.

Twelve special ops paratroopers shuffled towards it. In the light of a dim red bulb, they clip on their release lines. When it turns green, the first man tumbles out into the blackness. These are remarkable men, the best of the best, and none more so than their leader. Age 32, a Scottish aristocrat. He's distinguished himself in combat, operating behind enemy lines in North Africa with the unit he co-founded, the Special Air Service, or SAS. His devil-making care swagger will bring him to the attention of an intelligence officer, Ian Fleming. When the war's over, Fleming hopes to become a novelist. He will need a model for his spy

hero, the star of a book series he intends to write. The man's name is McLean, Fitzroy McLean, and his mission is of utmost importance, one that could turn the tide of the war. Under the auspices of the Special Operations Executive, the SOE, McLean has been dispatched by Winston Churchill personally. His orders? Seek out the Yugoslav resistance movement, the partisans, and make contact with their leader. No one knows his true identity.

All McLean knows, or anyone knows, is that he goes by a single cryptic name. Tito. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is part three of the Tito story. And this is real dictators. In 1937, Yossip Broz had returned to Yugoslavia from Russia. As a trained Soviet agent, he stood ready to lead a revolution. He has styled himself with a nickname, Tito.

Unfortunately, pro-Nazis have pushed the government into, joining the Tripartite Pact. In March 1941, Serbian Air Force officers staged a military coup. They reinstall Boy King Peter II as head of state. It's an outright rejection of Hitler's new order. A move as rash as it's brave, but there will be no escaping the wrath of the Fuhrer.

By now the Nazis are an unstoppable force. From the Pyrenees to Poland, continental Europe falls almost totally under access control. Yugoslavia, surrounded by hostile neighbors, is a lone holdout. It's also a sitting duck. Hitler had been counting on access across Yugoslavia for his troop trains, the better to bail out Mussolini, who'd botched his invasion of Greece. But his plans have hit the buffers.

Now he must fight his way to Athens, and delay his secret of offensive against the Soviet Union. The invasion of Yugoslavia comes with sadistic, retributive overtones. Fewer directive number 25, Unternemen Straff Gerich, Operation Punishment. At dawn on April 6th, 1941, Orthodox Easter Sunday, units of the Wehrmacht roll in. They're accompanied by troops from Italy and Hungary. They crossed the length of Yugoslavia's 1,300-mile land border, from Italy right the way round to Bulgaria, though the most effective destruction comes by way of the Luftwaffe,

which bombs Belgrade relentlessly. The capital is devastated, the bombing instilling a wave of terror. 17,000 civilians are killed. Yugoslavia has a decent-sized standing army, about a quarter of a million men. But it's as shambolic as it's spirited. Of the half a million reservists called up, two-thirds desert, mainly Croats and Slovenes. This artificial construct, this Yugoslavia, is not worth fighting for. Joachim von Ribendrop, the Nazi foreign minister, has been exploiting the divisions.

Allow the Nazis in, the Croatians are told, and they will be granted their own freedom. In Zagreb, the Germans are welcomed as liberators. The independent state of Croatia is declared on April 10th. It is inevitably a puppet arrangement, effectively under the control of the Croatian fascist movement, the Ustasha. In the rump of the country, the Yugoslavia armed forces fight a heroic rearguard. But with its obsolete air force destroyed, the Nazis cut through like a hot knife through butter. On April the 13th, day 8, Hitler's pancers rumble into Belgrade. To the south, Axis

troops surge in from Bulgaria to take Skopje. The Yugoslav retreat is cut off. With the fall of Sarajevo, it's game over. On the 17th, Yugoslavia surrenders. The campaign lasts just 12 days. The Germans take 300,000 Yugoslav POWs at a cost of just 558 casualties, textbook Blitzkrieg. And then the dismemberment begins. Dr Richard Mills. Hitler is definitely an enemy of Yugoslavia as a concept.

He is also no fan of the Serbs. We can trace this back to the First World War to Serbia's remarkable performance in the... that conflict, very small state with a small population, is able to embarrass Austria-Hungary, then emerges as this victor after the First World War around which this new state is built. We see lots of settling of accounts.

Ripping up the Treaty of Versailles, Hitler and Mussolini annexed chunks of Slovenia. Yilducce declares Montenegro and Italian protectorate and bags the Dalmatian coast. Hungary and Bulgaria carve off land, the latter annexing much of Macedonia. As one of nine occupation zones, the heart of the state is reduced to the German-administered territory of the military commander in Serbia. Professor Christopher Catherwood.

And it was then split up between the Germans and the Italians. Oh, and the Bulgarians got a bit too, of course, so they all had their bits. And Croatia was a kingdom normally under an Italian prince. in fact, I mean, not really somebody ever went there. And a lot of Yugoslavos was directly ruled by the Germans. And then of course there was a Quisling regime, which people forget in Belgrade, where it was sort of pro-German Serbs. Mineral riches are mined or the Axis war effort, and we see horrendous reprisals against the

Serbian population, massacres of innocent civilians, of children in some cases as well. Yugoslavia is no more. It ceases to exist. As if to demonstrate the efficiency of his war machine and to humble Mussolini, hit the stormtroopers roll on down to Greece. The swastika is flying over the Acropolis in just three weeks. The entire Balkans has now fallen. British forces in Greece withdraw to the island of Crete. The Yugoslav government has already scarpered. flying via Athens to Jerusalem, then Cairo. In June, the 17-year-old Peter II, along with his cabinet, will form a government in exile in London, operating out of Claridge's Hotel.

But if Hitler thought he had an easy ride, he has another thing coming. For though Yugoslavia has been knocked down, it's far from out. Its incredible resilience is not only an unsung story of the war, but will alter the very shape of it. Tito is in a quandary. Unthinkably, Nazi Germany and his beloved Soviet Union are now allies. Between them, they've divvied up Poland. To rob salt in the wounds, Stalin invites the Yugoslav ambassador to the Kremlin.

He informs him that his post has been dissolved. There is no longer any such thing as Yugoslavia. Where the Comintern is usually overloading Tito with instructions, it gives only one command now. Do nothing. Uncle Joe has thrown him under the boss, and as leader of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, he is a prime target. But Tito has spent 20 years moving around, living under false identities. When the Germans march into Zagreb, should they have looked for him, they would have have found only an engineer called Slabko Babich. And he has other attributes. Despite his age, and he's approaching 50, Tito is a seasoned soldier and revolutionary. Plus, the Yugoslav

communists have spent years stashing weaponry all over the place, ready for an armed uprising. A sizable contingent, two are brigadistas, men with first-hand experience of the Spanish Civil War. While Tito is ruminating, the narrative alters yet again. On Sunday, June the 22nd, Hitler launches Operation Barbarossa, his set-piece invasion of the Soviet Union. The non-aggression pact was just a charade. There are sighs of relief all round. Tito is back in business, author and intelligence consultant, Neil Barnett. I think this is sometimes glossed over

or something not fully understood that the partisan war was a resistance to occupation and a communist revolution wrapped up in one. The two were indistinguishable. And that's, you know, the opportunity really that Yugoslav communists have been waiting for, and they got it. Tito slips away first to Belgrade, then into the rugged interior of the Bosnian mountains.

And, wouldn't you know, The Comintern is back on the line. So it's not until the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 by the Germans that we suddenly see the Comintern mobilizing communist forces elsewhere in Europe. And at that point, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia receives instructions to start an uprising and to resist the invasion forces. Tito puts out a call to his comrades. The hour has struck to take up arms for your freedom against the fascist aggressors.

He is not only party leader, but the most capable military man, and thus appointed its commander. His fighting force has already been fashioned into brigades, and has a Soviet-style command structure. He is to fight, Moscow decrees, as part of the greater communist struggle. fronting the National Liberation partisan detachments of Yugoslavia, or, as everyone will call them, just the partisans. Professor Nicholas O'Shaughnessy. So he's immediately made head of the Communist Army, which does astonishingly well,

because it's used to operating in conditions of clandestine secrecy, and what you have in a hilly country, Londonous country even, occupied by the Third Reich, you have the need for clandestine forms of behavior and skills. And these, Tito, and in fact all the Yugoslats had to an extreme degree. I'm Clark Peters, and this is Founding Fathers, an American dream. Thomas Jefferson writes the Declaration of Independence. George Washington leads a rag-tag army against the mighty British Empire. A furious crowd in New York tears down a statue of the king. Two hundred fifty years ago, the United States of America was born. But how did the people invent a new nation? Listen to

founding fathers, an American dream, from the Noiser Podcast Network, wherever you get your podcasts. This July, on the Noiser Podcast Network, founding fathers and American dream continues. July 4th marks 250 years of the United States. Join Clark Peters for a deep dive into the country's origins. On real dictators, the story of Marshall Tito concludes, as currents of global history converge on the Balkans. Unreal survival stories were on board a light aircraft over Canada, following a couple on the holiday of a lifetime,

and watching on as an avalanche consumes a gold mine. On short history of, we'll delve into the amazing stories of the Brinks-Matt gold robbery and the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. And in Sherlock Holmes short stories, Holmes sets out on a search for a missing pupil in The Adventure of the Priory School. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus. The partisans are not alone. Out in the mountains are the remnants of the Yugoslav army.

They've regrouped under General Draza Mihailovich. They'll become known by the nickname they adopt. meaning a band or a troop, the Chetniks. Their immediate aim is the same, the eviction of the invaders. No reason why they can't coexist, though their long-term goals will prove very different. The other resistance movement under General Drozya Mahailovich, the Chetnik movement, is seeking a restoration of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia with the Serbian monarchy. Now, as the war progresses, that movement, which is a fairly disparate organization, moves

ever more closely towards Serbian nationalism. And of course, that's not what Tito and people want to do, because they were Yugoslavs, and they wanted to be able to use the situation of being invaded to create the revolution. For the moment, it's the Chetniks who have the ear of the government in exile, something underscored by yet another development. In July 12, 1941, Britain and the Soviet Union make a joint declaration. They are now allies. And what's going on in Yugoslavia, Churchill and Stalin both agree, is a vital strategic importance.

Unfortunately, due to the ongoing Nazi invasion, Stalin is unwilling to supply any weaponry to the Balkan theatre. Professor Geoffrey Swain. Tito was operating on the assumption that the Red Army would come to his aid quickly. And of course we know that that didn't happen. The Red Army has to retreat, but the British could, and they did. From air bases in Egypt and Cyprus, the RAF begins to air drop weaponry. The bad news for the partisans is that it is the Chetniks, the continuity army,

who are the chief beneficiaries. Tito's partisans are well-tooled up nonetheless. On July 4th, 1941, there are lightning raids on police stations and their armories. Knowing that there's no point in trying to take on the Germans in open warfare, they launch a hidden-run guerrilla campaign. Their cells are muddled on the Heiduk, the bandit brigades which once battled the Ottomans. With Hitler unable to spare troops either, the German occupation has been concentrated in the cities. Both partisans and Chetniks suffer around 4,000 casualties that first summer.

But out in the countryside, they have a number of successes. In September 1941, Tito puts out a call for a general uprising across the country. It's met with over 200 acts of sabotage, the blowing up of trains, supply depots and military installations. With Tito leading from the front, the partisans even, managed to liberate an entire area of Western Serbia, about 5,000 square miles, which they declare the Republic of Uzié. It's the first patch of occupied Europe to be freed. But things are about to change yet again.

To the Axis, Yugoslavia is a quintessential occupation state, there to be exploited. And as for its people, it's a field day for the Nazis who can play out their genocide. fantasies on the Slavs, Muslims, Jews and gypsies. The atrocities plumb new depths, a tale of mass executions, torture, rape, the raising of villages and death camp deportations. In Serbia, it's conducted by the German governor, Franz Burma, alongside the collaborationist Serb regime of General Milaniedic. even by Burma's own statistic standards, he will come a poor second to the Croatian

Ustasha leader and Tapa Velic. Professor Susan L. Woodward. The Croatian government sided with the Axis powers and the Ustashe, even the Nazis apparently thought they were more cruel than their own. The whole ideology of that Ustasha movement is based upon a hatred of Serbs as a people. They are blamed for the abomination, as they see it, which was the interwar kingdom, and they are dehumanized to a significant degree. And we see a genocide against the Serbian population in the independent state of Croatia.

It's estimated that around 350,000 Serbs are killed in Eustachirang concentration camps. 7,000 more are murdered in the favoured execution site, the forest of Dottrishina, had the other Yugoslav ethnicities, and some give a total figure exterminated as 700,000. It's a sad fact, and important for decades later, that more Yugoslavs will be killed by fellow Yugoslavs in the war than by any occupying power. Pavalich, it is alleged, keeps a macabre trophy in his office. Forty pounds of human eyeballs stored in jars. The German army, meanwhile, is on the rampage. Stories filter back at random groups of villages, men, women, children, the elderly, being marched

out to pits and shot en masse. One massacre in Serbia's Matsva region claimed 6,000 lives. The Nazi crossages are far, far worse than almost anywhere else. So you get this claim that for every dead German soldier, 100 local people would be executed. So the Third Reich was at its most murderous in Yugoslavia. The figure we're given is a million people killed in Yugoslavia in World War II. But part of it is because the resistance actually resisted. It's to cause a split between Tito and Mihailovich.

The Czechynics were terrified that if they took from... mature military action, there would be reprisals, and there were horrific reprisals. And so the Chechnick mantra became, well, we'll carry out little bits of sabotage, but we're not going to do anything in the way of real partisan fighting until there's a chance of an Allied landing, until there's a chance of some sort of external support. So they did deal with the Italians and said, we're going to wait. And the aim of the Chetniks was wait until the British are coming or whoever's going to liberate the Wolkins are coming. They did fight Germans sometimes, but most of the time they were trying to be low-key because they didn't like the people to be slaughtered.

But Tito, who'd lived through Stalin's purges, there can be no flinching at the barbarity. Tito's father-tons didn't really care so much about casualties. And, of course, that was part of the moral dilemma, the British had, because, you know, the question was, Who was fighting the most deumans? Well, of course, it was the partisans. The Nazi revenge policy, meanwhile, intended as a deterrent, soon proves counterproductive. Whole villages start decamping en masse into the forests to join the armed struggle. With the partisans welcoming all comers, it is to them whom they flock.

They are now appealing on a multi-ethnic basis to anyone that wants to join them. We also see the partisans embracing women as fighters, for example. It's an inclusive movement. Editor and publisher, Branko Berkich. I mean, Communist Party has inflated its role. Later, history has been written by the winners. So they inflated the original role in starting all those uprisals against the Germans and Italians. So they're basically people who just want to fight and the crimes committed by Ustashas and committed by Germans.

was so egregious that people basically do not care if they die because the horror and injustice is so big that they were basically saying I don't care if I die if I were always too fussy. It was run totally on communist lines. You didn't have to be a communist

and all to be a partisan, but you had to buy into the idea of Yugoslavia. By the end of 1941, there are around 80,000 partisans in the mountains. Serbs, anti-fascist Croats, Slovenes, Bosnia, Muslims or Bosniaks, as well as around 2,000 escaping Jews.

They're drawn in no small part by the lure of the mysterious Tito, who assumes an almost superhero status, often with his operatives claiming to be acting on his behalf, or sometimes even to be Tito himself, a nom de guerre. Well, Tito is an idea, he's a concept, he's something beyond the human. He's a kind of denigod. And like Robin Hood, he's here, he's there, he's everywhere. In the liberated Republic of Uziche, Tito lays out his vision. He has at his disposal at armaments factory, a bank, a printing press, even a railway.

These tools enable them to gain some momentum. They run this small piece of territory in a way that they look to run the entire country in the future as a kind of blueprint. Look what we will do for you if we are in power. The partisans aren't able to hold Uzisay for very long, but what they do is they slowly learn to move into territory, to occupy it for as long as they can, and then to move on again without having to engage in full frontal armed combat.

Tito's forces become the masters of survival. This rolling Bolshevik utopia is not the New Yugoslavia envisaged by the Chetniks, however. In fact, this not always welcomed by its citizens. In Montenegro, in 1941, we see a situation which, depending on who is framing it, is referred to as either the Red Terror or the deviation, where basically militant communists go too far. and they start to plunder and burn villages, to target more affluent peasants, and basically to fight a communist revolution at a time when things are not in their favour to do so,

and they alienate huge sections of the peasantry. Tito learns that running revolutionary micro-states on Soviet lions is not always the way to win hearts and minds. So although communists always talk about leading the people and being in touch with the people, he really had to learn to be in touch with the people. Mihailovich, meanwhile, is beginning to resent Tito. It is he who is the exiled king's appointed minister of war, after all.

But the bearded, black-clad Chetniks, with their skull and crossbones regalia, as well as their fondness for plum brandy, are not doing themselves any favours either. The Chetniks, they didn't have the discipline and organisation of the partisan, you know, drunkenness and massive consumption of Ristivovitz and excesses were their thing. Their strategy was to try and preserve Serbia because they were Serbian nationalists. But this then developed into local understandings with German commanders and then sometimes local collaboration with the Germans against the partisans. Along with the puppet regime in Belgrade,

Mihailovitz starts painting Tito as a Soviet stooge, as dangerous as any invasion. Later, isolated incidents soon turn into open civil war. In November 1941, when Mihailovic's army attacks the partisans in Zichit, the Germans simply sit back and enjoy the show. As Tito's army flees into Bosnia, the Chechnicks capture 365 partisans and hand them over. The collaboration is now overt. Some Chechnics form an alliance with the Italian general Mario Rwata, a frothing anti-communist

known as the Black Beast. The Chechnics will go on to kill around 68,000 fellow Yugoslavs, including Croats, Bosniaks, and especially partisans. Over a thousand will be massacred near the Serbian village of Ravnareka. Having said that, Peter also did deals with the Germans, if they're doing a deal with the Germans, doing down all the Chetniks and the so the Soviet nationalists. So nobody was perfect. But it all got very cold, because everybody was betraying everybody else to everybody else.

In fact, when Tito's wife, Herter is captured by the Germans, he will barter with them for her return. She swapped in a prisoner exchange for a Wehrmacht officer. The partisans live out the alpine winter in sub-zero temperatures, scavenging for food and weaponry. Tito is forever changing locations, staying one step ahead of his enemies and in light of the forces ranged against him demanding blind loyalty. There is no mercy shown either to the enemy or to traitors. Up in the mountains he runs a tight ship, he cannot afford breaches and discipline. Despite living rough, Tito has an image to protect.

He has always shaved and clad in an immaculate dress uniform, complete with brass buttons, even while having slept in a cave. Drinking alcohol is outlawed, as is fraternising with female recruits. I mean, he was enormously capable, militarily, and enormously charismatic, and he was up in the hills with the partisans, and sharing their risks and privations,

he was a proper leader. And he didn't reserve any particular privileges for himself, except for partisans generally weren't allowed to fratimates, with those of the opposite sex, and he gave himself a pass on that calm. But apart from that, he was walking the walk. As Herter will discover when she stumbles in on them, her husband is already conducting an affair with a female partisan, his 20-year-old personal secretary, Dabayanka Panovich. She will become his living partner for the rest of the war.

The good news for the partisans is that Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union is going disastrously. and for which Yugoslavia can claim some credit. The Belgrade coup of 1941 had forced Hitler to delay Operation Barbarossa by several weeks, leaving him unable to wrap up phase one of his operation before the first snow set in. Over the second winter, 1942 to 43, the German 6th Army is now encircled, locked in a fight to the death at Stalingrad. But Hitler in a corner is at his most vengeful. In January

1943, the Fury dispatches 90,000 Axis troops in a full-on offensive against the partisans. An operation known as Case White. The Eustache and Chechnicks joined the party. By March, 15,000 of Tito's men are dead. And Tito himself has dodged several bullets. It's March the 1st, 1943. We're on the steep wooded gorge of the Naretva River, a fast-flowing waterway that winds down from the Bosnian Highlands.

On its eastern bank, around the town of Yablanika, 20,000 partisans are holed up, including 4,500 wounded in desperate need of evacuation. Surrounding them are 150,000 Axis troops, including the fearsome 7th SS division, and, by the hour, they're closing in. Crawling through the snow, partisan scouts lead Tito to a vantage point on the cliffs. Through binoculars, he sees the skeletal steel structure of the bridge, the strategic crossing point, the partisan's only means of escape. But, knows Tito, the enemy will be counting on this. Chetniks and Italians are moving up on the other side. To the consternation of his officers, he gives an order, blow the bridge

Dutifully, members of the Pioneer Corps scrambled down to wriggle underneath the steelwork, laying charges. But Tito has issued an added instruction. Stage a sufficient level of destruction to give the impression that the bridge has been put out of use, but with enough of the superstructure left intact for it to be hastily reassembled. Sure enough, the image presented to German reconnaissance aircraft is exactly that. one of a bridge destroyed. To the Germans, it means the partisan surely will begin their breakout to the north. They redeploy accordingly.

Hours later, working through the night, the pioneers will begin the process of reattaching the bridge's girders. By March the 6th, there are enough in place to enable Tito to spirit his men across the water, including the wounded, beating back the Chetniks as they go. This daring action will become known as the Battle of Naritva or the Battle for the Wounded. It will allow the partisans to regroup, taking out a further 9,000 of the enemy. Hitler will follow up with Case Black, an even more intense assault on the partisans in southeast Bosnia. But by now Tito's force is capable of tying down a whole 20 German divisions, Less a guerrilla band now than a tactical fighting force.

By the summer of 1943, the Axis had been beaten in North Africa, and its troops are being withdrawn from everywhere else to stop the Red Army steamrolling westwards. The whole fascist house is falling down. With the Allied invasion of Italy, its troops in Yugoslavia simply turn on their heels and march home. So when Italy surrendered, The whole of the Downation Coast was suddenly lost to them.

The partisans charge quite dramatically into the area. A lot of the weaponry that the Italians left finds its way into the hands of the partisans. So the partisans, by the second half of 1943, are a real force. 1933 becomes a hugely important moment for the partisan struggle. And actually some Italian forces, more or less, handover weaponry to the partisans, and some Italian soldiers join the partisans at that point. Back in London, the Allies, quaintly, are still clinging to their patronage of the Chetniks. They would seem to be backing the wrong horse.

Now initially in the Balkans, Mahailovic is lauded as this great warrior fighting for the cause. national newspapers in Britain write odes to Mahalovich and his movement. By 1943, there's some suspicion emerging around this, and especially when agents start to be attached to Tito's pizan forces, and it quickly becomes clear that the partisans are a much more effective fighting force, that they are willing to take suicidal risks to damage the Axis. Though the U.S. has since entered the war, it's the British who remain the chief suppliers of arms to the Balkan Theatre. Churchill, some say to atone for his mismanagement of the Dardanelles or Gallipoli campaign in the First World War,

has been an especially keen and courageer of resistance there. He still sees it as the soft underbelly of Europe, a means he had hoped of opening a second front against Germany. In the end, the Allies had chosen to land in Italy, though Churchill still insists on flooding arms and equipment into Yugoslavia. Looking ahead to the post-war order, and with intelligence coming in continually from Bletchley Park, it's no longer a question of defeating Germany, but stemming Soviet expansion. Churchill is on the horns of a dilemma. A swift victory in the region can only come if the Allies ditched the duplicity.

as Chetniks. That, however, means endorsing a partisan liberated Yugoslavia, which would likely be run as a communist state, ripe for Soviet vassalage. What we knew in the book was because of we were reading the codes. And because he read the codes, that the people killing, most of the people, Mr. Germans, were the partisans. But of course, nobody could say that at the time. And this was part of the problem, because it all had to be hushed up, because you couldn't reveal how you knew what you knew. Churchill will throw his whole-hearted support behind the partisans, only if he can be assured that a post-war Yugoslavia pursues a path independent from Moscow. It's a huge leap of faith, moreover one based on a man, Tito, who no one has ever met. On July the 25th, 1943, Churchill summons Brigadier Fitzroy MacLayne to Czech us.

Schooled at Eton in Cambridge, McLean is quite the character. fluent in Russian and German. He was before the war a diplomat, serving in Moscow, and is currently a sitting Conservative MP, a member for Lancaster, but he is above all a hard-as-nails soldier. Assuing privilege, he enlisted in the army as a private and has worked his way up to Brigadier. Arriving in the wee small hours,

Maclean finds the Prime Minister's entourage in a surreal moment of light relief. sitting around watching a Cine reel, a Mickey Mouse cartoon. Churchill breaks off to Greek McLean and to waive a dispatch of important news, that in Italy, Mussolini has just resigned. It only goes to underline what he is about to ask at McLean. Affairs the other side of the Adriatic are more important than ever. He needs McLean to track down this Tito fellow. He must look him in the eye and determine whether he is a man whom they can

and trusts. After weeks of intense training, McLean's men lands safely in central Bosnia in the early hours of September the 18th, 1943. They are a specialist team of engineers, intelligence officers, and good old-fashioned commandos. There to run the rule over the partisans. Responding to coded messages, partisans meet them by moonlight and lead them on horseback up into the mountains. It's a hair-raising tail in itself, dodging German patrols, diving for cover when enemy planes swoop over. Two days later, they're in a ruined castle near the village of Yaitsa. Wait there, they're told. In what seems a recurring literary motif, McLean, the putative James Bond, was already

had a conversation with another S-O-E agent. His name is Evelyn War. War had been in the field in Yugoslavia claims to have got close to Tito without meeting him personally or indeed her for according to war Tito is a woman

indeed a lesbian but then he emerges the broad-shouldered middle-aged man McLean had always guessed him to be doing up the buttons of his jacket Tito introduces himself and offers his guests plum brandy, Sleivovitz. The rules regarding drinking not applying to himself either.

McLean is introduced to Edvard Kardelch and Alexander Rankovich, a Slovine and a Serb, old colleagues from Tito's prison days, now key members of his staff. With Tito holding court, they spend the evening round an open fire out under the stars, discussing how they can conspire to give the Germans a good kicking. And how Tito's vision of a post-war Yugoslavian republic will brook no interference from Stalin. Tito caps it off in his faltering English

with a passionate recitation of Edmund Lears, the owl and the pussycat. McLean is not just a conservative and a monarchist, but from his days in Moscow, a witness to Stalin's purges. He's about as anti-Bolshevik as you can get. But there is something about this Tito, he concedes. He has an aura, that certain X-factor. Exiting Yugoslavia involves a traumatic journey by Land and Sea. But once out, McLean is able to relay his message back to Churchill.

Tito, he tells him, is the real deal, a man with whom they can do business. The Tehran Conference of November December, 1943, marks the first meeting of the Big Three, Churchill, Stalin and Roosevelt. In the West, the planning for D-Day is at an advanced stage. In the east, the Russians have rolled the Wehrmacht back as far as Poland. To the south, Italy has formerly switched sides. In Germany, strategic bombing is turning the fatherland into a wasteland. To which end, the Allies announces Churchill, in the interests of a swift victory, should now back Tito's partisans as the official army of Yugoslav liberation. The conference is in agreement.

McLean will meet Churchill personally in Cairo, as he makes his way back from Persia. There, in Churchill's hotel, he finds the PM in his pajamas, sitting up in bed, looking out at a spectacular view across the pyramids. Have they done the right thing? McLean wonders. Kicking out the Germans is, of course, a necessity. But what if Tito does go rogue? There was a chat that Churchill had with McLean. He said, do you intend to live in Yugoslavia after the war? And McLean said, no. He said, well, nor do I. They just want to back the toughest side-fighting Hitler. If those people happen to be communist, they happen to be communist. Not only are the are the Yugoslav communists, by far the most effective, less led, the most rigorously

organized and trained. But the Chetniks, you actually cannot trust them anymore. Whereas the partisans, the communist partisans, are utterly reliable because they hate the Nazis with a murderous impassionate intensity. It's not just the Allies who appreciate Tito's worth. To the Germans, he remains a key target. In September 1943, a mission led by the commander Otto Skoszheni had snatched Benito Mussolini from his mountain-top captivity in the fabled Grand Saso raid. In May 1944, Skosani tries to repeat the trick,

flying gliders into the hills around DIRVA, the Bosnian town where the partisan HQ is relocated. Tito escapes by a whisker. though is wounded by bomb fragments during the process. The opponent said, don't give me good generals, give me lucky ones. Tito has extraordinarily luck throughout his life. I don't know if you know about this little detail. Tito was the only general or martial or army leader who was actually injured,

wounded in a Second World War. He was almost killed. He's sailing too close to the wind now. It's too dangerous for him to stay in the field. At the Allies' insistence, Tito removes himself from the front line and bases himself offshore. His new H.Q is the Dalmatian island of Viss, 30 miles off split. The Pazan movement increases its territory throughout 1943 and into 1944. One of those places is the island of Viss, which is way out in the Adriatic Sea.

We see a rudimentary air base being built there. We see allied naval forces coming in there. And it becomes a place where not only can the partisans plan for the future, they can also interact with their other allies. And so it starts to incorporate them into the wider European struggle as well. In June 1944, Tito is visited there by Ivan Subasich, the Yugoslav king's prime minister in London, who informs him that his majesty, finally,

is endorsing Tito and the partisans over the Chetniks. Politically, they are now constituted as the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia. A treaty assigned on June the 17th, with Tito agreeing to retain some kind of place for the king in the new provisional government. By time of the Treaty of Tehran, Churchill has accepted that Yugoslavia is going to have a new government

and that it's going to be dominated by Tito. But he wanted Tito to bring in some pre-war non-communist politicians and he wanted the king to at least be allowed to return. But can Tito keep his word? Again, there was only one way to find out. It's August the 12th, 1944. We're in Naples, on the terrace of the Villa Rivalta, overlooking Mount Vesuvius in the stunning Neapolitan Bay.

It's a sumptuous spread. Queen Victoria used to holiday here. Amid the terracotta pots and sculpted balustrades stands not a monarch, but its ideological opposite. Yossip Broz, Tito, or rather now Marshal Tito, given his position as both Supreme Military Commander and the country's leader in waiting. Flanked by two burly bodyguards toting submachine guns, Tito shuffles his feet and waits, something he's unaccustomed to doing. It's normally up to him to keep others in suspense. Unfortunately, Winston Churchill can't be found. A lax time keeps

this is nothing unusual. When Winston's assistants do locate him, he's down on the beach. He'd gone for a swim. Hastened back up to the villa, he dries off, throws on his white linen suit, and marches up the steps to the house. When he approaches Tito, he thrusts his right hand inside his jacket, at which the bodyguards spring forward, shoving their guns in Churchill's face. he was in fact reaching for his gold cigar case the better to offer his guest a hand-roll Romeo and Julietta the two leaders laugh and shake hands they will through interpreters

get along like a house on fire I think Churchill liked his sort of piratical personality and appreciated this sort of you know sort of Balkan high duck it appeal to his romantic side. With Paris liberated and the Western allies pushing toward the Rhine, Churchill tells him the end for Germany is nigh, and he has more good news.

The RAF and US Army Air Force can now supply not just air cover to the partisans, but actual planes, including a squadron of Spitfires. In return, Tito gives assurances about leading a provisional government as a broad coalition. He is no Stalinist poodle. Amid considerable Bonomie, the two men part. Churchill has looked Tito in the eye personally. He's convinced more than ever that he can use the new Western-facing Yugoslavia as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism.

Within days of Naples, both Romania and Bulgaria fall under Soviet control. It's all systems go. still returns to the island of this to plot the liberation's end stage. In the meanwhile, with airstrips laid in partisan held territory, supplies are ferried in like never before. You've got huge months of ammunition coming in planes, so forth and supplies, but you also have the supply of a lot of experts, men skilled in sabotage, skilled in leadership, who can advise the partisans because the partisans have guts, they have drive, they have zeal, they have enormous courage, but they're not regular professional soldiers. What they need is professional helper.

There are over 300,000 Yugoslavs who now count themselves as partisans. There are women's brigades, youth brigades, and by now, an air force. It's no longer a resistance movement, but an army, comparable in size to the Free French. Pound for pound, it's the most effective people's army in Europe. On September the 22nd, an intelligence communique comes in from the British military detachment on this. Tito has vanished, despite nervous excuses proffered by the Marshal's guards, that he's gone for a walk. It seems Tito, along with his inner circle, has disappeared into thin air. There's not a trace.

Events are pieced together. Apparently, under cover of darkness, an unidentified aircraft had flown into the island. It seems it might have been Russian. It will soon transpire that Tito has popped up in Moscow, cozying up to his old bitmoire, Stalin. So he was in touch with Churchill, of course. You know, the S-O-E and McLean and all of, but he was also directly interested with Stalin.

So he was playing both sides against the middle. He's a genuine communist. Scrooping to spread world communism. You know, that was the idea. So he was in a hand in glove with us and son at the same time. Churchill's eyes were open and he was furious. At a crucial stage, Churchill used the word levanted. Tito disappeared in an airplane sent by Stalin for talks with Stalin,

and this was very badly received by Churchill. With Churchill howling of betrayal, Tito's repost his deadpan. Only recently, Mr. Churchill went to Quebec to see President Roosevelt, and I only heard of this visit after he returned, and I was not angry. There is a reason for Tito's Russian dash. While he had always prided himself on the fact that Yugoslavia is on the verge of liberating itself, without any direct external help, For this last push on Belgrade, he will need on-the-ground military support, artillery, tanks and street-fighting know-how.

The situation on the eastern front had changed dramatically in October 1944 because Romania had surrendered and joined the Allies. So instead of the Red Army having to fight its way through Romania, it could walk through Romania. It got to Bulgaria and the Bulgarian partisans immediately staged an insurrection, which brought the Red Army pretty close to the border with Serbia, and so suddenly the Red Army really can help Tito. And what Tito had been summoned to Moscow for was for talks to agree that the Red Army would help with the liberation of Belgrade. Because what the partisans have been able to do is actually thrive in the countryside

and to take and hold large swathes of rural Yugoslavia, what they haven't been able to do until 1944 is take any major city. And now suddenly the Red Army is in the Balkans and it's able to sweep up through Serbia to liberate Belgrade, to basically put Tito's partisan movement in power. And so, the Soviets are invited in.

Together in October, the partisans and Red Army launched the Belgrade offensive. Tito rallies his troops beforehand. In Belgrade, we began the uprising. In Belgrade, we shall end it in victory. Its brutal stuff, clawing back the city inch by inch. There are 150,000 Germans to be evicted. It will take 16 days and cost the partisans another 3,000 casualties. But, on October the 20th, 1944, Belgrade falls. Sobia and much of eastern Yugoslavia are now free. It's October the 27th, 1944, seven days after the first troops entered the capital, two months after his meeting with Churchill. On the Broad Avenue, Kniezumiloza streets, upon a platform, stands Marshal Tito, with splendid in his dress uniform.

As columns of triumphant soldiers march past, he gives a salute. The lines of troops, which seem to stretch on forever, respond in kind. The partisans are a real mixture. Ser, Croix, Slovy, Montenegro, Bosnia, Macedonia, male, female, tall, shore, old, young, author of Orthodox, Catholic, Muslim. Their uniforms are a mix of patched-up khaki and bits of German and Italian kid their scourgings. Everything emblazoned with a bright red communist star. Tanks and trucks rumble in with them.

You need to understand that Tito was not just another dictator, just another power-hungry, corrupt man. He was the man with a serious vision. To survive, what Tito survived in Second World War. Just to give an idea, the entire movement, the other partisans was very, very optimistically numbered at the end of the 1941. By the time the war was over,

it was more than million people that joined. By the end of the war, this was a proper army. And what he built, he built as something which was from ground up and which was actually built by the people of Yugoslavia. And it's really important that this was not a recruit in the classical state recruitment, repression type recruitment. This was people who actually willingly wanted to fight the Germans and the Italians and everybody else.

The watching crowds are ecstatic, swarming these heroes and heresies who have freed them from three and a half years of hell. There are Yugoslav tricolors wave, Soviet hams and sickles flutter. Somewhere in the mix are a pair of jeeps, flying the Union Jack and stars. and Jack and Stars and Stripes, Fitzroy McLean and a group of allied agents. He'd returned to Yugoslavia to help coordinate Tito's Big Push.

Thirty years ago, Yossi Pros was a humble, impoverished Croatian, a citizen of Austria-Hungary. Today he walks Belgrade as the leader-designate of the new Free Yugoslavia, and whose name is being chanted to the rooftops. We're really talking in the end about the only conquered country in World War II which self-liberated, and that was Yugoslavia. The Soviets play a marginal role right at the end, but it's the fact of self-liberation, which gives Tito his great status for the rest of his life, but also Yugoslavia is great status. The war is not over, not yet.

It will take another four months with the German High Command to call for all remaining. Vermak troops to evacuate Yugoslavia, leaving the country wide open. Meanwhile, a partisan army is thrusting north to depose the Ustashi regime in Zagreb. Old foes the Chechniks are back on the scene too, fighting alongside the partisans, as they did at the start of the war. They're probably wishing to rehabilitate themselves, but they have sensed what lies ahead to be directed by Tito's own hand. Retribution.

In the next episode, In the war's aftermath, Tito exacts his bloody revenge. Maneuvering the king out of the picture, Tito's Yugoslavia is swiftly consolidated under communist rule. A clash with the U.S. risks further conflict, even a nuclear strike. Though the biggest showdown is to come, with Joseph Stalin.

That's next time. You can listen to the next two episodes of real dictators right now, without waiting and without adverts, by joining Noiser Plus. Click the banner at the top of the feed, or follow the link in the episode description.