POLITIČKA VAŽNOST BORBI TITOVIH I MIHAILOVIĆEVIH SNAGA U ISTOČNOJ BOSNI I SANDŽAKU UJESEN 1943. GODINE
THE POLITICAL IMPORTANCE OF THE STRUGGLES OF TITO’S AND MIHAILOVIĆ’S FORCES IN EASTERN BOSNIA AND SANDZAK IN THE AUTUMN OF 1943

Summary/Abstract: Based on archival and published sources and relevant literature, the article describes the struggles of the communist movement led by Josip Broz Tito, the National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia (NOVJ), against the Ravna Gora Chetnik monarchist movement led by Dragoljub Draža Mihailović, the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland (JVuO), in the fall of 1943 in eastern Bosnia and Sandžak. Based on primarily German archival sources, the article describes the course of the fighting between Tito’s and Mihailović’s forces in which Tito’s forces won. These struggles also had their international dimension, because shortly after their end, a conference was held in Tehran, at which Great Britain changed its previous policy. The change in British policy was reflected in the suspension of Mihailović’s support and open support given exclusively to Tito. The British state leadership, led by Winston Churchill, supported Tito because, due to the NOVJ’s military efficiency, he fit into the British strategy of inflicting as many losses as possible on German forces, while the support for Mihailović was suspended due to accusations of collaborating with German forces in the joint fight against the NOVJ. There have been numerous historiographical controversies about the reasons why Great Britain changed its policy towards Mihailović, ignoring the importance of the struggles waged by the NOVJ and JVuO forces in the autumn of 1943. What has been largely neglected in the literature so far is the fact that one of the immediate consequences of these battles was the open cooperation of the JVuO in the Sandžak area with German forces. Although the agreement signed with German forces by the JVuO commander in Sandžak, Vojislav Lukačević, is known in the literature, it was not placed in the context of previous NOVJ and JVuO battles in eastern Bosnia and Sandžak, nor in the changes in Churchill’s policy toward Mihailović. This paper aims to fill this gap and to explain the interdependence between these three events.

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