The Evening Star (May 10, 1946)
ON THE RECORD —
Another Moscow trial
By Dorothy Thompson
The trial of Draja Mihailovich in Belgrade promises to be another Moscow trial, in which not only the defendant but other nations are indicted for purposes of international Communist propaganda.
Mihailovich has, according to his prosecutors, the Tito regime, “confessed” that he collaborated with the Germans. Through his prosecutors he has repudiated the offer of American paratroopers who were rescued by him to appear as witnesses of fact in his behalf, and has rejected American counsel, asserting (through his prosecutors) that he has complete faith in Yugoslav people’s justice.
He has been condemned in advance. Tito’s government has announced “his crimes are far too horrible to allow discussions of whether he is guilty or not.” He is, therefore, presumed to have accepted a death sentence. But the trial is to proceed as an open political theater.
This is typical of Soviet trials, in which the only evidence is that of the prosecution and the weird supporting confessions of the defendants.
But in the case of Draja Mihailovich more is at issue than his particular person. The honor and loyalty of the British and American governments and war offices are at stake.
In the 1936 Moscow trials, the defendants were accused of treasonable collaboration with the Nazis. The trial became, therefore, an indictment of the defendant and of a foreign government. That three years later the government that tried the “criminals” would sign a pact with the Nazis is another matter. The trial was an international political and propaganda event.
So, in this forthcoming trial, there are indications that the stage is being set as another incident in the Soviet campaign to discredit not the old Bolsheviks in Russia, but the Allied governments of Great Britain and the United States in their wartime relations with the Soviets. It is, therefore, urgent that some of the American officers formerly in liaison with Mihailovich’s Chetnik headquarters, Col. Robert McDowell, Col. Albert Seitz, and Capt. Walter Mansfield, should be at the trial, to defend, if not Mihailovich, the United States.
Col. Seitz and Capt. Mansfield were officially attached to Mihailovich from August 1943 to January 1944, a time during which Tito supporters were branding Mihailovich as a German collaborator in the New York press. If he was, during that time, the United States Army is also under indictment.
One of Mihailovich’s officers previously captured, tried and executed on similar charges was Lt. Voislav Lukatchevitch. One of the accusations against him was that he was present at a meeting between Mihailovich and Col. von Staercker, in September 1944. The interview did, indeed, take place. Von Staercker, an emissary of the German high command in Southeastern Europe, sought, under truce, an interview with the Chetnik leader, which he was loathe to grant, but which was urged upon him by his American advisers. Von Staercker came to offer capitulation, not to Mihailovich, who had no official authority since Tito had already been recognized, but to the western Allies. This offer, transmitted to Washington, was rejected, on the demand (afterward made on Adm. Doenitz) that surrender be unconditional to all Allies.
It is important that all the facts become known, for the Tito government suggests in “Mihailovich’s treason,” a pamphlet issued in this country by the Yugoslav Embassy, that American officers encouraged Mihailovich in collaboration with the enemy! The pamphlet says, “a powerful clique in the War Department, close to Gen. Marshall, felt that Mihailovich’s collaboration with the Germans was necessary to prevent the spread of Communism.” If it is collaboration to consider an offer of surrender, that is news!
Mihailovich was, originally, Britain’s man. He organized the first resistance movement in Europe, at a time when Russia was in a friendly pact with Germany. When Russia entered the war, Tito appeared from Moscow. At the very time when Tito propagandists in this country were already branding Mihailovich as a German agent, German posters all over Yugoslavia, were offering gold marks for his (and Tito’s) capture, describing Mihailovich as a “British agent” and Tito as a “Russian agent.”
The Western Allies in February 1944 officially recognized Tito as the Yugoslav resistance leader, not because there was the slightest evidence, at the time, of Mihailovich’s collaboration with the enemy, but because Tito was more activist – and, also, I believe, because of Communist machinations within the Western Intelligence Services.
The truth about the Von Staercker affair was communicated to the Tito government at the time of the Lukatchevitch trial, but it was never published in Yugoslavia, nor did it appear as evidence in the trial.
There is a limit to human patience, when the integrity and loyalty of our government and Army are impugned.
It is, of course, possible that Mihailovich, under the unique psychological pressures on prisoners of the system perfected in Russia, and realizing that he has been abandoned by the Allies with whom he fought while Tito was still in Moscow, may have decided to collaborate in a smear against the Americans and British.
But history is being written in this trial, and it is imperative that the facts come out straight, whatever the defendant may or may not “confess” and “desire.” More than the Chetnik leader is on trial, and more is at stake.