Milo Stavic
NAME- Milo Stavic
NATION- Yugoslavia
DATE (S) OF INTERVIEW (S)- 1984-85, personal interview and correspondence via post.
PLACE OF INTERVIEW (S)- Belgrade, Yugoslavia (first and only physical contact)
LANGUAGE (S) CONDUCTED- English
SIGNIFICANCE OF SUBJECT- -Communist guerrilla and military intelligence operator; dog handler and bodyguard for Josip Broz ‘Tito’ during World War II
OTHERS IN ATTENDANCE- None
FORMAT- Q & A standard
Q- When and where were you born?
A- I was born in Belgrade on 3 November 1920.
Q- What was your family like?
A- My father was a schoolteacher, who taught English, as was my mother, who taught music. She was a classical pianist, a very good one. I had one sister who was killed in 1941 when the Germans bombed Belgrade.
Q- What was your political position before and during the war?
A- I was rather apolitical; not opposed to the monarchy or supportive of any particular party. I was young and in the university, so there was a lot of student political activity, but I was focused on my studies.
Q- What were your ambitions?
Q- Well, my father taught public school, and I learned English from him. He was educated in England when my grandparents moved there after the start of the First World War. He came back and married his childhood sweetheart, my mother. I wanted to be a professor of languages, since I was also trained in German and Russian. After the war I finished my university education, receiving a masters of philosophy degree, but I never went on to receive a doctorate. Marriage and children became the top priorities. I did teach in the schools.
Q- What made you decide to become a partisan (guerrilla)?
A- Most of us who were Nationalists wanted a Yugoslavia free of one party domination, and we were not all necessarily Communists. However, once the Germans invaded and Belgrade fell in April 1941 we were forced into action as Serbs were being killed by Croatian forces. It was this activity that created the great partisan (guerrilla) movement, nothing else.
Q- What was your function in the Tito forces?
A- Well, I had several responsibilities, mostly of an intelligence role, and this was mainly due to my language skills. I read captured German documents, interrogated prisoners, and translated communiqués from the Allies for Tito and the various field commanders. Later, in 1944 I was assigned as one of Tito’s bodyguards.
Q- Why was it only at this time that Tito wanted bodyguards?
A- He always had them, but only two in 1941. It was after 1943 that Tito increased his bodyguards, there were twelve in all, when the Germans placed a bounty on Tito, and in 1944 they began to send elite German units into the region to kidnap or kill him. There four such missions, and all of them failed. The Germans did not have as good an intelligence network in Yugoslavia as they would have liked.
Q- Why were you chosen?
A- I was selected because Tito wanted an interpreter who was also trustworthy. By this time there were many SOE (Special Operations Executive) and OSS (Office of Strategic Services) personnel arriving to work with us, Russians too. Unfortunately there were also several German agents and Chetnik impostors trying to get close to Tito, and these had to be screened carefully. This was my job; I would meet these people and speak with them, to protect Tito.
Q- What was life like living in the mountains and fighting the enemy?
A- Which enemy? We had nationalist and pro-monarchist Serbs, Croats, the Chetniks under Pavelic, the Germans, the list was long. Life on the run was harsh. There was never enough food, although the people in the countryside would help us most of the time. If they did this, and were caught by the Germans, they would be killed and the villages burned. The Germans used this tactic to eliminate assistance to us, which failed in total. We were always short of warm clothes and boots until the British and Russians began supplying us. Our units moved as entire families, even children moved with us to keep them out of the reach of the enemy. The women fought with us, and without them we could not have been as successful.
Q- But didn’t Tito order killings that he later thought were mistakes?
A- Yes, this is true. If you are investigating history you must look at both sides, and Tito made mistakes. When he realised that he was alienating much of the population, especially Catholics, he changed the tactics. This change in attitude would also carry over into the post-war politics when he was president. I think this was what made him a great leader; also the fact that he never bowed down to Stalin and the later Communists in Moscow.
Q- As an intelligence officer, what was your rank?
A- I was made a captain, later promoted to major.
Q- As an intelligence officer, did you gather information on German
officers?
A- Yes, especially the unit commanders against whom we were engaged. There were some we wanted to kill more than others, especially the SS officers. The one German we almost had some respect for was General Zeitzler. He had tried to change the German methods against civilians, and this was a man we thought we could deal with at a later date. However, the man we wanted the most was Mihailovic, whom we considered a traitor. He was in command of the nationalist anti-Communists, and the British supported him at the expense of Tito because he supported bringing the monarchy back into the country when the war was over. This was unacceptable to Tito. He wanted no outside influence in the country, as he felt that was the cause for all of Yugoslavia’s problems in the first place. Other officers we took an interest in were von Weichs and Karl von Krempler. Weichs was the overall German commander and Krempler was an SS General who commanded the traitors from Bosnia and some Serbs, mostly Muslims. They were high on our list, as were others.
Q- Did you ever plan kidnappings or assassinations of these men?
A- We discussed these things and made plans, but it was very difficult to get close enough to any of these men. One of the most visible targets later in the war was Colonel Pannwitz, commander of an anti-partisan Cossack unit in Yugoslavia in 1944-45. He was high on the list, and he was captured and handed over to the Soviets. There was no way to get close enough to him, since he always had giant bodyguards with swords who allowed no one to get close to him, not even German officers of higher rank. None of these plans worked.
Q- Did the Germans ever try and capture Tito in force?
A- Yes, several times. The most famous were what the Germans called ‘White’ and ‘Black’; the other was called Roesselsprung. We knew all about them through our intelligence networks, except Roesselsprung, which was a complete surprise. The Germans learned from their mistakes; all that mattered was killing the opposition. One thing that both helped and hurt us was the constant struggle against the Chetniks, but then the Germans did not trust them either, and sometimes they fought each other. It was crazy; sometimes you could be in a fight against Germans, then Chetniks may attack either you or the Germans, then we may be fighting Chetniks and the Germans show up looking for them, find us all, then it was a melee. You had to be there.
Q- What was Tito like as a man?
A- He was not so much the enigma the Western Allies made him out to be. He was ruthless when he had to be, but that is the same for all great leaders. Tito had many enemies and was always in danger, so he believed that to remove his enemies first was the best course of action. Sometimes he ordered killings, which he believed, were necessary, but I know he made mistakes. He changed his methods, especially once the population began responding to the Germans and Croats who were rebuilding churches and allowing the schools to remain open. These were powerful facts that he could not ignore, so he did the same thing. The difference is that even after the war when he was president he still allowed these parts of society to function. This is what kept the country together; his power and his genius. He was a ladies man, that is true, but he still loved his family. Tito was not an evil man, like Hitler and Stalin. He was a man of great compassion, but also a man with a large ego. But then again how many celebrities are not the same?
Q- Describe the worst battle you were in.
A- For me personally, it would have to be both the Battle of Neretva, during what the Germans called Operation White, and later during Roesselsprung, when German gliders and parachutists landed at the cave where Tito held his field headquarters. The Neretva fight lasted for hours and many were killed on both sides, but the Germans had the worst of it. Dozens died in the fight, which stretched from the cave down to the village two miles away. We won a great victory over Mihailovic then. During Roesselsprung our job was to keep the Germans at bay until Tito, Djilas and others could escape out the back. The bodies began piling up, and it was not until the following day that the Germans began to withdraw. That was the worst fight against the Germans. There were several fights with the Chetniks. One time we were caught in the Drina Valley and had to fight our way up and out of the killing zone. This was in 1943, and until 1944 we did not have much in the way of heavy weapons. We lost hundreds in this fight, and the enemy casualties were not counted. I remember two units we fought, the SS Divisions ‘Prinz Eugen’ and the ‘Handschar’ which were known because of the prisoners we took. The German SS men were better fighters, but the traitors in the SS were ruthless; killing prisoners always.
Q- Did you ever kill your prisoners?
A- I must admit that, yes, we did on occasion shoot prisoners, those who were badly wounded, or those that we could not transport because it would have slowed us up and compromised our unit. But we also shot our own people when they were badly wounded. It was understood that if you were terribly wounded your chances were not good. We did not have great medical facilities, and carrying wounded was difficult. It was a tragic reality, and part of the war. I make no excuses, but I do have regrets.
Q- In your opinion, what was a positive result of the war in Yugoslavia?
A- We had our own country again, free of both Western and Soviet domination, and led by a man who could keep the nation together. Once Tito died things began to get a little shaky, and now we have all kinds of problems. Old ethnic rivalries are flaring up again, and this will serve no purpose. I think the future will prove very difficult, but only time will tell.