Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare in Yugoslavia: British Secret Services and Partisans in 1943–1944

Abstract

This essay intends to shed light on the British perspective of their involvement in the Partisan war operations in Bosnia, especially around the town Drvar in Bosanska Krajina during 1944. Shifting their support from Mi- hailović’s royalist to Tito’s communist army, the British goverment brought for- ward a lasting impact in the post-war power balance in the Balkans and be- yond. War memoires of British officers and archival documents reveal their peculiar relation to domestic National Liberation Army – the Partisans and of- ten admiration for their leader – Tito. The purpose of this work is certainly not the glorification of the Communist ideology, Tito’s personality nor the British secret services but rather the aim is to portray one of the many facets of a decisive moment in WWII history on the Yugoslav soil.