740.0011 European War 1939/31694
Memorandum of Conversation, by the Assistant Secretary of State (Berle)
The Yugoslav Ambassador came in to see me, at his request.
His real purpose was to protest against the unfair picture of Yugoslav fighting which was being presented in the American press. He implied that there was a directive binding on the Office of War Information to do this.
He pointed out that while there were great flights of publicity regarding the activities of the partisans, the communiqués of General Mikhailovitch were unnoticed. It was even intimated that these communiqués were manufactured by Fotitch.
I told him that we were quite aware that they were not manufactured in the Embassy but did proceed from Yugoslavia. I said I would find out whether there was any directive of the kind to which he objected.
The Ambassador said that, put in a nutshell, his complaint was this. The Serbs under Mikhailovitch had first made the revolution and stood against the Germans. For two years they had been fighting under incredible difficulty. They were still doing so. Now, their communiqués were not printed, their motives were impugned, and the fruit of their resistance and victory might well be their own death.
This, the Ambassador said, was because the Serbs at least did not want to be an international citadel of anti-Fascism and an outpost of [Page 1022] left wing ideology. They wanted their own country, and to be let alone in it, and to lead their agrarian peasant life.