860H.01/8–1844
Memorandum by the Deputy Director of the Office of European Affairs (Matthews) to the Secretary of State
Mr. Secretary: Mr. Pares of the British Embassy called yesterday afternoon and read to Mr. Cannon a telegram sent by Mr. Churchill to the President on August 14,38 concerning the meeting of Mr. Churchill with the Yugoslav Prime Minister and Marshal Tito in Italy. Mr. Pares said that the British Ambassador was sending a copy of this telegram to the Secretary.
The telegram in question is rather remarkably lacking in substance, and the following observations may be of some interest in this connection.
It will be recalled that about a month ago arrangements were made for the Yugoslav Prime Minister and Tito to have their second round of conversations, with the idea of effecting a real working agreement between the Government in exile and the forces within Yugoslavia. According to agreement, the Yugoslav Prime Minister traveled from London to Caserta, and General Wilson himself was ready to preside at the meetings, but Tito simply refused to come. Mr. Subasic waited a few days and then returned to England. Almost immediately after his return to England, Tito sent word to General Wilson that he was now ready to come to Italy.
General Wilson postponed the meeting with Tito for some days but ten days ago arranged for “strictly military” talks with him. Tito arrived in Caserta with a few staff officers and a bodyguard, was invited to visit the Italian front, and on his own initiative also spent some time in Rome. It was about this time that Mr. Churchill decided to go to Italy, and presumably the British felt that if Mr. Churchill [Page 1398] should take the Yugoslav Prime Minister with him, and General Wilson should hold Tito at Caserta, a way could be found to oblige Tito and Subasic to continue their talks together and perhaps come to some agreement. It is against this background that we must view the announcement that “the two leaders reached a satisfactory agreement on a number of practical questions”.
As regards the “simultaneous declaration” which the two Yugoslav leaders have now agreed to issue, it will be recalled that there was also an agreement to issue declarations after the first meeting which took place in June. At that time there was clear evidence of Tito’s bad faith. First, he allowed the terms of the secret agreement to leak out to the press, then he arranged that the “Free Yugoslavia” radio station, which operates by way of Russia, should give practically the whole text of the agreement, and finally he announced that the two ministers whom he had designated as representatives in the Subasic Government were really not representatives of the Liberation Committee. As a consequence, the official texts of the agreement have never been released by the Yugoslav Government, and considerable misunderstanding has been caused by the mystery surrounding these negotiations, as well as the secrecy which the British Government has insisted on maintaining concerning the flight of Tito from Yugoslavia to Italy just before the negotiations began.
The question which is of chief interest to the United States at the present moment, in the matter of Yugoslavia, has reference to the supply of arms to the resistance forces, and to the reports that these arms, supplied by the Allies, are used, or are being held for use, in the struggle between the two major factions in Yugoslavia, rather than for use against the Germans. We have received several reports containing flat assertions that the American arms are being supplied to the Partisans to kill the Serbs. There is no doubt that as of a few weeks ago it was Tito’s plan to invade Serbia, and he discussed this matter with the British mission and we have record even of the officers who would command the operation. It was expected at that time that Brigadier Maclean, the chief of the British mission, would accompany these troops. About the same time the British Ambassador to the Yugoslav Government reported that such a project might well succeed since the Serbs had been greatly weakened and many of their best men are held as prisoners of war by the Germans. It is of course notorious that the Germans released what Croatian prisoners they had, and the reports of the Red Cross and other agencies who have studied the prisoner of war situation indicate that the Yugoslav prisoners of war, numbering some 140,000, are almost entirely Serbs.
The Department has made clear to Mr. Murphy that we disapprove of any plan for building up the Tito forces at the expense of the Serbs, [Page 1399] and naturally we are disturbed by the reports that American arms are being supplied to Tito for use in this civil war. This matter was taken up last week with the Joint Chiefs of Staff.39 According to a telegram received yesterday from Mr. Murphy, the arms sent to Tito are supplied by the British, but, says Mr. Murphy, it may be that some of them were manufactured for the British in the United States, and can be so identified.40
In view of the foregoing we have some reservations concerning the success of the conversations referred to in Mr. Churchill’s telegram.
- For text of telegram, see Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War; Triumph and Tragedy (Boston, 1953), p. 93.↩
- On August 15, Mr. Matthews sent a memorandum to Admiral Leahy in which he reiterated the Department’s desire to follow a policy of non-interference in Yugoslav internal affairs and asked Leahy to ascertain if these reports were true. (740.0011 European War 1939/8–744)↩
- Reference is to telegram 128 from Caserta, August 14, 1944, 2 p.m. This telegram also stated that competent American officers at Allied Force Headquarters felt that the reports of Titoist activity against the Serbs were exaggerated, They claimed to have evidence that Tito was using supplies received from the British in guerrilla activity against the Germans and they also claimed that there was no evidence that Tito was engaged in any operations against the Serbs. (740.0011–European War 1939/8–1444)↩