The KPJ Liberates, Conquers and Restores Yugoslavia January 1944–May 1945

Abstract

This chapter illustrates the results of the major Allied landing on the Yugoslav coast and how Marshall Tito's movement became the main beneficiary of British support forthcoming from Italy. It examines the British influence in a restored Yugoslavia, through support for the most active domestic movement. The Yugoslav communists had been active, and radically so, because they were carrying out their own revolutionary plan, for long unobserved. Following the war of Nazi Germany and its allies, the chapter then uncovers a situation that developed in which all the cards were stacked in favour of Tito and the Partisans. It evaluates how the formation of a 'partisan government' at Jajce had left a deep impression on the population of Bosnia. The chapter also presents the Yugoslav communists' less success in Macedonia, and the German withdrawal from Montenegro. Acknowledged as Yugoslavia's prime minister, Tito went to Moscow in April 1945 to sign a twenty-year treaty with the Soviet Union. Ultimately, it analyses Yugoslavia's tremendous human and material losses, the final withdrawal of the Germans, and the communist takeover.