Word: draja
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Darkness crept into the huge courtroom as the toneless voice (which once sang resonantly in the Serbian mountains) droned on & on. For the first time in six weeks the crowd of a thousand spectators ceased their hissing. They listened intently to Draja Mihailovich's last defense. He spoke with calm and sincerity, as if he knew that history would heed him even though Communist Tito's court would...
...When I am too tired," said Draja Mihailovich...
Conservative, Communist-hating Draja Mihailovich had been the one representative of the Serbian ruling class strong enough to fight back against Yugoslavia's Nazi invader. But when Hitler turned his guns against Soviet Russia, Josip Broz, the Communist toolmaker who called himself "Tito," appeared on the scene. To Mihailovich, the exiled government's official military leader, Tito may have seemed no more than a rabble-rouser leading a pack of bandits. Mihailovich clearly felt it his duty to unify Yugoslav resistance under his leadership and to hold his forces in readiness for the day when the Allies struck...
When the U.S. and Britain threw their support to Tito, Mihailovich, too weak or too weary to control his subordinates, turned more & more toward collaboration. His major crime-unpardonable in war and politics-was failure. "Partisan troops," said Draja Mihailovich last week, "turned out better than I expected...
...Belgrade prison cell, Draja Mihailovich awaited trial for treason (though he claimed that he had fought against Germany for his king & country). Marshal Tito (who had fought more effectively against Germany, but for Stalin & Communism) spoke sentence ahead of the judges: "[His] crimes against the people of Yugoslavia are far too big and horrible [to permit discussion of] whether he is guilty or not." 500-odd U.S. airmen who had fought in Yugoslavia disagreed...