CRCE简报 欺骗丘吉尔 作者：彼得-巴蒂

 CRCE简报

欺骗丘吉尔

作者：彼得-巴蒂 

关于作者

彼得-巴蒂是一名报纸记者，也曾是英国广播公司电视台《今夜》节目的编辑。节目的编辑。他编写并制作了6集受到国际赞誉的电视系列片《战争中的世界》。在南斯拉夫解体时，他为BBC拍摄了两部关于铁托的影片，这些影片被证明是有争议的，并导致了他的书《蒙蔽丘吉尔，铁托的伟大自信伎俩》，Shepheard-Walwyn，伦敦，2011年 CRCE的章程要求其受托人和顾问不参与其出版物中的分析，但我们希望读者会发现这项研究的价值和兴趣。

2013年9月首次出版

蒙蔽丘吉尔 作者：彼得-巴蒂 我的演讲题目是 "蒙蔽丘吉尔"，

它涉及温斯顿-丘吉尔在1943年12月做出的决定，即放弃德拉扎-米哈伊洛维奇的反共抵抗组织，全心全意地支持铁托的共产主义游击队--特别是菲茨罗伊-麦克林爵士（Baronet）和威廉-迪肯爵士在该决策中发挥的作用。

迪肯是一位年轻的牛津大学教授，曾帮助丘吉尔研究他的一些书籍，他在1943年5月被派往铁托进行实况调查，麦克林在9月被派往铁托担任一个全面的官方代表团团长，他将准备对整个南斯拉夫的抵抗进行深入研究。

麦克林是一名外交官，也是一名保守党议员，到目前为止，他在伊拉克和利比亚与特别空军部队（SAS）进行了一场冒险的战争。

麦克林声称，他被告知要将自己视为丘吉尔 "在游击队指挥部的个人代表"。当然，正是由于麦克林在1943年11月的所谓 "大爆炸 "报告，丘吉尔才做出了决定。

当我在1958年3月加入BBC电视台时--我加入了所谓的谈话部（这个名字是电台的遗留问题），该部门当时位于牧羊人丛林的莱姆林。

它的产出包括除新闻、体育、戏剧和轻度娱乐之外的所有内容--菲茨罗伊-麦克林当时是那里的常客。他与许多高级管理人员都有社交关系。我的部门主管格蕾丝-温德姆-戈尔迪是个寡妇，菲茨罗伊经常护送她参加招待会等活动。他总是出现在她每月的节目午餐会上。他非常有魅力，很受人喜欢，尤其是女士们。

我妻子是一名芭蕾舞演员，他和格蕾丝有一次和我们一起去考文特花园。他当时正试图进入电视台，要么做主持人，要么做节目制作人。我当时工作的节目--《今晚》的一名摄影师教他如何使用16毫米摄像机，我们借给了他，他去了高加索地区的格鲁吉亚等地，根据他战前作为英国外交官在那里的经历，为我们拍摄电影。

他对南斯拉夫战时事件的看法是当时BBC电视台内部公认的观点。我记得有一个长达一个小时的节目，名为《铁托元帅的生活和时代》，由麦克林娓娓道来，其中包括对铁托本人的一次特别崇敬的采访。

当然，BBC在战争期间宣传铁托和他的游击队以及在1945年后维持游击队的神话方面发挥了突出作用。

我必须承认，我也吞下了这些神话，并且不考虑任何相反的观点--在50年代末和60年代初，当我参与《今晚》的工作并在1963年成为其编辑时，并没有对战时南斯拉夫发生的事情进行很多讨论。

我被Lew Grade从BBC挖走，在作为执行制片人与他共事4年后，我成立了自己的独立制片公司，例如，为泰晤士电视台制作了6集《战争中的世界》系列，还为第四频道制作了阿尔及利亚战争系列，也为他们制作了美国内战系列，还有许多其他关于芭蕾舞和葡萄酒的单一纪录片，以及为ITV、BBC以及美国、德国和日本网络制作的历史主题。

1990年，当铁幕不再，人们可以相对容易地进入东欧时，我和妻子开车沿着多瑙河从黑森林的各个源头到黑海的三角洲，这是我们一直渴望的事情。

在这之后，我向第四频道提出了拍摄多瑙河系列短片的想法，但显然他们已经在考虑与伯纳德-列文一起拍摄这样一个系列，尽管事实上它从未发生。然后，我试图让他们对一个关于巴尔干半岛的系列片感兴趣，但那里负责此类节目的特定委托编辑拒绝了这个想法，并反问道：

"究竟谁会对巴尔干半岛感兴趣？几个月后，巴尔干地区，特别是南斯拉夫，发生了内爆。

在研究巴尔干半岛系列时，我看到了迈克尔-里斯的《塞尔维亚的强奸》一书，这本书刚刚出版，让我大开眼界。我联系了他，他邀请我在他位于多塞特的家中共进午餐。

他告诉我，由于英国人在1945年5月向俄国人释放哥萨克囚犯并随后将其杀害，导致阿尔丁顿勋爵/尼古拉-托尔斯泰诽谤案，英国没有出版商愿意碰他的书，他不得不在美国寻找出版商。

他不顾妻子格温的建议，准备去贝尔格莱德参加他的书的塞尔维亚-克罗地亚版本的发行。

他的身体状况很不好。格温劝说我陪同他们，我非常高兴地答应了。

那是1991年的春天，米洛舍维奇正进入盛年。

利斯被塞尔维亚民族主义者当作英雄对待。他们在飞机上迎接我们，把他高高举起，送上一队汽车，许多汽车上挂满了鲜花和旗帜--我不记得经过了移民局或海关--一路上都在狂按汽车喇叭，到了我们的酒店。

事实上，我们在塞尔维亚所到之处，迈克尔-李斯都受到了热烈欢迎。他在贝尔格莱德大学对他的书进行了最后的介绍，由于他的听众中有很大一部分是讲英语的年轻学生，他说服我和他一起坐在最高的桌子上，我成了一些提问的对象，特别是因为我和BBC的联系。

这些学生很生气，认为丘吉尔对铁托的两面派的迷惑，使他们陷入了40年的共产主义。

他们把所有的困境都归咎于丘吉尔放弃米哈伊洛维奇而支持铁托的决定。

他们觉得历史，特别是英国人，对他们并不友好。我开始觉得我有责任以某种方式为他们澄清事实。

我知道BBC对周年纪念的偏好--我发现1992年是铁托的百年诞辰--我回来后向BBC-2提出了为他们的 "时间观察 "栏目做几个关于铁托的节目的想法。

我明确表示，我的想法将是一种修正主义的方法--事实上，提案表的标题是 "伟大的铁托自信之术"。然而，直到1991年夏末，我才得到批准，因此秋天我在塞尔维亚、黑山、美国、瑞士和英国疯狂地进行拍摄。

起初，英国广播公司只对一个节目感兴趣，但在编辑过程中，当他们意识到我所收集的材料的数量时，他们同意了两个节目。我一直与那里的当权者保持联系，向他们展示节目的粗略剪辑。我们有过一些争论，但没有什么大的原则性问题，尽管我记得当他们中的一个人告诉我麦克林是他 "童年的英雄 "之一，并且他认为《东方之路》是他读过的最好的书之一时，我略感震惊。这些节目应在1992年2月底和3月初播出，因此在允许的时间内完成这些节目是有点仓促的。然而，这两个节目都很好地按计划完成了，并提交了编辑和配音，准备播出。

想象一下，当我发现在我的背后，第一部被严重审查：对麦克林和威廉-迪肯的批评被软化了，特别是对麦克林1943年《大爆炸报告》的批评。提到乌斯塔沙对塞尔维亚人的暴行被删除，提到臭名昭著的苏联间谍詹姆斯-克鲁格曼在开罗的诡计被削减或淡化，提到铁托在战争期间的反英态度也是如此。

甚至关于丘吉尔在1943年12月健康状况不佳的暗示也被删除。迪肯与丘吉尔的私人关系被淡化了，麦克林关于德国精锐师团据称被游击队束缚的夸张说法也没有受到质疑。据说麦克林在撰写报告前在南斯拉夫呆了 "几个月"，而事实上他在那里只呆了几个星期。如此等等，不一而足。电影编辑告诉我，已经做了近200处修改。他被禁止与我交谈。事实上，有一段时间我被拒绝进入BBC的场所，因为我的通行卡被电子化地取消了。

显然，BBC担心麦克里会采取法律行动--这清楚地证明了他在那里的持续影响力，即使在那时。这时，约翰-伯特在BBC中的地位至高无上，较小的节目主管们都在担心他们的未来。正如我很容易注意到的那样，那里的士气正处于历史最低点。当我向麦克林的朋友和前战时同事亚历山大-格伦爵士提及此事时，他向我保证，菲茨罗伊不是一个爱打官司的人，他更喜欢用更巧妙的方式来达到自己的目的。此外，他说，麦克林是个很精明的人，不会让自己冒着被律师发现柜子里有骷髅的风险。我告诉BBC的人，麦克里不愿意发出令状，而其他一些参与者可能不太愿意，但我没有被听进去。然而，我已经引起了足够的骚动，以至于第二个节目几乎没有被动过。

不出所料，当许多参与者发现第一部影片被修改时，他们感到非常震惊--BBC没有礼貌地通知他们发生了什么。也许不可避免的是，迈克尔-里斯被审查得最多，他立即从他的多塞特家中张贴了一份投诉。可惜的是，在他从邮箱回来的路上，他心脏病发作并去世了。他的遗孀坚持投诉，并将其提交给了广播投诉委员会，该委员会部分支持了他的投诉，而另一位参与者，即布莱切利的让-霍华德的类似投诉也得到了支持，他的贡献被完全删减。

我当时向自己保证，有朝一日我将澄清事实，但当时没有出版商有兴趣委托我写一份完整的报告。他们还在为阿尔丁顿/托尔斯泰的诽谤案感到害怕。又过了十年，在我妻子去世后，朋友们鼓励我做一个项目，让我有足够的精力来缓解悲伤的情绪。在考虑了几个项目之后，我决定写这本《蒙骗丘吉尔》。铁托的伟大自信伎俩》这本书的研究和写作已经进行了8年左右。

我对麦克林的参与很感兴趣，对威廉-迪肯的参与更感兴趣。

虽然麦克林迷人而有礼貌，但他给我的印象一直是一个野心勃勃、虚荣心强、不择手段的家伙，没有什么上进心，所以他吞下铁托的路线，相信那是他获得名利的途径，也许这并不奇怪，因为他显然相信丘吉尔也想相信它，因为他对游击队活动有着浓厚的兴趣，这是布尔战争经历的结果。

游击战吸引了丘吉尔的浪漫天性，由于南斯拉夫是当时唯一有大量游击活动的战区，他开始关注这个国家。

迪肯和麦克林对游击队看似不顾一切的英雄主义的描述显然让他心动。

丘吉尔生性喜欢冒险，因此像菲茨罗伊-麦克林这样的冒险家对他很有吸引力。

这反过来又使他对铁托着迷

--在他的词典中，铁托是 "伟大的游击队员"，"坚韧不拔，被人猎杀"--

一个似乎来自封建时代的人物，生活在山洞和森林中，永远在行动中，完成惊险的事迹。

他本想自己做这些事，但作为一个坐办公室的战士，他不能这样做。

随着美国人和俄国人在战争中占据主导地位，他也是一个越来越沮丧的文职战士。

丘吉尔总是被特立独行的人和无赖吸引。

他对非正统的人和古怪的人，对违反惯例的人有一种浪漫的热情。

他乐于看到不规则的事情。隐蔽的行动吸引了他生动的想象力。

他喜欢与秘密特工会面。

他也是一个没有耐心的人，因此他对米哈伊洛维奇感到恼火，因为他似乎想等到德国人跪下来之后再发出呼吁，让塞尔维亚人起来反对他们。

丘吉尔总是主张不惜一切代价立即采取行动。 

麦克林的表弟迈克尔-里斯相信，丘吉尔之所以让麦克林负责与铁托的联络任务，只是因为他答应带着他的麻烦儿子伦道夫一起去，从而让他摆脱他父亲的影响。

伦道夫在他的父亲面前变得特别麻烦，他再也无法管理他了，而且他被丘吉尔的工作人员强烈地反对。

外交部负责人亚历山大-卡多根爵士在他的日记中把他描述为 "一个可怕的年轻人"，而哈罗德-麦克米伦在他的日记中坦言，伦道夫 "无论走到哪里，都会有争吵或闹事的行为"。

当然，麦克林把伦道夫-丘吉尔带在身边，是公共关系方面的天才之举。

丘吉尔把他的独生子送来，对游击队来说，其意义不言而喻。

对丘吉尔来说，让他的儿子和游击队在一起，可以让他通过孝顺的代理参加游击战。

丘吉尔给铁托写了一份关于伦道夫的个人说明，并补充说：

"我希望我能亲自来，但我太老太重了，不能跳伞"。

铁托确保每当伦道夫访问一个村庄时，陪同他的政委都被指示组织一次大规模的接待活动，并总是把他介绍为温斯顿-丘吉尔的儿子，这给所有人留下了深刻的印象，最重要的是他的政治对手。

伦道夫的出现使丘吉尔家族与铁托的事业紧密相连。

伦道夫是一个通往高层的即时通道。麦克林能够在他的信号中加入 "伦道夫很好，并送上他的爱 "这样的短语，他知道这些短语会立即找到温斯顿的。

麦克林还安排伯肯海德勋爵作为政治战执行部（PWE）的代表被派往铁托的总部。

他是丘吉尔的教子，这也许不是一个巧合。

刚刚完成《新娘头重访》的伊夫林-沃（Evelyn Waugh）是另一位在1944年初加入麦克林任务的名人。

约翰-亨尼克-马约尔（John Henniker-Major）是该使团的成员，后来成为高级外交官--英国先是驻约旦，后是驻丹麦大使--他在自己的回忆录中把他们描述为 "板上钉钉"，"使该使团在国内有了威望和更高的知名度，并增加了菲茨罗伊有很多人站在他一边的印象"，揭示了他们真正的意义。

当然，麦克林与丘吉尔家族有着密切的联系。他的父亲曾与温斯顿一起在桑德赫斯特读书，他和伦道夫曾一起在伊顿读书。他曾多次受到温斯顿和他妻子的款待，甚至有一段时间和他们的侄女克拉丽莎约会，后者最终嫁给了丘吉尔的外交部长安东尼-伊登。

但威廉-迪肯在决策中的作用却不那么容易理解或证明。他也与丘吉尔关系密切，在20世纪30年代，作为一个年轻的牛津大学历史系学生，他曾帮助丘吉尔研究《马尔堡的生活》以及后来的《英语民族史》。

丘吉尔与迪肯一直保持着密切而热烈的关系。

他们在1940年8月一起吃过午饭，当时丘吉尔鼓励他加入SOE，即特别行动局，用丘吉尔自己的话说，就是要通过在德占欧洲的战线后方进行破坏和颠覆，"让欧洲燃烧起来"。

迪肯正式加入，最初被派往北美，然后在1942年底被派往SOE开罗。

迪肯毕竟是一位专业的历史学家，他的判断应该是清醒和公正的，他的研究应该是勤奋和详细的。.

我曾非常欣赏他的《残酷的友谊》--希特勒和墨索里尼的关系故事。

然而，在他自己1971年出版的回忆录《被围困的山峰》中，例如，他没有提到1943年1月28日在开罗与丘吉尔共进午餐的事，在那次午餐中，他迫使温斯顿更多地关注铁托的努力，并说服他在同一天会见迪肯的上司、SOE开罗的参谋长凯布尔上校，。

并委托他准备一份关于南斯拉夫各抵抗组织各自战斗能力的报告--马丁-吉尔伯特在他的《丘吉尔官方传记》中说，这些事件 "对英国对德国和意大利占领的南斯拉夫境内的抵抗力量的政策具有决定性意义"。.

迪肯在他的回忆录中根本没有提到凯布尔，也没有提到他的助手詹姆斯-克鲁格曼，他是开罗SOE中臭名昭著的苏联间谍，帮助编写了凯布尔的报告，并对米哈伊洛维奇的事业造成了巨大的损害，他篡改了英国与米哈伊洛维奇部队的联络官发往伦敦的文件和信息，并伪造了地图，夸大了游击队的影响范围，还吝啬向米哈伊洛维奇而不是向铁托提供物资。

迪肯在这些回忆录中很少提到乌斯塔沙对克罗地亚塞族人的暴行，以及它们对塞尔维亚境内塞族人的影响，导致他们对克罗地亚人的普遍怀疑。

当然，这与丘吉尔本人当时的态度是一致的。

在考虑米哈伊洛维奇对破坏活动的态度时，迪肯也不准备对 "报复 "的说法给予任何重视，特别是他担心不给德国人提供灭绝塞尔维亚人的借口，就像第一次世界大战中几乎发生的那样。

德国人每杀死一个德国人就杀死100个塞尔维亚人，每受伤一个就杀死50个。

报复令并不适用于南斯拉夫其他地方的非塞族活动，例如在波斯尼亚，铁托在战争的大部分时间都在那里。.

事实上，丘吉尔和他的顾问们似乎并不太担心对塞尔维亚人的报复，尽管他们担心对法国人的报复，

例如。马奎斯人经常被要求不杀德国人以避免平民伤亡。

在迪肯的著作中很少提到报复的问题.

在后来的生活中，他试图解释他对铁托的高度重视，提醒人们他和铁托曾被杀死迪肯的副手和铁托的首席保镖的同一枚炸弹所伤。

因此，他觉得他们已经成为某种血缘关系的兄弟。事实上，在他的回忆录中，在详细描述德国人此时对游击队的攻击以及他们所有人的可怕生活条件时，他承认他 "已经分阶段对他周围的人产生了一种约束和绝对的认同"。

迪肯当然对游击队的神话深信不疑，并利用他与丘吉尔的密切关系来帮助宣传这些神话。

像麦克林一样，他不会说塞尔维亚-克罗地亚语，因此几乎完全依赖于游击队传给他的信息，作为一个专业的历史学家，他一定意识到这些信息是片面的，因此需要得到其他不太主观的来源的支持。铁托可能希望米哈伊洛维奇被消灭，不是为了更好地追求战争，而是为了纯粹的政治原因，这一点似乎从未困扰过迪肯。

铁托后来说，他非常惊讶地发现迪肯和麦克里是他想要清算政治对手的心甘情愿的工具。

他在1969年授予迪肯一级游击队勋章，以表彰 "在人民解放战争中的特殊服务"。

迪肯已经在1944年从俄国人那里得到了他们的英勇勋章。

当然，麦克林也获得了更多的奖项。根据《泰晤士报》对他的讣告，铁托给了麦克里一个 "位于克罗地亚亚得里亚海岛屿科尔库拉的避暑别墅，尽管外国人在共产主义的南斯拉夫被禁止拥有财产，但铁托还是允许他拥有这个别墅"。

它由两座17世纪的威尼斯小宫殿组成，麦克里家族至今仍拥有这两座宫殿。

迪肯在战后帮助丘吉尔写了他的战时回忆录，对忠诚的一代人来说，这本书成为那场战争的公认版本。维恩-伊万诺维奇（Vane Ivanovic），一位在战争期间为政治战争执行部工作的南斯拉夫人，与迪肯是同学，尽管他们的观点不同，但在他的余生中与他保持着密切的关系，他在1977年出版的自己的回忆录中指出：

"在英国或欧洲其他地方，关于SOE在上次战争中的作用的研讨会或讨论，迪肯都没有参与其中的突出部分。

在每一次讨论中，关于南斯拉夫事件的说法都是SOE内部胜利的亲党派的说法。

在英国方面，我没有看到SOE内部另一方的任何观点或解释"。

事实上，迪肯在另一代人中仍然是英国最广泛认可的战时南斯拉夫问题专家。迈克尔-霍华德爵士在《独立报》对迪肯的讣告中说，主要是他的经验和建议说服了温斯顿-丘吉尔支持南斯拉夫的共产主义游击队。泰晤士报》的讣告作者进一步指出。

"主要是由于迪肯关于游击队有效性的报告，或许也是由于丘吉尔个人对迪肯判断的信任，英国政府决定撤回对切特尼克的支持，集中精力帮助游击队"。

1991年秋天，我曾在迪肯位于圣詹姆斯的布鲁克俱乐部与他共进晚餐。

我一直试图让他参加我为BBC制作的节目，但没有成功。

他当时住在法国，还没有成熟起来，也不准备承认一路上的任何错误。

但他确实说过，1943年12月，将军们更关心的是将德军师团束缚在南斯拉夫，从而使他们无法用来对付即将到来的盟军法国登陆，而不是哪个抵抗组织杀死的德国人最多。

对我来说，当晚印象最深的是一位保守党的大人物，他喝得酩酊大醉，走到我们桌前，

问 "比尔 "能否把他介绍给他的客人，后者也同样醉醺醺的，他说："请见见比尔-迪肯，他对南斯拉夫现在的混乱局面负有最大责任。

他实际上并没有说 "流氓"，但女士们都在场。

斯特凡-帕夫洛维奇（Stevan Pavlowitch）曾希望获得撰写南斯拉夫国有企业官方历史的委托，但由于当权者认为以他特殊的民族背景，

他不可能做到公正无私--这段历史仍有待撰写

--他曾对我说，在质疑铁托的权力崛起时，

仅仅寻找左翼的影响，寻找秘密部门中明显作假的共产主义鼹鼠是不够的。

正如他形象地指出的那样 "更有影响力的不是床下的红军，而是床上的蓝军"。

正如我们所看到的，铁托最忠诚、最健谈的支持者是英国实权派的支柱。

迈克尔-里斯告诉我，许多曾与米哈伊洛维奇在一起的联络官在SOE自己的社交场所--特种部队俱乐部--战后在骑士桥成立时受到排斥。.

用他的话说，俱乐部成了 "公认的智慧 "的堡垒--尽管他同意我的看法，也许 "感知的历史 "是一个更好的描述。

正是曾与铁托在一起的联络官塑造了二战期间盟军在南斯拉夫的历史书写。

这不仅仅是因为他们与丘吉尔的私人关系，以及他们写了畅销书的事实，还因为官方立场与他们的历史版本相吻合。

正如历来所发生的那样，是胜利者创造了他们自己的历史，而被征服者则必须默默忍受。

我很高兴现在能成为帮助打破这种沉默的人之一。

注：这是作者于2012年5月在CRCE发表的演讲内容。

Hoodwinking Churchill by Peter Batty My talk is entitled “Hoodwinking Churchill” and it concerns the decision Winston Churchill made in December 1943 to drop Draza Mihailovic’s anti-communist resistance group and to back wholeheartedly Tito’s communist partisans – and in particular the roles Sir Fitzroy Maclean, Baronet, and Sir William Deakin played in that decision-making. Deakin, a young Oxford don who had helped Churchill research some of his books, had been sent out to Tito in May 1943 on a fact-finding trip and Maclean in the September as head of a full-scale official mission to Tito who would prepare an in-depth study of Yugoslav resistance as a whole. Maclean was a diplomat and a Conservative Member of Parliament who had had an adventurous war so far in Iraq and Libya with the Special Air Services (SAS). Maclean claimed he had been told to consider himself Churchill’s “own personal representative with the Partisan command”. It was certainly as a result of Maclean’s so-called Blockbuster Report of November 1943 that Churchill’s fateful decision was made .

 

When I joined BBC Television in March 1958 – I joined the so-called Talks Department (the name was a hangover from radio) which was based then in Lime Grove in Shepherd’s Bush .

 

Its output included everything except news, sport, drama and light entertainment – Fitzroy Maclean was a frequent visitor there then. He was on social terms with many of the senior executives. My immediate head of department, Grace Wyndham Goldie, was a widow and Fitzroy often escorted her to receptions and such like. He was invariably present at her monthly programme lunches. He was very charming and well liked, particularly by the ladies .

 

My wife was a ballet dancer and he and Grace once came with us to Covent Garden. He was then trying to get into television either as a presenter or as a maker of programmes. One of the cameramen on the programme I then worked on – Tonight – taught him how to use a 16mm camera, which we loaned him, and he went off to places like Georgia in the Caucasus to make films for us, based on his experience there as a British diplomat before the War. His view of wartime events in Yugoslavia was the accepted one within BBC Television then. I remember an hour-long programme entitled The Life and Times of Marshal Tito, fulsomely narrated and presented by Maclean, that included a particularly reverential interview with Tito himself .

 

 

The BBC had of course played a prominent role in promoting Tito and his Partisans during the war and in sustaining the Partisan myths after 1945. I must admit that I too had swallowed those myths and didn’t countenance any contrary point of view - not that in the late ‘50s and early 1960s when I was involved with Tonight, becoming its editor in 1963, that what had happened in wartime Yugoslavia was much discussed .

 

I was wooed away from the BBC by Lew Grade and after working 4 years with him as an executive producer I founded my own independent production company, making, for instance, 6 of the episodes of Thames TV’s World at War series, also a series on the Algerian War for Channel 4, and one on the American Civil War for them too, and lots of other single documentaries on ballet and wine, as well as on historical subjects for ITV, the BBC and American, German and Japanese networks. In 1990, when the Iron Curtain was no more and one could access Eastern Europe relatively easily, my wife and I drove down the Danube from its various sources in the Black Forest to its Delta on the Black Sea, something we had always longed to do. Following this I put up an idea to Channel 4 for a short series of films on the Danube, but apparently they were already thinking of doing such a series with Bernard Levin, though in fact it never happened. I then tried to interest them in a series about the Balkans in general, but the particular commissioning editor there handling such programming turned down the idea with the riposte Who on earth is interested in the Balkans? A few months later, the Balkans, and Yugoslavia in particular, imploded .

 

While researching the Balkans series, I had come across Michael Lees’s book The Rape of Serbia which had just been published and which was an eye-opener for me. I contacted him and he invited me to lunch at his home in Dorset. He told me how no publisher in the UK would touch his book because of the Lord Aldington/Nikolai Tolstoy libel case over the release by the English in May 1945 of the Cossack prisoners to the Russians and their subsequent murder, and that he had had to seek a publisher in the United States. He was about to go to Belgrade, against the advice of his wife Gwen, for the launching of a SerboCroat edition of his book. He was far from well. Gwen persuaded me to accompany them which I was only too delighted to do. This was the spring of 1991 when Milosevic was coming into his prime. Lees was treated as a hero by the Serbian nationalists. They met us on the plane and carried him head-high to a cavalcade of cars, many decked with flowers and flags – I don’t remember going through immigration or customs – and there was wild honking of car horns all the way in to our hotel. Indeed everywhere we went in Serbia Michael Lees was received rapturously. The final presentation of his book was at Belgrade University, and because a large part of his audience were young English-speaking students he persuaded me to join him on the top table, as it were, and I became a butt of some of the questioning, especially because of my BBC links. These students were angry that Churchill’s falling for Tito’s duplicity had condemned them to 40 years of communism. They blamed all their woes on Churchill’s decision to drop Mihailovic and to back Tito. They felt that history, and the English in particular, had not been kind to them. I came to feel that I owed it to them to try to put the record straight in some way .

 

Knowing the BBC’s penchant for anniversaries – I had discovered that 1992 was the centenary of Tito’s birth - I put up the idea to BBC-2 on my return to do a couple of programmes on Tito for their Timewatch slot. I made it clear that mine would be a revisionist approach – indeed the proposal sheet was headed The Great Tito Confidence Trick. However it was not until the late summer of 1991 that I got the go ahead, such that the autumn was frantically spent filming in Serbia, Montenegro, America, Switzerland, and the UK. At first the Beeb were interested in only 1 programme but then during the editing when they realized the amount of material I had assembled they agreed to two programmes. I had kept the powers-that-be there in touch with my progress and had shown them the rough cuts of the programmes. We had had a few arguments, but nothing of great principle, though I remember being slightly alarmed when one of them told me Maclean had been one of his “boyhood heroes” and that he thought Eastern Approaches one of the best books he had ever read. The programmes were due for transmission in late February and early March 1992, so completing them in the time allowed was a bit of a rush. However they were both finished well on schedule and handed in, edited, dubbed, and ready for transmission .

 

Imagine my horror when I discovered that behind my back the first one had been heavily censored: criticisms of Maclean and William Deakin were softened, especially the criticisms of Maclean’s 1943 Blockbuster Report. Mentions of Ustasha atrocities against Serbs had been removed and references to the notorious Soviet spy James Klugmann’s skullduggery in Cairo cut or watered down, as were references to Tito’s anti-British attitudes during the war .

 

Even hints of Churchill’s ill-health in December 1943 had been removed. Deakin’s personal relationship with Churchill was downplayed and Maclean’s extravagant claims of elite German divisions allegedly tied down by the Partisans went unchallenged. Maclean was said to have spent “a few months in Yugoslavia” before writing his Report whereas in fact he was there barely a few weeks. And so on, and so on. The film-editor told me that almost 200 changes had been made. He had been forbidden to talk to me. Indeed for a while I was denied access to BBC premises when my pass-card was electronically cancelled .

 

Apparently the BBC had feared legal action by Maclean – clear evidence of his continuing sway there even then. This was when John Birt ruled supreme in the Beeb and lesser programme executives feared for their futures. Morale there was at an all-time low, as I had all too easily noticed. When I mentioned this to Maclean’s friend and former wartime colleague Sir Alexander Glen, who had also participated in the programmes, he assured me that Fitzroy was not a litigious individual, preferring more subtle means of getting his own way. Besides, he said, Maclean was too shrewd a chap to put himself at risk of lawyers finding skeletons in his cupboard. I told the BBC people that Maclean was disinclined to issue writs, whereas some of the other participants might be less reluctant, but I was not listened to. However, I had stirred up enough fuss, such that the second programme went out almost untouched .

 

As expected, many of the participants were horrified when they found out what changes had been made to the first film – the BBC not having had the courtesy to inform them of what had happened. Michael Lees, who, perhaps inevitably, had been censored the most, immediately posted a complaint from his Dorset home. Alas, on his way back from the mailbox, he suffered a heart attack and died. His widow persisted with his complaint which found its way to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission where it was upheld in part, as was a similar complaint from Jean Howard of Bletchley fame, another participant whose contribution had been totally cut out .

 

I promised myself then that I would one day set the record straight, but no publisher at that time was interested enough to commission me to write a full account. They were still running scared from the Aldington/Tolstoy libel case. Another ten years would go by, when, after the death of my wife, friends encouraged me to take up a project that might sufficiently engross me to ease the grieving. After considering several, I decided on this book Hoodwinking Churchill: Tito’s Great Confidence Trick which has been 8 years or so in the researching and writing .

 

I was intrigued by Maclean’s involvement and even more so by William Deakin’s. Although charming and courteous, Maclean had always struck me as an ambitious, vain, unscrupulous fellow with not very much up top, so perhaps it was not really surprising that he should swallow the Tito line, believing that that was his way to fame and fortune, convinced as he apparently was that Churchill wanted to believe it too, because of his intense interest in guerrilla activities, as a result of his Boer War experiences. Guerrilla warfare appealed to Churchill’s romantic nature, and as Yugoslavia was the only war-theatre then with substantial guerrilla activity he became absorbed in that country. The accounts by Deakin and Maclean of the seemingly reckless heroism of the Partisans clearly beguiled him. Churchill was adventurous by nature, hence the appeal to him of adventurers like Fitzroy Maclean. This led him in turn to be fascinated by Tito – “the great guerrilla” in his lexicon, “hardy and hunted” - a figure seemingly out of a feudal past, living in caves and forests, perpetually on the move, achieving deeds of derring-do. Deeds he would have liked to be doing himself, but as a deskbound warrior could not.

 

And an increasingly frustrated desk-bound warrior as the Americans and Russians came to dominate the war. Churchill had always been drawn to mavericks and buccaneers. He had a romantic enthusiasm for the unorthodox and the quirky, for people who defied convention. He delighted in the irregular. Cloak-and-dagger operations appealed to his vivid imagination. He enjoyed meeting secret agents. He was also an impatient man, hence his irritation with Mihailovic for seemingly wanting to wait until the Germans were on their knees before issuing his call for Serbs to rise up against them. Churchill was always for immediate action at all costs.  Michael Lees, a cousin of Maclean’s, was convinced Churchill only gave Maclean the job of heading the liaison mission to Tito because he had promised to take his troublesome son Randolph along with him, and thus get him out of his father’s hair. Randolph had become particularly bothersome with his father who could no longer manage him and he was disliked intensely by Churchill’s staff. The Foreign Office head, Sir Alexander Cadogan, described him in his diary as “a dreadful young man” while Harold Macmillan confided to his diary how Randolph “always manages to have a row or make a scene wherever he goes”. But it was of course a stroke of Public Relations genius on Maclean’s part to take Randolph Churchill along with him. The import of Churchill sending his only son was not lost on the Partisans. For Churchill, having his son with the Partisans allowed him, as it were, to participate in guerrilla warfare by filial proxy. Churchill had penned Tito a personal note concerning Randolph, and added: “I wish I could come myself, but I am too old and heavy to jump out on a parachute”. Tito made sure that whenever Randolph visited a village the commissar accompanying him was instructed to organize a mass reception and to introduce him always as Winston Churchill’s son, which impressed everyone, most of all his political opponents. Randolph’s presence tied the Churchill family to Tito’s cause. Randolph was an instant channel to the top. Maclean was able to pepper his signals with phrases like “Randolph well and sends his love”, knowing they would immediately find their way to Winston. Maclean arranged too for Lord Birkenhead to be sent out as the Political Warfare Executive’s (PWE) representative at Tito’s headquarters. That he was Churchill’s godson was perhaps not a coincidence. Evelyn Waugh, who had just completed Brideshead Revisited, was another celebrity who joined Maclean’s mission in early 1944. John Henniker-Major, a member of that mission who later became a senior diplomat – Britain’s Ambassador first to Jordan and then to Denmark - revealed their true significance when he described them in his own memoirs as “markers on the board” that “gave the mission prestige and a higher profile back home, and added to the impression that Fitzroy had a lot of people on his side”. Maclean of course had had close links to the Churchill family. His father had been with Winston at Sandhurst, and he and Randolph had been at Eton together. He had enjoyed hospitality from Winston and his wife on many occasions, and had even for a time dated their niece Clarissa who was eventually to marry Antony Eden, Churchill’s Foreign Secretary .

 

But William Deakin’s role in the decision-making is less easy to understand or to justify. He too was close to Churchill, having helped him in the 1930s as a young Oxford history don to research Churchill’s Life of Marlborough and later his A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Churchill had maintained a close and warm relationship with Deakin. They had had lunch together in August 1940 when Churchill had encouraged him to join SOE, the Special Operations Executive, meant, in Churchill’s own words, “to set Europe ablaze”, through sabotage and subversion behind the lines in German-occupied Europe. Deakin duly joined, initially being sent to North America on its behalf, before being posted to SOE Cairo in late 1942 .

 

Deakin after all was a professional historian, meant to be sober and impartial in his judgments and diligent and detailed in his researches. I had much admired his The Brutal Friendship – the story of Hitler and Mussolini’s relationship. Yet, in his own memoirs The Embattled Mountain, published in 1971, he, for instance, makes no mention of his lunch in Cairo with Churchill on the 28th of January 1943 at which he pressed Winston to take more notice of Tito’s efforts and persuaded him to meet that same day Deakin’s boss, Colonel Keble, SOE Cairo’s Chief of Staff, and to commission him to prepare a report on the respective fighting abilities of the various resistance groups in Yugoslavia – events which Martin Gilbert in his official biography of Churchill said “were to be decisive for British policy towards the resistance forces in German and Italian occupied Yugoslavia”. Deakin does not mention Keble at all in his memoirs, nor his assistant James Klugmann, the infamous Soviet spy in SOE Cairo who helped to write Keble’s Report and was to do so much damage to Mihailovic’s cause with his doctoring of documents and messages to London from the British liaison officers with Mihailovic’s forces, and his faking of maps to exaggerate the extent of Partisan influence, and his skimping of supplies to Mihailovic in preference to Tito. Deakin in those memoirs gives scant mention of the Ustasha atrocities against the Serbs in Croatia, and of their impact on Serbs in Serbia, leading to their enhanced suspicion of Croats in general. This was in line with Churchill’s own attitude then of course .

 

Nor was Deakin prepared to give any weight to the “reprisals” argument when considering Mihailovic’s attitude to sabotage, in particular his concern not to furnish the Germans with an excuse to exterminate the Serbs, as nearly happened in the First World War. The Germans were killing 100 Serbs for every German killed and 50 for every one wounded. The reprisal order did not apply to non-Serb activity elsewhere in Yugoslavia, such as in Bosnia where Tito was based for most of the war. Indeed Churchill and his advisers seem not to have worried much about reprisals against Serbs, though they were concerned about retribution against the French, for instance. The Maquis were often enjoined to avoid civilian casualties by not killing Germans. There are very few mentions of the reprisals in Deakin’s writings .

 

Later in life he was to try to explain his high regard for Tito by reminding people that he and Tito had been wounded by the same bomb that had killed Deakin’s deputy and Tito’s chiefbodyguard. As a result he felt they had become sort of blood-brothers. Indeed in his memoirs, while detailing the German attacks on the Partisans at this time and the terrible conditions in which they were all living, he was to admit that he “had taken on by stages a binding and absolute identity with those around” him. Deakin certainly swallowed hook, line and sinker the Partisan myths and took advantage of his close relationship with Churchill to help promote them. Like Maclean, he did not speak Serbo-Croat and hence relied almost entirely on information passed to him by the Partisans which, as a professional historian, he must have realised would be partial and therefore needed to be supported by other, less subjective sources. That Tito might want Mihailovic eliminated, not for the better pursuit of the war but for purely political reasons, seems never to have troubled Deakin. Tito was later to say how surprised he had been to find Deakin and Maclean such willing tools in his desire to liquidate his political opponents. He honoured Deakin in 1969 with the Partisan Star First Class “for special services in the People’s Liberation War”. Deakin had already received from the Russians in 1944 their Order of Valour. Maclean of course had been deluged with much higher awards. According to The Times obituary of him, Maclean had been given by Tito a “summer home in Korcula, a Croatian Adriatic island, which Tito allowed him to own despite foreigners being forbidden to possess property in communist Yugoslavia”. It comprised two small Venetian 17th century palaces which the Maclean family still own .

 

Deakin after the war helped Churchill write his wartime memoirs, which for a loyal generation became the accepted version of that war. Vane Ivanovic, a Yugoslav who worked for the Political Warfare Executive during the war, was at school with Deakin and, despite their differing viewpoints, maintained a close relationship with him for the rest of his life, observed in his own memoirs published in 1977: “There has been no symposium or discussion in Great Britain or elsewhere in Europe on the role of SOE in the last war in which Deakin has not taken a prominent part. In each of these, the version of events in Yugoslavia that has been aired is that of the victorious pro-Partisan faction inside SOE. On the British side, I have not come across any views or interpretations of the other side within SOE”. Indeed, Deakin was to remain for another generation Britain’s most widely recognized expert on wartime Yugoslavia. Sir Michael Howard in his obituary notice of Deakin in The Independent said that it was largely his experience and advice that persuaded Winston Churchill to support the Communist partisans in Yugoslavia. The Times obituarist went further in stating: “It was largely as a result of Deakin’s reports of the partisans’ effectiveness and perhaps, too, of the faith which Churchill personally had in Deakin’s judgment, that the British Government decided to withdraw its support from the Chetniks and to concentrate on helping the partisans” .

 

I had dinner once with Deakin at his club Brook’s in St James’s during the autumn of 1991. I had been trying without success to get him to take part in my programmes for the BBC. He was living then in France and hadn’t mellowed, nor was he prepared to admit any mistakes along the way. He did say though that the generals in December 1943 were more interested in tying down German divisions in Yugoslavia, and hence keeping them away from possible use against the coming Allied landings in France, than in which of the resistance groups was killing the most Germans. For me the evening was memorable for a Tory grandee the worse for drink lumbering over to our table and asking “Bill” if he could introduce him to his guest, who was equally inebriated, which he did with the words “Please meet Bill Deakin the man most responsible for the effing mess Yugoslavia now finds itself in”. He didn’t actually say effing, but ladies are present .

 

Stevan Pavlowitch who had hoped to have been given the commission to write the official history of the SOE in Yugoslavia, but was passed over because the powers-that-be thought that, with his particular ethnic background, he could not be impartial – the history has still to be written – once argued to me that in questioning Tito’s rise to power it was not enough to look simply to the left-wing influences, to the communist moles within the secret services who clearly had cooked the books. As he graphically put it: “It’s not so much the reds under the bed that were the more influential, as the blues IN the bed”. As we have seen, Tito’s most loyal and loquacious supporters were pillars of the British Establishment .

 

Michael Lees told me that many of the liaison officers who had been with Mihailovic were ostracised at SOE’s own social venue, the Special Forces Club, when it was established in Knightsbridge after the war. The Club became, in his terms, a fortress of the “received wisdom” – though he agreed with me that perhaps “perceived history” was a better description. It was the liaison officers who had been with Tito who shaped the writing of history on Allied involvement in Yugoslavia during the Second World War. Not just because of their personal relationship with Churchill and the fact that they wrote bestselling books, but because the official position came to coincide with their version of history. As has happened down the ages, it is the Victors who make their own history, while the vanquished must endure in silence. I am glad now to be numbered among those who are helping to break that silence .

 

Note: This is the text of a talk given by the Author at the CRCE in May 2012