Government-in-exile
In June 1941, King Peter arrived in London, where he joined other governments in exile from Nazi-occupied Europe. When Peter and his government landed in London they were greeted as heroes by the British media. The British press presented what the Serbian historian Stevan K. Pavlowitch called a "romanticized" picture of the young Peter, who became a "symbol of his country's struggle to keep its freedom in alliance with Great Britain". He was supplied with a Lendrum & Hartman Limited Buick delivered to his exile home near Cambridge.
A sign of the initial high regard for Peter in the neutral United States, he was featured as a hero in October 1941 edition of the comic book Military Comics: Stories of the Army and Navy, which presented a somewhat fictionalized version of the 27 March 1941 coup d'état in Belgrade in which a group of secondary school students who are upset by Yugoslavia's signing of the Tripartite Pact rally for the king and overthrow the regent.
Peter quickly learned that the degree of attention the British were willing to give to the government-in-exile was directly related to what assets the government-in-exile could bring to the Allied cause. As only a few hundred Yugoslav soldiers had escaped to Egypt, the Yugoslav government-in-exile did not have much to contribute.
Initially, the government-in-exile planned to make good its losses by recruiting an army from Yugoslav immigrants in the neutral United States, but the American government objected to this plan, and instead the government-in-exile had to recruit from the ethnic Slovene POWs captured while fighting with the Royal Italian Army. From the British POW camps, enough ethnic Slovenes volunteered to provide one infantry battalion, who were reluctant to fight against the Italians as they would be executed for treason if captured. In terms of military forces available in the Middle East, Yugoslavia was as Pavlowitch put it the "least important of the allies". The Yugoslav officer corps in Egypt was prone to feuding between younger officers who blamed the senior officers for Yugoslavia's swift defeat in April 1941, and such was the extent of the in-fighting that the government-in-exile had to ask the British military police to impose its will on its own army.
In this context, when King Peter and the rest of the government-in-exile heard reports in mid-1941 that a guerrilla movement called the Chetniks led by Colonel Draža Mihailović were fighting the Germans, he triumphantly seized upon these reports as proving that he did have an asset to the Allied cause that was tying down German forces that otherwise would be fighting on the other fronts. It was not until October 1941 that the government-in-exile was finally able to establish contact with General Mihailović. In September 1941, a liaison mission from the Special Operations Executive (SOE) parachuted into Yugoslavia to meet Mihailović, and afterwards, became the main means which Mihailović communicated with the Allies. It was through the SOE mission attached with the Chetniks that King Peter and the rest of government-in-exile communicated with Mihailović.
The news that the Croat fascists of the Ustashe had started a campaign to exterminate one-third of the prečani Serbs in the Krajina region and in Bosnia, expel another one-third and force the rest to convert to Roman Catholicism brought tensions in the government-in-exile between the Serb ministers and the few remaining Croat ministers to the boiling point and by October–November 1941, the cabinet almost collapsed. Adding to the tension was that the Croatian ministers refused to believe the reports about Ustashe atrocities, dismissing them as anti-Croat "Serb propaganda", which infuriated the Serbian ministers.
Several Serb ministers told King Peter that they found it difficult to be in the same room as the Croat ministers, after they were blithely dismissive of reports of the Ustashe killing prečani Serbs in a variety of gruesome ways. Regardless, it was felt necessary to retain them in order to maintain the claim that the Yugoslav government-in-exile spoke for all the peoples of Yugoslavia. The Croat ministers were unwilling to resign, fearing a Serb-dominated government returning after the war. With neither side willing to risk the cabinet collapsing, the crisis passed. Relations between the Croat and Serb ministers remained notably cold and distant.
Disagreements had emerged over who was to head the government-in-exile. General Borivoje Mirković wanted a cabinet of generals headed by himself, which was opposed by all of the politicians and Simović. Radoje Knežević wanted a coalition government of the political parties whose leaders had chosen to go into exile. General Simović wanted a "government of national salvation" made up of "distinguished personalities" from all walks of life which he would lead, which would exclude most of the politicians.
Simović as Prime Minister had an authoritarian manner and a disdain for politicians, and was soon feuding with the rest of his cabinet, who started writing letters to Peter asking him to dismiss his overbearing prime minister. The leader of the anti-Simović group was the distinguished scholar and historian Slobodan Jovanović, who served as deputy prime minister. As a liberal Serb, he opposed the more chauvinistic Serb nationalists, and so held a degree of credibility with the non-Serb ministers. Simović felt he had a duty to "tutor" the teenage king in the ways of statecraft and politics, and their relation became strained. Peter found Simović to be too dominating, and resented being "lectured" by his prime minister.
Outside of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia was the only place in Europe in 1941 that a full-scale guerrilla war was being waged against the Axis, leading as Pavlowitch put for Mihailović "...being built up by Yugoslav and British propaganda into an Allied superman". The popularity of Mihailović in Britain helped to seal the end of Simović's political career as the latter had been turned into a hero by the British press for leading the 27 March coup d'état, which made Peter for a long time reluctant to dismiss him. But with another Yugoslav hero in the form of Mihailović, Peter could dispense with Simović without fear of Fleet Street.
The instructions given by the prime minister Slobodan Jovanović to Mihailović in January 1942 were to protect the prečani Serbs from the massacres being waged by the Ustashe, but otherwise he was not to engage in any actions that would bring down reprisals against civilians unless absolutely necessary while at the same time he was to build up his forces to engage in a general uprising when the Allies landed in the Balkans. In October 1941, Mihailović had already decided upon a policy of limiting the Chetniks to sabotage attacks and of building up his forces for an uprising when the Allies returned to the Balkans. The German policy that for every German soldier killed, 100 Serb civilians would be shot in reprisal and for every wounded German soldier, 50 Serb civilians would be shot in reprisal worked to deter Chetniks from attacking the Wehrmacht after October 1941 as Mihailović concluded that guerrilla attacks were not worth the reprisals.
The Chetniks were most active in Serbia and Montenegro while the Communist Partisans drew most of their support from the prečani Serbs in Bosnia and in the Krajina and from anti-fascist Croats, Slovenes and Bosnian Muslims. Unlike the Chetniks who had a narrowly Serbian and Orthodox nationalist message, the Partisans were a pan-Yugoslav force. The Partisans were considerably better organized than the Chetniks and were more willing to accept the reprisals committed against innocent civilians by the Axis when they staged guerrilla attacks, leading to a situation where the Partisans ended up doing more of the fighting against the occupiers and the collaborators, an aspect of the war in Yugoslavia which caused Britain and the United States to ultimately favor the Partisans.
At the same time, British policy in Yugoslavia was increasingly for the resistance to engage in maximum violence against the Axis in order to tie down German and Italian divisions that would otherwise be fighting the Allies, no matter what the cost in reprisals to innocent civilians, a policy that clashed with the Chetnik policy of waiting for the Allies to return to Yugoslavia before engaging in a general uprising. The very way in which Mihailović and the Chetniks had been built up in 1941 in the British media, partly by the Yugoslav government-in-exile itself, as a force of ferocious guerrillas fiercely fighting the Germans at every turn, led to very grave disappointments by 1942 when it emerged at very best the Chetniks were waiting for the British to return to the Balkans before they were willing to engage in heavy fighting.
The King completed his education at Cambridge University before being commissioned in the Royal Air Force. In mid-1941, the Yugoslav government-in-exile opened talks with the Greek government-in-exile for a post-war confederation––the Balkan Union––that would unite Yugoslavia, Greece and Bulgaria once King Boris III of Bulgaria was overthrown. The Greek prime minister Emmanouil Tsouderos supported the confederation plan, but objected to the Yugoslav plans to bring in Bulgaria and for the proposed confederation to have an executive government in charge of all economic, foreign policy and military questions, leading Tsouderous to ask the British Foreign Secretary Sir Anthony Eden to mediate.
In July 1941, the Yugoslav government-in-exile recognized the Czechoslovak government-in-exile, and starting in September 1941 Peter regularly met with President Edvard Beneš to discuss a new Yugoslav-Czechoslovak alliance to replace the Little Entente that Beneš had negotiated with Peter's father, King Alexander, in 1921. On 31 December 1941, the Greek-Yugoslav talks concluded and on 15 January 1942 the Accord entre le Royaume de Yougoslavie et le Royaume Grèce concernant la constitution de l'Union balkanique was signed in London. The accord committed Yugoslavia and Greece after the war to have a common currency; a customs union; to co-ordinate their foreign policies; for a military alliance with joint staff talks for a common defense plan; and a committee consisting of the Yugoslav and Greek finance ministers, foreign ministers, and defense ministers to meet regularly to plan policies for the Balkan Union.
After signing the accord, King Peter and King George II of Greece spoke to the British press at a luncheon where the two kings spoke of the "Balkan Union" as being open to all of the states of the Balkans. On 11 January 1942, Peter dismissed his prime minister, General Dušan Simović, who proved himself to be an inept politician who was unable to get along with his cabinet, which had been threatening to all jointly resign since late 1941 if General Simović continued as prime minister. The new prime minister was Slobodan Jovanović, a widely respected historian.
At the same time that Peter dismissed Simović, he appointed Mihailović minister of war; as Mihailović remained in Yugoslavia, his position in the cabinet was purely symbolic. On 19 January 1942 at the Dorchester Hotel in London, the king and President Beneš together with the rest of the Yugoslav and Czechoslovak cabinets had lunch together to discuss a post-war regional association. Peter in his speech noted that he was happy that two of the men who negotiated the Little Entente, Momčilo Ninčić and Edvard Beneš "are here today" in this room. The plans to ally the proposed Greek-Yugoslav confederation with the proposed Czechoslovak-Polish confederation that Beneš had signed with General Władysław Sikorski, the leader of the Polish government-in-exile, drew intense objections from the Soviet Union which preferred the states of eastern Europe remain separate to keep them weak.
As in Yugoslavia, the Greek resistance was divided between communists and royalists, and Tsouderos objected to Peter that his friendship with Beneš and his plans to link the "Balkan Union" with the Polish-Czechoslovak confederation would cause the Soviets to cease recognizing George II as the king of the Hellenes. Tsouderos's fear was that the Soviet Union would recognize the Communist-dominated EAM as the legitimate government of Greece, and for this reason, wanted to do nothing that would antagonize Moscow. It was largely because of opposition from Tsouderos that Peter shelved his plans for a post-war Polish-Czechoslovak-Yugoslav-Greek alliance.
The very dependence of the government-in-exile on the British was a source of much tension, and Peter in 1942 tried to involve the Soviet Union and the United States as counter-balances. In 1942 Peter made a diplomatic visit to America and Canada, where he met American President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. The whirlwind tour was unsuccessful in securing Allied support for the exiled Yugoslav monarchist cause. Roosevelt and Churchill had already engaged the support of the Communist Yugoslav Government in the Allied effort to defeat Nazi Germany, with a view to ending the Second World War. Roosevelt made Yugoslavia eligible for Lend-Lease aid during Peter's visit, but given the small size of the Yugoslav forces in exile, this was not of much assistance.
During his visit to the United States, King Peter met the Serbian-American scientist Nikola Tesla on 8 July 1942 and wrote in his diary: "I visited Dr Nikola Tesla, in his apartment in the Hotel New Yorker. After I had greeted him the aged scientist said: 'It is my greatest honour. I am glad you are in your youth, and I am content that you will be a great ruler. I believe I will live until you come back to a free Yugoslavia. From your father you have received his last words: "Guard Yugoslavia." I am proud to be a Serbian and a Yugoslav. Our people cannot perish. Preserve the unity of all Yugoslavs – the Serbs, the Croats and the Slovenes.'"
In order to obtain support from Britain, Peter put his hopes for restoration on General Draža Mihailović, the leader of the Chetniks. On 10 June 1942, Peter promoted Mihailović to full general and made him the Chief of Staff of the Royal Yugoslav Army. Pavlowitch summarized the importance of Mihailović to King Peter by noting: "There was no other instance of the leader of a resistance movement being taken directly into an exiled government while remaining in occupied territory". Peter and the rest of the government-in-exile failed to appreciate that the Serb nationalism of Mihailović and the other Chetnik leaders was extremely offensive to the other peoples of Yugoslavia, all the more so as when reports of massacres committed by the Chetniks against Croats and Bosnian Muslims emerged.
For the peoples of Yugoslavia who were not Serbian, the king's support for the Chetniks seemed to suggest that after the war he was planning to establish a state that would be dominated by chauvinistic Serb nationalists, which led to those who wanted to resist the Axis occupation to support the Partisans who at least promised to establish a state where all the peoples of Yugoslavia would be equal.
The intense Serb nationalism of the Chetniks also caused alarm in London and Washington, sparking fears about the stability of Yugoslavia if it were restructured as a Serb-dominated state, which caused some decision-makers to feel that Yugoslavia would be more stable if ruled by the Croatian Communist Josip Broz Tito. Peter's efforts to have the United States as a counterbalance failed as the Americans shared the British frustration with the unwillingness of the Chetniks to engage in maximum violence against the Germans and were increasingly troubled by the reports that the Chetniks were collaborating with the Germans.
The Chetnik movement was motivated by a strong sense of resentment against all of the pre-war elites who were felt to have failed Yugoslavia in April 1941, and Mihailović did not have full control of his movement, being in many cases more of a figurehead whom many Chetnik commanders ignored whenever it was convenient for them. Besides for foreign policy considerations, the government-in-exile felt threatened by the anti-elitist and populist sentiments of the Chetniks and wanted to harness Mihailović to keep the Chetniks in a conservative direction.
The government-in-exile in London saw the Chetniks as a military movement whereas the Chetnik commanders saw their movement as both political and military. All of the Chetnik commanders professed to be monarchists who were loyal to King Peter, but in many cases the monarchism of the Chetniks was only superficial, being more of a legitimising device for the Chetnik leaders who justified their actions in the name of the distant king in London. Finally, the allegations, which first appeared in the press in 1942, that the Chetniks were not engaging in resistance, but instead collaborating with the Germans and the Italians in order to fight against the Communist Partisans proved to be extremely damaging to the image of King Peter in the West.
The government-in-exile tried its best to prevent the civil war between the Partisans and the Chetniks, but with no control over either the communists or the royalists, its efforts were futile. Jovanović at first tried to mediate an end to the civil war, arguing that the Partisans and Chetniks should be co-operating in fighting the Axis instead of each other, and when that failed, he tried to promote a "neutrality" agreement that would commit both movements from refraining from attacking each other that was likewise futile.
By 1943, the evidence that at least some Chetnik commanders were co-operating with the Axis was much stronger and Peter's insistence on defending the Chetniks was to do his reputation enormous damage in both Britain and the United States. Peter also did nothing to silence those ministers in his government who told the Anglo-American press that the Chetniks should crush the Communist Partisans to save the pre-1941 social order, which gave the impression that the government-in-exile cared more about restoring the social order than it did about winning the war.
Pavlowitch described Peter as an "immature" young man who was easily manipulated by the feuding politicians within the cabinet of his government-in-exile, and as a result, he was highly inconsistent in his policies as he changed his mind depending on who had last spoken to him. The Croat ministers preferred to talk directly to the king rather than their Serb counterparts while generally none of the Serb ministers were prepared to openly challenge the king, instead of flattening his ego. Peter always spoke of enjoying "ruling" rather more than he did the duty of "reigning", and did not behave as a strict constitutional monarch, becoming the focal point of the culture of intrigue which characterised the cabinet of the government-in-exile.
