Secret reports on one of the most controversial British undercover operations of the Second World War are to be released on Monday, showing that a Soviet spy may have been responsible for the British switching support to Tito’s forces in the former Yugoslavia.
The documents, including transcripts of secret wartime signals to London, are being released by the Public Records Office. They will show evidence of the role played by James Klugmann – the Soviet mole who converted the British spy, Donald Maclean, to Communism – in switching British allegiance from a Yugoslav royalist resistance leader called Mihailovich to Tito, at a critical point in the Second World War.
By switching support to Tito’s forces, the Special Operations Executive (SOE) helped to force the German retreat, but it cost Mihailovich his life – he was executed after the war as a collaborator – and ensured that the former Yugoslavia remained a Communist state under Tito’s control.
SOE spies who fought in the Balkans included the former Tory MP Julian Amery. Other famous names who flit in and out of the tales of SOE derring- do and duplicity in the region included Paddy Leigh Fermor and Major Anthony Quayle, the screen actor.
Rupert Allason, author of spy books under the pen name Nigel West, and a former Tory MP, said the real issue raised by the papers was the reason for the British Government’s backing of Tito. Nothing had been known about Tito – Fitzroy Maclean, a British agent, thought he was a woman – and the Government became convinced that Mihailovich was a collaborator with the Germans – something the “Ultra” code intercepts showed to be untrue.
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