Shadows on the Mountain: The Allies, the Resistance, and the Rivalries that Doomed WWII Yugoslavia

by Marcia Kurapovna

Overview

An in-depth look at a crucial, little-known World War II episode—the failed Allied policy in Yugoslavia and its ramifications in the Balkans and beyond

Winston Churchill called it one of his biggest wartime failures—the shift of British and U.S. support from Yugoslavia's Draža Mihailovic and his royalist resistance movement to Tito and his communist Partisans. This book illuminates the complex reasons behind that failure through the incredible story of what has been called the greatest rescue of Allied airmen from behind enemy lines in World War II history, a rescue executed, incredibly, with minimal official support from the United States and none such support from Great Britain.

• Recounts an unknown chapter of World War II history and the single largest rescue operation of the war
• Starting with Serbia's tragedy and triumph in World War II through civil war in Yugoslavia during World War I, focuses on the history of the Balkans, a tragically misunderstood part of the world
• Sheds new light on the OSS-SOE relationship and manipulations of intelligence that profoundly altered policy decision making
• Reveals how failed Allied policy set the stage for Yugoslavia's breakup in the 1990s
• Details the wartime camaraderie of unlikely warriors who became fast friends, outcasts, and heroes in executing the rescue

Written with the drama of a novel and the insight of serious history, Shadows on the Mountain is essential reading for anyone interested in World War II, European history, and the Balkans.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780470615669
Publisher:	Trade Paper Press
Publication date:	11/13/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Marcia Christoff Kurapovna is a former international affairs correspondent with an academic background in East European history. She has lived in and reported from southeastern Europe, Cairo, London, New York, and Washington, D.C. Her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal Europe, the International Herald Tribune, the Christian Science Monitor, the Economist, and Foreign Affairs. She is now a full-time writer and lives in Vienna, Austria, with her fiancé, Dr. Johannes Eltz.

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Table of Contents

Preface.

Acknowledgments.

Prologue The Blue Graveyard.

1 Lawrence of Yugoslavia: An Allied Awakening inside a Civil War.

2 The Mountain at Dawn.

3 Lawrence of Yugoslavia II: Into the Partisan-Chetnik Quagmire.

4 The Balkan Prize.

5 Allied Rivals, Allied Destruction.

6 A Mission (Nearly) Impossible.

7 Legends of Blood and Honor: The Sad, Strange End of the British-Mihailović Relationship.

8 Their Brother’s Keeper: The Downfall of Soviet-Tito Relations.

9 Night into Death into Day.

10 The Unknown Soldier.

11 The Red Graveyard.

12 The Politics of Surrender.

Epilogue The Mountain at Twilight.

Notes.

Index.