Dear Winston...

Two men who changed history never met, but they should have. They had an enormous impact on each other’s lives. They both were men of war. One would survive. The other would not. The following gives voice to General Draza Mihailovich, the one who did not survive, and what he might have said to the one who did, the great Statesman Winston Churchill, had he had the chance to do so.


Dear Winston,

During a critical period in the history of the world, our paths crossed in a fateful way, though we would never meet. I would die first, without any of the glory that was bestowed upon you during your lifetime and upon your death. I never had the chance to face you, man to man, though you depended on me and I, for a time, counted on you. Now, we meet face to face, and I need you to hear my words, for you have always had the benefit of your words being heard far and wide and you have shared your thoughts and your life with the world. I want no such claim to fame. I just need you, and you alone, to hear me now. Let me take you back to the time when our paths converged and the course of history was forever changed.

It is my feeling now that it wasn’t the Yugoslav communists or the Nazis who were my greatest enemies. I could have handled the partisans and did so for most of the war. My Serbian resistance forces handled the Nazis better than any of the previous seventeen nations did who had fallen to Hitler in a matter of just a couple of years. It was the massive support the British Establishment would give to the partisans in weapons, material and propaganda, that became my greatest obstacle and led to my ultimate downfall. However, it was how the British Establishment mishandled the inter-war years that must weigh on you as well, Winston. As a result of the mishandling of crucial and critical moments during this period of peace, I would inherit one monster and you would eventually feed me to another, though I would remain loyal to you to the end.

You made many promises to the government of Kingdom of Yugoslavia before March 27, 1941, but when Hitler attacked you were nowhere in sight. You were the greatest Empire on the face of the earth. Likewise, you made many promises to me when I started the resistance against the Nazis, but delivered very little. Considering that I had some 80,000 men under arms and thousands of others I had no arms to give to, all of your help to me during the four years of the war I was involved in amounted to just one pound of material per man. You made excuses that you didn’t have the transportation means to deliver the goods. But once you started supporting the communists of Yugoslavia with thousands of tons of weapons and material, you had plenty of planes and ships to do so.

For a long time, the Serbs had looked to Great Britain for inspiration and protection. However, in 1938, as Hitler was about to start another bloody war, you were able to equip just two divisions of men, and the following year, 1939, only 5 divisions on land. The Serbian faith in you was truly misdirected.

Germany lost the largest amount of counted dead in the First World War, but she was not the worst proportionate sufferer. That country was my beloved Serbia, who lost 15 percent of her population, compared with something between 2 and 3 percent of the British, French and German populations being lost. 15 percent. I was, and would always remain, cognizant of that.

Like many of my generation who had survived the horrors of the First World War, I was terrified lest that this new war would lead my people, the Serbs, toward a ‘national suicide’. So the question arose of which was the best way to fight the Nazi enemy. I felt that it was to build up my forces, to launch effective sabotage actions, and guard our resources until such time as a national uprising in conjunction with a decisive Allied offensive could have a real chance of success. You agreed with this method. It was your method as well. But you did not keep up your end. You would come to expect and demand far more of me and my forces than you ever expected of your own people.

Let’s revisit how the monster was created. Accountability always withstands the test of time, and hindsight, when honest, will reveal more than we were ever willing to acknowledge at the time.

1935 was the critical year, really, if we are to honestly assess accountability for what was to follow. In February of 1935 your British leaders, along with the French, let Hitler know that as far as you were concerned, the Versailles Peace Treaty was dead. You agreed that Germany should be allowed to rearm. Why? Because the Nazis were to be the bulwark against the encroachment of Bolshevism you feared more than anything else. Soviet Russia was a threat to the holdings of your great Empire, and the Nazis were the solution to containing that threat. This was exactly the time when Hitler began to make serious moves to start another war. How could the British be so blind?

Within the span of just one week, from March 9 of 1935 to March 16, Adolf Hitler would announce the existence of the German Air Force, which was forbidden by the Versailles Treaty, and declare conscription, also forbidden by the Treaty. As became clear to him, you no longer respected the Versailles Peace Treaty, therefore, why should he? On March 4, 1935 a Report on Defense came out in Britain showing Britain’s total lack of preparedness to defend herself. Do you wonder, Winston, as I do, whether Hitler was fully aware of Britain’s weakness as an Empire and proceeded accordingly?

On June 18, 1935 you signed the Anglo-German Naval Agreement which allowed Germany to build up her Navy even if you knew it was forbidden by the Versailles Peace Treaty. You did this behind the back of France and Italy only two months after you met with French and Italian leaders at Stressa where you pledged to keep Nazi Germany from extending beyond her borders and to condemn German rearmament, the very same rearmament that you had supported earlier that same year! The diabolical behavior of the British proved to Hitler that you were prepared to do anything in the interest of the British Empire, no matter how it might hurt others, especially the smaller nations of Europe.

In 1935 you could have stopped Hitler in his tracks. Instead, the British not only tacitly supported him, but ended up giving him Europe on a silver platter.
When Hitler took his first step towards another war that would destroy 30 million human beings, by sending 3 battalions of his troops into the demilitarized Rhineland on March 7th of 1936, you weren’t there to stop him. You did not act. France, following your lead, did not act, though she had more than enough resources to do so. France had become so submissive to you that she would do nothing the British did not approve off. This would cost her dearly.

Just six months later, former British prime minister Lloyd George visited Hitler and came back with nothing but praise for the German dictator. He called him a “man of supreme quality with no warlike plans.’’ The following year in 1937, you yourself prophesied that there would be no major war “in our lifetime”. One month later, Lord Halifax, a top British diplomat, declared, after visiting Hitler, that he liked all of the Nazi leaders, even Goebbels, and that he was much impressed, interested and amused by the visit.

You had more spy agencies and secret service organizations than any other country of Europe. Where were they to discover what Hitler planned in just a few years down the line? Belgrade was full of British secret service agents when they should have been in Berlin instead.

Your predecessor, Chamberlain’s government in the late 1930s was, indeed, one of the most third-rate governments in British history. ‘It was without talent, or intellect or independence.’ That made it criminally easy for Hitler and Mussolini to pull the trick they did on September 29, 1938 when the Munich Agreement sealed the fate of Czechoslovakia. For all practical purposes, the British gave the green light to Hitler to begin the war he had been preparing for with the blessing of the great western democracies in Europe. It should not be forgotten that at that time Great Britain was an empire of 450 million subjects and France was an empire of 80 million subjects. Both had unlimited resources and manpower available to them. Both failed to stop the monster at the door when they still could have before a single fatality was incurred.

At the time of the Munich Agreement when Germany, Italy, France and Britain compelled Czechoslovakia to cede Sudetenland to Germany, thereby selling out Czechoslovakia, there were highly positioned German military men who wanted the British to get engaged in helping them get rid of Hitler, but their hopes were dashed. You still believed Hitler would save you and all of Europe from Bolshevism, though you, Winston, would chastise Chamberlain severely for the Munich disaster, declaring that ‘now we will have a war in our lifetime!’ It would only be a few years later that you would demand that Serbs kill Germans regardless of the human cost to our people and our small nation and would turn to the Bolsheviks that you had feared so much to be your ally against Hitler. Serbs would pay the ultimate price for your policy of appeasement throughout the inter-war years and for your duplicity in switching alliances whenever it served your purpose. At what point, I wonder, did your Great Empire lose her shame over the course of these crucial years. I will wonder this once again in the coming dark years, dear Winston, not about your Empire, but about you.

On March 8, 1939, Halifax, Britain’s Foreign Secretary, spoke of the golden age of peace and prosperity that cooperation among the leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Italy might bring. It was only one week before Hitler marched his troops into Prague and swallowed Czechoslovakia. Once again, neither France nor Great Britain made a move.

Those in power in Europe that could have changed the course of history in those years after the end of the World War One became absorbed by the anti-Bolshevik obsession. They were blinded to the possibility that the other ideologies that were developing in Europe, Fascism and Nazism, were no better than Bolshevism. The people that were playing these deadly games were kings, prime ministers, chief-of-staffs, high-level financiers, Lords, media moguls and others. When the whole game of appeasement collapsed and Hitler and his armies became almost invincible you began exhorting me on to lead the nation of Serbia into suicide by killing Germans and losing 100 Serb lives for every killed German soldier.

At this time, the French army was the strongest one on earth. The French Empire, with 80 million inhabitants, was second only to that of the British. French industries were growing faster than the industries of their European and American rivals. French banks held much of the globe’s gold, amounting to one quarter by 1932. But in June of 1940 that same France with all of her manpower and resources would fall quickly to the Nazis in just a matter of weeks. Winston, Imagine that! It was a great tragedy for France and a still greater tragedy for Serbia that had counted so much on that country for protection against monsters such as Hitler and Mussolini.

Dear Winston,

Is it possible that one of your very own, a British Royal, sealed the fate of France by committing an act of the highest treason? The files remain closed, but I believe that you know what they contain. Despite the secrecy and the cover-ups, we now know the following:

On January 10, 1940 a German military plane crashed in Belgium. On that plane was a German General Staff officer who had on the plane with him Hitler’s war plan for the invasion of Western Europe. After the crash, this plan fell into Allied hands, a huge stroke of luck for the Allies. According to that plan, Hitler was to attack France through Belgium, come west of the Maginot Line, behind the back of French troops, enabling the quick capture of Paris. This plan was discussed at a secret meeting of the Allied Supreme Command in Paris. Your former British King, Edward VIII, was present at that meeting, as a British military representative.

After the meeting, Edward VIII, a longtime admirer of the German dictator, informed Hitler that the Allies had his war plans, thereby committing an act of treason that would prove fatal for the Allies. This was not the first time that Edward would be helpful to Hitler. He had previously let it be known to Hitler, after Hitler tested European resolve by occupying the Rhineland in 1937, that he could move ahead with his plans as Britain, and therefore France, would not move against him.

Unaware of the British king’s treachery, and going by the plan, the French pulled virtually all of their troops to the Belgian border to wait there for the German attack. They waited in vain. Using the information he had received from Edward, Hitler changed his plan and attacked France through Ardennes where no troops of any significance were waiting for him. The defeat of France was completed in only six weeks. The former British king had committed high treason not only against his own country but against all of Europe and the world. If he had not done so chances are that Hitler’s armies would have been smashed on the Belgian border and it would have been the end of both Hitler and the war.

Therefore, your former British king is greatly responsible for the deaths of over 30 million people and for the enormous destruction five years of war would wreak on the world.

As soon as France fell in June 1940 you began working on dividing the Balkans into Soviet and British spheres of influence – the Soviets being over the eastern and the British being over the western. Now, the Bolsheviks were no longer the enemy. Now, they were the Ally. This would be the precursor of sealing the fate of the Serbs in the years to come.

In just a year from that time Hitler and his armies would reach the height of their power. Come 1941 and the beginning of my resistance to the Nazis you would begin using me and my forces for your purposes as long as it suited you. Unlike you, we had never appeased. We had never supported the enemy either directly or by default. We knew the nature of the enemy from the very beginning and never wavered in our resolve to fight them. You knew this, yet it would be you that would betray us and sabotage our efforts. We would begin on your side and end on your side, but you would betray us.

My dear Winston,

You would demand that we kill Germans at great cost to ourselves, yet you would make no such demand of sacrifice from your own people. When the Germans occupied the British Channel Islands at the end of June of 1940, the only occupied British territory in the entire war, did you ever ask the 60,000 Britons living on those islands to kill Germans? In fact, there was no resistance on those islands and no German was killed on them even though they occupied them until June 1944. In fact, the British people living on those islands collaborated with the Germans one hundred percent.

How, Winston, knowing this, could you ever have conceived of considering my forces and me collaborators? Your own people were real collaborators. Instead, you chose to conform to the inventions of Communist propaganda and accused us, your allies in the same cause of being traitors to that cause.

In June of 1942 you accused me, on the basis of communist propaganda, that I contacted General Nedic and therefore was a German collaborator. The fact is I never contacted Nedic. Had you forgotten your own unsavory dealings by that time or were you looking for a way to camouflage those dealings? Remember when Hitler took France and split the country into two parts? One part was occupied by the German troops and the other part was left to Marshal Petain to govern from Vichy. Petain would promise Hitler complete cooperation. This was known.

The British would make several contacts with Petain through your South African and Canadian diplomats. The British would negotiate a deal with the Vichy government in Autumn of 1940, once again effectively undermining the myth of Britain always putting resistance to Germany as its top priority. How were you able to live and govern with your hypocrisy? At what point did you lose your shame?

In the Spring of 1942 when I still had a small army of poorly armed fighting men, you began to intensely blackmail me to kill more Germans in order to receive more supplies from you – supplies you promised but never delivered. You did this even after authorizing the mass evacuations of over 300,000 troops from Dunkirk in June of 1940, when, instead of fighting the Germans, you retreated. In 1942 you had your Mediterranean Army numbering 750,000 men, but when Rommel began his operations in Tobruk with just two German divisions (not more than 50,000 men) he had you running all over North Africa back to Egypt in total disorder. Were the Germans that powerful that even in tiny numbers compared to your own forces, they were able to scare you into retreat repeatedly? If so, how could you then in good faith keep demanding of me that my people face the enemy at all cost, regardless of the sacrifice, and fight to the death?

In fact, on any significant scale, British and German troops did not fight any large battles on the ground between June of 1940 and 1943. Between June 1940 and February 1941, a period of seven months, you did not fight the German Army at all and did not kill Germans. Until the end of 1942 you never fought more than four (weak) German divisions out of a total of over two hundred. From there on you never fought Germans alone. It was always with American supplies and men. It’s clear, Winston, that killing Germans was not your priority when it concerned British lives.

But still, you would blackmail us – making promises you never kept, demanding that we kill more Germans. It did not matter to you that Hitler, from the very beginning to the very end of our resistance in the war years, viewed me and my forces as a primary enemy to be reckoned with. You would withdraw all support of me and my resistance movement under completely false pretenses with no regard for the reality of warfare and how it was being conducted in Yugoslavia. You would ignore the advice of your own military leadership that British support should continue to be focused on the Chetnik forces and not those of Josip Broz. You would rely on manufactured misinformation generated by your own people and by the Yugoslav communists that you would come to support, much to your later regret. You would sell us, the nationalist, anti-Bolshevik Serbs out to the communists like Chamberlain sold out the Czechs to the Nazis, thus precipitating the Cold War that would follow.

It was after you cut off all of your support to Serbian nationalist forces in Yugoslavia that the Germans were offering 5,000 marks for the head of every Allied airman downed on Serbian territory. There were hundreds of such airmen, but none that fell on Chetnik controlled territory ever fell in German hands. They were protected, fed and eventually evacuated to friendly territory. My Serbs were faithful to the Allied cause to the end. They were saving hundreds of Allied lives despite your having abandoned me and my forces. But you betrayed these loyal Serbs anyway and sent tens of thousands of them to their death in communist hands. Winston, please tell me you feel shame for this.

In 1943, when you began abandoning me under the false pretense of not killing enough Germans, John Amery, the son of one of your British ministers, was going around to prisoner of war camps in Germany and recruiting captured British soldiers for SS formations.

I recruited no one to help the Nazis. I disrupted their operations across my heavily occupied country as much as humanly possible and successfully so, considering the force and vigilance with which Germans were guarding these zones. While I was asking the Serbian peasants to hide their output from the Germans, in other occupied countries of the west people carried on their normal lives by going to work with a large part of their industrial and agricultural output going to the Germans. There were seven million foreign workers working in Germany by mid 1944. There were another seven million working for the German war machine in their own countries. It would have been impossible for me to kill enough Germans to offset in any significant degree the total output of these workers, most of which were voluntary workers. This was real collaboration, the result of which was support of the Nazi war machine. There was absolutely nothing that we Chetniks did that supported the Nazi-Fascist war machine. Yet we stood accused and would ultimately be condemned.

During the collapse of Italy in September of 1943, the Western Allies once again mishandled a golden opportunity. For several months before the collapse there were Italian generals in Yugoslavia who wanted to join with me to fight the Germans. The Western Allies were informed of this, but under British influence the offer was ignored. As a consequence, most of the arms of the Italian occupational troops in Yugoslavia ended up in Communist hands. More importantly, the Germans captured more than 600,000 Italian soldiers and sent them to work in Germany in support of the Nazi war effort. If you had handled this situation in 1943 properly the war might have ended up at that time. Considering that most of the war fatalities occurred in 1944 and 1945, the British should have been charged with war crimes they committed by default. At the time of the Italian collapse there was a million-man Italian army that could have been saved and used by the Allies to kill a whole lot of Germans if that was what was most important to the British. That didn’t happen, because you failed to act properly.

Nothing is more indicative of your failure to ‘act properly’ as in how you mishandled our efforts and our successes to validate your own ethical failures and severe lapses of good judgment. Your cabal of communist agents serving in your Cairo office and the liaison officers that sabotaged us every step of the way caused more damage to the cause than any Nazi ever did in all the years of the war.

Your agents were received courteously and with an open mind by my Chetniks, on the assumption that complete cooperation and integrity would contribute most to the common aim, the defeat of the enemy. But most of your officers and agents, with the exception of those that respected the truth, proved to be insincere, and their presence in Yugoslavia was harmful. They were obsessed with their political role and were blindly enamored of Tito and his Partisans due to British ignorance and lack of foresight. They deliberately failed to inform their superiors about the importance and seriousness of our actions. They contributed greatly to the success of the destructively pervasive Communist propaganda and thereby undermined our honorable goals, goals Winston, which paralleled your very own. Or so we thought and were led to believe.

Your SOE agents with me were able to carry on their assignments in Yugoslavia because my forces protected them. You had no SOE agents in Czechoslovakia or Bulgaria or some other countries of Europe, because there was no one there to protect them. Yet, your propagandists and saboteurs designated me as disloyal to the Allied cause. One might rightfully be justified in wondering if there really was a conspiracy in all of this. What I do know first hand is that conspiracy or no conspiracy, your conduct was in bad faith, and you did not prove yourselves to have the attributes of a civilized people.

When Deakin, who was sent to Tito’s headquarters in May of 1943, and whom immediately became ‘convinced’ of my alleged collaboration with the Germans, reported to you about the great Partisan undertakings against the Germans, he didn’t know, or didn’t want to know, that the Partisan Supreme Command had negotiated with the Germans only two months before his own arrival in Yugoslavia. Deakin, like your friend Fitzroy Maclean after him, as did other British agents with the Partisans, wrote their reports while never going out in the field to verify the situation there. The Partisans did not want them out in the field. Those British and American agents with me were allowed and encouraged to crisscross the country at will before writing their reports. We had nothing to hide.

When your Foreign Minister told you in November of 1943 that he still didn’t have any evidence to support the charges of collaboration that the communists and their British sycophants were making against me, you did not change your plans to abandon me, despite the strong advice you were given against doing so. Why did you trust the word of your communist cabal in Cairo over that of your own ministers? What were you afraid of?

Lord Selbourne, when he was head of the SOE organization, did not approve of the British switching their support from the Chetnik forces to the Yugoslav communists. But his judgment was ignored. Winston, did you honestly believe that by supporting the Yugoslav communists, who never actually met any of your expectations as fighters for the common cause, that you could somehow revive the fighting image of the British soldiers, an image that was badly tarnished by the collapse of France in 1940, and your failings later in Singapore, Malaya, Tobruk and other places? What I do know is that you expected, no, demanded, that Serbs fight your battles for you and that they make the sacrifices you were never willing to ask of your own people.

Colonel Bailey and Brigadier Armstrong did advise your British Establishment that toward the close of 1943 in Serbia, my forces were everywhere and the Tito’s forces amounted to nothing. You did not alter your course as a result. You would betray and abandon me regardless of the facts presented to you from credible sources. Why? Only you can answer that question, Winston. Did you do so because you had to maintain justification of your actions? How you handled my fate was a great disservice not only to me, my people, and my country, but to the Allied cause.

You were supporting the Turks from the beginning to the end of the war. You supplied them with arms and tanks, even when they weren’t in the war. But all this time the Turks were supplying Hitler with chrome so he could continue to carry on the war. Albert Speer, Hitler’s Minister of War testified at the Nuremberg Trial that without getting chrome from Turkey and other countries, Hitler would have been forced to stop the war in 1943. You had the power by means of your ships to stop the Turkish shipment of the chrome and therefore to stop the war in 1943. Considering that most of the deaths in this war occurred in the last two years of it, does this ever bother you Winston? During this time, while the Turks were supporting the Nazi war machine, as were the other Neutral countries, we were fighting to defeat that machine. But we didn’t ever get the support from you that the Turks did, did we, Winston?

On November 6, 1943, (only weeks before the Teheran Conference of Nov 28, 1943) Colonel Seitz and Walter Mansfield, American OSS agents with my Headquarters began an extensive inspection tour of the Chetnik forces throughout Serbia in order to get a clear idea of what our strength and capability was. They held long conferences with each guerrilla commander to discuss his past and proposed operations and the size and the effectiveness of his group. But their reports never reached president Roosevelt before the Teheran Conference where the final decision was made by the Allies to cut off all support to my Chetniks and to focus on supporting the Yugoslav communists exclusively. This decision was made based on false reports coming from the British agents with the Partisan forces. Yet, on the basis of what he had seen traveling thru Serbia at this time, Colonel Seitz would later write:

“…if arms could be obtained from the Allies, Mihailovic could put into the field an army of trained and hardened for war of over 300,000 fit for combat. This would be sufficient to paralyze the Germans and Bulgarians in Serbia, close once and for all the traffic to and from Greece, and deny precious minerals such as copper, antimony, lead, chrome and zinc being taken from the Ibar and Morava valleys.”

Working with the Greek nationalists I would have, if properly supplied by the Allies, opened widely the door for the Allies to enter Europe from the south and the lives of the thousands that died on the beaches of Normandy in June of 1944 would have been spared.

American intelligence officers with both the Chetniks and the Partisans would later confirm that Tito was spending British supplies on fighting my forces and me instead of fighting the Germans. How much of this tragic irony were you aware of, Winston?

Early in March of 1944, after the military abandonment of me had been completed, you ordered that information be obtained from the British officers at my Headquarters as to whether there was a dissident group capable of removing me as a military leader. Soon, some of your agents and leading politicians suggested removing me by any means, including a possible assassination. I don’t believe you were ever willing to or wished to go that far, but looking back now at how my fate turned out at the hands of the Yugoslav communists, the very people to whom you gave your unmitigated support, it may as well have been you that pulled the trigger and ended my life.

For twenty years between the two great wars, the British were propping up Hitler and Germany as a bulwark against Bolshevism. But in 1939 the Soviets and Germans would end up collaborating with each other through the Non-Aggression Pact. This would not last long, but later, it would be you that would play right into Soviet hands as your bulwark against Nazi Germany. You were willing to enable anyone, it seems, to protect your interests, despite the human cost and the future consequences for the millions of innocents that would survive the four years of war only to fall victim to the scourge that would follow.

Yes, Winston, you made a lot of noise about “killing Germans”. You send hundreds of your agents to Yugoslavia to incite Serbs to kill Germans using the question of ‘who was killing more Germans’ as the pretext for switching your support from my nationalists to the communists with the justification that the latter were killing more Germans, even thought the facts and the reality did not bear this out. You never considered, either, that the partisans did not care about the reprisals, the human casualties of such actions, but that I did care.

Most of the Germans stationed in former Yugoslavia prior to the collapse of Italy were in Serbia where there were no partisans after November 1941. There was one German division consisting of five thousand men in Banja Luka, but there is no record that the Partisans ever attacked Germans in that city. In fact, all of the battles that the Partisans had with the Germans were initiated by the Germans and were later called the “Seven Offensives” by the communists. The chief Partisan commanders Peko Dapcevic, Koca Popovic, Kosta Nadj and others never mention any other Partisan battles with the Germans except for these seven offensives. Winston, did you know then that these were always operations in which the Germans were attacking and the partisans were running away? It was during the Seventh Offensive in May of 1944 that the Germans chased the complete Partisan Supreme Command, including Tito, out of Yugoslavia. He would not return until the Soviet Army made it safe for him to do so.

There were almost 20 separate large German operations against my forces. To each of these the Germans gave a code-name and in some of them more than one German division participated. Yet you did not provide the support or supplies you promised, ignoring the reality of what was happening on the ground in Serbia. Your inhumanity towards my people and me knew no bounds.

It should never be forgotten that there were far more Axis divisions in Yugoslavia when the Western Allies were supporting me than later when they abandoned me and began supporting the Yugoslav communists.

In the forefront of the British propaganda campaign against me, the main element of which was that I was not killing enough Germans, were your personal friends: William Deakin, Fitzroy Maclean and your son Randolph. It would be most interesting to establish how many Germans these three Britons killed. It would be even more interesting to determine why you didn’t send these three to the occupied British Channel Islands instead of to Tito’s headquarters in Yugoslavia. Why Winston, did you not start setting Europe ablaze from your own territories by urging the British citizens on those Islands to kill Germans? Why did you wait for me to do it in my homeland instead?

Did I save Moscow in 1941? I can never presume that I did nor do I want to. History, in some distant time, when it is written objectively, will be the only real judge, of both me and of you. At the time, there were those that placed a higher value on my efforts than you ever did. On July 18, 1946, for my obituary, The New York Times wrote:

"Hitler drew his plan for the attack on Russia in December 1940. At that time he hoped to absorb the Balkans without a fight. This would have secured his right flank for the attack on Russia. Mihailovic, then a colonel, was among an influential group in Yugoslavia that resisted an alliance with Germany, overthrew the pro-Nazi Government and installed one favorable to the Allies. When it became evident that Yugoslavia would not yield, von Paulus tells us, Hitler set the date of the drive on Yugoslavia for March and that against Russia for five weeks later. The attack on Yugoslavia actually was launched on April 6th, 1941…

The initial German attack on Yugoslavia made swift progress. The Government was driven from Belgrade. In the hills, however, a new Yugoslav hero emerged. Mihailovic, fighting a gallant delaying action, rallied the remnants of the Yugoslav Army and began an open and effective guerrilla resistance to the German Army. Because of this unexpected resistance, the German’s timetable of five weeks between the attack on Yugoslavia and the drive on the Soviets stretched to ten weeks. When it began, June 22nd, it was weakened by the necessity of maintaining several divisions in Yugoslavia to hold that flank.

Everyone knows the rest of the story. Delayed three months beyond the time originally set for the attack, the German Army failed to reach Moscow before the dreaded Russian winter had set in. With the help of the winter, the Red Army held the line in front of Moscow. Hundreds of thousands of Germans who had expected to garrison in the shelter of the Russian capital died instead in the icy trenches a few miles away. There is good reason to believe that this – even more than the defense of Stalingrad – was the turning point of the German-Russian conflict.”


In spite of all of the British assistance via positive propaganda and supplies to the partisans, and in spite of the fact that I was not receiving any help from anyone in the world, Tito knew that he and his partisans could not take Serbia from me without direct involvement of the Soviet Army. When the Soviet troops reached the Yugoslav border, Tito was still on the island of Vis, being protected, fed and supported by the British. On September 18th, 1944, Tito flew from Vis east to ask the Soviets to enter Yugoslavia, leaving you holding the bag. You cursed the turn of events, but it was to late to change the course. Tito was not your Ally after all, was he? On September 29th, the Partisans and the Red Army reached an agreement for the entry of Soviet troops into Yugoslavia. I would leave Serbia in late September of 1944 for Bosnia, and on Oct. 1, 1944 the Red Army entered Yugoslavia. On October 6th Tito returned to Yugoslavia from Moscow. The dictatorship began, and my fate, along with the fate of so many of my good and loyal followers and that of my beloved homeland, was sealed.

You, dear Winston, went down in the history books as a great statesman, an iconic, bigger than life figure that remains idolized as a hero to this day. I was just a simple soldier who became a General who led his forces and his people in a valiant battle against one of the greatest evils ever to befall mankind. You gave me the monster. I fought the good fight and gave you the best that I had. For this I paid with my life.

You wrote a lot of history books. But how accurate and honest is your version of history, Winston? How much of that history is self-serving and teaches the future generations nothing about the real mistakes that were made and what should have been done to avoid them? It is my belief that you ultimately cared for nothing but Britain. As a result, the lives, homes and cultures of non-Britons were taken and destroyed without a care or second thought.

I can only hope that one day, the study of history will provide an honest evaluation of the heroes and villains of the 20th century and how they came to pass. You, Winston Churchill, were a world leader at a pivotal time, the great statesman, the historian, the great orator, and you remain the legend.

I am just a soldier, who knows the truth.


By Aleksandra Rebic

May 2005-July 2008

_________________

To get in touch with the author, please feel
free to e-mail me at ravnagora@hotmail.com

The Death of a Good Man - How European Democracy killed General Mihailovich

On July 17, 1946, sixty-two years ago, the life of General Draza Mihailovich came to an end. Why should we care? Why did his life and death matter?

He was a military officer who lived at a time in history when his dedication to democratic ideals would bring him into conflict with the fascists, the Nazis and, in the end, the communists. It would be the communists who would finally silence him, but not before he and his people fought valiantly to prevent his country, Yugoslavia, from falling into communist hands after the war. It would be too easy to blame the dictatorships, however, for the tragic stories of World War Two. Unfortunately, some of the great democracies of our time are culpable not only in helping to catapult three terrorists to the top in their respective countries - Hitler in Germany, Mussolini in Italy, and Tito in Yugoslavia - but in undermining and sacrificing those who fought against them.

Huge mistakes were made before the war ever began. The dictators could never have prevailed to the extent that they did on their own. This is one of the uncomfortable realities that makes the study of history unsettling. Accountability always withstands the test of time, and hindsight, when honest, will reveal more than we were ever willing to acknowledge at the time.

The failure of France to counter Hitler’s advances in the 1930’s when her military strength would have easily enabled her to do so was one huge mistake. How the British Establishment mishandled the events of the inter-war years was an even more crucial mistake. As a result of the mishandling of crucial moments and events during that period of peace in the 1920s and 1930s, the democracies would embolden the monsters of history and it would be the democracies, the Allies, who would feed General Mihailovich to them. He would inherit the dishonorable mistakes made by the democratic Allies, though he would remain loyal to the Allies to the end. That was the kind of ally he was. That was the kind of man that he was.

If we look hard enough, the study of history itself may provide a satisfactory explanation of how certain things happened and why and who was responsible. Or, it may not. An individual must be careful and skeptical when he looks to “written” history for answers. One of history’s most prolific recorders was Winston Churchill, who is considered one of her greatest protagonists. Not only was he directly involved in shaping and making history he was intent on documenting it. Many historians would look to his published works for their research and continue do so, considering Churchill a credible and primary source of information. After all, he was there. He was a witness and an active participant. Through the years, he would write with impunity. However, any reader of his version of history would be well served to be aware of Churchill’s own caveat:

“Give me the facts and I will twist them the way I want, to suit my argument.”

Minding this caveat would be especially important in searching for answers to questions about the history of the Balkans during the Second World War.

Winston Churchill and Great Britain are almost always described as being relentless and noble opponents of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. To this day Churchill’s speeches continue to serve as inspiration to those who seek to express what it means to take a noble stand against tyranny. What is less widely known is the extent to which he favored a strong Germany before Germany’s strength would threaten all of Europe and beyond. After General Ludendorff, Germany's military leader during WWI, returned from exile in 1920 he requested to meet with Winston Churchill. On that occasion Churchill wrote to a friend:

“In my view the objective we should pursue…is the building up of a strong and peaceful Germany which will not attack our French allies, but will at the same time serve as a moral bulwark against the Bolshevism of Russia.”

This would become the tone of British foreign policy during the critical decades of the 1920s and 1930s. Churchill’s suggested “objective” would lead first to appeasement and then to a war for which the British were as responsible as the Germans were, not because they wanted it or started it, but because the British did not prevent it when they could have. Hitler did not rise up out of the ashes of the First World War overnight. His ascendance was gradual and methodical. He would watch and wait for reaction from the great democracies to every move he made, and the lack of reaction would puzzle him as much as it amused him. He knew well where Germany’s vulnerabilities were. He also came to know where the democracies were vulnerable, and they would prove over and over again that the growing dictators of Europe could pursue their goals with impunity. It would be beyond the scope of this work to show step by step how and why Hitler was able to take Europe to an abyss. Suffice to say, the British and French together had many opportunities to stop Mussolini and Hitler. Some Germans made far greater sacrifices in an effort to stop Hitler’s ascension than did the British or French leaders during the 1920s or 1930s. These Germans could have succeeded had they had the support they deserved.

For the British, the key theme of “Germany as the moral bulwark against the Bolshevism of Russia” was the primary foundation of their foreign policy and remained so until the war started. Hitler would exploit this theme to his fullest advantage. While, at the beginning, supporting Germany as a bulwark against the so-called “barbarians from the East” was a factor in Britain’s goal to maintain the balance of power in Europe in her favor, it eventually became the core of the appeasement of Hitler. Though it was Britain’s leader Neville Chamberlain who became the personification of appeasement, another dictator would become the benefactor of Britain’s compulsion to appease. This time, ironically, it would be a “barbarian from the East”, the leader of Soviet Bolshevism, Stalin, and the appeaser would be Chamberlain’s successor, Winston Churchill, the man who had once feared Bolshevism’s encroachment to the point of being willing to support the devil to prevent it. Yet another benefactor of Churchill’s appeasement policy would be Marshal Tito, leader of the partisans in Yugoslavia, another communist. So much for moral bulwarks against communism. The communist benefactors of British appeasement would continue where Hitler left off. Millions of lives were lost as a result of the consequences of appeasement, among them that of General Draza Mihailovich who was used, abandoned, betrayed and ultimately sacrificed by the democracies, the Allies, for the ends to be served.

It seems that no conflict has been so much written about as the Second World War, and yet probably no other corps of writing has done more to distort popular conception of what actually happened. Importance is sometimes assigned to relatively insignificant things, while truly significant events are either diminished or ignored. Too often, the leadership, especially if it was popularly revered, was not held accountable to the degree that it should have been. The main concern of any true democratic leader of that time should have been first how to stop the impending war from happening, and if all efforts to that end failed, to at least have done whatever possible to prevent it from escalating and to minimize the cost in human lives. General Mihailovich was a great protagonist of such efforts. He would remain so for the duration of WWII, while other “democratic” leaders and officers were not so concerned about human cost. The horrors reflected in the deaths of over fifty million people during WWII indicate that the regard for human life was not the number one priority for many of the military or civilian leaders. The fact that civilian deaths accounted for at least 50 percent or more of the total death toll of the war is testimony to the fact that human barbarism, even in the “civilized” 20th Century, knew no bounds. That is why each significant episode in the progression of history must be evaluated and judged by, amongst other things, the cost in human lives and how many people could have been saved had their leaders made different choices and taken different actions. Regardless of the benefit of hindsight after the fact, there is foresight also. Not only was foresight lacking in the 1920s and 1930s, it was ignored for the sake of political expediency. Hitler could have been stopped before September 1, 1939 and even afterwards. And he knew it.If one wanted to study and establish a sound theory as to how to prevent another catastrophy such as World War Two, it would be more important to study the pre-war events that led up to it rather than to study the war itself. Hitler became a successful “protagonist of war” because the “protagonists of peace” bungled their steps one after another, supposedly all in the attempt to prevent another war.

When Winston Churchill wrote that Germany should be propped up as a moral bulwark against Russia’s Bolshevism, it was just two years after the First World War ended and just a year after the Versailles Peace Treaty that was to guarantee that Germany couldn’t start another war was signed. This historic treaty, the document that was to ensure that there would never be another scourge on humanity such as the First World War, would, piece by piece, be undermined by the very democracies that had drafted it with such noble intent. Although the conditions imposed by the treaty were, and remain, controversial, Nazi Germany would proceed to prove to the world that treaties meant nothing, punishments were meaningless, and that consequences were of no consequence. She would do this because the great European democracies would sabotage the intended noble legacy of Versailles.Why were there no pre-emptive actions against Hitler and his plans by England and France, when England and France could have crushed him? France, to her credit, considered standing up to Hitler in the 1930s while he was still in his dictatorial infancy, however, though her economy and her military was mighty at the time, her fortitude was not. She would defer to Great Britain on matters of defense and offense and this would be to her great misfortune. The Rhineland episode of 1936 was just a portent of things to come in 1940 for France. She deferred to Great Britain when she shouldn’t have and it would cost her dearly.

As the two great democratic powers of Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, France and England failed. They failed to preserve the heritage and legacy of peace for which millions of good men had died during World War One. They had the means. Hitler knew this, and no one was probably more bewildered and amused than he that these means were not used against him as he tested the waters of Europe.

Draza Mihailovich of Serbia had the foresight to see what was coming. He understood that appeasement only lead to disaster for the appeasers and victory for the appeased. His would be a dishonorable inheritance of the mistakes made by the very Allies to whom he would pledge his undying loyalty.

He was not the only one who had foresight. Unlike others, he would survive to be an active participant in the preventable war that would eventually become inevitable due to grave human error in judgment. Unlike those that would eventually come to betray him, he would not survive the peace that would follow the war.

One of the smart men of Europe who was trying to organize a front against Hitler early enough when it was still possible was French foreign minister Louis Barthou in the early 1930s. His foreign policy was to create an anti-Hitler defense ring, to be achieved by what was known as the Eastern Pact, binding the Soviet Union, Poland, and the Little Entente (Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Romania) to France.

But while he was trying to organize a defense against German territorial expansions three months after he became foreign minister, the British were going in the opposite direction. In May of 1934 the British minister of foreign affairs, Sir John Simon, insisted that Germany should be permitted to rearm even though re-armament was expressly forbidden by the Versailles Peace Treaty. This was just one of the “allowances” the British were willing to extend to the Germans during the critical decade of the 1930s.Barthou went to Belgrade, Serbia at the end of June 1934 for successful introductory talks regarding a Franco-Yugoslav alliance, and it was agreed that King Alexander would pay a two week state visit to France starting on October 9th to lay the groundwork for an anti-Hitler alliance. French support against the terrorist activities of the Croatian separatists and their sponsor, the fascist dictator of Italy Mussolini, was also going to be negotiated. But as soon as Alexander’s planned visit to France was announced, Mussolini began working with his own Italian Military Intelligence Service and the Croat and Macedonian terrorists to plan King Alexander’s assassination. The plan for the assassination was finalized by Vancha Mihailov, the leader of Macedonian terrorists and Ante Pavelic, the leader of the Croatian terrorists.

On October 9, 1934 the terrorists made their move and succeeded. King Alexander of Yugoslavia and Jean Louis Barthou were assassinated in Marseilles, France. This assassination, though it was never given the attention or assigned the significance that Gavrilo Princip’s assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 was, turned out to be pivotal. Alexander’s death in 1934 was a direct precursor to the events of 1939. With the Franco-Yugoslav bond now weakened with his and Barthou’s deaths, Germany would tighten her economic hold in the Balkans. This would further augment Hitler’s growing confidence, and the Balkans would provide more resources for Nazi Germany. It is said that Hitler watched the film that was taken of the assassination that day and upon observing the panic of the crowd and the inability of the police to deal with it effectively, he was reassured that France was weak and that she could be beaten. Whether he watched the film or not, there is no question that he grew more confident. Every subsequent action he would take in the following years would reflect a hubris that only grew with the parallel incompetence of the democracies to stop it from manifesting.

Without having to worry about Britain or France or Italy, Hitler was able to proceed with enhancing his war machine. Seeing an opportunity to side up with an obvious future victor, Mussolini distanced himself carefully from England and France to eventually join Hitler. When the free world woke up to the reality of what was evolving it was too late to change the course of the future of Europe. The greatest war machine ever built up to that time was poised to march and conquer the world.

When Hitler marched his troops into Yugoslavia in 1941 after already conquering 17 countries, Draza Mihailovich and his Serbs began a historic resistance opposing the Nazis and their collaborators. The British, though lauding his uprising and celebrating him as a hero against tyranny at the beginning and promising him support, soon began pursuing their new policy of appeasing Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Bolshevism that they had supposedly so dreaded just years before. As a result, the course of history in Yugoslavia changed drastically. Soon, Mihailovich was fighting not only the occupying Nazis, but he was forced to fight the internal enemy as well, the Yugoslav communists, who were now being sponsored by the British as well as by the Soviets. It was not the Soviets or the Nazis from whom he had the most to fear, however. It would be his betrayal by the British, the Allies to whom he remained loyal and dedicated, that would seal his fate.

It is in the progression of appeasements, miscalculations, and ultimate betrayals by the great democratic leadership of Europe where the foundation of the death of General Draza Mihailovich on July 17, 1946 lies. Why is that important? Because his life counted at a time when democratic Europe was abysmally short of heroic men with foresight who understood the true nature of the enemy and her intentions, and he was a man who fought nobly, despite tremendous odds, for the very same democratic ideals that the democracies were so willing to sacrifice for expediency.
He has been dead for sixty-two years but remains an inspiration for millions of people, not just the Serbs. General Draza Mihailovich was an honorable and principled man who had a great vision for his homeland of Serbia and for Yugoslavia as a democratic country that embodied the great democratic ideals that had fostered great men and nations on the world stage. His vision would die with him.

Evil men ended his life on earth in a brutal way. They hid his grave, knowing full well that if its location were to become known, it would become a shrine where tens of thousands would come every year to reflect on what great men are capable of and why the ideals they fought for must be carried on by future generations. They would come also to reflect on what might have been had the man to whom they were paying their respects been allowed to live out the normal length of his life.

These evil men took not only Draza’s life, but they compromised the greatness Serbia had achieved during the First World War, when she was respected by all. They and their minions wrote book after book falsifying history in order to justify their acts. That is why we must be very discerning when we turn to “history” for answers as to why it all happened the way that it did and what it means for the future.

Sometimes history is most truthfully represented in words of tribute. Mihailovich has been eulogized over the years by great people the world over. Though they mourn his death, they honor his life and his rightful place in history. And their words serve as a reminder of what true greatness and honorable leadership is. Dame Rebecca West, the great literary writer and historian, understood these ideals well. She addressed them in a tribute given in honor of General Mihailovich in July of 1966, but her words echo today in 2008 just as they did all those years ago:

"Twenty years after the death of Draza Mihailovic he is undimmed in his glory as a defender of liberty against the fascist terror, who defended it also against the communist terror. He had no moment of weakness, or of bitterness. I know of no instance where he reproached those who were guilty of his betrayal.

Twenty years ago I knew he was innocent of all charges against him, and since then I have had many further proofs of his innocence. His abandonment was a crime, and like all crimes it brought no real profit to the criminals.

I loved your nation of Serbia before the war. I have loved and honoured it more and more as the years have gone by and I have seen that the hero whom you gave to history has not his like in our time. "

Will we ever have another like him? Do we deserve another like him? And if we should receive another like the good General, will we be smart enough to appreciate the gift?

Aleksandra Rebic

July 2008

ravnagora@hotmail.com

_________________

We Need to Return to being a "Nation Under God"

One of the many great childhood memories I cherish is that simple little declaration we made as children at the beginning of our school day all those years ago. Though we were young we knew what we were saying, and though I can't speak for the others, I know that I meant every word. I tested myself, after all these years of not beginning my day with that simple little morning ritual, to see if I still remembered. I did and do, and hopefully, always will.


"I Pledge Allegiance
To the Flag
Of the United States of America,
and to the Republic
For Which it Stands,
One Nation
Under God,
Indivisible,
With Liberty
And Justice
For All."


We were a "Nation under God" when I was child. We, as a nation, need to be "Under God" once again and for always.




********************

House of the Century - Going Back to Graceland

"Moonlight over Graceland"
Photo of Elvis Presley's "Graceland"
by Aleksandra Rebic December 2001




I first went inside when they had just opened the house on the hill in Memphis. It was the summer of 1982. What had once been just a man and his talent had long since been elevated to legend, and legend had become a full-blown phenomenon. I never met him, never knew him, but there we were, my family and I, going to his house, not as guests, but as visitors. This was no ordinary house. This was Graceland. I knew when I left, that I would be back.

Seventeen years later, in August of 1999, I returned, alone, to a place that drew me ever more strongly and to be part of a phenomenon. This time it would be during “Elvis Week” in Memphis. I wanted to see, too, what had become of the legacy here in this tiny part of the world where man and reality had met myth and found their place in the permanent folklore of immortality. "Why" is what you try to explain, but you can't in any concise way. If you're a fan, you'll understand. And you sure can't touch on all the different layers of it. You just know that you're one of many who are drawn to the same place. This is no ordinary journey. This is going to Graceland.

I remember exactly where I was almost to the square inch of driveway at our family home when I first heard the news that Elvis Presley died. I was 15. I had just started getting into the music of the day a couple of years back with Elton John and other 70's big shots. Elvis was part of the past, a comfortable, familiar, and integral part of American culture. You knew his voice and face and music by the age of 5 like you knew nursery rhymes and fairy tales. He was like George Washington, Abe Lincoln, and Santa Claus, a unique iconic figure that was always there. My friend Linda from our nice suburban Illinois neighborhood, whose family had moved there from Memphis, was coming over as us kids on the block began gathering out in the street as we always did on those summer days. She was 15, like me, and it was about 4:30 on just a regular August afternoon. She came walking up and greeted me with "Elvis Presley just died." She said it like she was still trying to believe it. Of course, I thought she was joking. But she wasn’t.

Now, what goes through a 15 year-old mind upon hearing something like that can be just about anything or nothing at all. All I know is that for some inexplicable reason that remains a mystery to me to this day, it was mind-blowing, as if someone had just broken the news that the president had been shot. With those few words of hers, a whole new era began and with it a whole new wonderful world opened up. I just couldn’t know it while in that moment. I still remember the kind of day it was - overcast and warm and humid. It had rained. I loved that kind of day. Up to that point it had been so ordinary.

"It must be weird back home," she said. How ironic that it was from a friend from Memphis that I first heard the news. Memphis was back home for her. Memphis suddenly got real close to home for me. The news programs got going, fumbling their way through unexpected - and overwhelming - news. This was news that suddenly no one knew quite how to report. This was someone, I guess, who everyone just assumed would live forever. But, the images and the accolades were enough. This 15 year-old was mesmerized, and the feeling would never go away.

Elvis Presley was only 42 when he died on August 16th, 1977, and to a 15 year-old, 42 is old. Now at 37, "old" takes on new meaning. With the wisdom of "age" comes a new appreciation for just how young 42 was and just how short a lifetime it was in which to accomplish so much.

The bus ride from Chicago to Memphis was 9 hours long. It was August 13th, another warm, overcast day, just like 22 years before. The day changed into evening with a silver-lining twilight that broke through the clouds. I got to Memphis about midnight that Friday night, and it seemed like just another ordinary town. That would begin to change the next day.

Saturday would be spent going to Sun Studio on Union Street where it had all begun. At first I was struck by how ordinary it all looked, how small in relation to how big a thing had happened there. Just a small town feel on a cross road street. Stepping into the recording studio was like stepping into a time machine, and that's where the magic began. No fancy sound systems, no star wars technology, just solid, decades old equipment in one high-ceilinged room. Our young tour guide gave us visitors a musical lesson in history, telling the story and playing the music that was over half a century old but echoing through the room as if it had just been made. What these walls had seen and heard they will hold for as long as they remain standing.

There was the silver, old time microphone standing in the corner. We took pictures with that microphone, touching a piece of legend and smiling self-consciously as we posed as amateurs, just as he might have done those many years ago when the voice first began its recorded journey through time.

Then it was on to Beale Street. Memphis was coming alive, and how alive it became there on that small stretch of Technicolor and sound. This was the street where the unknown teenage boy had hung out and now thousands were coming to congregate. This was the Bourbon Street of the Blues. The blues clubs in Chicago are good, but here, boy, here is where the soul was. It wasn't long before the street was overflowing with people and the sights and sounds injected an energy into the air that one can only experience by being there.

The next day was Homage day, Sunday, August 15th, the day which would culminate in the anniversary Candlelight Vigil. This was the highlight of “Elvis Week”. This was when the “entertainment” celebrating the life would give way to the respectful tribute commemorating the end of that life. Along with the many others who had come, I spent hours just hanging outside of Graceland, reading the countless messages that had been handwritten on the stone wall along the sidewalk and browsing the shops that had, over the years, been transformed from cheesy purveyors of "Made in Taiwan" memorabilia to classy, clean shops that reflected a deserving respect for the man whose image they were selling. I missed the cheesy shops of years ago, but there, on the edge of the strip, I found them, familiar, fun and oddly reverential. This was souvenir heaven, and it was easy to sell souvenirs of a pleasing image.

There in the plaza, too, was the Elvis Automobile Museum, an absolute must see for anyone who appreciates really cool cars and motorcycles. Another museum, “Sincerely Elvis” displayed real life mementos behind glass windows that drew you into an unreal life that was made real with the presence of these saved real life things. There, also, were the two personal planes you could walk through. These were another must see, for how often will you have the opportunity to enjoy an airplane furnished with cushy, plush chairs and sofas, a full-length dining table, gold plated powder room fixtures and a full-sized double bed complete with seat belt!

One could go on the house tour at one's leisure and as twilight approached I joined others on the shuttle trip up Graceland’s winding circle driveway, and through the front door we went. The home was pretty, to be sure, and impressive, but one is immediately struck at how hospitable it feels inside. It was grand enough but with enough 70's cheesecake and warm down home comfort to be something for everybody. And it welcomed everyone. I was struck at how almost ordinary and small it seemed, considering what it had housed. It's the record of achievement on display in the huge trophy room and the racquetball building that blows your mind with the impact of just how extraordinary the life of the man who had made his home here was. Here, at Graceland, one could find all the magnificence, irony and enigma of Elvis, in all its glory and simplicity. Here was an unfathomable combination and contradiction of the humble and the grand. The down-to-earth and the over-the-top. This was a welcoming southern mansion standing alone on the hill among beautiful trees on an ordinary street in a southern American city and it was the castle whose upstairs inner sanctum where he dropped and died remains mysterious and unseen by the millions of visitors who have walked between these walls over the years. This was a place of all-American success and excess. This was Home and Shrine. This was Graceland.

How quiet we all were as we walked from room to room, envisioning whatever it was in our minds that he was when he was here away from the lights and glory. This was one man's home that had become open house to the world. Did we know that we were merely temporary guests of a host unseen? We stepped outside and strolled through the loveliness of the grounds, winding our way to the final resting place. There are the horses quietly grazing in the yard. They’ve grown accustomed to us who visit and don’t pay us no mind. He is buried there, in the Meditation Garden, on the grounds of his beloved home; along with his mother, father and grandmother, the family he had loved and who had known him before any of us had ever heard his name. We are quiet as we walk past the graves and quiet again as we leave.

That lovely, warm, clear night, people seem to gather from out of nowhere. Thousands of them begin filling the street. As the crowd grew and the sun fell, the candles were handed out and people made ready to walk up the drive, one by one. The magnificent, yet soothing voice began flowing out of the speakers along the stone wall. The songs were gospel hymns and ballads. No rockers tonight. A voice and mood perfect for the night. So many people, yet such a composed and reverential crowd. I had never seen anything quite like it. They played "Until It's Time For You To Go", and a woman's voice addressed us all as young and old alike lifted their lit candles toward the house on the hill. It looked like all the stars in the sky had gathered here by those legendary gates of Graceland.

There were no fanatics here, no troublemakers. Just us, from all walks of life, all ages, all from different places. All with one common bond. What struck me most were the young people. The pretty 15 year-old girl from Spokane, Washington who'd made the trip by herself and lit her candle and cried. The mother and father with their four small kids, who were lighting their candles and were keenly understanding and reverential in their youth. There were the teenagers and young adults who had been born after he died but who were as much a part of keeping him alive as those who had been teenagers themselves when the phenomenon first began almost half a century ago. 22 years after he was gone it was all still there. That’s the way, I believe, it will always remain, with each new generation paying the visit that has become almost mandatory. I left as the people continued their walk up the drive and the gorgeous voice emanated into the summer night air. I left with a good feeling, not a sad one, and I was so glad I had come.

Not long ago, I concluded that maybe it wasn't just the pure charisma of the man that had mesmerized me all those years ago when I was just a kid of 15. Maybe it was my first real confrontation with mortality. That's one of those things that the lives of others teach us. But then again, who knows what it might have been and if the king himself could have explained it.

The question of what evoked this kind of reaction in so many people was raised again the next morning as I was getting ready to leave Memphis to go back home.

It was as unforeseen and unplanned an event as profound things usually are. I went outside and downstairs at my hotel to get a coke from the soda machine. There was a man there, in his late 30's like me, getting some ice. I asked him if he was there to go to Graceland. He smiled and said, "Yeah, of course. Drove 800 miles." Then, with a bemused smile, he said, "Well, we came because of our son who wanted to come." By stroke of inspiration, I asked him how old his son was. "He's six." “Six years old?” I asked. "Yeah, me and my wife don't know where the heck it came from, but the kid is like the biggest Elvis fan in the world. He wouldn't let us rest until we came." He shook his head good-naturedly and we exchanged the knowing look that is part of the common language in the Elvis world. As I was going back to my room his wife was coming down the walkway and following her was a cute little kid. Without paying any attention to me, he held up a tiny tooth to her and said, all excited, beside himself, "Look, Mommy, look!" Then, suddenly, in a quiet awed tone I'll never forget, he said, "Mommy, I lost my tooth the day Elvis lost his life." It was Monday, August 16th, 1999, just another day in August. Another Elvis story, this time being told by a child of six. A child born long after the king was gone.

As the century ended and everybody was determining their choice for man or woman of the 20th century, I knew who my choice was. There were many reasons to choose this man, for he was a man of many gifts, but where they can be found is no longer in the physical presence of the man himself. For as physical a man as Elvis Presley was, "who he was" and "what he did" and the impact he made both personally and professionally transcends the physical and defies mortality. The reasons are to be found in the hearts of the millions of his fans for whom he remains a mirror. Elvis was, and remains, whatever you choose to see in him. That was his magic.

This story inspired me to get in touch with my old friend, Linda, who I hadn’t seen or spoken to in over ten years. Somehow, I found her, and in a phone call we rekindled a warm and well-remembered young friendship. She too, she said, remembered that day in 1977 when she, too, was 15, right down to what she was wearing 22 years before.

I've gone back many times since and will continue to go back again and again. Back to Graceland. As time goes on and things change, and we reflect with affection on the past as we move into the unknown, I know one thing for sure: There will never be another like him. It inspires awe in me that for a short time I was alive on this earth while he was. Elvis continues to inspire and generate that good feeling that few have the gift of evoking. He moved and touched people, and it continues. No, not ever another. And that is the magic that sustains.




Aleksandra Rebic
1999/2008