Written by Tomislav Marković
“In all likelihood, we can never truly understand the distant past”, wrote Russian philosopher Lev Shestov in his book In Job’s Scales. He goes on to say, “We shouldn’t deceive ourselves or place too much faith in our ability to interpret the history of the Earth, of life, of mankind, and of nations based on the material traces that remain. All evidence suggests we interpret it poorly, very poorly, and this flawed understanding has led us to accumulate many false ideas and pieces of knowledge”.
The philosopher may well be right in his skepticism about long-gone eras and the people who lived in them, governed by rules and customs very different from our own. In truth, even the more recent past can be difficult to grasp, even that which was shaped by our ancestors, or by ourselves.
It’s not a question of access to facts or information. Rather, some events are so extraordinary that they completely break from the norm, defying our usual way of thinking. It often feels easier to take them at face value than to truly engage with them and comprehend their full scale and their sheer improbability. Because it’s not true that the impossible never happens; it’s just that the mental frameworks through which we view the world don’t allow for the impossible, so we convince ourselves it never occurred.
Spring of 1941
Of course, in today’s world, where lies are everywhere, forgeries abound, facts are denied, and even the most basic truths are mocked and undermined; where absurd conspiracy theories flourish, and where the fundamental human desire for knowledge is under constant attack, engaging with complex topics like this can seem almost pointless. But we shouldn’t take this chorus of loud deniers too seriously. Throughout history, such troublemakers have been dealt with fairly easily; sometimes, all it takes is raising your voice, and the issue is settled. The problem is, no one seems willing to raise that voice anymore, but that’s another matter.
Consider, for example, a period of history we’ve all studied in great detail, though it’s questionable how much we’ve truly understood. In the spring of 1941, after just an 11-day war, the Axis powers invaded, occupied, and carved up Yugoslavia. Both the army and the state collapsed like a house of cards; the country surrendered in record time. And this was hardly an isolated case. Ever since September 1939, when Hitler and Stalin divided Poland between them, European nations had been falling one by one to the fascist onslaught.
Denmark surrendered without a fight and was occupied by the Nazis within hours. Norway resisted for two months with Allied support, but ultimately fell. Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France all fell within days or weeks. Hitler’s advance seemed unstoppable. Greece was occupied just days after Yugoslavia, and soon Hitler launched his invasion of the Soviet Union, breaking the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. The fascists pushed back the Red Army, conquering vast territories.
Europe Under the Nazi Boot
In a very short time, the fascists had occupied nearly all of Europe. Germany and its allies seemed unstoppable; only Great Britain remained standing, and just barely, thanks to Winston Churchill and the country’s island geography. The United States was far away, not yet involved in the war, with no significant military aid in sight. The entire continent had sunk into darkness under occupation, terror, extermination, and the Holocaust, all under the symbol of ultimate evil, the swastika.
What could anyone do in such grim circumstances? What was the rational choice? Was there any hope at all amid such overwhelming despair? If major nations and powerful states had been defeated so easily, if nations far stronger and wealthier, with better-equipped armies, had been conquered, what could small, weaker peoples possibly achieve? In such a nightmarish situation, the most sensible course seemed to be that of the bourgeois class and its Chetnik forces. Open resistance to the German occupiers would be suicide. As Captain Nenad Mitrović, an envoy of Draža Mihailović during negotiations with the Germans, put it: “Both Draža Mihailović and I, as soldiers, know far too well the military strength of Germany to indulge in such childish illusions”. (Report from German Captain Matl to his superiors, October 30, 1941, regarding talks with Mihailović’s representatives.)
Common sense spoke loud and clear: it was best to wait. Let the Allies do the fighting; they were much stronger, after all. Once they broke the Axis Powers, we could join in at the end, so no one could say we didn’t participate, when victory was already assured and the occupiers had been defeated. That was the winning strategy, the only logical, normal, and reasonable one. Basic knowledge of the situation, political and military realities, suggested that there was no other way. It seemed perfectly obvious; was there even anything to debate?
A Mad Decision
The idea of launching a nationwide uprising against an incomparably stronger occupying force was sheer madness, something only complete lunatics could dream up. No sane person would embark on such a suicidal venture. The army had been destroyed and disarmed, its officers held captive. The people were unarmed. To fight the world’s most powerful military force without weapons, even mental patients wouldn’t entertain such an idea. One might as well jump off a bridge and spare oneself the agony.
Yet, in this atmosphere, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia decided to rise against the fascist occupiers, issuing a Proclamation to the Peoples of Yugoslavia, which read:
“Peoples of Yugoslavia, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Montenegrins, Macedonians, and others! You were defeated in war, but you are not conquered. The proud traditions of your forefathers’ struggle for justice and freedom must not be forgotten. Now is the time to prove that you are worthy descendants of your ancestors. The time has come, the hour has struck, to rise as one and fight the occupiers and their domestic collaborators, the executioners of our people. Fear no terror from the enemy. Respond to terror with mass strikes at the most vulnerable points of the fascist bands. Destroy everything that serves the fascist conquerors”.
Of course, it was clear from the start that this undertaking was doomed; the Germans, the other occupiers, and their collaborators would slaughter them like rabbits. Nothing would come of such an uprising. And yet, as we know, the impossible happened. Historian Ivo Goldstein describes it like this:
“In the summer of 1941, Tito emerged from a secret hideout in Belgrade to lead an unarmed army into battle against four occupying forces, the Germans, Italians, Hungarians, and Bulgarians, and against a dozen of their political and military allies: Ustaše, Domobrani, gendarmes, Nedić’s State Guard, and Ljotić’s Volunteer Corps, Chetniks under Kosta Pećanac and later Draža Mihailović, Slovenian Home Guard, White and Blue Guards, Bosnian Legionnaires, and Kosovar Balists. All these forces were well armed. Tito’s army had no weapons, literally none. Every rifle, every machine gun had to be seized from the enemy, as there was no other help in sight. The Wehrmacht was advancing toward Moscow, the Red Army was retreating, and Great Britain was struggling just to defend its island”.
An Unprecedented Miracle
At first glance, it seemed like a completely irrational endeavor by a handful of people with suicidal tendencies. When an objective historian lays out the facts plainly, it becomes clear to anyone that Tito and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia embarked on a reckless, senseless, suicidal course of action, one with no chance of success. And yet, we all know what happened. Goldstein writes:
“From that unarmed force of summer 1941, by early 1943, armed only with weapons captured from the enemy, Tito had built a well-equipped army of nearly 150,000 soldiers, organized into more than 30 brigades, 11 divisions, and around a hundred field units, guerrilla companies, support units, and guards. From June 1942 to the end of that year, this army achieved victory after victory.
In the heart of the country, a solid free territory was established, the so-called 'Bihać Republic', which by the end of 1942 covered an area of about 30,000 square kilometers, larger than modern-day Slovenia. Including isolated Partisan strongholds in Slovenia, Slavonia, Dalmatia, Syrmia, and elsewhere, the total liberated area reached about 48,000 square kilometers, not much smaller than today’s Croatia. When British intelligence officers began parachuting into the Partisan zones in spring 1943, they reported back to their superiors about 'a miracle that had taken place in the middle of occupied Europe.' In the entire history of warfare, there are few true precedents for such a 'miracle,' so it is no surprise that it would forever feed Tito’s self-confidence”.
To the best of my knowledge, words like “miracle” are not usually part of the vocabulary of historians, military intelligence officers, or scientists. Miracles don’t happen; even a child knows that. The very possibility of scientific inquiry depends on the assumption that miracles don’t occur. If miracles were possible, there would be no laws or patterns to explain. Such concepts belong to entirely different realms of human experience, theology, faith, and mysticism.
When historical events are over, scholars analyze the causes, explain the context, and weave a seemingly unbreakable chain of cause and effect. Inevitably, this creates the impression that events unfolded exactly as they had to, giving an aura of determinism. But in reality, it didn’t have to be that way at all, things could have turned out very differently. Imagine if today’s politicians had led the resistance movement instead of Tito, Koča, Đilas, Ranković, and the others. What would have become of the uprising? Nothing. It wouldn’t even have happened. Nor would there have been a victory for the National Liberation Movement, no defeat of the occupiers and collaborators, no building of a new Yugoslavia, no era of major emancipation and modernization across this region.
A Return to the Faith of Our Forefathers
When something miraculous happens, we feel compelled to normalize it, to fit it into the ordinary flow of events, to see it as inevitable, natural, maybe a little unusual, but still real. The very fact that it happened seems to prove it wasn’t a true miracle. The idea that something both impossible and possible could occur is hard for us to accept because it challenges the entire order of things, everything we know, and the very foundations of our world.
What’s paradoxical here is that reason, knowledge, an understanding of the facts, and cautious realism were all on the other side. The Partisans, meanwhile, were driven by faith. As the apostle Paul wrote: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”. Faith in the unseen was the foundation of their struggle. It sounds mad, but faith is not meant to be rational. Tito led the Partisans and the entire people toward the promised land, much like the Old Testament’s Abraham, who set out not knowing where he was going, as Paul also wrote. And the craziest thing of all? He succeeded. He led them to that land, which, at the time of the uprising, was nothing more than a fantasy, a chimera, a dream of idealists, pure utopia.
After the destruction of the world built by the anti-fascists, after the bloody drowning of Yugoslavia, after more than thirty years of moral decay, the systematic perversion of all values, mockery of justice and truth, the uglification of beauty and goodness, the destruction of solidarity and all normal human relations, after several decades of the orgy of evil and corruption, it is now painfully obvious that we could use a little faith in something. Anything. In an idea, a movement, a value, or a person.
The clerical nationalists and their ilk like to talk about a return to the faith of our fathers. On that point, I agree. But that faith is not the cross-brandishing pseudo-Orthodoxy, ethnophyletism, or related anti-Christian idol worship. It is the faith of the anti-fascists and the Partisans.
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