Beacons in the Night: With the OSS and Tito’s Partisans in Wartime Yugoslavia - Hardcover

Lindsay, Franklin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804721238 ISBN 13: 9780804721233

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 1993

Synopsis

At midnight on May 14, 1944, the blinking of a flashlight in mountainous, German-occupied Yugoslavia signaled the parachute drop of four American OSS (Office of Strategic Services) officers who were met by a group of Tito's Partisans. One of the OSS officers was Franklin Lindsay. Only with the declassification in the 1980s of wartime American and British archives could he undertake to reconstruct his day-to-day experiences in a war area of constantly changing conditions and ever-present danger. In the closing months of the war, Lindsay became the commander of the American Military Mission to Tito's new Communist government, and he describes the consolidation of Tito's power over the civil population, the final defeat of the Chetniks, and the elimination of all other political opposition. Directly pertinent to contemporary developments in the former Yugoslavia are Lindsay's observations of the savage ethnic and religious hatreds. Though the seeds of the present violent breakup of Yugoslavia were sown in earlier centuries, they were given powerful reinforcement by wartime atrocities.

About this title

From the Back Cover

“Lindsay’s memoir of his experiences as an American OSS officer with Tito’s Partisans stands as a classic work of Resistance literature, but the book’s overriding importance lies in its clarification of the ethnic/religious tensions that led to the present Balkan tragedy. . . . The book combines a rousing personal adventure story with new information on the Partisan contribution to the Allied war effort, and at the same time provides a useful lesson in Balkan history that is directly pertinent to the current bloodshed.”—Publishers Weekly
“A cracking good tale of covert operations.”—Roland Green

Reviews

Lindsay's memoir of his experiences as an American OSS officer with Tito's Partisans stands as a classic work of Resistance literature, but the book's overriding importance lies in its clarification of the ethnic/religious tensions that led to the present Balkan tragedy. Lindsay describes the two competing WW II resistance movements in Yugoslavia, both dedicated to engaging German forces needed elsewhere but with different postwar goals. Tito planned to turn the country into a Moscow-directed communist state; his rival, Chetnik leader Draza Mikhailovic, was determined to restore the monarchy and to continue the prewar dominance by the Serbs. On this basis, a civil war raged throughout the land even as the rivals fought against the German occupation. "The ethnic hatred that fueled the communal violence," writes the author, "seemed deeply embedded in the souls of the inhabitants." The book combines a rousing personal adventure story with new information on the Partisan contribution to the Allied war effort, and at the same time provides a useful lesson in Balkan history that is directly pertinent to the current bloodshed. Lindsay, retired chairman of the Itek Corporation, is an Associate of the Center for International Affairs at Harvard. Photos.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Exciting OSS/Serbo-Croatian adventure circa 1944, by Lindsay (Associate/Harvard's Center for International Affairs). Respectfully introduced by John Kenneth Galbraith, Lindsay's memoir preserves in well-crafted prose a legendary period, proving beyond doubt that Donovan's Daredevils were not all Ivy League triflers. A young engineer with a smattering of useful languages, the author talked himself into an assignment that began with parachuting into Yugoslavia to work with Tito's partisans and led to a hardscrabble existence that lost novelty but never danger. In precise, well-remembered detail, supported by archives and some thousand pages of radio dispatches, Lindsay presents the daily complexities of the assignment. Working with Communists, plagued by irregular supply drops, dependent on cranky radios that required large batteries, pursued by ever-efficient German intelligence and military units, saddled with inept local explosives ``experts,'' and subsisting on anything from horse meat to dough-balls, he blew up major bridges and tunnels, was nearly blown up himself, and lived a life that, as told here, is half For Whom the Bell Tolls and half Lawrence of Arabia. Especially clear is the element of human error (usually born of nationalism and compounded by bureaucracy): At one point, such error causes the partial failure of what could have been a brilliant mission; at another, it results in the loss of two British supply planes. Lindsay also presents a lucid picture of local customs, personalities, and nationalities, as well as of the Nazi exploitation of ethnic enmities that are unchanged to this day. Nor is he without humor, as in his account of a riding lesson interrupted by a randy stallion. An impressive document that will interest WW II buffs, historians, and anyone who likes a tale of hands-on derring-do. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0804721238
• ISBN 13: 9780804721233
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400