S2 Book Club: The Forgotten 500

Hello everyone, I’m finally back on track with our book club, and this month’s (or rather, last month’s) selection was quite an interesting read. I still haven’t decided if I want to do a dedicated video on The Forgotten 500, but I do plan to bring in some of these stories to future long-form content I’m working on. Just not really sure if the observations for this book are super interesting for those looking to glean some interesting information that may help them in today’s world.
Perhaps the most important lesson to learn is one of betrayal, namely that sometimes doing good deeds for others not only goes unrecognized, but results in destruction at the behest of politics.
Who would have thought that a simple POW rescue story would highlight such ideas, but delving into the dirty side of history really does show how complex of a fight WWII was, and how sometimes the “good guys” were only recognized as such because a historical account was lost to time.
Overview: The Forgotten 500 is the tale of Operation Halyard, a covert mission to rescue hundreds of airmen shot down in eastern Europe. The reason for this story being “forgotten” is that these airmen were shot down over what became rather contentious territory in the years following WWII…Yugoslavia and Serbia.
Following the Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943, the Axis powers throughout the region were on the back foot, and allied bombing campaigns intensified throughout the region. This included the Allied powers targeting German-occupied positions in Croatia, Serbia, Yugoslavia, and even all the way up to Hungary and over to Bulgaria in some cases.
With bombing raids, comes downed Allied airmen. As such, most of the book details the saga of the Serbian resistance/partizan fighters who took care of airmen who were shot down over (at the time) Yugoslavia. The Serbs took excellent care of the downed pilots and crew members, and a large logistics effort was set up to get the mostly British and American pilots out of the German-occupied region, back to friendly territory.
Just looking at a map, one might be able to tell how hard of a task this was. Enter, Operation Halyard, and the legend of General Draža Mihailović (anglicized as “Mihailovich”).
General Mihailovich was the leader of the Chetniks, an ethnically Serbian resistance group fighting the Germans in Yugoslavia. Both the American OSS and the British SOE had worked with Mihailovich to target the Germans, and the organization of such was set up very similarly to the French Resistance efforts, which is probably more familiar to most people nowadays.
As allied airmen parachuted from their strike aircraft down to the ground in Yugoslavia, the grand question began to mount…how do we get them out? Mihailovich himself (along with others) came up with the idea of building an airstrip. The idea being, Mihailovich and his people would gather up downed airmen, build a runway, and the SOE would land a series of C-47’s to rescue them.
In effect, that’s exactly how the rescue operation worked out, and similar airfields constructed in resistance-held terrain, all coordinated by the SOE and OSS higher command structure, resulted in a rescue campaign that got hundreds (at least 500, by the cover of the book) out of occupied Yugoslavia. In the political turmoil that occurred next, we may never know the real number of allied airmen that were rescued during this campaign, nor will we know the true number of Chetniks that died so that Allied aircrews could make their way home.
What would ordinarily have been a rescue mission on the magnitude of the Great Escape from Stalag Luft III, or maybe even the evacuation from Dunkirk, this overwhelmingly successful rescue mission was forgotten immediately after the war for political reasons that to this day are considered by many to be some of the most shameful acts of the entire war, and kicked off decades of bloodshed in the Balkans.
You see, General Mihailovich was not the only power-player in the region fighting the Germans…another, arguably more politically-motivated individual was also working with the Allies.
Marshal Josip Broz Tito.
One of the most legendary and infamous figures in Eastern European history, Tito (as he’s most commonly known) being the leader of the Yugoslav Partizans, also led an extremely effective resistance effort throughout the region. As such, he was able to curry the favor of the Allies more than Mihailovich.
Though this bit of European history is exceptionally controversial, to the point of starting riots decades after the fact, the general breakdown of what happened next is considered by many historians to be a tragic mistake.
The British (mostly Churchill) didn’t like the allegedly Communist leanings of Mihailovich, so instead of recognizing him post-war, Marshal Tito got the endorsement of the allies, who (in effect) handed control of the region over to him. Even Churchill himself stated after the war that this was a mistake, due to Tito becoming one of the most infamous leaders throughout the region after the war.
On of Tito’s first moves in his consolidation of power was the eradication of dissent…which included General Mihailovich who was executed in 1946 after being betrayed by the Yugoslav government after the war.
Of note, it’s not as simple to say that Tito was involved in Mihailovich’s death; the politics of the day were vastly more complicated. But the reason as to why this story is “forgotten” can be summed up fairly simply:
The Allies had to pick between supporting the Partisans (Tito) or the Chetniks (Mihailovich) after the war. The allies chose Tito, but because Mihailovich had saved the lives of hundreds of allied airmen, showing great loyalty to the west, this detail had to be ignored or else the Allies would look like the bad guys. In fact, during Mihailovich’s show trial, none of the airmen he rescued were allowed to testify in his favor. Thus, this story concludes on a sad note of an innocent man being killed in a consolidation of power, all due to the Allies making poor decisions at the time; decisions that the Allies came to regret only a few short years later after Tito became rather infamous.
What the truth is with regards to Balkan politics, is often a very tangled web. As such, it’s not really possible to get to the bottom of who was right, and who was wrong. At a more wave-top level, this book tries to highlight the general trend: A rescue operation that had to be Forgotten, because the man who made it possible was politically persecuted and killed, betrayed by the Allies for political reasons. That’s essentially where the story starts and ends.
Though the details of this story are probably not the most useful to a western audience today, it is an important saga to remember, and certainly highlights the importance of understanding that in war, no good deed goes unpunished.
So what do you think? Does Mihailovich receive more credit due to his work to help the Allies?
Do the other aspects of his character matter, or otherwise complicate this assessment?
Was Mihailovich’s death the beginning of the road of trouble for Yugoslavia, or were the events after the war unavoidable in any case?
I know that I myself don’t really have a clear answer to any of these questions; my simple American mind can’t possibly hope to comprehend the complexity and emotion of Balkan politics (or history in general, for that matter). But in the years since this specific operation became public, it seems like the general feeling is that the abandonment of Mihailovich was an incredible black mark on the Allies, and inadvertently led to a lot of problems throughout the region had Tito not been given such free reign after the war.
Either way, this was quite an interesting read, though as always probably not for the reasons expected at first.