The Cossacks
Sir: The claim that Domanov's Cossacks took virtually no part in the war (Notebook, 18 March) does not tally with the experience of British Liaison Officers (BLOs) with the partisans in Friuli when the Cossacks arrived in 1944. In summer 1944 the German lines of communication between Udine and Villach were under threat from growing numbers of partisans in the adjacent mountains. To counter this threat the Germans moved 30,000 (Domanov) Cossacks into the area, basing them on Tolmezzo, a small town on the Udine/Villach route. Inevitably the Cossacks had to commandeer forage for their horses, and they lived up to their name; the local people were terrified and the Germans avoided having to withdraw troops from the front.
In due course word reached the British Mission via the partisan leader that the Cossacks were ready to change sides provided they could be given a guarantee of immunity. This was some six months before the Yalta conference and the plea for immunity referred to the Allied Declaration on war
crimes (late 1943). Before anything could come of this approach the Cossacks, on German orders, attacked the partisans in a general drive to clear the area. Two members of the Mission were captured by the Cossacks and handed over to the Waffen SS who transferred them to the Gestapo. (They survived.) A second German/Cossack attack, launched a month later, forced the partisans to abandon operations until the following spring and the Mission left for Slovenia. At least one village was destroyed and a number of the inhabitants put to death, according to the partisans, by the Cossacks. In the closing days of the war one of the partisan commanders was cut to pieces by a Cossack. In April-May 1945 I returned to Friuli and met many of the partisans who recounted their experiences since we had parted five months before.
The Cossacks' best chance of survival was to come to terms with the Italians and keep as far away as possible from the Red Army. That this was possible was shown by the Italian reaction to their bid to defect. The partisan leaders were humane and intelligent men of some standing (one later became parliamentary secretary to Saragat, another a Cabinet Minister) who would have listened to any reasonable case put by the Cossacks provided they had not gone too far in collaborating with German repression. Their decision to quit Italy despite German orders to stay put suggests they were aware they had exceeded the limits of Italian tolerance, but once they were in Austria they lost the advantage of being remote from the Red Army.
Patrick Martin-Smith [Biz in FruiII In 1944] 28 Vicar's Close, Victoria Park,
London E9
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