Churchill's big mistake
From Mr Richard Lamb Sir: With all respect to Lady Maclean (Let- ters, 28 August), James Klugmann did 'doc- tor' the reports from British liaison officers with Mihailovic. This occurred in the autumn of 1943 in the SOE office in Cairo, which the communist Klugmann dominat- ed. He handled all reports, editing them and writing policy memorandums from them for the Foreign Office. He delayed decoding reports from Mihailovic's HQ, giving priority to those from Tito's, and tampered with the reports of sabotage by Mihailovic's troops.
As a result, when Churchill came to Cairo in December 1943 he was given a completely misleading view of Mihailovic's activities and a far too rosy one of Tito's. Accepting the Klugmann version, Churchill sacked Mihailovic despite strong opposition from the US and Anthony Eden, the for- eign secretary. I went through all the reports from the Mihailovic BLO's in the Public Record Office for my book Churchill as War Leader (1991). I was helped by a surviving BLO, the late Michael Lees, whose book The Rape of Serbia (1990) is completely authoritative and shows that Mihailovic's troops were carrying out sabo- tage with the co-operation of the British officers to a greater extent than Tito's.
After the war, Churchill said, '1 thought I could trust Tito . . but now I am aware I committed one of the biggest mistakes of the war,' while Eden stated, 'My biggest regret of the war was abandoning Mihailovic.'
Richard Lamb
Knighton Manor, Broadchalke, Salisbury, Wilts
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