Sir : I am surprised that Mr Jo Grimond (18
August) has used the case of Tito and Mihailovic in support of his thesis that 'sometimes communists are the most effective fighters.' The Germans, who were in an excellent position to assess the effectiveness of their opponents, considered through most of the Second World War the non-communist Mihailovic more dangerous than the head of the local section of the Comintern. On 17 July 1942, for instance, Himmler wrote to his aide H. Muller that the 'foundations of any success in Serbia and the whole of south-eastern Europe lie in the destruction of Mihailovic.' General Gehlen, the head of the German military intelligence in eastern Europe, insisted on 9 February 1943 that 'among the various insurgent movements which increasingly cause trouble in the area of the former Yugoslav state, the movement of Draza Mihailovic stays in the first place.' On 22 August 1944 Hitler told his top military advisers that 'even a certain com- munist danger' was preferable to Mihailovic.
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