Shadows on the Mountain: The Allies, the Resistance, and the Rivalries That Doomed WWII Yugoslavia - Hardcover

Winston Churchill called it one of his biggest wartime failures—the shift of British and U.S. support from Yugoslavia's Draža Mihailovic and his royalist resistance movement to Tito and his communist Partisans. This book illuminates the complex reasons behind that failure through the incredible story of what has been called the greatest rescue of Allied airmen from behind enemy lines in World War II history, a rescue executed, incredibly, with minimal official support from the United States and none such support from Great Britain.

• Recounts an unknown chapter of World War II history and the single largest rescue operation of the war
• Starting with Serbia's tragedy and triumph in World War II through civil war in Yugoslavia during World War I, focuses on the history of the Balkans, a tragically misunderstood part of the world
• Sheds new light on the OSS-SOE relationship and manipulations of intelligence that profoundly altered policy decision making
• Reveals how failed Allied policy set the stage for Yugoslavia's breakup in the 1990s
• Details the wartime camaraderie of unlikely warriors who became fast friends, outcasts, and heroes in executing the rescue

Written with the drama of a novel and the insight of serious history, Shadows on the Mountain is essential reading for anyone interested in World War II, European history, and the Balkans.

Why would a former U.S. Army Air Corps major spend decades of his post-war life trying to convince Congress, the State Department, and numerous presidents to defend, and later to honor posthumously, a man who was convicted of war crimes and executed by firing squad under British orders and with American compliance? The answer to this strange question takes you deep inside war-torn Yugoslavia as hard-pressed resistance groups battle the Nazis and each other, and downed Allied airmen struggle desperately to avoid capture and find a way home. Shadows on the Mountain tells one of the most gripping, heroic, and tragic war stories you'll ever read.