Hoodwinking Churchill

Peter Batty, a newspaper journalist, joined the original BBC TV Tonight team, later becoming its editor. After a spell with ITV he set up his own production company to produce, direct and script for film and TV. Awards include a Grand Prix at the Venice Film Festival and the Silver Dove from the Leipzig Film Festival for his Fall and Rise of the House of Krupp (also a book). He produced and scripted for BBC TV two documentaries on Tito which The Daily Mail found "fascinating", The Sunday Telegraph "excellent" and The Sunday Times "a damning investigation into the political dealings of the Yugoslav Partisan leader". He produced and scripted 6 episodes of the internationally-praised TV.

"this fascinating book ... The purpose of Peter Batty's excellent book is to describe what Churchill called 'one of the biggest mistakes of the war'" Daily Mail 20110722 5.0 stars out of 5. Peter Batty's absorbing book, based on scrupulous and wide ranging research, is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the dismemberment of former Yugoslavia by the Germans and Italians during the 2nd World War and its temporary reunification under Tito's brutal dictatorship. It convincingly challenges the myth, still not completely extinct, which credited the Croat/Slovene Communist Tito and his Partisans with providing the key resistance to the German occupation. Batty shows how the myth was based on material fed by Tito to Fitzroy Maclean and Deakin, Churchill's preferred but gullible envoys, and accepted as accurate by the British Prime Minister. This misleading version of events, questioned by our American allies and some British sources (though not by the B.B.C.), was bolstered by doctored intelligence supplied by a pro -Soviet mole working in the S.O.E. headquarters in Cairo. The development was accompanied by Britain's gradual abandonment of her previous allies, Mihailovic and his Serb royalist/nationalist Chetnik supporters, who were Tito's main rivals and victims and who, paradoxically, were regarded by the Germans as a far greater threat to them than Tito's Partisans. Batty also explains the contrasting policies adopted by the Germans and Italians towards the Serb resistance. His moving analysis of the character and motivations of the tragic and fundamentally honourable Mihailovic is entirely credible. He also shows how the British never fully understood that what was happening on the ground was as much a civil war as a resistance struggle. At the end of the war Churchill acknowledged that his unquestioning support of Tito had been a mistake but the myth of Tito as our staunch if Communist war time ally lived on in British public opinion, as did their belief in his mendacious claim that he and not the Russians had liberated Yugoslavia from the Germans. Peter Batty's account of Tito's highly skilful post war manoeuvring between the Communist and Capitalist blocs and his leading role in the Non Aligned Movement is equally fascinating and original. Tito's estrangement from Moscow (1948-55) intensified sympathy from Western governments who continued to court him. This was despite his brutal suppression of domestic opposition (largely ignored in the West), his fundamental attachment to Communist ideology and (with few exceptions) to Soviet foreign policy until his death in 1980, only a few years before the renewed fragmentation of Yugoslavia, this time from within. -- Giacomo Amazon Reader 20110822 5 stars out of 5. Long overdue expose This is a long overdue expose of one of Churchill's darkest secrets - and biggest mistakes - of the Second World War. Peter Batty is a highly respected documentary film-maker (producer/director of 6 episodes of the amazing World at War for example) and several years ago produced a big documentary on Tito for the BBC in which he met and interviewed many of the surviving witnesses to this episode in Churchill's life including many of the SOE agents flown into Yugoslavia during the war. As a result he has an incredible insight into the truth of this sorry tale of deception and blundering. It's a gripping read too and I highly recommend it to all readers. Amazon Reader 20110819 'The book answers many questions such as Tito's collaboration with the Germans particularly to thwart an Allied attack across the Adriatic, and his reign of terror and murder after WWII to eliminate all possible enemies. It also conclusively shows that the Partisans hardly harassed the German Army on its retreat in 1944, and did not liberate the country but spent most of their efforts fighting a Civil War to eliminate the forces of Mihailovic. Liberation was by the Red Army in Belgrade and the German evacuation.' South Slav Journal 20110815 'The research and referencing for the book is impressive and for any student of the period it will provide a valuable bibliography. A recommended read for any student of WWII and the Cold War.' Freedom Today 20110815 "Subtitled 'Tito's Great Confidence Trick', journalist and documentary film-maker Peter Batty's fascinating book explores new information to show how Britain's staunchly anti-communist Prime Minister was deceived into giving his full backing to the communist Tito, cutting all aid to the anti-communist forces resisting the Germans in Yugoslavia. But for that decision, the author argues, Tito would not have overcome his political opponents and emerged as the country's undisputed ruler after the war. That it has taken so long for the full story to emerge, the author suggests, is due to a concerted cover-up by a generation who had a vested interest in sustaining the myths surrounding Tito which they had helped to beget. In this the BBC played a controversial part. This book is both a telling biography of Tito and a convincing re-appraisal of the truth behind an important aspect of the wartime mythology." 20110910