Robert Harbold McDowell, OSS Ranger Team Mission to Yugoslavia's Chetniks, Part One

Robert Harbold McDowell was an American historian and intelligence officer who worked for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. McDowell, an expert on the Near East, was a professor of Balkan history at the University of Michigan. During World War II he was an OSS desk officer in Cairo and between August and November 1944 a member of an American mission Ranger, to the Chetniks, where he participated in negotiations with Germans to surrender their troops to Chetniks and Americans, and in Operation Halyard, to organize transport of the Allied pilots rescued by Chetniks.

The American president Franklin Roosevelt personally directed all important steps of the operations of the Office of Strategic Services related to Mihailovi?'s Chetniks because they were an instrument of US policy to avoid Partisan dominated Yugoslavia. McDowell, who had been an OSS desk officer in Cairo, arrived in the German-occupied territory of Serbia with six members of the "Ranger" team in late August 1944 to organize transport of the Allied pilots rescued by Chetniks during Operation Halyard. On 22 August 1944, Mihailovic was informed by members of his headquarters that George Musulin informed them about McDowell's direct access to Roosevelt.

At that time the Chetniks had already ordered a general mobilization aimed against Axis forces, so McDowell personally witnessed positioning of mobilized Chetnik troops to follow this aim and their resistance to German and Bulgarian forces to the final limits of people and equipment, capturing substantial number of prisoners and quantity of ammunition. Mihailovic informed McDowell that he had mobilized about 100,000 men with arms and 500,000 men without arms by 1 September 1944.

Negotiations for the surrender of German forces in Yugoslavia

Based on the instructions of the United States High Command, McDowell organized surrender conferences with representatives of German forces. In his later statements, approved by the War and State Departments, McDowell emphasized that Mihailovic did not attend the conferences about the surrender of German forces in Yugoslavia in August 1944.

In September 1944, the German command at Belgrade contacted McDowell and held two meetings with him at Mihailovi?'s headquarters, declaring that German forces in Yugoslavia were willing to surrender to the Americans and Chetniks but not to communist forces of the Soviet Union and Josip Broz Tito's Partisans. McDowell reported this to Allied headquarters which immediately ordered him to break off his contacts with the Germans.

When the Partisans were informed that McDowell was negotiating the surrender of German troops in Yugoslavia they became infuriated. In September, the Partisans began a major offensive against the Chetniks preventing McDowell's team from using an already prepared landing site for the evacuation of American airmen. Tito's associates condemned McDowell, demanding his withdrawal because they believed that he was giving political prestige to the Chetniks who did not deserve it. Churchill again personally intervened through Roosevelt, and McDowell was ordered to leave Mihailovic in September 1944. Wikipedia

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Report on Mission to Yugoslavia, Ranger Unit

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