Tito Part 3: The Partisan in the Mountains

What you'll learn

• 1 (00:43) **A Daring Night Drop into Bosnia** - SAS co-founder Fitzroy MacLean is parachuted into Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia on a personal mission from Winston Churchill to find and evaluate the mysterious partisan leader, Tito.
• 2 (04:11) **Yugoslavia’s Invasion and Dismemberment** - After a pro-Allied coup in Belgrade, Hitler launches a brutal blitzkrieg, crushing the Yugoslav army in twelve days and carving up the country among the Axis powers.
• 3 (11:35) **Tito’s Dilemma: Stalin’s Betrayal and the Nazi Invasion of the USSR** - With the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in effect, the Comintern orders Tito to do nothing, but Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 suddenly frees him to launch a communist revolution and armed resistance.
• 4 (17:20) **The Two Resistance Movements: Partisans vs. Chetniks** - Tito’s multi-ethnic Partisans compete with the royalist Chetniks, led by General Mihailović, who favor a cautious strategy of waiting for Allied liberation to avoid reprisals.
• 5 (20:55) **The Atrocities of Occupation and the Rise of the Partisans** - The Axis powers, especially the Croatian Ustaše, commit genocidal massacres, which paradoxically drives a multi-ethnic wave of recruits to Tito’s inclusive and disciplined Partisan movement.
• 6 (28:08) **Civil War and the Partisan Retreat** - The Chetniks, fearing Tito’s communist revolution, begin collaborating with the Axis to attack the Partisans, forcing Tito’s army to flee into the Bosnian mountains and endure a brutal winter.
• 7 (33:57) **The Battle of the Neretva: Tito’s Daring Escape** - Surrounded by 150,000 Axis troops, Tito orders his own bridge blown up to deceive the enemy, then secretly rebuilds it to spirit his 20,000 men and 4,500 wounded across the river.

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