Description
Milovan Djilas was a Communist ideologue and intellectual who became Tito’s “number two” during the partisan war against the Germans during World War Two — until imprisoned by Tito after the war.
“Wartime” is (on the surface) the story of the partisan war. On a deeper level it is the story of Djilas’s evolution from a dogmatic Communist to pragmatic conspirator in the evils of partisan warfare. By the end of the war, he is rationalizing crimes that, as a thoughtful intellectual, he knows are inexcusable.
Djilas is a wonderful writer and storyteller. He honestly sets out the contradictions in his journey to the heights of power and then to prison. Still, even in this account, he excuses himself for his part in affairs as if he were a block of wood being carried along by a historical current.
This is more than a story of war. In fact, it has little detail of actual partisan activity. Instead, it is a mesmerizing story of how one man participated in and adjusted himself to one of the most complicated and terrible stuggles of the war. This is, really, a sad story, well told, by by an author for whom one feels both sympathy and pity.
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