Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
Typed letter signed ('Winston S. Churchill') to Slobodan Jovanović (Prime Minister of the Royal Yugoslav government-in-exile in London), 10 Downing Street, 12 July 1942.

Two pages, 242 x 191mm, superscription and subscription in autograph (staple and punch holes to upper left corners; docket of the Ministerial cabinet of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia on verso of f.2 and stamps of the 'Institute of Military History – Archives of Enemy Units' on upper margins of both pages).

'The consequences of deliberate robbery and oppression': Churchill declines a request from the exiled Yugoslav prime minister to send food aid for the relief of the civilian population in breach of the blockade of continental Europe: 'deeply though we sympathise with the suffering which German-occupation has brought to your country, we do not feel able to authorise a departure from present policy'. The policy allows for the despatch of foodstuffs from neutral European countries in certain circumstances, and the British government has made a single exception from it: 'but we cannot abandon it generally so as to relieve the enemy of his responsibility to provide for the countries which he has overrun. Still less, I fear, is it possible to seek to repair the consequences of deliberate robbery and oppression, while the power of the robber and oppressor remains unbroken. For so long as the enemy is master in Europe, he holds the people at his mercy whatever we may do, and we cannot hope to change his policy'. The only option is to maintain pressure on the Axis 'in order that your country and the rest may be fee from tyranny as quickly as possible'.

Slobodan Jovanović (1869-1958) was pime mnister of the Royal Yugoslav government-in-exile in London between January 1942 and June 1943. He was sentenced to death in absentia by the postwar Communist government of Yugoslavia, and remained in London for the rest of his life. Letters by Churchill as wartime prime minister are surprisingly rare on the market: fewer than a dozen have appeared at auction in the last decade, and only two or three of those addressed substantive geopolitical questions, as here.

Collection of the distinguished Yugoslav historian Vojmir Kljaković (1916-1986); and by descent.
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