The first parachutes blossomed over the Yugoslav mountains at 7:00 AM, their silk canopies catching the morning light like strange white flowers descending upon the town of Drvar.

The Forgotten Airdrop: When Partisans Seized Drvar's Mountains

Operation Rösselsprung — Hitler's Daring Attempt to Kill Tito

Hitler sent 800 elite SS paratroopers to kill Tito on his birthday — and the partisans fought them off in a cemetery.

The first parachutes blossomed over the Yugoslav mountains at 7:00 AM, their silk canopies catching the morning light like strange white flowers descending upon the town of Drvar. It was June 13, 1944 — Tito's birthday — and the Germans had come to give him a deadly gift.

Inside a cave above the town, Marshal Josip Broz Tito — the man coordinating the largest resistance movement in occupied Europe — was finishing his morning routine when the drone of aircraft grew impossibly loud. Within minutes, over 800 SS paratroopers from the 500th SS Parachute Battalion were dropping into the narrow valley, their mission brutally simple: capture or kill the Yugoslav partisan leader and decapitate the resistance.

The Germans had planned Operation Rösselsprung ("Knight's Move") with chess-like precision. Intelligence had pinpointed Tito's headquarters. Gliders would land shock troops directly at the cave entrance while paratroopers seized the town below. A ground force of 16,000 troops would seal escape routes through the mountains.

But the SS men landed into a hornet's nest. Tito's partisan escort battalion — barely 350 fighters, many of them teenagers — opened fire before the Germans touche…

💡 Tito's dog, Tigar, was lowered down the cliff in a wicker basket during the escape and survived the entire war, becoming something of a mascot for the partisan movement.