All week long banner headlines told of the ferocious battles. Yugoslav television carried filmed reports of the fighting and a somber briefing by a major general on each day's action. One big Zagreb daily put out a special battlefield edition for the troops.
For all its realism, it was not a war but a war gameĀthe largest Yugoslav maneuvers since World War II, involving some 40,000 regular army troops and innumerable armed civilians. The exercise, pointedly called "Freedom '71," was designed as a defiant answer to the summer-long Soviet threats and maneuvers against the Yugoslavs. Moscow was furious with Belgrade...