to Sofia. A German telegram from 1:07 am on 5 September indicates that Hitler re-ordered the establishment of a puppet state in Macedonia. Mihaylov was transported to Skopje on the evening of 5 September "to see what can saved". Another telegram repeating the Fuehrer's order came in at 2 am on 6 September. On 6 September, Mihaylov declined the offer to lead an independent 'puppet state' for inability to get local support. The German diplomats in Skopje reported to Berlin that the attempt to establish a puppet state had failed. On 8 September 1944 Germany closed its Consulate in Skopje, and Mihaylov with his wife, together staff from the German consulate, left Skopje. Nevertheless, the same day, right-wing IMRO nationalists declared independence. During the Cold War In 1944, he was forced to flee again, this time to Italy. The Bulgarian communist leader Georgi Dimitrov ordered the assassination of Mihaylov. The new regimes in Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Greece persecuted his followers as fascists and traitors. After World War II the ruling Bulgarian Communists declared the population in Bulgarian Pirin Macedonia as ethnic Macedonian and teachers were brought in from Yugoslavia to teach the locals in the recently codified Macedonian language. The organizations of the IMRO in Bulgaria were completely destroyed. Former IMRO members were hunted by the communist Militsiya and many of them were imprisoned, repressed, exiled or killed. On the other hand, former Mihaylovists were also persecuted by the Belgrade-controlled authorities on accusations of collaboration with the Bulgarian occupation, Bulgarian nationalism, anti-communist and anti-Yugoslav activities, etc. Josip Broz Tito and Georgi Dimitrov worked on a project to merge Bulgaria and Yugoslavia into a Balkan Federative Republic under control of the Balkan Communist Federation. These policies were reversed after the Tito–Stalin split in June 1948, when Bulgaria, being subordinated to the interests of the Soviet Union took a stance against Yugoslavia. After the Second World War many former "Ohranists" were convicted of military crimes as collaborationists. Also, after the Greek Civil War many of these people were expelled from Greece and tortured as Bulgarians. Gradually Ivan Mihaylov was established as a legal political figure and author of the ideology of the Bulgarian national liberation movement in Macedonia. This fact allowed for a close political alliance between Ivan Mihaylov and the Macedonian Patriotic Organization in the United States, Canada and Australia in the late 1940s. Mihaylov became the emigrants' ideological leader, and