Chetniks
Encyclopedia
Chetniks, or the Chetnik movement ( tʃɛ̂tniːtsi), were Serbian nationalist and royalist paramilitary organizations from the first half of the 20th century. The Chetniks were formed as a Serbian resistance against the Ottoman Empire in 1904, and participated in the Balkan Wars
, World War I
, and World War II
. Between the wars, in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
, they functioned in the form of two civilian organizations. The name is today most closely associated with the Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army, the World War II movement of Draža Mihailović
, which was later renamed the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland (Jugoslovenska vojska u otadžbini, Југословенска војска у отаџбини; JVUO, ЈВУО). The original name of the movement formed by Draža Mihailović
in 1941 remained the most common in use throughout the war, even among the Chetniks themselves, although "The Ravna Gora Movement" is also used by some when referring to the movement formed by Mihailovic. In 1941, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
was defeated by Germany
and occupied by the Axis powers
from 1941 to 1945.
Although the Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army were the first of the two resistance organizations to be formed in occupied Yugoslavia, they were not an entirely homogeneous movement. While some units engaged in marginal resistance activities and avoided accommodations with the enemy, most Chetnik units collaborated
with the Axis
occupation to one degree or another in order to fight the rival Partisan resistance, whom they viewed as their primary enemy, by establishing modus vivendi or operating as "legalised" auxiliary forces under Axis control. Thus, over a period of time, and in different parts of the country, the Chetniks were drawn progressively into collaboration agreements: first with the Nedić forces in Serbia, then with the Italians in occupied Dalmatia
and Montenegro
, with some of the Ustaše
forces in northern Bosnia
, and after the Italian capitulation also with the Germans
directly. While Chetnik collaboration reached "extensive and systematic""Both the Chetniks' political program and the extent of their collaboration have been amply, even voluminously, documented; it is more than a bit disappointing, thus, that people can still be found who believe that the Chetniks were doing anything besides attempting to realize a vision of an ethnically homogeneous Greater Serbian state, which they intended to advance, in the short run, by a policy of collaboration with the Axis forces. The Chetniks collaborated extensively and systematically with the Italian occupation forces until the Italian capitulation in September 1943, and beginning in 1944, portions of the Chetnik movement of Draža Mihailović collaborated openly with the Germans and Ustaša forces in Serbia and Croatia." proportions, the Chetniks' themselves referred to this policy of collaboration as "using the enemy".
Several modern Serbian paramilitary organizations, formed in the 1990s after the collapse of Yugoslavia, chose the name "Chetniks", and consider themselves as the continuation of the Chetnik legacy.
. The word is derived from the Turkish word çete or in Serbian četa (чета) which means "military company". The suffix -nik is of Slavic origin. It approximately corresponds to the suffix "-er" in the English language and nearly always denotes an agent noun; that is, it describes a person related to the thing, state, habit, or action described by the word to which the suffix is attached.
by the Saint Sava organization, by members of the army and representatives of the ministry of foreign affairs, among whom was Milorad Gođevac, Vasa Jovanović, Luka Ćelović and General Jovan Atanacković. The aim of the movement was liberation of Old Serbia
and Macedonia. Serbia started equipping Macedonian Serb Chetniks who were in conflict with the autonomist and pro-Bulgarian Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO).
In the same year of establishment, the first četa from Belgrade
was led by voivode Anđelko. It perished, and Gligor Sokolović formed several detachments in and around Prilep, after meeting with Gođevac. The Serb Chetniks defeated the Bulgaria
ns at Prilep
, Kičevo
, Veles
and Poreč
. In the summer of 1906 the Serbian Chetniks attacked the Bulgarians at Krapa.
The Macedonian Serb Chetniks from 1904 till 1908 created strongholds in Skopje and Prilep regions after several battles against the Turks and the IMRO, but could not extend their territory due to the IMRO presence in the other parts of Macedonia. The most prominent Chetniks of Macedonia were Jovan Babunski, Gligor Sokolović, Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin
, Mihailo Ristić-Džervinac, Jovan Grković-Gapon, Vasilije Trbić
, Garda Spasa, Borivoje Jovanović-Brana, Ilija Jovanović-Pčinjski, Jovan Stanojković-Dovezenski, Micko Krstić, Lazar Kujundžić, Cene Marković, Miša Aleksić-Marinko, Doksim Mihailović
, Kosta Milovanović-Pećanac, Vojin Popović-Vuk and Savatije Milićević Milošević. After the proclamation of the Young Turk revolution in 1908 and the proclamation of the constitution, all of the brigands in Macedonia, including the Serbian Chetniks put down their weapons.
This period lasted until 1912, when the Balkan countries once again started arming guerrilla bands in Macedonia in order to help them in operations against the Ottoman Army. At the start of the Balkan wars
there were 110 IMRO, 108 Greek
, 30 Serbian, and 5 Vlach detachments. They fought against the Ottoman Empire
in the First Balkan War
, while in World War I they fought against Austria-Hungary
.
In World War I
bands of Chetniks fought against the Bulgarian Army and organized the Toplica Insurrection, which was quickly crushed by the Bulgarians.
After the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Kingdom of Yugoslavia
) and the arrival of peacetime, the Chetnik movement ceased functioning as a guerrilla force, and became a civilian organization. In 1921 the Organization of Chetniks for the Freedom and Honor of the Fatherland (Udruženje Četnika za slobodu i čast Otadžbine) was formed, and in 1924 the Organization of Serbian Chetniks for King and Fatherland (Udruženje srpskih četnika za Kralja i Otadžbinu), while the formation of the Organization of Serbian Chetniks Petar Mrkonjić (Udruženje srpskih četnika Petar Mrkonjić) also followed. These latter two merged together the following year as the Organization of Serbian Chetniks Petar Mrkonjić.
After the unitarianist King Alexander I
proclaimed a dictatorship in 1929, the Organization of Serbian Chetniks Petar Mrkonjić was banned while the Organization of Chetniks for Freedom and Honour of the Fatherland was allowed to continue operating. Kosta Pećanac
was the organization's leader from 1932 up to the occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941.
leading to the swift collapse of the Yugoslav state and the surrender of the Yugoslav army. Many Serbian detachments refused to surrender and took to the hills. The Chetnik tradition of paramilitary activity and outrage at Ustaše
atrocities quickly attracted recruits to the Chetnik banner. The pre-war Chetnik leader Kosta Pećanac
soon came to an arrangement with Nedić's collaborationist regime
in Serbia but Colonel Draža Mihailović
set up his Chetnik headquarters in Ravna Gora and established contact with the Allies. It is these forces that are generally referred to as the Chetniks during World War II although the name was also used generally for other smaller groups. In June 1941, following Operation Barbarossa
the communist Partisans under Tito
organised an uprising and in the period between June and November 1941, the Chetniks and Partisans largely co-operated in anti-Axis activity.
and Sandžak
and the centre of Chetnik activity moved to the Independent State of Croatia
, a Nazi puppet state.
However, by this time Mihailovic had already asked the Germans for munitions to fight the communists. The Germans declined to negotiate, instead demanding unconditional surrender. The British
liaison to Mihajlović advised London
to stop supplying the Chetniks after their assistance in the German attack on Užice (see First anti-Partisan Offensive
), but Britain continued to do so.
From a relatively short time after Yugoslavia was invaded, the Chetniks enjoyed high-profile support from the American
media
and received financial aid; American general Billy Mitchell's sister was one of the many Americans
that supported and/or financed the cause of the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland.
, In 1944, despite being abandoned by the Allied powers, the Chetniks of Mihailjovic rescued and evacuated 512 American pilots who had been shot down behind enemy lines.It was the largest Allied airlift operation behind enemy lines of World War II
. Most of the airmen were shot down during bombing runs of oil fields in Romania
. Most pilots were captured by Germans
and then rescued by Chetniks.
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Later during the War, the Allies were seriously considering an invasion of the Balkans, so the Yugoslav resistance movements increased in strategic importance, and there was a need to determine which of the two factions was fighting the Germans. A number of Special Operations Executive
(SOE) agents were sent to Yugoslavia to determine the facts on the ground
. In the meantime, the Germans, also aware of the growing importance of Yugoslavia, decided to wipe out the Partisans with determined offensives. The Chetniks, by this time, had agreed to provide support for the German operations, and were in turn granted supplies and munitions to increase their effectiveness.
The first of these large anti-Partisan offensives was Fall Weiss, also known as the Battle of Neretva. The Chetniks participated with a significant, 20,000-strong, force providing assistance to the German and Italian encirclement from the east (the far bank of the river Neretva
). However, Tito's Partisans managed to break through the encirclement, cross the river, and engage the Chetniks. The conflict resulted in a near-total Partisan victory, after which the Chetniks were almost entirely incapacitated in the area west of the Drina
river. The Partisans continued on, and later again escaped the Germans in the Battle of Sutjeska.
In the meantime, the Allies stopped planning an invasion of the Balkans and finally rescinded their support for the Chetniks and instead supplied the Partisans. At the Teheran Conference of 1943 and the Yalta Conference
of 1945, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin
and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill
decided to split their influence in Yugoslavia in half.
, agents of the western Allies were infiltrated into both the Partisans and the Chetniks. The intelligence gathered by liaisons to the resistance groups was crucial to the success of supply missions and was the primary influence on Allied strategy in Yugoslavia. The search for intelligence ultimately resulted in the demise of the Chetniks and their eclipse by Tito’s Partisans. In 1942, though supplies were limited, token support was sent equally to each. The new year would bring a change. The Germans were executing Operation Schwarz (the Battle of Sutjeska, i.e., the Fifth anti-Partisan offensive), one of a series of offensives aimed at the resistance fighters, when F.W.D. Deakin
was sent by the British to gather information.
His reports contained two important observations. The first was that the Partisans were courageous and aggressive in battling the German 1st Mountain and 104th Light Division, had suffered significant casualties, and required support. The second observation was that the entire German 1st Mountain Division had transited from Russia on rail lines through Chetnik-controlled territory. British intercepts (Ultra) of German message traffic confirmed Chetnik timidity. All in all, intelligence reports resulted in increased Allied interest in Yugoslavia air operations, and a shift in policy. In September 1943, at Churchill’s request, Brigadier Fitzroy Maclean was parachuted to Tito’s headquarters near Drvar to serve as a permanent, formal liaison to the Partisans. While the Chetniks were still occasionally supplied, the Partisans received the bulk of all future support.
Thus, after the Tehran Conference
the Partisans received official recognition as the legitimate national liberation force by the Allies
, who subsequently set-up the RAF Balkan Air Force (under the influence and suggestion of Brigadier Fitzroy MacLean) with the aim to provide increased supplies and tactical air support for Marshal Tito's Partisan forces. On 14 August 1944, the Tito-Šubašić agreement
between Partisans and the Government in exile was signed on the island of Vis
. The document called on all Croats, Slovenes, and Serbs to join the Partisans. Mihailović and the Chetniks refused to accept the Royal Government's agreement and continued to engage the Partisans, by now the official Yugoslav Allied force. Consequently on 29 August 1944, King Peter II
dismissed Mihailović as Chief-of-Staff of the Yugoslav Army and on 12 September appointed Marshal Josip Broz Tito in his place. In late 1944, the leader of the Serbian fifth column
, Milan Nedić
, transferred all fascist Serbian troops under his command to Mihailović.
Throughout the war the Chetniks were nevertheless involved in operations in which Allied (mostly United States
) airmen were rescued and sheltered from the occupation forces. The largest of these operations came to be Operation Halyard
, which took place shortly before the Chetnik movement was destroyed in 1945. Due to the efforts of Major Richard L. Felman
, President Harry S. Truman
posthumously awarded Mihailović the "Legion of Merit
", for the rescue of American Airmen (Operation Airbridge
). This award was classified secret by the United States Department of State
so as not to offend Yugoslavs
.
Finally, in April and May 1945, as the victorious Partisans took possession of the country's territory, many Chetniks retreated toward Italy and a smaller group toward Austria. Many were captured by the Partisans or returned to Yugoslavia by British forces while a number were killed afterwards at Bleiburg
. Some were tried for treason and were sentenced to prison terms or death. Many were summarily executed, especially in the first months after the end of the war. Mihailović and his few remaining followers tried to fight their way back to the Ravna Gora, but he was captured by Partisan forces. In March 1946, Mihailović was brought to Belgrade
, where he was tried and executed on charges of treason in July. During the closing years of World War II, many Chetniks defected from their units, as the Partisan commander-in-chief, Marshal Josip Broz Tito, proclaimed a general amnesty to all defecting forces for a time.
After the occupation of Yugoslavia, a number of Slovene soldiers from the dissolved Yugoslav royal army organized themselves as resistance fighters against the German occupation. They were organized as the Slovene branch of Mihajlović's "Yugoslav Army in the Homeland". Their goal was restoration of the Yugoslav monarchy, and expansion of Slovene territory. The leader of the Slovene Chetniks was Karl Novak, and a subordinate to general Mihajlović.
Created in 1941, the Slovene Chetniks originally had around 300.-600. fighters and their number later increased to 2.000. fighters.
They were organized into several groups:
1. "Primorski" under command of captain Ratomir Cotić.
2. "Gorenjski" under command of colonel Jože Hlebc.
3. "Centralni četniški odred" under command of captain Milan Kranjc.
4. "Štajerski" under command of sergeant (later lieutenant) Jože Melaherj.
Other notable commanders were vice-colonel Ernest Peterlin - Logar, colonel Vladimir Vauhnik, Ivan Prezelj, Anton Kokalj - Tonči and naval captain Andrej Klinar - Hren.
After victory by Tito's partisans, most Slovene Chetnik soldiers and commanders fled to Italy. Since most Slovene Chetnik commanders worked for SOE
,during the war, they continued to work for British and US intelligence after the war.
organization. Two Chetnik battalions - "Splitsko-šibenički četnički bataljon" and "Odred vojvode Birčanina" were mostly dominated by ethnic Croats. Most famous Croat Chetnik commanders were people like captain Krešimir Vranić (leader of second Chetnik detachment, dominated by Croats), Ivo Jankov, colonel Anton Šuster from Sušak and lieutenant Niko Lazarić from island of Krk
.
In 1943 the Chetniks actively attempted to enlist more Muslims into their ranks. Fehim Musakadic became the commander of Muslim Chetnik units.Other prominent Muslim Chetniks were Ismet Pupovac and Mustafa Mulagic. At the end of 1943, numbering about 4,000, Muslims comprised some eight percent of the total Chetnik forces.
from Ottoman rule as members of the Bulgarian Legion
s, Internal Revolutionary Organisation
, Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, Internal Thracian Revolutionary Organisation
. Afterwards chetniks were called members of the Bulgarian resistance movement during World War II
and also the Goryani
.
with the Axis, eventually losing its international recognition as the Yugoslav resistance force. After a brief initial period of cooperation, the Partisans and the Chetniks quickly started fighting against each other. Gradually, the Chetniks ended up primarily fighting the Partisans instead of the occupation forces, and started cooperating with the Axis in a struggle to destroy the resistance
, receiving increasing amounts of logistical assistance. Mihailović admitted to a British colonel that the Chetniks' principal enemies were "the partisans, the Ustasha, the Muslims, the Croats and last the Germans and Italians" in that order.
At the start of the conflict, Chetnik forces were merely relatively inactive towards the occupation, and had contacts and negotiations with the Partisans. This changed when the talks broke down, and they proceeded to attack the latter (who were actively fighting the Germans), while continuing to engage the Axis only in minor skirmishes. Attacking the Germans provoked strong retaliation and the Chetniks increasingly started to negotiate with them. Negotiations with the occupiers were aided by the gtwo sides' mutual goal of destroying the Partisans. This collaboration first appeared during the operations on the Partisan "Užice Republic", where Chetniks played a part in the general Axis attack.
; in the Italian puppet state of Montenegro
; and in German and Italian-occupied Slovenia. The collaboration in Dalmatia and parts of Bosnia was the most widespread. The split between Partisans and Chetniks took place earlier in those areas.
The Partisans considered all occupation forces to be "the fascist enemy," while the Chetniks hated the Ustaše but balked at fighting the Italians, and had approached the Italian VI Army Corps (General Renzo Dalmazzo, Commander) as early as July and August 1941 for assistance, via a Serbian politician from Lika
, Stevo Rađenović. In particular, Chetnik vojvodas ("leaders") Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin
and Dobroslav Jevđević were favorably disposed towards the Italians, because they believed Italian occupation over the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina would be detrimental to the influence of the Ustaše state
. For this reason, they sought an alliance with the Italian occupation forces in Yugoslavia. The Italians (esepcially General Dalamazzo) looked favorably on these approaches and hoped to first avoid fighting the Chetniks, and then use them against the Partisans, a strategy which they thought would give them an "enormous advantage". An agreement was concluded on January 11, 1942 between the representative of the Italian 2nd Army, Captain Angelo De Matteis and the Chetnik representative for southeastern Bosnia, Mutimir Petković, and was later signed by Draža Mihailović's chief delegate in Bosnia, Major Boško Todorović. Among other provisions of the agreement, it was agreed that the Italians would support Chetnik formations with arms and provisions, and would facilitate the release of "recommended individuals" from Axis concentration camps (Jasenovac
, Rab
...). The chief interest of both the Chetniks and Italians would be to assist each other in combating Partisan-led resistance.
In the following months of 1942, General Mario Roatta
, commander of the Italian 2nd Army, worked on developing a Linea di condotta ("Policy Directive") on relations with Chetniks, Ustaše and Partisans. In line with these efforts, General Vittorio Ambrosio
outlined the Italian policy in Yugoslavia: All negotiations with the (quisling) Ustaše were to be avoided, but contacts with the Chetniks were "advisable." As for the Partisans, it was to be "struggle to the bitter end". This meant that General Roatta was essentially free to take action with regard to the Chetniks as he saw fit.
He outlined the four points of his policy in his report to the Italian Army General Staff:
During 1942 and 1943, an overwhelming proportion of Chetnik forces in the Italian-controlled areas of occupied Yugoslavia were organized as Italian auxiliary forces in the form of the Anti-Communist Volunteer Militia
(Milizia volontaria anti comunista, MVAC). According to General Giacomo Zanussi (then a Colonel and Roatta's chief of staff), there were 19,000 to 20,000 Chetniks in the MVAC in Italian-occupied parts of the Independent State of Croatia
alone. The Chetniks were extensively supplied with thousands of rifles, grenades, mortars and artillery pieces. In a memorandum dated March 26, 1943 to the Italian Army General Staff, entitled "The Conduct of the Chetniks", Italian officers noted the ultimate control of these collaborating Chetnik units remained in the hands of Draža Mihailović, and contemplated the possibility of a hostile reorientation of these troops in light of the changing strategic situation. The commander of these troops was vojvoda Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin
, who arrived in Italian-annexed Split
in October 1941 and received his orders directly from Mihailović in the spring of 1942.
The Chetnik-Italian collaboration lasted until the Italian capitulation on September 8, 1943, when Chetnik troops switched to supporting the German occupation in trying to force the Partisans out of the coastal cities which the Partisans liberated after the Italian withdrawal. The German 114th Jäger Division
even incorporated a Chetnik detachment in its advance to the Adriatic
.
found themselves caught between the German and Ustaše (NDH) forces on one side and the Partisans on the other. In early 1942 Chetnik Major Jezdimir Dangić
approached the Germans in an attempt to arrive at an understanding, but was unsuccessful, and the local Chetnik leaders were forced to look for another solution. The Chetnik groups were in fundamental disagreement with the Ustaše on practically all issues, but they found a common enemy in the Partisans, and this was the overriding reason for the collaboration which ensued between the Ustaše authorities of the Independent State of Croatia
(NDH) and Chetnik detachments in Bosnia. The first formal agreement between Bosnian Chetniks and the Ustaše was concluded on May 28, 1942, in which Chetnik leaders expressed their loyalty as "citizens of the Independent State of Croatia" both to the state and its Poglavnik (Ante Pavelić
). During the next three weeks, three additional agreements were signed, covering a large part of the area of Bosnia (along with the Chetnik detachments within it). By the provision of these agreements, the Chetniks were to cease hostilities against the Ustaše state, and the Ustaše would establish regular administration in these areas. The Chetniks recognized the sovereignty of the Independent State of Croatia and became a legalized movement in it. The main provision, Art. 5 of the agreement, states as follows:
The necessary ammunition and provisions were supplied to the Chetniks by the Ustaše military. Chetniks who were wounded in such operations would be cared for in NDH hospitals, while the orphans and widows of Chetniks killed in action would be supported by the Ustaše state. Persons specifically recommended by Chetnik commanders would be returned home from the Ustaše concentration camps (Jasenovac concentration camp
). These agreements covered the majority of Chetnik forces in Bosnia east of the German-Italian demarcation line, and lasted throughout most of the war. Since Croatian forces were immediately subordinate to the German military occupation, collaboration with Croatian forces was, in fact, indirect collaboration with the Germans.
As early as spring 1942, the Germans favored the collaboration agreement the Ustaše and the Chetniks had established in a large part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since the Ustaše military was supplied by, and immediately subordinate to, the German military occupation, collaboration between the two constituted indirect German-Chetnik collaboration. This was all favorable to the Germans primarily because the agreement was directed against the Partisans, contributed to the pacification of areas significant for German war supplies, and reduced the need for additional German occupation troops (as Chetniks were assisting the occupation). After the Italian capitulation on September 8, 1943, the German 114th Jäger Division
even incorporated a Chetnik detachment in its advance to retake the Adriatic coast from the Partisans who had temporarily liberated it. The report on German-Chetnik collaboration of the XV Army Corps on November 19, 1943 to the 2nd Panzer Army states that the Chetniks were "leaning on the German forces" for close to a year.
German-Chetnik collaboration entered a new phase after the Italian surrender, because the Germans now had to police a much larger area than before and fight the Partisans in the whole of Yugoslavia. Consequently, they significantly liberalized their policy towards the Chetniks and mobilized all Serbian nationalist forces against the Partisans. The 2nd Panzer Army oversaw these developments: the XV Army Corps was now officially allowed to utilize Chetniks troops and forge a "local alliance". The first formal and direct agreement between the German occupation forces and the Chetniks took place in early October 1943 between the 373rd Infantry Division and a detachment of Chetniks under Mane Rokvić operating in western Bosnia and Lika. The Germans subsequently even used Chetnik troops for guard duty in occupied Split
, Dubrovnik
, Šibenik
, and Metković
. Independent State of Croatia
(NDH) troops were not used, despite Ustaše demands, because mass desertions of Croat troops to the Partisans rendered them unreliable. From this point on, the German occupation actually started to "openly favor" Chetnik (Serbian
) troops to the Croat
formations of the NDH, due to the pro-Partisan dispositions of the Croatian rank-and-file. The Germans paid little attention to frequent Ustaše protests about this.
Ustaše Major Mirko Blaž (Deputy Commander, 7th Brigade of the Poglavnik
's Personal Guard) observed that:
When appraising the situation in western Serbia, Bosnia
, Lika
, and Dalmatia
, Captain Merrem, intelligence officer with the German commander-in-chief southeastern Europe, was "full of praise" for Chetnik units collaborating with the Germans, and for the smooth relations between the Germans and Chetnik units on the ground.
In addition, the Chief of Staff of the 2nd Panzer Army observed in a letter to the Ustaše liaison officer that the Chetniks fighting the Partisans in Eastern Bosnia were "making a worthwhile contribution to the Croatian state", and that the 2nd Army "refused in principle" to accept Croatian complaints against the usage of these units. German-Chetnik Collaboration continued to take place until the very end of the war, with the tacit approval of Draža Mihailović and the Chetnik Supreme Command in Serbia. Though Mihailović himself never actually signed any agreements, he endorsed the policy for the purpose of eliminating the Partisan threat.
Field Marshal Maximilian von Weichs
commented:
The loss of Allied support in 1943 caused the Chetniks to lean more than ever towards the Germans for assistance against the Partisans. On 14 August 1944, the Tito-Šubašić agreement
between the Partisans and the Yugoslav King Peter II
and government-in-exile was signed on the island of Vis
. The document called on all Croats, Slovenes, and Serbs to join the Partisans. Mihailović and the Chetniks refused to follow the order and abide by the agreement and continued to engage the Partisans (by now the official Yugoslav Allied force). Consequently on 29 August 1944, King Peter II dismissed Mihailović as Chief-of-Staff of the Yugoslav Army and on 12 September appointed Marshal Josip Broz Tito in his place. Josip Broz Tito at this point became the Prime Minister of the Yugoslav state and the joint government.
, the Germans initially installed Milan Aćimović
, as leader, but later replaced him with General Milan Nedić
, former minister of war, who governed until 1944. Aćimović instead later served as the key liaison between the Germans and the Chetniks. In the second half of August 1941, prior to Nedić assuming power, the Germans arranged with Kosta Pećanac for the transfer of several thousand of his Chetniks to serve as auxiliaries for the Serbian gendarmerie. Collaboration between the Nedić administration and Mihailović's Chetniks began in fall of 1941 and lasted until the end of German occupation. Nedić was initially firmly opposed to Mihailović and the Chetniks. On September 4, 1941, Mihailović sent Major Aleksandar Mišić and Miodrag Pavlović to enter a meeting with Nedić and nothing was accomplished. After Mihailović shifted his policy of mild cooperation with the Partisans to becoming hostile to them and seizure of anti-German activity in late October 1941, Nedić relaxed his opposition. On October 15, Colonel Milorad Popović
, acting on behalf of Nedić, gave Mihailović about 500,000 dinars (in addition to an equal amount given on October 4) to persuade the Chetniks to collaborate. On October 26, 1941, Popović gave an additional 2,500,000 dinars. By mid-November 1941, Mihailović put 2,000 of his men under Nedić's direct command and shortly later these men joined the Germans in a anti-Partisan operation. When the Germans launched Operation Mihailović
on December 6-7, 1941, with the intent of capturing Mihailović and removing his headquarters in Ravna Gora, he escaped, probably because he was warned of the attack by Aćimović on December 5. In June 1942, Mihailović left Serbia to Montenegro and became out of contact with the Nedić authorities until returning in June. Subsequently, in the fall of 1942 the Chetniks of Mihailović (and Pećanac) that were legalized in Nedić's Serbia were dissolved. By 1943, Nedić feared that the Chetniks would become the primary collaborator with the Germans and after the Chetniks murdered Ceka Đorđević, deputy minister of internal affairs, in March 1944 he co-opted to replace him with a prominent Chetnik in the hopes of quelling the rivalry. A report prepared in April 1944 by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services
commented that:
In mid-August 1944, Mihailović, Nedić, and Dragomir Jovanović
met in the village of Ražani secretly where Nedić agreed to give one hundred million dinars for wages and to request from the Germans arms and ammunition for Mihailović. On September 6, 1944, under the authority of the Germans and formalization by Nedić, Mihailović took command over the entire military force of Nedić's Serbia, including the Serbian State Guard, Serbian Volunteer Corps, and the Serbian Border Guard.
Chetnik ideology revolved around the notion of a Greater Serbia within the borders of Yugoslavia, to be created out of all territories in which Serbs were found, even if the numbers were small. This goal had long been the foundation of the movement for a Greater Serbia. During the Axis occupation, however, the notion of clearing or "cleansing" these territories was introduced, largely in response to the massacres of Serbs by the Ustaše in the Independent State of Croatia.
Prior to the outbreak of World War II, use of terror tactics had a long tradition in the area as various oppressed groups sought their freedom and atrocities were committed by all parties engaged in conflict in Yugoslavia. During the early stages of the occupation, the Ustaše had also recruited a number of Muslims to aid in the persecutions of the Serbs, and even though only a relatively small number of Croats and Muslims engaged in these activities, and many opposed them, those actions initiated a cycle of violence and retribution between the Catholics, Orthodox and Muslims, as each sought to rid the others from the territories they controlled. In particular, Ustaše ideologues were concerned with the large Serbian minority in the NDH, and initiated acts of terror on a wide scale in May 1941, and by July, even the Germans protested the brutality of these actions. Reprisals followed, as in the case of Nevesinje, where Serb peasants staged an uprising in response to the persecution, drove out the Ustaše militia, but then engaged in reprisals killing hundreds of Croats and Muslims.
In the summer of 1941, the Rava Gora Movement had attracted a small number of Serbia intellectuals who developed a political ideology for the Chetniks. Stevan Moljević believed that Serbs should not repeat the mistakes of World War I by failing to define the borders of Serbia, and proposed that at the end of World War II Serbs should take control of all territories to which they laid claim, and from that position negotiate the form of a federally organized Yugoslavia. This plan required the relocation of non-Serbs from Serbian controlled territories and other shifts of populations. He produced a document, Homogenous Serbia, which articulated these notions. These proposals were very similar to those later formulated by the Belgrade Chetnik Committee and presented to the Government in Exile in September 1941, in which the Chetniks set forth specific figures in regard to population shifts. Over one million Serbs were to be brought into newly acquired territories, while over 2.5 million people were to be expelled in order to create an "ethnically pure" Greater Serbia comprising Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Vojvodina. The Sandžak was to be cleansed of the Muslim population, and both Bosnia and Herzegovina were to be cleansed of the Muslim and Croat populations.
A series of instructions attributed to Mihailović contained similar language, although the authenticity of the document is disputed—there is no original and it may have been a forgery made by Đurišić to suit his purposes.
The Chetnik Dinara Division created a similar program in March 1942, which, like the instructions attributed to Mihailovic, propose a Greater Serbia with a corridor between Herzegovina, northern Dalmatia, Bosnia, and Lika to Slovenia, and cleansing of these areas of non Serbian populations. This was accepted a month later by the military leaders of these areas. This document continued additional formulations of strategy, including collaboration with Italian forces as a modus vivendi, formation of Croatian Chetnik units as part of a continuing struggle against the Partisans, Domobrans and Ustaše. This document also proposed decent treatment of the Muslim population in order to keep them from joining the Partisan forces, and noted that the Muslims could later be eliminated.
In the fall of 1942, a program was fomulated at a Conference of Young Chetnik Intellectuals of Montenegro, which also proposed a unified Yugoslavia consisting only of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, exclusion of other ethnic groups, which was to be controlled by the Chetnik forces with the endorsment of the King, as well as agrarian and political reforms, nationalization of banking and wholesale trade, and increased propaganda to promote Chetnik ideology. Mihailović was not present, but was represented by his subordinate commanders Ostojic, Lasic, and Đurišić. Đurišić played the dominant role at this conference.
Some of the directives associated with cleansing of non-Serbs were later incorporated into a manual prepared by Chetnik military leaders in late 1942, which detailed a three phased approach and the military structure to be used during the war. The manual argued that both the Serbs and the Croats had been politically victimized in the period between the two world wars, and the unproven notion that in Serbia and especially in Belgrade, Croats held the upper hand in the government. Except for the Ustaše, Croats were not seen as the enemies of the Serbs, and a goal was set for the incorporation of Croatian forces under Chetnik leadership. Ustaše,on the other hand, were to be summarily executed. The question of shifting populations and religious conversion of the Croats was to be left aside until the Serbs had assumed power in Yugoslavia. Revenge was incorporated into the Chetnik manual as a "...sacred duty of the Serbian people against those who had wronged them during the war and occupation".
Throughout the war, the Chetniks engaged in a series of massacres carried out against Muslims in southeastern Bosnia, especially in the area in and around Foča, and in Sandžak. In the winter of 1941/1942, approximately 2000 Muslims were killed. Actions of greater severity were carried out in the area of Foča in August 1942, and further escalations occurred in January and February 1943, which the Chetniks justified as punitive actions in response to claimed attacks by Muslims against Serbian villages. In the latter action, Chetnik units from Montenegro engaged in "cleansing actions" against the Muslims of Foča and Sandžak, in which an estimated 10,000 Muslims were killed. Đurišić had been in charge of these operations and in his reports to Mihailović, he indicated that about 9000 of the dead were the old, women, and children, and the villages and property not seized by the Chetniks were destroyed. Losses would likely have been higher had not large number of Muslims already fled the area. Actions against the Croats were of a smaller scale but similar in action, and the violence against civilian Croat and Muslim populations were severe enough that the Italian General Roatta threatened to stop supplying the Chetniks if the attacks continued. Although many of these actions were justified as reprisals, they were consistent with the orders for ethnic cleansing actions attributed to Mihailović and regarded by the Chetniks as a response to the large scale "crimes against humanity" initiated by the Ustaše.
The Partisans were also targets of terror tactics. In Serbia, Chetniks killed an unknown number of Partisans, their families and sympathizers, on ideological grounds. During the summer of 1942, using names supplied by Mihailović, lists of individual Nedić and Ljotić supporters to be assassinated or threatened were broadcast over BBC radio during news programming in Serbo-Croatian. Once the British discovered this, the broadcasts of these lists were halted, although this did not prevent the Chetniks from continuing the assassinations.
. On 29 November 1945, King Peter II was deposed by the Yugoslav Constituent Assembly after an overwhelming referendum result. Chetnik leaders either escaped the country or were arrested by the authorities. On 13 March 1946, Draža Mihailović was captured by OZNA, the Yugoslav security agency
. He was put to trial, found guilty of high treason
against Yugoslavia, sentenced to death and then hanged on July 17. Later, Momčilo Đujić formed the 'Movement of Serbian Chetniks of Ravna Gora' in the United States
and Canada
.
's Serbian Radical Party
formed the White Eagles
group which identified themselves as Chetniks. Vuk Drašković
's Serbian Renewal Movement
was closely associated with the Serbian Guard
, which was also associated with Chetniks and monarchism.
During the war five Serb soldiers received the title of Chetnik voivodes from World War II veteran Momčilo Đujić: Rade Čubrilo, Slavko Aleksić, Branislav Gavrilović, Rade Radović, and Mitar Maksimović Mando. The title to Šešelj was given in 1989 but later taken off in 1998 when it became obvious that Šešelj is in cooperation with Slobodan Milošević
. Rade Čubrilo became the flag-bearer of Đujić's former unit, the Dinara Chetnik Division. Serb politician Vojislav Šešelj was also named a voivode prior to the start of the wars by Đujić and the title was taken from Šešelj in later decade, since he was anti-monarchist and in cooperation with Milošević.
Modern Chetnik movements include:
has annually organized the "Ravna Gora Parliament". People who attend the Parliament wear World War II Chetnik iconography and t-shirts with the image of Draža Mihailović or war crimes suspect Ratko Mladić
. In 2005, Croatian president Stjepan Mesić
cancelled a planned visit to Serbia as it coincided with the gathering, officially supported by the Serbian government, and attended by Vuk Drašković
.
In March 2004, the National Assembly of Serbia
passed a new law that equalized the Chetniks and Partisans as equivalent anti-fascists
. Rights were granted on the basis that both were anti-fascist movements that fought occupiers, and this formulation has entered the law. The vote was 176 for, 24 against and 4 abstained (the Socialist Party of Serbia
(SPS) of Slobodan Milošević was the one voting against the decision). There have been varying reactions to the law in Serbian public opinion. Many have praised it as just and long overdue, including Prince Alexander Karađorđević (son of Peter II, the last Yugoslav king), as well as most political parties (with the most notable exception of the SPS). Others protested the decision, including the Serbian Association of Former Partisans, the Serbian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights
, the Croatian Anti-Fascist Movement, and the President
and Prime Minister of Croatia. In 2009, Serbian courts rehabilitated Chetnik ideologist Dragiša Vasić.
The Serbian basketball player Milan Gurović
has a tattoo of World War II Chetnik Draža Mihailović on his left arm which has resulted in a ban since 2004 in playing in Croatia under its anti-fascist laws. Turkey
has also threatened to enact such a ban. Serbian rocker Bora Đorđević is also a self-declared Chetnik, but calling it a "national movement that is much older than the WWII", and adding that he does not hate other nations and never been a member of the Radical Party nor advocated Greater Serbia.
began. In 2003, Vesna Kilibarda, the Montenegrin Minister of Culture, banned the construction of the monument saying that the Ministry of Culture had not applied for the approval to erect monuments. The Association of War Veterans of the National Liberation Army (SUBNOR) objected to the construction of the monument saying that Đurišić was a war criminal who was responsible for the deaths of many colleagues of the veterans association and 7,000 Muslims. The following month the Montenegrin government forbade the unveiling of the monument stating that it "caused public concern, encouraged division among the citizens of Montenegro, and incited national and religious hatred and intolerance." A press release from the committee in charge of the construction of the monument stated that the actions taken by the government was "absolutely illegal and inappropriate." The stand that was prepared for the erection of the monument was later removed by the police.
. They all wore badges of military units which committed the massacre in July 1995. On July 11, 2009, after the burial of 543 victims in Srebrenica, members of the Ravna Gora Chetnik movement desecrated the flag
of Bosnia and Herzegovina, marched in the streets wearing T-shirts with the face of Ratko Mladić
and sang Chetnik songs. A group of men and women associated with the Serbian far-right group Obraz
"chanted insults directed towards the victims and in support of the Chetnik movement, calling for eradication of Islam." A full report of the incident was submitted to the local District Prosecutor's Office but no one has been prosecuted. The Bosniak political party SDP
has been campaigning for a creation of a law that would ban the group within Bosnia.
of the Independent Democratic Serb Party in Croatia (the present-day leader of Serbs of Croatia
and member of the Croatian Parliament), has described the organization as "fascist collaborators".
.
Balkan Wars
The Balkan Wars were two conflicts that took place in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe in 1912 and 1913.By the early 20th century, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia, the countries of the Balkan League, had achieved their independence from the Ottoman Empire, but large parts of their ethnic...
, World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, and World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Between the wars, in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Kingdom of Yugoslavia
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a state stretching from the Western Balkans to Central Europe which existed during the often-tumultuous interwar era of 1918–1941...
, they functioned in the form of two civilian organizations. The name is today most closely associated with the Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army, the World War II movement of Draža Mihailović
Draža Mihailovic
Dragoljub "Draža" Mihailović was a Yugoslav Serbian general during World War II...
, which was later renamed the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland (Jugoslovenska vojska u otadžbini, Југословенска војска у отаџбини; JVUO, ЈВУО). The original name of the movement formed by Draža Mihailović
Draža Mihailovic
Dragoljub "Draža" Mihailović was a Yugoslav Serbian general during World War II...
in 1941 remained the most common in use throughout the war, even among the Chetniks themselves, although "The Ravna Gora Movement" is also used by some when referring to the movement formed by Mihailovic. In 1941, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Kingdom of Yugoslavia
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a state stretching from the Western Balkans to Central Europe which existed during the often-tumultuous interwar era of 1918–1941...
was defeated by Germany
Invasion of Yugoslavia
The Invasion of Yugoslavia , also known as the April War , was the Axis Powers' attack on the Kingdom of Yugoslavia which began on 6 April 1941 during World War II...
and occupied by the Axis powers
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
from 1941 to 1945.
Although the Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army were the first of the two resistance organizations to be formed in occupied Yugoslavia, they were not an entirely homogeneous movement. While some units engaged in marginal resistance activities and avoided accommodations with the enemy, most Chetnik units collaborated
Collaborationism
Collaborationism is cooperation with enemy forces against one's country. Legally, it may be considered as a form of treason. Collaborationism may be associated with criminal deeds in the service of the occupying power, which may include complicity with the occupying power in murder, persecutions,...
with the Axis
Axis Powers
The Axis powers , also known as the Axis alliance, Axis nations, Axis countries, or just the Axis, was an alignment of great powers during the mid-20th century that fought World War II against the Allies. It began in 1936 with treaties of friendship between Germany and Italy and between Germany and...
occupation to one degree or another in order to fight the rival Partisan resistance, whom they viewed as their primary enemy, by establishing modus vivendi or operating as "legalised" auxiliary forces under Axis control. Thus, over a period of time, and in different parts of the country, the Chetniks were drawn progressively into collaboration agreements: first with the Nedić forces in Serbia, then with the Italians in occupied Dalmatia
Dalmatia
Dalmatia is a historical region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. It stretches from the island of Rab in the northwest to the Bay of Kotor in the southeast. The hinterland, the Dalmatian Zagora, ranges from fifty kilometers in width in the north to just a few kilometers in the south....
and Montenegro
Montenegro
Montenegro Montenegrin: Crna Gora Црна Гора , meaning "Black Mountain") is a country located in Southeastern Europe. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea to the south-west and is bordered by Croatia to the west, Bosnia and Herzegovina to the northwest, Serbia to the northeast and Albania to the...
, with some of the Ustaše
Ustaše
The Ustaša - Croatian Revolutionary Movement was a Croatian fascist anti-Yugoslav separatist movement. The ideology of the movement was a blend of fascism, Nazism, and Croatian nationalism. The Ustaše supported the creation of a Greater Croatia that would span to the River Drina and to the border...
forces in northern Bosnia
Bosnia (region)
Bosnia is a eponomous region of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It lies mainly in the Dinaric Alps, ranging to the southern borders of the Pannonian plain, with the rivers Sava and Drina marking its northern and eastern borders. The other eponomous region, the southern, other half of the country is...
, and after the Italian capitulation also with the Germans
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
directly. While Chetnik collaboration reached "extensive and systematic""Both the Chetniks' political program and the extent of their collaboration have been amply, even voluminously, documented; it is more than a bit disappointing, thus, that people can still be found who believe that the Chetniks were doing anything besides attempting to realize a vision of an ethnically homogeneous Greater Serbian state, which they intended to advance, in the short run, by a policy of collaboration with the Axis forces. The Chetniks collaborated extensively and systematically with the Italian occupation forces until the Italian capitulation in September 1943, and beginning in 1944, portions of the Chetnik movement of Draža Mihailović collaborated openly with the Germans and Ustaša forces in Serbia and Croatia." proportions, the Chetniks' themselves referred to this policy of collaboration as "using the enemy".
Several modern Serbian paramilitary organizations, formed in the 1990s after the collapse of Yugoslavia, chose the name "Chetniks", and consider themselves as the continuation of the Chetnik legacy.
Etymology
The word, "chetnik" was used to describe a member of a Balkan guerrilla force called chetaCheta
Cheta was an armed band, organized by the Christian population on the territory of the Ottoman Empire, aiming at anti-Turkish activity. The cheta was usually led by a leader, called voivoda. The members of the chetas were called chetnik....
. The word is derived from the Turkish word çete or in Serbian četa (чета) which means "military company". The suffix -nik is of Slavic origin. It approximately corresponds to the suffix "-er" in the English language and nearly always denotes an agent noun; that is, it describes a person related to the thing, state, habit, or action described by the word to which the suffix is attached.
Early Chetniks in Macedonia
In 1904 the organization known as the "Serb Chetnik Movement" (Српски Четнички Покрет) was formed in VranjeVranje
Vranje is a city and municipality located in southern Serbia. In 2011 the city has total population of 82,782, while the urban area has 54,456...
by the Saint Sava organization, by members of the army and representatives of the ministry of foreign affairs, among whom was Milorad Gođevac, Vasa Jovanović, Luka Ćelović and General Jovan Atanacković. The aim of the movement was liberation of Old Serbia
Old Serbia
Old Serbia is a modern name for the territory which was the core of medieval Serbia. It included Raška , Kosovo and Metohija and the Macedonia...
and Macedonia. Serbia started equipping Macedonian Serb Chetniks who were in conflict with the autonomist and pro-Bulgarian Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO).
In the same year of establishment, the first četa from Belgrade
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
was led by voivode Anđelko. It perished, and Gligor Sokolović formed several detachments in and around Prilep, after meeting with Gođevac. The Serb Chetniks defeated the Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
ns at Prilep
Prilep
Prilep is the fourth largest city in the Republic of Macedonia. It has a population of 66,246 citizens. Prilep is known as "the city under Marko's Towers" because of its proximity to the towers of Prince Marko.-Name:...
, Kičevo
Kicevo
Kičevo is a city in the western part of the Republic of Macedonia, located in a valley in the south-eastern slopes of Mount Bistra, between the cities of Ohrid and Gostivar. The capital Skopje is 112 km away. The city of Kičevo is the seat of Kičevo Municipality.-Population:The municipality...
, Veles
Veles (city)
Veles is a city in the center of the Republic of Macedonia on the Vardar river. The city of Veles is the seat of Veles Municipality.-Name:The city's name was Vylosa in Ancient Greek and before the Balkan Wars, it was a township with the name Köprülü in the Üsküp sandjak, Ottoman empire for 600...
and Poreč
Porec
Poreč is a town and municipality on the western coast of the Istrian peninsula, in Istria County, Croatia. Its major landmark is the 6th century Euphrasian Basilica, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997....
. In the summer of 1906 the Serbian Chetniks attacked the Bulgarians at Krapa.
The Macedonian Serb Chetniks from 1904 till 1908 created strongholds in Skopje and Prilep regions after several battles against the Turks and the IMRO, but could not extend their territory due to the IMRO presence in the other parts of Macedonia. The most prominent Chetniks of Macedonia were Jovan Babunski, Gligor Sokolović, Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin
Ilija Trifunovic-Bircanin
Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin was a Serbian Chetnik military commander with the title of Voivode.-Early life:Born in Topola in 1877, Trifunović-Birčanin served as a volunteer on the Macedonian side in the Balkan Wars, as well as in the First World War on the eastern front against Bulgaria...
, Mihailo Ristić-Džervinac, Jovan Grković-Gapon, Vasilije Trbić
Vasilije Trbić
Vasilije Trbić was a Chetnik fighter.He was of Croatian Serb origins, born in Bijelo Brdo near Dalj, Slavonia, present-day Erdut, Croatia. He went to school in his birthplace and then in Serbia. He wanted to be a monk at the Chilandar Monastery but in 1902 some Greek monks were murdered and he...
, Garda Spasa, Borivoje Jovanović-Brana, Ilija Jovanović-Pčinjski, Jovan Stanojković-Dovezenski, Micko Krstić, Lazar Kujundžić, Cene Marković, Miša Aleksić-Marinko, Doksim Mihailović
Doksim Mihailović
Doksim Mihailović was a Macedonian Serb voivode , originally a teacher, who joined the Chetniks in Macedonia , and then the Balkan Wars .-Life:...
, Kosta Milovanović-Pećanac, Vojin Popović-Vuk and Savatije Milićević Milošević. After the proclamation of the Young Turk revolution in 1908 and the proclamation of the constitution, all of the brigands in Macedonia, including the Serbian Chetniks put down their weapons.
This period lasted until 1912, when the Balkan countries once again started arming guerrilla bands in Macedonia in order to help them in operations against the Ottoman Army. At the start of the Balkan wars
Balkan Wars
The Balkan Wars were two conflicts that took place in the Balkans in south-eastern Europe in 1912 and 1913.By the early 20th century, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Greece and Serbia, the countries of the Balkan League, had achieved their independence from the Ottoman Empire, but large parts of their ethnic...
there were 110 IMRO, 108 Greek
Greeks
The Greeks, also known as the Hellenes , are a nation and ethnic group native to Greece, Cyprus and neighboring regions. They also form a significant diaspora, with Greek communities established around the world....
, 30 Serbian, and 5 Vlach detachments. They fought against the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
in the First Balkan War
First Balkan War
The First Balkan War, which lasted from October 1912 to May 1913, pitted the Balkan League against the Ottoman Empire. The combined armies of the Balkan states overcame the numerically inferior and strategically disadvantaged Ottoman armies and achieved rapid success...
, while in World War I they fought against Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
.
World War I and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
bands of Chetniks fought against the Bulgarian Army and organized the Toplica Insurrection, which was quickly crushed by the Bulgarians.
After the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Kingdom of Yugoslavia
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a state stretching from the Western Balkans to Central Europe which existed during the often-tumultuous interwar era of 1918–1941...
) and the arrival of peacetime, the Chetnik movement ceased functioning as a guerrilla force, and became a civilian organization. In 1921 the Organization of Chetniks for the Freedom and Honor of the Fatherland (Udruženje Četnika za slobodu i čast Otadžbine) was formed, and in 1924 the Organization of Serbian Chetniks for King and Fatherland (Udruženje srpskih četnika za Kralja i Otadžbinu), while the formation of the Organization of Serbian Chetniks Petar Mrkonjić (Udruženje srpskih četnika Petar Mrkonjić) also followed. These latter two merged together the following year as the Organization of Serbian Chetniks Petar Mrkonjić.
After the unitarianist King Alexander I
Alexander I of Yugoslavia
Alexander I , also known as Alexander the Unifier was the first king of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia as well as the last king of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes .-Childhood:...
proclaimed a dictatorship in 1929, the Organization of Serbian Chetniks Petar Mrkonjić was banned while the Organization of Chetniks for Freedom and Honour of the Fatherland was allowed to continue operating. Kosta Pećanac
Kosta Pecanac
Kosta Milovanović Pećanac was a Chetnik voivoda during the Second World War.-Origin:Kosta Milovanović was born in 1879, the exact date is not known as his military paper only has the year of birth. His father was a guardian of the Visoki Dečani monastery. His parents both died during an attack by...
was the organization's leader from 1932 up to the occupation of Yugoslavia in 1941.
Formation and ideology
In April 1941 the Germans and Italians invaded YugoslaviaInvasion of Yugoslavia
The Invasion of Yugoslavia , also known as the April War , was the Axis Powers' attack on the Kingdom of Yugoslavia which began on 6 April 1941 during World War II...
leading to the swift collapse of the Yugoslav state and the surrender of the Yugoslav army. Many Serbian detachments refused to surrender and took to the hills. The Chetnik tradition of paramilitary activity and outrage at Ustaše
Ustaše
The Ustaša - Croatian Revolutionary Movement was a Croatian fascist anti-Yugoslav separatist movement. The ideology of the movement was a blend of fascism, Nazism, and Croatian nationalism. The Ustaše supported the creation of a Greater Croatia that would span to the River Drina and to the border...
atrocities quickly attracted recruits to the Chetnik banner. The pre-war Chetnik leader Kosta Pećanac
Kosta Pecanac
Kosta Milovanović Pećanac was a Chetnik voivoda during the Second World War.-Origin:Kosta Milovanović was born in 1879, the exact date is not known as his military paper only has the year of birth. His father was a guardian of the Visoki Dečani monastery. His parents both died during an attack by...
soon came to an arrangement with Nedić's collaborationist regime
Nedic's Serbia
Serbia under German occupation refers to an administrative area in occupied Yugoslavia established by Nazi Germany following the invasion and dismantling of Yugoslavia in April of 1941...
in Serbia but Colonel Draža Mihailović
Draža Mihailovic
Dragoljub "Draža" Mihailović was a Yugoslav Serbian general during World War II...
set up his Chetnik headquarters in Ravna Gora and established contact with the Allies. It is these forces that are generally referred to as the Chetniks during World War II although the name was also used generally for other smaller groups. In June 1941, following Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the code name for Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that began on 22 June 1941. Over 4.5 million troops of the Axis powers invaded the USSR along a front., the largest invasion in the history of warfare...
the communist Partisans under Tito
Josip Broz Tito
Marshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...
organised an uprising and in the period between June and November 1941, the Chetniks and Partisans largely co-operated in anti-Axis activity.
Early activities
Chetnik leaders conducted a number of operations against Axis forces, some jointly with the Partisans. However, by September 1941 Mihailovic was advocating postponement of military action against the Germans, in contrast to the significant number of actions organised by the Partisans. According to Mihailovic the reason was humanitarian: the prevention of German reprisals against Serbs at the published rate of 100 civilians for every German soldier killed, 50 civilians for every soldier wounded. Nevertheless, in December 1941 the Yugoslav government in exile in London under King Peter II promoted him to Brigadier-General and named him commander of the Yugoslav Home Army. That same month the Germans launched an attack on Mihajlovic's forces in Ravna Gora and effectively routed the Chetniks from Serbia. The bulk of the Chetnik forces retreated into eastern BosniaBosnia (region)
Bosnia is a eponomous region of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It lies mainly in the Dinaric Alps, ranging to the southern borders of the Pannonian plain, with the rivers Sava and Drina marking its northern and eastern borders. The other eponomous region, the southern, other half of the country is...
and Sandžak
Sandžak
Sandžak also known as Raška is a historical region lying along the border between Serbia and Montenegro...
and the centre of Chetnik activity moved to the Independent State of Croatia
Independent State of Croatia
The Independent State of Croatia was a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany, established on a part of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. The NDH was founded on 10 April 1941, after the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers. All of Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed to NDH, together with some parts...
, a Nazi puppet state.
However, by this time Mihailovic had already asked the Germans for munitions to fight the communists. The Germans declined to negotiate, instead demanding unconditional surrender. The British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
liaison to Mihajlović advised London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
to stop supplying the Chetniks after their assistance in the German attack on Užice (see First anti-Partisan Offensive
First anti-partisan offensive
The First anti-Partisan Offensive, known in ex-Yugoslavia as the First Enemy Offensive , was the first major military confrontation on the Yugoslav Front of World War II. It was an offensive by German and collaborationist troops against the "Užice Republic", the first of a large number of...
), but Britain continued to do so.
From a relatively short time after Yugoslavia was invaded, the Chetniks enjoyed high-profile support from the American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
and received financial aid; American general Billy Mitchell's sister was one of the many Americans
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
that supported and/or financed the cause of the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland.
Operation Halyard
Operation HalyardOperation Halyard
Operation Halyard, also known as the Halyard Mission, was the largest Allied airlift operation behind enemy lines during World War II. A total of 512 allied airmen who had been downed over Nazi-occupied Serbia were rescued by Serbian Chetniks, led by General Draža Mihailović...
, In 1944, despite being abandoned by the Allied powers, the Chetniks of Mihailjovic rescued and evacuated 512 American pilots who had been shot down behind enemy lines.It was the largest Allied airlift operation behind enemy lines of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. Most of the airmen were shot down during bombing runs of oil fields in Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
. Most pilots were captured by Germans
Germans
The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....
and then rescued by Chetniks.
Axis offensives
Special Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive was a World War II organisation of the United Kingdom. It was officially formed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on 22 July 1940, to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Axis powers and to instruct and aid local...
(SOE) agents were sent to Yugoslavia to determine the facts on the ground
Facts on the ground
Facts on the ground is a diplomatic term that means the situation in reality as opposed to in the abstract. It originated in discussions of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, where it was used to refer to Israeli settlements built in the occupied West Bank, which were intended to establish permanent...
. In the meantime, the Germans, also aware of the growing importance of Yugoslavia, decided to wipe out the Partisans with determined offensives. The Chetniks, by this time, had agreed to provide support for the German operations, and were in turn granted supplies and munitions to increase their effectiveness.
The first of these large anti-Partisan offensives was Fall Weiss, also known as the Battle of Neretva. The Chetniks participated with a significant, 20,000-strong, force providing assistance to the German and Italian encirclement from the east (the far bank of the river Neretva
Neretva
Neretva is the largest river of the eastern part of the Adriatic basin. It has been harnessed and controlled to a large extent by four HE power-plants with large dams and their storage lakes, but it is still recognized for its natural beauty, diversity of its landscape and visual...
). However, Tito's Partisans managed to break through the encirclement, cross the river, and engage the Chetniks. The conflict resulted in a near-total Partisan victory, after which the Chetniks were almost entirely incapacitated in the area west of the Drina
Drina
The Drina is a 346 kilometer long river, which forms most of the border between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. It is the longest tributary of the Sava River and the longest karst river in the Dinaric Alps which belongs to the Danube river watershed...
river. The Partisans continued on, and later again escaped the Germans in the Battle of Sutjeska.
In the meantime, the Allies stopped planning an invasion of the Balkans and finally rescinded their support for the Chetniks and instead supplied the Partisans. At the Teheran Conference of 1943 and the Yalta Conference
Yalta Conference
The Yalta Conference, sometimes called the Crimea Conference and codenamed the Argonaut Conference, held February 4–11, 1945, was the wartime meeting of the heads of government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union, represented by President Franklin D...
of 1945, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
decided to split their influence in Yugoslavia in half.
Loss of support and final war years
To gather intelligenceMilitary intelligence
Military intelligence is a military discipline that exploits a number of information collection and analysis approaches to provide guidance and direction to commanders in support of their decisions....
, agents of the western Allies were infiltrated into both the Partisans and the Chetniks. The intelligence gathered by liaisons to the resistance groups was crucial to the success of supply missions and was the primary influence on Allied strategy in Yugoslavia. The search for intelligence ultimately resulted in the demise of the Chetniks and their eclipse by Tito’s Partisans. In 1942, though supplies were limited, token support was sent equally to each. The new year would bring a change. The Germans were executing Operation Schwarz (the Battle of Sutjeska, i.e., the Fifth anti-Partisan offensive), one of a series of offensives aimed at the resistance fighters, when F.W.D. Deakin
William Deakin
Frederick William Dampier Deakin, Sir William Deakin was a historian, World War II veteran, and literary assistant to Winston Churchill....
was sent by the British to gather information.
His reports contained two important observations. The first was that the Partisans were courageous and aggressive in battling the German 1st Mountain and 104th Light Division, had suffered significant casualties, and required support. The second observation was that the entire German 1st Mountain Division had transited from Russia on rail lines through Chetnik-controlled territory. British intercepts (Ultra) of German message traffic confirmed Chetnik timidity. All in all, intelligence reports resulted in increased Allied interest in Yugoslavia air operations, and a shift in policy. In September 1943, at Churchill’s request, Brigadier Fitzroy Maclean was parachuted to Tito’s headquarters near Drvar to serve as a permanent, formal liaison to the Partisans. While the Chetniks were still occasionally supplied, the Partisans received the bulk of all future support.
Thus, after the Tehran Conference
Tehran Conference
The Tehran Conference was the meeting of Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill between November 28 and December 1, 1943, most of which was held at the Soviet Embassy in Tehran, Iran. It was the first World War II conference amongst the Big Three in which Stalin was present...
the Partisans received official recognition as the legitimate national liberation force by the Allies
Allies of World War II
The Allies of World War II were the countries that opposed the Axis powers during the Second World War . Former Axis states contributing to the Allied victory are not considered Allied states...
, who subsequently set-up the RAF Balkan Air Force (under the influence and suggestion of Brigadier Fitzroy MacLean) with the aim to provide increased supplies and tactical air support for Marshal Tito's Partisan forces. On 14 August 1944, the Tito-Šubašić agreement
Tito-Šubašic Agreement
The Treaty of Vis , also known as the Tito-Šubašić Agreement, was an attempt by the Western Powers to merge the royal Yugoslav government in exile with the Communist-led Partisans who were fighting the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia in the Second World War and were de facto rulers on the liberated...
between Partisans and the Government in exile was signed on the island of Vis
Vis (island)
Vis is the most outerly lying larger Croatian island in the Adriatic Sea, and is part of the Central Dalmatian group of islands, with an area of 90.26 km² and a population of 3,617 . Of all the inhabited Croatian islands, it is the farthest from the coast...
. The document called on all Croats, Slovenes, and Serbs to join the Partisans. Mihailović and the Chetniks refused to accept the Royal Government's agreement and continued to engage the Partisans, by now the official Yugoslav Allied force. Consequently on 29 August 1944, King Peter II
Peter II of Yugoslavia
Peter II, also known as Peter II Karađorđević , was the third and last King of Yugoslavia...
dismissed Mihailović as Chief-of-Staff of the Yugoslav Army and on 12 September appointed Marshal Josip Broz Tito in his place. In late 1944, the leader of the Serbian fifth column
Fifth column
A fifth column is a group of people who clandestinely undermine a larger group such as a nation from within.-Origin:The term originated with a 1936 radio address by Emilio Mola, a Nationalist General during the 1936–39 Spanish Civil War...
, Milan Nedić
Milan Nedic
Milan Nedić was a Serbian general and politician, he was the chief of the general staff of the Yugoslav Army, minister of war in the Royal Yugoslav Government and the prime minister of a Nazi-backed Serbian puppet government during World War II.After the war, Yugoslav communist authorities...
, transferred all fascist Serbian troops under his command to Mihailović.
Throughout the war the Chetniks were nevertheless involved in operations in which Allied (mostly United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
) airmen were rescued and sheltered from the occupation forces. The largest of these operations came to be Operation Halyard
Operation Halyard
Operation Halyard, also known as the Halyard Mission, was the largest Allied airlift operation behind enemy lines during World War II. A total of 512 allied airmen who had been downed over Nazi-occupied Serbia were rescued by Serbian Chetniks, led by General Draža Mihailović...
, which took place shortly before the Chetnik movement was destroyed in 1945. Due to the efforts of Major Richard L. Felman
Richard L. Felman
Richard L. Felman was a distinguished officer in the United States Air Force who flew combat missions during World War II and the Korean War, receiving 27 awards and decorations over the course of his military career....
, President Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...
posthumously awarded Mihailović the "Legion of Merit
Legion of Merit
The Legion of Merit is a military decoration of the United States armed forces that is awarded for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services and achievements...
", for the rescue of American Airmen (Operation Airbridge
Operation Halyard
Operation Halyard, also known as the Halyard Mission, was the largest Allied airlift operation behind enemy lines during World War II. A total of 512 allied airmen who had been downed over Nazi-occupied Serbia were rescued by Serbian Chetniks, led by General Draža Mihailović...
). This award was classified secret by the United States Department of State
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
so as not to offend Yugoslavs
Yugoslavs
Yugoslavs is a national designation used by a minority of South Slavs across the countries of the former Yugoslavia and in the diaspora...
.
Finally, in April and May 1945, as the victorious Partisans took possession of the country's territory, many Chetniks retreated toward Italy and a smaller group toward Austria. Many were captured by the Partisans or returned to Yugoslavia by British forces while a number were killed afterwards at Bleiburg
Bleiburg massacre
The Bleiburg massacre, which also encompasses Operation Keelhaul is a term encompassing events that took place during mid-May 1945 near the Carinthian town of Bleiburg, itself some four kilometres from the Austrian-Slovenian border....
. Some were tried for treason and were sentenced to prison terms or death. Many were summarily executed, especially in the first months after the end of the war. Mihailović and his few remaining followers tried to fight their way back to the Ravna Gora, but he was captured by Partisan forces. In March 1946, Mihailović was brought to Belgrade
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
, where he was tried and executed on charges of treason in July. During the closing years of World War II, many Chetniks defected from their units, as the Partisan commander-in-chief, Marshal Josip Broz Tito, proclaimed a general amnesty to all defecting forces for a time.
Slovene Chetniks
Besides Partisans in Slovenia, during World War II there was also a movement of Slovene Chetniks (Jugoslovanska vojska v domovini).After the occupation of Yugoslavia, a number of Slovene soldiers from the dissolved Yugoslav royal army organized themselves as resistance fighters against the German occupation. They were organized as the Slovene branch of Mihajlović's "Yugoslav Army in the Homeland". Their goal was restoration of the Yugoslav monarchy, and expansion of Slovene territory. The leader of the Slovene Chetniks was Karl Novak, and a subordinate to general Mihajlović.
Created in 1941, the Slovene Chetniks originally had around 300.-600. fighters and their number later increased to 2.000. fighters.
They were organized into several groups:
1. "Primorski" under command of captain Ratomir Cotić.
2. "Gorenjski" under command of colonel Jože Hlebc.
3. "Centralni četniški odred" under command of captain Milan Kranjc.
4. "Štajerski" under command of sergeant (later lieutenant) Jože Melaherj.
Other notable commanders were vice-colonel Ernest Peterlin - Logar, colonel Vladimir Vauhnik, Ivan Prezelj, Anton Kokalj - Tonči and naval captain Andrej Klinar - Hren.
After victory by Tito's partisans, most Slovene Chetnik soldiers and commanders fled to Italy. Since most Slovene Chetnik commanders worked for SOE
Special Operations Executive
The Special Operations Executive was a World War II organisation of the United Kingdom. It was officially formed by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Minister of Economic Warfare Hugh Dalton on 22 July 1940, to conduct guerrilla warfare against the Axis powers and to instruct and aid local...
,during the war, they continued to work for British and US intelligence after the war.
Croat Chetniks
During World War II a number of ethnic Croats participated in various Chetnik units, mostly in Dalmatia. Many of those Croats were Yugoslav monarchists, pan-Slavists, anti-communists, and members of pre–World War II ORJUNAORJUNA
ORJUNA, ОРЈУНА, the commonly used acronym for Organizacija Jugoslavenskih Nacionalista, Организација Југославенских Националиста , was a political organization during the 1920s in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. It was the foremost fascist movement in interwar Yugoslavia...
organization. Two Chetnik battalions - "Splitsko-šibenički četnički bataljon" and "Odred vojvode Birčanina" were mostly dominated by ethnic Croats. Most famous Croat Chetnik commanders were people like captain Krešimir Vranić (leader of second Chetnik detachment, dominated by Croats), Ivo Jankov, colonel Anton Šuster from Sušak and lieutenant Niko Lazarić from island of Krk
Krk
Krk is a Croatian island in the northern Adriatic Sea, located near Rijeka in the Bay of Kvarner and part of the Primorje-Gorski Kotar county....
.
Muslim Chetniks
Also, a large amount of Yugoslav Muslims fought for the Chetniks. Some Chetnik officers were Muslim, such as Dr. Abdulah Kemura, Colonel Mustafa Sailhbegovic, and others. The Chetnik Sandzak corps was the corps with the most Muslim Chetnik fighters. It operated around South Serbia and Kosovo and Metohija. Most of the Muslims who were in the Chetniks were anti-communists, ORJUNA members, royalists, or former royal Yugoslav army soldiers.In 1943 the Chetniks actively attempted to enlist more Muslims into their ranks. Fehim Musakadic became the commander of Muslim Chetnik units.Other prominent Muslim Chetniks were Ismet Pupovac and Mustafa Mulagic. At the end of 1943, numbering about 4,000, Muslims comprised some eight percent of the total Chetnik forces.
Bulgarian Chetniks
Bulgarian chetniks were active during the Liberation of BulgariaLiberation of Bulgaria
In Bulgarian historiography, the term Liberation of Bulgaria is used to denote the events of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 that led to the re-establishment of Bulgarian state with the Treaty of San Stefano of March 3, 1878, after the complete conquest of the Second Bulgarian Empire, which...
from Ottoman rule as members of the Bulgarian Legion
Bulgarian Legion
The Bulgarian Legion was the name of two military bands formed by Bulgarian volunteers and revolutionary workers in the Serbian capital of Belgrade in the second part of the 19th century...
s, Internal Revolutionary Organisation
Internal Revolutionary Organisation
The Internal Revolutionary Organisation or IRO was a Bulgarian revolutionary organisation founded and built up by Bulgarian revolutionary Vasil Levski in the period between 1869 and 1871. The organisation represented a network of regional revolutionary committees which were governed by a Central...
, Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, Internal Thracian Revolutionary Organisation
Internal Thracian Revolutionary Organisation
The Internal Thracian Revolutionary Organisation , ITRO, was a Bulgarian revolutionary organisation active in Western Thrace and southern Bulgaria between 1920 and 1934.The reason for the establishment of ITRO was the deplorable situation of the Thracian Bulgarians in...
. Afterwards chetniks were called members of the Bulgarian resistance movement during World War II
Bulgarian resistance movement during World War II
The Bulgarian resistance movement was part of the anti-Axis resistance during World War II. It consisted of armed and unarmed actions of resistance groups against the Wehrmacht forces in Bulgaria and the Kingdom of Bulgaria authorities. It was mainly communist and pro-Soviet Union...
and also the Goryani
Goryani
The Goryani Movement or Goryanstvo were an active guerrilla resistance against the Bulgarian communist regime. It began immediately after the Ninth of September coup d'état in 1944 which opened the way to communist rule in Bulgaria, reached its peak between 1947 and 1954, subsided by the late...
.
Axis collaboration
Throughout the War, the Chetnik movement remained mostly inactive against the occupation forces, and increasingly collaboratedCollaborationism
Collaborationism is cooperation with enemy forces against one's country. Legally, it may be considered as a form of treason. Collaborationism may be associated with criminal deeds in the service of the occupying power, which may include complicity with the occupying power in murder, persecutions,...
with the Axis, eventually losing its international recognition as the Yugoslav resistance force. After a brief initial period of cooperation, the Partisans and the Chetniks quickly started fighting against each other. Gradually, the Chetniks ended up primarily fighting the Partisans instead of the occupation forces, and started cooperating with the Axis in a struggle to destroy the resistance
Resistance during World War II
Resistance movements during World War II occurred in every occupied country by a variety of means, ranging from non-cooperation, disinformation and propaganda to hiding crashed pilots and even to outright warfare and the recapturing of towns...
, receiving increasing amounts of logistical assistance. Mihailović admitted to a British colonel that the Chetniks' principal enemies were "the partisans, the Ustasha, the Muslims, the Croats and last the Germans and Italians" in that order.
At the start of the conflict, Chetnik forces were merely relatively inactive towards the occupation, and had contacts and negotiations with the Partisans. This changed when the talks broke down, and they proceeded to attack the latter (who were actively fighting the Germans), while continuing to engage the Axis only in minor skirmishes. Attacking the Germans provoked strong retaliation and the Chetniks increasingly started to negotiate with them. Negotiations with the occupiers were aided by the gtwo sides' mutual goal of destroying the Partisans. This collaboration first appeared during the operations on the Partisan "Užice Republic", where Chetniks played a part in the general Axis attack.
Collaboration with the Italians
Chetnik collaboration with the occupation forces of fascist Italy took place in three main areas: in Italian-occupied (and Italian-annexed) DalmatiaDalmatia
Dalmatia is a historical region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. It stretches from the island of Rab in the northwest to the Bay of Kotor in the southeast. The hinterland, the Dalmatian Zagora, ranges from fifty kilometers in width in the north to just a few kilometers in the south....
; in the Italian puppet state of Montenegro
Kingdom of Montenegro (1941-1944)
The Kingdom of Montenegro or the Independent State of Montenegro existed from 1941 to 1943 as a puppet protectorate of Fascist Italy, a component of the envisioned Italian Empire...
; and in German and Italian-occupied Slovenia. The collaboration in Dalmatia and parts of Bosnia was the most widespread. The split between Partisans and Chetniks took place earlier in those areas.
The Partisans considered all occupation forces to be "the fascist enemy," while the Chetniks hated the Ustaše but balked at fighting the Italians, and had approached the Italian VI Army Corps (General Renzo Dalmazzo, Commander) as early as July and August 1941 for assistance, via a Serbian politician from Lika
Lika
Lika is a mountainous region in central Croatia, roughly bound by the Velebit mountain from the southwest and the Plješevica mountain from the northeast. On the north-west end Lika is bounded by Ogulin-Plaški basin, and on the south-east by the Malovan pass...
, Stevo Rađenović. In particular, Chetnik vojvodas ("leaders") Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin
Ilija Trifunovic-Bircanin
Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin was a Serbian Chetnik military commander with the title of Voivode.-Early life:Born in Topola in 1877, Trifunović-Birčanin served as a volunteer on the Macedonian side in the Balkan Wars, as well as in the First World War on the eastern front against Bulgaria...
and Dobroslav Jevđević were favorably disposed towards the Italians, because they believed Italian occupation over the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina would be detrimental to the influence of the Ustaše state
Independent State of Croatia
The Independent State of Croatia was a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany, established on a part of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. The NDH was founded on 10 April 1941, after the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers. All of Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed to NDH, together with some parts...
. For this reason, they sought an alliance with the Italian occupation forces in Yugoslavia. The Italians (esepcially General Dalamazzo) looked favorably on these approaches and hoped to first avoid fighting the Chetniks, and then use them against the Partisans, a strategy which they thought would give them an "enormous advantage". An agreement was concluded on January 11, 1942 between the representative of the Italian 2nd Army, Captain Angelo De Matteis and the Chetnik representative for southeastern Bosnia, Mutimir Petković, and was later signed by Draža Mihailović's chief delegate in Bosnia, Major Boško Todorović. Among other provisions of the agreement, it was agreed that the Italians would support Chetnik formations with arms and provisions, and would facilitate the release of "recommended individuals" from Axis concentration camps (Jasenovac
Jasenovac concentration camp
Jasenovac concentration camp was the largest extermination camp in the Independent State of Croatia and occupied Yugoslavia during World War II...
, Rab
Rab concentration camp
The Rab concentration camp was an Italian concentration and internment camp on the Adriatic island of Rab, now part of the Republic of Croatia, during World War II. The camp was located at...
...). The chief interest of both the Chetniks and Italians would be to assist each other in combating Partisan-led resistance.
In the following months of 1942, General Mario Roatta
Mario Roatta
Mario Roatta was an Italian general, Mussolini's Chief-of-Staff, and head of the military secret service.-SIM:From 1934 to 1936, Roatta headed up the Italian Military Intelligence Service .-Spain:...
, commander of the Italian 2nd Army, worked on developing a Linea di condotta ("Policy Directive") on relations with Chetniks, Ustaše and Partisans. In line with these efforts, General Vittorio Ambrosio
Vittorio Ambrosio
Vittorio Ambrosio was an Italian general who served in the Italo-Turkish War, World War I, and World War II...
outlined the Italian policy in Yugoslavia: All negotiations with the (quisling) Ustaše were to be avoided, but contacts with the Chetniks were "advisable." As for the Partisans, it was to be "struggle to the bitter end". This meant that General Roatta was essentially free to take action with regard to the Chetniks as he saw fit.
He outlined the four points of his policy in his report to the Italian Army General Staff:
During 1942 and 1943, an overwhelming proportion of Chetnik forces in the Italian-controlled areas of occupied Yugoslavia were organized as Italian auxiliary forces in the form of the Anti-Communist Volunteer Militia
Anti-Communist Volunteer Militia
The White Guard was a name given colloquially and collectively by the Partisans to an ensemble of Slovene anti-communist political and paramilitary groups during World War II...
(Milizia volontaria anti comunista, MVAC). According to General Giacomo Zanussi (then a Colonel and Roatta's chief of staff), there were 19,000 to 20,000 Chetniks in the MVAC in Italian-occupied parts of the Independent State of Croatia
Independent State of Croatia
The Independent State of Croatia was a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany, established on a part of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. The NDH was founded on 10 April 1941, after the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers. All of Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed to NDH, together with some parts...
alone. The Chetniks were extensively supplied with thousands of rifles, grenades, mortars and artillery pieces. In a memorandum dated March 26, 1943 to the Italian Army General Staff, entitled "The Conduct of the Chetniks", Italian officers noted the ultimate control of these collaborating Chetnik units remained in the hands of Draža Mihailović, and contemplated the possibility of a hostile reorientation of these troops in light of the changing strategic situation. The commander of these troops was vojvoda Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin
Ilija Trifunovic-Bircanin
Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin was a Serbian Chetnik military commander with the title of Voivode.-Early life:Born in Topola in 1877, Trifunović-Birčanin served as a volunteer on the Macedonian side in the Balkan Wars, as well as in the First World War on the eastern front against Bulgaria...
, who arrived in Italian-annexed Split
Split (city)
Split is a Mediterranean city on the eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea, centered around the ancient Roman Palace of the Emperor Diocletian and its wide port bay. With a population of 178,192 citizens, and a metropolitan area numbering up to 467,899, Split is by far the largest Dalmatian city and...
in October 1941 and received his orders directly from Mihailović in the spring of 1942.
The Chetnik-Italian collaboration lasted until the Italian capitulation on September 8, 1943, when Chetnik troops switched to supporting the German occupation in trying to force the Partisans out of the coastal cities which the Partisans liberated after the Italian withdrawal. The German 114th Jäger Division
114th Jäger Division
114th Jäger Division was a German Infantry Division of World War II. It was formed in April 1943, following the reorganization and redesignation of the 714th Infantry Division. The 714th Division had been formed in May 1941, and transferred to Yugoslavia to conduct anti partisan and Internal...
even incorporated a Chetnik detachment in its advance to the Adriatic
Adriatic Sea
The Adriatic Sea is a body of water separating the Italian Peninsula from the Balkan peninsula, and the system of the Apennine Mountains from that of the Dinaric Alps and adjacent ranges...
.
Collaboration with the NDH
After the 1941 split between the Partisans and the Chetniks in Serbia, the Chetnik groups in central, eastern, and northwestern BosniaBosnia (region)
Bosnia is a eponomous region of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It lies mainly in the Dinaric Alps, ranging to the southern borders of the Pannonian plain, with the rivers Sava and Drina marking its northern and eastern borders. The other eponomous region, the southern, other half of the country is...
found themselves caught between the German and Ustaše (NDH) forces on one side and the Partisans on the other. In early 1942 Chetnik Major Jezdimir Dangić
Jezdimir Dangic
Jezdimir "Jezda" Dangić was a Bosnian Serb lawyer and gendarmerie officer. During World War II he was a member of the Chetnik movement.- Early life :...
approached the Germans in an attempt to arrive at an understanding, but was unsuccessful, and the local Chetnik leaders were forced to look for another solution. The Chetnik groups were in fundamental disagreement with the Ustaše on practically all issues, but they found a common enemy in the Partisans, and this was the overriding reason for the collaboration which ensued between the Ustaše authorities of the Independent State of Croatia
Independent State of Croatia
The Independent State of Croatia was a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany, established on a part of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. The NDH was founded on 10 April 1941, after the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers. All of Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed to NDH, together with some parts...
(NDH) and Chetnik detachments in Bosnia. The first formal agreement between Bosnian Chetniks and the Ustaše was concluded on May 28, 1942, in which Chetnik leaders expressed their loyalty as "citizens of the Independent State of Croatia" both to the state and its Poglavnik (Ante Pavelić
Ante Pavelic
Ante Pavelić was a Croatian fascist leader, revolutionary, and politician. He ruled as Poglavnik or head, of the Independent State of Croatia , a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia...
). During the next three weeks, three additional agreements were signed, covering a large part of the area of Bosnia (along with the Chetnik detachments within it). By the provision of these agreements, the Chetniks were to cease hostilities against the Ustaše state, and the Ustaše would establish regular administration in these areas. The Chetniks recognized the sovereignty of the Independent State of Croatia and became a legalized movement in it. The main provision, Art. 5 of the agreement, states as follows:
The necessary ammunition and provisions were supplied to the Chetniks by the Ustaše military. Chetniks who were wounded in such operations would be cared for in NDH hospitals, while the orphans and widows of Chetniks killed in action would be supported by the Ustaše state. Persons specifically recommended by Chetnik commanders would be returned home from the Ustaše concentration camps (Jasenovac concentration camp
Jasenovac concentration camp
Jasenovac concentration camp was the largest extermination camp in the Independent State of Croatia and occupied Yugoslavia during World War II...
). These agreements covered the majority of Chetnik forces in Bosnia east of the German-Italian demarcation line, and lasted throughout most of the war. Since Croatian forces were immediately subordinate to the German military occupation, collaboration with Croatian forces was, in fact, indirect collaboration with the Germans.
Battle of the Neretva
One of the highpoints of Chetnik collaboration with the Axis took place during the Battle of the Neretva, which was the final phase of operation Fall Weiss or the Fourth Enemy Offensive. In 1942, Partisans forces were on the rise, having established large liberated territories within Bosnia and Herzegovina. Chetnik forces, partially because of their collaboration with the Italian occupation, were also gaining in strength, however, but were no match to the Partisans and required Axis logistical support to attack the liberated territories. In light of the changing strategic situation, Adolf Hitler and the German high command decided to disarm the Chetniks and destroy the Partisans for good. In spite of Hitler's insistence, Italian forces in the end refused to disarm the Chetniks (thus rendering that course of action impossible), under the justification that the Italian occupation forces could not afford to lose the Chetniks as allies in their maintenance of the occupation.Collaboration with the Germans
114th Jäger Division
114th Jäger Division was a German Infantry Division of World War II. It was formed in April 1943, following the reorganization and redesignation of the 714th Infantry Division. The 714th Division had been formed in May 1941, and transferred to Yugoslavia to conduct anti partisan and Internal...
even incorporated a Chetnik detachment in its advance to retake the Adriatic coast from the Partisans who had temporarily liberated it. The report on German-Chetnik collaboration of the XV Army Corps on November 19, 1943 to the 2nd Panzer Army states that the Chetniks were "leaning on the German forces" for close to a year.
German-Chetnik collaboration entered a new phase after the Italian surrender, because the Germans now had to police a much larger area than before and fight the Partisans in the whole of Yugoslavia. Consequently, they significantly liberalized their policy towards the Chetniks and mobilized all Serbian nationalist forces against the Partisans. The 2nd Panzer Army oversaw these developments: the XV Army Corps was now officially allowed to utilize Chetniks troops and forge a "local alliance". The first formal and direct agreement between the German occupation forces and the Chetniks took place in early October 1943 between the 373rd Infantry Division and a detachment of Chetniks under Mane Rokvić operating in western Bosnia and Lika. The Germans subsequently even used Chetnik troops for guard duty in occupied Split
Split (city)
Split is a Mediterranean city on the eastern shores of the Adriatic Sea, centered around the ancient Roman Palace of the Emperor Diocletian and its wide port bay. With a population of 178,192 citizens, and a metropolitan area numbering up to 467,899, Split is by far the largest Dalmatian city and...
, Dubrovnik
Dubrovnik
Dubrovnik is a Croatian city on the Adriatic Sea coast, positioned at the terminal end of the Isthmus of Dubrovnik. It is one of the most prominent tourist destinations on the Adriatic, a seaport and the centre of Dubrovnik-Neretva county. Its total population is 42,641...
, Šibenik
Šibenik
Šibenik is a historic town in Croatia, with population of 51,553 . It is located in central Dalmatia where the river Krka flows into the Adriatic Sea...
, and Metković
Metkovic
Metković is a city in the Dubrovnik-Neretva county of Croatia, located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the river Neretva and on the border with Herzegovina.-Demographics:...
. Independent State of Croatia
Independent State of Croatia
The Independent State of Croatia was a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany, established on a part of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. The NDH was founded on 10 April 1941, after the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers. All of Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed to NDH, together with some parts...
(NDH) troops were not used, despite Ustaše demands, because mass desertions of Croat troops to the Partisans rendered them unreliable. From this point on, the German occupation actually started to "openly favor" Chetnik (Serbian
Serbs
The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...
) troops to the Croat
Croats
Croats are a South Slavic ethnic group mostly living in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and nearby countries. There are around 4 million Croats living inside Croatia and up to 4.5 million throughout the rest of the world. Responding to political, social and economic pressure, many Croats have...
formations of the NDH, due to the pro-Partisan dispositions of the Croatian rank-and-file. The Germans paid little attention to frequent Ustaše protests about this.
Ustaše Major Mirko Blaž (Deputy Commander, 7th Brigade of the Poglavnik
Poglavnik
Poglavnik was the title used by Ante Pavelić, leader of World War II Croatian fascist movement Ustaše and of the Independent State of Croatia between 1941 and 1945.-Etymology and usage:...
's Personal Guard) observed that:
When appraising the situation in western Serbia, Bosnia
Bosnia (region)
Bosnia is a eponomous region of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It lies mainly in the Dinaric Alps, ranging to the southern borders of the Pannonian plain, with the rivers Sava and Drina marking its northern and eastern borders. The other eponomous region, the southern, other half of the country is...
, Lika
Lika
Lika is a mountainous region in central Croatia, roughly bound by the Velebit mountain from the southwest and the Plješevica mountain from the northeast. On the north-west end Lika is bounded by Ogulin-Plaški basin, and on the south-east by the Malovan pass...
, and Dalmatia
Dalmatia
Dalmatia is a historical region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. It stretches from the island of Rab in the northwest to the Bay of Kotor in the southeast. The hinterland, the Dalmatian Zagora, ranges from fifty kilometers in width in the north to just a few kilometers in the south....
, Captain Merrem, intelligence officer with the German commander-in-chief southeastern Europe, was "full of praise" for Chetnik units collaborating with the Germans, and for the smooth relations between the Germans and Chetnik units on the ground.
In addition, the Chief of Staff of the 2nd Panzer Army observed in a letter to the Ustaše liaison officer that the Chetniks fighting the Partisans in Eastern Bosnia were "making a worthwhile contribution to the Croatian state", and that the 2nd Army "refused in principle" to accept Croatian complaints against the usage of these units. German-Chetnik Collaboration continued to take place until the very end of the war, with the tacit approval of Draža Mihailović and the Chetnik Supreme Command in Serbia. Though Mihailović himself never actually signed any agreements, he endorsed the policy for the purpose of eliminating the Partisan threat.
Field Marshal Maximilian von Weichs
Maximilian von Weichs
Maximilian Maria Joseph Karl Gabriel Lamoral Reichsfreiherr von Weichs zu Glon was a German Generalfeldmarschall during World War II. He was also a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves...
commented:
The loss of Allied support in 1943 caused the Chetniks to lean more than ever towards the Germans for assistance against the Partisans. On 14 August 1944, the Tito-Šubašić agreement
Tito-Šubašic Agreement
The Treaty of Vis , also known as the Tito-Šubašić Agreement, was an attempt by the Western Powers to merge the royal Yugoslav government in exile with the Communist-led Partisans who were fighting the Axis occupation of Yugoslavia in the Second World War and were de facto rulers on the liberated...
between the Partisans and the Yugoslav King Peter II
Peter II of Yugoslavia
Peter II, also known as Peter II Karađorđević , was the third and last King of Yugoslavia...
and government-in-exile was signed on the island of Vis
Vis (island)
Vis is the most outerly lying larger Croatian island in the Adriatic Sea, and is part of the Central Dalmatian group of islands, with an area of 90.26 km² and a population of 3,617 . Of all the inhabited Croatian islands, it is the farthest from the coast...
. The document called on all Croats, Slovenes, and Serbs to join the Partisans. Mihailović and the Chetniks refused to follow the order and abide by the agreement and continued to engage the Partisans (by now the official Yugoslav Allied force). Consequently on 29 August 1944, King Peter II dismissed Mihailović as Chief-of-Staff of the Yugoslav Army and on 12 September appointed Marshal Josip Broz Tito in his place. Josip Broz Tito at this point became the Prime Minister of the Yugoslav state and the joint government.
Collaboration with Nedić's Serbia
In occupied SerbiaNedic's Serbia
Serbia under German occupation refers to an administrative area in occupied Yugoslavia established by Nazi Germany following the invasion and dismantling of Yugoslavia in April of 1941...
, the Germans initially installed Milan Aćimović
Milan Acimovic
Milan Aćimović was a Serbian politician and Axis collaborator.Aćimović was an attorney by profession. He was at one point chief of the Belgrade police and minister of internal affairs in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia government....
, as leader, but later replaced him with General Milan Nedić
Milan Nedic
Milan Nedić was a Serbian general and politician, he was the chief of the general staff of the Yugoslav Army, minister of war in the Royal Yugoslav Government and the prime minister of a Nazi-backed Serbian puppet government during World War II.After the war, Yugoslav communist authorities...
, former minister of war, who governed until 1944. Aćimović instead later served as the key liaison between the Germans and the Chetniks. In the second half of August 1941, prior to Nedić assuming power, the Germans arranged with Kosta Pećanac for the transfer of several thousand of his Chetniks to serve as auxiliaries for the Serbian gendarmerie. Collaboration between the Nedić administration and Mihailović's Chetniks began in fall of 1941 and lasted until the end of German occupation. Nedić was initially firmly opposed to Mihailović and the Chetniks. On September 4, 1941, Mihailović sent Major Aleksandar Mišić and Miodrag Pavlović to enter a meeting with Nedić and nothing was accomplished. After Mihailović shifted his policy of mild cooperation with the Partisans to becoming hostile to them and seizure of anti-German activity in late October 1941, Nedić relaxed his opposition. On October 15, Colonel Milorad Popović
Milorad Popovic
Milorad Popović was a Serbian football defender who played for OFK Beograd during most of his career. Popović also played two seasons in Germany for 1. FC Nuremberg and Karlsruher SC.Popović died in Ruma from testicular cancer at the age of 27 years...
, acting on behalf of Nedić, gave Mihailović about 500,000 dinars (in addition to an equal amount given on October 4) to persuade the Chetniks to collaborate. On October 26, 1941, Popović gave an additional 2,500,000 dinars. By mid-November 1941, Mihailović put 2,000 of his men under Nedić's direct command and shortly later these men joined the Germans in a anti-Partisan operation. When the Germans launched Operation Mihailović
Operation Mihailović
Operation Mihailović was the codename for the final German anti-guerrilla offensive to suppress the Serbian Chetnik detachments of the Yugoslav Army, headed by Colonel Dragoljub Mihailović in the area of Šumadija, in the German occupation zone of Serbia...
on December 6-7, 1941, with the intent of capturing Mihailović and removing his headquarters in Ravna Gora, he escaped, probably because he was warned of the attack by Aćimović on December 5. In June 1942, Mihailović left Serbia to Montenegro and became out of contact with the Nedić authorities until returning in June. Subsequently, in the fall of 1942 the Chetniks of Mihailović (and Pećanac) that were legalized in Nedić's Serbia were dissolved. By 1943, Nedić feared that the Chetniks would become the primary collaborator with the Germans and after the Chetniks murdered Ceka Đorđević, deputy minister of internal affairs, in March 1944 he co-opted to replace him with a prominent Chetnik in the hopes of quelling the rivalry. A report prepared in April 1944 by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...
commented that:
In mid-August 1944, Mihailović, Nedić, and Dragomir Jovanović
Dragomir Jovanovic
Dragomir Dragi Jovanović was a Serbian politician and Axis collaborator.Jovanović finished a law degree at the University of Belgrade's Law School. He received a job as a police officer in the city...
met in the village of Ražani secretly where Nedić agreed to give one hundred million dinars for wages and to request from the Germans arms and ammunition for Mihailović. On September 6, 1944, under the authority of the Germans and formalization by Nedić, Mihailović took command over the entire military force of Nedić's Serbia, including the Serbian State Guard, Serbian Volunteer Corps, and the Serbian Border Guard.
Ethnic conflict and terror tactics
- See also Ethnic cleansingEthnic cleansingEthnic cleansing is a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic orreligious group from certain geographic areas....
and Draža Mihailović: Ethnic conflict and terror tactics
Chetnik ideology revolved around the notion of a Greater Serbia within the borders of Yugoslavia, to be created out of all territories in which Serbs were found, even if the numbers were small. This goal had long been the foundation of the movement for a Greater Serbia. During the Axis occupation, however, the notion of clearing or "cleansing" these territories was introduced, largely in response to the massacres of Serbs by the Ustaše in the Independent State of Croatia.
Prior to the outbreak of World War II, use of terror tactics had a long tradition in the area as various oppressed groups sought their freedom and atrocities were committed by all parties engaged in conflict in Yugoslavia. During the early stages of the occupation, the Ustaše had also recruited a number of Muslims to aid in the persecutions of the Serbs, and even though only a relatively small number of Croats and Muslims engaged in these activities, and many opposed them, those actions initiated a cycle of violence and retribution between the Catholics, Orthodox and Muslims, as each sought to rid the others from the territories they controlled. In particular, Ustaše ideologues were concerned with the large Serbian minority in the NDH, and initiated acts of terror on a wide scale in May 1941, and by July, even the Germans protested the brutality of these actions. Reprisals followed, as in the case of Nevesinje, where Serb peasants staged an uprising in response to the persecution, drove out the Ustaše militia, but then engaged in reprisals killing hundreds of Croats and Muslims.
In the summer of 1941, the Rava Gora Movement had attracted a small number of Serbia intellectuals who developed a political ideology for the Chetniks. Stevan Moljević believed that Serbs should not repeat the mistakes of World War I by failing to define the borders of Serbia, and proposed that at the end of World War II Serbs should take control of all territories to which they laid claim, and from that position negotiate the form of a federally organized Yugoslavia. This plan required the relocation of non-Serbs from Serbian controlled territories and other shifts of populations. He produced a document, Homogenous Serbia, which articulated these notions. These proposals were very similar to those later formulated by the Belgrade Chetnik Committee and presented to the Government in Exile in September 1941, in which the Chetniks set forth specific figures in regard to population shifts. Over one million Serbs were to be brought into newly acquired territories, while over 2.5 million people were to be expelled in order to create an "ethnically pure" Greater Serbia comprising Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Vojvodina. The Sandžak was to be cleansed of the Muslim population, and both Bosnia and Herzegovina were to be cleansed of the Muslim and Croat populations.
A series of instructions attributed to Mihailović contained similar language, although the authenticity of the document is disputed—there is no original and it may have been a forgery made by Đurišić to suit his purposes.
The Chetnik Dinara Division created a similar program in March 1942, which, like the instructions attributed to Mihailovic, propose a Greater Serbia with a corridor between Herzegovina, northern Dalmatia, Bosnia, and Lika to Slovenia, and cleansing of these areas of non Serbian populations. This was accepted a month later by the military leaders of these areas. This document continued additional formulations of strategy, including collaboration with Italian forces as a modus vivendi, formation of Croatian Chetnik units as part of a continuing struggle against the Partisans, Domobrans and Ustaše. This document also proposed decent treatment of the Muslim population in order to keep them from joining the Partisan forces, and noted that the Muslims could later be eliminated.
In the fall of 1942, a program was fomulated at a Conference of Young Chetnik Intellectuals of Montenegro, which also proposed a unified Yugoslavia consisting only of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, exclusion of other ethnic groups, which was to be controlled by the Chetnik forces with the endorsment of the King, as well as agrarian and political reforms, nationalization of banking and wholesale trade, and increased propaganda to promote Chetnik ideology. Mihailović was not present, but was represented by his subordinate commanders Ostojic, Lasic, and Đurišić. Đurišić played the dominant role at this conference.
Some of the directives associated with cleansing of non-Serbs were later incorporated into a manual prepared by Chetnik military leaders in late 1942, which detailed a three phased approach and the military structure to be used during the war. The manual argued that both the Serbs and the Croats had been politically victimized in the period between the two world wars, and the unproven notion that in Serbia and especially in Belgrade, Croats held the upper hand in the government. Except for the Ustaše, Croats were not seen as the enemies of the Serbs, and a goal was set for the incorporation of Croatian forces under Chetnik leadership. Ustaše,on the other hand, were to be summarily executed. The question of shifting populations and religious conversion of the Croats was to be left aside until the Serbs had assumed power in Yugoslavia. Revenge was incorporated into the Chetnik manual as a "...sacred duty of the Serbian people against those who had wronged them during the war and occupation".
Throughout the war, the Chetniks engaged in a series of massacres carried out against Muslims in southeastern Bosnia, especially in the area in and around Foča, and in Sandžak. In the winter of 1941/1942, approximately 2000 Muslims were killed. Actions of greater severity were carried out in the area of Foča in August 1942, and further escalations occurred in January and February 1943, which the Chetniks justified as punitive actions in response to claimed attacks by Muslims against Serbian villages. In the latter action, Chetnik units from Montenegro engaged in "cleansing actions" against the Muslims of Foča and Sandžak, in which an estimated 10,000 Muslims were killed. Đurišić had been in charge of these operations and in his reports to Mihailović, he indicated that about 9000 of the dead were the old, women, and children, and the villages and property not seized by the Chetniks were destroyed. Losses would likely have been higher had not large number of Muslims already fled the area. Actions against the Croats were of a smaller scale but similar in action, and the violence against civilian Croat and Muslim populations were severe enough that the Italian General Roatta threatened to stop supplying the Chetniks if the attacks continued. Although many of these actions were justified as reprisals, they were consistent with the orders for ethnic cleansing actions attributed to Mihailović and regarded by the Chetniks as a response to the large scale "crimes against humanity" initiated by the Ustaše.
The Partisans were also targets of terror tactics. In Serbia, Chetniks killed an unknown number of Partisans, their families and sympathizers, on ideological grounds. During the summer of 1942, using names supplied by Mihailović, lists of individual Nedić and Ljotić supporters to be assassinated or threatened were broadcast over BBC radio during news programming in Serbo-Croatian. Once the British discovered this, the broadcasts of these lists were halted, although this did not prevent the Chetniks from continuing the assassinations.
SFR Yugoslavia
After the end of World War II, the Chetniks were banned in the new Socialist Federal Republic of YugoslaviaSocialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was the Yugoslav state that existed from the abolition of the Yugoslav monarchy until it was dissolved in 1992 amid the Yugoslav Wars. It was a socialist state and a federation made up of six socialist republics: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia,...
. On 29 November 1945, King Peter II was deposed by the Yugoslav Constituent Assembly after an overwhelming referendum result. Chetnik leaders either escaped the country or were arrested by the authorities. On 13 March 1946, Draža Mihailović was captured by OZNA, the Yugoslav security agency
Security agency
A security agency is a governmental organization which conducts intelligence activities for the internal security of a nation. They are the domestic cousins of foreign intelligence agencies...
. He was put to trial, found guilty of high treason
High treason
High treason is criminal disloyalty to one's government. Participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplomats, or its secret services for a hostile and foreign power, or attempting to kill its head of state are perhaps...
against Yugoslavia, sentenced to death and then hanged on July 17. Later, Momčilo Đujić formed the 'Movement of Serbian Chetniks of Ravna Gora' in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
.
Yugoslav Wars
During the Yugoslav wars, Serb paramilitaries often self-identified and were referred to as Chetniks (either as a pejorative, or they pretended to look like Chetniks and use their insignia, without any real relationship to the original movement). Vojislav ŠešeljVojislav Šešelj
Vojislav Šešelj, JD is a Serbian politician, writer and lawyer. He is the founder and president of the Serbian Radical Party and was vice-president of Serbia between 1998 and 2000...
's Serbian Radical Party
Serbian Radical Party
The Serbian Radical Party is a far-right Serbian nationalist political party in Serbia, founded in 1991. Currently the second-largest party in the Serbian National Assembly, it has branches in three of the nations that currently border Serbia – all former federal republics of Yugoslavia...
formed the White Eagles
White Eagles (paramilitary)
The White Eagles , also known as the Avengers , were a Serbian paramilitary group associated with the Serbian National Renewal and the Serbian Radical Party...
group which identified themselves as Chetniks. Vuk Drašković
Vuk Draškovic
Vuk Drašković , leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement, is a Serbian politician who served as the Deputy Prime Minister of Yugoslavia and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of State Union of Serbia and Montenegro and Serbia.He graduated from the University of Belgrade's Law School in 1968...
's Serbian Renewal Movement
Serbian Renewal Movement
The Serbian Renewal Movement is a political party in Serbia.It was founded in 1990.In 1997 a dissident group abandoned the party and formed New Serbia....
was closely associated with the Serbian Guard
Serbian Guard
The Serbian Guard was a Serbian paramilitary active in Croatia during its War of Independence with close ties to the Serbian Renewal Movement . Eighty percent of the guard's members were members of the SPO...
, which was also associated with Chetniks and monarchism.
During the war five Serb soldiers received the title of Chetnik voivodes from World War II veteran Momčilo Đujić: Rade Čubrilo, Slavko Aleksić, Branislav Gavrilović, Rade Radović, and Mitar Maksimović Mando. The title to Šešelj was given in 1989 but later taken off in 1998 when it became obvious that Šešelj is in cooperation with Slobodan Milošević
Slobodan Milošević
Slobodan Milošević was President of Serbia and Yugoslavia. He served as the President of Socialist Republic of Serbia and Republic of Serbia from 1989 until 1997 in three terms and as President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000...
. Rade Čubrilo became the flag-bearer of Đujić's former unit, the Dinara Chetnik Division. Serb politician Vojislav Šešelj was also named a voivode prior to the start of the wars by Đujić and the title was taken from Šešelj in later decade, since he was anti-monarchist and in cooperation with Milošević.
Contemporary period
The current situation of the movement is different from place to place.Modern Chetnik movements include:
- Serbian Chetnik Movement of Republika Srpska
- Ravna Gora Chetnik Movement of Republika Srpska, based in BrčkoBrcko (city)Brčko is a city in northern Bosnia and Herzegovina, administrative seat of the Brčko District. It lies on the country's border along the Sava river across from Gunja, Croatia...
. - Serbian Movement of Ravna Gora, with branches in the United States, Canada, the United KingdomUnited KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, and AustraliaAustraliaAustralia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
.
Serbia
Since 1992, the Serbian Renewal MovementSerbian Renewal Movement
The Serbian Renewal Movement is a political party in Serbia.It was founded in 1990.In 1997 a dissident group abandoned the party and formed New Serbia....
has annually organized the "Ravna Gora Parliament". People who attend the Parliament wear World War II Chetnik iconography and t-shirts with the image of Draža Mihailović or war crimes suspect Ratko Mladić
Ratko Mladić
Ratko Mladić is an accused war criminal and a former Bosnian Serb military leader. On May 31, 2011, Mladić was extradited to The Hague, where he was processed at the detention center that holds suspects for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia...
. In 2005, Croatian president Stjepan Mesić
Stjepan Mesić
Stjepan "Stipe" Mesić is a Croatian politician and former President of Croatia. Before his ten-year presidential term between 2000 and 2010 he held the posts of Speaker of the Croatian Parliament , Prime Minister of Croatia , the last President of the Presidency of Yugoslavia , Secretary General...
cancelled a planned visit to Serbia as it coincided with the gathering, officially supported by the Serbian government, and attended by Vuk Drašković
Vuk Draškovic
Vuk Drašković , leader of the Serbian Renewal Movement, is a Serbian politician who served as the Deputy Prime Minister of Yugoslavia and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of State Union of Serbia and Montenegro and Serbia.He graduated from the University of Belgrade's Law School in 1968...
.
In March 2004, the National Assembly of Serbia
National Assembly of Serbia
The National Assembly of Serbia is the unicameral parliament of Serbia. It is composed of 250 proportionally elected deputies elected in general elections by secret ballot, on 4 years term. The National Assembly elects the President of the National Assembly who presides over the sessions...
passed a new law that equalized the Chetniks and Partisans as equivalent anti-fascists
Anti-fascism
Anti-fascism is the opposition to fascist ideologies, groups and individuals, such as that of the resistance movements during World War II. The related term antifa derives from Antifaschismus, which is German for anti-fascism; it refers to individuals and groups on the left of the political...
. Rights were granted on the basis that both were anti-fascist movements that fought occupiers, and this formulation has entered the law. The vote was 176 for, 24 against and 4 abstained (the Socialist Party of Serbia
Socialist Party of Serbia
The Socialist Party of Serbia is officially a democratic socialist political party in Serbia. It is also widely recognized as a de facto Serbian nationalist party, though the party itself does not officially acknowledge this...
(SPS) of Slobodan Milošević was the one voting against the decision). There have been varying reactions to the law in Serbian public opinion. Many have praised it as just and long overdue, including Prince Alexander Karađorđević (son of Peter II, the last Yugoslav king), as well as most political parties (with the most notable exception of the SPS). Others protested the decision, including the Serbian Association of Former Partisans, the Serbian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights
Helsinki Committee for Human Rights
The Helsinki Committees for Human Rights exist in many European countries as volunteer, non-profit organizations devoted to human rights and presumably named after the Helsinki Accords...
, the Croatian Anti-Fascist Movement, and the President
President of Croatia
The President of Croatia , officially styled the President of the Republic represents the Republic of Croatia in the country and abroad as the head of state, maintains the regular and coordinated operation and stability of the national government system, and safeguards the independence and...
and Prime Minister of Croatia. In 2009, Serbian courts rehabilitated Chetnik ideologist Dragiša Vasić.
The Serbian basketball player Milan Gurović
Milan Gurovic
Milan Gurović is a retired controversial Serbian professional basketball player.Gurović, a regular member of the FR Yugoslavia / Serbia and Montenegro national team, turned out for many clubs all over Europe during his career....
has a tattoo of World War II Chetnik Draža Mihailović on his left arm which has resulted in a ban since 2004 in playing in Croatia under its anti-fascist laws. Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
has also threatened to enact such a ban. Serbian rocker Bora Đorđević is also a self-declared Chetnik, but calling it a "national movement that is much older than the WWII", and adding that he does not hate other nations and never been a member of the Radical Party nor advocated Greater Serbia.
Montenegro
In 2002, preparations for a memorial complex dedicated to Pavle Đurišić near BeraneBerane
Berane , formerly Ivangrad, is a town in north-eastern Montenegro. It has a population of 11,776 .Berane is the centre of municipality and one of the centres of Polimlje area, named after the Lim River, on which Berane is situated.-History:During the medieval period the Montenegrin land of Berane...
began. In 2003, Vesna Kilibarda, the Montenegrin Minister of Culture, banned the construction of the monument saying that the Ministry of Culture had not applied for the approval to erect monuments. The Association of War Veterans of the National Liberation Army (SUBNOR) objected to the construction of the monument saying that Đurišić was a war criminal who was responsible for the deaths of many colleagues of the veterans association and 7,000 Muslims. The following month the Montenegrin government forbade the unveiling of the monument stating that it "caused public concern, encouraged division among the citizens of Montenegro, and incited national and religious hatred and intolerance." A press release from the committee in charge of the construction of the monument stated that the actions taken by the government was "absolutely illegal and inappropriate." The stand that was prepared for the erection of the monument was later removed by the police.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
On July 12, 2007, a day after the 12th anniversary of the Srebrenica Genocide and the burial of a further 465 victims, a group of men dressed in Chetnik uniforms marched the streets of SrebrenicaSrebrenica
Srebrenica is a town and municipality in the east of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska. Srebrenica is a small mountain town, its main industry being salt mining and a nearby spa. During the Bosnian War, the town was the site of the July 1995 massacre,...
. They all wore badges of military units which committed the massacre in July 1995. On July 11, 2009, after the burial of 543 victims in Srebrenica, members of the Ravna Gora Chetnik movement desecrated the flag
Flag desecration
Flag desecration is a term applied to various acts that intentionally destroy, damage or mutilate a flag in public, most often a national flag. Often, such action is intended to make a political point against a country or its policies...
of Bosnia and Herzegovina, marched in the streets wearing T-shirts with the face of Ratko Mladić
Ratko Mladić
Ratko Mladić is an accused war criminal and a former Bosnian Serb military leader. On May 31, 2011, Mladić was extradited to The Hague, where he was processed at the detention center that holds suspects for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia...
and sang Chetnik songs. A group of men and women associated with the Serbian far-right group Obraz
Obraz
Obraz is a Serbian far right organization. The organization is classified as an Orthodox clero-fascist by several organizations and state institutions, including Assembly of Vojvodina and the Serbian Ministry of Interior...
"chanted insults directed towards the victims and in support of the Chetnik movement, calling for eradication of Islam." A full report of the incident was submitted to the local District Prosecutor's Office but no one has been prosecuted. The Bosniak political party SDP
Social Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina
The Social Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina is a multi-ethnic social-democratic political party in Bosnia and Herzegovina.The party is the successor of the League of Communists of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and was enlarged by the inclusion of the Socijaldemokrati BiH party to the original...
has been campaigning for a creation of a law that would ban the group within Bosnia.
Croatia
Milorad PupovacMilorad Pupovac
Milorad Pupovac , is Croatian politician and linguist. He is member of Sabor and president of Serb National Council.-Education:...
of the Independent Democratic Serb Party in Croatia (the present-day leader of Serbs of Croatia
Serbs of Croatia
Višeslav of Serbia, a contemporary of Charlemagne , ruled the Županias of Neretva, Tara, Piva, Lim, his ancestral lands. According to the Royal Frankish Annals , Duke of Pannonia Ljudevit Posavski fled, during the Frankish invasion, from his seat in Sisak to the Serbs in western Bosnia, who...
and member of the Croatian Parliament), has described the organization as "fascist collaborators".
United States
Monuments dedicated to Draža Mihailović, Momčilo Đujić, and Pavle Đurišić exist at the Serbian cemetery in Libertyville, IllinoisLibertyville, Illinois
Libertyville is an affluent northern suburb of Chicago in Lake County, Illinois, United States. It is located west of Lake Michigan on the Des Plaines River. The 2000 census population was 20,742; the 2005 estimate was 21,760...
.
See also
- Serbian Military Administration
- Serbian Volunteer Corps
- Trial of Draža MihailovićTrial of Draža MihailovicThe Trial of Draža Mihailović, or the Belgrade Process, was the trial of Draža Mihailović and a number of other alleged so-called prominent collaborators for high treason and war crimes in 1946. Mihailović was tried as a leader of the Chetnik movement during World War II...
- Yugoslav People's Liberation War
- Yugoslavia and the AlliesYugoslavia and the AlliesIn 1941 when the Axis invaded Yugoslavia, King Peter II formed a Government in exile in London, and in January 1942 the royalist Draža Mihailović became the Minister of War with British backing. But by June or July 1943, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had decided to withdraw support from...
External links
- Chetnik American rescue
- OPERATION "AIR BRIDGE" Draza Mihailovich and the Rescue of US Airmen during World War II
- AP: Airmen revisit World War II sanctuary (2004)
- History of Chetniks, both in English and Serbian
- Chetnik movement during World War II
- U.S. Congressional record on Chetniks and Draza Mihailovic, 1987
- Chetnik songs
- 1903-2003 100th Anniversary of Chetnik Movement
- Guerrilla Warfare in the Balkans, 1941-1945: Gen. Draza Mihailovic and the Prinz Eugen SS Division
- Последњи словеначки четник постао војвода from PolitikaPolitikaPolitika is a Serbian newspaper. It is considered the newspaper of record and is the oldest daily in the Balkans, having been founded on January 25, 1904 by Vladislav Ribnikar. It is currently being published by Politika Newspapers and Magazines , a joint venture between Politika AD and...
newspaper, in SerbianSerbian languageSerbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries.... - Dragoljub Pantić - NOĆ KAME in SerbianSerbian languageSerbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....