Formation After the outbreak of
World War II in September 1939 the General Staff was aware that Yugoslavia was not ready for war against the
Axis powers and was concerned about neighboring countries igniting a civil war in Yugoslavia. Despite its misgivings about using Chetniks for guerrilla warfare, in April 1940, the General Staff established the Chetnik Command, which eventually comprised six full
battalions spread throughout the country. However, it is clear from the series of Yugoslav war plans between 1938 and 1941 that the General Staff had no real commitment to guerrilla warfare prior to the April 1941
Axis invasion of Yugoslavia, and did not seriously consider employing the Chetnik Association in the role either. A short time before the invasion, Pećanac was approached by the General Staff, authorising him to organise guerrilla units in the
5th Army area, and providing him with arms and funds for the purpose; the 5th Army was responsible for the
Romanian and
Bulgarian borders between the
Iron Gates and the
Greek border. On 6 April 1941, Yugoslavia was drawn into World War II when Germany,
Italy and
Hungary invaded and occupied the country, which was then partitioned. Some Yugoslav territory was
annexed by its Axis neighbours: Hungary,
Bulgaria and Italy. The Germans engineered and supported the creation of the
fascist Ustaše puppet state, the
Independent State of Croatia (, NDH), which roughly comprised most of the pre-war
Banovina Croatia, along with rest of present-day
Bosnia and Herzegovina and some adjacent territory. Before the defeat,
King Peter II and his government went into exile, reforming in June as the
Western Allied-recognised
Yugoslav government-in-exile in London. All elements of the Chetnik Command were captured during the invasion, and there is no record of them being used for their intended purpose or that elements of these units operated in any organised way after the surrender. as a Yugoslav
military attaché in
Prague,
Czechoslovakia in 1937 In the early days of the invasion, army (Colonel)
Draža Mihailović was the deputy
chief of staff of the
2nd Army deployed in
Bosnia. On 13 April, he was commanding a unit which was in the area of
Doboj on 15 April when it was advised of the decision of the Supreme Staff (the wartime General Staff) to surrender. A few dozen members of the unit, almost exclusively Serbs, joined Mihailović when he decided not to follow these orders, and the group took to the hills. They marched southeast then east, aiming to get to the mountainous interior of what became the
German-occupied territory of Serbia in the hope of linking up with other elements of the defeated army that had chosen to keep resisting. In the first few days, Mihailović's group was attacked by German forces. The group was joined by other parties of soldiers but heard no news of others continuing to resist. On 28 April, the group was about 80 strong, and crossed the
Drina River into the occupied territory of Serbia the next day, although over the next few days it lost a number of
officers and
enlisted men who were concerned about the pending hardship and uncertainty. After crossing the Drina, the group was also attacked by gendarmes belonging to the
collaborationist puppet
Commissioner Government. On 6 May Mihailović's remaining group was surrounded by German troops near
Užice and almost completely destroyed. On 13 May, Mihailović arrived at some shepherd huts at
Ravna Gora on the western slopes of
Suvobor Mountain near the town of
Gornji Milanovac in the central part of the occupied territory, by which time his group consisted of only seven officers and 27 other ranks. At this point, now aware that no elements of the army were continuing to fight, they were faced with the decision of whether to surrender to the Germans themselves or form the core of a resistance movement, and Mihailović and his men chose the latter. Due to the location of their headquarters, Mihailović's organisation became known as the "Ravna Gora Movement". While adherents of the Chetnik movement have claimed that Mihailović's Chetniks were the first resistance movement to be founded in Yugoslavia in World War II, this is not accurate if a resistance movement is defined as a political and military organisation of relatively large numbers of men conducting armed operations intended to be carried on with determination and more or less continuously. Soon after their arrival at Ravna Gora, Mihailović's Chetniks set up a command post and designated themselves the "Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army". While this name was clearly derivative of the earlier Chetniks and evoked the traditions of the long and distinguished record of the Chetniks of earlier conflicts, Mihailović's organisation was in no way connected to the interwar Chetnik associations or the Chetnik Command established in 1940. As early as August, the Chetnik
Central National Committee () was formed to provide Mihailović with advice on domestic and international political affairs, and to liaise with the civilian populace throughout the occupied territory and in other parts of occupied Yugoslavia where the Chetnik movement had strong support. The members were men who had some standing in Serbian political and cultural circles before the war, and some CNK members also served on the Belgrade Chetnik Committee that supported the movement. Much of the early CNK was drawn from the minuscule
Yugoslav Republican Party or the minor
Agrarian Party. The three most important members of the CNK, who comprised the executive committee for much of the war, were:
Dragiša Vasić, a lawyer, former vice-president of the nationalist
Serbian Cultural Club and a former member of the Yugoslav Republican Party;
Stevan Moljević, a
Bosnian Serb lawyer; and
Mladen Žujović, Vasić's law firm
partner who had also been a member of the Yugoslav Republican Party. Vasić was the most important of the three, and was designated by Mihailović as the ranking member of a three-man committee, along with
Potpukovnik (Lieutenant Colonel)
Dragoslav Pavlović and Major
Jezdimir Dangić, who were to take over the leadership of the organisation if anything should happen to him. In effect, Vasić was Mihailović's deputy.
Ideology From the beginning of Mihailović's movement in May 1941 until the
Ba Congress in January 1944, the ideology and objectives of the movement were promulgated in a series of documents. In June 1941, two months before he became a key member of the CNK, Moljević wrote a memorandum entitled
Homogeneous Serbia, in which he advocated for the creation of a
Greater Serbia within a
Greater Yugoslavia which would include not only the vast majority of pre-war Yugoslav territory, but also a significant amount of territory that belonged to all of Yugoslavia's neighbours. Within this, Greater Serbia would consist of 65–70 per cent of the total Yugoslav territory and population, and Croatia would be reduced to a small rump. His plan also included large-scale population transfers, evicting the non-Serb population from within the borders of Greater Serbia, although he did not suggest any numbers. At the same time that Moljević was developing
Homogeneous Serbia, the Belgrade Chetnik Committee formulated a proposal which contained territorial provisions very similar to those detailed in Moljević's plan, but went further by providing details of the large-scale population shifts needed to make Greater Serbia ethnically homogenous. It advocated expelling of 2,675,000 people from Greater Serbia, including 1,000,000 Croats and 500,000 Germans. A total of 1,310,000 Serbs would be brought to Greater Serbia from outside its boundaries, of which 300,000 would be Serbs from Croatia. Greater Serbia would not be entirely Serb, however, as about 200,000 Croats would be allowed to stay within its borders. No figures were proposed for shifting
Bosnian Muslims out of Greater Serbia, but they were identified as a "problem" to be solved in the final stages of the war and immediately afterwards. The CNK approved the Greater Serbia project after it formed in August. It can be assumed that Mihailović, who was a hard-core
Serb nationalist himself, endorsed all or most of both proposals. This is because their contents were reflected in a 1941 Chetnik leaflet entitled
Our Way, and he made specific references to them in a proclamation to the Serbian people in December and in a set of detailed instructions dated 20 December 1941 to
Pavle Đurišić and
Đorđije Lašić, newly appointed Chetnik commanders in the
Italian governorate of Montenegro. The Belgrade Chetnik Committee proposal was also smuggled out of occupied Serbia in September and delivered to the
Yugoslav government-in-exile in London by the Chetnik agent
Miloš Sekulić. In March 1942, the Chetnik
Dinara Division promulgated a statement which was accepted the following month by a meeting of Chetnik commanders from
Bosnia,
Herzegovina, northern
Dalmatia and
Lika at
Strmica near
Knin. This program contained details which were very similar to those included in Mihailović's instructions to Đurišić and Lašić in December 1941. It mentioned the
mobilisation of Serbs in these regions to "cleanse" them of other ethnic groups, and adopted several additional strategies:
collaboration with the Italian occupiers; determined armed opposition to NDH forces and the
Partisans; decent treatment of the Bosnian Muslims to keep them from joining the Partisans, although they could later be eliminated; and the creation of separate Croatian Chetnik units formed from pro-Yugoslav, anti-Partisan Croats. From 30 November to 2 December 1942, the Conference of Young Chetnik Intellectuals of Montenegro met at
Šahovići in Italian-occupied Montenegro. Mihailović did not attend, but his
chief of staff Zaharije Ostojić, Đurišić and Lašić attended, with Đurišić playing the dominant role. It advanced strategies that constituted an important and expanded version of the overall Chetnik program, and the report of the meeting bore an official Chetnik stamp. It reinforced the main Greater Serbia objective of the Chetnik movement, and in addition advocated the retention of the
Karađorđević dynasty, espoused a unitary Yugoslavia with self-governing Serb, Croat and
Slovene units but excluding entities for other Yugoslav peoples such as
Macedonians and
Montenegrins as well as other minorities. It envisaged a post-war Chetnik dictatorship that would hold all power within the country with the approval of the King, with a
gendarmerie recruited from Chetnik ranks, and intense promotion of Chetnik ideology throughout the country. The final Chetnik ideological document that appeared prior to the Ba Congress in January 1944 was a manual prepared by the Chetnik leadership around the same time as the Conference of Young Chetnik Intellectuals of Montenegro in late 1942. It explained that the Chetniks viewed the war in three phases: the invasion and capitulation by others; a period of organising and waiting until conditions warranted a general uprising against the occupying forces; and finally a general attack on the occupiers and all competitors for power, the Chetnik assumption of complete control over Yugoslavia, the expulsion of most national minorities, and arrest of all internal enemies. Crucially, it identified the two most important tasks during the second phase as: Chetnik-led organisation for the third phase without any party political influences; and incapacitation of their internal enemies, with first priority being the Partisans. Revenge against the Partisans and Ustaše was incorporated into the manual as a "sacred duty". The manual paid some lip service to
Yugoslavism, but the Chetniks did not really wish to become an all-Yugoslav movement because that was inconsistent with their main objective of achieving a Greater Serbia within Greater Yugoslavia. Due to their Serb nationalist stance, they never developed a realistic view of the "national question" in Yugoslavia because they disregarded the legitimate interests of the other Yugoslav peoples. Their ideology was therefore never attractive to non-Serbs except for those Macedonians and Montenegrins who considered themselves Serbs. The only new aspect of the Chetnik Greater Serbia ideology from the long-standing traditional one was their plan to "cleanse" Greater Serbia of non-Serbs, which was clearly a response to the massacres of Serbs by the Ustaše in the NDH. The final documents detailing Chetnik ideology were produced by the Ba Congress called by Mihailović in January 1944, in response to the November 1943 Second Session of the communist-led
Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (, AVNOJ) of the Partisans. The Second Session of AVNOJ had resolved that post-war Yugoslavia would be a federal republic based on six equal constituent republics, asserted that it was the sole legitimate government of Yugoslavia, and denied the right of the King to return from exile before a popular referendum to determine the future of his rule. The month after the Second Session of AVNOJ, the major
Allied powers met at Tehran and decided to provide their exclusive support to the Partisans and withdraw support from the Chetniks. The congress was held in circumstances where large parts of the Chetnik movement had been progressively drawn into collaboration with the occupying forces and their helpers over the course of the war, and may have been held with the tacit approval of the Germans. The document that was produced by the Ba Congress was called
The Goals of the Ravna Gora Movement and came in two parts. The first part,
The Yugoslav Goals of the Ravna Gora Movement stated that Yugoslavia would be a democratic federation with three units, one each for the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and national minorities would be expelled. The second part,
The Serbian Goals of the Ravna Gora Movement reinforced the existing Chetnik idea that all Serbian provinces would be united in the Serbian unit within the federal arrangement, based on the solidarity between all Serb regions of Yugoslavia, under a
unicameral parliament. The congress also resolved that Yugoslavia should be a
constitutional monarchy headed by a Serb sovereign. According to some historians, the new program of the Chetniks was social-democratic Yugoslavism, with a change to a federal Yugoslav structure with a dominant Serb unit, but in asserting the need to gather all Serbs into a single entity,
The Serbian Goals of the Ravna Gora Movement was reminiscent of
Homogeneous Serbia. The congress also did not recognise Macedonia and Montenegro as separate nations, and also implied that Croatia and Slovenia would effectively be appendages to the Serbian entity. The net effect of this, according to the historian
Jozo Tomasevich, was that the country would not only return to the same Serb-dominated state it had been in during the interwar period, but would be worse than that, particularly for the Croats. He concludes that this outcome was to be expected given the overwhelmingly Serb makeup of the congress, which included only two or three Croats, one Slovene and one Bosnian Muslim among its more than 300 attendees. The historian
Marko Attila Hoare agrees that despite its superficial Yugoslavism, the congress had clear Greater Serbia inclinations. The congress expressed an interest in reforming the economic, social, and cultural position of the country, particularly regarding democratic ideals. This was a significant departure from previous Chetnik goals expressed earlier in the war, especially in terms of promoting democratic principles with some socialist features. Tomasevich observes that these new goals were probably more related to achieving propaganda objectives than reflecting actual intentions, given that there was no real interest in considering the needs of the non-Serb peoples of Yugoslavia. The practical outcome of the congress was the establishment of a single political party for the movement, the Yugoslav Democratic National Union (, JDNZ), and an expansion of the CNK, however the congress did nothing to improve the position of the Chetnik movement. Beyond the main Serbian
irredentist objective, Mihailović's Chetnik movement was an extreme Serb nationalist organisation, and while it paid lip service to Yugoslavism, it was actually opposed to it. It was also
anti-Croat,
anti-Muslim, supported the
monarchy, and was
anti-communist. Given the ethnic and religious divisions in Yugoslavia, the narrow ideology of the Chetnik movement seriously impinged on its military and political potential. The political scientist
Sabrina Ramet has observed, "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".
Composition and organisation light machine gun The Chetniks were almost exclusively made up of Serbs except for a large number of Montenegrins who identified as Serbs, and consisted of "local defence units, marauding bands of Serb villagers, anti-partisan auxiliaries, forcibly mobilised peasants, and armed refugees, which small groups of uncaptured Yugoslav officers was attempting without success to mold into an organised fighting force". The aforementioned Chetnik manual of late 1942 discussed the idea of enlisting a significant number of Croats for the movement, but the movement only attracted small groups of Chetnik-aligned Croats in central Dalmatia and
Primorje, and they were never of any political or military significance within the Chetniks. A small group of Slovenes under Major
Karl Novak in the Italian-annexed
Province of Ljubljana also supported Mihailović, but they also never played an important role. There had been long standing mutual animosity between Muslims and Serbs throughout Bosnia, and in the period of late April and May 1941, the first Chetnik mass atrocities were carried out against non-Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in other ethnically heterogeneous areas. A few
Sandžak and Bosnian Muslims supported Mihailović, and some Jews joined the Chetniks, especially those who were members of the right-wing
Zionist Betar movement, but they were alienated by Serb
xenophobia and eventually left, with some defecting to the Partisans. The collaboration of the Chetniks with the Italians and later Germans may have also been a factor in the Jewish rejection of the Chetnik movement. The vast majority of Orthodox priests supported the Chetniks with some, notably
Momčilo Đujić and
Savo Božić, becoming commanders. Chetnik policies barred women from performing significant roles. No women took part in fighting units and women were restricted to nursing and occasional intelligence work. The low status of female peasants in areas of Yugoslavia where Chetniks were strongest could have been utilized and advantageous in military, political, and psychological terms. The treatment of women was a fundamental difference between the Chetniks and Partisans and Chetnik propaganda disparaged the female role in the Partisans.
Ruth Mitchell (ca. 1889–1969) was a reporter who was the only American woman to serve with the Chetniks. Fluent in German, she worked for the Chetniks as a spy and a courier for about a year.
Early activities led captured Germans through
Užice, autumn 1941. Initially, Mihailović's organisation was focussed on recruiting and establishing groups in different areas, raising funds, establishing a courier network, and collecting arms and ammunition. From the very beginning their strategy was to organise and build up their strength, but postpone armed operations against the occupation forces until they were withdrawing in the face of a hoped-for landing by the
Western Allies in Yugoslavia. The pre-war Chetnik leader Pećanac soon came to an arrangement with
Nedić's collaborationist regime in the
Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia. Colonel
Draža Mihailović, who was "interested in resisting the occupying powers", set up his headquarters in
Ravna Gora and named his group "The Ravna Gora Movement" in order to distinguish it from the Pećanac Chetniks. However, other Chetniks were engaged in collaboration with the Germans and the Chetnik name became again associated with Mihailović. The movement was later to be renamed the "Yugoslav Army in the Homeland", although the original name of the movement remained the most common in use throughout the war, even among the Chetniks themselves. It is these forces that are generally referred to as "the Chetniks" throughout World War II although the name was also used by other smaller groups including those of Pećanac, Nedić and
Dimitrije Ljotić. In June 1941, following the start of
Operation Barbarossa, the communist-led
Partisans under
Josip Broz Tito organised an uprising and in the period between June and November 1941, the Chetniks and Partisans largely cooperated in their anti-Axis activities. Chetnik uprisings, often in conjunction with the
Partisans, against Axis occupation forces began in early July 1941 in
Western Serbia. Uprisings in the areas of
Loznica,
Rogatica,
Banja Koviljača and
Olovo lead to early victories. On 19 September 1941, Tito and Mihailović met for the first time in
Struganik where Tito offered Mihailović the chief-of-staff post in return for the merger of their units. Mihailović refused to attack the Germans, fearing reprisals, but promised to not attack the Partisans. According to Mihailović 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. On 20 October, Tito proposed a 12-point program to Mihailović as the basis of cooperation. Six days later, Tito and Mihailović met at Mihailović's headquarters where Mihailović rejected principal points of Tito's proposal including the establishment of common headquarters, joint military actions against the Germans and quisling formations, establishment of a combined staff for the supply of troops, and the formation of national liberation committees. These disagreements lead to uprisings being quashed in
Montenegro and
Novi Pazar due to poor coordination between the resistance forces. Mihailović's fears for ongoing reprisals became a reality with two mass murder campaigns conducted against Serb civilians in
Kraljevo and
Kragujevac, reaching a combined death toll of over 4,500 civilians. Killings in the
Independent State of Croatia were also in full swing with thousands of Serb civilians being killed by the
Ustaše militia and death squads. In late October, Mihailović concluded the Partisans, rather than Axis forces, were the primary enemies of the Chetniks. To avoid reprisals against Serb civilians, Mihailović's Chetniks fought as a guerrilla force, rather than a regular army. It has been estimated that three-quarters of the Orthodox clergy in occupied Yugoslavia supported the Chetniks, while some like
Momčilo Đujić became prominent Chetnik commanders. While the Partisans opted for overt acts of sabotage that led to reprisals against civilians by Axis forces, the Chetniks opted for a more subtle form of resistance. Instead of detonating TNT to destroy railway tracks and disrupt Axis railway lines, Chetniks contaminated railway fuel sources and tampered with mechanical components, ensuring trains would either derail or breakdown at random times. Martin suggests that these acts of sabotage significantly crippled supplies lines for the
Afrika Korps fighting in North Africa. On 2 November, Mihailović's Chetniks
attacked Partisan headquarters in Užice. The attack was driven back and a counterattack followed the next day, the Chetniks lost 1,000 men in these two battles and a large amount of weaponry. On 18 November, Mihailović accepted a truce offer from Tito though attempts to establish a common front failed. That month, the British government, upon the request of the
Yugoslav government-in-exile, insisted Tito make Mihailović the commander-in-chief of resistance forces in Yugoslavia, a demand he refused. Partisan-Chetnik truces were repeatedly violated by the Chetniks, first with the killing of a local Partisan commander in October and then later, under orders of Mihailović's staff, massacring 30 Partisan supporters, mostly girls and wounded individuals, in November. Despite this, Chetniks and Partisans in eastern Bosnia continued to cooperate for some time. In December 1941 the Yugoslav government-in-exile in
London under
King Peter II promoted Mihailović to Brigadier-General and named him commander of the Yugoslav Home Army. By this time Mihailović had established friendly relations with Nedić and his
Government of National Salvation and the Germans who he requested weaponry from to fight the Partisans. This was rejected by General
Franz Böhme who stated they could deal with the Partisans themselves and demanded Mihailović's surrender. Around this time the Germans launched
an attack on Mihailović's forces in Ravna Gora and effectively routed the Chetniks from the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia. The bulk of the Chetnik forces retreated into eastern
Bosnia and
Sandžak and the centre of Chetnik activity moved to the
Independent State of Croatia. The British liaison to Mihailović advised Allied command to stop supplying the Chetniks after their attacks on the Partisans in the
German attack on Užice, but Britain continued to do so. Throughout the period of 1941 and 1942, both the Chetniks and Partisans provided refugee for Allied POWs, especially
ANZAC troops who escaped from railway carriages en route via Yugoslavia to Axis POW camps. According to Lawrence, following the Allied defeat at the
Battle of Crete, POWs were transported via Yugoslavia in railway carriages with some ANZAC troops escaping in occupied Serbia. Chetniks under the command of Mihailović provided refugee to these ANZAC troops and were either repatriated or recaptured by Axis forces.
Axis offensives In April 1942 the Communists in Bosnia established two Shock
Anti-Chetnik Battalions (Grmeč and Kozara) composed of 1,200 best soldiers of Serb ethnicity to struggle against Chetniks. 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. According to new archival evidence, published in 1980 for the first time, some actions against Axis carried by Mihailović and his Chetniks, with British liaison officer Brigadier
Armstrong, were mistakenly credited to
Tito and his Communist forces. 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.
Axis collaboration '' (Brigadier) Friedrich Stahl stands alongside an
Ustaše officer and Chetnik commander Rade Radić in central
Bosnia in mid–1942. Throughout the war, the Chetnik movement remained mostly inactive against the occupation forces, and increasingly
collaborated 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 Partisans, 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 active in uprising against the Axis 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 to stop further bloodshed. Negotiations with the occupiers were aided by the two 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 (left) with an Italian officer|alt=two men in uniform leaning against a car Chetnik collaboration with the occupation forces of fascist Italy took place in three main areas: in Italian-occupied (and Italian-annexed) Dalmatia; in the Italian puppet state of
Montenegro; and in the Italian-annexed and later German-occupied
Ljubljana Province in Slovenia. The collaboration in Dalmatia and parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina 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 Serb politician from
Lika,
Stevo Rađenović. In particular, Chetnik
vojvodas ("leaders")
Trifunović-Birčanin and
Jevđević were favorably disposed towards the Italians, believing Italian occupation over all of Bosnia-Herzegovina would be detrimental to the influence of the Ustaše state. Another reason for collaboration was a necessity to protect Serbs from the Ustaše and
Balli Kombëtar. When the Balli Kombëtar earmarked the
Visoki Dečani monastery for destruction, Italian troops were sent in to protect the Orthodox monastery from destruction and highlighted to the Chetniks the necessity for collaboration. (left) making a speech to the Chetniks in the presence of General
Pirzio Biroli,
Italian governor of Montenegro For this reason, they sought an alliance with the Italian occupation forces in Yugoslavia. The Chetniks noticed that Italy on occupied territories implemented a traditional policy of deceiving Croats with the help of Serbs and they believed that Italy, in case of victory of the Axis powers, would favor Serbs in Lika, northern Dalmatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and that Serbian autonomy would be created in this area under Italian protectorate. The Italians (especially General Dalmazzo) 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 11 January 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, etc.). The chief interest of both the Chetniks and Italians would be to assist each other in combating Partisan-led resistance. According to Martin, the Chetnik-Italian truce received approval from British Intelligence as it was seen as a way of garnering intelligence. Birčanin was instructed to gather information on harbor facilities, troop movements, mining operations and Axis communications in preparation for an Allied invasion of the Dubrovnik coast scheduled for 1943, an invasion that never eventuated. 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. In April 1942 Chetniks and Italians cooperated in battles with Partisans around
Knin. conferring with Italian officers in February 1943|thumb|left|alt=A tall male Chetnik amongst a group of men dressed in Italian Army uniform He outlined the four points of his policy in his report to the Italian Army General Staff: In 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 26 March 1943 to the Italian Army General Staff, entitled "The Conduct of the Chetniks". The allegiance between the Chetniks and Italians was crucial in protecting Serbs in the Lika and Dalmatian region from ongoing attacks from the Ustaše. Italian forces provided Serb civilians with weapons to protect their villages and accommodated thousands of Serb civilians escaping the ongoing
genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia. Đujić used these events as a way of justifying the allegiance and when ordered by Mihailović in February 1943 to break this allegiance, Đujić refused and stated that a break in a truce would mean certain death to tens of thousands of Serb civilians. in 1943 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 Trifunović-Birčanin, who arrived in Italian-annexed
Split in October 1941 and received his orders directly from Mihailović in the spring of 1942. By the time
Italy capitulated on 8 September 1943, all Chetnik detachments in the Italian-controlled parts of the Independent State of Croatia had, at one time or another, collaborated with the Italians against the Partisans. This collaboration lasted right up until the Italian capitulation 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. After the Allies did not land in Dalmatia as they had hoped, these Chetnik detachments entered into collaboration with the Germans in order to avoid being caught between the Germans and the Partisans.
Collaboration with the Independent State of Croatia and
Croatian Home Guard officers of the
Independent State of Croatia 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 NDH and Chetnik detachments in Bosnia. Agreement between commander major Emil Rataj and commander of Chetnik organizations in the
Mrkonjić Grad area
Uroš Drenović was signed on 27 April 1942 after heavy defeat in the conflict with
Kozara Partisan battalion. Contracting parties obliged to a joint struggle against the Partisans, in return, Serb villages would be protected by the NDH authorities together with the Chetniks from "attacks by communists, so-called Partisans". Chetnik commanders between
Vrbas and
Sana on 13 May 1942, gave a written confession to the NDH authorities about cessation of hostilities and that they would voluntarily take part in the fight against the Partisans. In Banja Luka two days later was signed agreement on the cessation of hostilities against the Chetniks in the area between Vrbas and Sana and on the withdrawal of
Home Guard units from this area, between Petar Gvozdić and Chetnik commanders
Lazar Tešanović (Chetnik detachment "Obilić") and Cvetko Aleksić (Chetnik detachment "Mrkonjić"). The agreements did not stop crimes against Serbs by the Ustaše or against Muslims and Croats by the Chetniks. They persisted in areas where the other had control and in regions where no agreements existed. 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. 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. Although the Dinara Division under the command of Đujić received support from the NDH, Chetniks under the command of Mihailović refused to collaborate with the NDH. Throughout the war Mihailović continued to refer to the NDH as an enemy and engaged Ustaše forces in the Serbian border areas. Mihailović's animosity towards the Ustaše was due to the ongoing genocidal policies of the NDH against the Serb population and other minority groups. Fleeing the Partisans, in March 1945
Pavle Đurišić negotiated an agreement with the Ustaše and Ustaše-supported Montenegrin separatist,
Sekula Drljević, to provide safe conduct for his Chetniks across the NDH. The Ustaše agreed to this, but when the Chetniks failed to follow the agreed-upon withdrawal route, the Ustaše attacked the Chetniks at
Lijevče Field, afterward killing the captured commanders, while the remaining Chetniks continued to withdraw to Austria with the NDH army and under their military command. Ustaše leader, Ante Pavelić ordered the NDH military to give
Momčilo Đujić and his
Dinara Division Chetniks "orderly and unimpeded passage", with which Đujić and his forces fled across the NDH to Slovenia and Italy. In early May 1945 Chetnik forces withdrew through Ustaše-held Zagreb; many of these were later killed, along with captured Ustaše, by the Partisans as part of the
Bleiburg repatriations.
Operation Weiss One major Chetnik collaboration with the Axis took place during the "Battle of the
Neretva", the final phase of "
Operation Weisss", known in Yugoslav historiography as the "
Fourth Enemy Offensive". In 1942, Partisans forces were on the rise, having established large liberated territories within Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Germans began planning an offensive against the Partisans, aiming to destroy their supreme headquarters. After destroying Partisan-held territories in Bosnia and Croatia, the final phase of the operation called for the Italians to disarm the Chetniks while simultaneously conducting operations against the Partisans. Since the spring of 1942 in certain military actions of Chetniks and Italians in Lika, northern Dalmatia, Gorski kotar and Kordun, killings are becoming more frequent while villages were looted and burned. The most victims were NOP activists and their families, while population of that area was intimidated, especially Serbs. Momčilo Đujić in 1942 proclamation for the population of Lika and western Bosnia ordered all Chetnik units to
"occupy all villages and towns and take all power into their hands", threatening to
"destroy all settlements to the ground" if they resist regardless of whether these settlements are Croatian or Serbian. Additional massacres against the Muslims in the area of Foča took place in August 1942. In total, over two thousand people were killed in Foča. In early January, the Chetniks entered
Srebrenica and killed around a thousand Muslim civilians in the town and in nearby villages. Around the same time the Chetniks made their way to
Višegrad where deaths were reportedly in the thousands. Massacres continued in the following months in the region. In the village of
Žepa alone about three hundred were killed in late 1941. In early January, Chetniks massacred fifty-four Muslims in
Čelebić and burned down the village. On 3 March, a contingent of Chetniks burned forty-two Muslim villagers to death in Drakan. and Foča in southeastern
Bosnia and in the county of
Pljevlja in
Sandžak In early January 1943 and again in early February, Montenegrin Chetnik units were ordered to carry out "cleansing actions" against Muslims, first in the
Bijelo Polje county in Sandžak and then in February in the
Čajniče county and part of Foča county in southeastern Bosnia, and in part of the
Pljevlja county in Sandžak. On 10 January 1943,
Pavle Đurišić, the Chetnik officer in charge of these operations, submitted a report to Mihailović, Chief of Staff of the Supreme Command. His report included the results of these "cleansing operations", which according to Tomasevich, were that "thirty-three Muslim villages had been burned down, and 400 Muslim fighters (members of the Muslim self-protection militia supported by the Italians) and about 1,000 women and children had been killed, as against 14 Chetnik dead and 26 wounded". In another report sent by Đurišić dated 13 February 1943, he reported that: "Chetniks killed about 1,200 Muslim fighters and about 8,000 old people, women, and children; Chetnik losses in the action were 22 killed and 32 wounded". He added that "during the operation the total destruction of the Muslim inhabitants was carried out regardless of sex and age". The total number of deaths in anti-Muslim operations between January and February 1943 is estimated at 10,000. The casualty rate would have been higher had not a great number of Muslims already fled, most to
Sarajevo, when the February action began. According to a statement from the Chetnik Supreme Command from 24 February 1943, these were countermeasures taken against Muslim aggressive activities; however, all circumstances show that these massacres were committed in accordance with implementing the directive of 20 December 1941. In March 1943, Mihailović listed the Chetnik action in Sandžak as one of his successes noting they had "liquidated all Muslims in the villages except those in the small towns". Actions against Croats were smaller in scale but similar in action. In the summer of 1941,
Trubar,
Bosansko Grahovo and
Krnjeuša were the sites of the first massacres and other attacks against ethnic Croats in the southwestern
Bosnian Krajina. Throughout August and September 1942, Chetniks, under the command of
Petar Baćović, intensified their actions against local Croats across the
hinterland areas of southern
Dalmatia. On 29 August, Chetniks killed between 141 and 160 Croats from several villages in the
Zabiokovlje,
Biokovo and
Cetina areas while participating in the Italian anti-Partisan "Operation Albia". From the end of August, into early September 1942, Chetniks destroyed 17 Croatian villages and
killed 900 Croats around the town of
Makarska. In early October 1942 in the village of
Gata near
Split, an estimated one hundred people were killed and many homes burnt purportedly as reprisal for the destruction of some roads in the area and carried out on the Italians' account. In that same October, formations under the command of Petar Baćović and Dobroslav Jevđević, who were participating in the Italian
Operation Alfa in the area of
Prozor, massacred a minimum of five hundred Croats and Muslims and burnt numerous villages. Baćović noted that "Our Chetniks killed all men 15 years of age or older. ... Seventeen villages were burned to the ground." Mario Roatta, commander of the
Italian Second Army, objected to these "massive slaughters" of noncombatant civilians and threatened to halt Italian aid to the Chetniks if they did not end. kill a Partisan through heart extraction. Croatian historian
Vladimir Žerjavić initially estimated the number of Muslims and Croats killed by the Chetniks as 65,000 (33,000 Muslims and 32,000 Croats; both combatants and civilians). In 1997, he revised this figure down to 47,000 dead (29,000 Muslims and 18,000 Croats). According to Vladimir Geiger of the
Croatian Institute of History,
Zdravko Dizdar, a historian, estimates Chetniks killed a total of 50,000 Croats and Muslims – mostly civilians – between 1941 and 1945. According to Ramet, the Chetniks completely destroyed 300 villages and small towns and a large number of mosques and Catholic churches. Some historians contend that during this period genocide was committed against Muslims and Croats. The Partisans were also targets of terror tactics. In the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia, apart from a few terrorist acts against Nedić's and Ljotić's men, and in Montenegro against separatists, terror was directed solely against the Partisans, their families and sympathizers, on ideological grounds. The goal was the complete destruction of the Partisans. The Chetniks created lists of individuals that were to be liquidated and special units known as "black trojkas" were trained to carry out these acts of terror. 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 were halted, although this did not prevent the Chetniks from continuing to carry out assassinations.
Loss of Allied support To gather
intelligence, official intelligence missions of the western Allies were sent into both the Partisans and the Chetniks. The intelligence gathered by liaisons were 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 the Partisans. The head of British mission
Colonel Bailey was instrumental for wrecking the position of Mihailović with British side. The Germans were executing
Case Black, 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 of German message traffic confirmed Chetnik timidity. and other US officers All in all, intelligence reports resulted in increased Allied interest in Yugoslavia air operations, and a shift in policy. In September 1943, British policy dictated equal aid to the Chetniks and Partisans, but by December, relations between the Chetniks and British soured after Chetniks refused to obey orders to sabotage the Germans without the guarantee of an Allied landing in the Balkans. Over time British support moved away from the Chetniks, who refused to stop collaborating with the Italians and Germans instead of fighting them, towards the Partisans, who were eager to increase their anti-Axis activity. After the
Tehran Conference, the Partisans received official recognition as the legitimate national liberation force by the
Allies, who subsequently set up the
Balkan Air Force (under the influence and suggestion of Brigadier
Fitzroy Maclean) with the aim to provide increased supplies and tactical air support for the Partisans. In February 1944, Mihailovic's Chetniks failed to fulfill British demands to demolish key bridges over the
Morava and
Ibar rivers, causing the British to withdraw their liaisons and halt supplying the Chetniks. Although British support for the Chetniks ceased, the Americans were less than enthusiastic about British abandonment of the anti-communist Chetniks. As support shifted towards the Partisans, Mihailović's Chetniks attempted to recommence Allied support for the Chetniks by displaying their eagerness to help the Allies. This eagerness to help was put into practice when the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) approached Mihailovic's Chetniks in mid 1944 to organise the airlift of downed US airmen. This operation known as the
Halyard Mission resulted in the rescue of 417 US airmen that were previously kept safe by Mihailovic's Chetniks. Mihailović later received the
Legion of Merit from US President
Harry S. Truman for the rescue of Allied pilots. 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. On 6 October 1944, the Nedić government transferred the
Serbian State Guard to Mihailović's command, although cooperation proved impossible and they separated in January 1945 while in Bosnia. During cooperation between Chetniks and SDS, they alongside
Muslim Militia helped Germans to take better positions in
Sandžak, as they helped them take important towns from the Partisans in October 1944, allowing
Army Group E to make retreat to Bosnia.
Cooperation with the Soviets In September 1944, the Soviets invaded and occupied Romania and Bulgaria, removing them from the war and putting Soviet forces on the borders of Yugoslavia. The Chetniks were not unprepared for this, and throughout the war their propaganda strove to harness the pro-Russian and pan-Slavic sympathies of the majority of the Serb population. The distinction between the Russian people and their communist government was belaboured, as was the supposed difference between Yugoslav Partisans, who were allegedly
Trotskyists, and the Soviets, who were
Stalinists. On 10 September 1944, a Chetnik mission of approximately 150 men, led by Lieutenant Colonel
Velimir Piletić, commander of northeastern Serbia, crossed the Danube into Romania and established contact with Soviet forces at
Craiova. Their main purpose, according to the memoirs of one of them, Lt. Col. Miodrag Ratković, was to establish Soviet agreement to certain political goals: a cessation of the civil war through Soviet mediation, free elections supervised by the Allied powers and the postponement of any war-related trials until after elections. Before the mission could go on to
Bucharest, where the American and British military missions were, they were denounced by one of Piletić's aides as British spies and arrested by the Soviets on 1 October. Although the Chetniks believed they could fight as allies of the Soviets at the same time as they fought the Partisans, they did manage some local cooperation with the former while antagonising the Germans. In a circular of 5 October, Mihailović wrote: "We consider the Russians as our allies. The struggle against Tito's forces in Serbia will be continued." The Germans were aware of the Chetniks' disposition through radio intercepts, and their intelligence reported on 19 October that "the Chetniks have never been prepared by Draža Mihailović through appropriate propaganda for a fighting encounter with the Russians. Draža Mihailović has on the contrary upheld the fiction that the Russians as allies of the Americans and the British will never act against the interests of the Serbian nationalists." The commander of a group of the Shock Corps, Lt. Col. Keserović, was the first Chetnik officer to cooperate with the Soviets. In mid-October his troops met Soviet forces advancing into central eastern Serbia from Bulgaria and together they captured the town of
Kruševac, the Soviets leaving Keserović in charge of the town. Within three days, Keserović was warning his fellow commanders that the Russians were only talking with the Partisans and disarming the Chetniks. Keserović reported to Supreme Command on 19 October that his delegate to the Soviet division had returned with a message ordering his men to be disarmed and incorporated in the Partisan armed forces by 18 October. Another Chetnik commander to cooperate with the Soviets was Captain Predrag Raković of the Second Ravna Gora Corps, whose men participated in the capture of
Čačak, where they captured 339 soldiers of the
Russisches Schutzkorps Serbien (whom they turned over to the Soviets). Raković apparently had a written agreement with the local Soviet commander, placing himself and his men under Soviet command in return for recognition that they were Mihailović's men. After a protest from Tito to Marshal
Fyodor Tolbukhin, commander of the front, Keserović's and Raković's cooperation came to an end. By 11 November the latter had gone into hiding and his forces had fled west to avoid being disarmed and placed under Partisan control.
Retreat and dissolution 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 in the
Bleiburg repatriations. 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 end of WWII Yugoslav authority undertook radical actions to destroy remaining Chetnik groups, especially in
Lika area. One of the radical methods was
forced displacement of Serbs from the area of
Gospić,
Plaški,
Donji Lapac and
Gračac. Chetnik attacks on villages were recorded in June 1945, as it were attack on
Dobroselo. The main part of the Chetniks was located in the area of Lapac while in the winter of 1946 actions were organized against them which testifies about the seriousness of the Chetnik threat. ==Aftermath==