Abstract
There is no doubt that from spring 1941 to the end of the war Draža Mihailović’s Chetniks played an important role in the territory of the pre-war Kingdom of Yugoslavia.1 It is also certain that most of them were active collaborators of the Axis forces for most of that period. However, there are still some historians in Serbia, the authorities and some politicians in that country, as well as in the part of Bosnia-Herzegovina in Serbian possession (Serbian Republic — Republika Srpska), who view the Chetniks as Allied fighters who actively fought against Axis forces in Yugoslavia. Moreover, in December 2004 the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia adopted the law on the rights of combat warriors, war invalids, and their families which officially promoted Mihailovićs Chetniks (the members of Jugoslovenska vojska u otadžbini [the Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland] and the members of Ravnogorski pokret [Ravna Gora Movement]) into the ranks of anti-fascist fighters on a par with Tito’s Partisans (members of the NarodnooslobodilaČka vojska Jugoslavije [the People’s Liberation Army of Yugoslavia]).2 In May 2010 Belgrade’s Military Museum (Vojni muzej) presented artefacts and data related to Draža Mihailović.3 There is no doubt that any museum exhibition on World War Two in former Yugoslavia and in Serbia should deal with him and with his Chetniks, but the problem is that they were presented exclusively as a resistance movement and therefore as an Allied military force. The same image of Chetniks as a resistance movement is present in history textbooks which are in use in Serbian schools, as discussed in Dubravka Stojanovićs contribution to this volume.4
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Notes
Dragoljub (Draža) Mihailović (1893–1946) started his military career in the Serbian army in 1910. During 1912 and 1913 he participated in the Balkan Wars as a Military Academy cadet. He actively participated in the First World War as an active military officer. After the war he remained in active service in the new Yugoslav army (Army of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes). From 1935 to 1937 he served as a military attaché in Sofia and in Prague. In April 1941, with a rank of general staff colonel, he served as Deputy Chief of Staff of the 2nd Army in northern Bosnia. There he decided not to surrender to German troops and moved to the mountainous area in western Serbia known as Ravna Gora. Information in English about Mihailović’s life and military career before 1941 can be found in Jozo Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: The Chetniks (Stanford University Press, 1975), pp. 130–131.
Suzana Rajić, Kosta Nikolić, and Nebojša Jovanović, Istorija za 8. razred osnovne škole [History for the 8th Grade of Elementary School] (Belgrade: Zavod za udžbenike i nastavna sredstva, 2005). In various chapters of the textbook Chetniks are presented as a resistance movement.
See Bogdan Krizman (ed.), Jugoslavenske vlade u izbjeglištvu 1941–1943.: Dokumenti [Yugoslav Governments in Exile from 1941 to 1943: Documents] (Belgrade and Zagreb: Arhiv Jugoslavije and Globus, 1981), pp. 5–94. See also Branko Petranović, ‘Jugoslovenske vlade u izbeglištvu i revolucija u Jugoslaviji (1943–1945)’ [Yugoslav Governments in Exile and the Revolution in Yugoslavia (1943–1945)], in Branko Petranović (ed.), Jugoslovenske vlade u izbeglištvu 1943–1945.: Dokumenti [Yugoslav Governments in Exile from 1941 to 1943: Documents] (Belgrade and Zagreb: Arhiv Jugoslavije and Globus, 1981), pp. 9–33. See also Aleksa Djilas, Osporavana zemlja. Jugoslovenstvo i revolucija (Belgrade: Književne novine, 1990), pp. 195–211. This book was later published in English under the title of The Contested Country: Yugoslav Unity and Communist Revolution 1919–1953 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991). About the relations of government members towards Banovina Hrvatska and the Cvetković-Maček Agreement from August 1939, see p. 197.
Branko Petranović, Srbija u drugom svetskom ratu 1939–1945 [Serbia in the Second World War from 1939 to 1945] (Belgrade: Vojnoizdavački i novinski centar, 1992), p. 392, noted that Mihailović had already established indirect contacts with the head of the Serbian quisling administration, commissar Milan Aćimović, in May 1941. Mihailović’s men established contacts and initiated negotiations with representatives of General Milan Nedić’s Serbian government immediately after its creation in late August 1941. See Jovan Marjanović, Ustanak i narodnooslobodilački pokret u Srbiji 1941 [Uprising and People’s Liberation Movement in Serbia in 1941] (Belgrade: Institut društvenih nauka. Odelenje za istorijske nauke, 1963), pp. 192–193. See also ZDPNORJ, book 1, pp. 17–18.
Konstantin Fotić (Constantin Fotitch), The War We Lost: Yugoslavia’s Tragedy and the Failure of the West (New York: The Viking Press, 1948), p. 155, later stated how on ‘September 13, 1941, he [Mihailović] succeeded in transmitting a radio message to the government-in-exile … This message was the first confirmation of the actual existence of Mihailovich’s resistance group, about which many unconfirmed rumors had already spread about.’ Jovan Marjanović, Draža Mihailović između Britanaca i Nemaca: Knjiga I.: Britanski štićenik [Draža MIhailović between the British and the Germans. Book I. British Protégé] (Zagreb and Belgrade: Globus, Narodna knjiga, and Prosveta, 1979), p. 79, noted that British historian Phyllis Auty claimed that the first successful contact of Draža Mihailović with Istanbul was established on 19 June 1941. Why then did officials of the Yugoslav royal government-in-exile mention the existence of Mihailović’s forces only in late August 1941, if that really happened? For details about the arrival of the first news about Mihailović see Krizman (ed.), Jugoslavenske vlade u izbjeglištvu 1941–1943.: Dokumenti, p. 25.
According to Walter R. Roberts, Tito, Mihailović and the Allies, 1941–1945 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1973), p. 26, ‘Mihailović thought of resistance in terms of setting up an organization which, when the time was ripe, would rise against occupying forces. Such a time would come, in his opinion, when Allied victory was assured and the liberation of Yugoslavia imminent.’
Numerous works dealing with the NDH policy towards Serbs during World War Two are focused on Ustaša crimes, especially those committed in the initial months of the war which actually motivated most of the Serbs to rebel against the NDH in July 1941. A brief overview of the Ustaša policy towards Serbs during World War Two and basic data about Chetniks in the NDH can be found in my article, ‘The NDH’s Relations with Italy and Germany’, in a special issue of Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, guest-edited by Sabrina P. Ramet (vol. 7, no. 4, December 2006, pp. 462–463, at 470). This article was subsequently reissued in Sabrina P. Ramet (ed.), The Independent State of Croatia, 1941–45 (London: Routledge, 2007).
Jozo Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration (Stanford University Press, 2001), pp. 254–255, concluded that the ‘process of gradual polarization between the two resistance groups began in the Italian-controlled parts’ of the NDH ‘earlier than in other Yugoslav areas … Already in July and August 1941, representatives of some Chetnik groups and of the Italian armed forces initiated contacts that gradually developed into close collaboration, with the Partisans the principal target and the protection of the Serbian population a basic objective.’
For details on crimes against Muslims see Vladimir Dedijer and Antun Miletić (eds), Genocid nad Muslimanima 1941.–1945.: Zbornik dokumenata i svjedočenja [Genocide against Muslims: The Collection of Documents and Testimonies] (Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1990). On crimes against Croats and Muslims see the aforementioned collection of documents edited by Zdravko Dizdar and Mihael Sobolevski, Prešućivani četnički zločini u Hrvatskoj i Bosni i Hercegovini 1941.–1945. The collection also contains some documents on Chetnik crimes against those Serbs who opposed their policy. Zdravko Dizdar, Četničcki zlocčini u Bosni i Hercegovini 1941.–1945., focused on the methods and means of crimes committed primarily against the Muslims of eastern Bosnia during 1941 and 1942.
Fikreta Jelić-Butić, Četnici u Hrvatskoj 1941–1945. [Chetniks in Croatia from 1941 to 1945] (Zagreb: Globus, 1986), p. 32. During the same period contacts with Italian-occupying authorities were established in Lika, Herzegovina, and in western Bosnia. The author mentions how those Serbian elements that approached Italians were motivated to do so due to Ustaša terror over the Serbian population. However, the terror on those territories started after the NDH authorities took over control at the very end of May and at the beginning of June 1941. Even in northern parts of the NDH there were no mass terror and mass crimes at the beginning of May 1941, although the NDH authorities had taken some measures against the interests of some Serbs. So it is reasonable to assume that some other reasons motivated Serbian politicians to approach the Italians at the very beginning of May 1941.
The Italian zone of influence and military presence in the NDH was first established at the meeting in Vienna on 21–22 April 1941. For details about the meeting in Vienna and the territory of the Italian zone see Ladislaus Hory and Martin Broszat, Der kroatische Ustascha-Staat 1941–1945 [The Croatian Ustaša State from 1941 to 1945] (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1964), pp. 64–66.
On Italian policy towards the NDH see Nada Kisić Kolanović, NDH i Italija: Političke veze i diplomatski odnosi [The NDH and Italy: Political Connections and Diplomatic Relations] (Zagreb: Naklada Ljevak, 2001). See also Tomasevich, Occupation and Collaboration, pp. 233–268.
For details about his activities from 1941 to the end of the war see Jovo Popović, Marko Lolić, and Branko Latas, Pop izdaje [The Priest Betrayed] (Zagreb: Stvarnost, 1988).
I focus on this topic in ‘How the West Was Won: Jugoslavenska izbjeglička vlada i legenda o Draži Mihailovića’ [How the West Was Won: The Yugoslav Government in Exile and the Legend of Draža Mihailović’], Časopis za suvremenu povijest, vol. 38, no. 3 (2006), pp. 1039–1056. See also Elisabeth Barker, British Policy in South-East Europe in the Second World War (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1976), pp. 157–164.
Numerous publications from that period contain such information whose sources were the services of the Yugoslav government-in-exile. For example, René Kraus, Europe in Revolt (New York: Macmillan, 1942), p. VII, expressed his gratitude ‘for most valuable source material to the embassies, legations and consulates general’ of several Allied countries, among them those of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. On the legend of Draža Mihailović see the chapter entitled ‘The Burning Balkans’, pp. 497–507.
Louis Adamič [Luj Adamič], My Native Land (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1943), p. 46.
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Jareb, M. (2011). Allies or Foes? Mihailović’s Chetniks during the Second World War. In: Ramet, S.P., Listhaug, O. (eds) Serbia and the Serbs in World War Two. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230347816_8
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