Chetnik
Tschetnik ( Bulgarian and Serbian четник četnik , plural: четници četnici ; from Slavic četa , which has been used in Ottoman sources ( Turkish çete ) since early modern times in the sense of a free corps , band of robbers ) originally denotes an irregular unpaid fighter. Since the second half of the 19th century mainly a Christian irregular who waged a guerrilla war against the Ottoman rule in the Macedonian and Bulgarian regions . He organized himself in small groups under the leadership of a “ Vojvoden ”. Its counterpart in Greece was the Andartis .
The current meaning of the self-designation was coined during the Second World War by the German occupying power in Yugoslavia as a collective term for the members of ethnic and anti-communist Serb and Montenegrin militias , which developed into a fascist movement. This also included the Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland , which consisted of Cheetnik troops under the leadership of Dragoljub Draža Mihailović for the re-establishment of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the establishment of Greater Yugoslavia with an ethnically pure Greater Serbia during the Second World War .
The Croatian historian Vladimir Žerjavić estimates that the Chetniks murdered around 29,000 Bosniaks and 18,000 Croatians (mostly civilians ) during World War II . The historian Zdravko Dizdar estimates that a total of around 50,000 Muslims and Croats were murdered.
Originated in the Ottoman Empire
The Chetniks emerged from the Hajduken tradition . In the second half of the 19th century, volunteers formed small combat groups on the Balkan Peninsula ruled by the Ottoman Empire . The mobile Chetnik groups attacked representatives of Ottoman rule and organized uprisings among the Christian population.
In the Bulgarian areas of the Ottoman Empire, the Chetniks played a central role in Georgi Rakovsky's "Plan for the Liberation of Bulgaria" written in 1862. During the Balkan crisis from 1875 to 1878, Bulgarian , Greek and Serbian irregulars were particularly active. Bulgarian Chetniks held a special position , especially during the Bulgarian April Uprising of 1876 and the Ilinden Uprising .
Balkan Wars
After the end of the Balkan crisis by the Berlin Congress , the Chetniks concentrated on Macedonia (see Komitadschi , IMRO ). There was intense activity by Chetniks against the Ottomans before and during the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913. Because of their different national objectives, Serbian, Bulgarian, Macedonian and Greek irregulars became increasingly bitter opponents.
First World War
In 1886, the Serbian King Milan I. Obrenović recognized the Chetniks as a militia . During the First World War , Chetniks formed reconnaissance and guerrilla forces in Serbia, which was occupied by the Central Powers . After the First World War, they remained active as a militia in the newly founded Kingdom of Yugoslavia and maintained their traditions. Traditional associations were also formed in Bulgaria. In 1938, around 1,000 Chetnik organizations with around 50,000 members were registered in Yugoslavia.
Second World War
Destruction of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
In addition to the unstable domestic policy, there was a threatening foreign policy situation. With the exception of Greece and Romania, Yugoslavia was surrounded by former enemies: Italy , Albania , Austria , Hungary and Bulgaria . After the surrender of the traditional protecting power France in June 1940, Yugoslavia was increasingly at the mercy of the territorial claims of the Axis powers. Mussolini in particular pursued the connection of large parts of Yugoslavia and Greece in the course of his expansionist policy in the Mediterranean region .
The German interests in the Balkans consisted on the one hand in securing their own southern flank and pushing ahead with the preparations for the Barbarossa enterprise , and on the other hand in exploiting Yugoslavia's economic and natural resources. An entry in the war diary of the High Command of the Wehrmacht on April 14, 1941 mentions the Bor copper mines as the largest in the world and estimates the bauxite deposits in Serbia at 9% of the world's reserves.
The Tripartite Pact signed on September 27, 1940 , to which Hungary , Bulgaria and Romania had also joined, also put the Yugoslav government under pressure. Since the accession of Yugoslavia meant a departure from the Serbian policy of the past 40 years, it was largely rejected and the Yugoslav government was hesitant and hesitant. Attempts by the Serbian Minister of War, Milan Nedić , known as a Germanophile , to justify the signing of the pact, even led to his dismissal on November 1, 1940. Despite comparatively mild treaty provisions (waiver of the right to march through for the upcoming German attack on Greece, elimination of the military alliance obligation ), Prince Regent Paul was only able to bring himself to a signature after massive diplomatic pressure on March 25, 1941. As a result, there were several mass demonstrations in Belgrade during which the slogan “Better war than the pact” (bolje rat nego pakt) was chanted. On March 27, 1941, a bloodless coup took place in Belgrade under the leadership of Air Force General Bora Mirković , in which Prince Regent Paul was overthrown and Prince Peter II was declared of legal age. De jure , Peter II was now responsible for the leadership of the state, the actual exercise of power, however, was transferred to the aviation general and Prime Minister Dušan Simović . Simović followed a winding course on the question of the tripartite pact signed by his predecessor, refusing to ratify it without openly rejecting the agreement.
Outraged by the developments in Belgrade, Adolf Hitler first expressed his intention to "smash Yugoslavia" on March 27, 1941, which was to happen as part of the attack on Greece. Mussolini, who was immediately let in on Hitler's plans, remarked that “the Croatian separationist tendencies of Dr. Pavelić could count ”. Hitler initially considered adding Croatia to Hungary, but rejected the intention after Maček's Peasant Party proved inconsistent. It became increasingly clear that the Axis powers wanted to use the numerous ethnic differences and conflicts that existed in the Balkans according to the principle of “ divide and rule ” for their own purposes by pitting and playing off ethnic groups against each other. It was also a declared aim of German foreign policy to downsize Serbia as much as possible in order to prevent "conspiracies and intrigues" directed against Germany. Hitler's foreign policy with regard to Serbia was based on his opinion, stemming from the Austro-Hungarian tradition, of Serbs as "bomb throwers" and "schemers" who were also "carriers of a great state-building force".
Since the decision to attack Yugoslavia came unexpectedly, the Axis Powers had little time for military preparations. The attack on Yugoslavia was to take place with the greatest possible participation of the allied Italian, Hungarian and Bulgarian units. While Bulgaria signaled no readiness for war against Serbia, the military under Miklós Horthy was able to prevail in Hungary . The Hungarian government, on the other hand, strictly refused to participate in the war against Yugoslavia, and the Hungarian Prime Minister Count Pál Teleki even committed suicide in protest against German pressure (OKW War Diary, April 2 and 3, 1941).
On April 5, 1941, the leader (poglavnik) of the fascist Ustaša movement, Ante Pavelić, called on the soldiers and citizens of Croatia on the radio to turn their weapons on Serbs and the “friendly powers Germany and Italy, who enjoy full freedom and independence of the Croatian people guaranteed “to place their trust in them. On April 10, 1941, Colonel General Slavko Kvaternik proclaimed the Independent State of Croatia . On the same day, German troops marched into Zagreb , where they were received with jubilation. In Bosnia, too, Bosniaks and Croats initially had no objection to the invasion of German troops.
On April 6, 1941, Germany opened the war against Yugoslavia with air raids on Belgrade. The military operation was commanded by the Austrian general Alexander Löhr , who ordered Hitler to destroy the Serbian national library and to capture all intellectual circles as well as the head of the Serbian Orthodox Church . Despite hasty war preparations by the attackers, the approximately 700,000-strong army of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (17 infantry divisions, 3 cavalry divisions, 700 fighter planes) was defeated within a few days. The reasons for the failure of the Yugoslav military lay on the one hand in the fact that 400,000 soldiers were young recruits who had only been drafted shortly before the attack, and on the other hand in an unsuitable military concept: the troops were set up like a cordon along a 1860 km long section of the border formed a thin line of defense that could easily be overcome. The military equipment was also largely out of date. Germany provided 7 infantry divisions, 4 motorized divisions, 4 tank divisions and 484 combat aircraft for the attack. Italy was represented with 28 infantry divisions and 320 combat aircraft, while Hungary sent 10 infantry brigades into battle. The Croatian and Slovenian troops laid down their weapons before the fighting began.
On April 17, 1941, King Peter II and the Simović government fled into exile in Great Britain . General Danilo Kalafatović , authorized to negotiate the ceasefire, signed the surrender of the Yugoslav armed forces on the same day in Belgrade in German captivity. On April 19, 1941, the German military administration was proclaimed in Serbia, which was followed by a provisional administration under Milan Aćimović at the end of April 1941 .
Only half of the Yugoslav armed forces, around 350,000 soldiers and officers, were captured. After most of the Croatians and Macedonians had been released, the remaining 200,000, mostly Serbian prisoners, were transferred to German internment camps. Over 300,000 Serb soldiers evaded capture and defied surrender.
Bosnia , Croatia (except Dalmatia ) and Syrmia were added to the Independent State of Croatia, which was proclaimed under Mussolini's patronage . The southern half of Slovenia , most of the Adriatic coast including Dalmatia, Montenegro , the Sandžak and Kosovo i Metohija fell under Italian rule, while the Bačka was annexed to Hungary. Macedonia was incorporated into Bulgaria . The northern half of Slavonia , the Banat , and the rest of the “ Rumpfserbia ” with around 4 million inhabitants were occupied by the German Empire.
Since the Wehrmacht was challenged in 1941 in the Soviet Union, the occupying power, like in Croatia, relied on local movements and structures that were ready to collaborate. However, in contrast to the relatively safe situation in the so-called “independent” state of Croatia, several extensive popular uprisings occurred in Serbia from the summer of 1941, which the German occupying power was initially unable to counter. In the summer of 1941, a great popular uprising broke out in Montenegro, which wrested the area from Italian control. The Ustaša genocide of Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, which Hitler expressly tolerated, caused a large flow of Serb refugees, which by autumn 1941 had grown to 200,000 people. Together with around 300,000 Serbian soldiers in the royal Yugoslav army, they represented a serious threat to the German occupying forces.
Foundation of the Ravna Gora Movement
Dragoljub Draža Mihailović , a Serbian general staff officer of the Yugoslav army in Bosnia, withdrew from Bosnia to Serbia with a small motorized unit on April 17, 1941 in view of the threatened occupation, where he ran into Ustaša troops and Bosnian gangs a few times. On April 29, 1941, he crossed the Drina River with his units . When he arrived in Serbia, he heard rumors of a major uprising by Serbian officers who were in the Kopaonik area and went there. On the way to central Serbia, Mihailović's unit was involved in fighting with a German unit near Užice on May 6, 1941 and almost wiped out. On May 10, 1941, Mihailović reached the Ravna Gora mountain plateau in central Serbia with only 34 officers and soldiers, decimated and exhausted .
After arriving in Ravna Gora, Mihailović tried to establish contact with other officers and to win over the people in order to get food and money. With the support of numerous gendarmes and police officers who refused to obey the Aćimović collaborationist government in Belgrade, this also succeeded. In the weeks that followed, Belgrade soldiers and officers poured into Ravna Gora, which exacerbated the supply problem. By the fall of 1941, the Ravna Gora movement had grown to around 3,000–4,000 men.
According to a Serbian Orthodox custom , male family members should not shave for 40 days after the death of a loved one. In reference to this, some Chetniks wore long beards and thus expressed their mourning for the lost and occupied Serbian kingdom. In battle, Chetnik units wielded a skull and crossbones flag to deter the enemy.
As monarchists and Serbian nationalists, the Chetniks of Mihailović sought the restoration of the former Yugoslav kingdom, the formation of a Greater Yugoslavia and an ethnically pure Greater Serbia contained therein . Mihailović initially pursued a wait-and-see strategy and avoided entering into an open military confrontation with the Germans too early. First he wanted to put the movement on a broader basis and integrate the leaderless and largely apolitical Chetnik gangs, which had arisen in many parts of the former Yugoslavia because of the terror of the occupiers and their helpers, into his organization in order to prepare for the post-war period. The attack of the Third Reich on the Soviet Union , which began in 1941, raised hopes among many Serbs for a quick victory for the Soviet Union and an early end to the war. Mihailović therefore endeavored to avoid casualties and "atonement measures" against civilians, also with regard to Serbia's experience in World War I , in which around a fifth of the population was killed. Mihailović therefore gave the Germans and Tito to understand in the early summer of 1941 that he disapproved of the “communist terror” and that no action against the occupiers was to be expected from him for the time being. Through intermediaries, he contacted the Aćimović provisional government in Belgrade and asked the collaborationist leader of the Serbian fascists, Dimitrije Ljotić , for the names of well-to-do people who could be donors. During the summer of 1941, the German occupation command showed no signs of fighting Mihailović and encouraged the Aćimović government to reach a compromise.
In September Mihailović received instructions from the Simović government in exile through an agent. These largely coincided with his assessment that his time would come after the defeat of the German army. The government told him to initially ensure security and order in the country and to take action against robbers and looters. Subsequently, the political arm of the Chetnik movement, the " Central National Committee " (Serbian Centralni Nacionalni Komitet ), was founded in Belgrade , whose members were monarchists such as republicans, conservatives, socialists and supporters of the peasant party (the heterogeneity of the parties made it difficult clear, common party line). An official recognition of Mihailović as the leader of the rest of the Yugoslav military did not materialize for the time being, which often gave rise to numerous power struggles, arbitrariness and refusals of obedience. It therefore became increasingly difficult for Mihailović to assert his authority over the various Chetnik factions. Some of the officers urged vigorous resistance against the occupiers and worked openly with the partisans, above all the son of the assassin Puniša Račić , artillery captain Dragoslav Račić , who represented the core of the anti-German officer's wing. Račić was an archetype of the Serbian Chetnik , not least because of his flowing beard and peasant clothes . His 1,500-strong unit took part in several successful attacks by partisans on German bases in September and October 1941. Račić later became a bitter opponent of the communists.
The popular uprising that broke out in western Serbia in early July forced many of Mihailović's officers to show their colors. In addition to Račić's troops, some Chetnik groups in Valjevo under the leadership of the Serbian Orthodox priest Vladimir Zečević fought together with the partisans against the occupiers in early September 1941. The artillery general Ljubomir Novaković , who was competing with Mihailović because of his rank, spread anti-German propaganda on a radio station in the Šumadija in mid-September 1941 and called on the people to resist. Novaković, however, was compromised by his military incompetence at the end of September 1941 when he stormed a German base near Aranđelovac with around 3,000 farmers, the majority armed with scythes and pitchforks, killing many attackers. These events gave the German commanders in Belgrade the impression that Mihailović's Chetniks were basically hostile to the Germans and demonstrated an affinity for cooperation with Tito's partisans. They also erroneously attributed some actions by the communists to Mihailović and his “Greater Serbian” officers.
In addition, Mihailovićs Chetniks were not the only ones: the "official" Chetnik militia of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia had been under the president of the national-conservative Chetnik veterans' association, Kosta Pećanac, since 1932 . This traditional Chetnik federation, which emerged from the Balkan Wars, had around 1,000 sections with a total of 500,000 members in 1938 and was the largest Chetnik faction in Serbia. In response to German pressure, Pećanac decided very early on to cooperate and ignored Mihailović's appeal of August 15, 1941 to join the Ravna Gora Movement. Pećanac was characterized by great hostility towards the communists and was therefore used to suppress revolts by partisans in southern Serbia. His units also fought in Kosovo i Metohija and the Sandžak against Albanian-Muslim fascist militias ( Balli Kombëtar ), where they presented themselves with uncompromising cruelty and brutal terror against the Albanian Muslims, which led many anti-fascist Albanians to join the multinational and ethnically tolerant ones Yugoslav partisans to enter. Because of its unreliability and not least because of the great distrust that the German military commanders showed in general towards the Serbian Chetnik leaders, Pećanac's 8,000-strong unit was disbanded, he himself was captured by Mihailović's JVUO in 1944, sentenced to death for high treason and in executed in the Serbian city of Sokobanja.
The greatest supporters and most willing collaborators of the occupiers in Serbia were the fascist " ZBOR movement" under the leadership of the nurse Dimitrije Ljotić . The Zbor movement was founded before the war based on the NSDAP and Mussolini's National Fascist Party . Similar to Ante Pavelić's Ustaša party, it was close to Christianity, but acknowledged its Serbian Orthodox variant. The ZBOR movement called for the abolition of democracy and the establishment of an authoritarian corporate state . While it did not achieve a significant political majority in the Yugoslav parliament before the war, its influence increased considerably after the German occupation. She dedicated herself to the fight against Jews, Freemasonry , Communists and Western capitalism and submitted to the command of the Wehrmacht. The "Serbian Volunteer Corps" (Serbian: Srpski Dobrovoljački Korpus ) of the ZBOR movement had a strength of around 3000–4000 men and was commanded by the former Yugoslav and Austro-Hungarian officer Kosta Mušicki . Due to their relatively small number, members of the movement mainly acted as translators, informants and advisers to the occupying power, and on several occasions as intermediaries between Mihailović and the occupiers. Militarily they were less important, they fought sporadically with Wehrmacht units against other Chetnik groups and less often against Serbian communists. The ZBOR movement remained loyal to National Socialism beyond the end of the war and demanded the continuation of the struggle in the form of a guerrilla war.
Chetniks of other nationalities
Mihailovićs Tschetniks also belonged to Slovenes and, to a small extent, Croatians who fought for a monarchist Yugoslavia. For example, the Slovenian historian Uroš Šušterič and his relatives were in the leadership of the JVUO. The Yugoslav and Slovenian economist Dr. In 1999, Aleksander Bajt confessed in his book “Berman's Dossier” that he had been a Chetnik sympathizer during the Second World War and that he had worked in Rome as an intelligence officer for Mihailović's JVUO under the code name “Berman”. Bajt's portrayal of the Chetniks was viewed as glorifying by critics and caused great public outrage in Slovenia because it challenged the prevailing opinion that the Greater Serbian Chetnik ideology was the real cause of the Balkan conflict .
There was also an active Chetnik movement in Montenegro, which was led by Pavle Đurišić and worked closely with Mihailović's Chetniks.
Resistance to the occupiers (1941)
The Communist Party of Yugoslavia, which had been banned since 1921 and operated underground, only had around 8,000 members in early 1941. However, between April and June 1941, about 4,000 new members joined it. The spread of the CPY was comparatively low in “Rump Serbia”, it only had 2,000 members there, 600 of them in Belgrade and its surroundings.
On July 1, 1941, the Comintern issued an order to the CPJ to found partisan associations and to carry out combat operations and acts of sabotage against the occupiers. As a result, a meeting was the "Main Staff of the Volksbefreierischen partisans of Yugoslavia" on July 4, 1941 in Belgrade (Glavni rod Narodnooslobodilačkih Partizanskih odreda Jugoslavije) , chaired by Josip Broz Tito (a Croat), Edvard Kardelj (Slovenia), Ivan Milutinovic (Montenegrin) , Aleksandar Ranković (Serbian) and Svetozar Vukmanović-Tempo (Montenegrin), where the CPJ decided to fight the occupiers. Vlado Popović was to organize the resistance in Croatia, Edvard Kardelj in Slovenia. Svetozar Vukmanović-Tempo was sent to Bosnia, Milovan Đilas to Montenegro. Ivo-Lola Ribar (Croat), Moša Pijade (Serb / Jew) and Arso Jovanović (Montenegrin) also belonged to the Supreme Staff and the leadership of the CPY in Yugoslavia, as well as the Serbian Orthodox priest Vladimir Zečević , who was involved in decisions of the staff was excluded.
The strategy of the communists was to win supporters in the villages and industrial areas of central Serbia and to motivate them for armed resistance, without shrinking from the murder of politically dissenting “counter-revolutionary elements”. The JCP also succeeded in radicalizing the Serbian refugees streaming in because of the Ustaša genocide in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The ruthless retaliatory measures taken by the German occupiers against civilians drove people to join the partisans in droves. A report by the German administrative staff in Belgrade dated July 23, 1941 describes the situation as follows:
- “In the mountains of Serbia there are the Komitatschi gangs, some of which are steeped in tradition, the so-called Cetnici, who are very popular with the Serbian people's well-known tendency towards adventurous romanticism. In the months after the war they had been reinforced by officers and soldiers who had fled. It is true that their existence was a worrying state of affairs for European concepts of public order and security; but they meticulously avoided any kind of clash with the German armed forces and stated that their primary task was to combat Croatian terror. With false slogans, communist functionaries have now managed to seize the leadership of a large part of these gangs. ”( Lit .: Schmider, 2002, p. 57.)
At first, the partisans avoided direct confrontation with the small but well-armed Wehrmacht units in Serbia. In July 1941, their fighting was directed mainly against Serbian gendarmes and institutions of the Aćimović collaboration government. Favored by the fact that the German military administration exerted little influence outside of the larger cities, the communists were able to quickly gain a foothold in Serbia by August 1941 and build a flexible and powerful organization. The flight of the German infantry divisions involved in the attack on Yugoslavia to the Soviet Union aroused the hope of the communists that the war would not last long.
On August 10, 1941, an order was issued allowing non-communists to join the communist combat units (odreds) . The popular uprising spread across western Serbia. On August 11, 1941 the Commander Serbia, General der Flieger Heinrich Danckelmann , General of the Artillery Paul Bader gave the order to "immediately start the aggressive fight against the communist terrorist gangs". The Aćimović gendarmerie and the Wehrmacht showed themselves to be powerless in the face of the widespread uprising and initially had little to counter it. Their helplessness resulted in uncontrolled "expiatory measures" in which around 1,000 people were killed indiscriminately by the end of August 1941.
At the end of August 1941, the Yugoslav communists established a "liberated area" in northeast Serbia, between the cities of Krupanj, Loznica and Zvornik. They were able to establish themselves as the leading resistance movement in Serbia in the summer of 1941 and won the initiative over the events. The attacks by the communists on gendarmes and police officers of the collaboration government targeted Mihailović's greatest supporters. In addition, some of Mihailović's zealous officers rebelled with impunity against his wait-and-see policy and fought together with the communist Odreds.
Cooperation with the occupiers
Mihailović feared the increasing influence of the communists and saw in the partial cooperation with the occupiers the lesser evil. While the Chetniks stood for the pre-war order and the continuity of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia based on the West, the Yugoslav communists advocated fundamental upheavals in society along the lines of the Soviet Union . The communists succeeded in propaganda that Mihailović was only posing as a resistance fighter, while the communist Yugoslav partisans bore the brunt of the struggle against the occupying powers. The partisans also set up national liberation councils in the liberated areas.
In addition, Mihailović was mostly only symbolically supported by the Allies and later dropped. While Great Britain initially supported the government-in-exile of the Serbian-Yugoslav King Petar II, who had fled to London , it turned around in the course of the war and supplied the communist Tito partisans with weapons. This fact played into the hands of German propaganda, which claimed that Churchill had "thrown the Bolsheviks to the Bolsheviks " to Serbia . Consequently, only Germany's victory can guarantee Serbia's independence.
While one of his formations was fighting with the partisans, Mihailović maintained relationships with the Nedić collaboration government and was supported by them with money and weapons. Many of Mihailović's Chetniks were able to go into hiding as gendarmes of the collaboration government and tried to the last to achieve legal status with reference to their anti-communist activities. At the same time Mihailović tried to get in touch with the notorious Wehrmacht general Franz Böhme . Böhme turned down his offer of alliance and insisted on unconditional surrender and complete disarmament.
There were violent differences of opinion between the German and Italian high command over how to deal with Chetniks in Bosnia and Croatia. The Italian general Mario Roatta viewed the Chetniks as potential allies who rendered valuable services in the fight against the communist partisans, and officially provided them with weapons and ammunition from mid-1942. At the same time, Italy was interested in building a counterweight to the Ustasha regime ruled by Germany. Hitler and the German military leadership, on the other hand, viewed the Chetniks as “Greater Serbian combat units” who would take the enemy side in an Allied attack on the Balkans, and pressed for their disarmament. Finally, it was agreed to disarm the Chetniks as part of the upcoming military operation “White”, in which the communist partisans were to be destroyed in early 1943. Since the fight against the partisans was more difficult than expected, the Chetniks in Bosnia and Croatia kept their weapons until the end of the war.
Fight against the communist resistance movement
The Yugoslav communists were able to build up the resistance far more successfully from the start. In September 1941 the partisans had a large base in Serbia and their military formations inflicted severe defeats on the German occupiers. In August 1941 they carried out 242 assassinations and killed 22 Wehrmacht soldiers. On August 31, 1941 alone, they carried out 18 attacks on railway lines. Already on September 21, 1941 they fought for a liberated area, the "Republic of Užice", in which there was an arms factory, whose production should become a bone of contention between Mihailović and the communists due to the lack of supplies with weapons and ammunition. Despite frequent attacks by the air forces, the communists managed to maintain arms production in Užice.
At the beginning of the war, the Chetniks and Communists still worked partially together, but the situation changed when Tito and Mihailović were unable to reach an agreement on the further course of the resistance at a meeting in the village of Brajići on October 26, 1941. From that point on, the two movements fought bitterly. A role in this was that Mihailović counted on British support and did not consider a compromise to be necessary at all costs.
On November 2, 1941, Mihailović's associations carried out an attack against the partisan stronghold of Užice. The “liberation” of Užice was originally coordinated jointly. Since the communists were the first to invade Užice and in turn proclaimed the “Socialist Republic of Užice”, and Mihailović's associations refused to enter, Mihailović saw the alliance with the communists broken and decided to attack. The attack was repulsed and Mihailović narrowly escaped military disaster. The staff of the People's Liberation Partisan Department for the Čačak District wrote on November 3, 1941 about the betrayal of Draža Mihailović : “The Fifth Column has risen again. The German agents, Draža Mihailović, Lieutenant Colonel Pavlović, Dragiša Vasić, came to the aid of Hitler, Nedić and Ljotić at the last hour. "
General Böhme knew how to take advantage of the situation and put the partisans on the defensive. On November 20, 1941, Tito and Mihailović agreed on an armistice under British pressure . In anticipation of a German attack on the main base of the partisans in Užice, Tito Mihailović called on November 28, 1941 once again to take part in joint armed action against the occupiers. Mihailović replied that he was not thinking about it, but was waiting for better conditions for a fight.
At the same time, some Chetnik commanders and their troops, a total of about 2,000 men, according to the communists, with the consent of Mihailović, placed themselves under the orders of General Nedić. A few days later these troops fought on the side of the Germans against the partisans. At the end of November General Böhme, reinforced by a German division and favored by Mihailović's attitude, succeeded in breaking the partisans' military resistance. The partisans fled in December 1941 via the only remaining route of retreat, to Montenegro, which was occupied by Italy, and to Herzegovina, which officially belonged to Croatia. With the withdrawal from Serbia to Montenegro and Herzegovina, and later to Bosnia, the partisan army was expelled from Serbia for years. It was not until the summer of 1944 that she succeeded in gaining a foothold in Serbia and, together with the Red Army, liberated it in the autumn / winter of 1944.
The alliance of Chetniks, Ustašas, Italian and German associations thus contributed significantly to the fall of the Užice Republic on November 29, 1941 and severely impaired the military efforts of the Yugoslav partisans until 1944.
On December 7, 1941, the exiled Yugoslav King Peter II. Karađorđević Mihailović promoted to the rank of brigadier general and appointed him leader of the "Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland" (Jugoslovenska vojska u otadžbini, JVUO). He officially belonged to the London government in exile as Minister of War.
Captured partisans and defected Chetniks were usually killed on the spot. Many of them were downright slaughtered by having their throats cut. On the other hand, the partisans proceeded with the same severity against real and alleged Chetnik sympathizers.
After their military defeat and their withdrawal from Serbia, the partisans had settled in the Bosnian-Croatian border area and held the first congress of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia in the city of Bihać , in which, according to the minutes of the meeting, all peoples of the future Yugoslavia took part and their will to fight against the occupiers testified.
War crimes
During the war, Chetnik associations also committed numerous war crimes against Serb, Croat, Albanian and Bosnian civilians. Letters and documents from various Chetnik leaders show that, among other things, they set fire to villages while drunk and shot and beat numerous sympathizers and supporters of the partisans to death.
In Bosnia-Herzegovina and in the Dalmatian hinterland, the Chetniks initially cooperated with the partisans and fought against the Croatian Ustaša , who carried out numerous massacres of the Serb population living there. The Ustasha's riot of blood reached such proportions that the German military administration even felt compelled to do something about it, because the atrocities ultimately did more harm than good to the German plans. The Reich Main Security Office described the situation in a report to the Reichsführer SS on September 9, 1942 as follows:
“Without the arrival of the Serbian population terrorized by the Ustaše, this sniper war (the Četniks) would have been nipped in the bud. The fact that there were outspoken uprisings is in large part due to the terror of the Ustaša. "
The most famous association around the town of Knin in northern Dalmatia was the so-called " Dinaric Chetnik Division " under the command of the Serbian Orthodox priest and voivod Momčilo Đujić . This collaborated with the Italian occupation forces and his unit was responsible for the Gata massacre on October 1, 1942, in which civilians were killed because they sympathized with the Tito partisans. In subsequent massacres by the Chetniks, which took place up to October 5, 1942, in Dugopolje , Kotlenica , Dubrava , Donji Dolac , Ostrvica , Čisla , Zvečanje and Srijane , 120 women, children and old people were often brutally murdered. The local committee of the Communist Party of Croatia for Central Dalmatia reported on October 4, 1942:
“[…] The Chetniks burned down the villages, plundered and slaughtered every person they could get their hands on. [...] The atrocities are difficult to describe. Anyone who failed to escape was killed. The women and girls were raped; her breasts cut off, as well as other parts of her body. Most of the people killed are elderly, but there are also many children. Many sick and helpless people burned to death in burning houses. The majority of those murdered were killed with knives and mostly had their throats cut. All kinds of scenes; a child in his mother's hands, both slaughtered. In some places large heaps of murdered people, 10 to 15 corpses in the same place. "
A few months earlier, the Chetniks had murdered Croatian civilians in the Zabiokovlje massacre , skinned Catholic priests, and looted and burned houses.
In the massacre in Foča and the surrounding area (1943) , the Chetniks murdered 9,200 Bosniaks , including 8,000 civilians (mostly old people, women and children). A German report from February 10, 1943 from the Muslim community of Bukovica states:
"On 5.2. of the year Cetnici attacked the Bukovica municipality ... and burned around 500 men, women and children. [...] Girls were found who had been impaled after they had been raped [...] In the village of Strazice, the body of Hajji Tahirovic was found, the skin of the hollows of his knees over his back and head to his chest. "
Decline
The Allies sent military and intelligence observers to investigate the situation in Yugoslavia and to convince themselves of the collaboration of the Chetniks with the Axis powers. In addition, there was the political pressure of the Soviet Union and the successes of the communists in Yugoslavia, so that the Allies withdrew their support for the Chetniks at the Tehran Conference in 1943 and accepted the Yugoslav partisans under the leadership of Tito as allies. The total strength of the JVUO in Serbia at that time was officially 12,000 to 15,000 men. In view of the political and military developments, the Chetniks were decimated by 1944, many relatives switched sides and defected to the partisans.
In 1945, some leaders of the JVUO broke away from Mihailović and founded the “Yugoslav National Army ” (not to be confused with the Yugoslav People's Army of the Tito Partisans) in Istria , together with the Slovenian Domobranci , under German protection , but which was never deployed. After the end of the war, the soldiers of the National Army were handed over to the Tito partisans by the British, contrary to other promises. Most were then murdered by them in the woods around Bleiburg or, according to official usage, " liquidated ".
Dragoljub Draža Mihailovićs Tschetniks were finally defeated in mid-May 1945 at the sources of the Drina and Neretva rivers . Mihailović was able to escape one last time and hid in Bosnia until mid-March 1946, where he was finally arrested by the communist secret service OZNA . He was sentenced to death in a five-day show trial for collaboration with the occupiers and executed by shooting in Belgrade on July 18, 1946 . His body was buried in a secret location. Based on the report of an eyewitness to the shooting in 2005, the secret of Mihailović's execution and burial site has been revealed.
Yugoslav Wars
During the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s, some Serbian militants fought under the name of "Chetniks" in Croatia and Bosnia, for which some of them have to answer before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia .
Vojislav Šešelj , the leader of the Serbian Radical Party imprisoned in The Hague since 2003 , held the title “Vojvoda”, which was awarded to him in 1989 in the USA by Momčilo Đujić, a Chetnik leader from the Second World War. The title was withdrawn from Šešelj on December 9, 1998, on the occasion of the formation of a coalition government made up of Šešelj's radicals and Milošević's socialists. On this occasion Đujić asked the “Serbian people for forgiveness” for having made a mistake by appointing Šešelj, because Šešelj had developed “into a fellow believer and colleague of Milošević”.
Rehabilitation and remembrance in Serbia
Annual rallies on Ravna Gora
The party founder of the Serbian Renewal Movement and later Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Drašković and his wife Danica attempted to organize a media-effective visit to Ravna Gora in honor of Draža Mihailović on the anniversary of the foundation of the Ravna Gora movement, May 13, 1990. However, they were forcibly prevented from doing so by units of the Interior Ministry. Motivated by this incident, a parade of Chetnik supporters, monarchists and pro-Serb nationalists from all countries has taken place on Ravna Gora every year in May, which ends in a final rally. The anti-fascist struggle of the Chetniks is invoked in speeches and the communist regime is denounced. Drašković, who successfully campaigns for the legalization of the Chetnik movement, often attended the rallies and gave several speeches there. The annual marches were initially reluctantly and later more and more openly tolerated by the authorities. In 1992 a statue of Draža Mihailović was erected on Ravna Gora, a church was built there in 1996, and later a museum.
There has also been a trend towards the rehabilitation of Chetniks in Serbia since the 1990s, something that can be found in school books and in the media. After decades of official demonization and suppression of Chetniks by the communist regime of Yugoslavia, a counter-movement arose that portrayed Chetniks as anti-fascist victims of the chaos of war, betrayed by the British for strategic reasons and militarily overrun by the Soviets. In this context, Mihailović's US award with the " Legion of Merit ", which he was awarded posthumously in 1948 for the rescue of 432 US pilots, is emphasized.
Legal equality with Tito's partisans
On December 21, 2004, at the request of the Serbian renewal movement Draškovićs, the Serbian parliament decided in an urgent session to amend the law by which the Chetniks were legally equated with the Tito partisans. The resolution was passed with 176 votes in favor, 24 against and 13 abstentions. This gave Chetniks and their relatives the right to a war pension and other benefits. The reason for this advance is the desire for "equality of all anti-fascist movements". Since many of those who took part in the war are already dead, the decision has above all a symbolic value, said Vojislav Mihailović, Vice President of Parliament and grandson of Draža Mihailović.
The Serbian Association of Fighters of the People's Liberation War (SUBNOR, Savez udruženja boraca Narodnooslobodilačkog rata) and the human rights organization “Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia” were indignant about the change in the law. From their point of view, the Chetniks were thus rewarded for their collaboration with Hitler, despite numerous murders of partisans and their sympathizers . It is a myth that Chetniks were just hapless anti-fascists and resistance fighters during World War II .
The decision was also the cause of sharp criticism in Croatia and in large parts of Bosnia. The Croatian President Stjepan Mesić said, for example, that the Chetniks could not be declared anti-fascists afterwards. In Croatia, displaying the symbolism of the Chetnik movement as well as that of the Ustaša movement is a criminal offense.
Only in Slovenia are the “Domobranci” on an equal footing with Tito's partisans.
See also
- Greater Serbia
- International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
- Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland
literature
- Holm Sundhaussen : Četnici . In: Holm Sundhaussen, Konrad Clewing (Hrsg.): Lexicon for the history of Southeast Europe . 2nd updated and expanded edition. Böhlau Verlag, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2016, ISBN 978-3-205-78667-2 , p. 231 ff .
- Jozo Tomasevich: The Chetniks: War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945 . Stanford University Press, Stanford 1975, ISBN 0-8047-0857-6 .
- Matteo J. Milazzo: The Chetnik Movement and the Yugoslav Resistance . Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1975, ISBN 0-8018-1589-4 .
- Lucien Karchmar: Draža Mihailović and the Rise of the Cetnik Movement, 1941–1942 . Garland Publishing Inc., New York / London 1987, ISBN 0-8240-8027-0 .
- Simon Trew: Britain, Mihailovic and the Chetniks, 1941–42 . Studies in Military and Strategic History. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 1998, ISBN 0-333-69589-5 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Holm Sundhaussen: Četnici, 2016 (see literature). The root word of CETA četiri (four) is not secured (see Language Evolution: Twos and Troops: Sifting the Evidence. September 26, 2014, accessed on March 6, 2019 . )
- ↑ Holm Sundhaussen : History of Serbia: 19. – 21. Century . Böhlau Verlag, Vienna a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-3-205-77660-4 , pp. 321 .
- ^ Michael Portmann, Arnold Suppan: Serbia and Montenegro in World War II . In: Österreichisches Ost- und Südosteuropa-Institut (Ed.): Serbia and Montenegro: Space and Population, History, Language and Literature, Culture, Politics, Society, Economy, Law . Lit Verlag, Münster 2006, ISBN 3-8258-9539-4 , p. 287 f .
- ↑ Vladimir Geiger: Human Losses of the Croats in World War II and the Immediate Post-War Period Caused by the Chetniks (Yugoslav Army in the Fatherand) and the Partisans (People's Liberation Army and the Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia / Yugoslav Army) and the Communist Authorities: Numerical Indicators . In: Croatian Institute of History (Ed.): Review of Croatian history . August, pp. 85-87.
- ^ Walter Manoschek : Serbia is free of Jews: Military occupation policy and the extermination of Jews in Serbia 1941/42 (= contributions to military history . Volume 38 ). Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1993, p. 112 ff .
- ↑ Detlef Brandes, Holm Sundhaussen, Stefan Troebst: Lexicon of expulsions: Deportation, forced resettlement and ethnic cleansing in Europe in the 20th century . 1st edition. Böhlau Verlag, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2010, ISBN 978-3-205-78407-4 , p. 322 .
- ^ Jovan Radovanović: Dragoljub Draža Mihajlović u ogledalu istorijskih dokumenata . 2nd Edition. Sventovid, Beograd 2003, ISBN 86-84117-24-7 .
- ↑ Thomas Casagrande: The Volksdeutsche SS Division "Prinz Eugen" . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt 2003, ISBN 3-593-37234-7 , pp. 199 .
- ↑ Zdravko Dizdar: Četnički zlocini u i Bosni Hercegovini: 1941.-1945 . Ed .: Hrvatski institut za povijest. Dom i svijet, Zagreb 2002, ISBN 953-6491-86-9 , p. 368 .
- ↑ Thomas Casagrande: The Volksdeutsche SS Division "Prinz Eugen" . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt 2003, ISBN 3-593-37234-7 , pp. 313 .
- ↑ Bosko S. Vukcevich: Diverse forces in Yugoslavia 1941-1945 . Authors Unlimited, 1990, ISBN 978-1-55666-053-5 , pp. 191 .
- ↑ Jovana Gligorijević: Vojvode po zanimanju: Đujić i uveoci. Retrieved January 21, 2017 .