Mihailović and the Četniks

Mihailović and the Četniks. A četnik was originally a member of an armed band (četa) operating against the Turks from Serbian-inhabited territory. In the wars of 1912–18, the četniks had been francs-tireurs helping the Serbian armies, and in 1941 the popular name was taken up again to describe all sorts of insurgents all over Yugoslavia, including army officers who had not accepted capitulation to the Germans.

The best known was Colonel Dragoljub (‘Draža’) Mihailović (1893–1946), whose idea was to organize, from German-occupied Serbia, a skeleton secret army to prepare for action to be co-ordinated with the plans of his government-in-exile and of the Allies. He called it the Yugoslav Home Army, to emphasize the continued legal existence of Yugoslavia, and to end the confusion that arose from the name četnik. The spontaneous rising in Serbia which followed on the German invasion of the USSR in June 1941 (see BARBAROSSA) interrupted his plans, and also brought to the surface a rival set of insurgents with other aims— Tito's partisans. The two fought uneasily side by side until brutal German repression exploded the bubble of popular optimism, relations between them turned to civil war, and, by the end of the year, the revolt had been quelled. Mihailović was generally considered its leader, in spite of his reticence and of the part played by the communists. Although his influence and his accomplishments were greatly exaggerated by Allied propaganda, nothing as important had so far occurred in occupied Europe, and Mihailović, promoted general, was symbolically made army minister in the exiled government in January 1942.

Tito and his partisans left Serbia for Bosnia, and Mihailović went back to his original plan to form a home army, careful to avoid further useless sacrifices. Keeping the base of his organization in Serbia, he removed himself just out of German reach, to northern Montenegro. Following on the Italian repression of the rising in Montenegro, the revolutionary activities of the communists had made the local Četniks willing to settle for ‘live-and-let-live’ with the occupying army, and in the Italian zone of Pavelić's fascist independent state of Croatia (NDH) as well, many Serbian rebels had come to terms with Italian commanders in exchange for protection against Pavelić's fascist Ustašas. Nevertheless, all Serbian rebels were anxious to acknowledge Mihailović as a nominal paramount symbol of their distant king and the Allies, to legitimize their authority over the local population.

Mihailović accepted the link, which provided him with intelligence and Italian matériel, in the hope that he would be able to destroy the NDH through the Četniks in anticipation of an Allied landing in Dalmatia, but they had already achieved as much as they could, and he never had any real authority over them. He did, however, collect useful data, and carry out sabotage on communications through Serbia, which earned him Allied praise.

Although he had been engaged in only limited direct action against the Germans since the end of 1941, the Allies believed Mihailović to be potentially the most dangerous of all the Yugoslav rebels. However, his strength was weakened in the bloody entanglements of the first half of 1943 when, in expectation of a landing, the Axis, Tito, and Mihailović all acted to safeguard their interests at each other's expense. But when he returned to Serbia that summer, he emerged again to the point where he is estimated to have led the second most active resistance movement in Europe—after Tito's. Time, however, was against him, for Tito was indeed impressing the British as ‘killing the most Germans’, and well ahead in terms of mobilization and organization. In December 1943, disappointed in their expectations, the British withdrew what support they had given Mihailović, and eventually, in May 1944, prevailed upon King Peter (1923–70) to appoint a new government which did not include him.

That summer marked the nadir of Mihailović's military action against the Germans, left as he was without supplies and facing the increasing onslaughts of Tito's partisans who were intent on returning to Serbia to link up with the advancing Red Army. Yet he organized the saving of shot-down Allied airmen, hunted down acknowledged collaborators, and continued rail sabotage. At the beginning of September he proclaimed a general mobilization to rid Serbia of its occupation forces. But attacked on three sides—by the Soviets, by the Bulgars who had turned from pro-German occupiers to pro-Soviet liberators, and by the partisans—he soon had to leave Serbia to try and regroup his forces in Bosnia.

In western Yugoslavia the collapse of Italy in September 1943 had deflated the independent Četniks. Most of what remained of them had eventually found their way to the region of Venezia Giulia in north-east Italy and were kept there by distrustful Germans who reinforced them with collaborationist auxiliaries from Serbia after that territory had been evacuated by the Germans and their auxiliaries. In October 1944 this jumble of armed groups wanted Mihailović to join them, so as to reorganize them into an efficient anti-communist force acceptable to the Allies. Mihailović wanted to disperse his troops into guerrilla groups and return to Serbia, but he did not entirely reject the plan, as it offered the possibility of joining with anti-communist forces in Slovenia and with the Anglo-American forces fighting in the Italian campaign. He sent them the nucleus of a command staff, and left all his men free to go or to stay with him. Many went, but only a few eventually got to Italy, and the plan came to nothing.

Mihailović then set out in April 1945 to return to Serbia to start a resistance movement against the new communist order being set up there. But ambushed and attacked on their way by strong and well-equipped partisan forces, and beset by hunger and disease, the remains of the Yugoslav Home Army soon melted away. Only a few thousand reached Serbia, where they fought a disorganized guerrilla campaign, until Mihailović was captured in March 1946 by communist security troops. His capture marked the final defeat of the losing side in the civil war and after a dramatic trial in Belgrade, he was executed for treason and war crimes on 17 July 1946.

Stevan Pavlowitch

Bibliography

Karchmar, L. , Draža Mihailović and the Rise of the Četnik Movement 1941–42 (New York, 1987).
Roberts, W. , Tito, Mihailović and the Allies 1941–45 (2nd edn., Durham, NC, 1987).
Trew, S. , Britain, Mihailović and the Chetniks, 1941–42 (London 1998).