Chetniks

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For the WWII guerilla force, see Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland.

Traditional classic chetnik farmers with accordeon

The Chetniks (Serbian : Четници or Četnici) were members of a Serbian nationalist and royalist guerrilla organization named after a 19th century Serbian movement opposing Ottoman rule. The term is also applied to the Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland, a guerilla force during the Second World War.

1 Origins
2 First Balkan War
3 The Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland
4 Modern era
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Origins

Chetniks were originally formed as a result of the Macedonian (Slav) struggle against the Ottoman Empire. Soon, other ethnic groups in the Balkans created their own Chetnik detachments: Serbs, Bulgarians, Greek Andartes, and Albanian Kacaci. At first, the Ottoman rulers offered little resistance to the Chetnik detachments. The Ottomans theorized that the various groups were primarily occupied in conflicts with each other. But, the Chetniks fought the Turks in Herzegovina. In northern Macedonia, the Chetniks fought against the Turks and pro-Turkish Albanians.

[edit] First Balkan War

At the start of the First Balkan War there were one-hundred-and-ten Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) detachments, one-hundred-and-eight Greek detachments, thirty Serbian detachments, and five Vlach detachments. These Chetnik detachments supported their respective sides in the Turkish rear in the First Balkan War.

[edit] The Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland

The Chetniks were not a homogenous organization. There where many groups and several leaders, many of which fought each other. In the early years of the formation of the Independent State of Croatia, local Chetnik units collaborated with Ustashe against the communist partisans. After the collapse of the so-called 1st Yugoslavia in 1941, many Serbs saw in the prewar chetnik association and in its 1932 president Kosta Pećanac the force which would start the action against the enemy who occupied the country. They never doubted about his patriotism, although they considerd him a controversial and reactionary person. Some time before the German invasion, the Yugoslav Ministry of Army and Navy requested from Pećanac to form guerilla operation in Southern parts of Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo, probably with the goal of controlling pro-Bulgarian and pro-Albanian population of those parts. He was supplied with certain amount of weapons and money and he managed to organize and arm several hundred men concentrated in the valley of river Toplica in South Serbia. This army remained intact after German occupation of Serbia, and its ranks were filled by refuges from Macedonia and Kosovo. It seems that there were some conflicts between these detachments and the Albanian groups in the beginning of the summer 1941. Only then Draza Mihajlovic, still unknown to the most of the Serbian population, organized his forces at Ravna Gora. He gathered a small group of officers and soldiers who refused to surrender to the Germans. After arriving at Ravna Gora, Serbia on May 8, he realized that he had only seven officers and twenty four non-commissioned officers and soldiers. In the early months of the German occupation and for a considerable time later, term "četnik (chetnik)" was identified only to the detachments of Kosta Pećanac which were much better known then Dražinovci, Draža's men.

A few months after the beginning of the war with the appearance of the communist lead partisans, Kosta Milovanović Pećanac gave up the idea of becoming the resistance force and by the end of August 1941 made an agreement with the Government of National Salvation in Serbia and German occupation authorities to fight the partisans with his detachments. In other words after five months the chetniks organization of Kosta Pećanac became an instrument of the occupation regime.

At Ravna Gora, Mihailović organized the Chetnik detachments of the Yugoslav Army. These became the Military-chetnik detachments and finally the Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland (Jugoslovenska vojska u otadžbini). They were, however, Serbian nationalists as they didn't recognize any other nationality in the so-called First Yugoslavia except the Serbian one.

The first Chetnik formations led by Mihailović were formed around Ravna Gora on June 14,. The declared goal of the Chetniks was the liberation of the not-anymore-existing country from the occupying armies including the forces of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Ustase (the fascist regime of the Croatia).

Mihailovic decided against a mass uprising because of catastrophical Serb losses in the World War I, in which the Kingdom of Serbia lost a quarter of its population. Pećanac and Mihailović became rivals, both claiming the Chetnik heritage. Pećanac was executed in 1944 by Mihailović's Chetniks for treason upon his capture.

The British Special Operations Executive were being sent to aid Mihailović's forces beginning in Autumn of 1941. Mihailović rose in rank, becoming the Minister of War of the exile government in January 11, 1942 and General and Deputy Commander-in-Chief on June 17 the same year.

The Chetniks of Serbia moved to Bosnia. There other chetnik groups were already active. They engaged in heavy combat with both the partisans and the Croat Ustasha and regular troops, resulting in many war crimes and atrocities in today's Bosnia and Croatia.

In 1943, the Germans decided to pursue the Chetniks in the northern zone, and offered a reward of 100,000 Reichsmarks for the capture of Mihailović, dead or alive. During the so-called Battle of the Neretva river in 1943, the Chetniks were fighting on the German and Italian side against the Tito's partisans. However, the Germans planned to disarm them after winning the battle against the partisans.

By the middle of the 1943, the partisan movement had successfully survived an intense period of Axis pressure, while the Chetniks had almost entirely abandoned anti-German activities in favour of fighting the partisans. Consequently, at the Tehran Conference in November 1943, the Allies decided to cease their support of the Chetniks, and switch allegiances to Tito's partisans, who were considered the main anti-fascist resistance group in Yugoslavia.

Towards the end of the war, Mihailović began to hide in the Eastern Bosnia. Nikola Kalabic, his war comrade was the only person who knew where Mihajlovic was. In exchange for freedom, since Kalabic was wanted as well, he told where Draza Mihajlovic was hiding. He was captured on March 13, 1946 by agents of OZNA (Odsjek Zastite Naroda — Department of National Security). Tried for high treason and war crimes from June 10 to July 15, he was found guilty and sentenced to death by firing squad on July 15th. The Presidium of the National Assembly rejected the clemency appeal on July 16. He was executed together with nine other officers in the early hours of 18 July 1946, in Lisiciji Potok, about 200 meters from the former Royal Palace, and buried in an unmarked grave on the same spot. His main prosecutor was Miloš Minić, later minister of foreign affairs for the Communist government of Yugoslavia.

The execution of Draza Mihajlovic was a sticking point in Franco–Yugoslav relations. Charles de Gaulle, refused to visit Yugoslavia due to what he viewed as Mihailović's murder by Marshal Tito's communist regime.

[edit] Modern era

Vojislav Šešelj, a leader of the Serbian Radical Party, held a rank of voivoda of the Chetniks, given to him in 1989 by Momčilo Đujić, a surviving leader of the WWII Chetniks who fled to the United States.^{[citation needed]} The modern Chetnik supporters fought against the internationally recognized Croatia, largely as paramilitary units, with the stated goal of amputating territory from the Republic of Croatia. Their ideology was based upon the old Greater Serbia plans (Nacertanie by Ilija Garasanin), who proposed a furious fight against the Croats "until our or your extermination" ("do istrebe naše ili vaše") in the middle of the 19th century. This ideology can surely be compared to the Nazi ideas, as it was xenophobic, intolerant and violent. At least 20,000 people were killed in Croatia and around 100,000 in Bosnia as a result of the 1990's conflicts.