Chetniks (Serbian Četnici, Четници) were an organization of Yugoslavs (mostly Serbs) who supported the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and formed a notable resistance force during World War II. The name is derived from the Serbian word četa which means "company" (of about 100 men).
Origins
Chetniks originally formed as a result of the Serbian struggle against the Ottoman Empire. In Herzegovina, they were fighting Turks, in northern Macedonia against Turks and Albanians who sided with them.
They also fought against the Turks in the First Balkan War, while in WWI they fought against Austria-Hungary.
World War II
After the surrender of the Yugoslav royal army in April 1941, some of the remaining Yugoslav soldiers organized in the Ravna Gora district of western Serbia under Colonel Dragoljub (Draža) Mihailović. They were mostly ethnic Serbs though there were some Slovenes and Croats as well. Mihailović directed his units to arm themselves and await his orders for the final push. He avoided actions which he judged were of low strategic importance. The reason behind his resolve was the fact that he had been a World War I officer.
Throughout 1941, the guerilla activity of the Chetniks in Serbia increased, and the forces of Nazi Germany retaliated very harshly against the civilian population. The Germans had introduced exact punitive measures against guerrilla activity: 100 Serb civilians were to be executed for every killed soldier of the Wehrmacht and 50 for each wounded. By the end of the conflict, Serbia itself had lost one quarter of its population.
The TIME Magazine featured a positive article about Draza Mihailovich and the Chetniks in 1942.
In late 1941, the Germans started a massive offensive on the areas of Ravna Gora and Užice. Mihailović offered a truce, but it was denied and the bulk of the Chetnik forces had to retreat for eastern Bosnia and Sandžak. There they came in direct conflict with the Ustase, the fascist regime of Independent State of Croatia. As the Ustase committed atrocities in the Serb-populated villages, the Chetniks retaliated in the villages populated by Bosnian Muslims and Croats. The areas around Višegrad, Zvornik, Foča, Čajniče, Pljevlja were gravely impacted by this kind of ethnic cleansing until Tito's Partisans arrived at the site in large numbers in 1942. There's one report of 2,000 Muslim men killed in Foča and Muslim women mass raped, and another report of 1,200 fighters and 8,000 civilians killed in easternmost Bosnia and Sandžak during this time.
The Chetniks were faced with two main categories of enemies: the genocidal German and Croatian troops that harassed the ethnic Serbian population, and the ideologically opposed Slavic Muslims (due to their religion) and the Communists (due to their anti-royalist stance). A Chetnik ideologue Stevan Moljević composed a memorandum called "Homogenous Serbia" that outlined a plan to solve their problems by expanding the Serbian territory to all the lands where ethnic Serbs live, and subsequently remove its heterogenous ethnic composition, revising the idea of Greater Serbia.
As the forces of Fascist Italy were latently opposed to the Ustase regime in their southern zone of influence, the Chetniks collaborated with the Italians to be able to engage the Ustase. The Allies frowned upon this but kept sending support for the Chetnik forces. Chetniks also cooperated with the Nedić quisling regime in Serbia, which proclaimed Belgrade to be the first Jew-free city of Europe after making use of trucks equipped to work as portable gas chambers. Finally, the Chetniks started concentrating on fighting the Partisan forces, even allying themselves with some German forces in Bosnia.
All this contributed to the Allies' disillusionment with Chetniks. They stopped planning an invasion of the Balkans and reverted the support Special Operations Executive from the Chetniks, and instead supported the Partisans. At the Teheran Conference of 1943 and the Yalta Conference of 1945, Stalin and Churchill decided to split their influence in Yugoslavia in half.
The Chetniks were also known for rescuing some 500 U.S. airmen who crashed over Yugoslavia in 1944-45.
By the end of the war, the Chetniks were still important in numbers. Some retreated north to surrender to Anglo-American forces; Mihailović and his few remaining followers tried to fight their way back to the Ravna Gora, but he was captured by Tito's Partisans. In March 1946 Mihailovic was brought to Belgrade, where he was tried and executed on charges of treason in July.
The last remaining Chetnik was captured in the Herzegovina-Montenegro border area in 1957.
Legion of Merit
Due to the efforts of Major Richard L. Felman and his buddies President Harry S. Truman, on the recommendation of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, posthumously awarded Mihailovich the "Legion of Merit", for the rescue of American Airmens by Chetniks. For the first time in history, this high award and the story of the rescue was classified secret by the State Department so as not to offend the communist government of Yugoslavia and subsequently publicize their colossal blunder of switching sides to Tito during the war.
Modern times
In modern times, the Chetniks are praised by Serbian nationalists.
Vojislav Šešelj, a leader of the Serbian Radical Party, held a rank of vojvoda of the Chetniks, given to him in 1989 by Momčilo Đujić, a surviving leader of the WWII Chetniks who fled to the US.
During the Yugoslav wars, several paramilitary formations, including those by Željko Ražnjatović "Arkan", boasted Chetnik insignia and some of them committed war crimes against non-Serbs.
Outside of Serbia, they are generally associated with extremism and negative connotation of Greater Serbia.
External links
- Official site of Ravna Gora Chetnik movement
- Rescue of 500 US Airmen by Chetniks
- AP: Airmen revisit WWII sanctuary (2004)
- Zdravko Dizdar: Chetnik genocidal crimes during WW2
- History of Chetniks, both in English and Serbian
- Chetnik movement during WW2
- U.S. Congressional record on Chetniks and Draza Mihailovic, 1987
- Tribute to Major Richard L. Felman