Partisans: War in the Balkans 1941 - 1945

Page 2 of 7

• 1. Invasion
• 2. Chetniks
• 3. Partisans
• 4. Two movements in conflict
• 5. Gaining ground
• 6. Aftermath
• 7. Find out more
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Chetniks

In some ways, however, the Axis victory remained a hollow one. For the writ of the Axis powers ran little beyond the towns and main roads. In the remote mountain regions, embryonic resistance forces soon emerged. But before the Germans could crush these nascent movements, their forces were redeployed from Yugoslavia to the east, in preparation for the now-imminent Operation Barbarossa.

Subsequently, those substantial Axis forces that did remain in the conquered Yugoslavia became locked in a protracted and appallingly brutal anti-partisan war, which raged across much of the territory. The resistance groups divided into two main movements - the Chetniks and the Partisans.

'... locked in a protracted and appallingly brutal anti-partisan war ...'

The first resistance group to emerge were the Chetniks - in Serbian the word means a detachment of men. These bands were nominally led by a former Yugoslav Army Colonel, named Dragoljub ('Draza') Mihailovic, who served the Yugoslav Royalist government in exile.

The original nucleus of these guerrilla bands were the ethnic Serb Yugoslav troops who had evaded Axis capture during the invasion, and then fled to the hills of Bosnia, Montenegro, and Serbia. Mihailovic established his first stronghold in the mountainous Ravna Gora area of western Serbia.

Soon Chetnik numbers were swelled by Serb peasants who had fled from Greater Croatia - non-Serbs were not allowed to join Chetnik bands. Many of these participants sought simply to defend their local village from the terrible brutalities of the Ustase. The latter were so brutal that they even drew protests from the Germans - not on humanitarian grounds, but because Ustase ethnic cleansing was fuelling the resistance movements.

The Chetniks were never a homogenous ideological movement, and many sub-groups paid no more than lip-service to Mihailovic's leadership. Some groups were implacably anti-German, whereas others saw the emerging rival resistance movement, that of the Partisans, as the greater threat. The elements that did unite the Chetniks, however, were their loyalty to the old Royalist regime, and their desire to ensure the survival of the Serbian population.

These disparate groups strove to protect the Serbs from what seemed to be the genocidal intent of the Croats and Germans, plus the hostility of Muslims (both Croatian and Serbian) and Communists. To achieve this goal, Chetniks strove to forge an ethnically-pure Greater Serbia by violently 'cleansing' these areas of Croats and Muslims.

On the other hand, Chetniks were often reluctant to attack Axis targets, in case this provoked brutal Axis retaliation against the local Serb population. In addition, Mihailovic wished to conserve his forces for the general uprising that would coincide with the envisaged Allied invasion of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia.

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Published: 2006-06-22