Chetniks
Chetnik flag; inscription reads: "For king and fatherland; freedom or death"
Leaders	Draža Mihailović Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin Dobroslav Jevđević Pavle Đurišić Momčilo Đujić Zaharije Ostojić Petar Baćović Vojislav Lukačević Dragutin Keserović Jezdimir Dangić Nikola Kalabić Zvonimir Vučković Miroslav Trifunović Predrag Raković Dragoslav Račić Velimir Piletić Karl Novak Pećanac Chetniks: Kosta Pećanac
Dates of operation	1941–1945
Allegiance	Yugoslav government-in-exile (until August 1944) King Peter II
Headquarters	Ravna Gora near Suvobor
Active regions	Occupied Yugoslavia
Ideology	See Ideology section
Allies	Allies of World War II  United States (1941–44)  United Kingdom (1941–44) Yugoslav government-in-exile (until August 1944) Partisans (July–October 1941) Axis powers  Germany (from 1942) Government of National Salvation (1941–1944)[1] Serbian Volunteer Corps (1944–45) Serbian State Guard (1944–45) Yugoslav National Movement (1944–45)  Independent State of Croatia (1942–45)  Hungary Pećanac Chetniks  Italy (1941–43) Montenegro Slovene Home Guard Russian Protective Corps (1941–44)
Opponents	Allies of World War II Partisans (October 1941 – May 1945) Axis powers  Germany (1941–43) Government of National Salvation Serbian Volunteer Corps (1941–44) Serbian State Guard (1941–44) Albania (1943–44)  Independent State of Croatia (1941–42; 1945)  Hungary  Italy (1941) Albania (1941–43)  Bulgaria Slovene Home Guard Sandžak Muslim militia Russian Protective Corps (1944) Balli Kombëtar
Battles and wars	1941: Uprising in Serbia Drvar uprising Battle of Loznica Capture of Banja Koviljača Attack on Šabac Attack on Kruševac Mačva operation Operation Uzice Siege of Kraljevo Uprising in Montenegro Srb uprising Siege of Rogatica Capture of Olovo Battle for Novi Pazar Operation Mihailovic War in Eastern Kosovo 1942: Operation Trio Chetnik sabotage of Axis communication lines Montenegro offensive Kozara Offensive Operation Alfa Operation Kopaonik 1943: Case White Operation Kugelblitz Battle of Grčarice Siege of Turjak Battle of Višegrad 1944: Massacre of villages under Kamešnica Operation Rösselsprung Operation Halyard Battle of Knin 1945: Mostar Operation Sarajevo Operation Battle of Lijevče Field Trieste operation Battle of Zelengora Battle of Poljana
Organization(s)	See formations

The Chetniks (Serbo-Croatian: Четници, Četnici, pronounced [tʃɛ̂tniːtsi]; Slovene: Četniki), formally the Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army, and also the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland (Serbo-Croatian: Југословенска војска у отаџбини, Jugoslovenska vojska u otadžbini; Slovene: Jugoslovanska vojska v domovini) and the Ravna Gora Movement, was a Yugoslav royalist and Serbian nationalist movement and guerrilla force^[2][3][4] in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. Although it was not a homogeneous movement,^[5] it was led by Draža Mihailović. While it was anti-Axis in its long-term goals and engaged in marginal resistance activities for limited periods,^[6] it also engaged in tactical or selective collaboration with Axis forces for almost all of the war.^[7] The Chetnik movement^[8] adopted a policy of collaboration^[9] with regard to the Axis, and engaged in cooperation to one degree or another by both establishing a modus vivendi and operating as "legalised" auxiliary forces under Axis control.^[10] Over a period of time, and in different parts of the country, the movement was progressively^[11] drawn into collaboration agreements: first with the puppet Government of National Salvation in the German-occupied territory of Serbia,^[12] then with the Italians in occupied Dalmatia and Montenegro, with some of the Ustaše forces in northern Bosnia, and, after the Italian capitulation in September 1943, with the Germans directly.^[13]

The Chetniks were active in the uprising in the German-occupied territory of Serbia from July to December 1941. Following the initial success of the uprising, the German occupiers enacted Adolf Hitler's formula for suppressing anti-Nazi resistance in Eastern Europe, a ratio of 100 hostages executed for every German soldier killed and 50 hostages executed for every soldier wounded. In October 1941, German soldiers and Serbian collaborators perpetrated two massacres against civilians in Kraljevo and Kragujevac, with a combined death toll reaching over 4,500 civilians, most of whom were Serbs. This convinced Mihailović that killing German troops would only result in further unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of Serbs. As a result, he decided to scale back Chetnik guerrilla attacks and wait for an Allied landing in the Balkans.^[14] While Chetnik collaboration reached "extensive and systematic" proportions,^[15] the Chetniks themselves referred to their policy of collaboration^[9] as "using the enemy".^[13] The political scientist Sabrina Ramet has observed, "Both the Chetniks' political program and the extent of their collaboration have been amply, even voluminously, documented; it is more than a bit disappointing, thus, that people can still be found who believe that the Chetniks were doing anything besides attempting to realize a vision of an ethnically homogeneous Greater Serbian state, which they intended to advance, in the short run, by a policy of collaboration with the Axis forces".^[9]

The Chetniks were partners in the pattern of terror and counter-terror that developed in Yugoslavia during World War II. They used terror tactics against Croats in areas where Serbs and Croats were intermixed, against the Muslim population in Bosnia, Herzegovina and Sandžak, and against the Communist-led Yugoslav Partisans and their supporters in all areas. These tactics included the killing of civilians, burning of villages, assassinations and destruction of property, and exacerbating existing ethnic tensions between Croats and Serbs.^[16] The terror tactics against the non-Serb population in the NDH were, at least to an extent, a reaction to the massacres of Serbs carried out by the Ustaše,^[17] however the largest Chetnik massacres took place in eastern Bosnia where they preceded any significant Ustaše operations.^[18] Croats and Bosniaks living in areas intended to be part of Greater Serbia were to be cleansed of non-Serbs regardless, in accordance with Mihailović's directive of 20 December 1941.^[19] The terror against the communist Partisans and their supporters was ideologically driven.^[20] Several historians regard Chetnik actions during this period as constituting genocide.^[21][22][23] Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the Chetniks in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina range from 50,000 to 68,000, while more than 5,000 victims are registered in the region of Sandžak alone. About 300 villages and small towns were destroyed, along with a large number of mosques and Catholic churches.

Etymology

The etymology of the word Chetnik is obscure. Some believe it to have developed from the Turkish word çete 'to plunder and burn down',^[24] while another view is it was inherited from the Proto-Slavic, meaning member of a company.^[25] The word may also derive from the Latin word coetus 'coming together, assembly'.^[26] The suffix -nik is a Slavic common personal suffix meaning 'person or thing associated with or involved in'.^[27]

The first use of Chetnik to describe members of army and police units appeared around the mid-18th century.^{[citation needed]} Matija Ban used the word Chetnik in 1848 in terms of the need to establish armed units outside the Principality of Serbia to act in opposition to Ottoman rule. At end of the 19th century, the term was extended to members of military or paramilitary organizations with Serb ethnonationalist aims.^[28] Dating from 1904, the Serbian word četnik was commonly used to describe a member of a Balkan guerrilla force called a cheta (četa/чета), meaning 'band' or 'troop'.^[29] Today, the word Chetnik is used to refer to members of any group that follows "the hegemonic and expansionist politics driven by Greater Serbia ideology".^[28]

Background

To 1918

Small-scale rebellious activity akin to guerilla warfare has a long history in the South Slav lands, particularly in those areas that were under Ottoman rule for a long period. In the First Serbian Uprising which began in 1804, bandit companies (hajdučke čete) played an important part until large-scale fighting gave the Ottomans the upper hand and the uprising was suppressed by 1813. A second rebellion broke out two years later, and guerilla warfare was again utilised to significant effect, assisting in the establishment of the partially-independent Principality of Serbia, which was expanded significantly in 1833 and became fully independent in 1878.^[30] Throughout this period and until the end of the 19th century interest in guerilla warfare remained, with books on the subject being commissioned by the Serbian government and published in 1848 and 1868.^[31] Four years after independence, the principality became the Kingdom of Serbia.^[32]

Between 1904 and 1912, small groups of fighters who had been privately recruited, equipped and funded in Serbia, travelled to the region of Macedonia within the Ottoman Empire with the aim of releasing the area from Ottoman rule and annexing it to Serbia, regardless of the wishes of the local population. These groups were, in the main, commanded and led by officers and non-commissioned officers on active duty in the Royal Serbian Army, and the Serbian government soon took over the direction of these activities. Similar forces had been sent to Macedonia by Greece and Bulgaria, who also wished to integrate the region into their own states, resulting in the Serbian Chetniks clashing with their rivals from Bulgaria as well as the Ottoman authorities. Except for the social democratic press, these Chetnik actions were supported in Serbia and interpreted as being in the national interest.^[33][34] These Chetnik activities largely ceased following the 1908 Young Turk Revolution in the Ottoman Empire.^[35] The Chetniks were active in the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913; during the First Balkan War against the Ottomans they were used as vanguards to soften up the enemy ahead of advancing armies, for attacks on communications behind enemy lines, for spreading panic and confusion, as field gendarmerie and to establish basic administration in occupied areas. They were also put to good use against the Bulgarians in the Second Balkan War. After the Balkan Wars, Chetniks bands were used in the pacification of the new areas of Serbia gained during the wars, which occasionally involved terrorising civilians.^[36]

As they had proven valuable during the Balkan Wars, the Serbian army used Chetniks in World War I in the same way, and while useful they suffered heavy losses. At the end of the Serbian campaign of 1914–1915, they withdrew with the army in the Great Retreat to Corfu and later fought on the Macedonian front. Montenegrin Chetniks also fought against the Austro-Hungarian occupation of that country. In late 1916, new Chetnik companies were being organised to fight in Bulgarian-occupied southeastern Serbia. Concerned about reprisals against a large-scale uprising, the Serbian army sent the veteran Chetnik leader Kosta Pećanac to prevent the outbreak. However, the Bulgarians started conscripting Serbs, and hundreds of men joined the Chetnik detachments. This resulted in the 1917 Toplica Uprising under the leadership of Kosta Vojinović, which Pećanac eventually joined. Successful at first, the uprising was eventually put down by the Bulgarians and Austro-Hungarians, and bloody reprisals against the civilian population followed.^[37] Pećanac then used Chetniks for sabotage and raids against the Bulgarian occupation troops, then infiltrated the Austro-Hungarian occupied zone.^[38] Just prior to the end of the war, the Chetnik detachments were dissolved, with some sent home and others absorbed by the rest of the army.^[39] The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was created with the merger of Serbia, Montenegro and the South Slav-inhabited areas of Austria-Hungary on 1 December 1918, in the immediate aftermath of the war.^[40]

Interwar period

Due to their military record since 1904, Chetnik veterans were among the leading Serbian patriotic groups in the new state. In 1921, the "Chetnik Association for the Freedom and Honor of the Fatherland" was organised in Belgrade by Chetnik veterans, with organisational aims of cultivating Chetnik history, spreading Chetnik patriotic ideas, and to care for the widows and orphans of Chetniks who had been killed, along with disabled Chetniks. It was also a political pressure group, and from the beginning there were questions about its leadership and political ideology. Initially, the main political influence in the organisation was the liberal Democratic Party, but a challenge for influence by the dominant People's Radical Party led to a split in 1924. The pro-Radical Greater Serbia elements of the association broke away and formed two new organisations in 1924, the "Association of Serbian Chetniks for King and Fatherland" and the "Association of Serbian Chetniks 'Petar Mrkonjić'". In July 1925 these two organisations amalgamated as the "Association of Serbian Chetniks 'Petar Mrkonjić' for King and Fatherland" led by Puniša Račić, who was elected to the National Assembly as a Radical representative in 1927, and in 1928 murdered three Croatian Peasant Party representatives on the floor of the National Assembly. He presided over a great deal of dissension until the organisation ceased to operate. After the imposition of royal dictatorship by King Alexander in 1929, at which time the state was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Račić's former organisation was dissolved, and the former dissidents rejoined the original "Chetnik Association for the Freedom and Honor of the Fatherland",^[41] which was officially sanctioned.^[42]

Immediately following the end of World War I and the formation of the new state, there was widespread unrest.^[43] Pro-Bulgarian sentiment was rife in Macedonia, which was referred to as South Serbia by the Belgrade government. There was little support among the Macedonian populace for the regime. Extensive measures were undertaken to "serbianise" Macedonia, including closing Bulgarian Orthodox Church schools, revising history textbooks, dismissing "unreliable" teachers, banning the use of the Bulgarian language, and imposing lengthy jail terms for those convicted of anti-state activities. Over 300 Macedonian advocates of Greater Bulgaria were murdered between 1918 and 1924, thousands were arrested in the same period, and around 50,000 troops were stationed in Macedonia. Thousands of Serb colonists were settled in Macedonia. Bands of Chetniks, including one led by Jovan Babunski, were organised to terrorise the population, kill pro-Bulgarian resistance leaders and impress the local population into forced labour for the army.^[44] Resistance by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization was met with further terror, which included the formation in 1922 of the Association against Bulgarian Bandits led by Pećanac and Ilija Trifunović-Lune, based out of Štip in eastern Macedonia. This organisation quickly garnered a reputation for indiscriminate terrorisation of the Macedonian populace.^[45] Pećanac and his Chetniks were also active in fighting Albanians resisting the Serb and Montenegrin colonisation of Kosovo.^[46]

Even under the homogenizing pressures of dictatorship, the Chetniks were not a monolithic movement.^[42] In 1929, Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin became president of the association, serving until 1932, when he became president of another Serbian nationalist organisation, Narodna Odbrana (National Defence), and established the rival "Association of Old Chetniks", but the latter never challenged the main Chetnik organisation. He was replaced by Pećanac,^[47] who continued to lead the organisation until the invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941.^[48] Starting in 1929, the main Chetnik organisations established chapters in at least 24 cities and towns outside Serbia proper, many of which had large Croatian populations. This expansion of what remained a Serb "nationalist-chauvinist" movement outside Serbia proper escalated ethnic tensions, especially the conflict between Serbs and Croats.^[49][50] Under Pećanac's leadership, membership of the Chetnik organisation was opened to new young members who had not served in war and were interested in joining for political and economic reasons, and in the course of the 1930s he took the organisation from a nationalist veterans' association focused on protecting veterans' rights, to an aggressively partisan Serb political organisation which reached 500,000 members throughout Yugoslavia in more than 1,000 groups.^[47][51] Trifunović-Birčanin and others were unhappy with the aggressive expansion of the organisation and its move away from traditional Chetnik ideals.^[47] After 1935, Chetnik activity was officially banned in both the predominantly Croat Sava Banovina and almost entirely Slovene Drava Banovina, but the Chetnik groups in those regions were able to continue operating at a lower level.^[47] During this period, Pećanac formed close ties with the far-right Yugoslav Radical Union government of Milan Stojadinović, which ruled Yugoslavia from 1935 to 1939.^[52] During the interwar period, limited training on guerilla warfare was given to junior officers of the army, and in 1929 the Handbook on Guerilla Warfare was published by the government to provide guidance.^[53] In 1938, the General Staff revised the approach detailed in 1929, recognising that operations similar to those carried out by Chetniks between 1904 and 1918 would not be possible in a modern war, and clearly indicating that it would not entrust any important wartime functions to the Chetnik Association.^[54]

History

Formation

After the outbreak of World War II in September 1939 the General Staff was aware that Yugoslavia was not ready for war against the Axis powers and was concerned about neighboring countries igniting a civil war in Yugoslavia.^[55] Despite its misgivings about using Chetniks for guerilla warfare,^[54] in April 1940, the General Staff established the Chetnik Command,^[55] which eventually comprised six full battalions spread throughout the country. However, it is clear from the series of Yugoslav war plans between 1938 and 1941 that the General Staff had no real commitment to guerilla warfare prior to the April 1941 Axis invasion of Yugoslavia, and did not seriously consider employing the Chetnik Association in the role either.^[54] A short time before the invasion,^[54] Pećanac was approached by the General Staff,^[56] authorising him to organise guerilla units in the 5th Army area,^[57] and providing him with arms and funds for the purpose;^[54] the 5th Army was responsible for the Romanian and Bulgarian borders between the Iron Gates and the Greek border.^[58]

On 6 April 1941, Yugoslavia was drawn into World War II when Germany, Italy and Hungary invaded and occupied the country, which was then partitioned. Some Yugoslav territory was annexed by its Axis neighbours: Hungary, Bulgaria and Italy. The Germans engineered and supported the creation of the fascist Ustaše puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia (Croatian: Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH), which roughly comprised most of the pre-war Banovina Croatia, along with rest of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and some adjacent territory.^[59] Before the defeat, King Peter II and his government went into exile, reforming in June as the Western Allied-recognised Yugoslav government-in-exile in London.^[60] All elements of the Chetnik Command were captured during the invasion, and there is no record of them being used for their intended purpose or that elements of these units operated in any organised way after the surrender.^[54][56]

In the early days of the invasion, army Pukovnik (Colonel) Draža Mihailović was the deputy chief of staff of the 2nd Army deployed in Bosnia.^[61] On 13 April, he was commanding a unit which was in the area of Doboj on 15 April when it was advised of the decision of the Supreme Staff (the wartime General Staff) to surrender.^[62] A few dozen members of the unit, almost exclusively Serbs, joined Mihailović when he decided not to follow these orders, and the group took to the hills. They marched southeast then east, aiming to get to the mountainous interior of what became the German-occupied territory of Serbia in the hope of linking up with other elements of the defeated army that had chosen to keep resisting.^[61][63] In the first few days, Mihailović's group was attacked by German forces. The group was joined by other parties of soldiers but heard no news of others continuing to resist. On 28 April, the group was about 80 strong,^[61] and crossed the Drina River into the occupied territory of Serbia the next day,^[63] although over the next few days it lost a number of officers and enlisted men who were concerned about the pending hardship and uncertainty. After crossing the Drina, the group was also attacked by gendarmes belonging to the collaborationist puppet Commissioner Government.^[61] On 6 May Mihailović's remaining group was surrounded by German troops near Užice and almost completely destroyed.^[64] On 13 May, Mihailović arrived at some shepherd huts at Ravna Gora on the western slopes of Suvobor Mountain near the town of Gornji Milanovac in the central part of the occupied territory,^[61] by which time his group consisted of only seven officers and 27 other ranks.^[64] At this point, now aware that no elements of the army were continuing to fight, they were faced with the decision of whether to surrender to the Germans themselves or form the core of a resistance movement, and Mihailović and his men chose the latter. Due to the location of their headquarters, Mihailović's organisation became known as the "Ravna Gora Movement".^[65]

While adherents of the Chetnik movement have claimed that Mihailović's Chetniks were the first resistance movement to be founded in Yugoslavia in World War II,^[66] this is not accurate if a resistance movement is defined as a political and military organisation of relatively large numbers of men conducting armed operations intended to be carried on with determination and more or less continuously.^[67] Soon after their arrival at Ravna Gora, Mihailović's Chetniks set up a command post and designated themselves the "Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army".^[68][69] While this name was clearly derivative of the earlier Chetniks and evoked the traditions of the long and distinguished record of the Chetniks of earlier conflicts, Mihailović's organisation was in no way connected to the interwar Chetnik associations or the Chetnik Command established in 1940.^[56][68]

As early as August, the Chetnik Central National Committee (Serbo-Croatian: Centralni Nacionalni Komitet, CNK, Централни Национални Комитет) was formed to provide Mihailović with advice on domestic and international political affairs, and to liaise with the civilian populace throughout the occupied territory and in other parts of occupied Yugoslavia where the Chetnik movement had strong support. The members were men who had some standing in Serbian political and cultural circles before the war, and some CNK members also served on the Belgrade Chetnik Committee that supported the movement. Much of the early CNK was drawn from the minuscule Yugoslav Republican Party or the minor Agrarian Party.^[70][71][72] The three most important members of the CNK, who comprised the executive committee for much of the war, were: Dragiša Vasić, a lawyer, former vice-president of the nationalist Serbian Cultural Club and a former member of the Yugoslav Republican Party;^[73][74] Stevan Moljević, a Bosnian Serb lawyer;^[18][73] and Mladen Žujović, Vasić's law firm partner who had also been a member of the Yugoslav Republican Party. Vasić was the most important of the three, and was designated by Mihailović as the ranking member of a three-man committee, along with Potpukovnik (Lieutenant Colonel) Dragoslav Pavlović and Major Jezdimir Dangić, who were to take over the leadership of the organisation if anything should happen to him.^[73] In effect, Vasić was Mihailović's deputy.^[74]

Ideology

From the beginning of Mihailović's movement in May 1941 until the Ba Congress in January 1944, the ideology and objectives of the movement were promulgated in a series of documents.^[75] In June 1941, two months before he became a key member of the CNK, Moljević wrote a memorandum entitled Homogeneous Serbia, in which he advocated for the creation of a Greater Serbia within a Greater Yugoslavia which would include not only the vast majority of pre-war Yugoslav territory, but also a significant amount of territory that belonged to all of Yugoslavia's neighbours. Within this, Greater Serbia would consist of 65–70 per cent of the total Yugoslav territory and population, and Croatia would be reduced to a small rump. His plan also included large-scale population transfers, evicting the non-Serb population from within the borders of Greater Serbia, although he did not suggest any numbers.^[76][77][78]

At the same time that Moljević was developing Homogeneous Serbia, the Belgrade Chetnik Committee formulated a proposal which contained territorial provisions very similar to those detailed in Moljević's plan, but went further by providing details of the large-scale population shifts needed to make Greater Serbia ethnically homogenous. It advocated expelling of 2,675,000 people from Greater Serbia, including 1,000,000 Croats and 500,000 Germans. A total of 1,310,000 Serbs would be brought to Greater Serbia from outside its boundaries, of which 300,000 would be Serbs from Croatia. Greater Serbia would not be entirely Serb, however, as about 200,000 Croats would be allowed to stay within its borders. No figures were proposed for shifting Bosnian Muslims out of Greater Serbia, but they were identified as a "problem" to be solved in the final stages of the war and immediately afterwards.^[79] The CNK approved the Greater Serbia project after it formed in August.^[80] It can be assumed that Mihailović,^[81] who was a hard-core Serb nationalist himself,^[82] endorsed all or most of both proposals. This is because their contents were reflected in a 1941 Chetnik leaflet entitled Our Way, and he made specific references to them in a proclamation to the Serbian people in December and in a set of detailed instructions dated 20 December 1941 to Pavle Đurišić and Đorđije Lašić, newly appointed Chetnik commanders in the Italian governorate of Montenegro. The Belgrade Chetnik Committee proposal was also smuggled out of occupied Serbia in September and delivered to the Yugoslav government-in-exile in London by the Chetnik agent Miloš Sekulić.^[79]

In March 1942, the Chetnik Dinara Division promulgated a statement which was accepted the following month by a meeting of Chetnik commanders from Bosnia, Herzegovina, northern Dalmatia and Lika at Strmica near Knin. This program contained details which were very similar to those included in Mihailović's instructions to Đurišić and Lašić in December 1941. It mentioned the mobilisation of Serbs in these regions to "cleanse" them of other ethnic groups, and adopted several additional strategies: collaboration with the Italian occupiers; determined armed opposition to NDH forces and the Partisans; decent treatment of the Bosnian Muslims to keep them from joining the Partisans, although they could later be eliminated; and the creation of separate Croatian Chetnik units formed from pro-Yugoslav, anti-Partisan Croats.^[83]

From 30 November to 2 December 1942, the Conference of Young Chetnik Intellectuals of Montenegro met at Šahovići in Italian-occupied Montenegro. Mihailović did not attend, but his chief of staff Zaharije Ostojić, Đurišić and Lašić attended,^[83] with Đurišić playing the dominant role.^[84] It advanced strategies that constituted an important and expanded version of the overall Chetnik program, and the report of the meeting bore an official Chetnik stamp. It reinforced the main Greater Serbia objective of the Chetnik movement, and in addition advocated the retention of the Karađorđević dynasty, espoused a unitary Yugoslavia with self-governing Serb, Croat and Slovene units but excluding entities for other Yugoslav peoples such as Macedonians and Montenegrins as well as other minorities. It envisaged a post-war Chetnik dictatorship that would hold all power within the country with the approval of the King, with a gendarmerie recruited from Chetnik ranks, and intense promotion of Chetnik ideology throughout the country.^[83]

The final Chetnik ideological document that appeared prior to the Ba Congress in January 1944 was a manual prepared by the Chetnik leadership around the same time as the Conference of Young Chetnik Intellectuals of Montenegro in late 1942. It explained that the Chetniks viewed the war in three phases: the invasion and capitulation by others; a period of organising and waiting until conditions warranted a general uprising against the occupying forces; and finally a general attack on the occupiers and all competitors for power, the Chetnik assumption of complete control over Yugoslavia, the expulsion of most national minorities, and arrest of all internal enemies. Crucially, it identified the two most important tasks during the second phase as: Chetnik-led organisation for the third phase without any party political influences; and incapacitation of their internal enemies, with first priority being the Partisans.^[85] Revenge against the Partisans and Ustaše was incorporated into the manual as a "sacred duty".^[86]

The manual paid some lip service to Yugoslavism, but the Chetniks did not really wish to become an all-Yugoslav movement because that was inconsistent with their main objective of achieving a Greater Serbia within Greater Yugoslavia. Due to their Serb nationalist stance, they never developed a realistic view of the "national question" in Yugoslavia because they disregarded the legitimate interests of the other Yugoslav peoples. Their ideology was therefore never attractive to non-Serbs except for those Macedonians and Montenegrins who considered themselves Serbs. The only new aspect of the Chetnik Greater Serbia ideology from the long-standing traditional one was their plan to "cleanse" Greater Serbia of non-Serbs, which was clearly a response to the massacres of Serbs by the Ustaše in the NDH.^[17]

The final documents detailing Chetnik ideology were produced by the Ba Congress called by Mihailović in January 1944,^[87][88][89] in response to the November 1943 Second Session of the communist-led Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (Serbo-Croatian: Antifašističko vijeće narodnog oslobođenja Jugoslavije, AVNOJ) of the Partisans.^[90][91][92] The Second Session of AVNOJ had resolved that post-war Yugoslavia would be a federal republic based on six equal constituent republics, asserted that it was the sole legitimate government of Yugoslavia, and denied the right of the King to return from exile before a popular referendum to determine the future of his rule.^[93] The month after the Second Session of AVNOJ, the major Allied powers met at Tehran and decided to provide their exclusive support to the Partisans and withdraw support from the Chetniks.^[90] The congress was held in circumstances where large parts of the Chetnik movement had been progressively drawn into collaboration with the occupying forces and their helpers over the course of the war,^[11][13] and may have been held with the tacit approval of the Germans.^[94][95]

The document that was produced by the Ba Congress was called The Goals of the Ravna Gora Movement and came in two parts. The first part, The Yugoslav Goals of the Ravna Gora Movement stated that Yugoslavia would be a democratic federation with three units, one each for the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and national minorities would be expelled.^[87] The second part, The Serbian Goals of the Ravna Gora Movement reinforced the existing Chetnik idea that all Serbian provinces would be united in the Serbian unit within the federal arrangement, based on the solidarity between all Serb regions of Yugoslavia, under a unicameral parliament. The congress also resolved that Yugoslavia should be a constitutional monarchy headed by a Serb sovereign.^[87][96] According to some historians, the new program of the Chetniks was social-democratic Yugoslavism,^[97] with a change to a federal Yugoslav structure with a dominant Serb unit,^[98] but in asserting the need to gather all Serbs into a single entity, The Serbian Goals of the Ravna Gora Movement was reminiscent of Homogeneous Serbia. The congress also did not recognise Macedonia and Montenegro as separate nations, and also implied that Croatia and Slovenia would effectively be appendages to the Serbian entity. The net effect of this, according to the historian Jozo Tomasevich, was that the country would not only return to the same Serb-dominated state it had been in during the interwar period, but would be worse than that, particularly for the Croats. He concludes that this outcome was to be expected given the overwhelmingly Serb makeup of the congress,^[99] which included only two or three Croats, one Slovene and one Bosnian Muslim among its more than 300 attendees.^[100][96] The historian Marko Attila Hoare agrees that despite its superficial Yugoslavism, the congress had clear Greater Serbia inclinations.^[101] The congress expressed an interest in reforming the economic, social, and cultural position of the country, particularly regarding democratic ideals. This was a significant departure from previous Chetnik goals expressed earlier in the war, especially in terms of promoting democratic principles with some socialist features. Tomasevich observes that these new goals were probably more related to achieving propaganda objectives than reflecting actual intentions, given that there was no real interest in considering the needs of the non-Serb peoples of Yugoslavia.^[102] The practical outcome of the congress was the establishment of a single political party for the movement, the Yugoslav Democratic National Union (Serbo-Croatian: Jugoslovenska demokratska narodna zajednica, JDNZ), and an expansion of the CNK,^[103][104] however the congress did nothing to improve the position of the Chetnik movement.^[105][92]

Beyond the main Serbian irredentist objective,^[106] Mihailović's Chetnik movement was an extreme Serb nationalist organisation,^[107] and while it paid lip service to Yugoslavism,^[108] it was actually opposed to it.^{[106][109][110]} It was also anti-Croat,^[106][109] anti-Muslim,^[106][109] supported the monarchy,^[108] and was anti-communist.^[87] Given the ethnic and religious divisions in Yugoslavia, the narrow ideology of the Chetnik movement seriously impinged on its military and political potential.^[82] The political scientist Sabrina Ramet has observed, "Both the Chetniks' political program and the extent of their collaboration have been amply, even voluminously, documented; it is more than a bit disappointing, thus, that people can still be found who believe that the Chetniks were doing anything besides attempting to realize a vision of an ethnically homogeneous Greater Serbian state, which they intended to advance, in the short run, by a policy of collaboration with the Axis forces".^[9]

Composition and organisation

The Chetniks were almost exclusively made up of Serbs except for a large number of Montenegrins who identified as Serbs,^[111] and consisted of "local defence units, marauding bands of Serb villagers, anti-partisan auxiliaries, forcibly mobilised peasants, and armed refugees, which small groups of uncaptured Yugoslav officers was attempting without success to mold into an organised fighting force".^[112] The aforementioned Chetnik manual of late 1942 discussed the idea of enlisting a significant number of Croats for the movement, but the movement only attracted small groups of Chetnik-aligned Croats in central Dalmatia and Primorje, and they were never of any political or military significance within the Chetniks.^[113] A small group of Slovenes under Major Karl Novak in the Italian-annexed Province of Ljubljana also supported Mihailović, but they also never played an important role.^[114]

There had been long standing mutual animosity between Muslims and Serbs throughout Bosnia,^[115] and in the period of late April and May 1941, the first Chetnik mass atrocities were carried out against non-Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in other ethnically heterogeneous areas.^[116] A few Sandžak and Bosnian Muslims supported Mihailović,^[117][116] and some Jews joined the Chetniks, especially those who were members of the right-wing Zionist Betar movement, but they were alienated by Serb xenophobia and eventually left,^[118] with some defecting to the Partisans.^[119] The collaboration of the Chetniks with the Italians and later Germans may have also been a factor in the Jewish rejection of the Chetnik movement.^[118] The vast majority of Orthodox priests supported the Chetniks with some, notably Momčilo Đujić and Savo Božić, becoming commanders.^[120]