Chetnik movement

Chetnik movement
Participant in the Balkan Wars World War I World War II
Chetnik flag inscription reads: "For king and fatherland; freedom or death"
Active	1904–46
Ideology	Yugoslav monarchism Greater Yugoslavia Serbian nationalism Greater Serbia
Leaders	Draža Mihailović Kosta Pećanac Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin Pavle Đurišić Dobroslav Jevđević Momčilo Đujić
Area of operations	Occupied Yugoslavia
Allies	Allies of World War II United States United Kingdom Yugoslav government-in-exile Axis powers Government of National Salvation Italy Germany
Organizations	Kingdom of Serbia: Serbian Chetnik Organization Kingdom of Yugoslavia: Chetnik Association for the Freedom and Honor of the Fatherland Association of Serbian Chetniks for King and Fatherland Association of Serbian Chetniks "Petar Mrkonjić" Association of Serbian Chetniks "Petar Mrkonjić" for King and Fatherland Association of Old Chetniks World War II Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army/Yugoslav Army in the Homeland Pećanac Chetniks Dinara Division Lim-Sandžak Chetnik Detachment

Kingdom of Yugoslavia:

World War II

The Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army, commonly known as the Chetniks (Serbo-Croatian: Četnici, Четници, pronounced [tʃɛ̂tniːtsi]; Slovene: Četniki), was a World War II movement in Yugoslavia led by Draža Mihailović, an anti-Axis movement in their long-term goals which engaged in marginal resistance activities for limited periods. They also engaged in tactical or selective collaboration with the occupying forces for almost all of the war. The Mihailović Chetniks were not a homogeneous movement. The Chetnik movement adopted a policy of collaboration with regard to the Axis, and engaged in cooperation to one degree or another by establishing modus vivendi or operating as "legalised" auxiliary forces under Axis control. Over a period of time, and in different parts of the country, the Chetnik movement was progressively drawn into collaboration agreements: first with the Nedić forces in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia, then with the Italians in occupied Dalmatia and Montenegro, with some of the Ustaše forces in northern Bosnia, and after the Italian capitulation also with the Germans directly.

While Chetnik collaboration reached "extensive and systematic" proportions, the Chetniks themselves referred to their policy of collaboration as "using the enemy". Professor Sabrina Ramet, a historian, 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.