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History of Balkan wars-How they started and who started them.

Dobrica Cosic Former Yugoslav President.
“Lažemo da bi smo obmanuli sebe, da utešimo drugog; lažemo iz samilosti, da nas nije strah, da ohrabrimo, da sakrijemo svoju i tudju bedu, lažemo zbog poštenja. Lažemo zbog slobode. Laž je vid našeg patriotizma i potvrda naše urodjene inteligencije. Lažemo stvaralacki, maštovito, inventivno.”

“We lie to deceive ourselves, to console others; we lie for mercy, we lie to fight fear, to encourage ourselves, to hide our and somebody else’s misery. We lie for love and honesty. We lie because freedom. The lie is the trait of our patriotism and the proof of our innate smartness. We lie creatively, imaginatively, inventively.”

Dobrica Cosic Former Yugoslav President “The Divisions”

Burden of fault caries the Orthodox Church! If you have a chance to read “The Mountain Wreath” written by P.P. Njegoš you will see how Vladika (high rank clergyman and statesman) blesses those who murdered their own brothers of different faith – Slavic muslims (bošnjaci) and very likely Albanians of the Monte Negro too.

The Chetniks (Serbian četnici, четници) were a Serbian nationalist and royalist organization with origins in the 19th century Serbian movement opposing Ottoman rule. In World War II, the Yugoslav Royal Army in the Fatherland, also referred to as the Chetniks (derived from the Serbian word četa, meaning "military company"), was founded on 13th May 1941, on Ravna Gora by colonel Dragoljub Mihajlović as a force loyal to the Yugoslav royal government in exile.

After some initial skirmishes with the occupying Axis forces, the Chetniks split, half continuing to fight the Germans, and the others concentrated on fighting the Communist partisans, sometimes collaborating with Italians (who offered protection from Ustasha atrocities) and even German forces. After 1943, the Allies, who had been supporting chetniks, shifted their support to the rival guerilla communist partisans. In 1944, the royal government recognized partisans as Yugoslavia's legitimate armed forces, and ordered chetniks to join the newly named Yugoslav army. Some chetniks refused and in April and May 1945, as the victorious Yugoslav army took possession of the country's territory, they retreated towards Italy and a smaller group retreated to Austria. Many were captured by partisans or returned to Yugoslavia by British forces. Some were tried for treason and either freed, sentenced to prison terms or death. Many were summarily executed, especially in the first months after the end of the war. In 1946, the last chetnik units under the command of Draža Mihajlović were captured in eastern Bosnia. He was tried, found guilty of treason and executed.

After the second world war, escaped chetniks and other nationalist Serbian emigrants formed nationalist clubs in countries like USA, England and Australia and continued to glorify the chetnik ideology and iconography, which was illegal and suppressed in the new socialist Yugoslavia.

In late 1980s, as Slobodan Milošević came to power in Serbia, chetniks were unofficially rehabilitated and the suppression of their literature and iconography was lifted. New opposition parties openly supported the role of chetniks in the Second World War, claiming that the official history had been falsified.

Politicians like Vuk Drašković and Vojislav Šešelj organized para-military units and demanded that Serbs use force to solve the nationalistic tensions in Yugoslavia and ensure that the territories populated by Serbs in other Yugoslav republics which planned to secede remain united with Serbia. During the Yugoslav wars which followed, many Serb paramilitary units called themselves chetniks, and Croats and Bosniaks commonly used the word to describe any armed Serb unit, regular or paramilitary.

Chetniks originally formed as a result of the Macedonian 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 them, as the various groups were primarily occupied in conflicts with each other. In Herzegovina, they fought the Turks, in northern Macedonia against Turks and pro-Turkish Albanians.

At the start of Balkan wars there were 110 IMRO, 108 Greek, 30 Serbian and 5 Vlach detachments. They fought against the Turks in the First Balkan War, while in WWI they fought against Austria-Hungary.

Chetniks were royalists, and their salute was "За краља и отаџбину" ("Za kralja i otadžbinu") - For King and Fatherland. They held family values and private property in high esteem, and were thus ideologically opposed to Communists who opposed the monarchy.

Many Chetniks started to grow elaborate beards during the war, which is a traditional Orthodox Christian way to express sorrow. In this manner, they marked their sorrow for the occupied fatherland which was ravaged by war.

Most Chetniks expressed staunch Serbian nationalism. A few even expressed ultra-nationalism. One obscure Chetnik ideologue, Stevan Moljević, went so far as to compose a memorandum called "Homogenous Serbia" that outlined a plan to solve Serbian problems by expanding the Serbian territory to all the lands where ethnic Serbs live, and subsequently remove its heterogeneous ethnic composition, revising the idea of Greater Serbia. This goal was to be achieved with ethnic cleansing of the territories that Greater Serbia was to assume. However, the plan was never taken seriously by more tolerant mainstream Chetniks and was never implemented.

Some ethnic Croats, Slovenians and Muslims also joined Chetniks forces. Most of them were democratically oriented Yugoslav patriots, anti-communists and anti-fascists. They didn’t fight for Greater Serbia but for liberation of their homeland, Kingdom of Yugoslavia:

General Mihailovic with Zvonko Vuckovic, comandant of 1st Chetnik Corps. Mr. Vuckovic was an ethnic Croat – loyal officer of Royal Yugoslav Army.

Mr. Mustafa Mulalic, one of Muslim officers in Chetnik’s headquarters, together with General Mihailovic and Mr. Stevan Moljevic (only three of them are in uniforms)

General Mihailovic with Muslim leaders in Bijeljina.

Collaboration and war crimes

The Chetnik collaboration with Italians, and marginally with Germans, did exist. In occupied Serbia, Nazis have installed under the leadership of Milan Aćimović, and later under former Minister of War, General Milan Nedić, which governed until 1944. The Chetniks had nothing to do with this government, and were fighting the German occupation since the beginning, but later shifted all their efforts to fighting Communists and the genocide perpetrating Ustashe, who included both Croats and muslims (who were considered Croats in the NDH).

Chetniks were operating semi-independenly. One group remained under the pre-war leader, Kosta Pećanac, and started collaborating with the Germans against the partisans, who, as a matter of fact, also did collaborate with Germans in this civil-war, though this fact is much less known. In NDH, Chetniks under comand of Voivoda Đujić in Serbian Krajina region were mostly fighting Ustashe who aimed to exterminate Serbs. To this end, his troups collaborated with Italians, who had an ingenious population in Dalmatia, that was later expelled by Tito's Partisans in foiba massacres.

Still other Chetniks rallied behind Draža Mihailović, a 48 year-old Army officer who had been court-martialed by Nedić and was known to have close ties to Britain. Early in the War Mihailović offered some resistance to the German forces while collaborating with the Italians. By July 22, 1941 the Yugoslav Government-in-Exile announced that continued resistance was impossible. Although Mihailović and his exiled government would maintain a fierce propaganda campaign to convince the Allies that his Chetniks were inflicting great damage on the Axis, the Chetniks did little for the war effort and openly collaborated with the Germans and Italians while fighting Ustaše and Partizans. At its peak, Mihailović's Chetniks claimed to have three hundred thousand troops. In fact they never numbered over thirty-one thousand. Chetnik advocates argue that these were tactical collaborations on a local level, with the main aim to fight their common enemy - the Partisans. Chetniks viewed their ideological struggle against the Partisans as one more important than the fight against the Germans. However this collaboration continued until the end of WWII, and the allies withdrew support from the Chetniks in 1944. Mihailović was executed in 1946 for treason. The extent of Chetnik collaboration with the German and Italian armies as well as their vicious war against the pro-Allied Partisans is well documented in dozens of books, including "The Chetniks."

In the areas of Independent State of Croatia, which included Bosnia and Croatia, a bitter ethnic war was fought. The ruling Ustaše regime had proclaimed as its goal to exterminate one third of the Serbs, expel the other third and convert the rest to the Catholic faith. Chetniks fought both the Ustaše and Partisans in these areas, and retaliated for the crimes against Serbs in the villages populated by Bosniaks (who they saw as ones allied with the Ustashe) 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 Bosnian 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.

After the victory of Tito's Communists, recognised the atrocities but also did not forget their collaboration with the German and Italian forces. After capture in 1946, Mihailović was tried, convicted of treason, which strained the Franco-Yugoslav relations at the time, and Charles de Gaulle refused to visit Yugoslavia or meet Tito.

During and after the WW2, communist regime in Yugoslavia occasionally fabricated “proofs” of chetniks’ collaboration with Axis powers. Sometimes, false pictures are very easy to spot. For example, at the front cover of the book that talks about chetniks’ collaboration, there is a picture that shows a German officer with chetniks. Check the forged picture By mistake, communist forgers haven’t recognized British and American uniforms at the picture. However, the original picture from February 1944 has survived. In the original picture, there is no German officer. In both pictures, there are British colonel William Bailey and American major Walter Mansfield. Check the original picture However there is real proof, including that of British intelligence agents in the region, that the Chetniks often collaborated with the Nazis, Italians, and even the Ustaše when battling the Partizans.[1]

Draža Mihailović

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dragoljub "Draža" Mihailovich (Serbian Cyrillic: Драгољуб "Дража" Михаиловић, also Чича/Čiča; April 27, 1893 – July 17, 1946) was a Serbian general now primarily remembered as leader of the Yugoslav Royal Army in the Fatherland (the "Chetniks") during World War II. After the war, he was tried by rival Communist Partisans for alleged collaboration, shot and then buried in an unmarked grave. U.S. president Harry S Truman posthumously awarded him the Legion of Merit for overseeing the rescue of five hundred American airmen by Chetniks during World War II.

Born in Ivanjica, Serbia, Mihailović went to the Serbian military academy in October 1910 and as a cadet fought in the Balkan Wars 1912–1913. In July 1913 he was given rank of Second Lieutenant as the top soldier in his class. He served in World War I and together with the Serbian army marched through Albania in 1915 during the long retreat of the Serbian army. He later received several decorations for his achievements on the Salonica front.

Between the wars he became a staff officer (elite of Serbian/Yugoslav army) and achieved the rank of colonel. He also served as military attaché in Sofia and Prague.

His military career almost came to an abrupt end after several incidents, the most important one being the idea of dividing the Yugoslav army along national lines into (Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes), for which he was sentenced to 30 days imprisonment. World War II found Mihailović occupying a minor position of assistant to chief of staff of the Second Army.

Following the Yugoslav defeat by Germany in April 1941, a small group of officers and soldiers led by Mihailović refused to surrender, and retreated in hope of finding Yugoslav army units still fighting in mountains. After arriving at Ravna Gora, Serbia on May 8, he realized that his group of seven officers and twenty four non-commissioned officers and soldiers was the only one.

At Ravna Gora, Mihailović organized the Chetniks detachment of the Yugoslav Army, which became the Military-chetnik detachments and finally Yugoslav Army of the Homeland (Jugoslovenska vojska u otadžbini).

The first Chetnik formations led by Mihailović were formed around Ravna Gora on June 14th,. The stated goal of the Chetniks was the liberation of the country from the occupying armies including the forces of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Ustase (the fascist regime of the Croatia).

However, he decided against a mass uprising because of catastrophical Serb losses in World War I, in which the Kingdom of Serbia lost a quarter of its male population to the war. Instead, Mihailović gathered logistics in men and weapons, waiting for an Allied landing in the Balkans. A WW I uprising leader and former Chetnik himself, Kosta Milovanović Pećanac, opposed this view and opted for cooperation with the Germans against the Communists. Pećanac and Mihailović became rivals, both claiming to the Chetnik heritage and with Pećanac commanding a much smaller allegiance than Mihailović. Because of his open collaboration with the Germans, Pećanac was shot in 1944 by Mihailović's Chetniks for treason upon his capture.

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.

The British Special Operations Executive were being sent to aid Mihailović's forces beginning with the 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 were forced to move to eastern Bosnia where they engaged in heavy combat with the Ustaše, resulting in several incidents of war crimes against people who supported the other faction. It is unclear however how much say Mihailović himself had in these incidents. The Chetnik movement was highly decentralized, and in that way was more like a collective of many small regional guerrillas which shared the same name, rather than a unified army under complete control of Mihailović and his staff.

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

Towards the end of the war, Mihailović went into hiding in East Bosnia. He was captured on March 12, 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.

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

Due to the efforts of Major Richard L. Felman and his friends, President Harry S. Truman, on the recommendation of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, posthumously awarded Mihailović 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.

Almost sixty years later, on May 9, 2005, Draža Mihailović's daughter Gordana was presented with a decoration bestowed posthumously on Draža Mihailović by President Truman in 1948, for the assistance provided to the crews of US bombers that were gunned down on the territory under Chetnik control in World War II.