Jezdimir Dangić (; 4 May 1897 – 22 August 1947) was a Yugoslav and Serb Chetnik commander during World War II. Born in the town of Bratunac, he was imprisoned during World War I for his membership of the revolutionary movement Young Bosnia. Dangić subsequently completed a law degree and became an officer in the gendarmerie of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes at the beginning of 1928. In 1929, the country changed its name to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In 1940, Dangić was appointed to lead the court gendarmerie detachment stationed at the royal palace in the capital, Belgrade. During the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, Dangić commanded the gendarmerie unit that escorted King Peter II to Montenegro as he fled the country. In August of that year, the leader of the Chetnik movement, Colonel Draža Mihailović, appointed Dangić as the commander of the Chetnik forces in eastern Bosnia. Here, Dangić and his men launched several attacks against the forces of the Independent State of Croatia (, NDH). Soon after his appointment, Dangić's Chetniks captured the town of Srebrenica from the occupiers. Afterwards, they became largely inactive in fighting the Germans, choosing instead to avoid confrontation. In December, Chetniks under Dangić's command massacred hundreds of Bosnian Muslims in the town of Goražde. In the same month, his Chetniks captured five nuns and took them with them through Romanija to Goražde, where they later committed suicide to avoid being raped.
In January 1942, Dangić ordered his forces to not resist German and NDH troops during the anti-Partisan offensive known as Operation Southeast Croatia. Afterwards, he was invited to Belgrade to negotiate the terms of proposed Chetnik collaboration with the Germans with the head of the collaborationist puppet government in the German-occupied territory of Serbia, Milan Nedić, and the Wehrmacht military commander of the territory, General der Artillerie Paul Bader. Although a deal was struck, it was vetoed by the Wehrmacht Commander in Southeast Europe, General der Pioniere Walter Kuntze, who remained suspicious of Dangić. Despite this, Dangić's Chetniks collaborated with German forces in eastern Bosnia over a period of several months beginning in December 1941. In April 1942, Dangić was arrested when he travelled to occupied Serbia despite promising to operate only within the territory of Bosnia, and was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in German-occupied Poland. In 1943, he escaped from the camp and the following year participated in the Warsaw Uprising as a member of the Polish Home Army. In 1945, he was captured by the Soviet Red Army and was extradited to Yugoslavia, where he stood accused of committing war crimes. In 1947, he was tried, convicted, sentenced to death and executed by Yugoslavia's new communist authorities.
Early life and interwar period Jezdimir Dangić was born on 4 May 1897 in Bratunac, which was at that time in the Austro-Hungarian occupied Bosnia Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire. He was one of ten children born to Savo, a Serbian Orthodox priest, and Milica (). He attended high school in Tuzla, about north-west of Bratunac, and was a communist sympathiser in his youth. He was also one of the youngest members of the pan-Slavic revolutionary organisation known as Young Bosnia (). On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo by one of Dangić's Young Bosnia comrades, Gavrilo Princip. This event sparked the outbreak of World War I. After the assassination, Dangić was arrested by the Austro-Hungarian police. In September 1915, he was tried alongside 32 co-defendants in Bihać and convicted of partaking in revolutionary activities, for which he was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison. Dangić's parents were also arrested. His father was found guilty of treason and sentenced to death, but his sentence was later reduced to three-and-a-half years' imprisonment. Dangić's mother was never tried; she suffered a mental breakdown after spending several months in solitary confinement and her trial was postponed indefinitely.
Dangić was released from prison at the end of the war in November 1918. The following year, he helped organise a series of pro-communist demonstrations in Belgrade, for which he was arrested and imprisoned. In 1920, he was conscripted into the army of the newly created Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and assigned to a gendarmerie unit stationed in Kratovo (in modern-day North Macedonia). Upon being discharged from the gendarmerie, Dangić returned to Belgrade, where he enrolled at the University of Belgrade's Faculty of Law. He also became a member of the League of Farmers, a political party that sought to protect the interests of the Bosnian Serb peasantry, and which the historian Marko Attila Hoare describes as a precursor to the Chetnik movement in Bosnia and Herzegovina during World War II. Dangić was again drafted into the gendarmerie on 3 January 1928, this time as a cavalry sub-lieutenant, and was stationed in the border town of Subotica in the Vojvodina region. His career included assignments at Virovitica, Sarajevo, Tuzla, Sremska Kamenica near Novi Sad, and Zagreb.
Dangić and his wife Nevena had two daughters, Nada and Ljiljana. Between 1937 and 1941, Dangić published ten articles in the Belgrade daily Politika. He published his first novel in 1938, titled Naše tamnovanje (Our Imprisonment). The novel was published under the pseudonym Miroljub Bogić. It was a critical success. In 1940, Dangić published a second novel, titled Glad i tamnica (Hunger and the Dungeon), which was also well received. In 1940, Dangić was named head of the gendarmerie detachment stationed at Belgrade's royal palace. By the time of the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, he had reached the rank of major.
World War II
Invasion and occupation of Yugoslavia
In April 1941, Yugoslavia was invaded and quickly defeated by the Axis powers. During the invasion, Dangić was assigned to command the gendarmerie unit that escorted King Peter II to Nikšić Airport as he left the country. Yugoslavia was partitioned, and as part of this, the Germans established a military government of occupation in an area roughly the same as the pre-1912 Kingdom of Serbia, consisting of Serbia proper, the northern part of Kosovo (around Kosovska Mitrovica), and the Banat. The Germans did this to secure two strategic lines of communication – the Danube river, and the railway line that connected Belgrade with Salonika in occupied Greece, and thence by sea to North Africa. The German-occupied territory of Serbia was also rich in non-ferrous metals such as lead, antimony and copper, which Germany needed to support its war effort.
During the invasion, the extreme Croat nationalist and fascist Ante Pavelić, who had been in exile in Benito Mussolini's Italy, was installed by the Germans as Poglavnik (leader) of an Ustaše-led Croatian state – the Independent State of Croatia (often called the NDH, from the ). The NDH combined almost all of modern-day Croatia, all of modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and parts of modern-day Serbia into an "Italian-German quasi-protectorate." NDH authorities, led by the Ustaše militia, subsequently implemented genocidal policies against the Serb, Jewish and Romani population living within the borders of the new state. Following the failure of the initial collaborationist puppet government in the German-occupied territory of Serbia, the Commissioner Government, Milan Nedić, a pre-war politician who was known to have pro-Axis leanings, was then selected by the Germans to lead the Government of National Salvation. Two guerilla movements emerged in occupied Yugoslavia – the Serb nationalist Chetniks, led by Colonel (later General) Draža Mihailović, and the multi-ethnic, Communist-led Yugoslav Partisans, led by Josip Broz Tito.
Command in east Bosnia
Background At the time of the Yugoslav surrender on 18 April 1941, Dangić was in Belgrade. He obeyed the summons of Milan Aćimović, head of the Commissioner Government, to serve in the Serbian gendarmerie and did so until mid-August. When news reached him of the Ustaše massacres of Serbs in the Bosnia areas of the NDH, he sought permission to travel there and escort his family and relatives to safety. His request was approved, and he travelled via Mihailović's headquarters at Ravna Gora. Early on, Mihailović designated Dangić as one of three men who were to succeed him as leaders of the Chetnik movement should anything happen to him. Initially, Mihailović's organisation was focussed on recruiting and establishing groups in different areas, raising funds, establishing a courier network, and collecting arms and ammunition. From the very beginning their strategy was to organise and build up their strength, but postpone armed operations against the occupation forces until they were withdrawing in the face of a hoped-for landing by the Western Allies in Yugoslavia.
Dangić likewise sought to avoid conflict with the Germans and began to pursue a policy of "self-defence against the Ustaše and revenge against the Croats and Muslims." Mihailović sent Dangić to eastern Bosnia to take command of the Chetnik detachments in the region and bring them under Mihailović's control, and he collected a group of Bosnian Serbs and crossed the Drina River into the NDH. Dangić was accompanied by Major Boško Todorović who had been appointed by Mihailović as his commander for eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. Dangić himself was appointed as the commander of the Mountain Staff of the Bosnian Chetnik Detachments, and had direct responsibility for eastern Bosnia, including the senior local Chetnik commanders, Aćim Babić and Rade Kosorić. According to the historian Marko Attila Hoare, Dangić may have had more influence on Chetnik decision-making, despite his formal subordination to Todorović. Todorović was responsible for negotiating with the Italians, and Dangić with the Germans. At the time Dangić arrived in eastern Bosnia, some Chetnik detachments were still co-operating with the Partisans in the region.
Initial activities and liaison with the Partisans