The Chetniks, a Yugoslav royalist and Serbian nationalist movement and guerrilla force, committed numerous war crimes during the Second World War, primarily directed against the non-Serb population of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, mainly Muslims and Croats, and against Communist-led Yugoslav Partisans and their supporters. Most historians who have considered the question regard the Chetnik crimes against Muslims and Croats during this period as constituting genocide.
The Chetnik movement drew its members from the interwar Chetnik Association and various Serb nationalist groups. Some Chetnik ideologues were inspired by the Stevan Moljević's Homogeneous Serbia memorandum in July 1941, that defined the borders of an ethnically pure Greater Serbia. A similar document was put forward to the Yugoslav government-in-exile in September 1941. The Yugoslav government embraced the Chetniks and their basic ideas, which were already a part of the political framework of pre-war Yugoslavia. A December 1941 directive, attributed to Chetnik leader Draža Mihailović, explicitly ordered the ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Croats from Sandžak and Bosnia and Herzegovina. One of the chief Chetnik ideologues, Dragiša Vasić, argued in May 1942 that population transfers and deportations should be carried out in the postwar period.
From the start of the war, the Chetniks expelled Muslims and Croats from areas they controlled, and engaged in mass killings. In late 1941, they connected with various independent pro-Chetnik groups that participated in revolts against the Ustaše-led Independent State of Croatia (NDH). With fascist Italy's help, the Chetniks established a form of civil and military government in large parts of eastern Bosnia, which was followed by discriminatory measures and systematic massacres of non-Serbs in the region. The Chetnik genocidal campaign reached a peak between October 1942 and February 1943. Military defeats and the loss of Allied support compelled the Chetniks to moderate their policy towards Croats and Muslims. Despite these efforts, massacres of civilians continued until the end of the war. The terror tactics against the Croats were, to at least an extent, a reaction to the terror carried out by the Ustaše; however, the largest Chetnik massacres took place in eastern Bosnia where they preceded any significant Ustaše operations. 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.
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the Chetniks in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina range from 50,000 to 68,000 Muslims and Croats. For the region of Sandžak, more than 5,000 victims are registered. About 300 villages and small towns were destroyed, along with a large number of mosques and Catholic churches. In 1946, Dragoljub Mihailović was convicted of war crimes and high treason, and was executed with nine other Chetnik commanders.
Background Interwar period
During the interwar period in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, veterans of Serbian guerilla units known as the Chetniks were split into different organizations, depending on their affiliation to the Democratic Party or the People's Radical Party. Organizations aligned to the Radical Party promoted the idea of a Greater Serbia. The leader of one such organization was Puniša Račić, who in 1928 killed two deputies of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) and mortally wounded its president, Stjepan Radić, in the Yugoslav Parliament. These organizations were dissolved following the imposition of royal dictatorship by King Alexander in 1929, and most of their members moved to the original "Chetnik Association for Freedom and Honor of the Fatherland" that continued to function. In 1932, Kosta Pećanac became the president of the Chetnik Association. As president, he transformed it into an aggressively partisan Serb political organisation and allowed entry to non-veterans. By 1938, the membership increased to around 500,000.
Chetnik Association subcommittees were established throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, particularly in eastern Bosnia, in territories they envisioned in a future expanded Serbia. Subcommittees were also formed in Croatia, mostly in areas inhabited by Serbs. They acted as semi-military organizations and were involved in violent activities throughout the 1930s, including murders. Croat and Slovene opposition to the Chetnik Association led to its prohibition in Banovinas with an ethnic Croat and Slovene majority. Some of its sections continued to operate in those regions in the following years, on a reduced scale. The Chetnik subcommittees and organizations with a similar program opposed the formation of the autonomous Banovina of Croatia, that was negotiated in August 1939 under the Cvetković–Maček Agreement by Croatian and Serbian political leaders. They called for the creation of the Banovina of Serbia, with parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Dalmatian coast that were included in the Croatian Banovina. Headed by the Serbian Cultural Club group, a movement called "Serbs united" (Srbi na okup) was formed, which claimed that the position of Serbs in the Banovina of Croatia was endangered. Pro-Chetnik organizations were active in the movement's work. Despite its activities, including a petition for the secession of Serb-majority districts, the movement did not receive widespread support among Serbs in Croatia. In the 1940 Croatian local elections, parties and lists supported by the movement performed poorly compared to the largely-Serb Independent Democratic Party, a member of the governing coalition together with the HSS. In 1941, there were around 300 Chetnik and similar organizations in Bosnia and Herzegovina and around 200 in Croatia.
World War II
On 6 April 1941, Nazi Germany, Italy, and Hungary invaded Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia capitulated on 17 April, and the country was partitioned by the Axis powers. In northern Bosnia, a group of officers and soldiers of the Royal Yugoslav Army, led by Colonel Draža Mihailović, refused to surrender and took to the hills. They moved to Ravna Gora in Serbia where they set up their headquarters. While they did not originate from interwar Chetnik organizations, upon establishing a command post, they designated themselves as the "Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army". Their name was later changed to "Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland", but were commonly known as the Chetniks. Pećanac also raised guerrilla units, but did not engage the Axis forces, and reached agreements in August with both the Serbian puppet government and the German authorities. His forces did not cooperate with Mihailović.
Mihailović undertook a military and political structuring of the movement. In August 1941, he formed the Chetnik National Committee as an advisory body. It included former politicians and members of organizations such as the Serbian Cultural Club, with a Greater Serbian ideological orientation. Outside Serbia, various independent groups were formed that shared the same ideology as the Chetniks. These groups took part in armed uprisings against the Ustashe-led Independent State of Croatia (NDH), an axis puppet state established in occupied Yugoslavia, in the summer of 1941. The uprisings were a reaction to the genocidal policy implemented by the Ustashas against Serbs. Mihailović sought to assume command of the insurgents and integrate them in the Chetnik movement. In the first months of the war, the Chetniks cooperated in their anti-Axis activities with the communist-led Yugoslav Partisans under Josip Broz Tito, with whom they later came into conflict.
In September, Mihailović made first contacts with the Yugoslav government-in-exile, which embraced the Chetnik movement and its main objectives as a basis of post-war Yugoslavia. The Serbian-dominated regime in Yugoslavia promoted Greater Serbian and anti-Croat policies in the interwar period.
Genocide of Muslims and Croats Ethnic cleansing plans
Chetnik ideology encompassed the notion of Greater Serbia, to be achieved through the ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Croats in order to create ethnically homogeneous areas. The majority of documents of the Chetnik leadership emphasized "cleansing", "resettling", or "moving" of non-Serb populations, as well as the executions of "traitors", which turned into mass killings of Croats and Muslims. In at least one document, the total destruction of ethnic groups was mentioned, that "Muslims from Bosnia, Herzegovina and Croatia should be liquidated." After the war, the Chetniks, as an instrument of the Yugoslav government-in-exile, planned on imposing a dictatorship to carry out their objectives.
On 30 June 1941, Stevan Moljević, an attorney and member of the Serbian Cultural Club, wrote the Homogeneous Serbia memorandum, calling for the creation of a Greater Serbia and its ethnic cleansing of the non-Serb population. Two months later, he became a member of the Chetnik National Committee. In a letter to Chetnik ideologue Dragiša Vasić in December 1941, he repeated his ideas and proposed "cleansing the land of all non-Serb elements". In another letter to Vasić in February 1942, he noted: "then from inside, the cleansing of the country of all non-Serb elements should be carried out. The miscreants should be punished on the spot, and for the remainder the road should be opened: for the Croats to Croatia and for the Muslims to Turkey (or Albania)." These tendencies were confirmed and elaborated in later documents.
Historian Mark Levin suggested that there is no evidence that the massacres committed by the Chetniks are a direct consequence of Moljević's writings. Moljević's discourse was similar to the one formulated by the Belgrade Chetnik Committee and presented to the Yugoslav government-in-exile in September 1941. The program was divided into four parts. Under article II, Mihajlović proposed a plan for the postwar period:
A map was made on the basis of the plan, in which specific figures in regard to population shifts were set forth. It was projected that 2,675,000 people had to be expelled from the borders of Greater Serbia, including 1,000,000 Croats and 500,000 Germans. The plan also included the population transfer of Serbs located outside those borders. No specific figures were given for Muslims. A written memorandum with Mihailović's signature, dated 20 December 1941, to newly appointed commanders in Montenegro, Đorđije Lašić, and Pavle Đurišić, outlined the Chetnik goals:
While the document's origin and its connection with Mihailović is disputed, it shows how the basic goal of the Chetniks was to be achieved. A March 1942 document from the Chetnik Dinara Division, active in northern Dalmatia, closely followed the December 1941 memorandum. The document called for the creation of a Greater Serbia with an exclusively Serb population, and the cleansing of Dalmatia, Lika, Bosnia, and Herzegovina of Croats and Muslims.