A Serbian nationalist commander who sought to restore the monarchy
In 1941 he rejected Tito's call for a general uprising as premature, and the two resistance movements soon turned their struggle into armed conflict.
Draža Mihailović was a Royal Yugoslav Army officer who led the Chetnik movement, seeking to restore the monarchy and a Serbian nationalist order after the Second World War. He built an organization at Ravna Gora in 1941, but chose to prepare for postwar power and avoid a general uprising rather than follow Tito's Partisans into sustained open resistance, bringing the movements into conflict. Parts of the Chetnik organization and Mihailović's command network collaborated with Axis and collaborationist forces, a choice that weakened the movement in multi-ethnic Yugoslavia and contributed to the Allies shifting support to the Partisans. Captured after the war, he was executed for treason and war crimes, while Serbia's Supreme Court overturned the verdict in 2015 as politically motivated.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1912–1913Serbian Army cadet, Balkan Wars
- 1914–1918Serbian Army officer, First World War
- 1935–1936Military attaché in Bulgaria
- 1936–1939Military attaché in Czechoslovakia, staff officer
- 1941Deputy chief of staff, Yugoslav Second Army
- 1941–1945Commander of the Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army
- 1946Tried for treason and war crimes, executed
Related historical events
Operation Halyard and the Collapse of Allied Relations, 1944
In 1944 Allied policy toward Mihailović tilted decisively to the Partisans. After Churchill argued for Tito at the Tehran Conference in late 1943, the British withdrew their liaison officers from Mihailović in spring 1944. On 10 December 1943 Churchill told King Peter II in London that he possessed proof of Mihailović's collaboration with the enemy and that Mihailović should be removed from the Yugoslav cabinet. That spring, liaison officer Armstrong reported that Mihailović had been mostly active in propaganda against the Axis and had missed numerous sabotage opportunities in the previous six to eight months. After the British mission withdrew in May 1944, Mihailović kept transmitting to the Allies and to his government but received no replies. In July 1944 Ivan Šubašić formed a new government-in-exile that excluded him, and on 29 August King Peter issued a decree dissolving the Supreme Command and abolishing his post.
Yet in July and August 1944 Mihailović cooperated with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the 60th Troop Carrier Squadron in Operation Halyard, the rescue of downed Allied airmen. Hundreds of Allied airmen were airlifted from improvised airstrips in Serbia between August and December 1944. A report submitted to the OSS, cited by historian Jozo Tomasevich, showed that Mihailović's Chetniks rescued 417 Allied airmen, while OSS Lieutenant Commander Richard M. Kelly put the total at 432 Americans and 80 Allied personnel airlifted during the mission. For this, President Truman posthumously awarded him the Legion of Merit on 29 March 1948; the citation stated that he and his forces, though lacking adequate supplies and fighting under extreme hardships, contributed materially to the Allied cause.
In the same period he also met the limits of his own movement. Mihailović had great difficulty controlling local commanders, and units without radio contact relied on couriers. According to Pavlowitch, Pavle Đurišić proudly reported to him that he had destroyed Muslim villages; Mihailović apparently did not order such acts and disapproved of them, but took no action against them. On 11 August 1944 his officers, including Nikola Kalabić, met German officers to discuss conditions for increased collaboration, and accounts place a secret meeting with Nedić around 20 August. After ordering a general mobilization on 1 September, his troops engaged Germans and Bulgarians while also under Partisan attack. The Red Army briefly cooperated with the Chetniks while entering from Romania and Bulgaria before disarming them, and his delegation to the Soviet command was ignored and ultimately arrested.
Mihailović's movement collapsed in Serbia under attacks by the Soviets, Partisans and Bulgarians and fighting with retreating Germans. Still hoping for a Western Allied landing, he headed for Bosnia and tried to regroup on the Ozren heights, but his forces were decimated. After defeat by the Yugoslav Army at the battle of Zelengora on 10 May 1945, he went into hiding in the mountains with a handful of men. The Yugoslav authorities wanted him alive to stage a full-scale trial, and he was captured on 13 March 1946.