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.
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