40 Facts About Chetnik

The Chetnik movement adopted a policy of collaboration with regard to the Axis, and engaged in cooperation to one degree or another by establishing modus vivendi or operating as "legalised" auxiliary forces under Axis control.

The terror tactics against the Croats were, to at least an extent, a reaction to the terror carried out by the Croatian Ustase, however the largest Chetnik massacres took place in eastern Bosnia where they preceded any significant Ustashe operations.

From an etymological perspective, "Chetnik" is believed to have developed from the Turkish word, which means "to plunder and burn down", words related to conflict, such as and.

The first use of "Chetnik" to describe members of army and police units appeared around the mid-18th century.

Today, the word "Chetnik" is used to refer to members of any group that "centres the hegemonic and expansionist politics driven by Greater Serbia ideology".

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Except for the social democratic press, these Chetnik actions were supported in Serbia and interpreted as being in the national interest.

In late 1916, new Chetnik companies were being organised to fight in Bulgarian-occupied southeastern Serbia.

Just prior to the end of the war, the Chetnik detachments were dissolved, with some sent home and others absorbed by the rest of the army.

Chetnik presided over a great deal of dissension until that year when the organisation ceased to operate.

Chetnik was replaced by Pecanac, who continued to lead the organisation until the invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941.

Under Pecanac's leadership, membership of the Chetnik organisation was opened to new young members that had not served in war and were interested in joining for political and economic reasons, and in the course of the 1930s he took the organisation from a nationalist veterans' association focused on protecting veterans' rights, to an aggressively partisan Serb political organisation which reached 500,000 members throughout Yugoslavia in more than 1,000 groups.

All elements of the Chetnik Command were captured during the invasion, and there is no record of them being used for their intended purpose or that elements of these units operated in any organised way after the surrender.

Chetnik's plan included large-scale population transfers, evicting the non-Serb population from within the borders of Greater Serbia, although he did not suggest any numbers.

Crucially, it identified the two most important tasks during the second phase as: Chetnik-led organisation for the third phase without any party political influences; and incapacitation of their internal enemies, with first priority being the Partisans.

Chetnik concludes that this outcome was to be expected given the overwhelmingly Serb makeup of the congress, which included only two or three Croats, one Slovene and one Bosnian Muslim among its more than 300 attendees.

Beyond the main Serbian irredentist objective, Mihailovic's Chetnik movement was an extreme Serb nationalist organisation, and while it paid lip service to Yugoslavism, it was actually opposed to it.

The bulk of the Chetnik forces retreated into eastern Bosnia and Sandzak and the centre of Chetnik activity moved to the Independent State of Croatia.

At the start of the conflict, Chetnik forces were active in uprising against the Axis occupation and had contacts and negotiations with the Partisans.

Chetnik outlined the four points of his policy in his report to the Italian Army General Staff:.

Italian officers noted the ultimate control of these collaborating Chetnik units remained in the hands of Draza Mihailovic, and contemplated the possibility of a hostile reorientation of these troops in light of the changing strategic situation.

Chetnik groups were in fundamental disagreement with the Ustase on practically all issues, but they found a common enemy in the Partisans, and this was the overriding reason for the collaboration which ensued between the Ustase authorities of the NDH and Chetnik detachments in Bosnia.

In early May 1945 Chetnik forces withdrew through Ustase-held Zagreb; many of these were later killed, along with captured Ustase, by the Partisans as part of the Bleiburg repatriations.

German-Chetnik collaboration entered a new phase after the Italian surrender, because the Germans now had to police a much larger area than before and fight the Partisans in the whole of Yugoslavia.

German-Chetnik collaboration continued to take place until the very end of the war, with the tacit approval of Draza Mihailovic and the Chetnik Supreme Command in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia.

Chetnik ideology revolved around the notion of a Greater Serbia within the borders of Yugoslavia, to be created out of all territories in which Serbs were found, even if the numbers were small.

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However, the largest Chetnik massacres took place in eastern Bosnia where they preceded any significant Ustashe operations.

In early January 1943 and again in early February, Montenegrin Chetnik units were ordered to carry out "cleansing actions" against Muslims, first in the Bijelo Polje county in Sandzak and then in February in the Cajnice county and part of Foca county in southeastern Bosnia, and in part of the Pljevlja county in Sandzak.

Chetnik's report included the results of these "cleansing operations", which according to Tomasevich, were that "thirty-three Muslim villages had been burned down, and 400 Muslim fighters and about 1,000 women and children had been killed, as against 14 Chetnik dead and 26 wounded".

Chetnik was accused of being responsible for the deaths of 1,500 people during the war.

On 12 January 1952, the government reported four or five Chetnik "brigades" numbering around 400 men each still existed and were at the borders of Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania, and in Montenegrin forests, attacking meetings of the communist party and police buildings.

In 1975, Nikola Kavaja, a diaspora Chetnik-sympathizer living in Chicago and belonging to the Serbian National Defense Council, was, at his own initiative, responsible for bombing a Yugoslav consul's home, the first in a series of attacks targeting the Yugoslav state in the United States and Canada.

Chetnik ideology was influenced by the memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

On 28 June 1989, the 600th anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo, Serbs in north Dalmatia, Knin, Obrovac, and Benkovac where there were "old Chetnik strongholds", held the first anti-Croatian government demonstrations.

Zeljko Raznatovic, a self-styled Chetnik, led a Chetnik force called the Serb Volunteer Guard, established on 11 October 1990.

Chetnik forces engaged in mass murder in Vukovar and Srebrenica.

Chetnik vowed to pursue a Greater Serbia "through peaceful means".

In September 2012, the Constitutional Court of Serbia declared the 2004 law unconstitutional stating Chetnik veterans were not permitted an allowance and medical assistance while still maintaining their rights to a pension and rehabilitation.

Serbian rock musician and poet Bora Ðordevic, leader of the highly popular rock band Riblja Corba, is a self-declared Chetnik, but calling it a "national movement that is much older than the WWII", and adding that he does not hate other nations and has never been a member of the SRS nor advocated Greater Serbia.

On 11 July 2009, after the burial of 543 victims in Srebrenica, members of the Ravna Gora Chetnik movement desecrated the flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina, marched in the streets wearing T-shirts with the face of Mladic and sang Chetnik songs.

Term "Chetnik" is sometimes used as a derogatory term for a Serbian nationalist or an ethnic Serb in general.