Talk:Draža Mihailović/quotations/

Please create a section for a given work, and within the section, put in quotations and approximate date for the historical event. Please insert new sections in alphabetic order by author, and new entries by page number to make them easier to find, and sign a quote that you have added (so we'll know who to ask if there are questions). --Nuujinn (talk) 10:39, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Hoare, Marko Attila Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia: The Partisans and the Chetniks, 1941-1943

Oxford University Press, 2006, ISBN 0197263801 [1]

• p.143

The massacres of Muslims there [east Bosnia] were above all an expression of the genocidal policy and ideology of the Chetnik movement. As Draža Mihailović noted in his diary in the spring of 1942: 'The Muslim population has through its behaviour arrived at the situation where our people no longer wish to have them in our midst. It is necessary already now to prepare their exodus to Turkey or anywhere else outside our borders'.

Lampe, John R. Yugoslavia as history: twice there was a country

Cambridge University Press, 2000, ISBN 052177357 [2]

• p.217

The German field commanders took no notice of this division [between the Chetniks and Partisans] and pressed ahead with reinforcements sufficient to destroy all active resistance. In the process, they executed some 25,000 civilians. Mihailovic understandably concluded that his force of less than 20,000 men, ill-armed and in scattered units, could not survive against a larger, far better equipped German force. By November 11, 1941, he initiated talks with German representatives to negotiate a modus vivendi. But when the Germans demanded total surrender, he abandoned his headquarters and scattered his forces still further. This genuine weakness and the passive strategy it encouraged escaped British notice. So did the fact, then and later, that no British arms ever reached the Chetnik forces inside Serbia itself. Churchill's commanders were still ready to believe what the Yugoslav government-in-exile told them about Mihailovic and were eager to trumpet any evidence of resistance inside Hitler's Europe. Mihailovic was thus able to maintain the image, in Walter Robert's words, of Allied Hero through 1942. He was presumed to control the Chetnik forces in Hercegovina and Montenegro discussed above, and they were assumed to be fighting the Axis occupiers.

Lerner, Natan Ethnic Cleansing

Israel Yearbook on Human Rights, Volume 24; Volume 1994, ISSN 03335925, isbn 9041100261 editor:Yoram Dinstein, [3]

• p 105

Already in 1942, a Chetnik military commander, attending a Chetnik assembly in Trebinje, stated that "the Serbian land must be cleansed from Catholics and Muslims. They will be populated by Serbs only." The commander showed his intentions, but was not original. The same phraseology goes back to a 1941 proclamation by General Draza Mihajlovic, the leader of the Royal Chetniks, who included among their war aims the following: "creation of a Great Yugoslavia with the Greater Serbia which ought to be ethnically pure..."; and "cleansing of the State territory of all national minorities and non-national elements...."

Malcolm, Noel Bosnia: a short history

New York University Press, 1994, isbn 0814755208 [4]

• p.175 (bosnia, 1941)

Anti-semitism was of only secondary concern to the Ustasa ideologists, however. The main aim was to 'solve' the problem of the large Serb minority (1.9 million out of a total of 6.3 million) in the territory of the NDH. Widespread acts of terror against the Serbs began in May." Mass arrests of Serbs in Mostar, hundred shot, entire villages destroyed. "By July even the Germans were complaining about the brutality of these attack" "...in the Nevesinje region [the Serb peasants] rose up in June 1941, drove out the Ustasa militia and established, for a while, a 'liberated area', joined to a similar area of resistance in neighboring Montenegro." Then turned against local Croat and Muslim villagers, killing hundreds.

• p. 179

But on the other hand there is no definite evidence that Draza Mihailovic himself ever called for ethnic cleansing. The one document which has frequently been cited as evidence of this, a set of instructions addressed to two regional commanders in December of 1941, is probably a forgery--though it must be pointed out that is was forged not by enemies wanting to discredit Mihailovic but by the commanders themselves, who hoped it would be take for a genuine Cetnik document.

• p. 188

At least 2000 Muslims were killed [in the Foca-Cajnice region]] by forces under one local Cetnik commander, Zaharija Ostojic, in August 1942, and in February 1943 more than 9000 were massacred, including 8000 elderly people, women, and children. A terrible system of mutually fueled enmities was now at work. The more Muslims there were joining the Partisans, the more the Cetniks regarded Muslims as such as their foes; and the worse the killings of Muslims by the Cetniks became, the more likely local Muslims where to cooperate with Partisan, German, Italian, or NDH forces against the Cetniks.

Mulaj, Klejda Politics of ethnic cleansing: nation-state building and provision of in/security in twentieth-century balkans

Lexington Books, 2008 [5]

• p 42

In the summer of 1941, the Belgrade Cetnik Committee proposed that in order to make Greater Serbia purely Serbian in composition, large-scale population "shifts" would be necessary--specifically: some 2,675,000 people would have to be expelled (including one million Croats and half a million Germans), and that 1,310,000 Serbs would be brought into the newly annexed areas....A Cetnik directive of 20 December 1941 specified their goal to create an "ethnically pure" Greater Serbia, consisting of Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Vojvodina, "cleansed...of all national minorities and non-national elements." This directive provided also for the "cleansing [of] the Muslim population from the Sandzak and the Muslim and Croatian populations from Bosnia and Herzegovina."

Ramet, Sabrina P., The Three Yugoslavias

Indiana University Press, 2006, ISBN 0253346568

• pp.145-146

Both the Chetniks political program and the extent of their collaboration have been amply, even voluminously, documented; it is more than a bit disappointing, thus, that people can still be found who believe that the Chetniks were doing anything besides attempting to realize a vision of an ethnically homogenous Greater Serbian state, which they intended to advance, in the short run, by a policy of collaboration with the Axis forces. The Chetniks collaborated extensively and systematically with the Italian occupation forces until the Italian capitulation in September 1943, and beginning in 1944, portions of the Chetnik movement of Draža Mihailović collaborated openly with the Germans and Ustaša forces in Serbia and Croatia. Moreover, as already mentioned, the Chetniks loyal to Kosta Pećanac collaborated with the Germans from early in the war. (...)

For the Chetniks the war provided an excellent opportunity to put their program into effect, and between autumn 1942 and spring 1943 the Chetniks carried out slaughters of Croatian [and Muslim] civilians in a wave of terror (...) Roatta [General Mario Roatta], commander of the Second Army, protested these "massive slaughters" and threatened to cut off Italian supplies and money if Chetnik depredations against noncombatant civilians did not end..

• pp.147-148

But, even as the Chetnik organization in Serbia atrophied, it gained a new center of gravity in western Yugoslavia in the course of 1942. The Italians wanted to extend their sphere of influence in Croatia and to pacify the rebellion and, perhaps giving in to wishful thinking, "tended to see the Chetniks as a fairly well-coordinated which was ready to join the Axis powers and the Serb collaborators in a struggle aimed exclusively at the Partisan rebellion." In January 1942, General Renzo Dalmazzo, commander of the Italian Sixth Army Corps, met with [Stevo] Rađenović, Trifunović-Birčanin, Jevđević, and Major Jezdimir Dangić, a free agent whose small force had carried out some sorties against NDH [Independent State of Croatia] troops, hoping to use the Chetniks in a joint operation against the Partisans. For the time being, however, the Germans vetoed any use of the Chetniks in such a capacity. In spite of that, the Nevesinje Chetniks were working together with the Italians in anti-Partisan operations as early as April 1942. Indeed, by mid-1942, the Italians had acquired a vested interest in arming and using the Chetniks against the Partisans. In addition to the aforementioned Chetnik collaborators, one should also mention Pop Đujić, an Orthodox priest in his late 30s, who led an armed band of about 3,000 men and who was, by mid April, launching anti-Partisan raids in coordination with the Italians. By early summer, the Italians were arming and supplying about 10,000 "legal" Chetniks in the Italian zoene in the NDH.

Mihailović was aware of and condoned the collaborationist agreements into which Jevđević and Trifunović-Birčanin entered. Meanwhile, the NDH government had already initiated talks with the Chetnik groups in Herzegovina and was open to expanding cooperative links with Chetniks against the shared communist foe. On 19 June 1942, Zagreb and the Italian high command agreed to set up a Voluntary Anti-Communist Militia (MVAC) into which Chetnik volunteers would enter. The agreement reached in Zagreb foresaw that these de facto reorganized Chetniks would be under the firm control of the Ustaše and the Italians. Mihailović himself was drawn into this collaborative web, and by late August, was he was sanctioning the use of these units in anti-Partisan campaign with Ustaša and Italian troops.

Roberts, Tito, Mihailović, and the allies, 1941-1945

Duke University Press, 1987, ISBN 0822307731 [6]

• p.37 (1941)

Appeals by Telephone from Tito to Mihailovic on November 27 and 28 did not move the Cetnik leader to take joint action.

• p.40 (1941)

After the successful uprising of Montenegrin "Whites" and Communists against the Italian Occupiers in July 1941, the Communists had taken charge of the situation. There is no doubt that their rule was bloody and antagonized many. When the Italians counter-attacked in the summer, they discovered that determined opposition came only from the Communists and that the other elements of the population simply stood aside. The Italian military governor.....put out secret feelers to local nationalists (Cetnik) leaders to the effect that the Italian occupation forces would leave them and their men undisturbed in the countryside provided they would in turn leave the Italian garrisons and communications in peace. The Montenegrin Cetnik leaders accepted, and this was the beginning of Italian-Cetnik co-operation.

• p. 67 (1942)

We know now that after Mihailovic had established headquarters in Montenegro in June and after his command had been raised by royal decree to Supreme Command of the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland, of which he was appointed Chief of Staff on June 10, he became so absorbed by his domestic foes that he concentrated almost his entire attention on them. Mihailovic appeared convinced that the Germans and Italians were passing phenomena which the Allies would take care of, but he wanted his forces to be in control of Yugoslavia when the day of liberation came. His primary attention was, of course, directed at the Partisans, but he also fought the Croatian Ustashe and the followers of the Serbian Fascist Ljotic, allies of the Germans and Italians. Early in September 1942 he began to take on Nedic, too. On September 9, Mihailovic called, through leaflets and clandestine radio transmitters, for civil disobedience to the Nedic regime. Bloody fighting broke out between Cetniks and Nedic followers and as a result, the German High Command became actively involved in the persecution of Cetniks, many of whom were captured and executed. There is evidence that particularly during November and December 1942, German troops were fighting Cetniks if for no other reason than to bolster the Nedic regime.

• p. 68 (1942)

The relationship of the Cetniks with the Italian occupation troops was, however, a different matter. There was, as we have seen, convincing evidence that "cooperation" between the Italians and the Montenegrin Cetniks started as early as the autumn of 1941 when Mihailovic was in Serbia. In 1942 this "cooperation" had grown to such an extent that Italian and Cetnik troops joined forces during the Third Offensive against the Partisans in Montenegro. Also in other parts of Yugoslavia occupied by the Italians, particularly in Dalmatia and Hercegovina, which were part of the Independent State of Croatia, accommodations were reached between local Cetnik commanders and the Italian Army. ....The two Cetniks who played a particular role were Dobroslav Jevdjevic in Hercegovina and Pop Momcilo Djujic farther to the north. How much control Mihailovic actually had over them is not clear. That their agreements with Italian commanders in 1942 were reached without Mihailovic's prior knowledge is very likely. Actually these agreements, which provided for Italian arms, clothing and food for local Cetnik units on condition that the Italians be not attacked were denounced by Mihailovic later. He was particularly incensed when he learned that Jevdjedic participated in early January 1943 in an Axis military conference prior to the Fourth Offensive against the Partisans......Another reason why Mihalilovic may have opposed the award (to Jevdjevic) was his knowledge that, in Jevdjevic's Hercegovina territory, the Cetniks took terrible revenge against the population for Ustashe atrocities committed in Croatia. Moslems and Croats were killed in large numbers.......In pursuing his fight against his internal enemies, Mihailovic was in short quite prepared to accept arms for this purpose from the Italians; but he opposed actual agreements with them as compromising his position as a fighter on the Allied side.

Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia 1941-1945

Volume I The Chetniks

Stanford University Press, 1975, ISBN 0804736154 [16]

• pp.232-233

The high point of Chetnik collaboration with the Axis powers was reached during the Battle of the Neretva in the winter of 1943, which was the final phase of Fall Weiss or, in Yugoslav terminology, the Fouth Enemy Offensive. The battle of the Neretva River had a long and complicated background on the Chetnik and Axis side and, for the Chetniks, a fateful aftermath. During the first six months of 1942 the Partisans suffered great losses... owing to the successful Chetnik subversion of many Partisan detachments and to some serious mistakes of the Communist leaders, especially the so called "left deviation"... At the same time the Chetniks in these areas have been building-up their strength partly by subverting Partisan detachments, and partly by collaborating with the Italians, and in certain areas to some extent with the Croatian quisling forces, and thus indirectly with the Germans.

Since September [1942] they [the Chetniks] had been trying to persuade the Italians to undertake "a large operation" against the Partisans in their domain [western areas of Bosnia] - knowing that unaided they were incapable of defeating them. Vojvoda [Chetnik leader] Trifunović-Birčanin met with General Roatta on September 10 and 21 to urge him to undertake "as soon as possible" a large operation to chase the Partisans from the Prozor-Livno area offering 7,500 Chetniks as aid on the condition they were furnished with the necessary arms and supplies. He was successful in obtaining some arms and promises of action.

Early in October the Italians launched an operation called Alfa... in which about 3,000 Herzegovinian and southeast-Bosnian Chetniks under the leadership of Lt. Colonel Baćović and Vojvoda Jevđević participated. In this operation the town of Prozor and some smaller towns in the same area were taken. But the Chetnik forces, acting on their own, burned villages and carried-out mass killings of the civilian Moslem and Croatian population. Their behavior quite naturally aroused the anger of the Croatian quisling government, and the Italians had to order the Chetniks to withdraw. Some Chetniks were discharged altogether, while others were sent later to northern Dalmatia to aid the forces of Vojvoda Đujić.

• p.236

For the execution of Operation Weiss the Germans employed from the beginning the 717th and 718th divisions, parts of the 714th division, the 7th SS Divison Prinz Eugen, the 187th Infantry Reserve Division, several Croatian quisling brigades, as well as about ninety German and Croatian aircraft, and from February 27 on, the 369th Infantry Division (Croatian Legionnaries). The Italians used the Lombardia, Re, and Sassari divisions from the beginning, as well as about 6,000 Chetnik auxiliaries from Lika and northern Dalmatia. Later they used also parts of the Bergamo, Marche, and Murge divisions. In the final phase, the Battle of the Neretva River, the total number of Chetnik auxiliaries and other Chetnik formations closely working together with the Italians was between 12,000 and 15,000 men...

• p.239

...Konjic proved to be another matter. This town was jointly held by Italians and Chetniks, and in the course of the battle for its control it was reinforced by some German and Croatian and additional Chetnik troops.

• p.241

Apparently to make sure that the crucial operation on the Neretva would be carried out successfully, and also to be present at the scene of the kill, Mihailović himself moved from Montenegro to Kalinovik where he joined Ostojić, who had up to this point been in command of operations in Herzegovina. On March 9 Mihailović wrote to Colonel Stanišić:

"I manage the whole operation through Branko [i.e. Ostojić, Mihailović's Chief of Operations]. No action is ordered without my approval. Branko is keeping me informed of even the smallest details. All his proposals are reviewed, studied, approved or corrected..."

Note 122: But at his trial Mihailović stated that "there the operations were led by Ostojić, because I had no time to occupy myself with these matters, since I had really come to visit my troops and get acquainted with the real state of affairs."

• pp.258-259

The second group, the Moslem population in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Sandžak, was one of the primary victims of Chetnik terror. Here, the centuries-old religious and political Christian-Moslem antagonism had been aggravated during the First World War when many Bosnian Moslems joined the Austro-Hungarian Schutz-korps, which engaged in anti-Serb activities, and again after April 1941 when a great many Moslems joined the Ustašas and participated in atrocities against the Serbs. The Moslems were thus a traditional enemy, and it was only after mid-1943, when the potential political value of the Moslem population of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Sandžak took on importance for the Chetniks, that they suspended their acts of terror against the Moslems. The third group against whom the Chetniks used mass terror was, of course, their principal enemy the Partisans. Against them, whatever their nationality or religion, from the late fall of 1941 the Chetniks used terrorist methods at every opportunity. Thus a terrible pattern of terror and counterterror emerged in various parts of the country during the Second World War may be found in the explanation of the verdict of the Military Tribunal that tried General Mihailović and his codefendants in the summer of 1946. One of the earliest incidents was the series of massacres of Moslems in southeastern Bosnia which took place in December 1941 and January 1942, especially in the area of the town of Foča, in which probably over two thousand people perished. Eastern and southeastern Bosnia were, in fact, severely hit both by Ustaša terror against the Serbs and by Chetnik terror against the Moslem and Croatian population. Additional Chetnik terrorist outbursts against the Moslems in the area of Foča took place in August 1942. The worst of the Chetnik terror against the Moslems occurred in Sandžak and southeastern Bosnia in January and February 1943. According to a statement originating with the Chetnik Supreme Command dated February 24, 1943, these were punitive countermeasures prompted by the "aggressive actions of the Moslems who had attacked Serbian villages and killed some Serbian people." Chetnik units which had been mobilized in December 1942 in Montenegro and readied for the planned, but delayed, "March on Bosnia" were ordered early in January and again early in February to undertake what were known as "cleansing actions" against the Moslems, first in the county of Bijelo Polje in Sandžak and in February in the county of Čajniče and part of the county of Foča in southeastern Bosnia, and in part of the county of Pljevlja in Sandžak. Chetnik losses were nominal; Moslem losses were estimated at about 10,000 persons. More details are revealed in the reports that Major [Pavle] Đurišić, the officer in charge of these operations, submitted to the Chief of Staff of the Supreme Command (Mihailović). According to Đurišić's report of January 10, thirty-three Moslem villages had been burned down, and 400 Moslem fighters (members of the Moslem self-protection militia supported by the Italians) and about 1,000 women and children had been killed, against 14 Chetnik dead and 26 wounded. The cleansing action carried out in early February took an even more staggering toll: according to Đurišić's report of February 13, in this action the Chetniks killed about 1,200 Moslem fighters and about 8,000 old people, women, and children; Chetnik losses in the action were 22 killed and 32 wounded. In addition, the Chetniks destroyed all property except livestock, grain, and hay, which they seized. It may be observed that Moslem casualties would certainly have been even greater had not a great number of Moslems already fled the area, mostly to Sarajevo; and all who could escape to safety of course did so as soon as the February action started. Although "cleansing actions" in Sandžak and southeastern Bosnia were represented by the Chetniks as countermeasures against Moslem aggressive activities, all circumstances indicate that the operations were a partial implementation of the Chetnik plans mentioned specifically in Mihailović's directive of December 20, 1941, to Đurišić and [Đorđije] Lašić about the cleansing of Sandžak of Moslem and of Bosnia of Moslem and Croatian populations.

• Chapter 7

The Chetnik command had already dispatched to Belgrade Colonel Branislav Pantić and Captain Nenad Mitrović, two of Mihailović's aides, where they contacted German intelligence officer Captain Josef Matl on October 28. They informed the Abwehr that they have been empowered by Colonel Mihailović to establish contact with Prime Minister Milan Nedić and the appropriate Wehrmacht command posts to inform them that the Colonel was willing to "place himself and his men at their disposal for fighting communism". The two representatives further gave the Germans their commander's guarantee for the "definitive clearing of communist bands in Serbian territory" and requested aid from the occupation forces in the form of "about 5,000 rifles, 350 machine guns, and 20 heavy machine guns."

• p.329

On 20 November 1944 the Germans intercepted a radio message from Mihailović to Vojvoda ["duke"] Đujić, his commander in northern Dalmatia, instructing him to cooperate with the German forces. He himself, he says, "cannot go along because of public opinion" (Microcopy No. T-311, Roll 196, Frame 225). This refusal to have any personal dealings with the enemy is a policy that Mihailović departed from only on five occasions: the Divci conference in mid-November 1941, two conferences with Envoy Neuerbacher's representative [Hermann Neubacher, chief Envoy of Nazi Germany in the Balkans], Rudolf Stärker, in the autumn of 1944, and again with Stärker on Vučjak Mountain in 1945.

Volume II Occupation and Collaboration

Stanford University Press, 2001, ISBN 0804736154 [17]

• Preface

Two important issues are not dealt with fully here, though they were an integral part of the Axis presence in Yugoslavia and of the collaborationist regimes, are wartime military operations and, as a complement to them, the systematic use of mass terror against the civilian population. They are reserved for fuller discussion in the volume on the Partisans. This is because most military operations in Yugoslavia during the war were undertaken by the Partisans or directed against them, and because a great deal of mass terror was used against the Partisans and their sympathizers or practiced by the Partisans themselves... (Tomasevich, Vol II, x).

All the historical literature on the Second World War, both from Yugoslavia and from Yugoslav political emigres, shows distinctive biases and, on certain topics, gross omissions. Mass terror is a good example. In Yugoslavia until the early 1980s, almost nothing was written about Partisan terror, while a great deal was written about German, Ustasha and Chetnik terror...

The collaboration of various domestic groups with the occupation forces is another delicate issue that has produced very biased writing. While self-serving writing by the various parties is quite understandable, it does not help establish historical truth, but only distorts it for ulterior purposes ((Tomasevich, Vol II, xi)