Mihailović, Dragoljub

▪ Yugoslavian resistance leader

Mihailović also spelled  Mihajlović,  byname  Draža 

born March 27, 1893, Ivanjica, Serbia

died July 17, 1946, Belgrade, Yugos.

      army officer and head of the royalist Yugoslav underground army, known as the Chetniks (Chetnik), during World War II.

      Having fought in the Balkan Wars (1912–13) and World War I, Mihailović, a colonel at the time of Germany's invasion of Yugoslavia (April 1941), refused to acquiesce in the capitulation of the Yugoslav army. He organized the royalist Chetniks, who operated mainly in Serbia. He was appointed general in 1941 and minister of war that same year by King Peter's Yugoslav government-in-exile.

      Both the Chetniks under Mihailović and the communist-dominated Partisans (Partisan), who were led by Josip Broz Tito (Tito, Josip Broz), resisted the occupying German forces, but political differences led to distrust and eventual armed conflict between them. Reports of Chetnik resistance in the early stages of occupation buoyed the Allies and made of Mihailović a heroic figure. Fearful, however, of brutal reprisals against Serbians, Mihailović came to favour a restrained policy of resistance until the Allies could provide more assistance; the Partisans supported a more aggressive policy against the Germans. Favouring the latter policy and confronted with reports of Chetnik collaboration (particularly in Italian-held areas) directed against the Partisans, the Allies switched their support from Mihailović to Tito in 1944.

      After the war Mihailović went into hiding. He was captured by the Partisans on March 13, 1946, and charged by the Yugoslav government with treason and collaboration with the Germans. Mihailović was sentenced to death and was executed in Belgrade in 1946. Although a U.S. commission of inquiry cleared Mihailović and those under his immediate command of the charge of collaboration, the issue is still disputed by some historians. Following the breakup of communist Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, his former refuge in the Ravna Gora region came to be a focus of royalist sentiment.

Additional Reading

Treatments of Mihailović include David Martin, Patriot or Traitor: The Case of General Mihailović (1978); and Walter R. Roberts, Tito, Mihailović, and the Allies, 1941–1945 (1973). Mihailović's role within the greater scope of the war is discussed in Paul N. Hehn, The German Struggle Against Yugoslav Guerrillas in World War II (1979); and Jozo Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945, rev. ed. (2001).

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