– Nenad Jovanović, Portal Novosti –
For the King, Then for Tito Against the King
The role of (non-)commissioned officers from the Royal Yugoslav Army in the National Liberation War (1/3):
Numerous (non-)commissioned officers of the Royal Yugoslav Army joined the Partisans. They held important positions in the Partisan movement and post-war Yugoslavia, and 82 of them were decorated with the Order of the National Hero. Draža Mihailović threatened those who defected to the Partisans with the death penalty.
Photo: Museum of the Revolution of the Peoples of Yugoslavia
Many still remember the Serbian folk saying: “A capable man joins the Chetniks but returns from the Partisans.” The Croatian version might go: a capable man joins the Home Guard but ends up with the Partisans. Still, it’s worth noting that for many, their time with the Chetniks lasted only a few months in 1941. Pre-war (non-)commissioned officers of the Royal Yugoslav Army joined the Partisan movement and made a significant contribution to the development, struggle and victories of the National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia. Contrary to revisionist narratives, this army was made up of people from all walks of life.
Numerous officers of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia — and other patriots who joined the Partisans — were declared traitors at the request of General Staff Colonel, later General and Minister of War, Dragoljub “Draža” Mihailović, commander of the Chetnik movement, officially the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland. With the backing of the government-in-exile and through Radio London, they were stripped of their ranks and threatened with execution. In the end, it became clear who the real traitors were — after the war, Mihailović and many of his commanders were tried for collaboration with the German army and occupation authorities, Nedić’s regime and even with the Independent State of Croatia (NDH), as well as for numerous crimes committed by the Chetniks.
The purpose of this feature series is to highlight those honourable people who put the fight for freedom, a better life and equality above the established hierarchy and authority — but also to call attention to revisionist manipulations, especially those relating to the final phase of the war.
According to data from various sources, around 800,000 people participated in the National Liberation War in Yugoslavia by 1945 — whether in Partisan units, ranging from companies and detachments to brigades, divisions, corps and armies, or in underground activities against the occupiers and domestic collaborators in cities. Combined with the number of those killed during the four years of war, it is a considerable figure. Many participants were awarded numerous honours; many hold the “1941 Commemorative Medal,” and a large number received various decorations, including the title of National Hero.
Looking at the occupations of National Heroes, the breakdown is as expected: 452 were miners, industrial and related workers; 236 were farmers or similar; 184 were students. However, the fourth-largest group — 82 individuals — consisted of officers, non-commissioned officers and gendarmes of the Yugoslav Army. These were people who had sworn an oath to the king before the war, but who, in the fight for freedom, stood with the only force on these lands that truly fought against the occupiers and their domestic collaborators — Josip Broz Tito and the Partisans.
Some joined the uprising from the very beginning, while others switched sides after realizing the betrayal behind Draža Mihailović’s policies. To provide more context: among those declared National Heroes, 78 were clerks, 66 were students, 64 were lawyers, 54 were teachers and professors, 33 worked in retail and services, 27 were engineers and doctors, 29 were other professionals and journalists — and there were even 14 pre-war housewives. Of course, the number of (non-)commissioned officers, along with a few gendarmes, who began their military service under the king — and some even under Mihailović — but continued it with Tito, was far greater than the number of those in that group who were officially declared National Heroes. Many, including individuals mentioned in this series, received the highest decorations and went on to have successful post-war careers — even if they were never named National Heroes.
Witnesses to History
How can we explain the fact that so many royal (non-)commissioned officers chose to fight on the Partisan side? Perhaps it lies in the fact that many of them — at least in Serbia — had negative experiences with German, Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian aggressors and occupiers during the First World War. Many others, coming from other parts of the country, had fought against the Central Powers as volunteers. “When the April War broke out, the Germans, after quickly bringing it to an end, weren’t eager to take large numbers of prisoners back to Germany. If someone in Serbia stepped out of the column of prisoners, they were no longer forced back into it, and the occupiers didn’t make much of an issue of it. As a result, several dozen generals, around a hundred colonels and senior officers, along with many captains and junior officers in Serbia avoided captivity. Many hid and changed into civilian clothes, but some officers and soldiers began forming small armed groups, and some even started collecting weapons. In Serbia and Montenegro, there may have been about fifty such groups — some larger, some smaller — and one of them was the group led by General Staff Colonel Draža Mihailović. This all happened in May 1941,” writes wartime leader and post-war diplomat Vladimir Velebit in Mira Šuvar’s book Witness to History. He also describes the first divisions among groups in the NDH resisting Ustaša terror — those who would later become Partisan or Chetnik detachments — depending on who led them.
(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
“Chetnik groups that formed spontaneously in Serbia after the capitulation of the Yugoslav Army were initially independent, had no central command and, in my opinion, no real program. After the first Partisan actions, some joined the Partisans. The summer and early autumn of 1941 was a period during which even the Chetniks participated in certain battles — they took part in the sieges of Valjevo and Kraljevo, the capture of Mataruška Banja and several other places. They later used these events as ‘evidence’ that they too had fought against the occupiers… When General Dušan Simović, head of the government-in-exile in London, named Draža Mihailović ‘commander of all armed detachments of the Yugoslav army in the homeland’ in his BBC broadcast on November 15, Mihailović immediately assumed command and ordered everyone loyal to him to withdraw and not cooperate with the Partisans. However, some groups, like the one under the command of Father Vlado Zečević, disobeyed,” Velebit notes.
He goes on to explain that Mihailović secured his position simply by being the first to reach out to the British. “How he could have guessed in late April or May 1941 that Great Britain would emerge victorious in the war remains a mystery to me. It’s known that he somehow obtained a brochure from British intelligence containing instructions on how to organize resistance in the event of a Yugoslav occupation… Some of his couriers managed to reach Istanbul, but Mihailović insisted on establishing contact only with the British. What helped him greatly was the fact that he established a radio station in October 1941 and began sending messages, which led to his name becoming known in London,” Velebit writes.
The story of Mihailović is important because many officers had contact with him at the start of their wartime journey. One such officer was Jakob Avšič, born in 1896 in Ljubljana, where he died in 1978. A cavalry colonel, after the capitulation, he initially responded to Draža Mihailović’s call and joined the Chetnik detachments in Serbia, eventually being offered command of the Chetnik troops in Slovenia. He refused the offer and, after returning to occupied Slovenia, worked intensively to recruit royal officers into the Partisan ranks and to bring them into the Osvobodilna fronta (OF — Liberation Front). He joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) in 1941.
This was not Avšič’s first war. In 1915, he had been mobilized into the Austro-Hungarian army, but the following year, on the Eastern Front, he defected to the Russians and voluntarily joined the forces fighting on the Salonika front. During the Second World War, he served as a member of the Supreme Headquarters of the National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia, deputy commander of the Main Staff of the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Slovenia, and when military ranks were introduced in August 1943 by order of Supreme Commander Josip Broz Tito, Avšič was the second person promoted to the rank of lieutenant general (general-poručnik — later renamed lieutenant colonel-general in the 1950s). Avšič was a delegate to AVNOJ, and after the liberation of Yugoslavia, he held several positions in the Yugoslav Army — serving as rear area commander and head of the Yugoslav military mission in Berlin. He retired in 1947. After retirement, he served as a representative in both the federal and republican assemblies, as a diplomatic representative of the FPRY in Austria, Minister of Forestry and Mayor of Ljubljana. He was awarded the “1941 Partisan Commemorative Medal” and several other high Yugoslav decorations.
The Liberation of Loznica, 1944
Savo Orović, born in 1888 in Lijeva Rijeka and died in 1974 in Belgrade, had a remarkable military role in the First World War. He returned to Montenegro from political exile in 1915 and fought as an officer in the Montenegrin army, serving as a reconnaissance platoon commander. After the Montenegrin army capitulated in January 1916, he continued fighting as a komita (guerrilla fighter) against the Austro-Hungarian occupiers. One of his local supporters betrayed him, and he was arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He served his sentence in Podgorica and was released after the liberation in 1918. He continued his military career in the Royal Yugoslav Army, eventually reaching the rank of colonel. After the April 1941 capitulation, he avoided capture and returned to his home region, where he actively took part in preparations for the July 13 uprising. He joined the Nikšić Partisan Detachment on July 17, 1941 and became the first to receive the rank of lieutenant general in 1943. He is well known from the photos showing a wounded Tito at Sutjeska. Orović served as commander of the Officer School of the Supreme Headquarters of the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia (NOV and POJ), chief of the Main Staff of NOV and PO of Vojvodina and commander of the Infantry Military School from December 1944 to 1947, which later became the Military Academy of the Yugoslav People’s Army. He retired in 1952 with the rank of colonel-general. He was elected as a representative in both the federal and Montenegrin assemblies. Orović joined the CPY in 1943 and was also a delegate of AVNOJ.
(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Among royal officers who joined the Partisans, very few were senior officers. One wonders whether Veselin Misita — born in 1904 in the village of Buna near Mostar and killed in August 1941 — might have been among them. During the April War, he held the rank of lieutenant-colonel and commanded an artillery regiment in Banja Luka. He refused to accept the capitulation and chose to continue resistance, leading a group of like-minded officers who clashed with the Ustaše near Doboj in May 1941. Upon hearing about Draža’s group, he went to Ravna Gora and offered his services, later helping to form the Cer and Jadar Chetnik detachments. Dissatisfied with Mihailović’s wait-and-see policy, Misita — then commander of the Jadar Chetnik Detachment — agreed with Lieutenant Ratko Martinović and priest Vlado Zečević at a public gathering on August 30 at the Tronoša Monastery to launch an uprising against the Germans and attack Loznica. This action was carried out without Mihailović’s approval. Misita led around 1,700 insurgents and was killed during the fighting in the town. According to some sources, he was shot by a local café owner working for the Germans. Loznica was liberated, and 93 Germans were captured.
Controversy surrounding Misita was later addressed by Ratko Martinović, who, along with Zečević, soon joined the Partisans. “It wouldn’t be justified to speculate on what path Misita would have taken had he survived, so I’ll limit myself to just these two facts: first, the attack on the German garrison in Loznica was carried out without an order from Draža Mihailović; and second, he died bravely fighting the Germans,” said Martinović. His position may be understood in light of the fact that some royal officers — such as Dragoslav Račić — initially fought fervently against the Germans but later, as Chetniks and followers of Draža, turned to betrayal. Martinović himself, born in 1916 in Banja Luka and died in Belgrade in 1993, was a pre-war officer in the Yugoslav Army. He joined Colonel Mihailović but soon broke with him due to differing views on how to fight the enemy. With Vlado Zečević, he formed the “Martinović-Zečević Military-Chetnik Detachment.” After the final break between Chetniks and Partisans, he and Zečević joined the Partisans. An interesting detail about Martinović is that, according to his own testimony, he may have been the first member of the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland — that is, a Chetnik — to wear a beard, for which Mihailović rebuked him. “I asked him to let me keep the beard because I had vowed to wear it until we expelled the Germans or until I was killed,” Martinović writes in his memoir From Ravna Gora to the Supreme Headquarters.
During the National Liberation War, Martinović held positions as chief of staff of the Valjevo Partisan Detachment, commander of the 2nd Krajina Assault Brigade, chief of staff of the 5th Krajina Division, and until November 1944, chief of the Main Staff of NOV and PO of Serbia, a position he held until May 1945. He held the rank of lieutenant colonel-general and served as head of the Military Academy from 1947 to 1950. As for the beard — he shaved it once he was with the Partisans, but it remained a symbol of the Chetniks, since it was mostly worn by those who voluntarily joined their ranks.
Free Flight from the King to Tito
Participation of (non-)commissioned officers from the Royal Yugoslav Army in the National Liberation War (2/3):
Arso Jovanović made the journey from Royal Army captain and uprising organizer in Montenegro to chief of the Supreme Headquarters and Stalin sympathizer. Thanks to defectors from the NDH such as Kluz and Čajavec, the Partisan army was the only resistance force in occupied Europe with its own air force.
Photo: Museum of Yugoslav History
Arso Jovanović was likely the most important and best-known officer to switch from the Royal Yugoslav Army to the Partisans. He was born in 1907 in Zavala near Podgorica, and died in 1948 near Vršac as a Cominform supporter. In the Royal Army, he held the rank of captain, and from the start of the Second World War, he sided with the Montenegrin insurgents. Near Crmnica, he defeated an Italian battalion, capturing about 2,000 Italians and a large amount of weapons. Shortly after that battle, Jovanović joined the Partisans and wore his captain’s uniform until the Partisan retreat from Montenegro. Due to his combat experience, he was appointed head of the Main Staff of the NOV and PO of Montenegro.
In early December 1941, he ordered the capture of the well-fortified town of Pljevlja in northern Montenegro and the destruction of the Italian garrison. The operation failed and 253 Partisans were killed. After the failed battle — meant to connect the free territories of the Sandžak and Montenegro — Jovanović, who feared he would be dismissed, was transferred to the Supreme Headquarters of the National Liberation Army of Yugoslavia, where he was named chief of staff. In his report, he detailed all of the Partisan weaknesses. During the war, he moved constantly with the Supreme Headquarters and taught at the First Partisan Officer School in Drvar in 1944. In March 1945, he was named the first chief of the General Staff of the Yugoslav Army. Since he sympathized with the USSR, he accepted the Cominform resolution and, along with Colonel Vlado Dapčević and General Branko Petričević, attempted to flee to Romania in the summer of 1948, but was killed in a skirmish with border guards.
Another general — and national hero — was Radivoje Jovanović Bradonja, born in the village of Zarube near Valjevo in 1918. He died in Belgrade in 2000. As an artillery second lieutenant, he witnessed the April War and the capitulation, managing to escape captivity and return to his home region. From the preparations and the very first day of the uprising in July 1941, he joined the Partisan ranks. He organized the defence of the Republic of Užice in November 1941 and stood out in the battle of Kadinjača.
After the Partisans retreated from Serbia, he returned from Tara to the Valjevo Partisan Detachment area on Party orders, as head of the Main Staff of National Liberation Detachments of Serbia, to gather and organize Partisan units and continue the fight against the occupiers and collaborators. However, the units dispersed. In February 1942, he was appointed commander of a group of detachments in western Serbia and managed to escape encirclement. After Mirko Tomić was dismissed as commander in August that year, the Supreme Headquarters appointed him commander of the Main Staff of the National Liberation Detachments of Serbia and member of the Supreme Headquarters of the NOV and POJ. In late September 1943, he was made commander of the First Šumadija Brigade. In February 1944, he became commander of the 3rd Serbian Assault Brigade, and in March, deputy commander of the 2nd Proletarian Division. In June 1944, he was appointed commander of the 25th Serbian Division, and in early September 1944, commander of the 14th Serbian Corps, which took part in the liberation of parts of Serbia, eastern Bosnia and later Zagreb.
After the war, Radivoje Jovanović Bradonja served as commander of the city of Belgrade. In early 1946, he went to the USSR as a student of the Dzerzhinsky Artillery Academy in Moscow. He returned in 1948 and became commander of the artillery of the Yugoslav Army, later the Yugoslav People’s Army. He was the architect of the concept of general national defence, with particular emphasis on territorial defence. An interesting episode occurred in autumn 1944 when, upon entering the headquarters of a Red Army unit, he saw negotiations underway with Chetniks. He stormed into the room and fired a burst from his submachine gun at the Chetnik side, stunning the Russians.
The Heroes Who Sank the Zagreb
When recounting heroic deeds from 1941, one must mention two Royal Navy officers who became national heroes without ever joining the Partisans — second-class ship lieutenants Milan Spasić of Belgrade and Sergej Mašera of Gorica. On April 17, 1941, in the port of Dobrota in the Bay of Kotor, they blew up the most modern ship of the Royal Navy at the time — the destroyer Zagreb — to prevent it from falling into the hands of Italian fascists, who had already taken control of the bay from the Royal Army, which was in complete disarray. The crews of the ships stationed in the Bay of Kotor were ordered not to open fire on the Italians and to surrender their vessels and equipment peacefully, with strict orders not to destroy them. Before the explosion, ship commander Captain Nikola Krizomali — who would later have a successful career in the NDH and go into exile in 1945 — relieved the crew of their duties and put on his dress uniform. But Spasić told him that the fuses had already been lit and that the ship would soon vanish. After two powerful explosions, the heavily damaged destroyer sank in shallow waters. The next day, fishermen found the body of Milan Spasić in the sea. He was buried on April 19, 1941 at the naval cemetery in Savina near Herceg Novi. Later, after Mašera’s body was found, he was also buried at the same cemetery. Many locals attended their funeral, along with a unit of the Italian army, which was so impressed by the heroism of Spasić and Mašera that they honoured them with military salutes.
(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
The destruction and sinking of the destroyer and the deaths of the two officers were the most moral acts in the tragedy of the Royal Yugoslav Navy. Their story was even covered by the British press. In 1942, the British erected a memorial plaque to Mašera and Spasić in their barracks on Malta. King Peter II awarded them the Order of Karađorđe’s Star with Swords, 4th Class, in January 1942. They were declared the last national heroes of Yugoslavia in 1973, as little had been known about their actions after the war. Writing about them only began in the 1960s. In 1968, the French made a feature film titled Flames Over the Adriatic, dedicated to the event, with a screenplay by Meša Selimović. After that, streets or squares in many Yugoslav cities were named after Spasić and Mašera, and a monument was erected to them in Tivat. In Zagreb, their streets were renamed in the early 1990s.
After the bloody split between the Chetniks and Partisans in late 1941 and the early months of 1942, there were no significant defections of collaborators — that is, Draža’s Chetniks and the Home Guard — to the Partisans until the second half of 1944. “Tito wanted the Partisans to fight according to the Geneva Conventions and not take revenge, to distinguish them from the Chetniks. Captured Chetniks, mostly peasants who had been forcibly mobilized, were usually released immediately, after which some asked to join the Partisans. Those who had committed crimes or handed over Partisans to the Germans — we executed, as we did with Ustaše. Captured Home Guard soldiers were released immediately, and many of them stayed with the Partisans afterward,” wrote Vladimir Velebit in his book Witness to History.
(Photo: Museum of the Revolution of the Peoples of Yugoslavia)
A somewhat different perspective, at least during the early years of the war, is offered by Partisan leader and political commissar Ivan Šibl in his war diary Memoirs 2 — War Diary. The Home Guard were not in a hurry to join the Partisans before 1944. He describes the capture of a battalion of 400 Home Guard soldiers from a DORA regiment (Home Guard labour unit — editor’s note), mostly Orthodox Serbs, whom the Ustaše did not trust, arming them with outdated weapons. “In the morning, I gave them a speech. Although I had given the same speech about 50 times before, this one had certain specifics due to the makeup of the battalion, and I still tried to give the impression that I was speaking from the heart. And what do you think — how many of those young men from Kordun, Banija and Bosnian Krajina declared they were willing to stay with the Partisans? Only thirty, and that was after hours of persuasion. We practically begged them on our knees to stay with us. But even that was better than usual. Typically, after the whole process, not a single Home Guard soldier would stay — and now, at least, 30 of these Orthodox Home Guards did,” wrote Šibl, who also described the fate of the battalion’s commander, Captain L.
“He was a career officer in the former Yugoslav Army, ethnically a Serb. Not a Serb from Croatia, but a Serb from Serbia proper. In the previous war, Captain L. fought as a soldier in the Serbian army against Austria-Hungary and crossed the Albanian mountains with the Serbian Army, later taking part in battles on the Salonika front. So his life and career followed a logical path, without criticism, until the new war,” wrote Šibl, adding that since he had married a Bosnian Croat — a merchant’s daughter — the Ustaša authorities treated him and his family with a bit more leniency. Although he could have stepped back from public life or moved to Serbia, he became a captain and commander of the DORA battalion — and then an Ustaša informant and collaborator. “Although he wanted to survive at all costs, not for himself but for his family — which is why he became an Ustaša captain and informant — Captain L. was executed. That was the inevitable outcome of his betrayal,” Šibl concluded.
Pilot Defections
From early 1942 to the summer of 1944, there were several notable pilot defections. Among them were Franjo Kluz — who had trained before the war first as a mechanic and then as a non-commissioned pilot — and Rudi Čajavec, a reserve second lieutenant. On May 23, 1942, a Potez 25 aircraft took off from the Banja Luka airfield, part of the NDH air force. The pilot, Franjo Kluz, was supposed to deliver seven rifles, ammunition and canned food to the Home Guard garrison in Sanski Most. Following him, a Breguet 19 aircraft took off to deliver 100 kilograms of salt and a crate of ammunition to the Home Guard in Gornja Sanica. The crew of this aircraft included pilot Rudi Čajavec and gunner-mechanic Mišo Jazbec. Both planes landed at the Urije airfield near Prijedor, which had been liberated a week earlier and was then the largest free town in all of occupied Europe. After this, the Partisans had their own air force — a unique case in resistance movement history. However, the pilots’ defection with their aircraft was not accidental, but rather a carefully planned and coordinated action by Banja Luka’s communists.
On June 4, 1942, Kluz and gunner Ivica Mitračić attacked the Ustasha Black Legion near Međeđa using bombs and machine-gun fire. On June 7, they bombed Bosanski Novi and Dvor and dropped leaflets over Dubica and Kostajnica. Due to an enemy offensive on Kozara, Kluz and Mitračić moved to a new airstrip. But on July 6, 1942, a German fighter discovered the strip, attacked and destroyed the Potez 25. Without a plane, Kluz joined the Operational Staff for Bosnian Krajina, where he remained until November 1943. He then joined the 1st Aviation Base in Livno, transferred to Italy, and then to North Africa, where he joined the 1st NOVJ Squadron. After intensive training, the Allies equipped the squadron with Spitfire fighters.
Holding the rank of captain, Kluz served not only as a pilot in that squadron but also as its political commissar. Starting on August 18 from the Canne airfield in Italy, and later from the base on Vis, Kluz carried out numerous combat missions, attacking German forces in Dalmatia and parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and providing fighter cover for both Partisan and Allied aircraft. He died on September 14, 1944 when, while leading a flight of four Spitfires during an attack on the port of Omiš, he was shot down by German anti-aircraft defences. He was proclaimed a National Hero on May 18, 1948.
Rudi Čajavec became a pilot second lieutenant in the Royal Army. In 1939, he went to France to pursue a doctorate in law. After France’s capitulation, he returned home and worked as a civil servant before being mobilized into the NDH air force. He made contact with the Partisans, supplying them with ammunition, medical materials and intelligence. He connected with Kluz and Jazbec and defected with them to free territory. On July 4, 1942, Čajavec dropped leaflets over Banja Luka and attacked the Zalužani airfield. Wounded, he crash-landed near the village of Kadinjani. To avoid falling into Chetnik hands alive, he took his own life. He received multiple decorations and was proclaimed a National Hero on December 20, 1951.
Their legacy lived on thanks in part to the Belgrade factory of clothing and parachutes (Kluz) and the Banja Luka factory of military electronics and household appliances (Čajavec). In 1979, director Hajrudin Krvavac made a film about their exploits, Partisan Squadron.
Vladimir Velebit mentions another defection of an NDH aircraft to the Partisans. “At the end of November 1943, a light bomber Dornier landed on the Livanjko polje — its crew decided to join the Partisans. The Partisan mission, led by Ivo Lola Ribar, was waiting with British liaison officers to travel to the Allies in Cairo via Italy. They had been waiting in vain for days on the Glamoč field for an Allied aircraft. Tito gave approval for them to use the Dornier. The pilot determined that the passengers could not take off from the Livanjko polje and that they would need to fly from Glamoč instead. Everyone relocated there to wait for the delayed aircraft. In the meantime, red stars were painted on the fuselage and wings. Around 20 excited people gathered around the plane to pose for commemorative photos.
“No one was watching the skies — and because the aircraft engines were still running, no one heard the incoming German Henschel. It attacked with bombs and machine-gun fire, killing Lola, several Partisans and Allied officers. It also killed the Dornier’s mechanic and gunner, Petar Hercigonja, who had bravely returned to the plane to fire from the turret, before the German aircraft hit and set their plane ablaze,” Velebit wrote.
The Five Armies of Marko Mesić
The participation of (non-)commissioned officers of the Royal Yugoslav Army in the National Liberation War (3/3):
Lieutenant Colonel Marko Mesić served in the Royal Army in Niš during the April War. He later joined the Croatian Home Guard — specifically, the 369th Reinforced Infantry Regiment of the NDH — with which he fought at Stalingrad. After that, he served in the Red Army and ended the war in the Yugoslav Army.
(Photo: Museum of the Revolution of the Peoples of Yugoslavia)
Radoslav Đurić was a pre-war officer and a Chetnik major under the pseudonym “Herman” from 1941 to 1944. He switched to the National Liberation Army in the spring of 1944. He was one of the few officers who consistently and uncompromisingly advocated fighting the Germans and frequently opposed the commander of the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland, Draža Mihailović. During the 1941 uprising in Serbia, he refused to attack the Partisans in Čačak and repeatedly informed Mihailović of Chetnik collaboration with the Germans, protesting against Chetnik crimes. When British missions arrived in his region in 1943, General Mihailović — despite Đurić being both commander of the South Morava Corps (from 1942 to 1944) and leader of the Belgrade Chetnik organization that mobilized men to join the Chetniks — forbade him from carrying out sabotage against the Wehrmacht and instead ordered him to attack the Partisans, which Đurić refused to do.
From March 1944, Đurić began preparing to defect to the Partisans. During this time, he refused to have his corps participate in defending the Jablanica and Toplica regions from Partisan forces, claiming he lacked the manpower for such a broad action. Informed of Đurić’s intentions to abandon the Chetnik organisation, Mihailović ordered his disarmament and arrest. On May 18, 1944, several Chetniks attacked Đurić’s headquarters. During the fighting between Chetniks and NOVJ units in the Jablanica area, Đurić managed to escape and, on May 27, joined the nearest Partisan detachments. Within the Partisans, he became commander of the South Morava Division. He took part in defeating Chetnik and Ljotić forces in the Jablanica and Toplica areas. As an experienced officer, he was appointed assistant to the chief of the Main Staff for Serbia and first deputy to General Koča Popović. In addition to participating in combat, he worked in autumn 1944 to mobilize former Chetniks into the Partisan ranks throughout southern Serbia. He ended the war with the rank of colonel in the Yugoslav Army and held various military posts. Until his retirement in 1948, he served in Niš, Aleksinac, Prokuplje and Priština.
Some sources also associate Major Đurić with a romantic relationship involving Vera Pešić, a spy who worked for the Germans and the Nedić regime. According to those sources, Vera’s presence at Đurić’s headquarters caused discontent among the Chetniks, who then planned an operation to eliminate both the major and her. When Đurić learned of the coup plot, he arrested the conspirator officers and sentenced them to death. However, on the day the executions were to take place, Chetniks from the main Chetnik headquarters arrived, surrounded Sijarinska Banja and arrested Đurić — though he later escaped. Vera attempted to flee with her mother but was captured, and both were executed by firing squad on May 18, 1944.
In Four Years, in Five Armies
As noted in previous instalments, some Royal officers — and not only them — found their path to the Partisans through the Home Guard, and some even through the Wehrmacht and the invasion of the USSR. One such example is Marko Mesić, born in 1901 in Bjelovar, who died in 1982 in Zagreb. He began his military education in Pečuj, and after the unification and formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, continued his training in Karlovac, Maribor, Belgrade and Niš. During the April War, he was stationed in Niš as an artillery colonel on the border with Bulgaria. After the capitulation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the establishment of the NDH, like many former officers, Mesić joined the newly formed Croatian Home Guard. In fact, following the capitulation, the Germans were quick to release from POW camps — especially officer camps — anyone who declared themselves Croatian, had no political record and did not refuse release.
Following the Axis invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941, the NDH authorities formed the 369th Reinforced Infantry Regiment, also known as the “Devil’s Division.” Mesić was appointed artillery commander in that unit, which was equipped, trained and under the direct command of the Wehrmacht. He fought on the Eastern Front and, from September 1942, in Stalingrad itself. After the death of regiment commander Viktor Pavičić in late January 1943 — according to some sources, Pavičić was killed during a confrontation while trying to board one of the last German aircraft out of Stalingrad — Mesić, as the highest-ranking officer, assumed command. In that role, he formally surrendered the regiment to the Soviets in early February after the Battle of Stalingrad ended. Back in Zagreb, he was mourned as deceased and even posthumously decorated. In reality, he had survived, along with some 700 soldiers from the regiment. They were sent on a forced march to the Krasnogorsk POW camp, where about 400 of them arrived alive. The Soviet authorities offered Mesić a deal: to switch sides and command a unit made up not only of the surviving legionnaires but also of Yugoslav citizens who had been caught in the USSR and Iran at the start of the war. In exchange, they were released from captivity.
Besides the 369th regiment survivors, the unit also included soldiers from the SS divisions Handžar, Kama and Skenderbeg, deported Serbs from Bačka, and Yugoslav economic migrants from Iran. This unit, known as the 1st Yugoslav Brigade, was initially intended to fight on the Eastern Front under Soviet command. However, the Soviets later decided to send it to Yugoslavia, where it was integrated into the NOVJ and placed under Tito’s command. The brigade’s use of royalist insignia — including the “little eagles” on their caps — intended to maintain diplomatic ties between the USSR and the Yugoslav government-in-exile, raised suspicion among Partisans. On the Romanian border, the eagles had to be replaced with red stars. The Partisans were particularly distrustful of the brigade once they learned who had made it up. Upon hearing that Mesić had joined the Partisans, NDH authorities stripped him of all honours and ranks.
(Photo: Museum of the Revolution of the Peoples of Yugoslavia)
The brigade, within the 23rd Serbian Division of the 14th Corps of the NOVJ, fought heavy battles against the Germans in the wider Čačak region. The attack failed, with severe losses: 135 killed, 234 wounded and 88 missing. From December 1944 to mid-March 1945, the brigade fought on the Syrmian Front, then in Podrinje and Bosnian Posavina, before returning to Croatia. The brigade ended the war in Bjelovar. Aside from a verbal rebuke from Tito in Romania, criticizing his wartime path, Mesić faced no serious consequences. After the war, he was retired with the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Yugoslav Army and lived peacefully in Zagreb until 1948, when UDBA detained him several times on suspicion of being a Soviet spy. That same year, in an unresolved accident, he fell under a train and lost both legs. He lived in Zagreb until his death in 1982.
Two Amnesties in 1944
By the second half of 1944, Allied victory — and with it the triumph of the NOVJ — was becoming more certain. This was the moment to invite members of collaborationist forces, who had not committed war crimes, to join the Partisans. King Peter Karađorđević II issued an ultimatum to Draža Mihailović and the Chetniks via Radio London on September 12, 1944, demanding an end to their collaboration with the occupiers. But neither Mihailović nor his commanders obeyed their nominal supreme commander. That same year, the NOVJ declared two amnesties — on August 30 and November 21. Both were nationwide and not limited to Serbia and the Chetniks. They also applied to Croatian Home Guards and Slovenian Domobranci, with the strict condition that the individuals had not committed war crimes, notes historian Milan Radanović, who discusses this in his book Punishment and Crime: Collaborationist Forces in Serbia.
However, the rise in Partisan numbers in Serbia was not due to amnesty alone. The surge was primarily the result of mass mobilization. Most of the young men conscripted in Serbia had not previously been Chetniks — and those who had were mostly forcibly conscripted in August and September 1944. Such men surrendered easily and had no trouble entering the NOVJ. They were not ideological Chetniks and had not committed crimes, Radanović explains, adding that around half of the Chetniks in Serbia switched to the Partisans in 1944, and that by autumn that year, there were about 30,000 of them.
As is often the case, many war criminals tried to sneak onto the winning side. Or, as Zdenko Duplančić, a member of the SKOJ in Split from 1942 and a 15-year-old fighter in the 1st Proletarian Brigade, which fought in Serbia and participated in the Belgrade Operation in autumn 1944, once put it: “Our policy was clear: whoever shaved off his beard — we took off his head.” The OZNA was also in the business of taking heads — clean-shaven ones. In the final months of the war and in its immediate aftermath, OZNA arrested and executed a large number of former Chetniks and members of other formations — both officers and soldiers — for crimes they had committed.
In the wartime developments in Croatia, September 15 took on an almost cult-like status. That was the deadline for Home Guards, Chetniks and others to join the Partisan ranks under the terms of the previously mentioned amnesty. Although there had already been a visible increase in the number of Home Guards joining the Partisans in the months before, the days around September 15 marked the peak.
This was described by Ivan Šibl, at the time political commissar of the 10th Zagreb Corps, who was then stationed in Čazma, which was “full of Home Guards and Home Guard officers” who, under Tito’s appeal, were guaranteed to keep their ranks. “I know many of the newly arrived Home Guards and officers. They’re enthusiastic about us Partisans — especially about me. They’re tame, eating out of our hands. They say they would have joined long ago, maybe even in 1941, but circumstances didn’t allow it: wives, children, elderly parents, lack of secure contacts and so on. Still, some of them are genuinely sincere. One Home Guard lieutenant, J., until recently commanded a marching company in Križ. Everyone here knows that he fought well and zealously against the Moslavina Partisan units. ‘You proved yourself to be an excellent fighter against us,’ I said to him. ‘Yes,’ he replied openly, ‘but you should know this — anyone who stank in the Home Guard will stink in the Partisans too.’” Šibl doesn’t mention what later happened to that lieutenant.
The delirium of Home Guard officers, led by Major Dionizije pl. Bužan, upon learning that as of September 15 they were considered Partisans — even if only one of their men (Ilija Kapara) had officially joined — is described in Joža Horvat’s anti-war novel The Cat Under the Helmet. Due to the mass defection of thousands of Home Guards to the Partisans, the Ustaše merged what remained of the Croatian Home Guard with the Ustaša Militia into the unified Croatian Armed Forces (HOS).
Members of other armed formations also joined the Partisans, so the malicious and false claim that the Partisans were merely a bunch of shaved and rebranded Chetniks — as repeated daily by right-leaning academics, journalists and politicians — does not hold up to scrutiny. In fact, the final operations to liberate Yugoslavia, and thus Croatia, were always carried out by Partisan units from across the country. Divisions and brigades from Serbia played a significant role in the final liberation of Croatia, but the greatest contribution came from units formed in Croatia, including those made up predominantly of Croats, as noted in the multi-author series Final Operations for the Liberation of Yugoslavia.
(Translated from the Serbo-Croatian originals on portalnovosti.com in three parts: part one, part two, part three)