I wanted much; I began much; but the gale of the world carried away me and my work.
-Draža Mihailovic, last statement to the court
On this date in 1946, Serbian Chetnik commander Draža Mihailovic was shot in Belgrade as a World War II traitor — a verdict that remains controversial to this day.
A colonel* in the Royal Yugoslav Army, Mihailovic escaped Germany’s initial invasion into the mountainous Balkan interior with a few dozen comrades who became the nucleus of a Serbian guerrilla movement.
These royalist Chetniks made a rivalrous opposite number to Josip Tito’s fellow guerrillas, the Communist partizans; it is easy enough to see from Mihailovic’s place in these very pages how matters settled in the end. From the first months of occupation in 1941, Chetniks and Partisans alike struck Axis occupation forces who had carved up Yugoslavia, even coordinating efforts in spite of their vast ideological chasm.
But politics didn’t stop at the border forever.
As the war progressed, the Chetniks gradually found terms with the occupiers, with Mihailovic at an October 1941 meeting dramatically rejecting Tito’s proposed common front. For the Chetniks, the leftist and polyglot Partisans who meant to rule the postwar Yugoslavia were the first enemy, “a motley collection of rascals,” in Mihailovic’s words — consisting of “Jews, Croats, Dalmatians, Bulgarians, Turks, Magyars, and all other nations of the world.”
Officially, tactical partnerships with the Germans and Italians were strictly opportunistic, not a buy-in on fascism — or they denoted a calculation (and Mihailovic’s limitless time-biding greatly aggravated the Allies while the fur was flying) to cautiously preserve his movement’s strength by avoiding engagement with an overwhelming enemy. In practice this policy drove the movement towards near-quisling status, with its major actions being undertaken against other resistance fighters on team partizan,** or to purge non-Serbs from this or that locale, even accepting German and especially Italian subsidies to do it.† Mihailovic’s enemies, he said in 1943, numbered “the Ustashi, the Partisans, the Croats and the Moslems” and “when he had dealt with these, he would turn to the Germans and the Italians.” Priorities are as priorities do.
For obvious reasons this behavior contrasts unfavorably with the Partisans’ militant “death to fascism, freedom to the people” line, and this latter movement’s ferocity in resistance saw it outstrip the Chetniks and seize the initiative for the postwar order. To a far greater extent than most other guerrillas of the bloodlands, the Partisans drove their own homelands’ liberation and left Tito master of a postwar Yugoslavia never occupied by the Red Army.
Mihailovic’s fall mirrored Tito’s rise. The Chetnik commander would be taken months after the war’s end, hiding out Saddam-like in a foxhole on the Bosnian marches. There could be no question of his fate.
Mihailovic and other Chetniks faced a predictably slanted trial for war crimes against Partisans and civilians, culminating in conviction on July 15, 1946 … two days before he faced the guns, with all of eight hours granted him to make his futile appeal. While it’s certain that the charges against him were maximized for the occasion, Mihailovic’s defense citing ignorance of and incapacity to control various units’ local atrocities is also not calculated to flatter a rebel general.
Mihailovic on trial.
Mihailovich was shot along with eight others:
-
Draghi Yovanovich, chief of the Belgrade police during the German occupation;
Milan Gushich and Radoslav Radich, Mihailovich aides;
Velibor Yonich, Tanasje Dinich, and Djure Dokich, ministers in the Serbian puppet government;
and, General Kosta Mushicki and a deputy named Paolovich.
In 2015, a Serbian court controversially reversed Mihailovic’s conviction.
* He’d be promoted to Brigadier General during the war years.
** World sport fanciers surely know that there is a literal team Partizan, founded as soon as World War II ended and one of the major clubs in Serbia ever since (in football, basketball, and 24 other sports). Here they are stealing the Adriatic League hoops championship from Cibona Zagreb on a full-court heave in 2010:
† This last-refuge-of-scoundrels legacy was unpleasantly recapitulated by some Serbian militias assuming the Chetnik brand during the ethnic wars attending Yugoslavia’s crackup in the 1990s. The term is basically a fighting word in certain quarters of the Balkans.
On this day..
- 1821: Fulgencio Yegros, former Paraguay head of state
- 1931: Charles Simpson, "make it snappy"
- 1857: John Dorsey
- 1920: Gerald Smyth, Royal Irish Constabulary officer
- 1787: Jacob "Hannikel" Reinhard
- 1651: Wilhelm Biener, faithful counsellor
- 1903: Dora Wright, in Indian Territory
- 1537: Janet Douglas, Lady Glamis
- 1798: Henry Joy McCracken
- 1749: Samuel Henzi, excluded
- 1793: Charlotte Corday, Marat's murderess
- 1918: Tsar Nicholas II and his family
Not to be confused with 
The Belgian velocipeddler raced professionally from 1924 to 1936 and reached the top ten of cycling’s 
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