What is "chetniks"

n. (plural of chetnik English)

The Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army, commonly known as the Chetniks (, Четници, ; ), was a World War II movement in Yugoslavia led by Draža Mihailović, an anti- Axis movement in their long-range goals and engaged in marginal resistance activities for limited periods. They also engaged in tactical or selective collaboration with the occupying forces for almost all of the war. The Mihailović Chetniks were not a homogeneous movement. 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. Over a period of time, and in different parts of the country, the Chetnik movement was progressively drawn into collaboration agreements: first with the Nedić forces in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia, then with the Italians in occupied Dalmatia and Montenegro, with some of the Ustaše forces in northern Bosnia, and after the Italian capitulation also with the Germans directly.

While Chetnik collaboration reached "extensive and systematic" proportions, the Chetniks themselves referred to their policy of collaboration as "using the enemy". Professor Sabrina Ramet, a historian, has observed, "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 homogeneous 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." Professor David Bruce MacDonald posits that it is "highly misleading to suggest that [Chetniks] throughout the war collaborated with the Germans and Italians to carry out genocide of Croats and Muslems."

The Chetniks were a partner in the pattern of terror and counter terror that developed in Yugoslavia during World War II. The Chetniks used terror tactics against the Croats in areas where Serbs and Croats were intermixed, against the Muslim population in Bosnia, Herzegovina and Sandžak, and against the Yugoslav Partisans and their supporters in all areas. These terror tactics took various forms, including killing of the civilian population, burning of villages, assassinations and destruction of property. Ethnic tensions existed between Croats and Serbs beforehand in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The terror tactics used by the Chetniks against the Croats were, to at least an extent, a reaction to the terror carried out by the Ustaše, but Croats and Bosniaks living in areas intended to be part of Greater Serbia were to be cleansed of non-Serbs regardless, in accordance with Mihailović's directive of 20 December 1941. The terror against the Partisans and their supporters was ideologically driven. The Muslim population of Bosnia, Herzegovina and Sandžak was a primary target of Chetnik terror due to the traditional animosity between Serbs and Muslims and also as countermeasures against Muslim 'aggressive' activities, but this action was also undertaken to 'cleanse' these areas of Muslims in order to create a 'Greater Serbia' free of non-Serbs.