title: Marianne Williamson

text: On October 18, 2019, Hillary Clinton suggested Russians were "grooming" Tulsi Gabbard to be a third-party candidate who would help Trump win reelection through the spoiler effect (though Clinton claimed she was referring to Republicans, not Russians, she called Gabbard "the favorite of the Russians"). Williamson defended Gabbard, saying, "The Democratic establishment has got to stop smearing women it finds inconvenient! The character assassination of women who don’t toe the party line will backfire."


title: Marianne Williamson

text: On January 2, 2020, after missing several fundraising targets, Williamson announced that she would have to continue her run without campaign staff. On January 10, Williamson announced the end of her campaign and pledged to support the Democratic nominee.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Many pundits treated Williamson's brief campaign as comic relief, such as Peter Wehner of "The New York Times" calling her "an amusing presence," or Alexandra Petri of "The Washington Post" writing, "We are all dreams in the mind of Marianne Williamson. If she stops believing in us even for a second, we will all vanish." However, some came to acknowledge that her message was ultimately persuasive and influential. After the July 30, 2019 Democratic debate, "New York Times" columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote, "It feels insane to say this, but Williamson out-debated virtually everyone else on the stage. She gave a compelling answer on reparations and returned again and again to the most important issue for Democratic voters, beating Trump." The following year, after Joe Biden accepted the Democratic nomination, Tom Scocca wrote an essay in "Slate" titled, "Marianne Williamson Won the Democratic Primary." Scocca compared Williamson's challenge to Trump ("I’m going to harness love for political purposes. I will meet you on that field, and sir, love will win.") with Biden's acceptance speech ("For love is more powerful than hate. Hope is more powerful than fear. Light is more powerful than dark."), and concluded that "Marianne Williamson’s message is what the Democrats are carrying into November."


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson said she developed her liberal views from her father, Sam, whom she called "an armchair revolutionary" and a cross between "William Kunstler and Zorba the Greek." When she was 13, she told her father that a teacher told her that the U.S. had to fight the Vietnam War in Vietnam to prevent it from coming to the U.S. In response, her father took her entire family to Vietnam "to make sure the military-industrial complex didn't eat her brain and convince her that war was O.K." Williamson said she was also affected by a trip she took with her family to Soviet-controlled Hungary as a child, and witnessing her father surreptitiously slip their tour guide his business card and tell him: "You get out of here. I'll take care of you the rest of the way."


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson said she was inspired by her father to "grow up and change the world...be the strong one and hold other people who are burdened with serious problems."


title: Marianne Williamson

text: She describes herself as a "pretty straight-line progressive Democrat" who has "social revolution" at the center of her being, and describes her policies as a "renovation" of a "sociopathic economic system" focused on "short-term profit maximization". She says her interest lies in the creation of an "enlightened society".


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson is one of 12 Democratic presidential candidates who have submitted answers to the Council on Foreign Relations's "Election 2020 Questions."


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports intervening early with at-risk youth through resources, education, and counseling. She also supports expanding restorative justice programs, introducing trauma education in the juvenile justice system, expanding life-skills programs in prisons, and advancing hunger prevention, which she says is the "root cause of violence."


title: Marianne Williamson

text: She supports the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act along with initiatives to guarantee voting rights and accessible polling to those with disabilities. She pledged to appoint disabled citizens to her cabinet. She also supported the Disability Integration Act requiring healthcare insurers to cover home healthcare. She pledged to try to get the Act passed in her first 100 days in office.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports transition programs that move institutionalized people with disabilities to supported independent living. She also supports reforming Social Security Insurance to ensure that people with disabilities are not excluded from entitlement programs if they earn more than $1,220 a month. In addition, she supports including disability policy, including disabled human rights, in U.S. trade deals.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports sex education in the disabled community, including sexual abuse reporting initiatives, and sensitivity training for police in regard to interacting with those with disabilities and mental illnesses.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports free tuition at public colleges, community colleges and trade schools. She also supports a "radical" reduction in college loan debt and total forgiveness of college loan debt "in some cases." She has expressed her support for treating student loans "like other debt", such that debtors could refinance at lower interest rates and those who declare bankruptcy could have their debt forgiven.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports paid leave (family, medical, pregnancy, and vacation), pay equity, government support for childcare services, union rights, and a universal basic income.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports portable retirement plans, the development of initiatives to protect homeowners from predatory lending, an increase in access to home loan modifications, SNAP coverage for low-income families, and initiatives to understand and decrease homelessness among veterans.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson also supports the creation of a Department of Children and Youth—a new cabinet-level agency to create programs to reduce infant mortality, illness, food insecurity, homelessness, and undereducation.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports making middle-class tax cuts permanent and repealing the corporate tax cuts in the 2017 Tax Bill. She also supports the restoration and "modernization" of the Glass-Steagall Act, with the intent of separating commercial banks from investment banks in order to prevent banks from making risky investments. Williamson supports preventing corporations from engaging in tax avoidance, including tax avoidance for carried interest and ETF income. She also supports enforcement of antitrust laws and the implementation of a federal fee for financial transactions such as buying stocks or exchanging currency. Williamson also supports independent regulation of the pharmaceutical industry to prevent what she has called "predatory practices":


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports gun control, and has described the issue as one personal to her. On November 4, 2018, she gave a passionate keynote address to several hundred Muslim and Jewish women at the Sisterhood of Salaam-Shalom conference in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, eight days after 11 Jews were murdered at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue:


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports eliminating the sale of assault rifles and semi-automatic weapons, banning bump stocks and high-capacity magazines, and eliminating the current limits on the Centers for Disease Control's ability to track and record gun ownership numbers. She also supports mandatory universal background checks and waiting periods for all gun dealers—including at gun shows and sporting retailers—child safety locks on all guns, and restrictions on the ability of the mentally ill to buy guns.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson also supports Red Flag Laws and making the process of obtaining gun licenses similar to that of obtaining driver's licenses.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports universal health care under a "Medicare for All type of plan." She has also stated that she supports extending health coverage––including coverage for home care––to currently uninsured Americans.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson has expressed that she would like to develop a "health care" system opposed to what she says is a "disease management" system that the U.S. currently has. Inclusive of that, Williamson has expressed support for reimbursement of medical professionals for wellness and preventive care, longer doctor visits, nutrition and lifestyle education and limiting the marketing of hyper-processed and sugary foods. She has also expressed support for ending subsidies to the agricultural production of "unhealthy" food in favor of "healthy" food production.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports expanding the role of the EPA and FDA to regulate toxin inclusion in the environment and food supplies, to make recommendations of how to lower societal stress, and to help develop healthy habits in local communities. She also supports limiting the profit motive in medicine as much as possible, being inclusive of seeking non-pharmacological ways to treat mental-health issues (where possible), and treating mental-health as important as physical health in order to normalize treatment.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson expressed that she also supports treating drug addiction as a mental-health issue and de-criminalizing drugs.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports a full path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants with no "serious" criminal background. She also supports reducing the cost of naturalization and increasing resources to help immigrants navigate the process with more ease.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Whereas Williamson does not support open borders, she supports a more humane approach to border policy. In June 2019, Williamson ripped then-President Donald Trump on his immigration policies after reports of children being separated from their families and being put in a detainment center, calling them "state-sponsored crimes". After Trump's announcement that ICE would begin mass-deportations, she said it is "no different" than what Jewish people faced in Nazi Germany.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports investing in "smart" border security, which she states, calls for better monitoring of airplanes, ships, trucks crossing the border, and submarines. She also supports overturning the three-year and ten-year re-entry bars.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson also supports Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and expanding protections and naturalization to undocumented immigrants who were brought here as children, regardless of their current age.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports The Equality Act. She also supports equality in health care, housing, employment, and services. She has also expressed support in protecting the LGBTQ community from marginalization due to Census questionnaire.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports an increase of the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour. She also supports increasing the minimum wage for localities based on an amount determined to be a living wage for a given geographical area, and then adjusting that wage for inflation as needed.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports "redesigning" the partnership between the Defense Department and the State Department that would elevate the need for peace, putting it on equal footing with the need for military preparedness. Williamson supports the creation of a United States Department of Peace to aid in her proposed redesign, which also includes a plan to establish a Peace Academy modeled after military academies.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: In her 2014 Congressional campaign, Williamson supported dismantling the National Security Agency (NSA).


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports decreasing the military budget and redirecting those funds toward peacebuilding and peace maintenance efforts e.g. mediation, diplomacy, humanitarian aid, post-conflict transitional justice, and "on-the-ground programs." She also supports maintaining a budget that would not impede military preparedness, while investing in a "sustainable society" inclusive of the development of clean energy and green manufacturing, retrofitting buildings and bridges, economically empowering women, and educating children.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports military engagement when a NATO ally is threatened, when the United States is under threat of attack, or "when the humanitarian order of the world is at risk."


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports the creation of a program through which every citizen, between 18 and 26, can perform one year of voluntary national servicehelping schools, hospitals, infrastructure, sustainability, regenerative agricultural projects, the military, the Peace Corpsthat can be remunerated for housing, "basic costs", or financial support for higher education.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports returning dominant control of the Black Hills to the Sioux Nation, halting construction of the Keystone Pipeline, recognizing tribal sovereignty over their territory. She also supports increasing funding to Native lands’ justice systems, protecting tribal sovereignty and governance, and protecting Native religious freedom.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson has expressed support for "rethinking treaties" and continuing annual tribal nations' summits in Washington D.C.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports the distribution of $200-$500 billion in reparations for slavery, spread across 20 years for "economic and education projects," to be disbursed based on the recommendation of a selected group of black leaders. In taking this position, Williamson became the only candidate to ever submit a detailed plan for reparations for black Americans.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson, who first expressed her support of reparations in her 1993 book, "Illuminata" –– advocating that the U.S. will not reconcile its racial and economic divide without them has said of the policy proposal –– states that her policy on reparations is not part of "a black agenda,"


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports abortion access, services and choice. She has spoken out against the Supreme Court's decision to overturn "Roe v. Wade".


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson deems climate change to be "the greatest moral challenge of our generation." She claimed support for the Green New Deal, immediate re-entry into the Paris Climate Accords, and has stated that she would be willing to support the Trans-Pacific Partnership if it included greater protections for workers and the environment.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson also support the U.S. directing subsidies from fossil fuels, including coal, and re-investing them in the development of renewable energy, both in the U.S. and abroad, particularly in developing countries.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson has called for the establishment of a Department of Peace to expand global diplomacy, mediation, and educational and economic development. She supported the creation of such a department in 2005, backing efforts by Congressman Dennis Kucinich, to try to establish it.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supported safe withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Afghanistan as soon as possible and would consider the use of a peace-keeping force, such as the United Nations, to assist with the transition.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson, recognizing Africa as the continent with the fastest-growing population, supports engagement with the continent in order to thwart the growth of terrorist groups and health epidemics, which she believes threaten U.S. security, while capitalizing on opportunities in areas where corruption is being reversed, free elections are being held, and economies are growing.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson has said she supports the U.S. vigorously using its position, i.e., through CFIUS, to prevent China from buying strategically important companies, which she believes will help defend U.S. economic interests and human rights, as in the cases of the Uighurs and residents of Hong Kong.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports rejoining the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). She said that "US propaganda ... falsely claims the deal lets Iran get nuclear weapons within 10 years." Williamson also backs increased diplomacy, a change of relations to address human rights in Iran, sanctions relief and the purchasing of Air Bus airplanes to support travel, entrepreneurship and normalization. According to Williamson, "Iran is a potential ally against Sunni extremism with many common interests to build upon". Williamson criticized the Trump administration for elevating tensions with Iran.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict which secures both the legitimate security of Israel and the human rights, dignity and economic opportunities of the Palestinian people. She expressed support for using the power of the Presidency to exert pressure on Israel to restart talks on this solution.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports rescinding President Trump's recognition of the Golan Heights as part of Israel. She has also stated her belief that settlements on the West Bank are illegal and does not support the Blockade of the Gaza Strip. However, Williamson does support the occupation of the Golan Heights "only until there is a stable government in Syria with whom one can negotiate".


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson supports creating conditions for effective dialogue between factions representing both Nicolás Maduro and Juan Guaidó that seek a peaceful transition. She has also expressed support for existing efforts to promote dialogue, in particular those being led by the Norwegian government. Williamson said she believes the best policy in Venezuela is to support efforts that allow its citizens to decide their political future, even if the U.S. does not agree with the outcome.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson is indifferent about religion, having called it a map in which "the route isn't important. It's the destination that matters."


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson has expressed a deep belief in forgiveness based on the notion that nothing is real, or exists, but love: "If a person behaves unlovingly, then that means that, regardless if their negativity—anger or whatever—their behavior was derived from fear and doesn’t actually exist. They’re hallucinating. You forgive them, then, because there’s nothing to forgive."


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson believes a peaceful life is attainable by thinking with God, while thinking without God creates pain. She has said, "Asking God for help doesn’t seem very comforting if we think of Him as something outside of ourselves, or capricious, or judgmental. But God is love and He dwells within us. We were created in His image, or mind, which means that we are extensions of His love, or Sons of God."


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson's beliefs on forgiveness and God influence her belief that sin is impossible: "A sin would mean we did something so bad that God is angry with us. But since we cannot do anything that changes our essential nature, God has nothing to be angry at. Only love is real. Nothing else exists. The Son of God cannot sin."


title: Marianne Williamson

text: A "both-and" approach (both prayer and medicine) to physical and mental health has been attributed to Williamson. This approach—the efficacy of prayer—accepts medical science as part of God's power to heal. For example, surgery may be seen as God answering prayers to heal. This logic invokes what Johns Hopkins Medicine has called the "strong link between 'positivity' and health", in which "positive attitude improves outcomes and life satisfaction across a spectrum of conditions."


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson, who believes that "the spirit is impervious to illness," confirmed this belief when she said that "people who are prayed for get out of the emergency room faster" and "people who have been diagnosed with a life-challenging illness, who attend spiritual support groups, live, on average, twice as long after diagnosis." She maintains that prayer is complementary to medicine, not a substitute for it.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson has stated her support for the necessity and value of vaccinations and antidepressants, but has been criticized for her skepticism about the pharmaceutical industry's influence in setting guidelines for how they are administered, citing her belief that their profit motive could result in harm to patients. She has also been scrutinized for criticizing overprescription of antidepressants, questioning whether antidepressants play a role in suicide, saying that the prescriptive definition between sadness and clinical depression is "artificial," and having called the process by which clinical depression is diagnosed "a scam."


title: Marianne Williamson

text: During Williamson's presidential campaign, several excerpts of her past comments have conflated her skepticism of the pharmaceutical industry's trustworthiness with an embrace of anti-vaccination dogma. As a result, she has been accused of being "anti-medicine" and "anti-science." She denies such accusations, saying they "could not be further from the truth." But critics point to Williamson's January 2012 interview on her radio show, "Living Miraculously," with Gwen Olsen, a 15-year veteran of the pharmaceutical industry who implied that she personally believed antidepressants could be dangerous and linked to autism. Critics also cite a podcast interview with Russell Brand in which Williamson, while speaking about vaccine exemptions, "glibly" described the process by which vaccines are mandated as "Orwellian" and likened the debate about vaccination mandates to the abortion debate. She later apologized, saying she "misspoke," and that the comments erroneously made her "sound as though I question the validity of life-saving vaccines."


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson has expressed frustration that her skepticism of the pharmaceutical industry has been equated with skepticism of the science of vaccines. She has said, "Skeptical about vaccinations I have not expressed. Skeptical about Big Pharma in general I have expressed. And there is a big difference." She has also expressed frustration that this distinction is lost in public discourse:=


title: Marianne Williamson

text: In October 1991, Williamson officiated at the wedding of Elizabeth Taylor and Larry Fortensky. She said that derisive publicity of the wedding harmed her credibility, as she was labeled "Guru to the Glitterati."


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson is often called terms like "New Age guru." The label has been associated with her for years, but she has long rejected such terms, calling them "outrageous". Religious organizations have also said that she is not "New Age" but teaches an "evolved Christianity—blending elements of Eastern mysticism into Christian language—using terms 'tied to old New Age'". She has said she finds it "creepy" to be called a "spiritual leader", believes it insults her audience's intelligence, and prefers to be called an author.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson has often commented on how she is portrayed in the media, and believes that her image as a "seeker" has brought ridicule in the press. During her 2014 Congressional run, Williamson said, "I’m sure they’re going to say I’m a New Age nutcase, dragon lady, lightweight thinker." She has said of her image, "There has been a tendency to create a caricature, and it’s very difficult to battle a caricature." According to "The New York Times Magazine", the depiction of her by "many in the press" has been "snide".


title: Marianne Williamson

text: During her presidential campaign, press outlets have called her "wacko," a "quack," "scary," "a joke," "kooky," "hokey," "dangerous," "bananas," "bonkers," "Secretary of Crystals," and "wackadoodle." She made headlines when she criticized "Vogue Magazine" for its "insidious influence" when it did not include her in an Annie Leibovitz photo shoot of the 2020 female presidential candidates. The magazine responded that it only wanted "to highlight the five female lawmakers who bring a collective 40 years of political experience to this race." Williamson subsequently posted a fan-made picture of the "Vogue" photo with herself edited in. "I am a serious woman, and I have had a serious career. Why won't people take me seriously?," she has said.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Williamson's older brother, Peter, became an immigration lawyer, the same profession as the siblings’ father. Her late sister, Elizabeth "Jane", was a teacher. Her father, and maternal grandparents, were Russian Jewish immigrants. Her grandfather changed his surname from Vishnevetsky to Williamson after seeing "Alan Williamson Ltd" on a train.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: She was briefly married in 1979 to a Houston businessman. She said the marriage lasted "for a minute and a half."


title: Marianne Williamson

text: In 1990, she gave birth to a daughter, India Emmaline. India pursued a doctorate in history at Goldsmiths College in London.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: Two years later, during the financial crisis, Williamson lost two of her homes in the Detroit metro area, valued at nearly $3 million, to foreclosure.


title: Marianne Williamson

text: In 2013, Williamson reported having assets estimated to be valued between $1 million and $5 million (not including personal residences).


title: Daniel James (footballer)

text: Daniel Owen James (born 10 November 1997) is a professional footballer who plays as a winger for Premier League club Fulham, on loan from Leeds United. Born in England, he represents the Wales national team.


title: Daniel James (footballer)

text: James made his professional debut for Swansea City in February 2018, and signed for Manchester United in June 2019. He made 74 appearances for the club, before joining Leeds United in August 2021.


title: Daniel James (footballer)

text: He made his senior Wales debut in November 2018, having previously represented the nation at various youth levels, and was part of their squad at UEFA Euro 2020. James also helped Wales qualify for the FIFA World Cup in 2022 for the first time since 1958.


title: Daniel James (footballer)

text: James was born in Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, to Elaine and Kevan James. He was raised in the nearby village of South Cave and attended South Hunsley School in Melton.


title: Daniel James (footballer)

text: A highly regarded prospect of the Hull City academy side, James joined Swansea City in 2014 for an initial fee of £72,000, immediately becoming part of their U18 academy side. By the 2016–17 season, James had become an integral part of the Swansea U23 side who gained promotion to the PDL Division 1, winning the league by an 11-point margin. Additionally, James contributed to the side winning the Premier League Cup, and reaching the semi-finals of the Premier League International Cup and the quarter-finals of the EFL Trophy.


title: Daniel James (footballer)

text: Following his impressive displays in the development squad, James was included in the first-team squad for the first time in January 2016 for the FA Cup defeat to Oxford United. Although James did not make an appearance off the bench, his progress was deemed sufficient for him to be offered a new three-year contract the following week. He was again named on the bench for a Premier League fixture against Stoke City in October 2016.


title: Daniel James (footballer)

text: On 30 June 2017, James signed for League One club Shrewsbury Town on loan until the end of the season. His loan deal was terminated by mutual consent on 31 August 2017, after he failed to force his way into the starting 11. James' only inclusion in a matchday squad was as an unused substitute in an EFL Cup first round tie against Nottingham Forest.


title: Daniel James (footballer)

text: On 6 February 2018, he made his Swansea first-team debut as a late substitute, scoring in the 82nd minute of an 8–1 FA Cup victory over Notts County.


title: Daniel James (footballer)

text: He made his league debut for Swansea on 17 August 2018 in a 0–0 draw against Birmingham City in the EFL Championship. He scored his first league goal for the club on 24 November 2018 in a 4–1 home defeat against Norwich City. In December 2018, with James now a regular and one of the standout performers for Swansea, manager Graham Potter revealed that the club were looking to open talks with James over a new contract. Despite discussion of a move to Leeds United during the January 2019 transfer window, James was named in the starting line-up for Swansea against Birmingham City on 29 January, with James scoring his second goal of the season in a 3–3 draw.


title: Daniel James (footballer)

text: On 31 January 2019, with James expressing his desire to leave Swansea to join Leeds United, a structured £10 million fee was agreed between the two clubs, James agreed terms and completed the medical at Leeds, and was at Elland Road conducting signing interviews and announcement photoshoots ahead of the deal being completed. However, after speculation of a disagreement between Swansea owners and their chairman regarding the structure of the deal only an hour before the transfer window's 11 pm deadline, James was left at Elland Road awaiting the deal to be signed off by Swansea, with the window closing at 11 pm.


title: Daniel James (footballer)

text: After Swansea failed to complete the deal, James' agent said it was "very disappointing", stating: "Swansea made no attempt to keep the player and at the first sign of money they couldn't show him the door quickly enough." At the end of the 2018–19 season, with Leeds missing out on automatic promotion, Leeds head coach Marcelo Bielsa said that he refused to blame the club for missing out on James, but said, "I'm not underlying the importance of the absence of James".


title: Daniel James (footballer)

text: On 6 June 2019, James underwent a medical with Premier League club Manchester United ahead of a transfer for a reported fee of £15 million with the potential for additional payments. The following day, United announced they had agreed terms, "in principle", with Swansea for the signing of James. On 12 June 2019, United officially announced the signing of James on a five-year contract, with an option to extend for a further year. He scored his first goal for the club on his competitive debut, coming on as a substitute to score United's final goal in a 4–0 win over Chelsea. He also scored in United's 2–1 loss against Crystal Palace. In only his fourth game for United he scored his third goal for the club in a 1–1 draw with Southampton, which was later voted goal of the month by United fans. James was also voted United player of the month for August. In March 2020, Daniel James ended a seven-month goal drought by scoring in a 5–0 win over LASK, the final game before the suspension of football caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the goal drought, James ranked number one in the Manchester United assist chart at the time of suspension.


title: Daniel James (footballer)

text: On 20 December 2020, James scored his first league goal of the season in a 6–2 win against Leeds United. On 2 February 2021, he scored United's Premier League record-equalling goal in the 9–0 home win against Southampton.


title: Daniel James (footballer)

text: James signed for Premier League rivals Leeds United on 31 August 2021 for an undisclosed fee on a five-year contract, having nearly joined the club two-and-a-half years prior to the transfer. Many news outlets were reporting the fee to be £25 million. He scored his first Premier League goal for Leeds on 21 November 2021, in the team's 2–1 loss at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.


title: Daniel James (footballer)

text: On 11 May 2022, James was sent off during Leeds United's Premier League match against Chelsea for a challenge on Mateo Kovacic.


title: Daniel James (footballer)

text: On 1 September 2022, James was loaned out to Premier League club Fulham until the end of the 2022–23 season.


title: Daniel James (footballer)

text: Born in England, James qualifies to play for Wales through his late father, Kevan, who was born in Aberdare. James scored at the Toulon Tournament playing for Wales U20 in a 1–0 win over Bahrain U20 after he won and scored the resulting penalty.


title: Daniel James (footballer)

text: James received his first senior call-up for the 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifying game against Serbia in 2017 by manager Chris Coleman and subsequently made his full Wales debut under Coleman's successor, Ryan Giggs, in a match against Albania in November 2018, playing the first 58 minutes of the game. James scored his first Wales goal in only his second cap, netting the only goal of the game in the opening minutes against Slovakia in his competitive home debut. During the September international break, James netted the only goal in a friendly win against Belarus. In May 2021, he was selected for the Wales squad for the delayed UEFA Euro 2020 tournament. In November 2022, he was named in the Wales squad for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.


title: Chetniks

text: The Chetniks (, ; ), formally the Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army, and also the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland and the Ravna Gora Movement, was a Yugoslav royalist and Serbian nationalist movement and guerrilla force in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. Although it was not a homogeneous movement, it was led by Draža Mihailović. While it was anti-Axis in its long-term goals and engaged in marginal resistance activities for limited periods, it also engaged in tactical or selective collaboration with the occupying forces for almost all of the war. 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 movement was progressively drawn into collaboration agreements: first with the puppet Government of National Salvation in the German-occupied territory of Serbia, then with the Italians in occupied Dalmatia and Montenegro, with some of the Ustaše forces in northern Bosnia, and, after the Italian capitulation in September 1943, with the Germans directly.


title: Chetniks

text: The Chetniks were active in the uprising in the German-occupied territory of Serbia from July to December 1941. As a result of the Battle of Loznica at the end of August, Mihailović's Chetniks were the first to liberate a European city from Axis control. Following the initial success of the uprising, the German occupiers enacted Adolf Hitler's formula for suppressing anti-Nazi resistance in Eastern Europe, a ratio of 100 hostages executed for every German soldier killed and 50 hostages executed for every soldier wounded. In October 1941, German soldiers and Serbian collaborators perpetrated two massacres against civilians in Kraljevo and Kragujevac, with a combined death toll reaching over 4,500 civilians, most of whom were Serbs. This convinced Mihailović that killing German troops would only result in further unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of Serbs. As a result, he decided to scale back Chetnik guerrilla attacks and wait for an Allied landing in the Balkans. While Chetnik collaboration reached "extensive and systematic" proportions, the Chetniks themselves referred to their policy of collaboration as "using the enemy". The political scientist Sabrina Ramet 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".


title: Chetniks

text: The Chetniks were partners in the pattern of terror and counter-terror that developed in Yugoslavia during World War II. They used terror tactics against Croats in areas where Serbs and Croats were intermixed, against the Muslim population in Bosnia, Herzegovina and Sandžak, and against the Communist-led Yugoslav Partisans and their supporters in all areas. These tactics included the killing of civilians, burning of villages, assassinations and destruction of property and exacerbating existing ethnic tensions between Croats and Serbs. The terror tactics against the Croats were, to at least an extent, a reaction to the terror carried out by the Croatian Ustaše, however the largest Chetnik massacres took place in eastern Bosnia where they preceded any significant Ustashe operations. 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 communist Partisans and their supporters was ideologically driven. Several historians regard Chetnik actions during this period as constituting genocide. Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the Chetniks in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina range from 50,000 to 68,000, while more than 5,000 victims are registered in the region of Sandžak. About 300 villages and small towns were destroyed, along with a large number of mosques and Catholic churches.


title: Chetniks

text: From an etymological perspective, "Chetnik" is believed to have developed from the Turkish word , which means "to plunder and burn down", words related to conflict, such as çatmak and çatışmak. Matija Ban used the word "Chetnik" in 1848 in terms of the need to organise armed units outside the Principality of Serbia to act in opposition to Ottoman rule. The first use of "Chetnik" to describe members of army and police units appeared around the mid-18th century. At end of the 19th century the term was extended to members of military or paramilitary organizations with Serb ethnonationalist aims. Dating from 1904, the Serbian word was commonly used to describe a member of a Balkan guerrilla force called a (/), meaning "band" or "troop". Today, the word "Chetnik" is used to refer to members of any group that "centres the hegemonic and expansionist politics driven by Greater Serbia ideology".


title: Chetniks

text: The original etymology of the word may derive from the Latin word , meaning "coming together, assembly". The suffix "-nik" is a Slavic common personal suffix meaning "person or thing associated with or involved in".


title: Chetniks

text: Small-scale rebellious activity akin to guerilla warfare has a long history in the South Slav lands, particularly in those areas that were under Ottoman rule for a long period. In the First Serbian Uprising which began in 1804, bandit companies () played an important part until large-scale fighting gave the Ottomans the upper hand and the uprising was suppressed by 1813. A second rebellion broke out two years later, and guerilla warfare was again utilised to significant effect, assisting in the establishment of the partially-independent Principality of Serbia, which was expanded significantly in 1833 and became fully independent in 1878. Throughout this period and until the end of the 19th century interest in guerilla warfare remained, with books on the subject being commissioned by the Serbian government and published in 1848 and 1868. Four years after independence, the principality became the Kingdom of Serbia.


title: Chetniks

text: Between 1904 and 1912, small groups of fighters who had been privately recruited, equipped and funded in Serbia, travelled to the region of Macedonia within the Ottoman Empire with the aim of releasing the area from Ottoman rule and annexing it to Serbia, regardless of the wishes of the local population. These groups were, in the main, commanded and led by officers and non-commissioned officers on active duty in the Royal Serbian Army, and the Serbian government soon took over the direction of these activities. Similar forces had been sent to Macedonia by Greece and Bulgaria, who also wished to integrate the region into their own states, resulting in the Serbian Chetniks clashing with their rivals from Bulgaria as well as the Ottoman authorities. Except for the social democratic press, these Chetnik actions were supported in Serbia and interpreted as being in the national interest. These Chetnik activities largely ceased following the 1908 Young Turk Revolution in the Ottoman Empire. The Chetniks were active in the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913; during the First Balkan War against the Ottomans they were used as vanguards to soften up the enemy ahead of advancing armies, for attacks on communications behind enemy lines, for spreading panic and confusion, as field gendarmerie and to establish basic administration in occupied areas. They were also put to good use against the Bulgarians in the Second Balkan War. After the Balkan Wars, Chetniks bands were used in the pacification of the new areas of Serbia gained during the wars, which occasionally involved terrorising civilians.


title: Chetniks

text: As they had proven valuable during the Balkan Wars, the Serbian army used Chetniks in World War I in the same way, and while useful they suffered heavy losses. At the end of the Serbian campaign of 1914–1915, they withdrew with the army in the Great Retreat to Corfu and later fought on the Macedonian front. Montenegrin Chetniks also fought against the Austro-Hungarian occupation of that country. In late 1916, new Chetnik companies were being organised to fight in Bulgarian-occupied southeastern Serbia. Concerned about reprisals against a large-scale uprising, the Serbian army sent the veteran Chetnik leader Kosta Pećanac to prevent the outbreak. However, the Bulgarians started conscripting Serbs, and hundreds of men joined the Chetnik detachments. This resulted in the 1917 Toplica Uprising under the leadership of Kosta Vojinović, which Pećanac eventually joined. Successful at first, the uprising was eventually put down by the Bulgarians and Austro-Hungarians, and bloody reprisals against the civilian population followed. Pećanac then used Chetniks for sabotage and raids against the Bulgarian occupation troops, then infiltrated the Austro-Hungarian occupied zone. Just prior to the end of the war, the Chetnik detachments were dissolved, with some sent home and others absorbed by the rest of the army. The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was created with the merger of Serbia, Montenegro and the South Slav-inhabited areas of Austria-Hungary on 1 December 1918, in the immediate aftermath of the war.


title: Chetniks

text: Due to their military record since 1904, the Chetnik veterans were among the leading Serbian patriotic groups in the new state. In 1921, the "Chetnik Association for the Freedom and Honor of the Fatherland" was organised in Belgrade by Chetnik veterans, with organisational aims of cultivating Chetnik history, spreading Chetnik patriotic ideas, and to care for the widows and orphans of Chetniks who had been killed, along with disabled Chetniks. It was also a political pressure group, and from the beginning there were questions about its leadership and political ideology. Initially, the main political influence in the organisation was the liberal Democratic Party, but a challenge for influence by the dominant People's Radical Party led to a split in 1924. The pro-Radical Greater Serbia elements of the association broke away and formed two new organisations in 1924, the "Association of Serbian Chetniks for King and Fatherland" and the "Association of Serbian Chetniks 'Petar Mrkonjić'". In July 1925 these two organisations amalgamated as the "Association of Serbian Chetniks 'Petar Mrkonjić' for King and Fatherland" led by Puniša Račić, who was elected to the National Assembly as a Radical representative in 1927, and in 1928 murdered three Croatian Peasant Party representatives on the floor of the National Assembly. He presided over a great deal of dissension until that year when the organisation ceased to operate. After the imposition of royal dictatorship by King Alexander the following year, at which time the state was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Račić's former organisation was dissolved, and the former dissidents rejoined the original "Chetnik Association for the Freedom and Honor of the Fatherland", which was officially sanctioned.


title: Chetniks

text: Immediately following the end of World War I and the formation of the new state, there was widespread unrest. Pro-Bulgarian sentiment was rife in Macedonia, which was referred to as South Serbia by the Belgrade government. There was little support among the Macedonian populace for the regime. Extensive measures were undertaken to "serbianise" Macedonia, including closing Bulgarian Orthodox Church schools, revising history textbooks, dismissing "unreliable" teachers, banning the use of the Bulgarian language, and imposing lengthy jail terms for those convicted of anti-state activities. Over 300 Macedonian advocates of Greater Bulgaria were murdered in the period 1918–1924, thousands arrested in the same period, and around 50,000 troops were stationed in Macedonia. Thousands of Serb colonists were settled in Macedonia. Bands of Chetniks, including one led by Jovan Babunski, were organised to terrorise the population, kill pro-Bulgarian resistance leaders and impress the local population into forced labour for the army. Resistance by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization was met with further terror, which included the formation in 1922 of the Association against Bulgarian Bandits led by Pećanac and Ilija Trifunović-Lune, based out of Štip in eastern Macedonia. This organisation quickly garnered a reputation for indiscriminate terrorisation of the Macedonian populace. Pećanac and his Chetniks were also active in fighting Albanians resisting the Serb and Montenegrin colonisation of Kosovo.


title: Chetniks

text: Even under the homogenizing pressures of dictatorship, the Chetniks were not monolithic movement. In 1929, Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin became president of the association, serving until 1932 when he became president of another Serbian nationalist organisation, (National Defence), and established the rival "Association of Old Chetniks", but the latter never challenged the main Chetnik organisation. He was replaced by Pećanac, who continued to lead the organisation until the invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941. Starting in 1929, the main Chetnik organisations established chapters in at least 24 cities and towns outside Serbia proper, many of which had large Croatian populations. This expansion of what remained a Serb "nationalist-chauvinist" movement outside Serbia proper escalated ethnic tensions, especially the conflict between Serbs and Croats. Under Pećanac's leadership, membership of the Chetnik organisation was opened to new young members that had not served in war and were interested in joining for political and economic reasons, and in the course of the 1930s he took the organisation from a nationalist veterans' association focused on protecting veterans' rights, to an aggressively partisan Serb political organisation which reached 500,000 members throughout Yugoslavia in more than 1,000 groups. Trifunović-Birčanin and others were unhappy with the aggressive expansion of the organisation and its move away from traditional Chetnik ideals. After 1935, Chetnik activity was officially banned in both the predominantly Croat Sava Banovina and almost entirely Slovene Drava Banovina, but the Chetnik groups in those regions were able to continue operating at a lower level. During this period, Pećanac formed close ties with the far-right Yugoslav Radical Union government of Milan Stojadinović which ruled Yugoslavia from 1935 to 1939. During the interwar period, limited training on guerilla warfare was given to junior officers of the army, and in 1929 the "Handbook on Guerilla Warfare" was published by the government to provide guidance. In 1938, the General Staff revised the approach detailed in 1929, recognising that operations similar to those carried out by Chetniks between 1904 and 1918 would not be possible in a modern war, and clearly indicating that it would not entrust any important wartime functions to the Chetnik Association.


title: Chetniks

text: After the outbreak of World War II in September 1939 the General Staff was aware that Yugoslavia was not ready for war against the Axis powers and was concerned about neighboring countries igniting a civil war in Yugoslavia. Despite its misgivings about using Chetniks for guerilla warfare, in April 1940, the General Staff established the Chetnik Command, which eventually comprised six full battalions spread throughout the country. However, it is clear from the series of Yugoslav war plans between 1938 and 1941 that the General Staff had no real commitment to guerilla warfare prior to the April 1941 Axis invasion of Yugoslavia, and did not seriously consider employing the Chetnik Association in the role either. A short time before the invasion, Pećanac was approached by the General Staff, authorising him to organise guerilla units in the 5th Army area, and providing him with arms and funds for the purpose; the 5th Army was responsible for the Romanian and Bulgarian borders between the Iron Gates and the Greek border.


title: Chetniks

text: On 6 April 1941, Yugoslavia was drawn into World War II when Germany, Italy and Hungary invaded and occupied the country, which was then partitioned. Some Yugoslav territory was annexed by its Axis neighbours: Hungary, Bulgaria and Italy. The Germans engineered and supported the creation of the fascist Ustaše puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia (, NDH), which roughly comprised most of the pre-war Banovina Croatia, along with rest of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and some adjacent territory. Before the defeat, King Peter II and his government went into exile, reforming in June as the Western Allied-recognised Yugoslav government-in-exile in London. All elements of the Chetnik Command were captured during the invasion, and there is no record of them being used for their intended purpose or that elements of these units operated in any organised way after the surrender.


title: Chetniks

text: In the early days of the invasion, army (Colonel) Draža Mihailović was the deputy chief of staff of the 2nd Army deployed in Bosnia. On 13 April, he was commanding a unit which was in the area of Doboj on 15 April when it was advised of the decision of the Supreme Staff (the wartime General Staff) to surrender. A few dozen members of the unit, almost exclusively Serbs, joined Mihailović when he decided not to follow these orders, and the group took to the hills. They marched southeast then east, aiming to get to the mountainous interior of what became the German-occupied territory of Serbia in the hope of linking up with other elements of the defeated army that had chosen to keep resisting. In the first few days, Mihailović's group was attacked by German forces. The group was joined by other parties of soldiers but heard no news of others continuing to resist. On 28 April, the group was about 80 strong, and crossed the Drina River into the occupied territory of Serbia the next day, although over the next few days it lost a number of officers and enlisted men who were concerned about the pending hardship and uncertainty. After crossing the Drina, the group was also attacked by gendarmes belonging to the collaborationist puppet Commissioner Government. On 6 May Mihailović's remaining group was surrounded by German troops near Užice and almost completely destroyed. On 13 May, Mihailović arrived at some shepherd huts at Ravna Gora on the western slopes of Suvobor Mountain near the town of Gornji Milanovac in the central part of the occupied territory, by which time his group consisted of only seven officers and 27 other ranks. At this point, now aware that no elements of the army were continuing to fight, they were faced with the decision of whether to surrender to the Germans themselves or form the core of a resistance movement, and Mihailović and his men chose the latter. Due to the location of their headquarters, Mihailović's organisation became known as the "Ravna Gora Movement".


title: Chetniks

text: While adherents of the Chetnik movement have claimed that Mihailović's Chetniks were the first resistance movement to be founded in Yugoslavia in World War II, this is not accurate if a resistance movement is defined as a political and military organisation of relatively large numbers of men conducting armed operations intended to be carried on with determination and more or less continuously. Soon after their arrival at Ravna Gora, Mihailović's Chetniks set up a command post and designated themselves the "Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army". While this name was clearly derivative of the earlier Chetniks and evoked the traditions of the long and distinguished record of the Chetniks of earlier conflicts, Mihailović's organisation was in no way connected to the interwar Chetnik associations or the Chetnik Command established in 1940.


title: Chetniks

text: As early as August, the Chetnik Central National Committee () was formed to provide Mihailović with advice on domestic and international political affairs, and to liaise with the civilian populace throughout the occupied territory and in other parts of occupied Yugoslavia where the Chetnik movement had strong support. The members were men who had some standing in Serbian political and cultural circles before the war, and some CNK members also served on the Belgrade Chetnik Committee that supported the movement. Much of the early CNK was drawn from the minuscule Yugoslav Republican Party or the minor Agrarian Party. The three most important members of the CNK, who comprised the executive committee for much of the war, were: Dragiša Vasić, a lawyer, former vice-president of the nationalist Serbian Cultural Club and a former member of the Yugoslav Republican Party; Stevan Moljević, a Bosnian Serb lawyer; and Mladen Žujović, Vasić's law firm partner who had also been a member of the Yugoslav Republican Party. Vasić was the most important of the three, and was designated by Mihailović as the ranking member of a three-man committee, along with "Potpukovnik" (Lieutenant Colonel) Dragoslav Pavlović and Major Jezdimir Dangić, who were to take over the leadership of the organisation if anything should happen to him. In effect, Vasić was Mihailović's deputy.


title: Chetniks

text: From the beginning of Mihailović's movement in May 1941 until the Ba Congress in January 1944, the ideology and objectives of the movement were promulgated in a series of documents. In June 1941, two months before he became a key member of the CNK, Moljević wrote a memorandum entitled "Homogeneous Serbia", in which he advocated for the creation of a Greater Serbia within a Greater Yugoslavia which would include not only the vast majority of pre-war Yugoslav territory, but also a significant amount of territory that belonged to all of Yugoslavia's neighbours. Within this, Greater Serbia would consist of 65–70 per cent of the total Yugoslav territory and population, and Croatia would be reduced to a small rump. His plan also included large-scale population transfers, evicting the non-Serb population from within the borders of Greater Serbia, although he did not suggest any numbers.


title: Chetniks

text: At the same time that Moljević was developing "Homogeneous Serbia", the Belgrade Chetnik Committee formulated a proposal which contained territorial provisions very similar to those detailed in Moljević's plan, but went further by providing details of the large-scale population shifts needed to make Greater Serbia ethnically homogenous. It advocated expelling of 2,675,000 people from Greater Serbia, including 1,000,000 Croats and 500,000 Germans. A total of 1,310,000 Serbs would be brought to Greater Serbia from outside its boundaries, of which 300,000 would be Serbs from Croatia. Greater Serbia would not be entirely Serb, however, as about 200,000 Croats would be allowed to stay within its borders. No figures were proposed for shifting Bosnian Muslims out of Greater Serbia, but they were identified as a "problem" to be solved in the final stages of the war and immediately afterwards. The CNK approved the Greater Serbia project after it formed in August. It can be assumed that Mihailović, who was a hard-core Serb nationalist himself, endorsed all or most of both proposals. This is because their contents were reflected in a 1941 Chetnik leaflet entitled "Our Way", and he made specific references to them in a proclamation to the Serbian people in December and in a set of detailed instructions dated 20 December 1941 to Pavle Đurišić and Đorđije Lašić, newly appointed Chetnik commanders in the Italian governorate of Montenegro. The Belgrade Chetnik Committee proposal was also smuggled out of occupied Serbia in September and delivered to the Yugoslav government-in-exile in London by the Chetnik agent Miloš Sekulić.


title: Chetniks

text: In March 1942, the Chetnik Dinara Division promulgated a statement which was accepted the following month by a meeting of Chetnik commanders from Bosnia, Herzegovina, northern Dalmatia and Lika at Strmica near Knin. This program contained details which were very similar to those included in Mihailović's instructions to Đurišić and Lašić in December 1941. It mentioned the mobilisation of Serbs in these regions to "cleanse" them of other ethnic groups, and adopted several additional strategies: collaboration with the Italian occupiers; determined armed opposition to NDH forces and the Partisans; decent treatment of the Bosnian Muslims to keep them from joining the Partisans, although they could later be eliminated; and the creation of separate Croatian Chetnik units formed from pro-Yugoslav, anti-Partisan Croats.


title: Chetniks

text: From 30 November to 2 December 1942, the Conference of Young Chetnik Intellectuals of Montenegro met at Šahovići in Italian-occupied Montenegro. Mihailović did not attend, but his chief of staff Zaharije Ostojić, Đurišić and Lašić attended, with Đurišić playing the dominant role. It advanced strategies that constituted an important and expanded version of the overall Chetnik program, and the report of the meeting bore an official Chetnik stamp. It reinforced the main Greater Serbia objective of the Chetnik movement, and in addition advocated the retention of the Karađorđević dynasty, espoused a unitary Yugoslavia with self-governing Serb, Croat and Slovene units but excluding entities for other Yugoslav peoples such as Macedonians and Montenegrins as well as other minorities. It envisaged a post-war Chetnik dictatorship that would hold all power within the country with the approval of the King, with a gendarmerie recruited from Chetnik ranks, and intense promotion of Chetnik ideology throughout the country.


title: Chetniks

text: The final Chetnik ideological document that appeared prior to the Ba Congress in January 1944 was a manual prepared by the Chetnik leadership around the same time as the Conference of Young Chetnik Intellectuals of Montenegro in late 1942. It explained that the Chetniks viewed the war in three phases: the invasion and capitulation by others; a period of organising and waiting until conditions warranted a general uprising against the occupying forces; and finally a general attack on the occupiers and all competitors for power, the Chetnik assumption of complete control over Yugoslavia, the expulsion of most national minorities, and arrest of all internal enemies. Crucially, it identified the two most important tasks during the second phase as: Chetnik-led organisation for the third phase without any party political influences; and incapacitation of their internal enemies, with first priority being the Partisans. Revenge against the Partisans and Ustaše was incorporated into the manual as a "sacred duty".


title: Chetniks

text: The manual paid some lip service to Yugoslavism, but the Chetniks did not really wish to become an all-Yugoslav movement because that was inconsistent with their main objective of achieving a Greater Serbia within Greater Yugoslavia. Due to their Serb nationalist stance, they never developed a realistic view of the "national question" in Yugoslavia because they disregarded the legitimate interests of the other Yugoslav peoples. Their ideology was therefore never attractive to non-Serbs except for those Macedonians and Montenegrins who considered themselves Serbs. The only new aspect of the Chetnik Greater Serbia ideology from the long-standing traditional one was their plan to "cleanse" Greater Serbia of non-Serbs, which was clearly a response to the massacres of Serbs by the Ustaše in the NDH.


title: Chetniks

text: The final documents detailing Chetnik ideology were produced by the Ba Congress called by Mihailović in January 1944, in response to the November 1943 Second Session of the communist-led Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (, AVNOJ) of the Partisans. The Second Session of AVNOJ had resolved that post-war Yugoslavia would be a federal republic based on six equal constituent republics, asserted that it was the sole legitimate government of Yugoslavia, and denied the right of the King to return from exile before a popular referendum to determine the future of his rule. The month after the Second Session of AVNOJ, the major Allied powers met at Tehran and decided to provide their exclusive support to the Partisans and withdraw support from the Chetniks. The congress was held in circumstances where large parts of the Chetnik movement had been progressively drawn into collaboration with the occupying forces and their helpers over the course of the war, and may have been held with the tacit approval of the Germans.


title: Chetniks

text: The document that was produced by the Ba Congress was called "The Goals of the Ravna Gora Movement" and came in two parts. The first part, "The Yugoslav Goals of the Ravna Gora Movement" stated that Yugoslavia would be a democratic federation with three units, one each for the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and national minorities would be expelled. The second part, "The Serbian Goals of the Ravna Gora Movement" reinforced the existing Chetnik idea that all Serbian provinces would be united in the Serbian unit within the federal arrangement, based on the solidarity between all Serb regions of Yugoslavia, under a unicameral parliament. The congress also resolved that Yugoslavia should be a constitutional monarchy headed by a Serb sovereign. According to some historians, the new program of the Chetniks was social-democratic Yugoslavism, with a change to a federal Yugoslav structure with a dominant Serb unit, but in asserting the need to gather all Serbs into a single entity, "The Serbian Goals of the Ravna Gora Movement" was reminiscent of "Homogeneous Serbia". The congress also did not recognise Macedonia and Montenegro as separate nations, and also implied that Croatia and Slovenia would effectively be appendages to the Serbian entity. The net effect of this, according to the historian Jozo Tomasevich, was that the country would not only return to the same Serb-dominated state it had been in during the interwar period, but would be worse than that, particularly for the Croats. He concludes that this outcome was to be expected given the overwhelmingly Serb makeup of the congress, which included only two or three Croats, one Slovene and one Bosnian Muslim among its more than 300 attendees. The historian Marko Attila Hoare agrees that despite its superficial Yugoslavism, the congress had clear Greater Serbia inclinations. The congress expressed an interest in reforming the economic, social, and cultural position of the country, particularly regarding democratic ideals. This was a significant departure from previous Chetnik goals expressed earlier in the war, especially in terms of promoting democratic principles with some socialist features. Tomasevich observes that these new goals were probably more related to achieving propaganda objectives than reflecting actual intentions, given that there was no real interest in considering the needs of the non-Serb peoples of Yugoslavia. The practical outcome of the congress was the establishment of a single political party for the movement, the Yugoslav Democratic National Union (, JDNZ), and an expansion of the CNK, however the congress did nothing to improve the position of the Chetnik movement.


title: Chetniks

text: Beyond the main Serbian irredentist objective, Mihailović's Chetnik movement was an extreme Serb nationalist organisation, and while it paid lip service to Yugoslavism, it was actually opposed to it. It was also anti-Croat, anti-Muslim, supported the monarchy, and was anti-communist. Given the ethnic and religious divisions in Yugoslavia, the narrow ideology of the Chetnik movement seriously impinged on its military and political potential. The political scientist Sabrina Ramet 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".


title: Chetniks

text: The Chetniks were almost exclusively made up of Serbs except for a large number of Montenegrins who identified as Serbs, and consisted of "local defence units, marauding bands of Serb villagers, anti-partisan auxiliaries, forcibly mobilised peasants, and armed refugees, which small groups of uncaptured Yugoslav officers was attempting without success to mold into an organised fighting force". The aforementioned Chetnik manual of late 1942 discussed the idea of enlisting a significant number of Croats for the movement, but the movement only attracted small groups of Chetnik-aligned Croats in central Dalmatia and Primorje, and they were never of any political or military significance within the Chetniks. A small group of Slovenes under Major Karl Novak in the Italian-annexed Province of Ljubljana also supported Mihailović, but they also never played an important role.


title: Chetniks

text: There had been long standing mutual animosity between Muslims and Serbs throughout Bosnia, and in the period of late April and May 1941, the first Chetnik mass atrocities were carried out against non-Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in other ethnically heterogeneous areas. A few Sandžak and Bosnian Muslims supported Mihailović, and some Jews joined the Chetniks, especially those who were members of the right-wing Zionist Betar movement, but they were alienated by Serb xenophobia and eventually left, with some defecting to the Partisans. The collaboration of the Chetniks with the Italians and later Germans may have also been a factor in the Jewish rejection of the Chetnik movement. The vast majority of Orthodox priests supported the Chetniks with some, notably Momčilo Đujić and Savo Božić, becoming commanders.


title: Chetniks

text: Chetnik policies barred women from performing significant roles. No women took part in fighting units and were restricted to nursing and occasional intelligence work. The low status of female peasants in areas of Yugoslavia where Chetniks were strongest could have been utilized and advantageous in military, political, and psychological terms. The treatment of women was a fundamental difference between the Chetniks and Partisans and Chetnik propaganda disparaged the female role in the Partisans.


title: Chetniks

text: Initially, Mihailović's organisation was focussed on recruiting and establishing groups in different areas, raising funds, establishing a courier network, and collecting arms and ammunition. From the very beginning their strategy was to organise and build up their strength, but postpone armed operations against the occupation forces until they were withdrawing in the face of a hoped-for landing by the Western Allies in Yugoslavia.


title: Chetniks

text: The pre-war Chetnik leader Pećanac soon came to an arrangement with Nedić's collaborationist regime in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia. Colonel Draža Mihailović, who was "interested in resisting the occupying powers", set up his headquarters in Ravna Gora and named his group "The Ravna Gora Movement" in order to distinguish it from the Pećanac Chetniks. However, other Chetniks were engaged in collaboration with the Germans and the Chetnik name became again associated with Mihailović.


title: Chetniks

text: The movement was later to be renamed the "Yugoslav Army in the Homeland", although the original name of the movement remained the most common in use throughout the war, even among the Chetniks themselves. It is these forces that are generally referred to as "the Chetniks" throughout World War II although the name was also used by other smaller groups including those of Pećanac, Nedić and Dimitrije Ljotić. In June 1941, following the start of Operation Barbarossa, the communist-led Partisans under Josip Broz Tito organised an uprising and in the period between June and November 1941, the Chetniks and Partisans largely cooperated in their anti-Axis activities.


title: Chetniks

text: Chetnik uprisings, often in conjunction with the Partisans, against Axis occupation forces began in early July 1941 in Western Serbia. Uprisings in the areas of Loznica, Rogatica, Banja Koviljača and Olovo lead to early victories. On 19 September 1941, Tito and Mihailović met for the first time in Struganik where Tito offered Mihailović the chief-of-staff post in return for the merger of their units. Mihailović refused to attack the Germans, fearing reprisals, but promised to not attack the Partisans. According to Mihailović the reason was humanitarian: the prevention of German reprisals against Serbs at the published rate of 100 civilians for every German soldier killed, 50 civilians for every soldier wounded. On 20 October, Tito proposed a 12-point program to Mihailović as the basis of cooperation. Six days later, Tito and Mihailović met at Mihailović's headquarters where Mihailović rejected principal points of Tito's proposal including the establishment of common headquarters, joint military actions against the Germans and quisling formations, establishment of a combined staff for the supply of troops, and the formation of national liberation committees. These disagreements lead to uprisings being quashed in Montenegro and Novi Pazar due to poor coordination between the resistance forces. Mihailović's fears for ongoing reprisals became a reality with two mass murder campaigns conducted against Serb civilians in Kraljevo and Kragujevac, reaching a combined death toll of over 4,500 civilians. Killings in the Independent State of Croatia were also in full swing with thousands of Serb civilians being killed by the Ustaše militia and death squads. In late October, Mihailović concluded the Partisans, rather than Axis forces, were the primary enemies of the Chetniks.


title: Chetniks

text: To avoid reprisals against Serb civilians, Mihailović's Chetniks fought as a guerrilla force, rather than a regular army. It has been estimated that three-quarters of the Orthodox clergy in occupied Yugoslavia supported the Chetniks, while some like Momčilo Đujić became prominent Chetnik commanders. While the Partisans opted for overt acts of sabotage that led to reprisals against civilians by Axis forces, the Chetniks opted for a more subtle form of resistance. Instead of detonating TNT to destroy railway tracks and disrupt Axis railway lines, Chetniks contaminated railway fuel sources and tampered with mechanical components, ensuring trains would either derail or breakdown at random times. Martin suggests that these acts of sabotage significantly crippled supplies lines for the Afrika Korps fighting in North Africa.


title: Chetniks

text: On 2 November, Mihailović's Chetniks attacked Partisan headquarters in Užice. The attack was driven back and a counterattack followed the next day, the Chetniks lost 1,000 men in these two battles and a large amount of weaponry. On 18 November, Mihailović accepted a truce offer from Tito though attempts to establish a common front failed. That month, the British government, upon the request of the Yugoslav government-in-exile, insisted Tito make Mihailović the commander-in-chief of resistance forces in Yugoslavia, a demand he refused. Partisan-Chetnik truces were repeatedly violated by the Chetniks, first with the killing of a local Partisan commander in October and then later, under orders of Mihailović's staff, massacring 30 Partisan supporters, mostly girls and wounded individuals, in November. Despite this, Chetniks and Partisans in eastern Bosnia continued to cooperate for some time.


title: Chetniks

text: In December 1941 the Yugoslav government-in-exile in London under King Peter II promoted Mihailović to Brigadier-General and named him commander of the Yugoslav Home Army. By this time Mihailović had established friendly relations with Nedić and his Government of National Salvation and the Germans who he requested weaponry from to fight the Partisans. This was rejected by General Franz Böhme who stated they could deal with the Partisans themselves and demanded Mihailović's surrender. Around this time the Germans launched an attack on Mihailović's forces in Ravna Gora and effectively routed the Chetniks from the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia. The bulk of the Chetnik forces retreated into eastern Bosnia and Sandžak and the centre of Chetnik activity moved to the Independent State of Croatia. The British liaison to Mihailović advised Allied command to stop supplying the Chetniks after their attacks on the Partisans in the German attack on Užice, but Britain continued to do so.


title: Chetniks

text: Throughout the period of 1941 and 1942, both the Chetniks and Partisans provided refugee for Allied POWs, especially ANZAC troops who escaped from railway carriages en route via Yugoslavia to Axis POW camps. According to Lawrence, following the Allied defeat at the Battle of Crete, POWs were transported via Yugoslavia in railway carriages with some ANZAC troops escaping in occupied Serbia. Chetniks under the command of Mihailović provided refugee to these ANZAC troops and were either repatriated or recaptured by Axis forces.


title: Chetniks

text: In April 1942 the Communists in Bosnia established two Shock Anti-Chetnik Battalions (Grmeč and Kozara) composed of 1,200 best soldiers of Serb ethnicity to struggle against Chetniks. Later during the war, the Allies were seriously considering an invasion of the Balkans, so the Yugoslav resistance movements increased in strategic importance, and there was a need to determine which of the two factions was fighting the Germans. A number of Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents were sent to Yugoslavia to determine the facts on the ground. According to new archival evidence, published in 1980 for the first time, some actions against Axis carried by Mihailović and his Chetniks, with British liaison officer Brigadier Armstrong, were mistakenly credited to Tito and his Communist forces. In the meantime, the Germans, also aware of the growing importance of Yugoslavia, decided to wipe out the Partisans with determined offensives. The Chetniks, by this time, had agreed to provide support for the German operations, and were in turn granted supplies and munitions to increase their effectiveness.


title: Chetniks

text: The first of these large anti-Partisan offensives was "Fall Weiss", also known as the Battle of Neretva. The Chetniks participated with a significant, 20,000-strong, force providing assistance to the German and Italian encirclement from the east (the far bank of the river Neretva). However, Tito's Partisans managed to break through the encirclement, cross the river, and engage the Chetniks. The conflict resulted in a near-total Partisan victory, after which the Chetniks were almost entirely incapacitated in the area west of the Drina river. The Partisans continued on, and later again escaped the Germans in the Battle of Sutjeska. In the meantime, the Allies stopped planning an invasion of the Balkans and finally rescinded their support for the Chetniks and instead supplied the Partisans. At the Teheran Conference of 1943 and the Yalta Conference of 1945, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill decided to split their influence in Yugoslavia in half.


title: Chetniks

text: Throughout the war, the Chetnik movement remained mostly inactive against the occupation forces, and increasingly collaborated with the Axis, eventually losing its international recognition as the Yugoslav resistance force. After a brief initial period of cooperation, the Partisans and the Chetniks quickly started fighting against each other. Gradually, the Chetniks ended up primarily fighting the Partisans instead of the occupation forces, and started cooperating with the Axis in a struggle to destroy the Partisans, receiving increasing amounts of logistical assistance. Mihailović admitted to a British colonel that the Chetniks' principal enemies were "the partisans, the Ustasha, the Muslims, the Croats and last the Germans and Italians" [in that order].


title: Chetniks

text: At the start of the conflict, Chetnik forces were active in uprising against the Axis occupation and had contacts and negotiations with the Partisans. This changed when the talks broke down, and they proceeded to attack the latter (who were actively fighting the Germans), while continuing to engage the Axis only in minor skirmishes. Attacking the Germans provoked strong retaliation and the Chetniks increasingly started to negotiate with them to stop further bloodshed. Negotiations with the occupiers were aided by the two sides' mutual goal of destroying the Partisans. This collaboration first appeared during the operations on the Partisan "Užice Republic", where Chetniks played a part in the general Axis attack.


title: Chetniks

text: Chetnik collaboration with the occupation forces of fascist Italy took place in three main areas: in Italian-occupied (and Italian-annexed) Dalmatia; in the Italian puppet state of Montenegro; and in the Italian-annexed and later German-occupied Ljubljana Province in Slovenia. The collaboration in Dalmatia and parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina was the most widespread. The split between Partisans and Chetniks took place earlier in those areas.


title: Chetniks

text: The Partisans considered all occupation forces to be "the fascist enemy", while the Chetniks hated the Ustaše but balked at fighting the Italians, and had approached the Italian VI Army Corps (General Renzo Dalmazzo, Commander) as early as July and August 1941 for assistance, via a Serb politician from Lika, Stevo Rađenović. In particular, Chetnik "vojvodas" ("leaders") Trifunović-Birčanin and Jevđević were favorably disposed towards the Italians, believing Italian occupation over all of Bosnia-Herzegovina would be detrimental to the influence of the Ustaše state. Another reason for collaboration was a necessity to protect Serbs from the Ustaše and Balli Kombëtar. When the Balli Kombëtar earmarked the Visoki Dečani monastery for destruction, Italian troops were sent in to protect the Orthodox monastery from destruction and highlighted to the Chetniks the necessity for collaboration.


title: Chetniks

text: For this reason, they sought an alliance with the Italian occupation forces in Yugoslavia. The Chetniks noticed that Italy on occupied territories implemented a traditional policy of deceiving Croats with the help of Serbs and they believed that Italy, in case of victory of the Axis powers, would favor Serbs in Lika, northern Dalmatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and that Serbian autonomy would be created in this area under Italian protectorate. The Italians (especially General Dalmazzo) looked favorably on these approaches and hoped to first avoid fighting the Chetniks, and then use them against the Partisans, a strategy which they thought would give them an "enormous advantage". An agreement was concluded on 11 January 1942 between the representative of the Italian 2nd Army, Captain Angelo De Matteis and the Chetnik representative for southeastern Bosnia, Mutimir Petković, and was later signed by Draža Mihailović's chief delegate in Bosnia, Major Boško Todorović. Among other provisions of the agreement, it was agreed that the Italians would support Chetnik formations with arms and provisions, and would facilitate the release of "recommended individuals" from Axis concentration camps (Jasenovac, Rab, etc.). The chief interest of both the Chetniks and Italians would be to assist each other in combating Partisan-led resistance.


title: Chetniks

text: In the following months of 1942, General Mario Roatta, commander of the Italian 2nd Army, worked on developing a "Linea di condotta" ("Policy Directive") on relations with Chetniks, Ustaše and Partisans. In line with these efforts, General Vittorio Ambrosio outlined the Italian policy in Yugoslavia: All negotiations with the (quisling) Ustaše were to be avoided, but contacts with the Chetniks were "advisable". As for the Partisans, it was to be "struggle to the bitter end". This meant that General Roatta was essentially free to take action with regard to the Chetniks as he saw fit. In April 1942 Chetniks and Italians cooperated in battles with Partisans around Knin.


title: Chetniks

text: During 1942 and 1943, an overwhelming proportion of Chetnik forces in the Italian-controlled areas of occupied Yugoslavia were organized as Italian auxiliary forces in the form of the Anti-Communist Volunteer Militia ("Milizia volontaria anti comunista", MVAC). According to General Giacomo Zanussi (then a Colonel and Roatta's chief of staff), there were 19,000 to 20,000 Chetniks in the MVAC in Italian-occupied parts of the Independent State of Croatia alone. The Chetniks were extensively supplied with thousands of rifles, grenades, mortars and artillery pieces. In a memorandum dated 26 March 1943 to the Italian Army General Staff, entitled "The Conduct of the Chetniks".


title: Chetniks

text: The allegiance between the Chetniks and Italians was crucial in protecting Serbs in the Lika and Dalmatian region from ongoing attacks from the Ustaše. Italian forces provided Serb civilians with weapons to protect their villages and accommodated thousands of Serb civilians escaping the ongoing genocide of Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia. Đujić used these events as a way of justifying the allegiance and when ordered by Mihailović in February 1943 to break this allegiance, Đujić refused and stated that a break in a truce would mean certain death to tens of thousands of Serb civilians.


title: Chetniks

text: Italian officers noted the ultimate control of these collaborating Chetnik units remained in the hands of Draža Mihailović, and contemplated the possibility of a hostile reorientation of these troops in light of the changing strategic situation. The commander of these troops was Trifunović-Birčanin, who arrived in Italian-annexed Split in October 1941 and received his orders directly from Mihailović in the spring of 1942. By the time Italy capitulated on 8 September 1943, all Chetnik detachments in the Italian-controlled parts of the Independent State of Croatia had, at one time or another, collaborated with the Italians against the Partisans. This collaboration lasted right up until the Italian capitulation when Chetnik troops switched to supporting the German occupation in trying to force the Partisans out of the coastal cities which the Partisans liberated after the Italian withdrawal. After the Allies did not land in Dalmatia as they had hoped, these Chetnik detachments entered into collaboration with the Germans in order to avoid being caught between the Germans and the Partisans.


title: Chetniks

text: The Chetnik groups were in fundamental disagreement with the Ustaše on practically all issues, but they found a common enemy in the Partisans, and this was the overriding reason for the collaboration which ensued between the Ustaše authorities of the NDH and Chetnik detachments in Bosnia. Agreement between commander major Emil Rataj and commander of Chetnik organizations in the Mrkonjić Grad area Uroš Drenović was signed on 27 April 1942 after heavy defeat in the conflict with Kozara Partisan battalion. Contracting parties obliged to a joint struggle against the Partisans, in return, Serb villages would be protected by the NDH authorities together with the Chetniks from "attacks by communists, so-called Partisans". Chetnik commanders between Vrbas and Sana on 13 May 1942, gave a written confession to the NDH authorities about cessation of hostilities and that they would voluntarily take part in the fight against the Partisans.


title: Chetniks

text: In Banja Luka two days later was signed agreement on the cessation of hostilities against the Chetniks in the area between Vrbas and Sana and on the withdrawal of Home Guard units from this area, between Petar Gvozdić and Chetnik commanders Lazar Tešanović (Chetnik detachment "Obilić") and Cvetko Aleksić (Chetnik detachment "Mrkonjić"). After several signed agreements, Chetnik commanders at a meeting near Kotor Varoš concluded that the remaining Chetnik detachments would also sign such agreements because they realized that such agreements had great benefits for the Chetnik movement. NDH authorities during May and June 1942, signed such agreements and with some east Bosnian Chetniks detachments. Commandant of Ozren Chetnik detachment Cvijetin Todić requested a meeting to reach an agreement with representatives of the NDH authorities. Ante Pavelic appointed persons for these negotiations and he gave these conditions: that they return to homes, hand over weapons and be loyal to the authorities of NDH. In return, it was promised that every Serbian village would receive weapons to fight the Partisans, that they would get state employment, and those Chetniks who stood out in the fight against the Partisans would receive decorations and awards. Ozren and Trebava Chetnik detachments signed this agreement on 28 May 1942. On 30 May 1942 Majevica Chetnik detachment signed agreement with one important novelty in this agreement, Chetniks from the area of Ozren and Trebava were given "self-governing power" i.e. autonomy which would be performed by the Chetniks' commanders. An almost identical agreement was signed on 14 June 1942 with the Zenica Chetnik detachment. In the later period similar agreements were signed with Chetnik detachments in the area of Lika and northern Dalmatia.


title: Chetniks

text: During the next three weeks, three additional agreements were signed, covering a large part of the area of Bosnia (comprising the Chetnik detachments within it). By the provision of these agreements, the Chetniks were to cease hostilities against the Ustaše state, and the Ustaše would establish regular administration in these areas. According to report of Edmund Glaise-Horstenau from 26 February 1944 based on official NDH data, in the NDH territory existed thirty five Chetnik groups of which nineteen groups with 17,500 men collaborated with Croatian and German authorities while as rebel Chetniks existed sixteen groups with 5,800-man. The Chetniks recognized the sovereignty of the Independent State of Croatia and became a legalized movement in it. The main provision, Art. 5 of the agreement, stated as follows:


title: Chetniks

text: Military and political expediency best explained these agreements, as historian Enver Redžić notes: "The Ustasha-Chetnik accords were driven neither by a confluence of Serbian and Croatian national interests nor by mutual desire for acceptance and respect, but rather because each side needed to obstruct Partisan advances." The agreements did not stop crimes against Serbs by the Ustaše or against Muslims and Croats by the Chetniks. They persisted in areas where the other had control and in regions where no agreements existed.


title: Chetniks

text: The necessary ammunition and provisions were supplied to the Chetniks by the Ustaše military. Chetniks who were wounded in such operations would be cared for in NDH hospitals, while the orphans and widows of Chetniks killed in action would be supported by the Ustaše state. Persons specifically recommended by Chetnik commanders would be returned home from the Ustaše concentration camps. These agreements covered the majority of Chetnik forces in Bosnia east of the German-Italian demarcation line, and lasted throughout most of the war. Since Croatian forces were immediately subordinate to the German military occupation, collaboration with Croatian forces was, in fact, indirect collaboration with the Germans.


title: Chetniks

text: Although the Dinara Division under the command of Đujić received support from the NDH, Chetniks under the command of Mihailović refused to collaborate with the NDH. Throughout the war Mihailović continued to refer to the NDH as an enemy and engaged Ustaše forces in the Serbian border areas. Mihailović's animosity towards the Ustaše was due to the ongoing genocidal policies of the NDH against the Serb population and other minority groups.


title: Chetniks

text: Fleeing the Partisans, in March 1945 Pavle Đurišić negotiated an agreement with the Ustaše and Ustaše-supported Montenegrin separatist, Sekula Drljević, to provide safe conduct for his Chetniks across the NDH. The Ustaše agreed to this, but when the Chetniks failed to follow the agreed-upon withdrawal route, the Ustaše attacked the Chetniks at Lijevče Field, afterward killing the captured commanders, while the remaining Chetniks continued to withdraw to Austria with the NDH army and under their military command.


title: Chetniks

text: Ustaše leader, Ante Pavelić ordered the NDH military to give Momčilo Đujić and his Dinara Division Chetniks "orderly and unimpeded passage", with which Đujić and his forces fled across the NDH to Slovenia and Italy. By his own admission, in April 1945, Ante Pavelić received "two generals from the headquarters of Draža Mihailović and reached an agreement with them on a joint fight against Tito's communists". In early May 1945 Chetnik forces withdrew through Ustaše-held Zagreb; many of these were later killed, along with captured Ustaše, by the Partisans as part of the Bleiburg repatriations.


title: Chetniks

text: One major Chetnik collaboration with the Axis took place during the "Battle of the Neretva", the final phase of "Case White", known in Yugoslav historiography as the "Fourth Enemy Offensive". In 1942, Partisans forces were on the rise, having established large liberated territories within Bosnia and Herzegovina. Chetnik forces, partially because of their collaboration with the Italian occupation, were also gaining in strength, however, but were no match to the Partisans and required Axis logistical support to attack the liberated territories. In light of the changing strategic situation, Hitler and the German high command decided to disarm the Chetniks and destroy the Partisans for good. In spite of Hitler's insistence, Italian forces in the end refused to disarm the Chetniks (thus rendering that course of action impossible), under the justification that the Italian occupation forces could not afford to lose the Chetniks as allies in their maintenance of the occupation.


title: Chetniks

text: When Germans invaded Yugoslavia they met in the Chetniks an organization trained and adapted for guerilla warfare. Although there were some clashes between the Germans and the Chetniks as early as May 1941, Mihailović thought of resistance in terms of setting up an organisation which, when the time was ripe, would rise against the occupying forces. British policy with regard to European resistance movements was to restrain them from activities which would lead to their premature destruction, and this policy coincided initially with the concepts on the basis of which Mihailović's movement was being operated. In order to dissociate himself from the Chetniks who collaborated with the Germans, Mihailović at first called its movement the "Ravna Gora Movement".


title: Chetniks

text: As early as spring 1942, the Germans favored the collaboration agreement the Ustaše and the Chetniks had established in a large part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Since the Ustaše military was supplied by, and immediately subordinate to, the German military occupation, collaboration between the two constituted indirect German-Chetnik collaboration. This was all favorable to the Germans primarily because the agreement was directed against the Partisans, contributed to the pacification of areas significant for German war supplies, and reduced the need for additional German occupation troops (as Chetniks were assisting the occupation). After the Italian capitulation on 8 September 1943, the German 114th Jäger Division even incorporated a Chetnik detachment in its advance to retake the Adriatic coast from the Partisans who had temporarily liberated it. The report on German-Chetnik collaboration of the XV Army Corps on 19 November 1943 to the 2nd Panzer Army states that the Chetniks were "leaning on the German forces" for close to a year.


title: Chetniks

text: German-Chetnik collaboration entered a new phase after the Italian surrender, because the Germans now had to police a much larger area than before and fight the Partisans in the whole of Yugoslavia. Consequently, they significantly liberalized their policy towards the Chetniks and mobilized all Serb nationalist forces against the Partisans. The 2nd Panzer Army oversaw these developments: the XV Army Corps was now officially allowed to utilize Chetniks troops and forge a "local alliance". The first formal and direct agreement between the German occupation forces and the Chetniks took place in early October 1943 between the German-led 373rd (Croatian) Infantry Division and a detachment of Chetniks under Mane Rokvić operating in western Bosnia and Lika. The Germans subsequently even used Chetnik troops for guard duty in occupied Split, Dubrovnik, Šibenik, and Metković.


title: Chetniks

text: NDH troops were not used, despite Ustaše demands, as mass desertions of Croat troops to the Partisans rendered them unreliable. From this point on, the German occupation actually started to "openly favor" Chetnik (Serb) troops over the Croat formations of the NDH, due to the pro-Partisan dispositions of the Croatian rank-and-file. The Germans paid little attention to frequent Ustaše protests about this.


title: Chetniks

text: Ustaše Major Mirko Blaž (Deputy Commander, 7th Brigade of the Poglavnik's Personal Guard) observed that:


title: Chetniks

text: When appraising the situation in the western part of the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia, Bosnia, Lika, and Dalmatia, Captain Merrem, intelligence officer with the German commander-in-chief southeastern Europe, was "full of praise" for Chetnik units collaborating with the Germans, and for the smooth relations between the Germans and Chetnik units on the ground. In addition, the Chief of Staff of the 2nd Panzer Army observed in a letter to the Ustaše liaison officer that the Chetniks fighting the Partisans in Eastern Bosnia were "making a worthwhile contribution to the Croatian state", and that the 2nd Army "refused in principle" to accept Croatian complaints against the usage of these units. German-Chetnik collaboration continued to take place until the very end of the war, with the tacit approval of Draža Mihailović and the Chetnik Supreme Command in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia. Though Mihailović himself never actually signed any agreements, he endorsed the policy for the purpose of eliminating the Partisan threat.


title: Chetniks

text: The loss of Allied support in 1943 caused the Chetniks to lean more than ever towards the Germans for assistance against the Partisans. On 14 August 1944, the Tito-Šubašić agreement between the Partisans and the Yugoslav King and government-in-exile was signed on the island of Vis. The document called on all Croats, Slovenes, and Serbs to join the Partisans. Mihailović and the Chetniks refused to follow the order and abide by the agreement and continued to engage the Partisans (by now the official Yugoslav Allied force). Consequently, on 29 August 1944, King Peter II dismissed Mihailović as Chief-of-Staff of the Yugoslav Army and on 12 September appointed Marshal Tito in his place. Tito at this point became the Prime Minister of the Yugoslav state and the joint government.


title: Chetniks

text: In the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia, the Germans initially installed Milan Aćimović, as leader, but later replaced him with General Milan Nedić, former minister of war, who governed until 1944. Aćimović instead later served as the key liaison between the Germans and the Chetniks. In the second half of August 1941, prior to Nedić assuming power, the Germans arranged with Kosta Pećanac for the transfer of several thousand of his Chetniks to serve as auxiliaries for the gendarmerie. Collaboration between the Government of National Salvation and Mihailović's Chetniks began in fall of 1941 and lasted until the end of German occupation.