page_title: Dobroslav Jevđević
section_title: Intelligence-gathering activities
hierarchical_section_title: Dobroslav Jevđević / Exile and death / Intelligence-gathering activities
caption_attribution_description: English: CIA chart illustrating the flow of Dobroslav Jevđević's intelligence.
context_page_description: Dobroslav Jevđević was a Bosnian Serb politician and self-appointed Chetnik commander in the Herzegovina region of the Axis-occupied Kingdom of Yugoslavia during World War II. He was a member of the interwar Chetnik Association and the Organisation of Yugoslav Nationalists, a Yugoslav National Party member of the National Assembly, and a leader of the opposition to King Alexander between 1929 and 1934. The following year, he became the propaganda chief for the Yugoslav government.
  Following the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, he became a Chetnik leader in Herzegovina and joined the Chetnik movement of Draža Mihailović. Jevđević collaborated with the Italians and later the Germans in actions against the Yugoslav Partisans. Although Jevđević recognised the authority of Mihailović, who was aware of and approved of his collaboration with Axis forces, a number of factors effectively rendered him independent of Mihailović's command, except when he worked closely with Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin, Mihailović's designated commander in Dalmatia, Herzegovina, western Bosnia and southwestern Croatia.
context_section_description: According to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Jevđević lived in Rome under the aliases "Giovanni St. Angelo" and "Enrico Serrao". He spent most of his time and money quarrelling with émigré Yugoslav politicians, trying to prove that his collaboration with the Italians was necessary in order to protect the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina from the Partisans and Germans. He became a member of the Association of Free Journalists of Central-Eastern Europe, and served as an informant for the Italian intelligence services between 1946 and 1947. During this period, he published a confidential periodical called the Royal Yugoslav Intelligence Bulletin which he shared with the Italians. Jevđević also contributed to a number of newspapers, including the Serb nationalist Srbobran. In 1946, he helped form the Serbian National Committee in Rome and, with help from Achille Marazza, published a pan-Serb and anti-Croat newspaper, Srpske Novine, in Eboli. He also established contacts with Italian neo-fascist groups and with an anti-communist group called the Committee of Nations Oppressed by Russia.
  Disagreement over who would lead the 10,000 Chetnik exiles in Italy escalated into a feud between Jevđević, Đujić and General Miodrag Damjanović in mid-1947. Damjanović had been appointed by Mihailović in March 1945 to lead the Chetniks into northwestern Italy. Jevđević and Đujić refused to accept this and claimed that they were Mihailović's only successors as leaders of the Chetnik movement.
  By 1949, the CIA claimed that Jevđević's intelligence material was being used by the Italian Ministry of Interior, the United States Counterintelligence Corps, British Forensic Science Service in Trieste, and French intelligence services in Rome and Paris. His intelligence correspondents included Đujić, who disseminated his intelligence reports to the CIA, Konstantin Fotić, the former Yugoslav ambassador to the United States, and Miro Didek, Croat politician Vladko Maček's self-styled intelligence representative in Rome. The intelligence reports were mostly collected from refugees fleeing Yugoslavia and arriving in Italy via Trieste and from émigré groups in Italy and Greece. By 1949, Jevđević claimed to have formed a large network of anti-communist propagandists in Italy and intelligence collection centres in Albania, Bulgaria and Greece. The CIA believed that these claims were exaggerated, if not entirely fictitious. In 1951, Jevđević began printing an anti-communist, pro-Chetnik publication from an unidentified religious institution in Italy. Issues were regularly mailed to Yugoslav exiles and former Chetniks living in the United States, Canada, Australia and various European countries.
  In May and June 1952, Jevđević visited Canada and addressed the Congress of the Serbian National Defence (Srpska Narodna Odbrana) in Niagara Falls regarding developments within Italy's Serb émigré community. The following year, he and Đujić issued a proclamation in Chicago declaring their intention to organise Chetnik groups against Damjanović, who had since emigrated to Germany. Jevđević later received threatening letters warning him not to go through with such a plan for fear of disuniting the Yugoslav diaspora. Little is known of his activities after 1953. He continued to live in Rome until his death in October 1962.
caption: A Central Intelligence Agency chart illustrating the flow of the information generated by Jevđević.
exif: {}