The Tchetniks or Chetniks (In Serb: Četnik, четник), of Serb the četa , military company, indicates a unit military or paramilitary nationalist, according to the period, it can be a question:
- Of resistant nationalist being opposed by the Guerilla to the Othoman reign to the 19th century;
- Of Serbes which fought in the Yugoslav Armée with the fatherland during the Second world war and which supported the idea of a Grande Serbia;
- Of Serb paramilitary unit during the Wars in ex-Yugoslavia.
Origins
The Tchetnik would have been founded following the fight of the Slavic Macedonians against the Ottoman Empire. Soon, other ethnicities of Balkans create Tchetnik units: Serb, Bulgarian, Greek and Albanian.
First Balkan war
At the beginning of the First Balkan war, in 1912, there were 110 detachment of the revolutionary Organization interior Macedonian, 108 detachment Greek, 30 detachment Serb, and 5 detachment Valaques.
Second world war
Directed by Draža Mihajlović, Tchetniks include/understand especially Serb combatants, of tendency monarchist and Serb nationalist. They are the first to resist to the Germans and their allies. They make cause common to the beginning with the partisans of Tito and fight in an occasional way unit, but quickly become enemy, because the 2 resistance movements are in major disagreement on what will be Yugoslavia of the Post-war period (a centralized and authoritative monarchy dominated by the Serb ones as before the war, or a federation of equal republics in right).The tchetniks will collaborate with the occupant in offensives against the partisans, in particular at the time of the Opération Weiss in which takes part 50.000 Germans, 25.000 Italians, 17.000 Oustachis and Domobran S and more than 12.000 tchetniks. During several years the tchetniks thus will receive material German and Italian, but such English and American, and even at certain Soviet periods.
Mihajlović is carried out for treason in 1946. According to Robert Philippot after an unfruitful meeting enters the two chiefs of Resistance in September 1941, " While the troops of Tito, driven out of Uzice, flee towards the mountains of Bosnia, Mihajlović saves its tchetniks extermination while negotiating with the collaborator government of Milan Nedić. It will adopt from now on a wait and see attitude, more inclined to fight the partisans titists than German divisions. "
The collaboration of the tchetniks with the Germans is in particular underlined by a report/ratio sent by the field-marshal Von Weichs to Hitler on November 1st, 1943:
" In this moment the principal danger comes from Croatia. The red forces propose to penetrate in Serbia by crossing the Drina. Mihailovic carries out preparations to push back them… Mihailovic seeks to come into contact with the German commands not to fall under the communist domination… As a whole, the national forces (tchetniks) lose foot, while the communist movement is in rise. From where direction of the engagement of our own forces and the formulation of the tasks: * the most dangerous enemy is Tito. * If one does not manage in the next months to weaken considerably his forces, acquired following the collapse of the Croatian state, then:
a) one will attend the organic fusion of all the communist rebels in all the sector of south-east.
b) the defense of the Adriatic Coast against an external attack will be impossible.
During next months, it will not act any more survival of Croatia, Montenegro and Albania, but of the creation or not-creation of a battle field Bolshevik on all the sector of south-east, in the immediate vicinity of Reich "
Wars in ex-Yugoslavia
Tchetnik today
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