| Dinara Division | |
|---|---|
 Chetnik flag inscription reads: "For king and fatherland; freedom or death" | |
| Active | 1942–1945 |
| Allegiance |
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| Type | Infantry |
| Size | c. 3,000 |
| Engagements | Yugoslav Front |
| Commanders | |
| Notable commanders | Momčilo Đujić |
The Dinara Division (Serbo-Croatian language: Dinarska divizija, Динарска дивизија) was a Chetnik division that existed during World War II. Organized in 1942 with large help from Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin and headed by Momčilo Đujić, the division incorporated commanders in Bosnia and Herzegovina, northern Dalmatia, and the Lika region with the intent of establishing a purely Serb state cleansed of other nationalities. The division was under the control of supreme Chetnik commander Draža Mihailović and received aid from Dimitrije Ljotić, leader of the Serbian Volunteer Corps, and Milan Nedić, head of the Serbian puppet Government of National Salvation.
Formation and objectives[]
Momčilo Đujić, commander of the Dinara Division, with an Italian officer.
The division was formed in early January 1942 after Momčilo Đujić was contacted by Draža Mihailović via a courier. Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin played a central role in organizing the units of Chetnik leaders in western Bosnia, Lika, and northern Dalmatia into the Dinara Division and dispatched former Yugoslav Army officers to help. Đujić was designated the commander of the division and its goal was for the "establishment of a Serb national state" in which "an exclusively Orthodox population is to live".[1] According to Đujić: "We were under Draža's command, but we received news and supplies for our struggle from [Dimitrije] Ljotić and [Milan] Nedić. [...] Nedić's couriers reached me in Dinara and mine reached him in Belgrade. He sent me military uniforms for the guardists of the Dinara Chetnik Division; he sent me ten million dinars to obtain for the fighters whatever was needed and whatever could be obtained."[2]
In March 1942 the division prepared a programmatic statement that concerned the "specific conditions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, northern Dalmatia, and southwestern Croatia (Lika)". The statement was accepted by commanders of these areas during a conference at Strmica near Knin a month later. The statement echoed the tone of Mihailović's instructions issued in December 1941 to Chetnik commanders Major Đorđije Lašić and Captain Pavle Đurišić in pursuing a Greater Serbia that was to be inhabited solely by Serbs, the establishment of a corridor through the linkage of the territories Herzegovina, northern Dalmatia, Bosnia, and Lika to Slovenia; the mobilization of all Serb nationalists for the ethnic cleansing of other nationalities that existed in Herzegovina, Dalmatia, Bosnia, and Lika. It also elaborated on the division's wartime strategy: "collaboration with the Italians on a live-and-let-live principle, determined struggle against Ustaša formations and the Domobrans, as well as against the Partisans; decent treatment of the Muslims — for the time being, to keep them from joining the Partisans, though later they can be eliminated; and the formation of separate Croatian Chetnik units for pro-Yugoslav, anti-Partisan Croats."[3]
Decline and retreat to the Adriatic Littoral[]
During early February 1943, as the Partisans began to prevail over the Chetniks as part of Case White, Đujić and Petar Baćović attempted to mount a counteroffensive around Bosansko Grahovo in western Bosnia preliminary to re-capturing Drvar. This was opposed by the Germans and made no headway.[4] By early August, the Dinara Division was "poorly formed, badly armed and disciplined", lacked accurate rolls of its members, and consisted of no more than 3,000 effectives. Lieutenant Colonel Mladen Žujević, one of Mihailović's few remaining delegates in the area, concluded that the division was "a pure figment of the imagination".[5]
On 21 December 1944, after Đujić requested a written guarantee from Ante Pavelić to afford him and his forces refuge in German-occupied Slovenia, Pavelić ordered the military forces of the Independent State of Croatia to give Đujić's division was given free passage. However, Đujić went through an alternate route towards the Istrian peninsula, as the routes offered by Pavelić were not secure from Partisan attacks, and killed the Croatian population along the way.[6] When Đujić reached Slovenia, his forces joined Dobroslav Jevđević's Chetniks, Dimitrije Ljotić's Serbian Volunteer Corps, and the remnants of Milan Nedić's Serbian Shock Corps in forming a single unit that was under the command of Odilo Globocnik of the Higher SS and Police Leader in the Adriatic Littoral.[6][7]
Notes[]
- ↑ Hoare 2006, p. 291.
- ↑ Hoare 2006, p. 293.
- ↑ Tomasevich 1975, p. 171.
- ↑ Milazzo 1975, p. 121.
- ↑ Milazzo 1975, p. 151.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Cohen 1996, pp. 45-47.
- ↑ Tomasevich 1975, p. 442.
References[]
- Cohen, Philip J. (1996). Serbia's Secret War: Propaganda and the Deceit of History. College Station: Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 978-0-89096-760-7. http://books.google.com/books?id=Fz1PW_wnHYMC&printsec=frontcover.
- Hoare, Marko Attila (2006). Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia: The Partisans and the Chetniks. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0197263801.
- Milazzo, Matteo J. (1975). The Chetnik Movement & the Yugoslav Resistance. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-1589-4.
- Tomasevich, Jozo (1975). War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: The Chetniks. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-0857-9. http://books.google.com/books?id=yoCaAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover.
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The original article can be found at Dinara Division and the edit history here.