
“Chetniks” by Jozo Tomasevich: The Fallacy that Endures
- 19/06/2021
According to the author’s own announcement, the German documents should have prevailed here. However, the count of reference points reveals a surprise as they refer to the following sources: 68 are attributed to the communist sources, and 64 to German…
Writes: Miloslav SAMARDŽIĆ
The length of the review concerning Jozo Tomasevich’s book on the Yugoslav Army in World War II, known as the Chetniks, would have been equal to that book’s length, as its each page calls for rebuttal. Yet, even after four decades, this book is still listed among the most cited sources in the field. If you decide to search for the relevant data using regular internet search engines about the Chetniks, General Draza Mihailovich, and his commanders, first hits will in evit ably involve Wikipedia—either in English, Serbian or Croatian where Tomasevich’s “The Chetniks” will dominate the footnotes section. Further more, if you examine the list of references across historiography pieces written abroad, Tomasevich’s book will be prominently featured yet again, and specifically its first U.S. edition from 1975. The reason for such phenomenon can certainly be the fact that no book of the same or similar title has ever been published in English, while historians from around the world during the course of their work require pieces written by authors from the countries of their research topics as language and financial barriers can prevent their actual visits to archives.
Jozo Tomasevich’s book gained fame within the socialist Yugoslavia as soon as it was translated and published there in 1979. Moreover, current official historians in Belgrade, Zagreb, Sarajevo, and other post-Yugoslav centers refer to this book even today as an example of objectivity.
In 1979 communist dictator Josip Broz Tito had been in power for three and a half decades and all the restrictive laws still applied. Freedom of speech, opinion, and expression did not exist. Harsh prison sentences were particularly imposed for challenging the “achievements of the Revolution” or for any history account that would go counter to what the Communist Party and its leader declared. When it comes to World War II, history as a scientific discipline virtually did not exist back then as it was boiled down to assignments given to historians-in-name-only to develop the points propelled by Josip Broz Tito and other communists at their party conventions.
These facts suggest that Tomasevich’s book “followed the party line” while raising the question of how and why it got published in Yugoslavia considering that the author had emigrated from his native Croatia [then also part of Yugoslavia]as early as 1930s. He lived in the United States, was involved in various business dealings, and worked as a clerk and a college professor until his retirement in 1973.

Jozo Tomasevich
The first link in this chain was definitely the support of Croatian immigrants in the United States given to the Yugoslav communists during World War II. These Croats found them selves in dire straits when the “Independent State of Croatia” became Hitler’s golden boy in the Balkans and when it officially declared war on the United States. In the following 1942, the whole world already learned that the guerilla leader in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was Serb General Draza Mihailovich, which Croatian immigrants interpreted as a sign that after the war their native land will be punished for its alliance with Hitler and genocide committed over Serbs, Jews, and Roma.
However, in 1943 the news broke out that there was one other guerilla within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the communist one, led by Croat Josip Broz Tito, whose goals were ultimately anti-Serbian. The American Croats, and among them Jozo Tomasevich, did not have any dilemma. That the communists were a good choice for them, they became convinced in 1944, when under the pressure from Great Britain, the Yugoslav Prime Minister exiled in London was removed from office, Serb Dr. Bozidar Puric. The whole cabinet got dissolved, the Provisional Yugoslav government was established led by Croat émigré Dr. Ivan Subasic who was given the task to reach agreement with his compatriot Tito, primarily concerning the liquidation of the Serbian Karageorgevich Dynasty and General Mihailovich. Subasic and Tito did just that and Yugoslavia was reconstituted: the Socialist Republic of Croatia as a federal unit emerged 10 percent larger than the two prewar Croatian “banovina” provinces, and by contrast, the Socialist Republic of Serbia as a federal unit became about 50 percent smaller than the six prewar Serbian “banovina” provinces.
It is no wonder, then, that after his retirement Jozo Tomasevich started working with the Yugoslav communists, especially one of Tito’s former Partisans and then Assistant Director of the Military History Institute in Belgrade—main institution for fabricating history—Colonel Vojmir Kljakovic, as well as Dr. Jovan Marjanovic, one of the leading official “historians” of the time. Kljakovic and Marjanovic sent literature and copies of selected documents to Tomasevich while acting as his reviewers and guides of his work.
We can conclude from Tomasevich’s notes on bibliography that the goal of this cooperation was to annul the effects of a piece written by history professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC) Dr. Ivan Avakumovic titled “Mihailović According to German Documents” which was published in London in 1969. This book was printed only in Serbian, but there was always a fear it could get translated into English at any time. Avakumovic examined the seized Wehrmacht documents in the National Archives of the United States while expressing their essence: the main German enemy in the Balkans were the Chetniks under General Mihailovich’s command, while the Partisans were a terrorist formation of the Communist Party who took advantage of the war conditions for power grab and there by even joining forces with convicts who escaped prison sentences using the chaos of the April War in 1941.
This is why Tomasevich emphasized that what mattered to him primarily were “the most relevant German and Italian war documents available in the National Archives of the United States” while he provided an extensive overview of this material and especially its German portion. He then stated that he used the U.S. and British documents, as well as “a series of Chetniks’ documents,” obtained through the Military History Institute in Belgrade. Finally, under “published materials” he cited around 500 books and other writings practically from all over the place.
In other words, there was an obvious ambition not only to rebut, but also surpass Avakumovic’s work, dedicated“ only” to the question of how Germans saw the Chetniks and along the way—the communists too.
This is why the critique of Tomasevich’s book must commence with the following question: was the principle to examine the Chetnik movement according to German sources adhered to in addition to completing the picture by referencing American, British and their own (Chetnik) documents, along with the ample literature as well?
To further examine this question, we are taking into consideration chapters 7, 9, and 11: “The Chetniks and the foreign enemy, ”“From the collapse of Italy to the Battle for Serbia,” and “The loss of grassroots support in Serbia.” Those chapters are critical because the first six chapters relate to the prewar situation, the April War, and other general issues; the eighth chapter is dedicated to politics; the tenth concerns the relations with the Allies; and the final twelfth chapter deals with the period when everything was already decided.
The seventh chapter, pages 180-232 in Croatian edition, contains 184 footnotes. According to the author’s own announcement, the German documents should have prevailed here as well as the German sources in general, then the Italian, American, British, and Chetnik sources which should have followed. However, the count of reference points reveals a surprise as they refer to the following sources: 68 are attributed to the communist sources, and 64 to German,25 to Italian, eight to the notes from the Serbian émigré circles, six to the primary Chetnik documents, and two to a [Milan Nedic] Nedic’s source (Stanislav Krakov’s book). The remaining 184 footnotes are author’s own explanations.
The ninth chapter, pages 283-320,contains 111 footnotes, and specifically: 85 German sources, 12 communist sources, five British, four from the Serbian émigré circles, and one [Dimitrije Ljotic] Ljotic’s source. The American and Chetnik documents are missing.
The eleventh chapter, pages 353-379,contains 99 footnotes, and specifically: 39 communist sources, 33 German, 19 from the Serbian émigré circles, two British, one American and one Ljotic’s source. Again, no primary Chetnik document is referenced.
Thus, in two out of three main chapters, the greatest number of sources are communist. Overall, in all those three key chapters, only six footnotes refer to the primary Chetnik documents, which practically means the Chetniks are described through the enemy lenses whose sources are being referenced by more than 90 percent of the footnotes. Such choice is, certainly, a matter of the author’s own prerogative. However, it is only important hereto establish that such choice is being masked by the claims of objective approach. In his introductory notes on bibliography, the author even failed to specifically indicate those communist sources that would end up dominating those two out of three key chapters.
Jozo Tomasevich explained the conspicuous absence of the U.S. documents through his personal assessment that the American intelligence officers deployed with the Chetniks “did not know” what took place. He made similar comments on the British officers as well: “They did not have established evidence on the Chetnik collaboration with the Germans.”In fact, around 1,000 allied officers, non-commissioned officers, and servicemen passed through the Chetnik units. Some were intelligence officers, others fought alongside the Chetniks, the Chetniks helped some escape the Axis, others Chetniks saved from certain capture (the downed Allied airmen), etc. Each of these 1,000 witnesses attested to the Chetniks as being part of the Allied military effort while the substance of Tomasevich’s work, as well as of the communist propaganda, was to actually present the Chetniks as figh ting alongside the Axis. This is the true reason why both American and British officers either “did not know” or “did not have evidence.”
Tomasevich missed the opportunity to provide an explanation for his failure to use the Chetnik documents. However, when the book is titled “The Chetniks,” it should over whel mingly contain the Chetnik documents, specifically due to their greatest number (when it comes to the Chetnik movement). The Military History Institute Archives in Belgrade keeps approximately one million pages belonging to the original Chetnik documents as primary sources. In Tomasevich’s book, these documents pertain only to about one percent of its entire content. Following the Western academic standards, this seems highly unusual. A serious book on the U.S. or British armies that would contain only one percent of the American/British documents does not even exist. However, this is a regular course of business under the communist propaganda demands.
The same principle does not apply to Avakumovic’s work, because he secured it from criticism by giving it a title “Mihailović According to German Documents” while Tomasevich opted not only for general but for “final history” of the Chetnik movement as his U.S. publisher announced. His official reviewer Colonel Kljakovic was also explicit when he claimed how “Tomasevich did not leave a single component of the Chetnik phenomenon out” which is why the future writings “will not succeed in discovering new elements with greater relevance.”
This all appears like every one is enjoying the feast while their host is away as communist sources provide the main tone to the book even though they tend to run out concurrently with the communist ideology’s expiration date. Certaintitles from Tomasevich’s footnotes constituted the basis of Tito’s Yugoslav propaganda: “The War of Liberation,” “Tito—The Military Accomplish ments,” “Neretva—A Compilation of Writings,” “Documents on Draza Mihailovich’s Betrayal,” “Trial against Leadership of the Draza Mihailovich Organization,”etc. Some of the writings were less known: “Dalmatia in 1942” (published in Zagreb in 1959), “Emergence and Development of the Chetnik Movement in Croatia” (Belgrade 1962), “International Relations of Yugoslavia During World War II” (Belgrade, 1962), etc. By utilizing all this, Tomasevich failed to acknowledge the truth that socialist systems—from Cuba, through Yugoslavia, to North Korea—are characterized by a systematic fabrication of events. Furthermore, he also repeated the inevitable praises to the “great leader” Tito, in addition to the very many negative remarks dedicated to his main opponent, General Draza Mihailovich. Likewise, he uncritically used documents that were evidently falsified for purposes of the postwar show trials against Mihailovich and his people.
To criticize the aforementioned communist literature seems superfluous, at least for now, which leaves us only to examine the way Tomasevich used German documents, which provide basis to almost half of his book.
The foremost test in this respect are orders and reports from the German Commanders of the Southeast from 1942 and 1943. Specifically, General Löhr explicitly wrote in 1942, “the most dangerous opponent is Mihailovich,”while his successor, Feldmarschall von Weichs, declared Tito as the most dangerous opponent in 1943. At that time, in November1943, Mihailovich himself declared the communists as his number 1 enemy while the Germans became enemy number 2 as those first ones suddenly gained more power due to large Allied weapon deliveries, which they primarily used to attack the Chetniks.
Therefore, the test is simple: Did Tomasevich’s book cover both Löhr’s and Weichs’ assessments? His official reviewer Dr. Jovan Marjanovic [the Military History Institute in Belgrade], for example, failed this test as he omitted to include these words in his book “Draza Mihailovich Between the British and the Germans” (even though he cited other – less relevant parts of that same document). As expected, Tomasevich failed here too.
Another quick test would involve the question whether Tomasevich enumerated and described German operations launched against the Chetniks during 1941-1944; and there were 34 of them? No, he did not. He alludes to just a few while claiming that one of those operations was only planned but never carried out(Operation “Teufel” against the Chetniks on mount Ozren near Doboj, in April 1943; according to the report by the German Wehrmacht Supreme Command of the Southeast, the losses included: 158 killed and 148 captured Chetniks and on the other side 38 dead, 64 wounded, and 20 missing Germans and Croats).
Or, did he describe operations the Chetniks launched against the Germans; and there were four such operations, one during each year of the war? No, he did not, despite countless German reports. These four reports, for example, the Germans dispatched within half an hour, on October 5, 1943:
“09:40: The 3rd Battalion of the 370th Grenadier Regiment dispatched the radio report: Under intense attack since 04:00 supported by heavy weaponry. The attack further intensified at 07:00. The Chetniks took control over Northeastern Visegrad. Calling for assistance from the auxiliary units in Rogatica. Calling for air support.
10:00: The Head Command in Croatia announces: the 2nd Mountain Brigade transmits: Visegrad encircled. The enemy took control over the northeastern part of the town. The 6th Mountain Regiment demands assistance in aerial reconnaissance for their intense firefight. The militia fled, the residents followed. The battlefield force needs reinforcement.
10.05: The 3rd Battalion of the 370th Grenadier Regiment transmits over the radio: pressure from the east is so intense that the [Croatian] Home Guard and gendarmerie are fleeing. Urgently appealing for air support.
10.10: Operations squad within the 3rd Battalion of the 370th Grenadier Regiment over the radio: The Luftwaffe assistance needed, but the current weather situation is bad. As of today, the Croatian forces will press on toward Visegrad.”
The Partisans did not launch offensive operations against the Germans; they systematically tried to evade them and instead attacked the Chetniks since their primary wartime goal was fighting for power.
Did Tomasevich describe and enumerate the urban areas Chetniks liberated from the Germans i.e. the 32 towns overall? No, he did not. In contrast, the Partisans failed to liberate even one town from the Germans until the Soviet Red Army arrived.
Did Tomsasevich describe actions of any saboteur groups, at least actions performed by the largest one codenamed “Gordon?” According to the German anti-saboteur “Wienecke” group’s report, the Chetnik group “Gordon” carried out as many as 1,499 acts of sabotage and obstruction, mostly on railroad during the North Africa campaign against Hitler’s Field Marshal Rommel, as the critical supply line went through Serbia which likely set a record for the entire World War II. Thirty-five Chetniks were killed while carrying out their tasks. The Germans captured and shot 396 saboteurs from the group “Gordon,” while they sent an additional 207 to concentration camps and 50 to prisons.
Did Tomasevich give account of the highest-level German visit to the occupied Kingdom of Yugoslavia following Hitler’s to urof Maribor in 1941? No, he did not because Heinrich Himmler came to Kraljevo in October 1942 to oversee an operation against the Chetniks.
Did he mention that Germans officially called their largest camp in the territory of Serbia “The DM Camp Dedinje,” where as “DM” meant Draza Mihailovich’s initials, and that is because the camp, which communists even today call “The Banjica Camp,” held captive his fellow combatants, including his wife and two children?
Did he cite countless reports about the executions of “DM hostages” following the German reprisal proportion of one hundred Serbs, then 50, then one hundred again, and ultimately a random number of killed Serbs—for every killed German? In his entire book, he mentioned it only once when he chronicled one execution of 250 “DM supporters” which took place on December 25, 1942 and he discussed it to appear rather a san exceptional occurrence.
However, tens of thousands of hostages were executed.
According to the order issued by German commander of Serbia General Felber from September 10, 1943—500 DM hostages were executed in Jajinci near Belgradeas the reprisal “for executing 10 German soldiers” by the Chetniks.
And the following is [Hans] Felber’s order from September 17, 1943:
“Execute 300 DM supporters in retaliation for the attack on a truck near Bajina Basta when four customs administrators were killed and another four were wounded.
Execute 10 DM supporters for the attack on the SS guards in Gojna Gora when four SS soldiers and one officer were killed.
Execute 25 DM supporters for the attack on a car near Sevojno when one security officer was wounded.”
In one clash near Vrnjacka Banja, the Chetniks killed eight German soldiers, for which on October 1, 1943 the Germans executed 400 ”DM supporters” in Jajinci. On the same day, an additional 285 Serbs were executed in Jajinci and Cacak, where as in Nis there were an additional 35, which in total brings about 720 Serbs executed in just one day. Immediately there after, on October 4, the Germans executed an additional 150 “Draza Mihailovich supporters” in Sabac.
Finally, did Tomasevich use the main German intelligence reports? No, he did not. For example, these are excerpts from the report written by Head of the Wehrmacht Foreign Armies East Department (FHO) of the Army General Staff General Reinhard Gehlen on February 9, 1943:
“Among the various insurrectionist movements in the former Yugoslav state’s territory causing increasing concern, the Draza Mihailovich Movement stands out as the first when it comes to leadership, armament, organization, and activities… By launching the DM Movement, an organization has been created which is structured around the fanatical will of every individual… The fighters’ superb familiarity with the terrain and affirmative view shared by the majority of Serbian people, certainly benefit the movement… Within the D. M. Movement are also militarily organized armed units comprising the ‘Yugoslav Homeland Army.’ Currently, it totals around 150,000 people across the entire Yugoslav territory.”
This all would sufficiently lead to conclusion that Tomasevich and his official reviewers failed to use the most important German wartime documents, and furthermore, even when it comes to building their narrative, they deployed a variety of tricks. For example, when chronicling the uprising in Serbia in 1941, they turned their entire attention to the question why the uprising broke out. Despite the presence of numerous Wehrmacht military reports, they decided to mainly cite the reports written by one civilian, and politician for that matter, Felix Benzler, the Representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Third Reich to the Military Command in Serbia, because throughout August 1941, he used buzzwords such as “communist uprising” and “communist movement,” and in this spirit dispatched the following report on September 12: “Under the influence of communist slogans that were camouflaged as nationalistic, certain Chetnik groups started perceiving German occupation troops unfavorably as well, even though as of now there were no clashes with them.”
Then they seemingly examined the uprising from all sides: on July 4, Stalin issues a directive to communists to begin their fight against the Germans in order to relieve the pressure from the USSR which they duly obeyed; the British government on several occasions during August repeats its announcement to the occupied nations over the radio advising them not to stage an insurrection, because it “could only result in severe reprisals and losses of our key people;” BBC Radio London also broadcasts a statement issued by Yugoslav Prime Minister General Dusan Simovic who threatened the leaders of the uprising with sanctions (just like after World War I the only surviving leader of the premature Toplica Uprising from 1917 faced an investigation); and all that conspicuously “coincided with Mihailovich ’s views,” etc.
Thus, the causes for the uprising have been explained in 20 pages, while neither its course of events was offered, nor any specific episode precisely described. Almost everything is subjected to the question “why,” while only a few sentences were dedicated to the question “what” such as this one: “Indeed some Chetnik detachments, later on that same month, began their fight against the Germans, but either on their own or in association with the Partisans.”
Seemingly, the story is logical.
However, Benzler the politician was not familiar with the events on the ground and to some extent neither was the commander of the German troops in Serbia, General Heinrich Danckelmann, which is why he ended up being dismissed from his post. They both fell under the influence of Serbian Germanophiles, who led them to believe that the uprising was communist. However, these Germanophiles were somewhat right at least in the beginning as communists not only started the uprising on July 7, 1941 by murdering two Serbian gendarmes, they also started their revolution. At that time, Colonel Draza Mihailovich made connections with the Serbian Gendarmerie in secrecy as the most powerful domestic armed formation in the territory of occupied Serbia devising a plan that the gendarmerie would assume the main role in destroying the communists, since it had a legal status in relation to the occupying force, i.e. it had the freedom of movement, and in addition, it suppressed the Communist Party terrorists even before the war. However, the Germanophiles learned about the gendarmerie commander Colonel Jovan Trisic’s trips to Ravna Gora [Mihailovich’s headquarters] and demanded from the Germans to deprive the gendarmerie of weapons and ammunition, and finally disband them justifying it with the opinion that the greater threat came from those “English mercenaries” i.e. the Chetniks. By eliminating the gendarmerie from the game, the communists suddenly seized a relatively large chunk of territory during August and September and embarked on additional killings of civilian swhich they would label as “enemies of the people.” Mihailovich, lacking sufficient military strength to deal with the communists, since he had both Germans and domestic Germanophiles at his heels, moved on to plan B: seeking to place the communists under his command, there by delaying their destruction until the right moment despite having a legal obligation to do so (among other things, Tomasevich and his official reviewers consistently failed to put events into legal perspective). This attempt succeeded only partially, namely in forming the joint tribunals, because otherwise the communists kept sentencing to death all the more affluent citizens in order to confiscate their property. Besides, both the people and the army did not share the readiness to fight the communists—most of it existed among the gendarmerie—however, among the most combative individuals, there was just the readiness to fight the traditional enemy—the Germans. If Mihailovich had just observed the events, the communists would have attracted such people, they would have become an important factor with these people joining their ranks, and then, they would have especially been able to “take the power and kill.”
This convoluted story gets unraveled by referencing the most important German documents. On the very same September 12, 1941 when uninformed Benzler reported that there were no clashes between the Chetniks and the Wehrmacht, Commander of the Southeast Field Marshal Wilhelm List, reported to the Wehrmacht High Command that, so far, the rebels “have been incorrectly referred to as the communists.” General Staff Major Jaris from the Command of the Southeast, wrote on September 18, 1941 that the uprising is “under the leadership of the former Yugoslav officers.” General Harald Turner, the SS Commander and Chief of Staff of the German Military Command in Serbia, wrote on September 21 about the uprising of the “Mihailovich’s gangs.” General Franz Böhme, who succeeded General Danckelmann, reported on September 25: “the leadership is in the hands of Serbian officers; it seems they have enough soldiers and command personnel.”
The story gets additionally unraveled through the chronology of events, also given according to the German documents which were all prior to the aforementioned Benzler report from September 12:
–August 31, 1941 the Chetniks liberated the town of Loznica (the Chetniks had eight killed and 10 wounded; while the German losses were 12 killed and 93 captured; this was the first liberated town in the occupied Europe).
–September 1,the Chetniks liberated the town of Bogatic (the Chetniks had 25 killed and a number of wounded; the Germans losses were one killed and eight wounded).
–September 4, the Chetniks liberated the town of Krupanj. Losses: the Chetniks had three killed, the Partisans had three killed (the Partisans accounted for 20 percent of the insurgent force during the attack), the Germans had 9 killed, 30 wounded, and 130 captured.
–September 6, the Chetniks liberated the town of Banja Koviljaca. Losses: the Chetniks had 41 killed; the Germans had 9 killed, 24 wounded, and 51 captured; the Ustasha had unknown losses.
When toward the end of September, the German reinforcements started to arrive i.e. the units made up of the first group of drafted conscripts, facing them in a front line were the Chetniks, while the communists, who remained deeply in the rear with Uzice as their center, were busy forming their “institutions of people’s government.” The Chetniks held back those reinforcements for about one whole month, while following their arrival in Uzice, the Germans crushed the communist defenses in only two hours.
The price of the premature uprising was enormous. According to General [Paul] Bader’s report, the Germans executed in punitive expeditions from September 1, 1941 to February 12,1942—20,149 Serbs in retaliation. Since the quota of killing one hundred Serbs for each killed German had not yet been fulfilled, Bader ordered executions of an additional 3,484 Serbs.
Following these experiences, the people saw through the communists and until the end of the war they did not have a strong hold in Serbia as they eventually overmastered it only by arriving behind the Soviet tanks.
The manner by which Tomasevich described the uprising in Serbia in 1941, he expanded to all other events. The agreements with Chetniks the Germans made up as apart of their psychological warfare, which would naturally lack signatures, he treated as real; the agreements with the NDH [the Independent State of Croatia] prohibiting the displacements of Serbs to concentration camps, he called collaboration with the Ustasha (even though they did not include the Ustasha and even though there are no recorded joint fights of Chetniks and Ustasha against the Partisans, while there are multiple German documents referring to the joint fights of Partisans and Ustasha against the Chetniks); the efforts by the Italians to stop the horrific genocide by the Croatian forces over Serbs and Jews, he also called collaboration with the Chetniks, as well as any infiltration of Mihailovich’s people into the so called legalized units, etc.
Those are all professional failures. However, calling the genocide of up to that point unseen proportions in the Croatian Nazi state as merely, “the brutal anti-Serb measures by the Ustasha, ”represents a tremendous moral fiasco. Even Hitler’s Special Envoy to the Balkans Dr. Hermann Neubacher wrote that this genocide “belongs to the cruelest acts of mass murder in world history” while assessing “the number of slaughtered without self-defense” to 750,000. The extent of this genocide is exemplified by the fact that the German generals sought to dismantle the Croatian Nazi state, but Hitler did not allow it, while the horrified Italians occupied about half of its territory.