Draža Mihailović

Born in Ivanjica in 1893 and raised in Belgrade, Mihailović fought through the Balkan Wars and the First World War with distinction. After Yugoslavia fell to Germany in April 1941, he organized the Chetniks at Ravna Gora and fought alongside Tito's Partisans against the occupiers. Opposing strategies, ideology, and distrust split them by late 1941 into open conflict. Many Chetnik groups then collaborated or reached accommodation with Axis forces; British frustration with Mihailović's inaction led the Allies to shift support to Tito in 1944. At war's end Mihailović collaborated with fascist collaborators Milan Nedić and Dimitrije Ljotić. He went into hiding, was captured in March 1946, tried and convicted of high treason and war crimes by the communist authorities, and executed by firing squad in Belgrade that July. In May 2015, Serbia's Supreme Court of Cassation overturned the verdict, calling the trial politically and ideologically motivated.