Jezdimir Dangić

Jezdimir Dangić (Serbian Cyrillic: Јездимир Дангић; 4 May 1897 – 22 August 1947) was a Yugoslav and Serb Chetnik commander during World War II. Born in the town of Bratunac, he was imprisoned during World War I for his membership of the revolutionary movement Young Bosnia. Dangić subsequently completed a law degree and became an officer in the gendarmerie of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes at the beginning of 1928. In 1929, the country changed its name to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In 1940, Dangić was appointed to lead the court gendarmerie detachment stationed at the royal palace in the capital, Belgrade. During the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, Dangić commanded the gendarmerie unit that escorted King Peter II to Montenegro as he fled the country. In August of that year, the leader of the Chetnik movement, Colonel Draža Mihailović, appointed Dangić as the commander of the Chetnik forces in eastern Bosnia. Here, Dangić and his men launched several attacks against the forces of the Independent State of Croatia (Serbo-Croatian: Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH). Soon after his appointment, Dangić's Chetniks captured the town of Srebrenica from the occupiers. Afterwards, they became largely inactive in fighting the Germans, choosing instead to avoid confrontation. In December, Chetniks under Dangić's command massacred hundreds of Bosnian Muslims in the town of Goražde. In the same month, his Chetniks captured five nuns and took them with them through Romanija to Goražde, where they later committed suicide to avoid being raped.

In January 1942, Dangić ordered his forces to not resist German and NDH troops during the anti-Partisan offensive known as Operation Southeast Croatia. Afterwards, he was invited to Belgrade to negotiate the terms of proposed Chetnik collaboration with the Germans with the head of the collaborationist puppet government in the German-occupied territory of Serbia, Milan Nedić, and the Wehrmacht military commander of the territory, General der Artillerie Paul Bader. Although a deal was struck, it was vetoed by the Wehrmacht Commander in Southeast Europe, General der Pioniere Walter Kuntze, who remained suspicious of Dangić. Despite this, Dangić's Chetniks collaborated with German forces in eastern Bosnia over a period of several months beginning in December 1941. In April 1942, Dangić was arrested when he travelled to occupied Serbia despite promising to operate only within the territory of Bosnia, and was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp in German-occupied Poland. In 1943, he escaped from the camp and the following year participated in the Warsaw Uprising as a member of the Polish Home Army. In 1945, he was captured by the Soviet Red Army and was extradited to Yugoslavia, where he stood accused of committing war crimes. In 1947, he was tried, convicted, sentenced to death and executed by Yugoslavia's new communist authorities.