1944 Chetnik congress in Serbia
The Ba Congress, also known as the Saint Sava Congress () or Great People's Congress, was a meeting of representatives of Draža Mihailović's Chetnik movement held between 25 and 28 January 1944 in the village of Ba in the German-occupied territory of Serbia during World War II. It sought to provide a political alternative to the plans for post-war Yugoslavia set out by the Chetniks' rivals, the communist-led Yugoslav Partisans, and attempted to reverse the decision of the major Allied powers to provide their exclusive support to the Yugoslav Partisans while withdrawing their support of the Chetniks.
The Partisan plan had been set out in the November 1943 Second Session of the communist-led Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ). While the Chetnik movement and Mihailović had been working towards a return to the Serb-dominated, monarchist Yugoslavia of the interwar period, AVNOJ had resolved that post-war Yugoslavia would be a federal republic with six equal, constituent republics, and denied the right of King Peter II to return from exile before a popular referendum to determine the future of his rule. AVNOJ had further asserted that it was the sole legitimate government of Yugoslavia.
By the time of the Ba Congress, large parts of the Chetnik movement had been drawn into collaboration with the occupying forces. The British, who had primacy regarding Allied policy in Yugoslavia, had originally supported the Chetniks, but, by December 1943, had concluded that the Chetniks were more interested in collaborating with the Axis against the Partisans than in fighting the Axis. As a test, they asked Mihailović to attack two specific bridges on the Belgrade-to-Salonika railway line, which never happened. At the Tehran Conference of November – December 1943, the major Allies agreed to change support to the Partisans. However, the Partisans had not gained entry to the German-occupied territory of Serbia, and combined with a November armistice the Chetniks had with the Germans (and likely with their tacit support for the congress), the Chetniks planned the Ba Congress as a political gesture aimed at addressing the resolutions of AVNOJ, providing an alternative political vision for post-war Yugoslavia, and as a means of changing the minds of the Allies – but particularly the US – about the decisions of the Tehran Conference that withdrew support for the Chetnik movement.
The congress opened on 25 January 1944, with the pre-war leader of the small Socialist Party, Živko Topalović, as its chairman. The congress denounced the AVNOJ as "the work of the Ustasha-Communist minority", continuing an existing propaganda campaign which claimed that the Partisans and Ustashas had united to exterminate the Serbs. It also provided its full support to King Peter II and the Yugoslav government-in-exile, and re-asserted the Chetnik movement's opposition to the Germans and their allies. It further resolved to mobilise all anti-communist Serbs to fight for the survival of Serbdom. It founded a new political party, the Yugoslav Democratic National Union (JDNZ), in an effort to unite all the elements of the Chetnik movement. Lastly, it proposed its own vision for the political and socio-economic future of Yugoslavia. This political framework included a Serb sovereign and a tripartite federal state, with entities for the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes only, with the Serb unit being dominant, much in the style of the Serbian nationalist and irredentist idea of Greater Serbia. However, while the congress resulted in a short period of reduced collaboration with the Germans and the forces of the puppet Government of National Salvation in the German-occupied territory of Serbia, at this stage of the war, and with the change in Allied policy towards the Chetniks, there was nothing that could be done to improve the position of the movement. Mihailović was dropped as a minister of the government-in-exile soon after, and the Chetnik situation continued to deteriorate, with their continuing tentative collaboration with the Germans playing into the hands of Partisans.
Background.
In April 1941, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was drawn into World War II when Germany and its allies invaded and occupied the country, which was then partitioned. Some Yugoslav territory was annexed by its Axis neighbours: Hungary, Bulgaria and Italy. The Germans engineered and supported the creation of the Independent State of Croatia (, NDH), a puppet state led by the fascist Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Movement. The NDH comprised all of modern-day Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina and some adjacent territory. Before the defeat, King Peter II and his government went into exile, reforming in June as the Western Allied-recognised Yugoslav government-in-exile in London.
Two resistance movements soon emerged in occupied Yugoslavia: the almost exclusively ethnic Serb and monarchist Chetniks, led by Draža Mihailović; and the multi-ethnic and communist-led Partisans, under Josip Broz Tito. The approaches of the two resistance movements differed in important respects from the beginning. The Chetniks under Mihailović advocated a "wait-and-see" strategy of building up an organisation for a struggle which was to commence when the Western Allies arrived in Yugoslavia, thereby limiting losses in military and civilian personnel alike until the final phase of the war. On the other hand, the Partisans were implacably opposed to the Axis occupation and resisted consistently from the beginning. The Chetnik political agenda was a return to the Serb-dominated Yugoslavia of the interwar period, whereas the Partisans strove to create a social revolution in a multi-ethnic but communist-dominated Yugoslavia. During the early years of the war, the Chetniks failed to articulate or promote a strong political agenda. According to the historian and political scientist Kirk Ford, it is possible that Mihailović believed that he did not need to do so, as he had been a representative of the government-in-exile since January 1942.
In different parts of the country the Chetnik movement was progressively drawn into collaboration agreements. First, with the forces of the puppet Government of National Salvation in the German-occupied territory of Serbia, then with the Italians in occupied Dalmatia and Montenegro, next with some of the Ustasha forces in the northern Bosnia region of the NDH, and, after the Italian capitulation in September 1943, with the Germans directly. On 29 October 1943, Adolf Hitler authorised German headquarters to utilise "national anti-Communist forces" to fight insurgencies in southeastern Europe. By the end of the year, due to a drift towards collaboration, the Government of National Salvation and the Germans were at least as influential over the Chetnik movement in the German-occupied territory of Serbia as Mihailović, who was becoming increasingly isolated.
Prelude.
By mid-1943, Mihailović had realised that he needed to broaden the political appeal of the Chetnik movement. Reverses in Montenegro and Herzegovina had shown that the Chetnik political ideology was producing unsatisfactory results with the populace, and the Western Allies were concerned that the Chetnik movement was anti-democratic, or possibly even fascist. The veneer of democracy advanced by the Partisans was appealing to the Western Allies, and Mihailović was concerned that the support he was receiving would shift to them. In order to widen the base of the Chetnik movement, Mihailović contacted representatives of the pre-war political parties living in Belgrade. He assured them that the former illiberal approach of the movement, as advocated by his close political advisers, the former republican and Black Hand adherent Dragiša Vasić and the Chetnik ideologue Stevan Moljević, had been replaced with a commitment to democracy. The politicians responded to Mihailović's approach positively as they were concerned about the outcome of the war, and neither a communist nor Chetnik military dictatorship appealed to them.
According to the historian Lucien Karchmar, the politician that appears to have taken the primary role in these negotiations was the leader of the small pre-war Socialist Party, Živko Topalović. Topalović contacted members of the pre-war United Opposition, such as the leader of the Independent Democratic Party, Adam Pribićević, and the leader of the People's Radical Party, Aca Stanojević. Both Pribićević and Stanojević were only the nominal leaders of their respective parties, as the real decision-makers in their parties were with the government-in-exile in London. The political parties agreed that they would negotiate with Mihailović as a group. Each party nominated two delegates to a coordinating council, and the council selected four negotiators, led by Topalović, who were to work out the details of an agreement with the Chetnik leader. These negotiations dragged on, and there was one break of two months between discussions. On the Chetnik side, Moljević and his supporters suggested that the politicians join the Chetnik movement, which they considered apolitical, but the politicians refused to be absorbed in this way. Instead, they demanded a new political grouping be formed, of which the Chetnik movement would be just one part, and that this new grouping would lay out a new program for the future. Further demands were for a reaffirmation of the Yugoslav idea, a parliamentary system and social reforms, a federally organised country, improved relationships with the British, and a new attempt at reconciliation with the Partisans, preferably with the help of the Allies.
Some of Mihailović's followers were against agreeing to the politicians' demands. Nevertheless, the Chetnik leader accepted them, but with the proviso that the politicians firmly commit to the agreement. The politicians were loath to do this, as if they signed any document it could be used against them by the Germans, forcing them to leave Belgrade and join Mihailović in the field. The next step was a proposal to convoke a congress to ratify the new political structure and announce the new program. Mihailović advanced the date of 1 December, which was the anniversary of the founding of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (Kingdom of Yugoslavia since 1929) in 1918, but the politicians delayed the preparations as they continued to negotiate and hesitate.
When it was finally held, the Ba Congress, also known as the Saint Sava Congress or Great People's Congress, was conducted in the shadow of two threats, which affected both the Chetniks and the leaders of the political parties in pre-war Yugoslavia who now supported them. The first of these was that the Partisans had widened their appeal by advancing the idea of unity among Yugoslav peoples as free and equal members of the country. This had attracted many people to their cause. This approach was formalised by the resolution of the Second Session of the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (, AVNOJ) in the Bosnian town of Jajce in November 1943, which decided to create a federal Yugoslavia, based on six constituent republics with equal rights, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. Along with this resolution, AVNOJ asserted that it was the sole legitimate government of Yugoslavia, and denied the right of King Peter to return from exile before a popular referendum to determine the future of his rule. The Western Allies expressed no opposition to the resolutions of AVNOJ, and at the Tehran Conference of 28 November to 1 December, the Allies had agreed to throw their support behind the Partisans.
The second threat to the Chetniks and their political allies was the fact that from mid-1943, the British, who had primacy regarding Allied policy in Yugoslavia, had begun to doubt their decision to support Mihailović. By December they had concluded that Mihailović's Chetniks were more interested in collaborating with the Axis against the Partisans than in fighting the Axis. On 8 December 1943, in the wake of the Tehran Conference decision, the British Commander-in-Chief of the Middle East, General Henry Maitland Wilson, had sent a message to Mihailović asking him to attack two specific bridges on the Belgrade to Salonika railway line. This message was a test formulated by the British to assess Mihailović's intentions regarding resisting the Germans, and was done with the expectation that he would continue his inactivity against the Germans and not comply. The chief of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) mission to the Chetniks, Brigadier Charles Armstrong, followed this up with written orders on 16 December, directing Mihailović to carry out the sabotage on the two bridges by 29 December. The attacks were never carried out.
In late 1943, the Partisans, who had enjoyed considerable success in the rest of Yugoslavia in the wake of the September capitulation of the Italians, had been stymied in an attempt to break into the German-occupied territory of Serbia from the neighbouring occupied territories of Montenegro, Sandžak and eastern Bosnia.