Dobroslav Jevđević

Who was Dobroslav Jevđević?

Dobroslav Jevđević was a Bosnian Serb politician and self-appointed Chetnik commander in the Herzegovina region of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia during the Second World War. He was a member of the interwar Chetnik Association and the Organisation of Yugoslav Nationalists, a Yugoslav National Party member of the National Assembly, and a leader of the opposition to King Alexander until the monarch's assassination in 1934.

Following the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis in April 1941, he became a Chetnik leader in Herzegovina and joined the Chetnik movement of Draža Mihailović. Jevđević collaborated with the Italians and later the Germans in actions against the Yugoslav Partisans. Although Jevđević recognised the authority of Mihailović, who was aware of and approved of his collaboration with Axis forces, a number of factors effectively rendered him independent of Mihailović's command, except when he worked closely with Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin, Mihailović's designated commander in Dalmatia, Herzegovina, western Bosnia and southwestern Croatia.

During the joint Italian-Chetnik Operation Alfa, Jevđević's Chetniks, along with other Chetnik forces, were responsible for killing between 543 and 2,500 Bosnian Muslim and Catholic civilians in the Prozor region in October 1942. His force also participated in one of the largest Axis anti-Partisan operations of the war, Case White in the winter of 1943. His forces were later merged with other collaborationist forces that had withdrawn towards the west, and were put under the command of the SS General Odilo Globocnik of the Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral. In the spring of 1945, he fled to Italy where he resided until his death.