This is a list of Serbian paramilitary units and formations throughout history. It includes Serbian volunteer militias loyal to the Habsburg Monarchy prior to Serbian independence, and organizations loyal to Serbia since. Note that many of the organizations either started out or ended up folded into official military organizations. These are distinct from institutions with formal status and a direct leadership structure under a nation-state, examples being the World War I era First Serbian Division and the post-2006 modern Serbian Army, which do not belong on this list.
Yugoslavia was a country in Southeast and Central Europe that existed from 1918 to 1992. It came into existence following World War I, under the name of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes from the merger of the Kingdom of Serbia with the provisional State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs, and constituted the first union of South Slavic peoples as a sovereign state, following centuries of foreign rule over the region under the Ottoman and Habsburg empires. Peter I of Serbia was its first sovereign. The kingdom gained international recognition on 13 July 1922 at the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris. The official name of the state was changed to Kingdom of Yugoslavia on 3 October 1929.
The Chetniks, formally the Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army, and also the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland and the Ravna Gora Movement, was a Yugoslav royalist and Serbian nationalist movement and guerrilla force in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. Although it was not a homogeneous movement, it was led by Draža Mihailović. While it was anti-Axis in its long-term goals and engaged in marginal resistance activities for limited periods, it also engaged in tactical or selective collaboration with Axis forces for almost all of the war. The Chetnik movement adopted a policy of collaboration with regard to the Axis, and engaged in cooperation to one degree or another by both establishing a modus vivendi and operating as "legalised" auxiliary forces under Axis control. Over a period of time, and in different parts of the country, the movement was progressively drawn into collaboration agreements: first with the puppet Government of National Salvation in the German-occupied territory of Serbia, then with the Italians in occupied Dalmatia and Montenegro, with some of the Ustaše forces in northern Bosnia, and, after the Italian capitulation in September 1943, with the Germans directly.
The term Greater Serbia or Great Serbia describes the Serbian nationalist and irredentist ideology of the creation of a Serb state which would incorporate all regions of traditional significance to Serbs, a South Slavic ethnic group, including regions outside modern-day Serbia that are partly populated by Serbs. The initial movement's main ideology (Pan-Serbism) was to unite all Serbs into one state, claiming, depending on the version, different areas of many surrounding countries, regardless of non-Serb populations present.
The Serb Volunteer Guard, also known as Arkan's Tigers or Arkan's men, was a Serbian volunteer paramilitary unit founded and led by Željko Ražnatović that fought in the Croatian War and the Bosnian War during the Yugoslav Wars and was responsible for numerous war crimes and massacres.
The Yugoslav Partisans, or the National Liberation Army, officially the National Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia, was the communist-led anti-fascist resistance to the Axis powers in occupied Yugoslavia during World War II. Led by Josip Broz Tito, the Partisans are considered to be Europe's most effective anti-Axis resistance movement during World War II.
Narodna Odbrana was a Serbian nationalist organization established on October 8, 1908 as a reaction to the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the time, it was concerned with the protection of ethnic Serbs in Austria-Hungary. To achieve their goals, the Narodna Odbrana spread propaganda and organized paramilitary forces.
The Serbian Volunteer Corps, also known as Ljotićevci, was the paramilitary branch of the fascist political organisation Zbor, and collaborated with the forces of Nazi Germany in the German-occupied territory of Serbia during World War II.
World War II in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia began on 6 April 1941, when the country was invaded and swiftly conquered by Axis forces and partitioned among Germany, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and their client regimes. Shortly after Germany attacked the USSR on 22 June 1941, the communist-led republican Yugoslav Partisans, on orders from Moscow, launched a guerrilla liberation war fighting against the Axis forces and their locally established puppet regimes, including the Axis-allied Independent State of Croatia (NDH) and the Government of National Salvation in the German-occupied territory of Serbia. This was dubbed the National Liberation War and Socialist Revolution in post-war Yugoslav communist historiography. Simultaneously, a multi-side civil war was waged between the Yugoslav communist Partisans, the Serbian royalist Chetniks, the Axis-allied Croatian Ustaše and Home Guard, Serbian Volunteer Corps and State Guard, Slovene Home Guard, as well as Nazi-allied Russian Protective Corps troops.
Serbian nationalism asserts that Serbs are a nation and promotes the cultural and political unity of Serbs. It is an ethnic nationalism, originally arising in the context of the general rise of nationalism in the Balkans under Ottoman rule, under the influence of Serbian linguist Vuk Stefanović Karadžić and Serbian statesman Ilija Garašanin. Serbian nationalism was an important factor during the Balkan Wars which contributed to the decline of the Ottoman Empire, during and after World War I when it contributed to the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and again during the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s.
The White Eagles, also known as the Avengers, were a Serbian paramilitary group associated with the Serbian National Renewal (SNO) and the Serbian Radical Party (SRS). The White Eagles fought in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Yugoslav Wars.
The Scorpions were a Serbian paramilitary unit active during the Yugoslav Wars. The unit was involved in war crimes during the wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo. After the wars, four members of the unit were found guilty of killing six prisoners during the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995 and five were found guilty of killing fourteen civilians, mostly women and children, during the Podujevo massacre in March 1999.
Konstantin "Kosta" Milovanović Pećanac was a Serbian and Yugoslav Chetnik commander (vojvoda) during the Balkan Wars, World War I and World War II. Pećanac fought on the Serbian side in both Balkan Wars and World War I, joining the forces of Kosta Vojinović during the Toplica uprising of 1917. Between the wars he was an important leader of Chetnik veteran associations, and was known for his strong hostility to the Yugoslav Communist Party, which made him popular in conservative circles. As president of the Chetnik Association during the 1930s, he transformed it into an aggressively partisan Serb political organisation with over half a million members. During World War II, Pećanac collaborated with both the German military administration and their puppet government in the German-occupied territory of Serbia.
During World War II, Pećanac Chetniks, also known as the Black Chetniks, were a collaborationist Chetnik irregular military force which operated in the German-occupied territory of Serbia under the leadership of vojvoda Kosta Pećanac. They were loyal to the Government of National Salvation, the German-backed Serbian puppet government.
Terms such as Serbian Volunteers, Serbian Volunteer Corps, Serbian Volunteer Division, Serbian Volunteer Force, Serbian Volunteer Guard, Serbian Volunteer Military, et cetera may refer to:
Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin was a Serbian Chetnik military commander. He took part in the Balkan Wars and World War I and afterwards served as the president of the Association of Serb Chetniks for Freedom and the Fatherland in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In the spring of 1942, he was appointed by Mihailović as the commander of Chetniks in Dalmatia, Herzegovina, western Bosnia and southwestern Croatia. He died in Split on 3 February 1943, having suffered from poor health for a considerable period of time.
The Anti-Communist Volunteer Militia were paramilitary auxiliary formations of the Royal Italian Army composed of Yugoslav anti-Partisan groups in the Italian-annexed and occupied portions of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia during the Second World War.
The Bijeljina massacre involved the killing of civilians by Serb paramilitary groups in Bijeljina on 1–2 April 1992 in the run-up to the Bosnian War. The majority of those killed were Bosniaks. Members of other ethnicities were also killed, such as Serbs deemed disloyal by the local authorities. The killings were committed by a local paramilitary group known as Mirko's Chetniks and by the Serb Volunteer Guard, a Serbia-based paramilitary group led by Željko "Arkan" Ražnatović. The SDG were under the command of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), which was controlled by Serbian President Slobodan Milošević.
Jovan Stojković, known as Jovan Babunski, was a Serbian Chetnik commander during the Macedonian Struggle, Balkan Wars and World War I. Following the murder of his brother and nephew by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), he joined a Chetnik band and took command of Chetnik units on the Vardar River, where he and his men often engaged Bulgarian and Ottoman forces.
Vojislav Tankosić was a Serbian military officer, vojvoda of the Serbian Chetnik Organization, major of the Serbian Army, and member of the Black Hand, who participated in the May Coup and was accused of involvement in the Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Chetniks in World War I were members of auxiliary units used by the Royal Serbian Army for special operations against invading Austro-Hungarian, Bulgarian and German forces.
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