Abstract

After the defeat of Yugoslavia in the April War in 1941, most of the country was occupied by Germany and its allies, the Independent State of Croatia was created and M. Nedić’s government collaborating with the Nazis was formed. The Resistance movement was widespread throughout the country. This movement consisted of the partisans of I. Broz Tito, who were oriented towards the USSR, and D. Mihailović’s Chetniks, who advocated the restoration of royal Yugoslavia and collaborated with the Western allies. Instead of coordinating forces, they soon started fighting against each other. More than 70% of those who were killed in the territory of Yugoslavia fell at the hands of their compatriots. After the communists came to power in Yugoslavia and D. Mihailović was executed by a court verdict, only the official version of the events of the WWII prevailed in historiography, and the Chetnik movement was condemned. In the 1980s, new works and studies about the WWII began to appear in Serbian culture and historical science. They destroyed old historical myths and at the same time created new ones about contradictory events of that time. The revisionist ideas started to develop among Serbian intellectuals. The question of the Chetnik movement acquired more and more political significance. The figure of Nedić, the head of the collaborationist government, also got re-evaluated. The breakup of Yugoslavia served as a catalyst for the rehabilitation of the Chetnik movement, and the court’s decision to overturn the conviction of D. Mihailović in 2015 was the final step in this process. It should be noted that the campaign initiated and supported by a part of the Serbian political establishment to revise the results and assessments of the WWII in Serbia has not led to the expected result. I. Broz Tito and his political regime have been criticized to a large extent, instead of accusing the USSR and the Red Army of the occupation. Although nationalist sentiments sometimes manifest themselves in Serbian society, they are considered unconstructive on the way towards Euro-Atlantic integration.