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.

Here, Dangić and his men launched several attacks against the forces of the Independent State of Croatia (Serbo-Croatian: Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH).

Although a deal was struck, it was vetoed by the Wehrmacht Commander in Southeast Europe, General der Pioniere[b] Walter Kuntze, who remained suspicious of Dangić.

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.

[11] In 1920,[12] he was conscripted into the army of the newly created Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes and assigned to a gendarmerie unit stationed in Kratovo (in modern-day North Macedonia).

[10] He also became a member of the League of Farmers,[13] a political party that sought to protect the interests of the Bosnian Serb peasantry, and which the historian Marko Attila Hoare describes as a precursor to the Chetnik movement in Bosnia and Herzegovina during World War II.

"[21] NDH authorities, led by the Ustaše militia,[22] subsequently implemented genocidal policies against the Serb, Jewish and Romani population living within the borders of the new state.

[7] When news reached him of the Ustaše massacres of Serbs in the Bosnia areas of the NDH, he sought permission to travel there and escort his family and relatives to safety.

[28][29] From the very beginning their strategy was to organise and build up their strength, but postpone armed operations against the occupation forces until they were withdrawing in the face of a hoped-for landing by the Western Allies in Yugoslavia.

[38] On 1 September, Babić signed an agreement with the Partisan Sarajevo Oblast (district) Staff led by Slobodan Princip-Seljo and Boriša Kovačević to form a joint command.

"[41] On 1 October 1941, Dangić and two other east Bosnian Chetnik commanders, Pero Đukanović and Sergije Mihailović, met with the Partisan General Staff for Bosnia-Hercegovina at the village of Drinjača, south of Zvornik.

[43] According to Hoare, the Drinjača agreement represented the pinnacle of co-operation between Partisans and Chetniks in east Bosnia, but effectively sidelined the Provincial Committee.

[47] Although his original objective was solely to protect the Serb population against the Ustaše, Dangić quickly became an important factor in the conflict between the two groups in eastern Bosnia.

Serbian Partisans were situated at Ljubovija at the time, ready to launch an offensive across the Drina against Dangić's forces in Bratunac and Srebrenica, but held off at Čolaković's request.

At the conference, Čolaković tried to maintain the alliance, but Vukmanović raised Mihailović's attack on Tito's headquarters at Užice and the Chetnik's failure to fight Axis forces.

[55] Dangić's envoys told them they intended "to slit the throats of the Turks, except for any pretty Turkish ladies" and "screw down the Croats so hard that they wouldn't dare for a thousand years to look at a Serb askance.

According to Hoare, on 29 November 1941, the Italians handed Goražde over to the Chetniks, who immediately massacred Croatian Home Guard prisoners and NDH officials.

[60] Chetnik forces in Bosnia, including those of Dangić, then set about pursuing an anti-Muslim campaign to recompense for the persecution experienced by ethnic Serbs in the NDH.

[66] On 22 January, Dangić ordered his own troops to permit the Germans to pass through Bosnia, saying "they are advancing peacefully and minding their own business without disturbing our unfortunate and long-suffering people."

[49] The Chetnik actions in response to Operation Southeast Croatia severely weakened Partisan defences with the result that they suffered significant casualties and lost a great deal of territory.

[69] In February, Dangić and other former Royal Yugoslav Army officers re-entered eastern Bosnia from the German-occupied territory of Serbia, where some of them had withdrawn to avoid Operation Southeast Croatia.

[49] Present were Bader, Professor Josef Matl, and Colonel Erich Kewisch for the Germans, Dangić and Pero Đukanović for the Chetniks, and Nedić and Aćimović for the Serbian puppet government.

The Germans demanded the area remain formally a part of the NDH though Bader implied "East Bosnia from the Serbian frontier to the River Bosna together with Sarajevo will be incorporated into occupied Serbia."

[70] However, despite the concurrence of the parties, the agreement was not signed because negotiations had not been cleared in advance by General der Pioniere Walter Kuntze, the Wehrmacht Commander in Southeast Europe.

[73] Bader reported following the talks that "Dangić on this occasion declared that he and his men would, even in the conditions of a general uprising in the Balkans and the arrival of the English, fight loyally and without wavering on the German side.

[76] In March, NDH gendarmerie in Tuzla reported "Nedić's Chetniks are distributing weapons and ammunition from the quota they receive from the Germans for the struggle against the Communists.

"[77] On 31 March, Jure Francetić, commander of the Black Legion, an Ustaše militia infantry unit consisting largely of Muslim and Croat refugees that fled from eastern Bosnia,[78] launched a pre-emptive offensive primarily against Dangić's Chetniks.

Francetić captured Vlasenica, Bratunac and Srebrenica, meeting limited resistance from the Partisans, and then scattered the more numerous Chetniks[79] while inflicting significant losses and committing atrocities against segments of the Bosnian Serb population.

[36][82] He was subsequently transferred to the Lubyanka Prison in Moscow, where alongside other members of the Polish Home Army, he was interrogated by the People's Commissariat for State Security.

[12] In 2011, the five Sisters of Divine Charity who were abused by Dangić's Chetniks and subsequently died in their custody were beatified by Pope Benedict XVI and came to be known as the Blessed Martyrs of Drina.