Momčilo Đujić[a] (Serbo-Croatian Cyrillic: Момчилo Ђујић, pronounced [mǒmtʃiːlo dʑûːjitɕ]; 27 February 1907 – 11 September 1999) was a Serbian Orthodox priest and Chetnik vojvoda.

After the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the Croatian Ustaše regime implemented a policy of widespread incarcerations, massacres, forced emigration and murder of Serbs and other groups, but Đujić escaped to the coastal zone annexed by Italy and began recruiting Chetniks in a refugee camp.

When a general uprising began in August, Đujić returned to Knin and deployed his Chetniks to defend local Serbs from the Ustaše, and under his command they captured the town of Drvar in the Bosanska Krajina.

Đujić was tried and convicted in absentia for war crimes by the new Yugoslav communist government, which found him guilty of mass murder, torture, rape, robbery, forcible confinement and collaborating with the occupying forces.

The casting of new church bells – the originals having been destroyed by Austro-Hungarian artillery in 1916 – was financed with money donated by the Yugoslav government and further improved his reputation among the local population.

[12] He also used his position as a priest and respected local leader to influence how the people of Strmica would vote, instructing his parishioners to cast ballots for a candidate of his choosing in the 1935 Yugoslav parliamentary elections.

He held a large rally at Pileći kuk – which was attended by a crowd of over 800 people – and delivered a speech criticising the regency for its "pro-[Roman] Catholic, anti-[Eastern] Orthodox and anti-worker" policies.

[16] The historians Popović, Lolić and Latas observe that Đujić's espoused political views appear to be wildly inconsistent during the interwar period, but they ascribe this to his willingness to do anything to achieve power and wealth, including embracing the populism of opposing the Yugoslav state.

[12] Following the 1938 annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, Yugoslavia shared a border with the Third Reich and came under increasing pressure as her neighbours became aligned with the Axis powers.

[19] With the aim of securing his southern flank before the pending attack on the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler began placing heavy pressure on Yugoslavia to join the Axis powers.

[22] On 10 April 1941, the Ustaše-led Independent State of Croatia (Croatian: Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH) was proclaimed in Zagreb and divided into German and Italian zones of occupation.

Under Mihailović's putative control, Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin played a central role in organising the units of Chetnik leaders in western Bosnia, Lika, and northern Dalmatia into the Dinara Division and dispatched former Royal Yugoslav Army officers to help.

[42] In mid-May, Đujić was a member of a Chetnik delegation that approached the Ustaše civil administration in the Knin region, and discussed joint action against the increasing threat from the Partisans.

[43] In this way, Đujić and other Chetnik leaders established co-operation with the Ustaše, although according to the political scientist Sabrina P. Ramet, these relationships were "based only on their common fear of the Partisans" and "characterised by distrust and uncertainty".

[50] In early February 1943, Đujić and fellow Chetnik leader Petar Baćović tried to participate in the Axis Case White offensive against the Partisans but the Germans stopped them from getting involved.

[51] On 10 February, Đujić, Ilija Mihić, Baćović and Radovan Ivanišević, the Chetnik commanders of east Bosnia, Herzegovina, Dalmatia, and Lika, signed a joint proclamation declaring to the "people of Bosnia, Lika, and Dalmatia" that "since we have cleansed Serbia, Montenegro, and Herzegovina, we have come to help to crush the pitiful remnants of the Communist international, criminal band of Tito, Moša Pijade, Levi Vajnert and other paid Jews".

[57] Around the same time, one of Mihailović's delegates, Mladen Žujović, reported that the Dinara Division was "poorly formed, badly armed and disciplined", did not have "accurate registers of officers and troops", and could muster no more than 3,000 men.

[63] Following the Italian capitulation on 8 September, the Germans moved quickly to secure the Adriatic coastline ahead of a feared Allied landing, and Đujić's detachments tried unsuccessfully to slow their deployment through sabotage.

[66] Nevertheless, the Germans were less supportive of his Chetniks than the Italians had been, did not trust them in large-scale actions, and restricted their activities to guarding railway tracks between Knin and the Adriatic coast from Partisan sabotage.

[67][68] The Germans required all members of the Dinara Division to produce their German-issued identification passes to receive arms and munitions, and eschewed a written agreement with Đujić.

His new situation was in stark contrast to the advantageous position he had enjoyed when dealing with the Italians, and the activities of the Dinara Division were strictly controlled, including a prohibition against undertaking operations in areas populated by Croats.

[71] Đujić said of the Dinara Division that it was:[72] ... under Draža's command, but we received news and supplies for our struggle from Ljotić and [leader of the puppet government in occupied Serbia, [Milan] Nedić.

The Command requests that [the village of] Pađene be the base for supplying our units, until a further common agreement is reached.On 3 December 1944, Đujić's force of between 6,000 and 7,000 withdrew to Bihać with help from the Wehrmacht 373rd Infantry Division.

Ljotić and Nedić also petitioned to Nazi party official Hermann Neubacher in Vienna that Đujić's forces should be allowed passage, as did Slovene collaborationist General Leon Rupnik.

Together, the collaborationist forces tried to contact the western Allies in Italy in an attempt to secure foreign aid for a proposed anti-Communist offensive to restore royalist Yugoslavia.

The writer and political analyst Paul Hockenos subsequently described Šešelj's activities in the Yugoslav Wars as those of "a man whose killer commando units operating in Croatia and Bosnia carried on the very worst of the Chetnik tradition.

[2] According to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) testimony of Croatian Serb leader Milan Babić, Đujić financially supported the Republic of Serbian Krajina in the 1990s with a donation of US$5,000.

[1] A New York Times obituary by the journalist David Binder stated that Đujić participated in "epic World War II battles" and carried out many "acts of wartime bravery.

[91] Commemorations of the Gata massacre committed by Đujić's Chetniks on 1 October 1942 have been conducted in the recent past, including on the 75th anniversary in 2017, at which Blaženko Boban, a prefect of Split-Dalmatia County, represented the president of Croatia, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović.

Both decried the move as a continuation of the official rehabilitation of Serb World War II collaborators by Serbian authorities since 2004 via historical revisionism and falsification of history, which has even spread into school textbooks.