From the summer of 1941 until April 1942, he headed the cabinet of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Milan Nedić's puppet Government of National Salvation in the German-occupied territory of Serbia.

[1] From the summer of 1941, Baćović headed the cabinet of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for Milan Nedić's German-installed puppet Government of National Salvation in the German-occupied territory of Serbia.

[4] Baćović led Chetnik forces fighting against the Partisans in the Sandžak region that straddled the border between the Italian governorate of Montenegro and the German-occupied territory of Serbia.

On 16 July 1942, Baćović, acting as one of Jevđević's military organizers, informed Mihailović that the vast majority of the 7,000 Chetniks in Herzegovina were well-equipped with small arms and had been "legalized" by the Italians.

[6] From March 1942 on, Mihailović had been looking for opportunities to create a "national corridor" connecting all the Chetnik groups operating in the Italian-occupied areas of the NDH, from Montenegro, Herzegovina, Dalmatia, to Lika and western Bosnia.

[7] In June, to advance Mihailović's aim of creating a "national corridor", Jevđević offered to send 2,000 Herzegovinian Chetniks to Dalmatia, where they would be placed under the control of Trifunović-Birčanin.

[3] Baćović was appointed as the Chetnik commander for eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, replacing Boško Todorović,[11] who had been captured and executed by the Partisans in late February 1942.

[9] The historian Fikreta Jelić-Butić believes that the idea of an anti-Partisan offensive was also discussed at the conference as a potential response to the Zagreb agreement concluded between Italy and the NDH in June.

[17] By August, Baćović was advocating the "liquidation" of Botić's Mountain Staff because they were creating disunity, and trying to politicise the Chetnik movement in Bosnia and Herzegovina on the model of the League of Farmers,[16] which had defended the interests of Bosnian Serb peasants against Muslim landowners during the interwar period.

[18] On 6 August 1942, in a continued Chetnik effort to eliminate external enemies and purge their own ranks, Baćović ordered the subordinate commanders of all corps and brigades to submit lists of such individuals with suggestions on how to deal with them.

Brigade commanders were required to send three assassins to kill any person whom they labelled with the letter "Z" (from the Serbo-Croatian Latin: zaklati, meaning "to slaughter") within 24 hours of receiving the name.

[20] According to the initial Chetnik reports, a total of 1,000 people were killed, including about 450 members of the Croatian Home Guard and Ustaše Militia, as well as around 300 women and children.

[21] A few days after they seized Foča, Baćović and Jevđević reported to Mihailović that all traces of the massacre had been removed and they had formally announced that those responsible for looting and killing had been shot.

[21] Eight days after the capture of Foča, Baćović wrote, "on that occasion 1,200 Ustaše in uniform and about 1,000 compromised Muslims perished, while we suffered only four dead and five wounded".

One of these reports stated that during reprisal attacks against the towns of Ljubuški in western Herzegovina and Imotski in the Dalmatian hinterland, his Chetniks had skinned alive three Catholic priests, killed all males over fifteen years of age, and razed 17 villages.

[15][22][25] Towards the end of August 1942, Mihailović issued directives to Chetnik units ordering them to prepare for a large scale anti-Partisan operation alongside Italian and NDH troops.

Trifunović-Birčanin met with Roatta on 10 and 21 September and urged him to undertake this operation as soon as possible to clear the Partisans from the Prozor–Livno area and offered 7,500 Chetniks as aid on the condition that they be provided with the necessary arms and supplies.

[27] The proposed operation, faced with opposition from Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić and a cautious Italian high command, was nearly cancelled, but after Jevđević and Trifunović-Birčanin promised to cooperate with Croat and Muslim anti-Partisan units, it went ahead, with less Chetnik involvement.

He blamed the Partisans for the destruction of traditional Serb society, religion and morals, claiming that they were corrupting women and the young, and promoting incest and immorality.

[41] In December, concerned about the possibility of Allied forces landing in the Balkans, the Germans began planning an anti-Partisan offensive in Bosnia and Herzegovina codenamed Case White.

[45] By 28 February 1943, 2,807 of the 8,137 Chetniks operating in northern Dalmatia as part of the Italian Anti-Communist Volunteer Militia (MVAC) XVIIth Corps were under Baćović's command.

Three days later he sent a report to Draža Mihailović that Chetnik troops have executed 70 Partisan PoWs and houses of runaway communists have been burnt down and their families are imprisoned.

[48] In mid-February 1944, Baćović and Lukačević accompanied Special Operations Executive (SOE) Colonel Bill Bailey to the coast south of Dubrovnik and were evacuated from Cavtat by a Royal Navy gunboat.

[51] Later that month, Baćović helped organize a Chetnik "Independent Group of National Resistance" and wanted to contact British forces who they expected to land in the southern Adriatic coast.

[1] Baćović joined Đurišić's forces in their trek towards the Ljubljana Gap in modern-day Slovenia, alongside Chetnik ideologue Dragiša Vasić, detachments commanded by Ostojić, and a large number of refugees,[54] totalling around 10,000.

Đurišić had wanted to withdraw through Albania to Greece, but Mihailović had told him to prepare for an Allied landing, the return of the king and the establishment of a national government.

When Mihailović remained unconvinced, Đurišić decided to move there independently of him, and arranged for Dimitrije Ljotić's Serbian Volunteer Corps already there to meet him near Bihać in western Bosnia to assist his movement.

[54] In order to get his group to Bihać, Đurišić made a safe-conduct agreement with elements of the Armed Forces of the NDH and with the Montenegrin separatist Sekula Drljević who was collaborating with them.

The details of the agreement are not known, but it appears that he and his troops were meant to cross the Sava River into Slavonia where they would be aligned with Drljević as the "Montenegrin National Army" with Đurišić retaining operational command.

[58] Following this defeat and the defection of one of his sub-units to Drljević, Đurišić was induced to negotiate directly with the leaders of the NDH forces about the further movement of his group towards safety.