Lieutenant Colonel Zaharije Ostojić (Serbian Cyrillic: Захарије Остојић; 1907 – April 1945) was a Montenegrin Serb and Yugoslav military officer who served as the chief of the operational, organisational and intelligence branches of the Chetnik Supreme Command led by Draža Mihailović in Yugoslavia during World War II.
In September 1941, he was landed on the coast of the Italian governorate of Montenegro along with the British Special Operations Executive officer Captain Bill Hudson and two companions.
During the remainder of 1942, Ostojić launched a counter-attack against Ustaše troops of the Independent State of Croatia returning to the eastern Bosnian town of Foča where they were expected to continue their genocidal anti-Serb policies.
While the Chetniks were an anti-Axis movement in their long-range goals and did engage in marginal resistance activities for limited periods, they also carried out for almost all of the war a tactical or selective collaboration with the occupation authorities against the Partisans.
This was demonstrated in late 1942 and early 1943, when Ostojić planned and oversaw the Chetnik involvement in the large Axis anti-Partisan offensive Case White alongside Italian troops.
[3] After completing his schooling, Ostojić joined the Royal Yugoslav Air Force (Serbo-Croatian Latin: Jugoslovensko kraljevsko ratno vazduhoplovstvo, JKRV) and prior to the outbreak of World War II had risen to the rank of major.
[6] Despite this, and with the aim of securing his southern flank for the pending invasion of the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler began placing heavy pressure on Yugoslavia to sign the Tripartite Pact and join the Axis.
[8] They quickly came into contact with the communist-led Montenegrin Partisans, including Milovan Đilas and Arso Jovanović, who escorted Hudson and Ostojić to Partisan-held Užice in the German-occupied territory of Serbia.
[14] From the very beginning the Chetnik 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.
[18] On 1 November the Chetniks unsuccessfully attacked the Partisan headquarters at Užice, and from then on, the hostility between the two movements gradually spread from the occupied territory of Serbia to the rest of Yugoslavia.
Ostojić, Hudson and other officers joined him soon after, travelling through Italian-held towns by truck disguised as troops of the Nedić regime, a puppet government in the German-occupied territory of Serbia.
[28] The historian Jozo Tomasevich agrees, observing that expulsion of the non-Serb population from this and other areas was done in pursuit of the principal Chetnik ideology of achieving an ethnically homogenous Greater Serbia.
[32] The conference was dominated by Đurišić and its resolutions "expressed extremism and intolerance",[33] as well as an agenda which was focused on restoring the pre-war status quo in Yugoslavia implemented in its initial stages by a Chetnik dictatorship.
The outline concept was that the Chetniks would set up a corridor through the Italian-occupied zone of the NDH as far as the Partisan liberated area in western Bosnia and Lika, neutralising the Italians through a combination of vague promises, encouraging them to surrender, and disarming them if necessary.
[39] What transpired instead was that the Chetniks that were preparing for the "march on Bosnia" were drawn into closer collaboration with the Axis during the second phase of Case White that took place in the Neretva and Rama river valleys in late February 1943.
[40] Despite the fact that the Chetniks were an anti-Axis movement in their long-range goals and did engage in marginal resistance activities for limited periods,[41] their involvement in Case White is one of the most significant examples of their tactical or selective collaboration with the Axis occupation forces.
[45] Rebuffed, Ostojić drew up a plan in accordance with Mihailović's orders, which called for the Chetniks to remain south and east of the Neretva to avoid being outflanked by the Partisans.
[46] Ostojić subsequently changed his mind and supported the Italian offensive plans, launching an attack aimed at preventing the Partisans from retreating from Jablanica to Prozor on 27 February 1943.
[40] Mihailović and Ostojić realised that the large concentrations of Chetnik troops in and around Mostar and the nearby bauxite mines were likely to draw German attention, and while they were focused on this issue, the Partisans completed their crossing of the Neretva by mid-March.
[55] Ostojić claimed in a report that killing, pillaging and robbery done by his soldiers happened against his orders, however justified it with recent massacre of few tens of Serbs in near-by villages.
He purposely ignores much larger scale of massacres in Višegrad and the fact that killing lasted three days and stopped only because of intervention by Albert Seitz, member of American mission to Chetnik High Quarters.
After 12 September 1944, when King Peter called for all in Yugoslavia to rally around Tito, Ostojić and Baćović warned Mihailović that their men were losing their will to fight the Partisans.
[63] In order to get to Bihać, Đurišić made a safe-conduct agreement with elements of the Armed Forces of the Independent State of Croatia (Croatian: Hrvatske oružane snage, HOS) and with the Montenegrin separatist Sekula Drljević.
[63] Following this defeat and the defection of one of their sub-units to Drljević, Đurišić was induced to negotiate directly with the leaders of the HOS forces about the further movement of the Chetniks towards the Ljubljana Gap.