Mihailovic faces Tito's offer

Colonel Draža Mihailović gathered around himself, from May 1941, the elements of the Royal Yugoslav Army that remained loyal to the king and the government-in-exile, on the Ravna Gora plateau. His men, the Chetniks (Četnici, "irregular fighters"), saw themselves as the clandestine regular army of occupied Yugoslavia, and he himself reasoned as a cautious officer: preserve his cadres, await a Western landing, avoid provoking the occupier until the conditions for a decisive uprising were met.

German terror seemed to prove him right. At Kraljevo and Kragujevac, the Wehrmacht had just shot a hundred hostages for every soldier killed, and the bloodshed deepened his conviction that a premature insurrection would be a catastrophe.

Facing him, the communist Partisans of Josip Broz Tito waged an offensive guerrilla war and held the "Republic of Užice." The two leaders had already met at Struganik on 19 September without reaching agreement. On 27 October 1941, at Brajići, Tito pressed again, proposing to unite their forces for a general uprising.

Mihailović now weighed three paths that stood wholly opposed: to merge his units into the Partisans' and launch open combat; to refuse the merger and husband his forces on a waiting line; or to turn his weapons first against the Partisans to secure exclusive control of the Serbian resistance.