Deaths on July 17

Draža Mihailović, Serbian general (b. 1893)

Dragoljub "Draža" Mihailović (Serbian Cyrillic: Драгољуб Дража Михаиловић; 27 April 1893 – 17 July 1946) was a Yugoslav Serb general during World War II. He was the leader of the Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army (Chetniks), a royalist and nationalist movement and guerrilla force established following the German invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941.

Born in Ivanjica and raised in Belgrade, Mihailović fought in the Balkan Wars and the First World War with distinction. After the fall of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Mihailović organized the Chetniks at Ravna Gora and engaged in guerrilla warfare alongside Josip Broz Tito's Partisans against occupying German forces. Opposing strategies, ideological differences and general distrust drove them apart, and by late 1941 the two groups were in open conflict. Many Chetnik groups collaborated or established modus vivendi with the Axis powers, which along with British frustration over Mihailović's inaction led to the Allies shifting their support to Tito in 1944. Mihailović himself collaborated with Milan Nedić and Dimitrije Ljotić at the end of the war.

Mihailović went into hiding after the war but was captured in March 1946. He was tried and convicted of high treason and war crimes by the communist authorities of the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, and executed by firing squad in Belgrade in July. The nature and extent of his responsibility for collaboration and ethnic massacres remains controversial. In May 2015, Mihailović's verdict was overturned on appeal by the Supreme Court of Cassation of Serbia, citing his trial and conviction as politically and ideologically motivated.