page_title: Dragiša Vasić
section_title: Early life
hierarchical_section_title: Dragiša Vasić / Early life
caption_attribution_description: English: Below: In the face of an overwhelming attack by armies from three countries, rather than surrender, the entire Serb Army along with the King and a large number of civilians, conduct a perilous retreat westward through the steep snowy mountains into Albania, where they will seek Allied assistance and wait to fight another day.
context_page_description: Dragomir "Dragiša" Vasić was a Serbian lawyer, writer and publicist who became one of the chief Chetnik ideologues during World War II. He finished law school in Belgrade and fought with the Serbian Army during the Balkan Wars and World War I. During the interwar period, he worked as a lawyer and represented a number of communist defendants. He was a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and became a correspondent at the Academy of Fine Arts on 12 February 1934. In 1936, he joined the Serbian Cultural Club and later became its vice-president. He is reported to have developed connections with Soviet intelligence services during this time.
  Following the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia, he joined the Chetniks and became one of the three most important members of the Central National Committee established in August 1941 by Chetnik leader Draža Mihailović. Vasić quickly became Mihailović's right-hand man and remained so until 1943, when Mihailović named Stevan Moljević as head of the Central National Committee. In 1945, Vasić joined Chetnik commander Pavle Đurišić and his forces as they began withdrawing from Montenegro towards Slovenia.
context_section_description: Dragiša Vasić was born in Gornji Milanovac, Kingdom of Serbia on 2 September 1885. He finished primary school and gymnasium in the town before moving to Belgrade to study law. Between 1912 and 1913, he fought in the Balkan Wars as a reserve officer in the Serbian Army and participated in the Battle of Kumanovo and the Battle of Bregalnica. He continued serving with the Serbian Army during World War I and fought at the Battle of Kolubara in November and December 1914. He retreated with Serbian forces through Albania during the winter of 1915 and 1916 and landed on the Greek island of Corfu, from where he was transferred to the Salonika Front. In 1917, he became disillusioned with the Karađorđević dynasty following the Salonika Trial, in which Vasić's cousin, Ljubomir Vulović, was sentenced to death and executed for being a member of the Black Hand.
  Vasić was de-mobilized at the end of the war, in November 1918, and left the army with the rank of captain. He expressed his opposition to regent Alexander by joining the Republican Party and became one of the editors of the independent Serbian newspaper Progres. Authorities responded to his publications by drafting him back into the armed forces. Vasić participated in military exercises near the Albanian border and was later transferred to the 30th Infantry Regiment, which had been involved in suppressing an uprising in northern Albania.
  He began practicing law in Belgrade in 1921 and, in January 1922, represented a number of communist defendants who were accused of attempting to assassinate King Alexander. At around the same time, he became good friends with academic Slobodan Jovanović, who at the time opposed the ruling People's Radical Party (NRS) of Nikola Pašić. In 1922, he became close friends with Croat writer Miroslav Krleža, who regularly contributed to Vasić's magazine Književna republika (Literary Republic). Together with a group of prominent Serbian writers, he was one of the founders of the Yugoslav PEN center in 1926. In 1927, Vasić visited the Soviet Union with Vladislav S. Ribnikar and Sreten Stojanović. He became one of the editors of the leftist magazine Nova literatura (New Literature) at the end of 1928. By the time of King Alexander's royal dictatorship proclamation on 6 January 1929, Vasić was widely believed to be a communist sympathizer as a result of his dissatisfaction with post-war political developments in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. In 1931, he used his connections with General Petar Živković to secure the release of Đuro Cvijić, a former leader of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia who had been sentenced to death by authorities. Vasić was a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) and became a correspondent at the Academy of Fine Arts on 12 February 1934.
  Vasić left the Republican Party and, with Jovanović's encouragement, founded the nationalist Serbian Cultural Club in 1936. He later became its vice-president. Before World War II, he edited a periodical titled Srpski glas (Serbian Voice). Together with Milan Žujović and Milan Nikolić, Vasić was member of the Executive Council of the secret society Conspiracy, (Serbian: Конспирација), established on 8 August 1938 to perform coup d etat and overthrow regime of Prince Pavle with support of United Kingdom. He sided with Serbian nationalists during the concordat crisis in 1938 and opposed the Cvetković–Maček Agreement of August 1939, which granted greater autonomy to Croatia within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Vasić is reported to have had some contacts with Soviet intelligence services.
caption: A column of Serbian soldiers retreating through the Albanian mountains, c. 1915. Vasić was involved in the Serbian Army's retreat through the country during World War I.
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