Konstantin "Kosta" MilovanoviàPeÃÂanac (; 1879âÂÂ1944) was a Serbian and Yugoslav Chetnik commander (vojvoda) during the Balkan Wars, World War I and World War II. PeÃÂanac fought on the Serbian side in both Balkan Wars and World War I, joining the forces of Kosta Vojinoviàduring the Toplica uprising of 1917. Between the wars he was an important leader of Chetnik veteran associations, and was known for his strong hostility to the Yugoslav Communist Party, which made him popular in conservative circles. As president of the Chetnik Association during the 1930s, he transformed it into an aggressively partisan Serb political organisation with over half a million members. During World War II, PeÃÂanac collaborated with both the German military administration and their puppet government in the German-occupied territory of Serbia.
Just before the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the Yugoslav government provided PeÃÂanac with funds and arms to raise guerrilla units in southern Serbia, Macedonia and Kosovo. He formed a detachment of about 300 men, mostly in the Toplica river valley in southern Serbia, which avoided destruction during the invasion. In the first three months after the surrender, PeÃÂanac gathered more troops from Serb refugees fleeing Macedonia and Kosovo. However, his Chetniks fought only Albanian groups in the region, and did not engage the Germans. Following the uprising in the occupied territory in early July 1941, PeÃÂanac quickly resolved to abandon resistance against the occupiers, and by the end of August had concluded agreements with the German occupation forces and the puppet government of Milan Nediàto collaborate with them and fight the communist-led Partisans. In July 1942, rival Chetnik leader Draà ¾a Mihailoviàarranged for the Yugoslav government-in-exile to denounce PeÃÂanac as a traitor, and his continuing collaboration with the Germans ruined what remained of the reputation he had developed in the Balkan Wars and World War I.
The Germans rapidly realised that PeÃÂanac's Chetniks, whose numbers had grown to 8,000, were inefficient and unreliable, and even the NediÃÂ government had no confidence in them. They were completely disbanded by March 1943. PeÃÂanac was interned by the NediÃÂ regime for some time, and was killed by agents of MihailoviÃÂ in May or June 1944.
Kosta Milovanoviàwas born in a village near DeÃÂani in 1879, although some sources mistakenly identify the year as 1871. His father Milovan was a guardian of the Visoki DeÃÂani monastery. PeÃÂanac's father and his brother Milosav fought in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877âÂÂ1878. In 1883, both of his parents were killed in an attack by Albanians on the monastery. After that point, PeÃÂanac was looked after by his uncle in the village of ÃÂurakovac near Peàfor an unknown amount of time.
He arrived in Serbia in 1892 at the age of 14 and worked as a mercenary. When he was 21, he was called up for army service and served in the engineer corps, becoming a reserve officer. He later worked with the border gendarmerie near Vranje as a corporal. PeÃÂanac was discharged at some point for reasons unknown and later joined the Chetniks. While serving with them he was given the nickname "PeÃÂanac", derived from the name of the town in which he grew up.
In 1895, war broke out in Macedonia against the Ottoman Empire. PeÃÂanac joined the Serbian Chetnik Organization in 1903, and fought against the Ottoman army in several significant battles including that of à  uplja Stena (near PÃÂinja) and ÃÂelopek (near Staro NagoriÃÂane). The deacon of the Vladika of à ½iÃÂa and commander () Jovan GrkoviÃÂ-Gapon suggested awarding PeÃÂanac the title of vojvoda; at a Christmas-day meeting in 1904, PeÃÂanac received the title at the age of 25. In the period between 1905 and 1907, he led several major battles against the Ottoman army in the Skopje region. In 1908, PeÃÂanac married Sofia Milosavljeviàfrom the town of Aleksinac. He went on to father four children with her. In 1910, as the struggles in Macedonia intensified, he left his children and pregnant wife, and returned to the battlefield.
In the First Balkan War, fought from October 1912 to May 1913, PeÃÂanac was mobilised in the Serbian Third Army, holding the rank of sergeant in the Morava Division. He took part in the defeat of the Albanians in Merdare, the Battle of Kumanovo and the capture of Metohija. During the Second Balkan War, fought from 29 June to 10 August 1913, PeÃÂanac is believed to have been stationed at the front at Kitka on Osogovo Mountain along the Zletovska and Bregalnica rivers. There, his division took part in the Battle of Bregalnica with the Bulgarians. After the Bulgarian attacks failed, they sent parliamentarians to seek a truce, but the Serbian side refused and the fighting continued. After his division had endured six days of heavy fighting, the Bulgarians were defeated at Grljani near Vinica.
Following the disastrous end to the Serbian campaign in late 1915, PeÃÂanac escaped to Corfu along with the retreating Serbian army and government, and ultimately joined the Salonika front. In 1915, PeÃÂanac had received various medals for his "merit in fighting" including three gold medals for bravery, one for military virtue, and the Order of the Star of KaraÃÂorÃÂe (4th Class) for his service in World War I and possibly also for his prior military accomplishments.
In September 1916, the Serbian High Command sent then-Lieutenant PeÃÂanac by air to Mehane (south-west of Nià ¡ in the Toplica region) to prepare a guerrilla uprising in support of a planned Allied offensive. There, PeÃÂanac contacted several groups of guerrillas, known as comitadji. PeÃÂanac joined forces with local leader Kosta VojinoviÃÂ, and they both established headquarters on Mount Kopaonik. Rivalry quickly developed between the two leaders, mainly because PeÃÂanac only had orders to prepare to support the planned Allied offensive, but Vojinoviàwas conducting operations that might result in pre-emptive action by the Bulgarian occupation forces. Matters came to a head in January â February 1917 when the Bulgarians began conscripting local Serbs for military service. At a meeting of guerrilla leaders to discuss whether they should commence a general uprising, PeÃÂanac was outvoted. However, events had overtaken the leaders, and they were essentially joining a popular uprising that was already underway. After guerrillas under PeÃÂanac's command engaged the Bulgarians, he was hailed as a leader of the resistance, although he had serious reservations about the eventual outcome once the Bulgarians and Austro-Hungarians committed large numbers of troops to subdue the uprising. The guerrillas were closing on Nià ¡ in early March when the occupying forces went on the offensive. PeÃÂanac advised his fighters to hide out in the woods and mountains, while Vojinoviàordered his to fight to the death. By 25 March, the uprising had been crushed. PeÃÂanac's participation in the rebellion came at a great personal cost; three of his children died whilst in Bulgarian internment.
In April 1917, PeÃÂanac re-emerged with his guerrillas, attacking a railway station, destroying a bridge and raiding a Bulgarian village on the border. PeÃÂanac avoided a further offensive by the occupation forces in July by disappearing into the mountains once again. After emerging for a short time, in SeptemberâÂÂOctober 1917 PeÃÂanac again dispersed his guerrillas and infiltrated the Austro-Hungarian occupied zone, where he remained in hiding until mid-1918. During his period in hiding, he met with the Kosovar Albanian leader Azem Galica to discuss joint actions against the occupation forces.
PeÃÂanac was the most prominent figure in the Chetnik movement during the interwar period. During the 1920 Constitutional Assembly elections for the newly created Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Prime Minister Nikola Paà ¡iàsent PeÃÂanac to the Sandà ¾ak with orders to intimidate the local Muslim population in the hope of keeping the turnout low. In the same year, attempts by the Yugoslav government to disarm and conscript Kosovo Albanians were met by revolts. PeÃÂanac was sent to Kosovo to form detachments made up of local Serbs to fight the rebels. This resulted in rebel attacks on Serb villages.
PeÃÂanac had a leading role in the Association against Bulgarian Bandits, an organisation that arbitrarily terrorised Bulgarians in the à  tip region. He also served as a commander with the Organization of Yugoslav Nationalists (ORJUNA). In 1922, after the failed assassination of a prominent People's Radical Party member in the Deà ¾eva district, the authorities sent PeÃÂanac and his Chetniks to fight Jusuf MehonjiÃÂ, who was behind the attempted assassination, and his unit of outlaws. In this action, PeÃÂanac's Chetniks killed 28 Muslim inhabitants of the village of StarÃÂeviÃÂi near Tutin. They failed to catch MehonjiÃÂ, and ultimately MehonjiÃÂ's unit defeated PeÃÂanac's Chetniks in a battle. PeÃÂanac was present as a member of parliament at the assassination of Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) leader Stjepan Radiàand HSS deputies Pavle Radiàand ÃÂuro BasariÃÂek on 20 June 1928. Prior to the shooting, he was accused by HSS deputy Ivan Pernar of being responsible for a massacre of 200 Muslims in 1921.
PeÃÂanac became the president of the Chetnik Association in 1932. By opening membership of the Chetnik Association to new younger members that had not served in World War I, he grew the organisation during the 1930s from a nationalist veterans' association focused on protecting veterans' rights to an aggressively partisan Serb political organisation with 500,000 members throughout the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. During this period, PeÃÂanac formed close ties with the far-right Yugoslav Radical Union government of Milan StojadinoviÃÂ. PeÃÂanac was known for his hostility to the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, which made him popular with conservatives, especially those in StojadinoviÃÂ's party.
Shortly before the Axis invasion of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in April 1941, PeÃÂanac was requested by the Yugoslav Ministry of the Army and Navy to prepare for guerrilla operations and guard the southern area of Serbia, Macedonia, and Kosovo from pro-Bulgarians and pro-Albanians rebels. He was given money and weapons, and managed to arm several hundred men in the Toplica River valley in southern Serbia. PeÃÂanac's force remained intact after the German occupation of Serbia and supplemented its strength from Serb refugees fleeing Macedonia and Kosovo. PeÃÂanac's detachments fought against Albanian bands in the early summer of 1941. At this time and for a considerable time after, only detachments under PeÃÂanac were identified by the term "Chetnik". With the rise of the communist Partisans, PeÃÂanac gave up any interest in resistance and by late August reached agreements with both the Serbian puppet government and the German authorities to carry out attacks against the Partisans.
While he was concluding arrangements with the Germans, on 18 August 1941 PeÃÂanac received a letter from Draà ¾a Mihailoviàrequesting an agreement be reached where PeÃÂanac would control the Chetniks south of the Western Morava River while Mihailoviàwould control the Chetniks in all other areas. PeÃÂanac declined his request and suggested that he might offer Mihailoviàthe chief of staff position and recommended MihailoviÃÂ's detachments disband and join his detachments. In the meantime, PeÃÂanac had arranged for the transfer of several thousand of his Chetniks to the Serbian Gendarmerie to act as German auxiliaries.
On 27 August, PeÃÂanac issued an open "Proclamation to the Dear People", in which he portrayed himself as a defender and protector of Serbs and called "on detachments that have been formed without his approval" to come together under his command. He demanded that individuals hiding in the forests immediately return to their homes and that acts of sabotage against the occupiers cease or the perpetrators would face death.
In September 1941, some of PeÃÂanac's subordinates broke ranks to join with the Partisans in fighting the Germans and their Serbian auxiliaries. In the Kopaonik region, a previously loyal subordinate of PeÃÂanac began attacking local gendarmerie stations and clashing with armed bands of Albanian Muslims. By the end of October, the Germans decided to stop arming the "unreliable" elements within PeÃÂanac's Chetniks, and attached the remainder to their other Serbian auxiliary forces. On November 16, the German occupiers held a meeting in Nià ¡ between representatives of the Serbian puppet government and prominent Albanian collaborators from Kosovo to stop the continuation of ethnic and religious violence between collaborationist groups. The Albanian side blamed the Serbian side for instigating the conflict, citing the involvement of PeÃÂanac's men in the Battle of Novi Pazar. PeÃÂanac was forced to answer to the quisling government's Minister of Interior Milan AÃÂimoviàand a German representative. He said that his commander Meà ¡an ÃÂuroviàhad possibly participated in the attack and banned him from attacking Albanian forces in the region. In return, the Germans guaranteed that Albanian forces would not enter Serbian territory as often.
On 7 October 1941, PeÃÂanac sent a request to Milan NediÃÂ, the head of the Serbian puppet government, for stronger organisation, supplies, arms, salary funds, and more. Over time, his requests were fulfilled and a German liaison officer was appointed at PeÃÂanac's headquarters to help coordinate actions. According to German data, on 17 January 1942 a total of 72 Chetnik officers and 7,963 men were being provided for by the Serbian Gendarmerie Command. This fell short of the maximum authorised size of 8,745 men and included two or three thousand of MihailoviÃÂ's Chetniks who were legalised in November 1941. In the same month, PeÃÂanac sought permission from the Italians for his forces to move into eastern Montenegro, but was refused over Italian concerns that the Chetniks would move into the Sandà ¾ak.
In April 1942, the German Commanding General in Serbia, General der Artillerie (General) Paul Bader, issued orders giving unit numbers C39 to C101 to the PeÃÂanac Chetnik detachments, which were put under the command of the local German division or area command post. These orders also required the deployment of a German liaison officer with all detachments engaged in operations, and limited their movement outside their assigned area. Supply of arms and ammunition was also controlled. In July 1942, MihailoviÃÂ arranged for the Yugoslav government-in-exile to denounce PeÃÂanac as a traitor. His continuing collaboration ruined what remained of the reputation he had developed in the Balkan Wars and World War I.
The Germans soon found that PeÃÂanac's units were inefficient, unreliable, and of little military use. PeÃÂanac's Chetniks regularly clashed and had rivalries with other German auxiliaries, such as the Serbian State Guard and Serbian Volunteer Command, as well as with MihailoviÃÂ's Chetniks. The Germans and the puppet government commenced disbanding them in September 1942, and all but one were dissolved by the end of 1942. The last detachment was dissolved in March 1943. PeÃÂanac's followers were dispersed to other German auxiliary forces, German labour units, and prisoner-of-war camps. Many deserted to join MihailoviÃÂ. Nothing is known of PeÃÂanac's activities in the months that followed except that he was interned for some time by the Serbian puppet government.
Accounts of PeÃÂanac's capture and death vary. According to one account, PeÃÂanac, four of his leaders and 40 of their followers were captured by forces loyal to MihailoviÃÂ in February 1944. All were killed within days except PeÃÂanac, who remained in custody to write his war memoirs before being executed on 5 May 1944. Another source states he was assassinated on 6 June 1944 by Chetniks loyal to MihailoviÃÂ.