Sekula Drljević

Sekula Drljević (Serbian Cyrillic: Секула Дрљевић; 7 September 1884 – 10 November 1945) was a Montenegrin nationalist, Yugoslav jurist, politician, orator, and theoretician. During World War II, he became a collaborator with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and cooperated with the Ustaše in the German puppet state of Croatia.

Born in the town of Kolašin, he earned a doctorate degree in law and became the Minister of Justice and Finance in the Kingdom of Montenegro before the outbreak of World War I. During the interwar period, he was a leading member of the "Greens", a Montenegrin nationalist and separatist movement. A proponent of the theory that Montenegrins were an ethnic group distinct from Serbs, he also founded and became the leader of the Montenegrin Federalist Party.

Following the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, Drljević began cooperating with the Italian authorities occupying Montenegro. In July, he proclaimed the reestablishment of the Kingdom of Montenegro, but his attempt to establish an Axis-aligned puppet state triggered an immediate uprising. That September, Italian authorities sent him to an internment camp in Italy after the outbreak of an anti-fascist revolt. Drljević escaped the camp several months later and made his way into the German-held half of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH). In the summer of 1944, he created the Montenegrin State Council in Zagreb.

Drljević moved back to Montenegro in 1945 and agreed to the formation of the Montenegrin National Army with Chetnik commander Pavle Đurišić. Đurišić and several other Chetnik commanders were later ambushed and killed on behalf of Drljević and the NDH. Đurišić's men later joined Drljević's Montenegrin National Army and withdrew with him towards the Austrian border. In mid-1945, Drljević crossed over into Austria with his wife, and the two ended up in a camp for displaced persons in Judenburg, where they were killed by Chetnik agents seeking to avenge Đurišić's death.