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 fascist collaborators 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.

Dragoljub "Draža" Mihailović was born on 27 April 1893 in Ivanjica, Kingdom of Serbia to Mihailo and Smiljana Mihailović (née Petrović). His father was a court clerk. Orphaned at seven years of age, Mihailović was raised by his paternal uncle in Belgrade. As both of his uncles were military officers, Mihailović himself joined the Serbian Military Academy in October 1910. He fought as a cadet in the Serbian Army during the Balkan Wars of 1912–13 and was awarded the Silver Medal of Valor at the end of the First Balkan War, in May 1913. At the end of the Second Balkan War, during which he mainly led operations along the Albanian border, he was given the rank of second lieutenant as the top soldier in his class, ranked sixth at the Serbian military academy. He served in World War I and was involved in the Serbian Army's retreat through Albania in 1915. He later received several decorations for his achievements on the Salonika front. Following the war, he became a member of the Royal Guard of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes but had to leave his position in 1920 after taking part in a public argument between communist and nationalist sympathizers. He was subsequently stationed in Skopje. In 1921, he was admitted to the Superior Military Academy of Belgrade. In 1923, having finished his studies, he was promoted as an assistant to the military staff, along with the fifteen other best alumni of his promotion. He was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel in 1930. That same year, he spent three months in Paris, following classes at the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr. Some authors claim that he met and befriended Charles de Gaulle during his stay, although there is no known evidence of this. In 1935, he became a military attaché to the Kingdom of Bulgaria and was stationed to Sofia. On 6 September 1935, he was promoted to the rank of colonel. Mihailović then came in contact with members of Zveno and considered taking part in a plot which aimed to provoke Boris III's abdication and the creation of an alliance between Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, but, being untrained as a spy, he was soon identified by Bulgarian authorities and was asked to leave the country. He was then appointed as an attaché to Czechoslovakia in Prague.

His military career almost came to an abrupt end in 1939, when he submitted a report strongly criticizing the organization of the Royal Yugoslav Army (Serbo-Croatian: Vojska Kraljevine Jugoslavije, VKJ). Among his most important proposals were abandoning the defence of the northern frontier to concentrate forces in the mountainous interior; re-organizing the armed forces into Serb, Croat, and Slovene units in order to better counter subversive activities; and using mobile Chetnik units along the borders. Milan Nedić, the Minister of the Army, was incensed by Mihailović's report and ordered that he be confined to barracks for 30 days. Afterwards, Mihailović became a professor at Belgrade's staff college. In the summer of 1940, he attended a function put on by the British military attaché for the Association of Yugoslav Reserve NCOs. The meeting was seen as highly anti-Nazi in tone, and the German ambassador protested Mihailović's presence. Nedić once more ordered him confined to barracks for 30 days as well as demoted and placed on the retired list. These last punishments were avoided only by Nedić's retirement in November and his replacement by Petar Pešić.

In the years preceding the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia, Mihailović was stationed in Celje, Drava Banovina (modern Slovenia). At the time of the invasion, Colonel Mihailović was an assistant to the chief-of-staff of the Yugoslav Second Army in northern Bosnia. He briefly served as the Second Army chief-of-staff prior to taking command of a "Rapid Unit" (brzi odred) shortly before the Yugoslav High Command capitulated to the Germans on 17 April 1941.

Following the invasion and occupation of Yugoslavia by Germany, Italy, Hungary, a small group of officers and soldiers led by Mihailović escaped in the hope of finding VKJ units still fighting in the mountains. After skirmishing with several Ustaše and Muslim bands and attempting to sabotage several objects, Mihailović and about 80 of his men crossed the Drina River into German-occupied Serbia on 29 April. Mihailović planned to establish an underground intelligence movement and establish contact with the Allies, though it is unclear if he initially envisioned to start an actual armed resistance movement.

For the time being, Mihailović established a small nucleus of officers with an armed guard, which he called the "Command of Chetnik Detachments of the Yugoslav Army". After arriving at Ravna Gora in early May 1941, he realized that his group of seven officers and twenty-four non-commissioned officers and soldiers was the only one. He began to draw up lists of conscripts and reservists for possible use. His men at Ravna Gora were joined by a group of civilians, mainly intellectuals from the Serbian Cultural Club, who took charge of the movement's propaganda sector.