Karl Novak

In February 1943, Novak, Draža Mihailović's chief representative in the province, having tried for many months to get the Slovene Alliance to place some of their forces under his command, formed his own militia, known as the Blue Guard (also known as the "Slovene Chetniks"). All major resistance factions in Slovenia had their representatives in Novak's headquarters, including Slovenian Legion, National Legion and Sokol Legion. Novak was the only Chetnik commander who exercised complete political and military control over units under his nominal command. However, this unit never grew larger than 400 troops, and because Novak had no political base in Slovenia, it was never a significant military or political force. After the war, Novak claimed that the Royal Yugoslav Army in Slovenia had armed encounters with Italian troops and gathered intelligence on the Italians for Mihailović, but according to the historian Jozo Tomasevich the first claim is groundless as the Italians allocated an operational zone to Novak's principal unit and indirectly provided it with supplies, and its size and restrictions on its movement precluded the gathering of much useful intelligence.

After the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April, 1941 Novak went to headquarters of Draža Mihailović at Ravna Gora together with Jaka Avšič. Novak was instructed by Mihailović to infiltrate the headquarters of the communist forces in Slovenia, but this attempt failed because the Slovenian communists were warned by the communist headquarters from Užice.

Karl Novak (October 19, 1905 – 1975) was a Yugoslav Slovene military officer best known as commander of the Slovene Chetniks in the Italian-annexed Province of Ljubljana (part of modern-day Slovenia) during World War II.