1st Belgrade Special Combat detachment | |
---|---|
Active | 1942–1944 |
Country | Nedić regime Nazi Germany |
Allegiance | Nazi Germany |
Branch | Gestapo |
Size | 2,000+ in total went through the unit, 145 members at a given time |
Commanders | |
Notable commanders | Strahinja Janjić |
The 1st Belgrade Special Combat detachment, known among its members as the "Serbian Gestapo", [lower-alpha 1] [1] was a special police unit which was established by the German Gestapo in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia [2] during World War II.
On 6 April 1941, Axis forces invaded the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Poorly equipped and poorly trained, the Royal Yugoslav Army was quickly defeated. [3] The country was then dismembered, with Serbia being reduced to its pre-1912 borders and placed under a government of German military occupation. [4] With their forces in the Balkans depleted by the need to send troops to the Eastern Front, the Germans sought to find local leaders to police the region for them. In Serbia this came in the form of Milan Nedić, a pre-war politician who was known to have pro-Axis leanings. [5]
The Germans then utilized a series of irregular armed formations to help stabilize the region. [6] One of these formations was the 1st Belgrade Special Combat detachment, formed in mid-1942 by the German Gestapo without the knowledge of Nedić or his government. It was the intention of SS-Oberführer Emanuel Schäfer, the newly appointed chief of the German Security Police in Serbia, to create "an indigenous Serbian entity through which the Gestapo could exert more control over the Nedić regime. Captain Strahinja Janjić, a reported German agent [7] and member of the Serbian fascist movement Zbor, was selected by Schäfer to lead the new organization. [4] Janjić proceeded to recruit members of quisling formations such as the Serbian State Guard and the Serbian Volunteer Corps, as well as high school students, merchants and officials from Nedić's administration. Members of the detachment then began calling themselves the Serbian Gestapo (Serbian : Српски Гестапо, romanized: Srpski Gestapo). Meanwhile, Janjić began to see himself as replacing Nedić and becoming the Führer of a national socialist Serbia with the first twelve members of his detachment, whom he called his "apostles", taking the highest state positions. Furthermore, Janjić proposed to Felix Benzler of the Reich Ministry of Foreign Affairs and August Meyszner of the Schutzstaffel (SS) that he should be entrusted with the creation of two Serbian SS divisions, one for the Eastern Front and one for the front in North Africa. When Nedić heard of Janjić's intentions, he ordered his arrest and the disbanding of the 1st Belgrade Special Combat detachment. Janjić was subsequently detained at the Banjica concentration camp, before being released at the behest of the German Gestapo. [1]
Between 1942 and 1944, the 1st Belgrade Special Combat detachment was active in the Syrmia region of the Independent State of Croatia. [8] At the end of 1942, it was recorded as having 145 members. Headquartered in a reconfigured primary school where torture and murders occurred, it was envisioned by the Germans as being an elite formation which would operate against the Yugoslav Partisans. However, Janjić was more concerned with usurping Nedić than fighting the Communists. On 22 February 1943, Nedić sent a memorandum to Schäfer, protesting the activities of Janjić's detachment. [1]
After receiving the memorandum, Schäfer divided the 1st Belgrade Special Combat detachment into two parts. Subsequently, Janjić and twenty-six of his men left Belgrade and travelled to Berlin, where they continued to work for the German Gestapo. Another thirty-three members of the detachment remained in Belgrade under the leadership of Janjić's deputy, Svetozar Nećak. Here, they worked to fulfill specific tasks set out to them by the Germans, and were ordered to undermine the actions of the Partisans rather than Nedić's administration. Headquartered in his Berlin apartment, Janjić had his men infiltrate the ranks of the Yugoslav forced labourers there, using methods such as blackmail, robbery, and entrapment to expose Partisan sympathizers. Despite these efforts, Janjić's actions were seen as being "[harmful] to German interests," and in May 1944 he was replaced by two other members of his detachment. [9] It is reported by new communist authorities that 121 people died as either Gestapo collaborators or as members of Serbian Gestapo after September 12, 1944, during and liberation of Belgrade. [10]
Occasionally, members of the detachment wore the uniform of Draža Mihailović's Chetniks. At other times, however, they dressed in German military uniforms while pretending not to know the Serbian language. [1]
Dimitrije Ljotić was a Serbian and Yugoslav fascist politician and ideologue who established the Yugoslav National Movement (Zbor) in 1935 and collaborated with German occupational authorities in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia during World War II.
The Serbian Volunteer Corps, also known as Ljotićevci, was the paramilitary branch of the fascist political organisation Zbor, and collaborated with the forces of Nazi Germany in the German-occupied territory of Serbia during World War II.
The Banjica concentration camp was a Nazi German concentration camp in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia, the military administration of the Third Reich established after the Invasion and occupation of Yugoslavia during World War II. In response to escalating resistance, the German army instituted severe repressive measures – mass executions of civilian hostages and the establishment of concentration camps. Located in the Banjica neighborhood of Dedinje—a suburb of Belgrade—it was originally used by the Germans as a center for holding hostages. The camp was later used to hold anti-fascist Serbs, Jews, Roma, captured Partisans, Chetniks and other opponents of Nazi Germany. By 1942, most executions occurred at the firing ranges at Jajinci, Marinkova Bara and the Jewish cemetery.
The Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia was the area of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia that was placed under a military government of occupation by the Wehrmacht following the invasion, occupation and dismantling of Yugoslavia in April 1941. The territory included only most of modern central Serbia, with the addition of the northern part of Kosovo, and the Banat. This territory was the only area of partitioned Yugoslavia in which the German occupants established a military government. This was due to the key rail and the Danube transport routes that passed through it, and its valuable resources, particularly non-ferrous metals. On 22 April 1941, the territory was placed under the supreme authority of the German military commander in Serbia, with the day-to-day administration of the territory under the control of the chief of the military administration staff. The lines of command and control in the occupied territory were never unified, and were made more complex by the appointment of direct representatives of senior Nazi figures such as Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, and Reichsminister Joachim von Ribbentrop. The Germans used Bulgarian troops to assist in the occupation, but they were at all times under German control. Sources variously describe the territory as a puppet state, a protectorate, a "special administrative province", or describe it as having a puppet government. The military commander in Serbia had very limited German garrison troops and police detachments to maintain order, but could request assistance from a corps of three divisions of poorly-equipped occupation troops.
The Grand Anti-Masonic Exhibition was the name of an antisemitic exhibition that was opened on October 22, 1941 during World War II in Belgrade, the capital of the Nazi Germany-established Militärverwaltung in occupied Serbia.
The Yugoslav National Movement, also known as the United Militant Labour Organization, was a Yugoslav fascist movement and organization led by politician Dimitrije Ljotić. Founded in 1935, it received considerable German financial and political assistance during the interwar period and participated in the 1935 and 1938 Yugoslav parliamentary elections, in which it never received more than 1 percent of the popular vote.
The Serbian State Guard, also known as the Nedićevci, was a collaborationist paramilitary force used to impose law and order within the German occupied territory of Serbia during World War II. It was formed from two former Yugoslav gendarmerie regiments, was created with the approval of the German military authorities, and for a long period was controlled by the Higher SS and Police Leader in the occupied territory. It assisted the Germans in imposing one of the most brutal occupation regimes in occupied Europe and helped guard and execute prisoners at the Banjica concentration camp in Belgrade. Its leaders and much of the rank and file were sympathetic to the Chetnik movement of Draža Mihailović, and it was purged by the Germans on several occasions for that reason. In October 1944, as the Soviet Red Army closed on Belgrade, the SDS was transferred to Mihailović's control by a member of the fleeing Nedić administration, but it quickly disintegrated during its withdrawal west, with only a small number of former SDS members being captured by the British near the Italian-Yugoslav border in May 1945.
The Russian Protective Corps was an armed force composed of anti-communist White Russian émigrés that was raised in the German occupied territory of Serbia during World War II. Commanded for almost its whole existence by Lieutenant General Boris Shteifon, it served primarily as a guard force for factories and mines between late 1941 and early 1944, initially as the "Separate Russian Corps" then Russian Factory Protective Group. It was incorporated into the Wehrmacht on 1 December 1942 and later clashed with the communist-led Yugoslav Partisans and briefly with the Chetniks. In late 1944, it fought against the Red Army during the Belgrade Offensive, later withdrawing to Bosnia and Slovenia as the German forces retreated from Yugoslavia and Greece. After Shteifon′s death in Zagreb, the Independent State of Croatia, on 30 April 1945, Russian Colonel Anatoly Rogozhin took over and led his troops farther north to surrender to the British in southern Austria. Unlike most other Russian formations that fought for Nazi Germany, Rogozhin and his men, who were not formally treated as Soviet citizens, were exempt from forced repatriation to the Soviet Union and were eventually set free and allowed to resettle in the West.
Konstantin Mušicki was a Yugoslav brigadier general who commanded the collaborationist Serbian Volunteer Corps during World War II. He was captured by the British Army at the end of the war, but was subsequently handed over to the Yugoslav authorities, who tried and executed him for war crimes.
Velibor Jonić was a Serbian fascist politician and government minister in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia during World War II. He taught at the Military Academy in Belgrade and at the Yugoslav royal court before the war. He was also the secretary-general of Zbor, a Yugoslav fascist movement. He became the Serbian Commissioner of Education on 10 July 1941. He was tried for collaboration by the communists following the war, was sentenced to death and executed in July 1946.
Milan Aćimović was a Yugoslav politician and collaborationist with the Axis in Yugoslavia during World War II.
Mihailo Olćan was a Serbian soldier and politician. During World War II, he served as the Minister for the Economy in Milan Nedić's German-installed Government of National Salvation which operated in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia between 1941 and 1944. He fled Yugoslavia towards the end of the war and emigrated to Australia, where he died in 1961.
During World War II, Pećanac Chetniks, also known as the Black Chetniks, were a collaborationist Chetnik irregular military force which operated in the German-occupied territory of Serbia under the leadership of vojvoda Kosta Pećanac. They were loyal to the Government of National Salvation, the German-backed Serbian puppet government.
The Government of National Salvation, also referred to as Nedić's government or Nedić's regime, was the colloquial name of the second Serbian collaborationist puppet government established after the Commissioner Government in the German-occupied territory of Serbia during World War II in Yugoslavia. Appointed by the German Military Commander in Serbia, it operated from 29 August 1941 to 4 October 1944. Unlike the Independent State of Croatia, the regime in occupied Serbia was never accorded status in international law and did not enjoy formal diplomatic recognition of the Axis powers.
The Commissioner Government was a short-lived Serbian collaborationist puppet government established in the German-occupied territory of Serbia within the Axis-partitioned Kingdom of Yugoslavia during World War II. It operated from 30 April to 29 August 1941, was headed by Milan Aćimović, and is also referred to as the Commissars Government or Council of Commissars. Of the ten commissioners, four had previously been ministers in various Yugoslav governments, and two had been assistant ministers. The members were pro-German, anti-semitic and anti-communist, and believed that Germany would win the war. The Aćimović government lacked any semblance of power, and was merely an instrument of the German occupation regime, carrying out its orders within the occupied territory. Under the overall control of the German Military Commander in Serbia, supervision of its day-to-day operations was the responsibility of the chief of the German administrative staff, SS-Brigadeführer and State Councillor Harald Turner. One of its early tasks was the implementation of German orders regarding the registration of Jews and Romani people living in the territory, and the placing of severe restrictions on their liberty.
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