The Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia () was a German-occupied region of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia during World War II, encompassing modern Serbia and adjacent areas. The Territory was established in April 1941 following the invasion of Yugoslavia by the German Wehrmacht with other Axis powers, and existed throughout the war in Yugoslavia until the German withdrawal in 1944. The Territory was nominally governed by a Serb puppet government under Nazi control. German forces in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia committed war crimes in their suppression of Yugoslav Partisan activity and perpetrated the Final Solution in Serbia; the Germans were actively aided by Serbian collaborators.
Overview
The Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia ("the Territory") included most of modern central Serbia, along with the northern part of Kosovo and the Banat. The Territory had key rail and Danube transport routes and contained valuable resources, particularly non-ferrous metals. The Territory of the Military Commander was the only instance in occupied Yugoslavia in which the German occupiers established a military government. Sources variously describe the Territory as a puppet state, a protectorate, a "special administrative province", or describe it as having a puppet government.
On 22 April 1941, the Territory was placed under the supreme authority of the German Military Commander in Serbia, with day-to-day administration assigned to the chief of the military administration staff. The lines of command and control in the Territory were never unified, and they were made more complex by the appointment of direct representatives of senior Nazi figures such as Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler for police and security matters, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring for the economy, and Reichsminister Joachim von Ribbentrop for foreign affairs.
The German Military Commander in Serbia had very limited German garrison troops and police detachments at his disposal to maintain order, and could request assistance only from three divisions of poorly-equipped occupation troops. On 30 May 1941, the Military Commander appointed the first of two Serbian civil puppet governments to carry out administrative tasks in accordance with German direction and supervision, called the Commissioner Government. The Commissioner Government was a basic tool of the occupation regime, lacking in any powers, and was to be short-lived. In late July 1941, an uprising began which quickly swamped the Serbian gendarmerie, the German police and security apparatus, and the rear area infantry force. The uprising initially involved both the communist-led Yugoslav Partisans and the monarchist Chetniks.
On 29 August 1941, the Germans established a second puppet government for the Territory with the aim of quelling the uprising with Serbian war collaborators. The Commissioner Government was replaced with the Government of National Salvation under Serbian general Milan Nedić. Although it enjoyed some support, the Government of National Salvation was unpopular with the majority of Serbs. The Nedić regime had no status under international law and no powers beyond those granted by the Germans; the regime was simply an instrument of German rule.
The Government of National Salvation failed to quash the uprising, which became a sustained resistance movement, forcing the Germans to bring in front line divisions from occupied France, occupied Greece, and from the Eastern Front to suppress the uprising. In late September 1941, the Germans launched Operation Uzice, which expelled the Yugoslav Partisans from the Territory. In December, Operation Mihailovic dispersed the Chetniks. Resistance would continue until 1944; the Germans responded with frequent reprisal killings, at times on the order of 100 Serbian hostages executed for every one German killed by Partisans.
German forces took the leading and guiding role of the Final Solution in Serbia; they were actively aided by Serbian collaborators. The German authorities murdered nearly all Jews in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia. The killings came in two waves: in 1941, by mass shootings of men in reprisals; and in early 1942, by the gassing of women and children in mobile Nazi gas vans. The Banjica concentration camp in Belgrade was controlled jointly by Nedic's Government of National Salvation and by the German army.
The Banat was an autonomous region throughout the occupation. It was nominally responsible to the puppet governments in Belgrade, but in practice was governed by its Volksdeutsche (ethnic German) minority. While the Commissioner Government had been limited to using only gendarmerie, Nedić's Government of National Salvation was authorized to raise an armed force to impose order, called the Serbian State Guard. The State Guard was immediately placed under the control of the SS and Police Leader, and functioned as German auxiliaries until the German withdrawal in October 1944.
The Germans used Bulgarian troops, at all times under German control, to assist in their occupation of the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia. The Germans raised other local auxiliaries in the Territory, often with specific objectives. Albanian collaborators in northern Kosovo secured the Trepça Mines and the Belgrade-Skopje railway for the Germans, gaining effective autonomy from Nedić's puppet Government of National Salvation in Belgrade. This de facto autonomy was later formalized by the German authorities.
One area in which the Government of National Salvation did exercise initiative and achieve relative success was its reception of Serb refugees into the Territory from other parts of partitioned Yugoslavia; the size of the refugee population has been estimated in the hundreds of thousands.
The Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia dissolved in 1944, when Germans withdrew in the face of a combined Red Army, Bulgarian People's Army and Partisan Belgrade Offensive, bringing. Nedić and the Government of National Salvation remained in place until the Territory's dissolution. After the war, several key German and Serbian leaders in the Territory were tried and executed for war crimes. Milan Nedić died in custody in Belgrade in 1946, awaiting trial for treason.
Names The region was formally named the Gebiet des Militärbefehlshabers in Serbien by its German occupiers; its official name in English is the "Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia" ("the Territory) and in Serbian Подручје Војног заповедника у Србији, romanized Područje vojnog zapovednika u Srbiji.
Sources, however, refer to the Territory using a wide variety of terms:
a German-controlled "Serbian Residual State" a German-controlled territory a rump Serbian state a "so-called German protectorate" a special "German-protected area" German-occupied Serbia Nedić's Serbia () Serbia Serbia–Banat Serbia under German military administration Serbia under German occupation
History
1941
Invasion and partition
In April 1941, Germany and its allies invaded and occupied the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which was then partitioned. Some Yugoslav territory was annexed by its Axis neighbors, Hungary, Bulgaria and Italy. The Germans engineered and supported the creation of the puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia (, NDH), which roughly comprised most of the pre-war Banovina Croatia, along with the rest of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and some adjacent territory. The Italians, Hungarians and Bulgarians occupied other parts of Yugoslavian territory. Germany did not annex any Yugoslav territory, but occupied northern parts of present-day Slovenia and stationed occupation troops in the northern half of the NDH. The German-occupied part of Slovenia was divided into two administrative areas that were placed under the administration of the Gauleiters of the neighboring Reichsgau Kärnten and Reichsgau Steiermark.
The remaining territory, which consisted of Serbia proper, the northern part of Kosovo (around Kosovska Mitrovica), and the Banat was occupied by the Germans and placed under the administration of a German military government. This was due to the key rail and riverine transport routes that passed through it, and its valuable resources, particularly non-ferrous metals. Some sources describe the territory as a puppet state, or a "special administrative province", with other sources describing it as having a puppet government. A demarcation line, known as the "Vienna Line", ran across Yugoslavia from the Reich border in the west to the point where the boundaries of German-occupied Serbia met the borders of the Bulgarian- and Albanian-annexed Yugoslavian territories. To the north of the line, the Germans held sway, with the Italians having prime responsibility to the south of the line.
Establishment of the military government of occupation
Even before the Yugoslav surrender, the German Army High Command (, or OKH) had issued a proclamation to the population under German occupation, detailing laws that applied to all German-occupied territory. When the Germans withdrew from the Yugoslav territory that was annexed or occupied by their Axis partners, these laws applied only to the part of modern-day Slovenia administered by the two Reichsgau, and the German-occupied territory of Serbia. This latter territory "was occupied outright by German troops and was placed under a military government". The exact boundaries of the occupied territory were fixed in a directive issued by Adolf Hitler on 12 April 1941, which also directed the creation of the military administration. This directive was followed up on 20 April 1941 by orders issued by the Chief of the OKH which established the Military Commander in Serbia as the head of the occupation regime, responsible to the Quartermaster-General of the OKH. In the interim, the staff for the military government had been assembled in Germany and the duties of the Military Commander in Serbia had been detailed. These included "safeguarding the railroad lines between Belgrade and Salonika and the Danube shipping route, executing the economic orders issued [by Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring], and establishing and maintaining peace and order". In the short-term, he was also responsible for guarding the huge numbers of Yugoslav prisoners of war, and safeguarding captured weapons and munitions.