European Review of History—Revue européenne d’histoire

Vol. 15, No. 2, April 2008, 179–192

Rural ‘anti-utopia’ in the ideology of Serbian collaborationists in the

Second World War
Milan Ristović*

Faculty of Philosophy (History), Belgrade, Serbia

( Received March 2007; final version received December 2007 )

The Serbian collaborationist administration, The Council of Commissaries and

National Salvation’s Government, between May 1941 and October 1944 in shaping its
political programme and ideology mixed ultraconservative nationalism with elements
of domestic version of fascist, authoritarian ‘sociology’. The main elements were
mythologisation of the village and patriarchal life in the rural extended family
community, as the only acceptable model for the spiritual and political ‘renaissance’ of
Serbia – an authoritarian, ‘organic’, peasant state – as a future member of German
New European Order. General Nedic from the end of August 1941 head of the National
Salvation’s Government presented to the German authorities, in January 1943, his
ambitious and detailed plan for the reorganisation of the domestic political system,
based on these ideas, which Berlin resolutely rejected.
Keywords: Second World War; Yugoslavia; Serbia; German occupation;
collaboration; ‘organic state’; rural utopia

One of the key principles in defining the borders of occupied Serbia was to make it as small
as possible.1 Decisions on the division of Yugoslav territories made by Axis allies at the
conference in Vienna on 21 and 22 of April 1941 reduced Central Serbia with Banat to its
pre-1912 borders (about 51,000 km2).2 There were about 3.81 million inhabitants
(or between 50% and 60% of the total Serbian population within the Yugoslav borders in
1941) living in that territory. A wave of some 400,000 –500,000 Serbian refugees poured
into Serbia from all neighbouring occupation zones (Hungarian, Bulgarian, Albanian-
Italian) and from the territory of the Ustashi Independent State of Croatia.3 Banat was
practically outside the scope and influence of the Serbian collaborationist administration4
and the German minority (approx. 120– 130,000) held power in it.5
Regarding the attitude toward occupied Serbia, there were generally two different
tendencies among key German players. According to the first, Serbia should have been
eliminated as the source of all problems in the European South East and eradicated from
the political map of Europe. At the beginning of the war this position was advocated by
Hitler himself as well as by military circles. Effectuation of this drastic measure, according
to the testimony of Hermann Neubacher, German plenipotentiary for the South East, was
impractical for ‘technical reasons’.6 Different configurations had been considered, such as
the creation of Reichsfestung-Belgrad (German fortress of Belgrade) through the
concentration of the German minority from the South East in the area around the central
Danube while Serbs from Belgrade and the Danubian basin were moved away.7

*Email: mristovi@f.bg.ac.yu; ristovism@yahoo.com

ISSN 1350-7486 print/ISSN 1469-8293 online

q 2008 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/13507480801931101
http://www.informaworld.com
180 M. Ristović

In addition, there were options to keep Serbs and Serbia under direct German control for a
long time, while their territories would be used to satisfy the allies’ (Croat and Bulgarian)
requests. From the remaining Serbian territories, perhaps with Montenegro added, it would
be then possible to create a strictly controlled vassal. Other opinions maintained that after
ideological and political Gleichschaltung, a place for a reduced Serbia would be found in
the New European Order.8
Such ‘theoretical’ views, as well as the practical occupation policy in Serbia, had a
great impact on the character and position of domestic collaborationist regimes. The status
of Rumpf Serbien (‘Serbian torso’, as the Serbian territory was often referred to) was
continuously overshadowed by the threat of further fragmentation and biologic
extermination of the population. That created a basis for the insistence, particularly
after the establishment of the ‘national salvation government’ of General Milan Nedić
(in that office from late August 1941 until October 1944), on the role of a ‘national
saviour’ and ‘restorer of national powers and traditions’ – someone who would stand
between the people and the occupation forces.
The strategic position of Serbia, the importance of communications and its significant
economic resources were factors that also defined Germany’s great interest to keep the
territory of Serbia under its direct control. To this end it was necessary to build a strong
occupation apparatus for the management of a ‘pacified’ Serbian space.9 The territory of
Serbia soon became ‘over-organised’ and throughout the war it was the scene of
competition among different German concerns (Wehrmacht, SS, Ministry of Foreign
Affairs of the Reich, Four Year Plan, representatives of private and state companies and
great banks, etc., illustrating a ‘pluralism of interests’).
In addition to this, at the very beginning of occupation it became obvious that German
military units were insufficient to keep ‘peace and order’.10 Therefore, it was necessary to
add domestic administration to this ‘external’ armed apparatus of massive repression and
terror as its specific instrument. As with other issues regarding German policy toward
Serbia, opinion on the involvement of domestic structures within the scope of their
competencies was not unanimous.11 By December 1941, the area under German occupation
administration obtained a new territorial administrative division harmonised with the
distribution of German Kreiskommandantur and Feldkommandantur in order to ensure
better supervision over the local governance bodies.12 The first domestic administration in
Belgrade, on the order of occupation military-administrative headquarters, was appointed
on 30 April 1941.13 The list of candidates for ‘commissaries’ consisted mainly of
‘operatives’, such as the former Yugoslav Minister of the Interior Milan Aćimović and his
deputy Tanasije Dinić, openly pro-Nazi politicians such as Dimitrije Ljotić and his close
associates from the small and, until the war, marginal fascist movement ‘Zbor’ (‘Rally’,
Yugoslav National Movement Zbor), and a few former members of the cabinet of Milan
Stojadinović (1935 –1939) as well as the deputies of his Yugoslav Radical Community.14
The Council of Commissaries, led by Milan Aćimović, was not a real ‘government’ even in
terms of its name and had very limited competences.15 Felix Benzler, the representative of
the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Belgrade,16 suggested on 3 May 1941 that Hitler
intended to allow recovery only of the functions of domestic administration in Serbia that
were useful to the occupation authorities and interests of the Third Reich.17
The occupation authorities very soon demonstrated their discontent with the effects of
the first domestic administration. The Council of Commissaries became discredited in the
eyes of the population due to the participation of domestic armed formations in punitive
expeditions by occupation forces and measures of retribution in quenching armed uprising,
which at the beginning of July started to spread throughout Serbia (from two centres of
 European Review of History—Revue européenne d’histoire 181

resistance: one under the command of royalist Yugoslav officers, led by colonel
Mihailović – ‘Chetniks’ or Yugoslav Army in the Homeland, and the other the
communist-led People’s Liberation Army – partisans). The Council of Commissaries was
unable to collect the necessary money from the population to cover the enormous costs of
supporting German occupation forces (about 6.5 RM per month), while internal conflicts
accelerated the collapse of the first collaborationist administration.
Dimitrije Ljotić proposed the founding of a new ‘government’ led by retired General
Nedić as the supreme power of a German Reichskommissar with dictator-like powers and
control of military units composed of his supporters. On 19 August, Aćimović himself
conveyed to Nedić a threat from the military commander of Serbia, General Heinrich
Danckelmann, that if no solution were found for a more efficient domestic government,
‘ultimate measures’ would be implemented: the partition of Serbia between German allies
(into the Independent States of Croatia, Hungary and Bulgaria).
The moment when, at the end of August 1941, General Milan Nedić18 replaced
Aćimović was extremely difficult. With his propaganda apparatus he feverishly attempted,
from the first day in office, to convince the people (and maybe also himself) of ‘good will’
on the part of Germany and its leadership and willingness to forget ‘Serbian mistakes’
(particularly the anti-German military coup of 27 March 1941), as emphasised in the
‘Declaration of the National Salvation Government’ of 2 September.19 At the time of
massive executions of civilians by the Wehrmacht throughout Serbia (between late
September and early December 1941, 20,000 to 30,000 civilians had been shot dead),20
Nedić said that he was convinced that, provided Serbs abided by law and order, ‘The Great
German Reich will not deprive us of the possibility to give our contribution to the new
European order. Germany has not been our enemy.’21
Despite the efforts of his war collaborators and followers to prove the originality of
Nedić’s ideas, he cannot be considered an authentic ideologist in the proper sense of the
word. This career soldier thought of himself as a politician out of necessity. Nedić
interpreted his acceptance of the position of president of the collaborationist government
as a choice of Fate.22 He compared himself to the Serbian medieval prince Lazar, a central
figure of the Kosovo myth and symbol of self-sacrifice, and by analogy regarded himself
as a ‘sacrifice for the nation’s interest’.23 Due to his nationalism, Nedić was ‘suspicious’ to
his German bosses throughout the war despite his continuing efforts to prove his loyalty.24
Nevertheless, the German authorities counted on his military authority and organisational
abilities, preferring him over more ideologically reliable candidates, such as Dimitrije
Ljotić, who was unpopular because of his openly pro-Nazi ideas.25
In shaping his political programme and ‘ideology’, Nedić mixed his ultraconservative
nationalism with elements of positions of Dimitrije Ljotić’s prewar supporters. The ideas
presented by Nedić in his speeches and ‘epistles’ were also reiterated by his closest
associates and propagandists; besides Ljotić, they included journalist Stanislav Krakov,
editor of the weekly Srpski narod (Serbian People), also a ‘Zbor’ member; professor
Velibor Jonić, Nedić’s minister of education and religion; former diplomat Miroslav
Spalajković and a few others with similar ideological profiles.26
At the beginning of his term of office, the social basis of Nedić’s regime was somewhat
wider than that of Aćimović’s Council of Commissaries, but nevertheless it did not have
sufficient ‘critical mass’ for a more stable social foothold. Nedić could not count on mass
support despite his insistence on his ‘loyalty’ to the Crown and pleading for return to a
‘purely Serbian’ state solution, as well as his stressing that he wanted to save Serbia from
destruction. In the summer of 1941 part of the Serbian urban elite who were not inclined to
ideas of national-socialism or fascism also believed in Nedić’s ability to prevent national
182 M. Ristović

catastrophe. They cherished hopes that Nedić would manage to ‘calm down the people’
and restore the foundations of the Serbian state, liberated of ‘Yugoslav delusions’.
They were very soon deeply disappointed. A faction of ‘purged’ civil servants, a small part
of the officers’ corps, merchants and entrepreneurs, a minority of the clergy, and the
extreme wing of nationalistic intelligentsia under Ljotić’s influence sided with him.27
Among representatives of the intelligentsia who crossed over to Nedić there were hardly
any names of influence in the cultural life of Serbia until 1941, with only a few exceptions.
Nedić’s regime did not manage to attract some of the most prominent figures of Serbian
culture, who spent the war in occupied Serbia (e.g. authors Ivo Andrić and Isidora Sekulić;
philosopher and Hellenist Miloš Durić; etc.). Nedić’s ‘social foothold’ was also narrowing
rapidly as his attempts to gain more independence, ensure stability and ease the brutal hold
of occupation authorities on Serbia proved futile.28
Failure to find reliable support in the urban elite exacerbated Nedić’s profound doubts
about them, above all the intellectuals who for the most part remained attached to their
prewar political ideas or (particularly the younger generation) turned to leftist ideas. This
additionally prompted Nedić and his associates to focus their concepts for the future of
Serbian villages (where about 80% of the population lived) as the only reliable social
foothold and guardian of ‘national’ and ‘racial authenticity’.29 Serbian villages bore the
brunt of political and ideological cleavages, occupation looting and brutal reprisals in
quenching uprisings. They had to deliver large quantities of farm produce to the
occupation authorities, to feed hungry cities and occupation forces (German and
Bulgarian) and various domestic armies. They were also the main source of conscripts for
the anti-occupation movement, the communist partisan movement and royalist Chetniks
under the command of the controversial General Mihailović. Military operations, lack of a
workforce and farm machinery, and adverse weather conditions also worked against the
Serbian village during the war years 1941 –1944/45.
In his first address to the people on 2 September 1941, Nedić stressed that the main
victims of the ongoing civil war in Serbia were ‘village domaćini’.30 He also immediately
introduced his messianic message: he stressed that he came ‘to save the Serbian people’, to
prevent them from exterminating each other, to introduce ‘order and peace, work and
brotherhood’. Once ‘order and peace’ were established, his government would devote
itself to the ‘economic and social development of Serbia’. In this way the core of the
Serbian people would be saved for its ‘unified and free participation in the future peaceful
building of New Europe’. Those who took p arms against occupying forces were in fact
‘serving foreign interests or ha[d] been misguided by foreign agents’. They were a
‘shameful minority’ that deserved no effort to be wasted on their salvation; rather it was
necessary to save the ‘honourable majority [of] . . . wholesome peasant Serbian people
. . . those our brave and honest domaćini who [were] threatened by renegades’.31 This
fetishism of village and peasantry was soon taken to extreme and became the foundation of
his view on the Serbian society in war (and within the German ‘New European Order’).
Nedić regarded the establishment of a personal cult as an ‘expression of the people’s
will’. In his communication with the population he introduced a specific clientelistic-
familiary rhetoric, characterised by an authoritarian-patriarchal tone. In this way, by direct
address, he tried to portray himself in the ‘fatherly’ role of a ‘head of the household’ of a
large, patriarchal, ‘national family’. He first indicated his more clearly defined ‘ideological’
position toward Serbian peasantry in a speech delivered on 12 October 1941. In this
address, which was his typical ‘warning to Serbian peasantry’, he sharply contrasted as two
hostile elements the village (where ‘still today . . . lies the power and future of Serbia’) and
the ‘rotten’ petit bourgeois from the ‘čarsija’ (small town, a derogatory term originating
 European Review of History—Revue européenne d’histoire 183

from the Turkish word çarşi). He presented himself as ‘ordinary folk’ who was ‘implored’
‘to protect home and village’ from ‘national-communists’ (Mihailović’s Chetniks and
Tito’s partisans). He criticised peasants for their naivety and credulousness because they
listened to ‘lies coming from Moscow and London’, and observed that peasants would be
the first to perish if they continued to engage in fighting against the occupation forces.32
The nationalistic, ultraconservative romantic image of the patriarchal village (which in
its ‘pure form’ had ceased to exist in Serbia almost a century earlier) was related to the
tendencies toward ‘racial’ and ‘spiritual restoration’, positioned in public addresses as a
central motive of all the other leading names of the Serbian extreme right gathered around
Nedić.33 The patriarchal rural model as the only adequate solution to Serbian historical and
social conditions was also promoted by Dimitrije Ljotić, Svetislav Stefanović, Stevan
Ivanić, Velibor Jonić, and other prominent members of the collaborationist regime. Their
positions reflected a special ‘sociology’ that advocated the principle of absolute surrender of
an individual to the whole (family, extended family, nation-state). This model presented all
political parties, parliamentary institutions and democratic forms as antagonistic to the
whole and leading to its destruction; they were the main enemies that had to be eliminated.34
The city was for Nedić an unnatural, alien body set in the centre of the biological being
of the Serbian peasant people – to its detriment and as its exploiter. The city was the
birthplace and residence of all evils that eroded traditional society and corrupted the idyllic
village, in a social, ideological and economic sense, as well as in the ‘racial’ and national
one. Individualism, rationalism, capitalism, liberalism, internationalism and, finally,
communism all came from the city.35
When talking about communists, Nedić related their emergence to his animosity
toward urban intelligentsia: ‘regulars in state-run canteens, students of expensive
universities, various state grant-holders, government-paid civil servants: school teachers,
professors, physicians and similar’ were in his opinion the social basis for the recruitment
of communists.36
In a cycle of lectures held in Belgrade in early autumn 1942 for teachers of all
secondary schools, Velibor Jonić, minister of education and religion and Nedić’s close
associate, particularly emphasised his ‘cultural-pessimistic attitude’ towards the values of
modern, urban Western civilisation which, he thought, also had a negative influence on the
‘state of mind’ of the Serbian people. Jonić stressed that the rural environment is the only
authentically sound environment that enables proper moral and biological development of
children. Children in the city are exposed to the devastating influence of disturbed moral
values. Rural spirituality is in stark opposition to urban perverted materialism,
communism and negation of God as its extension, which was made possible by the
indifference of capitalist society. A city man ‘does not plow and does not dig, and the
product of his work is not in such dependence from extraterrestrial forces as the peasant’s’,
therefore it is no accident that ‘communism, as extremely materialistic ideology,
originated in the city and not in the countryside’.37
Among other things, he blamed ‘historical circumstances’ for such a situation. Contact
of Serbs with modern Europe occurred at a most unfavourable point, at the time of the
French Revolution, which resulted in the prevalence of materialistic ideas. ‘The case of a
Serbian city’ was in his opinion more difficult due to the fact that at the time of Ottoman
rule it was populated by ‘non-Serbs’: Aromanians,38 Jews and Greeks. With their
‘materialistic spirit’ as old merchant peoples, they made this environment even more
dangerous for their rural Serbian surroundings. By mixing with Serbs (marrying their
daughters to Serbs) Aromanians also ‘imposed’ their materialistic positions that gradually
eroded the ‘national spirit’.39
184 M. Ristović

Anti-urbanism was not a special feature of the Serbian extreme nationalist right and
members of the ‘Zbor’ movement. It is ‘commonplace’ in most European extreme right
and fascist movements, including those in the predominantly agrarian South East. Blanket
criticism of the city in Nedić’s and Jonić’s speeches, as well as in those of other Serbian
intellectuals referring to the idea of the ‘third way’ reminds us of the positions of German
national-socialist ideologues such as Walter Darré or Alfred Rosenberg or their
predecessors.40
However, one should not forget the long tradition of thinking about the village as the
basic social, cultural and political factor in the political life of Serbia, as well as of other
Yugoslav and Balkan states. The left, the various conservative parties and the liberals all
had demonstrated an inclination toward instrumentalising and romanticising the village,
trying to generate from the old idealised model of a rural extended family community mass
support for their policies and programmes.41 Conservative streams of ‘rural mythology’ in
the Balkans before the Second World War received external ideological incentives,
leading to its further distortion into forms that were extremely leftist and fascist.
The mystification of the village encompassed all principal terms from the terminology of
fascist movements in the European South East in which the central (general) issues are
‘defence of Christianity’ (as an obstacle to communism and materialism), (unclearly
defined) ‘race’, ‘spiritual renaissance’, as well as the ‘organic’ peasant state. This can
easily be noted by comparative analysis of ‘programme texts’ of Romanian ‘legionaries’,
followers of Ljotic’s ‘Zbor’ and of Croat Ustashi.
Theoreticians of Romanian fascism such as Nicifor Crainic, Mihail Manoilecu and Ion
Veverca also worked on constructing an idealised picture of the Romanian village. Thus
Veverca saw the return to ‘ancestral soil’, and rejection of the ‘dirt of [the] cosmopolitan
city’ as a condition for ‘promoting racial values’ and their preservation. 42
Like Jonić and Ljotić, and their Romanian neighbours, Nedić insisted on the
connection between village and (Orthodox) Christianity. Nedić invited, warned and
threatened in his ‘epistles’, often using a preaching tone. He spoke of defeat in war and
occupation as ‘God’s punishment’, which ‘we deserved’ because we ‘spat on our entire
lovely past, tradition that invigorates, strengthens, cures, defends and leads’. Materialism
contributed to a condition in which people had ‘neither compassion nor Christian love . . .
nor fear of God’.43 The very fact that ‘Serbs are neither communists, nor Bolsheviks, they
are national Orthodox believers and domaćini’ would render unsuccessful all communists’
efforts to conquer Serbia, he claimed several months before he fled Belgrade.
He considered it unacceptable that the ‘Serbian people is led by nobodies and people of
foreign faith’ (president of the Royal Government in exile, Dr Ivan Šubašić, and Josip
Broz Tito, president of the partisan government, both Croats).44
Nedić attempted to openly demonstrate his loyalty to the church and religious
traditions. Official propaganda insisted on the religious devotion of the ‘father of the
Serbian people’. This also served as an attempt to conceal a poor relationship between
Nedić and the Serbian Orthodox Church hierarchy, whose patriarch (Gavrilo Dožić) was
in German imprisonment and was considered to be an ‘Englishman’, one of the key figures
of the anti-Axis coup of 27 March 1941. Most of the clergy and bishops were inclined
toward the monarchist movement of Draža Mihailović, while the SPC was continuously
suspected by the occupation authorities of maintaining relations with the enemy.45 Nedić,
Ljotić and their followers regarded the war of the Axis against the Allies, particularly the
Soviet Union, and the fight on the domestic front against partisans (communists) as a
‘Crusade’, a ‘fight against the Antichrist’ for the defence of (Christian) Europe against
‘communist non-believers’. Nedić recapped such position in the cry: ‘Bolshevism
 European Review of History—Revue européenne d’histoire 185

is knocking on the European door. Europe is defended by Germany.’ This was why one
should line up into (his) ‘Serbian armed units (for the defence) against communists with
the German support and cooperate loyally with them everywhere’.46
The society that Nedić intended to build within the framework of ‘New Europe’ on the
foundations of the traditional, rural extended family community – zadrugas – was
conceived as a ‘male society’. The traditional extended family was the community by
blood or kinship; by work, life and authority united by male kinship.47 Its value orientation
was joint property, authority of the master, consensus of adult men, subordinate position of
women and closeness against the outer world. Some of these elements were therefore very
suitable for fitting into the authoritarian model of society that Nedić and his associates
insisted upon. As he explained, ‘to separate a young woman from her home, to uproot her
from the environment in which she firmly belongs by national tradition would mean
causing unnecessary and unwanted disturbances’. Female children should be raised
‘primarily . . . to become good mothers and wives later’.48 For Jonić, giving women
greater rights was ‘proof’ of the decadence of West European societies, which he equated
with ‘restoration of matriarchy’.49
Milosav Vasiljević, one of the main ideologists of Ljotić’s ‘Zbor’ and one of the
authors of the ‘Serbian variant’ of ‘organic sociology’ made a thorough systematisation of
these ideas. He emphasised the principle of absolute submission of an individual to the
community, hierarchy, organisation, leader and duty.50 According to him, in 1804, at the
time of the First Serbian Uprising against Ottoman rule, ‘democratic ideas had nothing in
common with beliefs of our people. The principle of household (domaćinstvo), the
principle of respecting one will in nature (God), in the state (Leader, Prince or King) and in
the family (father) permeated our folk life. That is why our people were a strong spiritual
community.’ He claimed that ‘our people see complete hierarchy, particularly in society’,
because ‘everyone has their master’; ‘only God’ is without him. It follows that in nature,
‘hierarchy is complete up to God’, while the universe itself is organised according to the
‘household principle’, because God is ‘the master of the universe’.51 That is why the
community may expel any ‘harmful member’ and ‘force any individual to obedience’. For
him, extended families were a domestic substitute for corporations such as those that
existed in Italy. The ideas of democracy ‘came . . . from the outside and they were
imported and are still diligently imported by: Jews, freemasons and political parties . . .
and thus destroy ties in our national community’. Provincial petit-bourgeois anti-
Europeanism clearly pervaded his texts.52 For Vasiljević domaćin, the family leader, must
possess special features and request the complete submission of other subordinate
members of the community. Such theoretical deliberations were ideological cover for
(ideological) fascistisation of traditional rural society.53
Nedić’s ‘quasi-state’ rested on a very limited basis which was shrinking very fast. Its
‘president’ was well aware that his fate depended solely on the power and will of the
occupation forces. His powers were limited to administering small parts of the Serbian
economy and a few territories that were not of primary interest to the German occupation
forces (primary and secondary education, relief for Serbian refugees from Bosnia and
Croatia as well as from other occupied and annexed territories, collection and payment of
the costs of maintaining occupation forces).54 Maintaining ‘peace and order’ was also
within the competence of his administration, but local police and collaborationist military
units of the Serbian State Guard and Ljotić’s Volunteer Corps had for a long time been
under the direct command of the chief of the occupation police apparatus, SS-general
A. Meyszner.55 The continuous expansion of the Bulgarian occupation zone to the north
by 1943 reduced the territories where Nedić could exercise his limited authority.
186 M. Ristović

Regardless of the reality around him, Nedić tried to improve the image of occupied
Serbia, at least ‘cosmetically’, and to make it a ‘real state’ and find ways to move it from
the position of complete subordination at the bottom of the hierarchical ‘order of peoples
and states’ of Hitler’s ‘New Europe’. He shaped his ideas about radical reorganisation of
not only his administration but also the entire Serbian society with the help of his advisers
from the ranks of the ‘Zbor’ movement, in two extensive memorandums submitted on
1 January 1943 to the commander of the German occupation administration in Serbia,
General Paul Bader.56
Propaganda preparations for the launching of this project had been made during 1942.
Nedić and his ministers had indicated on several occasions that ‘in the near future . . . a
peasant Serbian state, people’s peasant community’ would be established.57 With such a
state that would rest on the ‘Serbian people’s co-operative socialism’, thought Nedić,
Serbia would become an equal member of the ‘New European Order’. Documents
submitted to Bader represented a ‘synthesis’ of Nedić’s views on Serbian society,
reorganised on the basis of the long tradition of rural extended family communities,
traditional values of rural life and preserved traditional morals. His concept of ‘people’s
socialism’ was based on blood relations of the family, extended family and kinship.
Nedić’s explanation to Bader of his motives for submitting the project was the need to
strengthen the Serbian ‘state’, prompted by the threat of the further spread of communism
and ‘united Anglo-Saxon and Bolshevik propaganda’. As he claimed, although the Serbian
people ‘in vast majority took the direction I pointed to, there is no organic cooperation
between the government and the people’.58
Nedić argued that he went public with his programme because ‘among the Serbian
people there was an increased hope in idealism for the development of New Europe that
filled young Germany’, in which Serbia should participate as well. For Nedić the second
reason ‘rests in the psychology of the Serbian people’, which despite its tragic history
managed to preserve its Rasseeigenschaft. They were the first among the Balkan people,
although a peasant people, who managed to win their ‘state and national freedom’. That is
why it was necessary to re-establish ‘national balance’ and show by actions that a place
existed for the Serbian people in the ‘New Order’ that Germany was fighting for. Trying to
convince Bader of the justification for his claims, he mentioned as an ‘argument’ that
‘unlike the Jewish-anarchist-Marxist frame of mind . . . Serbs, like other Aryan peoples,
possess natural racial instinct, which cherishes family, nation and state as the highest
spiritual and material values’.59
Nedić thought that it was necessary to carry out this major reform during the winter of
1943, so that by the next summer better relations between the government and the
population could be established with the ultimate goal of ensuring that ‘in maintaining
peace, order, work and harmony the government would have as strong an influence as
possible’. This would fit into the greater such solution ‘for the organisation of Serbian
people will be of utmost benefit for the Great German Reich in implementing its policy here,
in the European South East, and in Europe’, thought Nedić. The ‘organic structure’ of
Serbian society and state would enable individuals and extended families to be ‘united into
the people’s community’ rather than feeling ‘lonely’ and ‘left to their own devices’. It was
conceived as a hierarchical order of village, municipal and county assemblies and of the
national assembly of Serbia, which would be directed by state leadership. None of these
assemblies would be elected; instead their members would be appointed on the basis of their
personal authority and conduct. Elections and the electoral system would thus be quite
superfluous. These ‘people’s representatives’ would be a kind of ‘bridge’ between the
government and people. Assemblies would be ‘government collaborators’ without actual
 European Review of History—Revue européenne d’histoire 187

legislative powers, except the obligation to ‘cooperate . . . within those borders and
according to those principles whose guardian is the president of the government’. All
powers would be in the hands of the first man of government administration (Nedić), who
was conceived as the ‘first master of the people’ whose decisions would stand no
opposition.60
These elements allowed Nedić’s concept to be regarded as a draft plan for the creation of
an ‘organic’ Serbian Ständestaat, and the documents were submitted to General Bader as
drafts for its ‘principal law’. Extended family was perverted into ideological construction as
an ‘ideal model’.61 These proposals caused certain confusion and doubt in the occupation
administration headquarters. In such ‘co-operative state’ Staatsführungs- und Volksfüh-
rungsapparat would merge, becoming a single organism, as Bader’s Kriegsverwaltung-
sabteilungschef Bönner noted on 22 January 1943 in an analysis of Nedić’s proposal. He
pointed out that the document had primarily a political goal, rather than just reform of
domestic administration, which did not fit in with German occupation policy toward Serbia.
Bader forwarded Nedić’s memoranda and consulted his associates in Command
Headquarters: Felix Benzler, plenipotentiary of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, head of
the military economic headquarters F. Neuhausen, senior SS and police leader Maiszner,
and other representatives of administrative bodies in Serbia. He also promptly informed his
superior, commander for the South East General Aleksander Löhr, of Nedić’s unusual
action.62
Nedić’s plan, thought Bönner, should not be evaluated solely as his desire to strengthen
his personal position and the position of his government, but as a sign of his aspiration to re-
establish the nation-state. Bönner concluded that Nedić obviously desired, perhaps ‘for
tactical reasons’, because he ‘believe[d] in Germany’s victory’, to position his nation which,
‘though Aryan, was biologically unrelated to us’, on an ideological basis ‘of a similar
worldview to Germany and thus bring it closer to us’. But the central issue was whether such
‘reform’ was in the German interest at all. Bönner, as chief of Bader’s administrative
headquarters, thought that ‘ideological approximation’ was desirable in a country where the
population was openly deutschfeindlich and which was of strategic and economic
significance to Germany. A situation like the one that prevailed in Serbia at the time, in which
Nedić was regarded from the German side only as an instrument necessary to keep ‘order and
peace’, led to Bönner’s conclusion that for pragmatic reasons it would be good to encourage
any action or shift that could result in improved stability, including Nedić’s plan.63
A. Meyszner also gave his opinion. After the removal of the military administrative
commander Harold Turner and abolishment of this position at the end of 1942, Meyszner
had direct control over the operation of Nedić’s administration. He thought that in the
position it was in, with undefined borders and an uncertain fate, Serbia could not be
considered a state in the true sense of the word. In it ‘the Führer’s will was epitomised and
represented by [a German] commanding general and commander. A domestic government
can in this country be only an executive body, operating in all areas in accordance with
German interests.’ Nedić’s reorganisation, though understandable due to the need to cope
with economic difficulties and a communist uprising, could produce unwanted and
dangerous consequences for German interests, such as the strengthening of national
sentiments, which had been suppressed by force due Serbia’s position. Meyszner thought
that the essence of the question was whether the ‘highest place’ in Germany was willing at
all to put Serbia among the countries which would ‘actively participate in the
reconstruction of Europe’.64
The answer to this question finally came from General Bader on 29 January 1943.
He told Nedić that his memorandum had been almost entirely refused and that by
188 M. Ristović

submitting it the president of the collaborationist government exceeded his competences

and ‘fell under the influence of bad advisers’ or ‘external influences’. He advised Nedić to
continue to observe German orders and to adjust his activities to the actions of the
occupation authorities. Bader stressed that ‘after the war his merits will not be forgotten by
the German side’ and Serbia would be allowed to be organised in a manner that would suit
the interests of ‘New Europe’. This doomed Nedić’s plan of rural patriarchal (anti)utopia
to failure. Overall mistrust and hostility toward Serbia and Serbs prevailing among the
highest ranks of the Third Reich, even in relation to those who – like Nedić and his
supporters – stood on the side of the occupation power, were too strong to allow the
execution of such an experiment.65
Only Hermann Neubacher, German plenipotentiary for the South East, tried to defend
Nedić before Hitler, who was not pleased with the results of his administration and
mocked his orientalische Verbeugung (humble Oriental bow during a brief visit to
Führerhauptquartir in 1943). He explained to Hitler that Nedić was ‘a Serb with
conservative ideas, a Serbian Junker’ (ein Serbe konservativer Pragung, ein serbischer
Junker), quite different from ‘westerner Stojadinović’ (the president of the Yugoslav
Government in the 1935 –1939 period) who had left a good impression on Hitler.66
The unremitting mistrust towards Serbs, including those who agreed to collaboration, is
convincingly illustrated by Heinrich Himmler’s answer of 23 August 1942 to the proposal
of then head of the occupation administration in Serbia, Harold Turner, to strengthen the
position of Nedić’s ‘Government’. Himmler pointed to the example of Heidrich, who
attempted to weaken local administration in the Protectorate instead of strengthening its
position. That should be done in Serbia as well, particularly because ‘a Serb is always a Serb
and Serbs are a people who have been skilled in uprisings for centuries and we have to do
nothing more than what is necessary for our strength and refrain from anything that could
strengthen the Serbian Government and hence the Serbian people’.67
Nedić’s ‘National Salvation Government’ shared the fate of the German occupation
regime as its product and instrument. It was evacuated with the occupation apparatus
before advancing partisan and Soviet units in mid-October 1944 to the territory of Austria,
where Nedić was arrested in 1945 with some of his close associates by the American
occupation authorities and extradited to the new Yugoslav authorities. During the
investigation procedure, Nedić lost his life in prison in 1946 under unclear circumstances
(according to the official version, he committed suicide).68

Notes
1. Olshausen, Zwischenspiel af dem Balkan, 153– 62, 208–22. Schlarp, Wirtschaft und Besatzung
in Serbien 1941– 1944, 90 – 8; Marjanović, “2The German Occupation System in Serbia in
1941”, 273.
2. Principles of Yugoslavia’s partition were set by Hitler on 27 March 1941. They have been
worked out in a ‘Generalplan zur Verwaltung des jugoslawischen Gebietes’ of 6 April and the
so-called ‘Richtlinien’ of 12 April. These documents were the basis for further negotiation by
Germany with its allies at a conference in Vienna (21 and 22 April 1941); Čulinović,
Okupatorska podjela Jugoslavije, 61 –73.
3. On the refugee problem in Serbia see: Milošević,; Olshausen, Zwischenspiel auf dem
Balkan . . . , 222– 33.
4. On the problem of collaboration in Serbia see: Božović and Stefanović, Milan Aćimović, Dragi
Jovanović, Dimitrije Ljotić; Božović, Belgrade pod komesarskom upravom; Borković,
Kontrarevolucija u Srbiji. Kvislinška uprava 1941– 1944; Kreso, Njemačka okupaciona
uprava u Belgradeu 1941– 1944; Petranović, Revolucija i kontrarevolucija u Jugoslaviji
1941– 1945 (Revolution and counterrevolution in Yugoslavia 1941– 1945); Ristović, “General
M. Nedić – Diktatur, Kollaboration und die patriarchalische Gesellschaft Serbiens
 European Review of History—Revue européenne d’histoire 189

1941– 1944”, 633– 87; Ristović, “Kolaboracija u Srbiji u Drugom svetskom ratu: Istoriografski
i (ili) politički problem”, 10 – 25; Stefanović, Zbor Dimitrija Ljotića 1934– 1945.
5. Schlarp, Wirtschaft und Besätzung in Serbien, 342; Veg, “Sistem nemačke okupacione vlasti u
Banatu”, 76 – 8.
6. File Hermann Neubacher, in Vojni Arhiv Belgrade (VA ¼ Military Archive, Belgrade),
Nemačka arhiva (German Archive).
7. Wehler, “Reichsfestung Belgrad”.
8. Laak-Michel, Albrecht Haushofer und der Nationalsozialismus, 242 ff.
9. Marjanović, 277.
10. Kreso, Njemačka okupaciona uprava u Belgradeu 1941– 1944, 79 –82; Schlarp, 114– 15.
11. On the conflict between Turner’s and Meysner’s positions see: Schlarp, 124– 5, and Browning,
“Harald Turner und die Militärverwaltung in Serbien 1941– 1942”, 551– 73.
12. Višnjić, “Nemački okupacioni sistem u Srbiji 1941. godine”, 84 – 92; Schlarp, 124– 5.
13. “Novo vreme,” no. 1, 16 May 1941; Čulinović, Okupatorska podjela, 407; Borković,
Kontrarevolucija u Srbiji. Kvislinška uprava 1941–1944, 34.
14. Borković, 28 – 37. Petranović, Srbija u Drugom svetskom ratu 1939– 1945, 135.
15. Božović, Belgrade pod komesarskom upravom, 95 – 118.
16. Felix Benzler was Bevollmächtigten des Auswärtigen Amt; Olshausen, Zwischenspiel auf dem
Balkan, 135.
17. Kostić, Za istoriju naših dana, 19; Borković, Kontrarevolucija, Vol. 1, 30 – 1;
18. General Milan Nedić (1877 – 1946), was in high command positions in the Serbian and
Yugoslav army. He was defence minister 1939– 1940, but in the autumn of 1940 was retired
because of his conflict with Prince Regent Paul. He was returned to active service at the
beginning of war in 1941. He was captured, but was not taken prisoner of war like other high
Yugoslav Army officers but placed under house arrest in Belgrade.
19. Declaration of the National Salvation Government. In Cvijić and Vasović, Milan Å. Nedić,
Život, govori, saslušanja, 17; ibid., “Message to the Serbian people”, 4 December 1941, 35 – 6.
20. Marjanović, Ustanak i narodnooslobodilački pokret u Srbiji 1941, 264– 5; Manoschek,
“Serbien ist judenfrei”, 155–66, 168.
21. See note 19, ibid.
22. Address to the prisoners of war. In Cvijić and Vasović, Milan D. Nedić, 14 March 1942, 52.
23. Second message to the peasants. In Cvijić and Vasović, Milan D. Nedić, 18 January 1942, 38.
This is the point his defenders particularly insist on even today; Krakov, Milan Å. Nedić, Vol. I,
133– 4.
24. Krakov, Milan D. Nedić, 138, quotes Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 8 November 1940,
where Nedić at the time of his removal from the position of defence minister was accused of
being “a personification of Serbian chauvinism and an opponent of Yugoslavia’s closer ties
with the Axis powers”!
25. Concerning D. Ljotić, see Gligorijević, “Politički pokreti i grupe sa nacional– socijalističkom
ideologijom i njihova fuzija u Ljotićevom ‘Zboru’”, 35 – 83; Stefanović, “Zbor” Dimitrija
Ljotića 1934– 1945; Bojić, Jugoslovenski narodni pokret “Zbor” 1935– 1945; Avakumović,
“Yugoslavia’s Fascist Movements.” In Native Fascism in the Successor States 1918 –1945, ed.
Peter Sugar. Santa Barbara, CA, 1971.
26. Stanislav Krakov, 1895– 1968. In 1941– 1944 he was editor of “Novo vreme”, “Obnova”,
“Zapisi”; Berec, “O heroju ili ko je bio Stanislav Krakov”, Vol. II, 499– 502.
27. Borković, Kontrarevolucija u Srbiji, Vol. I, 87 –115.
28. Sundhaussen, “Okupation, Kollaboration und Widerstand in den Landern Jugoslawiens
1941– 1945”, 362.
29. Marjanović, 274; Jovanović, Seljaštvo Srbije u Drugom svetskom ratu 1941 –1945, 10; Dimić,
Kulturna politika Kraljevine Jugoslavije 1918 – 1941, Vol. I, 21 – 169. According to
J. Marjanović’s data, the social structure of Serbia 1941 was composed of (in thousands):
“Workers and apprentices. 418,116; Civil servants, pensioners, etc, 416,189; Agriculturists
3,101,913; Artisans and tradespeople 116,869; Liberal professions, private pensioners and
persons with unknown occupations 116,869; Marjanović, 274.
30. Domaćin – a patriarch, head of the patriarchal, traditional rural extended family (zadruga),
from the Serbian word dom (home).
31. Cvijić and Vasović, 17.
32. Call to the Peasants. In Cvijić and Vasović, 26 – 9.
190 M. Ristović

33. It should be noted that similar rhetoric is found with the royalist-nationalist Chetnik movement of
General Mihailović, who was from December 1941 minister of the Yugoslav Government in Exile.
34. Petranović, Srbija, 464, 465.
35. Do not leave the villages. In Cvijić and Vasović, 10 May 1942, 63 – 5.
36. Message to the Workers. In Cvijić and Vasović, 8 February 1942, 42.
37. V. Jonić, Problems of our spiritual orientation (texts of the lectures), September 1942. In: VA,
Nedić Archive, k 34, No. 12.
38. Cincars (Aromuns, Aromanians) – an old Balkan, Romanised ethnic group, which migrated
from the territories around the Pindus mountains, Greek Macedonia and Epirus toward Balkan
urban centres, assimilating very soon into the majority environment. They were mainly
merchants and craftsmen.
39. V. Jonić, Problem of our spiritual orientation (texts of the lectures), September 1942. In: VA,
Nedić Archive, k 34, No. 12.
40. See Bergmann, Agrarromantik und Großstadtfeindscahft, 33, 38 – 49ff; Rosenberg, Der
Mythos der 20. Jahrhunderts, 298, 532, 550 f; Schorske, “The Idea of the City in European
Thought: from Voltaire to Spengler”, 37 – 55.
41. Which was the case of the leading ideologist of the Serbian Socialist Movement in the second
half of the nineteenth century, Svetozar Marković (1846 –1875).
42. Radu, The Sword of the Archangel, 166 ff.
43. “Last Warning to the Serbian People.” In Cvijić and Vasović, 15 September 1941.
44. On the Occasion of Tito – Churchill alliance.” In Cvijić and Vasović, 12 June 1944, 174.
45. Radić, “Srpska Pravoslavna Crkva u Drugom svetskom ratu”, 203– 18.
46. Nedić’s speech on Radio Belgrade 27 March 1944. In Cvijić and Vasović, 159. See also
V. Jonić, “Problemi . . . ”. In VA, Na, k 34, No. 12.
47. See Richtman-Augustin, Struktura tradicionalnog mišljenja.
48. “Message to the Workers.” In Cvijić and Vasović, 42; Stefanović, Zbor, 212.
49. V. Jonić, “Problemi . . . ”. In VA, Na, k 34, Nr. 12.
50. Vasiljević, Čovek i zajednica. Osnovi savremene sociologije.
51. Vasiljević, “Sociološko u srpskoj narodnoj književnosti” (Sociological in Serbian national
literature); Subotić, Organska misao Srba u XIX I XX veku, 126; ibid., “Sociološka shvatanja
srpskog naroda” (Sociological comprehensions of the Serbian people); Subotić, Organska
misao Srba u XIX I XX veku, 134.
52. Mitrović, Jugoslavenska predratna sociologija, 95 – 8.
53. Vasiljević, Čovek i zajednica . . . 361; Kuljić, Fašizam, 238, 239.
54. Borković, Kontrarevolucija, Vol. 1, 230–44, 307–73 ff.
55. Borković, Kotrarevolucija, Vol. 1, 150– 73; Petranović, Srbija, 415–19; Manoschek, “Serbien
ist Judenfrei”, 40 – 8, 111.
56. “Begründung der volksgemeinschaftlichen Organisierung. Volksgemenischaft.” In Bundes
Archiv-Militärachiv Freiburg (BA-MA), RW 40/93. Serbische Regierung, Nr. 61. Also, see
Petranović, Srbija, 473.
57. Veselinović, M. “Srpski seljak u novoj Evropi” (The Serbian peasant in New Europe), end of
1942. In VA, Na, k 1, No. 171/1 – 1; Borković, Kontrarevolucija, Vol. 2, 33, 34.
58. “Begründung der volksgemeinschaftlichen Organisierung. Volksgemenischaft.” In Bundes
Archiv-Militärachiv Freiburg (BA-MA), RW 40/93. Serbische Regierung, No. 61.
59. ibid. Also, Stefanović, “Zbor” Dimitrije Ljotića, 84 – 97.
60. ibid.
61. “Reorganisation des öfentlichen Lebens und der öfentlichen Verwaltung in Serbien, Belgrad
22. Januar 1943. In BA-MA, RW 40/93.
62. Borković, Kontrarevolucija, Vol. 2, 49f.
63. “Reorganisation des öfentlichen Lebens und der öfentlichen Verwaltung in Serbien, Belgrad
22. Januar 1943. In: BA-MA, RW 40/93.
64. Der Höhere SS-und Polizeifährer Serbien, Tgb. Nr. 48/43, geh., an den Kommandierenden
Gegeral und Befelshaber in Serbien, Belgrad, 15. januar 1943. In BA-MA, RW, 40/93.
65. Borković, Kontrarevolucija, Vol. 2, 44.
66. Stojadinović “hat in München studiert, in Bayern als Referendar praktiziert, perfekt Bier
trinken gelernt und kann sich dacher in Deutschland wie ein Deutscher bewegen!”; Neubacher,
Sonder-Auftrag Sudost, 1940– 1945, 136. About Milan Stojadinović, see Stojkov, Vlada
Milana Stojadinovića 1935 –1937.
 European Review of History—Revue européenne d’histoire 191

67. Geheime Reichssache, Reichsführer SS an H. Turner, 23 august 1942. In BA-MA, 40/79.

68. Borković, Kontrarevolucija, Vol. 2, 341–78.
69. Les Systèmes D’occupation en Yougoslavie 1941– 1945, Institut za radnički pokret, Belgrade,
1963, 10, 14.

Notes on contributors
Milan Ristović (1953), is Professor of General Modern History at the Faculty of Philosophy,
Belgrade. He is managing editor of Godišnjak za društvenu istoriju (Annual of Social History) and
chairman of the Society for Social History.
Main publications: German “New Order” and Southeastern Europe 1940/41 – 1944/45. Plans on
Future and Practice (Belgrade, 1991 and 2005); In Search of Refuge. Yugoslav Jews Fleeing the
Holocaust 1941– 1945 (Belgrade, 1998); Long Journey Home. Greek Refugee Children in
Yugoslavia 1948– 1960 (Thessaloniki, 2000); Black Peter and the Balkan Brigands. Balkans and
Serbia in the German Satirical Magazines 1903– 1918 (Belgrade, 2003).

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Appendix 1: Armed forces of the Serbian collaborationist administration

December 1941: eight detachments – a total of approximately 12,000 soldiers
(3000 gendarmes, 3000 soldiers of the Serbian State Guard, 3000 soldiers of Ljotic’s Serbian
Volunteers Corps and 3000 Chetniks under Kosta Pecanac’s command).
September 1943– April 1944: five regiments in the Serbian Volunteer Corps (approximately 4000
men), five regiments in the Russian White Guard Corps and approximately 17,000 men in the
Serbian State Guard.69
Source: Les Systèmes D’occupation en Yougoslavie 1941– 1945 (pp. 10, 14).