Milan Nedić
Milan Nedić | |
---|---|
Prime Minister of the Government of National Salvation | |
In office 29 August 1941 – 4 October 1944 | |
Preceded by | Office established |
Succeeded by | Office abolished |
Minister of Interior of the Government of National Salvation | |
In office 5 November 1943 – 4 October 1944 | |
Prime Minister | Himself |
Preceded by | Tanasije Dinić |
Succeeded by | Office abolished |
Minister of the Army and Navy of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia | |
In office 26 August 1939 – 6 November 1940 | |
Monarch | Peter II |
Prime Minister | Dragiša Cvetković |
Regent | Paul |
Preceded by | Milutin Nedić |
Succeeded by | Petar Pešić (acting) |
Chief of the General Staff of the Royal Yugoslav Armed Forces | |
In office 1 June 1934 – 9 March 1935 | |
Monarchs | Alexander I Peter II |
Prime Minister | Nikola Uzunović Bogoljub Jevtić |
Regent | Paul |
Preceded by | Petar Kosić (acting) |
Succeeded by | Petar Kosić (acting) |
Personal details | |
Born | FPR Yugoslavia | 2 September 1878
Cause of death | Suicide by jumping |
Spouse | Živka Pešić |
Children | 5 |
Relatives | Milutin Nedić (brother) Dimitrije Ljotić (cousin) |
Alma mater | Military Academy |
Military service | |
Allegiance | Kingdom of Serbia (1904–1918) Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1918–1941) Nazi Germany (1941–1945) |
Branch/service | Royal Serbian Army Royal Yugoslav Army |
Years of service | 1904–1941 |
Rank | Army general (Kingdom of Yugoslavia) |
Commands | 3rd Army Group |
Battles/wars |
|
Awards | Albanian Commemorative Medal |
Milan Nedić (
Early life
Milan Nedić was born in the Belgrade suburb of Grocka on 2 September 1878 to Đorđe and Pelagia Nedić. His father was a local district chief and his mother was a teacher from a village near Mount Kosmaj. She was the granddaughter of Nikola Mihailović, who was mentioned in the writings of poet Sima Milutinović Sarajlija and was an ally of Serbian revolutionary leader Karađorđe. The Nedić family was originally from the village of Zaoka, near Lazarevac. It traced its origins to two brothers, Damjan and Gligorije, who defended the Čokešina Monastery from the Turks during the Serbian Revolution. The family received its name from Nedić's great-grandmother, Neda, who was a member of the Vasojevići tribe from modern-day Montenegro.[1]
Military and political career
Nedić finished
Nedić remained a brigade commander within the Timok Division until the end of 1918 and served as the 3rd Army
Because of his disapproval of a potential participation in the war against
German-occupied territory of Serbia
Wehrmacht commander Heinrich Danckelmann decided to entrust Nedić with the administration of German-occupied territory of Serbia in order to pacify Serb resistance. Not long before, Nedić had lost his only son and pregnant daughter in law in a munitions explosion in Smederevo, in which several thousands died. He accepted the post of the prime minister in the government called the Government of National Salvation, on 29 August 1941. At the same time mass imprisonment of the Jews started where police and gendarmerie of quisling government under Nedić assisted the Germans in arresting the Jews.[12]
On 1 September 1941 Nedić made a speech on Radio
The puppet government under Nedić accepted many refugees mostly of Serbian descent.[17] The civil war unleashed in the German-occupied territory of Serbia was the cause of the loss of as many or even more lives than German terror. In total, between 141,000 and 167,000 people died in Serbia of war-related causes. These deaths included 34,000 killed by the Germans and their Serb helpers, 46,000 deaths in prisons and camps, and 33,000 Chetnik and 42,000 Partisan combatants. At least 300,000 people were deported from Serbia or held in prisons and concentration camps.[18] German reprisals demanded that 100 Serbs be killed for each killed German soldier and 50 for each wounded German soldier,[19] as in the Kragujevac massacre.[20] Nedić implemented Hitler's anti Semitic policies and Belgrade became the first city in Europe to be declared Judenfrei ("clean of Jews") while Serbia itself was declared as such in August 1942.[21][22][23] Nedić also secretly diverted money and arms from his government to the Chetniks.[24][25] The military forces of Ljotić and Nedić together with the Wehrmacht participated in anti-Communist operations.[26] In the 1942 Christmas address, he announced that "the old world, which had destroyed our state, is over and replaced by the new one. This new world will elevate Serbia to its rightful and honorable place in the new Europe; under the new leadership (of Germany) we look courageously into the future". In 1942 he outlined a memo of his vision of Great Serbia in which Bosnia-Herzegovina, Srijem, and Dalmatia are within Serbia's borders with local population replaced by Serbian settlers.[27] On 28 February 1943, the commanding general in Serbia reduced the reprisal orders to 50 hostages for each German soldier, armed forces employee, civilian or Bulgarian soldier killed, and 25 for each German or Bulgarian wounded.[19] Nedić was received by Adolf Hitler in September 1943 when they talked about security and order in the occupied territory,[28] also at that meeting Nedić requested the annexation of East Bosnia, Montenegro, the Sanjak, Kosovo-Metohija and Srem. Joachim von Ribbentrop opposed Nedić’s demands which forced Hitler to appease Nedić by promising him concessions elsewhere.[29] Nedić's Ministry of Education, Ljotić and the intellectuals from the Zbor prepared Serbia and its youth by changing the education system in order to prepare the society for Hitler’s New Europe, in which anti-Semitism and anti-Communism were integral parts of the new ideological framework.[26] About the "great" Adolf Hitler hundreds of texts was written by Nedic's propaganda.[30]
On 4 October 1944, with the successes of the
He was incarcerated in Belgrade on charges of treason. On 4 February 1946, it is believed that Nedić either jumped out of the window of the Belgrade hospital where he was being detained or that he was pushed out to his death.[31] According to official records, he committed suicide by jumping through the window.[32] According to the Register of Victims Killed after 12 September 1944, Nedić was "liquidated".[33]
Recently, Miodrag Mladenović, a former officer with the Yugoslavian OZNA, said that on 4 February 1946, he received an order to pick up a dead body at Zmaj Jovina street, where the prison was located at the time. When he arrived there, the body was already wrapped in a blanket and rigor mortis had already set in. Following the orders given to him, he took the body to the cemetery where it was buried in an unusually deep grave. He never attempted to see the face of the person that he was carrying, but the day after, he read in the news that Nedić had committed suicide by jumping through the prison window at Zmaj Jovina street.[34]
Legacy
During the
The 1993 book The 100 most prominent Serbs published by the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts included an entry on Nedić in which its editor, the art historian and its editor Dejan Medaković, claimed that Nedić was "one of the most tragic figures in Serbian history" whose collaboration saved "a million Serbian lives". Patriarch Pavle held a memorial service for Nedić in 1994, during which he justified his collaboration with Nazi Germany on the grounds that it was "the only way to save the Serbian people from the revenge of the occupiers".[36]
After 2000, revisionists' demands for the rehabilitation of Milan Nedić began.[37] The minor Serbian Liberal Party attempted to promote his rehabilitation as an anti-Nazi, who did his best in an impossible situation, sparking controversy in Serbia.[38] The publisher of a 2002 secondary school history textbook, Nebojša Jovanović, told the daily Politika that collaboration with the Nazis was a way of preserving the ‘biological substance of the Serbian people".[36]
Nedić's portrait was included among those of Serbian prime ministers in the building of the Government of Serbia.[39] In 2008, the Minister of Interior and Deputy PM Ivica Dačić removed the portrait after neo-Nazi marches were announced in the country.[40][41] Revisionist interpretations required that Nedić's collaboration with the occupying forces and responsibility for the execution of Jews under his rule be obscured, in order to remember him as the "savior of the Serbian people".[41]
On 11 July 2018, The Higher Serbian Court in Belgrade rejected an application to rehabilitate the quisling Prime Minister of occupied Serbia during World War II, Milan Nedić.[42] During the rehabilitation trial, historian Bojan Dimitrijevic from the Institute for Contemporary Serbian History claimed, based on archived documents, that Nedić was not directly involved in the persecution and killing of Jews. According to Dimitrijevic, Nedić's administration only registered Jews and gave them fake Serbian documents while the Germans rounded them up and performed all the executions.[43][44]
Other sources claim that it was Nedić's role to protect Serbs from further executions in NDH and by Germans in Serbia by aiding in the persecution of Jews. Among other things, his regime confiscated and sold the property of Jews after they were executed by Germans, who were not interested in buying the homes and lands of Jews in Serbia.[45]
According to historian and President of the Jewish community in Belgrade, Jaša Almuli, one of the major reasons behind the killing of 11,000 Jews in Serbia by Germans was through reprisals for resistance against Germans in occupied Serbia and that Jews were killed for the same reasons as Serbs: to fulfill Hitler's quota towards Serbs and Serbia: for a wounded soldier to kill 50 and for a dead German soldier to kill 100 people. For that reason, together with Serbs and Gypsies, about 5,000 Jews were shot. German SS General Harald Turner was the main culprit behind the shooting of Jews in occupied Serbia.[46]
According to
During the COVID-19 pandemics in 2020, school classes were presented on the Radio Television of Serbia. One lecture for eighth grade students caught attention of the Serbian public. The teacher spoke positively about Milan Nedić and his role in WWII, even though such opinions are not based on the official textbook for the 8th grade.[49] Dubravka Stojanović commented on this lecture and emphasized that the games played with fascism and anti-fascism when it comes to "basic good and evil" brought the society into complete disorientation. She also pointed out that she often warned about the problems of revisionist history and rehabilitation of collaborators from WWII in history textbooks.[50]
Works
- Srpska vojska i solunska ofanziva, 1932[51]
- Kralj Aleksandar Prvi Ujedinitelj: kao vojskovođ, 1935[52]
- Srpska vojska na Albanskoj Golgoti, 1937[53]
Citations
Notes
- ^ Armiski đeneral was equivalent to a United States lieutenant general.[4]
Footnotes
- ^ a b c d e Glas javnosti & 27 January 2006.
- ^ Ramet & Lazić 2011, p. 17.
- ^ Cohen 1996, p. 14.
- ^ Niehorster 2013a.
- ^ Jarman 1997c, p. 119.
- ^ Jarman 1997c, p. 120.
- ^ Ramet 2006, p. 107.
- ^ Cohen 1996, p. 18.
- ^ Cohen 1996, p. 20.
- ^ Cohen 1996, pp. 18–21.
- ^ Tomasevich 2001, p. 179.
- ^ a b Hoare 2006, pp. 156–162.
- ^ "Visualizing Otherness II: Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies : University of Minnesota". Chgs.umn.edu. Archived from the original on 20 July 2011. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
- ^ Milivoj Bešlin; (2020) "Srpska majka" i rehabilitacija kvislinga u Srbiji ("Serbian Mother" and quisling rehabilitation in Serbia) {Nedić je snažno zagovarao čuvanje srpskog naroda od „nepravilnih mešavina“, njegova propaganda je frekventno koristila termine iz kategorijalnog aparata nacizma „čista rasa“, „bela rasa“, „arijestvo“ itd. U tom kontekstu Nedićeva vlada je donela niz uredbi kojima je implementirala politiku okupacionih vlasti o gubljenju prava na rad jevrejskog i romskog stanovništva..Nedic strongly advocated the protection of the Serbian people from "irregular mixtures", his propaganda frequently used terms from the categorical apparatus of Nazism "pure race", "white race", "Aryanism", etc. In this context, Nedic's government passed a series of decrees implementing the policy of the occupation authorities on the loss of the right to work of the Jewish and Roma populations} [1]
- ^ Cohen 1996, p. 39, 49.
- ^ Ramet 2006, p. 130.
- ^ Tomasevich 2001, p. 217.
- ^ Prusin 2017, p. 180.
- ^ a b Tomasevich 2001, p. 216.
- ^ Byford 2011a, p. 303.
- ^ Cox 2002, pp. 92–93.
- ISBN 978-1-40398-020-5.
- ^ Subotić 2019, p. 3.
- ^ Tomasevich 2001, pp. 216–217.
- ^ Hoare 2006, p. 293.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19108-751-6.
- ISBN 978-0-25209-961-8.
- ISBN 978-0-19820-873-0.
- ^ Marko Attila Hoare. "The Great Serbian threat, ZAVNOBiH and Muslim Bosniak entry into the People's Liberation Movement" (PDF). anubih.ba. Posebna izdanja ANUBiH. p. 123. Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 February 2021. Retrieved 21 December 2020.
- ^ Milivoj Bešlin; (2020) „Srpska majka“ i rehabilitacija kvislinga u Srbiji ("Serbian Mother" and quisling rehabilitation in Serbia) {Nedićeva propaganda je napisala stotine tekstova o “velikom” Adolfu Hitleru, ali ni jedan o streljanjima civila u Kraljevu i Kragujevcu, oktobra 1941...Nedic's propaganda wrote hundreds of texts about the "great" Adolf Hitler, but none about the shootings of civilians in Kraljevo and Kragujevac in October 1941} [2]
- ^ Ramet & Lazić 2011, p. 38.
- ISBN 978-1-00075-438-4.
- ^ "Недић Милан". Регистар жртава за тајне гробнице убијених после 12. септембра 1944.
- ^ "Google Translate". Translate.google.com. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
- ^ Perica 2002, p. 151.
- ^ a b Byford 2011b, p. 110.
- ^ Himka & Michlic 2019, p. 646.
- ^ Lazić 2011, p. 269.
- ISBN 978-0-23034-781-6.
- ISBN 978-3-83826-711-1.
- ^ a b Himka & Michlic 2019, p. 647.
- ^ Radišić, Nikola (26 July 2018). "Odbijen zahtev za rehabilitaciju Nedića" [Nedic's Rehabilitation Request Rejected]. N1 (in Serbian). Archived from the original on 18 February 2020. Retrieved 2 May 2020.
- ^ Dragojlo, Sasa (23 May 2016). "Serbia's Nazi-Backed Leader 'Did Not Kill Jews'". Balkan Insight. BIRN.
- ^ Subotić 2019, p. 89.
- ^ Čalija, Jelena. "Kako je Nedićeva vlast prodavala kuće Jevreja". Politika Online. Retrieved 18 October 2019.
- ^ Kljakic, Slobodan (1 July 2012). "Истина о уништењу српских Јевреја и њено фалсификовање". Politika.rs.
- ISBN 978-0-87586-429-7.
- ^ Subotić 2019, pp. 53–54.
- ^ Nedeljnik.rs (24 March 2020). ""Heroj, junak, najvažnija ličnost...": TV nastavnik istorije šokirao javnost lekcijom o Milanu Nediću, takvih reči nema ni u jednom udžbeniku". Nedeljnik. Retrieved 7 February 2021.
- ^ Milica Rilak; (2020) Sraman čas istorije na RTS: Nedić heroj, spasavao izbeglice (Shameful history lesson on RTS: Nedic is a hero, he saved refugees), Nova S, [3]
- ^ Марибор, IZUM-Институт информацијских знаности. "Српска војска и солунска офанзива :: COBISS+". plus.sr.cobiss.net (in Serbian). Retrieved 28 October 2020.
- ^ Марибор, IZUM-Институт информацијских знаности. "Краљ Александар I Ujedinitelj : као војсковођ :: COBISS+". plus.sr.cobiss.net (in Serbian). Retrieved 28 October 2020.
- ^ Марибор, IZUM-Институт информацијских знаности. "Српска војска на албанској Голготи :: COBISS+". plus.sr.cobiss.net (in Serbian). Retrieved 28 October 2020.
References
- Byford, Jovan (2011a). "Willing Bystanders: Dimitrije Ljotić, "Shield Collaboration" and the Destruction of Serbia's Jews". In Haynes, Rebecca; Rady, Martyn (eds.). In the Shadow of Hitler: Personalities of the Right in Central and Eastern Europe. London: I.B.Tauris. ISBN 978-1-84511-697-2.
- Byford, Jovan (2011b). "The Collaborationist Administration and the Treatment of the Jews in Nazi-Occupied Serbia." In: Ramet S.P., Listhaug O. (eds) Serbia and the Serbs in World War Two.". Serbia and the Serbs in World War Two. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 109–127. ISBN 978-1-349-32611-2.
- Cohen, Philip J. (1996). Serbia's Secret War: Propaganda and the Deceit of History. ISBN 978-0-89096-760-7.
- Cox, John K. (2002). The History of Serbia. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-31290-8.
- "Biografija—Milan Nedić". Glas javnosti (in Serbian). 27 January 2006.
- ISBN 978-0-19-726380-8.
- Himka, John-Paul; Michlic, Joanna Beata (2019). Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 978-1-49621-020-3.
- Jarman, Robert L., ed. (1997c). Yugoslavia Political Diaries 1918–1965. Vol. 3. Slough, Berkshire: Archives Edition. ISBN 978-1-85207-950-5.
- Lazić, Sladjana (2011). "The Re-evaluation of Milan Nedić and Draža Mihailović in Serbia". In Ramet, Sabrina P.; Listhaug, Ola (eds.). Serbia and the Serbs in World War Two. London, England: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0230278301.
- Niehorster, Leo (2013a). "Royal Yugoslav Armed Forces Ranks". Leo Niehorster. Retrieved 18 June 2014.
- Ramet, Sabrina P. (2006). The Three Yugoslavias: State-Building and Legitimation, 1918–2005. ISBN 978-0-253-34656-8.
- Ramet, Sabrina P.; Lazić, Sladjana (2011). "The Collaborationist Regime of Milan Nedić". In Ramet, Sabrina P.; Listhaug, Ola (eds.). Serbia and the Serbs in World War Two. ISBN 978-0230278301.
- Subotić, Jelena (2019). Yellow Star, Red Star: Holocaust Remembrance after Communism. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-1-50174-241-5.
- ISBN 978-0-8047-0857-9.
- Tomasevich, Jozo (2001). War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration. ISBN 978-0-8047-3615-2.
- Perica, Vjekoslav (2002). Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-517429-8.