Yugoslav National Movement
Yugoslav People's Movement Југословенски народни покрет Jugoslovenski narodni pokret | |
---|---|
President | Dimitrije Ljotić |
Vice president | Juraj Korenić |
Founded | 6 January 1935 |
Dissolved | 1945 |
Merger of | Various radical groups[n 1] |
Headquarters | Belgrade, Yugoslavia |
Newspaper | Fatherland[3] |
Student wing | White Eagles (from 1940) |
Paramilitary wing | Serbian Volunteer Corps[4] |
Membership | Fewer than 6,000 (1939 est.)[5] |
Ideology | Yugoslav fascism[n 2] |
Politics of Yugoslavia |
The Yugoslav National Movement (
Following the Axis invasion and occupation of Yugoslavia in April 1941, the Germans selected several Zbor members to join the Serbian puppet government of Milan Nedić. The Serbian Volunteer Corps (SDK) was established as Zbor's party army. Ljotić had no control over the SDK, which was commanded by Colonel Kosta Mušicki. In late 1944, Ljotić and his followers retreated to Slovenia with the Germans and other collaborationist formations. In March, Ljotić and Chetnik leader Draža Mihailović agreed on a last-ditch alliance against the Yugoslav Partisans. Ljotić's followers were placed under the command of Chetnik commander Miodrag Damjanović. Ljotić was killed in an automobile accident in late April 1945. His followers later fled to Italy alongside the Chetniks. The Western Allies extradited many back to Yugoslavia following the war, where they were summarily executed and buried in mass graves. Those who were not extradited immigrated to western countries and established émigré organizations intended to promote Zbor's political agenda.
Background
Dimitrije Ljotić was a right-wing politician in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia during the interwar period. As a loyalist to the Karađorđević dynasty, on 16 February 1931 he was appointed Yugoslav Minister of Justice by King Alexander.[22] In June of that year, Ljotić suggested to Alexander that the Yugoslav political system be structured on the Italian fascist model.[23] He presented him with a draft constitution that proposed "an organic constitutional hereditary monarchy, undemocratic and non-parliamentary, based on the mobilization of popular forces, gathered around economic, professional, cultural and charity organizations, that would be politically accountable to the king."[24] The king rejected Ljotić's constitution as being too authoritarian.[25] On 17 August, Ljotić resigned from his post after the government decided to create a single government-backed political party in Yugoslavia.[22]
Formation
In 1934, Alexander was assassinated in
Zbor's official stated goal was the imposition of a planned economy and "the racial and biological defense of the national life force and the family". Otadžbina became its official newspaper.
During
1935 and 1938 elections
Despite its opposition to parliamentary democracy, Zbor participated in the 1935 Yugoslav parliamentary elections.[31] It offered 8,100 candidates throughout Yugoslavia.[34] On 5 May, the Yugoslav government first announced the results of the elections, which showed that 72.6 percent of the eligible electorate had cast a total of 2,778,172 ballots. The party of Bogoljub Jevtić had received 1,738,390 (62.6%) votes and 320 seats in parliament, and the Opposition Bloc led by Vladko Maček had received 983,248 (35.4%) votes and 48 seats. Zbor finished last in the polls, with 23,814 (0.8%) votes, and had acquired no seats in parliament.[35] Of all the votes it had received, 13,635 came from the Danube Banovina, in which Ljotić's home district of Smederevo was located.[36] The election results initially published by authorities caused an upheaval amongst the public, forcing the government to publish the results of a recount on 22 May. The recount showed that 100,000 additional ballots that had not been recorded on 5 May had been cast and that Jevtić's party had received 1,746,982 (60.6%) votes and 303 seats, the Opposition Bloc had received 1,076,345 (37.4%) and 67 seats, and that Zbor had received 24,008 (0.8%) votes and again no seats.[35]
In 1937, Ljotić began attacking Stojadinović through Zbor publications and accused him of complicity in King Alexander's assassination three years earlier.
World War II
1939–1941
In August 1939, Ljotić's cousin,
With the outbreak of World War II, Ljotić supported Yugoslavia's policy of neutrality in the conflict while promoting the position that Yugoslav diplomacy should focus on relations with Berlin.[36] He vehemently opposed the August 1939 Cvetković–Maček Agreement[36][44] and repeatedly wrote letters to Prince Paul urging him to annul it.[45] In these letters, he advocated an immediate re-organization of the government according to Zbor ideology, the abolishment of Croatian autonomy, the division of the Royal Yugoslav Army into contingents of ethnic Serbs and some Croat and Slovene volunteers, who would be armed, and contingents of most Croats and Slovenes in the armed forces, who would serve as labour units and would be unarmed. Effectively, the purpose of all these points was to reduce non-Serbs in Yugoslavia to the status of second-class citizens.[46] By this point, Zbor was infiltrated by the German Gestapo, the Abwehr (German military intelligence), and the Schutzstaffel (SS).[47] In 1940, the Royal Yugoslav Army purged its pro-German elements and Ljotić lost much of the influence he held over the armed forces.[42]
Ljotić's followers responded to the Cvetković–Maček Agreement with violence, clashing with the youth wing of the
On 23 October 1940, White Eagles members massed outside the campus of the University of Belgrade.[48] University president Petar Micić was a Zbor sympathizer. The Belgrade police, who were alleged to have had foreknowledge of the riots, withdrew from the area before violence erupted.[47] The White Eagles members then threatened faculty and students with pistols and knives, stabbed some of them, hailed Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini as their heroes and shouted: "down with the Jews!"[48] Members of Slovenski Jug (Slavic South), a Serbian nationalist movement, also participated in the riots, which were orchestrated by Ljotić in the hope that violence would provoke martial law and thus bring about a more centralized system of control in the university. The Serbian public responded to the riots with outrage. On 24 October, the Yugoslav government revoked Zbor's legal status. On 2 November, the Ministry of Interior sent a list of Zbor members to all municipal administrators in Serbia.[47] The government cracked down on Zbor by detaining several hundred members, forcing Ljotić into hiding.[25] One of the only public figures in Serbia to speak in favour of Ljotić during this period was Serbian Orthodox Bishop Nikolaj Velimirović, who praised his "faith in God" and "good character".[49] Although a government investigation found that Zbor was guilty of high treason for accepting German funds, the authorities were careful not to arrest Ljotić in order not to provoke the Germans. Ljotić was placed under government surveillance, but authorities quickly lost track of him. He hid with friends in Belgrade and remained in contact with Nedić and Velimirović. On 6 November, Nedić resigned from his post to protest the government crackdown on Zbor. Additional issues of Bilten continued to be printed despite his resignation. These supported a pro-Axis Yugoslav foreign policy, criticized the government's tolerance of Jews and Freemasons and attacked pro-British members of the government for their opposition to Yugoslavia, signing the Tripartite Pact.[45] Ljotić remained in hiding until April 1941.[50]
1941–1945
On 6 April 1941, Axis forces invaded Yugoslavia. Poorly equipped and poorly trained, the Royal Yugoslav Army was quickly defeated.[51] Several dozen Royal Yugoslav Army officers affiliated with Zbor were captured by the Wehrmacht during the invasion but were quickly released. The Germans sent Ljotić a written notice assuring his freedom of movement in German-occupied Serbia.[52] Not long after German forces entered Belgrade, Ljotić's followers were given the task of selecting an estimated 1,200 Jews from the city's non-Jewish population.[53]
Upon occupying Serbia, the Germans prohibited the activity of all political parties except Zbor.
In October, Zbor organized the
On 15 July 1942,
Ljotić did not live to see the end of the war. He was killed in a car accident in Slovenia on 23 April 1945.
Notes
References
- ISBN 978-0-19-822884-4.
- ^ Kardelj, Edvard (1981). Socialist Thought and Practice. Vol. 1–7. p. 52.
- ^ Отаџбина / Otadžbina
- ^ (1941–1945)
- ISBN 978-3-598-24078-2
- ISBN 1315388898.
- ISBN 978-0-19-872346-2.
- ISBN 978-0-313-31290-8.
- ISBN 978-0-87586-428-0.
- ISBN 978-0-19-936531-9.
- ISBN 978-05-200153-6-4.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-78076-808-3.
- ^ ISBN 978-963-9776-15-9.
- ^
ISBN 9781483305394. Retrieved 9 September 2020.
[...] fascist Italy [...] developed a state structure known as the corporate state with the ruling party acting as a mediator between 'corporations' making up the body of the nation. Similar designs were quite popular elsewhere in the 1930s. The most prominent examples were Estado Novo in Portugal (1932-1968) and Brazil (1937-1945), the Austrian Standestaat (1933-1938), and authoritarian experiments in Estonia, Romania, and some other countries of East and East-Central Europe,
- ^ Christian Kurzydlowski (2017). Ideology and Politics Of Dimitrije Ljotić and the ZBOR Movement. Semantic Scholar. p. 96.
- ^ Kuljić, Todor (2017). Post-Yugoslav Memory Culture. Lambert. p. 14.
- ^ Note: zbor literally means "corps" or "assembly"
- ^ Skutsch, Carl (2005). Encyclopedia of the world's minorities, Volume 3. Routledge. p. 1083.
- ^ Megargee, Geoffrey P. (2018). The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume III. Indiana University Press. p. 839.
- ^ Newman, John (2015). Yugoslavia in the Shadow of War: Veterans and the Limits of State Building, 1903–1945. Cambridge University Press. p. 227.
- ^ Cohen 1996, p. 37.
- ^ a b c Cohen 1996, p. 14.
- ^ Ramet 2006, p. 101.
- ^ a b c d e Byford 2011, p. 297.
- ^ a b c Lampe 2000, p. 197.
- ^ a b Cohen 1996, pp. 14–15.
- ^ a b Kranjc 2013, p. 39.
- ^ a b c Cohen 1996, p. 15.
- ^ a b c Byford 2011, p. 299.
- ^ Pribičević 1999, p. 194.
- ^ a b Byford 2011, p. 298.
- ^ a b Vucinich 1969, p. 24.
- ^ Pešić 2008, p. 207.
- ^ a b Cohen 1996, p. 16.
- ^ a b Rothschild 1974, p. 249.
- ^ a b c d e Tomasevich 2001, p. 187.
- ^ a b c d Cohen 1996, p. 17.
- ^ a b c Vucinich 1969, p. 26.
- ^ Payne 1996, p. 326.
- ^ Crampton 1997, p. 163.
- ^ Cohen 1996, p. 18.
- ^ a b Byford 2011, p. 300.
- ^ Cohen 1996, pp. 18–21.
- ^ a b Byford 2011, pp. 300–301.
- ^ a b Cohen 1996, p. 21.
- ^ a b Tomasevich 2001, p. 188.
- ^ a b c Cohen 1996, p. 20.
- ^ a b Israeli 2013, p. 13.
- ^ Byford 2008, p. 51.
- ^ a b Byford 2011, p. 301.
- ^ Cohen 1996, p. 28.
- ^ Cohen 1996, p. 29.
- ^ Israeli 2013, p. 23.
- ^ Tomasevich 2001, p. 230.
- ^ Cohen 1996, p. 31.
- ^ Byford 2011, p. 302.
- ^ a b Israeli 2013, p. 24.
- ^ Tomasevich 2001, p. 189.
- ^ Tomasevich 2001, pp. 189–190.
- ^ Tomasevich 2001, p. 183.
- ^ a b c d Tomasevich 2001, p. 191.
- ^ Byford 2011, p. 305.
- ^ Cohen 1996, p. 48.
- ^ Roberts 1987, p. 63.
- ^ Portmann 2004, p. 13.
- ^ Cohen 1996, p. 59.
- ^ Tomasevich 1975, pp. 447–448.
- ^ a b c Byford 2011, p. 307.
- ^ Mojzes 2011, p. 127.
- ^ Hockenos 2003, p. 119.
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