Milan Nedić
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Milan Nedić | |
|---|---|
| Years of service | 37 |
| Rank | General |
Milan Nedić (Serbian Cyrillic Милан Недић) (September 2, 1878 – February 4, 1946) was a Serbian soldier and politician who led a Nazi-backed puppet government in the German-occupied part of Serbia during World War II. This period is known as Nedić's Serbia in which he formed Government of National Salvation (Serbian: Влада Националног Спаса, tr.Vlada Nacionalnog Spasa).
After the war, Nedić was arrested by British officials and given to the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia where he died shortly afterward, officially claimed to be a suicide but highly suspected to be a murder.
Early life
Nedić was born in Grocka close to Belgrade, Kingdom of Serbia. He finished the gymnasium in Kragujevac and entered the lower level of the Military Academy in 1895. In 1904 he completed the upper level of the Academy, then the General Staff Preparatory, and enlisted into the Army.
He was promoted to the rank of major in 1910. He served during the Balkan Wars and received a number of decorations and medals for bravery. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1913.
During World War I, in 1915 he was promoted to colonel and served in the general staff as the youngest colonel in the Serbian Army. During the retreat of the Serbian Army and Government through Albania in November 1915 through January 1916, under Austrian and German pressure, his troops provided cover. He was appointed the ordinance officer of King Peter I of Serbia in 1916 who retreated together with his people and his Army. In September 1918, he commanded the Infantry Brigade of the Timok Division when they made a breakthrough at Thessaloniki Front along with British, Greek and French alies.
Career in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
After the war, he continued as the commander of the Infantry Brigade, before he was made the staff commander of the 4th and 3rd Army Oblast as well as the commander of the Drava Division Oblast. He was made division general in 1923 and finally army general in 1930. Between 1934 and 1935, he commanded of the General Staff of the Yugoslav Army.
In 1939 he was made the Minister of Army and Navy in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, but because of his disapproval to having Yugoslavia participate in the war with Adolf Hitler's Germany. This was most likely out of unease with Nazi Germany's ally, Fascist Italy which at the time, held the Croatian extreme nationalist Ustashe leader in exile in Rome, and because of the rhetoric of some Italian fascists in the past such as the late Gabriele D'Annunzio, who violently opposed to a Yugoslav state. Nedic was dismissed on November 6, 1940 by regent Paul.
During the invasion of Yugoslavia, Nedić commanded the 3rd Army Group of the Yugoslav Royal Army.[1]
"Nedić's Serbia"
The Wehrmacht commander Heinrich Danckelmann decided to entrust Nedić with the administration of German-occupied Serbia in order to pacify Serb resistance. Not long ago, Nedić had lost his only son and pregnant daughter in law in a munition 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 August 29, 1941.
On September 1, 1941, Nedić made a speech on Radio Belgrade where he declared the intent of his administration to "save the core of the Serbian people" occupied by Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, the Independent State of Croatia, Hungary, and Bulgaria, as well as ethnic nationalists from Bosnia. Of these occupiers, the Ustashe-led regime of Croatia and Nazi-led Germany committed the most numerous and most horrendous atrocities on Serbs, some numbers indicating an estimated 700,000 Serbs were killed by the Ustashe. By accepting the occupation of Germany in the area of Sumadija, Drina Valley, Pomoravlje and Banat. He also spoke against organizing resistance to the occupying forces due to German Laws in which 50 Serbs were murdered for 1 wounded German soldier, and 100 for a killed soldier. In addition, more than 300,000 Serbs were forcefully taken to German camps. His state's actions were good intentioned for Serbs, but the opposite was the case for minority or opposition groups. His state's propaganda funded by Germany promoted anti-Semitism, anti-communism, which particularly linked these up with anti-masonry[1]as a means of swaying Serbs to see these groups as their enemies rather than the Germans.
The Serbian government under Nedić accepted many refugees mostly of Serbian descent, but also many Slovenes and the others including Milan Kucan former President of Slovenia and former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (she and her family were originally Jewish Czechs, but converted to Catholicism to avoid persecution by Nazis and anti-Semites).
However aside from accepting Serb and other refugees, Nedic's state was a disaster for the Serb people. The German occupiers held no respect for his authority or Serbs and during the war, over 200,000 people died in Serbia of war-related causes in German reprisals, that demanded as above mentioned 100 killed Serbs for one killed German soldier, like Kragujevac massacre while Nedic's government did nothing. In August 1942, Nedic's puppet state and the German occupiers proclaimed Serbia Judenfrei. Despite this, atrocities against Serbs continued, According to Nikola Živković, during the Nazi occupation of the German controlled zone called Serbia in WWII, 6,478 libraries, 1,670 schools, 30 colleges, 19 museums, 7 theatres, 52 Orthodox churches and monasteries, 63 synagogues and over 60 miscellaneous scholarly institutions were destroyed or pillaged. Surprisingly, Nedić also collaborated with the Chetniks as a way of defending "Endangered Serbianisation".
On October 4, 1944, with the successes of the Yugoslav Partisans and their moves onto Belgrade, Nedić's government was disbanded and on October 6, Nedić was allowed by the Germans to flee from Belgrade to Kitzbühel, Austria (then annexed to Germany) where he was protected. On January 1, 1946, the British forces handed him over to the Yugoslav Communist forces.
He was incarcerated in Belgrade for treason, and regularly tortured and interrogated while in prison. On February 5, the newspapers ran the news that Milan Nedić committed suicide by jumping out of a window while the guards weren't looking, others believe that the situation more likely was that the guards murdered him.