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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	(1878-09-02)2 September 1878 Grocka, Serbia
Died	4 February 1946(1946-02-04) (aged 67) Belgrade, Serbia, Yugoslavia
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)
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	Balkan Wars World War I Serbian army's retreat through Albania World War II in Yugoslavia Invasion of Yugoslavia
Awards	Albanian Commemorative Medal

Milan Nedić (Serbian Cyrillic: Милан Недић; 2 September 1878 – 4 February 1946) was a Serbian Army general (Kingdom of Yugoslavia) and politician who served as the Chief of the General Staff of the Royal Yugoslav Army, Minister of War in the Royal Yugoslav Government. During World War II, he collaborated with the Germans and served as the Prime Minister of a puppet government, Government of National Salvation, in the German occupied territory of Serbia. After the war, the Yugoslav communist authorities imprisoned him. In 1946, they reported that he had committed suicide by jumping out of a window.

Early life and military career

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 in Montenegro.

Nedić finished gymnasium in Kragujevac in 1895 and entered the lower level of the Military Academy in Belgrade that year. In 1904, he completed the upper level of the academy, then the General Staff preparatory, and was commissioned into the Serbian Army. In 1910, he was promoted to the rank of major. He fought with the Serbian Army during the Balkan Wars, and received multiple decorations for bravery. In 1913, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He served with the Serbian Army during World War I and was involved in rearguard actions during its retreat through Albania in the winter of 1915. That year, he was promoted to the rank of colonel. At 38, he was the youngest colonel in the Serbian General Staff. He was appointed ordnance officer to King Peter in 1916. Towards the end of the war, Nedić was given command of an infantry brigade of the Timok Division.

Royal Yugoslav Army

Nedić remained a brigade commander within the Timok Division until the end of 1918 and served as the 3rd Army chief of staff. Beginning in 1919, he also served as the de facto head of the 4th Army District in Croatia because its nominal commander, General Božidar Janković, was old and infirm. Nedić's cousin, Dimitrije Ljotić, and their mutual friend Stanislav Krakov, also served in the 4th Army District and were commanded by Nedić. When the Royal Yugoslav Army (Serbo-Croatian Latin: Vojska Kraljevine Jugoslavije, VKJ) was formed in 1919 he was absorbed into the army at the same rank. He was promoted to Divizijski đeneral in 1923, and subsequently commanded a division then was Secretary-General of the Committee of National Defence. In 1930, Nedić was promoted to the rank of Armijski đeneral, and assumed command of the 3rd Army in Skoplje. Nedić was appointed Chief of the General Staff in June 1934, and held this position until the following year, when he became the third member of the Military Council, probably because of his strained relations with the Minister for the Army and Navy, Petar Živković. At the time, British diplomatic staff observed that he was "somewhat slow-thinking and obstinate". On 13 August 1939, Nedić was appointed Minister of the Army and Navy as part of the Cvetković–Maček Agreement. Ljotić later assisted the SS-Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Central Office, RSHA) in establishing contacts with him. He also exploited the connections he had with Nedić to ensure that the banned Zbor-published journal Bilten (Bulletin) was distributed to members of the VKJ. The journal was published illegally in a military printing house and distributed throughout Yugoslavia by military couriers.

Because of his disapproval of a potential participation in the war against Adolf Hitler's Germany, Nedić was dismissed on 6 November 1940 by regent Paul. This was most likely out of unease with Nazi Germany's ally, Fascist Italy which at the time harboured the Croatian extreme nationalist Ustashe leader Ante Pavelić in exile in Rome, and because of the rhetoric of some Italian fascists in the past such as the late Gabriele D'Annunzio, who were violently opposed to a Yugoslav state. Nedić welcomed the coup of 1941 which deposed the pro-Axis regime, and fought for Yugoslavia in the German-led Axis invasion that followed.

Occupied Serbia

Wehrmacht commander Heinrich Danckelmann decided to entrust Nedić with the administration of German-occupied 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.

On 1 September 1941 Nedić made a speech on Radio Belgrade in which he declared the intent of his administration to "save the core of the Serbian people" occupied and surrounded by Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, the Independent State of Croatia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Albanians and Bosnian Muslims 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, because there was a German rule that 50 Serbs were to be murdered for each wounded German soldier and 100 for each killed soldier. In addition, at least 300,000 Serbs were forcefully taken to German camps. His state's propaganda was funded by Germany and promoted anti-Semitism and anti-communism, particularly linking these up with anti-masonry.

The puppet government under Nedić accepted many refugees mostly of Serbian descent. The German occupiers held no respect for his authority or Serbs, and during the war over 300,000 people died in Serbia of war-related causes in German reprisals, which as described above demanded 100 killed Serbs for each killed German soldier, as in the Kragujevac massacre. In August 1942, the German occupiers proclaimed Serbia Judenfrei ("clean of Jews"). Nedić also secretly diverted money and arms from his government to the Chetniks. 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".

On 4 October 1944, with the successes of the Yugoslav Partisans and their onslaught on Belgrade, Nedić's puppet government was disbanded, and on 6 October Nedić fled from Belgrade to Kitzbühel, Austria (then annexed to Germany) where he took refuge with the occupying British. On 1 January 1946 the British forces handed him over to the Yugoslav Partisans.

He was incarcerated in Belgrade on a charge of treason. On 5 February, the newspapers reported that Milan Nedić had committed suicide by jumping out of a window while the guards were not looking.

Recently, Miodrag Mladenović, a former officer with of 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 Milan Nedić had committed suicide by jumping through the prison window at Zmaj Jovina street.

Legacy

Nedić's portrait was included among those of Serbian prime ministers in the building of the Government of Serbia. In 2008, the Minister of Interior and Deputy PM Ivica Dačić removed the portrait after neo-Nazi marches were announced in the country. Higher Serbian Court in Belgrade, Serbia rejected an application to rehabilitate quisling Prime Minister of occupied Serbia during World War II, Milan Nedić. The Court took the decision on 11 July 2018.

In 1941 in Kragujevac and Kraljevo during Milan Nedić puppet government Germany's military presence in Serbia was strengthened and there was more than one mass shooting of civilians when more than 5 thousand people most of them Serbs where killed during same puppet Nedić government that has claimed to protect Serbs from German killings. Events are known as Kragujevac massacre and Kraljevo massacre.

During rehabilitation trial historian Dimitrijevic claimed based on Archive documents that was investigated Nedić has was not directly involved in any prosecuting and shooting of Jews as that was primary task of German occupation forces. Jews where marked in documents and some of them are where hidden under Serbian names in order to avoid terrible fate by Germans. However, during the Miloševic era, the regime and Serb historians found it extremely important to win over eminent Yugoslav Jewish organizations and individuals for the idea of the joint Serbo-Jewish martyrdom. In order to accomplish this, Serbia had to falsify history by obscuring the fact that the Serb quislings Milan Nedic and Dimitrije Ljotic ́ had cleansed Serbia of her sizeable Jewish population by deportations of Jews to East European concentration camps or killing them in Serbia. In 1995, the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts published a volume entitled 100 Outstanding Serbs, and included Nedić on the list. 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.

Other opinions claims that it was Nedić role in order to protect Serbs from further executions in NDH and by Germans in Serbia to provide some reprisal toward Jews and that was mostly done with confiscating and selling Jews property after they were executed by Germans who were not interested to buy homes and lands of Jews in Serbia and prior that to give list of Jews to Germans.

As one of biggest reasons for killing about 11,000 Jews in Serbia by Germans, Jewish reporter, author of many books about Jews in Serbia, historian and president of Jew community Belgrade, Jaša Almuli claims that it was reprisal for resistance against Germans in occupied Serbia and that Jews where killed for same reasons as Serbs in order to fulfill Hitlers quota towards Serbs and Serbia - for one wounded soldier kill 50 and for dead German soldier kill 100 people. For that reason together with Serbs and Gypsies about 5000 Jews were shot. German SS general Harald Turner was main culprit behind shooting Jews in occupied Serbia Harald Turner gave following statement in 1942:

Already some months ago, I shot dead all the Jews I could get my hands on in this area, concentrated all the Jewish women and children in a camp and with the help of the SD got my hands on a "delousing van," that in about 14 days to 4 weeks will have brought about the definitive clearing out of the camp...

— Dr. Harold Turner's letter to Karl Wolff (dated April 11, 1942)

"One Hundred Greatest Serbs" the book from 1993, published by Serbian Academy of Sciences and Art included an entry on Milan Nedić in which editor of the book historian Dejan Medaković clame that he was "one of the most tragic figures in Serbian history" whose collaboration saved "a million Serbian lives". Patriarch Pavle of the Serbian Orthodox Church held a memorial service for Milan Nedić in 1994. Publisher of the recent secondary school history textbook Nebojša Jovanović, in 2002 told the daily Politika that collaboration with the Nazis was a way of preserving the ‘biological substance of the Serbian people".

Citations

Notes

1. Armiski đeneral was equivalent to a United States lieutenant general.

Footnotes

1. Archived 14 January 2017 at the Wayback Machine
2. ^ Glas javnosti & 27 January 2006.
3. Ramet & Lazić 2011, p. 17.
4. Cohen 1996, p. 14.
5. Niehorster 2013a.
6. Jarman 1997c, p. 119.
7. Jarman 1997c, p. 120.
8. Ramet 2006, p. 107.
9. Cohen 1996, p. 18.
10. Cohen 1996, p. 20.
11. Cohen 1996, pp. 18–21.
12. Tomasevich 2001, p. 179.
13. "Visualizing Otherness II: Center for Holocaust & Genocide Studies : University of Minnesota". Chgs.umn.edu. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
14. Tomasevich 2001, p. 217.
15. Byford 2011, p. 303.
16. Browning 2007, p. 341. sfn error: no target: CITEREFBrowning2007 (help)
17. Tomasevich 2001, pp. 216–217.
18. Hoare 2006, p. 293. sfn error: no target: CITEREFHoare2006 (help)
19. Alexander Prusin, 2017, Serbia under the Swastika: A World War II Occupation, #page= 53-56
20. "Google Translate". Translate.google.com. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
21. ^
22. http://rs.n1info.com/a406998/Vesti/Odbijen-zahtev-za-rehabilitaciju-Nedica.html
23. http://www.novosti.rs/vesti/naslovna/drustvo/aktuelno.290.html:606766-Nedic-nije-progonio-Jevreje
24. Perica 2002, p. 151.
25. Lazić 2011, p. 269.
26. Čalija, Jelena. "Kako je Nedićeva vlast prodavala kuće Jevreja". Politika Online. Retrieved 18 October 2019.
27. http://www.politika.rs/scc/clanak/203780/Istina-o-unistenju-srpskih-Jevreja-i-njeno-falsifikovanje
28. Cite error: The named reference WOLFE was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
29. Jovan Byford, 2011, The Collaborationist Administration and the Treatment of the Jews in Nazi-Occupied Serbia, https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057%2F9780230347816_6 #page=110

References

• Byford, Jovan (2011). "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. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Cohen, Philip J. (1996). Serbia's Secret War: Propaganda and the Deceit of History. College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press. ISBN 978-0-89096-760-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• "Biografija—Milan Nedić". Glas javnosti (in Serbian). 27 January 2006.
• Jarman, Robert L., ed. (1997c). Yugoslavia Political Diaries 1918–1965. Vol. 3. Slough, Berkshire: Archives Edition. ISBN 978-1-85207-950-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• 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 0230278302. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Niehorster, Dr. Leo (2013a). "Royal Yugoslav Armed Forces Ranks". Dr. Leo Niehorster. Retrieved 18 June 2014. {{cite web}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Ramet, Sabrina P. (2006). The Three Yugoslavias: State-Building and Legitimation, 1918–2005. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-34656-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• 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. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 0230278302. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Tomasevich, Jozo (1975). War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: The Chetniks. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-0857-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Tomasevich, Jozo (2001). War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-3615-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Perica, Vjekoslav (2002). Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-517429-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

• Newspaper clippings about Milan Nedić in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW

v t e Key people of World War II in Yugoslavia
Partisans	Josip Broz Tito Moša Pijade Milovan Đilas Aleksandar Ranković Kosta Nađ Peko Dapčević Koča Popović Petar Drapšin Svetozar Vukmanović Arso Jovanović Sava Kovačević Ivan Gošnjak Boris Kidrič Franc Rozman Mihajlo Apostolski
Chetniks	Draža Mihailović Ilija Trifunović-Birčanin Dobroslav Jevđević Pavle Đurišić Momčilo Đujić Nikola Kalabić Vuk Kalaitović Dragutin Keserović Vojislav Lukačević Petar Baćović Jezdimir Dangić Zaharije Ostojić Velimir Piletić Dragoslav Račić Zvonimir Vučković Predrag Raković Karl Novak Ismet Popovac
Germany	Maximilian von Weichs Alexander Löhr Edmund Glaise-Horstenau Artur Phleps Franz Böhme Paul Bader Lothar Rendulic Karl-Gustav Sauberzweig
Italy	Mario Roatta Alessandro Pirzio Biroli
Albania	Xhafer Deva Rexhep Mitrovica Xhem Hasa Gajur Deralla Aćif Hadžiahmetović
Independent State of Croatia	Ante Pavelić Slavko Kvaternik Dido Kvaternik Mladen Lorković Mile Budak Vjekoslav Luburić Mijo Babić Andrija Artuković
German-occupied territory of Serbia	Milan Nedić Dimitrije Ljotić Kosta Pećanac Kosta Mušicki Miodrag Damjanović Milan Aćimović Dragi Jovanović
Italian governorate of Montenegro	Sekula Drljević Blažo Đukanović
Province of Ljubljana	Leon Rupnik Ernest Peterlin
see also World War II in Yugoslavia and Factions in the Yugoslav Front

• 1877 births
• 1946 deaths
• Eastern Orthodox Christians from Serbia
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• Members of the Serbian Orthodox Church
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• Royal Serbian Army soldiers
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• Serbian military personnel of World War I
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