Thank you Stephen for finally shedding some light into the thick fog of lies and propaganda with which Serbs have blanketed the western media.
As for the Serbs role in the WWII, here are some hard facts for the pro-Serbs:
During WWII, Serbia was governed by the “Vlada Nacionalnog Spasa” (Government of National Salvation), headed by Milan Nedic. General Nedic was a former CHIEF OF STAFF of the Royal Yugoslav Army. Under his direct command were the Serbian SS Volunteer Corps, the Serbian Gestapo, the Serbian State Guard, and the Department of General Police, Also allied with the Germans were two chetnik groups, the chetniks of Kosta Pecanac and those of Draza Mihailovic. Mihailovic, btw is still wildly popular in Serbia.
Serbian SS Volunteer Corps (Srpski Dobrovoljacki Korpus) – Formed on 15 September 1941, by Dimitrije Ljotic from Chetniks and his Zbor Movement activists. In January 1943, it had five 500 man battalions – four volunteer and one Chetnik Assault battalion, an armored car battalion, cavalry squadron and 6 aircraft – at strength of around 3,000 men. The formation was fully equipped by the Germans who where impressed by its performance.
In 1944, it had five 1200-man regiments with 500-man artillery battalion, under German tactical command but reporting to General Nedic. On 21 June another regiment was formed – 2nd Iron Regiment (2. gvozdeni puk), total strength has risen to around 9,000 men. The strength of the SS Volunteer Corps in August 1944 was 9.886 men, according to Bundesarchiv (RH 19 XI/31)
Serbian Gestapo – On 1 April 1942, the German Gestapo started the formation of ’1st Belgrade Special Combat detachment’. Members of that unit called themselves ‘Serbian Gestapo’. Recruitment of personnel was carried out by commander Strahinja Janjic and his deputy Svetozar Necak. Recruits were found amongst Gendarmerie, Ljotic men’s and individuals of Nazi believes. Acceptance was done by members of Belgrade Gestapo central, in front of whom candidates would write their autobiography and take an oath. At the end of 1942, the detachment was largest and had 147 men.
The Serbian State Guard (SDS) – Armed formation created on 3 March 1942, as addition to the civil police to keep order and lighten the burden on the German forces. Mostly created by expansion of former Yugoslav Drina and Danube Gendarmes Regiments and police detachments, which were already serving German authorities, with some active officers and NCO’s of former Royal Yugoslav Army. In January 1943, it had a total number of 36,716 men including support services and armed village militia. First commander was Colonel Jovan Trishic replaced by Major General Borivoje Jonic. Recruitment was done by mobilization, also from ranks of chetniks of Kosta Pecanac and later from Chetniks of Draza Mihailovic which by 1944 completely merged into SDS.
SDS also had, amongst other, an intelligence section, and was divided into:
- Municipal State Guard (Police) serving in Belgrade and other major cities of Serbia,
- Rural State Guard (Gendarmerie) which carried out duties across entire territory with exceptions of cities covered by Municipal State Guard, and typically reinforced by some 20 armed village militia.
- Border State Guard which carried out border duties.
On 6 October 1944, 5,000 members of SDS, under Lieutenant-General Stefan Radanovic joined command of Draza Mihailovic as 1st Serbian Assault Corps (Prvi Srpski Udarni Korpus – SUK), later joined by 2nd Assault division and 3rd Frontier Guard Division.
Department of General police – Carried out duties of political police and territorial counter-intelligence service. Form middle of 1941 it was renamed into Department of Special Police. It was mostly engaged in combat against Communist Party of Yugoslavia in which its members showed brutality against arrested communists and later activists People’s Liberation Movement (NOP). Special Police had 30 investigators and 150 agents also under its requests at disposal were further 52 officers and 1550 members of Municipal Guard. Special Police operated its own prison, Glavnyatcha in Belgrade.
Serbian antisemitism
In August 1942, Dr. Harald Turner (the chief of the German civil administration in Serbia) announced that Serbia was the only country in which the ‘Jewish question’ was solved and that Belgrade was the ‘first city of a New Europe to be Judenfrei.’ Turner himself attributed this success to Serbian help.
The fight against the Jewish influence had started six months before the German invasion when the government of Serbia issued legislation restricting Jewish participation in the economy and university enrolment. Fully six months before the Nazi invasion of Yugoslavia, Serbia had issued legislation restricting Jewish participation in the economy and university enrolment. One year later on 22 October 1941, the rabidly antisemitic ‘Grand Anti-Masonic Exhibit’ opened in occupied Belgrade, funded by the city of Belgrade. The central theme was an alleged Jewish-Communist-Masonic plot for world domination. Newspapers such as Obnova (Renewal) and Nasa Borba (Our Struggle) praised this exhibit, proclaiming that Jews were the ancient enemies of the Serbian people and that Serbs should not wait for the Germans to begin the extermination of the Jews. A few months later, Serbian authorities issued postage stamps commemorating the opening of this popular exhibit. These stamps, which juxtaposed Jewish and Serbian symbols, portrayed Judaism as the source of world evil and advocated the humiliation and violent subjugation of Jews.
The involvement of the Serbian Orthodox Church as a whole is well documented. The Serbian Orthodox Church openly collaborated with the Nazis, and many priests publicly defended the persecution of the Jews. On 13 August 1941, approximately 500 distinguished Serbs signed ‘An Appeal to the Serbian Nation’, which called for loyalty to the occupying Nazis. The first three signers were bishops of the Serbian Orthodox Church. On 30 January 1942, Metropolitan Josif, the acting head of the Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church, officially prohibited conversions of Jews to Serbian Orthodoxy, thereby blocking a means of saving Jewish lives. At a public rally, after the government Minister Olcan ‘thanked God that the enormously powerful fist of Germany had not come down upon the head of the Serbian nation’ but instead ‘upon the heads of the Jews in our midst’, the speaker of these words was then blessed by a high-ranking Serbian Orthodox priest.
A most striking example of Serbian antisemitism combined with historical revisionism is the case of Bishop Nikolaj Velimirovic, revered as one of the most influential church leaders and ideologists after Saint Sava, founder of the Serbian Orthodox Church. To Serbs, Bishop Velimirovic was a martyr who survived torture in the Dachau concentration camp. In truth he was brought to Dachau (as were other prominent European clergy), because the Nazis believed he could be useful for propaganda. There he spent approximately two months as an ‘Ehrenhaftling’ (honour prisoner) in a special section, dining on the same food as the German officers, living in private quarters, and making excursions into town under German escort.
