Dimitrije Ljotić

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Dimitrije Ljotić (around 1940)

Dimitrije Ljotić ( Serbian - Cyrillic Димитрије Љотић ; born August 12, 1891 in Belgrade , Kingdom of Serbia ; † April 23, 1945 in Aidussina , Adriatic Coastal Operation Zone ) was a Yugoslav lawyer and fascist politician .

Ljotić briefly held the office of Minister of Justice in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia . He was the founder and chief ideologist of the fascist party Yugoslav National Movement Zbor and in Serbia during World War II the leader of the Serbian Volunteer Corps .

Life

Ljotić was born as the son of the influential Serbian politician Vladimir Ljotić (1846–1912) in Smederevo . By his own account, his childhood in Smederevo was marked by devotion to Serbian Orthodox Christianity . He even considered a career in the church, but followed his father's direction and graduated from the Law Faculty of Belgrade University . In the fall of 1913 he received a state scholarship in Paris , where he got to know the ideas of the right-wing extremist French writer Charles Maurras .

During the First World War , Ljotić served in the Serbian army. Even after the end of the war he remained in the military service of the newly formed Yugoslavia. He was stationed in Bakar , Croatia , on the border with Italy . During a nationwide railroad strike in 1920, he detained all strikers in his area of ​​responsibility on charges of communist conspiracy. This experience led Ljotić to assume that he had to fight against communism and be politically active. He left the army and pursued a political career.

Ljotić became an active member of the Serbian Radical People's Party and was briefly appointed Minister of Justice after the introduction of the royal dictatorship of Yugoslav King Alexander I in 1931, from which he resigned after seven months. He then founded the Yugoslav National Movement Zbor . The members of the organization felt themselves to be the country's political elite. Over time he strengthened existing contacts with the NSDAP , in particular with Alfred Rosenberg . ZBOR was financially supported by the NSDAP through an export-import company. The worldview included a conglomerate of Serbian Orthodox mysticism, anti-communism , militant anti-democracy, anti-parliamentarianism, anti-capitalism, racism and anti-Semitism . The Führer principle was unchallenged. The aim of ZBOR was to establish Serbian hegemony in the Balkans.

After the defeat of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and the occupation of Serbia by the German Wehrmacht , Ljotić and a large part of the ZBOR supporters were the most active collaborators of the German occupiers during the Second World War on Serbian territory and created the Serbian Volunteer Corps ( Srpski dobrovoljački korpus , SDK ).

Ljotić died in a traffic accident in Ajdovščina ( Slovenia ) in 1945 . He was on his way to a meeting with the Serbian Orthodox Bishop Nikolaj (Velimirović) , the spiritus rector of the Zbor party. Ljotić was buried in Gorica, Slovenia . The grave speech held Bishop Nikolai.

literature

  • Jovan Byford: The willing bystanders: Dimitrije Ljotić, 'Shield Collaboration' and the destruction of Serbia's Jews . In: Rebecca Haynes, Martyn Rady (Eds.): In the Shadow of Hitler: Personalities of the Right in Central and Eastern Europe . IB Tauris, London 2011, pp. 295 ff .
  • Holm Sundhaussen : Ljotić, Dimitrije . In: Center for Antisemitism Research [Berlin], Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbook of Antisemitism: Anti-Semitism in Past and Present . tape 2 . Saur, 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-24072-0 , pp. 486 f . (Short biography).
  • Mladen Stefanović: Zbor Dimitrija Ljotića: 1934–1945 . Belgrade 1984.
  • Miloš Martić: Dimitrije Ljotic and the Yugoslav National Movement Zbor: 1935–1945 . In: East European Quarterly . tape 14 , no. 2 , 1980, p. 219-239 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dimitrije V. Ljotić: Iz moga života [From my life] . In: Odabrana dela . tape 1 . Munich 1981, p. 272 .
  2. ^ Mladen Stefanović: Zbor Dimitrija Ljotića: 1934–1945 . Belgrade 1984, p. 19 .
  3. ^ Holm Sundhaussen : Ljotić, Dimitrije . In: Center for Antisemitism Research [Berlin], Wolfgang Benz (Hrsg.): Handbook of Antisemitism: Anti-Semitism in Past and Present . tape 2 . Saur, 2009, ISBN 978-3-598-24072-0 , pp. 487 ( books.google.de ).
personal data
SURNAME Ljotić, Dimitrije
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Љотић, Димитрије В. (Serbian-Cyrillic); Ljotić, Dimitrije V.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Founder and chief ideologist of ZBOR
DATE OF BIRTH August 12, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Belgrade , Serbia
DATE OF DEATH April 23, 1945
Place of death Ajdovščina , Adriatic Coastal Operation Zone