Serbian Volunteer Corps (World War II)
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Српски Добровољачки Корпус / |
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|---|---|
| active | September 1941 to May 1945 |
| Country |
.svg){kind=small} Serbia
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| structure | 12 companies (1941) 19 companies (April 10, 1942) |
| Strength | 300–400 (Sept. 15, 1941) 2,700 (Nov. 1, 1941) 3,685 (Feb. 15, 1942) 4,000 (January 1943) 5,000–6,000 (Oct./Nov. 1943) 9,886 (Aug. 21, 1944) 9,000–10,000 (March 1945) 5,000–6,000 (May 1945) |
| Origin of the soldiers | Serbia |
| Nickname | Ljotićevci ( Ljotić's men) |
| Patron saint | St. George |
| motto | In faith in God for king and country |
| commander | |
| Important commanders |
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The Serbian Volunteer Corps (short SFK; Serbian Српски Добровољачки Корпус Srpski dobrovoljački korpus , short СДК / SDK) was a fascist freischar in Serbia during the Second World War .
The SFK was the armed arm of the Serbian ZBOR party, under its ideological leader Dimitrije Ljotić , and offered itself to the German occupiers to fight the rebels and to exterminate the Jews in Serbia.
At first it was called the Serbian Volunteer Command ( Srpska dobrovoljačka komanda ), from December 1942 then the Serbian Volunteer Corps ( Srpski dobrovoljački korpus ).
The SFK was never an organization of the Waffen-SS or the German Wehrmacht . Weapons, ammunition, uniforms and food that the SFK received from German military authorities were financially reimbursed by the Serbian government. The pay for the members of the SFK was paid by the Serbian government.
formation
After the occupation of Serbia by German troops in April 1941 and the installation of a collaboration government under Prime Minister Milan Nedić , a civil war began in July 1941 in Serbia , in which armed formations of the Yugoslav resistance fought against those of collaboration .
At the beginning of September 1941, the Serbian Interior Minister Mihailo Olćan proposed that further anti-communist units be set up. The following day, 234 ZBOR members registered as the first volunteers in the unit.
On September 17, 1941, command was transferred to Colonel Konstantin Mušicki . At the beginning the SFK consisted of 12 companies with 120–150 soldiers each. The uniform was green and the officers were dressed similarly to officers of the former Royal Yugoslav Army or they wore Italian uniforms.
The journalist Ratko Parežanin and the founder of the ZBOR movement, Dimitrije Ljotić, were responsible for the internal management of the troops . The spiritual concerns were entrusted to the Serbian Orthodox priest Aleksa Todorović .
The recruits were sworn in by Serbian Orthodox priests in a church ceremony. The formula of the oath was:
“ I (surname and first name) swear by Almighty God that I will fight valiantly under the banner of the Serbian Volunteer Corps at all times and at every opportunity and that I will never be unfaithful, that I will be loyal to the Serbian people and fatherland with all my soul, and that I will obey and exactly carry out the orders of all my superiors. So God help me! "
activities
On September 17, 1941, the unit experienced its “ baptism of fire” in the village of Dražanj near Grocka in the fight against Tito partisans .
At the end of May 1944 they fought against the 2nd and 4th Divisions of the Yugoslav Partisans . Thereupon the increase of the SFK requested by the military commander Southeast was approved by Berlin.
On August 21, 1944, the five regiments of the SFK comprised 9,886 officers and soldiers. By then, 700 had died and 1,800 SDK members were wounded in combat.
End of war
In September 1944, Tito's partisans began their major offensive in Serbia together with the Red Army . On October 8, 1944, the units under the command of Major Ilija Mićašević and Major Vojislav Dimitrijević by the Red Army and Tito partisans were ousted from the area around Belgrade. A little later the defeated units of Jovan Dobrosavljević , Vasa Ogrizović and Major Marisav Petrović followed .
In October 1944, the SFK was moved to Istria , where it took part in combat operations under the command of HSSuPF Odilo Globocnik .
On May 5, 1945 at Palmanova near Trieste, between 2,400 and 2,800 SFK men surrendered to the British, who handed them over to the partisan troops, as did later prisoners. Most of them were from the partisans executed .
General Mušicki was extradited to Yugoslavia by the Allies. In a show trial he was sentenced to death along with other collaborators and then executed.
emigration
After the collapse of the Serbian vassal state under the collaborative government of General Milan Nedić , ZBOR officials and members of the SFK were smuggled through several camps in Italy ( Forlì , Eboli ). Then the ZBOR leadership came to Germany and stayed in the Munster camp from 1947 to 1948 and in the Lingen DP camp from 1948 to 1949 . At the end of 1949 she settled in Schleissheim near Munich. Here she continued the Iskra newspaper, which was started in Lingen and still appears monthly . The newspaper went to 40 countries around the world. This royalist, Serbian-Orthodox, nationalist or fascist and conservative-oriented group of heirs in exile probably had the richest flow of publications as well as a globally developed press and information system. Since 2016 Iskra is no longer published in the Serbian diaspora , but in Novi Sad . In Iskra's publications, which are also accessible online, the deeds and people of the SFK continue to be glorified.
Owner, publisher and editor-in-chief was Jakov Ljotić , called Jaša (1895–1974), the brother of the fascist leader Dimitrije Ljotić . The 79-year-old was strangled with his tie on July 8, 1974 in his Munich apartment . He had announced that he would write about Tito's prisons. The Yugoslav secret service UDBA is said to have been responsible for his murder . As early as April 17, 1969, Iskra editor Ratko Obradović (1919–1969) was allegedly killed by the UDBA near his apartment in Munich-Hasenbergl on the street with five shots in the chest, neck and head. Obradović was a former functionary of the fascist ZBOR party and officer of the SFK who fled into exile in 1945.
See also
literature
- Ana Antić: Police Force Under Occupation: Serbian State Guard and Volunteers' Corps in the Holocaust . In: Sara R. Horowitz (Ed.): Back to the Sources: Re-examining Perpetrators, Victims and Bystanders (= Lessons and Legacies ). tape X . Northwestern University Press, Evanston 2012, ISBN 978-0-8101-2862-0 , pp. 13–36 ( google.de [accessed on November 10, 2013]).
- Stevan Piroćanac: Српски добровољци 1941–1945 у речи и слици [The Serbian volunteers in words and pictures 1941–1945] . Ed .: Društvo Hilandar Valjevo. Valjevo 2010, ISBN 978-86-911395-2-0 ( novo-videlo.com - sympathizes with the SFK).
- Momcilo Dobrich: Belgrade's Best: The Serbian Volunteer Corps: 1941–1945 . Axis Europa Books, 2001, ISBN 1-891227-38-6 (sympathizes with the SFK).
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Report of the SD to the Higher SS and Police Leader Serbia Meyszner from March 5, 1943 about the swearing-in of the 4th Battalion on February 28, 1943 in Belgrade. Az. L III Rx / Hg B.Nr.
- ↑ Hajo Funke, Alexander Rothert: Under our eyes: Ethnic purity: The politics of the Milosevic regime and the role of the West (= series of publications on politics and culture ). The Arabic Book, Berlin 1999, p. 47 .
- ^ Jozo Tomasevich: War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: Occupation and Collaboration . Stanford University Press, San Francisco 2001, ISBN 0-8047-3615-4 , pp. 189 .
- ↑ Karl Hnilicka: The end in the Balkans 1944/45: The military evacuation of Yugoslavia by the German Wehrmacht . Musterschmidt-Verlag, Göttingen u. a. 1970, p. 24 f ., footnotes 28 and 29 .
- ↑ Hans-Peter Rullmann: Murder Order from Belgrade: Documentation about the Belgrade murder machine . Ost-Dienst, Hamburg 1980, p. 26.
- ↑ Robert Welch: American Opinion . tape 21 , 1978, p. 16 .
- ↑ Marko Lopušina: Ubice u ime države [murder in the name of the state] . Agencija TEA BOOKS, 2014, ISBN 978-86-6329-189-8 .
- ↑ Ben Witter: One Thousand Pickpockets: Protocols from the Underworld (IV) . In: The time . No. 19/1969 , May 9, 1969.