Commissioner Government
The Commissioner Government was a short-lived Serbian collaborationist puppet government. It operated in the German occupied territory of Serbia within the Axis-partitioned Kingdom of Yugoslavia during World War II. Members were pro-German, antisemitic and anti-communist, and believed that Germany would win the war.
About Commissioner Government in brief
The Commissioner Government was a short-lived Serbian collaborationist puppet government. It operated in the German occupied territory of Serbia within the Axis-partitioned Kingdom of Yugoslavia during World War II. The members were pro-German, antisemitic and anti-communist, and believed that Germany would win the war. The government lacked any semblance of power, and was merely an instrument of the German occupation regime, carrying out its orders within the occupied territory. One of its early tasks was the implementation of German orders regarding the registration of Jews and Romani people living in the territory. In early July, a few days after a communist-led mass uprising commenced, Aćimović reshuffled his government, replacing three commissioners and appointing deputies for most of the portfolios. This resulted in the resignation of the Commissioner Government at the end of August, and the appointment of the Government of National Salvation led by former Minister of the Army and Navy Armijski đeneral Milan Nedić. There is no evidence that the collaborated with the occupiers moderated German occupation policies in any way. The Germans did this to secure two strategic lines of communication – the Danube river and the railway line that connected Belgrade with Salonika in occupied Greece, and thence by sea to North Africa. The exact boundaries of the occupation territory had been fixed in a directive issued by Adolf Hitler on 12 April 1941, which also directed the creation of the military administration.
In the interim, the staff for the military government had been assembled in Germany and the duties of the Military Commander in Serbia had been detailed. These included safeguarding the lines of Communication, executing the economic orders issued by the Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, and establishing and maintaining peace and order. He was also responsible for guarding the huge numbers of Yugoslav prisoners of war, and safeguarding captured weapons. The military commander’s staff was divided into four area commands and about ten district commands, which reported to the chief of the administrative staff, SS-Brigadeführer and State Councillor, Harald Turner. Other than General der Flieger, a Luftwaffe officer, the first military commander in the occupied area was General Helmuth Fieger. The area commands were allocated to the troops of the four local battalions across the four battalions of the Serbian Army, which were responsible for the defence of Belgrade and other parts of the country. The German occupied area of Serbia was also rich in non-ferrous metals such as lead, antimony and copper, which Germany needed to support its war effort. It was also in an area roughly the same as the pre-1912 Kingdom of Serbia, consisting of Serbia proper, the northern part of Kosovo, and the Banat. It is also referred to as the Commissars Government or Council ofCommissars. Of the ten commissioners, four had previously been ministers in various Yugoslav governments, and two had been assistant ministers.
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This page is based on the article Commissioner Government published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 01, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
