Milan Nedic

Early life and military career

Milan Nedic was born in the Belgrade suburb of Grocka on 2 September 1878 to Dorde and Pelagia Nedic. 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 Mihailovic, who was mentioned in the writings of poet Sima Milutinovic Sarajlija and was an ally of Serbian revolutionary leader Karadorde. The Nedic family was originally from the village of Zaoka, near Lazarevac. It traced its origins to two brothers, Damjan and Gligorije, who defended the Cokesina Monastery from the Turks during the Serbian Revolution. The family received its name from Nedic's great-grandmother, Neda, who was a member of the Vasojevici tribe in Montenegro.

Nedic 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 ordinance officer to King Peter in 1916. Towards the end of the war, Nedic was given command of an infantry brigade of the Timok Division.

Royal Yugoslav Army

Nedic 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 Bozidar Jankovic, was old and infirm. Nedic's cousin, Dimitrije Ljotic, and their mutual friend Stanislav Krakov, also served in the 4th Army District and were commanded by Nedic. In 1930, Nedic was promoted to the rank of Armiski deneral. Nedic was appointed head of the Royal Yugoslav Army (Serbo-Croatian: Vojska Kraljevine Jugoslavije, VKJ) General Staff in Belgrade in 1934. He held this position until the following year. On 13 August 1939, Nedic was appointed Minister of the Army and Navy as part of the Cvetkovic–Macek Agreement. Ljotic later assisted the SS-Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Central Office, RSHA) in establishing contacts with him. He also exploited the connections he had with Nedic 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, Nedic 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 Pavelic 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. Nedic welcomed the coup of 1941 which deposed the pro-Axis regime, and fought for Yugoslavia in the German-led Axis invasion that followed the coup.

Occupied Serbia

Wehrmacht commander Heinrich Danckelmann decided to entrust Nedic with the administration of German-occupied Serbia in order to pacify Serb resistance. Not long before, Nedic 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 August 29, 1941.

On September 1, 1941, Nedic 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 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 as a means of swaying Serbs to see these groups as their enemies along with the Germans.

The Serbian government under Nedic 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. Nedic also secretly diverted money and arms from his government to the Chetniks.

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

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

Recently, Miodrag Mladenovic, a former officer with of the Yugoslavian OZNA, said that on February 4, 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 Nedic had committed suicide by jumping through the prison window at Zmaj Jovina street.

Legacy

The Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts named Nedic as one of the 100 most significant Serbs. 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.

Nedic'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 Dacic removed the portrait after neo-Nazi marches were announced in the country.