German Newsreel Europa Woche № 81 Sept 1944 SERBIAN VOLUNTEER CORPS

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Episode 288

Europa Woche № 81

September 12.1944

In July 1941, following a full-scale rebellion by communist Yugoslav Partisans and royalist Chetniks, the German military commander in Serbia pressured Milan Nedić's collaborationist government to deal with the uprisings under the threat of letting the armed forces of the Independent State of Croatia, Hungary, and Bulgaria occupy the territory and maintain peace and order in it. A paramilitary militia called the Serbian Volunteer Detachments was formed, the unit, never formally part of the German armed forces, numbered about 3,500 men, mostly Serbian but also included some Croats and Slovenes. It was reorganised as the Serbian Volunteer Corps, at the end of 1942, and placed under the command of Colonel Kosta Mušicki. By 1944, the majority of the Serbian Volunteer Corps recruits were draftees as opposed to volunteers and reached a peak strength of 9,886 men.

After the Red Army entered Serbia and Belgrade was liberated in October 1944, the corps retreated with the Germans into the Slovene Lands. In November it was taken over by the Waffen-SS, and incorporated into the SFK: Serbisches Freiwilligen Korps (Serbian Volunteer Corps), an infantry unit composed of the various Nedić's collaborationist groups on the run. The surviving members of the three SFK regiments, retreated into Austria where they surrendered to the British on 12 May 1945 near Klagenfurt. Most of the men were returned to Yugoslavia where they were executed on charge of treason.

On 14 September 1941, at a government meeting, minister Mihailo Olća proposed that the puppet government should call upon the Serbian population to form anti-communist units. The next day 234 members of Yugoslav National Movement (ZBOR), Ljotić's and Olćan's pre-war political party enlisted as the first volunteers. On 6 October, Milan Nedić, the Prime Minister of the Axis-installed puppet Government of National Salvation, appointed Mušicki to lead the Serbian Volunteer Command. The command consisted of 12 companies, each 120-150 men strong. It had 153 officers and 1,779 other ranks. Many volunteers came from the student ZBOR organization and others were refugees from the Independent State of Croatia. The men wore olive green uniforms or, in the case of officers, the uniform of the former Yugoslav armed forces, with the Cross of St. George on the right breast.[14] Ranks or grade designations were for all practical purposes those of the former Royal Yugoslav Army. Weapons were mixed; besides German arms which were eventually supplied, foreign rifles and machine guns, especially those seized as war booty from the defeated Yugoslav forces were used. Mortars and light artillery were also on hand in varying quantities. The command also had an educational department whose task was to educate fighters ideologically. The head of the educational section was journalist Ratko Parežanin. It also had an intelligence section which had centres all over Serbia. The corps often operated in close alliance with the Russian Corps.

The Serbian Volunteer Corps was formally under Nedić's Command of Gendarmerie, but it was, like SDS and SGS, under direct control of SS and Police Leader August Meyszner and Commanding General in Serbia. In operations in the field, its units were put under tactical command of German divisions. Ljotić himself had no control over SDK. SDK units were not allowed to move from the assigned territory without German authorization.