SLIKA NEPRIJATELJA/SAVEZNIKA U SRBIJI 1941– 1944 TRADICIJA, IDEOLOGIJA, STEREOTIPI
THE IMAGE OF AN ENEMY/ALLY IN SERBIA 1941 – 1944 TRADITION, IDEOLOGY, STEREOTYPES

Summary/Abstract: The image of an enemy/ally in Serbia during WWII was created by all three main political and military factors. In the imaging of the enemy, central part had been occupied by Germans, particularly Austrians since the First World War. Such image has been confirmed after the April war, division of the Yugoslavia and mass terror against Serbs. The propaganda of the ocupator, that is to say the directed Serbian propaganda, had a difficult task to replace Germans as enemies with the image of the “World Jew” as a major, universal, that means Serbian enemy, too. According to that NS ideological dogma, the image of domestic enemy, two resistance movement has been created. They were accused as tools in Jewish s (western-plutocratic and eastern-Bolshevik)hands. Two resistance movements, a legitimistic one (Yugoslav Homeland army) and a revolutionary one (the Communist partisans)based their image of the enemy on the tradition of the German enemy, but the partisan movement has modified this image according to its political aims. Essentially different aims and tactics of these two movements, as well as their irreconcilable conflict from November 1941, determined changes in their imaging of the enemy. Both have seen the principal enemy in the other resistance movement. Their military and political activity was subordinated to such a perception. The changes in the balance of power in 1943. and 1944. influenced the credibility of the enemy perception of the two resistance movements. The image created by the victorious partisan movement was a basis for the interpretation of the WWII events throughout entire period of the Communist Yugoslavia.

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