Србија под Немачком окупацијом у Другом светском рату
Serbia Under German Occupation in WWII. Characteristics of the Occupation Administration

Author(s): Dragan Aleksić
Subject(s): Governance, Military history, Political history, Military policy, WW II and following years (1940 - 1949)
Published by: Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije
Keywords: Germany; occupation; The Second World War; Serbia; occupation administration;
Summary/Abstract: One of the main features of the German administration in Serbia in WWII was the fact that the occupation policy wasn’t directed from one center. Since the agencies of the military administration were not under unitary command in Serbia, nor did they have clearly delimitated spheres of action, their influence on occupation policy depended on the authority of their positions, i.e. on the place of the superimposed agencies in the complex pecking order of power in the Third Reich. Internal relations between individual occupation factors and the power of their influence were of importance for concrete implementation of the occupation policy and its consequences for the population. The spheres of activity of the occupation administration were divided among four agencies which fulfilled occupation tasks parallely without mutual coordination and often with conflicting interests. Each agency had its main office in Berlin and each had to fulfill its tasks directly, sidestepping the military administration in Serbia. Since security of the troops was endangered by a strong resistance movement and since due to the long protracted war the needs of German war economy steadily increased, the police and economic administration played the leading role in the hierarchy of German occupation agencies.

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