Мисија Едмунда Фезенмајера у Србији 1941. године
The Mission of Edmund Veesenmeyer in Serbia in 1941

Author(s): Dragan Aleksić
Subject(s): Military history, Political history, International relations/trade, WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Peace and Conflict Studies
Published by: Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije
Keywords: occupation; Special envoy; collaborationist administration; diplomacy; plenipotentiary; mission;
Summary/Abstract: This paper is an attempt at analyzing the methods the Reich’s leadership employed in solving acute problems in Serbia, and at the same time at presenting the role of certain factors within the occupying apparatus. The research is imbedded in a broader context of the situation in the occupied Serbia – the uprising, defeatism of the Council of Commissioners – the first native administration under occupation, discord among the occupying institutions as how to crush the armed resistance and varying views in various institutions of the Nazi state administration on the role and future competences of the future Serbian administration in crushing the uprising. Furthermore the analysis of activities of various German occupying institutions in Serbia on occasion of the selection of the new administration show the way the occupying system functioned. The main question discussed in the paper is the way in which the German Foreign Ministry through its affiliation in Serbia fulfilled its diplomatic and political tasks of vital importance for the Reich. The mission of Edmund Veesenmeyer in Serbia, the special envoy of the Reich’s foreign minister who had made his name in numerous audacious and very important diplomatic missions, differed here in goals and ways of proceeding from his previous tasks. His presence in Serbia was presented through the attempts of the Reich’s Foreign Ministry to shift the burden of quelling the uprising in Serbia to the native administration and to obtain the approval for this at the top from Hitler himself, since the military favored the use of brutal force and severe reprisals.

• Details
• Contents