1939–1941 In August 1939, Ljotić's cousin,
Milan Nedić, was appointed Yugoslav
Minister of Defense. Later that year, almost all Zbor publications, including
Otadžbina,
Buđenje,
Zbor,
Naš put (Our Path) and
Vihor (Whirlwind), were prohibited. Ljotić exploited the connections he had with Nedić to ensure that the banned Zbor-published journal
Bilten (Bulletin) was distributed to members of the
Royal Yugoslav Army. The journal was published illegally in a military printing house and distributed throughout the country by military couriers. Ljotić was the journal's main contributor and editor-in-chief. Fifty-eight issues of
Bilten were published from March 1939 until October 1940, in which Ljotić advocated a pro-Axis Yugoslav foreign policy and criticized Belgrade's tolerance of Jews. As many as 20,000 copies each were printed of later issues of the journal. Ljotić was particularly pleased with being able to exert his ideological influence over young military academy trainees as well as older officers. With the outbreak of World War II, Ljotić supported Yugoslavia's policy of neutrality in the conflict while promoting the position that Yugoslav diplomacy should focus on relations with Berlin. He vehemently opposed the August 1939
Cvetković–Maček Agreement and repeatedly wrote letters to
Prince Paul urging him to annul it. In these letters, he advocated an immediate re-organization of the government according to Zbor ideology, the abolishment of Croatian autonomy, the division of the Royal Yugoslav Army into contingents of ethnic Serbs and some Croat and Slovene volunteers, who would be armed, and contingents of most Croats and Slovenes in the armed forces, who would serve as labour units and would be unarmed. Effectively, the purpose of all these points was to reduce non-Serbs in Yugoslavia to the status of second-class citizens. By this point, Zbor was infiltrated by the German
Gestapo, the
Abwehr (German military intelligence), and the
Schutzstaffel (SS). In 1940, the Royal Yugoslav Army purged its pro-German elements and Ljotić lost much of the influence he held over the armed forces. Ljotić's followers responded to the Cvetković–Maček Agreement with violence, clashing with the youth wing of the
Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ). These incidents attracted as many as 5,000 new members to Zbor and led to the formation of a Zbor student wing known as the
White Eagles (). In July 1940, Ljotić expressed his bitter opposition to the diplomatic recognition of the
Soviet Union by Belgrade, which was meant to strengthen Yugoslavia internally in the case of war. On 23 October 1940,
White Eagles members massed outside the campus of the University of Belgrade. University president Petar Micić was a Zbor sympathizer. The Belgrade police, who were alleged to have had foreknowledge of the riots, withdrew from the area before violence erupted. The
White Eagles members then threatened faculty and students with pistols and knives, stabbed some of them, hailed
Adolf Hitler and
Benito Mussolini as their heroes and shouted: "down with the Jews!" Members of
Slovenski Jug (Slavic South), a Serbian nationalist movement, also participated in the riots, which were orchestrated by Ljotić in the hope that violence would provoke
martial law and thus bring about a more centralized system of control in the university. The Serbian public responded to the riots with outrage. On 24 October, the Yugoslav government revoked Zbor's legal status. On 2 November, the Ministry of Interior sent a list of Zbor members to all municipal administrators in Serbia. The government cracked down on Zbor by detaining several hundred members, forcing Ljotić into hiding. One of the only public figures in Serbia to speak in favour of Ljotić during this period was Serbian Orthodox Bishop
Nikolaj Velimirović, who praised his "faith in God" and "good character". Although a government investigation found that Zbor was guilty of high treason for accepting German funds, the authorities were careful not to arrest Ljotić in order not to provoke the Germans. Ljotić was placed under government surveillance, but authorities quickly lost track of him. He hid with friends in Belgrade and remained in contact with Nedić and Velimirović. On 6 November, Nedić resigned from his post to protest the government crackdown on Zbor. Additional issues of
Bilten continued to be printed despite his resignation. These supported a pro-Axis Yugoslav foreign policy, criticized the government's tolerance of Jews and Freemasons and attacked pro-British members of the government for their opposition to Yugoslavia, signing the
Tripartite Pact. Ljotić remained in hiding until April 1941.
1941–1945 On 6 April 1941,
Axis forces
invaded Yugoslavia. Poorly equipped and poorly trained, the Royal Yugoslav Army was quickly defeated. Several dozen Royal Yugoslav Army officers affiliated with Zbor were captured by the
Wehrmacht during the invasion but were quickly released. The Germans sent Ljotić a written notice assuring his freedom of movement in German-occupied Serbia. Not long after German forces entered Belgrade, Ljotić's followers were given the task of selecting an estimated 1,200 Jews from the city's non-Jewish population. Upon occupying Serbia, the Germans prohibited the activity of all political parties except Zbor. Although they originally intended to make Ljotić the head of a Serbian
puppet government, both Ljotić and the Germans realized that his unpopularity would make any government led by him a failure. The Germans soon invited Ljotić to join the initial Serbian puppet government, the
Commissioner Administration of
Milan Aćimović. Ljotić was offered the position of economic commissioner but never took office, partly because he disliked the idea of playing a secondary role in the administration and partly because of his unpopularity. He resorted to indirectly exerting his influence over the Serbian puppet government through two of his closest associates, Zbor members Stevan Ivanić and Miloslav Vasiljević, whom the Germans had selected as commissioners. The Germans trusted Ljotić more than any other ethnic Serb in occupied Yugoslavia. In need of a reliable collaborationist force to combat the
Communist uprising that had erupted in the aftermath of the German occupation of Serbia, they gave him permission to form the Serbian Volunteer Detachments in September 1941. In October, Zbor organized the
Grand Anti-Masonic Exhibition in Belgrade with German financial support. The exhibition sought to expose an alleged
Judeo-Masonic and Communist conspiracy for
world domination through several displays featuring
antisemitic propaganda. In December, the Serbian Volunteer Detachments were renamed the
Serbian Volunteer Corps (, SDK) and placed under the command of
General der Artillerie (lieutenant general)
Paul Bader. Although it was not formally part of the
Wehrmacht, the SDK received arms, ammunition, food and clothing from the Germans. Its units were not allowed to move from their assigned territory without German authorization. Ljotić himself had no control over the SDK, which was directly commanded by Colonel
Kosta Mušicki. Like the
Serbian State Guard, it was under the direct command of the
Higher SS and Police Leader August Meyszner and the Commanding General in Serbia. During operations, its units were put under the tactical command of German divisions. It was the only group of armed Serbs that the Germans ever trusted during the war, its units often being praised for valour in action by German commanders. The SDK often helped the Gestapo track down and round up Jewish civilians who had managed to evade capture by the Germans and was involved in sending Jewish prisoners to the
Banjica concentration camp. On 15 July 1942,
Chetnik leader
Draža Mihailović sent a telegram to the Yugoslav government-in-exile asking them to publicly denounce Ljotić, Nedić and the openly collaborationist Chetnik leader
Kosta Pećanac as traitors. The Yugoslav government-in-exile responded by doing so publicly over
BBC Radio. On 4 October 1944, Ljotić, along with Nedić and about 300 Serbian government officials, escaped from Belgrade with German officials. Ljotić and the SDK arrived in
Osijek by the end of October, where German official
Hermann Neubacher agreed to arrange their safe passage towards the Slovenian coast. In early 1945, Chetnik leader
Pavle Đurišić decided to move to the
Ljubljana Gap independent of Mihailović and arranged for Ljotić's forces already in Slovenia to meet him near
Bihać in western Bosnia to assist his movement. Between March and April, Ljotić and Mihailović exchanged messages concerning a last-ditch alliance against the Partisans. Although the agreement was reached too late to be of any practical use, the forces of Ljotić and Mihailović came together under the command of Chetnik General
Miodrag Damjanović on 27 March. Ljotić did not live to see the end of the war. He was killed in a car accident in Slovenia on 23 April 1945. In early May, Damjanović led most of the troops under his command into northwestern Italy, where they surrendered to the British and were placed in detention camps. Many were extradited to Yugoslavia, where an estimated 1,500–3,100 were executed by the Partisans and buried in mass graves in the
Kočevski Rog plateau. Others immigrated to western countries, where they established émigré organizations intended to promote Zbor's political agenda. Many of Ljotić's followers settled in
Munich, where they ran their own publishing house and printed a newspaper called
Iskra (Spark). In 1974, Ljotić's brother was shot and killed by agents of the Yugoslav
State Security Service (
Uprava državne bezbednosti, UDBA). The antagonism between pro-Ljotić groups and those affiliated with the Chetniks continued in exile. ==Notes==