Dimitrije Ljotić’s Yugoslav Nationalist Movement, also known as Zbor (Rally) […] was a pro-fascistic yet highly conservative political association, which received steady financial and political support from [the Third Reich] dating back its foundation in 1935, and which espoused an extreme anti-Communist, anti-liberal and anti-individualist ideological programme. Zbor was a marginal political phenomenon in the interwar years, and did not succeed in receiving more than 1 per cent of electoral support throughout the 1930s.³⁶

However, Ljotić and his close political associates were to become the decisive political factor during the subsequent [Axis] occupation of Serbia, and assumed important positions in the collaborationist government. Zbor advocated a return to the archaic cultural and religious traditions of the Yugoslav nation, and heavily criticized the political course and influence of Western democracies; unsurprisingly, this ideological stance profoundly shaped its adherents’ contributions to the modernization debates.

[…]

The [Axis] régime in rump Serbia implemented some of the most brutal occupation policies and practices in the entire [Axis occupation of] Europe. The cumulative effects of forced labour, detention and execution of the ‘politically unreliable’, constant economic exploitation and food requisitioning were severely worsened by the harsh reprisals in response to the developing armed rebellion of the Communist and nationalist forces.

The initial [Axis] plan not to set up a collaborationist régime with political and governmental duties needed to be changed as the situation with the guerrilla resistance deteriorated and no further reinforcement of the [Wehrmacht] in Serbia was allowed due to the Eastern front demands. In that context, the originally installed purely administrative body functioning under firm German auspices proved inefficient, and what was suggested was ‘reorganizing and strengthening the Serbian administration so that the Serbs themselves might crush the rebellion’.⁵⁰

The puppet government of General Milan Nedić, a high-ranking pre-war military officer and politician with a favourable popular reputation, was thus established in August 1941. From the very beginning of the [Axis] occupation, Ljotić served as one of the most important men in the collaborationist setting in Serbia: he immediately founded the Serbian Volunteers’ Corps (SDK) which was integrated into the Wehrmacht; members of Zbor joined the collaborationist cabinet, while Ljotić himself became a Commissar for the Rebuilding of the City of Smederevo.

Ljotić’s actual political influence extended well beyond what was suggested by his official title. He had a privileged access to the [Wehrmacht] and occupation authorities in Serbia: although he never formally joined Nedić’s government, he maintained significant influence over its decision-making and plans throughout the war years. Still, the government’s areas of authority were heavily restricted from the very outset, and they only shrank as time went on, as the government failed to secure popular backing, pacify the population or eliminate the military rebellion.

The government functioned under constant [Axis] threats of even more brutal anti-civilian retaliations, executions of the most prominent members of the intelligentsia, and the dismemberment and occupation of Serbia by the other Axis forces, etc. According to Tomasevich:

[T]he Serbian puppet government was so subservient to the […] occupation authorities [that] it cannot truly be said that it had its own policies in any field of government activity. It was simply an auxiliary organ of the […] occupation régime.⁵¹

Distrusted by the political and SS elements in the [Third Reich’s] apparatus, the government’s activity was largely reduced to low-level administration, pro-[Axis] propaganda efforts and pointing out to the population the futility of any anti-[Axis] operations.

[…]

From the very beginning of the occupation, wartime writings held on to the rhetoric of participation in an exceptionally significant project, one of building the New European Order. They also constructed Serbia as an important, equal, honourable and respected member of the renovated European family of nations.

In fact, as Nedić’s Minister Olćan noted in 1943, while England’s plans for the post-war reconstruction of Europe relegated the Balkans to the political margins and envisaged an insignificant international position for the region,⁸⁰ Serbia under Nedić had been awarded a ‘dignified place in the European community’, which would, after the war, become a ‘family of harmony and happiness’.⁸¹

(Emphasis added.)

As elsewhere in Axis propaganda, Serbia’s collaborationist government critised the United Kingdom for abusing India:

Numerous lengthy treatises on Indian politics, culture, history, literature and religion criticized the ‘British rhetoric of superiority and detestation’ with regard to the local population, the rhetoric that some of the most prominent pre-war intellectuals had themselves internalized. […] ‘India’s contacts with the West in more recent times brought to [the country] much misfortune, tragedy, unhappiness’.⁶³

While one could easily gloss over this as nothing but another generic attempt to persuade people into siding against the Western Allies, it is more useful to think of it in comparative terms: the colonisation of India was an example of a ‘bad’ occupation, whereas the Axis’s presence in the Balkans was an instance of a ‘good’ occupation. In other words, no matter how rough the Serbs might have had it, the Indians had it worse. When seen in this light, Axis propaganda (hypocritically) criticizing British colonialism becomes much easier to understand.