1st Belgrade Special Combat detachment
The 1st Belgrade Special Combat detachment was a special police unit which was established by the German Gestapo in the Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia during World War II. History Background On 6 April 1941, Axis forces invaded the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Poorly equipped and poorly trained, the Royal Yugoslav Army was quickly defeated. The country was then dismembered, with Serbia being reduced to its pre-1912 borders and placed under a government of German military occupation. With their forces in the Balkans depleted by the need to send troops to the Eastern Front, the Germans sought to find local leaders to police the region for them. In Serbia this came in the form of Milan Nedić, a pre-war politician who was known to have pro-Axis leanings. Formation The Germans then utilized a series of irregular armed formations to help stabilize the region. One of these formations was the 1st Belgrade Special Combat detachment, formed in mid-1942 by the German Gestapo without the knowledge of Nedić or his government. It was the intention of SS-Oberführer Emanuel Schäfer, the newly appointed chief of the German Security Police in Serbia, to create "an indigenous Serbian entity through which the Gestapo could