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Draft:Strahinja Janjić

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Strahinja Janjić
Serbian Cyrillic: Страхиња Јањић
Born(1906-04-13)April 13, 1906
DiedNovember 1966(1966-11-00) (aged 60)

Strahinja Janjić (Serbian Cyrillic: Страхиња Јањић; April 13th 1906 - November 1966) was a Serbian officer in the Royal Yugoslav Army and a German agent in the Yugoslav government. He is notable for being a commander of Serbian Gestapo during World War II.

Early life and military career

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Strahinja Janjić was born on April 13th, 1906 in the village of Klenje to Serbian parents, He attended a military academy in Belgrade and finished his education on October 1st, 1925. He was an infantry officer and was promoted to a lieutenant in 1929 but his military career was cut very short in June 1932 when he was kicked out due to bad behavior such as embezzlement and abuse of power.[1]

According to a Gestapo document, one such incident in 1932 is that Strahinja Janjić witnessed and exposed a homosexual affair among the top officers in the Yugoslav military probably involving Petar Živković, who is known to be homosexual. It has lead Strahinja Janjić to his retirement from the military.[2]

Interwar activities

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His behavior since retiring from the military did not change as indicated by the fact that he was reported to the police 20 times and his personal life was messy, despite this he joined various political parties such as JRZ and ZBOR. Janjić was a Nazi sympathizer and a Germanophile[3], because of that, at some point Janjić became a German agent in the government of Dragisa Cvetković.[4]

World War II

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Upon the outbreak of war in Yugoslavia Janjić escaped from Belgrade and began collaborating with Germans to suppress the Uprising in Serbia. His primary target were Yugoslav Partisans and he gathered around 100 volunteers in Kragujevac with an intention to suppress the partisan uprising in that region. He helped German forces in the Kragujevac massacre and was appointed a mayor of Kragujevac. [5] Janjić donated a large sum of money to the Grand Anti-Masonic Exhibition in Belgrade and he maintained order in the city in brutal ways by beating and torturing the local population as well as committing rape and stealing, because of that he was arrested by SDK officers at the start of December 1941 but shortly after freed by the Germans and was appointed as a mayor of Leskovac in early 1942. He stayed in that position for 3 months before getting replaced because of corruption. [6] [7] After that he got in conflict with the president of the Government of National Salvation Milan Nedić and was sent to the Banjica concentration camp from 18th May to 6th June 1942 when Germans intervened once again to save him, because of that he strictly worked with the German Gestapo and tried forming a Serbian SS division, he successfully gathered some volunteers and with them he formed the 1st Belgrade Special Combat detachment (also known as Serbian Gestapo) [8] [9]


References

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