population who could raise some sort of Serbian armed force and who would be willing to use it ruthlessly against the rebels whilst remaining under full German control. In response to a request from Benzler, the Foreign Office sent SS- Edmund Veesenmayer to provide assistance in establishing a new puppet government that would meet German requirements. Five months earlier, Veesenmayer had engineered the proclamation of the NDH. Veesenmayer engaged in a series of consultations with German commanders and officials in Belgrade, interviewed a number of possible candidates to lead the new puppet government, then selected former Yugoslav Minister of the Army and Navy Milan Nedić as the best available. The Germans had to apply significant pressure to Nedić to encourage him to accept the position, including threats to bring Bulgarian and Hungarian troops into the occupied territory and to send him to Germany as a prisoner of war. Unlike most Yugoslav generals, Nedić had not been interned in Germany after the capitulation, but instead had been placed under house arrest in Belgrade. On 27 August 1941, about 75 prominent Serbs convened a meeting in Belgrade where they resolved that Nedić should form a Government of National Salvation to replace the Commissioner Government. The same day, Nedić wrote to Danckelmann agreeing to become the Prime Minister of the new government on the basis of five conditions and some additional concessions. Two days later, the German authorities appointed Nedić and his government. Real power continued to reside with the occupiers. Aćimović initially retained his position as Minister of the Interior, but was replaced in November 1942. In March 1945, he joined a Chetnik group in the NDH, and was killed battling the Partisans. Analysis Apart from the Zbor activists, some members of the Commissioner Government may appear on face value to have been compliant bureaucrats with few ideological convictions. The historian Alexander Prusin asserts that on closer examination, they accepted collaboration with the occupiers as a means to spare Serbs from political influences that they considered more dangerous than the Germans: democracy, communism, and multiculturalism. He observes that despite their extremely limited powers, they actively assisted the Germans in exploiting the population and the economy, and also took an "extremely opportunistic" view of the Jewish question, regarding their own participation in the Holocaust as "unpleasant but unavoidable". Despite the claims of post-war apologists, Prusin concludes that there is no evidence that the