a gas van. After the war, several of the key German and Serbian leaders in the occupied territory were tried and executed for war crimes. Names While the official name of the territory was Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia, sources refer to it using a wide variety of terms: a German-controlled "Serbian Residual State" a German-controlled territory a rump Serbian state a "so-called German protectorate" a special "German-protected area" German-occupied Serbia Nedić's Serbia () Serbia Serbia–Banat Serbia under German military administration Serbia under German occupation History 1941 Invasion and partition In April 1941, Germany and its allies invaded and occupied the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, which was then partitioned. Some Yugoslav territory was annexed by its Axis neighbors, Hungary, Bulgaria and Italy. The Germans engineered and supported the creation of the puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia (, NDH), which roughly comprised most of the pre-war Banovina Croatia, along with the rest of present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina and some adjacent territory. The Italians, Hungarians and Bulgarians occupied other parts of Yugoslavian territory. Germany did not annex any Yugoslav territory, but occupied northern parts of present-day Slovenia and stationed occupation troops in the northern half of the NDH. The German-occupied part of Slovenia was divided into two administrative areas that were placed under the administration of the Gauleiters of the neighboring Reichsgau Kärnten and Reichsgau Steiermark. The remaining territory, which consisted of Serbia proper, the northern part of Kosovo (around Kosovska Mitrovica), and the Banat was occupied by the Germans and placed under the administration of a German military government. This was due to the key rail and riverine transport routes that passed through it, and its valuable resources, particularly non-ferrous metals. Some sources describe the territory as a puppet state, or a "special administrative province", with other sources describing it as having a puppet government. A demarcation line, known as the "Vienna Line", ran across Yugoslavia from the Reich border in the west to the point where the boundaries of German-occupied Serbia met the borders of the Bulgarian- and Albanian-annexed Yugoslavian territories. To the north of the line, the Germans held sway, with the Italians having prime responsibility to the south of the line. Establishment of the military government of occupation Even before the Yugoslav surrender, the German Army High Command (, or OKH) had issued a proclamation to the population under German occupation, detailing laws that applied