to all German-occupied territory. When the Germans withdrew from the Yugoslav territory that was annexed or occupied by their Axis partners, these laws applied only to the part of modern-day Slovenia administered by the two Reichsgau, and the German-occupied territory of Serbia. This latter territory "was occupied outright by German troops and was placed under a military government". The exact boundaries of the occupied territory were fixed in a directive issued by Adolf Hitler on 12 April 1941, which also directed the creation of the military administration. This directive was followed up on 20 April 1941 by orders issued by the Chief of the OKH which established the Military Commander in Serbia as the head of the occupation regime, responsible to the Quartermaster-General of the OKH. In the interim, the staff for the military government had been assembled in Germany and the duties of the Military Commander in Serbia had been detailed. These included "safeguarding the railroad lines between Belgrade and Salonika and the Danube shipping route, executing the economic orders issued [by Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring], and establishing and maintaining peace and order". In the short-term, he was also responsible for guarding the huge numbers of Yugoslav prisoners of war, and safeguarding captured weapons and munitions. In order to achieve this the military commander's staff was divided into military and administrative branches, and he was allocated personnel to form four area commands and about ten district commands, which reported to the chief of the administrative staff, and the military staff allocated the troops of the four local defence battalions across the area commands. The first military commander in the occupied territory was General der Flieger Helmuth Förster, a Luftwaffe officer, appointed on 20 April 1941, assisted by the chief of the administrative staff, SS-Brigadeführer and State Councillor, Dr. Harald Turner. Outside of the military commander's staff, there were several senior figures in Belgrade who represented key non-military arms of the German government. Prominent among these was NSFK-Obergruppenführer, Franz Neuhausen, who was initially appointed by Göring as plenipotentiary general for economic affairs in the territory on 17 April. Another was Envoy Felix Benzler of the Foreign Office, appointed by Reichsminister Joachim von Ribbentrop who was appointed on 3 May. A further key figure in the initial German administration was SS-Standartenführer Wilhelm Fuchs, who commanded Einsatzgruppe Serbia, consisting of Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service, or SD) and Sicherheitspolizei (Security Police, or SiPo), the 64th