Misplaced Pages

#326673

121-726: Between 1941 and 1944 during the occupation of Yugoslavia , its former operations were taken over by the Croatian State Bank in the Independent State of Croatia and the German-controlled Serbian National Bank in occupied Serbia , while the rest of the Yugoslav territory was forcibly annexed to the Bulgarian, German, Hungarian and Italian currency zones. The Yugoslav central bank was re-established in 1945 by

242-612: A "run on the Reichsmark " and a run on the banks viewed as "two independent causes". Schnabel thus similarly de-emphasized the centrality of foreign-currency aspects, and noted the absence of currency mismatch in large banks' balance sheets despite high shares of foreign deposits. Schnabel also argued that the large Berlin-based universal banks were made to feel too big to fail by the Reichsbank's liquidity policy stance, contributing to moral hazard and uncontrolled balance sheet expansion in

363-511: A 69-percent stake in Commerzbank (into which Barmer Bankverein  [ de ] was similarly merged), and a 35-percent stake in Deutsche Bank und Disconto-Gesellschaft . By contrast, the non-branch banks, Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft and Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft , neither requested nor received public financial assistance, although the latter was state-owned. The unraveling of

484-720: A Communist propaganda network in Sisak and nearby villages. At the same time, the CPY's Provincial Committee for Serbia made its decision to launch an armed uprising in Serbia and put together its Supreme Staff of the National Liberation Partisan Units of Yugoslavia to be chaired by Josip Broz Tito . On 4 July, a formal order to begin the uprising was issued. On 7 July, the Bela Crkva incident happened, which would later be considered

605-679: A bounty of 100,000 Reichsmarks offered by Germans for their heads. While "officially" remaining mortal enemies of the Germans and the Ustaše, the Chetniks were known for making clandestine deals with the Italians. The Second Enemy Offensive was a coordinated Axis attack conducted in January 1942 against Partisan forces in eastern Bosnia. The Partisan troops once again avoided encirclement and were forced to retreat over

726-1270: A cavalry regiment in Zagreb and an independent cavalry battalion at Sarajevo . Two independent motorized infantry battalions were based at Zagreb and Sarajevo respectively. Several regiments of Ustaše militia were also formed at this time, which operated under a separate command structure to, and independently from, the Croatian Home Guard, until late 1944. The Home Guard crushed the Serb revolt in Eastern Herzegovina in June 1941, and in July they fought in Eastern and Western Bosnia. They fought in Eastern Herzegovina again, when Croatian-Dalmatian and Slavonian battalions reinforced local units. The Italian High Command assigned 24 divisions and three coastal brigades to occupation duties in Yugoslavia from 1941. These units were located from Slovenia, Croatia and Dalmatia through to Montenegro and Kosovo. From 1931 to 1939,

847-541: A conference in London on 20-23 July. The general bank holiday was lifted after three weeks on 5 August 1931. The Hoover moratorium, which aimed to protect longer-term exposures by imposing a standstill on short-term repayments, disproportionately impacted British merchant banks involved in trade finance to German counterparts, but also triggered a collapse in the value of German bonds, many of which had been underwritten by American institutions. Political constraints linked to

968-731: A conflict of competence with the Zagreb-based National Bank was resolved, as a result of which the Croatian upstart was renamed Slavenska Banka . The transition of the Austro-Hungarian Bank's branches was only completed in August 1921, and the gold transfer in late 1922. The monetary transition was similarly complex. In the war's immediate aftermath, much of the country still used the Austro-Hungarian krone , temporarily rebranded

1089-698: A context of increasing competition among banks. In 2014, economists Albrecht Ritschl and Samad Sarferaz found empirical evidence "consistent with the claim of Schnabel (2004) that Germany's 1931 crisis was causally a banking crisis, whereas monetary transmission under the Gold Standard played only a limited role." The long-accepted causal link between the Creditanstalt collapse and the events in Germany has likewise been questioned in more recent historiography. Separately, recent research has demonstrated that France

1210-467: A decree established the office of Reichskommissar für das Bankgewerbe ( lit.   ' Imperial Commissioner for Banking ' ), for which Chancellor Heinrich Brüning appointed Friedrich Ernst  [ de ] . In 1934, this was transformed into the Aufsichtsamt für das Kreditwesen , by new comprehensive banking legislation ( German : Kreditwesengesetz of 5 December 1931). Initially

1331-733: A few days after the founding of the NDH. The force was formed with the authorisation of German authorities. The task of the new Croatian armed forces was to defend the new state against both foreign and domestic enemies. The Croatian Home Guard was originally limited to 16 infantry battalions and 2 cavalry squadrons – 16,000 men in total. The original 16 battalions were soon enlarged to 15 infantry regiments of two battalions each between May and June 1941, organised into five divisional commands, some 55,000 enlisted men. Support units included 35 light tanks supplied by Italy, 10 artillery battalions (equipped with captured Royal Yugoslav Army weapons of Czech origin),

SECTION 10

#1733085025327

1452-535: A financial statement. . On 6 June 1931, the German government announced it would be unable to pay reparations as previously planned, triggering a parliamentary crisis. On 20 June 1931, U.S. President Herbert Hoover announced a one-year "holiday" or moratorium on the payment of political debts, known as the Hoover Moratorium , which brought some relief even though it was initially opposed by France. On 22 June 1931,

1573-563: A general panic as the public felt the Reichsbank was reaching the limits of its liquidity assistance capacity. The government declared a general bank holiday, starting on 14 July 1931. On 15 July 1931, the Reichsbank suspended the convertibility of the Reichsmark, effectively taking Germany out of the gold standard , and imposed capital controls . From 16 July 1931, some banking transactions were again authorized but with severe limits and restrictions, partly loosened on 20 July. Meanwhile,

1694-510: A government-imposed moratorium on agricultural debt repayment, to a state of de facto insolvency that lasted essentially until the German in 1941, even though foreign-invested banks fared better thanks to external financial support. In May 1939, following the Italian invasion of Albania the month before and the earlier occupation of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany, the National Bank transferred

1815-585: A large scale from small and mid-sized banks, for which no deposit guarantee existed, to cash, direct deposits at the Banque de France , and accounts at the de facto state-guaranteed savings banks . Several joint-stock and private banks failed as a consequence, such as Banque Oustric in October 1930 and Banque Adam  [ fr ] in November 1930, and a severe credit crunch ensued. In Austria, Creditanstalt

1936-555: A lesser extent Romania , and much less so Czechoslovakia . The large Berlin-based branch banks also made a large number of acquisitions of smaller competitors, a trend which contributed in the rapid increase of their market share from 12.6 to 23.3 percent of total assets between 1913 and 1928, and culminated in 1929 with two large-scale transactions, Commerzbank 's acquisition of Mitteldeutsche Creditbank  [ de ] and Deutsche Bank 's acquisition of Disconto-Gesellschaft . The long-standing practice of self-regulation in

2057-460: A major contributor to the global economic depression of the early 1930s. In the early decades following the crisis, it was often described as a somewhat serendipitous crisis of confidence, in which the key mechanism was the withdrawal of short-term foreign deposits or " hot money ". Joseph Schumpeter described the crisis as triggered by "vicissitudes [that] would have to be explained primarily in terms of accidents and external factors". This narrative

2178-576: A major shareholder through the Anglo-International Bank , the former Anglo-Austrian Bank which had sold its Austrian operations to Creditanstalt in 1926 in an all-shares transaction. In 1930 and early 1931, the project of an Austro-German Customs Union generated additional friction, restricting the willingness of Austria's international creditors and especially France to support the country in moments of turmoil. On 11 May 1931, Creditanstalt publicly announced that it would not be able to publish

2299-662: A modern war fought in circumstances quite similar to those found in World War II Yugoslavia. In Slovenia, the Partisans likewise drew on the experienced TIGR members to train troops. Their other major advantage, which became more apparent in the later stages of the War, was in the Partisans being founded on a communist ideology rather than ethnicity . Therefore, they won support that crossed national lines, meaning they could expect at least some levels of support in almost any corner of

2420-739: A multi-side civil war was waged between the Yugoslav communist Partisans, the Serbian royalist Chetniks , the Axis-allied Croatian Ustaše and Home Guard , Serbian Volunteer Corps and State Guard , Slovene Home Guard , as well as Nazi-allied Russian Protective Corps troops. Both the Yugoslav Partisans and the Chetnik movement initially resisted the Axis invasion. However, after 1941, Chetniks extensively and systematically collaborated with

2541-561: A pure monobank system in which the National Bank was the single financial intermediary for the entire country. From 1955, the monobank framework was softened with the re-establishment of communal (local) banks and of specialized banks. The latter included the Yugoslav Bank for Foreign Trade (1955, later known as Jugobanka  [ sr ] ), Yugoslav Investment Bank (1956, later known as Investbanka  [ sr ] ), and Yugoslav Agricultural Bank (1958), complemented in 1978 with

SECTION 20

#1733085025327

2662-558: A sufficient mechanism to ensure the soundness of the banking sector, not least as German banks published balance sheet data on a monthly basis, and also confidentially reported foreign debt data to the Reichsbank . By contrast, the Bank of France only gathered balance sheet information from the largest four commercial banks ( Comptoir National d'Escompte de Paris , Crédit Industriel et Commercial , Crédit Lyonnais , and Société Générale ) before

2783-406: A supervisory regime was first introduced in 1941. In June 1931, Reichsbank President Hans Luther assured his American counterpart George L. Harrison that "periodical publication of German banks' statement provide safe means for judging their situation which is safe despite large foreign withdrawals." In spite of the apparent abundance of data, however, German public authorities' knowledge about

2904-691: A treaty of friendship with Yugoslavia (prior to 22 June 1941 , Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia adhered to the non-aggression pact the parties had signed in August 1939 and in the autumn 1940, Germany and the Soviet Union had been in talks on the USSR's potential accession to the Tripartite Pact ). Having steadily fallen within the orbit of the Axis during 1940 after events such as the Second Vienna Award , Yugoslavia followed Bulgaria and formally joined

3025-462: The Grossbanken , the four largest ( Deutsche Bank , Danat-Bank , Dresdner Bank , and Commerzbank ) maintained extensive branch networks, while others (e.g. Berliner Handels-Gesellschaft and Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft ) had no branch network and were comparatively more active lending to other banks than to industry. There was no simple correlation between bank type and risk profiles; for example,

3146-570: The 1st Proletarian Assault Brigade ( 1. Proleterska Udarna Brigada ) – the first regular Partisan military unit capable of operating outside its local area. 22 December became the "Day of the Yugoslav People's Army ". On 15 January 1942, the Bulgarian 1st Army , with three infantry divisions, transferred to south-eastern Serbia. Headquartered at Niš , it replaced German divisions needed in Croatia and

3267-657: The Banat ), National Bank of Albania (e.g. Kosovo ), and Bulgarian National Bank (most of Macedonia ). In November 1944, after Belgrade was taken over by the Partisans, the Serbian National Bank was liquidated. In February 1945, the Communist authorities dismissed the National Bank officials in exile. New Yugoslav dinar banknotes, printed in the Soviet Union , were introduced from 20 April 1945 to 9 July 1945. The era of

3388-549: The Central Bank of Kosovo . In March 2001, the Central Bank of Montenegro was established following legislation passed the previous year, even though it no longer had an independent monetary policy role following Montenegro's unilateral adoption of the Deutsche Mark as sole legal tender from 1 January 2001. In February 2003, the National Bank of Yugoslavia, which no longer had monetary authority over either Kosovo or Montenegro,

3509-622: The Croatian Littoral and large chunks of the coastal Dalmatia region (along with nearly all of the Adriatic islands and the Bay of Kotor ). It also gained control over the Italian governorate of Montenegro , and was granted the kingship in the Independent State of Croatia, though wielding little real power within it; although it did (alongside Germany) maintain a de facto zone of influence within

3630-473: The Deutsche Golddiskontbank (a Reichsbank subsidiary, 10 percent), Deutsche Bank und Disconto-Gesellschaft (10 percent), Deutsche Zentralgenossenschaftskasse , Bank für Industrie-Obligationen , Deutsche Rentenbank-Kreditanstalt , Prussian State Bank , and Dresdner Bank (6 percent each), and other Berlin-based joint-stock banks (10 percent). The Akzeptbank's early activity was mainly focused on

3751-540: The General Post Office, Belgrade , which had been erected as the seat of Poštanska štedionica in the late interwar period, was used by the National Bank from 1946 to 2006, after which it became the seat of the Constitutional Court of Serbia . Many of these buildings were subsequently reallocated, either to newly created banks or to other organizations. In the 1970s, some of newly created "national banks" at

National Bank of Yugoslavia - Misplaced Pages Continue

3872-477: The Igman mountain near Sarajevo. The Third Enemy Offensive , an offensive against Partisan forces in eastern Bosnia, Montenegro , Sandžak and Herzegovina which took place in the spring of 1942, was known as Operation TRIO by the Germans, and again ended with a timely Partisan escape. Over the course of the summer, they conducted the so-called Partisan Long March westwards through Bosnia and Herzegovina, while at

3993-460: The Independent State of Croatia (NDH) proclaimed on 10 April, which extended over much of today's Croatia and contained all of modern Bosnia and Herzegovina , despite the fact that the Treaties of Rome concluded between the NDH and Italy on 18 May envisioned the NDH becoming an effective protectorate of Italy. Mussolini's Italy gained the remainder of Slovenia, Kosovo , coastal and inland areas of

4114-778: The International Monetary Fund , as also did rump Yugoslavia which in the meantime had renamed itself Serbia and Montenegro . In 1993, the respective National Banks of Kosovo , Montenegro , Serbia , and Vojvodina were merged back into the NBY. In November 1999, the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo established the Banking and Payments Authority of Kosovo in Pristina , which in 2010 became

4235-470: The Italian occupation forces until the Italian capitulation , and thereon also with German and Ustaše forces. The Axis mounted a series of offensives intended to destroy the Partisans, coming close to doing so in the Battles of Neretva and Sutjeska in the spring and summer of 1943. Despite the setbacks, the Partisans remained a credible fighting force, with their organisation gaining recognition from

4356-891: The Landesbank der Rheinprovinz had expanded its lending to municipalities without proper risk management, whereas its peer the Mitteldeutsche Landesbank had behaved more prudently. Harbingers of crisis started to accumulate at the end of the decade. German stock prices started declining with the "Black Friday" of May 1927, and GDP growth slowed substantially in 1928 and turned negative in 1929. Industrial production started to decline from mid-1929. A cyclical credit crunch started in May 1930 and resulted in German money supply, defined as currency and bank deposits, contracting by 17 percent from June 1930 to June 1931. German policymakers displayed excessive confidence in market discipline as

4477-488: The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was marked by frequent financial sector reforms displaying the whole range of options from radical decentralization to the most extreme centralization, mirroring political factions sometimes labelled respectively "pluralistic" and "monistic", even as the entire sector was continuously state-owned. In 1945, the Communist authorities created six new state regional banks in

4598-703: The Western Allies at the Tehran Conference and laying the foundations for the post-war Yugoslav socialist state. With support in logistics and air power from the Western Allies, and Soviet ground troops in the Belgrade offensive , the Partisans eventually gained control of the entire country and of the border regions of Trieste and Carinthia . The victorious Partisans established the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia . The conflict in Yugoslavia had one of

4719-474: The Yugoslav krone , rather than the Yugoslav dinar . The exchange of krones against dinars was complex and protracted. It a first phase starting 1 February 1920 and ending on 3 June 1920, the stamped Austrian-Hungarian krone notes were exchanged for new notes denominated in both dinars and crowns, with a new ratio of four crowns for one dinar, which allowed the rebranded crown to keep legal tender status. Then in 1921

4840-479: The gold standard continued after Germany's exit in mid-July, immediately followed by Hungary . The UK abandoned gold parity on 19 September 1931, and Austria did so on 8 October 1931. France remained in the gold standard until 1936, with severe deflationary effect. Significant banks collapsed in other countries as well. In Hungary, in addition to high foreign indebtedness, several banks had significant exposures to Austrian banks and were thus directly impacted by

4961-804: The reparations negotiations; July 1930, due to governmental crisis; and September 1930, due to the Nazi Party 's strong showing in the Reichstag election . These episodes, however, were kept under control by the Reichsbank. Similarly, the collapse in August 1929 of insurer Frankfurter Allgemeine Versicherungs-AG (FAVAG) due to fraudulent management, known in Germany as the FAVAG scandal  [ de ] , turned out to be an idiosyncratic event and perceived as such by depositors. In France, an early wave of deposit flight occurred from October 1930 to February 1931, during which retail savers transferred their holdings on

National Bank of Yugoslavia - Misplaced Pages Continue

5082-446: The unity promoted by the South Slavic state , two different concepts of anti-Axis resistance emerged: the royalist Chetniks , and the communist -led Partisans . Two of the principal constituent national groups, Slovenes and Croats, were not prepared to fight in defense of a Yugoslav state with a continued Serb monarchy . The only effective opposition to the invasion was from units wholly from Serbia itself. The Serbian General Staff

5203-440: The 1970s, 75 percent in the 1980s, and a hyperinflationary regime by the end of 1989. The National Bank accumulated macroeconomically significant losses during that period. In January 1991, it was revealed that the Parliament of the Yugoslav Republic of Serbia had passed secret legislation compelling the respective National Banks of Serbia, Kosovo and Vojvodina to provide $ 1.8 billion worth of funding without approval or knowledge of

5324-431: The Austrian banking turmoil. In the Kingdom of Yugoslavia , a number of banks became insolvent and were liquidated, acquired or nationalized. In France, a new wave of deposit withdrawals from small and mid-sized banks occurred between July 1931 and January 1932, albeit on a slightly smaller scale than the previous one in late 1930, , and triggered the collapse of a significant bank, the Banque Nationale de Crédit which

5445-497: The Axis on cooperation with as few concessions as possible, while attempting secret negotiations with the Allies and the Soviet Union, but these moves failed to keep the country out of the war. A secret mission to the U.S., led by the influential Serbian-Jewish Captain David Albala , with the purpose of obtaining funding to buy arms for the expected invasion went nowhere, while the Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin expelled Yugoslav ambassador Milan Gavrilović just one month after agreeing

5566-425: The Axis; Serbian public and military circles preferred alliance with the Western European empires, while the then-banned Communist Party of Yugoslavia saw the Soviet Union as a natural ally. Following the fall of France in May 1940, Yugoslavia's Regent Prince Paul and his government saw no way of saving the Kingdom of Yugoslavia except through accommodation with the Axis powers. Although Germany's Adolf Hitler

5687-417: The Battle of Neretva and the Battle of Sutjeska after the rivers in the areas they were fought, or the Fourth and Fifth Enemy Offensive, respectively, according to former Yugoslav historiography. On 7 January 1943, the Bulgarian 1st Army also occupied south-west Serbia. Savage pacification measures reduced Partisan activity appreciably. Bulgarian infantry divisions in the Fifth anti-Partisan Offensive blocked

5808-439: The Chetnik army and stated that the National Liberation Movement was an independent movement, with no aid from the Soviet Union or the UK. Somewhat later, Đilas and Velebit were brought to Zagreb to continue the negotiations. In the Fourth Enemy Offensive, also known as the Battle of the Neretva or Fall Weiss (Case White), Axis forces pushed Partisan troops to retreat from western Bosnia to northern Herzegovina, culminating in

5929-400: The Chetniks, a conservative royalist and nationalist force, enjoying support almost exclusively from the Serbian population in occupied Yugoslavia, on the other hand. From the start and until 1943, the Chetniks, who fought in the name of the London-based King Peter II 's Yugoslav government-in-exile, enjoyed recognition and support from the Western Allies, while the Partisans were supported by

6050-404: The Communist authorities and renamed the National Bank of the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia on 15 January 1946, shortened to National Bank of Yugoslavia in March 1961. It lasted under that name until 4 February 2003, when it was renamed the National Bank of Serbia with a reduced geographical scope following the breakup of Yugoslavia . On 27 June 1920, the Law on the National Bank of

6171-423: The German Wehrmacht and SS , Italy , Chetniks, the Independent State of Croatia, the Serbian collaborationist government, Bulgaria, and Hungary . The First Anti-Partisan Offensive was the attack conducted by the Axis in autumn of 1941 against the " Republic of Užice ", a liberated territory the Partisans established in western Serbia. In November 1941, German troops attacked and reoccupied this territory, with

SECTION 50

#1733085025327

6292-463: The German banking sector measured by total assets; large Berlin-based universal banks ( German : Grossbanken ), another 20 percent; cooperative banks , about 10 percent; private banks , about 6 percent; the rest being mainly provincial (e.g. Bayerische Vereinsbank and Hypo-Bank in Bavaria , Barmer Bankverein  [ de ] in the Ruhr , Allgemeine Deutsche Credit-Anstalt  [ de ] in Saxony ) and other joint-stock banks. Of

6413-564: The German banking sector, with the exception of local savings banks ( German : Sparkassen ), implied that this increase in leverage was not kept in check by public supervision. Even at the time, self-regulation was not obviously effective to keep risks in check: for example, Deutsche Bank was impacted by a series of scandals related to poor credit risk controls in the mid-1920s. By the late 1920s, public banks ( Staatsbanken , Landesbanken , Girozentralen , Kommunalbanken , and Sparkassen ) represented more than one-third of

6534-533: The German debt problem would only be settled in 1953 with the London Agreement on German External Debts . At its low point in 1932, German economic output had declined 39 percent from its level in 1929. The large joint-stock banks were fully reprivatized in 1937. Capital controls were kept for an extended time period. The crisis had major consequences for the development of prudential banking supervision in Germany, which had been essentially nonexistent (except for savings banks) before 1931. On 19 September 1931,

6655-418: The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes ratified the adoption of that new name by the former National Bank of the Kingdom of Serbia and extended its activity to the whole territory of the recetly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes , following an agreement between the bank and the government of 20 January 1920. Even though the bank retained the same private shareholders as its Serbian predecessor, it

6776-411: The National Bank had branches in Banja Luka , Bitola , Cetinje , Dubrovnik , Ljubljana , Maribor , Mostar , Niš , Novi Sad , Osijek , Pančevo , Petrovgrad , Šabac , Sarajevo , Skopje , Split , Subotica , Sušak , Varaždin , Vršac , and Zagreb . On 29 May 1941, a decree of the German occupation authorities pronounced the National Bank's liquidation, and it was replaced two days later by

6897-439: The National Bank of Croatia in the former stock exchange building in Zagreb . Occupation of Yugoslavia Yugoslav Partisan – Allied victory ^ Axis puppet regime established on occupied Yugoslav territory ^ Initially a resistance movement. Engaged in collaboration with Axis forces from mid-1942 onward, lost official Allied support in 1943. Full names: initially "Chetnik Detachments of

7018-563: The Partisan escape-route from Montenegro into Serbia and also participated in the Sixth anti-Partisan Offensive in Eastern Bosnia. Negotiations between Germans and Partisans started on 11 March 1943 in Gornji Vakuf , Bosnia. Tito's key officers Vladimir Velebit , Koča Popović and Milovan Đilas brought three proposals, first about an exchange of prisoners, second about the implementation of international law on treatment of prisoners and third about political questions. The delegation expressed concerns about Italian involvement in supplying

7139-436: The Partisan retreat over the Neretva river. This took place from January to April, 1943. The Fifth Enemy Offensive, also known as the Battle of the Sutjeska or Fall Schwarz (Case Black), immediately followed the Fourth Offensive and included a complete encirclement of Partisan forces in southeastern Bosnia and northern Montenegro in May and June 1943. In that August of my arrival [1943] there were over 30 enemy divisions on

7260-660: The Reichsbank introduced restrictions to its domestic bill discounts, with the aim disincentivizing transfers of money abroad by German firms - but this had catastrophic effect by creating financial squeezes even for essentially sound firms. From mid-June, concerns arose around a loan of 48 million Reichsmark that Danat-Bank had granted to struggling textile company Nordwolle , corresponding to 40 percent of its equity. On 4 July 1931, Danat-Bank ran out of discountable bills. The Reichsbank had to discontinue its liquidity assistance on 10 July 1931, and on 13 July 1931 Danat publicly disclosed its inability to meet commitments, triggering

7381-404: The Reichsbank sponsored several mechanisms to facilitate the revival of interbank transactions. On 18 July 1931, it established a temporary Transfer Association ( German : Überweisungsverband ) to allow the system's core banks to transact among themselves without being bound by the general restrictions on payments: this started with 11 institutions, and expanded to 44 by 4 August 1931, after which

SECTION 60

#1733085025327

7502-410: The Reichsbank was associated with the supervisory process through a newly established Supervisory Office, but that role was transferred to the Economics Minister German : Reichswirtschaftsminister upon a legislative revision in 1939, and the Aufsichtsamt für das Kreditwesen itself was dissolved in 1944 with its duties taken over by the economics ministry. After World War II , banking supervision

7623-406: The Serbian National Bank. The occupation forces confiscated 11 tons of gold from the bank's vaults, only a fraction of the 53 tons that had been transferred to safety abroad during the previous two years. The pro-Nazi official Milan Radosavljević  [ sr ] , who had been reappointed Governor in December 1940, retained his position in the new entity, even though he had no independence under

7744-431: The Soviet Union had prepared communists for a guerrilla war in Yugoslavia. On the eve of the war, hundreds of future prominent Yugoslav communist leaders completed special "partisan courses" organised by the Soviet military intelligence in the Soviet Union and Spain. On the day Germany attacked the Soviet Union, on 22 June 1941, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) received orders from Moscow-based Comintern to come to

7865-492: The Soviet Union's aid. On the same day, Croatian communists set up the 1st Sisak Partisan Detachment , the first armed anti-fascist resistance unit formed by a resistance movement in occupied Yugoslavia during World War II. The detachment began resistance activities the day after its creation; launching sabotage and diversionary attacks on nearby railway lines, destroying telegraph poles, attacking municipal buildings in surrounding villages, seizing arms and ammunition and creating

7986-403: The Soviet Union. The Chetniks initially enjoyed the support of the Western Allies (up to the Tehran Conference in December 1943). In 1942, Time Magazine featured an article which praised the "success" of Mihailović's Chetniks and heralded him as the sole defender of freedom in Nazi-occupied Europe. Tito's Partisans fought the Germans more actively during this time. Tito and Mihailović had

8107-438: The Soviet Union. At the very beginning, the Partisan forces were relatively small, poorly armed, and without any infrastructure. But they had two major advantages over other military and paramilitary formations in former Yugoslavia: the first and most immediate advantage was a small but valuable cadre of Spanish Civil War veterans . Unlike some of the other military and paramilitary formations, these veterans had experience with

8228-447: The Tripartite Pact on 25 March 1941. Senior Serbian air force officers opposed to the move staged a coup d'état and took over in the following days. On 6 April 1941 the Kingdom of Yugoslavia was invaded from all sides – by Germany, Italy, and their ally Hungary . Belgrade was bombed by the German air force ( Luftwaffe ). The war, known in the post-Yugoslavia states as the April War , lasted little more than ten days, ending with

8349-513: The USSR on 22 June 1941, the communist -led republican Yugoslav Partisans , on orders from Moscow , launched a guerrilla liberation war fighting against the Axis forces and their locally established puppet regimes , including the Axis-allied Independent State of Croatia (NDH) and the Government of National Salvation in the German-occupied territory of Serbia . This was dubbed the National Liberation War and Socialist Revolution in post-war Yugoslav communist historiography. Simultaneously,

8470-463: The United States which were uniquely exposed because of the structuring of German post-WWI reparations. At the Lausanne Conference of July 1932 , an agreement was outlined on a three-year suspension of German reparations, but that was rejected by the U.S. Congress in December 1932, triggering defaults by France and the UK on interallied war debts. Ultimately, losses of U.S. investors into German debt amounted to 13 to 16 percent of U.S. 1931 GDP, and

8591-422: The Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland, JVUO) was organised following the surrender of the Royal Yugoslav Army by some of the remaining Yugoslav soldiers. This force was organised in the Ravna Gora district of western Serbia under Colonel Draža Mihailović in mid-May 1941. However, unlike the Partisans, Mihailović's forces were almost entirely ethnic Serbs. The Partisans and Chetniks attempted to cooperate early during

8712-767: The Yugoslav Army", then "Yugoslav Army in the Fatherland". ^ Casualties in the Balkan area, including Greece, from April 1941 to January 1945 Asia-Pacific Mediterranean and Middle East Other campaigns Coups Uprisings 1942 1943 1944 1945 World War II in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia began on 6 April 1941, when the country was invaded and swiftly conquered by Axis forces and partitioned among Germany , Italy , Hungary , Bulgaria and their client regimes . Shortly after Germany attacked

8833-588: The Yugoslav Bank for International Economic Cooperation. In 1961-1962, "regional banks" were established in each of the country's six Republics. More freedom to create investment banks and commercial banks was introduced in 1965, further eroding the overwhelming dominance of the National Bank. As a consequence, many new banks were formed in the 1960s and 1970s, including non-depository "internal banks" (financial arms of companies and other public bodies) and depository "basic banks". Among these, Beobanka  [ sr ] and Beogradska banka  [ sr ] became

8954-511: The activities of the Partisan resistance, and Chetnik units attacked the Partisans in November 1941, while increasingly receiving supplies and cooperating with the Germans and Italians in this. The British liaison to Mihailović advised London to stop supplying the Chetniks after the Užice attack (see First Anti-Partisan Offensive ), but Britain continued to do so. On 22 December 1941 the Partisans formed

9075-449: The bank holiday restrictions were fully lifted and the Überweisungsverband was disbanded. Then on 28 July 1931, the Akzept- und Garantiebank AG (later known as Akzeptbank ) was set up to make interbank bills acceptable as collateral by the Reichsbank through credit enhancement. Its capital of 200 million Reichsmark was subscribed (albeit at 25 percent) by the government (40 percent),

9196-544: The beginning of the uprising in Serbia. On 10 August 1941 in Stanulović, a mountain village, the Partisans formed the Kopaonik Partisan Detachment Headquarters. Their liberated area, consisting of nearby villages and called the "Miners Republic", was the first in Yugoslavia, and lasted 42 days. The resistance fighters formally joined the ranks of the Partisans later on. The Chetnik movement (officially

9317-599: The borders of the NDH. Hungary dispatched the Hungarian Third Army to occupy Vojvodina in northern Serbia, and later forcibly annexed sections of Baranja, Bačka, Međimurje, and Prekmurje . The Bulgarian army moved in on 19 April 1941, occupying nearly all of modern-day North Macedonia and some districts of eastern Serbia which, with Greek western Thrace and eastern Macedonia (the Aegean Province), were annexed by Bulgaria on 14 May. The government in exile

9438-511: The bulk of its gold reserves to safety at the Bank of England and Federal Reserve Bank of New York . In the second half of 1940 the National Bank, whose capital had been held since its creation in the 1880s by about twenty Serbian merchant families, was nationalized, by way of an equity injection after which state institutions held 52 percent of its share capital, financed by bonds issued by the State Mortgage Bank of Yugoslavia . By 1939,

9559-641: The conflict and Chetniks were active in the uprising in Serbia, but this fell apart thereafter. In September 1941, Partisans organised sabotage at the General Post Office in Zagreb . As the levels of resistance to its occupation grew, the Axis Powers responded with numerous minor offensives. There were also seven major Axis operations specifically aimed at eliminating all or most Yugoslav Partisan resistance. These major offensives were typically combined efforts by

9680-582: The control of two more powerful German officials, the General Agent for Economic Affairs and the Banking Commissioner. The Serbian National Bank's activity was primarily oriented towards financing the collaborationist government. The Yugoslav government-in-exile immediately issued a decree depriving Radosavljević of his position, and appointed Dobrivoje Lazarević as Governor. Unlike other governments-in-exile, however, it did not match these actions with

9801-563: The controversies over war reparations, implying that the "appearance of prosperity" and visible public investment should be avoided, weighed negatively on key economic sectors such as the automobile market and infrastructure works. Economic historian Peter Temin concludes that Brüning "ruined the German economy — and destroyed German democracy — in the effort to show once and for all that Germany could not pay reparations." It remains debated, however, to which extent an alternative strategy of expansion would have been viable. Harold James notes that

9922-490: The country liberated by the Partisans. In places, even limited arms industries were set up. To gather intelligence , agents of the Western Allies were infiltrated into both the Partisans and the Chetniks. The intelligence gathered by liaisons to the resistance groups was crucial to the success of supply missions and was the primary influence on Allied strategy in the Yugoslavia . The search for intelligence ultimately resulted in

10043-483: The country's six Republics and two Autonomous Provinces , forming an integrated system together with the NBY, with a Board of Governors consisting of the respective heads of the NBY and of the eight sub-federal National Banks. The latter were autonomous institutions under the law of their respective sub-federal jurisdictions. The policy framework was associated with an increasingly dramatic loss of control over inflation , which reached an annual average 17.5 percent during

10164-662: The country's financial center despite the presence of large state-owned credit institutions in Belgrade, three in Ljubljana, and one in Sarajevo. Faced with major turmoil, the National Bank neglected any concern about the survival of these "non-Serbian" banks and announced on 8 August 1931 that it would not grant any new funding to any bank, focusing instead on defending the currency. This led all domestic banks, which were weakened by illiquid investments in industrial companies and from April 1932 by

10285-580: The country, unlike other paramilitary formations limited to territories with Croat or Serb majority. This allowed their units to be more mobile and fill their ranks with a larger pool of potential recruits. While the activity of the Macedonian and Slovene Partisans was part of the Yugoslav People's Liberation War, the specific conditions in Macedonia and Slovenia, due to the strong autonomist tendencies of

10406-539: The decline of the Chetniks and their eclipse by Tito's Partisans. In 1942, though supplies were limited, token support was sent equally to each. In November 1942, Partisan detachments were officially merged into the People's Liberation Army and Partisan Detachments of Yugoslavia ( NOV i POJ ). In the first half of 1943 two Axis offensives came close to defeating the Partisans. They are known by their German code names Fall Weiss (Case White) and Fall Schwarz (Case Black) , as

10527-467: The double-named currency concept was abandoned and another exchange replaced the dinar-crown notes with ones exclusively denominated in dinar, after which the crown eventually lost legal tender status on 1 January 1923. The poorly organized transition was marked by widespread fraud as krone banknotes printed in Hungary were imported in contraband into Yugoslavia. In 1930, the bank constructed a new facility for

10648-440: The establishment of an administrative structure for the central bank in foreign territory. The Yugoslav Partisans had no monetary authority of their own and opportunistically used different currencies in different locations. The operations of the National Bank in the Independent State of Croatia were taken over by the Croatian State Bank  [ hr ] , established in Zagreb on 10 May 1941. The State Bank's main activity

10769-584: The exit of Germany from the gold standard on 15 July 1931, followed by the UK on 19 September 1931, and extensive losses in the U.S. financial system that contributed to the Great Depression . The causes of the crisis included a complex mix of financial, fiscal, macroeconomic, political and international imbalances that have nurtured a lively debate of historiography . Germany's banking sector shrank dramatically from 1913 to 1924 but expanded rapidly again in

10890-568: The federal government, in egregious breach of the Yugoslav monetary system's legal framework that was described as "theft from the other republics" and "an astonishing act of economic sabotage". This event accelerated the breakup of Yugoslavia , during which the respective National Banks of Bosnia and Herzegovina , Croatia , Macedonia , and Slovenia left the NBY-centered system and became fully independent central banks for their respective countries. In late 1992, all four republics became members of

11011-467: The highest death tolls by population in the war, and is usually estimated at around one million, about half of whom were civilians. Genocide and ethnic cleansing was carried out by the Axis forces (particularly the Wehrmacht ) and their collaborators (particularly the Ustaše and Chetniks), and reprisal actions from the Partisans became more frequent towards the end of the war, and continued after it. Prior to

11132-581: The largest problem banks, namely Danat-Bank, Dresdner Bank, Landesbank der Rheinprovinz as well as Bremen 's Schröder-Bank  [ de ] , and lent to the Deutsche Girozentrale to support the network of savings banks . The Reichsbank's subsidiary Deutsche Golddiskontbank acquired equity in the ailing joint-stock banks, and consequently became the owner of a 91-percent stake in Dresdner Bank (in which Danat-Bank had been forcibly merged),

11253-536: The later 1920s, with fivefold growth of aggregate bank assets between 1924 and 1930. The banks were generally undercapitalized and overstretched following rapid balance sheet expansion in the late 1920s, with a preponderance of short-term debt, much of it foreign. Germany was the world's largest capital importer between 1924 and 1929, with U.S. banks lending massively to German counterparts and U.S. investors buying German bonds in large volumes. By mid-1928, 42 percent of deposits at joint-stock banks were foreign, and

11374-503: The latter's aggregate share was limited to one-fifth of total equity capital. Immediately afterwards, Yugoslavia was severely affected during the European banking crisis of 1931 . Communal politics played a large role in the policy reaction. By the end of 1930, none of Yugoslavia's twelve largest banks, which in aggregate represented half of the system's total assets, was headquartered in Serbia (or Montenegro): eight were in Zagreb, effectively

11495-454: The legacy of the hyperinflation episode of the early 1920s implied that public borrowing and spending could not be an appropriate strategy for crisis resolution, in Germany as in other Central European Countries including Austria, Hungary, and Poland. The financial crisis sharply exacerbated the economic downturn that had started before mid-1931. The German turmoil of July 1931 generated powerful spillover impact on other countries, particularly

11616-518: The level of individual republics or autonomous provinces commissioned new buildings, most notably in Pristina and Skopje , while others appropriated existing properties, such as the National Bank of Slovenia in the former head office of the Ljubljana Credit Bank , the National Bank of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the former branch building of the State Mortgage Bank of Yugoslavia in Sarajevo , and

11737-753: The local communists, led to the creation of separate sub-armies called the People's Liberation Army of Macedonia , and the Slovene Partisans led by the Liberation Front of the Slovene People , respectively. The most numerous local force, apart from the four second-line German Wehrmacht infantry divisions assigned to occupation duties, was the Croatian Home Guard ( Hrvatsko domobranstvo ) founded in April 1941,

11858-458: The majority of Partisan forces escaping towards Bosnia . It was during this offensive that tenuous collaboration between the Partisans and the royalist Chetnik movement broke down and turned into open hostility. After fruitless negotiations, the Chetnik leader, General Mihailović, turned against the Partisans as his main enemy. According to him, the reason was humanitarian: the prevention of German reprisals against Serbs. This however, did not stop

11979-628: The most prominent of which were those in Dubrovnik , Karlovac , Kragujevac , Mostar , Šabac , and Skopje . The latter was built on a very prominent location, on the spot where the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle was erected in 2008-2011. In the Communist era, the National Bank took over the previous properties of all previously existing banks in the country. For example, the Southwestern wing of

12100-558: The newly established republics . On 12 October 1946, a government decree formally established the National Bank of the Federative People's Republic of Yugoslavia. Starting around that time, all existing banks were liquidated and their preserved operations taken over by the National Bank or by the State Investment Bank of Yugoslavia , which in turn was merged into the National Bank in 1952. From 1952 to 1955, Yugoslavia exhibited

12221-451: The outbreak of war, the government of Milan Stojadinović (1935–1939) tried to navigate between the Axis powers and the imperial powers by seeking neutral status, signing a non-aggression treaty with Italy and extending its treaty of friendship with France . At the same time, the country was destabilized by internal tensions, as Croatian leaders demanded a greater level of autonomy. Stojadinović

12342-468: The people of the country. Partisan numbers were liable to increase rapidly. European banking crisis of 1931 The European banking crisis of 1931 was a major episode of financial instability that peaked with the collapse of several major banks in Austria and Germany , including Creditanstalt on 11 May 1931, Landesbank der Rheinprovinz on 11 July 1931, and Danat-Bank on 13 July 1931. It triggered

12463-505: The production of banknotes and coins in the Topčider neighborhood of Belgrade. In May 1931, it eventually joined the Gold exchange standard , and its governance was simultaneously reorganized, practically transferring any residual control of the private shareholders to the government. By then, the bank's largest shareholders were banks rather than individuals, as well as government agencies even though

12584-568: The same time the Axis conducted the Kozara Offensive in northwestern Bosnia. The Partisans fought an increasingly successful guerrilla campaign against the Axis occupiers and their local collaborators , including the Chetniks (which they also considered collaborators). They enjoyed gradually increased levels of success and support of the general populace, and succeeded in controlling large chunks of Yugoslav territory. People's committees were organised to act as civilian governments in areas of

12705-596: The share was 18 percent of all deposits in the German banking sector in 1929. This unusual feature of the German financial system was a direct legacy of the hyperinflation of 1921-1923 , which durably impaired the role of capital markets and made the country abnormally dependent on short-term foreign lending. Many German companies routinely parked their money in foreign subsidiaries that in turn lent to their German parent. Similar patterns could be observed in other Central European countries that had suffered from hyperinflation, particularly Austria , Hungary , and Poland , to

12826-403: The system's dominant banks together with Jugobanka and Investbanka, but all would have had to be liquidated in 2002 after they were found insolvent together with 80 percent of what then remained of the Yugoslav banking sector. In 1971-1972, a major reform resulted in the establishment of a "system of national banks" with the NBY at its center. A separate "National Bank" was established in each of

12947-422: The territory of Jugoslavia, as well as a large number of satellite and police formations of Ustashe and Domobrani (military formations of the puppet Croat State), German Sicherheitsdienst, chetniks, Neditch militia, Ljotitch militia, and others. The partisan movement may have counted up to 150,000 fighting men and women (perhaps five per cent women) in close and inextricable co-operation with several million peasants,

13068-565: The true state of banks' financial condition was systematically deficient. Conversely, the issue of foreign lending was heavily politicized in Germany and its importance correspondingly overestimated, not least because much of the "foreign capital" invested in Germany was actually round-tripping by German investors e.g. via the Netherlands and Switzerland for tax avoidance . Incipient financial instability occurred in Spring 1929, due to frictions in

13189-564: The unconditional surrender of the Royal Yugoslav Army on 17 April. Not only hopelessly ill-equipped compared to the German Army ( Heer ), the Yugoslav army attempted to defend all of its borders, thinly spreading its scarce resources. Additionally, much of the population refused to fight, instead welcoming the Germans as liberators from government oppression. As this meant that each individual ethnic group would turn to movements opposed to

13310-702: Was devolved in West Germany to the Länder , until a national banking supervisor was re-established in 1962 as the Bundesaufsichtsamt für das Kreditwesen  [ de ] , which again cooperated closely with the Deutsche Bundesbank . Another decree on 6 October 1931 granted legal personality to the Sparkassen and reinforced their public supervision. The financial crisis of 1931 has long been identified as

13431-557: Was echoed in reference works such as those by Karl Erich Born  [ de ] or Gerd Hardach  [ de ] , and more recently by Thomas Ferguson and Peter Temin . By contrast, historian Harold James has argued in 1984 that a domestic crisis of public finances was at the core of the German sequence, noting that domestic deposit flight predated the exodus of foreign investors in Germany by several critical weeks. Isabel Schnabel in 2004 identified it as twin crises in currency and banking markets respectively, namely

13552-466: Was not particularly interested in creating another front in the Balkans , and Yugoslavia itself remained at peace during the first year of the war, Benito Mussolini 's Italy had invaded Albania in April 1939 and launched the rather unsuccessful Italo-Greek War in October 1940. These events resulted in Yugoslavia's geographical isolation from potential Allied support. The government tried to negotiate with

13673-411: Was not spared by the banking crisis, against a long-established view that the country had been spared. That view was distorted by the lack of accessible data beyond the country's four largest banks which were comparatively unscathed, and could only be corrected with the rediscovery of a unique collection of balance-sheet data of most French banks gathered by Crédit Lyonnais between 1901 and 1939, known as

13794-453: Was now only recognized by the Allied powers. The Axis had recognized the territorial acquisitions of their allied states. From the start, the Yugoslav resistance forces consisted of two factions: the Partisans, a communist-led movement propagating pan-Yugoslav tolerance (" brotherhood and unity ") and incorporating republican, left-wing and liberal elements of Yugoslav politics, on one hand, and

13915-789: Was renamed the National Bank of Serbia . The National Bank kept its head office in the National Bank Building, Belgrade , originally erected for the National Bank of the Kingdom of Serbia in 1890, and expanded it in 1922-1925 on designs by the original architect, Konstantin Jovanović . In 1920, it had taken over a number of former branches of the Austro-Hungarian Bank . It then developed a program of construction of new branches, entrusted to architect Bogdan Nestorović  [ sr ] ,

14036-508: Was restructured in early 1932 as the Banque Nationale pour le Commerce et l'Industrie . In Spain, Banco de Cataluña  [ es ] failed on 7 July 1931 together with two subsidiaries, Banco de Reus de Descuentos y Préstamos and Banco de Tortosa  [ es ] , causing a credit contraction in the whole of Catalonia . Germany made "standstill agreements" with major creditor countries in August and September, following

14157-512: Was sacked by the regent Prince Paul in 1939 and replaced by Dragiša Cvetković , who negotiated a compromise with Croatian leader Vladko Maček in 1939, resulting in the formation of the Banovina of Croatia . However, rather than reducing tensions, the agreement only reinforced the crisis in the country's governance. Groups from both sides of the political spectrum were not satisfied: the pro-fascist Ustaše sought an independent Croatia allied with

14278-591: Was to finance the Independent State's government, whose ability to collect tax revenue was severely limited by the war circumstances. It had branches in Banja Luka , Dubrovnik , Karlovac , Mostar , Osijek , Sarajevo , Varaždin , and Zemun , most of which were taken over from the National Bank of Yugoslavia. Other parts of the dismembered Yugoslavia came under the monetary authority of the Reichsbank (e.g. Northern Carniola ), Bank of Italy (e.g. Dalmatia , Governorate of Montenegro ), Hungarian National Bank (e.g.

14399-782: Was under the effective control of the government from the start. In application of the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye , the National Bank received a significant amount of gold bullion from the Austro-Hungarian Bank in Vienna and took over its branches in the significant parts of the new country that had been part of the Habsburg monarchy , namely Slovenia , Croatia , Vojvodina , Bosnia and Herzegovina : these included Zagreb , Varaždin , Split , Osijek , Ljubljana , Maribor , Sarajevo , Mostar , Banja Luka , Zemun , Novi Sad , Veliki Bečkerek , Subotica , Pančevo , and Vršac . Meanwhile, in early 1920

14520-472: Was united on the question of Yugoslavia as a "Greater Serbia" ruled, in one way or another, by Serbia. On the eve of the invasion, there were 165 generals on the Yugoslav active list. Of these, all but four were Serbs. The terms of the surrender were extremely severe, as the Axis proceeded to dismember Yugoslavia. Germany annexed northern Slovenia , while retaining direct occupation over a rump Serbian state . Germany also exercised considerable influence over

14641-462: Was widely viewed as a pillar of financial stability given its history of market dominance and prudent management led by the Rothschild family . Its traditional strength, however, ironically became a vulnerability as the government leaned on it to absorb struggling banks, including Allgemeine Bodencreditanstalt and Union-Bank. Its governance was also disrupted by the emergence of the Bank of England as

#326673