“Organized Bestial Gangs”—The Second World War and Images of Betrayal in Yugoslav Socialist Cinema

Abstract

This chapter investigates how the difficult sides of Yugoslavia’s Second World War history, including questions of collaboration and betrayal, civil war, and mass atrocities against civilians, have been addressed in Yugoslav war films of the socialist period. Looking at films from different periods of Yugoslav socialism, Tea Sindbæk Andersen points out how images of traitors and collaborators developed and explores how these changes relate to the main developments within political and historical discussions about the war in Socialist Yugoslavia. The chapter argues that war films were a powerful medium for representations of the past, not least because of the high quality of Yugoslav cinema. Moreover, some war films were among the most daring and sophisticated attempts to rethink Yugoslav wartime history. These films have thus contributed significantly to the cultural memory of Yugoslavia’s Second World War as well as to the ways in which traitors and collaborators have been remembered.

Earlier versions of parts of this Chapter have been published in the journal Donau (Tea Sindbæk, ‘Occupiers, traitors and patriots—The Second World War in Yugoslav cinema, 1945–1978’, Donau (Groningen), December 2008, 20–27) and my book Tea Sindbæk, Usable History. Representations of Yugoslavia ’ s difficult past from 1945 to 2002, Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2012.