On 29 August 1941, the Germans appointed the Government of National Salvation (, Влада Националног Спаса) under General Milan Nedić, to replace the short-lived Commissioner Administration. Nedić, a pre-war politician, believed since the defeat of France in the 1940 that the Germans would emerge as the winners in World War II and sought to protect the Serbian people from German retaliation by cooperating with the Axis. Resistance to the Germans emerged immediately and caused the German High Command to declare that a hundred Serbs would be executed for every German soldier killed and fifty Serbs would be executed for every German soldier wounded. By October 1941, the Germans executed more than 25,000 Serbs in various revenge killings throughout the occupied territory.