He was captured by communist forces on 11 December 1945 in Munich, in Allied occupied Germany following the war, and tried alongside other Serbian collaborationist leaders in 1946.

[3][4] On 17 April 1941, the day Yugoslavia surrendered to the Axis powers, Jovanović left the town of Gornji Milanovac and went to Belgrade.

The German field commander in Belgrade, Colonel Ernst Moritz von Kaisenberg, then appointed Jovanović to the position of extraordinary commissar for the city.

[5] As mayor, Jovanović proposed that Belgrade be divided into sixteen boroughs and two commissariats and that the local police be used to quell anti-German acts in the city.

[8] According to the post-war testimony of the camp's administrator, Svetozar Vujković, Jovanović saved countless Serb civilians from being executed as German hostages by swapping them with Roma prisoners.