Terror in the Balkans (105 page)

eral months.

The brutalized, embittered way in which Geissler came to regard the

enemy is clear throughout these extracts. It is easy to imagine how such

a perspective could, in turn, brutalize a soldier’s behavior. It is also easy

to see how the behavior of the 718th’s troops could by now have been

similarly affected. Of course, the National Socialist indoctrination to

which they had already been subjected almost certainly eased the path to

barbarization. But the extreme and often perilous conditions the troops

were enduring would have profoundly hardened them nonetheless.

The third Jajce operation, which fi nally saw the Partisans properly

expelled from Jajce, was the hardest fought of all. It commenced at the

start of December.120 The Germans suffered fi fty-eight dead and ninety-

three wounded, the Croats twenty-three dead and 135 wounded. One

hundred and forty-nine Croats were also reported missing. The Parti-

sans, meanwhile, lost 431 dead and sixty wounded.121 By December 5

it was reported that the enemy had fi nally pulled out of Jajce and was

headed north.122 But the scale of Axis losses indicates just how hard-

pressed the division’s troops were by this time. Having retaken the town,

the vulnerability of the rest of its jurisdiction, particularly around Tuzla

and Zenica, thwarted the 718th’s attempt to pursue the Partisans and

complete their destruction.123 Other divisions, such as the 714th, faced a

similar situation by now.124

By the end of the year the 718th had gained no respite. Among other

things, the division’s intelligence section reported that the large Commu-

nist groups beyond its demarcation line continued to threaten its area’s

southwestern border. Their skill in propaganda, their practice of forced

recruitment, and what divisional command termed the “natural tendency

of some of the population to murder and plunder” were all aiding them.125

Even the changes to the NDH’s military structure, which had taken

place in October and November, failed to bring about a signifi cant

The Morass
213

change in Axis fortunes. In late November Croatia Command reported

that a reshuffl e in the NDH government had not affected internal policy,

and that Ustasha attacks continued to spawn chaos. The Partisan pres-

ence in Zone III had increased since the Italians had abandoned it.126

And Croatia Command now conceded that, compared with the mayhem

in those regions still “administered” by the NDH, the population of the

Communist-controlled areas actually enjoyed considerable stability.127

By December Croatia Command believed that 95 percent of the popula-

tion was supporting the Partisans’ communication network. It also noted

that the Partisans, by treating captured Croatian soldiers humanely, were

fueling mounting desertion from the Croatian army.128

The 718th Infantry Division’s experience during the fi nal four months

of 1942 shows that there were now ever greater limits to how far any unit

was prepared to pursue the kind of counterinsurgency campaign that

placed constructive engagement at its center. For one thing, it was no

longer just a question of whether the division should engage with the

population, but also of which groups to engage with, and how far. Con-

sidering the increasingly acute threat the Partisans now posed, and the

mayhem being dispensed not just by the Ustasha but, increasingly, by

the Muslim militias also, it might at fi rst have seemed that the obvious

partner for the 718th to woo was the Chetniks. But because the Chetniks

themselves rivaled and sometimes surpassed these other groups for bru-

tality, arming them was a course of action that, the division recognized,

was fraught with pitfalls of its own.

In such conditions, hearts and minds measures were likely to bring

tenuous benefi ts if any. The sense of frustration this was bound to fuel

was perhaps one reason why the 718th eschewed much of its earlier

restraint during the Jajce operations. Perhaps an even more immediate

reason was that the Partisans’ burgeoning fi ghting power would inevi-

tably lead to a furious engagement—a particularly daunting prospect for

an occupation division blighted by so many failings—from which mass

civilian deaths were likely to result.

By now, moreover, the effect that almost unremitting counterinsur-

gency warfare was having upon the troops was likely to barbarize their

214
terror in the balk ans

own behavior irrespective of any measures divisional and regimental

commands took to check it. And if divisional and regimental commands

were
not
seeking to check it, it is little wonder that the “Partisan” body

counts the Jajce operations yielded were so horribly disproportionate.

And the absence of any restraint by divisional and regimental com-

mands indicates the mounting obduracy, further fueled by directives

from higher command, which was by now coloring their own mind-set.

The 718th Infantry Division’s command had not been a model of

enlightened thinking during 1942. But for much of the year it had sought

to infuse its counterinsurgency campaign with a considerable degree of

constructive engagement. But towards the end of the year, what seems

to have hardened its attitude most decisively was not National Socialist

conviction, but the sheer intractability of the military, political, and envi-

ronmental conditions its campaign was facing. The origin of this morass

ultimately lay, as earlier in 1942, in the strategic priorities and political

mistakes of the division’s highest military and civilian masters.

In the opening months of 1943, the fortunes of the German occupation

divisions in the NDH would decline further still. How the divisions

responded would depend, again, not just upon the Wehrmacht’s central

doctrines and the orders issued by high command, but also upon the

conditions the divisions faced and the sensibilities of the men who com-

manded them. The 718th Infantry Division was by no means the worst

offender during this period. That distinction went to the German-led

“Croatian Legion” formations of the 369th and 373d Infantry Divisions.

c h a p t e r 1 0

The Devil’s Division

The 369th Infantry Division in Bosnia, 1943

The commander of the 369th infantry division was Briga-

dier General Fritz Neidholt. Neidholt had been born in 1887 in

Thuringia, central eastern Germany, to the family of a Protestant pas-

tor. He spent the majority of his Great War on the eastern front, though

he did experience both the 1914 advance and the 1918 retreat on the

western front. Throughout those four years he served variously as an

adjutant, a communications offi cer, a pioneer offi cer, and a staff offi cer.

It was in this latter capacity that Neidholt’s career seems to have stalled.

According to his resume, in April 1917 he was appointed an “offi cer in

the fi eld” with the army high command, but just over a year later he

was serving on the staff of a reserve division. On the inception of the

Reichswehr, Neidholt began serving with the infantry, with which he

largely remained until leaving military service in 1935. By the outbreak

of war Neidholt had returned to the Wehrmacht, briefl y commanding

an infantry regiment in Poland before ending up on the army high com-

mand’s offi cer reserve list. He was only appointed a brigadier general

in October 1942.1

Neidholt’s, then, was not an especially distinguished career. Perhaps

appropriately, the only way in which the division he commanded in

Yugoslavia distinguished itself was in the number of civilians it killed.

215

216
terror in the balk ans

Known in Croatia as the “Devil’s Division,” its nickname would prove

grimly apposite.2

Formed in 1942, the 369th arrived in Yugoslavia at the end of that

year. The 369th itself was a replacement for a forerunner unit destroyed

on the eastern front.3 Its main body of combat troops was divided into

two infantry regiments, the 370th and the 969th, each comprising three

battalions of four companies, together with an artillery regiment and

an antitank section.4 In other respects, its composition was unusual.

Together with the later-formed 373d and 392d Infantry Divisions, it was

a “legionnaire division.” Its senior offi cers, and some of its junior offi -

cers and NCOs, were German- or Austrian-born, but its rank-and-fi le

personnel consisted of former soldiers of the Croatian army. The Ger-

mans had set up a German- and Austrian-led “Croatian Legion” during

1942 because they believed that the presence of German army offi cers

and NCOs would compensate for the growing lack of suitable offi cer and

NCO personnel within the Croatian army itself.5

But for the 369th Infantry Division, the presence of German army offi -

cers and NCOs would not compensate for low morale, discipline, and

fi ghting power. These debilitating conditions would help to brutalize the

division’s conduct during this period. Yet that conduct, as with the 342d

Infantry Division’s in 1941, can also be attributed to the biography of its

commander, and in particular to his Great War experience.

By early 1943, the numerical strength of the Partisans’ regular forces,

forty-fi ve thousand by German estimates, was still less than a third of

the now hundred and fi fty thousand-strong Chetnik movement. But

the rate of growth—a ten-fold increase in twelve months—had been

dramatic.6Among other things, the Partisans were benefi ting from grow-

ing popular affront at the increasingly rapacious economic measures

to which the Axis was subjecting occupied Yugoslavia, particularly in

terms of the procurement of crops and labor.7 Against them, the Axis

was in increasing disarray. Relations between the Germans and the Ital-

ians plummeted further during winter 1942–1943; whether in Yugoslavia,

the Soviet Union, or North Africa, the Italians were increasingly blamed

for Axis failures. Only Hitler’s fellow feeling with Mussolini, and his fear

The Devil’s Division
217

that any further weakening of the Duce’s position might have dire politi-

cal consequences for the Axis, prevented the Germans from undermin-

ing the Italian leader. In the NDH General Roatta, refl ecting the Italians’

deteriorating position, had in November 1942 announced his intention of

initiating a further withdrawal. The purpose this time was not to con-

centrate on areas of particular interest to the Italians, but simply to better

defend Italy itself against the threat of invasion the Axis defeats in North

Africa portended.8

Fearing another power vacuum, the Germans managed to get this

withdrawal delayed. But the episode was a measure of how burden-

some German relations with the Italians now were. The Germans also

remained intensely uneasy at how far the Italians were willing to go to

accommodate the Chetniks. Any pretension that this was a cunning,

credible divide-and-rule policy, rather than a recipe for mayhem, now

looked even more threadbare than before. By now if not earlier, the Ital-

ians, as the German police attaché in Agram observed, might be good at

dividing, but did not possess the strength for ruling.9

Immensely diffi cult also were German relations with the NDH. Yet

despite the Ustasha regime’s ongoing weakness, most senior German

fi gures remained reluctant to abolish it. General Löhr was an exception.

Counterinsurgency hard-liner though he was, he had the presence of

mind to want the Ustasha regime replaced either by a government headed

by the Croatian Peasants’ Party, or by a Wehrmacht military commander.

This did not happen, partly because of Hitler’s ongoing sympathy with

the Ustasha, and partly because of lack of suffi cient support for Löhr

from Glaise and Kasche. Hitler also feared how replacing the Ustasha

regime with one headed by the Croatian Peasants’ Party might be per-

ceived externally. Elsewhere in German-occupied Europe, conservative-

authoritarian collaborationist regimes had been replaced by more radical

ones. But performing the operation in reverse might be perceived as a

humiliating failure. Furthermore, for reasons of Italo-German diplomatic

relations, overthrowing the Ustasha regime would only have been pos-

sible by granting more concessions to Mussolini. But this in turn would

have made it harder to mobilize the Croatian national forces.10

And preserving the Pavelicŕegime at least kept German options open.

As long as the Chetniks were not completely disarmed, they could be used

218
terror in the balk ans

as leverage against the Ustasha. And as long as the Pavelicŕegime and the

Italians remained at loggerheads the Germans could continue presenting

their own economic demands on the NDH as more reasonable. These

were scarcely inspiring motives, but they helped ensure that retaining the

Pavelicŕegime appeared marginally preferable to the alternative.11

Confronting the Partisans in the NDH were three German army infan-