Terror in the Balkans (106 page)

try divisions—the 714th, the 718th, and from February 1943 the 717th—

together with a menagerie of Croatian, Italian, and pro-Axis Chetnik

forces of questionable if any reliability. Yet the condition of the German

divisions, at least, was improving. Early in 1943, they were upgraded to

the status of light divisions (
Jäger-Divisionen
), and received improved

equipment and weaponry.12 Their fi ghting power still left something to

be desired. Though their quality had been raised in some respects, they

were still denied an infl ux of younger, fi tter personnel with the level of

training enjoyed by frontline combat troops.13 Their numbers remained

static just as those of the Partisans were multiplying. But their new status

was at least an improvement on before.

The Axis forces received a further boost to their campaign—the pow-

erful Prinz Eugen Division of the Waffen-SS, a formation composed

almost entirely of ethnic Germans. But this division’s often barbaric con-

duct, and the odium it provoked among the population, went some way

towards canceling out its military contribution.14 Glaise sought a politi-

cal solution involving curbing the Ustasha’s outrages and offering better

treatment to the NDH’s Serb population.15 But the arrival of the “Croa-

tian Legion” infantry divisions would infuse the anti-Partisan campaign

with yet more savagery. Unlike the Prinz Eugen Division, however, the

legionnaire divisions did not couple their savagery with formidable

fi ghting power.

The major operations the Axis executed in the NDH during the fi rst half

of 1943 were highly ambitious. By now, they needed to be. They were

designed to achieve the stage-by-stage conquest of the whole of Bosnia,

and the complete destruction of the Partisan forces based there. Follow-

ing Axis defeats in North Africa, the real possibility of an Allied landing

in southeast Europe—and with it the likely collapse of Italy—brought a

The Devil’s Division
219

new urgency to this task.16 Against twenty-fi ve to thirty thousand largely

battle-experienced and well-equipped Partisans, the Axis committed a

total of circa ninety thousands troops.17 The operations themselves were

titled White I, II, and III. In essence, White I was to destroy the Partisans

in western Bosnia, White II the Partisans in central Bosnia. White III,

fi nally, was intended not only to destroy the Partisans in Herzegovina,

but also to conclusively disarm the national Chetnik units in that region.

This provoked the ire of the Italians, who had of course sanctioned the

use of thousands of such Chetniks in the MVAC. In the event, the Ital-

ians reneged on their initial pledge to cooperate in this part of the plan,

and managed to further postpone a fi nal reckoning on the matter.18 At

the same time, in fact, Mihailovic´ was himself planning what he hoped

would be the decisive Chetnik blow against the Partisans. He eventu-

ally concluded that the best opportunity to fi nish off the Partisans lay

in attaching his forces to the Italian formations participating in the Axis

offensive. This he would do in time for Operation White II—though not

with the result he had hoped for.19

White I, which commenced on January 20, was the fi rst major opera-

tion planned for the fi rst half of 1943. At fi rst sight, the forces assembled for

it were formidable: it involved the 369th and 717th Infantry Divisions—

together with the 714th in a mopping-up capacity—the Prinz Eugen Divi-

sion, and three Italian divisions. The troops, many of whom were battle

experienced and—among the Germans at least—well equipped, would

be supported by Luftwaffe combat aircraft; in 1942 German operations

had had to rely mainly, and often unhappily, on Italian and Croatian

airpower. The German forces were to advance on western Bosnia from

the north and east, the Italians from the south and from the Dalmatian

coast to the west.

But each of the three Italian divisions committed forces only at battle

group strength. The 717th Infantry Division could barely muster a regi-

ment’s worth of strength at the start of the operation, and only the Prinz

Eugen Division possessed specialized mountain gear. Finally, the dis-

tances the troops were expected to cover were wholly unrealistic. The

troops of the Prinz Eugen Division, for instance, were ordered to cover

one hundred and fi fty kilometers of diffi cult terrain and cut off the Parti-

san retreat, all in the space of forty-eight hours.20 In the event, the Prinz

220
terror in the balk ans

Eugen’s divisional command objected and got the target drastically

reduced to no more than three kilometers daily. But this was overcom-

pensating in the extreme, as well as indicating that some commanders

lacked faith in the entire operation, because it guaranteed that thousands

of fl eet-footed Partisans would escape the trap.21 The 369th’s task, with

support from the 714th Infantry Division, was to advance to the line

of Slumj and Bihac´, cleanse the Samarica region, and link up with the

Prinz Eugen’s left wing.22 Facing its initiation into combat of any kind,

the division’s shortcomings would be mercilessly exposed.

The operation’s ferocity is conveyed by Milovan Djilas: “the fi erceness

of the offensive from the day it began in Banija on 16 January, and in

Kordun on 20 January, left no doubt about Hitler’s determination to

squash the resistance movement in Yugoslavia. The Germans crushed

our defenses with tanks and artillery, set our villages afi re, and shot

hostages and prisoners. From morning till night their aviation pounded

everything in sight; from the very fi rst days our bases at Bihac´, Petrovac,

etc., were constant targets.”23

The initial higher-level directives Croatia Command issued for

the fi rst of the White operations again exuded the German military’s

longstanding counterinsurgency ruthlessness. Such ruthlessness was

encouraged by the highest command level of all; on December 16, 1942,

Hitler had issued an exceptionally ferocious directive. He had ordered

“the most brutal means . . . against women and children also” in the

conduct of the security campaign, and declared that any offi cer or man

showing scruples in the matter was committing treason against the Ger-

man people.24 Before White I’s launch, Croatia Command issued two

major directives for its prosecution. One, dated January 12, stated that

“
every
measure that ensures the security of the troops and appears to

serve the purpose of pacifi cation is justifi able . . . No-one should be held

to account for conducting themselves with excessive harshness.”25 The

order went on to direct that anyone taking up arms against the Axis

forces was to be shot or hanged, and that “villages which are diffi cult

to enter, as other places which have been identifi ed as Partisan strong-

points or would suitably serve as such . . . are to be destroyed.”26 But the

The Devil’s Division
221

directive Croatia Command issued fi ve days before this one contained

even more severe implications:

a) In unreliable areas, the male population between 15–50 is to be

concentrated in transit camps, with a view to transportation to

Germany.

b) Partisans and Partisan suspects, together with civilians, in whose

homes weapons and munitions are found, are to be summarily

shot or hanged and their homes burned down.

c) The local garrisons . . . can set curfews for the general population.

d) Contravention of German orders to be dealt with ruthlessly and

extensively with an armed response.

e) Functionaries of the Croatian state who fail to cooperate suffi -

ciently to be arrested for sabotage.27

Granted, the directive’s harshness was diluted somewhat, apparently

on Glaise’s intervention, in time for the operation. Orders dated a few

days later, which appear in the fi les of the divisions participating in the

operation, make no mention of the mass deportations stipulated in the

fi rst point.28 But the second and fourth points were still in force, and

their implications were ominous. The second was emphasizing that

mere suspicion, not proof, was suffi cient to invite brutal retaliation. The

fourth was not so much an order as a guideline. In both encouraging

ruthlessness and giving the directive’s recipients a completely free hand

in practicing it, it was a textbook example of the National Socialist lead-

ership principle. The barbarity the 369th Infantry Division dealt out

during the operation, like the 342d Infantry Division’s barbarity in 1941,

was not, therefore, simply down to the need to “follow orders.”

The directives the 369th itself issued for the operation were in the

spirit of Croatia Command’s. On December 29, 1942, the division’s

operations section issued an order for the handing over of nonresidents

in villages. It declared that “all people denounced as Partisans are to

be arrested and thoroughly interrogated. If it becomes clear that those

denounced may be suspected of being Partisans, they are to be hanged

or shot.”29 In other words, no distinction was to be made between cap-

tured Partisans and civilians whom the troops merely suspected of being

222
terror in the balk ans

Partisans, and mere suspicion, not proof, was enough to warrant a bul-

let or a noose. And the order was certainly carried out. The division’s

intelligence section reported that, while three hundred Partisan suspects

had been sent to a concentration camp over the course of January 1943,

a further fi fty had been shot merely on suspicion of cooperating with

Partisans.30 Around the same time, the division decreed that the civilian

population must hand over all its weapons by a certain deadline. It also

proclaimed that anyone caught aiding or sheltering nonresidents would

receive an automatic death penalty. This was regardless, presumably, of

whether such nonresidents were Partisans or not.31

In issuing these orders, the 369th Infantry Division was not just fol-

lowing higher-level directives. It was also expressing the perennial fear

of irregular warfare that had so brutalized German conduct over the past

two years. The intelligence section gave voice to it:

Anyone approaching from the enemy’s direction is always suspect

and therefore to be arrested. The Partisans have mastered the art of

infi ltrating our lines disguised as harmless farmers, forest workers . . .

etc. Another of their techniques is for men and women to hide them-

selves in snow holes near villages . . . After the troops have passed by,

they return to retrieve their weapons from their hiding place and form

up again in the troops’ rear to attack communications and supply

columns. Later, they form large groups which undermine the entire

transport and supply network and attack the troops in the rear.32

The intelligence section concluded from all this that:

there is no place for sympathy for Partisans, Partisan suspects,

etc. . . . It is the duty of all units, supply troops and columns to comb

these areas and seize all men of this age group (15 to 50). At all costs,

the whereabouts of the Partisans’ hiding places must be prised out of

the inhabitants they have left behind.33

As a direct prelude to White I, the 369th issued a general directive on

January 6, 1943, urging “ruthless measures against the Partisans and the

The Devil’s Division
223

population who pact with them.”34 Three weeks later, as White I reached

the heights of ferocity, the division ordered that “villages, houses either side

of the roads are to be burned down so as to deny the Partisans shelter.”35

Such orders, as so often before, could only encourage the troops to

violent excess. Between January 9 and February 15 the 369th Infantry

Division recorded that, though its troops had sustained losses of thirty-

six dead, they had killed 834 Partisans for certain and estimated killing

455 more.36 Frank Deakin, an offi cer of the British Special Operations

Executive attached to Tito’s headquarters during 1943, conveys what

such fi gures could mean in human terms in an anecdote from an opera-

tion later that year:

In one cave, where ninety men, women, and children huddled

together, a German patrol approached within ten yards, without per-

ceiving the entrance. At that moment a new-born baby began crying,

and the mother sought to calm the child. The wailing continued, and

panic seized hold of the people. A voice whispered to kill the baby,

and the mother held out the infant in silent resignation. Even in ter-

ror no one had the will to commit the act. The mother strangled the

infant. The Germans appeared at the mouth of the cave, shot down

some of the aged occupants, and moved on their way.

A child’s cradle has remained in the cave since that day.37

And as so often before, the contrast between “Partisan dead” and Parti-

san weapons captured was horribly disproportionate. From a reported

nigh-on thirteen hundred Partisan dead, the division retrieved only 256