Terror in the Balkans (25 page)

opponents, meanwhile, posed an ever greater challenge. Even though

between 50 percent and 30 percent of their men were reportedly without

arms,74 they were increasingly well armed overall. At times they turned

on their attackers and infl icted signifi cant casualties. The 697th Infan-

try Regiment faced especially stubborn resistance on September 27, for

instance. So too did the 699th Infantry Regiment on October 10.75

Together, these conditions gnawed at the troops’ resilience. “The

troops’ state of health can no longer be described as good,” the 342d

reported on November 12. “The duration and relentlessness of the oper-

ations has meant that shoes, uniforms, weaponry, and equipment cannot

be brought up to strength or cared for properly . . . The character and

duration of the operations (combing, searching, shooting, and living off

the land) are beginning to affect the troops’ discipline and demeanor

badly. The division urgently needs a reasonably long period of peace and

quiet in which to re-establish its fi ghting worth, and immunize its troops

against infection and malaria.”76 The 342d also lacked specialist moun-

tain warfare equipment. Finally, though it did not lack for tanks—having

acquired two from another unit—they were inferior French models in

constant need of maintenance, which the absence of a proper workshop

rendered impossible. They were also so loud that they quickly alerted

the insurgents to the Germans’ imminent approach.77

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133

Fighting in such conditions, feeling the pressure from above for

results, and frustrated at their failure to capture or kill actual insur-

gents in large numbers, soldiers were more likely to respond when their

commanders exhorted them to ever greater ruthlessness. Indeed, some

of the troops were so brutally inclined that their discipline was seri-

ously threatened. Consequently, at different times in September and

October, the 342d Infantry Division felt compelled to forbid its troops

to plunder, destroy churches, shoot prisoners who could be screened

for information, shoot dogs and livestock, seize livestock except on the

highest authority, or execute persons outside the domain of the proper

legal offi ces.78

And there are signs that some of the 342d’s own senior offi cers could

barely keep themselves on a leash, let alone their men. During the 1970s

the Federal German Central Offi ce of Land Administration inter-

viewed witnesses for preliminary investigations, later abandoned, into

war crimes committed by the 342d Infantry Division. The interviews

revealed that Colonel Trüstedt, commander of the 342d’s artillery regi-

ment, had been unhealthily fond of alcohol and known to issue orders

while under the infl uence. He had also been a terror to work under;

when his subordinates had nicknamed him the “Lion of Mannheim,”

they had not meant it as a compliment.79

But the conditions the 342d experienced do not explain the division’s

especially ferocious conduct on their own. Units within the permanent

German army occupation divisions stationed in Serbia—the 704th,

714th, and 717th Infantry Divisions—had even more reason to lash out in

frustration at their circumstances. For the situation their isolated units

faced did not just impede them; it could also imperil them. Yet whilst

the actions of the some of the units within these divisions were horren-

dous, neither they nor the division-level orders that spawned them actu-

ally went further than General Boehme’s dictates. But the 342d Infantry

Division’s actions did go further.

It is not just the 342d’s particular situation that needs examining,

then, but also the attitudes that ensured that it would react to them in

singularly brutal fashion. The main source of such attitudes lies at the

division’s apex—divisional command, and particularly General Hing-

hofer himself.

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terror in the balk ans

Divisional command implemented vicious measures not only out of obe-

dience to Boehme, but also according to its own convictions. The quar-

termaster department’s summary at the end of the Drina-Sava operation

of September exhibited both a steadfast faith in the effi cacy of terror, and

a marked indifference to the plight of civilians caught up in the fi ghting:

“It is clear that the population of the Sava-Drina bend, due in part to

being terrorized by bandits and Communist groups, has by and large

cooperated in the uprising. The division’s harsh and vigorous action has

seriously weakened its moral power to resist.”80 It also credited the divi-

sion’s use of extreme terror with ensuring suspects’ “willingness” to line

up to be transported to concentration camps.81

Such language oozes the German military’s decades-old proclivity

for maximum force and terroristic counterinsurgency warfare. The fact

that Hinghofer himself had been born in Austria, not Germany, does not

detract from this. This is not least because Austrians too had plenty in

the way of terroristic counterinsurgency tradition on which to draw.

A divisional command that harbored these convictions so strongly

was more likely to lash out excessively at the slightest trouble from armed

civilians. And while the 342d’s opponents could hardly be described as

the “slightest” trouble, nor could they yet be described as truly formi-

dable. Indeed, perhaps because they were attempting to get more rein-

forcements and equipment put their way, the 342d’s offi cers sometimes

overblew the scale of diffi culty that they faced. This point needs keeping

in mind when considering any report in which a German army coun-

terinsurgency formation loudly protested the parlousness of its condi-

tion. For instance, the 342d asserted that the Chetnik forces in the Mount

Cer region possessed an excellent communications network. In fact, the

Chetniks lacked modern communication equipment and relied almost

entirely upon runners and riders.82 Nor should it be forgotten that the

342d was able to summon Luftwaffe support against the rebels. Stuka

attacks could sometimes be hindered by poor visibility, but they pro-

vided the 342d with telling offensive impact.83

That the 342d Infantry Division’s travails were not always as oner-

ous as it made out is a further indication that the principal source of its

singular brutality lay elsewhere. Indeed, the divisional fi les also indicate

that the 342d’s command was suffused with that anti-Serb prejudice then

Settling Accounts in Blood
135

particularly prevalent among Austrians. The Chetniks, it claimed, did

not just employ underhand irregular tactics and avoid direct confronta-

tion; they also responded strongly to “their leaders’ constant appeals to

the old Serbian tradition of taking up arms in ‘small wars’ against ‘the

other.’”84 The Chetniks’ attempts to break out of the division’s encircle-

ments, meanwhile, were marked by “fanaticism and desperation.”85

Given the large gaps in the records of the 714th and 717th Infantry

Divisions, it is diffi cult to be completely certain how far the 342d Infantry

Division’s attitude differed from theirs. But those 700-number division

orders and reports that do survive in archives, material that for the 704th

at least is extensive, neither advocate terror nor evince anti-Serbism with

the same alacrity as the 342d’s. The clearest clues as to the origins of the

342d’s particularly obdurate attitude lie with General Hinghofer. Indeed,

when Hinghofer was replaced in mid-November, because his superiors

doubted his offensive spirit,86 the 342d began behaving in a manner that,

brutal though it continued to be, was less brutal than before.

Hinghofer was not dismissed, but he was required, in mid-November,

to swap divisional commands with that of the 717th Infantry Division,

hitherto led by Brigadier General Paul Hoffmann. In being shunted

from a relatively powerful, mobile Category Fourteen division to a sub-

standard, static Category Fifteen division, Hinghofer was clearly being

demoted. And his desperate, ultimately fruitless protest to higher com-

mand shows that he knew it.87

Some impetus for the division’s new approach under General Hoff-

mann came from above. In late October and early November, Boehme

himself, seeing the pragmatic value of greater restraint, displayed further

rare fl ashes of moderation. On October 25 he declared that indiscrimi-

nate arrests and persecution would drive the Serbs into the insurgents’

arms. He also directed that hostages be seized only from villages known

to be centers of the uprising. A week later he directed that, while anyone

found carrying a weapon in the operational area was to be shot, those

who were unarmed were not.88

Hoffmann also invoked an Army High Command directive of October

25, which stated that “the population must be shown clearly that it is point-

less to resist the troops and their instruments of power. Harsh conduct is

required in guilty or doubtful cases. On the other hand, practical support

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terror in the balk ans

and good setting of examples are essential to the reestablishment of peace,

confi dence and trust.” And while he reiterated that the troops must con-

duct themselves harshly, Hoffmann also put new stress on “protecting the

population against Communists and against unpermitted attacks on their

property from any side [including, presumably, from rank-and-fi le Ger-

man troops], help with agriculture through the commitment of personnel

and equipment, support over rebuilding of houses, (and) propaganda to

promote peace, quiet, and work, as well as defense against disruptive ele-

ments.”89 The division now also directed that “suspects are to be taken

prisoner if there is no reason to shoot them.”90

Similarly, units of the 342d taking part in December’s Operation

Mihailovic´, launched against the Chetnik leader’s headquarters in the

Ravna Gora region, did not infl ict butchery on anything like the scale

of earlier operations. That operation saw twelve enemy dead, and 745

men, seven offi cers, and two women taken prisoner. Three hundred and

seventeen rifl es and seven machine guns were seized.91 Saner attitudes

also seemed to be penetrating the subordinate units involved in this par-

ticular operation. “The speediest way to achieve success was through

ruthless offensive action,” reported Antitank Detachment 342. But while

it also described the population as “diffi cult to fi gure out,” it judged it

“friendly for the most part.”92 This was new language for the 342d.

The 342d also issued a directive in late November stressing that the

best means of improving workers’ willingness to toil for the Axis occupa-

tion was to protect them from insurgent attack.93 Reprisals, too, ferocious

though they remained, were now less ferocious than before. Under Gen-

eral Hinghofer, a violent assault on a member of the division’s person-

nel would probably have precipitated a reprisal shooting of fi fty or even

one hundred victims. But under General Hoffmann the 342d’s riposte

to one such incident, the victim being one Lieutenant Friedrich, was to

shoot twenty-fi ve hostages—a brutal act, but less brutal than it might have

been—and fi ne the local population fi ve hundred thousand dinars.94

In December, fi nally, Hoffmann would seek to impress his more

measured stance upon his superiors. Serbia Command’s war diary for

December 11 records that Hoffmann paid a visit that day to recommend

that farmers belonging to Mihailovic´’s movement who were not carry-

ing weapons should not be treated as rebels. Hoffmann believed that the

Settling Accounts in Blood
137

farmers had had no other choice but to join Mihailovicíf they were to

avoid having to join the Communists instead. As long as they comported

themselves quietly, they should be allowed to go about their work and

feel secure in the protection of the German Wehrmacht. Hoffmann also

urged that intensifi ed propaganda be employed among the Serbian farm-

ers, particularly on market days.95

Much of the impetus behind the division’s new approach emanated,

then, from divisional command. And the fact that divisional command

was now under new management can hardly have been coincidental.

Hinghofer’s biography reveals much about what made his approach to

counterinsurgency warfare markedly more ferocious than his succes-

sor’s. In some respects there was little signifi cant difference between

Hinghofer’s background and those of the other divisional commanders

serving in Yugoslavia that autumn. All came from middle-class families;

Hinghofer’s father had been a senior bank inspector, Hoffmann’s a senior

postal offi cial, Borowski’s a police inspector. General Stahl, commander

of the 714th Infantry Division, was perhaps slightly higher on the social

scale, his father having been a privy councilor. But all four offi cers essen-

tially hailed from the families of middle-class petty offi cials, albeit fairly