Terror in the Balkans (31 page)

modation, were to be burned down.20

Operation Prijedor, fi nally, was prefaced by one of the harshest direc-

tives of all. It being so diffi cult to identify the enemy, the operational

orders declared that all male Serbian inhabitants between sixteen and

sixty were to be treated as though they had been encountered in battle

with a weapon in their hands. In other words, it can be presumed, all

were to be shot. As with the inhabitants, so with their dwellings: just as

in the previous operation, the Serbian villages on each side of the main

route of march, unless they could be used as troop accommodation, were

to be burned down.21 Again, the 718th’s subordinate units followed the

brutal lead. For instance, Battle Group Wutte provided a lengthy list on

March 7 of which groups of houses were to be burned down either side of

its route of march.22 Copious amounts of livestock were also seized dur-

ing Prijedor: 667 cattle, 417 sheep, and eighty-fi ve pigs.23

Yet ferocious as such ruthlessness was, it was of a different quality to

the 342d Infantry Division’s back in Serbia the previous autumn. None

of the orders the 342d or the 718th issued for these winter operations

were couched in racial terms. They did not invoke historic resentments

against the enemy, but instead dispassionately labeled Chetniks as Serb

and Partisans as Communist. One report referred to a Partisan leader’s

Jewish identity;24 otherwise, all the orders and reports relating to the

operations were racially “blind.” What suffused the orders instead was

the ruthlessly “pragmatic” doctrine of annihilating the enemy through

maximum force and maximum terror. This different motivation would,

of course, have been no comfort to the unarmed civilians whom the 342d

and 718th were killing. But it does shed a different light on what was driv-

ing the division. The 718th for one seems particularly to have believed

that such an obdurate doctrine would compensate for the diffi culties it

166
terror in the balk ans

was bound to encounter when its substandard troops faced the opera-

tions’ arduous conditions.

Indeed, sometimes the 718th Infantry Division and its regiments

urged their troops to be brutal not just to the enemy, but to themselves

also, if they were to best the obstacles they were facing. On January 17, at

the outset of Operation Southeast Croatia, the 718th informed the 750th

Infantry Regiment that its troops would need to dig deep within them-

selves in order to overcome the challenge ahead: “the troops’ enthusiasm

must overcome the major diffi culties, the high snow levels, and the lack

of mountain equipment, so as to ensure that all participating units make

ruthless progress.”25 Likewise for Operation Ozren, in which the 718th’s

troops were similarly hampered by high snow levels and thickly forested,

mountainous terrain,26 the division directed that “just as the troops

hammered the insurgents in South-East Croatia, so will they extermi-

nate this enemy also, despite the diffi culties of weather and terrain.”27

The 738th Infantry Regiment ordered that less capable men and horses

be left behind during the operation, and urged the troops to “do their

utmost,” through their own self-reliance, “to fulfi l the tasks with which

the division has entrusted them.”28

Such harsh exhortations certainly had plenty to compensate for. The

forces committed to Operation Southeast Croatia in particular were set

too ambitious a schedule within too limited a time frame. Prospects for

bagging large numbers of insurgents were further diminished when atro-

cious weather held the Germans up. These problems were not encoun-

tered during the smaller-scale Operation Ozren, but the 718th Infantry

Division still had to negotiate deep snow and thickly wooded terrain

during that operation.29

Moreover, the 718th went into these operations in a seriously defi -

cient state. The root problem was that both the 342d and the 718th were

ill-equipped for winter mountain warfare.30 The main division-level

order for Operation Southeast Croatia virtually acknowledged this; it

ordered that the 718th’s patchy transportation facilities be utilized to

their absolute limit. “All means of forward mobility (skis, trucks suited

to the terrain, pack animals and so on . . . ) are to be used to the point

Glimmers of Sanity
167

of exhaustion . . . All that matters is that transport is available whenever

and wherever needed.”31

Conditions during Southeast Croatia itself were execrable. The 698th

Infantry Regiment operated under the 342d Infantry Division, but the

conditions it experienced would have been familiar to all units involved

in the operation: villages, and the supply and shelter contained within

them, given the “scorched earth” treatment by retreating insurgents;

areas practically devoid of human life, and frequently meter-high snow.32

During Operation Prijedor the 718th’s troops found it immensely diffi -

cult to ensure the fl ow of ammunition, and the troops’ pack radios were

unable to maintain contact by night. This caused especially acute prob-

lems whenever offi cers tried to direct artillery fi re. And shortage of offi -

cers was preventing the division’s units from authorizing leave.33

The 718th also expected little if any real help from its Croatian allies.

Croatian army units assigned to the 718th during Operation Southeast

Croatia, the division reported, possessed appalling levels of fi ghting

power, and were blighted by constant supply problems and a complete

lack of comradeship between offi cers and men.34 The command of the

division’s armored train concurred that the Croatian troops were indeed

useless. It regarded small-unit combined operations with the Croatian

military as pointless, because the Croats always rapidly degenerated into

a disorganized shambles. They also preferred to hang back rather than

support German raiding parties actively.35 During Operation Prijedor,

meanwhile, the 750th Infantry Regiment, under the command of Colo-

nel Rudolf Wutte, reported that “the Croatian mountain column . . . is

more a hindrance than a help to the troops.”36

Such excoriating reports, generated as they were by German army

units anxious to cover up their own failures, must be approached cau-

tiously. But given the manifold problems blighting the Croatian army,

such reports clearly contained a substantial element of truth. And dur-

ing Operation Ozren the 718th found that it could not always rely even

on German units. On February 7 General Fortner reported that the

697th Infantry Regiment, loaned from the 342d Infantry Division, had

failed to follow orders to extend the attack on its right as far as the River

Spreca. The 750th Infantry Regiment had had to cover for it, but this

had enabled the enemy to slip past the Germans’ left fl ank. The 718th

168
terror in the balk ans

came under even more pressure when the 697th was relocated while the

operation was still going on.37

None of this helped, of course, in trying to locate and vanquish an

adversary who was proving increasingly elusive and resourceful. Opera-

tion Southeast Croatia set the tone. Only one regiment of the 342d Infan-

try Division was able to properly come to grips with the enemy, the

majority of whom took advantage of a weak Italian cordon to escape over

the Italian demarcation line.38 During Southeast Croatia, Territorial

Battalion 823 noted the speediness of the insurgents’ communications

system, a system aided substantially by the efforts of local villagers. It

regularly enabled the enemy to anticipate the Germans’ approach, disap-

pear before it, and then resurface in the same place days later. Matters on

this score grew worse during Operation Ozren. The heavy snow on the

roads impeded the Germans’ progress further.39

Especially vexing in Operation Ozren was the fact that the Germans

thought they had thoroughly encircled the area beforehand. They had

employed several artillery batteries and ten Croatian infantry battal-

ions, and checked the cordon’s impenetrability every night. But Serbia

Command realized that the operation had overlooked the enemy’s abil-

ity to escape in small groups through supposedly impassable terrain. It

also believed that many other insurgents, even if they had not actually

escaped, had been able to disappear into the mountains using the snow

prints of the men in front to conceal their true numbers, and that they

would resurface and reestablish themselves after the operation.40

The 718th lacked the sort of specialist mountain troops who might

have been able to pursue escaping insurgents successfully. LXV Corps

urged that each regiment convert and equip one of its companies as such

troops. It also urged more time to prepare for operations in future, so

that the Germans could ready specialist troops, properly assemble com-

munications, and set smaller and more realistic daily targets. Otherwise,

it asserted, such operations were pointless.41

Operation Prijedor, meanwhile, brought a further worrying develop-

ment. The insurgents stopped trying merely to escape, and began to

show not just themselves but their teeth also—not, however, in a way

that enabled the Germans to get to grips with them. They frequently

fi red upon the Germans from skillfully concealed positions:

Glimmers of Sanity
169

They often let our own troops approach to within 20 meters before

opening fi re. Single rifl emen also often fi re from great distances,

with carefully targeted fi re from very well concealed positions,

whereby they avoid using even houses, but rather dig themselves

into the landscape . . . The rifl emen, scattered across the landscape,

hide in their nests until they can escape under cover of darkness.

These lone rifl emen often fi re for just a few minutes, and even then

only with a few, carefully targeted shots. For this reason, locating

these lone rifl emen is very diffi cult.42

The 750th Infantry Regiment described the Partisans’ appearance, as

well as their very diverse composition:

According to an ethnic German whose property is next to the rail

bridge on Height 127, and who allegedly spent a week as a hostage of

the insurgents, the insurgents are, overall, well uniformed, with black-

colored Yugoslavian uniforms, and equipped with rifl es and hand gre-

nades. They consist of fi fteen to twenty per cent Communists, ten per

cent Muslims and the rest Serbs and Croats. On their caps the Serbs

wear Serbian national colors, the Croats their provincial colors, the

Muslims the Crescent and the Communists the Soviet star.43

These winter operations whittled down the 718th’s manpower alarm-

ingly. During Operation Prijedor, for instance, the 750th Infantry Regi-

ment’s combat strength fell from 692 offi cers, NCOs, and men, to 564.

Total losses for Prijedor were severe, the Germans suffering thirty-four

dead and the Croats seventeen, for ninety-seven Partisan dead.44 There

were major gaps in the 738th Infantry Regiment’s manpower also;

according to its roll call of March 1, its second battalion now possessed

319 offi cers, NCOs, and men, as against the fi rst battalion’s 376.45

Yet the 718th Infantry Division, and its subordinate units, showed restraint

as well as ruthlessness during these operations. In a display of moderation

during Operation Southeast Croatia, the 718th relayed orders from the

342d Infantry Division declaring that “women and children will not be

170
terror in the balk ans

shot or carried off, unless they demonstrably have taken part in combat

or message-carrying.”46 Perhaps it was this provision alone that led both

divisions to proclaim, apparently without irony, that “Croatia is a country

that is friendly to us. The troops must be aware of this, and avoid any

exceeding of their duties.”47 For Operation Ozren, the division directed

that Chetniks were to be treated as prisoners, not shot, if they surrendered

unconditionally with their weapons.48

Much impetus for these particular measures seems to have come from

General Bader. Bader, it appears, had begun to see the wisdom of some

restraint even as he spurred his troops to ruthlessness. On January 21 he

had ordered that, while armed opponents who resisted the Germans in

the course of Operation Southeast Croatia were to be shot, those who

gave themselves up were to be treated as prisoners of war. Villagers in

whose houses weapons were found, but who had not themselves partici-

pated in the fi ghting, were to be treated similarly.49 This order contrasts

with Bader’s ferocious exhortation of just days previously, when on Janu-

ary 8 he had announced that any person encountered in the area being

cleansed was to be viewed as an enemy.50 Bader’s likeliest motive for the

change was more calculating than enlightened. Deescalating the opera-

tion’s violence would enable the DangicĆhetniks, whom Bader would be