Terror in the Balkans (40 page)

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-

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.