Terror in the Balkans (41 page)

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

weapons.38 Granted, the Partisans were retrieving some of their weapons

themselves, some among their number would have been unarmed in any

case, and the fi gures for Partisan dead were subject to other distortions

also. Yet this was still the kind of massive shortfall that had hundreds

of noncombatant deaths written all over it. Such shortfalls in 1943 raise

even more suspicion than they would have done in previous years. For

the increasingly professionalized and militarized Partisans of this period

were much less likely than their predecessors to have allowed substan-

dard Axis troops to slaughter them in such numbers.

224
terror in the balk ans

If it had already been apparent during 1942 that German troops in the

NDH were conducting themselves ever more brutally, it was more appar-

ent still in early 1943. This was irrespective of whether those troops were

German themselves or, in the 369th’s case, German-led. Granted, high-

level commanders stipulated that persons taken in White I were not to be

shot immediately, but placed in a hostage reserve. But the operation still

produced a massive contrast between the number of persons shot and

the number of weapons seized. Women, children, and deserters were, it

seems clear, frequently being killed for the troops’ convenience.

The legacy of ruthless decades-old counterinsurgency doctrine must

take much of the blame for this. So too must the hardening effect of

National Socialist ideological indoctrination—even if said ideology, and

said doctrine, were being conveyed within the 369th to Croatian troops

by German- or Austrian-born offi cers and NCOs. The conditions the

troops faced played a role also. Among other things, soldiers now felt

insecure even in those Muslim or Croatian areas in which they had pre-

viously felt safe. And it is probably not too outrageous to suggest that,

fi ghting as they were in a region that by now was essentially lawless, and

seeing what Yugoslavs were capable of doing to each another, many of the

369th’s junior German offi cers and NCOs would have had fewer qualms

about behaving similarly and encouraging their troops likewise.39 Many

of their Croatian rank and fi le, of course, would have had fewer qualms

still. Seeking to fully explain events of the kind Frank Deakin describes,

however, should not detract from their harrowing nature.

But, as before, not all divisions were behaving as brutally as others. In

late 1942, such restraint as the 718th Infantry Division had shown earlier

that year had been supplanted by a gruesome lapse during its operations

around Jajce. But in early 1943 it returned to something approaching

its earlier form, form that contrasted markedly with the 369th Infantry

Division’s. The 718th’s fi les for early 1943 do not contain ruthless direc-

tives of the sort which the 369th was so fond of issuing; if anything, they

contain the opposite. On February 16, for instance, the 718th’s divisional

command decreed that “it is understandable that the soldier should be

able to obtain extra provisions in the form of plundered livestock. But

The Devil’s Division
225

it has been established that some livestock have been slaughtered, one

piece of meat taken, and the livestock left in the road. This is plunder and

squandering to the detriment both of our own homeland and of the local

land.”40 The same order, mindful perhaps of the slaughter the division’s

troops had infl icted during the Jajce operations, also directed that:

Valuable individuals are not to be shot, so that some information can

be prised out of them.

Deserters with our own certifi cation, who provided testimony, were

shot, in some cases purely because they could not be escorted back.

This attitude cannot be tolerated!

Women and children, when not under suspicion, are to be left

exactly where they are found.41

Nor was the need for measured treatment of the population lost on the

718th’s subordinate units. In February 1943, for instance, Battle Group

Annacker requested “the formation of propaganda units which will fol-

low the troops and explain and justify their conduct to the population

through the spoken and written word.”42 Because leafl ets alone would

have little effect upon the illiterate sections of the population, the group

urged “skilful spoken propaganda, as practised recently by the Parti-

sans.”43 It also recognized that “the propaganda troops must not consist

of Ustasha people, for the population views the Ustasha and everything it

stands for with hate and distrust. Rather, they should consist of members

of the Croatian Army or civilians.”44 Free, at least for the moment, of the

brutalizing pressure it had faced during the Jajce operations, the 718th

Infantry Division seems to have been allowing saner counsel to prevail.

Furthermore, the body counts the 718th’s troops infl icted during

this period, high though they were, were less outrageous than those the

369th was dealing out. For the whole of January 1943 the 718th recorded

killing 204 Partisans at a loss to itself of thirty-eight dead.45 Against this

was the 369th’s recording of 834 reported Partisan dead, at a loss to itself