Terror in the Balkans (46 page)

difference was that maximum violence assumed another form here. The

largest offensives, such as Kozara and White I, spawned mass destruction

and vast body counts that, though they purportedly comprised insurgents

slain in combat, clearly included large numbers of civilians.

Yet the 718th Infantry Division’s example shows that there were com-

manders who, unless their unit’s position became so execrable as to close

off all means of success, saw opportunities to do things differently. As

well as relying more on small mobile units, they sought to erode Partisan

strength by making potential deserters feel safe in crossing the line, and

by cultivating a population that could provide vital information, man-

power, and other practical support against the Partisans.

Thus, the situation facing the Germans in the NDH during 1942 was

onerous, but not yet a life-or-death struggle. This fact helped foster

cooler, more measured judgments by some—even if they were uneven,

temporary, and often highly relative. German army anti-Partisan divi-

sions serving in the Soviet Union during World War II could behave

similarly. The 221st Security Division and Army Rear Area 532 are well-

documented examples of units that were sane enough to realize that there

were more sensible ways of trying to compensate for their own failings

than just untrammeled terror.24 One thing these units had in common

with the 718th Infantry Division was their circumstances. All three units

experienced periods in which their struggle against insurgents was not

so urgent and intense as to prevent them from employing measures that,

though more restrained and smaller in scale than massive encirclement

operations, needed more time in which to bear fruit.

248
terror in the balk ans

Yet, while small-unit tactics and constructive engagement could cer-

tainly bring dividends, two conditions were essential for them to work to

their full effect. The fi rst was suffi cient troops of suffi cient quality on the

ground, and for suffi cient duration. The second was a wider occupation

policy properly geared towards the population’s basic needs of personal

security and economic stability. Axis occupation policy in the NDH met

neither condition. The Pavelicŕegime itself
certainly
met neither condi-

tion. The eventual result was an inexorable swelling of Partisan support.

And by the time the Partisans’ strength and infl uence had reached a

certain level, neither destructive, maximum-force mobile operations nor

more imaginative approaches could defeat them conclusively. In these

circumstances, such were many commanders’ terroristic proclivities that

they opted for maximum destructive force as a panacea. Others, such as

the 718th Infantry Division’s General Fortner, may simply have opted for

harsher action out of sheer frustration. Offi cers’ anxiety at the growing Par-

tisan threat, and the pressure from higher command for quick and spec-

tacular results, could only drive them even more surely down such a path.

A similar example from the Soviet Union is that of the 201st Security

Division. This formation carried out massive, bloody antipartisan opera-

tions in the Polotsk Lowland, in the northwestern portion of the Army

Group Center Rear Area, during 1942 and 1943. The partisans it faced in

this region were especially numerous and active. Moreover, the transport

network that crisscrossed it, a network now under serious partisan threat,

was of special importance to the German war effort in the East. Not only did

the 201st face a singularly formidable foe on the ground, then; it also had to

reckon with intense pressure from above for quick, tangible results.25

Moreover, even when German army units on the ground did aspire

to cultivate the NDH’s population, such was the situation they faced

that cultivation was immensely diffi cult to implement. For the tortuous

complexities of the ethnic situation rendered a straightforward wooing

of the population increasingly impossible. Army commanders needed to

consider not just whether to engage with the population, but also which

particular population groups to engage with in preference to others, and

how far. And there were periods even in 1942 in which the Wehrmacht

already found itself facing powerful Partisan attacks. When Wehrmacht

forces sought to counter a Partisan offensive, as happened with the 718th

Conclusion
249

Infantry Division at Jajce in late 1942, even units that had hitherto shown

restraint began to display brutalized desperation instead. Brutality, then,

remained a central component of counterinsurgency for all the German

army divisions in the NDH. It seems that even units that were more

inclined to cultivate felt compelled to terrorize instead if they felt driven

to it by circumstances.

The 221st Security Division provides a similar example from the occu-

pied Soviet Union. This division too sought to moderate its conduct and

engage the population during the years 1942 and 1943. But its conduct

during these years was also punctuated by periods in which, whether

due to pressures on the ground or pressure from above for results, it

ratcheted up its ruthlessness markedly.26

How long a division had actually been engaged in such warfare could

also color its behavior. The longer ordinary soldiers spent in the fi eld,

the harder and more savage their conduct could become. The 718th

Infantry Division at Jajce demonstrated this. But at command level, a

lengthy tenure on the ground could, over time, lead a unit to exercise

more restraint. Thus in early 1943, for instance, the newly arrived 369th

Infantry Division meted out a great deal more brutality—at divisional

command’s behest—than the 717th and 718th Infantry Divisions. The

commands of these latter units, by contrast, had had longer to adjust to

the intricacies of Balkan politics and thus begin comporting themselves

with more insight. The 221st Security Division again provides a similar

example from the Soviet Union. Here too was a unit that, in general,

behaved more moderately over time, partly because it increasingly saw

the need to engage with the population it was occupying.27 That said,

passing time and mounting pressure could actually make rank-and-fi le

troops less likely to follow their commanders’ moderate lead.

Conditions on the ground, then, did indeed provide a bridge that

transformed Wehrmacht doctrine into brutal behavior. But just as con-

ditions could brutalize the behavior of German army commanders and

their units, they could also moderate it.

Ultimately, however, German army counterinsurgency commanders were

not just members of a particular institution. They were also individuals.

250
terror in the balk ans

How far they followed the directives they had been issued could depend,

therefore, not just upon the situation they faced, but also upon how they

as individuals perceived it. Their perceptions could be colored, in turn,

by infl uences and experiences they had undergone over the course of

their lives. It is likely that this is why there were German army command-

ers in Yugoslavia whose behavior was markedly harsher and more brutal

than that of others, even if they faced similar conditions or had been in the

fi eld for similar periods.

In autumn 1941, during the Wehrmacht’s savage suppression of the

Serbian national uprising, the suppression dealt out by the 342d Infan-

try Division was not only the most savage of all, but also exceeded even

General Boehme’s bloody dictates. The man primarily responsible was

the division’s commander, General Hinghofer. But the 342d did not

hold a monopoly on extraordinary ruthlessness. In the NDH in 1943, it

was Neidholt and Zellner, commanders of the 369th and 373d Infantry

Divisions respectively, who exercised particular severity. Meanwhile,

General Eglseer, commander of the 714th Infantry Division, stood apart

from other divisional commanders also, if not for his actual brutality

then certainly for the zeal with which he sought to harden and disci-

pline his men.

These offi cers stand apart from other divisional commanders whose

conduct this study has considered—General Borowski of the 704th

Infantry Division; from the 714th General Stahl; from the 717th General

Hoffmann (latterly of the 342d) and General Dippold; and from the 718th

General Fortner.

This second group of offi cers was not particularly “enlightened,”

whether by today’s standards or by those of seventy years ago. Some,

such as General Fortner, were indeed capable of considerable modera-

tion. But offi cers in this group were clearly capable of deeds that were

anything but moderate. The 704th, 714th, and 717th Infantry Divisions

in particular were unfailing in their obedience to General Boehme’s

orders for the ferocious suppression of the Serbian national uprising in

1941. Yet what distinguished the ruthlessness of these offi cers was that,

although it was in line with the directives of higher command, it did not

actually exceed them. Theirs was a “mainstream” ruthlessness, brutal as

it was, rather than ruthlessness of a more exceptional kind.

Conclusion
251

By contrast, the ruthlessness of radical commanders like Hinghofer,

Zellner, and Neidholt did indeed exceed those directives. Not the insti-

tutional harshness that permeated the offi cer corps, nor orders from

above, nor conditions on the ground, then, can fully explain why these

particular offi cers comported themselves thus.

Radical offi cers such as these also served in divisions fi ghting in the

antipartisan campaign in the Soviet Union. One case, again, is that of

the 221st Security Division, one of three such divisions that served in

the Army Group Center Rear Area during 1941. In late 1942, the 221st

was learning the virtues of greater restraint. But that was not only for

the future, but also for a later, more enlightened divisional commander,

Brigadier General Hubert Lendle. In 1941, the 221st was commanded

by Major General Johann Pfl ugbeil. An incident from the early days of

the invasion of the Soviet Union provides a telling insight into the par-

ticular strength of anti-Semitism that seems to have animated Pfl ugbeil’s

command. In late June 1941, the 221st’s divisional command turned a

blind eye when the Order Police battalion in its jurisdiction massacred

the Jewish population of the town of Bialystok. Two grisly distinctions

marked this atrocity out. Firstly, it preceded by several weeks the fi rst

mass shootings of Soviet Jews by the SS Einsatzgruppen, a key phase in

the unfolding of the Final Solution that year. Secondly, though equally

horrendous as those later killings in a moral sense, it lacked their cold

and clinical precision; instead, it was atavistic and savage.28

The 221st’s reaction to this massacre contrasts markedly with the atti-

tude of German army units towards the Einsatzgruppe shootings. Army

units allowed Einsatzgruppe shootings to take place in their jurisdictions.

Yet they were anxious to distance the army from the killings, and counter

any danger to their troops’ discipline by forbidding them to witness or

participate in the killings. But the 221st’s divisional command, headed by

Pfl ugbeil himself and operations offi cer Major Karl Haupt, appears to have

been completely unperturbed by the unbridled, sadistic massacre which

they and their troops witnessed. That these offi cers were apparently so

unruffl ed says much about the likely strength of their own anti-Semitism.29

A second case is the 203d Security Division. During summer and early

autumn 1942, under its commander Brigadier General Gottfried Barton,

the 203d operated in the southwestern portion of the Army Group Center

252
terror in the balk ans

Rear Area. It faced very similar fi ghting conditions to those of the 221st

Security Division, now commanded by the more restrained General Len-

dle, directly to the 203d’s southeast. But the directives the 203d issued for

the treatment of the population were more severe than the 221st’s at this

time. Moreover, severity seem to have permeated the division further down.

Its troops killed far more Partisans in excess of their own losses—largely

unarmed civilians, in other words—than did the troops of the 221st.30

Such examples indicate that the radical offi cers who made their presence

felt in Yugoslavia belonged to a wider group. It now remains to consider

the infl uences and experiences that made that decisive difference in bru-

talizing their mind-set beyond even the German army’s norms.

The fi rst question to consider is where an offi cer was born. In Yugosla-

via, it was offi cers born in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire whom the

forces of historical enmity were most likely to drive towards particularly

harsh conduct. Secondly, just as an offi cer’s geographical background

might shape him, so might his social background. Offi cers hailing from

the “new” middle-class circles to which both the German and Austro-