Terror in the Balkans (66 page)

ian counterinsurgency in, 119, 139;

29–31, 34–37; puppet government of, 77,

United States, 24, 51

79–80, 98, 106, 145; popular mood in,

Ustasha, pre-1941, 74; programme, 78;

83–84, 99; progress of national uprising

support levels of, 78–79; relations with

in, 93–100, 110, 115–116, 120; pacifi cation

Axis, 78, 94–95, 150, 156, 160, 172, 180,

of late 1941, 142–147

185, 217–218, 234; purging of NDH’s

Serbs.
See
Serbia

state sector by, 79; anti-Serb campaign

Simovic´, Dusan, 75–76, 144

of, 79–80, 92–94, 156, 180, 193, 200,

Sinti and Roma, German treatment of, 2,

237–238, 241; measures against Jews,

5, 32, 86, 101, 122–123; Ustasha treatment

79–80, 92; measures against Sinti and

of, 78, 79, 92; Serbian treatment of, 293

Roma, 79–80, 92; destabilizing effect

Slovenia, 76, 93–94;

of, 151–152, 155, 157, 160, 176–180, 187,

Social Darwinism, 18; link with Pan-Ger-

191–192, 195, 198–200, 202, 204, 213, 225,

manism, 18, 22–24, 27, 33, 243

237–238; relations with Croatian Army,

Soviet Union, and Nazi-Soviet pact 1939,

157; contribution of military units to

66, 69; German invasion of, 69–70,

counterinsurgency, 163, 173–175, 183, 191,

90–91; German counterinsurgency

203–205; relations with Chetniks, 182,

campaign in, 239, 246–249, 251, 254

196; relations with Muslims, 193.
See

SS, 2, 5; and Night of the Long Knives, 62;

also
Pavelic´, Ante

in Poland, 67–68; in Serbia, 80, 100–104,

123; in NDH, 202, 240.
See also
Ein-

satzgruppen; Himmler, Heinrich; Order

Versailles, Treaty of, 12, 58, 59, 63–64

Police; Turner, Harald; Waffen-SS

Volkswehr, 53

Stahl, Friedrich, biographical details, 117,

137–138, 196, 286; ruthlessness in counter-

insurgency, 141–142, 180; attitude towards

Waffen-SS, divisions: 2d Panzer “Das

Chetniks, 196.
See also
German army

Reich,” 87; 7th Mountain “Prinz Eugen,”

(1939–1945), infantry divisions, 714th

158, 160, 218, 219–220, 227, 241, 328; 13th

Stalin, Josef, 91

Mountain “Handschar,” 193, 241

Stojadinovic´, Milan, 74

Wehrmacht.
See
German army (1939–1945),

Luftwaffe

Wehrmacht Command South-East, 80,

“Time of Struggle,” 54–55

100, 159, 175, 201.
See also
Kuntze, Wal-

Tito (Josep Broz), 1941 strategy of, 91–92;

ter; List, Wilhelm; Löhr, Alexander

relations with Mihailovic´, 110, 145;

Weichs, Maximilian von, 88, 118

342
Index

Weimar Republic, 57–59, 196

72–73, 75; foundation, 53, 72–73; ethnic

Wilhelm II, Emperor, 13–14, 17

composition, 72–73; political polarization,

Windisch, Alois, 232

73–74; growing dependence on Germany,

Working classes, German, 13, 32, 62;

74; conquest, occupation and division of,

Yugoslav, 96, 148–149, 179

75–78; topography, 76, 82; discrimination

Wüst, Joachim, 232.
See also
German

against Croats in, 78, 92–93

army (1939–1945), battle groups: Wüst

Yugoslavism, 73–74, 145, 151

Wutte, Rudolf, 167, 232.
See also
German

army (1939–1945), battle groups: Wutte

Zbor Movement, 74, 121

Zellner, Emil, 230–232, 234, 250–251, 254,

Yugoslavia (1918–1941), Axis invasion

326.
See also
German army (1939–1945),

and conquest of, 1; March 1941 coup,

infantry divisions, 373d (Croatian)

• Terror in the Balkans: German Armies and Partisan Warfare
  
• Contents
  
• Terror in the Balkans
  
• Introduction
  
• 1. Before the Great War: Changes in the Officer Corps
  
• 2. Forging a Wartime Mentality:
  The Impact of World War I
  
• 3. Bridging Two Hells: The 1920s and 1930s
  
• 4. Invasion and Occupation: Yugoslavia, 1941
  
• 5. Islands in an Insurgent Sea: The 704th
  Infantry Division in Serbia
  
• 6. Settling Accounts in Blood: The 342nd Infantry Division in Serbia
  
• 7. Standing Divided: The Independent State
  of Croatia, 1942
  
• 8. Glimmers of Sanity: The 718th
  Infantry Division in Bosnia
  
• 9. The Morass: Attitudes Harden in the
  718th Infantry Division
  
• 10. The Devil’s Division: The 369th
  Infantry Division in Bosnia, 1943
  
• Conclusion
  
• Appendix A: Source References for
  Featured Officers
  
• Appendix B: Note on the Primary Sources
  
• Abbreviations
  
• Notes
  
  • Introduction
    
  • 1. Before the Great War
    
  • 2. Forging a Wartime Mentality
    
  • 3. Bridging two Hells
    
  • 4. Invasion and Occupation: Yugoslavia, 1941
    
  • 5. Islands in an Insurgent Sea
    
  • 6. Settling Accounts in Blood
    
  • 7. Standing Divided
    
  • 8. Glimmers of Sanity
    
  • 9. The Morass
    
  • 10. The Devil’s Division
    
  • Conclusion
    
• Acknowledgments
  
• Index
  

T E R R OR I N T H E BA L K A NS

TERROR

IN THE

BALKANS

German Armies and Partisan Warfare

BEN SHEPHERD

Harvard University Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts • London, England

2012

Copyright © 2012 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Shepherd, Ben.

Terror in the Balkans : German armies and partisan warfare / Ben Shepherd.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-674-04891-1 (alk. paper)

1. World War, 1939–1945—Yugoslavia. 2. World War, 1939–1945—

Underground movements—Yugoslavia. 3. Yugoslavia—History—Axis occupation,

1941–1945. 4. Germany. Heer—History—World War, 1939–1945. I. Title.

D766.6.S44 2012

940.53'497—dc23 2011048292

Contents

Introduction

1

1. Before the Great War:

Changes in the Offi cer Corps

12

2. Forging a Wartime Mentality:

The Impact of World War I

28

3. Bridging Two Hells: The 1920s and 1930s

57

4. Invasion and Occupation: Yugoslavia, 1941

72

5. Islands in an Insurgent Sea: The 704th

Infantry Division in Serbia

83

6. Settling Accounts in Blood: The 342d

Infantry Division in Serbia

119

7. Standing Divided: The Independent State

of Croatia, 1942

148

8. Glimmers of Sanity: The 718th

Infantry Division in Bosnia

161

vi
Contents

9. The Morass: Attitudes Harden in the

718th Infantry Division

190

10. The Devil’s Division: The 369th

Infantry Division in Bosnia, 1943

215

Conclusion

236

Appendix A: Source References for

Featured Offi cers

259

Appendix B: Note on the Primary Sources

263

Abbreviations

267

Notes

269

Acknowledgments

331

Index

333

T E R R OR I N T H E BA L K A NS

Introduction

In spring 1941 the German Wehrmacht, replete with victory over

successive opponents across Europe, fell upon the Balkan kingdom

of Yugoslavia.1 The Yugoslav army was overwhelmed within ten days,

and an improvised occupation regime swiftly established. But there

then erupted a national uprising that later developed into an insur-

gency as violent and obdurate as any in World War II.2 It lasted almost

the entire duration of the war. It was marked not just by a fearsome

campaign against the Axis occupier and ferocious Axis countermea-

sures, but also by fratricidal slaughter between Yugoslavia’s mutually

belligerent ethnic groups. It was almost the entire cause of the 1.75 mil-

lion dead—11 percent of the population—Yugoslavia suffered during

World War II.3

Hitler and the Wehrmacht retaliated against the uprising with a

campaign of hostage-taking and reprisals that was exceptional, even by

Nazi standards, in the scale of indiscriminate butchery that it infl icted.

There is no better expression of the campaign’s intent, and of the his-

torically founded hatred that helped to forge it, than an order issued

at its outset by Lieutenant General Franz Boehme,4 the Wehrmacht’s

Plenipotentiary Commanding General in Serbia:

1

2
terror in the balk ans

Your objective is to be achieved in a land where, in 1914, streams of

German blood fl owed because of the treachery of the Serbs, men and

women. You are the avengers of those dead. A deterring example

must be established for all of Serbia, one that will have the heaviest

impact on the entire population. Anyone who carries out his duty

in a lenient manner will be called to account, regardless of rank or

position, and tried by a military court.5

Though the rising posed a considerable danger to the Axis occupation,

the response Boehme was urging went beyond all normal constraints

of legality and morality.6 And Boehme belonged not to the organization

with which the worst outrages of Nazi occupation are most often associ-

ated—the SS—but to the Wehrmacht. It was this same Wehrmacht that

was popularly viewed for decades after World War II as having been a

bastion of moral decency, sometimes active resistance, against the Nazi

regime’s depravities. But Boehme’s order is only one example of the vast

array of evidence, unearthed over the past four-and-a-half decades, that

has demolished the myth of the “clean” Wehrmacht.

The myth retained remarkable durability after 1945. Over the course

of World War II, the organs of the Nazi regime infl icted destruction and

misery upon the swathe of occupied Europe from the Atlantic to the

Urals. The occupied peoples were increasingly deprived of their food-

stuffs, economic resources, and human labor, all in the cause of feed-

ing Germany’s increasingly voracious war economy. The further east

one went, the more harrowing the picture got; here, the Nazis’ pirati-

cal rampage was exacerbated by their belief that the “racially inferior”

Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe were natural slaves, to be decimated

and exploited with impunity. None of this is to mention the campaign of

terror, and ultimately genocide, waged against those groups Nazi ideol-

ogy regarded as an existential threat to the German race itself—Commu-

nists, Sinti and Roma, and, above all, Jews. Finally, across the continent,

the Nazis countered mounting resistance to their economic and ideo-

logical dictates with a security campaign ever more indiscriminate in the

bloodshed and destruction it infl icted. Indeed, particularly in the Nazi

empire’s eastern regions, “security needs” were often used as convenient

cover for implementing those same dictates even further.7

Introduction
3

Yet the Wehrmacht, its postwar advocates asserted, was untainted

by any involvement in such terror and exploitation.8 Only during the

late 1960s, as West German students took to the streets to challenge an

establishment they saw as criminally compromised by its earlier asso-

ciations with Nazism, did historians begin dismantling the myth of the

“clean” Wehrmacht. Now, seventy years after World War II, it can be

confi dently stated that the Wehrmacht, or its higher command levels at

any rate, was complicit, sometimes instrumental, in the barbarities the

Third Reich perpetrated across occupied Europe. Yet even though the

navy (Kriegsmarine), and certainly the air force (Luftwaffe) were tainted

by involvement in Nazi crimes, it was the army (Heer), by far the Weh-

rmacht’s numerically largest branch, whose involvement in such crimes

was most extensive. And it was the army that, consequently, has been

the focus of the vast majority of studies that have collectively revealed the