Terror in the Balkans (83 page)

and Roma since the NDH’s founding. By June, it was exploiting freshly

passed legislation authorizing lethal measures against purported “ene-

mies of the people and state” to justify the next, far more rabid phase of

its ethnic campaign. The Ustasha claimed that the Serbs in the NDH

were “squatters,” who had been deposited on ancestral Croatian ter-

ritory by their Ottoman or Habsburg masters and had subjected the

Croats to centuries of cruelty. This was a vast oversimplifi cation of a

complex, centuries-old interaction between the two peoples. The Usta-

sha also depicted the Serbs as the bloodstained hatchet men of the Bel-

grade government during the interwar years, with thousands of Croat

deaths on their hands. Granted, Croats had been discriminated against

shamefully over the past two decades, and there had been some deadly if

small-scale incidents between the two peoples. But claims of a murder-

ous ethnic campaign were grossly exaggerated. Yet rewriting history in

this way, the Ustasha believed, would enable it to publicly justify what

Islands in an Insurgent Sea
93

it was about to unleash. The Ustasha-controlled media and, shamefully,

large portions of the Croatian Catholic clergy propagated such distor-

tions enthusiastically.57

The Ustasha did not intend committing genocide on the Serbs. It

did intend to fatally dislocate Serbian community life within the NDH,

exterminating a portion of the Serbs, driving others beyond its borders,

and forcibly converting the rest to Roman Catholicism.58 Thus, from

summer 1941 the Ustasha orchestrated the brutal expulsion or barbaric

slaughter of whole Serb communities. It also herded thousands more

Serbs into newly established concentration camps, mass killing centers

in all but name, the most infamous of which was the camp at Jasenovac.

By February 1942, the German Foreign Ministry in Agram estimated

with some alarm, the Ustasha had butchered approximately three hun-

dred thousand Serbs.59

Matters were made worse by the demographic domino effect of Him-

mler’s misconceived attempt to “Germanize” northern Yugoslavia. Hit-

ler and Himmler sought to expel nearly a quarter of a million Slovenes

from their homeland to make way for ethnic German settlers there. The

Ustasha was willing to make room for them in the NDH, believing this

would excuse “legally” expelling even more Serbs to make way for them.

The Germans and Croats agreed terms for an “orderly” transfer on June

4, 1941. But the Germans soon realized that the Ustasha was actually

expelling up to fi ve times more Serbs into Serbia, under the most brutal

and inhuman conditions, than the number of Slovenes arriving in the

NDH. In late August the German authorities in Serbia, fearful of the

spiraling practical problems and the gathering backlash from the Ser-

bian population, refused to accept any more Serbs from the NDH; some

weeks later, Himmler ordered a halt to the Slovene deportations also.

But thousands of the Serbs spared expulsion from the NDH would now

be massacred by the Ustasha instead.60

In Kozara in Bosnia, the Serb uprising actually preceded the Usta-

sha’s murderous campaign. In Montenegro, the revolt was caused by

the population’s particular grievances against its Italian occupiers. But

for the most part, Serbs in the NDH, and many in Serbia itself, rose up

in response to the killings to preserve their existence within the bloody

ethnic bear pit that was now rapidly evolving. The main revolt spread

94
terror in the balk ans

between July 7 and 27 from Krupanj in western Serbia, through Monte-

negro, Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia.61

Many German and Italian offi cials were horrifi ed at the Ustasha kill-

ings, if not necessarily for moral reasons then certainly because of the

chaos they threatened to unleash. On June 26 Pavelic´ was prevailed

upon to issue a decree condemning those guilty of “excesses.” Yet apart

from the arrest of a few “bad apples,” and the execution of fewer still, the

Pavelicŕegime did nothing.62 And neither in 1941 nor later did the high-

est German military and diplomatic representatives in the NDH actually

take decisive action to try to halt the Ustasha.

This was partly because they knew Hitler would not have supported

them. Hitler’s own motives for supporting the NDH were power-politi-

cal in part. The NDH was, theoretically, a sovereign state. Being seen to

interfere “excessively” in its affairs might therefore play badly with Ger-

many’s other allies. Hitler was also reluctant to offend Italian sensitivi-

ties by intervening too stridently in a region that was, offi cially, within

the Italian sphere of interest.63 But Hitler also harbored a distinct soft

spot for the Ustasha. This was partly because of their shared Habsburg

heritage, but primarily because he approved of the Ustasha’s extrem-

ism. Indeed, in June 1941 he positively egged Pavelicón, counseling the

Croatian leader to pursue an “intolerant” policy for the next fi fty years.64

Hitler also valued what he regarded as the Ustasha regime’s steadfast

loyalty to Germany. This was a score on which it contrasted with some

other collaborationist regimes, such as the democratic government in

occupied Denmark. Finally, as the war in general became ever more

protracted, Ribbentrop was increasingly loath to present Hitler with

any bad news. He thus concealed from the Führer the full extent of the

mayhem the Ustasha’s campaign was spawning.65 Nor were the two men

whom Hitler had appointed to directly deal with the Pavelicŕegime best

suited to challenging it effectively.

Hitler had installed Lieutenant General Edmund Glaise von Hor-

stenau, a former Austro-Hungarian offi cer, as German General in

Agram, charged with representing Wehrmacht interests to the Ustasha

government.66 Glaise was in fact very critical of the NDH government,

but there were limits to how far he was prepared to act against it. For one

thing, he recognized the benefi ts the foundation of the new state had

Islands in an Insurgent Sea
95

brought to many of his former colleagues from the old Royal and Impe-

rial Army. He was also united with the Croats against the policies of the

Italians. In particular, Glaise failed to argue for stronger action, such as

replacing the Pavelicŕegime with a fully empowered Wehrmacht mili-

tary commander. This was partly for fear that his own position as Ger-

man General in Agram might become superfl uous were Hitler to accept

such a recommendation, and partly for fear that he might be sacked

were Hitler to reject it. This was something that Glaise, whose private

fi nances were deeply problematic, was especially anxious to avoid. Nor,

as time went by, did Glaise harbor any desire to be appointed military

commander himself. For he sought to remain suffi ciently disassociated

from the proliferating war crimes that would, over time, be committed

by German troops in the NDH. From 1943 onward, as the tide of war

turned against Germany, this concern assumed pressing signifi cance.67

The failure of Siegfried Kasche, the German Foreign Ministry’s rep-

resentative in Agram, to challenge the Ustasha effectively is more eas-

ily explained. A thuggish SA man, Kasche instinctively approved of the

Ustasha’s aims and methods and could usually be relied upon to defend

the regime at every turn. Glaise recorded that Kasche had once described

Croatia as “the purest paradise.”68 As this quotation suggests, Kasche

was also somewhat short on gray matter; the main reason he got the job

of Foreign Ministry representative was that, like many of Ribbentrop’s

appointees, he was a useful check on the SS. This was an organization

Kasche hated, understandably enough, because it had tried to murder

him in the Night of the Long Knives.69

Though the Communists did not start the Serb revolt, they seized

its reins as best they could. And it was indeed the Communists, not

Mihailovic´’s Chetniks, who were best-placed to do this. The cadres

that spearheaded Communist efforts to coordinate and control the

revolt had ample experience of subterfuge; as Turner’s Administrative

Offi ce recorded on 23 July, “as soon as the German invasion of Russia

was announced on the radio, a large portion of the known Communist

functionaries in Belgrade disappeared into the countryside. The police

action which was immediately ordered was therefore only able to capture

96
terror in the balk ans

a fraction of them.”70 Students, workers, and artisans comprised the bulk

of Communist support in Serbia. Throwing open the Partisan movement

to non-Communists, a step the Yugoslav Communists took on August

10, enabled the revolt to take wing even more emphatically.71 By now

the Communists claimed twenty-one Partisan detachments, with eight

thousand members, in Serbia alone.72 An important component of the

Partisans’ fi ghting power at this point was the combat-seasoned Spanish

Civil War veterans who gravitated to their cause.73

The Communists organized their Partisan units into companies, bat-

talions, and larger detachments, with political commissars attached to

units of company size and above. In September, they formed the fi rst

NOOs in the areas the Partisans had liberated. The largest and most

prominent such area was centered on Užice in northwest Serbia. The

NOOs were tasked with mobilizing troops and supplies from villages

and towns. This made it possible to supply the Partisans, at least much

of the time, through orderly requisition and taxation rather than plun-

der. The NOOs in the “Užice Republic” also redistributed abandoned

and sequestered land and property, together with land and property

from accused collaborators. By such means, the Partisans not only built

vital support among the local peasantry—in addition to the many peas-

ants among the thousands of destitutes and NDH refugees who poured

into the region—but also began laying the foundations for revolutionary

change. The power of the NOOs in wartime Yugoslavia would eventu-

ally extend to managing local agriculture, performing judicial functions,

and organizing education.74

The MihailovicĆhetniks appealed largely to rural Serbs, former

Yugoslav army soldiers seeking to avoid a POW camp, and ethnic Serbs

who were either fl eeing or had been expelled from the NDH.75 But they

faced obstacles to widening their appeal further. In particular, their lack

of a cadre system, or of a proper track record of political activism, pre-

vented them from spreading propaganda anything like as effectively as

the Communists. Instead, they relied more on simple verbal propaganda

and supportive BBC broadcasts.76 Mihailovicálso had immense diffi culty

controlling “his” Chetnik units, compromising a great deal with his com-

manders in the fi eld and granting them extensive autonomy.77 The move-

ment’s military potential was similarly limited. Its forces were divided

Islands in an Insurgent Sea
97

into small, loosely organized detachments, with a combined operative

strength in autumn 1941 of fi ve to ten thousand fi ghters, but as late as

November only a fraction were capable of engaging in combat.78 More-

over, the MihailovicĆhetniks as a whole suffered, as did the Partisans

initially, from chronic shortages of suitable weaponry.79

Until early August the Communists directed the revolt at the collabo-

rationist Acímovic´ government, particularly its gendarmerie, rather than

at the Germans.80 Selecting softer targets inevitably brought the Parti-

sans greater success, and helped the revolt to mushroom rapidly into a

national uprising.81 Initially the forces the Germans themselves commit-

ted to combating the rebels directly comprised Einsatzgruppe Yugosla-

via and Reserve Police Battalion 64. Wehrmacht troops themselves were

only used occasionally.

By early August, however, this was changing. This was not least

because, following an attack on a tank on the Valjevo-Užice road in the

704th Infantry Division’s jurisdiction, German army troops were them-

selves now being targeted.82 The Partisans switched tactics in this way

in an effort to gain better-quality weapons, greater recognition from the

population, and more fuel for the revolt.83

LXV Corps’ summer communiqués convey how rapidly the uprising

spread. By early August, it reported, Communist bands were “terror-

izing” farmers and “robbing” communities, attacking Serbian gendar-

merie stations, and fi ring on lone military vehicles. In the last ten days

of August alone, Serbia Command recorded 135 attacks, whether on

railways, telephone lines, road bridges, industrial installations, gendar-

merie stations and other public offi ces, or Wehrmacht personnel. Most

of the agricultural population, according to Serbia Command, were not

actually siding with the “bandits.” But nor would they embrace the Weh-