Terror in the Balkans (87 page)

At midnight a worsening of the weather set in with heavy clouds. The

moonlight, which had been providing good vision, deteriorated, and

at the same time the enemy fi re stopped. At 02.00 on 9/3 (sic), in com-

plete darkness, a heavy fi re bombardment began, lasting between 30

and 45 minutes. Because nothing could be seen of the enemy, we had

to restrict ourselves to laying down machine-gun, rifl e, and grenade

launcher fi re to prevent the enemy from breaking into the buildings.

It was established, by fi ring fl ares after the exchange was over, that the

stretch of ground in front of the hospital was clear of the enemy. But

enemy rifl e fi re continued with varying degrees of intensity.166

By evening on September 3, both companies already knew their posi-

tion was in imminent danger of being overwhelmed, and they burned all

their documents as a precaution: “At 22.00 on 9/3 I (Lieutenant Rehmer)

burned all secret documents . . . (On the morning of 4 September) the

enemy laid down a well-targeted rifl e fi re on all windows in the hospital.

The only relief for the men came through air support
.” Attacks on the insur-

gents by Stuka dive bombers the following day provided some respite,

but Lieutenant Rehmer himself was wounded, “whereupon I handed

over command to Sergeant Kreidel.”167 Eleventh company reported that

“Tenth company was unable to take one step outside, and thus spent four

days without water. Everyone was on constant alert from daybreak all the

way through to the next morning. And so on and so on.”168

On September 4 both companies realized they had to break out immedi-

ately or be destroyed. According to tenth company, “even before the attack,

the men were seriously exhausted from almost constant watch with only

brief respite. After the attack on Stolica the men knew no more rest at all . . .

Lack of sleep, exhaustion and the effect of the events, not to mention the

lack of supply and water, put the men in a nervous and overstrained condi-

tion. Ammunition was scarce . . . Under these conditions the hospital could

have held out at best for one more night and one more day. The promised

help never came, and therefore on 4 September a breakout was judged the

only remaining option.” As a preliminary, all supplies were destroyed.169

Then, “240 kilograms of explosives blew the hospital sky-high.”170

Tenth company described what happened next: “The medical offi cer,

Dr. Höhne, remained behind to care for the wounded. Some wounded,

Islands in an Insurgent Sea
115

including Lieutenant Rehmer, who had been wounded by splinters from a

hand grenade, took part in the breakout, and with immense effort were able

to prevail.” But, “despite the greatest of care, the breakout became scattered

into small groups. Sergeant Kreidel headed further east over the steep,

rocky mountain face, where he was surprised at a house on the heights

by bandits and, according to the troops behind him . . . was shot.” Sev-

eral other soldiers were picked off during this phase. “Of the main group

under Captain Seifert, the only men of tenth company to make it through to

Valjevo were the wounded Lieutenant Rehmer, fi ve NCOs, and 30 men.”171

Worse still was the plight of eleventh company. It was held up by mines

and other obstacles from the start. Further on its escape route was blocked

again, this time by a demolished bridge: “With infernal pleasure the ban-

dits wanted to gloat at our helplessness.”172 The company had to leave its

own equipment and wounded behind. “What happened to our wounded

I have no idea . . . In the evening at 22.30 we arrived in Valjevo . . . Up until

now we are still missing 42 men. How many are dead and wounded can-

not yet be established.”173

One staff offi cer in LXV Corps greeted this debacle with apoplexy. “The

shit the bandits are dealing out is just beyond belief now,” he wrote in a

private letter. “Today a general told us that two companies (!) have been

missing for fourteen days (!!!) Just imagine that!! Two companies taken

prisoner!!! With fi ve offi cers and so on!!! We’re searching for them with

aircraft, day and night!!! You just want to scream right at the heavens!!!!!”174

The two companies’ assessment was more analytical—and more remark-

able for it, considering what they had been through. Eleventh company

wrote: “against encirclement from behind we were completely powerless.

A probe into such mountainous and forested territory as around Kru-

panj, Stolica, Zajaca will lead either to no success, because the enemy can

escape with ease, or to defeat if the bandits are strong enough. The land is

so peppered with ravines that the use of trucks, maybe even tanks, is also

fruitless, for the enemy can put down roadblock after roadblock which

cannot be removed within a short space of time.”175

Of the insurgents themselves, tenth company wrote that “the bandits

can be thankful for their communications network, which runs quickly

116
terror in the balk ans

from village to village across otherwise impassable terrain. The only

effective weapon here is aerial attack. Up to now we have not had this. For

people raised in this land there are many opportunities for overcoming

weak units with underhand methods.”176 Tenth company concluded that

“only harsh measures, without regard for the population, will resurrect

the orderly conditions that will re-establish trust in the Wehrmacht.”177

Between September 6 and 12 1941, the SD reported, insurgents car-

ried out eighty-one attacks on transport, communication, and economic

installations, and no fewer than 175 attacks on the Serbian gendarmerie.

There were also eleven attacks on Wehrmacht personnel, resulting in

thirty men killed, fi fteen wounded, and eleven abducted.178 All this came

to a total of two hundred and sixty-seven attacks. Considering that Ser-

bia Command had recorded “only” one hundred and thirty-fi ve attacks

as recently as the fi nal week in August, this was a frightening escalation.

The 704th’s situation was summed up on September 19 by Lieutenant

Dollmann of the divisional staff: “We are facing a uniformly led organ-

isation strongly equipped with weapons and means of communication.

It benefi ts from the terrain, it has managed to compel the population to

support it. It is inevitably superior to the road-bound forces at our dis-

posal. Only the most ruthless deployment of armored and air force units,

against the suspect civilian population (as well as the insurgents), can

effect a dramatic change in the situation.”179

The quotes by Dollmann and the “lost companies” of the 724th Infan-

try Regiment indicate that, desperate as they were becoming, the 704th

Infantry Division’s offi cers were now emphatically eschewing mod-

eration. They were increasingly less inclined to distinguish between

innocent and guilty, and increasingly more inclined to view the entire

population as a threat. This hardening mind-set presaged the brutal

escalation of the German counteroffensive against the Serbian national

uprising that autumn.

During summer 1941, the 704th Infantry Division faced an increasingly

debilitating situation. It was condemned to ineffectiveness by a manpower

policy that vastly underprioritized the security of occupied areas gener-

ally, and of the occupied area in which the division itself was operating.

Islands in an Insurgent Sea
117

The 704th was already sinking into a more moribund condition before

the Serbian national uprising had even begun. Once the uprising was

under way, little time elapsed before the division felt in danger of being

overwhelmed. Impotence, fear, and frustration all combined to harden

the way it conducted itself. The ferocious escalation of the Wehrmacht’s

counterinsurgency campaign would only really gather pace during

autumn 1941, but the 704th’s example indicates that the process was

already beginning that summer.

Yet much of the groundwork for the divisions’ harsh reaction to their

circumstances had been laid decades before the Third Reich. The Ger-

man military had long idolized the swift use of maximum force to achieve

victory. So the fact that the 704th Infantry Division commanded little in

the way of either swiftness or force was likely to increase its propensity

to lash out in brutalized frustration at the dangers it was facing. Indeed

all divisional commanders in Serbia, together with their offi cers and

men, probably felt the mocking contrast between their current, wretched

situation and the decisive maneuver warfare that was the German mili-

tary’s meat and drink. General Stahl, commander of the 714th Infantry

Division, had experienced such warfare as recently as the French cam-

paign. His colleague General Hoffmann, commander of the 717th, had

experienced it in Poland in 1939. And all three divisional commanders,

Borowski included, were being prevented from experiencing it in the as

yet still successful campaign against the Soviet Union.180

The particularly brutal approach to counterinsurgency that the Ger-

man military had periodically displayed during earlier decades, and had

resurrected for the Polish campaign, can only have further augmented

the growing desire for an immensely harsh response to the uprising. It

should also be remembered that the occupation divisions became increas-

ingly involved, if not yet to the same extent as the
Kommandanturen
, in

the ever more vicious campaign against Serbia’s Jews and Communists.

Commanders who willingly involved their units in such a campaign, and

in so doing indicated their own anti-Semitic and anti-Bolshevik proclivi-

ties, were if anything even more likely to judge that the security situation

was one that demanded ferocious retaliation.

Yet though it may seem perverse to point out, the ruthless conduct of the

704th during these summer months needs placing in perspective. During

118
terror in the balk ans

the occupation’s initial months, the 704th Infantry Division treated most

of the general population—Jews and Communists excepted—with rea-

sonable restraint. Even when the division’s conduct did harden, the bru-

tality it dealt out had yet to become as severe as it would that autumn.

Moreover, even though the opponent the division faced was of southern

Slavic stock, anti-Slavism did not visibly suffuse the division’s conduct.

There are also signs that the 704th’s rank-and-fi le troops did not sub-

scribe to the tenets of National Socialist ideology or ruthless counterin-

surgency doctrine as thoroughly as they might have done. This speaks

of the limits to National Socialist indoctrination’s ability to brutalize the

German army’s ordinary soldiery.

Much of the lead for the 704th Infantry Division’s relatively restrained

behavior towards the general population came from LXV Corps. This

formation was very far from being a model of enlightenment. But it

did recognize, in contrast with Field Marshal von Weichs’ more brutal

strictures, that keeping the bulk of the population onside was impor-

tant. It directed its divisions accordingly, urging the kinds of restraint

that constituted “propaganda of deed” and complemented some of Sec-

tion S’s propaganda measures. Even so, given the pressures it faced as

the national uprising mushroomed, the 704th, like its fellow divisions,

might still have been expected to behave more ferociously than it did.

By September 1941 the German occupation troops in Serbia, facing an

unconventional and ruthless enemy, resembled islands in an insurgent

sea, beleaguered on all sides and facing the prospect of complete collapse

without the injection of powerful reinforcements. Such circumstances

might have been enough to shift the 704th’s brutality up several more

gears than they did. That they did not was probably due to particular

attitudes held by key offi cers within the 704th.181

But in autumn 1941, Wehrmacht brutality in Serbia escalated spec-

tacularly. This was an escalation to which Wehrmacht commanders, if

the 704th Infantry Division is any guide, were by now increasingly pre-

disposed. The results would be calamitous not just for Serbia’s Jews, but

also for the general population. And some commanders went to singu-

larly ferocious lengths to bring such results about. A particularly power-

ful example is the 342d Infantry Division.

c h a p t e r 6

Settling Accounts in Blood

The 342d Infantry Division in Serbia

Major general walter hinghofer, the 342d Infantry Divi-

sion’s commanding offi cer, was born to an ethnic German fam-

ily in Transylvania, in the easternmost part of the Habsburg Empire,

in 1884. His father was a senior bank inspector. Hinghofer fought as an

artillery offi cer on the eastern front throughout the entire length of the

Great War. He saw uninterrupted duty there for the duration of the fi ght-

ing from 1914 to 1917. During this period, among other things, he fought

in the massive 1915 offensive that took the armies of the Central powers