Terror in the Balkans (96 page)

mand of the 342d Infantry Division. Alongside the two divisions were

seven Croatian infantry battalions and nine Croatian artillery batteries,

while the Luftwaffe committed reconnaissance aircraft and a combat

squadron.9 The 718th was strengthened for the operation. The 738th

Infantry Regiment, ordered to strike from Sarajevo through the Praca

Valley towards Rogatica, received pioneer troops, four Croatian bat-

talions, four Croatian artillery batteries, and two and a half German

mountain artillery batteries sent from the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo.

The 750th Infantry Regiment, moving out from southwest of Tuzla

towards Olovo, was accompanied by a German artillery battery, and a

Croatian infantry battalion and mountain battery.10 But the extra forces

allotted to the division would be of limited help. Indeed, the Croats

would prove more of a hindrance.

The operation was called off on January 23, having failed to destroy

the insurgents as planned. On its heels a few days later came Opera-

tion Ozren, which lasted until February 4. The 718th, advancing from

Kladanj, was tasked with clearing the area between the Rivers Bosna

and Spreca of the circa two-thousand-strong Partisan forces there.11 The

division had been further strengthened by the time of this operation.

Alongside its core infantry and artillery regiments it was now allocated

an armored train and fi ve Panzer platoons. Sixteen territorial compa-

nies, meanwhile, reduced the pressure on the 718th, largely by assum-

ing static security duties in its jurisdiction.12 To the operation itself the

718th committed its full infantry and artillery strength, together with an

Ustasha battalion. It was also loaned the 697th Infantry Regiment from

the 342d Infantry Division.13 Ten Croatian battalions and an unspecifi ed

number of Croatian artillery batteries were tasked with cordoning off

the Spreca and the Bosna valley to prevent the Partisans from escaping,

while the main body of the 718th advanced from the north and west.14 In

the event, however, the great majority of Partisans managed to escape.15

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terror in the balk ans

Mid-February, fi nally, brought Operation Prijedor. Here, in north-

west Bosnia, the 718th committed the 750th Infantry Regiment, advanc-

ing from Dubica, to pulling Territorial Battalion 923 and numerous

Croatian units out of trouble after they had been isolated in Prijedor fol-

lowing Partisan attacks on the surrounding railway lines. This operation

achieved its limited aims, the 718th committing four battalions together

with two artillery batteries, two additional artillery platoons, and pio-

neer and signals troops.16 The Croatian army committed four infantry

battalions, a gendarmerie battalion, four artillery batteries and two artil-

lery sections, and a further twenty-nine companies of various types.

Most of the Croatian units were assigned to guarding the roads and the

cordon around the operational area. But the Croatian units’ already lim-

ited effectiveness was further curtailed by the fact that fi ve of the compa-

nies consisted of low-quality replacements or recruits.17

The orders the 718th issued during these operations, relayed in South-

east Croatia’s case from the 342d Infantry Division, remained true to the

German military’s harsh counterinsurgency tradition and drew little

distinction between combatant and noncombatant. On January 9, in

advance of Operation Southeast Croatia, the 718th ordered its regiments

to view as hostile anyone falling into one of the following, very much

all-encompassing groups: all nonresidents and residents who had been

absent from their localities until recently; all identifi able “Mihailovic´

people” with or without weapons or ammunition; all identifi able DangicĆhetniks—a group with whom the Germans were not yet supposed to be offi cially dealing—with or without weapons or ammunition; all Communists who could be identifi ed in any way, with or without weapons or

ammunition; and, fi nally, anyone concealing, supplying, or informing

the above groups. No distinction was to be made between members of

the different ethnic groups.18

When it came to how to treat captured insurgents, the directives were

predictably fi erce. A brief interrogation or examination, followed by

summary shooting, was to be the fate of all Communists, and of anyone

who had participated in combat or been caught carrying ammunition or

messages. Anyone resisting or fl eeing was likewise to be shot. The 718th,

Glimmers of Sanity
165

though interestingly not the 342d, extended the same treatment to all

“Serbian Chetniks”—a reference, one assumes, to MihailovicĆhetniks.

Finally, houses from which shots were fi red, unless useful as accommo-

dation, were to be burned down.19 The division’s orders for Operation

Ozren were similarly merciless, sparing again neither Communist Parti-

sans nor “Serbian Chetniks,” and its regiments entered into the spirit of

things. The 750th Infantry Regiment, for instance, ordered that villages

from which shots had been fi red, and that were not needed for accom-

modation, were to be burned down.20

Operation Prijedor, fi nally, was prefaced by one of the harshest direc-

tives of all. It being so diffi cult to identify the enemy, the operational

orders declared that all male Serbian inhabitants between sixteen and

sixty were to be treated as though they had been encountered in battle

with a weapon in their hands. In other words, it can be presumed, all

were to be shot. As with the inhabitants, so with their dwellings: just as

in the previous operation, the Serbian villages on each side of the main

route of march, unless they could be used as troop accommodation, were

to be burned down.21 Again, the 718th’s subordinate units followed the

brutal lead. For instance, Battle Group Wutte provided a lengthy list on

March 7 of which groups of houses were to be burned down either side of

its route of march.22 Copious amounts of livestock were also seized dur-

ing Prijedor: 667 cattle, 417 sheep, and eighty-fi ve pigs.23

Yet ferocious as such ruthlessness was, it was of a different quality to

the 342d Infantry Division’s back in Serbia the previous autumn. None

of the orders the 342d or the 718th issued for these winter operations

were couched in racial terms. They did not invoke historic resentments

against the enemy, but instead dispassionately labeled Chetniks as Serb

and Partisans as Communist. One report referred to a Partisan leader’s

Jewish identity;24 otherwise, all the orders and reports relating to the

operations were racially “blind.” What suffused the orders instead was

the ruthlessly “pragmatic” doctrine of annihilating the enemy through

maximum force and maximum terror. This different motivation would,

of course, have been no comfort to the unarmed civilians whom the 342d

and 718th were killing. But it does shed a different light on what was driv-

ing the division. The 718th for one seems particularly to have believed

that such an obdurate doctrine would compensate for the diffi culties it

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terror in the balk ans

was bound to encounter when its substandard troops faced the opera-

tions’ arduous conditions.

Indeed, sometimes the 718th Infantry Division and its regiments

urged their troops to be brutal not just to the enemy, but to themselves

also, if they were to best the obstacles they were facing. On January 17, at

the outset of Operation Southeast Croatia, the 718th informed the 750th

Infantry Regiment that its troops would need to dig deep within them-

selves in order to overcome the challenge ahead: “the troops’ enthusiasm

must overcome the major diffi culties, the high snow levels, and the lack

of mountain equipment, so as to ensure that all participating units make

ruthless progress.”25 Likewise for Operation Ozren, in which the 718th’s

troops were similarly hampered by high snow levels and thickly forested,

mountainous terrain,26 the division directed that “just as the troops

hammered the insurgents in South-East Croatia, so will they extermi-

nate this enemy also, despite the diffi culties of weather and terrain.”27

The 738th Infantry Regiment ordered that less capable men and horses

be left behind during the operation, and urged the troops to “do their

utmost,” through their own self-reliance, “to fulfi l the tasks with which

the division has entrusted them.”28

Such harsh exhortations certainly had plenty to compensate for. The

forces committed to Operation Southeast Croatia in particular were set

too ambitious a schedule within too limited a time frame. Prospects for

bagging large numbers of insurgents were further diminished when atro-

cious weather held the Germans up. These problems were not encoun-

tered during the smaller-scale Operation Ozren, but the 718th Infantry

Division still had to negotiate deep snow and thickly wooded terrain

during that operation.29

Moreover, the 718th went into these operations in a seriously defi -

cient state. The root problem was that both the 342d and the 718th were

ill-equipped for winter mountain warfare.30 The main division-level

order for Operation Southeast Croatia virtually acknowledged this; it

ordered that the 718th’s patchy transportation facilities be utilized to

their absolute limit. “All means of forward mobility (skis, trucks suited

to the terrain, pack animals and so on . . . ) are to be used to the point

Glimmers of Sanity
167

of exhaustion . . . All that matters is that transport is available whenever

and wherever needed.”31

Conditions during Southeast Croatia itself were execrable. The 698th

Infantry Regiment operated under the 342d Infantry Division, but the

conditions it experienced would have been familiar to all units involved

in the operation: villages, and the supply and shelter contained within

them, given the “scorched earth” treatment by retreating insurgents;

areas practically devoid of human life, and frequently meter-high snow.32

During Operation Prijedor the 718th’s troops found it immensely diffi -

cult to ensure the fl ow of ammunition, and the troops’ pack radios were

unable to maintain contact by night. This caused especially acute prob-

lems whenever offi cers tried to direct artillery fi re. And shortage of offi -

cers was preventing the division’s units from authorizing leave.33

The 718th also expected little if any real help from its Croatian allies.

Croatian army units assigned to the 718th during Operation Southeast

Croatia, the division reported, possessed appalling levels of fi ghting

power, and were blighted by constant supply problems and a complete

lack of comradeship between offi cers and men.34 The command of the

division’s armored train concurred that the Croatian troops were indeed

useless. It regarded small-unit combined operations with the Croatian

military as pointless, because the Croats always rapidly degenerated into

a disorganized shambles. They also preferred to hang back rather than

support German raiding parties actively.35 During Operation Prijedor,

meanwhile, the 750th Infantry Regiment, under the command of Colo-

nel Rudolf Wutte, reported that “the Croatian mountain column . . . is

more a hindrance than a help to the troops.”36

Such excoriating reports, generated as they were by German army

units anxious to cover up their own failures, must be approached cau-

tiously. But given the manifold problems blighting the Croatian army,

such reports clearly contained a substantial element of truth. And dur-

ing Operation Ozren the 718th found that it could not always rely even

on German units. On February 7 General Fortner reported that the

697th Infantry Regiment, loaned from the 342d Infantry Division, had

failed to follow orders to extend the attack on its right as far as the River

Spreca. The 750th Infantry Regiment had had to cover for it, but this

had enabled the enemy to slip past the Germans’ left fl ank. The 718th

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terror in the balk ans

came under even more pressure when the 697th was relocated while the

operation was still going on.37

None of this helped, of course, in trying to locate and vanquish an

adversary who was proving increasingly elusive and resourceful. Opera-

tion Southeast Croatia set the tone. Only one regiment of the 342d Infan-

try Division was able to properly come to grips with the enemy, the

majority of whom took advantage of a weak Italian cordon to escape over

the Italian demarcation line.38 During Southeast Croatia, Territorial

Battalion 823 noted the speediness of the insurgents’ communications

system, a system aided substantially by the efforts of local villagers. It

regularly enabled the enemy to anticipate the Germans’ approach, disap-

pear before it, and then resurface in the same place days later. Matters on

this score grew worse during Operation Ozren. The heavy snow on the

roads impeded the Germans’ progress further.39

Especially vexing in Operation Ozren was the fact that the Germans