Terror in the Balkans: German Armies and Partisan Warfare

351 Pages·2012·3.84 MB·English

by  Ben H. Shepherd

TERROR IN THE BALKANS

TERROR
IN THE
BALKANS
German Armies and Partisan Warfare
BEN SHEPHERD
Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts (cid:129) 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
TERROR IN THE BALKANS

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