Terror in the Balkans (111 page)

directives that were more guidelines for ruthless action, and thus open to

some interpretation, rather than specifi c orders. Even where directives

were more specifi c, commanders often had some freedom of action over

how radically they implemented them. Some commanders followed the

spirit of such directives closely. Others took ruthlessness to extremes.

Others still tempered their ruthlessness with some restraint. How Ger-

man army commanders and units behaved in the fi eld also depended

greatly upon the conditions in the fi eld which they experienced. It was

these that, along lines elucidated by the historian Jürgen Förster,22 could

create a bridge between the ideological beliefs that shaped the offi cers’

mind-set, and how they then went on to conduct themselves.

In Serbia, such were the fairly sedate conditions occupation units

faced during spring and early summer 1941 that they at fi rst exercised

considerable restraint. But there was no contradiction between this

apparently benign picture and the ruthless mind-set that had taken root

in the offi cer corps. For theirs was a selective restraint, one from which

only the majority Serbian population could hope to benefi t. There is

almost no evidence of offi cers or units refusing to participate in the inten-

sifying persecution of the country’s Jews during this period. Moreover,

even at this early stage, the moderation that occupation divisions exer-

cised towards the Serbs—a moderation to which “demonstrative” harsh-

ness towards, Jews, Communists, and Sinti and Roma was an essential

accompaniment—had its own limits. Yet moderation there was.

But once the Serbian national uprising was under way, restraint with-

ered and terror intensifi ed—not only against Serbia’s Jews, but against

the wider Serbian population also. Given that the escalating severity of

246
terror in the balk ans

German reprisal policy eventually helped to discourage Mihailovic´ from

involving his Chetnik forces in the uprising any further, it can be seen

that the policy in one sense possessed a terrible pragmatic logic—even

though a policy reliant upon terror, and not upon more insightful solu-

tions, could not hope to triumph in the long term. But the severity of

the measures was not just due to the fact that commanders possessed

a remarkably obdurate sense of “pragmatism.” It was also because of

their institutionally conditioned abhorrence of irregular warfare. More

immediately, it was because of the mounting frustration and desperation

felt by formations like the 704th Infantry Division and their substandard

units, facing a security situation that daily grew more alarming. Such

conduct was also apparent among German army anti-Partisan units in

the Soviet Union.23

Further, though the need to “obey orders” should not be ignored, it

should also be remembered that German army commanders, like Third

Reich operatives more generally, often enjoyed considerable freedom of

action when interpreting higher-level directives. Even where directives

were more stringent, it was possible for individual commanders to speak

out against them, or against the premise behind them. Despite this, not

one of the divisional commanders examined in this study chose, as the

national uprising escalated, to proceed with moderation. Instead, they

chose to implement them with all their inherent harshness. One, for rea-

sons of his own, behaved even more harshly. The Wehrmacht campaign

against the Serbian national uprising showcases the explosion of violence

that took place when decades of intensifying institutional harshness com-

bined with the pressures and dangers of the campaign on the ground.

From the beginning of 1942, when the main center of the Yugoslav

Partisan war shifted to the NDH, through to early 1943, German army

counterinsurgency commanders found themselves in markedly differ-

ent circumstances. During this period, in contrast to 1941, the Weh-

rmacht was not facing a desperate defensive situation. It spent much of

the period on the offensive, even though the offensive action it took var-

ied in scale and intensity. Their circumstances being less immediately

alarming than those they had faced in Serbia the previous year, the Ger-

mans deescalated their reprisal policy somewhat. The unworkability of

a policy that relied on an infi nite supply of reprisal victims drawn from a

Conclusion
247

fi nite population, not to mention the “allied” status of the NDH, made it

foolhardy to pursue such a policy there.

Even so, German formations remained overstretched, underresourced,

and pitted against an increasingly resourceful opponent amid extremely

arduous terrain. The Germans therefore still faced onerous diffi culties in

their struggle to defeat the Partisans. This struggle was made no easier by

the fact that their Italian and Croatian allies were unequal to the task. The

Germans’ solution again refl ected not just reality on the ground but also

the brutal, ideologically colored proclivities of their favored counterin-

surgency doctrine. The “solution” was to accord maximum violence just

as prominent a place in the NDH as it had been accorded in Serbia. The

difference was that maximum violence assumed another form here. The

largest offensives, such as Kozara and White I, spawned mass destruction

and vast body counts that, though they purportedly comprised insurgents

slain in combat, clearly included large numbers of civilians.

Yet the 718th Infantry Division’s example shows that there were com-

manders who, unless their unit’s position became so execrable as to close

off all means of success, saw opportunities to do things differently. As

well as relying more on small mobile units, they sought to erode Partisan

strength by making potential deserters feel safe in crossing the line, and

by cultivating a population that could provide vital information, man-

power, and other practical support against the Partisans.

Thus, the situation facing the Germans in the NDH during 1942 was

onerous, but not yet a life-or-death struggle. This fact helped foster

cooler, more measured judgments by some—even if they were uneven,

temporary, and often highly relative. German army anti-Partisan divi-

sions serving in the Soviet Union during World War II could behave

similarly. The 221st Security Division and Army Rear Area 532 are well-

documented examples of units that were sane enough to realize that there

were more sensible ways of trying to compensate for their own failings

than just untrammeled terror.24 One thing these units had in common

with the 718th Infantry Division was their circumstances. All three units

experienced periods in which their struggle against insurgents was not

so urgent and intense as to prevent them from employing measures that,

though more restrained and smaller in scale than massive encirclement

operations, needed more time in which to bear fruit.

248
terror in the balk ans

Yet, while small-unit tactics and constructive engagement could cer-

tainly bring dividends, two conditions were essential for them to work to

their full effect. The fi rst was suffi cient troops of suffi cient quality on the

ground, and for suffi cient duration. The second was a wider occupation

policy properly geared towards the population’s basic needs of personal

security and economic stability. Axis occupation policy in the NDH met

neither condition. The Pavelicŕegime itself
certainly
met neither condi-

tion. The eventual result was an inexorable swelling of Partisan support.

And by the time the Partisans’ strength and infl uence had reached a

certain level, neither destructive, maximum-force mobile operations nor

more imaginative approaches could defeat them conclusively. In these

circumstances, such were many commanders’ terroristic proclivities that

they opted for maximum destructive force as a panacea. Others, such as

the 718th Infantry Division’s General Fortner, may simply have opted for

harsher action out of sheer frustration. Offi cers’ anxiety at the growing Par-

tisan threat, and the pressure from higher command for quick and spec-

tacular results, could only drive them even more surely down such a path.

A similar example from the Soviet Union is that of the 201st Security

Division. This formation carried out massive, bloody antipartisan opera-

tions in the Polotsk Lowland, in the northwestern portion of the Army

Group Center Rear Area, during 1942 and 1943. The partisans it faced in

this region were especially numerous and active. Moreover, the transport

network that crisscrossed it, a network now under serious partisan threat,

was of special importance to the German war effort in the East. Not only did

the 201st face a singularly formidable foe on the ground, then; it also had to

reckon with intense pressure from above for quick, tangible results.25

Moreover, even when German army units on the ground did aspire

to cultivate the NDH’s population, such was the situation they faced

that cultivation was immensely diffi cult to implement. For the tortuous

complexities of the ethnic situation rendered a straightforward wooing

of the population increasingly impossible. Army commanders needed to

consider not just whether to engage with the population, but also which

particular population groups to engage with in preference to others, and

how far. And there were periods even in 1942 in which the Wehrmacht

already found itself facing powerful Partisan attacks. When Wehrmacht

forces sought to counter a Partisan offensive, as happened with the 718th

Conclusion
249

Infantry Division at Jajce in late 1942, even units that had hitherto shown

restraint began to display brutalized desperation instead. Brutality, then,

remained a central component of counterinsurgency for all the German

army divisions in the NDH. It seems that even units that were more

inclined to cultivate felt compelled to terrorize instead if they felt driven

to it by circumstances.

The 221st Security Division provides a similar example from the occu-

pied Soviet Union. This division too sought to moderate its conduct and

engage the population during the years 1942 and 1943. But its conduct

during these years was also punctuated by periods in which, whether

due to pressures on the ground or pressure from above for results, it

ratcheted up its ruthlessness markedly.26

How long a division had actually been engaged in such warfare could

also color its behavior. The longer ordinary soldiers spent in the fi eld,

the harder and more savage their conduct could become. The 718th

Infantry Division at Jajce demonstrated this. But at command level, a

lengthy tenure on the ground could, over time, lead a unit to exercise

more restraint. Thus in early 1943, for instance, the newly arrived 369th

Infantry Division meted out a great deal more brutality—at divisional

command’s behest—than the 717th and 718th Infantry Divisions. The

commands of these latter units, by contrast, had had longer to adjust to

the intricacies of Balkan politics and thus begin comporting themselves

with more insight. The 221st Security Division again provides a similar

example from the Soviet Union. Here too was a unit that, in general,

behaved more moderately over time, partly because it increasingly saw

the need to engage with the population it was occupying.27 That said,

passing time and mounting pressure could actually make rank-and-fi le

troops less likely to follow their commanders’ moderate lead.

Conditions on the ground, then, did indeed provide a bridge that

transformed Wehrmacht doctrine into brutal behavior. But just as con-

ditions could brutalize the behavior of German army commanders and

their units, they could also moderate it.

Ultimately, however, German army counterinsurgency commanders were

not just members of a particular institution. They were also individuals.

250
terror in the balk ans

How far they followed the directives they had been issued could depend,

therefore, not just upon the situation they faced, but also upon how they

as individuals perceived it. Their perceptions could be colored, in turn,

by infl uences and experiences they had undergone over the course of

their lives. It is likely that this is why there were German army command-

ers in Yugoslavia whose behavior was markedly harsher and more brutal

than that of others, even if they faced similar conditions or had been in the

fi eld for similar periods.

In autumn 1941, during the Wehrmacht’s savage suppression of the

Serbian national uprising, the suppression dealt out by the 342d Infan-

try Division was not only the most savage of all, but also exceeded even

General Boehme’s bloody dictates. The man primarily responsible was

the division’s commander, General Hinghofer. But the 342d did not

hold a monopoly on extraordinary ruthlessness. In the NDH in 1943, it

was Neidholt and Zellner, commanders of the 369th and 373d Infantry