Terror in the Balkans (114 page)

All these concerns were apparent during the research for
War in the Wild East
, and it was anticipated that a similar pattern would be in evidence in the present study. In the event, the magnitude of these concerns was greater than anticipated. This meant that

attempting to gather suffi cient data was more time-consuming than anticipated. In cases where inadequate information prevented a more accurate picture it was necessary to draw

more inferences from other available information.

A particular concern emerged in the case of regimental commanders. It was antici-

pated at the study’s outset that, while regimental-level sources would be considerably less extensive than division-level sources, there would nevertheless be suffi cient material to illuminate the individual motives of some regimental commanders. This was a reasonable

expectation based on the author’s experiences with the source material for
War in the Wild
East
. Eventually, however, it became clear that the source material available for the current study contained much less of interest in this respect.

Why the regimental-level source material utilized for
War in the Wild East
was fuller than the equivalent material for the present study is not entirely clear. One possible explanation is that particularly hard-line offi cers serving in the relatively quiet sectors that were the focus of
War in the Wild East
felt they needed to go to extra effort to impose their will upon their troops. Many units serving in Yugoslavia, by contrast, faced more dangerous or more pressing circumstances. In these circumstances, it was more likely for harsher directives to be issued at divisional level or above anyway. Hard-line regimental commanders

may therefore have felt no need to go to the extra effort of issuing such directives themselves.

It was also decided to exclude divisional operations offi cers (Ia offi cers) from the sample. This was because suffi cient data could not be found on a meaningfully large number of Ia offi cers drawn from the divisions on which the study focused. However, given divisional
commanders’
central importance, excluding Ia offi cers still enables the study to produce important fi ndings regarding infl uences on division-level behavior, and the importance of divisional commanders to that process.

In view of all these issues, it eventually became necessary to focus primary analysis on just nine offi cers, all of whom were divisional commanders serving in Yugoslavia. Nevertheless,
Appendix B
265

it has proved possible to make select comparisons with certain regimental commanders, and with certain divisional commanders who served in the Soviet Union, in order to aid analysis of the core group of Yugoslavia-based divisional commanders.

Despite this unavoidable reduction in the amount of wholly satisfactory information available, the results that emerged make a signifi cant contribution to incremental understanding of German army offi cers’ motivations at the middle command level. As such, these results provide a useful basis on which further case studies can build in the future. Historians working on similar studies in the future should take note both of the limitations and opportunities inherent in the archival sources and how they might best be utilized accordingly.

Abbreviations

Abt.

Abteilung (section)

AdR

Archiv der Republik, Vienna

AK

Armeekorps (army corps)

Anl.

Anlage (supplement)

AOK

Armeeoberkommando (army command)

AVNOJ Antifašisticˇko Vijecé Narodnog Oslobod¯enja Jugoslavije

(Anti-Fascist Council of the People’s Liberation of Yugoslavia)

BA-MA

Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv (Federal Military Archive),

Freiburg-im-Breisgau

Bayr. Bayerisch

(Bavarian)

Betr.

Betrifft (regarding)

Der bevollm. Kdr.

Der bevollmächtigte Kommandierende General in Serbien

Gen. in Serbien /

(Plenipotentiary Commanding General in Serbia)

BKG Serbien

Bf. dt. Tr. Kroatien

Befehlshaber der deutschen Truppen in Kroatien

(Croatia Command)

BfZ

Bibliothek für Zeitgeschichte (Library of Contemporary History),

Stuttgart

BKA

Bayerisches Kriegsarchiv (Bavarian War Archive), Munich

KG Serbien

Befehlshaber und Kommandierende General in Serbien

(Serbia Command)

267

268
Abbreviations

Div.-Kmdo.-Abfert.

Divisionskommando-Abfertigung (divisional command dispatch)

EOK

Etappenoberkommando (rear area command

[Austro-Hungarian])

FABrig.

Feld-Artillerie-Brigade

Fmlt.

Feldmarschalleutnant (lieutenant general [Austro-Hungarian])

GM

Generalmajor (Brigadier General)

GR / Gren.-Rgt.

Grenadier-Regiment

ID / Inf.-Div.

Infanterie-Division

IR / Inf.-Rgt.

Infanterie-Regiment

IWM

Imperial War Museum, London

JD / Jäg.-Div.

Jäger-Division (light division)

JR / Jäg.-Rgt.

Jäger-Regiment (light regiment)

KA

Kriegsarchiv (War Archive, Vienna)

Kdr.

Kommandeur

Kp. / Komp.

Kompanie

Kpfgr.

Kampfgruppe (battle group)

Kpfw.

Kampfwagen (armored car)

KTB

Kriegstagebuch (war diary)

k. u. k. Heer

Das königliche und kaiserliche Heer ([Austro-Hungarian]

Royal-Imperial Army)

LSB

Landesschützen-Bataillon (territorial battalion)

Ltn.

Lieutenant

MVAC

Milizia Volontaria Anti Comunista (Anti-Communist

Volunteer Militia)

NARA

US National Archives and Records Administration, College

Park, MD

NDH

Nezavisna Država Hrvatska (Independent State of Croatia)

NFA

Neue Feldakten (New Battlefi eld Files)

NHT

Nuremberg Hostage Trial

NOO

Narodno Oslobodilacki Odbor (people’s liberation committee)

OKH

Oberkommando des Heeres (Army High Command)

OKW

Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Armed Forces High Command)

P-Zug

Panzerzug (armored train)

Sch.-Div.

Schützen-Division (rifl e division)

Notes

i n t r o d u c t i o n

1. Throughout this study, the term
Wehrmacht
denotes the German armed forces generally, or at least more than one of the three armed services. It is frequently used in

reference to German occupation of the Balkans because several senior Wehrmacht

commanders who served in the region hailed from the air force (
Luftwaffe
) rather than the army (
Heer
). The term
Wehrmacht
is not used in this study to denote the army specifi cally, as is often the case in other studies.

2. While guerrillas seek simply to overthrow the established order, partisans see them-

selves as an adjunct to regular forces seeking to reestablish independent govern-

ment. This is the meaning of the term as used in the title of this study, and applies to the main insurgent groups who were active in Yugoslavia during World War Two. In

the study’s text, however, the term is normally used with a capital
P.
This denotes the Yugoslav Communist Partisans, who took the term
Partisan
as the title of their movement as well as a general descriptive label. The term is occasionally used in the

text with a small
p
where the partisan movement in the Soviet Union is referred to.

The term
insurgent
is used in the text to denote irregular fi ghters generally, be they guerrillas, partisans or Partisans in the specifi c Yugoslav context.

3. Fred Singleton,
Twentieth-Century Yugoslavia
(London: Macmillan, 1976), 86.

4. Generals’ ranks are translated into their World War II U.S. Army and British army

equivalents at fi rst mention, then simply as “general” thereafter. The translations (in order of rank) are as follows:

General =
Generaloberst

Lieutenant General =
General der Infanterie/General der Artillerie/General der

Gebirgsjäger
(mountain troops)

269

270
Notes to Pages 2–7

Major General =
Generalleutnant

Brigadier General =
Generalmajor

5. Walter Manoschek, “The Extermination of the Jews in Serbia” in
National Socialist
Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies
, ed.

Ulrich Herbert (Oxford: Berghahn, 2000), 170.

6. See Geoffrey Best,
Humanity in Warfare
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980); Stephen C. Neff,
War and the Law of Nations: A General History
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

7. See, for instance, Edward B. Westermann,
Hitler’s Police Battalions: Enforcing

Racial War in the East
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005); Philip W.

Blood,
Hitler’s Bandit Hunters: The SS and the Nazi Occupation of Europe
(Wash-

ington, DC: Potomac, 2006).

8. On the historiography from the late 1940s to the mid-1980s, see the introduction in

Theo J. Schulte,
The German Army and Nazi Policies in Occupied Russia
(Oxford:

Berg, 1989).

9. For a historiographical overview up to the 2000s, see Rolf-Dieter Müller and Gerd R.

Überschär, eds.,
Hitler’s War in the East 1941–1945: A Critical Assessment
(Oxford: Berg, 2000). Recent overview works, with further pointers to secondary literature,

include Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans-Erich Volkmann, eds.,
Die Wehrmacht: Mythos

und Realität
(Hamburg: Oldenbourg, 1999); Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann, eds.,

War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II 1941–1944
(New York:

Berghahn, 2000); Christian Hartmann et al., eds.,
Verbrechen der Wehrmacht: Bilanz

einer Debatte
(Munich: C. H. Beck, 2005); Ben Shepherd, “The Clean Wehrmacht, The War of Extermination, and Beyond,”
Historical Journal
52 (2009): 455–473.

10. Klaus Schmider,
Partisanenkrieg in Jugoslawien 1941–1944
(Hamburg: E. S. Mittler, 2002), 547.

11. The fourth condition, that of being commanded by a superior responsible for his

subordinates, was met. Aubrey C. Dixon, and Otto Heilbrunn,
Communist Guer-

rilla Warfare
(London: Allen and Unwin, 1954), 85.

12. Klaus Schmider, “Der jugoslawische Kriegsschauplatz,” in
Das Deutsche Reich und der
Zweite Weltkrieg, Band 8. Die Ostfront, 1943/44: Der Krieg im Osten und an den Nebenfronten
, ed. Karl-Heinz Frieser et al. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2007), 1072.

13. Ben Shepherd, “German Army Security Units in Russia, 1941–1943: A Case Study”

(PhD diss., University of Birmingham, 2000), 7–10. See also Chapter 6.

14. On the need for a nuanced approach to the offi cer corps and the Wehrmacht gener-

ally, see Rolf-Dieter Müller, “Die Wehrmacht—Historische Last und Verantwortung:

Die Historiographie im Spannungsfeld von Wissenschaft und Vergangenheitsbewäl-

tigung,” in
Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realität
, ed. Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans-

Erich Volkmann (Hamburg: Oldenbourg, 1999), 3–35; Christian Hartmann,

“Verbrecherischer Krieg—verbrecherische Wehrmacht? Überlegungen zur Struk-

tur des deutschen Ostheeres 1941–1944,”
Vierteljahreshefte für Zeitgeschichte
52

(2004): 1–75.

Notes to Pages 7–10
271

15. Though for rank-and-fi le studies of great merit, see for example Omer Bartov,
The
Eastern Front, 1941–45: German Troops and the Barbarization of Warfare
(Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1985); Omer Bartov,
Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in

the Third Reich
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1992); Christoph Rass,
Men-schenmaterial: Deutsche Soldaten an der Ostfront
(Paderborn: Schöningh, 2003);

Christoph Rass, “The Social Profi le of the German Army’s Combat Units, 1939–

1945,” in
Germany and the Second World War, Volume 9, Part 1. German Wartime

Society 1939–1945: Politicization, Disintegration, and the Struggle for Survival
, Ralf Blank et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 671–768. On source-related

problems that studies of the motivations of NCOs and rank-and-fi le soldiers should

consider, see Shepherd, “German Army Security Units in Russia, 1941–1943: A Case

Study” 7–10.

16. In particular, the picture becomes less reliable and complete further down the com-

mand chain, especially at battalion and company level. On the source-related issues

regarding German army divisional fi les, see Shepherd, “German Army Security

Units in Russia, 1941–1943: A Case Study,” 27–31. Two recent division-level stud-

ies of particular prominence are Hermann Frank Meyer,
Blutiges Edelweiss: Die 1.

Gebirgs-Division im Zweiten Weltkrieg
(Berlin: Links, 2008); Christian Hartmann,
Wehrmacht im Ostkrieg: Front und militärisches Hinterland 1941/42
(Munich:

Oldenbourg, 2009).

17. For more detail, see Shepherd, “German Army Security Units in Russia, 1941–1943:

A Case Study,” 7–10.

18. Records of the royal armies of Bavaria, Saxony, and Württemberg, which belonged

to the Imperial German Army, have survived, but the central records in Potsdam,

containing the records of the much more predominant Prussian units, were for the