Terror in the Balkans (128 page)

65. MFB4/72346, 37165/1, 142–143. 373. Inf.-Div. Ia, 6/10/43. Betr.: Stimmung und Hal-

tung der Truppe, Mai 1943, p. 1.

66. MFB4/72346, 37165/1, 343. 373. Inf.-Div. Ia, 3/25/43. Anlage 1 zu Ia Nr. 55/43.

67. MFB4/72346, 37165/1, 678. 373. Inf.-Div. Ia, 7/2/43. Divisionsbefehl für das Unternehmen im Raum Cardaci, p. 2.

68. MFB4/72346, 37165/1, 615. 373. Inf.-Div. Kommandeur, 7/15/43. Zellner was pro-

moted to the rank of major general on April 1, 1943. RH7, fi le on Emil Zellner.

69. A similarly extreme example, one that again contrasts with its neighboring units,

is the 45th Security Regiment, which fought under the 221st Security Division in

the rear area of Army Group Center during 1943. Ben Shepherd,
War in the Wild

East: The German Army and Soviet Partisans
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-

sity Press, 2004), 208–216.

70. Shepherd,
War in the Wild East: The German Army and Soviet Partisans
, 160–161.

The same process did eventually affect the 369th Infantry Division to an extent. See

Ben Shepherd, “With the Devil in Titoland: A Wehrmacht Anti-Partisan Division

in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1943,”
War in History
16 (2009): 77–97.

71. Neidholt was from the family of a Protestant priest, Dippold from that of a Bavarian royal forester, but there is no information on the social origins of Fortner or Zellner.

See AppendixA.

72. Neidholt underwent “secret training” with the Reichswehr in 1921. Zellner was

an artillery offi cer during the Great War and a tactical instructor at the Austrian

Military Academy in 1930. Dippold underwent military-scientifi c training with the

Reichswehr in 1926. See Appendix A.

73. See AppendixA.

74. After this date, Zellner also served for an unspecifi ed period in the Bukovina on the eastern front, western Ukraine. The Honvéd was the Hungarian home army of the

pre-1918 Austro-Hungarian Empire. See Appendix A.

75. In a previous publication, it was mistakenly stated that the 384th was subordinate to the 369th Infantry Division. See Shepherd, “With the Devil in Titoland: A Wehrmacht Anti-Partisan Division in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1943.”

Notes to Pages 232–235
327

76. Though Dippold, unlike Fortner, was interned in Switzerland and returned to the

western front as a company commander, presumably following a prisoner exchange,

in July 1918. See Appendix A.

77. See Appendix A

78. See Appendix A

79. See Appendix A

80. Walter Manoschek,
“Serbien ist judenfrei”: Militärische Besatzungspolitik und Judenvernichtung in Serbien 1941/42
(Munich: Oldenbourg, 1995); 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), 163–185; Walter Manoschek and Hans Safrian, “717./117. Inf.-Div.: Eine Infanterie-Division auf dem Balkan,” in
Vernichtungskrieg: Verbrechen der Wehrmacht, 1941 bis 1944
, ed. Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1995).

81. Christian Promitzer, “The South Slavs in the Austrian Imagination: Serbs and Slo-

venes in the Changing View from German Nationalism to National Socialism,” in

Creating the Other: Ethnic Confl ict and Nationalism in Habsbgurg Central Europe
, ed. Nancy M. Wingfi eld (Oxford: Berghahn, 2003), 183–210.

82. See Appendix A.

83. Alon Rachamimov,
POWs and the Great War: Captivity on the Eastern Front
(Oxford: Berg, 2002), 54–58, 87–107. See also Reinhard Nachtigal,
Rußland und seine österreichisch-ungarischen Kriegsgefangenen (1914–1918)
(Remshalden: Greiner, 2003);

Reinhard Nachtigal, “Die Kriegsgefangenen-Verluste an der Ostfront. Eine Übersicht

zur Statistik und zu Problemen der Heimatfronten 1914/15,” in
Die vergessene Front:

Der Osten 1914/15
, ed. Gerhard P. Groß (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2006), 202–216.

84. Richard Germann identifi es Eglseer as having belonged to an “Austrian network,” a

small coterie of National Socialist–minded former Bundesheer offi cers who fl ourished

in the Wehrmacht. Richard Germann, “‘Österreichische’ Soldaten in Ost- und Südos-

teuropa 1941—1945: Deutsche Krieger—Nationalsozialistische Verbrecher—Öster-

reichische Opfer?” (PhD thesis, University of Vienna, 2006), 347.

85. AdR Vienna, Bundesheer-Akten. Personnel fi le on Karl Eglseer. Staatssekretär

Angelis, 3/13/38. Betr.: GM Adalbert Szente, Inf. Brig. Der 6. Division. Beurlau-

bung; ibid., Kommando der 6. Division, 3/25/38.

86. MFB4/56147, 37291/2, 299. 714. Inf.-Div. Ia, 3/26/43. Geheim! Betr.: Verhalten

deutscher und kroatischer Soldaten bei Überfälle; MFB4/56147, 37291/4, 425–427.

114. Jäg.-Div. Kommandeur, 4/6/43. Geheim! Richtlinien (Nr. 1) für einheitliche

Anschauungen und Arbeit in der Div.

87. MFB4/56147, 37291/2, 247–248. 714. Inf.-Div. Ia, 3/28/43. Merkblatt für Verhalten

von Versorgungskolonnen im bandengefährdeten Raum. Emphasis in original.

88. See chap. 2.

89. Hoare,
Genocide and Resistance in Hitler’s Bosnia: The Partisans and the Chetniks,
330, 335.

90. On these phases of the White operations, see Milazzo,
The Chetni Movement and the
Yugoslav Resistance
, 118–131; Tomasevich,
War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945:
The Chetniks
, 237–256; Schmider,
Partisanenkrieg in Jugoslawien 1941–1944
, 219–239.

328
Notes to Pages 236–241

c o n c l u s i o n

1. For the best general discussion of why the Axis failed militarily against the Par-

tisans, see Klaus Schmider,
Partisanenkrieg in Jugoslawien 1941–1944
(Hamburg:

Verlag E. S. Mittler, 2002), ch. 8.

2. Ibid., 535–541, 553.

3. Ibid., 525, 548.

4. Ibid., 525, 529–534.

5. Ibid., 568–569.

6. Ibid., 547.

7. Ibid., 550–552.

8. Ibid., 552–553.

9. Ibid., 541–542.

10. In 1944 units under Artur Phleps, commander of the Prinz Eugen Division,

employed hunter group–type tactics on a larger scale, in the form of rapid pursuit

operations rather than encirclement operations. However, the source base is too small to enable the drawing of fi rm conclusions as to how successful these operations were. Schmider,
Partisanenkrieg in Jugoslawien 1941–1944
, 553.

11. Ben Shepherd,
War in the Wild East: The German Army and Soviet Partisans

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 163.

12. On German anti-Partisan operations in 1943, see Schmider,
Partisanenkrieg in

Jugoslawien 1941–1944
, ch. 5; Gaj Trifkovic, “A Case of Failed Counter-Insurgency: Antipartisan Operations in Yugoslavia 1943,”
Journal of Slavic Military Studies
24

(2011): 314–336.

13. On Operation Black see Schmider,
Partisanenkrieg in Jugoslawien 1941–1944,
261–

288, 543; Trifkovic, “A Case of Failed Counter-Insurgency: Antipartisan Opera-

tions in Yugoslavia 1943.”

14. Schmider,
Partisanenkrieg in Jugoslawien 1941–1944
, 282–283; Trifkovic, “A Case of Failed Counter-Insurgency: Antipartisan Operations in Yugoslavia 1943,” 334–336.

15. Ruth Bettina Birn,
Die Höheren SS- und Polizeiführer: Himmlers Vertreter im Reich
und den besetzten Gebieten
(Düsseldorf: Droste, 1986), 260–274.

16. 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
, Karl-Heinz Frieser et al. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2007), 1021.

17. Ibid., 1028–1030; Schmider,
Partisanenkrieg in Jugoslawien 1941–1944
, 545–547.

18. Schmider,
Partisanenkrieg in Jugoslawien 1941–1944
, 52–53; Schmider, “Der jugoslawische Kriegsschauplatz,” 1028. On relations between the Germans and the NDH

during late 1943 and 1944, see Schmider,
Partisanenkrieg in Jugoslawien 1941–1944
, 362–378, 397–413.

19. On the Partisans’ increasingly impressive military performance during 1943 and

increasing Allied support for them, see, for example, F. W. D. Deakin,
The Embattled
Mountain
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971); Milovan Djilas,
Wartime: With
Tito and the Partisans
(London: Martin Secker and Warburg, 1977), 215–363; Michael McConville,
A Small War in the Balkans: British Military Involvement in Wartime

Notes to Pages 241–253
329

Yugoslavia 1941–1945
(London: Macmillan, 1986); Richard West,
Tito and the Rise and
Fall of Yugoslavia
(London: Sinclair Stevenson, 1996), chaps. 8, 9; Marko Attila Hoare,
Genocide and Resistance in Hitler’s Bosnia
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 329–349. On Chetnik–Axis collaboration, see Jozo Tomasevich,
War and Revolution in

Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: The Chetniks
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1975), chaps. 7, 9; on the eventual Chetnik–Allied break, see ibid., 359–372. For a detailed

treatment of British–Chetnik relations, see Simon Trew,
Britain, Mihailovic´, and the
Chetniks, 1941–42
(London: St. Martin’s Press, 1997).

20. Schmider, “Der jugoslawische Kriegsschauplatz,” 1024–1025. For more detail on the

Italian capitulation’s impact upon German efforts in Yugoslavia, see Schmider,
Par-

tisanenkrieg in Jugoslawien 1941–1944
, 288–316.

21. On anti-Partisan operations in 1944 and the campaign’s fi nal phase, see Schmider,

Partisanenkrieg in Jugoslawien 1941–1944
, 378–397, 413–417.

22. Jürgen Förster, “The Relation between Operation Barbarossa as an Ideological war

of Extermination and the Final Solution,” in
The Final Solution: Origins and Imple-

mentation
, ed. David Cesarani (London: Routledge 1994), 90–97; Jürgen Förster,

“Wehrmacht, Krieg und Holocaust,” in
Die Wehrmacht: Mythos und Realität
, ed.

Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans-Erich Volkmann (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1999), 953.

23. See the example of Security Battalion 242.Shepherd,
War in the Wild East: The German Army and Soviet Partisans
, 203–207, 211.

24. Theo J. Schulte,
The German Army and Nazi Policies in Occupied Russia
(Oxford: Berg, 1989); Shepherd,
War in the Wild East: The German Army and Soviet Partisans.

25. Shepherd,
War in the Wild East: The German Army and Soviet Partisans
, 147–149.

26. Ibid., chap. 6.

27. Ibid.

28. Ibid., 66–70.

29. Ibid., chap. 2.

30. Ibid., 155–157, 227–228.

31. Ibid., 81–82.

32. Three additional motivational factors to which previous secondary literature

ascribes importance are omitted:

1.
Direct experience of armed confrontation during the Time of Struggle (1918–

1920)
, omitted because available sources rarely indicate whether or not a par-

ticular offi cer was engaged so actively.

2.
Pursuit of civilian career during the interwar years.
This may have been a radicalizing factor, given that there was, from 1935 onward, a predominance within

the German army offi cer corps of men who came from the middle-class civilian

circles from whom the Nazis drew their most extensive electoral support. How-

ever, any impact this factor may have had is obscured by the fact that most of

the sample served as continuing offi cers during the interwar years in any case.

3.
Prior service in the East (Poland or the Soviet Union) during World War II.

This may have been a brutalizing factor for reasons similar to service on the

eastern front during the Great War. It is omitted because the sample offi cers

330
Notes to Pages 253–254

who served in Yugoslavia from 1941 onward—a large portion of the entire sam-

ple—would have been unable to serve in the Soviet Union beforehand, because

their occupation of Yugoslavia preceded the invasion of the Soviet Union.

33. See Appendix A.

34. On the 221st Security Division, see Shepherd,
War in the Wild East: The German

Army and Soviet Partisans
, 129–218. On comparison between the 221st and the more hard-line 203d Security Division during the second half of 1942, see ibid., 155–157.

35. See Appendix A.

36. On continuities and discontinuities between the eastern front experience of the

Great War and the Third Reich’s prosecution of World War II, see Rüdiger Bergien,

“Vorspiel des ‘Vernichtunsgkrieges’? Die Ostfront des Ersten Weltkrieges und das

Kontinuitätsproblem,” in
Die vergessene Front: Der Osten 1914/15
, ed. Gerhard P.

Groß (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2006), 393–408.

Acknowledgments

Grateful thanks are due to:

The School of Law and Social Sciences, Glasgow Caledonian University, for providing

me with such a supportive environment in which to carry out this study.

Kathleen McDermott at Harvard University Press, and HUP’s external reviewers, for

helpful advice on writing the book.

Andrew Kinney at HUP, and Marianna Verturro and her colleagues at IBT Global, for

helping put the book together in its later stages;

The British Academy and the Carnegie Foundation for providing extra research funding.

The following individuals, who freely provided either valuable advice, practical help,