Terror in the Balkans (24 page)

killing anyone: “The night passed quietly, (but) no-one should be fooled

by this. Attacks must be reckoned with. Every man encountered in no-

man’s land is to be shot without delay.” “The slightest suspicion” was

reason enough for killing prisoners also.39 Such orders even prompted

XVIII Corps itself to advise the 342d to keep a check on its brutality, and

at least spare for interrogation those “bandits” who could provide valu-

able information.40

The fate of Šabac itself was sealed once German soldiers “incurred

losses” there on September 23.41 The 342d was ordered by Boehme to

sweep up all men in the town aged between fourteen and seventy, put

them in a concentration camp north of the Sava, and “immediately shoot

all inhabitants
who participated in the fi ghting or set themselves against

the troops, and all
male inhabitants
in whose homes weapons or muni-

tions were found, from whose homes shots were fi red, or who tried to

fl ee arrest.”42 The division’s assault on Šabac on September 27 also razed

forty houses to the ground and unleashed Stuka attacks on the sur-

rounding villages. Its own losses were minimal—one man killed and one

lightly wounded from enemy action, together with a reserve policeman

who was killed when his own gun went off.43

The men of the town, along with hundreds of Jews hitherto interned

in Šabac, were then shunted from camp to camp, fi rst in Šabac, then to

Jarak where the 342d’s pioneers were in the process of building a new

concentration camp, and then back again. This “blood march,” as Yugo-

slav historians have titled it, was preceded by the massacre of eighty

prisoners by the 342d for “disobedience,” before the division eventually

handed responsibility for the remaining prisoners to Reserve Police Bat-

talion 64.44

During the fi nal days of September and into October, the 342d

exacted a dreadful toll of “enemy” dead throughout the Macˇva region.

This dwarfed both the hauls of insurgent weaponry the division seized

and its own losses. It is clear that many, at least, of the “enemy” dead

128
terror in the balk ans

were unarmed civilians. When the division shot 250 of its prisoners and

ordered the 698th Infantry Regiment to obliterate the village and male

population of Metkovic´, as retaliation for unspecifi ed “hostile activi-

ties,” it was an average day’s work.45 The following day, the division shot

eighty-four prisoners, from whom only one machine gun and a handful of

rifl es were seized.46 Serbian refugees fl eeing the division’s onslaught were

driven onto the anvil of allied Croatian troops on the Drina, and were

forced to seek refuge in the islands and woods on and around the river.47

Between September 21 and 30 the 342d Infantry Division shot 830

of its eighty-four hundred prisoners. Though it could have shot many

more, it is clear that the great majority of those whom it did shoot were

unarmed civilians. For here, too, the division counted only a handful

of rifl es and a couple of machine guns. The 342d itself suffered three

dead and twenty wounded.48 And here too the division was not merely

following General Boehme’s lead, but also acting on its own initiative.

The reprisal ratios General Boehme specifi ed on October 10 were actu-

ally less severe than the ratio of Serbs to Germans killed at the division’s

hands up to that date.49

The 342d Infantry Division concluded its initial cleansing of the Macˇva

region on October 9. The operation had failed to destroy the main insur-

gent group. The division launched a second, more targeted attack around

Mount Cer—to where the insurgents who had eluded it in the Macˇva

operation had withdrawn—between October 10 and 15, and a third in

the direction of Krupanj on October 19 and 20. Again, few weapons

were taken but a vast number of shootings took place—4,011, the divi-

sion reported, across all three operations. This fi rst phase of the 342d’s

activities in Serbia ended with the relief of Valjevo on October 26.50

For the October 10–15 operations, against Mount Cer and its environs,

the 342d Infantry Division was further augmented by two companies

and two additional platoons from the 202d Panzer Regiment.51 Infest-

ing this area, the division reckoned, were twenty-fi ve hundred well-

equipped Chetniks and up to four thousand generally poorly equipped

Communists.52 The 342d was ordered to annihilate these “bandits” and

end the threat they posed to the transport artery of the River Macˇva.

Settling Accounts in Blood
129

Its formations advanced in three groups into the regions of Prnjavor-

Zminjak, Klenje-Slepcěvic´-Bogatic´, and Vranjska-Šabac. As before, a

Stuka bombardment heralded the attack.53

The Germans’ opponents were set on eluding rather than engaging

them, halting only to defend the roadblocks they had erected. The 342d

ordered several villages destroyed, declaring that “the villages south of

Mount Cer are to be burned. The villages north of Mount Cer are to

be burned . . . only Bela Reka and Petkovica are to be spared.”54 It also

ordered male villagers sent to the concentration camp at Šabac, and the

rest of the inhabitants press-ganged into clearing the roadblocks. During

its advance the 342d also obliterated major insurgent strongholds in the

monasteries of Radovasnica and Mount Tronosa.55

Three days later, the 342d completed the encirclement of the Cer

region. But its minuscule haul of prisoners showed that most of the insur-

gents had escaped again, this time westward. The division surmised that

they had gone in the direction either of the Italians, with whom they

were likely to try to cut a deal, or of ethnic Serb forces fi ghting the Usta-

sha in the NDH.56

The 342d then turned on the insurgents in the Jadar region, and their

main center in and around Krupanj. Of this group, the division wrote

that “the enemy that has surfaced south of the Jadar constitutes not

independent groups or isolated pockets, but organized resistance under

military-style leadership.”57 Three to four thousand were reportedly

gathered in “primeval forest”—perennially ideal country for bandits and

irregulars.58

The 342d launched its assault on Krupanj on October 19. “Some

weeks ago,” the 342d’s divisional command wrote, referring to the disas-

ter that had befallen the two companies of the 724th Infantry Regiment,

“German troops in Krupanj were attacked by overwhelming numbers of

insurgents. The division has the task of avenging this attack with every

measure of harshness.”59 The division committed its entire strength,

intact since the start of operations, aided by two Panzer companies and

patrol boats from the Hungarian Danube Flotilla.60 Within two days,

though an unknown number of insurgents had escaped after leveling

Krupanj’s lead works, the division reported that the town itself had been

destroyed. The 342d shot “suspect” inhabitants before it pulled out.61

130
terror in the balk ans

Mass arrests and shootings saturated this attack also. Armed engage-

ments, rare instances aside, did not. Here too, then, the 342d failed to

deal the rebels a decisive blow.

But if the 342d’s military performance was at best inconsistent dur-

ing these latter two operations, the butchery it infl icted, much of it on

its own initiative, was thoroughly consistent. On October 13, as well as

ordering the destruction of numerous villages within the Mount Cer

region, it reiterated the command to kill on the slightest suspicion “all

those in uniform, as with all civilians encountered in no-man’s land, who

are suspected of belonging to the insurgency, are to be shot.”62 When

it attacked Krupanj, it ordered that “anything found there is to be shot

and the place burned down,”63 and that “every harshness must be visited

upon any civilians encountered, for it is known that the enemy does not

wear uniform.”64

Such orders ensured that these operations too infl icted a massively

disproportionate tally of “enemy” dead. During the last ten days of Octo-

ber, for example, the 342d lost six men, together with four offi cers and

twenty men wounded. Yet it reported that it had, in turn, killed two hun-

dred of the enemy in combat and shot one hundred after capture—three

hundred persons against the thirty-seven guns the division had seized

from them.65 Between October 10 and 19, the 342d reported, its troops

had killed 546 insurgents in combat and shot a further 1,081 following

their capture—from whom they had recovered just four guns.66

Some of the explanations for these massive contrasts do not point to

the 342d itself. These are explanations that, indeed, need keeping in

mind throughout this study. Insurgents sometimes retrieved or buried

the weapons of the fallen before retreating. Some, such as medics, pio-

neers, and some members of less well-equipped groups generally, would

probably have been unarmed anyway. Figures for insurgent dead may

also have been infl ated for other intentional or unintentional reasons. Yet

this is still such a colossal shortfall that the mass shooting of unarmed

civilians must account for a very great deal of it.67

More grisly still were the 342d’s reprisal shootings. Yet they are also

more signifi cant, for they highlight even more clearly just how ferocious

the division’s campaign was becoming. During the Krupanj operation’s

Settling Accounts in Blood
131

opening stages the 342d reported that, in reprisal for the killing of one of

its offi cer and seven of its men, and the wounding of a further three offi -

cers and twenty-seven men, it planned to execute twenty-three hundred

hostages—four hundred of whom it had already shot.68

This grim fi gure corresponded to General Boehme’s stipulated

reprisal ratios. But then the 342d took things even further. By the time

it had relieved Valjevo in late October, it had lost ten dead and thirty-

nine wounded; in reprisal, it declared it would shoot one thousand hos-

tages in retaliation for its dead, and 3,950 hostages in retaliation for its

wounded. It sharply reminded its troops of Boehme’s stipulated 1:100

and 1:50 killing ratios. This was a likely sign that not all the division’s

rank-and-fi le soldiers had been administering those ratios as thoroughly

as the division wished.69 But simple calculation reveals that the 342d’s

command was now actually
exceeding
Boehme’s ratios. For it intended to

shoot one hundred hostages not just for every one of its dead, but also for

every one of its wounded. In fact, by November 11 the division had actu-

ally run out of prisoners with which to meet its target.70

Clearly then, the need to follow orders was not the only thing pow-

ering the butchery which the 342d Infantry Division was infl icting. It

should also be remembered that the division had been butchering with

particular aplomb for a fortnight
before
Boehme issued his 1:100 reprisal

order. Indeed, not content just to outdo Boehme for ruthlessness, Hing-

hofer also challenged his superior when he felt Boehme was going “soft.”

Perhaps surprisingly, there was one occasion when Boehme did provide

Hinghofer with such grounds.

By October 20 the SD, at Boehme’s command, had released over fi ve

thousand of the more than twenty-two thousand prisoners who had been

incarcerated in the Šabac concentration camp for most of the period

since the start of the Drina-Sava operation. Boehme’s decision was not

prompted by humanity. He acted as he did partly because the Germans

needed more native informers and collaborators, and partly because

the SD simply had too many prisoners to cope with inside the camp.

Hinghofer, however, opined that the action would enable thousands of

insurgents, and their accomplices, to disappear undetected among the

population and reemerge once the 342d had left the area.71

132
terror in the balk ans

Given the scale of the production-line carnage the 342d was infl icting,

it may at fi rst appear obscene to argue that the conditions the division

encountered on the ground could have helped to fuel it. Certainly, oner-

ous though the 342d’s travails were, they do not even begin to justify

bloodletting of such magnitude. Yet their effect, alongside other possible

explanations, needs to be considered.

Following the relative failure of the Drina-Sava operation, General

Boehme and the 342d Infantry Division were under even greater pres-

sure to produce results. And by the time of the Mount Cer operation, the

342d also faced increasingly arduous conditions. Insurgents frustrated

the 342d’s advance by razing villages to the ground in “scorched earth”

fashion. The division’s troops were hindered in their advance by a road

system resembling a “baseless mass of mud.”72 They endured a debilitat-

ing slog through harsh terrain; slept under canvas in lashing rain, cold,

and snow; and lived on invariably cold rations.73 The 342d’s Chetnik