Terror in the Balkans (43 page)

not any “Bolshevik infection,” that were the most compelling reason why

many were joining or aiding the Partisans. The 369th and 373d Infantry

Divisions’ offi cers were perhaps too new to the region for them to have

fully learned these lessons yet.

And as before, the life infl uences and experiences that shaped a divi-

sional commander’s standpoint need considering also. The information

the sources provide on the social origins of the commanders in question

is too patchy for any conclusions to be drawn from it.71 There is more

information on the offi cers’ military specialisms. Dippold, Neidholt, and

Zellner had all, at some earlier time in their careers, served in one of the

new, technocratic military branches, or had received or provided specialist

training.72 One might therefore expect them to have felt frustrated, perhaps

to the point of brutalization, by the demodernized conditions many coun-

terinsurgency units in the NDH endured. Fortner, on the other hand, did

not undergo such specialist training. But the professional route he took

during the interwar years possessed a hardening potential of its own.

Instead, important clues as to what separated more radical offi cers

like Neidholt and Zellner from their more measured colleagues can be

found in where these offi cers were born and the experiences they under-

went during the Great War.

For one thing, both the 369th and 373d Infantry Divisions were com-

manded by men who had had considerable experience of the eastern

front, both on the defensive and on the offensive into the territory of the

Russian Empire, during the Great War.73 Neidholt served in a variety

of posts at army, divisional, brigade, and company level on the eastern

front between March 1915 and April 1917. Zellner served on the eastern

front against the Russian army from September 1914 until August 1916,

fi rst with the Austro-Hungarian 11th Field Gun Regiment and then with

the 70th
Honvéd
Field Howitzer Regiment. He then served with the 16th

Field Artillery Regiment in the campaign against Rumania from Sep-

tember 1916, before being transferred to the Italian front, presumably

in early 1917, following that campaign’s conclusion.74 Two of the 373d’s

232
terror in the balk ans

regimental commanders also saw extensive action on the eastern front,

again in both defensive and offensive roles, during the Great War. One

was Colonel Nikolaus Boicetta of the 384th Croatian Grenadier Regi-

ment, the other Colonel Alois Windisch, who commanded the 383d

Croatian Infantry Regiment.75

By contrast, neither Dippold nor Fortner spent any time on the eastern

front during the Great War. Indeed Dippold, like Fortner, spent the entire

duration of his Great War on the western front. Coincidentally, moreover,

his experience of that battlefront was cut short, like Fortner’s, after two

years. He was captured by the British in September 1916, the exact same

month as his colleague in the 718th.76 Some of the 718th’s regimental com-

manders likewise experienced the Great War in ways that were less bru-

talizing than they might have been. Colonel Joachim Wüst, for instance,

fought entirely on the western front during the Great War. However, born

as he was in 1900, Wüst spent only the last six months of the war in com-

bat.77 It was a similar picture with Colonel Rudolf Wutte. Wutte was born

in Austria in 1897. He served on the eastern front, but only briefl y, from

October 1914 to February 1915. He then returned to his previous post in the

military machinists’ school at Pola. From September 1915, until the begin-

ning of 1918, he served on the cruiser
Novara
in the Adriatic before taking

up various technical posts on the home front until the end of the war.78

That extensive eastern front experience during the Great War helped

to radicalize an offi cer’s conduct during World War II was suggested by

the case of the 342d Infantry Division in Serbia. It is suggested here also.

And General Zellner and Colonel Boicetta, both Austrian-born, had

also participated in the invasion of Serbia during the Great War.79 In Ser-

bia in 1941, General Boehme had exploited the memory of the 1914 inva-

sion to immensely brutal effect.80 Bosnia in 1943 was not Serbia in 1941.

But when Boehme invoked the Serbian atrocities of 1914 to justify his call

for vengeance against the Serbs in 1941, he may also have been tapping

into wider Austrian perceptions about the “backwardness and savagery”

of southern Slavs generally. These were perceptions to which General

Conrad had given voice in his memoirs decades before.81 In any case, to

many offi cers the interethnic slaughter that ravaged Bosnia in 1943 may

have seemed another symptom of such savagery, alongside the Serbian

“barbarism” of 1914. Offi cers faced with the latter, during a formative

The Devil’s Division
233

time of their lives, in 1914 may well have been more likely to lash out in

response to the former in 1943. Indeed, any offi cer of Austrian origin

was subject to such collective memory, even if he had not actually served

in the Balkans during the Great War. And offi cers encountering ethnic

Serbs in Bosnia during 1943 may have drawn a particularly strong con-

nection with the purported Serbian savagery of 1914.

Habsburg origins and eastern front experience may well have also

hardened another of the divisional commanders serving in the NDH in

1943. Lieutenant General Karl Eglseer was appointed commander of the

714th Infantry Division in March of that year. Eglseer served briefl y on

the eastern front in 1914, before being badly wounded and captured by

the Russians at the end of that year. He was not to see action again until

spring 1918, when he rejoined his old regiment on the Italian front.82 But

even though he was out of the action, his experience as a prisoner of war

may well have affected him profoundly. Until the Bolshevik Revolution,

captured offi cers of the Central powers, unlike their men, enjoyed privi-

leged arrangements in line with the terms of the Geneva Convention. But

the Bolshevik Revolution transformed their situation. The Bolsheviks’

pronouncement of captured offi cers as class enemies, stoppage of their

monthly allowance, and the terrible economic hardships ravaging Rus-

sia at this time all caused their conditions to deteriorate markedly.83 It is

likely that this experience contributed to Eglseer’s own radicalization.

Eglseer’s conduct at the time of the 1938 Anschluß certainly marks

him out as a convinced follower of National Socialism.84 Chief of staff

of the Austrian 6th Infantry Division when the Anschluß took place, he

quickly supplanted his non-Nazi superior, Brigadier General Szente, as

divisional commander. Such was his buoyant mood that, twelve days

after the Anschluß, he quashed pending disciplinary charges against

two soldiers “in view of the enthusiasm which the reunifi cation of Aus-

tria with Germany has released.”85

On arriving in Bosnia as the new commander of the 714th Infantry Divi-

sion, Eglseer issued directives that set him apart from commanders such as

Fortner and Dippold. For he was singularly keen on issuing “why we fi ght”–

type directives to the troops.86 He also stressed, underlining the point for

effect, that “
there is no such thing as a non-combatant! Anyone who runs

away or does not take part in the battle will come before a military court!”
87

234
terror in the balk ans

Eglseer’s particularly acute concern for discipline may be attributed

to his Great War experiences. He had seen discipline collapse among

frontline troops just before his capture on the eastern front in 1914.88 He

had probably also seen it, though the available sources do not explicitly

say so, among the disintegrating Habsburg armies on the Italian front in

1918. It may also be attributed to an ideological harshness forged by the

personal indignities and hardships he had suffered as a captive of the

Bolsheviks. It could be further attributed, fi nally, to a personal belief in

driving the troops as hard as possible—a legacy, perhaps, of the extreme

infantry training to which General Conrad had subjected the men of the

Royal-Imperial Army before the Great War.

The hapless state of the 369th Infantry Division’s manpower helps to

explain why that division’s propensity for brutality during Operation

White I was so strong. It did, after all, have to contend with such a situ-

ation while also contending with severe overstretch, vast tracts of dif-

fi cult terrain, and an at best ambivalent population. These conditions,

as the 718th Infantry Division had discovered in 1942, might have been

avoided had the Reich’s military and political leadership resourced the

anti-Partisan campaign properly from the start, asserted itself with the

Italians, and above all taken a much fi rmer line against the Ustasha.

Nevertheless, the 369th’s epidemic discipline problems indicate that its

poor fi ghting power was to some degree self-infl icted. Yet it also becomes

clear, by comparing the 369th with the 373d Infantry Division, that for-

mations that possessed
different
levels of fi ghting power could respond

to their situation in similarly extreme ways. That the two divisions were

newcomers to the business of counterinsurgency warfare, whether in

Yugoslavia or elsewhere, may have contributed to this. So too may the

combat theaters in which both divisional commanders, and indeed two

of their regimental commanders, saw service during the Great War. And

in Bosnia in 1943, the effect for some commanders may well have been

reinforced by their Austrian origins. This may also explain why the lan-

guage employed by the 373d, commanded by the Austrian Zellner, was

more ideological than that of the 369th under the German Neidholt. Both

commanders, however, shared common ground with the 714th Infantry

The Devil’s Division
235

Division’s General Eglseer. And all three differ sharply from the more

restrained divisional commanders whom this chapter has considered.

Operation White I itself was a failure. Not only did the forewarned Par-

tisans resist with surprising ferocity; it eventually became clear to the

Axis that the largest body of Partisans was located further south anyway.

Sensing that the Axis were themselves about to realize this, Tito ordered

his main force to move to the southeast, across the River Neretva, to

escape encirclement. As the Partisans advanced on the Neretva during

the fi rst half of February, they also threatened the bauxite mines in the

Mostar area. General Lüters canceled White I accordingly on February

15. Six days later, in an effort to destroy the main Partisan group, he initi-

ated White II. A subsidiary Axis operation was also launched to protect

the mines. The Italians barred the Partisans’ way to the Neretva. And

now Mihailovicópportunistically threw his Chetniks into the struggle

also. He committed between twenty thousand and twenty-six thousand

Chetniks—the exact fi gures are unclear—with the aim of fi nishing off

the Partisans once and for all.89

But Tito then destroyed the Neretva bridges and turned his forces

around to attack the Germans advancing on his rear. This not only bought

time in which to protect the Partisan wounded, but also made the Axis

believe that the Partisans were not planning to cross the Neretva anyway.

Thus, when Tito’s forces eventually turned to face the Neretva again, suc-

cessfully crossing it by makeshift means, only Mihailovic´’s Chetniks stood

in their way. Between March 9 and 15, 1943, the Partisans conclusively

demonstrated their military superiority over the MihailovicĆhetniks by

routing them in a decisive battle from which they never recovered.90

During the months that followed, so badly did the Axis position

against the Partisans deteriorate that all prospect of success for any kind

of anti-Partisan campaign progressively dwindled to nothing.

Conclusion

The white operations had shown how formidable a prospect the

Yugoslav Partisans were becoming by early 1943. The operations

the Axis conducted against them during the rest of 1943, and into 1944,

increasingly demonstrated that defeating them decisively with the forces

available was impossible. This book’s main concern has not been why

the Wehrmacht’s counterinsurgency campaign in Yugoslavia ultimately

failed, or whether it might have succeeded had it acted differently. Its

main concern has been with what motivated German army commanders

to conduct the campaign in the way that they did. But before return-

ing to that central question, it is important to consider the main military

and political reasons why ultimate success eluded the Wehrmacht’s cam-

paign during the period examined in this book, and the consequences

during the period that followed from spring 1943 onward.1

There were manifold reasons why the Wehrmacht failed to destroy the

Partisans before their strength reached its level of early 1943. The Wehr-