Terror in the Balkans (71 page)

tary had a particularly strong proponent of the view that encircling and

destroying an insurgent adversary was far preferable to a drawn-out,

costly “passive” security policy that focused entirely on guarding vital

installations and supply routes in occupied territory.50 But perhaps the

development that hardened the German military’s attitude most pro-

foundly was its experience of francs-tireurs—irregular French fi ghters

or, directly translated, “free-shooters”51—during the Franco-Prussian

War of 1870–1871.

During this confl ict—the culminating point of Prussia’s unifi cation

with other German states—the armies of Prussia and its German allies

developed a strong “franc-tireur psychosis.” This was caused by fre-

quent, often ruthless attacks by armed civilians upon German soldiers

in occupied France. Most of the penalties the Germans exacted were

less severe than they might have been—heavy fi nes and destruction of

property, rather than mass shootings. But hostage-taking and hostage-

shooting did take place, and rare as they were, they set a precedent.52

For the Prussian military establishment heading the German forces

detested with special vehemence any disruption of what it perceived to

be the “proper” waging of war—the employment of mobile, technical,

and tactical superiority, by coordinated and uniformed fi eld armies in

open combat, with the aim of vanquishing the enemy’s forces in a swift

26
terror in the balk ans

battle of annihilation. Of course, the Prussians’ fondness for such war-

fare was founded on the belief that they themselves were the unrivaled

masters of it.53

But the particular aversion to irregular warfare which the German

military developed during the Franco-Prussian War and after was also

due to its own limitations. It relied upon the concentration of maximum

force, underpinned by superior tactics and technology, without properly

appreciating those other elements so often essential to concluding a war

successfully. For instance, though the Germans defeated the French fi eld

armies in 1870, it was diplomacy that brought the Franco-Prussian War

to an end the following year. In downplaying the importance not just of

diplomacy, but also of factors such as logistical planning, intelligence,

coordination with civilian agencies, and—in the case of counterinsur-

gency—suffi cient cooperation from the occupied population, the Ger-

man military was narrow-minded to the point of myopia. Its excessive

reliance, instead, upon a battle of annihilation employing concentrated

maximum force therefore meant that it was actually less well equipped

for counterinsurgency than it might have been. The diffi culties it then

encountered would in turn harden its conduct even further—this time

out of frustrated ambition and a desire to compensate for its failure.54

Finally, once the German military eventually managed, through

extreme exertion and force, to bring a counterinsurgency campaign

to a successful albeit brutal conclusion, such a “victory” could fur-

ther entrench its view that “success comes only through terror.”55 It

did not help that German civilian-political agencies lacked the power

granted their counterparts in other countries to check the military’s

more brutish inclinations.56 Particularly during the Great War, more-

over, the Germans would defend their actions ever more fi ercely, citing

the paramountcy of “military necessity” in the face of the international

criticism and humanitarian lawmaking ranged against them.57 The

Austro-Hungarians tended to support the German stance, albeit for

different reasons. The Habsburg military associated irregular warfare

with internal revolutionary warfare—something that appalled it to the

utmost after violent insurrection had almost brought about the empire’s

downfall in 1848.58

Before the Great War
27

By the eve of the Great War, then, the two offi cer corps were undergo-

ing signifi cant and in part disturbing changes. They were more socially

diverse, but also more susceptible to pernicious ideology, and more pre-

occupied with mastering the technical dimensions of warfare than they

had been forty years previously. A further incubator of ruthlessness for

the German military was the combating of a particularly despised form

of warfare in its colonial campaigns.

But there remained a serious limit to how far these forces were trans-

forming offi cers’ attitudes before 1914. Though unsettling traits were

emerging within both offi cer corps, the sum effect as yet fell very far

short of a prototype National Socialist worldview. Quite apart from any-

thing else, both offi cer corps also subscribed to more benign values. For

instance, though many offi cers’ conservatism may not have opened them

up to a more broad-minded worldview, the traditional Christian beliefs

so often intrinsic to such conservatism might help counter, or at least

temper, more radical infl uences. While the military schooling to which

German offi cers were subjected imbibed an array of malignant tenden-

cies, it also conveyed the importance of good character, self-awareness,

and personal responsibility.59 The multiethnic character of the Austro-

Hungarian army, meanwhile, helped its offi cers retain an outlook char-

acterized by open-minded moderation as well as by more reactionary

traits. It would be wrong, therefore, to conclude that a combination of

social and political myopia, narrow technical specialization, and emer-

gent Social Darwinism with all it vicious offshoots was having a uni-

formly nefarious effect upon all offi cers.

Nevertheless, there are many signs that a base of disturbing tenden-

cies was already forming, and on a widespread basis. It would take a new

development, the Great War, to radically harden it.

c h a p t e r 2

Forging a Wartime Mentality

The Impact of World War I

When most of europe went to war in summer 1914, following a

monthlong diplomatic crisis sparked by the assassination of Franz

Ferdinand at the hands of a Bosnian Serb radical, the belief that it would

be a quick, glorious affair was not universal. Certainly, many generals

did not share it. They were cognizant of just how diffi cult the revolution

in defensive fi repower had rendered the business of attack. They were

also cognizant of nations’ capacity to mobilize, fi eld, and equip conscript

armies on a scale so great that it was now infi nitely harder to vanquish

them in one decisive campaign. Moltke was well aware of how protracted,

intense, and perilous to the German Empire’s future the war might well

prove to be.1 Similarly, of the approaching confl agration’s possible impact

upon the Habsburg Empire, Conrad wrote his mistress that “it will be a

hopeless struggle, but nevertheless it must be, because such an ancient

monarchy and such an ancient army cannot perish ingloriously.”2

The Great War and its tumultuous aftermath would provide favor-

able conditions for ruthlessness to fl ourish and for moderation to wither.

The effect should not be exaggerated; the brutalization German and

Austro-Hungarian offi cers underwent did not go unchecked, whether

by the more restrained side of their own mind-set or by the more level-

headed decrees issued by the commands under which they served. And

28

Forging a Wartime Mentality
29

the progression from the brutalizing ordeal they underwent during these

years to the mass violence they helped perpetrate during World War II

was not yet inescapable. But the Great War and its aftermath certainly

made that calamitous endpoint much more likely.

Germany’s Schlieffen Plan, devised a decade before war broke out,

envisioned committing the bulk of the German army to the front in the

west, in a lightning sweep through Belgium and northern France. The

Germans would advance on Paris, with the principal aim of encircling

and destroying the French armies in that swift “battle of annihilation”

of which the German General Staff deemed itself the unrivalled master.

Meanwhile, a small force would be stationed in eastern Prussia to hold

off the slower-to-mobilize Russians, until the German armies in the west

could be sent eastward to settle accounts there. With German armies

thus committed elsewhere, the Austro-Hungarian army was left to fi nish

off Serbia and her diminutive neighboring ally, Montenegro.

Franz Ferdinand had been slain by a Bosnian Serb fanatic with the

connivance of pan-Slavic elements in the Serbian army. Desire to avenge

his murder, and to expunge Slavic nationalism from the Balkans, drove

the Austrian urge for a fi nal reckoning with Serbia. Lieutenant General

von Appel, commander of X Austro-Hungarian Army Corps stationed

in Sarajevo, proclaimed on August 10, 1914:

We not only have to win here but also shatter and destroy the Serbo-

Montenegrin army—this is the carrier of Russian ideas and propa-

ganda. Above all we must thoroughly wean them of their megalomania

and arrogance . . . I have forbidden my offi cers under pain of punish-

ment with loss of honor to treat with Serbian offi cers on an equal foot-

ing . . . If they are captured . . . they are to be treated like common

soldiers . . . for an offi cer corps that takes into its midst foreign deserters

like comrades, tolerates regicide, conspires, and (includes) members of

secret societies deserves no other treatment than captured soldiers.3

It was not just the Serbian army the Austrians faced, however,

but also Serbian irregular fi ghters—men who, to Austrian eyes, were

30
terror in the balk ans

indistinguishable from the bandits who had inhabited the Balkans’

wild, mountainous regions for centuries. The previous chapter pointed

out that the Austro-Hungarians’ aversion to irregular warfare was only

slightly less intense than that of the Germans. And, though there were

limits to how far they were prepared to go in suppressing such resistance,

Austro-Hungarian troops were ready to employ ferocious brutality when

they encountered it.

It was during their fi rst invasion of Serbia, in August 1914, that the Aus-

trians encountered the highest levels of irregular resistance. Some came

from ethnic Serbian saboteurs (
Komitadjis
) within the empire’s own bor-

ders. Some
Komitadjis
, to the Austrians’ horror, were women—a fore-

runner of the armed women (
Flintenweiber
) whose irregular resistance

during World War II would particularly revolt the German army’s sensi-

bilities. Then, once in Serbia, proliferating stories of the enemy’s subter-

fuge and atrociousness, including reports that Austro-Hungarian soldiers

were being mutilated before they were killed, increased the troops’ fear

and revulsion.4 Austro-Hungarian countermeasures were fi erce in the

extreme. General von Appell ordered his offi cers to make their men aware

of “our
moral and numerical superiority
to the point of fanaticism.”5 He

also proclaimed that the war would be a “punishing hand” for the “fanati-

cal” leaders of Serbia, and that it would serve as “atonement for the coun-

try.”6 In a matter of weeks, around thirty-fi ve hundred Serbian civilians

perished in Austro-Hungarian reprisals.7 Many reprisals, usually in the

form of mass public hangings, were directed against the “treasonous”

border peoples within the empire itself.8

Brutal and excessive though it was, there was a context to this blood-

letting. The Serbs themselves, and other Balkan peoples, had been

guilty of considerably worse during the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913. More-

over, Serbian and Montenegrin troops attacking Sarajevo in August 1914

committed atrocities against Habsburg civilian subjects.9 And the Aus-

trians did not comport themselves as viciously as they might have done.

Though they sometimes threatened to retaliate against Serbian barba-

rism by devastating the country and decimating its population, they

always pulled back from the brink. This was partly out of practicality,

partly because they did not wish to transform the Serbian people into an

avenging horde, and partly because they wanted to retain the moral high

Forging a Wartime Mentality
31

ground in the eyes of domestic and international opinion. This, then,

was never a war of racial extermination, even if ethnic contempt contrib-

uted to it. Rather, it was an old-school imperial-style campaign—albeit

an extremely harsh one—to preserve order.10

Worse was the treatment the Imperial German Army dealt out in its

march through Belgium and northern France during the war’s opening

weeks. Here, German troops overreacted massively to the slightest civil-

ian resistance in the regions of Belgium and northern France through

which they were advancing. Indeed, so edgy were the German troops

that they even blamed cases of friendly fi re on francs-tireurs, and exacted